Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning/Chapter IV

by Reginald Lane Poole

CHAPTER IV.

THE SCHOOL OF CHARTRES.

At the beginning of the twelfth century three schools are distinguished in the contemporary literature above the multitude which had sprung into new life in France and were connected with so many of her cathedrals and religious houses. These three were at Laon, Paris, and Chartres.^[1] It would be more accurate to say, they were the schools of Anselm and Ralph, of William of Champeaux, and of Bernard the Breton. For in those days the school followed the teacher, not the teacher the school. Wherever a master lived, there he taught; and thither, in proportion to his renown, students assembled from whatever quarter. Thus it had been at Tournay, as we have seen, under Odo, at Bee under Lanfranc and Anselm, and still earlier under Fulbert at Chartres. The tie was a personal one, and was generally severed by the master's death. A succession of great teachers in one place was a rare exception.

The eminence of William of Champeaux drew logical students to Paris, but not because he taught at Paris. The success of one of them, Abailard, ^a in forcing his master to modify the basis of his system added a peculiar notoriety to a school whose fame was already established: for William's action heralded the downfall of the old-fashioned realism, and the orthodox system, heretofore so solid and substantial, came to acknowledge sects whose number and division might contrast unfavourably with the comparative unity of their rivals. Moreover the exciting presence of Abailard tended to give Paris a permanent importance as a seat of learning. The natural pugnacity of youth gathered crowds of students to a scene where an endless encounter was going on, in their several lecture-rooms, between the heads of the opposing parties. Paris became the centre of the dialectical struggle, and in another generation we see it filled with the noise of a new populace of schools set up in every part by ambitious teachers. But the schools of William of Champeaux nourished only with their master. We are not even certain who occupied his place at Notre Dame; for it is only a hazardous guess that identifies his successor with ^b Robert of Melun: nor is the celebrity of Saint Victor, where the later years of William's life as a teacher were passed, any the more connected with him. He left the priory, on his elevation to the see of Châlons [a.d. 1112], a name for dialectic: but that which made the enduring reputation of the abbey (^c it obtained this dignity in the year of his removal, or the year after) was something quite different. It was an impulse of reaction from the dialectic movement, due to the presence among its canons of Hugh of Saint Victor. The spirit which Hugh infused was more theological and religious, less instinctively literary, far less secular. This was the stamp of the mystics of Saint Victor which long remained their common tradition; but it was not the legacy of William of Champeaux.

The two other great schools of France have this likeness to William's, that they were rigorously realistic; but in neither were dialectics the main interest of the place in the way they were at Paris. Of the school of Laon we know little besides its renown. Its history is comprised within the lifetime of the brothers Anselm and Ralph, whose celebrity attracted scholars from all parts of western Europe. At one time we see a band of clergymen from Milan, the rival of Rome, prouder in her religious tradition than any other church in Christendom, journeying to Laon that they might sit at the feet of the acknowledged masters in theology.^[2] At another ^d it is Wicelin, a mature teacher at Bremen, who gives up his school and spends some years in France, learning the interpretation of holy Writ from the same masters. Anselm, the 'doctor of doctors,'^[3] the pupil perhaps of his more famous namesake at Bec,^[4] was at different times the master both of William of Champeaux, who seems to have been in some sort regarded as his legitimate successor,^[5] and of Abailard, ^e who characteristically despised him as an eloquent man without much judgement; not to speak of Alberic of Rheims, Gilbert of La Porrée, and many more of the theological students of the time. ^f He died as early as 1117, and the ^g school was thenceforward directed by his brother alone; but it seems to have soon lost its peculiar eminence, and with Ralph's death in ^h 1138 it sank again into the obscurity from which their single efforts had raised it.

Apart from the personal weight of the teachers, the school had acquired a peculiar and almost unique name for the stedfast fidelity with which it maintained and handed on the pure theological tradition of the church.^[6] A generation after Anselm, many years after Ralph, had passed away, their authority is appealed to in the same unquestioned manner as an English clergyman might appeal to Hooker or Barrow. ⁱ It is relied on as irrefragable by Robert de Bosco, archdeacon of Châlons, in connexion with the trial for heresy of Gilbert of La Porrée in 1148; and later still in 1159 ⁱ John of Salisbury avers that no one would dare to detract in public from the lustre of those most splendid lights of Gaul, the glory of Laon, whose memory is in pleasantness and blessing. It is supposed that while Anselm devoted himself to the field of theology, Ralph instructed the school in the liberal arts generally; but as to the sort of teaching he gave we have no information.^[7] Our ignorance appears all the greater in comparison with the amplitude and vivid detail of our knowledge of the school of Chartres, which has a remarkable individuality among the schools of the time. Its interest was not theological nor principally dialectical, but literary: its character was that of a premature humanism. The golden age of the school is nearly contemporary with that of Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux; but it is carried on to a later date through its master Bernard, whom John of Salisbury signalises as ^l in modern times the most abounding spring of letters in Gaul.

