SECOND DIVISION. (Continued.) (continued 3)

§ 98.4. The Franciscans from A.D. 1219 to A.D. 1223.―Soon after the departure of St. Francis the report of his death spread through Italy, and loosened the bonds which, by reason of the obligation to render him obedience hitherto operative, had secured harmony among the brethren. Francis had, on the basis of Luke x. 7, 8, laid upon his companions only the commonly accepted rules of fasting, but the observance of a more rigorous fast required his own special permission. Now, however, some rigorists, at a convention of the elders, gave expression to the opinion, that the brethren should be enjoined to fast not as hitherto, like all the rest of Christendom, only on two, but on four, days of the week, a resolution which not only removed the rule altogether from its basis in Luke x. 7, 8, but also broke the solemn promise to observe the wish of Innocent III., incorporated in it, that in no particular should it be altered. And while the rule forbade any intercourse with women, brother Philip obtained a papal bull which appointed him representative of the order of “poor women,” afterwards the Nuns of St. Clara, founded in A.D. 1212 on the model of the Franciscan ideal of poverty. Another brother, John of Capella, sought to put himself at the head of an independent order of poor men and women. Many such projects were being planned. So soon as news reached Francis of these vagaries, he returned to Italy, accompanied by his favourite pupil, the energetic, wise, and politic Elias of Cortona, whose organizing and governing talent was kept within bounds down to the founder’s death. Perceiving that all these confusions had arisen from the want of a strictly defined organization, legitimized by the pope and under papal protection, Francis now endeavoured to secure such privileges for his order. He therefore entreated Honorius III. to appoint Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia, afterwards Pope Gregory IX., previously a zealous promoter of his endeavours, as protector and governor of his brotherhood; and he soon with a strong hand put a stop to all secessionist movements in the community. A vigorous effort was now made by the brotherhood, suggested and encouraged by the papal chair, to carry out a scheme of transformation, by means of which the order, which had hitherto confined itself to simple religious and ascetic duties, should become an independent and powerful monkish order, to place it “with the whole force of its religious enthusiasm, with its extraordinary flexibility and its mighty influences over the masses, at the service of the papacy, and to turn it into a standing army of the pope, ever ready to obey his will in the great movements convulsing the church and the world of that time.” Honorius III. took the first step in this direction by a bull addressed, in Sept., A.D. 1220, to Francis himself and the superiors of his order, there styled “Ordo fratrum minorum,” by which a novitiate of one year and an irrevocable vow of admission were prescribed, the wearing of the official dress made its exclusive privilege, and jurisdiction given to its own tribunal to deal with all its members. Francis was now also obliged, willing or unwilling, to agree to a revision of his rule. This new rule was probably confirmed or at least approved at the famous Pentecost chapter held at the Portiuncula chapel in A.D. 1221, called the “Mat Chapter” (C. storearum), because the brethren assembled there lived in tents made of rush-mats.283 It is, as Carl Müller has incontestably proved, this same rule which was formerly regarded by all as the first rule composed in A.D. 1209. The older rule, however, formed in every particular its basis, and the enlargements and modifications rendered necessary by the adoption of the new ideas appear so evidently as additions, that the two different constituents can even yet with tolerable certainty be distinguished from one another, and so the older rule can be reconstructed. But the development and modification of the order necessarily proceeding in the direction indicated soon led to a gradual reformation of the rule, which in this new form was solemnly and formally ratified by Honorius III. in November, A.D. 1223, as possessing henceforth definite validity. In it the requirement of the literal acceptance of the commands of Jesus on sending out His disciples in Matthew x. and Luke x. is no longer made the basis and pattern, as in the two earlier rules, but all the stress is laid rather upon the imitation of the lives of poverty led by Jesus and His apostles; as an offset to the renunciation of all property, the obligation to earn their own support by work was now set aside, and the practice of mendicancy was made their proper object in life, came indeed to be regarded as constituting the special ideal and sanctity of the order, which in consequence was now for the first time entitled to be called a mendicant or begging order. At its head stood a general-minister, and all communications between the order and the holy see were conducted through a cardinal-protector. The mission field of the order, comprising the whole world, was divided into provinces with a provincial-minister, and the provinces into custodies with a custos at its head.―Every third year at Pentecost the general called together the provincials and custodes to a general chapter, and the custodes assembled the brethren of their dioceses as required in provincial and custodial chapters. The dress of the order remained the same. The usual requirement to go barefoot, however, was modified by the permission in cases of necessity, on journeys and in cold climates, to wear shoes or sandals.

§ 98.5. The Franciscans from A.D. 1223.―There was no mention in the rule of A.D. 1223 of any sort of fixed place of abode either in cloisters or in houses of their own. The life of the order was thus conceived of as a homeless and possessionless pilgrimage; and as for the means of life they were dependent on what they got by begging, so also it was considered that for the shelter of a roof they should depend upon the hospitable. The gradual transition from a purely itinerant life had already begun by the securing of fixed residences at definite points in the transalpine district and first of all in Germany. After the first sending forth of disciples in A.D. 1219, without much attention to rule and without much plan, had run its course there with scarcely any success, a more thoroughly organized mission, under the direction of brother Cæsarius of Spires, consisting of twelve clerical and thirteen lay brethren, including John v. Piano Cupini, Thomas v. Celano, Giordano v. Giano, was sent by the “Mat Chapter” of A.D. 1221 to Germany, which, strengthened by oft-repeated reinforcements, carried on from A.D. 1228 a vigorous propaganda in Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and Norway. In accordance with the rule of A.D. 1223 Germany as forming one province was divided into five custodies, but in A.D. 1230 into two distinct provinces, the Rhineland and Saxony, with a corresponding number of custodies. Even more brilliant was the success attending the mission to England in A.D. 1224. On their missionary tours the brethren took up their residence temporarily in hospitals and leper houses, or in hospitable parsonages and private houses, and preached by preference in the open air, where the people flocked around them in crowds, occasionally at the invitation of a bishop or priest in the churches. Presents of lands gave them the opportunity of erecting convents of their own, with churches and burying-grounds for themselves, which, placed under the charge of a guardian, soon increased in number and importance. The begging, which was now made the basis of the whole institution, was regulated by the principle, that, besides the benefactions voluntarily paid into the cloister, monks sent forth at particular terms, hence called Terminants284 with a beggar’s bag, should beg about for the necessaries of life. With agriculture and industrial work, and generally all bodily labour, the brothers had nothing to do. On the contrary, what was altogether foreign to the intention of the founder and their rules, and so originating not from within the order itself, but from without, first of all by the admission of scientifically cultured priests, a strong current set in in favour of scientific studies, stimulated by their own personal ambition as well as by rivalry with the Dominicans. These scholarly pursuits soon yielded abundant fruit, which raised the reputation, power, and influence of the order to such a height, that it has been enabled to carry out in all details the task assigned it in the papal polity. Architecture, painting, and poetry also found among the members of the order distinguished cultivators and ornaments.―Supported by accumulating papal privileges, which, for example, gave immunity from all episcopal jurisdiction and supervision, and allowed its clergy the right in all parts, not only of preaching, but also of reading mass and hearing confessions, and aided in its course of secularization by papal modifications and alterations of its rule, which permitted the obtaining and possessing rich cloister property, the order of Minor Brothers or Minorites soon could boast of an extension embracing several thousands of cloisters.―Francis, wasted by long-continued sickness and by increasing infirmities, was found dead, in A.D. 1226, stretched on the floor of the Portiuncula chapel. Two years afterwards he was canonized by Gregory IX., and in A.D. 1230 there was a solemn translation of his relics to the beautiful basilica built in his honour at Assisi. The legend, that a seraph during his last years had imprinted upon him the bloody wound-prints or stigmata of the Saviour was also turned to account for the glorification of the whole order, which now assumed the epithet “seraphic.”―The one who possessed most spiritual affinity to his master of all the disciples of St. Francis, and after him most famous among his contemporaries and posterity, was St. Anthony of Padua. Born in A.D. 1195 at Lisbon, when an Augustinian canon at Coimbra he was, in A.D. 1220, received into the communion of the Minorites, when the relics of the five martyrs of Morocco were deposited there, and thereupon he undertook a mission to Africa. But a severe sickness obliged him to return home, and driven out of his course by a storm, he landed at Messina, from whence he made a pilgrimage to Assisi. The order now turned his learning to account by appointing him teacher of theology, first at Bologna, then at Montpellier. For three years he continued as custos in the south of France, going up and down through the land as a powerful preacher of repentance, till the death of the founder and the choice of a successor called him back to Italy. He died at Padua in A.D. 1231. The pope canonized him in A.D. 1232, and in A.D. 1263 his relics were enshrined in the newly built beautiful church at Padua dedicated to him. Among the numerous tales of prodigies, which are said to have accompanied his goings wherever he went, the best known and most popular is, that when he could obtain no ready hearing for his doctrine among men, he preached on a lonely sea-shore to shoals of fishes that crowded around to listen. His writings, sermons, and a biblical concordance, under the title Concordantiæ Morales SS. Bibliorum, are often printed along with the Letters, Hymns, Testament, etc., ascribed to St. Francis.―Among the legends of the order still extant about the life of St. Francis is the Vita I. of Thomas of Celano, written in A.D. 1229, the oldest and relatively the most impartial. On the other hand, the later biographies, especially that of the so-called Tres socii and the Vita II. of Thomas, which has been made accessible by the Roman edition of Amoni of 1880, written contemporaneously somewhere about A.D. 1245, as well as that of St. Bonaventura of A.D. 1263, recognised by the chapter of the order as the only authoritative form of the legends, are all more or less influenced by the party strifes that had arisen within its ranks, while all are equally overladen with reports of miracles. In A.D. 1399, by authority of the general chapter at Assisi, the “Liber Conformitatum” of Bartholomew of Pisa pointed out forty resemblances between Christ and St. Francis, in which the saint has generally the advantage over the Saviour. In the Reformation times an anonymous German version of this book was published by Erasmus Alber with a preface by Luther, under the title, Der Barfüssermönche Eulenspiegel und Alkoran, Wittenberg, 1542. The most trustworthy contemporary source of information has been only recently again rendered accessible to us in the Memorabilia de Primitiv. Fratrum in Teutoniam Missorum Conversatione et Vita of the above-named Giordano of Giano, embracing the years 1207-1238, which G. Voigt discovered among his father’s papers, and has published with a full and comprehensive introduction. The Franciscans of Quaracchi near Florence have re-edited it “after the unique Berlin manuscript,” as well as the supplementary document, the De Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Anglia, in the first volume of their Analecta Franciscana, Quar., 1885.―Thode, in his Fr. v. A. und die Anfänge d. Kunst d. Renaissance in Ital. (Berl., 1885), has described in a thorough and brilliant style the mighty influence which St. Francis and his order exerted upon the development of art in Italy, especially of painting and architecture, as well as of poetry in the vernacular; for he has shown how the peculiar and close relation in which the saint stood to nature gave the first effective impulse to the emancipation of art from the trammels of formalism, and how the new artistic tendency, inspired by his spirit, was first given expression to in the building and adorning of the basilica at Assisi dedicated to him.285

