He was then more than fifty years of age, not a friar,
but a secular priest, and one of the most influential men in Oxford.
but a secular priest, and one of the most influential men in Oxford.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v01
“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.
## p. 200 (#220) ############################################
200
Franciscans and Dominicans
Johannes de Sacro Bosco-probably of Holywood in Dumfriesshire
-(d. 1252), he owed his sole allegiance to Paris. Stephen Langton
(d. 1228), who, similarly, studied in Paris only, was restored to
England by his consecration as archbishop of Canterbury; his
successor, Edmund of Abingdon (d. 1240), owed his first allegiance
to Oxford, and his second to Paris.
We have seen that the university of Paris originated in the
cathedral school of Notre-Dame. The education of Europe
might have long remained in the hands of the secular clergy,
but for the rise of the new orders of the Franciscans and the
Dominicans in the second decade of the thirteenth century. The
old monastic orders had made their home in solitary places, far
removed from the world, while the aim of the Franciscan order
was not to withdraw to the lonely valleys and mountains, but to
work in the densely crowded towns
Bernardus valles, montes Benedictus amabat,
Oppida Franciscus.
The order of the Franciscans was founded at Assisi in 1210;
that of the Dominicans, at Toulouse in 1215; and, at an early
date, both orders resolved on establishing themselves in the great
seats of education. The Dominicans fixed their head-quarters at
Bologna and Paris (1217), besides settling at Oxford (1221) and
Cambridge (1274); while the Franciscans settled at Oxford and
Cambridge in 1224, and at Paris in 1230. When once these
orders had been founded, all the great schoolmen were either
Franciscans or Dominicans. Intellectually, the dogmatic Domini.
cans were mainly characterised by a conservative orthodoxy,
while the emotional Franciscans were less opposed to novel forms
of opinion. In Paris, the greatest Dominican teachers were
Albertus Magnus (1193—1280) and his favourite pupil, the great
Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–7–1274), who brought scholasticism
to its highest development by harmonising Aristotelianism with
the doctrines of the church. The Angelic Doctor was the
foremost of the intellectual sons of Saint Dominic, the saint who
(in Dante's phrase) “for wisdom was on earth a splendour of
cherubic light. " Meanwhile, Saint Francis, who was “all seraphic
in ardour," and felt no sympathy whatsoever for the intellectual
and academic world, nevertheless counted among his followers
men of academic, and even more than academic, renown. Fore-
most of these were Alexander of Hales, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus
and William of Ockham.
Aquinas (c. 1220ne harmonising Alator was the
## p. 201 (#221) ############################################
Alexander of Hales
201
Alexander of Hales, a native of Gloucestershire, studied in
Paris at a time when the Physics and Metaphysics were not yet
translated into Latin, and, also, later, when their study had been
expressly prohibited (1215). This prohibition lasted until the
dispersion of the university in 1229; and (although he may have
been lecturer to the Franciscans at an earlier date) it was not
until the return of the university in 1231 that he actually joined
the order. As one of the leading teachers in Paris, he had a
distinguished career. In his scholastic teaching he was an ex-
ponent of realism. He was entrusted by Innocent IV with the
duty of preparing a comprehensive Summa Theologiae; and the
ponderous work, which remained unfinished at his death in 1245,
was completed by his pupils seven years later. In its general
plan it follows the method of Peter Lombard, being one of the
earliest comments on the Master of the Sentences. It was examined
and approved by seventy divines, and the author became known
as the Irrefragable Doctor; but a still greater Franciscan,
Roger Bacon, who describes the vast work as tamquam pondus
unius equi, declares that it was behind the times in matters of
natural science, and was already being neglected, even by members
of the author's own order? The MS of Alexander's Exposition
of the Apocalypse, in the Cambridge University Library, includes
a portrait of the author, who is represented as reverently kneeling
in the habit of a Franciscan friar?
St Francis himself regarded with suspicion the learning of his
age. He preferred to have his followers poor in heart and under-
standing, as well as in their dress and their other belongings.
Perfect poverty was, however, obviously incompatible with the
purchase of books. A provincial minister of the order, who
happened to possess books of considerable value, was not allowed
to retain them. In the same spirit, on hearing that a great doctor
in Paris had entered the order, St Francis said to his followers :
“I am afraid, my sons, that such doctors will be the destruction,
of my vineyard. " The preaching of the Franciscans among the
common people owed its force less to their learning than to their
practical experience. Their care for the sick, and even for the
leper, gave a new impulse to medical and physical and experi-
mental science; and they gradually devoted themselves to a more
scientific study of theology. In their schools the student was
expected to take notes and to reproduce them in the form of a
i Opus Minus, 326 f.
Reproduced in J. R. Green's Short History, ill. ed. p. 287.
## p. 202 (#222) ############################################
202
Franciscans of Oxford
lecture, and this practice, combined with the disputation between
the teacher and the learner, brought into play readiness, memory
and invention. Speculative theology was, in their hands, modified
by the hard facts of practical life. Their sermons, however, not
unfrequently appealed to the imagination and the feelings, and
did not disdain either the sparkling anecdote or the pleasantly
didactic allegory?
In September 1224, two years before the death of the founder,
a little band of nine Franciscans was ferried across the Channel
by the monks of Fécamp, and found a welcome at the priory
of Canterbury. Some of them pressed forward to London, where
they were received by the Dominicans, while two of them went on
to Oxford. The Dominicans had already settled there in 1221,
when the church of St Edward had been assigned them in the
Jewry, in the very heart of the town, and a school of theology had
been opened under Robert Bacon. For about a week the two
Franciscans “ate in the refectory and slept in the dormitory”
of the Dominicans? ; then they hired a house near St Ebbe's in the
south-west quarter, whence they soon moved to a marshy plot of
ground outside the walls. Part of that plot was known as Paradise.
In 1245, they were followed by the Dominicans, who left the centre
of the town for a suburban spot whose memory is now preserved
in the name of Black Friars road. In olden days, the Trill
mill stream flowed past the Grey Friars mill and beneath the
“Preachers' bridge,” until it reached the two mills of the Black
Friars.
It was probably a migration from Paris that had, meanwhile,
made Oxford a studium generale, or a publicly recognised place
of studious resort. In 1167, John of Salisbury, then in exile
owing to his devotion to the cause of Becket, sent a letter to
Peter the Writer, stating that “the votaries of Mercury were
80 depressed, that France, the mildest and most civilised of
nations, had expelled her alien scholarg8”; and, either in 1165,
or in 1169, at a time when many Masters and Scholars beneficed
in England were studying in Paris, Henry II required all clerks
who possessed revenues in England to return within three months.
