"What is the cause of the present widespread homage to St. Francis?

It is, of course, far too wide a question to allow the present

writer to do more than make a few suggestions. First and foremost,

we must ever reckon with the perennial charm of the Saint's

personality, which seems to wield an ineffable influence over the

hearts of men--drawing and holding those of the most different

habits of mind, with a sense of personal sympathy. Perhaps no other

man, unless it be St. Paul, ever had such wide reaching,

all-embracing sympathy: and it may have been wider than St. Paul's,

for we find no evidence in the great apostle of a love for nature

and of animals. This exquisite Franciscan spirit, as it is called,

which is the very perfume of religion--this spirit at once so

humble, so tender, so devout, so akin to 'the good odor of

Christ'--passed out into the whole world and has become a permanent

source of inspiration. A character at once so exhalted and so

purified as St. Francis was sure to keep alive an ideal; and so he

does. From this one can easily understand St. Francis' dominance

among a small but earnest band of enthusiasts now pointing the world

back to the reign of the spirit. It was this same gentle idealism of

St. Francis which inspired the art of the Umbrian people; it was

this which was translated into the paintings of the greatest

artists. No school of painting has ever been penetrated with {262}

such pure idealism as the Umbrian; and this inspiration, at once

religious and artistic, came from the tomb of the _poverello_ above

which Giotto had painted his mystical frescoes. The earnest

quasi-religious study of the medieval beginnings of western art has

therefore rightly been set down as another cause for some of the

latter-day pilgrimages to Assisi. In like manner, the scientific

treatment of the Romance literature leads naturally to St. Francis

as to the humble upper waters of a mighty stream; at the beginning

of the Thirteenth Century is St. Francis, at the end is Dante. It

was Matthew Arnold, we believe, who first held up the poor man of

Assisi as a literary type--a type as distinct and formal as the

author of the _Divine Comedy_. 'Prose,' he says, 'could not easily

satisfy the saint's ardent soul, and so he made poetry.' 'It was,'

writes Ozanam, 'the first cry of a nascent poetry which has grown

and made itself heard through the world.'"

Considering how thoroughly impractical Francis seemed to be in his

life, it can scarcely help but be a source of ever increasing wonder

that he succeeded in influencing, his generation so widely and so

thoroughly. It is evident that there were many men of the time tired

of the more or less strenuous life, which chained them either to the

cares of business or tempted them for the sake of the bubble

reputation into a military career. To these St. Francis' method of

life came with an especially strong appeal. The example of his neglect

of worldly things and of his so thoroughly maintained resolve not to

be harassed by the ordinary cares of life, and especially not to take

too much thought of the future, penetrated into all classes. While it

made the rich realize how much of their lives they were living merely

for the sake of others, it helped the poor to be satisfied, since here

was a sublime and complete recognition of the fact that an existence

without cares was better than one with many cares, such as were sure

to come to those who wrought ever and anon increase of the goods of

this world. Such ideas may seen to be essentially modern, but anyone

who will turn to the chapter on The Three Most Read Books of the

Century and read the passages from the "Romance of the Rose" on wealth

and poverty, will know better than to think them anything but

perennial.

{263}

Men gathered around St. Francis then and pleaded to be allowed to

follow his mode of life. Some of the men who thus came to him were the

choice spirits of the times. Thomas of Celano, who was to be one of

the Master's favorite disciples and subsequently to be his most

authoritative biographer, was one of the great literary geniuses of

all times, the author of the sublime Dies Irae. While most of his

first companions were men of such extreme simplicity of mind that the

world has been rather in an amused than admiring attitude with regard

to them, there can be no doubt that this simplicity was of itself an

index not only of their genuine sincerity of heart, but of a greatness

of mind that set them above the ordinary run of mankind and made them

live poetry when they did not write it. The institute established by

St. Francis was destined, in the course of the century, to attract to

it some of the great men of every country. Besides Thomas of Celano

there was, in Italy, Anthony of Padua, almost as famous as his master

for the beauty of his saintly life; Jacopone Da Todi, the well-known

author of the Stabat Mater, a hymn that rivals in poetic genius, the

Dies Irae; Bonaventure, the great teacher of philosophy and theology

at the University of Paris, and the writer of some of the sublimest

treatises of mystical theology that were to be text books for the

members of the Franciscan order, and of many other religious bodies

for centuries after his death, indeed down to even our own times.

There was Roger Bacon, in England, the famous teacher of science at

Paris and at Oxford; and that Subtle Doctor, Duns Scotus, whose

influence in philosophical speculation was destined never quite to

disappear, and many others, the pick of the generations in which they

lived, all proud to look up to Francis of Assisi as their father; all

glad of the opportunity that the order gave them, to pass their lives

in peace, far from the madding crowd with its strifes and competition,

providing them constantly with opportunities to live their own lives,

to find their own souls, to cultivate their own individualities

untrammelled by worldly cares.

Francis' success in this matter and the propaganda of his influence

will not be so surprising to Americans of this generation, if they

will only recall what is still a precious memory in {264} the minds of

men who are yet alive, that efforts to found a community not unlike

that of the Franciscans in certain ways, attracted widespread

attention even in our own country half a century ago. After all, the

men who gathered at Brook Farm had ideas and ideals not so distant

from those cherished by St. Francis and the early members of the

Franciscan Order. Their main effort was also to get away from worldly

cares and have the opportunity to work out their philosophy of life

far from the disturbing influence of city life, in the peaceful

pursuit of only such agricultural efforts as might be necessary to

ensure them simple sustenance, yet at the same time enforce from them

such exercise in the open air as would guarantee the preservation of

health. The men of Brook Farm were, in the eyes of their generation,

quite as far from practical ideas as were the early Franciscans. It

must not be forgotten, however, that these men who thus attempted in

the Nineteenth Century what St. Francis succeeded in accomplishing in

the Thirteenth, in their subsequent careers succeeded in impressing

themselves very strongly upon the life of the American people. Much of

what is best in our Nineteenth Century life would be lost if the Brook

farmers and what they accomplished were to be removed from it. Men of

ideals are usually also men of working ideas, as these two experiences

in history would seem to show.

{opp264}

[Illustration]

ST. ELIZABETH--THREE FRANCISCANS (GIOTTO)

[Illustration]

ST. LOUIS--THREE FRANCISCANS (GIOTTO)

[Illustration]

ST. CLARE--THREE FRANCISCANS (GIOTTO)

It was not alone for the men of his generation, however, that Francis

was destined to furnish a refuge from worldly care and a place of

peace and thoughtful life. We have already said that it was by chance,

certainly without any conscious intention on Francis' part that the

Franciscan order for men which is usually spoken of as the First Order

came into existence. The last thing in the world very probably that

would ever have entered into the mind of Francis when he began to lead

the simple life of a poor little man of God, was the founding of a

religious order for women. We tell elsewhere the story, of St. Clare's

interest in St. Francis' mode of life and of the trials that she

underwent in order to obtain permission and opportunity to fashion her

own life in the same way. The problem was even more serious for women

than for men. St. Francis considered that they should not be {265}

allowed to follow the Franciscan custom of going out to seek alms and

yet required that they should live in absolute poverty, possessing

nothing and supporting themselves only by the contributions of the

faithful and the work of their hands. St. Clare attempted the

apparently impossible and solved the problem of a new career for the

women of her time.

It was not very long before St. Clare's example proved as infective as

that of St. Francis himself. While in the beginning the members of her

family had been the most strenuous objectors against her taking up

such an unwonted mode of existence it was not long before she was

joined in the monastery of St. Damian where her little community was

living, by her sister who was to become almost as famous as herself

under the name of St. Agnes, and by her mother and other near

relatives, from Assisi and the neighborhood. This Second Order of St.

Francis to which only women were admitted proved to have in it the

germ of as active life as that of the first order. Before the end of

the Thirteenth Century there were women Franciscans in every country

in Europe. These convents furnished for women a refuge from the

worried, hurried, over-busy life around them that proved quite as

attractive as the similar opportunity for the men. For many hundreds

of years down even to our own time, women were to find in the quiet

obscurity of such Franciscan convents a peaceful, happy life in which

they occupied themselves with simple conventual duties, with manual

labor in their monastery gardens, with the making of needle work in

which they became the most expert in the world, with the illuminating

of missals and office books of such artistic beauty that they have

become the most precious treasures of our great libraries, and with

the long hours of prayer by which they hoped to accomplish as much in

making the world better as if they devoted themselves to ardent

efforts of reform which, of course, the circumstances of the time

would not have permitted.

Finally there was the Third Order of St. Francis, which was to gather

to itself so many of the distinguished people of the century whose

occupations and obligations would not permit them to live the

conventual life, but who yet felt that they must be attached by some

bond to this beautiful sanctity that was {266} entering into all the

better life of the century. The Third Order was established so as to

permit all the world to become Franciscans to whatever degree it

considered possible, and to share in the sublime Christianity of the

founder whom they all admired so much, even if they were not able to

imitate his sublimer virtues. Into this Third Order of St. Francis

most of the finer spirits of the time entered with enthusiasm. We need

only recall that Louis IX. of France, the greatest Monarch of the

century, considered it a special privilege to be a follower of the

humble Francis, and that St. Elizabeth of Hungary, the daughter of a

king, the wife and mother of a ruling prince, gave another example of

the far-reachingness of Francis' work. Dante was another of the great

members of the Third Order and was buried in the habit of St. Francis,

glorying in the thought of the brotherhood this gave him with the

saint he loved so much.

All down the centuries since, other distinguished men in many

countries of Europe were proud to claim the same distinction. Modern

science is supposed to be unorthodox in its tendencies and electricity

is the most recent of the sciences in development. Three of the great

founders in electricity, Volta, Galvani and Ampere, were members of

the Third Order of St. Francis and at least one of them, Galvani,

insisted on being buried in the habit of the order six centuries after

the death of his father Francis in order to show how much he

appreciated the privilege. There is no man who lived in the Thirteenth

Century who influenced the better side of men more in all the

succeeding ages down to and including our own time, than the poor

little man of God of Assisi. He is just coming into a further precious

heritage of uplift for the men of our time, that is surprising for

those who are so buried in the merely material that they fail to

realize how much the ideal still rules the minds of thinking men, but

that seems only natural and inevitable to those who appreciate all the

attractiveness there is in a simple life lived without the bootless

hurry, the unattaining bustle and the over-strained excitement of the

strenuous existence.

What St. Francis and his order accomplished in Italy another great

Saint, Dominic, was achieving in the West. The {267} fact that another

order similar to that of St. Francis in many respects, yet differing

from it in a number of essential particulars, should have arisen

almost at the same time shows how profoundly the spirit of

organization of effort had penetrated into the minds of these

generations of the Thirteenth Century. While poverty was to be the

badge of St. Dominic's followers as well as those of St. Francis,

learning was to replace the simplicity which St. Francis desired for

his sons. The order of preachers began at once to give many eminent

scholars to the Church, and for three centuries there was not a single

generation that did not see as Dominicans some of the most

intellectual men of Europe. Leaders they were in philosophy, in the

development of thought, in education, and in every phase of

ecclesiastical life. The watch dogs of the Lord, (Domini Canes) they

were called, punning on their name because everwhere, they were in the

van of defense against the enemies of Christianity. That the

Thirteenth Century should have given rise to two such great religious

orders stamps it as a wonderfully fruitful period for religion as well

as for every other phrase of human development.

In order to understand what these great founders tried to do, the work

of these two orders must be considered together. They have never

ceased, during all the intervening seven centuries, to be the source

of great influence in the religious world. They have proven refuges

for many gentle spirits at all times and have been the homes of

learning, as well as of piety. While occasionally their privileges

have been abused, and men have taken advantage of the opportunities to

be idle and luxurious, this has happened much seldomer than the world

imagines. Not a single century has failed to show men among them whom

the world honors as Saints, and whose lives have been examples of what

can be accomplished by human nature at its best. They have been

literally schools of unselfishness, and men have learned to think less

of themselves and more of their labor by the contemplation of the

lives of these begging friars. What they did for England, the Rev.

