At any rate, it may be accepted as beyond discussion that to the great mediaeval thinkers—to Peter Lombard, to Abelard, to St. Bernard, to St. Bonaventura and Albertus Magnus, to Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus; above all, perhaps, to St. Thomas Aquinas and to Dante, all knowledge is ultimately religious knowledge: just because God is conceived and realised as being the beginning and end and groundwork of all things. This truth underlies the beautiful language of the first canto of _Paradiso_— La gloria di colui che tutto move Per l’ universo penetra e risplende In una parte più e meno altrove. and again— ... Le cose tutte quante Hanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma Che ’l universo a Dio fa simigliante.[164] It also underlies the description of the damned as those who have lost “the Good of the intellect.”[165] Noi siam venuti al luogo ove io t’ ho detto Che tu vedrai le genti dolorose Ch’ hanno perduto il ben de l’ intelletto. This tendency to subsume all knowledge under religious knowledge is indeed one of the most important ways in which Dante is representative of his time. To that we shall revert later on. Now let us turn to consider for a moment some of the elements and sources of mediaeval knowledge as Dante knew and mastered it. Holy Scripture, the Patristic writings, ancient classical lore, the Graeco-Arabian philosophy and science of which the groundwork was Aristotle—these are the main antecedents of the mediaeval system of knowledge, and they are blended together in characteristic ways, and dissolved, as it were, in a fluid composed of romantic chivalry and other elements of preponderatingly Teutonic and Celtic origin. (1) The groundwork of all is, of course, Holy Scripture: known and studied exclusively in the Latin Vulgate text, a rather degenerate and corrupt representative of the (in its way) masterly and excellent translation from the Hebrew and Greek made by St. Jerome in the fifth century. The Bible, as we know quite well to-day,—even those of us who are more than ever convinced of its inspiration—is not a manual of natural science or philosophy, nor even an absolutely infallible guide in matters of history and chronology. Its scientific standpoint is that of the age in which each part was composed, however eternal be the significance and application of its fundamental religious principles. To the mediaeval mind, however, Scripture was a universal text-book of science. So that countless questions were regarded as foreclosed because the Bible appeared to have pronounced upon them. The scientific mind of the Middle Ages felt itself committed at a hundred points to the rather crude conceptions of the ancient Hebrews, and to a literal interpretation, very often, of figurative and highly poetical expressions.