Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/873

 LANGTON

791

LANOTON

Langton, Stephkn-, Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury, b. in the latter half of the twelfth century; d. at Slindon Manor, Sussex, 9 July, 1228. Although the roll of English churchmen has few names more illustrious, Langton's fame is hardly equal to his achievements. Even among his own countrymen too few have an adequate knowleilge of his merits and of his great services to his country and to the Catholic Church, although his labours were concerned with the two things specially dear to Englishmen, the Bible and the British Constitution. Little though they may think it, every one who reads the Bible or enjoys the benefit of civic freedom owes a deep debt of gratitude to this Catholic cardinal. If men may be measured by the magnitude of the work they accomplish, it may be safely said that Langton was the greatest English- man who ever sat in the chair of St. Augustine. For .\nselm was not an Englishman, and his triumphs were won in fields of thought and poUtics of less inter- est to Englishmen. Some churchmen, again, have been great as writers and thinkers, others as states- men solicitous for the welfare of the whole people, and others as zealous pastors of their flock. It was Lang- ton's lot to win distinction in all three capacities, as scholar, statesman, and archbishop.

I. The Schol.\r. — The literary activity of Lang- ton belongs to the earlier part of his hfe, and it is as a scholar that he first appears in historj-. Of his boy- hood we have no details, both the date and place of his birth lieing matters of inference and conjecture. From the circumstances attending his election to the primatial See of Canterbury it is evident that he was an Englishman. His name itself is clearly taken from some English town, but it is not certain which of the several places so-called had the honour of giving its name to the family of the cardinal, though Mark Pattison confidently asserts that he " is known by the surname of Langton from the place of his birth, Lang- ton near Spilsby in Lincolnshire" (op. cit. in bibli- ography). His father was Henry de Langton; his brother Simon de Langton — presumably his junior, seeing that he survived the archbishop twenty years — was Archdeacon of Canterbury, and took an active part in the ecclesiastical and political struggles of the time. There does not seem to be any evidence of kin- ship between the archbishop and John Langton, Bisuop of Chichester in the following century. Ste- phen's birth may Ite fi.ved approximately by the known dates of his election (120.5) and his death (1228). For, since he was already famous as a scholar and had be- come cardinal before the former date, he can hardly have been then a mere youth, while the fact that he lived for another twenty years and more, and was en- gaged in active work until his death, would seem to show that he was yet in the prime of life when he was elected archbishop. His birth, therefore, could not fall very much before or after 1160 or 1170. On the same grounds it may be gathered that Langton went to the University of Paris at an early age, for it was his fame as a teacher of theology that led Innocent III to summon him to Rome and create him cardinal. This act of the great pope and the store he set by Langton's learning may remind us how one of his predecessors wished in like manner to avail himself of the services of the Venerable Bede — another great Englishman, with whom Langton hail much in common in the char- acter of his learning anil in his indefatigable industry as a commentator on Holy .Scripture. Thus Pattison naturally mentions the name of Bede in his graphic description of Langton as "that great prelate, who, during a twenty-three years occupation of the See of Canterbury, acted in public a mo.st prominent part in national affairs, and in the cloister produced more works for the instruction of his flock, than any who, before or since him, have been seated in that ' Papal chair of the North ' — who was the soul of that power- ful confederacy who took the crown from the head of

the successor of the Comiiieror, — and yet, next to Bede, the most voluminous and original commentator on the Scripture this country has produced — and who has transmitted to us an enduring memorial of him- self in three most dilTerent institutions, which after the lapse of six centuries are still in force and value among us — Magna Charta, the division of the Bible into chaj)- ters, and those constitutions which open the series, and form the basis, of that Canon Law which is still binding in our Ecclesiastical Courts" (il)id.).

In this passage Pattison has incidentally touched on the chief and most eduring result of Langton's industrious scholarship, the division of the Bible into chapters — or, in the c|uaint words of an old chronicler (Trevisa's translation of Higden's " Polychronicon "), "he coted the Bible at Parys and marked the chap- itres ". This statement has been confirme<l by recent researches of Denifle (see Kaulen, " Einleitung in d. Heil. Schrift"), which prove clearly that the di\ision of the Sacred Text into chapters owes its origin to Stephen Langton. The importance of this work may be sufficiently gauged by its widespread adoption, for this division into chapters has not only passed from the Vulgate to all modern vernacular \ersions of the Bible, but has been applied with obvious advantage to the Greek New Testament and to the Septuagint. It is indeed one of the few cases in which Latin scholar- ship has affected the Eastern Churches. Yet more remarkable is it that the division has also been adopted by the Jews themselves, and that the hand of the English cardinal should leave its mark on the pages of the Talmud. Wliile not abandoning their own system of di\-ision, the Jews saw the advantage of the Langtonian chapters, which are constantly used for purposes of reference even in purely Rabbinical liter- ature, as may be seen in the Warsaw editions of the Talmud Babli and Midrash Rabba. The value of this change is practically illustrated in Ceriani's facsimile edition of the Milanese Code.x SjTo-Peschitto, where the divisions wanting in the text are marketl in the margin by the editor. The division into chapters has some- times been ascribed to Cardinal Hugh of St-Cher, but his task was to subdivide Langton's chapters into seven parts marked by the first seven letters of the alphabet. This method, used by old commentators and still surviving in our liturgical books, has for general purposes been superseded by the division into verses which we owe to Robert Estieime.

Although few of Langton's original writings or com- mentaries on Holy Writ are known to students of the present day, Lingard is hardly warranted in stating bluntly that "his writings have perisheil". Many of his voluminous works still happily survive in manu- scripts, the number of which indicates the popularity his writings once enjoyed. Some of his letters have been printed by D'Achery in his "Spicilegium"; his tractate on the translation of St. Thomas of Canter- bury is pubhshed by Dr. Giles in the second volume of his valuable edition of the life and letters of the blessed martyr, and, though .slight, is sufficient to give the reader some notion of Langton's Latin style. For the rest, it should be remembered that, though his com- mentaries are no longer read, the Biblical student of the present day still benefits by them at least intlirectly, since here, as in other fields of sacretl science, the scholars of each age build on the work left by those who went before them, and commentaries that were once in the hands of all must have had some influence on the later works by which they were eventually superseded.

II. The St.\tesman. — If Stephen Langton had spent the rest of his days in Rome, his great services as a scholar would give us good reason to regard him with reverence, and we might have doubted whether the studious cardinal were likely to accomplish much in the world of action and ecclesiastical admmist ration. It was undoubtedly a severe ordeal to pass from a hfe