The change took place in the thirteenth century. Its best intellectual efforts, north of the Alps at least, were directed to the study and theological appropriation of the Aristotelian encyclopaedia of metaphysics and universal knowledge.[1] The effect of Aristotle was totally unliterary. And the minds of men, absorbed in mastering this giant mass of knowledge and argument, ceased to regard literary form and the humane aspects of Latin literature.
Until the thirteenth century, dialectic and theology were not completely severed from belles lettres. The Platonic-Augustinian theology of the twelfth century had been idealizing and imaginative, not to say poetical. Such an interesting exponent of it as Hugo of St. Victor appears as a literary personage, despite his stinted advocacy of classical study. One notes that for his time the chief single source of physical knowledge was the Latin version of the Timaeus, certainly not a prosaic composition. Thus, for the twelfth century, an effective cause of the continuance of the study of letters lay herein: whatever branch of natural knowledge might allure the student, he could not draw it bodily from a serious but unliterary repository, like the Physics or De animalibus of Aristotle, which were not yet available; he must follow his bent through the writings of various Latin poets as well as prose-writers. In fine, the sources of profane knowledge open to the twelfth century were literary in their nature, and might form part of the literature which would be read by a student of grammar or rhetoric.
One sees this in John of Salisbury. There may have been a few men who knew more than he did of some particular topic. But his range and readiness of knowledge were unique. And it is evident from his writings that his knowledge (except in logic) had no special or scientific source, but was derived from a promiscuous reading of Latin literature. As a result, he is himself a literary man. One may say much the same of his younger contemporary, Alanus de Insulis.[2] He too has gathered knowledge from literary sources, and he himself is one of the best Latin poets of the Middle Ages. Another extremely poetic
