It is not easy to overestimate the influence of monasticism on
subsequent religious history. The lives of its votaries provided
examples of almost every conceivable kind of self-torture or
semi-maniacal behaviour. It had made the world thoroughly familiar with
extravagance of action as the symptom of intense religious conviction.
And its influence on social development had been such that the
susceptibility of the public mind to suggestions was as a raw wound in
the presence of a powerful irritant. Such an institution as the
Inquisition could only have maintained itself among a people thoroughly
familiar with supernaturalism, and to whom its preservation was the
first and most sacred of duties.
A society habituated to the commanding presence of the monk, fed upon
stories of their miraculous encounters with celestial and diabolic
visitants, and so accustomed to regard the priesthood as in a very
peculiar sense the mouthpiece of divinity, was well prepared for such a
series of events as the crusades for the recovery of the Holy Land.
Pilgrimages to the burial-places of saints, and to spots connected, by
legend or otherwise, with Christian history, had long been in vogue, and
formed a source of both revenue to the Church and of inspiration to the
faithful. As early as 833 a guide-book had been prepared called the
_Itinerary from Bordeaux to Jerusalem_, and along the route marked
convents and shelters for the pilgrims were established. A lucrative
traffic in relics of every description had also been established, and
any interference with this touched the Church in its tenderest point.
Added to which the expected end of the world in the year 1000 had the
effect of still further increasing the crowd of pilgrims to the Holy
Land, where it was firmly believed the second advent would take place.
In the eleventh century a tax was imposed on all Christians visiting
Jerusalem. There were also reports of Christian pilgrims being
ill-treated. Recent events in Europe have shown with what ease Christian
feeling may be roused against a Mohammedan power, and it was
considerably easier to do this in the eleventh century. Between them,
Pope Urban II. and Peter the Hermit--the former acting mainly from
political motives; the latter from a spirit of sheer fanaticism--
succeeded in rousing Europe to a maniacal desire for the recovery
of the Holy Land. And for nearly two hundred years the world saw
a series of crusades on as absurd an errand as ever engaged the
energies of mankind. Every class of society participated, and it is
calculated that no less than two millions of lives were sacrificed.
Ordinary histories lean to representing the crusades as a series of
armed expeditions, led by princes, nobles, and kings. But this gives a
quite inaccurate conception of the movement, during its early stages, at
all events. In reality it was a true psychological epidemic. No custom,
however ancient, no duty, no law, was allowed to stand before the
crusading mania. In every village the clergy fed the mania, promising
eternal rewards to all who took up the burden of the cross. Old and
young, the strong and the sick, the rich and the poor were enrolled.
Urban had told them that "under their General, Jesus Christ," they would
march to certain victory. Absolution for all sins was promised to all
who joined; and, as Gibbon says, "at the voice of their pastor, the
robber, the incendiary, the homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their
souls by repeating on the infidels the same deeds which they had
exercised against their Christian brethren." Until experience had taught
them better, little precautions were taken to provide food or arms. Huge
concourses of people,[176] some led by a goose and a goat, into which it
was believed the Holy Ghost had entered, set out for the Holy Land, so
ignorant that at every large town or city they enquired, "Is this Zion?"
Although a religious expedition, small regard was paid to decency or
humanity. Defenceless cities _en route_ were sacked. Women were
outraged, men and children killed. The Jews were murdered wholesale.
Almost universally the slaughter of Jews at home were preparatory to
crusading abroad. Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria, although providing
contingents for the crusading army, suffered heavily by the passage of
these undisciplined, lawless crowds. As one writer says:--
"If they had devoted themselves to the service of God, they convinced
the inhabitants on their line of march that they had ceased to regard
the laws of man. They considered themselves privileged to gratify every
wish and every lust as it arose. They recognised no rights of property,
they felt no gratitude for hospitality, and they possessed no sense of
honour. They violated the wives and daughters of their hosts when they
were kindly treated, they devastated the lands of friends whom they had
converted into enemies, they resorted to wanton robbery and destruction
in revenge for calamities which they had brought upon themselves. They
believed that they proved their superiority to the Mohammedans by
torturing the defenceless Jews; and this was the only exploit in which
the first divisions of the crusaders could boast of success.... To the
leaders, who could not write their own names, deception and treachery
were as familiar as force; to their followers rapine and murder were so
congenial that, in the absence of Saracens, Jews, or townsfolk, it
seemed but a professional pastime to kill or to rob a companion in
arms."[177]
And of the behaviour of the crusaders on the first capture of Jerusalem,
1099, Dean Milman writes:--
"No barbarian, no infidel, no Saracen, ever perpetrated such wanton and
cold-blooded atrocities of cruelty as the wearers of the Cross of Christ
(who, it is said, had fallen on their knees and burst into a pious hymn
at the first view of the Holy City) on the capture of that city. Murder
was mercy, rape tenderness, simple plunder the mere assertion of the
conqueror's right. Children were seized by their legs, some of them
plucked from their mother's breasts, and dashed against the walls, or
whirled from the battlements. Others were obliged to leap from the
walls; some tortured, roasted by slow fires. They ripped up prisoners to
see if they had swallowed gold. Of 70,000 Saracens there were not left
