Thirteenth Century. While it may be astonishing to many modern people
to learn how much was accomplished in this utterly unexpected quarter,
it will not be a surprise to those who realize the thoroughly
practical character of the century and the perfectly matter of fact
way in which it went about settling all the difficulties that
presented themselves; and how often they succeeded in reaching a very
practical if not always ideal solution. The sad feature of the case is
to think that most of this coming together of nations was lost by the
gradual development of national feeling, much of benefit as there may
have been in that for the human race, and by the drawing of the
language lines between nations more closely than they had been before,
for the next three centuries saw the development of modern tongues
into the form which they have held ever since.
Hansa did more than almost any other institution in northern Europe to
establish the reign of Law. If it had accomplished no other purpose,
this would make it eminently worthy of the study of those who are
interested in sociology and social evolution. Before the time of Hansa
the merchant by sea or land was liable to all sorts of impositions,
arbitrary taxes, injustices, and even the loss of life as well of his
goods. As Hansa gained in power however, these abuses disappeared.
Perhaps the most noteworthy improvement came with regard to
navigation. There is a story told of a famous rock in Brittany on
which many ships were wrecked during the Middle Ages. Even as late as
the Thirteenth Century sometimes false lights were displayed on this
rock with the idea of tempting vessels to their destruction on it.
Everything that was thrown ashore in the neighborhood was considered
to be the property of the people who gathered it, except that a
certain portion of its value had to be paid to the Lord of the Manor.
{425} This worthy representative of the upper classes is said to have
pointed out the rock to some visiting nobleman friends one day, and
declared that it was more precious to him than the most precious stone
in the diadem of any ruling monarch in Europe. This represents the
state of feeling with regard to such subjects when Hansa started in to
correct the abuses.
It may be looked upon as a serious disgrace to the Thirteenth Century
that such a low state of ethical feeling should have existed, but it
is the amelioration of conditions which obliterated such false
sentiments that constitutes the triumph of the period. On the other
hand we must not with smug self-complacency think that our generation
is so much better than those of the past. It is easy to be pharisaical
while we forget that many a fortune in modern times suffers shipwreck
on the coasts of business and investment, because the false lights of
advertising intended to deceive, are displayed very prominently, for
those who are only anxious as were the mariners of the olden times to
make their fortunes. Doubtless too the proprietors of many of the
papers which display such advertisements, and it is nonsense to say
that they are unconscious of the harm they do, are quite as proud of
the magnificent revenue that their advertising columns bring to them
as was the Breton noble of the Thirteenth Century. Man has not changed
much in the interval.
Lest it should be thought that even the present-day initiation into
secret societies of various kinds is the invention of modern times, it
seems well to give some of the details of the tests through which
those seeking to be members of the Hanseatic League were subjected, by
those who were already initiated. It may possibly seem that some of
these customs were too barbarous to mention in the same breath with
the present-day initiations, but if it is recalled that at least once
a year some serious accident is reported as the result of the
thoughtless fooling of "frat" students at our universities, this
opinion may be withdrawn. Miss Helen Zimmern in her story of the Hansa
Towns already quoted several times, has a paragraph or two of
descriptions of these that we shall quote. It may be well to remember
that these tests were not entirely without a serious significance for
the members of the Hansa. Much {426} was expected of those who
belonged to the Hansa Guild. A number of precious trade secrets were
entrusted them, and they alone knew the methods and mysteries of
Hansa. In order that these might not by any possibility be betrayed,
the members of Hansa who lived in foreign countries were forbidden to
marry while abroad and were bound under the severest penalties to live
a life of celibacy. They were not supposed to be absent from the
houses assigned to them during the night, and their factories so
called, or common-places of residence, were guarded by night watchman
and fierce dogs in order to secure the keeping of these rules.
Besides torture was a very common thing in those times and a man who
belonged to a country that happened to be at war for the moment, might
very easily be subjected to torture for some reason or another with
the idea of securing important information from him. If the members of
Hansa wanted to be reasonably assured that new members would not give
up their secrets without a brave struggle, they had no better way than
by these tests, for which there was therefore some excuse. As to the
brutality of the tests perhaps Miss Zimmern in maidenly way has said
too much. We commend her paragraphs to the modern committees of
reception of college secret societies, because here as elsewhere this
generation may get points from the Thirteenth Century.
{opp426}
[Illustration]
MINSTER (CHORIN, GERMANY)
[Illustration]
CITY GATE (NEUBRANDENBURG)
"We cannot sully our pages by detailing the thirteen different games
or modes of martyrdom that were in use at Bergen. Our more civilized
age could not tolerate the recital. In those days they attracted a
crowd of eager spectators who applauded the more vociferously the more
cruel and barbarous the tortures. The most popular were those
practices known as the smoke, water and flogging games; mad, cruel
pranks calculated to cause a freshman to lose health and reason. Truly
Dantesque hell tortures were these initiations into Hansa mysteries.
Merely to indicate their nature we will mention that for the smoke
game the victim was pulled up the big chimney of the Schutting while
there burned beneath him the most filthy materials, sending up a most
nauseous stench and choking wreaths of smoke. While in this position
he was asked a number of questions, to which he was forced, under yet
more terrible penalties, to reply. If {427} he survived his torture he
was taken out into the yard and plied under the pump with six tons of
water." (Even the "Water Cure" is not new).
There was a variety about the tests at different times and places that
show no lack of invention on the part of the members of Hansa. With
regard to other water tests Miss Zimmern has furnished some
interesting details:
"The 'water' game that took place at Whitsuntide consisted in first
treating the probationer to food, and then taking him out to sea in a
boat. Here he was stripped thrown into the ocean, ducked three times,
made to swallow much sea-water, and thereafter mercilessly flogged by
all the inmates of the boats. The third chief game was no less
dangerous to life and limb. It took place a few days after, and was a
rude perversion of the May games. The victims had first to go out into
the woods to gather the branches with which later they were to be
birched. Returned to the factory, rough horse play pranks were
practised upon them. Then followed an ample dinner, which was
succeeded by mock combats, and ended in the victims being led into the
so-called Paradise, where twenty-four disguised men whipped them till
they drew blood, while outside this black hole another party made
hellish music with pipes, drums and triangles to deafen the screams of
the tortured. The 'game' as considered ended when the shrieks of the
victims were sufficiently loud to overcome the pandemonic music." Some
of the extreme physical cruelties of the initiations our modern
fraternities have eliminated, but the whole story has a much more
familiar air than we might have expected.