Augustus Jessopp, a non-conformist clergyman in England, has recently

told very well, and the more one studies their history, the higher the

estimation of them; and the more one knows of {268} them, the less

does one talk of their vices. Green in his "History of the English

People" has paid them a tribute that it is well to remember:--

"To bring the world back again within the pale of the Church was the

aim of two religious orders which sprang suddenly to life at the

opening of the Thirteenth Century. The zeal of the Spaniard Dominic

was aroused at the sight of the lordly prelates who sought by fire

and sword to win the Albigensian heretics to the faith. 'Zeal,' he

cried, 'must be met by zeal, lowliness by lowliness, false sanctity

by real sanctity, preaching lies by preaching truth.' His fiery

ardor and rigid orthodoxy were seconded by the mystical piety, the

imaginative enthusiasm of Francis of Assisi. The life of Francis

falls like a stream of tender light across the darkness of the time.

In the frescoes of Giotto or the verse of Dante we see him take

Poverty for his bride. He strips himself of all: he flings his very

clothes at his father's feet, that he may be one with Nature and

God. His passionate verse claims the moon for his sister and the sun

for his brother; he calls on his brother the Wind, and his sister

the Water. His last faint cry was a 'Welcome, Sister Death.'

Strangely as the two men differed from each other, their aim was the

same, to convert the heathen, to extirpate heresy, to reconcile

knowledge with orthodoxy, to carry the Gospel to the poor. The work

was to be done by the entire reversal of the older monasticism, by

seeking personal salvation in effort for the salvation of their

fellow-men, by exchanging the solitary of the cloister for the

preacher, the monk for a friar. To force the new 'brethren' into

entire dependence on those among whom they labored the vow of

Poverty was turned into a stern reality; the 'Begging Friars' were

to subsist on the alms of the poor, they might possess neither money

nor lands, the very houses in which they lived were to be held in

trust for them by others. The tide of popular enthusiasm which

welcomed their appearance swept before it the reluctance of Rome,

the jealousy of the older orders, the opposition of the parochial

priesthood. Thousands of brethren gathered in a few years around

Francis and Dominic, and the begging preachers, clad in their coarse

frock of serge, with the girdle of rope around their waist, wandered

barefooted as {269} missionaries over Asia, battled with heresy in

Italy and Gaul, lectured in the Universities, and preached and

toiled among the poor."

[Illustration]

SIDE CAPITAL (LINCOLN)

{270}

XVII

AQUINAS THE SCHOLAR.

No one of all the sons of the Thirteenth Century, not even Dante

himself, so typifies the greatness of the mentality of the period as

does Thomas, called from his birthplace Aquinas, or of Aquin, on whom

his own and immediately succeeding generations because of what they

considered his almost more than human intellectual acumen, bestowed

the title of Angelical Doctor, while the Church for the supremely

unselfish character of his life, formally conferred the title of

Saint. The life of Aquinas is of special interest, because it serves

to clarify many questions as to the education of the Thirteenth

Century and to correct many false impressions that are only too

prevalent with regard to the intellectual life of the period. Though

Aquinas came of a noble family which was related to many of the Royal

houses of Europe and was the son of the Count of Aquino, then one of

the most important of the non-reigning noble houses of Italy, his

education was begun in his early years and was continued in the midst

of such opportunities as even the modern student might well envy.

It is often said that the nobility at this time, paid very little

attention to the things of the intellect and indeed rather prided

themselves on their ignorance of even such ordinary attainments as

reading and writing. While this was doubtless true for not a few of

them, Aquinas's life stands in open contradiction with the impression

that any such state of mind was at all general, or that there were not

so many exceptions as to nullify any such supposed rule. Evidently

those who wished could and did take advantage of educational

opportunities quite as in our day. Aquinas's early education was

received at the famous monastery of Monte Cassino in Southern Italy,

where the Benedictines for more than six centuries had been providing

magnificent opportunities for the studious youth of Italy and for

serious-minded students from all over Europe. {271} When he was

scarcely more than a boy he proceeded to the University of Naples,

which at that time, under the patronage of the Emperor Frederick II.,

was being encouraged not only to take the place so long held by

Salernum in the educational world of Europe, but also to rival the

renowned Universities of Paris and Bologna. Here he remained until he

was seventeen years of age when he resolved to enter the Dominican

Order, which had been founded only a short time before by St. Dominic,

yet had already begun to make itself felt throughout the religious and

educational world of the time.

Just as it is the custom to declare that as a rule, the nobility cared

little for education, so it is more or less usual to proclaim that

practically only the clergy had any opportunities for the higher

education during the Thirteenth Century. Thomas had evidently been

given his early educational opportunities, however, without any

thought of the possibility of his becoming a clergyman. His mother was

very much opposed to his entrance among the Dominicans, and every

effort was made to picture to him the pleasures and advantages that

would accrue to him because of his noble connections, in a life in the

world. Thomas insisted, however, and his firm purpose in the matter

finally conquered even the serious obstacles that a noble family can

place in the way of a boy of seventeen, as regards the disposition of

his life in a way opposed to their wishes.

The Dominicans realized the surpassing intelligence of the youth whom

they had received and accordingly he was sent to be trained under the

greatest teacher of their order, the famous Albert the Great, who was

then lecturing at Cologne. Thomas was not the most brilliant of

scholars as a young man and seems even to have been the butt of his

more successful fellow-students. They are said to have called him the

dumb one, or sometimes because of his bulkiness even as a youth, the

dumb ox. Albert himself, however, was not deceived in his estimation

of the intellectual capacity of his young student, and according to

tradition declared, that the bellowings of this ox would yet be heard

throughout all Christendom. After a few years spent at Cologne, Thomas

when he was in his early twenties, accompanied Albert who had been

called to {272} Paris. It was at Paris that Thomas received his

bachelor's degree and also took out his license to teach--the doctor's

degree of our time. After this some years further were spent at

Cologne and then the greatness of the man began to dawn on his

generation. He was called back to Paris and became one of the most

popular of the Professors at that great University in the height of

her fame, at a time when no greater group of men has perhaps ever been

gathered together, than shared with him the honors of the professors'

chairs at that institution.

"Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas

Aquinas, form among themselves, so to speak, a complete

representation of all the intellectual powers: they are the four

doctors who uphold the chair of philosophy in the temple of the

Middle Ages. Their mission was truly the reestablishment of the

sciences, but not their final consummation. They were not exempt

from the ignorances and erroneous opinions of their day, yet they

did much to overcome them and succeeded better than is usually

acknowledged in introducing the era of modern thought. Often, the

majesty, I may even say the grace of their conceptions, disappears

under the veil of the expressions in which they are clothed; but

these imperfections are amply atoned for by superabundant merits.

Those Christian philosophers did not admit within themselves the

divorce, since their day become so frequent, between the intellect

and the will; their lives were uniformly a laborious application of

their doctrines. They realized in its plenitude the practical wisdom

so often dreamed of by the ancients--the abstinence of the disciples

of Pythagoras, the constancy of the stoics, together with humility

and charity, virtues unknown to the antique world. Albert the Great

and St. Thomas left the castles of their noble ancestors to seek

obscurity in the cloisters of St. Dominic: the former abdicated, and

the latter declined, the honors of the Church. It was with the cord

of St. Francis that Roger Bacon and St. Bonaventure girded their

loins; when the last named was sought that the Roman purple might be

placed upon his shoulders, he begged the envoys to wait until he

finished washing the dishes of the convent. Thus they did not

withdraw themselves {273} within the exclusive mysteries of an

esoteric teaching; they opened the doors of their schools to the

sons of shepherds and artisans, and, like their Master, Christ, they

said: "Come all!" After having broken the bread of the word, they

were seen distributing the bread of alms. The poor knew them and

blessed their names. Even yet, after the lapse of six hundred years,

the dwellers in Paris kneel round the altar of the Angel of the

School, and the workmen of Lyons deem it an honor once a year to

bear upon their brawny shoulders the triumphant remains of the

'Seraphic Doctor.'"

For most modern students and even scholars educated in secular

universities the name of Aquinas is scarcely more than a type, the

greatest of them, it is true, of the schoolmen who were so much

occupied with distant, impractical and, to say the least, merely

theoretic metaphysical problems, in the later Middle Ages. It is true

that the renewed interest in Dante in recent years in English speaking

countries, has brought about a revival of attention in Aquinas's work

because to Dante, the Angelical Doctor, as he was already called,

meant so much, and because the Divine Comedy has been declared often

and often, by competent critics, to be the Summa Theologiae of St.

Thomas of Aquin in verse. Even this adventitious literary interest,

however, has not served to lift the obscurity in which Aquinas is

veiled for the great majority of scholarly people, whose education has

been conducted according to modern methods and present-day ideas.

As showing a hopeful tendency to recognize the greatness of these

thinkers of the Middle Ages it is interesting to note that about five

years ago one of St. Thomas's great works--the Summa Contra

Gentiles--was placed on the list of subjects which a candidate may at

his option offer in the final honor school of the _litterae

humaniores_ at Oxford. There has come a definite appreciation of the

fact that this old time philosopher represents a phase of intellectual

development that must not be neglected, and that stands for such

educational influence as may well be taken advantage of even in our

day of information rather than mental discipline. For the purposes of

this course Father Rickaby, S. J., has prepared an annotated

translation of the great philosophic work under the title, {274} "Of

God and His Creatures," which was published by Burns and Oates of

London, 1905. This will enable those for whom the Latin of St. Thomas

was a stumbling block, to read the thoughts of the great scholastic,

in translation at least, and it is to be hoped that we shall hear no

more of the trifling judgments which have so disgraced our English

philosophical literature.

The fact that Pope Leo XIII., by a famous papal bull, insisted that

St. Thomas should be the standard of teaching in philosophy and

theology in all the Catholic institutions of learning throughout the

world, aroused many thinkers to a realization of the fact that far

from being a thing of the dead and distant past, Thomas's voice was

still a great living force in the world of thought. To most people Leo

XIII. appealed as an intensely practical and thoroughly modern ruler,

whose judgment could be depended on even with regard to teaching

problems in philosophy and theology. There was about him none of the

qualities that would stamp him as a far-away mystic whose thoughts

were still limited by medieval barriers. The fact that in making his

declaration the Pope was only formulating as a rule, what had

spontaneously become the almost constant practice and tradition of

Catholic schools and universities, of itself served to show how great

and how enduring was St. Thomas's influence.

In the drawing together of Christian sects that has inevitably come as

a result of the attacks made upon Christianity by modern materialists,

and then later by those who would in their ardor for the higher

criticism do away with practically all that is divine in Christianity,

there has come a very general realization even on the part of those

outside of her fold, that the Roman Catholic Church occupies a

position more solidly founded on consistent logical premises and

conclusions than any of the denominations. Without her aid Christian

apologetics would indeed be in sad case. Pope Leo's declaration only

emphasizes the fact, then, that the foundation stone of Christian

apologetics was laid by the great work of St. Thomas, and that to him

more than any other is due that wonderful coordination of secular and

religious knowledge, which appoints for each of these branches of

knowledge its {275} proper place, and satisfies the human mind better

than any other system of philosophic thought. This is the real

panegyric of St. Thomas, and it only adds to the sublimity of it that

it should come nearly six centuries and a half after his death. To

only a bare handful of men in the history of the human race, is it

given thus to influence the minds of subsequent generations for so

long and to have laid down the principles of thought that are to

satisfy men for so many generations. This is why, in any attempt at

even inadequate treatment of the greatness of the Thirteenth Century,

Thomas Aquinas, who was its greatest scholar, must have a prominent

place. The present generation has had sufficient interest in him

aroused, however, amply to justify such a giving of space.

