The brothers John and Isaac Tzetzes, critics and grammarians of Constantinople, are still consulted as commentators upon some of the Greek authors. John Tzetzes is a voluminous writer: his extant works give evidence at once of his vast acquaintance with literature, and of the literary facilities of that age, at least in cities such as Constantinople.
Robert Grostest (Greathead), bishop of Lincoln, was famed for his skill in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, as well as for the bold resistance he made to the exactions of the popes upon the English church. Camden says of him that “he was a man versed in the languages and in general literature in a degree scarcely credible, when the age in which he lived is considered; a terrible reprover of the pope, the adviser of his king (Henry III.), and a lover of truth.”
Matthew Paris, one of the earliest of the English historians, displays in his works an acquaintance with ancient literature, as well as a familiar knowledge of the antiquities of his native country. Like the bishop last named, Paris vigorously opposed the papal usurpations in England; nor did he less courageously reprove vice in every rank at home. His reputation as a man of learning and virtue enabled him to effect a considerable reformation in many of the English monasteries. He died 1259. The “Historia Major” of this writer begins with the Norman Conquest, and is continued to the year of the author’s death, 1259.
The works of Albert, called the Great, a Dominican friar, and afterwards, in 1260, bishop of Ratisbon, fill one-and-twenty volumes. They are chiefly on the physical sciences, but include a sort of encyclopædia of the learning of the age. “A man of wonderful erudition, to whom few things in theological science, and hardly any in secular learning, were unknown. On account of the extent and variety of his acquirements surnamed ‘the Great’—an honour conferred upon no other learned man during life.” Albert, like Roger Bacon, incurred among his contemporaries the suspicion of being a magician. Learning, in the restricted sense of the term, or the knowledge of books, though possessed by a comparatively small class of persons, was too frequent to excite wonder or envy; but Science, or a knowledge of nature, and this acquired, not from Aristotle, but from experiment, was so rare, that it seldom failed to engender both, and to occasion a dangerous accusation of correspondence with infernal spirits.
The revival of learning is usually reckoned to have commenced in the fifteenth century: but in the fourteenth a very decided advancement in almost every department of literature had taken place. That the ignorance which had prevailed in the preceding century was wearing away from the bulk of the community in several parts of Europe, and that the educated classes were acquiring a better taste and more expanded views, needs no other evidence than that which is so abundantly presented in the works of Dante, of Petrarch, of Boccatio, of Chaucer, and of Gower, which were not merely produced in that period, but were extensively read and admired.
Fewer instances than those given above might suffice to prove, that at no part of that tract of time, which extends from the decline of learning in the sixth century, to its revival in the fifteenth, was there anything which can be called an extinction of the knowledge of ancient literature. This proof, it must be acknowledged, is much more complete in reference to the Greek, than to the Latin authors; it is also more ample in relation to ecclesiastical and sacred, than to profane literature. Of all the extant manuscripts, executed in the middle ages, perhaps nineteen in twenty belong to the former class. The continuance of the eastern empire till the middle of the fifteenth century, afforded an uninterrupted protection to Greek learning during those periods in which western Europe was laid waste by the Gothic nations. Yet even those devastations were never universal either in their extent, or in their kind. At times when Italy was in ashes, the British Islands were secure. And if cities were sacked and burned, and if castles, palaces, and cathedrals were pillaged and overthrown, hundreds of religious houses, in strong or secluded situations, remained untouched; or if occasionally they were subjected to the violence of armies, or to the exactions of conquerors, they more often lost their chests, their cups and their salvers, than their books.
Learning and the sciences can flourish and advance only where there are the means of a wide and quick diffusion of the fruits of intellectual labour: but they may exist even under the almost total absence of such means. This was the case in Europe during the middle ages. Knowledge rested with the few whom the inward fire of native genius constrained to pursue it: and these few were often insulated from each other, and unknown beyond the walls within which they spent their lives; and often secluded also by their tastes, even from their fellows of the same society.
In every myriad of the human race, take the number where or when we may, there will be found a few individuals—born for thought; and if the vocation of nature is not always stronger than every obstacle, it is, for the most part, strong enough to overcome such as are of ordinary magnitude. Those who are thus endowed with the appetite for knowledge, will certainly follow the impulse, if the means of its acquirement are presented to them in early life. Now these means were everywhere interspersed among the nations of Europe during the middle ages, by the monastic system; and it may be questioned whether there were not then greater chances for drawing within the pale of learning the native mind of every district, than are afforded even by the present constitutions of society. The religious houses were so thickly scattered through every country, and the continual draught from the population for the maintenance of the numbers of their inmates (a standing rule of the monastic establishments enjoined that the original number of each congregation should be maintained) was so great, that they must have taken up many more than the gifted individuals of every neighbourhood; and yet such individuals would almost certainly be included within that enlistment; for whenever a youth displayed a fondness for learning, nothing better could be done for him, whether he was the son of a peasant or a noble, than to devote him to the service of the Church. The monasteries usually contained schools for the youth of their vicinities. From these schools the superiors of the house had the opportunity of selecting any who gave promise of intelligence.
In the very darkest times, learning insured to its possessor a degree of reputation; and the heads of religious houses, in most instances, sought to decorate their establishments with some particles of the honours of erudition, as well as to recommend them by the possession of relics; and many were eagerly ambitious to enhance the literary celebrity of their communities. With this view it would be their policy to afford the necessary means and encouragement to those who seemed most likely to support the credit of the society. “The education of a monk, at least in the fourteenth century, consisted of church music and the primary sciences, grammar, logic, and philosophy—obviously that of Aristotle. Some French and Latin must also have been included; for these were the languages the monks were enjoined to speak on public occasions. They were afterwards sent to Oxford or Paris to learn theology. Such indeed was the encouragement held out to literature, that in a provincial chapter of abbots and priors of the Benedictine order, held at Northampton A.D. 1343, men of letters and masters of art were invited to become monks, by a promise of exemption from all daily services.”—Fosbrooke.
Independently therefore of any more direct evidence, there would be reason to believe that many if not most of the monasteries and conventual churches, at all times, included an individual or two whose tastes led him to devote his life to study, and who would become the sedulous guardian and conservator of the books of the house, directing the labours of his less intelligent brethren in the work of transcribing such as might be falling into decay.