October 13, 1898] 



NATURE 



573 



the turmoil was less — I refer to Britain and South Italy — 

 while the exiled Nestorians carried Hellenic science and 

 philosophy out of Europe altogether to Mesopotamia 

 and Arabia. 



The next wave, it was but a small one, had its origin in 

 our own country. In the eighth century England was at 

 Its greatest height, relatively, in educational matters ; chiefly 

 owing to the labours of two men. Beda, generally called 

 the Venerable Bede, the most eminent writer of his age, 

 was born near Monkwearmouth in 673, and passed his 

 life in the monastery there. He not only wrote the 

 history of our island and nation, but treatises on the 

 nature of things, astronomy, chronology, arithmetic, 

 medicine, philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music ; 

 basing his work on that of Pliny. He died in 735, in 

 which year his great follower was born in Yorkshire. I 

 refer to Alcuin. He was educated at the Cathedral 

 School at York under Archbishop Egbert, and having 

 imbibed everything he could learn from the writings of 

 Bede and others, was soon recognised as one of the 

 greatest scholars of the time. On returning from Rome, 

 whither he had been sent by Eaubald to receive the 

 pallium, he met Karl the (^reat. King of the Franks and 

 Lombards, who eventually induced him to take up his 

 residence at his Court, to become his instructor in the 

 sciences. Karl (or Charlemagne) then was the greatest 

 figure in the world, and although as King of the Franks 

 and Lombards, and subsequently Emperor of the Holy 

 Roman Empire, his Court was generally at Aachen, he was 

 constantly travelling throughout his dominions. He was 

 induced, in consequence of Alcuin's influence, not only 

 to have a school always about him on his journeys, but 

 to establish, or foster, such schools wherever he went. 

 Hence it has been affirmed that " France is indebted to 

 Alcuin for all the polite learning it boasted of in that 

 and the following ages." The Universities of Paris, 

 Tours, Fulden, Soissons and others were not actually 

 founded in his day, but the monastic and cathedral 

 schools out of which they eventually sprung were 

 strengthened, and indeed a considerable scheme of 

 education for priests was established ; that is, an educa- 

 tion free from all sciences, and in which philosophy alone 

 was considered. 



Karl the Great died in 814, and after his death the 

 eastward travelling wave, thus started by Bede and 

 Alcuin, slightly but very gradually increased in height. 

 Two centuries later, however, the conditions were 

 changed. We find ourselves in presence of interference 

 phenomena, for then there was a meeting with another 

 wave travelling westwards, and this meeting was the 

 origin of the European Universities. The wave now 

 manifested travelling westerly, spread outward from Arab 

 centres first and finally from Constantinople, when its 

 vast stores of Greek lore were opened by the conquest of 

 the city. 



The first wavelet justified Eudemus' generalisation that 

 " the invention of the Sciences originated in practical 

 needs," and that knowledge for its own sake was not the 

 determining factor. The year had been determined, stone 

 circles erected almost everywhere, and fires signalled from 

 them, giving notice of the longest and shortest days, so that 

 agriculture was provided for, even away from churches and 

 the Festivals of the Church, The original user of geometry 

 was not required away from the valleys of the Nile, Tigris 

 and Euphrates, and, therefore, it is now Medicine and 

 Surgery that come to the front for the alleviation of 

 human ills. In the eleventh century we find Salerno, soon 

 to be famed throughout Europe as the great Medical 

 School, forming itself into the first University. And 

 Medicine did not exhaust all the science taught, for 

 Adelard listened there to a lecture on " the nature of 

 things," the cause of magnetic attraction being one of the 

 " things " in question. 



NO. I 5 II, VOL. 58] 



This teaching at Salerno preceded by many years the 

 study of the law at Bologna and of theology at Paris. 



The full flood came from the disturbance of the Arab 

 wave-centre by the Crusades, about the beginning of the 

 twelfth century. After the Pope had declared the " Holy 

 War," William of Malmesbury tells us, " The most distant 

 islands and savage countries were inspired with this 

 ardent passion. The Welshman left his hunting, the 

 Scotchman his fellowship with vermin, the Dane his 

 drinking party, the Norwegian his raw fish." Report has 

 it that in 1096 no less than six millions were in motion 

 along many roads to Palestine. This, no doubt, is an 

 exaggeration, but it reflects the excitement of the time, 

 and prepares us for what happened when the Crusaders re- 

 turned ; as Green puts it,^ " the western nations, including 

 our own, ' were quickened with a new life and throbbing 

 with a new energy.' ... A new fervour of study sprang 

 up in the West from its contact with the more cultured 

 East. Travellers like Adelard, of Bath, brought back the 

 first rudiments of physical and mathematical science 

 from the schools of Cordova or Bagdad. . . . The long 

 mental inactivity of feudal Europe broke up like ice before 

 a summer's sun. Wandering teachers, such as Lanfranc 

 or Anselm, crossed sea and land to spread the new power 

 of knowledge. The same spirit of restlessness, of inquiry, 

 of impatience with the older traditions of mankind, either 

 local or intellectual, that drove half Christendom to the 

 tomb of its Lord, crowded the roads with thousands of 

 young scholars hurrying to the chosen seats where 

 teachers were gathered together." 



Stiidiwn generah was the term first applied to a large 

 educational centre where there was a guild of masters, 

 and whither students flocked from all parts. At the 

 beginning of the thirteenth century the three principal 

 studia were Paris, Bologna and Salerno, where theology 

 and arts, law and medicine, and medicine almost by 

 itself, were taught respectively ; these eventually developed 

 into the first universities.^ 



English scholars gathered in thousands at Paris round 

 the chairs of William of Champeaux or Abelard, where 

 they took their place as one of the " nations " of which 

 the great Middle Age University of Paris was composed. 



We have only to do with the Arts faculty of this 

 University. We find that the subject-matter of the 

 liberal education of the Middle Age there dealt with 

 varied very little from that taught in the schools of 

 ancient Rome. 



The so-called " artiens," students of the Arts faculty, 

 which was the glory of the University and the one rnost 

 numerously attended, studied the seven arts of the trivium 

 and quadrivium — that is, grammar, rhetoric, dialectic 

 and arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy.* 



This at first looks well for scientific study, but the 

 mathematics taught had much to do with magic ; arith- 

 metic dealt with epacts, golden numbers, and the like. 

 There was no algebra, and no mechanics. Astronomy 

 dealt with the system of the seven heavens. 



Science, indeed, was the last thing to be considered in 

 the theological and legal studia, and it would appear that it 

 was kept alive more in the medical schools than in the 

 Arts faculties. Aristotle's writings on physics, biology, 

 and astronomy were not known till about 1230, and then 

 in the shape of Arab- Latin translations. Still it must not 

 be forgotten that Dante learned some of his astronomy, 

 at all events, at Paris. 



Oxford was an offshoot of Paris, and therefore a 

 theological studium, in all probability founded about 

 1 167,* and Cambridge came later. 



Not till the Reformation (sixteenth century) do we see 



1 " History of the English People," I. 198. 



2 See " Historic de I'Universit^ de Paris." Cr^vier, lygi, />assiin. 

 ' Enumerated in the following Middle Age Latin verse : 



" Lingua, tropus, ratio, numerus, tonus, angulus, astra." _ 

 * " Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ' Rashdall, vol. ii. p. 3441. 