Probably the most interesting feature of the history of the Hanseatic
League is the fact that this great combination for purposes of trade
and commerce proved a source of liberty for the citizens of the
various towns, and enabled them to improve their political status
better than any other single means at this precious time of
development of legal and social rights. This is all the more
interesting because great commercial combinations with similar
purposes in modern times have usually proved fruitful rather of
opposite results. A few persons have been very much benefited by them,
or at least have made much money by them, which is quite another
thing, though money is {428} supposed to represent power and
influence, but the great mass of the people have been deprived of
opportunities to rise and have had taken from them many chances for
the exercise of initiative that existed before.
There is a curious effect of Hansa upon the political fortunes of the
people of the cities that were members of the League which deserves to
be carefully studied. As with regard to so many other improvements
that have come in the history of the race, it was not a question so
much of the recognition of great principles as of money and revenues
that proved the origin of amelioration of civic conditions. These
commercial cities accumulated wealth. Money was necessary for their
rulers for the maintenance of their power and above all for the waging
of war. In return for moneys given for such purposes the cities
claimed for the inhabitants and were granted many privileges. These
became perpetuated and as time went on were added to as new
opportunities for the collection of additional revenues occurred,
until finally an important set of fundamental rights with documentary
confirmation were in the hands of the city authorities. One would like
to think that this state of affairs developed as the result of the
recognition on the part of the ruling sovereign, of the benefits that
were conferred on his realm by having in it, or associated with it, an
important trading city whose enterprising citizens gave occupation to
many hands. This was very rarely the case, however, but as was true of
the legal rights obtained by England's citizens during the Thirteenth
Century, it was largely a question of the coordination of taxation and
legislative representation and the consequent attainment of
privileges.
The most important effect on the life of Europe and the growth of
civilization that the Hanseatic League exerted, was its success in
showing that people of many different nations and races, living under
very different circumstances, might still be united under similar laws
that would enable them to accomplish certain objects which they had in
view. Germans, Slavs and English learned to live in one another's
towns and while observing the customs of these various places
maintained the privileges of their homes. The mutual influence of
these people on one another, many of them being the most practical and
{429} enterprising individuals of the time, could scarcely fail to
produce noteworthy effects in broadening the minds of those with whom
they came in contact. It is to this period that we must trace the
beginnings of international law. Hansa showed the world how much
commercial relations were facilitated by uniform laws and by just
treatment of even the citizens of foreign countries. It is to commerce
that we owe the first recognition of the rights of the people of other
countries even in time of war. If the Hanseatic League had done
nothing else but this, it must be considered as an important factor in
the development of our modern civilization and an element of influence
great as any other in this wonderful century.
[Illustration]
HINGE FROM CATHEDRAL, SCHLESTADT
{430}
APPENDIX I
SO-CALLED HISTORY.
RULERS.
EMPERORS OF GERMANY.
Otho IV 1198-1218
Frederick II 1212-1250
Conrad IV 1250-1254
William of Holland 1254-1256
Richard Earl of Cornwall 1257-1273
Rudolph of Hapsburg 1273-1291
Adolph of Nassau 1292-1298
Albert of Austria 1298-1308
KINGS OF SCOTLAND..
William 1175-1214
Alexander II 1214-1249
Alexander III 1249-1286
Margaret 1286-1292
John Balliol 1292-1296
Interregnum 1296-1306
KINGS OF CASTILE AND LEON.
Alfonso IX 1188-1214
Henry I 1214-1217
St. Ferdinand III 1217-1252
Alfonso X 1252-1284
Sancho IV 1284-1295
Ferdinand IV 1295-1312
KINGS OF ENGLAND.
John Lackland 1199-1216
Henry III 1216-1272
Edward I 1272-1307
KINGS OF FRANCE.
Philip II 1180-1223
Louis VIII 1223-1226
Louis IX 1226-1270
Philip III 1270-1285
Louis [Philip] IV 1314-1316
KINGS OF ARAGON.
Pedro II 1196-1213
James I., the Conqueror 1215-1276
Pedro III 1276-1285
Alfonso III 1285-1291
James II 1291-1327
KINGS OF NAPLES.
Conrad 1250-1254
Conradin 1254-1258
Manfred 1258-1266
Charles of Anjou 1266-1285
Charles 1285-1309
EVENTS.
1202.--Fourth great crusade under Boniface, marquis of Montferrat.
1204.--The English stripped of Normandy, etc.,
by Philip Augustus of France.
1206.--Jenghis-Khan: foundation of the great empire of the Moguls.
1212.--Battle of Ubeda: defeat and fall of Almohads of Africa.
1213.--John Lackland acknowledges himself vassal of the pope.
1213.--Battle of Bouvines won by Philip Augustus.
1215.--Magna Charta.
The palatinate of the Rhine goes to the house of Wittelsbach.
1217.--Crusade of Andrew II., King of Hungary.
1218.--Extinction of the dukes of Zarringuia:
Switzerland becomes an immediate province of the empire.
{431}
1222.--Charter or decree of Andrew II.,
basis of the Hungarian constitution.
1226.--Renewal of the League of Lombardy
to oppose the Emperor Frederick II.
1227.--Battle of Bornhoeved in Holstein: Waldemar II., King of
Denmark, loses his conquests on the southern coast of the Baltic.
1228.--Crusade of the Emperor Frederick II.
1230.--The Teutonic order establishes itself in Prussia.
Conquest of the Balearic islands by the King of Aragon.
1235.--Formation of the Duchy of Brunswick in favor
of the house of the Guelphs.
1236.--Conquest of the Kingdoms of Cordova, Murcia and
Seville by the Castilians.
1237.--Conquest of Russia by Baton-Khan: origin of the
Mogul or Tartar horde of Kaptschak.
