CHAPTER IV - AVERRHOÏST INFLUENCES

The great intellectual achievement of the Middle Ages was the recovery of the learning of the world that had vanished before the onset of the Hun, the Vandal and the Lombard.[70] That learning was in part classical, in part patristic. But as the process of absorption was the achievement of the Church, the emphasis was on theology, and the works of the Fathers bulked very much more largely than the profane literatures of Greece and Rome. There was much in the teaching of Augustine that was Neoplatonic, that was akin to the speculations of Plato himself. But the whole point of view, method and cast of mind of the mediæval thinker were radically different from those of the pagan philosopher. The latter set out upon the search for abstract truth without any preconceptions; the former started from the postulate of a divine revelation. His primary object was not to investigate, but to justify the ways of God to man. For him all knowledge must be a theodicæa. He was not, therefore, an original thinker; for the foundations of his scholarship being revealed truth, his most marked characteristic was a sincere deference to authority. He was, moreover, ever conscious that the salvation of the soul was a matter of greater cogency than even the exposition of God’s dealings with the world. At the same time mediæval philosophy was of a peculiarly formal pattern; and to the modern world it is apt to appear pedantic indeed, ‘cabined, cribbed, confined.’ It rested upon the tripod of grammar, rhetoric, logic. It was a matter very largely of dialectic, and it may seem to us of mere verbal juggling. The Trivium was an introduction to metaphysics, but the metaphysics were strongly theological in bias and nakedly logical in form. Their clue to the processes of thought being logic, not psychology, mediæval thinkers did not clearly distinguish between problems of the human mind and problems of reality, assuming an exact correspondence between mental conceptions and the ultimate facts of the universe.

Yet whatever the defects of the scholastic philosophy, it holds a great and significant place in the history of the intellectual development of western Europe, since it was the means whereby the learning of the ancient world was recovered and preserved and an intellectual continuity rendered possible. Such is one out of many of the great contributions made by the mediæval Church to the cause of civilization. Secular knowledge was not proscribed, but on the contrary adopted and utilized, by the Church; enquiry and research not looked askance upon, but encouraged. The universities of the Middle Ages were ecclesiastical in origin; their teachers and scholars were clerks. The great University of Paris, the very centre of the intellectual life of Christendom in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was an object of very special solicitude to the Holy See. The two great mendicant orders, the Prædicants and the Minorites, taking the lead in the schools and universities only a few years after their own inception, speedily produced some of the most erudite and the most brilliant minds of the Middle Ages.

In the twelfth century the leading scholastics were Augustinians; in the middle of the thirteenth the dominant philosophy was still of a Neoplatonic character. The great Franciscans Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, Peckham belonged to that school of thought. In many of them, notably in Bonaventura, there was a marked strain of mysticism. The mystic note in Plato, his insistence on moral and spiritual values had made his doctrine harmonize easily with Christian dogma. The appropriation of pagan thought and secular science had not so far produced any discord with the truths of the Christian faith, or any serious tendency to question them. It is indeed significant that the pupils of Anselm of Bec should have asked him for a rational justification of Christian dogma; but that had not betokened any doubt as to the possibility of reconciling faith with reason, but only an appreciation of the desirability of being able to demonstrate that, however superfluous, such justification was perfectly possible. Again, in the vast compendious treatises of such encyclopædic scholars as Vincent of Beauvais, Hugo of St. Victor and Peter Lombard, there was the explicit recognition that, while secular learning is a thing to be desired for its own sake, yet its stages of cogitatio and meditatio are only the threshold before the portal of the shrine, wherein the divine nature may be contemplated. Reason cannot unaided explain the ineffable; the visible world is but the simulacrum of the unseen.[71] Once or twice indeed there had been hints of danger. Right back in the ninth century a certain very self-confident Irishman, by name John Scotus Eriugena, had declared the supremacy of reason over authority; for while authority sometimes proceeded from reason, reason never proceeded from authority. In the eleventh century there had been the aberrations of Berengar of Tours and Roscellinus. In the next century a new and more brilliant Eriugena arose in the person of Abelard, a man even more self-opinionated and self-confident, one who treated the seeming contradictions of the Fathers as opportunity merely for mental calisthenics, whose whole method of thought appeared to enthrone reason at the expense of authority. But the potential danger was never realized. The trained dialectician trembled before the unlearned spiritual dictator of Christendom; the man who exalted himself in his own eyes dared not face Bernard, to whom God was all in all and man as nothing: and at the last Abelard, a monk of Cluny, died humbled, in the odour of sanctity. Up to the end of the twelfth century, then, the free play of enquiry and discussion in the schools had not threatened defilement of the purity of the Christian faith. Heresy had indeed been a serious danger; but not among the learned, not in the precincts of the university, had it been bred.

