he old monastic orders of St. Augustine and St. Benedict, of whose love of books we have principally spoken hitherto, were kept from falling into sloth and ignorance in the thirteenth century by the appearance of several new orders of devotees. The Dominicans,[438] the Franciscans,[439] and the Carmelites were each renowned for their profound learning, and their unquenchable passion for knowledge; assuming a garb of the most abject poverty, renouncing all love of the world, all participation in its temporal honors, and refraining to seek the aggrandizement of their order by fixed oblations or state endowments, but adhering to a voluntary system for support, they caused a visible sensation among all classes, and wrought a powerful change in the ecclesiastical and collegiate learning of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and by their devotion, their charity, their strict austerity, and by their brilliant and unconquerable powers of disputation, soon gained the respect and affections of the people.[440]
Much as the friars have been condemned, or darkly as they have been represented, I have no hesitation in saying that they did more for the revival of learning, and the progress of English literature, than any other of the monastic orders. We cannot trace their course without admiration and astonishment at their splendid triumphs and success; they appear to act as intellectual crusaders against the prevailing ignorance and sloth. The finest names that adorn the literary annals of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the most prolific authors who flourished during that long period were begging friars; and the very spirit that was raised against them by the churchmen, and the severe controversal battles which they had between them, were the means of doing a vast amount of good, of exposing ignorance in high places, and compelling those who enjoyed the honors of learning to strive to merit them, by a studious application to literature and science; need I do more than mention the shining names of Duns Scotus, of Thomas Aquinas, of Roger Bacon, the founder of experimental philosophy, and the justly celebrated Robert Grostest, the most enlightened ecclesiastic of his age.[441]
We may not admire the scholastic philosophy which the followers of Francis and Dominic held and expounded; we may deplore the intricate mazes and difficulties which a false philosophy led them to maintain, and we may equally deplore the waste of time and learning which they lavished in the vain hope of solving the mysteries of God, or in comprehending a loose and futile science. Yet the philosophy of the schoolmen is but little understood, and is too often condemned without reason or without proof; for those who trouble themselves to denounce, seldom care to read them; their ponderous volumes are too formidable to analyze; it is so much easier to declaim than to examine such sturdy antagonists; but we owe to the schoolmen far more than we are apt to suppose, and if it were possible to scratch their names from the page of history, and to obliterate all traces of their bulky writings from our libraries and from our literature, we should find our knowledge dark and gloomy in comparison with what it is.
But the mendicant orders did not study and uphold the scholastic philosophy without improving it; the works of Aristotle, of which it is said the early schoolmen possessed only a vitiated translation from the Arabic,[442] was, at the period these friars sprung up, but imperfectly understood and taught. Michael Scot, with the assistance of a learned Jew,[443] translated and published the writings of the great philosopher in Latin, which greatly superseded the old versions derived from the Saracen copies.
The mendicant friars having qualified themselves with a respectable share of Greek learning, then taught and expounded the Aristotelian philosophy according to this new translation, and opened a new and proscribed field[444] for disputation and enquiry; their indomitable perseverance, their acute powers of reasoning, and the splendid popularity which many of the disciples of St. Dominic and St. Francis were fast acquiring, caused students to flock in crowds to their seats of learning, and all who were inspired to an acquaintance with scholastic philosophy placed themselves under their training and tuition.[445]
No religious order before them ever carried the spirit of inquiry to such an extent as they, or allowed it to wander over such an unbounded field. The most difficult and mysterious questions of theology were discussed and fearlessly analyzed; far from exercising that blind and easy credulity which mark the religious conduct of the old monastic orders, they were disposed to probe and examine every article of their faith. To such an extent were their disputations carried, that sometimes it shook their faith in the orthodoxy of Rome, and often aroused the pious fears of the more timid of their own order. Angell de Pisa, who founded the school of the Franciscans or Grey Friars at Oxford, is said to have gone one day into his school, with a view to discover what progress the students were making in their studies; as he entered he found them warm in disputation, and was shocked to find that the question at issue was "whether there was a God;" the good man, greatly alarmed, cried out, "Alas, for me! alas, for me! simple brothers pierce the heavens and the learned dispute whether there be a God!" and with great indignation ran out of the house blaming himself for having established a school for such fearful disputes; but he afterwards returned and remained among his pupils, and purchased for ten marks a corrected copy of the decretals, to which he made his students apply their minds.[446] This school was the most flourishing of those belonging to the Franciscans; and it was here that the celebrated Robert Grostest[447], bishop of Lincoln, read lectures about the year 1230. He was a profound scholar, thoroughly conversant with the most abstruse matters of philosophy, and a great Bible reader.[448] He possessed an extensive knowledge of the Greek, and translated, into Latin, Dionysius the Areopagite, Damascenus, Suida's Greek Lexicon, a Greek Grammar, and, with the assistance of Nicholas, a monk of St. Alban's, the History of the Twelve Patriarchs. He collected a fine library of Greek books, many of which he obtained from Athens. Roger Bacon speaks of his knowledge of the Greek, and says, that he caused a vast number of books to be gathered together in that tongue.[449] His extraordinary talent and varied knowledge caused him to be deemed a conjuror and astrologer by the ignorant and superstitious; and his enemies, who were numerous and powerful, did not refuse to encourage the slanderous report. We find him so represented by the poet Gower:—
"For of the grete clerk Grostest,
I rede how redy that he was
Upon clergye, and bede of bras,
To make and forge it, for to telle
Of suche thynges as befelle,
And seven yeres besinesse.
Ye ladye, but for the lackhesse
Of 'a halfe a mynute of an houre,
Fro fyrst that he began laboure,
Ye lost al that he had do."[450]