§ 98.6. Party Divisions within the Franciscan Order.―That the founder was by no means wholly in sympathy with the tendency which prevailed in his order from A.D. 1221, and only tolerated what he was no longer in a position to prevent, might have been guessed from the fact that from that time he withdrew himself more and more from the supreme direction of the order, and made it over to Elias of Cortona, as his general-vicar, who in existing circumstances was better fitted for the task. But from his Testament it appears quite evident that he strictly adhered to the views of his early days, and even attempted a last but fruitless reaction against the tendency to worldly conformity that had set in. Thus, for example, it still puts all the brethren under obligation to perform honourable labour, and will allow them to beg only in case of necessity, but especially forbids them most distinctly by their sacred vow of obedience from asking any privilege from the papal chair, or altering the simple literal meaning of the rule of the order, and of this his last will and testament by addition, abatement, or change. After his death, on 4th October, 1226, Elias retained in his hand the regency till the next meeting of the Pentecost chapter; but then he was deprived of office by the election of John Pareus as general-minister, a member of the stricter party. Meanwhile the increasing number and wealth of their cloisters and churches, with their appurtenances, made it absolutely necessary that the brethren should face the question how the holding of such possessions was to be reconciled with the strict injunction of poverty in the sixth chapter of their rule, according to which “the brothers are to possess nothing of their own, neither a house, nor an estate, nor anything whatsoever, but are to go about for alms as strangers and pilgrims in this world.” At the next general chapter, in A.D. 1230, this question came up for discussion, along with that of the validity of the testament above referred to. When they could not agree among themselves, it was decided, in spite of all the protestations of the general, to request by a deputation the advice of the pope, Gregory IX., on this and certain other disputed questions. With reference to the testament, the pope declared that its demands, because issued without the consent and approval of the general chapter, could not be binding upon the order. With reference to the property question, he repudiated the rendering of the rule in such a way as if in this, just as in all other orders, only the possession of property on the part of individual brothers was forbidden; but the membership of the order as a whole could not be prevented from holding property, as directly contrary to the literal statements of the rule, without, however, entering upon the question as to whose property the movables and immovables standing really at the call of the order were to be considered. And as he had at an earlier date, on the occasion of sending a new Minorite mission to Morocco, granted as a privilege to the order to take alms in money, which was allowed by the rule only for the support of sick brethren, for the reason that without money they would not be able there to procure the necessaries of life, so he now extended this permission for other purposes essential to the good of the order, e.g. building and furnishing of cloisters and churches, as not contrary to the rule, if the collecting and spending of the money is carried on, not by members of the order, but by procurators chosen for the work. It was probably to this victory of the lax party that Elias owed his elevation at the next election, in A.D. 1332, to the office of general. It also enabled him to maintain his position for seven years, during which he showed himself particularly active and efficient, not only as general of the order, but also in political negotiations with the princes of Italy, especially as mediator between the pope and the emperor, Gregory IX. and Frederick II. But his government of the order in a despotic and lordly manner, and his reckless endeavours to conform to worldly customs, intensified the bitterness of his pious opponents, and his growing friendliness with the emperor lost him the favour of the pope. And so it came about that his overthrow was accomplished at the general chapter in Rome, in A.D. 1239. He now openly passed over into the service of the emperor, against whom the ban had anew been issued, accompanied him on his military campaigns, and inveighed unsparingly against the pope in public speeches. As partisan of the banned emperor, already de jure excommunicated, the ban was pronounced against him personally in A.D. 1244, and he was expelled from the order. He died in A.D. 1253, reconciled with the church after a penitential recantation and apology. His four immediate successors in the generalship all belonged to the strict party; but the growing estrangement of the order from the interests and purposes of the curia, especially too its relations to the Evangelium æternum, pronounced heretical in A.D. 1254 (§ 108, 5), produced a reaction, in consequence of which the general, John of Parma, was deprived of office in A.D. 1257. With his successor, St. Bonaventura, the opposition succeeded to the undisputed control of the order. The difficult question, how the really pre-eminently rich cloister property was to be reconciled with the rule of the order requiring absolute abandonment of all possessions, found now among the preponderating lax party, the so-called Fratres de communitate, its solution in the assertion, that the goods in their hands had been bestowed upon them by the donors only in usufruct, or even that they were presented not so much to the order, as rather to the Romish Church, yet with the object of supporting the order. Nicholas III., in A.D. 1279, legitimated the theory, for he decided the question in dispute in his bull Exiit qui seminat, by saying that it is allowed to the disciples of St. Francis to hold earthly goods in usufruct, but not in absolute possession, as this is demanded by the example of Christ and His apostles. But now arose a new controversy, over the form and measure of using with a distinction of a usus moderatus and a usus tenuis or pauper, the latter permitting no store even of the indispensable necessaries of life beyond what is absolutely required to satisfy present needs. Those, on the other hand, who were dissatisfied with the principles affirmed in the papal bull, the Spirituales or Zelatores, with Peter John de Oliva and Ubertino de Casale at their head, assumed an attitude of open, fanatical opposition to the papacy, identifying it with antichrist (§ 108, 6). A section of them, which, besides the points about poverty, took offence at the lax party also over questions of clothing reform, obtained permission from Cœlestine V., in A.D. 1294, to separate from the main body of the order, and, under the name of Cœlestine Eremites, to form an independent communion with a general of their own. They settled for the most part in Greece and on the islands of the Archipelago. Boniface VIII., in A.D. 1302, peremptorily insisted upon their return to the West and to the present order. But as he died soon after, even those who had returned continued their separate existence and their distinctive dress.―Continuation, § 112, 2.

§ 98.7. The Dominican or Preaching Order.―St. Dominic, to whom this order owes its origin, was born, in A.D. 1170, at Calaruega, in Old Castile, of a distinguished family (De Guzman?). As a learned Augustinian canon at Osma, he had already wrought zealously for the conversion of Mohammedans and heretics, when Bishop Diego of Osma, entrusted in A.D. 1204, by King Alphonso VIII. with obtaining a bride for his son Ferdinand, took him as one of his travelling retinue. The sudden death of the bride, a Danish princess, rendered the undertaking nugatory. On their homeward journey they met at Montpellier with the Cistercian mission, sent out for the conversion of the Albigensians (§ 109, 1), the utter failure of which had become already quite apparent. Dominic, inflamed with holy zeal, prevailed upon his bishop to enter along with himself upon the work already almost abandoned in despair; and after the bishop’s early death, in A.D. 1206, he carried on the enterprise at his own hand. For Albigensian women, converted by him, he founded a sort of conventual asylum at Prouille, and a house at Toulouse, which was soon afterwards gifted to him, became the first centre where his disciples gathered around him, whence by-and-by they removed into the cloister of St. Romanus, assigned to them by Bishop Fulco. During the Albigensian crusade, the thought ripened in his mind that he might secure a firmer basis and more powerful support for his enterprise by founding a new, independent order, whose proper and exclusive task should be the combating and preventing of heresy by instruction, preaching, and disputation. In order to obtain for this proposal ecclesiastical sanction, he accompanied his patron, Bishop Fulco of Toulouse, in A.D. 1215, to the Fourth Lateran Council at Rome. But pope and council seemed little disposed to favour his idea. The former, indeed, sought rather to persuade him to join some existing ecclesiastical institution, and carry out his scheme under its organization. Consequently Dominic, with his sixteen companions, resolved to adopt the rule of St. Augustine, augmented by several Præmonstratensian articles. When, however, Honorius III. had ascended the papal chair, Dominic hastened again to Rome, and in A.D. 1216 obtained from this pope without difficulty what Innocent III. had refused him, namely, permission to found a new, independent order, with the privilege of preaching and hearing confession everywhere. Then, and also subsequently, he preached frequently with great acceptance to those living in the papal palace, and thus an opportunity was afforded of establishing the office of a magister sacri palatii, or papal court preacher, which was immediately occupied, and has ever since continued to be held, by a Dominican. At a later period the supreme censorship of books was also assigned to this same official. The first general chapter of the order met at Bologna in A.D. 1220. There the vow of poverty, which was hitherto insisted upon only in the sense of all the earlier orders as a mere abandonment of property on the part of individuals, was put in a severer form, so that even the order as such kept itself free from every kind of possession of earthly goods and revenues, except the bare cloister buildings, and exhorted all its adherents to live only on begged alms. Thus the Dominicans, even earlier than the Franciscans, whose rule then permitted begging only in case of need, constituted themselves into a regular mendicant order. Dominic, however, chose voluntary poverty for himself and his disciples, not like St. Francis simply for the purpose of securing personal holiness, but rather only to obtain a perfectly free course for his work in the salvation of others. The official designation, “Ordo fratrum Prædicatum,” was also fixed at this chapter.286 At the second general chapter, in A.D. 1221, there were already representatives from sixty cloisters out of eight provinces. Dominic died soon after, at Bologna, on 6th August, 1221, uttering anathemas against any one who should corrupt his order by bestowing earthly goods upon it. He was canonized by Gregory IX. in A.D. 1233. His immediate successor, Jordanus, wrote his first biography, adorned, as we might expect, with endless miracles.

