foundation and development of law, can only be appreciated by those
who realize the extent of their contributions to the codification of
canon law. It was the arrangement of this in definite shape that put
the civil jurists of the time at work setting their house in order.
Innocent III., who is deservedly called _Pater Juris_, devoted a great
deal of his wonderful energy and genius to the arrangement of canon
law. This placed for the first time the canon law on an absolutely
sure footing and filled up many gaps that formerly existed. Gregory
IX. commissioned his chaplain, the famous Raymond of Pennafort, who
had been a professor of canon law in the University of Bologna, to
codify all the decretals since the time of Gratian. This work was
officially promulgated in 1234, four years of labor having been
devoted to it. The laws are in the form of decisions pronounced in
cases submitted to the Pope from all parts of Christendom, including
many from the distant East and not a few from England and Scotland.
Gregory's decretals were published in five books; a supplement under
the name of the sixth book was published under Pope Boniface VIII. in
1298. In this for the first time abstract rules of law are laid down
extracted from actual judgments. A compendium of Roman Law was added
so as to approximate canon and civil procedure.
This gives the best possible idea of how deeply the popes and the
authorities in canon law of the century were laying the foundations of
canonical practise and procedure for all times. The origins of modern
law are to be found here, and yet not, as might be anticipated because
of the distance in time, in such a confused or unmanageable fashion
that they are not worth while consulting, but on the contrary with
such clarity and distinctness and with such orderly arrangement, that
they have been the subjects of study on the part of distinguished
{371} jurists for most of the centuries ever since, and have never
lost their interest for the great lawyers and canonists, who prefer to
know things from the foundation rather than accept them at second
hand.
Some of the commentaries, or glosses as they were called, on canon law
serve to give an excellent idea of the legal ability as well as the
intellectual acumen of the canon lawyers of the century. The system of
teaching was oral, and careful study was devoted to original
authorities in law. Explanatory notes were added by the professors to
their copies of the text. When later these texts were given out or
lent for transcription, the notes were also copied, usually being
written in the margin. After a time the commentary, however, proved to
be, for students at least, as important as the text and so was
transcribed by itself and was called an apparatus, that is a series of
mechanical helps, as it were, to the understanding of the text.
Of the names of some of the most distinguished glossatores the memory
has been carefully preserved because they produced so much effect on
legal teaching. The gloss written on Gratian by Joannes Teutonicus
(John the German), probably during the first decade of the Thirteenth
Century, was revised and supplemented by Bartholomew of Brescia about
the middle of the Thirteenth Century. Some ten years later Bernard of
Parma wrote a commentary on the decretals of Gregory. All of these are
important fundamental works in canon law, and they were of very great
influence in bringing out the principles of law and showing the basis
on which they were founded. It is almost needless to say that they
aroused additional interest and made the subject much more easy of
approach than it had been. The fact that all of these magnificent
contributions to the science and literatures of law should have been
made during our Thirteenth Century, serves only to emphasize the fact
that everything that men touched during this period was sure to be
illuminated by the practical genius of the time, and put into a form
in which for many centuries it was to be appealed to as a model and an
authority in its own line. How much of legal commentary writing there
was besides these, can be readily understood from the fact that these
represent the activity only of the University of Bologna {372} which
was, it is true, the greatest of universities in its law department,
but it must not be forgotten that many other universities throughout
Europe also had distinguished professors of law at this time.
All this would seem to be of little interest for the secular
law-making of the period, but it must not be forgotten that civil law
was closely related to canon law at all times and that the development
of canon law always meant a renewed evolution of the principles, and
practise, and procedure of the civil law. In such countries as
Scotland, indeed, the canon law formed the basis of the civil
jurisprudence and its influence was felt even for centuries after the
so-called reformation. On the other hand it must not be forgotten that
the popes and the ecclesiastics helped to fight the battles of the
middle and lower classes against the king and the nobility in
practically every country in Europe. A very striking example of this
is to be found in the life of that much misunderstood Pope Boniface
VIII., the last pope of the century, who had received his legal
training at Bologna, and who was one of the great jurists of his time.
Circumstances differ so much, however, and obscure realities to such a
degree, that at the present time we need the light of sympathetic
interpretation to enable us to realize what Boniface accomplished.
{opp372}
[Illustration]
PORTRAIT OF POPE BONIFACE VIII. (GIOTTO, ROME)
He did much to complete in his time that arrangement and codification
of canon law which his predecessors during the Thirteenth Century had
so efficiently commenced. Like Innocent III. he has been much maligned
because of his supposed attempt to make the governments of the time
subservient to the Pope and to make the Church in each nation
independent of the political government. With regard to the famous
Bull Clericis Laicos, "thrice unhappy in name and fortune" as it has
been designated, much more can be said in justification than is
usually considered to be the case. Indeed the Rev. Dr. Barry, whose
"Story of the Papal Monarchy" in the Stories of the Nations series has
furnished the latest discussion of this subject, does not hesitate to
declare that the Bull far from being subversive of political liberties
or expressive of too arrogant a spirit on the part of the Church, was
really an expression of a great principle that was to become very
prominent in {373} modern history, and the basis of many of the modern
declarations of rights against the claims of tyranny.
He says in part:
"Imprudent, headlong, but in its main contention founded on history,
this extraordinary state-paper declared that the laity had always
been hostile to the clergy, and were so now as much as ever. But
they possessed no jurisdiction over the persons, no claims on the
property of the church, though they had dared to exact a tenth, nay,
even a half, of its income for secular objects, and time-serving
prelates had not resisted. Now, on no title whatsoever from
henceforth should such taxes be levied without permission of the
Holy See. Every layman, though king or emperor, receiving these
moneys fell by that very act under anathema; every churchman paying
them was deposed from his office; universities guilty of the like
offense were struck with interdict.
"Robert of Winchelsea, Langton's successor as primate, shared
Langton's views. He was at this moment in Rome, and had doubtless
urged Boniface to come to the rescue of a frightened, down-trodden
clergy, whom Edward I. would not otherwise regard. In the Parliament
at Bury, this very year, the clerics refused to make a grant. Edward
sealed up their barns. The archbishop ordered that in every
cathedral the pope's interdiction should be read. Hereupon the
chief-justice declared the whole clergy outlawed; they might be
robbed or murdered without redress. Naturally, not a few gave way; a
fifth, and then a fourth, of their revenue was yielded up. But
Archbishop Robert alone, with all the prelates except Lincoln
against him, and the Dominicans preaching at Paul's cross on behalf
of the king, stood out, lost his lands, and was banished to a
country parsonage. War broke out in Flanders. It was the saving of
the archbishop. At Westminster Edward relented and apologized. He
confirmed the two great charters; he did away with illegal judgments
that infringed them. Next year the primate excommunicated those
royal officers who had seized goods or persons belonging to the
clergy, and all who had violated Magna Charta. The Church came out
of this conflict exempt, or, more truly a self-governing estate of
the realm. It must be considered as {374} having greatly concurred
towards the establishment of that fundamental law invoked long after
by the thirteen American Colonies, 'No taxation without
representation,' which is the corner stone of British freedom."
We have so often heard it said that there is nothing new under the
sun, that finally the expression has come to mean very little, though
its startling truth sometimes throws vivid light on historical events.
Certainly the last place in the world that one would expect to find if
not the origin, for all during the Thirteenth Century this great
principle had been gradually asserting itself, at least, a wondrous
confirmation of the principle on which our American revolution
justified itself, would be in a papal document of the end of the
Thirteenth Century. Here, however, is a distinguished scholar, who
insists that the Colonists' contention that there must be no taxes
levied unless they were allowed representation in some way in the body
which determined the mode and the amount of taxation, received its
first formal justification in history at the hands of a Roman Pontiff,
nearly five centuries before the beginning of the quarrel between the
Colonies and the Mother Country. The passage serves to suggest how
much of what is modern had its definite though unsuspected origin, in
this earlier time.
[Illustration]
DECORATION THIRTEENTH CENTURY PSALTER MS.
{375}
XXIV
DEMOCRACY, CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AND NATIONALITY.
Democracy is a word to conjure with but it is usually considered that
the thing it represents had its origin in the modern world much later
than the period with which we are occupied. The idea that the people
should be ready to realize their own rights, to claim their privileges
and to ask that they should be allowed to rule themselves, is supposed
ordinarily to be a product of the last century or two. Perhaps in this
matter more than any other does the Thirteenth Century need
interpretation to the modern mind, yet we think that after certain
democratic factors and developments in the life of this period are
pointed out and their significance made clear, it will become evident
that the foundations of our modern democracy were deeply laid in the
Thirteenth Century, and that the spirit of what was best in the
aspiration of people to be ruled by themselves, for themselves, and of
themselves had its birth in this precious seed time of so much that is
important for our modern life.
Lest it should be thought that this idea of the development of
democracy has been engendered merely in the enthusiastic ardor of
special admiration for the author's favorite century, it seems well to
call attention to the fact that historians in recent years have very
generally emphasized the role that the Thirteenth Century played in
the development of freedom. A typical example may be quoted from the
History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom by Professor James K. Hosmer,
[Footnote 31] who does not hesitate to say that "while in England
representative government was gradually developing during this
century, in Germany the cities were beginning to send deputies to the
Imperial Parliament and the Emperor, Frederick II., was allowing a
certain amount of representation in the {376} Government of Sicily. In
Spain, Alfonso the Wise, of Castile, permitted the cities to send
representatives to the Cortez, and in France this same spirit
developed to such a degree that a representative parliament met at the
beginning of the Fourteenth Century." In none of these countries,
however, unfortunately did the spirit of representative government
continue to develop as in England and in many of them the privileges
obtained in the Thirteenth Century were subsequently lost.
[Footnote 31: Scribners, New York, 1890.]
Certain phases of the rise of the democratic spirit have already been
discussed, and the reader can only be referred to them now with the
definite idea of recognizing in them the democratic tendencies of the
time. What we have said about the trade guilds constitutes one
extremely important element of the movement which will be further
discussed in this chapter. After this comes the guild merchant in its
various forms. After all the Hanseatic League was only one
manifestation of these guilds. Its widespread influence in awakening
in people's minds the realization that they could do for themselves
much more, and secure success in their endeavors much better by their
own united efforts, than by anything that their accepted political
rulers could do or at least would do for them, will be readily
appreciated by all who read that chapter.
Hansa must have been a great enlightener for the Teutonic peoples. The
History of the league shows over and over again their political rulers
rather interfering with than fostering their commercial prosperity.
These rulers were always more than a little jealous of the wealth
which the citizens of these growing towns in their realm were able to
accumulate, and they showed it on more than one occasion. The history
of the Hansa towns exhibits the citizens doing everything to dissemble
the feelings of disaffection that inevitably came to them as the
result of their appreciation of the fact, that they could rule
themselves so much better than they were being ruled, and that they
could accomplish so much more for themselves by their commercial
combination with other cities than had ever been done for them by
these hereditary princes, who claimed so much yet gave so little in
their turn.
The training in self-government that came with the {377} necessities
for defense as well as for the protection of commercial visitors from
other cities in the league, who trustfully came to deal with their
people, was an education in democracy such as could not fail to bring
results. The rise of the free cities in Germany represents the growth
of the democratic spirit down to our own time, better than any other
single set of manifestations that we have. The international relations
of these cities did more, as we have said, to broaden men's minds and
make them realize the brotherhood of man in spite of national
boundaries than any other factor in human history. Commerce has always
been a great leveler and such it proved to be in these early days in
Germany, only it must not be thought that these German cities had but
faint glimmerings of the great purpose they were engaged in, for
seldom has the spirit of popular government risen higher than with
them.
How clearly the Teutonic mind had grasped the idea of democracy can be
best appreciated perhaps from the attitude of the Swiss in this
matter. These hardy mountaineers whose difficult country and rather
severe climate separate them effectually from the other nations, soon
learned the advisability of ruling themselves for their own benefit.
