asses of exegetic nullity a total failure to grasp the simple nd often obvious meaning either of books, passages, texts, or ven words. Most of these Compilers and Glossators were reachers; some of them were saints of God; many of them vere the most learned men of their day; but in spite of all his, their exegesis is null and naught.1

Between this earlier epoch and the zenith of Papal suprenacy stands the great name of JOHANNES SCOTUS ERIGENA. Scholasticism practically sprang out of the brief collision between Church authority and independent thought. It was in part the outcome of controversies like that between Ratram and Paschasius on the Eucharist (A.D. 844); between Lanfranc and Berengarius on the Eucharist (1047); between Anselm and Roscelin on Universals (1092); between Bernard and Abelard on rationalism.2 Erigena, who towers above his age, was employed to answer Gotteschalc who was a Predestinarian, but he was himself condemned by two Councils for "very many heresies inferred by very many syllogisms," and his books were burnt by Pope Honorius III.3 Alone among his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, he shows independence and originality. "Let no authority terrify you," he says, "from conclusions which the reasonable persuasion

1 Even Cardinal Newman says, "About the sixth or seventh century this originality disappears; the oral or traditionary teaching which allowed scope to the individual teacher became hardened into a written tradition, and henceforth there is a uniform invariable character as well as substance of Scripture interpretation." Pref. to Catena Aurea, p. ii. The lexicographers Hesychius, Suidas, Phavorinus, Zonaras, &c., are not exegetes but furnish good materials.

Scholasticism may be divided into three epochs. 1. From Anselm (†1109) to Peter Lombard († 1164). 2. From Peter Lombard to the death of Albertus Magnus († 1280). 3. From the beginning of the thirteenth century to Gabriel Biel († 1495). Hauréau divides it, 1. From Alcuin to the end of the twelfth century. 2. From Alexander of Hales († 1245) to John Gerson († 1429). Ueberweg's epochs are nearly the same, and so are those adopted by Tribbechovins and by Diestel. Philosophically, Mr. Lewes distinguishes three epochs. 1. The debate on Universals. 2. The influence of Aristotle. 3. The proclamation of the independence of reason (Biogr. Hist. of Philos. p. 290). Consin distinguishes between the periods of (1) absolute subordination and (2) commencing emancipation of philosophy (Cours de l'hist. de la philos. Leçon ix.).

Feb. 23, 1225. The writings of Erigena fell into the more suspicion from the use made of them by Berengarius of Tours in the Eucharistic controversy (1050), and by Amalric of Bène. John Scotus was the first who adopted a systematically syllogistic form of argument.

ne istened to it. Erigens unhappily

. He held indeed that the sense of
Eererance is matifid, and like a peacock's feather
but be also held that all creatures

are maiestatus of the divine. The chief influence b
exercised was due to his translation and adoption of the
views of the Syran Neoplatonist whose works were attributed
to Dionysus the Areopagite. Those spurious writings, which
probabis originated at Edessa or under the infirence of
the Edessene School, about the beginning of the sixth
century, wrought like a spell upon the mediaeval Church

De Din. Nat. i. 66, 68, 71, iv. 9; Diestel, p. 159. He asserts the demoty
of Philosophy and Religion, not the vassalage of the fame to the latter.
Ceberweg, 1357. So too Berengar, ade. Laxfree, Li poderier, p. 106.
In Eve. Nat. iv. 16.

In Din. Nat. iv. 5. This truly great work was condemned by the Synod
af Valence 555) as & commentum diaboli, and by Fope Hmains III. (1225)
teeming with the venom of heretical depravity;" and placed on the
Gregory XIII. See Schaff, Medial Christy, 548.
The wings of Pendo-Dionysins are first heard of about 5% soon after
the of the Neptonic schools of Athens by Justinin, and their authen-
diated Phot. Cad. 2). Cave Srist Be i 177) attributes
As the elder, and others to Sresins, Nether suggestion is
SG 113; Meier, De Dama Hyster Dextrina,
S Base in Prad-Diemnia; Dear Calet in the Cedentia
Expo Lupton; Westen Dinge Areep,
Takk. The effect of this work in the whole ce-
the popular faith it is almost impose justly t
24. Proclus and his ploughed
2 biler" Fabric: Mari Pa Vita, p

As were translated by J. Sets Eng, and in
Sis; but even in 757 his writings had been
Fermere faronites with the mutes, as als
Some of Abelard's many bles were

- as to Dionysis and St. Denys Pope says

Plate to th'empres' sphere

is fist perfect, and first fir; 2nd his followers trod

ox yang sense call imitating God."

