DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0064
38
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
was not without significance. It spoke of a Europe bound
together, instead of isolated nations; of intercourse in times
of peace, no less than in times of war.
The analysis of these elements belongs, we repeat, to more
solid pens; it is the work of philosophic historians. And the
same may be said of the first distinguished spirits concerned
therein. The Abelards, the Roger Bacons cannot be dis-
missed in a few pages. We must be content to accept the
state of things as we find it in France at the end of the
fifteenth, the beginning of the sixteenth century. Still all-
prevailing stood out the great Conservative forces: the Sor-
bonne—or Faculty of Theologians—a court of judgment for
learning, for creed, and for discussion; its foster-child, the
University ; and the equally narrow Parlement—the assembly
which registered the royal decrees. If it refused to do so,
the King was impotent, unless he chose to act arbitrarily;
a power which made it an important political factor, though
it very seldom dared to exercise it. The influence both of
Parlement and of Sorbonne is astounding to read of. The
fear inspired by the Sorbonne, even occasionally in the King,
was almost like a superstition. It had acquired a divine
right, a papacy of its own, which no one had contested; it
could summon a Princess to appear at its bar; it was prac-
tically the omnipotent censor of all the thought and literature
of the Kingdom.
Against these troops of bigotry, there mustered an ever-
growing band of rebels. The more spiritual among them
took refuge in Mysticism, which afterwards exercised no
small influence on the Reformation; the more intellectual
became men of science—rational philosophers—and made
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
was not without significance. It spoke of a Europe bound
together, instead of isolated nations; of intercourse in times
of peace, no less than in times of war.
The analysis of these elements belongs, we repeat, to more
solid pens; it is the work of philosophic historians. And the
same may be said of the first distinguished spirits concerned
therein. The Abelards, the Roger Bacons cannot be dis-
missed in a few pages. We must be content to accept the
state of things as we find it in France at the end of the
fifteenth, the beginning of the sixteenth century. Still all-
prevailing stood out the great Conservative forces: the Sor-
bonne—or Faculty of Theologians—a court of judgment for
learning, for creed, and for discussion; its foster-child, the
University ; and the equally narrow Parlement—the assembly
which registered the royal decrees. If it refused to do so,
the King was impotent, unless he chose to act arbitrarily;
a power which made it an important political factor, though
it very seldom dared to exercise it. The influence both of
Parlement and of Sorbonne is astounding to read of. The
fear inspired by the Sorbonne, even occasionally in the King,
was almost like a superstition. It had acquired a divine
right, a papacy of its own, which no one had contested; it
could summon a Princess to appear at its bar; it was prac-
tically the omnipotent censor of all the thought and literature
of the Kingdom.
Against these troops of bigotry, there mustered an ever-
growing band of rebels. The more spiritual among them
took refuge in Mysticism, which afterwards exercised no
small influence on the Reformation; the more intellectual
became men of science—rational philosophers—and made