79 



(1250 1320), which laid the foundations of medi- 

 cine at Padua, and inspired the frescoes of the 

 Salla della Ragione, was occult and mystical. 



hour in England the clergy command the public schools. In 

 a warlike society learning and contemplation must fall to the 

 clergy ; without the fortresses of war or learning, if there was 

 any safety, there was not dignity or peace. The mendicant 

 orders were young institutions, ascendant, and in favour with 

 the great. Of their usurpations in the universities 1 have 

 spoken. Within them even Popes could not meddle, as Bacon 

 found to his sorrow. Hales and Ockham also became Minors, 

 as Albert and St Thomas, both of illustrious descent, became 

 Preachers. Moreover the Franciscans had devoted themselves 

 to the care of the sick, and especially of those smitten with the 

 new pestilences such as leprosy, syphilis, and plague which 

 Oriental dirt and asceticism had engendered or inflamed; and 

 thus a bent to observation of natural phenomena may have 

 been encouraged (see art. Roger Bacon, Westminster Rev. loc. 

 cit). To say that to the monks we owe the conservation of 

 learning is not so true as to say that learned men betook 

 themselves to the religious houses in order to find relief from 

 turmoil, to secure the subsistence of life without its cares, to 

 get access to books, and to profit by the counsel of comrades 

 who had enjoyed not only the culture of their own house, but 

 also the interchange of ideas and manuscripts with all the 

 learned houses in Europe. When these advantages were to be 

 had in the world, learning deserted the monasteries. Again, 

 Bacon was not an unbeliever, nor anything like it; in the Opus 

 Majus he declares the Holy Scriptures to be the source of 

 all truth ; not only, like Socrates before him au<jl Kant after 

 him, did he fix his eyes on moral perfection as the end, but 

 also on the Church as the means : on the other hand the resent- 

 ments of passionate genius under harsh duress did not make 

 a naturally rebellious temper more tractable. " Fames et mora 

 bilem conciunt." It is evident that within the Franciscan 