§ 98.8. According to the constitutional rules of the order, collected and revised by the third general of the order, Raimund de Pennaforte, about A.D. 1238, the general who stands at the head of the whole order, residing at Rome, magister generalis, is elected to office for life at the general chapter held annually at Pentecost, and he nominates his own socii as advisory assistants. The government of the provinces is conducted by a provincial chosen every four years by the provincial chapter, assisted by four advisory definitores, and each cloister elects its own prior. The mode of life was determined by strict rules, severe fasts were enjoined, involving strict abstinence from the use of flesh, and during particular hours of the day absolute silence had to be observed. In the matter of clothing, only woollen garments were allowed. The dress consisted of a white frock with white scapular and a small peaked capouch; but outside of the cloister a black cloak with capouch was worn over it. From the favourite play upon the name Dominican, Domini canes, in contrast to the dumb dogs of Isaiah lvi. 10, the order adopted as its coat of arms a dog with the torch of truth in its mouth. The special vocation of the order as preachers and opponents of heresy required a thorough scientific training. Every province of the order was therefore expected to have a seminary capable of giving a superior theological education to the members of the order, to which they gave the name of a studium generale, borrowed from the universities, although the predicate was here used in a sense much more restricted (comp. § 99, 3). But ambitious desires for scientific reputation incited them to obtain authority for instituting theological chairs in the University of Paris, the most celebrated theological seminary of that age. The endeavour was favoured by a conflict of Queen Blanca with the Parisian doctors, in consequence of which they left the city and for a time gathered their students around them partly at Rheims, partly at Angers, while the Dominicans, encouraged by the bishop, established their first chair in the vacant places in A.D. 1230. The Franciscans too accomplished the same end about this time. The old professors on their return used every means in their power to drive out the intruders, but were completely beaten after almost thirty years of passionate conflict, and the nurture of scholastic theology was henceforth all but a monopoly of the two mendicant orders (§ 103, 3). The art of ecclesiastical architecture and painting, which during this age reached a hitherto unattained degree of perfection, found many of its most distinguished ornaments and masters in the preaching order. And in zeal for missions to the Mohammedans and the heathen the Franciscans alone could be compared with them. But the order reached the very climax of its reputation, influence, and power when Gregory IX., in A.D. 1232, assigned to it exclusive control of the inquisition of heretics (§ 109, 2).―The veneration of the devout masses of the people, who preferred to confide their secret confessions to the itinerant monks, roused against both orders the hatred of the secular clergy, the preference shown them by the popes awakened the envy of the other orders, and their success in scientific pursuits brought down upon them the ill-will of the learned. Circumstances thus rendered it necessary for a long time that the two orders should stand well together for united combat and defence. But after all those hindrances had been successfully overcome, the rivalry that had been suppressed owing to temporary community of interests broke out all the more bitterly in the endeavour to secure world-wide influence, intensified by opposing philosophico-dogmatic theories (§ 113, 2), as well as by the difference in the interpretation and explanation of the doctrine of poverty, in regard to which they strove with one another in the most violent and passionate manner (§ 112, 2). From having in their hands the administration of the Inquisition the preaching order obtained an important advantage over the Minorites; while these, on the other hand, were far more popular among the common people than the proud, ambitious Dominicans, who occupied themselves with high civil and ecclesiastical politics as counsellors and confessors of the princes and the nobles.―Continuation, § 112, 4.

§ 98.9. To each of the two mendicant orders there was at an early date attached a female branch, which was furnished by the saint who founded the original order with a rule adapting his order’s ideal of poverty to the female vocation, and therefore designated and regarded as his “second order.”

The female conventual asylum, founded in A.D. 1206 at Prouille, may be considered the first cloister of Dominican nuns. The principal cloister and another institution, however, was the convent of San Sisto in Rome, given to St. Dominic for this purpose by Honorius III. In all parts of Christendom where the preaching order settled there now appeared female cloisters under the supervision and jurisdiction of its provincial superior, with seclusion, strict asceticism, passing their time in contemplation, and conforming as closely as possible to the mode of life and style of clothing prescribed for the male cloisters. This institution was presided over by a prioress.

The order of the Nuns of St. Clara, as “the second order of St. Francis,” was founded by St. Clara of Assisi. Born of a distinguished family, endowed with great physical beauty, and destined to an early marriage, in her eighteenth year, in A.D. 1212, she was powerfully impressed by the teaching of St. Francis, so that she resolved completely to abandon the world and its vanities. She proved the earnestness of her resolve by obeying the trying requirement of the saint to go through the streets of the city clad in a penitent’s cloak, begging alms for the poor. On Palm Sunday at the Portiuncula chapel she took at the hand of her chosen spiritual father the three vows. Her younger sister Agnes, along with other maidens, followed her example. Francis assigned to this union of “poor women” as a conventual residence the church of St. Damiani restored by him, from which they were sometimes called the Nuns of St. Damiani. When in A.D. 1219 St. Francis undertook his journey to the east, he commended them to the care of Cardinal Ugolino, who prescribed for them the rule of the Benedictine nuns; but after the saint’s return they so incessantly entreated him to draw up a rule for themselves, that he at last, in A.D. 1224, prepared one for them and obtained for it the approval of the pope. Clara died in A.D. 1253, and was canonized by Innocent IV. in A.D. 1255. Her order spread very widely in more than 2,000 cloisters, and can boast not only of having received 150 daughters of kings and princes, but also of having enriched heaven with an immense number of beatified and canonized virgins.

§ 98.10. The other Mendicant Orders.―The brilliant success of the Franciscans and Dominicans led other societies, either previously existing, or only now called into being, to adopt the character of mendicants. Only three of them succeeded, though in a much less degree than their models, in gaining position, name and extension throughout the West. The first of these was the Carmelite Order. It owed its origin to the crusader Berthold, Count of Limoges, who in A.D. 1156 founded a monastery at the brook of Elias on Mount Carmel, to which in A.D. 1209 the patriarch of Jerusalem prescribed the rule of St. Basil (§ 44, 3). Hard pressed by the Saracens, the Carmelites emigrated in A.D. 1238 to the West, where as a mendicant order, under the name of Frates Mariæ de Monte Carmelo, with unexampled hardihood they repudiated their founder Berthold, and maintained that the prophet Elias had been himself their founder, and that the Virgin Mary had been a sister of their order. What they most prided themselves on was the sacred scapular which the Mother of God herself had bestowed upon Simon Stock, the general of the order in A.D. 1251, with the promise that whosoever should die wearing it should be sure of eternal blessedness. Seventy years later, according to the legends of the order, the Virgin appeared to Pope John XXII. and told him she descended every Saturday into purgatory, in order to take such souls to herself into heaven. In the 17th century, when violent controversies on this point had arisen, Paul V. authenticated the miraculous qualities of this scapular, always supposing that the prescribed fasts and prayers were not neglected. Among the Carmelites, just as among the Franciscans, laxer principles soon became current, causing controversies and splits which continued down to the 16th century (§ 149, 6).―The Order of Augustinians arose out of the combination of several Italian monkish societies. Innocent IV. in A.D. 1243 prescribed to them the rule of St. Augustine (§ 45, 1) as the directory of their common life. It was only under Alexander IV. in A.D. 1256 that they were welded together into one order as Ordo Fratrum Eremitarum S. Augustini, with the duties and privileges of mendicant monks. Their order spread over the whole West, and enjoyed the special favour of the papal chair, which conferred upon its members the permanent distinction of the office of sacristan to the papal chapel and of chaplain to the Holy Father (Continuation, § 112, 5).―Finally, as the fifth in the series of mendicant orders, we meet with the Order of Servites, Servi b. Virg., devoted to the Virgin, and founded in A.D. 1233 by seven pious Florentines. It was, however, first recognised as a mendicant order by Martin V., and had equal rank with the four others granted it only in A.D. 1567 by Pius V.

