That the thirteenth century witnessed a great decay of Latinity is not to be denied, though, as has been before shown, this decay and the neglect of classical studies had set in before the rise of the mendicant orders and is in no way to be attributed to them. Oxford enjoyed the reputation of talking the very worst Latin in Europe, whence arose the proverb, Oxoniensis loquendi mos. Certainly, if the grammatical errors condemned in the visitation articles of John of Peckham, as reported by Wood, were common in the schools, there is not much to be said in their defence. The prevalence of law studies, too, helped on the decline of rhetoric, for the diction of the jurists was, if possible, worse than that of the scholastics; and the inferiority, apparent during the reign of Edward II., in the schools of divinity, philosophy, and arts, is attributed by the learned Dominican, Holcot, to the over-abundance of law lectures. Granting, however, a full share in the corruption of Latinity to have been the work of the schoolmen, it is difficult to understand how they can be said to have committed a “wrong” by “enriching the Latin with terms which seemed to convey their meaning.” It is usually supposed to be the object of language to convey one’s thoughts, and writers who had to express the nice distinctions of Christian theology would have been puzzled had they been bound to confine themselves to the Ciceronian phraseology. They did, therefore, what Cicero himself had done before them, and coined words and idioms to express ideas which were not current in the Augustan age. The writings of the scholastics must be regarded as in some sort scientific works, in which the object was not elegance of style, but accuracy of sense. We are not, therefore, necessarily to conclude that the Latin of Duns Scotus was an example of the best that the age could produce; on the contrary, many instances might be cited to prove that even this unfortunate thirteenth century possessed scholars whose Latin was at least as pure as the English of some of their critics. Thus the Bull of Gregory X. for the canonisation of St. Louis, is cited by M. Artaud, the biographer of Dante, as “a very model of pure Latinity.” Cicero’s Rhetoric was so far from being devoured by the moths, that it was almost the very first work chosen for translation into Italian prose, and appeared in the vulgar idiom in 1257, the translator being Galeotto, the professor of grammar at the university of Bologna. But, putting aside all exceptional cases of those who still studied and imitated the classics, may we not reasonably complain of the narrowness of that criticism which stigmatises as barbarous everything which does not belong to one style, or reflect the phraseology of one arbitrarily chosen period? “It is strange,” observes Rohrbacher, “that every one supposes and repeats that the scholastics and the cloisters of the Middle Ages produced no book capable of pleasing the world and becoming popular; and yet, for centuries past, the world has read and delighted in a book of scholastic morality, composed in the Middle Ages by a monkish superior for the use of his novices, and that this book which has been read, known, and admired by everybody, is especially a popular book; and has been translated into every language, and gone through thousands of editions.” He is speaking of the Following of Christ, which, according to very probable conjectures, appears to have been composed in the thirteenth century, by John Gersen of Cabanaco, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of St. Stephen, at Vercelli.[253]
Again: among the writers who displayed such incredible ignorance as to write Leonine verse were the authors of a sacred poetic literature which will defy all the attacks of time, and which no classic revival can ever render obsolete. The “Dies Iræ,” the “Ave Maris Stella,” the “Stabat Mater,” the “Veni Sancte Spiritus,” the “Hymns of the Blessed Sacrament,” and those innumerable sequences so familiar to every Christian ear, owe nothing of their inspiration to classic sources. It is even possible that they may set at defiance the rules of Latin prosody; but all sense of harmony must be destroyed before we can designate the language in which they are composed as a “hybrid jargon.” And who were the writers of these exquisite compositions, which gave a voice to popular Christian devotion, and still preserve, like some choice balm, not merely the dogmas of the faith, but the very unction of a believing age? They were, for the most part, monks, schoolmen, and friars, the very men who stand charged with a conspiracy against literature and common sense. St. Peter Damian, Adam of St. Victor, Pope Innocent III., the Franciscan Jacopone, the Dominican St. Thomas, and we may add, the gifted and unfortunate Abelard, the very type and representative of the earlier scholastics—these are the barbarians to whom we are indebted for that mediæval lyric poetry, much of which has been incorporated into the office of the Church. In the seventeenth century France grew ashamed of her ancient hymnology, and committed the task of liturgical reform to Santeuil, the half-scholar, half-buffoon, to the Jansenist Coffin, and the Deist De Brienne. The hymns of Fortunatus and St. Ambrose were then exchanged for studied imitations of Horace, from the pen of a writer who boasted that he was ready to be hung up at a lamp-post if he were detected in writing a single bad verse, though one of his Jesuit critics has cruelly enumerated no fewer than a hundred and eight. But whatever be the merit of his poetry, the Catholic sense has long since passed its verdict on the question, and declared the unction of the ancient lyrics to be worth the pure Latinity of a thousand such writers as Jean Baptiste Santeuil.[254]
Both orders of Mendicant Friars gave to the English Church great prelates as well as great scholars; Kilwarby the Dominican and Peckham the Franciscan, two of the grandest of our English primates, may be taken as fair representatives of their respective orders. In the first we see the Oxford and Paris doctor, learned in scriptural and patristic lore, the “great clerk,” as Godwin calls him, who “disputed excellently in divers exercises,” and who, as primate, distinguished himself by his bold, uncompromising resistance to the tyranny of powerful nobles, and his efforts for the advancement of learning and the correction of public morals. After filling the see of Canterbury for six years, “he was obliged to fly from the king’s anger,” says Harpsfield, and, retiring to Rome, resigned the English primacy and became Cardinal Bishop of Porto.[255] His successor was the Franciscan, John of Peckham, appointed like himself by papal provision. How little was there of a worldly spirit in these appointments, so loudly and captiously condemned, when a Pope could put aside so powerful a personage as Robert Burnel, the chancellor of the greatest king of England who had reigned since the Conquest, in order to promote one, by birth a poor Sussex peasant, whose only recommendations were his exquisite scholarship and his saintly life! Peckham’s learned reputation was not indeed of an ordinary kind. He was a doctor both of Paris and Oxford, and a pupil at the latter university of St. Bonaventure; he had made the tour of all the Italian universities, and in the Pope’s own palace had lectured on sacred letters to a crowd of bishops and cardinals, who were proud to call themselves his pupils, and who every day as he passed through their ranks to his pulpit arose from their seats to show him reverence. Wadding speaks of his singularly noble countenance and graceful demeanour, and adds that, besides his other learned acquirements, he was an excellent poet.