what exegesis really implies. Sometimes, indeed, they repeat correct principles borrowed from Jerome and Augustine, but in practice they abandon these principles as soon as they are enunciated, and give us folio volumes of dogma, morality, and system, which profess to be based on Scripture, but have for the most part no real connection with the passages to which they are attached.1

The Papal system had established a secure despotism over the minds of men. The sources of all Christian truth were supposed to be furnished by Scripture and tradition; and the Church-by which was mainly meant the Pope-was held to be the infallible interpreter of both. In the seventh century the whole fabric of society still reeled with the terrible and continuous shocks which it had received from the storms of barbarian invasion, when Goths, Vandals, Sarmatians, Gepidae, Alani, Heruli, Huns, Suevi, Saxons, and Burgundians, had poured themselves upon the West. Learning naturally perished in the storm. "Woe to our days," exclaimed Gregory of Tours, "for the study of letters has perished from us."2 When Didier, Archbishop of Vienne, tried to reintroduce the teaching of grammar, Gregory the Great, the most fertile and eloquent moralist of his dreary age, in words which irresistibly remind us of what Jack Cade says to Lord Saye and Sele in Shakespeare's Henry VI., wrote to him, "I can scarcely mention without shame that your Fraternity explains grammar to certain persons. What a deadly and heinous fault!" 3 Fortunatus († 609), though a leading poet

1 Homiletics have been to an incredible extent the Phylloxera Vastatrix of exegesis, and preachers with their habit of thrusting into texts an endless variety of commonplaces which have no connexion with them, have become privileged misinterpreters. They have ploughed with the unequally-yoked ox and ass of science and sermon-making, and made texts an excuse for saying this or that as it pleased them, with no thought of the real meaning of words.

2 Greg. Tur. Hist. Franc. Prooem. Compare Lupus, Ep. 36 (Migne, vol. cxix.). King Alfred did not know one monk south of the Thames who could translate the Breviary.

3 "Sine verecundia memorare non possumus fraternitatem tuam Grammaticam quibusdam exponere!. Quam grave nefandumque!" Greg. M. Epp. xi. 54. So Jack Cade in Henry VI. pt. ii. act iv. sc. 7: "Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school," &c. We must, however, bear in mind that Gregory regarded the end of the

Work of Charlemagne.

247

of the age, confesses not only that he had never read Plato or Aristotle, but not even Hilary, Ambrose, or Augustine. "Many," wrote Ambrose Antpert in his comment on the Apocalypse, "say that this is no time to discuss Scripture." The eighth century was the most ignorant, the darkest, the most barbarous, that France had ever seen.1 There was everywhere confusion and chaos, national, social, and political. The energies of men were absorbed in the attempt to found a new order upon the crumbling ruins of ancient civilisation.

Charlemagne, having seen that schools and learning still existed in Italy, wished to revive them in his own kingdom, and about 787 wrote to the Bishops the circular letter which Ampère calls "la charte constituante de la pensée moderne." Then it was that the teaching of the Trivium and the Quadrivium began.2 As there was no diffusion of knowledge, all education became ecclesiastical, all piety monastic in type. There was a monotonous and absolute ascendency of sacerdotal authority. And how could there be anything but an everdeepening misinterpretation of Scripture when so few Christian interpreters possessed even a smattering of Hebrew; when Greek was but little known; when men went to Scripture, not to seek truth, but to find their own dogmas; when, in spite of a nominal idolatry for the sacred writings, men turned them into plastic enigmas; when the interpreter world as being "in actual progress," and thought that the light of eternity was already piercing the gloom of time. Dialog. iv. 41. Gregory, in his thirty-five books of Moralia ("ein schweres, ein unausdehnliches Buch ") thinks it "unworthy to bind the heavenly utterances by the rules of Donatus." He says, "Primum quidem fundamenta Historiae ponimus; deinde per significatorem typicam in arcem fidei fabricam mentis erigimus ad extremum quoque per moralitatis gratiam quasi superducto aedificium colore vestimus.' Ep. ad Leandrum.

1 Hist. Lit. de France, ii. For the facts mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs see Hauréau, Hist. de la Philos. Scholastique, i. 1-16. Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. 418. Bouquet, Rer. Gallic. Script. vol. v. Even Alcuin grew up to disparage as "polluting" the study of Virgil. Vita (Migue); Maitland, Dark Ages, p. 179.

2 The three arts of grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric, and the four sciences of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. See J. Bass Mullinger, The Schools of Charles the Great (1877). Brucker, iii. 957. Hauréau (i. 21) attributes the classification to Martianus Capella, but it is as old as Augustine (De Ordine, 13). See J. Gow, Short Hist. of Greck Mathematics, p. 72 (1884). Léon Maitre, Les Écoles de l'occident; Monnier, Alcuin et son influence. Manset, Art. Logic. Rudimenta, p. 28.