§ 98.11. Penitential Brotherhoods and Tertiaries of the Mendicant Orders.―Carl Müller was the first to throw light upon this obscure period in the history of the Franciscans. The results of his investigations are essentially the following: In consequence of the appearance of St. Francis as a preacher of repentance and of the kingdom of God there arose a religious movement which, not merely had as its result the securing of numerous adherents to the association of Minor Brethren directed by himself, as well as to the society of “poor women” attaching itself to St. Clara, but also awakened in many, who by marriage and family duties were debarred from entering these orders, the desire to lead a life of penitence and asceticism removed from the noisy turmoil of the world in the quiet of their own homes while continuing their industrial employments and the discharge of civil duties. As originating in the movement inaugurated by St. Francis, these “Fratres pœnitentiæ” designated themselves “the third order of St. Francis,” and as such made the claim that they should not be disturbed in their retired penitential life to engage upon services for the State, military duty, and so forth. In this way they frequently came into conflict with the civil courts. Although in this direction powerfully supported by the papal curia, the brotherhoods were just so much the less able to press their claim to immunity in proportion as they spread and became more numerous throughout the cities of Italy, and the greater the rush into their ranks became from day to day from all classes, men and women, married and unmarried. The right of spiritual direction and visitation of them was assigned in A.D. 1234 by Gregory IX. to the bishops; but in A.D. 1247 Innocent IV., at the request of the Minorites, issued an ordinance according to which this right was to be given to them, but they were not able in any case to carry it out. Not only the secular clergy were opposed, but they were vigorously aided in their resistance by the Dominicans.―In A.D. 1209, at the beginning of the Albigensian crusade, St. Dominic had founded, at Toulouse, an association of married men and women under the name of Militia Christi, which, recognisable by the wearing of a common style of dress, undertook to vindicate the faith of the church against heretics, to restore again any goods that had wrongfully been appropriated by them, to protect widows and orphans, etc. This Militia migrated from France to Italy. Although originally founded for quite different purposes than the Penitential brotherhoods, it had the same privileges as these enjoyed conferred upon it by the popes, and assimilated itself largely to these in respect of mode of life and ascetic practices, and practically became amalgamated with them. But still the Penitential brotherhoods always formed a neutral territory, upon which, according to circumstances, sometimes the secular clergy, and sometimes one or other of the two mendicant orders, but much more frequently the Minorite clergy, exercised visitation rights. The first attempt at effecting a definite separation arose from the Dominicans, whose seventh general, Murione de Zamorra, prescribed a rule to those Penitential brotherhoods which were more closely related to his order. Upon their adopting it they were loosed from the general society as “Fratres de Pœnitentia” S. Dominici, and described as exclusively attached to the preaching order. In A.D. 1288, however, Jerome of Arcoli, the former general of the Franciscans, ascended the papal throne as Nicholas IV., and now used all means in his power to secure to his own order the supremacy in every department. In the following year, A.D. 1289, he issued the bill Supra montem, in which he prescribed (statuimus) a rule of his own for all Penitential brotherhoods; and then, since on this point, out of regard for the powerful Dominican order, he did not venture to do more than simply recommend, added the advice (consulimus), that the visitation and instruction of these should be assigned to the Minorite superiors, giving as a reason that all these institutions owed their origin to St. Francis. Against both the prescription and the advice, however, the bishops, as well in the interest of their own prerogatives as for the protection of their clergy, threatened in vocation and income, raised a vigorous and persistent protest, which at last, however, succumbed before the supreme power of the pope and the marked preference on the part of the people for the clergy of the orders. Those brotherhoods which adopted the rule thus obtruded on them stood now in the position of rivals, alongside of those of St. Dominic, as “Fratres de pœnitentia” S. Francisci. The Dominican Penitentials afterwards adopted the name and character of a “third order of St. Dominic” or “Tertiaries.” In the Franciscan legends, however, the rule drawn up by Nicholas IV. soon came to be represented as the one prescribed to the Penitentials on their first appearance in A.D. 1221 by St. Francis himself, only ratified anew by the pope, and has been generally regarded as such down to our own day.―The rapid growth in power and influence which the two older mendicant orders owe to the Tertiary Societies, induced also the later mendicant orders to produce an imitation of them within the range of their activity. Crossing the Alps the Penitential brotherhoods found among these orders, on this side, an open door,―the Franciscan brothers being especially numerous,―and entered into peculiarly intimate relations with the Beghard societies which had sprung up there, forming, like them, associations of a monastic type.

§ 98.12. Working Guilds of a Monkish Order.―(1) During the 11th century, midway between the strictly monastic and secular modes of life, a number of pious artisan families in Milan, mostly weavers, under the name of Humiliati, adopted a communal life with spiritual exercises, and community of handicraft and of goods. Whatever profit came from their work was devoted to the poor. The married continued their marriage relations after entering the community. In the 12th century, however, a party arose among them who bound themselves by vows of celibacy, and to them were afterwards attached a congregation of priests. Their society was first acknowledged by Innocent III. in A.D. 1021. But meanwhile many of them had come under the influence of Arnold (§ 108, 6), and so had become estranged from the Catholic church. At a later period these formed a connection with the French Waldensians, the Pauperes de Lugduno, adopted their characteristic views, and for the sake of distinction took the name of Pauperes Italici (§ 108, 12).―Related in every respect to the Lombard Humiliati, but distinguished from them by the separation of the sexes and a universal obligation of celibacy, were the communities of the Beguines and Beghards. Priority of origin belongs to the Beguines. They took the three monkish vows, but only for so long as they belonged to the society. Hence they could at any time withdraw, and enter upon marriage and other relations of social life. They lived under the direction of a lady superior and a priest in a so-called Beguine-house, Curtis Beguinarum, which generally consisted of a number of small houses connected together by one surrounding wall. Each had her own household, although on entrance she had surrendered her goods over to the community and on withdrawing she received them back. They busied themselves with handiwork and the education of girls, the spiritual training of females, and sewing, washing and nursing the poor in the houses of the city. The surplus of income over expenditure was applied to works of benevolence. Every Beguine house had its own costume and colour. These institutions soon spread over all Belgium, Germany, and France. The first Beguine house known to us was founded about 1180 at Liège, by the famous priest and popular preacher, Lambert la Bèghe, i.e. the Stammerer. Hallmann thinks that the name of the society may have been derived from that of the preacher. Earlier writers, without anything to support them but a vague similarity of sound, were wont to derive it from Begga, daughter of Pepin of Landen in the 7th century. Most likely of all, however, is Mosheim’s derivation of it from “beggan,” which means not to pray, “beten,” a praying sister, but to beg, as the modern English, and so proves that the institute originally consisted of a collection of poor helpless women. We may compare with this the designation “Lollards,” § 116, 3.―After the pattern of the Beguine communities there soon arose communities of men, Beghards, with similar tendencies. They supported themselves by handicraft, mostly by weaving. But even in the 13th century corruption and immorality made their appearance in both. Brothers and sisters of the New (§ 108, 4) and of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5), Fratricelli (§ 112, 2) and other heretics, persecuted by the church, took refuge in their unions and infected them with their heresies. The Inquisition (§ 109, 2) kept a sharp eye on them, and many were executed, especially in France. The 15th General Council at Vienna, in A.D. 1312, condemned eight of their positions as heretical. There was now a multitude of Beguine and Beghard houses overthrown. Others maintained their existence only by passing over to the Tertiaries of the Franciscans. Later popes took the communities that were free from suspicion under their protection. But even among these many forms of immorality broke out, concubinage between Beguines and Beghards, and worldliness, thus obliging the civil and ecclesiastical authorities again to step in. The unions still remaining in the time of the Reformation were mostly secularized. Only in Belgium have a few Beguine houses continued to exist to the present day as institutions for the maintenance of unmarried women of the citizen class.287

§ 98.13. The Spiritual Order of Knights.―The peculiarity of the Order of Knights consists in the combination of the three monkish vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience with the vow to maintain a constant struggle with the infidels. The most important of these orders were the following.

The Templars, founded in A.D. 1118 by Hugo de Payens and Godfrey de St. Omer for the protection of pilgrims in the Holy Land. The costume of the order was a white mantle with a red cross. Its rule was drawn up by St. Bernard, whose warm interest in the order secured for it papal patronage and the unanimous approbation of the whole West. When Acre fell in A.D. 1291 the Templars settled in Cyprus, but soon most of them returned to the West, making France their headquarters. They had their name probably from a palace built on the site of Solomon’s temple, which king Baldwin II. of Jerusalem assigned them as their first residence.288―Continuation, § 112, 7.

The Knights of St. John or Hospitallers, founded by merchants from Amalfi as early as the middle of the 11th century, residing at first in a cloister at the Holy Sepulchre, were engaged in showing hospitality to the pilgrims and nursing the sick. The head of the order Raimund du Puy, who occupied this position from A.D. 1118, added to these duties, in imitation of the Templars, that of fighting against the infidels. They carried a white cross on their breast, and a red cross on their standard. Driven out by the Saracens, they settled in Rhodes in A.D. 1310, and in A.D. 1530 took possession of Malta.289

The Order of Teutonic Knights had its origin from a hospital founded by citizens of Bremen and Lübeck during the siege of Acre in A.D. 1120. The costume of the knights was a white mantle with a black cross. Subsequently the order settled in Prussia (§ 93, 13), and in A.D. 1237 united with the order of the Brothers of the Sword, which had been founded in Livonia in A.D. 1202 (§ 93, 12). Under its fourth Grandmaster, the prudent as well as vigorous Hermann v. Salza, A.D. 1210-1239, it reached the summit of its power and influence.

The Knights of the Cross arose originally in Palestine under the name of the Order of Bethlehem, but at a later period settled in Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Poland. There they adopted the life of regular canons (§ 97, 5) and devoted themselves to hospital work and pastoral duties. They are still to be found in Bohemia as holders of valuable livings, with the badge of a cross of red satin.

In Spain, too, various orders of spiritual knights arose under vows to fight with the Moors (§ 95, 2). The two most important were the Order of Calatrava, founded in A.D. 1158 by the Cistercian monk Velasquez for the defence of the frontier city Calatrava, and the Order of Alcantara, founded in A.D. 1156 for a similar purpose. Both orders were confirmed by Alexander III. and gained great fame and still greater wealth in the wars against the Moors. Under Ferdinand the Catholic the rank of Grandmaster of both orders passed over to the crown. Paul III. in A.D. 1540 released the knights from the vow of celibacy, but obliged them to become champions of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. Both orders still exist, but only as military orders of merit.

§ 98.14. Bridge-Brothers and Mercedarians.―The name of Bridge Brothers, Frères Pontifex, Fratres Pontifices, was given to a union founded under Clement III., in Southern France, in A.D. 1189, for the building of hospices and bridges at points where pilgrims crossed the large rivers, or for the ferrying of pilgrims over the streams. As a badge they wore a pick upon their breast. Their constitution was modelled upon that of the Knights of St. John, and upon their gradual dissolution in the 13th century most of their number went over to that order.―Petrus [Peter] Nolescens, born in Languedoc, of noble parents and military tutor of a Spanish prince, moved by what he had seen of the sufferings of Christian slaves at the hand of their Moorish masters, and strengthened in his resolve by an appearance of the Queen of Heaven, founded in A.D. 1228 the knightly order of the Mercedarians, Mariæ Virg. de mercede pro redemptione Captivorum. They devoted all their property to the purchase of Christian captives, and where such a one was in danger of apostatising to Islam and the money for redemption was not procurable, they would even give themselves into slavery in his place. When in A.D. 1317 the Grand Commandership passed over into the hands of the priests, the order was gradually transformed into a monkish order. After A.D. 1600, in consequence of a reform after the pattern of the rule of the Barefoots, it became a mendicant order, receiving the privileges of other begging fraternities from Benedict XIII. in A.D. 1725. The order proved a useful institution of its time in Spain, France and Italy, and at a later period also in Spanish America.

