93 



of the brilliant fourth Lateran Council ; and in the 

 sixteenth the thunders of Trent. Padua adopted 

 Averroisni, in the fourteenth century, because of its 

 medical contents ; in the two following centuries this 

 system was emptied of heart and life, but pattered 

 and mumbled by pretentious pedants in North-east 

 Italy it prevailed till the seventeenth, when after a 

 reign of three centuries it was succeeded by the 

 Cartesian. Of its phases in the sixteenth century 

 Patrizzi said, "Ingens abhis philosophorum numerus 

 ac successio manavit quse in Aven Rois hypothesi- 



bus habitavit Inde dubitationum ac qua3stioimm 



sexcentorum milium numerus manavit" (Disc. 

 Peripat Vol. i. Venet. 1571 ; quoted by Renan, 

 Averroes). The name of Averroes, "perfectus et 

 gloriosissimus physicus, veritatis amicus et defensor 

 intrepidus," became the shibboleth of philosophers 

 who held the different nature of the heavenly 

 bodies against the "moderns" who alleged the 

 identity of matter in sky and earth, and the doc- 

 trine of the universal against the individual soul. 



Yet, in spite of Petrarch's gibes, Averroism in its 

 spring had nursed Padua with the milk of natural 

 science. Even in its decay for all teaching of 

 philosophy, as a separate study, must decay the 



