i have been reading jean leclerq's the love of learning and the desire for god: a study of monastic culture (new york: fordham university press, 1961), and i am struck again by how much of the current antogonism betwen "science" and "religion" originated in the twelfth century as the practices of the schools and the monasteries diverged.in that context, i am encouraged by the collegiate and monastic community of st. illtyd at llanilltud fawr, where many of the most illustrous of welsh and cornish scholar saints and bishops were trained. illtyd was described by his student samson as "the most learned of all britons in the knowledge of scripture, both the old testament and the new testament, and in every branch of philosophy--poetry and rhetoric, grammar and arithmetic, and he was most sagacious and gifted with the power of telling future events."
the result of the loss of real education has results so obvious they hardly need mentioning: "sciences" whose primary gifts are splintering of societies into groups in which all the "individuals" have guns to solve their problems and the "sovereign nations" have weapons of mass destruction to solve their problems, and "religions" which have produced people who are "spiritual" but not religious.
of course there were problems in wales of the late fifth century. but there was also a comprehensive understanding of the solutions, taught by st. illtyd and his students, which we seem to have lost. might there be a solution not in trying to produce more "renaissance men [and women]" but in educating more of the sort of christians who came from st. illtyd's school? we will not know, of course, unless we make the efforts to return to an understanding of all knowledge as coming from one source, and serving one lord.
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