No More Learning



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CHAPTER X
ENGLISH SCHOLARS OF PARIS AND FRANCISCANS
OF OXFORD
LATIN LITERATURE OF ENGLAND FROM JOHN OF
SALISBURY TO RICHARD OF BURY
THE university of Paris owed its origin to the cathedral school
of Notre-Dame. It was not until the time of William of Cham-
peaux (d. 1121), that this school began to rival the scholastic
fame of Chartres. Early in the thirteenth century the schools of
Paris were connected with three important churches. On the Ile
de la Cité there was the cathedral of Notre-Dame; to the south
of the Seine, on rising ground near the site of the present Pan-
théon, was the collegiate church of Sainte-Geneviève ; and, to the
east of the walls south of the river, the church of Canons Regular
at the abbey of St Victor. The schools of Notre-Dame and
of Sainte-Geneviève were, successively, the scenes of the ever-
memorable lectures of a famous pupil of William of Champeaux,
the eloquent, brilliant, vain, impulsive and self-confident disputant,
Abelard (d. 1142). The fame of his teaching made Paris the resort
of large numbers of scholars, whose presence led to its becoming
the home of the many Masters by whom the university was
ultimately founded. The earliest trace of this university has been
discovered in the passage where Matthew Paris states that his own
preceptor, an abbot of St Albans, had, as a student in Paris, been
admitted into “ the fellowship of the elect Masters ” (c. 1170)? . In
1136, when John of Salisbury went to Paris, the university was
not yet in existence. The first recorded “town and gown” riot,
that of 1200, led to the grant of a charter to the resident body
of Masters; the approximate date of the first statutes, ten years
later, marks the earliest recognition of the university as a legally
constituted corporation, a veritable universitas ; and, about ten
years later still, the Masters of Arts were first organised into
four nations, namely, the French, the Normans, the Picards and
i Gesta Abbatum, 1, 217, ed. 1867.


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184
English Scholars of Paris
the English, this last including the Germans and all who came
from the north and the east of Europe. In the thirteenth century
Paris was still the centre of European culture. It is sufficient to
cite as proof a passage from the English encyclopaedist, Bartholo-
mew, who flourished in the middle of that century:
Even as sometime the city of Athens, mother of liberal arts and letters,
nurge of philosophers and fountain of all learning, was the ornament of
Greece; so, in our own day, Paris excelleth in learning and civilisation, not
only France, but also the rest of Europe, and, as the mother of wisdom,
receiveth guests from every part of the world, supplieth all their need and
bringeth all of them beneath her peaceful rule?
The carnival riot of 1229 led to the withdrawal of the resident
Masters and Scholars for two years ; meanwhile, many of them
accepted the invitation of Henry III, and thus reinforced the
rising universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
The first important representative of England in the schools
of Paris was John of Salisbury. He began by becoming a
pupil of Abelard, who had returned to the scene of his early
triumphs, and, at the age of 57, was now lecturing on the hill
of Sainte-Geneviève. That “illustrious and admirable teacher”
was discoursing, as of old, on logic; and “at his feet" John of
Salisbury "acquired the first rudiments of dialectics, greedily
seizing all that fell from his lips. " But his brilliant instructor was
once more opposed, and once more withdrew from Paris; and the
pupil passed into the school of Master Alberic and Robert of
Melun. The first was, “in questions, acute and expansive"; the
second, “in responses, brief and lucid”; and, "if anyone could
have combined the merits of both, he would have been unrivalled
in debate? " Having thus studied logic for two years (1136–8) in
Paris, John of Salisbury spent three years (probably the latter
part of 1138, and a large part of 1139 and 1140) working at
“grammar," or the scholarly study of Latin literature. The place
is not named, but it has, rightly, been identified as the school of
Chartres. In that school the sound and healthy tradition of
Bernard of Chartres was still maintained by his pupils. By John
of Salisbury's time, Bernard had been succeeded as chancellor of the
cathedral school by Gilbert de la Porrée. John of Salisbury learnt
rhetoric from Richard L'Évêque, who was “familiar with almost
every branch of learning, whose knowledge was even greater than
his eloquence, who had more truth than vanity, more virtue than
show. " He had already attended, with less profit, the somewhat
| xv, o. 57.
• Metalogicus, a, 10.
3 Schaarschmidt, Joh. Saresberiensis, p. 22.
4 Metalogicus, loc. cit.


