Part 17 (1/2)
Two woes have been set forth, and lo, a third woe remains! The Faculties called liberal [i.e., free] have lost their old time liberty, and are devoted to a slavery so complete that long-haired youths shamelessly possess themselves of the offices in these Faculties, and beardless boys sit in the seat of the Elders, and those who do not yet know how to be pupils strive to be named Doctors. And they themselves compile their own summaries, reeking and wet with [their own] further drivellings, and not even seasoned with the salt of the philosophers.
Neglecting the rules of the Arts and throwing away the standard works of the Makers of the Arts, they catch in their sophisms, as in spiders' webs, the midges of their empty trifling phrases.
Philosophy cries out that her garments are rent and torn asunder; she modestly covers her nakedness with certain carefully prepared remnants [but] she is neither consulted by the good man nor does she console the good woman.
These things, O Father, demand the hand of Apostolic correction, that the present unseemliness of teaching, learning, and debating may by your authority be reduced to definite form, that the Divine Word may not be cheapened by vulgar attrition; that it may not be said on the corners, Lo! Here is Christ, or Lo! He is there! that sacred things may not be cast before dogs or pearls before swine to be trampled under their feet.[77]
(b) _The Monastic View_
To many of the monks of this period study and the search for truth through reason were repellent. In their view the way to spiritual truth was through retirement from the world, and the observance of religious exercises. This is the burden of a letter to John of Salisbury by Peter de la Celle, abbot of a monastery near Rheims, in 1164. Incidentally it gives his view concerning Paris.
”Peter de la Celle to John of Salisbury concerning the perils that encompa.s.s souls at Paris and concerning the true school of truth.”
His own Abbot to his own clerk. You have, my well-beloved, chosen a sufficiently delightful exile, where joys, though they be vain, are in superabundance, where the supply of bread and wine exceeds in richness that of your own land where there is the frequent access of friends, where the dwelling together of comrades is common. Who else besides you is there beneath the sky who has not thought Paris the place of delights, the garden of plantations, the field of first fruits?
Yet, though smiling [at these things], you have said truly that where pleasure of the body is greater and fuller, there is the exile of the soul; and where luxury reigns there the soul is a wretched and afflicted hand-maid. O Paris! How well-suited art thou to captivate and deceive souls! In thee are the nets of the vices, in thee the arrow of h.e.l.l transfixes the hearts of the foolis.h.!.+ This my John has felt and therefore he has named it an exile. Would that you were leaving behind that exile of yours just as it is, and were hastening to your native land not in word and tongue only but in very deed and truth! There, in the book of life would you be looking, not upon forms and elements, but upon divinity itself, as it really is, as upon truth--eye to eye, without labor of reading, without tediousness of seeing, without fallacies and mistakes of understanding, without anxiety of retaining, without fear of forgetting. O blessed school, where Christ teaches our hearts with the words of his virtue, where without study and lecture we learn how we should live happily to eternity! There no book is bought, no teacher of things written is hired, there is no circ.u.mventing in debate, no intricacy of sophisms, [but] a plain settlement of all questions, a full apprehension of universal reasons and arguments. There life avails more than lecture; simplicity, more than cavilling. There no one is shut in [i.e., limited in freedom] save he who is shut out. In a word; there every reproach is done away with in the answer given to him who evilly presents an evil life: ”Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels;” and to him who sets for a good life: ”Come, ye blessed” &c.
Would that the sons of men were as intent upon these better studies as they are on idle talking, on vain and base buffoonery!
Certainly they would harvest richer fruits, more excellent favors, certainly greater honors and beyond doubt would learn the end of all perfection,--Christ,--whom they will never find in these. Farewell.[78]
(c) _Letters from or to Students at Paris_
These letters belong to a period covering nearly four centuries. The first gives an opinion of William of Champeaux in marked contrast to that of Abelard.
(1) A CERTAIN D. WRITES TO A CERTAIN PRIOR CONCERNING HIS STUDIES AT PARIS. (1109-1112.)
I am now in Paris in the School of Master William of Champeaux, the greatest of all the men of his time whom I have known, in every branch of learning. When we hear his voice we think that no man, but, as it were, an angel from heaven, is speaking; for the melody of his words and the profundity of his ideas transcends, as it were, human limitations....