It has been reasonably assumed that many of the students, thus
expelled, or recalled, from Paris, migrated to Oxford“. But the
earliest certain reference to the schools of Oxford belongs to
1 Brewer's Preface to Monumenta Franciscana, 1, xxviii-lv.
? Mon. Franc. 1, 5–9; 11, 9.
Ep. 225 (Migne, P. L. CXCIX, 253 A).
• Rashdall's Universities of Europe, 11, 329 f.
## p. 203 (#223) ############################################
Grosseteste and the Franciscans 203
1189, when “all the doctors in the different faculties," and their
more distinguished pupils, and the rest of the scholars, were
(as we have seen) entertained by Giraldus Cambrensis on the
second and third days of his memorable recitation?
The Franciscan friars of 1224 were well received by the
university, and, in those early times, were on excellent terms
with the secular clergy. They were men of cheerful temper, and
possessed the courtesy and charm that come from sympathy.
From Eccleston's account of the coming of the Friars Minor,
we learn that, “as Oxford was the principal place of study in
England, where the whole body (or universitas) of scholars was
wont to congregate, Friar Agnellus (the provincial Head of the
Order) caused a school of sufficiently decent appearance to be
built on the site where the Friars had settled, and induced Robert
Grosseteste of holy memory to lecture to them there ; under him
they made extraordinary progress in sermons, as well as in subtle
moral themes suitable for preaching," and continued to do so until
"he was transferred by Divine Providence from the lecturer's chair
to the episcopal see. ”? He was already interested in them about
12253; and it was, possibly, before 1231 that he was appointed their
lecturer.
He was then more than fifty years of age, not a friar,
but a secular priest, and one of the most influential men in Oxford.
To the friars he was much more than a lecturer ; he was their
sympathetic friend and adviser, and, after he had become bishop
of Lincoln in 1235, he repeatedly commended the zeal, piety and
usefulness of their order. About 1238, he wrote in praise of them
to Gregory IX: “Your Holiness may be assured that in England
inestimable benefits have been produced by the Friars; they
illuminate the whole land by their preaching and learning. ”
Grosseteste, a native of Stradbroke in Suffolk, was educated
at Oxford. It is often stated that he also studied in Paris ;
but of this there is no contemporary evidence. It is true that,
as bishop of Lincoln, he writes to the regents in theology
at Oxford, recommending them to abide by the system of
lecturing adopted by the regents in theology in Paris', but
he says nothing of Paris in connection with his own education.
While he was still at Oxford, he held an office corresponding to
that of the chancellor in Paris, but he was not allowed by the
i Giraldus, 1, 72 f. , 410; In, 92, where "Magister Gualterus, magister Oxoniensis,
archidiaconus,” is probably a mistake for "Magister Gualterus Mapus, Oxoniensis
archidiaconus" (op. I, 412).
· Mon. Franc. 1, 87; cf. ib. 64–66.
3 Ep. 2.
• Ep. 58; cf. Epp. 20, 41, 67.
6 Ep. 123.
## p. 204 (#224) ############################################
204
Franciscans of Oxford
v
then bishop of Lincoln to assume any higher title than that of
Magister Scholarum? At Oxford, he prepared commentaries on
some of the logical treatises of Aristotle, and on the Physics,
and a translation of the Ethics, which appeared about 1244, was
known under his name. He himself produced a Latin rendering
of the "middle recension” of the Epistles of Ignatius, besides
commenting on Dionysius the Areopagite, and causing a trans-
lation to be made of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,
the Greek MS of which (now in the Cambridge Library) had been
brought from Athens by his archdeacon, John of Basingstoke.
In his Compendium Scientiarum he classified all the departments
of knowledge recognised in his day. The printed list of his works
extends over twenty-five quarto pagesa ; it includes treatises on
theology, essays on philosophy, a practical work on husbandry.
Perhaps the most interesting of his works is a poem in 1757 lines
in praise of the Virgin and Son, an exquisite allegory called the
Château d Amour, originally written in “romance" for those who
had ne letture ne clergie, and soon translated from French into
Latin, and ultimately into English. Robert de Brunne, in his
translation of the Manuel des Pechiez, tells us of the bishop's love
for the music of the harp.
In the opinion of Luard, the editor of his Letters, "probably
no one has had a greater influence upon English thought and
English literature for the two centuries that followed his age. "
Wyclif ranks him even above Aristotle', and Gower calls him
"the grete clerc*. ” Apart from his important position as a patriot,
a reformer and a statesman, and as a friend of Simon de Montfort,
he gave, in the words of his latest biographer, F. S. Stevenson,
“a powerful impulse to almost every department of intellectual
activity, revived the study of neglected languages, and grasped the
central idea of the unity of knowledge. ” One of the earliest
leaders of thought in Oxford, a promoter of Greek learning, and
an interpreter of Aristotle, he went far beyond his master in the
experimental knowledge of the physical sciences. Roger Bacon
lauds his knowledge of science, and he is probably referring to
Grosseteste, when he says that no lectures on optics “have as yet
been given in Paris, or anywhere else among the Latins, except
twice at Oxford 6. ” Matthew Paris, who resented his zeal for the
· Lincoln Register (Rashdall, 11, 355 n. 2).
8 Trial, iv, c. 3.
6 Opera Inedita, 33, 37, 472.
? Life by Pegge (1793).
• Conf. Am. IV, 234.
## p. 205 (#225) ############################################
205
Adam Marsh. Roger Bacon
reform of the monasteries, generously pays the following tribute to
his memory:
Thus the saintly. . . bishop of Lincoln passed away from the exile of this
world, which he never loved. . . . He had been the rebuker of pope and king, the
corrector of bishops, the reformer of monks, the director of priests, the
instructor of clerks, the patron of scholars, the preacher of the people,. . . the
careful student of the Scriptures, the hammer and the contemner of the
Romans. At the table of bodily food, he was liberal, courteous and affable;
at the table of spiritual food, devout, tearful and penitent; as a prelate,
sedulous, venerable and never weary in well-doing?