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John of Salisbury
185
meagre lectures of Bernard's younger brother, Theodoric, who is
nevertheless described as "a most studious investigator of the
Arts? . " This description was confirmed in 1888, when he was identi-
fied as the author of two large volumes containing a comprehensive
Survey of the Liberal Arts, written in a bold and clear hand, which
may now be seen in the public library of the cathedral town. It
may be added that it was between 1134 and 1150, during the time
when Theodoric was successively "master of the school" and chan-
cellor, that the south doorway of the west front of the cathedral
was adorned with figures of the seven arts, each of them asso-
ciated with the ancient representative of that art, for example,
grammar with Priscian, dialectic with Aristotle and rhetoric with
Cicero.
It was probably early in 1141 that John returned to Paris.
For a short time he attended, not only the lectures of Gilbert, who
had lately ceased to be chancellor of Chartres, but also those of
Robert Pullen, the future cardinal, who had taught at Oxford in
1133. Socially, he saw much of Adam du Petit Pont, who owed
his surname to the school that he had set up on the little bridge
between the Ile de la Cité and the Quartier Latin.
John of Salisbury's student life in Paris, and Chartres, and
again in Paris, probably extended from early in 1136 to late in 1145.
In the spring of 1148, he was present at the council of Rheims.
It was there that he was introduced by Bernard of Clairvaux to
Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, an introduction that had an
important effect on his literary and ecclesiastical career.
About 1150 he returned to England, and resided mainly at
the court of Canterbury, engaged on secretarial and diplomatic
work, which frequently took him to the court of Rome. On the
most celebrated of these visits, during the winter of 1155—6, his
friend the English pope, Hadrian IV, sent Henry II his written
authority to extend his rule over Ireland, together with an emerald
ring in token of his right? . It was probably John of Salisbury's
eager interest in the privileges of the church, while he was still
in the service of Theobald, that led to his soon falling into dis-
favour with the king. During the enforced leisure of 1159, he
revised and completed two of his most extensive works, finishing
Policraticus shortly before, and Metalogicus immediately after,
the death of Hadrian IV (31 August 1159). Both of these were
dedicated to Becket, the warlike chancellor, with whose aid
Henry II was then “fulminating” at the siege of Toulouse. When
i Metalogicus, 1, 5.
16. 11, 42. * Policraticus, VIII, 25.
bishop of Canterbur ecclesiastical career, mainly at


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186
English Scholars of Paris
Becket became archbishop in 1162, John of Salisbury entered his
service, and, soon afterwards, composed a Life of archbishop
Anselm with a view to the canonisation which was not conceded
until three centuries later. On the king's return early in 1163,
John of Salisbury found it safest to leave the country, staying for
six or seven years with Peter de la Celle, then abbot of Rheims,
under whose roof he wrote Historia Pontificalis. His exile,
like that of Becket, lasted till late in 1170. On the fatal 29th
of December he was at Canterbury with the archbishop, who
unhappily disregarded the counsels of moderation suggested by
his devoted friend. They entered the cathedral together. In face
of the murderous attack on the archbishop's person, John of Salis-
bury seems to have fled at first, but to have soon returned to the
post of peril. He was probably present at the end. He was
certainly believed by his friend Peter to have been “sprinkled
with the precious blood of the blessed martyr? . "
He immediately urged the inclusion of his master's name in
the calendar of martyrs, wrote his Life, and loyally served his
successor. In 1176, his devotion to the memory of St Thomas and
his friendship with the archbishop of Sens led to John of Salisbury
being made bishop of Chartres. For the last four years of his life
he was the most prominent personage in the place where he had
spent three of the most fruitful years of his youth. In the
necrology of his cathedral church he is described as vir magnae
religionis, totiusque scientiae radiis illustratus.
His Letters give abundant proof of his wide influence as a
sagacious counsellor, an able politician and a zealous ecclesiastic.
They were collected and edited by himself soon after 1170.
Of the 326 comprised in the modern editions, some were
written after the above date, and some by other writers. His
Entheticus, an elegiac poem of no less than 1852 lines, was,
apparently, intended as an introduction to Policraticus, which
is now preceded by a short set of verses bearing the same title as
the above poem. In both of these poems, which are written in a
strong and solid but not particularly elegant style, Becket is
warmly eulogised. He is the king's right hand, the embodiment
of all excellence, the refuge of the oppressed, the light of the
church, the glory of the nation?
Policraticus is a work in eight books. The primary title
has led to its being regarded as a "statesman's handbook. ” The
alternative title, De Nugis Curialium, et Vestigiis Philosophorum,
1 Petrus Cellensis, Ep. 117.
• Migne, P. L. cxcix, 379, 993.


