Readings in the History of Education: Mediaeval Universities

by Arthur O. Norton

The selection from the Canon Law (p. 59 ff.) gives a good idea of the substance of a dictated mediaeval lecture. Concerning the "original" and more or less off-hand lecture we have the amusing account of Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146-1220), in his "most flattering of all autobiographies." After recounting—in the third person—his studies at Paris in Civil and Canon Law, and Theology, he says:

He obtained so much favor in decretal cases, which were wont to be handled Sundays, that, on the day on which it had become known throughout the city that he would talk, there resulted such a concourse of almost all the doctors with their scholars, to hear his pleasing voice, that scarcely could the amplest house have held the auditors.

And with reason, for he so supported with rhetorical persuasiveness his original, wide-awake treatment of the Laws and Canons, and so embellished his points both with figures and flowers of speech and with pithy ideas, and so applied the sayings of philosophers and authors, which he inserted in fitting places with marvellous cleverness, that the more learned and erudite the congregation, the more eagerly and attentively did they apply ears and minds to listening and memorizing. Of a truth they were led on and besmeared with words so sweet that, hanging, as it were, in suspense on the lips of the speaker,—though the address was long and involved, of a sort that is wont to be tedious to many,—they found it impossible to be fatigued, or even sated, with hearing the man.

And so the scholars strove to take down all his talks, word for word, as they emanated from his lips, and to adopt them with great eagerness. Moreover, on a certain day when the concourse from all parts to hear him was great, when the lecture was over and was followed by a murmur of favorable applause from all the throng, a certain distinguished Doctor who both had lectured on the Arts at Paris and long studied on the laws at Bologna, whose name was Master Roger the Norman, … broke out openly in expressions of this sort: "There is not such knowledge under the sun, and if it were by chance reported at Paris, it would, beyond a doubt, carry incomparable weight there, far more so than anywhere else." Now the opening—as it were, the proem—of that talk I have not considered it inappropriate to introduce here; so this is the way it began:

"I had proposed to hear before being heard, to learn before speaking, to hesitate before debating. For to cultured ears and to men of the highest eloquence my speech will appear to have little marrow in its views, and its poverty of words will seem jejune. For idle is it, and utterly superfluous, to offer that which is arid to the eloquent, and that which is stale to men of knowledge and wisdom. Whence our Moral Seneca, and, quoting from him, Sidonius, says:

"'Until Nature has drunk in knowledge, it is not greater glory to speak what you know than to be silent about what you do not know.'

"And yet, since, on the testimony of Augustine, 'Every part out of harmony with its whole is base,' that I may not seem the sole anomaly among you, or, where others speak, be found by my silence a disciple of Pythagoras surpassing the rest, I have chosen to be found ridiculous for my speaking, rather than out of harmony for my silence.

"What note then shall the noisy goose emit in the presence of the clear-songed swans? Shall he offer new things, or things well known? Things often considered and trite generate disgust; new things lack authority. For, as Pliny says: 'It is an arduous task to give novelty to old things, authority to new things, brightness to things obsolete, charm to things disdained, light to obscure things, credence to doubtful things, and to all things naturalness!'

"The question which we have before us is old, but not inveterate,—a question often argued, but whose decision is still pending: Should a Judge decide according to the evidence, or according to his conviction?"

Now he supported the second, but far less justifiable view, by arguments taken from the Laws and the Canons, so forcible that, while all were amazed, all were uncertain whether greater praise should be given to the ornateness of the words or to the efficacy of the arguments.[57]