enough to bury the dead; poor Christians were hired to perform the
office. Everyone surprised in the Temple was slaughtered, till the reek
from the dead drove away the slayers. The Jews were burned alive in
their synagogue."[178]
The most remarkable of all the crusades, and the one that best shows
the character of the epidemic, was the children's crusade of 1212. It
was said that the sins of the crusaders had caused their failure, and
priests went about France and Germany calling upon the children to do
what the sins of their fathers had prevented them accomplishing. The
children were told that the sea would dry up to give them passage, and
the infidels be stricken by the Lord on their approach. A peasant lad,
Stephen of Cloyes, received the usual vision, and was ordered to lead
the crusade. Commencing with the children around Paris, he collected
some 30,000 followers, and without money or food commenced the march. At
the same time an army of children, 40,000 strong, was gathered together
at Cologne. The result of the crusade may be told in a few words. About
6000 of the French contingent, having reached Marseilles, were offered a
passage by some shipowners. Several of the ships foundered, others
reached shore, and the boys were sold into slavery. The girls were
reserved for a more sinister fate. Thousands of the children died in
attempting a march over the Alps. A mere remnant succeeded in reaching
home, ruined in both mind and body. Well might Fuller say: "This crusade
was done by the instinct of the devil, who, as it were, desired a
cordial of children's blood, to comfort his weak stomach, long cloyed
with murdering of men."[179]
On both the social and the religious side the consequences were
important. For the first time large bodies of men, taught to regard all
those who were outside Christendom as beneath consideration, came into
contact with a people possessing an art, an industry, a culture far
superior to their own. As Draper says: "Even down to the meanest camp
follower, everyone must have recognised the difference between what they
had anticipated and what they had found. They had seen undaunted
courage, chivalrous bearing, intellectual culture far higher than their
own. They had been in lands filled with prodigies of human skill. They
did not melt down into the populations to whom they returned without
imparting to them a profound impression destined to make itself felt in
the course of time."[180] Hitherto Mohammedan culture had only
influenced Christendom through the medium of the Spanish schools and
universities. Now the influence became more general. A taste for greater
comfort developed. Commerce grew; literature improved. We approach the
period of the Renaissance, and to that new birth the crusades, despite
their intolerance and brutality, offered a contribution of no small
value.
On the other hand, and for a time, the power of the Church grew greater.
The impetus given to superstitious hopes and fears made on all hands for
the wealth of the Church. Much was made over to the Church as a free
gift. Much was pawned to it. Much also was entrusted by those who went
to the Holy Land, never to return, in which case the Church became the
designated or undesignated heir. "In every way the all-absorbing Church
was still gathering in wealth, encircling new land within her hallowed
pale, the one steady merchant who in this vast traffic and sale of
personal and of landed property never made a losing venture, but went on
accumulating and still accumulating, and for the most part withdrawing
the largest portion of the land in every kingdom into a separate
estate, which claimed exemption from all burthens of the realm, until
the realm was compelled into measures, violent often and iniquitous in
their mode, but still inevitable."[181]
Next, the crusades set their seal upon the justice of religious wars,
and established an enduring alliance between militarism and religion.
The military profession became surrounded with all the ceremonies and
paraphernalia of religion, without being in the least humanised by the
alliance. The knight received his arms blessed by the Church, he was
sworn to defend the Church, and he was as ready to turn his weapons
against heretics in Europe as against infidels in Syria. Military
persecutions of heretics assumed the form of a mania. There were
crusades against the Moors in Spain, against the Albigenses, and against
other heretics. As Bryce remarks: "The religious feeling which the
crusades evoked--a feeling which became the origin of the great orders
of chivalry, and somewhat later of the two great orders of mendicant
friars--turned wholly against the opponents of ecclesiastical claims,
and was made to work the will of the Holy See, which had blessed and
organised the project."[182] The expedition against King John by Philip
of France was undertaken at the behest of the Pope, and was called a
crusade. The attempt of Spain to crush the Netherlands was called a
crusade. So was the Armada that was fitted out against England.
More than all, a stamp of permanency was given to popular superstition.
For two centuries people had seen expedition after expedition fitted out
to accomplish an avowedly religious purpose. They had been taught that
to die in defence of religion, or in the attempt to achieve a religious
object, was the noblest of deaths. They had seen the greatest in Europe
setting forth at the command of the Church. Signs and wonders had
abounded to prove the heaven-blessed character of the crusades. They had
seen the Church growing steadily in power, and every possible means had
been utilised to increase the flame of religious fanaticism. Expeditions
might fail, but failure did not cure fanaticism. It fed it; the
crusaders returned, chastened in some respects, but still sufficiently
full of religious zeal to be ready to battle against the unbeliever and
the heretic at the behest of the Church. And it was not the policy of
the Church to allow this fanaticism to remain unemployed. Even though it
might ultimately lose, the Church and superstition profited enormously
by the crusading spirit. It strengthened the general sense of the
supernatural, even while creating tendencies that were destined to limit
its sway. Above all, it prepared the way for other religious epidemics.