Before the end of the Thirteenth Century they had formed a defensive
and offensive union among themselves against the Hapsburgs, and though
for a time overborne by the influence of this house after its head
ascended the Imperial throne, immediately on Rudolph's death they
proceeded to unite themselves still more firmly together. They then
formed the famous league of 1291 which represents so important a step
in the democracy of modern times. The formal document which
constituted this league a federal government deserves to be quoted. It
is the first great declaration of independence, and its ideas were to
crop out in many another declaration in the after times. It is an
original document in the strictest sense of the word. It runs as
follows:
"Know all men that we, the people of the valley of Uri, the
community of the valley of Schwiz, and the mountaineers of the lower
valley, seeing the malice of the times, have solemnly agreed and
bound ourselves by oath to aid and defend each other with all our
might and main, with our lives and property, {378} both within and
without our boundaries each at his own expense, against every enemy
whatever who shall attempt to molest us, either singly or
collectively. This is our ancient covenant. Whoever hath a lord let
him obey him according to his bounden duty. We have decreed that we
shall accept no magistrate in our valleys who shall have obtained
his office for a price, or who is not a native or resident among us.
Every difference among us shall be decided by our wisest men; and
whoever shall reject their award shall be compelled by the other
confederates. Whoever shall wilfully commit a murder shall suffer
death, and he who shall attempt to screen the murderer from justice
shall be banished from our valleys. An incendiary shall lose his
privileges as a free member of the community, and whoever harbors
him shall make good the damage. Whoever robs or molests another
shall make full restitution out of the property he possesses among
us. Everyone shall acknowledge the authority of a chief magistrate
in either of the valleys. If internal quarrels arise, and one of the
parties shall refuse fair satisfaction, the confederates shall
support the other party. This covenant for our common weal, shall,
God willing, endure forever."
In England democracy was fostered in the guilds, which, as we have
already seen in connection with the cathedrals, proved the sources of
education and intellectual development in nearly every mode of thought
and art. The most interesting feature of these guilds was the fact
that they were not institutions suggested to the workmen and tradesmen
by those above them, but were the outgrowth of the spirit of self help
and organization which, came over mankind during this century. At the
beginning they were scarcely more than simple beneficial associations
meant to be aids in times of sickness and trial, and to make the
parting of families and especially the death of the head of the family
not quite so difficult for the survivors, since affiliated brother
workmen remained behind who would care for them. During this century,
however, the spirit of democracy, that is the organized effort of the
people to take care of themselves, better their conditions, and add to
their own happiness, led to the development of the guilds in a fashion
that it is rather difficult for generations of the modern time to
{379} understand, for our trades' unions do not, as yet at least,
present anything that quite resembles their work in our times.
It was because of the effective social work of these guilds that
Urbain Gohier, the well-known French socialist and writer on
sociological subjects, was able to say not long ago in the North
American Review:
"When the workmen of the European Continent demand 'the three
eights'--eight hours of work, eight hours of rest and refreshment,
physical and mental, and eight hours of sleep--some of them are aware
of the fact that this reform already exists in the Anglo-Saxon
countries; but all are ignorant of this other fact that, during the
Middle Ages, in an immense number of labor corporations and cities, a
work-day was often only nine, eight and even seven hours long. Nor
have they ever been told that every Saturday, and on the eve of over
two dozen holidays, work was stopped everywhere at four o'clock." The
Saturday half holiday began it may be said even earlier, namely at the
Vesper Hour which according to medieval church customs was some time
between two and three p. m. and the same was true on the vigils, as
the eves of the important church festivals were called.
The only possible way to give a reasonably good idea of the spirit of
the old-time guilds which succeeded in accomplishing such a wonderful
social revolution, is to quote some of their rules, which serve to
show their intents and purposes at least, even though they may not
always have fulfilled their aims. Their rules regard two things
particularly--the religious and the social functions of the guild.
There was a fine for absence from the special religious services held
for the members but also a fine of equal amount for absence from the
annual banquet. In this they resemble the rules of the religious
orders which were coming to be widely known at the end of the Twelfth
and the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, and according to which
the members of the religious community were required quite as strictly
to be present at daily recreation, that is, at the hour of
conversation after meals, as at daily prayer. An interesting phase of
the social rules of the guild is that a member was expected to bring
his wife with him, or if not his wife then his sweetheart. They were
franker in these matters {380} in this simpler age and doubtless the
custom encouraged matrimony a little bit more than our modern colder
customs.
As giving a fair idea of the ordinances of the pre-Reformation guilds
in their original shape the rules of the Guild of St. Luke at Lincoln,
may be cited. St. Luke had been chosen as patron because according to
tradition he was an artist as well as an evangelist. The patron saint
was chosen always so that he might be a model of life as well as a
protector in Heaven. Its members were the painters, guilders,
stainers, and alabaster men of the city. The first rule provides that
on the Sunday next after the feast of St. Luke all the brothers and
sisters of the Guild shall, with their officers, go in procession from
an appointed place, carrying a great candle, to the Cathedral Church
of Lincoln, and there every two of the brethren and sisters shall
offer one half-penny or more after their devotion, and then shall
offer the great candle before an image of St. Luke within the church.
And any who were absent without lawful cause shall forfeit one pound
of wax to the sustentation of the said great candle.
On the same Sunday, "for love and amity and good communication to be
had for the several weal of the fraternity," the guildmen dined
together, every brother paying for himself and his wife, or
sweetheart, the sum of four pence. Absentees were fined one pound of
wax towards the aforesaid, candle.
The third rule provided that four "mornspeeches"--that its business
meetings--should be held each year, "for ordering and good rule to be
had and made amongst them." Absentees from a mornspeech forfeited one
pound of wax to St. Luke's candle. Another rule provided that the
decision of ambiguities or doubts about the forfeitures prescribed
should be referred to the mayor and four aldermen of the city. Rules 4
to 11, and also 13, regulate the taking of apprentices and the setting
up in trade; forbid the employing of strangers; provide for the
settlement of disputes and the examination of work not sufficiently
done after the sample. Already the tendency to limit the number of
workmen that might be employed which was later to prove a stumbling
block to artistic progress is to be noted. On the other hand the
effort to keep work up to a certain standard, which was to mean so
much for artistic {381} accomplishment in the next few generations
must be noted as a compensatory feature of the Guild regulations.
{opp381}
[Illustration]
DOORWAY (LINCOLN)
[Illustration]
NAVE (DURHAM CATHEDRAL)
[Illustration]
BROKEN ARCH (ST. MARY'S, YORK, CLIMAX OF GOTHIC)
Rule 12 directs that "when it shall happen any brother or sister of
the said fraternity to depart and decease from the world, at his first
Mass the gracemen and wardens (skyvens) for the time being shall offer
of the goods and chattels of the said fraternity, two pence; and at
his eighth day, or thirtieth day, every brother and sister shall give
to a poor creature a token made by the dean, for which tokens every
brother and sister shall pay the dean a fixed sum of money, and with
the money thus raised he shall buy white bread to give to the poor
creatures" holding the tokens, the bread to be distributed at the
church of the parish in which the deceased lived.
This twelfth rule with regard to the manner of giving charity is
particularly striking, because it shows a deliberate effort to avoid
certain dangers, the evil possibilities of which our modern organized
charity has emphasized. According to this rule of the Guild of St.
Luke's at Lincoln, all the members were bound to give a certain amount
in charity, for the benefit of a deceased member. This was not,
however, by direct alms, but by means of tokens for which they paid a
fixed price to the Dean, who redeemed the tokens when they were
presented by the deserving poor. This guaranteed that each member
would give the fixed sum in charity and at the same time safeguarded
the almsgiving from any abuses, since the member of the guild himself
would be likely to know something of the poor person and his
deservingness, and if not there was always the question of the Dean
being informed with regard to the needs of the case. All of this was
accomplished, however, without hurting the feelings of the recipients
of the charity, since they felt that it was done not for them but for
the benefit of a deceased member.
How much the guilds came to influence the life of the people during
the next two centuries may be best appreciated from their great
increase in number and wealth.
In England, it is computed that at the beginning of the Sixteenth
Century there were thirty thousand of these institutions spread over
the country. The county of Norfolk alone had nine hundred, of which
number the small town of {382} Wymondham had at least eleven still
known by names, one--the Guild of Holy Trinity, Wymondham--being
possessed of a guild-hall of its own, whilst it and the other guilds
of the town are said to have been "well endowed with lands and
tenements." In Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, there were twenty-three
guilds; Boston, Lincolnshire, had fourteen, of which the titles and
other particulars are known, whilst in London their number must have
been very great. Of the London trade guilds, Stow, the Elizabethan
antiquary, records the names of sixty of sufficient importance to
entitle their representatives to places at the civic banquets in the
reign of Henry VIII. Many of them are still in existence, having been
spared at the time of the Reformation on the plea that they were
trading or secular associations. Fifteen of the largest of
them--including the merchant tailors, the goldsmiths and the
stationers--have at the present time an annual income of over $50,000
each.
The reasons for their popularity can be readily found in the many
social needs which they cared for. Socialistic cooperation has,
perhaps, never been carried so far as in these medieval institutions
which were literally "of the people, by the people, and for the
people." Often their regulation made provisions for insurance against
poverty, fire, and sometimes against burglary. Frequently they
provided schoolmasters for the schools. Their funds they loaned out to
needy brethren in small sums on easy terms, whilst trade and other
disputes likely to give rise to ill-feeling and contention were
constantly referred to the guilds for arbitration. One of the rules of
the Guild of our Lady at Wymondham thus ordains, that for no manner of
cause should any of the brothers or sisters of the fraternity go to
law till the officers of the guild had been informed of the
circumstances and had done their best to settle the dispute and
restore "unity and love betwixt the parties." To assist at the burial
of deceased brethren, and to aid in providing for the celebration of
obits for the repose of their souls, were duties incumbent on all,
defaulters without good excuse being subject to fines and censure.
It must not be thought that these tendencies to true democracy were
confined to the trades guilds, however. The historian of the merchant
guilds has demonstrated that they had the {383} same spirit and this
was especially true for the great guild merchant. He says:
"To this category of powerful affinities must be added the Gild
Merchant. The latter was from the outset a compact body emphatically
characterized by fraternal solidarity of interests, a protective
union that naturally engendered a consciousness of strength and a
spirit of independence. As the same men generally directed the
counsels of both the town and the Gild, there would be a gradual,
unconscious extension of the unity of the one to the other, the
cohesive force of the Gild making itself felt throughout the whole
municipal organism. But the influence of the fraternity was material
as well as moral. It constituted a bond of union between the
heterogeneous sokes (classes of tenants) of a borough; the townsmen
might be exclusively amenable to the courts of different lords, but,
if engaged in trade within the town, they were all members of one
and the same Gild Merchant. The independent regulation of trade also
accustomed the burgesses to self-government, and constituted an
important step toward autonomy; the town judiciary was always more
dependent upon the crown or mesne lord than was the Gild Merchant."
Because of the supreme interest in everything connected with
Shakespeare, the existence of one of the most important guilds in
Stratford, has led to the illustration of guilds' works there better
than for any English town during this period. The Guild of the Holy
Cross was the most important institution of Stratford and enthusiastic
Shakespeare scholars have applied themselves to find out every detail
of its history as far as it is now available, in order to make clear
the conditions--social and religious--that existed in the great
dramatist's birthplace. Halliwell, in his Descriptive Calendar of the
Records of Stratford on Avon, and Sidney Lee, in his Stratford on Avon
in the Time of the Shakespeares, have gathered together much of this
information:--"The Guild has lasted, wrote its chief officer in 1309,
for many, many years and its beginning was from time whereunto the
memory of man reaches not." Bowden, in his volume on the Religion of
Shakespeare, has a number of the most important details with regard to
Stratford's Guild. The earliest extant documents with regard to it are
from the {384} Reign of Henry III., 1216-1272, and include a deed of
gift by one William Sede, of a tenement to the Guild, and an
indulgence granted October 7th, 1270, by Giffard, Bishop of Wooster,
of forty days to all sincere penitents who after having duly confessed
had conferred benefits on the Guild.