The cathedral school of Chartres had early in the preceding century been famous as a house of religious learning. Its president, the saintly Fulbert, a pupil of Gerbert, was one of those quick-souled teachers who, just as saint Anselm two generations later, gave so powerful an impulse to the reviving civilisation of the time. Even ^m after his elevation to the bishoprick of his own city, Fulbert still continued to follow his chosen calling among the scholars of the cloister. The position he won as a teacher—Berengar of Tours was among his pupils,—and the name of 'Socrates' by which his scholars delighted to remember him, bear witness to the attractive force of his personality.^[8] At his death, says the biographer of saint Odilo, ⁿ the study of philosophy in France decayed, and the glory of her priesthood well-nigh perished. But Fulbert's learning was that of a divine, though he was a scholar and a mathematician too. He was wont of an evening to take his disciples apart in the little garden beside the chapel, and discourse to them of the prime duty of life, to prepare for the eternal fatherland hereafter. Without this presiding thought there was infinite danger in the study of letters by themselves: they were only worth cultivating in so far as they ministered to man's knowledge of divine things.

We have little information concerning the fortunes of the school of Chartres after Fulbert's death in 1029;^[9] but it is natural to presume that the literary tradition of the city, if not unbroken, was before long restored by the presence, whether his influence was actively exercised or not,^[10] of its bishop, the great lawyer Ivo, ^o a religious man, as he is described, and of great learning, who in his youth had heard master Lanfranc, prior of Bec, treat of secular and divine letters in that famous school which he had at Bec. Certainly some time towards the close of Ivo's life (he died in 1115^[11]) the school emerges again into notice under the rule, first, it should seem, of Bernard, and then of his brother Theodoric; and thenceforward, down to near the middle of the twelfth century, it enjoyed a peculiar distinction among the schools of France. The names of the two brothers are taken by ^p Otto of Freising as a typical instance to illustrate the dangerous nimbleness of Breton wits, a characteristic of which Abailard furnished a still more striking example: ^q Abailard himself adduces them (if it be really to them that he refers) in proof of the perverse theological views that could be maintained by persons holding the highest rank as teachers. Unlike Abailard, however, neither came into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities.

^r Bernard and Theodoric were both canons and in turn chancellors of the church of Chartres. The latter, though his activity lasted long beyond his brother's lifetime, may be mentioned first. John of Salisbury distinguishes him as ^s a most diligent investigator of the arts, and ^t expressly as a logician; of his skill as a teacher of rhetoric, John ^u speaks in less favourable terms. If we are to credit a ^x curious story, which may not be altogether without authority, it will appear that it was this same scholar who attempted to instruct Abailard in the rudiments of mathematics. Tirric, as he is here called (the name is already softening into Thierry), is again doubtless one with the Terric, ^y a master of the schools, who took part in Abailard's trial at Soissons [a.d. 1121], and the ^z Theodoric of Chartres who was present many years later at that of Gilbert of La Porrée at Rheims [a.d. 1148]. ^a Midway between these two dates he appears as an eminent teacher at Paris. A single treatise, one on the six days of creation, represents for us Theodoric's literary production; and of this only a few extracts have been printed.^[12] These suffice, however, to shew us how boldly he pushed the principles of realism to their furthest issues, and argued from the doctrine of the unity of all being, that all being is God, and that God is the form of being of all things. How far the author's influence was exercised in the school of Chartres, we are left to surmise from that of his elder brother, whose philosophy was of a similar complexion. For it is to Bernard in all probability that the restoration of the school to its old repute was due. Yet there is little beyond the external relation to connect the teaching of Bernard with that of Fulbert or, for that matter, of Lanfranc. Perhaps the single link is to be discovered in its conservative character, its aversion from modern innovations; but even this attitude marks the great difference between Bernard and his predecessors. They looked back and relied upon Christian doctrine as it had filtered through the dark ages; he sought his models beyond Christianity in the reliques of classical antiquity, and emulated neither the theological weight of Fulbert nor the dialectical prowess, such as it was, of Lanfranc.

Bernard^[13] was a devoted Platonist,—^b perfectissimus inter Platonicos seculi nosiri, says John of Salisbury,—but instead of for that reason attacking nominalism, he rather sought to win his opponents over to his side by a demonstration of the essential harmony of Plato and Aristotle. We may believe ⁿ John of Salisbury when he says that the proof was unsuccessful; but he gives no details, nor is it likely that he entered into a minute examination of the different theories current in his day. He stood by the ancients and took little heed of what appeared to him ephemeral controversies. It is indeed a relief in this tempestuous time to make acquaintance with a man holding a distinguished place as a teacher, who nevertheless pursued his quiet way in the study of the classics, and seemed unconscious of the surrounding tumult. ^d We are, he would say, as dwarfs mounted on shoulders of giants, so that we can see more and further than they; yet not by virtue of the keenness of our eyesight, nor through the tallness of our stature, but because we are raised and borne aloft upon that giant mass.

