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.[1] 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
- ↑ [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.]
