THE MORAL LIFE OF EUROPE DURING THE AGE OF CHIVALRY
I. THE CHURCH CONSECRATES THE MARTIAL IDEAL OF KNIGHTHOOD
[Sidenote: Introductory]
From the third to the ninth century the ideal of asceticism absorbed
a great part of the moral enthusiasm of Christendom. During the later
part of this period, however, as we have noted, there was growing up
alongside the ascetic ideal another of a very different character--the
martial ideal of knighthood. In the present chapter we shall first make
a brief survey of the various causes that gave this new trend to the
moral feelings and convictions of the age, and then shall glance at
some of the more important historical outcomes of the vast enthusiasm
evoked by this new ideal of character.
The ideal of knighthood, a product in the main of feudalism, grew up
outside the Church, and only later was recognized by ecclesiastical
authority and approved as compatible with the ethical spirit of
Christianity. Had not the ideal been thus approved by ecclesiastical
authority, and advantage taken of the enthusiasm it evoked to promote
through it the cause of the Church, it would never have become the
significant force it did in European history. Therefore we must first
inquire what were the influences that engendered a military spirit in
the Church and led it to approve the martial ideal of the knight and
give the consecration of religion to the institution of chivalry which
was its embodiment.
[Sidenote: The genius of
Christianity opposed to the war
spirit]
If at the advent of Christianity one reflecting upon the genius of the
new religion and the teachings of its Founder had ventured to forecast
the influence of the new faith upon the different departments of
morality, he would almost certainly have predicted that this influence
would be felt most decisively upon the ethics of war. The attitude
assumed by the early Christians toward the military life would have
justified this forecast, for Christianity brought into the world the
new principle of nonresistance.[672] This teaching made the primitive
Christian community almost a Quaker body; but barely three centuries
had passed before this religion which had entered the world as a gospel
of peace and good will had become a martial creed and its emblem been
made a battle standard.
[Sidenote: Causes which fostered
the war spirit in the Church:
(_a_) the heritage of the war
ethics of the ancient world of
culture]
The causes that produced this amazing transformation in the Christian
Church were various and so interrelated as to make it difficult to
determine just what influence was exercised by each. Yet it is possible
to note the character of the different agencies at work, and to form
at least some general idea of the way in which the transformation was
wrought.
First, there was the inheritance from the past. War had always been
one of the leading occupations of men. It had scarcely ever occurred
to any one to question its legitimacy. It was looked upon as a part of
the constitution of things. The ideas, feelings, habits, engendered
by its practice through uncounted millenniums of history had become
ingrained in every tissue and fiber of man’s being. Set in the midst
of the world, the Church yielded to the influence of this baneful pagan
heritage. It incorporated with its own moral code, wholly alien to the
essential spirit of Christianity as these elements were, the war ethics
of the pre-Christian world, and thus made this pagan international
morality a permanent part of Christian ethics.[673] It will be
instructive for us to follow somewhat closely this reaction upon the
ethics of the Church, first of the war code of the civilized world of
the south, and then later of the war spirit of the barbarian world of
the north.
The early Fathers of the Church in general condemned the military
service as incompatible with the Christian life.[674] Not till the
second century of the Empire do we find any record of Christian
soldiers serving in the Roman armies. By this time the early rule of
the Church forbidding a member to serve in the army had become relaxed;
but members of the Christian body who entered the Roman legions were
required to undertake a prescribed penance and to seek absolution
before partaking of the Eucharist. By the time of Diocletian Christians
appear to have entered with little or no scruple upon the military
life.[675] A significant waymark of this gradual transformation is
the great victory won by the Emperor Constantine over his rival
Maxentius at the battle of Milvian Bridge, 312 A.D. Upon that field
the soldiers of Constantine fought beneath the Labarum, a standard
which bore as an emblem the Christian cross. The fortunate issue of
the battle for Constantine seems to have greatly confirmed the feeling
in the Christian community as to the legitimacy of war. The Church
conformed more and more positively its teachings and discipline to
the requirements of the military service. Saints Augustine (354–430
A.D.) and Ambrose (340–397 A.D.), in opposition to most of the earlier
Fathers, were open apologists and defenders of war and of the military
life.
