A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III

by Henry Charles Lea

and the Spiritual General might well like to strike a blow at the greatest scholar of the Order.[600]

While Bacon suffered because he antagonized the thought of his time, there was much of scholastic bitterness which escaped animadversion because it was the development of the tendencies of the age, and the schoolmen were allowed to indulge in endless wrangling for the most part without censure. The great quarrel between the Nominalists and the Realists occupies too large a space in the intellectual history of Europe to be wholly passed over, although its relation to our immediate subject is not intimate enough to justify detailed consideration.

In the developed theory of the Realists, genera and species—the distinctive attributes of individual beings, or the conceptions of those attributes—are real entities, if not the only realities. Individuals are ephemeral existences which pass away; the only things which survive are those which are universal and common to all. In man this is humanity, but humanity again is but a portion of a larger existence, the animate, and the animate is but a transitory form of an Infinite Being, which is All and nothing in particular. This is the sole Immutable. These conceptions took their origin in the Periphyseos of John Scot Erigena in the ninth century, whose reaction against the prevailing anthropomorphism led him to sublimated views of the Divine Being, which trenched closely on Pantheism. The heresy latent in his work lay undiscovered until developed by the Amaurians, when the book, after nearly four centuries, was condemned by Honorius III., in 1225.[601]

Nominalism, on the other hand, regarded the individual as the primal substance; universals are only abstractions or mental conceptions of qualities common to individuals, with no more of reality than the sounds which express them. Even as Realism in the hands of daring thinkers led to Pantheism, so, step by step, Nominalism could be brought to recognize the originality of the individual and finally to Atomism.[602]

The two antagonistic schools were first clearly defined in the beginning of the twelfth century, with Roscelin, the teacher of Abelard, as the leader of the Nominalists, and William of Champeaux at the head of the Realists. Discussion continued in the schools with constantly increasing bitterness, though neither side dared to push their own views to their ultimate conclusions. Realism in a modified form achieved a triumph with the immense authority of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Duns Scotus was a Realist, though he differed with Aquinas on the problem of individuation, and the Realists became divided into the opposing factions of Thomists and Scotists. While they were thus weakened with dissension, William of Ockham revived Nominalism, and it became bolder than ever. The perennial hostility between the Dominicans and Franciscans tended to range the two Orders under the opposing banners, while Ockham’s defence of Louis of Bavaria in his quarrel with the papacy served to impress upon the new school of Nominalists his views upon the relations between Church and State.[603]

The schools continued to resound with the clangor of disputation, occasionally growing so hot that blows supplied the deficiency of words, and even murder is said to have not been wanting. Under Peter d’Ailly and John Gerson the University of Paris was Nominalist. With the English domination the Realists triumphed and expelled their adversaries, who were unable to return until the restoration of the French monarchy. In 1465 there arose in the University of Louvain a strife which lasted for ten years over some propositions of Pierre de la Rive on fate and divine foreknowledge, in which the rival sects took sides. The University of Paris was drawn in; the Nominalists triumphed in condemning de la Rive, and the Realists took their revenge by procuring from Louis XI. an edict prohibiting the teaching of Nominalist doctrines in the University and in all the schools of the kingdom; all Nominalist books were boxed up and sealed until 1481, when Louis was persuaded to recall his edict, and the university rejoiced to regain her liberty. One tragic incident in the long quarrel has been already alluded to in the trial of John of Wesel which led to his death in prison, and it illustrates how readily scholastic ardor assumed that in gratifying its vindictiveness it was vindicating the faith. The contemporary reporter of the trial assumes that the persecution was caused by the antagonism of the Dominican Realists to the Nominalism of the victim, and he deplores the rage which led the Thomists to regard every one who denied the existence of universals as though guilty of the sin against the Holy Ghost, and as a traitor to God, to the Christian religion, to justice, and to the State.[604]

