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[Transcriber's notes]
This is derived from these copies on the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029759630 (1920)
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014712875 (1907)
The two editions are combined because of missing pages in one and missing images in the other.
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book.
Obvious spelling errors have been corrected but "inventive" and inconsistent spelling is left unchanged.
[End Transcriber's notes]
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS SERIES
MAKERS OF MODERN MEDICINE
Lives of the men to whom nineteenth century medical science owes most. Second Edition. New York, 1910. $3.00 net.
THE POPES AND SCIENCE
The story of Papal patronage of the sciences and especially medicine. 45th thousand. New York, 1911. $3.00 net.
MAKERS OF ELECTRICITY
Lives of the men to whom important advances in electricity are due. In collaboration with Brother Potamian, F. S. C, Sc.D. (London), Professor of Physics at Manhattan College. New York, 1909. $2.50 net.
EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW
Addresses in the history of education on various occasions. 3rd thousand. New York, 1911. $2.50 net.
OLD-TIME MAKERS OF MEDICINE
The story of the students and teachers of the sciences related to medicine during the Middle Ages. New York, 1911, $2.50 net.
MODERN PROGRESS AND HISTORY.
Academic addresses on how old the new is in Education, Medicine, Dentistry, Politics, etc. New York, 1912. $2.50 act.
THE CENTURY OF COLUMBUS
The story of the Renaissance $3.50 net.
THE DOLPHIN PRESS SERIES
CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE
First, second and third series, each $1.00 net.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Lectures on The Influence of the Mind on the Body delivered at Fordham University School of Medicine. Appletons, New York, 1912. $6.50 net.
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LE BEAU DIEU (AMIENS)
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THE THIRTEENTH
Greatest of Centuries
BY
JAMES J. WALSH, K.C.St.G., M.D., Ph.D., LL.D, LITT. D. (Georgetown), Sc.D. (Notre Dame)
MEDICAL DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY; PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY AT CATHEDRAL COLLEGE, NEW YORK; LECTURER IN PSYCHOLOGY, MARYWOOD COLLEGE, SCRANTON AND ST. MARY'S COLLEGE, PLAINFIELD; TRUSTEE OF THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL OF AMERICA; MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE, OF THE GERMAN AND FRENCH AND ITALIAN SOCIETIES OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE, A.M.A., A.A.A.S., ETC.
Popular Edition
(Sixtieth Thousand)
CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL PRESS
New York, 1920
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Copyright 1907
James J. Walsh
Set up and stereotyped 1907 (first edition 2,000)
Reprinted with Appendix 1909
Georgetown edition enlarged and extra illustrated 1910
Fourth edition reprinted with additions (6th thousand) 1912
Fifth edition, Knights of Columbus, 50,000, 1912-1913.
Made by
THE SUPERIOR PRINTING CO
AKRON, OHIO
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To Right Rev. Monsignor M. J. Lavelle,
Rector of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, sometime President of the Catholic Summer School, to whose fatherly patronage this book is largely due, and without whose constant encouragement it would not have been completed, it is respectfully and affectionately dedicated by the author.
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PROEM.
(EPIMETHEUS.)
WAKE again, Teutonic Father-ages,
Speak again, beloved primeval creeds;
Flash ancestral spirit from your pages,
Wake the greedy age to noble deeds.
……
Ye who built the churches where we worship,
Ye who framed the laws by which we move,
Fathers, long belied, and long forsaken,
Oh, forgive the children of your love!
(PEOMETHEUS.)
There will we find laws which shall interpret,
Through the simpler past, existing life;
Delving up from mines and fairy caverns
Charmed blades to cut the age's strife.
—Rev. Charles Kingsley.—The Saints' Tragedy.
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PREFACE.
"Why take the style of these heroic times? For nature brings not back the mastodon—Nor we those times; and why should any man Remodel models?"
What Tennyson thus said of his own first essay in the Idyls of the King, in the introduction to the Morte D'Arthur, occurs as probably the aptest expression of most men's immediate thought with regard to such a subject as The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries. Though Tennyson was confessedly only remodeling the thoughts of the Thirteenth Century, we would not be willing to concede—
"That nothing new was said, or else.
Something so said, 'twas nothing,"
for the loss of the Idyls would make a large lacuna in the literature of the Nineteenth Century, "if it is allowed to compare little things with great," a similar intent to that of the Laureate has seemed sufficient justification for the paradox the author has tried to set forth in this volume. It may prove "nothing worth, mere chaff and draff much better burnt," but many friends have insisted they found it interesting. Authors usually blame friends for their inflictions upon the public, and I fear that I can find no better excuse, though the book has been patiently labored at, with the idea that it should represent some of the serious work that is being done by the Catholic Summer School on Lake Champlain, {viii} now completing nearly a decade and a half of its existence. This volume is, it is hoped, but the first of a series that will bring to a wider audience some of the thoughts that have been gathered for Summer School friends by many workers, and will put in more permanent form contributions that made summer leisure respond to the Greek term for school.
The object of the book is to interpret, in terms that will be readily intelligible to this generation, the life and concerns of the people of a century who, to the author's mind, have done more for human progress than those of any like period in human history. There are few whose eyes are now holden as they used to be, as to the surpassing place in the history of culture of the last three centuries of the Middle Ages. Personally the author is convinced, however, that only a beginning of proper appreciation has come as yet, and he feels that the solution of many problems that are vexing the modern world, especially in the social order, are to be found in these much misunderstood ages, and above all in that culmination of medieval progress—the period from 1200 to 1300.
The subject was originally taken up as a series of lectures in the extension course of the Catholic Summer School, as given each year in Lent and Advent at the Catholic Club, New York City. Portions of the material were subsequently used in lectures in many cities in this country from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore., St. Paul, Minn., to New Orleans, La. The subject was treated in extenso for the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1906, after which publication was suggested.
The author does not flatter himself that the book adequately represents the great period which it claims to present. The subject has been the central idea of studies in leisure moments for a dozen years, and during many wanderings in Europe but there will doubtless prove to be errors in detail, for which the author would crave the indulgence of more serious students {ix} of history. The original form in which the material was cast has influenced the style to some extent, and has made the book more wordy than it would otherwise have been, and has been the cause of certain repetitions that appear more striking in print than they seemed in manuscript. There were what seemed good reasons for not delaying publication, however, and leisure for further work at it, instead of growing, was becoming more scant. It is intrusted to the tender mercies of critics, then, and the benevolent reader, if he still may be appealed to, for the sake of the ideas it contains, in spite of their inadequate expression.
PREFACE.
(GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY EDITION).
This third edition is published under the patronage of Georgetown University as a slight token of appreciation for the degree of Doctor of Letters, conferred on the author for this work at the last Commencement. This issue has been enlarged by the addition of many illustrations selected to bring out the fact that all the various parts of Europe shared in the achievements of the time and by an appendix containing in compendium Twenty-Six Chapters that Might Have Been. Each of these brief sketches could easily have been extended to the average length of the original chapters. It was impossible to use all the material that was gathered. These hints of further sources are now appended so as to afford suggestions for study to those who may care to follow up the idea of the Thirteenth as The Greatest of Centuries, that is, of that period in human existence when man's thoughts on all the important human interests were profoundly valuable for future generations and their accomplishments models for all the after time.
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PREFACE.
(FOURTH EDITION).
Many of the now rather numerous readers and hearers of this book, for it has been read in the refectories of over 200 religious communities, have said that the title seemed almost deterring at first because of the high claim that is set up for a medieval century. To mitigate the possible initial deterrent effect of the paradox of the Thirteenth as the Greatest of Centuries, it has seemed worth while in this edition then to premise a series of quotations from some of the most distinguished historical writers in English of our own time which amply justify the claim here set up. Frederic Harrison, Macaulay, Freeman, and Fiske are sufficiently different in themselves to make their agreement in supreme admiration for the Thirteenth Century very striking. In spite of their lack of sympathy with many things in the period, all of them emphatically declare that it is the source of most that is great and good since, and that while we have added details, we have failed to surpass its artistic and intellectual achievement in all the 700 years that have elapsed.
August 15, 1912.
PREFACE.
(FIFTH EDITION).
After the success of the Knights of Columbus edition of the Popes and Science of which 40,000 were issued it gives me great pleasure to accede to the request of the Supreme Officers of the Order to permit them to issue a correspondingly large edition of the present volume. The good work which the Knights of Columbus have thus done in diffusing a knowledge of the true relations of the Church to science,—generous patronage and encouragement, instead of supposed opposition,—will, I think, be greatly furthered by the wide distribution of the information contained in this volume with regard to the supremely helpful attitude of the Church towards art and architecture, literature, education and above all the important social problems, which is so well illustrated during the great period of the Thirteenth Century. I sincerely hope that brother Knights of Columbus will find in the book some of that renewal of devotion to Mother Church that came as the result of my own studies of this glorious period of her history, when her action was untrammelled by political considerations and when she was free to express herself in every great movement for the benefit of humanity.
Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1912.
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FREDERIC HARRISON, MACAULAY,
FREEMAN, AND FISKE
ON
THE PLACE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY IN HISTORY
Of all the epochs of effort after a new life, that of the age of Aquinas, Roger Bacon, St. Francis, St. Louis, Giotto, and Dante is the most purely spiritual, the most really constructive, and indeed the most truly philosophic. … The whole thirteenth century is crowded with creative forces in philosophy, art, poetry, and statesmanship as rich as those of the humanist Renaissance. And if we are accustomed to look on them as so much more limited and rude it is because we forget how very few and poor were their resources and their instruments. In creative genius Giotto is the peer, if not the superior of Raphael. Dante had all the qualities of his three chief successors and very much more besides. It is a tenable view that in inventive fertility and in imaginative range, those vast composite creations—the Cathedrals of the Thirteenth Century, in all their wealth of architectural statuary, painted glass, enamels, embroideries, and inexhaustible decorative work may be set beside the entire painting of the sixteenth century. Albert and Aquinas, in philosophic range, had no peer until we come down to Descartes, nor was Roger Bacon surpassed in versatile audacity of genius and in true encyclopaedic grasp by any thinker between him and his namesake the Chancellor. In statesmanship and all the qualities of the born leader of men we can only match the great chiefs of the Thirteenth Century by comparing them with the greatest names three or even four centuries later.
Now this great century, the last of the true Middle Ages, which as it drew to its own end gave birth to Modern Society, has a special character of its own, a character that gives it an abiding and enchanting interest. We find in it a harmony of power, a universality of endowment, a glow, an aspiring ambition and confidence such as we never find in later centuries, at least so generally and so permanently diffused. …
The Thirteenth Century was an era of no special character. It was in nothing one-sided and in nothing discordant. It had great thinkers, great rulers, great teachers, great poets, {xii} great artists, great moralists, and great workmen. It could not be called the material age, the devotional age, the political age, or the poetic age in any special degree. It was equally poetic, political, industrial, artistic, practical, intellectual, and devotional. And these qualities acted in harmony on a uniform conception of life with a real symmetry of purpose.
There was one common creed, one ritual, one worship, one sacred language, one Church, a single code of manners, a uniform scheme of society, a common system of education, an accepted type of beauty, a universal art, something like a recognized standard of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. One-half of the world was not occupied in ridiculing or combating what the other half was doing. Nor were men absorbed in ideals of their own, while treating the ideals of their neighbors as matters of indifference and waste of power. Men as utterly different from each other, as were Stephen Langton, St. Francis, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Dante, Giotto, St. Louis, Edward I—all profoundly accepted one common order of ideas, equally applying to things of the intellect, of moral duty, of action, and of the soul—to public and private life at once—and they could all feel that they were all together working out the same task. It may be doubted if that has happened in Europe ever since.—Frederic Harrison, A Survey of the Thirteenth Century in the Meaning of History and Other Historical Pieces. Macmillan, 1908.
* * *
The sources of the noblest rivers which spread fertility over continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps, and rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the history of our country during the Thirteenth Century may not unaptly be compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that we must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the national character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has ever since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders, islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics, their feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared with distinctness that constitution which has ever since, through all changes, preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other free constitutions in the world are copies, and which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which any great {xiii} society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that the House of Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblies which now meet, either in the old or in the new world, held its first sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity of a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival of the imperial jurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who manned the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges which still exist at both the great national seats of learning were founded. Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than the languages of the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece alone. Then too appeared the first faint dawn of that noble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many glories of England.—Macaulay.
* * *
This time of fusion during which all direct traces of foreign conquest were got rid of, was naturally the time during which the political and social institutions of the country gradually took on that form which distinguishes modern England, the England of the last 600 years from the older England of the first 600 years of English history. … By the time of Edward I, though the English tongue had not yet finally displaced French, it had assumed the main characters which distinguished its modern from its ancient form. In architecture a great change had taken place, by which the Romanesque style gave way to the so-called Gothic. The subordinate arts had taken prodigious strides. The sculpture of the thirteenth century is parted from that of the twelfth by a wider gap than any that parts these centuries, in law or language. And in the root of the matter in our law and constitution itself those changes have been made which wrought the body politic of England into a shape which has left future ages nothing to do but to improve in detail. (Italics ours.)
In short the great destructive and creative age of Europe and civilized Asia passed over England as it passed over other lands. The age which saw the Eastern Empire fall beneath the arms of the Frank and the Eastern Caliphate before the arms of the Mogul—the age which saw the true power and glory of the Western Empire buried in the grave of the Wonder of the World—the age which ruled that the warriors of the Cross should work their will in Spain and in Prussia {xiv} and should not work their Will in the Holy Land itself—the age which made Venice mistress of the Eastern seas, and bade Florence stand forth as the new type of democratic freedom—the age which changed the nominal kingship of the Lord of Paris and Orleans into the mighty realm of Philip Augustus and Philip the Fair—this age of wonders did its work of wonder in England also.—Freeman, The Norman Conquest, Vol. V, page 606. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1876.
* * *
The moment when this interaction might have seemed on the point of reaching a complete and harmonious result was the glorious thirteenth century, the culminating moment of the Holy Roman Empire. Then, as in the times of Caesar or Trajan, there might have seemed to be a union among civilized men, in which the separate life of individuals and localities was not submerged. In that golden age, alike of feudal system of empire and of Church, there were to be seen the greatest monarchs, in fullest sympathy with their peoples, that Christendom has ever known—an Edward I, a St. Louis, a Frederick II. Then when in the Pontificates of Innocent III and his successors the Roman Church reached its apogee, the religious yearning of men sought expressions in the sublimest architecture the world has seen. Then Aquinas summed up in his profound speculations the substance of Catholic theology, and while the morning twilight of modern science might be discerned in the treatises of Roger Bacon, while wandering minstrelsy revealed the treasures of modern speech, soon to be wrought under the hands of Dante and Chaucer into forms of exquisite beauty, the sacred fervor of the apostolic ages found itself renewed in the tender and mystic piety of St. Francis of Assisi. It was a wonderful time, but after all less memorable as the culmination of medieval empire and medieval church than as the dawning of the new era in which we live to-day.
* * *
While wave after wave of Germanic colonization poured over Romanized Europe, breaking down old boundary lines and working sudden and astonishing changes on the map, setting up in every quarter baronies, dukedoms, and kingdoms fermenting with vigorous political life; while for twenty generations this salutary but wild and dangerous work was going on, there was never a moment when the imperial sway of {xv} Rome was quite set aside and forgotten, there was never a time when union of some sort was not maintained through the dominion which the Church had established over the European mind. When we duly consider this great fact in its relations to what went before and what came after, it is hard to find words fit to express the debt of gratitude which modern civilization owes to the Roman Catholic Church. When we think of all the work, big with promise of the future, that went on in those centuries which modern writers in their ignorance used once to set apart and stigmatize as the "Dark Ages"; when we consider how the seeds of what is noblest in modern life were then painfully sown upon the soil which Imperial Rome had prepared; when we think of the various work of a Gregory, a Benedict, a Boniface, an Alfred, a Charlemagne, we feel that there is a sense in which the most brilliant achievements of pagan antiquity are dwarfed in comparison with these. Until quite lately, indeed, the student of history has had his attention too narrowly confined to the ages that have been pre-eminent for literature and art—the so-called classical ages—and thus his sense of historical perspective has been impaired.—Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, or The Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religions Liberty.
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CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION, THE THIRTEENTH, GREATEST OF CENTURIES. 1
Deeds and men of a marvellous period. Evolution and man. No intellectual development in historical period. The wonderful medieval pre-renaissance. Our Gothic ancestors. Education for the classes and masses. Universities, cathedrals, arts, and crafts. Origins in art. Supreme literature in every language. Origins in law and liberty. Beginnings of modern democracy.
CHAPTER II
UNIVERSITIES AND PREPARATORY SCHOOLS. 18
Origins of universities. Triumph of invention. Character unchanged ever since. University evolution, Salerno, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Italian, French and Spanish Universities. Origin of preparatory schools. Cathedral colleges. Decree of the Council of Lateran, every cathedral to have a school and metropolitan churches to have colleges. Attendance at these preparatory schools.
CHAPTER III
WHAT AND HOW THEY STUDIED AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 33
Education of the Middle Ages usually ridiculed. Ignorance of critics. Scholastics laughed at by those only who know them, but at second hand. "Logic, ethics and metaphysics owe to scholasticism a precision, unknown to the ancients themselves" (Condorcet.) Teaching methods. Scholarly interests quite as in our own day. Magnetism in literature. A magnetic engine. Aquinas and the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy. Roger Bacon's four grounds of human ignorance. Prophecy of explosives for motor purposes. Correction of the calendar. Contributions to optics. Experiment as the basis of scientific knowledge. Whewell's appreciation. Albertus Magnus and the natural sciences Humboldt's praise for his physical geography. Contributions to botany. Declaration with regard to foolish popular notions. The {xviii} great group of scientific men at the University of Paris. Robert of Sorbonne's directions how to study. Education of the heart as well as the head.
CHAPTER IV
THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS AND DISCIPLINE. 58
Largest universities of all time. More students to the population than at any time since. Discussion as to the numbers in attendance. Comparative average ages of students. How such numbers were supported. Working their way through college. Some reasons for false impressions, as to university attendance. M. Compayré's paragraph on education in the Middle Ages. Supposed ignorance. The monks at the universities. How many students clerical. College abuses and discipline. The "nations," the under-graduate committee on discipline. Teaching practical democracy.
CHAPTER V
POST-GRADUATE WORK AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 78
Medieval universities and additions to knowledge. Original work done, their best apology. Extensive writings of professors. Enthusiasm of students who copied their books. Post-graduate work in theology and in philosophy. Period of the scholastics. Graduates in law and collections and digests. Post-graduate work in medicine most important. Teaching by case histories. The significance of dropsy, suture of divided nerves, healing by first intention. William of Salicet and his pupil Lanfranc. The danger of the separation of surgery from medicine. Red light and smallpox. Mondaville and Arnold of Villanova. The republication of old texts. The supposed bull forbidding anatomy. The supposed bull forbidding chemistry. The encouragement of science in the medieval universities.
CHAPTER VI
THE BOOK OF THE ARTS AND POPULAR EDUCATION. 96
The Gothic Cathedrals, the stone books of medieval arts. St. Hugh of Lincoln. Wealth of meaning in the Cathedrals. Their power to please. Gothic architecture everywhere, but no slavish imitation. English, French, German, and Italian Gothic. Spanish Gothic. Gothic ideas in modern architecture. Beauty of details. Sculpture. Gothic Statuary, not stiff, nor ugly. Most affinity with Greek sculpture (Reinach). The Angel Choir at Lincoln. {xix} The marvellous stained glass of the period,—Lincoln, York, Chartres, Bourges. Storied windows and their teachings. Beauty and utility in the arts. Magnificent needlework, the Cope of Ascoli. The Cathedral as an educator. The Great Stone Book, which he who ran must read. Symbolism of the Cathedrals. The great abbeys, the monasteries, municipal and domestic architecture of the century. Furniture and decorations. Ruskin on Giotto's tower.
CHAPTER VII
ARTS AND CRAFTS—GREAT TECHNICAL SCHOOLS. 124
Solution of problems of social unrest. Blessed is the man who has found his work. Merrie England. The workman's pleasure in his work. Influence of the Church in the arts and crafts movement. Rivalry in building the Cathedrals. Organization of technical instruction. Correction of optical illusions. The village blacksmith and carpenter. Comparative perfection of the work done then and now. The trade guilds and the training of workmen. The system of instruction, apprentice, journeyman, master. The masterpiece. Social co-operation and fraternity. Mystery plays and social education.
CHAPTER VIII
GREAT ORIGINS IN PAINTING. 138
Rise of painting. Franciscans and Dominicans, patrons of art. St. Francis' return to nature, the incentive of art. Cimabue's Madonna. Gaddi. Guido, Ugolino and Duccio of Siena. Berlinghieri of Lucca, Giunta of Pisa. Giotto the master. His work at Assisi, Verona, Naples, Rome. Marvellous universal appreciation of art. Contrast with other times. False notions with regard to Gothic art. Sadness not a characteristic. The beauty of the human form divine.
CHAPTER IX
LIBRARIES AND BOOKMEN. 149
Monastic regulations for collecting and lending books. Library rules. Circulating libraries. The Abbey of St. Victor, the Sorbonne, St. Germain des Prés, and Notre Dame. Fines for misuse of books. Library catalogues. Library of La Ste. Chapelle. First medical library at the Hotel Dieu. How books were collected. Exchange of books. Special revenue for the libraries in the monasteries. Book collecting and bequests by ecclesiastics. Cost of books. Franciscan and Dominican libraries. Richard De Bury's {xx} Philobiblon. How books were valued. Richard a typical bookman. His place in history. Illuminated books. The most interesting and original of all time (Humphreys). St. Louis' beautiful books.
CHAPTER X
THE CID, THE HOLY GRAIL, THE NIBELUNGEN. 166
Literature equal to accomplishment in other lines. Architecture and literature, and the expression of national feelings. National epics of three western-most nations informed within the same half century. The Cid, its unity of authorship and action. Martial interest and spirited style. Tender domestic scenes. Psychological analysis. Walter Mapes, and the Arthur Legends. Authorship and place in literature. Launcelot one of the greatest heroes ever invented. Unity of authorship of Nibelungen. Place in literature. Modern interest. Influence of these epics on national poetry.
CHAPTER XI
MEISTERSINGERS, MINNESINGERS, TROUVÈRES, TROUBADOURS. 182
A great century of song. The high character of women, as represented in these songs. Nature-poetry, and love. Walter Von der Vogelweide, Hartman Von Aue, Wolfram Von Eschenbach, Conrad Von Kirchberg. The Troubadours and their love songs. Selections from Arnaud de Marveil, Arnaud Daniel, Bertrand de Born, William of St. Gregory, and Peyrols.
CHAPTER XII
GREAT LATIN HYMNS. 194
Greatest poetic bequest of the period. Place of rhyme in Latin. Latin hymns the first native poetry in the language. Influence of their charm of rhyme and rhythm on the developing languages of Europe. Supremacy of the Dies Irae, its many admirers. Other surpassing Latin Hymns. Celtic origin of rhyme. The Stabat Mater, some translations. Critical faculty in hymn selection. Jerusalem the Golden, its place in Christian song. Aquinas' hymn, the Pange Lingua, its popularity. Musical expression of feeling and plain chant. The best examples from this period. Invention of part music, its adaptation and development in popular music.
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CHAPTER XIII
THE THREE MOST READ BOOKS. 209
A generation and the books it reads. Reynard the Fox, the Golden Legend, and the Romance of the Rose. "Reynard the most profoundly humorous book ever written." Powers of the author as observer. Besides Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote and Pilgrim's Progress. Its relations to Uncle Remus and many other animal stories. The place of the Golden Legend in literature. Longfellow's use of it. The Romance of the Rose for three centuries the most read book in Europe. The answer to the charge of dullness. The Rose as a commentary on the morning paper. The abuse of wealth as the poet saw it in the Thirteenth Century. Praise of "poverty light heart and gay."
CHAPTER XIV
SOME THIRTEENTH CENTURY PROSE. 221
Prose of the century as great as the poetry. Medieval Latin unappreciated but eminently expressive. The prose style, simple, direct and nicely accurate. Saintsbury's opinion as to the influence on modern literature of the scholastic philosophers' style. The chroniclers and the modern war correspondent. Villehardouin, Jocelyn of Brakelond, Joinville, Matthew of Paris. Vincent of Beauvais and the first encyclopedia. Pagel's opinion of Vincent's style. Durandus' famous work on symbolism. Examples of his style. The Scriptures as the basis of style.
CHAPTER XV
ORIGIN OF DRAMA. 238
St. Francis and the first nativity play. Earlier mystery plays. Chester cycle. Humorous passages introduced. Complete bible story represented. Actors' wages and costumes. Innocent diversion and educational influence. Popular interest. Everyman in our own day. Comparison with the passion play at Oberammergau. The drama as an important factor in popular education. Active as well as passive participation in great poetry. Anticipation of a movement only just beginning again.
CHAPTER XVI
FRANCIS, THE SAINT—THE FATHER OF THE RENAISSANCE. 254
The Renaissance, so-called. Before the Renaissance. Gothic architecture and art. Francis the father of the real Renaissance. {xxii} Matthew Arnold and "the poor little man of God." St. Francis as a literary man. The canticle of the Sun. St. Francis' career. The simple life. Ruskin on Francis' poverty. St. Francis in the last ten years. The disciples who gathered around him. A century of Franciscans. The third order of St. Francis. Kings and queens, nobles and scholars hail St. Francis as father. What the religious orders accomplished. St. Clare and the second order.
CHAPTER XVII
AQUINAS, THE SCHOLAR. 270
The nobility and education. Studies at Cologne and Paris. The distinguished faculty of Paris in his time. Summa Contra Gentiles. Pope Leo XIII. and Aquinas' teaching. Foundations of Christian apologetics. Characteristic passages from Aquinas. Necessity for revelation of God's existence. Explanation of Resurrection. Liberty in Aquinas' writings. Greatness of Aquinas and his contemporaries and the subsequent decadence of scholasticism. Contemporary appreciation of St. Thomas. His capacity for work. His sacred poetry.
CHAPTER XVIII
LOUIS, THE MONARCH. 289
The greatest of rulers. His relations as a son, as a husband, as a father. His passion for justice. Interest in education, in books, in the encyclopedia. Tribute of Voltaire. Guizot's praise. The righting of wrongs. Letters to his son. Affection for his children. Regard for monks. Would have his children enter monasteries. Treatment of the poor. Attitude towards lepers. One of nature's noblemen. Louis and the crusades. Bishop Stubbs, on the real meaning of the crusades. Louis' interest in the crusades not a stigma, but an added reason for praise.
CHAPTER XIX
DANTE, THE POET. 300
Dante not a solitary phenomenon. A Troubadour. His minor poems and prose works. His wonderful Sonnets. The growth of appreciation for him. Italian art, great as it kept nearer to Dante. Tributes from Italy's' greatest literary men. Michael Angelo's sonnets to him. A world poet. English admiration old and new. Tributes of the two great English Cardinals. Dean Church's Essay. Ruskin on the Grotesque on {xxiii} Dante. German critical appreciation. Humboldt's tribute. America's burden of praise. Dante and the modern thinker. His wonderful powers of observation. Comparison with Milton. His place as one of the supreme poets of all times. A type of the century.
CHAPTER XX
THE WOMEN OF THE CENTURY. 319
Women of the century worthy of the great period. St. Clare of Assisi's place in history. Happiness. The supper at the Portiuncula. Peace, in the cloister and woman's influence. Equality of sexes in the religious orders. St. Elizabeth of Hungary, the first settlement worker. "Dear St. Elizabeth's" influence on women since her time. Blanche of Castile as Queen and mother. Her influence as a ruler. Difficulties with her daughter-in-law. Mabel Rich, the London tradesman's wife, and her sons. Isabella Countess of Arundel and courageous womanly dignity. Women's work in the century. Service of the sick. Co-education in Italy. Reason for absence in France and England. Women professors at Italian universities. Feminine education four times in history. Reasons for decline. Women in the literature of the century. The high place accorded them by the poets of every country. Dante's tribute to their charm without a hint of the physical.
CHAPTER XXI
CITY HOSPITALS—ORGANIZED CHARITY. 337
Charity occupied a co-ordinate place to education. Pope Innocent III. organized both. His foundations of the City hospitals of the world, the Santo Spirito at Rome the model. Rise of hospitals in every country, Virchow's tribute to Innocent III. Care for lepers in special hospitals and eradication of this disease. The meaning of this for the modern time and tuberculosis. Special institutions for erysipelas which prevented the spread of this disease. The organization of charity. The monasteries and the people. The freeing of prisoners held in slavery. Two famous orders for this purpose.
CHAPTER XXII
GREAT ORIGINS IN LAW. 350
Legal origins most surprising feature of the century. Significance of Magna Charta. Excerpts that show its character. The church, widows and orphans, common pleas, international law, no {xxiv} tax without consent, rights of freemen. Development of meaning as time and progress demanded it. Bracton's digest of the common law. Edward I. the English Justinian. Simon de Montfort. Real estate laws.
CHAPTER XXIII
JUSTICE AND LEGAL DEVELOPMENT. 364
Legal origins in other countries besides England. Montalembert and France. St. Louis and the enforcement of law. Fehmic courts of Germany and our vigilance committees. Andrew II., and the "Golden Bull, that legalized anarchy" in Hungary. Laws of Poland. The Popes and legal codification; Innocent III, Gregory IX. Commentaries on law at the universities. Pope Boniface VIII, the canonist. Origin of "no taxation without representation."
CHAPTER XXIV
DEMOCRACY, CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AND NATIONALITY. 375
Origins in popular self-government. Representation in the governing body. German free cities. Swiss declaration of independence. Christian socialism and "the three eights." Saturday half-holiday, and the vigils of holy-days. Christian fraternity and the guilds. Organization of charity. The guild merchant and fraternal solidarity. The guild of the Holy Cross, Stratford, and its place in town government and education. Progress of democracy. How the crusades strengthened the democratic spirit. Their place in the history of human liberty and of nationality.
CHAPTER XXV
GREAT EXPLORERS AND THE FOUNDATION OF GEOGRAPHY. 392
Geography's wonderful development. Modern problems, Thibet explored, Lhasa entered. This perhaps the greatest triumph of the century. Marco Polo's travels. Former mistrust now unstinted admiration. Striking observations of Polo. John of Carpini's travels in the Near East. Colonel Yule on the Book of the Tartars. Friar William of Rubruquis' travels in Tartary. Anticipations of modern opinions as to language. Some details of description. Friar Odoric and his Irish companion. The Praemonstratensian Hayton. Franciscan missionary zeal supplied for our geographical societies. Idle monks.
{xxv}
{xxx}
{1}
{18}
{33}
{58}
{78}
{96}
{124}
{138}
{149}
{166}
{182}
{194}
{209}
{221}
{238}
{254}
{270}
]
{289}
{300}
{319}
{337}
{350}
{364}
{375}
{392}
CHAPTER XXVI
GREAT BEGINNINGS OF MODERN COMMERCE. 415
This is the most interesting phase for our generation. Hanseatic League and obscurity of its origin. League of Lombard cities and effect of crusades. Importance of Hansa. Enforcement of its decrees. Confederation of cities from England to Central Russia. Surprising greatness of the cities. Beginnings of international law. Commerce and peace. Origins of coast regulation. Fraternal initiations and their equivalents in the aftertime. Origins in hazing. Commerce and liberty. Fostering of democracy. International comity.
APPENDIX I
So-called history. 430
APPENDIX II
TWENTY-SIX CHAPTERS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 432
I.
America in the Thirteenth Century--Papal documents.
II.
A representative upper house.
III.
The parish, and training in citizenship.
IV.
The chance to rise.
V.
Insurance--fire, marine, robbery, against injustice.
VI.
Old age pensions, disability wages.
VII.
Ways and means of charity--organized charity.
VIII.
Scientific universities, investigation, writing.
IX.
Medical education and high professional status.
X.
Magnetism--first perpetual motion inventor--the North Pole.
XI.
Biological theories--evolution, recapitulation.
XII.
The Pope of the century--Innocent III.
XIII.
International arbitration.
XIV.
Bible revision.
XV.
Fiction of the century.
XVI.
Great orators.
XVII.
Great beginnings of English literature.
XVIII.
Origins of music.
XIX.
Refinement and table manners.
XX.
Textiles, satins, brocades, laces, needlework.
XXI.
Glass-making.
XXII.
Inventions.
XXIII.
Industry and trade.
XXIV.
Fairs and markets.
XXV.
Intensive farming.
XXVI.
Cartography and the teaching of geography--Hereford Map of the World.
APPENDIX III
CRITICISMS, COMMENTS, DOCUMENTS. 464
Human progress. The century of origins. Education. Technical education of the masses. How it all stopped. Comfort and poverty. Comfort and happiness. Comfort and health. Hygiene. Wages and the condition of working people. Interest and loans. The eighteenth lowest of centuries.
{xxvi}
{xxvii}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
1
Le Beau Dieu (Amiens)
Frontispiece(ii)
2
Virgin with the Divine Child (Mosaic, St. Mark's, Venice)
Opposite page 53
Pulpit (N. Pisano, Siena)
Opposite page 84
Archangel Michael (Giovanni Pisano, Pisa)
Opposite page 135
Christ (Andrea Pisano, Florence)
Opposite page 136
Sta. Reparata (Andrea Pisano, Florence)
Opposite page 137
Paschal Candlestick (Baptistery, Florence)
Opposite page 158
Reliquary (Cathedral Orvieto, Ugolino di Vieri)
Opposite page 159
The Church in Symbol (Paris)
On page 1710
Adoration of Magi (Pulpit, Siena, Nic. Pisano)
Opposite page 2211
Cathedral (Lincoln)
Opposite page 2812
Cathedral (York)
Opposite page 2813
Cloister of St. John Lateran (Rome)
Opposite page 3214
Jacques Coeur's House (Bourges)
On page 3215
Rathhaus (Tangermünde)
Opposite page 4216
Cathedral (Hereford)
Opposite page 4417
Cathedral (York, East)
Opposite page 4418
Single Flying Buttress
On page 5719
Christ Driving Out Money Changers (Giotto)
Opposite page 6420
Bride from Marriage of Cana (Giotto)
Opposite page 6421
Head (Mosaic, St. Mark's, Venice)
Opposite page 6422
Head of Blessed Virgin Annunciation
Opposite page 6423
Petrarch Portraits by Benozzo Gozzoli
Opposite page 7124
Dante Portraits by Benozzo Gozzoli
Opposite page 7125
Giotto Portraits by Benozzo Gozzoli
Opposite page 7126
Screen (Hereford)
Opposite page 8727
Doorway of Sacristy (Bourges)
Opposite page 8728
Double Flying Buttress
On page 9529
Angel Choir (Lincoln)
Opposite page 9630
Cathedral (Amiens)
Opposite page 10531
Cathedral (Rheims)
Opposite page 10732
Cloister of St. Paul's (without the walls, Rome)
Opposite page 11233
Cathedral (Bourges)
Opposite page 11634
Cathedral (Chartres)
Opposite page 11635
Durham Castle and Cathedral
Opposite page 12036
King John's Castle (Limerick)
Opposite page 12037
Giotto's Tower (Florence)
Opposite page 12238
Palazzo Vecchio (Arnulfo, Florence)
Campanile (Giotto)
Opposite page 122{xxviii}
39
Fountain (Perugia) [Town Pump]
Opposite page 12640
Lavatoio (Todi) [Public Wash-House]
Opposite page 12641
Reliquary (Limoges Museo, Florence)
Opposite page 13342
Crucifix (Duomo, Siena)
Opposite page 13343
Madonna, Cimabue (Rucellai Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence)
Opposite page 13644
St. Francis' Marriage with Poverty (Giotto, Assisi)
Opposite page 14445
Espousal of St. Catherine (Gaddi, XIII. Century pupil, Perugia)
Opposite page 14746
Group from Visitation (Rheims)
On page 14847
Monument of Cardinal de Bray (Arnolfo)
Opposite page 15648
Decoration (XIII. Cent. Psalter MSS.)
On page 16549
Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (Rome's Gothic Cathedral)
Opposite page 16850
Crozier (obverse and reverse)
On page 18151
Tower of Scaligers
On page 19352
St. Francis Prophesies the Death of Celano (Giotto, Upper Ch., Assisi)
Opposite page 19753
Virgin and Child (Pisa, Campo Santo, Giov. Pisano)
Opposite page 20054
Entombment of Blessed Virgin
On page 20855
St. Christopher (alto relievo, Venice)
Opposite page 21456
Madonna and Child (Giov. Pisano, Padua)
Opposite page 21457
Tower (Lincoln)
On page 22058
Porta Romana Gate, Florence (N. Pisano)
Opposite page 22659
Ponte Alle Grazie (Lapo)
Opposite page 22660
Church and Cloisters, San Antonio (Padua)
Opposite page 23261
St. Catherine's (Lübeck)
Opposite page 23262
Stone Carving (Paris)
On page 23763
The First Nativity Play (Giotto, Upper Church of Assisi)
Opposite page 24064
Palazzo Buondelmonti (Florence)
Opposite page 24865
Palazzo Tolomei (Siena)
Opposite page 24866
Capital (Lincoln)
On page 25367
The Glorification of St. Francis (Giotto, Lower Church of Assisi)
Opposite page 25668
St. Francis (Church of the Frari, Venice, Nic. Pisano)
Opposite page 26169
St. Clare—Three Franciscans (Giotto)
Opposite page 26470
St. Louis—Three Franciscans (Giotto)
Opposite page 26471
St. Elizabeth—Three Franciscans (Giotto)
Opposite page 26472
Side Capital (Lincoln)
On page 26973
Notre Dame (Paris)
Opposite page 29074
La Sainte Chapelle (Paris)
Opposite page 294 [missing]
75
Cathedral (Orvieto)
Opposite page 294 [missing]
{xxix}
76
Apostle (la Sainte Chapelle, Paris)
Opposite page 29677
Decoration (Queen Mary's Psalter, XIII. Century MS.)
On page 29978
Portrait of Dante (Giotto, in the Bargello, Florence)
Opposite page 30079
Torre del Fame (Dante, Pisa)
Opposite page 30680
Palazzo Pretorio (Todi)
Opposite page 30681
Angel (Rheims)
On page 31882
St. Clare Bids the Dead St. Francis Good-bye (Giotto, Up. Ch. Assisi)
Opposite page 32083
Church (Doberan, Germany)
Opposite page 32284
San Damiano (Assisi)
Opposite page 32285
St. Elizabeth's Cathedral (Marburg)
Opposite page 32586
Marriage of the Blessed Virgin (Giotto, Padua)
Opposite page 32887
Mosaic (St. Mark's, Venice, 1220)
Opposite page 33388
Stone Carving (Amiens)
On page 33689
Hospital of the Holy Ghost (Lübeck)
Opposite page 34190
Charity (Giotto)
Opposite page 34791
Fortitude (Giotto)
Opposite page 34792
Hope (Giotto)
Opposite page 34793
Hospital Interior
On page 34994
Tower (Marburg)
On page 36395
City Gate (Neubrandenburg)
Opposite page 36896
Rathhaus (Stralsund)
Opposite page 36897
Portrait of Pope Boniface VIII. (Giotto, Rome)
Opposite page 37298
Decoration (XIII. Cent. Psalter)
On page 37499
Doorway (Lincoln)
Opposite page 381100
Nave (Durham)
Opposite page 381101
Broken Arch (St. Mary's, York, Climax of Gothic)
Opposite page 381102
Animals from Bestiarium (XIII. Cent. MS.)
On page 391103
Door of Giotto's Tower (Florence)
Opposite page 405104
Principal Door of Baptistery (Pisa)
Opposite page 405105
Palazzo dei Consoli (Gubbio)
Opposite page 417106
Palazzo Zabarella (Padua)
Opposite page 417107
Rathhaus (Lübeck)
Opposite page 422108
City Gate (Neubrandenburg)
Opposite page 426109
Minster (Chorin, Germany)
Opposite page 426110
Hinge from Schlestadt
On page 429111
Portion of Letter of Innocent III., Mentioning Greenland
On page 433112
Double Pivoted Compass Needle
On page 441113
Peregrinus' Compass
On page 442114
Portion of MS. of Ormulum
On page 450115
Key of Map of World (Hereford)
On page 461116
Map of World (Hereford)
Opposite page 463
{xxx}
{1}
I
INTRODUCTION
THE THIRTEENTH, THE GREATEST OF CENTURIES
It cannot but seem a paradox to say that the Thirteenth was the greatest of centuries. To most people the idea will appear at once so preposterous that they may not even care to consider it. A certain number, of course, will have their curiosity piqued by the thought that anyone should evolve so curious a notion. Either of these attitudes of mind will yield at once to a more properly receptive mood if it is recalled that the Thirteenth is the century of the Gothic cathedrals, of the foundation of the university, of the signing of Magna Charta, and of the origin of representative government with something like constitutional guarantees throughout the west of Europe. The cathedrals represent a development in the arts that has probably never been equaled either before or since. The university was a definite creation of these generations that has lived and maintained its usefulness practically in the same form in which it was then cast for the seven centuries ever since. The foundation stones of modern liberties are to be found in the documents which for the first time declared the rights of man during this precious period.
A little consideration of the men who, at this period, lived lives of undying influence on mankind, will still further attract the attention of those who have not usually grouped these great characters together. Just before the century opened, three great rulers died at the height of their influence. They are still and will always be the subject of men's thoughts and of literature. They were Frederick Barbarossa, Saladin, and Richard Coeur De Lion. They formed but a suggestive prelude of what was to come in the following century, when such {2} great monarchs as St. Louis of France, St. Ferdinand of Spain, Alfonso the Wise of Castile, Frederick II of Germany, Edward I, the English Justinian, Rudolph of Hapsburg, whose descendants still rule in Austria, and Robert Bruce, occupied the thrones of Europe. Was it by chance or Providence that the same century saw the rise of and the beginning of the fall of that great Eastern monarchy which had been created by the genius for conquest of Jenghiz Khan, the Tartar warrior, who ruled over all the Eastern world from beyond what are now the western confines of Russia, Poland, and Hungary, into and including what we now call China.
But the thrones of Europe and of Asia did not monopolize the great men of the time. The Thirteenth Century claims such wonderful churchmen as St. Francis and St. Dominic, and while it has only the influence of St. Hugh of Lincoln, who died just as it began, it can be proud of St. Edmund of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, and Robert Grosseteste, all men whose place in history is due to what they did for their people, and such magnificent women as Queen Blanche of Castile, St. Clare of Assisi, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. The century opened with one of the greatest of the Popes on the throne, Innocent III, and it closed with the most misunderstood of Popes, who is in spite of this one of the worthiest successors of Peter, Boniface VIII. During the century there had been such men as Honorius IV, the Patron of Learning, Gregory IX, to whom Canon Law owes so much, and John XXI, who had been famous as a scientist before becoming Pope. There are such scholars as St. Thomas of Aquin, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, St. Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, Raymond Lully, Vincent of Beauvais, and Alexander of Hales, and such patrons of learning as Robert of Sorbonne, and the founders of nearly twenty universities. There were such artists as Gaddi, Cimabue, and above all Giotto, and such literary men as the authors of the Arthur Legends and the Nibelungen, the Meistersingers, the Minnesingers, the Troubadours, and Trouvères, and above all Dante, who is universally considered now to be one of the greatest literary men of all times, but who was not, as is so often thought and said, a solitary phenomenon in the period, but only the culmination of a great literary movement that had to have {3} some such supreme expression of itself as this in order to properly round out the cycle of its existence.
If in addition it be said that this century saw the birth of the democratic spirit in many different ways in the various countries of Europe, but always in such form that it was never quite to die out again, the reasons for talking of it as possibly the greatest of centuries will be readily appreciated even by those whose reading has not given them any preliminary basis of information with regard to this period, which has unfortunately been shrouded from the eyes of most people by the fact, that its place in the midst of the Middle Ages would seem to preclude all possibility of the idea that it could represent a great phase of the development of the human intellect and its esthetic possibilities.
There would seem to be one more or less insuperable objection to the consideration of the Thirteenth as the greatest of centuries, and that arises from the fact that the idea of evolution has consciously and unconsciously tinged the thoughts of our generation to such a degree, that it seems almost impossible to think of a period so far in the distant past as having produced results comparable with those that naturally flow from the heightened development of a long subsequent epoch. Whatever of truth there may be in the great theory of evolution, however, it must not be forgotten that no added evidence for its acceptance can be obtained from the intellectual history of the human race. We may be "the heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time," but one thing is certain, that we can scarcely hope to equal, and do not at all think of surpassing, some of the great literary achievements of long past ages.
In the things of the spirit apparently there is very little, if any, evolution. Homer wrote nearly three thousand years ago as supreme an expression of human life in absolute literary values as the world has ever known, or, with all reverence for the future be it said, is ever likely to know. The great dramatic poem Job emanated from a Hebrew poet in those earlier times, and yet, if judged from the standpoint of mere literature, is as surpassing an expression of human intelligence in the presence of the mystery of evil as has ever come from the mind of man. We are no nearer the solution of the problem of {4} evil in life, though thousands of years have passed and man has been much occupied with the thoughts that disturbed the mind of the ruler of Moab. The Code of Hammurabi, recently discovered, has shown very definitely, that men could make laws nearly five thousand years ago as well calculated to correct human abuses as those our legislators spend so much time over at present, and the olden time laws were probably quite as effective as ours can hope to be, for all our well intentioned purpose and praiseworthy efforts at reform.
It used to be a favorite expression of Virchow, the great German pathologist, who was, besides, however, the greatest of living anthropologists, that from the history of the human race the theory of evolution receives no confirmation of any kind. His favorite subject, the study of skulls, and their conformation in the five thousand years through which such remains could be traced, showed him absolutely no change. For him there had been also no development in the intellectual order in human life during the long period of human history. Of course this is comparatively brief if the long aeons of geological times be considered, yet some development might be expected to manifest itself in the more than two hundred generations that have come and gone since the beginning of human memory. Perhaps, then, the prejudice with regard to evolution and its supposed effectiveness in making the men of more recent times superior to those of the past, may be considered to have very little weight as an a priori objection to the consideration of the Thirteenth Century as representing the highest stage in human accomplishment. So far as scientific anthropology goes there is utter indifference as to the period that may be selected as representing man at his best.
To most people the greater portion of surprise with regard to the assertion of the Thirteenth as the greatest of centuries will be the fact that the period thus picked out is almost in the heart of the Middle Ages. It would be not so amazing if the fifth century before Christ, which produced such marvelous accomplishments in letters and art and philosophy among the Greeks, was chosen as the greatest of human epochs. There might not even be so much of unpreparedness of mind if that supreme century of Roman History, from fifty years before Christ to fifty years after, were picked out for such signal notice.
{opp5}
VIRGIN WITH THE DIVINE CHILD (MOSAIC, ST. MARK'S, VENICE)
{5}
We have grown accustomed, however, to think of the Middle Ages as hopelessly backward in the opportunities they afforded men for the expression of their intellectual and artistic faculties, and above all for any development of that human liberty which means so much for the happiness of the race and must constitute the basis of any real advance worth while talking about in human affairs. It is this that would make the Thirteenth Century seem out of place in any comparative study for the purpose of determining proportionate epochal greatness. The spirit breathes where it will, however, and there was a mighty wind of the spirit of human progress abroad in that Thirteenth Century, whose effects usually miss proper recognition in history, because people fail to group together in their minds all the influences in our modern life that come to us from that precious period. All this present volume pretends to do is to gather these scattered details of influence in order to make the age in which they all coincided so wonderfully, be properly appreciated.
If we accept the usual historical division which places the Middle Ages during the thousand years between the fall of the Roman Empire, in the Fifth Century and the fall of the Grecian Empire of Constantinople, about the middle of the Fifteenth, the Thirteenth Century must be considered the culmination of that middle age. It is three centuries before the Renaissance, and to most minds that magical word represents the beginning of all that is modern, and therefore all that is best, in the world. Most people forget entirely how much of progress had been made before the so-called Renaissance, and how many great writers and artists had been fostering the taste and developing the intelligence of the people of Italy long before the fall of Constantinople. The Renaissance, after all, means only the re-birth of Greek ideas and ideals, of Greek letters and arts, into the modern world. If this new birth of Greek esthetics had not found the soil thoroughly prepared by the fruitful labor of three centuries before, history would not have seen any such outburst of artistic and literary accomplishments as actually came at the end of the Fifteenth and during the Sixteenth centuries.
{6}
In taking up the thesis, The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries, it seems absolutely necessary to define just what is meant by the term great, in its application to a period. An historical epoch, most people would concede at once, is really great just in proportion to the happiness which it provides for the largest possible number of humanity. That period is greatest that has done most to make men happy. Happiness consists in the opportunity to express whatever is best in us, and above all to find utterance for whatever is individual. An essential element in it is the opportunity to develop and apply the intellectual faculties, whether this be of purely artistic or of thoroughly practical character. For such happiness the opportunity to rise above one's original station is one of the necessary requisites. Out of these opportunities there comes such contentment as is possible to man in the imperfect existence that is his under present conditions.
Almost as important a quality in any epoch that is to be considered supremely great, is the difference between the condition of men at the beginning of it and at its conclusion. The period that represents most progress, even though at the end uplift should not have reached a degree equal to subsequent periods, must be considered as having best accomplished its duty to the race. For purposes of comparison it is the amount of ground actually covered in a definite time, rather than the comparative position at the end of it, that deserves to be taken into account. This would seem to be a sort of hedging, as if the terms of the comparison of the Thirteenth with other centuries were to be made more favorable by the establishment of different standards. There is, however, no need of any such makeshift in order to establish the actual supremacy of the Thirteenth Century, since it can well afford to be estimated on its own merits alone, and without any allowances because of the stage of cultural development at which it occurred.
John Ruskin once said that a proper estimation of the accomplishments of a period in human history can only be obtained by careful study of three books—The Book of the Deeds, The Book of the Arts, and the Book of the Words, of the given epoch. The Thirteenth Century may be promptly ready for this judgment of what it accomplished for men, of {7} what it wrote for subsequent generations, and of the artistic qualities to be found in its art remains. In the Book of the Deeds of the century what is especially important is what was accomplished for men, that is, what the period did for the education of the people, not alone the classes but the masses, and what a precious heritage of liberty and of social coordination it left behind. To most people it will appear at once that if the most important chapter of Thirteenth Century accomplishment is to be found in the Book of its Deeds and the deeds are to be judged according to the standard just given of education and liberty, then there will be no need to seek further, since these are words for which it is supposed that there is no actual equivalent in human life and history for at least several centuries after the close of the Thirteenth.
As a matter of fact, however, it is in this very chapter that the Thirteenth Century will be found strongest in its claim to true greatness. The Thirteenth Century saw the foundation of the universities and their gradual development into the institutions of learning which we have at the present time. Those scholars of the Thirteenth Century recognized that, for its own development and for practical purposes, the human intellect can best be trained along certain lines. For its preliminary training, it seemed to them to need what has since come to be called the liberal arts, that is, a knowledge of certain languages and of logic, as well as a thorough consideration of the great problems of the relation of man to his Creator, to his fellow-men, and to the universe around him. Grammar, a much wider subject than we now include under the term, and philosophy constituted the undergraduate studies of the universities of the Thirteenth Century. For the practical purposes of life, a division of post-graduate study had to be made so as to suit the life design of each individual, and accordingly the faculties of theology, for the training of divines; of medicine, for the training of physicians; and of law, for the training of advocates, came into existence.
We shall consider this subject in more detail in a subsequent chapter, but it will be clear at once that the university, as organized by these wise generations of the Thirteenth Century, has come down unchanged to us in the modern time. We {8} still have practically the same methods of preliminary training and the same division of post-graduate studies. We specialize to a greater degree than they did, but it must not be forgotten that specialism was not unknown by any means in the Thirteenth Century, though there were fewer opportunities for its practical application to the things of life. If this century had done nothing else but create the instrument by which the human mind has ever since been trained, it must be considered as deserving a place of the very highest rank in the periods of human history.
It is, however, much more for what it accomplished for the education of the masses than for the institutions it succeeded in developing for the training of the classes, that the Thirteenth Century merits a place in the roll of fame. This declaration will doubtless seem utterly paradoxical to the ordinary reader of history. We are very prone to consider that it is only in our time that anything like popular education has come into existence. As a matter of fact, however, the education afforded to the people in the little towns of the Middle Ages, represents an ideal of educational uplift for the masses such as has never been even distantly approached in succeeding centuries. The Thirteenth Century developed the greatest set of technical schools that the world has ever known. The technical school is supposed to be a creation of the last half century at the outside. These medieval towns, however, during the course of the building of their cathedrals, of their public buildings and various magnificent edifices of royalty and for the nobility, succeeded in accomplishing such artistic results that the world has ever since held them in admiration, and that this admiration has increased rather than diminished with the development of taste in very recent years.
Nearly every one of the most important towns of England during the Thirteenth Century was erecting a cathedral. Altogether some twenty cathedrals remain as the subject of loving veneration and of frequent visitation for the modern generation. There was intense rivalry between these various towns. Each tried to surpass the other in the grandeur of its cathedral and auxiliary buildings. Instead of lending workmen to one another there was a civic pride in accomplishing for one's native town whatever was best.
