by giving, e as John Scotus gave, an equal if not a superior
place to reason. Reason was the basis on which he rested,
and logic, as the method which controlled the exercise
of its powers, became the science of sciences. It was
therefore natural that the dialectical reaction should
ally itself with the protest of reason against the dogma
of transubstantiation. Berengar of Tours, who main-
tamed what may be called the Zwinglian view of the
Lord’s supper, is therefore so far the beginner of the new
movement that the rationalism of the opinions he put
forth set the whole catholic world thinking, questioning,
disputing. Himself ready enough to recant under pres
sure, the number of his immediate disciples may not have
been large : but the stream of speculation once let loose,
could not be restrained at will. It was a time of religious
reform, and reform went hand in hand with the promotion of education. Monasteries and their schools were
restored or founded in a continually expanding circle.
They busied themselves with the rudimentary arts of
the Trivium, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic ; and the
last, because of its universal applicability, remained the
most popular study even for those who proceeded to the
higher branches of the Quadrivium, or to the faculties of
theology or law. The disputations which in the English
universities only died out at the end of the eighteenth
century, and retained much later a formal existence in
the superior faculties, are the shadowy survivors of a
system which was in its fresh ardour in the eleventh century.
To the enthusiastic dialectician everything would seem
to depend upon the turn of a debate ; a challenge to a
disputation was as serious as a challenge to the combat :
logic became the centre round which all speculation revolved, and the question about its metaphysical basis became the absorbing one for all who pretended to share in the commonwealth of scholars.
Nevertheless the suspicion with which theologians regarded the new study was not soon averted. Apart from antecedent principles it was not likely that they
