Note 73 — Chapter VI · THE LAST CRUSADES

It was very seldom that the Christians thought of converting the Mussulmans. When the sword failed, then they resorted to arguments. The occasion will excuse us from departing from chronological order, and saying, that in the year 1285, Pope Honorius IV in his design to convert the Saracens to Christianity, wished to establish schools at Paris for the tuition of people in the Arabic and other oriental languages, agreeably to the intentions of his predecessors. In every subsequent project for a crusade, it was always proposed to instruct the Saracens sword in hand. The Council of Vienne in 1312 recommended the conversion of the infidels, and the re-establishment of schools, as the way to recover the Holy Land. It was accordingly ordered that there should be professors of the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic tongues in Rome, Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca; and that the learned should translate into Latin the best Arabic books. It was not till the time of Francis I that this decree was acted upon. He founded the royal college, and sent even into the East for books.