turned to his convent in Cologne, where Norman kings; his brothers, Reginala he died in 1280, leaving behind him great and Landolph, held high rank in the fame for his learning and his labour. Imperial armies. His family was con Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VIII. 259, nected by marriage with the Hohensays of him: "Albert the Great at once staufens; they had Swabian blood in awed by his immense erudition and ap- their veins, and so the great schoolman palled his age. His name, the Universal was of the race of Frederick II. MonastiDoctor, was the homage to his all-em- cism seized on Thomas in his early youth; bracing knowledge. He quotes, as equally he became an inmate of Monte Casino; familiar, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Jewish at sixteen years of age he caught the philosophers. He was the first School- more fiery and vigorous enthusiasm of man who lectured on Aristotle himself, the Dominicans. By them he was sent on Aristotle from Græco-Latin or Arabo-no unwilling proselyte and pupil-to Latin copies. The whole range of the France. He was seized by his worldly Stagirite's physical and metaphysical brothers, and sent back to Naples; he philosophy was within the scope of Al- was imprisoned in one of the family bert's teaching. In later days he was castles, but resisted even the fond encalled the Ape of Aristotle; he had dared treaties of his mother and his sisters. He to introduce Aristotle into the Sanctuary persisted in his pious disobedience, his itself. One of his Treatises is a refuta- holy hardness of heart; he was released tion of the Arabian Averrhoes. Nor is after two years' imprisonment-it might it Aristotle and Averrhoes alone that seem strange-at the command of the come within the pale of Albert's erudi- Emperor Frederick II. The godless tion; the commentators and glossators Emperor, as he was called, gave Thomas of Aristotle, the whole circle of the Arab- to the Church. Aquinas took the irre ians, are quoted; their opinions, their vocable vow of a Friar Preacher. He reasonings, even their words, with the became a scholar of Albert the Great at utmost familiarity. But with Albert, Cologne and at Paris. He was dark, Theology was still the master-science. silent, unapproachable even by his bre The Bishop of Ratisbon was of unim-thren, perpetually wrapt in profound me. peached orthodoxy; the vulgar only, in his wonderful knowledge of the secrets of Nature, in his studies of Natural History, could not but see something of the magician. Albert had the ambition of reconciling Plato and Aristotle, and of reconciling this harmonized Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy with Christian Divinity. He thus, in some degree, misrepresented or misconceived both the Greeks; he hardened Plato into Aristotelism, expanded Aristotelism into Platonism; and his Christianity, though Albert was a devout man, while it constantly subordinates, in strong and fervent language, knowledge to faith and love, became less a religion than a philosophy.' 99. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Docor of the Schools. Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VIII. 265, gives the following sketch of him : "Of all the schoolmen Thomas Aquinas has left the greatest name. He was a son of the Count of Aquino, a rich fief in the kingdom of Naples. His mother, Theodora, was of the live of the old ditation. He was called, in mockery, the He re dom might be expected to bow down. He died ere he had passed the borders of Naples, at the Abbey of Rossa Nuova, near Terracina, at the age of forty-eight. Dark tales were told of his death; only the wickedness of man could deprive the world so early of such a wonder. The University of Paris claimed, but in vain, the treasure of his mortal remains. He was canonized by John XXII. "Thomas Aquinas is throughout, above all, the Theologian. God and the soul of man are the only objects truly worthy of his philosophic investigation. This is the function of the Angelic Doctor, the 'mission of the Angel of the Schools. In his works, or rather in his one great work, is the final result of all which has been decided by Pope or Council, taught by the Fathers, accepted by tradition, argued in the schools, inculcated in the confessional. The Sum of Theology is the authentic, authoritative, acknowledged code of Latin Christianity. We cannot but contrast this vast work with the original Gospel: to this bulk has grown the New Testament, or rather the doctrinal and moral part of the New Testament. But Aquinas is an intellectual theologian: he approaches more nearly than most philosophers, certainly than most divines, to pure embodied intellect. He is perfectly passionless; he has no polemic indignation, nothing of the Churchman's jealousy and suspicion; he has no fear of the result of any investigation; he hates nothing, hardly heresy; loves nothing, unless perhaps naked, abstract truth. In his serene confidence that all must end in good, he moves the most startling and even perilous questions, as if they were the most indifferent, the very Being of God. God must be revealed by syllogistic process. Himself inwardly conscious of the absolute harmony of his own intellectual and moral being, he places sin not so much in the will as in the understanding. The perfection of man is the perfection of his intelligence. He examines with the same perfect selfcommand, it might almost be said apathy, the converse as well as the proof of the most vital religious truths. He is nearly as consummate a sceptic, almost atheist, as he is a divine and theologian. Secure, as it should seem, in impenetrable armour, he has not only no apprehension, but seems not to suppose the possibility of danger; he has nothing of the boastfulness of self-confidence, but, in calm assurance of victory, gives every advantage to his adversary. On both sides of every question he casts the argument into one of his clear, distinct syllogisms, and calmly places himself as Arbiter, and passes judgment in one or a series of still more unanswerable syllogisms. He has assigned its unassailable province to Church authority, to tradition or the Fathers, faith and works; but beyond, within the proper sphere of philosophy, he asserts full freedom. There is no Father, even St. Augustine, who may not be examined by the fearless intellect." 