89 



teaching as opposed to the platonism of Florence, 

 where, however, a spirit of accurate learning was 

 nurtured in the deciphering and verification of 

 texts. The political and commercial ambition of 

 Venice, the Holland of Italy, of which State Padua 

 was the learned quarter, and the inflow of liberal 

 thinkers from other nations, kept her aloof from 

 the fury of the Catholic reaction of the sixteenth 

 century, which ruined Paris; thus in North-east 

 Italy the spirit of modern science awoke sooner 

 than in England or in France, and inquisitive 

 students, both home and foreign, were attracted 

 rather to Padua and to Bologna than, as in earlier 

 times, to Paris. 



In so far as Scholasticism may be described as 

 a temporary reconciliation of Aristotle that is, of 

 natural and secular methods with the Faith, this 

 end had been attained, if at all, by St Thomas ; in 

 St Thomas Scholasticism culminated. But no such 

 artificial truce could abide ; and the issue of the 

 chief scholastic controversy was to be determined by 

 one greater than St Thomas. The pilgrim to Ockham, 

 sitting in its church beneath the seven lancets of 

 its twelfth century window, may be solitary also in 

 his memory of one of the greatest of Englishmen, 