When Leo XIII. made his recommendation of St. Thomas it was not as one

who had merely heard of the works of the great medieval thinker, or

knew them only by tradition, or had slightly dipped into them as a

dilettante, but as one who had been long familiar with them, who had

studied the Angelical Doctor in youth, who had pondered his wisdom in

middle age, and resorted again and again to him for guidance in the

difficulties of doctrine in maturer years, and the difficulties of

morals such as presented themselves in his practical life as a

churchman. It was out of the depths of his knowledge of him, that the

great Pope, whom all the modern world came to honor so reverently

before his death, drew his supreme admiration for St. Thomas and his

recognition of the fact that no safer guide in the thorny path of

modern Christian apologetics could be followed, than this wonderful

genius who first systematized human thought as far as the relations of

Creator to creature are considered, in the heyday of medieval

scholarship and university teaching.

Those who have their knowledge of scholastic philosophy at second

hand, from men who proclaim this period of human development as

occupied entirely with fruitless discussion of metaphysical theories,

will surely think that they could find nothing of interest for them in

St. Thomas's writings. It is true the casual reader may not penetrate

far enough into his writing to realize its significance and to

appreciate its depth of knowledge, but the serious student finds

constant {276} details of supreme interest because of their

applications to the most up-to-date problems. We venture to quote an

example that will show this more or less perfectly according to the

special philosophic interest of readers. It is St. Thomas's discussion

of the necessity there was for the revelation of the truth of the

existence of God. His statement of the reasons why men, occupied with

the ordinary affairs of life, would not ordinarily come to this truth

unless it were revealed to them, though they actually have the mental

capacity to reach it by reason alone, will show how sympathetically

the Saint appreciated human conditions as they are.

"If a truth of this nature were left to the sole inquiry of reason,

three disadvantages would follow. One is that the knowledge of God

would be confined to few. The discovery of truth is the fruit of

studious inquiry. From this very many are hindered. Some are

hindered by a constitutional unfitness, their natures being

ill-disposed to the acquisition of knowledge. They could never

arrive by study at the highest grade of human knowledge, which

consists in the knowledge of God. Others are hindered by the claims

of business and the ties of the management of property. There must

be in human society some men devoted to temporal affairs. These

could not possibly spend time enough in the learned lessons of

speculative inquiry to arrive at the highest point of human inquiry,

the knowledge of God. Some again are hindered by sloth. The

knowledge of the truths that reason can investigate concerning God

presupposes much previous knowledge; indeed almost the entire study

of philosophy is directed to the knowledge of God. Hence, of all

parts of philosophy that part stands over to be learned last, which

consists of metaphysics dealing with (divine things). Thus only with

great labour of study is it possible to arrive at the searching out

of the aforesaid truth; and this labour few are willing to undergo

for sheer love of knowledge.

"Another disadvantage is that such as did arrive at the knowledge or

discovery of the aforesaid truth would take a long time over it on

account of the profundity of such truth, and the many prerequisites

to the study, and also because in youth and early manhood the soul,

tossed to and fro on the {277} waves of passion, is not fit for the

study of such high truth; only in settled age does the soul become

prudent and scientific, as the philosopher says. Thus if the only

way open to the knowledge of God were the way of reason, the human

race would (remain) in thick darkness of ignorance: as the knowledge

of God, the best instrument for making men perfect and good, would

accrue only to a few after a considerable lapse of time.

"A third disadvantage is that, owing to the infirmity of our

judgment and the perturbing force of imagination, there is some

admixture of error in most of the investigations of human reason.

This would be a reason to many for continuing to doubt even of the

most accurate demonstrations, not perceiving the force of the

demonstration, and seeing the divers judgments, of divers persons

who have the name of being wise men. Besides, in the midst of much

demonstrated truth there is sometimes an element of error, not

demonstrated but asserted on the strength of some plausible and

sophistic reasoning that is taken for a demonstration. And therefore

it was necessary for the real truth concerning divine things to be

presented to men with fixed certainty by way of faith. Wholesome,

therefore, is the arrangement of divine clemency, whereby things

even that reason can investigate are commanded to be held on faith,

so that all might be easily partakers of the knowledge of God, and

that without doubt and error (Book I. cix)."

A still more striking example of Thomas's eminently sympathetic

discussion of a most difficult problem, is to be found in his

treatment of the question of the Resurrection of the Body. The

doctrine that men will rise again on the last day with the same bodies

that they had while here on earth, has been a stumbling block for the

faith of a great many persons from the beginning of Christianity. In

recent times the discovery of the indestructibility of matter, far

from lessening the skeptical elements in this problem as might have

been anticipated, has rather emphasized them. While the material of

which man's body was composed is never destroyed, it is broken up

largely into its original elements and is used over and over again in

many natural processes, and even enters into the composition of other

men's bodies during the long succeeding generations. Here is a problem

upon which it would {278} ordinarily be presumed at once, that a

philosophic writer of the Thirteenth Century could throw no possible

light. We venture to say, however, that the following passage which we

quote from an article on St. Thomas in a recent copy of the Dublin

_Review_, represents the best possible solution of the problem, even

in the face of all our modern advance in science.

"What does not bar numerical unity in a man while he lives on

uninterruptedly (writes St. Thomas), clearly can be no bar to the

identity of the arisen man with the man that was. In a man's body,

while he lives, there are not always the same parts in respect of

matter but only in respect of species. In respect of matter there is

a flux and reflux of parts. Still that fact does not bar the man's

numerical unity from the beginning to the end of his life. The form

and species of the several parts continue throughout life, but the

matter of the parts is dissolved by the natural heat, and new matter

accrues through nourishment. Yet the man is not numerically

different by the difference of his component parts at different

ages, although it is true that the material composition of the man

at one stage of his life is not his material composition at another.

Addition is made from without to the stature of a boy without

prejudice to his identity, for the boy and the adult are numerically

the same man."

In a word, Aquinas says that we recognize that the body of the boy and

of the man are the same though they are composed of quite different

material. With this in mind the problem of the Resurrection takes on

quite a new aspect from what it held before. What we would call

attention to, however, is not so much the matter of the argument as

the mode of it. It is essentially modern in every respect. Not only

does Thomas know that the body changes completely during the course of

years, but he knows that the agent by which the matter of the parts is

dissolved is "the natural heat," while "new matter accrues through

nourishment." The passage contains a marvelous anticipation of

present-day physiology as well as a distinct contribution to Christian

apologetics. This coordination of science and theology, though usually

thought to be lacking among scholastic philosophers, is constantly

typical of their mode of thought and discussion, and this example, far

from {279} being exceptional, is genuinely representative of them, as

all serious students of scholasticism know.

Perhaps the last thing for which the ordinary person would expect to

find a great modern teacher recommending the reading of St. Thomas

would be to find therein the proper doctrine with regard to liberty

and the remedies for our modern social evils. Those who will recall,

however, how well the generations of the Thirteenth Century faced

social problems even more serious than ours--for the common people had

no rights at all [at] the beginning of the century, yet secured them with

such satisfaction as to lay the foundation of the modern history of

liberty--will realize that the intellectual men of the time must have

had a much better grasp of the principles underlying such problems,

than would otherwise be imagined. As a matter of fact, St. Thomas's

treatment of Society, its rights and duties, and the mutual

relationship between it and the individual, is one of the triumphs of

his wonderful work in ethics. It is no wonder, then, that the great

Pope of the end of the Nineteenth Century, whose encyclicals showed

that he understood very thoroughly these social evils of our time,

recognized their tendencies and appreciated their danger, recommended

as a remedy for them the reading of St. Thomas. Pope Leo said:

"Domestic and civil society, even, which, as all see, is exposed to

great danger from the plague of perverse opinions, would certainly

enjoy a far more peaceful and a securer existence if more wholesome

doctrine were taught in the academies and schools--one more in

conformity with the teaching of the Church, such as is contained in

the works of Thomas Aquinas.

"For the teachings of Thomas on the true meaning of liberty--which

at this time is running into license--on the divine origin of all

authority, on laws and their force, on the paternal and just rule of

princes, on obedience to the higher powers, on mutual charity one

towards another--on all of these and kindred subjects, have very

great and invincible force to overturn those principles of the new

order which are well known to be dangerous to the peaceful order of

things and to public safety."

{280}

For this great Pope, however, there was no greater teacher of any of

the serious philosophical, ethical and theological problems than this

Saint of the Thirteenth Century. His position in the matter would only

seem exaggerated to those who do not appreciate Pope Leo's marvelous

practical intelligence, and Saint Thomas's exhaustive treatment of

most of the questions that have always been uppermost in the minds of

men. While, with characteristic humility, he considered himself

scarcely more than a commentator on Aristotle, his natural genius was

eminently original and he added much more of his own than what he took

from his master. There can be no doubt that his was one of the most

gifted minds in all humanity's history and that for profundity of

intelligence he deserves to be classed with Plato and Aristotle, as

his great disciple Dante is placed between Homer and Shakespeare.

Those who know St. Thomas the best, and have spent their lives in the

study of him, not only cordially welcomed but ardently applauded Pope

Leo's commendation of him, and considered that lofty as was his praise

there was not a word they would have changed even in such a laudatory

passage as the following:

"While, therefore, we hold that every word of wisdom, every useful

thing by whomsoever discovered or planned, ought to be received with

a willing and grateful mind. We exhort you, Venerable Brethren, in

all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to

spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic

faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of all the

sciences. The wisdom of St. Thomas, We say--for if anything is taken

up with too great subtlety by the scholastic doctors, or too

carelessly stated--if there is anything that ill agrees with the

discoveries of a later age, or, in a word, improbable in whatever

way, it does not enter Our mind, to propose that for imitation to

Our age. Let carefully selected teachers endeavor to implant the

doctrines of Thomas Aquinas in the minds of students, and set forth

clearly his solidity and excellence over others. Let the academies

already founded or to be founded by you illustrate and defend this

doctrine, and use it for refutation of prevailing errors. But, lest

the false for the true or the corrupt for the pure be drunk in, be

watchful that the doctrine of Thomas {281} be drawn from his own

fountains, or at least from those rivulets which derived from the

very fount, have thus far flowed, according to the established

agreement of learned men, pure and clear; be careful to guard the

minds of youth from those which are said to flow thence, but in

reality are gathered from strange and unwholesome streams."

Tributes quite as laudatory are not lacking from modern secular

writers and while there have been many derogatory remarks, these have

always come from men who either knew Aquinas only at second hand, or

who confess that they had been unable to read him understandingly. The

praise all comes from men who have spent years in the study of his

writings.

A recent writer in the Dublin _Review_ (January, 1906) sums up his

appreciation of one of St. Thomas's works, his masterly book in

philosophy, as follows:

"The _Summa contra Gentiles_ is an historical monument of the first

importance for the history of philosophy. In the variety of its

contents, it is a perfect encyclopedia of the learning of the day.

By it we can fix the high-water mark of Thirteenth Century thought,

for it contains the lectures of a doctor second to none in the great

school of thought then flourishing--the University of Paris. It is

by the study of such books that one enters into the mental life of

the period at which they were written; not by the hasty perusal of

histories of philosophy. No student of the Contra Gentiles is likely

to acquiesce in the statement that the Middle Ages were a time when

mankind seemed to have lost the power of thinking for themselves.

Medieval people thought for themselves, thoughts curiously different

from ours and profitable to study."