## p. 187 (#207) ############################################

John of Salisbury.
Peter of Blois 187
is suggestive of a satire on the vanities of courtiers, followed by a
set treatise on morals ; but the latter half deals with the prin-
ciples of government, and with matters of philosophy and learning,
interspersed with many digressions. It is, in fact, an “encyclopaedia
of miscellanies," reflecting the cultivated thought of the middle
of the twelfth century. It includes an interesting chapter on
Aristotle', and a satirical account of the scholastic controversies
of the age.
Metalogicus, in four books, contains a defence of the method
and use of logic, vindicating the claims of "grammar," and
pleading for an intelligent study of logic. It includes an analysis
of the whole series of Aristotle's treatises on that subject, being, in
fact, the earliest work in the Middle Ages in which every part of
Organon is turned to account.
Historia Pontificalis is only preserved in an incomplete form
in a single manuscript at Bern; it was not printed until 1868,
and was not identified as the work of John of Salisbury until
1873. It gives an account of the ecclesiastical history of the years
1148 to 1152, but is really as much a satire as a history.
In his attitude towards the ancient classics, John of Salisbury
is far from regarding Aristotle as infallible; he is opposed to
Plato, though he is fully conscious of Plato's greatness. His
favourite author is Cicero, and the purity of his own Latin prose
has been justly praised. Caesar and Tacitus he knows solely by
name; but, in all the literature accessible to him, he is obviously
the best-read scholar of his time. A humanist two centuries in
advance of his age, he is eager to give the widest possible interpre-
tation to “whatsoever things were written aforetime for our
learning"?
In his day the first period in the medieval study of logic was
drawing towards its close, and with the degenerate type of the
professional dialectician he has no sympathy. The earliest of all
the medieval theories on the nature and the functions of the
state is due to John of Salisbury. He is the first of modern
writers on the philosophy of politics, and he founds his own theory
on the records of the Old Testament and on the annals of the
ancient Roman empire.
As a representative of literature and learning, Peter of Blois
is only a pale reflection of John of Salisbury. Born at Blois,
he was probably educated at Tours; he learnt and taught at
Bologua and Paris, settled in England about 1175 as secretary
1 yu, C.
• Cf. prologue to Policraticus, vu.


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188
English Scholars of Paris
to Richard of Dover, archbishop of Canterbury, and was suc-
cessively archdeacon of Bath (c. 1177) and of London (C. 1204).
He was repeatedly entrusted with diplomatic duties by Henry II,
and the Letters ascribed to him purport to have been originally
collected at the request of the king. But some of them—for
example, those on the capture of Damietta in 1219—could not
possibly have been written during the life of the king, who died in
1189, or during that of Peter of Blois, who died in or before 1212.
Peter of Blois, on his appointment as secretary to the archbishop
in 1175, obviously made a diligent study of the Letters of John of
Salisbury, who had edited his Letters soon after 1170, while Peter
did not begin to edit his own until 1181, the year after John of
Salisbury's death. Many of Peter's Letters are enriched with
quotations from the classics, but most of those quotations are
borrowed from John of Salisbury. Thus, in a letter to the arch-
deacon of Nantes, we have a list of ancient grammarians, and a
second list of ancient historians? . Both of these are borrowed from
John of Salisbury? ; but, while John of Salisbury modestly refers
his readers to Tacitus, without professing to have read that author,
Peter of Blois pretends to have “frequently looked into” Tacitus,
-an author never mentioned by such well-informed contempo-
raries as Giraldus Cambrensis and Ralph of Diceto. Criticised
for his constant quotations, he defends a manner of composition
which places him “like a dwarf on the shoulders of giants"); but
this very comparison is tacitly taken from John of Salisbury, who
honestly quotes it from Bernard of Chartrest. It is improbable
that Peter was ever an actual pupil of the scholar to whom he
owed much of his borrowed erudition; but, curiously enough,
he held preferment at Chartres, and also at Salisbury. His brief
Sermons call for no comment. Of his few poems the longest deals
with the sacraments in twenty-six chapters of riming hexameters;
while two others, written in a different metre, have for their
themes the life of the clergy, and the conflict between the flesh
and the spirit.
Walter Map', who was born about 1137 on the marches of
Wales, and, accordingly, called England his mother, and the Welsh
his fellow-countrymen, studied in Paris from about 1154 to 1160.
He returned to England before 1162, was frequently one of the
king's itinerant judges and, after holding other preferment, was
appointed archdeacon of Oxford in 1197. About 1209, when
1 Ep. 101.
? Policraticus, viii, 18.
: Ep. 92.
• Metalogicus, III, 4. See ante, Chapter 1x, pp. 177 il.


## p. 189 (#209) ############################################

Walter Map
189
Giraldus published the second edition of his Conquest of Ireland",
Walter Map was no longer living.
Map was the author of an entertaining miscellany in Latin prose,
De Nugis Curialium, a work in a far lighter vein than that of John
of Salisbury, who had adopted this as an alternative title of his
Policraticus. But, even in this lighter vein, Map has often a grave
moral purpose. Stories of the follies and crimes of courts, and a
lament over the fall of Jerusalem, are here followed by an account
of the origin of the Carthusians, the Templars and the Hospitallers,
with reflections on their growing corruption, and a violent attack
on the Cistercians, together with notices of heretics and of hermits.
In the second book, we have anecdotes of the Welsh, with a col-
lection of fairy-tales; in the third, a series of highly romantic
stories; in the fourth, the "Epistle of Valerius dissuading from
marriage the philosopher Rufinus” (sometimes erroneously ascribed
to St Jerome); and, in the fifth, an invaluable sketch of the history
of the English court from William Rufus to Henry II. Walter
Map's "courtly jests” are mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis, who,
in his latest work, describes Map as a person of distinction, endued
with literary skill and with the wit of a courtier, and as having
spent his youth (and more than his youth) in reading and writing
poetry? Giraldus sends his friend a set of Latin elegiacs, with a
present of a walking-stick, and he has fortunately preserved the
twelve lines of his friend's reply in the same metres. This reply is
almost the only certainly genuine product of Map's muse that
has survived. Of his poems against the Cistercian monks, only
a single line is left: Lancea Longini, gresc albus, ordo nefandus“.
His notorious antipathy to the Cistercian order has led to his
being regarded as the author of another poem entitled Discipulus
Goliae episcopi de grisis monachis. The worldly, and worse than
worldly, bishop Golias is the theme of other poems, in accentual
riming metres, ascribed to Map, notably the Apocalypse, the
Confession and the Metamorphosis of Golias. The Apocalypse
is first assigned to him in a Bodleian manuscript of the fourteenth
century. Here there is no attempt to dramatise the character of
Golias; we have simply an apocalyptic vision of the corruptions
of the church set forth in 110 riming quatrains of accentual
dactyls in lines of the type: Omnis a clericis fluit enormitas.
In the accentual trochaics of the Confession, the bishop is
dramatically represented as remembering “the tavern that he
has never scorned, nor ever will scorn until the angels sing his
* v, 410. . iv, 140. 1, 363. • Latin Poems, p. xxxv. 6 Ib. p. 54.


