Ch. 15 - The Mystics - Page 2

tacitly or expressly prohibited.

One cannot stop to explain why Aristotle himself would have been
first to forbid the teaching of what was called by his name in the
Middle Ages; but you are bound to remember that this period between
1140 and 1200 was that of Transition architecture and art. One must
go to Noyon, Soissons, and Laon to study the Church that trampled on
the schools; one must recall how the peasants of Normandy and the
Chartrain were crusading for the Virgin in 1145, and building her
fleches at Chartres and Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives while Bernard was
condemning Gilbert at Rheims in 1148; we must go to the poets to see
what they all meant by it; but the sum is an emotion--clear and
strong as love and much clearer than logic--whose charm lies in its
unstable balance. The Transition is the equilibrium between the love
of God--which is faith--and the logic of God--which is reason;
between the round arch and the pointed. One may not be sure which
pleases most, but one need not be harsh toward people who think that
the moment of balance is exquisite. The last and highest moment is
seen at Chartres, where, in 1200, the charm depends on the constant
doubt whether emotion or science is uppermost. At Amiens, doubt
ceases; emotion is trained in school; Thomas Aquinas reigns.

Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of Aquino were both artists,--very
great artists, if the Church pleases,--and one need not decide which
was the greater; but between them is a region of pure emotion--of
poetry and art--which is more interesting than either. In every age
man has been apt to dream uneasily, rolling from side to side,
beating against imaginary bars, unless, tired out, he has sunk into
indifference or scepticism. Religious minds prefer scepticism. The
true saint is a profound sceptic; a total disbeliever in human
reason, who has more than once joined hands on this ground with some
who were at best sinners. Bernard was a total disbeliever in
scholasticism; so was Voltaire. Bernard brought the society of his
time to share his scepticism, but could give the society no other
intellectual amusement to relieve its restlessness. His crusade
failed; his ascetic enthusiasm faded; God came no nearer. If there
was in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typical Englishman
of the future Church of England type than John of Salisbury, he has
left no trace; and John wrote a description of his time which makes
a picturesque contrast with the picture painted by Abelard, his old
master, of the century at its beginning. John weighed Abelard and
the schools against Bernard and the cloister, and coolly concluded
that the way to truth led rather through Citeaux, which brought him
to Chartres as Bishop in 1176, and to a mild