PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.

SECTION II.

THE NORMAN PERIOD.

1066-1350.

1. In the age at which we are arrived, two classes of men only cultivated literature, the clergy and the minstrels. The local centres at which learning was to be obtained were of two kinds, the universities and the monasteries. Poetry and light literature were comparatively independent of such aids; yet the form and development even of these could not but be largely dependent on the social and moral condition of the classes amongst which they were circulated. The intellectual achievements, therefore, of the clergy--both Saxon and Norman-the means of selfculture which they had at their disposal, and the degree of success with which they availed themselves of those means-the different classes of poets, their nationality, the traditional or other materials upon which they worked, and the furtherance or obstruction which they met with in the temper and habits of the time—all these matters must now be successively touched upon. What we have named the Norman period embraces more than two centuries and a half, and includes the long conflict between two opposing elements, which terminated, on the whole, in favour of what was English, yet so that the national language, literature, and prevailing opinions, were all deeply coloured by French words and French thoughts.

2. For many years after the Conquest the Saxon clergy were in no mood or condition to betake themselves to the tranquil pursuits of learning. Before that catastrophe, religious fervour and rigour of discipline had long been on the wane amongst them. We read of much laxity of manners, of bishops holding two or more sees at once, of priests so ignorant of Latin as to be unable to say mass without innumerable blunders. The Conqueror, who, with all his cruelty and pride, hated hypocrisy and empty profession with all his heart, would not tolerate these relaxed ecclesiastics, and by the nomination of Lanfranc (a native

matters.

of Italy, but for many years prior of Bec, in Normandy) to the see of Canterbury, inaugurated a great reformation in Church Some few of the Saxon bishops, as the noble St. Wulstan of Worcester, Agelric of Chichester, and one or two others, were left in possession of their sees; the rest had to make way for Normans. Nor was this all. Had the unworthy only been deposed, and the worthy still allowed to look forward to advancement to be obtained through desert, the Saxon clergy might still have held together, and with renewed strictness of life a revival of learning might have taken place among them. But the repeated insurrections of the English exasperated the fiery temper of the Conqueror; and after having quelled them, and thus 'overturned the power of the laity, he made an ordinance that no monk or clergyman of that nation should be suffered to aspire to any dignity whatever.'1 Thus cut off from the hope of due recognition for merit, the Saxon clergy were deprived of one of the chief incentives to study. One may be sure that from that time the more ambitious among them would make haste to learn French, and would rather disguise their nationality than avow it. Yet there was at least one monastery, in which a literary work, begun in happier times two centuries before, was carried on by Saxon monks, and in the Saxon tongue. This was the continuation of the Saxon Chronicle, composed in the monastery of Peterborough. It ends abruptly in the first year of the reign of Henry II. (1154), the writer or writers being by that time probably unable to resist any longer the universal fashion of employing Latin for any serious prose work. William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Caradoc, all these, and many others, were writing history at this very time, and all, as a matter of course, wrote in Latin. The Anglo-Saxon, too, being no longer taught in schools, nor spoken in the higher circles of society, had lost very much of its original harmony and precision of structure; and when the annalist found himself using one inflection for another, or dropping inflections altogether, he may well have thought it high time to exchange a tongue which seemed crumbling and disintegrating under his hands, for one whose forms were fixed and its grammar rational. Little did the down-hearted monk anticipate the future glories, which, after a crisis of transformation and fusion, would surround his rude ancestral tongue.

3. Yet literature and learning were not negligently or even unsuccessfully prosecuted in England during this which we call the Norman period; and this is a fact which we must learn to

Malmesbury p. 287.'

see in its true light, in order to understand aright the rise of English literature in the fourteenth century. Again, the intellectual awakening which spread to England in the eleventh and twelfth, and produced valuable literary results there in the thirteenth century, cannot be understood except in connection with the general European movement of mind which ensued upon the consolidation of society following the long troubled night of the dark ages. Something must therefore be said about the origin of that movement, about the course it took, and about the great thinkers whose names are for ever associated with it.

4. Strange as it may seem, the revival of intellectual activity at the end of the eleventh and in the twelfth century is clearly traceable to the labours and the example of Mahometans. Charlemagne, indeed, had made a noble effort in the ninth century to systematize education, and to make literature and science the permanent denizens of his empire, but the wars and confusion of every kind which ensued upon the partition of that empire among his sons extinguished the still feeble light. A happier lot had befallen the powerful and populous kingdoms founded by the successors of Mahomet. Indoctrinated with a knowledge of the wonderful fertility and energy of the Greek mind, as exemplified especially in Aristotle and Plato, by Syrian Nestorians (whose forefathers, fleeing from persecution into Persia after the council of Chalcedon, carried with them Syriac versions of the chief works of the Greek philosophers, and founded a school at Gondisapor, near Bagdad), Haroun-al-Raschid (whose reign was contemporary with that of Charlemagne), and Al Mamoun, his successor, saw and assisted in the commencement of a brilliant period of literary activity in the nations of Arabian race, which lasted from the ninth to the fourteenth century. Among the Arabian kingdoms none entered into this movement with more earnestness and success than the Moorish kingdoms in Spain. We hear of the Universities of Cordova, Seville, and Granada; and the immense number of Arabic manuscripts on almost every subject contained at this day in the library of the Escurial at Madrid attests the eagerness with which the Moorish writers sought after knowledge, and the universality of their literary tastes. Of their poetry, and the effect which it had on that of Christian Europe, we shall speak presently. Their proficiency in science is evidenced by the remarkable facts which William of Malmesbury relates of Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II. After having put on the monastic habit at Flory, in France, his thirst for knowledge led him to