III. Theological Science and its Controversies.

§ 99. Scholasticism in General.290

The scientific activity of the Middle Ages received the name of Scholasticism from the cathedral and cloister schools in which it originated (§ 90, 8). The Schoolmen, with their enthusiasm and devotion, their fidelity and perseverance, their courage and love of combat, may be called the knights of theology. Instead of sword and spear they used logic, dialectic and speculation; and profound scholarship was their breastplate and helmet. Ecclesiastical orthodoxy was their glory and pride. Aristotle, and also to some extent Plato, afforded them their philosophical basis and method. The Fathers in their utterances, sententiæ, the Councils in their dogmas and canons, the popes in their decretals, yielded to this Dialectic Scholasticism theological material which it could use for the systematising, demonstrating, and illustrating of the Church doctrine. If we follow another intellectual current, we find the Mystical Scholasticism taking up, as the highest task of theology, the investigating and describing of the hidden life of the pious thinker in and with God according to its nature, course, and results by means of spiritual contemplation on the basis of one’s individual experience. Dogmatics (including Ethics) and the Canon Law constituted the peculiar field of the Dialectic Theology of the Schoolmen. The standard of dogmatic theology during the 12th century was the Book of the Sentences of the Lombard (§ 102, 5); that of the Canon Law the Decree of Gratian. Biblical Exegesis as an independent department of scientific study stood, indeed, far behind these two, but was diligently prosecuted by the leading representatives of Scholasticism. The examination of the simple literal sense, however, was always regarded as a secondary consideration; while it was esteemed of primary importance to determine the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical signification of the text (§ 90, 9).

§ 99.1. Dialectic and Mysticism.―With the exception of the speculative Scotus Erigena, the Schoolmen of the Carlovingian Age were of a practical turn. This was changed on the introduction of Dialectic in the 11th century. Practical interests gave way to pure love of science, and it was now the aim of scholars to give scientific shape and perfect logical form to the doctrines of the church. The method of this Dialectic Scholasticism consisted in resolving all church doctrines into their elementary ideas, in the arranging and demonstrating of them under all possible categories and in the repelling of all possible objections of the sceptical reason. The end aimed at was the proof of the reasonableness of the doctrine. This Dialectic, therefore, was not concerned with exegetical investigations or Scripture proof, but rather with rational demonstration. Generally speaking, theological Dialectic attached itself to the ecclesiastical system of the day as positivism or dogmatism; for, appropriating Augustine’s Credo ut intelligam, it made faith the principal starting point of its theological thinking and the raising of faith to knowledge the end toward which it laboured. On the other hand, however, scepticism often made its appearance, taking not faith but doubt as the starting point for its inquiries, with the avowed intention, indeed, of raising faith to knowledge, but only acknowledging as worthy of belief what survived the purifying fire of doubt.―Alongside of this double-edged Dialectic, sometimes in conflict, sometimes in alliance with it, we meet with the Mystical Scholasticism, which appealed not to the reason but to the heart, and sought by spiritual contemplation rather than by Dialectic to advance at once theological science and the Christian life. Its object is not Dogmatics as such, not the development of Fides quæ creditur, but life in fellowship with God, the development of Fides qua creditur. By contemplative absorption of the soul into the depth of the Divine life it seeks an immediate vision, experience and enjoyment of the Divine, and as an indispensable condition thereto requires purity of heart, the love of God in the soul and thorough abnegation of self. What is gained by contemplation is made the subject of scientific statement, and thus it rises to speculative mysticism. Both contemplation and speculative mysticism in so far as their scientific procedure is concerned are embraced under the name of scholastic mysticism. The practical endeavour, however, after a deepening and enhancing of the Christian life in the direction of a real and personal fellowship with God was found more important and soon out-distanced the scientific attempt at tabulating and formulating the facts of inner experience. Practical mysticism thus gained the ascendency during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, and formed the favourite pursuit of the numerous inmates of the nunneries (§ 107).

§ 99.2. The Philosophical Basis of Dialectic Scholasticism was obtained mainly from the Aristotelian philosophy, which, down to the end of the 12th century, was known at first only from Latin renderings of Arabic and even Hebrew translations, and afterwards from Latin renderings of the Greek originals (§ 103, 1). Besides Aristotle, however, Plato also had his enthusiastic admirers during the Middle Ages. The study of the writings of Augustine and the Areopagite (§ 90, 7) led back again to him, and the speculative mystics vigorously opposed the supremacy of Aristotle.―At the outset of the philosophical career of scholasticism in the 11th century we meet with the controversy of Anselm and Roscellinus [Roscelin] about the relations of thinking and being or of the idea and the substance of things (§ 101, 3). The Nominalists, following the principles of the Stoics, maintained that General Notions, Universalia, are mere abstractions of the understanding, Nomina, which as such have no reality outside the human mind, Universalia post res. The Realists, on the contrary, affirmed the reality of General Notions, regarding them as objective existences before and apart from human thinking. But there were two kinds of realism. The one, based on the Platonic doctrine of ideas, taught that General Notions are really existent before the origin of the several things as archetypes in the Divine reason, and then also in the human mind before the contemplation of the things empirically given, Universalia ante res. The other, resting on Aristotle’s doctrine, considered them as lying in the things themselves and as first getting entrance into the human mind through experience, Universalia in rebus. The Platonic Realism thought to reach a knowledge of things by pure thought from the ideas latent in the human mind; the Aristotelian, on the other hand, thought to gain a knowledge of things only through experience and thinking upon the things themselves.―Continuation, § 103, 1.

§ 99.3. The Nurseries of Scholasticism.―The work previously done in cathedrals and cloister schools was, from about the 12th century, taken up in a more comprehensive and thorough way by the Universities. They were, as to their origin, independent of church and state, emperor and pope. Here and there famous teachers arose in the larger cities or in connection with some celebrated cloister or cathedral school. Youths from all countries gathered around them. Around the teacher who first attracted attention others gradually grouped themselves. Teachers and scholars organized themselves into a corporation, and thus arose the University. By this, however, we are to understand nothing less than a Universitas litterarum, where attention was given to the whole circle of the sciences. For a long time there was no thought of a distribution into faculties. When the multitude of teachers and students demanded a distribution into several corporations, this was done according to nations. The name signifies the Universitas magistrorum et scholarium rather than an articulated whole. The study here pursued was called Studium generale or universale, because the entrance thereto stood open to every one. At first each university pursued exclusively and in later times chiefly some special department of science. Thus, e.g. theology was prosecuted in Paris and Oxford and subsequently also in Cologne, jurisprudence in Bologna, Medicine in Salerno. The first university that expressly made provision for teaching all sciences was founded at Naples in A.D. 1224 with imperial munificence by Frederick II. The earliest attempt at a distribution of the sciences among distinct faculties was occasioned by the struggle between the university of Paris and the mendicant monks (§ 103, 1), who separated themselves from the other theological teachers and as members of a guild formed themselves in A.D. 1259 into a theological faculty. The number of the students, among whom were many of ripe years, was immensely great, and in some of the most celebrated universities reached often to ten or even twenty thousand. There was a ten years’ course prescribed for the training of the monks of Clugny: two years’ Logicalia, three years’ Literæ naturales et philosophicæ, and five years’ Theology. The Council at Tours in A.D. 1236 insisted that every priest should have passed through a five years’ course of study.291

§ 99.4. The Epochs of Scholasticism.―The intellectual work of the theologians of the Middle Ages during our period ran its course in four epochs, the boundaries of which nearly coincide with the boundaries of the four centuries which make up that period.

From the 10th century, almost completely destitute of any scientific movement, the so-called Sæculum obscurum, there sprang forth the first buds of scholarship, without, however, any distinct impress upon them of scholasticism.

In the 11th century scholasticism began to show itself, and that in the form of dialectic, both sceptical and dogmatic.

In the 12th century mysticism assumed an independent place alongside of dialectic, carried on a war of extermination against the sceptical dialectic, and finally appeared in a more peaceful aspect, contributing material to the positive dogmatic dialectic.

In the 13th century dialectic scholasticism gained the complete ascendency, and reached its highest glory in the form of dogmatism in league with mysticism, and never, in the persons of its greatest representatives, in opposition to it.

§ 99.5. The Canon Law.―After the Pseudo-Isidore (§ 87, 2) many collections of church laws appeared. They sought to render the material more complete, intentionally or unintentionally enlarging the forgeries and massing together the most contradictory statements without any attempt at comparison or sifting. The most celebrated of these were the collections of bishops Burchard of Worms about A.D. 1020, Anselm of Lucca, who died in A.D. 1086, nephew of the pope of the same name, Alexander II., and Ivo of Chartres, who died in A.D. 1116. Then the Camaldolite monk Gratian of Bologna undertook not only to gather together the material in a more complete form than had hitherto been done, but also to reconcile contradictory statements by scholastic argumentation. His work appeared about A.D. 1150 under the title Concordantia discordantium canonum, and is commonly called Decretum Gratiani. A great impulse was given to the study of canon law by means of this work, especially at Bologna and Paris. Besides the Legists, who taught the Roman law, there now arose numerous Decretists teaching the canon law and writing commentaries on Gratian’s work. Gregory IX. had a new collection of Decrees of Councils and Decretals in five books, the so-called Liber extra Decretum, or shortly Extra or Decretum Gregorii, drawn up by his confessor and Grand-Penitentiary, the learned Dominican Raimundus [Raimund] de Pennaforti [Pennaforte], and sent it in A.D. 1234 to the University of Bologna. Boniface VIII. in A.D. 1298 added to this collection in five parts his Liber Sextus, and Clement V. in A.D. 1314 added what are called after him the Clementinæ. From that time down to A.D. 1483 the decretals of later popes were added as an appendix under the name Extravagantes, and with these the Corpus juris canonici was concluded. An official edition was begun in A.D. 1566 by the so-called Correctores Romani, which in A.D. 1580 received papal sanction as authoritative for all time to come.292