By the close of the reign of Edward I., at the beginning of the
Fourteenth Century, the Guild was wealthy in houses and lands, and the
foundation was laid of its chapel and almshouses which, with the hall
of meeting--the "Rode or Reed Hall"--stood where the Guild Hall is at
the present day. Edward III. and Richard II., during the Fourteenth
Century, confirmed the rights of the Guild and even added to its
privileges. Though it was a purely local institution, the fame of its
good works had spread so wide during these next centuries that
affiliation with it became a distinction, and the nobility were
attracted to its ranks. George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward,
with his wife and children, and the Earl of Warwick, and the Lady
Margaret were counted among its members, and merchants of distant
towns counted it an honor to belong to it. Later, also, Judge
Littleton, one of the famous founders of English law, was on its roll
of membership.
The objects of the Guild were many and varied and touched the social
life of Stratford at every point. The first object was mutual prayer.
The Guild maintained five priests or chaplains who were to say masses
daily, hour by hour, from six to ten o'clock for its members, it being
expected that some of them would be present at each of the masses. Out
of the fees of the Guild one wax candle was to be kept alight every
day throughout the year at every mass in the church before the rood,
or cross, "so that God and our Blessed Virgin and the Venerated Cross
may keep and guard all the brethren and sisters of the Guilds from
every ill." The second object was charity, under which was included
all the various Works of Mercy. The needs of any brother or sister who
had fallen into poverty or been robbed were to be provided for "as
long as he bears himself rightly towards the brethren." When a brother
died all the brethren were bound to follow the body to the church and
to pray for his soul at its burial. The Guild candle and eight smaller
ones were to be kept burning by the body from the {385} time of death
till the funeral. When a poor man died in the town the brethren and
sisters were, for their soul's health, to find four wax candles, a
sheet, and a hearse cloth for the corpse. This rule also applied in
the event of a stranger's death, if the stranger had not the necessary
means for burial. Nor were the efforts of the Guild at Stratford
devoted solely to the alleviation of the ills of mankind and the more
serious purposes of life. Once a year, in Easter Week, a feast of the
members was held in order to foster peace and true brotherly love
among them. At this time offerings were made for the poor in order
that they too might share in the happiness of the festival time. There
was attendance at church before the feasting and a prayer was offered
by all the "brethren and sisters that God and our Blessed Virgin and
the Venerated Cross in whose honor we have come together will keep us
from all ills and sins." This frequent reference to the Cross will be
better understood if it is recalled that the Guild at Stratford bore
the name of the Guild of the Holy Cross, and the figure of the
crucified One was one of its most respected symbols and was always
looked upon as a special object of veneration on the part of the
members.
The thoroughly progressive spirit of the Guild at Stratford will
perhaps be best appreciated by the modern mind from the fact, that to
it the town owed the foundation of its famous free school. During the
Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries the study of grammar, and of the
various theoretical branches, was not considered the essential part of
an education. Gradually, however, there had arisen the feeling that
all the children should be taught the ground-work of the vulgar
tongue, and that those whose parents wished it should receive
education in Latin also; hence the establishment of grammar schools,
that at Stratford being founded for the children of the members of the
Guild about the middle of the Fifteenth Century. This was only the
normal development of the earlier spirit of the Guild which enabled it
to meet the growing social needs of the time. It was at this school,
as reconstituted under Edward VI., that Shakespeare was educated, and
the reestablishment by Edward was only in response to the many
complaints which arose because of the absence of the school after its
suppression by {386} Henry VIII. The fact that Shakespeare was
educated at an Edward VI. grammar school, has often given occasion for
commentators to point out that it was practically the Reformation in
England which led to the establishment of free schools. Any such
suggestion, however, can be made only in complete ignorance of the
preexisting state of affairs in which the people, by organization,
succeeded in accomplishing so much for themselves.
As a matter of fact the Guild at Stratford, as in most of the towns in
England--for we have taken this as an example only because it is
easier to get at the details of its history--was the most important
factor in the preservation of social order, in the distribution of
charity, in the providing of education, and even the maintenance of
the security of the life and property of its inhabitants. When it was
dissolved, in 1547, Stratford found itself in a chaotic state and had
to petition Edward VI. to reconstitute the Guild as a civil
corporation, which he did by charter in 1553.
After this consideration of the guilds and their purpose and success,
it is no wonder that we should declare that the wind of the spirit of
democracy was blowing in England and carrying away the old landmarks
of absolute government. It is to the spirit thus fostered that must be
attributed the marvelous progress in representative government, the
steps of which we recall.
In 1215, all England united against the odious John Lackland and
obliged him to grant the Magna Charta--a declaration of national
liberty.
In 1257, the Provisions of Oxford, under Henry III., established, for
the moment, the stated recurrence of the great national council of
Parliament.
In 1265, under the same Prince, the earl of Leicester admitted to
Parliament the knights of the shire and the representatives of the
townspeople, who formed later the lower house, or House of Commons,
while those personally summoned to attend by the king from the great
nobles formed the upper house, or House of Lords.
Beginning with the year 1295, in the reign of Edward I., the
attendance of the county and town members became {387} regular, making
Parliament really representative of the country.
In 1309, in the reign of Edward II., Parliament revealed its possible
strength by putting conditions on its vote for taxes.
There were other factors at work, however, and one of them at least,
because of its importance, deserves to be recalled here. In the
chapter on Great Beginnings of Modern Commerce we call attention to
the fact, that the Crusades were responsible to a great degree for the
spirit of enterprise which led to the formation of the Lombard league
of cities, and later to the great Hanseatic League, which seems to
have taken at least its incentive from the Southern Confederation. In
the chapter on Louis IX. we point out that the Crusades, and his
connection with them, far from being blots on Louis's career must
rather be considered as manifestations of the great heart of the time
which was awakening to all needs, and had its religious aspirations
stirred so deeply that men were ready to give up everything in order
to follow an idea. One thing is certain, the Crusades did more to set
ferments at work in the social organization of Europe than would have
been possible by any other movement. These ferments brought about two
results, one the uplift of the common people, the other the
centralization of power in the hands of the kings with the gradual
diminution of the influence of the nobility. While fostering the
spirit of democracy on the one hand, they gave birth to the spirit of
nationality and to all that this has accomplished in modern history.
Storrs, in his life of St. Bernard, recently issued, has given
expression to this thought in a very striking fashion. He says:
"It used to be the fashion to regard the Crusades as mere fantastic
exhibitions of a temporary turbulent religious fanaticism, aiming at
ends wholly visionary, and missing them, wasting the best life of
Europe in colossal and bloody undertakings, and leaving effects only
of evil for the time which came after. More reasonable views now
prevail; and while the impulse in which the vast movement took its
rise is recognized as passionate and semi-barbaric, it is seen that
many effects followed which were beneficial rather than harmful,
which could not perhaps have been at the time in other ways
realized. As I have already suggested, properties were to an
important {388} extent redistributed in Europe, and the
constitutions of states were favorably affected. Lands were sold at
low prices by those who were going on the distant expeditions, very
probably, as they knew, never to return; and horses and armor, with
all martial equipments, were bought at high prices by the Jews, who
could not hold land, and the history of whom throughout the Middle
Ages is commonly traced in fearful lines of blood and fire, but who
increased immeasurably their movable wealth through these transfers
of property. Communes bought liberties by large contributions to the
needs of their lord; and their liberties, once secured, were
naturally confirmed and augmented, as the years went on. The smaller
tended to be absorbed in the larger; the larger often to come more
strictly under royal control, thus increasing the power of the
sovereign--which meant at the time, general laws, instead of local,
a less minutely oppressive administration, the furtherance of the
movement toward national unity. It is a noticeable fact that Italy
took but a comparatively small part in the Crusades; and the long
postponement of organic union between different parts of the
magnificent peninsula is not without relation to this. The influence
which operated elsewhere in Europe to efface distinction of custom
and language in separate communities, to override and extinguish
local animosities, to make scattered peoples conscious of kinship,
did not operate there; and the persistent severance of sections from
each other, favored, of course, by the run of the rivers and the
vast separating walls of the Apenines, was the natural consequence
of the want of this powerful unifying force." [Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: Storrs, "Bernard of Chairvaux," New York
(Scribners), 1897, pp. 544-45. ]
As a matter of fact very few people realize how much was accomplished
for the spirit of democracy, for liberty, for true progress, as
regards the rights of men of all classes, and for the feeling of the
brotherhood of man itself, by the Crusades. A practical money-making
age may consider them examples of foolish religious fanaticism, but
those who have studied them most profoundly and with most sympathy,
who are deeply interested in the social amelioration which they
brought about, and, above all, those who look at them in the higher
poetic {389} spirit of what they did to lift man above the sordid
cares of everyday life, see them in a far different way. Charles
Kingsley sang in the poem of The Saints Tragedy:
"Tell us how our stout crusading fathers
Fought and bled for God and not for gold."
But quite apart from the poetry of them, from the practical side much
can be said which even the most matter of fact of men will appreciate.
Here, for instance, are a series of paragraphs from the history of the
Middle Ages by George Washington Greene, which he confesses to have
taken chiefly from the French, [Footnote 33] which will make clear
something of the place these great expeditions should be considered as
holding in the history of democracy and of liberty:
[Footnote 33: New York, Appleton, 1867.]
"Christendom had not spent in vain its treasures and its blood in
the holy wars. Its immense sacrifices were repaid by immense
results, and the evils which these great expeditions necessarily
brought with them were more than compensated for by the advantages
which they procured for the whole of Europe.
"The Crusades saved Europe from the Mussulman invasion and this was
their immediate good. Their influence was felt, too, in a manner
less direct, but not less useful. The Crusades had been preached by
a religion of equality in a society divided by odious distinctions.
All had taken part in them, the weak as well as the strong, the serf
and the baron, man and woman, and it was by them that the equality
of man and woman, which Christianity taught, was made a social fact.
St. Louis declared that he could do nothing without the consent of
his queen, his wife. It was from this period that we must date that
influence of woman which gave rise to chivalric courtesy, the first
step towards refinement of manners and civilization. The poor, too,
were the adopted children of the Christian chivalry of the Crusades.
The celebrated orders of Palestine were instituted for the
protection of poor pilgrims. The Knights of the hospitals called the
poor their masters. Surely no lesson was more needed by these proud
barons of the Middle Ages than that of charity and humility.
{390}
"These ideas were the first to shake the stern despotism of
feudality, by opposing to it the generous principles of chivalry
which sprang all armed from the Crusades. Bound to the military
orders by a solemn vow--and in the interests of all Christendom--the
knight felt himself free from feudal dependence, and raised above
national limits, as the immediate warrior and servant of the united
Christendom and of God. Chivalry founded not upon territorial
influence, but upon personal distinction, necessarily weakened
nobility by rendering it accessible to all, and diminishing the
interval which separated the different classes of society. Every
warrior who had distinguished himself by his valor could kneel
before the king to be dubbed a knight, and rise up the equal, the
superior even, of powerful vassals. The poorest knight could sit at
the king's table while the noble son of a duke or prince was
excluded, unless he had won the golden spurs of knighthood. Another
way by which the Crusades contributed to the decay of feudalism was
by favoring the enfranchisement of serfs, even without the consent
of their masters. Whoever took the cross became free, just as every
slave becomes free on touching the soil of England or France.
