And yet these discoveries, and this knowledge of the Orientals, did not much enlighten the West in the art of curing. Properly to receive lessons of experience of this kind, preliminary studies were necessary, and the physicians of Europe were then too ignorant to profit by the learning of the Arabians. At this period, religious charity raised a great number of open asylums for suffering humanity. But this charity, however admirable, when its object was to attend the sick, and comfort them in their sufferings, knew but very little of the symptoms or the character of the numberless diseases which attack the life of man. It may be safely said, that during the crusades, we received from the East many more serious diseases than true instruction in medicine. We know that there were numerous lazar-houses established in Europe in the time of the crusades; but we know nothing of the remedies employed for the cure of leprosy. Isolation appears to have been the only curative or preservative means known for this malady, which many learned physicians now look upon as mere prejudice. The spirit of devotion richly endowed lepers, without doing anything for their cure. Leprosy, in the end, disappeared without the assistance of medicine, and the property bestowed upon lazar-houses was transferred to the hospitals; which was advantageous to humanity, and may be set down as one of the benefits of the crusades.[123]
We will say nothing of the other sciences, which owed still less than geography and medicine to the holy wars.
The Saracens of Syria were very little enlightened in the middle ages. In the East, the state of knowledge, like everything else, depended upon the reign of a great prince; whilst this prince reigned, knowledge flourished by his influence; at his death, everything returned to darkness, as the natural state of countries governed by Islamism.[124]
The Franks gained more by their commerce with the Greeks than by that with the Saracens. The Crusaders established continual relations between the cities of Italy and the empire of Byzantium. Some sparks of the genius of the Greeks were glimmering in Italy before the taking of Constantinople by the Turks.
A college for young Greeks was established at Paris in the reign of Philip Augustus. In the thirteenth century universities flourished at Bologna, Paris, and Salamanca, in which the Greek language was taught; and later, the Oriental languages were added, by a decree of the council of Vienna.
We find in a chronicle of St. Denis these remarkable words:—“This year, 1257, William, a physician, brought some Greek books from Constantinople.” Thus, the arrival of some volumes from Greece was an event worthy of being recorded, and the importance attached to it, already announced the disposition of men’s minds.
When the Turks became masters of Constantinople, the learned, exiled from their country, came to establish themselves in Italy, where the Greek muses formed an alliance with the Latin muses. The venerable interpreters of antiquity were hailed everywhere with eagerness, and the communication of their knowledge was repaid by generous hospitality. Among the distinguished men to whom the muses of ancient Greece owed an honourable protection, we must not forget Nicholas V., who, as the head of the Christians of the West, excommunicated the Greek Church, and, as a scholar, seemed to have vowed a worship to the genius of Homer and Plato.[125] Printing, which had then recently been invented, was employed to preserve the literary treasures brought from the East, and made them for ever safe from the scythe of Time, the furies of war, or the hands of barbarians. The Iliad and the Odyssey found readers in places which had inspired the Æneid; the orations of Demosthenes were again read amid the wrecks of the forum, where the learned might believe they still listened to the voice of Cicero. The genius of the Italians, kindled by the masterpieces of ancient Rome and of old Athens, produced fresh masterpieces; and Italy presented a phenomenon which the world will, perhaps, never see again,—that of a nation which, in the space of a few centuries, obtained twice the palm of literature in two different languages.
It was from Constantinople we received the philosophy of Aristotle. We can scarcely say to what extent the true friends of intelligence ought to congratulate themselves on this head. Aristotle had disciples, partisans, and martyrs; the philosopher of Stagyra was very near being preferred to the Bible; the contemners of Aristotle were called Biblici. At that period a mania for subtleties was introduced into the schools, which dishonoured the teaching of philosophy. Reason was no longer studied in the mind of man, but in a book; nature was no longer studied in the universe, but in Aristotle. The schools became like fencing-matches. In an age in which everything was decided by violence, the human mind wished to have its species of warfare; so that victory in most affairs was considered justice; and became, in the schools, the only reason. We may believe that this philosophy did not much assist the march of true wisdom; but we must admit, that if it did, for a moment, lead the human mind astray, it did not quite arrest its progress. It exercised the faculties of man, and by that means assisted in their development. At the commencement of societies, it is less the errors of the mind than its inaction that retains nations in the darkness of barbarism.
Universities had never been so attended as at this period. The number of students in the schools of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford were said to amount to ten thousand. The great privileges granted to universities, prove the esteem in which learning was then held. The doctors disputed for precedency with knighthood itself. If Bartholo is to be believed, ten years’ teaching of the Roman law conferred the title of knight. This dignity was called the knighthood of learning, and they who attained it were called knights-clerks.