The Portable Medieval Reader

by James Bruce Ross

  Rules oftheUniversity of Paris

  1215

  ROBERT, servant of the cross of Christ by divine pity, cardinal priest of the title, St. Stephen in Mons Caelius, legate of the apostolic see, to all the masters and scholars of Paris, eternal greeting in the Lord. Let all know that, since we have had a special mandate from the pope to take effective measures to reform the state of the Parisian scholars for the better, wishing with the counsel of good men to provide for the tranquillity of the scholars in the future, we have decreed and ordained in this wise:

  No one shall lecture in the arts at Paris before he is twenty-one years of age, and he shall have heard lectures for at least six years before he begins to lecture, and he shall promise to lecture for at least two years, unless a reasonable cause prevents, which he ought to prove publicly or before examiners. He shall not be stained by any infamy, and when he is ready to lecture, he shall be examined according to the form which is contained in the writing of the lord bishop of Paris ... And they shall lecture on the books of Aristotle on dialectic old and new in the schools ordinarily and not ad cursum. They shall also lecture on both Priscians ordinarily, or at least on one. They shall not lecture on feast days except on philosophers and rhetoric and the quadrivium and Barbarismus and ethics, if it please them, and the fourth book of the Topics. They shall not lecture on the books of Aristotle on metaphysics and natural philosophy or on summaries of them or concerning the doctrine of Master David of Dinant or the heretic Amaury or Mauritius of Spain.

  In the principia and meetings of the masters and in the responsions or oppositions of the boys and youths there shall be no drinking. They may summon some friends or associates, but only a few. Donations of clothing or other things as has been customary, or more, we urge should be made, especially to the poor. None of the masters lecturing in arts shall have a cope except one round, black, and reaching to the ankles, at least while it is new. Use of the pallium is permitted. No one shall wear with the round cope shoes that are ornamented or with elongated pointed toes. If any scholar in arts or theology dies, half of the masters of arts shall attend the funeral at one time, the other half the next time, and no one shall leave until the sepulture is finished, unless he has reasonable cause....

  Each master shall have jurisdiction over his scholar. No one shall occupy a classroom or house without asking the consent of the tenant, provided one has a chance to ask it. No one shall receive the licentiate from the chancellor or another for money given or promise made or other condition agreed upon. Also, the masters and scholars can make both between themselves and with other persons obligations and constitutions supported by faith or penalty or oath in these cases: namely, the murder or mutilation of a scholar or atrocious injury done a scholar, if justice should not be forthcoming, arranging the prices of lodgings, costume, burial, lectures and disputations, so, however, that the university be not thereby dissolved or destroyed.

  As to the status of the theologians, we decree that no one shall lecture at Paris before his thirty-fifth year and unless he has studied for eight years at least, and has heard the books faithfully and in classrooms, and has attended lectures in theology for five years before he gives lectures himself publicly. And none of these shall lecture before the third hour on days when masters lecture. No one shall be admitted at Paris to formal lectures or to preachings unless he shall be of approved life and science. No one shall be a scholar at Paris who has no definite master.

  Moreover, that these decrees may be observed inviolate, we by virtue of our legatine authority have bound by the knot of excommunication all who shall contumaciously presume to go against these our statutes, unless within fifteen days after the offence they have taken care to emend their presumption before the university of masters and scholars or other persons constituted by the university. Done in the year of Grace 1215, the month of August.

  From Chartulary of the University of Paris, trans. L. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages.

  Fernando of Cordova, the Boy Wonder

  LAUNOY

  1445

  IN THE year 1445 there came to the Collège de Navarre a certain youth of twenty summers who was past master of all good arts, as the most skilled masters of the university testified with one accord. He sang beautifully to the flute: he surpassed all in numbers, voice, modes, and symphony. He was a painter and laid colours on images best of all. In military matters he was most expert: he swung a sword with both hands so well and mightily that none dared fight with him. No sooner did he espy his foe than he would leap at him with one spring from a distance of twenty or twenty-four feet. He was a master in arts, in medicine, in both laws, in theology. With us in the school of Navarre he engaged in disputation, although we numbered more than fifty of the most perfect masters. I omit three thousand others and more who attended the bout. So shrewdly and cumulatively did he reply to all the questions which were proposed that he surpassed the belief, if not of those present, certainly of those absent. Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and many more tongues he spoke in a most polished manner. He was a very skilful horseman. Nay more, if any man should live to be a hundred and pass days and sleepless nights without food and drink, he would never acquire the knowledge which that lad’s mind embraced. And indeed he filled us with deep awe, for he knew more than human nature can bear. He argued four doctors of the church out of countenance, no one seemed comparable to him in wisdom, he was taken for Antichrist. Such are the quotations of Stephen Paschal, book v of Disquisitions, chapter 23, from a history in manuscript made by an eyewitness.

  Trans. L. Thorndike, in University Records and Life in the Middle Ages.