PULPIT (PISANO, SIENA)
{9}
Each of these towns, then, none of which had more than twenty thousand inhabitants except London, and even that scarcely more, had to develop its own artist-artisans for itself. That they succeeded in doing so demonstrates a great educational influence at work in arts and crafts in each of these towns. We scarcely succeed in obtaining such trained workmen in proportionately much fewer numbers even with the aid of our technical schools, and while these Thirteenth Century people did not think of such a term, it is evident that they had the reality and that they were able to develop artistic handicraftsmen—the best the world has ever known.
With all this of education abroad in the lands, it is not surprising that great results should have flowed from human efforts and that these should prove enduring even down to our own time. Accomplishments of the highest significance were necessarily bound up with opportunities for self-expression, so tempting and so complete, as those provided for the generations of the Thirteenth Century. The books of the Words as well as of the Arts of the Thirteenth Century will be found eminently interesting, and no period has ever furnished so many examples of wondrous initiative, followed almost immediately by just as marvelous progress and eventual approach to as near perfection as it is perhaps possible to come in things human. Ordinarily literary origins are not known with sufficient certainty as to dates for any but the professional scholar to realize the scope of the century's literature. Only a very little consideration, however, is needed to demonstrate how thoroughly representative of what is most enduring in literary expression in modern times, are the works in every country that had origin in this century.
There was not a single country in civilized Europe which did not contribute its quota and that of great significance to the literary movement of the time. In Spain there came the Cid and certain accompanying products of ballad poetry which form the basis of the national literature and are still read not only by scholars and amateurs, but even by the people generally, because of the supreme human interest in them. In England, the beginning of the Thirteenth Century saw the putting {10} into shape of the Arthur Legends in the form in which they were to appeal most nearly to subsequent generations. Walter Map's work in these was, as we shall see, one of the great literary accomplishments of all time. Subsequent treatments of the same subject are only slight modifications of the theme which he elaborated, and Mallory's and Spenser's and even our own Tennyson's work derive their interest from the humanly sympathetic story, written so close to the heart of nature in the Thirteenth Century that it will always prove attractive.
In Germany, just at the same time, the Nibelungen-Lied was receiving the form in which it was to live as the great National epic. The Meistersingers also were accomplishing their supreme work of Christianizing and modernizing the old German and Christian legends which were to prove such a precious heritage of interest for posterity. In the South of Germany the Minnesingers sang their tuneful strains and showed how possible it was to take the cruder language of the North, and pour forth as melodious hymns of praise to nature and to their beloved ones as in the more fluent Southern tongues. Most of this was done in the old Suabian high German dialect, and the basis of the modern German language was thus laid. The low German was to prove the vehicle for the original form of the animal epic or stories with regard to Reynard, the Fox, which were to prove so popular throughout all of Europe for all time thereafter.
In North France the Trouvères were accomplishing a similar work to that of the Minnesingers in South Germany, but doing it with an original genius, a refinement of style characteristic of their nation, and a finish of form that was to impress itself upon French literature for all subsequent time. Here also Jean de Meun and Guillaume de Lorris wrote the Romance of the Rose, which was to remain the most popular book in Europe down to the age of printing and for some time thereafter. At the South of France the work of the Troubadours, similar to that of the Trouvères and yet with, a spirit and character all its own, was creating a type of love songs that the world recurs to with pleasure whenever the lyrical aspect of poetry becomes fashionable. The influence of the Troubadours was to be felt in Italy, and before the end of the {11} Thirteenth Century there were many writers of short poems that deserve a place in what is best in literature. Men like Sordello, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, and Dante da Maiano, deserve mention in any historical review of literature, quite apart from the influence which they had on their great successor, the Prince of Italian poets and one of the immortal trio of the world's supreme creative singers—Dante Alighieri. With what must have seemed the limit of conceit he placed himself among the six greatest poets, but posterity breathes his name only with those of Homer and Shakespeare.
Dante, in spite of his giant personality and sublime poetic genius, is not an exception nor a solitary phenomenon in the course of the century, but only a worthy culmination of the literary movement which, beginning in the distant West in Spain and England, gradually worked eastward quite contrary to the usual trend of human development and inspired its greatest work in the musical Tuscan dialect after having helped in the foundation of all the other modern languages. Dante is the supreme type of the Thirteenth Century, the child of his age, but the great master whom medieval influences have made all that he is. That he belongs to the century there can be no doubt, and of himself alone he would be quite sufficient to lift any period out of obscurity and place it among the favorite epochs, in which the human mind found one of those opportune moments for the expression of what is sublimest in human thought.
It is, however, the bock of the Arts of the Thirteenth Century that deserves most to be thumbed by the modern reader intent on learning something of this marvelous period of human existence. There is not a single branch of art in which the men of this generation did not accomplish excelling things that have been favorite subjects for study and loving imitation ever since. Perhaps the most marvelous quality of the grand old Gothic cathedrals, erected during the Thirteenth Century, is not their impressiveness as a whole so much as their wonderful finish in detail. It matters not what element of construction or decoration be taken into consideration, always there is an approach to perfection in accomplishment in some one of the cathedrals that shows with what thoroughness the men of the {12} time comprehended what was best in art, and how finally their strivings after perfection were rewarded as bountifully as perhaps it has ever been given to men to realize.
Of the major arts—architecture itself, sculpture and painting—only a word will be said here since they will be treated more fully in subsequent chapters. No more perfect effort at worthy worship of the Most High has ever been accomplished than is to be seen in the Gothic cathedrals in every country in Europe as they exist to the present day. While the movement began in North France, and gradually spread to other countries, there was never any question of mere slavish imitation, but on the contrary in each country Gothic architecture took on a national character and developed into a charming expression of the special characteristics of the people for whom and by whom it was made. English Gothic is, of course, quite different to that of France; Spanish Gothic has a character all its own; the German Gothic cathedrals partake of the heavier characteristics of the Northern people, while Italian Gothic adds certain airy decorative qualities to the French model that give renewed interest and inevitably indicate the origin of the structures.
In painting, Cimabue's work, so wonderfully appreciated by the people of Florence that spontaneously they flocked in procession to do honor to his great picture, was the beginning of modern art. How much was accomplished before the end of the century will be best appreciated when the name of Giotto is mentioned as the culmination of the art movement of the century. As we shall see, the work done by him, especially at Assisi, has been a source of inspiration for artists down even to our own time, and there are certain qualities of his art, especially his faculty for producing the feeling of solidity in his paintings, in which very probably he has never been surpassed. Gothic cathedrals in other countries did not lend themselves so well as subjects of inspiration for decorative art, but in every country the sacred books in use in the cathedral were adorned, at the command of the artistic impulse of the period, in a way that has made the illuminated missals and office books of the Thirteenth Century perhaps the most precious that there are in the history of book-making.
{opp13}
ARCHANGEL MICHAEL (GIOVANNI PISANO, PISA)
CHRIST (ANDREA PISANO, FLORENCE)
STA. REPARATA (ANDREA PISANO, FLORENCE)
{13}
It might be thought that in sculpture, at least, these Thirteenth-Century generations would prove to be below the level of that perfection and artistic expression which came so assuredly in other lines. It is true that most of the sculptures of the period have defects that make them unworthy of imitation, though it is in the matter of technique that they fail rather than in honest effort to express feelings appropriately within the domain of chiseled work. On the other hand there are some supreme examples of what is best in sculpture to be found among the adornments of the cathedrals of the period. No more simply dignified rendition of the God Man has ever been made in stone than the statue of Christ, which with such charming appropriateness the people of Amiens have called le Beau Dieu, their beautiful God, and that visitors to their great cathedral can never admire sufficiently, admirably set off, as it is, in its beautiful situation above the main door of the great cathedral. Other examples are not lacking, as for instance some of the Thirteenth-Century effigies of the French kings and queens at St. Denis, and some of the wonderful sculptures at Rheims. In its place as a subsidiary art to architecture for decorative purposes, sculpture was even more eminently successful. The best example of this is the famous Angel Choir of Lincoln, one of the most beautiful things that ever came from the hand of man and whose designation indicates the belief of the centuries that only the angels could have made it.
In the handicrafts most nearly allied to the arts, the Thirteenth Century reigns supreme with a splendor unapproached by what has been accomplished in any other century. The iron work of their gates and railings, even of their hinges and latches and locks, has been admired and imitated by many generations since. When a piece of it is no longer of use, or loosens from the crumbling woodwork to which it was attached, it is straightway transported to some museum, there to be displayed not alone for its antiquarian interest, but also as a model and a suggestion to the modern designer. This same thing is true of the precious metal work of the times also, at least as regards the utensils and ornaments employed in the sacred services. The chalices and other sacred {14} vessels were made on severely simple lines and according to models which have since become the types of such sacred utensils for all times.
The vestments used in the sacred ceremonials partook of this same character of eminently appropriate handiwork united to the chastest of designs, executed with supreme taste. The famous cope of Ascoli which the recent Pierpont Morgan incident brought into prominence a year or so ago, is a sample of the needlework of the times that illustrates its perfection. It is said by those who are authorities in the matter that Thirteenth-Century needlework represents what is best in this line. It is not the most elaborate, nor the most showy, but it is in accordance with the best taste, supremely suitable to the objects of which it formed a part. It is, after all, only an almost inevitable appendix to the beautiful work done in the illumination of the sacred books, that the sacred vestments should have been quite as supremely artistic and just as much triumphs of art.
As a matter of fact, every minutest detail of cathedral construction and ornamentation shared in this artistic triumph. Even the inscriptions, done in brass upon the gravestones that formed part of the cathedral pavements, are models of their kind, and rubbings from them are frequently taken because of their marvelous effectiveness as designs in Gothic tracery.
Their bells were made with such care and such perfection that, down to the present time, nothing better has been accomplished in this handicraft, and their marvelous retention of tone shows how thorough was the work of these early bell-makers.
The triumph of artistic decoration in the cathedrals, however, and the most marvelous page in the book of the Arts of the century, remains to be spoken of in their magnificent stained-glass windows. Where they learned their secret of glass-making we know not. Artists of the modern time, who have spent years in trying to perfect their own work in this line, would give anything to have some of the secrets of the glass-makers of the Thirteenth Century. Such windows as the Five Sisters at York, or the wonderful Jesse window of Chartres with some of its companions, are the despair of the modern {15} artists in stained glass. The fact that their glass-making was not done at one, or even a few, common centers, but was apparently executed in each of these small medieval towns that were the site of a cathedral, only adds to the marvel of how the workmen of the time succeeded so well in accomplishing their purpose of solving the difficult problems of stained glasswork.
{opp15}
PASCHAL CANDLESTICK (BAPTISTERY, FLORENCE)
RELIQUARY (CATHEDRAL ORVIETO, UGOLINO DI VIERI)
If, to crown all that has been said about the Thirteenth Century, we now add a brief account of what was accomplished for men in the matter of liberty and the establishment of legal rights, we shall have a reasonably adequate introduction to this great subject. Liberty is thought to be a word whose true significance is of much more recent origin than the end of the Middle Ages. The rights of men are usually supposed to have received serious acknowledgment only in comparatively recent centuries. The recalling of a few facts, however, will dispel this illusion and show how these men of the later middle age laid the foundation of most of the rights and privileges that we are so proud to consider our birthright in this modern time. The first great fact in the history of modern liberty is the signing of Magna Charta which took place only a little after the middle of the first quarter of the Thirteenth Century. The movement that led up to it had arisen amongst the guildsmen as well as the churchmen and the nobles of the preceding century. When the document was signed, however, these men did not consider that their work was finished. They kept themselves ready to take further advantage of the necessities of their rulers and it was not long before they had secured political as well as legal rights.
Shortly after the middle of the Thirteenth Century the first English parliament met, and in the latter part of that half century it became a formal institution with regularly appointed times of meeting and definite duties and privileges. Then began the era of law in its modern sense for the English people. The English common law took form and its great principles were enunciated practically in the terms in which they are stated down to the present day. Bracton made his famous digest of the English common law for the use of judges and lawyers and it became a standard work of reference. Such it {16} has remained down to our own time. At the end of the century, during the reign of Edward I, the English Justinian, the laws of the land were formulated, lacunae in legislation filled up, rights and privileges fully determined, real-estate laws put on a modern basis, and the most important portions of English law became realities that were to be modified but not essentially changed in all the after time.
This history of liberty and of law-making, so familiar with regard to England, must be repeated almost literally with regard to the continental nations. In France, the foundation of the laws of the kingdom were laid during the reign of Louis IX, and French authorities in the history of law, point with pride, to how deeply and broadly the foundations of French jurisprudence were laid. Under Louis's cousin, Ferdinand III of Castile, who, like the French monarch, has received the title of Saint, because of the uprightness of his character and all that he did for his people, forgetful of himself, the foundations of Spanish law were laid, and it is to that time that Spanish jurists trace the origin of nearly all the rights and privileges of their people. In Germany there is a corresponding story. In Saxony there was the issue of a famous book of laws, which represented all the grants of the sovereigns, and all the claims of subjects that had been admitted by monarchs up to that time. In a word, everywhere there was a codification of laws and a laying of foundations in jurisprudence, upon which the modern superstructure of law was to rise.
This is probably the most surprising part of the Thirteenth Century. When it began men below the rank of nobles were practically slaves. Whatever rights they had were uncertain, liable to frequent violation because of their indefinite character, and any generation might, under the tyranny of some consciousless monarch, have lost even the few privileges they had enjoyed before. At the close of the Thirteenth Century this was no longer possible. The laws had been written down and monarchs were bound by them as well as their subjects. Individual caprice might no longer deprive them arbitrarily of their rights and hard won privileges, though tyranny might still assert itself and a submissive generation might, for a time, {17} allow themselves to be governed by measures beyond the domain of legal justification. Any subsequent generation might, however, begin anew its assertion of its rights from the old-time laws, rather than from the position to which their forbears had been reduced by a tyrant's whim.
Is it any wonder, then, that we should call the generations that gave us the cathedrals, the universities, the great technical schools that were organized by the trades guilds, the great national literatures that lie at the basis of all our modern literature, the beginnings of sculpture and of art carried to such heights that artistic principles were revealed for all time, and, finally, the great men and women of this century—for more than any other it glories in names that were born not to die—is it at all surprising that we should claim for the period which, in addition to all this, saw the foundation of modern law and liberty, the right to be hailed—the greatest of human history?
THE CHURCH [SYMBOLIZED] (PARIS)
{18}
{415}
{430}
{432}
{464}
II
UNIVERSITIES AND PREPARATORY SCHOOLS.
To see, at once, how well the Thirteenth deserves the name of the greatest of centuries, it is necessary, only, to open the book of her deeds and read therein what was accomplished during this period for the education of the men of the time. It is, after all, what a generation accomplishes for intellectual development and social uplift that must be counted as its greatest triumph. If life is larger in its opportunities, if men appreciate its significance better, if the development of the human mind has been rendered easier, if that precious thing, whose name, education, has been so much abused, is made readier of attainment, then the generation stamps itself as having written down in its book of deeds, things worthy for all subsequent generations to read. Though anything like proper appreciation of it has come only in very recent times, there is absolutely no period of equal length in the history of mankind in which so much was not only attempted, but successfully accomplished for education, in every sense of the word, as during the Thirteenth Century. This included, not only the education of the classes but also the education of the masses.
For the moment, we shall concern ourselves only with the education offered to, and taken advantage of by so many, in the universities of the time. It was just at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century that the great universities came into being as schools, in which all the ordinary forms of learning were taught. During the Twelfth Century, Bologna had had a famous school of law which attracted students from all over Europe. Under Irnerius, canon and civil law secured a popularity as subjects of study such as they never had before. The study of the old Roman Law brought back with it an interest in the Latin classics, and the beginning of the true new birth—the real renaissance—of modern education must be traced from here. At Paris there was a theological school attached to {19} the cathedral which gradually became noted for its devotion to philosophy as the basis of theology, and, about the middle of the Twelfth Century, attracted students from every part of the civilized world. As was the case at Bologna, interest after a time was not limited to philosophy and theology; other branches of study were admitted to the curriculum and a university in the modern sense came into existence.
During the first quarter of the Thirteenth Century both of these schools developed faculties for the teaching of all the known branches of knowledge. At Bologna faculties of arts, of philosophy and theology, and finally of medicine, were gradually added, and students flocked in ever increasing numbers to take advantage of these additional opportunities. At Paris, the school of medicine was established early in the Thirteenth Century, and there were graduates in medicine before the year 1220. Law came later, but was limited to Canon law to a great extent, Orleans having a monopoly of civil law for more than a century. These two universities, Bologna and Paris, were, in every sense of the word, early in the century, real universities, differing in no essential from our modern institutions that bear the same name.
If the Thirteenth Century had done nothing else but put into shape this great instrument for the training of the human mind, which has maintained its effectiveness during seven centuries, it must be accorded a place among the epoch-making periods of history. With all our advances in modern education we have not found it necessary, or even advisable, to change, in any essential way, this mold in which the human intellect has been cast for all these years. If a man wants knowledge for its own sake, or for some practical purpose in life, then here are the faculties which will enable him to make a good beginning on the road he wishes to travel. If he wants knowledge of the liberal arts, or the consideration of man's duties to himself, to his fellow-man and to his Creator, he will find in the faculties of arts and philosophy and theology the great sources of knowledge in these subjects. If, on the other hand, he wishes to apply his mind either to the disputes of men about property, or to their injustices toward one another and the correction of abuses, then the faculty of law will {20} supply his wants, and finally the medical school enables him, if he wishes, to learn all that can be known at a given time with regard to man's ills and their healing. We have admitted the practical-work subjects into university life, though not without protest, but architecture, engineering, bridge-building and the like, in which the men of the Thirteenth Century accomplished such wonders, were relegated to the guilds whose technical schools, though they did not call them by that name, were quite as effective practical educators as even the most vaunted of our modern university mechanical departments.
It is rather interesting to trace the course of the development of schools in our modern sense of the term, because their evolution recapitulates, to some degree at least, the history of the individual's interest in life. The first school which acquired a European reputation was that of Salernum, a little town not far from Naples, which possessed a famous medical school as early as the ninth century, perhaps earlier. This never became a university, though its reputation as a great medical school was maintained for several centuries. This first educational opportunity to attract a large body of students from all over the world concerned mainly the needs of the body. The next set of interests which man, in the course of evolution develops, has to do with the acquisition and retention of property and the maintenance of his rights as an individual. It is not surprising, then, to find that the next school of world-wide reputation was that of law at Bologna which became the nucleus of a great university. It is only after man has looked out for his bodily needs and his property rights, that he comes to think of his duties toward himself, his fellow-men, and his Creator, and so the third of these great medieval schools, in time, was that of philosophy and theology, at Paris.
It is sometimes thought that the word university applied to these institutions after the aggregation of other faculties, was due to the fact that there was a universality of studies, that all branches of knowledge might be followed in them. The word university, however, was not originally applied to the school itself, which, if it had all the faculties of the modern university, was, in the Thirteenth Century, called a studium generale. The Latin word universitas had quite a different {21} usage at that time. Whenever letters were formally addressed to the combined faculties of a studium generale by reigning sovereigns, or by the Pope, or by other high ecclesiastical authorities, they always began with the designation, Universitas Vestra, implying that the greeting was to all of the faculty, universally and without exception. Gradually, because of this word constantly occurring at the beginning of letters to the faculty, the term universitas came to be applied to the institution. [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: Certain other terms that occur in these letters of greeting to university officials have a more than passing interest. The rector of the university, for instance, was always formally addressed as Amplitudo Vestra, that is, Your Ampleness. Considering the fact that not a few of the rectors of the old time universities, all of whom were necessarily ecclesiastics, must have had the ampleness of girth so characteristic of their order under certain circumstances, there is an appropriateness about this formal designation which perhaps appeals more to the risibilities of the modern mind than to those of medieval time.]
While the universities, as is typically exemplified by the histories of Bologna and Paris, and even to a noteworthy degree of Oxford, grew up around the cathedrals, they cannot be considered in any sense the deliberate creation, much less the formal invention, of any particular set of men. The idea of a university was not born into the world in full panoply as Minerva from the brain of Jove. No one set about consciously organizing for the establishment of complete institutions of learning. Like everything destined to mean much in the world the universities were a natural growth from the favoring soil in which living seeds were planted. They sprang from the wonderful inquiring spirit of the time and the marvelous desire for knowledge and for the higher intellectual life that came over the people of Europe during the Thirteenth Century. The school at Paris became famous, and attracted pupils during the Twelfth Century, because of the new-born interest in scholastic philosophy. After the pupils had gathered in large numbers their enthusiasm led to the establishment of further courses of study. The same thing was true at Bologna, where the study of Law first attracted a crowd of earnest students, and then the demand for broader education led to the establishment of other faculties.
{22}
Above all, there was no conscious attempt on the part of any supposed better class to stoop down and uplift those presumably below it. As we shall see, the students of the university came mainly from the middle class of the population. They became ardently devoted to their teachers. As in all really educational work, it was the man and not the institution that counted for much. In case of disagreement of one of these with the university authorities, not infrequently there was a sacrifice of personal advantage for the moment on the part of the students in order to follow a favorite teacher. Paris had examples of this several times before the Thirteenth Century, and notably in the case of Abelard had seen thousands of students follow him into the distant desert where he had retired. Later on, when abuses on the part of the authorities of Paris limited the University's privileges, led to the withdrawal of students and the foundation of Oxford, there was a community of interest on the part of certain members of the faculty and thousands of students. This movement was, however, distinctly of a popular character, in the sense that it was not guided by political or other leaders. Nearly all of the features of university life during the Thirteenth Century, emphasize the democracy of feeling of the students, and make it clear that the blowing of the wind of the spirit of human liberty and intellectual enthusiasm influencing the minds of the generation, rather than any formal attempt on the part of any class of men deliberately to provide educational opportunities, is the underlying feature of university foundation and development.
While the great universities of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford were, by far, the most important, they must not be considered as the only educational institutions deserving the name of universities, even in our modern sense, that took definite form during the Thirteenth Century. In Italy, mainly under the fostering care of ecclesiastics, encouraged by such Popes as Innocent III, Gregory IX, and Honorius IV, nearly a dozen other towns and cities saw the rise of Studia Generalia eventually destined, and that within a few decades after their foundation, to have the complete set of faculties, and such a number of teachers and of students as merited for them the name of University.
{opp22}
ADORATION OF MAGI (PULPIT, SIENA, NIC. PISANO).
{23}
Very early in the century Vicenza, Reggio, and Arezzo became university towns. Before the first quarter of the century was finished there were universities at Padua, at Naples, and at Vercelli. In spite of the troublous times and the great reduction in the population of Rome there was a university founded in connection with the Roman Curia, that is the Papal Court, before the middle of the century, and Siena and Piacenza had founded rival university institutions. Perugia had a famous school which became a complete university early in the Fourteenth Century.
Nor were other countries much behind Italy in this enthusiastic movement. Montpelier had, for over a century before the beginning of the thirteenth, rejoiced in a medical school which was the most important rival of that at Salernum. At the beginning this reflected largely the Moorish element in educational affairs in Europe at this time. During the course of the Thirteenth Century Montpelier developed into a full-fledged university though the medical school still continued to be the most important faculty. Medical students from all over the world flocked to the salubrious town to which patients from all over were attracted, and its teachers and writers of medicine have been famous in medical history ever since. How thorough was the organization of clinical medical work at Montpelier may perhaps best be appreciated from the fact, noted in the chapter on City Hospitals—Organized Charity, that when Pope Innocent III. wished to establish a model hospital at Rome with the idea that it would form an exemplar for other European cities, he sent down to Montpelier and summoned Guy, the head of the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in that city, to the Papal Capital to establish the Roman Hospital of the Holy Ghost and, in connection with it, a large number of hospitals all over Europe.
A corresponding state of affairs to that of Montpelier is to be noted at Orleans, only here the central school, around which the university gradually grouped itself, was the Faculty of Civil Law. Canon law was taught at Paris in connection with the theological course, but there had always been objection to the admission of civil law as a faculty on a basis of equality with the other faculties. There was indeed {24} at this time some rivalry between the civil and the canon law and so the study of civil law was relegated to other universities. Even early in the Twelfth Century Orleans was famous for its school of civil law in which the exposition of the principles of the old Roman law constituted the basis of the university course. During the Thirteenth Century the remaining departments of the university gradually developed, so that by the close of the century, there seem to be conservative claims for over one thousand students. Besides these three, French universities were also established at Angers, at Toulouse, and the beginnings of institutions to become universities early in the next century are recorded at Avignon and Cahors.
Spain felt the impetus of the university movement early in the Thirteenth Century and a university was founded at Palencia about the end of the first decade. This was founded by Alfonso XII. and was greatly encouraged by him. It is sometimes said that this university was transferred to Salamanca about 1230, but this is denied by Denifle, whose authority in matters of university history is unquestionable. It seems not unlikely that Salamanca drew a number of students from Palencia but that the latter continued still to attract many students. About the middle of the Thirteenth Century the university of Valladolid was founded. Before the end of the century a fourth university, that of Lerida, had been established in the Spanish peninsula. Spain was to see the greatest development of universities during the Fourteenth Century. It was not long after the end of the Thirteenth Century before Coimbra, in Portugal, began to assume importance as an educational institution, though it was not to have sufficient faculty and students to deserve the more ambitious title of university for half a century.
While most people who know anything about the history of education realize the important position occupied by the universities during the Thirteenth Century and appreciate the estimation in which they were held and the numbers that attended them, very few seem to know anything of the preparatory schools of the time, and are prone to think that all the educational effort of these generations was exhausted in connection {25} with the university. It is often said, as we shall see, that one reason for the large number of students reported as in attendance at the universities during the Thirteenth Century is to be found in the fact that these institutions practically combined the preparatory school and the academy of our time with the university. The universities are supposed to have been the only centers of education worthy of mention. There is no doubt that a number of quite young students were in attendance at the universities, that is, boys from 12 to 15 who would in our time be only in the preparatory school. We shall explain, however, in the chapter on the Numbers in Attendance at the Universities that students went to college much younger in the past and graduated much earlier than they do in our day, yet apparently, without any injury to the efficacy of their educational training.
In the universities of Southern Europe it is still the custom for boys to graduate with the degree of A. B. at the age of 15 to 16, which supposes attendance at the university, or its equivalent in under-graduate courses, at the age of 12 or even less. There is no need, however, to appeal to the precociousness of the southern nations in explanation of this, since there are some good examples of it in comparatively recent times here in America. Most of the colleges in this country, in the early part of the nineteenth century and the end of the eighteenth, graduated young men of 16 and 17 and thought that they were accomplishing a good purpose, in allowing them to get at their life work in early manhood. Many of the distinguished divines who made names in educational work are famous for their early graduations. Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, whom the medical profession of this country hails as the Father of American Medicine, graduated at Princeton at 15. He must have begun his college course, therefore, about the age of 12. This may be considered inadvisable in our generation, but, it must be remembered that there are many even in our day, who think that our college men are allowed to get at their life-work somewhat too late for their own good.
It must be emphasized, moreover, that in many of the university towns there were also preparatory schools. Courses {26} were not regularly organized until well on in the Thirteenth Century, but younger brothers and friends of students as well as of professors would not infrequently be placed under their care and thus be enabled to receive their preparation for university work. At Paris, Robert Sorbonne founded a preparatory school for that institution under the name of the College of Calvi. Other colleges of this kind also existed in Paris. This custom of having a preparatory school in association with the university has not been abandoned even in our own day, and it has some decided advantages from an educational standpoint, though perhaps these are not enough to balance certain ethical disadvantages almost sure to attach to such a system, disadvantages which ultimately led in the Middle Ages to the prohibition that young students should be taken at the universities under any pretext.
The presence of these young students in university towns probably did add considerably to the numbers reported as in attendance. It must not be thought, however, that there were no formal preparatory schools quite apart from university influence. This thought has been the root of more misunderstanding of the medieval system of education than almost any other. As a matter of fact there were preliminary and preparatory schools, what we would now call academies and colleges, in connection with all of the important monasteries and with every cathedral. Schools of less importance were required by a decree of a council held at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century to be maintained in connection with every bishop's church. During the Thirteenth Century there were some twenty cathedrals in various parts of England; each one had its cathedral school. Besides these there were at least as many important abbeys, nearly a dozen of them immense institutions, in which there were fine libraries, large writing rooms, in which copies of books were being constantly made, many of the members of the communities of which were university men, and around which, therefore, there clung an atmosphere of bookishness and educational influence that made them preparatory schools of a high type. The buildings themselves were of the highest type of architecture; the community life was well calculated to bring out what was best in the {27} intellectuality of members of the community, and, then, there was a rivalry between the various religious orders which made them prepare their men well in order that they might do honor to the order when they had the opportunity later, as most of those who had the ability and the taste actually did have, to go to one or other of the universities.
This system of preparatory schools need not be accepted on the mere assumption that the monasteries and churches must surely have set about such work, because there is abundant evidence of the actual establishment and maintenance of such schools. With regard to the monasteries there can be no doubt, because it was the members of the religious orders who particularly distinguished themselves at the universities, and the histories of Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris are full of their accomplishments. They succeeded in obtaining the right to have their own houses at the universities and to have their own examinations count in university work, in order that they might maintain their influence over the members of the orders during the precious formative period of their intellectual life. With regard to the church schools there is convincing evidence of another kind.
In the chapter on the foundation of City Hospitals we have detailed on the authority of Virchow all that Innocent III. accomplished for the hospital system of Europe. This chapter was published originally in the form of a lecture from the historical department of the Medical School of Fordham University and a reprint of it was sent to a distinguished American educator well known for his condemnation of supposed church intolerance in the matter of education and scientific development. He said that he was glad to have it because it confirmed and even broadened the idea that he had long cherished, that the Church had done more for Charity during the despised Middle Ages than national governments had ever been able to accomplish since, though it was all the more surprising to him that it should not have under the circumstances, done more for education, since this might have prevented some of the ills that charity had afterward to relieve. This expression very probably represents the state of mind of very many scholars with regard to this period. The Church is supposed to have interested herself {28} in charity almost to the exclusion of educational influence. Charity is of course admitted to be her special work, yet these scholars cannot help but regret that more was not done in social prophylaxis by the encouragement of education.
In the light of this almost universal expression it is all the more interesting to find that such opinions are founded entirely on a lack of knowledge of what was done in education, since the same Pope, in practically the same way and by the exertion of the same prestige and ecclesiastical authority, did for education just what he did for charity in the matter of the hospitals and the ailing poor. Virchow, as we shall see, declared that to Innocent III. is due the foundation of practically all the city hospitals in Europe. If the effect of certain of the decrees issued in his papacy be carefully followed, it will be found that practically as many schools as hospitals owe their origin to his beneficent wisdom and his paternal desire to spread the advantages of Christianity all over the civilized world. This policy with regard to the hospitals led to the foundation before the end of the century of at least one hospital in every diocese of all the countries which were more closely allied with the Holy See. There is extant a decree issued by the famous council of Lateran, in 1215, a council in which Innocent's authority was dominant, requiring the establishment of a Chair of Grammar in connection with every cathedral in the Christian world. This Chair of Grammar included at least three of the so-called liberal arts and provided for what would now be called, the education of a school preparatory to a university.
Before this, Innocent III, [Footnote 2] who had himself received the benefit of the best education of the time, having spent some years at Rome and later at Paris and at Bologna, had encouraged the sending of students to these universities in every way.
[Footnote 2: Most of the details of what was accomplished for education by Pope Innocent III, and all the references needed to supply further information, can be found in the Hestoire Litteratire de la France, recent volumes of which were issued by the French Institute, though the magnificent work itself was begun by Benedictines of St. Maur, who completed some fifteen volumes. The sixteenth volume, most of which is written by Dauñou, is especially valuable for this period. Du Boulay, in his History of the University of Paris, will furnish additional information with regard to Pope Innocent's relations to education throughout Europe, especially, of course, in what regards the University of Paris.]
CATHEDRAL (YORK)
CATHEDRAL (LINCOLN)
{29}
Bishops who came to Rome were sure to hear inculcated the advisability of a taste for letters in clergymen, hear it said often enough that such a taste would surely increase the usefulness of all churchmen. Schools had been encouraged before the issuance of the decree. This only came as a confirmatory document calculated to perpetuate the policy that had already been so prominently in vogue in the church for over fifteen years of the Pope's reign. It was meant, too, to make clear to hesitant and tardy bishops, who might have thought that the papal interest in education was merely personal, that the policy of the church was concerned in it and recalled them to a sense of duty in the matter, since the ordinary enthusiasm for letters, even with the added encouragement of the Pope, did not suffice to make them realize the necessity for educational establishments.
The institution of the schools of grammar in connection with cathedrals was well adapted to bring about a definite increase in the opportunities for book learning for those who desired it. In connection with the cathedrals there was always a band of canons whose duty it was to take part in the singing of the daily office. Their ceremonial and ritual duties did not, however, occupy them more than a few hours each day. During the rest of the time they were free to devote themselves to any subject in which they might be interested and had ample time for teaching. The requirement that there should be at least a school of grammar in connection with every cathedral afforded definite opportunity to such of these ecclesiastics as had intellectual tastes to devote themselves to the spread of knowledge and of culture, and this reacted, as can be readily understood, to make the whole band of canons more interested in the things of the mind, and to make the cathedral even more the intellectual center of the district than might otherwise have been the case.
For the metropolitan churches a more far-reaching regulation was made by this same council of Lateran under the inspiration of the Pope himself. These important Archiepiscopal cathedrals were required to maintain professors of three chairs. One of these was to teach grammar, a second philosophy, and a third canon law. Under these designations there was practically included much of what is now studied not only in preparatory {30} schools but also at the beginning of University courses. The regulation was evidently intended to lead eventually to the formation of many more universities than were then in existence, because already it had become clear that the traveling of students to long distances and their gathering in such large numbers in towns away from home influences, led to many abuses that might be obviated if they could stay in their native cities, or at least did not have to leave their native provinces. This was a far-seeing regulation that, like so many other decrees of the century, manifests the very practical policy of the Pope in matters of education as well as charity. As a matter of fact this decree did lead to the gradual development of about twenty universities during the Thirteenth Century, and to the establishment of a number of other schools so important in scope and attendance that their evolution into universities during the Fourteenth Century became comparatively easy. This formal church law, moreover, imposed upon ecclesiastical authorities the necessity for providing for even higher education in their dioceses and made them realize that it was entirely in sympathy with the church's spirit and in accord with the wish of the Father of Christendom, that they should make as ample provision for education as they did for charity, though this last was supposed to be their special task as pastors of the Christian flock.
All this important work for the foundation of preparatory schools in every diocese and of the preliminary organization of teaching institutions that might easily develop into universities, as they actually did in a score of cases in metropolitan cities, was accomplished under the first Pope of the Thirteenth Century, Innocent III. His successors kept up this good work. Pope Honorius III., his immediate successor, went so far in this matter as to depose a bishop who had not read Donatus, the popular grammarian of the time. The bishop evidently was considered unfit, as far as his mental training went, to occupy the important post of head of a diocese. Pope Gregory IX., the nephew of Innocent III., was one of the most important patrons of the study of law in this period (see Legal Origins in Other Countries), and encouraged the collection of the decrees of former Popes so as to make them available for purposes of study as well as for court use. He is famous for {31} having protected the University of Paris during some of the serious trouble with the municipal authorities, when the large increase of the number of students in attendance at the University had unfortunately brought about strained relations between town and gown.
Pope Innocent IV. by several decrees encouraged the development of the University of Paris, increased its rights and conferred new privileges. He also did much to develop the University of Toulouse, and especially to raise its standard and make it equal to that of Paris as far as possible. The patronage of Toulouse on the part of the Pope is all the more striking because the study of civil law was here a special feature and the ecclesiastical authorities were often said to have looked askance at the rising prominence of civil law, since it threatened to diminish the importance of canon law; and the cultivation of it, only too frequently, seemed to give rise to friction between civil and ecclesiastical authorities. While the pontifical court of Innocent IV. was maintained at Lyons it seemed, according to the Literary History of France, [Footnote 3] more like an academy of theology and of canon law than the court of a great monarch whose power was acknowledged throughout the world, or a great ecclesiastic who might be expected to be occupied with details of Church government.
[Footnote 3: Histoire Litteratire de la France, Vol. XVI, Introductory Discourse.]
Succeeding Popes of the century were not less prominent in their patronage of education. Pope Alexander IV. supported the cause of the Mendicant Friars against the University of Paris, but this was evidently with the best of intentions. The mendicants came to claim the privilege of having houses in association with the university in which they might have lectures for the members of their orders, and asked for due allowance in the matter of degrees for courses thus taken. The faculty of the University did not want to grant this privilege, though it was acknowledged that some of the best professors in the University were members of the Mendicant orders, and we need only mention such names as Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas from the Dominicans, and St. Bonaventure, Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus from the Franciscans, to show the truth of this assertion. To give such a privilege {32} seemed a derogation of the faculty rights and the University refused. Then the Holy See interfered to insist that the University must give degrees for work done, rather than merely for regulation attendance. The best possible proof that Pope Alexander cannot be considered as wishing to injure or even diminish the prestige of the University in any way, is to be found in the fact that he afterwards sent two of his nephews to Paris to attend at the University.
All these Popes, so far mentioned, were not Frenchmen and therefore could have no national feeling in the matter of the University of Paris or of the French universities in general. It is not surprising to find that Pope Urban IV., who was a Frenchman and an alumnus of the University of Paris, elevated many French scholars, and especially his fellow alumni of Paris, to Church dignitaries of various kinds. After Urban IV., Nicholas IV. who succeeded him, though once more an Italian, founded chairs in the University of Montpelier, and also a professorship in a school that it was hoped would develop into a university at Gray in Franche Comte. In a word, looked at from every point of view, it must be admitted that the Church and ecclesiastical authorities were quite as much interested in education as in charity during this century, and it is to them that must be traced the foundation of the preparatory schools, as well as the universities, and the origin and development of the great educational movement that stamps this century as the greatest in human history.
JACQUES COEUR'S HOUSE (BOURGES)
{opp32}
CLOISTER OF ST. JOHN LATERAN (ROME)
{33}
III
WHAT AND HOW THEY STUDIED AT THE UNIVERSITIES.
It is usually the custom for text books of education to dismiss the teaching at the universities of the Middle Ages with some such expression as: "The teachers were mainly engaged in metaphysical speculations and the students were occupied with exercises in logic and in dialectics, learning in long drawn out disputations how to use the intellectual instruments they possessed but never actually applying them. All knowledge was supposed to be amenable to increase through dialectical discussion and all truth was supposed, to be obtainable as the conclusion of a regular syllogism." Great fun especially is made of the long-winded disputations, the time-taking public exercises in dialectics, the fine hair-drawn distinctions presumably with but the scantiest basis of truth behind them and in general the placing of words for realities in the investigation of truth and the conveyance of information. The sublime ignorance of educators who talk thus about the century that saw the rise of the universities in connection with the erection of the great Cathedrals, is only equaled by their assumption of knowledge.
It is very easy to make fun of a past generation and often rather difficult to enter into and appreciate its spirit. Ridicule comes natural to human nature, alas! but sympathy requires serious mental application for understanding's sake. Fortunately there has come in recent years a very different feeling in the minds of many mature and faithful students of this period, as regards the Middle Ages and its education. Dialectics may seem to be a waste of time to those who consider the training of the human mind as of little value in comparison with the stocking of it with information. Dialectical training will probably not often enable men to earn more money than might have otherwise been the case. This will be {34} eminently true if the dialectician is to devote himself to commercial enterprises in his future life. If he is to take up one of the professions, however, there may be some doubt as to whether even his practical effectiveness will not be increased by a good course of logic. There is, however, another point of view from which this matter of the study of dialectics may be viewed, and which has been taken very well by Prof. Saintsbury of the University of Edinburgh in a recent volume on the Thirteenth Century.
He insists in a passage which we quote at length in the chapter on the Prose of the Century, that if this training in logic had not been obtained at this time in European development, the results might have been serious for our modern languages and modern education. He says: "If at the outset of the career of the modern languages, men had thought with the looseness of modern thought, had indulged in the haphazard slovenliness of modern logic, had popularized theology and vulgarized rhetoric, as we have seen both popularized and vulgarized since, we should indeed have been in evil case." He maintains that "the far-reaching educative influence in mere language, in mere system of arrangement and expression, must be considered as one of the great benefits of Scholasticism." This is, after all, only a similar opinion to that evidently entertained by Mr. John Stuart Mill, who, as Prof. Saintsbury says, was not often a scholastically-minded philosopher, for he quotes in the preface of his logic two very striking opinions from very different sources, the Scotch philosopher, Hamilton, and the French philosophical writer, Condorcet. Hamilton said, "It is to the schoolmen that the vulgar languages are indebted for what precision and analytical subtlety they possess." Condorcet went even further than this, and used expressions that doubless will be a great source of surprise to those who do not realize how much of admiration is always engendered in those who really study the schoolmen seriously and do not take opinions of them from the chance reading of a few scattered passages, or depend for the data of their judgment on some second-hand authority, who thought it clever to abuse these old-time thinkers. Condorcet thought them far in advance of the old Greek philosophers for, he said, "Logic, ethics, and metaphysics {35} itself, owe to scholasticism a precision unknown to the ancients themselves."
With regard to the methods and contents of the teaching in the undergraduate department of the university, that is, in what we would now call the arts department, there is naturally no little interest at the present time. Besides the standards set up and the tests required can scarcely fail to attract attention. Professor Turner, in his History of Philosophy, has summed up much of what we know in this matter in a paragraph so full of information that we quote it in order to give our readers the best possible idea in a compendious form of these details of the old-time education.
"By statutes issued at various times during the Thirteenth Century it was provided that the professor should read, that is expound, the text of certain standard authors in philosophy and theology. In a document published by Denifle, (the distinguished authority on medieval universities) and by him referred to the year 1232, we find the following works among those prescribed for the Faculty of Arts: Logica Vetus (the old Boethian text of a portion of the Organon, probably accompanied by Porphyry's Isagoge); Logica Nova (the new translation of the Organon); Gilbert's Liber Sex Principorium; and Donatus's Barbarismus. A few years later (1255), the following works are prescribed: Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, De Anima, De Animalibus, De Caelo et Mundo, Meteorica, the minor psychological treatises and some Arabian or Jewish works, such as the Liber de Causis and De Differentia Spirititus et Animae."
"The first degree for which the student of arts presented himself was that of bachelor. The candidate for this degree, after a preliminary test called responsiones (this regulation went into effect not later than 1275), presented himself for the determination which was a public defense of a certain number of theses against opponents chosen from the audience. At the end of the disputation, the defender summed up, or determined, his conclusions. After determining, the bachelor resumed his studies for the licentiate, assuming also the task of cursorily explaining to junior students some portion of the Organon. The test for the degree of licentiate consisted {36} in a collatio, or exposition of several texts, after the manner of the masters. The student was now a licensed teacher; he did not, however, become magister, or master of arts, until he had delivered what was called the inceptio, or inaugural lecture, and was actually installed (birrettatio). If he continued to teach he was called magisier actu regens; if he departed from the university or took up other work, he was called magister non regens. It may be said that, as a general rule, the course of reading was: (1) for the bachelor's degree, grammar, logic, and psychology; (2) for the licentiate, natural philosophy; (3) for the master's degree, ethics, and the completion of the course of natural philosophy."
Quite apart from the value of its methods, however, scholasticism in certain of its features had a value in the material which it discussed and developed that modern generations only too frequently fail to realize. With regard to this the same distinguished authority whom we quoted with regard to dialectics, Prof. Saintsbury, does not hesitate to use expressions which will seem little short of rankly heretical to those who swear by modern science, and yet may serve to inject some eminently suggestive ideas into a sadly misunderstood subject.
"Yet there has always in generous souls who have some tincture of philosophy, subsisted a curious kind of sympathy and yearning over the work of these generations of mainly disinterested scholars, who, whatever they were, were thorough, and whatever they could not do, could think. And there, have even, in these latter days, been some graceless ones who have asked whether the Science of the nineteenth century, after an equal interval, will be of any more positive value—whether it will not have even less comparative interest than that which appertains to the Scholasticism of the Thirteenth."
In the light of this it has seemed well to try to show in terms of present-day science some of the important reflections with regard to such problems of natural history, as magnetism, the composition of matter, and the relation of things physical to one another, which we now include under the name science, some of the thoughts that these scholars of the Thirteenth Century were thinking and were developing for the benefit of the {37} enthusiastic students who flocked to the universities. We will find in such a review though it must necessarily be brief many more anticipations of modern science than would be thought possible.
To take the example for the moment of magnetism which is usually considered to be a subject entirely of modern attention, a good idea of the intense interest of this century in things scientific, can be obtained from the following short paragraph in which Brother Potamian in his sketch of Petrus Peregrinus, condenses the references to magnetic phenomena that are found in the literature of the time. Most of the writers he mentions were not scientists in the ordinary sense of the word but were literary men, and the fact that these references occur shows very clearly that there must have been wide-spread interest in such scientific phenomena, since they had attracted the attention of literary writers, who would not have spoken of them doubtless, but that they knew that in this they would be satisfying as well as exciting public interest.
"Abbot Neckam, the Augustinian (1157-1217), distinguished between the properties of the two ends of the lodestone, and gives in his De Utensilibus, what is perhaps the earliest reference to the mariner's compass that we have. Albertus Magnus, the Dominican (1193-1280), in his treatise De Mineralibus, enumerates different kinds of natural magnets and states some of the properties commonly attributed to them; the minstrel, Guyot de Provins, in a famous satirical poem, written about 1208, refers to the directive quality of the lodestone and its use in navigation, as do also Cardinal de Vitry in his Historia Orientialis (1215-1220), Brunetto Latini, poet, orator and philosopher (the teacher of Dante), in his Tresor des Sciences, a veritable library, written in Paris in 1260; Raymond Lully, the enlightened Doctor, in his treatise, De Contemplatione, begun in 1272, and Guido Guinicelli, the poet-priest of Bologna, who died in 1276." [Footnote 4]
[Footnote 4: The letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the Magnet, A. D. 1269, translated by Bro. Arnold, M. Sc., with an Introductory Note by Bro. Potamian, N. Y., 1904.]
{38}
The metaphysics of the medieval universities have come in for quite as much animadversion, not to say ridicule, as the dialectics. None of its departments is spared in the condemnation, though most fun is made of the gropings of the medieval mind after truth in the physical sciences. The cosmology, the science of matter as it appealed to the medieval mind, is usually considered to have been so entirely speculative as to deserve no further attention. We have presumably, learned so much by experimental demonstration and original observation in the physical sciences, that any thinking of the medieval mind along these lines may, in the opinion of those who know nothing of what they speak, be set aside as preposterous, or at best nugatory. It will surely be a source of surprise, then, to find that in the consideration of the composition of matter and of the problem of the forces connected with it, the minds of the medieval schoolmen were occupied with just the same questions that have been most interesting to the Nineteenth Century and that curiously enough the conclusions they reached, though by very different methods of investigation, were almost exactly the same as those to which modern physical scientists have attained by their refined methods of investigation.
One or two examples will suffice, I think, to show very clearly that the students of the Thirteenth Century had presented to them practically the same problems with regard to matter, its origin and composition, as occupy the students of the present generation. For instance Thomas Aquinas usually known as St. Thomas, in a series of lectures given at the University of Paris toward the end of the third quarter of the Thirteenth Century, stated as the most important conclusion with regard to matter, that "Nihil omnino in nihilum redigetur,"' "Nothing at all will ever be reduced to nothingness." By this it was very evident from the context that he meant that matter would never be annihilated and could never be destroyed. It might be changed in various ways but it could never go back into the nothingness from which it had been taken by the creative act. Annihilation was pronounced as not being a part of the scheme of things as far as the human mind could hope to fathom its meaning.
In this sentence, then, Thomas of Aquin was proclaiming the {39} doctrine of the indestructibility of matter. It was not until well on in the nineteenth century that the chemists and physicists of modern times realized the truth of this great principle. The chemists had seen matter change its form in many ways, had seen it disappear apparently in the smoke of fire or evaporate under the influence of heat, but investigation proved that if care were taken in the collection of the gases that came off under these circumstances, of the ashes of combustion and of the residue of evaporation, all the original material that had been contained in the supposedly disappearing substance could be recovered or at least completely accounted for. The physicists on their part had realized this same truth and finally there came the definite enunciation of the absolute indestructibility of matter. St. Thomas' conclusion "Nothing at all will ever be reduced to nothingness" had anticipated this doctrine by nearly seven centuries. What happened in the Nineteenth Century was that there came an experimental demonstration of the truth of the principle. The principle itself, however, had been reached long before by the human mind by speculative processes quite as inerrable in their way as the more modern method of investigation.
When St. Thomas used the aphorism "Nothing at all will ever be reduced to nothingness" there was another signification that he attached to the words quite as clearly as that by which they expressed the indestructibility of matter. For him Nihil or nothing meant neither matter nor form, that is, neither the material substance nor the energy which is contained in it. He meant then, that no energy would ever be destroyed as well as no matter would ever be annihilated. He was teaching the conservation of energy as well as the indestructibility of matter. Here once more the experimental demonstration of the doctrine was delayed for over six centuries and a half. The truth itself, however, had been reached by this medieval master-mind and was the subject of his teaching to the university students in Paris in the Thirteenth Century. These examples should, I think, serve to illustrate that the minds of medieval students were occupied with practically the same questions as those which are now taught to the university students of our day. There are, however, some even {40} more striking anticipations of modern teaching that will serve to demonstrate this community of educational interests in spite of seven centuries of time separation.
In recent years we have come to realize that matter is not the manifold material we were accustomed to think it when we accepted the hypothesis that there were some seventy odd different kinds of atoms, each one absolutely independent of any other and representing an ultimate term in science. The atomic theory from this standpoint has proved to be only a working hypothesis that was useful for a time, but that our physicists are now agreed must not be considered as something absolute. Radium has been observed changing into helium and the relations of atoms to one another as they are now known, make it almost certain that all of them have an underlying sub-stratum the same in all, but differentiated by the dynamic energies with which matter in its different forms is gifted. Sir Oliver Lodge has stated this theory of the constitution of matter very clearly in recent years, and in doing so has only been voicing the practically universal sentiment of those who have been following the latest developments in the physical sciences. Strange as it may appear, this was exactly the teaching of Aquinas and the schoolmen with regard to the constitution of matter. They said that the two constituting principles of matter were prime matter and form. By prime matter they meant the material sub-stratum the same in all material things. By form they meant the special dynamic energy which, entering into prime matter, causes it to act differently from other kinds and gives it all the particular qualities by which we recognize it. This theory was not original with them, having been adopted from Aristotle, but it was very clearly set forth, profoundly discussed, and amply illustrated by the schoolmen. In its development this theory was made to be of the greatest help in the explanation of many other difficulties with regard to living as well as non-living things in their hands. The theory has its difficulties, but they are less than those of any other theory of the constitution of matter, and it has been accepted by more philosophic thinkers since the Thirteenth Century than any other doctrine of similar nature. It may be said that it was reached only by deduction and not by experimental observation. Such an expression, {41} however, instead of being really an objection is rather a demonstration of the fact that great truths may be reached by deduction yet only demonstrated by inductive methods many centuries later.
Of course it may well be said even after all these communities of interest between the medieval and the modern teaching of the general principles of science has been pointed out, that the universities of the Middle Ages did not present the subjects under discussion in a practical way, and their teaching was not likely to lead to directly beneficial results in applied science. It might well he responded to this, that it is not the function of a university to teach applications of science but only the great principles, the broad generalizations that underlie scientific thinking, leaving details to be filled in in whatever form of practical work the man may take up. Very few of those, however, who talk about the purely speculative character of medieval teaching have manifestly ever made it their business to know anything about the actual facts of old-time university teaching by definite knowledge, but have rather allowed themselves to be guided by speculation and by inadequate second-hand authorities, whose dicta they have never taken the trouble to substantiate by a glance at contemporary authorities on medieval matters.
It will be interesting to quote for the information of such men, the opinion of the greatest of medieval scientists with regard to the reason why men do not obtain real knowledge more rapidly than would seem ought to be the case, from the amount of work which they have devoted to obtaining it. Roger Bacon, summing up for Pope Clement the body of doctrine that he was teaching at the University of Oxford in the Thirteenth Century, starts out with the principle that there are four grounds of human ignorance. "These are first, trust in inadequate authority; second, the force of custom which leads men to accept too unquestioningly what has been accepted before their time; third, the placing of confidence in the opinion of the inexperienced; and fourth, the hiding of one's own ignorance with the parade of a superficial wisdom." Surely no one will ever be able to improve on these four grounds for human ignorance, and they continue to be as {42} important in the twentieth century as they were in the Thirteenth. They could only have emanated from an eminently practical mind, accustomed to test by observation and by careful searching of authorities, every proposition that came to him. Professor Henry Morley, Professor of English Literature at University College, London, says of these grounds for ignorance of Roger Bacon, in his English Writers, Volume III, page 321: "No part of that ground has yet been cut away from beneath the feet of students, although six centuries ago the Oxford friar clearly pointed out its character. We still make sheep walks of second, third, and fourth and fiftieth-hand references to authority; still we are the slaves of habit; still we are found following too frequently the untaught crowd; still we flinch from the righteous and wholesome phrase, 'I do not know'; and acquiesce actively in the opinion of others that we know what we appear to know. Substitute honest research, original and independent thought, strict truth in the comparison of only what we really know with what is really known by others, and the strong redoubt of ignorance has fallen."