Here, my revered friend, I am training my youth that I may not utterly succ.u.mb to those vices which, unless conquered, are wont, as a rule, to overturn this period of life. Here I am doing my best to illumine by doctrine and study my untaught mind, emanc.i.p.ated from the shades of ignorance and the sin of the first man, so far as G.o.d, from whom alone comes every blessing of wisdom, shall himself deign to permit. Because the blessing of wisdom, when sought and acquired with pure interest, is rightly believed and considered by all men of discernment as the surmnuni [bonum]. For, as the Apostle says: Knowledge without charity puffeth up but, with charity edifieth: for it uproots vices and grafts in virtues; it instructs itself in its duty to itself, its neighbor, and its Creator; finally, by its presence, it fortifies and defends the mind, over which it presides in person, against all the ills of this life that come to it from without.[79]
(2) PHILIP OF HARVENGT TO HERGALD, A STUDENT AT PARIS (DATE BETWEEN 1154 AND 1181)
Know that I have both read carefully and when read, accepted gratefully the letters which your affection, with memorable feeling, led you to send to me ...because in them I thought I saw evidence of your progress in learning.... Just as the Queen of Sheba is said to have come with a large retinue, that by the sight of her own eyes she might have surer knowledge of those things whose fame she had eagerly absorbed from afar, so you too, drawn by love of knowledge, came to Paris and found a much desired model of Jerusalem, sought for by many. For here David strikes his harp of ten chords, here with mystic touch he composes the psalms. Here Isaiah is read and in the reading his prophecies are revealed; here the rest of the prophets present their diverse strains of harmonious melody. Here the wisdom of Solomon is open for the instruction of those who have gathered from all parts of the world; here his treasure house is thrown open to eager students. Here to stimulate so great a concourse of students there is so great a throng of clerks that it vies with the numerous mult.i.tude of the laity. Happy city! in which the Sacred Codes are pored over with so much zeal and their involved mysteries are solved by the gift of the outpoured Spirit, in which there is so much diligence on the part of the readers, and, in short, so much knowledge of Scriptures that it truly deserves to be called Cariath Sepher, that is The City of Letters. Therein would I have you instructed like Gothoniel, not so much in letters as in the spirit, and so to grasp the Scriptures that you may take delight in searching out their inner sweetness.... Farewell.[80]
(3) DESCRIPTION OF PARIS ABOUT 1175 BY GUY DE BASOCHES
To a youth who is n.o.ble and so like himself as to be a second self, Guy de Basoches [seeks] to match his n.o.bility of birth by high-bred manners....
My situation then is this: I am indeed in Paris, happy because of soundness of both mind and body, happier were you enjoying it too, and happiest had it but been my lot to have you with me. I am indeed in Paris, in that City of Kings, which not only holds, by the sweet delight of her natural dowry, those who are with her, but also alluringly invites those who are far away. For as the moon by the majesty of its more brilliant mirror overwhelms the rays of the stars, not otherwise does said city raise its imperial head with its diadem of royal dignity above the rest of the cities. It is situated in the lap of a delightful valley, surrounded by a coronet of mountains which Ceres and Bacchus adorn with fervent zeal. The Seine, no humble stream amid the army of rivers, superb in its channel, throwing its two arms about the head, the heart, the very marrow of the city, forms an island. Two suburbs reach out to right and left, the less excellent, even, of which begets envy in envious cities. From the two suburbs two stone bridges stretch over to the island and one of them which has been named for its size, for it is Great, faces the north and the English Sea, while the opposite one, which opens towards the Loire, they call the Little Bridge....
On this island Philosophy, of old, placed a royal throne for herself, Philosophy, who, despised in her solitude, with a sole attendant, Study, now possesses an enduring citadel of light and immortality, and under her victorious feet tramples the withered flowers of a world already in its dotage.
On this island, the seven sisters, to wit, the Liberal Arts, have secured an eternal abiding place for themselves, and, with the ringing clarion of their n.o.bler eloquence, decrees and laws are proclaimed.
Here the healing fount of learning gushes forth, and as it were evoking from itself three most limpid streams, it makes a threefold division of the knowledge of the sacred page into History, Allegory and Morals.[81]
(4) JOHANN VON JENZENSTEIN TO MASTER BENESCH OF HORSCHOWITZ, CONCERNING PARIS. (1375.)
Master Bennessius, dearest comrade and friend. If recent doings at Paris are unknown to you, if the fecundity of pleasures, the abundance of all things edible, the manners of the men, the bountiful supply of all the sciences, even the clever teaching in very many material crafts,--if you could but see the mere shadow of all these, surely, overpowered by their arguments, you would throw off your sluggishness and generously enter into the aforesaid enjoyments; and your eyes, grown old in old sights would renew their youth in these new sights....