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Biblicists, or Bible Doctors, (2)

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an appellation given by some writers of the Church of Rome to those who profess to adhere to the Holy Scriptures as the sole rule of faith and practice. Toward the close of the twelfth century the Christian doctors were divided into two parties, the Biblici, or Bible doctors, and the Scholastici. The former interpreted the sacred volume in their schools, though for the most part very miserably; they explained religious doctrines nakedly and artlessly, without calling reason and philosophy to their aid, and confirmed them by the testimonies of Scripture and tradition. The latter, or Scholastics, did nothing but explain the Master of the Sentences, or Peter Lombard; and they brought all the doctrines of faith, as well as the principles and precepts of practical religion, under the dominion of philosophy. And as these philosophical or scholastic theologians were deemed superior to the others in acumen and ingenuity, young men admired them, and listened to them with the greatest attention; while the Biblical doctors, or doctors of the sacred page (as they were called), had very few, and sometimes no pupils. Several persons of eminent piety, and even some Roman pontiffs, in the thirteenth century, seriously admonished the scholastic theologians, more especially those of Paris, to teach the doctrines of salvation according to the Scriptures, with simplicity and purity; but their admonitions were fruitless. The Holy Scriptures, together with those who studied them, fell into neglect and contempt; and the scholastici or schoolmen, who taught the scholastic theology with all its trifling subtleties, prevailed in all the colleges and universities of Europe down to the time of Luther (Mosheim's Eccl. Hist., by Murdoch, bk. 3, cent. 12, pt. ii, ch. 3: 8, and cent. 13, pt. ii, ch. ii, 7)."-Eadie, Eccl. Cyclop. s.v.