The succeeding century, however, did bring with it an anxious problem. There came a large influx of new learning out of the pagan past—the encyclopædic knowledge of Aristotle. Aristotle had been introduced into the world of Latin Christianity long ere this through the medium of Boëthius in the days of Theodoric.[72] The Dark Ages had intervened since then. Now came a second and a much more significant advent of Aristotle. This time he came through a non-Christian medium, through the interpretations of the ‘great commentator,’ the Moslem Ibn-Roschd, Averrhoës. Could the Stagirite be won for Christ; could his teachings be enlisted for the Christian theodicæa? The Church could not but be alive to the risks involved in any converse with Aristotelianism. There were radical contrasts between the Platonic and Aristotelian methods. The latter was inductive, non-committal, denoted an impartial examination of natural phenomena, the range of which was infinitely more comprehensive than anything which any other human mind had ever attempted. Aristotle seemed intent rather upon coldly collecting evidence from the operations of a soulless Nature than extolling the wonders of God in a beatific vision. The extent of secular knowledge opened up in the writings of Aristotle was, then, vast and their attraction to the alert and curious mind correspondingly vivid; but the attractiveness had to be viewed with caution.

The Church perceived that there were in the Peripatetic philosophy elements which must be repugnant to truly devout minds. This would have been true even had the pure unadulterated text of Aristotle been in question; it was the more cogently true seeing that Aristotle was presented to the Christian world through the voice of Averrhoës and the commentary was more familiar than the original.

During the tenth and eleventh centuries when Christendom was for the most part wrapped in a barbarous ignorance, Saracen culture, in the caliphates of Baghdad and Cordova, had kept alive the sciences—mathematics, astronomy, medicine—and speculative thinkers had preserved, not indeed uncorrupted, yet always as a vital influence, the ancient philosophy of Greece, when to the Christian world it was lost in oblivion. Side by side with an orthodox philosophy in consonance with the teachings of the Koran, Islam had produced a heretic philosophy, which though written in a Semitic language and modified by an oriental environment, was essentially Greek, essentially Aristotelian.[73] To the Arabian thinkers the Stagirite represented the utmost limit of the human intelligence; they could not conceive that there could ever be improvement upon knowledge so Catholic, synthesis so complete.

The first of the great Arabian philosophers, Alfarabi, had been Neoplatonist in thought, Aristotelian in method.[74] His great successor, Avicenna, was Aristotelian both in the content and the logical scheme of his work.[75] The distinctive teachings of Avicenna were, first, the nominalist doctrine that universality exists not in reality, but in thought only; secondly, that matter is uncreated and eternal; thirdly, that the first and only direct emanation from God or the First Cause is Intelligence, νοῦς, but that this communication of intelligence to lesser beings is not a single act in time, but a constant process or an everlasting act. While in the eastern caliphate these bold speculations were strongly denounced by the later philosopher of Baghdad, Ghazali, and were repudiated in a powerful orthodox reaction;[76] in Spain at the beginning of the twelfth century Avempace and Abubacer were teaching that the life of the soul is a progress from a purely instinctive existence shared with the lower animals to a spiritual absorption in the divine essence and intellect; while the latter philosopher added the contention that religious creeds were but types of, or approximations to, absolute truth, which the philosopher, but never the mere theologian, may attain. The greatest of all the Arabian thinkers, Averrhoës, whose life extended over the greater part of the twelfth century was, in even greater degree than Avicenna, a worshipper of Aristotle.[77] While Avicenna occasionally questioned his great original, Averrhoës never did. He laid no claim to originality. To him the substance of human wisdom could never alter, being enshrined for ever in Aristotle’s pages. If Averrhoïsm differs from Aristotelianism, it does not differ consciously. Averrhoïsm is simply and solely the undiluted gospel of Aristotle, as Averrhoës conceived it.

