WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES THOUGHT OF THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY
HAPPENED TO LIVE
DATES are a very useful invention. We could not do without them but
unless we are very careful, they will play tricks with us. They are
apt to make history too precise. For example, when I talk of the
point-of-view of mediaeval man, I do not mean that on the 31st of
December of the year 476, suddenly all the people of Europe said, "Ah,
now the Roman Empire has come to an end and we are living in the Middle
Ages. How interesting!"
You could have found men at the Frankish court of Charlemagne who were
Romans in their habits, in their manners, in their out-look upon life.
On the other hand, when you grow up you will discover that some of the
people in this world have never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man.
All times and all ages overlap, and the ideas of succeeding generations
play tag with each other. But it is possible to study the minds of a
good many true representatives of the Middle Ages and then give you an
idea of the average man's attitude toward life and the many difficult
problems of living.
First of all, remember that the people of the Middle Ages never thought
of themselves as free-born citizens, who could come and go at will and
shape their fate according to their ability or energy or luck. On the
contrary, they all considered themselves part of the general scheme of
things, which included emperors and serfs, popes and heretics, heroes
and swashbucklers, rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves. They
accepted this divine ordinance and asked no questions. In this, of
course, they differed radically from modern people who accept nothing
and who are forever trying to improve their own financial and political
situation.
To the man and woman of the thirteenth century, the world
hereafter--a Heaven of wonderful delights and a Hell of brimstone and
suffering--meant something more than empty words or vague theological
phrases. It was an actual fact and the mediaeval burghers and knights
spent the greater part of their time preparing for it. We modern people
regard a noble death after a well-spent life with the quiet calm of the
ancient Greeks and Romans. After three score years of work and effort,
we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well.
But during the Middle Ages, the King of Terrors with his grinning skull
and his rattling bones was man's steady companion. He woke his victims
up with terrible tunes on his scratchy fiddle he sat down with them at
dinner--he smiled at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took
a girl out for a walk. If you had heard nothing but hair-raising yarns
about cemeteries and coffins and fearful diseases when you were very
young, instead of listening to the fairy stories of Anderson and Grimm,
you, too, would have lived all your days in a dread of the final hour
and the gruesome day of Judgment. That is exactly what happened to the
children of the Middle Ages. They moved in a world of devils and spooks
and only a few occasional angels. Sometimes, their fear of the future
filled their souls with humility and piety, but often it influenced them
the other way and made them cruel and sentimental. They would first of
all murder all the women and children of a captured city and then they
would devoutly march to a holy spot and with their hands gory with
the blood of innocent victims, they would pray that a merciful heaven
forgive them their sins. Yea, they would do more than pray, they would
weep bitter tears and would confess themselves the most wicked of
sinners. But the next day, they would once more butcher a camp of
Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy in their hearts.
Of course, the Crusaders were Knights and obeyed a somewhat different
code of manners from the common men. But in such respects the common man
was just the same as his master. He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily
frightened by a shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent
and faithful service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when
his feverish imagination saw a ghost.
In judging these good people, however, it is wise to remember the
terrible disadvantages under which they lived. They were really
barbarians who posed as civilised people. Charlemagne and Otto the Great
were called "Roman Emperors," but they had as little resemblance to a
real Roman Emperor (say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as "King" Wumba
Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers of Sweden or
Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst glorious ruins but who
did not share the benefits of the civilisation which their fathers and
grandfathers had destroyed. They knew nothing. They were ignorant of
almost every fact which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged
to go to one single book for all their information. That was the Bible.
But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the history of the
human race for the better are those chapters of the New Testament which
teach us the great moral lessons of love, charity and forgiveness. As
a handbook of astronomy, zoology, botany, geometry and all the other
sciences, the venerable book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth
century, a second book was added to the mediaeval library, the great
encyclopaedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the Greek
philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why the Christian
church should have been willing to accord such high honors to the
teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas they condemned all other Greek
philosophers on account of their heathenish doctrines, I really do
not know. But next to the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only
reliable teacher whose works could be safely placed into the hands of
true Christians.
His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout way. They had gone
from Greece to Alexandria. They had then been translated from the Greek
into the Arabic language by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the
seventh century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and the
philosophy of the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of Stagira in
Macedonia) was taught in the Moorish universities of Cordova. The Arabic
text was then translated into Latin by the Christian students who had
crossed the Pyrenees to get a liberal education and this much travelled
version of the famous books was at last taught at the different schools
of northwestern Europe. It was not very clear, but that made it all the
more interesting.
With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant men of the
Middle Ages now set to work to explain all things between Heaven and
Earth in their relation to the expressed will of God. These brilliant
men, the so-called Scholasts or Schoolmen, were really very intelligent,
but they had obtained their information exclusively from books, and
never from actual observation. If they wanted to lecture on the sturgeon
or on caterpillars, they read the Old and New Testaments and Aristotle,
and told their students everything these good books had to say upon
the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons. They did not go out to the
nearest river to catch a sturgeon. They did not leave their libraries
and repair to the backyard to catch a few caterpillars and look at these
animals and study them in their native haunts. Even such famous scholars
as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether the
sturgeons in the land of Palestine and the caterpillars of Macedonia
might not have been different from the sturgeons and the caterpillars of
western Europe.
