They landed early in
August, probably at Dover. They were at once received with cordiality
by Archbishop Langton, who put their powers to the test by commanding
one of their number to preach before him. The Primate took them into
his favour, and sent them on their way. On the 10th of August they
were preaching in London, and on the 15th they appeared in Oxford,
and were welcomed as the bringers-in of new things. Their success was
unequivocal. We hardly hear of their arrival before we learn that
they were well established in their school and surrounded by eager
disciples.
Be it remembered that any systematic training of young men to serve
as evangelists--any attempt to educate them directly as preachers
well furnished with arguments to confute the erring, and carefully
taught to practise the graces of oratory--had never been made in
England. These Dominicans were already the Sophists of their age,
masters of dialectic methods then in vogue, whereby disputation had
been raised to the dignity of a science. Then a scholar was looked
upon as a mere pretender who could not maintain a _thesis_
against all comers before a crowded audience of sharp-witted critics
and eager partisans, not too nice in their expressions of dissent or
approval. The exercises still kept up for the Doctor's degree in
Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge are but the shadow of what was a
reality in the past.
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