Rapid pro gress of the CHAL presented by both orders to the inactivity of the Benedictines necessarily appealed with singular force to the wants and sympathies of the poor amid the vicissitudes of that tempestuous century. The two orders extended themselves with marvellous rapidity over Europe and yet remoter regions. Their convents multiplied not only in more civilized countries, but also in Russia, Poland, and Denmark; their missionaries penetrated to the heart of Palestine, to the inaccessible fastnesses of Abyssinia, and the bleak regions of Crim Tartary. In a few years,' says Dean Milman, 'from the sierras of Spain to the steppes of Russia; from the Tiber to the Thames, the Trent, the Baltic sea; the old faith in its fullest mediaval, imaginative, inflexible rigour, was preached in almost every town and hamlet". In England the Dominicans met with less success, but this was fully comThe Francis pensated by the rapid progress of the Franciscans. Very soon after the establishment of the latter order, they had formed a settlement at Oxford under the auspices of Grosseteste, and had erected their first rude chapel at Cambridge. Within thirty years from their first arrival in the country, they numbered considerably more than a thousand and had established convents in most of the more important towns. 'If your holiness,' says Grosseteste, writing to Gregory IX in 1238, 'could see with what devotion and humility the people run to hear the word of life from them, for confession and instruction as to daily life, and how much improvement the clergy and the regulars (clerus et religio) have obtained by imitating them, you would indeed say that they that dwelt in the shadow of death upon them hath the light shined". Even by the existing religious orders they and their work were regarded, in the first instance, with far from unfriendly sentiments; or, if jealousy were felt, it was deemed prudent eans in Eng land Their pop lanty with the people. they served to show forth the count- intellectual energy, without which those ages would have been very barren.' Prof. Maurice, Medieval Philosophy, pp. 165-166. 1 Hist. Latin Christianity, Bk. I c. 9. 2 Luard, Preface to Grosseteste Epistola, p. xxii; see also Epist. 58. to repress its manifestation while the current of popular char. e feeling flowed so strongly in their favour. Roger of Wendover, prior of the Benedictine convent of Belvoir, declares that the labours of the new missionaries brought much fruit to the Lord'.' Ar With the activity of the Dominicans is associated the other great movement of this century,-the introduction of the new philosophy. The numerous foundations planted by them in the East, brought about an increased intercourse between those regions and Western Europe; the influence of the Crusades, as we have already seen, was tending to a like result; the barriers which, in the time of Gerbert, nterposed between Mahometan and Christian thought, were roken down; and, simultaneously with these changes, the Jours of Averroes, who died at Morocco in 1198, were preading among the Arabs a deference for the authority f Aristotle such as no preceding commentator or translator ad inspired. Another widely scattered body supplied the k that brought these labours home to Christendom. The ews of Syria, and those who, under the scornfully tolerant ule of the Saracens in Spain, found refuge from the perse ution and insult which confronted them in the great cities f Christian Europe, were distinguished by their cultivation f the new philosophy, and their acquaintance with both Arabic and Latin enabled them in turn to render the works f Averroes accessible to the scholars of the Romance ountries. It would seem to be a well established conclusion Ar Fat the philosophy of Aristotle was first made known to *) Le West mainly through these versions. The rarity, at this riod, of a knowledge of Greek, and the attractions offered y the additional and afforded in the Arabic commentaries, cured for these sources a proference over whatever had as t appeared that was founded upon an immediate acquaint CHAP. I. ance with the Greek originals'. A considerable interval clapsed before translations direct from the Greek appeared in sufficient number to rival those from the Arabic, and here it will be well before we proceed with the consideration of the interpretation of Aristotle adopted by the earliest teachers of our universities, to discriminate the sources from whence their inspiration would appear to have been derived. Previous We have already had occasion to notice that the Aristotl of the schoolmen, prior to the twelfth century, was nothing more than probably two of his treatises on Logic,-the Categories and the De Interpretatione; the remaining por tion of the Organon, as translated by Boethius, being first made known at the beginning of that century. It remains to explain by what means the Middle Age translations from the Arabic and those from the Greek have been distinguishel and identified. The theories of different scholars on this ques tion were for a long time singularly at variance. It coul! not be doubted that the source from whence those who firs introduced the philosophy of Aristotle into Christian Europ derived their knowledge, were Latin translations; but in what instances these translations had been made directl from the Greek, and in what instances they were derive! from the labours of the Arabians, was in considerable dispute Brucker, in his History of Philosophy, put forth only a confused and unsatisfactory statement; Heeren inclined t the opinion that the revival might be traced to source Monte, abbatis S. Michaelis, Chronic These portions of the Organo, that is to say, the Prior and Poster or Analytics, the Topica, and th Elenchi Sophistici became known as the Nova Logica, the Categories and the De Interpretatione as lets Logica. See Buleus, 111 82. Prant! observes that in Duns Scotus th distinction appears to have been that i by which the respective treatises were ! generally known. Geschichte de l Logik, 206. " De Arabic translations: Buhle CAP. antry opinion; Tennemann g hypotheses; but it was nus essay first published early ve by a series of lengthened at those conclusions which as, been now almost universally Jourdain was to take, in turn, Method of schoolmen, and carefully to s presented themselves from satin versions we posses; he was actorily to determine the period a of the Aristotelian philosophy the sources to which each writer the earlier Aristotle, the transBoethius were, of course, easily the later period; for, besides the Caracter of the writing and the e former translations possessed a van, while the latter were charactera word for word substitution of a greatly added to the obscurity rms, moreover, were left unscribed, though the Latin tory equivalent. An equally to distinguish the versions versions from the Arabic; for, in val that Greek words which, in valent, had been retained in correctly spelt in the Latin te translator in ignorance of * Arabic word, left it standing CHAP. I. untranslated. In many cases again considerable collateral light was afforded by the divisions of the chapters; in the Metaphysics, for instance, and the treatise on Meteors, the division of the Arabic version differed from that of the manuscript employed by the translator from the Greek, and the discrepancy, of course, reappeared in the corresponding Latin versions. Results catablished by his The conclusions Jourdain was thus enabled to establish, Ferarchics were, in substance, chiefly as follow:-Up to the com mencement of the thirteenth century neither the philosophy of Aristotle nor the labours of his Arabian commentators and translators appear to have been known to the Schoolmen. There were, it is true, translations of Avicenna and Alfarab by Gondisalvi, coming into circulation about the middle of the twelfth century, but they failed to attract the attention of the learred in France and England. Daneus remarks that the name of Aristotle never once occurs in the Master of the Sentences'. But by the year 1272, or two year before the death of Thomas Aquinas, the whole of Aristotle's writings, in versions either from the Greek er the Arabic, had become known to Western Europe. Within a period therefore of less than three quarters of a century, this philosophy, so far as regards Christendom, passes from a state of almost complete obscuration to one of almost perfect revelation. A further attention to ascertained facts enables us yet more accurately to determine the character of these translations and the order of their appearance, and adds considerable illustration to the whole history of the establishment of those relations of the Aristotelian philosophy with the Church which constitute so important a feature. in the developement of this age. The natural Pelosophy of el fly intro duced With regard to the sources from whence the respective translations were derived, it is in harmony with what we de from should be disposed to expect from the attention paid by the Arabians to natural science, that we find it was chiefly the natural philosophy of Aristotle that was made known through their agency to Europe, and constituted consequently Arabec sources. 1 Prolegomena in Petri Lomb. Sententias, Lib. 1 Geneva, 1580. |