rs became known to
the western world, both Jewish and Christian. Among the Jews, his
writings soon acquired almost canonical authority. His system found
expression in the works of the best known of Hebrew thinkers,
Maimonides (1135-1204), "the second Moses" works which, despite all
orthodox opposition, dominated Jewish thought for nearly three hundred
years, and made the Jews during that time the chief promoters of
rationalism. When Muslim persecution forced a large number of Jews to
leave Spain and settle in Southern France, the works of Averroes and
Maimonides were translated into Hebrew, which thenceforth became the
vehicle of Jewish thought; and thus Muslim Aristotelianism came into
direct contact with Christianity.

Among the Christians, the works of Averroes, translated by Michael
Scott, "wizard of dreaded fame," Hermann the German, and others, acted
at once like a mighty solvent. Heresy followed in their track, and shook
the Church to her very foundations. Recognizing that her existence was
at stake, she put forth all her power to crush the intruder. The Order
of Preachers, initiated by St. Dominic of Calahorra (1170-1221), was
founded; the Inquisition was legalized (about 1220). The writings of
Aristotle and his Arab commentators were condemned to the flames (1209,
1215, 1231). Later, when all this proved unavailing, the best intellects
in Christendom, such as Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), and Thomas Aquinas
(1227-74), undertook to repel the new doctrine with its own weapons;
that is, by submitting the thought of Aristotle and his Arab
commentators to rational discussion. Thus was introduced the second or
palmy period of Christian Scholasticism, whose chief industry, we may
fairly say, was directed to the refutation of the two leading doctrines
of Averroes. Aiming at this, Thomas Aquinas threw the whole dogmatic
system of the Church into the forms of Aristotle, and thus produced that
colossal system of theology which still prevails in the Roman Catholic
world; witness the Encyclical _AEterni Patris_ of Leo XIII., issued
in 1879.

By the great thinkers of the thirteenth century, Averroes, though
regarded as heretical and dangerous in religion, was looked up to as an
able thinker, and the commentator _par excellence_; so much so that St.
Thomas borrowed from him the very form of his own Commentaries, and
Dante assigned him a distinguished place, beside Plato and Aristotle, in
the limbo of ancient sages ('Inferno,