Grosseteste's friend Adam Marsh, who had been educated
under him at Oxford and had entered the priesthood, joined the
Franciscan order shortly after 1226. The first four lecturers to the
Franciscans in Oxford (beginning with Grosseteste) were seculars ;
the first Franciscan to hold that office was Adam Marsh”, who was
probably appointed for the year 1247—8. Provision was then
made for a regular succession of teachers, and soon there were
fifty Franciscan lectureships in various parts of England. Out of
love for Adam Marsh, Grosseteste left his library to the Oxford
Franciscans? Like Grosseteste, he is a friend and adviser of Simon
de Montfort, and faithfully tells him that "he who can rule his own
temper is better than he who storms a city. " The king and the
archbishop of Canterbury urged his appointment as bishop of Ely;
but Rome decided in favour of Hugo de Balsham (1257), the future
founder of Peterhouse (1284). In his Letters Marsh's style is less -
classical than that of Grosseteste; but the attainments of both of
these lecturers to the Oxford Franciscans are warmly eulogised by
their pupil, Roger Bacon. He mentions them in good company-
immediately after Solomon, Aristotle and Avicenna, describing
both of them as “perfect in divine and human wisdom 5. ” On the
death of Alexander of Hales (1245), Grosseteste was afraid that
Adam Marsh would be captured by Paris to fill the vacant chair.
His Letters, his only surviving work, give him no special claim to
those scholastic qualities of clearness and precision that were
possibly indicated in his traditional title of Doctor illustris.
Roger Bacon, a native of Ilchester, was the most brilliant
representative of the Franciscan order in Oxford. He there
attended the lectures of Edmund Rich of Abingdon, who had
studied in Paris, who could preach in French and who was
possibly himself the French translator of his principal Latin work,
Chronica Majora, V, 407, ed. Luard.
3 Mon. Franc. I, 185.
• Opus Tertium, c. 22 f. , 25.
Mon. Franc. 1, 38.
* Ib. 1, 264.
6 Ep. 334.
## p. 206 (#226) ############################################
206
Franciscans of Oxford
Speculum Ecclesiae. Rich was the first in Roger Bacon's day to
expound the Sophistici Elenchi at Oxford'. It was probably under
the influence of Grosseteste and Marsh that Bacon entered the
Franciscan order, a society which, doubtless, had its attractions for
his studious temperament. He is said to have been ordained in
1233. Before 1245, he left Oxford for Paris. He there distin-
guished himself as a teacher; but he had little sympathy with the
scholasticism of the day, and he accordingly returned to England
about 1250.
In the order of St Francis there was room for freedom of
thought, no less than for mystic devotion ; but, some seven years
later, so soon as the party of the mystics was represented in the
new general of that body, Bacon fell under suspicion for his liberal
opinions, and, by command of the "seraphic" Bonaventura, was
sent to Paris and there kept in strict seclusion for ten years
(1257—67). He probably owed his partial release to the goodwill
of Clement IV, who had heard of the studies of the Franciscan friar
before his own elevation to the papal see, and, by a letter written
at Viterbo on 22 June 1266, drew him from his obscurity and
neglect by pressing him for an account of his researches. There-
upon, in the wonderfully brief space of some eighteen months,
the grateful and enthusiastic student wrote three memorable
works, Opus Majus, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium (1267).
These were followed by his Compendium Studii Philosophiae
(1271–2), and by a Greek Grammar of uncertain date. In his
Compendium, he had attacked the clergy and the monastic orders
and the scholastic pedants of the day; and, by a chapter of the
Franciscans held in Paris in 1278, he was, on these and, doubtless,
other grounds, condemned for "certain suspected novelties” of
opinion. Accordingly, he was once more placed under restraint;
but he had again been released before writing his Compendium
Studii Theologiae (1292). At Oxford he died, and was buried
among the Friars Minor, probably in 1294.
Before entering the order, he had written nothing on science;
and, after his admission, he came under the rule that no friar
should be permitted the use of writing materials, or enjoy the
liberty of publishing his work, without the previous approval of
his superiors. The penalty was the confiscation of the work, with
many days of fasting on bread and water. He had only written a
few “chapters on various subjects at the request of his friends. "
* Comp. Theol. (op. J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, 1, 592, ed. 2, 1906).
? Opera Inedita, 13.
## p. 207 (#227) ############################################
Roger Bacon
207
Possibly, he is here referring to the pages on the secret works of
nature and art, on Greek fire, on gunpowder and on the properties
of the magnet', on which he had discoursed in letters addressed
either to William of Auvergne (d. 1248), or to John of Basingstoke
(d. 1252). He was surrounded with difficulties ; he found philo-
sophy and theology neglected in the interests of civil law, and
despised under the delusion that the world knew enough of them
already. He had spent forty years in the study of the sciences
and languages, and, during the first twenty years specially de-
voted by him to the attainment of fuller knowledge (possibly
before joining a mendicant order), he had expended large sums
on his learned pursuits. None would now lend him any money to
meet the expense of preparing his works for the pope, and he
could not persuade any one that there was the slightest use in
science? Thankful, however, for the pope's interest in his studies,
he set to work with enthusiasm and delight, though he was strictly
bound by the vow of poverty, and had now nothing of his own to
spend on his literary and scientific labours.
His principal works, beginning with the three prepared for the
pope, are as follows:
Opus Majus, which remained unknown until its publication
by Samuel Jebb in 1733. It has since been recognised as the
Encyclopédie and the Organon of the thirteenth century. It
is divided into seven parts : (1) the causes of human ignorance ;
(2) the connection between philosophy and theology ; (3) the
study of language ; (4) mathematical science; (5) physics (espe-
cially optics); (6) experimental science; and (7) moral philosophy.
The part on language was preserved in an imperfect form ; that
on moral philosophy was omitted in Jebb's edition.
Opus Minus was first published by John Sherren Brewer
in 1859 (with portions of Opus Tertium and Compendium Studii
Philosophiae). It was written partly to elucidate certain points
in Opus Majus, partly to meet the risk of the earlier treatise
failing to reach its destination. It enters more fully into an
examination of the schoolmen; it exposes the pretensions
of the Franciscan, Alexander of Hales, and of an unnamed
Dominican. It recapitulates the passages in the previous work
which the author deems especially important, and discusses the
six great errors that stand in the way of the studies of Latin
Christendom, namely (1) the subjection of theology to philosophy;
(2) the general ignorance of science ; (3) implicit trust in the dicta of
Opera Inedita, 536 f.
" Ib. 16, 59, 65.
## p. 208 (#228) ############################################
208 Franciscans of Oxford
the earlier schoolmen ; (4) exaggerated respect for the lecturers on
the Sentences, in comparison with the expounders of the text of
the Scriptures ; (5) mistakes in the Vulgate; (6) errors in the
spiritual interpretation of Scripture due to ignorance of Hebrew,
Greek, Latin, archaeology and natural history; and those due to
misunderstanding of the hidden meaning of the Word of God.