Here is a similar high tribute for Aquinas's great work on Theology

from his modern biographer, Father Vaughan:

"The 'Summa Theologica' is a mighty synthesis, thrown into technical

and scientific form, of the Catholic traditions of East and West, of

the infallible dicta of the Sacred Page, and of the most enlightened

conclusions of human reason, gathered from the soaring intuitions of

the Academy, and the rigid severity of the Lyceum.

"Its author was a man endowed with the characteristic notes of the

three great Fathers of Greek Philosophy: he possessed {282} the

intellectual honesty and precision of Socrates, the analytical

keenness of Aristotle, and that yearning after wisdom and light

which was the distinguishing mark of 'Plato the divine,' and which

has ever been one of the essential conditions of the highest

intuitions of religion."

As a matter of fact it was the very greatness of Thomas Aquinas, and

the great group of contemporaries who were so close to him, that

produced an unfortunate effect on subsequent thinking and teaching in

Europe. These men were so surpassing in their grasp of the whole round

of human thought, that their works came to be worshiped more or less

as fetishes, and men did not think for themselves but appealed to them

as authorities. It is a great but an unfortunate tribute to the

scholastics of the Thirteenth Century that subsequent generations for

many hundred years not only did not think that they could improve on

them, but even hesitated to entertain the notion that they could equal

them. Turner in his History of Philosophy has pointed out this fact

clearly and has attributed to it, to a great extent, the decadence of

scholastic philosophy.

"The causes of the decay of scholastic philosophy were both internal

and external. The internal causes are to be found in the condition

of Scholastic philosophy at the beginning of the Fourteenth Century.

The great work of Christian syncretism had been completed by the

masters of the preceding period; revelation and science had been

harmonized; contribution had been levied on the pagan philosophies

of Greece and Arabia, and whatever truth these philosophies had

possessed had been utilized to form the basis of a rational

exposition of Christian revelation. The efforts of Roger Bacon and

of Alfred the Great to reform scientific method had failed; the

sciences were not cultivated. There was, therefore, no source of

development, and nothing was left for the later Scholastics except

to dispute as to the meaning of principles, to comment on the text

of this master or of that, and to subtilize to such an extent that

Scholasticism soon became a synonym for captious quibbling. The

great Thomistic principle that in philosophy the argument from

authority is the weakest of all arguments was forgotten; Aristotle,

St. Thomas, or Scotus became the criterion of truth, and as Solomon,

whose youthful wisdom had {283} astonished the world, profaned his

old age by the worship of idols, the philosophy of the schools, in

the days of its decadence, turned from the service of truth to

prostrate itself before the shrine of a master. Dialectic, which in

the Thirteenth Century had been regarded as the instrument of

knowledge, now became an object of study for the sake of display;

and to this fault of method was added a fault of style--an

uncouthness and barbarity of terminology which bewilder the modern

reader."

The appreciation of St. Thomas in his own time is the greatest tribute

to the critical faculty of the century that could be made. "Genius is

praised but starves," in the words of the old Roman poet. Certainly

most of the geniuses of the world have met with anything but their

proper meed of appreciation in their own time. This is not true,

however, during our Thirteenth Century. We have already shown how the

artists, and especially Giotto, (at the end of the Thirteenth Century

Giotto was only twenty-four years old) were appreciated, and how much

attention Dante began to attract from his contemporaries, and we may

add that all the great scholars of the period had a following that

insured the wide publication of their works, at a time when this had

to be accomplished by slow and patient hand-labor. The appreciation

for Thomas, indeed, came near proving inimical to his completion of

his important works in philosophy and theology. Many places in Europe

wanted to have the opportunity to hear him. We have only reintroduced

the practise of exchanging university professors in very recent years.

This was quite a common practise in the Thirteenth Century, however,

and so St. Thomas, after having been professor at Paris and later at

Rome, taught for a while at Naples and then at a number of the Italian

universities.

Everywhere he went he was noted for the kindliness of his disposition

and for his power to make friends. Looked upon as the greatest thinker

of his time it would be easy to expect that there should be some signs

of consciousness of this, and as a consequence some of that unpleasant

self-assertion which so often makes great intellectual geniuses

unpopular. Thomas, however, never seems to have had any

over-appreciation of his own talents, but, realizing how little he

knew compared to {284} the whole round of knowledge, and how

superficial his thinking was compared to the depth of the mysteries he

was trying, not to solve but to treat satisfactorily, it must be

admitted that there was no question of conceit having a place in his

life. This must account for the universal friendship of all who came

in contact with him. The popes insisted on having him as a professor

at the Roman university in which they were so much interested, and

which they wished to make one of the greatest universities of the

time. Here Thomas was brought in contact with ecclesiastics from all

over the world and helped to form the mind of the time. Those who

think the popes of the Middle Ages opposed to education should study

the records of this Roman university.

Thomas became the great friend of successive popes, some of whom had

been brought in contact with him during his years of studying and

teaching at Rome and Paris. This gave him many privileges and abundant

encouragement, but finally came near ruining his career as a

philosophic writer and teacher, since his papal friends wished to

raise him to high ecclesiastical dignities. Urban IV. seems first to

have thought of this but his successor Clement IV., one of the noblest

churchmen of the period, who had himself wished to decline the papacy,

actually made out the Bull, creating Thomas Archbishop of Naples. When

this document was in due course presented to Aquinas, far from giving

him any pleasure it proved a source of grief and pain. He saw the

chance to do his life-work slipping from him. This was so evident to

his friend the Pope that he withdrew the Bull and St. Thomas was left

in peace during the rest of his career, and allowed to prosecute that

one great object to which he had dedicated his mighty intellect. This

was the summing up of all human knowledge in a work that would show

the relation of the Creator to the creature, and apply the great

principles of Greek philosophy to the sublime truths of Christianity.

Had Thomas consented to accept the Archbishopric of Naples in all

human probability, as Thomas's great English biographer remarks, the

Summa Theologica would never have been written. It seems not unlikely

that the dignity was pressed upon him by the Pope partly at the

solicitation of powerful members of {285} his family, who hoped in

this to have some compensation for their relative's having abandoned

his opportunities for military and worldly glory. It is fortunate that

their efforts failed, and it is only one of the many examples in

history of the short-sightedness there may be in considerations that

seem founded on the highest human prudence.

Thomas was left free then to go on with his great work, and during the

next five years he applied every spare moment to the completion of his

Summa. More students have pronounced this the greatest work ever

written than is true for any other text-book that has ever been used

in schools. That it should be the basis of modern theological teaching

after seven centuries is of itself quite sufficient to proclaim its

merit. The men who are most enthusiastic about it are those who have

used it the longest and who know it the best.

St. Thomas's English biographer, the Very Rev. Roger Bede Vaughan, who

is a worthy member of that distinguished Vaughan family who have given

so many zealous ecclesiastics to the English Church and so many

scholars to support the cause of Christianity, can scarcely say enough

of this great work, nor of its place in the realm of theology. When it

is recalled that Father Vaughan was not a member of St. Thomas's own

order, the Dominicans, but of the Benedictines, it will be seen that

it was not because of any _esprit de corps_, but out of the depths of

his great admiration for the saint, that his words of praise were

written:

"It has been shown abundantly that no writer before the Angelical's

day could have created a synthesis of all knowledge. The greatest of

the classic Fathers have been treated of, and the reasons of their

inability are evident. As for the scholastics who more immediately

preceded the Angelical, their minds were not ripe for so great and

complete a work: the fullness of time had not yet come. Very

possibly had not Albert the Great and Alexander (of Hales) preceded

him, St. Thomas would not have been prepared to write his

master-work; just as, most probably, Newton would never have

discovered the law of gravitation had it not been for the previous

labors of Galileo and of Kepler. But just as the English astronomer

stands solitary in his greatness, though surrounded and {286}

succeeded by men of extraordinary eminence, so also the Angelical

stands by himself alone, although Albertus Magnus was a genius,

Alexander was a theological king, and Bonaventure a seraphic doctor.

Just as the Principia is a work unique, unreachable, so, too, is the

'Summa Theologica' of the great Angelical. Just as Dante stands

alone among the poets, so stands St. Thomas in the schools."

Probably the most marvelous thing about the life of St. Thomas is his

capacity for work. His written books fill up some twenty folios in

their most complete edition. This of itself would seem to be enough to

occupy a lifetime without anything more. His written works, however,

represent apparently only the products of his hours at leisure. He was

only a little more than fifty when he died and he had been a

university professor at Cologne, at Bologna, at Paris, at Rome, and at

Naples. In spite of the amount of work that he was thus asked to do,

his order, the Dominican, constantly called on him to busy himself

with certain of its internal affairs. On one occasion at least he

visited England in order to attend a Dominican Chapter at Oxford, and

the better part of several years at Paris was occupied with his labors

to secure for his brethren a proper place in the university, so that

they might act as teachers and yet have suitable opportunities for the

education and the discipline of the members of the Order.

Verily it would seem as though his days must have been at least twice

as long as those of the ordinary scholar and student to accomplish so

much; yet he is only a type of the monks of the Middle Ages, of whom

so many people seem to think that their principal traits were to be

fat and lazy. Thomas was fat, as we know from the picture of him which

shows him before a desk from which a special segment has been removed

to accommodate more conveniently a rather abnormal abdominal

development, but as to laziness, surely the last thing that would

occur to anyone who knows anything about him, would be to accuse him

of it. Clearly those who accept the ancient notion of monkish laziness

will never understand the Middle Ages. The great educational progress

of the Thirteenth Century was due almost entirely to monks.

{287}

There is another extremely interesting side to the intellectual

character of Thomas Aquinas which is usually not realized by the

ordinary student of philosophy and theology, and still less perhaps by

those who are interested in him from an educational standpoint. This

is his poetical faculty. For Thomas as for many of the great

intellectual geniuses of the modern time, the sacrament of the Holy

Eucharist was one of the most wondrously satisfying devotional

mysteries of Christianity and the subject of special devotion. In our

own time the great Cardinal Newman manifested this same attitude of

mind. Thomas because of his well-known devotion to the Blessed

Sacrament, was asked by the Pope to write the office for the then

recently established feast of Corpus Christi. There are always certain

hymns incorporated in the offices of the different Feast days. It

might ordinarily have been expected that a scholar like Aquinas would

write the prose portions of the office, leaving the hymns for some

other hand, or selecting hymns from some older sacred poetry. Thomas,

however, wrote both hymns and prose, and, surprising as it may be, his

hymns are some of the most beautiful that have ever been composed and

remain the admiration of posterity.

It must not be forgotten in this regard that Thomas's career occurred

during the period when Latin hymn writing was at its apogee. The Dies

Irae and the Stabat Mater were both written during the Thirteenth

Century, and the most precious Latin hymns of all times were composed

during the century and a half from 1150 to 1300. Aquinas's hymns do

not fail to challenge comparison even with the greatest of these.

While he had an eminently devotional subject, it must not be forgotten

that certain supremely difficult theological problems were involved in

the expression of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. In spite of the

difficulties, Thomas succeeded in making not only good theology but

great poetry. A portion of one of his hymns, the Tantum Ergo, has been

perhaps more used in church services than any other, with the possible

exception of the Dies Irae. Another one of his beautiful hymns that

especially deserves to be admired, is less well known and so I have

ventured to quote three selected stanzas of it, as an illustration

{288} of Thomas's command over rhyme and rhythm in the Latin tongue.

[Footnote 24]

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,

Quae sub his figuris vere latitas.

Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit,

Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Visus, tactus, gustus, in te fallitur,

Sed auditu solo tute creditur:

Credo quidquid dixit Dei filius

Nihil veritatis verbo verius.

And the less musical but wonderfully significative fourth, stanza--

Plagas sicut Thomas non intueor,

Deum tamen meum te confiteor,

Fac me tibi semper magis credere,

In te spem habere, te diligere.