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190
English Scholars of Paris
requiem. ” Then follow the four lines, which are better known
and more misunderstood than any in the poem :
Meum est propositum in taberna mori:
Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,
Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori,
“Deus sit propitius huic potatori! ”
These lines, with part of the subsequent context, were at an early
date extracted from their setting and made into a drinking-song;
but it cannot be too clearly stated that they were originally
meant for a dramatic representation of the character of the
degenerate “bishop. ” It is a mistake to regard them as reflecting
in any way the habits of the reputed author, who has been
erroneously described as the "jovial archdeacon,” and the “Ana-
creon of his age. " Giraldus, in the very same work in which he
lauds the literary skill and the wit of his friend, quotes for repro-
bation, and not for imitation, a series of calumnious passages,
including the above lines with their immediately previous context!
He is clearly quite innocent of ascribing these lines to his friend.
The whole of the Confession is also preserved in the celebrated
thirteenth century Munich MS of Carmina Burana, formerly
belonging to the Benedictine monastery of Benedictbeuern in
the Bavarian highlands. It forms part of the vast number of
anonymous Latin rimes known from 1227 onwards by the name
of Goliardi. The character of bishop Golias may possibly have
assumed dramatic form in the age of Walter Map, but the name
was certainly three centuries older. As early as the time of
Gautier, archbishop of Sens (d. 923), a sentence of condemnation
is passed on the clerici ribaldi, maxime qui vulgo dicuntur de
familia Goliae.
Map is credited in certain MSS with the authorship of the
"original” Latin of the great prose romance of Lancelot du Lac,
including the Quest of the Holy Grail and the Death of Arthur ;
but no such “Latin original” has yet been found. A version of
the Quest in French prose is assigned to “Maistres Gualters Map,"
and is described as “written by him for the love of his lord, King
Henry, who caused it to be translated from Latin into French. "
In certain manuscripts, all the four parts of the romance of
Lancelot are ascribed to Map; and Hue de Rotelande (c. 1185), &
near neighbour and a contemporary of Map, after describing in his
Ipomedon a tournament, which is also an incident in Lancelot,
excuses his romance-writing in the words : “I am not the only
1 2v, 293.
· Labbé's Concilia, 1671, ix, 678.


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Other writers of Latin
191
man who knows the art of lying; Walter Map knows well his
part of it"? Such is the evidence, slight as it is, for ascribing
to Map any share in the great cycle of romance surveyed in
other chapters? We have already seen that there is very little
reason for accepting him as the author of any part of the large
body of accentual Latin poetry which passes under his name.
The only thirteen lines of Latin verse which are certainly genuine
products of his pen are written in hexameters and pentameters
of the strictly classical type.
A century before the time of Map, Godfrey, a native of Cam-
brai, and prior of St Swithin's, Winchester (d. 1107), had written
Latin epigrams after the manner of Martial. He is, in fact, re-
peatedly quoted as “Marcial ” by Gower. The 238 ordinary epi-
grams of his first book are followed by nineteen others, which
have a historic interest, in so far as they refer to royal or
ecclesiastical persons of the day. The Anglo-Norman poet
Reginald, a monk of St Augustine's, Canterbury (A. 1112), wrote a
lengthy poem in leonine hexameters on the life of the Syrian
hermit St Malchus. In the next half-century, Lawrence, the
Benedictine monk who became prior and bishop of Durham
(d. 1154), composed a popular summary of Scripture history in
nine books of elegiac verse. Henry of Huntingdon (d. 1155) has
preserved, in the eleventh book of his Historia Anglorum, the
Latin epigrams and other minor poems that he had learnt to
compose as a pupil of the monks of Ramsey. A little later,
Hilarius, who is supposed to have been an Englishman, and was
a pupil of Abelard about 1125, wrote in France three Latin plays
on sacred themes, the earliest of their kind. The “raising of
Lazarus" and the “image of St Nicholas” are partly written in
French; the “story of Daniel,” in Latin only. He is also the
author of twelve interesting sets of riming lyrics, in Latin inter-
spersed with a few lines of French, the most graceful poem in the
series being addressed to an English maiden bearing the name
of Rose. About the same time the Cistercian monk, Henry of
Saltrey (A. 1150), wrote a Latin prose version of the legend of the
Purgatory of St Patrick. A life of Becket, now only known
through the Icelandic Thomas Saga, was written by Robert of
Cricklade, chancellor of Oxford (1159) and prior of St Frides-
wide's, who dedicated to Henry II his nine books of Flores from
the Natural History of the elder Pliny.
· H. L. D. Ward's Catalogue of Romances, I, 734–41.
• See especially post, Chapter xn.


