The Catholic World
Chapter 101 : On regaining the library, I dozed away the remainder of the dark hours in the same com

On regaining the library, I dozed away the remainder of the dark hours in the same commodious arm-chair, and as soon as the bell began to toll for the seven o'clock prayers, I pa.s.sed unnoticed out of the building and regained my lodgings.

"Been keeping a coast-guard night, sir?" said Mrs. Jollisole, as she set the breakfast things in order.

"Why, yes, Mrs. Jollisole," I answered; "I did enjoy some rather extensive prospects last night."

And that was all that pa.s.sed. I had fixed it in my own mind that I would keep my own counsel strictly until I should have called at the palace, and communicated the whole of the circ.u.mstances in confidence to the bishop, with whom I was slightly acquainted.

This plan I carried into effect in the course of the morning. His lords.h.i.+p was at home, and listened with his customary kindness and courtesy to the whole of my romantic recital. Just as I was finis.h.i.+ng, his study door opened, and a young lady entered, dressed in black, tall, and strikingly beautiful, though looking pale and f.a.gged.

Glancing at me she gave a slight start, and taking a book from one of the shelves, instantly left the room, after a few muttered words of apology for disturbing the bishop. It was my companion of the library and the tower.

"I see," said his lords.h.i.+p, "that you have recognized the ghost. That young lady is an orphan niece of mine, and has been brought up in my house from her infancy. Never strong, she has reduced what vigor she possesses by her ardent love of books, and her intellectual interest is awake to all kinds of subjects. She is equally unwearied in visiting amongst the poor, and often returns home from her rounds in a state of exhaustion from which it is difficult to rouse her. About a twelvemonth ago we first noticed the appearance of a tendency to somnambulism. She was removed for several weeks to the sea-side, and we began to hope that a permanent improvement had set in. A severe loss, however, which she has lately sustained, has, I fear, done her great injury, and here is proof of the old malady returning. We are indebted to you, sir," added the kind old man, "for your judicious and thoughtful way of proceeding under the circ.u.mstances of last night, and for at once putting me in possession of the details, which will enable me to take the necessary precautions."

Before leaving the bishop's company, I begged him to go with me into the cathedral, and to be present while a carpenter removed the woodwork of the library window in order to recover the key. This he consented at once to do, and we crossed the gardens by the very route which "the ghost" and I had traversed during the night. On removing the panelling, we found that the depth of the c.h.i.n.k was comparatively trifling, and the key was soon seen s.h.i.+ning among the dust.

I was further gratified by another discovery, which, together with the extreme pleasure that it gave the bishop, quite indemnified me for my night's imprisonment. We noticed, partially concealed by rubbish in a niche of the wall below the panelling, the corner of a vellum covering. On further examination, this proved to be a MS. copy of St.

Matthew's Gospel, not indeed of the most ancient date, but adorned with very rare and curious illumination, and making an excellent addition to the stores of the library. After a _tete-a-tete_ dinner that evening with the friendly bishop, we spent a pleasant hour or two in a thorough inspection of the newly-found treasure.

It was little more than a month afterward that I heard the great bell in the western tower toll the tidings {685} of a death. One week more, and a sorrowing procession of school-children and women of the alms-houses filed from the transept into the quiet cloister-ground, there to bury the last remains of one who would seem to have been to them in life a loving and much-loved friend. It was so. The eager brain and the yearning heart, worn out with unequal labors, were laid to rest for ever. The bishop's frail nursling was dead.

From The Month.

CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

The errors of the present day are generally the consequences of some false principle admitted long ago, and many may be traced clearly to the calamities of the sixteenth century. One of these is, that the mediaeval learning preserved (as was declared at the Council of Trent) chiefly among the monks was in its nature useless and trifling, fitted only to amuse ignorant and narrow-minded men in the darkness of the middle ages, and consisted in certain metaphysical speculations and logical quibbles, called scholastic teaching. Several French writers have done much to disabuse men of this prejudice, by making known the amount of knowledge and science attained by mediaeval scholars, whose works are despised because they are too scarce to be read, and perhaps too deep to be understood in a less studious age. One of these champions of he truth is Ozanam, who has traced with a master-hand the preservation of all that was valuable in antiquity, through the downfall of the empire; and he has rendered a subject which otherwise it would have been presumption to approach a plain matter of history, which the reader has only to receive, like other facts; so that we see how, under the safeguard of the Church, the same powers which were formerly used in vain by the philosophers for the discovery of truth, were successfully used for the attainment its deeper mysteries. But all that is human is marked by imperfection; and the very instinct which led philosophers to "feel after" their Creator, and seek that supreme good for which we were created, was misled by errors which all ultimately ended in infidelity. It is not necessary to dwell on these.

A few words will remind the cla.s.sical scholar that the Ionian school, which sought truth by experiment, through the perception of the senses, leads to fatalism and pantheism; while Pythagoras, who sought by reason and the sciences him who is above and beyond their sphere, left the disappointed reason in a state of doubt and indifference, or else despair. Plato alone pursued a course of safety. Taking the existence of G.o.d as a truth derived perhaps from patriarchal teaching, he used the Socratic method of induction only for the destruction of falsehood, and received with fearless candor all that the poets taught of superhuman goodness and beauty; for though the symbolism of the poets degenerated into disgusting idolatry, they have been called the truest of heathen teachers. It is well known how Aristotle strengthened the reasoning power; but the mighty power had no object on which to put forth its strength, and the more n.o.ble minds rejected at once both reasoning and experiment, and sought for religion in the mysticism of Alexandria. Such was the wreck and waste of all that man could do without revelation, {686} and so sickening was the disappointment, that St. Augustin would fain have closed the Christian schools to Virgil and Cicero, which he loved once too well; but St.

Gregory, brought up as he was a Roman and a Christian, had nothing to repent of or to destroy, and cla.s.sic letters were preserved by Christians.

Ozanam found pleasure in believing that Christianity, while as yet concealed in the catacombs, was "in all senses undermining ancient Rome," and that it had an ameliorating effect on the Stoic, which was then the best sect of the philosophers; so that Seneca, instead of following the lantern of Zeno, who confused the natures of G.o.d and man, learnt from St. Paul not only to distinguish them, but also the relation in which man regards his Creator and Father, whom he serves with free-will and love, by subduing his body to the command of his soul. But the pride of philosophy may be modified without being subdued. The principle of heathenism is "the antagonist of Christianity: one is from man, and for man; the other from G.o.d, and for G.o.d." It was the object of St. Paul and the first fathers of the Church to liberate the intellect as well as the affections from perversion, and to teach how the treasures of antiquity might be used by Christians for religion, as the spoils of Egypt and the luxurious perfumes of the Magdalen. And after the fierce battle of Christianity with paganism was over, the triumph of the Church was completed under Constantine by the Christianization of literature; that is, by using in the service of truth all those powers which had been wasted in the ineffectual efforts for its discovery. "A mixed ma.s.s of ancient learning was saved from the wreck of the Roman world; and as Pope Boniface preserved the splendid temple of the Pantheon, and dedicated it to the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d glorified in his saints, so the doctors of the Church employed the logic and eloquence of the philosophers without adopting their theories. This was not always easy, and some, like Origen and Tertullian, fell into error; for the distinctive character of Christian teaching is to be dogmatic, not argumentative, submitting the conclusions of reason to the decisions of inspired authority, and the province of reason has bounds which it cannot pa.s.s."

Gradually a Christian literature arose. Not only in the still cla.s.sical Roman schools, but in those of Constantinople, Asia, and Africa, pagan writings were used as subservient to the training of Christian authors, and the fourth century was the golden age of intellect as well as sanct.i.ty. The fathers employed their cla.s.sical training in the study of the Holy Scriptures; but, according to the true principle of sacred study, they sought from Almighty G.o.d himself the grace which alone can direct the use of the intellectual powers.

