81 



"the Albert of the Orient" as St Thomas to 

 Averroes ; pagan sages technically damnable yet 

 "mighty spirits," worthy of reverence. Dante put 

 in Hell, but on green meadows in an open place, 

 lofty and luminous, esteeming himself exalted by 

 the sight of them, not only Aristotle, Plato and 

 Socrates, but also 



"Euclide geometra, e Tolommeo, 

 Ippocrate, Avicenna, e Galieno, 

 Averrois, che il gran comento feo." 



Inf. iv. 142. 



Universities were founded in France, England, and 

 Italy. Frederick the Second protected the Arabs, 

 and even aped them ; Ghibeline indeed almost 

 signified freethinker. From the Roman de Renard, 

 from the candid Joinville, from Boccaccio, we may 

 infer that the very foundations of the Faith were 

 sapped ; and therewith, for good or ill, both moral 

 and political bonds were loosened. But the natural 

 fecience which made the second renascence irre- 

 sistible was absent in the first : the consolida- 

 tion of the European peoples was not compact 

 enough for a rehandling of the conceptions of 

 religion and morals, too incomplete even for 

 the latitude of opinion which, in nations as in 

 individuals, is apt to slacken swift and consentient 

 A. 6 