Its principal theses—the Averrhoïst version of Aristotle—are the eternity of matter and the unity of the intellect.[78] Matter is uncreated. God did not create; He is Himself the primordial element in things, the latent force or impulse in the universe, which gives it both its being and continuance. Emanating from the First Cause is the active intellect. For Averrhoës makes an important distinction between νοῦς ποιητικός and νοῦς ποθητικός, the latter being the human intellect. Averrhoës explains the difference by the analogy of the sun and the human vision. Just as by the light which it sheds the sun produces the capacity to see, so the active intellect produces the capacity to understand. But the human intellect has no individual immortality, being at death absorbed in the universal mind. Man, indeed, possesses no personal immortality. Only in man’s power of reproducing his species can there be said to be any human immortality. The human race is permanent. In the fullest sense, however, only the active intellect is eternal.

The attitude of Averrhoës to Islam, and indeed to all religion, is important. It may be summed up by saying that he was the friend of religion, the enemy of theology, for which he could see no excuse. There could be no compromise between faith and philosophy. The theologian was at the outset hopelessly hampered in the search for truth, because he had to premise all the articles of his creed. His system, thus conditioned, became a mere hodge-podge of sophistic quibblings, groundless distinctions, fanciful allegories, which did but serve to obscure and distort the religion which it pretended to expound. The sincere and exact thinker could accept no such postulates, start with no preconceptions. Philosophy and religion must be kept completely apart; the attempt to suffuse them—made in theology—did but corrupt both. They were not, however, mutually subversive. Religion was no branch of knowledge, no matter of arid formularies; it was an inward power, an inspiration. It was indispensable, because it was the basis of morality for the multitude who could not aspire to philosophy. But while Averrhoës thus discountenanced any attempt to instil religious doubts into the popular mind, his attitude towards religion was exclusively utilitarian, and he obviously regarded it as the inferior of philosophy. The special religion of philosophers, he declared, was to study what exists, for the noblest worship of God was in the contemplation of his works. Philosophy, in short, the pursuit of wisdom, was the highest form of religion, higher than that which is based upon prophecy.[79]

Averrhoïsm speedily penetrated into Christendom. Aragon and Castile naturally received it early. In Languedoc, at the schools of Montpellier, Narbonne, Perpignan, Arabian medicine and philosophy both flourished. Scholars from central and western Europe, visiting the medical schools of the Moors, no doubt brought back with them the current views of the Saracen philosopher as well as the Saracen physician. The first Latin version of Averrhoës’ commentaries is attributed to Michael Scot, who came fresh from Toledo to the court of Frederick II; while there is a tradition that the son of Averrhoës lived for a time in the palace of that most eclectic potentate.[80] From Saracen Toledo itself, from Christians and Jews in Spain and Provence, came translations of Averrhoës. It was probably with extraordinary rapidity that the ideas of the Arabian philosopher became the common property of the Christian schoolmen.[81] Quite certainly Latin Averrhoïsm was a force to be reckoned with by the middle of the thirteenth century.[82]