1

1 Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe.

quit his cloister and betake himself to the Moorish community in Spain, about the year 1000. At Seville, we are told, he 'satisfied his desires,' becoming an adept, not only in astrology and magic, but also in the 'lawful sciences' of music and astronomy, arithmetic and geometry. These,' says Malmesbury,

'with great perseverance he revived in Gaul, where they had for a long time been wholly obsolete.' Allowing for some exaggeration in this statement, since the studies of the Trivium and Quadrivium,' among which the said lawful sciences were included, had never been wholly discontinued in the West since the fall of the Roman Empire, we may yet easily conceive that Gerbert was the first who popularized in Gaul the use of the Arabic numerals, without which arithmetic could never have made any considerable progress; and that by importing the astronomical instruments used by the Moors, together with a knowledge of the mechanical principles on which they were constructed, he may have placed the study of astronomy on a new footing. He became a public professor on his return into Gaul, and had many eminent persons among his scholars.

5. Our next forward step transports us to the monastery of Bec, in Normandy. There the abbots Herluin, Lanfranc, and St. Anselm, formed a line of great teachers, whose lectures were eagerly attended, both by laymen and ecclesiastics. Whether the intellectual life of Bec was directly influenced by the writings of the great Arabian thinkers, it is difficult to ascertain. Avicenna, the physician and philosopher, died in 1037; therefore in point of time, his expositions of the Aristotelian philosophy might have become known to Lanfranc and Anselm. The Organon, however, which was translated by Boethius and was known to Bede and Alcuin, had never ceased to be used in the schools, and the writings of St. Anselm do not, we believe, contain any proof that he was acquainted with any other of the works of the Stagirite besides the Aristotelian logic. Still, it is not only possible, but probable, that the reports brought by Gerbert and others of the palmy state of literature among the Moors, and of the zeal both of teachers and students in their universities, may have indirectly had a stimulating effect on the studies of Bec.

6. St. Anselm, abbot of Bec after Lanfranc had been called into England in 1070, is considered by many the founder of the scholastic philosophy. At any rate, he seems to have been the first to apply, on a large scale, philosophy and its formulæ

1 The Trivium consisted of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the Quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

to the doctrines of religion. Yet, as he did not originate a method, and his writings do not form a systematic whole, it would seem that he cannot fairly be called the founder of scholasticism. What the true scholastic method was, and by whom originated, we shall presently see. St. Anselm merely handles, with great subtlety and dialectical skill, certain special subjects, such as the divine essence, the Trinity, original sin, &c., but does not treat of theology as one connected whole. For these doctrines he endeavours to find irrefragable intellectual proof, and to show that they must be as necessarily accepted on grounds of reason as on grounds of faith. Thus he defines his Proslogium, a treatise on the existence of God, to be 'faith seeking understanding' (fides quærens intellectum), and says that he has framed the work under the character of one endeavouring to lift up his mind to the contemplation of the Deity, and seeking to understand what he believes.' Yet we may be certain that St. Anselm himself, like all the saints, derived the certainty of his religious convictions through the will rather than through the reason; he believed and loved, therefore he knew. He, and those who were like-minded to him, could safely philosophize upon the doctrines of faith, because they already possessed, and firmly grasped, the conclusions to which their argumentation was to lead. But what if a thinker were to arise, who should follow the same path without the same preservative? What if a being of brilliant genius, of captivating eloquence, of immense ambition, should undertake to philosophize upon religion, without the safeguard of personal sanctity?

7. Such a being was the famous Abelard. This is not the place to enlarge upon his story, which in every subsequent age has attracted the regards alike of the poet and the philosopher.1 Suffice it to say that he developed a great scheme, of what we should now call rationalism, through taking up St. Anselm's argumentative way of proving religious doctrine, without his spirit of docile submission to authority. He made faith and reason identical (charitas Dei per fidem sive rationis donum infusa), and his scholars demanded from him, he informs us,evidently placing his own sentiments in their mouths,-not words but ideas, not bare dogmatic statements, but clear enunciations of their philosophical import. His lectures, at Paris, Melun, and Troyes, were attended by enthusiastic multitudes. Roused from its long intellectual slumber, the Western world, like a man whose limbs have been numbed by long inaction, delighted in the vigorous exercise of its mental powers for the

1 It has been handled by Bayle, Cousin, Pope, Cawthorn, &c.