Chapter — Concina, Compendium
Chapter XII — On the study of letters upon which Regulars are bound to apply themselves; what method is to be observed in learning the sciences
I. All Christians more or less, according as their condition bears, ought to give their labour to the holy Scriptures. But upon this study Regulars and all men addicted to sacred things are most gravely bound to apply themselves. John Trithemius, Abbot of the illustrious Order of the most holy Patriarch Benedict — most fruitful of distinguished men, not only in ancient times but even in our own age, God being its author — in homily 4 On the Study of the Sacred Scriptures, thus addresses his monks: We see among you certain men ignorant of the Scriptures, unstable of mind, unruly and wandering, to whom we impute ignorance the more, the less they are inclined to discipline. It is base indeed not to know what thou art commanded; it is baser to know and not to learn; but basest of all to contemn. And there are among you those who despise saving knowledge; there are also those who neglect to learn: what if I add that there are others who utterly contemn the knowledge of the divine Scriptures?
And a little before he has these things: O most foolish and most abandoned loiterers, who contemn saving knowledge, and love ignorance of the divine Scriptures rather than understanding! Will affected ignorance render you obnoxious to fewer stripes? Or will you therefore be innocent before God when you offend, because you are willingly ignorant of the mandates of God? With a twofold penalty shall you be tormented: the one, that you contemn to know the way of the mandates of God; the other, that you have not kept the words of God. … Of you also, O most foolish men of darkness, is that saying of St. Jerome understood, that there ignorance is no longer excusable where it is known what that is which is ignored. But it is the more to be guarded against by you, lest you at last be reckoned with those who said to God: Depart from us, we will not the way of thy sciences.
II. Nor are those only to be blamed who unhappily labour under a gross and supine ignorance of those things which regard their own state; but also those who in a certain most mournful sleep most willingly slumber, who are unwilling to move either arm or foot that they may attain necessary knowledge; and moreover those who wear away their time in learning arts, sciences, and disciplines which draw them away from the knowledge which cloistered men ought chiefly to procure. It pleases me to transcribe the words of Louis of Granada, part 2, On Prayer, chapter 4, § 7: “How many are studious today in the World! And among these, how few are disciples of JESUS CHRIST! And what is most bitter, those very men who, having recently left the world, embrace Religion, at that very time at which they ought to strip off the old man and devote themselves to this discipline, when they have scarcely begun to taste God, and have with difficulty opened their eyes to knowing him, are placed among the gentile Philosophers, and are exercised in worldly sciences, where for a long time not a word of JESUS CHRIST is heard. Which study, although on account of the change of times and the perversity of heretics it be in some way necessary, we ought nevertheless to receive it as a great wound of our age and life, as being that which snatches from us so much time, and separates us and makes us exiles for so many years from the company of our Saviour. Chiefly if we attend to what Gregory Nazianzen says, that all those sciences and disciplines of the gentiles entered into the Church as the plagues of Egypt on account of our sins. But since the wretched condition of the times has driven us to this necessity, a congruous time would have to be given and assigned to it; and so provision would have to be made that the edifice and foundation of virtue should be so constituted in the souls of those who begin that they might suffice for sustaining that burden. But so long as the work is tender, and the Christian yet an infant tastes JESUS CHRIST, it is folly to wean him from that very thing, and to give him a taste of the books of the gentiles, where he sees nothing but subtle arguments and sophisms full of fallacies. But what, if we weigh it well, is this other than to imitate the cruelty of Pharaoh machinating the ruin of the people of God, when he commanded that as soon as a Hebrew male was born he should be suffocated in the river and in the waters of Egypt? All things (says the Wise Man) have their time … a time of embracing, and a time to be far from embraces. That time was owed to God, for embracing and for procuring a love so strong that it could not be suffocated or extinguished by the waters of the world: which being done, it will be permitted a little to recede from his embraces, that one may attend to the necessities of one's neighbour. What else did our God will in the law, when he forbade that the newly betrothed should be compelled to take arms and go forth to war? What did he signify, when he forbade to work with the firstborn of an ox, and to shear the firstlings of the sheep, save that that beginning of the firstborn, of which we here speak, should be free from bonds and burdens, that it might expend itself wholly upon itself and upon its own progress? Against all these laws they act who steal away that time from the study of true wisdom and of true knowledge, that they may addict themselves wholly to human sciences.” Thus far the most wise Louis of Granada, to whom nothing is lacking save antiquity, that he might be named a Father of the Church.
III. If the reckoning of the times compelled our elders, when the Philosophy of the Arabs flourished, to give their labour to the Aristotelian doctrines, that they might stab heathen and superstitious men with their own weapons, the opposite vicissitude of the times ought to urge us to apply ourselves to those studies which are opportune for refuting and converting heretics and bad Catholics. At present among the heathen and the Turks who surround us there is no study of Philosophy: they labour under a supine ignorance, and little is needed whereby it may be refuted. There are now heretics who assail Catholic dogmas, and certain Catholic writers who, with a pious intention but forestalled by a false manner of opining, accommodate the rules of evangelical Morals, even unwillingly, too much to human appetitions. Upon that study therefore, that we may imitate our elders, we must apply ourselves which is opportune for tearing up the errors of these men. Christian Theology consists of things to be believed and things to be done; and these two cannot long stand separated.
IV. The method therefore which I suggest to be held by novices, the year of noviceship being completed (far be it that I should wish to erect a tribunal, and propose it as a censor), is this. In a few months let them learn the just rules of reasoning drawn from Dialectic, without the trifles and sophistical cavillings which corrupt the mind, or at least dispose it perversely. Let those rules teach the way of inquiring into truth, since truth alone and unique is the way which leads to heaven. Four or five months having elapsed in this study, let them expend upon the reading of holy Scripture and of ecclesiastical history that triennium which they are wont to consume in the study of Philosophy. It were exceedingly to be desired that someone should publish a course of ecclesiastical history accommodated to the use of the schools, and digested into opportune tracts or dissertations. There would have to be sent before a brief synopsis of the history of the Old Testament, illustrated with few but opportune disputations. Afterwards a specimen of Christian history would have to be run through, that young men might know who were our heroes, and what their acts and deeds. Some very brief dissertations could be added for every century. That work ought to be like a philosophical course, to be substituted for it, and to be completed, as that is, in a triennium. Young men instructed with these safeguards would approach the learning of sacred Christian Theology, both of things to be believed and of things to be done. Then true and constant theologians would depart from the schools. These things I have indicated in passing, subjecting them to the judgment of the wise.
V. Very many other things concerning the religious state would have to be said; but I should overleap the confines of a compendium if I went further. Let these things therefore which have been said suffice, and let them turn out to the greater glory of God and the profit of readers. Amen.