The Catholic World, Vol. 16, October 1872-March 1873Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 16, October 1872-March 1873
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Spain, and Flanders likewise had their own
centres, more local, however, than those of Italy, all of them under the
new form of universities, and all more or less emancipated from the
strictly monastic spirit of the older centres of learning. Vienna, Erfurt,
Heidelberg, and Wittenberg were the foremost in Germany; Cracow was
founded by a saint, the holy Hedwige of Poland; and Prague, which gave so
much trouble and anxiety to the church in former times and hardly less in
our own day, owes much of its glory to the holy women of the middle ages.
Thus Dombrowka, a princess of Bohemia, married to a Polish chief, and
Hedwige, the great queen and patron saint of Poland, established colleges
there and endowed them liberally. Salamanca had a wider reputation, and
fell heir to all the brilliant learning of the Arabian and Jewish schools,
whose influence on Christian thought in the days of S. Thomas of Aquin had
been so dangerous. All the scientific knowledge of the East thus became
its natural property, while the intensely Catholic mind of the Spaniards
held them aloof from what was poisonous in Eastern philosophy. And here
let us stop to remark that Spain, ranked as it has always been among the
Latin nations, nevertheless owes its first Christian traditions, and, no
doubt, also its imperial notions of universal sway, to the vigorous Gothic
races, mingled with the Frankish and Burgundian blood brought in by
intermarriage with the Merovingian princes of France. There is something
in Spanish history, in Spanish perseverance, we might almost say in
Spanish toughness, that reveals the Visigoth, the man of the northern
forests, with his indomitable energy and insatiable thirst for the sole
rule of land and sea. Alcala, the creation of Cardinal Ximenes, and
Coimbra, besides twenty‐four colleges dignified by the name of
universities, make up the quota contributed by Spain to the intellectual
progress of Europe. We wish we had more space and time to devote to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account