UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO ~ i i ii I'liiiiiir 3 1822022366579 w r 3 LIBRARY ynivERsrrv OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO . UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 3 1822 02236 6579 Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due OCT 1 6 1997 MAR 1 1999 MAP 1 1 tnnn WMK 1 1 1999 4 Cl 39 (5/97) UCSD Lib. FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE ROYAL INJUNCTIONS OF 1535. 3Lontion : CAMBRIDGE WAREHOUSE, 17 PATERNOSTER ROW. \ (Kambrtoge : DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE ROYAL INJUNCTIONS OF 1535 BY JAMES BASS MULLINGEE, M.A. ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1873 [All Right* rexerred.] ambrtoge : PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY. M.A. AT THE UN1VEBSITY PEESS. TO JOHN EDWIN SANDYS, ESQ., M.A., FELLOW AND TUTOR OP ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, grin's Uolume 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 Vlll 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 Athence 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. Bat 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, Haurdau, the younger Jourdain, Re'musat, 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 Louvain 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.R.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 1 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 Oivitate 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 Aldlielm, 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 oiblati 19 Disturbed state of the empire after the death of Charle- magne ib. Bishop Lupus of Ferrieres 20 His letters and studies ib. State of learning in England 21 xiv CONTENTS. PAOK SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES 21 Orosius 22 Martianus Capella 23 Boethius 27 Aristotle as known to Europe before the twelfth century . 29 Cassiodorus 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 Rheims 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 4g Maintains the rights of reason against mere traditional belief 47 His controversy with Lanfranc Anselm 4 < COMMENCEMENT OP THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY . . ib. Dictum of Cousin with respect to its origin .... 50 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 59 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 OP THE UNIVERSITY ERA, r 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 CONTEXTS. PACK THE UsmosiTY OF BOJXXJXA . Its schools and constitution Original Jgnifa'M*** of the (factorial degree .... ib. Doctoret legente* and non legtnlt* .... 74 Insignificance of the coDege system at Bologna . Limits within which Bologna was adopted as a model for later universities THE USTTEBSITT OF PARIS 74 The ' Sinai of the Middle Ages' . Paris and Bologna compared Origin of the university Origin of uniTersity degrees ib. Catholicity of then- degrees dependent on the papal sane- tun ... 7> Professor Maiden's explanation ib. The 'Nations' 78 Early theological activity of the university .... 79 Jealousy of Borne ib. Explanation given by M. V. Le Clerc *&. Other universities founded in the thirteenth century . . . -' Probable origm of Oxford and Cambridge ib. The first Danish invasion 81 Destruction of the Becedictine monasteries .... ib. Their rerrral under St. Dnnstan ib. The second Danish invasion ib. Destruction of the libraries 82 Subsequent multiplication of the monasteries .... ib. m Revival of learning at Oxford 83 Robert Puflen ib. Connexion between the schools of Oxford and the university of Paris 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 -' Degeneracy of the Benedictines C 6 Account of Giraldus Cambrensis ib. Causes that favored monastic corruption -7 Influence of the Crusades ib. The orders of St Dominic and St Francis d'Assisi . . . 88 Conception of these orders contrasted with that of monartiriam "9 Their rapid extension . 90 The Franciscans at Oxford and at Cambridge .... ib. CONTENTS. PAGE Testimony of Grossctcstc 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 Ai-abic 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 Avith 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 and 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. xviii CONTENTS. PAGE Extension given to this theory by the Arabian commen- tators Views espoused by the Franciscans H7 Alexander Hales Averroistic sympathies of the early Franciscans . . . 118 Bonaventura His comparative indifference to Aristotle .... W 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 PAKIS . . . 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. Le Clerc . . . 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 ^ 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 Jleligious orders at Cambridge ' ib. The Franciscans ib. The Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustine Friars . . . 139 The Priory at Barnwell . ib. OUTLINE OP THE EARLY ORGANISATION OF 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 pi-octors 144 The bedels . . ih Scrutators and taxors . 145 The working body formerly the sole legislative body . . ib. The university recognised at Rome as a gtudium 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. b-2 XX CONTENTS. PAGE His translation of Aristotle's Ethics 1-34 His opinion of the existing translations of Aristotle . . . 154 ROGER BACOX ib. His account of the contemporary translators of Aristotle . 155 Difficulties of his career as a Franciscan . . . . 153 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 he proposes 158 Utter want of grammatical knowledge of any language . > ib. Value he attaches to the study of mathematics . . . 159 Foundation of Merton 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 OF MEBTOX COLLEGE, 1270 164 The religious orders excluded from the foundation . . ib. Various pursuits of the secular clergy in those times . . 165 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 be maintained on the foundation 16S Distinguished merit of the whole conception ... ib. EMLXEXT MEBTOXIAXS : Drxs Scores 169 Oxford at the commencement of the fourteenth century . 171 Views of the schoolman and the modern scholar contrasted 17-2 Difficulties that attend any account of this period . . ib. Progressive element in scholasticism 173 Researches of recent writers .... 174 Influence of the Byzantine logic .' 175 Learning at Constantinople in the eleventh century . . ib, Treatise on logic by Psellus 175 Translation of Psellus's treatise by Petrus Hispanus . . 175 Translation by William Shyreswood 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 jij-g Presence of the Byzantine logic in writings of Duns Scotus 180 CONTENTS. XXI PAGE Theory of the intentio secunda . . . . . . 181 State of the controversy prior to the time of Duns Scotus . ib. Theory of the 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 the 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 Duns Scotus ib. WILLIAM OF 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 the 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-noiniualistic 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 BURY ib. * His early career and experiences 201 His interview with Petrarch at Avignon .... it>. xxii 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 V- His testimony to the degeneracy of the mendicant orders . ib. VThe 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 Blackstone'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 . 218 Main object of this statute 220 Its details compared with those of statute LXVIII. . . 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 HUGH BALSHAM ^ His disputed election to the see of Ely ... ib. His merits compared with those of Adam de Marisco . . 224 His merits as an administrator His equitable decision between his archdeacon and the university ^ Scholars not under a master forbidden to reside in the university 226 Hugh Balsham 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 OP PETERHOUSE, A.D. 1284 ib- The 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. These 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 Peterhouse 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 Bateman 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 Christ! College 249 Its statutes apparently borrowed from those of Michael- house ib. CONTENTS. PAGE Requirements with respect to studies . FOUNDATION OF CLARE HALL, by Elizabeth de Burgh, A.D. 1359 Design of the foundress Losses occasioned by the pestilence one of her motives Liberality of sentiment by which these statutes are charac- terised . Conditions to be observed in the election of fellows . . 252 Provision for ten sizars FOUNDATION OF KING'S HALL by Edward n., A.D. 1326 Mansion given to the King's scholars by Edward in. . . 253 Statutes given by Richard n Limitations as to age at time of admission .... Other provisions in the statutes The foundation apparently designed for students from the wealthier classes "' Illustration afforded in the foregoing codes of the different tendencies of the age The vital question with respect to University education . ib. CHAP. III. CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO THE CLASSICAL ERA. Part II. The Fifteenth Century. Visitation of Archbishop Arundel, A.D. 1401 .... 258 He aims at the suppression of Lollardism Fundamental importance of the question raised by "William of Occam .... .^ .... 259 Direct relevancy of the question concerning the temporal power of the pope to the study of the canon law . . 260 Jonx WYCLIF 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 ib- Exclusive privileges which they succeed in obtaining . . 264 Opposition to the theory of Walter de Merton . . . ib. Efforts of Wyclif on behalf of the secular clergy at Oxford . ib. 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 the monks ib. Archbishop Langham expels the seculars .... ib. CONTENTS. XXV PAGE Efforts of the laity to circumscribe the power of the Church 266 Real character of Wyclifs 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 the universities 270 The universities the strongholds of Lollardism . . . 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 Modis and De Conccrdia . . . 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 loth century .... ib. The Great Councils . 281 The policy of Gerson^ opposed at Basel by the English Ultramontanists ib. France enacts the Pragmatic Sanction ib. The popes avenge"theniselves 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 the 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 the university by Arundel ib. This authorityjabolished by pope Martin v in the Barmvell Process 28S xxvi CONTENTS. PAGE REGINALD PECOCK - His Rcprcssor ... Logic his panacea for heresy 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 He nevertheless advocates submission to the temporal authority of the pope ib. He denounces Lollardism 293 Summa Prcedicantium 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. V/" 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 V y^ Defective accommodation for instruction at both universities 299 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 OP WYKEHAM fa Foundation of New College, Oxford, A.D. 1380 . . . 302 The college endowed with lands purchased from religious houses ib. 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 ... ft Gough's account of the alien priories . 304 Sequestrations under different monarchs . ;& FOUNDATION OF KING'S COLLEGE and ETON COLLEGE AD 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 306 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 OP 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 Woodvillo 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 OP ST. CATHERINE'S HALL, A.D. 14" 5 . . . 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 OP 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. xxviii CONTENTS. PAGE John Alcock, bishop of Ely 321 Early statutes of Jesus 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 Peter-house, 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 CHAP. IV. STUDENT LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. I 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 be 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 The ascetic theory CONTENTS. XXIX Results of monastic industry not to be 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 Chinge 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. The 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 universities . . 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 Avith 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 AN 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. 1 439 . . . . ib. Grammar always included in the arts course . . . ib. Logic ........... 350 The Summulce of Petrus Hispanus ..... ib. Rhetoric ........ 351 XXX CONTENTS. PAGE The giiadritium 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 The questionist 353 The supplicat ib. Stokys' account of the ceremony observed by the questionist ib. The determiner 354 Stare in quadragesima ib. Determiners admitted to determine by proxy . . . ib. Importance attached to the ceremony of determination . 3-35 The iuceptor ib. Account of the ceremony of inception ib. The 'father' 356 The prcemricator . 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 360 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 355 The education thus imparted thorough of its kind ... ib. Baneful effects on the theology of the time ... ib. COLLEGE LIFE ogg Asceticism again the dominant theory ... ib. Account given by Erasmus of the College de Montaigu . 367 His account unchallenged . . . . ' 3 68 Our early colleges designed only for poor students . . ib. Certain attainments necessary in those admitted on the foundation 3 69 Extreme youth of the majority at the time of their ad- mission - CONTENTS. XXXI PAGE Their treatment 369 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 be 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. Tlie 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 ;&. 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 modern 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. PAGK His- position in relation to Ai-istotlc 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 . . . 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 CHRTSOLORAS 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 GUARINO .,,,,, 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 BRUNI 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 JSneas 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. xxxni I-AGF. BKSSARION , 40.1 His patriotic zeal .<.,...... ib. His efforts towards the 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 , ib, Reuchlin and Argyropulos . " . . " . . . . 407 LEARNING IN GERMANY ib. jEneas Sylvius and Gregory Heimburg .... 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 Forma ndo Studio .' . . ... . . ib. He regards natural science as ancillary to philosophy . . 411 Use of the native language in' classical studies ... ib. Acquired knowledge to be not only stored but assimilated . ib. Real novelty of thought in this treatise .... 412 His De Inretitione, 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 ..... 416 The Humanists and the universities H>. Progress of Nominalism at the universities . ... . ib. Attitude of the universities with respect to the new learning 417 The Humanists attack fhe civilians .' . . . . . 418 Valla at the university bf Pavia ib. Comparison instituted by an eminent jurist between Cicero and ' Bartolus . . .' 419 Valla's attack^on Bartolus ib. Poggio and the canonists 4-Jo C T V* xxxiv CONTENTS. PAGE The opposition in tlio 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 this 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 t7>. The phenomena of the age not of an inspiriting character . . 427 isher'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. Angelus Politianus ft>. His Miscellanea ......... ib. Theodorus Gaza ib. Georgius Trapezuntius . ...... ib. His Logic ib. Constantino Lascaris, Hcnnolaus Barbaras and George Hermonymus 430 Early Greek Grammars . if). Sentiments with which the progress of the new learning was regarded at Cambridge . . . ; . . 431 Progress of scepticism in Italy ?7>. Testimony of Machiavelli and Savonarola to the depravity of the nation ib. Feelings of the supporters of the traditional learning . . 432 CONTEXTS. XXXV PACK Earliest traces of some attention to the writings of the Human- ists at Cambridge 433 A treatise by Petrarch at Michaelhouse ib. Cams 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 fi>. FOUNDATION OF THE LADY MARGARET PROFESSORSHIP ... ib. The revenues entrusted to the abbey of Westminster . . 436 Salary attached to the office ib. 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 ib. 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 #' CONTENTS. PAGE Accessions to the revenues of the society .... 445 Design of the lady Margaret Fisher elected president of Queens' College .... 446 Foundation of CHRIST'S COLLEGE, A.D. 1505 .... 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 .... King Henry's reception 449 Fisher's oration to king Henry His excessive adulation . . . Traditions concerning the foundation of the university 450 Fisher's acknowledgement of the favours he had himself . received The procession through the town 4ol 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 OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, AD. 1506 . . . ib. Numerous restrictions imposed upon the authority of the master 454 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 . 4o7 Clause in the form of oath administered to the master of Christ's College .... : 458 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 PAfiB Provision for the admission of pensioners of approved cha- racter 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 f&. 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 . t 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 46S 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 ! ospital at Ospringe as a partial compensation .... v ... ib. xxxviii 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 .... Thirty-one fellows elected Alan Percy succeeds Shorten as master .... The statutes given identical with those of Christ's College . ib. Illustration they afford of Fisher's character . . . 471 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 Politian ib. Thomas Linacre 478 The pupil of Selling at Christchurch and of Vitelli at Oxford ib. He accompanies Selling to Italy ib. Becomes a pupil of Politian ....... ib. Makes the acquaintance of Hermolaus Barbaras at Rome . 479 Important results of their subsequent intercourse . . ib. Influence of his example at Oxford on Grocyn, Lily, and Latimer ^ Different candidates for the title of restorer of Greek learn- ing in England 1 '5 > Testimony of Erasmus to the merits of his Oxford friends . . 480 Debt of Cambridge to Oxford jj Gibbon's dictum ........ 7 j Where and when Erasmus acquired his knowledge of Greek . 481 Chiefly indebted to his own efforts ...... #. Progress of Greek studies at Oxford - t -j Linacre's translations ^ The odium theologicum 4g9 The study of Greek sanctioned in the fourteenth century bv papal decree $ Subsequent omission of Greek in the text of the Clemen- tines ...... CONTENTS. XXXIX PAQB The Greek fathers begin to be better known .... 483 Their influence on the views of eminent Humanists . . . ib. Vitrarius ib. Erasmus ih. Colet and Reuchlin 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 . . id. Position assumed by the anti-Augustiniau party . . . 485 Permanence of Augustine's influence ..... ib. Story from Eusebius ib. Greek studies begin to be regarded as heretical . . . 486 Reuchliu'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 Ammonius 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 fa protected by Fisher 496 His admiration of Fisher's character fa 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 , . fa John Watson ib. His letter to Erasmus . ib. xl CONTENTS. PAGE John Fawne, Richard Whitford, and Richard Sampson . . 500 Gerard the bookseller ib. Views of Erasmus compared with those prevalent in the uni- versity during his stay . ' . . . .. . 501 His estimate of different fathers ...... ib. St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and Origen ib. St 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 Novum 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 $ Leo x accepts the dedication . ." . . . . . 512 Counter demonstrations at Cambridge ... ib. Sarcastic allusions in the commentary of the Novum Instru- mentum ^ He attacks the secular clergy, the monks, the Mendicants and the schoolmen ..... ? -j Erasmus's reply to Bullock, Aug. 31, 1516. . . 513 He attacks his opponents with acrimony Justifies himself by the precedent afforded by the new versions of Aristotle ^ Refers to the distinguished approval which his work had already obtained . . . . . ;. . 515 y , 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 less with qutPsfionct ib. CONTENTS. xli PAGE Believes posterity, will do him more justice . . . . 516 His prediction fulfilled 517 \f 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 Novum Instrumentum .... 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 CHRISTI 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 \JHe 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 Wolsey, 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 CONTENTS. PAGE Oxford 'a Cambridge colony' .539 Retort of Anthony Wood Institution of the office of Public Orator, A. D. 1522 . Croke elected for life ib. N SKELTON 54 His satirical verses on the attention now given to Greek at Cambridge ib. THOMAS WOLSEY 541 His relations to Cambridge He declines the chancellorship .... 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 tft. Peroration of his speech 547 Wolsey's victims at the universities ib. Stafford, Skelton, and Pace 548 Oxford surrenders its statutes to be altered at Wolsey's pleasure 549 The precedent followed by Cambridge ib. Fiddes's criticism on the Cambridge address . . . ib. 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 developement of Lollardisin but to be traced to the influence of Erasmus's New Testament ib Bilney's testimony '. 55g Proclamation of Indulgences by Leo x. ...... ib. Copy affixed by Fisher to the gate of the common schools . fa Act of Peter de Valence 557 His excommunication fa Prospects of reform prior to A. D. 1517 /ft 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 Xew 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 bis own country 563 Thomas Forman, John Lambert ...... ib. Nicholas Shaxton 564 Gonville Hall noted for its sympathy with the Reformers . ib. ROBERT BARXES ib. Character of the Augustinian friars as a body . . . ib. John Tonnys 565 Barnes sent to study at Louvain ib. Jerome Busleiden ib. Foundation of the collegium trilinyue ib. Jealousy of the conservatives 566 Barnes returns to England with Paynell .... 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. Becon'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 Sorbonue 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 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. P1GK King Henry.and Fisher write against Luther .... 572 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 Reformers not all young men .... 574 Circumstances that ple^d 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 , . 550 His early career and character . . . . . . 581 He attacks Melanchthon { J. His position in the. university ......... ib. He is converted by Bilney #. He becomes his intimate associate 582 Effects of his example ...... $ Bishop West attends Latimer's sermon . . . 553 He requests Latimer to preach against Luther . . . ib. West inhibits Latimer from preaching . . 534 Latimer preaches at the church of the Augustiuiau friars . ib. Latimer is summoned before Wolsey in London . . fa. Wolsey licenses Latimer to preach . $ Sir Thomas More elected high steward . . #' Absorbing attention given to Luther '. Letter o St. John's College ib. Cromwell succeeds fisher as chancellor 629 His comniissio.ners.at Oxford, and Cambridge .... ib. Leighton> account of the proceedings at Oxford . . . ib. THE ROYAL INJUNCTIONS OP 1535 630 Commencement of anew 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-Guteh, Baker-Mayor, denote respectively Wood's Annals of Oxford, edited by Gutch, 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. IV 2 , 375*, denotes the edition to which reference is made. EBKATUM. p. 282, note 2, for ' collegium trilingue at Lou vain,' read ' university of Lou vain. ' INTRODUCTION. THE thirteenth century embraces within its limits an INTRO- , A r i IT u- 4. T A DUCTION. eminently eventful era in European history. It was an age -y 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 DITCTION. r . . . .-, i , ., f ., ,, j ^^-v^ conducive to our main purpose, the habits ot 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 The imperial of the Church. In the third and fourth centuries indeed the the Roman traditions of Roman culture were still preserved in full vigour in Transalpine Gaul; Autun, Treves, 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 commence- of Philip Augustus have been termed, not inaptly, ' the mentor the ~ ,. . b , , T . J1 Henedictiue Benedictine era . 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, 1 L6on Maitre, Les Ecoles Episcopates et Monastiques de V Occident, p. 174. THEORY OF MONASTICISM. 3 anarchy, and misery of their age. ready to bid adieu to the INTRO- DUCTION. world and its cares, so that they might pass the remainder ^ ' of their days in holy duties and tranquil occupations, in conation of . ". -IT *J le religious fasting, meditation, and prayer. In precisely the same spirit lif e. St Benedict reared on Monte Cassino the first monastery Foundation of his order, and drew up those rules for its observance Monastery of r ^ < Monte whereby self-mortification, isolation from mankind, the ex- ^"^ 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 . i i i i r i t '? e monast i c 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 in justice 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 - v 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. orosms. The first of the five treatises above enumerated represents A.D. 4i6. 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 HisiiMo- homo 1 . It was in the fifth century that Orosius wrote; a riarum . . ,,,... Sfk^jJJJJ time when paganism was loudly reiterating its accusations Liiri vii. a g a i ns t 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 few will call in question, claims for dain's Dissertation sur VEtat de la these times a somewhat larger litera- Philosophic Naturelle au Douzieme tiire than is usually admitted :' ' A Siccle, p. 26. Among the most recent toutes les 6poques du moyen age on estimates of the learning of these a lu les Questions Naturelles de ages that of M. Victor Le Clerc's ia S^neque, le poeme de Lucrece, les noticeable for its highly favorabla ouvrages philosophiques de Ciceron, character : ' Quant a la litte'rature les livresd'Apulee,ceuxdeCassiodore, latiue, peu s'en fallait qu'on ne 1'eut de Boece, etc.' Recherches Critiques deja telle que nous 1'avons aujour- sur L'Age et L'Origine des Traduc- d'hui. Ce mot trop legerement em- tions Latines D'Aristote, edit. 1843, ploye de renaissance des lettres ne p. 21. Mr Lewes (Hist, of Philoso- sauraits'appliqueraux lettres latines: phy, ii 65) doubts whether Lucretius ellesn'ont point ressuscite,parce qu'el- could possibly have been tolerated les n'etaient point mortes.' Histoire in so exclusively theological an age; Litteraire de la France au Quator- but both Eabanus Maurus and Wil- zieme Siecle, i 355. liam of Conches appear to have been * Ozanam, History of Civilization familiar with portions, at least, of in the Fifth Century, i 57. his great poem. See Charles Jour- OEOSIUS. 23 circumstantial reply. The ' Histories' are accordingly a kind INTRO- of abstract of the De Civitate, the theory of Augustine < -y ' 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 Phtlologice Martianus et Mercurii et de Septem Artibus Liberalibus Libri Novem, is fl.dro.4U 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 Nactus enim sum prseteritos dies (Eyssenhardt, Lipsite, 1866) considers non solum aeque ut hos graves, verum that he lived before 43'.), and could etiam tanto atrocius miseros, qnanto not possibly have written subse- longius a reinedio verse religionis quently to the Vandal occupation of alienos. Prafatio ad Aiirelium An- Africa. He consequently places our giistinum, Migue, xsxi 667. author nearly half a century earlier 2 A recent editor of Martianns than the usually assigned elate. 24; THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. INTRO- venes a meeting of the gods and demands the rights of natu- ^^^' 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. The cum- 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 Grammar, subject, it is not only docte scribere legereque, but also 1 See Haureau, De la Philosophic the loud snores of Silenus asleep Scholastique, i 21. Brucker, Hist. under the influence of his deep Grit. Phil, in 957. This division of potations. The kiss wherewith Ehe- the several liberal arts is to be found torica salutes Philologia is heard in Augustine, De Ordine, c. 13. throughout the assembly, nihil enim Haureau would therefore seem to be silens, ac si cuperet, facicbat. John in error when he attributes its first of Salisbury (see Metaloyicus, Lib. iv) conception to Capella. See Dean frequently illustrates his discourses Hansel's Introd. to Artis Logics Ru- by a reference to this allegory as dimenta, p. 28. especially familiar to his age. Les 2 As specimens the following may imaginations vives, remarks Le"on suffice : The plaudits that follow Maitre, donnaient leur pr6f6rence a upon the discourse delivered by Martianus Capella. Scales Episc. Arithmetica are supposed to be in- 211. terrupted by laughter, occasioned by MARTIANUR CAPELLA. 25 erudite intelliqere probaregue. The actual information is INTRO- DUCTJON 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 Rhetoric, 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 Geometry. 1 Kopp here observes, ' ea elegisse videtur, in quibus 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- dorus and Isidore. C. F. Hermann, in his preface to Kopp's edition, expresses his belief that Martianus drew largely from Varro, ' quse si recte observavi, fieri poterit ut exMartiano si uihil aliud tamen aliquas principis eruditionis Bomanae reliquias lucre - mur.' 3 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 fiomans been disposed to encourage a speculative philosophy 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 w'hich 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, 1 ^-" 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 of the geographical fa&t Tiberius had, in his own person, traversed the whole knowledge * of the period. extent of t k e Northern Ocean and had penetrated to the country of the Scythians and the Arctic regions, magno dehino 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 Aside 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 loAver 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 Music. interpreted after the manner of Pythagoras. ' Music ' includes the subject of metre, together with a brief account of harmony Astronomy, 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, very remarkable queatur, planetae quotidie tarn loca that superficial as is his treatment of quam diversitates arripiant circulo- astrpnorny, he yet appears to have rum. Nam ex his nullum sidus ex to some extent anticipated the Co- eoloco undepridieortumestelevatur. pernican theory. The passage de- Quod si est, dubium non est, cen- serves quotation : ' Licet generaliter turn octoginta tres circulos habere sciendum, cunctis orbibus planetarum Solem, per quos aut ab solstitio in eccentron esse tellurem, hoc est non brumam redit, aut ab eadem in tenere medium circulorum ; quoniam solstitialem lineam sublevatur ; per mundi centron esse non dubium ; et easdern quippe mutationes commeat illud generale septem omnibus ad- circulorum. Sed quum Sol prsedictum vertendum, quod quum mundus ejns- numerum habeat, Mars duplos c;r- dem ductus rotatione uniinoda tor- culos facit, lovis stella duodecit'S BOETHIUS. 27 If, as has been conjectured 1 , the allegory presented in the De Consolatione Philosophies of Boethius was conceived in imitation of the allegorical treatment adopted by Martianus, 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 which that distinguished statesman rendered to posterity 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, we shall probably incline to the conclusion that Boethius wrote for a different and a higher class. The His prcat service to learning. Martianus and Hocthius compared. exercet, octies vicies cumulatur Sa- turnus, eos circulos qui parallel! dicuntur circuiiicurrens ; qui motus omnium cum mundo proveniunt, et terras ortibus occasibusque circum- euiit. Nam Venus Hercuriusque licet ortus occasusque quotidianos oxti'iidant, tamen eorum circuit terras omnino non ambiunt sed circa Solcm laxiare ambitu circulantur ; denique circuloriim suorum centron in Sole constituunt, ita ut supra ipsum ali- u supra Solem sunt, propin- ilii/itr est terris Mercurius, quum infra Solem, Venus, utpote qua: orbe castiore dijfuttiori'quc ciirvetur.' c. viii., p. 856, ed. Kopp. ' On dit,' says Delambre, 'qui c'est ce peu de ligues qui a e"tc pris par Copernic pour le sujet de ses meditations, et qui 1'a conduit A son syslenio du ruoude ; en ce cas Mar- tianus aurait rendu a 1'astronomio plus de services que des astronomes Men plus habiles, et nous devous lui pardonner son verbiage, ses be"vues et son galimathias.' 1 See article by Dean Stanley, ' Boethius,' in Smith's Diet, of Greek and Eom. Biography and Mythology. 3 " Both of the great esteem in which the Consolation of Boethiua was held by the Church of tbo Middle Ages, and of the great in- fluence of the monastic schools, Dr Pauli finds evidence in the fact, that ' as soon as a newly formed language began to produce, we meet with a version of Boethius in it ; this is also the case with all the most ancient remains of the old High Germans, the Provencals, and the Northern French ; even Chaucer formed him- self upon it when he gave England its language.'" Morley'sA'/'^'s/i Writer*, Vol. i pt. 1, p. 3UU. 28 THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. TNTRO- Arithmetic in Martianus, for instance, occupies but 47 pages ; <. ' that of Boethius, 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 The cduca- treatment by Boethius is not only far more comprehensive, tional trea- * , . _ * . tises by tmt gives to the whole curnculum a dignity and coherence Boethius pi 1 iatinn c s? 1 but altogether wanting in the works of the other compilers. The thnrgen^ai 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. Boethius not The results of modern criticism would seem to have a Christian writer. established the fact that Boethius cannot be ranked among the adherents of early Christianity 2 . 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 Cassiodorus (in the two pages in Weber's Preface to Fragmentum which he dismisses the same subject) A. M. T. S. Boethii de Arithmetica. bears witness to its merits : ' quam Cassellis, 1847. (arithmeticam) apud Grsecos Nico- 2 Boethium a Christi doctrina alie- inachus diligenter exposuit. Hunc num fuisse multis ex rebus efficitur, primum Madaurensis Apuleius, de- is the dictum of a recent editor, inde magnificus vir Boetius Latino See De Consol. Phil. ed. Obbarius, sermone translation Romania contu- 1843. The supposition that Boethius lit lectitandum. ' De Artibus Liber, encountered his fate as a martyr in Migne, LXX 1207. Other followers the cause of orthodoxy against the of Boethius were Bede, Gerbert, and Arians, though sanctioned by Baehr John of Salisbury. For a succinct and Heyne, has been completely account of the progress of the science refuted by Hand ; see Ersch and up to the time of Boethius see C. F. Grub. Encyklopacdie, xi 233. CASSIODORUS. 29 countrymen with the writings of Aristotle and Porphyry, and INTHO- > TH T f*TIOV to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, would at once suggest, to - *~ "' 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 11 i of the philosophy will be aware how frequently its predominant Aristotelian 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 o n i>- the thirteenth century, was simply Aristotle the logician ; and Aristotle . . , , . known to even as a logician he was but imperfectly known. The Euro j* L from * A.D. 500 tO whole of the Organon had, indeed, been translated by Boethius, blunpart' 18 but even of this the greater part was unknown to Europe prior to the twelfth century 1 . The Categories and the De Interpretation, 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 ganzlich unbekannt der Hauptschriften des Organons, d. gewesen war. Prantl, Gcschichte der h. der beiden Analytiken und der Logik, in 3. Topik nebst Soph. El., -vor dem 12. SO THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. INTRO- seventy years of age, Cassiodorus effected his retreat to the monastery which he had founded at Scylacium, to enjoy, far 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 DeArtibut. . J ' Disciplinis Liberalium 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 warmly 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 1 'His Dialectic contains a brief chapter DeParaloyismis, which treats analysis of the Isagoge of Porphyry of purely logical fallacies. The ar- and the Organon of Aristotle, with rangement of the work is by no additions, a considerable portion means methodical, and extraneous being borrowed from Apuleius and matters are introduced which properly Boethius. His analysis of the Or- belong to Rhetoric.' Dean Mansel, ganon does not include the Sophistic Introd. to Artis Logicce Rudimenta, Refutations, but contains a separate p. xxis. ISIDORUS. 31 peninsula of Spain, was engaged in the compilation of one of INTRO- DUCTION. 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. J J d.63t>. 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 ns onginct. 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 Origines present a novel and noticeable Novel . .- .. element in feature, the incorporation of the remains of pagan learning tius 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 63. 32 THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. INTRO- composed of an extraordinary medley of medicine, theology, ^^2!J' natural 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 it 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 General sufficient evidence amply to warrant two general conclusions : with respect 1 that the literature of the seventh, eighth, ninth, and to the culture tent h centuries was scanty in 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, with 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, IXTRO- who, in his monastic solitude, feebly retraced the outlines of v ^ 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 unveracity 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 Ecclesiastics, where- j^Jj?*. 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 socles du moyen age par il n'a pas vane" d'une syllabe avant Boe'ce, 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 6"coles dea L e $ Ecoles Episcopate*, etc. p. 300. 3 34 THE CANON LAW. TXTRO- its pages; for between Clemens, the first bishop, and Siricius, DtTCTiox ^0 ^^ at ^ e close of the fourth century, the decrees of the bishops of Rome were altogether wanting. But suddenly the missing Decretals were forthcoming. An unknown pretended individual, who styled himself Mercator, brought forward Aiw'cato'r. 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 the 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 between and c i"otnrad. 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 Pension in appeal existed. It was now found that, among the newly favour of \ r ' J Home discovered Decretals, was one that established the supremacy founded on J f Rome over all other metropolitans; Rothrad was rein- stated in his episcopal chair by Nicholas ; and Hincmar 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 *. It was not until three 1 'The False Decretals do not Church property, on its usurpation merely assert the supremacy of the and spoliation ; on ordinations ; on Popes the dignity and privileges of the sacraments, on baptism, confirm- the Bishop of Borne. They compre- ation, marriage, the Eucharist ; on bend 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 the of . the Apostles ; on the chrism, lowest degree, their sanctity and im- holy water, consecration of churches, mumties, their persecutions, their blessing of the fruits of the field ; on disputes, their right of appeal to the sacred vessels and habiliments. Borne. They are full and minute on Personal incidents are not wanting THE DECRETUM OF CRATIAN. 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 xm deemed it expedient to expunge those parts which, however they might charitably have been supposed to have deceived INTKO- nrcriox. Gratian. Hii Vecre- I a HI. 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 Rome and the aggrandisement of the whole clergy in subordination to the See of Rome ; but 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 whole 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 Rheims 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, bv the late Rev. 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, Trowi-me Discours sur VHistoire Ecclesiastiniic. 32 36 THE CANON LAW. INTRO- the original compiler, could not sustain the scrutiny of a DUCTION. . . , - y ' 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 ; and 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 Divino of Wyclif, and to the English Reformation. Revival of Somewhat earlier in the same century that saw the study of the . * ariulw r 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 1 Paradise, Bk. x 113. p. 3 ; the latter -writer, though a 2 See a Lecture by B. G. Phillimore staunch Catholic, admits and deplores ' On the Influence of Ecclesiastical the effects of the excessive preten- Law on European Legislation ;' also sions of the Decretals on behalf of Butler's Horee Juridica Subsecirte, the Papal power. 1RNERIUS. 37 tribunals that existed under the Gothic, the Lombard, and IXTRO- 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 Lombardy were, 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 imerius iec- the Roman code in lectures, but introduced, for the first 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 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 iurisprudence began again to Rapid ?pread V r /. . , of the study assume its true dignity as a science and a profession. The <> e Civ 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, i '_ aber diese Kenntnisz und Rechts, c. xvin. sec. 32. See the Anwendung desselben sehr diirftig whole of the same chapter, entitled waren, undnuralsUebergangzueiner Wiederherstellung der Rechtsicissen- besseren Zeit Werth haben konnten.' chaft. Savigny, Geschichte des Romischen 38 REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN LAW. Vacarius lectures at Oxford circ. 1113. should, in the first instance, have been viewed with such disfavour at Rome. Already, before the appearance of the Pandects of Amain, 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 in 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 langue vulgaire la re*- daction des coutumes, qui, non moins variees que les divisions fe"odales, conservaient presque la me'thode et souvent meme les dispositions des lois romaines. Ces lois, dans les pays de coutumes, furent e'tudie'es comme raison e"crite, et, dans les pays de droit remain, adoptees comme lois. En Languedoc, elles e'taient le droit commun du pays ; Toulouse et Montpellier les enseignaient, meme avant 1'institution de leurs univer- sity's. L'e"cole de Paris, qu'on avait voulu preserver de cette innovation, s'enhardit jusqu'a reconnaitre a Tun et a 1'autre droit une sorte d'e"galite" ; lorsqu'elle dut, en 1408, apre*s la declaration de neutralite entre les papautcs rivales, fixer les conditions necessaires pour posseder les b^ne"- fices, elle exigea indifferemment des e\eques et des chefs d'ordres le grade de docteur ou de licenci^ soit en the'ologie, soit en droit canonique, soit en droit civil.' V. Le Clerc, Etat des Lettres au 14 e Sieele, p. 510. 2 Vacarius appears to have taught at Oxford about the year 1149, al- most exactly the same time that 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 causidici in Angliam primo vocati sunt, quorum primus eratma- gister Vacarius. Hie in Oxonefordia legem docuit. 3 Savigny's criticism throws addi- tional light upon the circumstance : ' Mehrere haben Anstosz daran gefun- den, dass bei einem Streit unter Geist- h'chen iiber geistliche Gegenstande gerade Romisches Recht wichtig und unentbehrh'ch gefunden worden sey; sie haben daher angenommen, es sey zugleich das canonische Recht mit verpflanzt worden, ja Manche haben den Unterricht des Vacarius lediglich auf das canonische Recht beziehen wollen. Allein diese ganze Schwierig- keit scheint mir ohne Grund. Das canonische Recht war stets als Theil der Theologie von der Geisth'chkeit erlernt worden, so dass weder die Abfassung des Decrets von Gratian, noch dessen Erklarung in der Schule von Bologna, hierin einen ganz neuen Zustand hervorbrachte. Anders ver- hielt es sich mit dem Romischen DEVOTION OF THE CLERGY TO THE STUDY. 39 but transitory ; before the expiration of the twelfth century INTRO- the attractions and direct importance of a science a know- ledge of which had become essential to those concerned in the conduct of proceedings before ecclesiastical tribunals, Fa U ter U P e eriod a 11 11 T r-1, -r- i i by 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 ^ 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 Eecht, welches, in seiner Wieder- gliae Stephanus, allatis legibus Italiaa herstellung durch die Glossatoren, in Angliam, publico edicto prohibuit, in der That etwas Neues war. Zu- ne ab aliquo retinerentur. Si igitur gleich aber ist es unverkennbar, dass laicus princeps laici 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 laicorum. Addo etiam quod klart 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 majorem gentium istarum, quam schriften des Eomischen Eechts aus Italiae et illarum. Igitur deberent Italien in England einzufiihren, magis clerici Anglias 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 Philosophies, 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. TNTRO- speculation it is difficult accurately to decide 1 , but it is DfCTIOX 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. Paschasras The dogma maintained by Paschasius concerning the real Ttadbertus, , * n. arc. 850. 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 effort to bring about a reconciliation between reason and authority, belief and dogma, which underlies the whole history of the scholastic philosophy 8 . It is impossible to look upon the Katranmns, arguments of Paschasius and his able opponent Ratramnus wrote ore. 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 by does 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. This was the of Mayence. At a subsequent period, character which the schools of A Icuin Pope Gregory VII declared that the and Charlemagne almost inevitably view of Paschasius, as expressed by gave to it.' Mediteval Philosophy, p. Lanfranc, was rejected both by him- 41. self and Peter Damiani. It was * Hampden, Scholastic Philosophy, seven centuries after the time of p. 37. See also M. Barthelemy Saint- Ratramnus, that Ridley, when plead- Hilaire, De la Logique dAristote, ing before the commissioners at Ox- n 194. ford, said, This man was the first * Bellarmine has unfairly repre- who pulled me by the ear, and forced sented Ratramnus as the inaugurator me from the common error of the of the controversy ; but the doctrine Roman Church, to a more diligent of transubstantiation was a heresy in search of Scripture and ecclesiastical JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA. 41 Godeschalchus, we have a metaphysician of the Platonic INTRO- DUCTIOV school appearing in somewhat singular contrast to the ^ -' 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 respect to the general character of that philosophy it is the 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 ofxuePseudo- 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- lannine, De Sac. Euch. Bk. i c. 1. tonismof which that was a corruption, Milman, Hist, of Latin Christianity, different in most important respects Bk.vm c. 3. from the Augustinian Platonism, or . l ' 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, Mediceval Philoso~ Philosophic, n 3 103111. phy, p. 68. See also Christlieb, 8 It was ' exceedingly unlike the Leben und Lehre des Joh. Scotut Alexandrian Platonism from which Erigena, Gotha, 1860. it has been supposed to be derived, * Acts rra 34. 42 THE TENTH CENTURY. TNTRO- Stammerer, emperor of Byzantium, to Louis le Ddbormaire, > y ^ 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 Estimations importance in the history of European studies. From this treatise was period the Pseudo-Dionvsius occupied a foremost place in held, from r . . J . the time of the estimation of the theologian, and it is melancholy to John 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 Popesyives- of Gerbert, afterwards pope Sylvester n, and the valuable teril.d.1003. . A 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 Researches of admirable life prefixed by M. Olleris to the more recently published magnificent edition of his works 2 , has somewhat 1 Dean Milman truly observes that nom de Sylvestre II., Collationtcs sur ' the effect of this work on the whole les Manuscrits, Precedes de sa Bio- ecclesiastic system, and on the popu- graphic, suivies de Notes Critiques et lar faith, it is almost impossible justly Historiques, par A. Olleris, doyen des to estimate.' Hist, of Latin Chris- Faculty's de Lettres, Clermont-Fer- tianity, Bk. vm c. 5. rand, 1867. 2 (Euvres de Gerbert, Pape sous le rces GERBERT. 43 modified the conclusions previously formed respecting both IXTRO- DUCTIOX. the individual and his age, the obscure period of transition '-* when the sceptre passed from the Carlovingian to the Cape- tian dynasty. That the method of numerical notation employed by Employment J * of the modern Gerbert was identical with that of our modern era, and that, ^{^'Jf 1 at the same time, his knowledge was not derived from the byGerbertm 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. oiieris* . conclusions to such sources for his method. That method, M. Olleris . wit '> res P cct to the source: considers, may have very well been derived from those l^ writers whom we have already passed under review as 1" 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- writiugs of the chroniclers of the first naissances fort exage're'es en mathe*- Crusades, such as Albert d'Aise, matiques et en astronomic, permirent, Robert le Moine, and Raymond prs d'un sificle apr&s sa mort, d d'Agiles, and the accounts of the Beusson, cardinal de 1'antipape Gui- later Crusades, belonging to the later bert, ennemi de Saint- Siega, de pro- half of the twelfth and thirteenth fiter d'un mot e"chappe" a 1'ignorance centuries, by Guillaume de Tyr and d'Adhfimar de Chabanais, qui avait Jaques de Vitry. By the former the dit que Gerbert 6tait alls' 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 veillenx 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 rdcits mensongers corresponding amount of sympathy ne sont-ils pas completement re'fute's has been developed; the morals of par la faveur constante dont Gerbert the latter are even favourably con- a joui aupres des e"veques et des trasted with those of the countrymen princes Chretiens 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- 3 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 r ^^ < taught with great 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, HIS teaming 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 interpretations librum, cujus laboris sit, aptissime monstravit. Inde etiam topica, id est argumentorum sedes, a Tullio de Greco in Latinum translata 2 , 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 ires, diffinitionumque librum unum, divisionum ceque unum, utiliter legit et expressit. Post quorum laborem, cum ad rhetoricam suos provehere vellet, id sibi suspectum erat, quod sine locutiomtm modis, qui in poetis discendi sunt, ad oratoriam artem ante perveniri non queat Poetas igitur adhibuit, quibits assuescendos arbitrabatur. Legit itaque ac docuit Maronem et Statium Terentiumque poetas, Juvenalem quoque ac Persium Horatiumque satiricos, Lucanum etiam historiographum. Quibus assuefactos, locutionumque modis compositos, ad rhetoricam transduxit 3 . 1'arabe? II faut done reconnaitre a 'Manlius' is, of course, Boethius; que Gerbert n'a visite" ni Seville ni see infra, pp. 51 53. It would Cordoue, que ses maitres e"taient scarcely be necessary to make this chr^tiens, que les auteurs place's en- observation had not Hock in his tre ses mains e*taient ceux que Ton Histoire du Pape Sylvester II, 6tudiait en France avantlesguerres ci- traduite par M. I'Abbe J. M. Axinger, viles,entreautreslerhe'teurYictorinup, supposed a totally different person to Martianus Capella, et surtout Boece, be designated. dont Cassiodore fait un si pompeux 2 M. Olleris correctly observes, e"loge. C'est chez lui qu'il puisa ces ' Richer se trompe quand il les prend notions scientifi ques tant admire'es par pour une traduction.' le XP siecle, qui lui donna les titres 3 Richeri (E.) Historiarum Quatuor flatteurs de philosophe, de savant, Libri, Lib. in c. 46 & 47. Reims, de nouveau Boece.' Olleris, Vie de 1855. Gerbert, p. 21. RECURRENCE OF THE OLD PANIC. 45 Pope Gerbert lived to see the commencement of the INTRO- pucrio.v. eleventh century and the inauguration of what may fairly * be regarded as a less gloomy period, but the years which ^e p c r iow h of f immediately followed on the thousandth Christian year were mum. 1 ' 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 nimtian 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 wincii seasons revolved with their accustomed regularity, but the imprison wiscon- clergy skilfully converted the predominant feeling into chan- ^ b >' 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 Theantidpa- mi *'"" of tlle and anon recurrent, operating with an equal power. The end of the world ct-asos theory has been revived by the student of prophecy and 3edt5 by the charlatan, but it has never since so far attracted JSSel the 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 DUCTION. , , . . . , . . 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 as an element an( j directed as it was by those who upheld and inculcated in the cha- * racterofthe ^jg {^1^ must 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 . Berengar, The eleventh century saw the revival of the controversy 1. 1000, ... a. loss. which Paschasius had initiated. In contravention of the extreme theory which he had supported, Berengar, 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 etre fatale eut sonne" sans catastrophe, so well-informed a writer as Mr les hommes, anime's d'une ardeur in- Lecky, in his able sketch of the be- accoutume'e, semblerent appre"cier lief of these centuries (see Hist, of davantage le bienfait de 1'existence. Rationalism, Vol. i) should have left De toutes parts les dcolea sortirent this theory almost altogether un- de leur long assoupissement; on noticed. M. Digot, Eecherches sur se mit a reconstruire les e"glises et let Ecoles Episcopates et Monast. de } es monasteres en mine, enfin les la province de Trevcs, has indeed in- lettres et les arts P nrent ,subitement clined to the opinion that its influ- un essor nouveau.' Les Ecoles Epis- ence has been exaggerated, but Leon copales, etc. p. 96. M. Olleris has Maitre quotes satisfactory evidence forcibly characterised the sentiment to show that the reconstruction of before prevalent : ' Personne ne the ruined churches and monas- songeait a s'instruire. A quoi bon teries in France was not attempted cultiver son esprit ? Pourquoi tran- until after the year 1000; of the scrire des livres qui allaient perir change that then took place he thus dans la conflagration universelle ?' writes: 'Lorsque 1'heure qui devait Vie de Gerbert, p. 21. BERENGAR OF TOURS. 47 as purely emblematical. This interpretation was as old as INTRO- DUCTIOV. Clemens and Origen, but the principle which Berengar con- Y currently asserted startled and aroused the Church. While ^J^"" 11 familiar with the writings of the Fathers, for he was one tld3 UUnker - 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. Lanfranc, The position which Berengar was led finally to assume a. 1039. '' 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 lie maintains right faith, he maintained, did not exhaust itself in efforts v "<>^ view in opposition to to reconcile to the understanding mysteries above human lfcr :u s ar - 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- ruinque Patrum 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 sectmdum rationem est factns of Berengar in the long lost trea- ad imaginem Dei, suum honorem re- tise discovered by Lessing 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. Vischer, quia coufugere ad earn ad rationem 1834, p. 105. est confugere, quo qui non coufugit, 48 LANFRANC AND BEREXGAR. DUCHON smce the ti me wnen Carneades and the disciples of the Later ' Academy proposed no longer to aspire to the possession of JSSSwe of*" positive or absolute truth, but to rest contented in the hope that they had attained to the probable. It was one of the siveat e tention effects, and undoubtedly a very pernicious effect, of the Logic. . 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- of ever > be admitted that the general tone of Berengar's treatise w&g in_ ca i cu i a t e d 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 INTRO- DUCTION. of logic which he wielded with such remarkable adroitness, x ~ / ' 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 follewing year died Lanfranc, and the mitre of his episcopacy descended to his pupil Anselm. But before Anselm succeeded to the see of Canterbury, another controversy had arisen, which unmistakably attested d. 1109. how the chord somewhat roughly touched by Berengar had found response in the growing tboughtfumess 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 3 , that this illustrious thinker claims our attention, and here, before we become involved in the great metaphysical dispute, it 1 Prcefatio ad Monologion. human thought ; how it cannot but a '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 50 ORIGIN OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. becomes necessary to turn aside awhile to examine briefly a preliminary and not unimportant question. It was originally asserted by Cousin, and his dictum has been 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 passage in Porphyry, which is nothing more than a 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 not easily preserved : un rayon de- robe a Vantiquite la produisit; Van- t ignite tout entiere Vetouffa ...... 'II faut snpposer,' he adds, ' le monde ancien dl trait, hi philosophic ancien- ne ensevelie avec la civilisation dont elle faisait partie, et la longue et brillante pole'mique qui avait fait la vie meme de cette philosophic, re"- duite a la phrase de Porphyre dans la traduction latine de Boece. C'est sttr cette phrase et autonr d'elle que va pen a pea se reformer une phQo- sophie nouvelle. Les commencements de cette philosophic seront bien faibles, il est vrai, et se ressentiront de la prof onde barbaric dn temps ; mais une fois nee, la puissance de Internal probleme la deVeloppera et lui ouvrira une carriere immense.' Fragments Philosophiquet, Abelard, pp. 82, 88, 89. ed. 1840. BOETHIUS ON PORPHYRY. 51 they have a substantial existence or exist only as mere INTRO- DUCTION 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 %*^ff te the translation made by Boethius himself and accompanied ^roughlhe 8 by a second and fuller commentary, also from his pen. In t^flr^ the interval between the composition of these two commen- taries it is evident, as Cousin has veiy 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 or J r . Boethius in passages are conclusive evidence : ' Haee se igitur Porphyrius "| n ^' on breviter mediocriterque promittit exponere. Non enira in- 11^!?- troductionis vice fungeretur, si ea nobis a primordio fundaret, to ad quae nobis haec tarn clara introductio praeparatur. Servat 1 AvrlKa irepi yev<2v rt Kal dd&, rb lard, pp. 92, 93. ed. 1840. Dean fib eire v(f>taTi]Kev efre Kal tv nbvais Mansel is of opinion that Boe- ^i\a?s tTrivolais Kfirai, efre KCLI v^ffrrj- thius in his second commentary is to K6ra ffu/MTd la.riv ij affufiara, xal be regarded as a conceptualist, see iroTtpov xup"? V tv TO?J 0^07^0?$ Artis Logics Rudimenta, Appendix, Kal irtpl ravra vfaffrura Trapair^ffOfj.ai p. 160. \ty(u>- padvraT-ns ovays TTJS Toiavr^ 3 Cousin's remark that Boethius vpayfiardas, Kal ctXXijj /neffovoy 5eo- n'avait pas Pair d"y attacker une M^TJJ e^eraffcus. grande importance, appears to be in 2 Cousin, Fragments Philosophi- no way warranted by the iext of qitcs, Philosophic Scholastique, AM- Boethius himself. 42 52 ORIGIN OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. Criticism of Koethius in his Com- mentary on his own version. Boethiusas interpreted by Cousin. igitur introductionis modum doctissima parcitas disputandi ut ingredientium viam ad obscurissimas rerum caligines aliquo quasi doctrinae suae lumine temperaret. Dicit enim apud antiques alta et magnified qucestione disserta, quae ipse nunc parce breviterque composuit. Quid autera de his a priscis philosophies tractatoribus dissertum sit, breviter ipse tangit et praBterit. Turn Fabius : Quid illud, inquit, est ? Et ego : Hoc, inquam, quod ait se omnino praeteraiittere 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 bis sese quoniam alta esset disputatio, tacere promisit: nos autem adhibito moderationis freno, mediocriter unumquodque tan- gamusY 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 secretae, et temptatae quidem a doctis viris nee a pluribus dissolutse V 'Ipsa enim genera et species subsistunt quidem aliquo modo, intelliguntur vero alio modo et sunt incorporalia, sed sensibilibus juncta subsistunt insensibilibus. Intelliguntur vero prseter corpora, ut per semetipsa subsistentia, ac non in aliis 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, ideirco vero studiosius Aristotelis sententiam exsecuti sumus, non quod earn maxime probaremus, sed quod hie liber ad Praedicamenta conscriptus est, quorum Aristotelis auctor est 3 .' The view taken by Boethius of that which he thus con- ceived to be the Aristotelian theory respecting Universals, 1 Boethius, Dialogue r. ed. Basil, pp. 7 and "8. 2 Boethius, Commentariorum in Porphyrium a se Translation, Lih. I ed. Basil, p. 54. 3 Ibid. p. 56. BOETHIUS ON PORPHYRY. 53 is clearly analysed by Cousin: 'The final conclusion of INTRO- DUCTIOX Boethius,' says this writer, ' upon the three questions contained v in the sentence of Porphyry, is (I) 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 54s ORIGIN OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY, iirrno- with Boethius; and it is evident that from this exclusive DIJCTION. i , * ' study there could scarcely result anything but tendencies and intellectual habits entirely opposed to realism V 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 The gioss of be observed that the gloss of Rabanus Maurus quoted by Maurus Mr Lewes in his History of Philosophy, and erroneously shews that J r . J ' J thecontro- attributed by mm to Boethius, constitutes not the locus versy re- unTverfais classicus, as he has inferred, for the origin of the controversy, tefth'entath 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 Philosophi- three points: (1) in ascribing to ques, Abelard, pp. 100 102. The Boethius the foregoing passage, which arguments which Boethius brings for- as Cousin expressly states is part of ward are borrowed from Aristotle, the gloss of Rabanus Maurus ; (2) in Metaphysics, Bks. in and vin pp. 62, applying the comments of Cousin on 158,. 174, ed. Brandis. the translation of Porphyry by Boe- 2 The following is the original of thius in the sixth century, to the the passage quoted by Mr Lewes gloss of Eabanus Maurus in the (Hist, of Phil, n 25) : Intentio Par- ninth; (3) in leaving it to be inferred phyrii est in hoc opere facilem Intel- that the above fragment of this gloss lectum ad Preedicamenta prceparare, was the sole surviving passage wherein tractando de quinqiie rebus velvocibus, the question of Universals was ad- genere scilicet, specie, differentia, pro- verted to by Boethius. So erroneous prio et accidente, quorum cognitio a representation of the history of valet ad Pr that had escaped Boethius, and of which time. 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 modo plures persona, quarum singula Science', Haiireau, Philosophic Scho- qnceque est pcrfectus Deus, sint Deus lastique ; Hampden's Bampton Lec- unus?' De Fide Trinitatis sive In- tures, Lect.. n ; and,, for the im- carnatione Verbi, contra blasphemias portant question of the relation of Verbi, quoted by Cousin. the Categories and the Isagoge of 1 For an impartial account of the Porphyry to the controversy,, Dean controversy, see Appendix (A) to Pro- Hansel's Artis Logica 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, pj and can only be conceived as universals but cannot 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 a*; century offers an agreeable contrast. Grammar and rhetoric appear to have there been taught after a far less mechanical "'fn^ruc^ 1 fashion ; an attention to correct Latinity was inculcated, and tion> Cicero and Quintilian were studied as models. The Roman 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 comparative purt of the Salisbury 8 , and Giraldus Cambrensis wrote far purer Latin 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. w , Among his pupils was Abelard, and a few years later we see A V Policraticus, Bk.. vii cv 12. His sola. Tune demum eminet, cum ad- description of the different parties junctarum virtute splendescit.' also deserves quotation : 'Suut 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- universalibus dicitur referunt. Alii quently second-hand. His knowledge discntiunt intellectus, et eos univer- of Greek was scanty; he had read saUumnominibuscensericonfirmant.. 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 auctore 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 axic- dium of Latin.' C. Schaarschmidt, torem vel sententiam profiteri, solis Johannes Saresberiensis nach Leben nominibus inhaerentes, quod rebus et und Studien, Schriften und Philoso- intellectibus subtrahunt, sermonibus phie, (Leipzig, 1862) 113. (Quoted ascribunt.' by Rev. J. E. B. Mayor, Pref. to- 2 Mctalogicus, Lib. n c. 9 ; iv 27. Richard of Cirencester (Rolls Series), 'Fere enim inutilis est logica, si sit p. cxvii). 58 ABELARD. Progress of the spirit of enquiry. sentences of Peter 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, Medicccal Philosophy, p. 156. PETEE LOMBARD. 59 tences' of Peter Lombard, launched upon the world, the A DUCTION. 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*. Our main concern, however, is with its character as an embodiment of the dogmatic teaching of the time 3 . 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 Cassiodoras, 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 Formatione, 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 Chnstus sit creatura, vel creatus, 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 Sententiarum libris, qui Vienna pro- as right rules, most necessarie to be dierunt anno 1519, pene integrum marked and fitte to be followed of exscripsisse. Others think his con- all of them that would have children ception is to be traced to the example taught as they should.' Ascham's of Eobert 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, n 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 ' sententiae,' Lombard, is to be followed not for a use of the word not uncommon in its oicn sake but as a course that is our earlier writers, though now re- pleasing to the Deity. taiued solely as a grammatical ex- 60 THE SENTENCES. habuerit sapientiam parent cum Deo; el si omnia scit ~ ~v quce Deus. 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 Littfraire de la France*; our main concern, however, is with that new element which the Dialectical Sentences, while apparently resting solely upon patristic element in . . the wort 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 sev-erest order ; Cousin indeed has asserted that in this respect they surpass all previous efforts of scholasticism 3 . 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- 2 Vol. xn p. 589. A fuller and ded the schools in the time of Petrus very careful one, but poor in lite- was whether the divine nature, or rary execution, is to be found in the only the personality of the Son, be- Essai sur les Sentences de fu-rre came incarnate. After summing up Lombard Considerees sous le point the opinions of the Fathers, he con- de Vue Historico-Dogmatique ; These eludes that we must admit that the pour obtenir le Grade de Bachelier person of the Son has put on human en The'ologie, par Jean Bresch. Stras- nature, and that thus the divine and bourg, 1857. human natures have been united in 3 Cousin speaks of Petrus Lom- the Son. "When therefore we say that bardus as distinguished ' par une the Son has taken on him the nature seVerite* de dialectique que vous ne of a slave, we intend not to exclude trouveriez point dans les scholasti- the divine nature but only the per- ques qui lui sout anterieurs.' GEuvres sons of 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, ' can read the first book, we should conceive, without acquir- 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 foll6wing, 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 suspicion The volume which was to become the theological text-book of our universities up to the Reformation, was severely criticised on its first introduction 2 . Gualterus, the Criticism of the work by Professor Maurice. Opposition encountered ou its first appearance. 1 ' brevi volumine conplicans Pa- trum sententias, appositis eorum testimoniis, ut non sit necesse quse- renti librorum numerositatem evol- vere.' Praf. ad Sententias. 8 ' It is a curious fact that the spi- ritual powers persisted in strenuously opposing the successive efforts of the rationalists, and at the same time gradually adopted the very system to which they were so averse, into their own authoritative theology. They opposed, that is, both the principle of the rationalists, the principle that human reason was to be exer- cised in matters of religion, and the conclusions to which the unrestrained use of it had led. But afterwards, when the books of controversialists had passed into records of opinions, they readily adopted, as guides in their decisions of any new opinions, the conclusions of that rationalising method which as such had been so passionately denounced. Through- out the whole period, when the scho- lastic method may be said to have been growing, we meet with constant disclaimers, on the part of Church leaders, of the system itself, a con- stant appeal to the authority of the Scriptures and the holy Fathers against the rationalistic spirit of the times. Luther himself has not more vehemently denounced the scholastic philosophy, than Bernard and other doctors anterior to the Reformation have declaimed against the importu- 62 THE SENTENCES. INTRO- Prior of St. Victoire, in his celebrated attack on Abelard, did ^v --' 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 marvellous 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- The influence fluence which equally exceeded the intentions of the compiler thl sentences and the anticipations of his opponents. The appeal once design*! by made from authority to reason, from implicit faith to logical the compiler. J ' 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 Activity of 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, arc occupied with the same labour. Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Durandus, nateness of the speculations of their sufficeret disputatto. Bulaeus, Hist. times.' Hampden's Scholastic Philo- Univ. Paris, n 406. sophy, Lect i. * ' Get ouvrage destine* a tracer des 1 The gravamen of the attack made limites a 1'esprit humain, a ltd in- by Gualterns was quod qua sua esset diqner les sources oft il devait puiser sententia, nunquam fere aperiret; sed la theologie, a eu un eftet tont con- triplicem vulgo de omni quastione traire a sa destination. Jamais la proponeret opinionem ; quorum prima licence des opinions ne fat pins grande eorum erat qui nee Haretici nee Ca- qn'apres les Sentences ; jamais les tholici vere did poterant. 2. Eorum Scolastiqnes n'etudierent avec plus qui manifeste Catholici erant. 3. De- d'ardeur la philosophie paienne et nique eorum qui absque ullo dubio n'en userent plus dans les matieres censendi erant hteretici. Omnes vero de reh'gion qne depuis que Lombard authoritatibus sacra Scripture et en eu montre les dangers. Jamais sanctorum Patrum, rationibus quoque l'e"tude des Peres ne fat plus ne"glige"e et argument is diaiecticis confirmabat, que depuis qu'il Tavait recommande"e.' non determinans qua vera essent et L'Histoire Litteraire de France, m tenenda, aiens nolle se ut lectori sua 606. ST. ANSELM. 63 Occam, and Estius are scarcely inferior in their zeal as DUCTTON. 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. Round 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 thosQ ages that, before the prevailing method had driven life, warmth, and sensibility from out the pale of belief, a thinker st Anseim. 