The number of things which Roger Bacon succeeded in discovering by the application of the principle of testing everything by personal observation, is almost incredible to a modern student of science and of education who has known nothing before of the progress in science made by this wonderful man. He has been sometimes declared to be the discoverer of gunpowder, but this is a mistake since it was known many years before by the Arabs and by them introduced into Europe. He did study explosives very deeply, however, and besides learning many things about them realized how much might be accomplished by their use in the after-time. He declares in his Opus Magnum: "That one may cause to burst forth from bronze, thunderbolts more formidable than those produced by nature. A small quantity of prepared matter occasions a terrible explosion accompanied by a brilliant light. One may multiply this phenomenon so far as to destroy a city or an army." Considering how little was known about gunpowder at this time, this was of itself a marvelous anticipation of what might be accomplished by it.
{opp42}
RATHHAUS (TANGERMÜNDE)
Bacon prophesied, however, much more than merely {43} destructive effects from the use of high explosives, and indeed it is almost amusing to see how closely he anticipated some of the most modern usages of high explosives for motor purposes. He seems to have concluded that some time the apparently uncontrollable forces of explosion would come under the control of man and be harnessed by him for his own purposes. He realized that one of the great applications of such a force would be for transportation. Accordingly he said: "Art can construct instruments of navigation such that the largest vessels governed by a single man will traverse rivers and seas more rapidly than if they were filled with oarsmen. One may also make carriages which without the aid of any animal will run with remarkable swiftness." [Footnote 5] When we recall that the very latest thing in transportation are motor-boats and automobiles driven by gasoline, a high explosive, Roger Bacon's prophesy becomes one of these weird anticipations of human progress which seem almost more than human.
[Footnote 5: These quotations are taken from Ozanam's Dante and Catholic Philosophy, published by the Cathedral Library Association, New York, 1897. ]
It was not with regard to explosives alone, however, that Roger Bacon was to make great advances and still more marvelous anticipations in physical science. He was not, as is sometimes claimed for him, either the inventor of the telescope or of the theory of lenses. He did more, however, than perhaps anyone else to make the principles of lenses clear and to establish them on a mathematical basis. His traditional connection with the telescope can probably be traced to the fact that he was very much interested in astronomy and the relations of the heavens to the earth. He pointed out very clearly the errors which had crept into the Julian calendar, calculated exactly how much of a correction was needed in order to restore the year to its proper place, and suggested the method by which future errors of this kind could be avoided. His ideas were too far beyond his century to be applied in a practical way, but they were not to be without their effect and it is said that they formed the basis of the subsequent correction of the calendar in the time of Pope Gregory XIII three centuries later.
{44}
It is rather surprising to find how much besides the theory of lenses Friar Bacon had succeeded in finding out in the department of optics. He taught, for instance, the principle of the aberration of light, and, still more marvelous to consider, taught that light did not travel instantaneously but had a definite rate of motion, though this was extremely rapid. It is rather difficult to understand how he reached this conclusion since light travels so fast that as far as regards any observation that can be made upon earth, the diffusion is practically instantaneous. It was not for over three centuries later that Römer, the German astronomer, demonstrated the motion of light and its rate, by his observations upon the moons of Jupiter at different phases of the earth's orbit, which showed that the light of these moons took a definite and quite appreciable time to reach the earth after their eclipse by the planet was over.
We are not surprised to find that Bacon should praise those of his contemporaries who devoted themselves to mathematics and to experimental observations in science. Of one of his correspondents who even from distant Italy sent him his observations in order that he might have the great Franciscan's precious comments on them. Bacon has given quite a panegyric. The reasons for his praise, however, are so different from those which are ordinarily proclaimed to have been the sources of laudation in distant medieval scientific circles, that we prefer to quote Bacon's own words from the Opus Tertium. Bacon is talking of Petrus Peregrinus and says: "I know of only one person who deserves praise for his work in experimental philosophy, for he does not care for the discourses of men and their wordy warfare, but quietly and diligently pursues the works of wisdom. Therefore, what others grope after blindly, as bats in the evening twilight, this man contemplates in all their brilliancy because he is a master of experiment. Hence, he knows all natural science whether pertaining to medicine and alchemy, or to matters celestial and terrestrial.
"He has worked diligently in the smelting of ores as also in the working of minerals; he is thoroughly acquainted with all sorts of arms and implements used in military service and in hunting, besides which he is skilled in agriculture and in the measurement of lands. {45} It is impossible to write a useful or correct treatise in experimental philosophy without mentioning this man's name. Moreover, he pursues knowledge for its own sake; for if he wished to obtain royal favor, he could easily find sovereigns who would honor and enrich him."
{opp44}
CATHEDRAL (YORK)
CATHEDRAL (HEREFORD)
Lest it should be thought that these expressions of laudatory appreciation of the great Thirteenth Century scientist are dictated more by the desire to magnify his work and to bring out the influence in science of the Churchmen of the period, it seems well to quote an expression of opinion from the modern historian of the inductive sciences, whose praise is scarcely if any less outspoken than that of others whom we have quoted and who might be supposed to be somewhat partial in their judgment. This opinion will fortify the doubters who must have authority and at the same time sums up very excellently the position which Roger Bacon occupies in the History of Science.
Dr. Whewell says that Roger Bacon's Opus Majus is "the encyclopedia and Novam Organon of the Thirteenth Century, a work equally wonderful with regard to its general scheme and to the special treatises with which the outlines of the plans are filled up. The professed object of the work is to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had not made a greater progress, to draw back attention to the sources of knowledge which had been unwisely neglected, to discover other sources which were yet almost untouched, and to animate men in the undertaking by a prospect of the vast advantages which it offered. In the development of this plan all the leading portions of science are expanded in the most complete shape which they had at that time assumed; and improvements of a very wide and striking kind are proposed in some of the principal branches of study. Even if the work had no leading purposes it would have been highly valuable as a treasure of the most solid knowledge and soundest speculations of the time; even if it had contained no such details it would have been a work most remarkable for its general views and scope."
It is only what might have been expected, however, from {46} Roger Bacon's training that he should have made great progress in the physical sciences. At the University of Paris his favorite teacher was Albertus Magnus, who was himself deeply interested in all the physical sciences, though he was more concerned with the study of chemical problems than of the practical questions which were to occupy his greatest pupil. There is no doubt at all that Albertus Magnus accomplished a great amount of experimental work in chemistry and had made a large series of actual observations. He was a theologian as well as a philosopher and a scientist. Some idea of the immense industry of the man can be obtained from the fact that his complete works as published consist of some twenty large folio volumes, each one of which contains on the average at least 500,000 words.
Among these works are many treatises relating to chemistry. The titles of some of them will serve to show how explicit was Albert in his consideration of various chemical subjects. He has treatises concerning Metals and Minerals; concerning Alchemy; A Treatise on the Secret of Chemistry; A Concordance, that is a Collection of observations from many sources with regard to the Philosopher's Stone; A Brief Compend on the Origin of the Metals; A Treatise on Compounds; most of these are to be found in his works under the general heading "Theatrum Chemicum."
It is not surprising for those who know of Albert's work, to find that his pupil Roger Bacon defined the limits of chemistry very accurately and showed that he understood exactly what the subject and methods of investigation must be, in order that advance should be made in it. Of chemistry he speaks in his "Opus Tertium" in the following words: "There is a science which treats of the generation of things from their elements and of all inanimate things, as of the elements and liquids, simple and compound, common stones, gems and marble, gold and other metals, sulphur, salts, pigments, lapis lazuli, minium and other colors, oils, bitumen, and infinite more of which we find nothing in the books of Aristotle; nor are the natural philosophers nor any of the Latins acquainted with these things."
In physics Albertus Magnus was, if possible, more advanced {47} and progressive even than in chemistry. His knowledge in the physical sciences was not merely speculative, but partook to a great degree of the nature of what we now call applied science. Humboldt, the distinguished German natural philosopher of the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, who was undoubtedly the most important leader in scientific thought in his time and whose own work was great enough to have an enduring influence in spite of the immense progress of the Nineteenth Century, has summed up Albert's work and given the headings under which his scientific research must be considered. He says:
"Albertus Magnus was equally active and influential in promoting the study of natural science and of the Aristotelian philosophy. His works contain some exceedingly acute remarks on the organic structure and physiology of plants. One of his works bearing the title of 'Liber Cosmographicus de Natura Locorum,' is a species of physical geography. I have found in it considerations on the dependence of temperature concurrently on latitude and elevation, and on the effect of different angles of incidence of the sun's rays in heating the ground, which have excited my surprise."
To take up some of Humboldt's headings in their order and illustrate them by quotations from Albert himself and from condensed accounts as they appear in his biographer Sighart and in Christian Schools and Scholars [Footnote 6], will serve to show at once the extent of Albert's knowledge and the presumptuous ignorance of those who make little of the science of the medieval period. When we have catalogued, for instance, the many facts with regard to astronomy and the physics of light that are supposed to have come to human ken much later, yet may be seen to have been clearly within the range of Albert's knowledge, and evidently formed the subject of his teaching at various times at both Paris and Cologne, for they are found in his authentic works, we can scarcely help but be amused at the pretentious misconception that has relegated their author to a place in education so trivial as is that which is represented in many minds by the term scholastic.
[Footnote 6: Christian Schools and Scholars. Drane.]
"He decides that the Milky Way is nothing but a vast {48} assemblage of stars, but supposes naturally enough that they occupy the orbit which receives the light of the sun. The figures visible on the moon's disc are not, he says, as hitherto has been supposed, reflections of the seas and mountains of the earth, but configurations of her own surface. He notices, in order to correct it, the assertion of Aristotle that lunar rainbows appear only twice in fifty years; 'I myself,' he says have observed two in a single year.' He has something to say on the refraction of a solar ray, notices certain crystals which have a power of refraction, and remarks that none of the ancients and few moderns were acquainted with the properties of mirrors."
Albert's great pupil Roger Bacon is rightly looked upon as the true father of inductive science, an honor that history has unfortunately taken from him to confer it undeservedly on his namesake of four centuries later, but the teaching out of which Roger Bacon was to develop the principles of experimental science can be found in many places in his master's writings. In Albert's tenth book, wherein he catalogues and describes all the trees, plants, and herbs known in his time, he observes: "All that is here set down is the result of our own experience, or has been borrowed from authors whom we know to have written what their personal experience has confirmed: for in these matters experience alone can give certainty" (experimentum solum certificat in talibus). "Such an expression," says his biographer, "which might have proceeded from the pen of (Francis) Bacon, argues in itself a prodigious scientific progress, and shows that the medieval friar was on the track so successfully pursued by modern natural philosophy. He had fairly shaken off the shackles which had hitherto tied up discovery, and was the slave neither of Pliny nor of Aristotle."
Botany is supposed to be a very modern science and to most people Humboldt's expression that he found in Albertus Magnus's writings some "exceedingly acute remarks on the organic structure and physiology of plants" will come as a supreme surprise. A few details with regard to Albert's botanical knowledge, however, will serve to heighten that surprise and to show, that the foolish tirades of modern sciolists, {49} who have often expressed their wonder that with all the beauties of nature around them, these scholars of the Middle Ages did not devote themselves to nature study, are absurd, because if the critics but knew it there was profound interest in nature and all her manifestations and a series of discoveries that anticipated not a little of what we consider most important in our modern science. The story of Albert's botanical knowledge has been told in a single very full paragraph by his biographer. Sighart also quotes an appreciative opinion from a modern German botanist which will serve to dispel any doubts with regard to Albert's position in botany that modern students might perhaps continue to harbor, unless they had good authority to support their opinion, though of course it will be remembered that the main difference between the medieval and the modern mind is only too often said to be, that the medieval required an authority while the modern makes its opinion for itself. Even the most skeptical of modern minds however, will probably be satisfied by the following paragraph.
"He was acquainted with the sleep of plants, with the periodical opening and closing of blossoms, with the diminution of sap through evaporation from the cuticle of the leaves, and with the influence of the distribution of the bundles of vessels on the folial indentations. His minute observations on the forms and variety of plants intimate an exquisite sense of floral beauty. He distinguished the star from the bell-floral, tells us that a red rose will turn white when submitted to the vapor of sulphur and makes some very sagacious observations on the subject of germination. … The extraordinary erudition and originality of this treatise (his tenth book) has drawn from M. Meyer the following comment: 'No Botanist who lived before Albert can be compared to him, unless Theophrastus, with whom he was not acquainted; and after him none has painted nature in such living colors or studied it so profoundly until the time of Conrad Gesner and Cesalpino.' All honor, then, to the man who made such astonishing progress in the science of nature as to find no one, I will not say to surpass, but even to equal him for the space of three centuries."
{50}
We point out in the chapter on Geography and Exploration how much this wonderful Thirteenth Century added to the knowledge of geographical science. Even before the great explorers of this time, however, had accomplished their work, this particular branch of science had made such great progress as would bring it quite within the domain of what we call the science of geography at the present time. When we remember how much has been said about the ignorance of the men of the later Middle Ages as regards the shape of the earth and its inhabitants, and how many foolish notions they are supposed to have accepted with regard to the limitation of possible residents of the world and the queer ideas as to the antipodes, the following passages taken from Albert's biographer will serve better than anything else to show how absurdly the traditional notions with regard to this time and its knowledge, have been permitted by educators to tinge what are supposed to be serious opinions with regard to the subject matters of education in that early university period:
"He treats as fabulous the commonly-received idea, in which Bede had acquiesced, that the region of the earth south of the equator was uninhabitable, and considers, that from the equator to the South Pole, the earth was not only habitable, but in all probability actually inhabited, except directly at the poles, where he imagines the cold to be excessive. If there be any animals there, he says, they must have very thick skins to defend them from the rigor of the climate, and they are probably of a white color. The intensity of cold, is however, tempered by the action of the sea. He describes the antipodes and the countries they comprise, and divides the climate of the earth into seven zones. He smiles with a scholar's freedom at the simplicity of those who suppose that persons living at the opposite region of the earth must fall off, an opinion that can only rise out of the grossest ignorance, 'for when we speak of the lower hemisphere, this must be understood merely as relatively to ourselves.' It is as a geographer that Albert's superiority to the writers of his own time chiefly appears. Bearing in mind the astonishing ignorance which then prevailed on this subject, it is truly admirable to find him correctly tracing the chief mountain chains of Europe, with the rivers which take {51} their source in each; remarking on portions of coast which have in later times been submerged by the ocean, and islands which have been raised by volcanic action above the level of the sea; noticing the modification of climate caused by mountains, seas and forests, and the division of the human race whose differences he ascribes to the effect upon them of the countries they inhabit! In speaking of the British Isles he alludes to the commonly-received idea that another distant island called Tile or Thule, existed far in the Western Ocean, uninhabitable by reason of its frightful climate, but which, he says, has perhaps not yet been visited by man."
Nothing will so seriously disturb the complacency of modern minds as to the wonderful advances that have been made in the last century in all branches of physical science as to read Albertus Magnus' writings. Nothing can be more wholesomely chastening of present day conceit than to get a proper appreciation of the extent of the knowledge of the Schoolmen.
Albertus Magnus' other great pupil besides Roger Bacon was St. Thomas Aquinas. If any suspicion were still left that Thomas did not appreciate just what the significance of his teachings in physics was, when he announced that neither matter nor force could ever be reduced to nothingness, it would surely be removed by the consideration that he had been for many years in intimate relations with Albert and that he had probably also been close to Roger Bacon. After association with such men as these, any knowledge he displays with regard to physical science can scarcely be presumed to have been stumbled upon unawares. St. Thomas himself has left three treatises on chemical subjects and it is said that the first occurrence of the word amalgam can be traced to one of these treatises. Everybody was as much interested then, as we are at the present time, in the transformation of metals and mercury with its silvery sheen, its facility to enter into metallic combinations of all kinds, and its elusive ways, naturally made it the center of scientific interest quite as radium is at the present moment. Further material with regard to St. Thomas and also to the subject of education will be found in the chapter, Aquinas the Scholar.
After this brief review of only a few of the things that they taught in science at the Thirteenth Century universities, most {52} people will scarcely fail to wonder how such peculiar erroneous impressions with regard to the uselessness of university teaching and training have come to be so generally accepted. The fault lies, of course, with those who thought they knew something about university teaching, and who, because they found a few things that now look ridiculous, as certain supposed facts of one generation always will to succeeding generations who know more about them, thought they could conclude from these as to the character of the whole content of medieval education. It is only another example of what Artemus Ward pointed out so effectively when he said that "there is nothing that makes men so ridiculous as the knowing so many things that aint so." We have been accepting without question ever so many things that simply are not so with regard to these wonderful generations, who not only organized the universities but organized the teaching in them on lines not very different from those which occupy people seven centuries later.
What would be the most amusing feature, if it were not unfortunately so serious an arraignment of the literature that has grown up around these peculiar baseless notions with regard to scholastic philosophy, is the number of men of science who have permitted themselves to make fun of certain supposed lucubrations of the great medieval philosophers. It is not so very long ago that, as pointed out by Harper in the Metaphysics of the School, Professor Tate in a lecture on Some Recent Advances in Physical Science repeated the old slander that even Aquinas occupied the attention of his students with such inane questions as: "How many angels could dance on the point of a needle?" Modern science very proudly insists that it occupies itself with observations and concerns itself little with authority. Prof. Tate in this unhappy quotation, shows not only that he has made no personal studies in medieval philosophy but that he has accepted a very inadequate authority for the statements which he makes with as much confidence as if they had been the result of prolonged research in this field. Many other modern scientists (?) have fallen into like blunders. (For Huxley's opinion see. Appendix)
The modern student, as well as the teacher, is prone to wonder what were the methods of study and the habits of life {53} of the students of the Thirteenth Century, and fortunately we have a short sketch, written by Robert of Sorbonne, the famous founder of the Sorbonne, in which he gives advice to attendants at that institution as to how they should spend their time, so that at least we are able to get a hint of the ideals that were set before the student. Robert, whose long experience of university life made him thoroughly competent to advise, said:
"The student who wishes to make progress ought to observe six essential rules.
"First: He ought to consecrate a certain hour every day to the study of a determined subject, as St. Bernard counselled his monks in his letter to the Brothers of the Mont Dieu.
"Second: He ought to concentrate his attention upon what he reads and ought not to let it pass lightly. There is between reading and study, as St. Bernard says, the same difference as between a host and a guest, between a passing salutation exchanged in the street and an embrace prompted by an unalterable affection.
"Third: He ought to extract from the daily study one thought, some truth or other, and engrave it deeply upon his memory with special care. Seneca said 'Cum multa percurreris in die, unum tibi elige quod illa die excoquas'—When you have run over many things in a day select one for yourself which you should digest well on that day.
"Fourth: Write a resume of it, for words which are not confided to writing fly as does the dust before the wind.
"Fifth: Talk the matter over with your fellow-students, either in the regular recitation or in your familiar conversation. This exercise is even more profitable than study for it has as its result the clarifying of all doubts and the removing of all the obscurity that study may have left. Nothing is perfectly known unless it has been tried by the tooth of disputation.
"Sixth: Pray, for this is indeed one of the best ways of learning. St. Bernard teaches that study ought to touch the heart and that one should profit by it always by elevating the heart to God, without, however, interrupting the study."
Sorbonne proceeds in a tone that vividly recalls the modern university professor who has seen generation after generation {54} of students and has learned to realize how many of them waste their time.
"Certain students act like fools; they display great subtility over nonsensical subjects and exhibit themselves devoid of intelligence with regard to their most important studies. So as not to seem to have lost their time they gather together many sheets of parchment, make thick volumes of note books out of them, with many a blank interval, and cover them with elegant binding in red letters. Then they return to the paternal domicile with their little sack filled up with knowledge which can be stolen from them by any thief that comes along, or may be eaten by rats or by worms or destroyed by fire or water.
"In order to acquire instruction the student must abstain from pleasure and not allow himself to be hampered by material cares. There was at Paris not long since two teachers who were great friends. One of them had seen much, had read much and used to remain night and day bent over his books. He scarcely took the time to say an 'Our Father.' Nevertheless he had but four students. His colleague possessed a much less complete library, was less devoted to study and heard mass every morning before delivering his lecture. In spite of this, his classroom was full. 'How do you do it?' asked his friend. 'It is very simple,' said his friend smiling. 'God studies for me. I go to mass and when I come back I know by heart all that I have to teach.'"
"Meditation," so Sorbonne continues, "is suitable not only for the master, but the good student ought also to go and take his promenade along the banks of the Seine, not to play there, but in order to repeat his lesson and meditate upon it."
These instructions for students are not very different from those that would be issued by an interested head of a university department to the freshmen of the present day. His insistence, especially on the difference between reading and study, might very well be taken to heart at the present time, when there seems to be some idea that reading of itself is sufficient to enable one to obtain an education. The lesson of learning one thing a day and learning that well, might have been selected as a motto for students for all succeeding generations with manifest advantage to the success of college study.
{55}
In other things Sorbonne departs further from our modern ideas in the matter of education, but still there are many even at the present time who will read with profound sympathy his emphatic advice to the University students that they must educate their hearts as well as their intellects, and make their education subserve the purpose of bringing them closer to God.
A word about certain customs that prevailed more or less generally in the universities at this time, and that after having been much misunderstood will now be looked at more sympathetically in the light of recent educational developments will not be out of place here.
One of the advantages of modern German university education has often been acclaimed to be the fact that students are tempted to make portions of their studies in various cities, since all the courses are equalized in certain ways, so that the time spent at any one of them will be counted properly for their degrees. It has long been recognized that travel makes the best possible complement to a university course, and even when the English universities in the Eighteenth Century sank to be little more than pleasant abiding places where young men of the upper classes "ate their terms," the fact that it was the custom "to make the grand tour" of continental travel, supplied for much that was lacking in the serious side of their education. Little as this might be anticipated as a feature of the ruder times of the Thirteenth Century, when travel was so difficult, it must be counted as one of the great advantages for the inquiring spirits of the time. Dante, besides attending the universities in Italy, and he certainly was at several of them, was also at Paris at one time and probably also at Oxford. Professor Monroe in his text book in the History of Education has stated this custom very distinctly.
"With the founding of the universities and the establishment of the nations in practically every university, it became quite customary for students to travel from university to university, finding in each a home in their appropriate nation. Many, however, willing to accept the privileges of the clergy and the students without undertaking their obligations, adopted this wandering life as a permanent one. Being a privileged order, they readily found a living, or made it by begging. A monk of {56} the early university period writes: 'The scholars are accustomed to wander throughout the whole world and visit all the cities, and their many studies bring them understanding. For in Paris they seek a knowledge of the liberal arts; of the ancient writers at Orleans; of medicine at Salernum; of the black art at Toledo; and in no place decent manners.'"
With regard to the old monk's criticism it must be remembered that old age is always rather depreciative in criticism of the present and over-appreciative of what happened in the past se pueris. Abuses always seem to be creeping in that are going to ruin the force of education, yet somehow the next generation succeeds in obtaining its intellectual development in rather good shape. Besides as we must always remember in educational questions, evils are ever exaggerated and the memory of them is prone to live longer and to loom up larger than that of the good with which they were associated and to which indeed, as anyone of reasonable experience in educational circles knows, they may constitute by comparison only a very small amount. Undoubtedly the wanderings of students brought with it many abuses, and if we were to listen to some of the stories of foreign student life in Paris in our own time, we might think that much of evil and nothing of good was accomplished by such wandering, but inasmuch as we do so we invite serious error of judgment.
Another striking feature of university life which constituted a distinct anticipation of something very modern in our educational system, was the lending of professors of different nationalities among the universities. It is only at the beginning of the Twentieth Century that we have reestablished this custom. In the Thirteenth Century, however, Albertus Magnus taught for a time at Cologne and then later at Paris and apparently also at Rome. St. Thomas of Aquin, after having taught for a time at Paris, lectured in various Italian universities and then finally at the University of Rome to which he was tempted by the Popes. Duns Scotus, besides teaching in Oxford, taught also at Paris. Alexander of Hales before him seems to have done the same thing. Roger Bacon, after studying at the University of Paris, seems to have commenced teaching there, though most of his professional work was {57} accomplished at the University of Oxford. Raymond Lully probably had professional experiences at several Spanish Universities besides at Paris. In a word, if a man were a distinguished genius he was almost sure to be given the opportunity to influence his generation at a number of centers of educational life, and not be confined as has been the case in the centuries since to but one or at most, and that more by accident than intent, to perhaps two. In a word there is not a distinctive feature of modern university life that was not anticipated in the Thirteenth Century.
FLYING BUTTRESS (AMIENS)
{58}
IV
THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS AND DISCIPLINE.
For most people the surprise of finding that the subjects with which the students were occupied at the universities of the Thirteenth Century were very much the same as those which claim the attention of modern students, will probably be somewhat mitigated by the thought that after all there were only few in attendance at the universities, and as a consequence only a small proportion of the population shared in that illumination, which has become so universal in the spread of opportunities for the higher education in these later times. While such an impression is cherished by many even of those who think that they know the history of education, and unfortunately are considered by others to be authorities on the subject, it is the falsest possible idea that could be conceived of this medieval time with which we are concerned. We may say at once that it is a matter of comparatively easy collation of statistics to show, that in proportion to the population of the various countries, there were actually more students taking advantage of the opportunity to acquire university education in the Thirteenth Century, than there were at any time in the Nineteenth Century, or even in the midst of this era of widespread educational opportunities in the Twentieth Century.
Most people know the traditions which declare that there were between twenty and thirty thousand students at the University of Paris toward the end of the Thirteenth Century. At the same time there were said to have been between fifteen and twenty thousand students at the University of Bologna. Correspondingly large numbers have been reported for the University of Oxford and many thousands were supposed to be in attendance at the University of Cambridge. It is usually considered, however, that these figures are gross exaggerations. It is easy to assert this but rather difficult to prove. As a matter of fact the nearer one comes to the actual times in the {59} history of education, the more definitely do writers speak of these large numbers of students in attendance. For instance Gascoigne, who says that there were thirty thousand students at the University of Oxford at the end of the Thirteenth Century, lived himself within a hundred years of the events of which he talks, and he even goes so far as to declare that he saw the rolls of the University containing this many names. There is no doubt at all about his evidence in the matter and there is no mistake possible with regard to his figures. They were written out in Latin, not expressed in Arabic or Roman numerals, the copying of which might so easily give opportunities for error to creep in.
In spite of such evidence it is generally conceded that to accept these large numbers would be almost surely a mistake. There were without any doubt many thousands of students at the Thirteenth Century universities. There were certainly more students at the University of Paris in the last quarter of the Thirteenth Century than there were at any time during the Nineteenth Century. This of itself is enough to startle modern complacency out of most of its ridiculous self-sufficiency. There can be scarcely a doubt that the University of Bologna at the time of its largest attendance had more students than any university of modern times, proud as we may be (and deservedly) of our immense institutions of learning. With regard to the English universities the presence of very large numbers is much more doubtful. Making every allowance, however, there can be no hesitation in saying that Oxford had during the last quarter of the Thirteenth Century a larger number than ever afterwards within her walls and that Cambridge, though never so numerous as her rival, had a like good fortune. Professor Laurie of Edinburgh, a very conservative authority and one not likely to concede too much to the Middle Ages in anything, would allow, as we shall see, some ten thousand students to Oxford. Others have claimed more than half that number for Cambridge as the lowest possible estimate. Even if it be conceded, as has sometimes been urged, that all those in service in the universities were also counted as students, these numbers would not be reduced very materially and it must not be {60} forgotten that, in those days of enthusiastic striving after education, young men were perfectly willing to take up even the onerous duties of personal services to others, in order to have the opportunity to be closely in touch with a great educational institution and to receive even a moderate amount of benefit from its educational system. In our own time there are many students who are working their way through the universities, and in the Thirteenth Century when the spirit of independence was much less developed, and when any stigma that attached to personal service was much less felt than it is at the present time, there were many more examples of this earnest striving for intellectual development.
If we discuss the situation in English-speaking countries as regards the comparative attendance at the universities in the Thirteenth Century and in our own time, we shall be able to get a reasonably good idea of what must be thought in this matter. The authorities are neither difficult of consultation nor distant, and comparatively much more is known about the population of England at this time than about most of the continental countries. England was under a single ruler, while the geographical divisions that we now know by the name of France, Spain, Italy and Germany were the seats of several rulers at least and sometimes of many, a circumstance which does not favor our obtaining an adequate idea of the populations.
That but two universities provided all the opportunities for whatever higher education there was in England at this time, would of itself seem to stamp the era as backward in educational matters. A little consideration of the comparative number of students with reference to the population of the country who were thus given the opportunity for higher education—and took advantage of it—at that time and the present, will show the unreasonableness of such an opinion. It is not so easy as might be imagined to determine just what was the population even of England in the Thirteenth Century. During Elizabeth's reign there were, according to the census, an estimate made about the time of the great Armada, altogether some four millions of people. Froude, accepts this estimate as representing very well the actual number of the population. Certainly there were not more {61} than five millions at the end of the Sixteenth Century. Lingard, who for this purpose must be considered as a thoroughly conservative authority, estimates that there were not much more than two millions of people in England at the end of the Twelfth Century. This is probably not an underestimate. At the end of the Thirteenth Century there were not many more than two millions and a half of people in the country. At the very outside there were, let us say, three millions. Out of this meagre population, ten thousand students were, on the most conservative estimate, taking advantage of the opportunities for the higher education that were provided for them at the universities.
At the present moment, though we pride ourselves on the numbers in attendance at our universities, and though the world's population is so much more numerous and the means of transportation so much more easy, we have very few universities as large as these of the Thirteenth Century. No American university at the present moment has as large a number of students as had Oxford at the end of the Thirteenth Century, and of course none of them compares at all with Paris or Bologna in this respect. Even the European universities, as we have suggested, fall behind their former glory from this standpoint. In the attendance to the number of population the comparison is even more startling for those who have not thought at all of the Middle Ages as a time of wonderful educational facilities and opportunities. In the greater City of New York as we begin the Twentieth Century there are perhaps fifteen thousand students in attendance at educational institutions which have university privileges. I may say that this is a very liberal allowance. At universities in the ordinary sense of the word there are not more than ten thousand students and the remainder is added in order surely to include all those who may be considered as doing undergraduate work in colleges and schools of various kinds. Of these fifteen thousand at least one-fourth come from outside of the greater city, and there are some who think that even one-third would not be too large a number to calculate as not being drawn directly from our own population. Connecticut and New Jersey furnish large numbers of students and then, besides, the post-graduate schools {62} of the universities have very large numbers in attendance even from distant states and foreign countries.
It will be within the bounds of truth, then, to say, that there are between ten and twelve thousand students, out of our population of more than four millions in Greater New York taking advantage of the opportunities for the higher education provided by our universities and colleges. At the end of the Thirteenth Century in England there were at least ten thousand students out of a population of not more and very probably less than three millions, who were glad to avail themselves of similar opportunities. This seems to be perfectly fair comparison and we have tried to be as conservative as possible in every way in order to bring out the truth in the matter.
It can scarcely fail to be a matter of supreme surprise to find that a century so distant as the Thirteenth, should thus equal our own vaunted Twentieth Century in the matter of opportunities for the higher education afforded and taken advantage of. It has always been presumed that the Middle Ages, while a little better than the Dark Ages, were typical periods in which there was little, if any desire for higher education and even fewer opportunities. It was thought that there was constant repression of the desire for knowledge which springs so eternally in the human heart and that the Church, or at least the ecclesiastical authorities of the time, set themselves firmly against widespread education, because it would set people to thinking for themselves. As a matter of fact, however, every Cathedral and every monastery became a center of educational influence, and even the poorest, who showed special signs of talent, obtained the opportunity to secure knowledge to the degree that they wished. It is beyond doubt or cavil, that at no time in the world's history have so many opportunities for the higher education been open to all classes as during the Thirteenth Century.
In order to show how thoroughly conservative are the numbers in attendance at the universities that I have taken, I shall quote two good recent authorities, one of them Professor Laurie, the Professor of the Institutes and History of Education in the University of Edinburgh, and the other Thomas Davidson, a well-known American authority on educational {63} subjects. Each of their works from which I shall quote has been published or revised within the last few years. Professor Laurie in "The Rise and Early Constitution of the University with a Survey of the Medieval Education," which formed one of the International Educational Series, edited by Commissioner Harris and published by Appleton, said:
"When one hears of the large number of students who attended the earliest universities—ten thousand and even twenty thousand at Bologna, an equal, and at one time a greater, number at Paris, and thirty thousand at Oxford—one cannot help thinking that the numbers have been exaggerated. There is certainly evidence that the Oxford attendance was never so great as has been alleged (see Anstey's 'Mon Acad.'); but when we consider that attendants, servitors, college cooks, etc., were regarded as members of the university community, and that the universities provided for a time the sole recognized training grounds for those wishing to enter the ecclesiastical or legal or teaching professions, I see no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the tradition as to attendance—especially when we remember that at Paris and Oxford a large number were mere boys of from twelve to fifteen years of age."
As to the inclusion of servitors, we have already said that many, probably, indeed, most of them, were actual students working their way through the university in these enthusiastic days. Professor Laurie's authority for the assertion that a large number of the students at Paris and Oxford were mere boys, is a regulation known to have existed at one of these universities requiring that students should not be less than twelve years of age. Anyone who has studied medieval university life, however, will have been impressed with the idea, that the students were on the average older at the medieval universities rather than younger than they are at the present time. The rough hazing methods employed, almost equal to those of our own day! would seem to indicate this. Besides, as Professor Laurie confesses in the next paragraph, many of the students were actually much older than at present. Our university courses are arranged for young men between 17 and 22, but that is, to fall back on Herbert Spencer, presumably because the period of infancy is {64} lengthening with the evolution of the race. There are many who consider that at the present time students are too long delayed in the opportunity to get at the professional studies, and that it is partly the consequence of this that the practical branches are so much more taken up under the elective system. As we said in the chapter on Universities and Preparatory Schools, in Italy and in other southern countries, it is not a surprising thing to have a young man graduate at the age of 16 or 17 with his degree of A. B., after a thoroughly creditable scholastic career. This means that he began his university work proper under 13 years of age; so that we must judge the medieval universities to some extent at least with this thought in mind.
Mr. Thomas Davidson in his "History of Education," [Footnote 7] in the chapter on The Medieval University has a paragraph in which he discusses the attendance, especially during the Thirteenth Century, and admits that the numbers, while perhaps not so large as have been reported, were very large in comparison to modern institutions of the same kind, and frankly concedes that education rose during these centuries which are often supposed to have been so unfavorable to educational development, to an amazing height scarcely ever surpassed. He says:
[Footnote 7: A History of Education, by Thomas Davidson, author of Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideas. New York: Scribners, 1900.]
"The number of students reported as having attended some of the universities in those early days almost passes belief; e. g. Oxford is said to have had thirty thousand about the year 1300, and half that number even as early as 1224. The numbers attending the University of Paris were still greater. These numbers become less surprising when we remember with what poor accommodations—a bare room and an armful of straw—the students of those days were content, and what numbers of them even a single teacher like Abelard could, long before draw into lonely retreats. That in the Twelfth and following centuries there was no lack of enthusiasm for study, notwithstanding the troubled condition of the times, is very clear. The instruction given at the universities, moreover, reacted upon the lower schools, raising their standard and supplying them with competent teachers. Thus, in the Thirteenth and {65} Fourteenth centuries, education rose in many European states to a height which it had not attained since the days of Seneca and Quintilian."
{opp64}
CHRIST DRIVING OUT MONEY CHANGERS (GIOTTO)
HEAD FROM ANNUNCIATION (GIOTTO)
BRIDE MARRIAGE AT CANA (GIOTTO)
SAINT'S HEAD (MOSAIC, ST. MARK'S VENICE)
A very serious objection that would seem to have so much weight as to preclude all possibility of accepting as true the large numbers mentioned, is the fact that it is very hard to understand how such an immense number of students could have been supported in any town of the Middle Ages. This objection has carried so much weight to some minds as to make them give up the thought of large numbers at the medieval universities. Professor Laurie has answered it very effectively, however, and in his plausible explanation gives a number of points which emphasize the intense ardor of these students of the Middle Ages in their search for knowledge, and shows how ready they were to bear serious trials and inconveniences, not to say absolute sufferings and hardships, in order that they might have opportunities for the higher education. The objection then redounds rather to the glory of the medieval universities than lessens their prestige, either as regards numbers or the enthusiasm of their students.
"The chief objection to accepting the tradition (of large numbers at the universities) lies in the difficulty of seeing how in those days, so large a number of the young men of Europe could afford the expense of residence away from their homes. This difficulty, however, is partly removed when we know that many of the students were well to do, that a considerable number were matured men, already monks and canons, and that the endowments of Cathedral schools also were frequently used to enable promising scholars to attend foreign universities. Monasteries also regularly sent boys of thirteen and fourteen to university seats. A papal instruction of 1335 required every Benedictine and Augustinian community to send boys to the universities in the proportion of one in twenty of their residents. Then, state authorities ordered free passages for all who were wending their way through the country to and from the seat of learning. In the houses of country priests—not to speak of the monastery hospitals—traveling scholars were always accommodated gratuitously, and even local subscriptions were frequently made to help them on their way. {66} Poor traveling scholars were, in fact, a medieval institution, and it was considered no disgrace for a student to beg and receive alms for his support."
After reading these authoritative opinions, it would be rather difficult to understand the false impressions which have obtained so commonly for the last three centuries with regard to education in the Middle Ages, if we did not realize that history, especially for English-speaking people, has for several centuries been written from a very narrow standpoint and with a very definite purpose. About a century ago the Comte de Maistre said in his Soirées de St. Petersburg, that history for the three hundred years before his time "had been a conspiracy against the truth." Curiously enough the editors of the Cambridge Modern History in their first volume on the Renaissance, re-echoed this sentiment of the French historical writer and philosopher. They even use the very words "history has been a conspiracy against the truth" and proclaim that if we are to get at truth in this generation, we must go behind all the classical historians, and look up contemporary documents and evidence and authorities once more for ourselves. It is the maintenance of a tradition that nothing good could possibly have come out of the Nazareth of the times before the Reformation, that has led to this serious misapprehension of the true position of those extremely important centuries in modern education—the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth.
To those who know even a little of what was accomplished in these centuries, it is supremely amusing to read the childish treatment accorded them and the trivial remarks that even accredited historians of education make with regard to them. Occasionally, however, the feeling of the reader who knows something of the subject is not one of amusement, but far from it. There are times when one cannot help but feel that it is not ignorance, but a deliberate purpose to minimize the importance of these times in culture and education, that is at the basis of some of the utterly mistaken remarks that are made. We shall take occasion only to give one example of this, but that will afford ample evidence of the intolerant spirit that characterizes the work of some even of the supposedly most enlightened historians of education. The quotation will be from Compayré's {67} "History of Pedagogy" which is, I understand, in use in nearly every Normal School in this country and is among the books required in many Normal School examinations.
M. Compayré in an infamous paragraph which bears the title "The Intellectual Feebleness of the Middle Age," furnishes an excellent example of how utterly misunderstood, if not deliberately misrepresented, has been the whole spirit and content and the real progressiveness of education in this wonderful period. After some belittling expressions as to the influence of Christianity on education—expressions utterly unjustified by the facts—he has this to say with regard to the Thirteenth Century, which is all the more surprising because it is the only place where he calls any attention to it. He says:
"In 1291, of all the monks in the convent of St. Gall, there was not one who could read and write. It was so difficult to find notaries public, that acts had to be passed verbally. The barons took pride in their ignorance. Even after the efforts of the Twelfth Century, instruction remained a luxury for the common people; it was the privilege of the ecclesiastics and even they did not carry it very far. The Benedictines confess that the mathematics were studied only for the purpose of calculating the date of Easter."
This whole paragraph of M. Compayré (the rest must be read to be appreciated), whose history of education was considered to be of such value that it was deemed worthy of translation by the President of a State Normal School and that it has been adopted as a work of reference, in some cases of required study, in many of the Normal Schools throughout the country, is a most wonderful concoction of ingredients, all of which are meant to dissolve every possible idea that people might have of the existence of any tincture of education during the Middle Ages. There is only one fact which deeply concerns us because it refers to the Thirteenth Century. M. Compayré says that in 1291 of all the monks of the Convent of Saint Gall there was not one who could read and write. This single fact is meant to sum up the education of the century for the reader. Especially it is meant to show the student of pedagogy how deeply sunk in ignorance were the monks and all the ecclesiastics of this period.
{68}
Before attempting to say anything further it may be as well to call attention to the fact that in the original French edition the writer did not say that there was not a single monk. He said, "There was but one monk, who could read and write." Possibly it seemed to the translator to make the story more complete to leave out this one poor monk and perhaps one monk more or less, especially a medieval monk, may not count for very much to modern students of education. There are those of us, however, who consider it too bad to obliterate even a single monk in this crude way and we ask that he shall be put back. There was one who could read and write and carry on the affairs of the monastery. Let us have him at least, by all means.
In the year 1291 when M. Compayré says that there was but a single monk at the monastery of St. Gall who could read and write, he, a professor himself at a French Normal School, must have known very well that there were over twenty thousand students at the University of Paris, almost as many at the University of Bologna, and over five thousand, some authorities say many more than this (Professor Laurie would admit more than ten thousand), at the University of Oxford, though all Christian Europe at this time did not have a population of more than 15,000,000 people. He must have known, too, or be hopelessly ignorant in educational matters, that many of the students at these universities belonged to the Franciscans and Dominicans, and that indeed many of the greatest teachers at the universities were members of these monastic orders. Of this he says nothing, however. All that he says is "Education was the privilege of the ecclesiastics and they did not carry it very far." This is one way of writing a history of education. It is a very effective way of poisoning the wells of information and securing the persistence of the tradition that there was no education until after the beginning of the Sixteenth Century.
Meantime one can scarcely help but admire the ingenuity of deliberate purpose that uses the condition of the monastery of St. Gall to confirm his statement. St. Gall had been founded by Irish monks probably about the beginning of the Eighth Century. It had been for at least three centuries a center of education, civilization and culture, as well as of religion, for the {69} barbarians who had settled in the Swiss country after the trans-migration of nations. The Irish had originally obtained their culture from Christian Missionaries, and now as Christian Missionaries they brought it back to Europe and accomplished their work with wonderful effectiveness. St. Gall was for centuries a lasting monument to their efforts. After the Tenth Century, however, the monastery began to degenerate. It was almost directly in the path of armies which so frequently went down to Italy because of the German interest in the Italian peninsula and the claims of the German emperor. After a time according to tradition, the emperor insisted that certain of the veterans of his army should be received and cared for in their old age at St. Gall. Gradually this feature of the institution became more and more prominent until in the Thirteenth Century it had become little more than a home for old soldiers. In order to live on the benefices of the monastery these men had to submit to ecclesiastical regulations and wear the habit. They were, it is true, a sort of monk, that is, they were willing, for the sake of the peace and ease which it brought, to accept the living thus provided for them and obey to some degree at least the rules of the monastery. It is not surprising that among these there should have been only one who could read and write. The soldiers of the time despised the men of letters and prided themselves on not being able to write. That a historian of pedagogy, however, should take this one fact in order to give students an idea of the depth of ignorance of the Middle Ages, is an exhibition of some qualities in our modern educated men, that one does not like to think of as compatible with the capacity to read and write. It would indeed be better not to be able to read and write than thus to read and write one's own prejudices into history, and above all the history of education.
Compayré's discussion of the "Causes of the Ignorance" of the Middle Ages in the next paragraph, is one of the most curious bits of special pleading by a man who holds a brief for one side of the question, that I think has ever been seen in what was to be considered serious history. He first makes it clear how much opposed the Christian Church was to education, then he admits that she did some things which cannot be denied, but minimizes their significance. Then he concludes that it was not {70} the fault of the Church, but in this there is a precious bit of damning by faint praise. It would be impossible for any ordinary person who had only Compayré for authority to feel anything after reading the paragraph, but that Christianity was a serious detriment and surely not a help to the cause of progress in education. I quote part of the paragraph:
"What were the permanent causes of that situation which lasted for ten centuries? The Catholic Church has sometimes been held responsible for this. Doubtless the Christian doctors did not always profess a very warm sympathy for intellectual culture. Saint Augustine has said: It is the ignorant who gain possession of heaven (indocti coelum rapiunt.) Saint Gregory the Great, a Pope of the Sixth Century, declared that he would blush to have the holy word conform to the rules of grammar. Too many Christians, in a word, confounded ignorance with holiness. Doubtless, towards the Seventh Century, the darkness still hung thick over the Christian Church. Barbarians invaded the Episcopate, and carried with them their rude manners. Doubtless, also, during the feudal period the priest often became a soldier, and remained ignorant. It would, however, be unjust to bring a constructive charge against the Church of the Middle Age, and to represent it as systematically hostile to instruction. Directly to the contrary, it is the clergy who, in the midst of the general barbarism, preserved some vestiges of the ancient culture. The only schools of that period are the Episcopal and claustral schools, the first annexed to the Bishops' palaces, the second to the monasteries. The religious orders voluntarily associated manual labor with mental labor. As far back as 530, St. Benedict founded the Convent of Monte Cassino, and drew up statutes which made reading and intellectual labor a part of the daily life of the monks." When this damning by faint praise is taken in connection with the paragraph in which only a single monk at the Monastery of St. Gall is declared to have been able to read and write, the utterly false impression that is sure to result, can be readily understood even by those who are not sympathetic students of the Middle Ages. This is how our histories of education have been written as a rule, and as a consequence the most precious period in modern education, its great origin, has been ignored even by professional scholars, to the great detriment not only of historical knowledge but also of any proper appreciation of the evolution of education.
Portraits
Bennozo Gozzoli
PETRARCA OMNIUM VIRTUTUM
MONARCA
GIOTTO, PICTOR EXIMIUS
DANTE THEOLOGUS NULLIUS
DOGMATIS EXPERS
{71}
It will be said by those who do not appreciate the conditions that existed in the Middle Ages, that these numbers at the universities seeking the higher education, mean very little for the culture of the people, since practically all of those in attendance at the universities belonged to the clerical order. There is no doubt that most students were clerics in the Thirteenth Century. This did not mean, however, that they had taken major orders or had in any way bound themselves irrevocably to continue in the clerical vocation. The most surprising thing about the spread of culture and the desire for the higher education during the Thirteenth Century, is that they developed in spite of the fact that the rulers of the time were all during the century, embroiled in war either with their neighbors or with the nobility. Anyone who wanted to live a quiet, intellectual life turned naturally to the clerical state, which enabled him to escape military duties and gave him opportunities for study, as well as protection from many exactions that might otherwise be levied upon him. The church not only encouraged education, but supplied the peaceful asylums in which it might be cultivated to the heart's content of the student.
While this clerical state was a necessity during the whole time of residence at the university, it was not necessarily maintained afterward. Many of the clerics did not even have minor orders—orders which it is well understood carry with them no absolute obligation of continuing in the clerical state. Sextons and their assistants were clerics. When the word canon originally came into use it meant nothing more than that the man was entered on the rolls of a church and received some form of wages therefrom. Students at the universities were by ecclesiastical courtesy then, clerics (from which comes the word clerk, one who can read and write) though not in orders, and it was because of this that the university was able to maintain the rights of students. It was well understood that after graduation men might take up the secular life and indeed most of them did. In succeeding chapters we shall see examples of this and discuss the question further. Professors at the {72} universities had to maintain their clerical condition so that even professors of law and of medicine were not allowed to marry. This law continued long beyond the Thirteenth Century, however. Professors of medicine were the first to be freed from the obligation of celibacy, but not until the middle of the Fifteenth Century at Paris, while other professors were bound thus for a full century later. Certain minor teaching positions at Oxford are still under this law, which evidently has seemed to have some advantage or it would not have been maintained.
It might perhaps be thought that only the wealthier class, the sons of the nobility and of the wealthy merchants of the cities had opportunities at the universities. As a matter of fact, however, the vast majority of the students was drawn from the great middle class. The nobility were nearly always too occupied with their pleasures and their martial duties to have time for the higher education. The tradition that a nobleman should be an educated gentleman had not yet come in. Indeed many of the nobility during the Thirteenth Century rather prided themselves on the fact that they not only had no higher education, but that they did not know even how to read and write. When we reflect, then, on the large numbers who went to the universities, it adds to our surprise to realize that they were drawn from the burgher class. It is evident that many of the sons even of the poor were afforded opportunities in different ways at the universities of the time.
Tradition shows that from the earliest time there were foundations on which poor students could live, and various arrangements were made by which, aside from these, they might make their living while continuing their studies. Working one's way through the university was more common in the Thirteenth Century than it is at the present day, though we are proud of the large numbers who now succeed in the double task of supporting and educating themselves, with excellent success in both enterprises. There are many stories of poor students who found themselves about to be obliged to give up their studies, encountering patrons of various kinds who enabled them to go on with their education.
There is a very pretty set of legends with regard to St. Edmund of Canterbury in this matter. He bears this name {73} because he was afterward the sainted primate of England. For many years he taught at the University of Oxford. The story is told of a clerical friend sending him up a student to Oxford and asking that his bills be sent to him. St. Edmund's answer was that he would not be robbed of an opportunity of doing good like this, and he took upon himself the burden of caring for the student. At the time there were many others dependent on his bounty and his reputation was such that he was enabled to help a great many through the benefactions of friends, who found no higher pleasure in life than being able to come generously to Edmund's assistance in his charities.
Those who know the difficulty of managing very large bodies of students will wonder inevitably, how the medieval universities, with their less formal and less complete organizations, succeeded in maintaining discipline for all these thousands of students. Most people will remember at once all the stories of roughness, of horse play, of drinking and gaming or worse that they have heard of the medieval students and will be apt to conclude that they are not to be wondered at after all, since it must have been practically impossible for the faculties of universities to keep order among such vast numbers. As a matter of fact, however, the story of the origin and maintenance of discipline in these universities is one of the most interesting features of university life. The process of discipline became in itself a very precious part of education, as it should be of course in any well regulated institution of learning. The very fact, moreover, that in spite of these large numbers and other factors that we shall call attention to in a moment, comparatively so few disgraceful stories of university life have come down to us, and the other and still more important fact that the universities could be kept so constantly at the attainment of their great purpose for such numbers, is itself a magnificent tribute to those who succeeded in doing it, and to the system which was gradually evolved, not by the faculty alone but by teachers and students for university government.
With regard to the discipline of the medieval universities not much is known and considerable of what has been written on this obscure subject wears an unfavorable tinge, because it is unfortunately true that "the good men do is oft interred with {74} their bones" while the evil has an immortality all its own. The student escapades of the universities, the quarrels between town and gown, the stories of the evils apparently inevitable, where many young men are congregated—the hazing, the rough horse play, the carousing, the immoralities—have all come down to us, while it is easy to miss the supreme significance of the enthusiasm for learning that in these difficult times gathered so many students together from distant parts of the world, when traveling was so difficult and dangerous, and kept them at the universities for long years in spite of the hardships and inconveniences of the life. With regard to our modern universities the same thing is true, and the outside world knows much more of the escapades of the few, the little scandals of college life, that scarcely make a ripple but are so easily exaggerated, and so frequently repeated and lose nothing by repetition, the waste of time in athletics, in gambling, in social things, than of the earnest work and the successful intellectual progress and interests of the many. This should be quite enough to make the modern university man very slow to accept the supposed pictures of medieval student life, which are founded mainly on the worse side of it. Goodness is proverbially uninteresting, a happy people has no history and the ordinary life of the university student needs a patient sympathetic chronicler; and such the medieval universities have not found as yet. But they do not need many allowances, if it will only be remembered under what discouragements they labored and how much they accomplished.
The reputation of the medieval universities has suffered from this very human tendency to be interested in what is evil and to neglect the good. Even as it is, however, a good deal with regard to the discipline of the universities in the early times is known and does not lose in interest from the fact, that the main factor in it was a committee of the students themselves working in conjunction with the faculty, and thus anticipating what is most modern in the development of the disciplinary regime of our up-to-date universities. At first apparently, in the schools from which the universities originated there was no thought of the necessity for discipline. The desire for education was considered to be sufficient to keep men occupied in {75} such a way that further discipline would not be necessary. It can readily be understood that the crowds that flocked to hear Abelard in Paris, and who were sufficiently interested to follow him out to the Desert of the Paraclete when he was no longer allowed to continue his lectures in connection with the school at Paris, would have quite enough of ruling from the internal forum of their supreme interest, not to need any discipline in the external forum.
In the course of time, however, with the coming of even greater numbers to the University of Paris, and especially when the attendance ran up into many thousands, some form of school discipline became an absolute necessity. This developed of itself and in a very practical way. The masters seem to have had very little to do with it at the beginning since they occupied themselves entirely with their teaching and preparation for lectures. What was to become later one of the principal instruments of discipline was at first scarcely more than a social organization among the students. Those who came from different countries were naturally attracted to one another, and were more ready to help each other. When students first came they were welcomed by their compatriots who took care to keep them from being imposed upon, enabled them to secure suitable quarters and introduced them to university customs generally, so that they might be able to take advantage, as soon as possible, of the educational opportunities.