Thus during the very period when the Church was putting under its ban
the cruel and sanguinary amusements of the Romans by the suppression
of the gladiatorial games,[676] and thus lifting domestic morality to
a new and higher plane, through a strange inconsistency it was first
condoning and then finally consecrating the international pagan war
system of which these sports were only a mild imitation.
[Sidenote: (_b_) The war spirit of
the German race]
After the fifth century the influence upon the ethics of the Church of
the war system of the civilized world of the south was reënforced by
the martial spirit of the barbarian world of the north. That world was
now, largely through the missions of the monastic Church, being rapidly
brought within the pale of Christianity. But all these northern peoples
were the very incarnation of the war spirit. Their favorite deities
were gods who delighted in battle and bloodshed. Fighters these men
were, and fighters they remained even after conversion and baptism.
The mingling of moralities which followed their conversion is well
illustrated by the passionate outburst of the Frankish chieftain Clovis
as he listened to the story of the Crucifixion: “Oh,” he exclaimed,
“if only I could have been there with my trusty warriors!” The soul
of Clovis lived on in his race. Four centuries later these Frankish
warriors, as knight crusaders, were on the spot of the Crucifixion,
redeeming with lance and sword the tomb of the slain Christ from the
hands of infidels. It was this ineradicable war spirit of the northern
barbarians to which was due, perhaps more than to any other agency, the
infusion of a military spirit into that church of which the Founder was
the Prince of Peace.
Among the customs of the early Germans there was one which had such a
positive influence upon the evolution we are tracing in Church morality
that we must here make special note of it. This was the ordeal by fire,
by water, or by wager of battle to determine the guilt or innocence of
an accused person. The prominent place held by this institution among
savage or semicivilized peoples is familiar to the student of primitive
society. Now the German folk brought with them this institution, and
with it the belief which made the ordeal, and particularly the ordeal
by combat, a solemn judicial matter in which God rendered decision and
gave victory to the one whose cause was just. This barbarian conception
of the wager of battle between individuals became incorporated with
the common body of Christian ideas and beliefs. The same manner of
thinking was perforce applied to war. A conflict between great armies
was conceived as a wager of battle in which God gave victory to the
right. Thus was war consecrated and made an agency whereby God executes
judgment among the nations.
[Sidenote: (_c_) The war records
of the Old Hebrew Testament]
This interpretation of the nature and mission of war was reënforced by
a like unfortunate interpretation of the records of the Old Testament.
The good bishop Ulfilas was right when, in translating the Hebrew Bible
into the Gothic tongue, he omitted the war chronicles through fear that
these records of wars and massacres would fan into too fierce a flame
the martial zeal of his Gothic neophytes. To these terrible chronicles,
which represent God as commanding the Israelites to wage war against
his enemies, and even as ordering the most horrid atrocities upon war
captives, is due in large part the idea so dominant even to-day among
Christian nations that God is a God of War, and that through the ordeal
of battle he gives judgment on the earth.[677]
[Sidenote: (_d_) The armed
propaganda of Islam]
The transformation taking place in the ethical standard of the
Church under the various influences we have named was hastened and
completed by the reaction upon Christian ethics of the martial ethics
of Islam.[678] This new influence began to be exerted in the seventh
century. By infection the crusading spirit of the Mohammedan zealots
was communicated to the Christian Church. Toward the close of the
eleventh century the spiritual head of Christendom, Pope Urban II,
summoned the Christian nations of Europe to arms for the recovery of
the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the unbelievers.
Feudalism by this time had flowered in chivalry. The Christian
lands were filled with brave young knights, especially knights of
Norman descent, aflame with martial enthusiasm and eager for warlike
adventure. It was the ancestors of these very men, instinct with the
military spirit, that Rome had once enlisted in her legions to fight
the battles of the Empire; it is the children of those legionaries that
the Christian Church now summons in the name of Christ to her standard
to fight the battles of the Cross.