The Averrhoïst was not the only Latin version of Aristotle current in western Christendom in the twelfth century. The capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204 had brought Catholic Europe directly into contact with Greek philosophy, and translations direct from the Greek into Latin had been attempted, one of the earliest being made by Bishop Grosseteste. Various translations of Aristotle were, then, available. Were they to be regarded as open without restriction to the curious eye of scholarship? The Church decided against such freedom. In 1210 a council of the ecclesiastical province of Sens, held at Paris, having publicly condemned the heresies of Amaury de Bène, went on to protect the unwary from another source of possible contamination by commanding that neither the works of Aristotle nor the commentaries upon him should be read in Paris under pain of excommunication.[83] The commentaries referred to must be either those of Averrhoës or similar Arabian treatises. In 1215 this prohibition was renewed by the papal legate, under whose supervision the schools of Paris came. Gregory IX, in a regulation addressed to the masters and students of Paris on April 13, 1231, made the prohibition provisional, until such time as the books of Aristotle could be examined and expurgated. At the same time he entrusted this important task to William of Auxerre and two others. The project is very much to the credit of the Pope, a genuine supporter of learning who, however, had probably not realized how great an undertaking it was. At all events it came to nothing; and the prohibition, although renewed by Urban IV, in January 1263, would appear to have remained a dead-letter. In 1255 the ‘Physics’ and ‘Metaphysics’ of Aristotle were prescribed for the course in the Arts’ faculty in the University. In fact the Aristotelian impulse in the vivid and vigorous atmosphere of the youthful Parisian schools was too strong. Neither Aristotle nor Averrhoës could be got rid of by papal inhibition. The keenest interest had been aroused in them. It were better, as it was simpler, to utilize such keenness rather than to attempt to combat it. Of all the great services rendered to the Church by the Dominican order none was greater than its capture of profane learning for orthodox Christianity. The great Franciscans were expounding the current theology of the day with its tinge of Platonism; the Dominicans now came forward to adapt Aristotle for the service of Christianity. In 1256 Alexander IV commissioned Albertus Magnus to write his ‘De unitate intellectus contra Averroëm’: a fact that is proof positive of the headway that had already been made not only by Aristotelianism but by the tenets of the ‘great commentator.’ The tractate is indeed written against Averrhoës himself, not Averrhoïsts, but the fact that the Pope entrusted Albert of Cologne with the task of answering the former is evidence of the activity of the latter.[84] Fifteen years later Thomas Aquinas produced another work on the same subject: but this one definitely ‘contra Averroïstas.’ Between the years 1261 and 1269 Aquinas was, together with William of Moerbeke, at the court of Rome engaged upon the great task, now at length undertaken under the auspices of the Holy See, of making a translation and commentary on Aristotle. In the latter year he appeared at Paris on the occasion of the assembly there of a chapter-general of the Dominican order. It has been maintained that the real reason of his presence was to clear the Prædicants of the suspicion of Averrhoïsm.[85]

The middle and the latter half of the thirteenth century were years of violent controversy in the University of Paris. Fundamentally the source of this was the jealousy of the secular clergy against the Mendicant orders, which had succeeded in establishing themselves in the University earlier in the century, the Dominicans securing their first chair in 1217, the Franciscans theirs in 1219. Apprehensive lest the Friars should achieve a complete predominance, the seculars under the leadership of Gerard of Abbeville and the acrimonious William of Saint-Amour led a heated attack upon them, first only on the practical question of university privileges. But it was not long before matters of doctrine were involved, and regulars and seculars were soon denouncing each other as heretics and antichrist.[86] It is not easy to discover what was the doctrinal position of the seculars, but they seem to have reproached the Dominicans at all events with overfondness for philosophy as distinct from theology.[87] Together with the contest between seculars and regulars in the University there went also one between the two great Mendicant orders. The same charge seems to have been preferred against the Prædicants by their rivals. They cared too much for knowledge that was not wholly sacred; they were too scientific, too intellectualist.[88] Such is the gist of the diatribes launched against the Dominicans, especially Thomas Aquinas, by Archbishop Peckham.[89] There is no doubt that he deliberately tried to involve Aquinas in the suspicion of Averrhoïsm. A certain Gilles de Lessines, sending to Albertus Magnus a list of fifteen errors current in Paris, includes in the number thirteen definitely Averrhoïst doctrines together with two theories of Aquinas, not Averrhoïst, to which, however, the Augustinians took exception.[90] Clearly the Franciscans were endeavouring to discredit not only the Averrhoïsts, but the Aristotelians. In the year 1270 there appeared two important treatises: the one by a certain Siger of Brabant, entitled ‘De anima intellectiva,’ the other by Aquinas, ‘De unitate intellectus contra Averroïstas.’ The latter is defending himself vigorously against the charge of Averrhoïsm by himself vigorously attacking the Averrhoïsts. In a sermon preached before the University of Paris St. Thomas vehemently denounced the self-confidence and self-sufficiency of the Averrhoïsts, and contrasted the contradictions and the uncertainties of philosophy with the clearness and certitude of revealed religion.[91] In this same year 1270 the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, solemnly condemned the thirteen propositions mentioned in Gilles de Lessines’ letter to Albertus of Cologne. They were the doctrines being taught at the time by the two leaders of Averrhoïsm in the University, the Siger of Brabant just mentioned and Boëthius of Dacia.

