Honour God and holy church,—and give to the poor that have need;—Thus ye shall work God’s will,—and have for reward the joy of heaven.—To which joy us bring—Jesus Christ heaven’s King. Amen.
The scholastic philosophy flourished through the thirteenth century, the age of Albertus Magnus, of Grosteste, and of Roger Bacon; but, towards the close of that period, the importance of the schools and universities was rapidly declining. They had received a shock from the triumph of the monks over the scholars during the reign of St. Louis, which they could never recover. Political events, and the great change which was then operating in the whole political—we may perhaps say social—system, hastened their fall. The nice quibbles of the dialectitian, although they still had their weight in the cloister, began to be sneered at in the world without. The following song, which perhaps belongs to the beginning of the fourteenth century, is directed against the artistæ, or those who studied the seven arts, the scholastic trivium and quadrivium.
SONG AGAINST THE SCHOLASTIC STUDIES.
[From MS. Cotton. Titus A. XX. fol. 66, vo, written in reign of Edw. II.; and MS. Bodl. Oxford. Rawl. B. 214, fol. 168, vo, of 15th cent.]
Meum est propositum gentis imperitæ
Artes frugi reddere melioris vitæ,
Et ad artes singulas procedatis rite:
Ad mea decepti juvenes documenta venite.