Help us create a biggest collection of medieval chronicles and manuscripts on line.
#   A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z 
Medieval chronicles, historical sources, history of middle ages, texts and studies

WILLIAM STUBBS Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects

DOWNLOAD THE ONLY FULL EDITIONS of

Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of England, France, Spain and the Ajoining Countries from the latter part of the reign of Edward II to the coronation of Henry IV in 12 volumes 

Chronicles of Enguerrand De Monstrelet (Sir John Froissart's Chronicles continuation) in 13 volumes 

 
 
 
  Previousall pages

Next  

WILLIAM STUBBS
Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects
page 366



respects freedom of thought also; which reduced moral obligations to a system of penances, pecuniary commutations, monitions, and excommunications, and which made use of the sacraments of the Church as the mere means and appliances of a coercion to external good behaviour, which ought to be a free-will offering and the instinctive product of a sincere heart. Do not think that I am exaggerating the attitude of repulsion in which the pure theologian and the pure moralist stood to the ecclesiastical lawyer who was making money out of the practice of the Courts Christian. You remember how John of Salisbury had doubted whether an archdeacon could be saved : Roger Bacon declares that the study of the civil law, attracting the clever men among the clergy, threw the study of theology into a second place,*/ and secularised the clerical character, making the priest as much a layman as the common lawyer; while Richard of Bury, the author of the Philobiblion, and Holcot the great scholastic, declared, the one that the civilian, although he gained the friendship of the world, was an enemy of God ; the other, that under existing relations the handmaid Hagar, despising the true wife, was in apt analogy to the contempt under which neglected theology sank in the estimation of the world as compared with the law. It is true that these remarks have a primary reference to the civil law, but, as I showed, the civil law was learned chiefly as the executive of the canon law, and it was by its relations to the canon law that it became practical and remunerative. I need not go into much detail about this, but, if I am speaking to any who attended my lectures on Ockham and Marsilius, they will remember how not only those great writers, but a crowd of minor ones, attack the " canon law and its professors as the great enemies, not only of civil government but of vital religion : an exaggeration no doubt, but founded on a true principle. 'Who,' says John of Salisbury, himself a canonist,


  Previous First Next