CHAP. I - COMMENCEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY ERA

Summary

Recapitulation of Introductory Chapter

In our introductory sketch we have essayed to point out some of the more important data on which, up to the period when the University of Cambridge first greets the research of the historian, our estimate of the culture, the philosophy, and the mental characteristics of the preceding centuries must rest. Of both the darkness and the dawn which belong to this era it seems fittest to speak in less general and unqualified language than has often been employed. The darkness, great as it undoubtedly was, had still its illumination; the dawn was far from steady and continuous, but rather a shifting, capricious light, often advancing only again to recede. We have seen how imperfect was the knowledge of the literature of antiquity to which the student, in those times, was able to attain, and how limited was the circle to which what survived of that literature was known; how, amid the fierce shocks and dark calamities that prevailed, the conceptions of the theologian were narrowed and overshadowed by one dread conviction; how, as some sense of security returned, and the barbarian acknowledged a stronger arm, learning again took heart, and minds began once more to enquire, to speculate, and to theorise; how scepticism, with weapons snatched from the armoury of paganism, assailed the doctrines of the Church; how the study of law followed upon the return of external order; how the political exigencies of Rome led her to impose on Europe a code fraught with unscrupulous fiction.