These were more circumscribed in area, and less lengthy in their
duration; but their existence was made possible and easy by the
centuries during which, first monasticism, and later the crusading
mania, had dominated the public mind.
The crusades had hardly been brought to a close before continental
Europe witnessed an outbreak, in epidemic form, of a practice that had
been long associated with monastic discipline. The use of the whip as a
form of religious discipline had always played a part in conventual and
monastic life. On the one hand, it formed part of that insensate desire
to torture the body which went to make up the ascetic ideal; on the
other hand, the fondness for whipping bare flesh and for being whipped
has a distinctly pathologic character. The subject is rather too
unsavoury to dwell upon, but it has long been established that there is
a close connection between the whipping of certain parts of the body and
the production of intense sexual pleasure.[183] And it is also clear
that the life led by monks and nuns was such as to encourage sexual
aberrations of various forms. Moreover, when once the practice of
whipping became a public spectacle, and assumed an epidemic form,
imitation, combined with intense religious faith, would operate very
powerfully.
In the fourteenth century Europe was visited by the Black Plague. In
countries utterly devoid of sanitation, where baths were practically
unknown and personal habits of the filthiest, the plague found a
fruitful soil. Nearly a quarter of the population died, and corpses were
so numerous that huge pits were dug and hundreds buried together. It was
amid the general terror and demoralisation caused by this visitation
that the sect of the Flagellants arose. Calling themselves the
Brotherhood of the Flagellants, or the Brethren of the Cross, wearing
dark garments with red crosses front and back, they traversed the cities
of the Continent carrying whips to which small pieces of iron were
fixed. England appears to have been the only country in which they
failed to establish themselves. Elsewhere their numbers grew with
formidable rapidity. At Spires two hundred boys, under twelve years of
age, influenced probably by the example of the children's crusade,
formed themselves into a brotherhood and marched through some of the
German cities. In Italy over 20,000 people marched from Florence in one
of these processions; from Modena, over 25,000. Some of them professed
to work miracles. Everywhere, while the mania lasted, they were warmly
welcomed, the inhabitants of towns and cities ringing the bells and
flocking in crowds to hear the preaching and witness the whippings.
The proceedings of the Flagellants in all countries were very similar.
They marched from town to town, men and women and children stripped to
the waist--sometimes entirely naked--praying incessantly and whipping
each other. "Not only during the day, but even by night, and in the
severest winter, they traversed the cities with torches and banners, in
thousands and tens of thousands, headed by their priests, and prostrated
themselves before the altars." At other times they proceeded to the
market-place, arranged themselves on the ground in circles, assuming
attitudes in accordance with their real or supposed crimes. After each
had been whipped, "one of them, in conclusion, stood up to read a
letter, which it was pretended an angel had brought from heaven to St.
Peter's Church, at Jerusalem, stating that Christ, who was sore
displeased at the sins of man, had granted, at the intercession of the
Holy Virgin and of the angels, that all who should wander about for
thirty-four days and scourge themselves should be partakers of the
Divine grace." In the end the movement became so obnoxious to the
Church, and so troublesome to the civil authorities, that both combined
to secure its suppression.
Equally significant in the history of religion is the dancing mania,
which broke out as the mania for flagellation was subsiding. The
function of dancing in primitive religious ceremonial has been pointed
out in a previous chapter. It is there a common and obvious method of
both creating and expressing a high state of nervous excitability. In
later times religious dancing becomes more purely hypnotic in character,
and suggestion plays a powerful part. During the medieval period the
conditions were peculiarly favourable to the prevalence of psychological
epidemics. Plagues, more or less severe, were of frequent occurrence.
Between 1119 and 1340, Italy alone had no less than sixteen such
visitations. Smallpox and leprosy were also common. The public mind was
morbidly sensitive to signs and portents and saturated to an almost
incredible degree with superstition. The public processions of the
Church, its penances, and practices were all calculated to fire the
imagination, and produce a mixed and dangerous condition of fear and
expectancy. Moreover, dancing mania, on a small scale, had made its
appearance on several previous occasions, and the public mind was thus
in a way prepared for a more serious outbreak.
The great dancing mania of 1374 occurred immediately after the revels
connected with the semi-Pagan festival of St. John. Bacchanalian dances
formed one of the accompaniments of the festival of St. John, and made,
so to speak, a natural starting-point for the epidemic. Hecker, who
gives a very elaborate account of the dancing mania as it appeared in
various countries, thus describes the behaviour of those afflicted:--
"They formed circles, hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost control
over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of all bystanders, for
hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the
ground in a state of exhaustion.... While dancing, they neither saw nor
heard, being insensible to external impressions, but were haunted by
visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked
out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt as if they had
been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high.
Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour
enthroned with the Virgin Mary."[184]