His valuation of logic was, from a modern point of view, excessive. He considered it pre-eminently the Christian science, and made play with its derivation from “Logos.” “In the beginning was the Logos,”
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says Saint John’s Gospel, and this, he thought, proves the dignity of Logic.
His chief importance is in logic and theory of knowledge. His philosophy is a critical analysis, largely linguistic. As for universals, i. e., what can be predicated of many different things, he holds that we do not predicate a thing, but a word. In this sense he is a nominalist. But as against Roscelin he points out that a “flatus vocis” is a thing; it is not the word as a physical occurrence that we predicate, but the word as meaning. Here he appeals to Aristotle. Things, he says, resemble each other, and these resemblances give rise to universals. But the point of resemblance between two similar things is not itself a thing; this is the mistake of realism. He says some things that are even more hostile to realism, for example, that general concepts are not based in the nature of things, but are confused images of many things. Nevertheless he does not wholly refuse a place to Platonic ideas: they exist in the divine mind as patterns for creation; they are, in fact, God’s concepts.
All this, whether right or wrong, is certainly very able. The most modern discussions of the problem of universals have not got much further.
Saint Bernard, whose saintliness did not suffice to make him intelligent, * failed to understand Abélard, and brought unjust accusations against him. He asserted that Abélard treats the Trinity like an Arian, grace like a Pelagian, and the Person of Christ like a Nestorian; that he proves himself a heathen in sweating to prove Plato a Christian; and further, that he destroys the merit of the Christian faith by maintaining that God can be completely understood by human reason. In fact, Abélard never maintained this last, and always left a large province to faith, although, like Saint Anselm, he thought that the Trinity could be rationally demonstrated without the help of revelation. It is true that, at one time, he identified the Holy Ghost with the Platonic Soul of the World, but he abandoned this view as soon as its heretical character was pointed out to him. Probably it was more his combativeness than his doctrines that caused him to be accused of heresy, for his habit of criticizing pundits made him violently unpopular with all influential persons.
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* “The greatness of St. Bernard lay not in the qualities of his intellect, but of his character.”–Encyclopædia Britannica.
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Most of the learned men of the time were less devoted to dialectic than Abélard was. There was, especially in the School of Chartres, a humanistic movement, which admired antiquity, and followed Plato and Boethius. There was a renewed interest in mathematics: Adelard of Bath went to Spain early in the twelfth century, and in consequence translated Euclid.
As opposed to the dry scholastic method, there was a strong mystical movement, of which Saint Bernard was the leader. His father was a knight who died in the first Crusade. He himself was a Cistercian monk, and in 1115 became abbot of the newly-founded abbey of Clairvaux. He was very influential in ecclesiastical politics–turning the scales against antipopes, combating heresy in Northern Italy and Southern France, bringing the weight of orthodoxy to bear on adventurous philosophers, and preaching the second Crusade. In attacking philosophers he was usually successful; but after the collapse of his Crusade he failed to secure the conviction of Gilbert de la Porrée, who agreed with Boethius more than seemed right to the saintly heresy-hunter. Although a politician and a bigot, he was a man of genuinely religious temperament, and his Latin hymns have great beauty. * Among those influenced by him, mysticism became increasingly dominant, till it passed into something like heresy in Joachim of Flora (d. 1202). The influence of this man, however, belongs to a later time. Saint Bernard and his followers sought religious truth, not in reasoning, but in subjective experience and contemplation. Abélard and Bernard are perhaps equally one-sided.
Bernard, as a religious mystic, deplored the absorption of the papacy in worldly concerns, and disliked the temporal power. Although he preached the Crusade, he did not seem to understand that a war requires organization, and cannot be conducted by religious enthusiasm alone. He complains that “the law of Justinian, not the law of the Lord” absorbs men’s attention. He is shocked when the Pope defends his domain by military force. The function of the Pope is spiritual, and he should not attempt actual government. This point of view, however, is combined with unbounded reverence for the Pope, whom he calls “prince of bishops, heir of the apostles, of the
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* Medieval Latin hymns, rhymed and accentual, give expression, sometimes sublime, sometimes gentle and pathetic, to the best side of the religious feeling of the times.
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primacy of Abel, the governance of Noah, the patriarchate of Abraham, the order of Melchizedek, the dignity of Aaron, the authority of Moses, in judgeship Samuel, in power Peter, in unction Christ.” The net result of Saint Bernard’s activities was, of course, a great increase of the power of the Pope in secular affairs.
John of Salisbury, though not an important thinker, is valuable for our knowledge of his times, of which he wrote a gossipy account. He was secretary to three archbishops of Canterbury, one of whom was Becket; he was a friend of Hadrian IV; at the end of his life he was bishop of Chartres, where he died in 1180. In matters outside the faith, he was a man of sceptical temper; he called himself an Academic (in the sense in which Saint Augustine uses this term). His respect for kings was limited: “an illiterate king is a crowned ass.” He revered Saint Bernard, but was well aware that his attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle must be a failure. He admired Abeélard, but laughed at his theory of universals, and at Roscelin’s equally. He thought logic a good introduction to learning, but in itself bloodless and sterile. Aristotle, he says, can be improved on, even in logic; respect for ancient authors should not hamper the critical exercise of reason. Plato is still to him the “prince of all philosophers.” He knows personally most of the learned men of his time, and takes a friendly part in scholastic debates. On revisiting one school of philosophy after thirty years, he smiles to find them still discussing the same problems. The atmosphere of the society that he frequents is very like that of Oxford Common Rooms thirty years ago. Towards the end of his life, the cathedral schools gave place to universities, and universities, at least in England, have had a remarkable continuity from that day to this.
During the twelfth century, translators gradually increased the number of Greek books available to Western students. There were three main sources of such translations: Constantinople, Palermo, and Toledo. Of these Toledo was the most important, but the translations coming from there were often from the Arabic, not direct from the Greek. In the second quarter of the twelfth century, Archbishop Raymond of Toledo instituted a college of translators, whose work was very fruitful. In 1128, James of Venice translated Aristotle Analytics, Topics, and Sophistici Elenchi; the Posterior Analytics were found difficult by Western philosophers. Henry Aristippus of
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Catania (d. 1162) translated the Phaedo and Meno, but his translations had no immediate effect. Partial as was the knowledge of Greek philosophy in the twelfth century, learned men were aware that much of it remained to be discovered by the West, and a certain eagerness arose to acquire a fuller knowledge of antiquity. The yoke of orthodoxy was not so severe as is sometimes supposed; a man could always write his book, and then, if necessary, withdraw its heretical portions after full public discussion. Most of the philosophers of the time were French, and France was important to the Church as a makeweight against the Empire. Whatever theological heresies might occur among them, learned clerics were almost all politically orthodox; this made the peculiar wickedness of Arnold of Brescia, who was an exception to the rule. The whole of early scholasticism may be viewed, politically, as an offshoot of the Church’s struggle for power.
CHAPTER XII The Thirteenth Century
IN the thirteenth century the Middle Ages reached a culmination. The synthesis which had been gradually built up since the fall of Rome became as complete as it was capable of being. The fourteenth century brought a dissolution of institutions and philosophies; the fifteenth brought the beginning of those that we still regard as modern. The great men of the thirteenth century were very great: Innocent III, Saint Francis, Frederick II, and Thomas Aquinas are, in their different ways, supreme representatives of their respective types. There were also great achievements not so definitely associated