Only the ardent study of many years will give anything like an

adequate idea of the great schoolman's universal genius. I am content

if I have conveyed a few hints that will help to a beginning of an

acquaintance with one of the half dozen supreme minds of our race.

[Footnote 24: The following translation made by Justice O'Hagan

renders sense and sound into English as adequately perhaps as is

possible:

Hidden God, devoutly I adore thee,

Truly present underneath these veils:

All my heart subdues itself before thee.

Since it all before thee faints and fails.

Not to sight, or taste, or touch be credit.

Hearing only do we trust secure;

I believe, for God the Son hath said it--

Word of truth that ever shall endure.

...

Though I look not on thy wounds with Thomas,

Thee, my Lord, and thee, my God, I call:

Make me more and more believe thy promise,

Hope in thee, and love thee over all.

]

{289}

XVIII

ST. LOUIS THE MONARCH.

If large numbers of men are to be ruled by one of their number, as

seems more or less inevitable in the ordinary course of things, then,

without doubt, the best model of what such a monarch's life should be,

is to be found in that of Louis IX., who for nearly half a century was

the ruler of France during our period. Of all the rulers of men of

whom we have record in history he probably took his duties most

seriously, with most regard for others, and least for himself and for

his family. There is not a single relation of life in which he is not

distinguished and in which his career is not worth studying, as an

example of what can be done by a simple, earnest, self-forgetful man,

to make life better and happier for all those who come in contact with

him.

His relations with his mother are those of an affectionate son in whom

indeed, from his easy compliance with her wishes in his younger years

one might suspect some weakness, but whose strength of character is

displayed at every turn once he himself assumed the reins of

government. After many years of ruling however, when his departure on

the Crusade compelled him to be absent from the kingdom it was to her

he turned again to act as his representative and the wisdom of the

choice no one can question. As a husband Louis' life was a model, and

though he could not accomplish the impossible, and was not able to

keep the relations of his mother and his wife as cordial as he would

have liked them to be, judging from human experience generally it is

hard to think this constitutes any serious blot on his fair name. As a

father, few men have ever thought less of material advantages for

their children, or more of the necessity for having them realize that

happiness in life does not consist in the possession of many things,

but rather in the accomplishment of duty and in the recognition of the

fact that the giving of happiness to others {290} constitutes the best

source of felicity for one's self. His letters and instructions to his

children, as preserved for us by Joinville and other contemporaries,

give us perhaps the most taking picture of the man that we have, and

round out a personality, which, while it has in the telling French

phrase "the defects of its virtues," is surely one of the most

beautiful characters that has ever been seen upon earth, in a man who

took an active and extremely important part in the great events of the

world of his time.

The salient points of his character are his devotion to the three

great needs of humanity as they present themselves in his time. He

made it the aim of his life that men should have justice, and

education, and when for any misfortune they needed it,--charity; and

every portion of his career is taken up with successful achievement in

these great departments of social action. It is well known that when

he became conscious that the judges sometimes abused their power and

gave sentences for partial reasons, the monarch himself took up the

onerous duty of hearing appeals and succeeded in making the judges of

his kingdom realize, that only the strictest justice would save them

from the king's displeasure, and condign punishment. For an unjust

judge there was short shrift. The old tree at Versailles, under which

he used to hear the causes of the poor who appealed to him, stood for

many centuries as a reminder of Louis' precious effort to make the

dispensing of justice equal to all men. When the duty of hearing

appeals took up too much of his time it was transferred to worthy

shoulders, and so the important phase of jurisprudence in France

relating to appeals, came to be thoroughly established as a part of

the organic law of the kingdom.

{opp290}

[Illustration]

NOTRE DAME (PARIS)

As regards education, too much can not be said of Louis' influence. It

is to him more than to anybody else that the University of Paris owes

the success it achieved as a great institution of learning at the end

of the Thirteenth Century. Had the monarch been opposed to the spread

of education with any idea that it might possibly undermine his

authority, had he even been indifferent to it, Paris would not have

come to be the educational center of the world. As it was, Louis not

only encouraged it in every way, but also acted as the patron of great

{291} subsidiary institutions which were to add to its prestige and

enhance its facilities. Among the most noteworthy is the Sorbonne. La

Sainte Chapelle deserves to be mentioned, however, and the library

attached to it, which owed its foundation and development to Louis,

were important factors in attracting students to Paris and in

furnishing them interestingly suggestive material for thought and the

development of taste during their residence there. His patronage of

Vincent of Beauvais, the encyclopedist, was but a further

manifestation of his interest in everything educational. His

benefactions to the Hotel Dieu must be considered rather under the

head of charity, and yet they also serve to represent his

encouragement of medical education and of the proper care for the poor

in educated hands.

Voltaire, to whom Louis' character as a supreme believer in revealed

religion must have been so utterly unsympathetic, and whose position

as the historical symbol of all that Voltaire most held in antipathy

in medievalism, might have been expected to make the French

philosopher avoid mention of him since he could not condemn, has been

forced into some striking utterances in praise of Louis, one of which

we quote:

"Louis IX appeared to be a prince destined to reform Europe, if she

could have been reformed, to render France triumphant and civilized,

and to be in all things a pattern for men. His piety which was that

of an anchorite, did not deprive him of any kingly virtue. A wise

economy took nothing from his liberality. A profound policy was

combined with strict justice and he is perhaps the only sovereign

who is entitled to this praise; prudent and firm in counsel,

intrepid without rashness in his wars, he was as compassionate as if

he had always been unhappy. No man could have carried virtue

further."

Guizot, the French statesman and historian, whose unbending Calvinism

made the men and institutions of the Middle Ages almost

incomprehensible to him from their Catholic aspects, has much of good

to say of Louis, though there is not wanting rather definite evidence

of the reluctance of his admiration:

"The world has seen more profound politicians on the throne, greater

generals, men of more mighty and brilliant intellect, princes who

have exercised a more powerful influence {292} over later

generations and events subsequent to their own times; but it has

never seen such a king as this St. Louis, never seen a man

possessing sovereign power and yet not contracting the vices and

passions which attend it, displaying upon the throne in such a high

degree every human virtue purified and ennobled by Christian faith.

St. Louis did not give any new or personal impulse to his age; he

did not strongly influence the nature or the development of

civilization in France; whilst he endeavored to reform the gravest

abuses of the feudal system by the introduction of justice and

public order, he did not endeavor to abolish it either by the

substitution of a pure monarchy, or by setting class against class

in order to raise the royal authority high above all. He was neither

an egotist nor a scheming diplomatist; he was, in all sincerity, in

harmony with his age and sympathetic alike with the faith, the

institutions, the customs, and the tastes of France in the

Thirteenth Century. And yet, both in the Thirteenth Century and in

later times St. Louis stands apart as a man of profoundly original

character, an isolated figure without any peer among his

contemporaries or his successors. As far as it was possible in the

Middle Ages, he was an ideal man, king, and Christian."

Guizot goes even further than this when he says, "It is reported that

in the Seventeenth Century, during the brilliant reign of Louis XIV.,

Montecuculli, on learning of the death of his illustrious rival,

Turenne, said to his officers, 'A man has died to-day who did honor to

mankind.' St. Louis did honor to France, to royalty, to humanity, and

to Christianity. This was the feeling of his contemporaries, and after

six centuries it is still confirmed by the judgment of the historian."

Of Louis' wonderful influence for good as a ruler all historians are

agreed in talking in the highest terms. His private life however, is

even more admirable for our purpose of bringing out the greatness of

the Thirteenth Century. Of course many legends and myths have gathered

around his name, but still enough remains of absolutely trustworthy

tradition and even documentary evidence, to make it very clear that he

was a man among men, a nobleman of nature's making, who in any

position of life would have acquitted himself with a perfection sure

to make his life worthy of admiration. One of the most {293} striking

traits of his character is his love of justice, his insatiable desire

to render to all men what was rightly theirs. A biographer has told

the story that gives the most telling proof of this in relating the

solicitude with which he tried to right all the wrongs not only of his

own reign, but of those of his predecessors, before he set out on the

Crusade. He wished to have the absolute satisfaction that he, nor his,

owed any man any reparation, as the most precious treasure he could

take with him on his perilous expedition. He wished even to undo any

wrongs that might have been done in his name though he was entirely

unconscious of them.

"As he wished to be in a state of grace at the moment of departure,

and to take with him to the Holy Land a quiet conscience by leaving

the kingdom in as happy a condition as possible, he resolved to

carry out one of the noblest measures ever undertaken by a king. By

his order, inquisitors were sent into all the provinces annexed to

the royal dominion since the accession of Philip Augustus. All those

who had been maltreated or despoiled by the bailiffs, seneschals,

provosts, sergeants, and other representatives of the royal

authority, came to declare their wrongs to these newly appointed

judges, and to demand the reparation which was due to them; the

number was great, since for forty years there had been much

suffering in the country districts and even in the towns .... The

royal officers had too often acted as if they were in a conquered

country; they believed themselves to be safe from observation, so

that they might do as they pleased. The people had much to endure

during these forty years, and it was a noble idea to make reparation

freely and with elaborate care. No prince had been known, of his own

accord and at his own cost, to redress the wrongs inflicted on the

people during the reigns of his father and grandfather. This made an

immense impression, which lasted for centuries. Blanche's son was

not merely a good king, he became the unrivalled sovereign, the

impeccable judge, the friend and consoler of his subjects."

It is no wonder that so inappeasable a lover of justice should commend

that virtue above all others to his son. When we read his letters to

that son who was to be his successor, in the light of Louis' own

career, we appreciate with what utter {294} sincerity they were

written. Louis realized that simple justice between men would undo

more of the world's wrongs than most of the vaunted cures for social

ills, which are only too often the result of injustice.

"Dear son," he writes in his Instruction, "if you come to reign, do

that which befits a king, that is, be so just as to deviate in

nothing from justice, whatever may befall you. If a poor man goes to

law with one who is rich, support the poor rather than the rich man

until you know the truth, and when the truth is known, do that which

is just. And if it happen that any man has a dispute with yourself,

maintain the cause of your adversary before the council so as not to

appear partial to your own cause, until the truth is known. Unless

you do this, those who are of the council may fear to speak against

you, and this ought not to be. . . . And if you find that you

possess anything unjustly acquired, either in your time or in that

of your predecessors, make restitution at once, however great its

value, either in land, money, or any other thing. . . . If the

matter is doubtful and you cannot find out the truth, follow the

advice of trusty men, and make such an agreement as may fully

deliver your soul and that of your predecessors. If you hear that

your predecessors have made restitution of anything, take great

trouble to discover if anything more should be restored, and if you

find that this is the case, restore it at once so as to deliver your

own soul and that of your predecessors."

"The education of his children, their future position and

well-being, engrossed the attention of the King as entirely, and

were subjects of as keen an interest, as if he had been a father

with no other task than the care of his children. After supper they

followed him to his apartment, where he made them sit around him for

a time whilst he instructed them in their duty; he then sent them to

bed. He would direct their attention particularly to the good and

bad actions of Princes. He used to visit them in their own apartment

when he had any leisure, inquire as to their progress, and like a

second Tobias, give them excellent instruction .... On Maundy

Thursday, he and his children used to wash the feet of a dozen poor

persons, give them large alms, and afterward wait upon them whilst

they dined. The King together with his son-in-law {295} King

Thibault, whom he loved and looked upon as his own son, carried the

first poor man to the hospital of Compiegne, and his two oldest

sons, Louis and Philippe, carried the second. They were accustomed

to act with him in all things, showing him great reverence, and he

desired that they and Thibault should also obey him implicitly in

everything that he commanded."