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 HIS 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 intelligam 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. INTRO- a nce in the phenomena of the external world, has more than v ' 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 1 de cette the*ologie Anselme n'appartient pas a la pre- vient de ce qu'elle est une applica- miere; il a peu fait pour elle, quoi- tion au dogme, non de la logique, qu'il ait certainement sa place mar- mais de la me'taphysique ; non de la que'e dans la philosophic proprement dialectique d'Aristote, mais de la dia- dite ; et pour la seconde, il est venu lectique de Platon. C'est done tout au moment ou elle se formait. II n'a ensemble exage"rer et mSconnaitre le pas e"te" sans influence snr sa forma- role d' Anselme que de 1'appeler un tion, mais il n'en a pas pre"cisement des createurs de la scolastique. II determine" le caractere. II ne ten- faudrait au moins faire une distinc- dait pas a la faire scolastique, mais tion que les critiques omettent trop philosophique. n voulait fonder la souvent, entre la philosophic sco- philosophic du dogme.' Be'musat, lastique et la the"ologie scolastique. St Aiwelm de Cantorbery, p. 478. CHAPTER I. COMMENCEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY ERA. IN our introductory sketch we have essayed to point out CHAP - r - 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 by one dread conviction ; how, as some sense of Recapituia- security returned, and the barbarian acknowledged a stronger introductory 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 66 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. Fabulous It is at this stage in the progress of Europe that the character of ... , . ,. . the early English universities pass from the region of mere tradition accounts of o stty^of elm- 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 V 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 2 , but have also pronounced Ingulphus and his con- The account tinuator alike undeserving of credit 3 . We are accordingly by Peter of J ?enera I ]iy V dis- com pelled 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, Hist, of England, m 438. had before given to these accounts. 2 Carter, in his History of the Uni- Sir Francis Palgrave inclined to the versity of Cambridge, p. 7, gives with- belief that the Chronicle of Ingul- out any apparent doubt, a letter from phus 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- studies ! 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 Hallam, in the later editions of attributed to Peter of Blois as equal- his Middle Ages, (see eleventh edit. ly spurious. iii 421) retracted the credence he rman m- NORMAN INFLUENCES IN ENGLAND. 67 study of the circumstantial evidence that we are enabled to CHAP. i. arrive at a sufficiently probable induction. The character of No the induction admits of being very concisely stated. It is a to the J quest. 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 Norma influen only prevented by a great national reaction ; and the ques- ^ the q con' tion then fell to the arbitration of the sword. But when quest " 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- ces ' sitv of Paris stitution of the university of Paris formed the model on l h t.T del * both for which that of Oxford and that of Cambridge were formed ; ombridf 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 * Freeman's Hist, of the Norman 12. Conquest, n 515. 52 68 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. CHAP. I. Did the Universities cause the ruin of the Episcopal and Monastic schools 2 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 *. Without entering 1 ' Parvenus au regne de Philippe - Auguste, nous touchons a la fin de 1'existence glorieuse des e'coles pi- scopales et monastiques et a I'ave'ne- ment d'un nouvel ordre des choses. Tous semble des lors conspirer centre 1'education claustrale, pour en ac- ce'le'rer la mine. Les prelats habi- tue's a la vie tumultueuse depuis les croisades, se laissent absorber par les preoccupations temporelles, et bri- guent 1'honneur d'entrer dans les conseils des princes ou de devenir leur rninistres d'Etat. Les moines s'engourdissent dans la relachement et I'oisivete" qu'am&ne toujours apres elle une trop grande opulence, et se trouvent sans force pour lutter centre les nouveaux ordres religieux qui se sont empares des chaires de 1'en- seignemeut. II n'est pas jusqu' a la transformation qui _ s'ope'rait alors dans la socie'te' f^odale qui n'ait eu son influence sur ce denouement pre'cipite'. Ce n'est pas que le zele des etudiants se soit refroidi, au con- traire, jamais il ne fut plus ardent; mais les fils de ceux qui avaient secoue" le joug des seigneurs pour s'e'riger en municipalit^s tranches 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. r. to point out that the facts, as pleaded by Theiner 1 and Le'on Th rma- tive main- Maitre, have met with a distinct and specific denial. If tamed by . .-. i i t t Theiner and indeed the guidance of other investigators may be trusted, won Maitre 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 z and of Mabillon, ' numbered t nof . 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, Ecoles Episcopates, p. 170. cesseurs les encouragerent en fondant i Hist, des Institutions d* Education des universite"s et en comblant ces Eccltsiastique, i 181 190. corporations avec privileges. Inca- a Hist.Litte'rairedelaFrance,vi3 l 2. pables de soutenir une concurrence s Loup de Ferrieres, v. pp. 19 21. aussi redoutable, les dcoles e'piscopa- * Hericus or Ericus of Auxerre, fl. les et monastiques furent rapidement c i rc . 880. Migne, cxxiv 1128. de'posse'de'es du sceptre qu'eUes tenai- s Remy of Auxerre, d. circ. 908. ent avec honneur depuis quatre e g ee 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 Progress Whatever value we may be disposed to attach to this versus mere * conservatisnL 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 1 Monnier, Alcuin et son Influence, p. 189. s 'Enfin, on s'obstine a ignorer les profonds travaux d'un Benedictin, du venerable fondateur de notre grande Histoire litte"raire, qui attes- tent, sur les meilleures autorites, que les e"coles des e'veques et celles des monasteres avaient continue* de fleu- rir avec les nouvelles socie'te's d'e"tu- des. II faut, pour n'accuser ainsi que les autres, se laisser faire illusion par la haine centre tonte loi civile, centre toute education seculiere, et mdme centre tout ordre religieux qui ne juge point la pie"te" incompatible avec nne instruction solide et sincere, ni 1'histoire avec la v^rite.' V. Le Clerc, Etat des Lettresau XIV' Siecle, i 302. It is however undeniable that though both the Monastic and Epis- copal Schools may have continued to exist, they had suffered woful deterio- ration: Heppe quotes authority to the effect that, in the year 1291, in the monastery of St Gall neither the abbot nor any of the monks could write; and we have it on the state- ment of a Benedictine himself that in the 13th century it was rare even in his own order to find anyone ac- quainted with grammar. See chapter entitled Die Kloster und Domschulen des Mittelalters in Dr Heppe's Schul- Ktsen des Mittelalters, pp. 15 25. UNIVERSITAS. 71 accepted as sound philosophy, all that widened the domain CHAP. r. 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 i PI ? aris> and century, the historian becomes aware of the recognised exist- s ierno. 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^^l o studies pursued in these ancient seats of learning, that while ^nim^fta 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 8 .' If however we agree to define a university as a corpo- ration for the cultivation of learning formed under legal 1 Savigny, Geschichte des Evmi- 2 Prof. Maiden, Origin of t he Uni- schen Rechts, c. xxi sec. 127. versitics, 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 - 'avjjrny's able features of the age. ' It would,' says Savignv, ' be .riticism. , . . . 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 I 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 2 !' If we look therefore rather to the spontaneous than to the formal element, Irnerius may be regarded as the founder university of 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 centuiy, until the university became officially recognised in the charter of privileges which it received from the emperor Frederic I, in the year 1158 3 . its charter of In this charter we find provision made for the free admission of foreign students ; for their protection from legal proceedings 1 'In der That nun kann der An- the time, the words Universitas vestra fang der Universitat deswegen nicht meant ' the whole of you.' Introd. genau bestimmt werden, weil sie gar to Munimenta Academica, i xxxiv. nicht von einer willkiihrlichen Stift- * Geschichte des Romischen Jiechts, ung ausgieng.' Savigny, c. xxi sec. 3. c. xxx sec. 60. Mr Anstey remarks that ' in the thir- 3 Bologna is not named in the teenth and fourteenth centuries, Charter, but Savigny shows that re- strange as it may appear to those ference could have been intended unacquainted with patent letters of only to that city. Ibid, xa 63. ITS CONSTITUTION. 73 founded upon alleged offences or debts in other countries ; CTIAP. 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 Law, Arts, porated the other branches of learning. In 1316, a school ^ d 3 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 citramm- and Ultramontani, Italians and foreigners. Thus divided &"raZm- 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, Rectors. and representing the supreme authority. There were also two chancellors ; ' counsellors,' who represented the different chancellors. . i i i y-. i TTI, Counsellors. nations into which the Citramontani and Ultramontani were divided ; a syndic, who represented the university in its external relations to the state ; a notary, a treasurer, and two otherofficers. bidelli. The degree of doctor, almost as ancient as the i>e?reeof 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 original gig- distinguished as doctores leqentes and non-legentes those nification of . . , the term. 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, colleges. 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 Limits of the influence north of Angers and Orleans. She formed it is true influence of Bologna. 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 Danube and the Seine 1 . The universities of the rest of Europe, Oxford and Cambridge in England, Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg, and Cologne in Germany, derived their formal constitution, the traditions of their education, and their modes 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 sec. 63. Von 2 'The Sinai of the Middle Ages' Raumer, Geschichte dcr Pdiagogik, was also a term applied by the Be- iv 4. nedictines to Monte Cassino. 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 Boio|na 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 8 , 1 Ihilaeus, Hist. Univ. Paris, n 2, of the thirteenth century the study 3. A decree of Innocent in. in the was prohibited by Honorius m. 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 Com- 2 Von Raumer, (iv 4) says ' Diirfte pendium Philosophic, c. 4) ; (4) It was doch in Paris nur das von der Kirche not until the year 1G79 that, after a ausgehende canonische, nicht aber lengthened banishment it was again das Civilrecht gelesen werden ; erst admitted into the university of Paris, im Jahre 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 1 . 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. Bulseus 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 civil vous a quelles consequences pratiques law was most in favour at Rome et dernieres poussent forcdment des exactly corresponds with the time inclinations si diverses. A Bologne when it was regarded with most la libre, la ville qui regarde par-dessus suspicion at Paris, and this is in i a Rome des papes vers Brutus et perfect accord with the general tenour rid<$al antique, quelle faculte" tri- of feeling at that university during he? Uf er The only other universities in France that trace back Universities J Thirteenth their origin to the thirteenth century are those of Toulouse an( ^ Montpellier ; b u t 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 Padua. 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. Pisa,verceiii, Pisa, Vercelli, Arezzo, and Ferrara rose in the same century ; Ferrara, while in our own country Oxford and Cambridge appear Oxford and . J Cambridge, 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 belong to a field of enquiry which the seeker for real knowledge will most prudently forego. It may however be Probable observed that such data as we possess would appear to point un?iersities e to an origin similar to that assigned to the university of and bam- Paris ; the school in connexion with the priory of St Fri- bridge. deswyde, and that of the conventual church at Ely, being Etat des Lettres au Qiiatorzieme Siecle, i 262. TRADITION OF LEARNING IN ENGLAND. 81 probably the institution from whence the universities of CHAP, t 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 First Danish 1 * n , Invasion. here be of small profit minutely to investigate the evidence A -- 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 2 . 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 8 . In the year 870 the town of Cambridge was totally destroyed 4 . The monasteries of the Benedictines, the chief guardians of Destruction of the Bene- learning, appear to have been completely broken up ; 'it is Monasteries. 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 Then-Revival under St. at its sources by the recent establishment of the Cluniac % branch on the continent, was again established. During the reign of Eadgar, when the land had rest from invasion, no 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 Acadsmica, i xxxiv. that 710 species of pecuniary support a ' 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 Regum Anglorum, i royal charter or letter has ever been sec. 62. produced hitherto, though Anthony 3 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 * Caius Hist. Cantebrig. Acad.p. 39. that the University did not exist at 8 Kemble's Saomns 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. L subsequent th^BenedSs- tine Order. of devastation was repeated; Oxford was burnt to the ground in the year 1009; a like fate overtook Cambridge in the 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 extended. The rival foundations of St Augustine and Christ Church at Canterbury, those of Abingdon, St Alban's, Bury, Ely, Glastonbury, Malmesbury, Winchester, Westminster, and Kochester, 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 *. 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 Vacarius, and his lectures at Oxford on the civil law in the middle of the twelfth century, we have already spoken; it was probably about twenty years before that an English ecclesiastic returning from Paris, and commiserating the low 1 " Periisse autem iam tune per Danicas aliasque eruptiones omnem priscam in Anglia eruditionem, lu- culentus est testis Gnilieknus Mai- mesburiensis,Conquaestorisffivoprox- imus. (Lib. in.) 'Literarum,' inquit tile, 'et religionis ttudia obsoteverant non paucis ante adrentum Norman- norum annis. Clerici literatura tu- multuaria contentl vix Sacramento- rum verba balbutiebant ; stupori et miraculo erat caeteris, qui grammati- cam nosset.'" Conringius, De Anti- quitatibut Academicit, p. 282. SCHOOLS OF OXFORD. 83 state of learning among his countrymen, essayed to rekindle CHAP. T. at Oxford some acquaintance with Latin and a love for letters. The Sententiarum Libri Octo of Robert Pullen have been Robert Pullen. supposed to have suggested the Sentences of Peter Lombard, His senten- ttarum Ltbrt 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, j^ was for some years a student at Paris, and it is sufficiently oxfrd credible that what he had there learnt he should teach at slty o 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: 'Bobert with the other historical fictions Pulleyne who nourished 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 hi 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 s 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 84 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. CHAP. i. schools to a studium generate, or, as we call it, an university, cannot be 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 .' Earliest The 'earliest authentic legal instrument,' to use the recognition ii f iuversity of language of Cooper, containing any recognition of Cambridge Cambridge. Bg & university, is a writ of the second year of Jlenry in, addressed to the sheriff of the town, commanding all clerics 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 2 .' 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. GaHing 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 GrSteste. designated ' the age of Robert Grosseteste.' The cold com- A1253.' 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 encourager of Greek learning, the interpreter of Aristotle, the patron of the mendicant orders, the chastiser of monastic corruption, the fearless champion of the national 1 Munlmenta Acadtmica, p. xliv. * Annals, 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 His influence .... 7 i -i-i i as a thinker. 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 Dcsi s nof . 1 <* the formation corporate bodies in wealth and influence, had followed upon M,tn : uc cr 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, 3 Even so late as in the course of about A.D. 912, gave rise to the Clu- Btudies prescribed for the University nian order ; which was the first and of TUbingen by King Ferdinand, in principal branch of the Benedictines ; 1525, 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 Sammlung were called by a different name.' der Wiirttembergischen 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, ' regulae beatissirni 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 inhaj- mation," says Tanner, 'of somethings rere velle professes fuisse.' Ibid. V which seemed too remiss in St Be- 219. 86 BISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. CHAP. 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 ?f e ti?e Bene- s l ace ' in unmitigated sensual indulgence. The great Benedic- dictmes. j.' ne movemen t 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 hi s return from the Continent to London, at the famous monas t e ry of St. Augustine at Canterbury. He was hospitably 1 Witness application by Giraldus I, a keen wit, a jovial pluralist, but Cambrensis of the comparison in- a man of culture and true earnestness, stituted by Jerome between the monk He had a living at Westbury-on- and the secular priest to his own Severn, very near the Cistercian times. Giraldus was himself an abbey in the forest of Dean. En- ecclesiastic and an aspirant to the croachment by the Cistercians on see of St David's. ''Monachus enim his clerical rights may have added to tanquam unius custos, vel singularis the indignation of his satire. When dictus, sui solius curam agit. Cleri- on his rounds, as Justice in Eyre cus vero circa multorum curam soli- for the King, he was wont when citari tenetur. Est itaque monachus taking the oath that he would do tanquam granum tritici solum ma- equal justice to all, to except Jews nens; est autem clericus tanquam and Cistercians, as men to whom granum germinans, et in horrea Do- equal justice was an abomination, mini multum fructum afferens/ To- His Apocalypse of bishop Golias is a pographia Hibernica, Bk. in c. 30. fierce satire on, the debauchery and The broad satire of the friend of sensuality, of the order. Bishop Go- Giraldus, Walter Map, points in the lias is represented as actuated by same direction. Map was archdea- the fondest hope that he might die con of Oxford in the reign of Richard drunk in a tavern. EISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDEES. 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 fov e red h this 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 . . theCrusades. undermining the popular taith, were, tor 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 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 Gcstis, Bk. n c. 5. discipline, appears to have been * Hist, of the Reiyn of King Hen- frequently laid aside for a dress of ry II, p. 330. gay colours. See Pearson, Hist, of 3 Even the garb of the monk, that Emjland, i 294. last external sign of compliance with God,' says the abbat Guibert, RISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. CIIAP. I. The Orders of St. Domi- liic and St. Francis d' Assist 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 infected the Christianity of the fourth and fifth centuries reappeared ; 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, -Bons 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. Louis breathed his last on the coast of Africa, in that final expedition on behalf of the beleaguered Christian settlements 'invented the Crusades as a new way for the laity to atone for their sins and to merit salvation,' quoted by Gibbon, c. 58. 1 See Professor Brewer's preface to the Monumcnta Franciscana, p. xxxvii; also Mr Luard's Preface to JRoberti Grosseteste Epistolce. Mr Brewer regards the doctrines of the Albigenses, which appear to have been a form of Mauicheism, arid those of the ' Everlasting Gospel ' as attributable to the same influences. The Crusades appear rather to have increased than diminished the num- ber of those who took refuge in the monasteries. See Michaud, Hist, dcs Croisades, iv 255; also Milman, whose view of their collective and final effects is somewhat more favo- rable. Hist. Latin Christianity, Bk. vii c. 6. RISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 89 in Syria, to which he had roused the flagging enthusiasm of CHAP. r. 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 ill 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 Theconcep- . . . , tion of these orders was conceived stood in startling contrast to the ideas 9"l crs essen : tally opposed then associated with the religious life. For isolation from 1^"^^ 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 cimracteris- errand of mercy. The fiery eloquence of the former, whose Dominicans J J and the exemplar was St. Paul, drew around him numerous and 52^2?' x cuninxsicu. 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 the Frail- 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- Rapidpro- tuous century. The two orders extended themselves with gress of the new orders. ma rvellous 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- The Francis- pensated by the rapid progress of the Franciscans. Very land. ' 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. Sity^rith 1 " Within thirty years from their first arrival in the country, the people. tn e y 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 with 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 the count- intellectual energy, without which eracting tendencies of a very memo- those ages would have been very rable period. If each held down barren.' Prof. Maurice, Mediceval some truth, each brought some side Philosophy, pp. 165 166. of truth into light which its rival 1 ' Hist. Latin Christianity, Bk. n would have crushed. If they left c. 9. many pernicious influences to after - Luard, Preface to Grosseteste Epi- ages, they awakened a spiritual and stolce, p. xxii; see also Epist. 58. THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 91 * to repress its manifestation while the current of popular CHAP. L 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 instrumen- /. . talityofthe other great movement of this century, the introduction of Dominicans J ' and the Jews the new philosophy. The numerous foundations planted by t", e br Nl^ gin them in the East, brought about an increased intercourse Anstotle - 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 Anstotio . / i /! 11 first known that the philosophy of Aristotle was nrst made known to toEur peas a philosopher the West mainly through these versions. The rarity, at this A '$; h period, of a knowledge of Greek, and the attractions offered 80urce8 - 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 hio ordo ales, verbum vitae prsedicantes, et fratrum praedictoruin, qui Minores turbis agrestibus virtutum plautaria dicuntur, per orbem universum ; qui inserentes, fructum plurimuin Doini- in urbibus babitantes et castellis, no obtulerunt.' Roger of Wendover, deni et septeni exierunt in diebus Flowert of Hitt. ed. Wats, p. 341. illis, per villas et ecclesiaa parochi- 92 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. CHAP. i. 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 J . f the 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 8 . 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 Monte, abbatisS. Michaelis,Chronica. cette source qu'a 1'autre, parce que (quoted by Jourdain, p. 58). This les traductions de I'he'breu et de however would, of course, add little 1'arabe e'taient plus litte"rales, et to the actual knowledge of Aristotle. qu'on y trouvait des explications 3 These portions of the Organon, que I'obscurite" du texte rendait tres- that is to say, the Prior and Posteri- n^cessaires.' Jourdain, Reclierclies or Analytics, the Topica, and the Critiques, etc. p. 16. Elenchi Sophistici became known 3 The first known translation di- as the Nova Logica, the Categories rect from the Greek is that of Jacques and the De Interpretatione as Fetus de Venise, 1128. ' Jacobus, clericus Logica, See Bulasus, in 82. Prantl de Venitia, transtulit de graeco in observes that in Duns Scotus this latinum quosdam libros Aristotelis distinction appears to have been that et commentatus est, scilicet Topica, by wnich the respective treatises were Analyticos priores et posteriores, et generally known. Qeschichte der Elenchos, quamvis antiqua translatio Logik, ui 206. super eog haberetur.' Roberti de JGURDAIN'S RESEARCHES. 93 almost entirely independent of the Arabic translations : Buhle CHAP. i. 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 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 1 . The method employed by Jourdain was to take, in turn, Method of i J J 'tab 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 employ ed,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 THE 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. Kesuitsesta- The conclusions Jourdain was thus enabled to establish, Wished by his researches, 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 natural With regard to the sources from whence the respective philosophy of . ..,..., -ii Anstotie translations were derived, it is in harmony with what we chiefly intro- ducdfrom snO uld 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. Sentential, 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 sionsfromthe the preceding versions. Of this the reason is not difficult the 8 Araw 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 1 , 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 8 . 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 8 . The statement of J & M. Renan's Kenan leaves us almost bewildered as we seek to realise account of the latter. 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 v on songe que les 1 Ou le mot latin couvre le mot arabes sur dea versions heT>raiques.' grec, de meme que les pieces de Averroes et VAverroismt, p. 203. 1'echiquier s'appliquent sur les cases.' 3 ' Ibn-Roschd n'a lu Aristote que Jourdain, Reclierches Critiques, p. 19. dans les anciennes versions faites du 8 Renan says, 'Au xn et au xm syriaquepar Honeinlbn-Ishak, Ishak siecle, 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 mit a traduiro les philosophea 432, 96 . THE NEW ARISTOTLE. CTTAP. i. Editions imprime*es de ses ceuvres n'offrent qu'une traduction latine dune traduction hebra'ique cCune commentaire fait sur une traduction arabe d'une 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 1'extreme subtilitd du texte qu'il s'agissait d'eclaircir 1 ?' 1 he'church 0f -^ was na turally to be anticipated that, with the strong ro'tiieTw 4 prepossession in favour of Aristotle which his traditional philosophy. a^hority 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 2 , 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 0eo? ayvwa-Tos whose attributes were but 1 Averroes et Averroisme, p. 52. qu'on le regardait comme un maitre 3 ' La reputation dont Aristote infallible en toute espece de science.' jouissait, comme logicien, donnait Reclierches Critiques, etc., p. 3. nne telle extension & son antoriy 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 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 Tvas 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 Aristotelis is expressly stated that they are inScholisProtestantiumFortuna,c.l) libri Aristotelis de naturali philoso- relying on the authority of Rigordus phia. Recherches Critiques, p. 190. has asserted that it was the Meta- 3 See chapter entitled Commentaires * physics that were condemned on sur Aristote in La Phitosophie de this occasion; but Jourdain has ad- Saint Thomat d'Aquin, by Charles duced the sentence itself, wherein it Jourdain, i 83. 98 THE NEW AEISTOTLE. CHAP. i. was the patronage of the emperor, Frederic II 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- tized. 1 It was probably about the year 1220 that Frederic II sent 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 dictionum ordinatione consertas, et vetustarum vestium, quas eis e new lite- rature ap- dread anticipations of preceding centuries no longer hung %%^$$ gloomily over thought and action ; and the impulse generated *** 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^^IT gave birth, it will be well to turn aside for a moment for gHsh a Library the purpose of forming a final estimate of the sources from ofthe Twelfth , ~ TI i T i 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 2 , a relation which probably accounts for the nume- rous copies of the ordinary text books in its possession. of'thefr^on- "^ w ^ ^ e seen * na * tnc l^ erar y resources of these two tents. great centres of monasticisin 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, Eapport sur * ' The cathedral church of Canter- les Bibliotheques de VOuest. 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. 162 and Append, p. 375); founded for monastic purposes; the but M. Re"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 Anselme de Cantorbery (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. 3. 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 Epist. Cantuariensei, pp. xxiii, xxiv. 101 rfi s V a ^ fej >* .1 C .5 S ft . s ^ | p n *a fe J J -s o" -g g cs$t42K\j'sa A . .-a^s^^SSS ! "S o ^, g .-C 102 1 . .1 'I rS 00 TCHUECH, CANTERBURY. Theodolus cum multis aliis. Avianus cum multis aliis. Glose super Theodolum. Ovidius epistolarum, Samsonis. Ovidius tristium, non totus. Hyginus (written Igenus) de as Tractus de numero et aliis. Liber Hermanni de astralabio Marcius de astrologia. Hyginus (written Eginus). Imago mundi et regule de com Kalendarium Haymonis. Taouie astronomice. Epistole Senece ad paulum. Liber Capitulorum. Liber de situ cluniacensi. Lucidarius. Amalarius non totus. Wimundus de corpore et sangu: T-l -1 , Eecapitulatio de Paradiso. Vita Sancti Wilfridi. Alia vei Tobia et Josue versifice. Expositio misse secundum Ysii T.iKollna Pr,^ Pal^ollj Sentencie de diversis auctoribu Liber de virtutibus et vitiis. 02 i . ^ i Tj o. o _^ . CD 3 g fa f* 5 i "g CD g ta> .s 1 * 1 tS . . S 00 S 3 H -c CD II J 3 H g, E^ a 3 g C8 !2 *" a a s CD -"JH 1 c5 *--t O ^ s % -$ 3 g a C C oj ^ ^ 1 1 i 1 1 1 a CD 2 5 g ^ 'aT CD CD . "3 -J -J 11 1 PQ "oo~ CD '1 C? 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Qn*vi*v^rt --,-.,-, 1 > " 1 c 3 5 3 ^ 1 1 2 HH Z Humma super Jrns( Glose super Prise' < Item Glose super F Item Glose super P oO o il O d CO 1 % ~ g ^H a Differentie parcium Eemigius super pri: Item super secunds Eemigius super Do; Donatus grece. Eemigius super pri: Donatus Anglice. 103 O 104 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. CHAP. 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 Timaeus 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 2 . No Greek author appears in the library at Bee, a fact from which M. Remusat is pro- bably justified in inferring that neither Lanfranc nor Anselm possessed any acquaintance with the language 3 ; nor will the presence of a Greek grammar (Donatus 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 1 ' Immensum Prisciani transiit preuve ; et quoique, alors, on pass&t transnatando pelagus.' Bibl. Cluny, pour savoir cette langue, quand on col. 18. en lisait les caracteres, nous ne 8 Bichardus, abbat of Pratellum in voyons nulle raison de faire d'An- the Provincia Botomagensis, died selme meme le plus faible des hell^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 TrXa'ros, et interpretations of the prophets, a donnelemotalte're' d'anagogencomme commentary on Deuteronomy, etc. synonyme de contemplatio. ' Anselme See Qallia Christiana, xi 837, 838. de Cantorbery, p. 457. 3 ' On dit bien que Lanfranc savait 4 See p. 29, and p. 72 note 3. le grec, mais on n' en dqnne aucune SCANTINESS OF THE EXISTING LITERATURE. 105 in its infancy at Bee, and their entire absence at Canterbury CHAP. 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 J>e 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 note, as offering a striking contrast to the extensive catalogue teryofchrut- . i>t e\ i 11 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 of nation or the understanding, and the scantiness of- the existing c&nts f&vour- & 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 that the earlier history both of the mendicant orders and of the 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 1 35, 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. cans Paris. Conflict between the University and the Citizens in 1228. CHAP. i. f u liy 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 staling themselves the Friars Minor, but their conduct already began to belie the humility The Domini- O f their professions, and the Dominicans were evidently at cans at r * 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- verity from pended ; the assemblies were no longer convened 1 . It was at this juncture that Henry in 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- improve it. The secession of the students was resented both b y the Domi- f _ iiicjiii.s. 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 ^^w, 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.' Bulteus, in 162. tratus in Academic soils.' Bulaeus, Considerable difference of statement in 1 38. is to be found respecting the date of 2 Ibid, m 132. the arrival of Albertus in Paris. * ' Hocce tempore Albertus Magnus Milman and Haure"au placing it as summa celebritate docebat in platea early as 1228 ; Ueberweg and the qua hodie etiam M. Alberti nomen author of the life of Albertus in the praefert (still known as the Rue de Nouvelle Biographic G6nrale, as late Maitre-Albert) missus quippe Lute- as 1245. tiam, anno 123&, Doctoratus apicem 108 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. CHAP. I. The Domini- can Inter- pretation of Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas, 6. 1224. d.1274. Different methods of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Philosophy of Thomas' 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 2 , 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 le grand maitre d' Albert. La forme de son commen- taire est celle d'Avicenne ; Avicenne est cite" a cbaque page de ses Merits, tandis qu' Averroes ne Test qu'assez rarement, et parfois pour essuyer le reproche d'avoir ose" contredire son maitre... Albert doit tout a Avicenne; saint Thomas, comme pbilosopbe, doit presque tout a Averrods. ' Eenan, Averroes et V Averrolsme, pp. 231, 236. 2 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 8ge - 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 LII Oxford Reformers, p. 61. "The'Celes- ofihe Secunda Secundce oi iheSumma, 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 nni- pluribus locis simul. 3. Utrum pluree 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 l n 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 ' Aristotelian Aristotle, is to know the end or reXoSY- humanis naturali investigatione per- cunda, Quiest. n art. 4. scrutantea 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 8 . qiSSf fa 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 eaoh 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 Summa, m Quaest. ix art. 1. Compare also Secunda Secunda, * There is a marked resemblance Qusest. n art. 4. Dryden, as Johnson to Aqninas 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 Religio Laid. The following ed Trinity during the Puritan ascend- coincidence 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 possunt, ut in eis divina substantia wherein he affirms of the poet ' that videatur quid sit, cum sint effectus his knowledge both of the Church eausffivirtutemnonsequantes.' Contra which he quitted and of the Church Gentes, i c. 3. ' How can the less the which he entered were of the most greater comprehend? | Or finite rea- superficial kind.' Hist. England, n 2 son reach infinity? | For what could 197. . 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 . T i 11 .his position Aristotelian philosophy can scarcely be accepted as a satis- 1 t ^ e re t 1 ,^ i n ht to factory solution of a great difficulty. To reconcile, indeed, ofhisa e e - is ever a harder task than simply to proscribe, arid 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 ^^onhe of the century most strongly influenced Europe, were of Se- j^f"^ 1 mitic race and pagan faith ; while those who rose within the thl8penod - 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 Perplexorum Aquinas 1 On the influence of this writer ReliyiomphUosophie , von Dr. A. upon Scholasticism see Stvdien uber Schmiedl, Wien, 1869. How largely 8 114) THE NEW ARISTOTLE. CHAP. i. (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, KVKUfJLefov lara.ro cC/xa, wflei 5' v ffdicei -rlirrw poor ovot v65effcru> A uinaa The course to which Aquinas found himself ultimately A^lSSfin impelled, may be briefly characterised as the sacrifice of Aristoue. 8 ^ 6 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 his teaching threatened to endanger the cause of orthodoxy 2 . M. Renan remarks Albertus Magnus drew from his ceeding by regular gradations, the writings may be seen in the treatise idea of creation transformed into the of M. Joel, Breslau, 1863. doctrine of a process of evolution 1 The De Causis was another grounded in immanent necessity.' popular forgery in these times ; a Church Hist, vin 206. translation from the Arabic of a a It is not uninteresting to note in treatise falsely ascribed to Aristotle. these times the first appearance of M. Jourdain (Recherches Critiques, p. that singular theory, revived amid 212) considers it to have been in the metaphysical jugglery of the scarcely less favour than the Pseudo- present century, which would explain Dionysius. 'It contains,' says Ne- all contradictions by suggesting as a ander, ' the principles of the Neo- solution that what is true in science Platonic monism, as the same was may be false in theology, and vice reduced to form and systematic co- versa. Boger Bacon (Opus Tertium, herence by Plotinus, the doctrine of c. 23, 24) indignantly repudiates the the Absolute as the super-existent, sophism, and Mr. Lewes (Hist, of from which issues forth the whole Philosophy, n 83) has noticed his developing process of being, pro- 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 Fall TS 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 1 , is familiar to all em* to Psychology. students of psychology. He regards the intellectual faculty as existing under a twofold form, the passive principle ^ 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, u - "* f . sed by the the controversies to which the new Aristotle gave birth, other Frandscans - 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. It is now known that the commentary on the Metaphysics once attributed to this writer is by a different hand, but in his Summa Theologice we have ample indications that he ven- tured to dangerous lengths under the guidance of Averrb'es 8 . J De Unitate Intellect, p. 257. commentaire da vm'livre de la Phy- 8 Among them Kenan enumerates sique, ' he observes, ' est presque tout ' la mati&re premiere et indetermine'e, enjier consacre' a re"futer celui d' Aver- la hierarchic des premiers principes, roes.' Averrobs et I'Averrolsme, p. le role interme"uiaire de la premiere 238. intelligence a la fois cr^e" et cre"atrice, 3 ' On peut designer comme les la negation de la providence, et sur- deux foyers de I'averroisme, au xin e tout I'lmpossibilite* de la creation. Le sici-le, 1'ucole franciscaine et surtout 118 THE UNIVEKSITY OF PARIS. CHAP. L The Irrefragable Doctor, for so he was named, died in the Averroistio year 1245, and his followers appear to have adopted yet bolder Fr^Tci^'ns. 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 "i n 22i entura> 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 livl fSe above the arena of human philosophy and controversial zeal. Aristotle. 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 . Juccess'oP -^ P r bably marks the general success that was held to by e Aq e utat nt have 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 1267, 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- roistic opinions ; and we may well understand that the blow thus given to the Franciscan party considerably diminished I'Umversite' de Paris.' Ibid. 259. scholastics regnum longe amplifica- Roger Bacon reproduces this tradition runt.' m 657. of his order : see Opus Majus, passim. l ' Saint Bonaventura d^daignait According to Bulseus, Hales was the Aristote et sa cabale...nous serons first to comment on the Sentences : peu curieux de rechercher quelle opi- 1 Primus autem e theologis nostris nion il lui a plu d'exprimer incidem- M. Petri Lombard! Sententias com- ment, avec le laissez-aller de 1'in- mentariis illustrasse dicitur Alexan- difference, sur les grands problemes der Alensis, factus deinde Minorita, du peripate'tisme. ' Haureau, Phil. cujusexemplumimitati AlhertusMag- Scholastique, n 219. nus et Thomas Aquinas theologiae 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 Rheims they found the chairs of instruction occupied Paris, 1231. 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 ,.,..,. between the during which the jealousies and nvalry thus evoked con- secuiarsand J J the Mendi- 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, 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 ime *' 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 fteligionem, 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. Rivalry between the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The philo- sophy of Aquinas attacked by the Francis- cans. 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 Averroistic 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'UniversiW regrettainfiniment son absence, et elle n'omit rien de ce qui pouvait de"pendre d'elle pour obtenir son retour a Paris. Deli- berations frequentes, mortifications procure'es aux Mendians ennemis de ce docteur, deputations au pape : tout fiat inutile.' Crevier, n 27. The whole history of the conflict between William St. Amour and his opponents, which we 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, 382. OPPOSITION TO THE MENDICANTS. 121 remains. Theology, as with Roscellinus, here again supplied CHAP. r. 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- JJSgjy hension. The reply of the Franciscans was eminently sue- their attack> 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 ^Egidius 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, atneathof n _ * 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 intelligentiae non demned represented the tenets of habent 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.' See Haure"au, Philo- bian philosophy, but he has failed to gophie Scholattique, n 216. Benan, note the rebuff inflicted upon the AverroSs et VAverroume, p. 278. Dominicans. Of the three condemn- Bulfflus, in 433. 122 THOMAS AQUINAS. CHAP. i. the church. ins canoni- zation. 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 ^ OT tne purpose of re-establishing his reputation. The priors Q fa Q different 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 fyand, Far di noi centre e di se far corona, which shone with surpassing lustre among the spirits of the blest 2 . 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 1 Haure'au, Philosophic Scholasti- que, u 217. Bulaeus, in 448. 2 Dante, Paradiso, x 64. The whole of the speech 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 " teaching, 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, ^on? 18 f the chancellor of the university of Paris, and long the reputed author of the Imitalio Christi, declared that Bonaventura, as non immiscens positiones extraneas vel doctrinas sceculares dialecticas aut physicas terminis theologicis 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 as false shepherds, and Vinceutius 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, Brucker, virum hunc superstitioso obsequio philosopho addictum reduxit, ut theologies vulneribus quce prcepostera philosophice commixtio inflixerat, nova adderet vulnera, sicque sacram doctrinam ver& faceret philosophicam, immo gentilem 1 . Still heavier falls the censure of Carl Prantl, who indeed has treated both Albertus and Aquinas with unwonted harshness, even denying to the 1 Hist. Phil, in 805. 124 THOMAS AQUINAS. CHAP. T. latterall merit as an original thinker, and affirming that itcould 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 * of the school- sucn as these are strongly opposed to the prevailing senti- 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 GescMchte der Logik, m 108. to the natural sciences, and the open * Petrarch even went so far as to ridicule with which they assailed the compose a treatise entitled De sui Mosaic account of the Creation, effec- ipsiusetmultorumaliommignorantia, tually checked much sympathy be- having for its object the rebuking of tween him and them. He was wont the pert scepticism which vras rife to tell them that he considered it of among the young Venetians. In his more importance to explore the na- interconrse with them he tells us ture of man than that of quadrupeds that he found them intellectually and and fishes. See Gingue'ne', Hist. Lift. studiously inclined, but their devo- d'ltalie, Tom. u p. 35. Tiraboschi, tion, under the teaching of Averroes, v 45. THOMAS AQUINAS. 125 pease the bigot, to restore philosophy and to guard the P^^J: 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 'of " . . , , -, Aristotle. century, the proper thought ot 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 Loyik, n qui dfichiraient a cette 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 Eoscellinus partis. Cette nuance meme ^tait-elle down to that of Aquinas. Few who bien arrete"e ? N'est-il pas dea jours have made the effort to grasp the de chaos ou les mots perdent leur distinctions on which these contro- signification primitive, oil les amis versies turned, will fail to feel the ne se retrouvent plus, ou les ennemis force of Benan's observation: 'II est semblent se donner la main?' Aver- fort difficile, au milieu des querelles rote et VAverroisme, p. 221 (ed. 1852). 126 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. CHAP. i. 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 colleges 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 TWO sup- subjected to an adequate test in Paris. Crevier indeed We been traces back the foundation of two colleges, that of St. Thomas founded in wntury! fth ^ u Louvre 3 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- bres fournit le logement et la subsis- ploy6 que des versions drives imme- tance, ou du moins des secours pour diatement du grec, soit qu'il fait faire subsister pendant leurs Etudes. Cette de nouvelles, soit qu'il ait obtenu des ceuvre de charite* n'e*tait pas nouvelle, collations d'anciennes versions avec et il y avoit d6ja longtems que le roi 1'original, et ait en ainsi des varian- Robert en avoit donne' 1'exemple en tes. Guillaume Tocco, dans la vie entretenant de pauvres clercs, c'est- qu'il nous a laisse'e de ce grand doc- a-dire de pauvres e*tudians. Nous teur, dit positivement : Scripsit etiam avons preuve que Louis le Jeune super philosophicam naturalem et mo- faisait aussi distribuer des liberalite's ralem et super metaphysicam, quorum a de pauvres e"coliers par son grand librorum procuravit ut fieret nova aumonier. L'exemple de la munifi- translatio qua sentential Aristotelis cence de nos rois invita les princes, contineret clarius neritatem.' (Acta les grands, et les pr^lats a 1'imiter. Sane. Antwerp, i 665.) Jourdain, Cette bonne oeuvre prit faveur, et se Jlecherches Critiques, p. 40. multiplia beaucoup pendant les trei- 2 Ibid. p. 395. Prantl, Geschichte zieme et quatorzieme siecles, aux- der Logik, m 5. quels se rapporte 1'institution de la 8 'Dans cet e'tablissement se mani- plupart des boursiers dans notre feste 1'origine de nos boursiers, qui University.' Crevier, i 269. sont de jeunes gens pauvres, aux- 4 They are the College de Constan- quels le college dont Us sont mem- 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 Thecoiiege ._..-.-. ,, -I-11 of Navarre. the lair, 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 du Louvre, des Bernhardins, des Eons Enfans de la Rue St. Victor, de Sorbonne, de Calvi, des Augustine, des Cannes, des Pre"montr6s, de Clugni, du Tre'sorier, d'Harcourt, and des Cholets. The circumstances of the foundation of the College de Constantinople and the motives in which De Boulay conjectures it ma^ have taken its rise, are somewhat singular: 'Post expugnatam Con- stantinopolim a Francis et Venetis sacro foedere junctis Philippe Au- gusto rege Lutetian conditum est collegium Constantinopolitanum ad ripam Seqnanae prope forum Mal- hertinum, nescio in arcano imperil consilio, ut Graecorum liberi Lutetiam venientes una cum lingua Latina paullatim vetus illud et patrium in Latinos odium deponerent eorumque humanitatem et benignitatem experti ad suos reversi nou sine magno La- tini nominis incremento virtutes illas passim praedicarent, ac velut obsides habiti, qui, si quid parentes et affines Grseca levitati adversus Latinos mo- lirentur, ipsi adolescentes Lutetia couclusi fueriut.' Bulseus, in 10. 1 Crevier, i. 271. Le Clerc, Etat des Lettres au XIV' SiMe, i 265. s ' Homme simple dans son carac- tere et dans ses mceurs.' Crevier. 8 ' Avant Robert de Sorbonne nul college n'etait &abli a Paris pour les pe'culiers I'tiulians en The'ologie. II voulut leur procurer cet avantage... La pauvrete 1 e"tait 1'attribut propre de la maison de Sorbonne. Elle en a conserve longtems la realittS aveo le titre.' Ibid, i 494, 495. 128 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. CHAP. L 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; Clarnanges, 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- j^Tofttie vouritism resulting from these courtly relations 2 . 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 mail see Egger, L'HeUen- trop aecoutume's a faire la volonte" isme en France, 1 128 130. Oresme 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 eclaterent, matics and his linguistic attainments deux siecles apres, 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 Eoger Bacon in the qu'il faillait braver,- 1'affaiblit et previous century. Of his acquaint- l'e"nerva, en lui otant peu a peu, de ance with Greek we shall have oc- connivence avec des protecteurs puis- casion to speak in another place. sants, la liberte" de ses lecons et la 2 ' Ce fut un malheur pour une publicite" de ses examens. ' Le Clerc, corporation qui avait besoin d'inde- Etat da Lettres au Qimtorzieme Sie- pendance, de s etre laisser dommer c j j 266 267. DESCRIPTION OF M. LE CLERC. 129 represented a similar design. The institution of the Colldge 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, S^ 1 ^ " ' or had they all received their full complement of scholars, tlerc- 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. CHAR 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 capetes of Montaigne, who were also, and not without the students. reasoilj 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. 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, other charac 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, Nosfuimus simul in Garlandia; or they remembered how they had once shouted in the ears of the watch the defiant menace, Alice 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, VicvsStramineus, 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 tlie Statutes, App. A. p. xlv. tinuance of the lecture : benches and a L e cierc, Etat des Lett res au seats being forbidden by an express A'/P Siecle i 269 271 statute of Pope Urban V in 1366. 92 CHAPTER IL RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. u. 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 ne\V 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. KISE 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 studenu . . -r--i from Paris at the great migration from Pans, in the year 1229, availed ^| 11 * 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. 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 eminent Oxonians who had also studied at Paris. Among Oxonians at _ f Paris - the names are those of Giraldus 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 Anthony considerably extended. ' Leland,' says Wood, ' in the lives count a 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 iUustrium 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 propius jam Francus et Anglicus eque Norunt Parisius quid feceris Oxonieque. 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. Migrations Within thirty years of this event Cambridge and Oxford ^ their turn saw their sons set forth in search of quieter abodes. The division into ' nations ' in the continental uni- 1 Wood-Gutch, i 206214. 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 ^ 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 Stamford. 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 : DoctritKK studium quod nune application of the university of Ox- viget ad Vada Bourn \ Tempore ven- 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 hereforOz/ord; Vada Saxi f or 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 ing water. 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 KISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. IT. 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 i 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, those who had commenced in Peacock's Observations, Appendix, p. any other town in England.' Dean xrviii. See also note on Peck's Acade- LOSS OF EARLY RECORDS. 137 they considered of any value, and destroyed everything that CHAP. ir. bespoke a lettered community. In 1261 the records of the university were committed to the flames ; the year 1322 was marked by a similar act of Vandalism ; in 1381, during the insurrections then prevalent throughout the country, {^ ndiary 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 Fuller's view greater calamity was not wrought by such casualties : ' Who- soever,' he says, ' shall consider in both universities the ill- contrivance of many chimneys, hollowness 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- p pp ortuni- asters has unfortunately resulted in a positive as well as fi> l rae< IT- i i 11 i introduction negative evil. It is not simply that we are unable to deter- *****, 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 Anglicana, Appendix (B). college foundations would have had 1 Cooper, Annals, i 48, 79, 121. a special value, were lost in the fire 3 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 EISE 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 . Disquiet oc- Another and not infrequent source of disquiet to both twmiments.. 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.' niigious It will not be necessary further to illustrate the presence Cambridge. o f 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, The Francis- throughout England the Franciscans were the more nume- cans. 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 have but one true and sad the first of our antiquarians to per- answer to return to all their ques- ceive their real value. The absurd tions, " They are burnt." ' (Fuller, anachronisms they contain are point- Hist. of the Univ. p. 84). These ed out by Dyer, Privileges, i397 416. forgeries are given in MSS. Hare, i 2 ' Cantabrigias primo receperunt 1 3. What opinion Hare himself fratres burgenses villae, assignantes had of their genuineness he has not eis veterum synagogam quae erat left on record. Baker was perhaps coutigua carceri. Cum vero intole- BELIGIOUS ORDERS AT CAMBRIDGE. 13!) described as an ornament to the university, and the pre- CHAP. n. 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 The 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- bourhood the priory of the Augustiruan Canons at Barnwell. atBanmeit The general organisation of both Oxford and Cambridge outline of the o early orgam- was, as we have already seen, modelled on that of Paris, and En^h 0fthe it will here be well to point out what appear to have been Ul 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 carceris fratribus, pro reditu are, et sic sedificabant fra- quod eundem ingressura habebant tres capellam ita pauperrimam, ut carcerarii et fratres, dedit dominus unus carpentarius in una die faceret, Rex decem marcas ad emendum et erigeret una die xiv coplas tigno- reditum quod satis fieret saccario suo rum.' MonumentaFranciscana, p. 18. 140 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. ii. jecture, was the function of the Magister Glomerice, an Function of officer whose duties have been the subject of considerable t Gbi' ter 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- Peacock of sisted of a chancellor, and of the two houses of regents and the early of th e itution non-regents 2 . The chancellor was chosen biennially by the cambridge, of 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 sing therefore,' he adds, ' that they the relation of teachers to those who should present enactments which were taught, yet we can discover no are sometimes contradictory to each attempt to disturb the distribution of other, when we are thus deprived of the powers exercised by the chancel- the 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, we graduation.' Observations, pp. 26, 27. experience no difficulty in recognis- 2 Regere like legere (see p. 74) was ing the permanent and more striking to teach : the regents were those features of the constitution of the engaged in teaching, the non-regents university, 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. n. 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 Chan- Causes in which a scholar was concerned, unless facti atrocitas cellor - ml 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 amplified by royal charters, were unquestionably ecclesiastical, 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. n. from those of the regents or non-regents ; for the authority HiTpTCIrT of the chancellor had an origin independent of the regents, distinguished 11- T v^ from them of and his previous concurrence was necessary to give validity andnon- s to their acts : he constituted, in fact, a distinct estate in the 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, distinction in p h o e ss p essed rs b *hat in the earliest ages of the university, the regents alone, bodiesT* 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 its 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 Powers , . , i'ii vested in the were not immediately connected with the proper functions nou-regents , , at * l ate r of the regency ; and we consequently find that at the period P eriod - 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. n. * The two proctors, called also rectors, after chancellor and Proctors. 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 gretnial 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 *. '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 pledges for the payment of fees, which a late Statute (see Statuta Antiqua were usually jewels or manuscripts ; No. 182) no manuscript written or these books or manuscripts were book printed, on paper instead of valued by the university stationarii vellum, was allowed to be received in (the booksellers) , who were not unfre- pledge.' Peacock's Observations on quently bribed to cheat the univer- the Statutes, p. 25. sity by putting a price upon them EARLY CONSTITUTION OF CAMBRIDGE. 145 almost perpetual attendance upon the chancellor, proctors, CHAP. TI. 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 III. 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 P* working -body foruier work of education in the university and in no one else, that ^body.* 1 * 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 Pa p ftl recognition from Pope John xxn a formal recognition as a Stiidium ^ Generate or Universitas 1 , whereby the masters and scholars 6enerale - 1 Brian Twyne, with his usual considered a university: 'qua es- unfairness, endeavours to wrest this sent adniodum ridicula, si ante illud fact into evidence that Cambridge, tempus Cantabrigia aut studium before this time, had no claim to be generale, aut Uuiversitas habita fu- 10 146 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. ii. 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. increase of There is, perhaps, no instance in English history, of any and rapid ' religious body undergoing so sudden and complete a change iarity popu " * n PP u l ar 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 isset, aut privilegia sub nomine Uni- dayogik, rv 11.) But this fact proves versitatis, unquam ante id tempus, nothing with respect to Paris and a Eomanis pontificibus obtinuisset. ' Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge. (Antiq. Acad. Oxon. Apologia, $ 111.) The origin and formation of these It is of course true that in the case universities is lost in obscurity, of the majority of the universities 'Das gilt,' says Von Eaumer, 'von created prior to the Eeformation, the keiner deutschen Universitat, man granting of the Papal Bull was coin- kennt bei alien die Geschichte ihrer cident with their first foundation. Entstehung.' iv 6. (See Von Raumer, Geschichte der Pa- 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 morrow (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. Madden's Preface to the Histnrui part (ann. 1189 1250) was, in the Anr)lorum, p. Ixii. 102 148 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. TL 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 ram of UM account so grave a scandal and descants thereon with well- 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 (rt'rt 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. 14-9 years, have reared in England mansions as lofty as the palaces of CHAP. it. 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. MenSfouits 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- TI.C Francis- selves at Bury. A struggle ensued which lasted for five ** years. The friars erected buildings, which the monks de- 1 Wats, p. 612. MS. Cott. Nero. D.V. fol. 324 a. 150 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. it. molished. The dispute was carried by the latter to Rome, but their efforts in that direction proved of but small avail while Alexander iv rilled the papal chair. Iii the year 1261 that pontiff died, and his successor Urban rv 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 1 .' 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 2 . In the year 1276 the same HM nt i ,01 i canterbury, 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 subserviency the Mendicants had begun to ebb. Foremost among the of the new Papai'extor- c* 111863 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. Wats, pp. 967 quantum ipsi in aedificiis et spatiis 8, and 970; Register Werketone, latioribus augmentantur, tanto Prior Harleian MS. 638; Dugdale, Mo- et conventus in bonia suis et juribus nasticon, m 106. angustiantur; quia redditus quos a 1 ' Qui de die in diem aedificantes, messuagiis fratribus collatis recepe- collatis sibi a quamplurimis locis cir- rant, sibi nunc pereunt ; et oblationes, cumjacentibus de quibus Prior et con- quse eis dari consneverant, fratres ventus redditus debent percipere, in jam noviter venientes, prsedicatio- magnum ejusdem domus detrimen- nibus suis urgentibus, funditus usur- tum, 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. IT. 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- {Jlfw^nThe selves to Grosseteste at Lincoln. He had been a warm messen^s supporter of their order, having even at one time intended cTrosseteste. 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. IT. parochial clergy. Everywhere the parish priest found his Rapid de- authority contemned, his sphere of action invaded, his mode fhenw yo of life censured and decried, by their unscrupulous zeal. orders. 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 R^glniS^n degeneracy. Consideremus religiosos, says Roger Bacon, spre^ d r e -" writing in the year 1271, himself a Franciscan friar, nullum the religious ordinem excludo. Videamus quantum ceciderunt singuli a day. statu debito, et novi ordines jam horribiliter labefacti sunt a pristina dignitate. Totus clerus vacat superbice, luxuries, 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 Comp. Studii Philosophic, c. 1. Consequent Philosophic, written in This treatise, written in 1271, must 1292. be carefully distinguished from the 2 Ibid. c. 6. Compendium Studii Theologice 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^eathof J J Grosseteste. when the Franciscan emissaries knocked at his door. It marks the reputation which he had eve a 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 His .services to Ins genera' education ; he had revived learning ; he had enriched the tlon> 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 pregnant if not classic phrase, that he was prcelatorum J^>my of correptor, monachorum corrector, presbyterorum director, ^ s t ^ llis 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 j^f"*?, appears to have been given to the new learning scarcely less llew leurlllng - than to the new orders, and he had sought to promote the 1 Matthew Paris, pp. 876, 877. severus sed potius austerus et in- 4 'In qua, si quis omnes tyran- humanus censeretur.' Ibid. p. 815. nides quas exercuit recitaret, non 154 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. ii. 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 theEthfcsf 68 there 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 His opinion translations as were already in use he utterly despaired, and of the existing <* Waltham has been recently, and for the first time, brought CHAP. ir. foundation at Waltham - 1 Prof. Stubbs, Introd. to De In- ventione Sanctte Crucis, etc. pp. viii. ix; and Introd. to Epiatolce Cantua- rieiises, p. xvii. 2 Tanner-Nasmith, pp. 84, 207, 504. See also Mr C. H. Pearson's observations in Historical Maps of J-'.mjland, p. 54. 'It was,' says Pro- fessor Stubbs, 'unfortunately the policy of tbe 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 seen If r church was an unheard-of impiety.' Introd. to Epist. Cant. p. xxv. 3 He is so described in the charter of Waltham. ' We can ima- gine, ' says Professor Stnbbs, ' 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 foundation*; the heroes of the monks were Ethelwulf, 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 Merlon, and William of Wykeham.' Introd. to De Inven- tione, p. vii. 11 Mr. Free- man's v: the excep- 162 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. ii. before the student of this period, in its true relation to the majority of the foundations of the time. 'Every writer of fe'w of English history,' says Mr Freeman, ' as far as I know, has wholly misrepresented its nature. It is constantly spoken Kari Harold's o f as 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 ^Ethelstan 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. 163 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 Walterde Merton. 1 Hist, of the 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; J;he 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 Parnwell 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- land, Collectanea, 1 69.) (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. ' Cum in ea canonici seculares nimis ir- religiose et carnaliter vixissent, ita quod infamia conversationis illorum modum excedens multos scaudali- zasset.' Dugdale, Monasticon, vi 63: or, in the language of the account quoted by Dugdale, 'quia...mundanis operibus, et illecebris illicitis magis quani divino servitio intendebant.' 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 subdeacou's orders. See Sketch of the life of Walter de Merton, by Edmund, Bishop of Nelson, pp. 2 and 19; also Monumenta Franciscana, letter 242. 112 164 RISE OF 'THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. II. Walter de Merton, Lord High Chancellor of England, Bishop of Rochester. d. 1277. Statutes of Merton Col- lege, 1270. Exclusion of the religious orders from the founda- tion. 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 design of Walter de Merton 1 ; when we add that his statutes became the model on which those of the earlier colleges both at Oxford and at Cambridge were framed, we shall need no excuse for dwelling at some length on their scope and character 2 . The first broad fact that challenges our attention in these statutes is the restriction whereby 'no religious person,' nemo religiosus, 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. Such Were the two classes whom Walter de Merton sought to exclude. It was his design to create a seminary for the 1 'Ever a warm advocate of the liberty of the subject, and -a staunch patron of education, Merton must have viewed with a jealous eye the advances of Rome and the increasing influence of her emissaries in the country. While filling the high office of chancellor of England, he had learned by experience how vain was the attempt to struggle with the mi- nisters of Rome when once wealth and position had given them an over- whelming authority in Church and State. He therefore directed his attention to the principal seat of education, and endeavoured to raise in the secular schools a power which rnigK, "By'crushTng the strength of the monasteries, check the growth of the papal influence in the bud.' Percival, Introd. to Statutes of Merton College, p. xiv. It is noted by the Bishop of Nelson, as a proof of the , high estimation in which Walter de Merton was held by the royal family, that all its members contributed iu : some way to the foundation of hia : college. (Life, p. 7.) He was chan- cellor in the years 1261-2, a time when the troubles Of" JPLtihry III. were at their height, and he not im- probably earned the gratitude of the royal family by his able administra- tion during the monarch's absence from the kingdom. 2 The statutes here referred to are those of 1270, and may be regarded as embodying the final views and intentions of the founder. MERTON COLLEGE. 165 Church, and he accordingly determined to place it beyond CHAP. n. 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 Pcenitentia. 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_actjpnj)y their acquired leariHng! On tEeotEer" 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 theclerical profession at this period Varied P u included all vocations^ tEaTinvolyed a lettered and technical rcciLu preparation. The^civilJ.aw, 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 n, 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, ill 109. 16G RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES, not a monas- tery. CHAP. n. civil and legal offices 1 .' The restriction of Merton College to The college the clergy cannot consequently be 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 Balsham (A.D. 1276) in his decision as arbitrator between his own archdeacon and the Master of Glomery, sive scholares sive laid, shows how entirely ecclesiastical was the character of the Universities at this time. Laymen and clerks, as Mr Anstey observes, were the nearest equivalents to the modern ' town ' and 'gown,' Munimenta Acad. 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'importante question,' says M. Thurot, in his very able treatise, 4 de savoir si 1' University etait un corps laic ou ecclesiastique a etc" tou- jours controvertee...EUe fut toujours traitee comme un corps ecclesiastique auxiii 6 au xiv e et au xv siecle...Elle fut meme ge"neralement traite"e com- me un corps la'ic au xvii e et au xviii* siecle'. De V Organisation de VEn- seignement dans I'Universite de Paris au Moyen-Age. Par Charles Thurot. Paris, 1850, pp. 29-31. 8 'It is customary with the igno- rant to speak of our colleges as mo- nastic institutions, but, as every one knows who is acquainted with the history of the country, the colleges with very few exceptions were intro- duced to supplant the monasteries. Early in the 12th century the opinion began 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 so trained betake themselves to other professions.' Dean Hook, Lives of the Archbishops, 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 the religious orders were so largely en- joying, and to this end I think all his provisions are found to be con- sistently framed. He borrowed from the monastic institutions the idea of an aggregate body li ving 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 CHAP. n. which the founder designed should predominate among the character of > i i -r, i , t i i .the education scholars . It was his aim to establish a constant succession at 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 2 ' 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 The o'oy and the Ca- canon law is recognised, but the students in that faculty are ^^5^. expressly limited to four or five ; to the civil law even less a^^sSac 3 favour is shewn, for the study is permitted only to the mentfm" 1 ' 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 2 '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 impropriations 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,' in 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. only real stu dents to be CHAP. ii. that lie 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. ft J s significant of the founder's intention that only real J s t u dents should find a home within the walls of Merton, lon ' 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 wisdom of permanent member of the society 1 . With this somewhat the whole r J conception. rem arkable 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 thoughtfulness 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- sequently abolished. ' We do not conceive,' says Walter de Merton's biographer*, in summing up his estimate of these statutes, ' that there need remain any doubt that the par- 1 Statutes, ed. Percival, p. 20. 3 Ibid. p. 55. 