§ 99.6. The Schoolmen as such contributed nothing to Historical Literature. Histories were written not in the halls of the universities but in the cells of the monasteries. Of these there were three kinds as we have already seen in § 90, 9. For workers in the department of Biblical History, see § 105, 5; and of Legends of the Saints, § 104, 8. For ancient Church History Rufinus and Cassiodorus were the authorities and the common text books (§ 5, 1). An interesting example of the manner in which universal history was treated when mediæval culture had reached its highest point, is afforded by the Speculum magnum s. quadruplex of the Dominican Vincent of Beauvais (Bellovacensis). This treatise was composed about the middle of the 13th century at the command of Louis IX. of France as a hand-book for the instruction of the royal princes. It forms an encyclopædic exposition of all the sciences of that day in four parts, Speculum historiale, naturale, doctrinale, and morale. The Speculum doctrinale breaks off just at the point where it should have passed over to theology proper, and the Speculum morale is a later compilation by an unknown hand.293

§ 100. The Sæculum Obscurum: the 10th Century.294

In contrast to the brilliant theological scholarship and the activity of religious life in the 9th century, as well as to the remarkable culture and scientific attainments of the Spanish Moors with their world-renowned school at Cordova, the darkness of the 10th century seems all the more conspicuous, especially its first half, when the papacy reached its lowest depths, the clergy gave way to unblushing worldliness and the church was consumed by the foulest corruption. During this age, indeed, there were gleams of light even in Italy, but only like a will o’ the wisp rising from swampy meadows, a fanatical outburst on behalf of ancient classic paganism. The literature of this period stood in direct and avowed antagonism to Christian theology and the Christian church, and commended a godless frivolity and the most undisguised sensuality. A grammarian Wilgard of Ravenna taught openly that Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal were better and nobler than Paul, Peter, and John. The church had still so much authority as to secure his death as a heretic, but in almost all the towns of Italy he had sympathisers, and that among the clergy as well as among laymen. It was only by the influence of the monks of Clugny, the reformatory ascetic efforts of Romuald (§ 98, 1) and St. Nilus the Younger, a very famous Greek recluse of Gaeta, who died in A.D. 1005, aided by the reformatory measures for the purification of the church taken by the Saxon emperors, that this unclean spirit was gradually driven out. The famous endeavours of Alfred the Great and their temporary success were borne to the grave along with himself. From A.D. 959 however, Dunstan’s reformation awakened anew in England appreciation of a desire for theological and national culture. The connection of the imperial house of Otto with Byzantium also aroused outside of Italy a longing after old classical learning. The imperial chapel founded by the brother of Otto I., Bruno the Great (§ 97, 2), became the training school of a High-German clergy, who were there carefully trained as far as the means at the disposal of that age permitted, not only in politics, but also in theological and classical studies.

§ 100.1. The degree to which Classical Studies were pursued in Germany during the period of the Saxon imperial house is shown by the works of the learned nun Roswitha of Gandersheim, north of Göttingen, who died about A.D. 984. The first edition of her works, which comprise six dramas on biblical and ecclesiastical themes in the style of Terence, in prose interspersed with rhymes, also eight legends, a history of Otto I., and a history of the founding of her cloister in leonine hexameters, was issued by the humanist Conrad Celtes, with woodcuts by Dürer in A.D. 1501.―Notker Labeo, president of the cloister school of St. Gall, who died in A.D. 1022, enriched the old German literature by translations of the Psalms, of Aristotle’s Organon, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, and various writings of Boethius [Boëthius].―In England the educational efforts of St. Dunstan (§ 97, 4) were powerfully supported by Bishop Ethelwold of Winchester, who quite in the spirit of Alfred the Great (§ 90, 10) wrought incessantly with his pupils for the extension and enrichment of the Anglo-Saxon literature. Of his scholars by far the most famous was Aelfric, surnamed Grammaticus, who flourished about A.D. 990. He wrote an Anglo-Saxon Grammar, prepared a collection of homilies for all the Sundays and festivals and a free translation from sermons of the Latin Fathers, translated also the Old Testament heptateuch, and wrote treatises on other portions of Scripture and on biblical questions.295

§ 100.2. Italy produced during the second half of the century many theologians eminent and important in their day. Atto, bishop of Vercelli, who died about A.D. 960, distinguished himself by his exegetical compilations on Paul’s epistles, and as a homilist and a vigorous opponent of the oppressors of the church during these rough times. Still more important was his younger contemporary Ratherius, bishop of Verona, afterwards of Liège, but repeatedly driven away from both, who died A.D. 974. A strict and zealous reformer of clerical morals, he insisted upon careful study of the Bible, and wrought earnestly against the unblushing paganism of the Italian scholars of his age as well as against all kinds of hypocrisy, superstition, and ecclesiastical corruptions. This, and also his attachment to the political interests of the German court, exposed him to much persecution. Among his writings may be named De contemptu canonum, Meditationes cordis, Apologia sui ipsius, De discordia inter ipsum et clericos.―In France we meet with Odo of Clugny, who died in A.D. 942, famed as a hymn writer and homilist, and, in his Collationum Ll. iii., as a zealous reprover of the corrupt morals of his age. In England and France, Abbo of Fleury taught toward the end of the century. From England, where he had been induced to go by St. Dunstan, he returned after some years to his own cloister of Fleury, and by his academic gifts raised its school to great renown. He wrote on astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and history. He also composed a treatise on dialectics, in which he makes his appearance as the first and most eminent precursor of the Schoolmen. Chosen abbot of his monastery and exercising strict discipline over his monks, he suffered a martyr’s death by the hand of a murderer in A.D. 1004.―Gerbert of Rheims, afterwards Pope Sylvester II. (§ 96, 3, 4), during his active career lived partly in France, partly in Italy. Distinguished both for classical and Arabic scholarship, he shone in the firmament of this dark century as it was passing away († A.D. 1003) like a star of the first magnitude in theology, mathematics, astronomy, and natural science, while by the common people he was regarded as a magician. Under him the school of Rheims reached the summit of its fame.

§ 101. The Eleventh Century.

During the 11th century, with the moral and spiritual elevation of the church, eager attention was again given to theological science. It was at first mainly prosecuted in the monasteries of the Cistercians and among the monks of Clugny, but afterwards at the seminaries which arose toward the end of the century. The dialectic method won more and more the upper hand in theology, and in the Eucharist controversy between Lanfranc and Berengar, as well as in the controversy between Anselm and Gaunilo about the existence of God, and between Anselm and Roscelin about the Trinity, Dogmatism obtained its first victory over Scepticism.

§ 101.1. The Most Celebrated Schoolmen of this Century.

Fulbert opens the list, a pupil of Gerbert, and from A.D. 1007 Bishop of Chartres Before entering on his episcopate he had founded at Chartres a theological seminary. His fame spread over all the West, so that pupils poured in upon him from every side.

The most important of these was Berengar of Tours, afterwards a canon and teacher of the cathedral school of his native city, and then again archdeacon at Angers. He died in A.D. 1088. The school of Tours rose to great eminence under him.

Lanfranc, the celebrated opponent of the last-named, was abbot of the monastery of Bec in Normandy, and from A.D. 1070 Archbishop of Canterbury (§ 96, 8). He died in A.D. 1089. He wrote against Berengar Liber de corpore et sanguine Domini.

Bishop Hildebert of Tours, who died in A.D. 1134, famous as a writer of spiritual songs, was a pupil of Berengar. But he avoided the sceptical tendencies of his teacher, and, warned of the danger of dialectic and following the mystical bent of his mind, he applied himself to the cultivation of a life of faith, so that St. Bernard praised him as tantam columnam ecclesiæ.

The monastic school of Bec, which Lanfranc had rendered celebrated, reached the summit of its fame under his pupil Anselm of Canterbury, who far excelled his teacher in genius as well as in importance for theological science. He was born in A.D. 1033 at Aosta in Italy, educated in the monastery of Bec, became teacher and abbot there, was raised in A.D. 1093 to the archiepiscopal chair of Canterbury, and died in A.D. 1109. As a churchman he courageously defended the independence of the church according to the principles of Hildebrand (§ 96, 12). As a theologian he may be ranked in respect of acuteness and profundity, speculative talent and Christian earnestness, as a second Augustine, and on the theological positions of that Father he based his own. Though carrying dialectic even into his own private devotions, there was yet present in him a vein of religious mysticism. According to him faith is the condition of true knowledge, Fides præcedit intellectum; but it is also with him a sacred duty to raise faith to knowledge, Credo ut intelligam. Only he who in respect of endowment and culture is not capable of this intellectual activity should content himself with simple Veneratio. His Monologium contains discussions on the nature of God, his Proslogium proves the being of God; his three books, De fide Trinitatis et de incarnatione Verbi, develop and elaborate the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology; while the three dialogues De veritate, De libero arbitrio, and De casu diaboli treat of the object, and the tract Cur Deus homo? treats of the subject, of soteriology. The most able, profound, and impressive of all his writings is the last-named, which proves the necessity of the incarnation of God in Christ for the reconciliation of man with God. It was an epoch-making treatise in the historical development of the church doctrine of satisfaction on Pauline foundations.296 Anselm took part in the controversy of the Greeks by his work De processione Spiritus (§ 67, 4). He discussed the question of predestination in a moderate Augustinian form in the book, De concordia præscientæ et prædest. et gratiæ Dei cum libero arbitrio. In his Meditationes and Orationes he gives expression to the ardent piety of his soul, as also in the voluminous collection (426) of his letters.297

Anselm of Laon, surnamed Scholasticus, was the pupil of Anselm of Canterbury. From A.D. 1076 he taught with brilliant success at Paris, and thus laid the first foundation of its university. Subsequently he returned to his native city Laon, was made there archdeacon and Scholasticus, and founded in that place a famous theological school. He died in A.D. 1117. He composed the Glossa interlinearis, a short exposition of the Vulgate between the lines, which with Walafrid’s Glossa ordinaria (§ 90, 4), became the favourite exegetical handbook of the Middle Ages.