After a break, there next follows a comparison between the opinions
of French and English naturalists on the elementary principles
of matter, and, after a second break, an account of the various
metals. Only a fragment, equivalent to some 80 pages of print,
has been preserved in a single MS in the Bodleian.
Opus Tertium, though written later, is intended to serve
as an introduction to the two previous works. In the first
twenty chapters we have an account of the writer's personal
history, his opinions on education, and on the impediments thrown
in its way by the ignorance, prejudice, contempt, carelessness and
indifference of his contemporaries. He next reverts to points that
had been either omitted or inadequately explained in his earlier
writings. After a digression on vacuum, motion and space, he
dwells on the utility of mathematics, geography, chronology and
geometry, adding remarks on accents and aspirates, and on punc-
tuation, metre and rhythm. A subsequent defence of mathe-
matics, with an excursus on the reform of the calendar, leads to a
discourse on chanting and on preaching.
The above three works, even in their incomplete form, fill as
many as 1344 pages of print. It was these three that were com-
pleted in the brief interval of eighteen months.
Compendium Studii Philosophiae, imperfectly preserved in
a single MS in the British Museum, begins with reflections
on the beauty and utility of wisdom. The impediments to its
progress are subsequently considered, and the causes of human
error investigated. The author criticises the current Latin
grammars and lexicons, and urges the importance of the study of
Hebrew, adding as many as thirteen reasons for the study of Greek,
followed by an introduction to Greek grammar.
The above is only the beginning of an encyclopaedic work on
logic, mathematics, physics, metaphysics and ethics. The part on
physics is alone preserved, and extracts from that part have been
printed? .
The Greek Grammar may be conveniently placed after the
above Compendium, and before the next. The author's know-
1 Émile Charles, 369–91.
## p. 209 (#229) ############################################
209
Roger Bacon
ledge of Greek was mainly derived from the Greeks of his own
day, probably from some of the Greek teachers invited to England
by Grossetestel. He invariably adopts the late Byzantine pronun-
ciation; and, in his general treatment of grammar, he follows the
Byzantine tradition. This work was first published by the Cam-
bridge University Press in 1902.
Compendium Studii Theologiae, Bacon's latest work, deals
with causes of error, and also with logic and grammar in reference
to theology. The above parts are extant in an imperfect form,
and only extracts from them have been printed from a MS
in the British Museum? . A "fifth part," on optics, is preserved in
a nearly complete condition in the same library.
Roger Bacon was the earliest of the natural philosophers of
western Europe. In opposition to the physicists of Paris, he
urged that "enquiry should begin with the simplest objects of
science, and rise gradually to the higher and higher,” every obser-
vation being controlled by experiment. In science he was at least
a century in advance of his time; and, in spite of the long and
bitter persecutions that he endured, he was full of hope for the
future. He has been described by Diderot as “one of the most
surprising geniuses that nature had ever produced, and one of the
most unfortunate of men. " He left no disciple. His unknown
grave among the tombs of the Friars Minor was marked by no
monument; a tower, traditionally known as “Friar Bacon's
Study,” stood, until 1779, on the old Grand Pont (the present
Folly bridge) of Oxford. The fact that he had revived the study
of mathematics was recorded by an anonymous writer about
13703. A long passage in his Opus Majus“, on the distance between
the extreme east and west of the habitable globe, inserted (without
mention of its source) in the Imago Mundi of Pierre d'Ailly, was
thence quoted by Columbus in 1498 as one of the authorities that
had prompted him to venture on his great voyages of discovery.
Meanwhile, in popular repute, friar Bacon was regarded only as
an alchemist and a necromancer. During the three centuries
subsequent to his death, only four of his minor works, those on
Alchemy, on the Power of Art and Nature and on the Cure of Old
Age, were published in 1485—1590. Like Vergil, he was reputed
to have used a "glass prospective” of wondrous power, and, like
others in advance of their times, such as Gerbert of Aurillac,
Study," stool of Oxford. The by an anonymo
? Émile Charles, 410—6.
1 Comp. Phil. 434.
3 Little's Grey Friars at Oxford, 195 n.
4 Opus Majus, ed. Bridges, 1, xxxiii, 290.
E. L. I. CH. X.
14
## p. 210 (#230) ############################################
210
Franciscans of Oxford
Albertus Magnus and Grosseteste, to have constructed a “brazen
head” that possessed the faculty of speech. The popular legend
was embodied in The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon, in Greene's
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (c. 1587) and in Terilo's satire
of 1604. At Frankfurt, the parts of Opus Majus dealing with
mathematics and optics were published in 1614; but a hundred
and twenty years passed before a large portion of the remainder
was published in England (1733), and the same interval of time
preceded the first appearance of Opera Inedita (1859). The
seventh part of Opus Majus, that on moral philosophy, was
not printed until 1897. But the rehabilitation of Roger Bacon,
begun by Brewer in 1859, had, happily, meanwhile been indepen-
dently completed by Émile Charles in 1861.
Friar Bacon is associated in legend with friar Bungay, or
Thomas de Bungay in Suffolk), who exemplifies the close con-
nection between the Franciscan order and the eastern counties.
Bungay lectured to the Franciscans at Oxford, and, afterwards, at
Cambridge, where he was placed at the head of the Franciscan
convent. As head of the order in England, he was succeeded
(c. 1275) by John Peckham, who had studied at Paris under
Bonaventura, had joined the Franciscans at Oxford and was arch-
bishop of Canterbury from 1279 to 1292. At Oxford, a number
of grammatical, logical, philosophical and theological doctrines
taught by the Dominicans, and already condemned by the Domi-
nican archbishop, Robert Kilwardby (1276), a Master of Arts of
Paris, famous as a commentator on Priscian, were condemned
once more by the Franciscan archbishop, Peckham (1284). Thomas
Aquinas had held, with Aristotle, that the individualising principle
was not form but matter-an opinion which was regarded as
inconsistent with the medieval theory of the future state. This
opinion, disapproved by Kilwardby, was attacked in 1284 by
William de la Mare, probably an Englishman, possibly an Oxonian,
certainly a Franciscan. Both of them may have owed something
to Roger Bacon. They were certainly among the precursors of the
type of realism represented by Duns Scotus, the Doctor subtilis.
John Duns Scotus was a Franciscan in Oxford in 1300. There
is no satisfactory evidence as to the place of his birth ; a note in
a catalogue at Assisi (1381) simply describes him as de provincia
Hiberniae'. At Oxford he lectured on the Sentences.
