Produced by Don Kostuch
[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.
{i}
{ii}
[Illustration]
LE BEAU DIEU (AMIENS)
{iii}
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
{iv}
_ 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
{v}
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.
{vi}
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._
{vii}
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.
{x}
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.
{xi}
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_.
{xvi}
{xvii}
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.