'Medicine never- theless afterwards became a flourish- ing study in the college during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and in a capitular order of 1504 is recognised as a philosophical act.' Bp. of Nelson's Life of Walter de Merton, p. 26, note. DUNS SCOTUS. 1G9 ticula.r benefit which the founder designed to confer on the CHAP. IL 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 Regula, 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 j^^L 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 ] Ibid. p. 29. 170 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. ir. 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 Duns scotus. genius of Duns Scotus, who next occupies the foreground in * 1308. 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 1 'It is difficult to conceive how translations, which certainly appear snch a character could then exist. to have merited all his severity. Of That he received much of his know- both Avicenna and Averroes he 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. But that he derived from these (the Arabian) writings, yet I them his disposition to shake off the have discovered evidence enough to authority of Aristotle, to maintain make the position of Roger Bacon the importance 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.' (Whewell, Hut. of Phil, n 84. Mr Shirley, in H ist. of the Inductive Sciences, i 258.) the Introduction to the Fasciculi It may be doubted whether any pas- Zizanionnn, p. L has even gone so sages hi Bacon's writings can be con- far as to assert that we have in strued into impatience of the autho- Roger Bacon ' the normal type of an rity of Aristotle himself : a careful English philosopher ' of the thir- txaui iiiation will shew that his cen- teenth century, sures are always directed at the Latin DUNS SCOTUS. 171 the fourteenth century is one of the most remarkable afforded CHAP. IL by any university since the commencement of the new era, oxford at the the earliest developement, in our own country, of that singular mem of the . Y . . ,, , . i . , fourteenth 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 l , Oxford appears as the centre of a purelyphilosophic 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 Republic. to Giraldus Cambrcnsis, n. xv. After the thirteenth century, the cor- 172 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. or the t :^ CHAP. n. the age had 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. The languid culture of the Benedictines had been thrust aside by the fervid inteUectualism 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 prima and secunda intentio still remained uninvestigated and the prindpium individua- t ton is 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 metaphysical subtlety*,' has passed, by a strange caprice of 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 that attend aftiBi period. 1 The prosperity and authority of the Dominicans appear to have been very closely associated with the pro- sperity of the university of Paris. Mr Shirley notes the decline of that university in this century as a ' heavy blow' to the order. See Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 1L . * Coleridge's Literary Remains, in 2L DUNS SCOTUS. 173 feel how vain must be the effort to realise the conditions CHAP. IT. 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 2 . 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 i i i i i 111 / i i dement in the task which devolved upon the schoolmen ot the preced- the history of scholasti- 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 rate. He is said and that of Mr Coxe, librarian of to have died at the^ga of. thirty- the Bodleian, that no materials now I'mir, 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- print- 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 174 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. IT. 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 the interest and value that its efficient performance would possess for a select, though somewhat limited, circle of students 1 . Researches of recent writers. 1 ' The extensive research which would form one indispensable quali- fication for such a task, would be only one out of many, even less common, qualifications, without which such a work would be worse than useless. The author should be one thoroughly on his guard against the common error of confounding together, or leading his readers to confound, an intimate acquaintance with many books on a given subject, and a clear insight into the subject itself. With ability and industry for inves- tigating a multitude of minute parti- culars, he should possess the power of rightly estimating each according to its intrinsic importance, and not (as is very, commonly done) accord- ing to the degree of laborious re- search it may have cost him, or the rarity of the knowledge he may in any case have acquired. And he should be careful, while recording the opinions and expressions of va- rious authors on points of science, to guard both himself and his readers against the mistake of taking any- thing on authority that ought to be evinced by scientific reasoning.' Whately's Logic (ed. 1862), p. 2. In striking contrast to the view above indicated, Dean Mansel con- siders that ' a historical account of the Scholastic Logic ought to con- fine itself to commentaries and trea- tises expressly on the science ; and the scholastic contributions to the matter of Logic should be confined to such additions to the Aristote- lian text as have been incorporated into the Logica doceiis.' (Introd. to Artis Log. Rud. p. 31.) But in treating a time when the application of this Logica docens underlay almost every treatise of a didactic character, it is evident that to restrict the his- torical survey to the abstract art DUNS SCOTUS. 175 This want, at least up to the conclusion of the scholastic era, CHAP. n. has now been to a great extent supplied by the labours of Prantl, to whose researches, together with those of Haure'au 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 associates the learning of the Latins with that of the Greek 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 state of v learning at East, which had so often defied the fiercest assaults of the J^p'^lhe infidel, and had not yet been subjugated to the rule of an illite- ceSy! 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 1 ; and would be to diminish, very mate- was spoken in the court and taught rially, both the value and the inte- 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- various 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, Sclavonian, 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. TT. 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 Michael f an d Aristarchus. Among such writers the name of Michael psemS^ tine Constantine Psellus, a learned professor at Constantinople towards the close of the eleventh century, deserves a foremost place; and to his treatise on logic, 2wo-\Ja? et an( j 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 influence of thought presented in the Byzantine logic. The element, theByzantine J thing mwt accordingly, which in Albertus, Aquinas, and Grosseteste, is te'chnkaT' 7 but an exceptional phenomenon (vereinzelten Erscheinungeri), 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- 1 'Jedenfalls ist unter den ahnli- den Psellus zu iibersetzen, oder ob chen Erzeugnissen jener Zeit das er nur als Abschreiber einer bereits Compendium des Petrus Hispanus vorhandenen getreuen Uebersetzung das geistloseste, insoferne es ohne sich seinen ,,weltgescbicbtlichen" irgend einen einzigen eigenen Einfluss errungen habe, lasst sich Gedanken nur den Grundtext der nicht entscheiden ; der Schweiss neu eingefiihrten byzantinischen des Angesichtes " kann in keinem der Logik wiederholt. Ob der Verfasser beiden Falle gross gewesen sein.' des Griechischen machtig war, um in 34. THE BYZANTINE LOGIC'. 179 struction placed upon the Byzantine logic and the direction CHAP. ir. 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- Th e legiti- mate in- sion of the precise position of Duns Scotus in relation to the f h u e ei x e e w of philosophy of the time, briefly to recall those important ^"tfau'v modifications of theory that had already resulted from the by u the hs< 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 Pott, i, ii. Topica, vi, viii. 1. Realist and Nominalist concurred; 122 180 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. ii. 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. S?BySn- f ' The lgi c f Duns Scotus/ says Prantl, ' which gave DunsTcotus. 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 2 .' The treatise of Psellus, as translated by Petrus Hispanus, thus enunciates the theory which Duns Scotus developed ; Dyalectica est ars artium, scientia scien- an opinion adopted, almost to a man, l Ad Boeth. de Trinitate, (Vol. by the Jesuit, Dominican, and Fran- xvri 2) p. 134. quoted by Prantl, in ciscan Cursualists.' More accurate 108. enquiry has shewn this to be by far 2 Gfschichte dcr Logik, in 203. too sweeping an assertion. >y r to is Scotus. THE BYZANTINE LOGIC. 181 tiarum, ad omnium methodorum principia viarn hdbens. Sola CHAP. IT. enim dyalectica probabiliter disputat de principiis omnium aliarum scientiarum. Et ideo in acquisitions 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 2 .' It Theory of the J ^ t Intentio was in connexion with this doctrine of the intentio secunda Secutvia ~ 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 state of the * ' controversy it presented itself before the enunciation of this theory, 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 pretentious 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 eecundas.' Metaph. I 1, 1. The only fehlt in unserem Texte des Psellus ; sense in which Albertus appears to er ist wohl aus der gewb'hnlichen bo- have been able to recognize logic as ethianischeu Tradition aufgenom- 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 : AtoXt/trt/c^ the Arabians to the text of Aristotle Am r^x" 7 ? Tt-xyav Ka.1 ^TrtoTiJ/tt?; tin- is the celebrated distinction between trrr)/j,iai> irpds rds dwaff&v rav pf06dat> first and second intentions. This is a.pX&* oSov t^ovcra, teal Sict TOVTO 4v rjf found in the epitome of the Catego- KTijffti rGiv firi.a'rijfj.uiv irp&rqv flvai TTJI> ries by Averroes. It has also been dta\fKTiKT)v xpti- l li P- 1 quoted by traced to Avicenna. To the Arabians Prantl. also are probably owing some of the 2 ' Istffi igitur sunt tres scientiae distinguishing features, though cer- speculativse, et non sunt plures. Sci- taiuly not the origin, of the Scholastic entire logicae non considerant ens et llealism.' Dean Mansel, Introd. to partem entis aliquam, sed intentiones Artis Log. Rud, p. xxix. 182 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. CHAP. ii. 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 theoryof were not. It was in respect of this theory of the non-reality Duns scotus. Q f tne { n f en ^ ones secundcB, that Duns Scotus joined issue with the Thomists. 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 Logic a only a subjective existence. They are equally real, and science as J > J T. J 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 1 . 1 ' Auch den Unterschied, welcher senschaft sei, im Ausschlusse an Alf- zwischen Logik und Metaphysik arabi dahin, dass die Logik einerseits neben manchen Beruhrangspunkten als docens wirklich eine Wissenschaft doch als ein wesentlicher besteht, ist und andrerseits als utens den erblickt Scotus ebenso \vie all seine modus fiir alle iibrigen enthalt, so dass alteren und jiingeren Zeitgenossen in wir hier...den Eegriff einer "ange- jener intentio secunda, welcher wir wandten Logik" treffen.' Prantl, nun seit den Arabern stets schon be- Geschichte der Logik, m 204-5. gegneten, und er spricht in mannig- According, therefore, to this view we faltigen Wendungen wiederholt es aus, have, Logica Docens = Pure Logic = a dass die Logik jene Momente, welche Science ; Logica Utens=Applied Logic von ratio oder von intellectus oder von = an Art. This appears almost conceptus ausgehen, kurz also der sub- identical with the view subsequently jectiven Werkstatte angehoren, auf espoused by Wolf, and by Kant, who, das objective Wesen der Dinge " an- in defining the Logica Docens as wende," applicare. Eben hiedurch ' The Science of the Necessary Laws entscheidet er auch jene Frage, ob die of Thought,' arrived, though by a Logik als modus sciendiselbet eine Wis- very different process, at the same science as well as an art. 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 d 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. xiv c. 3) with that given by science. Universalia non sunt ficti- Haure"au and Prantlwill prove this. ones intellectus; tune enim nunquam 1 Prantl remarks that both Al- in quid pradicarentur de re extra bertus and Duns Scotus attempted nee ad definitionem pertinerent, nee to prove the existence of Universals metaphysica differret a logica, immo from our subjective conception of omnis scientia esset logica, quia de them: 'weil es ja von dem Nicht- universali. Theorem, 4 in 269 A, Seienden keine Erkenntniss gebeu quoted by Prantl, in 207. 184- RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. THAT. n. 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 langue bienfaite 1 , may, with the change of a single word, he applied with perfect propriety to the Subtle Doctor. ' Cela poseY says Haurdau, after an able ex- position of the Scotian theory, ' cela pose*, il va sans dire qu'JH toutes les pensdes correspondent autant de choses, qu'on pent indiffe'remment e'tudier la nature en observant les faits de conscience ou en observant les phe'nomenes du monde ob- jectif, et qu'une logique bien faite peut suppleer a toute physique, a toute metaphysiqueV resuitsfofthe ^ w ^ no ^ re P av us * follow our laborious guide through oTtheBy- on those minute and subtle enquiries whereby he has demon- 1C ' strated the presence of the new element in the applied logic of Scotus, 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 dogrna, 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 should give some recognition to that phase of his genius which honorably distinguishes him from Albertus and Aqui- l imit * u ^ ch nas. The logician who riveted thus closely the fetters of Pootus held rvLun b t ne schools, was also the theologian who broke through the t!o e u a l 282. en France et hors de France, ont CREATION OF HOSTELS. 217 house, of Michaelhouse and of King's Hall, of University CHAP. HI. Hall and of Clare, that our data assume something of com- ^^L^ 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 iiosteis. 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 SwSnt the university, has enumerated, chiefly on the authority of theST tm 218 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. CHAP. in. Cains and Parker, no less than thirty-four of these institu- Jll^-L 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/ Early statute "We are indebted to recent research for the discovery of respecting tenureo? nd aT1 ear ty 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: cautions: at 'If anyone desire to have the principalship of any hostel what time . they may be m the said university, he must come to the landlord of the received. -J^-J- 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 inference to be ipven to inherited from her father, John de Dreux, duke of Brittany, p^L 01 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 , Of GO.NVILIB was Edmund Gonville, a member of an ancient county family, HALL - 1348 - 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, >l!^lL' a college for twenty scholars, dedicated in honour of the An- nunciation of the Blessed Virgin 2 . titS'Se 8 ^" Ttie statutes given by Edmund Gonville are still extant, G > o^u d ' 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 have studied, read, and lectured in logic, but on the comple- uiieoiogy. ^ Qn Q j^ course j n ar ^ S} 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 . study of the The foregoing scheme may accordingly be regarded as permitted th&i o f an English clergyman of the fourteenth century, but not obli- O'' / * gatory ' 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 Luthborne-Jane ; see Masters' dedicated, was originally known by Hist, of Corpus Christi CMege, ed. the name of Gonville Hall. See Lamb, p. 28. I\ 245 - * Tbe college however though thus 3 MSS. Eakar, xxix 268270. TRINITY HALL. 241 Balsham or John Hotham; one who had earned a high repu- CHAP. in. tatiou at Cambridge, by his proficiency in the civil and canon ^-J- 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 VII regarded as the true field of labour for the ecclesiastic who aimed at eminence and power. The year 134-9 is a memorable one in English history, The Great 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 O 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 devasta- 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*. 1 Masters-Lamb, p. 29. ' He had cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and desired to be iuterred in England, other great men. The service was either among his ancestors 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 8 Baker-Mayor, i 34. of St. Mary at Avignon, his body 3 See article on The Black Death being attended to the grave by the by Seebohm, Fortnightly Review, 16 242 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. Its early statutes, as given by bp. Bateman, The college designed exclusively for canonists and civilians. It was chiefly with a view to recruiting the thinned ranks of the clergy in his diocese, that William Bateman proceeded, in the year 1350, to the foundation of Trinity Hall 1 . In fact, no less 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 college is designed for students of the civil and canon law, and 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 to augment the number of canonists to ten or that of the civilians to thirteen ; but these numbers represent the max- 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 ques- tion Whether the writer's inferences are quite justified by his facts. Two thirds of the benefices in the West Biding might be vacated without two thirds of the priests dying. Let us suppose four benefices A, B, C, D, worth respectively 400, 300, 200, and 100 marks. The holder of A dies: then the holder of B is promoted to A, the holder of C to B, and the hol- der of D to C. Thus one death gives rise to four vacancies. 1 'It had before been a hostle be- longing to the monks of Ely : John of Cranden, one of their priors, pur- chased it for his monks to study in when they came to Cambridge. Bi- shop Bateman afterwards made an exchange with them, and gave them several parsonages for the said hostle, and converted it into a college or hall.' Warren, Hist, of Trinity Hall, Cole MSS. LVIII 85. * 'Volumus enim quod Socii om- nes studio intendant scholastico dili- genter, quousque habiles fuerint ad legendum; et ex tune ad legendum continue in statu Baccalanrei se con- vertant, quousque volumina in Jure Civili Legistse, et libros Decretalium Decretistae, more perlegerint consue- to.' Documents, n 419. 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 ^It^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- ft! 1 ^^* chelor or a scholar of three years standing, whose studies ^"g^p" 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 2 . A library given by the bishop to the new college affords Library P re- additional illustration of the comparative importance attached nateman to x f * liis founda- by him to theological and juridical studies. No less than Uon - 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, Rayuerus, 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 eomm ad audiendum ordinarid vel cursorie Decretales; jura Canonica, et ad gradum Presby- quicunque, modo qno pnemittatur, teri voluerit migrare.' Documents, ad stiulendum in Jure Canonico de- ii 621. putatus, seu in locum Canonist al- 8 ' Item statuimus et ordinamus, terius subrogatus, infra anni proxinii quod exceptis incepturis in Jure Ci- spatium a die qno admissus fuetit in vili, jura Caiionica infra tempus ad sociuin Canonistam, ad omnes sacros incipienduin eisdem limitatum audi- ordincs se facial promoveri, et post entibus, ut prtefertur, et Doctoribus susceptum sacerdotium se faciat cele- Juris Civilis per biennium proximum riter instrui ad Alissas celebrund -.' post eorum cessatiouem legeutibus Documents, u 1'2-i. 1G 2 244 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. T ' Biblie. There is however a second catalogue, the volumes ^~~ v in 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 and 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 c U e g e would probably have ceased to exist, had not the GoS" s d founder of Trinity Hall given it effectual aid. In the same hy bfshop n year that the original statutes were given, the year in which i. 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, Hist, of Trinity Hall, our college history would have saved MSS. Cole, LVIII 115 18. him from this misconception. It * The prominence given to the has been 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 going about 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 was too small to constitute a vision must be regarded as another school.' English Universities, i 158, indication of the mercenary spirit in 159, A closer acquaintance * Hh which the study was then pursued. GONVILLE HALL. 245 good thing, preferring it even to life itself. The founder of CHAP. TTL this college proposed to create a perpetual college of scholars >-J^-_ - 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 Mary, proposing by the assistance of the said glorious Virgin, altered to f . -i > . that of the so to endow the said college with revenues and sufficient college of the Annuncia- resources. (when the present site or any other shall have Bes^ed the been approved by our diocesan bishop of Ely,) that they Mary< 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 1 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 -^f^JL 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 Ainicabi- . _. . . Htate- be- wa s entered into between the two foundations. a Compositio tween the Trinit r Ha f ii de Amicabilitate , which, unnecessary and unmeaning as any laium le sucn 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 -^ u ^ ^ e or ig ma l statutes of Gonville Hall harmonised miinTo^"- but little with bishop Bateman's views, and his aid, unlike Han" a the r that of Hugh Balsham, was to be bought only with a price. tio n M35i 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 2 . The direction thus 1 See Stabilitio Fundacionis, (&c, tempore fuerint plene et integraliter Baker MSS. xxix 279. faciant et observent omnia et singula 2 ' Volumus insuper quod omnes et que in duodecim Statutis Sociorum singuli socii dicti Collegii qui pro Collegii Saucte Trinitatis per eos ju- CORPUS CHRISTI. 247 given to the course of study is a kind of mean between that CHAP. in. designed by the original founder and that of Trinity Hall. vl^-lx 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 * ' of CORPUS whose rise may be attributed, though in this case less directly, coT^ to the effects of the plague; but the whole circumstances of 1352> 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 Facnltaa 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- cuments, n 228. In Documents, i rint, sint Artistae, et in ill i facilitate 406, bishop Bateman is spoken of continuent, quousque 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 Ganonica Theologie aut ad Me- chapter iv. dicine scientiam, juxta eoram electio- 3 ' In primis cum ad honorem Dei nem liberam se transferred Docu- ac Universitatis decorem universeque ments, n 226. Baker MSS. xxix 283. literalia scientie fomentum fore ere- 248 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. CHAP. in. 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 . thocilaractcr 'They were not,' says this writer, 'in any sense superstitious cud's! eary 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 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- purposes? us 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 3 .' 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 2 The Old Crown House, by Toul- late Toulmin Smith. With Intro- min Smith, p. 31. duction and Glossary by Lucy Toul- 3 English Gilds, Introd. p. xxix. min Smith, and Preliminary Essay ' The services of a chaplain were on the History and Developement of deemed quite secondary to the other Gilds by Dr Brentano. 1870. Pub- purposes of the Gilds.' Note, p. lished 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 ^I^L, incorrect with respect to the Gilds, it may be applied with perfect accuracy to the college which they founded. It objects fa ><:i> these requirements respecting the professedly clerical element. ^ l j;^ actcr " 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. Harleiau 7041, ft. 4362. Documents, u 121. 252 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. CHAP. in. purpose of creating a foundation for the church 1 . The >_t^I^ remaining fellows are to be selected from bachelors or soph- conditions to isters in arts, or from ' skilful and well-conducted ' civilians be observed . . i"** 8 * 1 **" and canonists , but only two fellows may be civilians, only of fellows. <* J 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 eease 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 sizars. the most rapid progress. The siaars 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. Foundation The statutes that next claim our attention are the last OI rviMr > ^ n t jj e 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- Documents, n 130. cure those undertaking the perform- * Only two civilians and one 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 roribus recipiendis amplius remoti, 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. in. queen Isabella. It had also been his intention to provide >-^-l* 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 Riven to the the Hospital of St. John, ' to the honour of God, the blessed Kj.< 8 **[?- Virgin, and all the saints, and for the souls of Edward it, of ward " L himself, of Philippa the Queen, and of his children and his ancestors.' As Peterhouse had been enriched by the ad vow- 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 vm 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 ukhard n. 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 falling into crime.' It is required that each scholar on his Limitation a i i i i PI J J j. i i tn awe at time admission be proved to be ot good and reputable conversa- 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- xtallation Ode, has represented Ed- tution, and is so designated in the ward in as the founder of Trinity ancient university statute, De exe- College. But the honour more pro- must 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, Thefounda- and perhaps in the unusually liberal allowance for weekly tion probably . - designed for commons, that the foundation was designed for students of students of ^Q wealthier class 2 ; poverty is not, as in the case of most of 1 ' Bone conversationis sit et ho- Lave been printed in Rymer, viz 239. neste, aetatis quatuordecim annorum - The sum allowed for the weekly vel ultra, de quo volumus quod pre- maintenance of a King's scholar was fato Custodi fide dignorum testimo- fourteen pence : ' expense commen- nio fiat fides : quodque talis sic ad- sales singulorum scholarium singulis mittendus in regulis grammatical!- septimanis summain quatuordecim bus ita sufficienter 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 prafatus Gustos post ance at Clare Hall in the same cen- examinationem et admissionem ejus tury was twelve pence, at Gonville duxerit ilium deputandum.' Sta- Hall only ten pence ! At Corpus the tutes of King's 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. in. reasonable to suppose that a foundation representing the ^J^ - 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 affoS'by respect to the theory of education in the statutes of the ofuiwe^riy seven Cambridge foundations which we have now passed of thedfflta- . . ent tenden- under review, but it must be admitted that they afford con- cies of the t age. siderable illustration of those different tendencies that have occupied our attention in the preceding chapters. In 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- qu^yon 1 ^ ville Hall, (as modified by its second founder,) we hear unl^S/ty nothing more than an echo of the traditions of Avignon, pu 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 ad van- P" 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- * 'Lee the'ologiens et les artistes,' lege, Oxford, had allowance made says M. Thurot, 'ne consideraient him for his commons at the rate of pas la science da droit comme un sixteen pence a week for six weeks ; art liberal. Pour eux c'e'tait un which was afterwards reduced to metier plutdt qu'un art.' De VOr- fourteen pence. Bursar's Accounts, ganisation de I'Etweignement, etc. quoted by Dean Hook. Lives, v 8. p. 166. 256 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. CHAP. in. success and professional advancement, were admitted within -^-^ 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 Oxfo'rd. 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 avait a craindre qu'une singulierement celles de theologie. cole de droit civil une fois ouverte Crevier, v 156. See p. 75, note 2. ne fit deserter toutes 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 ^-^L^, history of the sister university and the progress of thought in the country at large. 17 CHAPTER III. PART II: THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. cnAp.ra. IT was on the sixteenth of September, 1401, that Thomas vt^_L, Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, arrived in ' a stately apchbUho * equipage ' at Cambridge, upon his visitation as metropolitan. abrid g a e, 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 and individually, ten questions, having reference to the dis- "e su 8 ** c ipli ne an( l general state of the university. Among them was iloiiarfisni. one which, at that juncture, possessed no ordinary signifi- 1 King's Hall and Corpus Christi colleges to which they did relate, do not appear to have been visited. Absolute hostels, who stood by them- Cooper observes that the master of selves, being all of them unendowed, the latter college, Richard Billing- by consequence had no considerable ford, was chancellor of the univer- statutes, the breach whereof was sity at the time. Annals, 1 147. ' As the proper subject of this visitation, for hostels, the wonder is not so 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 because dependent hostels were, no body of the university.' Fuller, doubt, visited in and under those Hist, of the Univ. LOLLARDISM. 259 cance; 'were there any; the archbishop asked, 'suspected of CHAP. m. Lollardism?' The ashes of Wyclif had not yet been cast into PAE * ^ the Swift, and his memory was still cherished at Oxford, but the preceding year had seen the appearance of the writ De Hceretico 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'll 11- originally were occupied mainly with his metaphysical theory and his raised by influence in the schools, but his opinions with respect to the j t to th political power of the pope form a not less important element nowe? of io 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 Vctus, the massive tomes that, with the labours of the commentators, form so prominent a feature in our most 1 '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. minatcd to an episcopal see who had 172 260 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. in. ancient college libraries. From these sources were drawn all >l R J-IL those subtleties which, from the days of Hincmar to those of Boniface VIII, 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 . f relevancy of tic ?' he was manifestly calling in question the whole theory the question thetempofai f allegiance to spiritual authority. Nor is it difficult to see ope r to f tne e the relevancy of such discussion to the contending theories of cnon'ia4. ie 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 impoi'tance 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 j^ogma, 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 WYCLIF. 2G1 As we have already seen, the application of his own me- CHAP. m. thod to specific dogmas, was not made by William of Occam; nor was it made by Wyclif, who may fairly be regarded as the jj 1 representative of Occam in his assertion of the right of pri- wJ^ in vate judgement against priestly authority. Some writers, the a temporai indeed, have spot en of Wyclif. as in all respects a thinker of F'opeTa'foi- . , ,. , , lower of the same school as his predecessor. ' He was, says James, Occam, ' but opposed the learned librarian of the Bodleian, ' a professed follower of oule^poilits. 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 Realists- 2 . While, again, Occam was the ms 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 Knttlisli a climax. The resistance that the English Franciscans had *'nciscuns. t 1 Life of WickliffA, appended to Zizaiiiornm, pp. lii and liii) from the Tint xliitrt Treatises ayaimt the orders MS. sermons of Wyclif preserved in of the Bt' sought to carry out a plan resembling that conceived by cStertS * 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. * Shirley, Pref. to Fasciculi /.L,i- 1 Lewis, Life of Wiclif, p. 4. (from niorum, pp. xiv, xv. Note on the Manuscript Collections of the Bishop Two John Wyclifs, p. 527. 266 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. III. PART II. His attempt to combine the two ele- ments at Canterbury Hall. He finally expels the monks. Simon Lang- ham, archbp. of Canter- bury 13ti6 1303. He expels the seculars from Canter- bury lialL Efforts of the laity to cir- cumscribe the power of the Church. scholars who were monks from Christchurch, Canterbury, and eight other scholars who were secular priests. The studies prescribed were logic and the civil and the canon law. But, as at Cambridge, the project served only to bring out more clearly the incompatibility of the two elements. The monks and the seculars were perpetually at variance, and Simon Islip, 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 exclusively 1 . The successor of Simon Islip was Simon Lang- ham, 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 Islip's decision. The seculars were all expelled, and their places filled 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. While the seculars were thus contending under numerous disadvantages against their powerful foes, the laity in their 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 Dean Hook in his life of Simon Langhain (Lives, iv 210), but it is distinctly stated by Lewis, Life of Wyclif, p. 13, and by Professor Shir- ley, Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 515. Dean Hook takes notice of the de- position of Woodhead or Woodhall only. The new warden appointed on this occasion was John Wyclif of May- field, whom Prof. Shirley has, it may be considered, satisfactorily proved to have been also the fellow of Mer- ton College (see Note on the Two John Wyclifs, appended to the Fasc. Ziz.}; such a conclusion, of course, cancels many pages in the Life by Lewis, and in the Monograph of Dr. Robert Vaughan. The testimony of Wodeford, on which the latter writer chiefly relies in endeavouring to prove that the warden of Canter- bury Hall and the reformer were the same person, is shown by Pro- fessor Shirley, upon a searching cri- ticism of the whole evidence, to Le unentitled to credence. JOHN WYCLIF. 2G7 the Crown, in the year 1371, with a general remonstrance CHAP. in. against the appointment of churchmen to all great dignities JIl^l3 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 Rcal C ], arac . English tracts, so full of pathos, irony, and manly passion, sympatiiiesf 8 his denunciations of Romish innovations, was still the schoolman, the dialectician, and the realist 2 . 'He was second to none,' says the monk Knighton, ' in philosophy ; in the w yc iif ' f J > tli e foremost discipline of the schools he was incomparable.' ' He was,' ^j^' 1 ^ 11 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 bis description of the Parish Priest, xin c. 6. Dr. Robert Vaughau has 'seems to have had him (Wyclif), quoted from the Ecclesia: Regimen this friend and acquaintance of his, (Cotton MSS. Titus, D. 1) passages in his thoughts.' Life of Wyclif, p. which clea.ly shew that Wyclif sub- 45. Mr. Robert Bell, in his preface sequently 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 uncertain, but there is feet; 1 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 iu WychTs life, when he had actu- not as a panegyric, ally assumed the part of a reformer. 3 Anthony Banner's Specimen, p. a Lewis has asserted that Chaucer, 15 (quoted by Lewis). 268 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. in. tation of the character to whom they refer. It would seem ^1^_IL 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 vvyciKnot debate. While finally, if we carefully examine the origin of originally _ J ' Mendkantl' 6 ^ 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 . * ' 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 hvpo- bably have remained unmolested. crisy of the monks, he acted \\ith Considerable latitude in speculation the applause of the bishops, whose 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 cared little for theo- ties, but all the clergy, regular and logical discussions. The university secular, with him when he attacked was, itself, vehemently antipapal, the Mendicants. Fitz-Balph, who long before Wyclif was matriculated; preceded him, and was equally vio- and his antipathy to the Church of lent in his attacks upon the men- Rome was an inheritance on the part dicant orders, had been rewarded of an Oxonian. In opposing the with the archiepiscopal mitre of Ar- pope, a creature of France, Wyclif magh.' Hook, Lives of tlie Arcli- only did what every patriot was bishops, in 83. WYCLIF AND THE MENDICANTS. 269 original sentiments towards those orders were certainly not CHAP. in. of a hostile character 1 . v_ 1^-J- It was undoubtedly an evil day for the Mendicants when Fierceness of his subse- the great schoolman at last put on the armour of William of quent denun- ciation of St. Amour. The class hostility of the Benedictine historian, theirvice8 - the honest aversion of Roger Bacon, the sarcasm and con- tempt of Langlande and Chaucer, even the hot anger of Armachanus, 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 faults, 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. Vaughan, in tium acerrimos esse patronos et his work entitled John de Wycliffe, vindices. Qnod cum non ante an- D.D., a Monograph, says 'From num 1381 factum esse, et alia monu- what we know of the controversy as menta et libri ejus nondum typis ex- conducted by others, and from all scripti testimonio sint, luceclariusest, that we find bearing upon it in the Trialogum aut hoc 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- wliich 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- fum uon a primo initio de ' fratribus tious of the begging Friars, which at miuoribus,' ' prsedicatoribus,' reli- first he did in a soft and gentle man- quis, ita sensisse, potius magni eos ner, until, finding that his detecting ffistimavisse, nee antequam ccepisset their abuses was what was accept- doctrinae de 'traussubstantiatione' able to his hearers, he proceeded to censuram agere, mendicautes im- deal more plainly and openly with pugnasse, ipsius opera testuntur. them.' Life of Wyclif, p. 21. He Cum enim theologi illis ordinibus admits, however, that the tract edi- adscripti prae ceteris ipsi adversa- ted by James, the librarian of the reutur de doctrina ilia ageuti, \Vic- Bodleian, in 1608, which with the lifus sibi persuadere ccepit, fratres Trialogus contains the gravamen of niendicantes omnium errorum atque Wyclif's attack, was not written un- malorum in ecclesia Rouiaua vigeii- til about ten years later. Ibid. p. 22, 270 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. in. the admiration of St. Louis and of Robert Grosseteste. The PART^I. yow Q f p 0ver ty 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,' ' envenymed with gostly sin of Sodom/ ' perilous enemies to holy Church and all our lond 3 .' We need scarcely wonder that charges 1 'For ye now wenden through by Wyclif as a term of reproach, as the realme, and ech night will lig embodying the initial letters of the I in your owne courtes, and so mow names of the four mendicant orders, , but right few lords do.' Jack Upland Carmelites, Augustinians, Jacobites i (quoted by Lewis). or Dominicans (called Jacobites from I 2 Caymes Casteiis. 'That is Cain's the Rue St. Jacques in Paris, where \ Castles; 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 Cairn. Dr. Todd to his edition of Wyclif s So in his New Testament: "Abel of- treatise DeEcclesiaet Membra E jit*. fered a myche more sacrifice thaun 3 Two short Treatises against tJtr Cairn to God." The word is used Orders of the Begging Friars, eel. LOLLARDISM AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 271 and epithets such as these, made moreover by no obscure CHAP. in. parish priest but by the most eminent English schoolman of J^Ji- lis 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 The struggle J against tlie these leading features in Wyclifs teaching and influence, car?^ 1 H at to the developement of thought and education in the *!^ universi - 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 Wyclif, 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 TIIC univcrsi- ties the became the strongholds of Wyclifism 2 ; of Lollardism, that ^ f r j"^jf s is to say, free for the most part from those abuses and extra- ism - 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 \Vildif, pp. 2330. 1 Lingard has naturally not failed to find in Wyclif's vituperations an exculpation of the opposite party : ' It will not excite surprise,' he ob- serves, ' if invectives so coarse, and doctrines so prejudicial to their in- terests, alarmed and irritated the clergy. They appealed for protec- tion to the king and the pontiff ; but though their reputation and for- tunes were at stake they sought not to revenge themselves on their ad- versary, but were content with an order for his removal from the uni- versity to reside on his own living. If the reader allot to him the praiso of courage, he cannot refuse to than the praise of moderation.' Hist, of England in s 307. 2 Of its presence at Oxford we have a signal proof in the fact that with- in a few years after the foundation of New College in 1380, we find the courtiers reproaching William of Wykeham, the founder, with having raised np a seminary of heresy; so prevalent had the new doctrines be- come within the college. See Wil- liam of Wijki'lnun and hi a CW/ri/cx, by Mackenzie E. C. Walcott, p. 282. 272 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. C:IAP. in. reasserted byWyclif, not simply in connexion with a specific ^^Lj- 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 very clearly the gravamen of the offence constitutions given by the party of reform to the ecclesiastical authorities ; of archbp. J . . 1 Jde does an injury 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, Annals, i 153. Wilkins, 79. Concilia, in 316. LOLLARDISM AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 273 Into the question of the political bearings of Wyclif's doctrines we are not called upon to enter. They appear to have been carried to dangerous excesses by the fanatics who, under the general designation of Lollards, represented not 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 doctrines, well-nigh extinguished in England, rose again in new purity and vigour in a distant land. Amid a Sclavonic race, in the cities of Bohemia, the son of John of Gaunt 2 directed the persecuting sword against the tenets of which Lollardism suppressed in Kii-rhinil to reappear in Bohemia. 1 'Another class, as truly alien from his spirit as any, and who began in the next generation to ap- pear in considerable number, were the men who rejected, as unworthy of the Christian religion, whatever did not appear patent at once to the intelligence of the most ordinary learner. For them human nature had no hidden depths, religion no mysteries ; yet of the Christian ordi- nances, that which alone seema to have thoroughly approved itself to them was that which to others ap- peared the most mysterious of all, the exposition of the Bible by the most ignorant of the priesthood. In the high value they set on this unlettered preaching, and in that alone, they could truly claim the authority of Wyclif.' Prof. Shirley, Pref. to Fasc. Ziz. Ixviii. - Cardinal Beaufort. 18 274 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. ra. 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 safely to affirm that Lollardy was not the beginning of mo- dern Protestantism, Plausible as it seems to regard Wyclif as " the morning star of the Reformation," the figure con- o * o 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 frcm Bo- unable to ascertain on what grounds, hernia at the English university at that Huss 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 transcribe ' Wyclif s increased intercourse between the doctrines. The generally received ac- two countries that followed upon the count is that Huss became acquaint- marriage of king Wenzel's sister to ed with those doctrines through writ- Richard n. Wood-Gntch, i 585, 586. ings brought by one of his scholars Milman, Latin Christianity, Bk. xiu who had been studying at Oxford, c. 8. LOLIvARDISM AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 275 to this day continues, much that is far more sound than CHAP. in. unsound 1 .' ^2, But while it would seem indisputable that the doctrines Sate of 8 the"" of Wyclif were effectually suppressed in this country, it is fonowed hat , . , ,. , upon the sup- necessary to guard against a tendency to refer to their sup- pression of J Lollardisraat pression consequences which demand a wider solution. Ihe tlieuni - . . . versities. 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 1 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 nisstate- /irvTfYTi i ment of tlle ot the phenomena ot the bceculum nynoaale, and a more facts err - . . neous, intimate acquaintance with our university history, would probably have led the writer considerably to modify if not 1 Fortnightly Review, vol. n, Bible was to his countrymen but a short Thought in the Fifteenth Century, by blaze, soon damped and stifled by James Gairduer. 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 a Huber, Emjlish Univertitief, i more effectually lighted their tapers, 156. 182 276 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. The uni- versity of Paris re- gains her former pre- eminence. 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 Oxford was passing through Paris, it was addressed by Gerson, then chancellor of the university of Paris, and complimented on the spirited interest in the welfare of the Church, which the body it represented had displayed at so important a juncture 2 . 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 3 . Both universities, again, were addressed by the uni- versity of Paris with a view to concerted action at the council of Basel 4 ; 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 position occupied by the university of Paris during the earlier part of the fifteenth century is incontestible evidence. The centre of 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; Wood-Gutcb, 544, 545. 3 'Eccequid praeclara universitas Oxoniensis, unde sibi meruit con- gratulari, pridem ad boc Concilium petendum determinavit se et misit in Franciam, scia qui prassens mter- fui dum proponeretur bsec conclusio.' Propositiofacta a J. Gcrsonio ex parte Universitatis coram Anglicis Parisios euntibus ad Sacrum Consilium Pisis. Opera, ed. Dupin, n 126. 3 Cooper, Annals, i 158. 4 MS. Lambethiani, No. 447, fo. 143 (quoted by Cooper). JEAN CHARLIER DE GERSON. 277 days of Albertus and Aquinas. Never^ declares Crevier, had CHAP. IIL she been consulted and listened to with greater deference ; ^2^L 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 8 . Of Gerson himself it has been truly said that ' he does j ea n cimr- more than almost any other man to link the thoughts oftf/reou, different periods together 3 ;' for, though essentially a repre- <* 1*29- sentative of medieval 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, in 3. independent way unsupported by the 1 Similarly, of a somewhat earlier moral corruption of the Church from period in England, Mr Froude 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. Maurice, Modern Philo- the temper of the Plantagenets, 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 repre*sentant reprieve. Ita worst abuses would d'une 6poque ofo les principes les plus then have terminated, and the refor- contradictoires se combattcnt.' Essai 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. DQ Triplici Theologia or in the De Monte Conteinplationis ; i^-J' but in two of Gerson's shorter and comparatively unknown trilttees, De treatises, the De Modis Significandi, and the De Concordia, veConwrdia. Metaphysics 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 ti'cTafford f the Oxford Franciscan given to the flames. It is to be results' 1 1 noted also, as perhaps the most significant feature, that the metaphysics, 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 2 ; 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 3 , 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, ed. Dupin, iv 826, 827. signum est, prassertim in anima, 2 ; Sumatur ex his distinctionibus spectatad grammaticamvellogicam.' ha3C unica, quod consideratio rei, ut Ibid, iv 829. res est, spectat ad metaphysicam. 3 Dean Mansel, Artis Logicce Budi- Consideratio vero rei, nt tantummodo menta, p. 40, note . JEAN CHARLIER DE GERSON. 279 Such then was the harvest which scholasticism finally reaped CHAP. in. in the fields of philosophy ! After the toil of centuries it had J^HL at last succeeded in bringing back to view the original text of the great master, which the vagaries of mediaeval specula- tion had well-nigh obliterated 1 . But it is not the nominalist only that appears in these 'T ll ? seresults 9 little more pages; the mystic and the theologian are also discernible. {J^* roturn The grand old mediaeval conception of theology, as the science Sr AdS. of .sciences, struggles for expression. Theology or rather ontology, in Gerson'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 Gerson's i i 11 . view of the says, as the sculptor reveals the statue in the block (a simile relations of . ... Io 8 ic to borrowed from his favorite Dionysius) ' not by what he brings theol 8y- 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*! 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. Gerson's treatise something more Jean Charlier de Gerson's work, De than a mere restoration of Aristo- Modis Signiftcandi and De Concordia teliau thought. 'The metaphysical Metaphysics cum Logica, may he philosophy of the Middle Ages, with taken as an exponent of the results its dominating controversy between obtained by Scholasticism ; and it is realism aud 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 * '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 facit agalma pulcherri- dictions which Aristotle's system con- mum, id est, imagiuem, nihil addendo taiued, in its combination of ontology sed removendo. Sequitur eos Domi- with metaphysic, were brought to nus Bonaventura, Itinerario Mentis view. This was a great step in ad- in Deum, eleganter valde.' Opera, )<(((, although no one as yet arose iv 827. capable of introducing a principle THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. in. plains their tone and invests them with additional interest. ^^_1L Gerson at this time was no longer chancellor of Paris. The sun" noblest act of a far from ignoble career had made the duke ? e d se r tr!ati- of Burgundy his mortal foe. In 1418 he fled from the city written? 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 142G, 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 2 . tifetate of The intercourse between Paris and the English univer- tweenParis sities appears to have died out about the time of Gerson's Kngiisn 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 SinceTthat century. Over both countries the storm of war burst with aiiout'adi- peculiar severity : and when the fierce feuds of the Armag- the influence nacs and the Burgundians, the struggle between the two yersityof nations, and the Wars of the Roses were over, the supremacy Pans in the centurj-! f Pa 8 as the chief seat of European learning was also at 1 Prof. Maurice, Modern Philo- duplex, scilicet vise et patriae. Theo- sophy, p. 49. logia vise respicit ens primum ut 2 'Concordia metaphysics cum creditum cum suis attributivis non theologia net, si consideretur ens excludendo intelligentiam de multis. simpliciter vel ens purum, vel ens Theologia autem patrise respicit ens universaliter perfectum, quod est primum ut facialiter visum et objec- Deus. Aut si consideretur generalis talitur in seipso, non in speculo vel ratio objectalis entis. Secundum senigmate. Gratias ipsi qui aperuit spectat ad metaphysicam : primum hanc coiicordiam hominibus bonaa proprie ad tbeologiam, in qua Dens voluntatis.' Opera, iv 829, 830. est subjectum. Est autem theologia THE SPECULUM 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 ecor- ^^-^ 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 ci'LSnt* 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 f , ft i 11 /> Person op- and carry out the policy of Gerson, demanded measures of p| t reform to which Eugenius IV refused his sanction, they found ff" t ^j. sh themselves opposed by an English Ultramontane party, re- montanists - 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 Franco had secured for herself at Bourges that independence of Rome t! . ie rzm&- r tic Sanction. 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 Archbislwps, v 216218. 282 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. The popes avenge them- selves upon the uni- versity of Paris. Rise of new universities under the papal sanction. 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. xui c. 13 ; Eanke, History of the Popes, I 25, 26. ? 'Les differences sont encore plus frappautes si 1'on examine seulement le uombre des Facultes de the"ologie autorise'es par les papes ; xm e siecle, 1; xiv" siecle, avant 1378, 5; de 1378 a 1500, 27. Si 1'on rapproche ces chiffres des e've'nements religieux et politiques auxquels 1'Universite' de Paris a 6t6 mele"e, on trouvera que les Universities se sont plus particu- lierement multipliers a partir du schisme, 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 ^Tenements, accom- plis eutre 1378 et 1430, n'ont pas ete' sans influence sur la multiplication des Umversite"s. L'e'tude des faits confirmecette conclusion... Les papes, irritesdelaconduitede I'Universite' de Paris dans les conciles de Constance et de Bale, autorisereut douze Uni- versites nouvelles pour 1'Allemagne, la Hongrie, la Suede et le Danemarck. En France meme, les papes et les rois s'accorderent pour frapper au cceur 1' Universite de Paris. Charles vn la dfitestait parce qu'elle avait e"t6 domine'e par les suppots de la nation Picarde, sujets du due de Bourgogne. Le concile de Bale donnait peu de satisfaction au pape Eugene iv. En 1437, ils autorisereut tous deux la fondation d'une Universite" complete a Caen, au milieu d'une des Nations les plus riches etles plus importantes de 1' University de Paris. Charles vn, reconnu roi au sud de la Loire, avait d^ja autorise" une University a Poitiers (1431). Eugene iv accords une Facult6 de theologie a Dole (1 437), et ime Universite complete a Bordeaux (1441). Louis xi et Pie n ne pouvaient manquer de s'enteudre centre 1'Uui- versite" de Paris, qui contenait des sujets de Charles-le-Te'me'raire, et qui soutenait la pragmatique sanction. Deux University's furent autorise'es dans les deux provinces qui envoy- aient le plus d'etudiauts a la Nation de France, en Bretagne (Nantes, 1460) et en Berry (Bourges, 1464).' Thurot, De V Organisation de VEnseif/nemcnt, etc. pp. 206, 208. I may observe that the foundation of the coller/him tiilingue at Louvaiu, in 1426, which is among those enumerated by M. Thurot, is hardly an illustration of his statement. It was founded under the auspices of the Duke of Brabant, and designed for all the faculties save that of theology; the primary object being to create a studium gene- rnle 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 Meiiwires NEW UNIVERSITIES. 283 have already noted that the English ' nation' at Paris was known after the year 1430 as the German ' nation' ; but 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 each exerted more or less influence over a certain radius, 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- Jiemlnt utonic from Paris. sur les deux Premiers Slides de V Uni- vcrsite de Louvain, par le Baron de Beiffenberg. Bruxelles, 1829. None of these fifteenth century univer- sities shew any advance in their con- ception upon the traditional ideas. Leipzic, founded in 1409, adopted in the first instance the course of study at Prague (founded 1348) with scarcely any modification. See Die S'ntiitenbiicher der Universitat Leip- zic, aits den Ersten 150 Jahren Hires Ht'stehens. Von Friedrich Zarncke, p. 311. ' Item die et loco, quibus su- pra, placuit magistris pro tune facul- tatem repraesentantibus, quod libri pro gradibus magistem et baccalari- atus in uuiversitate Pragensi simili- iter hie permanere debeant sine ad- dicioue et diminucione ad annum. Quo finito possit fieri mutacio, ad- dicio vel diminucio juxta placitum fucultatis. Et idem placuit de parvis loycalibus Maulfelt pro exerciciis et ordinario servaudis ad idem tempus et postea juxta voluntatem facultatis ulterius continuandis vel immutandia in alia parva loycalia, scilicet Greffin- stein vel Marsilii vel alterius.' The authors and subjects required both for the bachelor's and the master's degree are enumerated, and Aristotle is nearly the Alpha and the Omega of the course : in the first the candi- date must have attended lectures on the logic of Petrus Hispanus, and an abridgement of Priscian; the whole of the Organon specified as iheVetus Ars, the Prior and Posterior Analy- tics, and the Elenchi Sophistici ; the Physics, the De Anima, and the Sphaera Materialis; in the second, the Topica, the De Coelo, De Gene- ratione, De Meteoris, and Parva Naturalia; the Ethics, the Politics, and the Economics; common per- spective, the theory of the planets, Euclid, the logic of Hesbrus, com- mon arithmetic, music, and meta- physics. 1 Thurot, De V Organisation de VEnseignement, etc. p. 208. 284 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. in. versity had contributed to her ancient fame. In the decline ^IL 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. tS^istatuteof Besides the forcible suppression of Wyclif's doctrines, prejudicial and isolation from the continent, a third cause affected yet versities. more closely the material prosperity of Oxford and Cam- bridge, the action of the statute of Pro visors. 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 suppliount tres humble- anientisment de Seinte Esglise, et merit voz Communes, que come jadys sur ces pur defaut que les diz Clerkes la Clergie de la Koialme fuist cressant etudiantz en les voz ditz Universitees, . et flouraut et profitaiit en voz Uni- ne sonnt pas avaunciez, promotz, et versitees d'Oxenford et Cantebregge, nuricez, en leur emprise konesteetver- p Doctours erTDivimfrSe, en Ie"3~Ley"es tue, et si pur taunt que la dite Clergie Canon etCivill.et pour autres de meyn- n'est comforte et nuricee, grauntz et \ dre degree, a graund confort, conso- intollerables Errours et Heresy es lation, et haut profit de toute Seinte envers Dieu, et Homme, et rebellion Eglise, et votre poeple Cristian d'En- et obstinacie eiicountre Vous, tres gleterre environ, a ore en contraire d' soverain Sg r . entre les commune einsy, que 1'estatuitde Provision et en- pie de votre Eoialme sount uadgairs countre Provisours fuit fait par Parle- ensurdez, encouiitre auncien doctrine ment, la Clergie en les ditz Univer- de noz Seintz Piers, et determination sitees lamentablement est extincte, et a tout Seint Esglise; et si 1'avaunt en plusours parties despise, a graunt ditz Universities ottut 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- patronage. ing shewed itself in the nomination of uneducated men to than home 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*. Precisely similar had been the experience of the university of Paris. In the year 1408, we find Charles vi recognising by royal letter the inefficient working of home Pan8 ' 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 tance de sez Espirituelx sitz et pro- 538. fi tables studianz, a grauntdescomfort * Wood-Gutch, i 617. Cooper, et prejudice de toute Seinte Esglise Annak, i 158. suis dite, et extinction de foie Chris- s Baleens, v 186. tien, et male exemple a toutz autres 4 Ibid, v 775. ' Les Prelats, colla- Cristians Roialmes, si hasty remedie teurs, et patrons eccUisiastiques ne ne soit fait en ceste matere si bosom- gardoient ne entretenoient la Prag- able.' Rot. Parl. iv 81. matique-Sanction, en tant que louche 286 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. m. phase of the religious history of the fifteenth century has been but lightly treated or wholly slurred over by most of our recent historians, but the comment of Huber places it in its true light : ' It is not/ he says, ' to be inferred that 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 I 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 les be'ne'fices qui estoient et seront presentation was invaded by the deubs et effectez aux graduez et nom- papal claims, had originally pro- mez de Universitez.' yoked the complaints which the 1 Huber, Engligh Universities, i reader has so frequently noticed, and 173, 174. See also England under now were ready to submit to a minor the House of Lancaster, pp. 135, 136. sacrifice, rather than allow the re- ' The truth is,' says Ldngard, ' 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 of Paris, following in the steps of Gerson, re-enacted the CHAP. IIL Pragmatic Sanction ; while the English universities led by >-t^-^ the Ultramontane party sought to set aside the statute of Provisors. At Cambridge indeed there can be no question uitra- montanist that the influence of that party predominated throughout tendencies at the century, and of this another proof is afforded by the cele- brated Barnwell Process in the year 1430. We have already seen that one of the earliest measures The BARS- WELL PRO- ascribed to Hugh Balsham had for its object the more CBSS > 143 - accurately denning 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 Diocesan . authority of asserted by the university, the immunity was founded upon p^raS^t' ancient and indefeasible rights 1 ; but occasionally a bishop ^ve of Ely appeared who called these rights in question, and Aruildel> 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 Donewyc, 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 * 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 hia the same.' Barnwell Process, Hey- time, gave occasion to this contest. 288 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. m. of the recognition thus obtained of his diocesan authority, PART iL t k at we g n( j Arundel 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 1 ?' Whatever doubt existed respecting these privileges was now atoitwbv to be finally set at rest. In the year 1430 pope Martin V m issued a bull reciting how that the doctors, masters, and 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 mined and confirmed them without legate de latere hath in some caes it: nevertheless, saving to themselves equal power with the pope, which he and successors the right of exacting represents; and if it be true, which ft whenever they should think fit so to some bold canonists aver, that none do.' Bentham, Hist, and Antiq. of may say to the pope, cur ita facisf 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- univeraity 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, injuria non jit ro- was appointed by the king to act as lentibtts. 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 Aiundel, fol. 106 (quoted by Wherefore the students, that they Dean Hook, iv 409). might have a nearer and cheaper 1 ' 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 Un iv. even put up in the same chest with of Cambridge. Oxford privileges (pretending to as THE BARNWELL PROCESS. 28iT benignity provide for the indemnity of them and the univer- CHAP. m. sity in the premises 1 . He therefore delegated the prior of ^-!L 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, aged 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 xxn 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 tlie 1th century, 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 90 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. m. gave his definitive sentence in favour of the privileges ^^JL' claimed 1 .' 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. Reginald Pecock, bishop of Chichester, the author of the ablest English pamphlet of the fifteenth century, was, like 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 Reginald Tfo^kh^ 6 1390 ii460(?). 1 Cooper, Annals, i 282, 283; Hey- wood, Early Cambridge Statutes, 181 211. Huber, judging from his Ian- guage,would appear to have been igno- rant of this document. See English Universities, i 63. 2 Baker, in his History, seems to be the first writer who has grasped the fact that the Barnwell Process was an Ultramontanist movement, Speaking of the comparative indif- ference shewn by the two bishops of Ely, John Fordham (bp. 1388 1425) and Philip Morgan (bp. 1426 1435), to the affairs of the Hospital of St. John, he says, ' These two bishops had some reason to be out of hu- mour with the religious as well as with the university, who seem to have conspired and joined in the same design of procuring exemptions from episcopal jurisdiction. For it was under this bishop that the great blow was given to the see of Ely by the university, by obtaining from Martin the Fifth, an. 1430, his Lulls to this purpose, directed to the prior of Barnwell and John Deping canon of Lincoln: John Deping being a se- cular was not fond of such employ- ment, but the prior of Barnwell was a man for the purpose, who sat and heard the process alone, and the bulls of Honorius and Sergius the First being produced (who had no more authority in England than they had at Japan) he very learn- edly gave sentence for the univers- ity upon two as rank forgeries as ever were; for the whole stress of the controversy turned upon these bulls. But the present pope was willing to believe there had been such a power exercised in England by his predecessors so many years ago, and the honest prior was to follow his instructions. And so there was an end of ordinary jurisdiction.' Baker- Mayor, i 43, 44. BEGIN ALD PECOCK. 291 'doctrine which would, in these days, be called Ultramon- CHAP. rft. tane.' In some important respects, indeed, the views held by Reginald Pecock were identical with those of the great reformer. Both strenuously contended for the right o 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 Helook s upon a know- Unfolded in the Organon were to become general among the I e s d fhe best gic laity. The Ars Vetus was his panacea for all forms ofag'Snif 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 He asserts * . the rights of all truth was capable of being approved to the logical faculty, ?^ he repudiated the notion that men were, in any case, bound to an implicit acceptance of dogma. So far as his writings afford an indication, it may be doubted whether in his opinion 4 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, leemyng the Kingis lawe of ben, for defaut of perceuyng whanne Ynglond in these dales, thilk now an argument procedith into his con- seid schort compendiose logik were clusioun needis and whanne he not ful preciose. Into whos making, if so dooth but seineth oonli so do. God wole graunte leue and leyser, y And miche good wolde come forth if purpose sumtyme aftir myn othere a schort compendiose logik were de- bisyneasisfortoassaie.' Ecpressor,f.Q f 192 292 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. ni. 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 hoiiestly 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 Heisnot passages in his writings, that he was prepared to set aside afraid to call :" r r in question both the Fathers and the Schoolmen if their conclusions the authority and he the thers appeared to him erroneous. Views like these ar6 now schoolmen. ne i tner 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. JtondSnFad- ^ ne anoma ly however which more particularly challenges mSn to b " tne attention of the modern student, is, that with all this bold- au e thorit p yf ness and 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 of the practices of the Mendicants, whose 'Cain's Castles' CHAP. nr. find in him an ingenious and elaborate apologist. As for the v_^_J 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- eock, 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 J^ yard author or compiler of the Summa Prcedicantium. He was a y> ""<* Preedican- Dominican, was both Doctor Utriusque Juris and master of tium - 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, Conscientia, Fides, Patientia, Pauper tas, Trinitas, Vbcatio, 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 Prceconibus, Animarum Fide- minici Gregis Pastoribus, Divini liumMini8tris,etSacrarumLUeraru7n 294 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. m. exegesis is cold, formal, and systematic, not without that ^^-li- 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 Pecock^and that belong to the doctrinal expositions of Pecock, we may contrasted. p er h a p s discern the earliest instance of that antithesis which, The contrast w ith occasional exceptions, has generally characterised the fypicaTone. 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- Pecockdis- ter's sight. He seems to have been of opinion that there was approves of preaching & g rea ^ deal too 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- His eccentric viction ; rhetoric plays a much more conspicuous part. At defence of . 11 r his 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 Cultoribus longe utilissima ac perne- times printed ; the edition I have used cessaria. 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. m. To the Lollards, who held that it was the first duty of a ^_1L 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 tiuufamere him to sever himself from both parties, at a time when such montamst isolation was unsafe if not impossible 2 . He alienated a power- He 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 Barn well 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- Eolls Series, by Prof. Churchill Ba- lasticis inquisicionibus, et profunda biugton, B.D. i 102 110. litteratura, ac maturis moribus, mul- 2 ' Perhaps it would not be greatly tos antecessores suos precellit.' Lives wrong to assert that Pecock stands of the Henries, quoted in Communica- half way between the Church of tionx to the Camb. Antiq. Soc. i 287, Rome 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 Collf/i?. Roman. Of Puritanism, in all its * Communications oj the Camb. Antiq. phases, he is the decided opponent. Soc. u 18. There were many others more or less 296 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. ra. Gilbert Worthington, and Peter Hirforde, who had espoused -It^lL 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< utiSf * persecution. His arraignment before archbishop Bourchier, sufferer. ^is 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*. The Lancas- trian party was distinguished by its leaning towards TJltra- 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 of the authorities of Oxford 3 . In the early statutes of King's 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, Annals, 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. s See dean Hook, Lives of the Arch- And Pecock was not mistaken. Forth bishops, v 308. Pecock, says this came fulminating from Borne 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- the Church ; he had asserted, with bishop Bonrchier refused to receive. Martin v, that the pope was the mo- * "Wbod-Gutch, i 603 606. narch of the Church, and that every 4 'Item statuimus quod qui- bishop was only the pope's delegate : libet scholaris juret quod mm he had done boldly what Martin v favebit opinionibus, damnatis erro- had called upon Chicheley and the ribus, aut haeresibns Johannis Wyck- bi-hops of bis time to do; he had lyfe, Reginald! Pecocke, neque ali- protested against those statutes of cujus alterius hasretici, quamdin vix- provisors and praemunire which the erit in hoc mundo, sub poena per- clergy and laity had passed as a safe- jurii et expulsionis ipso facto.' Stat. gusrd against papal aggression; and Coll. Regil. Cantabr. c. ult. in fine, surely the pope would not desert him See also Prof. Babington's Introd. to in his hour of need. If the pope the Represser, p. xxsdv. The date possessed or claimed the supremacy assigned to the above statutes in the for which Pecock contended, he would Documents 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 Antiqua of CHAP. m. Q> n 11 1 PART II. ueens College . ^ v - 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 Torporofthe i> 11 -i T-I ic universities work and was falling into its dotage. Even before the out- a ft r iiis . 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 o*ford nearly de- 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 testimony of those who were thus impelled, in the early part of the cen- fw liuL 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 bellomm annonre other instance of a by no means pecuniarumque caritate depaupera- uncornmon 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 milli without any intimation that it is of ad universitateni accedendi habent a later date than that when the sta- voluntatem. Undo fit quod aulae 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 millibii* xtiidt'iitinm qute fama est defendet haereses vel errores Johan- istic in priori estate fuisse non jam nis Wicklyf, Eeginaldi Pecocke, aut vnitm supersit.' From a Memorial cujuscunque alterius haeretici 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' 1 CoUeite. we also find in Bulaeus (v 813), the 8 'Jamsiquiderngloriosamaterolim following plaint by the university of tarn beata prole foecunda, pene in ex- Paris on the occasion of an epidemic, tirmiuiuni ac desolationem versa est : ' Nunc mini de multis vix extat milli- sola sedet plaugens ac dolens, quod bus units.' non modo extranei, sed uec sui veutris 298 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. in. Traversari, Guarino, and Valla. From such scanty records as PABT II. ... . v ^ remain of his impressions we might conclude that the Roman scantiness poet on the shores of the Euxine found a scarcely less conge- ofour ve Y nial atmosphere 1 . If indeed all that the fifteenth century pro- national 1 i 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 anfl reflexion, could 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 Hallam, '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 torno final- motives,' says Shepherd, 'which in- mente alia Corte.' vi 701. 