1241.--Invasion of Poland, Silesia, and Hungary by the Moguls.
1248.--Crusade of St. Louis, King of France.
1250.--Beginning of the great interregnum in Germany.
1254.--Accessions of the emperors of different houses in
Germany. End of the dominion of the Agubites in Egypt and
Syria; beginning of the empire of the Mamelukes.
1256.--Enfranchisement of the serfs at Bologna in Italy.
1261.--Michel Paleologus, emperor of Nice,
takes Constantinople; end of the empire of the Latins.
1265.--Accession of the house of Anjou to the throne of the
Two Sicilies.
1266.--Admission of the Commons to the Parliament of England.
1268.--Corradino decapitated at Naples; extinction of the house of
Hohenstaufen. Suabia and Franconia become immediate
provinces of the empire.
1271.--The county of Toulouse passes to the King of
France, and the Venaissin to the Pope.
1273.--Accession of the Emperor Rudolph of Hapsburg to
the throne of the empire: first election by the seven electors.
1282.--Conquest of Wales by the King of England.
1282.--The Sicilian Vespers, the kingdom of Sicily passes to
the King of Aragon. The Emperor Rudolph gives to his sons the
duchies of Austria; foundation of the house of Hapsburg.
1283.--The Teutonic order completes the conquest of Prussia.
1289.--Extinction of the male line of the old race of Scotch
kings. Contest of Baliol and Bruce.
1290.--Decline of the republic of Piza. Aggrandizement of that of Genoa.
1291.--Taking of Ptolemais and Tyre by the Mamelukes.
End of the crusades.
1294.--Decline of the Mogul empire at the death of Kublai-Khan.
1298.--Introduction of an hereditary aristocracy at Venice.
1300.--Foundation of the modern Turkish empire by
Ottoman I. First Jubilee proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII.
{432}
APPENDIX II.
TWENTY-SIX CHAPTERS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
I. AMERICA IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
To most people it would seem quite out of the question that a chapter
on America in the Thirteenth Century might have been written. One of
the most surprising chapters for most readers in the previous edition
was that on Great Explorers and the Foundation of Geography, for it
was a revelation to learn that Thirteenth Century travelers had
anticipated all of our discoveries in the Far and in the Near East
seven centuries ago. Certain documents have turned up, however, which
make it very clear that with the same motives as those which urged
Eastern travelers, Europeans went just as far towards the West at this
time. Documents found in the Vatican Archives in 1903 and exhibited at
St. Louis in 1904, have set at rest finally and absolutely the long
disputed question of the discovery of America by the Norsemen, and in
connection with these the story of America in the Thirteenth Century
might well have been told. There is a letter from Pope Innocent III.,
dated February 13, 1206, addressed to the Archbishop of Norway, who
held jurisdiction over Greenland, which shows not only the presence of
the Norsemen on the American Continent at this time, but also that
they had been here for a considerable period, and that there were a
number of churches and pastors and large flocks in whom the Roman See
had a lively interest. There are Americana from three other Popes of
the Thirteenth Century. John XXI. wrote, in 1276, Nicholas III. two
letters, one dated January 31, 1279, and another June 9, 1279, and
Martin III. wrote 1282. We have inserted on the opposite page a
reproduction of a portion of the first Papal document extant relating
to America, the letter of Pope Innocent III., taken from "The Norse
Discovery of America" (The Norraena Society, N. Y., 1908). The word
_Grenelandie_, underscored, indicates the subject. The writing as an
example of the chirography of the century is of interest.
II. A REPRESENTATIVE UPPER HOUSE.
In most historical attempts at government by the people it has been
recognized that legislation is better balanced if there are two
chambers in the law-making body, one directly elected by the people,
the other indirectly chosen and representing important vested
interests that are likely to make its members conservative. The
initiative for legislation comes, as a rule, from the direct
representatives of the people, while the upper chamber represses
radical law-making or sudden changes in legislative policy, yet does
not hamper too much the progress of democracy.
{433}
[Illustration]
PART OF LETTER OF POPE INNOCENT III. MENTIONING GREENLAND.
{434}
During the last few years a crisis in English politics has led to a
very general demand for a modification of the status of the House of
Lords, while almost similar conditions have led to the beginning at
least of a similar demand for the modification of our Senate in this
country. Both these upper chambers have come to represent vested
interests to too great a degree. The House of Lords has been the
subject of special deprecation. The remark is sometimes made that it
is unfortunate that England is weighted down by this political
incubus, the House of Lords, which is spoken of as a heritage from the
Middle Ages. The general impression, of course, is that the English
House of Lords, as at present constituted, comes down from the oldest
times of constitutional government in England. Nothing could well be
more untrue than any such idea.
The old upper chamber of England, the medieval House of Lords, was an
eminently representative body. Out of the 625 or more of members of
the English House of Lords at the present time about five hundred and
fifty hold their seats by heredity. Only about seventy-five are in
some sense elective. At least one-half of these elected peers,
however, must be chosen from the hereditary nobility of Ireland and
Scotland. Nearly nineteen-twentieths of the membership of the House of
Lords, as at present constituted, owe their place in national
legislation entirely to heredity. Until the reformation so-called this
was not so. More than one-half of the English House of Lords, a good
working majority, consisted of the Lords spiritual. Besides the
Bishops and Archbishops there were the Abbots and Priors of
monasteries, and the masters of religious orders. These men as a rule
had come up from the people. They had risen to their positions by
intellectual abilities and by administrative capacity. The abbots and
other superiors of religious orders had been chosen by their monks as
a rule because, having shown that they knew how to rule themselves,
they were deemed most fitting to rule over others.
