CULTURAL CAUSES
It is time to turn our attention to the cultural context. C. H. Haskins called the pivotal age �the Renaissance of the twelfth century’ and even people who reject the proliferation of �renascences’ will admit that this was indeed a great intellectual century.
Western Europe discovered numerous Greek and Arabic works of science, which were being translated into Latin, analysed, explained and confronted with traditional beliefs. So great was the admiration for the newly discovered revelations from Antiquity that they were treated as absolute authorities. As the Bible contained the truth in matters of religion, so did Aristotle, Galen and Ptolemy in logic, physics, anatomy, astronomy and geography. Truth was discovered, not through observation but through correct understanding of the Ancients, the �giants’ upon whose shoulders the medieval �dwarves’ were sitting. It was no different with jurisprudence. Here also one great authority from Antiquity contained the ultimate perfection in legal science, so the best way to become a jurist was to assimilate the timeless revelation of the Corpus iuris. In this climate of obedience to ancient authority the Christian Middle Ages had to overcome the objection that it was of pagan origin. In the case of Aristotle these qualms were overcome by ascribing to him an anima naturaliter christiana and as far as the great Roman jurists of the classical era were concerned, who were all pagans, all doubts were overcome by the consideration that their writings were part and parcel of the lawbook promulgated by a great Christian emperor. So the way the Corpus became the object of veneration and literal explanation fitted perfectly into the general approach of the age to the giants from Antiquity (and, of course, to the holy books of Christendom).[104]
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