'DerHu- duced him to take this step seem to manist erging sich in grossen Hoff- be concealed in studied and myste- nungen, theils auf dem britischen rious silence.' Life of Poggio, p. Boden noch manchen verloreuen 124. Tiraboschi says ' Ei viaggio Classiker wiederzufinden, theils unter ancora cira il 1418 nell' Inghilterra, dem Schutze des koniglichen Pra- benche non si sappia precisamente laten sein Gliick zu machen.' Voigt, per quel mottivo; del qual viaggio Die Wiederbekbung des classischen fa egli stesso piu volte menzione; Alterthums, p. 371. e pare, che ci si trattenesse non poco 2 Scholtmaster, ed. Mayor, p. 81. ERECTION OF SCHOOLS. 299 It will be remembered that the papal decision in the CHAP. in. year 1314 with reference to the privileges of the Mendicants ^_IL 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 Defective 1 J ' accoinmo- does not appear that either university was possessed of schools, f,? s t tructi'onat in the sense of buildings expressly erected for the purpose; Sto. BBtWdP ' 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 Logicalia. ' 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 loth 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 paradisus, 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 comes from and in 1275 we have a distinct ac- tliose inferior disputatious that are count of a university grace passed at performed by the juniors, namely a congregation held in the church. "generalls," which to this day are In 1303 we begin to get notices of called and written disputationea in university sermons, and in 1347 a parvisiis. For in the morning were university chaplain was founded to anciently, as now, th answering of celebrate daily masses in this church quodlibcts, 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- - y-~- 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 u^respec" poet how the whole effect must have been calculated to over- the religious awe and attract the youthful student; how the curiously orders. 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- Erectionof sures. In the latter part of the century Sir Robert de the Divinity m . 111 n r>-nii i schoouat inorpe, lord chancellor of Hingland, and sometime master of Cambridge, c Pembroke, had commenced the erection of the divinity schools 2 , which was carried to completion by the executors of his Erection of brother, Sir William de Thorpe, about the year 13.98 3 . But scho^ifand the grand effort was not made until the latter half of the schooivdrc. 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 Piers Ploughman, ed. room. ' Toujours le pluriel, ' observes Wright, ii 460, 461. Thurot, ' meme pour designer une 2 Cooper, Annals, i 111. It is to be salle unique.' observed that the use of the plural 3 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 ^^^ 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 . Slowly, but surely and inevitably, the tide of learning ^ak^ne was rolling on away from the friary and the monastery. monaster y- 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 patrons . ... . . , of learning timent of aversion to monasticism as a theory, but even the begin to de- spair of the lover of the monastery began to despair of the monk; and it der^! OU80r " 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 ^!{^, f have a signal proof of this state of feeling, The college f/ \ : ^ itself, though built up as it were out of the ruins of monastic 1 Hence the frequent entries in histpry of the schools see Cooper, the Grace Hooks, of payments pro Memorials, in 59 66. A large por- tcholis in jure civili. See Grace Book tion of the old gateway now forms A 6b; Grace Hook B p. 112. For a the entrance to the basse-cour at Ma- detailed account of the architectural dingley Hall. 302 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. LBGE..1380. The college endowed with lands pur- religious houses. CHAP. in. foundatioDS, retained more than any similar society, the disei- pline of the monastic life. It was, in fact, half as a substitute f r the monastery that the college appears to have been 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 .' The extension given by this eminent prelate to the con- ception of Walter de Merton is represented by the fact that 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. The scheme of his noble foundation threw into the shade every existing college whether at Oxford or Cambridge, and was the first in our own country which could compare with Statutes of the founda- tion. 1 Lowth, Life of William of Wyke- ham, p. 21. To exactly similar effect is the language of Colet's biographer: 'Not that he hated any one of their several orders ; but because he found that few or none of them lived up to their vows and professions.' Ruight, 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 >-^ ^ 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 xefconege latest biographer, ' not only Henry vi at Eton and King's, subquent r 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 g^ further advance in the direction marked out by William of Wvkeham ; from the simple conversion, by purchase, of M*mtc 11 .1 alionpri- monastic property into college property, we arrive at the ones, 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. 304 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. in. to enrich the foreigner. ' These priories,' says Gough, ' were v '-> cells of the religious houses in England which belonged to cou'nfof fhe foreign monasteries : for when manors or tithes were given to trie's" Pr 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 .' sequestra- The first seizure appears to have taken place in 1285, on tions of their , , . estates under the outbreak of war between France and England : and in different monarchs. 1337 Ed ward III 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 2 ; 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 Some Account of the Alien Priories by Gough in his brief sketch, where and of such Lands as they are known he speaks of the policy of Henry iv to have possessed in England and as more favorable to the mainte- Wales. Lond. 1779. Pref. to Vol. i. nance of the foreign interests, i a 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 ^ 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 asserted that it had been the original intention of Foundations TT ^ ^ TO!( Henry v to appropriate the whole of the revenues to the COLLEGE J and KING'S 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 which had already shaken off their dependence upon the continental houses and, by electing their own head, had become independent monas- teries. a Henry's intent, says Wood, ' was to have built a college in the castle of Oxford wherein the seven sciences should have been taught, and there- unto to have annected all the alien priories in England, and withal to have reformed the statutes of the university; but being prevented by death, his son King Henry vi be- stowed many of the said priories on his college at Eaton and that nt Cam- bridge.' Wood-Gutch, i 5fi5. 3 Gough says, ' Some of the lands in England belonging to the cells of the abbey of Bee, and to other alien prio- ries, were purchased temp. Richard n by William of Wykeham for his col- lege at Winchester.' Alien Priories, i 167. Purchase in the fourteenth century became confiscation in the fifteenth. 20 306 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. m. tance and various hostels in the town, completed the long t^LlL 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- coiiege, tion of the way in which Ultramontanist theories were at this time successfully contending for the predominance in our universities, and the principle asserted in the Barn well The first Process receiving further extension. The commissioners Comrais- TTTMT Bionws. originally appointed to prepare the statutes were William Alnwick, 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 nat!on. resig 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, negotiis 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 wiiiiam the new statutes, William Millington, the rector of the Millington Provost 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- Slent e to h the scientious assent to their provisions and was accordingly new statutes. L i i ^i 2 T, -111 1-11 His ejection, ejected by the commissioners . It will be desirable to point 1 The birthday of king Henry made provost, and which the new being on the feast of St. Nicholas. drawn statutes exempted him from; 2 Cole says, 'the true reason of his besides he was not thoroughly satis- removal seems to proceed from him- fied that the scholars should all come 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 university before he was whole evidence concerning the first KING'S 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 thoso of New College. provost of his college, endorses this account, and observes, ' that the founder 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 Milling ton, l'ir*t 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 Waiurleet 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 autem dictw Majister Will id - vuis Wayne flete non nniltum priori dissimilix, cams ut putatur domino Regi habettir, non tarn propter scien- tiam salutarem quam ritam cclilx'iu. 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 W T aiufleet with the earlier foundations.' Ibid. p. 293. 202 308 THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY. CHAP. m. The college is designed for the maintenance of poor and needy scholars, who must be intending to devote themselves to the sacred profession, at that time (says the preamble) ' so 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 Periled or P rec i s i n : theology (sacra scriptura sen pagina), the arts, permitted. 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 astrorum) 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 quia suinme mode of expression : e. g. ' ac praeci- aff ectamus et volumus quod nurnerus pue ut ferventius et frequentius scholarium et sociorum in dicto nos- Christus evangelizetur, et fides cul- tro Kegali Collegio Cantabrigise per tnsque divini nominis augeatur, et nos superius institutus, plene et per- fortius sustentetur, same insuper fecte per Dei gratiam perpetius futu- theologiae ut dilatetur laus, guberne- ris temporibus sit completus : ac tur ecclesia, vigor atque fervor Chris- cousiderantes attente quod grain- tianaa religionis coalescant, scientiaa matica, quse prima deartibus seu sci- quoque ac virtutes amplius conva- entiis liberalibus reputatur, funda- lescant, necnon ut generalem mor- mentum, janua, et origo omnium bum militias clericalis quam propter aliarum artium liberalium et scien- paucitatem cleri ex pesiilentiis, guer- tiarum existit ; quodque sine ea cae- ris, et aliis mundi miseris, graviter terae artes seu scientife perfecte sciri vulnerari conspeximus, desolation! non possunt, nee ad earum veram compatientes tarn tristi, partim alle- cognitionem et perfectionem quis- vare possimus, quern in toto sanare quam poterit pervenire : ea propter, veraciter non valemus, ad quod re- diviiia favente dementia, de bonis vera pro nostrse devotionis animo nostris a Deo collatis unum aliud nostros regies apponimus libenter Regale collegium in villa nostra de labores.' Statutes, by Heywood and Etona ut superius memoratur insti- "Wright, p. 18. tuimus etc.' Ibid. 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. m. probation, during which time it has been ascertained whether " ^ the scholar be ingenio, capacitate sensus, moribus, condition*- 1^$*? bus, et scientia, dignus, habilis, et idoneus FOR FURTHER STUDY, ^JiectiS" to 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 p^g es with the sanction of Parliament, to the college, the king tions^r^tk obtained bulls from the pope exempting the college and foiSiktion. 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 . :>t l>y the exempted the university from ecclesiastical control, it was socl ^y- 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 Mijliogton 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. CHAP. in. been in any way foreshadowed, could hardly have approved ^^Ji' 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 Millington. appears to have been the limitation of the ofWiiham v Miiungton. 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 * ' be ea ue f si? 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 a;mul the ' . excluslvl an( ^ the scn l ars f King's College were prohibited from privileges, 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 beate Marie de Eton juxta Windesor, undoubtedly the main instrument in et sancti Nicholai Cantabrigg', per introducing the new papal usurpa- dictum domiuum meum Eegem ex tion.' Dean Hook>Liues, v 155. singulari et prsecipua sua devocione 2 Gough, Monumenta Vetusta, n ad diviui cultus augmentum catholi- xi. Beaufort's bequest is in a second ceque fidei exaltacionem sancte ac codicil, bearing date April 9, 1447. salubriter fundatorum, etc.' Nichols, The preamble is as follows: 'lam Eoyal and Noble Wills, p. 338. tamen reminisceus illorum notabi- 3 Cooper, Annals, i 205. Hum et insignium collegiorum, viz. KINGS COLLEGE. 311 concessions, in retaining those privileges which have formed the distinctive feature of the foundation up to our own day 1 . It has been conjectured, and the conjecture is sufficiently plausible, that this imperium in imperio which this society succeeded in establishing, took its alleged justification in 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, Winter-ton," 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- munities granted to the college dur- ing the lifetime of the founder is to be found in an act passed in the year 1453 for raising 13,000 archers for the king's service, wherein a claus.e expressly exempts the provost and scholars of this foundation from the obligation of furnishing their quota to the levy imposed on the county of Cambridge. Rot. Parliament, v 232. Cooper, Annals, i 205. 2 Hook, Lives oftheArchbps., iv 4. It is certain that, in the itjnrit in which its statutes were conceived, King's College made a closer ap- proach to the monastic conception than any other college at Cambridge. ' Some of their most remarkable characteristics," observe the editors, 'were taken from the old monastic discipline, such aa the wish to pre- serve the inmates from external con- nections, the extensive power given to the provost, the lengthy oaths at every step, and the urgent manner in which every member was desired to act as a spy upon the conduct of his fellows.' Preface by Heywood and Wright. 312 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. in. revenues were double those of St. John's, which stood second, -^^^ 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. COT.LEGE. In the year 1445 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 Margaret of 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 1 The revenues of Bang's College di cations of that unyielding spirit amounted to 1010. 12s. ll^d. ; those which afterwards hurried her into of St John's to 536. 17s. tyd. ; those acts of perfidy, violence, and crime, settled on Trinity College, on the When goaded into madness hy the 24th of December in the same year, unmanly assaults of men who sought amounted to 1678. 3s.$^d. to hlacken her chaste character, to 2 ' 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 ^^^, her policy was systematically directed to the encouragement "on^n' of friendly relations with her own country, in opposition to 8 y m P athles - 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 iiusbana. humble wif, forasmuche as youre moost noble grace hath nevvely 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 assignement, 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 cure feith and augmeutacon of pure clergie namely of the imparesse* of alle sciences and facultees theologic...to the* w "P r *- ende there accustumed of plain lecture and exposicon bo- traced* with docteurs sentence autentig' perforated daily *buttre*ted. twyes by two docteurs notable and wel avised upon the bible aforenoone and maistre of the sentences afternoone to the af terwards command its effusion with- ginal disposition reasserted its nscen- 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. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. m. publique audience of alle men frely bothe seculiers and * .y , ^ 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 wbiche 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 graunte 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's ' 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. Bernard, to which reference is made in Margaret of Anjou's 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 Hist, of the Queens' College of W. G. Searle, M.A., pp. 15, 16. St. Margaret and St. Bernard, by QUEENS' COLLEGE. 315 The petition was granted and another charter, that of CHAP. m. August 21, 1447, was accordingly prepared, permitting the ^^JL 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, the sixth. as the reason for its exemption from all corrodies, pensions, etc. (which might be granted by the king, ratione dicte fundationis nostri) is expressed in the words, eo quod colle- gium predictum de fundatione nostra, ut premittitur, existit 1 .' It was at this juncture of affairs that Margaret of Anjou j$ rterof presented her petition, and as the result, the charter of 1447 cancelled - 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 Foundation * . of QUEEN 3 university of Cambridge.' In exercise of the permission thus COLLBQB. 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 . motives of conception. It is as the world advances to its old age and thefoun - dress. as virtue is fading away, as the wonted devotion of mankind is becoming 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 wars 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. in. conclusion, a code was given to the college by Elizabeth ^JL 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 Sumixith with the Lancastrian party : she had been one of the ladies Woodville. . .. ,11 / -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 passiug 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. Granted at 'The duties of our royal prerogative,' says the preamble, the petitioner . ' Andrew 'require, piety suggests, natural reason demands, that we demof* 681 " should be specially solicitous concerning those matters where- Queens'. ^y ^g sa f e ty 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, l^k? requi ~ at the tmie f his election, be of not lower status than that of h" fellow- 8 a questionist if a student in arts, or a scholar, if in theology. When elected he is bound to devote his time either to studies to philosophy or to theology, until he shall have proceeded in be pursued. ^g intervening stages and finally taken his doctor's degree. On becoming a master of arts he is qualified to teach in the Lectureships trivium and quodrivium for the space of three years ; a at the function which, as it appears to have been a source of expiration of three 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 permission printed. ST CATHERINE'S HALL. 317 is limited to that period ; its exercise, on the other hand, is CHAP. m. not obligatory, provided that the fellow's time be devoted to >-t^ ^ 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 -11 11- i i c ' v '' or t * ie civil Jaw : but this can only be by the consent of the master c? no ? ' w simply and the majority of the fellows, and the concessive character P erm tted - 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 CATHKBIXE-S foundation of King's College, was Robert Woodlark, afterwards founder and master of St. Catherine's Hall. On Chedworth's 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 Bev. 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 characteT* 10 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.' Forbids the There is little in the statutes given by "Woodlark to the civil and college which he founded, deserving of remark, beyond the canon law at . ., . st. cathe- fact that both the canon and the civil law were rigorously rine 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 tion intended P11 . , 1 ,.. -, ir*ir>ii to benefit the following oath, to be administered to each of the fellows on secular clergy. bis 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 aulce ad aliquam aliam scientiam sive facultatem ullo unquam tempore se divertat propter aliquem gradum infra universitatem susci- piendum, prceterquam ad philosopkiam et sacram theologiam, sed pro posse meo resistam cum effectu, 2 . 1 'In prosecution of the royal Hardwicke, M.A., Cam. Antiq. Soc. scheme, it was originally commanded Pub. No. xxxvi. that 1000 per annum should be 2 Accordingly, in the library which paid to Woodlark out of the estates Woodlark bestowed on his founda- of the duchy of Lancaster; 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 Books, etc. edited by DrCorrie; remaining due to the magnanimous Cam. Antiq. Soc. Pub. No. i. provost.' Robert Woodlark, by Charles ST CATHERINES HALL. 319 If in addition to this fact, we observe that among the few alterations introduced by Chedworth, or Wainfleet, into the statutes given by William of Wykeham to New College at Oxford, the most important was that whereby the students in civil law were reduced from ten to two, and in the canon law from ten to four, that in the statutes of Queens' College the study of both these branches appears to have been permitted rather than encouraged, and that in the statutes of Jesus 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 .' CHAP. HI. PART II. Evident de- sire at this period on the part of the different founders to check the excessive devotion to the study of the civil and canon law. 1 The folio wing lists from the Grace Books of the number of graduates for the years 1489 and 1490, in the dif- ferent faculties, are worthy of note ; they have, probably by a clerical errpr, been transposed in dean Peacock's pages, Appendix A, p. xlix. (1489) 30 Determinatores in quadragesima (B.A.). 84 Magistri artinm. 22 Baccalaurei juris canonici. 10 Intrantes ad lecturam sententia- rum (B.D.) including one canon regular, two Dominicans, and one Franciscan. (1499) 32 Determinatores in quadragesima. 16 Inceptores sen professores artium. 12 Intrantes in jure cauonico. 8 Intrantes in jure civili. 3 Commensantes in theologia (B.D.). * The comments of Poggio Brac- ciolini upon the spirit in which these studies were pursued in Italy in the fifteenth century, is to almost pre- cisely the same effect as those of Boger Bacon in the thirteenth : ' Dixi paulo ante, eos qui juri civili et canonibus operam darent, non scifiuli, a fd liicrandi cupiditate se ad eorum cognitionem conferre. Ex eo videtis quantus fiat ad has discip- liuas concursus tanquam ad certain aurifodinam. At hi cum quae appel- lantur insignia doctorum (licet plurea sint indocti) susceperunt, hoc est, qutestus et avaritine signa, scitis quam freiiuontentur, quam honorentur ab omnibus, quam colantur, ornantur quoque preciosioribus vestibus, anuli aurei gestandi jus datum est, ut plane intelligaut homines id genus faculta- tum solum auri corrodeudi causa sus- ceptum.' De Araritia, Opera, ed. Basil., p. 4. In the year 1339 a scrutiny was held at Merton College, on which occasion we find a formal demand made by the fellows of the commissioners, ' quod ponantur de- creta et decretalia in librario.' It 320 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. m. 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 ry houses in the town was the nunnery of St. Rhadegund, P" 11 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 KPtSSSS.** 1457, we find William Gray, one of the most distinguished the bishops < ' 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; incorrupt the revenues of the society were squandered and dissipated ; iu n tfon d w!th~ the con duct of the nuns brought grave scandal on their the fifteenth profession ; and in the reign of Henry VII not more than two remained on the foundation, so that, to borrow the charter of language of the college charter, 'divine service, hospitality, the founda- -i i < -, -i uon of Jesus or other works of mercy and piety, according to the primary was nearly the only lore that the Canon Law. Civil Laic. majority cared about in those days! 1470... 8 See Prof. Kogers, Hist, of Prices, n 1481... 14 1481... 2 6714. 1483... 5 1483... 1 The following lists give the admis- 1484... 4 1484... 5 sions of bachelors in civil law and 1487... 7 1487... 1 canon law in the hitter part of the 1488... 3 1488... 4 century: 1489... 22 Canon Law. Civil Law. 1490... 9 1490... 1 1459... 9 1491... 6 1491.. 1 1460... 8 1492... 1 1492... 3 1461... 1 1493... 1 1493... 1 1462... 2 1494... 6 1463... 1 1496... 3 1496... 9 1466. ..12 1499. ..12 1499... 8 1467... 8 1467... 2 a Cooper, Annals, i 208. JESUS COLLEGE. 321 foundation and ordinance of their founders there used, could not be discharged by them 1 .' In the year 1497, through the exertions of John Alcock, bishop of Ely, the nunnery was accordingly suppressed by royal patent ; the bishop was 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, a fellow on the foundation in the seventeenth century, 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 Cantabrigiensium museum, still further contributed. The original statutes of the college were not given until early in the sixteenth century. Their author was Stanley, the successor, one removed, to Alcock, in the episcopal chair at Ely, and son-in-law of Margaret, countess of Richmond: they were subsequently considerably modified by his illus- trious successor Nicholas West, fellow of King's, and the friend of bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More 5 . The new John Alcock, II, D. bp. of Ely, 14861501. The site originally not included in Cambridge. Early statutes of the college given by James Stanley, D.D. bp. of Elv, 15061515, and Nicholas West, LL.D. bp. of Kly, 15151533. 1 Cooper, Memorials, i 364. Do- cuments, in 91. Shermanni Histo- ria Collegii Jesu Cantabrigiensis, ed. Halliwell, p. 20. 3 Alcock was also a considerable benefactor to Peterhouse (Cooper, Memorials, i 363); he was tutor to the unfortunate Edward v until re- moved frorq th a * P os * by *^ e *o- tector. Bentham, Hist, and Antiq. of Ely Cathedral, p. 182. 3 ' The college was to have been called " the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St John the Evangelist, and StRadegund, near Cambridge : " to be governed by such statutes as he or his successors should think proper to make and ordain. But the bishop having thought proper to add to this title, that of the holy name Jesus, it was even in his time commonly called Jesus College.' Ibid. p. 182. 4 ' Collegium ea ngura ab ipsis plane fundamentis construxit quae monasterium etiamnum referat, et quantum ad situm, id sane loci oc- cupat, quod musis est accommoda- tissimum, viz. ab oppidanorum stre- pitu et tumultu remotisBimum.' Shermanni Historia, p. 23. 6 ' Statuta insuper Jacobus [Stan- ley] cousilio suo condidit, quse Julius Secundus pontifex Eomanus, simul et collegii fundationem, authoritate Apostolica sancivit. Joannes [.!/- cock] episcopus, cujus nomen sit be- nedictionibus, vivendi rationem sub- ministravit, Joanne morte repentina sublato, Jacobus dein vivendi nor- mam adhibuit : Nicholaus epis- copus Eliensis Jacobi statuta revisit, multa immutavit, revocavit nounulla, cetera sanxit, et statutis ab eo con- ditis hodie utimur, quorum etiain quatuor copias habemus, omnes sans date) unperfectas quoque omnes, in- 21 322 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. in. statutes however were in professed conformity with the -*^"-^ presumed intentions of the founder 1 ; it is consequently all study of the the more significant that, though both Alcock and West Canon 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 cncy observ- * A o Remoter! of l an g uor tna t followed upon the Wars of the Roses lasted thfspTnod. 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 2 we have 'devoted some 'attention terpolatas, amanuensium incuria er- vivendi ordine, servanda statuta ant ratis scatentes, inter se discordantes, ordinationes aliquas perfecte vel suf- nulla authoritate episcopali munitas.' ficienter ediderit : Nos igitur opus Ibid. p. 24. tarn pium tamque devoti patris et 1 ' Ceterum qnia tantus pater optimi praesulis propositum, instinc- morte prseventus, 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 firmiter fit, ut nee pro tanto numero susti- stabiliri paterno affectu intendentes nendo collegium prffidictum sufficien- et magnopere cupientes, etc. ' Docu- ter dotaverit, nee pro bono studen- ments, in 94. tium regimine ac recto et quieto 5 See supra pp. 101 3. CAMBRIDGE LIBRARIES. 323 to the catalogues of two libraries of the period when the CHAP. in. earliest universities were first rising into existence ; the ^t^IL 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 versity Li- 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 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 The Uni- versity Library. Cam. Ant. Soc. Pub. versity Library, article by the same No. xxii. Communicated by Henry in Cam. Univ. Gazette, No. 10. 212 324 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CBAP. in. addition of some two hundred volumes, made by Thomas PAET ii. jfothgranj 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 ef 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- b^es of ble evidence respecting the literature at this time most esteemed at Cambridge, but other and ampler evidence remains. It was on Christmas Eve, 1418, exactly eight St Catharine's years before Gerson drew up his De Concordia, that an unknown hand at Peterhouse completed a catalogue of the library belonging to that foundation 8 . 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 3 . 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 1 ' Quoniam ratio humanitasque fectrnm, scholas noramque superius requirere videtur ut superioribos no- librarian polito lapide, sumptuosa bis benefactoribus, etsi non con- pompa, ac dignis (edificiis perfecerit, dignas, saltern ntcunque congruas eamqne, omnibus ut decuit rebus referamus gratias, eisque juxta vi- exornatam, non paucis vel vilibus rinni exilitatem, ut possumus, meri- libris opulentam reddidit, plurimaque toria obsequia reddamus. hinc est insuper alia bona eidem universitati quod merito cum probitatis turn bo- procuravit, etc.' De exequiis Thonue nornm operum exhibitione reveren- Rotheram, Documents, i 414. dus in Christo pater ac dominus domi- * This catalogue is still in mann- nus Thomas Rotheram divina misera- script : I am indebted to the autho- tione Lincolniensis episcopns ac mag- rities of Peterhouse for permission nus Anglise generalis hujusque almae to consult the volume in which it is universitatis praecipuus dignnsque contained, eancellarius et singnlaris patronus 3 See supra pp. 243, 244. turn in honorem Dei, incrementum 4 A List of Books presented to Pem- studii, et universitatis nostrse pro- brokt College, Cambridge, by different CAMBRIDGE LIBRARIES. 325 1472 1 , amounting to 224 volumes, and one of the library of St. Catharine's Hall in the year 1475, amounting to 137 volumes 2 , 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 that they represent, in much the same proportions, those new contributions to mediaeval literature which have already so long engaged our attention. Anselm, Albertus, Aquinas, Alexander Hales, Boethius, Bonaventura, Walter Burley, Duns Scotus, Holcot, Langton, John of Salisbury, Grosse- teste, and Kichard 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 now almost passed from memory or are familiar only to those who have made a special study of this period. Again and again we are confronted by the representatives of that great school of medieval 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 Illustration of the additions to learning afforded by these- catalogues. Evidence af- forded with respect to the theo- logical stu- dies of the time. Donors, during the Fourteenth andFif- teenth Centuries. By the Rev. G. E. Corrie, D.D., Master of Jesus College. Cam. Ant. Soc. Pub. No. in. 1 Catalogue of the Library of Queens' College in 1472 ; communi- cated by the Rev. W. G. Searle, M.A., late Fellow of Queens' College. Cam. Ant. Soc. Pub. No. xv. ' A Catalogue of the original Li- brary of St. Catharine's Hall, 1475 ; communicated by the Rev. G. E. Corrie, D.D. Cam. Ant. Soc. Pub. No. i. (4to Series.) 326 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Hugo of St. Cher, d.1260. Nicholas de Lyra, it 1340. Absence of the Arabian commenta- tors on Ari- stotle. Fewer works than we should ex- pect on logic and contro- Tersial theo- logy. The Fathers very imper- fectly repre- ented. 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 Domi- nican, Hugo of St. Cher (or of Vienne), whose reputation, 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 Ecclesim*. While inferior to neither of these in fame or learning comes the Franciscan, Nicholas de Lyra, who died towards the middle of the four- 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 anagogic 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 waited on the labours of a Leighton or a Scott. In contrast to the spirit of the Italian universities throughout this 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 university library. In the latter, again, Mr Bradshaw has pointed out the comparatively small proportion of libri logicales and libri theologice disputatce, and the observation is nearly equally applicable to the catalogues of the former. It is important also to observe how small is the element furnished by patristic literature. Ambrose, Gregory, Jerome, and Augustine, the four great doctors of the Latin Church, 1 ' It would not be easy,' observes the archbishop of Dublin (who has ably vindicated the Latin poetry of these ages from the contempt of the classicist), 'to exaggerate the in- fluence for good which went forth from this institution during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries up- on the whole Church,' Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 55. * Fabricius, Bibliotheca Lot. Xcd. et Inf. Jitatis. CAMBRIDGE LIBRARIES. 827 are indeed represented, but only partially, while scarcely CHAP. m. another name of importance appears. The entire absence ^"^ of Greek authors, and the almost equally entire absence of Entire ab- sence of all that, in the eyes of the classical scholar, gives its value 1 1* 1 T i inundations Draining, there is a map representing the .Bedford Level at ? former 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 a , 1 The termination -ey or -y tie- * ' The most important work as to notes in Saxon an island ; and such public utility, prior to the lleforma- werefo'rmerlyChilderley, Denny, Ely, tion, was the great channel made Horningsey, Bamsey, Suthrey, Thor- by bishop Morton, which served tho 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 fromWisboch to Peterborough. 332 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. Cambridge. HAP. iv. tradition was wont to foretell that all Holland was destined v 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 . Gradual From facts like these we are better able to understand own o'r how it was that, in times before the university existed, the 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- solution of monasteries, the fenny country became more overflowed than it had formerly been, the sewers and banks, which through the care of the religious houses had been kept in a state of good repair, having been neglected by the new proprietors of the monastic estates. The first pro- ject of a general drainage (which in- deed was before the making of bishop Morton's canal) appears to have been in the reign of Henry vi, when Gilbert Haltoft, one of the barons of the exchequer, who resided near Ely, had a commission for that purpose, under which he proceeded to make laws, but nothing effectual was then done.' Lysons' Cambridgeshire,^. 32. 1 'And after him the fatal Welland went, | That, if old saws prove true, (which God forbid!) | Shall drowne all Holland with his excrement, | And shall see Stamford, though now homely hid, | Then shine in learning, , more then ever did | Cambridge or Oxford, England's goodly beames.' Spenser, Faery Queene, iv xl 35. The ' old saws ' here referred to are those mentioned by Antony Wood, see p . 135 . ' Holland ' , or ' Little Hol- land,' as it was sometimes called, is a division of the county of Lincoln, the S.E. portion, having the North Sea on the east. The poet's mean- ing, I apprehend, is that inasmuch as an inundation of this country could not fail to extend southwards, and greatly to aggravate the evils to which Cambridgeshire was periodi- cally liable, the latter county would be rendered comparatively uninhabit- able; while Stamford, as lying with- out the Bedford Level and on the rising land above the Welland, would be beyond the reach of the waters. d ver- THE FEN COUNTRY. 333 were all powerful, and by and bye a suburb was formed cn\r. iv. 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 Beauty can* J - to be selecic to explain how such a locality came to be selected as the gj t r y a d "^ site of a university. Compared with Stamford, Northampton, cusse(L 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 definite act of obvious explanation is to be found in the fact that, in all g 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- 9 In the sixteenth century writers nicle, 73 b. begin to recognise this fact. ' Cam- 334 MEDIEVAL 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- 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 Drawbacks from which it was regarded in mediaeval times. And first of all it is necessary to remember how entirely monastic ideas raendations in medwYai predominated in the early annals of both Oxford and Cam- bridge, and also how prominent a place among those ideas The ascetic 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 Tales, 257 310.. THE FEN COUNTRY. 335 and food, he professed to crave for nothing more. If we CHAP. IT. examine the sites selected for our earlier monasteries we R^ug O f shall see that it was neither the bracing air nor the fertility etas^nouo of the soil that allured the founders to the mountain summit fouSdld with T -11 reasons for or to the far recesses of the vale. It was not until the th , e original selection of Church began to rival the temporal power, not until 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 nstance hardly be better rendered than in the quaint version by Dugdale : ' In the year 1256, William, bishop of Ely, and Pa 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; and 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, Historic, Major, ed. Wats, p. 929; Dugdale, Embanking and Draining, p. 358. 336 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LfFE. 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 des U cribedb S y visited, resembles rather that brought by the spies to Joshua, than the picture which the name of the Fens 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 2 Liber Eliensis (ed. 1848), i 232. built or planted, they set the gene- 3 ' Dicimus autem Ely Anglice, id rous example of providing for the est, a copia anguillarum quas in eis- pleasure, the honour, the wealth, dem capiuntur paludibus, nomen and greatness of generations yet un- sumpsit ; sicut Beda Anglorum di- boru. They executed everything in sertissimus docet.' Ibid. 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 Ramsay 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 rv i ft .the monastic monasteries as affording the chief examples of the practice practice in selection of of the ascetic theory. But as generation after generation new 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 be 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. It accordingly devolved upon Poggio, who at that time filled the office ofinSitottri secretary to Martin v, to prohibit the new erection at Arezzo S? r a*re 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 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. CHAP. iv. interference, though simply a discharge of his official duty, y 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 Fratres 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 Be privari patria amoenissima, meo judicio baud injuria id agunt. Illud enim nostrum nectar, Jovis potus, multos allicit non solum peregrines, sed et cives. Plato, vir minime Chris- tianus, elegit Academiae locum insa- lubrem, quo magis infirmo corpora animus esset firmior, et bonse menti vacaret. At isti, qui se Christum sequi simulant, loca eligunt amoenaj voluptuosa, omni referta jucunditate, non in solitudine, sed in summa hominum frequentia, non ut menti vacent, aed corpori.' Traversarii Epistolce (ed. Menus, FlorentisB,1759). Lib. xxv 41, see also xxiv 8. With respect to Plato note JElian, Varia Historia, IX 10: '0 nXarow, voaepov Xupiov Xeyo/J.ti'ov etvai rijs ' AKaSr)/j.eias Kal ffVfj.j3ov\ev6iT au'rijj r&v larpwv ^s TO AvKeiov fj.fTOiKTJffa.1, OVK tj^iufffv et- iruv, ' d\X' i-yuye OVK dv ovSt is TO TOV "KBu fjteTifKrjffa. $.v virtp TOV fiaKpofiiw- repo j yevtffOai. ' It is not unlikely how- ever that Poggio had in his mind a passage in St. Basil, De legendis libris Gentilium, c. 19 : Aid dij Kal JlXdruvd ij>affi ryv IK TTJS THEORY OF EDUCATION. 339 It is certainly somewhat surprising to find a man of CHAP, rvy Poggio's intelligence implicitly asserting that the unhealthi- Thl^duT ness of a locality recommended it as a place of education for undoibtedi youth; but the fact affords decisive evidence that such wasP*^"^- 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- onl y 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 Burley, 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 8 . Unreasonable mountainous to the south and east ; by reason of the purity of the two former quarters in respect of the latter ; just as Oxford is situated which was selected by the philoso- phers that came from Greece." ' Plot's Hist, of Oxford, p. 330. 8 The first distinct expression of a counter theory in connexion with university requirements ie perhaps that of the Duke of Brabant, the founder of the university 'of Louvain in 1426, who on announcing the pa- pal sanction of the proposed scheme describes the site as ' loco vinetis, pratis, rivulis, frugibus et fructibus, ac aliis circa victualia necessariis re- ferto, in aere dulci et bona temperie situato, loco quidem spatioso et ju- cundo, et nbi mores burgensium et incolarum sunt benigni.' M6moircs sur les deux Premiers Siecles de I' Uni- ri'mite. de Louvain : par le Baron de Reiffenberg, p. 20. This language it will be observed was used three years 222 a\a.[3eii> t!-eirlrr)5es, Iva r-fjv ayav ivirddfiav rov (Tti^taros, olov dfivf\ov T-fjv els rd ircpirrd opdv, n-fpiKoiTToi. The writings of St. Basil were much studied at this time in connexion with the controversy be- tween! the eastern and western Churches. 1 'Ipse dixit ei quod loca super aquam non sunt sana, nisi fuerint in sublimi sita.' Eccleston, in Monu- menta Franciscana, p. 66. 8 ' I think it very considerable what remains upon record in Mag- dalen College library, in an antient manuscript of Walter Burley's, fel- low of Merton (tutor to the famous King Edward in and deservedly Btiled doctor profundus), who upon the problem complexio rara quare sanior, has these words concerning the healthy condition of Oxford and its selection by students for the seat of the muses : "A healthy city must be open to the north and east, and 340 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. The theory not without The uni- versity originally only a grammar school. CHAP. iv. moreover as that theory now appears, it will be found, like many other abandoned crotchets of medievalism, to contain a germ of truth. The highest state of physical well-being nt of j s ra rely 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 Barnwell Process. The existence of such a functionary and of the The Magifter Glomerice. before the attack of Poggio on the Observantists : but on the other hand it is to be noted that it is the language of a layman, and that the university of Louvain was founded for all the faculties save that of theo- logy. (See p. 282, note 2, andErrata.) Nothing certainly can justify Dr Newman in adducing Louvain, as 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. derstaDd 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 j 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 sueAyTn'e , student of sole acquirement of the great majority of our university stu- grammar, dents. The complete trivium, followed by the yet more for- midable quadriviiim, 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 Domimis was contracted into Dan; e.g. Dan Chaucer. 342 MEDIEVAL 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 arts 7 , -,. -,. * ne t rtmum an< l quadnwum, 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 e'clat 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 ! 6 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 Incepturis in Grammatica. Documents, i 374. THE ARTS FACULTY. 343 graduate had spent two or three years and perhaps taken CHAP, iv, 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 r afforded by stances we find that these changes were subsequently adopted bookfoaL at Cambridge, and, as the chronology of the statutes at Paris pari"n7n- of is far more regularly preserved, they often afford us valuable thl'anuqui- guidance (more especially those of the Nation Anglaise, or English 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 $* important element in the university, but they receive quite a held^coS secondary amount of consideration in the ancient statutes. tKorthV The career of the arts student, on the other hand, is to be "* 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 we're not looked upon as occupying an essentially inferior position : their decline in estimation was causes which . . . conduced to probably the result of those new additions to university tllis uit. 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 MEDLEVAL STUDENT LIFE. CHAP. rr. startling the learned of Italy, failed for a long time to awaken 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 Thepromroa- such an honour*. The grammarian indeed in those days was t if ut nothing . - ... 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 tantmnmodo exceptis, Cambridge was conferred in the year qni artem solam decent vel audiunt 1542. Peacock, Obserrations, etc. grammaticam, ad quorum exequias Append, p. rxx 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 ThTciliTTs the cause of Latin learning was to his heart, does not hesitate EJ^ 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 2 ?' From the career and prospects of a grammar student we Experiences may now proceed to examine those of the student in arts 3 , study o" an * . 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, Latinnm, mathematicum, phi- for every master in Gramer a shrewde tesophum, medicum, ical TCLVTO. /Saat- Boy, whom the master in Gramer XIKO^, 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 discmciat in grammatics, 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 sint octo par- gulis. And thus endythe the Acte in tes orationis, quod hactenus nemo that Facultye.' Stokes' Book, Pea- Graacorum aut Latinorum ad plenum cock, Observations, Append. A, p. praestare voluit.' Encomium Morice. xxxvii. s It is difficult to form any very 2 Seebohm, Oxford Reformers, 220*. exact conclusion with respect to the See also Mr Anstey's remarks, Mu- estimation in which the advantages nimenta Academica, p. Ixiii. 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 Rogers 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 : t orical Gleanings, 2nd series, p. 17. Novi quendam Tfo\vre\v!na.rov, Grse- 346 MEDIAEVAL 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 to 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 been 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 ATerageage present day : the former would often not be more than ftt time of J entry. twenty-one, the latter not more than fourteen or fifteen; Master and consequently their relations^were of much less formal charac- 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 Immunitate Scho- Documents, i 332. This statute which larium, 'Indignum esse judicamus was promulgated in the fifteenth of ut quis scholarem tueatur, qui cer- Henry in is evidently an echo of that turn magistrum infra xv dies . post of the university of Paris passed six- ejus ingressum in universitate non teen years before by Eobert de Cour- habuerit aut nomen suum infra tern- on. 'Nullus sit scholaris Parisius pus praslibatum in matricula magis- qui certum magistrum non habeat.' tri sui redigere non curaverit, etc.' Bulseus, 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 s holar8 - 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*. But however this may have been, there was a far more practice of popular method of replenishing an empty purse, a method 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 tlmttime. SeeFuller- mulation of successive legacies to Prickett and Wright, p. 201. the university by persons of opulence : * ProfessorBogers,Hjsn '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 lectures 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 dn the bachelors. If we now turn to consider the method employed by the Methods lecturers, we shall readily understand that at a time when "> lecturer, students rarely possessed a copy of the text of the author under discussion, the Sentences and the Summulce 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 i t T f i i analytical commenced by discussing a few general questions having method, reference to the treatise which he was called upon to explain, 1 'Les^oursextraordinaires e*taient ment.' Thurot, p. 78. See also pour les bacheliers une occasion de Pseu.do-~Boeihitt9,DeDisciplina Scho- recruter an auditoire pour lour mat- larium, c. 5. trifle, et de s'exercer a 1'enseigne- 360 MEDIEVAL 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 ; divided 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, duuecticai ^6 second method, and probably by far the more popular method. one> was designed to assist the student in the practice of casting the thought of the author into a form that might serve 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. 361 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 disput?,' 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 8 .' When the student in arts had incepted and delivered his The Non- 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 statuimns quod, audientes the employment of the catechetical textum in quacunque facilitate, pro method? Otherwise, why BO much forma in eadem facultate statuta et circumlocution to express what might requisita rite eundem audire tenean- have been conveyed in a single word? tur, una cum qutestionibus juxta See Appendix (E). modum magistrorum suorum in qua- * De Corruptis Artibiis, i 345. A stionando usitatum, si modus legeudi good illustration of the application in eadem facultate quaestionem re- of the disputation to the mathema- quirat.' Statute 138. Documents, r tical 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. Chatin of Emmanuel, of an that the term ordinarie did not im- act in which he was respondent. ply, as Mr Anstey has conjectured, 362 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. CHAP. iv. 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 mcnJest 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 Professional res t and was valued for it. But as in every age with the prospect of Master 1 of 17 ma j r ity 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- evidence calculated to substantiate tion of the reader that the course of his statement. It was customary study above described must have both at Oxford and Cambridge to been attended with considerable ex- include in the grand total all those pense, and taken in conjunction with attached to the university as servants the numbers of those who appear to or tradesmen, and with this fact be- have annually incepted, with the fore us we may perhaps read 3,000 known limits of the town of Cam- for 30,000 in the celebrated vaunt of bridge in those days, and with the Armachanus with respect to the ascertained numbers in the university numbers at Oxford in the commence- of Paris at different and earlier pe- ment of the fourteenth century. A riods, can hardly fail to disabuse our similar qualification will be necessary minds of those exaggerated state- in the statement quoted by M. Victor ments with respect to numbers hand- le Clerc (see p. 130), with respect ed down by different writers. Of the to the numbers at Paris. But the university of Paris, M. Thurot says, exaggeration of mediaeval writers in ' Le nombre des etudiants de toutes the matter of statistics is notorious. les Facultes peut-etre evalue en may- Mr Fronde (Hist, of England, in* 407), enne a 1500, et celui des maitres re- has furnished us with some interest- gents a 200, aux epoques les plus flo- ing illustrations of this tendency at rissantes de I' Universite.' De VOr- & yet later period. Both M. Kenan ganisation de VEnseignement, p. 33, and Mr Lecky have observed that it n. 1. The numbers at Cambridge was not until the introduction of the could scarcely have been much higher. exact sciences that men began to un- Sir W. Hamilton has stated (Dis- derstand the importance of accuracy cussions, p. 484) , that hi the thirteenth in such matters, century the scholars were certainly ' See pp. 319, 320. above 5000, but I have met with no THE FACULTY OF THEOLOGY. 363 B.D., was much smaller than the encouragement extended to CHAP. TV. 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 m these times deserve to w of J t theology 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 . .. . lecture degree, they were known as biblici ordinam or simply as 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 malos vel indifferentes?' Theologia. Documents, i 377. The Anstej,MunimentaAcademica, 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 fetre admis a trum posna inflicta in purgatorio sit faire lecon sur le Livre des Sentences, pcena inflicta a Deo immediate vel il fallait justifier qu'on avait etudifi per ministros ? Si per ministros, an en the'ologie pendant neuf annees en- una anima aliam punit? vel per tidres, et fait deux cours sur la Bible.' angelos, et tune utrum per angclos (Sur V Organisation, etc. p. 141.) 364 MEDLEY AL STUDENT LIFE. CHAP. iv. Hie courses for the doctorial degree in civil and canon course of law were equally laborious. In the former it was not im- perative 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 Digesturn 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 other text-books of the course 1 . In the course for the canon law the 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*. In both branches it was also obligatory that the candidate should have kept or have been ready to keep all the required oppositions and responsiona 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 VIII, 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 whieh forms so marked a feature in the theology of this period. while, according to our own statutes, sum dixere Teteres Sacrae Scripture lecturing sententiarie is made depen- tempas aliquod addictnm. Ab to dent on a certain course in arts and vero docendl munerc ttuologicum cur- theology (see Statute 108, Documents, turn suum ordiebantur nuperi Bacca- i 370), and lecturing biblice is in turn lam cursor et ; ac postea sententi- made dependent on having already arum Petri Lombard! libros quatuor lectured on the Sentences. (See Sta- interpretabantur. Hinc nata ilia dis- tute 112, Documents, i 372). Bubeus tinctio Baccalariorum 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- 1 Statute 120. Documents, i 375-6. sacus in libro De Origin* Prisca Fa- * Statute 122. Documents, i 376-7. cultatif Thtologitt, p. 14, Bibliae 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 . ThTfa^ity' Such then was the character of the highest forms of cul- TiIdu- me ture aimed at in the Cambridge of those days ; and whatever thorough of its 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 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 theories et admittatur ad incipieudum in medi- alinm de practica, et quod in scholis cina nisi prius in artibua rexerit, et suae facultatis publice et principaliter ad minus per quinquennium hie vel opposuerit et respondent, et quod ad alibi in universitate audierit medi- minus per annum exercitatus fuerit cinam, ita quod audierit semel libros in practica: ita quod ejus notitia in medicinte non commentates, 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 magistris urinis, et quemlibet librum Isaac, illius facultatis secundum depositio- viz. librum uriuarum Isaac, librum nem de scientia eorundem modo su- de dietis particularibus, librum fe- pradicto: et tune admittatur cum brium Isaac, librum Viatici. Item formam praedictam se complevisse audiat semel antidotarium Nicbolai : 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- brum prognosticorum, librum apbo- tatus fuerit in practica.' Statute 119. rismorum, librum de regimine acu- Documents, i 875. torum: et quod legerit cursorie ad 366 MEDIAEVAL 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 life. 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. And here again it becomes necessary to bear in mind that 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. TV. beneath the stiluses of his own pupils, to the monastery of St. Gall fired by its own externes. 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 BOMBM of record of his own experiences at Paris. The College de Mon- 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- rociam appellant indolem generosi- ence to the College de Montaigu he orem, quam studio frangunt ut eos says, 'Neque vero haec commemoro reddant habiles monasteriis.' Com- quod male velimillicollegio.sed opera 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 aetatem 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 readers 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 had 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 Oestis 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 His account in the first edition of the Colloquies at Basel 1 . Yet this de- appears to . n , . have called scription appears to have provoked no outcry or indignant d n eriaL ant 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 early There is perhaps no feature more uniformly characteristic desired only of our early college statutes than the design of the founder to for poor . ... students. 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 2 . 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 3 The wealthier class of students frendes or beyng benefyced men dyd resided in the hostels : this is clearly lyue of theym selues in Ostles and shewn in Lever's sermon at St Paul's Innes be eyther gon awaye, or elles Cross, preached in 1550, where, con- fayne to crepe into Colleges, and trasting the state of the university at put poore men from bare lyuynges.' the time with that at an earlier part Lever's S'ermons, ed. Arber, p. 121. of the century, he says that many THE COLLEGES. 369 more easily enforced. The standard for admission varied CHAP. iv. from a moderate knowledge of Latin to an acquaintance with the whole of the trivium. It was necessary that those certain attainments elected should have been born in lawful wedlock, be of good Pf?h^ y character, nor could a single county furnish more than a j^fo- 011 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 J * , J , . youth of the although a certain amount of previous attainment was mdis- majority at A the time of pensable, the average age was such as to call for the dis- ^ admis ' cipline of the schoolboy. The ' boys,' as they were termed. J hei / > ' . J ' treatment. 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 uppon all sondays and holly- etove. 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. 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 595. 24 370 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. CHAP. IV. The college library. Description of a college library of these times. Description of student life by a master of St. John's in the year 1550. 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 2 , 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 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. 2 The 'communa,' or commons, were the expenses of maintenance: all meals being at that time taken in the common hall. 1 The volumes, as entered in the catalogue, are distinguished as ca- thenati and divisi inter socios: the libri logice divisi inter socios are 29, those cathenati, also 29; the libri theologie cathenati, 137, assignati tociis, 41; the libri juris civilis ca- thenati, 9, divisi inter socios, 15 ; the libri jurit canonic* cathenati, THE COLLEGES. 371 the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, ' and C HAP - 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 Tins descrip- rapacity of courtiers and nobles, the college had been reduced an exce p- tional state to the lowest ebb of its fortunes, and, to use Lever's own ofaffaira - 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- There is abundant indirect proof that Oxford was at this P e " toex ' ccption* 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 iture 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 jincoln's Inn diet.' In hall and in college generally the use use or Latin ._., . . . j. 2 i required in oi 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 two Ibs. Then it will be ob- A, note 2, p. v. 242 372 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. CHAP. rv. tongue was occasionally permitted. An Oxford statute of this period enjoins that grammar students shall construe their author into hoth 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, and if in residence to be studying. If he absented himself, unless upon business of the college, the allowance for his weekly expenses was stopped. In the course of time he was permitted 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- tion of his fellowship*. If the property of the house increased . . i T i , .. wM*h toad* fa value, this increase was to be applied to the creation of to the num- rr 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 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 masterfre- J J quentiT com- of holding other emoluments, sometimes even at another Dined with college. Thus John Sickling, the last master of God's House, held at the same time a fellowship at Corpus ; Shorten, the 1 Muni men ta Academica, p. 438. * The earliest instance that has Mr Anstey conjectures that this sta- come under my notice of such leave tute. which is without date, is at least of absence is that of Eichard 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, fire years' leave of absence whole statute evidently relates to that he 'might attend upon Lord grammar students, and his marginal Monntjoy in foreign parts.' Knight's summary clearly implies that such is Life of Erasmut, p. 64. the case. THE CAM. 373 first master of St. John's, was also a fellow of Pembroke. Like CHAP. iv. Rotheram 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 pastimes. 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 2 . 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 being held by the corporation ' with all and singular waters, property of fishings, pastures, feedings, etc.,' in fee simple of the crown 8 ; 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 4 . 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 ratio3* at 1 The late Dr Ainslie, in his In- object of the foundation itself that quiry concernini) 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. 37* MEDLEYAL STUDENT LIFE. CHAP. iv. not blameless in this matter, and on one occasion the whole community was scandalized by learning that the prior of 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* 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*.' It is not uninteresting to note that a custom of the pre- sent day, which it might be supposed was merely a matter of obvious 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 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 eom- pecially when of unusual size, to have mand a higher price than would be been regarded as a great delicacy, given for a tnrbot in the present day. and the price it commanded in the * Cooper, Annals, i 353. market most 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 tp- the occasion of cardinal Wolsey*8 gether conversing with each other in visit to the university in 1520, we paij^ on scholarship or on some proper find in the proctors' list of expenses, and pleasant topic, and so return 'for 6 great pikes, 33*. 4dL'; on the together betimes.' Statute* of Canttr- occasion of a royal visit in 1522 bury Hall giren by Simon Itlip, 1366. twelve grete pyks, 55*. Sd,' ; and in See also St. John's Statutes, (1516), 1533, 'payed for a great pyke govyn e. 25 ; and Whitaker's WkaOey, p. in present to my lord Mount Kgte, 4s.' 70. THE KING'S DITCH. 375 to Trumpington was skirted on either side by dreary marshes, CHAP. 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 .... ' r , , of mediaeval 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 {^fj 1 ^, days to a close. In looking back at the various features of modem that life, its arid culture and ascetic discipline, it seems at tilnes ' 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. I'.ut 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 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 a f t te n r e num- e 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 been > ^-~ seen standing by a fire into which the former was thrusting e i304. ch> 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 heen 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 Linguae Grcecee Instauratoribus (ed. Jebb), 1742; (2) Boerner, De Doctis Hominibus Greeds, Lipsise, 1750; (3) Ambrosii Traversarii Oeneralis Camuldulenshnn Aliorumque ad Ipsum et ad Alias de eodem Ambrosio Lati- no; Epistolce, etc. Accedit ejusdem Ambrosii vita in qua Historia Litteraria Florentina ab Anno 1192 usque ad Annum 1440 ex Monumentis potissimum nondttm editis deducta est a Laurentio Mehu* Etruscce Academice Cortonensis Sodo, Florentiae, 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 Wicderbelebung det Classischen Alterthums oder das erste Jahrhundert des Humanismus, Berlin, 1859. 380 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. It was an experience of a kind far from uncommon in the Jjt^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. Effects of the The new influence to which our attention must now be revival of ?eStag con- directed is distinguished from all the preceding influences that affected the course of learning by one important feature, -j. g p ure jy se cular 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 homines, votum, timer, ira, voluptas, Gaudia, discursus . 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 . y ' It was indeed time that some new spirit breathed upon Extrayagan- cies of the the waters over which the ancient darkness seemed threat- ^ e " e riod. 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 2 . 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 phoenix or the crocodile, the subject matter no longer shielded it from criticisms that successfully exposed its radical defects. The prospect was General de- J . - . ,, . cline in the scarcely more encouraging in other fields. Gleams of classic L^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 srenius in the beautiful dialect of Si. O 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 8 ; the verdict, 1 'Die Italiener,' says Burckhardt, schaftliche Secte nur aus Petrarca's ' sind die fruhsten unter den Moder- Sehilderung, and dieser hebt als ihr nen welche die Gestalt der Land- Gegner allein die negativen und an- schaft als etwas mehr oder weniger stb'ssigen Lehren hervor.' Voigt, p. Schoneswahrgenommenundgenossen 62. 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 tind der Menschen, in Die Saat, die er ansgeworfen, hat Tau- Cultur der Renaissance, pp. 222 82. sende von Menschen zu ihrer Pflege a ' Leider kennen wir diese wissen- gerufen und Jahrhunderte zur Beife 382 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. it must be added, unaccompanied by those reservations and ^-^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 His estimate from the general destruction. Petrarch, it is evident, saw cians of his nothing in the whole 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 and of the their trade for the love of gain 1 . The universities appeared universities^ t ' A L 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 bedurf t. Nicbt nur auf alien Seiten * ' Juvenis catbedram ascendit, nes- dieses Bucbes, wobl aucb auf alien cio quid confusum murmurans. Tune Blattern, welcbe die Weltgeschicbte majores certatim ut divina locutntn der folgenden Jabrbunderte erzablen, laudibus ad cselum tollunt ; tinniunt wird der feinfiiblende Leser den Geist interim campanas, strepunt tubae, vo- des neubelebten Altertbums und ge- lant annuli, figuntur oscula, ver- rade in der Gewandung rauscben tici rotundus ac magistralis biretus boren, die er durcb Petrarca empf an- apponitur; bis peractis descendit gen.' Ibid. p. 102. sapiens, qui stultus ascenderat.' De 1 Eerum Memorand. Lib. i Opera, Vera Sapientia, 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- ings of Cicero, and, though less directly, the awakening of ^hSi Italy to the value of the Greek literature and, as a collateral (2) as . viver of the result, the resuscitation of the Platonic philosophy and the g^ 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 changeinthe f i 111 t_ i i modem esti- tor his memory when dead, rested, as their language clearly n^ 1 . 6 * his r genius from shews, on a very different basis from that which has sus- contmpom- 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 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. His services in relation to the works of Cicero. tical errors and even barbarisms are not infrequent; the 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. It is scarcely necessary to say that Cicero was his chief model; 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 ayva)a-TO<; decx;, 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*. From this oblivion it was Petrarch's ambition to rescue them ; in fact, 1 See criticisms quoted by Hallam, Literature of Europe, i 6 84. 3 The only orations of Cicero known in the twelfth and thirteenth centu- ries, according to Voigt, were the Catilines, the Philippics, part of the Verrines, and the Pro Lege Manilla, with one or two other minor ones. This however is an inference from merely negative evidence : 'So schliesse ich daraus, dass ich nur diese Werke in Dante's poetischen und prosai- schen Schriften erwahnt gefunden.' p. 23. Certain of Cicero's philoso- phical treatises were of course known both in Italy and other countries at this period : see catalogue printed supra p. 101. PETRARCH. 385 in his efforts to recover the long lost masterpieces of antiquity "JAP. 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 m k w - of the Greek tongue 2 , it was with difficulty that he spelt 1 ' ln " to - 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 dern Sammlungen dieser Briefe und of the matter in the following terms : hatte bereits die tullianische Epistolo- ' So ist es nun im Allgemeinen kein graphic in die ueuere Literatur ein- Zweifel, dass Cicero's Werke, auch gefiihrt, in der sie eine grossartige die philoBophischen und rhetorischen, Rolle zu spielen berufen war, aber durch Petrarca's Anregung unend- der nene Fund gab diesem wich- lich mehr copirt und gelesen wurden tigen Belebungsmittel des humanis- als vorher ; davon zengt ihre Verbrei- tischen Verkehrs sofort eiuen erhohe- tuiig im Beginue des folgenden Jahr- teren Schwung und hat so eine un- hunderts. Aber um zwei Klassen messbareWirkung geiibt,' p. 27. See derselben hat Petrarch ein unmittel- also Mehus, pp. 213-20. bares Verdienst, um die Reden und 8 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 ' Irani cane Dea Pelidce Achillis Reden hat er auf Reisen gefunden, | Corrupt ibilem, qiitr innumerabiles doch besass er noch lange nicht alle Grcecis dolores posuit. \ Multas antem diejenigen, die wir jetzt lesen. Aber robwttas animas Inferno antca mixit \ welchen Triumph empfand er, als ihm Heroum ; ipxorum antem cadavera or- 1345 zu Verona die seit dem 10 Jahr- dinavit canibns \ AvibiMqui- onnitlnt*. huudertvolligverschollenensogenann- lorits diitein pi-r/icitbattir conxiliuni, \ ten farniliaren Briefe Cicero's in die Ex quo jam primitm separatim li/i- Hand fielen. Zwar besass er wahr- gar mint \ Atridrnque Hex Virorum scheiulich damalsschondiebeiden an- et Divan Achillas.' Mehus, p. 273. '25 386 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. join the noisy throng in the Lyceum, he turned aside to v '" 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 Timseus and the Phaedo 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 ^premacy of characteristic essay,' De sui ipsius et aliorum ignorantia, we Anstotie. nav e 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. His position It is interesting in connexion with this controversy to com- Aristotie" pare the position of Aquinas with that of Petrarch. The compared ... , . _ T . . with that of schoolman, in his endeavour to introduce the JN ew Anstotie, 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 sui ipsius et multorum igno- Latin translation of this dialogue in rantia, Opera, 1162. Voigt, p. 48. a manuscript of the thirteenth cen- I presume that the Phasdo was the tury. Fragments Philosophiques, Abe- second. Cousin informs us that the lard. Appendix, library of the Sorbonne 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 ^-^ compelled to hear called in question. It marks the singular He attacks ., .,. ,. the style of insensibility to literary excellence of form induced bv the the < ? xistin s * 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 2rtou! 