the land; and it was not until 1348, the year of the abrogation of the Privilege of Union in Aragon, that it was promulgated, in a somewhat uncertain manner, as a text-book of the great common law of Castile.1

The first book or partida of the code treats of natural law, the law of nations, and law ecclesiastical, mainly taken from the Roman codes and decretals. The second lays down the power and duties of the king. The third prescribes judicial procedure. The fourth treats of personal and social rights. The fifth is the law of contract; the sixth of wills, inheritance, and succession. The seventh contains the penal code, and the code of criminal procedure. The modern reader who would intelligently and fruitfully study this celebrated code, whether as an historian or as a jurist, will not fail to take advantage of the well-known historical and critical commentary, modestly styled an Ensayo, or essay, of Don Francisco Martinez Marina, which was first published at Madrid 2 at the beginning of the present century, and which is itself a work of great value and interest to the student of comparative legislation.

This was accomplished by the ever-celebrated Ordenamiento de Alcala, promulgated by Alfonso XI., in which it was provided that all cases that could not be decided by the application of the local Fueros, should be decided according to the laws of the Partidas. The spirit of the Fueros was, no doubt, more liberal than that of the Partidas; and it might have been unjust to impose the new code upon Castile immediately, or without some preliminary mitigation. It was thus gradually introduced.

2I have used the second edition (two vols., Madrid, 1834); as well as Don Marcelo Martinez Alcabilla, Códigos de España (two vols., Madrid, 1886).

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE UNIVERSITIES.1

I.-Education at Cordova.

THE first college that was established in the Peninsula was, no doubt, that of Sertorius at Huesca. But the institution was in advance of the times. It perished on the death of its noble founder and patron; and for half a dozen centuries nothing like public instruction was found or imagined in Spain.

With the development of Christianity the clergy arrogated to themselves the exclusive power of teaching.2 Clerical seminaries were established at least as early as 527 by the Visigothic bishops in the second Council of Toledo; and Isidore is said, on somewhat doubtful authority, to have founded a school at Seville. But after the coming of the Arabs, and more especially in the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, schools and colleges were established in most of the Spanish cities; and at

The materials for a sketch, however brief, of the universities of Spain, can hardly be found outside the Peninsula. Don Vicente de la Fuente's Historia de las Universidades is the best general authority; and a good deal of miscellaneous information is to be found in the España Sagrada and the Documentos ineditos. With regard to special institutions, Maestro Pedro Chacon's Historia de la Universidad de Salamanca (Salmantica, 13 Januar. Ann. Salut, 1709), is undoubtedly the most interesting. The copy which I consulted in the National Library at Madrid, where this chapter was actually written, was in MS., and it was not until I returned to Bloomsbury that I learned that Chacon's work was printed in the Semanario Erudito, tom. xviii., Madrid, 1788, with a continuation of the original work in 1726 by D. Antonio Valladares. The Boletin de la Real Acad. de Hist., tom. xv., p. 179 et seq., contains some interesting information. But the Spanish universities do not seem, as a rule, to have engaged the attention of English writers. Of Ticknor's carelessness I have spoken in the text. In Laurie's Early Rise and Constitution of Universities, A. D. 200-1350, there is not a word about Spain! But see P. H. Denifle, Die Entstehung der Universitäten bis 1400 (1886), especially pp. 470, 515.

2 One of the most offensive heresies of the Priscillianists was the claim to call themselves doctors. V. de la Fuente, i., 22.

3 Conc. Caes. Aug. (380), 7.

Cordova especially an admirable system of public instruction anticipated much that was excellent in the Christian universities of modern Europe; for in these early establishments general culture and special knowledge were alike aimed at, while liberality dominated the whole.1

Of the scientific attainments of the great doctors of Cordova, a few words have already been said in relation to the philosophy of Averroës. But the Spanish Arabs were not merely philosophers or even physicians. The numeral figures that are in daily use throughout modern Christendom are of their invention or introduction, and are still called by their name.2 Algebra, unknown even to the great Greek mathematicians, was similarly introduced by the Arabs, and the English word represents the original al jeber, or "the reduction of numbers". The Arabs more punctiliously called, and still call, the science al jeber o al makabella, as that of "reduction and comparison ".

Having thus rendered possible the arithmetical operations, which under the Roman system of numeration could not even have been attempted, they proceeded to develop the theory of quadratic equations and the binomial theorem. They invented spherical trigonometry. They were the first to apply algebra to geometry, to introduce the tangent, and to substitute the sine for the arc in trigonometrical calculations.3 At a time when Europe firmly believed in the flatness of the earth, and was making ready to burn any foolhardy person who thought otherwise, the Moslems at Cordova were teaching geography by globes.

In the practical department of medicine, no less than in the speculative fields of philosophy, the Spanish Arabs offered to their students, without distinction of creed or nationality, the

1 See Littré, Études sur les Barbares, pp. 440-3.

2 It was through the Hindus that the Arabs learned arithmetic, especially that valuable invention termed by us the Arabic numerals, but honourably ascribed by the Arabs to its proper source, under the designation of "Indian numerals". Our word cipher recalls the Arabic word tsaphara or ciphra, that which is blank or void. Murphy and Shakespear, Mahometan Empire in Spain, pp. 351-3; and Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. ii., p. 40. Algebra was also

known to the Hindus.

En science and en philosophie, les Arabes pendant deux siècles furent bien nos maitres, mais-le fond de cette science Arabe est Grec; C'était des Espagnols ecrivant en Arabe. Renan, Mélanges, 13.

