Of course, besides the principle above alluded to, there was the more manifest object of religious training, touching which I will merely quote the words of a former Rector of the Paris University, who wrote in anything but a religious age. “Religion,” says M. Rollin, in his treatise on “Education,” “should be the object of all our instructions; though not perpetually in our mouths, it should always be in our minds. Whoever examines the ancient statutes of the university which relate to masters and scholars, and takes notice of the prayers, solemnities, public processions, festivals, and days set apart for preparing for the Sacraments, may easily discover that the intention of their pious Mother is to consecrate and sanctify the studies of youth by religion, and that she would not carry them so long in her bosom were it not with the view of regenerating them to Jesus Christ. It is with this design that she requires that in every class, besides their other exercises of piety, the scholars should daily repeat certain sentences from Holy Scripture, and especially from the Gospels, that their other studies may be, as it were, seasoned with salt.” And he quotes passages from the ancient statutes, requiring that “the Divine Word be mingled with the eloquence of the pagans, as is fitting in Christian schools where Christ, the One Teacher of man, should not only be present, but preside.”
The very slight mention made in the statutes of Robert de Courçon of Rhetoric, as included in the course of arts, is the last which we shall meet with for a considerable space of time. The Bull of Gregory IX., published in 1231, and the statutes of the Regents of Arts, which appeared in 1254, make no reference to this study. The arts are there represented by philosophy alone, and there is no allusion to the cultivation of rhetoric, or the reading of the classical authors, which from this date became very generally neglected. As a natural consequence, grammar also lamentably decayed. It was, of course, not absolutely banished, inasmuch as a certain amount of it was essential for the pursuit of any studies at all; but it became altogether barbarised and debased. Those rules of syntax and prosody, over which the old monastic masters had so lovingly lingered, were totally neglected, and although Latin poems were still produced, their Latinity was full of false quantities and grammatical solecisms. The tenth century, with all its darkness, knew far more of humane letters than the thirteenth; nor was the superiority of the earlier schools confined to a knowledge of the classics. The exaggerated prominence given to philosophy, or rather to dialectics, had caused a neglect of the Fathers, who were now chiefly studied in Sums and Sentences, which professed to present the student with the pith of theology in a single volume, forming the text-books on which the doctors delivered lectures and commentaries, coloured, naturally enough, with their own ideas. The original works of the Fathers, which had been the familiar study of the monastic students, appear at this time to have been little in request; and when St. Louis, on his return from Palestine, formed a plan for collecting a library of all the most useful and authentic ecclesiastical writings, he had to get copies made of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, and other Catholic doctors, from the codices stored up in remote monastic libraries; for in the schools of Paris they were not to be found. The extreme scholastics, indeed, were accustomed to speak of the Fathers as rhetoricians; writers, that is, who expressed themselves according to the rules of natural eloquence, a terrible delinquency in the eyes of the new illuminati, who considered that a man should display his science by loading his pages with the terms of logic—assertion, proof, major, minor, and corollary. The good king, however, whose taste was superior to that of most of his contemporaries, persevered in his noble enterprise, and at great pains and cost collected a library of the best Christian authors, in which he himself studied profoundly; liberally granting its use to others also. “He read the works of the Fathers, whose authority is established,” says his biographer, “more willingly than those of the new doctors;” and he gave as a reason for making new copies, in preference to buying up the old ones, that by this means he multiplied writings which he desired should be more widely known. He ordered that after his death this library should be divided among the three monasteries he had founded; those, namely, of the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Cistercians; and it was from this source that the Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais, who filled the office of tutor to the royal children, drew the materials of his famous work, The Great Mirror, of which we shall hereafter have occasion to speak.
If positive theology and the humanities began to be neglected, however, civil and canon law were better treated. The appearance in 1157 of the “Decretals” of Gratian, had been followed by the erection of a Chair of Jurisprudence at Bologna, and another at Paris. The new branch of study had one advantage which commended it to popular favour: it led to substantial profits, and scholars were found not unwilling to let Horace and Cicero drop into disuse in favour of a science which paid so well for the time spent on its acquisition. The prodigious popularity of these new pursuits at length caused grave apprehensions lest the schools of arts and theology should in time be altogether deserted, and in 1220 Honorius III. found it necessary to forbid the further study of civil law at Paris. Crevier complains of this prohibition as injurious to the university, and it was, in fact, very generally eluded; although the formal permission to include civil law in the Faculty of Right was not granted till 1679. But in point of fact, the alarm which was felt was not without foundation. At Oxford such a revolution had been brought about by the introduction of the law lectures, that it was feared both arts and theology would be utterly neglected. What was worse, the law students aspired after and obtained benefices; and this abuse was encouraged by sovereigns, who found law prelates much more easy to deal with, and to accommodate to their own political views, than theologians. Innocent III. had, at last, to prohibit the admission to benefices of those who had only graduated in law, and insisted that all who aspired to ecclesiastical benefices should also pursue a regular course of theology. The tendency of the age, however, was manifest; the universities were falling more and more away from that idea of education which the old system had, in theory at any rate, professed to carry out; namely, the presenting of knowledge as a whole, its various parts arranged under the heads of the seven liberal arts, presided over by theology. Philosophy, according to this idea, included a knowledge of truth in all its various departments, and all the arts were but branches springing from one trunk, one of which could not be struck off without injuring the proportion and harmony of the whole.
