78 



as Albert was clear-sighted enough to foresee ; if 

 science undermines dogma, mysticism relaxes or 

 neglects it : hence, as clerks only could teach, it 

 may have been that independent thinkers like 

 Hales, Roger Bacon, and Ockham entered the Fran- 

 ciscan order 1 . Indeed the science of Pietro di Abano 



1 To wonder why Roger Bacon became a clerk and a 

 Franciscan is to look upon the thirteenth century with the 

 eyes of the nineteenth. The vision of St Francis had not 

 grown dim ; the strange beauty of his life held men captive 

 still, and his cheerful natural religion still animated his 

 disciples. None could have said more truly than St Francis 



"While others fish with craft for great opinion, 

 I with great truth catch mere simplicity." 



The grey friar of the fourteenth century, as we know him in 

 Langland and Chaucer, or later in the degraded fanaticism of 

 the Observants, had fallen far from the example of his master. 

 Perhaps the chief reason for Bacon's decision was that his 

 friend Grosseteste, who on. the first coming of the friars wrote 

 eloquently to Gregory the Ninth of their illumination, humility 

 and piety, was a member of the Order, and was the first of its 

 Rectors in Oxford. (Rd. Grosseteste, Epist. ed. Luard ; Rolls, 

 1861, p. 179.) Even in Cambridge, till 1877, teachers and 

 professors, save those of Law or Medicine, were in orders, for 

 the most part in holy orders ; for instance, the following 

 extract, of date 1849, which I owe to the kindness of 

 Dr Donald MacAlister, " Cseterum neminem in socium un- 

 quam admitti volumus qui non sit aut Theologian) professurus 

 et sacros ordines post certum temporis intervallum inferius 

 definiendum suscepturus aut e Collegio discessurus, nisi unus 

 e duobus sociis qui Medicine aut ex illis duobus qui Juris 

 Civilis studio deputati sunt, electus fuerit." (Stat. Coll. Div. 

 Joh. Evan. Cant. cap. xii. 28 April, 12 Viet. 1849.) To this 



