II. OF LATIN to himself in cultivated talent, in force of mind, and CHAP. in literary composition. He has even had the honor of being thought to have furnished Des Cartes with REVIVAL one of the most celebrated reasonings of his metaphysical ingenuity;22 but he was improved from sources TURE to which Lanfranc had either not resorted, or only began to know. AFTER THE Normans become study. The most informed ecclesiastics on the Continent Anglowere invited from all parts into England, and were placed in its great ecclesiastical dignities, to the rapid eager for improvement of the country.23 Every where the spirit of learning and better manners, and a taste for noble architecture, were introduced. The fine arts are naturally connected with mental advancement; the pleasures of the eye and ear have been justly remarked to be intellectual gratifications; and therefore painting, sculpture, architecture, and music, will always be the delights of cultivated understanding. The Anglo-Saxons felt the powerful influence of the two great principles that were actuating the Norman 24 22 Leibnitz thought that Descartes derived the idea of his well-known reasoning, I think; therefore I exist'-from some expression of Anselm, in his Monologion. 23 The canon of Bayeux, made archbishop of York, is highly extolled for his literature. Malms. 273.-John of Tours, established at Bath a congregation of monks, distinguished for knowlege. Ib. 254.—A Norman bishop filled the church at Dorset with canons of the same literary taste. Ib. 290.-The monk of St. Bertin, who accompanied the bishop of Salisbury to England, contributed largely to the diffusion of knowlege in his diocese. Ib. p. 130.-Another Norman bishop is mentioned, who was fond of astronomy. Ib. p. 286.-The archbishop who succeeded Anselm, was also much attached to learning. Ib. p. 230.-So the Norman bishop of Rochester increased the condition of this cathedral magnifice. p. 233. Thus Malmesbury declares, that the Normans loved great buildings; and that after the Norman conquest, churches arose in the villages, and monasteries in the cities in a new style of building. The kingdom, by the new customs, began so to flourish, that every opulent man thought the day had been lost, which some act of splendid magnificence had not distinguished. 1. 3. p. 102, ENGLAND. BOOK character the love of exterior pomp, in preference VI. to animal pleasures, and the desire of reputation. LITERARY Hence the wealth which the Anglo-Saxons were conHISTORY OF suming in the debasing luxuries of the appetites, the Anglo-Normans applied to the erection of great public edifices; the support of schools; the acquisition of books; and to the display of that stately magnificence, which, tho productive of pride and ambition, yet was more favorable to human improvement than corrupting sensuality. Their love of fame counteracted the ill effects of their love of pomp, by darting soon at intellectual objects; and their moral virtues25 concurred with their spirit of emulation and ardent piety, to create by degrees a high principle of personal honor, and a general increase of social probity and individual worth, which gave stability and force to the national progression. A striking this desire. One impressive description has survived to us, of the great intellectual activity and usefulness of the Norman clergy, to plant in England the literature they had just imbibed. On Ingulf's death, Joffred was invited from Norinstance of mandy, and appointed abbot of Croyland. When he settled in the monastery, he sent to its farm near Cambridge four Norman monks, who were well instructed in what was then called philosophy and science. With all the zeal, and in the manner of our modern itinerant preachers, they hired a public barn 25 We have already noticed the virtues of the Norman character: Malmesbury adds these traits- They are emulous of their equals, and strive to surpass their superiors: They are faithful to their masters, but abandon them on the least offence: They punish perfidy with death, but commute the sentence for money: The most kind-hearted of all men, they treat strangers with the same respect as themselves. They marry with their inferiors. Since their coming into England, they have raised religion as it were from the dead.' 1. 3. p. 102. OF LATIN LITERA AFTER THE at Cambridge, and went thither daily and taught what CHAP. they knew. In a short time, a great concourse of pupils gathered round them. In the second year of REVIVAL their exertions, the accumulation of scholars from all the country round, as well as from the town, was so TURE great, that the largest house, barn, or even church, NORMAN was insufficient to contain them. To gratify the ex- CONQUEST. tensive demand for their instruction, they separated their labors. In the first part of the morning, one of the friars, who was distinguished as a grammarian, taught the Latin grammar to the younger part of the community; at a later hour, another, who was esteemed an acute sophist, instructed the more advanced in the logic of Aristotle, according to the comments of Porphyry and Averroes; a third friar lectured on rhetoric, from Cicero and Quintilian; the fourth, on Sundays and feast-days, preached to the people in various