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 5
3. Pulpit (N. Pisano, Siena)--Opposite page 8
4. Archangel Michael (Giovanni Pisano, Pisa)--Opposite page 13
5. Christ (Andrea Pisano, Florence)--Opposite page 13
6. Sta. Reparata (Andrea Pisano, Florence)--Opposite page 13
7. Paschal Candlestick (Baptistery, Florence)--Opposite page 15
8. Reliquary (Cathedral Orvieto, Ugolino di Vieri)--Opposite page 15
9. The Church in Symbol (Paris)--On page 17
10. Adoration of Magi (Pulpit, Siena, Nic. Pisano)--Opposite page 22
11. Cathedral (Lincoln)--Opposite page 28
12. Cathedral (York)--Opposite page 28
13. Cloister of St. John Lateran (Rome)--Opposite page 32
14. Jacques Coeur's House (Bourges)--On page 32
15. Rathhaus (Tangermuende)--Opposite page 42
16. Cathedral (Hereford)--Opposite page 44
17. Cathedral (York, East)--Opposite page 44
18. Single Flying Buttress--On page 57
19. Christ Driving Out Money Changers (Giotto)--Opposite page 64
20. Bride from Marriage of Cana (Giotto)--Opposite page 64
21. Head (Mosaic, St. Mark's, Venice)--Opposite page 64
22. Head of Blessed Virgin Annunciation--Opposite page 64
23. Petrarch Portraits by Benozzo Gozzoli--Opposite page 71
24. Dante Portraits by Benozzo Gozzoli--Opposite page 71
25. Giotto Portraits by Benozzo Gozzoli--Opposite page 71
26. Screen (Hereford)--Opposite page 87
27. Doorway of Sacristy (Bourges)--Opposite page 87
28. Double Flying Buttress--On page 95
29. Angel Choir (Lincoln)--Opposite page 96
30. Cathedral (Amiens)--Opposite page 105
31. Cathedral (Rheims)--Opposite page 107
32. Cloister of St. Paul's (without the walls, Rome)--Opposite page 112
33. Cathedral (Bourges)--Opposite page 116
34. Cathedral (Chartres)--Opposite page 116
35. Durham Castle and Cathedral--Opposite page 120
36. King John's Castle (Limerick)--Opposite page 120
37. Giotto's Tower (Florence)--Opposite page 122
38. Palazzo Vecchio (Florence) Campanile (Giotto)--Opposite page 122
{xxviii}
39. Fountain (Perugia) [Town Pump]--Opposite page 126
40. Lavatoio (Todi) [Public Wash-House]--Opposite page 126
41. Reliquary (Limoges Museo, Florence)--Opposite page 133
42. Crucifix (Duomo, Siena)--Opposite page 133
43. Madonna, Cimabue (Rucellai Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence)--
Opposite page 136
44. St. Francis' Marriage with Poverty (Giotto, Assisi)--Opposite page 144
45. Espousal of St. Catherine (Gaddi, XIII. Century pupil, Perugia)--
Opposite page 147
46. Group from Visitation (Rheims)--On page 148
47. Monument of Cardinal de Bray (Arnolfo)--Opposite page 156
48. Decoration (XIII. Cent. Psalter MSS.)--On page 165
49. Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (Rome's Gothic Cathedral)--Opposite page 168
50. Crozier (obverse and reverse)--On page 181
51. Tower of Scaligers--On page 193
52. St. Francis Prophesies the Death of Celano
(Giotto, Upper Ch., Assisi)--Opposite page 197
53. Virgin and Child (Pisa, Campo Santo, Giov. Pisano)--Opposite page 200
54. Entombment of Blessed Virgin--On page 208
55. St. Christopher (alto relievo, Venice)--Opposite page 214
56. Madonna and Child (Giov. Pisano, Padua)--Opposite page 214
57. Tower (Lincoln)--On page 220
58. Porta Romana Gate, Florence (N. Pisano)--Opposite page 226
59. Ponte Alle Grazie (Lapo)--Opposite page 226
60. Church and Cloisters, San Antonio (Padua)--Opposite page 232
61. St. Catherine's (Luebeck)--Opposite page 232
62. Stone Carving (Paris)--On page 237
63. The First Nativity Play (Giotto, Upper Church of Assisi)--Opposite page 240
64. Palazzo Buondelmonti (Florence)--Opposite page 248
65. Palazzo Tolomei (Siena)--Opposite page 248
66. Capital (Lincoln)--On page 253
67. The Glorification of St. Francis (Giotto, Lower Church of Assisi)--
Opposite page 256
68. St. Francis (Church of the Frari, Venice, Nic. Pisano)--Opposite page 261
