Understanding and negotiating turnkey and EPC

contracts 2nd Edition Joseph A. Huse pdf

https://ebookgate.com/product/understanding-and-negotiating-
turnkey-and-epc-contracts-2nd-edition-joseph-a-huse/

Get the full ebook with Bonus Features for a Better Reading Experience on ebookgate.com
Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Media Now Understanding Media Culture and Technology 7th

https://ebookgate.com/product/media-now-understanding-media-culture-
and-technology-7th-edition-joseph-straubhaar/

ebookgate.com

Examples Explanations for Contracts Brian A Blum

https://ebookgate.com/product/examples-explanations-for-contracts-
brian-a-blum/

ebookgate.com

Petroleum Contracts English Law Practice 2nd Edition Peter

https://ebookgate.com/product/petroleum-contracts-english-law-
practice-2nd-edition-peter-roberts/

ebookgate.com

Public Relations Worktext A Writing and Planning Resource

https://ebookgate.com/product/public-relations-worktext-a-writing-and-
planning-resource-2nd-edition-joseph-m-zappala/

ebookgate.com
An Introduction to the Economics of Information Incentives
and Contracts 2nd Edition Ines Macho-Stadler

https://ebookgate.com/product/an-introduction-to-the-economics-of-
information-incentives-and-contracts-2nd-edition-ines-macho-stadler/

ebookgate.com

Understanding Youth and Crime 2nd Edition Sheila Brown

https://ebookgate.com/product/understanding-youth-and-crime-2nd-
edition-sheila-brown/

ebookgate.com

Construction Contracts Law and Management 4th Edition John

https://ebookgate.com/product/construction-contracts-law-and-
management-4th-edition-john-murdoch/

ebookgate.com

Drafting Contracts How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do 2nd

https://ebookgate.com/product/drafting-contracts-how-and-why-lawyers-
do-what-they-do-2nd-edition-edition-tina-l-stark/

ebookgate.com

The economics of contracts theories and applications Eric

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-economics-of-contracts-theories-and-
applications-eric-brousseau/

