Twelve Catholic men of science / edited by Sir Bertram Windle.

  • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Twelve Catholic men of science / edited by Sir Bertram Windle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/288 page 4
    Linacre’s popularity abroad, while due, in the main, to personal qualities, must have owed something to Selling’s introductions. The universities at that time formed a great guild of persons animated with a common purpose; no student was a stranger at any of them. The ‘‘ nations ’’ of mediaeval universities were a recognition of the cosmo- politan character of their influence ; yet with the cosmo- politan idea there was found a unifying influence derived from a central authority. “ In spite of national diver- sities there existed all over Europe a striking unity of spirit, of civilization, of learning and religious feeling, diffused mainly by the Church, which from her centre at Rome acted as the mainspring of mental cultivation everywhere, and penetrated into the internal constitution of all the nations beneath her sway.” This, says the learned historian of the English Universities, Professor Huber of Marburg, must be our guiding light in studying the origin and growth of universities. He goes on to say that long before the period of revived classical learning, the Church manifested an intellectual spirit and an objective historical method in her mode of treating the Holy Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, the ancient writers and their languages, the discoveries made by that age in natural philosophy ; and that the schools and universities were organized and extended in a manner parallel to the progress of the intellectual life of the time. One might expect criticism from Marburg not to be too friendly to Catholic claims, but Huber’s judgement as a historian is too just to allow him to endorse the prejudiced view that the Catholic Church has not favoured the progress of learning. Most of the continen- tal universities, he admits, originated in entire depen- dence on the Church, and her exercise of so important a trust was marked by an honourable activity. In our own country the old English universities are, as well as we can trace, offshoots of Paris, while St. Andrews, Aberdeen, and Glasgow owe their foundation directly to 4
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image