458 MERTON COLLEGE AND CANADA. 



the day. The town came into collision with the gown ; "Welshmen^ 

 Scotchmen, North-of-England men, with their fellow'-islanders, whose 

 homes happened to be south of the Trent. Rival instructors also gene- 

 rated rival factions among the youth; and not alone on points of ordi- 

 nary secular learning. Differences of view in regard to religious ques- 

 tions and matters of conventual discipline aggravated the discord. 

 Each great monastery of the British Islands had a class of its foster- 

 children studying at the place, and these partook of the prejudices of 

 the houses which sustained them. Devotees of the different orders 

 of friars were thus arrayed one against the other : Benedictines 

 against Augustinians ; Cistercians against Carmelites ; Dominicans 

 against Franciscans. The University, in fact, was dominated in 1264 

 by the monastic orders. 



The subjects of study were nominally good and comprehensive : 

 the seven liberal arts, as they were called : the Trivium, i. e., 

 the study of classical literature, rhetoric and dialectics ; the 

 Quadrivium, i. e., arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music : but 

 almost every one of these was pursued to an extent that we should 

 now consider only elementary, and in a spirit which we shovxld 

 call excessively pedantic and narrow. The logic of Aristotle, received 

 in an abridged, condensed form, not directly from the original Greek, 

 but through a meaojre translation in Latin from the Arabic, was 

 applied crudely to all the stock topics of discussion, theology included. 

 And this was held to be the highest exercise of the human mind. 

 Doubtless the gifts of intellect were distributed then as now liberally 

 throughout communities; and, failing really rational and frviitful 

 subjects of speculation, matters the most irrational and useless — 

 albeit extremely ingenious and subtle — exercised the wits of clever 

 men. Consequently, the literary remains of the period referred to,, 

 impress moderns most unpleasantly. Two dialogues of the celebrated 

 Abelard, named above, the all-accomplished Master as he was styled 

 in his day, — one between a Christian and a Jew, the other between a 

 Christian and a Philosopher, — may be taken as specimens. And thus 

 speaks one who has looked into them : " Words are wanting," h& 

 says, " to express the utter insipidity and absence of all taste, energy 

 or life which these spiritless compositions display: nor can we," he 

 adds, " concede to them the praise of being written in Latin which 

 will bear the test of strict examination." [English Cyclop., art^ 

 Abelard.) 



