The Medieval Mind. Henry Osborn Taylor
close friend, abbot of a monastery at Tours:
“Since you hold my memory in honour, and in virtue of relationship declare great friendship, I deem that I shall be happy for your opinion, if only I am one who in the judgment of so great a man is found worthy to be loved. But since I am not one who, with Panetius, would sometimes separate the good from the useful, but rather with Tully would mingle it with everything useful, I wish these best and holiest friendships never to be void of reciprocal utility. And as morality and the art of speech are not to be severed from philosophy, I have always joined the study of speaking well with the study of living well. For although by itself living well may be nobler than speaking well, and may suffice without its fellow for one absolved from the direction of affairs; yet for us, busied with the State, both are needed. For it is of the greatest utility to speak appositely when persuading, and with mild discourse check the fury of angry men. In preparing for such business, I am eagerly collecting a library; and as formerly at Rome and elsewhere in Italy, so likewise in Germany and Belgium, I have obtained copyists and manuscripts with a mass of money, and the help of friends in those parts. Permit me likewise to beg of you also to promote this end. We will append at the end of this letter a list of those writers we wish copied. We have sent for your disposal parchment for the scribes and money to defray the cost, not unmindful of your goodness. Finally, lest by saying more we should abuse epistolary convenances, the cause of so much trouble is contempt of faithless fortune; a contempt which not nature alone has given to us—as to many men—but careful study. Consequently when at leisure and when busied in affairs, we teach what we know, and learn where we are ignorant.”[358]
Gerbert’s letters are concise, even elliptical to the verge of obscurity. He discloses himself in a few words to his old friend Raymund at the monastery of Aurillac: “With what love we are bound to you, the Latins know and also the barbarians,[359] who share the fruit of our studies. Their vows demand your presence. Amid public cares philosophy is the sole solace; and from her study we have often been the gainer, when in this stormy time we have thus broken the attack of fortune raging grievously against others or ourselves. …”[360]
Save for the language, one might fancy Cicero speaking to some friend, and not the future pope of the year 1000 to a monk. The sentiment is quite antique. And Gerbert not only uses antique phrase but is touched, like many a mediaeval man, with the antique spirit. In another letter he writes of friendship, and queries whether the divinity has given anything better to mortals. He refers to his prospects, and remarks: “sed involvit mundum caeca fortuna,” and he is not certain whither it will cast him.[361]
Doubtless such antique sentiments were a matter of mood with Gerbert; he can readily express others of a Christian colour, and turn again to still other topics very readily, as in the following letter—a curious one. It is to a monk:
“Think not, sweetest brother, that it is through my fault I lack my brethren’s society. After leaving thee, I had to undertake many journeys in the business of my father Columbanus.[362] The ambitions of the powers, the hard and wretched times, turn right to wrong. No one keeps faith. Yet since I know that all things hang on the decree of God, who changes both hearts and the kingdoms of the sons of men, I patiently await the end of things. I admonish and exhort thee, brother, to do the same. In the meanwhile one thing I beg, which may be accomplished without danger or loss to thee, and will make me thy friend forever. Thou knowest with what zeal I gather books everywhere, and thou knowest how many scribes there are in Italy, in town and country. Come then, quietly procure me copies of Manlius’s (Boëthius) De astrologia, Victorinus’s Rhetoric, Demosthenes’s Optalmicus.[363] I promise thee, brother, and will keep my word, to preserve a sacred silence as to thy praiseworthy compliance, and will remit twofold whatever thou dost demand. Let this much be known to the man, and the pay too, and cheer us more frequently with a letter; and have no fear that knowledge will come to any one of any matter thou mayest confide to our good faith.”[364]
When he wrote this letter, about the year 988, Gerbert was dangerously deep in politics, and great was the power of this low-born titular Abbot of Bobbio, head of the school at Rheims and secretary to the archbishop. The tortuous statecraft and startling many-sidedness of this “scholar in politics” must have disturbed his contemporaries, and may have roused the suspicions from which grew the stories, told by future men, that this scholar, statesman, and philosopher-pope was a magician who had learned from forbidden sources much that should be veiled. Withal, however, one may deem that the most veritable inner bit of Gerbert was his love of knowledge and of antique literature, and that the letters disclosing this are the subtlest revelation of the man who was ever transmuting his well-guarded knowledge into himself and his most personal moods.
“For there is nothing more noble for us in human affairs than a knowledge of the most distinguished men; and may it be displayed in volumes upon volumes multiplied. Go on then, as you have begun, and bring the streams of Cicero to one who thirsts. Let M. Tullius thrust himself into the midst of the anxieties which have enveloped us since the betrayal of our city, so that in the happy eyes of men we are held unhappy through our sentence. What things are of the world we have sought, we have found, we have accomplished, and, as I will say, we have become chief among the wicked. Lend aid, father, in order that divinity, expelled by the multitude of sinners, bent by thy prayers, may return, may visit us, may dwell with us—and if possible, may we who mourn the absence of the blessed father Adalberon, be rejoiced by thy presence.”[365]
So Gerbert wrote from Rheims, himself a chief intriguer in a city full of treason.
Gerbert was a power making for letters. The best scholars sat at his feet; he was an inspiration at the Courts of the second and third Ottos, who loved learning and died so young; and the great school of Chartres, under the headship of his pupil Fulbert, was the direct heir to his instruction. At Rheims, where he taught so many years, he left to others the elementary instruction in Latin. A pupil, Richer, who wrote his history, speaks of courses in rhetoric and literature, to which he introduced his pupils after instructing them in logic:
“When he wished to lead them on from such studies to rhetoric, he put in practice his opinion that one cannot attain the art of oratory without a previous knowledge of the modes of diction which are to be learned from the poets. So he brought forward those with whom he thought his pupils should be conversant. He read and explained the poets Virgil, Statius, and Terence, the satirists Juvenal and Persius and Horace, also Lucan the historiographer. Familiarized with these, and practised in their locutions, he taught his pupils rhetoric. After they were instructed in this art, he brought up a sophist, to practise them in disputation, so that practised in this art as well, they might seem to argue artlessly, which he deemed the height of oratory.”[366]
So Gerbert used the classic poets in teaching rhetoric, and doubtless the great prose writers too, with whom he was familiar. Following Cicero’s precept that the orator should be a proficient reasoner, he prepared his young rhetoricians by a course in logic, and completed their discipline with exercises in disputation.
Richer also speaks of Gerbert’s epoch-making mathematical knowledge.[367] In arithmetic he improved the current methods of computation; in geometry he taught the traditional methods of measurement descended from the Roman surveyors, and compiled a work from Boëthius and other sources. For astronomy he made spheres and other instruments, and in music his teaching was the best obtainable. In none of these provinces was he an original inventor; nor did he exhaust the knowledge had by men before him. He was, however, the embodiment of mediaeval progress, in that he drew intelligently upon the sources within his reach, and then taught with understanding and enthusiasm. Richer’s praise is unstinted:
“He began with arithmetic; then taught music, of which there had long been ignorance in Gaul. … With what pains he set forth the method of astronomy, it may be well to state, so that the reader may perceive the sagacity and skill of this great man. This difficult subject he explained by means of admirable instruments. First he illustrated the world’s sphere by one of solid wood, the greater by the less. He fixed it obliquely as to the horizon with two poles, and near the upper pole set the northern constellations, and by the lower one those of the south. He determined its position by means of the circle called by the Greeks orizon and by the Latins limitans, because it divides the constellations which are seen from those which are