  The Problems of a Christian Humanist

  JOHN OF SALISBURY

  Twelfth century

  CONSIDER the leading teachers of philosophy of our own day, those who are most loudly acclaimed, surrounded by a noisy throng of disciples. Mark them carefully; you will find them dwelling on one rule, or on two or three words, or else they have selected (as though it were an important matter) a small number of questions suitable for dispute, on which to exercise their talent and waste their life. They do not however succeed in solving them but hand down to posterity for solution by their disciples their problems, with all the ambiguity with which they have invested them.

  In their lecture room they invite you to battle with them, become pressing, and demand the clash of wit. If you hesitate to engage, if you delay but for a moment, they are upon you. If you advance and, though unwillingly, engage them and press them hard, they take refuge in subterfuge; they change front; they torture words; with tricks of magic they transform themselves until you marvel at the reappearance of the slippery, changing Proteus. But he can be trapped more easily if you insist on understanding his meaning and intention despite his voluble and erratic language. He will finally be vanquished by his own meaning and be caught by the words of his mouth, if you can grasp their significance and hold it firmly.

  The points of dispute of our modem Proteus however are as useless as they are trivial. If in disgust over time wasted on such trifles you press your attack he again has recourse to evasion. As if taking refuge in the bosom of Mother Earth like Antaeus, he strives to recover his strength in the element in which he was born and brought up. Such a roundabout way; so many detours! As though it were necessary to traverse a labyrinth to reach the common place! ...

  If therefore you hoist them with their own petard you may well pity them their poverty in almost every capacity. Some seem to excel in details; others offer for sale all branches of philosophy, and yet in the details they are without the proper philosophic background. There are some who hope to attain perfection as the result of excellence in one branch; there are others who devote their energy to the whole field though they lack the knowledge of its parts. I find it hard to say which are in greater error, since perfection is not derived from one and no one has the power to devote himself faithfully to all. However he who seeks perfection in all from one is the more absu
rd, while he who claims proficiency in all is the more arrogant. It is the mark of the indolent to occupy himself with one thing to the exclusion of all else; of the dilettante to embrace them all.

  At any rate he who makes a wide survey in order to select his specialty displays discretion and is the more devoted to his choice after having weighed the value of others. Perhaps that is the intention of the moralist who enjoins the reading of books....

  All reading should be done in such a way that some of it when finished should be disregarded, some condemned, and some viewed en passant, that the subject matter be not entirely unknown; but above all careful attention should be given to those matters which lay the foundation of the life of the state, be it by the law of the state or else by ethical principles, or which have in view the health of body and soul. Since then the chief branch [grammar] among the liberal arts, without which no one can teach or be taught properly, is to be merely greeted en passant and as it were from the door, who can imagine that time should be devoted to other branches which being difficult to understand or impractical and harmful do not conduce to the betterment of man? For even those things that are required for man’s use prove very harmful if they occupy his attention to the exclusion of all others.

  Does anyone doubt the desirability of reading the historians, the orators, and the authorities on approved mathematics, since without a knowledge of them men cannot be, or at least usually are not, liberally educated? Indeed those who are ignorant of those writers are termed illiterate even if they can read and write. But when such writers lay claim to the mind as though it belonged exclusively to them, although they praise learning they do not teach; rather they hinder the cultivation of virtue. This is the reason that Cicero when dealing with the poets, to make his remarks more effective, burst out, “The shout of approbation of the populace, as though it were some great and wise teacher qualified to recommend, puts the stamp of genius upon whom it wishes. But they who are so lauded, what darkness do they spread, what fears engender, and what passions inflamel” ... Elsewhere however Cicero highly commends writers. He says, “He alone who fears no contempt himself casts contempt upon poets and writers in other branches of artistic literature, as well as upon the historians. They know what virtue is and offer the material for philosophic study, for they brand vices; they do not teach them. Their works are attractive too on account of the help and pleasure they give to the reader. They make their way amid dangers which threaten character, with the intention of securing a foothold for virtue.” ... I myself am of the opinion of those who believe that a man cannot be literate without a knowledge of the authors. Copious reading, however, by no means makes the philosopher, since it is grace alone that leads to wisdom.... It may be assumed that all writings except those that have been disapproved should be read, since it is believed that all that has been written and all that has been done have been ordained for man’s utility although at times he makes bad use of them. For the angels too were, so to speak, ordained on account of the soul, but the corporeal world, according to the statement of the fathers, for the use of the body.... Just so in books there is something profitable for everybody provided, be it understood, the reading is done with discrimination and that only is selected which is edifying to faith and morals. There is matter which is of profit to stronger minds but is to be kept from the artless; there is that which an innately sound mind rejects; there is that which it digests for character-building or perfecting eloquence; there is that which hardens the soul and causes spiritual indigestion in matters of faith and good works. There is scarcely a piece of writing in which something is not found either in meaning or expression that the discriminating reader will not reject. The safe and cautious thing to do is to read only Catholic books. It is somewhat dangerous to expose the unsophisticated to pagan literature; but a training in both is very useful to those safe in the faith, for accurate reading on a wide range of subjects makes the scholar; careful selection of the better makes the saint....

