SCHOLASTICISM 



217 



doctrine. To give him that place in the schools 

 which many now wished would be a standing 

 menace to the authority of the church. From the 

 first appearance of the new writings, therefore, 

 Home steadily set ite face against the 'Grecian 

 Doctor,' and in a succession of anathemas forbade 

 certain parts of his writings to be used in the 

 universities. In the relation of thinkers to Aris- 

 totle we have thus the distinction between the 

 earlier and the later scholasticism. Of the first 

 period the great names are Koscellinus, Ansehn, 

 William of Champeaux, Abelard, and Peter Lom- 

 bard ; of the second, Albertus Magnus, Alexander 

 of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William 

 of Ockham, and Jean Gerson. 



The name of Anselm (1033-1109) is chiefly re- 

 membered in connection with his attempt to prove 

 the existence of God from the innate idea which 

 he supposed to be common to all mankind. His 

 place in the line of the schoolmen, however, is not 

 due to this argument, famous as it is in the history 

 of thought. It was in his controversy with his 

 contemporary Roscellinus (lx>rn near Soissons 

 about 1050) on the burning question of universals 

 that he entered the peculiar domain of scholasti- 

 cism. Though not the first to renew the old con- 

 troversy, Kosccllinus, by the notoriety which lie 

 gave to it, may be regarded as the founder of the 

 scholastic philosophy. With a skill and success 

 that alarmed the authorities of the church he 

 argued for the theory of Nominalism, Anselm 

 taking up the contrary position with equal subtlety 

 and persistence. It proves the importance u--iu r ni-, 1 

 to the question at issue that in 1092 a council held 

 at Soissons condemned the teaching of Koscellinus 

 as implicitly involving the negation of the doctrine 

 of the Trinity. As Roscellinus was the founder of 

 Nominalism, William of Champcaux (1070-1122), 

 the head of a famous school of logic in Paris, was 

 the founder of Realism. It was in refuting his 

 teaching that his pupil Abelard ( 1079- 11 42) gained 

 the first triumphs of hU extraordinary career. In 

 Alielard we have the boldest thinker and one of 

 the most striking figures in the history of the 

 middle a^es. His celebrated pamphlet .SVc et 

 .\~HII was a manifesto of rationalism, which sent 

 a shudder through the conservatism of the time. 

 Selecting 158 points of Christian doctrine he 

 arrayed the opinions of the most revered author- 

 ities on each. Presented in this startling fashion, 

 the opinions of St Paul, Augustine, Gregory, 

 Jerome, Athanasius, and others were seen to be 

 so essentially self-contradictory that no doctrine 

 was left on which an intelligent believer could 

 rest. On the main question of the schools he 

 rejected the orthodox Realism, and adopted an 

 eclectic theory which was neither Realism nor 

 Nominalism, but a middle position between each. 

 A thinker like Abelard striking at the very root 

 of the Christian tradition could not in the reason 

 of things be tolerated by the church ; and by a 

 great assembly at Sens in 1140, and afterwards at 

 Kome, his writings were ordered to be burned and 

 liiu. self prohibited from teaching. But the spirit of 

 Alielard was never completely exorcised during the 

 subsequent centuries, and he has alwavs been re- 

 garded as the brilliant precursor of tiie modern 

 time. By his ' Four Books of Sentences' (i.e. right 

 rules) Peter Lombard (c. 1100-60), a pupil of 

 Abelard, came to hold a place in the history of 

 scholasticism hardly second to any other thinker. 

 The object of his book was to be the antidote of 

 Sic et ffon ; and in a different spirit from Abelard 

 the Lombard brought together the opinions of the 

 Latin fathers Augustine, Ambrose, and Hilary, as 

 also of Casttiodorus. To each article he annexed 

 a series of 'Distinctions,' in which he sought to 

 define more precisely the doctrine under considera- 



tion. Though conceived in a spirit of orthodoxy, 

 the ' Sentences ' did not escape the leaven of 

 Abelard's scepticism. Regarded with suspicion 

 on its first appearance, it yet became the great 

 text-book of the universities to the close of the 

 middle ages, and was itself made the subject of in- 

 terminable commentaries by subsequent schoolmen. 



In the second period of scholasticism larger 

 interests and more various problems quickened the 

 speculations of the successive thinkers. During 

 the 13th and 14th centuries the rivalries of the two 

 mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Fran- 

 ciscans, divided the schools, and introduced a 

 polemical element into philosophical discussion 

 unknown in a similar degree to the earlier period. 

 Generally the Franciscans, as the body of demo- 

 cratic origin, counted in their ranks the bolder 

 thinkers among the schoolmen. Thus, Roger 

 Bacon, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham were 

 Franciscans, Albertus Magnus and Thomas 

 Aquinas Dominicans. The new Aristotle was the 

 battle-ground of the two rival camps of thinkers, 

 and specially the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul. 

 As that doctrine had been expounded by the 

 Arabian commentator Axerrhoi-s, it involved the 

 negation of the Christian doctrine of the resurrec- 

 tion and of the immortality of the soul. It is 

 mainly by their attitude towards Averrhoes that we 

 ili>tiii^iiish the different tendencies of the school- 

 men of the 13th and 14th centuries. 



An eclectic in his view of universals, Albertus 

 Magnus (1193-1280) accepted Aristotle through the 

 commentator Avirenna in preference to Averrhoes. 

 The task of the later schoolmen was to harmonise 

 the newly-received teaching of Aristotle with the 

 doctrines of the church, and Albert was the first to 

 bring together the materials for the furthering of 

 this end. To effect this harmony was the life's 

 endeavour of the most constructive mind of all the 

 schoolmen, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1226-74). In his 

 Siniiiiut Thtologiae Aquinas sought to supply a com- 

 plete repertory of human thought on all subjects 

 touching religion and philosophy, the fundamental 

 principle of his work l>eing that as faith and reason 

 have two distinct spheres, neither can conflict 

 with the other. On the subject of universals he 

 was an eclectic like his master Albertus. Even 

 Aquinas did not escape the charge of heresy, and 

 through the efforts of the Franciscans his teaching 

 on the nature of the soul was formally condemned 

 by the church. Eventually, however, he came to 

 hold the first place as the oracle of divine and 

 human wisdom, so that a pope could say of him 

 that 'the articles of Thomas were so many 

 miracles." What Aquinas was to the Dominicans 

 Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) was to the Franciscans. 

 Roger Bacon (c. 1214-94), also a Franciscan, holds 

 a place apart from the other thinkers of the miiUlle 

 ,-(M,.H liy his contempt for the studies of the school- 

 men. The introduction into the western schools of 

 what is known as the Byzantine logic by Petrus His- 

 pnniis ( 1226-77) is a turning point in the history of 

 the scholastic philosophy. Through its influence 

 logic in the teaching of Duns Scotus and William of 

 Ockham assumed an importance which had the most 

 disastrous results on the entire scholastic system. 

 With an acumen which gained fof him the title of 

 'The Subtle Doctor,' Duns applied the new logic 

 to the main position of Aquinas that reason and 

 revelation are two distinct sources of knowledge, 

 and sought to prove that there is, in truth, no 

 knowledge apart from the Christian teaching. On 

 the question of universals he shows all his subtlety, 

 but his position is virtually that of Aouinas himself. 

 It was in the hands of William of Ockham (c. 1270- 

 1349), a pupil of Duns Scotns, that the scholastic 

 philosophy assumed a form which speedily led to its 

 disintegration. By his triumphant demonstration 



