Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 676

652

§ 103.

PREMATURELY CLAIMED TRIUMPH

[Div. Ill

Especially the removal of the centre of gravity of orders. the Church from the East to the West, from civilized to the still uncivilized nations of the Germanic-Gallic world, materially aided this dismissal of theology from service, and encouraged the withdrawal of study into the convents, as in so many centres of learning in the midst of uncultivated

conditions. § 103.

The long

Prematurely claimed Triumph

period extending across the four centuries which

precede and the four centuries which follow the Dark Ages, is of importance for the development of Theology in its sec-

ond half only. This is not intended to undervalue the rich development of intellectual life in the several monasteries, at the courts of the Carolingian princes, and under Alfred among the Anglo-Saxons, before the night of the Middle Ages set in, but merely to indicate that the great progress of learning rendered no material aid to the development of the conception of theology as such.

It

brought

this devel-

opment scarcely an indirect good. The study of the better Latin authors was continued, the Church Fathers were read and quoted, series of excerpts from the Fathers (catenae patrum) were compiled for exegesis, chronicles were diligently written, Alcuin prepared even some sort of a dogmatic compendium from the works of Augustine, entitled De fide sanctae et individuae Trinitatis lihri duo, which was rapidly passed on from hand to hand; but however bright and clear this learning was compared to the night of ignorance that still rested darkly upon Europe's west and north,

it

produced no

scientific results.

There were fresh

wave-beats in these waters, of momentary duration, as

when

Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgel advocated adoj)tionism, Paschasius Radbertus constructed the theological explanation of transubstantiation, and Gottschalk undertook once

more

to assail the semi-Pelagianism that

had crept

in

on every

hand, and the conflict about the fiUoque became necessary as a defence against the Eastern Church but these efforts effected ;

no enduring

results.

The Church

tacitly giving shape to

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