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.
## p. 200 (#220) ############################################
200
Franciscans and Dominicans
Johannes de Sacro Bosco-probably of Holywood in Dumfriesshire
-(d. 1252), he owed his sole allegiance to Paris. Stephen Langton
(d. 1228), who, similarly, studied in Paris only, was restored to
England by his consecration as archbishop of Canterbury; his
successor, Edmund of Abingdon (d. 1240), owed his first allegiance
to Oxford, and his second to Paris.
We have seen that the university of Paris originated in the
cathedral school of Notre-Dame. The education of Europe
might have long remained in the hands of the secular clergy,
but for the rise of the new orders of the Franciscans and the
Dominicans in the second decade of the thirteenth century. The
old monastic orders had made their home in solitary places, far
removed from the world, while the aim of the Franciscan order
was not to withdraw to the lonely valleys and mountains, but to
work in the densely crowded towns
Bernardus valles, montes Benedictus amabat,
Oppida Franciscus.
The order of the Franciscans was founded at Assisi in 1210;
that of the Dominicans, at Toulouse in 1215; and, at an early
date, both orders resolved on establishing themselves in the great
seats of education. The Dominicans fixed their head-quarters at
Bologna and Paris (1217), besides settling at Oxford (1221) and
Cambridge (1274); while the Franciscans settled at Oxford and
Cambridge in 1224, and at Paris in 1230. When once these
orders had been founded, all the great schoolmen were either
Franciscans or Dominicans. Intellectually, the dogmatic Domini.
cans were mainly characterised by a conservative orthodoxy,
while the emotional Franciscans were less opposed to novel forms
of opinion. In Paris, the greatest Dominican teachers were
Albertus Magnus (1193—1280) and his favourite pupil, the great
Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–7–1274), who brought scholasticism
to its highest development by harmonising Aristotelianism with
the doctrines of the church. The Angelic Doctor was the
foremost of the intellectual sons of Saint Dominic, the saint who
(in Dante's phrase) “for wisdom was on earth a splendour of
cherubic light. " Meanwhile, Saint Francis, who was “all seraphic
in ardour," and felt no sympathy whatsoever for the intellectual
and academic world, nevertheless counted among his followers
men of academic, and even more than academic, renown. Fore-
most of these were Alexander of Hales, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus
and William of Ockham.
Aquinas (c. 1220ne harmonising Alator was the
## p. 201 (#221) ############################################
Alexander of Hales
201
Alexander of Hales, a native of Gloucestershire, studied in
Paris at a time when the Physics and Metaphysics were not yet
translated into Latin, and, also, later, when their study had been
expressly prohibited (1215). This prohibition lasted until the
dispersion of the university in 1229; and (although he may have
been lecturer to the Franciscans at an earlier date) it was not
until the return of the university in 1231 that he actually joined
the order. As one of the leading teachers in Paris, he had a
distinguished career. In his scholastic teaching he was an ex-
ponent of realism. He was entrusted by Innocent IV with the
duty of preparing a comprehensive Summa Theologiae; and the
ponderous work, which remained unfinished at his death in 1245,
was completed by his pupils seven years later. In its general
plan it follows the method of Peter Lombard, being one of the
earliest comments on the Master of the Sentences. It was examined
and approved by seventy divines, and the author became known
as the Irrefragable Doctor; but a still greater Franciscan,
Roger Bacon, who describes the vast work as tamquam pondus
unius equi, declares that it was behind the times in matters of
natural science, and was already being neglected, even by members
of the author's own order? The MS of Alexander's Exposition
of the Apocalypse, in the Cambridge University Library, includes
a portrait of the author, who is represented as reverently kneeling
in the habit of a Franciscan friar?
St Francis himself regarded with suspicion the learning of his
age. He preferred to have his followers poor in heart and under-
standing, as well as in their dress and their other belongings.
Perfect poverty was, however, obviously incompatible with the
purchase of books. A provincial minister of the order, who
happened to possess books of considerable value, was not allowed
to retain them. In the same spirit, on hearing that a great doctor
in Paris had entered the order, St Francis said to his followers :
“I am afraid, my sons, that such doctors will be the destruction,
of my vineyard. " The preaching of the Franciscans among the
common people owed its force less to their learning than to their
practical experience. Their care for the sick, and even for the
leper, gave a new impulse to medical and physical and experi-
mental science; and they gradually devoted themselves to a more
scientific study of theology. In their schools the student was
expected to take notes and to reproduce them in the form of a
i Opus Minus, 326 f.
Reproduced in J. R. Green's Short History, ill. ed. p. 287.
## p. 202 (#222) ############################################
202
Franciscans of Oxford
lecture, and this practice, combined with the disputation between
the teacher and the learner, brought into play readiness, memory
and invention. Speculative theology was, in their hands, modified
by the hard facts of practical life. Their sermons, however, not
unfrequently appealed to the imagination and the feelings, and
did not disdain either the sparkling anecdote or the pleasantly
didactic allegory?
In September 1224, two years before the death of the founder,
a little band of nine Franciscans was ferried across the Channel
by the monks of Fécamp, and found a welcome at the priory
of Canterbury. Some of them pressed forward to London, where
they were received by the Dominicans, while two of them went on
to Oxford. The Dominicans had already settled there in 1221,
when the church of St Edward had been assigned them in the
Jewry, in the very heart of the town, and a school of theology had
been opened under Robert Bacon. For about a week the two
Franciscans “ate in the refectory and slept in the dormitory”
of the Dominicans? ; then they hired a house near St Ebbe's in the
south-west quarter, whence they soon moved to a marshy plot of
ground outside the walls. Part of that plot was known as Paradise.
In 1245, they were followed by the Dominicans, who left the centre
of the town for a suburban spot whose memory is now preserved
in the name of Black Friars road. In olden days, the Trill
mill stream flowed past the Grey Friars mill and beneath the
“Preachers' bridge,” until it reached the two mills of the Black
Friars.
It was probably a migration from Paris that had, meanwhile,
made Oxford a studium generale, or a publicly recognised place
of studious resort. In 1167, John of Salisbury, then in exile
owing to his devotion to the cause of Becket, sent a letter to
Peter the Writer, stating that “the votaries of Mercury were
80 depressed, that France, the mildest and most civilised of
nations, had expelled her alien scholarg8”; and, either in 1165,
or in 1169, at a time when many Masters and Scholars beneficed
in England were studying in Paris, Henry II required all clerks
who possessed revenues in England to return within three months.