104. Gratian was a Franciscan friar, and teacher in the school of the convent of St. Felix in Bologna. He wrote the Decretum Gratiani, or "Concord of the Discordant Canons," in which he brought into agreement the laws of the courts secular and ecclesiastical. 107. Peter Lombard, the "Master of Sentences," so called from his Libri Sententiarum. In the dedication of this work to the Church he says that he wishes "to contribute, like the poor widow, his mite to the treasury of the Lord." The following account of him and his doctrines is from Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VIII. 238: "Peter the Lombard was born near Novara, the native place of Lanfranc and of Anselm. He was Bishop of Paris in 1159. His famous Book of the Sentences was intended to be, and became to a great extent, the Manual of the Schools. Peter knew not, or disdainfully threw aside, the philosophical cultivation of his day. He adhered rigidly to all which passed for Scripture, and was the authorized interpretation of the Scripture, to all which had become the creed in the traditions, and law in the decretals, of the Church. He seems to have no apprehension of doubt in his stern dogmatism; he will not recognize any of the difficulties suggested by philosophy; he cannot, or will not, perceive the weak points of his own system. He Y has the great merit that, opposed as he was Dionysius the Areopagite." Peter Lombard was born at the beginning of the twelfth century, when the Novarese territory, his birthplace, was a part of Lombardy, and hence his name. He studied at the University of Paris, under Abelard; was afterwards made Professor of Theology in the University, and then Bishop of Paris. He died in 1164. 109. Solomon, whose Song of Songs breathes such impassioned love. III. To know if he were saved or not, a grave question having been raised upon that point by theologians. 115. Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted by St. Paul. Acts xvii. 34: Howbeit, certain men clave unto him, and clieved; among the which 66 A book attributed to him, on the "Ce- gite, both as to the angelic world and the subtile theology. John Erigena hastened to make known in the West the 'Celestial Hierarchy,' the treatise on the Name of God,' and the brief chapters on the 'Mystic Philosophy."" 119. Paul Orosius. He was a Spanish presbyter, born at Tarragona near the close of the fourth century. In his youth he visited St. Augustine in Africa, who in one of his books describes him thus: "There came to me a young monk, in the catholic peace our brother, in age our son, in honour our fellow-presbyter, Orosius, alert in intellect, ready of speech, eager in study, desiring to be a useful vessel in the house of the Lord for the refutation of false and pernicious doctrines, which have slain the souls of the Spaniards much more unhappily than the sword of the barbarians their bodies." On leaving St. Augustine, he went to Palestine to complete his studies under St. Jerome at Bethlehem, and while there arraigned Palagius for heresy before the Bishop of Jerusalem. The work by which he is chiefly known is his "Seven Books of Histories; " a world-chronicle from the creation to his own time. Of this work St. Augustine availed himself in writing his "City of God;" and it had also the honour of being translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred. Dante calls Orosius "the advocate of the Christian centuries," because this work was written to refute the misbelievers who asserted that Christianity had done more harm to the world than good. 66 125. Severinus Boethius, the Roman Senator and philosopher in the days of Theodoric the Goth, born in 475, and put to death in 524. His portrait is thus drawn by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Ch. XXXIX. : The.. Senator Boethius is the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman. As a wealthy orphan, he inherited the patrimony and honours of the Anician family, a name ambitiously assumed by the kings and emperors of the age; and the appellation of Manlius asserted his genuine or fabulous descent from a race of consuls and dictators, who had re pulsed the Gauls from the Capitol, and sacrificed their sons to the discipline of the Republic. In the youth of Boethius, the studies of Rome were not totally abandoned; a Virgil is now extant, corrected by the hand of a consul; and the professors of grammar, rhetoric, and jurisprudence were maintained in their privileges and pensions by the liberality of the Goths. But the erudition of the Latin language was insufficient to satiate his ardent curiosity; and Boethius is said so have employed eighteen laborious years in the schools of Athens, which were supported by the zeal, the learning, and the diligence of Proclus and his dis ciples. The reason and piety of their Roman pupil were fortunately saved