ebookgate.com
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 CHAPTER XIII.
PARIS AND THE FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES.
a.d. 1150 TO 1250.
The modern visitor to Paris who finds his way to that portion of the
city lying on the southern bank of the river, which still bears the
name of the Quartier de l’Université, sees himself surrounded by
buildings, many of which bear unmistakably the character of their
original destination. He stands, in fact, amid the débris of the old
university of Paris, the schools and colleges of which were clustered
for the most part about the Mont St. Geneviève, and occupied an
entire suburb, which was first enclosed within the city walls by Philip
Augustus. That monarch, passionately desirous to increase the
splendour of his capital, and at the same time to afford larger space
for the accommodation of the crowds of students, whose numbers
are said to have exceeded those of the citizens themselves, added a
large district, which in the year 1200 presented a fair expanse of
fields and vineyards, interspersed with churches, houses, and farms,
but in which you would vainly have sought for any of those
magnificent and semi-monastic structures which we are accustomed
to associate with the idea of a university. Colleges, in fact, had as
yet no existence at Paris, and the university consisted of an
assemblage, not of stately buildings, but of masters and scholars
gathered out of every European land.
It is no easy matter to convey an idea of the enthusiasm with
which the Paris schools were regarded at the beginning of the
thirteenth century. No one, whatever might be his country, could
pretend to any consideration who had not studied there in his youth;
if you met a priest or doctor, whose skill in letters you desired to
praise, it was enough to say, “one would think he had passed his
whole life in Paris.” It was, to use the expression of Gregory IX., the
Cariath-sepher, or city of letters,[168] which drew to itself the
intellectual wealth of Christendom. “Whatever a nation has that is
most precious,” writes William of Brittany, the chaplain of Philip
Augustus, in his poem of the Philipide, “whatever a people has most
famous, all the treasures of science and all the riches of the earth;
lessons of wisdom, the glory of letters, nobility of thought,
refinement of manners, all this is to be found in Paris.” Others
declared, in yet more pompous language, that neither Egypt nor
Athens could be compared to the modern capital, which was, they
said, the very fountain-head of wisdom, the tree of life in the midst
of the terrestrial paradise, the torch of the house of the Lord. The
exile who had once tasted of its delights no longer regretted his
banishment from his own land; and, in truth, the beauty of the city,
its light elastic atmosphere, the grace and gaiety of its inhabitants,
and the society of all that was most choice in wit and learning,
rendered it no less fascinating a residence in the thirteenth century
as the capital of learning than it has since become as the metropolis
of fashion.
To these attractions were added the advantages which the Parisian
students enjoyed in virtue of their privileges. I have already spoken
of the diploma granted by Philip Augustus, and its provisions were
greatly enlarged by subsequent monarchs. Philip le Bel ordered that
the goods of students should never be seized for debt, and they
were also exempt from taxes. If a French scholar travelled, all
farmers were obliged to supply him with horses at a reasonable rate
of hire. Artisans were not allowed to annoy him with unpleasant
odours or noises, and on complaint being made of such nuisances,
they had to remove themselves out of his neighbourhood. The rights
of citizenship were likewise enjoyed by the members of all the
French universities, and in those days this involved many important
exemptions. Scholarship was, in short, regarded as an honourable
profession, something which almost conferred on its possessor a
patent of nobility; the new master of arts had lighted flambeaux
carried before him in the public streets, and the conferring of a
doctor’s degree was an event which caused as much stir as the
dubbing of a knight. Nay, in those days, so permeated with the
romantic spirit of chivalry, scholars were not unfrequently spoken of
as “the knights of science,” and the disputation at which some
youthful aspirant contended for the doctor’s cap was regarded as the
intellectual tournament.
Yet, there was another side to this brilliant picture, and one plainly
discerned by those whose calmer judgment would not suffer itself to
be deceived as to the perils which awaited so many young and
ardent minds, exposed without restraint or guidance to the manifold
temptations, both moral and intellectual, that awaited them in that
busy throng. “O Paris!” exclaims Peter of the Cells, in a letter to one
of his monks who had been sent thither to study, “resort of every
vice, source of every disorder, thou dart of hell; how dost thou
pierce the heart of the unwary!” John, the young monk whom he
addresses, had, it would seem, deplored the new scenes amid which
he found himself as painfully out of harmony with his monastic
training. “Who but yourself,” replies the abbot, “would not reckon
this Paris to be a very Eden, a land of first-fruits and flowers? Yet
you have spoken truly, though in jest, for the place which is richest
in bodily pleasures miserably enslaves the soul. So, at least, thinks
my John, and rightly therefore does he call it a place of exile. May
you always so esteem it, and hasten home to your true country,
where in the book of life you will find, not figures and elements, but
Divinity and Truth itself. O happy school of Christ! where He teaches
our heart with the word of power, where the book is not purchased
nor the Master paid. There life avails more than learning, and
simplicity than science. There none are refuted save those who are
for ever rejected; and one word of final judgment, Ite or Venite,
decides all questions and all cavils for ever. Would that men would
apply themselves to these studies rather than to so many vain
discourses; they would find more abundant fruit and more availing
honour.”
In these words we see the distrust with which the representatives
of the old learning regarded the rising university system, contrasting
as it did so strangely with the claustral discipline in which they had
themselves been reared. Nor can it be denied that the fair outside of
the great city concealed a monstrous mass of deformity. James de
Vitry, who had himself been a student, gives a frightful picture of the
vices which were fostered in a society drawn from every rank and
every country, and associated together without moral discipline of
any kind, at an age when the passions were least subject to
restraint. The very sense of moral rectitude, he says, seems to have
been lost. A profuse extravagance was encouraged by the example
of the more wealthy students, and those who lived frugally, or
practised piety, were ridiculed as misers and hypocrites. There was
at that time no provision for the accommodation of the students in
halls or hospices; they lodged in the houses of the citizens wherever
they could secure the cheapest entertainment. Not unfrequently the
very schools of the masters were held in the upper story of some
house, the groundfloor of which was the resort of the most
abandoned characters.[169] There was no common table; but the
students dined at taverns where they often associated with the
worst companions, and indulged in the lowest excesses, and the
jealousy between “town and gown” continually broke out in
disgraceful quarrels, terminating not unfrequently in bloodshed. As
most of those engaged in these affrays were clerics, and as the
striking of a cleric brought on the guilty party the sentence of
excommunication, the results of these disorders were exceedingly
grave. It became necessary to grant extraordinary powers to the
university officers, and to prohibit the scholars from bearing arms, a
prohibition grounded on the atrocious crimes with which they stood
charged; and which at one time threatened to bring about the total
extinction of the university. For the magistrates having proceeded to
revenge a certain riot which had arisen out of a tavern quarrel, by ill-
judged acts of severity, both masters and scholars resolved to
abandon the city; nor did they return till the wise and timely
interference of Pope Gregory IX. brought about a reconciliation
between the civil and academic authorities.
The university, in fact, presented the spectacle, at that time new
in Christendom, of a system of education which aimed at informing
the intellect without disciplining the soul. Its work was done in the
lecture room, where alone the master exercised any authority, and
the only tie existing between him and his disciples was the salary
