History of Human Society

by Frank W. Blackmar

But from the fact of the church's assuming this attitude toward the new learning, it must not be inferred that there was no learning within the church, for there were scholars in theology, logic, and law, astute and learned. Yet the church assumed that it had a sort of proprietorship or monopoly of learning, and that only what it might see fit to designate was to receive attention, and then only in the church's own way; all other knowledge was to be opposed. The ecclesiastical discussions gave evidence of intense mental activity within the church, but, having little knowledge of the outside world to invigorate it or to give it something tangible upon which to operate, the mind passed into speculative fields that were productive of little permanent culture. Dwelling only upon a few fundamental conceptions at first, it soon tired itself out with its own weary round.

The church recognized in all secular advocates of literature and learning its own enemies, and consequently began to expunge from the literary world as far as possible the remains of the declining Roman and Greek culture. It became hostile to Greek and Latin literature and art and sought to repress them. In the rise of new languages and literature in new nationalities every attempt was made by the church to destroy the effects of the pagan life. The poems and sagas treating of the religion and mythologies of these young, rising nationalities were destroyed. The monuments of the first beginnings of literature, the products of a period so hard to compass by the historian, were served in the same way as were the Greek and Latin masterpieces.

The church said, if men will persist in study, let them ponder the precepts of the gospels as interpreted by the church. For those who inquired about the problems of life, the churchmen pointed to the creeds and the dogmas of the church, which had settled all things. If men were too persistent in inquiring about the nature of this world, they were told that it is of little importance, only a prelude to the world to come; that they should spend their time in preparation for the future. Even as great a man as Gregory of Tours said: "Let us shun the lying fables of the poets and forego the wisdom of the sages at enmity with God, lest we incur the condemnation of endless death by the sentence of our Lord." Saint Augustine deplored the waste of time spent in reading Virgil, while Alcuin regretted that in his boyhood he had preferred Virgil to the legends of the saints. With the monks such considerations gave excuse for laziness and disregard of rhetoric.

But in this movement of hostility to the new learning, the church went too far, and soon found the entire ecclesiastical system face to face with a gross ignorance, which must be eradicated or the superstructure would fall. As Latin was the only vehicle of thought in those days, it became a necessity that the priests should study Virgil and the other Latin authors, consequently the churches passed from their opposition to pagan authors to a careful utilization of them, until the whole papal court fell under the influence of the revival of learning, and popes and prelates became zealous in the promotion and, indeed, in the display of learning. When the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent became Pope Leo X, the splendor of the ducal court of Florence passed to the papal throne, and no one was more zealous in the patronage of learning than he. He encouraged learning and art of every kind, and built a magnificent library. It was merely the transferrence of the pomp of the secular court to the papacy.

Such was the attitude of the church toward the new learning—first, a bitter opposition; second, a forced toleration; and third, the absorption of its best products. Yet in all this the spirit of the church was not for the freedom of mind nor independence of thought. It could not recognize this freedom nor the freedom of religious belief until it had been humiliated by the spirit of the Reformation.

Scholastic Philosophy Marks a Step in Progress.—There arose in the ninth century a speculative philosophy which sought to harmonize the doctrine of the church with the philosophy of Neo-Platonism and the logic of Aristotle. The scholastic philosophy may be said to have had its origin with John Scotus Erigena, who has been called "the morning star of scholasticism." He was the first bold thinker to assert the supremacy of reason and openly to rebel against the dogma of the church. In laying the foundation of his doctrine, he starts with a philosophical explanation of the universe. His writings and translations were forerunners of mysticism and set forth a peculiar pantheistic conception. His doctrine appears to ignore the pretentious authority of the church of his time and to refer to the earlier church for authority. In so doing he incorporated the doctrine of emanation advanced by the Neo-Platonists, which held that out of God, the supreme unity, evolve the particular forms of goodness, and that eventually all things will return to God. In like manner, in the creation of the universe the species comes from the genera by a process of unfolding.

The complete development and extension of scholastic philosophy did not come until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The term "scholastics" was first applied to those who taught in the cloister schools founded by Charlemagne. It was at a later period applied to the teachers of the seven liberal arts—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, in the Trivium, and arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, in the Quadrivium. Finally it was applied to all persons who occupied themselves with science or philosophy. Scholastic philosophy in its completed state represents an attempt to harmonize the doctrines of the church with Aristotelian philosophy.

There were three especial doctrines developed in the scholastic philosophy, called respectively nominalism, realism, and conceptualism. The first asserted that there are no generic types, and consequently no abstract concepts. The formula used to express the vital point in nominalism is "Universalia post rem." Its advocates asserted that universals are but names. Roscellinus was the most important advocate of this doctrine. In the fourteenth century William of Occam revived the subject of nominalism, and this had much to do with the downfall of scholasticism, for its inductive method suggested the acquiring of knowledge through observation.

Realism was a revival of the Platonic doctrine that ideas are the only real things. The formula for it was "Universalia ante rem." By it the general name preceded that of the species. Universal concepts represent the real; all else is merely illustrative of the real. The only real sphere is the one held in the mind, mathematically correct in every way. Balls and globes and other actual things are but the illustrations of the genus. Perhaps Anselm was the strongest advocate of this method of reasoning.

It remained for Abelard to unite these two theories of philosophical reasoning into one, called conceptualism. He held that universals are not ideals, but that they exist in the things themselves. The formula given was "Universalia in re." This was a step in advance, and laid something of a foundation for the philosophy of classification in modern science.