from the contagion of mystery and magic, which polluted the groves of the Academy; but he imbibed the spirit, and imitated the method of his dead and living masters, who attempted to reconcile the strong and subtle sense of Aristotle with the devout contemplation and sublime fancy of Plato. After his return to Rome, and his marriage with the daughter of his friend, the patrician Symmachus, Boethius still continued in a palace of ivory and marble to prosecute the same studies. The Church was edified by his profound defence of the orthodox creed against the Arian, the Eutychian, and the Nestorian heresies; and the Catholic unity was explained or exposed in a formal treatise by the indifference of three distinct, though consubstantial persons. For the benefit of his Latin readers, his genius submitted to teach the first elements of the arts and sciences of Greece. The geometry of Euclid, the music of Pythagoras, the arithmetic of Nicomachus, the mechanics of Archimedes, the astronomy of Ptolemy, the theology of Plato, and the logic of Aristotle, with the commentary of Porphyry, were translated and illus trated by the indefatigable pen of the Roman Senator. And he alone was esteemed capable of describing the wonders of art, a sun-dial, a water-clock, or a sphere which represented the motions of the planets. From these abstruse speculations Boethius stooped, or, to speak more truly, he rose to the social duties of public and private life: the indigent were relieved by his liberality; and his eloquence, which flattery might compare to the voice of Demosthenes or Cicero, was uniformly exerted in the cause of innocence and humanity. Such conspicuous merit was felt and rewarded by a discerning prince; the dignity of Boethius was adorned with the titles of Consul and Patrician, and his talents were usefully employed in the important station of Master of the Offices." A more honourable tomb the bones of a Catholic saint, who, from his Arian persecutors, had acquired the honours of martyrdom, and the fame of miracles." 128. Boethius was buried in the church of San Pietro di Cieldauro in Pavia. work, the various riches of philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, must already have possessed the intrepid calmness which he affected to seek. Suspense, the worst of evils, was at length determined by the ministers of death, who executed, and perhaps exceeded, the inhuman mandate of Theodoric. strong cord was fastened round the head of Boethius, and forcibly tightened, till his eyes almost started from their Being suspected of some participation sockets; and some mercy may be disin a plot against Theodoric, he was covered in the milder torture of beating confined in the tower of Pavia, where he him with clubs till he expired. But his wrote the work which has immortalized genius survived to diffuse a ray of knowhis name. Of this Gibbon speaks as ledge over the darkest ages of the Latin follows: "While Boethius, oppressed world; the writings of the philosopher with fetters, expected each moment the were translated by the most glorious of sentence or the stroke of death, he com- the English kings, and the third Emposed in the tower of Pavia the Consola-peror of the name of Otho removed to a tion of Philosophy; a golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully, but which claims incomparable merit from the barbarism of the times and the situation of the author. The celestial guide whom he had so long. invoked at Rome and Athens now condescended to illumine his dungeon, to revive his courage, and to pour into his wounds her salutary balm. She taught him to compare his long prosperity and his recent distress, and to conceive new hopes from the inconstancy of fortune. Reason had informed him of the precarious condition of her gifts; experience had satisfied him of their real value; he had enjoyed them without guilt; he might resign them without a sigh, and calmly disdain the impotent malice of his enemies, who had left him happiness, since they had left him virtue. From the earth Boethius ascended to heaven in search of the SUPREME GOOD; explored the metaphysical labyrinth of chance and destiny, of prescience and free-will, of time and eternity; and generously attempted to reconcile the perfect attributes of the Deity with the apparent disorders of his moral and physical government. Such topics of consolation, so obvious, so vague, or so abstruse, are ineffectual to subdue the feelings of human nature. Yet the sense of misfortune may be diverted by the labour of thought; and the sage who could artfully combine, in the same 131. St. Isidore, a learned prelate of Spain, was born in Cartagena, date unknown. In 600 he became Bishop of Seville, and died 636. He was indefatigable in converting the Visigoths from Arianism, wrote many theological and scientific works, and finished the Mosarabic missal and breviary, begun by his brother and predecessor, St. Leander. "The Venerable Bede," or Beda, an Anglo-Saxon monk, was born at Wearmouth in 672, and in 735 died and was buried in the monastery of Yarrow, where he had been educated and had passed his life. His bones were afterward removed to the Cathedral of Durham, and placed in the same coffin with those of St. Cuthbert. He was the author of more than forty volumes; among which his Ecclesiastical History of England is the most known and valued, and, like the Histories of Orosius, had the honour of being translated by King Alfred from the Latin into Anglo-Saxon. On his death-bed he dictated the close of his translation of the Gospel of John. "Dearest master,' said his scribe, |