Of Siger’s works a number are extant. Two or three are concerned with the sort of logical conundrums popular among mediæval dialecticians or with theories of Aquinas and are orthodox enough, but the ‘De aeternitate mundi’ and the ‘De anima intellectiva’ contain the whole gospel of Averrhoës.[92] Their contentions are so completely a transcription of the ‘great commentator’ that it is unnecessary to do more than summarize them briefly. For Siger, as for the Arabian, Aristotle is the one and only philosopher. Like Averrhöes too, Siger makes no attempt to reconcile Aristotle with revealed religion, but carries his teaching to its supposed logical conclusion. Both Albertus and Aquinas, Siger maintained, had perverted Aristotle.[93] Not they, but Averrhoës, was the true exponent of the Stagirite. He proclaimed, then, in all boldness the doctrine of the unity of the intellect together with its inevitable corollary, the denial of personal immortality; the doctrine of the eternity of matter, which involved the negation of the Biblical story of creation, the intervention of providence, the free will and moral responsibility of the individual.[94]

Such were the fundamental conceptions of Siger’s teaching and of the propositions condemned by the Bishop of Paris in 1270. The condemnation did not silence the Averrhoïst champion and his friends. For six or seven more years they continued to be possibly a small, but apparently an energetic and defiant, body among the masters of arts in the University. Between 1272 and 1275 Siger was in open revolt against the authority of the rector, Amaury of Rheims. The Averrhoïsts separated themselves from the rest of the faculty; but the force and skill, perhaps the very audacity, of their leader attracted a large number of students to his lectures.[95] The doctrinal controversy continued. It was one not so much concerning the truth or erroneousness of the Averrhoïst position as on the question of fact—was Averrhoës or Aquinas the more faithful interpreter of Aristotle? Aegidius Romanus triumphantly vindicated the Stagirite from the Averrhoïst deductions.[96] On the other hand, there continued to be those to whom Aristotelianism and the expositions of Albertus Magnus and Aquinas were anathema.[97] In the end the latter triumphed over their adversaries: Aquinas was canonized, Aristotle was vindicated, and the Alberto-Thomist principle tended to take the place of Platonic Augustinianism as the most authoritative philosophy of the schools. It was far otherwise with the anti-scholastic faction of Siger. They, the literal slaves of Aristotle, accepting the Averrhoïst interpretations of him without emendation, refusing to accept the idea of any compromising adaptation to suit the requirements of revealed truth, were accused of maintaining that the Christian faith, in common with all other religious creeds with their fables and errors, was an obstacle to scientific enquiry leading to the acquirement of exact truth.[98] Here was Averrhoïsm naked and unashamed indeed; but it is difficult to believe that this accusation can be true. However that may be, the Paris Averrhoïsts—and Siger very outspokenly—asserted the collateral existence of two distinct truths, the religious and the philosophical.