Anyone who still retains any trace of the old-fashioned notion, which

used to be unfortunately a commonplace among English speaking people,

that the medieval Monks were unworthy of their great calling, and that

the monasteries were the homes of lazy, fat-witted men whose only

object in taking up the life was to secure an easy means of

livelihood, will be thoroughly undeceived, if he but read with some

attention the stories of Louis' relations to the monasteries. In all

his journeys he stopped in them, he always asked to see their

libraries, he insisted on not being treated better than the community

and in every way he tried to show his esteem for them. There is a

story which may or may not be true in the "Little Flowers of St.

Francis," which comes from almost a contemporary source, however, that

once on his travels he called on Brother Giles, the famous

simple-minded companion of St. Francis, of whom so many delightfully

humorous stories are told. Brother Giles received his affectionate

greeting but said never a word in return. After the first words the

King himself said nothing, but both sat and communed in silence for

some time, and then the King departed apparently well-pleased with his

visit. Needless to say when Brother Giles told the story of the King

of France having called on him there was a commotion in the community.

But by this time the King was far distant on his way.

Indeed Louis took so many opportunities to stop in monasteries and

follow monastic regulations as to prayer and the taking of meals while

there, that he quite disgusted some of the members of his retinue who

were most with him. One of the ladies of the court in her impatience

at him for this, is once said to have remarked under such indiscreet

circumstances that it was reported to Louis, that she wished they had

a man and not a monk for King. Louis is said to have asked her very

{296} gently if she would prefer that he spend most of his time in

sport and in excesses of various kinds. Even such remarks, however,

had no effect in turning him from his purpose to live as simply and as

beneficently for others as possible. His genuine appreciation of the

monks must be recognized from his wishes with regard to his children.

On the other hand his readiness to secure their happiness as far as

possible in the way they wished for themselves shows the tenderness of

his fatherly heart. A modern biographer has said of him:--

"He was very anxious that his three children born in the East during

the Crusade--Jean Tristan, Pierre, and Blanche--and even his eldest

daughter Isabella, should enter the monastic life, which he looked

upon as the most likely to insure their salvation; he frequently

exhorted them to take this step, writing letters of the greatest

tenderness and piety, especially to his daughter Isabella; but, as

they did not show any taste for it, he did not attempt to force

their inclinations. Thenceforth, he busied himself in making

suitable marriages for them, and establishing them according to

their rank; at the same time he gave them the most judicious advice

as to their conduct and actions in the world upon which they were

entering. When he was before Tunis and found that he was sick unto

death, he gave the instructions which he had written out in French

with his own hand to his eldest son, Philip. They are models of

virtue, wisdom and paternal tenderness, worthy of a King and a

Christian."

Perhaps the most interesting feature of St. Louis' life was his

treatment of the poor. He used literally to recall the fact that they

must stand to him in the place of God. "Whatever you do to the least

of these you do even unto me" was a favorite expression frequently in

his mouth. He waited on them personally and no matter how revolting

their appearance would not be deterred from this personal service. It

is easy to understand that his courtiers did not sympathize with this

state of mind, though Louis used to encourage them not only by his

example but by personal persuasion. Every Holy Thursday he used to

wash the feet of twelve poor people at a public ceremonial, in honor

of the washing of the feet of the Apostles by Christ.

{opp296}

[Illustration]

APOSTLE (LA SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS)

It must not be thought moreover, that such a {297} proceeding was

perhaps less repugnant to the feelings of the men of that time than

they are to the present generation. It might be considered that the

general paucity of means for maintaining personal cleanliness in

medieval times would make the procedure less disgusting. As a proof of

the contrary of this we have the words of Joinville who tells of the

following conversation:--

"Many a time," says Joinville, "I have seen him cut their bread for

them, and pour out their drink. One day he asked me if I washed the

feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday. "Sire," I answered, "What, the

feet of those dirty wretches! No indeed, I shall never wash them."

"Truly," replied the King, "you have spoken ill, for you ought not

to despise that which God intended for your instruction. I pray you,

therefore, first of all for the love of God, and then by your love

towards me, that you make a habit of washing their feet."

Even more striking than this however, was his attitude toward the

lepers of the time. These poor creatures were compelled to live apart

from the population and were not allowed to approach healthy

individuals. They were of exceeding interest to Louis however, who

took every opportunity to mitigate the trials and hardships of their

existence. Whenever he met them on his journeys he insisted on

abundant alms being given them, and gave orders that every possible

provision for their welfare, consonant with the care that their

affection should not be permitted to spread, be made for them. Over

and over again he greeted them as his brothers and when his retinue

feared to approach them, would himself go to them, in order to console

them by his words and his exhibition of personal interest. There is an

incident told of his having on one occasion, when a muddy stream

intervened between him and some lepers, forded the stream alone in

order to get to them, and neither any personal fear of contagion nor

any natural repugnance was permitted to deter him from this sublime

work of charity. It is no wonder that his people proclaimed him a

saint, that is "one who thinks first of others and only second of

himself," even during his lifetime.

The only supposed blot upon Louis' character is the denunciation by

certain modern writers of what they call the fanaticism, {298} which

prompted him to go on the Crusades instead of remaining at home

properly to care for his people. The opinion with regard to the place

that must be assigned to the Crusades as a factor in history and

national as well as European development, has changed very much in

recent years. Formerly it was the custom almost entirely to condemn

them and to look upon them as a serious mistake. Such ideas however,

are only entertained by those who do not realize the conditions under

which they were undertaken or the important results which flowed from

them. Bishop Stubbs in his lectures on Medieval and Modern History,

delivered while he was professor of History at Oxford, has been at

some pains to correct this false notion, and his passage constitutes

one of the best apologies for Louis' interest in the Crusades which

could be written. He said:--

"The Crusades are not, in my mind, either the popular delusions that

our cheap literature has determined them to be, nor papal

conspiracies against kings and peoples, as they appear to Protestant

controversialists; nor the savage outbreak of expiring barbarism,

thirsting for blood and plunder, nor volcanic explosions of

religious intolerance. I believe them to have been in their deep

sources, and in the minds of their best champions, and in the main

tendency of their results, capable of ample justification. They were

the first great effort of medieval life to go beyond the pursuit of

selfish and isolated ambitions; they were the trial-feat of the

young world, essaying to use, to the glory of God and the benefit of

man, the arms of its new knighthood. That they failed in their

direct object is only what may be alleged against almost every great

design which the great disposer of events has moulded to help the

world's progress; for the world has grown wise from the experience

of failure, rather than by the winning of high aims. That the good

they did was largely leavened with evil may be said of every war

that has ever been waged; that bad men rose by them while good men

fell, is and must be true, wherever and whenever the race is to the

swift and the battle to the strong. But that in the end they were a

benefit to the world no one who reads can doubt; and that in their

course they brought out a love for all that is heroic in human

nature, the love of freedom, the honor of prowess, sympathy with

sorrow, {299} perseverance to the last, the chronicles of the age

abundantly prove; proving, moreover, that it was by the experience

of these times that the forms of those virtues were realized and

presented to posterity." [Footnote 25]

[Footnote 25: Stubbs, "Seventeen Lectures on Medieval and Modern

History," p. 180.]

With the stigma of supposed imprudence or foolhardiness for having

gone on the Crusade turned into a new cause for honor, Louis must be

considered as probably the greatest monarch who ever occupied an

important throne. Instead of being surprised that such a monarch

should have come in the heart of the Middle Ages and during a century

so distant as the Thirteenth, readers must now be ready to appreciate

to some degree at least the fact, that his environment instead of

being a hindrance in any sense of the word to the development of

Louis' greatness, should rather be considered as one of the principal

sources of it. Louis' character was representative of the men of that

time and exhibits in their most striking form the qualities that were

set up as ideals in that period. If the century had produced nothing

else but Louis, it would have to be considered as a great epoch in

history, for he was no mere accident but typically a son of his age.

If this is but properly appreciated the true significance not only of

Louis' life but the period in which he lived will be better understood

than would be possible by any other means. Those who want to know the

men of this wonderful century as they actually were should study

Louis' life in detail, for we have been only able to hint at its most

striking characteristics.

{opp300}

[Illustration]

DECORATION (QUEEN MARY'S PSALTER, XIII. CENTURY MS.)

{300}

XIX

DANTE THE POET.

It is only too often the custom to talk of Dante as a solitary

phenomenon in his time. Even Carlyle who knew well and properly

appreciated many things in medieval life and letters and especially in

the literary productions of the Thirteenth Century said, that in Dante

"ten silent centuries found a voice." Anyone who has followed what we

have had to say with regard to the Thirteenth Century will no longer

think of Dante as standing alone, but will readily appreciate that he

is only the fitting culmination of a great literary era. After having

gone over even as hurriedly as has been necessary in our brief space,

what was accomplished in every country of Europe in literature that

was destined to live not only because of the greatness of the

thoughts, but also for the ultimateness of its expression, we should

expect some surpassing literary genius at the end of the period. It

seems almost inevitable indeed that a supreme poet, whose name stands

above all others but one or two at the most in the whole history of

the race, should have lived in the Thirteenth Century, and should have

summed up effectually in himself all the greatness of the century and

enshrined its thoughts in undying verse for all future generations.

{opp300}

[Illustration]

PORTRAIT OF DANTE (GIOTTO, IN THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE)

When Dante himself dares to place his name with those of the men whom

he considered the five greatest poets of all time, it seems sublimest

egotism. At first thought many will at once conclude that his reason

for so doing was, that in the unlettered times his critical faculty

was not well developed and as he knew that his work far surpassed that

of his contemporaries, he could scarcely help but conclude that his

place must be among the great poets. Any such thought however, is

entirely due to lack of knowledge of the conditions of Dante's life

and education. He had been in the universities of Italy, and in his

exile had visited Paris and probably also Oxford. He knew the poets of

his country well. He appreciated them {301} highly. It was the

consciousness of genius that made him place himself so high and not

any faulty comparison with others. Succeeding generations have set him

even higher than the place chosen by himself and now we breathe his

name only with those of Homer and Shakespeare, considering that these

three sublime immortals are so far above all other poets that there is

scarcely a second to them.

Dante is the most universal of poets. He has won recognition from all

nations, and he has been the favorite reading of the most diverse

times and conditions of men. From the very beginning he has been

appreciated, and even before his death men had begun to realize

something of the supremacy of his greatness. Commentaries on his works

that have been preserved down to our own day were written almost

during his lifetime. Only supreme interest could have tempted men to

multiply these by the hard labor of patient handwriting. Petrarch who

as a young man, was his contemporary, recognized him as the Prince of

Italian poets who had composed in their common tongue, and even was

tempted to say that the subtle and profound conceptions of the

Commedia could not have been written without the special gift of the

Holy Ghost. Boccaccio was wont to speak of him as the Divine Poet, and

tells us that he had learned that Petrarch deliberately held aloof

from the Commedia, through fear of losing his originality if he came

under the spell of so great a master.

Very few realize how great a poet Dante must be considered even if

only the effusions of his younger years were to be taken as the

standard of his poetical ability. Some of his sonnets are as beautiful

of their kind as are to be found in this form of poetry. His

description of his lady-love is famous among sonnets of lovers and may

only be compared with some of the Sonnets from the Portuguese in our

own day, or with one or two of Camoens' original sonnets in the

Portuguese, for lofty praise of the beloved in worthy numbers. After

reading Dante's sonnets it is easy to understand how a half century

later Petrarch was able to raise the sonnet form to an excellence that

was never to be surpassed. With a beginning like this it is no wonder

that the sonnet became so popular in Europe during the next three

centuries, and that every young poet, {302} down to Shakespeare's

time, had an attack of sonneteering just as he might have had an

attack of the measles. The first one of a pair of sonnets that are

considered supreme in their class deserves a place here as an example

of Dante's poetic faculty in this form, for which he is so much less

known than he ought to be.

