The premium on the study of jurisprudence was so enormous that there
were schools of law in every part of the Empire, even in the very
domain of Metaphysics. But, though the transfer of the seat of empire
to Byzantium gave a perceptible impetus to its cultivation in the
East, jurisprudence never dethroned the pursuits which there competed
with it. Its language was Latin, an exotic dialect in the Eastern half
of the Empire. It is only of the West that we can lay down that law
was not only the mental food of the ambitious and aspiring, but the
sole aliment of all intellectual activity. Greek philosophy had never
been more than a transient fashionable taste with the educated class
of Rome itself, and when the new Eastern capital had been created, and
the Empire subsequently divided into two, the divorce of the Western
provinces from Greek speculation, and their exclusive devotion to
jurisprudence, became more decided than ever. As soon then as they
ceased to sit at the feet of the Greeks and began to ponder out a
theology of their own, the theology proved to be permeated with
forensic ideas and couched in a forensic phraseology. It is certain
that this substratum of law in Western theology lies exceedingly deep.
A new set of Greek theories, the Aristotelian philosophy, made
their way afterwards into the West and almost entirely buried its
indigenous doctrines. But when at the Reformation it partially shook
itself free from their influence, it instantly supplied their place
with Law. It is difficult to say whether the religious system of
Calvin or the religious system of the Arminians has the more markedly
legal character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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