The transformation of that Church was now complete. The age of the
Crusades had opened. Christ and Mars were co-sovereigns in Christian
Europe. The teachings of the Prince of Peace and the war spirit of
the civilization of antiquity and of the German barbarians were
reconciled.[679] As Lecky finely portrays it, “At the hour of sunset
when the Christian soldier knelt down to pray before his cross, that
cross was the handle of his sword.”[680]
II. THE COMPOSITE IDEAL OF KNIGHTHOOD
[Sidenote: The composite character
of the ideal: its pagan-Christian
virtues]
The foregoing brief account of the reconciliation and commingling in
later Roman and early medieval times of the pagan ethics of war and
the Christian ethics of peace has already acquainted us with what was
the distinctive characteristic of the ethical ideal of knighthood,
the ideal which resulted from this mingling of these two strongly
contrasted moralities. It was a composite ideal, a combination of pagan
and Christian virtues. The true knight, who was the incarnation of the
ideal, must possess all the admired moral qualities of the pagan hero,
and, together with these, all the essential virtues of the Christian
saint. Among the pagan virtues we find a set of moral qualities that
are attributes of character which, with possibly one or two exceptions,
were assigned a high place either in the barbarian German or in the
classical ideal of excellence. Chief among these qualities are personal
loyalty, courage, truthfulness, justice, magnanimity, courtesy, and
self-respect.
The first duty and virtue of the true knight was absolute loyalty to
his superior, to his comrades in arms, and to the cause espoused.
This virtue of loyalty is the virtue which Professor Royce makes the
root from which all other virtues spring.[681] Without doubt it is,
if not the central virtue of every true moral system, one of the most
attractive of all ethical traits, and one most sacredly held from taint
by every person with a nice sense of what constitutes true nobility of
character.
A second and indispensable virtue was courage. The knight must be brave
as well as loyal. Cowardice and knighthood were wholly incompatible
things.
Another moral quality was veracity, absolute fidelity to a promise. The
pledged word of the true knight was sacrosanct and inviolable.[682]
Still another indispensable trait in the character of the ideal knight
was love of justice. The true knight must be just; an unjust knight
could not be a true knight any more than an unjust judge can be a true
judge.
Again, the knight who would be loyal to the ideal of knighthood must
be magnanimous. One of the elements of this virtue is unwillingness
to take an unfair advantage of another, especially of an enemy. It
was a disgraceful thing for a knight to attack his foe when at a
disadvantage, as when disarmed or fallen. He must always meet his enemy
in fair and open fight.
Furthermore, the true knight must be courteous. It was as much his
duty to be courteous as to be truthful. Now courtesy is not a trait or
feeling which inspires lofty action, but one which induces gentleness,
kind consideration, and gracious deference toward all alike--rich and
poor, high and low.
Lastly, the knight must possess dignity or self-respect. The age of
chivalry interpreted this virtue or duty as requiring the knight to
stand on his rights as a man. He must not let an injury to himself
or to a friend go unpunished. He must resent every insult and return
blow for blow. Not to do so argued cowardice and pusillanimity. All
this was of course directly opposed to the Christian requirements of
humility, meekness, nonresistance, and forgiveness of injuries, and was
distinctly a part of the moral code of chivalry which was borrowed from
pre-Christian or non-Christian morality.
To these essentially pagan virtues the knight, after the institution
of chivalry had been approved and consecrated by the Church, must add
all the distinctly Christian virtues, particularly the virtue of right
religious belief. Only the true believer could be a true knight.
A striking illustration of the mixture of moralities with which we
have to do in the period of chivalry is afforded by the celebrated
religious military orders of the Hospitalers and Templars, which were
formed just before the Second Crusade, when the enthusiasm for the
chivalric ideal was at its height, while that for the ascetic had not
yet sensibly abated. The Hospitalers were monks who, to their monastic
vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience or humility, added the martial
obligations of knighthood; the Templars were knights who to their
military vows added those of the monk. Thus in these remarkable orders
of knight-monks we see incongruously united the monastic and military
ideals, two of the most sharply contrasted conceptions of worthy life
that it is possible to find in the whole history of ethical ideals.
[Sidenote: Defects of the ideal]
The ideal of chivalry had serious defects. First, the military
spirit, borrowed from paganism, which the ideal apotheosized, was in
absolute opposition to the spirit of Christianity, so that the perfect
reconciliation and fusion of the different moral qualities entering
into the ideal was impossible.