It is remarkable that principles of this type should have been tolerated so long. In 1277 there came a change. In January of that year Pope John XXI addressed a letter to Etienne Tempier in which he bids him search out notable errors in doctrine, since it is deplorable to find the pure streams of Catholic faith, which it is the special function of the University to send forth, being grievously polluted.[99] Thus commanded, Tempier set to work once more, and this time produced a list of no fewer than 219 errors.[100] Again an attempt was made to confound the Thomists with the Averrhoïsts, and the long list included many very petty points. But the principal errors enumerated are Averrhoïst and the list is obviously aimed chiefly against Siger and Boëthius. The Bishop not only produced the catalogue, but he fulminated a decree pronouncing excommunication against all those who harboured the opinions therein condemned. Henceforward such persons were ‘suspect’ of heresy; and it is not surprising that either in November 1277 or 1278—probably the former—Siger and Boëthius were cited to appear before the inquisitor of France, Simon du Val, in the diocese of Noyon.[101] The two Averrhoïsts seem to have appealed against the inquisitor direct to the court of Rome, probably on the grounds of the special privileges of the University of Paris, the peculiar solicitude of the papacy for the University, their own intrinsic importance as teachers of great reputation and their persistent declaration that they were true Catholics. The circumstances of their latter days are obscure; but the strong probability is that they made their way to Rome to purge themselves from the suspicion of heresy, were tried before the Inquisition of Tuscany, abjured their errors, were duly reconciled and then penanced with perpetual imprisonment.[102] Siger died at Orvieto, certainly before 1300, since in that year Dante imagines a meeting with him in his journey through Paradise. How comes it that Dante places this heretic in Paradise? Two possible conjectures have been put forward. The first that Dante did so in ignorance of Siger’s true character, not being sufficiently well versed in the current philosophy of the time; the other, that he wanted to place in Paradise some one who should represent the philosopher par excellence as distinct from the theologian. It was not easy to find such a one; and of the possible candidates, Siger of Brabant was the most distinguished.[103]

Parisian Averrhoïsm, despite the condemnation of its chief exponents, did not die with Siger, Boëthius and the thirteenth century. In the next century a certain John of Landun or of Ghent was preaching Averrhoïst doctrine in the University and attacking the reputation of St. Thomas; and he had numerous followers.[104] But by this time the chief centre of Averrhoïsm was tending to be Padua rather than Paris. Here the Averrhoïst school was founded by Peter of Abano, equally famous as physician, magician, astrologer and Averrhoïst, who only escaped the clutches of the Inquisition by dying an opportune natural death in 1316.[105] The school there also admitted its direct indebtedness to the Parisian, John of Landun. From his days right down to the seventeenth century speculations of an Averrhoïst character continued to be discussed in northern Italy, especially in Padua. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there were two rival Aristotelian parties in Padua and Bologna, Averrhoïsts and Alexandrists (so-called after the Greek commentator, Alexander of Aphrodistias), who disputed academic-wise concerning the personal or impersonal nature of immortality. Of the Averrhoïsts the most distinguished were Achellini, Augustino Nifo and Zimara; of the Alexandrists, Pomponazzi. Although an Alexandrist, this bold and lively thinker owed much to Averrhoës; while it is an indication of the very academic nature of Italian Averrhoïsm that Nifo, it is true after somewhat modifying his views, was commissioned by Leo X to prove as against Pomponazzi that Aristotle believed in the immortality of the soul.[106]

The most perfervid opponent of Latin Averrhoïsm in the Middle Ages was Raymond Lully, who made it his dominant object in life to combat Islam in all its shapes and forms. His schemes embraced the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre and the conversion of all Jews and Saracens; but he desired to attack not only the Koran, but Moslem heterodoxy also, and to rescue the truths of Christianity from the contaminations of the ‘great commentator.’ To these ends he laboured untiringly and with an intense zeal. We find him approaching the Council of Vienne in 1311, with projects for the amalgamation of the great military orders, a new crusade against the infidel, the foundation of colleges for the study of Arabic so that Moslem errors may be the more easily confuted. Lully also desired the suppression of the works of Averrhoës in all schools, and the prohibition of all Christians from reading them.[107] It is remarkable that the works of this great antagonist of Averrhoïsm should have themselves come under suspicion of heresy. It is probable that his followers, rather than Lully himself, were responsible for the damaging of his reputation, since some of them held opinions of a Joachite character. But it is clear that in his animosity to Averrhoïsm Lully went to the opposite extreme. Condemning the tenet of the incompatibility of philosophy and revealed truth, he was moved to maintain that there was no difference between them, that there was no dividing line between the rational and the supernatural.[108] Therein was perhaps as great error as in the contrary opinion. However that may be, Nicholas Eymeric determined to have Lully’s memory condemned, and in the ‘Directorium’ is particularly venomous against him. In 1376 he exhibited a papal bull condemning no fewer than 500 Lullist opinions as heretical. The results were curious. These were in the days of the Schism; and the Aragonese acknowledged neither pope. Declaring the bull a forgery, perpetrated by the inquisitor himself, the Lullists secured his banishment, and Eymeric died in exile.[109]

