Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning Book

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL THOUGHT AND LEARNING BY REGINALD LANE POOLE LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE NKW YORK THK MACMILLAN COMPANY Printed in Great Britain by Phototype Limited, Darnel, Herts. PREFACE. To republisli a book after a lapse of thirty-six years can only be excused by the fact that it has long been out of print and that it is still asked for. When a new edition was proposed to me, my first intention was to issue the book as it stood, with no more change than the correction of obvious mis takes. But further consideration showed me that a good deal more than this was necessary if it was to be republished at all. Such revision, however, as I have made has been designedly eteade with a sparing hand, and the book remains in substance and in most details a work not of 1920 but of 1884. Had I written it now, the point of view would not have been quite the same. A large literature on the subjects 1 dealt with has appeared in the interval, and a fresh examination of the materials would certainly have recommended a different selection of illustrations from that which I made then. It was indeed fortunate that I gave the book the title of Illustrations, because it made no claim to be a coherent history, though it has sometimes been mistaken for one. The long interval of time which separates the new edition from the original seems to justify some statement as to the manner in which the essays collected in the book came to be written. In 1881 I resigned a post which I held in the department of manuscripts in the British Museum in order to spend two years in study on the Continent. This plan was made feasible by my election to a travelling scholarship on the Hibbert foundation, and I cannot too heartily express my VI PREFACE. gratitude to the trustees for thus enabling me to begin a course of work which I have carried on ever since. I settled myself then at Leipzig in the autumn of 1881, entered the university, and was promoted doctor of philosophy in the following January. I started my own work by reading John of Salisbury, but soon saw that he could not stand as a beginning. I had become acquainted with the venerable Gotthard Lechler, one of the professors in the theological faculty of the place and superintendent in the reformed church, a man well-known in England for his pioneer studies of Wycliffe. He recommended me to read Hermann Renters Geschichte der religiosen Aufklarunq im Mittelalter, and 1 took his advice. It would not indeed be true to say that I learned much from Renters exaggerated and often dis torted presentment of facts but I found his references useful, and in planning the first half of my book I followed pretty closely the scheme of his. But it seemed to me that the field which Renter surveyed needed an introduction, and in writing this 1 derived many suggestions from the essay on The Schools of Charles the Great, by James Bass Mullinger, whom in after-years 1 had the pleasure of numbering among my friends. Not much of this work was done at Leip ig. Jn the spring of 1882 1 removed to Zurich, where 1 took quarters in a cottage at Biesbaeh about a mile out of the town. There J had the advantage of access to two libraries well-equipped for my special purposes. Both were established in disused churches the town library in the Wasserkirche, close by what was then the uppermost bridge over the Limmat, and the university library in the quire of the Dominican church high up on the Hhvschengniben. From these two libraries 1 enjoyed PREFACE. VI 1 the privilege of borrowing as many as ten volumes at a time, and I made use of the privilege to the full. The limitations of these libraries were also to my benefit...Read More