In Spain, too, various orders of spiritual knights arose under vows to fight with the Moors (§ [95, 2]). The two most important were the Order of Calatrava, founded in A.D. 1158 by the Cistercian monk Velasquez for the defence of the frontier city Calatrava, and the Order of Alcantara, founded in A.D. 1156 for a similar purpose. Both orders were confirmed by Alexander III. and gained great fame and still greater wealth in the wars against the Moors. Under Ferdinand the Catholic the rank of Grandmaster of both orders passed over to the crown. Paul III. in A.D. 1540 released the knights from the vow of celibacy, but obliged them to become champions of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. Both orders still exist, but only as military orders of merit.
§ 98.14. Bridge-Brothers and Mercedarians.—The name of Bridge Brothers, Frères Pontifex, Fratres Pontifices, was given to a union founded under Clement III., in Southern France, in A.D. 1189, for the building of hospices and bridges at points where pilgrims crossed the large rivers, or for the ferrying of pilgrims over the streams. As a badge they wore a pick upon their breast. Their constitution was modelled upon that of the Knights of St. John, and upon their gradual dissolution in the 13th century most of their number went over to that order.—Petrus [Peter] Nolescens, born in Languedoc, of noble parents and military tutor of a Spanish prince, moved by what he had seen of the sufferings of Christian slaves at the hand of their Moorish masters, and strengthened in his resolve by an appearance of the Queen of Heaven, founded in A.D. 1228 the knightly order of the Mercedarians, Mariæ Virg. de mercede pro redemptione Captivorum. They devoted all their property to the purchase of Christian captives, and where such a one was in danger of apostatising to Islam and the money for redemption was not procurable, they would even give themselves into slavery in his place. When in A.D. 1317 the Grand Commandership passed over into the hands of the priests, the order was gradually transformed into a monkish order. After A.D. 1600, in consequence of a reform after the pattern of the rule of the Barefoots, it became a mendicant order, receiving the privileges of other begging fraternities from Benedict XIII. in A.D. 1725. The order proved a useful institution of its time in Spain, France and Italy, and at a later period also in Spanish America.
III. Theological Science and its Controversies.
§ 99. Scholasticism in General.[290]
The scientific activity of the Middle Ages received the name of Scholasticism from the cathedral and cloister schools in which it originated (§ 90, 8). The Schoolmen, with their enthusiasm and devotion, their fidelity and perseverance, their courage and love of combat, may be called the knights of theology. Instead of sword and spear they used logic, dialectic and speculation; and profound scholarship was their breastplate and helmet. Ecclesiastical orthodoxy was their glory and pride. Aristotle, and also to some extent Plato, afforded them their philosophical basis and method. The Fathers in their utterances, sententiæ, the Councils in their dogmas and canons, the popes in their decretals, yielded to this Dialectic Scholasticism theological material which it could use for the systematising, demonstrating, and illustrating of the Church doctrine. If we follow another intellectual current, we find the Mystical Scholasticism taking up, as the highest task of theology, the investigating and describing of the hidden life of the pious thinker in and with God according to its nature, course, and results by means of spiritual contemplation on the basis of one’s individual experience. Dogmatics (including Ethics) and the Canon Law constituted the peculiar field of the Dialectic Theology of the Schoolmen. The standard of dogmatic theology during the 12th century was the Book of the Sentences of the Lombard (§ [102, 5]); that of the Canon Law the Decree of Gratian. Biblical Exegesis as an independent department of scientific study stood, indeed, far behind these two, but was diligently prosecuted by the leading representatives of Scholasticism. The examination of the simple literal sense, however, was always regarded as a secondary consideration; while it was esteemed of primary importance to determine the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical signification of the text (§ 90, 9).
§ 99.1. Dialectic and Mysticism.—With the exception of the speculative Scotus Erigena, the Schoolmen of the Carlovingian Age were of a practical turn. This was changed on the introduction of Dialectic in the 11th century. Practical interests gave way to pure love of science, and it was now the aim of scholars to give scientific shape and perfect logical form to the doctrines of the church. The method of this Dialectic Scholasticism consisted in resolving all church doctrines into their elementary ideas, in the arranging and demonstrating of them under all possible categories and in the repelling of all possible objections of the sceptical reason. The end aimed at was the proof of the reasonableness of the doctrine. This Dialectic, therefore, was not concerned with exegetical investigations or Scripture proof, but rather with rational demonstration. Generally speaking, theological Dialectic attached itself to the ecclesiastical system of the day as positivism or dogmatism; for, appropriating Augustine’s Credo ut intelligam, it made faith the principal starting point of its theological thinking and the raising of faith to knowledge the end toward which it laboured. On the other hand, however, scepticism often made its appearance, taking not faith but doubt as the starting point for its inquiries, with the avowed intention, indeed, of raising faith to knowledge, but only acknowledging as worthy of belief what survived the purifying fire of doubt.—Alongside of this double-edged Dialectic, sometimes in conflict, sometimes in alliance with it, we meet with the Mystical Scholasticism, which appealed not to the reason but to the heart, and sought by spiritual contemplation rather than by Dialectic to advance at once theological science and the Christian life. Its object is not Dogmatics as such, not the development of Fides quæ creditur, but life in fellowship with God, the development of Fides qua creditur. By contemplative absorption of the soul into the depth of the Divine life it seeks an immediate vision, experience and enjoyment of the Divine, and as an indispensable condition thereto requires purity of heart, the love of God in the soul and thorough abnegation of self. What is gained by contemplation is made the subject of scientific statement, and thus it rises to speculative mysticism. Both contemplation and speculative mysticism in so far as their scientific procedure is concerned are embraced under the name of scholastic mysticism. The practical endeavour, however, after a deepening and enhancing of the Christian life in the direction of a real and personal fellowship with God was found more important and soon out-distanced the scientific attempt at tabulating and formulating the facts of inner experience. Practical mysticism thus gained the ascendency during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, and formed the favourite pursuit of the numerous inmates of the nunneries (§ [107]).