churches; and in this duty Joffred himself frequently co-operated.20 In this unadorned account, we have a striking proof of the attachment of mankind to intellectual improvement, and their eagerness to embrace every opportunity of acquiring it. The soil is ever ready; the laborers only are wanting, where it continues unproductive. In the second year of their tuition, we find these five friars, under all the disadvantages of a foreign language, of great national prejudice against them, and of addressing an uncultivated nation," yet that Hist. Croyland, 1 Gale Script. p. 114. "Such was the state of England in the eyes of Lanfranc, at this time, among the reasons which he gives to the Pope for declining at first the mitre of Canterbury, were, not only our speaking an unknown language, but our being a barbarous nation. Op. Lanfr. Ep. 1. p. 299.-So Guitmund, as before quoted in p. 88. Barbarous in the estimation of a Lombard and a Norman! But even civilization in its degeneracy deserves the epithet. HISTORYOF ENGLAND. BOOK succeeding so prosperously in spreading literature VI. around them, that not even the public buildings were LITERARY large enough to contain the scholars who besought their instruction. If foreign countries under our own government pine still in darkness and base superstitions, it is not from their want of any susceptibility of improvement; it must be our prejudices, and not theirs, which continue their inferiority. No obstacle can be deemed insurmountable by the philanthropical philosopher, who recollects the nations that have been meliorated, and the gratitude with which they have hailed their own improvement and its authors. Schools every where es One of the first fruits of this revival of literature in England, was the universal establishment of schools, tablished. To every cathedral, and almost to every monastery; a school was appended. It is a pleasing feature of the human character, that we are desirous of im parting to others the knowlege we acquire. Few persons of any note appear to us among the clergy, during the century after the conquest, who did not during some part of his life occupy himself in instructing others. Such efforts must have been the produce of genuine benevolence, because, of all intellectual toil, the instruction of youth exacts the greatest labor, and returns the least immediate gratification. Even the Popes were active in exciting the cultivation of knowlege: they deserve the credit of having led the way, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in causing the establishment of schools, the formation of libraries, and the directing of the clerical mind to the most useful studies. The commanding efficacy of their persevering recommen dations on this momentous subject, affords no small atonement for the misdirection of their influence in 28 II. LITERA their political struggles: Councils held under their CHAP. legates, even in the thirteenth century, continued to patronise schools. It is true that they were ecclesi- REVIVAL! astical schools, and that extrinsic study was watched OF LATIN with some suspicion; 30 but all assisted to increase TURE the national education; and the general improvement NORMAN in every branch of learning and knowlege attests the CONQUEST. efficacy of their encouragement and exertions. AFTER THE Pilgrim Greece; The habit of pilgrimage, and afterwards of the ages thro crusades, increased the taste for study. It was impossible for so many, from all ranks and nations in Europe, to visit the Grecian and Arab states, without some conviction of the benefit of superior knowlege, and a general desire to acquire and impart the improvement which they beheld. From the account left by Luithprand, of the wonders he saw at Constantinople-of the metallic tree, on whose brazen branches gilt birds were made to sing-of the throne supported by gilded lions, who roared at his approach of the other shows and tricks which he witnessed, and of the horse-laugh with which his 28 Gregory VII. in 1038, ordered that all the bishops should cause the artes literarum to be taught in their churches. Murat. Ant. Ital. 874 And in 1179, in the general council in the Lateran church at Rome, it was declared, That the church, like a pious inother, ought to provide for the needy, as well those things which are necessary for the body, as those which tend to the progress of the mind: and, lest the opportunity of reading and improvement should be withheld from the poor, who had no paternal wealth to assist them, it directs, that in every cathedral a competent maintenance should be allowed to a master, who should teach the ecclesiastics of that church, and also poor scholars, gratis; and that no money should by any means be exacted for licences to teach.' Ann. Hoveden, p. 589. 29 Thus the council of Paris held in 1212, under a cardinal legate, prohibited the exaction of any thing for licence to teach schooling. It blamed monks who, swore not to lend out any books, and ordered the bishops to have reading at their tables at the beginning and end of meals. Dupin, Eccl. Hist. 13th cent. c. 6. 30 The 20th article of this council forbad those admitted into a monastery to go out to study, and ordered the absent to return within two months. Dupin, 13 cent. |