acknowledged masters in theology.[1] 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,'[2] the pupil perhaps of his more famous namesake at Bec,[3] was at different times the master both of William of Champeaux, who seems to have been in some sort regarded as his legitimate successor,[4] 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.[5]
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ '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.'
- ↑ [Anselm's Sententiae are now printed by Dr. F. Bliemetzrieder, Münster 1919].