His appointment to the primacy being, strange to say, unopposed by the Crown, he began his administration by calling a Provincial Synod, among the acts of which is that memorable one which enjoins every parish priest to explain to his flock the fundamentals of the Faith, laying aside all the niceties of school distinction, and which draws out in admirable and lucid terms what may be called an abridgment of Christian doctrine, under the heads of the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Two Evangelical Precepts, the Seven Works of Mercy, the Seven Deadly Sins, and those that proceed from them, the Seven Contrary Virtues, and the Seven Sacraments.[256] Moreover, we find him appointing parochial schoolmasters in holy Orders for teaching the children of the poor.
Peckham not only visited his whole diocese, but travelled over the greater part of England, informing himself of the exact state of cathedrals, monasteries, clergy, and people, and making war on pluralism, and every other abuse which be discovered. He also showed himself very active in reforming the disorders that had crept into the universities, and at his visitation, held at Oxford in 1283, condemned a considerable number of false propositions, as well in theology, as in grammar, philosophy, and logic. His fearless independence of character did not shrink from presenting a remonstrance against the tyranny of Edward I., and administering a rebuke to the great Earl of Warren for allowing his deer and cattle to trample down a poor man’s field of corn. The immense list of his works, as given by Pitseus, shows that he was not of the number of those who neglected the arts. Besides his “Concordance of the Scriptures,” and his theological and scholastic works, there are poems, treatises on geometry, optics, and astronomy, others on mystical divinity, others on the pastoral office intended for the use of the parochial clergy, and some apparently drawn up to facilitate the instruction of the poor. Yet this illustrious man, undoubtedly one of the greatest of our English primates, was never in private life anything but the simple Friar Minor. “He was stately in gesture, gait, and outward show,” says Harpsfield, “yet of an exceeding meek, facile, and liberal temper.” At his own table sumptuously furnished for his guests, he ate only the coarsest viands, always travelled on foot, and chose to perform the humblest offices in his cathedral church, such as lighting the waxen tapers on the altar. It is a significant fact, that he always retained a prebend attached to the see of Lyons, in case he might at any time be forced to fly from England; and Godwin tells us, that after his time this benefice continued annexed to the see of Canterbury, in order to provide against the case of the more than probable exile of the Primates.
Our last specimen of an Oxford Don of the thirteenth century shall be taken from a different class; no Worcestershire yeoman, or Sussex peasant boy, but the son of the greatest and noblest of the English barons, Cantilupe, Earl of Pembroke, marshal and protector of the realm during the stormy minority of Henry III. Thomas Cantilupe, his eldest son, was educated first at court, and then at the universities of Oxford, Paris, and Orleans; and whether at court or in the schools, he displayed the same piety and delicacy of conscience. Deeply learned both in canon and civil law, he was raised by king Henry to the post of Lord Chancellor, and was also elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford. But on the accession of Edward I. he obtained leave to resign his dignities, and retired to Oxford, where he trusted he might spend the rest of his life in the practice of study and devotion. He took his degree of Doctor of Divinity in the church of the Dominicans, on which occasion his old master and spiritual director, Robert Kilwarby, then Archbishop of Canterbury, was present, and scrupled not publicly to declare his belief that he had never forfeited his baptismal innocence. He was then fifty-four years of age. “So help me God,” were the archbishop’s words, “I believe him to be this day as pure from all actual sin as on the day of his birth. And if any man ask, let him know that from his childhood I have heard his confessions, and read his life and conscience as clearly as a man may read an open book.”[257]
After attending the second Council of Lyons, he was elected Bishop of Hereford, and in the government of his diocese found himself, singularly enough, opposed to his saintly metropolitan, John of Peckham, who, as he conceived, overstrained his authority as Primate. Yet though he staunchly defended the rights of his Church, and was constantly engaged in vexatious disputes with some of the great barons, no one ever dreamt of charging him with a haughty or ambitious spirit. The speciality of his sanctity was charity, and it was said of him that he was never seen angry, save when a whisper of detraction met his ear.