In this reverent dependence on the ancients lies therefore the main peculiarity of the school of Chartres. Learning, Bernard took it, was the fruit of long and patient thought, careful study of worthy models, and a tranquil life free from distracting circumstances. In his own words,

^e Mens humilis, studium quaerendi, vita quieta,
Scrutinium tacitum, paupertas, terra aliena,
Haec reserare solent multis obscura legendo.

Grammar, the necessary staple of a school, was thus to be a discipline as well as a technical acquirement. Now we have to bear in mind that in the middle ages boys learned grammar, that is Latin, not commonly as an accomplishment or piece of training, but as an indispensable vehicle of communication. Fluency more than depth was required, and elegant scholarship was nearly unknown. To meet this demand therefore it was usual for the schoolmaster to drill his boys simply in books of rules and abstracts. Priscian, Donatus, and Alcuin supplied the common text-books, and the classical authors, if heard of at all, were only heard of through delectuses. Bernard's method was a protest directed against this hurried unintelligent system. He maintained that grammar was the basis of all culture and must be learned slowly, leisurely, thoroughly; above all it must be gathered from the classics themselves, and not from all authors alike, but from the best authors.

^f John of Salisbury has given a large and most interesting picture of what he found in practice under Bernard's disciples. ^g Gilbert of La Porrée followed him as chancellor, but Bernard's tradition was handed on mainly by William of Conches and Richard l'Évêque. How powerful it was may be illustrated from a number of passages in John of Salisbury's writings. In the account to which we have referred, it is the choice of reading that stands out as the salient characteristic of Bernard's method, and marks it as aiming at a totally different level of excellence from that which had hitherto been deemed sufficient. The primary rudiments of the art were certainly not neglected. The pupil went through all the routine of metaplasm, schematism, and figures of speech; but this was only the groundwork. As soon as possible he was introduced to the classical texts themselves; and in order to create a living interest in the study, Bernard used not merely to treat these grammatically, but also to comment freely upon them. He would point out for instance how the style of prose differs from that of verse, so that what are vices in the one may be even counted virtues in the other. Nor did he confine himself to the form of what was being read; he was still more anxious to impress upon his pupils its meaning. It was a principle with him that the wider and more copious the master's knowledge, the more fully will he perceive the elegancy of his authors and the more clearly will he teach them. For in them, explains John, the bare material is so refined and perfected by knowledge drawn from every possible source that the finished work appears in some sort an image of all arts. ... Ransack Virgil or Lucan, and whatever philosophy thou profess, thou wilt find there its quintessence. This method of illustration, of bringing all forces to bear upon one's subject, is noted by the same writer as characterising Gilbert of La Porrée, the most famous scion of the Chartres school. He used, says John, the help of all sciences, as the matter demanded; for he knew that the general consists, by mutual service, in the particular.^[14]

Bernard carried out his system in a way that suggests the routine of a much later age. He set his boys, or young men (for, if John of Salisbury's case be typical, the course was rather that of a university than of a school), to do daily exercises in prose and verse composition, and prepared them by explaining the qualities in the orators or poets which they should imitate; his great rule being that they should be brought up on the best models and eschew the rest. Among the virtues of the grammarian, says John, the ancients justly reckoned this: to be ignorant of some things. The pupils passed round their copies of verses to one another for correction, and the healthy friction helped to keep up the stimulating influence of their master. Nor was composition the only practice which they were given. They had also to learn by rote, and every day keep a record of as much as they could remember of the previous day's lesson; for with them the morrow was the disciple of yesterday... After this wise, adds John of Salisbury, did my preceptors, William of Conches and Richard surnamed the Bishop, now by office archdeacon of Coutances, a man good both in life and conversation, instruct their pupils awhile. But afterwards, when opinion did prejudice to truth, and men chose rather to seem than to be philosophers, and professors of arts undertook to instil the whole of philosophy into their auditors more quickly than in three or even two years,—they were overcome by the onset of the unskilled crowd and retired.^[15] Since then less time and less care have been bestowed on grammar, and persons who profess all arts, liberal and mechanical, are ignorant of the primary art, without which a man proceeds in vain to the rest. For ^h albeit the other studies assist literature, yet this has the sole privilege of making one lettered.

A competitive system such as that John refers to, was a natural result of the ⁱ intellectual restlessness of the time. The aim of the school of Chartres was directly opposed to this. Grammar, according to Bernard, was not to be treated as a mere technical study, as an instrument to be used in philosophy or theology: it was an end in itself. In a word he endeavoured according to his lights to substitute for grammar philology in the large sense. The level to which he attained may appear to us very imperfect; but we have at least this testimony to his success, that John of Salisbury, who followed his method, wrote indisputably the purest, if not the most graceful, Latin of the middle ages. He has a taste in style and a breadth of reading for which no previous period has prepared us. The idea of learning which he reveals is something quite different from what we meet with in the preceding centuries, whether in the eleventh, in the verbose inanities of ^k Anselm the Peripatetic, or even at the close of the ninth, in the childish unconsciousness of saint Notker Balbulus, himself an inmate of the renowned monastery of Saint Gall. The latter, after discoursing at length ^l Of the famous Men who have expounded the holy Scriptures, thinks it necessary to say a word about secular literature. For the rest, he says (he is writing to Solomon, afterwards bishop of Constance), if thou desirest to know also the authors of the gentiles, read Priscian. Moreover, the histories of Josephus the Jew and of our Hegesippus should be read. And I set an end to my book. Amen.