paid by one party and received by the other. In addition to the
dangers incident to this state of uncontrolled liberty, were the more
subtle temptations to pride and presumption which beset a man in
the schools. Mere youths were sometimes seen promoted to the
professor’s chair, and seeking to win a passing popularity by the
promulgation of some new extravagance, an abuse which led to the
passing of an ordinance forbidding any one to teach Theology before
he had attained the age of twenty-five. But the teaching of the
professors was influenced by other peculiarities in their position.
“The university doctors,” says Fleury, “were doctors, and they were
nothing more. Exclusively engaged with theoretic views, they had
leisure to write at great length on the most frivolous questions; and
plentiful occasions were thus ministered of quarrel and dispute.” And
he proceeds to notice the contrast between such a system and that
of earlier ages, when the teachers of the Church were for the most
part bishops, engaged in the duties of their pastoral charge, and
able to support their doctrines with the weight of practical
experience. The character of the new professors is drawn severely
enough in the curious poem of Architrenius,[170] which was written
towards the close of the twelfth century by John de Hauteville, an
English monk of St. Albans. Architrenius, the hero, is supposed to
travel through the world, trying various states and conditions, and
finding vanity and emptiness in all of them; at last he comes to
Paris, and devotes a whole book to describing the vanity of the
masters, and the miseries of their disciples. He depicts the negligent
and squalid appearance of the poor scholars, their ragged dress,
uncombed hair, bad lodging and hard beds. After spending half the
night in study, he says, they are roused at daybreak and forced to
hurry to the school, where the master treats them rudely, and where
they have to endure the mortification of seeing others of less merit
rewarded, and themselves passed over with neglect. He goes on to
describe the hill of presumption which he peoples with doctors and
scholastics, gifted with far less learning than conceit, and concludes,
that the schools are as full of vanity and disappointment as the rest
of the world.
The sufferings of the poor scholars, which Architrenius so
graphically describes, were destined, however, to bring about a most
beneficial change in the university system, by being the chief
occasion of the foundation of hospices and colleges, the
multiplication of which, and their organisation under regular
discipline, in time applied a remedy to the worst of the existing evils.
From a very early date, the relief and support of poor scholars had
been recognised as a meritorious work of charity; it formed one of
the favourite devotions of the two kings, Robert the Pious and Lewis
the Young, the former of whom attempted something in the shape
of a hospital to receive them. How miserable their condition was, we
may gather from the benefaction of the good knight Jocius de
Londonne, who, returning from the Holy Land in 1171, found some
poor scholars miserably lodged in the Hôtel-Dieu, and gave money
to provide them with beds, and a small monthly alms, on condition
of their carrying the Cross and Holy-water at the funeral of those
who died in the hospital, and repeating the Penitential Psalms for the
repose of their souls. The earliest establishment actually made for
their reception appears to have been the Hospice of St. Thomas of
Canterbury, founded in the twelfth century by Robert Dreux. It
embraced a number of other charitable works, and was administered
by canons who were under religious vows, the scholars being
governed by a provost of their own. Other colleges gradually arose,
some for scholars of particular nations, as those of the Danes and
Swedes; others for separate dioceses. One of the earliest
foundations was the College of Constantinople, founded by Baldwin
of Flanders, shortly after the taking of Constantinople by the Latins,
for the education of young Greeks in the orthodox faith. Chapels
were opened in connection with these colleges so early as 1248, in
which year we find Pope Innocent IV. granting permission for such a
chapel to be attached to the college des Bons Enfants. But the
collegiate system became more thoroughly established by the
influence of the Religious Orders, who very soon found themselves
obliged to open religious houses in connection with the university,
for the education of their own students. These houses of studies
afforded the young religious the regular discipline of the old
monastic schools, combined with the advantages of university
education; and their example made it a necessity to provide similar
protection for the secular students.
The Trinitarian Order, founded by one of the most illustrious of the
Parisian doctors, and largely recruited from the ranks of his co-
professors, was naturally the first to associate itself to the university,
out of whose bosom it had sprung; and so early as the year 1209,
we find the friars in possession of the Church of St. Maturin, which
was ordinarily used by the university as their place of assembly. Next
to them came the Dominicans and Franciscans, the former of whom
owed their establishment in Paris to the good will of the university
authorities, who made over to them certain claims they possessed
on the Hospital of St. James, which had been granted to the new
comers by the good doctor, John of St. Quentin. A little later, the
College of the Bernardines was founded by Stephen of Lexington, an
Englishman who had been a pupil of St. Edmund, and who in 1242
became abbot of Clairvaux. Strictly contemplative as was the rule of
the Cistercians, it did not exclude the cultivation of sacred studies. It
aimed rather at restoring monastic life to the ancient Benedictine
type, in which, as we have seen, the homely labours of husbandry
were mingled with those of the scriptorium. The Cistercians, whilst
they laboured to bring back religious poverty and simplicity into the
cloister, always showed themselves hearty encouragers of learning.
St. Stephen Harding had himself set on foot that great copy of the
Bible, long preserved at Citeaux, which was corrected with the
utmost precision after being collated with a vast number of
manuscripts, several learned Jews being consulted by the abbot on
the Hebrew text. To procure a correct version of the Gregorian
Antiphonary, he sent all the way to Metz, trusting to obtain a sight of
the copy laid up there by Charlemagne. The library at Citeaux was
rich in the works of the Fathers, though the outside of the books
exhibited nothing of that costly ornament on which the skill of
monastic binders and jewellers was elsewhere expended. The early
Cistercians were connected very closely with some of the best Paris
scholars, such as William of Champeaux, the friend of St. Stephen,
and after his elevation to the episcopate, the diocesan of St Bernard.
In England their ranks had been largely recruited from the University
of Oxford, and their monastery of Rievaux was famous at home and
abroad for its school of learning. Stephen of Lexington was not,
therefore, departing from the traditions of his order in considering
that the maintenance of sacred studies was a necessity of the times.
Two years after his election he obtained permission from Pope
Innocent IV. to begin the erection of a college at Paris for the young
monks of his order; but the proposal was very unfavourably received
by the other Benedictine houses who saw in it the break-up of the
old monastic system of studies. The conservative spirit which was
roused among them is discernible in the complaints of Matthew
Paris, who laments over the contempt with which a proud world is
beginning to regard the old Benedictine monks. “This new institution
of colleges,” he says, “is not, that we can see, derived from the rule
of St. Benedict; on the contrary, we read that he quitted the schools
to retire into the desert.”
Stephen, however, persevered in his design; he was aware that
the contempt with which the monks were so frequently treated, both
by the secular doctors and the new orders of friars, was grounded
on the charge of their illiteracy, and he therefore believed it essential
to provide his monks with better means of education than, under the
altered state of things, they were now able to command in their
claustral schools. His design was crowned with perfect success. Not
only did the College of the Bernardines become illustrious for its
good scholarship, but the conduct of its religious shed a good odour
of edification over the whole university, and ten years after its
foundation, Matthew Paris himself bore honourable witness to the
holy example of the monks, which, he said, “gave pleasure to God
