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Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22509, 17 September 1938, Page 20

UNIVERSITY LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

A LIVELY STUDY

The Mediaeval Universities. By Nathan Schachner. Allen and Unwin. 380 pp. (12/6 net.)

[Reviewed by G. M. L. LESTER.]

Mr Schachner's book, a popular study cf the history of the mediaeval university, would be suitable for a course of university extension lectures. His narrative, is lively and interesting. The accuracy of his facts may be presumed from his confession that he "leans heavily" on the monumental work of Dr. H. Rashdall, which, happily for historical students, has recently been reissued. In Mr Schachner's work the proportion between the main facts and matters of detail is admirably preserved. Yet this book suffers from many defects, the most serious of which is the violent prejudice which vitiates his account of the part which the Church played in the period he is considering. Popes, bishops, conclaves, ecclesiastical' institutions incur alike his anger and his scorn. The manner in which he expresses this antiCatholic bias is deplorable. Lest I should be' accused of unfairness, I will quote a few examples. The work of the heroic band of missionaries who gave saints to the Church and converted the barbarian hordes of Goths, Franks, and Vandals to Christianity, is thus described:

It [the Church] exhorted and preached, it spewed forth missionaries with the flame of fanaticism in- them, it bullied and intrigued, it organised and cemented, until the 'barbarian hordes, the savages with mighty thews and uncomplicated minds, rendered at least lip service to Christianity. With that the Church was .content.

Charlemagne sitting at the feet of his teacher Alcuin, the greatest scholar of his day, was, according to Mr Schachner, "no doubt an unctuously humble pupil." Of S. Bernard he. writes: "That grim, gaunt hound of orthodoxy, Bernard, the saint-to-be, had smelt blood. S. Dominic is pilloried as "an ambitious, orthodox- zealot." S. Francis "he lets off more lightly, not because he added to the spiritual heritage of the but because "his loving kindness embraced beasts and birds and flowers of the field." Apart from this serious blemish Mr Schachner's work is well done; and we can forgive the ■ goodnatured patronage which he extends to the master-thinkers of his period for the sake of the clarity and conciseness with which' he. records their part in the growth and consolidation of the university system. Some of his conclusions on grave matters of metaphysic and theology may raise a smile on the faces of those who are trained to deal with such matters; but he succeeds an making a very difficult subject clear to any intelligent," uncritical reader. In his history of the contests with Popes Kings, Provosts, and Councils which ,beset the growing universities in their upward course, Mr Schachner provides a narrative as exciting and as sustained in interest as the Chronicles of Froissart; and .his sense of. humour adds zest to his picture of the-ljife and manners of .mediaeval students and of those amongst whom they lived. It is an excellent picture, even; though Mr Schachner is rather too fond of the muck-rake and seems to judge both men and institutions by the lowest level of their moral - and sanitary achievement. / The numerous quotations in the later part of his book, chosen from authorities like Rashdall, Coulton, and J. A. Symonds, are well selected and full of interest and amusement.