## p.
192 (#212) ############################################

192 English Scholars of Paris
One of Map's younger contemporaries, Gervase, the author
of Otia Imperialia, a native of Tilbury on the coast of Essex,
was brought up in Rome; he lectured on law at Bologna, and
probably died in England. The above work was written about
1211 to amuse the leisure hours of the German emperor, Otto IV.
It is a miscellaneous collection of legendary tales and super-
stitions. The theme of the first three books and many of the
quotations are borrowed, without acknowledgment, from the
Historia Scholastica of that omnivorous compiler, Petrus Co-
mestor. The third book tells us of werewolves and lamias and
barnacle-geese and other marvels, and also of the enchantments
ascribed to Vergil at Naples.
Another of Map's contemporaries, Nigel Wireker, precentor
of Christ Church, Canterbury (d. 1200), was the witty author
of Speculum Stultorum, a long elegiac poem on the adventures
of the donkey “Burnellus,” or “Brunellus," a diminutive of
“Brown" (just as “donkey” is a diminutive of “dun"). The name
is borrowed from the scholastic logic of the day, in which it repre-
sents any particular horse or ass, as opposed to the abstract
idea of either of those animals? .
The author himself explains that the ass of his satire is a monk
who, discontented with his condition, wants to get rid of his old
stump of a tail, and obtain a new and longer appendage by
becoming a prior or an abbot. Brunellus, then, finding his tail
too short, consults Galen on his malady, and is, ultimately, sent off
to Salerno with a satirical prescription, which he is to bring back
in glass bottles, typical of the vanity and frailty of all human
things. On his way there and back, he is attacked by merchants
and monks and mastiffs, and is thus robbed of all his scanty goods,
and of half his diminutive tail. Ashamed to return home, and
having an immense capacity for patient labour, he resolves on
becoming a member of the English school in the university of
Paris. Then follows a satire on the idleness and extravagance of
some of the English students at that seat of learning. After
spending seven years in studying the liberal arts and thus
“completing” his education, he finds on leaving Paris that he has
even forgotten the name of the place. However, he succeeds in
recalling one syllable, but that is enough, for he has learnt in his
time that “the part may stand for the whole. " Passing from the
liberal arts to theology, the hero of the story tries all the
monastic orders in their turn, and ends in resolving to found an
1 Immanuel Weber, De Nigello Wirekero, Leipzig Dissertation, 1679.


## p. 193 (#213) ############################################

Nigel Wireker. Alexander Neckam 193
order of his own. Meeting Galen once more, he begins discussing
the state of the church and the general condition of society, and
urges Galen to join his new order, when, suddenly, his old master,
Bernard, appears on the scene, and compels him to return to his
first allegiance as an ordinary monk. Chaucer, in The Nonne
Preestes Tale, recalls one of the stories he had “rad in daun
Burnel the Asse? ,"
The Architrenius or “Arch-Mourner” of the Norman satirist,
Jean de Hauteville (A. 1184), who was born near Rouen and
passed part of his life in England, has only a slight connection with
our present subject. The pilgrim of that satire pays a visit to
Paris, and describes the hardships of the students and the fruit-
lessness of their studies; he afterwards arrives at the hill of
Presumption, which is the haunt of all manner of monks and
ecclesiastics, as well as the great scholastic doctors and professors.
The seven liberal arts are elaborately described in the Anti-
Claudianus of the Universal Doctor, Alain de Lille (1114-1203).
This fine poem, and the mingled prose and verse of De Planctu
Naturae, were familiar to Chaucer. Alain probably passed some
time in England with the Cistercians at Waverley in Surrey (1128),
and he is the reputed author of a commentary on the prophecies
of Merlin,
Alain's contemporary, Geoffrey de Vinsauf (A. 1200), who was
educated at St Frideswide's, Oxford, and travelled in France and
Italy, dedicated to Innocent III his Poëtria Nova, an Art of
Poetry founded partly on Horace, and recommending the ancient
metres in preference to the modern rimes, with examples of the
various kinds of composition. In the same period, Alexander
Neckam, of St Albans, distinguished himself in Paris in 1180,
and, late in life, became abbot of Cirencester. He is the author
of an amusing treatise De Naturis Rerum, with many anecdotes
of animals, and with an attack on the method of teaching logic
in the university of Paris. In his lengthy elegiac poem De
Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae he traverses much of the same
ground. He further describes the chief seats of learning in his
day, summing up in a single couplet the four faculties in the
university of Paris, the paradisus deliciarum :
Hic florent artes; coelestis pagina regnat ;
Stant leges; lucet jus; medicina viget 3.
Joannes de Garlandia, who studied at Oxford and Paris (1204),
· Canterbury Tales, 16318.
E. L. I. CH. X.
? p. 453 ed. Wright, in Rolls Series, 1863,
13