"From the three senses of Holy Scripture" (says St. Bonaventure, in a pa.s.sage quoted by Ozanam out of his _Redactio Artium ad Theologiam_) "descended three schools of Scriptural teaching. The _allegorical_, which declares matters of faith, in which St. Augustin was a doctor, and in which he was followed by St. Anselm and others, who taught by discussion. The _moral_, on which St. Gregory founded his preaching and taught men the rule of life, in which he was followed by St.

Bernard who belongs also to the mystical school and by a host of preachers. While from the third or _a.n.a.logical_ sense, St. Dionysius taught by contemplation the manner in which man may unite himself to G.o.d." Ozanam names a chain of authors as belonging to this school of "Boethius, who on the eve of martyrdom wrote the consolations of that sorrow which is concealed under the illusions of the world; Isidore, Bede, Raba.n.u.s, Anselm, Bernard, Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, who rejoiced 'to cast his sentences like the widow's mite into the treasury of the temple, Hugo, and Richard of St. Victor, Peter the Spaniard, Albert, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas."

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"Under the barbarian rule, all the intellectual, an well as the devout, took sanctuary in the cloister; so that when the Arian Lombards attacked the centre of Christendom, they were opposed only by the teaching and discipline of the Church as perfected by St. Gregory; and the power of these must have been supernatural, as the influence of letters was nearly lost in Rome. Then, in defence of the faith, St.

Benedict marshalled a new band of devoted champions in the mountains of Subiaco, and he made it a part of their duty to preserve the treasures of learning, and to employ them in the service of religion; and these monks," says Ozanam, "who spent six hours in choir, transcribed in their cells the historians and even the poets of Greece and Rome, and bequeathed to the middle ages the most valuable writings of antiquity."

It is agreed by all that Charlemagne was the founder of the middle ages; and he opened the schools in which theology was formed into a science, and gained the t.i.tle of scholastics. Alcuin was the instrument by whom Charlemagne remodelled European literature, with the authority of the Church and councils, tradition and the fathers.

Of these the Greek were little known west of Constantinople; and the chief representative of the Latin fathers was St. Augustin. There were a few later writers, as Boethius on the "Consolation of Philosophy,"

and Ca.s.sidorus, who wrote _De Septem Disciplinis_.

"Every one knows," says Ozanam, "that when Europe was robbed of ancient literature by the invasion of barbarians, the remains of science, saved by pious hands, were divided into seven arts, and enclosed in the Trivium and Quadrivium." These arts were grammar, rhetoric, logic, and mathematics, which last comprehended arithmetic and geometry, music and astronomy. "The establishment of public schools in cent, ix.," says Ozanam, "a.s.sisted the progress of reasoning, till it became in itself an art capable of being employed indifferently to prove either side of an argument. The science of words was no longer that of grammar, but became dialectics; and words were used lightly as a mere play of the intellect, or as a mechanical process to a.n.a.lyze truth." But it can never be lawful for a Christian to discuss what has been revealed, as though it were possible that those who reject it may be right; nor to consider truth as an open question, which is still to be decided, and may be sought by those rules of reasoning which had been laid down by Aristotle for the discovery of what was as yet unknown. It was for this reason that, as Ozanam says, Tertullian called Aristotle the patriarch of heretics; yet his rules of reasoning were right, and the error lay in using them amiss. Thus the Manichaeans reasoned when they should have believed, and the Paulicians subjected the Holy Scriptures to their own interpretation, and rejected all that was above their comprehension; and thus in after-times did the Albigenses, and then the Protestants of the sixteenth, and the Liberals of the nineteenth, century.

