[x] Those who feel some curiosity about the civilians of the middle ages will find a concise and elegant account in Gravina, De Origine Juris Civilis, p. 166-206. (Lips. 1708.) Tiraboschi contains perhaps more information; but his prolixity is very wearisome. Besides this fault, it is evident that Tiraboschi knew very little of law, and had not read the civilians of whom he treats; whereas Gravina discusses their merits not only with legal knowledge, but with an acuteness of criticism which, to say the truth, Tiraboschi never shows except on a date or a name.
[The civil lawyers of the mediæval period are not at all forgotten on the continent, as the great work of Savigny, History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages, sufficiently proves. It is certain that the civil law must always be studied in Europe, nor ought the new codes to supersede it, seeing they are in great measure derived from its fountain; though I have heard that it is less regarded in France than formerly. In my earlier editions I depreciated the study of the civil law too much, and with too exclusive an attention to English notions.]
[y] Ante ipsum dominum Carolum regem in Galliâ nullum fuit studium liberalium artium. Monachus Engolismensis, apud Launoy, De Scholis per occidentem instauratis, p. 5. See too Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. iv. p. 1. "Studia liberalium artium" in this passage, must be understood to exclude literature, commonly so called, but not a certain measure of very ordinary instruction. For there were episcopal and conventual schools in the seventh and eighth centuries, even in France, especially Aquitaine; we need hardly repeat that in England, the former of these ages produced Bede and Theodore, and the men trained under them; the Lives of the Saints also lead us to take with some limitation the absolute denial of liberal studies before Charlemagne. See Guizot, Hist. de la Civilis. en France, Leçon 16; and Ampère, Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. p. 4. But, perhaps, philology, logic, philosophy, and even theology were not taught, as sciences, in any of the French schools for these two centuries; and consequently those established by Charlemagne justly make an epoch.
[z] Id. Ibid. There was a sort of literary club among them, where the members assumed ancient names. Charlemagne was called David; Alcuin, Horace; another, Dametas, &c.
[a] Hist. Littéraire, p. 217, &c.
[] This division of the sciences is ascribed to St. Augustin; and we certainly find it established early in the sixth century. Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiæ, t. iii. p. 597.
[c] Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 126.
[d] Crevier, Hist. de l'Université de Paris, t. i. p. 28.
[e] Brucker, t. iii. p. 612. Raban Maurus was chief of the cathedral school at Fulda, in the ninth century.
[f] Crevier, p. 66.