The name is absent

220 History of Universities

their immemorial prestige we pay conscious tribute whenever
we speak of a “Faculty of Arts and Sciences,” an “Arts
College,” or a “liberal education.”

From one century to another the content and even the
meaning of these subjects has changed. Grammar meant
Latin Grammar. Latin was the language of law, of litera-
ture, of the Church, of learned conversation, and of inter-
national intercourse. Even within the memory of men now
living, boys in Southern and New England schools preparing
for college spent more time on Latin than on all other sub-
jects combined. Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, was studied
from ancient models and examples. But the major intel-
lectual excitement of the twelfth century was the rediscovery
of Aristotle. In 1100, Christendom knew only two or three
of his books; by the end of the century, largely through
Arabic translations, there had been translated into Latin the
New Logic, the Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics, and the
numerous books on Natural Science. The logical books in
particular appealed to intellectuals of the time, for in Aris-
totle’s Logic they found a ready-made tool, an organon, to
reconcile ancient philosophy with holy writ. The subtleties
of Logic had the same fascination for the medieval scholar’s
mind as have the mysteries of Economics and Chemistry
for twentieth-century scholars. The University of Paris
grew up almost spontaneously out of the crowd of young
men who thronged there to learn Logic; for the word had
been passed around that Logic was the key that unlocked a
good job in the Church, and a necessary prerequisite to the
study of Philosophy, Law, and Theology. The Church, after
a preliminary fear-flurry over the popularity of a “pagan”
author, took Aristotle to her bosom ; and the great doctors
of the Church set themselves the task of reconciling all that
Aristotle taught with the Bible and the Church Fathers.

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