It was in 891 that Paschasius wrote, for the instruction of his convent, a treatise on the Holy Eucharist, in which he proved by reasoning that doctrine which "the whole world believes and confesses;" but he was contradicted by Ratram, who first put forth the heresy that the real presence is only figurative, and then the Church p.r.o.nounced the dogma of transubstantiation. From that time theologians were obliged to confute the intellectual heresies of philosophers by fighting, as on common ground, with the weapons of argument which were used by both, in order to defend the doctrines which had been hitherto declared simply and by authority, as by our Lord himself. "Now," says Ozanam, "mysteries were subjected to definitions, and revelation was divided into syllogisms. And as the love of argument 'increased, the disputants took up the question which {688} had been discussed among heathen philosophers as to the abstract existences which are called universal forms or ideas; types of created things eternally existing in the mind of G.o.d, according to the teaching of St. Bonaventure. And when these were discovered by metaphysics, logic was exercised upon them; and a dispute arose as to whether truth exists independently of the perceptions of man. The Platonists a.s.serted that it does, and this belief, which they called idealism, was held by the divines, and was called realism, while those who denied that it exists independently of man were said to be nominalists." In modern days the dispute of realism and nominalism is laughed at as an idle war of words; but the war is, in truth, on principles, and still divides the orthodox and unbeliever, and the names of realism and nominalism are only changed for objective and subjective truth.

A painful experience had long prevailed that the spirit of controversy is destructive of devotion; and the more devout, weary of the wars of philosophers, rejected logic, and found in the mystic school that repose which had been sought even by heathens in a counterfeit mysticism, in which the evil powers deluded men by imitating divine inspirations. According to Ozanam, "Christian mysticism is idealism in its most brilliant form, which seeks truth in the higher regions of spontaneous inspiration;" and he goes on to explain, from the writings of St. Dionysius, that its nature is contemplative, ascetic, and symbolical. It is _contemplative_, as it brings man into the presence of the immense indivisible G.o.d, from whom all power, life, and wisdom descend upon man through the hierarchies of the angels and through the Church, and whose divine influences act in nine successive spheres through all the gradations between existence and nothing. It is _ascetic_, as it acts on the will through the link which connects the body with the mind, and regulates the pa.s.sions through the inferior part of the soul. This "medicine of souls" was taught by the fathers of the desert, who were followed by all the mystic doctors; and it was on this reciprocal action of physics and morals that St. Bonaventure afterward wrote the Compendium. It is _symbolic_, because it takes the creation as a symbol of spiritual things, and the external world as the shadow of what is invisible. The union of man with G.o.d is the object and fullness of the knowledge which regards both the divine and human nature, and levels all intellects in the immediate presence of G.o.d. This was imparted to Adam, and restored by Christ our Lord, who left it in the keeping of the Church. The first uninspired teacher of this mystic theology is thought to have been Dionysius the Areopagite, and the martyred Bishop of Athens, or, as some say, of Paris. In the festival of his martyrdom it is declared "that he wrote books, which are admirable and heavenly, concerning the divine names, the heavenly and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and on mystical theology." Ozanam quotes a fragment from his writings, which teaches that the indivisibility of G.o.d is intangible by mathematical abstractions of quant.i.ty, and indefinable by logic, because definition is a.n.a.lysis; and it is incomparable, because there are no terms of comparison.