and man.” For Stephen there was reserved the reward of disgrace
and humiliation. The Chapter-General of Citeaux deposed him from
his office in 1255, instigated, says Matthew Paris, by envy for the
superior merits of an Englishman. Whatever were the cause of his
disgrace, it gave him an opportunity of proving that his adoption of
what had seemed an innovation on established customs, sprang out
of no defect in the religious spirit. He refused to accept of the
protection offered him by the Pope, in favour of which he might have
been reinstated in his dignity, and preferred spending the rest of his
days as a private religious, entirely occupied with his own
sanctification.
The example of the Bernardines was quickly followed by other
religious orders. The Carmelites took up their station at the foot of
Mt. St. Geneviève, the Augustinians in the Quartier Montmartre. The
old Benedictines, or Black Monks, had their college near the abbey
of St. Germain, and the Carthusians received from St. Louis a grant
of the royal Chateau de Vauverd. The monks of the latter order were
indeed prohibited by their rule from attending in the schools, but the
object of their establishment so near the capital is expressly stated
to have been, that they might profit by the salutary streams of
doctrine which flowed forth from the city of letters. To these must be
added the monks of Cluny and Marmoutier, the former of whom
provided their students with lecturers within their own cloisters; and
a new Institute originally founded by four doctors of theology, who
in 1201 gave up their academic honours and pursuits, and, smitten
with that desire of poverty and obscurity which not unfrequently
overtakes men in the very zenith of their popularity and success,
retired to a wild valley in the diocese of Langres, and assumed the
religious habit of the Canons Regular of St. Victor. Here they were
soon joined by other professors and scholars, till their numbers
rendered it impossible for them to find subsistence in the desolate
wildness they had chosen, exposed to the fury of the mountain
torrents, and the falling of precipitous rocks. They, therefore,
removed in 1224 to a more fertile valley, which obtained the name of
the Val d’Ecoliers, a title afterwards bestowed on the new order
itself. Five years later they opened a house of studies in Paris, and
the Church of St. Catherine was built for them at the charge of a
certain knight, in fulfilment of a vow he had taken at the battle of
Bouvines, the young St. Louis laying the first stone with his own
hand.
The bishops were not slow to follow the example set them by the
monastics; and indeed they, more than others, felt the necessity of
providing in some way or other for the training of their clerks. It was
vain to think of competing with the university in the cathedral
schools; and, on the other hand, what was to be hoped from a
secular clergy, formed in no higher school of discipline than that
which James of Vitry has described? Colleges, therefore, where the
young clerics might be reared in ecclesiastical habits, were, strictly
speaking, essential; and, accordingly, we find them established for
the clergy of different dioceses, as those of Laon, Narbonne, and
Bayeux. In these the scholars lived in common, celebrated the Divine
Office, had appointed hours of study and recreation, and were
governed and watched over by regents. In fact, says Fleury, “they
were so many little seminaries;” differing in many respects, and
doubtless, far inferior to those old ecclesiastical schools which had
been established in the bishop’s house, wherein the young clerks
grew up under the eye, and were trained by the lips of their chief
pastor; yet still schools of discipline, the good results of which were
so apparent that, erelong, every country which followed the Latin
rite adopted the system which had begun in France and Italy. The
most famous of all the secular colleges was that of the Sorbonne,
the founder of which, Robert of Sorbonne, was chaplain to St. Louis.
Crevier calls it the greatest ornament of the university, and from very
humble beginnings it came at last to be regarded as the first
theological school in the Christian world. In it were afterwards
founded no fewer than seven Chairs of Theology; namely, those of
the Reader, of Contemplative, and Positive Theology, of the Holy
Scriptures, of Casuistry, of Controversial Divinity, and of the
Interpretation of the Hebrew Text.
Gradually, but surely, the university freed itself from the chaotic
disorder of its first beginnings, and assumed the form of a great
institution, governed by regular laws and invested with vast powers
and privileges. At the period of its complete development, it was
composed of seven companies; namely, the Faculties of Theology,
Law, and Medicine, and the four nations of France, Picardy,
Normandy, and England. These four nations together formed the
Faculty of Arts, but each had a separate vote in the affairs of the
university. The Rector was chosen by the nations out of the Faculty
of Arts, the other faculties being governed by their deans.
An immense benefit was conferred on the University by Innocent
III., who had himself studied at Paris at a time when the want of
discipline was most severely felt. He was the first to supply his Alma
Mater with a body of academic statutes; which were promulgated in
1215 by his legate, Robert de Courçon, an Englishman by birth, and
a man of piety and learning. They embraced the whole discipline of
the schools, regulating the conditions on which everyone was to be
admitted to teach, the books that were to be read and those that
were prohibited. No one was to profess arts before the age of
twenty-one, or without having previously studied for six years under
some approved master. He must bear a good reputation, and before
commencing his lectures, was to undergo an examination according
to certain rules. The books he was to read were to be the
“Dialectics” and “Topics” of Aristotle, Priscian, and certain others, the
authors of which are not named, but which seem to have been well-
known popular treatises on philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, and
mathematics. The physics and metaphysics of Aristotle were
forbidden, together with the writings of certain heretics, such as
Amauri de Bene, who had drawn their errors from the teaching of
the Greek Philosopher.[171]
To teach Theology, the statutes required that a man should be at
least thirty-five years of age, and that he should have studied under
some approved master. We see here the germ of the system of
graduation, which was perfected before the close of the century. The
rule, as then established, was for a bachelor to begin by explaining
the Sentences in the school of some doctor for the space of a year.
At the end of that time he was presented to the Chancellor of the
Cathedral of Paris, and if, on examination, he was judged worthy, he
received a license and became licentiate, until he was received as
doctor, when he opened a school of his own, in which he explained
the Sentences for another year. At the end of that time he was
allowed to receive some bachelor under him. The whole doctor’s
course lasted three years; nor could any one take a degree unless
he had taught according to these regulations. It was supposed that
before beginning his theological studies the doctor must have passed
through his course of arts, the various stages in which were
distinguished by the names of grammar, poetry, philosophy, &c., in
each of which, according to the theory of the ancient schools, a
student had to study successively for an appointed time. The plan
was excellent, says Fleury, had its execution been possible; but life
was too short to allow of a man’s perfecting himself in every known
branch of learning before entering on his theological studies. It
implied that his whole life was to be spent in the schools; and,
indeed, no inconsiderable portion of it was so spent, as we have
seen in the case of John of Salisbury, whose academical career
spread itself over the space of twelve years. But, in estimating the
exact value of these statements, we must bear in mind that the
university course at this time began at a very early age, and
included those more elementary studies which occupy a schoolboy
of our day for several years before his matriculation.
The statutes of Paris University, first promulgated by Innocent III.,
and enlarged under subsequent pontiffs, not only regulated all
matters of study and discipline, but provided for the preservation of
that religious element which must always find a place in any system
of education sanctioned by the Church. The Christian schools, as we
have seen, found their cradle in the monastic and episcopal
seminaries, in which, as a matter of course, religious exercises were
intermingled with intellectual ones, to a very large degree. The