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194 English Scholars of Paris
was an Englishman by birth, but regarded France as the land of
his adoption. His two principal poems, De Mysteriis and De
Triumphis Ecclesiae, are earlier than 1252. His Ars Rhythmica
quotes whole poems as examples of the rules of rhythm. His prose
works include three Vocabularies, one of which, with its interlinear
French glosses and its reference to the tricks played by Parisian
glovers on inexperienced students, was clearly written for use in
the university of Paris.
· Later in the same century, a chaplain of Eleanor of Provence,
queen of Henry III, named John Hoveden (d. 1275), wrote a
number of poems in riming quatrains. The longest of these
consists of nearly 4000 lines of meditation on the life of Christ.
This was translated into French. His most popular poem, that
beginning with the line Philomela, praevia temporis amoeni, was
translated into German and Spanish and, about 1460, into English.
Latin verse was one of the early amusements of the keen and
active Norman-Welshman, Giraldus Cambrensis, who was born
at the castle of Manorbier, which he dutifully describes as
“the sweetest spot in Wales? . " The grandson, on his mother's
side, of Nest, “the Helen of Wales," he celebrated the exploits
of her heroic descendants, the Geraldines, in one of his earliest
works, the Conquest of Ireland. He had himself inherited some
of Nest's beauty; he tells us that, in his youthful days, an
abbot of the Cistercian order once said of him in the presence of
Baldwin, then bishop of Worcester : “Is it possible that Youth,
which is so fair, can ever die ? ? " He received his early education
from two of the chaplains of his uncle, the bishop of St David's.
After continuing his studies at St Peter's abbey, Gloucester, he
paid three visits to Paris, spending three periods of several years
in its schools, and giving special attention to rhetoric. We have
his own authority for the fact that, when his lecturers desired
to point out a model scholar, they mentioned Gerald the
Welshman.
As archdeacon of Brecon (1175—1203) he was an ardent
reformer of ecclesiastical abuses in his native land, and his great
disappointment in life was that he never became (like his uncle)
bishop of St David's. On the first of several occasions when he
was thus disappointed, he returned to Paris, and there studied for
three years, besides lecturing with great success on canon law
(1177—80). Visits to Ireland followed in 1183 and 1185, when he
was in attendance on prince John. After the prince's return,
I vi, 98. See also the present work, ante, Chapter 1x, p. 177.
? 1v, 104.
31, 23.


## p. 195 (#215) ############################################

Giraldus Cambrensis
195
Gerald stayed till Easter, 1186, collecting materials for his two
works on Ireland. The Topography was completed in 1188. .
In the following year, he resolved on reciting it publicly at Oxford,
“where the most learned and famous of the English clergy were
then to be found. ” He read one of the three divisions of the work
on each of three successive days. “On the first ſhe informs us] he
received and entertained at his lodgings all the poor of the town;
on the next, all the doctors of the different faculties, and such of
their pupils as were of fame and note; and, on the third, the rest
of the scholars with the soldiers and the townsmen. ” He com-
placently assures us that “it was a costly and a noble act; a
revival of the bygone ages of poetry"; and (he proudly adds)
“neither present nor past time could furnish any record of such
a solemnity having ever taken place in Englandı. "
Meanwhile in 1188, Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, had
been sent to Wales to preach the coming crusade. Riding in full
armour at the head of the procession, with the white cross gleaming
on his breastplate, he was accompanied by Ranulf de Glanville,
chief justiciar of England, and attended by a young man of
slender figure, delicate features and beetling eyebrows, a man of
learning and wit, and with no small share of self-conceit, “the
leader of the clergy of St David's, the scion of the blood-royal of
Wales. " The archbishop's exhortations produced little effect on
the common people, until he prompted Gerald to take up the
preaching. At Haverford, Gerald discoursed in Latin and also
in French. Although the crowd understood neither language,
they were moved to tears by the magic of his eloquence, and no
less than two hundred joined the standard of the cross? . It was
pleasantly remarked soon afterwards that, if Gerald had only
discoursed in Welsh, not a single soldier would have failed to
follow that banner. Three thousand recruits were enrolled ; the
archbishop and the chief justiciar had taken the cross at Radnor;
both of them kept their vow and died in 1190 in the course of the
crusade. Gerald, meanwhile, had been appointed to write its
history in Latin prose, and the archbishop's nephew, Joseph of
Exeter, to write it in verse. Joseph had already composed an
epic on the Trojan war, England's solitary Latin epic, which was
long attributed to Cornelius Nepos, notwithstanding its dedication
to the archbishop of Canterbury. He celebrated the crusade in
his Antiocheis, now represented by a solitary fragment on the
Flos Regum Arthurus. Gerald, however, neither went on the
11, pp. xlvii, 72 f.
* I, pp. xlix, 76.
13–2