A better known enemy of Averrhoïsm than Raymond Lully was Petrarch, who like Lully hated everything that savoured of Islam. He hated its medicine and its astronomy, but above all its philosophy. He makes the Averrhoïsts—of whom it is clear he must have known a number—targets of an indignant irony. They are men who make it a point of honour to deny Christ and the supernatural. Petrarch, his inspiration drawn from the classics of paganism, a man who had witnessed and loathed the abominations of Avignon, who regarded Rome as ‘the temple of heresy,’ had no brief to defend the orthodox creed. But to him Christianity was endeared because of its humility, Averrhoïsm abhorrent because it was dogmatic, self-confident, pedantic.[110]

This to the mediæval mind is the outstanding characteristic of Averrhoïsm. It is insolent in the assurance of its denials. In the fourteenth century Averrhoës himself stands as the unique personification of the spirit of unbelief; and as such is bracketed with Antichrist and Mohammed.[111] In this light he figures in the paintings of Orcagna and others. To Gerson he is the most abominable of all enemies of Christianity, to Petrarch a rabid dog ever raging against the Catholic faith.[112] The famous phrase ‘the three impostors,’ which had first been attributed by Gregory IX to Frederick II, and the essential conception of which in book form was destined to be attributed to many others from Boccaccio to Erasmus, Rabelais to Milton, was fathered upon Averrhoës.[113] He had declared—so it was believed—that Moses, Christ and Mohammed were three impostors who had deluded the world; also that of the three religions, Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, the first was a religion for babes, the second a sheer impossibility, the third fit only for hogs. The Eucharist was the impossible feature of Christianity, and Christians were especially hateful because they ate the flesh of the God whom they professed to adore.[114]

Perhaps the most interesting fact connected with the story of the Islamic philosophy in Europe is the fact that it helped to familiarize Christendom with some of the features of another religion. It was not, of course, the sole agency to do that; the Crusades played their part. It is significant that many of the mediæval stories and mystery plays have as their central idea apostasy, which as a rule takes the form of conversion to Mohammedanism. Even the religious wars in Palestine did not breed exclusively antagonism to the faith of the infidel, and friendly intercourse with Saracen Spain and academic interest in Islamic philosophy produced a knowledge that was less critical than sympathetic. Such familiarity with the main conceptions of other creeds rendered feasible the comparative study of religion. That was to be an achievement for a future age. Yet it needed no exact science of the subject to encourage the spirit of toleration. When other religions were discussed, were it only for the sake of attacking and refuting them, still the curious eye could not fail to be aware of their common elements. Not even in Marsiglio is the principle of religious toleration more notably set forth than in one of the tales of the ‘Decameron,’ the pithy parable of ‘The Three Rings,’ which inspired Lessing’s ‘Nathan the Wise.’[115] Melchizedek in Boccaccio’s tale emphasizes in his analogue the common elements in the three religions of Jew, Moslem and Christian, each claiming to be the sole truth, and no doubt one of them being in fact the truth, yet so alike that none can tell which that one is. Boccaccio’s attitude is one of sceptical indifference, and it is no far cry from that to the attitude of Pulci in the ‘Morgante Maggiore,’ in which the mood is one of complete levity and all the forces of ridicule are brought against the quips and quiddities of the theologian and the superiority of Orlando’s God over Morgante’s original deity is made to look exceedingly equivocal.

