A French writer, who does himself honor in protecting the church with his valiant pen as others have done with their swords, M. L. Veuillot, and of whom it may be said, "brave as his pen," says somewhere that the thirteenth century has produced such great things in the moral order that Saint Thomas had been able to build up the colossus styled La Somme; yet during this epoch people went on foot, and time was not lost running over the world on railroads. I am persuaded the contemporaries of Roger Bacon would not have approved of this apologetic argument; for if they had known the great discoveries of our day, of what works would not such vigorous and universal minds have been capable? If such men, consumed by activity, by love of science and humanity, ran from Naples to Oxford, from Bologna to Paris, professing, preaching, writing, administering the sacraments, directing their communities, or working with the pope and the bishops in the government of the church; if such men have produced such great things on foot, what would they not have undertaken with railroads at their disposal? To-day there come from Italy but few philosophers measurable with the Count d'Aquin and Jean de Fidanza; but, to make amends, how easy to convoke an oecumenical council and send zouaves to Rome!
The observation I have just made is not a digression, for it tends to demonstrate the profoundly practical aim of science in the thirteenth century. These professors of Paris, Cologne, and Oxford did not content themselves with teaching their doctrines from the privileged benches of a university to a few cultivated, delicate, and critical minds. They did not style themselves philosophers, as the wise men by profession, who in the last century wished thus to distinguish Christians. They practised their doctrines, and their teaching was democratic, (pardon the so much abused expression,) not only on account of their principles but in regard to the public whom they addressed. They called all the world to the feet of their pulpits, and after distributing the bread of faith and science, that of charity was not wanting. "Thus," said Ozanam, "the poor knew and blessed their names. And even to-day, after six hundred years, the inhabitants of Paris bend the knee before the altars of "the angel of the schools," and the workmen of Lyons are honored in carrying once a year, on their robust shoulders, the triumphant remains of the "seraphic doctor." [Footnote 133] Can we believe that six centuries hence they will do the same for the ashes of Kant, Fichte, or Hegel?
[Footnote 133: Dante et la Philosophie Catholique, p. i. ch. ii. p. 88.]
This enthusiasm of holy people for science was not entirely the fruit of the doctrines of St. Francis and St. Dominic, or of the personal tendencies of their disciples. When the zeal for such subjects weakened, the church tried to revive the flame. Let us recall the bull of 1254, published by Innocent IV., for the re-establishment of philosophical studies: "A deplorable rumor, spread abroad and repeated from mouth to mouth, has reached our ears, and deeply afflicts us. It is said that the many aspirants for the priesthood, abandoning, repudiating even, philosophical studies, and consequently the teachings of theology, have sought the different schools to explain the civil laws. Sarah then is the slave, and Hagar has become mistress. We have tried to find a remedy for this unexpected disorder. We would bring back minds to the study of theology, which is the science of salvation, or at least to philosophical studies, in which it is true the tenderest emotions of piety are not met with, but where the soul discovers the first lights of eternal truth, and frees itself from the miserable preoccupations of cupidity—the root of all evil, and a species of idolatry. Therefore we decide by these presents, that in future no professor of jurisprudence, no lawyer, whatever may be his rank or the renown he may enjoy in the practice of law, can pretend to any prebend, honor, or ecclesiastical dignity, nor even to an inferior benefice, if he has not given proofs of requisite capacity in the faculty of arts, and if he is not recommended by the innocence of his life and the purity of his manners."
Such admirable teaching could not remain barren in a Christian society. In 1256, just as Pope Alexander IV. had declared all the serfs emancipated who would abandon the cause of Ezelin le Féroce, the authorities of Bologna proceeded to the general enfranchisement of those of their territory. The city was not contented to set free only its own serfs; it extended the benefit to those belonging to private masters, indemnifying the proprietors, as some modern states have done in the slavery of the blacks: the middle age was distinguished always for its respect for acquired rights. The state paid ten livres for every serf over fourteen, eight livres for those below that age. The freedmen were bound to pay to the state some moderate tax in cereals. The suggester of this generous measure was Bonacursio de Sorresina, capitano del popolo, elected podesta the following year. He placed the names of all the enfranchised on a register called the Paradise of Joy. "An all-powerful God," said he in the introduction to this register, "created man free; original sin poisoned him; from immortal he became mortal, from incorruptible corruptible, from free the slave of hell. He sent for man's redemption his only Son, begotten by him from all eternity. It is then just and equitable that man saved and freed by God should not stagnate in servitude, where human laws have precipitated him; that he should be set free. By these considerations, Bologna, which has always fought for public liberty, which recalls the past and weighs the future, has for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ redeemed all the serfs of its territory, and proclaimed, for the future, slavery will be no more tolerated. A little leaven leavens the whole lump; the presence of one degraded being dishonors society."
It is right to observe that this noble language is the reproduction, often textual, of the well-known words of the holy Pope Gregory I., the Great, against the slavery of the Anglo-Saxons.
Ten years afterward Bela, king of Hungary, having rejected a bishop because he was born a serf, the pope wrote him that "the will of man could not prescribe against nature, that has given liberty to the human race."
"It is a frequent error among men," said the Count d'Aquin, "to believe themselves noble because they are the issue of noble families. … It is well not to have failed in examples of noble ancestors; but it is far better to have adorned an humble birth with great actions. … I repeat, then, with Saint Jerome, that nothing appears to me worth envying in this pretended hereditary nobility, if the nobles themselves are not restrained in the paths of virtue by the shame of derogating from it. The true nobility is that of the soul, according to the words of the poet:
'Nobilitas sola est animum quae moribus ornat.'" [Footnote 134]
[Footnote 134: De Eruditione Principum.]