William of Champeaux, the proper founder of the University of Paris, had already taught rhetoric and dialectic for some time with great success in the cathedral school, when the fame of the theological school of Laon led him to the feet of Anselm. In A.D. 1108 he returned to Paris, and had immense crowds listening to his theological lectures. Chagrined on account of a defeat in argument at the hand of Abælard, one of his own pupils, he retired from public life into the old chapel of St. Victor near Paris, and there founded a monastery under the same name for canons of the rule of St. Augustine. He died in A.D. 1121 as Bishop of Chalons.

The abbot Guibert of Nogent, in the diocese of Laon, who died about A.D. 1124, a scholar of Anselm at Bec, was a voluminous writer and, with all his own love of the marvellous, a vigorous opponent of all the grosser absurdities of relic and saint worship. He wrote a useful history of the first crusade, and a work important in its day entitled, Liber quo ordine sermo fieri debeat. His great work was one in four books, De pignoribus Sanctorum, against the abuses of saint and relic worship, the exhibition of pretended parts of the Saviour’s body, e.g. teeth, pieces of the foreskin, navel cord, etc., against the translation or distribution of the bodies of saints, against the fraud of introducing new saints, relics, and legends.

§ 101.2. Berengar’s Eucharist Controversy, A.D. 1050-1079.―Berengar of Tours elaborated a theory of the eucharist which is directly antagonistic to the now generally prevalent theory of Radbert (§ 91, 3). He taught that while the elements are changed and Christ’s body is really present, neither the change nor the presence is substantial. The presence of His body is rather the existence of His power in the elements, and the change of the bread is the actual manifestation of this power in the form of bread. The condition however of this power-presence is not merely the consecration but also the faith of the receiver. Without this faith the bread is an empty and impotent sign. Such views were publicly expressed by him and his numerous followers for a long while without causing any offence. But when he formally stated them in a letter to his friend Lanfranc of Bec, this churchman became Berengar’s accuser at the Synod of Rome in A.D. 1050. The synod condemned him unheard. A second synod of the same year held at Vercelli, before which Berengar was to have appeared but could not because he had meanwhile been imprisoned in France, in an outburst of fanatical fury had the treatise of Ratramnus on the eucharist, wrongly ascribed to Erigena, torn up and burnt, while Berengar’s doctrine was again condemned. Meanwhile Berengar was by the intervention of influential friends set at liberty and made the acquaintance of the powerful papal legate Hildebrand, who, holding by the simple Scripture doctrine that the bread and wine of the sacrament was the body and blood of Christ, occupied probably a position intermediate between Radbert’s grossly material and Berengar’s dynamic hypothesis. Disinclined to favour the fanaticism of Berengar’s opponents, Hildebrand contented himself with exacting from him at the Synod of Tours in A.D. 1054 a solemn declaration that he did not deny the presence of Christ in the Supper, but regarded the consecrated elements as the body and blood of Christ. Emboldened by this decision and still always persecuted by his opponents as a heretic, Berengar undertook in A.D. 1059 a journey to Rome, in order, as he hoped, by Hildebrand’s influence to secure a distinct papal verdict in his favour. But there he found a powerful opposition headed by the passionate and pugnacious Cardinal Humbert (§ 67, 3). This party at the Lateran Council in Rome in A.D. 1059, compelled Berengar, who was really very deficient in strength of character, to cast his writings into the fire and to swear to a confession composed by Humbert which went beyond even Radbert’s theory in the gross corporeality of its expressions. But in France he immediately again repudiated this confession with bitter invectives against Rome, and vindicated anew against Lanfranc and others his earlier views. The bitterness of the controversy now reached its height. Hildebrand had meanwhile, in A.D. 1073, himself become pope. He vainly endeavoured to bring the controversy to an end by getting Berengar to accept a confession couched in moderate terms admitting the real presence of the body and blood in the Supper. The opposite party did not shrink from casting suspicion on the pope’s own orthodoxy, and so Hildebrand was obliged, in order to avoid the loss of his great life work in a mass of minor controversies, to insist at a second synod in Rome in A.D. 1079 upon an unequivocal and decided confession of the substantial change of the bread. Berengar was indiscreet enough to refer to his private conversations with the pope; but now Gregory commanded him at once to acknowledge and abjure his error. With fear and trembling Berengar obeyed, and the pope dismissed him with a safe conduct, distinctly prohibiting all further disputation. Bowed down under age and calamities, Berengar withdrew to the island of St. Come, near Tours, where he lived as a solitary penitent in the practice of strict asceticism, and died at a great age in peace with the church in A.D. 1088. His chief work is De Cœna S. adv. Lanfr.―Continuation, § 102, 5.

§ 101.3. Anselm’s Controversies.

On the basis of his Platonic realism, Anselm of Canterbury constructed the ontological proof of the being of God, that there is given in man’s reason the idea of the most perfect being to whose perfection existence also belongs. When he laid this proof before the learned world in his Monologium and Proslogium, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, who was a supporter of Aristotelian realism, opposed him, and acutely pointed out the defects of this proof in his Liber pro insipiente. He so named it in reference to a remark of Anselm, who had said that even the insipiens who, according to Psalm xiv. 1, declares in his heart that there is no God, affords thereby a witness for the existence of the idea, and consequently also for the existence of God. Anselm replied in his Apologeticus c. Gaunilonem. And there the controversy ended without any definite result.

Of more importance was Anselm’s controversy with Roscelin, the Nominalist, canon of Compiègne. He in a purely nominalistic fashion understood the idea of the Godhead as a mere abstraction, and thought that the three persons of the Godhead could not be una res, οὐσία, as then they must all at once have been incarnate in Christ. A synod at Soissons in A.D. 1092 condemned him as a tritheist. He retracted, but afterwards reiterated his earlier views. Anselm then, in his tract De fide Trinitatis et de incarnatione Verbi contra blasphemias Rucelini, proved that the drift of his argumentation tended toward tritheism, and vindicated the trinitarian doctrine of the church. For more than two centuries Nominalism was branded with a suspicion of heterodoxy, until in the 14th century a reaction set in (§ 113, 3), which restored it again to honour.

§ 102. The Twelfth Century.

In the 12th century dialectic and mysticism are seen contending for the mastery in the department of theology. On the one side stands Abælard, in whom the sceptical dialectic had its most eminent representative. Over against him stands St. Bernard as his most resolute opponent. Theological dialectic afterwards assumed a pre-eminently dogmatic and ecclesiastical character, entering into close relationship with mysticism. While this movement was mainly carried on in France, where the University of Paris attracted teachers and scholars from all lands, it passed over from thence into Germany, where Provost Gerhoch and his brother Arno gave it their active support in opposition to that destructive sort of dialectic that was then spreading around them. Although the combination of dogmatic dialectic and mysticism had for a long time no formal recognition, it ultimately secured the approval of the highest ecclesiastical authorities.

§ 102.1. The Contest on French Soil.

The Dialectic Side of the Gulf.―Peter Abælard, superior to all his contemporaries in acuteness, learning, dialectic power, and bold freethinking, but proud and disputatious, was born at Palais in Brittany in A.D. 1079. His first teacher in philosophy was Roscelin. Afterwards he entered the school of William of Champeaux at Paris, the most celebrated dialectician of his times. Having defeated his master in a public disputation, he founded a school at Melun near Paris, where thousands of pupils flocked to him. In order to be nearer Paris, he moved his school to Corbeil; then to the very walls of Paris on Mount St. Genoveva; and ceased not to overwhelm William with humiliations, until his old teacher retreated from the field. In order to secure still more brilliant success, he began to study theology under the Schoolman Anselm of Laon. But very soon the ambitious scholar thought himself superior also to this master. Relying upon his dialectical endowments, he took a bet without further preparation to expound the difficult prophet Ezekiel. He did it indeed to the satisfaction of scholars, but Anselm refused to allow him to continue his lectures. Abælard now returned to Paris, where he gathered around him a great number of enthusiastic pupils. Canon Fulbert appointed him teacher of his beautiful and talented niece Heloise. He won her love, and they were secretly married. She then denied the marriage in order that he might not be debarred from the highest offices of the church. Persisting in this denial, her relatives dealt severely with her, and Abælard had her placed in the nunnery of Argenteuil. Fulbert in his fury had Abælard seized during the night and emasculated, so that he might be disqualified for ecclesiastical preferment. Overwhelmed with shame, he fled to the monastery of St. Denys, and there in A.D. 1119 took the monastic vow. Heloise took the veil at Argenteuil. But even at St. Denys Abælard was obliged by the eager entreaties of former scholars to resume his lectures. His free and easy treatment of the church doctrine and his haughty spirit aroused many enemies against him, who at the Synod of Soissons in A.D. 1121 compelled him before the papal legate to cast into the fire his treatise De Unitate et Trinitate divina, and had him committed to a monastic prison. By the intercession of some friends he was soon again set free, and returned to St. Denys. But when he made the discovery that Dionysius at Paris was not the Areopagite the persecution of the monks drove him into a forest near Troyes. There too his scholars followed him and made him resume his lectures. His colony grew up under his hands into the famous abbey of the Paraclete. Finding even there no rest, he made over the abbey of the Paraclete to Heloise, who had not been able to come to terms with her insubordinate nuns at Argenteuil. He himself now became abbot of the monastery of St. Gildasius at Ruys in Brittany, and, after in vain endeavouring for eight years to restore the monastic discipline, he again in A.D. 1136 resumed his office of teacher and lectured at St. Genoveva near Paris with great success. He wrote an ethical treatise, “Scito te ipsum,” issued a new and enlarged edition of his Theologia christiana, now extant as the incomplete Introductio ad theologiam in three books, and composed a Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judæum et Christianum, in which the heathen philosophers and poets of antiquity are ranked almost as high as the prophets and apostles. In Sic et Non, “Yes and No,” a collection of extracts from the Fathers under the various heads of doctrine contradictory of one another, the traditional theology was held up to contempt.