## p. 196 (#216) ############################################

196
English Scholars of Paris
crusade, nor wrote its history; he paid his fine and he stayed at
home to help the king to keep the peace in his native land, and
to write the Itinerary and the Description of Wales.
When the bishopric of St David's once more fell vacant, Gerald
struggled for five years to win the prize of his ambition, paying
three visits to Rome, in 1199, 1201 and 1203, without success.
But he was considered by himself and his fellow-countrymen to
have waged a glorious contest. “Many and great wars,” said the
prince of Powys, “have we Welshmen waged with England, but
none so great and fierce as his, who fought the king and the
archbishop, and withstood the might of the whole clergy and
people of England, for the honour of Wales? . "
He had already declined two other bishoprics in Wales and four
in Ireland. When the see of St David's was again vacant in 1214,
he was passed over. He probably died in 1223, and was buried in
the precincts of the cathedral church, for whose independence he
had fought for long. The dismantled tomb, which is shown as his,
probably belongs to a later time. He deserves to be commemorated
in that cathedral by the couplet which he placed above his archi-
diaconal stall, and also enshrined in one of his “epitaphs":
Vive Deo, tibi mors requies, tibi vita labori;
Vive Deo; mors est vivere, vita moril.
The first volume of the Rolls edition of Giraldus includes two
autobiographies and two lists of his writings. Only the most
important need here be noticed. The earliest of his works is the
Topography of Ireland. The first book gives an account of its
physical features, and its birds and beasts ; the second is devoted
to the marvels of the country; and the third, to the early history,
followed by a description of the manners, dress and condition of
the inhabitants. One of the MSS in the British Museum bas in
the margin many curious coloured drawings of the birds and beasts
described by the authors. It is to this work that we owe almost all
our knowledge of medieval Ireland.
It was followed by the Conquest of Ireland, a narrative of the
events of 1169–85. This is marked by a simpler style and a more
sober judgment than the Topography, and is, in fact, a historical
monograph of considerable value. But there is much bias, and
some unfairness; and an air of unreality is produced by the Irish
chiefs, who have Greek patronymics, and harangue their troops
11, 129=111, 210.
1, 364, 382.
3 Bibl. Reg. 13 B VIII (c. 1200), copied in J. R. Green's Short History, ill. ed. p. 225.


## p. 197 (#217) ############################################

Giraldus Cambrensis
197
with quotations from Ovid and Caesar. Towards the close the
author cites the ominous Irish prophecy that “scarcely before the
Day of Judgment will Ireland be wholly subdued by the English? . "
The Itinerary of Wales takes us on a tour of one month in
the South, and only eight days in the North. Apart from its
topographical and ecclesiastical interest, it introduces us to Gerald
as a student of languages. He tells us of a priest, who, in his
boyhood, paid a visit to fairy-land, and learnt the language, which
proved to be akin to Greek; and he gives us one or two specimens
in the words for “salt” and “water," adding the equivalents in
Welsh, English, Irish, German and French? . It was this passage
that once prompted Freeman to call Gerald the “father of com-
parative philology. ” In his own Latin, Gerald has no hesitation in
using werra for “war," and kniprilus for “pen-knife. ” At Cardiff,
we incidentally learn that Henry II understood English, but could
not speak it". In the South, our attention is drawn to the vestiges
of Roman splendour at Caerleon on Usk, and to the old Roman
walls at Carmarthen.
The companion volume, called the Description of Wales,
appeared in two editions (1194, 1215). The author patriotically
ascribes to his fellow-countrymen a keenness of intellect that
enables them to excel in whatever study they pursue. He extols
their set speeches and their songs. He also quotes examples of
alliteration in Latin and Welsh. The following are the specimens
he selects from the English of his day: "god is to-gedere gamen
and wisdom” (it is good to be merry and wise); “ne halt nocht
al sor isaid, ne al sorghe atwite” (it boots not to tell every woe,
nor to upbraid every sorrow); "betere is red thene rap, and liste
thene lither streingthe" (better is counsel than haste, and tact
than vicious strength)". Elsewhere he tells the story of the English-
woman, who, with her mistress, had for a complete year attended
daily mass, at which the priest had (besides the oft-repeated
Oremus) always used the introit Rorate coeli, desuper; on finding
that her mistress had, nevertheless, been disappointed in her desires,
she indignantly said to the priest : “rorisse pe rorie ne wrthe
nan" (your rories and ories are all to no purpose)? He also
quotes the phrase, “God holde be, cuning” (God save thee, king),
and the refrain of a love-song, “gwete lemman, dhin are” (sweet
mistress, thy favour ! ). He notes that the language of North
I v, 385.
* VI, 77.
• Norman Conquest, v, 679; of. Comparative Politics, 486.
• 11, 292.
VI, 64 L
VI, 188. * 11, 128. 8 vi, 64; 11, 120; cf. iv, 209.