The friendships thus fostered gradually grew into formal organizations, the so-called "nations." These began to take form just before the beginning of the Thirteenth Century. They made it their duty to find lodgings for their student compatriots, and evidently also to supply food on some cooperative plan for at least the poorer students. Whenever students of a particular nationality were injured in any way, their "nation" as a formal organization took up their cause and maintained their rights, even to the extent of an appeal to formal process of law before the magistrates, if necessary. The nations were organized before the faculties in the universities were formally recognized as independent divisions of the institution, and they acted as intermediaries between the university head and the students, making themselves responsible for discipline to no slight {76} degree. At the beginning of the Thirteenth Century in Paris all the students belonged to one or other of four nations, the Picard, the Norman, the French, which embraced Italians, Spaniards, Greeks and Orientals, and the English which embraced the English, Irish, Germans, Poles (heterogeneous collection we would consider it in these modern days) and in addition all other students from the North of Europe.
Professor Laurie, of the University of Edinburgh, in his Rise and Early Constitution of Universities in the International Educational Series [Footnote 8] says:
[Footnote 8: The Rise and Early Constitution of Universities, with a survey of Medieval Education, by S. S. Laurie, LL.D., Professor of the Institutes and History of Education in the University of Edinburgh. New York, D. Appleton & Company, 1901.]
"The subdivisions of the nations were determined by the localities from which the students and masters came. Each subdivision elected its own dean and kept its own matriculation-book and money-chest. The whole "nation" was represented, it is true, by the elected procurators; but the deans of the subdivisions were regarded as important officials, and were frequently, if not always, assessors of the procurators. The procurators, four in number, were elected, not by the students as in Bologna and Padua, but by the students and masters. Each nation with its procurator and deans was an independent body, passing its own statutes and rules, and exercising supervision over the lodging-houses of the students. They had each a seal as distinguished from the university seal, and each procurator stood to his "nation" in the same relation as the Rector did to the whole university. The Rector, again, was elected by the procurators, who sat as his assessors, and together they constituted the governing body; but this for purposes of discipline, protection and defense of privileges chiefly, the consortium magistrorum regulating the schools. But so independent were the nations that the question whether each had power to make statutes that overrode those of the universitas, was still a question so late as the beginning of the Seventeenth Century."
It is typical of the times that the governing system should thus have grown up of itself and from amongst the students, rather than that it should have been organized by the teachers {77} and imposed upon the university. The nations represented the rise of that democratic spirit, which was to make itself felt in the claims for the recognition of rights for all the people in most of the countries during the Thirteenth Century, and undoubtedly the character of the government of the student body at the universities fostered this spirit and is therefore to a noteworthy degree, responsible for the advances in the direction of liberty which are chronicled during this great century. This was a form of unconscious education but none the less significant for that, and eminently practical in its results. At this time in Europe there was no place where the members of the community who flocked in largest numbers to the universities, the sons of the middle classes, could have any opportunities to share in government or learn the precious lessons of such participation, except at the universities. There gradually came an effort on the part of the faculties to lessen many of the rights of the nations of the universities, but the very struggle to maintain these on the part of the student body, was of itself a precious training against the usurpation of privileges that was to be of great service later in the larger arena of national politics, and the effects of which can be noted in every country in Europe, nowhere more than in England, where the development of law and liberty was to give rise to a supreme heritage of democratic jurisprudence for the English speaking peoples of all succeeding generations.
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V
POST-GRADUATE WORK AT THE UNIVERSITIES.
In modern times it has often been said that no university can be considered to be doing its proper work unless, besides teaching, it is also adding to the existing body of knowledge by original research. Because of unfortunate educational traditions, probably the last thing in the world that would enter into the minds of most people to conceive as likely to be found in the history of the universities of the Thirteenth Century, would be original research in any form. In spite of this almost universal false impression, original work of the most valuable kind, for much of which workers would be considered as amply deserving of their doctorates in the various faculties of the post-graduate departments of the most up-to-date of modern universities, was constantly being accomplished during this wonderful century. It is, as a matter of fact, with this phase of university activity that the modern educator is sure to have more sympathy than with any other, once the significant details of the work become clear.
All surprise that surpassing original work was accomplished will cease when it is recalled that, besides creating the universities themselves, this century gave us the great Cathedrals—a well-spring of originality, and a literature in every civilized country of Europe that has been an inspiration to many subsequent generations. At last men had the time to devote to the things of the mind. During what are called the Dark Ages, a term that must ever be used with the realization that there are many bright points of light in them, men had been occupied with wars and civic and political dissensions of all kinds, and had been gradually climbing back to the heights of interest in intellectual matters which had been theirs before the invasion of the barbarians and the migration of nations. With the rebirth of intellectual interests there came an intense curiosity to know everything and to investigate every manifestation. {79} Everything that men touched was novel, and the wonderful advances they made can only be realized from actual consultation of their works, while the reader puts himself as far as possible at the same mental point of view from which they surveyed the world and their relations to it.
The modern university prides itself on the number of volumes written by its professors and makes it a special feature of its announcements to call attention to its at least supposed additions to knowledge in this mode. It must have been immensely more difficult to preserve the writings of the professors of the medieval universities for they had to be copied out laboriously by hand, yet we have an enormous number of large volumes of their works, on nearly every intellectual topic, that have been carefully preserved. There are some twenty closely printed large folio volumes of the writings of Albertus Magnus that have come down to us. For two centuries, until the time of printing, ardent students must have been satisfied to spend much time in preserving these. While mainly devoted to theology, they treat of nearly everything else, and at least one of the folio volumes is taken up almost exclusively with physical science. St. Thomas Aquinas has as many volumes to his credit and his work is even of more importance. Duns Scotus died at a very early age, scarcely more than forty, yet his writings are voluminously extensive and have been carefully preserved, for few men had as enthusiastic students as he. Alas! that his name should be preserved for most people only in the familiar satiric appellation 'dunce.' The modern educator will most rejoice at the fact that the students of the time must have indeed been devoted to their masters to set themselves to the task of copying out their work so faithfully for, as Cardinal Newman has pointed out, it is the personal influence of the master, rather than the greatness of the institution, that makes education effective.
First with regard to philosophy, the mistress of all studies, whose throne has been shaken but not shattered in these ultimate times. After all it must not be forgotten that this was the great century of the development of scholastic philosophy. While this scholastic philosophy is supposed by many students of modern philosophy to be a thing of the past, it still continues {80} to be the basis of the philosophical teaching in the Catholic seminaries and universities throughout the world. Catholic philosophers are well known as conservative thinkers and writers, and yet are perfectly free to confess that they consider themselves the nearer to truth the nearer they are to the great scholastic thinkers of the Thirteenth Century. Even in the circle of students of philosophy who are outside the influence of scholasticism, there is no doubt that in recent years an opinion much more favorable to the Schoolmen has gradually arisen. This has been due to a study of scholastic sources. Only those despise and talk slightingly of scholasticism who either do not know it at all or know it only at second hand. With regard to the system of thought, as such, ever is it true, that the more close the acquaintanceship the more respect there is for it.
With regard to theology the case is even stronger than with regard to philosophy. Practically all of the great authorities in theology belong to the Thirteenth Century. It is true that men like Saint Anselm lived before this time and were leaders in the great movement that culminated in our century. Saint Anselm's book, Cur Deus Homo, is indeed one of the best examples of the combination of scholastic philosophy and theology that could well be cited. It is a triumph of logical reasoning, applied to religious belief. Besides, it is a great classic and any one who can read it unmoved by admiration for the thinker who, so many centuries ago, could so trenchantly lay down his thesis and develop it, must be lacking in some of the qualities of human admiration. The writers of the Thirteenth Century in theology are beyond even Anselm in their marvelous powers of systematizing thought. One need only mention such names as Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure. Duns Scotus, and Raymond Lully to make those who are at all acquainted with the history of the time realize, that this is not an idle expression of the enthusiasm of a special votary of the Thirteenth Century.
As we shall see in discussing the career of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church still continues to teach scholastic theology on exactly the same lines as were laid down by this great doctor of the church in his teaching at the University of Paris. Amid the crumbling of many Christian systems of {81} thought, as upheld by the various protestant sects, there has been a very general realization that the Catholic Church has built up the only edifice of Christian apologetics, which will stand the storms of time and the development of human knowledge. Confessedly this edifice is founded on Thirteenth Century scholasticism. Pope Leo XIII., than whom, even in the estimation of those who are least sympathetic toward his high office, there was no man of more supremely practical intelligence in our generation, insisted that St. Thomas Aquinas must in general principle at least, be the groundwork of the teaching of philosophy and theology as they are to form the minds of future Catholic apologists.
The scholastic theology and philosophy of the Thirteenth Century have come to us in absolute purity. The huge tomes which represent the indefatigable labors of these ardent scholars were well preserved by the subsequent generation which thought so much of them, and in spite of the absence of printing have come down to us in perfectly clear texts. It is easy to neglect them and to say that a study of them is not worth while. They represent, however, the post-graduate work and the research in the department of philosophy and theology of these days, and any university of modern time would consider itself honored by having their authors among its professors and alumni. Any one who does not think so need only turn to the volumes themselves and read them with understanding and sympathy, and there will be another convert to the ranks of that growing multitude of scholars, who have learned to appreciate the marvelous works of our university colleagues of the Thirteenth Century.
With regard to law, not much need be said here, since it is well understood that the foundations of our modern jurisprudence (see chapters on Legal Origins), as well as the methods of teaching law, were laid in the Thirteenth Century and the universities were the most active factors, direct and indirect, in this work. The University of Bologna developed from a law school. Toward the end of the Twelfth Century Irnerius revived the study of the old Roman law and put the curriculum of modern Civil Law on a firm basis. A little later Gratian made his famous collection of decretals, which are the basis of Canon {82} Law. Great popes, during the Thirteenth Century, beginning with Innocent III., and continuing through such worthy emulators as Gregory IX. and Boniface VIII., made it the special glory of their pontificates to collect the decrees of their predecessors and arrange and publish them, so that they might be readily available for consultation.
French law assumed its modern form, and the basis of French jurisprudence was laid, under Louis IX., who called to his assistance, in this matter, the Professors of Law at the University of Paris, with many of whom he was on the most intimate terms. His cousin, Ferdinand of Castile, laid the foundation of the Spanish law about the same time under almost similar circumstances, and with corresponding help. The study of law in the English universities helped to the formulation of the principles of the English Common Law in such simple connected form as made them readily accessible for consultation. Just before the beginning of the last quarter of the Thirteenth Century, Bracton, of whose work much more will be said in a subsequent chapter, drew up the digest of the English Common Law, which has been the basis of English jurisprudence ever since. It took just about a century for these countries, previously without proper codification of the principles of their laws, to complete the fundamental work to such a degree, that it is still the firm substructure on which rests all our modern laws. Legal origins, in our modern sense, came not long before the Thirteenth Century; at its end the work was finished, to all intents and purposes. Of the influence of the universities and of the university law departments, in all this there can be no doubt. The incentive, undoubtedly, came from their teachings. The men who did so much for legal origins of such far-reaching importance, were mainly students of the universities of the time, whose enthusiasm for work had not subsided with the obtaining of their degrees.
It is in medicine, however, much more than in law or theology, that the eminently practical character of university teaching during the Thirteenth Century can be seen, at least in the form in which it will appeal to a scientific generation. We are so accustomed to think that anything like real progress in medicine, and especially in surgery, has only come in very {83} recent years, that it is a source of great surprise to find how much these earnest students of a long distant century anticipated the answers to problems, the solutions of which are usually supposed to be among the most modern advances. Professor Allbutt, the Regius professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge, a position, the occupant of which is always a leader in English medical thought, the present professor being one of the world's best authorities in the history of medicine, recently pointed out some of these marvels of old-time medicine and surgery. In an address On the Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery to the end of the Sixteenth Century, delivered at the Congress of Arts and Sciences at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, he (Prof. Allbutt) spoke with regard to one of the great university medical teachers of the Thirteenth Century as follows:
"Both for his own great merits, as an original and independent observer, and as the master of Lanfranc, William Salicet (Guglielmo Salicetti of Piacenza, in Latin G. Placentinus de Saliceto—now Cadeo), was eminent among the great Italian physicians of the latter half of the Thirteenth Century. Now these great Italians were as distinguished in surgery as in medicine, and William was one of the protestants of the period against the division of surgery from inner medicine; a division which he regarded as a separation of medicine from intimate touch with nature. Like Lanfranc and the other great surgeons of the Italian tradition, and unlike Franco and Ambroise Paré, he had the advantage of the liberal university education of Italy; but, like Paré and Wurtz, he had large practical experience in hospital and on the battlefield. He practised first at Bologna, afterward in Verona. William fully recognised that surgery cannot be learned from books only. His Surgery contains many case histories, for he rightly opined that good notes of cases are the soundest foundation of good practice; and in this opinion and method Lanfranc followed him. William discovered that dropsy may be due to a 'durities renum'; he substituted the knife for the Arabist abuse of the cautery; he investigated the causes of the failure of healing by first intention; he described the danger of wounds of the neck; he sutured divided nerves; he forwarded the diagnosis of {84} suppurative disease of the hip, and he referred chancre and phagedaena to their real causes."
This paragraph sets forth some almost incredible anticipations of what are usually considered among the most modern phases of medicine and surgery. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the simple statement that Salicet recognized that surgery cannot be learned from books alone. His case histories are instructive even to the modern surgeon who reads them. His insistence on his students making careful notes of their cases as the soundest foundation of progress in surgery, is a direct contradiction of nearly everything that has been said in recent years about medieval medicine and especially the teaching of medicine. (See Appendix.)
William's great pupil, Lanfranc, followed him in this, and Lanfranc encouraged the practise at the University of Paris. There is a note-book of a student at the University of Paris, made toward the end of the Thirteenth Century, carefully preserved in the Museum of the University of Berlin. This notebook was kept during Lanfranc's teaching and contains some sketches of dissections, as well as some illustrations of operative procedures, as studied with that celebrated surgeon. The tradition of case histories continued at the University of Paris down to the beginning of modern surgery.
Some of the doctrines in medicine that William of Salicet stated so clearly, sound surprisingly modern. The connection, for instance, between dropsy and durities renum (hardening of the kidneys) shows how wonderfully observant the old master was. At the present time we know very little more about the dropsical condition associated with chronic Bright's disease than the fact that it constantly occurs where there is a sclerosis or contraction of the kidney. Bright in his study of albuminuria and contracted kidney practically taught us no more than this, except that he added the further symptom of the presence of albumin in the urine. It must have been only as the result of many carefully studied cases, followed by autopsies, that any such doctrine could have come into existence. There is a dropsy that occurs with heart disease; there is also a dropsy in connection with certain affections of the liver, and yet the most frequent cause is just this hardening of the kidneys {85} spoken of by this middle-of-the-Thirteenth Century Italian professor of medicine, who, if we would believe so many of the historians of medicine, was not supposed to occupy himself at all with ante and post-mortem studies of patients, but with the old-time medical authorities.
Almost more surprising than the question of dropsy is the investigation as to the causes of the failure of healing by first intention. The modern surgeon is very apt to think that he is the only one who ever occupied himself with the thought, that wounds might be made to heal by first intention and without the occurrence of suppuration or granulation. Certainly no one would suspect any interest in the matter as far back as the Thirteenth Century. William of Salicet, however, and Lanfranc, both of them occupied themselves much with this question and evidently looked at it from a very practical standpoint. Many careful observations must have been made and many sources of observational error eliminated to enable these men to realize the possibilities of primary union, especially, knowing as they did, nothing at all about the external causes of suppuration and considering, as did surgeons for nearly seven centuries afterward, that it was because of something within the patient's tissues that the cases of suppuration had their rise.
Unfortunately, the pioneer work done by William and his great disciple did not have that effect upon succeeding generations which it should have had. There was a question in men's minds as to whether nature worked better by primary union or by means of the suppurative process. In the next century surgeons took the wrong horn of the dilemma and even so distinguished a surgeon as Guy de Chauliac, who has been called, not without good cause, the father of surgery, came to the conclusion that suppuration was practically a necessary process in the healing of large wounds at least, and that it must be encouraged rather than discouraged. This doctrine did not have its first set-back until the famous incident in Ambroise Paré's career, when one morning after a battle, coming to his patients expecting to find many of them very severely ill, he found them on the contrary in better condition than the others for whom he had no forebodings. In accord with old custom {86} he poured boiling oil into the wounds of all patients, but the great surgeon's supply of oil had failed the day before and he used plain water to cleanse the wounds of a number, fearing the worst for them, however, because of the poison that must necessarily stay in their wounds and then had the agreeable disappointment of finding these patients in much better condition than those whom he had treated with all the rules of his art, as they then were. Even this incident, however, did not serve to correct entirely the old idea as to the value of suppuration and down to Lister's time, that is almost the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, there is still question of the value of suppuration in expediting the healing of wounds, and we hear of laudable pus and of the proper inflammatory reaction that is expected to bring about wound repair.
The danger of wounds of the neck is, of course, not a modern doctrine, and yet very few people would think for a moment that it could be traced back to the middle of the Thirteenth Century and to a practical teacher of surgery in a medieval Italian university. Here once more there is evidence of the work of a careful observer who has seen patients expire in a few minutes as the result of some serious incident during the course of operations upon the neck. He did not realize that the danger was due, in many cases, to the sucking in of air into the large veins, but even at the present time this question is not wholly settled and the problem as to the danger of the presence of air is still the subject of investigation.
As to the suture of divided nerves, it would ordinarily and as a matter of course be claimed by most modern historians of surgery and by practically all surgeons, as an affair entirely of the last half century. William of Salicet, however, neglected none of the ordinary surgical procedures that could be undertaken under the discouraging surgical circumstances in which he lived. The limitations of anesthesia, though there was much more of this aid than there has commonly been any idea of, and the frequent occurrence of suppuration must have been constant sources of disheartenment. His insistence on the use of the knife rather than on the cautery shows how much he appreciated the value of proper healing. It is from such a man that we might expect the advance by careful {87} investigation as to just what tissues had been injured, with the idea of bringing them together in such juxtaposition as would prevent loss of function and encourage rapid and perfect union.
{opp87}
SCREEN (HEREFORD)
DOORWAY OF SACRISTY (BOURGES)
Perhaps to the ordinary individual William's reference of certain known venereal affections to their proper cause, will be the most astonishing in this marvelous list of anticipations of what is supposed to be very modern. The whole subject of venereal disease in anything like a scientific treatment of it is supposed to date from the early part of the Sixteenth Century. There is even question in certain minds as to whether the venereal diseases did not come into existence, or at least were not introduced from America or from some other distant country that the Europeans had been exploring about this time. William's studies in this subject, however, serve to show that nothing escaped his watchful eye and that he was in the best sense of the word a careful observer and must have been an eminently suggestive and helpful teacher.
What has thus been learned about him will serve of itself and without more ado, to stamp all that has been said about the unpractical character of the medical teaching of the medieval universities as utterly unfounded. Because men have not taken the trouble to look up the teaching of these times, and because their works were until recent years buried in old folios, difficult to obtain and still more difficult to read when obtained, it has been easy to ignore their merit and even to impugn the value of their teaching completely. William of Salicet was destined, moreover, to be surpassed in some ways by his most distinguished pupil, Lanfranc, who taught at the University of Paris at the end of the Thirteenth Century. Of Lanfranc, in the address already quoted from, Professor Allbutt has one very striking paragraph that shows how progressive was the work of this great French surgeon, and how fruitful had been the suggestive teaching of his great master. He says:
"Lanfranc's 'Chirurgia Magna' was a great work, written by a reverent but independent follower of Salicet. He distinguished between venous and arterial hemorrhage, and used styptics (rabbit's fur, aloes, and white of egg was a popular styptic in elder surgery), digital compression for an hour, or in severe cases ligature. His chapter on injuries of the head {88} is one of the classics of medieval surgery. Clerk (cleric) as he was, Lanfranc nevertheless saw but the more clearly the danger of separating surgery from medicine."
Certain assertions in this paragraph deserve, as in the case of Lanfranc's master, to be discussed, because of their anticipations of what is sometimes thought to be very modern in surgery. The older surgeons are supposed to have feared hemorrhage very much. It is often asserted that they knew little or nothing about the ligature and that their control of hemorrhage was very inadequate. As a matter of fact, however, it was not primary hemorrhage that the old surgeons feared, but secondary hemorrhage. Suppuration often led to the opening of an important artery, and this accident, as can well be understood, was very much dreaded. Surgeons would lose their patients before they could come to their relief. How thoroughly Lanfranc knew how to control primary hemorrhage can be appreciated from the quotation just made from Dr. Allbutt's address. The ligature is sometimes said to have been an invention of Ambroise Paré, but, as a matter of fact, it had been in use for at least three centuries before his time, and perhaps even longer.
Usually it is considered that the difficult chapter of head injuries, with all the problems that it involves in diagnosis and treatment, is a product of the Nineteenth Century. Hence do we read, with all the more interest, Allbutt's declaration that Lanfranc wrote what is practically a classical monograph, on the subject. It is not so surprising, then, to find that the great French surgeon was far ahead of his generation in other matters, or that he should even have realized the danger of separating surgery from medicine. Both the Regius professors of medicine at the two great English universities, Cambridge and Oxford, have, since the beginning of the Twentieth Century, made public expression of their opinion that the physician should see more of the work of the surgeon, and should not depend on the autopsy room for his knowledge of the results of internal disease. Professor Osler, particularly, has emphasized his colleague, Professor Allbutt's opinion in this matter. That a surgical professor at the University of Paris, in the Thirteenth Century, should have anticipated these two leaders {89} of medical thought in the Twentieth Century, would not be so surprising, only that unfortunately the history of medieval teaching has, because of prejudice and a lamentable tradition, not been read aright.
Occasionally one finds a startling bit of anticipation of what is most modern, in medicine as well as in surgery. For instance, toward the end of the Thirteenth Century, a distinguished English professor of medicine, known as Gilbert, the Englishman, was teaching at Montpelier, and among other things, was insisting that the rooms of patients suffering from smallpox should be hung entirely with red curtains, and that the doors and the windows should be covered with heavy red hangings. He claimed that this made the disease run a lighter course, with lessened mortality, and with very much less disfigurement. Smallpox was an extremely common disease in the Thirteenth Century, and he probably had many chances for observation. It is interesting to realize that one of the most important observations made at the end of the Nineteenth Century by Dr. Finsen, the Danish investigator whose studies in light and its employment in therapeutics, drew to him the attention of the world, and eventually the Nobel prize of $40,000 for the greatest advance in medicine was, that the admission of only red light to the room of smallpox patients modified the disease very materially, shortened its course, often prevented the secondary fever, and almost did away completely with the subsequent disfigurement.
It is evident that these men were searching and investigating for themselves, and not following blindly in the footsteps of any master. It has often been said that during the Middle Ages it was a heresy to depart, ever so little, from the teaching of Galen. Usually it is customary to add that the first writer to break away from Galen, effectually, was Vesalius, in his De Fabrica Corporis Humani, published toward the end of the second quarter of the Sixteenth Century. It may be said, in passing, that, as a matter of fact, Vesalius, though he accomplished much by original investigation, did not break so effectually with Galen as would have been for the best in his own work, and, especially, for its influence on his successors. He certainly did not set an example of independent research {90} and personal observation, any more fully, than did the medical teachers of the Thirteenth Century already mentioned, and some others, like Mondaville and Arnold of Villanova, whose names well deserve to be associated with them.
One reason why it is such a surprise to find how thoroughly practical was the teaching of the Thirteenth Century university medical schools, is because it has somehow come to be a very general impression that medicine was taught mainly by disputations, and by the consultation of authorities, and that it was always more important to have a passage of Galen to support a medical notion, than, to have an original observation. This false impression is due to the fact that the writers of the history of medical education have, until recent years, drawn largely on their imaginations, and have not consulted the old-time medical books. In spite of the fact that printing was not discovered for more than two centuries later, there are many treatises on medicine that have come down to us from this early time, and the historians of medicine now have the opportunity, and are taking the trouble, to read them with a consequent alteration of old-time views, as to the lack of encouragement for original observation, in the later Middle Ages. These old tomes are not easy reading, but nothing daunts a German investigator bound to get to the bottom of his subject, and such men as Pagel and Puschmann have done much to rediscover for us medieval medicine. The French medical historians have not been behind their German colleagues and magnificent work has been accomplished, especially by the republication of old texts. William of Salicet's surgery was republished by Pifteau at Toulouse in 1898. Mondaville's Surgery was republished under the auspices of the Society for the Publication of old French Texts in 1897 and 1898. These republications have made the works of the old-time surgeons readily available for study by all interested in our great predecessors in medicine, all over the world. Before this, it has always been necessary to get to some of the libraries in which the old texts were preserved, and this, of course, made it extremely difficult for the ordinary teacher of the history of medicine to know anything about them. Besides, old texts are such difficult reading that few, except the most earnest of students, {91} have patience for them, and they are so time-taking as to be practically impossible for modern, hurried students.
Unfortunately, writers of the history of medicine filled up this gap in their knowledge, only too frequently, either out of their imaginations, or out of their inadequate authorities, with the consequence of inveterating the old-time false impression with regard to the absence of anything of medical or surgical interest, even in the later Middle Ages.
Another and much more serious reason for the false impression with regard to the supposed blankness of the middle age in medical progress, was the notion, quite generally accepted, and even yet not entirely rejected, by many, that the Church was opposed to scientific advance in the centuries before the reformation so-called, and that even the sciences allied to medicine, fell under her ban. For instance, there is not a history of medicine, so far as I know, published in the English language, which does not assert that Pope Boniface VIII., by a Bull promulgated at the end of the Thirteenth Century, forbade the practise of dissection. To most people, it will, at once, seem a natural conclusion, that if the feeling against the study of the human body by dissection had reached such a pass as to call forth a papal decree in the matter, at the end of the century, all during the previous hundred years, there must have been enough ecclesiastical hampering of anatomical work to prevent anything like true progress, and to preclude the idea of any genuinely progressive teaching of anatomy.
There is not the slightest basis for this bit of false history except an unfortunate, it is to be hoped not intentional, misapprehension on the part of historical writers as to the meaning of a papal decree issued by Boniface VIII. in the year 1300. He forbade, under pain of excommunication, the boiling of bodies and their dismemberment in order that thus piecemeal they might be transported to long distances for burial purposes. It is now well known that the Bull was aimed at certain practises which had crept in, especially among the Crusaders in the East. When a member of the nobility fell a victim to wounds or to disease, his companions not infrequently dismembered the body, boiled it so as to prevent putrefaction, or at least delay decay, and then transported it long distances to his home, in {92} order that he might have Christian burial in some favorite graveyard, and that his friends might have the consolation of knowing where his remains rested. The body of the Emperor Frederick Barbarosa, who died in the East, is said to have been thus treated. Boniface was one of the most broadly educated men of his time, who had been a great professor of canon and civil law at Paris when younger, and realized the dangers involved in such a proceeding from a sanitary standpoint, and he forbade it, requiring that the bodies should be buried where the persons had died. He evidently considered that the ancient custom of consecrating a portion of earth for the purpose of burial in order that the full Christian rites might be performed, was quite sufficient for noble as for common soldier.
For this very commendable sanitary regulation Boniface has been set down by historians of medicine as striking a death blow at the development of anatomy for the next two centuries. As a matter of fact, however, anatomy continued to be studied in the universities after this Bull as it had been before, and it is evident that never by any misapprehension as to its meaning was the practise of dissection lessened. Curiously enough the history of human dissection can only be traced with absolute certainty from the time immediately after this Bull. It is during the next twenty-five years at the University of Bologna, which was always closely in touch with the ecclesiastical authorities in Italy and especially with the Pope, that the foundations of dissection, as the most important practical department of medical teaching, were laid by Mondino, whose book on dissection continued to be the text book used in most of the medical schools for the next two centuries. Guy de Chauliac who studied there during the first half of the Fourteenth Century says he saw many dissections made there. It was at Montpellier, about the middle of the century, when the Popes were at Avignon not far away, that Guy de Chauliac himself made attendance at dissections obligatory for every student, and obtained permission to use the bodies of criminals for dissection purposes. At the time Chauliac occupied the post of chamberlain to the Popes. All during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries constant progress was making in anatomy, especially in Italy, and some of it was accomplished at Rome {93} by distinguished teachers of anatomy who had been summoned by the popes to their capital in order to add distinction to the teaching staff at the famous Papal School of Science, the Sapienza, to which were attached during the next two centuries many of the distinguished scientific professors of the time.
This story with regard to the papal prohibition of dissection has no foundation in the history of the times. It has had not a little to do, however, with making these times very much misunderstood and one still continues to see printed references to the misfortune, which is more usually called a crime, that prevented the development of a great humanitarian science because of ecclesiastical prejudice. This story with regard to anatomy, however, is not a whit worse than that which is told of chemistry in almost the same terms. At the beginning of the Fourteenth Century Pope John XXII. is said to have issued a Bull forbidding chemistry under pain of excommunication, which according to some writers in the matter is said to have included the death penalty. It has been felt in the same way as with regard to anatomy, that this was only the culmination of a feeling in ecclesiastical circles against chemistry which must have hampered its progress all during the Thirteenth Century.
An examination of the so-called Bull with regard to chemistry, it is really only a decree, shows even less reason for the slander of Pope John XXII. than of Boniface VIII. John had been scarcely a year on the papal throne when he issued this decree forbidding "alchemies" and inflicting a punishment upon those who practised them. The first sentence of the title of the document is: "Alchemies are here prohibited and those who practise them or procure their being done are punished." This is evidently all of the decree that those who quoted it as a prohibition of chemistry seem ever to have read. Under the name "alchemies," Pope John, as is clear from the rest of the document, meant a particular kind of much-advertised chemical manipulations. He forbade the supposed manufacture of gold and silver. The first sentence of his decree shows how thoroughly he recognized the falsity of the pretensions of the alchemists in this matter. "Poor themselves," he says, "the alchemists promise riches which are not forthcoming." He then forbids them further to impose upon the poor people {94} whose confidence they abuse and whose good money they take to return them only base-metal or none at all.
The only punishment inflicted for the doing of these "alchemies" on those who might transgress the decree was not death or imprisonment, but that the pretended makers of gold and silver should be required to turn into the public treasury as much gold and silver as had been paid them for their alchemies, the money thus paid in to go to the poor. As in the case of the Bull with regard to anatomy, it is very clear that by no possible misunderstanding at the time was the development of the science of chemistry hindered by this papal document. Chemistry had to a certain extent been cultivated at the University of Paris, mainly by ecclesiastics. Both Aquinas and his master Albertus wrote treatises on chemical subjects. Roger Bacon devoted much time to it as is well known, and for the next three centuries the history of chemistry has a number of names of men who were not only unhampered by the ecclesiastical authorities, but who were themselves usually either ecclesiastics, or high in favor with the churchmen of their time and place. This is true of Hollandus, of Arnold of Villanova, of Basil Valentine, and finally of the many abbots and bishops to whom Paracelsus in his time acknowledged his obligations for aid in his chemical studies.
Almost needless to say it has been impossible, in a brief sketch of this kind limited to a single chapter, to give anything like an adequate idea of what the enthusiastic graduate students and professors of the Thirteenth Century succeeded in accomplishing. It is probably this department of University life, however, that has been least understood, or rather we should say most persistently misunderstood. The education of the time is usually supposed to be eminently unpractical, and great advances in the departments of knowledge that had important bearings on human life and its relations were not therefore thought possible. It is just here, however, that sympathetic interpretation and the pointing out of the coordination of intellectual work often considered to be quite distinct from university influences were needed. It is hoped then that this short sketch will prove sufficient to call the attention of modern educators to a field that has been neglected, or at least has {95} received very little cultivation compared to its importance, but which must be sedulously worked, if our generation is to understand with any degree of thoroughness the spirit manifested and the results attained by the medieval universities.
DOUBLE FLYING BUTTRESS (RHEIMS)
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VI
THE BOOK OF THE ARTS AND POPULAR EDUCATION.
The most important portion of the history of the Thirteenth Century and beyond all doubt the most significant chapter in the book of its arts, is to be found in the great Gothic Cathedrals, so many of which were erected at this time and whose greatest perfection of finish in design and in detail came just at the beginning of this wonderful period. We are not concerned here with the gradual development of Gothic out of the older Romanesque architectural forms, nor with the Oriental elements that may have helped this great evolution. All that especially concerns us is the fact that the generations of the Thirteenth Century took the Gothic ideas in architecture and applied them so marvelously, that thereafter it could be felt that no problem of structural work had been left unsolved and no feature of ornament or decoration left untried or at least unsuggested. The great center of Gothic influence was the North of France, but it spread from here to every country in Europe, and owing to the intimate relations existing between England and France because of the presence of the Normans in both countries, developed almost as rapidly and with as much beauty, and effectiveness as in the mother country.
It is in fact in England just before the Thirteenth Century, that the spirit which gave rise to the Cathedrals can be best observed at work and its purposes most thoroughly appreciated. The great Cathedral at Lincoln had some of its most important features before the beginning of the Thirteenth Century and this was doubtless due to the famous St. Hugh of Lincoln, who was a Frenchman by birth and whose experience in Normandy in early life enabled him successfully to set about the creation of a Gothic Cathedral in the country that had become his by adoption.
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Hugh himself was so great of soul, so deeply interested in his people and their welfare, so ready to make every sacrifice for them even to the extent of incurring the enmity of his King (even Froude usually so unsympathetic to medieval men and things has included him among his Short Studies of Great Subjects), that one cannot help but think that when he devoted himself to the erection of the magnificent Cathedral, he realized very well that it would become a center of influence, not only religious but eminently educational, in its effects upon the people of his diocese. The work was begun then with a consciousness of the results to be attained and the influence of the Cathedral must not be looked upon as accidental. He must have appreciated that the creating of a work of beauty in which the people themselves shared, which they looked on as their own property, to which they came nearly every second day during the year for religious services, would be a telling book out of which they would receive more education than could come to them in any other way.
Of course we cannot hope in a short chapter or two to convey any adequate impression of the work that was done in and for the Cathedrals, nor the even more important reactionary influence they had in educating the people. Ferguson says: [Footnote 9 ]
[Footnote 9: Ferguson—History of Architecture. N. Y., Dodd, Mead & Co.]
"The subject of the cathedrals, their architecture and decoration is, in fact, practicably inexhaustible. . . . Priests and laymen worked with masons, painters, and sculptors, and all were bent on producing the best possible building, and improving every part and every detail, till the amount of thought and contrivance accumulated in any single structure is almost incomprehensible. If any one man were to devote a lifetime to the study of one of our great cathedrals—assuming it to be complete in all its medieval arrangements—it is questionable whether he would master all its details, and fathom all the reasonings and experiments which led to the glorious result before him. And when we consider that not in the great cities alone, but in every convent and in every parish, thoughtful professional men were trying to excel what had been done and was doing, by their predecessors and their fellows, we shall {98} understand what an amount of thought is built into the walls of our churches, castles, colleges, and dwelling houses. If any one thinks he can master and reproduce all this, he can hardly fail to be mistaken. My own impression is that not one tenth part of it has been reproduced in all the works written on the subject up to this day, and much of it is probably lost and never again to be recovered for the instruction and delight of future ages."
This profound significance and charming quality of the cathedrals is usually unrecognized by those who see them only once or twice, and who, though they are very much interested in them for the moment, have no idea of the wealth of artistic suggestion and of thoughtful design so solicitously yet happily put into them by their builders. People who have seen them many times, however, who have lived in close touch with them, who have been away from them for a time and have come back to them, find the wondrous charm that is in these buildings. Architects and workmen put their very souls into them and they will always be of interest. It is for this reason, that the casual visitor at all times and in all moods finds them ever a source of constantly renewed pleasure, no matter how many times they may be seen.
Elizabeth Robbins Pennell has expressed this power of Cathedrals to please at all times, even after they have been often seen and are very well known, in a recent number of the Century, in describing the great Cathedral of Notre Dame, "Often as I have seen Notre Dame," she says, "the marvel of it never grows less. I go to Paris with no thought of time for it, busy about many other things and then on my way over one of the bridges across the river perhaps, I see it again on its island, the beautiful towers high above the houses and palaces and the view now so familiar strikes me afresh with all the wonder of my first impression."
This is we think the experience of everyone who has the opportunity to see much of Notre Dame. The present writer during the course of his medical studies spent many months in daily view of the Cathedral and did a good deal of work at the old Morgue, situated behind the Cathedral. Even at the end of his stay he was constantly finding new beauties in {99} the grand old structure and learning to appreciate it more and more as the changing seasons of a Paris fall and winter and spring, threw varying lights and shadows over it. It was like a work of nature, never growing old, but constantly displaying some new phase of beauty to the passers-by. Mrs. Pennell resents only the restorations that have been made. Generations down even to our time have considered that they could rebuild as beautifully as the Thirteenth Century constructors; some of them even have thought that they could do better, doubtless, yet their work has in the opinion of good critics served only to spoil or at least to detract from the finer beauty of the original plan. No wonder that R. M. Stevenson, who knew and loved the old Cathedral so well, said: "Notre Dame is the only un-Greek thing that unites majesty, elegance, and awfulness." Inasmuch as it does so it is a typical product of this wonderful Thirteenth Century, the only serious rival the Greeks have ever had. But of course it does not stand alone. There are other Cathedrals built at the same time at least as handsome and as full of suggestions. Indeed in the opinion of many critics it is inferior in certain respects to some three or four of the greatest Gothic Cathedrals.
It cannot be possible that these generations builded so much better than they knew, that it is only by a sort of happy accident that their edifices still continue to be the subject of such profound admiration, and such endless sources of pleasure after seven centuries of experience. If so we would certainly be glad to have some such happy accident occur in our generation, for we are building nothing at the present time with regard to which we have any such high hopes. Of course the generations of Cathedral builders knew and appreciated their own work. The triumph of the Thirteenth Century is therefore all the more marked and must be considered as directly due to the environment and the education of its people. We have then in the study of their Cathedrals the keynote for the modern appreciation of the character and the development of their builders.
It will be readily understood, how inevitably fragmentary must be our consideration of the Cathedrals, yet there is the consolation that they are the best known feature of Thirteenth {100} Century achievement and that consequently all that will be necessary will be to point out the significance of their construction as the basis of the great movement of education and uplift in the century. Perhaps first a word is needed with regard to the varieties of Gothic in the different countries of Europe and what they meant in the period.
Probably, the most interesting feature of the history of Gothic architecture, at this period, is to be found in the circumstance that, while all of the countries erected Gothic structures along the general lines which had been laid down by its great inventors in the North and Center of France, none of the architects and builders of the century, in other countries, slavishly followed the French models. English Gothic is quite distinct from its French ancestor, and while it has defects it has beauties, that are all its own, and a simplicity and grandeur, well suited to the more rugged character of the people among whom it developed. Italian Gothic has less merits, perhaps, than any of the other forms of the art that developed in the different nations. In Italy, with its bright sunlight, there was less crying need for the window space, for the provision of which, in the darker northern countries, Gothic was invented, but, even here the possibilities of decorated architecture along certain lines were exhausted more fully than anywhere else, as might have been expected from the esthetic spirit of the Italians. German Gothic has less refinement than any of the other national forms, yet it is not lacking in a certain straightforward strength and simplicity of appearance, which recommends it. The Germans often violated the French canons of architecture, yet did not spoil the ultimate effect. St. Stephen's in Vienna has many defects, yet as a good architectural authority has declared it is the work of a poet, and looks it.
A recent paragraph with regard to Spanish Gothic in an article on Spain, by Havelock Ellis, illustrates the national qualities of this style very well. As much less is generally known about the special development of Gothic architecture in the Spanish peninsula, it has seemed worth while to quote it at some length:
"Moreover, there is no type of architecture which so {101} admirably embodies the romantic spirit as Spanish Gothic. Such a statement implies no heresy against the supremacy of French Gothic. But the very qualities of harmony and balance of finely tempered reason, which make French Gothic so exquisitely satisfying, softened the combination of mysteriously grandiose splendor with detailed realism, in which lies the essence of Gothic as the manifestation of the romantic spirit. Spanish Gothic at once by its massiveness and extravagance and by its realistic naturalness, far more potently embodies the spirit of medieval life. It is less esthetically beautiful but it is more romantic. In Leon Cathedral, Spain possesses one of the very noblest and purest examples of French Gothic—a church which may almost be said to be the supreme type of the Gothic ideal, of a delicate house of glass finely poised between buttresses; but there is nothing Spanish about it. For the typical Gothic of Spain we must go to Toledo and Burgos, to Tarragona and Barcelona. Here we find the elements of stupendous size, of mysterious gloom, of grotesque and yet realistic energy, which are the dominant characters, alike of Spanish architecture and of medieval romance."
Those who think that the Gothic architecture came to a perfection all its own by a sort of wonderful manifestation of genius in a single generation, and then stayed there, are sadly mistaken. There was a constant development to be noted all during the Thirteenth Century. This development was always in the line of true improvement, while just after the century closed degeneration began, decoration became too important a consideration, parts were over-loaded with ornament, and the decadence of taste in Gothic architecture cannot escape the eye even of the most untutored. All during the Thirteenth Century the tendency was always to greater lightness and elegance. One is apt to think of these immense structures as manifestations of the power of man to overcome great engineering difficulties and to solve immense structural problems, rather than as representing opportunities for the expression of what was most beautiful and poetic in the intellectual aspirations of the generations. But this is what they were, and their architects were poets, for in the best sense of the {102} etymology of the word they were creators. That their raw material was stone and mortar rather than words was only an accident of their environment. Each of the architects succeeded in expressing himself with wonderful individuality in his own work in each Cathedral.
The improvements introduced by the Thirteenth Century people into the architecture that came to them, were all of a very practical kind, and were never suggested for the sake of merely adding to opportunities for ornamentation. In this matter, skillful combinations of line and form were thought out and executed with wonderful success. At the beginning of the century, delicate shafts of marble, highly polished, were employed rather freely, but as these seldom carried weight, and were mainly ornamental in character, they were gradually eliminated, yet, without sacrificing any of the beauty of structure since combinations of light and shade were secured by the composition of various forms, and the use of delicately rounded mouldings alternated with hollows, so as to produce forcible effects in high light and deep shadow. In a word, these architects and builders, of the Thirteenth Century, set themselves the problem of building effectively, making every portion count in the building itself, and yet, securing ornamental effects out of actual structure such as no other set of architects have ever been able to surpass, and, probably, only the Greek architects of the Periclean period ever equaled. Needless to say, this is the very acme of success in architectural work, and it is for this reason that the generations of the after time have all gone back so lovingly to study the work of this period.
It might be thought, that while Gothic architecture was a great invention in its time and extremely suitable for ecclesiastical or even educational edifices of various kinds, its time of usefulness has passed and that men's widening experience in structural work, ever since, has carried him far away from it. As a matter of fact, most of our ecclesiastical buildings are still built on purely Gothic lines, and a definite effort is made, as a rule, to have the completed religious edifice combine a number of the best features of Thirteenth Century Gothic. With what {103} success this has been accomplished can best be appreciated from the fact, that none of the modern structures attract anything like the attention of the old, and the Cathedrals of this early time still continue to be the best asset of the towns in which they are situated, because of the number of visitors they attract. Far from considering Gothic architecture outlived, architects still apply themselves to it with devotion because of the practical suggestions which it contains, and there are those of wide experience, who still continue to think it the most wonderful example of architectural development that has ever come, and even do not hesitate to foretell a great future for it.
Reinach, in his Story of Art Throughout the Ages, [Footnote 10] has been so enthusiastic in this matter that a paragraph of his opinion must find a place here. Reinach, it may be said, is an excellent authority, a member of the Institute of France, who has made special studies in comparative architecture, and has written works that carry more weight than almost any others of our generation:
[Footnote 10: Scribners, New York, 1905.]
"If the aim of architecture, considered as an art, should be to free itself as much as possible from subjection to its materials, it may be said that no buildings have more successfully realized this ideal than the Gothic churches. And there is more to be said in this connection. Its light and airy system of construction, the freedom and slenderness of its supporting skeleton, afford, as it were, a presage of an art that began to develop in the Nineteenth Century, that of metallic architecture. With the help of metal, and of cement reinforced by metal bars, the moderns might equal the most daring feats of the Gothic architects. It would even be easy for them to surpass them, without endangering the solidity of the structure, as did the audacities of Gothic art. In the conflicts that obtain between the two elements of construction, solidity and open space, everything seems to show that the principle of free spaces will prevail, that the palaces and houses of the future will be flooded with air and light, that the formula popularized by Gothic architecture has a great future before it, and that following the revival of the Graeco-Roman style from {104} the Sixteenth Century, to our own day, we shall see a yet more enduring renaissance of the Gothic style applied to novel materials."
It would be a mistake, however, to think that the Gothic Cathedrals were impressive only because of their grandeur and immense size. It would be still more a mistake to consider them only as examples of a great development in architecture. They are much more than this; they are the compendious expression of the art impulses of a glorious century. Every single detail of the Gothic Cathedrals is not only worthy of study but deserving of admiration, if not for itself, then always for the inadequate means by which it was secured, and most of these details have been found worthy of imitation by subsequent generations. It is only by considering the separate details of the art work of these Cathedrals that the full lesson of what these wonderful people accomplished can be learned. There have been many centuries since, in which they would be entirely unappreciated. Fortunately, our own time has come back to a recognition of the greatness of the art impulse that was at work, perfecting even what might be considered trivial portions of the cathedrals, and the brightest hope for the future of our own accomplishment is founded on this belated appreciation of old-time work.
It has been said that the medieval workman was a lively symbol of the Creator Himself, in the way in which he did his work. It mattered not how obscure the portion of the cathedral at which he was set, he decorated it as beautifully as he knew how, without a thought that his work would be appreciated only by the very few that might see it. Trivial details were finished with the perfection of important parts. Microscopic studies in recent years have revealed beautiful designs on pollen grains and diatoms which are far beneath the possibilities of human vision, and have only been discovered by lens combinations of very high powers of the compound microscope. Always these beauties have been there though hidden away from any eye. It was as if the Creator's hand could not touch anything without leaving it beautiful as well as useful.
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CATHEDRAL (AMIENS)
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To as great extent as it is possible perhaps for man to secure such a desideratum, the Thirteenth Century workman succeeded in this same purpose. It is for this reason more than even for the magnificent grandeur of the design and the skilful execution with inadequate means, that makes the Gothic Cathedral such a source of admiration and wonder.
To take first the example of sculpture. It is usually considered that the Thirteenth Century represented a time entirely too early in the history of plastic art for there to have been any fine examples of the sculptor's chisel left us from it. Any such impression, however, will soon be corrected if one but examines carefully the specimens of this form of art in certain Cathedrals. As we have said, probably no more charmingly dignified presentation of the human form divine in stone has ever been made than the figure of Christ above the main door of the cathedral of Amiens, which the Amiennois so lovingly call their "beautiful God." There are some other examples of statuary in the same cathedral that are wonderful specimens of the sculptor's art, lending itself for decorative purposes to architecture. This is true for a number of the Cathedrals. The statues in themselves are not so beautiful, but as portions of a definite piece of structural work such as a doorway or a facade, they are wonderful models of how all the different arts became subservient to the general effect to be produced. It was at Rheims, however, that sculpture reached its acme of accomplishment, and architects have been always unstinted in their praise of this feature of what may be called the Capitol church of France.
Those who have any doubts as to the place of Gothic art itself in art history and who need an authority always to bolster up the opinion that they may hold, will find ample support in the enthusiastic opinion of an authority whom we have quoted already. The most interesting and significant feature of his ardent expression of enthusiasm is his comparison of Romanesque with Gothic art in this respect. The amount of ground covered from one artistic mode to the other is greater than any other advance in art that has ever been made. After all, the real value of the work of the period must be judged, rather by the amount of progress that has {106} been made than by the stage of advance actually reached, since it is development rather than accomplishment that counts in the evolution of the race. On the other hand it will be found that Reinach's opinion of the actual attainments of Gothic art are far beyond anything that used to be thought on the subject a half century ago, and much higher than any but a few of the modern art critics hold in the matter. He says:
"In contrast to this Romanesque art, as yet in bondage to convention, ignorant or disdainful of nature, the mature Gothic art of the Thirteenth Century appeared as a brilliant revival or realism. The great sculptors who adorned the Cathedrals of Paris, Amiens, Rheims, and Chartres with their works, were realists in the highest sense of the word. They sought in Nature not only their knowledge of human forms, and of the draperies that cover them, but also that of the principles of decoration. Save in the gargoyles of cathedrals and in certain minor sculptures, we no longer find in the Thirteenth Century those unreal figures of animals, nor those ornaments, complicated as nightmares, which load the capitals of Romanesque churches; the flora of the country, studied with loving attention, is the sole, or almost the sole source from which decorators take their motives. It is in this charming profusion of flowers and foliage that the genius of Gothic architecture is most freely displayed. One of the most admirable of its creations is the famous Capital of the Vintage in Notre Dame at Rheims, carved about the year 1250. Since the first century of the Roman Empire art had never imitated Nature so perfectly, nor has it ever since done so with a like grace and sentiment."
Reinach defends Gothic Art from another and more serious objection which is constantly urged against it by those who know only certain examples of it, but have not had the advantage of the wide study of the whole field of artistic endeavor in the Thirteenth Century, which this distinguished member of the Institute of France has succeeded in obtaining. It is curious what unfounded opinions have come to be prevalent in art circles because, only too often, writers with regard to the Cathedrals have spent their time mainly in the large cities, or along the principal arteries of travel, and have not realized {107} that some of the smaller towns contained work better fitted to illustrate Gothic Art principles than those on which they depended for their information. If only particular phases of the art of any one time, no matter how important, were to be considered in forming a judgment of it, that judgment would almost surely be unfavorable in many ways because of the lack of completeness of view. This is what has happened unfortunately with regard to Gothic art, but a better spirit is coming in this matter, with the more careful study of periods of art and the return of reverence for the grand old Middle Ages.
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CATHEDRAL (RHEIMS)
Reinach says: "There are certain prejudices against this admirable, though incomplete, art which it is difficult to combat. It is often said, for instance, that all Gothic figures are stiff and emaciated. To convince ourselves of the contrary we need only study the marvelous sculpture of the meeting between Abraham and Melchisedech, in Rheims Cathedral; or again in the same Cathedral, the Visitation, the seated Prophet, and the standing Angel, or the exquisite Magdalen of Bordeaux Cathedral. What can we see in these that is stiff, sickly, and puny? The art that has most affinity with perfect Gothic is neither Romanesque nor Byzantine, but the Greek art of from 500 to 450 B. C. By a strange coincidence, the Gothic artists even reproduce the somewhat stereotyped smile of their forerunners." Usually it is said that the Renaissance brought the supreme qualities of Greek plastic art back to life, but here is a thoroughly competent critic who finds them exhibited long before the Fifteenth Century, as a manifestation of what the self-sufficient generations of the Renaissance would have called Gothic, meaning thereby, barbarous art.
What has been said of sculpture, however, can be repeated with even more force perhaps with regard to every detail of construction and decoration. Builders and architects did make mistakes at times, but, even their mistakes always reveal an artist's soul struggling for expression through inadequate media. Many things had to be done experimentally, most things were being done for the first time. Everything had an originality of its own that made its execution something more than merely a secure accomplishment after previous careful {108} tests. In spite of this state of affairs, which might be expected sadly to interfere with artistic execution, the Cathedrals, in the main, are full of admirable details not only worthy of imitation, but that our designers are actually imitating or at least finding eminently suggestive at the present time.
To begin with a well known example of decorative effect which is found in the earliest of the English Cathedrals, that of Lincoln. The nave and choir of this was finished just at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century. The choir is so beautiful in its conception, so wonderful in its construction, so charming in its finish, so satisfactory in all its detail, though there is very little of what would be called striving after effect in it, that it is still called the Angel Choir.
The name was originally given it because it was considered to be so beautiful even during the Thirteenth Century, that visitors could scarcely believe that it was constructed by human hands and so the legend became current that it was the work of angels. If the critics of the Thirteenth Century, who had the opportunity to see work of nearly the same kind being constructed in many parts of England, judged thus highly of it, it is not surprising that modern visitors should be unstinted in their praise. It is interesting to note as representative of the feeling of a cultured modern scientific mind that Dr. Osler said not long ago, in one of his medical addresses, that probably nothing more beautiful had ever come from the hands of man than this Angel Choir at Lincoln. As to who were the designers, who conceived it, or the workmen who executed it, we have no records. It is not unlikely that the famous Hugh of Lincoln, the great Bishop to whom the Cathedral owes its foundation and much of its splendor, was responsible to no little extent for this beautiful feature of his Cathedral church. The workmen who made it were artist-artisans in the best sense of the word and it is not surprising that other beautiful architectural features should have flourished in a country where such workmen could be found.