It has been reasonably assumed that many of the students, thus
expelled, or recalled, from Paris, migrated to Oxford“. But the
earliest certain reference to the schools of Oxford belongs to
1 Brewer's Preface to Monumenta Franciscana, 1, xxviii-lv.
? Mon. Franc. 1, 5–9; 11, 9.
Ep. 225 (Migne, P. L. CXCIX, 253 A).
• Rashdall's Universities of Europe, 11, 329 f.
## p. 203 (#223) ############################################
Grosseteste and the Franciscans 203
1189, when “all the doctors in the different faculties," and their
more distinguished pupils, and the rest of the scholars, were
(as we have seen) entertained by Giraldus Cambrensis on the
second and third days of his memorable recitation?
The Franciscan friars of 1224 were well received by the
university, and, in those early times, were on excellent terms
with the secular clergy. They were men of cheerful temper, and
possessed the courtesy and charm that come from sympathy.
From Eccleston's account of the coming of the Friars Minor,
we learn that, “as Oxford was the principal place of study in
England, where the whole body (or universitas) of scholars was
wont to congregate, Friar Agnellus (the provincial Head of the
Order) caused a school of sufficiently decent appearance to be
built on the site where the Friars had settled, and induced Robert
Grosseteste of holy memory to lecture to them there ; under him
they made extraordinary progress in sermons, as well as in subtle
moral themes suitable for preaching," and continued to do so until
"he was transferred by Divine Providence from the lecturer's chair
to the episcopal see. ”? He was already interested in them about
12253; and it was, possibly, before 1231 that he was appointed their
lecturer.
He was then more than fifty years of age, not a friar,
but a secular priest, and one of the most influential men in Oxford.
To the friars he was much more than a lecturer ; he was their
sympathetic friend and adviser, and, after he had become bishop
of Lincoln in 1235, he repeatedly commended the zeal, piety and
usefulness of their order. About 1238, he wrote in praise of them
to Gregory IX: “Your Holiness may be assured that in England
inestimable benefits have been produced by the Friars; they
illuminate the whole land by their preaching and learning. ”
Grosseteste, a native of Stradbroke in Suffolk, was educated
at Oxford. It is often stated that he also studied in Paris ;
but of this there is no contemporary evidence. It is true that,
as bishop of Lincoln, he writes to the regents in theology
at Oxford, recommending them to abide by the system of
lecturing adopted by the regents in theology in Paris', but
he says nothing of Paris in connection with his own education.
While he was still at Oxford, he held an office corresponding to
that of the chancellor in Paris, but he was not allowed by the
i Giraldus, 1, 72 f. , 410; In, 92, where "Magister Gualterus, magister Oxoniensis,
archidiaconus,” is probably a mistake for "Magister Gualterus Mapus, Oxoniensis
archidiaconus" (op. I, 412).
· Mon. Franc. 1, 87; cf. ib. 64–66.
3 Ep. 2.
• Ep. 58; cf. Epp. 20, 41, 67.
6 Ep. 123.
## p. 204 (#224) ############################################
204
Franciscans of Oxford
v
then bishop of Lincoln to assume any higher title than that of
Magister Scholarum? At Oxford, he prepared commentaries on
some of the logical treatises of Aristotle, and on the Physics,
and a translation of the Ethics, which appeared about 1244, was
known under his name. He himself produced a Latin rendering
of the "middle recension” of the Epistles of Ignatius, besides
commenting on Dionysius the Areopagite, and causing a trans-
lation to be made of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,
the Greek MS of which (now in the Cambridge Library) had been
brought from Athens by his archdeacon, John of Basingstoke.
In his Compendium Scientiarum he classified all the departments
of knowledge recognised in his day. The printed list of his works
extends over twenty-five quarto pagesa ; it includes treatises on
theology, essays on philosophy, a practical work on husbandry.
Perhaps the most interesting of his works is a poem in 1757 lines
in praise of the Virgin and Son, an exquisite allegory called the
Château d Amour, originally written in “romance" for those who
had ne letture ne clergie, and soon translated from French into
Latin, and ultimately into English. Robert de Brunne, in his
translation of the Manuel des Pechiez, tells us of the bishop's love
for the music of the harp.
In the opinion of Luard, the editor of his Letters, "probably
no one has had a greater influence upon English thought and
English literature for the two centuries that followed his age. "
Wyclif ranks him even above Aristotle', and Gower calls him
"the grete clerc*. ” Apart from his important position as a patriot,
a reformer and a statesman, and as a friend of Simon de Montfort,
he gave, in the words of his latest biographer, F. S. Stevenson,
“a powerful impulse to almost every department of intellectual
activity, revived the study of neglected languages, and grasped the
central idea of the unity of knowledge. ” One of the earliest
leaders of thought in Oxford, a promoter of Greek learning, and
an interpreter of Aristotle, he went far beyond his master in the
experimental knowledge of the physical sciences. Roger Bacon
lauds his knowledge of science, and he is probably referring to
Grosseteste, when he says that no lectures on optics “have as yet
been given in Paris, or anywhere else among the Latins, except
twice at Oxford 6. ” Matthew Paris, who resented his zeal for the
· Lincoln Register (Rashdall, 11, 355 n. 2).
8 Trial, iv, c. 3.
6 Opera Inedita, 33, 37, 472.
? Life by Pegge (1793).
• Conf. Am. IV, 234.
## p. 205 (#225) ############################################
205
Adam Marsh. Roger Bacon
reform of the monasteries, generously pays the following tribute to
his memory:
Thus the saintly. . . bishop of Lincoln passed away from the exile of this
world, which he never loved. . . . He had been the rebuker of pope and king, the
corrector of bishops, the reformer of monks, the director of priests, the
instructor of clerks, the patron of scholars, the preacher of the people,. . . the
careful student of the Scriptures, the hammer and the contemner of the
Romans. At the table of bodily food, he was liberal, courteous and affable;
at the table of spiritual food, devout, tearful and penitent; as a prelate,
sedulous, venerable and never weary in well-doing?