The teaching of St. Dionysius was not forgotten when the knowledge of Greek was lost in the west. He was succeeded in this religious and Christian philosophy by St. Anselm in the eleventh century. In his _Monologium, De Ratione Fidei_, he supposes an ignorant man to be seeking the truth with the sole force of his reason, and disputing in order to discover a truth hitherto unknown. "Every one, for the most part," he says, "if he has moderate understanding, may persuade himself, by reason alone, as to what we necessarily believe of G.o.d; and this he may do in many ways, each according to that best suited to himself;" {689} and he goes on to say that his own mode consists in deducing all theological truths from one point--the being of G.o.d. All the diversity of beautiful, great, and good things supposes an ideal one or unity of beauty, and this unity is G.o.d. Hence St. Anselm derives the attributes of G.o.d--the creation, the Holy Trinity, the relation of man to G.o.d, in a word, all theology. The _Proslogium_, or truth demonstrating itself, is a second work, in which St. Anselm proposes to demonstrate truth which has been already attained. "As in the first he had, at the request of some brothers, written _De Ratione Fidei_ in the person who seeks by reasoning what he 'does not know, so he now seeks for some one of these many arguments which should require no proof but from itself. He was the first to use the famous argument, that from the sole idea of G.o.d is derived the demonstration of his existence. He thus begins the _Proslogium:_ 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no G.o.d. Wherefore the most foolish atheist has in his mind the idea of the sovereign good, which good cannot exist in thought only, because a yet greater good can still be conceived. This sovereign good therefore exists independently of the thought, and is G.o.d.'" It is not worth while to follow out the errors which arose in the middle ages from nominalism. In the eleventh century Roscelin carried it to the absurdity of saying that ideas are only words, and that nothing real exists except in particulars. And Philip of Champeaux a.s.serted the opposite extreme, and denied the existence of all but universals; as that humanity alone exists, of which men are mere parts or fragments. It was in the twelfth century that Abelard, who had been trained in both these systems, came forth in the pride of his vast intellect to reconcile them by a new theory, but his search after truth was by a mere intellectual machinery, to be employed by science in order to construct general scheme of human knowledge; while it led to the rejection of that simple faith which believes without examination, and subst.i.tuted the system of rationalism, so fruitful to this day of error and unbelief.

It was while men were constructing this intellectual tower of Babel that Almighty G.o.d raised up as the champion of the truth the meek and holy St. Bernard. Like David he laid aside his weapons of reasoning, and left his cloister to overthrow the gigantic foe. In the cowl of St. Benedict, he declared that the truth, which men sought by human efforts, was to be received in faith as the gift of G.o.d, from whom all knowledge and light proceeds. And it was not the powers of his well-trained faculties, nor his cla.s.sical and poetical studies, but his prayers, which gained the victory; so that, as by miracle, Abelard, the most eloquent disputant of his age, stood mute before the saint, who taught that faith is no opinion attained by reasoning, but a conviction beyond all proof that truth is revealed by G.o.d. This had been the teaching of St. Gregory, who said that faith which is founded on reason has no merit; and of St. Augustin, who said that faith is no opinion founded on reflection, but an interior conviction; and of the apostle, who said that faith is the certainty of things unseen. It is consoling to read that the holy influence of St. Bernard did not only silence his adversary; the heart of Abelard was melted, he laid aside the studies in which he had so nearly lost his soul, and he made his submission to the Church, and sought the forgiveness of St. Bernard.

Soon afterward he died a penitent, sorrowing for his moral and intellectual offences. But evil does not end with the guilty; and his school has continued brilliant in intellect and taste, but presumptuous in applying them to the examination of truth. On the other hand, the two folio volumes of St. Bernard have been always a treasury of devotion, where the saints and pious of all succeeding ages have been trained. It is impossible for words to {690} contain more thought; and he had the gift of penetrating thoughts contained in the inspired writings; as when he wrote twenty-four sermons on the three first verses of the Canticles. Ozanam says that St. Pierre perceived a fresh world of insects each day that he examined a single strawberry-leaf; and thus in the spiritual world the intellect of St.

Bernard contemplated and beheld wonders with a sort of microscopic infinity, while his vast comprehension was a.n.a.logous in its discoveries to the telescope. Such were the gifts conferred by G.o.d on the humble abbot of Clairvaux.

There were in the time of St. Bernard other great teachers: Peter the Venerable, St. Norbert, G.o.dfrey, Richard, and Hugo, all monks of St.

Victor. Ozanam says that he embraced the three great modes of teaching--that is, the allegorical, moral, and a.n.a.logical; and preceded St. Bonaventure in a gigantic attempt to form an encyclopaedia of human knowledge, based on the truth declared by St.

James, that every good and perfect gift descends from the Father of light, who is above.