Catholic universities, in their complete form, adapted this system to
their own needs, and required of their students daily attendance, not
only in the lecture rooms, but also in the church or the collegiate
chapel. The weekly “chapels” exacted from our Oxford and
Cambridge students are fragments of the old rules, which, at Paris
as in the English universities, required daily attendance at Mass and
Vespers, and, at certain times also, at the Office of the Dead; and
appointed public processions at different seasons of the year, and
days when the public studies were suspended in order to give more
time for the due celebration of feasts, and preparation for the
reception of the Sacraments. If any reader be disposed to think that
these demands on the time of the students must have proved an
interruption to their studies, the fact is at once, and readily,
admitted. But it may be suggested whether, in this interruption,
there does not manifest itself a grand principle on which the Church
acts wherever there is question of the exercise of the human
intelligence. The problem she had to resolve was, not how to convey
the greatest possible amount of knowledge with the greatest
possible saving of time; but rather, how to provide that a certain
amount of intellectual labour should be gone through in such a way
as not to interfere injuriously with the spiritual well-being of the
soul. In cases where the intellect is brought into exercise and
stimulated to extraordinary activity, there is danger lest what is in
itself a wholesome and necessary exercise may become vitiated by a
certain natural impetuosity, which disposes a man to pour himself
out into the occupation in which he is engaged; an impetuosity
which opens the door to the human spirit, and which brings in along
with it a host of bad company, such as pride, envy, ambition,
contention, and the like. If this be allowed, study, instead of being
an instrument of our sanctification, degenerates into its enemy; and
hence the object aimed at in the Catholic system has ever been to
supply checks and safeguards to nature, and to sanctify intellectual
labour by a large admixture of prayer. Among the monastic students
the regular duties of religious life supplied these necessary checks,
the “retinacula,” as they were called by Bede, who fully understood
their value and importance; and the Catholic universities, to a certain
degree, imitated the monastic system, by requiring fixed religious
duties to be complied with by their students, as a part of their
academic course. Nor need we suppose that these interruptions, so
salutary in a spiritual sense, were at all injurious in an intellectual
point of view. The discipline of the Church, by a beautiful harmony,
provides for the well-being of our nature, at the very time that she
mortifies it. Her rules of fasting and abstinence, when observed,
often prove the best preservatives of health; and, in the same way,
her checks on study were not always hindrances. The truest
economy of time does not, obviously, consist in cramming the twelve
hours of the day with excessive work, but in laying them out to the
best advantage. It is possible to tax the mental powers beyond their
strength, in which case nature revenges herself on those who violate
her laws, and the mind itself weakens under the pressure of
excessive labour. Could we compare the horarium of an Oxford or
Paris student of the thirteenth century, with that of a modern Rugby
schoolboy, and obtain an accurate statistical table, showing the
proportion of exhausted brains to be found among an equal number
of either class, it might appear that the Church legislated even for
the mental well-being of her children when she interposed so often
between them and their studies, by requiring of them the fulfilment
of solemn offices at stated times.
Of course, besides the principle above alluded to, there was the
more manifest object of religious training, touching which I will
merely quote the words of a former Rector of the Paris University,
who wrote in anything but a religious age. “Religion,” says M. Rollin,
in his treatise on “Education,” “should be the object of all our
instructions; though not perpetually in our mouths, it should always
be in our minds. Whoever examines the ancient statutes of the
university which relate to masters and scholars, and takes notice of
the prayers, solemnities, public processions, festivals, and days set
apart for preparing for the Sacraments, may easily discover that the
intention of their pious Mother is to consecrate and sanctify the
studies of youth by religion, and that she would not carry them so
long in her bosom were it not with the view of regenerating them to
Jesus Christ. It is with this design that she requires that in every
class, besides their other exercises of piety, the scholars should daily
repeat certain sentences from Holy Scripture, and especially from
the Gospels, that their other studies may be, as it were, seasoned
with salt.” And he quotes passages from the ancient statutes,
requiring that “the Divine Word be mingled with the eloquence of
the pagans, as is fitting in Christian schools where Christ, the One
Teacher of man, should not only be present, but preside.”
The very slight mention made in the statutes of Robert de
Courçon of Rhetoric, as included in the course of arts, is the last
which we shall meet with for a considerable space of time. The Bull
of Gregory IX., published in 1231, and the statutes of the Regents of
Arts, which appeared in 1254, make no reference to this study. The
arts are there represented by philosophy alone, and there is no
allusion to the cultivation of rhetoric, or the reading of the classical
authors, which from this date became very generally neglected. As a
natural consequence, grammar also lamentably decayed. It was, of
course, not absolutely banished, inasmuch as a certain amount of it
was essential for the pursuit of any studies at all; but it became
altogether barbarised and debased. Those rules of syntax and
prosody, over which the old monastic masters had so lovingly
lingered, were totally neglected, and although Latin poems were still
produced, their Latinity was full of false quantities and grammatical
solecisms. The tenth century, with all its darkness, knew far more of
humane letters than the thirteenth; nor was the superiority of the
earlier schools confined to a knowledge of the classics. The
exaggerated prominence given to philosophy, or rather to dialectics,
had caused a neglect of the Fathers, who were now chiefly studied
in Sums and Sentences, which professed to present the student with
the pith of theology in a single volume, forming the text-books on
which the doctors delivered lectures and commentaries, coloured,
naturally enough, with their own ideas. The original works of the
Fathers, which had been the familiar study of the monastic students,
appear at this time to have been little in request; and when St.
Louis, on his return from Palestine, formed a plan for collecting a
library of all the most useful and authentic ecclesiastical writings, he
had to get copies made of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome,
St. Gregory, and other Catholic doctors, from the codices stored up
in remote monastic libraries; for in the schools of Paris they were not
to be found. The extreme scholastics, indeed, were accustomed to
speak of the Fathers as rhetoricians; writers, that is, who expressed
themselves according to the rules of natural eloquence, a terrible
delinquency in the eyes of the new illuminati, who considered that a
man should display his science by loading his pages with the terms
of logic—assertion, proof, major, minor, and corollary. The good king,
however, whose taste was superior to that of most of his
contemporaries, persevered in his noble enterprise, and at great
pains and cost collected a library of the best Christian authors, in
which he himself studied profoundly; liberally granting its use to
others also. “He read the works of the Fathers, whose authority is
established,” says his biographer, “more willingly than those of the
new doctors;” and he gave as a reason for making new copies, in
preference to buying up the old ones, that by this means he
multiplied writings which he desired should be more widely known.
He ordered that after his death this library should be divided among
the three monasteries he had founded; those, namely, of the
Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Cistercians; and it was from
this source that the Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais, who filled the
office of tutor to the royal children, drew the materials of his famous
work, The Great Mirror, of which we shall hereafter have occasion to
speak.
If positive theology and the humanities began to be neglected,
however, civil and canon law were better treated. The appearance in
