Neither was the spirit urban. To be sure, much of the energy of French
thought awoke and did its work in towns; and Paris was to become the
intellectual centre. But the stress of French life was not so surely in
the towns, nor men’s minds so characteristically urban as in Italy, and by
no means so predominantly humanistic. Even in the eleventh century the
lofty range of French thought, of French intellectual interests, is
apparent; for it embraces the problems of philosophy and theology, and
does not find its boundary and limit in phenomenal or mortal life. Gerbert
is almost too universal an intellect to offer as a fair example. Yet all
that he cared for is more than represented by other men taken together;
for Gerbert did not fully represent the interests of religious thought in
France. His was the humanism and the thirst for all the round of knowledge
included in the Seven Arts. But he scarcely reached out beyond logic to
philosophy; and theology seems not to have troubled him. Both philosophy
and theology, however, made part of the intellectual interests of France;
for there was Berengar and Roscellinus, Gaunilo and St. Anselm, and the
wrangling of many disputatious, although overwhelmingly orthodox, councils
of French Churchmen. Paris also, with its great schools of theology and
philosophy, looms on the horizon. The intellectual matter is but inchoate,
yet universally germinating, in the eleventh century.
Thus intellectual qualities of mediaeval France appear inceptively. The
French mediaeval temperament needs perhaps another century for its clear
development. Both as to temperament and intellectual interests, a line
will have to be drawn between the south and north; between the land of the
_langue d’oc_, the Roman law, the troubadour, and the easy, irreligious,
gay society which jumped the life to come; and the land of the various old
French dialects (among which that of the Isle de France will win to
dominance), the land of philosophy and theology, the land of Gothic
architecture and religion, the hearth of the crusades against the Saracen
or the Albigensian heretic; the land of the most distinctive mediaeval
thought and strongest intellectual development.
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