The better spirit prevailed. The lower classes had the inevitable disadvantages of their origin to contend with, but every cathedral and religious house had its schools, which were ready enough to admit boys who were seen to possess those “gifts of the Holy Ghost” which might, if duly cultivated, make them useful in Church and State; and it was regarded as the duty of ecclesiastical persons to look out for such boys, and support them in their career. Richard II. rejected a proposal to forbid villeins to send their children to school “to learn clergee;” and the triumph of the more liberal sentiment was legally secured by the Statute of Artificers passed by Parliament in 1406, which enacted that “every man or woman, of what state or condition he be, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that pleaseth them within the realm.”
The career which was thus thrown open to all classes of the people was a much larger one than appears at first sight. Not only all the offices and dignities of the Church, from that of stipendiary chaplain to that of bishop or even of Pope, were open to all comers, but also all the offices of the State which required learning as a qualification were open to every clerk. For the kings took the officials of the civil departments of the Government very largely from the ranks of the clergy; and, by a great abuse of their patronage, paid them for their services to the State by promotion to the emoluments and dignities of the Church.[131]
Some of the satirists found fault with this state of things, but, in fact, the man of humble birth, who had risen to high rank in the Church by force of his own learning and character, had little to fear from illiberal reflections upon the lowliness of his origin. The men who had risen from the grammar school of some village or obscure town to rank and wealth were so far from trying to hide the obscurity of their origin, that it was the general custom of dignified ecclesiastics to drop their patronymic and take the name of their birthplace instead. Thus, he whom we familiarly call Thomas-à-Becket was known to his contemporaries as Thomas of London; the family name of Thomas of Rotherham, Archbishop of York, was Scot; the family name of the illustrious bishop and statesman, William of Wyckham, was Longe; and that of William of Wayneflete was Barlow.[132] Another good custom was that such men frequently raised for themselves a lasting monument in their native place by founding a free school in the village, or a college or hospital in the town.[133]
From the school of the cathedral or monastery, or of the parish priest, the ambitious student whose means permitted it went to some more famous centre of learning: in Saxon times, to the schools of Canterbury or York or Winchester; in later times, to the universities which were organized under the auspices of the Church in the various countries of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Bologna was famous as a School of Law; Paris took the lead in Theology; Salerno in Medicine. Here, in England, Oxford and Cambridge were centres of learning at the close of the twelfth century, and organized universities early in the thirteenth. Oxford in the thirteenth century had a European reputation second only to that of Paris.
The period from the awakening of new religious and scientific thought in the eleventh century through the two following centuries, was one of great intellectual activity throughout Europe. The isolated Saxon Church had been little affected by the new learning; but the first Norman archbishop, Lanfranc, was one of the foremost scholars of the time, and Anselm, his successor, was more than that, being one of the greatest thinkers of Christian Europe; and from their time onward Englishmen held a place among the most learned men of Europe.
In those days, as in these—and indeed in all days—men had different natural temperaments—some a contemplative and spiritual disposition, some an inquiring scientific turn of mind, others a rationalizing and practical bias; some leaned upon authority, others were speculative and self-confident. Great freedom of thought was permitted, and of the expression of thought, and yet England was very little troubled by heresies. From the beginning of the English Church to the beginning of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the excessive doctrines of Lollardism in the fourteenth century—when they seemed to threaten the very bases of social order both in Church and State—alone called forth any serious action on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities against the open expression of religious opinion. These ages, therefore, had their various “schools of thought.”
The most prominent feature of this awakened, religious, and scientific thought throughout Europe was the endeavour to give a rational exposition of the doctrines of the Faith, and to organize them into a scientific system; it pervaded more or less all the other schools of thought of these ages. It will be enough to mention here the two great representatives of the school. Peter Lombard, in the latter part of the twelfth century, wrote “Quatuor Libri Sententiarum” (Four Books of Sentences), in which he arranged under their various heads the opinions of some of the older teachers, especially Augustine and Gregory the Great,[134] and of the newer teachers, and sought to reconcile them by accurate distinctions into a body of doctrine; he gathered together in compact brevity so rich a store of matter, and treated it with so much sobriety and moderation, that his work became a standard manual, adopted by the most distinguished teachers, who were content to teach and write commentaries on the “Sentences.” “England alone is said to have produced no less than one hundred and sixty-four writers, who illustrated this famous text-book.” The English Franciscan friar, Alexander of Hales (died 1245), was among the most important representatives of the scholastic theology. The greatest master of the school, however, was Thomas Aquinas, an Italian Dominican friar, who wrote in the third quarter of the thirteenth century. His “Summa Theologica” is the greatest work of its class, and served as a text-book to the students of Europe throughout the subsequent ages.[135]
Another school—of which Hugh, Canon of St. Victor in Paris (died 1141), was an eminent leader—included frequently men of great intellectual power, and skilled in the scholastic theology of their time; but the bent of the school was towards spiritual contemplation and practical piety. They drew their doctrines rather from the Bible itself and the older Church teachers; they dwelt on the Divine perfections and on the relations of the soul to God; their religion was of the affections rather than the intellect. The college of St. Victor was for a long period a centre of this school. Robert Pullein was an eminent representative of its teaching at Oxford. Richard the Hermit, of Hampole, popularized its teachings in the fourteenth century in numerous tractates written in English; and its influence is easily recognized in many of the religious works of that and the subsequent century. “The Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas à Kempis, a good example of the school, is at this day the favourite devotional book of tens of thousands of our devout people.[136]
Other Englishmen, who were among the most famous of the learned men of Europe, were John Duns Scotus, a Franciscan friar, who, at the end of the thirteenth century, displayed a great genius for mathematical science; and Roger Bacon (died 1292), another Franciscan, who possessed an extraordinary genius for physical science, and Occham. These, and such-like, were the men who ruled the thought of the time, and their teachings were eagerly studied and reproduced in the cathedral and monastic schools, and imbibed and assimilated by the scholars; and their general principles at least tinctured the teaching of the parish priests in their town parishes and country villages.