A competitive system such as that John refers to, was
a natural result of the i intellectual restlessness of the
time. The aim of the school of Chartres was directly
opposed to this. Grammar, according to Bernard, was
not to be treated as a mere technical study, as an instru
ment to be used in philosophy or theology : it was an end
in itself. In a word he endeavoured according to his lights
to substitute for grammar philology in the large sense. The
level to which he attained may appear to us very im
perfect ; but we have at least this testimony to his success,
that John of Salisbury, who followed his method, wrote
indisputably the purest, if not the most graceful, Latin of
the middle ages. He has a taste in style and a breadth
of reading for which no previous period has prepared
us. The idea of learning which he reveals is something
quite different from what we meet with in the preceding
centuries, whether in the eleventh, in the verbose inanities
of k Anselm the Peripatetic, or even at the close of the
ninth, in the childish unconsciousness of saint Notker
Balbulus, himself an inmate of the renowned monastery
of Saint Gall. The latter, after discoursing at length
1 Of the famous Men who have expounded the holy
Scriptures, thinks it necessary to say a word about secular scriptures
literature. For the rest, he savs (he is writing to Solomon,
afterwards bishop of Constance), if thou destrest to know
also the authors of the gentiles, read Priscian. Moreover, the
histories of Josephus the Jew and of our Hegesippus should
be read. And I set an end to my book. Amen.
From what has been said of Bernard s conservative temper, and of the way in which he held aloof from the popular wrangle of dialectical controversies, it may fairly be surmised that his school did not attract so great a number of pupils as some other schools which had sprung up with the dialectical movement, and which devoted themselves to the novel vogue. Such, as we shall see, were those of Melun, and of Saint Genevieve and the Petit Pont at Paris. At the same time we may reasonably infer that Chartres attracted a distinctly higher class
