Oxford (England) -- History; University of Oxford -- History
Mr Waterhouse is responsible for the present front of the College, the
east side of the first quadrangle, the north side of the Garden
Quadrangle and the new Hall therein (1867-1877).
Not content with fighting the University, the Oxford Friars soon began
to fight each other. Rivalries sprang up between the Orders; enormous
scandals of discord, as Matthew Paris phrases it. Jealousy found its
natural vent in politics as in the schools. Politically, the Oxford
Franciscans supported Simon de Montfort; the Dominicans sided with the
King. The Mad Parliament met in the Convent of the Black Friars. In
philosophy the Franciscans attacked the doctrine of the Dominican, S.
Thomas Aquinas, who had made an elaborate attempt to show that natural
and revealed truth were complementary the one of the other. In order to
establish this thesis and to reconcile human philosophy and the
Christian faith, the Angelic Doctor, for so he was commonly termed, had
written an encyclopædia of philosophy and theology, in which he advanced
arguments on both sides of every question and decided judicially on each
in strict accordance with the tenets of the Church.
The light of this "sparkling jewel of the clergy, this very clear mirror
of the University of Paris, this noble and illuminating candlestick,"
was somewhat dimmed, however, when the great Franciscan hero, the
"subtle doctor," Duns Scotus, took up the argument, and clearly proved
that the reasoning of this champion of orthodoxy was itself unorthodox.
The world of letters was divided for generations into the rival camps of
Scotists and Thomists. But the two doctors have fared very differently
at the hands of posterity. Thomas was made a Saint, judged to be a
"candlestick," and awarded by Dante a place high in the realms of
Paradise. Duns Scotus, on the other hand, whose learning and industry
were as great and his merit probably not much inferior, survives chiefly
in the English language as a "dunce." The name of the great Oxford
scholar stands to the world chiefly as a synonym for a fool and a
blockhead. For when the Humanists, and afterwards the Reformers,
attacked his system as a farrago of needless entities and useless
distinctions, the Duns men, or Dunses, on their side railed against the
new learning. The name of Dunce, therefore, already synonymous with
cavilling sophist or hair-splitter, soon passed into the sense of dull,
obstinate person, impervious to the new learning, and of blockhead,
incapable of learning or scholarship. Such is the justice of history.
Duns Scotus had carried the day and the Church rallied to the side of
the Franciscans. But such a successful attack involved the Orders in
extreme bitterness. The Dominicans retorted that these Franciscans, who
claimed and received such credit throughout Europe for humility and
Christlike poverty, were really accumulating wealth by alms or bequests.
The charge was true enough.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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