"The communities whose development is to be referred to the period
of the Crusades, multiplied rapidly; the nobility gladly granting
charters and privileges in exchange for men and money. With the
communities the royal power grew, and that of the aristocracy
decreased. The royal domain was enlarged, by the escheating of a
great number of fiefs which had been left vacant by the death of
their lords. The kings protected the communities, favored their
enfranchisement, and employed them usefully against insubordinate
vassals. The extension of the royal power favored the organization
of the nation, by establishing a principle of unity, for till then,
and with that multitude of masters, the nation had been little else
than an agglomeration of provinces, strangers to one another, and
destitute of any common bond or common interest. The great vassals,
themselves, often united under the royal banner, became accustomed
during these distant expeditions to submission and discipline, and
learned to recognize a legitimate authority; and if they lost by
this submission a part of their {391} personal power, they gained in
compensation the honorable distinctions of chivalry.
"But it was not the national feeling alone which was fostered by the
Crusades. Relations of fraternity, till then wholly unknown, grew up
between different nations, and softened the deep-rooted antipathy of
races. The knights, whom a common object united in common dangers,
became brothers in arms and formally formed permanent ties of
friendship. That barbarous law which gave the feudal lord a right to
call every man his serf who settled in his domains was softened.
Stranger and enemy seemed to be synonymous, and 'the Crusaders,' say
the chroniclers of the times, 'although divided by language, seemed
to form only one people, by their love for God and their neighbor.'
And without coloring the picture too warmly, and making all due
allowance for the exaggerations which were so natural to the first
recorders of such a movement, we may say that human society was
founded and united and Europe began to pass from the painful period
of organization, to one of fuller and more rapid development."
Here in reality modern democracy had its rise, striking its roots deep
into the disintegrating soil of the old feudalism whence it was never
to be plucked, and though at times it languished it was to remain ever
alive until its luxuriant growth in recent times.
[Illustration]
ANIMALS FROM BESTIARIUM, THIRTEENTH CENTURY MS.
{392}
XXV
GREAT EXPLORERS AND THE FOUNDATION OF GEOGRAPHY.
Geography is usually considered to be quite a modern subject. The idea
that great contributions were made to it in the Thirteenth Century
would ordinarily not be entertained. America was discovered at the end
of the Fifteenth Century. Knowledge of the East was obtained during
the Sixteenth Century. Africa was explored in the Nineteenth and a
detailed knowledge of Asia came to us in such recent years that the
books are still among the novelties of publication. Our knowledge of
Persia, of Northern India, of Thibet, and of the interior of China are
all triumphs of Nineteenth Century enterprise and exploration. As a
matter of fact, however, all portions of the East were explored, the
Capital and the dominions of Jenghis Khan described, Lhasa was entered
and the greater part of China thoroughly explored by travelers of the
Thirteenth Century, whose books still remain as convincing evidence of
the great work that they accomplished. This chapter of Thirteenth
Century accomplishment is, indeed, one of the most interesting and
surprising in the whole story of the time.
It is usually considered that the teaching, supposed to have been more
or less generally accepted, that the Antipodes did not exist,
prevented any significant development of geography until comparatively
modern times. While the question of the existence of antipodes was
discussed in the schools of the Middle Ages, and especially of the
Thirteenth Century when men's minds were occupied with practically all
of the important problems even of physical science, and while many
intelligent men accepted the idea that there could not be inhabitants
on the other side of the world because of physical difficulties which
supposedly made it impossible, it would be a mistake to think that
this idea was universally accepted. We have already called attention
to the fact in the chapter on "What was Taught at the {393}
Universities," that Albertus Magnus, for instance, ridiculed the
notion that men could not live with their heads down, as was urged
against the doctrine of the existence of antipodes, by suggesting very
simply that for those on the other side of the earth what we call down
was really not down but up. This expresses, of course, the very heart
of the solution of the supposed difficulty.
As a matter of fact it seems clear that many of the great travelers
and explorers of the later Middle Ages harbored the notion that the
earth was round. As we shall note a little later in mentioning Sir
John Mandeville's work, the writer, whomever he was who took that
pseudonym, believed thoroughly in the rotundity of the earth and did
not hesitate to use some striking expressions--which have been often
quoted--that he had heard of travelers who by traveling continually to
the eastward had come back eventually to the point from which they
started. While in the schools, then, the existence of antipodes may
have been under discussion, there was a practical acceptance of their
existence among those who were better informed with regard to
countries and peoples and all the other topics which form the proper
subject matter of geography.
It must be realized, moreover, that though the existence of the
Antipodes is an important matter in geography, at this early period it
was a mere theory, not a condition antecedent to progress. It was
really a side issue as compared with many other questions relating to
the earth's surface and its inhabitants with which the medieval mind
was occupied. To consider that no knowledge of geography could be
obtained until there was a definite acceptance of the right view of
the earth's surface, would be to obliterate much precious knowledge.
The argument as to the existence of antipodes, as it was carried on,
was entirely outside of geography properly so-called. It never
influenced in the slightest degree the men who were consciously and
unconsciously laying deep and broad the foundations of modern
geography. To consider such a matter as vital to the development of as
many sided a subject as geography, illustrates very typically the
narrowness of view of so many modern scholars, who apparently can see
the value of nothing which does not entirely accord with modern
knowledge. The really {394} interesting historian of knowledge,
however, is he who can point out the beginnings of what we now know,
in unexpected quarters in the medieval mind.
As the story of these travels and explorations is really a glorious
chapter in the history of the encouragement of things intellectual, as
well as an interesting phase of an important origin whose foundations
were laid broad and deep in the Thirteenth Century, it must be told
here in some detail. Our century was the great leader in exploration
and geography as in so many other matters in which its true place is
often unrecognized.
The people of the time are usually considered to have had such few
facilities for travel that they did not often go far from home, and
that what was known about distant countries, therefore, was very
little and mainly legendary. Nothing could be more false than any such
impression as this. The Crusades during the previous century had given
the people not only a deep interest in distant lands, but the
curiosity to go and see for themselves. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land
were frequent, ecclesiastics often traveled at least as far as Italy,
and in general the tide of travel in proportion to the number of
population must have been not very much less in amount than in our own
day. After the establishment of the religious orders, missionary
expeditions to the East became very common and during the Thirteenth
Century, as we shall see, the Franciscans particularly, established
themselves in many parts of the Near East, but also of the Far East,
especially in China. Many of those wrote accounts of their travels,
and so the literature of travel and exploration during the Thirteenth
Century is one of the most interesting chapters of the literature of
these times, while the wonderfully deep foundations that were laid for
the science of geography, are worthy to be set beside the great
origins in other sciences and in the arts, for which the century is so
noteworthy.
To most people it will come as a distinct surprise to learn that the
travelers and explorers of the Thirteenth Century--merchants,
ambassadors, and missionaries--succeeded in solving many of the
geographical problems that have been of deepest interest to the
generations of the last half of last century. {395} The eastern part
of Asia particularly was traveled over and very thoroughly described
by them. Even the northern part of India, however, was not neglected
in spite of the difficulties that were encountered, and Thibet was
explored and Lhasa entered by travelers of the Thirteenth Century. Of
China as much was written as had been learned by succeeding
generations down practically to our own time. This may sound like a
series of fairy-tales instead of serious science, but it is the
travelers and explorers of the modern time who have thought it worth
while to comment on the writings of these old-time wanderers of the
Thirteenth Century, and who have pointed out the significance of their
work. These men described not only the countries through which they
passed, but also the characters of the people, their habits and
customs, their forms of speech, with many marvelous hints as regards
the relationship of the different languages, and even something about
the religious practises of these countries and their attitude toward
the great truths of Christianity when they were presented to them.
Undoubtedly one of the greatest travelers and explorers of all times
was Marco Polo, whose book was for so long considered to be mainly
made up of imaginary descriptions of things and places never seen, but
which the development of modern geographical science by travels and
expeditions has proved to be one of the most valuable contributions to
this department of knowledge that has ever been made. It took many
centuries for Marco Polo to come to his own in this respect but the
Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries have almost more than made up for
the neglect of their predecessors. Marco Polo suffered the same fate
as did Herodotus of whom Voltaire sneered "father of history, say,
rather, father of lies." So long as succeeding generations had no
knowledge themselves of the things of which both these great writers
had written, they were distrusted and even treated contemptuously.
Just as soon, however, as definite knowledge began to come it was seen
how wonderfully accurate both of them were in their descriptions of
things they had actually seen, though they admitted certain
over-wonderful stories on the authority of others. Herodotus has now
come to be acknowledged as {396} one of the greatest of historians. In
his lives of celebrated travelers, James Augustus St. John states the
change of mind with regard to Marco Polo rather forcibly:
"When the travels of Marco Polo first appeared, they were generally
regarded as fiction; and as this absurd belief had so far gained
ground, that when he lay upon his death bed, his friends and nearest
relatives, coming to take their eternal adieu, conjured him as he
valued the salvation of his soul, to retract whatever he had
advanced in his book, or at least many such passages as every person
looked upon as untrue; but the traveler whose conscience was
untouched upon that score, declared solemnly, in that awful moment,
that far from being guilty of exaggeration, he had not described
one-half of the wonderful things which he had beheld. Such was the
reception which the discoveries of this extraordinary man
experienced when first promulgated. By degrees, however, as
enterprise lifted more and more the veil from Central and Eastern
Asia the relations of our traveler rose in the estimation of
geographers; and now that the world--though containing many unknown
tracts--has been more successfully explored, we begin to perceive
that Marco Polo, like Herodotus, was a man of the most rigid
veracity, whose testimony presumptuous ignorance alone can call in
question."
There is many a fable that clings around the name of Marco Polo, but
this distinguished traveler needs no fictitious adornments of his tale
to make him one of the greatest explorers of all time. It is sometimes
said that he helped to introduce many important inventions into Europe
and one even finds his name connected with the mariner's compass and
with gunpowder. There are probably no good grounds for thinking that
Europe owes any knowledge of either of these great inventions to the
Venetian traveler. With regard to printing there is more doubt and
Polo's passage with regard to movable blocks for printing paper money
as used in China may have proved suggestive.
There is no need, however, of surmises in order to increase his fame
for the simple story of his travels is quite sufficient for his
reputation for all time. As has been well said most of the modern
travelers and explorers have only been developing what Polo indicated
at least in outline, and they have been {397} scarcely more than
describing with more precision of detail what he first touched upon
and brought to general notice. When it is remembered that he visited
such cities in Eastern Turkestan as Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan,
which have been the subject of much curiosity only satisfied in quite
recent years, that he had visited Thibet, or at least had traveled
along its frontier, that to him the medieval world owed some definite
knowledge of the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia and all that it was to
know of China for centuries almost, his merits will be readily
appreciated. As a matter of fact there was scarcely an interesting
country of the East of which Marco Polo did not have something to
relate from his personal experiences. He told of Burmah, of Siam, of
Cochin China, of Japan, of Java, of Sumatra, and of other islands of
the great Archipelago, of Ceylon, and of India, and all of these not
in the fabulous dreamland spirit of one who has not been in contact
with the East but in very definite and precise fashion. Nor was this
all. He had heard and could tell much, though his geographical lore
was legendary and rather dim, of the Coast of Zanzibar, of the vast
and distant Madagascar, and in the remotely opposite direction of
Siberia, of the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and of the curious customs
of the inhabitants of these distant countries.
How wonderfully acute and yet how thoroughly practical some of Polo's
observations were can be best appreciated by some quotations from his
description of products and industries as he saw them on his travels.
We are apt to think of the use of petroleum as dating from much later
than the Thirteenth Century, but Marco Polo had not only seen it in
the Near East on his travels, but evidently had learned much of the
great rock-oil deposits at Baku which constitute the basis for the
important Russian petroleum industry in modern times. He says:
"On the north (of Armenia) is found a fountain from which a liquor
like oil flows, which, though unprofitable for the seasoning of
meat, is good for burning and for anointing camels afflicted with
the mange. This oil flows constantly and copiously, so that camels
are laden with it."