The neglect of arts, and the excessive preponderance given to law studies and dialectics, made up a grave and momentous change in the whole theory of education, which was daily losing something more of that breadth and largeness which formed one of the chief features of education as proposed by the ancients, whose traditions had been accepted by the Christian schools. This seems a fair statement of the mischievous side of the change; but there is also another view of the question, which justly claims to be recognised. There was a deeper cause for the popularity of law and logic in the European schools of this period than any sordid motive of gain, or any mere love of disputation. Both of them formed a part of that extraordinary intellectual revolution which marked the opening of the thirteenth century. Men had grown indifferent to the study of language in proportion as they had been aroused to the deeper interest of mental science. Though the immediate result was to introduce a decay of polite letters, and not a few philosophic extravagancies, it cannot be doubted that many faculties were roused into vigorous action, which, under the former system, had lain dormant. The grand defect of the old monastic scholars, as scholars, was, that they cultivated learning rather than mind; they studied other men’s thoughts, but were not equally exercised in training their own. They seldom investigated for themselves either mental or physical phenomena; whatever absurdities were to be found in the natural philosophy which they received from the ancients, were generally adopted without question, and handed on to the next generation; and the instances are rare in which an appeal is made to the results of personal observation.
Even their theological works were chiefly compilations, and St. Anselm may be called the first original thinker who had appeared among divines since the close of the fifth century. When the intellectual powers of Europe again woke into action, men were not unnaturally induced to regard mere elegances of style with a certain rude indifference. Like soldiers who, when about to engage in a conflict for life or death, are careless whether or no they wear their holiday trappings, the scholastics of the thirteenth century, while they exercised their mental powers in subtle disputation, conceived a contempt for the charms of mere rhetoric, and valued language only as the vehicle for expressing the distinctions of philosophy. Under such circumstances Latinity, of course, grew barbarous; and many far graver disorders arose out of the daring and undue exercise of reason. Yet, real intellectual progress was being made, in spite of the decay of letters; and the growth of mind went on in the same way as the growth of body, when the delicate tints and graceful form of childhood disappear, whilst bone and muscle are being built up, and the feeble child is expanding into the strong-armed man. When the revival of literature took place two centuries later, it found a race of strong thinkers in place of diligent readers. The scholars of the Renaissance were forward in ridiculing the barbarism of the scholastic philosophers, but in doing so they showed that they had very superficially studied the intellectual era that preceded their own. Undoubtedly, the excess of legal and logical studies had many abuses, but they are not therefore to be arbitrarily condemned. Even the lawyers, with whom it is most difficult to keep charity, and whose influence was the most mischievous in the schools, had a considerable share in the education of modern Europe. Careful critics, on studying the legal documents of the Middle Ages, such, for example, as our own Magna Charta, fail not to express their wonder and admiration at the keenness of intellect which is displayed in their provisions, and the precision of language in which they are expressed. The men of the pen were cautiously and sagaciously circumventing the men of the sword. Every constitutional principle laid down in the statute-book established the sovereignty of law over that of brute force; it was a victory of mind over matter, and was therefore a mighty step in the history of intellectual progress.
These considerations must be calmly weighed before we pass any judgment on the scholastic revolution of the thirteenth century. Our sympathies, no doubt, will linger with the elder scholars, and we shall be disposed to look with a very jealous eye on the triumph of the sophists and the Cornificians; but it will suffice to reconcile us to the temporary necessity of the change, that it was accepted by the Church, and that she set her seal to the due and legitimate use of those studies which were to develope the human intellect to its full-grown strength. Nay, more, she absorbed into herself an intellectual movement which, had she opposed it, would have been directed against her authority, and so, to a great extent, neutralised its powers of mischief. The scholastic philosophy, which, without her direction, would have expanded into an infidel Rationalism, was woven into her theology itself, and made to do duty in her defence, and that wondrous spectacle was exhibited, so common in the history of the Church, when the dark and threatening thunder cloud which seemed about to send out its lightning bolts, only distils in fertilising rain.[172]
The statutes of Robert de Courçon, after regulating the studies, pass on to the manners of the students. They descend with great simplicity into various details, which are not uninteresting, as furnishing us with some idea of the usages of the times. Great banquets were forbidden to be held at the installation of new masters, who were only allowed to invite a few companions and friends. No master reading arts was to wear aught but a round black gown falling as low as his heels, “at least,” adds the cardinal with much naïveté, “when it is new.” A cloak is allowed, but the abomination of pointed shoes is strictly prohibited. When a scholar of arts or theology died, one-half of the masters were to attend his funeral; if it were a master, all the other masters were to assist at the Office for the Dead. They were, moreover, to recite, or cause to be recited, an entire Psalter for his soul, to remain in the church where the Office was celebrated until midnight, and on the day of burial all exercises in the schools were to be suspended. He confirms to the students the free possession of those broad and delightful meadows, so dearly prized as a place of recreation, which gave their name to St. Germain des Prés, and for the protection of the scholars, fixes the rate at which the citizens shall be obliged to furnish them with lodgings.