From what has been said of Bernard's conservative temper, and of the way in which he held aloof from the popular wrangle of dialectical controversies, it may fairly be surmised that his school did not attract so great a number of pupils as some other schools which had sprung up with the dialectical movement, and which devoted themselves to the novel vogue. Such, as we shall see, were those of Melun, and of Saint Geneviève and the Petit Pont at Paris. At the same time we may reasonably infer that Chartres attracted a distinctly higher class of students than these, at least after the retirement of William of Champeaux, and the death of the brothers of Laon. John of Salisbury may again be called as witness. After two years under famous dialecticians at Paris, he was glad enough to spend three more under the masters of Chartres. The teachers he names in this connexion are William of Conches and Richard l'Évêque: a third distinguished disciple of Bernard, Gilbert of La Porrée, who was perhaps still resident at Chartres when he arrived, John did not attend as a master, so far as we know, until later. These successors of Bernard illustrate the tendencies of his teaching in several ways; but it is remarkable that only one of them, William, and William only in a modified degree, can be regarded as Bernard's heir in what we take to be his special characteristic, namely his indifference to, if not his negation of, theology as a branch of scientific study.

William of Conches is ranked after Bernard ^m as the most accomplished, opulentissimus, grammarian of his time. With him, as with Bernard and with ⁿ John of Salisbury, the rules of speech which comprise grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, and are together included under the name of eloquence, are the first things which the philosopher must possess: with them equipped, as with arms, we ought to approach the study of philosophy, first as learned in the sciences of the Quadrivium, and finally in theology, since by the knowledge of the creature we attain to a knowledge of the Creator.^[16] But the basis of the whole is grammar: in omni doctrina grammatica praecedit. This is the mark of the school of Chartres; and it is unfortunate that William's comprehensive work, the Philosophia, remains a fragment at the end of the fourth book just at the point where he is about to introduce the characteristic subject. Hence we know the author principally as a natural philosopher, it would be more accurate to say, as a cosmologer; and in this quality his writings are a good sample of the freedom of thought that issued from the classic calm of Chartres.

Bernard had found in his philosophy an adequate explanation of all the phaenomena of life, ethical and metaphysical as well as physical: and William was his true disciple; but with this difference, that he expanded the definition of philosophy so as to include theology. His views on this subject, there can be no doubt, he derived almost exclusively from the writings of Abailard; but if he was only a theologian at second hand, this was because his interest was still confined to the outward facts of nature. He borrowed from theology just so much as was necessary to elucidate the genesis and order of the universe, and beyond this he did not care to go. For the same reason he parted company with the realists before accepting that doctrine of ideas which others found the most attractive feature in Platonism. Alike in his ^o commentary on Boëthius's Consolation of Philosophy, a work of a comparatively early date, and in the ^p Dragmaticon which he wrote long afterwards with an avowedly apologetic purpose, we find the same reluctance to admit conclusions which, he plainly felt, did not belong to his proper field of enquiry. His business was with the external and tangible. The root of his system is disclosed in the sentence above quoted: By the knowledge of the creature we attain to a knowledge of the Creator. Nor was this any but a legitimate application of the habits of thought current in the schools of the time. Realism no less than nominalism, as Bernard and Theodoric are witness, had its ^q inevitable issues running counter to the accepted religion: yet the realists as a rule were disposed rather to compromise Christianity in favour of Plato than to loose hold of the universal truth of their philosophical theories. William of Conches treats the two authorities as practically coördinate, and, with the one exception to which we have referred, confidently adapts his interpretation of the letter of Scripture to the principles which he had learned, through whatever indirect channels, from Plato. ^r The wisdom of the world, he repeats, is foolishness with God: not that God esteems the wisdom of this world to be foolishness, but because it is foolishness in comparison of his wisdom; nor does it follow on that account that it is foolishness.