Almost as impressive as the Angel Choir was the stained glass work at Lincoln. The rose windows are among the most beautiful ever made and one of them is indeed considered a gem of its kind. The beautiful colors and wonderful {109} effectiveness of the stained glass of these old time Cathedrals cannot be appreciated unless the windows themselves are actually seen. At Lincoln there is a very impressive contrast that one can scarcely help calling to attention and that has been very frequently the subject of comment by visitors. During the Parliamentary time, unfortunately, the stained glass at Lincoln fell under the ban of the Puritans. The lower windows were almost completely destroyed by the soldiers of Cromwell's army. Only the rose windows owing to their height were preserved from the destroyer. There was an old sexton at the Cathedral, however, for whom the stained glass had become as the apple of his eye. As boy and man he had lived in its beautiful colors as they broke the light of the rising and the setting sun and they were too precious to be neglected even when lying upon the pavement of the Cathedral in fragments. He gathered the shattered pieces into bags and hid them away in a dark corner of the crypt, saving them at least from the desecration of being trampled to dust.
Long afterwards, indeed almost in our own time, they were found here and were seen to be so beautiful that regardless of the fact that they could not be fitted together in anything like their former places, they were pieced into windows and made to serve their original purpose once more. It so happened that new stained glass windows for the Cathedral of Lincoln were ordered during the Nineteenth Century. These were made at an unfortunate time in stained glass making and are as nearly absolutely unattractive, to say nothing worse, as it is possible to make stained glass. The contrast with the antique windows, fragmentary as they are, made up of the broken pieces of Thirteenth Century glass is most striking. The old time colors are so rich that when the sun shines directly on them they look like jewels. No one pays the slightest attention, unless perhaps the doubtful compliment of a smile be given, to the modern windows which were, however, very costly and the best that could be obtained at that time.
More of the stained glass of the Thirteenth Century is preserved at York where, because of the friendship of General Ireton, the town and the Cathedral were spared the worst ravages of the Parliamentarians. As a consequence York still {110} possesses some of the best of its old time windows. It is probable that there is nothing more beautiful or wonderful in its effectiveness than the glass in the Five Sisters window at York. This is only an ordinary lancet window of five compartments—hence the name—in the west front of the Cathedral. There are no figures on the window, it is only a mass of beautiful greyish green tints which marvelously subdues the western setting sun at the vesper hour and produces the most beautiful effects in the interior of the Cathedral. Here if anywhere one can realize the meaning of the expression dim religious light. In recent years, however, it has become the custom for so many people to rave over the Five Sisters that we are spared the necessity of more than mentioning it. Its tints far from being injured by time have probably been enriched. There can be no doubt at all, however, of the artistic tastes and esthetic genius of the man who designed it. The other windows of the Cathedral were not unworthy of this triumph of art. How truly the Cathedral was a Technical School can be appreciated from the fact that it was able to inspire such workmen to produce these wondrous effects.
Experts in stained glass work have often called attention to the fact that the windows constructed in the Thirteenth Century were not only of greater artistic value but were also more solidly put together. Many of the windows made in the century still maintain their places, in spite of the passage of time, though later windows are sometimes dropping to pieces. It might be thought that this was due to the fact that later stained glass workers were more delicate in the construction of their windows in order not to injure the effect of the stained glass. To some extent this is true, but the stained glass workers of the Thirteenth Century preserve the effectiveness of their artistic pictures in glass, though making the frame work very substantial. This is only another example of their ability to combine the useful with the beautiful so characteristic of the century, stamping practically every phase of its accomplishment and making their work more admirable because its usefulness does not suffer on account of any strained efforts after supposed beauties.
Though it is somewhat out of place here we cannot refrain {111} from pointing out the educational value of this stained glass work.
Some of the stories on these windows gave details of many passages from the Bible, that must have impressed them upon the people much more than any sermon or reading of the text could possibly have accomplished. They were literally sermons in glass that he who walked by had to read whether he would or not. When we remember that the common people in the Middle Ages had no papers to distract them, and no books to turn to for information, such illustrations as were provided by the stained glass windows, by the painting and the statuary decorations of the Cathedrals, must have been studied with fondest devotion even apart from religious sentiment and out of mere inquisitiveness. The famous "prodigal" window at Chartres is a good example of this. Every detail of the story is here pictorially displayed in colors, from the time when the young man demands his patrimony through all the various temptations he met with in being helped to spend it, there being a naive richness of detail in the matter of the temptations that is quite medieval, from the boon companions who first led him astray to the depths of degradation which he finally reached before he returned to his father,—even the picture of the fatted calf is not lacking.
On others of these windows there are the stories of the Patron Saints of certain crafts. The life of St. Crispin the shoemaker is given in rather full detail. The same is true of St. Romain the hunter who was the patron of the furriers. The most ordinary experiences of life are pictured and the methods by which these were turned to account in making the craftsman a saint, must have been in many ways an ideally uplifting example for fellow craftsmen whenever they viewed the window. This sort of teaching could not be without its effect upon the poor. It taught them that there was something else in life besides money getting and that happiness and contentment might be theirs in a chosen occupation and the reward of Heaven at the end of it all, for at the top of these windows the hand of the Almighty is introduced reaching down from Heaven to reward his faithful servants. It is just by such presentation of ideals even to the poor, that {112} the Thirteenth Century differs from the modern time in which even the teaching in the schools seems only to emphasize the fact that men must get money, honestly if they can, but must get money, if they would have what is called success in life.
Another very interesting feature of these windows is the fact that they were usually the gifts of the various Guilds and so represented much more of interest, for the members. It is true that in France, particularly, the monarchs frequently presented stained glass windows and in St. Louis time this was so common that scarcely a French Cathedral was without one or more testimonials of this kind to his generosity; but most of the windows were given by various societies among the people themselves. How much the construction of such a window when it was well done, would make for the education in taste of those who contributed to the expense of its erection, can scarcely be over-estimated. There was besides a friendly rivalry in this matter in the Thirteenth Century, which served to bring out the talents of local artists and by the inevitably suggested comparisons eventually served to educate the taste of the people.
It must not be thought, however, that it was only in stained glass and painting and sculpture—the major arts—that these workmen attained their triumphs. Practically every detail of Cathedral construction is a monument to the artistic genius of the century, to the wonderful inspiration afforded the workmen and to the education provided by the Guilds which really maintained, as we shall see, a kind of Technical School with the approbation and the fostering care of the ecclesiastics connected with the Cathedrals. An excellent example of a very different class of work may be noted in the hinges of the Cloister door of the Cathedral at York. Personally I have seen three art designers sketching these at the same time only one of whom was an Englishman, another coming from the continent and the third from America. The hinge still swings the heavy oak door of the Thirteenth Century. The arborization of the metal as it spreads out from the main shaft of the hinge is beautifully decorative in effect.
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CLOISTER OF ST. PAUL'S (WITHOUT THE WALLS, ROME)
A little study of the hinge seems to show that these branching portions were so arranged as to make the mechanical {113} moment of the swinging door less of a dead weight than it would have been if the hinge were a solid bar of iron. Besides the spreading of the branches over a wide surface serves to hold the woodwork of the door thoroughly in place. While the hinge was beautiful, then it was eminently useful from a good many standpoints, and trivial though it might be considered to be, it was in reality a type of all the work accomplished in connection with these Thirteenth Century Cathedrals. According to the old Latin proverb "omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci," he scores every point who mingles the useful with the beautiful, and certainly the Thirteenth Century workman succeeded in accomplishing the desideratum to an eminent degree. This mingling of the useful and the beautiful is of itself a supreme difference between the Thirteenth Century generations and our own. Mr. Yeats, the well known Irish poet, in bidding farewell to America some years ago said to a party of friends, that no country could consider itself to be making real progress in culture until the very utensils in the kitchen were beautiful as well as useful. Anything that is merely useful is hideous, and anyone who can handle such things with impunity has not true culture. In the Thirteenth Century they never by any chance made anything that was merely useful, especially not if it was to be associated with their beloved Cathedral.
An excellent example of this can be found in their Chalices and other ceremonial utensils which were meant for Divine Service. As we have said elsewhere The Craftsman, the journal of the Arts and Crafts Movement in this country not long since compared a Chalice of the Thirteenth Century with the prize cups which are offered for yacht races and other competitions in this country. We may say at once that the form which the Chalice received during the Thirteenth Century is that which constitutes to a great extent the model for this sacred vessel ever since and the comparison with the modern design is therefore all the more interesting. In spite of the fact that money is no object as a rule in the construction of many of the modern prize cups, they compare unfavorably according to the writer in The Craftsman with the old time chalices. There is a tendency to over ornamentation which {114} spoils the effectiveness of the lines of the metal work in many cases and there is also only too often, an attempt to introduce forms of plastic art which do not lend themselves well to this class of work. It is in design particularly that the older workman excels his modern colleague though usually there are suggestions from several sources for present day work. In a word the Thirteenth Century Chalice was much more admirable than the modern piece of metal work, because the lines were simpler, the combination of beauty with utility more readily recognizable and the obtrusiveness of the ornamentation much less marked.
This same thing is true for other even coarser forms of metal work in connection with the Cathedrals, and anyone who has seen some of the beautiful iron screens built for Cathedral choirs in the olden times will realize that even the worker in iron must have been an artist as well as a blacksmith. The effect produced, especially in the dim light of the Cathedral, is often that of delicate lace work. To appreciate the strength of the screen one must actually test it with the hands. This of itself represents a very charming adaptation of what might be expected to be rough work meant for protective purposes into a suitable ornament. Some of the gates of the old churchyards are very beautiful in their designs and have often been imitated in quite recent years, for the gates of country places, for our modern millionaires. The Reverend Augustus Jessopp who has written much with regard to the times before the Reformation, says that he has found in his investigations, that not infrequently such gates were made by the village blacksmiths. Most of the old parish records are lost because of the suppression of the parishes as well as the monasteries in Henry the Eighth's time. Some of the original documents are, however, preserved and among them are receipts from the village blacksmith, for what we now admire as specimens of artistic ironwork and corresponding receipts from the village carpenter, for woodwork that we now consider of equally high order. There were carved bench ends and choir stalls which seem to have been produced in this way. Just how these generations of the Thirteenth Century, in little towns of less than ten thousand inhabitants, {115} succeeded in raising up artisans in numbers, capable of doing such fine work, and yet content to make their living at such ordinary occupations, is indeed hard to understand. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that though there was not much furniture during the Thirteenth Century what little there was, was as a rule very carefully and artistically made. Thirteenth Century benches and tables are famous. Cathedrals and castles worked together in inspiring and giving occupation to these wonderful workmen.
It was not only the workmen engaged in the construction of the edifices proper who made the beautiful things and created marvelously artistic treasures during this century. All the adornments of the Cathedrals and especially everything associated in any intimate way with the religious service was sure to be executed with the most delicate taste. The vestments of the time are some of the most beautiful that have ever been made. The historians of needlework tell us that this period represents the most flourishing era of artistic accomplishment with the needle of all modern history. One example of this has secured a large share of notoriety in quite recent years. An American millionaire bought the famous piece of needlework known as the Cope of Ascoli. This is an example of the large garment worn over the shoulders in religious processions and at benediction. The price paid for the garment is said to have been $60,000. This was not considered extortionate or enforced, as the Cope was declared by experts to be one of the finest pieces of needlework in the world. The jewels which originally adorned it had been removed so that the money was paid for the needlework itself. After a time it became clear that the Cope had been stolen before being sold, and accordingly it was returned to the Italian government who presented the American millionaire with a medal for his honesty.
We have spoken of the Cathedrals as great stone books, in which he who ran, might read, even though he were not able to read in the technical sense of the term. This has been an old-time expression with regard to the Cathedrals, but not even its inventor perhaps, and certainly not most of those who have repeated it have realized how literally true was the saying. I {116} have elsewhere quoted from Reinach's Story of Art Throughout the Ages as an authority on the subject. His re-statement of the intellectual significance for the people of the Cathedrals of their towns, in which it must be remembered that they had a personal interest because in a sense they were really theirs, and they felt their ownership quite as much as a modern member of a parish feels with regard to his church, emphasizes and illuminates this subject to a wonderful degree. The realization that the information of the time was deliberately woven into these great stone structures, mainly of course for decorative purposes, but partly also with the idea of educating the people, is a startling confirmation of the idea that education was the most important and significant work of this great century.
"The Gothic Cathedral is a perfect encyclopedia of human knowledge. It contains scenes from the Scriptures and the legends of saints; motives from the animal and vegetable kingdom; representations of the seasons of agricultural labor, of' the arts and sciences and crafts, and finally moral allegories, as, for instance, ingenious personifications of the virtues and the vices. In the Thirteenth Century a learned Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais, was employed by St. Louis to write a great work which was to be an epitome of all the knowledge of his times. This compilation, called The Mirror of the World, is divided into four parts: The Mirror of Nature, The Mirror of Science, the Moral Mirror, and the Historical Mirror. A contemporary archaeologist, M. E. Male, has shown that the works of art of our great cathedrals are a translation into stone of the Mirror of Vincent of Beauvais, setting aside the episodes from Greek and Roman History, which would have been out of place. It was not that the imagers had read Vincent's work; but that, like him, they sought to epitomise all the knowledge of their contemporaries. The first aim of their art is not to please, but to teach; they offer an encyclopedia for the use of those who cannot read, translated by sculptor or glass-painter into a clear and precise language, under the lofty direction of the Church which left nothing to chance. It was present always and everywhere, advising and superintending the artist, leaving him to his own devices only when he {117} modelled the fantastic animals of the gargoyles, or borrowed decorative motives from the vegetable kingdom." [Footnote 11]
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[Footnote 11: Reinach—The Story of Art Throughout the Ages. Scribner's, 1904.]
CATHEDRAL (BOURGES)
CATHEDRAL (CHARTRES)
As to how much the cathedrals held of meaning for those who built them and worshiped in them, only a careful study of the symbolism of the time will enable the present-day admirer to understand. Modern generations have lost most of their appreciation of the significance of symbolism. The occupation of mind with the trivial things that are usually read in our day, leaves little or no room for the study of the profounder thought an artist may care to put into his work, and so the modern artist tells his story as far as possible without any of this deeper significance, since it would only be lost. In the Thirteenth Century, however, everything artistic had a secondary meaning. Literature was full of allegories, even the Arthur Legends were considered to be the expression of the battle of a soul with worldly influences as well as a poetic presentation of the story of the old time British King. The Gothic Cathedrals were a mass of symbolism. This will perhaps be best understood from the following explanation of Cathedral symbolism, which we take from the translation of Durandus's work on the meaning of the Divine Offices, a further account of which will be found in the chapter on The Prose of the Century.
"Far away and long ere we can catch the first view of the city itself, the three spires of its Cathedral, rising high above its din and turmoil, preach to us of the Most High and Undivided Trinity. As we approach, the Transepts, striking out crosswise, tell of the Atonement. The Communion of Saints is set forth by the chapels clustering around Choir and Nave: the mystical weathercock bids us to watch and pray and endure hardness; the hideous forms that are seen hurrying from the eaves speak the misery of those who are cast out of the church; spire, pinnacle, and finial, the upward curl of the sculptured foliage, the upward spring of the flying buttress, the sharp rise of the window arch, the high thrown pitch of the roof, all these, overpowering the horizontal tendency of string course and parapet, teach us, that vanquishing earthly desires, we also should ascend in heart and mind. Lessons of holy {118} wisdom are written in the delicate tracery of the windows; the unity of many members is shadowed forth by the multiplex arcade; the duty of letting our light shine before men, by the pierced and flowered parapet that crowns the whole.
"We enter. The triple breadth of Nave and Aisles, the triple height of Pier arch, Triforium, and Clerestory, the triple length of Choir, Transepts, and Nave, again set forth the HOLY TRINITY. And what besides is there that does not tell of our Blessed SAVIOUR? that does not point out "HIM First" in the two-fold western door; "HIM Last" in the distant altar; "HIM Midst," in the great Rood; "HIM Without End," in the monogram carved on boss and corbel, in the Holy Lamb, in the Lion of the tribe of Judah, in the Mystic Fish? Close by us is the font; for by regeneration we enter the Church; it is deep and capacious; for we are buried in Baptism with CHRIST; it is of stone, for HE is the Rock; and its spiry cover teaches us, if we be indeed risen from its waters with HIM, to seek those things which are above. Before us in long-drawn vista are the massy piers, which are the Apostles and Prophets—they are each of many members, for many are the Graces in every Saint, there is beautifully delicate foliage round the head of all; for all were plentiful in good works. Beneath our feet are the badges of worldly pomp and glory, the graves of Kings and Nobles and Knights; all in the Presence of God as dross and worthlessness. Over us swells the vast valley of the high pitched roof; from the crossing and interlacing of its curious rafters hang fadeless flowers and fruits which are not of earth; from its hammer-beams project wreaths and stars such as adorn heavenly beings; in its center stands the LAMB as it has been slain; from around HIM the celestial Host, Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones, Principalities, and Powers, look down peacefully on the worshipers below. Harpers there are among them harping with their harps; for one is the song of the Church in earth and in Heaven. Through the walls wind the narrow cloister galleries; emblems of the path by which holy hermits and anchorets whose conflicts were known only to their GOD, have reached their Home. And we are compassed about with a mighty cloud of witnesses; the rich deep glass of the windows teems {119} with saintly forms, each in its own fair niche, all invested with the same holy repose; there is the glorious company of the Apostles; the goodly fellowship of the Prophets; the noble army of Martyrs; the shining band of Confessors; the jubilant chorus of the Virgins; there are Kings, who have long since changed an earthly for an heavenly crown; and Bishops who have given in a glad account to the Shepherd and Bishop of souls. But on none of these things do we rest; piers, arch behind arch, windows, light behind light, arcades, shaft behind shaft, the roof, bay behind bay, the Saints around us, the Heavenly Hierarchy above with dignity of preeminence still increasing eastward, each and all, lead on eye and soul and thought to the Image of the Crucified Saviour as displayed on the great East window. Gazing steadfastly on that we pass up the Nave, that is through the Church Militant, till we reach the Rood Screen, the barrier between it and the Church Triumphant, and therein shadowing forth the death of the Faithful. High above it hangs on His Triumphant Cross the image of Him who by His death hath overcome death; on it are portrayed Saints and Martyrs, His warriors who, fighting under their LORD have entered into rest and inherit a tearless eternity. They are to be our examples, and the seven lamps above them typify those graces of the SPIRIT, by Whom alone we can tread in their steps. The screen itself glows with gold and crimson; with gold, for they have on their heads golden crowns; with crimson, for they passed the Red Sea of Martyrdom, to obtain them. And through the delicate network, and the unfolding Holy Doors, we catch faint glimpses of the Chancel beyond. There are the massy stalls; for in Heaven is everlasting rest; there are the Sedilia, emblems of the seats of' the Elders round the Throne; there is the Piscina; for they have washed their robes and made them white; and there heart and soul and life of all, the Altar with its unquenched lights, and golden carvings, and mystic steps, and sparkling jewels; even CHRIST Himself, by Whose only Merits we find admission to our Heavenly Inheritance. Verily, as we think on the oneness of its design, we may say: Jerusalem edificatur ut civitas cujus participatio ejus in idipsum."
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It is because of all this wealth of meaning embodied in them, that the Cathedrals of this old time continue to be so interesting and so unfailingly attractive even to our distant and so differently constituted generation. [Footnote 12]
[Footnote 12: Those who care to realize to some degree all the Wonderful symbolic meaning of the ornamentation of some of these cathedrals, should read M. Huysman's book La Cathedrale, which has, we believe, been translated into English. Needless to say it has been often in our hands in compiling this chapter, and the death of its author as this chapter is going through the press poignantly recalls all the beauty of his work.]
We cannot close this chapter on the Book of the Arts leaving the impression that only the Church Architecture of the time deserves to be considered in the category of, great art influences. There were many municipal buildings, some stately castles, and a large number of impressively magnificent Abbeys and Monasteries, besides educational and charitable institutions built at this same time. The town halls of some of the great Hansa towns, that is, the German free cities that were members of the Hanseatic League, present some very striking examples of the civil architecture of the period. It has the same characteristics that we have discussed in treating of the Cathedrals. While wonderfully impressive, it was eminently suitable for the purpose for which it was intended and the decorations always forming integral parts of the structure, sounded the note of the combination of beauty with utility which is so characteristic of every phase of the art accomplishment of the century.
Some of the castles would deserve special description by themselves but unfortunately space forbids more than a passing mention. Certain castellated fortresses still standing in England and Ireland come from the time of King John, and are excellent examples of the stability and forceful character of this form of architecture in the Thirteenth Century. It is interesting to find that when we come to build in the Twentieth Century in America, the armories which are to be used for the training of our militia and the storage of arms and ammunition, many of the ideas used in their construction are borrowed from this olden time.
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DURHAM CASTLE AND CATHEDRAL
KING JOHN'S CASTLE (LIMERICK)
There is a famous castle in Limerick, Ireland, built in John's time which constituted an {121} excellent example of this and which has doubtlessly often been studied and more or less imitated.
One portion of Kenilworth Castle in England dates from the Thirteenth Century and has been often the subject of careful study by modern architects. The same thing might be said of many others.
With regard to the English Abbeys too much cannot be said in praise of their architecture and it has been the model for large educational and municipal buildings ever since. St. Mary's Abbey at York, though only a few scattered fragments of its beauties are to be seen and very little, of its walls still stand, is almost as interesting as Yorkminster, the great Cathedral itself. There were many such abbeys as this built in England during the Thirteenth Century—more than a dozen of them at least and probably a full score. All of them are as distinguished in the history of architecture as the English Cathedrals. It will be remembered that what is now called Westminster Abbey was not a Cathedral church, but only a monastery church attached to the Abbey of Westminster and this, the only well preserved example of its class furnishes an excellent idea of what these religious institutions signify in the Thirteenth Century. They meant as much for the art impulse as the Cathedrals themselves.
One feature of these monastic establishments deserves special mention. The cloisters were usually constructed so beautifully as to make them veritable gems of the art of the period. These cloisters were the porticos usually surrounding a garden of the monastery within which the Monks could walk, shaded from the sun, and protected from the rain and the snow. They might very easily have been hideously useful porches, especially as they were quite concealed from the outer world as a rule, and those not belonging to the order were not admitted to them except on very special occasions. The name cloister signifies an enclosed place and lay persons were not ordinarily admitted to them. Those who know anything about them will recall what beautiful constructive work was put into them. Certain examples as that of St. John Lateran in Rome and the Cloister of St. Paul's without the walls some five miles from Rome, constructed during the {122} Thirteenth Century and under the influence of the same great art movement as gave the Cathedrals, are the most beautiful specimens that now remain. The only thing that they can be compared with is the famous Angel Choir at Lincoln which indeed they recall in many ways.
The pictures of these two Cloisters which we present will give some idea of their beauty. To be thoroughly appreciated, however, they must be seen, for there is a delicacy of finish about every detail that makes them an unending source of admiration and brings people back again and again to see them, yet always to find something new and apparently unnoticed before. It might be thought that the studied variety in the columns so that no two are of exactly the same form, would produce a bizarre effect. The lack of symmetry that might result, from this same feature could be expected to spoil their essential beauty. Neither of these effects has been produced, however. The Cloisters were, moreover, not purple patches on monasteries, but ever worthy portions of very beautiful buildings.
All of these buildings were furnished as regards their metal work, their wood work, and the portions that lent themselves to decoration, in the same spirit as the Cathedrals themselves. The magnificent tables and benches of the Thirteenth Century are still considered to be the best models of simplicity of line with beauty of form and eminent durability in the history of furniture making. The fashion for Colonial furniture in our own time has brought us nearer to such Thirteenth Century furniture making than has been true at any other time in history. Here once more there was one of these delightful combinations of beauty and utility which is so characteristic of the century. Even the kitchen utensils were beautiful as well as useful and the Irish poet might have been satisfied to his heart's content.
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PALAZZO VECCHIO (ARNULFO, FLORENCE)
CAMPANILE (GIOTTO)
GIOTTO'S TOWER (FLORENCE)
Certain other architectural forms were wonderfully developed during the Thirteenth Century and the opening years of the Fourteenth Century while men trained during the former period were still at work. Giotto's tower, for instance, must be considered a Thirteenth Century product since its architect was well past thirty-five years of age before the Thirteenth {123} Century closed and all his artistic character had been formed under its precious inspiration. It is a curious reflection on modern architecture, that some of the modern high business buildings are saved from being hideous just in as much as they approach the character of some of these tower-like structures of the Thirteenth Century. The first of New York's skyscrapers which is said to have escaped the stigma of being utterly ugly, as most of them are, because of their appeal to mere utility, was the New York Times Building which is just Giotto's tower on a large scale set down on Broadway at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Seen from a mile away the effect is exactly that of the great Florentine architect's beautiful structure and this was of course the deliberate intention of the modern architect. Anyone who would think, however, that our modern business building with its plain walls recalls in any adequate sense its great pattern, should read what Mr. Ruskin has said with regard to the wealth of meaning that is to be found in Giotto's tower. Into such structures just as into the Cathedrals, the architects and builders of the time succeeded in putting a whole burden of suggestion, which to the generations of the time in which they were built, accustomed to the symbolism of every art feature in life around them, had a precious wealth of significance that we can only appreciate after deep study and long contemplation. We have felt that only the quotation from Mr. Ruskin himself can fully illustrate what we wish to convey in this matter.
"Of these representations of human art under heavenly guidance, the series of basreliefs which stud the base of this tower of Giotto's must be held certainly the chief in Europe. At first you may be surprised at the smallness of their scale in proportion to their masonry; but this smallness of scale enabled the master workmen of the tower to execute them with their own hands; and for the rest, in the very finest architecture, the decoration of most precious kind is usually thought of as a jewel, and set with space round it—as the jewels of a crown, or the clasp of a girdle."
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VII
ARTS AND CRAFTS—GREAT TECHNICAL SCHOOLS
The most interesting social movement in our time is undoubtedly that of the arts and crafts. Its central idea is to lift the workmen up above the mere machine that he is likely to become, as the result of the monotonous occupation at some trade, that requires him only to do a constantly repeated series of acts, or direct, one little portion of machinery and so kills the soul in him. Of course, the other idea that a generation of workmen shall be created, who will be able to make beautiful things, for the use of the household as well as the adornment of the house is another principal purpose. Too many people have mistaken this entirely secondary aim of the movement for its primary end. It is because of the effect upon the workman himself of the effort to use his intellect in the designing, his taste in the arrangement, and his artisan skill for the execution of beautiful things, that the arts and crafts movement has its appeal to the generality of mankind.
The success of the movement promises, to do more, to solve social problems than all the socialistic agitation that is at present causing so much dismay in some quarters and raising so many hopes that are destined to be disappointed in the hearts of the laboring classes. The solution of the problem of social unrest is to be found, not in creating new wants for people and giving them additional wages that will still further stimulate their desire to have many things that will continue to be in spite of increased wages beyond their means, but rather to give them such an interest in their life work that their principal source of pleasure is to be found in their occupation. Unfortunately work has come to be looked upon as a drudgery and as men must spend the greater portion of their lives, at least the vast majority of them must, in doing something that will enable them to make a living, it is clear that unhappiness {125} and discontent will still continue. Blessed is the man who has found his work, blessed is the man to whom his work appeals with so much interest that he goes from it with a longing to be able to finish what he has been at, and comes back to it with a prospect that now he shall be able to accomplish what time and perhaps fatigue would not allow him to proceed with the day before.
This is the best feature of the promises held out by the arts and crafts movement, that men shall be interested in the work they do. This may seem to some people an unrealizable idea and a poetic aspiration rather than a possible actuality. A little study of what was accomplished in this line during the Thirteenth Century, will surely prove even to the most skeptical how much of success is capable of being realized in this matter. The men who worked around the Cathedrals were given opportunities to express themselves and the best that was in them as no class of workmen before or since have ever had the opportunity. Every single portion of the Cathedral was to be made as beautiful as the mind of man could conceive, his taste could plan and his hands could achieve. As a consequence the carpenter had the chance to express himself in the woodwork, the village blacksmith the opportunity to display his skill in such small ironwork as the hinges or the latch for the door and every workman felt called upon to do the best that was in him.
It is easy to understand under these circumstances with what interest the men must have applied themselves to their tasks. They were, as a rule, the designers as well as the executors of the work assigned them. They planned and executed in the rough and tried, then modified and adapted, until finally as we know of most of the Cathedrals, their finished product was as nearly perfect in most particulars as it is ordinarily given to man to achieve. Their aim above all was to make such a combination of utility with beauty of line yet simplicity of finish, as would make their work worthy counterparts of all the other portions of the Cathedral. The sense of competition must have stirred men to the very depths of their souls and yet it was not the heartless rivalry that crushes when it succeeds, but the inspiring emulation that makes one do as well as or better than others, though not necessarily in such a way as to {126} belittle others' efforts by contrast or humble them by triumph.
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FOUNTAIN (PERUGIA) [TOWN PUMP]
LAVATOIO (TODI) [PUBLIC WASH-HOUSE]
In these old medieval days England used to be called Merrie England and it is easy to understand that workmen would be profoundly merry at heart, when they had the consciousness of accomplishing such good work. Men must have almost tardily quitted their labor in the evening while they hoped and strove to accomplish something that would be worthy of the magnificent building in which so many of their fellow workmen were achieving triumphs of handicraftsmanship. Each went home to rest for the night, but also to dream over what he might be able to do and awoke in the morning with the thought that possibly to-day would see some noteworthy result. This represents the ideal of the workman's life. He has an interest quite apart from the mere making of money. The picture of the modern workman by contrast looks vain and sordid. The vast majority of our workmen labor merely because they must make enough money to-day, in order that they may be able to buy food enough so as to get strength to work to-morrow. Of interest there is very little. Day after day there is the task of providing for self and others. Only this and nothing more. Is it any wonder that there should be social unrest and discontentment? How can workmen be merry unless with the artificial stimulus of strong drink, when there is nothing for them to look forward to except days and weeks and years of labor succeeding one another remorselessly, and with no surcease until Nature puts in her effective demand for rest, or the inevitable end comes.
It would be idle to say that these men who knew how to make the beautiful things for these cathedrals were not conscious of the perfection of the work that they were accomplishing. The very fact that each in his own line was achieving such beautiful results must have stamped him as thoroughly capable of appreciating the work of others. The source of pleasure that there must have been therefore, in some twenty towns in England alone, to see their Cathedral approaching completion, must have been of itself a joy far beyond anything we can imagine as possible for the workmen of the present day. The interest in it was supreme and was only heightened by the fact that it was being done by relatives and friends and brother workmen, even {127} though they might be rivals, and that whatever was done was redounding first to the glory of the Lord to whom they turned with so much confidence in these ages of faith, and secondly, and there was scarcely less satisfaction in the thought, to the reputation of their native town and their fellow-townsmen.
This is the feature of the life of the lower classes in the Thirteenth Century which most deserves to be studied in our time. We hear much of people being kept in ignorance and in servitude. Men who talk this way know nothing at all of the lives of the towns of the Middle Ages and are able to appreciate not even in the slightest degree the wonderful system of education, that made life so much fuller of possibilities for intellectual development for all classes and for happiness in life, than any other period of which we know. This phase of the Thirteenth Century is at once the most interesting, the most significant for future generations, and the most important in its lessons for all time.
We have been following up thus far the exemplification in the Thirteenth Century of John Ruskin's saying, that if you wish to get at the real significance of the achievements of a period in history, you must read the book of its deeds, the book of its arts and the book of its words. We have been turning over a few of the pages of the book of the deeds of the Thirteenth Century in studying the history of the establishment of the universities and of the method and content of university teaching. After all the only deeds that ought to count in the history of mankind are those that are done for men—that have accomplished something for the uplift of mankind. History is unfortunately occupied with deeds of many other kinds, and it is perhaps the saddest blot on our modern education, that it is mainly the history of deeds that have been destructive of man, of human happiness and in only too many cases of human rights and human liberties, that are supposed to be most worthy of the study of the rising generation. History as written for schools is to a great extent a satire on efforts for social progress.
We shall continue the study of the book of the deeds of the Thirteenth Century and its most interesting and important chapter, that of the education of the masses. We shall find in what was accomplished in educating the people of the {128} Thirteenth Century, the model of the form of education which in spite of our self-complacency does not exist, but must come in our time, if our education is to fulfill its real purpose. Perhaps the most interesting phase of this question of the education of the masses will be the fact that in studying this book of the deeds, we shall have also to study once more the book of the arts of the Thirteenth Century. All their best accomplishment was linked with achievement and progress in art. Yet it was from the masses that the large number of artist-artisans of workmen with the true artistic spirit came, who in this time in nearly every part of Europe, created masterpieces of art in every department which have since been the admiration of the world.
We may say at once that the opportunity for the education of the masses was furnished in connection with the Cathedrals. In the light of what we read in these great stone books, it is a constant source of surprise that the Church should be said to have been opposed to education. Reinach in his Story of Art throughout the Ages says:
"The Church was not only rich and powerful in the Middle Ages; it dominated and directed all the manifestations of human activity. There was practically no art but the art it encouraged, the art it needed to construct and adorn its buildings, carve its ivories and its reliquaries, and paint its glass and its missals. Foremost among the arts it fostered was architecture, which never played so important a part in any other society. Even now, when we enter a Romanesque or Gothic church, we are impressed by the might of that vast force of which it is the manifestation, a force which shaped the destinies of Europe for a thousand years."
It was as the result of this demand for art that the technical schools naturally developed around the Cathedrals. To take the example of England alone, during the Thirteenth Century some twenty cathedrals were erected in various parts of the country. Most of these were built in what we would now call small towns, indeed some of them would be considered scarcely more than villages. There were no large cities, in praise be it spoken, during the Thirteenth Century, and it must not be forgotten that the whole population of England at the beginning {129} of the century was scarcely more than two millions of people and did not reach three millions even at the end of it. Every rood of ground did not perhaps maintain its man, but every part of England had its quota of population so that there could not be many crowded centers. Even London probably at no time during the century had more than twenty-five thousand inhabitants and Oxford during the palmiest days of the University was perhaps the most populous place in the land.
There was a rivalry in the building of Cathedrals, and as the main portion of the buildings were erected in the short space of a single century, a feeling of intense competition was rife so that there was very little possibility of procuring workmen from other towns. Each town had to create not only its cathedral but the workmen who would finish it in all its details. When we consider that a Cathedral like Salisbury was practically completed in the short space of about twenty-five years, it becomes extremely difficult to understand just how this little town succeeded in apparently accomplishing the impossible. It has often been said that artists cannot be obtained merely because of a demand for them and that they are the slow creation of rather capricious nature. It is only another way of saying that the artist is born, not made. Nature then must have been in a particularly fruitful mood and tense during the Thirteenth Century, for there is no doubt at all of the wonderful artistic beauty of the details of these Gothic cathedrals. While nature's beneficence meant much, however, the training of the century probably meant even more and the special form of popular education which developed well deserves the attention of all other generations.
It may be said at once that education in our sense of teaching everybody to read and write there was none. There were more students at the universities to the number of the population than in the Twentieth Century as we have seen, but people who were not to devote themselves in after life to book learning, were not burdened with acquisitions of doubtful benefit, which might provide stores of useless information for them, or enable them to while away hours of precious time reading trash, or make them conceited with the thought that because they had absorbed some of the opinions of others on things in general, {130} they had a right to judge of most things under the sun and a few other things besides. The circulation of our newspapers and the records of the books in demand at our libraries, show how much a knowledge of reading means for most of our population. Popular education of this kind may, and does benefit a few, but it works harm to a great many.
Of education in the sense of training the faculties so that the individual might express whatever was in him and especially that he might bring out what was best in him, there was much. Take again the example of England. There was considerably less in population than there is in Greater New York at the present time, yet there was some twenty places altogether in which they were building Cathedrals during this century, that would be monuments of artistic impulse and accomplishment for all future time. Any city in this country would be proud to have any one of these English cathedrals of the Thirteenth Century as the expression of its taste and power to execute. We have tried to imitate them more or less in many places. In order to accomplish our purpose in this matter, though, we deliberately did everything on a much smaller and less ambitious scale than the people of the small English towns of seven centuries ago, and our results do not bear comparison for a moment with theirs, we had to appeal to other parts of the country and even to Europe for architects and designers, and even had to secure the finished products of art from distant places. This too, in spite of the fact that we are seven centuries later and that our education is supposed to be developed to a high extent. If there were twenty places of instruction in Greater New York where architects and artist workers in iron and glass, and metal of all kinds, and wood and stone, were being trained to become such finished artisans as were to be found in twenty different little towns of England in the Thirteenth Century, we should be sure that our manual training schools and our architectural departments of universities and schools of design were wonderfully successful.
When we find this to be true of the England of the Thirteenth Century we can conclude that somehow better opportunities for art education must have been supplied in those times than in our own, and though we do not find the mention or {131} records of formal schools, we must look patiently for the methods of instruction that enabled these generations to accomplish so much. Needless to say such attainments do not come spontaneously in a large number of people, but must be carefully fostered and are the result of that greatest factor in education, environment. It will not be hard to find where the ambitious youth of England even of the workman class found opportunities for technical education of the highest character in these little towns. This was never merely theoretic, though, it was sufficiently grounded in principle to enable men to solve problems in architecture and engineering, in decoration and artistic arrangement, such as are still sources of anxiety for modern students of these questions.
To take but a single example, it will be readily appreciated that the consideration of the guilds of builders of the Cathedrals as constituting a great technical school, is marvelously emphasized by certain recent observations with regard to architects' and builders' methods in the Cathedrals. There is a passage in Evelyn's Diary in which he describes certain corrections that were introduced into Old St. Paul's Cathedral, London (the Gothic edifice predecessor of the present classical structure), in order to remove appearances of dissymmetry and certain seeming mistakes of construction. This passage was always so misunderstood that editors usually considered it to be defective in some way and as the classical critics always fall back on an imperfect text for insoluble difficulties, so somehow Evelyn was considered as either not having understood what he intended to say, or else the printer failed to put in all the words that he wrote. It was the modern readers, however, not Evelyn nor his printer who were mistaken. Mr. Goodyear of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences has proved by a series of photographs and carefully made observations, that many of the old Gothic Cathedrals have incorporated into them by their builders, optical corrections which correspond to those made by the Greeks in their building in the classical period, which have been the subject of so much admiration to the moderns.
The medieval architects and builders knew nothing of these classical architectural refinements. They learned for themselves by actual experience the necessity for making such optical {132} corrections and then introduced them so carefully, that it is not until the last decade or so that their presence has been realized. It is only by an educational tradition of the greatest value that the use of such a refinement could become as general as Professor Goodyear has found it to be. Besides the practical work then, and the actual exercise of craftsmanship and of design which the apprentices obtained from the guild, there was evidently a body of very definite technical information conveyed to them, or at least to certain chosen spirits among them, which carried on precious traditions from place to place. This same state of affairs must of course have existed with regard to stained glass work, the making of bells and especially the finer work in the precious metals. Practical metallurgy must have been studied quite as faithfully as in any modern technical school, at least so far as its practical purposes and application were concerned. Here we have the secret of the technical schools revealed.
It is extremely interesting to study the details of the very practical organization by which this great educational movement in the arts and crafts was brought about. It was due entirely to the trades' and merchants' guilds of the time. In the cathedral towns the trades' guilds preponderated in influence. There gathered around each of these cathedrals during the years when work was most active, numbers of workmen engaged at various occupations requiring mechanical skill and long practice at their trade. These workmen were all affiliated with one another and they were gradually organized into trades' unions that had a certain independent existence. There was the guild of the stone workers; the guild of the metal workers—in some places divided into a guild of iron workers and a guild of gold workers, or workers in precious metals; there was the guild of the wood workers and then of the various other forms of occupation connected with the supplying of finished or unfinished materials for the cathedral. In association with these were established guilds of tailors, bakers, butchers, all affiliated in a merchants' guild which maintained the rights of its members as well as the artisans' guilds. Some idea of the number and variety of these can be obtained from the list given in the chapter on the Origin of the Drama.
{opp133}
RELIQUARY (LIMOGES MUSEO, FLORENCE)
CRUCIFIX (DUOMO, SIENA)
{133}
These were the workmen who not only accomplished such brilliant results in art work, but also succeeded in training other workmen so admirably for every line of artistic endeavor.
It is somewhat difficult to understand just how a village carpenter did wood-carving of so exquisite a design and such artistic finish of detail that it has remained a subject of admiration for centuries. It is quite as difficult to understand how one of the village blacksmiths of the time made a handsome gate, that has been the constant admiration of posterity ever since, or designed huge hinges for doors that artists delight to copy, or locks and latches and bolts that are transported to our museums to be looked at with interest, not only because they are antiques, but for the wonderful combination of the beautiful and the useful which they illustrate. We are assured, however, by the Rev. Augustus Jessopp, that he has seen in the archives of the old English parishes, some of the receipts for the bills of these village workmen as we would term them, for the making of these beautiful specimens of arts and crafts.
The surprise grows greater when we realize that these beautiful objects were made not alone in one place or even in a few places, but in nearly every town of any size in England and France and Italy and Germany and Spain at various times during the Thirteenth Century, and that at any time a town of considerably less than ten thousand inhabitants seemed to be able to obtain among its own inhabitants, men who could make such works of art not as copies nor in servile imitation of others, but with original ideas of their own, and make them in such perfection that in many cases they have remained the models for future workmen for many centuries. Even the bells for the cathedrals seem to have been cast in practically all cases in the little town in which they were to be used. It may be added that these bells of the Thirteenth Century represent the highest advances in bell making that have ever been attained and that their form and composition have simply been imitated over and over again since that time. Even the finer precious metal work such as chalices and the various sacred vessels and objects used in the church services, were not obtained from a distance but were made at home.
An article that appeared a few years ago in The Craftsman {134} (Syracuse, N. Y.), a magazine published in the interests of the Arts and Crafts movement, called attention to how much more beautifully the Thirteenth Century workman in the precious metals accomplished his artistic purpose than does the corresponding workman of the present day. A definite comparison, was made between some typical chalices of the Thirteenth Century and some prize cups which were made without regard to cost, as rewards for yachting and other competitions in the Twentieth Century. The artist workman of the olden time knew how to combine the beautiful with the useful, to use decoration just enough not to offend good taste, to make the lines of his work eminently artistic and in general to turn out a fine work of art. The modern prize cup is usually made by one of the large firms engaged in such work who employ special designers for the purpose, such designs ordinarily passing through the trained hands of a series of critics before being accepted, and only after this are turned over to the modern skilled workmen to be executed in metal. All this ought to assure the more artistic results; that they do not according to the writer in The Craftsman, demonstrates how much such success is a matter of men and of individual taste rather than of method. We have already called attention to the fact that in needlework and in other arts connected with the provision of church ornaments and garments, the success of the Thirteenth Century workers was quite as great. The Cope of Ascoli considered by experts to be one of the most beautiful bits of needlework ever made is an example of this. Many other examples are to be found in the treasuries of churches and monasteries, in spite of the ravages of time and only too often of intolerant and unfortunate destruction by so-called reformers, who could see no beauty in even the most beautiful things if they ran counter to certain of their religious prejudices.
The training necessary for the production of such beautiful objects of handicraftsmanship was obtained through the guilds themselves. The boy in the small town who thought that he had a liking for a certain trade or craft was received as an apprentice in it. If during the course of a year or more he demonstrated his aptness for his chosen craft, he was allowed to {135} continue his labor of assisting the workmen in various ways, and indeed very early in the history of the guilds was bound over to some particular workman, who usually supplied him with board and clothing, though with no other remuneration during his years of apprenticeship. After four or five years, always, however, with the understanding that he had shown a definite talent for his chosen trade, he was accepted among the workmen of the lowest grade, the journeymen, who usually went traveling in order to perfect their knowledge of the various methods by which their craft maintained itself and the standard of its workmanship in the different parts of the country.
During these three years of "journeying" a striking development was likely to take place in the mind of the ambitious young workman. His wanderjahre came just at the most susceptible period, sometime between 17 and 25, they continued for three years or more, and the young workman if at all ambitious was likely to see many men and methods and know much of the cities and towns of his country before he returned to his native place. Sometimes these craft-wanderings took him even into France, where he learned methods and secrets so different to those at home.
After these years if he wished to settle down in his native town or in some other, having brought evidence of the accomplishment of his apprenticeship and then of his years as a journeyman, he became an applicant for full membership in the guild to which his years of training had been devoted. He was not admitted, however, until he had presented to the officials of the organization a piece of work showing his skill. This might be only a hinge, or a lock for a door, but on the other hand it might be a design for an important window or a delicate piece of wood or stone-carving. If it was considered worthy of the standard of workmanship of the guild it was declared to be a masterpiece. This is where the fine old English word masterpiece comes from. The workman was then admitted as a master workman and became a full member of the guild.
This membership carried with it a number of other rights besides that of permission to work as a master-workman at full wages whenever the guild was employed. Guilds had certain privileges conferred on them by the towns in which they lived, {136} by the nobles for whom they worked and the ecclesiastical authorities on whose various church structures they were employed. At the beginning of the Thirteenth Century at least, feudal ideas prevailed to such an extent that no one was supposed to enjoy any rights or privileges except those which had been conferred on him by some authority. Besides the workmen of the same guild were bound together by ties, so that any injury inflicted on one of them was considered to be done to the whole body. When human rights were much less recognized than has come to be the case since, this constituted an important source of protection against many forms of injury and infringement of rights.
Besides the privileges, however, the guild possessed certain other decided advantages which made membership desirable, even though it involved the fulfilment of certain duties. In the various towns in England, after the introduction during the Thirteenth Century of the practice of having mystery plays in the various towns, the guild claimed and obtained the privilege of giving these at various times during the year. The guild of the goldsmiths would give the performance of one portion of the Old Testament; the guild of the tailors another; the guild of the butchers and so on for each of the trades and crafts still another, so that during the year a whole cycle of the mysteries of the Christian religion in type and in reality were exhibited to the people of each region. Almost needless to say, on such festive occasions, for the plays were given on important feast days, the people from the countryside flocked in to see them and the influence was widespread. What was most important, however, was the influence on those who took part in the plays, of such intimate contact for a prolonged period with the simplicity of style, the sublimity of thought, the concentration of purpose and the effectiveness of expression of the Scriptures and the Scripture narratives even in their dramatized form.
The fact of actually taking part in these performances meant ever so much more than merely viewing them as an outsider. It is doubtless to this intimate relationship with the great truths of Christianity that the profound devotion so characteristic of the accomplishments of the arts and crafts, during the Thirteenth Century, must be to no little extent attributed.
{opp136}
MADONNA, CIMABUE
(RUCELLAI CHAPEL, SANTA MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE)
{137}
Their beautiful work could only have come from men of profoundest faith, but also it could not have come from those who were ignorant of the basis of what they accepted on faith. In other words, there was a mental training with regard to some of the sublimest truths of life and its significance, the creation of a Christian philosophy of life, that made the workman see clearly the great truths of religion and so be able to illustrate them by his handiwork. Education of a higher order than this has never been conceived of, and the very lack of tedious formality in it only made it all the more effectual in action.
Other duties were involved in membership in the guild. All the members were bound to attend church services regularly and to perform what is known as their religious duties at periodic intervals, that is, the rule of the guild required them to go to mass on Sundays and holy days, to abstain from manual labor on such days unless there was absolute necessity for it, and to go to confession and communion several times a year. Besides they were bound to contribute to the support of such of their fellow-members as were sick and unable to work or as had been injured. A very interesting phase of this duty toward sick members existed at least in some parts of the country. A workman was supposed to pass one night at certain intervals on his turn, in helping to nurse a fellow-workman who was seriously hurt or who was very ill. It was considered that the family were quite worn out enough with the care of the sick man during the day, and so one of his brother guildsmen came to relieve them of this duty at night. It is a custom that is still maintained in certain country places but which of course has passed out of use entirely in our unsympathetic city life. In a word, there was a thorough education not only in the life work that made for wages and family support, but also in those precious social duties that make for happiness and contentment in life.
{138}
VIII
GREAT ORIGINS IN PAINTING. [Footnote 13]
[Footnote 13: Most of this chapter is taken from the work on Italian painting (La Peinture Italienne depuis les origines jusqu'a la fin du xv Siecle, par Georges Lafenestre, Paris Ancienne Maison Quantin Libraries-Imprimeries Reunies, May & Motteroz, Directeurs, rue Saint-Benoit. Nouvelle Edition), which forms one of the series of text books for instruction in art at L'Ecole Des Beaux-Arts—the famous French Government Art School in Paris. It may be said that this collection of art manuals is recognized as an authority on all matters treated of, having been crowned by the Academie Des Beaux-Arts with the prize Bordin. There is no better source of information with regard to the development of the arts and none which can be more readily consulted nor with more assurance as to the facts and opinions exposed.]
At the commencement of the Thirteenth Century the movement of emancipation in every phase of thought and life in Italy went on apace with an extraordinary ardor. After a very serious struggle the Italian republics were on the point of forcing the German Empire to recognize them. Everywhere in the first enthusiasm of their independence which had been achieved by valiant deeds and aspirations after liberty as lofty as any in modern times, the cities, though united in confederations they were acting as independent rivals, brought to all enterprises, lay or religious foundations, commercial or educational institutions, a wonderful youthful activity and enterprise. The papacy allied with them favored this movement in its political as well as its educational aspects and strengthened the art movement of the time. Christianity under their guidance, by the powerful religious exaltation which it inspired in the hearts of all men, became a potent factor in all forms of art. From Pope Innocent III to Boniface VIII probably no other series of Popes have been so misunderstood and so misrepresented by subsequent generations, as certainly the Popes of no other century did so much to awaken the enthusiasm of Christians for all modes of religious development, and be it said though credit for this is {139} only too often refused them, also for educational, charitable and social betterment.
The two great church institutions of the time that were destined to act upon the people more than any others were the Franciscan and Dominican orders—the preachers and the friars minor, who were within a short time after their formation to have such deep and widespread influence on all strata of society. Both of these orders from their very birth showed themselves not only ready but anxious to employ the arts as a means of religious education and for the encouragement of piety. Their position in this matter had an enormous influence on art and on the painters of the time. The Dominicans, as became their more ambitious intellectual training and their purpose as preachers of the word, demanded encyclopedic and learned compositions; the Franciscans asked for loving familiar scenes such as would touch the hearts of the common people. Both aided greatly in helping the artist to break away from the old fashioned formalism which was no longer sufficient to satisfy the new ardors of men's souls. In this way they prepared the Italian imagination for the double revolution which was to come.
It was the great body of legends which grew up about St. Francis particularly, all of them bound up with supreme charity for one's neighbor, with love for all living creatures even the lowliest, with the tenderest feelings for every aspect of external nature, which appealed to the painters as a veritable light in the darkness of the times. It was especially in the churches founded by the disciples of "the poor little man of Assisi," that the world saw burst forth before the end of the century, the first grand flowers of that renewal of art which was to prove the beginning of modern art history. It is hard to understand what would have happened to the painters of the time without the spirit that was brought into the world by St. Francis' beautifully simple love for all and every phase of nature around him. This it was above all that encouraged the return to nature that soon supplanted Oriental formalism. It was but due compensation that the greatest works of the early modern painters should have been done in St. Francis' honor. Besides this the most important factor in art was the revival of the thirst for knowledge, which arose among the more intellectual portions of the {140} communities and developed an enthusiasm for antiquity which was only a little later to become a veritable passion.
The most important phase of Italian art during the Thirteenth Century is that which developed at Florence. It is with this that the world is most familiar. It began with Cimabue, who commenced painter, in the quaint old English phrase, not long before the middle of the century and whose great work occupies the second half of it. There are not wanting some interesting traditions of certain other Florentine painters before his time as Marchisello, of the early part of the century, Lapo who painted, in 1261, the facade of the Cathedral at Pistoia, and Fino di Tibaldi who painted a vast picture on the walls of the Municipal Palace about the middle of the century, but they are so much in the shadow of the later masters' work as to be scarcely known. Everywhere Nature began to reassert herself. The workers in Mosaic even, who were occupied in the famous baptistry at Florence about the middle of the century, though they followed the Byzantine rules of their art, introduced certain innovations which brought the composition and the subjects closer to nature. These are enough to show that there was a school of painting and decoration at Florence quite sufficient to account for Cimabue's development, without the necessity of appealing to the influence over him of wandering Greek artists as has sometimes been done.
Though he was not the absolute inventor of all the new art modes as he is sometimes supposed to be, Cimabue was undoubtedly a great original genius. Like so many others who have been acclaimed as the very first in a particular line of thought or effort, his was only the culminating intelligence which grasped all that had been done before, assimilated it and made it his own. As a distinct exception to the usual history of such great initiators, this father of Italian painting was rich, born of a noble family, but of a character that was eager for work and with ambition to succeed in his chosen art as the mainspring of life. At his death, as the result of his influence, artists had acquired a much better social position than had been theirs before, and one that it was comparatively easy for his successors to maintain. His famous Madonna which was subsequently borne in triumph from his studio to the Church of {141} Santa Maria Novella, placed the seal of popular approval on the new art, and the enthusiasm it evoked raised the artist for all time from the plane of a mere worker in colors to that of a member of a liberal profession. Even before this triumph his great picture had been deemed worthy of a visit by Charles of Anjou, the French King, who was on a visit to Florence and according to tradition ever afterwards the portion of the city in which it had been painted and through which it was carried in procession, bore by reason of these happy events the name Borgo Allegri—Ward of Joy.
