THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 279
use, the name of the "great Doctor."* From this period down to the eleventh century, although biblical studies did not flourish with the same vigor and the same fruit- fulness as before, yet they did flourish, and principally by the instrumentality of the clergy. It was their care and solicitude that selected the best and most useful things that the ancients had left, arranged them in order, and published them with additions of their own — as did St. Isidore of Seville, Venerable Bede, and Alcuin, among the most prominent; it was they who illustrated the sacred pages with "glosses" or short commentaries, as we see in Walafrid Strabo and St. Anselm of Laon, or ex- pended fresh labor in securing their integrity, as did St. Peter Damian and Blessed Lanfranc. In the twelfth cen- tury many took up, with great success, the allegorical ex- position of Scripture. In this kind, St. Bernard is pre- eminent; and his writings, it may be said, are Scripture all through. With the age of the scholastics came fresh and welcome progress in the study of the Bible. That the scholastics were solicitous about the genuineness of the Latin version is evident from the Correctoria Biblica, or list of emendations, which they have left. But they ex- pended their labors and industry chiefly on interpretation and explanation. To them we owe the accurate and clear distinction, such as had not been given before, of the various senses of the sacred words; the assignment of the value of each "sense" in theology; the division of books into parts, and the summaries of the various parts; the investigation of the objects of the writers; the demonstra- tion of the connection of sentence with sentence, and clause with clause; all of which is calculated to throw much light on the more obscure passages of the sacred volume. The valuable work of the scholastics in Holy Scripture is seen in their theological treatises and in their Scripture commentaries; and in this respect the greatest name among them all is St. Thomas Aquinas.
^ See the Collect on his feast, September 30.
