Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/594

 578 INTELLECT AND FAITH. The Reformation served a double purpose in checking this ten- dency to dangerous speculation. It destroyed the hard-and-fast lines of the rigid scholastic theology, and gave to active intellects a wide field for discussion within the limits of the Christian faith. The assaults of Luther and Melanchthon and Calvin were not to be met with the dialectics of the schools, but with a freer and wider scope of reasoning. The worn-out debates over Aristotle and Alexander and Averrhoes, over Nominalism and Realism, were replaced with new systems of Scriptural exegesis and an earnest inquiry into man's place in the universe and his relations to his fellows and to his God. Then the counter-Reformation aroused a zeal which could no longer tolerate the philosophical quodlibets leading to speculations adverse to the received faith. Servetus and Giordano Bruno belong to a period beyond our present limits, but their fate shows how little either Protestant or Catholic, in the fierce strife which enkindled such uncompromising ardor, were disposed to listen to philosophical discussions upon religious beliefs. Before leaving this branch of our subject we must recur to the curious episode of the career of Raymond Lully, the Doctor Illu- minatus, of whom Padre Feyjoo truly says, " Raymond Lully, looked upon from every side, is a very problematical object. Some make him a saint, others a heretic ; some a most learned man, others an ignoramus ; some regard him as illuminated, others as hallucinated ; some attribute to him a knowledge of the trans- mutation of metals, others deny it ; finally, some applaud his Ars Magna, others depreciate it." * This enigmatical being was born in Palma, the capital of Ma- jorca, January 25, 1235. Sprung from a noble family, he was bred in the royal court, where he rose to the post of seneschal. He married and had children, but followed a gay and dissolute career until, like Peter Waldo and Jacopone da Todi, he was sud- denly converted by an experience of the nothingness of life. He was madly in love with Leonor del Castello, and his reckless tem- per manifested itself by pursuing her on horseback into the church of Santa Eulalia during a Sunday service, to the great scandal of priest and congregation. To rid herself of such importunate pur-
 * Cartas de D. Fr. Feyjoo, Carta xxn. (T. I. p. 180).