That the mediæval universities in some points, though not in all, were inferior to modern universities, was not their fault. No good judge of human conditions could expect it to be otherwise. The experience and efficiency of the mature man is not attained at once, but only after the exertions and experiments made by him during the period of youth and development. At a time when all the experiences in the field of school legislation, which are the property of the present day, had yet to be collected, when the relation between lower and higher schools had not been regulated in all respects, at that time it was not possible to be in the position we are in to-day. Future critics of our times will see in our present educational systems many gross defects, which often are not hidden even to our own eyes. But it would be arrogance for them to belittle our efforts, the fruits of which they will once enjoy without any merit on their part. The university of yore conformed to the educational purposes of that period; it was the focus of intellectual life, perhaps to a larger degree than is the case to-day. This suffices. Moreover, the number of professors was quite considerable, that of the students even more so. In Bologna in 1388 the number of professors was 70, not including the theologians, among them 39 jurists; in Piacenza there were from the years 1398 to 1402 71 professors; among them were 27 teachers of Roman law and 22 teachers of medicine (Denifle, 209, 571).

In regard to the zeal displayed by the Church in promoting universities, it might be objected that she was caring in the first place for theology, not for the other sciences, and that the universities then had chiefly been established for theological students. This, however, is not the case. The universities especially favoured by the Popes were first of all law schools, chiefly of civil law, or medical schools. Those at Bologna, Padua, Florence, and Orleans were principally law schools; in Italy, in general, chief attention was paid to jurisprudence, particularly to Roman law. Montpellier was essentially a medical college; it attained during the thirteenth century preponderance even over Salerno. The assertion has been made that the vigorous life at this medical college was owing to its independence of Rome (Haeser, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medizin, 1, 655. Cfr. Denifle, 342). But Denifle has proved that “clerical organs have been the moving spirits of the medical college at Montpellier.”

Nor did the Papal charter deeds exclude any profane science. The common formula, which always prevails, authorizes to teach indiscriminately in jure canonico et civili necnon in medicina et qualibet alia licita facultate. Only one science was frequently excepted, and that was just theology. Of the forty-six high schools that had been established up to the year 1400, about twenty-eight, therefore nearly two-thirds, excluded by their charter the teaching of theology. At first a number of universities sprang up merely as law schools, others as medical schools, and there was then no need to include the science of theology in the schedule of studies. Furthermore, Paris was ever since the twelfth century looked upon as the home and the natural place for theology (Denifle, 703 f.). Hence the benevolence of the Church towards the universities was not merely determined by selfish interest.

Or was it, nevertheless? May the Church not have bestowed so much care on the homes of science in order to increase her own influence thereby, and also with an eye to the future? This assertion has been made. But this assertion is an injustice and it is against the testimony of history. The Popes very often issued their charter deeds only then, when request was made [pg 155] by worldly rulers and by the cities themselves. Hence there was no hurried self-assertion. And the Church has never denied the right to worldly powers to found their own high schools. The theologians of the thirteenth century expressedly declared it to be the duty of princes to provide for institutions of learning (Cfr. Thomas of Aquin, De regimine principum, I, 13; Op. contra impug. relig. 3).

Thus up to the year 1400 nine high schools had received no charters at all, ten only imperial charters or charters from their local sovereigns. If the Popes had cared only about their influence, why then did they treat such colleges with the same benevolence? Spain's first college was founded at Paleneia in the years 1212-1214 by Alfonso VIII.without asking the Pope. When soon afterwards it was in trouble it was Honorius III. who aided Alfonso's successor in restoring it, by assigning some ecclesiastical income to its professors. When the college was nearly wrecked and Rome once more applied to for help, Urban IV. lent an aiding hand because he did not want ut lucerna tanta claritatis in commune mutorum dispendium sic extincta remaneat. Frederick II. had founded a university of his own. When it failed it was Clement IV. who urged King Charles of Anjou to re-establish it. In eodem regno facias et jubeas hujusmodi studium reformari (Denifle, 478, 459). This is not the language and action of one who is only ruled by the passion to spread his own influence, and not guided by benevolence for science.