Even in our day, when the Church occupies nothing like the position in
the hearts of the masses that she held in the ages of faith, our
Catholic Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, both here and in England,
are chosen as members of arbitration boards to settle strikes and
other social difficulties, because it is felt that the working class
has full confidence in them, and that they are thoroughly
representative of the spirit of democracy. In England Cardinal Manning
served more than once in critical social conditions. In this country
we have had a series of such examples. From these we can better
understand what the Lords spiritual represented in the English House
of Lords. There were abuses, though they were not nearly so frequent
as were thought, by which unworthy men sometimes reached such
positions, for men abuse even the best things, but in general these
clerical members of the House of Lords were the chosen intellectual
and moral products of the kingdom. Since they were without families
they had {435} less temptation to serve personal interests and,
besides, they had received a life-long training in unselfishness, and
the best might be expected of them. For an ideal second chamber I know
none that can compare with this old English House of Lords of the
Middle Ages. How much it was responsible for the foundation of the
liberties of which the English-speaking people are deservedly so
proud, and which have been treated in some detail in the chapter on
Origins in Law, would be interesting to trace.
III. THE PARISH, AND TRAINING IN CITIZENSHIP.
Mr. Toulmin Smith, in his book on "The Parish," and Dom Gasquet, in
his volume on "The Parish Before the Reformation," have shown what a
magnificent institution for popular self-government was the English
medieval parish, and how much this contributed to the solution of
important social problems and to the creation of a true democratic
spirit. Mr. Toulmin Smith calls particular attention to the fact that
when local self-government gets out of the hands of the people of a
neighborhood personal civic energy goes to sleep. The feeling of
mutual responsibility of the men of the place is lost, to the great
detriment of their larger citizenship in municipality and nation. In
the parish, however, forming a separate community, of which the
members had rights and duties, the primal solid basis for government,
the parish authorities took charge of the highways, the roads, the
paths, the health, the police, the constabulary, and the fires of
their neighborhood. They kept, besides, a registry of births and
deaths and marriages. When these essentially local concerns are
controlled in large bodies the liability to abuse at once becomes easy
and political corruption sets in. He mentions, besides many parochial
institutions, a parochial friendly society for loans on security,
parish gilds for insurance, and many other phases of that thoroughly
organized mutual aid so characteristic of the Middle Ages.
These parishes became completely organized, so as to be thoroughly
democratic and representative of all the possibilities of local
self-government under King Edward at the end of the Thirteenth and the
beginning of the Fourteenth Century. Rev. Augustus Jessopp, in "After
the Great Pillage," tells the story of how the parishes were broken up
as a consequence of the confiscation of their endowment during the
so-called reformation. The quotation from him may be found in Appendix
III. in the section on "How it all stopped."
Toulmin Smith is not so emphatic, but he is scarcely less explicit
than Jessopp. "The attempts of ecclesiastical authority to encroach on
the civil authorities of the parish have been more successful since
the reformation." As a matter of fact, at that time all government
became centralized, and complete contradiction though it may seem to
be of what is sometimes declared the place of the reformation in the
history {436} of human liberty, the genuine democratic institutions of
England were to a great extent impaired by the reform, and an
autocracy, which later developed into an autocratic aristocracy,
largely took its place. Out of that England has gradually lifted
itself during the Nineteenth Century. Even now, however, as pointed
out in the preceding chapter that might have been, the House of Lords
is not at all what it was in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
when the majority of its members were Lords spiritual, men who had
come up from the masses as a rule.
IV. THE CHANCE TO RISE.
We are very prone to think that even though there may have been
excellent opportunities for the higher education in the Thirteenth
Century and, in many ways, an ideal education of the masses, still
there was one great social drawback in those times, the lack of
opportunity for men of humble birth to rise to higher stations.
Nothing, however, is less true. There probably never was a time when
even members of the poorest families might rise more readily or
rapidly to the highest positions in the land. The sons of village
merchants and village artisans, nay, the sons and grandsons of farmers
bound to the soil, could by educational success become clergymen in
various ranks, and by attaining a bishopric or the position of abbot
or prior of a monastery, reach a seat in the House of Lords. Most of
the Lord High Chancellors of England during the Middle Ages--and some
of them are famous for their genius as canon and civil lawyers, for
their diplomatic abilities and their breadth of view and capacity as
administrators--were the sons of humble parents.
Take the single example of Stratford, the details of whose
inhabitants' lives, because of the greatness of one of them, have
attracted more attention than those of any other town of corresponding
size in England. At the beginning of the Fourteenth Century it is only
what we would call a village, and it probably did not have 3,000
inhabitants, if, indeed, the number was not less than 2,000. In his
book, "Shakespeare the Boy," Mr. Rolfe calls attention to certain
conditions that interest us in the old village. He tells us of what
happened as a result of the development of liberty in the Thirteenth
Century:
"Villeinage gradually disappeared in the reign of Edward VII.
(1327-1337), and those who had been subject to it became free
tenants, paying definite rents for house and land. Three natives of
the town, who, after the fashion of the time, took their surnames
from the place of their birth, rose to high positions in the Church,
one becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, and the others respectively
Bishops of London and Chichester. John of Stratford and Robert of
Stratford were brothers, and Ralph of Stratford was their nephew.
John and Robert were both for a time Chancellors of England, and
there is no other instance of two brothers attaining that high
office in succession."
{437}
To many people the fact that the avenue to rise was through the Clergy
more than in any other way will be disappointing. One advantage,
however, that the old people would insist that they had from their
system was that these men, having no direct descendants, were less
likely to pursue selfish aims and more likely to try to secure the
benefit of the Community than are those who, in our time, rise through
the legal profession. The Lord High Chancellors of recent time have
all been lawyers. Would not most of the world confess that the
advantage was with the medieval peoples?
President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton realized sympathetically this
great element of saving democracy in the Middle Ages, and has paid
worthy tribute to it. He said: "The only reason why government did not
suffer dry rot in the Middle Ages under the aristocratic systems which
then prevailed was that the men who were efficient instruments of
government were drawn from the church--from that great church, that
body which we now distinguish from other church bodies as the Roman
Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church then, as now, was a great
democracy. There was no peasant so humble that he might not become a
priest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become Pope of
Christendom, and every chancellery in Europe was ruled by those
learned, trained and accomplished men--the priesthood of that great
and then dominant church; and so, what kept government alive in the
Middle Ages was this constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from
the rank and file of the great body of the people through the open
channels of the Roman Catholic priesthood."
