THE PROSCRIBED. 373 



on which a good number of students had one knee rested, the other 

 remaining raised, in order to take down in short-hand the extempo- 

 raneous effusion of the master, by means of those abbreviating signs 

 whose lost import throws into despair the decypherers of modern 

 times. The hall was full, not only of scholars, but also of the most 

 distinguished members of the clergy, the court, and the judicial 

 order. There were to be seen learned strangers, men of the sword, 

 and rich citizens. There the eyes were met by specimens of those 

 well-developed faces, protuberant foreheads, and venerable beards, 

 which, in the pictures of the middle age, inspire us with a sort of 

 religious devotion for our ancestors. Some meagre visages with 

 brilliant deep-set eyes, surmounted by bald craniums, time-tarnished 

 through the fatigues of an impotent scholastic divinity, the favourite 

 passion of the age, were contrasted with young ardent heads, with 

 grave sedate countenances, with warriors' faces, flashing fire, and 

 with the varied rubicund visages of a few financiers, breathing 

 gold and calculation. These lessons, dissertations, and themes, 

 sustained by the most brilliant geniuses of the thirteenth and 

 fourteenth centuries, excited all the enthusiasm of our fore- 

 fathers. They were their bull-fights, their Italian operas, 

 their tragedy and comedy, their great dancers, all the theatre in 

 fine. The representations of mysteries were but the successors of 

 these spiritual combats, which perhaps gave birth to the French 

 stage. At that time, an inspired eloquence, which united to the 

 charm of the human voice, skilfully managed, the subtleties of rhe- 

 toric, and the most daring researches into the secrets of God, satis- 

 fied curiosity, moved the passions, and was the fashionable exhibi- 

 tion of the day. Theology then comprised all the sciences. It was 

 science itself, as grammar was formerly with regard to the Greeks. 

 Theology opened a rich future to those who distinguished themselves 

 among those intellectual gladiators, in which, like Jacob, the orators 

 wrestled with the spirit of God. The embassies, the arbitrements 

 between sovereigns, the chancellorships, the ecclesiastical dignities, 

 all belonged to those whose speech had been painted in theological 

 controversy. The pulpit was the tribune of the epoch. This 

 system continued till the day when Rabelais immolated the disputa- 

 tious wrangling of the schools* with his terrible raillery, as 

 Cervantes exterminated chivalry by a written comedy. 



In order to comprehend this extraordinary age, the spirit which 

 dictated its chefs-d'oeuvre, unknown in our times, although in truth 

 immense, to explain even its barbarism, it would suffice only to study 

 the constitutions of the University of Paris, and to examine the 

 strange system of instruction then in all its vigour. Theology was 

 divided into two faculties, that of theology, properly so called, and 

 that by decree. The faculty of theology had three sections ; the 

 scholasticai, the canonical, and the mystical. It would be super- 

 fluous, consequently tiresome, to explain the attributions of those 



* I had a great mind to anglicize the French word erg-oiisme by cutting off 

 the final /?, but I durst not, in spite of its conciseness, and classic claims to 

 legitimacy. T. 



M.M. No. 10. 3B 