With a vast amount of literary treasures the crusaders had brought from the east, in the twelfth century, the Greek authors, with their Arab commentators. They brought the physics, metaphysics, and morals of Aristotle; and they brought also the pantheism, which, says Ratisbon, the Saracens, like the early Stoics, had learnt from the Brahmins, who believe that men have two souls--one inferior and led by instinct, the other united and identical with G.o.d. This fatal error was received by a daring school, to which Frederic of Sicily was suspected to belong. It was to confute this school that St. Bernard had taught in his sermons on the Canticles that union with G.o.d is not by confusion of natures, but conformity of will. The poison entered Europe from the west as well as the east; the Arabs in Spain mixed the delusions of Alexandria with the subtleties of Aristotle, and the result was such men as Averroes and Avicenna. Gerbert, afterward Silvester II., had himself studied in Spain, and brought back into the European schools not only the philosophy of Aristotle, but the Jewish translations of Averroes. The unlearned monks of the west were naturally alarmed at the new works on physics, astronomy, and alchemy, and especially at the logic of Aristotle, and the terrible eruption of pantheism. It was then that the Church exercised her paternal authority, and condemned the confusion of the limits between faith and opinion, and the degradation of the sciences to mere worldly purposes.

Ozanam gives the bull issued in 1254 by Innocent IV., in which he complains that the study of civil law was subst.i.tuted for that of philosophy, and that theology itself was banished from the education of priests. "We desire to bring back men's minds to the teaching of theology, which is the science of salvation; or at least to the study of philosophy, which, though it does not possess the gentle pleasures of piety, yet has the first glimpses of that eternal truth which frees the mind from the hindrance of covetousness, which is idolatry."

The tendency of philosophical errors was now rendered apparent by their development, so that what was at first a vague opinion was now a broad and well-defined system. Those who were firm in the teaching of the Church found it necessary to use every means for opposing such multiplied evils, and they boldly ventured on a Christian eclecticism, which should employ all the faculties and all the modes of using them in the service of religion; but it was not like the eclecticism of Alexandria, where the ideas of Plato were united with the forms of Aristotle, and adorned by the delusions of magic. The strength of Christian eclecticism lay in the pure unity of faith, defended by all the powers of man. {691} "Both a.n.a.lysis and synthesis," says Ozanam, "are harmonized in true science: they are the two poles of the intellectual world, and have the same axis and horizon. The intersecting point of the two systems was the union of what is true in realism and nominalism with mystic teaching, and the eclectic admitted the experience of the senses as well as the deductions of reason and the intuition of mysticism with the testimony of learning. Thus were united in the study of truth the four great powers of the soul, reason, tradition, experience, and intuition." But it has been remarked that some of the masters who taught by experiment and tradition were persecuted as magicians, and some of those who used reason and intuition were canonized. Both, however, observed the ascetic life, of which the abstinence of Pythagoras and the endurance of the Stoics were imitations, and all practised the virtues most opposite to heathen morality, namely, humility and charity. The first attempt at uniting the different opinions of the learned was made by Peter Lombard, who collected the sentences of the fathers into a work, which gained him the t.i.tle of Master of the Sentences, and which was afterward perfected in the _Summa_ of St. Thomas. Albert the Great left the palace of his ancestors for the Dominican cloister. He studied at Cologne, and was unequalled in learning and psychology.

While he reasoned on ideas, he made experiments on matter; nay, he used alchemy, to discover unknown powers and supernatural agents. It is said that his twenty-one folio volumes have never been sufficiently studied by any one to p.r.o.nounce on their merits. His work on the universe was written against pantheism, and declares the presence of G.o.d in every part of creation, without being confused with it. That divine presence is the source of all power. "He was," says Ozanam (p.

33), "an Atlas, who carried on his shoulders the whole world of science, and did not bend beneath its weight." He was familiar with the languages of the ancients and of the east, and had imbibed gigantic strength at these fountains of tradition. He believed in the t.i.tle of magician, which his disciples gave him; and he is remembered by posterity rather as a mythological being than as a man.

