From time to time the use of the classics even for grammatical purposes was condemned, though unavailingly. They were necessary in the schools; evils, doubtless, but unavoidable. Then, again, some of the classics were looked upon as allegorical: from the sixth century to the Renascence the Æneid was often interpreted in this way; and Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue was thought to be a prophecy of Christ’s coming. Ovid allegorised contained profound truths; his Art of Love, so treated, was not unfit for nuns.[519] Other writers, as Lucan, were appreciated for their didacticism; Juvenal, Cato and Seneca the younger as moralists. And some of the religious fell a prey to these evils, inasmuch as they assessed them at their true value as literature.
The classics therefore were accepted. Anselm recommended Virgil. Horace, in his most amorous moods, was sung by the monks. Ovid, either adapted or in his natural state, was a great favourite. In an appendix we have scheduled the chief classics found in English monastic catalogues to indicate roughly the extent to which they were collected and used. A glance at Becker’s sheaf of catalogues will show us that Aristotle, Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, Persius, Plato, Pliny the elder, Porphyry, Sallust, Statius, Terence, and especially Cicero, Ovid, Seneca, and Virgil are well represented. But it must not be supposed that they were in monastic libraries in excessive numbers. On the contrary. An inspection of almost any catalogue of
such a library will prove that only a small proportion of it consisted of classical writings, especially in those catalogues compiled prior to the time when Aristotle’s works dominated the whole of medieval scholarship. The monastic library was throughout the Middle Ages the armoury of the religious against evil, and the few slight changes of character which it underwent at one time and another do not alter the fact that on the whole it was a fit and proper collection for its purpose.[520]
§ II
After the twelfth century broadening influences were at work. The education given in the cathedral and monastic schools was found to be too restricted; the monasteries, moreover, now began to refuse assistance to secular students.[521] To some extent the catechetic method of the theologians was forced to give place to the dialectic method, equally dogmatic, but more exciting and stimulating. Hence was compiled such a book as Peter Lombard’s Sentences (1145-50), a cyclopædia of disputation, wherein theological questions were collected under heads, together with Scriptural passages and statements of the Fathers bearing on these questions. By the thirteenth century Lombard was the standard text-book of the schools: a work of such reputation that it was studied in preference to the Scriptures, as Bacon complained.