CHAP. II. dies which were more strongly encouraged, more commodiously pursued, and more successfully cultivated in other places; they gradually became contemptible as nurseries of learning, and their fraternities degenerated into sloth and ignorance'. It will devolve upon us, at a somewhat later stage in our enquiry, to point out how a like decline awaited the prestige of the mendicant orders, the penalty of their own arrogance and bigotry. Lull in the intellectual universities. In bringing to a close our retrospect of the intellectual activity of the activity of England at this era, a yet more important decline even than that of the monastic and mendicant orders presses itself upon our notice and demands some explanation. How is it, that from the middle of the fourteenth century up to the revival of classical learning, the very period wherein the munificence of royal and noble founders is most conspicuous in connexion with our university history, such a lull comes over the mental life of both Oxford and Cambridge, and so few names of eminence, Wyclif and Reginald Pecock being the most notable exceptions, invite our attention? From the death of Bradwardine to the first battle of St. Alban's, more than three quarters of a century intervene, during which no adequate external cause of distraction appears which may be supposed to account for the comparative Wood's criti- inertness of the universities. The observation of Anthony but a partial Wood, already quoted, that, after the time of Wyclif' the of the fact. students neglected scholastical divinity and scarce followed any studies but polemical, being wholly bent and occupied in refuting his opinions and crying down the orders of mendicant friars,' presents us with a true but only a partial explanation. Other causes were at work, some of which will be best explained in a subsequent chapter, but it can hardly be questioned that the most baneful effects in the fourteenth century are to be traced to the bias given to the studies then pursued. The shortcomings and excesses indicated by Bacon constithe study of tuted the prevailing characteristics long after his time, and the absorbing attention given to the civil and canon law was undoubtedly one of the most fruitful sources of those evils. It cism offers explanation Absorbing devotion to the civil law. 1 Dissertation on Introduction of Learning into England, p. cxiii, ed. 1840. Blackstone's the history of may not be unimportant here to notice, that it would be a CHAP. II. serious misapprehension were we to regard these two branches of jurisprudence as representing at that time the provinces of the civilian and the ecclesiastic respectively. It is part of the gravamen of Bacon's complaint, written in the year 1270, that the effects of the civil law were to confound the distinction (the distinction which so frequently eludes the student's grasp) between the laity and the clergy of those times. Blackstone indeed in the Introduction to his Commentaries Inaccuracy of has gone so far as to represent the civil law as from the first account of under the protection of the clergy, and contending in its this study. progress against no other obstacle than that offered by the laity, eager in the defence of their municipal law'. We have already seen that such would be but a very imperfect account of the history of the Pandects. The same conservatism that had resisted the introduction of the Sentences and of the new Aristotle, had opposed the study of the Roman Law. But with the advance of the thirteenth century this opposition had died away,—how completely may be seen from the following passage from the Compendium Philosophiæ:— con's account resulting from the too study of the 'But as we have now come down to our own times, I am Roger Baespecially desirous of introducing that which has been ad- of the evils vanced in preceding pages concerning the causes of errors exclusive and the impediments of learning which have multiplied civil law. during the last forty years, and to point out how error so prevails in the Church of God, that either the approach of Antichrist or some other heavy trouble must be near at hand, or the advent of some most holy chief pontiff, who in the strength of God will root out these causes of error and 1 The clergy in particular as they then engrossed almost every other branch of learning...were peculiarly remarkable for their proficiency in the study of the law. Nullus clericus nisi causidicus is the character given of them soon after the Conquest by William of Malmesbury.........And if it be considered that our universities began about that time to receive their present form of scholastic discipline; that they were then and continued to be till the time of the Reformation, entirely under the influence of the CHAP. II. restore all things to their proper state. Of these causes two have, in the last forty years, attained their climax, of which one, the abuse of the civil law of Italy, not only destroys the desire of learning but the Church of God and all kingdoms. And thus, by this abuse, all those five before-mentioned grades of learning are destroyed, and the whole world exposed to the evil one. But as for the way whereby evil-minded jurists destroy the love of learning, that is patent; namely that by their craft and trickery they have so preoccupied the minds of prelates and princes that they obtain nearly all the emoluments and favours, so that the empty-handed students of theology and philosophy have no means of subsistence, of buying books, or