The contemporary of Albert, says Ozanam, was Alexander Hales, who wrote the "Summa of Universal Theology." William of Auvergne was a Dominican and preceptor of St. Louis; he wrote _Specimen Doctrinale, Naturale, Historiale;_ a division of the sciences and their end, containing--1, theology, physics, and mathematics; 2, practice, monastic, economic, and politic; 3, mechanics and arts; 4, logic and words. Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, was more accurate in learning than Albert himself; sound, though no discoverer in physics, and deep in mathematics. He commented on Aristotle and Peter Lombard. From his strength, sagacity, and precision, he was named the Doctor Subtilis.

He wrote on free will, and says that its perfection is conformity to the will of G.o.d; and derives the moral law from the will of G.o.d, according to St. Paul, "Sin is the transgression of the law." When St.

Thomas taught that the moral law is necessarily good because G.o.d is good, and this question divided the learned into the schools of Scotists and Thomists, Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan, was the pupil of Scotus; but he was eclectic, and admitted both exterior and interior experience, and the deductions of reason, into the intercourse of the soul with G.o.d. Though he condemned magic as an imposture, he wrote on alchemy, and with the simplicity of enthusiasm he hoped to find the philosopher's stone, and to read the fall of empires in the stars. He believed in the powers of human science, and he hints at the possibility of a vessel moving without sails or oars; and imagined a balloon, a diving-bell, a suspension bridge, and other miracles of art, especially a telescope and a multiplying-gla.s.s.

Speaking of Greek {692} fire and unquenchable lamps, he says that art as well as nature has its thunders, and describes the effect of gun-powder, the attraction of the loadstone, and the sympathies between minerals, plants, and animals; and says, "When I see the prodigies of nature, nothing startles my faith either in the works of man or in the miracles of G.o.d;" concluding, that Aristotle may not have penetrated the deepest secrets of nature, and that the sages of his own time will be surpa.s.sed by the novices of future days. He had the same clear and sound views of supernatural things, and wrote on the secret works of art and nature, and the falsehood of magic. "Man cannot influence the spiritual world except by the lawful use of prayer addressed to G.o.d and the angels, who govern not only the world of spirits, but the destinies of man." Though called the Doctor Mirabilis, he was suspected of magic, and died neglected in a prison, where he had no light to finish his last works. His ma.n.u.scripts were burned at the Reformation, in a convent of his order, by men "who professed," says Ozanam, "to restore the torch of reason, which had been extinguished by the monks of the middle ages."

Raymond Lulli, the Doctor Illuminatus, was a Franciscan, the great inventor of arts; but he was a philosophical adventurer, whose cast of mind was Spanish, Arabian, African, and eastern. His youth was licentious, his life turbulent, and his imagination restless; but he died as a saint and a martyr on his return from liberating the Christian slaves in Spain.

The glory of the Franciscan order is the Seraphical Doctor, St.

Bonaventure. He was educated under Hales, the Irrefragable Doctor. His genius was keen and his judgment just, and he was a master of scholastic theology and philosophy. But when he studied, it was at the foot of a crucifix, with eyes drowned in tears from incessant meditation on the pa.s.sion of Christ. His life was dedicated to the glory of G.o.d and his own sanctification; yet he spent much time in actual prayer, because he knew from mystic theology that knowledge and obedience are the gifts of G.o.d; and devoted himself to mortifications, because they alone prepare the soul for the reception of divine grace and intuition. Yet though he obtained the gift of ecstacy and the grace of crucifying the human nature, he placed Christian perfection not in heroic acts of virtue, but in performing ordinary actions well.

Ozanam quotes his words: "A constant fidelity in small things is a great and heroic virtue; it is a continued crucifixion of self-love, a complete sacrifice of self, an entice submission to grace." And his own pale and worn countenance shone with a happiness and peace which exemplified his maxim that spiritual joy is a sign that grace is present in the soul. Though his desire for sacramental communion was intense, yet we are told his great humility once kept him at a distance from the altar, till an angel bore to him the consecrated host; and the raptures with which he always received his G.o.d are expressed, though doubtless imperfectly, in the burning words, _Transfige Domine_, etc., which he was wont to utter after he had himself offered the holy sacrifice. His devotional works, written for St. Louis and others in his court, fill the heart with their unction, and rank him as the great master of spiritual life. It was during the intervals of ecstasies that he wrote; and while he was occupied on the life of St. Francis, St. Thomas beheld him in his cell raised above the earth, and the future saint exclaimed: "Leave a saint to write the life of a saint."

