Note 252 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

We shall perhaps best understand the inner life of the schools in the Middle Ages by likening it to that of the universities of our own time, where there is unquestionably much unbelief among teachers and taught, but where the economic and other pressures of the institution suffice to preserve an outward acquiescence. In the Middle Ages it was immeasurably less possible than in our day for the unbeliever to strike out a free course of life and doctrine for himself. If, then, to-day the scholarly class is in large measure tied to institutions and conformities, much more so was it then. The cloister was almost the sole haven of refuge for studious spirits, and to attain the haven they had to accept the discipline and the profession of faith. We may conclude, accordingly, that such works as Abailard’s Sic et Non, setting forth opposed views of so many doctrines and problems, stood for and made for a great deal of quiet skepticism;252 that the remarkable request of the monks of Bec for a ratiocinative teaching which should meet even extravagant objections, covered a good deal of resigned unfaith; and that in the Franciscan schools at Oxford the disputants were not all at heart believers. Indeed, the very existence of the doctrine of a “twofold truth”—one truth for religion and another for philosophy—was from the outset a witness for unbelief. But the unwritten word died, the litera scripta being solely those of faith, and liberation had to come, ages later, from without. Even when a bold saying won general currency—as that latterly ascribed, no doubt falsely, to King Alfonso the Wise of Castile, that “if he had been of God’s council when he made the world he could have advised him better”—it did but crystallize skepticism in a jest, and supply the enemy with a text against impiety.