The university thus established, redounded, it need not be said, to the profit as well as to the glory of the French capital. Not only the intellect, but the wealth also, of Europe flowed into that great centre. New branches of industry sprang up in connection with the schools; the Rue de Fouarre supplied them with straw for their seats, and the Rue des Ecrivains was entirely peopled with booksellers and book-lenders, mostly Jews, who furnished the scholars with literary wares, suffering those who were too poor to buy, to hire their volumes at a fixed rate. The bookselling trade fell at last under the jurisdiction of the university, and the booksellers were enrolled as academic officers, taking an oath on their appointment to observe the statutes and regulations. They were not suffered to open a traffic without testimonials as to character, and the tariff of prices was fixed by four of their number appointed by the university. Fines were imposed for incorrect copies, and the traders were bound to hang up a priced catalogue in their shops. If books of heretical or immoral tendency were found introduced, they were burnt by order of the university officers. The same powers were exercised over the book trade by the universities of Vienna, Toulouse, and Bologna, and the name of Stationarii began to be given to those who held these stores; stalls, or shops of all descriptions, being often denominated Stations. By degrees, however, the licensed Stationarii lost their monopoly of the trade, and the custom became tolerated of allowing poor scholars to sell books of low price in order to obtain the means of pursuing their studies. The Librarii were the copyists of new books, who dealt also in parchment and writing materials, and exercised a very important profession before the days of printing; those who transcribed old books were considered a separate branch, and styled Antiquarii, and by this distinction the scholar in search of a volume knew at once from which Statio he might obtain the object of his desires.
But as in those days of high prices and book scarcity, the poor student was sorely impeded in his progress, to provide against these disadvantages, a law was framed at Paris, compelling all public booksellers to keep books to lend out on hire. The reader will be surprised at the idea of lending libraries in the Middle Ages, but there can be no doubt of the fact that they were established at Paris, Toulouse, Vienna, and Bologna. These public librarians, too, were obliged to write out regular catalogues of their books, and hang them up in their shops with the prices affixed, so that the student might know beforehand what he had to pay for reading each book. Some of these lists are preserved, in which we find three sous charged for the loan of Peter Lombard’s Book of the Sentences, and ten sous for a Bible.
The custom began to be introduced among the scholars of expending great sums on the adornment of their books with gilt letters and fantastic illuminations, and writers of the time complain of the extravagant sums thus dissipated. Thus Odofred speaks of a certain gentleman who sent his son to Paris, giving him an annual allowance of 100 livres. “What does he do? Why, he has his books ornamented with gold initials and strange monsters, and has a new pair of boots every Saturday.” The mention of these literary trades leads me to speak of what we may call the great festival day of the trades in general, and of the scholars and booksellers in particular. Who has not heard of the great fair of St. Denis, the Landit, as it was called, originally held to enable the Bishop of Paris to display the relics preserved in the abbey to those devout multitudes whose numbers, being too great for any church to contain them, rendered it necessary to assemble them in the open fields? A French poet describes this fair as he beheld it at the close of the twelfth century, crowded with tailors, furriers, linendrapers, leather-sellers, shoemakers, cutlers, corn-merchants, jewellers, and goldsmiths. The enumeration of all the trades at last passes his powers, and he begs his readers to excuse his completing the catalogue. And what has this to do with the university? it may be asked. Much, for thither also flocked the sellers of parchment. The rector of the university went there in state to choose the best article which the fair produced; nay, what is more, all dealers in parchment were forbidden by royal edict to purchase any on the first day of the fair, until the merchants of the king and the bishop, and the masters and scholars of the university, had laid in their yearly provision. This going of the rector to the Landit was the grand annual holiday. He was attended by all the masters and scholars on horseback, and not unfrequently, says Lebœuf, in his “History of the Diocese of Paris,” this expedition was the occasion of many falling sick, through heat and fatigue, especially the youngsters.