It is with profound reverence that we must inquire what was the intellectual teaching of so holy a man; and it is, indeed, so vast and yet so deep that it exhausts all the human powers in contemplating the nature of G.o.d and the end of man, which is his union to G.o.d. Ozanam gives a pa.s.sage from his work on the "Reduction of Arts to Philosophy," in which he {693} says that philosophy is the medium by which the theologian forms for himself a mirror (_speculum_) from created things, which serve him as steps by which he may ascend to heaven. He begins by the revealed truth, that every good and perfect gift descends from the Father of light, and teaches of its descent by these four ways--exterior, inferior, interior, and superior--through successive irradiations, namely, Holy Scripture, experimental mechanics, and philosophy, which succeed each other like the days of creation, all converging in the light of Holy Scripture, and all succeeded by that seventh day in which the soul will rest in the perfect knowledge of heaven.

1. Exterior light, or tradition, relates to the exterior forms of matter, and produces the mechanical arts, which were divided by Hugo into seven--weaving, work in wood and in stone, agriculture, hunting, navigation, theatricals, and medicine.

2. Inferior light, or that of the senses, awakens in the mind the perceptions of the five senses, as St. Augustin says, by that fine essence whose nature and whose seat baffles all our discoveries.

3. Interior light, or reason, teaches us by the processes of thought those intellectual truths which are fixed in the human mind by physics, logic, and ethics, through rational, natural, and moral action on the will, the conduct, and the speech, which are the triple functions of the understanding, and on the three faculties of the reason--apprehension, judgment, and action; this interior light acts on outward things by physics, mathematics, and metaphysics, and perceives G.o.d in all things by logic, by physics, and by ethics. And he goes on to consider truth as it is in the essence of words, things, and actions.

4. The superior light proceeds from grace and from the Holy Scriptures, and reveals the truths relating to salvation and sanctification. It is named from its raising us to the knowledge of things above us, and because it descends from G.o.d by way of inspiration and not by reflection. This light also is threefold. Holy Scripture contains, under the literal sense of the words, the allegorical, which declares what must be believed concerning G.o.d and man; the moral, which teaches us how to live; the a.n.a.logical, which gives the laws by which man may unite himself to G.o.d. And the teaching of Holy Scripture contains three points--faith, virtue, and beat.i.tude.

The course by which knowledge must be sought is by,

1, tradition; 2, experiment; 3, reason; and 4, a descent as it were by the same road, so as to find the stamp of the divinity on all which is conceived, or felt, or thought. All sciences are pervaded by mysteries; and it is by laying hold of the clue of the mystery that all the depths of each science are explored.

It was to Mount Alvernia, where his master, St. Francis, so lately received the stigmata, that St. Bonaventure retired to write the _Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum_, in which he treats on the divine nature, and considers G.o.d as manifesting himself in three modes, and man as receiving the knowledge of him by the three functions of memory, understanding, and will.

Ozanam says: "To these triple functions of the mind G.o.d manifests himself in three ways: 1, by the traces of his creation in the world; 2, by his image in human nature; 3, by the light which he sheds on the superior region of the soul. Those who contemplate him in the first are in the vestibule of the tabernacle; those who rise to the second are in the holy place; those who reach the third are within the holy of holies, where the two cherubim figured the unity of the divine essence and the plurality of divine persons." He likens the invisible existence of G.o.d to the light, which, though unseen, enables the eye to perceive colors; and proves from his existence his unity, eternity, and perfection; and from the eternal action of his goodness he deduces the doctrine of the Trinity.

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