Second, from feudalism, with its sharply defined social classes, the
ideal received an aristocratic stamp. In this respect it was the
direct opposite of the monastic ideal. Any person, freeman or slave,
king or peasant, could become a monk, and by following the more
excellent way gain the homage of men and win the crown of sainthood.
But the chivalric ideal was one to which no plebeian might aspire.
Only a person of noble birth could become a knight. This exclusive
aristocratic character of the ideal constituted one of its most
serious defects. Yet in spite of this and other defects it was a noble
and attractive ideal, and one which not only left a deep stamp upon
medieval history, but contributed precious elements to the ethical
heritage which the modern world received from the Middle Ages.
III. THE CHIEF MORAL PHENOMENA OF THE PERIOD
[Sidenote: Influence of the ideal
of chivalry upon the history of
the epoch]
Just as the moral enthusiasm awakened by the monastic ideal gave a
special character and trend to much of the history of the age of its
ascendancy,--inspiring or helping to inspire the missionary propaganda
among the barbarian tribes of Europe, giving birth to a special
literature (the _Lives of the Saints_), and fostering the spirit of
benevolence and self-renunciation,--so did the unmeasured enthusiasm
created by the chivalric ideal give a distinctive character to much of
the history of the age of its predominance--lending a romantic cast
to the Crusades, creating a new form of literature, and giving a more
assured place in the growing European ideal of character to several
attractive traits and virtues. Respecting each of these matters we
shall offer some observations in the immediately following pages, and
then shall proceed to speak briefly of some reform movements which
belong to the general moral history of the epoch under review.
[Sidenote: Chivalry and the
Crusades]
The Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries against the Moslems
of the East, in so far as those enterprises were inspired by moral
feeling,--and religious-ethical feeling was the chief motive force
behind them,--were largely the translation into action of the ideal
of chivalry now commended and consecrated by the Church. The oath of
the Knights of Malta, who were a perfect incarnation of the spirit of
chivalry, was “to make eternal war upon the Turks; to recognize no
cessation of hostilities with the infidel, on any pretext whatsoever.”
It is an amazing change that, in the course of a few generations, has
come over the ethical spirit and temper of the peoples of Christendom.
In the earlier medieval time the best conscience of the age was
embodied in the monk-saints Augustine, Columba, Winfrid, and a great
company of other unarmed missionary apostles to the pagan Celts
and Germans; in this later time the best conscience of the age is
incarnated in the armor-clad warriors Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond,
Bohemond, Tancred, and a multitude of other knightly leaders of the
hosts of Crusaders who go forth to redeem with blood and slaughter the
tomb of their martyred Lord.
[Sidenote: Romance literature
as an expression of the ethical
spirit of the age]
No element of civilization responds more quickly to the changing
ethical ideal of a people than its literature. The change that passed
over the popular literature of Christendom in the transition of Europe
from the age of asceticism to the age of chivalry is finely summarized
by Lecky in these words: “When the popular imagination [in the earlier
age] embodied in legends its conception of humanity in its noblest and
most attractive form, it instinctively painted some hermit-saint of
many penances and many miracles.... In the romances of Charlemagne and
Arthur we may trace the dawning of a new type of greatness. The hero of
the imagination of Europe is no longer the hermit but a knight.”[683]
An interesting monument of this new species of literature, in what
we may view as a transition stage, is the _Gesta Romanorum_,[684] a
collection of moral stories invented by the monks in their idle hours.
These tales are a curious mixture of things Roman, monastic, and
knightly.
But for a true expression of this romance literature we must turn to
the legends of the Holy Grail, in which a lofty imagination blends,
in so far as they can be blended, all the varied elements of the
knightly ideal in a consistent whole. No age save the age of Christian
knighthood could have produced this wonderful cycle of tales.
[Sidenote: Contribution of
chivalry to the moral heritage of
the Christian world]
But it is neither in the crusading enterprises nor in the literary
products of the age of chivalry that we are to look for the real
historical significance of the ideal of chivalry. Its chief import
for the moral evolution of the European nations lies in the fact that
it helped to give fuller and richer content to the Christian ideal
by contributing to it, or by giving a surer place in it, certain
nontheological virtues, some of which the Church had laid little
emphasis upon or had entirely neglected.