He sees completely fullest bliss abound

Who among ladies sees my Lady's face;

Those that with her do go are surely bound

To give God thanks for such exceeding grace.

And in her beauty such strange might is found.

That envy finds in other hearts no place;

So she makes them walk with her, clothed all round

With love and faith and courteous gentleness.

The sight of her makes all things lowly be;

Nor of herself alone she gives delight.

But each through her receiveth honor due.

And in her acts is such great courtesy,

That none can recollect that wondrous sight.

Who sighs not for it in Love's sweetness true.

It will be noted that Dante has nothing to say of the personal

appearance of his beloved. This is true, however, of the whole series

of poems to and about her. He never seems to have thought for a moment

of her physical qualities. What he finds worthy to praise is her

goodness which shines out from her features so that everyone rejoices

in it, while a sweetness fills the heart as if a heavenly visitor had

come. For him her supreme quality is that, with all her beauty, envy

finds no place in others' hearts because she is so clothed around with

love and faith and courteous gentleness. It has often been said that

Shakespeare did not describe the physical appearances of his heroines

because he realized that this meant very little, but then Shakespeare

had to write for the stage and realized that blondes and brunettes,

especially in the olden time, could not be made to order and that it

was better to leave the heroine's physical appearance rather vague. It

would be expected, however, that Dante, with his Southern temperament,

would have dwelt on the physical perfections of his fair. The next

{303} sonnet, however, of the best known group emphasizes his

abstraction of all physical influence in the matter and insists on her

goodness and the womanly beauty of her character. It will be found in

our chapter on Women of the Century.

In his earlier years Dante considered himself one of the Troubadours,

and there can be no doubt that if he had never written the Divine

Comedy, he still would have been remembered as one of the great poets

who wrote of love in this Thirteenth Century. Not only does he deserve

a place among the greatest of the Minnesingers, the Trouveres, and the

Troubadours, but he is perhaps the greatest of them. That he should

have sung as he did at the end of the century only shows that he was

in the stream of literary evolution and not being merely carried idly

along, but helping to guide it into ever fairer channels. Dante's

minor poems would have made enduring fame for any poet of less genius

than himself. His prose works deserve to be read by anyone who wishes

to know the character of this greatest of poets, and also to

appreciate what the educational environment of the Thirteenth Century

succeeded in making out of good intellectual material when presented

to it. Dante's works are the real treasury of information of the most

precious kind with regard to the century, since they provide the

proper standpoint from which to view all that it accomplished.

While Dante was a supreme singer among the poets of a great song time,

it was only natural, in the light of what we know about the literary

product of the rest of this century, that he should have put into epic

form the supreme product of his genius. With the great national epics

in every country of Europe--the Cid, the Arthur Legends, and the

Nibelungen, at the beginning of this century, and the epical poems of

the Meistersingers during its first half, it is not surprising, but on

the contrary rather what might have been confidently looked for, that

there should have arisen a great national epic in Italy before the end

of the century. The Gothic art movement spread through all these

countries, and so did the wind of the spirit of esthetic

accomplishment which blew the flame of national literature in each

country into a mighty blaze, that not only was {304} never to be

extinguished, but was to be a beacon light in the realm of national

literatures forever after.

We have already said a word of the well-known contemporary admiration

for the poet but it should be realized that due appreciation of Dante

continued in Italy during all the time when Italian art and literature

was at its highest. It dwindled only at periods of decadence and lack

of taste. Cornelius' law with regard to Dante's influence on art is

very well known, Italian art according to him, has been strong and

vigorous just in proportion as it has worked under Dante's influence,

while it became weak and sensuous as that influence declined. This has

held true from the very beginning and has been as true for literature

as for art. When the Italians became interested in trivialities and

gave themselves up to weak imitations of the classics, or to pastoral

poetry that was not a real expression of feeling but a passing fancy

of literary folk, then Dante was for a time in obscurity. Even at the

height of the Renaissance, however, when Greek was at the acme of its

interest and the classics occupied so much attention that Dante might

be expected to be eclipsed, the great thinkers and critics of the time

still worshipped at the shrine of their great master of Italian verse.

The best proof of this is to be found in Michael Angelo's famous

sonnets in praise of Dante, the second of which would seem to exhaust

all that can be said in praise of a brother poet.

Into the dark abyss he made his way;

Both nether worlds he saw, and in the might

Of his great soul beheld God's splendour bright.

And gave to us on earth true light of day:

Star of supremest worth with its clear ray.

Heaven's secrets he revealed to us through our dim sight.

And had for guerdon what the base world's spite

Oft gives to souls that noblest grace display,

Full ill was Dante's life-work understood,

His purpose high, by that ungrateful state.

That welcomed all with kindness but the good.

Would I were such, to bear like evil fate,

To taste his exile, share his lofty mood.

For this I'd gladly give all earth calls great.

{305}

In the first of this pair of sonnets, however, Michael Angelo gave if

possible even higher praise than this. It will be recalled that he

himself, besides being the greatest of sculptors and one of the

greatest of painters and architects in a wonderfully productive

period, was also a very great poet. These sonnets to Dante, the one to

his crucifix, and one to Vittoria Colonna, are the best proof of this.

He knew how to chisel thoughts into wonderfully suitable words quite

as well as marble into the beautiful forms that grew under his hands.

With all his greatness, and he must have been conscious of it, he

thinks that he would be perfectly willing to give up all that earth

calls great, simply to share Dante's lofty mood even in his exile. No

greater tribute has ever been paid by one poet to another than this,

and Michael Angelo's genius was above all critical, never

thoughtlessly laudatory. As emphasizing the highest enlightened taste

of a great epoch this has seemed to deserve a place here also.

What should be said of him speech may not tell;

His splendor is too great for men's dim sight;

And easier 'twere to blame his foes aright

Than for his poorest gifts to praise him well.

He tracked the path that leads to depths of Hell

To teach us wisdom, scaled the eternal height.

And heaven with open gates did him invite.

Who in his own loved city might not dwell.

Ungrateful country step-dame of his fate.

To her own loss: full proof we have in this

That souls most perfect bear the greatest woe.

Of thousand things suffice in this to state:

No exile ever was unjust as his,

Nor did the world his equal ever know.

In England, in spite of distance of country, race and language, the

appreciation of Dante began very early. Readers of Chaucer know the

great Italian as the favorite poet of the Father of English poetry,

and over and over again he has expressed the feeling of how much

greater than anything he could hope to do was Dante's accomplishment.

Readers will remember how Chaucer feels unable to tell the story of

{306} Ugolino and his starving sons in the Hunger Tower, and refers

those interested in the conclusion of the tale to Dante. After the

religious revolt of the early Sixteenth Century Dante was lost sight

of to a great extent. His temper was too Catholic to be appreciated by

Puritan England, and the Elizabethans were too much occupied with

their own creation of a great national literature, to have any time

for appreciation of a foreigner so different in spirit from their

times. With the coming of the Oxford Movement, however, Dante at once

sprang into favor, and a number of important critical appreciations of

him reintroduced him to a wide reading public in England, most of whom

were among the most cultured of the island. This renewed interest in

Dante gave rise to some of the best critical appreciations in any

language. Dean Church's famous essay is the classic English monograph

on Dante, and its opening paragraph sounds the keynote of critical

opinion among English speaking people.

"The Divina Commedia is one of the landmarks of history. More than a

magnificent poem, more than the beginning of a language and the

opening of a national literature, more than the inspirer of art and

the glory of a great people, it is one of those rare and solemn

monuments of the mind's power which measure and test what it can

reach to, which rise up ineffaceably and forever as time goes on,

marking out its advance by grander divisions than its centuries, and

adopted as epochs by the consent of all who come after. It stands

with the Iliad and Shakespeare's Plays, with the writings of

Aristotle and Plato, with the Novum Organon and the Principia, with

Justinian's Code, with the Parthenon and St. Peter's. It is the

first Christian Poem, and it opens European literature as the Iliad

did that of Greece and Rome. And, like the Iliad, it has never

become out of date; it accompanies in undiminished freshness the

literature which it began."

{opp306}

[Illustration]

TORRE DEL FAME (DANTE, PISA)

[Illustration]

PALAZZO PRETORIO (TODI)

No better introduction to Dante could be obtained than this from Dean

Church. Those who have found it difficult to get interested in the

great Florentine poet, and who have been prone to think that perhaps

the pretended liking for him on the part of many people was an

affectation rather than a sincere expression of opinion, should read

this essay and learn {307} something of the wealth of sympathy there

is in Dante for even the man of these modern times. Our Thirteenth

Century poet is not easy to read but there is probably no reading in

all the world that brings with it so much of intellectual

satisfaction, so much of awakening of the best feelings in man, so

many glimpses into the depths of his being, as some lines from Dante

pondered under favorable circumstances. Like one of these Gothic

cathedrals of the olden times he never grows old, but, on the

contrary, every favorite passage seems to have a new message for each

mood of the reader. This is particularly true for the spiritual side

of man's being as has been pointed out by Dean Church in a well-known

passage toward the end of his essay.

"Those who know the Divina Commedia best will best know how hard it

is to be the interpreter of such a mind; but they will sympathize

with the wish to call attention to it. They know, and would wish

others also to know, not by hearsay, but by experience, the power of

that wonderful poem. They know its austere yet submitting beauty;

they know what force there is in its free and earnest and solemn

verse to strengthen, to tranquillize, to console. It is a small

thing that it has the secret of Nature and Man; that a few keen

words have opened their eyes to new sights in earth, and sea, and

sky; have taught them new mysteries of sound; have made them

recognize, in distinct image of thought, fugitive feelings, or their

unheeded expression, by look, or gesture, or motion; that it has

enriched the public and collective memory of society with new

instances, never to be lost, of human feeling and fortune; has

charmed mind and ear by the music of its stately march, and the

variety and completeness of its plan. But besides this, they know

how often its seriousness has put to shame their trifling, its

magnanimity their faint-heartedness, its living energy their

indolence, its stern and sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its

thrilling tenderness overcome sullenness and assuaged distress, its

strong faith quelled despair, and soothed perplexity, its vast grasp

imparted the sense of harmony to the view of clashing truth. They

know how often they have found in times of trouble, if not light, at

least that deep sense of reality, permanent though unseen, which is

more than light can {308} always give--in the view which it has

suggested to them of the judgments and love of God."

As might have been expected from the fact of Dante's English

popularity paralleling the Oxford Movement, both the great English

Cardinals who were such prominent agents in that movement, looked upon

him as a favorite author. Both of them have given him precious

tributes. Newman's lofty compliment was the flattery of imitation when

he wrote the Dream of Gerontius, that poem for poets which has told

the men of our generation more about the immediate hereafter than

anything written in these latter centuries. No poet of the intervening

period, or of any other time, has so satisfactorily presented the

after world as these writers so distant in time, so different in

environment,--the one an Italian of the Thirteenth, the other an

Englishman of the Nineteenth Century.

Cardinal Manning's tribute was much more formal though not less

glorious. It occurs in the introduction to Father Bowden's English

edition of the German critic Hettinger's appreciation of Dante, and

deserves a place here because it shows how much a representative

modern churchman thinks of the great Florentine poet.

"There are three works which always seem to me to form a triad of

Dogma, of Poetry, and of Devotion,--The Summa of St. Thomas, The

Divina Commedia, and the Paradisus Animae (a manual of devotional

exercises by Horstius). All three contain the same outline of Faith.