William therefore seeks God through nature: he proves his existence from the good design and government of the world, and scruples not to find a different explanation of the mystery of the Trinity from that which is sanctioned by the fathers of the church. There is, he says,^[17] in the Godhead, power, and wisdom, and will, which the saints call three persons, applying these terms to them by a sort of affinity of meaning, and saying that the divine power is Father, the wisdom Son, the will the Holy Ghost... The Father, he continues, begat the Son, that is the divine power begat wisdom, when he provided how he would create things and dispose them when created: and since he provided this before the ages, before the ages he begat the Son, that is, wisdom; and this of himself not of another, because not by the teaching of another nor by experience, but of his own nature, he had this knowledge. From the time he was (if it be lawful to say it of eternity), from that time he knew these things, nor was there any else to know them. If therefore he is eternal, his wisdom also is eternal. Thus the Father begat the Son, coeternal with him and consubstantial.^[18] In another place ^s William expressly rejects the notion that Eve was created out of Adam's rib, as a crabbed, literal interpretation. How, he asks, are we contrary to the divine Scripture, if concerning that which it states to have been done, we explain the manner in which it was done?^[19]

Such independent utterances not unnaturally made William an object of violent dislike to his more cautious or more pious contemporaries. His works are full of complaints of his detractors. He accounts for the opposition he met with, as the venom of envious rivals: Because they know not the forces of nature, in order that they may have all men comrades in their ignorance, they suffer not that others should search out anything, and would have us believe like rustics and ask no reason; so that now the word of the prophet should be fulfilled, The priest shall be as the people. But we say that in all things a reason must be sought, and if it fail we must confide the matter, as the divine page declares, to the Holy Spirit and to faith.^[20] These envious monks, however, if they perceive any man to be making search, at once cry out that he is a heretic, presuming more on their habit than trusting in their wisdom.^[21] William takes them to be altogether the same class of teachers who compounded for the slenderness of their knowledge by the pace at which they could carry their pupils through the whole of philosophy. ^t He is never tired of inveighing against these glib smatterers.

At length, however, as he advanced in years, William came to see that there was this justice in the objections raised against him on the score of orthodoxy, that even though every doctrine he maintained was capable of defence, he had erred in the novelty of the terms in which he had stated them. Some time after John of Salisbury had quitted Chartres, William of Saint Thierry, the prime mover in the final attack on Abailard, ^u detected the danger that lurked under the innocent form of Conches's Philosophy. It was enough, he said, to have had a new theology to extirpate in the case of Abailard, without the addition of a new philosophy.^[22] He wrote a strenuous letter on the subject to Bernard of Clairvaux; and the influence of the autocratic saint conspired, it seems, with the hostility which William of Conches had excited among rival teachers, to determine the latter to withdraw from the wrangle of the schools. His Norman birth perhaps helped to find him protection in the household of ^x Geoffrey the Fair, count of Anjou, who was now in occupation of Normandy, and who had himself endured the edge of saint Bernard's vigorous denunciation.^[23]

To this prince William addressed a new edition of his Philosophy, rewritten in a more docile spirit, and distinguished from the earlier book by its dialogue form. He confesses in it ^y the errors and omissions which experience had discovered to him in the work of his youth, imperfectum, utpote imperfecti, and is resolved to make ample amends by striking out not only things contrary to the catholic faith, but also everything at all connected with it which, though capable of defence, might savour dangerously of novelty. It was better, he felt, to be silent than to risk the possibility of falsehood. His former work, therefore, he suppressed, and begged everyone who possessed the book to join him in condemning and destroying it. Not words, he protested, make a heretic, but their defence. It is a strange commentary on his judgement, and on the criticism of William of Saint Thierry, that the work thus disowned should have lived to be printed in three several editions as the production of the Venerable Bede, of saint Anselm's friend, William of Hirschau, and of Honorius of Autun; the taint of heresy plainly cannot have been long perceptible to medieval librarians. Nor, indeed, was the change that transformed the Philosophy into the Dragmaticon a very extensive one: substantially the two books are for the most part the same. To the ideology of Plato he had never committed himself: now he takes the opportunity of emphasising his correct position with respect to a pitfall into which, in fact, he had never stumbled;^[24] in such matters, he says, ^z Christianus sum, non academicus. He remained a Platonist so far as the external and rational elements of the philosophy were concerned, but he went to orthodox theology for the rest.

It is likely that the moderation with which he had learned to express his views restored his credit in the eyes of the stricter churchmen. Certainly his Dragmaticon enjoyed a remarkable popularity, and a wide diffusion attested by a multitude of manuscripts at Vienna, Munich, Paris, Oxford, and other places. The favour in which he was held by Geoffrey Plantagenet we know only from William's own scanty notices, and of his later years nothing is recorded. If it be true that he died at Paris about 1154,^[25] we may find here a possible kernel of truth in the old tradition which has been constantly repeated from du Boulay, Oudin, and the other literary historians, and which makes William from first to last a distinguished figure in the 'university' of that city.^[26]

The meagre facts thus elicited concerning the philosopher's external biography are abundant in comparison with those recorded of his colleague at Chartres, Richard l'Évêque, whose virtues as a man and a scholar are, ^a celebrated in no ordinary terms by his pupil and friend, John of Salisbury. Richard, so far as is known, left no memorial as a writer. Unlike William he advanced from teaching to the active service of the church; he became archdeacon of Coutances, and finally in 1171 bishop of Avranches. The situation of his ministry brought him also into connexion with the house of Anjou, and it was his city of Avranches that witnessed the readmission of Henry the Second to the communion of the church after the murder of Thomas Becket. He died in 1182, the last survivor of the masters of Chartres.