69. St. Clare--Three Franciscans (Giotto)--Opposite page 264
70. St. Louis--Three Franciscans (Giotto)--Opposite page 264
71. St. Elizabeth--Three Franciscans (Giotto)--Opposite page 264
72. Side Capital (Lincoln)--On page 269
73. Notre Dame (Paris)--Opposite page 290
74. La Sainte Chapelle (Paris)--Opposite page 294 [missing]
75. Cathedral (Orvieto)--Opposite page 294 [missing]
{xxix}
76. Apostle (la Sainte Chapelle, Paris)--Opposite page 296
77. Decoration (Queen Mary's Psalter, XIII. Century MS.)--On page 299
78. Portrait of Dante (Giotto, in the Bargello, Florence)--Opposite page 300
79. Torre del Fame (Dante, Pisa)--Opposite page 306
80. Palazzo Pretorio (Todi)--Opposite page 306
81. Angel (Rheims)--On page 318
82. St. Clare Bids the Dead St. Francis Good-bye
(Giotto, Up. Ch. Assisi)--Opposite page 320
83. Church (Doberan, Germany)--Opposite page 322
84. San Damiano (Assisi)--Opposite page 322
85. St. Elizabeth's Cathedral (Marburg)--Opposite page 325
86. Marriage of the Blessed Virgin (Giotto, Padua)--Opposite page 328
87. Mosaic (St. Mark's, Venice, 1220)--Opposite page 333
88. Stone Carving (Amiens)--On page 336
89. Hospital of the Holy Ghost (Luebeck)--Opposite page 341
90. Charity (Giotto)--Opposite page 347
91. Fortitude (Giotto)--Opposite page 347
92. Hope (Giotto)--Opposite page 347
93. Hospital Interior--On page 349
94. Tower (Marburg)--On page 363
95. City Gate (Neubrandenburg)--Opposite page 368
96. Rathhaus (Stralsund)--Opposite page 368
97. Portrait of Pope Boniface VIII. (Giotto, Rome)--Opposite page 372
98. Decoration (XIII. Cent. Psalter)--On page 374
99. Doorway (Lincoln)--Opposite page 381
100. Nave (Durham)--Opposite page 381
101. Broken Arch (St. Mary's, York, Climax of Gothic)--Opposite page 381
102. Animals from Bestiarium (XIII. Cent. MS.)--On page 391
103. Door of Giotto's Tower (Florence)--Opposite page 405
104. Principal Door of Baptistery (Pisa)--Opposite page 405
105. Palazzo dei Consoli (Gubbio)--Opposite page 417
106. Palazzo Zabarella (Padua)--Opposite page 417
107. Rathhaus (Luebeck)--Opposite page 422
108. City Gate (Neubrandenburg)--Opposite page 426
109. Minster (Chorin, Germany)--Opposite page 426
110. Hinge from Schlestadt--On page 429
111. Portion of Letter of Innocent III., Mentioning Greenland--On page 433
112. Double Pivoted Compass Needle--On page 441
113. Peregrinus' Compass--On page 442
114. Portion of MS. of Ormulum--On page 450
115. Key of Map of World (Hereford)--On page 461
116. 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 Trouveres, 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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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 Trouveres 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 Trouveres 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}
[Illustration]
ARCHANGEL MICHAEL (GIOVANNI PISANO, PISA)
[Illustration]
CHRIST (ANDREA PISANO, FLORENCE)
[Illustration]
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}
[Illustration ]
PASCHAL CANDLESTICK (BAPTISTERY, FLORENCE)
[Illustration:]
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?
[Illustration]
THE CHURCH [SYMBOLIZED] (PARIS)
{18}
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.
{opp23}
[Illustration]
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 Daunou, 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.]
[Illustration]
CATHEDRAL (YORK)
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
JACQUES COEUR'S HOUSE (BOURGES)
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
RATHHAUS (TANGERMUeNDE)
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 Roemer, 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."
[Illustration]
CATHEDRAL (YORK)
[Illustration]
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.