THE MEDIAEVAL MIND 85 



scholars who cared for the classics as a bypath of 

 study, or as a means of understanding better the 

 language of Scripture and the writings of the Fathers. 

 The predominant theological attitude was still Platonic 

 and Augustinian, idealistic and mystical rather than 

 rationalistically philosophical. 



But in the thirteenth century a great change of 

 outlook took place, coincident with and inseparable 

 from the humanizing movement, associated with the 

 coming and establishment of the Friars. Between 

 12 10 and 1225 the complete works of Aristotle were 

 recovered and rendered into Latin, first from im- 

 perfect Arab versions, and then by direct translations 

 from the Greek. In this latter work one of the fore- 

 most scholars was Robert Grosseteste, patron of 

 the new uncloistered mendicant orders, the great 

 Chancellor of Oxford, and Bishop of Lincoln, who 

 invited Greeks to England and imported Greek books, 

 while his pupil, Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar, 

 wrote a grammar of the Greek language. Their 

 aim was not literary but philosophic to unlock 

 the original tongue of Scripture and of Aristotle. 

 Their ultimate though distant achievement was to 

 set free the Western mind from the dialectic 

 subleties of the schoolmen and the Fathers of the 

 Church. 



Aristotle opened a new world of thought to the 

 mediaeval mind. His attitude at once more rational 

 and more scientific was quite different from the 

 Neo-Platonism which hitherto had chiefly represented 

 ancient philosophy. His range of knowledge both 

 in philosophy and in the science of nature was far 

 greater than anything then available. It was a heavy 



