One may add, that it was fortunate for the progress of mediaeval learning that Latin was the one language used by all scholars in all countries. This facilitated the diffusion of knowledge. How slow and painful would have been that diffusion if the different vernacular tongues had been used in their respective countries, for serious writing.
[454] Ante, Chapter XII., I.
[455] Eruditio didascalica, i. cap. 12 (Migne, Pat. Lat. 176, col. 750).
[456] Cf. Abelson, The Seven Liberal Arts (New York, 1906).
[457] I am speaking generally, that is to say, omitting for the present the aberrant or special or intrusive tendencies found in a man like Roger Bacon, for example. They were of importance for what was to come thereafter; but are not broadly representative of the Middle Ages.
[458] St. Anselm, Epist. lib. iii. 41, ad Fulconem (Migne, Pat. Lat. 158, col. 1192). So Roscellin showed in his own case how problems primarily logical could pass over to metaphysics or theology. Likewise, although on the other side of the controversy, one, Odo of Tournai, a good contemporary realist, found realism an efficient aid in explaining the transmission of original sin; since for him all men formed but one substance, which was infected once for all by the sin of the first parents. Cf. Hauréau, Hist. de la philosophie scholastique, i. pp. 297-308; De Wulf, Hist. of Medieval Philosophy, p. 156, 3rd ed.
[459] Abaelard, Hist. calamitatum, chap. 2.
[460] Ante, Chapter XXV.
[461] Ante, Chapter XII., I.
[462] Abaelard’s Dialectica was published by Cousin, Ouvrages inédits d’Abélard (Paris, 1836). For a thorough exposition of Abaelard’s logic see Prantl, Ges. der Logik, ii. p. 160 sqq.