Thus the enthusiasm for the ideal of chivalry, like the Church’s
veneration of the Holy Virgin,[685] tended to elevate and refine
the ideal of woman, and thus to counteract certain tendencies of
the ascetic ideal. It helped to give a high valuation to the moral
qualities of loyalty, truthfulness, magnanimity, self-reliance,
and courtesy. We designate these attractive traits of character as
chivalrous virtues for the reason that we recognize that knighthood
made precious contributions to these elements of the moral inheritance
which the modern received from the medieval world.
[Sidenote: Restrictions on the
right of private war: the Truce of
God]
Very closely connected ethically and historically with chivalry is
the movement during the later medieval time for the abolition of
the right of private war.[686] In the tenth century, as feudalism
developed and the military spirit of knighthood came more and more
to dominate society, the right of waging war, with which privilege
every feudal lord of high rank was invested, resulted in a state of
intolerable anarchy in all those lands where the feudal system had
become established. Respecting this right, claimed and exercised by the
feudal prince, of waging war against any and every other chieftain,
even though this one were a member of the same state as that to which
he himself belonged, there was in these medieval centuries precisely
the same moral feeling, or rather lack of moral feeling, that exists
to-day in regard to the right claimed and exercised by the different
independent nations of waging war against one another.
As a result of this practice of private war, Europe reverted to a
condition of primitive barbarism. Every land was filled with fightings
and violence. “Every hill,” as one pictures it, “was a stronghold,
every plain a battlefield. The trader was robbed on the highway, the
peasant was killed at his plow, the priest was slain at the altar.
Neighbor fought against neighbor, baron against baron, city against
city.”
In the midst of this universal anarchy the Church lifted a protesting
voice. Toward the end of the tenth century there was started in France
a movement which aimed at the complete abolition of private war. The
Church aspired to do what had been done by pagan Rome. It proclaimed
what was called the Peace of God. It commanded all men everywhere
to refrain from fighting and robbery and violence of every kind as
contrary to the spirit and teachings of Christianity.
But it was found utterly impossible to make the great feudal barons
refrain from fighting one another even though they were threatened with
the eternal torments of hell. They were just as unwilling to surrender
this highly prized privilege and right of waging private war as the
nations of to-day are to surrender their prized privilege and right to
wage public war.
Then the leaders of the clergy of France, seeing that they could not
suppress the evil entirely, resolved to attempt to regulate it. This
led to the proclamation of what was called the Truce of God. The first
certain trace of this movement dates from the year 1041.[687] In that
year the abbot of the monastery of Cluny and the other French abbots
and bishops issued an edict commanding all men to maintain a holy and
unbroken peace during four days of every week, from Wednesday evening
till Monday morning.[688] Every man was required to take an oath to
observe this Truce of God. The oath was renewed every three years, and
was administered to boys on their reaching their twelfth year.
This movement to redeem at least a part of the days from fighting
and violence came gradually to embrace all the countries of Western
Europe. The details of the various edicts issued by Church councils
and popes vary greatly, but all embody the principle of the edict of
1041. Holydays, and especially consecrated periods, as Easter time
and Christmas week, came to be covered by the Truce. The Council of
Clermont, which inaugurated the First Crusade, extended greatly the
terms of the Truce, forbidding absolutely private wars while the
Crusade lasted, and placing under the ægis of the Church the person and
property of every crusader.
The Truce of God was never well observed, yet it did something during
the eleventh and twelfth centuries to mitigate the evils of private
war and to render life more secure and tolerable. After the twelfth
century the kings of Europe, who were now strengthening their authority
and consolidating their dominions, took the place of the Church in
maintaining peace among their feudal vassals. They came to regard
themselves as responsible for the “peace of the land,” which phrase now
superseded those of the “Peace of God” and the “Truce of God.” Thus the
movement to which moral forces had given the first impulse was carried
to its consummation by political motives. To the Church, however,
history will ever accord the honor of having begun this great reform
which enforced peace upon the members of the same state, and which has
made private wars in civilized lands a thing of the past.
