Holy Scripture, the Patristic writings, ancient classical lore, the Graeco-Arabian philosophy and science of which the groundwork was Aristotle—these are the main antecedents of the mediaeval system of knowledge, and they are blended together in characteristic ways, and dissolved, as it were, in a fluid composed of romantic chivalry and other elements of preponderatingly Teutonic and Celtic origin.
(1) The groundwork of all is, of course, Holy Scripture: known and studied exclusively in the Latin Vulgate text, a rather degenerate and corrupt representative of the (in its way) masterly and excellent translation from the Hebrew and Greek made by St. Jerome in the fifth century.
The Bible, as we know quite well to-day,—even those of us who are more than ever convinced of its inspiration—is not a manual of natural science or philosophy, nor even an absolutely infallible guide in matters of history and chronology. Its scientific standpoint is that of the age in which each part was composed, however eternal be the significance and application of its fundamental religious principles.
To the mediaeval mind, however, Scripture was a universal text-book of science. So that countless questions were regarded as foreclosed because the Bible appeared to have pronounced upon them. The scientific mind of the Middle Ages felt itself committed at a hundred points to the rather crude conceptions of the ancient Hebrews, and to a literal interpretation, very often, of figurative and highly poetical expressions.
The disadvantages of this state of things are obvious to us: we must not forget, however, that they were largely modified by the fact that while all knowledge was regarded as ultimately religious knowledge, it is just in its religious principles that the Bible is supreme, and is permanently true.
(2) The interpretation of Scripture in the Middle Ages is largely based on patristic exegesis; on the writings of the really great minds of the third, fourth and fifth centuries, when men like Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, Basil and the Gregories, Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine, laid the foundations of systematic Christian thought; men steeped in the Holy Scriptures, and bringing to them an intellect furnished with ideas and categories inherited in part from the classical world—from Graeco-Roman literature and philosophy. The most influential of them all, perhaps, upon mediaeval thought were Jerome (through his translation of the Bible) and Augustine, the deepest and most original thinker (with the exception of Origen) among all the “Fathers.”
Holy Scripture then, patristically interpreted, is the first and most important element in mediaeval knowledge; and the place it holds in Dante may be roughly estimated by the calculations of Dr. Moore in his Dante Studies (Vol. I), where he shows that in his extant works the Poet quotes the Vulgate more than five hundred times.
Dante is representative of the Middle Ages in his reverence for and his use of Holy Scripture, interpreted for the most part by traditions derived from the Christian Fathers.
Scripture itself was mediaevally supplemented by hagiology—the lives and legends of the Saints—nor is this element lacking in Dante.[166]