be
checked by main force by reining him round and round, and thereby
exhausting his spirit and strength, and keeping him in a narrow space,
so the wanton efforts of the mind may be guided, if they cannot be
checked. These principles of policy answered their object for a time,
until metaphysical were changed for physical discussions. Then it became
impossible to divert the onward movement, and on the first great
question arising--that of the figure and place of the earth--a question
dangerous to the last degree, since it inferentially included the
determination of the position of man in the universe, theology suffered
an irretrievable defeat. Between her and philosophy there was
thenceforth no other issue than a mortal duel.

[Sidenote: Course of Scholasticism.] Though Erigena is the true founder
of Scholasticism, Roscelin, already mentioned as renewing the question
of Platonic Universals, has been considered by some to be entitled to
that distinction. After him, William of Champeaux opened a school of
logic in Paris, A.D. 1109, and from that time the University made it a
prominent study. On the rise of the mendicant orders, Scholasticism
received a great impulse, perhaps, as has been affirmed, because its
disputations suited their illiterate state; Thomas Aquinas, the
Dominican, and Duns Scotus, the Franciscan, founding rival schools,
which wrangled for three centuries. In Italy, Scholasticism never
prevailed as it did in France and elsewhere, and at last it died away,
its uselessness, save in the political result before mentioned, having
been detected.

[Sidenote: Reaction in the papacy against these pressures.] The middle of
the eleventh century ushers in an epoch for the papacy and for Europe.
It is marked by an attempt at a moral reformation in the Church--by a
struggle for securing for the papacy independence both of the Emperors
of Germany and of the neighbouring Italian nobles--thus far the pope
being the mere officer of the emperor, and often the creature of the
surrounding nobility--by the conversion of the temporalities of the
Church, heretofore indirect, into absolute possessions, by securing
territories given "to the Church, the blessed Peter, and the Roman
republic" to the first of these beneficiaries, excluding the last.
[Sidenote: Preparation for a concentration of the papal power.] As
events proceeded, these minor affairs converged, and out of their union
arose the great conflict of the imperial and pa