V. INSURANCE.
Insurance is usually supposed to be a modern idea representing one of
those developments of the capitalization of mutual risks of life,
property, and the like that have come as a consequence of modern
progress. The insurance system of the Middle Ages, the organization of
which came in the Thirteenth Century, is therefore extremely
interesting. It was accomplished, as was every form of co-operation
and co-ordination of effort, through special gilds or through the
trade or merchant gilds. Among the objects of the gilds enumerated by
Toulmin Smith is insurance against loss by fire. This was paid through
the particular gild to which the merchant belonged, or in the case of
the artisan through a special gild which he joined for the purpose.
Provision was made, however, for much more than insurance by fire. Our
fire insurance companies are probably several centuries old, so also
are our insurance arrangements against shipwreck. Other features of
insurance, however, are much more recent. Practically all of these
were in active existence during the Middle Ages, though they
disappeared with the so-called reformation, and then {438} did not
come into existence again for several centuries and, indeed, not until
our own time.
The old gilds, for instance, provided insurance against loss from
flood, a feature of insurance that has not, so far as I know,
developed in our time, against loss by robbery (our burglary insurance
is quite recent), against loss by the fall of a house, by
imprisonment, and then also insurance against the loss of cattle and
farm products. All the features of life insurance also were in
existence. The partial disability clauses of life or accident
insurance policies are recent developments. In the old days there is
insurance against the loss of sight, against the loss of a limb, or
any other form of crippling. The deaf and dumb might be insured so as
to secure an income for them, and corresponding relief for leprosy
might be obtained; so that, if one were set apart from the community
by the law requiring segregation of lepers, there might be provision
for food and lodging, even though productive work had become
impossible. In a word, the insurance system of the Middle Ages was
thoroughly developed. It was not capitalistic. The charges were only
enough to maintain the system, and not such as to provide large
percentage returns on invested stock and on bonds, and the
accumulation of huge surpluses that almost inevitably lead to gross
abuses. What is best in our modern system of insurance is an imitation
of the older methods. Certain of the trade insurance companies which
assume a portion of the risk on mills, factories and the like, are
typical examples. They know the conditions, enforce proper
precautions, keep an absolute check on suspicious losses, accumulate
only a moderate surplus and present very few opportunities for
insurance abuses. The same thing is true for the fraternal societies
that conduct life insurance. When properly managed they represent the
lowest possible cost and the best efficiency with least opportunities
for fraud and without any temptations to interfere with legislation
and any allurements for legislators to spend their time making strike
and graft bills instead of doing legislative work.
VI. OLD AGE PENSIONS.
This generation has occupied itself much with the question of old age
pensions. Probably most people feel that this is the first time in the
world's history that such arrangements have been made. The movement is
supposed to represent a recent development of humanitarian purpose,
and to be a feature of recent philanthropic evolution. It is rather
interesting, in the light of that idea, to see how well they
accomplish this same purpose in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Centuries. In our time it has been a government affair, with all the
possibilities of abuse that there are in a huge pension system, and
surely no country knows it better than we do here in America. The old
countries, Germany and France, have established a contributing {439}
system of pension. This was the model of their system of caring for
the old and the disabled in the Middle Ages. Toulmin Smith cites a
rule of one of the gilds which gives us exactly the status of the old
age disability pension question. After a workman had been seven years
a member, the gild assured him a livelihood in case of disability from
any cause.
When we recall that employer as well as employee as a rule belonged to
the gild and this was a real mutual organization in which there was a
sharing of the various risks of life, we see how eminently well
adapted to avoid abuses this old system was. Where the pensioners
appeal to a government pension system, abuses are almost inevitable.
There is the constant temptation to exploit the system on the part of
the pensioners, because they have the feeling that if they do not,
others will. Then the investigation of each particular case is
difficult, and favoritism and graft of various kinds inevitably finds
its way in. Where the pension is paid by a small body of fellow
workmen, the investigation is easy, the temptation to exploit does not
readily find place, and while abuses are to some extent inevitable,
these are small in amount, and not likely to be frequent. Friends and
neighbors know conditions, and men are not pauperized by the system,
and if, after an injury that seemed at first so disabling as to be
permanent, the pensioner should improve enough to be able to get back
to work, or, at least, to do something to support himself, the system
is elastic enough so that he is not likely to be tempted to continue
to live on others rather than on his own efforts.
VII. THE WAYS AND MEANS OF CHARITY--ORGANIZED CHARITY.
Most of us would be apt to think that our modern methods of obtaining
funds for charitable purposes represented definite developments, and
that at least special features of our collections for charity were our
own invention. In recent years the value of being able to reach a
great many people even for small amounts has been particularly
recognized. "Tag day" is one manifestation of that. Everyone in a
neighborhood is asked to contribute a small amount for a particular
charitable purpose, and the whole collection usually runs up to a snug
sum. Practices very similar to this were quite common in the
Thirteenth Century. As in our time, it was the women who collected the
money. A rope, for instance, was stretched across a marketplace, where
traffic was busy, and everyone who passed was required to pay a toll
for charity. Occasionally the rope was stretched across a bridge and
the tolls were collected on a particular day each year. Other forms of
charitable accumulation resembled ours in many respects.
Entertainments of various kinds were given for charity, and special
collections were made during the exhibition of mystery plays {440}
partly to pay the expenses of the representation, and the surplus to
go to the charities of the particular gild.
Most of the charity, however, was organized. Indeed it is the
organization of charity during the Thirteenth Century that represents
the best feature of its fraternalism. The needy were cared for by the
gilds themselves. There were practically no poorhouses, and if a man
was willing to work and had already shown this willingness, there were
definite bureaus that would help him at least to feed his family while
he was out of work. This system, however, was flexible enough to
provide also for the ne'er-do-wells, the tramps, the beggars, but they
were given not money, but tokens which enabled them to obtain the
necessaries of life without being able to abuse charity. The
committees of the gilds consulted in various ways among themselves and
with the church wardens so as to be sure that, while all the needy
were receiving help, no one was abusing charity by drawing help from a
number of different quarters. Of course, they did not have the problem
of large city life that we have, and so their comparatively simple
organization of charity sufficed for all the needs of the time, and at
the same time anticipated our methods.
