[6] It was an age of superstition and miracles, diabolic influences, witchcraft and magic, private warfare, trials by ordeal, robber bands, little dirty towns, no roads, unsanitary conditions, and miserable homes. Even the nobility had few comforts and conveniences, and personal cleanliness was not common. Disease was punishment for sin and to be cured by prayer, while the insane were scourged to cast out the devils within them.
[7] Frederic II was Emperor of the mediaeval Holy Roman Empire, ruling from 1227 to 1250. Though a German by birth, he had lived long in Sicily, and spent most of his time in Italy after becoming Emperor. He greatly admired the Saracens for their learning, and tried to transfer some of their knowledge to Christian Europe. He lived, however, at a time when the Papacy was cementing its temporal power and the Pope was becoming the Emperor of Europe. This encroachment Frederick resisted and tried to break, but without success. At his death the mediaeval German dream of world empire perished; Germany was left a collection of feudal States; and the temporal power of the Pope was henceforth for centuries to come undisputed.
[8] Christianity had not as yet been introduced among the mixed Slavic and Germanic tribes along the eastern Baltic. In Prussia and Lithuania, where missionary efforts had been made from 900 on, success did not come until more than three centuries later. (See art. "Missions," Ency. Brit., 11th ed., vol. 18.)
[9] The more important questions arising concerned the Trinity, the Eucharist, and Transubstantiation.
[10] This discussion was over what was known as nominalism vs. realism. Anselm of Canterbury (1034-1109), basing his argument largely on some parts of Plato, had declared that ideas constituted our real existence. Roscellinus of Compiègne (1050-1105), basing his argument on parts of the Organon of Aristotle, had held that ideas or concepts are only names for real, concrete things. Anselm, as a realist, contended that the human senses are deceptive, and that revealed truth alone is reliable. Roscellinus, as a nominalist, held that truth can be reached only through investigation and the use of reason. The church accepted the realism of Anselm as correct, and Roscellinus was compelled to recant. The stifling effect of such an attitude toward honest doubt can be imagined.
[11] McCabe, Joseph, Peter Abelard, p. 7.
[12] By the beginning of the eleventh century this cathedral school had become the most important in France, a position which it retained for centuries. It was the great center for theological study, and drew to it a succession of eminent teachers—William of Champeaux, Abelard, Peter the Lombard—and, in time, thousands of students.
[13] The term scholasticism comes from scholasticus, because it was chiefly in the cathedral schools that scholasticism arose. It means, literally, the method of thinking worked out by the teachers in the cathedral schools.
[14] The English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) once said that when he considered the inertness of the Middle Ages he was led to think that God had been content to make man a two-legged animal, leaving to Aristotle the task of making him a thinking being. The worship of Aristotle is easily explained by the great amount of information his works contained, his logical method and skillful classification of knowledge, and the way his ideas as to causes fitted into Christian reasoning.
[15] The Dominicans, or Black Friars, were a new teaching and preaching monastic order, founded in 1216. It was a revival of monasticism, directed toward more modern ends. The Dominicans established themselves in connection with the new universities, and sought to control education and to defend orthodoxy. Another new order of this same period was that of the Franciscans, or Gray Friars, founded by Saint Francis in 1212. Their work was directed still more to preaching, missions, and public service. They were a less intellectual but a more democratic brotherhood. It was the Franciscans who followed the armies of Spain to Mexico, and later built and conducted the missions of the central and southern California coast.