1157 of the “Decretals” of Gratian, had been followed by the
erection of a Chair of Jurisprudence at Bologna, and another at
Paris. The new branch of study had one advantage which
commended it to popular favour: it led to substantial profits, and
scholars were found not unwilling to let Horace and Cicero drop into
disuse in favour of a science which paid so well for the time spent on
its acquisition. The prodigious popularity of these new pursuits at
length caused grave apprehensions lest the schools of arts and
theology should in time be altogether deserted, and in 1220
Honorius III. found it necessary to forbid the further study of civil
law at Paris. Crevier complains of this prohibition as injurious to the
university, and it was, in fact, very generally eluded; although the
formal permission to include civil law in the Faculty of Right was not
granted till 1679. But in point of fact, the alarm which was felt was
not without foundation. At Oxford such a revolution had been
brought about by the introduction of the law lectures, that it was
feared both arts and theology would be utterly neglected. What was
worse, the law students aspired after and obtained benefices; and
this abuse was encouraged by sovereigns, who found law prelates
much more easy to deal with, and to accommodate to their own
political views, than theologians. Innocent III. had, at last, to
prohibit the admission to benefices of those who had only graduated
in law, and insisted that all who aspired to ecclesiastical benefices
should also pursue a regular course of theology. The tendency of the
age, however, was manifest; the universities were falling more and
more away from that idea of education which the old system had, in
theory at any rate, professed to carry out; namely, the presenting of
knowledge as a whole, its various parts arranged under the heads of
the seven liberal arts, presided over by theology. Philosophy,
according to this idea, included a knowledge of truth in all its various
departments, and all the arts were but branches springing from one
trunk, one of which could not be struck off without injuring the
proportion and harmony of the whole.
The neglect of arts, and the excessive preponderance given to law
studies and dialectics, made up a grave and momentous change in
the whole theory of education, which was daily losing something
more of that breadth and largeness which formed one of the chief
features of education as proposed by the ancients, whose traditions
had been accepted by the Christian schools. This seems a fair
statement of the mischievous side of the change; but there is also
another view of the question, which justly claims to be recognised.
There was a deeper cause for the popularity of law and logic in the
European schools of this period than any sordid motive of gain, or
any mere love of disputation. Both of them formed a part of that
extraordinary intellectual revolution which marked the opening of the
thirteenth century. Men had grown indifferent to the study of
language in proportion as they had been aroused to the deeper
interest of mental science. Though the immediate result was to
introduce a decay of polite letters, and not a few philosophic
extravagancies, it cannot be doubted that many faculties were
roused into vigorous action, which, under the former system, had
lain dormant. The grand defect of the old monastic scholars, as
scholars, was, that they cultivated learning rather than mind; they
studied other men’s thoughts, but were not equally exercised in
training their own. They seldom investigated for themselves either
mental or physical phenomena; whatever absurdities were to be
found in the natural philosophy which they received from the
ancients, were generally adopted without question, and handed on
to the next generation; and the instances are rare in which an
appeal is made to the results of personal observation.
Even their theological works were chiefly compilations, and St.
Anselm may be called the first original thinker who had appeared
among divines since the close of the fifth century. When the
intellectual powers of Europe again woke into action, men were not
unnaturally induced to regard mere elegances of style with a certain
rude indifference. Like soldiers who, when about to engage in a
conflict for life or death, are careless whether or no they wear their
holiday trappings, the scholastics of the thirteenth century, while
they exercised their mental powers in subtle disputation, conceived a
contempt for the charms of mere rhetoric, and valued language only
as the vehicle for expressing the distinctions of philosophy. Under
such circumstances Latinity, of course, grew barbarous; and many
far graver disorders arose out of the daring and undue exercise of
reason. Yet, real intellectual progress was being made, in spite of
the decay of letters; and the growth of mind went on in the same
way as the growth of body, when the delicate tints and graceful form
of childhood disappear, whilst bone and muscle are being built up,
and the feeble child is expanding into the strong-armed man. When
the revival of literature took place two centuries later, it found a race
of strong thinkers in place of diligent readers. The scholars of the
Renaissance were forward in ridiculing the barbarism of the
scholastic philosophers, but in doing so they showed that they had
very superficially studied the intellectual era that preceded their
own. Undoubtedly, the excess of legal and logical studies had many
abuses, but they are not therefore to be arbitrarily condemned. Even
the lawyers, with whom it is most difficult to keep charity, and
whose influence was the most mischievous in the schools, had a
considerable share in the education of modern Europe. Careful
critics, on studying the legal documents of the Middle Ages, such, for
example, as our own Magna Charta, fail not to express their wonder
and admiration at the keenness of intellect which is displayed in their
provisions, and the precision of language in which they are
expressed. The men of the pen were cautiously and sagaciously
circumventing the men of the sword. Every constitutional principle
laid down in the statute-book established the sovereignty of law over
that of brute force; it was a victory of mind over matter, and was
therefore a mighty step in the history of intellectual progress.
These considerations must be calmly weighed before we pass any
judgment on the scholastic revolution of the thirteenth century. Our
sympathies, no doubt, will linger with the elder scholars, and we
shall be disposed to look with a very jealous eye on the triumph of
the sophists and the Cornificians; but it will suffice to reconcile us to
the temporary necessity of the change, that it was accepted by the
Church, and that she set her seal to the due and legitimate use of
those studies which were to develope the human intellect to its full-
grown strength. Nay, more, she absorbed into herself an intellectual
movement which, had she opposed it, would have been directed
against her authority, and so, to a great extent, neutralised its
powers of mischief. The scholastic philosophy, which, without her
direction, would have expanded into an infidel Rationalism, was
woven into her theology itself, and made to do duty in her defence,
and that wondrous spectacle was exhibited, so common in the
history of the Church, when the dark and threatening thunder cloud
which seemed about to send out its lightning bolts, only distils in
fertilising rain.[172]
 The statutes of Robert de Courçon, after regulating the studies,
pass on to the manners of the students. They descend with great
simplicity into various details, which are not uninteresting, as
furnishing us with some idea of the usages of the times. Great
banquets were forbidden to be held at the installation of new
masters, who were only allowed to invite a few companions and
friends. No master reading arts was to wear aught but a round black
gown falling as low as his heels, “at least,” adds the cardinal with
much naïveté, “when it is new.” A cloak is allowed, but the
abomination of pointed shoes is strictly prohibited. When a scholar
of arts or theology died, one-half of the masters were to attend his
funeral; if it were a master, all the other masters were to assist at
the Office for the Dead. They were, moreover, to recite, or cause to
be recited, an entire Psalter for his soul, to remain in the church
where the Office was celebrated until midnight, and on the day of
burial all exercises in the schools were to be suspended. He confirms
to the students the free possession of those broad and delightful
meadows, so dearly prized as a place of recreation, which gave their
name to St. Germain des Prés, and for the protection of the
scholars, fixes the rate at which the citizens shall be obliged to
furnish them with lodgings.
The university thus established, redounded, it need not be said, to