He is quite as definite in the information acquired with regard, to
the use of coal. He knew and states very confidently that {398} there
were immense deposits of coal in China, deposits which are so
extensive that distinguished geologists and mineralogists who have
learned of them in modern times have predicted that eventually the
world's great manufacturing industries would be transferred to China.
We are apt to think that this mineral wealth is not exploited by the
Chinese, yet even in Marco Polo's time, as one commentator has
remarked, the rich and poor of that land had learned the value of the
black stone.
"Through the whole Province of Cathay," says Polo, "certain black
stones are dug from the mountains, which, put into the fire, burn
like wood, and being kindled, preserve fire a long time, and if they
be kindled in the evening they keep fire all the night."
Another important mineral product which even more than petroleum or
coal is supposed to be essentially modern in its employment is
asbestos. Polo had not only seen this but had realized exactly what it
was, had found out its origin and had recognized its value. Curiously
enough he attempts to explain the origin of a peculiar usage of the
word salamander (the salamander having been supposed to be an animal
which was not injured by fire) by reference to the incombustibility of
asbestos. The whole passage as it appears in The Romance of Travel and
Exploration deserves to be quoted. While discoursing about Dsungaria,
Polo says:
"And you must know that in the mountain there is a substance from
which Salamander is made. The real truth is that the Salamander is
no beast as they allege in our part of the world, but is a substance
found in the earth. Everybody can be aware that it can be no
animal's nature to live in fire seeing that every animal is composed
of all the four elements. Now I, Marco Polo, had a Turkish
acquaintance who related that he had lived three years in that
region on behalf of the Great Khan, in order to procure these
salamanders for him. He said that the way they got them was by
digging in that mountain till they found a certain vein. The
substance of this vein was taken and crushed, and when so treated it
divides, as it were, into fibres of wool, which they set forth to
dry. When dry these fibres were pounded in a copper mortar and then
washed so as to remove all the earth and to leave only the fibres,
like {399} fibres of wool. These were then spun and made into
napkins." Needless to say this is an excellent description of
asbestos.
It is not surprising, then, that the Twentieth Century so interested
in travel and exploration should be ready to lay its tributes at the
feet of Marco Polo, and that one of the important book announcements
of recent years should be that of the publication of an annotated
edition of Marco Polo from the hands of a modern explorer, who
considered that there was no better way of putting definitely before
the public in its true historical aspect the evolution of modern
geographical knowledge with regard to Eastern countries.
It can scarcely fail to be surprising to the modern mind that Polo
should practically have been forced into print. He had none of the
itch of the modern traveler for publicity. The story of his travels he
had often told and because of the wondrous tales he could unfold and
the large numbers he found it frequently so necessary to use in order
to give proper ideas of some of his wanderings, had acquired the
nickname of Marco Millioni. He had never thought, however, of
committing his story to writing or perhaps he feared the drudgery of
such literary labor. After his return from his travels, however, he
bravely accepted a patriot's duty of fighting for his native country
on board one of her galleys and was captured by the Genoese in a
famous sea-fight in the Adriatic in 1298. He was taken prisoner and
remained in captivity in Genoa for nearly a year.
It was during this time that one Rusticiano, a writer by profession,
was attracted to him and tempted him to tell him the complete story of
his travels in order that they might be put into connected form.
Rusticiano was a Pisan who had been a compiler of French romances and
accordingly Polo's story was first told in French prose. It is not
surprising that Rusticiano should have chosen French since he
naturally wished his story of Polo's travels to be read by as many
people as possible and realized that it would be of quite as much
interest to ordinary folk as to the literary circles of Europe. How
interesting the story is only those who have read it even with the
knowledge acquired by all the other explorers since his time, can
properly appreciate. It lacks entirely the egotistic quality that
usually characterizes an explorer's account of his travels, and,
indeed, {400} there can scarcely fail to be something of
disappointment because of this fact. No doubt a touch more of personal
adventure would have added to the interest of the book. It was not a
characteristic of the Thirteenth Century, however, to insist on the
merely personal and consequently the world has lost a treat it might
otherwise have had. There is no question, however, or the greatness of
Polo's work as a traveler, nor of the glory that was shed by it on the
Thirteenth Century. Like nearly everything else that was done in this
marvelous century he represents the acme of successful endeavor in his
special line down even to our own time.
It has sometimes been said that Marco Polo's work greatly influenced
Columbus and encouraged him in his attempt to seek India by sailing
around the globe. Of this, however, there is considerable doubt. We
have learned in recent times, that a very definite tradition with
regard to the possibility of finding land by sailing straight westward
over the Atlantic existed long before Columbus' time. [Footnote 34]
Polo's indirect influence on Columbus by his creation of an interest
in geographical matters generally is much clearer. There can be no
doubt of how much his work succeeded in drawing men's minds to
geographical questions during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries.
[Footnote 34: My learned friend, Father DeRoo, of Portland, Ore.,
who has written two very interesting volumes on the History of
America before Columbus, does not hesitate to say that Columbus may
even have met in his travels and spoken with sailors who had touched
on some portions of the American Continent, and that, of course, the
traditions with regard to Greenland were very clear.]
After Marco Polo, undoubtedly, the most enterprising explorer and
interesting writer on Travel in the Thirteenth Century was John of
Carpini, the author of a wonderful series of descriptions of things
seen in Northern Asia. Like so many other travelers and explorers at
this time John was a Franciscan Friar, and seems to have been one of
the early companions and disciples of St. Francis of Assisi, whom he
joined when he was only a young man himself. Before going on his
missionary and ambassadorial expedition he had been one of the most
prominent men in the order. He had much to do with its {401}
propagation among the Northern nations of Europe, and occupied
successively the offices of custos or prior in Saxony and of
Provincial in Germany. He seems afterwards to have been sent as an
organizer into Spain and to have gone even as far as the Barbary
coast.
It is not surprising, then, that when, in 1245, Pope Innocent IV.
(sometime after the Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe and the
disastrous battle of Legamites which threatened to place European
civilization and Christianity in the power of the Tartars) resolved to
send a mission to the Tartar monarch, John of Carpini was selected for
the dangerous and important mission.
At this time Friar John was more than sixty years of age, but such was
the confidence in his ability and in his executive power that
everything on the embassy was committed to his discretion. He started
from Lyons on Easter Day, 1245. He sought the counsel first of his old
friend Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia, and from that country took with
him another friar, a Pole, to act as his interpreter. The first stage
in his journey was to Kiev, and from here, having crossed the Dnieper
and the Don to the Volga, he traveled to the camp of Batu, at this
time the senior living member of Jenghis Khan's family. Batu after
exchanging presents allowed them to proceed to the court of the
supreme Khan in Mongolia. As Col. Yule says, the stout-hearted old man
rode on horseback something like three thousand miles in the next
hundred days. The bodies of himself and companion had to be tightly
bandaged to enable them to stand the excessive fatigue of this
enormous ride, which led them across the Ural Mountains and River past
the northern part of the Caspian, across the Jaxartes, whose name they
could not find out, along the Dzungarian Lakes till they reached the
Imperial Camp, called the Yellow Pavilion, near the Orkhon River.
There had been an interregnum in the empire which was terminated by a
formal election while the Friars were at the Yellow Pavilion, where
they had the opportunity to see between three and four thousand envoys
and deputies from all parts of Asia and Eastern Europe, who brought
with them tributes and presents for the ruler to be elected.
{402}
It was not for three months after this, in November, that the Emperor
dismissed them with a letter to the Pope written in Latin, Arabic, and
Mongolian, but containing only a brief imperious assertion that the
Khan of the Tartars was the scourge of God for Christianity, and that
he must fulfill his mission. Then sad at heart, the ambassadors began
their homeward journey in the midst of the winter. Their sufferings
can be better imagined than described, but Friar John who does not
dwell on them much tells enough of them to make their realization
comparatively easy. They reached Kiev seven months later, in June, and
were welcomed there by the Slavonic Christians as though arisen from
the dead. From thence they continued their journey to Lyons where they
delivered the Khan's letter to the Pope.
Friar John embodied the information that he had obtained in this
journey in a book that has been called Liber Tartarorum (the Book of
the Tartars or according to another manuscript, History of the Mongols
whom we call Tartars). Col. Yule notes that like most of the other
medieval monks' itineraries, it shows an entire absence of that
characteristic traveler's egotism with which we have become abundantly
familiar in more recent years, and contains very little personal
narrative. We know that John was a stout man and this in addition to
his age when he went on the mission, cannot but make us realize the
thoroughly unselfish spirit with which he followed the call of Holy
Obedience, to undertake a work that seemed sure to prove fatal and
that would inevitably bring in its train suffering of the severest
kind. Of the critical historical value of his work a good idea can be
obtained from the fact, that half a century ago an educated Mongol,
Galsang Gombeyev, in the Historical and Philological Bulletin of the
Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, reviewed the book and bore
testimony to the great accuracy of its statements, to the care with
which its details had been verified, and the evident personal
character of all its observations.
Friar John's book attracted the attention of compilers of information
with regard to distant countries very soon after it was issued, and an
abridgment of it is to be found in the Encyclopedia of Vincent of
Beauvais, which was written shortly {403} after the middle of the
Thirteenth Century. At the end of the Sixteenth Century Hakluyt
published portions of the original work, as did Borgeron at the
beginning of the Seventeenth Century. The Geographical Society of
Paris published a fine edition of the work about the middle of the
Nineteenth Century, and at the same time a brief narrative taken down
from the lips of John's companion. Friar Benedict the Pole, which is
somewhat more personal in its character and fully substantiates all
that Friar John had written.
As can readily be understood the curiosity of his contemporaries was
deeply aroused and Friar John had to tell his story many times after
his return. Hence the necessity he found himself under of committing
it to paper, so as to save himself from the bother of telling it all
over again, and in order that his brother Franciscans throughout the
world might have the opportunity to read it.
Col. Yule says "The book must have been prepared immediately after the
return of the traveler, for the Friar Salimbene, who met him in France
in the very year of his return (1247) gives us these interesting
particulars: 'He was a clever and conversable man, well lettered, a
great discourser, and full of diversity of experience. He wrote a big
book about the Tartars (sic), and about other marvels that he had seen
and whenever he felt weary of telling about the Tartars, he would
cause this book of his to be read, as I have often heard and seen.
(Chron. Fr. Salembene Parmensis in Monum. Histor. ad Provinceam
Placent: Pertinentia, Parma 1857).'"
Another important traveler of the Thirteenth Century whose work has
been the theme of praise and extensive annotation in modern times was
William of Rubruk, usually known under the name of Rubruquis, a
Franciscan friar, thought, as the result of recent investigations,
probably to owe his cognomen to his birth in the little town of Rubruk
in Brabant, who was the author of a remarkable narrative of Asiatic
travel during the Thirteenth Century, and whose death seems to have
taken place about 1298. The name Rubruquis has been commonly used to
designate him because it is found in the Latin original of his work,
which was printed by Hayluyt in his collection of Voyages at the end
of the {404} Sixteenth Century. Friar William was sent partly as an
ambassador and partly as an explorer by Louis IX. of France into
Tartary. At that time the descendants of Jenghis Khan ruled over an
immense Empire in the Orient and King Louis was deeply interested in
introducing Christianity into the East and if possible making their
rulers Christians. About the middle of the Thirteenth Century a rumor
spread throughout Europe that one of the nephews of the great Khan had
embraced Christianity. St. Louis thought this a favorable opportunity
for getting in touch with the Eastern Potentate and so he dispatched
at least two missions into Tartary at the head of the second of which
was William of Rubruk.
His accounts of his travels proved most interesting reading to his own
and to many subsequent generations, perhaps to none more than our own.