Gilbert of La Porrée has a more important place in the philosophical history of the age even than William of Conches, partly because his studies lay in departments of learning to which a greater relative weight was attached, than to natural philosophy or grammar. A contemporary panegyrist proclaims him lacking in no one of the seven liberal arts, save only astronomy;^[27] but in sober history he appears as a theologian and a dialectician. In dialectics he holds in one way a quite unique position; for his Book of the Six Principles, a supplement to the Categories of Aristotle, was accepted through the middle ages as second only in authority to the works of the founder of logic (among which, both in manuscript and print,^[28] it held its place until the Latin versions of Aristotle were exchanged in general use for editions of the Greek), and it was made the basis of extensive commentaries by Albert the Great and several other schoolmen. Gilbert is thus the first medieval writer who was at once taken as a recognised authority on logic, the immediate successor of Boëthius and Isidore; for Alcuin's Dialectic, although a very popular text-book, had only been admitted as a convenient summary, and had by this time been rendered practically obsolete by the higher proficiency which was now expected of logical students: and even if Gilbert's treatise is hardly worthy of its reputation, it undoubtedly indicates a remarkable advance in the notions men had of scientific necessities, that anyone should venture to complete a section of a work of so unapproachable an eminence as Aristotle's Organon.

If dialectics made Gilbert's lasting fame, theology was the rock upon which his fortunes were nearly shipwrecked. He is the one man whom saint Bernard of Clairvaux unsuccessfully charged with heresy. This singular experience may be conveniently treated in another connexion; at present it will suffice to notice the few facts which are known about his life. Born in Poitiers about the year 1075,^[29] he left his native city to become successively the scholar of Bernard of Chartres and of the illustrious Anselm of Laon.^[30] It was doubtless the attraction of the former teacher that recalled him to Chartres, where he settled and was made chancellor of the cathedral. After perhaps twenty years of this life he removed to Paris, and gave lectures in dialectics and theology. He did not, however, stay long in the capital, for in 1142 he was raised to the bishoprick of Poitiers.^[31] Possibly he was not sorry then to obtain an honourable office in the country, for we are told that ^d Abailard, when approaching condemnation at the council of Sens, turned to Gilbert with the line of Horace,

^e Tune tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.

Gilbert must therefore have already been pointed at as a fellow-heretic with the victim of Sens. The presage, as the sequel shews, proved true; but it was four years after his preferment that the crisis of his life came. A charge of heresy which was brought against him occupied and perplexed the deliberations of two successive councils; and to this day it is debated whether he was condemned or acquitted [a.d. 1148.]. It will suffice for the present to observe that the visible result of the second council was that the bishop returned untouched to his diocese, where for the few years remaining of his long life he ruled in peace. ^f He died in 1154. The fact that his alleged offence related to the detail of theological metaphysics takes it out of the atmosphere of that school of which we have attempted to discern the peculiar elements. His theology is a legacy not from the teaching of Bernard of Chartres, but from Anselm of Laon, who, ^g we know, had suggested, though he did not countenance, at least one of the theses which brought Gilbert into trouble.^[32] It is also necessary to bear in mind that the latter would in all probability never have attracted hostile notice, had not the party of tradition first tasted blood in the person of Abailard. Ignorance, prejudice, an incapacity of criticism, coupled the two men together; and Gilbert suffered from the tail of the storm which had overwhelmed Abailard.