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, The Italian 5' Humanists as marking the initial chapter of its history and scarcely ame latcr 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 Remm Memorand. Lib. H; Opera, p. 4G6. 3 Opera, p. 1159. 252 888 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. successive protection of Cosmo, Lorenzo, and their descendant v ^ 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. Fiorenceand J n the fifteenth century there was but one capital in <'(nstanti- tested. 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 the four 6 to the l ver f ai> t an d literature to look back upon what Flo- fifteohth'^n- 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 refbunded 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 / - 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 [A~ 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 Palseologi 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 culture of the two cities. 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 8 . 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 Milton, Areopagitica. * 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 bo- citf e e s? thetwo 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. Italian scho- Nevertheless the Italian scholar bent a longing eye stantinopie. 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 Phiieipims, known. Occasionally, like John of Ravenna, Philelphus, a. U8i! Giaconio 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 1 ' 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 3 . usages of the ancient state, and with. CONSTANTINOPLE. 391 there,' he says, ' I studied hard and long, and made diligent CHAP. v. I* ART I 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 i ^ Greek duction given by the lecturers in the schools are full of the c^^fn merest trifles, and nothing certain or satisfactory is to be opl& 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 Barlaamo 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 T i /-^ Clrrysoloras, Chrysoloras 3 , a relative of the John Chrysoloras of whom* 1415 - Philelphus above makes mention, as an ambassador from the emperor of the eastern empire to solicit aid against the Turks. Chrvsoloras was honorably distinguished from those of ins high * * character 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 refugeeB 2 JSneas Sylvius, in his Enropa, c. on that occasion, ' Sie waren in kei- 52, tells an amusing story of how ner Weiae 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 Schiller 3 Many writers, among whom I gegeben, unter denen wir die riistig- notice so recent a contributor to the sten Fb'rderer beider Literaturen literature of. the subject as Dr Gei- finden, und auf dem Unionsconcil ger, have dated this revival from the wurde der FunkezurFlamme.' Voigt, fall of Constantinople in 1453. Voigt p. 330. 392 THE HUMANISTS. He masters the Uitin II is eminence as a, teacher of Greek. His Greek Grammar. served reputation, and his real knowledge of the Greek literature. To the man of letters he added the mac of the world and the diplomatist; he was acquainted with most of the countries of Europe, and had visited our own court in the reign of Richard II in an official capacity. He was, 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 \ 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. Most of those who had listened to Petrarch's famous pupil, 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 Greek grammar, the Erotemata, egregiuin libellwni gram- maticum, as Boerner justly terms it, the same that after- wards served Reuchlin for a model at Orleans*, that was used 11 Voigt's language implies that Chrysoloras was already acquainted with Latin, but the statement of Ju- lianas is explicit: 'Nam cum jam grandis esset, nullius praeceptoris auxilio nostras perdidicit liters s, ne- que sibi oneri visum est, cum tot annis philosophise studiis vacasset, ad puerilia literarnm elementa re- vertL' Boemer, p. 31. * See authorities quoted by Boerner, p. 21. Geiger, Johann Reuchiin, 19, 20. BenchUn himself compiled a Greek grammar, the fuKporcuSeia, for his own scholars. This however was never deemed worthy of being printed, and as the title suggests contained probably the merest elements, while the Erotemata went through many editions, and was par excellence the Greek grammar of the first century oftheBenaissance. SeeHaUam.Lfte- rature of Europe, i 6 101. According to Constantine Lascaris it suffered con- siderably from being often abridged by ignorant compilers, TO pipXior OVK Old' 8r(iK TIV& TUV afW&UP OVffTfl- \enrrej oU0(ipar. Hody, p. 22. EMMANUEL -CHRYSOLORAS. 393 by Linacre at Oxford and by Erasmus at Cambridge, and CIIA1> - 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 fns 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, dosing years have been well content to pass the remainder of his days, f 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 8 . 1 Muratori Scriptores, xix 920; 8 'Nam cum Graces nihilaut parum Hody, pp. 2830. literis suisauimumadverteresentiret, 2 Codinus, De Antiquitatibus Con- casque sensim sinistra reruin ac tem- xtantinop., quoted by Boerner, p. 23. porum varietate extiugui cognosceret, 394 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. Jis efforts to arouse the western powers to concerted action against the common enemy had signally failed, while the tide of invasion in the East had begun to threaten the walls 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 ro bably 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 "* project was one which commanded his warmest sympathies*; the Pope. an( j ) 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, ne ipsomm studiorum veins ilia glo- agitate,* di visas, lacerataeqae religio- riadeficeret,mItaliamnavigavit, T etc. nis nostrae divino prope affectu per- Andrece Juliani pro Manutte Chryso- motus, pontificibus maximis, qni ip- lora Funebris Oratio, Boerner, p. 32. rius gravitatem, prudentiam et yitam, 1 Gibbon-Milman-Srnith, vm 28. tanquam ca&leste oracultun venera- * 'Nam cum snmmus pontifex Con- bantur, concilii sententias, quantum stantiam ire constituisset, nonnul- in se fnit, suscipiendas fore, suadere losque summae anctoritatis Tiros et conatus est. Et ut ceterorum bono- sapientiae, atqne erga hanc nostram rum judiciis adhaereret, omnem iti- religionem insigni quadam pietate neris longitudinem, frigora, hiemes, affectos sibi delegisset, Manuelem Tiarnm asperitates atque mortem, si inter primes habere constituit, qui opus esset, perferre instituit. Qnae in hanc laudatissimam rem necessa- cum, ut cogitarat, perfecta fuissent, riumque negotium ita omnem curam, inveteratos Graecorum errores ad Bo- studium, diligentiamque contulit ut m^Tiarn religionem sna opera ac dili- neqne vim ullam, neque insidias, ne- gentia deduxisset.' Boerner, pp. 26-7. que metus prospicere, nee senectutis 3 It was on this occasion that Si- suae incommoda aut labores aestimare gismund declared himself, as rex Bo- videretur. Quocirca hujus tarn diu maniu, to be. super 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 c"^^** 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 tbe 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 3 . sion of the story is worthy of note. * ' 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 liberta- emperor as interpreter to Constance, tern obsessam 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, beerroneous: seealso Boerner, pp. 14, paucosque post dies, dolore magis 26,27. 'Faai\is,DeVirisIllustribus,p.8. 396 THE HUMANISTS. His funeral oration by Julianus. Guarino, b. 13TO. d.1460. His fame as a teacher. Eminent Englishmen among his pupils. 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 2 . 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 II, 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 Cultur der Renais- sance, 180-7. 2 This however was a kind of stock compliment at this period: Maffei de Volterra applies it to John of Ka- venna, Platina to Bessariou. GUARINO. 397 notary, and author of the Lucitbrationes Tiburtiance 1 , John CHAP. v. Free, a lawyer of considerable eminence, whose performances v as a translator from the Greek were sufficiently meritorious to any. 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 3 . 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-j 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 Euthyphron 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 in* collection direct proof that bishop Gray was actuated by feelings of resent- J? ^J lio1 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 lanniuiges.' Hist, of Ely Ca- 2 Thomse Caii, 1'indi<-i,c Antiquit. thedral, p. 177. See also Wharton, Acad. Oxon. n 334, ed. Hearne. Ant/Iia 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 Cntnlonm Codicum MSS. qui in Guarini of Verona, with as great Colli-ijii* A it Usque Oxonicnsibns hodie benefit to himself as credit to his adserrantiir. Confecit Henricus O. master; atprcialh/ hi the Greek and Coxe, M.A., Oxonii, 1852. Pars i. 398 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. Old age of Guarino. Leonardo Bruni, b. 1382. uke Hum- mindful of Oxford, and it is not improbable that the splendid quests to e 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- i a ments 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, and a copy of Valerius Maximus. 400 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. and novel habits of thought. The Verrines and Philippics of ^ " 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. Fan of con- As the first half of the fifteenth century drew to its close, stantinople, . .. . 1453 - it became evident that the progress ol the lurkish 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 ito? y flight 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 impor- preceding half century had fortunately already introduced Greek litent 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- Forebodings machus, Pindar, and Oppian 1 . To this array the poor exiles scholars contributed the last instalment of any magnitude, but the Lament of loss was enormous. Quirinus, a Venetian, writing to pope Quiriiius. [ JNicolas 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 Gruber, Grieclienland, vm 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 v ^ 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 8yWu, princes of Germany at Ratisbon, 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 His predic- J J tions falsified a very different future. The light in Constantinople was far j*^?"* 1 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 i 1 Hody, p. 191-2. tur enim Reuchlinns (De Arte Caba- 2 jfo'd. listica, lib. i), "plus illic fnisse dis- 3 'Quin vero constat in urbe Con- cipulorum quam decem millium, e stantinopoli, postquam a Turcis cap- Persia, Grascia, Latio, et Judaismo." ' t:i fuisset, floruisse magno numero Ibid. p. 193. literal-urn non modo aliarum verum 4 Angelus Decembrius, De Litera- etiam Graecarum studiosos. Testa- ria Politia (quoted by Hody). 26 402 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. conduct of the Greek 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 &s ^ e their dull affectation of superiority. They shewed moreov er 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 the ablest among them seem to have despaired of attaining to a complete mastery of the Ian- guage : Bessarion himself says : 'Nostrisimpossibileestaliquidsequali gratia atque Latini in lingua Latina scribere, quantumcumque vel Graeci in Latina, vel Latini in Grseca lingua profecerint. Cujus rei turn "ego turn alii de nostris digni sumus testes, qui Latinam utcumque mediocriter in- telligimus linguam, nil tamen, quod ornatum Latineque compositum sit, scribere possum.' Epist. ad Lasca- 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 * ^ 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 iunc- ture was the celebrated Bessarion, a native of Trapezus but 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 his 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 zeftl. 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, His 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 Graecia oriundus, na- ilia imperia nunquam fuisse corrui- tusque in Asia, utriusque collegit tura, si Bessarion, magni animi at- generosi spiritus semina.' Platin que consilii vir, illis in locis turn Pmit'uyricus, Boerner, p. 82. This fuisset, cum tempestas ilia contra panegyric, which contains much va- non Graecos tantum sed humanum luable material for the life of Bessa- genus exorta eat. Excitasset enim rion, was composed during the life- vir omnium vigilantissimus dormi- time of the cardinal, and gives no entem Graecam, armasset nimio otio facts subsequent to the elevation of languentes animos, ire in hostem his rival, Pius n, to the papal chair. BUOS, et a cervicibus tantam calami- Hody, who had never seen it, speaks tatem avertere quantam passi sunt, of it (p. 152) as a funeral oration ! spe verae et integrae laudis proposita, 3 'Constans est certe, Quirites, compulisset.' Ibid. pp. 84-5. omnium bene sentientium opinio, et * ' Dicebat enim, quod verissimum eorum maxime qui suo periculo ista- est, Mahometauam perfidiam late 262 404 THE HUMANISTS. His conver- ' sion to the western Church. His 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 Eugenius 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 dum religionis nostraa capita inter se dissiderent ; procedatue Spi- ritus Sanctus a Patre tantum, ut Grffici, an a Patre et Filio ut Latini volebant ; his enim controversiis fac- tum, ut ad Mahometanos, partim vi, partim sponte, deficerent populi, dum Christianas religionis principes quid potissimum teneant incertos vident. Hinc amissam esse Antiochenam ec- clesiarn, hinc Hierosolymitanajn, hinc Alexandrinam ; hinc denique omnem ferme Asiam et totam Africam hanc pestem occupasse, et, quod gravius est, Europffi quasdam partes jamjain infecisse ac longius evagaturam, ni, propere sublatis tarn perniciosis con- troversiis ac pulsis Christianas rei- publicaa hostibus, in possessionem veterem labore yigiliis ac sanguine martyrum comparatam, armati cum vexillo crucis pervenerint.' Ibid. p. 86. 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 some- 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, minds of many associated with heresy, and an opposition far Greek be- comes asso- more irrational even than that which the New Aristotle had ^ ^^ 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 Arevropuios. of the few men of learning in the promiscuous throng of ti4sJc?). 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 ire devotes 11 j j , himself to range of knowledge was unusually extended, embracing not improving 1 c thr know- merely grammar and rhetoric but a perfected acquaintance ^t t [ e with the whole course of the trivium and quadrivium 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 e trliari philosophy. Philelphus, Cortesius, and Politian vie ^ s t with- each other in their praises of his services in this field. Plura virorum, says Boerner, after quoting their emphatic i 'disciplinarumcunctarum.quffl tissimns est habitus.' Miscellanea, Cyclicie a Martiano dicuutur, erudi- o. i. Hody, p. 199. 406 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. encomiums, taceo testimonies, quibus de insigni eximiaque J^-^* illius eruditione prcedicarunt. Theodoras 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- His depreda- creasing with every year. had no true knowledge either of tion of Cicero J J ' M a^phiioso- 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 linguce doctrinceque non libenter admittit ista natio. Unlike Chrysoloras 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 sectatoribus 2 ' Et ut homo erat omnium (ut persuaserat, ita ut, quod pene dictu turn quidem videbatur) acerrimus in quoque uefas, pro concesso inter disputando, atque aurem (quod ait nos haberetur, nee philosophicam Persius) mordacilotus aceto, prasterea scisse M. Tullium nee Graecas lite- verborum quoque nostrorum fundita- ras.' Hody, p. 199. tor maximus, facile id vel uobis vel .ENEAS SYLVIUS. 407 marked degree. Their general excellence was rarely called CHAP. v. in question, and they altogether surpassed the versions that ^-i* 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.1482. * 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 hi& 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 tramvolavit 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 O 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 ist ihr Verdienst so wie translates ab eo fuisse ait. Petrus das Bruni's in der Folge durch Argy- Nannius autem, ad verba magis quam ropulos verduukelt worden, iind fur ad sensum, Argyropulum attendisse, ewige Zeiten haben sie alle nicht ipsiusque adeo interpretationes neo gearbeitet.' Voigt, p. 355. ' Diversa fideles nee elegantes esse pronuntiat. et contraria inter se de Argyropuli Attamen accurate interpretandi lau- versionibus virorum doctorum sunt dem illi haudquaquam denegandam judicia. B. Volaterranus eleganter esse, Huetius arbitratur.' Boerner, p. magis quam fideliter Aristotelis li- 149. See also Hody, 208-9. bros eum convertisse censet. Contra a The authority for this is Melanch- ea loach. Perizonius fideliter magis thon; see his Oratio de lohanne Cap. quam ornate eleganterque illos ipsos nione, Declamationes, i 625. 408 THE HUMANISTS. Gregory Heiuiburg. The Italian scholar and German jurist con- trasted. Hepus. 6. 1420. d.1430. the impress of the national genius. Of this movement ^Eneas Sylvius, afterwards pope Pius II, is perhaps entitled to be regarded as the inausrurator. At the time that he became O . O 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 : ' Teutones onmes cancellariaa aptos arbitrantur qui vel civilis vel canonici juris periti dicuntur, aut quos vocant magistros artium, qui praeter garrulam et. loquacem dia- lecticam niViil aliarum artium didi- cere. Florentini eos assurnant, qui- bus Ciceronis et Quintiliani praecepta notissima sunt, poetarum et oratorum imbuti doctrinis, .... atque eos si domi non inveniunt foris quaerunt.' Hist. Friedrich III p. 327, (quoted by Prantl, iv 160.) 2 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!^ll^ slender, strenuously exhorting his scholars to the acquirement s v ^t r olat 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 uudoifvon his famous school, introducing new text-books and discarding &' i9. the old, and remodelling the whole system of instruction, J^ns'"^^^ until the monks of Cologne were ready to denounce him as niethodsoV 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 pj barbarian sloth- fulness, ignorance, poverty of expression and whatever marks arPunlettered 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 manfullv JoimWessei. ? . . b - W20- 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 J the authority doctor too, that he was conversant with three of the ancient of Aquinas, 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 8 . 1 Geiger, Johanii Reuchlin, Ein- et si quid est his incultius, esse nos leituiig, pp. x-xi. Von Raumer, jactitant, exsolvamus, futuramque (i,: 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 tl- 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 <* J dlr? ous r were to be found among either the monastic or the mendicant fraternities. Traversari belonged to the order of the Camul- dules ; Antonio da Blio 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 ists at the ... . ,, . universities, universities, it is oi 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 realis and sermocinalis, or on quidditas, hcecceitas, and formalitas. The realists and nominalists however, now known as the Progress of Antioui and Moderni, constituted the two great parties, and nominalism virsitL" 1 "' at almost 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 2 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 Dis- as our own, ' etiam ilia barbara qure putationum Usu, says, 'Quid est, trans 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 CHAP. v. school of liberal thought, the nominalists had expelled their < - v ' 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 /. , theunier- the introduction of a new culture, but the attitude ^of spfima fa hfl.vft been almost invariably hostile new ltiarnil - to the new learning, and butli nominalists and realists laid asicTe their differences to oppose the common foe. To the Humanists, Prantl observes, two courses were open : they could either insist on a__restqratiocL of the true logic of Aristotle and a general rejection of the misconstructions and unjustifiable additions made by Petrus 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. Logik, rv 151-2. 27 418 THE HUMANISTS. CHAP. v. suspicion of heresy, but was undeniably exposed to the charge -J-^L^ 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.' i e atfaktke The civil law was not, it is true, the weakest point in ans ' 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 vaiu at the a t Padua and at Pa via ; 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 Elegantice, 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 n 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 j '. f. . .,. . . instituted by deity ot the civilians, the jurist retorted by calling in question ^The 30 * the merits of Cicero, the deity of the rhetoricians. HeSSSSS, 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'g 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 straggle been waged after the manner of Valla and his antagonist it would have been as interminable as the controversy concerning uni- versal s. f 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 Poggio ana Symbolum, was unmistakeable. The popular belief in the thecanonists. i i i ... canon law was not less severely shaken by the criticisms 01 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 2 . 1 Voigt, 451-2. 2 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 that encountered in the universities of France and Germany. Son "n Politian, long before his death, must have felt himself master SnlvSes 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 of this 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 Difference in perhaps the different constitution of the respective uni- tionouhe 11 . . TII T respective versities. In the short outline given in our first chapter *Z! atai * offers a of the universities of Paris and Bologna, it will have been p"^^^ noticed that while the constitution of the latter was demo- thefact ' 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 of J ' J the Human- SUCCeSSlVe victories of the Humanists produced an impression fcts. which could not be withstood. One by one the strongholds of mediaeval culture and the idols of mediaeval credulity fell before them. Grocyn, mounting the pulpit at St. Paul's Cathedral, to confess with deep humiliation, tliat the same 1 Letter to Thomat Grey, Opera, in 77. 422 THE HUMANISTS. CUAP.V. long-revered treatise by Dionysius, the genuineness of which i-^ 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 ^1!^-IL bishop of Rochester and, during the first quarter of the ?SK. sixteenth century, the leading spirit in the university of & l iM. (1} ' 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 8 , 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 t 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. master of his college in 1497 : facts which, as his bio- grapher observes, suificientlylmTicate the estimation in which he was held 1 . It may be reasonably inferred that Michaelhouse had throughout enjoyed the benefits of good government and n that its resources had been wisely administered, for not lone 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*. 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 8 , 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 5 . On the other hand, we have nothing to and views attte er indicate that Fisher was, at this time, an advocate of penod " 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 Fisher, i 4. together.' Eiley's Second Report of Cooper, Annals, i 370. the Royal Commission of Historical 3 He was ' presented ' at the Law MSS. Hundred or Leet of the town in 1502, 6 At the survey of the colleges in for having the pavement in front of 1545, conducted by Parker, Redman, the college 'broken and ruinous. 'Ibid. and May, Michaelhouse and Queens' i 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, 1465-78, was charged the benefit of Fisher's administra- with having ' most disgracefully made tion) were the only two where the away with the best cup and the best expenditure was not found consider- piece of silver plate, together with ably to exceed the revenue. See as much money as he could scrape Cooper, Annals, 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 ^-^IIL 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 appty 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 thfctim? 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 year 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,' 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, was the author of an Introduction to Logic and a Com- > Wood-Gutch, n 8. 426 BISHOP FISHER. John Ar^v 1. UK Schools. CHAP.V. mentary on Duns Scotus ; he was also afterwards the first P * ? * I T v-~ 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 Bang's, and physician to the two sons of Henry vn, was also a dialectician of some repute. There is extant from his pen a series of verses on all the HB proposed faeries (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 away. The manuscript still remains in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford*, and may be regarded as a good illustration of the scope of the dialectical practice the schools of those days. Hacomblene, the eighth provost of Bang'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 3 . the commencement in 1479 of the rebuilding of Great St. Hacomblene. Henry Hornebr. is. lil:.' o: :.-. r ::.: i.-.::: mm in the uni- itre " 1 Cooper, Athena, 1 10. * At the commencement of the poem is pasted a slip on which is written in a different hand, Actou Mr* Jo. Argentyn publice habitat in unirtrsi- tate Cantabrigite contra omnes Re- gentes hujus unirenitatis quoad op- positioner, A.D. 1470. (The year is er- roneously given in Nichols's edition of Fuller, as 1407.) The following lines, in the same handwriting as the slip, seem to indicate the ambitions design of the young inceptor: Neu sit turba Regens nostros tacitura per aitnos, | Hinc eanere est animo cariis ludendo cicutis. \ Dulcia plectra mihi tua porrige cantor Apollo \ At Stil- bontis (Mercury) ope mea fistula per- tonet apte. \ Sic mihi erinittts cytha- ram concedat lopas \ Threiciam tit Thelim (? Chelyn) Phebeiu spondeat Orpheus. \ Ac me sifcveat caute lotto vbrre mater \ Exigua ista suis modu- labor carmina rivis { Et relit hue eonferre pedem sacra turba Regentum | Vtferat (?sciat) an motissociem bene carmina nervis. I am indebted to the courtesy of the Bev. E. L. Hicks, M.A., librarian of the college, for the foregoing particulars, and also for two conjectural emendations of the Latin Terse. * See supra, pp. 300-1. TONE OF THE UNIVERSITY. 427 Mary's (a task of forty years) 1 , and other minor improve- ments of the kind, did nothing to stimulate the intellectual life of the university. Nor can we deny that the national experiences of that age were not such as to encourage sanguine sentiments or bold innovations. The early years of Englishmen of that generation had been darkened by 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, when in brighter days he looked back upon these times, * whether it were the continual strifes with the townsmen, 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 view of the matter: 'The mention of St. Mary's mindeth me of church- work indeed, so long it was from the founding to the finishing thereof; as begun May 16th, 1478, when the first stone thereof was laid in the 17th of Edward iv ; the church ended (but without a tower or belfry) 1519, in the eleventh of Henry vui. The tower finished 1608, in the sixth of King James; so that from the begin- ning to the ending thereof were no fewer than an hundred and thirty years.' Fuller-Prickett & Wright, p. 180. 2 ' nesoio quo infortunio, sive CHAP. V. PART II. The pheno- mena of the age not of an inspiriting character. Fisher's de- scription of the prevalent tone of the university. continuis litibus et injuriis oppida- norum (quibus eramus imph'cati), sive diuturna plaga febrium, quibus supra moduni vexabamur, (nam ex literatoribus complures amisimus, et ex ipso doctormn numero decem viros graves et valde erudites), seu tertio bonarum artium fautores et banefactores pauci erant et prope niilli. Sive his sive aliis occasioni- bus, profecto literarnm et studiorum TIC >s prope omnes tasdium cepit : adeo ut multi secuiu cogitarent, quorsum hinc abirent commode.' Oratio ha- bita coram illustrissimo rege H>'n- rico vn, Cantabrigice, A.D. 1506. Lewis, Life of Fieher, App. vui. 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 woi'kmen, might well seem, to the Cam- bridge of those days, to give a tacit sanction to such fl c u"n< r forebodings. But in the mids^ 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, the new Fisher had heard of the great library which duke Humphrey learning in * Ital 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 J^lli- that great glory of early typography, the Florence Homer o les. of 1488 \ a volume whose antique splendour recalls to us the 6. 1424. d. 151L change, so ably touched by a living poetess, that had come HU edition 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 Anting 1483 to the chair of both Greek and Latin in the same city, ]$* and the appearance of his Miscellanea, in 1489, was iustlv His &**- , . , , . 7 htnea - regarded as marking an era in the progress of Latin criti- cism. Theodorus Gaza, the prote'ge' of Bessarion, had died in 1479, after teaching with eminent success at both Rome and Ferrara : to him belongs the honour of having been the first to appreciate the varied excellences of Plutarch and the satiric genius of Aristophanes*. His rival, Georgius Trapez- untius, whose morose vindictive nature contrasted strongly i iu * O 0. 1396. with the modest worth of Gaza, after forfeiting the favour of A 1486> 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 system, attained to considerable popularity at the univer- sities, and was introduced at Cambridge after the fall of Duns Scotus 3 . 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 Graecas literas discern vellent, tion of the typographical beauties huiic scriptorem Attica elegantias of the volume in Maittaire, Anna!. elegantissimum, assidua versandum Typograph. i 183 ; and for facsimile manu commendabat.' Boerner, 128. of p. 1, plate 35 in Humphrey's H ist. * Ibid., 105-20; Hody, 102-35. of Printing. His treatise on logic, De Re Dialec- * ' Pmtarchum Chaeronensem, prae- tica, was often printed: see Georgii ter ceteros scriptores Graecos in de- Trapezuntii De Re Dialectica Liber, liciis habuit Gaza . . . Magnifice idem scholiis loannis Neomagi et Bartholo- ille de Aristophane, comicorum prin- mai Latomi illustratus. Lugduni, BISHOP FISHER. George Her- immymua. Greek gram- mars ofTheo- dorus Gaza, Chalcondv- les, and Con- stantino Las- caris. reflected so much that was most splendid and imposing in the old Hellenic civilization, Constantine 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, Budseus, 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, j which Budseus 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 3 . 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 quse Graeci voces, Latini prsedicabilia, so- lent appellare, deinde de praedica- mentis et de prsedicatorio syllogismo pauca admonebimus, postremo de propositioue hypothetica et syllo- gismo et de definitione et divisione disseremus nee omnino ea prsecepta Contemnemus, quse ejus rei, quam juniores obligationem vocant, vim et naturam complectuntur.' Prantl, Ge- Schichte der Logik, iv 169. 1 Jerome of Eagusa in his Eulogia Siculorum says : ' Postremo in Sici- liam navigans Messanse perpetuam sedem fixit, caeli salubri temperie, soli amoenitate, humanissimis civium moribus allectus, quodque frequens esset navium appulsus Messanam ex Oriente, unde suorum litterse ultro citroque perferrentur facilius.' See Boerner, pp. 170-80. 2 Boerner, p. 195, n. 4; Geiger, Johann Reuchlin, p. 17. 3 ' Id tamen plerique vere nota- runt, provectioribus et Graacarum litterarum gnaris magis illam inser- vire quarn Grseca discere incipienti- bus; et librum primum, brevitate nimia obscuriorem, quartum vero, qui est de strnctura sermonis et va- riis dicendi modis, et in quo Apollo- nium maxime secutus est Gaza, prioribus longe esse difficiliorem.' Boerner, pp. 130-1. 4 ' Hanc eo composuisse videtur f 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, ^^-^ second to it alone in merit 1 . We can hardly be in error in supposing that the master sentiments < , . w 'th which of Michaelhouse and his contemporaries at Cambridge were * yET rww 88 frequently receiving intelligence respecting the new studies i^Sd&lf that were slowly fighting their way in the continental uni- Ca 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 , 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 3 . The scientific f c r e pS S mi n 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 nation! decline. Machiavelli, no squeamish censor, openly declared Testimony of . f. . J . . Machiavelli that Italy exceeded all other nations in irrehgion and de- and pravity 4 . 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, consilient anditorum snornm Grro- Const. Lascarissibi jure snovendicat.' cas literas ab ipso discentium con- De Ratione Studii (quoted by >Hody). Buleret utilitati, ita videlicet com- * Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Re- paratum, ut et plenior sit 'Eporn)- naissance in Italien, p. 404. naffi ChrysoloraB et intellectu facilior * Ibid., 841-65. See also Von institutionibus Gazse.' Ibid. p. 187. Raumer, Geschichte der Padagogik, 1 ' Inter Grsecos grammaticos ne- i 55-6. mo non primum locum tribuit Theo- * Discorsi, i 12 (quoted by Burck- doro Gazse, proximum mea senteutia hardt, p. 342). 432 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. o f v i ce everywhere in honour 1 . To facts like these, that PART II * * could not but awaken the alarm of the more earnest, and con- Feeiingsot scientious leaders of the university, must he added those porters of the apprehensions which aroused the hostility of a far more traditional rr > 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 BO 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 Gahrjjngszeit der Italiener, of Lorenzo ; and the scheme of go- wahrend sie sich den Blick auf an- vernment that he drew up during dere Nation en, 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 t^oVhe" scholars, is the presence of a copy of Petrarch's letters in the u^Humln- original catalogue of the library of Peterhouse, of the year bridge. *" 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 Remediis utriusque Fortunce. The manuscript treatise by * Petrarch at was the property of one Robert Alne, who, ill 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 3 . 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 hos, qui in altercatio- nomini ossibusque sufficiet!' Eiiif.t. nibns et cavillatiouibus sophistic-is Familiar, i 57J. totum vitae tempus expendunt seque 8 See supra, pp. 324, 370. inanibus semper quaestiunculis ex- * See Paper by Mr. Bradshaw in agitant, et prffisagium meum de Cam. Ant. Soc. Com. n 239-40. omnibus habeto : omnium nempecum * See supra, pp. 323-4. ipsis fama corruet, unum sepulchrum 28 434 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. mastery, gathering consolation from the placid stoicism - P ^ 1 "^' preached by the great Florentine. If to such rare indications aims Aube- as the foregoing, we add that there was an Italian, one Cains rums lee- r u e7encein Auberinus, resident in the university, writing Latin letters the umver- Qn f orm j occasions 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. Fisher at We 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- He attracts ance at court, and in his official capacity Fisher was sent the notice * motiler k Mir- down to Greenwich where the royal court was frequently te^ofRtek 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, ^un'of her ' " Dee( ^ sav nothing of so great a name : she was daughter of ancestry. 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, Annals, i 240; Athena, i 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 ~ P - E J-1'- year 1497 he was appointed her confessor. It was an aus- J^ t rf a r picious conjunction for Cambridge; for to the wealth and C0nfe880r - 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, ter. rcharac " ' 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 2 .' His promotion at court served still further to recommend fj s v.er elect- Fisher to the favour of his university, and in the year 1501, Joi? ceII r ' when he had already commenced D.D., he was elected vico- chancellor. In the same year that the countess appointed ^J,"* 1 ,^ 011 'him heT~e"onfessor (though how far her design is attributable p r a ^^J. to his influence is uncertain) we find her obtaining a royal slup> 1503- 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. 4 Cooper, Annals, i 247. 2 Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 5. 6 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, anu. 1497.' ing a formal foundation according to Wood-Gutch, ii 828-9. law by her charter, bearing date on 282 436 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. the absence of any assigned motive, it is not difficult to ^j^IL 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 The revenues reputation for sanctity, and its enormous wealth, might be entrusted to * . West a in1ns y ter f 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- The salary trusted 1 . The salary of the reader must have seemed a liberal the office, one in those days, for it amounted yearly to 13. 6s. 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 The subjects against a perfunctory discharge of the specified duties. Each chosen by . ** * 1-1 the lecturer reader was bound to read in the divinity schools hbere, soi- to be subject t * hsc ~ fe**to* f j & t aperte, to every one thither resorting, without fee or o th er 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. vii 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.' Wood-Gutch, n 826. she had, or did then, give divers 1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 7. tionofthe authorities. 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 v '> the eighth of September, but to cease in Lent, if the chan- bVgfveT 1 *' cellor should think fit, in order that during that season he and dlyln term, j. 7. -77 -7- 7- TT atld a ' 80 ' n his auditors might be occupied in preaching. He was not to the long va- cease from reading in any term for more than four days, The time of unless licensed for reasonable cause, to be approved by the given to ; l preacliing. 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 7 77 111 /. i f to be biennial, take place biennially, on the last day of the term before the >" id vested m * the doctors. long vacation, in the assembly house, the electors being the j^^S. chancellor or vicechancellor, and all doctors, bachelors, and {j[y. ofdivi ~ 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 ? isher the first profea- first election to the lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity sor - 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, nisgucces- 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 or shall be discontinued during Lent, in order that both the !*<* preaching at reader and his class may devote themselves to preaching, is 8 *"* 04 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 Lollardism. Consequent rarity of 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, 1 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 2 . 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 Meander, Church History, (Clark's Series), ix 7881. 2 'Also Lincoln sayeth in a sermon that begynneth, Scriptum est de Le- vitis : " Yf any prieste saye he can- not preache, one remedye is resigne he uppe his benefyce. " ' See A com- pendious olde treatyse shewynge howe that we ought 'to haue the scripture in Englysshe^ Arber's ed. of Eede me and be not wrothe, p. 176. 3 Blunt, Hist, of the Reformation, c. 4 ; Latimer, Sermons, i 182. THE MARGARET PREACHERSHIP. 439 mon 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, A ? ificial and J ' extravagant there were fifty who could discuss its moral, anagogical, and the^re'adiing figurative meaning, who could twist it into all kinds of un- m 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 Alton's de- scription of the Cambridge of these days, not inaptly described its young II^Xis scholars as men who when they had ' once superciliously of lus y ' 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 t ^^ s a had hitherto been rare and ineffectual. We find in the year Fwuie- 1446, one Thomas Collage bequeathing forty pounds for the Thom'aTcbl- 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 low ebb* ; while in 1503, pope Alexander VI, in response to a special application, Buiiof Alex- issued a bull, empowering the chancellor of the university isoa* v 1 Utopia, ed. Arber, pp. 153-7. giana of Italy in his day, is worthy a A Replycacion agaynst certayne of note : ' Erant olim hujus scientiaa yong Scholers abjured of late, etc. [theologiae] professores; hodie, quod Skelton-Dyce, i 206. These lines, it indignans dico, sacrum nomen pro- is true, were really aimed, some fani et loquaces dialectic! dehones- twenty years after the foundation of tant ; quod nisi sic esset, non htec the lady Margaret preachership, at tanta tarn subito pullulasset seges the young Cambridge Reformers: inutilium magistrorum.' DeEemediis but they describe with perfect ac- utriusque Fortuna;, p. 45. curacy the ordinary theological train- 8 Cooper, Annals, i 198; Wood- ing of the time* Petrarch's cor- Gutch, 1 596. responding criticism on the theolo- 440 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. yearly to appoint under the university seal, twelve doctors or >-^-J- 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 Market wandering and fainting for want of the shepherd's care. The shi P- 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, Double aim that this endeavour was a direct anticipation of like efforts revive the on the part of the most enlightened reformers of his own and practice, formtiuT ^ e succeeding generation, from moderate Anglicans, like preaching 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 Testimony of Erasmus, whom he incited to the composition of his treatise Erasmus. 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 2 .' Regulations By the regulations now given in connexion with the new of the J ip. foundation, the preacher was required to deliver six sermons 1 Cooper, Annals, i 260. 2 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 ^^ 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, ceteris 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 , ITT 1 fixed at ten pounds per annum, payable by the abbat and made trien- convent of Westminster 1 . On the whole, looking at the scope of these several Fisher's 11 claims to be designs of the countess and her adviser, the provision for regarded as a reformer. 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 lie is elected grow in favour. In the same year that the foregoing preach- the univcr- ership was founded, he was elected chancellor of the univer- n n""ated 1 Cooper, Annals i 273-4. 'The in English to the university. ' Wood- preacher,' says Wood, 'was pro- Gutch, n 827. bably the ouly person that preached 442 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. sity, and at nearly the same time was promoted to the PART II v '* bishopric of Rochester. The circumstances under which he Rochester, 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- _ ... . succeeded to ^ nan Fisher himself, when, without solicitation or expectation the bishopric. on ki s own part, as yet 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 Fitzjames (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 with the 6 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 ' Quippe qui paucos annos habu- nibus liquido constar.et illorum causa erim, qui nunquam in curia obse- id factum esse . . Te nullius aut viri quium praestiterim, qui nullis ante aut feminaB precibus adductum ut dotatus beneficiis. Et quam ob rem id faceres asserebas.' Lewis, Life ego ad episcopatum assumerer? Nihil of Fisher, n 270. profecto aliud nisi ut studiosis om- 2 Wood, Annals, u 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- jundersin nificence of nearly all founders of great institutions in these these time8 " 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 Sec snpra, p. 59, note 4. 444 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. the souls of the countess and certain of her relations. While PART ii. res p ec ti n g ki n g 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 pounds 1 .' But the prayers of the secular clergy were never with tiie so highly prized as those of the regulars, and over the mind Westminster. O f ^g 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 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 i 1 "^. swelling the coffers soon to be plundered so mercilessly 3 , was given to the foundation of two societies, which, after having graced the university for more than three centuries with 1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 30. Nothing shows more clearly the hold 2 Baker-Mayor, p. 59. which the Abbey had laid on the af- 3 ' 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, Memorials 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- ^-J- fulness. The foundation of God's House, as a school of grammar History of God s House under the government of the authorities of Clare and in the from its fouu- UlillOU. 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 Designer 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 rftteiocMar. ' 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 8 . Such was the foundation Design of the which the lady Margaret, acting under the advice of Fisher reJ ' 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 vulfjariternuncupatumGod- * Cooper, Annah, i 189; Nichols, deihous (given 20 Henry vi), in Docu- Royal Will*, 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- Btood in this parish is said to have ness, Newstead, Sawtrey, and Caus- 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 advowsous 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, B 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);therewouldconsequently of the society of God's House is still appear to have been a resumption. 446 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. of a- double conversion, from monastic uses to those of a ^-^ ' 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' t- College, which now took place, was not improbably designed, ed president T ,. .,. , . of Queens' as Lewis suggests, ss a means of providing him with a College, Apr. 12,1505. suitable place of residence during the erection of Christ's College 2 . The president of the former society, Thomas Wil- kinson, voluntarily retired from his post at the request of the countess 3 , 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 COLL^J s foundation of Christ's College, wherein, after a recital of the 1505. facts already mentioned together with numerous other details, 1 Cooper, Athena, i 23. dear to them all not only on ac- a Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 16. count of his ingenuous humanity, but 3 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 ' The bishop,' they said, 'was a Life of Fisher, p. 20. 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 matris 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 Vl), 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 ^^^' Creyke in Norfolk, with licence to assign the same to this Mar s 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 advowson of Manobre in Pembrokeshire, which 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'a 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. BISHOP FISHER. other be- f;u.-i- to the college, Her second visit, with in 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 tyrne 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 5 ; 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 Walsmgham. He was met, in the first instance, at three ' miles 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, Annals, i 275. 9 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 Lento, lentt! "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 clerum from Dr Ceilings.' Fuller Prickett & Wright, p. 182. THE ROYAL VISIT. 449 the university according to their degree. As the' monarch passed along he stooped from his saddle to kiss the cross borne 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 P sh f r ' tion to King 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- His excessive 7 . , , 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 thei 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 of some of the most extravagant fables respecting the origin of the university. 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 ritabimus*. 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, Fisher's ac- Fisher's acknowledgement of the benefactions he had himself mentofthe received at the royal hands; and finally the oration closes favours he w ith a Devout prayer that length of days, an undisputed succession (prince Henry appears to have been standing at 1 Cooper, Athena, 1 14. generally been regarded as trust- 8 Gaguinus was an accepted au- worthy. See Potthast, Eibliotheca thority at this time. He was the Historica Medii jEvi, ed. 1862, 240, author of De Origine et Gestis Fran- 325. Erasmus speaks of him in the corum, a chronicle of French history highest terms, ' Bobertus Gagui- from the time of Pharamond down nus, quo uno litterarum parente, an- to 1491, and held a chair of rhetoric tistite, princrpe, Francia non injuria in the university of Paris. His ac- gloriatur.' Opera, HI 1782. count of contemporary history has 8 See supra, 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 proce- ,, . , . . i i . ion through the procession moved on ; it appears to have made a kind the t ' m - 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 iiir in attends the 1 he chapel there, commenced halt a century before, was at v> The fellow of Jesus College is required to swear, ' I will ^ n s s e t &g . hold and maintain inviolate all and each of the statutes and P ensations - 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 perpetunm quantum in me crit ab aliis teneri socium hujus collegii electus, ad- et observari faciam, etc.* Ibid, in missus et institutus, juro ad haeo 103. sancta Dei evangelia, per me cor- a * nullam ullo tempore adver- poraliter tacta, quod omnia et singu- BUS aliquod statutorum Fundatricis la statuta et ordinationes hujus col- nostrse sive adversus hoc juramen- legii absque omni cavillatione, aut turn meum dispensationem impetra- mala aut sinistra interpretations, bo, nee curabo impetrari, neque ab quatenua ipsa me concernunt, in- aliis impetratam acceptabo ullo mo- violabiliter tenebo et observabo, et do.' Ibid, in 194. 456 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. same, but in a subsequent clause of the oath administered at PART II. v ' 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 jb?tuu ent if obtained by others.' It is to be observed that this latter sta"ute"of clause has a precedent in the fellowship oath administered at lege. King's College (which in dean Peacock's opinion Fisher had taken as his model) 1 , 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 2 , 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 3 , 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 rafced'bv dean Peacock's view we are consequently here presented with ' 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. the statutes of this college to effect p. 103. or to authorise such alterations as 3 Early Statutes of St. John's Col- time and other circumstances might lege (ed. Mayor), pp. 306 and 600. render necessary' (p. 99). This 3 ' In Caius, Corpus, Downing, does not quite agree with the con- Trinity Hall, Catherine Hall, it is elusion of the final statute, chapter the queen in council or in a court o-f 48; where we read, ' Et reservamus equity. In Peterhouse, Jesus, Mag- item nobis auctoritatem mutandi et dalen, Sidney, Emmanuel, the visit- innovandi quaecunque statuta priora ors, as representing the founders aut alia adjiciendi pro nostro arbitrio and deriving from them peculiar cum expresso consensu magistri et jurisdiction and authority, would sociorum priedictorum. ' Documents, either be competent to sanction such in p. 212. In the oath taken by the changes, or at all events to authorise master he again swears to observe an application to the queen in coun- all 'ordinationes et statuta jam cil or in a court of equity.' Peacock, edita sive inposterum edenda.' Ibid* p. 101. Dean Peacock observes with in 187 8. reference to Christ's College, ' There * Ibid. p. 96. is no power expressly reserved by 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 ^- '* 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 V 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 applicable to The clause . , i T , originally the prae-Reformation period, and we are consequently under aimed at 1 dispeiisa- the necessity of enquiring what may be supposed to have i^ e frow 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 Obligor 1 Ibid. p. 97. 458 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. tionis qua Magister sive Gustos obligabitur: and by this statute ^^-_ the master is required to execute a bond for the payment of the^to^ 1 ^200 to the provost of King's and the master of Michaelhouse. minfs t ter a ed' So long however as he abstains from obtaining liter as aliquas of Christ^ r apostolicas dispensatorias 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 ? fthe /fu ten ' subsequent to that Act, when of course the oath became tion of the sub u sequ n ent a l most unmeaning, and, as we learn from Baker, who found SeHtotutes. many of these bonds among the archives of St. John's, the name of the king was inserted instead of that of the pope*. 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 Documents, in 188; see also after altered for the King, or else the Early Statutes of St. Jo hn's, p. 64. bonds run in general expressions.' J ' 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,' servance 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- indirectly from the pope, the court low was supposed to be debarred of Rome, 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 was soon STATUTES OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE. 459 retention of this clause down to the reign of Victoria, that CHAP. r. suggested by the above writer would certainly appear to be v~- - 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 (disdpuli scholares), The scholars: we find that they are to be students of promise, as yet neither c'entiy m- . * structedin bachelors nor in holy orders, able to speak and understand the Latin tongue, and intending to devote themselves to a literature (bonas artes), and theology, and the sacred profes- theology ' 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 Th e canon the canon or civil law or to medicine, and the master is and media* 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 convivce, as they are also Pensioners to termed, is here first provided for ; and it is required that "ho are of ' good cbaruc- special vigilance shall be exercised in admitting only such as ter - are probatce vitce et famce 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 i T i lecturer ap- daily in the hall ; one on dialectics or sophistry, another on pointed. logic, a third on philosophy, and a fourth on the works of His lectures 9 mi to include the poets and orators . Ihe other provisions, it is to be "^'"p * from the noted, also make a much closer approach towards bringing the college course into rivalry with that of the schools. 1 Peacock, Observations, p. 98. bitrio relinqnimus quoad ipsi condu- * ' Quern librum vero in quaque cibilius auditorio fore judicaverint.' harum facultatum sit expositurus, et Documents, HI 201. qua hora, magistri et decannrum ar- 460 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. There are to be ' oppositions ' every Monday and Wednes- ^^^i, 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 be given in foregoing, 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. ^ n tue statute relating to the visitor, Joannes Roffensis tor for life, episcopus, nunc universitatis 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. . i 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 these C retric- 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 Documents, in 203, 208, 201, 209. J 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' ^^-L* 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 sequentiy prescribed in commons at St. John's, and maintained it, notwithstanding orstToh^, the general rise in prices, in the revisions of the code of the edb FUJ^?" latter foundation which he instituted in the years 1524 and hia r iiff. ou 1530 2 . Long after Fisher's death, in the year 1545, the S^nhi, fellows of the same society found that this compulsory eco- frugahty - 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 8 .' The university had scarcely ceased to congratulate itself Proposed on the foundation of Christ's College, when it became known oTst John's College, by that the lady Margaret was intent on a somewhat similar tneiadyMu- design in connexion with the ancient Hospital of the Bre- The Hospital thren of St. John. In this case however the original stock threnofst . 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, Early 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 16d. ; 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 8 Early Statutes (ed. Mayor), pp. was not increased; insomuch that 153, 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 Fisher, 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 luhe n c d om- n number 1 . But with the commencement of the sixteenth oTThe^ix 11 -* century, under the misrule of William Tomlyn, the condition tury. 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 1 . Such being the state of affairs, the bishop of Ely, at this it proposed time James Stanley, stepson to the countess, had nothing dissolution. J> r 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- Endowments adequate to the design of the countess, who proposed to erect garetfoVuJT on the same site and to endow a new and splendid college, new college. an( j 8 ^ Q accordingly 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- fent ' 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. Is. what he calls 'a middle computation,' lOd. : those of the priory to 256. at 300, has placed them too high. 11*. 10|d. (Cooper, Annals, i 370.) * Baker-Mayor, p. 60. DEATH OF THE LADY MARGARET. 4G3 mother's petition in a ' very tender and affectionate ' manner, CHAP. v. but, as Baker informs us, ' his sight was so much appayr'd ' ^^ ^ 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 Apr Y 2 Vl 09 - J Death of the side in the great abbey. Erasmus composed her epitaph 1 ; ^j^fl" Skelton sang her elegy 8 ; 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 3 .' 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, p in thrilling tones and with an emotion the genuineness of [ her funeral sermon. 1 MABGABETJE. RICHE- magni, qnem locus iste fovet ; | Quern MONOID. SEPTIMI HEN- locus iste sacer celebri celebrat poly- RICI. MATBI. OCTAVI. AT- andro, | Illius en genetrix hac tumu- LE. Qv.ra. STIPENDIA latur hnmo ! \ Cui cedat Tanaquil CONSTITVIT. TBIB. Hoc. (Titus hanc super astra reportet), I COENOBIO. MONACHIS. Cedat Penelope, cams Ulixis amor ; | ET. DOCTOBI. GBAMMATI- Huic Abigail, velut Hester, erat pie- CES. APVD. WYMBOBH. tate secunda : | En tres jam procerea PEBQ : ANGLIAM TOTAM. nobilitate pares ! DmNi. VEBBI. PBJECONI. etc. etc. DVOB. ITEM. INTEBPRE- Skelton's Works, by Dyce, 1 195. TIB. LITTEBAB: SACBAB: * Dean Stanley, Historical Memo- ALTEBI. OXONIIS. Ax- rials of Westminster Abbey, p. 164 : TERI. CANTABBIGI.E. ' More nojble and more refined than VBI. ET. COLLEGIA. DVO. in any of her numerous portraits, her CHBISTO. ET. IOANNI. effigy well lies in that chapel, for to DISCIPULO. EJUS. STBUX- her the King, her son, owed every- IT. MOBITUB. AN. DOMINI. thing. For him she lived. To end M.D. ix. in. KAL. IVLII. the Civil Wars by his marriage with ' 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 Bororum, | Et Margaretam collacry. was always "Margaret Richmond." mate piam; | Hac sub mole latet 16 it?, 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^IL 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 irerexecu- 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 charterer and Hugh Ashton, clerks. On the ninth of April, 1511, the founda- tion of ST. the executors proceeded to draw up the charter or the JOHN'S COL- . * LBGB, 1511. 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 liber alibus 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 *br receive lands under the same name. At Robert 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 2 .' Of the above-named executors, the four laymen appear 1 The Sermon has been twice tury by Baker, and in the present by edited ; in each case by fellows of Dr Hymers. St. John's College : in the last cen- a Baker- Mayor, p. 68. ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 4G5 to have taken little or no active interest in the scheme. CHAP. v. Lovell, described by Cavendish in his Life of Wolsey as ' a .*^ R J^ very sage counsellor and witty 1 ,' was probably well able to Loveii. 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 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 Asuton. 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 ^"Jl^;* the dishonest rapacity of a few and the indifference of many, " n h ' Uher - 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, together with those of the hospital, amounted annually to nearly 500, an income second only to that of King's in the ElvenuJX- list of college foundations. It was well known however that tffe 1 Cavendish, Life of Cardinal * Ibid, i 527. Wolsey (ed. Singer), p. 71. * Baker-Mayor, p. 78. * Cooper, Memorials, i 30. 30 466 BISHOP FISHER. Apparent contradic- tiou in the original licence. Bishop Stanley opposes the dissolution of the lloa- pital. His 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 aversenessto study; but with so splendid a prize as a bishopric 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 62. ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 467 within his reach, it was necessary that he should prove CHAP. v. himself not totally illiterate, and when a student at Paris he >_^ * 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 execu- TWTl 1 11 * rS Oxtail was obtained. When it arrived it was discovered that ? bul1 fron Rome. certain omissions and informalities rendered it absolutely " nugatory, and application was made for a second. The latter A second was fortunately drawn up in terms that admitted of no taine 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 3 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- * 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 8 . 472 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. factor of his race in future times will do well to ponder, ere PART 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 occasions 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 .' ERASMUS. The presence of Erasmus in Cambridge in the year 1506, a. 1536. 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 His second details; but, either in the year 1509 or 1510, he repeated his visit to Cam- . . -IIP i5 r io se ' 1509 ~ visit > anc * resided for a period of not less than four years. His lengthened sojourn at the university on this occasion, is object of his 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 Seebohm, Oxford Reformers, 465 s . 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- 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 areum- all examine the circumstances that led to Erasmus's selec- ied"o e his *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, to Louvain 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 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 ' Quae semper in re theologica litterarum genere, quod sibi propo- non aliter principem tenuit locum suit, semper primas tenuit.' Letter quam Romana secies Christian re- to Vivcs, Ibid. HI 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 1^-J. we have already had occasion to note, was no longer what she had once been. Lou vain 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, e ntirely 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 2 . 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 ITALY, 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 3 ; 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 De V Organisation de VEnseignemcnt, etc. p. 2. 3 ' Equidem faveo glorias Italije, vel ob hoe ipsum, quod hanc ffiquio- rem experiar in me quam ipsam pa- triam.' Letter to Wm. Latimer (1518), Opera, in 379. 'Exosculor Italiae candorem, quas favet exteromm in- geniis cum ipsi nobis invideamus.' Letter to Bartholinus, Ibid, in 635. See also his letter to More in 1520, in 614-5. 4 ' Gallus aut Germanus cum Italis, imo cum Musuri posteris inire cer- tarnen, quid nisi sibilos ac risum lucrifacturus ?' Letter to Ambrosius Leo, Ibid, in 507. 1 ' Videbant enim Angli inter pro- fessores bonarum litterarum in tota academia Parisiensi nullum existere, qui vel eruditius posset, vel fidelius docere consuesset.' Ehenanus, quoted by Knight, p. 13 n. 1. 2 'Au commencement du xvi e siecle, 1'universite de Paris comptait peut-itre plus d'etudiants qu'elle n'en avait jamais eu ; mais elle avait perdu sa puissance et sa grandeur. Au lieu d'etre le se'mi- naire de la chre'tiente', elle tendait a devenir une institution purement nationale. La reforme de 1598 ne fit que sanctionner des changements accomplis depuis un siecle.' Thurot, 1*7- J* ERASMUS. 475 from expressing his envy at the lot of one who could look CHAP. v. forward to passing his life in that splendid city, surrounded ^-^-^ by the learned and the noble 1 . 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 Barbarus among her own sons, Buda?us 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 medieval 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 8 . 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 : 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- iii 507. pullulascat Paganitas.* Letter to 3 See his Ciceronianus. Gertildinii BflxiusT^pera, in 1119. 3 ' Suspicor istic esse d\\ov\ovs, ' Unus adhuc scrupulus habet ani- quos intra sinum urit, quod nego mum meum, ne sub obtentu priscfe quicquam esse facundum, quod non litteraturse renascentis caput erigere sit (Jhristianum... 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 * Jortin, i 31. 476 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. V. PART II. OXPOED. Friends of E- rasmusat 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 ' Nnsquam est academia, quse modestiores habeat juvenes, minus- que tumultuantes, qoam hodie Lova- nium.' Letter to lodocus Noetius, Opera, m 409. 1 ' Ceternm illud saepe mecum ad- mirer, quum omnes ferine totius orbis academiae, veluti resipiscentes, ad sobrietatem quandam componant eese, apnd solos Lovanienses esse, qui tarn pertinaciter obluctentur me- lioribus literis ; prsesertim quum nee in hoc sophistico doctrinae genere magnopere praecellant.' Letter to Ludoricus Vices (A.D. 1521). Ibid. ni 689. 3 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 MSS. 6989, i 7; Brewer, Let- ters and Papers, Hen. mi, m 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 dicitnr) sten- torea, fremunt aliquando ad spumam 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 (nt ita loquar) ex omni parte butyratus: a dinner without butter would be thought monstrous. ' Ecce descrip- simus tibi felicitatem Teutonico- rum ! ' See also Ascham's very simi- lar testimony, Scholemaster (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- v '* 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- jj )a or er h?s~ ference was the removal or death of most of his former o^ori urnt 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 outline of the history of the it will be necessary to turn aside tor a while, to trace out introduction of- Greek into tbe successive steps whereby the study of Greek had, in JnT'lS^eenth the preceding century, again become planted on English soil century - 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 wiiiiam sii- and singularly exclusive foundation of All Souls, Oxford, AUQS. 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 studiesGreek is stated, he formed the acquaintance of Politian, and forth- Fti with placed himself under his instruction 8 . From this 1 Life of Erasmus, p. 123. thority of Johnson. If, as Anthony a ' Ecce subito illi pros oculis noc- Wood implies, Selling was a fellow tes atque dies observabatur Italia, at All Souls at the time that Linacre post Grseeiam, bonorum ingeniorum 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 5 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 J[^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 ThouMu his pupils was Thomas Li nacre. From Selling, Linacre ;. : -jf;; 4 - received his first instruction in Greek, and when, at the Tt^jMipa of a g e Q twenty, he in turn went up to All Souls, Oxford, 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 14&4 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, nd of viteiii 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, and he now gained He ftcemnpa- permission for Linacre to accompany him on his journey. On his arrival in 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 gome 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. 5. Wood, Hist. Becomes* of 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 he was occupied ; and from this casual interview sprang up a cordial and lasting friendship between the Makes the ac- _ , . , * , ., * quaintance of young English scholar and the noblest Italian scholar of the uermoiaus Barbaras at period, Hermolaus Barbaras. It became Linacre's privilege ltome - 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 f results of in every way probable that, from this intercourse, Linacre their subse - * J r _ quent inter- 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 by his accounts at Oxford, proved more potent than the ex- at'oxfolS on Grocvn, l,ily, ample of Selling. Within a few years three other Oxonians, and 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 niffcrcnt can- Oxonians, the revival of Greek learning in England is the title of i- i i '? restorer of undoubtedly to be attributed; but the individual claims of re< * ^- any one of the four to this special honour are not so easily lan(L to be determined. That Grocyn was the father of the new study, is in Stapleton's opinion incontestable, inasmuch as 480 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. he was the first who publicly lectured at Oxford on the - P ^ R *^> 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 8 . 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 ^ .... . friends. 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 Gibbon's 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 ' Kecens tune ex Italia venerat ciplinarum orbem non miretur ? Li- Grocinus, qui primus ea estate Grse- nacri judicio quid acutius, quid altius, cas litteras in Angliam invexerat quid emunctius ? Thomas Mori in- Oxoniique publice professus fuerat, genio quid unquam finxit natura vel a cujus sodali Tho. Linaero (Mo- mollius, vel dulcius, vel felicius ? ' rus) Graecas litteras Oxonii didicit.' Opera, in 13. Tres Thonue, in Thomas Mori Vita, 5 Hallam goes to the opposite ex- es, i. treme in describing the statement as s Life of Linacre, p. 152. 'His 'resting on no evidence' (Lit. of translation of the Sphere of Proclus,' Europe, i 6 237): the following passage Johnson adds, ' was the first correct in a letter from Erasmus to Latimer version of a Greek author executed in 1518, can hardly be otherwise un- in this 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 3 Historia Anglica (Basel, 1570), those of Linacre: 'sed ut ingenue lib. xxiv p. 618. dicam quod sentio, si mihi contingat 4 ' Coletum meum cum audio, Pla- Linacrus aut Tonstallus praeceptor, tonem ipsum mihi videor audire. In nam de te nihil dicam, non deside- Orocino quis ilium absolutum dis- rarim Italiam.' Opera, m 379. ERASMUS. 481 Greek when he went to Oxford; it is equally certain on CHAP.V. I'AKT II the other hand, that when heJeft he did not know ~ ( much; considerably less, that is to say, than he knew when Tie ^r" entered upon the duties of instructor in Greek to our own w" 8 know! r university. In the year in which he left Oxford, we find Greek. 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 3 . But his own inde- ciuefly in- . , i . i .. - i Tiii debted to his latigable industry, it is evident, accomplished the mam part own efforts. of the work ; and his expression in relation to the subject, as being himself avToSlSaKTos, clearly shews, as Muller observes, that he was his own chief instructor 4 . During the time that Erasmus was resident at Oxford, Progress of 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 rjated the new study simply because it was an innovation. Linacre, who was r.macre-s J r J translations. Aristotelian to the backbone, and heartily despised the Pla- tonists, was occupied in translating Galen ; while, in conjunc- ^AdGrfficaslitterastotumanimum hoc unum expertus video, nullis in applicui; statimque ut pecuniam ac- litteris nos esse aliquid singGraci- cepero, Grascos primum auctores, tyf&i Letter to Colet, IbuLifrQlT. deinde vestes emam.' Letter to Ja- **^Jortin, i 28. ' Italiam adivimus cobus Battus, Opera, in 27. OrmnitatiH yofimflmnm fiftiiRft, vemra 2 ' Quamquam autem interim rem hie jam frigent studia, fervSnt bella, tracto, fortassis humiliorem, tamen quo maturius revolare studebiinus.' dum in Graecorum hortis versor, mul- To Servatius (Bologna, 1507), Ibid. ta obiter decerpo, injjflgterumusui m 1871. futura etiam eacrisTii litteris. Naui 4 Muller, p. 171. 