But it is true, in supporting the higher schools the Church did not aim at science as its ultimate object; it was her view that science should serve the material welfare of man, but still more the highest ethical and religious purpose of life. This in general was the conception of the entire Middle Ages. At that time it would have been considered curious to seek a science ultimately for its own sake.

And the universities repaid the Church by gratitude and devotion. The effort has been made to demonstrate that the modern separation of science from religion had already begun in the Middle Ages, and had showed itself everywhere; this tendency for autonomy “appeared at first only timidly and in manifold disguises” (Kaufmann, 14). How easy it is to find such disguises may be shown by an example. The university of Paris had after the death of St. Thomas asked for his remains. Kaufmann holds that the notion of the autonomy of science had found sharp expression in the memorandum wherein the university stated the motive of its request. Now how does this harmless document sound? “Quoniam [pg 156] omnino est indecens et indignum ut alia ratio aut locus quam omnium studiorum nobilissima Parisiensis civitas quae ipsum prius educavit nutrivit et fovit et post modum ad eodem doctrinae monumenta et ineffabilia fomenta suscepit ossa ... habeat.... Si enim Ecclesia merito ossa et reliquias Sanctorum honorat nobis non sine causa videtur honestum et sanctum tanti doctoris corpus in perpetuum penes nos habere in honore.” Evidently the university requests the relic for itself, or rather for the Parisiensis civitas, not in opposition to the Church, but in opposition to other cities, altera natio aut locus. I wonder if the Parisian admirers of St. Thomas ever dreamed that they would one day be put in the light of forerunners of liberal science, because of their pious application for the bones of their great teacher? This is tantamount to carrying one's own idea into the fact. Denifle, probably the most competent judge of the affairs of mediæval universities, writes as follows: “If we weigh the different acts which suggest themselves to us in these various foundations, and if we compare them with one another, there is revealed to us, in the realm of history of the foundation of mediæval universities, a wonderful harmony between Church and State, between the spiritual and material. This is the reason why the universities of the Middle Ages appear to us as the highest civil as well as the highest ecclesiastical teaching institutions. Fundamentally, they are the product of the Christian spirit which penetrated the whole, wherein Pope and Prince, clergy and laity, each held the proper position” (l. c. p. 795).

One consequence of this relation between the universities and the Church was that “they attained their greatest prosperity as long as the unity of Church and faith remained unimpaired, and that, at the time of the Reformation, they all sided with the Church with the exception of two, Wittenberg and Erfurt. Torn away from their ecclesiastical and established basis only by violent means, they were led to the new doctrine, but really succumbed to it only when their freedom had been curtailed and they had been reduced to state institutions” (Janssen, l. c. p. 91). They had been, as the learned Wimpheling wrote at the close of the sixteenth century, “the most favoured daughters [pg 157] of the Church, who tried to repay by fidelity and attachment what they owed to their Mother” (De arte impressoria, apud Janssen, l. c. 91).

A False Progress.

Hence history cannot subscribe to the accusation that the Church is the enemy of progress. How then does it happen that this accusation is made so frequently? The idea suggests itself that there may be here a different meaning given to the word “progress,” that the Church opposes a certain kind of progress which her enemies call “the” progress. And this is the actual fact. If we examine the proofs which are to show the hostile attitude of the Church, we meet at every step Galileo, the Copernican system, the Syllabus, and Index. But this appears only on the surface, which hides beneath it something that is easily overlooked by the cursory glance. And this is the precise definition of scientific and civilized progress. Progress has ever been an ideal of powerful attraction. The noblest and best of men have ever displayed the most earnest endeavour onward and upward. In our times, however, this ideal comes forward differently garbed, in the name of the new view of the world, and resolutely censures as reactionary everything that will oppose it. What is this definition?