Grosseteste's friend Adam Marsh, who had been educated
under him at Oxford and had entered the priesthood, joined the
Franciscan order shortly after 1226. The first four lecturers to the
Franciscans in Oxford (beginning with Grosseteste) were seculars ;
the first Franciscan to hold that office was Adam Marsh”, who was
probably appointed for the year 1247—8. Provision was then
made for a regular succession of teachers, and soon there were
fifty Franciscan lectureships in various parts of England. Out of
love for Adam Marsh, Grosseteste left his library to the Oxford
Franciscans? Like Grosseteste, he is a friend and adviser of Simon
de Montfort, and faithfully tells him that "he who can rule his own
temper is better than he who storms a city. " The king and the
archbishop of Canterbury urged his appointment as bishop of Ely;
but Rome decided in favour of Hugo de Balsham (1257), the future
founder of Peterhouse (1284). In his Letters Marsh's style is less -
classical than that of Grosseteste; but the attainments of both of
these lecturers to the Oxford Franciscans are warmly eulogised by
their pupil, Roger Bacon. He mentions them in good company-
immediately after Solomon, Aristotle and Avicenna, describing
both of them as “perfect in divine and human wisdom 5. ” On the
death of Alexander of Hales (1245), Grosseteste was afraid that
Adam Marsh would be captured by Paris to fill the vacant chair.
His Letters, his only surviving work, give him no special claim to
those scholastic qualities of clearness and precision that were
possibly indicated in his traditional title of Doctor illustris.
Roger Bacon, a native of Ilchester, was the most brilliant
representative of the Franciscan order in Oxford. He there
attended the lectures of Edmund Rich of Abingdon, who had
studied in Paris, who could preach in French and who was
possibly himself the French translator of his principal Latin work,
Chronica Majora, V, 407, ed. Luard.
3 Mon. Franc. I, 185.
• Opus Tertium, c. 22 f. , 25.
Mon. Franc. 1, 38.
* Ib. 1, 264.
6 Ep. 334.
## p. 206 (#226) ############################################
206
Franciscans of Oxford
Speculum Ecclesiae. Rich was the first in Roger Bacon's day to
expound the Sophistici Elenchi at Oxford'. It was probably under
the influence of Grosseteste and Marsh that Bacon entered the
Franciscan order, a society which, doubtless, had its attractions for
his studious temperament. He is said to have been ordained in
1233. Before 1245, he left Oxford for Paris. He there distin-
guished himself as a teacher; but he had little sympathy with the
scholasticism of the day, and he accordingly returned to England
about 1250.
In the order of St Francis there was room for freedom of
thought, no less than for mystic devotion ; but, some seven years
later, so soon as the party of the mystics was represented in the
new general of that body, Bacon fell under suspicion for his liberal
opinions, and, by command of the "seraphic" Bonaventura, was
sent to Paris and there kept in strict seclusion for ten years
(1257—67). He probably owed his partial release to the goodwill
of Clement IV, who had heard of the studies of the Franciscan friar
before his own elevation to the papal see, and, by a letter written
at Viterbo on 22 June 1266, drew him from his obscurity and
neglect by pressing him for an account of his researches. There-
upon, in the wonderfully brief space of some eighteen months,
the grateful and enthusiastic student wrote three memorable
works, Opus Majus, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium (1267).
These were followed by his Compendium Studii Philosophiae
(1271–2), and by a Greek Grammar of uncertain date. In his
Compendium, he had attacked the clergy and the monastic orders
and the scholastic pedants of the day; and, by a chapter of the
Franciscans held in Paris in 1278, he was, on these and, doubtless,
other grounds, condemned for "certain suspected novelties” of
opinion. Accordingly, he was once more placed under restraint;
but he had again been released before writing his Compendium
Studii Theologiae (1292). At Oxford he died, and was buried
among the Friars Minor, probably in 1294.
Before entering the order, he had written nothing on science;
and, after his admission, he came under the rule that no friar
should be permitted the use of writing materials, or enjoy the
liberty of publishing his work, without the previous approval of
his superiors. The penalty was the confiscation of the work, with
many days of fasting on bread and water. He had only written a
few “chapters on various subjects at the request of his friends. "
* Comp. Theol. (op. J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, 1, 592, ed. 2, 1906).
? Opera Inedita, 13.
## p. 207 (#227) ############################################
Roger Bacon
207
Possibly, he is here referring to the pages on the secret works of
nature and art, on Greek fire, on gunpowder and on the properties
of the magnet', on which he had discoursed in letters addressed
either to William of Auvergne (d. 1248), or to John of Basingstoke
(d. 1252). He was surrounded with difficulties ; he found philo-
sophy and theology neglected in the interests of civil law, and
despised under the delusion that the world knew enough of them
already. He had spent forty years in the study of the sciences
and languages, and, during the first twenty years specially de-
voted by him to the attainment of fuller knowledge (possibly
before joining a mendicant order), he had expended large sums
on his learned pursuits. None would now lend him any money to
meet the expense of preparing his works for the pope, and he
could not persuade any one that there was the slightest use in
science? Thankful, however, for the pope's interest in his studies,
he set to work with enthusiasm and delight, though he was strictly
bound by the vow of poverty, and had now nothing of his own to
spend on his literary and scientific labours.
His principal works, beginning with the three prepared for the
pope, are as follows:
Opus Majus, which remained unknown until its publication
by Samuel Jebb in 1733. It has since been recognised as the
Encyclopédie and the Organon of the thirteenth century. It
is divided into seven parts : (1) the causes of human ignorance ;
(2) the connection between philosophy and theology ; (3) the
study of language ; (4) mathematical science; (5) physics (espe-
cially optics); (6) experimental science; and (7) moral philosophy.
The part on language was preserved in an imperfect form ; that
on moral philosophy was omitted in Jebb's edition.
Opus Minus was first published by John Sherren Brewer
in 1859 (with portions of Opus Tertium and Compendium Studii
Philosophiae). It was written partly to elucidate certain points
in Opus Majus, partly to meet the risk of the earlier treatise
failing to reach its destination. It enters more fully into an
examination of the schoolmen; it exposes the pretensions
of the Franciscan, Alexander of Hales, and of an unnamed
Dominican. It recapitulates the passages in the previous work
which the author deems especially important, and discusses the
six great errors that stand in the way of the studies of Latin
Christendom, namely (1) the subjection of theology to philosophy;
(2) the general ignorance of science ; (3) implicit trust in the dicta of
Opera Inedita, 536 f.
" Ib. 16, 59, 65.
## p. 208 (#228) ############################################
208 Franciscans of Oxford
the earlier schoolmen ; (4) exaggerated respect for the lecturers on
the Sentences, in comparison with the expounders of the text of
the Scriptures ; (5) mistakes in the Vulgate; (6) errors in the
spiritual interpretation of Scripture due to ignorance of Hebrew,
Greek, Latin, archaeology and natural history; and those due to
misunderstanding of the hidden meaning of the Word of God.