La Giralda at Seville, the first astronomical observatory in Europe, was built by the Spanish Arabs, under the superintendence of Jabir ibn Aflah (Geber) in 1190. Murphy and Shakespear, op. cit., 256. See Draper, Intell. Dev. of Europe, ii., 40-43; Syed Amir Ali, Life and Teachings of Mohammed, 361, 422, 425, 548, 556, 577, 578.

highest education that was known or dreamed of in Europe.1 Avenzoar or Ibn Zoar, a chemist and a botanist, published an elaborate Pharmacopoeia for the use of his students at Cordova. Arabic became the language of science, and Andalusia the home of study. Surgery, too, which was lightly esteemed by Christian nations until comparatively modern times, had its professors and its practitioners in Moslem Spain. Albucasis or Abu al Kasim, of Cordova, was not only a bold and a skilful operator, but his treatise on surgical instruments may be read with interest at the present day.2

Nor were the students either of medicine or of arts confined to the sterner sex; and we may possibly plume ourselves less upon the liberality and extent of our progress in modern England, when we read of the fair scholars and doctors who graduated in the schools of Cordova, and brought their skill and their science to the bedsides of their Moslem sisters in the day of sickness.

In the schools of Moslem Spain, not only at the capital, but at Seville, at Saragossa, at Toledo, at Granada, arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, astronomy, the entire circle of the sciences occupied the attention of the students. The professors gave lectures also on philosophy, on natural history, on literature, on rhetoric and composition. The language which, it was their boast, was the most perfect ever spoken by man, was studied with peculiar care. But others were by no means excluded from the course. Grammars and lexicons, not only of the Arabic, but of Greek, of Latin, of Hebrew, were prepared and re-edited. The works of the great master of science, Lisan ud-din of Granada, constitute one of the earliest encyclopædias in the world of letters. The commentaries of Ibn Roshd (Averroes) of Cordova opened the treasure-house of Greek learning to the students of medieval Europe.*

1 The medieval physicians, not only in Spain but even in France, were actually known by the name of the Emir or Mir. See the old French proverb: Il ne faut pas choisir son Mir pour son héritier.

2 Murphy and Shakespear, p. 249; Draper, ii., 39, 40; S. Lane Poole, Moors in Spain, p. 144.

3 The more cultivated Christian Spaniards in the Moslem provinces from the eighth to perhaps the eleventh century, spoke Arabic more largely than their own Latin. Romey, vi., 310.

The learning and culture of the Spanish Arabs is simply denied by many modern Spaniards, as, for instance, by Father Camara, the author of the orthodox Contestacion or refutation of Draper's Intellectual Development (Valladolid, 1885). See especially chap. iv. ; De la ciencia en el Mediodia de Europa," p. 183. The mere denial, uncritical, rhetorical, and unsupported by any authorities, is in itself,

To do more than allude to the numerous and admirable schools that existed in Moslem Spain, almost from the time of the conquest, would be at once outside the scope and beyond the limits of this work. Yet they were the resort of students, from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, from every part of Europe. The celebrated Gerbert, afterwards Sylvester II., most liberal of mediæval Popes (993-1003), is said to have been a student at Cordova towards the end of the tenth century.1 Peter the Venerable, the friend and protector of Abelard, who spent much of his time in Cordova, and not only spoke Arabic fluently, but actually had the Koran translated into Latin, mentions that, on his first arrival in Spain, he found several learned men, even from England, studying astronomy and other less recondite branches of science.2 It was from Toledo that Michael Scot brought his translation of Aristotle and Averroës at the beginning of the thirteenth century (1194-1250) to the strangely enlightened court of the Emperor Frederick II.

Hermann the German, or Alemannus, continued Michael Scot's work at Toledo, and carried his versions of other works into Naples and Sicily, where Manfred had inherited his father's tastes, if not his father's power.

"When the narrow principles of Islam are considered," says a Spanish writer, "the liberality of the Arabs towards the professors of literature justly demands our admiration". The Eastern Caliphs employed foreigners in the superintendence of their schools, and in Spain we find that Christians and even Jews were

of course, worthless; but it is highly interesting as showing the temper of Spanish Churchmen as regards history and science at the present day, and more particularly as regards the bitterness of their bigotry towards Islam, with which Christian Spain has not been brought into serious conflict for 400 years.

A modern Spanish apologist of the great Cardinal Ximenez, Simonet, Ximenez de Cisneros (Granada, 1885), p. 6, speaks of "Lo Atrasado y grosero de su civilizacion of the Spanish Arabs, "que nunca pasó de la barbarie !" This

from Granada!

...

1 This, indeed, is denied, as far as I know, for the first time, by Don Vicente de Lafuente, who asserts that Gerbert studied, not at Cordova, but at Vich in the County of Barcelona, and that he attained his high mathematical excellence under a Christian bishop-name unknown-at a time long anterior to the study of exact sciences at Cordova. Hist. de las Universidades, tom. i., 45-49. There is an interesting sketch of the Life of Gerbert in the English Historical Review, October, 1892, p. 625, by Mr. R. Allen.

2 Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. ii., p. 12; Murphy and Shakespear, op. cit., part ii., sect. ii., especially p. 217. Peter the Venerable was not the translator but the patron. The Englishman who did the work was Robertus Retenensis. See the edition of this celebrated translation, Basle, 1543.

3Siete Partidas, p. vii., tit. xxvi., lev. i.; Renan, Averroës, pp. 205-216; Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, vol. iii., 561.