§ 102.2.

Abælard maintained, in opposition to the Augustinian-Anselmian theory, that faith preceded knowledge, that only what we comprehend is to be believed. He did indeed intend that his dialectic should be used not for the overthrow but for the establishment of the church doctrine. He proceeded, however, from doubt as the principle of all knowledge, regarding all church dogmas as problems which must be proved before they can be believed: Dubitando enim ad inquisitionem venimus, inquirendo veritatem percipimus. He thus reduced faith to a mere probability and measured the content of faith by the rule of subjective reason. This was most glaring in the case of the trinitarian doctrine, which with him approached Sabellian modalism. God as omnipotent is to be called Father, as all wise the Son, as loving and gracious the Spirit; and so the incarnation becomes a merely temporal and dynamic immanence of the Logos in the man Jesus. The significance of the ethical element in Christianity quite overshadowed that of the dogmatic. He taught that all fundamental truths of Christianity had been previously proclaimed by philosophers and poets of Greece and Rome, who were scarcely less inspired than the prophets and apostles, the special service of the latter consisting in giving currency to these truths among the uncultured. He turns with satisfaction from the theology of the Fathers to that of the apostles, and from that again to the religion of Jesus, whom he represents rather as a reformer introducing a pure morality than as a founder of a religious system. Setting aside Anselm’s theory of satisfaction, he regards the redemption and reconciliation of man as consisting in the awakening in sinful man, by means of the infinite love displayed by Christ’s teaching and example, by His life, sufferings and death upon the cross, a responding love of such fulness and power, that he is thereby freed from the dominion of sin and brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God.298―Abælard’s fame and following grew in a wonderful manner from day to day; but also powerful opponents dragged his heresies into light and vigorously combated them. The most important of these were the Cistercian monk William of Thierry and St. Bernard, who called attention to the dangerous tendency of his teaching. St. Bernard dealt personally with the heretic, but when he failed in converting him, he appeared in A.D. 1141 at the Synod of Sens as his accuser. The synod condemned as heretical a series of statements culled from his writings by Bernard. Abælard appealed to the pope, but even his friends at Rome, among whom was Card. Guido de Castella, afterwards Pope Cœlestine II., could not close their eyes to his manifest heterodoxies. His friendship for Arnold of Brescia also told against him at Rome (§ 108, 7). Innocent II. therefore excommunicated Abælard and his supporters, condemned his writings to be burnt and himself to be confined in a monastery. Abælard found an asylum with the abbot Peter the Venerable of Clugny, who not only effected his reconciliation with Bernard, but also, on the ground of his Apologia s. Confessio fidei, in which he submitted to the judgment of the church, obtained permission from the pope to pass his last days in peace at Clugny. During this time he composed his Hist. calamitatum Abælardi, an epistolary autobiography, which, though not free from vanity and bitterness, is yet worthy to be ranked with Augustine’s “Confessions” for its unreserved self-accusation and for the depth of self-knowledge which it reveals. He died in A.D. 1142, in the monastery of St. Marcellus at Chalons, where he had gone in quest of health. He was buried in the abbey of the Paraclete, where Heloise laid on his coffin the letter of absolution of Peter of Clugny. Twenty-two years later Heloise herself was laid in the same quiet resting place.299

§ 102.3.

The Mystic Side of the Gulf.―Abælard’s most famous opponent was St. Bernard of Clairvaux (§ 98, 1), born in A.D. 1091 at Fontaines near Dijon in Burgundy, died in A.D. 1153, a man of such extraordinary influence on his generation as the world seldom sees. Venerated as a miracle worker, gifted with an eloquence that carried everything before it (doctor mellifluus), he was the protector and reprover of the Vicar of God, the peacemaker among the princes, the avenger of every wrong. His genuine humility made him refuse all high places. His enthusiasm for the hierarchy did not hinder him from severely lashing clerical abuses. It was his word that roused the hearts of men throughout all Europe to undertake the second crusade, and that won many heretics and schismatics back to the bosom of the church. Having his conversation in heaven, leading a life of study, meditation, prayer, and ecstatic contemplation, he had also dominion over the earth, and by counsel, exhortation, and exercise of discipline exerted a quickening and healthful influence on all the relations of life. His theological tendency was in the direction of contemplative mysticism, with hearty submission to the doctrine of the church. Like Abælard, but from the opposite side, he came into conflict with the theory of Anselm; for the ideal of theology with him was not the development of faith into knowledge by means of thought, but rather the enlightenment of faith in the way of holiness. Bernard was not at all an enemy of science, but he rather saw in the dialectical hair-splitting of Abælard, which grudged not to cut down the main props of saving truth for the glorification of its own art, the overthrow of all true theology and the destruction of all the saving efficacy of faith. Heart theology founded on heart piety, nourished and strengthened by prayer, meditation, spiritual illumination and holiness, was for him the only true theology. Tantum Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. Orando facilius quam disputando et dignius Deus quæritur et invenitur. The Bible was his favourite reading, and in the recesses of the forest he spent much time in prayer and study of the Scriptures. But in ecstasy (excessus) which consists in withdrawal from sensible phenomena and becoming temporarily dead to all earthly relations, the soul of the pious Christian is able to rise into the immediate presence of God, so that “more angelorum” it reaches a blessed vision and enjoyment of the Divine glory and that perfect love which loves itself and all creatures only in God. Yet even he confesses that this highest stage of abstraction was only attained unto by him occasionally and partially through God’s special grace. Bernard’s mysticism is most fully set forth in his eighty-six Sermons on the first two chapters of the Song of Solomon and in the tract De diligendo Deo. In his controversy with Abælard he wrote his Tractatus de erroribus Petri Abælardi. To the department of dogmatics belongs De gratia et libero arbitrio; and to that of history, the biography of his friend Malachias (§ 149, 5). The most important of his works is De Consideratione, in 5 bks., in which with the affection of a friend, the earnestness of a teacher, and the authority of a prophet, he sets before Pope Eugenius III. the duties and dangers of his high position. He was also one of the most brilliant hymn writers of the Middle Ages. Alexander III. canonized him in A.D. 1173, and Pius VIII. in A.D. 1830 enrolled him among the doctores ecclesiæ (§ 47, 22 c).―Soon after the controversy with Abælard had been brought to a close by the condemnation of the church, Bernard was again called upon to resist the pretensions of dialectic. Gilbert de la Porrée (Porretanus), teacher of theology at Paris, who became Bishop of Poitiers in A.D. 1142 and died in A.D. 1154, in his commentary on the theological writings of Boëthius (§ 47, 23) ascribed reality to the universal term “God” in such a way that instead of a Trinity we seemed to have a Quaternity. At the Synod of Rheims, A.D. 1148, under the presidency of Pope Eugenius III., Bernard appeared as accuser of Porretanus. Gilbert’s doctrine was condemned, but he himself was left unmolested.300

§ 102.4.

Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Mysticism.―At the school of the monastery of St. Victor in Paris, founded by William of Champeaux after his defeat at the hands of Abælard, an attempt was made during the first half of the 12th century to combine mysticism and dialectic in the treatment of theology. The peaceable heads of this school would indeed have nothing to do with the speculations of Abælard and his followers which tended to overthrow the mysteries of the faith. But the mystics of St. Victor made an important concession to the dialecticians by entering with as much energy upon the scientific study and construction of dogmatics as they did upon the devout examination of Scripture and mystical theology. They exhibited a speculative power and a profundity of thought that won the hearty admiration of the subtlest of the dialecticians. By far the most celebrated of this school was Hugo of St. Victor. Descended from the family of the Count of Halberstadt, born in A.D. 1097, nearly related to St. Bernard, honoured by his contemporaries as Alter Augustinus or Lingua Augustini, Hugo was one of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages. Having enjoyed a remarkably complete course of training, he was enthusiastically devoted to the pursuit of science, and, endowed with rich and deep spirituality, he exerted a most healthful and powerful influence upon his own and succeeding ages, although church and science had to mourn their loss by his early death in A.D. 1141. In his Eruditio didascalica we have in 3 bks. an encyclopædic sketch of all human knowledge as a preparation to the study of theology, and in other 3 bks. an introduction to the Bible and church history.301 His Summa sententiarum is an exposition of dogmatics on patristic lines, an ecclesiastical counterpart of Abælard’s Sic et Non. The ripest and most influential of all his works, and the most independent, is his De sacramentis christ. fidei, in 2 bks., in which he treats of the whole contents of dogmatics from the point of view of the Sacraments (§ 104, 2). His exegetical works are less important and less original. His mysticism is set forth ex professo in his Soliloquium de arrha animæ and in the series of three tracts, De arca morali, De arca mystica, and De vanitate mundi. He makes Noah’s ark the symbol of the church as well as of the individual soul which journeys over the billows of the world to God, and, by the successive stages of lectio, cogitatio, meditatio, oratio, and operatio reaches to contemplatio or the vision of God.―Hugo’s pupil, and from A.D. 1162 the prior of his convent, was the Scotchman Richard St. Victor, who died in A.D. 1173. With less of the dialectic faculty than his master―though this too is shown in his 6 bks. De trinitate, a scholastic exposition of the Cognitio or Fides quæ creditur―he mainly devoted his energies to the development on the mystico-contemplative side of the “Affectus” or Fides qua creditur, which aims at the vision and enjoyment of God. This he represents as reached by the three stages of contemplation, distinguished as mentis dilatatio, sublevatio, and alienatio. Among his mystical tracts, mostly mystical expositions of Scripture passages, the most important are, De præparatione animæ ad contemplationem, s. de xii. patriarchis, and the 4 bks. De gratia contemplationis s. de arca mystica. These are also known as Benjamin minor and B. major. In Richard there appears the first indications of a misunderstanding with the dialecticians which, among the late Victorines, and especially in the case of Walter of St. Victor, took the form of vehement hostility.