of searching and experimenting upon the secrets of science. Even jurists who study the canon law possess the means neither of subsistence nor of study unless they previously possess a knowledge of the civil law. Whence, just as with philosophers and theologians, no regard is paid them unless they have a reputation as civil jurists, with the abuses of which study they have disfigured the sacred canons. Furthermore, every man of superior talent, possessing an aptitude for theology and philosophy, betakes himself to civil law, because he sees its professors enriched and honoured by all prelates and princes, and also that few, out of regard for their kin, adhere to the study of philosophy and theology, because the greedy faculty of the civil law attracts the great body of the clergy. And not only does the civil law of Italy destroy the pursuit of learning in that it carries off the resources of students and diverts fit persons (from that pursuit), but also in that by its associations it unworthily confounds the clergy with the laity, since it is in no way the function of the clergyman, but altogether that of the layman, to have cognisance of such law,-as is evident if we bear in mind that this law was compiled by lay emperors and for the government of the laity at large. And, indeed, the professors of the law of Bologna are willing to be styled either teachers or clergymen; and they reject the clerical tonsure. They take to themselves wives and regulate their household entirely in secular fashion, and associate with and adopt the customs of laymen. From whence it is evident that they are CHAP. II. separate from the clerical office and station"," portance of the study of the civil law With the fourteenth century the combination which Bacon Growing imthus loudly censures of the study of the civil with that of the canon law, had become the rule rather than the exception. A powerful impulse had been given to the former study by William of Nogaret, who in his capacity of legal adviser to Philip the Fair, in that monarch's struggle with pope Boniface, had developed the resources of the code with startling significance. Compared with such lore, theological learning became but a sorry recommendation to ecclesiastical preferment; most of the popes at Avignon had been distinguished by their attainments in a subject which so nearly concerned the temporal interests of the Church; and the civilian and the canonist alike looked down with contempt on the theologian, even as Hagar, to use the comparison of Holcot, despised her barren Testimony mistress. The true scholar returned them equal scorn; and Richard of Bury roundly averred that the civilian, Testimony of though he might win the friendship of the world, was the Bury. enemy of God3. Equally candid is the good bishop's expression of his indifference, notwithstanding his omnivorous appetite for books, for the volumes of the glossists, which alone he appears to have been careless of collecting or preserving. It is not improbable that, as M. Le Clerc has suggested, the study of both codes had a genuine attraction for students in that age, inasmuch as it provided, along with the gratification of the love of subtlety induced by the training of the schools, an outlet for practical activity. But it is 1 Compendium Studii Philosophie, c. 4. Holcot, Super Librum Sapientiæ, Præf. D. Leges enim,' he adds, 'et canones istis temporibus mirabiliter fœcundæ concipiunt divitias et pariunt dignitates. Et ideo sacra scriptura quæ est omnium scientiarum derelicta est; et ad illas affluit quasi tota multitudo scholarium.' 3 In libris juris positivi, lucrativa peritia dispensandis terrenis accommoda, quanto hujus sæculi filiis famulatur utilius, tanto minus, ad capessenda sacræ scripturæ mysteria 4 minus tamen librorum civilium Etat des Lettres au XIV Siècle, 1 509. of Holcot. Richard of CHAP. II. easy to see that its chief value in the eyes of the many, of those who valued knowledge as a means rather than as an end, was that asserted by Bacon,-that it was the path to emolument, to high office, to favour with 'prelates and princes.' 'Who ever rose pricked in heart from reading the laws, or the canons?' asked John of Salisbury, when he sought to draw away Thomas à Becket from his excessive attention to the study'. But it was under the shelter of the canon law that the archbishop fought out his struggle with the king of England. As for the hope to which Bacon had given expression, that some 'most holy pontiff' might arise who should reform these crying evils, it is sufficient to note the exclamation of Clement VII,-a pope whose sole recommendation to the tiara had been his unscrupulous political genius, when he heard at Avignon that a young student of promise in the university of Paris was devoting his attention Theological to theology: What folly,' he ejaculated, 'what folly, for paratively him thus to lose his time! These theologians are all mere dreamers. Neither from Rome nor from Avignon were those influences to come which should guide into happier paths the studies and learning of Europe. studies com despised. 1 'Prosunt quidem leges et canones, sed mihi credite, quia nunc non erit his opus, Non hoc ista sibi tempus spectacula poscit. Siquidem non tam devotionem excitant, quam curiositatem......Quis e lectione legum, aut etiam canonum compunctus surgit? Plus dico: scholaris exercitatio interdum scientiam auget ad timorem, sed devotionem aut raro aut nunquam inflammat.' Epist. 138 [A.D. 1165] ed. J. A. Giles, i 196. 2 Crevier, III 186. |