Consequently a man of parts, with a leaning towards
theological and philosophical learning, took up the study of
civil law, with the hope of more easily winning preferment.[1]
"Compared with such [legal] lore," writes Mr. Mullinger,
"theological learning became but a sorry recommendation
to ecclesiastical preferment; most of the Popes at Avignon
had been distinguished by their attainments in a subject
which so nearly concerned the temporal interests of the
Church; and the civilian and the canonist alike looked down
with contempt on the theologian, even as Hagar, to use the
comparison of Holcot, despised her barren mistress."[2] The
most casual glance through some pages of monastic records
will show how frequent and endless was the litigation in
which the Church was engaged, and consequently how useful
a knowledge of civil law would be.
[1] Bacon, Op. ined., 84, 148.
[2] Mullinger, 211.
But these changes were trifling compared with the
stimulus given to medieval learning by the influx of Greek
books and of Arabic versions of them. In the second half
of the eleventh century the works of Galen and Hippocrates
were re-introduced into Italy from the Arabian empire by a
North African named Constantine, who translated them
at the famous monastery of Monte Cassino.
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