The Encyclopedia Britannica (ninth edition) says that the narrative of
his journey is everywhere full of life and interest, and some details
of his travels will show the reasons for this. Rubruk and his party
landed on the Crimean Coast at Sudak or Soldaia, a port which formed
the chief seat of communication between the Mediterranean countries
and what is now Southern Russia. The Friar succeeded in making his way
from here to the Great Khan's Court which was then held not far from
Karakorum. This journey was one of several thousand miles. The route
taken has been worked out by laborious study and the key to it is the
description given of the country intervening between the basin of the
Talas and Lake Ala-Kul. This enables the whole geography of the
region, including the passage of the River Ili, the plain south of the
Bal Cash, and the Ala-Kul itself, to be identified beyond all
reasonable doubt.
The return journey was made during the summertime, and the route lay
much farther to the north. The travelers traversed the Jabkan Valley
and passed north of the River Bal Cash, following a rather direct
course which led them to the mouth of the Volga. From here they
traveled south past Derbend and Shamakii to the Uraxes, and on through
Iconium to the coast of Cilicia, and finally to the port of Ayas,
where they embarked for Cyprus. All during his travels Friar William
made observations on men and cities, and rivers and mountains, and
{405} languages and customs, implements and utensils, and most of
these modern criticism has accepted as representing the actual state
of things as they would appear to a medieval sightseer. Occasionally
during the period intervening between his time and our own, scholars
who thought that they knew better, have been conceited enough to
believe themselves in a position to point out glaring errors in
Rubruquis' accounts of what he saw. Subsequent investigation and
discovery have, as a rule, proved the accuracy of the earlier
observations rather than the modern scholar's corrections. An
excellent example of this is quoted in the Encyclopedia Britannica
article on Rubruquis already referred to.
{opp405}
[Illustration]
DOORWAY OF GIOTTO'S TOWER (FLORENCE)
[Illustration]
PRINCIPAL DOOR OF BAPTISTERY (PISA, DIOTISALVI)
The writer says: "This sagacious and honest observer is denounced as
an ignorant and untruthful blunderer by Isaac Jacob Schmidt (a man no
doubt of useful learning, of a kind rare in his day but narrow and
long-headed and in natural acumen and candour far inferior to the
Thirteenth Century friar whom he maligns), simply because the evidence
of the latter as to the Turkish dialect of the Uigurs traversed a pet
heresy long since exploded which Schmidt entertained, namely, that the
Uigurs were by race and language Tibetan."
Some of the descriptions of the towns through which the travelers
passed are interesting because of comparisons with towns of
corresponding size in Europe. Karakorum, for instance, was described
as a small city about the same size as the town of St. Denis near
Paris. In Karakorum the ambassador missionary maintained a public
disputation with certain pagan priests in the presence of three of the
secretaries of the Khan. The religion of these umpires is rather
interesting from its diversity: the first was a Christian, the second
a Mohammedan, and the third a Buddhist. A very interesting feature of
the disputation was the fact that the Khan ordered under pain of death
that none of the disputants should slander, traduce, or abuse his
adversaries, or endeavor by rumor or insinuations to excite popular
indignation against them. This would seem to indicate that the great
Tartar Khan who is usually considered to have been a cruel, ignorant
despot, whose one quality that gave him supremacy was military valor,
was really a large, liberal-minded man. His idea seems to have been to
discover {406} the truth of these different religions and adopt that
one which was adjudged to have the best groundwork of reason for it.
It is easy to understand, however, that such a disputation argued
through interpreters wholly ignorant of the subject and without any
proper understanding of the nice distinctions of words or any practise
in conveying their proper significance, could come to no serious
conclusion. The arguments, therefore, fell flat and a decision was not
rendered.
Friar William's work was not unappreciated by his contemporaries and
even its scientific value was thoroughly realized. It is not
surprising, of course, that his great contemporary in the Franciscan
order, Roger Bacon, should have come to the knowledge of his Brother
Minorite's book and should have made frequent and copious quotations
from it in the geographical section of his Opus Majus, which was
written some time during the seventh decade of the Thirteenth Century.
Bacon says that Brother William traversed the Oriental and Northern
regions and the places adjacent to them, and wrote accounts of them
for the illustrious King of France who sent him on the expedition to
Tartary. He adds: "I have read his book diligently and have compared
it with similar accounts." Roger Bacon recognized by a sort of
scientific intuition of his own, certain passages which have proved to
be the best in recent times. The description, for instance, of the
Caspian was the best down to this time, and Friar William corrects the
error made by Isidore, and which had generally been accepted before
this, that the Caspian Sea was a gulf. Rubruk, as quoted by Roger
Bacon, states very explicitly that it nowhere touches the ocean but is
surrounded on all sides by land. For those who do not think that the
foundations of scientific geography were laid until recent times, a
little consultation of Roger Bacon's Opus Majus would undoubtedly be a
revelation.
It is probably with regard to language that one might reasonably
expect to find least that would be of interest to modern scholars in
Friar William's book. As might easily have been gathered from previous
references, however, it is here that the most frequent surprises as to
the acuity of this medieval traveler await the modern reader.
Scientific philology is so much a product of the last century, that it
is difficult to {407} understand how this old-time missionary was able
to reach so many almost intuitive recognitions of the origin and
relationships of the languages of the people among whom he traveled.
He came in contact with the group of nations occupying what is now
known as the Near East, whose languages, as is well known, have
constituted a series of the most difficult problems with which
philology had to deal until its thorough establishment on scientific
lines enabled it to separate them properly. It is all the more
surprising then, to find that Friar William should have so much in his
book that even the modern philologist will read with attention and
unstinted admiration.
With regard to this Colonel Yule, whose personal experience makes him
a valuable guide in such matters, has written a paragraph which
contains so much compressed information that we venture to quote it
entire. It furnishes the grounds for the claim (which might seem
overstrained if it were not that its author was himself one of the
greatest of modern explorers) that William was an acute and most
intelligent observer, keen in the acquisition of knowledge; and the
author in fact of one of the best narratives of travel in existence.
Col. Yule says:
"Of his interest and acumen in matters of language we may cite
examples. The language of the Pascatir (or Bashkirds) and of the
Hungarians is the same, as, he had learned from Dominicans who had
been among them. The language of the Ruthenians, Poles, Bohemians,
and Slavonians is one, and is the same with that of the Wandals or
Wends. In the town of Equinus (immediately beyond the Ili, perhaps
Aspara) the people were Mohammedans speaking Persian, though so far
remote from Persia. The Yugurs (or Uigurs) of the country about the
Cailac had formed a language and character of their own, and in that
language and character the Nestorians of that tract used to perform
their office and write their books. The Yugurs are those among whom
are found the fountain and root of the Turkish and Comanian tongue.
Their character has been adopted by the Moghals. In using it they
begin writing from the top and write downwards, whilst line follows
line from left to right. The Nestorians say their service, and have
their holy book in Syriac, but know nothing of the {408} language,
just as some of our Monks sing the mass without knowing Latin. The
Tibet people write as we do, and their letters have a strong
resemblance to ours. The Tangut people write from right to left like
the Arabs, and their lines advance upwards."
There were other matters besides language and religion on which Friar
William made observations, and though his book is eminently human
giving us a very interesting view of his own personality and of his
difficulties with his dragoman, which many a modern Eastern traveler
will sympathize with, and a picture that includes the detail that he
was a very heavy man, _valde ponderosus_, which makes his travel on
horseback for some 10,000 miles all the more wonderful; it also
contains a mass of particulars, marvelously true--or so near the truth
as to be almost more interesting--as to Asiatic nature, ethnography,
manners, morals, commercial customs, and nearly everything else
relating to the life of the peoples among whom he traveled. A typical
example of this is to be found in the following suggestive paragraph:
"The current money of Cathay is of cotton paper, a palm in length and
breath, and on this they print lines like those of Mangu Khan's seal:
'imprimunt lineas sicut est sigillum Mangu'"--a remarkable expression.
"They write with a painter's pencil and combine in one character
several letters, forming one expression: 'faciunt in una figura plures
literas comprehendentes unam dictionem'"--a still more remarkable
utterance, showing an approximate apprehension of the nature of
Chinese writing.
There are other distinguished travelers whose inspiration came to them
during the Thirteenth Century though their works were published in the
early part of the next century. Some of these we know mainly through
their adaptation and incorporation into his work without due
recognition, by that first great writer of spurious travels Sir John
Mandeville. Mandeville's work was probably written some time during
the early part of the second half of the Fourteenth Century, but he
used materials gathered from travelers of the end of the Thirteenth
and the beginning of the next (his own) century. Sir Henry Yule has
pointed out, that by far the greater part of the supposed {409} more
distant travels of Sir John Mandeville were appropriated from the
narrative of Friar Odoric, a monk, who became a member of the
Franciscan order about the end of the Thirteenth Century, and whose
travels as a missionary in the East gave him the opportunities to
collect a precious fund of information which is contained in Odoric's
famous story of his voyages. Of Odoric himself we shall have something
to say presently.
In the meantime it seems well worth while calling to attention, that
the accepted narrative of Sir John Mandeville as it is called, and
which may have been written by a physician of the name of John of
Burgoigne under an assumed name, contains a number of interesting
anticipations of facts that were supposed to enter into the domain of
human knowledge much later in the intellectual development of the
race. In certain passages, and especially in one which is familiar
from its being cited by Dr. Johnson in the preface to his dictionary,
Mandeville, to use the name under which the story is best known, shows
that he had a correct idea of the form of the earth and of position in
latitude as it could be ascertained by observation of the Pole Star.
He knew also, as we noted at the beginning of this article, that there
are antipodes, and if ships were sent on voyages of discovery they
might sail around the world. As Col. Yule has pointed out, Mandeville
tells a curious story which he had heard in his youth of how "a worthy
man did travel ever eastward until he came to his own country again."
Odoric of whom we have already spoken must be considered as the next
great missionary traveler of this age. He took Franciscan vows when
scarcely a boy and was encouraged to travel in the East by the example
of his Holy Father St. Francis, and also by the interest and
missionary zeal to convert the East which had been aroused by Marco
Polo's travels. His long journeys will be more readily understood,
however, if we realize, as is stated in the article on him in the
Encyclopedia Britannica, an authority that will surely be unsuspected
of too great partiality for the work of Catholic missionaries, that
"There had risen also during the latter half of the Thirteenth Century
an energetic missionary action, extending all over the East on the
part of both the new orders of Preaching and Minorite (or Dominican
and Franciscan) Friars which had caused {410} members of these orders,
of the last especially, to become established in Persia and what is
now Southern Russia, in Tartary and in China."
In the course of his travels in the East Odoric visited Malabar
touching at Pandarini (twenty miles north of Calicut), at Craganore
and at Quilon, preceding thence, apparently, to Ceylon and to the
Shrine of St. Thomas at Mailapur near Madras.
Even more interesting than his travels in India, however, are those in
China. He sailed from the Hindustan Peninsula in a Chinese junk to
Sumatra, visiting various ports on the northern coast of that island
and telling something about the inhabitants and the customs of the
country. According to Sir Henry Yule he then visited Java and it would
seem also the coast of Borneo, finally reaching Kanton, at that time
known to Western Asiatics as Chin Kalan or Great China. From there he
went to the great ports of Fuhkeen and Schwan Chow, where he found two
houses of his order, thence he proceeded to Fuchau from which place he
struck across the mountains into Chekaeng and then visited Hang Chow
at that time renowned under the name of Cansay. Modern authorities in
exploration have suggested that this might be King Sae, the Chinese
name for Royal Residence, which was then one of the greatest cities of
the world. Thence Odoric passed northward by Nanking, and, crossing
the great Kiang, embarked on the Grand Canal and traveled to Cambaluc
or Pekin, where he remained for three years and where it is thought
that he was attached to one of the churches founded by Archbishop John
of Monte Corvino, who was at this time in extreme old age.