When occasionally an exceptionally curious person like Roger Bacon
appeared in the council of the learned and began to experiment with
magnifying glasses and funny little telescopes and actually dragged the
sturgen and the caterpillar into the lecturing room and proved that they
were different from the creatures described by the Old Testament and by
Aristotle, the Schoolmen shook their dignified heads. Bacon was going
too far. When he dared to suggest that an hour of actual observation
was worth more than ten years with Aristotle and that the works of that
famous Greek might as well have remained untranslated for all the good
they had ever done, the scholasts went to the police and said, "This man
is a danger to the safety of the state. He wants us to study Greek that
we may read Aristotle in the original. Why should he not be contented
with our Latin-Arabic translation which has satisfied our faithful
people for so many hundred years? Why is he so curious about the insides
of fishes and the insides of insects? He is probably a wicked magician
trying to upset the established order of things by his Black Magic." And
so well did they plead their cause that the frightened guardians of the
peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for more than ten years. When
he resumed his studies he had learned a lesson. He wrote his books in
a queer cipher which made it impossible for his contemporaries to read
them, a trick which became common as the Church became more desperate in
its attempts to prevent people from asking questions which would lead to
doubts and infidelity.
This, however, was not done out of any wicked desire to keep people
ignorant. The feeling which prompted the heretic hunters of that day
was really a very kindly one. They firmly believed--nay, they knew--that
this life was but the preparation for our real existence in the
next world. They felt convinced that too much knowledge made people
uncomfortable, filled their minds with dangerous opinions and led to
doubt and hence to perdition. A mediaeval Schoolman who saw one of
his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the Bible and
Aristotle, that he might study things for himself, felt as uncomfortable
as a loving mother who sees her young child approach a hot stove. She
knows that he will burn his little fingers if he is allowed to touch it
and she tries to keep him back, if necessary she will use force. But she
really loves the child and if he will only obey her, she will be as good
to him as she possibly can be. In the same way the mediaeval guardians
of people's souls, while they were strict in all matters pertaining to
the Faith, slaved day and night to render the greatest possible service
to the members of their flock. They held out a helping hand whenever
they could and the society of that day shows the influence of thousands
of good men and pious women who tried to make the fate of the average
mortal as bearable as possible.
A serf was a serf and his position would never change. But the Good Lord
of the Middle Ages who allowed the serf to remain a slave all his life
had bestowed an immortal soul upon this humble creature and therefore
he must be protected in his rights, that he might live and die as a good
Christian. When he grew too old or too weak to work he must be
taken care of by the feudal master for whom he had worked. The serf,
therefore, who led a monotonous and dreary life, was never haunted by
fear of to-morrow. He knew that he was "safe"--that he could not be
thrown out of employment, that he would always have a roof over his head
(a leaky roof, perhaps, but roof all the same), and that he would always
have something to eat.
This feeling of "stability" and of "safety" was found in all classes of
society. In the towns the merchants and the artisans established guilds
which assured every member of a steady income. It did not encourage the
ambitious to do better than their neighbours. Too often the guilds
gave protection to the "slacker" who managed to "get by." But they
established a general feeling of content and assurance among the
labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of general
competition. The Middle Ages were familiar with the dangers of what we
modern people call "corners," when a single rich man gets hold of all
the available grain or soap or pickled herring, and then forces the
world to buy from him at his own price. The authorities, therefore,
discouraged wholesale trading and regulated the price at which merchants
were allowed to sell their goods.
The Middle Ages disliked competition. Why compete and fill the world
with hurry and rivalry and a multitude of pushing men, when the Day of
Judgement was near at hand, when riches would count for nothing and
when the good serf would enter the golden gates of Heaven while the bad
knight was sent to do penance in the deepest pit of Inferno?
In short, the people of the Middle Ages were asked to surrender part
of their liberty of thought and action, that they might enjoy greater
safety from poverty of the body and poverty of the soul.
And with a very few exceptions, they did not object. They firmly
believed that they were mere visitors upon this planet--that they were
here to be prepared for a greater and more important life. Deliberately
they turned their backs upon a world which was filled with suffering and
wickedness and injustice. They pulled down the blinds that the rays
of the sun might not distract their attention from that chapter in the
Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was to illumine
their happiness in all eternity. They tried to close their eyes to most
of the joys of the world in which they lived that they might enjoy those
which awaited them in the near future. They accepted life as a necessary
evil and welcomed death as the beginning of a glorious day.
The Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the future but had
tried to establish their Paradise right here upon this earth. They had
succeeded in making life extremely pleasant for those of their fellow
men who did not happen to be slaves. Then came the other extreme of the
Middle Ages, when man built himself a Paradise beyond the highest clouds
and turned this world into a vale of tears for high and low, for rich
and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb. It was time for the pendulum
to swing back in the other direction, as I shall tell you in my next
chapter.