VIII. SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES.
In the first edition of this book I called attention to the fact, that
science, even in our sense of physical science, was, in spite of
impressions to the contrary, a favorite subject for students and
teachers in the early universities. What might have been insisted on,
however, is that these old universities were scientific universities
resembling our own so closely in their devotion to science as to
differ from them only in certain unimportant aspects. Because the
universities for three centuries before the Nineteenth had been
occupied mainly with classical studies, we are prone to think that
these were the main subjects of university teaching for all the
centuries before. Nothing could well be less true. The undergraduate
studies consisted of the seven liberal arts so-called, though these
were largely studied from the scientific standpoint. The quotation
from Prof. Huxley (Appendix III., Education) makes this very clear.
What we would now call the graduate studies consisted of metaphysics,
in which considerable physics were studied, astronomy, medicine, above
all, mathematics, and then the ethical sciences, under which were
studied what we now call ethics, politics and economics. The picture
of these medieval universities as I have given them in my lecture on
Medieval Scientific Universities, in "Education, How Old the New,"
makes this very clear. The interests and studies were very like those
of our own time, only the names for them being different. Nature-study
was a favorite subject, and, as I have pointed out in "The Popes and
Science," Dante must be considered as a great nature student, for he
was able to draw the most exquisite figures from details of knowledge
of living things with which few {441} poets are familiar. The books of
the professors of the Thirteenth Century which have been preserved,
those of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Aquinas, Duns Scotus and
others, make it very clear that scientific teaching was the main
occupation of the university faculties, while the preservation of
these huge tomes by the diligent copying of disciples shows how deeply
interested were their pupils in the science of the time.
IX. MEDICAL TEACHING AND PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS.
At all times in the history of education, the standards of scientific
education, and the institutions of learning, can be best judged from
the condition of the medical schools. When the medical sciences are
taken seriously, when thorough preparation is demanded before their
study may be taken up, when four or five years of attention to
theoretic and practical medicine are required for graduation, and when
the professors are writing textbooks that are to attract attention for
generations afterwards, then, there is always a thoroughly scientific
temper m the university itself. Medicine is likely to suffer, first,
whenever there is neglect of science. The studies of the German
historians, Puschmann, Pagel, Neuberger, and Sudhoff in recent years,
have made it very clear that the medical schools of the universities
of the Thirteenth Century were maintaining high standards. The
republication of old texts, especially in France, has called attention
to the magnificent publications of their professors, while a review of
their laws and regulations confirms the idea of the good work that was
being done. Gurlt, in his history of surgery, "Geschichte der
Chirurgie" (Berlin, 1898), has reviewed the textbooks of Roger and
Roland and the Four Masters, of William of Salicet and Lanfranc and of
many others, in a way to make it very clear that these men were
excellent teachers.
When we discover that three years of preparatory university work was
required before the study of medicine could be begun, and four years
of medical studies were required, with a subsequent year of practice
under a physician's direction, before a license for independent
practice could be issued, then the scientific character of the medical
schools and therefore of the universities to which they were attached
is placed beyond all doubt. These are the terms of the law issued by
the Emperor Frederick II. for the Two Sicilies. That, in substance, it
applied to other countries we learn from the fact that the charters of
medical schools granted by the Popes at this time require proper
university preliminary studies, and four or five years at medicine
before the degree of Doctor could be given. We know besides that in
the cities only those who were graduates of properly recognized
medical schools were allowed to practice medicine, so that there was
every encouragement for the maintenance of professional standards.
Indeed, {442} strange as it may seem to our generation, the standards
of the Thirteenth Century in medical education were much higher than
our own, and their medical schools were doing fine work.
X. MAGNETISM.
For proper understanding of the Thirteenth Century scholars, it is
especially important to appreciate their thoroughly scientific temper
of mind, their powers of observation, and their successful attainments
in science. I know no more compendious way of reaching the knowledge
of these qualities in the medieval mind, than a study of the letter of
Peregrinus, which we would in our time call a monograph on magnetism.
Brother Potamian, in his chapter in "Makers of Electricity" (Fordham
University Press, N. Y., 1909) on Peregrinus and Columbus, sums up the
very interesting contributions of this medieval student of magnetism
to the subject. The list of chapters alone in Peregrinus' monograph
(Epistola) makes it very clear how deep were his interests and how
thoroughly practical his investigations.
[Illustration]
THE DOUBLE PIVOTED NEEDLE OF PEREGRINUS.
They are:--"Part I., Chapter i, purpose of this work; 2,
qualifications of the experimenter; 3, characteristics of a good
lodestone; 4, how to distinguish the poles of a lodestone; 5, how to
tell which pole is north and which is south; 6, how one lodestone
attracts another; 7, how iron touched by a lodestone turns toward the
poles of the world; 8, how a lodestone attracts iron; 9, why the north
pole of one lodestone attracts the south pole of another, and vice
versa; 10, an inquiry into the natural virtue of the lodestone.
"Part II., Chapter 1, construction of an instrument for measuring the
azimuth of the sun, the moon or any star then in the horizon; 2,
construction of a better instrument for the same purpose; 3, the art
of making a wheel of perpetual motion."
In order to illustrate what Peregrinus accomplished it has seemed
worth while to reproduce here the sketches which illustrate his
epistle. We have the double pivoted needle and the first pivoted
compass.
In the light of certain recent events a passage from the "New Naval
History or Complete Review of the British Marine" (London, 1757) is of
special interest. It illustrates perhaps the new confidence that came
to men in sailing to long distances as the result of the {443}
realization of the practical value of the magnetic needle during the
Thirteenth Century.
[Illustration]
FIRST PIVOTED COMPASS (PEREGRINUS, 1269).
"In the year 1360 it is recorded that a friar of Oxford called
Nicholas de Linna (of Lynn), being a good astronomer, went in company
with others to the most northern island, and thence traveled alone,
and that he went to the North Pole, by means of his skill in magic, or
the black art; but this magic or black art may probably have been
nothing more than a knowledge of the magnetic needle or compass, found
out about sixty years before, though not in common use until many
years after."