the profit as well as to the glory of the French capital. Not only the
intellect, but the wealth also, of Europe flowed into that great
centre. New branches of industry sprang up in connection with the
schools; the Rue de Fouarre supplied them with straw for their
seats, and the Rue des Ecrivains was entirely peopled with
booksellers and book-lenders, mostly Jews, who furnished the
scholars with literary wares, suffering those who were too poor to
buy, to hire their volumes at a fixed rate. The bookselling trade fell
at last under the jurisdiction of the university, and the booksellers
were enrolled as academic officers, taking an oath on their
appointment to observe the statutes and regulations. They were not
suffered to open a traffic without testimonials as to character, and
the tariff of prices was fixed by four of their number appointed by
the university. Fines were imposed for incorrect copies, and the
traders were bound to hang up a priced catalogue in their shops. If
books of heretical or immoral tendency were found introduced, they
were burnt by order of the university officers. The same powers
were exercised over the book trade by the universities of Vienna,
Toulouse, and Bologna, and the name of Stationarii began to be
given to those who held these stores; stalls, or shops of all
descriptions, being often denominated Stations. By degrees,
however, the licensed Stationarii lost their monopoly of the trade,
and the custom became tolerated of allowing poor scholars to sell
books of low price in order to obtain the means of pursuing their
studies. The Librarii were the copyists of new books, who dealt also
in parchment and writing materials, and exercised a very important
profession before the days of printing; those who transcribed old
books were considered a separate branch, and styled Antiquarii, and
by this distinction the scholar in search of a volume knew at once
from which Statio he might obtain the object of his desires.
But as in those days of high prices and book scarcity, the poor
student was sorely impeded in his progress, to provide against these
disadvantages, a law was framed at Paris, compelling all public
booksellers to keep books to lend out on hire. The reader will be
surprised at the idea of lending libraries in the Middle Ages, but
there can be no doubt of the fact that they were established at Paris,
Toulouse, Vienna, and Bologna. These public librarians, too, were
obliged to write out regular catalogues of their books, and hang
them up in their shops with the prices affixed, so that the student
might know beforehand what he had to pay for reading each book.
Some of these lists are preserved, in which we find three sous
charged for the loan of Peter Lombard’s Book of the Sentences, and
ten sous for a Bible.
The custom began to be introduced among the scholars of
expending great sums on the adornment of their books with gilt
letters and fantastic illuminations, and writers of the time complain
of the extravagant sums thus dissipated. Thus Odofred speaks of a
certain gentleman who sent his son to Paris, giving him an annual
allowance of 100 livres. “What does he do? Why, he has his books
ornamented with gold initials and strange monsters, and has a new
pair of boots every Saturday.” The mention of these literary trades
leads me to speak of what we may call the great festival day of the
trades in general, and of the scholars and booksellers in particular.
Who has not heard of the great fair of St. Denis, the Landit, as it
was called, originally held to enable the Bishop of Paris to display the
relics preserved in the abbey to those devout multitudes whose
numbers, being too great for any church to contain them, rendered
it necessary to assemble them in the open fields? A French poet
describes this fair as he beheld it at the close of the twelfth century,
crowded with tailors, furriers, linendrapers, leather-sellers,
shoemakers, cutlers, corn-merchants, jewellers, and goldsmiths. The
enumeration of all the trades at last passes his powers, and he begs
his readers to excuse his completing the catalogue. And what has
this to do with the university? it may be asked. Much, for thither also
flocked the sellers of parchment. The rector of the university went
there in state to choose the best article which the fair produced; nay,
what is more, all dealers in parchment were forbidden by royal edict
to purchase any on the first day of the fair, until the merchants of
the king and the bishop, and the masters and scholars of the
university, had laid in their yearly provision. This going of the rector
to the Landit was the grand annual holiday. He was attended by all
the masters and scholars on horseback, and not unfrequently, says
Lebœuf, in his “History of the Diocese of Paris,” this expedition was
the occasion of many falling sick, through heat and fatigue,
especially the youngsters.
The Landit was not the only recreation day of the scholars;
besides those red-letter days which in olden time were lavishly
provided for solace and refreshment of mind and body, they took
part in all popular rejoicings, and on occasion of the great victory of
Bouvines claimed and obtained a whole week’s vacation, during
which time, says Lebœuf, “they sang and danced continually.” Their
country walks to Chantilly and other rural villages were known as the
Ire ad Campos, for which leave had to be asked by the inmates of
colleges. James of Vitry alludes to the national characteristics
apparent in the different nations represented among the students,
the luxurious habits of the French, the love of fighting exhibited by
the Germans, and the propensity of the English to indulge in deep
potations. In the schools their habits were simple enough. The
lectures were begun punctually at the first stroke of the bells of
Notre Dame, as they rung out the hour of Prime. Clocks were not
then very common, and the cathedral bells, rung at the different
hours and heard at a great distance, furnished citizens and scholars
with their ordinary mode of reckoning time. At the last stroke the
scholars were supposed to be all assembled; seated on trusses of
hay or straw, which supplied the place of benches, they listened to
the lecture of the master, delivered after the manner of a spoken
harangue, and took such notes as they were able. The method of
dictation, which had been in use in the earlier schools, appears to
have been dropped, or to have been retained only in the more
elementary schools. The vivâ voce lecture was, in fact, the speciality
of the university system; and to its use may, in great part, be
attributed that enthusiasm which animated the scholars of some
popular master, who contrived to infuse the charm of his personal
grace and eloquence into the hard syllogisms with which he dealt.
“The act of instruction vivâ voce,” says one, himself a master, “has I
know not what hidden energy, and sounds more forcibly in the ears
of a disciple, when it passes from the master’s lips, than the written
word can do.” Hence these dry logicians of the Middle Ages were
possessed with as ardent an enthusiasm for their own pursuits as
that which kindled the armies of the Crusaders; nay, when we read
of the mad devotion of Abelard’s followers, or the resistless
impetuosity of those crowds who mustered in the Place Maubert to
listen to the great Albert as he lectured on the Sentences, we need
to bear in mind that the age was that of generous impulse; keenly
susceptible to personal influence, capable of being roused to great
enterprises by some strong word spoken to the heart, and ready to
cast itself on the shores of Palestine, or to swell the ranks of a
mendicant order, according to the deep emotions called forth by
some eloquent tongue.
 The history of the university, indeed, is not without its chapters of
romance. At one time we may wander in imagination out into the
green meadows of St. Germains, and watch a group of young
scholars, John, the Englishman, and William Scot, with another John,
of Provençal blood, and his Italian fellow-student, the young
Lothairius Conti, as they join together in familiar talk, little thinking
of the changes which a few short years are to make in the destinies
of each; when the Provençal will have become the founder of the
Trinitarian Order, and his old companions, John and William, shall
have flung away their doctors’ caps, to assume the blue and crimson
cross, and it shall be from Lothaire himself, now seated in the chair
of St. Peter as Pope Innocent III., that he is to receive its first formal
confirmation.
Or, shall we gaze for a moment on that poor ragged boy, begging
his bread in the streets of Paris, where like a rustic simpleton, he has
come in hopes of finding the way to fame and fortune? Yet, a
simpleton he is not;—he struggles on ill fed, ill-lodged, but, thanks