The most surprising part of Odoric's travels were still to come. When
the fever for traveling came upon him again he turned almost directly
westward to the Great Wall and through Shenshua. From here the
adventurous traveler (we are still practically quoting Sir Henry Yule)
entered Thibet and appears to have visited Lhasa. Considering how much
of interest has been aroused by recent attempts to enter Lhasa and the
surprising adventures that men have gone through in the effort, the
success of this medieval monk in such an expedition would seem
incredible, if it were not substantiated by documents that {411} place
the matter beyond all doubt even in the minds of the most
distinguished modern authorities in geography and exploration. How
Odoric returned home is not definitely known, though certain
fragmentary notices seem to indicate that he passed through Khorasan
and probably Tabriz to Europe.
It only remains to complete the interest of Odoric's wondrous tale to
add that during a large portion of these years' long journeys his
companion was Friar James, an Irishman who had been attracted to Italy
in order to become a Franciscan. As appears from a record in the
public books of the town of Udine in Italy, where the monastery of
which both he and Odoric were members was situated, a present of two
marks was made by the municipal authorities to the Irish friar shortly
after Odoric's death. The reason for the gift was stated to be, that
Friar James had been for the love of God and of Odoric (a typical
Celtic expression and characteristic) a companion of the blessed
Odoric in his wanderings. Unfortunately Odoric died within two years
after his return though not until the story of his travels had been
taken down in homely Latin by Friar William of Bologna. Shortly after
his death Odoric became an object of reverence on the part of his
brother friars and of devotion on the part of the people, who
recognized the wonderful apostolic spirit that he had displayed in his
long wanderings, and the patience and good-will with which he had
borne sufferings and hardships for the sake of winning the souls of
those outside the Church.
Sir Henry Yule summed up his opinion of Odoric in the following
striking passage which bears forcible testimony also to the healthy
curiosity of the times with regard to all these original sources of
information which were recognized as valuable because first hand:
"The numerous MSS. of Odoric's narrative that have come down to our
time (upwards of forty are known), and chiefly from the Fourteenth
Century, show how speedily and widely it acquired popularity. It
does not deserve the charge of general mendacity brought up against
it by some, though the language of other writers who have spoken of
the traveler as a man of learning is still more injudicious. Like
most of the medieval travelers, he is indiscriminating in accepting
strange tales; but while some of these are the habitual stories of
the {412} age, many particulars which he recited attest the genuine
character of the narrative, and some of those which Tiraboschi and
others have condemned as mendacious interpolations are the very
seals of truth."
Besides Odoric there is another monkish traveler from whom Mandeville
has borrowed much, though without giving him any credit. This is the
well-known Praemonstratensian Monk Hayton, who is said to have been a
member of a princely Armenian family and who just at the beginning of
the Fourteenth Century dictated a work on the affairs of the Orient
and especially the history of the nearer East in his own time, of
which, from the place of his nativity and bringing up, he had abundant
information, while he found all round him in France, where he was
living at the time, the greatest thirst for knowledge with regard to
this part of the world. His book seems to have been dictated
originally in French at Poictiers, and to have attracted great
attention because of its subject, many copies of it being made as well
as translations into other languages within a few years after its
original appearance.
The story of Odoric is a forcible reminder of how much the
missionaries accomplished for geography, ethnology, and ethnography in
the Thirteenth Century, as they did in succeeding centuries. If what
the missionaries have added to these sciences were to have been lost,
there would have been enormous gaps in the knowledge with which modern
scholars began their scientific labors in philology. It may be a
surprise to most people, moreover, to be thus forcibly reminded of the
wonderful evangelizing spirit which characterized the later middle
age. Needless to say these graduates of the Thirteenth Century
universities who wandered in distant eastern lands, brought with them
their European culture for the uplifting of the Orientals, and brought
back to Europe many ideas that were to be fruitful sources of
suggestions not only for geographical, ethnological, philological, and
other departments of learning, but also in manufactures and in arts.
We mentioned the fact that Odoric in his travels eventually reached
Cambaluc, or Pekin, where he found Archbishop John of Monte Corvino
still alive though at an advanced age, and was probably attached for
the three years of his stay to one of {413} the churches that had been
founded by this marvelous old Friar, who had been made Archbishop
because of the wonderful power of organization and administration
displayed during his earlier career as a missionary. The story of this
grand old man of the early Franciscan missions is another one of the
romances of Thirteenth Century travels and exploration which well
deserves to be studied in detail. Unfortunately the old Archbishop was
too much occupied with his work as a missionary and an ecclesiastic to
return to Europe in order to tell of it, or to write any lengthy
account of his experiences. Like many another great man of the
Thirteenth Century he was a doer and not a writer, and, but for the
casual mention of him by others, the records of his deeds would only
be found in certain ecclesiastical records, and his work would now be
known to the Master alone, for whom it was so unselfishly done.
It will be noted that most of these traveling missionaries were
Franciscans but it must not be thought that it was only the
Franciscans who sent out such missionaries. The Dominicans
(established at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century) also did
wonderful missionary work and quite as faithfully as even their
Franciscan brothers. Undoubtedly the Franciscans surpassed them in the
extent of their labors, but then the Dominicans were founded with the
idea of preaching and uplifting the people of Europe rather than of
spreading the good news of the Gospel outside the bounds of
Christianity as it then existed. From the very earliest traditions of
their order the Franciscans had their eyes attracted towards the East.
The story that St. Francis himself went to the Holy Land at the
beginning of the Thirteenth Century in order to convert Saladin, the
Eastern monarch whose name has been made famous by the stories of the
Crusade in which Richard Coeur de Lion took part, has been doubted,
but it seems to be founded on too good contemporary authority to be
considered as entirely apocryphal. St. Francis' heart went out to
those in darkness who knew nothing of the Christ whom he had learned
to love so ardently, and it was a supreme desire of his life that the
good tidings of Christianity should be spread by his followers all
over the world. While they did this great work they accomplished
unwittingly great things in all the series of sciences {414} now
included under the term geography, and gathered precious information
as to the races of men, their relations to one another and to the part
of the earth in which they live. The scientific progress thus made
will always redound largely to their credit in the story of the
intellectual development of modern Europe. Most of their work was far
ahead of the times and was not to be properly appreciated until quite
recent generations, but this must only emphasize our sympathy for
those obscure, patient but fruitful workers in a great field of human
knowledge. As to what should be thought of those who ignorant of their
work proclaim that the Church did not tolerate geography it is hard to
say. Our geographical knowledge comes mainly from travelers whose wish
it is to gain commercial opportunities for themselves or their
compatriots; that of the Middle Ages was gained by men who wished
anxiously to spread the light of Christianity throughout the world.
The geographical societies of these earlier days were the religious
orders who sent but the explorers and travelers, furnished them on
their return with an enthusiastic audience to hear their stories, and
then helped to disseminate their books all over the then civilized
world.
There is probably no better refutation of the expression so often
heard from those who know nothing about it, with regard to the
supposed laziness of the Monks of the Middle Ages, than this chapter
of the story of their exploration and missionary labors during the
Thirteenth Century. It is usually supposed that if a Monk was fat he
could not possibly have accomplished any serious work in life. Some of
these men were _valde ponderosi_, very weighty, yet they did not
hesitate to take on themselves these long journeys to the East. Their
lives are the best illustration of the expression of Montalembert:
"Let us then banish into the world of fiction that affirmation so
long repeated by foolish credulity which made monasteries an asylum
for indolence and incapacity, for misanthropy and pusillanimity, for
feeble and melancholic temperaments, and for men who were no longer
fit to serve society in the world. It was not the sick souls, but on
the contrary the most vigorous and healthful the human race has ever
produced who presented themselves in crowds to fill them."
{415}
XXVI
GREAT BEGINNINGS OF MODERN COMMERCE.
For our present eminently commercial age nothing of all the
accomplishment of the Thirteenth Century will probably possess
livelier interest than the fact that, in spite of what must have
seemed insuperable difficulties to a less enterprising generation, the
men of that time succeeded in making such business combinations and
municipal affiliations, besides arranging various trade facilities
among distant, different peoples, that not only was commerce rendered
possible and even easy, but some of the most modern developments of
the facilitation of international intercourse were anticipated. The
story of the rise of this combination of many men of different
nations, of many cities whose inhabitants were of different races and
of different languages, of commercial enterprise that carried men
comparatively much farther than they now go on trade expeditions,
though we have thought that our age had exhausted the possibilities of
progress in this matter, cannot fail to have an interest for everyone
whose attention has been attracted to the people of this time and must
be taken as a symbol of the all-pervading initiative of the
generations, which allowed no obstacle to hinder their progress and
thought no difficulty too great to be surmounted.
In beginning the history of the great commercial league which in the
Thirteenth Century first opened men's minds to the possibilities of
peace and commerce among the nations and alas! that it should be said,
did more perhaps than any other agent except Christianity to awaken in
different races the sense of the brotherhood of man, the English
historian of the Hanseatic League, Miss Zimmern in the Stories of the
Nations, said:
"There is scarcely a more remarkable chapter in history than that
which deals with the trading alliance or association known as the
Hanseatic League. The league has long since {416} passed away having
served its time and fulfilled its purpose. The needs and circumstances
of mankind have changed, and new methods and new instruments have been
devised for carrying on the commerce of the world. Yet, if the league
has disappeared, the beneficial results of its action survive to
Europe though they have become so completely a part of our daily life
that we accept them as matters of course, and do not stop to inquire
into their origin." This last declaration may seem surprising for
comparatively few know anything about this medieval commercial league,
yet the effects claimed for it are only what we have seen to be true
with regard to most of the important institutions of the period--they
were the origins of what is best in our modern life.
Like many of the great movements of the Thirteenth Century the origin
of the Hanseatic League is clouded somewhat by the obscurity of the
times and the lack of definite historical documents. [Footnote 35]
There is no doubt, however, that just before the middle of the century
it was in flourishing existence, and that by the end of the century it
had reached that acme of its power and influence which it was to
maintain for several centuries in spite of the jealousy of the
nobility, of certain towns that did not have the same privileges, and
even of the authorities of the various countries who resented more and
more as time went on the growing freedom and independence of these
wealthy cities. The impetus for the formation of the League seems to
have been given during the Crusades. Like so many other of the
important movements of the time commerce was greatly influenced by
these expeditions, and the commercial spirit not only aroused but
shown the possibility of {417} accomplishing hitherto impossible
results in the matter of transportation and exchange. The returning
crusaders brought back with them many precious Eastern objects whose
possession was a source of envy to others and whose value was rated so
high as to make even distant travel for them well worth while. The
returning crusaders also knew how cheaply objects considered very
precious in the West might be purchased in the East, and they told the
stories of their own acquisition of them to willing listeners, who
were stimulated to try their fortunes in expeditions that promised
such rich rewards.
[Footnote 35: Perhaps no better idea of the obscurity of the origin of
the Hansa confederation can be given, than is to be derived from the
fact that even the derivation of the word Hansa is not very clear.
Bishop Ulfilas in his old Gothic translation of the Scriptures used
the word "hansa" to designate the mob of soldiers and servants of
the High Priest who came to take Christ prisoner in the Garden.
Later on the word Hansa was used to mean a tax or a contribution.
This term was originally employed to designate the sum of money
which each of the cities was compelled to pay on becoming a member
of the league, and it is thought to be from this that the terms
Hansa and Hanseatic League were eventually derived.]
{opp417}
[Illustration]
PALAZZO DEI CONSOLI (GUBBIO)
[Illustration]
PALAZZO ZABARELLA (PADUA)
Besides the crusaders on their return through Italy had observed what
was accomplished by the League of the Lombard cities which had been in
existence in a more or less imperfect way for more than a century, and
at the end of the Twelfth and the beginning of the Thirteenth Century
had begun to provide an example of the strength there is in union, and
of the power for good there is in properly regulated combinations of
commercial interests with due regard for civic rights and privileges.