The abolition of private warfare was the first decisive step marking
the advance of Europe toward universal peace. Public war, that is,
war between nations, is still an established and approved institution
of international law; but in the moral evolution of humanity a time
approaches when public war shall also, like private war, be placed
under the ban of civilization, and will have passed upon it by the
truer conscience of that better age the same judgment that the
conscience of to-day pronounces on that private warfare upon which the
Truce of God laid the first arresting hand.
[Sidenote: Progress in the ethics
of war: sale into slavery of
Christian captives condemned]
Although the Church has done little in a direct way to abolish public
war, or even directly to create in society at large a new conscience
in regard to the wickedness of war in itself as an established method
of settling international differences, its influence has been felt
from early Christian times in the alleviation of its barbarities and
cruelties. One of the first ameliorations in the rules of war effected
through Christian influence concerned the treatment of war captives.
Among the ancient Greeks, as we have seen, under the influence of the
sentiment of Panhellenism, there was developed a vague feeling that
Greeks should not enslave Greeks. But aside from this Panhellenic
sentiment, which had very little influence upon actual practice, there
was in the pre-Christian period seemingly little or no moral feeling on
the subject, and the custom of reducing prisoners of war to slavery was
practically universal.
But the custom, in so far as it concerned Christian prisoners, was
condemned by the Christian conscience as incompatible with the spirit
of Christianity, and the rule was established that such captives
should not be enslaved.[689] We observe the first clear workings of
this new war conscience in Britain after the conversion of the Saxon
invaders. The Celts of Britain were Christians, and the Saxons, after
they themselves had been won over to Christianity, ceased to sell into
slavery their Celtic captives. Gradually this new rule was adopted by
all Christian nations. No other advance of equal importance marks the
moral history of public war during the medieval period.
This humane rule, however, did not, as we have intimated, embrace
non-Christians. Our word “slave” bears witness to this fact. This term
came to designate a person in servitude from the circumstance that up
to the eleventh century, which saw the evangelization of Russia, the
slave class in Europe was made up largely of _Slavs_, who, as pagans,
were without scruple reduced to slavery by their Christian captors.
But the earlier rights which the immemorial laws of war conferred upon
the captor were not wholly annulled in the case of Christian captives.
The practice of holding for ransom took the place of sale into slavery.
This custom prevailed throughout the feudal period, but gradually
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this practice finally
yielded to the more humanitarian custom of exchange of prisoners.[690]
Thus in this department of ethics there is to be traced a gradual
humanization of the code, which, beginning in savagery with gross
cannibalism and torture, advances through killing in cold blood, sale
into slavery, and holding for ransom, to equal exchange.
[Sidenote: Morality in the
monasteries: moral significance of
the rise of the Mendicant Orders]
During the age of chivalry the ideal of the knight overshadowed the
ideal of the monk. Nevertheless throughout the whole period the
monastic ideal inspired a great deal of moral enthusiasm. The founding
and endowment of monasteries divided with the equipping of knightly
expeditions for the Crusades the zeal and efforts and sacrifices of the
European peoples.
In the old orders of monks, however, zeal for the ascetic ideal would
often grow cold, and the high moral standard of the earlier time would
be lowered. Then some select soul, set aflame by a fresh vision of the
ideal, would draw together a group of devoted followers, and thus would
come into existence a new order of monks, among whom the flame of a
holy enthusiasm would burn brightly for a time.[691]
Among the numerous new orders called into existence by these reform
movements there were two which, in the ideal of duty which they
followed, stand quite apart from the ordinary monastic orders. This
new ideal had its incarnation in St. Francis[692] and St. Dominic, the
founders respectively of the Franciscan and the Dominican order of
friars.
In this new conception of what constitutes the worthiest and most
meritorious life, the quietistic virtues of the earlier ascetic ideal,
which had developed during the period of terror and suffering which
followed the subversion of classical civilization by the northern
barbarians, gave place to the active, benevolent virtues. In the
earlier monastic movement there was a self-regarding element. The monk
fled from the world in order to make sure of his own salvation. The
world was left to care for itself. In the new orders, the brother, in
imitation of the Master who went about among men teaching and healing,
left the cloister and went out into the world to rescue and save
others. In its lofty call to absolute self-forgetfulness and complete
consecration to the service of humanity, the early ideal of the
Mendicants was one of the noblest and most attractive that had grown
up under Christian influence. The loftiness of the ideal attracted
the select spirits of the age--for noble souls love self-sacrifice.