31 482 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. tion with Grocyn and Latimer, he had conceived the vast de- PAKT II. 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 in 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 sane- * . fourteenth' 16 dox s * u dy, by a decree for the foundation of two professor- ptap^deeree. sn ips of the language, at the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca 3 . 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, somewhereaaJihe fifteentlLcentury, it was discovered that, in subsequent the papal decree above referred to, the provision for the G"eek to the study of Greek had been silently withdrawn, while that for ciementm'es. the three other languages was retained. The subsequent 1 Life, by Johnson, p. 204. cyn's friendship. See his Letter to 2 Grocyn's reputation for orthodoxy a monk, Jortin, n 673. was such, that More, writing in 1519, 3 Thurot, De I 'Organisation de considered it no little proof that VEnseignement, etc., p. 85. Vives, Erasmus was sound in the faith, in De Causis, rv 141. that he had been honored by Gro- ERASMUS. 48.3 commentators on the Clementines had the hardihood to CHAP. v. assert, that Greek had never been included in the original v^ZlL decree that received the pontiffs signature 1 ; but the testi- mony of Erasmus 2 , 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 ., , kntfwn- and that acquaintance was now more easily to be gamed. 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 Theodorus 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 views of emi- . J J . nent Ilunmn- similar writers, but by the tone of thought and occasional tato - 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 regaroj Augustine as anjifc fallible oracle. Vitrarius, that nobTe" Franciscan" in whom, , Erasmus could recognise a genius that might compare with thatofColet, preferred Origen, Arian though he was called, to any of the other fathers 8 ; Erasmus Erasmus. himself, who entertained a decided preference for the Greek theology, declared that Jerome was worth the whole of the 1 Constitutiones Clementina Papa Letter to Christopher Fisher, Opera, Quinti, una cum Apparatu loannis in 99. Erasmus, it is to be noted, Andrea (Venice, 1479); Johannes de speaks of provision being made or/// 1 - Imola,InClementinorumVoluminibu8 nally for instruction in only three Opiilentissima Commentaria (1539), p. languages, of which however Greek 126. was one. 2 ' Quo in loco rursus admirer, quo 3 Muller, Leben des Erasmus, p. consilio Grjecam linguam eraserint.' 146. 312 484 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. Latin fathers ; and even ventured to point out how far, by >t^-lL 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 w he rd to- Greek fathers could fairly be charged with the special heresy b/ e t e he fa op- ers ^ *ke Greek Church, for they had lived and written long posite party, bef^g fo e 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 mediseval 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 spirit of the seventeenth century. The gravamen of the charge against theokf tin con- * nein > in the days of Erasmus, was, that they favored rebellion trasted. 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 Seebohm, Oxford Reformer!, p. 362. 2 Geiger, Johann Eeuclilin, p. 99. ERASMUS. 485 part much closer to apostolic times, and were more nearly CHAP. v. related, not only chronologically but ethnically and geographi- ^* T _|^ cally, to the most ancient Christian Churches ; that some of them, a fact singularly calculated to win the reverence of medieval 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 bitter 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 Ongen or Euse- ermanence 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 pe with the traditions of a thousand years, was not easily to tine-s'hiti'u- 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. ^_i^_ -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 (opapa 0OTTft,TTTOv), 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 evil spirit. Erasmus himself, ardent as was his love of learning, was well-nigh turned back in his youth from the 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 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 1 / It was precisely the same spirit At or eti *> * Dedication to Cardinal Hadrian, Xd3ot$- &uv0vrti* yap cVotrra rot Sort- prefixed to his De Acetntibu* et Or- fidfeiv tavox el, fal _^Ljx 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 of Nor was Erasmus's influence at Cambridge confined to Erasmus on thl^ver* that 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 dullness. He again, on the onlTHan"d7 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 a. 1525. 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 2 . 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 (Johannes Crullius) commen- lin, p. 338. davi codicem, in quo erant Keuch- 3 Cooper, Athenee, i 33-4. linica quae misere desiderabat Boffen- 3 ' Bovillus gnaviter Grsecatur.' sis.' Erasmw to More (A.D. 1517), Letter to Ammonius, in 106. Opera, m 234. Geiger,Johann Eeuqh- 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 ^f, li fellow of King's, whom he styles doctissimus and carissi- mus, 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 8 . Another fellow on the same- foundation, a youth who had but just donned his bachelor's hood, was Robert Aldrich, the juvenis Robert blandce cnjusdam eloquentice, who accompanied Erasmus on ' his famed expedition to Walsinghara, 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 Joimwatson. rf 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 His letter to HMBMBi 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 Elsworth, ' 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. a Ibid, i 87 ; Knight, p. 146. 6 ' Nactus sum sacerdotium intra 8 Kuiglit, p. 144; Erasmus, Pere- septem millia a Cantabrigia, aedes grinatio Religionis Ergo; Cooper, habet pulchras, et mediocriter ad Athence, i 142. victum utile est; porro valet viginti 4 Cooper, Athena, i39, 40; Knight, nostrates libras supra omnia aunna; 32-2 500 BISHOP FISHER. Richard Whitford. Richard Sampson, d. 1654. CHAP. v. fellows of Queens' College, of maturer years, Dr Fawne, his J^-I!^ successor in the lady Margaret professorship, and Richard disi9 Fawne " 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- Gerrd,the 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 2 , 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 prime fere dimi- diata portio fundetur in reparationem domus ; hoc si tibi ant voluptati, aut ulli usui esse potuerit, tuum erit, tibique mecum commune, quomodo et erit quicquid et aliud est meum.' Erasmi Opera, in 1882. 1 Cooper, Athena:, i 22, 79, 119; Knight, p. 43. 2 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 istud non leve mo- mentum habere credimus, ad ejus- modi in perpetuum profligandos er- rores (quod tamen, sine tuas celsitu- dinis ope, efficere non valemus), nem- pe si regia indulgentia concedatur academiffl noetrsB, tret habere biblio- polas, homines probos atque graves, qui sacramento et mulcta graudi ad- stringantur, nullum vel importare vel vendere librum, quern non prius viri aliquot absolutae eruditionis (quos censores huic rei prasficiet academia), talem pronunciarint ut qui tuto ven- datur. Quos turn bibliopolas, quo- niam e re nostra magis erit, alieni- genas esse, sic enim consuletur libro- rum pretiis, summe credimus necessa- rium, ilia uti libertate et immunitate gaudere, quibus indigene tuae fruun- tur, ita provinciali jure donati, ut Londini 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 Brianum,...ac veterem hospitem meum Gerardum bibliopolam.' Opera, in 130. ERASMUS. 501 perhaps the commercial prospects of his own forthcoming CTIAP.V. editions of the Greek Testament and St. Jerome. ^*'-l'- 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 of E. counter to the traditional teaching. The school of theology pTr^ith"" .,,,.,,. . . , ,. , 6J those preva- with which his name is identified, was in direct antagonism k>ntinlli , university to the whole system then m vogue. The historical element ** m in the Scriptures, the existence of which" Fe T cTeariy~o7scemed 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- classical ity of the New Testament Greek and of erroneous quotations from the Septuagint. His estimate of the whole patristic in* estimate literature, again, was almost a complete inversion of that then fathers, accepted at all the universities. Of St. Chrysostom, the ft. n.ryso- 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 theologorum 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 fffXX^/SSip', nt aiunt, conjunctura fuit, these criticisms applied only to writ- eximium fuit, quicquid in aliis per ings falsely attributed to St. Chry- partes miramur ... poterat hie unus Bostom (see Jortin, n 15). In some pro cunctis sumcere Latinis, vel ad of his letters Erasmus speaks of this vitas pietatem, vel ad theologies rei father in terms of high admiration ; cognitionem, si modo integer ao in- see Opera, m 1343, 1432. columis exstaret.' Jortin, H 530,531. * Ibid, in 146. ' iu hoc uno Append. 52. See also Opera, HI 142. 502 BISHOP FISHER. su mury. 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 j. Q j^ subsequent 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 o f mediaeval 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 s . But 1 ' Aperit enim quasi fontes quos- dam, et rationes indicat artis theo- logies.' Opera, m 95. * 'Subinde necessitatem hanc [Z talibm pronunciandi] deplorat sanc- tissimns vir Hilarios handquaquam ignarus quam periculi plenum sit, quam pamm religiosrun, de rebus ineffabilibus eloqui, incomprehensi- bilia scrntari, de longe semotis a captu nostro pronnnciare. Sed in hoc pelago longius etiam provectus est dims Augustinus, videlicet felix hominis ingenium, qnaerendi volup- tate, velut aura secundiore, aliunde alio proliciente. Moderatior est et Petrus Lombardus, qui sententias alienas recitans non ternere de suo addit ; aut si quid addit, timide pro- ponit. Res tandem usque ad impiam audaciam progressa est. Sed veteri- bus sit venia, quam precantur, quos hue adegit necessitas. Nobis qua front e veniam poscemns, qui de rebus longe semotissimas a nostra natnra, tot curiosas, ne die am impiat, more- mta qu&stiones; tarn multa dffini- mus, qua, citra talutis dispendium, vel ignorari poterant, tel in ambiguo relinqui? Doctrina Christi, quae prius nesciebat \oyofuixia.>>, coepit a philosophise praesidiis pendere: hie erat primus gradus ecclesise ad de- teriora prolabentis. Accreverunt opes, et accessit Tis. Porro admixta hnic negotio Caesarum auctoritas, non multum promorit fidei sinceri- tatem. Tandem res dedncta est ad sopbisticas contentiones, articulorum myriades prornperunt. Hinc deven- tum est ad terrores ac minas. Quum- que vita nos destituat, quum jides tit in ore magis quum in animo, qitum solida ilia sacrantm Litteranim cog- nitio nos denciat, tamen terroribus hue adigimus homines, nt credant quod non crednnt, ut ament quod non amant, et intelligant quod non intel- ligunt.' Ibid, in 693, 696. * 'Qui quicquid Lyranus scripse- rit oraculi instar haberi yolunt, tu- eantur ilium in illis locis in quibus ab eo dissentio. Nam in Hugone quaerere quod reprehendas, stultissi- ERASMUS. 503 the most unpardonable offence of all, in the eyes of the CHAP. v. majority of contemporary theologians, was probably the open - ^liL countenance he gave to that bold heresy of the coldly critical Grocyn, respecting the authenticity of the Hierarchy of The Dionysius. Almost alone amid the accepted oracles of the 8lus - 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 ! 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 thfe winter fogs'; he J 1 j i grumbled sadly over the college ale, which aggravated his j 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 tantnm 3 ' pro vino bibimua vappam, et annotavi, sed insigniter absnrda, si quid vappa detenus.' (Ibid, in quo nimirum cautiores redderem eos, 105.) ' Cervisia hnjun loci mibi nullo qui hujusmodi scriptores summa modo placet, nee admodum satis- fiducia nullo judicio legunt.' Ibid. faciunt vim; si possis efficereut uter m 128. aliquis vini Graecanici, quantum po- 1 'Ethic (0 Academiam!), nullns 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 9 ' Nam hie sestivare malim quam 108. hibernate.' Ibid, in 112. 504 BISHOP FISHER. Minor sources of dia- satisfaction. 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 to turn his little university world upside down. Even from 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 5 . His total income, therefore, 1 'Nisi vulgus Cantabrigiense in- hospitales Britannos antecedit, qui cum summa rusticitate summam malitiam conjunxere.' (Quoted by Fuller). a Wright and Jones, Queens' Col- lege, p. 14. * A.sch&m, English Works (ed. Ben- nett), p. 77. 4 An exception to Warham'fr prac- tice, and a deviation from Erasmus's principles, honorable, under the circumstances, to both. See Knight, pp. 158-60. 5 Jortin, i 56; Knight, p. 159; Opera, in 1528-9. The statements in the text are, of course, made under the supposition that these sums were actually paid and that the recipient was not too heavily mulcted by those through whose hands the moneys passed. In a letter written some seventeen years later, he says: 'E duabus Angliae pensionibus debentur quotannis plus minus ducenti floreni, sed ea pecunia ad me pervenit accisa, nonnunquam usque ad quartam partem, interdum et intercipitur. ' in 1292. He was however one of the few foreigners who in the heavy tax imposed on the clergy in 1522 was allowed to pay 1 only as natives did.' Burnet-Po- cock, i 53. To the notice of those who hold up this age to our admira- tion, as one of rough but honest virtues, I would commend the fact 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 -1L literary labours involved a considerable outlay ; notwith- ^ standing therefore these liberal aids, he was always pestering 8ta 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-, to Ammonius, he gave full vent to his distress and despon- b^dg dency. ' For some months past,' he writes, ' I have been living the life of a snail in its shell, stowing myself away in college, anbT~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 a 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 not 1 .' history, not even after the Bestora- turn quoqne solitude est. Sumptns 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 omnia sacra dejerasse. Nondum classes. quinque menses sunt, quod hue me 1 In consequence of this, a grace contuli, interim ad sexagiata nobilea 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 mnltum deprecans ao recnsans. the feast of St Leonard's. Baker, Certum est his hibernis mensibua MSS. xxxni 173; Cooper, Annuls, i tranna. Xi0ot> Kivttv, planeque sacram, 295. quod aiunt, ancoram solverel Si 2 ' Nos, mi Ammoni, jam menses fltl'ccedit, nidntn- -ariquem mihi pa- aliquot plane cochleas vitam vivimus, rabo ; sin minus, certum est hino domi contract! conditique mussamus avolare, incertum quo : si nihil aliud, in studiis. Magua hie solitude : certe alibi moriturus. Bene vale.' absunt pestilentire metu plerique, Opera, in 116. This letter, in the quanquam quum adsunt universi, Leyden edition, bears the date, Nov. 506 BISHOP FISHER. 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 before. 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 g^ 1511. and the reply of Ammonius (in 164), is dateoNov. 24. in the same year. The internal evidence however clearly proves the assigned year to be erroneous, for both letters contain a reference to the epitaph by Carmilianus on the death of the King of the Scots at Flodden, and must consequently have been written sub- sequent to Sept. 9, 1513. Carmili- anus thought himself a master of Latin verse, and to the great amuse- ment of both scholars had made the first syllable in pullulare short. By the expression, quod hue me contuli, Erasmus must therefore refer to his return after one of his journeys to London, which he appears to have visited more than once during his residence at Cambridge; I have ac- cordingly translated the words agree- 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 .^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 countertestt- a letter to Servatius, written in the same year that he left mums in " i n r i 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 * theology at later, to Everard, the stadtholder of Holland, he declares that theuniver- sound theology is flourishing at Paris and at Cambridge N 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 n pie of three col- sixty-fourth year, when his recollections of Cambridge must Ie 8 es - haveBegun 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 men of learning by a weighty eloquence 8 .' 1 'Sunt hie collegia, in quibus 8 'inqnibusnon ea traflantur quaa tantum est religionis, tanta vitro mo- juvenes ad sophisticas paliestras in- destia, ut millam religionem eis pra struant, ad serias functiones frigidoa hac non contempturus, si videas.' reddant et ineptos, aed unde prodeant Opera in 1529. veris disciplinis ac sobriis disputatio- 2 ' Lutetiffi Cantabrigifeque sic floret nibus exercitati, qui graviter evange- theologiffi studium, ttt nunquam alias licoqne apiritu pradicent verbum Dei, teque. Quid in causa ? Nimirum quod et efficaci quadam eloquentia com- sese accommodant seculo alio se flee- mendent eniditorum animis.' Ibid. tenti quod has meliores litteras, vel in 1263. The three colleges, it is vi irrumpere conantes, non repellunt hardly necessary to say, are Queens', nt hostes, sed ut hospites counter ^ChngJ&Bnd SJ ^John's. Wiffire- amplectuntur.' Ibid, in 677. Aspect to his deliberate estimate of 508 BISHOP FISHER. His failure apparent rather than real. His tfovtmi Instrumen- tum. 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 fhe'bmce' 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* of Erasmus, appeared, as is England at large, we can ask for no more favorable verdict than the fol- lowing : ' uhi favore principum reg- nant bonas litterse, viget honesti studium, exsulat aut jacet, cum fu- cata personataque sanctimonia, futilis et insulsa doctrina quondam diraiSfv- TOS ireircu5ev/j.i><>}v.' Letter to Richard Pace (A.D. 1517), Opera, in 237. 1 ' quia ille primus invexit litteras ad nos Graecas.' Stat. Ant, p 112. 2 ' Novum Instrumentum omne, di- ligenter ab Erasmo Eoterodamo re- cognitum et emendatum, non solum ad Grfflcam veritatem, verum etiam ad multorum utriusque linguae codicum, eorumque veterum simul et emendato- rum fidem, postremo ad probatissimo- rum autorum citationem, emendati- onem, et interpretationem, praecipue, Origeuis, Chrysostomi, Cyrilli, Vulga- rii, Hieronyrni, Cypriani, Ambrosii, THE NOVUM INSTRUMENT. 509 well known to every scholar, from the printing press of CHAP, 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 patronage 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 spurious 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 armotati- the authority of both Augustine and onibus quse lectorem doceant, quid qua Jerome : ' Nee intelligunt ad enm ratione mutatuin sit. Quisquis igitur modum aliquoties loqui divnm Hiero- amas veram theologiam, lege, cog- nymum, nee legisse videntur Augus- nosce, et deinde judica. Neque statim tinum, quidocetaptiusdici Inttriiiin-n- offendere, si quid mutatum offenderis, turn quam Testamentum. Idque veris- sed expeude, num in melius mutan- simum est, quoties non de re, Bed do dum sit.' Erasmus preferred the word voluminibua verba ttont. Ham 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, and he Testamenti," nullus erat liber Novi defended his preference by citing Testamenti proditus.' Opera, in 1006. 510 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. entangled with the old Latin version. It was his avowed object 4^-^ 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 asserted by the New Testament of Erasmus 1 V Defects and If from the foregoing general estimate of the influence of errors in the work. 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 2 ; he even shews such ignorance of ancient 1 Preface to Letters and Papers, the following way. Erasmus had vol. ii pp. cclxiv-v. a copy of Theophylact on Matthew, 1 'This was the mention, in the with this title : Tou Qfov- been used in the preparation of the \OLKTOV e^^yijffit elt rb /caret Ma-r0at- text ' (see note 2, p. 508), ' of Volga- ov 'Euo-yyAtoi'. In his haste he took rius, a writer no one had ever heard Qev\a.KTov for an epithet, while for of before. The mistake arose in Bou\7ap/aj he must have read Boi^a- THE NOVUM INSTRUMENTUM. 511 geography as to assert that Neapolis, the port where the CHAP, v, apostle Paul arrived on his journey from Samothrace to Jlt^-IL 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 cut 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-giet- the work, Bullock wrote from Cambridge to inform his old pre- mus; Aug. ii - 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 J T ^ r reception of had throughout steadily promoted the scheme. Warham was > f Initrumeti- emphatic in his praise. Fox, whose opinion on such a{|** 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 mihi longe and under this name Theophylact was gratissimus, utpote qui aliis omnibus quoted in his notes. To make mat- sum tibimultis partibnsdevinctior... ters worse, he attributed to Vulga- ffi^apritgr^oumb^yitJfio^Graeois, rius a reading which is not to be found opTanlque nori fflecEbcriter tuum ad- in Theophylact, and in one place ventum : et hi magnopere favent huio grossly misconstrued him.' See an tuae in Novum Testamentum edition! : article, The Greek Testament of Eras- dii boni, quam eleganti, argutse, ao mws.by R.B. Drummond. Theological omnibussanigustussuaviacpernoces- Bev'iew v. 527. saris ! ' Opera, in 197. 1 ' Tuus in Angliam reditus, pre- 512 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP.V. 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 Leo . x . : "^ Leo x, might alone seem sufficient to disarm the prejudices cepts the de- J dicatlon ' of the most 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 tow- 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 c^JTmln^ry 6 application, which the sarcastic scholar had taken occasion inttrumen- to make (often with considerable irrelevance and generally without necessity) of particular texts to the prevailing abuses The secular of the times. For example, he had progressed no further than the third chapter of St. Matthew, before he contrived and the to find occasion for dragging in a slur upon the whole schoolmen . . aii attacked, priestly order*; in commenting on Matt. xv. 5, he censures 1 ' Wintoniensis episcopus, vir ut * It is when speaking of the MSS. Bcis prudentissinius, in celeberrimo of the Gospels to which he had had co2tu magnatum, quum de te ac tnis access at the College of St. Donatian lucubrationibus incidisset senno, tes- at Bruges. 'Habebat ea bibliotheca,' tatus est omnibus approbantibus, ver- he goes on to say, ' complures alios sionem tuam Novi Testament!, vice libros antiquitatis yenerandae, qui esse sibi commentarioram decem, neglectu quorundam perierunt, ut tantum afferre lucis.' Opera, in 1650. nunc feme runt tacerdotum more* THE NO YUM INSTRUMENTUM. 513 the monks and friars for the artifices whereby they prevailed CHAP. v. on the wealthy to bequeath their estates to religious houses - rather than to their rightful heirs ; in a note on Matt, xxiii. 2, he indulges in a tirade against the bishops; Mark vi. 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 : Erumiu's , -r, , T> 11 1 > reply to Hal- and Erasmus commences by saying, in response to Bullock s i*. Aug. 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 numnwrum tentius cepisset, ingenue coram audi- quam volumimtm.' (Quoted by Jortin, torio fassus est, sibi verso calpulo non ii 206.) videri id opus esse Dionysii Areo- 1 ' Ante complures annos, nt mem- pagitro.' 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 nulla disciplina non exquisite antagonists, to maintain that Gro- doctus et exercitatus, auspicaturus cyn's first view was the right one ! Londini in ade Divo Paulo sacra a Epist. 148, Opera, in 126. This enarrationem Ccelestis 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 reopagitffl, veheinenter destomachans contents will shew that it is a reply in eorum impudentiam, qui dissen- to Bullock's letter of Aug. 13, 1510. tirent. At idem priusquam opens Ibid, in 197. 33 514 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. among so delightful a circle of friends, but at present he v-^Lj. is looking forward to wintering at Lou vain. 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 OeoXoyiKwrarov) 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 attacks grudsring at their own profit ! Of what race can they be, his opponents & B withacri- wno are by 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 self by c l h - im turns to the new translations of Aristotle as his most per- P^c'eS" 16 tinent illustration. 'What detriment,' he asks, 'did the w- writings of Aristotle suffer, when Argyropulos, Leonardo totie. ' 13 ~ Aretino, and Theodorus Gaza brought forth their new ver- 1 ' Quod genus hoc hominum, usque thos, aut in conciliabulis fori, pro- adeo morosum, ut officiis irritentur, disse novum opus, quod omnibus the- quibus mansuescunt et feras belluas ; ologis, seu cornicibus, oculos tentet tarn implacabile, ut eos uec tarn configere : ac mox meris conviciis in- multffl apologiae lenire possint ? immo sectantuf* et auctorem qui tantis (quod est impudentius), isti damnant vigiliis studiis omnium prodesse stu- ac lacerant librum, quern ne legerint duerit, et librum, unde poterant pro- quidem, alioqui nee intellecturi si ficere.' in 126. legant. Tantum audierunt inter cya- I THE NOVUM INSTRUMENTUM. 515 sions ? Surely the translations of these scholars are Dot to be CHAP. v. suppressed and destroyed, simply in order that the old inter- ^!^L preters of the Aristotelian philosophy may be regarded as omniscient ?' He then falls back, reasonably enough, on the Rcf crstothe argument ad verecundiam : his work had gained the warmest approval of Warham ; Capito, professor at Basel, and Berus, Tirea 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 compares the * Cambridge of young students are attracted to these studies, the schools ^ A will become deserted. Why do they not rather reflect on ^ 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" (as they call them), and those old exercises out of Aristotle, and qucestiones taken from Dims 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 J plains this, as referring to ' Alexander of the Doctrinale Pueroriim, for some de Hales ', called doctor.irrefragabilis, centiU'lUB tliUUlUUlTommou text-book Expositio in libros Metaphysicae Aris- on grammar. It was a compilation totelis.' Jones and Wright (Queens' from Priscian, and in leonine verse Coll., p. 13) say, ' the middle-age (see Warton, Hist, of Eng. Poetry, a poem of Walter de Castellis.' Nei- 3-17, n.). Compare also the follow- ther of these, I think, is right, and ing, 'Qui prater commentaries in MrDemaus who, in his Life of Lati- Alexandria* not f r *ke P ur P ose f studying the Sentences, nor wKbtwf. m d ee d w ith a view to any other single thing save only the dilemmas of qucestiones. 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 Believes DOS- corresponding diversity of fate awaits us, I fancy, in the h t .more future. Time, while it deprives them of the popular regard, may perhaps bestow it on me. This do I confidently predict ; whatever may be the merit of my literary labours, they will be judged with greater impartiality by posterity 1 .' 1 ' Ante annos ferme triginta, nihil prseter Alexandrum, Parva Logicalia, traclebatur in schola Cantabrigiensi, ut vocant, et vetera 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 Navwn Instrumentum attended u"n 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 The subject ... , . ofGreekcon- opposition it excited, continued, it would seem, to be the cCu^hui chief subject of interest at Cambridge for some years after 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 "r add that in adopting this mode of treatment, he found little Arisoti, n time for the discussion of the prevalent nominah'stic disputes. ne dictata Scoticasque quaestionea. Pro- sam aetatem in qncestionum frivolis gressu temporis accesserunt bouse argutiis conteri ? Atqui hoc sane litter ; accessit matheseos cognitio ; nomine non admodum poenitet me accessit novus, aut certe novatus, mearum vigiliarnm. Compertum est Aristoteles; accessit Graecarum lit- hacteuus quosdam fuisse theologoa, terarum peritia; accesserunt auctores qui adeo nunquam legerant divinas tarn inulti, quorum olim ne nomina litteras, ut uec ipsos Sententiarum quidem tenebantur, neo a summati- libros evolvereut, neque quicquam bus illis larcbis. Quaeso, quid bisce omnino attingerent prater quaeetio- ex rebus accidit academise vestrae ? mini gryphos. An non expedit ejus- nempe sic effloruit, ut cum priinia modi ad ipsos revocari foiites ? Ego, hujus saeculi scholis certare possit; mi Bovflle, labores quos certe non et tales babet viros ad quos vcteres mediocres omnibus juvandis suscepi, illi collati umbrae tbeologorum vide- cupiam omnibus esse frugiferos antur, non tbeologi. Non inficiantur et spero futurum, ut quod nunc id majores, si qui sunt ingenio can- placet optimis, mox placeat pluri- dido. Aliis suam felicitatem gratu- mis. Aliis gratiam conciliavit novi- lantur, suam comploraut infelicita- tas, ut buic operi novitas invidiam tern. An boc istos male habet, quod peperit. Proinde diversnm opinor posthac et plures legent Evangelicas accidet. Illis ietas favorem adimit, Apostolicasque litteras, et attentius ; mibi fortassis apponet. Bind certe et vel boc temporis his studiis deci- praesagio de meis lucubrationibus, di dolent, quibus omne tempus opor- qnalescunque sunt, candidius judica- tebat impartiri; malintque univer- turam posteritatem.' Opera, in 130. 518 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. \. The young regent incurred, of course, a large amount of * ' 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- the Rede" ships gave additional sanction to the new learning. Sir lecturcsUiDS A.D. 1518. 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 2 . Rouse of the In the mean time, Fisher's zeal in behalf of the study importance of GreeThf f Greek appears not only to have remained unabated, but to controversy 6 have been considerably enhanced by his sense of the growing jf^mu"! 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 Erasmus Greek was to be nobody. In the year 1516, Erasmus again visits . , 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 publice per bien- being appointed professor there, he nium publicis in scholis, non ex found the nominalists and realists spinosis realium et nominalium (quo- filling the university -with their dis- rum turn altercationes academiam putes. He proposed to them that perturbabant) subtilitatibus, sed ex they should apply themselves to the ipsis fontibus proponebat. Quo no- joint pursuit of truth in those books mine multis factus invisior, at Eras- ' which they quoted but had not mo, eruditissimo illi ingeniorum cen- read,' gave each of them a Greek sori, carissimus est effectus.' MSS. and a Latin grammar, and established Tenison (quoted by Knight, p. 147). peace. Nisard, Etudes sur la Eenais- Compare the similar course pursued sance, p. 448. by Melanchthon at almost exactly 2 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 *_" "'- to have visited Cambridge; but writing from London at the close of the year to Berus, he again bears testimony to His testi- the remarkable and decisive change that had come over the ngeat ha ..,,,,, . ., . Cambridge. spirit 01 the university, and encourages his correspondent by the assurance that he will, ere long, witness a like change at Paris 2 . It was during his stay at Rochester on this occasion, Rsher M- that his patron gave convincing proof of his sense of the nowie 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, wend2, f IUl 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 ;f ears ; ' 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 8 ? The pressure put upon Latimer was not slight, but he backed out of the engagement by Latimer d declaring that he had not opened either a Greek or Latin tak classic for the last eight years, and he advised that an instructor should be sought in Italy*. It appears indeed 1 Jortin, i 110. vix ullam interim paginam, vel Gne- 8 ' Videbis eas ineptias magna ex cam vel Latinam attigerim, quod vel parte explodi. Cantabrigia mutata: me tacente hae litter tibi facile de- haec schola detestatur frigidas illas clarabunt, quid debui, aut etiam quid argutias, qute magis ad rixam faciunt potui vel Moro roganti, vel tibi pos- quam ad pietatem. ' tulanti promittere, quando etiam 8 Erasmi Opera, in 1573, 1574. vebementer pudet, x/) ydp ofywu rd- 4 ' Sed cum octo aut novein annos XTJ&J el-relv, vel ad te scribere, bomi- iu aliis studiis ita sim versatus, ut mm. ut nihil aliud dicam, dissertis- " * 520 BISHOP FISHER. Cambridge of^t^che? violent op- position to more than doubtful whether Fisher ever acquired the know- ledge he so much coveted 1 . 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. ^ ^ ne mean time, the university was, like its chancellor, 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 unabated hostility and unscrupulousness of the opposite J r L P artv > 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 sinmm? ...... Quapropter si vis ntpro- cedat episcopus, et ad aliquam in his rebus frugem perreniat, fac peritum aliqnem harnm rernm ex Italia ac- cersat, qui et manere tantisper com eo velit, donee se tarn firmum ac validum senserit, nt non repere so- lum, sed et erigere sese ac stare atque etiam ingredi possit. Nam hoc pacto melius, mea sententia, futuraB ejus eloqnentiae consules, quam si balbutientem adhuc et pene vagien- tern, veluti in cunis relinquas.' E- rasmi Opera, m 294-5. Erasmus and More, it may be added by way of explanation, had wanted Latimer to undertake the office of tutor for a month, just as an experiment. 1 The sole evidence in favour of the affirmative adduced by Lewis (i 61), the presence of a Greek qno- tation on the title- page of the bishop's treatise against Luther, can hardly be considered satisfactory. GREEK AT OXFORD. 521 theology of the schools. It was exactly at this time, more- 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 Corpus Christi. Though at the time still master of Pem- broke, his Oxford sympathies predominated, or he perhaps 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, 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 2 and another on Greek 8 , there was also to be a Foundation of CORPUS ClIRlSTI CllL- I.EE at Ox- ford, 1516. Bp. Fox'g Matuti-s. 1 The Foundation Statutes of Bi- shop Fox for Corpus Ghristi College in the University of Oxford, A.D. 1517. Translated into English, with a Life of the Founder. By R. M. Ward, Esq., M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, etc. 1843, p. xli. 2 The first lecturer, who is to be ' the sower and planter of the Latin tongue,' the statute directs ' to man- fully root out barbarity from our garden, and cast it forth, should it at any time germinate therein.' He was required to read ' Cicero's Epi- stles, Orations, or Offices, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, or Suetonius Tranquillus; next, Pliny, Cicero de Arte, De Oratore, the Institutio Ora- toria of Quintilian; next, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, or Plautus.' He was also to read ' pri- vately in some place of our college, to be appointed by the president, to all of the household who wish to hear him, either the elegancies of Laurentius Vallensis, or the Attic Lucubrations of Aulus Gellius, or the Miscellanies of Politian.' Ibid. c. 22. 8 ' But the second herbalist of our apiary is to be, and to be called, the Header of the Grecists and of the Greek language: whom we have placed in our bee-garden expressly because the holy canons have esta- blished and commanded, most suit- ably for good letters and Christian literature especially, that such an one should never be wanting in the university of Oxford ' [the reference is evidently, to the original decree in the^CJementinea of 1311, see supra, p. 42~] ' in liKe manner^ as in some few other most famous places of learning He is to read on Mon- days, Wednesdays, and Fridays, some part of the grammar of Theo- 522 BISHOP FISHER. third lecturer, whose special task it was to be, not only to familiarise the minds of the students with those very Greek fathers whom so many were violently denouncing, but also to discourage the study of those mediaeval theologians who then occupied so considerable a space in all the college libraries, and whose authority was regarded as only inferior to that of St. Augustine himself. With that fondness for metaphor which characterises the language of many of our early college statutes, Fox spoke of his college as a garden, of the 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 this 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 every other year, he is to read some part of the Old is Testament and some part of the New, which the president and major part of the seniors may appoint; and lie must always in his interpretation, as far as he can, imitate the dorus, or some other approved Greek grammarian, together with some part of the speeches of Isocrates, Lucian, or Philostratus ; bulfon TlftiUduytt, Thursdays, wid Saturdays, he is to read Aristophanes, Theocritus, Eu- ~~' siod, or some ofEef~bTTEe~ifio^Fah- dent Greek poets, together with some portion of Demosthenes, Thu- cydides, Aristotle, Theophrastus, or Plutarch; but on holidays, Homer, the Epigrams, or some passage from the divine Plato or some Greek theo- logian. Also, thrice every week, and four times only, at his own option, during the excepted periods of the vacation, he shall read privately in some place of our college, to be as- signed for the purpose by the presi- dent, some portion of Greek gram- mar or rhetoric, and also of some Greek author rich in various matter, to all of the household of our col- lege who wish to hear him.' Sta- tutes, by Ward. > Novum Tetla- III' /((' HI. GREEK AT OXFORD. 523 holy and ancient doctors^ both Latin and Greek, and especially CHAP. v. Jerome, Austin, Ambrose. Oriaen. Hilary, Chrysostom, JDa^ ^^L mascenus, and that sort, wot Liranus, not ISuah of Vienne, a/fid 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 the shock which the institution of bishop Fox's 'gardeners, 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 discard* tlio Vulicato 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 of reeling at Erasmus's own expression, ' to storm an entrance,' if admis- Olford - 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. Un- . 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. The earlier teachers of Greek no longer resi- dent. Conduct of the Oxford students. Grecians yertut Tro- jans. fortunately, their decision was, in the first instance, not in 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 men whose character and reputation had upheld the study in former years, were no longer resident. Grocyn, 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. It would appear that the younger students of the univer- 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- 1 'in Trojanos istos aptissime quadrare videtur vetus illud adagium, sero sapiunt Phryges,' was More's sarcastic observation in his letter. Jortin, ii 663. GREEK AT OXFOHD. 525 dence of their heroic descent, by a series of unprovoked CHAP. v. insults to every inoffensive student who had exhibited a - PA " I L" 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*. 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- put a stop to so senseless a crusade, writes, at the conclusion of a cogent statement 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- t -\T i i i "rates with 1 You already see, he the university authorities WltVi on behalf of 11 the Grecians. 1 Jortin, ii 663-4, Wood-Gutch, ii 16-17. 8 M. Laurent, who in his sugges- tive work takes occasion to 'tell this story, observes: 'Cesguerres nous paraissent aujourd'hui dignes de celle des grenouilles chante"e par Ho- mere ; au quinzieme siecle, on ne 1'entendait pas ainsi: c'e"tait en reality la lutte du catholicisme contre la civilisation moderne. La pre- miere faculte* de the*ologie de la chre'tiente', la Sorbonne osait dire devant le parlement, que e'en ftait fait de la religion si on permettait Vttude du grec et de Vhebreu.' 1 His- toire du Droit des Gens, Tome Tin, La Reforme, p. 392. 526 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. mote the pursuit of studies of every kind in your university, ' v '" and particularly that of Greek. But it will be surprising He contrasts indeed, if their friendly sentiments are not chilled, when thedispo- . J b iti the s ox wn they l earn that their excellent designs have become the theToncTuc 1 }; object of unbounded ridicule. Especially, when at Cam- brigiansl anta 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 to the univer- - * tue Grecians severest penalties, that all students desiring to apply them- moiestotionL selves to Greek studies, should be permitted to do so with- out molestation. This was in the year 1519 ; and in the woisey, in following year, Wolsey, into whose hands the university had the following 6 J J> a C chair o 1 f ld8 a l rea dy surrendered itself, tied and bound, for a complete oxford?' 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*. 1 'Prseterea multos jam coepisse sertim quum Cantabrigice, cui vos videtis, quorum exempla sequentur prcelucere semper consuevistis, illi alii, multum boni vestro conferre quoque qui non discunt Greece, tarn gymnasio, quo et omnigenam litera- communi suce scholce studio ducti, in turam promoveant et modo nomina- stipendium ejus qui aliis Grceca prce- tim Graecam. Quorum nunc fervi- legit viritim perquam honeste contri- dusinvosaffectusmirumnifrigescat, buunt.' Jortin, n 666. si tarn piurn proposition summo lu- 2 Opera, m 408. dibrio istbic haberi sentiant. Prce- RICHAED CROKE. 527 The honorable and unimpeachable testimony above CHAP. v. given in favour of Cambridge at this same period, sufficiently 1^-J 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, ^W 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 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 8 . From Oxford Croke went on to Paris; and having com- HU career . . . on the con- 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. 8 Opera, in 131. 3 ' Crocus regnat in academia Lip- siensi, publicitus Graecas docens litte- ras.' Letter from Erasmus to Linacre (A.D. 1515), hid. in 136. 4 'In qua parte' [Erfurt] 'ego, quanquam admodum adolescens, ta- men f erebar in oculis, quia audiveram Ricardum Crocum Britannum, qui primusjautabatur ita docuisse Gra- cSm "Enguam in Germauia ut piano perdisci illamposse, et quid momenti d Oliluem "doclfln'HB eruditionem atque cultum hujus cognitio allatura ease videretnr, nostri homines sese intelligere arbitrarentur. Nos quidem certe ita statuebamus, hanc esse viam virtutis atque sapientiee, et iter di- rectum cum pietatis et religionis, turn humanitatis et laudis in hao vita et in terris.' Joach. Camerarii, Narratio de Helio Eobano Hetto (ed. Kreyssig, Misenro, 1843),-p. 5. 528 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. Emser, writing to Erasmus, informs him, that the young - v ^ 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 w A. in 1517. appointed instructor in Greek to king Henry. In the year Lectures on 1518 he commenced a course of lectures on the language at Greek in the university in Cambridge 1 . These lectures however, like those of Erasmus lolo. and John Bryan, were given without the direct sanction of 1519, is ap- the authorities; and it was not until the year 1519, that Greekreader. Croke received his formal appointment as Greek_reader to the university. It was then that, aboutTthe^rionth 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. Hisantece- Apart from the numerous indications that the opponents dents better r arm d hostfuty ^ Greek were fighting a losing battle, it is evident that f 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 CHOKE'S INAUGURAL ORATION. 529 been one of brilliant success. From that career this young CHAP. v. 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, ^urai'ora- and laurel-crowned from the chief seats of continental learn- a 'pp'.in"ment ing, the young orator sought their attention, and proceeded ^1^6- with an effective eloquence and a choice Latinity, that isw. 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 benevolently 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 not only with de- ference but with pleasure, when the delegates of princes have ^ spoken before them in a barbarous and even ludicrous style, the 'auction simply out of feelings of deference for those whom the speakers Jj^^j; represented. On the same grounds he too claims a like con- ^'{^ sideration ; for he represents their chancellor, one unsurpassed <*iior. 1 Croke bad perhaps been led to 8 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. ' 34 530 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. in watchful care for their interests, and to whom they owe those PAKT ii. two 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, on'hiimihe 1 ' he exhorts them to apply themselves with all diligence to the piamin e the s ^ u ^7 ^ Greek literature, that literature in praise of which so advantages many able men have recently sent forth dissertations. The ex- studies, hortatiou of one who had never urged them to aught 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 , , . . , . , , , . defended, as such learning, is the preeminence 01 the race whom it represents. eminently su- The Greeks surpassed all who came after them, in wisdom and in penor race, invention, in theoretical sagacity and in practical ability. What city or what republic could compare with Lacedsemon, 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 1 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 1 Let those who praised the piety, sanctity, and other Spartan comparison virtues of Numa, consider how much more conspicuously the same d qualities shone forth in Lycurgus : 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 ! Numa again had but restrained the heroic ardour of his people, Lycurgus had augmented it; for the latter expelled from Lacedsemon not bridles, swords, and spears, but banquetings, 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 more to their nurse than to their parent. Lycurgus had expelled them from Sparta when that state was already weakened by their pre- 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. PART "' He then proceeds to apply the conclusion which these some- The language what labored antitheses were designed to establish. These ill us- ^J^ ^ trious Greeks had dignified not merely their country and their J>e diffused, race but also their native tongue. It is remarkable that it is on to fhe in- n this ground alone, the superior moral excellence of the Roman [nv^ti^e u- d people, that he asserts the claims of Latin over French or Celtic, penonty- 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, because 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 ; & 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 tot am Care be*tow- Grcecorum beneficio habemus. A people thus devoted to the arts dent J Greek" and refinements of life were not likely to be neglectful of the study JiJ^^!* 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 ingenhun, Graiis dedit 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 ^SS^t a i, wrote ? Let them note too how writers of all nations had pre- g^JJ^ ferred Greek to their native language : Phavorinus the Gaul, the Porphyry the Phoanician, Jamblichus the Syrian, Philoponus the t01 Egyptian, Ammonius the Phrygian, Simplicius the Thracian, Philo the Jew, and Musonius born at Volainii near to Rome, Trismegistus, Musseus, and Orpheus; the historians, Joseph us the Jew, ^Elian the Roman, Arrian, and Albinus, Aibinus 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 Nodes Attica: orit y 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 iroXviXm, i, ^o(ro-u>opos ? How imperfectly did any amount 342 532 BISHOP FISHER. Respect shewn for the language by the Roman emperors. Favours shewn to Reuchlin and Erasmus. Favours he had himself experienced. Extreme an- tiquity of the Greek lan- guage. rtility of a knowledge of Greek in the studies of the trivium and quadrivium. 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 2 . To turn 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- inanicus, Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Severus, Theodosius. To come nearer to their own time, how had Leo, the supreme! pontiff, f.nd the emperor Maximilian, shewn their regard for those | devoted to the new learning, by interposing to rescue the inno- i ceiice df rii'U'jMui and Er.ismus 'from th<>.-r double-dyed younger brethren of the gianfB't 8 *" Be 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 vin 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 Maecenas,' or my lord Cardinal, ' my lord bishop x>f Rochester is a host in him- self.' Look again at the antiquity of the Greek tongue. Allowing that, in this respect, the first place must be conceded to Hebrew, the lingua Attica is certainly entitled to a second. Other cities boasted of their founders; bxit Athens had no founder, for her sons were avr6\6ov^. 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- ceptce provincice cogitatione pene defatiger. To commence with the trivium and quadrivium, and first of all with grammar, which many, ' inflated with a vain pretence of knowledge,' cavil at, as 1 'Neque sustinuit conscius sibi dissimulari id gratissimus Lucretius qni igitur nraltis se dicitGraecis usuin, quod Latine ea dici non possent. O quam parum istud putant, qui igno- rant veteri sermoni Latino plurima Grreca fuisse immixta, qnique arbi- traria omnia vocabula sic esse volunt, ut quovismodo a se ficta authorita- tem habitura fidant, supino quodam Grseci fontis contemptu, ex quo si non veniant detorta, nemo, nisi cum risu, novationem admittat!' 2 ' Cujus innocentia ab dibaphis istis Gigantum fratercnlis toties af- flicta, tandem snccubuisset, nisi fessis doctissimi et optiini homiais rebus sanctitas Leonis et Maximiliani pietas Riiccurrissent.' The interference of Leo x between Eeucliliu and his antagonists, a virtual triumph ferine reform party, had taken place in the year 1516. See Geiger, Johann Reiichlin, pp. 290321. 3 Luther's primate, and one of the seven Electors of Germany; but a faithless and unscrupulous politician. See Brewer, Letters and Papers, in xiii xvii. CHOKES INAUGURAL ORATION. 533 trivial and sterile, he offers to point out a few facts from which CII.VP. v. they will perceive that it is of higher excellence than all other PAKT " branches of knowledge. What does the name of 'grammarian' ' !" ' l 4 TT -01 Functions of imply { Me quotes the passage in buetonms , to shew that the the ancient grammarian with the Greeks was the litteratus of the Romans, ^''""" w " <: *- 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 grammatid; 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 prsetorship, 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 i^Jlu "' "' representation of the Greek Kainra ; the aspirate (h) so often found in Latin words, denoted a Greek origin ; the reduplication in such words as jtoposci, totondi, momordi, was nothing else than the Trapa.KL(ji.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 learnei 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 sententioiisness 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 ^'oru^to the grave error that had found its way into Euclid's definition of 8ensc '>>' 7 11 f n i i ' i i comparison a straight line, until the collation of a, Greek codex exposed the ofa -11 i . i words not polite learning had never smiled, saw no harm in a man using the arbitrary. 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 wishing themselves to be at liberty to import into Latin any barbarism they might think fit. For his own part, he had no wish to seethe 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- Evils result- tinually engaged in them. When tlie mind ivas thus exclusively celsive'attcn- concentrated on extremely minute distinctions its powers were wasted disputes! glcal an d impaired, and the student was diverted from more useful learning, The Bible -from t/ie Pauline Epistles, from the Evangelists, from the whole neglected. Bible: and these had a paramount claim on the theologian, whose 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 liome, 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. He implores An appeal to the spirit of emulation holds a prominent place be e out" ott> i n his peroration. ' The Oxford men, whom up to the present time tfauxwiians V 6 ^ ave 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 bishops, 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 1 ' Oxonienses, quos ante hac in guage; just as mathematicians, in omni scientiarum genere vicistis, ad the present day, generally prefer Cam- litteras Gracas perfugere, vigilant, bridge. Compare with the words in"* jejunant, sudant et algent; nihil non italics, More's observation, addressed faciunt ut eas occupent. Quod si to the Oxonians, already quoted: contingat, actum est de fama vestra. Cantabrigia, cui vos prcelucere semper Erigent enim de vobis trophasum consuevistis. Perhaps we may recon- nunquam succubituri. ' Croke's cile these diametrically opposed state- meaning appears to be that if Ox- ments, made in the same year, by in- ford once succeeds in gaining the ferring that neither university had reputation of being the school for much real reason for priding itself Greek, students will get into the on superiority to the other, habit of going there to learn the Ian- CHOKE'S INAUGURAL OHATION. 535 felt bound to his own uni- skill in either tongue, the threefold linguistic learning of Stokes- CHAP. v. ley 1 , the pure and polished elegance of More, the erudition and J*j ET ^ genius of Pace, commended by Erasmus himself, unsurpassed as a n judge of learning, Erasmus ! once, would he were still, your own Greek professor ! I have succeeded to his place. Good heavens ! how inferior to him in learning and in fame 2 ! And yet, lest I should be looked upon as of no account whatever, permit me 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 witli 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 ^ College, to which I owe my first acquirements in the "art of eloquence, have enjoined that I should first offer my services to. jou. Should those services find favoTH 1 iff^your eyes, I shall ', esteem myself amply rewarded ; and I shall conclude that such is f 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, j 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 adapt myself to each individual case, as to run with those who 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 8 , the nobler races in the animal world should be longest in the womb. Let them 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 Stoplelus, and Wood (Annals, i 17) has trans- lated it as Stopley, without appa- rently having an idea who was meant. There can, however, be no doubt that Croke intended Stokesley, principal of Magdalen Hall, and afterwards bishop of London. Compare the en- comium of Erasmus, ; Joannes Stok- leius, prater scholasticam hanc theo- logiam, in qua nemini cedit, trium ftiam linguarum haud vulgariter peritus.' Opera, in 402. 2 Erasmus had heard of Croke's appointment, and wrote to congratu- late him thereon, in the best possible spirit: ' Gratulor tibi, mi Croce, professionem istam tarn spleudidam, iK'ii minus houorincam tibi quam frugiferam academies Cantabrigiensi, en jus commodis equidem pro veteris hospitii consuetudine peculiari quo- dam studio faveo.' Letter to Croke (Aprih 1518), Opera, in 1679. " Quiniiiian, x iii 4. 53G BISHOP FISHER. cilAP. v. Nerve yourselves, therefore, to courses such as these, and ere long PAKT ii. 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 difficulty?" reflect that the mind of man has enabled him to traverse the seas, to know the movements and to count the number of the stars, 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 Jiis 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 \ipon 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, a variety of ,. ' f , -, i i -j. studies. 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. A last appeal But if there be any who, after listening to my discourse, blush not perpnde. to confess themselves blockheads and unteachable, let them be off to the desert and there herd with wild beasts ! With beasts, did I say 1 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 is so dense as to be unable to imbibe a modicum of Greek culture, let him know, that though more a man, he is in no way more i CHOKE'S INAUGURAL ORATION. 537 humane 1 , as regards his educated faculties, than the dullest brute. C AP - v - You see, gentlemen of Cambridge, there's no excuse for you, Jil^li!^ 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 occdsio catva. 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 the 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 compared more within the scope of the present pages may be found, if J*^*J 1>v we proceed to contrast Croke's oration with the far better JftnS?"" known address, entitled De Studiis Corrigendis, delivered by bergl 1518- young Philip Melauchthon, before the university of Witten- berg, in the preceding year 2 . Nor will the comparison be 1 Croke intends apparently a play cuudum quidem natnram editam upon the word humanus, ' Qtiisquis magis humanum quam imperfectissi- igitur adeo hebes es, ut nihil Grteca- ma quajque auiinalia.' rum litterarum imbibere queas, sciaa 2 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. y ' 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 *. 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 necessary 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 Melanchthon 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 plusquam Thracico revocant : a man of thirty ; but Melanchthon was diffigiliuBesBejBtudiurn litterarum re- a singularly precocious genius. uascentium qvtam utilius; Gra>ca a 1 Compare, from Melanchthon' s quibusdam male" "feriatis ingeniis own account, the arguments em- arripi, et ad ostentationem parari; ployed against Greek at Wittenberg dubise fidei Hebrea esse; interim a with those used at Oxford and at genuine litteras cultu perire; philo- Cambridge : ' Germanicam juventu- sophiam desertum iri; et id genus tern paulo superioribus annis alicubi reliquis conviciis.' Declamationes, conatam in hoc felix certamen litte- i 16. mrum descendere, jam nunc quoque 2 Doruer, Hist, of Protestant Theo- iion pauci. yelut e medio cursu com- Ingy (Clarke's Series), i 116. CROKE'S SECOND ORATION. 539 apposite illustration, its far greater command of an elegant CHAP.V. Latinity, its dexterous resort to the recognised weapons of '* 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 croke's e- i ./,... . cond oration. oration, but one interior 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 a Cantabrigia deducta, 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 f> 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 ot 1 the office of ance with the university may be inferred from the fact, that t I " b i i 5 2 V ra ~ when in 1522 the office of Public Orator was first founded, Croke was elected for life; while it was at the same time croke 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, Annalg, I 3n">. 540 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. pen of the poet Skelton. In a satire composed about the i^ '" year 1521 or 1522, the writer represents, though with evident Helton, poetical exaggeration, this new growth of learning as over- n- 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 Wotoej! 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 x council of at last met, and it was evident that nothing practical was nouVetthe designed, but, to quote the language of Lewis, ' the meeting Pui'lfrvo'f UM was rather to notify to the world the extravagant pomp and cig". 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 be I am, that his grace woll not that specially expressed in your said mo- I shulde be so lytle estemed, that ye nicyons, be 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 advyse, cyon of the premyssis, though hy- consent, and knowledge.' Wilkins, derto no in time coming, I have ne Cnncilia, in 600. 544 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. authority of the lord legate, than for any great good to the P ? J ^' 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 Fisher and as one of the most memorable in their lives. The attention trastei o f 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 2 , 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 3 . The one seeking to overawe the assembly, by the same energy of will and arrogance of demeanour that 1 Lewis, pp. 69-70. sioned in a great measure by the 2 Skelton-Dyce, n 62; Roy (ed. strict abstinence and penance to Arber) , p. 58. which he had long accustomed him- 3 ' his face, hands, and all his self, even from his youth.' Lewis, body were so bare of flesh as is al- n 215. most incredible ; 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- . p f" ir '. 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 wen the university but all England, were still in the future, his 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 8 . Shorten 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 * Goober, Athena, 1 41, 119. Fiddes honour on this occasion, and lays mentions also Dr Taylor, archdeacon considerable stress on the compli- 35 546 BISHOP FISHER. Bullock's oration well suited to the occasion. Orossness of his flattery. Wolsey the guardian of the poor. Extolled by foreign na- tions. attracted the cardinal's notice ; for, within four years after, we find Wolsey availing himself of his assistance in connexion with his magnificent foundation at Oxford. Whatever may be our opinion of the merits of Bullock's 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- tors, the man in whom all the virtues, probitas, innocentia, 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- versal benefactor of his race. Wolsey it is, who shields the 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 to 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 pontiff's chair; this France acknowledges, whose most ment thus paid to Wolsey, these doc- exercises pre-required to that degree.' tors being admitted freely and fully,' Life of Wolsey, p. 186. ' as 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" 11 ". Poles, "the nations of the isles," in fine the whole globe HU 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-s i T T, <> T , ..,. peroration. in lucem edidit; feliciores prmcipes, quibus accessisti; feh- cissima respublica, quse talem moderatorem sortita est. Et nos Cantabrigiarii non postremam sed vel primam felicitatis partem videmur adepti, non solum quod huic nostrae acade- miae tam impense faves, adeo ut nonnullos ejus alumnos huic tuae nobilissimae adscripseris familiae, beneficiisque non medi- ocribus cumulaveris ; sed quod nos tua praesentia longe sua- vissima ornare dignatus es, quod hunc tuum vultuni multo gratiosissimum liceat intueri, hanc tuam celsitudinem am- ' plecti; haud facile fuerit explicare quanto tripudio, quam hilari vultu, quam ingenti laetitia, salientibus 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, hae columnae, haec subsellia, hoc sacrum, hi omnes denique scholastici 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 patronum, Deus optimus maxi- mus te in usus publicos quam diutissime conservet inco- lumem 1 .' The love of flattery must have been inordinate indeed in ,., i . i i-i 11 victims at the 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 1 Fiddes, Collections, 43-5. 352 548 BISHOP FISHER. CHAP. v. Cambridge, having made splendid but indefinite promises. PABTIT. j n ^ e f o ^ owm g year, the university learned that one of its former scholars and distinguished benefactors 1 , the courtly, Stafford, munificent, chivalrous Stafford, had perished on the scaffold, Buckingham, 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 Bkeiton. 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 Pace. 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 tions of Polydore Vergil; 'from upon as the founder of Buckingham whom,' he says, ' the calumny was (afterwards Magdalene) College, where derived and rests on no other author- his portrait is still preserved. Cooper ity.' He also denounces Vergil's nar- notices however that the college was rative, which he shews to be incor- certainly called Buckingham College rect in detail, as ' a tissue of rnisre- before the duke's time. In the Uni- presentation, exaggeration, and false- versity Calendar the foundation of hood, devised by this partial histo- Magdalene College is incorrectly as- rian to gratify his hostility to the signed to the year 1519; but the cardinal.' (p. ccxl.) But, without lay- foundation of Baron Audley belongs ing any stress on the saying attri- to the year 1542 (see Cooper, Annals, buted to Charles v, it is certain that i 404), and consequently no account Eoy's satire was published about of the college is given in the present 1528 ; while the first edition of Ver- volume. gil's Historia Anglica, in which his 2 Fuller-Prickett & Wright, p. account of Wolsey is to be found, 198. This was certainly the general was not published until 1534. belief at the time: cf. Eoy's com- 3 Bichardus Pacseus qui regis sui ment, nomine legatus ad nos venit, vir est ' Also a ryght noble prince of fame insigni utriusque litteraturte peritia Henry, the Ducke of Buckingham, praeditus, apud regiam majestatem He caused to die, alas, alas.' multis nominibus gratissimus, fide (ed. Arber), p. 50. sincerissima, moribus plusquam ni- Prof. Brewer (Preface to Letters and veis, totus ad gratiam et amicitiam Papers, in cxvi) has represented this natus.' (Erasmi Opera, in 441.) view of the duke's fate as taking its Pace lived however to survive his rise solely out of the misrepresenta- persecutor, and to regain, to some WOLSEY. 549 the necessity of conciliating his favour at almost any price ; CHAP. r. and at Cambridge it appeared of supreme importance to -^^IL- 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.G unh-cr- 1 i 11- i i i sity of Oxford slavish and abject submission which it was not easv to posits statutes in outvie. In the year 1518, that venerable body had, to quote Ksto be the language of Wood, ' made a solemn and ample decree, in pi^e? llia 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, Tins example that passed the assembly of regents and non-regents in the itemfonty year 1524, and received the common seal, was expressed, brid e ' 152i appear yet ' stronger, more specific and diversified.' ' To shew . , , 1-1 criticism on iurther, he adds, 'how much they desired to augment the t|ie tone of ' . i i / i /> theories re- which the Reformation opened up, and of the variety of spectmg its 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 ! -11 i t i r 1 mation of regarded as the inevitable and natural result of that increased preceding f 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 2 . 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 3 D'Aubign6, Hist, of the Rcforma- 285 a . Mi'lman, Hist, of Latin Chrit- tion (transl. by White), 1 1&-17. Hunt, tianity ix 3 150, 266. Religiout Thought in England, i 2. 554 THE REFORMATION. 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 orders 4 , that the age by which it was followed was not one whit less corrupt than that by which it was pre- ceded 5 , 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. 3 Dollinger 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 2365. 8 A view recently reiterated by Prof. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, p. 326 3 . 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 eine Bewegung fiir Gewissensfreiheit gewesen. Gerade das Gegentheil ist wahr. Fiir sich selbst freilich haben Lutheraner uud Calvinisten, ebenso wie alle Men- schen zu alien Zeiten, Gewissens- freiheit begehrt, aber Andern sie zu gewahren, fiel ihnen, wo sie die Starkeren waren, nicht ein.' Dollin- ger, Kirche und Kirchen, p. 68. 4 ' Personne n'ignore que ce zele de re"fonne tant vante, et sous le pre"texte duquel on a bouleverse" 1'E- glise et 1'Etat dans une grande partie de 1'Europe, a eu pour principe une miserable jalousie entre moines men- dians au sujet de la prediction des indulgences. Le"on x fit publier en 1517 une croisade centre les Turcs, et il y attachait des indulgences, dont il faut avouer que le but n'^tait pas bien canonique ni exempt d'inte"ret. La commission de precher les indul- gences en Saxe se donnait commune'- ment aux Augustins. Elle fut don- ne"e aux Jacobins. Voila la source du mal, et I'^tincelle che"tive qui a cause" un si furieux embrasement. Luther, qui e"tait Augustin, voulut venger son ordre que 1'on privait d'une commission fructueuse.' Cre- vier, v 134-5. This was the view on which Voltaire insisted : ' Un petit inte"rt des moines, qui s'enviaient la vente des indulgences, alluma la revolution. Si tout le Nord se se"para de Rome, c'est qu'on vendait trop cher la delivrance du purgatoire a des ames dont les corps avaient alors tres-peu d'argent.' Quoted by Lau- rent, La Reforme, p. 431. 5 ' 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. 6 Moehler, Symbolik, p. 25. Dol- linger, Kirche und Kirchen, 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- of the Eeformation in England is to be found in the labours England begun at of the lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge from Cambrid 8e- the years 1511 to 1514 S 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- rity to shew that the Refonnation was not a continuation of f '^1- lardisui, the reform commenced by Wyclif *. 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 morninsr star is the cause of day. It was the New Testa- but to be ' traced to tlio ment of Erasmus, bought, studied, and openly discussed by ^* t ^f sta ' countless students, at a time when Wyclif's Bible was only 1 ' It was not Luther or Zwinglius Latin fathers to light and published that contributed so much to the Re- 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 themselves 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. TI. 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. * . 11,1 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 could 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 Prociama- as any in its history. In the preceding year, as is well byleoT known, Leo X had sent forth over Europe his luckless pro- A.D.1516. damation 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 ci a e mation on the arrival of a certain number at Cambridge, it devolved Jteo r fthe he on Fisher, as chancellor, to give them due publicity. The S3S35! 1 gd bishop received them, apparently nothing doubting, and 1 Foxe-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 or Peter , i -rt de Valence. the proclamation, Beatus mr cujus est nomen Domini spes ejus, et non respeocit 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 ofHisexcom- Fisher's biographers, a writer entitled to little credit, that n " eventually De Valence did come forward, made open confes- sion of his act, and received formal absolution 8 . 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 Prospects of . reform prior sturdy figure of Martin Luther strode into the foreground. to A - D - w"- 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 forinfer- 8 Baily, Life of Fither, pp. 26-7, ring that the one suggested the other. ' A book which when lately in manu- There had long before been observ- Bcript, 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 * 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; butinnei- Hiit. of Protestant Theology, p. 76. 558 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 EpMoia Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum, that TrdpeSpos to the Enco- Obscurorum ,.. . , . , mium MoricB, 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- Pomponatius tate AnimcB of Pomponatius, wherein a heresy that involved tMtau. r ' all other doctrinal belief, was unfolded and elaborated with a candour that the transparent artifice of salva fide 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, Hopes of the there were yet not a few sincere and enlightened Catholics Humanists. * who looked forward to the establishment throughout Europe 1 'Nunc nulla est natio sub Chris- reargued more at length the question tiana dicione in qua non omne dis- which had already been discussed by ciplinarum genus (musis bene for- Averroes (see supra, pp. 115-7). His tunantibus) eloquentiae majestatem denial extended only to the philoso- eruditionis utilitati adjungit.' Eras- phic evidence, and he readily admitted mi Opera, in 350. the authority of revelation. His 3 Pomponatius did not, as has of- book was however burnt by the in- ten been asserted, himself deny the quisitors of Venice and placed in the immortality of the soul. He simply Index. A.D. 1516. 559 of a community of men of letters, who while, on the one hand, they extended the pale of orthodox belief, might, on the other, render incalculable service to the diffusion of the religious spirit. Learningjind the arts, protected and countenanced by Jhe^su^reioaJiead_of the Church, would in turn become tHemost 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. VL 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 ZI/ISWM?)- 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 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 iiis account him peace. ' There are those physicians/ he says in his letter to tua" ex? m ~ Tunstal, ' upon whom that woman which was twelve years vexed 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 Bilney resembled he presents in many respects a sin- his celebrated contemporary and fel- gular likeness. See Bezae Icones. low-worker, Faber or Lefevre, the * Foxe-Cattley, iv 621. reformer of Paris, to whom indeed THOMAS BILNEY. 561 garment through faith, she was so healed that presently she CHAP. vi. 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 r- niiiii f 1-1 instituted by formation in England, that has been more frequently cited Bnney J perhaps than this, by those whose aim has been to demonstrate the J?