This League of the Lombard cities was encouraged by the popes
especially by Innocent III. and his successors who are usually said to
have given it their approbation for their own purposes, though this is
to look at but one side of the case. The German Emperors endeavored to
assert their rights over Italian territory and in so doing came into
collision with the popes not only in temporal matters but also in
spiritual things. As we have noted in the short sketch of the popes of
the century, Innocent III. was the first great Italian patriot and
original advocate of Italy for the Italians. He constantly opposed the
influence of the German Emperor in Italian politics, mainly, of
course, because this interfered with the power of the Church, but to a
very great degree also because it proved a source of manifold
political evil for the Italian cities.
The Germans then, who in the train of the Emperor went down into Italy
saw the working of this League of Lombard cities, talked about it on
their return, and were naturally tempted to essay what might be
accomplished by the same means on German territory. These two
elements, the incentive of the crusades and the stimulus of the
example of the {418} Italians, must be considered as at the basis of
Hansa, though these were only seeds, and it was the nurture and
fostering care of the German mind which ever since the days of Tacitus
had been noted as the freest in Europe, that gave the League its
wonderful development.
It is difficult to tell how many towns belonged to the Hanseatic
League during the Thirteenth Century but at the end of this period,
Hansa, as it came to be called, was, as we have said, in its most
flourishing condition and we know something definite of its numbers a
little more than half a century later. In 1367 deputies from all the
towns met in the large council chamber of the famous town hall at
Cologne to discuss certain injustices that had been committed against
the members of the League, or as the document set forth "against the
free German merchants," in order to determine some way of preventing
further injuries and inflict due punishment. Altogether the deputies
of 77 towns were present and declared most solemnly "that because of
the wrongs and the injuries done by the King of Denmark to the common
German merchant the cities would be his enemies and help one another
faithfully." The distant and smaller cities were not expected to send
troops or even naval forces but promised to give contributions in
money. Such cities as did not take part in this movement were to be
considered as having forfeited their membership and would no longer be
permitted to trade with the members of Hansa.
Lest it should be thought that the cities were incapable of enforcing
any such boycott with effect, the story of the town of Luebeck must be
recalled. Luebeck on one occasion refused to join with the other Hansa
towns in a boycott of certain places in Flanders which had refused to
observe the regulations as to trading. One of these was to the effect
that such vessels as were lost on a coast did not become the property
of the people of the neighborhood, though they had a right to a due
share for salvage, but a fair proportion must be returned to the
citizens of the town that suffered the loss. Luebeck was at the moment
one of the most powerful commercial cities in Germany, and her
citizens seemed to think that they could violate the Hansa regulation
with impunity. For 30 years. {419} however, the Hansa boycott was
maintained and so little trading was done in the city that according
to one old writer "the people starved, the markets were deserted,
grass grew in the street and the inhabitants left in large numbers."
Such a lesson as this was enough to make the Hanseatic decrees be
observed with scrupulous care and shows the perfection of the
organization.
The outcome of the war with Denmark demonstrates the power of the
league. The King of Denmark is said to have scorned their declaration
of war, and making an untranslatable pun on the word "Hansa" called
the members of the League "geese who cackled much but need not be
feared." The fleet of the League, however, succeeded in shutting off
all the commerce of the coast of Denmark and though there was a truce
each winter the war was renewed vigorously, and with summer many of
the Danish cities were ransacked and plundered. At the end of the
second year Denmark was exhausted and the people so weary of war that
they pleaded for peace, and Valdemar had to accept the terms which the
"geese" were willing to offer him. This triumph of the common people
over a reigning monarch is one of the most striking passages in
medieval history. It comes about a half century after the close of the
Thirteenth, and is evidently the direct result of the great practical
forces that were set in movement during that wonderful period, when
the mighty heart of humanity was everywhere bestirring men to deeds of
high purpose and far-reaching significance.
As a matter of fact, Hansa became, very early in its career, one of
the firmest authorities in the midst of these troubled times and meted
out unfailingly the sternest justice against those who infringed its
rights if they were outsiders, or broke the rules of the League if
they were its members. It was ever ready to send its ships against
offenders and while it soon came to be feared, this fear was mingled
with respect, and its regulations were seldom infringed. It is a most
interesting reflection, that as its English Historian says, "never
once in the whole course of its history did it draw the sword
aggressively or against its own members." While it was ever on the
look-out to increase its power by adding new cities to the League,
cities were not forced to join and when it meted {420} out punishments
to its members this was not by the levying of war but by fines, the
refusal to pay these being followed by the "declaration of boycott,"
which soon brought the offender to terms. War was only declared in all
cases as a last resort, and the ships of the League were constantly
spoken of and designated in all documents as "peace ships," and even
the forts which the League built for the protection of its towns, or
as places where its members might be sure of protection, were
described as "Peace Burgs."
Unfortunately, the lessons of peace that were thus taught by commerce
were not to bear fruit abundantly for many centuries after the
Thirteenth. It is practically only in our own time that they have been
renewed, and the last generation or two, has rather plumed itself over
the fact that trade was doing so much to prevent war. Evidently this
is no guarantee of the perpetuation of such an improvement in national
or international morals, for the influence of Hansa for peace came to
be lost entirely, after a few centuries. The cities themselves,
however, that belonged to the League gradually became more and more
free, and more independent of their rulers. It was thus, in fact, that
the free cities of Germany had their origin, and in them much more of
modern liberty was born than has ever been appreciated, except by
those whose studies have brought them close to these marvelous
medieval manifestations of the old spirit of Teutonic freedom.
The names of most of the cities that were members of the Hansa League
are well known, though it is not easy to understand in the decrepitude
that has come over many of them, how they could have been of so much
importance as has been claimed for them in the Middle Ages. All the
cities of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were united together, and
while we think of these as German, many of them really belonged to
Slav people at this time, so that the membership of a number of
Russian cities is not surprising. While the Rhenish cities were
important factors in the League, Cologne indeed being one of the most
important, Bremen and Hamburg and both the Frankforts, and Rostock,
and Luebeck and Stralsund, and Tangermuende and Warnemunde, were
important members. Novgorod was founded by Hansa for the purpose of
trading {421} with the Orientals, and the Volga, the Dnieper, the
Dwina, and the Oder were extensively used for the purpose of
transporting goods here and there in central Europe. One of their most
famous towns, Winetha in German, Julin in Danish, disappeared beneath
the waters of the Baltic Sea and gave rise to many legends of its
reappearance. It is hard to realize that it was so important that it
was called the Venice of the North, and was seriously compared with
its great southern rival.
A good idea of the intimate relations of the Hansa towns to England
and the English people can be obtained from the article on the subject
written by Richard Lodge for the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica. A single paragraph of this compresses much of the external
and internal history of the "Rise and Development of Hansa." It was
rather to be expected that the commercial relations between England
and the various cities situated along the North Sea, as well as the
Baltic and up the Rhine, would be active and would have to be
submitted to careful regulation. Unless the modern mind is actually
brought directly in touch, however, with the complex yet very
practical state of affairs, which actually existed, it will utterly
fail to appreciate how thoroughly progressive and enterprising were
these medieval peoples. Enterprise and practicalness we are apt to
think of as the exclusive possession of much more modern generations.
Least of all would we be apt to consider them as likely to be found in
the Thirteenth Century, yet here they are, and the commercial
arrangements which were made are as absolute premonitions of our
modern thought as were the literature and architecture, the painting,
even the teachings of science at the same period.
"The members of this League (Hanseatic) came to England mostly from
Cologne, the first German town which obtained great importance both at
home and abroad. Its citizens possessed at an early date a guild-hall
of their own (in London), and all Germans who wished to trade with
England had to join their guild. This soon included merchants from
Dortmund, Soest and Munster, in Westphalia; from Utrecht, Stavern and
Groningen, in the Netherlands, and from Bremen and Hamburg on the
North Sea. But, when at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, the
rapidly rising town of Luebeck {422} wished to be admitted into the
guild, every effort was made to keep her out. The intervention of
Frederick II. was powerless to overcome the dread felt by Cologne
towards a possible rival to its supremacy. But this obstacle to the
extension of the League was soon overcome. In 1260 a charter of Henry
III. assured protection to all German merchants. A few years later
Hamburg and Luebeck also were allowed to form their own guilds. The
Hansa of Cologne, which had long been the only guild, now sinks to the
position of a branch Hansa, and has to endure others with equal
privileges. Over all the branch Hansas rises the "Hansa Alamanniae,"
first mentioned in 1282.
This article gives additional information with regard to the many and
varied influences at work at the end of the Thirteenth Century. It
furnishes in brief, moreover, an excellent picture of the activity of
mind and power of organization so frequently displayed during this
period in every branch of life. This is after all the highest quality
of man. The development of associations of various kinds, especially
such as are helpfully purposive, are the outcome of that social
quality in man's mind which is the surest index of his rational
quality. Succeeding centuries lost for some almost unaccountable
reason much of this faculty of organization and the result was a
lamentable retrogression from the advances made by older generations,
so that it was only in quite recent years that anything like this old
international comity was reestablished.
{opp422}
[Illustration]
RATHHAUS (LUeBECK)
The extent and very natural development of this community of interests
must ever attract attention. It is the first time in our modern
history that it occurs and men of some seven different races and
tongues were at last drawn into it. In this it represents the greatest
advance of history, for it led to assimilation of laws and of
liberties, with some of the best features of each nation's old-time
customs preserved in the new codes. Its extension even to Novgorod, in
what is now the heart of Russia is a surprising demonstration of
successful enterprise and spread of influence almost incredible. The
settling of the trade disputes of this distant Russian City in the
courts of a North Sea town, is an evidence of advance in commercial
relations emphasized by the writer in the Britannica, that deserves to
be well weighed as a manifestation of what is often thought {423} to
be the exclusively modern recognition of the rights of commerce and
the claims of justice over even national feelings.
"The league between Luebeck and Hamburg was not the only, and possibly
not the first, league among the German towns. But it gradually
absorbed all others. Besides the influence of foreign commercial
interests there were other motives which compelled the towns to union.
The chief of these were the protection of commercial routes both by
sea and land, and the vindication of town independence as opposed to
claims of the landed aristocracy. The first to join the League were
the Wendish towns to the East, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, etc., which
had always been intimately connected with Luebeck, and were united by a
common system of laws known as the 'Luebisches Recht' (Luebeck Laws).
The Saxon and Westphalian towns had long possessed a league among
themselves; they also joined themselves to Luebeck. Luebeck now became
the most important town in Germany. It had already surpassed Cologne
both in London and Bruges. It soon gained a similar victory over
Wisby. At a great convention in which twenty-four towns from Cologne
to Revel took part, it was decided that appeals from Novgorod which
had hitherto been decided at Wisby should henceforth be brought to
Luebeck."
After much travail and vexation of spirit, after much diplomacy and
political and parliamentary discussion, after much striving on the
part of the men in all nations, who have the great cause of universal
peace for mankind at heart, we have reached a position where at least
commercial difficulties can be referred to a sort of international
court for adjudication. The standing of this court is not very clear
as yet. Special arrangements at least are required, if not special
treaties in many cases, even for the reference of such merely
commercial difficulties as debt-collecting to it. In the last quarter
of the Nineteenth Century special tribunals had to be erected for the
settlement of such difficulties between nations. In the Twentieth
Century the outlook is more hopeful and the actual accomplishment is
indeed encouraging. In the Thirteenth Century with the absence of the
telegraph and the cable, with the slowness of sailing vessels and the
distance of towns {424} emphasizing all the difficulties of the
situation, the Hanseatic League succeeded in obtaining an
international tribunal, whose judgments with regard to commercial
difficulties were final and were accepted by men of many different
races and habits and customs, and to which causes were referred
without any of the immense machinery apparently required at the
present time.