This picture is still in its place in the Rucellai chapel and is of course the subject of devoted attention on the part of visitors. Lafenestre says of it, that this monument of Florentine art quite justifies the enthusiasm of contemporaries if we compare it with the expressionless Madonnas that preceded it. There is an air of beneficent dignity on the features quite unlike the rigidity of preceding art, and there is besides an attractive suppleness about the attitude of the body which is far better proportioned than those of its predecessors. Above all there is a certain roseate freshness about the colors of the flesh which are pleasant substitutes for the pale and greenish tints of the Byzantines. It did not require more than this to exalt the imaginations of the people delivered from their old-time conventional painting. It was only a ray of the dawn after a dark night, but it announced a glorious sunrise of art and the confident anticipations of the wondrous day to come, aroused the depths of feeling in the peoples' hearts. Life and nature went back into art once more; no wonder their re-apparition was saluted with so much delight.
Two other Madonnas painted by him, one at Florence in the Academy, the other in Paris in the Louvre, besides his great Mosaic in the apse of the Cathedral at Pisa, serve to show with what prudence Cimabue introduced naturalistic qualities into art, while always respecting the tradition of the older art and preserving the solemn graces and the majestic style of monumental painting. The old frescoes of the upper church at Assisi which represent episodes in the life of St. Francis have also been attributed to Cimabue, but evidently were done by a number of artists probably under his direction. It is easy to {142} see from them what an important role the Florentine artist played in directing the gropings of his assistant artists.
After Cimabue the most important name at Florentine in the Thirteenth Century is that of his friend, Gaddo Gaddi, whose years of life correspond almost exactly with those of his great contemporary. His famous Coronation of the Virgin at Santa Maria de Fiore in Florence shows that he was greatly influenced by the new ideas that had come into art. Greater than either of these well-known predecessors however, was Giotto the friend of Dante, whose work is still considered worthy of study by artists because of certain qualities in which it never has been surpassed nor quite outgrown. From Giotto, however, we shall turn aside for a moment to say something of the development of art in other cities of Italy, for it must not be thought that Florence was the only one to take up the new art methods which developed so marvelously during the Thirteenth Century.
Even before the phenomenal rise of modern art in Florence, at Pisa, at Lucca and especially at Siena, the new wind of the spirit was felt blowing and some fine inspirations were realized in spite of hampering difficulties of all kinds. The Madonna of Guido in the Church of St. Dominic at Siena is the proof of his emancipation. Besides him Ugolino, Segna and Duccio make up the Siena school and enable this other Tuscan city to dispute even with Florence the priority of the new influence in art. At Lucca Bonaventure Berlinghieri flourished and there is a famous St. Francis by him only recently found, which proves his right to a place among the great founders of modern art. Giunta of Pisa was one of those called to Assisi to paint some of the frescoes in the upper church. He is noted as having striven to make his figures more exact and his colors more natural. He did much to help his generation away from the conventional expressions of the preceding time and he must for this reason be counted among the great original geniuses in the history of art.
The greatest name in the art of the Thirteenth Century is of course that of Giotto. What Dante did for poetry and Villani for history, their compatriot and friend did for painting. Ambrogio de Bondone familiarly called Ambrogiotto (and with the abbreviating habit that the Italians have always had for the names of all those of whom they thought much shortened to {143} Giotto, as indeed Dante's name had been shortened from Durante) was born just at the beginning of the last quarter of the Thirteenth Century. According to a well-known legend he was guarding the sheep of his father one day and passing his time sketching a lamb upon a smooth stone with a soft pebble when Cimabue happened to be passing. The painter struck by the signs of genius in the work took the boy with him to Florence, where he made rapid progress in art and soon surpassed even his master. The wonderful precocity of his genius may be best realized from the fact that at the age of twenty he was given the commission of finishing the decorations of the upper Church at Assisi, and in fulfilling it broke so completely with the Byzantine formalism of the preceding millennium, that he must be considered the liberator of art and its deliverer from the chains of conventionalism into the freedom of nature.
It is no wonder that critics and literary men have been so unstinted in his praise. Here is an example:
"In the Decamerone it is said of him 'that he was so great a genius that there was nothing in nature he had not so reproduced that it was not only like the thing, but seemed to be the thing itself.' Eulogies of this tenor on works of art are, it is quite true, common to all periods alike, to the most accomplished of classical antiquity as well as to the most primitive of the Middle Age; and they must only be accepted relatively, according to the notion entertained by each period of what constitutes truth and naturalness. And from the point of view of his age, Giotto's advance towards nature, considered relatively to his predecessors, was in truth enormous. What he sought was not merely the external truth of sense, but also the inward truth of the spirit. Instead of solemn images of devotion, he painted pictures in which the spectator beheld the likeness of human beings in the exercise of activity and intelligence. His merit lies, as has been well said, in 'an entirely new conception of character and facts.'" [Footnote 14]
[Footnote 14: History of Ancient, Early Christian and Medieval Painting from the German of the late Dr. Alfred Woltmann, Professor at the Imperial University of Strasburg, and Karl Woertmann, Professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, Dusselford. Edited by Sidney Colvin, M. A., Dodd, Mead & Co., N. Y., 1894.]
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Lafenestre, in his history of Italian painting for the Beaux-Arts of Paris already referred to, says that what has survived of Giotto's work justifies the enthusiasm of his contemporaries. None of his predecessors accomplished anything like the revolution that he worked. He fixed the destinies of art in Italy at the moment when Dante fixed those of literature. The stiff, confused figures of the mosaics and manuscripts grew supple under his fingers and the confusion disappeared. He simplified the gestures, varied the expression, rectified the proportions. Perhaps the best example of his work is that of the upper Church of Assisi, all accomplished before he was thirty. What he had to represent were scenes of life almost contemporary yet already raised to the realm of poetry by popular admiration. He interpreted the beautiful legend of the life of the Saint preserved by St. Bonaventure, and like the subject of his sketches turned to nature at every step of his work. If his figures are compared with those of the artists of the preceding generations, their truth to life and natural expressions easily explain the surprise and the rapture of his contemporaries.
Beautiful as are the pictures of the Upper Church, however, ten years after their completion Giotto's genius can be seen to have taken a still higher flight by the study of the pictures on the vast ceilings of the Lower Church. The four compartments contain the Triumph of Chastity, the Triumph of Poverty, the Triumph of Obedience, and the Glorification of St. Francis. The ideal and the real figures in these compositions are mingled and grouped with admirable clearness and inventive force. To be appreciated properly they must be seen and studied in situ. Many an artist has made the pilgrimage to Assisi and none has come away disappointed. Never before had an artist dared to introduce so many and such numerous figures, yet all were done with a variety and an ease of movement that is eminently pleasing and even now are thoroughly satisfying to the artistic mind. After his work at Assisi some of the best of Giotto's pictures are to be found in the Chapel of the Arena at Padua. Here there was a magnificent opportunity and Giotto took full advantage of it. The whole story of Christ's life is told in the fourteen episodes of the life of his Mother which were painted here by Giotto. For their sake Padua as well as {145} Assisi has been a favorite place of pilgrimage for artists ever since and never more so than in our own time.
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ST. FRANCIS' MARRIAGE WITH POVERTY (GIOTTO, ASSISI)
No greater tribute to the century in which he lived could possibly be given than to say that his genius was recognized at once, and he was sought from one end of Italy to another by Popes and Kings, Republics and Princes, Convents and Municipalities, all of which competed for the privilege of having this genius work for them with ever increasing enthusiasm. It is easy to think and to say that it is no wonder that such a transcendent genius was recognized and appreciated and received his due reward. Such has not usually been the case in history, however. On the contrary, the more imposing the genius of an artist, or a scientist, or any other great innovator in things human, the more surely has he been the subject of neglect and even of misunderstanding and persecution. The very fact that Giotto lifted art out of the routine of formalism in which it was sunk might seem to be enough to assure failure of appreciation. Men do not suddenly turn round to like even great innovations, when they have long been satisfied with something less and when their principles of criticism have been formed by their experience with the old.
We need not go farther back than our own supposedly illuminated Nineteenth Century to find some striking examples of this. Turner, the great English landscapist, failed of appreciation for long years and had to wait till the end of his life to obtain even a small meed of reward. The famous Barbizon School of French Painters is a still more striking example. They went back to nature from the classic formalism of the early Nineteenth Century painters just as Giotto went back to nature from Byzantine conventionalism. The immediate rewards in the two cases were very different and the attitude of contemporaries strikingly contrasted. Poor Millet did his magnificent work in spite of the fact that his family nearly starved. Only that Madame Millet was satisfied to take more than a fair share of hardships for herself and the family in order that her husband might have the opportunity to develop his genius after his own way, we might not have had the magnificent pictures which Millet sold for a few paltry francs that barely kept {146} the wolf from the door, and for which the next generation has been paying almost fabulous sums.
All through the Thirteenth Century this characteristic will be found that genius did not as a rule lack appreciation. The greater the revolution a genuinely progressive thinker and worker tried to accomplish in human progress, the more sure was he to obtain not only a ready audience, but an enthusiastic and encouraging following. This is the greatest compliment that could be paid to the enlightenment of the age. Men's minds were open and they were ready and willing to see things differently from what they had been accustomed to before. This constitutes after all the best possible guarantee of progress. It is, however, very probably the last thing that we would think of attributing to these generations of the Thirteenth Century, who are usually said very frankly to have been wrapped up in their own notions, to have been only too ready to accept things on authority rather than by their own powers of observation and judgment, and to have been clingers to the past rather than lookers to the present and the future. Giotto's life shows better than any other how much this prejudiced view of the Thirteenth Century and perforce of the Middle Age needs to be corrected.
During forty years Giotto responded to every demand, and made himself suffice for every call, worked in nearly every important city of Italy, enkindling everywhere he went the new light of art. Before the end of the century he completed a cartoon for the famous picture of the Boat of Peter which was to adorn the Facade of St. Peter's. He was in Rome in 1300, the first jubilee year, arranging the decorations at St. John Lateran. The next year he was at Florence, working in the Palace of the Podesta. And so it went for full two score years. He was at Pisa, at Lucca, at Arezzo, at Padua, at Milan, then he went South to Urbino, to Rome and then even to Naples. Unfortunately the strain of all this work proved too much for him and he was carried away at the comparatively early age of sixty in the midst of his artistic vigor and glory.
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ESPOUSAL OF ST. CATHERINE
(GADDI, XIII. CENTURY PUPIL, PERUGIA)
The art of the Middle Ages and especially at the time of the beginnings of modern art in the Thirteenth Century, is commonly supposed to be inextricably bound up with certain {147} influences which place it beyond the pale of imitation for modern life. It has frequently been said, that this art besides being too deeply mystical and pietistic, is so remote from ordinary human feelings as to preclude a proper understanding of it by the men of our time and certainly prevent any deep sympathy. The pagan element in art which entered at the time of the Renaissance and which emphasized the joy of life itself and the pleasure of mere living for its own sake, is supposed to have modified this sadder aspect of things in the earlier art, so that now no one would care to go back to the pre-Renaissance day. There has been so much writing of this kind that has carried weight, that it is no wonder that the impression has been deeply made. It is founded almost entirely on a misunderstanding, however. Reinach whom we have quoted before completely overturns this false notion in some paragraphs which bring out better than any others that we know something of the true significance of the Thirteenth Century art in this particular.
Those who think that Gothic art was mainly gloomy in character, or if not absolutely sad at heart that it always expressed the sadder portion of religious feelings, who consider that the ascetic side of life was always in the ascendant and the brighter side of things seldom chosen, for pictorial purposes, should recall that the Gothic Cathedrals themselves are the most cheery and lightsome buildings, that indeed they owe their character as creations of a new idea in architecture to the determined purpose of their builders to get admission for all possible light in the dreary Northern climates. The contradiction of the idea that Gothic art in its essence was gloomy will at once be manifest from this. Quite apart from this, however, if Gothic art be studied for itself and in its subjects, that of the Thirteenth Century particularly will be found far distant from, anything that would justify the criticism of over sadness. Reinach (in his Story of Art Throughout the Middle Ages) has stated this so clearly that we prefer simply to quote the passage which is at once authoritative and informing:
"It has also been said that Gothic art bears the impress of ardent piety and emotional mysticism, that it dwells on the suffering of Jesus, of the Virgin, and of the martyrs with harrowing persistency. Those who believe this have never studied {148} Gothic art. It is so far from the truth that, as a fact, the Gothic art of the best period, the Thirteenth Century, never represented any sufferings save those of the damned. The Virgins are smiling and gracious, never grief stricken. There is not a single Gothic rendering of the Virgin weeping at the foot of the cross. The words and music of the Stabat Mater, which are sometimes instanced as the highest expression of the religion of the Middle Ages, date from the end of the Thirteenth Century at the very earliest, and did not become popular till the Fifteenth Century. Jesus himself is not represented as suffering, but with a serene and majestic expression. The famous statue known as the Beau Dieu d'Amiens may be instanced as typical."
GROUP FROM VISITATION (RHEIMS)
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IX
LIBRARIES AND BOOKMEN.
As the Thirteenth Century begins some 250 years before the art of printing was introduced, it would seem idle to talk of libraries and especially of circulating libraries during this period and quite as futile to talk of bookmen and book collectors. Any such false impression, however, is founded entirely upon a lack of knowledge of the true state of affairs during this wonderful period. A diocesan council held in Paris in the year 1212, with other words of advice to religious, recalled to them the duty that they had to lend such books as they might possess, with proper guarantee for their return, of course, to those who might make good use of them. The council, indeed, formally declared that the lending of books was one of the works of mercy. The Cathedral chapter of Notre Dame at Paris was one of the leaders in this matter and there are records of their having lent many books during the Thirteenth Century. At most of the abbeys around Paris there were considerable libraries and in them also the lending custom obtained. This is especially true of the Abbey of St. Victor of which the rule and records are extant.
Of course it will be realized that the number of books was not large, but on the other hand it must not be forgotten that many of them were works of art in every particular, and some of them that have come down to us continue to be even to the present day among the most precious bibliophilic treasures of great state and city libraries. Their value depends not alone on their antiquity but on their perfection as works of art. In general it may be said that the missals and office books, and the prayer books made for royal personages and the nobility at this time, are yet counted among the best examples of bookmaking the world has ever seen. It is not surprising that such should be the case since these books were mainly meant for use in the Cathedrals and the chapels, and these edifices were so beautiful in every detail that the generations that erected them {150} could not think of making books for use in them, that would be unworthy of the artistic environment for which they were intended. With the candlesticks, the vessels, and implements used in the ceremonial surpassing works of art, with every form of decoration so nearly perfect as to be a source of unending admiration, with the vestments and altar linens specimens of the most exquisite handiwork of their kind that had ever been made, the books associated with them had to be excellent in execution, expressive of the most refined taste and finished with an attention utterly careless of the time and labor that might be required, since the sole object was to make everything as absolutely beautiful as possible. Hence there is no dearth of wonderful examples of the beautiful bookmaking of this century in all the great libraries of the world.
The libraries themselves, moreover, are of surpassing interest because of their rules and management, for little as it might be expected this wonderful century anticipated in these matters most of our very modern library regulations. The bookmen of the time not only made beautiful books, but they made every provision to secure their free circulation and to make them available to as many people as was consonant with proper care of the books and the true purposes of libraries. This is a chapter of Thirteenth Century history more ignored perhaps than any other, but which deserves to be known and will appeal to our century more perhaps than to any intervening period.
The constitutions of the Abbey St. Victor of Paris give us an excellent idea at once of the solicitude with which the books were guarded, yet also of the careful effort that was made to render them useful to as many persons as possible. One of the most important rules at St. Victor was that the librarian should know the contents of every volume in the library, in order to be able to direct those who might wish to consult the books in their selection, and while thus sparing the books unnecessary handling also save the readers precious time. We are apt to think that it is only in very modern times that this training of librarians to know their books so as to be of help to the readers was insisted on. Here, however, we find it in full force seven centuries ago. It would be much more difficult in the present day to know all the books confided to his care, but some of the {151} librarians at St. Victor were noted for the perfection of their knowledge in this regard and were often consulted by those who were interested in various subjects.
In his book on the Thirteenth Century [Footnote 15 ] M. A. Lecoy de la Marche says that in France, at least, circulating libraries were quite common. As might be expected of the people of so practical a century, it was they who first established the rule that a book might be taken out provided its value were deposited by the borrower. Such lending libraries were to be found at the Sorbonne, at St. Germain des Prés, as well as at Notre Dame. There was also a famous library at this time at Corbie but practically every one of the large abbeys had a library from which books could be obtained. Certain of the castles of the nobility, as for instance that of La Ferte en Ponthieu, had libraries, with regard to which there is a record, that the librarian had the custom of lending certain volumes, provided the person was known to him and assumed responsibility for the book.
[Footnote 15: Le Treizieme Siecle Litteraire et Scientifique, Lille, 1857.]
Some of the regulations of the libraries of the century have an interest all their own from the exact care that was required with regard to the books. The Sorbonne for instance by rule inflicted a fine upon anyone who neglected to close large volumes after he had been making use of them. Many a librarian of the modern times would be glad to put into effect such a regulation as this. A severe fine was inflicted upon any library assistant who allowed a stranger to go into the library alone, and another for anyone who did not take care to close the doors. It seems not unlikely that these regulations, as M. Lecoy de la Marche says, were in vigor in many of the ecclesiastical and secular libraries of the time.
Some of the regulations of St. Victor are quite as interesting and show the liberal spirit of the time as well as indicate how completely what is most modern in library management was anticipated. The librarian had the charge of all the books of the community, was required to have a detailed list of them and each year to have them in his possession at least three times. On him was placed the obligation to see that the books were not destroyed in any way, either by parasites of any kind or by {152} dampness. The librarian was required to arrange the books in such a manner as to make the finding of them prompt and easy. No book was allowed to be borrowed unless some pledge for its safe return were left with the librarian. This was emphasized particularly for strangers who must give a pledge equal to the value of the book. In all cases, however, the name of the borrower had to be taken, also the title of the book borrowed, and the kind of pledge left. The larger and more precious books could not be borrowed without the special permission of the superior.
The origin of the various libraries in Paris is very interesting as proof that the mode of accumulating books was nearly the same as that which enriches university and other such libraries at the present time. The library of La St. Chapelle was founded by Louis IX, and being continuously enriched by the deposit therein of the archives of the kingdom soon became of first importance. Many precious volumes that were given as presents to St. Louis found their way into this library and made it during his lifetime the most valuable collection of books in Paris. Louis, moreover, devoted much time and money to adding to the library. He made it a point whenever on his journeys he stopped, at abbeys or other ecclesiastical institutions, to find out what books were in their library that were not at La Saint Chapelle and had copies of these made. His intimate friendship with Robert of Sorbonne, with St. Thomas of Aquin, with Saint Bonaventure, and above all with Vincent of Beauvais, the famous encyclopedist of the century, widened his interest in books and must have made him an excellent judge of what he ought to procure to complete the library. It was, as we shall see, Louis' munificent patronage that enabled Vincent to accumulate that precious store of medieval knowledge, which was to prove a mine of information for so many subsequent generations.
From the earliest times certain books, mainly on medicine, were collected at the Hotel Dieu, the great hospital of Paris, and this collection was added to from time to time by the bequests of physicians in attendance there. This was doubtless the first regular hospital library, though probably medical books had also been collected at Salernum. The principal colleges of the universities also made collections of books, some of them {153} very valuable, though as a rule, it would seem as if no attempt was made to procure any other books than those which were absolutely needed for consultation by the students. The best working library at Paris was undoubtedly that of the Sorbonne, of which indeed its books were for a long time its only treasures. For at first the Sorbonne was nothing but a teaching institution which only required rooms for its lectures, and usually obtained these either from the university authorities or from the Canons of the Cathedral and possessed no property except its library. From the very beginning the professors bequeathed whatever books they had collected to its library and this became a custom. It is easy to understand that within a very short time the library became one of the very best in Europe. While most of the other libraries were devoted mainly to sacred literature, the Sorbonne came to possess a large number of works of profane literature. Interesting details with regard to this library of the Sorbonne and its precious treasures have been given by M. Leopold Delisle, in the second volume of Le Cabinet des Manuserits, describing the MSS. of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. According to M. Lecoy de la Marche, this gives an excellent idea of the persevering efforts which must have been required, to bring together so many bibliographic treasures at a time when books were such a rarity, and consequently enables us better almost than anything else, to appreciate the enthusiasm of the scholars of these early times and their wonderful efforts to make the acquisition of knowledge easier, not only for their own but for succeeding generations. When we recall that the library of the Sorbonne was, during the Thirteenth Century, open not only to the professors and students of the Sorbonne itself, but also to those interested in books and in literature who might come from elsewhere, provided they were properly accredited, we can realize to the full the thorough liberality of spirit of these early scholars. Usually we are prone to consider that this liberality of spirit, even in educational matters, came much later into the world.
In spite of the regulations demanding the greatest care, it is easy to understand that after a time even books written on vellum or parchment would become disfigured and worn under the ardent fingers of enthusiastic students, when comparatively so {154} few copies were available for general use. In order to replace these worn-out copies every abbey had its own scriptorium or writing room, where especially the younger monks who were gifted with plain handwriting were required to devote certain hours every day to the copying of manuscripts. Manuscripts were borrowed from neighboring libraries and copied, or as in our modern day exchanges of duplicate copies were made, so as to avoid the risk that precious manuscripts might be subject to on the journeys from one abbey to another. How much the duty of transcription was valued may be appreciated from the fact, that in some abbeys every novice was expected to bring on the day of his profession as a religious, a volume of considerable size which had been carefully copied by his own hands.
Besides these methods of increasing the number of books in the library, a special sum of money was set aside in most of the abbeys for the procuring of additional volumes for the library by purchase. Usually this took the form of an ecclesiastical regulation requiring that a certain percentage of the revenues should be spent on the libraries. Scholars closely associated with monasteries frequently bequeathed their books and besides left money or incomes to be especially devoted to the improvement of the library. It is easy to understand that with all these sources of enrichment many abbeys possessed noteworthy libraries. To quote only those of France, important collections of books were to be found at Cluny, Luxeuil, Fleury, Saint-Martial, Moissac, Mortemer, Savigny, Fourcarmont, Saint Père de Chartres, Saint Denis, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Saint Corneille de Compiègne, Corbie, Saint-Amand, Saint-Martin de Tournai, where Vincent de Beauvais said that he found the greatest collections of manuscripts that existed in his time, and then especially the great Parisian abbeys already referred to, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint Victor, Saint-Martin-des-Champs, the precious treasures of which are well known to all those who are familiar with the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, of whose manuscript department their relics constitute the most valuable nucleus.
Some of the bequests of books that were made to libraries at this time are interesting, because they show the spirit of the {155} testators and at the same time furnish valuable hints as to the consideration in which books were held and the reverent care of their possessors for them. Peter of Nemours, the Bishop of Paris, when setting out on the crusades with Louis IX. bequeathed to the famous Abbey of St. Victor, his Bible in 22 volumes, which was considered one of the finest copies of the scriptures at that time in existence. To the Abbey of Olivet he gave his Psalter with Glosses, besides the Epistles of St. Paul and his Book of Sentences, by which is evidently intended the well-known work with that title by the famous Peter Lombard. Finally he gave to the Cathedral of Paris all the rest of his books. Besides these he had very little to leave. It is typical of the reputation of Paris in that century and the devotion of her churchmen to learning and culture, that practically all of the revenues that he considered due him for his personal services had been invested in books, which he then disposed of in such a way as would secure their doing the greatest possible good to the largest number of people. His Bible was evidently given to the abbey of St. Victor because it was the sort of work that should be kept for the occasional reference of the learned rather than the frequent consultation of students, who might very well find all that they desired in other and less valuable copies. His practical intention with regard to his books can be best judged from his gift to Notre Dame, which, as we have noted already possessed a very valuable library that was allowed to circulate among properly accredited scholars in Paris.
According to the will of Peter Ameil, Archbishop of Narbonne, which is dated 1238, he gave his books for the use of the scholars whom he had supported at the University of Paris and they were to be deposited in the Library at Notre Dame, but on condition that they were not to be scattered for any reason nor any of them sold or abused. The effort of the booklover to keep his books together is characteristic of all the centuries since, only most people will be surprised to find it manifesting itself so early in bibliophilic history. The Archbishop reserved from his books, however, his Bible for his own church. Before his death he had given the Dominicans in his diocese many books from his library. This churchman of the first half of the {156} Thirteenth Century seems evidently to deserve a prominent place among the bookmen of all times.
There are records of many others who bequeathed libraries and gave books during their lifetime to various institutions, as may be found in the Literary History of France, [Footnote 16] already mentioned, as well as in the various histories of the University of Paris. Many of these gifts were made on condition that they should not be sold and the constantly recurring condition made by these booklovers is that their collections should be kept together. The libraries of Paris were also in the market for books, however, and there is proof that the Sorbonne purchased a number of volumes because the cost price of them was noted inside the cover quite as libraries do in our own days. When we realize the forbidding cost of them, it is surprising that there should be so much to say about them and so many of them constantly changing hands. An ordinary folio volume probably cost from 400 to 500 francs in our values, that is between $80 and $100.
[Footnote 16: Histoire Litteraire de la France, by the Benedictines of St. Maur.]
While the older abbeys of the Benedictines and other earlier religious orders possessed magnificent collections of books, the newer orders of the Thirteenth Century, the Mendicants, though as their name indicates they were bound to live by alms given them by the faithful, within a short time after their foundation began to take a prominent part in the library movement. It was in the southern part of France that the Dominicans were strongest and so there is record of regulations for libraries made at Toulouse in the early part of the Thirteenth Century. In Paris, in 1239, considerable time and discussion was devoted in one of the chapters of the order to the question of how books should be kept, and how the library should be increased. With regard to the Franciscans, though their poverty was, if possible, stricter, the same thing is known before the end of the century. In both orders arrangements were made for the copying of important works and it is, of course, to the zeal and enthusiasm of the younger members of these orders for this copying work, that we owe the preservation by means of a large number of manuscript copies, of the {157} voluminous writings of such men as Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas, Duns Scotus and others.
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MONUMENT OF CARDINAL DE BRAY (ARNOLFO)
While the existence of libraries of various kinds, and even circulating libraries, in the Thirteenth Century may seem definitely settled, it will appear to most people that to speak of book collecting at this time must be out of place. That fad is usually presumed to be of much later origin and indeed to be comparatively recent in its manifestations. We have said enough already, however, of the various collections of books in libraries especially in France to show that the book collector was abroad, but there is much more direct evidence of this available from an English writer. Richard de Bury's Philobiblon is very well known to all who are interested in books for their own sake, but few people realize that this book practically had its origin in the Thirteenth Century. The writer was born about the beginning of the last quarter of that century, had completed his education before its close, and it is only reasonable to attribute to the formative influences at work in his intellectual development as a young man, the germs of thought from which were to come in later life the interesting book on bibliophily, the first of its kind, which was to be a treasure for book-lovers ever afterwards.
Philobiblon tells us, among other things, of Richard's visits to the continent on an Embassy to the Holy See and on subsequent occasions to the Court of France, and the delight which he experienced in handling many books which he had never seen before, in buying such of them as his purse would allow, or his enthusiasm could tempt from their owners and in conversing with those who could tell him about books and their contents. Such men were the chosen comrades of his journeys, sat with him at table, as Mr. Henry Morley tells us in his English Writers (volume IV, page 51), and were in almost constant fellowship with him. It was at Paris particularly that Richard's heart was satisfied for a time because of the great treasures he found in the magnificent libraries of that city. He was interested, of course, in the University and the opportunity for intellectual employment afforded by Academic proceedings, but above all he found delight in books, which monks and monarchs and professors and churchmen of all kinds and scholars {158} and students had gathered into this great intellectual capital of Europe at that time. Anyone who thinks the books were not valued quite as highly in the Thirteenth Century as at the present time should read the Philobiblon. He is apt to rise from the reading of it with the thought that it is the modern generations who do not properly appreciate books.
One of the early chapters of Philobiblon argues that books ought always to be bought whatever they cost, provided there are means to pay for them, except in two cases, "when they are knavishly overcharged, or when a better time for buying is expected." "That sun of men, Solomon," Richard says, "bids us buy books readily and sell them unwillingly, for one of his proverbs runs, 'Buy the truth and sell it not, also wisdom and instruction and understanding.'" Richard in his own quaint way thought that most other interests in life were only temptations to-draw men away from books. In one famous paragraph he has naively personified books as complaining with regard to the lack of attention men now display for them and the unworthy objects, in Richard's eyes at least, upon which they fasten their affections instead, and which take them away from the only great life interest that is really worth while—books.
"Yet," complain books, "in these evil times we are cast out of our place in the inner chamber, turned out of doors, and our place taken by dogs, birds, and the two-legged beast called woman. But that beast has always been our rival, and when she spies us in a corner, with no better protection than the web of a dead spider, she drags us out with a frown and violent speech, laughing us to scorn as useless, and soon counsels us to be changed into costly head-gear, fine linen, silk and scarlet double dyed, dresses and divers trimmings, linens and woolens. And so," complain the books still, "we are turned out of our homes, our coats are torn from our backs, our backs and sides ache, we lie about disabled, our natural whiteness turns to yellow—without doubt we have the jaundice. Some of us are gouty, witness our twisted extremities. Our bellies are griped and wrenched and are consumed by worms; on each side the dirt cleaves to us, nobody binds up our wounds, we lie ragged and weep in dark corners, or meet with Job upon a dunghill, or, as seems hardly fit to be said, we are hidden in abysses of the {159} sewers. We are sold also like slaves, and lie as unredeemed pledges in taverns. We are thrust into cruel butteries, to be cut up like sheep and cattle; committed to Jews, Saracens, heretics and Pagans, whom we always dread as the plague, and by whom some of our forefathers are known to have been poisoned."
Richard De Bury must not be thought to have been some mere wandering scholar of the beginning of the Fourteenth Century, however, for he was, perhaps, the most important historical personage, not even excepting royalty or nobility, of this era and one of the striking examples of how high a mere scholar might rise in this period quite apart from any achievement in arms, though this is usually supposed to be almost the only basis of distinguished reputation and the reason for advancement at this time. While he was only the son of a Norman knight, Aungervyle by name, born at Bury St. Edmund's, he became the steward of the palace and treasurer of the royal wardrobe, then Lord Treasurer of England and finally Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. While on a mission to the Pope he so commended himself to the Holy See that it was resolved to make him the next English bishop. Accordingly he was made Bishop of Durham shortly after and on the occasion of his installation there was a great banquet at which the young King and Queen, the Queen Mother Isabelle, the King of Scotland, two Archbishops, five bishops, and most of the great English lords were present. At this time the Scots and the English were actually engaged in war with one another and a special truce was declared, in order to allow them to join in the celebration of the consecration of so distinguished an individual to the See of Durham near the frontier.
Before he was consecrated Bishop, Richard De Bury had been for some time the treasurer of the kingdom. Before the end of the year in which he was consecrated he became Lord Chancellor, at a time when the affairs of the kingdom needed a master hand and when the French and the Scots were seriously disturbing English peace and prosperity. He resigned his office of Chancellor, as Henry Morley states, only to go abroad in the royal service as ambassador that he might exercise his own trusted sagacity in carrying out the peaceful policy he had {160} advised. During this diplomatic mission to the continent he visited the courts of Paris, of Flanders, of Hainault and of Germany. He succeeded in making terms of peace between the English king and the Counts of Hainault and Namur, the Marquis of Juliers and the Dukes of Brabant and Guelders. This would seem to indicate that he must be considered as one of the most prominent men of Europe at this time.
His attitude toward books is then all the more noteworthy. Many people were surprised that a great statesman like Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century, should have been interested in so many phases of thought and of literature and should himself have been able to find the time to contribute important works to English letters. Richard De Bury was at least as important a man in his time as Gladstone in ours, and occupied himself as much with books as the great English commoner. This is what will be the greatest source of surprise to those who in our time have been accustomed to think, that the great scholars deeply interested in books who were yet men of practical worth in helping their generation in its great problems, are limited to modern times and are least of all likely to be found in the heart of the Middle Ages. In spite of his occupations as a politician and a bookman, Richard De Bury was noted for his faithfulness in the fulfilment of his duties as a churchman and a bishop. It is worthy of note that many of the important clergymen of England, who were to find the highest church preferment afterwards, were among the members of his household at various times and that the post of secretary to the bishop, particularly, was filled at various times by some of the best scholars of the period, men who were devoted friends to the bishop, who dedicated their works to him and generally added to the reputation that stamped him as the greatest scholar of England and one of the leading lights of European culture of his time.
This is not so surprising when we realize that to be a member of Richard's household was to have access to the best library in England, and that many scholars were naturally ambitious to have such an opportunity, and as the results showed many took advantage of it. Among Richard of Durham's chaplains were Thomas Bradwardine who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Fitzraufe, subsequently Archbishop of {161} Armagh, Walter Seagrave, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, and Richard Bentworth, who afterwards became Bishop of London Among the distinguished scholars who occupied the post were Robert Holcot, John Manduit, the astronomer of the Fourteenth Century, Richard Kilmington, a distinguished English theologian, and Walter Burley, a great commentator on Aristotle, who dedicated to the bishop, who had provided him with so many opportunities for study, his Commentaries upon the Politics and Ethics of the ancient Greek philosopher.
That Richard's love for books and the time he had necessarily devoted to politics did not dry up the fountains of charity in his heart, nor cause him to neglect his important duties as the pastor of the people and especially of the poor, we know very well from certain traditions with regard to his charitable donations. According to a standing rule in his household eight quarters of wheat were regularly every week made into bread and given to the poor. In his alms giving Richard was as careful and as discriminating as in his collection of books, and he used a number of the regularly organized channels in his diocese to make sure that his bounty should be really helpful and should not encourage lack of thrift. This is a feature of charitable work that is supposed to be modern, but the personal service of the charitably inclined in the Thirteenth Century, far surpassed in securing this even the elaborate organization of charity in modern times. Whenever the bishop traveled generous alms were distributed to the poor people along the way. Whenever he made the journey between Durham and New Castle eight pounds sterling were set aside for this purpose; five pounds for each journey between Durham and Stockton or Middleham, and five marks between Durham and Auckland. Money had at that time at least ten times the purchasing power which it has at present, so that it will be easy to appreciate the good bishop's eminent liberality.
That Richard was justified in his admiration of the books of the time we know from those that remain, for it must not be thought for a moment that because the making of books was such a time-taking task in the Thirteenth Century, they were not therefore made beautiful. On the contrary, as we shall see {162} shortly, no more beautiful books have ever been made than at this time. This of itself would show how precious in the eyes of the collectors of the time their books were, since they wanted to have them so beautifully made and were satisfied to pay the high prices that had to be demanded for such works of art. Very few books of any size cost less than the equivalent of $100 in our time and illuminated books cost much higher than this, yet seem never to have been a drug on the market. Indeed, considering the number of them that are still in existence to this day, in spite of the accidents of fire, and water, and war, and neglect, and carelessness, and ignorance, there must have been an immense number of very handsome books made by the generations of the Thirteenth Century.
While illumination was not an invention of the Thirteenth Century, as indeed were very few of the great art features of the century, during this time book decoration was carried to great perfection and reached that development which artists of the next century were to improve on in certain extrinsic features, though the intrinsic qualities were to remain those which had been determined as the essential characteristics of this branch of art in the earlier time. The Thirteenth Century, for instance, saw the introduction of the miniature as a principal feature and also the drawing out of initials in such a way as to make an illuminated border for the whole side of the page. After the development thus given to the art in the Thirteenth Century further evolution could only come in certain less important details. In this the Thirteenth Century generations were accomplishing what they had done in practically everything else that they touched, laying foundations broad and deep and giving the superstructure the commanding form which future generations were only able to modify to slight degree and not always with absolute good grace.
Humphreys in his magnificent volume on The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages, which according to its title contains an account of the development and progress of the art of illumination as a distinct branch of pictorial ornamentation from the Fourth to the Seventeenth centuries, [Footnote 17] has some very striking words of praise for Thirteenth Century illuminations and the artists who made them. He says:
[Footnote 17: The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages, by Henry Noel Humphreys Longman. Green, Brown and Longmans, London, 1848.]
{163}
"Different epochs of the art of illumination present widely different and distinct styles; the most showy and the best known, though the least pure and inventive in design, being that of the middle and end of the Fifteenth Century; whilst the period perhaps the least generally known, that of the Thirteenth Century, may be considered as the most interesting and original, many of the best works of that period displaying an astonishing variety and profusion of invention. The manuscript, of which two pages form the opposite plate, may be ranked among the most elaborate and profusely ornamented of the fine books of that era; every page being sufficient to make the fortune of the modern decorator by the quaint and unexpected novelties of inventions which it displays at every turn of its intricate design."
The illuminations of the century then are worthy of the time and also typical of the general work of the century. It is known by experts for its originality and for the wealth of invention displayed in the designs. Men did not fear that they might exhaust their inventive faculty, nor display their originality sparingly, in order that they might have enough to complete other work. As the workmen of the Cathedrals, the artist illuminators devoted their very best efforts to each piece of work that came to their hands, and the results are masterpieces of art in this as in every other department of the period. The details are beautifully wrought, showing the power of the artist to accomplish such a work and yet his designs are never overloaded, at least in the best examples of the century, with details of ornamentation that obscure and minimize the effect of the original design. This fault was to be the error of his most sophisticated successors two centuries later.
Nor must it be thought the high opinion of the century is derived from the fact that only a very few examples of its illumination and bookmaking are now extant, and that these being the chosen specimens give the illumination of the century a higher place than it might otherwise have. Many examples {164} have been preserved and some of them are the most beautiful books that were made. Paris was particularly the home of this form of art in the Thirteenth Century, and indeed the school established there influenced all the modes of illumination everywhere, so much so that Dante speaks of the art with the epithet "Parisian," as if it were exclusively done there. The incentive to the development of this form of art came from St. Louis who, as we have said, was very much interested in books. His taste as exhibited in La Sainte Chapelle was such as to demand artistic excellence of high grade in this department of art, which has many more relations with the architecture of the period, and especially with the stained glass, than might possibly be thought at the present time, for most of the decoration of books partook of the character of the architectural types of the moment.
Among the most precious treasures from the century are three books which belonged to St. Louis himself. One of these is the Hours or Office Book; a second, is his Psalter, which contains some extremely beautiful initials; a third, which is in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, is sometimes known as the Prayer Book of St. Louis himself, though a better name for it would be the Prayer Book of Queen Blanche, for it was made at Louis' orders for his mother, the famous Blanche of Castile, and is a worthy testimonial of the affectionate relations which existed between mother and son.
Outside of Paris there are preserved many books of great value that come from this century. One of them, a Bestiarum or Book of Beasts, is in the Ashmoleam Museum at Oxford. This is said to be a very beautiful example of the illumination of the Thirteenth Century, but it is even more interesting because it shows the efforts of the artists of the time to copy nature in the pictures of animals as they are presented. There is said to be an acuity of observation and a vigor of representation displayed in the book which is highly complimentary to the powers of the Thirteenth Century artists.
Even these brief notes of the books and libraries of the Thirteenth Century, will serve to make clear how enthusiastic was the interest of the generations of this time in beautiful books and in collections of them that were meant for show as {165} well as for practical usefulness. There is perhaps nothing more amusing in the attitude of modern generations with regard to the Middle Ages, than the assumption that all the methods of education and of the distribution of knowledge worth while talking about, are the inventions of comparatively modern times. The fact that libraries were also a creation of that time and that most of the regulations which are supposed to be the first fruit of quite recent science in the circulation of books had been adopted by these earlier generations, is commonly ignored utterly, though it is a precious bit of knowledge that cannot help but increase our sympathy with those bookmen of the olden times, who thought so much of their books, yet wished to share the privilege of their use with all those who would employ them properly, and who, in their great practical way succeeded in working out the scheme by which many people could have the opportunity of consulting the treasures they thought so much of, without risk of their loss or destruction, even though use might bring some deterioration of their value.
DECORATION (XIII. CENT. PSALTER MSS.)
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X
THE CID, THE HOLY GRAIL, THE NIBELUNGEN.
Anyone who has studied even perfunctorily the Books of the Arts and of the Deeds of the Thirteenth Century, who has realized its accomplishments in enduring artistic creations, sublime and exemplary models and inspirations for all after time, who has appreciated what it succeeded in doing for the education of the classes and of the masses, the higher education being provided for at least as large a proportion of the people as in our present century, while the creation of what were practically great technical schools that culled out of the masses the latent geniuses who could accomplish supreme artistic results in the arts and crafts and did more and better for the masses than any subsequent generation, can scarcely help but turn with interest to read the Book of the Words of the period and to find out what forms of literature interested this surprising people. One is almost sure to think at the first moment of consideration that the literature will not be found worthy of the other achievements of the times. In most men's minds the Thirteenth Century does not readily call up the idea of a series of great works in literature, whose influence has been at all as profound and enduring as that of the universities in the educational order, or of the Cathedrals in the artistic order.
This false impression, however, is due only to the fact that the literary creations of the Thirteenth Century are so diverse in subject and in origin, that they are very seldom associated with each other, unless there has been actual recognition of their contemporaneousness from deliberate calling to mind of the dates at which certain basic works in our modern literatures were composed. It is not the least surprise that comes to the student of the Thirteenth Century, to find that the great origins of what well deserves the name of classic modern literature, comprising a series of immortal works in prose and poetry, were initiated by the contemporaries of the makers of the {167} universities and the builders of the Cathedrals. If we stop to think for a moment it must be realized, that generations who succeeded in expressing themselves so effectively in other departments of esthetics could scarcely be expected to fail in literature alone, and they did not. From the Cid in Spain, through the Arthur Legends in England, the Nibelungen in Germany, the Minnesingers and the Meistersingers in the southern part of what is now the German Empire, the Trouvères in North France, the Troubadours in South France and in Italy, down to Dante, who was 35 before the century closed, there has never been such a mass of undying literature written within a little more than a single hundred years, as came during the period from shortly before 1200 down to 1300. Great as was the Fifth Century before Christ in this matter it did not surpass the Thirteenth Century after Christ in its influence on subsequent generations.
We have already pointed out in discussing the Cathedrals that one of the most characteristic features of the Gothic architecture was the marvelous ease with which it lent itself to the expression of national peculiarities. Norman Gothic is something quite distinct from German Gothic which arose in almost contiguous provinces, but so it is also from English Gothic; these two were very closely related in origin and undoubtedly the English Cathedrals owe much to the Norman influence so prevalent in England at the end of the Twelfth Century, and the beginning of the Thirteenth Century. Italian Gothic has the principal characteristic peculiarities of the architectural style which passes under the name developed to a remarkable degree, and yet its finished product is far distant from any of the three other national forms that have been mentioned, yet is not lacking in a similar interest. Spanish Gothic has an identity of its own that has always had a special appeal for the traveler. Any one who has ever visited the shores of the Baltic sea and has seen what was accomplished in such places as Stralsund, Greifswald, Lübeck, and others of the old Hansa towns, will appreciate still more the power of Gothic to lend itself to the feelings of the people and to the materials that they had at hand. Here in the distant North they were far away from any sources of the stone that would ordinarily be deemed absolutely {168} necessary for Gothic construction. How effectively they used brick for ecclesiastical edifices can only be realized by those who have seen the remains of the Gothic monuments of this portion of Europe.
The distinguishing mark of all these different styles is the eminent opportunity for the expression of nationality which, they afford. It might be expected that since they were all Gothic, most of them would be little better than servile copies, or at best scarce more than good imitations of the great originals of the North of France. As a matter of fact, the assertion of national characteristics, far from destroying the effectiveness of Gothic, rather added new beauties to this style of architecture. This was true even occasionally when mistakes were made by architects and designers. As Ferguson has said in his History of Architecture, St. Stephen's at Vienna is full of architectural errors and yet the attractiveness of the Cathedral remains. It was a poet who designed it and something of his poetic soul gleams out of the material structure after the lapse of centuries.
In nearly this same way the literatures of the different countries during the Thirteenth Century are eminently national and mirror with quite wonderful appropriateness the characteristics of the various people. This is true even when similar subjects, as for instance the Graal stories, are treated from nearly the same standpoint by the two Teutonic nations, the Germans and the English. Parsifal and Galahad are national as well as poetic heroes with a distinction of character all their own. As we shall see, practically every nation finds in this century some fundamental expression of its national feeling that has been among its most cherished classics ever since.
{opp168}
SANTA MARIA SOPRA MINERVA (ROME'S GOTHIC CATHEDRAL)
The first of these in time is the Cid, which was written in Spain during the latter half of the Twelfth Century, but probably took its definite form just about the beginning of the Thirteenth. It might well be considered that this old-fashioned Spanish ballad would have very little of interest for modern readers, and yet there are very few scholars of the past century who have not been interested in this literary treasure. Critics of all nations have been unstinted in their praise of it. Since the Schlegels recalled world attention to Spanish {169} literature, it has been considered almost as unpardonable for anyone who pretended to literary culture not to have read the Cid, as it would be not to have read Don Quixote.
As is true of all the national epics founded upon a series of ballads which had been collecting in the mouth of the people for several centuries before a great poetic genius came to give them their supreme expression, there has been some doubt expressed as to the single authorship of Cid. We shall find the same problem to be considered when we come to discuss the Nibelungen Lied. A half a century ago or more the fashion of the critics for insisting on the divided authorship of such poems was much more prevalent than it is at present. At that time a great many scholars, following the initiative of Wolf and the German separatist critics, declared even that the Homeric poems were due to more than one mind. There are still some who cling to this idea with regard to many of these primal national epics, but at the present time most literary men are quite content to accept the idea of a single authorship. With regard to the Cid in this matter Mr. Fitzmaurice Kelly, in his Short History of Spanish Literature in the Literatures of the World Series, says very simply:
"There is a unity of conception and of language which forbids our accepting the Poema (del Cid) as the work of several hands; and the division of the poem into several cantares is managed with a discretion which argues a single artistic intelligence. The first part closes with the marriage of the hero's daughters; the second with the shame of the Infantes de Carrion, and the proud announcement that the Kings of Spain are sprung from the Cid's loins. In both the singer rises to the level of his subject, but his chiefest gust is in the recital of some brilliant deed of arms."
The Spanish ballad epic is a characteristic example of the epics formed by the earliest poetic genius of a country, on the basis of the patriotic stories of national origin that had been accumulating for centuries. Of course the Cid had to be the Christian hero who did most in his time against the Moslem in Spain. So interesting has his story been made, and so glorious have been his deeds as recorded by the poets, that there has been even some doubt of his existence expressed, but that he {170} was a genuine historical character seems to be clear. Many people will recall the Canons' argument in the forty-ninth chapter of Don Quixote in which Cervantes, evidently speaking for himself, says: "That there was a Cid no one will deny and likewise a Bernardo Del Carpio, but that they performed all the exploits ascribed to them, I believe there is good reason to doubt." The Cid derives his name from the Arabic Seid which means Lord and owes his usual epithet. El Campeador (champion), to the fact that he was the actual champion of the Christians against the Moors at the end of the Eleventh Century. How gloriously his warlike exploits have been described may be best appreciated from the following description of his charge at Alcocer:
"With bucklers braced before their breasts, with lances pointing low.
With stooping crests and heads bent down above the saddle-bow.
All firm of hand and high of heart they roll upon the foe.
And he that in good hour was born, his clarion voice rings out,
And clear above the clang of arms is heard his battle-shout,
'Among them, gentlemen! Strike home for the love of charity!
The Champion of Bivar is here—Ruy Diaz—I am he!'
Then bearing where Bermuez still maintains unequal fight.
Three hundred lances down they come, their pennons flickering white;
Down go three hundred Moors to earth, a man to every blow;
And, when they wheel, three hundred more, as charging back they go.
It was a sight to see the lances rise and fall that day;
The shivered shields and riven mail, to see how thick they lay;
The pennons that went in snow-white come out a gory red;
The horses running riderless, the riders lying dead;
While Moors call on Muhamed, and 'St. James!' the Christians cry."
While the martial interest of such early poems would be generally conceded, it would usually be considered that they would be little likely to have significant domestic, and even {171} what might be called romantic, interests. The Cid's marriage is the result of not what would exactly be called a romance nowadays, though in ruder times there may have been a certain sense of sentimental reparation in it at least. He had killed in fair fight the father of a young woman, who being thus left without a protector appealed to the king to appoint one for her. In the troublous Middle Ages an heiress was as likely to be snapped up by some unsuitable suitor, more literally but with quite as much haste, as in a more cultured epoch. The king knew no one whom he could trust so well with the guardianship of the rich and fair young orphan than the Cid, of whose bravery and honor he had had many proofs. Accordingly he suggested him as a protector and the Cid himself generously realizing how much the fair Jimena had lost by the death of her father consented, and in a famous passage of the poem, a little shocking to modern ideas, it must be confessed, frankly states his feelings in the matter:
"And now before the altar the bride and bridegroom stand,
And when to fair Jimena the Cid stretched forth his hand,
He spake in great confusion: 'Thy father have I slain
Not treacherously, but face to face, my just revenge to gain
For cruel wrong; a man I slew, a man I give to thee;
In place of thy dead father, a husband find in me.'
And all who heard well liked the man, approving what he said;
Thus Rodrigo the Castilian his stately bride did wed."
There are tender domestic scenes between the Cid and his wife and his daughters, which serve to show how sincere was his affection and with what sympathetic humanity a great poet knew how to depict the tender natural relations which have an interest for all times. Some of these domestic scenes are not unworthy to be placed beside Homer's picture of the parting of Hector and Andromache, though there is more naive self-consciousness in the work of the Spanish bard, than in that of his more artistic colleague of the Grecian olden times. There is particularly a famous picture of the duties of noble ladies in Spain of this time and of the tender solicitude of a father for his daughters' innocence, that is quite beyond expectation at {172} the hands of a poet whose forte was evidently war and its alarms, rather than the expression of the ethical qualities of home life. The following passage, descriptive of the Cid's parting from his wife, will give some idea of these qualities better than could be conveyed in any other way:
"Thou knowest well, señora, he said before he went,
To parting from each other our love doth not consent;
But love and joyance never may stand in duty's way,
And when the king commandeth the noble must obey.
Now let discretion guide thee, thou art of worthy name;
While I am parted from thee, let none in thee find blame.
Employ thy hours full wisely, and tend thy household well,
Be never slothful, woe and death with idleness do dwell.
Lay by thy costly dresses until I come again.
For in the husband's absence let wives in dress be plain;
And look well to thy daughters, nor let them be aware.
Lest they comprehend the danger because they see thy care,
And lose unconscious innocence. At home they must abide,
For the safety of the daughter is at the mother's side.
Be serious with thy servants, with strangers on thy guard,
With friends be kind and friendly, and well thy household ward,
To no one show my letters, thy best friends may not see.
Lest reading them they also may guess of thine to me.
And if good news they bring thee, and woman-like dost seek
The sympathy of others, with thy daughters only speak.
* * *
Farewell, farewell, Jimena, the trumpet's call I hear!
One last embrace, and then he mounts the steed without a peer."
The touch of paternal solicitude and prudence in the passage we have put in italics is so apparently modern, that it can scarcely fail to be a source of surprise, coming as it does from that crude period at the end of the Twelfth Century when such minute psychological observation as to young folks' ways would be little expected, and least of all in the rough warrior {173} hero or his poet creator, whose notions of right and wrong are, to judge from many passages of the poem, so much coarser than those of our time.
After the Cid in point of time, the next enduring poetic work that was destined to have an influence on all succeeding generations, was the series of the Arthur Legends as completed in England. As in the case of the Cid these stories of King Arthur's Court, his Knights and his Round Table, had been for a long time the favorite subject of ballad poets among the English people. Just where they originated is not very clear, though it seems most likely that the original inspiration came from Celtic sources. These old ballads, however, had very little of literary form and it was not until the end of the Twelfth and the beginning of the Thirteenth Century that they were cast in their present mold, after having passed through the alembic of the mind of a great poetic and literary genius, which refined away the dross and left only the pure gold of supremely sympathetic human stories. To whom we owe this transformation is not known with absolute certainty, though the literary and historical criticism of the last quarter of a century seems to have made it clear that the work must be attributed to Walter Map or Mapes, an English clergyman who died during the first decade of the Thirteenth Century.
His claims to the authorship of the Graal legend in its artistic completeness and to the invention of the character of Lancelot, which is one of the great triumphs of the Arthur legends as they were told at this time, have been much discussed by French and English critics. This discussion has perhaps been best summarized by Mr. Henry Morley, the late Professor of Literature at the University of London, whose third volume of English writers contains an immense amount of valuable information with regard to the literary history, not alone of England at this time but practically of all the countries of Europe. Mr. Morley's plan was conceived with a breath of view that makes his work a very interesting and authoritative guide in the literary matters of the time. His summation of the position of critical opinion with regard to the authorship of the Arthur Legends deserves to be quoted in its entirety:
"The Arthurian Romances were, according to this opinion. {174} all perfectly detached tales, till in the Twelfth Century Robert de Borron (let us add, at Map's suggestion) translated the first Romance of the St. Graal as an introduction to the series, and shortly afterwards Walter Map added his Quest of the Graal, Lancelot, and Mort Artus. The way for such work had been prepared by Geoffrey of Monmouth's bold setting forward of King Arthur as a personage of history, in a book that was much sought and discussed, and that made the Arthurian Romances a fresh subject of interest to educated men.