^^* existence of an essential difference between the spirit of the bT mediaeval and Romish Church, and the spirit of Protestant- *" 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 Refonnation, 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 medieval doctrine is far from being equally certain ; nor can we unhesitatingly admit, that if Bilney, 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 Kenipis, 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 Bilney'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. 36 562 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vi. seen, attracted rather by his tastes as a scholar than by the Biiney reads hope of lighting upon new truth, he began to study the Testament of Novum Testanfientum of Erasmus. It was the turning-point uiange u in his in his spiritual life. He became a strenuous opposer of the religious views, 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 ins character sympathy. ' I have known hitherto few such,' wrote Latimer as drawn by * L * Latimer. ^ gj r 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. H>sconverts In his own college Bilney's converts were not numerous ; HalL 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 2 . We meet however with a few names that indicate the working of Bilney's influence. Among Arthur 3 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 3 , and who about the same time was 1 Latimer-Corrie, n 330. Cooper, Athena, i 139. 3 Ibid, i 46. THOMAS BILNEV. 563 appointed master of St. Mary's Hostel. There was also a CHAP. vi. young man of good family, named William Paget, afterwards w^C"" lord high steward of the university and a watchful guardian Pa * 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 and Richard list of Bilney's followers among his fellow-collegians. In His influence especially another relation however his influence is to be far more ^on^'na- distinctly traced. Local associations, as we have before own%o f u'ity 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 3 . Among this number was Thomas Forman, a fellow of Queens' College, and sub- Thomas sequently for a short time president of the society. He was Queens', 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*. 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 Quwn r> ! 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 must 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 hitter 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 Cranmtr, 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. VL Nicholas GoDTiUe Gor.ri;:e f.-r :i? STC.- f.iir.T with tr.e Ht- Jo!:n TLix- taiof Fen. broke. MM liarr.--?. prior , ; r.e friars. Character of 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 Reformers, 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 holilyV 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* 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, Athena, I 67. 1 Ibid. 1 158. 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. * It may be of service here to dis- tinguish between the Augustinian canons (or canons regular), and the Augustinian Briars, as 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; the 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 Dngdale. Moruutiton, vi 38, 1591; Cole MSS. xxxi 213; Wright and Jones, Memorial*, voL n; 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, Ltttert and Papers, n 365. ROBERT BARNES. 565 were distinguished by a more unselfish activity. At Oxford CHAP. vi. 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 time when the study had found scarcely * isio.' 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 Bamcs remained for some years*. The theological reputation of that aTLouvlin/ 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 6 . It need scarcely be added that, with tastes like these, he was an ardent sympathiser with the Foundation Humanists in their contests at the universities. Dying inta * the year 1517, he left provision in his will for the foundation 1 Anstey, Introd. to Munimenta tris grammatics convertatur ad usum Academica, p. Ixiii. magistrorum scholarum apud fratrea 3 'Et quia magistri scholarum Augustinenses.' Ibid. p. 363. apud fratres Augustinenses, in dis- a Cooper, Athena, i 14. putatiouibus ibidem habitis, sine- * Ibid, i 74. mercedo graves sustinent labores,. * Neve, Me"moire Historique et Lit- magistri autem grammaticae sine la- ttraire sur le College des Trois-Lan' boribus ad onus universitatis salaria guest d V University de Louvain (1856), percipiunt, ideo statuimus et ordina- p. 40. mus, quod ipsa Bumma 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, jealousy of though now inspirited by the presence of Erasmus in their vatives. Amidst, was still but a small minority ; and Barnes, 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 the star of the Humanists manifestly on the ascendant ; and Cambridge returned to Cambridge an avowed champion of the cause with PaynelL 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 8 . Under their united efforts the house of the His lectures Augustinian friars acquired a considerable reputation; and on the Latin . r classics. 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- Bamesiec- tures : and Barnes, in the language of Foxe, 'putting aside tures on the r Duns and Dorbel 3 ,' this is to say the schoolmen and the Barnes re turns to Epistles of St. Paul. 1 ' Quand le nouveau college venait d'etre ouvert pres du marche" aux Poissons, des tudiants de la faculte des arts, excite's peut-gtre par 1'un ou 1'autre de leur maitres ou bien par leur mepris naturel pour les belles-lettres, prenaient plaisir a crier partout: Nos non loquimur Latinmn de foro Piscium sed loquimur Latinum via- tris nostrce facultatis.' Ibid. p. 62, Andrea, Fasti Academici studii gene- ralis Lovaniensis, p. 277. 3 Cooper, Athence, i 78. 3 Nicholas de Orbellis or Dorbelhis (d. 14.55), was one of the best of the multitudinous commentators on Pe- trus Hispanus. Prantl (Gesch. d. Logik, iv 175) speaks of him as 'ein viel gelesener und haufig benutzter Autor, welcher (abgesehen von seiner Erlauterung des Sententiarius und der aristotelischen Physik) zu Petrus Hispanus einen umschreibeuden und zugleich im Einzeln reichlich be- lehrenden Commentar verfasste.' Dorbellus says in his preface, 'Juxta doctoris subtilis Scoti mentem aliqua logicalia pro juvenibus super sum- mulas Petri Hispani breviter eno- dabo.' In one of his prefaces we GEORGE STAFFORD. 567 Byzantine logic, next began to comment on the Pauline CHAP. vi. Epistles. -~v 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- oeonre nent Cambridge Reformer was' a fellow of Pembroke and dis- M.Ai52i . 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- HC lectures gether to discard the Sentences for the Scriptures 8 , a measure t > ures"imti p d 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 Becon-s ,. ., ,.. ,, . . estimate of exaggeration that otten accompanies the reminiscences of the value of ,,,.. . - , . . Ms swvices. 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- 3 That is to say, exactly like Lu- jects embraced in the trivium and ther at Wittenberg, Stafford chose to qiuidricium, be a doctor biblicus rather than a 'r Sclli.mn(] an sich vollzie- heti.' Dollinger, Kirche und Kirchen, p. 67. 570 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vi. These writings handed over to the Rapid spread Lutheran doctrines in bridge?" woisey Luther pap"? buii at VVitten- ter <;- 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 handed over for examination to the doctors of the Sorbonne, and 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 rendered their introduction a matter of comparative ease ; and 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 2 . Nix, furious at the spread of heresy in his diocese, called loudly for repressive measures. Wolsey how- ever, who saw how impolitic. would be a system of violent 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 3 . 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 Sorbonne to be burnt, April 21, 1521. 3 The rapid spread of Luther's writings in Europe is remarkable. The writer of the able article on the Reformer in Herzog's Real-Encyklo- pddie (viii 578) states that even in 1519 they had penetrated into France, England, and Italy; and Erasmus writing so early as May 15, 1520, to (Ecolampadius, states that they had narrowly escaped being burned in England. Brewer, Letters and Pa- pers, in 284. 3 Ibid, in 455. LUTHER'S WORKS. 571 London, to sit, as the Sorbonne had long been sitting, in CHAP. vr. judgement on the obnoxious volumes. In these proceedings woi sey some of the most influential men at Oxford and Cambridge conference in London. took part, and about three weeks after the Sorbonne had | n ^jitonne given its decision, the conference arrived at a similarly ad- L "ndon verse conclusion 1 . The Lutheran treatises were publicly ESSST* burnt, on the twelfth of May, in the churchyard at Paul's ttPaaft Cross 2 : and Fisher, in a sermon delivered on the occasion in Mavi2, 1521. Fisher g the presence of Woisey and numerous other magnates, not *|ist 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 8 . Within two days after Fisher's sermon, Woisey 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 l ^^ 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-* . r . books burnt fore the Easter term was over similar conflagrations were at oxford and Cain- instituted at both universities, that at Cambridge being brid u - held under the joint auspices of Woisey, 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 Brinknell, 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 8 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 * Strype, Memorial*, i 55-6. divers learned men and bishops in * 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 303-4), 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- Bolemnly 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 R. Parker 572 THE REFORMATION. Meetings of the Reform- ers at Cam- bridge. The 'White Horse.' CHAP. vi. Then, in the following year, king Henry himself compiled his celebrated polemic, Contra Martinum Lutherum Hceresi- archon; and in 1523 appeared Fisher's Assertionis Lutherance 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 2 . The White Horse was accordingly chosen as the place of rendezvous ; and as the meetings before long vice Cancellarii pro mtmere quod dedit tabellario dominiCardinalis, 4.' 'Item eidem pro consimili munere da- to tabellario Regine, 4s. ' Item eidem pro potu et aliis expensis circa combus* tionem librorum Martini Lntheri, 2s.' 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, Memorials, i 5G8-9. (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 of the conference held in London: Expensa Senioris Proctoris: ' Item solutum Petro bedello misso do- mino Cardinal! et Cancellario cum literis pro operibus Lutheri, 20s.' Expensa Junioris Proctoris: 'Item solvi doetori Bullocke pro expensis Londini circa examinationem Lu- theri ad inandatum domini Cardi- nalis, 53s. 4d.' ' Item doetori Um- frey pro ejus expensis in consi- mili iiegotio, 53s. 4d.' 'Item doc- toribus Watson et Ridley pro eorum expensis in eodem negotio, 5,6s. 8d.' 'Item doctor! Nycolas gerenti locum THE WHITE HORSE. 573 became notorious in the university, and those who frequented CHAP - 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 tno^L * Germany.* facilities the little company increased rapidly in numbers. Their gatherings were held nominally under the presidency Barnes e T> i Till- presides at or i3arnes, whose position enabled him to defy the academic the meeti J Snaxton, 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 ifes? 1 and destined to wider fame. From Gonville Hall came not *' ritl '. Taverner, only Shaxton, but also Crome the president of that society, ? a r r k n e e r ;. and and John Skip, who subsequently succeeded, like Shaxton, to ^mi'the the office of master, a warm friend, in after life, of the m< lleformers, 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 prirni- character of i . . their pro- tive Christians, were heard again, freed from the sophistries <*eding. and misconstructions of mediaeval theology, the glowing utterances of the great apostle of the Gentiles. There also, 574 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. VL 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*.' 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, Reformers Crome, Latimer, and Tyndale, are sufficient to shew that the men- 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 orcum- Cambridge students are conceived and carried out. That piead in their those designs were not adopted until after long and earnest behalf incon- thd^sJb 1 . 111 counsel and thought will scarcely be denied ; and if in the 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. 580) appears, case with others, as for instance at least while at Cambridge, not to Matthew Parker and Shaxton. give 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 CHAP. vr. afterwards became associated, when the Protestant repre- ' v ' 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 Theirmect- White Horse and of the circulation of Luther's works in the uKS^ 4 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 . woUcyde- iin i 1,1 T i, clincgto W nerever indeed the cardinal s personal feelings and in- i>i>int a cniimii.i.sion terests were not involved, it must be acknowledged that his ofenquiry - 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*. We shall hereafter be better able nIrta"Sas Kve, \ i< . to explain how it was that he was preaching there instead 1526 - 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 his 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 churchBarnes 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, rv 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 &n&Luther's Postil.' (Foxe- 576 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. VT. 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 . We can hardly doubt that these censures and allusions constituted the real gravamen of his offence ; but the pas- etane * Uor - sages noted 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 V Early in the ensuing week Barnes learned that articles of information had been lodged against him with the vice- chancellor, and at once proposed that he should be allowed to explain and justify himself in the same pulpit on the Cattley, T 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. 580. cule 1 See Cavendish, Life of Wolsey In every poynt most curiously. (ed. Singer), p. 44 ; and compare Boy, On eache syde a pollaxe is borne Rede me etc. (ed. Arber) p. 565. Which in none wother use is ' After theym f olowe two lave men worne, HBcnlar, Pretendynge some hid mistery.' And eache of theym holdynge a pillar Cooper, Annals, i 313-5. BARNES' SERMON. 577 following Sunday. Unfortunately the vice-chancellor for that CHAP, vi, 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- Tiicpn>cci- derinsr at the doors. It had become known throughout the i >tc * b - v o demonstni- university that Barnes was undergoing the ordeal of an {0? tn'o examination, and that his judges and accusers were denying atl 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 appoyntedamongethemtobethepro- Fooke, aud mayster Tyrell whicke was senter of these artycles.' Ibid, i 316. 37 578 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vi. Within a few days after, Barnes was summoned to the He is again lodge at Clare College, and subjected to a further cross- the k.dge of examination by the same authorities ; and again a similar Clare, and . 1 . the proceed- demonstration on the part ot the university put a stop to ings are _ i . r^ted? 1 ** 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 p * books. 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 Barnes is ar- either received no warning or scorned to fly, was arrested in conveyed to the schools and brought to London : and soon found himself London. 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 istriedbefore ' pillars and poleaxes' were 'coined and given in alms.' But Fisher and ... at h west- hops *ke interview with Wolsey was succeeded by the public ordeal tuinster. j n ^ Q 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 a,gainst 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 His own nr. , , , ., a- i rativeofthe me. For in the other thre dayes, was there no man sunered conclusion, to here one worde that I spake. So after theyr eommande- 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 goo 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. 372 580 THE KEFORMATION. CHAP. vi. which was fastyngame Sonday, I shtild 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 pryour 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 thouglie they had convicted me for one: the whyche of truth, and afore God, was as farre from those thinges as any man collide be, savynge that I was no tyraunt nor no persecutour of God's 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 anc ^ P rac ^ ca l sagacity. This man was the famous Hugh Latimer. At the time that Barnes preached his Christmas 1 The Supplication ofdoctour Barnes, etc., (quoted by Cooper, Annals, 1 322). HUGH LATIMER. 581 Eve sermon, Latimer was probably over forty years of age, CHAP. vr. and his adhesion to the new doctrines had not been given in until long after the time when such a ste.p could justly be represented as that of a rash and enthusiastic youth. A fellow of Clare College, he was distinguished in the earlier HI* early f i . , i-i career and part ot his career by everything that could inspire the confi- character, 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 ofchthoo. 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 shewing their appreciation of his merit. He was invested HIS position in the uni- with the honorable office of crossbearer to the university, in vemity. 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*. Among those who listened to Latimer's harangue against Melanchthon was 'little Bilney.' He perceived that the He u con- orator was ' zealous without knowledge,' and determined, possible, to open his eyes to the truth. The plan he adopted 1 Cooper, Athena, 1 130; Demaus, Life of Latimer, c. n. 3 See infra, p. 584, n. 3. 582 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vi. 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 1524, and from that time he He becomes became the intimate friend and associate of Bilney, in whose Bilney s in- itiate 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. Latimer^s ex- ^e mn 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 heiug come an high priest of good things to come.' 584 THE EEFORMATION. 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 1 .' 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 inhibits bishop's voice was uplifted against Latimer at Barnwell Latimer from ,-,-, i c Breaching. Abbey; and he finally inhibited him from preaching any where in the diocese or in any of the pulpits of the university. Latimer It was then that Barnes invited Latimer to preach in the preaches at the Au<^sti f church of the Augustinian friars, where the episcopal veto man friars. cou \fr no t 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 befowoi- Wolsev in London. But his language had throughout been pcy in Lon* 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 O 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 woiseyii- as you have here repeated, you shall have my licence, and "reafcu shall preach it unto his beard, let him say what he will/ And from this ordeal Latimer returned unscathed and triumphant to Cambridge 2 . sir Thomas Towards the close of the year 1525, the high stewardship - was offered to and accepted by Sir Thomas More, who con- tinued to hold the office for several years 3 ; and with Fisher 1 Latimer- Corrie, pp. xxviii, xxix. Wingfield, 'a sad and ancient Knight' 8 Demaus, Life of Latimer, pp. (see Cooper, Athence, i 32), had set 55-58. his heart upon succeeding to the 3 More 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- CHAP. vf. 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 s^-en to LU- . . thcr's writ- unparalleled in the previous experience of the publishing j^ 8 ^ 1 ^ 1 " 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 against the doctrine of transubstantiation alone. It was a General dis- season of deep disquiet, fierce excitement, and gloomy fore- tWumes. 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 Eatione Concionandi, intimating however that he scarcely expects that it will find him still alive 1 ; Erasmus himself, in whose character dature. Wingfield was accordingly qtiam maxima 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 hsec res tarn office again vacant, and More was serio agitur, et tarn grato atque adeo elected his successor. From the fol- tarn ardenti petitur aiiiino, ut quum lowing extract from a letter written nihil prseter fidem antea venerando by Latimer to Dr Green, who was Moro datum causari supererat nobis master of Catherine Hall and vice- exoretur jam Morus, Bed regia id chancellor in 1523, it appears that a quidem (ut fertur) intercessione, ut salary was at that time attached to Wynfyldo cedat, lice.itque nobis citra the office: '...nou quod tantillo sa- omnem iguomiuias notam Wynfyldi lario sit opus tarn honorifico viro' votis obsecundare.' Latimer-Corrie, [Wingfield] ' et rerum omnium afflu- n 407. entia tarn insigniter locupletato, sed 1 Lewis, Life of Fither, 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 ! The world is worse than ever it was, Never so depe in miserable decaye, But it cannot thus endure alwaye.' e " 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 Augustine and a Gregory concerning the approaching end of all things 2 . 1 'Velum templi scissum est, effe- rit), 'cujusdam Joannis de Monte- runtur omnia, etiam quae sacerdoti regio insignissimi astrologi de anno dixeris in sacramentalissima confes- salutiferce incarnationis quingentes- sione. Caveat sibi quisque; Domi- i.n^v^cesimo quarto supra millesimum nus venit.' Letter to John Ccesarius, memini me ita legisse, " Hoc anno nee (A.D. 1524) Opera, m 841. solis nee lunae eclipsim conspicabi- 3 After detailing the signs of the cor- inur; sed pnesenti anno syderum ruption of the age, especially of the habitudines miratu dignissimte acci- clergy, the writer goes on to say, dent ; in mense enim Februario ' Unde nee minim si nobis plurimum viginti conjunctiones cum minune irascitur, in cujus auribus peccato- mediocres, turn magnae accident, rum nostrorum horrida vox quotidie quarum sedecim signum aqueum clamat, eumque ad ultionem pro- possidebunt, quse uni verso fere orbi, vocat: irascuntur quippe et astra climatibus, regnis, provinciis, stati- ipsa nobisque propinquum minantur bus, dignitatibus, brutis, belluis interitum. Dudum sane in quibus- maximis cunctisque terrae nascenti- dam ephemeridibus, seu diariis, quod bus indubitatam mutationem, varia- vocant ' (here Brown stoutly anno- tionem, ac alterationem significabunt, tates in the margin, nos Cantabrigien- talem prof ecto qualem a pluribus ses non solemus, ut plurimum, multum seculis ab historiographis aut natu almanacographis tribuere ; quodcun- majoribusvixpercepimus,&c." Neque que hie bonus vir e Monteregio college- is solum insueta prodigia miiiatur 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 Appearance the appearance of William Tyndale's New Testament gave ^ d p'^ 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 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 nu transia- dissent/ said the lady Margaret professor, in his admirable wt . Paraclesis prefixed to the work, ' I totally dissent from those who are unwilling that the sacred Scriptures, trans- 8lre to ** 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 mortalibus; audivi jam nuper ex immntationem, nt vix homines dia gravissimorum virorum relatu esse posse subsistereverisimilitercredaut.' inodernos aliquos in ea scientist Epistola Cantabrigiensis cujusdam probatissimos qui tantam tamque Aiiom/i/ii de misero Ecclesia statu, mirandam ex celestium corporum in- Gratius Fasciculus Rerum Expeten- fluxione augurantur brevi eventuram darum, Appendix by Brown, vol. n. 088 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 Reason of views when, in 1526, they loudly condemned what, in 1516, with which it they had implicitly commended ; and that explanation must 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 Hrasmus Erasmus himself, at the earnest entreaty of Tunstal, entering writes De LiberoArii- the lists against Luther, and maintaining, in opposition to the trio against Auther. 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- ms enemies pression in his Paraclesis. His enemies were now never tired denounce ... , , . , . inm aa the of pointing out, not altogether without reason but with much cause of the information, 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, iv 104-1. clusit. Mirum vero dietnm Mirori- : 2 'Ego peperi ovum, Lutherus ex- tarum istorum rnagnaque et loiia WILLIAM TYNDALE. 589 friars only reiterated their assertions yet more loudly, and at CHAP, vr.' Louvain, it would appear, he was at one time even re- "~ v ported to be the author of the De Captivitate Babylonica. But whatever might have been Erasmus's later senti- ments, the noble sentences J^oj^o^oJLed had been given to the world paslTfecall ; 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 Wi]linin Erasmus's pupils at the university ; but this supposition rests J/i" *''(?) on very insufficient evidence, and other facts would rather in- rf ' 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 probbiy 1514 to 1521, Tyndale was resident in the university; and c"okebut it may safely be inferred that he was among the number of mu - 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 dignum. Ego posui ovum gal- cutnm cum illo, qui ilium vidisset linaceum, Lutherus exclusit pullum exceptum Parisiis comitatu CL equo- longe dissimillimum.' Opera, in 840. rum. Addebat se timere Tyndalua 1 Canon Westcott, Hist, of tlie 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 Quatyi Bollicite isti tractant hoc ne- Tyndale's residence at Cambridge to gotium, tanqnam illis delegasset Deus between the years 1514 and 1521; instituendum et rudimentis fidei im- and Erasmus, as vre have already buendum orbem!' Opera, m 1856. seen, left n.t tha^lose of 1513. There is certainly nothing in this 2 The sole reference to Tyndale in language, nor in the way in which the EpistolcB 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 Reformer was an ten about 1533 ; ' Hex videtur ad- old pupil of the great scholar. As versus haereticos acrior quam episcopi for his statement that he waited on ipsi. Tyndalus, haereticus 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 Galliro ; scmet collo- may have reached him by hearsay. 590 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vi. 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- s- tions of a painful personal experience. 'Remember ye not,' cences of Ox- fwd. 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, they would burn them therein, though it should cost them their lives ; affirming that all good learning de- cayed and was utterly lost, since men gave them unto the Latin tongue 2 .' 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 supra, pp. 487, 524-6. Eeformation in England may be y Works^ m 75. D'Aubigne as- formed, when we state that, in one sures 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, Tyndale 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 of the 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. 591 poverty, for he appears to have belonged to no college and to CHAP. VT. have held no fellowship, he went down to his native county n 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 nis life at hospitable board, the questions he had learned to handle at bur y- 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 cuthhwt J J Tunstnl. senior, had originally been a student of Balliol College, but the i^- 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 2 . 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 8 , a winning courtesy of manner, and consummate tact. His virtues, if not of an heroic nichra> order, stood often in favorable contrast to the passions of* 6 1 See the interesting sketch of this ' Cooper, A thence, 1 199. 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 His tempo- by an excess of caution ill-suited for stirring times ; and pre- nsrng policy. 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, His writings, h. e 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 Republica. honorable city of London, in the Aristoteles scribit Thraces quosdam absence of the king's most noble esse qui numerando non possunt pro- grace.' Hook's Lives, vi 213. gredi ultra quattuor; quseso te, an 1 For this amusing oration see talibus putes commendandam esse Melanchthonis Declamationes, i 382- gubernationem, non dico magni mer- 91. After pointing out some of the catus aut venarum rnetallicarum sed uses of arithmetic, he continues 'Vi- alicnjus mediocris ceconomiae? Exis- TTJNSTAL AND TYNDALE. 593 censured by Deschales for insufficiency in demonstration ; CHAP. vi. but, to quote the late professor De Morgan's comment, ' Tun- mute** stal is a very Euclid by the side of his contemporaries.' ' The Supput< 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 V On Cuthbert Tunstal Tyndale now waited, carrying Tynuie 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, timerausne A talibus posse rationes Harum ope sublati in caelum, lus- paululum modo intricatas evolvi et trare ocolis 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 qoi de- fataleg congretsus, denique causa* stituti sunt hujus artis presidio.' rerum inaximarum qtue in hoc hotni- After having similarly recommended num vita accidunt, animadvertere po- the study of geometry to their at- teritix.' tention, he adds, 'His qui in studiis * 'The book,' adds De Morgan, versantur et perfectam doctrinam 'was a farewell to the sciences on expetunt, illam sibi utilitatem pro- the author's appointment to the see ponunt, quod ad doctrinam de rebus of London. It was published (that caelestibus 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- qnidem tanta vis est arithmetices in secration took place. The book is doctrina de rebus caelestibus, ut me- decidedly the most classical which diocri arithmetico pene omnia in ever was written on the subject in doctrina rerum caelestium sunt per- Latin, both in purity of style and via ; certe magnum partem ejus doc- goodness of matter. The author had trinae sine ullo negotio asseqni potest. read everything on the subject in Jam vide quam exiguo labore quan- every language which he knew, as he turn pretium operae 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 um exemplttm, in discere. His mediocriter cognitis, licking what he found into shape.' propemodum tola astronomia statim Arithmetical Books, p. 13. percipi .line itlla dijfficultate potest 38 594 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. VL from 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 Tyn dale'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 Tunstai ae- refusal. The latter, in his long-lived resentment, described Juthlm?* 8 " him, many years after, as 'a stiU 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.' The two men The poor scholar went forth from Tunstal's presence dis- and their trasted n ~ 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 Hist, of the English Bible, p. 417. 2 Demaus, Life of Tyndale, p. IB. TUNSTAL AND TYNDALE. 595 valuable qualities, there are undertakings and junctures in CHAP. vr. 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 unperplezt 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 . , , Cambridge, belongs to a wider current than that of uni- 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. His attain- It is not a little remarkable that it should have been ments asa scholar mis- reserved for the research of the last few years to vindicate represented by More, ^he 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 2 . 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 same view 3 ; and still more recently the authority of Hallam 1 'Whiche who so calleth the New the Hebrew.' CJiurch History, in Testament, calleth it by a wrong 162. name, excepte they wyll call it Tyn- 3 See Walter's Letter to Marsh, dal's Testament or Luther's Testa- On the Independence of the Autho- ment. For so hadde Tyndale after rized Version 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 Heresies and Mat- Bible in a higher light than as a ters of Religion, English Works (ed. secondary translation.... It was the 1557), p. 228. combined effect of your language and 8 'He rendered the Old Testament manner which induced me to believe, out of the Latin, his best friends not that Tyndal... instead of translating entitling him to any skill at all in directly from the original Scriptures, WILLIAM TYNDALE. 697 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 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 omon 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 style and 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 l Hist, of the English Biblt, o. I disclaimed, but he endeavored in and App. vm ; Hallam, Hitt. of l.i- his reply to shew that Tyndale de- terature, i 7 386 ; Froude,Z/wt. ofEng- pended a good deal on Luther and land, c. xu. 598 THE REFORMATION. CHAP.TL 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 Tyndale's independence of Luther as a trans- lator 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 doctrine of predestination. They consequently treated Jerome and the Greek fathers with but little respect Luther inaeed stigmatised the former as a heretic, and declared that he ' hated ' him more than any of the would- be teachers of the Church 3 . And these views, though not perhaps adopted by all the early Reformers*, were certainly those that now prevailed at both universities. 1 Hist, of the English Bible, pp. ein Ketzer gewesen Ich weiss 210-1. keinen nnter den Lehrem, dem ich * 'Whose bokes be nothing els in so feind bin als Hieronymo.' Titch- effeet, bat the worst heresies picked reden, Walch, xm 2070. out of Luther's workes, and Lather's 4 The testimony of George Jove, worst wordes translated by Tyndall fellow of Peterhouse, seems to point and pat forth in TyndaTs own name.' to contrary tendencies. In his nar- More, English Works, p. 228. retire of his interview with Gas- 3 'Hieronymas soil nicht anter die eoigne, Wolsey's treasurer, he says: Lehrer der Kirehen mit gerechnet ' I came to Mr. Gaseoing, whyche noch gezehlet warden, denn er 1st I perceyaed by his wordes faaored TYNDALE'S NEW TESTAMENT. 599 Among the first to sound the note of alarm, as the report CHAP. vi. of Tyndale's New Testament began to spread abroad, was E^IrfT^. Edward Lee, at that time king's almoner and afterwards Y! P ' oi archbishop of York. A fit representative of the bigotry of * 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 rounds what infection and danger may ensue hereby if it be not till a P ^r? n withstanded. This is the new way to fulfil your realm with Tyndaie-s * 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 Instrumentum ; 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 l Cooper, Athena, i 85 ; Lewis, Life I studied Arigene [Origen] whycbe of Fisher, n 201-2. was an heretike, said be; and he * Froude, Hist, of England, n SI, saide that I helde such opinions as note. did Bilney and Arture.' Quoted by * Schelhorn, Anwenit. Lit. iv 431 Maitland, Essays on the Reformation, (quoted by Westcott, p. 42). p. 9. 600 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vi. doctrinal teaching. The Greek words which in the Latin Anti-Romish f the Vulgate had been translated as equivalent to 'church,' ce?to1nSeek f 'priest,' ' charity,' 'grace,' 'confession,' ' penance,' had in Tyn- dale's version been rendered by the words 'congregation,' 'elder,' complaint 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, Paul's cross, and the royal mandate to that effect was forthwith issued. Cuthbert Tunstal, who presided at the burning at Paul's r- Cross, declared in his sermon on the occasion, that the mon on the occasion. version contained two thousand errors 2 ; 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 of 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 our Englishe toungue wer almost inough to make a booke, neither expresse the thynges that be and of every sort of those bookes be ment 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 2 Westcott, p. 43. Or, according are of these evill sectes an innume- to Roy, a yet larger number r 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, lacion.' we nede not doubte in what maner, Rede 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, English Works (1532), p. 341. sand textes by tale.' English Works, 'For he had corrupted and purposely p. 228. chaunged in many places the text, 3 ' 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 felowes, and afterwards by the it selfe.' Ibid. p. 310. new sectes gprongen out of his, which THE CAMBRIDGE 'COLONY' AT OXFORD. 601 volume which must be looked upon as essentially the same CHAP. vr. with that over which the foremost biblical scholars of our ~ v- " 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 Progress of Oxford had been rapidly progressing. As the scheme of a fc* Una single foundation it was on a scale of unprecedented macmi- Magnificence o of the design. ncence, 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 Motives tht no insignificant compliment to Cambridge that Wolsey paid i "ie t& 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 sub-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- ciency 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. CHAP. vr. upon these that the choice fell. It is of course quite possible that Shorton, 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 The aid thus and have applauded Shorton's discretion 2 . But however given to oxfor3 g not ^ s rnay have been, we certainly cannot assent to the repre- superfluous. se ntations of Antony Wood 3 , 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 Death of Ablest scholar of them all, died in the same year that the Oct. 20, 1524. 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 1 Strype (Life of Cranmer, p. 3) some of the migrators to Oxford 'had mentions Dr. Capon, master of Jesus a shrewd name,' i. e. for heresy. College, as also acting on Wolsey's 3 Wood-Gutch, n 25. behalf in the matter. 4 Brewer, Letters and Papers, rv 2 According to Dr. London's state- 322 ; Johnson, Life of Linacre, p. ment to Warham (Froude, n 46), 272. LEARNING AT OXFORD. 603 Physicians failed to identify his 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 emolument but small attraction to recognised ability*. tureshipg. 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. 8 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. The appointment to these lectures had been origin/illy 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 Sanitnt,- Tuenda and De Methodo Medendi, as translated by Linacre, or those of the same author De Element!* ft Shnplii-ibits. He was to continue in office three years and a half ; but his 604- THE REFORMATION. CHAP. VI. 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 (Athena, 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. vr. 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 corne 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 ^ J 6 against the Cambridge; and as the first result, towards the close of the Q^^J'** year 1527, George Joye, Bilney, and Arthur, were summoned George 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 HI night to > HtrMsburg. 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*. His subsequent 1 Dr. London to Warham, Rolls Colleges and Haiti (ed. Gutch), p. House MS. (quoted by Froude, n 188. 46). For Dr. London see Wood, The Letters ichyche Johan Ash' 606 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vi. disingenuous performances in connexion with Tyndale's Hischarac- New Testament, and Tyndale's description of his character 1 , will perhaps incline us to conclude that the severity with which Dr. Maitland has commented on his want of veracity, in common with that of other of the early Reformers, is in this instance not altogether undeserved 2 . Examination With Arthur and Bilney, whom Joye had left undergoing of Arthur *' J ^ neir examination at the chapter-house, it fared much the Articles same as with Barnes. The indictments against Arthur 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 8 ; 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 Hisrecanta- curses should turn to the harm of himself.' Of these latter tion. articles he now signed a revocation and submitted himself to the judgement of the authorities 4 . Articles Bilney, who was regarded as the archheretic. and who against Bil- ne y- probably felt that on his firmness the constancy of his followers materially depended, gave more trouble. He had offended well, priour of Newnham Alley be- English Bible, pp. 56-60, 69. sydes JBedforde, sent secretly to the 2 Essays on the Reformation, pp. bishope of Lyncolne, in the yeare of 412. our Lord 1527. Wheer in the say de 3 ' By the authority of God, where priour accuseth George Joye, that He saith Euntes in mundum, prtedi- tyme being felow of Peter College in cede evangelium omni creaturce; by Cambryge, of fower opinyons : with which authority every man may the answere of the sayde George unto preach.' (Second Article, Foxe- t he sayde opinyons. Strassburg. I Cattley, iv 623). Arthur's inference believe the date from Strassburg to be almost suggests a doubt whether he merely a blind, and that the book rightly translated the Latin. was printed in London.' Maitland, 4 Cooper, Annals, i 325; Foxe- Essays on the Reformation, p. 12. Cattley, iv 620-3. 1 Canon Westcott, Hist, of the JOYE, ARTHUR, AND BILNEY. GOT against the authority of the Church far more seriously by his CHAP. 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, He recant* 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 skeiton-g u- J tire of the to this occasion 8 that Skelton attacked the Cambridge 1 Bilney denied that he had wit- Mr. Dyce's theory that Skelton (who tingly taught any of Luther's opinions. dedicated the ' Reply cacion ' Cardi- 1 Then the cardinal asked him, whe- nali meritissimo et apostolicce sedis ther he had not once made an oath legato, a latereque legato superillustri before, that he would not preach, ...necnon prtesentis opusculi fautore rehearse, or defend any of Luther's excellentiisimo), fled to the Sane- opinions, but would impugn the tuary at Westminster BO early as same everywhere? He answered 1523. 'It would be absurd,' he says that he had made such an oath ; but (i Mi), ' to imagine that, in 1523, not lawfully." Foxe-Cattley, iv 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 Courtel' But this objection a '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 feest 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 Sth 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. VL 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 Laurel!' nor the vigorous irony of 'Colyn Clout' or of 'Why coine 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* 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*. 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 blow in the death of the eloquent and highminded Stafford. It was in the generous discharge of the offices of Christian charily 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 yen had ten pounde pellers.' Therewith for to be founde * Hid. 1 217-3. It will be observed At the unyversyte that these are precisely the practices Employed whiche might have against which Bilney directed his at- be tacks. There can be no doubt that Moehe better other waves.' it is to Bilney's trial that More in Skelton-Dyee, 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 eon* 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 A~agt*>A as ' Gos- lith Work* (ed. 1557), p. 113. LATIMER'S CARD SERMONS. 609 not improbably, was regarded as a special judgement; and CHAR \ r. 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 1 /"i i i T-> Sermons on prison, the Cambridge Reformers might have lacked a leader, . JL*CC. lu.J. f . 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 quaintncss of fancy that characterise the pulpit oratory of his age. Delivered moreover on the Sunday t before Christmas, they had a special relevancy to the approaching season. It was customary in those days for almost every card-playing household to indulge in card-playing at Christmas time, nmstmas diversion. Even the austere Fisher, while strictly prohibiting such recreation at all other times of the year, conceded per- Permitted i. y mission to the fellows of Christ's and St. John's thus to fi> " ow * f s - John'tatthis divert themselves at this season of general rejoicing . By e ol >- 1 Fuller-frickett & Wright, p. ha?c nemo Bociornm tcsseris, aleia, 206. Cooper's conjecture (Annals, i taxillis, chartis aliisve India jure 327 n. 5), that the conjurer was per- cauonico vel regni prohibitis utatur, haps only a mathematician, seeins prceterquam solo Nativitatis Christ! scarcely compatible with what we tempore, neque turn in multam noc- kuow of the estimation in which ma- tern aut alibi qnam in aula, atque id thematical studies were held at this dimtaxat aiiimi remittendi causa, time ; nearly a century before, John non qmestus lucrive gratia. Disci- Holbrook, master of Peterhouse, had pulurum rt-ro tn'inincm dictos Ittdot compiled and bequeathed to that exercere uUo tuiijiuim tempore per- * society a complete set of astronomi- mittimus, aut iutra collegium *ut cal tables; while Melanchthon, as we extra.' Early Statutes of St. John'$ 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 Tabulae Caittnliritiii'iixeg, 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 Halliwell's Catalogue of the Contents Augsburg it was decreed that those of the Codex IIolbrookianuK, 1840. who countenanced any game of 8 The scholars were forbidden to chance should not be admitted to play even at Christmas time. 'Ad the communion. See Taylor's 39 610 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. VL having recourse to a series of similes drawn from the roles of primero and 'trump 1 ,' Latimer accordingly illustrated his subject in a manner tha 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 Buckenham, the prior of the Dominican foundation at 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 die 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*. But an imitation is rarely as happy as the original, nor was Buckentiam 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 Card*, pp. 249-88, for the called the firing*, which, if it be games at cards in vogue at this veil played at, he that dealeth shall period. Seven of the cards in the win; the players shall likewise win; Jot de Mmmieymm wen named from and the standen and lookers upon the subjects of the frirucai and fK*4- shall do the same.' Latimer, Sfr- riritim. sum* (ed. Come), p. a For the game 1 From the French triowtplu : so of La Triempkt, see Taylor, p. 372-3; pr in his first sermon: 'The it is, he says, ' the parent of eearfl.' that we wffl play at shall be * Demaus, Lift ofLatimtr,?. 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 Barn well. 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 The contest until the arrival of the following missive from the royal almoner to Dr. Buckmaster, the vice-chancellor, that peace, at least in outward observance, was restored to the uni- versity : ' 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 certayne 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 anymated 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 tJte 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 ofiende and sklaunder the people, which I assure you in my mynde is neither wisely donne ui nunc aunt tempora, neither like a goode evangeliste. 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 kinge's pleasure, or elles by some other waies to reduce them in concordance, the wayes how to ordre the same I rerayt 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. 8 Lamb, Cambridge Document*, p. 14. 392 612 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. TL Thomas Cranmer. b. 1489. d. 1556. The '.Dolphin.' Cranmer's marriage. His wife's death. A second time elected fellow of Jesus Col- lege. The allusion in the foregoing letter to 'the king's cause' 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 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 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. But within 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 the connexion he had formed, that he was again elected to a fellowship by the authorities at Jesus 2 . 1 Cooper, Athena, 1 115. According to Fuller, Cranmer's 'frequent re- pair' to the Dolphin 'gave occasion to that impudent lie of the papists that he was an ostler.' Fuller- Prickett & Wright, p. 203; Morice, Anecdotes of Archbp. Cranmer, in Nichols, Narratives of the Reforma- tion, p. 269. 2 'I know the statutes of some houses run thus: Nolumus socios nostros esse maritos vel maritatos. It seems this last barbarous word was not, or was not taken notice of, in Jesus College statutes. Cranmer herein is a precedent by himself, if that may be a precedent which hath none to follow it.' Ibid. p. 203. A recent election, to a fellowship on the foundation of the college of the same name at the sister university, has falsified Fuller's last words. CRANMER. 613 In the long vacation of 1529 the outbreak of the plague CTIAP.VI. at Cambridge had driven away the members of the university ^"~ v ^ J ' \ runnier at and among the number Cranmer had taken refuge with two JSSftiat pupils, also relatives, of the name of Cressy, at their father's SUifiSi house at Waltham. It so happened that during his residence rcsJSig^ . i , , . , . . * the royal tnere, the same epidemic had compelled the court to leave <">* 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 , , r as laid before merits of a controversy respecting which, amid all the 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 Sec supra 160-3. 614 THE REFORMATION. C J^*'^1' were supposed to have any cognisance. The question, which as canonists and theologians they were called upon to decide, was simply whether a man may lawfully marry his brother's wife, after that brother's 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- The question men. It was however patent to all that a far wider question really involv- . . . . . e au- e was ** e **y ^ ai( i before the universities as an inevitable po^. tyofthe corollary 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 2 ; 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 theexpe- how small was the probability that the different centres of 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 sit jure divino et natural! out the words in italics. See Hist. prohibitum ne frater ducat in uxo- of England, rv 5 593, Append. M. rem relictam fratris mortui sine li~ 2 Burnet himself admits that 'to beris.' 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 - vr - now Greek lecturer at St. John's, had been sent out, at the croke in suggestion of Cranmer, 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 ... , in bribing the business consisted in collecting subscriptions, duly recognised by an adequate Jwnorarium, to an opinion favorable to his royal employer*. 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 97. find however larger sums quoted : 8 For a detailed account of Croke'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 letter book. Cotton MS. Vitellius Croke in his letters, thinks they can B 18. The statement of Cavendish hardly be looked upon as bribes, [Life of Woltey (ed. Singer), p. 206], from the smallness of the amounts : is perhaps as trustworthy as that of 'they' [the recipients] he say s, '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.' InDodd-Tierney (i 201), we to choke them, and in especial to 616 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vr. Mr. Froude'i comparison of the con- duct of Ox- ford and Cambridge. At home, though there is no evidence of bribery, there was undeniable intimidation. The very first letter that 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 2 ; 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 3 . 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 i honorable and conscientious motives, Mr. Froude, in com- 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 .' such as had the governance and custody of their universities' seals.' See also lingard, Hist, of England, iv 5 593. 1 'And in case you do not up- rightly, according to divine learning, humble yourselves herein, ye may be assured that we, not without great cause, shall so quickly and so sharply . look to your unnatural misdemean- our herein, that it shall not be to your quietness and ease hereafter.' Froude, i 258. 2 ' And if the youth of the univer- sity will play masteries as they begin to do, we doubt not but they shall well perceive that non est bonum irritare crabrones.' Ibid, i 262. 3 'And so much the more marvel we at this your manner of delays, that- our university of Cambridge hath within far shorter time not only agreed upon the fashion and manner to make answere to us effect- ually, and with diligence following the same : but hath also eight days since sent unto us their answere under common seale, plainly deter- mining, etc.' Fiddes, Life of Wol- sey, Collect. No. 85. (This letter is not referred to by Mr. Froude). 'So many thunderclaps of his dis- pleasure,' says Anthony Wood, 'Lad been enough, if our famous univer- sity had not been consecrated to eternity, to have involved our col- leges among the funerals of abbeys.' Wood-Gutch, ii 40. 4 Hist, of England, i 257, 262. THE DIVORCE. 617 "Without entering upon the question how far the com- CHAP.VI. parison thus drawn is to be justified on a consideration of . ?T" Hw criticism the continuous history of the two universities, it may be dSS^cntaiy worth while to examine to what extent Mr. Froude's eulogium evidcnce - 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, the Vice-cfuincellor, Doctors, and King Henry's Regentes and Non-Regentes of our Universitie of Cambridge. gSntl^Si 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 myndes and opynions in that bihalfe, and nothing dowtinge but like as ye have all wayes founde us to you and that our universitie favourable benivolent, 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 pleascr, specially in declaration of the truthe in a cause so nere touching us your prince and soveraine lorde, our soule, the wealth also and benetite 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 premises. 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 seale of that our universitie, of such opynyon in the proposition aforesaid as shul be then concluded, and by the consent of lerned men shall be agreed upon. In cloying whereof, ye shall deserve our especiiill 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 crannicr- university had been familiarised with the main arguments 1 Eamb, Cambridge Documents, p. 11). 618 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. VL f or and 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 : Gardiner and ' To THE KlNG's HlGHNESS, oni7course Pleaseth it your highness to be advertised, that arriving consequent here at Cambridge upon Saturday last past at noon, that same rece?pt h of the n ig n ^ an< i Sunday in the morning we devised with the vice- rovaf 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 your 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, ourself^ 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, imtltas 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 and opinion ; where- unto they answered severally, as their affections led them, et res erat in multa confusione. 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 is remarkable that not a single is a matter of doubt. See Cooper, copy of this treatise is known to be A the nee, I 146. in existence, and even its exact title THE DIVORCE. 619 to come for that purpose ; and likewise against Dr. Reppes and Dr. Crome; and also 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 frieud 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 that 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 the 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 duos partes, 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. CHAP. vi. THE GRACE. ' Placet vobis ut (A) Vicecancellarius Magistri in theologia, Doctores Middleton, (A) Salcot, the abbot of St. (A) Heynes, Benets, "Watsoii, Mylsent, de isto bene spe- ratur. (A) Repps, (A) Shaxton, Tomson, (A) Latimer, ~Ven.etus,deistobenesperatur.(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 Procurators, kabeant plenam facultatem et authoritatem, nomine totius universi- tatis respondendi litteris Regice Majestatis in hoc congregatione lectis, ac nomine totius universitatis definiendi et determinandi qucestionem in dictis litteris propositam. Ita quod quicquid duce partes eorum prcesentium inter se decreverint respondendi dictis litteris, et deftnierint ac determinaverint super qucestione prceposita, in iisdem habeatur et reputetur pro responsione definitione et de- terminatione totius universitatis, et quod liceat vicecancellario pro- curatoribus et scrutatoribus litteris super dictarum duarum par- tium definitione et determinatione concipienda sigillum commune universitatis 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 hope of four ; of which four if we get two and obtain of another to be absent, it is sufficient for our purpose V 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 by an important reservation, that the marriage was illegal dedwonof if it could be proved that Catherines marriaqe with prince the univer- J Burnet, Hist, of the Reformation, Records i ii 22. Cooper, Annals, 1 337-9. THE DIVORCE. C21 Arthur had been consummated 1 . It was however no slight CTIAP - VI - achievement to have gained thus much from the university ; and when Buckmaster presented himself at Windsor as the <*- * master's bearer of this determination, he was received by Henry with *x unt f J J his reception every mark of favour, and Cambridge was praised for ' the at 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 and of the A t indications of world almost cryeihe oute of Cambridge for this acte, and {^{YhS* 1 * specially on me, but I must bear it as well as I maye/ He UDiver8it - v - 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 me 2 .' 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 . . - tend tii deny, that this end was attained by the nomination of a ^i,f commission which, if we examine its composition, can only '>'">'" be regarded in the light of a packed jury, that the nomina- 1 'Quod ducere nxorem fratris hibitum jure divino ao natural!.' mortui sine liberis cognitam a priori Lamb, Cambridge Documents, p. 21. viro per carnalem 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 . Position 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 Ductor Dubi- matter appears undeniable: that tantium; the second, that of Dodd, both Clement and Henry were sen- the Catholic historian. 'Who [i.e. sible 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 the 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 smnmated, 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 5 551. this proposition that the Levitical The general feeling of the two uni- degrees do not, by any law of God, versities is worthy of note in con- bind Christians to their observance.' nexion with Mr. Froude'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 having married Catherine by virtue and injured wife, the victim of a of that dispensation, and lived near false husband's fickle appetite.' i twenty-five years with her as his wife, 94. 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 seventeenth century and marry another. '(written 1737). Dodd- eighteenth century view : the first, Tierney, i 231. FISHER'S STATUTES. 623 his best reward. The promotion of Metcalfe to the master- CHAP - vt - ship in 1518 had proved eminently favorable to the best Prosperity or A J St John interests of the society. Metcalfe was himself indeed no SSjJjut. proficient in the new studies ; but in Fuller's phrase, though oUfe '* rnle - '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 8 . 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 Fisher-* * statutes of closely printed quarto pages, and those of 1524, seventy-seven, 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- rteneor the detail* 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, Epistola 227 ; Baker-Mayor, 107-8. (ed. Elstob), pp. 74-5. 2 For Cheke's celebrity in the C24) THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vi. precautions that, though the good bishop's care extended to ThTItotutTs details so trifling that the statute against ' fierce birds ' was tafaa^grave 1 extended to include the most harmless of the feathered oinission in IIT 111111-111 fixing no race, the thrush, the linnet, and the blackbird , he yet standard of ... ^u^respect nevertheless omitted altogether to make provision with L ? ous". 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 2 , 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 ingly find Ascham in writing to Cranmer (then archbishop). Ascham to . J V harm result- informing him that there were two things 'which proved ing from tins laxity. 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 138. of pensioner. Dr. Ainslie, in his 2 See supra, 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, 3 Strype, Memorials 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- niAp.vt. 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 The omission to remedy the above evil (so far at least as the college was st - J oi'"' in the sta- concerned), by the insertion of a clause requiring that no tutes of 1545 - 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 TM of the tendencies he saw around him was far from singular, 1>MBS - 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 jpim 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 itaque quod fonnida- hoc collegio qnemquam, ne externum mus ex Iris provenire malum potest, quidem aut puerum, grainniaticam si quosdam praeter hunc numerum in cubicnlo suo nut intra collegium couvictores et peusionarios iutra col- doceat, turn quia magnum stiuliis legium admiserimus, quorum non snis impediinoutum erit, turn qiiia Integra conversatio ceteros inficiat, majora doctndu in callt'iiii* aunt, atque ita sensim reliquo corpori per- graumuitica in ludiii liitcruriis di~ nicies inferatur. Magnopere etiam cenda e*t* Habeant nntoiu qui in collegii interest ut adolescentes, collegium admissi sunt aliquam in priusquam in collegium adruittuntur, litU-ris prngress-iomm, ut postquain aliquam progressionem et cursum in ad dialecticam se oontolarntt, majo- litteris factum habeant. Debet enim rem operam et diligi'ntiorfin cum nomiihil inter ludos litterarios et fructu in Aristotele ponant. academiam interesse, ut nisi funda- nisi fiat, permngnam in logica clis- meutis bene jactis e scholis gramma- cenda jactunun facieut, et ernditio ticorum ad academiam nou proce- ea quro necessaria proptiT usum est dant. Et fere ceruitur eos postea insuavis proptcr illorum in discendo maximum fructum studinrum per- tarditatem crit.' Karhj Statutes of cipere, qui ante in linguis mediocri- St. Jtil.n's (ed. Mayor), p. 85. ter profecerunt. Itaque nnllus in 40 626 THE REFORMATION. CHAP.VL 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 Licence of 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 1 Cooper, Annals i 329; see also (Feb. 1860), by Mr. Thompson sttpra, p. 500, n. 2. Cooper, F.B.A. 2 See an article, The Cambridge 3 Cooper, Athena, i 51 ; Latimer- University Press, in The Bookseller Conie, n 321. DEATH OF FISHER. 627 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 disputant who perhaps made but a poor figure in the schools l * Lf of the university, not unfrequently reappeared as a prosper- 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 ta 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 *. In the meantime significant events in the political world came on in rapid succession; and not long after Fisher had drawn up his last code for St. John's College, it began a 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, i 347. 402 623 THE REFORMATION. mined to Feeling of the univer- sity. CHAP. vi. Tower. Superstitious he might be, but where his super- Fisher com- 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 of st found such an expression of pathetic grief as the letter in 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 John's College. 1 'Tu nobis pater, doctor, praecep- tor, legislator, omuls denique virtutis et sanctitatis exemplar. Tibi victum, tibi doctrinam, tibi quicquid* est quod boni vel habemus vel scimus nos debere fatemnr Quaecunque autern nobis in communi sunt opes, quicquid habet collegium nostrum, id si tot urn tua causa profunderemus, ne adhuc quidem tuam in nos bene- ncentiam assequeremur. Quare (re- verende pater) quicquid nostrum est, obsecramus, utere ut tuo. Tuum est eritqne quicquid possnmus, tuiomnes Bumus erimusque toti.' (Quoted in Baker-Mayor, p. 465). See also Lewis, Life of Fisher, u 356-8. THE ROYAL INJUNCTIONS. G29 have since been wont to assemble not a few who have risen C.IAI-. M. 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- cromweii succeeds ceeded to the chancellorship at Cambridge; and a ruder ^^ r hand than that of Fisher or Wolsey ousted the professors of 1535 - 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 ofniacommia- sionorsat 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- ' 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 sewells 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 appoint. ,1 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- * Strype, Memorials, i 324. 630 THE REFORMATION. CHAP. vi. nities, benefices, and stipends, or expulsion from the univer- * sity:' THE ROYAL ' (1) That by a writing to be sealed with the common seal of of 1535. TI NS the university and subscribed with their hands, tfley should swear to the king's succession, and to obey the statu of the realm, made or to be made, for the extirpation of the pVpal 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, Wd Christ's Colleges, Michaelhouse, Peterhouse, Gonville, TrinitV, 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 upon 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 that 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 (S), Anthony Tr'om- 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. Erlauterung der Quodlibeta des Sco- (a) see supra, pp. 59-62. tus schrieb unter dem Titel In Scoti (j8) see supra, pp. 412-3. Formalitates und einen hochst aus- (7) see supra, p. 429. fiihrlichen controvertirenden Com- (5) see supra, p. 197. mentar zu Sirectus verfasste, wobei (e) One of the newest commen- er im Hinblicke auf die unerlass- tators on Duns Scotus (d. 1518), liche Reinheit der Parteistellung die ' welcBer Qucestiones quodlibetales als Ansieht 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 the downfal of scholasticism in England ; and here, if any- 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 learnino- 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 zum Thomismus hinnei- unterlassen konnten.' Ibid, nr 200. gend verdiichtigte.' Pr&ntl,Geschichte (ij) Another commentator on Si- der Logik, iv 269. rectus; printed in different editions (f) Textustotiuslogicespermagis- of that author, Venet. 1501, 1514, trum Tliomam Bricot abbr<-rintitn et 1526, 1588. He labored to reduce per eumdem novissime emendatus. the distinctio to two kinds, the dig- (Basilece, 1492), ' zeigt sich uns tinctio formalis, and the dintinctiit derselbe als einen rasonirenden nnd realix. ' Diese Dichotomic aberwurdo zngleich rechtfertigenden Auszug aus hinwiederum...vonanderenconserva- dem aristotelischen Organon init tiven Scotisten geradezu als eine Einschluss des Porphyrius, BO dass Hinneigung zum Thomismus bezeich- wir jede weitere Bemerkung iiber net.' Ibid, iv 198. diese an sich untergeordnete Arbeit 632 CONCLUSION. CHAP. vi. much extravagance, much puerility, and much bigotry, ' v ' 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. Lydgate's Verses on the Foundation of tlie 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 hando, And specially rcmembringo as I reedo In his cronicles made of England Arnoungo other thynges as ye shall vnderstand, Whom for myne aucthour I dare alleago, Seith the translacion and buylding of Cambridge. 2 With hym accordinge Alfride the Croniclere, Seriouslye who lyst his bookes to see, Made in the tymo when he was Thresurero Of Beverley an old famouse cytie, Affirmo and seyne the vniuersitio Of Cambridge & studyo fyrst began By their wrytinge as I reporte can. 3 He rehersing first for commendacion, By their writinge how that old cytio 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 Pertholyno he was germayno brother Duke in tho daies in Ireland a great Kynge, Chieffe & principall cause of that building. The wall about and towers as they stoodo Was set and buiite vpon a large floode, 636 APPENDIX, 5 Named Cantebro a large brode ryver, And after Cante called Cantebro, This famous Citie, this write the Cronicler, Was called Cambridge; rehersing eke also In their booke their aucthors bothe twoe Towching the date, as I rehearse can, Fro thilke tyme that the world began 6 Power thowsand complete by accomptes clere And three tmndreth by computacion Joyned therto eight and fortie yeare, When Cantebro gave the fundacion Of thys cytie and this famous towne And of this noble vniuersitie Sett on this ryver which is called Cante. 7 And fro the great transmigration Of kynges reconed in the byble of old Fro Iherusalem to babylou Twoe hundreth wynter and thirtie yeares told. Thus to writte myne aucthour maketh me bold, "When Cantebro, as it well knoweth, At Atheynes 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 sovereigne of renowne Vnto Cambridge, playnlye this is the case, Anaxamander and Anaxagoras 9 With many other myne Aucthours dothe fare, To Cambridge fast can hym spede With philosophers, & let for no cost spare In the Schooles to studdie & to reede ; Of whoes teachinge great profit that gan spreade And great increase rose of his doctrine; Thus of Cambridge the name gan first shyne 10 As.chiefFe schoole & vniuersitie Vnto this tyme fro the daye it began By cleare reporte in manye a far countre Vnto the reigne of Cassibellan, A woorthie prince and a full knyghtlie man, As sayne cronicles, who with his might[ie] hand Let Julius Cesar to arrvve in this lande. APPENDIX. 637 11 Five hundroth yere full thirtie yere & twcntio Fro babilons transmigration That Cassibelan reigned in britayne, Which by his notable royall discrecion To increase that studdie of great affection, I meane of Cambridge the vuiuersitie, 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 stooddie great plentie 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 thcim to rome towne, Thus by processe remembred here to forne Cambridg was founded longe or Chryst was borne, 14 Five hundreth yere thirtie and eke nyne. In this matter ye gett no more of me, Reherse I wyll no more [as] at this tymo. Theis remeinbrauuces have great aucthoritio To be preferred of longe antiquitie ; 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 do 1 1 anna, 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 Antiquarian Annals of Stanfvnl, 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. vni. p. 44) claims, may perhaps be questioned : Wood hesitates to decide; and the language of the letter of Kdward m commanding the return 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 universities? 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 in 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. vm 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 Repingdale, Walter Heston, Ralph de 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 Scholarium, going thus, Explicit liber Boetii de disci- plina scholarium in hunc modum ordinatus ac compilatus per quen- dam Magistrum qui rexit scholas Stamfordiae, anno ab 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 esl. The note quoted by Wood belongs, according to Peck, to a copy preserved at Merton College, Oxford. See Camb. 