St. Thomas traces it on the intellect, Dante upon the imagination,

and the Paradisus Animae upon the heart. The poem unites the book of

Dogma and the book of Devotion, clothed in conceptions of intensity

and of beauty which have never been surpassed nor equalled. No

uninspired hand has ever written thoughts so high in words, so

resplendent as the last stanza of the Divina Commedia. It was said

of St. Thomas, _'Post Summan Thomae nihil restat nisi lumen

gloriae_'--After the Summa of Thomas nothing is left except the

light of glory. It may be said of Dante, _'Post Dantis Paradisum

nihil restat nisi visio Dei_,'--After Dante's Paradise nothing is

left except the vision of God."

Of course John Ruskin had a thorough-going admiration for so great a

spiritual thinker as Dante and expressed it in no {309} uncertain

terms. With his wonderful power to point out the significance of

unexpected manifestations of human genius, Ruskin has even succeeded

in minimizing one of the great objections urged against Dante, better

perhaps than could be done by anyone else, for English speaking people

at least. For many readers Dante is almost unbearable, because of

certain grotesque elements they find in him. This has been the source

and cause of more unfavorable criticism than anything else in the

great Florentine's writings. Ruskin of course saw it but appreciated

it at its proper significance, and has made clear in a passage that

every Dante reader needs to go over occasionally, in order to assure

himself that certain unusual things in Dante's attitude towards life

are an expression rather of the highest human genius and its outlook

on life, than some narrow limitation of medievalism. Ruskin said:--

"I believe that there is no test of greatness in nations, periods,

nor men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a

noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation,

of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque

invention or incapability of understanding it. I think that the

central man of all the world, as representing in perfect balance the

imaginative, moral and intellectual faculties, all at their highest

is Dante; and in him the grotesque reaches at once the most distinct

and the most noble development to which it was ever brought in the

human mind. Of the grotesqueness in our own Shakespeare I need

hardly speak, nor of its intolerableness to his French critics; nor

of that of AEschylus and Homer, as opposed to the lower Greek

writers; and so I believe it will be found, at all periods, in all

minds of the first order."

Great reverence for Dante might have been expected in Italy but the

colder Northern nations shared it.

In Germany modern admiration for Dante began with that great wave of

critical appreciation which entered into German literature with the

end of the Eighteenth and the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. As

might almost have been expected, Frederick Schlegel was one of the

first modern German admirers of Dante, though his brother August,

whose translations of Shakespeare began that series of German studies

of {310} Shakespeare which has been so fruitful during the past

century, was also an open admirer of the medieval poet. Since then

there has practically been no time when Germany has not had some

distinguished Dante scholar, and when it has not been supplying the

world with the products of profound study and deep scholarship with

regard to him. The modern educational world has come to look so

confidently toward Germany for the note of its critical appreciation,

that the Dante devotion of the Germans will be the best possible

encouragement for those who need to have the feeling, that their own

liking is shared by good authorities, before they are quite satisfied

with their appreciation. Dean Plumptre has summed up the Dante

movement in Germany in a compendious paragraph that must find a place

here.

"In the year 1824, Scartazzini, the great Dante scholar of the

Nineteenth Century, recognizes a new starting point. The period of

neglect of supercilious criticism comes to an end, and one of

reverence, admiration and exhaustive study begins. His account of

the labors of German scholars during the sixty years that have

followed fills a large part of his volume. Translations of the

Commedia by Kopisch, Kannegiesser, Witte, Philalethes (the nom de

plume of John, King of Saxony), Josefa Von Hoffinger, of the Minor

Poems by Witte and Krafft, endless volumes and articles on all

points connected with Dante's life and character, the publications

of the Deutsche Dante-Gesellschaft from 1867 to 1877, present a body

of literature which has scarcely a parallel in history. It is no

exaggeration to say that the Germans have taught Italians to

understand and appreciate their own poet, just as they have at least

helped to teach Englishmen to understand Shakespeare."

Nor must it be thought that only the literary lights of Germany

thoroughly appreciated the great Florentine. The greater the genius of

the man the more his admiration for Dante if he but once becomes

interested in him. A noteworthy example of this is Alexander Von

Humboldt the distinguished German scientist, who was generally looked

upon as perhaps the greatest thinker in European science during the

first quarter of the Nineteenth Century. He is said to have been very

faithful in his study of Dante and has expressed his admiration in no

{311} uncertain terms. Curiously enough he found much to admire him

for in matters scientific, for while it is not generally realized,

Dante was an acute observer of Nature and has given expression in his

works to many observations with regard to subjects that would now be

considered within the scope of natural science, in a way to anticipate

many supposedly modern bits of information. With regard to this

Humboldt said in his Cosmos:--

"When the glory of the Aramaic Greek and Roman dominion--or I might

almost say, when the ancient world had passed away,--we find in the

great and inspired founder of a new era, Dante Alighieri, occasional

manifestations of the deepest sensibility to the charms of the

terrestrial life of Nature, whenever he abstracts himself from the

passionate and subjective control of that despondent mysticism which

constituted the general circle of his ideas." How little Humboldt

seems to have realized in his own absorption in external nature, that

the qualities he blames in Dante are of the very essence of his

genius, rounding out his humanity to an interest in all man's

relations, supernatural as well as natural, and that without them he

would not be the world poet for all time that he is.

In America Dante came to his own almost as soon as literature obtained

her proper place in our new country. The first generation of

distinctly literary men comprise the group at Cambridge including

Longfellow, Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Eliot Norton,

James Russell Lowell, and others of minor importance. It soon became a

favorite occupation among these men to give certain leisure hours to

Dante. The Cambridge Dante society added not a little to the world's

knowledge of the poet. Longfellow's translation and edition of Dante's

works was a monumental achievement, for which its author is likely to

be remembered better by future generations than perhaps for any of his

original work. Future generations are likely to remember James Russell

Lowell for his essays on Dante and Shakespeare better than for

anything else. His Dante monograph is as magnificently illuminating as

that of Dean Church's and perhaps even more satisfying to critical

readers. That these men should have been content to give so much of

their time to the study of the Thirteenth {312} Century poet shows in

what appreciation he must be held by the rest of us if we would give

him his due place in literature.

There are many misunderstandings with regard to Dante which apparently

only some serious study of the poet serves to remove satisfactorily.

Most people consider that he was a distant, prophetic, religious

genius, and that his poetry has in it very little of sympathy for

humanity. While it is generally conceded that he saw man projected on

the curtain of eternity, and realized all his relationships to the

universe and to his Creator better than perhaps any other poet of all

time, it is usually thought that one must have something of the

medieval frame of mind in order to read him with interest and

admiration. Such impressions are largely the result of reading only a

few lines of Dante, and, finding them difficult of thorough

comprehension, allowing one's self to be forced to the conclusion that

he is not of interest to the modern reader. The Inferno being the

first part of Dante's great poem is the one oftenest read in this

passing fashion and so many ideas with regard to Dante are derived

from this portion, which is not only not the masterpiece of the work

but, if taken alone, sadly misrepresents the genius of the poet. His

is no morbid sentimentality and does not need the adventitious

interest of supreme suffering.

As a matter of fact the Purgatorio is a much better introduction to

Dante's real greatness, and is considered by the generality of Dante

scholars as the more humanly sympathetic if not really the supreme

expression of his creative faculty. The ascent of the Mount of

Expiation with its constant note of hope and the gradually increasing

facility of the ascent as the summit is approached, touches condolent

cords in the human heart and arouses feelings that are close to what

is best in human aspiration in spite of its consciousness of defect.

Over and over again in the Purgatorio one finds evidence of Dante's

wonderful powers of observation. The poet is first of all according to

the etymology of the word a creator, one who gives life to the

figments of his imagination so that we recognize them as vital

manifestations of human genius, but is also the seer, the man who sees

deeper into things and sees more of them than anyone else. Ordinarily

Dante is considered by those who do not know him as not having been an

observer of things human and around him in life. There are passages in

his works, however, that entirely refute this.

[Illustration]

ANGEL (RHEIMS)

{313}

The story that he went about the cities of North Italy during his

exile, with countenance so gloomy and stare so fixed that men pointed

to him and spoke of him as one who had visited Hell, and the other

tradition, however well it may be founded, that the women sometimes

pointed him out to their children and then used the memory of him as a

bogy man to scare them into doing unpleasant things afterwards, would

seem to indicate that he had occupied himself very little with the

things around him, and that above all he had paid very little

attention to the ways of childhood. He has shown over and over again,

especially in the Purgatorio, that the simplest and most natural

actions of child-life had been engraved upon his heart for he uses

them with supreme truth in his figures. He knows how

"An infant seeks his mother's breast

When fear or anguish vex his troubled heart,"--

but he knows too, how the child who has done wrong, confesses its

faults.

"As little children, dumb with shame's keen smart.

Will listening stand with eyes upon the ground.

Owning their faults with penitential heart,

So then stood I."

There is a passage in the Inferno in which he describes so vividly the

rescue of a child from the flames by its mother that Plumptre has even

ventured to suggest that Dante himself may have been the actual

subject of the rescue. Because it helps to an appreciation of Dante's

intensity of expression and poignancy of vision the passage itself,

with Plumptre's comment, seems deserving of quotation:

"Then suddenly my Guide his arms did fling

Around me, as a mother, roused by cries,

Sees the fierce flames around her gathering

And takes her boy, nor ever halts but flies.

Caring for him than for herself far more,

Though one scant shift her only robe supplies."

{314}

It must not be thought, however, that Dante's quality as an observer

was limited to the actions of human beings. His capacity to see many

other things is amply manifested in his great poem. Even the smallest

of living things, that would surely be thought beneath his notice,

became the subject of similies that show how much everything in nature

interested the spirit of genius. The passage with regard to the ants

has often been quoted, and is indeed a surprising manifestation of

nature study at an unexpected time and from an entirely unanticipated

quarter. Dante saw the souls of those who were so soon to enter into

the realm of blessedness, and who were already in the last circle of

purgatory, greeting each other with the kiss of peace and his

picturesque simile for it is:--

"So oft, within their dusk brown host, proceed

This ant and that, till muzzle muzzle meet;

Spying their way, or how affairs succeed."

As for the birds his pages are full of references to them and all of

his bird similies are couched in terms that show how sympathetically

observant he was of their habits and ways. He knows their different

methods of flying in groups and singly, he has observed them on their

nests and knows their wonderful maternal anxiety for their young, and

describes it with a vividness that would do credit to a naturalist of

the modern time who had made his home in the woods. Indeed some of his

figures taken from birds constitute examples of the finest passages of

poetic description of living nature that have ever been written. The

domestic animals, moreover, especially the cat and the dog, come in

for their share of this sympathetic observance, and he is able to add

greatly to the vividness of the pictures he paints by his references

to the well-known habits of these animals. It is no wonder that the

tradition has grown up that he was fond of such pets and possessed

several of them that were well-known to the early commentators on his

poems, and the subject of no little erudition.

Nothing escaped the attention of this acute observer in the world

around him, and over and over again one finds surprising bits of

observation with regard to natural phenomena usually supposed to be

quite out of the range of the interest of {315} medieval students

generally, and above all of literary men of this Middle Age. Alexander

Von Humboldt calls attention in a well-known passage in his Cosmos to

the wonderful description of the River of Light in the Thirtieth Canto

of the Paradiso.

"I saw a glory like a stream flow by.

In brightness rushing and on either shore

Were banks that with spring's wondrous hues might vie.

And from that river living sparks did soar,

And sank on all sides in the flow'rets' bloom,

Like precious rubies set in golden ore.

Then, as if drunk with all the rich perfume,

Back to the wondrous torrent did they roll,

And as one sank another filled its room."

Humboldt explains this as follows, with a suggestion that deserves to

be remembered.

"It would almost seem as if this picture had its origin in the

poet's recollection of that peculiar and rare phosphorescent

condition of the ocean in which luminous points appear to rise from

the breaking waves, and, spreading themselves over the surface of

the waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea of sparkling

stars."