whence we shall gain our most accurate idea of the extent and character of the learning which he was now to convey to the monasteries and schools of Frankland. The imposing enumeration at once calls our attention to the fact that the library at York, at this period, far surpassed any possessed by either England or France in the twelfth century, whether that of Christ Church, Canterbury, of St. Victor at Paris, or of Bec in Normandy. The invasions of the Northmen in the ninth and tenth centuries fell, in both countries, with peculiar severity on the monasteries; and the result was that neither Alfred the Great, St. Dunstan, nor John of Salisbury had access to libraries like those known to Bede and Alcuin. CHAP. I. authors Allowing for the poetic vein of Alcuin's description, and The not unreasonably surmising (although he assures us the list studied by might have been greatly extended) that an enumeration which Alcuin. includes the names of Phocas (the author of a sorry life of Virgil), of Euticius, and Comminianus, can hardly have passed by much of note or value, it is still probable that the library was the best that England then possessed. With two exceptions, to one of which we shall have Boethius, b. 470; hereafter to allude at length,' all the text-books of the period d. 524. are there. Of these Boethius must certainly be regarded as the most important, from the fact that in his pages are preserved that slight modicum of school learning which found Quid quoque Sedulius, vel quid canit ipse Juvencus, Nomina sed quorum praesenti in carmine scribi Migne, ci 843-4. 1 The other author is Isidorus, omitted probably on account of the metrical difficulty, for we have evidence that his writings were well known to Alcuin. CHAP. I. his trans lations of known to Alcuin. its way into the education of the time. His adaptation of the Arithmetic of Nicomachus; his treatise on music; his translation, with some trifling additions, of the first four books of Euclid; and his version of portions of Aristotle's Organon, must be looked upon as forming the basis of the highest education then known. Unfortunately his writings shared in the fate that overtook so many of the chief lights Portions of of Latin literature. Of his translation of the Organon the more important part, including the Prior and Posterior Aristotle Analytics, the Topica and the Sophistici Elenchi, seems to have been lost to learning soon after his death, and was not recovered until the twelfth century. The Categories themselves disappeared from sight for some centuries, their place being supplied by a meagre Latin abridgement, falsely attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo. The De Interpretatione accordingly alone remained, and this, together with a translation of the Isagoge of Porphyry by Boethius, and some of Boethius' own logical treatises, must be considered to have made up the sum of the Aristotelian logic known to the age of Alcuin. How entirely ignorant that age was of Aristotle's ethical, metaphysical, and scientific treatises it is unnecessary here to explain; but the foregoing comments will suffice to shew that when Alcuin affirms of the library at York that it contained Quae scripsere Boetius ipse his statement must be accepted with very important limita- 1 For the evidence at greater length see my History of the University of Cambridge, pp. 27-29; it will be sufficient here to quote the summary of this important question given by Prantl: 'Kurz also—um die Abgränzung so entschieden und deutlich als möglich zu wiederholen-es besteht für diesen ersten Abschnitt des Mittelalters das traditionelle Material der Logik ausschliesslich aus Folgendem: Mart. Capella, Augustin, Pseudo-Augustin, Cassiodorus, Boethius ad Porphyrium a Vict. transl., ad Porph. a se transl., ad Arist. Categ.; ad Arist. De Interpretatione (ed. 1 and 2), ad Ciceronis Topica, Introd. ad Cat. Syll., D. Syll. Cat., D. Syll. Hyp., De Div., D. Defin., D. Diff. Top. Hingegen fehlt die Kenntniss der beiden Analytiken, der Topik, und der Sophistici Elenchi des Aristotles.' Prantl, ii 4. See also some observations by M. Hauréau, i 94; also Recherches Critiques sur l'Age et l'Origine des Traductions Latines d'Aristote, par M. A. Jourdain. 1843. CHAP. dorus, The De Artibus et Disciplinis liberabilium litterarum of Cassiodorus, whom Alcuin also names, must appear, when compared with Boethius, a singularly meagre production. CassioThe four subjects of the quadrivium-arithmetic, geometry, 6.468; music, and astronomy—are each dismissed in two pages; those d. 568. of the trivium are somewhat more fully explained, but not a spark of originality relieves the treatise. Prantl animadverts upon the confusion, shewn in the discussion of the Tóro, of those which belong to rhetoric and those proper to dialectic.1 Nevertheless it is to this writer that, up to the thirteenth century, students in the Middle Ages were indebted for their knowledge of the Topics; for in Martianus Capella nothing is to be found on this division of logic, and Isidorus, who gives the dialectical Tóπo, appears to have been indebted for them to the undiscerning industry of his predecessor.2 With this latter writer we have ample evidence that Alcuin was well acquainted, though a metrical difficulty appears to have excluded the name from his enumeration of authors. Isidorus was a Spanish bishop of the seventh century; and his treatise, entitled Originum seu Etymologiarum libri xx, was perhaps the most popular of all compendiums of school knowledge at this time. His attainments obtained for him in his own day the reputation of being the most learned man of