1. [Rheims under Alberic should be added to the number: cf. supra, p. 68 n. 30, and infra, p. 129.]
2. Landulf do s. Paulo, Hist. Mediol. xxv, Pertz 20. 30 sq. One of these visitors is mentioned in a letter by an Italian student at Laon, perhaps a little later, printed in the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, 4th series, 1. 465 sq. Another letter, ibid., p. 466, shews how largely the school was frequented. Compare the Histoire littéraire 10. 173–176, where an extensive list of its disciples is given.
3. The title seems an accepted one: see one of the supplements to Sigebert of Gembloux, Auctar. Affligemense, a. 1100, Pertz 6. 400; John of Salisbury, Epist. ccxi, Opp. 2. 54, ed. J. A. Giles, Oxford 1848.
4. Histoire littéraire 10. 171. The statement that Anselm of Laon had previously taught at Paris appears, so far as I can discover, to rest upon the patriotic sentiment of du Boulay and the authors of the Histoire littéraire rather than upon any positive testimony.
5. 'Mortuo Anselmo Laudunensi et Guillelmo Catalaunensi,' wrote Hugo Metellus in his bombastic style to Innocent the Second, 'ignis verbi Del in terra defecit:' ep. iv, C. L. Hugo, Sacrae Antiquitatis Monumenta 2. 331, Saint Dié 1731 folio. Compare Reiner, a monk of Saint Laurence at Liège, writing about the year 1190, who couples the names together as 'opinatissimos tune Franciae magistros:' De ineptiis euiusdam idiotae i, Pertz 20. 596. Later still Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale xxxiii. 93, speaks of Anselm as 'magister nominatissimus scientia morum, et honestato clarus.'
6. [Anselm's Sententiae are now printed by Dr. F. Bliemetzrieder, Münster 1919].
7. [His treatise on the abacus, published in 1890, marks a stage in the history of mathematics in the west. See my work on The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century, pp. 47, 51, 53; Oxford 1912.]
8. Adelman, scholastic of Liège and afterwards bishop of Brescia, writing to Berengar of Tours, recalls prettily 'dulcissimum illud contubernium quod... in academia Carnotensi sub nostro illo venerabili Socrate iucundissime duxi... Sed absque dubio memor nostri, diligens plenius quam cum in corpore mortis huius peregrinaretur, invitat ad se votis et tacitis precibus, obtestans per secreta ilia et vespertina colloquia quae nobiscum in hortulo iuxta capellam de civitate quam Deo volente senator nunc possidet, saepius habebat, et obsecrans per lachrymas... ut illuc omni studio properemus, viam regiam directim gradientes:' Ep. ad Bereng., Max. Biblioth. Patrum 18. 438 d, e.
9. The date I give according to the modern reckoning: see Mabillon, Vet. Anal. 231 ed. 1723; Gall. Christ. 8. 1116 b, Paris 1744 folio. The old account makes it 1028: Max. Biblioth. Patrum 18. 3 a, b.
10. 'Scholas fecit' in the Martyrologium Ecclesiae Carnotensis prefixed to Juretus' edition of Ivo's letters, Paris 1610, and in Gallia Christiana 8. 1133 a, is so far as I am aware a solitary notice: nor need it mean much. The Histoire littéraire 10. 112 says that Ivo rebuilt the schools.
11. The year is certain See the Martyrologium and Gallia Christiana 8. 1132 a. Other dates, 1116 and 1117, are probably to be explained by the slowness with which news travelled in those days.
12. See Haureau, Hist do la Philos. scol. 1. 393-403 [and Notices et Extraits de quelques Manuscrits LatinsdelaBibliothequeNationale, 1. 51-69; 1890. On Theodoric’s unpublished Heptateuchon see A.. Clerval Les Ecoles de Chartres au moyen Age, pp. 172, 221 .qq.; 1895].
13. [In the first edition of this book I followed the prevailing opinion and took Bernard of Chartres to be the same person as Bernard Silvester or Silvestris, the author of the treatise De mimdi universitate. But M. Hauréau, revising his earlier view, has shewn that the latter's connexions were with Tours, not Chartres: Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions 31. (2.) 99 sq.; 1884. Moreover the abbé A. Clerval, Les Écoles de Chartres au moyen Age, p. 161, gives reasons for believing that Bernard of Chartres died before 1130; whereas his namesake wrote in the time of Eugenius the Third. See my article on The Masters of the Schools at Paris and Chartres, in the English Historical Review, 35, 326–331; 1920.]
14. Utebatur, prout res exigebat, omnium adminiculo disciplinarum, in singulis quippe sciens auxiliis mutuis universe constare; Historia pontificalis xii p. 526. The authorship of this invaluable record, which was published for the first time in 1868, as an anonymous work, by Dr. Wilhelm Arndt in Pertz's twentieth volume, was proved by Dr. von Giesebrecht in the Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-philologischen und historischen Classe der königlichen Bayerischen Akademieder Wissenschaften, 3. 125 sq.; Munich 1873.
15. I have commented on the interpretation of this passage, which seems to me to have been generally misunderstood, infra, Appendix vii.
16. Philosophia iv. 41 Hon. p. 1020 f. The work to which I refer under this title I quote either from the edition printed as the work of Honorius of Autun, in the twentieth volume of the Lyons Max. Biblioth. Patr., 1667, or from that to be found among Bede's works, vol. 2, in the edition of Basle 1563 folio; which recensions I distinguish as Hon. and Bed. On the various intricate questions relating to William's bibliography see below, Appendix, v, vi.
17. Est igitur in Divinitate potentia, sapientia, voluntas: quas sancti tres personas vocant, vocabula illis a vulgari per quandam affinitatem transferentes; dicentes potentiam divinam Patrem, sapiontiam Filium, voluntatem Spiritum sanctum: Philos. i. 6 (Bed. 2. 312; Hon., p. 998 a). Cf. infra, Appendix vi. 6.
18. Pater ergo genuit Filium, id est, divina potentia sapientiam, quando providit qualiter res crearet et creatas disponeret: et quia ante secula hoc providit, ante secula Filium, id est, sapientiam, genuit; et hoc ex se non ex alio, quia neque alicuius doctrina neque usus experientia, sed ex propria natura hoc scire habuit. Ex quo autem fuit (si fas est dicere de aeterno), ex eo [edd. quo] haec scivit, nec [al. non] fuit qui [al. quin] ista sciret. Si [al. Sic] ergo aeternus est, et [al. quia] sapientia eius aeterna est. Hic [al. Sic] Pater genuit Filium coaeternum sibi et consubstantialem: Philos. i. 8 Bed. 2. 313. I add in the last three sentences the variants from Hon. p. 998 c; in one word I have conjectured an emendation.
19. Nam in quo divinae scripturae contrarii sumus, si quod in illa dictum est esse factum, nos qualiter factum sit explicemus: Hon. p. 1002 e (Nos I supply from Bed. 2. 318).
20. Sed quoniam ipsi nesciunt vires naturae, ut ignorantiae suae omnes socios habeant, nolunt eos aliquid inquirere, sed ut rusticos nos credere nec rationem quaerere; ut iam impleitur propheticum, Erit sacerdos sicut populus. Nos autem dicimus in omnibus rationem esse quaerendam: si autem alicui deficiat (quod divina pagina affirmat) Spiritui sancto et fidei est mandandum: ibid. Cf. infra, p. 149 n. 6.
21. Si inquirentem aliquem sciant illum esse haereticum clamant, plus de suo caputio praesumentes quam sapientiae suae confidentes: ib., p. 1002 f.
22. Etenim post Theologiam Petri Abäelardi Guillelmus de Conchis novam affert Philosophiam, confirmans et multiplicans quaecunque ille dixit: Epist., ubi supra, p. 127.
23. 'Comes Andegavensis, malleus bonorum, oppressor pacis et libertatis ecclesiae,' says Bernard in a letter assigned to the year 1141: Ep. cccxlviii. 2, Opp. 1. 317.
24. The Dragmaticon, or Dailogus de Substantiis physicis, has been carefully analysed in an interesting paper by professor Karl Werner, in the seventy-fifth volume of the Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Classe der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1873. See especially pp. 400 sqq.
25. The date is given among the notices of 1154, but with the prefix 'hoc tempore,' and only in the chronicle of Alberic, called of Trois Fontaines, who died nearly a century later: Bouquet 13. 703 d; 1786.
26.  Dr. Schaarschmidt, who was the first, I think, to combat this theory, is inclined, Johannes Saresberiensis 22, to question William's connexion with Paris at any time. The epitaph however, or rather the panegyric, upon him, which says,
    Eius praeclaret natu Normannia, vie tu
    
