[220] These foundations are thought worthy of being named among his greatest works in the Breviary lessons for the Octave day of his feast: “Hebraicæ et Arabicæ linguæ publicas scholas in Ordine Prædicatorum impensis instituit.”
[221] The letter is printed at length in Martene’s Collection, Tom. iv. col. 1527.
[222] Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. de Paris. Vol. ii. p. 227. There is incidental evidence that the Greek and Oriental tongues were occasionally studied even by members of the secular colleges of Paris, during this and the following century. Stephen Pasquier speaks of a certain youth of twenty, who in the year 1445 spoke very subtle Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic, besides many other tongues; and winds up his account by saying that if an ordinary man had lived a hundred years without eating and sleeping he could not have learnt as much as this young prodigy. His learning, however, was evidently something rather uncommon, for, says the historian, it put all his fellow-students in fear lest he knew more than human nature ought to know, and might possibly be “a young Antichrist.”
[223] Ayliffe; State of the University of Oxford, vol. i. p. 106.
[224] Fontana, Const. De studio Linguarum. g. p. 467; also Jasinsky, Studium Linguarum. lit. B.
[225] Annibaldi was a pupil of Albert the Great, and took his Doctor’s degree in Paris, where he enjoyed a very brilliant reputation. Innocent IV. created him Master of the Sacred Palace. But being promoted to the purple in 1263 be solicited Urban IV. to name as his successor in that office a certain learned English Friar, F. William Bonderinensis, as he is called in the Catalogue of the Masters, who belonged to the Convent of London, and was the only one of our countrymen who ever filled that important post.
[226] Hibernia Dominicana, p. 191.
[227] Speech on the Extension of Academic Education in Ireland, delivered at Cork, Nov. 13, 1844; quoted in an article on the Ancient Dominican Irish Schools; Dublin Review, Sept. 1845.
[228] Hib. Dominicana, p. 193.
[229] Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol. xi, p. 593.