  Therefore let the pagan writers be read in a way that their authority be not prejudicial to reason; for the burning weed, as the rose is plucked, sometimes burns the hand of him who touches it.

  Wisdom is as it were a spring from which rivers go out watering all the land, and its divine pages not only fill with delight the place of its birth but also make their way among the nations to such an extent that they are not entirely unknown even to the Ethiopians. It is from this source that the flowering, perfumed, fruitful works of the pagan world spring, and should perchance any artless reader enter their field let him keep in mind this quotation: Flee hence, O ye who gather flowers

  Or berries growing on the ground; the clammy

  Snake is hiding in the grass.

  [Virgil, Eclogues, III, 92-93]

  It is no sluggard who carries off the apples of the Hesperides guarded by the ever-sleepless dragon, nor one who reads as though not awake but drowsing and dreaming as if eager to reach the end of his task. It is certain that the pious and wise reader who spends time lovingly over his books always rejects errors and comes close to life in all things.

  From Policraticus, book VII, trans. J. B. Pike, Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1938).

  The Ancients and the Moderns

  WALTER MAP

  Twelfth century

  THE diligent achievement of the ancients is still in our possession; they make their own past present to our times, and we ourselves wax dumb: whence the memory of them liveth in us and we are unmindful of ours. Notable miracle! The dead live, the living are buried in their stead. Our times offer perchance something not unworthy of “the buskin of Sophocles.” But the illustrious deeds of modern men of might are little valued, and the castaway odds and ends of antiquity are exalted. This is surely because we know how to blame and because we know not how to write; we seek to tear to pieces and we deserve to be torn. Thus the forked tongues of detractors are responsible for the rarity of poets. Thus minds grow slack, wits are undone; thus the native strength of this time is unduly extinguished, and the lamp is quenched, not indeed by lack of fuel, but craftsmen wax inert and the record of the present is lightly reckoned. So Caesar liveth in the praises of Lucan, Aeneas in those of Virgil, not the more by their great merits than by the watchful-ness of poets. Only the (trifling) of mimes in vulgar rhymes celebrateth among us the godlike nobility of the Charleses and the Pepins—no one speaketh of living Caesars; but their characters, full of bravery and self-control, and inviting everybody’s wonder, are ready to the pen. Alexander of Macedon, blaming the narrowness of the world open to his conquest, said with a sigh, when he looked upon the tomb of Achilles, “O thou happy youth, who enjoyest so great a publisher of thy merits!” meaning Homer. This mighty Alexander is my witness that many who have deserved to live among men after death, live (only) by the interpretation of poets. But to what purport the sighs of Alexander—certainly this, that he was bemourning the lack of a great poet to chant his merits, lest on his last day he should wholly die. But who would dare to put upon a page what is passing today, or to pen even these names of ours? ... But if thou lookest upon “Hannibal” or “Menestratus,” or any name of a sweetness hallowed by time, thou givest all thine attention ; and, eager to plunge into the fabled cycles of the golden age, thou exultest in their deeds. Thou embracest with all reverence the tyranny of Nero and the avarice of Juba, and whatever else antiquity doth offer; thou rejectest the gentleness of Louis and the generosity of Henry.

  From Courtiers’ Trifles, trans. F. Tupper and M. B. Ogle (London: Chatto and Windus, New York: Macmillan, 1924).

  A Plea for the Study of Languages

  ROGER BACON

  Thirteenth century

  FOR it is impossible for the Latins to reach what is necessary in matters divine and human except through the knowledge of other languages, nor will wisdom be perfected for them absolutely, nor relatively to the Church of God and to the remaining three matters noted
above. This I now wish to state, and first with respect to absolute knowledge. For the whole sacred text has been drawn from the Greek and Hebrew, and philosophy has been derived from these sources and from Arabic: but it is impossible that the peculiar quality of one language should be preserved in another. For even dialects of the same tongue vary among different sections, as is clear from the Gallic language, which is divided into many dialects among the Gauls, Picards, Normans, Burgundians, and others.... Therefore an excellent piece of work in one language cannot be transferred into another as regards the peculiar quality that it possessed in the former....

  For let any one with an excellent knowledge of some science like logic or any other subject at all strive to turn this into his mother tongue, he will see that he is lacking not only in thoughts, but words, so that no one will be able to understand the science so translated as regards its potency. Therefore no Latin will be able to understand as he should the wisdom of the sacred Scripture and of philosophy, unless he understands the languages from which they were translated.

  Secondly, we must consider the fact that translators did not have the words in Latin for translating scientific works, because they were not first composed in the Latin tongue. For this reason they employed very many words from other languages. Just as these words are not understood by those ignorant of those languages, so are they neither pronounced correctly nor are they written as they should be....

  Thirdly, although the translator ought to be perfectly acquainted with the subject which he wishes to translate and the two languages from which and into which he is translating, Boëthius alone, the first translator, had full mastery of the languages; and Master Robert, called Grosse-Teste, lately bishop of Lincoln, alone knew the sciences....