Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/94

76 ''its steep ascent and upon its spacious top obtained the vision of Christ, seated with all his saints. There was Bruno archbishop of Cologne, being accused by the supreme Judge for his vain pursuit of philosophy: howbeit saint Paul was his advocate and he was restored to his throne.'' To us looking back at Bruno's work, it is difficult to exaggerate its value whether to his nation or to the church at large. Under his guidance the royal palace became the centre also of intellectual life in Germany. Bruno's aim was to fit the clergy to spread this new civilisation over the country, and when they departed to higher offices afterwards, as when he himself was raised to the see of Cologne, to form each one a fresh centre of learning. In this way he seconded the measures which the wisdom of his father and brother, Henry and Otto, had directed to the revival of the political state. The example was taken up by the religious houses, and their schools—those of Reichenau and Saint Gall are particularly distinguished—entered upon a new course of learned activity. The clergy of Lotharingia and Germany became marked out from the rest of Christendom no less by their education than by its fruit, their moral excellence. To such, seed the German popes owed their distinction, and through them the restoration of the papacy signalised by Leo the Ninth and Gregory the Seventh was made practicable.

It was long before the intellectual revival which began to shew itself from the middle of the tenth century, was sensibly felt. Guitmund, archbishop of Aversa, speaking of the time when Fulbert, who died in 1029, came to govern the school of Chartres, which he made the chief home of learning in Gaul, confesses that at that time the liberal arts had all but become extinct in the land. A single name illuminates the literary record of the age, and Gerbert the Aquitanian, pope Silvester the Second, owes his