After a break, there next follows a comparison between the opinions
of French and English naturalists on the elementary principles
of matter, and, after a second break, an account of the various
metals. Only a fragment, equivalent to some 80 pages of print,
has been preserved in a single MS in the Bodleian.
Opus Tertium, though written later, is intended to serve
as an introduction to the two previous works. In the first
twenty chapters we have an account of the writer's personal
history, his opinions on education, and on the impediments thrown
in its way by the ignorance, prejudice, contempt, carelessness and
indifference of his contemporaries. He next reverts to points that
had been either omitted or inadequately explained in his earlier
writings. After a digression on vacuum, motion and space, he
dwells on the utility of mathematics, geography, chronology and
geometry, adding remarks on accents and aspirates, and on punc-
tuation, metre and rhythm. A subsequent defence of mathe-
matics, with an excursus on the reform of the calendar, leads to a
discourse on chanting and on preaching.
The above three works, even in their incomplete form, fill as
many as 1344 pages of print. It was these three that were com-
pleted in the brief interval of eighteen months.
Compendium Studii Philosophiae, imperfectly preserved in
a single MS in the British Museum, begins with reflections
on the beauty and utility of wisdom. The impediments to its
progress are subsequently considered, and the causes of human
error investigated. The author criticises the current Latin
grammars and lexicons, and urges the importance of the study of
Hebrew, adding as many as thirteen reasons for the study of Greek,
followed by an introduction to Greek grammar.
The above is only the beginning of an encyclopaedic work on
logic, mathematics, physics, metaphysics and ethics. The part on
physics is alone preserved, and extracts from that part have been
printed? .
The Greek Grammar may be conveniently placed after the
above Compendium, and before the next. The author's know-
1 Émile Charles, 369–91.
## p. 209 (#229) ############################################
209
Roger Bacon
ledge of Greek was mainly derived from the Greeks of his own
day, probably from some of the Greek teachers invited to England
by Grossetestel. He invariably adopts the late Byzantine pronun-
ciation; and, in his general treatment of grammar, he follows the
Byzantine tradition. This work was first published by the Cam-
bridge University Press in 1902.
Compendium Studii Theologiae, Bacon's latest work, deals
with causes of error, and also with logic and grammar in reference
to theology. The above parts are extant in an imperfect form,
and only extracts from them have been printed from a MS
in the British Museum? . A "fifth part," on optics, is preserved in
a nearly complete condition in the same library.
Roger Bacon was the earliest of the natural philosophers of
western Europe. In opposition to the physicists of Paris, he
urged that "enquiry should begin with the simplest objects of
science, and rise gradually to the higher and higher,” every obser-
vation being controlled by experiment. In science he was at least
a century in advance of his time; and, in spite of the long and
bitter persecutions that he endured, he was full of hope for the
future. He has been described by Diderot as “one of the most
surprising geniuses that nature had ever produced, and one of the
most unfortunate of men. " He left no disciple. His unknown
grave among the tombs of the Friars Minor was marked by no
monument; a tower, traditionally known as “Friar Bacon's
Study,” stood, until 1779, on the old Grand Pont (the present
Folly bridge) of Oxford. The fact that he had revived the study
of mathematics was recorded by an anonymous writer about
13703. A long passage in his Opus Majus“, on the distance between
the extreme east and west of the habitable globe, inserted (without
mention of its source) in the Imago Mundi of Pierre d'Ailly, was
thence quoted by Columbus in 1498 as one of the authorities that
had prompted him to venture on his great voyages of discovery.
Meanwhile, in popular repute, friar Bacon was regarded only as
an alchemist and a necromancer. During the three centuries
subsequent to his death, only four of his minor works, those on
Alchemy, on the Power of Art and Nature and on the Cure of Old
Age, were published in 1485—1590. Like Vergil, he was reputed
to have used a "glass prospective” of wondrous power, and, like
others in advance of their times, such as Gerbert of Aurillac,
Study," stool of Oxford. The by an anonymo
? Émile Charles, 410—6.
1 Comp. Phil. 434.
3 Little's Grey Friars at Oxford, 195 n.
4 Opus Majus, ed. Bridges, 1, xxxiii, 290.
E. L. I. CH. X.
14
## p. 210 (#230) ############################################
210
Franciscans of Oxford
Albertus Magnus and Grosseteste, to have constructed a “brazen
head” that possessed the faculty of speech. The popular legend
was embodied in The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon, in Greene's
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (c. 1587) and in Terilo's satire
of 1604. At Frankfurt, the parts of Opus Majus dealing with
mathematics and optics were published in 1614; but a hundred
and twenty years passed before a large portion of the remainder
was published in England (1733), and the same interval of time
preceded the first appearance of Opera Inedita (1859). The
seventh part of Opus Majus, that on moral philosophy, was
not printed until 1897. But the rehabilitation of Roger Bacon,
begun by Brewer in 1859, had, happily, meanwhile been indepen-
dently completed by Émile Charles in 1861.
Friar Bacon is associated in legend with friar Bungay, or
Thomas de Bungay in Suffolk), who exemplifies the close con-
nection between the Franciscan order and the eastern counties.
Bungay lectured to the Franciscans at Oxford, and, afterwards, at
Cambridge, where he was placed at the head of the Franciscan
convent. As head of the order in England, he was succeeded
(c. 1275) by John Peckham, who had studied at Paris under
Bonaventura, had joined the Franciscans at Oxford and was arch-
bishop of Canterbury from 1279 to 1292. At Oxford, a number
of grammatical, logical, philosophical and theological doctrines
taught by the Dominicans, and already condemned by the Domi-
nican archbishop, Robert Kilwardby (1276), a Master of Arts of
Paris, famous as a commentator on Priscian, were condemned
once more by the Franciscan archbishop, Peckham (1284). Thomas
Aquinas had held, with Aristotle, that the individualising principle
was not form but matter-an opinion which was regarded as
inconsistent with the medieval theory of the future state. This
opinion, disapproved by Kilwardby, was attacked in 1284 by
William de la Mare, probably an Englishman, possibly an Oxonian,
certainly a Franciscan. Both of them may have owed something
to Roger Bacon. They were certainly among the precursors of the
type of realism represented by Duns Scotus, the Doctor subtilis.
John Duns Scotus was a Franciscan in Oxford in 1300. There
is no satisfactory evidence as to the place of his birth ; a note in
a catalogue at Assisi (1381) simply describes him as de provincia
Hiberniae'. At Oxford he lectured on the Sentences.
