Great Britain -- History -- Henry II, 1154-1189; Henry II, King of England, 1133-1189
forms of ancient Rome, and the clergy were to be separated from all
secular jurisdiction. In Lombardy the growth of wealth, population, and
trade, demanded a more developed jurisprudence, and a new study had
sprung up of Roman law. Bolognese lawyers lectured on the Pandects of
Justinian, and by their work the whole legal education of the day was
transformed; old prejudices and old traditions lost the authority which
had long hedged them about, and the new code threatened to destroy
everywhere the imperfect systems of the past with which it came in
contact. The revival of the study of civil law was followed by a new
scientific study of Canon law; and a recognized code was for the
first time developed, as well as a minute system of legal procedure,
when Gratian published in 1151 the _Decretum_, a great text-book of
ecclesiastical law.
Amid all the intellectual activity which surrounded the English students
abroad it is, curious to note what they carried home with them across the
Channel, and what they left simply untouched. The zeal for learning
quickly showed itself in the growth of the Universities. As early as 1133
Robert Pulleyn was teaching Latin at Oxford. In 1149 Archbishop Theobald
brought to it Master Vacarius, a famous Lombard lawyer, who lectured on
the Civil law until he was expelled by Stephen, half fearful of the new
teaching and half influenced by the pressure of the older and more
conservative of the English bishops. There was much of the foreign
movement, however, which found no place in England. Difference of tongue
shut out Norman and Englishman from the influence of the new Provençal
poetry, and for a century to come England owed nothing to the finished
art of the South. The strip of sea which kept aloof all European tumults
shut out also the speculations in politics and government which were
making their way abroad. Even the religious movement which overran one
half of France under the Albigenses, or that which counted its followers
and martyrs by multitudes in Flanders never crossed the Channel, in spite
of the constant intercourse between the peoples; and missionaries from
Germany during the reign of Henry only succeeded in converting one poor
woman in England who immediately recanted. It was in other directions
that the energies of the people found their exercise. If Englishmen were
heedless of foreign philosophers, they were quick to notice that the
fruit of the vine had failed, and forthwith the unheard-of novelty of
taverns where beer and mead were sold sprang up in France, probably by
the help of those English traders whose beer was the marvel of Frenchmen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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