"But M. Paulin Paris, whose opinions, founded upon a wide acquaintance with the contents of old MSS. I am now sketching, and in part adopting, looked upon Walter Map as the soul of this work of Christian spiritualisation. Was the romance of the St. Graal Latin, before it was French? He does not doubt that it was. He sees in it the mysticism of the subtlest theologian. It was not a knight or a jongleur who was so well read in the apocryphal gospels, the legends of the first Christian centuries, rabbinical fancies, and old Greek mythology; and there is all this in the St. Graal. There is a theory, too, of the sacrifice of the mass, an explanation of the Saviour's presence in the Eucharist, that is the work, he says, of the loftiest and the most brilliant imagination. These were not matters that a knight of the Twelfth Century would dare to touch. They came from an ecclesiastic and a man of genius. But if so, why should we refuse credit to the assertion, repeated in every MS. that they were first written in Latin? The earliest MSS. are of a date not long subsequent to the death of Walter Map, Latinist, theologian, wit, and Chaplain to King Henry II., who himself took the liveliest interest in Breton legends. King Henry, M. Paris supposes, wished them to be collected, but how? Some would prefer one method, some another; Map reconciled all. He satisfied the clergy, pleased the scholar, filled the chasms in the popular tales, reconciled contradictions, or rejected inconsistencies, and by him also the introductory tale of the Graal was first written in Latin for Robert de Borron to translate into French."
The best literary appreciation of Map's genius, apart, of course, from the fact that all generations ever since have acknowledged the supreme human interest and eminently {175} sympathetic quality of his work, is perhaps to be found in certain remarks of the modern critics who have made special studies in these earlier literary periods. Prof. George Saintsbury, of the University of Edinburgh, for instance, in the second volume of Periods of English Literature, [Footnote 18] has been quite unstinted in his praise of this early English writer. He has not hesitated even to say in a striking passage that Map, or at least the original author of the Launcelot story, was one of the greatest of literary men and deserves a place only next to Dante in this century so preciously full of artistic initiative.
[Footnote 18: The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory, by George Saintsbury, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh (New York, Charles Scribner & Sons, 1897).]
"Whether it was Walter Map, or Chrestien de Troyes, or both, or neither to whom the glory of at once completing and exalting the story is due, I at least have no pretension to decide. Whoever did it, if he did it by himself, was a great man indeed—a man second to Dante among the men of the Middle Age. Even if it was done by an irregular company of men, each patching and piecing the other's efforts, the result shows a marvelous 'wind of the spirit' abroad and blowing on that company."
Prof. Saintsbury then proceeds to show how much even readers of Mallory miss of the greatness and especially of the sympathetic humanity of the original poem, and in a further passage states his firm conviction that the man who created Lancelot was one of the greatest literary inventors and sympathetic geniuses of all times, and that his work is destined, because the wellsprings of its action are so deep down in the human heart, to be of interest to generations of men for as long as our present form of civilization lasts.
"Perhaps the great artistic stroke in the whole legend, and one of the greatest in all literature, is the concoction of a hero who should be not only
'Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave,'
but more heroic than Paris and more interesting than Hector—not only a 'greatest knight,' but at once the sinful lover of his queen and the champion who should himself all but achieve and in the person of his son actually achieve, the sacred {176} adventure of the Holy Graal. If, as there seems no valid reason to disbelieve, the hitting upon this idea, and the invention or adoption of Lancelot to carry it out, be the work of Walter Mapes (or Map), then Walter Mapes is one of the great novelists of the world, and one of the greatest of them. If it was some unknown person (it could hardly be Chrestien, for in Chrestien's form the Graal interest belongs to Percevale, not to Lancelot or Galahad), then the same compliment must be paid to that person unknown. Meanwhile the conception and execution of Lancelot, to whomsoever they may be due, are things most happy. Entirely free from the faultlessness which is the curse of the classical hero; his unequaled valor not seldom rewarded only by reverses; his merits redeemed from mawkishness by his one great fault, yet including all virtues that are themselves most amiable, and deformed by no vice that is actually loathsome; the soul of goodness in him always warring with his human frailty—Sir Lancelot fully deserves the noble funeral eulogy pronounced over his grave, felt by all the elect to be, in both senses, one of the first of all extant pieces of perfect English prose."
To appreciate fully how much Walter Map accomplished by his series of stories with regard to King Arthur's Court, it should be remembered that poets and painters have in many generations ever since found subjects for their inspiration within the bounds of the work which he created. After all, the main interest of succeeding poets who have put the legends into later forms, has centered more in the depth of humanity that there is in the stories, than in the poetic details for which they themselves have been responsible. In succeeding generations poets have often felt that these stories were so beautiful that they deserved to be retold in terms readily comprehensible to their own generation. Hence Malory wrote his Morte D'Arthur for the Fifteenth Century, Spenser used certain portions of the old myths for the Sixteenth, and the late Poet-laureate set himself once more to retell the Idyls of the King for the Nineteenth Century. Each of these was adding little but new literary form, to a work that genius had drawn from sources so close to the heart of human nature, that the stories were always to remain of enduring interest.
{177}
For the treasure of poesy with which humanity was enriched when he conceived the idea of setting the old ballads of King Arthur into literary form, more must be considered as due to the literary original writer than to any of his great successors. This is precisely the merit of Walter Map. Of some of his less ambitious literary work we have many examples that show us how thoroughly interested he was in all the details of human existence, even the most trivial. He had his likes and dislikes, he seems to have had some disappointed ambition that made him rather bitter towards ecclesiastics, he seems to have had some unfortunate experiences, especially with the Cistercians, though how much of this is assumed rather than genuine, is hard to determine at this modern day. Many of the extremely bitter things he says with regard to the Cistercians might well be considered as examples of that exaggeration, which in certain minds constitutes one modality of humor, rather than as serious expressions of actual thought. It is hard, for instance, to take such an expression as the following as more than an example of this form of jesting by exaggeration. Map heard that a Cistercian had become a Jew. His comment was: "If he wanted to get far from the Cistercians why didn't he become a Christian."
From England the transition to Germany is easy. Exactly contemporary with the rise of the Arthur Legends in England to that standard of literary excellence that was to give them their enduring poetic value, there came also the definite arrangement and literary transformation of the old ballads of the German people, into that form in which they were to exert a lasting influence upon the German language and national feeling. The date of the Nibelungen Lied has been set down somewhat indefinitely as between 1190 and 1220. Most of the work was undoubtedly accomplished after the beginning of the Thirteenth Century and in the form in which we have it at present, there seems to be no doubt that much was done after the famous meeting of the Meistersingers on the Wartburg—the subject of song and story and music drama ever since, which took place very probably in the year 1207. With regard to the Nibelungen Lied, as in the case of the other great literary arrangements of folk-ballads, there has been question as to the {178} singleness of authorship. Here, however, as with regard to Homer and the Cid, the trend of modern criticism has all been towards the attribution of the poem to one writer, and the internal evidence of similarity of expression constantly maintained, a certain simplicity of feeling and naïveté of repetition seems to leave no doubt in the matter.
As regards the merits of the Nibelungen Lied as a great work of literature, there has been very little doubt in the English-speaking world at least, because of the enthusiastic recognition accorded it by German critics and the influence of German criticism in all branches of literature over the whole Teutonic race during the Nineteenth Century. English admiration for the poem began after Carlyle's introduction of it to the English reading public in his essays. Since this time it has come to be very well known and yet, notwithstanding all that has been said about it no English critic has expressed more fully the place of the great German poem in world literature, than did this enthusiastic pro-German of the first half of the Nineteenth Century.
For those for whom Carlyle's Essays are a sealed book because of loss of interest in him with the passage of time, the citation of some of his appreciative critical expressions may be necessary.
"Here in the old Frankish (Oberdeutsch) dialect of the Nibelungen, we have a clear decisive utterance, and in a real system of verse, not without essential regularity, great liveliness and now and then even harmony of rhythm. Doubtless we must often call it a diffuse diluted utterance; at the same time it is genuine, with a certain antique garrulous heartiness, and has a rhythm in the thoughts as well as the words. The simplicity is never silly; even in that perpetual recurrence of epithets, sometimes of rhymes, as where two words, for instance lip (body), lif (leib) and wip (woman), weib (wife) are indissolubly wedded together, and the one never shows itself without the other following—there is something which reminds us not so much of poverty, as of trustfulness and childlike innocence. Indeed a strange charm lies in those old tones, where, in gay dancing melodies, the sternest tidings are sung to us; and deep floods of sadness and strife play lightly in little {179} purling billows, like seas in summer. It is as a meek smile, in whose still, thoughtful depths a whole infinitude of patience, and love, and heroic strength lie revealed. But in other cases too, we have seen this outward sport and inward earnestness offer grateful contrasts, and cunning excitement; for example, in Tasso; of whom, though otherwise different enough, this old Northern Singer has more than once reminded us. There too, as here, we have a dark solemn meaning in light guise; deeds of high temper, harsh self-denial, daring and death, stand embodied in that soft, quick-flowing joyfully-modulated verse. Nay farther, as if the implement, much more than we might fancy, had influenced the work done, these two poems, could we trust our individual feeling, have in one respect the same poetical result for us; in the Nibelungen as in the Gerusalemme, the persons and their story are indeed brought vividly before us, yet not near and palpably present; it is rather as if we looked on that scene through an inverted telescope, whereby the whole was carried far away into the distance, the life-large figures compressed into brilliant miniatures, so clear, so real, yet tiny, elf-like and beautiful as well as lessened, their colors being now closer and brighter, the shadows and trivial features no longer visible. This, as we partly apprehend, comes of singing epic poems; most part of which only pretend to be sung. Tasso's rich melody still lives among the Italian people; the Nibelungen also is what it professes to be, a song."
The story of the Nibelungen would ordinarily be supposed to be so distant from the interests of modern life, as scarcely to hold the attention of a reader unless he were interested in it from a scholarly or more or less antiquarian standpoint. For those who think thus, however, there is only one thing that will correct such a false impression and that is to read the Nibelungen itself. It has a depth of simplicity and a sympathetic human interest all its own but that reminds one more of Homer than of anything else in literature, and Homer has faults but lack of interest is not one of them. From the very beginning the story of the young man who does not think he will marry, and whose mother does not think that any one is good enough for him, and of the young woman who is sure that no one will come that will attract enough of her attention so as to compel {180} her to subject herself to the yoke of marriage, are types of what is so permanent in humanity, that the readers' attention is at once caught. After this the fighting parts of the story become the center of interest and hold the attention in spite of the refining influences that later centuries are supposed to have brought to humanity.
Hence it is that Prof. Saintsbury in the second volume of his Periods of European Literature, already quoted from, is able to say much of the modern interest in the story. "There may be," as he says, "too many episodic personages—Deitrich of Bern, for instance, has extremely little to do in this galley. But the strength, thoroughness, and in its own savage way, charm of Kriemhild's character, and the incomparable series of battles between the Burgundian princes and Etzel's men in the later cantos—cantos which contain the very best poetical fighting in the history of the world—far more than redeem this. The Nibelungen Lied is a very great poem; and with Beowulf (the oldest but the least interesting on the whole), Roland (the most artistically finished in form), and the poem of the Cid (the cheerfullest and perhaps the fullest of character), composes a quartette of epics with which the literary story of the great European literary nations most appropriately begins. In bulk, dramatic completeness, and a certain furia, the Nibelungen Lied, though the youngest and probably the least original is the greatest of the four."
Less need be said of the Nibelungen than of the Cid or Walter Map's work because it is much more familiar, and even ordinary readers of literature have been brought more closely in touch with it because of its relation to the Wagnerian operas. Even those who know the fine old German poems only passingly, will yet realize the supreme genius of their author, and those who need to have the opinions of distinguished critics to back them before they form an estimate for themselves, will not need to seek far in our modern literature to find lofty praises of the old German epic.
With even this brief treatment no reader will doubt that there is in these three epics, typical products of the literary spirit of three great European nations whose literatures rising high above these deep firm substructures, were to be of the greatest {181} influence in the development of the human mind, and yet were to remain practically always within the limits of thought and feeling that had been traced by these old founders of literature of the early Thirteenth Century, whose work, like that of their contemporaries in every other form of artistic expression, was to be the model and the source of inspiration for future generations.
CROZIER (OBVERSE AND REVERSE)
{182}
XI
MEISTERSINGERS, MINNESINGERS, TROUVÈRES, TROUBADOURS.
It would be a supreme mistake to think because the idea of literature in the Thirteenth Century is usually associated with the Arthur Legends, the Nibelungen and Dante, that all of the literary content of the century was inevitably serious in character or always epical in form. As a matter of fact the soul of wit and humor had entered into the body social, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, and the spirit of gaiety and the light-hearted admiration for nature found as frequent expression as at any time in history. With these as always in literary history there came outbursts of love in lyric strains that were not destined to die. While the poets of South Germany and of Italy sang of love that was of the loftiest description, never mingled with anything of the merely sensual, their tuneful trifles are quite as satisfying to the modern ear in both sense and sound as any of the more elaborate vers de societé of the modern times. The German poets particularly did not hesitate to emphasize the fact that sensuality had no part in Minne—their pretty term for love—and yet they sang with all the natural grace and fervid rapture of the Grecian poets of the old pagan times, worshiping at the shrines of fleshly goddesses, or singing to the frail beauties of an unmoral period. Nothing in the history of literature is better proof that ideal love can, unmixed with anything sensual, inspire lyric outbursts of supreme and enduring beauty, than the poems of the Minnesingers and of some of the French and Italian Troubadours of this period. It is easier to understand Dante's position in this matter after reading the poems of his predecessors in the Thirteenth Century.
For this feeling of the lofty character of the love they sang was not, in spite of what is sometimes said, confined only to the Germans, though as is well known from time immemorial the {183} Teutonic feeling towards woman was by racial influence of higher character than that of the southern Nations. As Mr. H. J. Chaytor says in the introduction to his Troubadours of Dante, there came a gradual change over the mind of the Troubadour about the beginning of the Thirteenth Century and "seeing that love was the inspiring force to good deeds," the later Troubadours gradually dissociated their love from the object which had aroused it. Among them, "as among the Minnesingers, love is no longer sexual passion, it is rather the motive to great works, to self-surrender, to the winning an honorable name as Courtier and Poet." Mr. Chaytor then quotes the well known lines from Bernart de Ventadorn, one of the Troubadours to whom Dante refers, and whose works Dante seems to have read with special attention since their poems contain similar errors of mythology.
"for indeed I know
Of no more subtle passion under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid.
Not only to keep down the base in man.
But teach high thought and amiable words.
And courtliness and the desire of fame.
And love of truth and all that makes a man."
A sentiment surely that will be considered as true now as it ever was, be the time the Thirteenth Century or earlier or later, and that represents the best solution of social problems that has ever been put forward—nature's own panacea for ills that other remedies at best only palliate.
In the early Nineteenth Century Carlyle said of this period what we may well repeat here:
"We shall suppose that this Literary Period is partially known to all readers. Let each recall whatever he has learned or figures regarding it; represent to himself that brave young heyday of Chivalry and Minstrelsy when a stern Barbarossa, a stern Lion-heart, sang sirventes, and with the hand that could wield the sword and sceptre twanged the melodious strings, when knights-errant tilted, and ladies' eyes rained bright influences; and suddenly, as at sunrise, the whole earth had grown {184} vocal and musical. Then truly was the time of singing come; for princes and prelates, emperors and squires, the wise and the simple, men, women and children, all sang and rhymed, or delighted in hearing it done. It was a universal noise of Song; as if the Spring of Manhood had arrived, and warblings from every spray, not, indeed, without infinite twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no music, were bidding it welcome."
This is the keynote of the Century—song, blithesome and gay as the birds, solemn and harmonious as the organ tones that accord so well with the great Latin hymns—everywhere song.
"Believers," says Tieck, the great collector of Thirteenth Century poetry, "sang of Faith; Lovers of Love; Knights described knightly actions and battles; and loving, believing knights were their chief audience. The Spring, Beauty, Gaiety, were objects that could never tire; great duels and deeds of arms carried away every hearer, the more surely the stronger they were painted; and as the pillars and dome of the Church encircled the flock, so did Religion, as the Highest, encircle Poetry and Reality; and every heart, in equal love, humbled itself before her."
The names of the Meistersingers are well-known to musical lovers at least, because of the music drama of that name and the famous war of the Wartburg. The most familiar of all of them is doubtless Walter von der Vogelweide who, when he was asked where he found the tuneful melodies for his songs, said that he learned them from the birds. Those who recall Longfellow's pretty ballad with regard to Walter and his leaving all his substance to feed the birds over his grave near Nuremberg's minster towers, will not find it surprising that this Meistersinger's poetry breathes the deepest love of Nature, and that there is in it a lyric quality of joy in the things of Nature that we are apt to think of as modern, until we find over and over again in these bards, that the spirit of the woods and of the fields and of the spring time, meant as much for them as for any follower of the Wordsworth school of poetry in the more conscious after-time. This from Walter with regard to the May will serve to illustrate very well this phase of his work.
{185}
Gentle May, thou showerest fairly
Gifts afar and near;
Clothest all the woods so rarely,
And the meadows here;
O'er the heath new colors glow;
Flowers and clover on the plain.
Merry rivals, strive amain
Which can fastest grow.
Lady! part me from my sadness.
Love me while 'tis May;
Mine is but a borrowed gladness
If thou frown alway;
Look around and smile anew!
All the world is glad and free;
Let a little joy from thee
Fall to my lot too!
Walter could be on occasion, however, as serious as any of the Meistersingers and is especially known for his religious poems. It is not surprising that any one who set woman on so high a pedestal as did Walter, should have written beautiful poems to the Blessed Virgin. He was the first, so it is said, to express the sentiment: "Woman, God bless her, by that name, for it is a far nobler name than lady." Occasionally he can be seriously didactic and he has not hesitated even to express some sentiments with regard to methods of education. Among other things he discusses the question as to whether children should be whipped or not in the process of education and curiously enough takes the very modern view that whipping is always a mistake. In this, of course, he disagrees with all the practical educators of his time, who considered the rod the most effective instrument for the education of children and strictly followed the scriptural injunction about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Walter's opinion is for that reason all the more interesting:
"Children with rod ruling—
'Tis the worst of schooling.
Who is honor made to know.
Him a word seems as a blow."
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The birds were always a favorite subject for poetic inspiration on the part of the Minnesingers. Bird music rapt poetic souls into ecstasies in which the passage of time was utterly unnoticed. It is from the Thirteenth Century that comes the beautiful legend with regard to the monk who, having wondered how time could be kept from dragging in Heaven, was permitted to listen to the song of a bird one day in the forest and when he awoke from his rapture and went back to his convent found that a hundred years had passed, that all of the monks of his acquaintance were dead, and while his name was found on the rolls of the monastery, after it there was a note that he had disappeared one day and had never been heard of afterwards. Almost in the same tenor as this is a pretty song from Dietmar von Eist, written at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, and which was a type of the charming songs that were to be so characteristic of the times:
There sat upon the linden-tree
A bird, and sung its strain;
So sweet it sung that as I heard
My heart went back again.
It went to one remember'd spot,
It saw the rose-tree grow.
And thought again the thoughts of love,
There cherished long ago.
A thousand years to me it seems
Since by my fair I sate;
Yet thus to be a stranger long
Is not my choice, but fate;
Since then I have not seen the flowers,
Nor heard the birds' sweet song;
My joys have all too briefly past.
My griefs been all too long.
Hartman von Aue was a contemporary of Walter's and is best known for his romantic stories. It is rather curiously interesting to find that one of the old chroniclers considers it a great mark of distinction that, though Hartman was a knight, he was able to read and write whatever he found written in {187} books. It must not be forgotten, however, that not all of these poets could read and write, and that indeed so distinguished a literary man as Wolfram von Eschenbach, the author of Percival, the story on which Wagner founded his opera of Parsifal, could neither read nor write. He had developed a very wonderful memory and was able to store faithfully his poems in the course of their composition so that he was above the need of pen and paper. Hartman is most famous for having written the story of Poor Henry, which Longfellow has chosen so effectively for his Golden Legend. Hartman's appreciation of women can be judged from the following lines, which accord her an equal share in her lord's glory because of her sufferings in prayer at home.
Glory be unto her whose word
Sends her dear lord to bitter fight;
Although he conquer by his sword.
She to the praise has equal right;
He with the sword in battle, she at home with prayer.
Both win the victory, and both the glory share.
Occasionally one finds, as we have said, among the little songs of the Minnesingers of the time such tuneful trifles as could be included very appropriately in a modern collection of vers de société, or as might even serve as a love message on a modern valentine or a Christmas card. The surprise of finding such things at such a time will justify the quotation of one of them from Brother Wernher, who owes his title of brother not to his membership in any religious order, very probably, but to the fact that he belonged to the brotherhood of the poets of the time.
Since creation I was thine;
Now forever thou art mine.
I have shut thee fast
In my heart at last.
I have dropped the key
In an unknown sea.
Forever must thou my prisoner be!
{188}
Wolfram von Eschenbach was the chief of a group of poets who at the close of the Twelfth and beginning of the Thirteenth centuries gathered about the Landgraf Hermann of Thuringen in his court on the Wartburg, at the foot of which lies Eisenach, in the present Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. They shaped tales of knightly adventure, blended with reflection, spiritual suggestion, and a grace of verse that represented the best culture of the court, and did not address itself immediately to the people. Wolfram was a younger son of one of the lower noble Bavarian families settled at Eschenbach, nine miles from Ausbach, in Middle Franconia. He had a poor little home of his own, Wildenberg, but went abroad to seek adventures as a knight, and tell adventures as a poet welcome to great lords, and most welcome to the lavish friend of poets, Hermann of Thuringen, at whose court on the Wartburg he remained twenty years, from 1195 to 1215, in which latter year his "Parzival" was finished. From some passages in his poem it may safely be inferred that he was happily married, and had children. The Landgraf Hermann died in 1216, and, was succeeded by Ludwig, husband of St. Elizabeth.
We cannot ascribe to English writers alone the spiritualizing of the Grail Legends, when there is Wolfram's "Parzival" drawing from the same cycle of myths a noble poem of the striving to bind earthly knighthood to the ever-living God. While Gawain, type of the earthly knight wins great praise in love and chivalry, Parzival—Percival—finds his way on from childhood up, through humble searchings of the spirit, till he is ruler in the kingdom of the soul, where he designs that Lohengrin, his eldest son, shall be his successor, while Kardeiss, his younger son, has rule over his earthly possessions.
How beautifully the Minnesingers could enter into the spirit of nature and at the same time how much the spirit of Spring has always been prone to appeal to poetic sensibilities may be judged from the following song of Conrad of Kirchberg, which is translated very closely and in the same meter as the original old high German poem. It is very evident that none of the spirit of Spring was lost on this poet of the olden time, nor on the other hand that any possibility of poetic expression was missed by him. There is a music in the lilt of the verselets, {189} eminently suggestive of the lyric effect that the new birth of things had on the poet himself and that he wished to convey to his readers. Of this, however, every one must judge for himself and so we give the poem as it may be found in Roscoe's edition of Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe.
May, sweet May, again is come;
May, that frees the land from gloom.
Up, then, children, we will go
Where the blooming roses grow.
In a joyful company
We the bursting flowers will see;
Up! your festal dress prepare!
Where gay hearts are meeting, there
May hath pleasures most inviting
Heart, and sight, and ear delighting:
Listen to the bird's sweet song.
Hark! how soft it floats along!
Courtly dames our pleasures share.
Never saw I May so fair;
Therefore, dancing will we go:
Youths rejoice, the flowrets blow;
Sing ye! join the chorus gay!
Hail this merry, merry May!
At least as beautiful in their tributes to their lady loves and their lyric descriptions of the beauties of Spring, were the Troubadours whose tuneful trifles, sometimes deserving of much more serious consideration than the application of such a term to them would seem to demand, have come down to us though the centuries. One of the best known of these is Arnaud de Marveil, who was born in very humble circumstances but who succeeded in raising himself by his poetic genius to be the companion of ruling princes and the friend of the high nobility. Among the provencals he has been called the great Master of Love, though this is a name which Petrarch reserves especially for Arnaud Daniel, while he calls Marveil the less famous of the Arnauds. An example of his work as the Poet of Love, that is typical of what is usually considered to have {190} been the favorite mode of the Troubadour poets runs as follows:
All I behold recalls the memory
Of her I love. The freshness of the hour
Th' enamell'd fields, the many coloured flower,
Speaking of her, move me to melody.
Had not the poets, with their courtly phrase,
Saluted many a fair of meaner worth,
I could not now have render'd thee the praise
So justly due, of "Fairest of the Earth."
To name thee thus had been to speak thy name,
And waken, o'er thy cheek, the blush of modest shame.
An example of the love of nature which characterizes some of Arnaud de Marveil's work will serve to show how thoroughly he entered into the spirit of the spring-time and how much all the sights and sounds of nature found an echo in his poetic spirit. The translation of this as of the preceding specimen from Arnaud is taken from the English edition of the Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe by Sismondi, and this translation we owe to Thomas Roscoe, the well known author of the life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who considering that Sismondi does not furnish enough of specimens of this Troubadour poet, inserts the following verses, for the translation of which he acknowledges himself indebted to the kindness of friends, a modest concealment doubtless of his own work:
Oh! how sweet the breeze of April,
Breathing soft as May draws near!
While, through nights of tranquil beauty,
Songs of gladness meet the ear:
Every bird his well-known language
Uttering in the morning's pride,
Revelling in joy and gladness
By his happy partner's side.
When, around me, all is smiling,
When to life the young birds spring,
Thoughts of love, I cannot hinder,
Come, my heart inspiriting—
Nature, habit, both incline me
In such joy to bear my part:
With such sounds of bliss around me
Could I wear a sadden'd heart?
{191}
His description of his lady love is another example of his worship of nature in a different strain, which serves to show that a lover's exaggeration of the qualities of his lady is not a modern development of la belle passion.
Fairer than the far-famed Helen,
Lovelier than the flow'rets gay.
Snow-white teeth, and lips truth-telling,
Heart as open as the day;
Golden hair, and fresh bright roses—
Heaven, who formed a thing so fair.
Knows that never yet another
Lived, who can with thee compare.
A single stanza from a love-song by Bertrand De Born will show better than any amount of critical appreciation how beautifully he can treat the more serious side of love. While the Troubadours are usually said to have sung their love strains in less serious vein than their German brother poets of the North, this has the ring of tenderness and truth about it and yet is not in these qualities very different from others of his songs that are well known. The translation we have chosen is that made by Roscoe who has rendered a number of the songs of the Troubadours into English verse that presents an excellent equivalent of the original. Bertrand is insisting with his lady-love that she must not listen to the rumors she may hear from others with regard to his faithfulness.
I cannot hide from thee how much I fear
The whispers breathed by flatterers in thine ear
Against my faith. But turn not, oh, I pray!
That heart so true, so faithful, so sincere.
So humble and so frank, to me so dear.
Oh, lady! turn it not from me away.
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At times one is surprised to find pretty tributes to nature even in the midst of songs that are devoted to war. The two things that were nearest the hearts of these Troubadour poets were war and their lady-loves, but the beauties of nature became mixed up not only with their love songs but also with their battle hymns, or at least with their ardent descriptions of military preparations and the glories of war. An excellent example of this is to be found in the following stanza written by William of Saint Gregory, a Troubadour who is best known for his songs of war rather than of tenderness.
The beautiful spring delights me well.
When flowers and leaves are growing;
And it pleases my heart to hear the swell
Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing
In the echoing wood;
And I love to see all scattered around
Pavilions and tents on martial ground;
And my spirit finds it good
To see on the level plains beyond
Gay knights and steeds caparison'd.
Occasionally the Troubadours indulge in religious poetry though usually not of a mystical or profoundly devotional character. Even the famous Peyrols, who is so well known for his love songs, sometimes wandered into religious poetry that was not unworthy to be placed beside his lyric effusions on other topics. Peyrols is best known perhaps for his lamentations over King Richard the Lion Heart's fate, for he had been with that monarch on the crusade, and like most of the Troubadours who went with the army, drank in deep admiration for the poetic king. After his visit to the Holy Land on this occasion one stanza of his song in memory of that visit runs as follows: [Footnote 19: Translated by Roscoe.]
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I have seen the Jordan river,
I have seen the holy grave.
Lord! to thee my thanks I render
For the joys thy goodness gave,
Showing to my raptured sight
The spot whereon thou saw'st the light.
Vessel good and favoring breezes,
Pilot, trusty, soon shall we
Once more see the towers of Marseilles
Rising o'er the briny sea.
Farewell, Acre, farewell, all.
Of Temple or of Hospital:
Now, alas! the world's decaying.
When shall we once more behold
Kings like lion-hearted Richard,
France's monarch, stout and bold?
TOWER OF SCALIGERS (VERONA)
{194}
XII
GREAT LATIN HYMNS AND CHURCH MUSIC.
One of the most precious bequests of the Thirteenth Century to all the succeeding centuries is undoubtedly the great Latin hymns. These sublime religious poems, comparable only to the Hebrew psalms for their wondrous expression of the awe and devotion of religious feeling, present the beginnings of rhymed poetry, yet they have been acclaimed by competent modern critics as among the greatest poems that ever came from the mind of man. They come to us from this period and were composed, most of them at least, during the Thirteenth Century itself, a few, shortly before it, though all of them received during this century the stamp of ecclesiastical and popular approval, which made them for many centuries afterward the principal medium of the expression of congregational devotion and the exemplar and incentive for vernacular poetry. It is from these latter standpoints that they deserve the attention of all students of literature quite apart from their significance as great expressions of the mind of these wondrous generations.
These Latin hymns have sometimes been spoken of with perhaps a certain degree of contempt as "rhymed Latin poetry," as if the use of rhyme in conjunction with Latin somehow lowered the dignity of the grand old tongue in which Cicero wrote his graceful periods and Horace sang his tuneful odes. As a matter of fact, far from detracting from the beauties of Latin expression, these hymns have added new laurels to the glory of the language and have shown the wonderful possibilities of the Roman speech in the hands of generations long after the classical period. If they served no other purpose than to demonstrate beyond cavil how profoundly the scholars of this generation succeeded in possessing themselves of the genius of the Latin language, they would serve to contradict the foolish critics who talk of the education of the period as superficial, or as negligent of everything but scholastic philosophy and theology.
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At least one distinguished philologist, Professor F. A. March, who has now for the better part of half a century occupied the chair of comparative philology at Lafayette College, does not hesitate to say that the Latin hymns represent an expression of the genius of the Latin people and language, more characteristic than the classical poetry even of the golden or silver ages. "These hymns," he says, "were the first original poetry of the people in the Latin language, unless perhaps those Latin critics may be right who think they find in Livy a prose rendering of earlier ballads. The so-called classic poetry was an echo of Greece, both in substance and in form. The matter and meters were both imitated and the poems were composed for the lovers of Grecian art in the Roman Court. It did not spring from the people, but the Christian hymns were proper folk poetry, the Bible of the people—their Homeric poems. Their making was not so much speech as action. They were in substance festive prayers, the simplest rhythmic offering of thanks and praise to the Giver of Light and of rest both natural and spiritual, at morning and evening and at other seasons, suited to the remembrance and rhythmical rehearsal of the truths of the Bible." Prof. March's opinion has been echoed by many another enthusiastic student of these wonderful hymns. It is only those who do not know them who fail to grow enthusiastic about them.
This of itself would stamp these great poems as worthy of careful study. There is, however, an additional reason for modern interest in them. These hymns were sung by the whole congregation at the many services that they attended in the medieval period. In this regard it seems well to recall, that it was the custom to go to church much oftener then than at present. Besides the Sundays there were many holy days of obligation, that is, religious festivals on which attendance at Church was obligatory, and in addition a certain number of days of devotion on which, because of special reverence for some particular saint, or in celebration of some event in the life of the Lord or his saints, the people of special parts of the country found themselves drawn to attendance on church services. It seems probable that instead of the sixty or so times a year that is now obligatory, people went to Church during the Thirteenth {196} Century more than a hundred times in the year. Twice a week then, at least, there was the uplifting cultural influence of this congregational singing of wonderful hymns that are among the greatest poems ever written and that belong to literature of the very highest order. The educational value of such intimate contact with what is best in literary expression could scarcely fail to have a distinct effect upon the people. It is idle to say that the hymns being in Latin they were not understood, since the language of them was close akin to the spoken tongues, the subjects were eminently familiar mysteries of religion and constant repetition and frequent explanation must have led to a very general comprehension even by the least educated classes. For anyone with any pretension to education they must have been easy to understand, since Latin was practically a universal language.
It is not always realized by the students whose interests have been mainly confined to modern literature, in what estimation these Latin hymns have been held by those who are in the best position to be able to judge critically of their value as poetry. Take for example the Dies Irae, confessedly the greatest of them, and it will be found that many of the great poets and literary men of the Nineteenth Century have counted it among their favorite poems. Such men as Goethe, Friedrich and August Schlegel, Scott, Milman and Archbishop Trench were enthusiastic in its praise. While such geniuses as Dryden, Johnson and Jeremy Taylor, and the musicians Mozart and Hayden, avowed supreme admiration for it. Herder, Fichte and August Schlegel besides Crashaw, Drummond, Roscommon, Trench and Macaulay gave the proof of their appreciation of the great Thirteenth Century hymn by devoting themselves to making translations of it, and Goethe's use of it in Faust and Scott's in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, show how much poets, whose sympathies were not involved in its religious aspects, were caught by its literary and esthetic merit.
In very recent times the Latin hymns have been coming more to their own again and such distinguished critics as Prof. Henry Morley, and Prof. George Saintsbury, have not hesitated to express their critical appreciation of these hymns as great {197} literature. Prof. Saintsbury says in his volume of the Thirteenth Century literature: [Footnote 20]
[Footnote 20: The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory, Volume II. of Periods of European Literature, Edited by George Saintsbury, New York, Scribners, 1899.]
{opp197}
ST. FRANCIS PROPHESIES THE DEATH OF CELANO (GIOTTO, UPPER CH., ASSISI)
"It will be more convenient to postpone to a later chapter of this volume a consideration of the exact way in which Latin sacred poetry affected the prosody of the vernacular; but it is well here to point out that almost all the finest and most famous examples of the medieval hymns, with perhaps the sole exception of the Veni Sancte Spiritus, date from the Twelfth and Thirteenth centuries. Ours (that is, from this period) are the stately rhythms of Adam of St. Victor, and the softer ones of St. Bernard the Greater. It was at this time that Jacopone da Todi, in the intervals of his eccentric vernacular exercises, was inspired to write the Stabat Mater. From this time comes that glorious descant of Bernard of Morlaix, in which, the more its famous and very elegant English paraphrase is read beside it (Jerusalem the Golden), the more does the greatness and the beauty of the original appear.
"And from this time comes the greatest of all hymns, and one of the greatest of all poems, the Dies Irae. There have been attempts—more than one of them—to make out that the Dies Irae is no such wonderful thing after all; attempts which are, perhaps, the extreme examples of that cheap and despicable paradox which thinks to escape the charge of blind docility by the affectation of heterodox independence. The judgment of the greatest (and not always of the most pious) men of letters of modern times may confirm those who are uncomfortable without authority in a different opinion. Fortunately there is not likely ever to be lack of those who, authority or no authority, in youth and in age, after much reading or without much, in all time of their tribulation and in all time of their wealth, will hold these wonderful triplets, be they Thomas of Celano's or another's, as nearly or quite the most perfect wedding of sound to sense that they know."
This seems almost the limit of praise but Prof. Saintsbury can say even more than this: "It would be possible, indeed, to {198} illustrate a complete dissertation on the methods of expression in serious poetry from the fifty-one lines of the Dies Irae. Rhyme, alliteration, cadence, and adjustment of vowel and consonant values—all these things receive perfect expression in it, or, at least, in the first thirteen stanzas, for the last four are a little inferior. It is quite astonishing to reflect upon the careful art or the felicitous accident of such a line as:
Tuba mirum spargens sonum,
with the thud of the trochee falling in each instance in a different vowel; and still more on the continuous sequence of five stanzas, from Judex ergo to non sit cassus, in which not a word could be displaced or replaced by another without loss. The climax of verbal harmony, corresponding to and expressing religious passion and religious awe, is reached in the last—
Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus!
where the sudden change from the dominant e sounds (except in the rhyme foot) of the first two lines to the a's of the last is simply miraculous and miraculously assisted by what may be called the internal sub-rhyme of sedisti and redemisti. This latter effect can rarely be attempted without a jingle: there is no jingle here, only an ineffable melody. After the Dies Irae, no poet could say that any effect of poetry was, as far as sound goes, unattainable, though few could have hoped to equal it, and perhaps no one except Dante and Shakespeare has fully done so."
Higher praise than this could scarcely be given and it comes from an acknowledged authority, whose interests are moreover in secular rather than religious literature, and whose enthusiastic praise is therefore all the more striking. Here in America, Schaff, whose critical judgment in religious literature is unquestionable and whose sympathies with the old church and her hymns were not as deep as if he had been a Roman Catholic, has been quite as unstinted in laudation.
"This marvelous hymn is the acknowledged masterpiece of Latin poetry, and the most sublime of all uninspired hymns. {199} … The secret of its irresistible power lies in the awful grandeur of the theme, the intense earnestness and pathos of the poet, the simple majesty and solemn music of its language, the stately meter, the triple rhyme, and the vowel assonances, chosen in striking adaptation to the sense—all combining to produce an overwhelming effect, as if we heard the final crash of the universe, the commotion of the opening graves, the trumpet of the archangel summoning the quick and the dead, and saw the 'king of tremendous majesty' seated on the throne of justice and of mercy, and ready to dispense everlasting life and everlasting woe."
Neale says of Thomas Aquinas' great hymn the Pange Lingua: "This hymn contests the second place among those of the Western Church, with the 'Vexilla Regis,' the 'Stabat Mater,' the 'Jesu Dulcis Memoria,' the 'Ad Regias Agni Dapes,' the 'Ad Supernam,' and one or two others, leaving the 'Dies Irae' in its unapproachable glory," thus furnishing another supreme testimony to the hymn we have been discussing, which indeed only needs to be read to be appreciated, since it will inevitably tempt to successive readings and these bring with them ever and ever increasing admiration, showing in this more than in any other way that it is a work of sublime genius.
With regard to rhyme particularly the triumph of art and the influence of the Latin hymns is undoubted. This latest beauty of poetry reached its perfection of expression in the Latin hymns. It is rather curious to trace its gradual development. It constitutes the only feature of literature which apparently did not come to us from the East. The earlier specimens of poetry of which we know anything among the Oriental nations other than the Hebrews, are beautiful examples of the possibilities of rhythm and the beginnings of meter. As poetry goes westward meter becomes as important as rhythm in poetry and these two qualities differentiated it from prose. Both of these literary modes, however, are eastern in origin. Rhyme comes from the distant West and seems to have originated in the alliteration invented by the Celtic bards. The vowel assonance was after a time completed by the addition of consonantal assonance and then the invention of rhyme was completed. The first fully rhymed hymns seem to have been written by the {200} Irish monks and carried over to the Continent by them on their Christianizing expeditions, after the irruption of the barbarians had obliterated the civilization of Europe. During the Tenth and Eleventh centuries rhyme developed mainly in connection with ecclesiastical poetry. During the Twelfth and Thirteenth centuries it reached an acme of evolution which has never been surpassed during all the succeeding generations.
It must not be thought that, because so much attention is given to the Dies Irae, this constitutes the only supremely great hymn of the Thirteenth Century. There are at least five or six others that well deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. One of them, the famous Stabat Mater of Jacopone da Todi, has been considered by some critics as quite as beautiful as the Dies Irae in poetic expression, though below it as poetry because of the lesser sublimity of its subject. Certainly no more marvelously poetic expression of all that is saddest in human sorrow has ever been put into words, than that which is to be found in these stanzas of the Franciscan Monk who had himself known all the depths of human sorrow and trial. Most people know the opening stanzas of it well enough to scarce need their presentation and yet it is from the poem itself, and not from any critical appreciation of it, that its greatness must be judged.
{opp200}
VIRGIN AND CHILD (PISA, CAMPO SANTO, GIOV. PISANO)
Stabat mater dolorosa
Juxta crucem lacrymosa,
Dum pendebat filius,
Cuius animan gementem,
Contristantem at dolentem
Pertransivit gladius.
O quam tristis et afflicta
Fuit illa benedicta
Mater unigeniti.
Quae moerebat et dolebat
Et tremebat, dum videbat
Nati poenas inclyti.
Quis est homo, qui non fleret,
Matrem Christi si videret,
In tanto supplicio?
Quis non posset contristari,
Piam matrem contemplari
Dolentem cum filio!
{201}
As in the case of the Dies Irae there have been many translations of the Stabat Mater, most of them done by poets whose hearts were in their work and who were accomplishing their purpose as labors of love. While we realize how many beautiful translations there are, it is almost pitiful to think what poor English versions are sometimes used in the devotional exercises of the present day. One of the most beautiful translations is undoubtedly that by Denis Florence MacCarthy, who has been hailed as probably the best translator into English of foreign poetry that our generation has known, and whose translations of Calderon present the greatest of Spanish poets, in a dress as worthy of the original as it is possible for a poet to have in a foreign tongue. MacCarthy has succeeded in following the intricate rhyme plan of the Stabat with a perfection that would be deemed almost impossible in our harsher English, which does not readily yield itself to double rhymes and which permits frequency of rhyme as a rule only at the sacrifice of vigor of expression. The first three stanzas, however, of the Stabat Mater will serve to show how well MacCarthy accomplished his difficult task:
By the cross, on which suspended.
With his bleeding hands extended,
Hung that Son she so adored,
Stood the mournful Mother weeping.
She whose heart, its silence keeping.
Grief had cleft as with a sword.
O, that Mother's sad affliction—
Mother of all benediction—
Of the sole-begotten One;
Oh, the grieving, sense-bereaving,
Of her heaving breast, perceiving
The dread sufferings of her Son.
What man is there so unfeeling.
Who, his heart to pity steeling.
Could behold that sight unmoved?
Could Christ's Mother see there weeping,
See the pious Mother keeping
Vigil by the Son she loved?
{202}
A very beautiful translation in the meter of the original was also made by the distinguished Irish poet, Aubrey de Vere. The last two stanzas of this translation have been considered as perhaps the most charmingly effective equivalent in English for Jacopone's wonderfully devotional termination that has ever been written.
May his wounds both wound and heal me;
His blood enkindle, cleanse, anneal me;
Be his cross my hope and stay:
Virgin, when the mountains quiver,
From that flame which burns for ever,
Shield me on the judgment-day.
Christ, when he that shaped me calls me,
When advancing death appalls me.
Through her prayer the storm make calm:
When to dust my dust returneth
Save a soul to thee that yearneth;
Grant it thou the crown and palm.
Even distinguished professors of philosophy and theology occasionally indulged themselves in the privilege of writing these Latin hymns and, what is more surprising, succeeded in making poetry of a very high order. At least two of the most distinguished professors in these branches at the University of Paris in the latter half of the Thirteenth Century, must be acknowledged as having written hymns that are confessedly immortal, not because of any canonical usage that keeps them alive, but because they express in very different ways, in wondrously beautiful language some of the sublimest religious thoughts of their time. These two are St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan, and St. Thomas of Aquin, the Dominican. St. Bonaventure's hymns on the Passion and Cross of Christ represent what has been most beautifully sung on these subjects in all the ages. St. Thomas' poetic work centers around the Blessed Sacrament in whose honor he was so ardent and so devoted {203} that the composition of the office for its feast was confided to him by the Pope. The hymns he wrote, far from being the series of prosy theological formulas that might have been expected perhaps under such circumstances, are great contributions to a form of literature which contains more gems of purest ray in its collection than almost any other. St. Thomas' poetic jewels shine with no borrowed radiance, and their effulgence is not cast into shadow even by the greatest of their companion pieces among the Latin hymns of a wonderfully productive century. Neale's tribute to one of them has already been quoted in an earlier part of this chapter.
It has indeed been considered almost miraculous, that this profoundest of thinkers should have been able to attain within the bounds of rhyme and rhythm, the accurate expression of some of the most intricate theological thoughts that have ever been expressed, and yet should have accomplished his purpose with a clarity of language, a simplicity and directness of words, a poetic sympathy of feeling, and an utter devotion, that make his hymns great literature in the best sense of the word. One of them at least, the Pange Lingua Gloriosi, has been in constant use in the church ever since his time, and its two last stanzas beginning with Tantum Ergo Sacramentum, are perhaps the most familiar of all the Latin hymns. Few of those most familiar with it realize its place in literature, the greatness of its author, or its own marvelous poetic merits.
It must not be forgotten that at the very time when these hymns were most popular the modern languages were just assuming shape. Even at the end of the Thirteenth Century none of them had reached anything like the form that it was to continue to hold, except perhaps the Italian and to some extent the Spanish. When Dante wrote his Divine Comedy at the beginning of the Fourteenth Century, he was tempted to use the Latin language, the common language of all the scholars of his day, and the language ordinarily used for any ambitious literary project for nearly a century later. It will not be forgotten that when Petrarch in the Fourteenth Century wrote his epic, Africa, on which he expected his fame as a poet to rest, he preferred to use the Latin language. Fortunately Dante was large enough of mind to realize, that the vulgar {204} tongue of the Italians would prove the best instrument for the expression of the thoughts he wished to communicate, and so he cast the Italian language into the mold in which it has practically ever since remained.
His very hesitation, however, shows how incomplete as yet were these modern languages considered by the scholars who used them. It was at this very formative period, however, that the people on whose use of the nascent modern languages their future character depended, were having dinned into their ears in the numerous church services, the great Latin hymns with their wonderful finish of expression. Undoubtedly one of the most effective factors of whatever of sweetness there is in the modern tongues, must be attributed to this influence exerted all unconsciously upon the minds of the people. The rhythm and the expressiveness of these magnificent poems could scarcely fail to stamp itself to some degree upon the language, crude though it might be, of the people who had become so familiar with them. It is, then, to no small extent because of the influence of these Latin hymns that our modern languages possess a rhythmic melodiousness that in time enabled them to become the instruments for poetic diction in such a way as to satisfy all the requirements of the modern ear in rhyme, and rhythm, and meter. A striking corresponding effect upon the exactness of expression in the modern languages, it will be noticed, is pointed out in the chapter on the Prose of the Century as representing, according to Professor Saintsbury, the greatest benefit that was derived from the exaggerated practise of dialectic disputation in the curriculum of the medieval Universities.
Those who would think that the Thirteenth Century was happy in creative genius but lacking in the critical faculty that would enable it to select the best, not only of the hymns presented by its own generations but also of those which came from the preceding centuries, should make themselves acquainted with the history of these Latin hymns. Just before the Thirteenth Century the monks of the famous Abbey of St. Victor took up the writing of hymns with wonderful success and two of them, Adam and Hugh, became not only the favorites of their own but of succeeding generations. The Thirteenth {205} Century received the work of these men and gave them a vogue which has continued down to our own time. Some of the hymns that were thus acclaimed and made popular are among the greatest contributions to this form of literature, and while they have had periods of eclipse owing to bad taste in the times that followed, the reputation secured during the Thirteenth Century has always been sufficient to recall them to memory and bring men again to a realization of their beauty when a more esthetic generation came into existence.
One of the hymns of the immediately preceding time, which attained great popularity during the Thirteenth Century—a popularity that reflects credit on those among whom it is noted as well as upon the great hymn itself—was Bernard of Cluny's or Bernard of Morlaix's hymn, concerning the contempt of the world, many of the ideas of which were to be used freely in the book bearing this title written by the first Pope of the century, Innocent III, whose name is usually, though gratuitously associated with quite other ideas than those of contempt for worldly grandeur. The description of the New Jerusalem to come, which is found at the beginning of this great poem, is the basis of all the modern religious poems on this subject. Few hymns have been more praised. Schaff, in his Christ in Song says: "This glowing description is the sweetest of all the new Jerusalem Hymns of Heavenly Homesickness which have taken their inspiration from the last two chapters of Revelation." The extreme difficulty of the meter which its author selected and which would seem almost to preclude the possibility of expressing great connected thought, especially in so long a poem, became under the master hand of this poetic genius, whose command of the Latin language is unrivaled, the source of new beauties for his poem. Besides maintaining the meter of the old Latin hexameters he added double rhymes in each line and yet had every alternate line also end in a rhyme. To appreciate the difficulty this must be read.
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Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus,
Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus
Imminet, imminet ut mala terminet, aequa coronet.
Recta remuneret, anxia liberet, aethera donet,
Auferat aspera duraque pondera mentis onustae,
Sobria muniat, improba puniat, utraque juste.
Hic breve vivitur, hic breve plangitur, hic breve fletur;
Non breve vivere, non breve plangere retribuetur;
O retributio! stat brevis actio, vita perennis;
O retributio! coelica mansio stat lue plenis;
Quid datur et quibus? aether egentibus et cruce dignis,
Sidera vermibus, optima sontibus, astra malignis.
There are many versions, but few translators have dared to attempt a close imitation of the original meter. Its beauty is so great, however, that even the labor required for this has not deterred some enthusiastic admirers. Our English tongue, however, does not lend itself readily to the production of hexameters, though in these lines the rhyme and rhythm has been caught to some extent:
"These are the latter times, these are not better times;
Let us stand waiting;
Lo! how with, awfulness, He, first in lawfulness,
Comes arbitrating."
Even from this it may be realized that Doctor Neale is justified in his enthusiastic opinion that "it is the most lovely, in the same way that the Dies Irae is the most sublime, and the Stabat Mater the most pathetic, of medieval poems."
While it scarcely has a place here properly, a word must be said with regard to the music of the Thirteenth Century. It might possibly be thought that these wondrous rhymes had been spoiled in their effectiveness by the crude music to which they were set. To harbor any such notion, however, would only be another exhibition of that intellectual snobbery which concludes that generations so distant could not have anything worth the consideration of our more developed time. The music of the Thirteenth Century is as great a triumph as any other feature of its accomplishment. It would be clearly absurd to suppose, that the people who created the Cathedrals and made every element associated with the church ceremonial so beautiful as to attract the attention of all generations since, could have failed to develop a music suitable to these {207} magnificent fanes. As a matter of fact no more suitable music for congregational singing than the Gregorian Chant, which reached the acme of its development in the Thirteenth Century, has been invented, and the fact that the Catholic Church, after having tried modern music, is now going back to this medieval musical mode for devotional expression, is only a further noteworthy tribute to the enduring character of another phase of Thirteenth Century accomplishment.
Rockstro, who wrote the article on Plain Chant for Grove's Dictionary of Music and for the Encyclopedia Britannica, declared that no more wonderful succession of single notes, had even been strung into melodies so harmoniously adapted to the expression of the words with which they were to be sung, than some of these Plain Chants of the Middle Ages and especially of the Thirteenth Century. No more sublimely beautiful musical expression of all the depths there are in sadness has ever found its way into music, than what is so simply expressed in the Lamentations as they are sung in the office called Tenebrae during Holy Week. Even more beautiful in its joyousness is the marvelous melody of the Exultet which is sung in the Office of Holy Saturday. This latter is said to be the sublimest expression of joyful sound that has ever come from the human heart and mind. In a word, in music as in every other artistic department, the men of the Thirteenth Century reached a standard that has never been excelled and that remains to the present day as a source of pleasure and admiration for intellectual men, and will continue to be so for numberless generations yet unborn.
Nor must it be thought that the Thirteenth Century men and women were satisfied with Church music alone. About the middle of the century part singing came into use in the churches at the less formal ceremonials, and soon spread to secular uses. As the Mystery Plays gave rise to the modern drama, so church music gave birth to the popular music of the time. In England, particularly, about the middle of the century, various glee songs were sung, portions of which have come down to us, and a great movement of folk music was begun. Before the end of the century the interaction of church and secular music had given rise to many of the modes of modern musical {208} development, and the musical movement was as substantially begun as were any of the other great artistic and intellectual movements which this century so marvelously initiated. This subject, of course, is of the kind that needs to be studied in special works if any satisfactory amount of information is to be obtained, but even the passing hint of it which we have been able to give will enable the reader to realize the important place of the Thirteenth Century in the development of modern music.
ENTOMBMENT OF BLESSED VIRGIN (NOTRE DAME, PARIS)
{209}
XIII
THREE MOST READ BOOKS OF THE CENTURY.