to pious alms, just able to scrape together the means of study. He
passes from one grade to another; and in time Paris learns to be
proud of her great doctor, Maurice of Sully, and forgets that he owes
his surname to the lordly territory where his fathers cultivated the
soil. At last his fame reaches his native place, and his old mother
who is still living, resolves to go and find out her boy, whom she
always knew would make his fortune. So taking staff in hand, she
found her way to the great city, and asked the first fine ladies whom
she met in the streets, if they could tell her where she could find the
Doctor Maurice. The good ladies, taking pity on her, took her to their
house, gave her refreshment, and throwing a better kind of mantle
over the coarse woollen petticoat which she wore, after the fashion
of French peasants, led her to Maurice, and introduced her to him as
his mother. “Not so,” said Maurice, “my mother is a poor peasant
woman, she wears no fine clothes like these; I will not believe it is
her unless I see her in her woollen petticoat.” Then she threw off her
cloak, and seeing her in her own garb he embraced her, and
introduced her to the great people who stood about him, saying,
“This is indeed my mother.” “And the thing spread through the city,”
says the chronicler, “and did good honour to the master, who
afterwards became Bishop of Paris;” in which office he did many
notable things, and among others built the present Cathedral of
Notre Dame.[173]
I might ask my readers, in like manner, to glance at other scenes,
no less characteristic; to look into that same cathedral where crowds
have assembled to hear the preaching of the famous doctor, John of
St. Quentin. He has chosen the subject of holy poverty, and he
seems inspired by some unwonted strain of eloquence as he speaks
of the snares, the emptiness, and the vanity of the world. At last he
stops, and descends the pulpit stairs. Is his discourse finished, or
what is he about to do? the crowd moves hither and thither with
curiosity, and sees him kneeling at the feet of the Dominican Prior of
St. James, of whose Order little was then known, save that its
members were mendicants, and owed their lodging in the city to the
bounty of this very John. But now the white habit is thrown over his
doctor’s gown, the black mantle, the garb of poverty and humility is
added, and he returns to finish his discourse, exhibiting to his
wondering audience that he can teach not by words only, but by
example. Or, once more let us wander into that old church of St.
Mery, which even to this day retains a certain air of quaint antiquity;
where the long lancet windows, and the Ladye chapel with its carved
wooden reredos, black with age, and adorned with silver statuettes,
and its walls frescoed with the figures of saints, carry us back to
mediæval times; and the cool air with its sweet fragrance of incense,
and the silence broken only by a passing footstep on the worn and
broken pavement, soothe and tranquillise us as though we had
passed out of the busy streets into the atmosphere of another world.
In that church, and before that Ladye altar, you might nightly have
seen an English scholar, who had passed over to Paris whilst still a
mere boy to study his course of arts. Every night he comes hither to
assist at Matins, and remains there till daybreak, kneeling absorbed
in heavenly contemplation till the hour strikes which is the signal for
him to betake himself to the schools. Against those very pillars,
perhaps, he leant his weary head; that dusty and shattered
pavement was once watered with his tears; and who is there that
loves and venerates the memory of St. Edmund of Canterbury, who
will not, for his sake, be glad to escape from the thoroughfares of
the brilliant capital to spend an hour of pilgrimage in the church of
St. Mery?[174]
Pictures such as these, embodying the legends of an age, the
daily life of which was fraught with poetry, might be multiplied to
any extent; but I prefer to fix the reader’s attention on one which
tells more of the university life of Paris at this precise epoch, than
could be conveyed by many a laboured description. It was then
about the year 1199, just when the princes of Europe were
deliberating on a fifth crusade, that there lived at Neuilly-sur-Marne,
halfway between Paris and Lagny, a simple country Curé, named
Fulk, unlearned in worldly and even in divine science, but full of holy
zeal, governing his parish with all diligence, and preaching with a
certain rude eloquence—not sparing of his reproofs, but ready at all
times to speak the truth boldly and freely alike to rich and poor. He
who, of old, chose unlettered fishermen to be the heralds of His
Word, made choice of this poor priest to reform the follies of those
vain scholars who, to use the words of James of Vitry, “intent on
vain wranglings and questions of words, cared not to break the
Bread of Life to little ones.” Feeling his own want of knowledge, and
specially his ignorance of the Holy Scriptures, Fulk determined, old
as he was, to commence a regular course of study in the schools,
and began to go regularly into the city, attending the theological
lectures of Peter the Chanter. How the gay scholars stared and
wondered at the sight of the rustic Curé, in his coarse frock and grey
hairs, humbly entering the school, with his note-book in his hand,
wherein he entered only a few phrases, such as his poor capacity
was able to gather from the lips of the speaker. He understood little
and cared less for all the terms of art which the dialecticians of those
days so lavishly dispensed to their hearers; and if his companions
had glanced over his shoulder, they would have read on the
parchment page nothing but some scattered texts of Scripture,
sprinkled here and there with trite and practical maxims. Yet these
were enough for Fulk: they were the seed falling into good ground,
watered with prayer and meditation, and bringing forth the
hundredfold. Often did he read and ponder over his little book, and
commit its maxims to his memory, and on Sundays and Festival
days, returning to his own parish, he gave forth to his flock what he
had thus carefully gathered in the schools. His master, observing the
zeal and fervour of his new disciple, and penetrating through that
rough exterior which concealed a richly-gifted soul, required of him
at last that he should preach in the Church of St. Severinus before
himself and a great number of the students. Fulk obeyed with his
accustomed simplicity, and lo! “the Lord gave to His servant such
grace and power that it seemed as if the Holy Spirit spoke by his
mouth; and from that day masters and scholars began to flock to his
rude and simple preaching. They would invite one another, saying,
‘Come and hear the priest Fulk—he is another Paul.’”
One day a vast multitude were assembled to hear him in the Place
de Champeaux, for the churches were not large enough to contain
those who gathered to the preaching; and he spoke with such
eloquence that hundreds, pierced to the very heart, fell at his feet,
and, presenting him with rods, besought him to chastise them for
their sins, and guide them in the way of penance. He embraced
them all, giving thanks to God, and to each one he gave some
suitable words of advice. He had something appropriate to say to all,
to usurers and public sinners, fine gentlemen, men-at-arms, and
scholars. He admonished the masters to give more pithy,
wholesome, and profitable lectures in the fear of God; he bade the
dialecticians put away what was unprofitable in their art, and retain
only that which bore fruit; the canonists he reproved for their long
and wearisome disquisitions; the theologians for their tediousness
and over-subtlety; and so, in like manner, he fearlessly rebuked and
admonished the teachers of other arts, and called on them to leave
their vain babblings, and apply themselves to what was profitable to
salvation.
Welcome to Our Bookstore - The Ultimate Destination for Book Lovers
Are you passionate about books and eager to explore new worlds of
knowledge? At our website, we offer a vast collection of books that
cater to every interest and age group. From classic literature to
specialized publications, self-help books, and children’s stories, we
have it all! Each book is a gateway to new adventures, helping you
expand your knowledge and nourish your soul
Experience Convenient and Enjoyable Book Shopping Our website is more
than just an online bookstore—it’s a bridge connecting readers to the
timeless values of culture and wisdom. With a sleek and user-friendly
interface and a smart search system, you can find your favorite books
quickly and easily. Enjoy special promotions, fast home delivery, and
a seamless shopping experience that saves you time and enhances your
love for reading.
Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and
personal growth!

ebookgate.com