his age. Alcuin himself styles him lumen Hispaniae, and cites him as an authority among the doctors of the Church; but we can have no more convincing proof of the darkness that reigned in the kingdom of the Visigoths, notwithstanding the immunity that Spain then enjoyed from political commotion, than the fact that the Origines of Isidorus represents its maximum of light. The work is a kind of encyclopaedia, in 20 books, of such information as still survived in connexion with every subject, whether literature, science, or religion. In astronomy his attainments enabled him to state that the sun 1 I give this statement on the authority of Prantl; otherwise it is well known that Aristotle himself considered his Rhetoric to be closely connected with the Topics (Rhet. II, last chapter). Blakesley, Life of Aristotle, p. 144. Cassiodorus appears to have confounded the distinctive elements of the two subjects. 2 Prantl, i 724. Isidorus, b. 570; . 636. CHAP. I. Martianus (fl. c. 424) unmen tioned. was bigger than either the moon or the earth; but he appears to have known but little more, and the illustration may serve to shew the extreme vagueness of his scientific knowledge. In logic he would seem to have derived his information almost entirely from Cassiodorus, much as Cassiodorus had derived his from Boethius. There was yet another text-book which, notwithstanding the completeness of the library at York, does not occur in Alcuin's enumeration; nor can we regard the omission as accidental, for the book was one which there is good reason for supposing he would never have placed in the hands of his pupils. Among the most popular writers of the fifth century was Martianus Capella,' a native of Carthage, and a teacher of rhetoric in the schools of that city at a time when their reputation was at its highest. Martianus was fully acquainted with the Christian tenets, but, unlike his fellow professors, Arnobius and Orosius, he appears to have inclined to an eclecticism borrowed from the yet more famous schools of Alexandria, of that kind with which the names of Philo Judaeus, Clemens, and Origen are associated-the Platonic philosophy in attempted harmony with Christian doctrine. It was not to his philosophic teaching, however, that allegorical Martianus was indebted for his wide-spread and enduring popularity. His lively African fancy had suggested to him the idea of embodying the course of the trivium and quadrivium in an allegorical dress; he is, in fact, a rival claimant with Augustine for the honour of having first invented that time-honoured division of the sciences. The first two books of Martianus are, accordingly, entirely occupied with a fantastic story of the marriage of Mercury and Philologia, or, in more modern phrase, of science and eloquence. Jupiter, warned by the oracles, convenes a meeting of the gods, and demands the rights of naturalisation for one hitherto but a mortal virgin. Mercury then assigns to his His treatment of his subject. 1 'Martiani Minaei Felicis Capellae Carthaginiensis Viri Proconsularis Satyricon, in quo de Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii libri duo, et de Septem Artibus liberalibus libri singulares,' ed. Eyssenhardt, Lipsiae, 1866; ed. Kopp and Hermann, Frankfort, 1836. CHAP. I. bride seven virgins as her attendants, each of whom is in turn introduced at the marriage banquet, and descants on that particular branch of knowledge denoted by her name. The humour with which the allegory is relieved is broad, and occasionally coarse; but it hit the fancy of the age. In fact, although we may question the right of Martianus to be regarded as the inventor of the trivium and quadrivium, there is every probability that it was mainly owing to his fanciful conception that they were so faithfully preserved in the traditions of mediaeval education, while the idea is Influence supposed to have suggested the allegory contained in a his far better known treatise, the De Consolatione of Boethius. example. Wherever pious scruples did not prevent, the work became the favourite text-book of the schools; Gregory of Tours frankly admits, that whatever of the arts or sciences was to be known in his day was to be found in Martianus Capella ;1 it was translated into German so early as the eleventh century; it is often cited even by so late and discerning a writer as John of Salisbury. 2 attributed to racter of tise. Neither the allegory nor the science contained in the Speculapages of the De Nuptiis would have led to the suppression of tive cha the volume on the part of the teachers at York; but the treaMartianus also ventured to employ his fancy within the domain of religious belief. Of the two Platonic dialogues known to mediaeval scholars, the Timaeus, as preserved in the translation of Chalcidius, offered powerful temptation to the speculative mind; but the divine of the eighth century could tolerate no scientific theorisation that contravened that of the inspired volume, and the cosmogony of the Timaeus could not be reconciled with that of the Mosaic 'Quod si te, sacerdos Dei, quicumque es, Martianus noster septem disciplinis erudiit, id est, si te in grammaticis docuit legere, in dialecticis altercationum propositiones advertere, in rhetoricis genera metrorum agnoscere, in geometricis terrarum linearumque mensuras colligere, in astrologicis cursus siderum contemplari, in arithmeticis numerorum partes colligere, in harmoniis sonorum modulationes suavium accentuum carminibus concrepare.' Greg. Turon. x 31. 2 Wackernagel (Altdeutsches Lesebuch, p. 150) gives considerable fragments of this version. 3 The other was the Phaedo. F |