XI. BIOLOGICAL THEORIES, EVOLUTION, RECAPITULATION.
Of course only those who are quite unfamiliar with the history of
philosophic thought are apt to think that the theory of evolution is
modern. Serious students of biology are familiar with the long history
of the theory, and especially its anticipations by the Greeks. Very
few know, however, that certain phases of evolutionary theory
attracted not a little attention from the scholastic philosophers. It
would not be difficult to find expressions in Roger Bacon and Albertus
Magnus, that would serve to show that they thought not only of the
possibility of some very intimate relation of species but of
developmental connections. The great teacher of the time, St. Thomas
Aquinas, has some striking expressions in the matter, which deserve to
be quoted, because he is the most important representative of the
philosophy and science of the century and the one whose works most
influenced succeeding generations. In the lecture on Medieval
Scientific Universities, published in "Education, How Old the New"
(Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1910), I called particular attention
to this phase of St. Thomas' teaching. Two quotations will serve to
make it clear here.
Prof. Osborne, in "From the Greeks to Darwin," quotes Aquinas'
commentary on St. Augustine's opinion with regard to the origin of
things as they are. Augustine declared that the Creator had simply
{444} brought into life the seeds of things, and given these the power
to develop. Aquinas, expounding Augustine, says:
"As to production of plants, Augustine holds a different view, . . .
for some say that on the third day plants were actually produced,
each in his kind--a view favored by the superficial reading of
Scripture. But Augustine says that the earth is then said to have
brought forth grass and trees _causaliter_; that is, it then
received power to produce them." (Quoting Genesis ii:4): "For in
those first days, . . . God made creation primarily or _causaliter_,
and then rested from His work."
Like expressions might be quoted from him, and other writers of the
Thirteenth Century might well be cited in confirmation of the fact
that while these great teachers of the Middle Ages thoroughly
recognize the necessity for creation to begin with and the placing by
the Creator of some power in living things that enables them to
develop, they were by no means bound to the thought that all living
species were due to special creations. They even did not hesitate to
teach the possibility of the lower order of living beings at least
coming into existence by spontaneous generation, and would probably
have found no difficulty in accepting a theory of descent with the
limitations that most scientific men of our generation are prone to
demand for it.
Lest it should be thought that this is a mere accidental agreement
with modern thought, due much more to a certain looseness of terms
than to actual similarity of view, it seems well to point out how
close St. Thomas came to that thought in modern biology, which is
probably considered to be one of our distinct modern contributions to
the theory of evolution, though, in recent years, serious doubts have
been thrown on it. It is expressed by the formula of Herbert Spencer,
"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." According to this, the completed
being repeats in the course of its development the history of the
race, that is to say, the varying phases of foetal development from
the single cell in which it originates up to the perfect being of the
special type as it is born into the world, retrace the history by
which from the single cell being the creature in question has
gradually developed.
It is very curious to find that St. Thomas Aquinas, in his teaching
with regard to the origin and development of the human being, says,
almost exactly, what the most ardent supporters of this so-called
fundamental biogenetic law proclaimed during the latter half of the
Nineteenth Century, thinking they were expressing an absolutely new
thought. He says that "the higher a form is in the scale of being and
the farther it is removed from mere material form, the more
intermediate forms must be passed through before the finally perfect
form is reached. Therefore, in the generation of animal and man--
these having the most perfect forms--there occur many intermediate
forms in generations, and consequently destruction, because the {445}
generation of one being is the destruction of another." St. Thomas
draws the ultimate conclusions from this doctrine without hesitation.
He proclaims that the human material is first animated by a vegetative
soul or principle of life, and then by an animal soul, and only
ultimately when the matter has been properly prepared for it by a
rational soul. He said: "The vegetative soul, therefore, which is
first in embryo, while it lives the life of a plant, is destroyed, and
there succeeds a more perfect soul, which is at once nutrient and
sentient, and for that time the embryo lives the life of an animal:
upon the destruction of this there succeeds the rational soul, infused
from without."
XII. THE POPE OF THE CENTURY.
The absence of a chapter on the Pope of the Century has always seemed
a lacuna in the previous editions of this book. Pope Innocent III.,
whose pontificate began just before the century opened, and occupied
the first fifteen years of it, well deserves a place beside Francis
the Saint, Thomas the Scholar, Dante the Poet, and Louis the Monarch
of this great century. More than any other single individual he was
responsible for the great development of the intellectual life that
took place, but at the same time his wonderfully broad influence
enabled him to initiate many of the movements that meant most for
human uplift and for the alleviation of suffering in this period. It
was in Councils of the Church summoned by him that the important
legislation was passed requiring the development of schools, the
foundation of colleges in every diocese and of universities in
important metropolitan sees. What he accomplished for hospitals has
been well told by Virchow, from whom I quote a magnanimous tribute in
the chapter on the Foundation of City Hospitals. The legislation of
Innocent III. did much to encourage, and yet to regulate properly the
religious orders of this time engaged in charitable work. Besides
doing so much for charity, he was a stern upholder of morals. As more
than one king of the time realized while Innocent was Pope, there
could be no trifling with marriage vows.
On the other hand, while Innocent was so stern as to the enforcement
of marriage laws, his wonderfully judicious character and his care for
the weak and the innocent can be particularly noted in his treatment
of the children in these cases. While he compelled recalcitrant kings
to take back the wives they would repudiate, and put away other women
who had won their affections, he did not hesitate to make due
provision as far as possible for the illegitimate children. Pirie
Gordon, in his recent life of Pope Innocent III., notes that he
invariably legitimated the offspring of these illegal unions of kings,
and even declared them capable of succession. He would not visit the
guilt of the parent on the innocent offspring.
{446}
Innocent did more to encourage the idea of international arbitration
than anyone up to his time. During his period more than once he was
the arbitrator to whom rival national claims that might have led to
war were referred. Probably his greatest claim on our admiration in
the modern time is his attitude toward the Jews. In this he is
centuries ahead of his time and, indeed, the policy that he laid down
is far ahead of what is accorded to them by many of the nations even
at the present time, and it must not be forgotten that it is only
during the past hundred years that the Jew has come to have any real
privileges comparable to those accorded to other men. At a time when
the Jew had no real rights in law, Innocent insisted on according them
all the rights of men. His famous edict in this regard is well known.
