that Alcuin despised secular literature and forbade his scholars to cultivate it, appears to be an unfounded presumption: its sole positive basis lies in a story told by a biographer who was not even a contemporary and who relates the affair simply in order to show the master's miraculous gift of clairvoyance. It was fitting enough that Alcuin should have remonstrated with those who studied their Virgil to the exclusion or neglect of the Bible; but the fact proves nothing as to his general regard for letters, and the testimony of his writings and acts is more eloquent than such private admonitions. Alcuin and the Scots, we take it, laboured, with whatever transient jealousies, in a common love of learning. The old temper which regarded religion and letters as irreconcilable opposites, was clean forgotten; the spirit is caught up by the rulers of the church themselves; and soon a Roman council held under the pope, Eugenius the Second, can make a canon enjoining all diligence in the search for teachers to be appointed in all places to meet the necessities of the age, masters and doctors to teach the study of letters and liberal arts, and the holy doctrines which they possess, since in them chiefly are the divine commands manifested and declared.[1]
That such an ordinance as this should have been required proves how much the learning of the new empire
- ↑ See the dissertation of Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, De Litterarum Studiis apud Italos primis medii Aevi Saeculis, 11, Berlin 1845 quarto. The 34th canon of the Roman council, as re-enacted in an assembly presided over by Leo the Fourth in 853, is as follows: 'De quibusdam locis ad nos refertur non magistros neque curam invenire pro studiis litterarum. Idcirco in universis episcopiis subiectisque populis, et aliis locis in quibus necessitas occurrerit, omnino cura et diligentia habeatur ut magistri et doctores constituantur, qui studia litterarum liberaliumque artium ac sancta habentes dogmata, assidue doceant; quia in his maxime divina manifestantur atque declarantur mandata:' Mansi 14. 1008. For 'ac sancta habentes dogmata' there is a variant 'habentium dogmata:' but though the 'sancta' seems required to justify the word 'dogmata,' the genitive 'habentium' is perhaps more suitable to the context than 'habentes.' The authoritative admonition was appealed to three centuries later by Abailard, as against the detractors of secular learning in his day: Theol. Christ. ii., Opp. 2. 442; Introd. ad theol. ii., ib. p. 69; ed. V. Cousin, Paris 1859 quarto.