    Francia, Parisius corpore, mente polus,
    
    

    is stated to have been the composition of Philip Harveng, abbat of Bonne Espérance, who died perhaps thirty years after William: Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis 2. 743. It appears indeed that M. Charma disputes this evidence and discovers the philosopher's grave in a village near Evreux: see Hauréau, Singularités historiques et littéraires 266. This, if proved, would be a welcome solution of a vexed question.

27.  

    Temporibus nostris celeberrimus ille magister,
    Logicus, ethicus hic, theologus atque sophista,
    Solaque de septem cui defuit astronomia:—Du Boulay 2. 736.

28. I have used the Venice folio of 1489.
29. John of Salisbury, writing of the year 1148, speaks of Gilbert as one who 'circiter annos 60 expenderat in legendo et tritura litteraturae:' Historia pontificalis viii. Pertz 20. 522.
30. M. Hauréau, Histoire de la Philosophie scolastique 1. 489. [following Mabillon, praef. in Bernardi Opp. i. § lviii.], rightly exposes the error by which Otto of Freising describes Hilary of Poitiers as Gilbert's first master. Saint Hilary was in fact the father to whose writings Gilbert constantly professes himself peculiarly indebted.
31. Compare my article in the English Historical Review, 35. 325 sq., 332 sq.
32. A special point of connexion between Anselm and Gilbert lies in the fact that the latter wrote a series of glosses in continuation and extension of his master's Glossa interlinearis et marginalis, itself a supplement to the standard Glossa ordinaria of Walafrid Strabo. 'Considerate quippe magistri Anselmi Laudunensis glossandi modo, quod videlicet nimia brevitate non nisi ab exercitatis in expositionibus patrum posset intelligi, glossam prolixiorem eoque evidentiorem fecit:' Appendix to Henry of Ghent, De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, cap. viii., A. Miraeus, Biblioth. eccles. 174, Antwerp 1639 folio. Gilbert thus became a joint author of what was practically the authorised body of notes on the Bible current in the middle ages. The 'glosatura magistri Giliberti Porretani super Psalterium quam ipse recitavit coram suo magistro Anselmo,' Psalms (cod. coll. Ball. Oxon. xxxvi. f. 144 d), appears to have been held in particular esteem: cf. Alberic, a. 1149, Bouquet 13. 702 b; Robert de Monte, a. 1154; William of Nangy, who also refers to Gilbert's comments on the Pauline epistles, ibid., vol. 20. 736 b. See too du Boulay 2. 734 (who accidentally writes Petri for Giliberti), and the Histoire littéraire de la France 10. 181, 12. 474. [That Gilbert was the author of the commentary on the Pauline epistles, which has also been attributed to Gilbert of St. Amand, is proved by Denifle, Luther und Luthertum, 1. (2), Quellenbelege, 334–346, Mentz, 1905.]