We must not allow ourselves to discover an Averrhoïst origin for all the outspoken language used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which Christianity is regarded critically, objectively.[116] It is no doubt true that Averrhoïsm was principally an academic force belonging to the universities, and that even there its adherents were never numerous. On the other hand, there must inevitably have been some infiltration of Averrhoïst ideas through the general community. There must have been some dispersal through the agency of the scholars who thronged the seats of learning, who were more often than not wanderers from one school to another, from Spain to France, from France to England, from England to Italy, and who must have scattered abroad the influences under which they themselves were brought. There were from the point of view of the Church two obviously dangerous features in Averrhoïsm. First there was its anti-scholastic nature, its determination to follow philosophy wheresoever it might lead, regardless of whether it could be reconciled with Christian dogma or not, a determination which was accompanied by a bold insistence upon their incompatibility in point of fact. In the resolution to follow truth, untrammelled by religious dogma, there might at the surface appear to be something of that critical spirit which produced another anti-scholastic revolt, that of Roger Bacon. But whereas in his case the inductive method gave promise of progress in knowledge, the possibility scarcely existed with philosophers who were just as completely persuaded as was the most orthodox mediæval saint that the truth had once and for ever been vouchsafed to mankind, with the sole difference that whereas the saint found the truth in the Bible, the Averrhoïst found it in the treatises of Aristotle. But the fact that he did so find it—in pagan and not in sacred writ—was, one would have thought, radical enough and dangerous enough; while the actual doctrines he professed were as divorced from Christian belief, as wildly heretical as any that the most fiercely persecuted mediæval sect ever expressed. Nevertheless as a rule the Averrhoïst was not persecuted.

At first glance this appears very surprising. Yet the explanation is in reality simple enough. In the first place, the Church was no enemy of speculative thinking as such. The doctors, the masters and the students who debated so earnestly, so vehemently, abstract questions in philosophy as well as in theology were themselves clerics; the universities were ecclesiastical foundations; their studies were essentially sacred, not profane. It was no part of the policy of the mediæval Church to stifle enquiry and discussion by those properly qualified concerning the ultimate truths of existence. Such work might well be to the glory of God and the permanent enrichment of the Church. And if the Averrhoïsts did not, like Albertus Magnus and Aquinas and the great Franciscan Augustinians, convert their learning into Christian apologetics; on the other hand, they were not like the wandering sectaries, whom the Church did persecute, irresponsible unlearned laity, who spoke of mysteries they were not fit to understand, but they were themselves clergy under proper academic discipline and supervision. Moreover, they did not attack the Church; on the contrary, they professed themselves the most devout true Catholics. Their interest in philosophy was purely abstract; they had no ulterior motives, no remotest idea of propaganda with a view to shaking the authority of the Church or the filial allegiance to her of a single one of her children. On the contrary, they repeatedly and most emphatically asserted that their philosophical tenets were exclusively academic and not intended to have any bearing upon life and conduct. Thus the Averrhoïst postulate of a double truth, one philosophic, the other religious, stood its adherents in good stead. We cannot to-day see into the minds of these Latin Averrhoïsts, cannot tell whether they persuaded themselves that they really were Christians, were sincere in their conception of two irreconcilable truths or adopted it merely as a convenient subterfuge and were flippantly cynical or sardonically insolent in their hypocrisy. The subterfuge served the Averrhoïsts; whether its acquiescence in the subterfuge served the Church is another matter. While the obviously honest Waldensian and Beghard were harried to the stake, the obviously dishonest Averrhoïst was usually left at large. Was not the tendency of such discrepancy of treatment to place a premium upon mere lip-service and religious insincerity? From the fourteenth-century Averrhoïst, with his idea of the double truth, it is but one step to the fifteenth-century humanist, openly indifferent to religion altogether, not troubling to consider whether such a thing as religious truth exists at all, seeking and discerning truth in the pagan world only.