96 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 



mon views ; but the scientific man, saturated with the doctrine 

 of evolution, is loth to accept a spontaneous generation of cul- 

 ture at the period of the late Italian renaissance. Students of 

 medieval history are indeed beginning to date back this period 

 of awakening to the thirteenth or even to the eleventh century ; 

 but there appears to be much evidence for a gradual extension 

 of civilization and culture throughout Europe from the sixth to 

 the eleventh centuries. 



It is a long way from the love passages of the Phaedrus to 

 those of the Vita Nuova, from the fawn of Praxiteles to the 

 madonna of Giotto, from the Phrygian mysteries to the order of 

 St. Francis. The Christian church is said to have been inimical 

 to culture and science, but to it we owe the establishment of 

 monasteries, schools and libraries throughout Europe. It is 

 natural that the civilizations of Athens and of Rome should 

 have become merged in the surrounding peoples. We might 

 as well wonder why Shakespeare did not give rise to a line of 

 poets, as to wonder why the Athens of Pericles was not perma- 

 nent. When Rome came in contact with the peoples of the 

 north, an average resulted which was in the end an extension 

 of civilization. The barbarians who overran Italy and sacked 

 Rome were themselves converted to Christianity, and the tradi- 

 tions of culture were carried beyond the Rhine and the English 

 Channel. 



Boetius, whose birth coincided with the fall of the western 

 empire, wrote on science as well as on philosophy. From his 

 death, in 525, education and learning were in the hands of the 

 church. Gregory the Great, pope from 590 to 604, encour- 

 aged primary education ; and monasteries, being at once schools, 

 libraries and academies of learned men, were established every- 

 where under the early popes. Bede, born about 673, wrote 

 on astronomy and medicine. At his school at Jarrow in North- 

 umbria there were 600 monks in attendance besides strangers 

 from a distance. Alcuin, born about the year that Bede died, 

 went from the directorship of the school at York to establish 

 the palace school for Charles the Great, making the court of 

 the emperor more nearly an academy of sciences and letters 



