The debate on the classics still rages, though the
arguments pro and con no longer raise the point of their influence on
religious belief. (2) The selection is one among many examples of the
powerful influence of Abelard's method in mediaeval writing and
teaching. The reader will at once see in it the form of the "Yes and
No." (3) It gives a very good idea of the substance of a university
lecture, which would ordinarily consist in reading the actual text and
comments here set down (see p. 111). (4) It shows how the mass of
comments came to overshadow the original text, and by consequence to
absorb the greater part of the attention of teachers and students. One
object of university reform in all studies at the end of the fifteenth
and the beginning of the sixteenth century was to sweep away this
burdensome and often useless material, and to return to the study of the
text itself (see p. 48). (5) It illustrates a common mode of
interpreting in a figurative sense passages from the Bible which to the
modern reader seem to have no figurative meaning. Thus (pp. 64, 66) the
plagues of frogs and flies which Moses brought upon Egypt typify "the
empty garrulousness of dialecticians, and their sophistical arguments ";
the gifts of the three Magi to the infant Jesus signify "the three parts
of philosophy," etc. Mediaeval literature contains a great mass of such
interpretations.
The text and the "gloss," or commentary, are here placed on opposing
pages for the sake of clearness.
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