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 Statute Universitatis Cantebrigiae. Si aliquis velit habere aliquam principalitatem alicujus hospitii in dicta universitate, vcniat ad dominurn hospitii illius in die Sancti Barnabae apostoli ; quia ab illo tempore [11 Jun.] usque ad Nativitatem Beatae Mariae [8 Sept.] possunt offerri cautiones et adniitti, et 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 ipso debet venire domino hospitii in praedicto die vel infra illud tempus, sed quanto citius tanto melius, ct in praesentia bedclli 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 cancellarium et sibi exponere cauti- onem in praesentia illorum testium et dicere qualiter dominus hospitii te minus juste recusavit in cautione recipienda ; et hoc probato cancel- larius statim te admittet ad illam cautionem et ad illam principalitatem invito domino hospitii. Item ille qui scholaris est et principalis alicujus hospitii non potest cedere nee alicui clerico scholar! socio renuutiare juri suo, sed tun turn domino hospitii. Item cessiones hujusmodi prohibentur quia fuissent in praejudicium domini hospitii ; quod fieri uon 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 placcat tibi, peto mo admitti ad princi]>alitateni hospitii tui in ilia parochia, quandocunque principalis velit cedero vel renuntiari juri suo, ita quod ego primo et principaliter et immediate possim sibi succedere, si placcat tibi, salvo jure suo dum principalis fuerit. Si non vult, exponas cautionem cancellario, ut te admittat ad illam conditionem quod quandocunquo non fuerit principalis, quod tu possis esse principalis et sibi succedere in eodeui hospitio prae omnibus aliis ; ct cancellarius te admittet iuvito domino et invito principali. Item si aliquis dominus dicit alicui scholari : Vis tu esse principalis illius hospitii moi ? Scholaris dicit quod sic ; sed dominus hospitii dicit quod non vult quod hospitium taxetur aliquo modo; scholaris dicit quod non curat ; scholaris ingreditur tanquam pi ineipalis ct accipit sibi socios scholares in hospitio suo. Isti scholarcs hospitii possunt adire cancellarium et facerc hospitium eonim 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 privare aliquem principaleni sua principali- tate nee aliquo modo supplantare, dummodo solvit pensionem, nisi dominus hospitii velit inhabitare, vel nisi dominus vendiderit vel hos- pitium alienaverit. (D), p. 234. The Statutes of Michael House under the seal of Harvey de Stanton. (The earliest college statutes of the university.) Universis Christi fidelibus prsesentibus et futuris, Hervicus de Stanton clericus salutein, ad perpetuam memoriam subscriptorum. Celsa Plasniatoris omnium niagnifice bonitatis immensitas, creaturam suam rationalem quam sue siinilitudiui conformarat, ingenuam volens ad interne discretionis intelligentiam efferri, et in fide catholica solidari, superna pietate disposuit creaturam ipsam fulgere virtutibus et doctrkiis, ut creatorem et redemptoreni suum fideliter credendo cognosceret, et eidem, absque criminis contagione mortiferi, deserviret. Cumque per divini cultus obsequium et scripturae sacre documentum juxta sanc- tiones canonicas sancta mater extollatur ecclesia. Quibus ab excellen- tissimo principe et domino reverendo, domino Edwardo Dei gratia rege Anglie illustri, devotione saluberrima pensatis, Idem dominus rex ad honorem Dei et augmentuna 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 inesuagio cum per- tinentiis in Cantebrig: ubi exercitium studii fulgere dinoscitur, (quod quidem mesuagium michi in feodum adquisivi) quandam domum scola- rium, capellanorum et aliorum, sub nomine Domus Scolarium Sancti Michaelis Cantebrig: per queudam niagistrum ejusdem domus regendam juxta ordinationem meam, instituere et fundare possim et assignare pre- dictis magistro et scolaribus, habendum sibi et successoribus suis pro eorum inhabitatione im perpetuum. Super quo venerabilis pater domi- nus Johannes Dei gratia Eliensis episcopus, loci diocesanus, in hac parte, precibus meis, de conseusu capituli sui, salubriter annuendo, gratiose concessit, predictam Domum Scolarium Sancti Michaelis, ut pre- dicitur, per me fundari et firmitate perpetua stabiliri. S. 3. Quapropter convocatis in presentia mea magistro Roberto de Mildenhale, magistro Waltero de Buxton, magistro Thoma de Kyning- ham, et Henrico de Langham presbiteris ; Thoma de Trumpeshale et Edmundo de Mildenhall presbiteris et baccalauriis in univers5tate Cantebrig: studentibus, qui artium liberalium philosophic, seu theolrgie studio intendebant: dictam domum in Sancte et Individue Trinitatis, Beate Marie matris Domini nostri Jesu Christi semper Virginis, Sancti Michaelis Archangeli, et omnium Sanctorum venerationem, sub nomine Domus Scolarium sancti Michaelis, ut predicitur, predictis Roberto, APPENDIX. 641 Waltero, Thoma, Henrico, Thoma, et Edmundo, scholaribus de piano consentientibus, in ipsorum scolarium personis, collegium originaliter facio, ordino, stabilio, et constituo in hac parte: quibus magistrum Reginald de Honynge subdiaconum associari concedo. Et prefatum magistrum Walterum de Buxton cisdem domui, collegio, et socie- tati, in magistrum preficio: et ipsum magistrum ad salubre et competens regimen eorundem constituo, quibus quidem magistro et scolaribus, et eorum successoribus, locum inhabitationis in mesuagio meo predicto cum pertinentiis scituato in parochia Sancti Michuelis in vico qui vocatur Melnstrete, quod perquisivi de magistro Rogero filio domini Guidonis Butetourte, im perpetuum concedo et assigno. Quam quidem Domum Scolarium Sancti Michaelis volo imperpctuum nuncupari. 8. 4. Super statu vero predictae domus scholarium, sic ordinandum duxi et statuendum: primum quidem quod scholarcs in eadem dorno sint presbytcvi, qui in artibus liberalibus seu philosophia rexerint, ye] saltern baccalaurii in eadem scientia existant, et qui in artibus incipere teneantur, et postquam cessaverint studio Theologise intendaut. et quod nullus de cctero in societatem dicte domus admittatur preter presbi- teros, vel saltern in sacris ordinibus constitutes, infra annum a tempore adniissioni s sue in domum praedictam, ad ordinem sacerdotalem canonico promovendos, honestos, castos, humiles, pacificos, et indigentes qui consimiliter in artibus liberalibus seu philosophia rexerint, vel saltern baccalaurii in eadem scientia existant, et studio theologie ut pro- dicitur, processu temporis vacent et intendant. S. 5. Quibus magistrum preesse volo, et eidom magistro, seu sub- stitute ab eodeni, (cum legitimo impedimento ipsum magistrum abcsse, vel adversa valetudine detineri contigerit) volo, ordino, ct stabilio ceteros dicte societatis scolares, tarn presbyteros quam alios subesse, et cidem in canonicis et licitis, pro statu, utilitate et regimine dictarum domus et societatis salubriter obedire. S. 6. Et quod magister et scolares capellani et alii, mensam com- uuincin habeant, in domo predicta: et habitum conformem, quanto commode poterint, quorum quilibet in ordine presbyterus constitutus quinque marcas, et quilibet in diaconum aut subdiaconum ordinatus quatuor marcas tantummodo, de me et rebus meia annuatim percipiat : donee, Dei suffragio, pro ipsorum sustentatione, in tenements, redditibus, seu ecclesiarum appropriationibus provideatur; undo possint in forma predicta sustontari. Ita quod singulis septimanis sumptus cujuslibet eorundem in esculentis et poculentis duodecim denarios, nisi ex causa necessaria et honesta, non excedat Ek si quod, anno revoluto, do pre- dictis quinque et quatuor marcis supererit, computatis expensis cujuslibet juxta ordinationem predictain, distribuatur inter socios dicte domus pro cquali portione. Habeant insuper dicti scolares duos famulos ad niinis- trandum eis in hospitio suo, quorum utcrque pro sustentatione sua in esculentis et poculentis percipiat singulis septimanis decem denarios 41 642 APPENDIX. pro stipendio vero eorundem duorum famulorum, et barbitonsoris et lotricis, percipiaut dicti scolares quadraginta solidos per annum, et si pro minori stipendio inter eos convenerit, quod residuum fuit inter ipsos scolares distribuatur, sicut superius dictum est 8. 7. Xumerus vero capellanorum scolarium et aliorum, ut predicitur, juxta quantitatem bonorum et proventuum dicte domus, processu tem- poris augentur. De 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 alternating singulis septimanis ministretur ; et inde, singulis diebus Yeneris aut Sabbati, coram magistro et sociis fideliter computetur. 8. 8. Nee aliquis in societate dicte domus ponatur seu admittatur nisi per magistrum et scolares dicte domus ; qui per scrutinium socios eligendos in virtute juramenti sui, eligant simpliciter meliores; non habendo respectum ad aliquam affectionem carnalem, nee instantiam, nee aliquorum requisitionem, seu precationem. S. 9. Si vero dictorum presbyterorum seu scolarium alicui talis egri- tudo supervenerit, quod inter sanos commode conversari non debeat; seu 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 fuerit ad studenduni; seu in divini cultus ministerio, juxta status sui exi- gentiam et ordinationem predictam, negb'gens aut remissus notabiliter extiterit; seu aliunde substantiam ad valentiam centum solidorum annuorum in temporalibus seu spiritualibus consecutus fuerit; cesset ex tune omnino in ejus persona exhibitio in domo predicta. Ita quod nichil 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; seu de perjurio, sacrilegio, furto, seu rapina, homicidio, adulterio, vel incon- tinentia super lapsu carnis notorie diflFamatur; ita quod, per socios dicte domus statuto sibi termino, se purgare non possit, dicta sustentatio omnino sibi subtrahatur, et ipse velut ovis morbida, que totam massam corrumpit, a dicta congregatione juxta discretionem magistri et senioris partis societatis predicte, penitus excludatur. Xec alicui a domo pre- dicta sic ejecto actio competat, contra magistrum dicte domus uut scolares, seu quoscunque alios de dicta domo, agendo, appellando, conquerendo, sive in integrum restitationem petendo; nee aliquibus literis seu impetrationibus, in foro ecclesiastico seu seculari subveni- atur: hujusmodi literis seu impetrationibus, qualitercunque optentis, utendo. 8. 11. Et ne litibus, placitis, seu quereUs, bona dicte domus distra- hantur, per aliquem seu aliquos societatis predicte, aut in usus alios convertantur, minuantur, aut dissipentnr; sed dumtaxat in pios usus ut predicitur, erogentur; ordino, statuo, et stabilio, ne qui in dicta APPENDIX. 643 sustentatione aut bonis dicte domus proprietatem habcant, nee aliqnod sibi vendicare possint, nisi dum obedientes, tolerabiles, humiles fuerint, adeo et modesti ut magister et socii dicte domus eorura conversationem et societatem laudabilem approbaverint, et inde decreverint se contentos in forma predicta. S. 12. Hoc autem scolares dicte domus diligeater inter se attendant, ut nullus eorum, extraneos aut propinquos inducendo, dicte sue societati, onerosus existat; ne per hoc aliorum turbetur tranquillitas, aut conten- tionis seu jurgiorum materia suscitetur, aut bonorum dicte societatis in ipsorum dispendium portio subtrahatur, seu in usus alios minus proyide convertatur. S. 1 3. Content! ones 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 importunitate, dominus episcopus Elyensis qui pro tempore fuerit, vel canccllariua universitatis Cantebrig. juxta factorum contingentium qualitatem, si necesse fuerit consulatur. Preterea visitetur dicta domus per cancel- larium universitatis, semel, vel pluries, cum per magistrum dicte donius aut scolares fuerit requisitus. Et si quid corrigendum invenerit, emen- dari faciat, juxta consuetudinem universitatis predicte; nichil tamen novi attemptet, statuat, ordinet, seu introducat per quod ordinationi mee predicte in aliquibus derogetur, seu valeat derogari. Capellani et scolares societatis predicte, singulis diebus festivis majoribus, in predicta ecclesia Sancti Michael is, ad raatutinas et alias horas canonicas competentur psallendas, personaliter conveniant; et ad missas de die prout decet juxta festorum exigentiam, cum nota quatenus commode vacare poterint, celebrandas. Singulis vero diebus feriatis dicant omnes horas canonicas, prout decet Hoc semper obser- vato quod singulis diebus in quibus licet celebrare, Mista beat* Vir- ginis et Misse defunctorum extra festa majora, perpetuo celebrentur. Et quod quilibet in ordine sacerdotali constitutus quinquies in septimaua missam celebret, cum commode vacare poterit, nisi per infirmitatcm aut alias ex causa legitima fuerit impeditus. Singulis vero diebus Dominicis, a tempore inceptionis hysteric quo dicitur Deux omnium usque ad adventum Domini, celebretur Missa de Trinitate. per singulos autem dies Lune, Missa de Sancto Michael* Archangelo. Et quolibet die Martis, Missa de Sancto Edmundo Rege et Sancto Thoma Archi- episcopo Cantuariensi Martyribiu et omnibus Martyribus. Quolibet die Mercurii, Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptitta et alia Mitta de Sancto Petro Apostolo et omnibus Apostolis. Quolibet die Jovis, Mitta de Sanctis Etheldreda, Katerina, Margareta, et omnibus Virginibu*. Quolibet die Veneris, Missa de Sancta Cruce, et quolibet die Sabbati, Missa de Sanctis Nicholao, Martino, et omnibut Confestoribut. 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 speciales horis captatb intendere poterint celebrandas. 17. Per hoc autem intentionis mee non existit, ipsorum scolarium capellanoruru aliquem ultra possibilitatem suam congruani, super hujus- modi missarum celebrationibus faciendis, onerare, quo minus lectionibus, disputationibus in scolis, sire studio raleant racare competenter : et hec eadem ipsorum conscientiis duxi relinquenda. Psalmos Tero peni- tentiales cum psalmis quindecim, scilicet Ad Dominion, cum tribularer t et afiis usualibus: et litania, placebo, et dirige, et animarum com- mendatianem, dicant secundum usum Sarnm, conjunctim rel separ- atim, horis quibus Tacare poterint competentibus, suarum periculo IS. In omnibus vero et singulis missis celebrandis, tenentur dicti capellani scolares orare, pro statn universalis Ecclesie, et pace et tranquillitate regni, et pro salute dicti domini regis, domine Isabelle regine, domini Edwardi dicti regis primogeniti, et aliorum ipsius regis liberorom, et prefati domini episcopi Ehensis, prioris et con- ventus ejusdem loci, Mea, magistri Rogeri Butetourte, Dere de "VTad- dyngle et omnium parentom amicorum, et benefactorum meorum: et ipsorum cum ab hoc seculo migraverint, animabus. et omnium regum Anglic animabus necnon speeialiter pro animabus dominorum Radulphi de Walpol et Roberti de Oreford quondam episcoporum Elyensium ; Johannis de North wolde quondam abbatisde sancto Edmundo; Johannis de Berwisco, Henrici de Guldeford, Johannis de Yivon, Ade de Ikelyng- ham, Galfridi de Kyngeston, Johannis de Ely, Parentnm et benefactorum meorum et omnium fidelium defunctorum. 19. Be cameris Tero in mac so habitat! onis prediete dictis scok- ribus assignandis, habeat magister cameram principalem, et quo ad alias cameras preferantur seniores. 20. Item habeant dicti magister et scolares commnnem cistam, pro cart is, scriptis, et hujus modi rebus snis custodiendis, cum tribus serruris et claribus; quarnm unam clavem custodiat magister dicte domus, et aliam ckvem unus capellanorum, et tertiam clavem alius capellanus, per magistrum et scolares ad custodiam illam depntandi 21. Cedente Tero ant decedente magistro dicte domus, alius magister ydoneus, providus, et circumspectus, in ordine saoerdotali constitutus, saltern qui in arte resent dialectics, per socios ejusdem domus sen majorem et seniorem partem eorundem secundum numerum, de seipsis aut aliis. eligatur ; et hujus modi electio cancellario universitatis Cante- brig: notificetur, simpliciter, approbanda, sed non examinanda. Xec per hoc habeat cancellarius dicte universitatis potestatem sive juris- dictionem dictam election em quassandi, seu de statu dicte domus ali- qnaliter ordinandl seu aliquem in societatem dicte domus ponendi, contra formam ordinationis mee supradicte, 22. Quod si forsan scholares dicte domus, cedente Tel decedente magistro ejusdem, alium magistrum ad regimen dicte domus, infra duos APPENDIX. 645 menses a tempore cession is ant decessus magistri, eligerc neglexerint: tune statini post lapsum illorum duorum mensiuin, dominus episcopus Elyensis, qui pro tempore fuerit, magistrum preficiat et deputet ad regimen antedictum; et hujus modi profectio magistri, facta per pre- dictum dominum episcopum, cancellario notificetur, modo superius annotato, salva semper dictis scolaribus electione libera magistrum eligendi, in singulis aliis vacationibus, per mortem aut cessionem magistri sui, contingentibus in futurum. 23. Cum auteni aliquis scolaris, sive 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, inspect is sire tactis sacro- sanctis evangeliis, quod predictas ordinationes et statuta, ut predicitur, toto posse suo fideliter observabit, quatenus absque nota perjurii, juxta conscience sue serenationem, ea tenero poterit et observare. 24. Ceterum liceat mihi, omnibus diebus vite mee, predictis ordi- nationibus add ere et easdem minuere, mutare, declarare, et interpretari prout et quando, secundum Deum, michi placuerit et videbitur expedire. 25. In quorum testimonium presentibus sigfllum meum apposui, testibus domino Ffultone Priore de Bernwelle, Roberto Dunning majore Cantebrig: Eudone de Impringham, magistro Henrico de Trippelowe, Johanne Morris, Roberto de Cuniberton, Petro de Berraingham, Adam de Bungeye, Willelmo de Heywarde, 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 millesimo trecentissimo vicesimo quarto, et regni domini regis Bdwardi filii regis Edwardi decimo octavo. (E), p. 358. Legere ordinarie, extraordinaire, cursor^. 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 lectures 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 ORDINABIB lectiones suas debet finire CURSORIE.'" Peacock, Obser cations, App. A, pp. xliv, xlv. 64-6 APPENDIX. ' "What these cursory lectures were we 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 leons Staient distinguees en ordinaires et extraordinaires. Les lecons ordinaires etaient ainsi appelees parce que la mati&re, la forme, le jour, 1'heure et le lieu etaient determines par la Faculte et par la Nation. Ces Ie9ons ne pouvaient etre faites que par les Maitres. L'objet, la forme, le jour, 1'heure et le lieu des leons extraordinaires etaient laisses dans de certaiues limites au libre arbitre de chacun. Elles pouvaient etre faites soit par des maitres, soit par des bacheliers' Thurot, De I Organisation de VEnseignement, etc. p. 65. M. Thurot then quotes in a note the phrases lectiones cursorice, 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 be supposed to have reference to a peculiar method of lecturing, what sense is to be assigned to the expression extraordinarie? (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 be 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 terminos infra biennium in lectura sibi assignanda per ordinarie legentem. That is, according to Mr Anstey'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! (/3) 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 375377); 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 whole course of the faculty he represented, (y) Among other statutes of our own university we find the following: Item nullus baccalaureus in artibus aliqucm textum APPENDIX. G47 publice legal ante anni suce determinationis completion. (Statute 142, Documents i 385). This statute is entitled De artittit curtorie legcn- 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 cursory 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 May liter logons ordi- narie metaphysicam, earn legat per terminum anni et majorem partem ad minus alterius termini immediate sequentis, nee cosset a lectura ilia donee illam rite compleverit, nisi in casu quo fidem fecerit coram Can- cellario et Procuratoribus, quod non poterit commode et absque damno dictam continuare lecturam, in quo casu, facta fide, cessare 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 diuiittitur de lectura, et valebit pro forma in casu praemisso cursoria lectura, non obstante ordinatione priore.' Munimenta Academica, p. 423. It remains to examine the evidence for Mr. Anstoy's theory contained in the following statute, on which he lays considerable stress : ' Cum statutum fuerit ab antique quod Magistri tenentes scholas grammaticales posititce infor- mationi Scholarium suoruui, ex debito juramenti vel fidei prsestitae, summopero intendere debeant et vacaro, quidam tamen eorum lucro et cupiditati inhiantes ac propriae salutis imtnemores, pracdicto statuto contempto, lectioncs cursorias, quas vocant audientiam abusive, in doc- trinse Scholarium suorum evidens detrimentum legcre prcesuinpserunt; propter quod Cancellarius, utilitati eoruudoin Scholarium et pnccipue juniorum volens prospicere, ut tonetur, dictam audientiam, quam non tantum frivolam sed damnosam profcctui dictorum juniorum reputat, suspendendo statuit quod, quicumque scholas grammaticales doincepa tencre voluerit, sub pcena privationis a regimme scholarum, ac sub poana incarcerationis ad libitum Cancellarii subeundo?, ab hujutmodi lectura cursoria desistapt, ita quod nee in scholis suis, nee alibi in Uuiversitate hujusmodi cursus legant, nee legi faciant per quoscunque, sed aliis omnibus prsetermissis, instructioni positive Scholarium suoiuui inten- dant diligentius et insudent. Alii vero a Magistria scholas U-nentibua, qui idonei fuerint reputati, in locis distantibus a scholis illis, si volu- erint, hujusmodi cursus legant, prout antiquitu* fieri contuecit.' (Munimenta Academica, pp. 86, 87.) This statuto is referred to by Mr Anstey as 'one forbidding curtory 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 their parsin^ !' (Introd. p. Ixix.) The whole of this criticism, so far as il 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 648 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 scholis 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. (Mun. 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, 67, 77, n. 1; asserts the rights of reason against authority, 68 ; attacked by Gualt cms, 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 Alfred, 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, Budolphus, 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 hitter 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, ib. - 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 Peterhonse, ib. n. 2 Alcnin, diversity of opinion respect- ing share of, in the revival of learn- ing under Charlemagne, 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, ib. n. 1; death of, de- scribed by Monuier, t'6. n. 2 ; teacher of Babanus Maunis at Tours, 64 ; tradition of the teaching of, 69 Aldrich, Bobt., fell, of King's, a friend of Erasmus at Cambridge, 499 Aldhelm, archbp. of Canterbury, hifl knowledge of Latin and Greek, 8 Alexander of Aphrodisias, extensions given to the psychology of Aris- totle by, 117 Alexander iv, 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 C50 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, Eobert, 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 thoughtfulness of his times, ib.; considered that nominalism was necessarily repugnant to the doctrine of the Trinity, 55; his Xiatinity 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"- musat, 64, n. 1; none of his writ- ings named in the catalogue of the library of Christchurch, 104 Anstey, 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, 83, 84; objections to the theory of, of the relations of 'grammar' to the arts course, 350, n. 1 Antichrist, appearance of imme- diately to precede the end of the world, 10 Antichristo Libellus de, erroneously attributed to Alcuin, 16, n. 1 ; its resemblance to Lactantius, ib. Antony, St., the monachisrn 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- roes, 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 Averroea 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 mediaeval teachers, ib. ; method of, as compared with that of Lombar- dus, calculated to promote contro- versy, 125 ; commentaries of, pre- ceded the nova translatio of Aris- totle, 126 ; agreement of, with Eoger 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, ib. 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 Bheims, 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 Interpretatione 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, ib.; all the extant works of, known to Europe through Latin versions before the year 1272, ib.; waitings 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, ib.; 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 Prague 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 Eeuchlin, 407 Arnobius, 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, 562; migrates from Trinity Hall to St. John's, ib. ; appointed mas- ter of St. Mary's Hostel, 563; summons of, before the chapter at Westminster, 605 ; articles against, 606 ; recantation of, ib. Arundel, archbp., his visitation at Cambridge, 258; commission ap- pointed by, ib. ; his character, 269, 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 Aschaui, Scholemaster of, quoted, 59, n. 3; testimony of, to evils re- sulting from indiscriminate ad- mission of pensioners, <>:M 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- ritate Dei of, 4; juncture at which the treatise was composed, 10 ; obli- gations of John Scotus to, 41 ; in- fluence of upon Ansclm, 49; his spirit revived in Anselm, 63; trans- lations of Aristotle by, how dis- tinguished from those of a later 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. Angustinian canons, priory of at Barnwell, 139 ; hospital of, founded at Cambridge, 223 Augustinian friars, their house near the old Botanic Gardens, 139; character of as a body, 564 ; .-itc 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, ih. Aulus Gellins, Lupus of Ferri&rea in- tends to forward a copy of, 20; the class lecturer at C. C. C. Oxford i'1-di ml by bp. Fox to lecture on, 521, n. 2 Auvergne, William of, condemnation of a series of propositions from the De Cautis by, 114 Averriies, 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 his writings, ib. ; his Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium, 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 at Merton 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, ib. ; signs a recantation, 16. ; his narrative of the con- clusion, ib. ; disclaims being a Lutheran, 580 ; is imprisoned at Northampton, ib. ; escapes to Ger- many, ib. Barker, John, 'the sophister of King's,' 425 Barnet, bp. of Ely, omits to take the oaths of the chancellors of the uni- versity, 287, n. 2 BarnweU, 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, IXDEX. C53 issued by pope Martin v, 288; real character of, 290 and n. 2 Basel, council of, new theory of papal power established by the, 281 Basing, John, assists Grosseteste in translating the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 110 ; the disco- verer of 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 Bayeux, 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, Hi. 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, ib. 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 Lan franc, 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 curtoret, 363 Bidelhu, an officer in the university of Bologna, 73 Bilney, Thos., testimony of to the influence of Erasmus's Greek Test., 556 ; his eccentric character,. 660 ; 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 R., inaccuracy of his account of the early study of tho civil law, 209 Boethius, a text-book during the Middle Ages, 21; the allegory in the De Contolatione 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 Topica of Cicero used by Gerbert at Rli.-im?. 654 INDEX. 44; the same as Manlius, ib. note 1; his commentary on the trans- lation of Porphyry by Victorinus, 51 ; his translation of Porphyry, ib. ; change in his philosophic opinions, ib.; importance attached by, 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 and the theologian confounded in cata- logue of library at Christchurch, 104; Chaucer's translation of the De Consolations 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 vrith 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, 215 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 vin, pope, defied by William of Occam, 187; rapacity of alienates the English Franciscans, 194 Booksellers, at Cambridge, required to suppress heretical books, 500, n. 2; generally foreigners, ib. ; licence of 1534 for, 626 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 Bradwardine, 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. 1'; referred to by Chaucer, 26.; 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 prce- nttntius Reformationis, ib. Bresch, Jean, Essay on the Sentences by, 60, n. 2 Brewer, professor, observations of, on the Latinity of mediaeval writers, 171, n. 1; criticism of, on Erasmus's New Testament, 509 Bromyard, John, his Summa Prcedi- cantium, 293; a Dominican, ib.; character of his work, 294; con- trasted with Pecock, ib. Bruni, 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 scholasticAristotleby,123 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, 517; not an eminent Grecian, 520 Buckenham, prior of the Dominicans, sermon by, in reply to Latimer, 610 Buckrnaster, 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 mediaeval 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,ti.; 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 Burbank, Wm., secretary to Wolsey, 545 Buridanus, his Qucestiones a good illustration of the common mode of lecturing, 359 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, Eichard 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, ib. ; his interview with Petrarch at Avignon, ib. ; he disappoints the poet, 202; his knowledge of Greek, ib. ; 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 Suppositio, ib.; its rapid spread in the 16th century,416 Caen, abbey of, lands taken from to found King's College, 305 Caesar, Commentaries of, Lupus qf Ferrieres promises to send copy of, 20; considers portion to have been written by Hirtius, ib. Cairn's Castles, the residences of the Mendicants, so called by Wyclif, 270 Cams Auberinus, a lecturer on Te- rence at the university towards the close of the 15th century, 434 Cam, the river, 329 ; route described in its course, ib. ; its present point of junction with the Ouse, ib.; meaning of name, ib. 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 irrtSe, 107; presence of students from Paris at, 133; migration from the, to Northamp- ton, 135 ; first recognised as a stu- d in ni 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 in 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 W..1- sey to Oxford, 552; less forward to 656 INDEX. espouse new doctrines than Oxford, 559; begins to take the lead in connexion with the Information, 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 Kichard 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, ib. ; mode of life at monas- tery of St. Augustine at, described by Giraldus Cambrensis, 87 Canterbury Hall, Oxford, efforts of Simon Islip 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 Christmas 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- thius, 28, n. 1; escapes the fate of Boethius under Theodoric, 29 ; his Gothic History, 30; his Epi- stles, ib. his treatise De Artibus, ib. ; copy of, at the library at Bee, 100 Categories of Aristotle, the, along with the De Interpretatione, 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 Timceus 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, ib. ; 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. of Kichmond, 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, ib. ; appointment of lecturer on Latin literature at.tt.; 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 Julianus, 396 Chrysostom, St., disparagingly spoken of by Erasmus, 501 Chubbes, Wm., author of a treatise on logic, 425; an adviser of bp. Alcock in the foundation of Jesus College, 426 Cicero, Lupus of Ferrieres asks for the loan of the Rtietoric of, 20; Toplca of, expounded by Gerbert at Bheims, 44 ; studied as a model under Bernard of Chartres, 57; styled by Niebuhr a 0tos dyfuvrot 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, il>. n. 3 ; order of the, satirised by Walter Map, 86 Citrainontani, a division of the stu- dents at the university of Bologna, 73 Civil law, study of, revived by Irne- rius at Bologna, 36; extended by Accursius,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, ih. ; 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 Christchurch, 104 ; studied at the College de Bayeux in Paris, 128; conditions under which the study of, was permitted at Mertou College, 167; absorbing attention to, in the 14th century, 208; its tendency to confound dix- tinctious between laity and clergy, 209; inaccuracy of BlackstODe's account of the study, 16. ; Reginald 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, it.; 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, it.; conditions to be observed in the election of fellows at, 252 ; sizars at, it. ; its reputa- tion in the 15th century, 314 Clement VH, 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 hia trial, 579 Clerke (or Clark), John, one of the Cambridge Reformers, 604, and n. 1 Cluniao branch of the Benedictine order, 85 Cnnt, king, converts the canonry at Bury St. Edmund's into a Bene- dictine monastery, 149; favored the creation of secular colleges, ICO 42 658 INDEX. Cobbett, Wm., his 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 1446, 439 College de Montaigu, account given by Erasmus of the, 367 Colleges, of small importance in the university of Bologna, 74 ; supposed by Bulffius 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 students, 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, ann. 1545, 424, n. 5 College life, sketch of, in the Middle Ages, 366; asceticism a dominant notion in, ib. 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, 460; 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 re- spect 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, 388 ; 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 Martianus, 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, ib.', 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 universals 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 Cranmer, Tho., fell, of Jesus, univer- sity career of, 612 ; marriage of, ib.', visit of, to Waltham, 613 ; sug- gestion of, with respect to the royal divorce, ib. ; his treatise on the question, 618 Credo ut intelligam, dictum of St. Anselm, 64 Croke, Rich., early career of, 527; his continental fame, ib.; instruc- tor in Greek to king Henry, 528 ; begins to lecture on Greek at Cam- bridge, ib.; formally appointed Greek reader in 1519, ib.; his in- augural oration, 529 ; his Latin style modelled on Quintilian, ib. ; had received offers from Oxford to INDEX. 659 become a professor there, 534; his oration compared with that of Melanchthon De Studiin Corrigen- dis, 537 ; his second oration, 539 ; elected public orator, ib. ; ingrati- tude of, to Fisher, 615 ; activity of, in Itaty, 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. () D D'Ailly, Pierre, bp. of Cambray, edu- cated at the college of Navarre, 128 Damian, Peter, hostile to pagan learning, 18 Damlet, Hugh, master of Pembroke, opposed to Reginald Pecock, 295 Danes, 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 Clar Hall, 250 ; death of a brother of, enables her to undertake the de- sign, ib. n. 1 De Causit, the, a Neo-Platonic trea- tise, 114 ; attributed to Aristotle, ib. n. 1 ; considered by Jourdaiu to have been not less popular than the Psendo-Dionysius, ib. ; the work described by Neander, ib. Decretals, the false, 34; criticised by Mihnan, 16. 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 Hccretico Comburendo, statute of, 259 De Interpretatione of Aristotle, along with the Categoriet the only por- tion of his logic studied prior to the 12th century, 29 Determine, to, meaning of the term explained, 354 ; by proxy, 16. 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 Pseudo- .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, '6. n. 2; Grocyn in lec- turing on, discovers its real charac- ter, ib. ; the work described by Milman, 16. ; 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, ib. ; their original purport, 457 Disputations in parvitiit, 299, n. 2; why so termed, ib. Divorce, the royal, 612; question with reference to, as laid before the universities, 613 ; what it really involved, 614 ; fallacy of th expedient, ib.; decision of Cam- bridge on, 620; criticisms on, 622 422 GfiO INDEX. Doctor, origin of the degree of, 73 ; 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, ib. 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 Bo- 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 Dunstan, 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, 160, n. 1 E 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 HI, 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, ib. ; confiscates the estates of the alien priories, 304 Eginhard, letter to, from bishop Lupus, 20 Egypt, called by Martianus, Asia caput, 26 Elenchi Sophistici of Aristotle never quoted prior to the 12th century, 29 Ely, origin of the name, 336 and n. 3 Ely, archdeacons of, claims of juris- diction in Cambridge asserted by, 225 ; nominated the master of glo- mery, ib. Ely, bishop of, exemption from his jurisdiction first obtained by the university, 146; this exemption disputed by some bishops, ib. ; his jurisdiction in the university alter- nately asserted aud unclaimed, 287; maintained by Arundel, ib.; 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- house originally so termed, 231 Empson, minister of Henry VH, high- steward of the university in 1506, 449 Emser, testimony of, to fame of Bichard 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. CGI English ' nation' in the university of Paris, when first called the Ger- man ' nation,' 79, n. 1 Epistola Cantabrigiensis, the, 686; gloomy prognostications of, ib. n. 2 Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum, ap- pearance of, 558 Erasmus, example set by, of ridi- culing the method of the schoolmen , 109 ; account given by, of the Col- ISge de Montaigu, 367 ; his descrip- tion of the Scotists at Paris, 421 ; his testimony to Fisher's views with respect to the pulpit oratory Iof the time, 440; perhaps visited Cambridge in the tram 01 Hen. vn in 1506, 452 and n. 1 ; admitted B.D. and DP. in, 1505. 453 and n. 1 ; his Intimacy with Fisher at this time, 16. ; epitaph on Margaret of Richmond 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 Linacre, 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, Hi. ; failure of bis 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 mediaeval theologians, 502; his Cambridge experiences of a trying character, 503 ; his description of the towns- men, 504, n. 1; his want of eco- nomy, 504; his last Cambridge letter, 505; his deliberate testi- mony favorable to Cambridge, 507 ; his Novum Inttrumentum, 508; 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 Lou vain, 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 Reformation 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 portux, 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 Divitione Na- turte, 41 ; his affinities to Platon- ism, ;'/. ; his philosophy derived from Augustine, ib. ; translates the Psendo-Dionysins, 42 Eton College, foundation of, by Henry vi. 305 Em- lid. translation of four books of, by Boethius, 28; definition in, re- stored by collation of a Greek MS., 533 Eugenius in, pope, raises Gratian to the bishopric of Chiusi, 36 ; lec- tures on the canon law instituted by, 72 Engenius iv, pope, confirms the Barnwell Process, 290 Eusebins, story from the Prcrparatin Krnnyrlica of, 485 662 INDEX. Eustachius, 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 Win. of Kilkenny, 223 Expenses of students when keeping 'acts,' limited by the authorities, 337 F 'Father,' the, in academic cere- monies, 356 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 Eliensis, 336 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 Kochester, his parentage and early education, 422 ; entered at Michaelhouse, ib. ; elected fellow, ib. ; 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 ; is introduced to the king's mother, ib. ; appointed her confessor, 435; is elected vice-chancellor, ib. ; and lady Margaret professor, 437 ; aims at a revival of popular preaching, 440 ; his claims to rank as a reform- er, 441 ; elected chancellor, ib. ; pro- moted to the bishopric of Koches- ter, 442; his influence with the lady Margaret on behalf of Cam- bridge, ib. ; 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 opening of St. John's College, 470 ; gives statutes to the college identical with those of Christ's, ib. ; letter from, to Eras- mus, ib. 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- mentum, 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, 541; is re-elected for life, 542; ab- sent from the university on the occasion of Wolsey's visit, 543 ; why so, ib.; his relations to the cardinal, ib. ; 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, ib. ; his treatise against Luther, 572; inclined to leniency to Barnes at his trial, 579; writes to Erasmus urging the publication of his DC Ratione Concionandi, 585; 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, a translator of INDEX. Aristotle, 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, bp. of Ely, makes over to Peterhouse the church at Hintou, 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, Rich. , bp. of Winchester, bishop of Durham in 1500, 425 ; exe- cutor to the countess of Richmond, 464 ; Oxford sympathies of, 465 ; praises Erasmus's Novum Testa- mentum, 511 ; founds Corpus Christ! 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. Francte, 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, //;.; their house on the present site of Sidney, ib. ; their rivalry with the Dominicans described by Mat- thew Parisj 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 Tribus Impostor ibm, ib. ; sends translations of Aris- totle to Bologna, ///., 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 Waltham, 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, 16. Frost, name of an ancient family ut 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 ( lain In cr, Mr., his opinion on Lollard- ism quoted, 274 Gardiner, Stephen, an active member of Trinity Hall, 562 ; elected master of, H>. ; reports to king Henry on the progress of the divorce question at Cambridge, 618 Gaza, Theodorus, his estimate of the translations of Aristotle by Argy- ropulos, 406 ; bia 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 iu Martiauus. -'"> G64 INDEX. Genesis, first chapter of, how inter- preted by John Seotus Erigena, 41 Genevifeve, 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 thai of the Saracens, 43; but not derived from them, ib.; derived his knowledge solely from Christian writers, ib. n. 2; his method of instruction at Rheims, 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 Be- fonners so called, 573 Gerson, Jean Chariier de, his prefer- ence of Bonaventura to Aquinas, 123 ; educated at the college of Na- varre, 128; the representative of a transition period, 277 ; his De l/o- dit 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 nTwlor 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 ; Tonlmin Smith's description of their character, 248; Masters' de- scription of them open to excep- tion, ib. Giraldus Cambrensis, his Latinity superior to that of a subsequent age, 57; 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 ; Bee Mag. Glom. God's House, foundation of, in con- nexion with Clare Hail, 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, i*.; 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, ib. ; fellows of, required to lecture ordinarit, 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 denned 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 %tudy 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- eeptors in, ib. ; always included as a branch of the arts course of study, 319 : paucity of teachers of, ' INDEX. 6G5 in the 15th century, ib. n. 3 ; schools, foundation of, discouraged in the 15th century, 349; general decay of, ib. n. 3 Grammaticus, the, at the university in the Middle Ages, 344 ; Erasmus's description of the life of, 345 Grantbrigge, the ancient, 332 Gratian, Decretum of, 35 ; general scope of the work, ib. ; divisions of, 36 ; 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. Rhadegnnd, 320; a pupil of Guarino at Ferrara, 397 ; brings a valuable collection of MSS. 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; Lanfranc ignorant of, 104, n. 3; grammar found in the catalogue of the library at (Jhribtchurch, Canterbury, 104; scholars invited to England by Grosseteste, 154; authors, entire absence of, in the mediaeval 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 141 n century, ib. ; opposition shewn to, at Basel, 486; more peacefully pur- sued at Cambridge than at Oxford, 496, n. 3 ; progress of the study of, 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's Hall, letter to, from Latimer, 584, n. 3 Gregory the Great, his conception of education, 6; he anticipates the speedy end of the world, ib. ; his character too harshly judged, 7 Gregory rx, letter to, from Robt. Grosseteste, 90; forbids the study of Aristotle's scientific treatises at Paris, 98; interferes on behalf of the university of Paris, 119 Gregory xm, pope, expunges the more obvious forgeries in the De- cretum of Gratian, 35 Greiswald, university of, less dis- tructed 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, 47'J Grosseteste, Robert, 'the age of,' 84; scant justice done by Hallam - to his memory, 84, 85; Mr Lnard'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, f b. ; 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 n. 1 Grote, Mr., his essay on the Psy- chology of Aristotle, 116, n. 1 Gualterus, his denunciation of the Sentences, 62 Guarino, the disciple and successor of Chrysoloras, 396 ; his success M a teacher, ib.; his death, 398 Guilds, see Gild* H 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, Hi. ; his Sum- 66ti INDEX. ^ ii.; the Orrefragable Doctor,' 451 ; his bequests towards the eom- 118; a student aft the university pietion of the edifice, 458; gives of Paris, 134 hii HMBj :, ibe revc-canoc by the HjJlam, his retractation of credence lady Margaret of her grants to in accounts respecting the early Westminster Abbey, 462; his history of Cambridge. 66; scant :,,:_. -^ justice done by, to Jonrdain's re- Henry TED, refusal of, to sanction searches npon the mediasral Ana- the spoliation of St. John's Col- totte, 93; his observation on the lege, 461; disinclined to smiendei character of English literature the estates bequeathed by the lady during the Middle Ages, 152 Margaret, 466; decrees that those Hand, refutation by, of the theory who choose to study Greek at Ox- that Boethios was a martyr in the ford shall not be molested, 596; defence of orthodoxy, 28, n. 2 treatise of, against Lather, 572; Hareourt, the College de, restricted stops the controversy between Lati- -, ;:-:.- sriien;.;. loj mer andBnAfnham at Cambridge. Harmer, Anthony, his testimony to 6U ; menaces Oxford, 616 ; letter tie ciirii^r I : \Vrciif, i" 7 of , to the university of Camhridy, Harold, earl, favours the foundation 617 of secular colleges, 160, 161; his Henry, sir, of Clement's hostel, a foundation at Waltham, 161; how reputed conjurer, 608; visited by described in the charter of Walt- Stafford, 609 ; burns his < ham, *.; his conception at Watt- books, ib. ham revived by Walter deMerton, Heppe, Dr., on the state of 163 tion in the monasteries of the 13th Heeren, theory of, that the medue- centorr, 70, n. 2 Tal knowledge of Aristotle was not Heretics' Hill, a waft frequented by derived from Arable translations, Klney and Latimer EO called, 582 93 iTj^-^w m *^~i*^. Begins, school of, at Deventer, 409 attacked by Boger Bacon, 155 Heidelberg, university of, formed Hermolaas Barbaras, ma on the model of Paris. 74; division learning at Venice. 430; the friend into nations at, 79, n. 2 ; triumph of Linaere at Borne, 479 of the nominalists at, 417 'H.-~:~-~i^~L~. '.7e::_"r. j ic^:Ler of HeJonborg, Gregory, defends the new Greek in Paris, 430 learning at Nenstadt, 408; sobee- Hervey de Stanton, founds Michael- quently rejects it, ti. house, 234; statutes given by, to Henry n, kmg, expels the seculars the foundation, Append. (D). at Wattham, 168 Herwerden, quotation from a Cam- Henry m, writ of, to the sheriff of wtntmtio of, 16, n. 2 Cambridge, 84; invites stndfnto Heynes, Simon, |Hnir ii.r pheey respecting tho Mendicants, statutes of King's College, 306; 149 provides new statutes for the col- Hmemar, arehbp. of Bheims, accepts lege,ffr.; had nothing to do with the fiocged decretals, 34; his eonse- the ejection of Mflhngton, 307; at- qnent submission to Borne, 6. taehment to the memory of, shewn Hutain Uttermin de Frame*, eriti- 447 " i, on the Sentences, 64, Henry vo, gties permission to Mar- n. 2 garetofBiehmondtofonndChrist's Hodgson, Mr Shadworth, his essay College, 447; visits the universiry on Time and Space, 189, n. 1; his in 1506, 448; attends divine ser- agreement with Occam, ib.; quo- vice in King's College chapel, tation from, on Gerson, 279, n. 1 INDEX. UIJ7 Hulbrook, John, master of Peter- bouse and chancellor, appoints proctors in the matter of the Barn- well Process, 289 ; Tabula Canta- brigienses of, 609, n. 1 Holcot, 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 Barnwell Process a student at Cambridge, 239, n. 1 Honorius in, pope, forbids the study of the civil law at Paris, 38 Horace, lectures on, by Gerbert, at Kl it'h us, 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, ib. ; 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, n. 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 Pro visors quoted, 286 Hucbald, of Lidge, instructor of the canons of St. Genevieve in Paris, 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 loth cen- tury, 326; contempt of Kra.-mus for, 502 Humanists, the, spirit of their stu- dies contrasted with the preceding learning, 380 ; few of, to be found among the religious orders, 416 ; 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 iv, pope, subjects the Men- dicants at Paris to episcopal autho- rity, 119; empowers the Francis- cans to levy contributions, 150 InUntio tecunda, 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 Origintt of, 81 ; novel feature in, ib. ; DC (tjfHcii of, 33; copy of, at the library at Bee, 100 ; quoted by Roger Bacon, 608 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. 3 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, 598 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 Scotus Erigena, see Erigena John the Deaf, pupil of Drogo, 70; instructor of Roscellinus, ib. John xxn, pope, recognises Cam- bridge as a studium generate, 145 Jonson, Ben, his allusion to William Shyreswood, the logician, quoted, 177 Jordanus, general of the Dominican order at Paris, 107 Jourdain, M. Amable, his essay on the Latin translations of Aristotle, 93; method employed by him in his investigations, ib. ; conclusions arrived at by, 94 Jourdain, 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 the 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 Bheims, 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, ib. ; statutes of, 306 ; com- missioners appointed to prepare the statutes of, ib.; their resigna- tion, ib. ; William Millington first provost of, ib. ; his ejection, ib.; statutes of, borrowed from those of New College, 307 ; their character, ib. ; attributed to Chedworth by some, by Mr. Williams to Wain- fleet, ib. n. 1 ; provisions of the statutes of, 308; verbosity of the statutes of, ib. 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. than that of any other Cambridge college, ib. 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 n, 253 ; limitation as to age in, ib. ; other provisions in, 254 ; the foundation probably designed for sons of the wealthier classes, ib. 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 Li- 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 Lanfranc, 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, Constantino, 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. ('., Oxford, was required by bp. Fox to lecture, 521, n. 2 Latimer, Hugh, fell, of Clare, cha- racter given by, to Bilney, 362; his early career and character, 581 ; he attacks Melanchthon, il>. ; his position in the university, i>>. ; 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, ib. ; is inhibited by him from preaching, 584 ; preaches in the church of the Augustinian friars, il>.; is summoned before Wolsey in London, ib. ; is licensed by the cardinal to preacfi, ib. ; ne- gotiates respecting the appoint- ment to the high stewardship, Hi. n. 3 ; Sermons on the Card by, 609 ; controversy of, with Bnckenham, 610; favored 'the king's cause 'in the question of the divorce, 611 Liitimer, Wm., declines the office of Greek preceptor to bp. Fisher, 519 Launoy, 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, curtorie, and extraordinarie, explained, 858 and Append. (E) ; two principal 'modes of, 359 670 INDEX. Lee, archbp., alarm of, on the ap- pearance of Tyndale's New Testa- ment, 599 Legere, 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, ib. ; less distracted by the nominalistic controversies, 416 ; fame of B. Croke at, 527 Leland, John, on the intercourse be- tween Paris and Oxford, 134 Leo x, proclamation of indulgences by, in 1516, 556 L6on 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 Isidorus, 31 ; 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 Bateman, 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, ib. Linacre, Wm., pupil of Selling at Christchurch, Canterbury, 478; and of VitelliatOxford,i&.; accompanies Selling to Italy, ib. ; becomes a pupil of Politian at Florence, ib. ; makes the acquaintance of Hermo- laus Barbarus at Eome, 479 ; pro- bable results of this intimacy, ib. ; his return 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, n. 1 ; death of, 602 Lisieux, College de, foundation of, 129 'Little Logicals,' the, much studied at Cambridge before the time of Erasmus, 515; see Parva Logi- calia LL.D., origin of the title, 39 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 Summulte, ib. ; baneful effects of excessive atten- tion formerly given to, 365 ; trea- tise on, by Budolphus 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 Beformation, 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, ib. n. 2 ; thought to have copied Pullen, ib. ; honour paid to his memory, 63; 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, 339, 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 Luard, Mr. , on the forgeries that im- posed upon Grosseteste, 110 Lucan, lectures on, by Gerbert, at Bheims, 44 INDEX. 671 Lupus, bishop of Ferrieres, his la- ment over the low state of learn, ing in his age, 20; his literary activity, ib. 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 inoderate 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 Lytteltou, 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 Macrobius, correction of copy of, by a correspondent of Lupus of Ferri- t'res, 20; numerous copies of, in libraries of Bee and Christchurch, Canterbury, 104 Magister Glomeria, duties perform- ed by the, 110; nature of his functions, 340 Maimonides, Hoses, his Dux Per- pier or urn much used by Aquinas, 113 Maitland, Dr., his defence of the mediaeval theory with respect to the pursuit of secular learning, 18 Maitre, L&>n, on the revival at the commencement of the eleventh century, 46, n. 1 Major, John, a resident at the Col- lege de Montaigu, 368; alleged reason of his choice of Christ's College, 445 Maiden, prof., on the various appli- cations of the term Univertita*, 71 ; on the sanction of the pope as necessary to the catholicity of a university degree, 78 Malmesbnry, William of, his com- ment on the state of learning in England after the death of Bede, 81 Manlius, see Boethius 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, i!>. ; 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, 4(j2 ; 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, /'/. ; funeral sermon for, by Fisher, ib.; her character, 464; her executors, ib. Margaret, lady, preachership, found- ed, 440; regulations of, ib. Margaret, lady, professorship, found- ed, 435 ; original endowment of, 436 ; regulations of, Hi. Marisco, Adam de, a teacher of Wal- ter de Merton, 163 ; nominated by Hen. HI to the bishopric of Ely, 223; his death, 224; compared with Hugh Balsham, ib.; warmly praised by Roger Bacon, ib. 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 C72 INDEX. Martin v, pope, issues the bull in 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 Richard 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, 537 ; 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- selytism 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, ib. 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 bv, 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), i6.ru 2; qiialifications 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, ib. 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, ib. n. 2; appointed by king Henry to draw up statutes of Queens' College, ib. ; 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 IXDEX. 673 Being, 49, n. 2 ; on the evangelism of the Mendicant orders, 90 Moerbecke, William of, his transla- tion of Aristotle, 126 ; his transla- tion of Aristotle attacked by Boger Bacon, 155 Monasteries, origin of their 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, ih. Montaigne, College de, student fare at, 130 Moutpellier, civil law taught at, be- fore foundation of university, 38, n. 1 ; university of, formed on the model of Bologna, 74 ; founded in the 13th century, 80 More, sir Tho., quoted in illustra- tion of standard of living at the universities, 371; endeavours to persuade Win. 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 Natares, master of Clare, an enemy to the Reformers, 577; summons Barnes in his capacity of vice- chancellor, ib. '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, i>>. ; Jeanne of, foundress of the college known by her name, Hi. ; the chief college at Paris in the 14th and 15th cen- turies, 128 ; injurious influences of court patronage at, Hi. 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 Wyclif's 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, ib. ; 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, t'6. 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, 65, n. 1 ; . new importance acquired by, from its application to theology, H>. . 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, ib. ; 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 43 674 INDEX. Non-regents, gradually admitted to share in university legislation, 142; the term explained, 361 Norfolk, county of, many of the Cam- bridge Beformers natives of, 563 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 NovaArs, the, its introduction greatly increased the attention given to logic, 343 Novum Instrumentum of Erasmus, 508; why so called, ib. 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, 523 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 Potestate 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, ib. ; styled by pope John xxii the Doctor Invincibilis, 196 ; compared with Bradwardine, 205, n. 1 ; his attack on the politi- cal power of the pope struck at the study of the canon law, 259; his De Potestate, 260 Odo, bishop of Bayeux, regarded none but Benedictines as true monks, 82 Odo, abbat of Clugni, hostile to pagan learning, 18 ; pupil of Eemy 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, 501 ; studied by some of the Cam- bridge Beformers, 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, 56 ; 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, ib.; 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. 675 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, Rich. , 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 result of a migration from Bologna, 80 Paget, Wm., a convert of Bilney, 563; lectured on Melanchthon's Bhetoric at Trinity Hall, ib. 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 ' university' to, ib. ; 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, t6. ; 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.l ; 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 Cambridge, 343 ; ma- thematical studies at, in 15th 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, Bach., error in his Hittory of Cambridge with respect to the date of the burning of Luther's books, 571, n. 5 432 INDEX. Parra Logicalia, studied at Leipsic andPrague, 232, n. 2: a part of the Sttmmulac of Petrus Hispanns, 350 ; why so called, i*. n. 4 ; not studied in More's Utopia, 351, n. 1 Paschasius, Badbertns, 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, 140, n. 1 ; question raised by, with reference to dis- pensation oaths, 456; inaccuracy in his statement with respect to Christ's College, i6. n. 3 Pecock, Reginald, an eclectic, 290; mistaken by Foxe for a Lollard, ib. ; really an Ultramontanist, ib. ; his belief in logic, 291 ; asserts the rights of reason against dogma, ib. ; 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, ib. ; his enemies at Cambridge, id.; his character by prof. Babington, i6. n. 2 ; possibly a political suf- ferer, 296; 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 BO named at, ib. ; grammar first in- cluded in the college course at, id. ; 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; Vox, bp. of Winchester, master of, 465 Pensioners, first admitted by statute, at Christ's College, 459; evils re- sulting from indiscriminate admis- sion of, 624 Perrival, Mr. E. F., his edition of the foundation statutes of Merton College, 159, n. 4; his assertion respecting Roger Bacon, ib. ; quoted, on Walter de Merton's design in the foundation of Merton College, 164, n. 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 Peterhonse, foundation of, 228; be- comes possessed of the site of the friary De Pffnitrntia Jrsu, 229; final arrangement between, and the brethren of St.John the Evangelist, ib. prosperity of the society, ib. ; patronised by Fordham, bp. of Ely, ib. ; early statutes of, given by Simon Mont acute, 230 ; early statutes of, copied from those of Merton Col- lege, Oxford, ib. ; 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, ib. 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, ib. ; his ser- vices to the study of Cicero, 384, 385, n. 1 ; his knowledge of Greek, INDEX. 677 885 ; his instinctive appreciation of Plato, 386; he initiates the struggle against Aristotle, ib. ; his position compared with that of Aquinas, ib. ; 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 Summulce, 178 ; theory enunciated by the trea- tise, 180 ; its extensive use in the Middle Ages, 350 Philelphu?, 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 vin, 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, ib. Plague, the, often followed upon the visits of illustrious personages, 542, n. 2 Plato, Timaus of, translated into Latin by Chalcidius, 41 ; his theory of Universals described by Por- phyry as translated by Boethius, 52 ; Tinueua 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-Sorboune, College de, founda- tion of, 129 Poggio Bracciolini, 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 the Fratres Ob- servantice, 337; exposes the ficti- tious character of the Decretals 420 Politian, professor of both Greek and Latin at Florence, 429 ; his Miscel- lanea, 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 tho death of Stafford to Wolsey's re- sentment, 548, 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, Isagoge of, lectures on, by Gerbert at Bheims, 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 Prevaricator, the, in academic exer- cises, 356 Pragmatic Sanction, the, secures to France independence of Bomo, 281 Prague, university of, formed on the model of Paris, 74; division hr. 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. li.f 1 ; le.-s di>tructt .1 by the nominalistic controversies, 416 PrantI, Carl, on the results of en- couragement given by the emperor Frederic to the new Aristotle. n. 1 ; his condemnation of the scholastic Aristotle, 124; the au- thor's obligations to liis <;,-*<-hirht<- der Loyik, 175; bis ob.servutions on the extensive influence of tl:r Byzantine logic, 179; his eatimutr of Occam's philosophy quoted, 1-v.i 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, n. 1 C78 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; Lingard's ditto, ib., n. 1 Psellus, Michael Constantino, 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, Eobt., 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 Paris, 134 'Pythagoras, the school of,' period to which it belongs, 332 Q 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 Woodville in 1475, ib. ; first pro- perly styled Queens' College, 316; statutes of, given at petition of Andrew Doket, ib. ; studies and lectureships at, ib.; early catalogue of the library of, 324; bp. Fisher appointed to the presidency of, 446 ; residence of Erasmus at, 472 Questionist, 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 R Rabanus Maurus, pupil of Alcuin at Tours, 54; gloss by, on Boethius, erroneously quoted by Mr. Lewes, ib.; the gloss quoted, ib. n. 2; his commentary on Boethius, accord- ing to Cousin, proves that the dis- pute respecting Universals was familiar to the ninth century, 55, n. 1 ; sustains the tradition of Alcuin's teaching, 69; according to bp. Fisher, educated at Cam- bridge, 450 Ranc, 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, 554 ; not a developement from Lollardism, 555 ; to be traced to the influence of Erasmus's Greek Testament, ib.; its spread in the eastern 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; INDEX. 679 desert the theology of Erasmus, 598 ; treatment of, by Wolsey at Oxford, 604; proceedings against, at Cambridge, 605 Eegents, 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 Reinusat, 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 Alcuin's teaching, 69 Kenan, 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 Eenchlin, John, attends a lecture of Argyropulos, 407 ; admiration of, for Gregory of Nazianzum, 484 ; his knowledge of Greek denounced by the older members of the univer- sity of Basel, 486 Bheims, lectures at, by Gerbert, 44 ; migration to, from Paris in 1228, 107 Rhetoric, 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, H>. 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 nominalistic views traditional, 54 ; new importance given by, to such views, 55; a pupil of John the Deaf, 70; his pupils, H>. Rotheram, Tho., his benefactions to the university, 324 ; 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 Roy, Win., his description of Wol- sey's pomp, 542 ; his statement that Wolsey was the author of Stafford's death, 548, n. 2 Rud's Hostel, made over to the bre- thren of the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist, 228 Rudolf von Lange, 409 ; his school at Muncter, ib. S St. Amour, William, attacks the Mendicants at Paris, 119 ; his Perilt of the Leut Timet, ib. ; ar- raignment of, before the archbp. of Paris, ib. ; his book burnt, 120 ; his retirement into exile, //. St. Basil, his statement that Plato selected the site of his Academy for its uwhealthiness, quoted, 838, 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 by 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 collie designed to educate the secular olergy, ib.; library of, ann. 1475, 825 ; 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, n. 1 St. Gutblac, lived in the fens for solitude, 335 Saint-Hilaire, Barthelemy, his criti- cism on the psychology of Aristotle, 116, n. 1 080 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, in 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; Shorton first master of, ib. ; revenues bequeathed to, by the lady Margaret, 465 ; the revenues seized .by Henry vm, 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 Linacre 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. Ainslie, ib. n. 1 St. Paul's School, foundation of, 471, n. 2 St. Peter's church, appropriation of, made over to Peterhouse, 228 St. Ehadegund, 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 Martianus, 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-baud, ib. n. 3 ; sought to draw away A'Becket 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; Croke professes his admiration of, 533 Schools, of the Boman 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 at 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 in 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 Scrutators, 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 Politian at Bologna, Hi. ; appointed master of the con- ventual school at Canterbury, 478 ; Wm. 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, il>. 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 Shaxton, 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, Robt., 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- mulceoi Petrus Hispanus, 177; first author in whom the mnemonic verses are found, ib. ; praised by Roger 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 ' Sinai of the Middle Ages,' university of Paris so termed, 74 ; Monte Cas- sino so styled by the Benedictines, H>. 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 Richmond, 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, ib. ; falls into disgrace with Wolsey, 548; satire of, on the Cambridge Reformers, 607 and n. 2 Smith, Rich., 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, Robert de, founder of tho college known by his name, 127 Spain, comparatively free from in- vasion under the Visigoths, 31 ; universities of, formed on tho model of Bologna, 74 Spalatiu, testimony of, to the de- mand for Tyudale's New Testa- ment in England, 599 Spenser, Edm., his description of the course of the Ouse, 330; an- cient prophecy recorded by, 382, n. 1 Stafford, Edw., duke of Buckingham, the supposed victim of Wolaey*B 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, ib. n. 2 Stafford. George, fell, of Pembroke, 567; his lectures in theology, ib.; discards the Sentences for tho Scriptures, ib.; his services to 81. Paul as estimated by Becon. i/-.; his disputation with I'.ani.-* in tlm dniiiity school*, 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, ib. 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 Stationarii, the booksellers of the university, 144, n. 1 ; fraudulent practices of, ib. Statius, lectures on, by Gerbert at Kheims, 44 Statute, early, respecting hostels, 218 (see also App. C) ; its pro- visions compared with those of Btatute 67, 221; forbidding friars to receive into their order youths under eighteen, 222 Statute of 'Pro visors, 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. 3 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 Summulce, see Petrus Hispanus Supplicat, the, nature of, 353 Suppositio, the, theory of, 188 ; a con- tribution of the Byzantine logic, ib. Sylvester n, see Gerbert Sylvius, 2Eneas, 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 T Taverner, Kich., 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, ib. n. 1 Theiner, his theory with respect to the decline of the episcopal and monastic schools called in ques- tion, 69 Theodorus, 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 11. 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 Bilney's converts, 564 Thorpe, sir Eobert de, master of Pembroke, commences the divinity Bchools at Cambridge, 300 ; execu- tors of, complete the erection of the divinity schools, ib. Tiedemann, theory of, that the medi- eval 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, ib. 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, ib.; 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 ; Bilney'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. Intt., 512; academic career of, 591 ; character of, 592 ; temporising policy of, ib.; his writ- ings, ib. ; his Arithmetic, ib. ; his interview with Tyndale, 693 ; de- scription of, by Tyndale, 594 ; preaches at the burning of Tyn- 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, 639 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, i/>. ; his reminis- cences of Oxford, 590 ; his life in Gloucestershire, 591 ; his inter- view with Tunstal, 693; his ser- vices compared with those of Tun- stal, 695 ; his career on leaving England, ib. ; 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. Ultramontani, foreigners BO named in the university of Bologna, 73 Ultramontanists, 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, 852 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 Univenittu, real significance of the term, 71 ; its first application to Paris, ib.; the term employed in various senses, 16.; Univrrsiiat rentra, rangr.lar meaning of the expression, 72, n. 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 loth centuries, 282 and n. 2 ; for different univer- sities see under respective names University College, the earliest col- lege foundation at Oxford, 160, n. 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 the, 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 rv, pope, orders the Francis- cans to quit Bury, 150 Urban v, use of benches and seats at lectures forbidden by, 131, n. 1 Vacarius, 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 Maximus, the classical lec- turer at C. C. C., Oxford, ordered by bp. Fox to lecture on, 521, n. 2 Valla, Laurentius, 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 Eleganticeoi, 521, n. 2 Vaughan, Dr. Kobt., doubtful charac- ter of his assumptions with respect to Wyclif, 269 Venetus, John, preaches against La- timer at St. Mary's, 611 Vercelli, university of, founded in the 13th century, 80 Verses, memorial, on the tr'rium 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, 51 ; 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 14th century, 351 Virgil, lectures on, by Gerbert at Kheims, 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 bythe Lutheran controversy, 385 Vulgate, the Latin, errors in, pointed out by Roger Bacon, 158 ; dis- carded by Erasmus in his Nov. Test., 523 W Wainfleet, Wm., provost of Eton, probably prepared the second sta- tutes of King's College, 307, n. 1 Waltham, earl Harold's foundation tit, 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 Wendover, Koger 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 audn. 1; though an eminent canonist forbids the study of the canon law at Jesus College, 322 ; ostentatious charac- ter of, 583; attends I, a timer's ser- mon before the university, it.; asks him to preach against Luther, ib. ; inhibits him from preaching, 584 Westcott, canon, his estimate of Tyn- dale's New Testament quoted, 697 "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 Roger 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, it. 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, 300, n. 2; 307, u. 1 Wingfield, sir Rich., appointed high steward in 1524, 584, n. 3 ; his reasons for desiring the office, it. 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 ,468 ; sympathies of, mainly with Oxford, 469 ; an imitator of bp. For in his innovations at Oxford, 521 ; founds a chair of Greek at Oxford, 526 ; is solicited to accept the ofl'.ce 'of chancellor and declines, it. ; his name appears in the list of benefactors of St. John's College, it. 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 invested with similar powers at Cambridge, it. ; obtains the king's licence to endow Cardinal College, 551 ; invites scholars from Cambridge to the new foundation, 552 ; his scholastic learning, it. ; 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 by Barnes, 576 ; summons Barnes to London, 578; authorises Latimer to preach in defiance of the bp. pf 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 Cant-.ibrigia deducta, 539 Woodlark, Robt., founder of St. Ca- therine's Hall, 317 ; provost of King's College, it.; his ability as an administrator, 318 ; forbids the study of the canon and civil law at St. Catherine's, it. ; no books on these subjects in the library he gave to the society, it. n. 2 Woodville, Eliz. (queen of Edw. rv), gives the statutes of Queens' Col- lege, 816 . Worcester, earl of, a disciple of Gua- rino at Ferrara, 396 Wyclif, John, De Dominio Dirino of, opposed to papal claims founded on the canon law, 36 ; how far a follower of Occam, 261; his rela- tions to the Mendicants, it. ; his efforts on behalf of the secular clergy at Oxford, 264; leaves Ox- ford, 265 ; his return, it. ; his 686 INDEX. character, 267 ; period at which bim to found New College, 302 ; in- he assumed that of a reformer, fluence of his example, 363 t&. 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 CAMBRIDGE : FEINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE USIVEHSITY PKESS. 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