Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/167

Rh against the hierarchical doctrine. Berengar had struggled in that interest, and with Abelard, in the 12th century, the revolt against authority in belief grew loud. The dialogue between a Christian, a Jew, and a philosopher suggested a comparative estimate of religions, and placed the natural religion of the moral law above all positive revelations. Nihilists and naturalists, who deified logic and science at the expense of faith, were not unknown at Paris in the days of John of Salisbury. In such a critical generation the words of Averroism found willing ears, and pupils who outran their teacher. Paris became the centre of a sceptical society, which the decrees of bishops and councils, and the enthusiasm of the orthodox doctors and knight-errants of Catholicism, were powerless to ex tinguish. At Oxford Averroes told more as the great commentator. In the days of Roger Bacon he had become an authority. Bacon, placing him beside Aristotle and Avicenna, recommends the study of Arabic as the only way of getting the knowledge which bad versions made almost hopeless ; and the student of the present day might echo his remark. In Duns Scotus, Averroes and Aristotle are the unequalled masters of the science of proof ; and he pronounces distinctly the separation between Catholic and philosophical truth, which became the watchword of Aver roism. By the 14th century Averroism was the common leaven of philosophy ; John Baconthorpe is the chief of Averroists, and Walter Burley has similar tendencies. Meanwhile Averroism had, in the eye of the great Dominican school, corne to be regarded as the arch-enemy of the truth. When Frederick II. consulted a Moslem free-thinker on the mysteries of the faith, when the phrase or legend of the &quot; Three Impostors &quot; presented in its most offensive form the scientific survey of the three laws of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, and when the characteristic doctrines of Averroes were misunderstood, it soon followed that his name became the badge of the scoffer and the sceptic. What had begun with the subtle disputes of the universities of Paris, went on to the materialist teachers in the medical schools and the sceptical men of the world in the cities of Northern Italy. The patricians of Venice and the lecturers of Padua made Averroism synonymous with doubt and criticism in theology, and with sarcasm against the hierarchy. Petrarch, vexed by the arrogance and over- refinements of their argumentation, and by the barbarism of their words, refuses to believe that any good thing can come out of Arabia, and speaks of Averroes as a mad dog barking against the church. In works of contemporary art Averroes is at one time the comrade of Mahomet and Antichrist; at another he lies with Arius and Sabellius, vanquished by the lance of St Thomas. It was in the universities of North Italy that Averroism finally settled, and there for three centuries it continued as a stronghold of Scholasticism to resist the efforts of revived antiquity and of advancing science. Padua became the seat of Averroist Aristotelianism ; and, when Padua was conquered by Venice in 1405, the printers of the republic spread abroad the teaching of the professors in the university. As early as 1300, at Padua, Petrus Aponensis, a notable expositor of medical theories, had betrayed a heterodoxy in faith; and John of Jandun, one of the pamphleteers on the side of Lewis of Bavaria, was a keen follower of Averroes, whom he styles a &quot;perfect and most glorious physicist.&quot; Urbanus of Bologna, Paul of Venice (d. 1428), and Cajetamis de Thienis (1387-1465), established by their lectures and their discussions the authority of Averroes ; and a long list of manuscripts rests in the libraries of Lombardy to witness the diligence of these writers and their successors, Even a lady of Venice, Cassandra Fedele, in 1480, gained her laurels in defence of Averroist theses. With Pomponatius, in 1495, a brilliant epoch began for the school of Padua. Questions of permanent and present interest took the place of outworn scholastic problems. The disputants ranged themselves under the rival commen tators, Alexander and Averroes; and the immortality of the soul became the battle-ground of the two parties. Pomponatius defended the Alexandrist doctrine of the utter mortality of the soul, whilst Augustinus Niphus, the Aver roist, was entrusted by Leo X. with the task of defending the Catholic doctrine. The parties seemed to have changed when Averroism thus took the side of the church ; but the change was probably due to compulsion. Niphus had edited the works of Averroes (1495-7); but his expressions gave offence to the dominant theologians, and he had to save himself by distinguishing his personal faith from his editorial capacity. Achillini, the persistent philosophical adversary of Pomponatius both at Padua and subsequently at Bologna, attempted, along with other moderate but not brilliant Averroists, to accommodate their philosophical theory with the requirements of Catholicism. It was this comparatively mild Averroism, reduced to the merely ex planatory activity of a commentator, which continued to- be the official dogma at Padua during the 16th century. Its typical representative is Marc-Antonio Zimara (d. 1552), the author of a reconciliation between the tenets of Averroes and those of Aristotle. Meanwhile, in 1497, Aristotle was for the first timo expounded in Greek at Padua. Plato had long been the favourite study at Florence ; and Humanists, like Erasmus, Ludovicus Vives, and Nizolius, enamoured of the popular philosophy of Cicero and Quintilian, poured out the vials of their contempt on scholastic barbarism with its &quot;impious and thrice-accursed Averroes.&quot; The editors of Averroes complain that the popular taste had forsaken them for tho Greek. Nevertheless, while Fallopius, Vesalius, and Galileo were claiming attention to their discoveries, the Professors Zabarella, Piccolomini, Pendasio, and Cremonini continued the traditions of Averroism, not without changes and additions. Cremonini, the last of them, died in 1631, after lecturing twelve years at Ferrara, and forty at Padua. The legend which tells that he laid aside his telescope rather than see Jupiter s moons, which Galileo had dis covered, is a parable of the fall of scholastic Averroism. Medievalism, with its misconstruction of Averroes, perished because it would not see that the interpretation of the past calls for the ripest knowledge of all discoveries in the present. 