Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/95

Rh unique position less to his writings than to his personal influence as a teacher; as a teacher too not of moral but of natural philosophy, as a master not of theology but of statecraft. The stores of his knowledge, – were they acquired from the Arabs during his stay in the Spanish march, or won by long practice and research in every library accessible to him, – were no doubt unequalled. Gerbert was a mathematician, a natural philosopher, and a pioneer of natural philosophers; his learning was believed to be universal: but, except in the domain of positive science, he was but the ready accumulator and diffuser of what was actually within the range of any well-read student of his day. In theology and metaphysics he produced little or nothing. If we exclude the necessary official productions of a dignitary of the church, sermons and speeches addressed to synods and similar gatherings, and these too concerned not with theology but with ecclesiastical politics, we shall find that Gerbert composed not one theological work, or, it he wrote any, they have been lost; for the only treatise of this class which has been ascribed to him is certainly not his.

It was indeed in practical affairs that Gerbert's interest