74-0 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



While the minds of the three great religious communities were 

 thus distracted, some rays of Mohammedan learning penetrated into 

 the Christian schools. A few travelers had brought back specimens 

 from the East. The Crusades still further stimulated intercourse be- 

 tween the hostile creeds. Arabic versions of Aristotle were imported 

 along with bales of merchandise into Sicily, Italy, and the south of 

 France ; and some diligent scholars translated the Arabic works of 

 science into Latin. Raymond, Bishop of Toledo (1130-1150), caused 

 several of the works of Avicenna, Gazali, and Alfarabi to be trans- 

 lated into Latin ; and Michael Scot and others translated the Arabic 

 versions of Greek works into Latin. All this mass of new literature 

 gave an immense stimulus to metaphysical controversy. The intoxi- 

 cation of mind produced a flood of discussion which threatened to be 

 fatal to orthodoxy. The first scholastics professed themselves devout 

 sons of the Church, but the inevitable tendency of free inquiry was to 

 lead them further and further away from orthodoxy. The doctrines 

 of Avicenna, Averroes, and Avicebron convulsed the Christian schools ; 

 and the teaching of Aristotle seemed to lead to the plainest pantheism 

 and materialism. 



The Catholic Church was now thoroughly aroused and alarmed. 

 It was, indeed, shaken to its foundations ; and, as Aristotle seemed the 

 original source of all these heresies, he was formally condemned by 

 the Church in 1204, 1209, and 1215. Thus in all the three religious 

 communities the appeal to reason was dangerous to faith ; and the 

 Aristotelian philosophy was a terror equally to orthodox Jews, to or- 

 thodox Mohammedans, and to orthodox Catholics. 



The Catholic Church seemed on the very brink of destruction ; the 

 scandalous lives and the venality of the court of Rome shocked all 

 Christendom. Every country swarmed with heretics in revolt against 

 the tyranny of the priesthood. But the Pontiff was equal to the crisis. 

 The Crusades had familiarized the followers of the meek and gentle 

 Jesus with the idea that the slaughter of infidels was grateful to the 

 Creator. And heretics were worse than infidels. Accordingly, Inno- 

 cent III carried fire and sword into the fairest provinces of Christen- 

 dom. 



A great revolution was at hand, and the Church was saved in the 

 very crisis of her existence. In the same year, 120G, Dominic, a Span- 

 iard, founded an order of mendicant friars at Toulouse, and Francis, 

 at Assisi. They were bound to devote themselves to poverty and 

 preaching. The new orders spread with marvelous rapidity, and in a 

 very few years all Europe was filled with them. They were devoted 

 to the defense of Catholic dogma. Each order cultivated the most 

 profound learning, and studied the pagan philosophers to profit by 

 them and to confute them. The rival fraternities vied with each 

 other in celebrated names. The Franciscans boasted Alexander de 

 Hales; the Dominicans, Albert of Cologne, surnamed the Great. 