“Whenever in the thirteenth century,” says the historian Lea, “we find
a man towering above his fellows, we are almost sure to trace him to
one of the Mendicant Orders.”[693]
It is in the exaltation of this virtue of self-renunciation that we
find one of the chief services rendered by the Mendicant Orders,
especially by the Franciscan, to European morality. Just as the early
monks, through the emphasis laid on the virtue of chastity, made
a needed protest against the sensuality of a senile and decadent
civilization, so did the friars, through the stress laid on the
virtue of self-denial for others, make a needed protest against the
selfishness and hardness of an age that seemed to have forgotten the
claims of the poor and the lowly.[694] It can hardly be made a matter
of reasonable doubt that the slowly growing fund of altruistic feeling
in Christendom was greatly enriched by the self-devoted lives and
labors of the followers of Saints Francis and Dominic.
But the value of the ideal of the friars as an ethical force in the
evolution of European civilization was seriously impaired by certain
theological elements it contained. It was an ideal in which, as in the
ordinary monastic ideal, the duty of correct opinion came to be exalted
above all others. The ethics of belief took precedence of the ethics of
service. Thus the friars, particularly the Dominicans, through their
zeal for orthodoxy, fostered the grave moral fault of intolerance. The
growth of this conception of Christian duty, concurring with other
causes of which we shall speak in the next chapter, ushered in the age
of the Inquisition.
[Sidenote: The ethics of
Scholasticism]
The ethical history of the friars or the preaching orders mingles with
the ethical history of Scholasticism. The ethics of the Schoolmen was
a syncretism of two moral systems, the pagan-classical or Aristotelian
and the Christian. With the four classical virtues of wisdom, prudence,
temperance, and justice were combined the three Christian virtues
of faith, hope, and love. But these two moral types, the classical
and the theological, each being taken in its entirety, were mutually
inconsistent ideals of virtue. The pagan code was a morality based on
the autonomy of the individual reason; the Church code was based on an
external authority. The one was inner and natural, the other outer and
supernatural. The scholastic system was thus an incongruous combination
of naturalism and supernaturalism in ethics, of native virtues and
“virtues of grace.” This dualism is the essential fact in the history
of the ethics of Scholasticism.
As it was the great effort of the Schoolmen in the domain of dogma to
justify the doctrines of the Church, to show their reasonableness and
consistency, so was it their great effort in the domain of ethics to
justify the Church’s composite moral ideal, to show all its duties
and virtues to form a reasonable and consistent system. The best
representative of this effort of reconciliation was the great Schoolman
Thomas Aquinas. But a perfect fusion of the diverse elements was
impossible. There were ever striving in the system two spirits--the
spirit of Greek naturalism and the spirit of Hebrew-Christian
supernaturalism.
But there was another line of cleavage in the system which was still
more fateful in its historical consequences than the cleavage between
the Aristotelian and the Church morality. This cleavage was created
by the twofold ethics of the Church, for the ecclesiastical morality,
considered apart from the Aristotelian element, was itself made up of
two mutually inconsistent ethics, namely, Gospel ethics and Augustinian
ethics.[695] The saving virtue of the first was loving, self-abnegating
service; the saving virtue of the second was faith, which was
practically defined as “the acceptance as true of the dogma of the
Trinity and the main articles of the creed.” Such was the emphasis laid
by certain of the Schoolmen upon the metaphysical side of this dual
system that there was in their ethics more of the mind of Augustine
than of the mind of Christ. This making of an external authority
the basis of morality, this emphasizing of the theological virtues,
especially the virtue of right belief, had two results of incalculable
consequences for the moral evolution in Christendom. First, it led
naturally and inevitably to that system of casuistry[696] which was
one of the most striking phenomena of the moral history of the later
medieval and earlier modern centuries; and second, it laid the basis of
the tribunal of the Inquisition. Thus does the theological ethics of
Scholasticism stand in intimate and significant relation to these two
important matters in the moral history of Europe.