Three books were more read than any others during the Thirteenth Century, that is, of course, apart from Holy Scriptures, which contrary to the usually accepted notion in this matter, were frequently the subject of study and of almost daily contact in one way or another by all classes of people. These three books were, Reynard the Fox, that is the series of stories of the animals in which they are used as a cloak for a satire upon man and his ways, called often the Animal Epic; the Golden Legend, which impressed Longfellow so much that he spent many years making what he hoped might prove for the modern world a bit of the self-revelation that this wonderful old medieval book has been for its own and subsequent generations; and, finally, the Romance of the Rose, probably the most read book during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth and most of the Fifteenth centuries in all the countries of Europe. Its popularity can be well appreciated from the fact that, though Chaucer was much read, there are more than three times as many manuscript copies of The Romance of the Rose in existence as of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and it was one of the earliest books to see the light in print. [Footnote 21]
[Footnote 21: It was a favorite occupation some few years ago to pick out what were considered the ten best books. Sir John Lubbock first suggested, that it would be an interesting thing to pick out the ten books which, if one were to be confined for life, should be thought the most likely to be of enduring interest. If this favorite game were to be played with the selection limited to the authors of a single century, it is reasonably sure that most educated people would pick out the thirteenth century group of ten for their exclusive reading for the rest of life, rather than any other. An experimental list of ten books selected from the thirteenth century writers would include the Cid, the Legends of King Arthur, the Nibelungen Lied, the Romance of the Rose, Reynard the Fox, the Golden Legend, the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, Parsifal or Perceval by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Durandus's Symbolism and Dante. As will readily be appreciated by anyone who knows literature well, these are eminently books of enduring interest. When it is considered that in making this list no call is made upon Icelandic Literature nor Provençal Literature, both of which are of supreme interest, and both reached their maturity at this time, the abounding literary wealth of the century will be understood.]
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It has become the fashion in recent years, to take the pains from time to time to find out which are the most read books. The criterion of worth thus set up is not very valuable, for unfortunately for the increase in readers, there has not come a corresponding demand for the best books nor for solid literature. The fact that a book has been the best seller, or the most read for a time, usually stamps it at once as trivial or at most as being of quite momentary interest and not at all likely to endure. It is all the more interesting to find then, that these three most read books of the Thirteenth Century, have not only more than merely academic interest at the present time, but that they are literature in the best sense of the word. They have always been not only a means of helping people to pass the time, the sad office to which the generality of books has been reduced in our time, but a source of inspiration for literary men in many generations since they first became popular. The story of Reynard the Fox is one of the most profoundly humorous books that was ever written. Its satire was aimed at its own time yet it is never for a moment antiquated for the modern reader. At a time when, owing to the imperfect development of personal rights, it would have been extremely dangerous to satirize as the author does very freely, the rulers, the judges, the nobility, the ecclesiastical authorities and churchmen, and practically all classes of society, the writer, whose name has, unfortunately for the completeness of literary history, not come down to us, succeeded in painting all the foibles of men and pointing out all the differences there are between men's pretensions and their actual accomplishments. All the methods by which the cunning scoundrel could escape justice are exploited. The various modes of escaping punishment by direct and indirect bribery, by pretended repentance and reformation, by cunning appeal to the selfishness of judges, are revealed with the fidelity to detail of a modern muckraker; yet, all of it with a humanly humorous quality which, while it takes away nothing from the completeness of the exposure, removes most of the bitterness that probably would have made the satire fail of its purpose. While every class in the community of the time comes in for satirical allusions, that give us a better idea of how closely the men and the women {211} of the time resembled those of our own, than is to be found in any other single literary work that has been preserved for us from this century, or, indeed, any other, the series of stories seemed to be scarcely more than a collection of fables for children, and probably was read quite unsuspectingly by those who are so unmercifully satirized in it, though doubtless, as is usually noted in such cases, each one may have applied the satire of the story as he saw it to his neighbor and not to himself.
A recent editor has said very well of Reynard the Fox that it is one of the most universal of books in its interest for all classes. Critics have at all times been ready to praise and few if any have found fault. It is one of the books that answers well to what Cardinal Newman declared to be at least the accidental definition of a classic; it pleases in childhood, in youth, in middle age and even in declining years. It is because of the eternal verity of the humanity in the book, that with so much truth Froude writing of Reynard can say: "It is not addressed to a passing mode of folly or of profligacy, but it touches the perennial nature of mankind, laying bare our own sympathies, and tastes, and weaknesses, with as keen and true an edge as when the living world of the old Suabian poet winced under its earliest utterance."
The writer who traced the portraits must be counted one of the great observers of all time. As is the case with so many creative artists of the Thirteenth Century, though this is truer elsewhere than in literature, the author is not known. Perhaps he thought it safer to shroud his identity in friendly obscurity, rather than expose himself to the risks the finding of supposed keys to his satire might occasion. Too much credit must not be given to this explanation, however, though some writers have made material out of it to exploit Church intolerance, which the conditions do not justify. We are not sure who wrote the Arthur Legends, we do not know the author of the Cid, even all-pervasive German scholarship has not settled the problem of the writer of the Nibelungen, and the authorship of the Dies Irae is in doubt, though all of these would be sources of honor and praise rather than danger. Authors had evidently not as yet become sophisticated to the extent of {212} seeking immortality for their works. They even seem to have been indifferent as to whether their names were associated with them or not. Enough for them apparently to have had the satisfaction of doing, all else seemed futile.
The original of Reynard the Fox was probably written in the Netherlands, though it may be somewhat difficult for the modern mind to associate so much of wit and humor with the Dutchmen of the Middle Ages. It arose there about the time that the Cid came into vogue in Spain, the Arthur Legends were being put into shape in England, and the Nibelungen reaching its ultimate form in Germany. Reynard thus fills up the geographical chart of contemporary literary effort for the Thirteenth Century, since France and Italy come in for their share in other forms of literature, and no country is missing from the story of successful, enduring accomplishment in letters. It was written from so close to the heart of Nature, that it makes a most interesting gift book even for the Twentieth Century child, and yet will be read with probably even more pleasure by the parents. With good reason another recent editor has thus summed up the catholicity of its appeal to all generations:
"This book belongs to the rare class which is equally delightful to children and to their elders. In this regard it may be compared to 'Gulliver's Travels,' 'Don Quixote' and 'Pilgrim's Progress.' For wit and shrewd satire and for pure drollery both in situations and descriptions, it is unsurpassed. The animals are not men dressed up in the skin of beasts, but are throughout true to their characters, and are not only strongly realized but consistently drawn, albeit in so simple and captivating a way that the subtle art of the narrator is quite hidden, and one is aware only of reading an absorbingly interesting and witty tale." To have a place beside Gulliver, the old Spanish Knight and Christian, shows the estimation in which the book is held by those who are best acquainted with it.
The work is probably best known through the version of it which has come to us from the greatest of German poets, Goethe, whose Reineke Fuchs has perhaps had more sympathetic readers and a wider audience than any other of Goethe's {213} works. The very fact that so deeply intellectual a literary man should have considered it worth his while to devote his time to making a modern version of it, shows not only the estimation in which he held it, but also affords excellent testimony to its worth as literature, for Goethe, unlike most poets, was a fine literary critic, and one who above all knew the reasons for the esthetic faith that was in him. Animal stories in every age, however, have been imitations of it much more than is usually imagined. While the author probably obtained the hint for his work from some of the old-time fables as they came to him by tradition, though we have no reason to think that AEsop was familiar to him and many for thinking the Greek fabulist was not, he added so much to this simple literary mode, transformed it so thoroughly from child's literature to world literature, that the main merit of modern animal stories must be attributed to him. Uncle Remus and the many compilations of this kind that have been popular in our own generation, owe much more to the animal Epic than might be thought possible by one not familiar with the original Thirteenth Century work.
Every language has a translation of the Animal Epic and most of the generations since have been interested and amused by the quaint conceits, which enable the author to picture so undisguisedly, men and women under animal garb. It discloses better than any other specimen of the literature of the time that men and women do not change even in the course of centuries, and that in the heart of the Middle Ages a wise observer could see the foibles of humanity just as they exist at the present time. Any one who thinks that evolution after seven centuries should have changed men somewhat in their ethical aspects, at least, made their aspirations higher and their tendencies less commonplace, not to say less degenerative, should read one of the old versions of Reynard the Fox and be convinced that men and women in the Thirteenth Century were quite the same as we are familiar with them at the present moment.
The second of the most read books of the century is the famous Legenda Aurea or, as it has been called in English, the Golden Legend, written by Jacobus de Voragine, the distinguished Dominican preacher and writer (born during the first half of the Thirteenth Century, died just at its close), who, {214} after rising to the higher grades in his own order, became the Archbishop of Genoa. His work at once sprang into popular favor and continued to be perhaps the most widely read book, with the exception of the Holy Scriptures, during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries. It was one of the earliest books printed in Italy, the first edition appearing about 1570, and it is evident that it was considered that its widespread popularity would not only reimburse the publisher, but would help the nascent art of printing by bringing it to the attention of a great many people. Its subject is very different from that of the modern most read books; librarians do not often have to supply lives of Saints nowadays, though some similarities of material with that of books now much in demand help to account for its vogue.
Jacobus de Voragine's work consisted of the lives of the greater Saints of the Church since the time of Christ, and detailed especially the wonderful things that happened in their lives, some of which of course were mythical and all of them containing marvelous stories. This gave prominence to many legends that have continued to maintain their hold upon the popular imagination ever since. With all this adventitious interest, however, the book contained a solid fund of information with regard to the lives of the Saints, and besides it taught the precious lessons of unselfishness and the care for others of the men who had come to be greeted by the title of Saint. The work must have done not a little to stir up the faith, enliven the charity, and build up the characters of the people of the time, and certainly has fewer objections than most popular reading at any period of the world's history. For young folks the wonderful legends afforded excellent and absolutely innocuous exercise of the functions of the imagination quite as well as our own modern wonder books or fairy tales, while the stories themselves presented many descriptive portions out of which subjects for decorative purposes could readily be obtained. It must be set down as another typical distinction of the Thirteenth Century and an addition to its greatness, that it should have made the Golden Legend popular and thus preserved it for future generations, who became {215} deeply interested in it, as in most of the other precious heritages they received from this great original century.
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MADONNA AND CHILD (GIOV. PISANO, PADUA)
ST. CHRISTOPHER (ALTO RELIEVO, VENICE)
The third of the most read books of the century, The Romance of the Rose, is not so well known except by scholars as is the Animal Epic or perhaps even the Golden Legend. Anyone who wants to understand the burden of the time, however, and who wishes to put himself in the mood and the tense to comprehend not only the other literature of the era, and in this must be included even Dante, but also the social, educational, and even scientific movements of the period, must become familiar with it. It has been well said that a knowledge and study of the three most read books of the century, those which we have named, will afford a far clearer insight into the daily life and the spirit working within the people for whom they were written, than the annals of the wars or political struggles that were waged during the same period between kings and nobles. For this clearer insight a knowledge of the Romance of the Rose is more important than of the others. It provides a better introduction to the customs and habits, the manners of thought and of action, the literary and educational interests of the people of the Thirteenth Century, than any mere history, however detailed, could. In this respect it resembles Homer who, as Froude declares, has given us a better idea of Greek life than a whole encyclopedia of classified information would have done. The intimate life stories of no other periods in history are so well illustrated, nor so readily to be comprehended, as those of Homer and the authors of the medieval Romaunt.
The Romance of the Rose continued to be for more than two centuries the most read book in Europe. Every one with any pretense to scholarship or to literary taste in any European country considered it necessary to be familiar with it, and without exaggeration what Lowell once declared with regard to Don Quixote, that it would be considered a mark of lack of culture to miss a reference to it in any country in Europe, might well have been repeated during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries of the Romance of the Rose. It has in recent years been put into very suitable English dress by Mr. F. S. Ellis and published among the Temple Classics, thus placing it {216} within easy reach of English readers. Mr. Ellis must certainly be considered a suitable judge of the interest there is in the work. He spent several years in translating its two and twenty thousand six hundred and eight lines and yet considers that few books deserve as much attention as this typical Thirteenth Century allegory. He says:
"The charge of dulness once made against this highly imaginative and brilliant book, successive English writers, until quite recent times have been content to accept the verdict, though Professor Morley and others have of late ably repelled the charge. If further testimony were necessary as to the falsity of the accusation, and the opinion of one who has found a grateful pastime in translating it might be considered of any weight, he would not hesitate to traverse the attribution of dulness, and to assert that it is a poem of extreme interest, written as to the first part with delicate fancy, sweet appreciation of natural beauty, clear insight, and skilful invention, while J. de Meun's continuation is distinguished by vigor, brilliant invention, and close observation of human nature. The Thirteenth Century lives before us."
The Rose is written on a lofty plane of literary value, and the fact that it was so popular, speaks well for the taste of the times and for the enthusiasm of the people for the more serious forms of literature. Not that the Romance of the Rose is a very serious book itself, but if we compare it with the popular publications which barely touch the realities of life in the modern time, it will seem eminently serious. In spite of the years that have elapsed since its original publication it has not lost all its interest, even for a casual reader, and especially for one whose principal study is mankind in its varying environment down the ages, for it presents a very interesting picture of men and their ways in this wonderful century. Here, as in the stories of Reynard the Fox, one is brought face to face with the fact that men and women have not changed and that the peccadillos of our own generation have their history in the Middle Ages also. Take, for instance, the question of the too great love of money which is now the subject of so much writing and sermonizing. One might think that at least this was {217} modern. Here, however, is what the author of the Romance of the Rose has to say about it:
Three cruel vengeances pursue
These miserable wretches who
Hoard up their worthless wealth: great toil
Is theirs to win it; then their spoil
They fear to lose; and lastly, grieve
Most bitterly that they must leave
Their hoards behind them. Cursed they die
Who living, lived but wretchedly;
For no man, if he lack of love.
Hath peace below or joy above.
If those who heap up wealth would show
Fair love to others, they would go
Through life beloved, and thus would reign
Sweet happy days. If they were fain,
Who hold so much of good to shower around
Their bounty unto those they found
In need thereof, and nobly lent
Their money, free from measurement
Of usury (yet gave it not
To idle gangrel men), I wot
That then throughout the land were seen
No pauper carl or starveling quean.
But lust of wealth doth so abase
Man's heart, that even love's sweet grace
Bows down before it; men but love
Their neighbors that their love may prove
A profit, and both bought and sold
Are friendships at the price of gold.
Nay, shameless women set to hire
Their bodies, heedless of hell-fire;
It is after reading a passage like this in a book written in the Thirteenth Century that one feels the full truth of that expression of the greatest of American critics, James Russell Lowell, which so often comes back to mind with regard to the works of this century, that to read a classic is like reading a commentary on the morning paper. When this principle is {218} applied the other way, I suppose it may be said, that when a book written in the long ago sounds as if it were the utterance of some one aroused by the evils round him in our modern life, then it springs from so close to the heart of nature that it is destined to live and have an influence far beyond its own time. The Romance of the Rose, written seven centuries ago, now promises to have renewed youth in the awakening of interest in our Gothic ancestors and their accomplishments, before the over-praised renaissance came to trouble the stream of thought and writing.
Other passages serve to show how completely the old-time poet realized all the abuses of the desire for wealth, and how much it makes men waste their lives over unessentials, instead of trying to make existence worth while for themselves and others. Here is an arraignment of the strenuous life of business every line of which is as true for us as it was for the poet's generation:
'Tis truth (though some 'twill little please)
To hear the trader knows no ease;
For ever in his soul a prey
To anxious care of how he may
Amass more wealth: this mad desire
Doth all his thought and actions fire.
Devising means whereby to stuff
His barns and coffers, for 'enough'
He ne'er can have, but hungreth yet
His neighbors' goods and gold to get.
It is as though for thirst he fain
Would quaff the volume of the Seine
At one full draught, and yet should fail
To find its waters of avail
To quench his longing. What distress,
What anguish, wrath, and bitterness
Devour the wretch! fell rage and spite
Possess his spirit day and night.
And tear his heart; the fear of want
Pursues him like a spectre gaunt.
The more he hath, a wider mouth
He opes, no draught can quench his drouth.
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The old poet pictures the happiness of the poor man by contrast, and can in conclusion depict even more pitilessly the real poverty of spirit of the man who "having, struggleth still to get" and never stops to enjoy life itself by helping his fellows:
Light-heart and gay
Goes many a beggar by the way,
But little heeding though his back
Be bent beneath a charcoal sack.
They labor patiently and sing.
And dance, and laugh at whatso thing
Befalls, for havings care they nought.
But feed on scraps and chitlings bought
Beside St. Marcel's, and dispend
Their gains for wassail, then, straight wend
Once more to work, not grumblingly.
But light of heart as bird on tree
Winning their bread without desire
To fleece their neighbors. Nought they tire
Of this their round, but week by week
In mirth and work contentment seek;
Returning when their work is done
Once more to swill the jovial tun.
And he who what he holds esteems
Enough, is rich beyond the dreams
Of many a dreary usurer,
And lives his life-days happier far;
For nought it signifies what gains
The wretched usurer makes, the pains
Of poverty afflict him yet
Who having, struggleth still to get.
The pictures are as true to life at the beginning of the Twentieth Century as they were in the latter half of the Thirteenth. There are little touches of realism in both the pictures, which show at once how acute an observer, how full of humor his appreciation, and yet how sympathetic a writer the author of the Romance was, and at the same time reveal something of the sociological value of his work. It discloses what is so easily concealed under the mask of formal historical writing and {220} tells us of the people rather than of the few great ones among them, or those whom time and chance had made leaders of men. It seems long to read but as a recent translator has said, it represents only the file of a newspaper for eighteen months, and while it talks of quite as trivial things as the modern newspaper, the information is of a kind that is likely to do more good, and prove of more satisfaction, than the passing crimes and scandals that now occupy over-anxious readers.
CENTRAL TOWER (LINCOLN)
{221}
XIV
SOME THIRTEENTH CENTURY PROSE.
It would be unpardonable to allow the notion to be entertained that it was only in poetry that the writers of the Thirteenth Century succeeded in creating works of enduring influence. Some of the prose writings of the time are deeply interesting for many reasons. Modern prose was in its formative period, and the evolution of style, as of other things in the making, is proverbially worthy of more serious study than even the developed result. The prose writings of the Thirteenth Century were mainly done in Latin, but that was not for lack of command over the vernacular tongues, as we shall see, but because this was practically a universal language. This century had among other advantages that subsequent ages have striven for unsuccessfully, our own most of all, a common medium of expression for all scholars at least. There are, however, the beginnings of Prose in all the modern languages and it is easy to understand that the Latin of the time had a great influence on the vernacular and that the modes of expression which had become familiar in the learned tongue, were naturally transferred to the vulgar speech, as it was called, whenever accuracy of thought and nicety of expression invited such transmutation.
With regard to the Latin of the period it is the custom of many presumably well-educated men to sniff a little and say deprecatingly, that after all much cannot be expected from the writers of the time, since they were dependent on medieval or scholastic Latin for the expression of their ideas. This criticism is supposed to do away with any idea of the possibility of there having been a praiseworthy prose style, at this time in the Middle Ages. In the chapter on the Latin Hymns, we call attention to the fact that this same mode of criticism was supposed to preclude all possibility of rhymed Latin, as worthy to occupy a prominent place in literature. The widespread {222} encouragement of this false impression has, as a matter of fact, led to a neglect of these wonderful poems, though they may in the opinion of competent critics, even be considered as representing the true genius of the Latin language and its powers of poetic expression better than the Greek poetic modes, which were adopted by the Romans, but which, with the possible exception of their two greatest poets, never seem to have acquired that spontaneity that would characterize a native outburst of lingual vitality.
As for the philosophic writers of the century that great period holds in this, as in other departments, the position of the palmiest time of the Middle Ages. To it belongs Alexander Hales, the Doctor Irrefragabilis who disputes with Aquinas the prize for the best example of the Summa Theologiae; Bonaventure the Mystic, and writer of beautiful hymns; Roger Bacon, the natural philosopher; Vincent of Beauvais, the encyclopedist. While of the four, greatest of all, Albertus Magnus, the "Dumb Ox of Cologne," was born seven years before its opening, his life lasted over four-fifths of it; that of Aquinas covered its second and third quarters; Occam himself, though his main exertions lie beyond this century, was probably born before Aquinas died; while John Duns Scotus hardly outlived the century's close by a decade. Raymond Lully, one of the most characteristic figures of Scholasticism and of the medieval period (with his "great art" of automatic philosophy), who died in 1315, was born as early as 1235. Peter the Spaniard, Pope and author of the Summulae Logicales, the grammar of formal logic for ages as well of several medieval treatises that have attracted renewed attention in our day, died in 1277.
With regard to what was accomplished in philosophic and theologic prose, examples will be found in the chapter on St. Thomas Aquinas, which prove beyond all doubt the utter simplicity, the directness, and the power of the prose of the Thirteenth Century. In the medical works of the time there was less directness, but always a simplicity that made them commendable. In general, university writers were influenced by the scholastic methods and we find it reflected constantly in their works. In the minds of many people this would be {223} enough at once to condemn it. It will usually be found, however, as we have noted before, that those who are readiest to condemn scholastic writing know nothing about it, or so little that their opinion is not worth considering. Usually they have whatever knowledge they think they possess, at second hand. Sometimes all that they have read of scholastic philosophy are some particularly obscure passages on abstruse subjects, selected by some prejudiced historian, in order to show how impossible was the philosophic writing of these centuries of the later Middle Ages.
There are other opinions, however, that are of quite different significance and value. We shall quote but one of them, written by Professor Saintsbury of the University of Edinburgh, who in his volume on the Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (the Twelfth and Thirteenth centuries) of his Periods of European Literature, has shown how sympathetically the prose writing of the Thirteenth Century may appeal even to a scholarly modern, whose main interests have been all his life in literature. Far from thinking that prose was spoiled by scholasticism. Prof. Saintsbury considers that scholasticism was the fortunate training school in which all the possibilities of modern prose were brought out and naturally introduced into the budding languages of the time. He says:
"However this may be" (whether the science of the Nineteenth Century after an equal interval will be of any more positive value, whether it will not have even less comparative interest than that which appertains to the scholasticism of the Thirteenth Century) "the claim modest, and even meager as it may seem to some, which has been here once more put forward for this scholasticism—the claim of a far-reaching educative influence in mere language, in mere system of arrangement and expression, will remain valid. If at the outset of the career of modern languages, men had thought with the looseness of modern thought, had indulged in the haphazard slovenliness of modern logic, had popularized theology and vulgarized rhetoric, as we have seen both popularized and vulgarized since, we should indeed have been in evil case. It used to be thought clever to moralize and to felicitate mankind over the rejection of the stays, the fetters, the prison in which its {224} thought was medievally kept. The justice or the injustice, the taste or the vulgarity of these moralizings, of these felicitations, may not concern us here. But in expression, as distinguished from thought, the value of the discipline to which these youthful languages was subjected is not likely now to be denied by any scholar who has paid attention to the subject. It would have been perhaps a pity if thought had not gone through other phases; it would certainly have been a pity if the tongues had been subjected to the fullest influence of Latin constraint. But that the more lawless of them benefited by that constraint there can be no doubt whatever. The influence of form which the best Latin hymns of the Middle Ages exercised in poetry, the influence in vocabulary and in logical arrangement which scholasticism exercised in prose are beyond dispute: and even those who will not pardon literature, whatever its historic and educative importance be, for being something less than masterly in itself, will find it difficult to maintain the exclusion of the Cur Deus Homo, and impossible to refuse admission to the Dies Irae."
Besides this philosophic and scientific prose, there were two forms of writing of which this century presents a copious number of examples. These are the chronicles and biographies of the time and the stories of travelers and explorers. These latter we have treated in a separate chapter. The chronicles of the time deserve to be studied with patient attention by anyone who wishes to know the prose writers of the century and the character of the men of that time and their outlook on life. It is usually considered that chroniclers are rather tiresome old fogies who talk much and say very little, who accept all sorts of legends on insufficient authority and who like to fill up their pages with wonderful things regardless of their truth. In this regard it must not be forgotten that in times almost within the memory of men still alive, Herodotus now looked upon deservedly as the Father of History and one of the great historical writers of all time, was considered to have a place among these chroniclers, and his works were ranked scarcely higher, except for the purity of their Greek style.
The first of the great chroniclers in a modern tongue was the famous Geoffrey de Villehardouin, who was not only a writer {225} of, but an actor in the scenes which he describes. He was enrolled among the elite of French Chivalry, in that Crusade at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, which resulted in the foundation of the Greco-Latin Empire. His book entitled "The Conquest of Constantinople," includes the story of the expedition during the years from 1198 to 1207. Modern war correspondents have seldom succeeded in giving a more vivid picture of the events of which they were witnesses than this first French chronicler of the Thirteenth Century. It is evident that the work was composed with the idea that it should be recited, as had been the old poetic Chansons de Geste, in the castles of the nobles and before assemblages of the people, perhaps on fair days and other times when they were gathered together. The consequence is that it is written in a lively straightforward style with direct appeals to its auditors.
It contains not a few passages of highly poetic description which show that the chronicler was himself a literary man of no mean order and probably well versed in the effusions of the old poets of this country. His description of the fleet of the Crusaders as it was about to set sail for the East and then his description of its arrival before the imposing walls of the Imperial City, are the best examples of this, and have not been surpassed even by modern writers on similar topics.
Though the French writer was beyond all doubt not familiar with the Grecian writers and knew nothing of Xenophon, there is a constant reminder of the Greek historian in his work. Xenophon's simple directness, his thorough-going sincerity, the impression he produces of absolute good faith and confidence in the completeness of the picture, so that one feels that one has been present almost at many of the scenes described, are all to be encountered in his medieval successor. Villehardouin went far ahead of his predecessors, the chroniclers of foregoing centuries, in his careful devotion to truth. A French writer has declared that to Villehardouin must be ascribed the foundation of historical probity. None of his facts, stated as such, has ever been impugned, and though his long speeches must necessarily have been his own composition, there seems no doubt that they contain the ideas which had been expressed on various occasions, and besides were composed with due reference to {226} the character of the speaker and convey something of his special style of expression.
Prof. Saintsbury in his article in the Encyclopedia Britannica on Villehardouin, sums up very strikingly the place that this first great vernacular historian's book must occupy.
He says: "It is not impertinent, and at the same time an excuse for what has been already said, to repeat that Villehardouin's book, brief as it is, is in reality one of the capital books of literature, not merely for its merit, but because it is the most authentic and the most striking embodiment in the contemporary literature of the sentiments which determined the action of a great and important period of history. There are but very few books which hold this position, and Villehardouin's is one of them. If every other contemporary record of the crusades perished, we should still be able by aid of this to understand and realize what the mental attitude of crusaders, of Teutonic Knights, and the rest was, and without this we should lack the earliest, the most undoubtedly genuine, and the most characteristic of all such records. The very inconsistency with which Villehardouin is chargeable, the absence of compunction with which he relates the changing of a sacred religious pilgrimage into something by no means unlike a mere filibustering raid on a great scale, add a charm to the book. For, religious as it is, it is entirely free from the very slightest touch of hypocrisy or, indeed, of self-consciousness of any kind. The famous description of the Crusades, gesta Dei per Francos, was evidently to Villehardouin a plain matter-of-fact description and it no more occurred to him to doubt the divine favor being extended to the expeditions against Alexius or Theodore than to doubt that it was shown to expeditions against Saracens and Turks."
{opp226}
PONTE ALLE GRAZIE (FLORENCE, LAPO)
PORTA ROMANA GATE, (FLORENCE, N. PISANO)
It was especially in the exploitation of biographical material that the Thirteenth Century chroniclers were at their best. Any one who recalls Carlyle's unstinted admiration of Jocelyn of Brakelonds' life of Abbot Sampson in his essays Past and Present, will be sure that at least one writer in England had succeeded in pleasing so difficult a critic in this rather thorny mode of literary expression. It is easy to say too much or too little about the virtues and the vices of a man whose biography one has chosen to write. Jocelyn's simple, straightforward story {227} would seem to fulfill the best canons of modern criticism in this respect. Probably no more vivid picture of a man and his ways was ever given until Boswell's Johnson. Nor was the English chronicler alone in this respect. The Sieur de Joinville's biographical studies of the life of Louis IX. furnish another example of this literary mode at its best, and modern writers of biography could not do better than go back to read these intimate pictures of the life of a great king, which are not flattered nor overdrawn but give us the man as he actually was.
The English biographic chronicler of the olden time could picture exciting scenes without any waste of words. A specimen of his work will serve to show the merit of his style. After reading it one is not likely to be surprised that Carlyle should have so taken the Chronicler to heart nor been so enthusiastic in his praise. It is the very type of that impressionism in style that has once more in the course of time become the fad of our own day.
"The abbot was informed that the church of Woolpit was vacant, Walter of Coutances being chosen to the bishopric of Lincoln. He presently convened the prior and great part of the convent, and taking up his story thus began: 'You well know what trouble I had in respect of the church of Woolpit; and in order that it should be obtained for your exclusive use I journeyed to Rome at your instance, in the time of the schism between Pope Alexander and Octavian. I passed through Italy at that time when all clerks bearing letters of our lord the Pope Alexander were taken. Some were imprisoned, some hanged, and some, with nose and lips cut off, sent forward to the pope, to his shame and confusion. I, however, pretended to be Scotch; and putting on the garb of a Scotchman, and the gesture of one, I often brandished my staff, in the way they use that weapon called, a gaveloc, at those who mocked me, using threatening language, after the manner of the Scotch. To those that met and questioned me as to who I was, I answered nothing, but, "Ride ride Rome, turne Cantwereberei." This did I to conceal myself and my errand, and that I should get to Rome safer in the guise of a Scotchman.
"'Having obtained letters from the pope, even as I wished, on my return I passed by a certain castle, as my way led me {228} from the city; and behold the officers thereof came about me, laying hold upon me, and saying, "This vagabond who makes himself out to be a Scotchman is either a spy or bears letters from the false pope Alexander." And while they examined my ragged clothes, and my boots, and my breeches, and even the old shoes which I carried over my shoulders, after the fashion of the Scotch, I thrust my hand into the little wallet which I carried, wherein was contained the letter of our lord the pope, placed under a little cup I had for drinking. The Lord God and St. Edmund so permitting, I drew out both the letter and the cup together, so that, extending my arm aloft, I held the letter underneath the cup. They could see the cup plain enough, but they did not see the letter; and so I got clear out of their hands, in the name of the Lord. Whatever money I had about me they took away; therefore I had to beg from door to door, without any payment, until I arrived in England.'"
Another excellent example of the biographic prose of the century, though this is the vernacular, is Joinville's life of St. Louis, without doubt one of the precious biographical treasures of all times. It contains a vivid portrait of Louis IX., made by a man who knew him well personally, took part with him in some of the important actions of the book, and in general was an active personage in the affairs of the time. Those who think that rapid picturesque description such as vividly recalls deeds of battle was reserved for the modern war correspondent, should read certain portions of Joinville's book. As an example we have ventured to quote the page on which the seneschal historian himself recounts the role which he played in the famous battle of Mansourah, at which, with the Count de Soissons and Pierre de Neuville, he defended a small bridge against the enemy under a hail of arrows.
He says: "Before us there were two sergeants of the king, one of whom was named William de Boon and the other John of Gamaches. Against these the Turks who had placed themselves between the river and the little tributary, led a whole mob of villains on foot, who hurled at them clods of turf or whatever came to hand. Never could they make them recoil upon us, however. As a last resort the Turks sent forward a foot soldier {229} who three times launched Greek fire at them. Once William de Boon received the pot of green fire upon his buckler. If the fire had touched anything on him he would have been entirely burned up. We at the rear were all covered by arrows which had missed the Sergeants. It happened that I found a waistcoat which had been stuffed by one of the Saracens. I turned the open side of it towards me and made a shield out of the vest which rendered me great service, for I was wounded by their arrows in only five places though my horse was wounded in fifteen. One of my own men brought me a banner with my arms and a lance. Every time then that we saw that they were pressing the Royal Sergeants we charged upon them and they fled. The good Count Soissons, from the point at which we were, joked with me and said 'Senechal, let us hoot out this rabble, for by the headdress of God (this was his favorite oath) we shall talk over this day you and I many a time in our ladies' halls.'"
We have said that the writing of the Thirteenth Century must have been done to a great extent for the sake of the women of the time, and that its very existence was a proof that the women possessed a degree of culture, that might not be realized from the few details that have been preserved to us of their education and habits of life. In this last passage of Joinville we have the proof of this, since evidently the telling of the stories of these days of battle was done mainly in order that the women folks might have their share in the excitement of the campaign, and might be enabled vividly to appreciate what the dangers had been and how gloriously their lords had triumphed. At every period of the world's history it was true that literature was mainly made for women and that some of the best portions of it always concerned them very closely.
We have purposely left till last, the greatest of the chroniclers of the Thirteenth Century, Matthew Paris, the Author of the Historia Major, who owes his surname doubtless to the fact that he was educated at the University of Paris. Instead of trying to tell anything about him from our own slight personal knowledge, we prefer to quote the passage from Green's History of the English People, in which one of the greatest of our modern English historians pays such a magnificent tribute to his colleague of the earlier times:
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"The story of this period of misrule has been preserved for us by an annalist whose pages glow with the new outburst of patriotic feeling which this common expression of the people and the clergy had produced. Matthew Paris is the greatest, as he is in reality the last of our monastic historians. The school of St. Albans survived indeed till a far later time, but the writers dwindle into mere annalists whose view is bounded by the Abbey precincts, and whose work is as colorless as it is jejune. In Matthew the breadth and precision of the narrative, the copiousness of his information on topics whether national or European, the general fairness and justice of his comments, are only surpassed by the patriotic fire and enthusiasm of the whole. He had succeeded Roger of Wendover as Chronicler of St. Albans; and the Greater Chronicle, with the abridgement of it which has long passed under the name of Matthew of Westminster, a "History of the English," and the "Lives of the Earlier Abbots," were only a few among the voluminous works which attest his prodigious industry. He was an eminent artist as well as a historian, and many of the manuscripts which are preserved are illustrated by his own hand. A large circle of correspondents—bishops like Grosseteste, ministers like Hubert de Burgh, officials like Alexander de Swinford—furnished him with minute accounts of political and ecclesiastical proceedings. Pilgrims from the East and Papal agents brought news of foreign events to his scriptorium at St. Albans. He had access to and quotes largely from state documents, charters, and exchequer rolls. The frequency of the royal visits to the abbey brought him a store of political intelligence and Henry himself contributed to the great chronicle which has preserved with so terrible a faithfulness the memory of his weakness and misgovernment. On one solemn feast-day the King recognized Matthew, and bidding him sit on the middle step between the floor and the throne, begged him to write the story of the day's proceedings. While on a visit to St. Albans he invited him to his table and chamber, and enumerated by name two hundred and fifty of the English barons for his information. But all this royal patronage has left little mark on his work. "The case," as he says, "of historical writers is hard, for if they tell the truth they provoke men, and if they write what is false they offend God." {231} With all the fullness of the school of court historians, such as Benedict or Hoveden, Matthew Paris combines an independence and patriotism which is strange to their pages. He denounces with the same unsparing energy the oppression of the Papacy and the King. His point of view is neither that of a courtier nor of a Churchman, but of an Englishman, and the new national tone of his chronicle is but an echo of the national sentiment which at last bound nobles and yeomen and Churchmen together into an English people."
We of the Twentieth Century are a people of information and encyclopedias rather than of literature, so that we shall surely appreciate one important specimen of the prose writing of the Thirteenth Century since it comprises the first modern encyclopedia. Its author was the famous Vincent of Beauvais. Vincent consulted all the authors, sacred and profane, that he could possibly lay hands on, and the number of them was indeed prodigious. It has often been said by men supposed to be authorities in history, that the historians of the Middle Ages had at their disposition only a small number of books, and that above all they were not familiar with the older historians. While this was true as regards the Greek, it was not for the Latin historical writers. Vincent of Beauvais has quotations from Caesar's De Bello Gallico, from Sallust's Catiline and Jugurtha, from Quintus Curtius, from Suetonius and from Valerius Maximus and finally from Justin's Abridgement of Trogus Pompeius.
Vincent had the advantage of having at his disposition the numerous libraries of the monasteries throughout France, the extent of which, usually unrealized in modern times, will be appreciated from our special chapter on the subject. Besides he consulted the documents in the chapter houses of the Cathedrals especially those of Paris, of Rouen, of Laon, of Beauvais and of Bayeux, which were particularly rich in collections of documents. It might be thought that these libraries and archives would be closely guarded. Far from being closed to writers from the outer world they were accessible to all to such an extent, indeed, that a number of them are mentioned by Vincent as public institutions.
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His method of collecting his information is interesting, because it shows the system employed by him is practically that which has obtained down to our own day. He made use for his immense investigation of a whole army of young assistants, most of whom were furnished him by his own order, the Dominicans. He makes special mention in a number of places of quotations due to their collaboration. The costliness of maintaining such a system would have made the completion of the work absolutely impossible were it not for the liberality of King Louis IX., who generously offered to defray the expenses of the composition. Vincent has acknowledged this by declaring in his prefatorial letter to the King that, "you have always liberally given assistance even to the work of gathering the materials."
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ST. CATHERINE'S (LÜBECK)
CHURCH AND CLOISTERS, SAN ANTONIO (PADUA)
Vincent's method of writing is quite as interesting as his method of compilation of facts. The great Dominican was not satisfied with being merely a source of information. The philosophy of history has received its greatest Christian contribution from St. Augustine's City of God. In this an attempt was made to trace the meaning and causal sequence of events as well as their mere external connection and place in time. In a lesser medieval way Vincent tried deliberately to imitate this and besides writing history attempted to trace the philosophy of it. For him, as for the great French philosophic historian Bossuet in his Universal History five centuries later, everything runs its provided race from the creation to the redemption and then on toward the consummation of the world. He describes at first the commencements of the Church from the time of Abel, through its progress under the Patriarchs, the Prophets, Judges, Kings, and leaders of the people, down to the Birth of Christ. He traces the history of the Apostles and of the first Disciples, though he makes it a point to find place for the famous deeds of the great men of Pagan antiquity. He notes the commencement of Empires and Kingdoms, their glory, their decadence, their ruin, and the Sovereigns who made them illustrious in peace and war. There was much that was defective in the details of history as they were traced by Vincent, much that was lacking in completeness, but the intention was evidently the best, and patience and labor were devoted to the {233} sources of history at his command. Perhaps never more than at the present moment have we been in a position to realize that history at its best can be so full of defects even after further centuries of consultation of documents and printed materials, that we are not likely to be in the mood to blame this first modern historian very much. As for the other portions of his encyclopedia, biographic, literary and scientific, they were not only freely consulted by his contemporaries and successors, but we find traces of their influence in the writings and also in the decorative work of the next two centuries. We have already spoken of the use of his book in the provision of subjects for the ornamentation of Cathedrals and the same thing might be said of edifices of other kinds.
Nor must it be thought that Vincent has only a historic or ecclesiastical interest. Dr. Julius Pagel, in his Chapter on Medicine in the Middle Ages in Puschmann's Hand-Book of the History of Medicine, [Footnote 22] says, "that there were three writers whose works were even more popular than those of Albertus Magnus. These three were Bartholomew, the Englishman; Thomas, of Cantimprato, and Vincent, of Beauvais, the last of whom must be considered as one of the most important contributors to the generalization of scientific knowledge, not alone in the Thirteenth but in the immediately succeeding centuries. His most important work was really an encyclopedia of the knowledge of his time. It was called the Greater Triple Mirror and there is no doubt that it reflected the knowledge of his period. He had the true scientific spirit and constantly cites the authorities from whom his information was derived. He cites hundreds of authors and there is scarcely a subject that he does not touch on. One book of his work is concerned with human anatomy, and the concluding portion of it is an abbreviation of history carried down to the year 1250."
[Footnote 22: Puschmann. Hand-Buch der Geschichte der Medizin, Jena, Fischer, 1902.]
It might be considered that such a compend of information would be very dry-as-dust reading and that it would be fragmentary in character and little likely to be attractive except to a serious student. Dr. Pagel's opinion does not agree with this a priori impression. He says with regard to it: {234} "The language is clear, readily intelligible, and the information is conveyed usually in an excellent, simple style. Through the introduction of interesting similes the contents do not lack a certain taking quality, so that the reading of the work easily becomes absorbing." This is, I suppose, almost the last thing that might be expected of a scientific teacher in the Thirteenth Century, because, after all, Vincent of Beauvais must be considered as one of the schoolmen, and they are supposed to be eminently arid, but evidently, if we are to trust this testimony of a modern German physician, only by those who have not taken the trouble to read them.
One of the most important works of Thirteenth Century prose is the well-known Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (Significance of the Divine Offices) written by William Durandus, the Bishop of Mende, in France, whose tomb and its inscription in the handsome old Gothic Cathedral of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, in Rome, shares with the body of St. Catherine of Sienna the honor of attracting so many visitors. The book has been translated into English under the title. The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, and has been very widely read. It was very popular in the Thirteenth Century, and the best possible idea of its subsequent reputation can be gathered from the fact, that the Rationale was the first work from the pen of an uninspired writer to be accorded the privilege of being printed. The Editio Princeps, a real first edition of supreme value, appeared from the press of John Fust in 1459. The only other books that had been printed at that time were the Psalters of 1457 and 1459. This edition is, of course, of the most extreme rarity. According to the English translators of Durandus the beauty of the typography has seldom been exceeded.
The style of Durandus has been praised very much by the critics of succeeding centuries for its straightforwardness, simplicity and brevity. Most of these qualities it evidently owes to the hours spent by its author in the reading of Holy Scriptures. Durandus fashioned his style so much on the sacred writings that most of his book possesses something of the impressive character of the Bible itself. The impression derived from it is that of reading a book on a religious subject written {235} in an eminently suitable tone and spirit. Most of this impression must be attributed without doubt to the fact, that Durandus has not only formed his style on the Scriptures, but has actually incorporated Scriptural expressions in his writings to such an extent as to make them mostly a scriptural composition. This, far from being a fault, appears quite appropriate in his book because of its subject and the method of treatment. A quotation from the proeme (as it is in the quaint spelling of the English translation) will give the best idea of this.
"All things, as pertain to offices and matters ecclesiastical, be full of divine significations and mysterious, and overflow with celestial sweetness; if so be that a man be diligent in his study of them, and know how to draw HONEY FROM THE ROCK, AND OIL FROM THE HARDEST STONE. But who KNOWETH THE ORDINANCES OF HEAVEN, OR CAN FIX THE REASONS THEREOF UPON THE EARTH? for he that prieth into their majesty, is overwhelmed by the glory of them. Of a truth THE WELL IS DEEP, AND I HAVE NOTHING TO DRAW WITH: unless he giveth it unto me WHO GIVETH TO ALL MEN LIBERALLY, AND UPBRAIDETH NOT: so that WHILE I JOURNEY THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS I may DRAW WATER WITH JOY OUT OF THE WELLS OF SALVATION. Wherefore albeit of the things handed down from our forefathers, capable we are not to explain all, yet if among them there be any thing which is done without reason it should be forthwith put away. Wherefore, I, WILLIAM, by the alone tender mercy of God, Bishop of the Holy Church which is in Mende, will knock diligently at the door, if so be that THE KEY OF DAVID will open unto me: that the King may BRING ME INTO HIS TREASURE? and shew unto me the heavenly pattern which was shewed unto Moses in the mount: so that I may learn those things which pertain to Rites Ecclesiastical whereof they teach and what they signify: and that I may be able plainly to reveal and make manifest the reasons of them, by HIS help, WHO HATH ORDAINED STRENGTH OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES AND SUCKLINGS: WHOSE SPIRITS BLOWETH WHERE IT {236} LISTETH: DIVIDING TO EACH SEVERALLY AS IT WILL to the praise and glory of the Trinity."
This passage alone of Durandus would serve as an excellent refutation of the old-time Protestant tradition, fortunately now dying out though not as yet entirely eradicated, which stated so emphatically that the Bible was not allowed to be read before Luther's time.
Those who wish to obtain a good idea of Durandus' style and the way he presents his material, can obtain it very well from his chapter on Bells, the first two paragraphs of which we venture to quote. They will be found quite as full of interesting information in their way as any modern writer might have brought together, and have the dignity and simplicity of the best modern prose.
"Bells are brazen vessels, and were first invented in Nola, a city of Campania. Wherefore the larger bells are called Campanae, from Campania the district, and the smaller Nolae, from Nola the town.
"You must know that bells, by the sound of which the people assembleth together to the church to hear, and the Clergy to preach, IN THE MORNING THE MERCY OF GOD AND HIS POWER BY NIGHT do signify the silver trumpets, by which under the Old Law the people was called together unto sacrifice. (Of these trumpets we shall speak in our Sixth Book.) For just as the watchmen in a camp rouse one another by trumpets, so do the Ministers of the Church excite each other by the sound of bells to watch the livelong night against the plots of the Devil. Wherefore our brazen bells are more sonorous than the trumpets of the Old Law, because then GOD was known in Judea only, but now in the whole earth. They be also more durable: For they signify that the teaching of the New Testament will be more lasting than the trumpets and sacrifices of the Old Law, namely, even unto the end of the world.
"Again bells do signify preachers, who ought after the likeness of a bell to exhort the faithful unto faith: the which was typified in that the LORD commanded Moses to make a vestment for the High Priest who entered into the Holy of Holies. Also the cavity of the bell denoteth the mouth of the preacher, {237} according to the saying of the Apostle, I AM BECOME AS SOUNDING BRASS ON A TINKLING CYMBAL."
Of course there are what we would be apt to consider exaggerations of symbolic meanings and far-fetched explanations and references, but this was of the taste of the time and has not in subsequent centuries been so beyond the canons of good taste as at present. Durandus goes on to tell that the hardness of the metal of the bell signifies fortitude in the mind of the preacher, that the wood of the frame on which the bell hangeth doth signify the wood of our Lord's Cross, that the rope by which the bell is strung is humility and also showeth the measure of life, that the ring in the length of the rope is the crown of reward for perseverance unto the end, and then proceeds to show why and how often the bells are rung and what the significance of each ringing is. He explains why the bells are silent for three days before Easter and also during times of interdict, and gives as the justification for this last the quotation from the Prophet "I WILL MAKE THY TONGUE CLEAVE TO THE ROOF OF THY MOUTH FOR THEY ARE A REBELLIOUS HOUSE."
Even these few specimens of the prose of the Thirteenth Century, will serve to show that the writers of the period could express themselves with a vigor and directness which have made their books interesting reading for generations long after their time, and which stamp their authors as worthy of a period that found enduring and adequate modes of expression for every form of thought and feeling.
STONE CARVING (PARIS)
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XV
ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA.
The last place in the world, perhaps, that one would look for a great impulse to the development of the modern drama, which is entirely a new invention, an outgrowth of Christian culture and has practically no connection with the classic drama, would be in the life of St. Francis of Assisi. His utter simplicity, his thorough-going and cordial poverty, his sincere endeavor all during his life to make little of himself, might seem quite enough to forbid any thought of him as the father of a literary movement of this kind. "The poor little man of God," however, as he liked to call himself, in his supreme effort to get back to nature and out of the ways of the conventional world, succeeded in accomplishing a number of utterly unexpected results. His love for nature led to his wonderful expression of his feelings in his favorite hymn, one of the first great lyrical outbursts in modern poetry, a religious poem which as we shall see in the chapter on the Father of the Renaissance, Renan declares can only be appreciated properly by comparing it with the old Hebrew psalms, beside which it is worthy to be placed.
Those who know the life of St. Francis best will easily appreciate how dramatic, though unconsciously so, were all the actions of his life. After all, his utter renunciation of all things, his taking of holy poverty to be his bride, his address to the birds, his sisters, his famous question of the butcher as to why he killed his brothers, the sheep, his personification of the sun and the moon and even of the death of the body as his brothers and sisters, are all eminently dramatic moments. His life is full of incidents that lent themselves, because of their dramatic quality, to the painters of succeeding centuries as the subjects of their striking pictures. Before the end of the century Giotto had picked out some of the most interesting of these for the decorative illustration of the upper church at {239} Assisi. During the succeeding century, the author of the Little Flowers of St. Francis, embodied many of these beautiful scenes in his little work, where they have been the favorite reading of poets for many centuries since.
It should not be such a surprise as it might otherwise be, then, to find that St. Francis may be considered in one sense as the father of the modern drama. The story is a very pretty one and has an additional value because it has been illustrated by no less a brush than that of Giotto. One Christmas Eve just at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, St. Francis gathered round him some of the poor people living outside of the town of Assisi, in order to recall vividly to them the great event which had taken place on that night so many centuries before. A little figure of a child, dressed in swaddling clothes, was laid on some straw in a manger with the breath of the nearby animals to warm it. To this manger throne of the Child King of Bethlehem, there came in adoration, after the hymns that recalled the angels' visit, first some of the shepherds from the surrounding country and then some of the country people who represented the kings from the East with their retinues, bringing with them their royal gifts. After this little scene, probably one of the first Nativity plays that had ever been given, St. Francis, according to the old legend, took the little image in his arms and in an excess of devotion pressed it to his heart. According to the old-time story, the infant came to life in his embrace and putting its little arms around his neck embraced him in return. Of course our modern generation is entirely too devoted to "common sense" to accept any such pretty, pious story as this as more than a beautiful poetic legend. The legend has provided a subject for poet and painter many a time in subsequent centuries. Perhaps never has it been used with better effect than by Giotto, whose representation is one of the favorite pictures on the wall of the upper church of Assisi. Whether the little baby figure of the play actually came to life in his arms or not we do not know, but one thing is certain, that infant modern dramatic literature did come to life at the moment and that before the end of the Thirteenth Century it was to have a vigor and an influence that made it {240} one of the great factors in the social life of the period. The Franciscans were soon spread over the world. With filial reverence they took with them all the customs of their loved Father of Assisi, and especially such as appealed to the masses and brought home to them in a vivid way the great truths of religion. By the middle of the century many of the towns had cycles of mystery plays given at various times during the year, associated with the different feasts and illustrating and enforcing the lessons of the liturgy for the people in a manner so effective that it has probably never been equaled before or since.
While the most potent factor in the dissemination of the early religious drama can be traced to Francis and the Franciscans, they were but promoters of a movement already well begun. Mystery plays were attempted before the Thirteenth Century in England and in North France. There is a well-known story from Matthew Paris, who wrote about the middle of the Thirteenth Century, of one Geoffrey who afterwards became Abbot of St. Albans. While yet a secular he borrowed certain precious religious vestments to be used in some sort of a miracle play in honor of St. Catherine. During the performance of the play, these vestments were destroyed by fire and Geogory was so much afflicted by the misfortune that in a spirit of reparation he became a religious in the Abbey of St. Albans. This must have been about the beginning of the Twelfth Century. Towards the end of this century mystery plays were not infrequent, though not in anything like the developed form nor popular character which they acquired during the Thirteenth Century. Fitz Stephen, writing the life of St. Thomas a Becket, towards the end of the Twelfth Century, contrasts the holier plays of London in his days with the theatrical spectacles of ancient Rome. The plays he mentioned were, however, scarcely more than slight developments of Church ceremonial with almost literal employment of scripture and liturgical language.
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ST. FRANCIS' NATIVITY PLAY (GIOTTO)
The first cycle of mystery plays of which there is definite mention is that of Chester. According to the proclamation of the Chester plays, the representation of this cycle dates in some form from the mayoralty of John Arneway, who was the {241} Mayor of Chester, between 1268 and 1276. Of the series of plays as given in the Thirteenth Century there are few remains. It is probable, even, that at this early date they were not acted in English but in French. English plays were probably first given in some of the Cathedral towns along the east coast of England, and perhaps York should have the credit of this innovation. It is easy to understand how the simpler dramatic additions to the ritual of the Church would inevitably develop in the earnest and very full religious life of the people which came with the building of the cathedrals, the evolution of Church ceremonial and the social life fostered by the trade-guilds of the time. While we have none of the remains of the actual plays of the Thirteenth Century, there is no doubt that an excellent idea of their form and content can be gathered from the English mystery plays, that have recently been edited in modern form and which serve to show the characteristics of the various cycles.
It might perhaps be thought that these mystery plays would not furnish any great amount of entertainment for the populace, especially after they had seen them a certain number of times. The yearly repetition might naturally be expected to bring with it before long a satiety that would lead to inattention. As is well known, however, there is an enduring interest about these old religious stories that makes them of much greater attractiveness than most ordinary historical traditions. Many a faithful reader of the Bible finds constantly renewed interest in the old Biblical stories in spite of frequent repetition. Their significance to the eye of faith in the Middle Ages gave them, beyond any doubt, that quality which in any literary work will exemplify and fulfill Horace's dictum, decies repetita placebit. Besides, it must not be forgotten that the men and women of the Thirteenth Century had not the superficial facilities of the printing press to cloy their intellectual curiosity, and by trivial titillation make them constantly crave novelty.
It must not be thought, in spite of the fact that these were religious plays, that they were always so serious as to be merely instructive without being amusing. A large fund of amusement was injected into the old biblical stories by the {242} writers of the different cycles and undoubtedly the actors themselves added certain personal elements in this matter, which still further enhanced some of the comical aspects of the solemn stories. Nearly always the incidents of the Scriptural narrative though followed more or less literally, were treated with a large humanity that could scarcely fail to introduce elements of humor into the dramatic performances. Such liberties, however, were taken only with characters not mentioned by the Bible—the inventions of the writers. A series of quotations from the Chester Cycle of Plays will best illustrate this. We give them in the quaint spelling of the oldest version extant. The scene we quote is from the play dealing with Noah's flood and pictures Noah's wife as a veritable shrew.
