"The scholars of the Medieval Universities seem to have studied grammar, logic and rhetoric; arithmetic and geometry; astronomy, theology and music. Thus their work, however imperfect and faulty, judged by modern lights, it may have been, brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man. For these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo, sometimes it may be in caricature, what we now call philosophy, mathematical and physical science, and art. And I doubt if the curriculum of any modern university shows so clear and generous a comprehension of what is meant by culture, as this old Trivium and Quadrivium does." (Italics ours.)
The results of this system of education may be judged best perhaps from Dante as an example. In The Popes and Science (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1908) a chapter is devoted to Dante as the typical university man of the time, above all in his knowledge of science as displayed in his great poem. No poet of the modern time has [{467}] turned with so much confidence to every phase of science for his figures as this product of medieval universities. Anyone who thinks that the study of science is recent, or that nature study was delayed till our day, need only read Dante to be completely undeceived.
The fact that the scholars and the professors at the universities were almost without exception believers in the possibility of the transmutation of metals in the old days, used to be considered by many educated people as quite sufficient to stamp them as lacking in judgment and as prone to believe all sorts of incredible and even impossible things without justification. Such supercilious condemnation of the point of view of the medieval scholars in this matter, however, has recently received a very serious jolt. Sometime ago, Sir William Ramsey, the greatest of living English chemists, announced at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, that he had succeeded in changing copper into lithium. This created a sensation at the time, but represented, after all, a culmination of effort in this direction that had long been expected. More recently, Sir William has reported to the British Chemical Society that he has succeeded in obtaining carbon from four substances not containing this element—bismuth, hydro-fluo-silicic acid, thorium and zirconium. An American professor of chemistry has declared that he would like to remove all traces of silver from a quantity of lead ore, and then, after allowing it to stand for some years, have the opportunity to re-examine it, since he is confident that he would find further traces of silver in it that had developed in the meantime. He is sure that the reason why these two metals always occur together, as do copper and, gold, is that they are products of a developmental process, the precious metals being a step farther on in that process than the so-called base metals. It would seem, then, that the medieval scholars were not so silly as they used to appear before we knew enough about the subject to judge them properly. Only their supercilious critics were silly.
It is probably with regard to the exact sciences that most even educated people are quite sure that the Thirteenth Century does not deserve to be thought of as representing great human advance. For them the Middle Ages were drowsily speculative, but never exact in thinking. Of course, such people know nothing of the intense exactness of thought of St. Thomas or Albertus Magnus or Duns Scotus. It would be impossible, moreover, to make them realize, from the writings of these men, how exact human thought actually was in the Thirteenth Century, though the more that modern students devote themselves to scholastic philosophy, the more surely do they appreciate and admire this very quality in the medieval philosophy. For such people, very probably, the only evidence that would have made quite an adequate answer to their objection, would be a chapter on the mathematics of the Thirteenth Century. [{468}] That might very easily have been made, for Cantor, in his History of Mathematics (Vorlesungen Über Geschichte der Mathematik, Leipzig, 1892), devotes nearly 100 pages of his second volume to the mathematicians of the Thirteenth Century, two of whom, Leonardo of Pisa and Jordanus Nemorarius, did so much in Arithmetic, the Theory of Numbers, Algebra and Geometry, as to make a revolution in mathematics. Cantor says that they accomplished so much, that their contemporaries and successors could scarcely follow them, much less go beyond them. They had great disciples, like John of Sacrobusco (probably John of Holywood, near Dublin), Joannes Campanus and others. Cantor calls attention particularly to the spread of arithmetical knowledge among the masses, which is a well-deserved tribute to the century, for it was a characteristic of the time that the new thoughts and discoveries of scholars were soon made practical and penetrated very widely among the people. Brewer, in the Preface to Roger Bacon's works, quotes some of Bacon's expressions with regard to the value of mathematics. The English Franciscan said: "For without mathematics, nothing worth knowing in philosophy can be attained." And again: "For he who knows not mathematics cannot know any other science; what is more, he cannot discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedy." The term mathematics, as used by Bacon, had a much wider application then than now, and Brewer notes that the Thirteenth Century scientist included therein Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music.
With regard to post-graduate education; the best evidence that, far from any exaggeration of what was accomplished in the Thirteenth Century, there has been a very conservative estimate of it made in the book, may be gathered from the legally erected standards of the medical schools and the legal status of the medical profession. In the Appendix of The Popes and Science, two Bulls are published, issued by Pope John XXII. (Circa, 1320), establishing medical schools in Perugia, at that time in the Papal States, and in Cahors, the birthplace of this pope. These bulls were really the formal charters of the medical schools. They require three years of preliminary study at the university and four or five years at medicine before the degree of doctor may be granted, and in addition emphasized that the curricula of the new medical schools must be equal to those of Paris and Bologna. These bulls were issued in the early part of the fourteenth century, and show the height to which the standards of medical education had been raised. There will be found also a law of Frederick II., issued 1241, requiring for all physicians who wished to practice in the Two Sicilies three years of preliminary study—four years at the medical school and a year of practice with a physician before the diploma which constituted a license to practice would be issued. This law is also a pure drug law forbidding the sale of impure drugs under penalty of confiscation of goods, and the preparation of them under penalty of death. Our pure drug law was passed about the time of the issue of the first edition of this book.
Those who ask for the results of this post-graduate training may find them in the story of Guy de Chauliac, the Father of Modern Surgery. His life formed the basis of a lecture before the Johns Hopkins Medical Club that is to be published in the Bulletin of John Hopkins Hospital. It is incorporated in Catholic Churchmen in Science, Second Series (The Dolphin Press, Phila., 1909). We know Chauliac's work not by tradition, but from his great text-book on surgery. This great Papal physician of the fourteenth century operated within the skull, did not hesitate to open the thorax, sewed up wounds of the intestines, and discussed such subjects as hernia, catheterization, the treatment of fractures, and manipulative surgery generally with wonderful technical ability. His book was the most used text-book for the next two centuries, and has won the admiration of everyone who has ever read it.
TECHNICAL EDUCATION OF THE MASSES.
Some of my friends courteously but firmly have insisted with me that I have greatly exaggerated the technical abilities of the village workmen of the Middle Ages. That every town of less than ten thousand inhabitants in England was able to supply such workmen as we can scarcely obtain in our cities of a million inhabitants, and in that scanty population supply them in greater numbers than we can now secure them from our teeming populations, seems to many simply impossible.
What I have been trying to say, however, in the chapters on the Arts and Crafts and on Popular Education, has been much better said by an authority that will scarcely be questioned by my critics. The Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D. D., who has been for twenty years the Rector of Searning in England, who is an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College and of Worcester College, Oxford, besides being an Honorary Canon in the Cathedral of Norwich, has devoted much time and study to this question of how the cathedrals were built and finished. Twenty years of his life have been spent in the study of the old English parish and of parish life. He has studied the old parish registers, and talks, therefore, not from distant impressions, but from the actual facts as they are recorded. If to his position as an antiquarian authority I add the fact that he is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, to the credit of which so much of this popular education and accomplishment in the arts and crafts of the century accrues, the value of his evidence is placed entirely above suspicion of partisan partiality. In his chapter on Parish Life in England, in his book "Before the Great Pillage" (Before the Great Pillage with other Miscellanies, by Augustus Jessopp, D. D., London. T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster Square, 1901), he says: