CHAPTER II 



FROM THE BIRTH OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY 

 TO THE DEATH OF ROGER BACON. 



" If that I did not know philosophy 

 To be of all our vanities the motliest 

 The merest word that ever fool'd the ear 

 From out the Schoolman's jargon I should deem 

 The golden secret, the sought " Kalon," found 

 And seated in my soul." * 



Aided by the Arabian and Hebrew learning, thus 

 gradually came into being the system known as the 

 Scholastic Philosophy : for many centuries the only 

 form of erudition in Christian Europe. The sole 

 mode of instruction was in the schools in which the 

 teaching, by the " Schoolmen," as they were called, 

 was entirely oral. Few or no books were accessible 

 to the pupils, and for a long time few or none of them 

 could read, The clerks, or those who could read and 

 write, the clericus were the monks and ecclesiastics 

 only. For many years the instruction was confined 

 to the "trivium" of the liberal arts, grammar, 

 rhetoric and logic. It was necessary before all that 



* Byron's Manfred. Act III., 1. 