The annals of the schools are full of cases which show how the recklessness of disputatious logic led to subtleties most perilous in minute details of theology, and also how sensitive were the conservators of the faith as to anything that might be construed by perverse ingenuity as savoring of heresy. Duns Scotus did not escape, nor Thomas Bradwardine; William of Ockham and Buridan were enveloped in a common condemnation by the University of Paris, of which the latter had been rector. The boundaries between philosophy and the theology which sought to define everything in the visible and invisible world were impossible of definition, and it was a standing grievance that the philosophers were perpetually intruding on the domains of the theologians. When their daring speculations were unorthodox they sought to shelter themselves behind the assertion that according to the methods of philosophy the Catholic religion was erroneous and false, but that it was true as a matter of faith, and that they believed it accordingly. This only made matters worse, for, as the authorities pointed out, it assumed that there were two opposite truths, contradicting each other. It was not merely that orthodox sensitiveness was called upon to condemn, as was done in 1447 by the University of Louvain, such vain sophisms as the assertion that it is possible to conceive of a line a foot long which shall yet have neither beginning nor end, and that a whole may be in England while all its parts are in Rome; or those of Jean Fabre, condemned by the University of Paris in 1463, that any part of a man is a man, that one man is infinite men, that no man is ever corrupted, though sometimes a man is corrupted—propositions in which lurked the possibilities of heretical development—or the apparently yet more innocent grammatical obtuseness which recognized no difference between the phrases “the pot boils” and “pot, thou boilest”—an obtuseness which Erasmus tells us was regarded as an infallible sign of infidelity. Philosophers were not satisfied unless they could prove by logic the profoundest and holiest mysteries of theology, and, however zealous they were in the faith, the intrusion of reason into the theological preserves was not only resented as an interference, but was rightfully regarded with alarm at its possible consequences. When the Arab philosophers were disputing as to the nature and operation of the Divine Knowledge, the calm wisdom of Maimonides interposed, saying, “To endeavor to understand the Divine Knowledge is as though we endeavored to be God himself, so that our perception should be as his.... It is absolutely impossible for us to attain this kind of perception. If we could explain it to ourselves we should possess the intelligence which gives this kind of perception.” Ambitious schoolmen, however, as well as orthodox theological doctors, refused to admit that the finite cannot grasp the infinite, and their pride of reason awakened, not unnaturally, the jealousy of those who considered it their exclusive privilege to guard the Holy of Holies and to explain the will of God to men. This feeling finds expression as early as 1201 in the story told of the learned doctor, Simon de Tournay, who proved by ingenious arguments the mystery of the Trinity, and then, elated by the applause of his hearers, boasted that if he were disposed to be malignant, he could disprove it with yet stronger ones, whereupon he was immediately stricken with paralysis and idiocy. The self-restraint of such men was a slender reliance, and yet slenderer was the chance that the interposition of Heaven would always furnish so salutary a warning.[605]

The audacity of these rash intruders upon the sacred precincts increased immeasurably with the introduction of the works of Averrhoes in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, constituting a real danger of the perversion of Christian thought. In the hands of the Arab commentators the theism of Aristotle became a transcendental materialism, carried to its furthest expression by the latest of them, Ibn Roschd or Averrhoes, who died in 1198. In his system matter has existed from the beginning, and the theory of creation is impossible. The universe consists of a hierarchy of principles, eternal, primordial, and autonomous, vaguely connected with a superior unity. One of these is the Active Intellect, manifesting itself incessantly and constituting the permanent consciousness of humanity. This is the only form of immortality. As the soul of man is a fragment of a collective whole, temporarily detached to animate the body, at death it is reabsorbed into the Active Intellect of the universe. Consequently there are no future rewards or punishments, no feelings, memory, sensibility, love, or hatred. The perishable body has the power of reproducing itself and thus enjoys a material immortality in its descendants, but it is only collective humanity that is immortal.[606] To those whose conceptions of paradise and the resurrection were as material as the Swarga of the Brahman or the Kama Loka heavens of the Buddhist, such collective and insensible immortality, like the Moksha and Nirvana, was virtually equivalent to annihilation, and the Averrhoists were universally stigmatized as materialists.

Such theories as these necessarily induced the loftiest indifferentism as to religious formulas, although a wholesome dread of the rising Moslem fanaticism, from which Averrhoes had not escaped scathless, rendered him cautious as to assailing the established faith. “The special religion of philosophers,” he says, “is to study what exists, for the most sublime worship of God is the contemplation of his works, which leads us to a knowledge of him in all his reality. In the eye of God this is the noblest of actions, while the vilest is to accuse of error and presumption him who pays to divinity this worship, nobler than all other worship; who adores God by this religion, the best of all religions.” At the same time the received religions are an excellent instrument of morality. He who inspires among a people doubts as to the national religion is a heretic, to be punished as such by the established penalties. The wise man will utter no word against the national religion, and will especially avoid speaking of God in a manner equivocal to the vulgar. When several religions confront each other, one should select the noblest. Thus all religions are of human origin, and the choice between them is a matter of opinion or policy—but policy, if nothing else, must have prevented Averrhoes from uttering the phrase commonly attributed to him—“The Christian faith is impossible; that of Judaism is a religion of children, that of Islam, a religion of hogs.”[607]

Still less credible is the popular assertion which assigns to him the famous speech referring to Moses, Christ, and Mahomet as the three impostors who had deluded the human race. This saying became a convenient formula with which the Church horrified the faithful by attributing it successively to those whom it desired to discredit. Thomas of Cantimpré fathered it upon Simon de Tournay, whose paralytic stroke in 1201 he ascribed to this impiety. Gregory IX., when in 1239 he arraigned Frederic II. before the face of Europe, did not hesitate to assert that he was the author of this utterance, which Frederic made haste to deny in the most solemn manner. A certain renegade Dominican named Thomas Scot, who was condemned and imprisoned in Portugal, was said to have been guilty of this blasphemy among others, and the phrase drifted through the centuries until there was a current belief that an impious book existed under the title De Tribus Impostoribus, the authorship of which was attributed variously to Petrus de Vineis, Boccaccio, Poggio, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Servetus, Bernardino Ochino, Rabelais, Pietro Aretino, Étienne Dolet, Francesco Pucci, Muret, Vanini, and Milton. Queen Christina of Sweden vainly caused all the libraries of Europe to be searched for it, but it remained invisible until, in the eighteenth century, various scribblers put forth volumes to gratify the popular curiosity.[608]