f
their contempt on scholastic barbarism with its "impious and
thrice-accursed Averroes." The editors of Averroes complain that the
popular taste had forsaken them for the Greek. Nevertheless, while
Fallopius, Vesalius and Galileo were claiming attention to their
discoveries, G. Zabarella, Francesco Piccolomini (1520-1604) and Cesare
Cremonini (1550-1631) continued the traditions of Averroism, not without
changes and additions. Cremonini, the last of them, died in 1631, after
lecturing twelve years at Ferrara, and forty at Padua. The great
educational value of Arabian philosophy for the later schoolmen
consisted in its making them acquainted with an entire Aristotle. At the
moment when it seemed as if everything had been made that could be made
out of the fragments of Aristotle, and the compilations of Capella,
Cassiodorus and others, and when mysticism and scepticism seemed the
only resources left for the mind, the horizon of knowledge was suddenly
widened by the acquisition of a complete Aristotle. Thus the mistakes
inevitable in the isolated study of an imperfect _Organon_ could not
henceforth be made. The real bearing of old questions, and the
meaninglessness of many disputes, were seen in the new conception of
Aristotelianism given by the _Metaphysics_ and other treatises. The
former Realism and Nominalism were lifted into a higher phase by the
principle of the universalizing action of intellect--_Intellectus in
formis agit universalitatem_. The commentaries of the Arabians in this
respect supplied nutriment more readily assimilated by the pupils than
the pure text would have been.

Arabian philosophy, whilst it promoted the exegesis of Aristotle and
increased his authority, was not less notable as the source of the
separation between theology and philosophy. Speculation fell on
irreligious paths. In many cases the heretical movement was due less to
foreign example than to the indwelling tendencies of the dominant school
of realism. But it is not less certain that the very considerable
freedom of the Arabians from theological bias prepared the time when
philosophy shook off its ecclesiastical vestments. In the hurry of first
terror, the church struck Aristotle with the anathema launched against
innovations in philosophy. The provincial council of Paris in 1209,
which condemned Amalricus and his followers, as well as David of
Dinant's works, forbade the study of Aristotle's _Natural Philosophy_
and the _Commentarie