## p. 198 (#218) ############################################

198
English Scholars of Paris
Wales is purer than that of the South, that the language of
Cornwall and Britanny closely resembles Welsh, that the language
of the south of England (especially Devonshire) is purer than
that of the north and that the English works of Bede and king
Alfred were all written in the southern idiom? He also tells
his readers how Wales may be conquered, how it should be
governed and how it is to hold its own.
Gemma Ecclesiastica was its author's favourite work. It may,
perhaps, be described as a lengthy archidiaconal charge of an
exceptionally learned and lively type. It certainly presents us
with a vivid picture of the state of morality and learning in Wales,
illustrated by not a few stories of ignorance of Latin among the
inferior clergy. Thus, a priest once interpreted “St John ante
portam Latinam” to mean that St John, ante, first, portam,
brought, Latinam, the Latin language (into England). This
ignorance, which even extended to some of the higher clergy, is,
here and elsewhere, attributed to the excessive study of law and
logic.
The Book of his Acts and Deeds, in the midst of much that is
purely personal, tells the story of the holy hermit who prayed
that he might attain to the mystery of the Latin language. He
was granted the gift of the Latin tongue, without that of the Latin
syntax; but he successfully overcame all difficulties of moods and
tenses by always using the present infinitive. Gerald once asked
this hermit to pray for him that he might understand the Scrip-
tures. The hermit warmly grasped his hand, and gravely added :
“Say not understand, but keep; it is a vain thing to understand
the word of God, and not to keep it. "4
The work on the Instruction of a Prince, completed after
the death of king John in 1216, is divided into three books. The
first, on the duties of the ideal prince, is enriched with many
quotations, the virtue of patience being illustrated by nine, and
the modesty of princes by thirteen. The second and third include
a history of the life and times of Henry II. The main interest lies
in the sketches of the characters of the royal family. Gerald here
tells the story of the finding of king Arthur's body at Glastonbury
in a coffin bearing the inscription : "Here lies buried the famous
King Arthur, with Guinevere his second wife, in the Isle of Avalon 6. "
His other works include a Life of Geoffrey Plantagenet, arch-
bishop of York, and several lives of saints, partly suggested by
1 v1, 177 t.
9 11, 842. . 911, 348; II, 29 t.
+ 1, 90 1.
6 VIII, 126 f.


## p. 199 (#219) ############################################

Giraldus Cambrensis. Michael Scot 199
his stay at Lincoln in 1196—8. His Collection of Extracts from
his own works was, naturally, compiled late in life. Among his
Epistles is one urging Richard I to befriend men of letters,
“ without whom all his glory would soon pass away? . " His latest
work, the Mirror of the Church, depicts the principal monastic
orders of the time in violent language that, not unnaturally, led
the monastic copyists to neglect transcribing, and thus preserving,
the author's writings. The only MS of this particular work that
has survived suffered severely in a fire in the Cottonian library;
but the sketch of the state of learning with which it opens had,
happily, already been partly transcribed by Anthony Wood. In the
last book Gerald adds a description of the churches in Rome,
and closes his writings with an impressive picture of the day of
doom.
To the end of his life Gerald remained true to his early devotion
to literature; and he hopefully looked forward to the appreciation
of posterity. Freeman, in estimating the historical value of his
writings, justly characterises him as “vain, garrulous” and “care-
less as to minute accuracy,” but as also “one of the most learned
men of a learned age,” “one who, whatever we may say as to the
soundness of his judgment, came behind few in the sharpness of his
wits," "one who looked with a keen, if not an impartial, eye on all
the events and controversies of his own time. ”8
Among "English" students at Paris we may briefly mention
Michael Scot, who, probably before 1209, learnt Arabic at Palermo,
where he lived at the brilliant court of Frederick II, to whom he
dedicated three of his earliest works. Leaving Palermo for Toledo
about 1209, he there completed a Latin rendering of two Arabic
abstracts of Aristotle's History of Animals. In 1223, he returned
to Palermo. He was highly esteemed as a physician and an astrolo-
ger, and his reputed skill in magic has been celebrated by Dante,
Boccaccio and Sir Walter Scott. He is described by Roger Bacon
as introducing to the scholars of the west certain of the physical
and metaphysical works of Aristotle, with the commentators on the
same. He may have visited Bologna and Paris for this purpose
about 1232. He probably died before 1235, and tradition places
his burial, as well as his birth, in the Lowlands of Scotland.
There is no evidence that Michael Scot was ever a student at
Oxford. Like Cardinal Curson of Kedleston (d. 1218), and
Alexander of Hales (d. 1245), and the able mathematician,
11, 243.
30, 212, 411; vi, 7.
s vn, p. liii.
• Opus Majus, 11, 66, Bridges.


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