Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/24

20 opinion should prevail. At its end two consequences necessarily followed, as has just been said: The essential validity of the methods of experimental science had been vindicated, and scholars understood that a new era had begun. This was the era illuminated by Galileo's early researches. On the other hand, the Greek Aristotle had conquered. The liberty which comes of conflict was no longer permitted. Orthodoxy founded itself on the new interpretations and reigned firmly and severely. To the people at large the end of the conflict marked the overthrow of speculative heresy, not the winning of a new world to science. The pantheistic idealism of Averroës and the Arabs lingered on in a few minds. Cardan, Pomponazzi and Jordano Bruno were tinged by it. But in the church orthodoxy ruled.

During the early centuries of the christian era no one was concerned to vindicate the claim of the church of Rome to primacy. The bishop of Rome was the successor of St. Peter; his church was the mother of all the churches; it was situated at the capital of the empire. These were its sufficient titles. About the year 500 'apostolic canons' were collected which afterwards grew into the canon-law. Precepts from the Bible, extracts from the writings of the fathers, decrees of church councils, letters (decretals) of the Roman bishops, formed the body of a distinctive law of the church. But in the schools of Italy the memory of the civil law of the empire had never wholly died out. Early in the twelfth century Irnerius was lecturing in Bologna on the Corpus Juris of Justinian, and from such studies the university arose, just as the University of Paris grew from the teaching of Abelard. A pupil of Irnerius lectured at Oxford. The universities of Paris and Oxford were, however, chiefly concerned with theology and with general culture—with the quaidrivium or group of higher scientific studies.

The teachings of Bologna (in law) and of Salerno (in medicine) were more special. They necessarily implied an acquaintance with classic writers and with the history of the empire. It was inevitable that the question of the legal status of the church should be discussed. When and how was it recognized by the empire? What were its legal sanctions? Upon what grounds were the canon and the civil law to be reconciled? These were soul-stirring questions which the church subsequently answered in its own way. With the answers we have no concern. The civil law dealt with every one of the personal and social relations of mankind; it had to do with the whole life of civil society; its principles were not immediately related to the principles underlying the body of the canon law.

The origins of what we call the revival of learning must be sought in the discussions that inevitably arose from the comparison of principles so different, and the consequent necessity of an appeal to the original writings of authors of classic times. The renaissance had its