§ 99.2. The Philosophical Basis of Dialectic Scholasticism was obtained mainly from the Aristotelian philosophy, which, down to the end of the 12th century, was known at first only from Latin renderings of Arabic and even Hebrew translations, and afterwards from Latin renderings of the Greek originals (§ [103, 1]). Besides Aristotle, however, Plato also had his enthusiastic admirers during the Middle Ages. The study of the writings of Augustine and the Areopagite (§ 90, 7) led back again to him, and the speculative mystics vigorously opposed the supremacy of Aristotle.—At the outset of the philosophical career of scholasticism in the 11th century we meet with the controversy of Anselm and Roscellinus [Roscelin] about the relations of thinking and being or of the idea and the substance of things (§ [101, 3]). The Nominalists, following the principles of the Stoics, maintained that General Notions, Universalia, are mere abstractions of the understanding, Nomina, which as such have no reality outside the human mind, Universalia post res. The Realists, on the contrary, affirmed the reality of General Notions, regarding them as objective existences before and apart from human thinking. But there were two kinds of realism. The one, based on the Platonic doctrine of ideas, taught that General Notions are really existent before the origin of the several things as archetypes in the Divine reason, and then also in the human mind before the contemplation of the things empirically given, Universalia ante res. The other, resting on Aristotle’s doctrine, considered them as lying in the things themselves and as first getting entrance into the human mind through experience, Universalia in rebus. The Platonic Realism thought to reach a knowledge of things by pure thought from the ideas latent in the human mind; the Aristotelian, on the other hand, thought to gain a knowledge of things only through experience and thinking upon the things themselves.—Continuation, § [103, 1].
§ 99.3. The Nurseries of Scholasticism.—The work previously done in cathedrals and cloister schools was, from about the 12th century, taken up in a more comprehensive and thorough way by the Universities. They were, as to their origin, independent of church and state, emperor and pope. Here and there famous teachers arose in the larger cities or in connection with some celebrated cloister or cathedral school. Youths from all countries gathered around them. Around the teacher who first attracted attention others gradually grouped themselves. Teachers and scholars organized themselves into a corporation, and thus arose the University. By this, however, we are to understand nothing less than a Universitas litterarum, where attention was given to the whole circle of the sciences. For a long time there was no thought of a distribution into faculties. When the multitude of teachers and students demanded a distribution into several corporations, this was done according to nations. The name signifies the Universitas magistrorum et scholarium rather than an articulated whole. The study here pursued was called Studium generale or universale, because the entrance thereto stood open to every one. At first each university pursued exclusively and in later times chiefly some special department of science. Thus, e.g. theology was prosecuted in Paris and Oxford and subsequently also in Cologne, jurisprudence in Bologna, Medicine in Salerno. The first university that expressly made provision for teaching all sciences was founded at Naples in A.D. 1224 with imperial munificence by Frederick II. The earliest attempt at a distribution of the sciences among distinct faculties was occasioned by the struggle between the university of Paris and the mendicant monks (§ [103, 1]), who separated themselves from the other theological teachers and as members of a guild formed themselves in A.D. 1259 into a theological faculty. The number of the students, among whom were many of ripe years, was immensely great, and in some of the most celebrated universities reached often to ten or even twenty thousand. There was a ten years’ course prescribed for the training of the monks of Clugny: two years’ Logicalia, three years’ Literæ naturales et philosophicæ, and five years’ Theology.The Council at Tours in A.D. 1236 insisted that every priest should have passed through a five years’ course of study.[291]
§ 99.4. The Epochs of Scholasticism.—The intellectual work of the theologians of the Middle Ages during our period ran its course in four epochs, the boundaries of which nearly coincide with the boundaries of the four centuries which make up that period.