LIBERTY OF THOUGHT. 65 



cial departments ; when each state began to declare that, in political 

 matters, it was independent of the Church. 



Still another great gain was, when a few " mighty though solitary 

 persons " in the twelfth century, the first scholastics, asserted the right 

 of human reason to be heard and to be consulted in the formation of 

 opinions, as against the mere say-so of the Church ; though most of 

 these persons forbore to attack commonly received opinions upon 

 religion ; but they revolted from blind acceptance of everything the 

 Church said. They went to work timidly. They would believe in 

 part because the Church said so, but they wanted that belief sup- 

 ported also by reason. The inference would be that reason had also 

 some claim to be heard ; a further inference might be that these men 

 were rationalists, and would only believe what reason could com- 

 prehend, but that would not follow. They only did not want to 

 believe what contradicted reason, and they wanted the privilege of 

 supporting their belief by reason so far as they could. 



Abelard, founder of the scholastic philosophy, began the great 

 battle. The first shock of the strife was- when he threw down the 

 gauntlet about reason, and St. Bernard, a very distinguished divine of 

 the day, took it up. Both were men of great genius, leaders of great 

 parties, and both were bent on reform. St. Bernard was a monk, 

 humble, self-denying, and modest. He was celebrated for his pen- 

 ances, his poverty, his devotion to the distressed, as well as for his 

 learning and eloquence. He had attacked the vices of the monastic 

 world, and was reforming it with great zeal. It was a fight between 

 giants, and Abelard was beaten he was silenced. 



A friend and disciple of Abelard, Arnold of Brescia, advocated 

 liberty of thought, while he also championed the rights of the people 

 all around to act and live as they pleased, so far as the ecclesiastical 

 body then dominant was concerned. And, so far did this revolu- 

 tion go, begun by Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, that it seemed at 

 one time likely to antedate the great religious revolution of the six- 

 teenth century by nearly four centuries. Free, independent thinking, 

 with heresy, was rife in all the schools. A republic existed at Rome. 

 The most fertile of the French provinces, Languedoc, was in the power 

 of the Albigenses. But as Abelard was silenced, so Arnold was 

 hanged. The Roman Republic was suppressed. The Albigenses of 

 Languedoc were exterminated. The cause of liberty came to grief, 

 and yet the good work of emancipation was not ended. 



'Another great gain for free thought was in the early national 

 literatures. They were uncompromising foes of Rome, its vices and 

 its tyranny over thought. Petrarch denounced the Roman hierarchy, 

 popes, cardinals, and monks, with unmeasured severity. He poured 

 out a torrent of invective. Dante showed the ideal church, and then 

 contrasted with it the real Church. He put popes into hell, and called 

 Rome the very Babylon that John saw in the Apocalypse. Boccaccio 



TOL. XXI. 5 