"Let no Christian by violence compel them to come dissenting or
unwilling to Baptism. Further let no Christian venture maliciously to
harm their persons without a judgment of the civil power, to carry off
their property or change their good customs which they have had
hitherto in that district which they inhabit." When, in addition to
all this, it is recalled that he was a distinguished scholar and
graduate of the University of Paris, looked up to as one of the
intellectual geniuses of the time, the author of a treatise "On the
Contempt of the World" at a time when the kings of the earth were
obeying him, known for his personal piety and for his thorough
regulation of his own household, something of the greatness of the man
will be appreciated. No wonder that historians who have taken up the
special study of his career have always been won over to deep personal
admiration of him, and though many of them began prejudiced in his
regard, practically all of them were converted to be his sincere
admirers.
XIII. INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.
During the Peace Conference in New York in 1908 I was on the programme
with Mr. William T. Stead of London, the editor of the English _Review
of Reviews_, who was very much interested in the volume on the
Thirteenth Century, and who suggested that one chapter in the book
should have been devoted to the consideration of what was accomplished
for peace and for International Arbitration during this century. There
is no doubt that there developed, as the result of many Papal decrees,
a greater tendency than has existed ever before or since, to refer
quarrels between nations that would ordinarily end in war to decision
by some selected umpire. Usually the Pope, as the head of the
Christian Church, to which all the nations of the civilized world
belonged, was selected as the arbitrator. This international
arbitration, strengthened by the decrees of Pope Innocent III., Pope
Honorius III. and Pope Alexander III., developed in a way that is well
worth while studying, and that has deservedly been the subject of
careful investigation since the present {447} peace movement began.
Certainly the outlook for the securing of peace by international
arbitration was better at this time than it has been at any time
since. What a striking example, for instance, is the choice of King
Louis of France as the umpire in the dispute between the Barons and
the King of England, which might have led to war. Louis' position with
regard to the Empire and the Papacy was to a great extent that of a
pacificator, and his influence for peace was felt everywhere
throughout Europe. The spirit of the century was all for arbitration
and the adjudication of intranational as well as international
difficulties by peaceful means.
XIV. BIBLE REVISION.
Most people will be quite sure that at least the question of Bible
revision with critical study of text and comparative investigation of
sources was reserved for our time. The two orders of friars founded in
the early part of the Thirteenth Century, however, devoted themselves
to the task of supplying to the people a thoroughly reliable edition
of the Scriptures. The first systematic revision was made by the
Dominicans about 1236. After twenty years this revision was set aside
as containing too many errors, and another Dominican correction
replaced it. Then came that great scholar, Hugh of St. Cher, known
later as the Cardinal of Santa Sabina, the author of the first great
Biblical Concordance. His Bible studies did much to clarify
obscurities in the text. Sometime about 1240 he organized a commission
of friars for the revision of what was known as the Paris Exemplar,
the Bible text that was most in favor at that time. The aim of Hugh of
St. Cher was to establish the old Vulgate of St. Jerome, the text
which received this name during this century, but with such revision
as would make this version correspond as nearly as possible to the
Hebrew and the Greek.
This activity on the part of the Dominicans was rivaled by the
Franciscans. We might not expect to find the great scientist, Roger
Bacon, as a Biblical scholar and reviser, but such he was, working
with Willermus de Mara, to whom, according to Father Denifle, late the
Librarian of the Vatican Library, must be attributed the title given
him by Roger Bacon of Sapientissimus Vir. The Dominicans under the
leadership of Hugh of St. Cher with high ideals had hoped to achieve a
perfect primitive text. The version made by de Mara, however, with the
approval and advice of Bacon, was only meant to bring out St. Jerome's
text as perfectly as possible. These two revisions made in the
Thirteenth Century are typical of all the efforts that men have made
since in that same direction. Contrary to usual present day
impressions, they are characterized by critical scholarship, and
probably represent as great a contribution to Biblical lore as was
made by any other century.
{448}
XV. FICTION OF THE CENTURY.
Ordinarily it would be presumed that life was taken entirely too
seriously during the Thirteenth Century for the generation to pay much
attention to fiction. In a certain sense this is true. In the sense,
however, that they had no stories worthy of the great literature in
other departments it would be quite untrue. There is a naivete about
their story telling that rather amuses our sophisticated age, yet all
the elements of our modern fiction are to be found in the stories that
were popular during the century, and arranged with a dramatic effect
that must have given them a wide appeal.
The most important contribution to the fiction of the century is to be
found in the collection known as the _Cento Novelle Antiche_ or
"Hundred Ancient Tales," which contains the earliest prose fiction
extant in Italian. Many of these come from a period anterior to Dante,
and it is probable from what Manni, the learned editor of the
_Novelliero_, says, that they were written out in the Thirteenth
Century and collected in the early part of the Fourteenth Century.
They did not all originate in Italy, and, indeed, Manni considers that
most of them derived their origin from Provence. They represent the
interest of the century in fiction and in anecdotal literature.
As for the longer fiction, the pure love story of the modern time, we
have one typical example of it in that curious relic of the Middle
Ages, "Aucassin and Nicolette." The manuscript which preserved this
for us comes from the Thirteenth Century. Perhaps, as M. Paris
suggests, the tale itself is from the preceding century. At least it
was the interest of the Thirteenth Century in it that saved it for us.
For those who think that the love romance in any of its features is
novel, though we call it by that name, or that there has been any
development of human nature which enables the writer of love stories
to appeal to other and deeper, or purer and loftier feelings in his
loved ones now than in the past, all that is needed, as it seems to
me, is a casual reading of this pretty old song-story.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of this oldest specimen of modern
fiction is the number of precious bits of psychologic analysis or, at
least, what is called that in the recent time, which occur in the
course of it. For instance, when Aucassin is grieving because he
cannot find Nicolette he wanders through the forest on horseback, and
is torn by trees and brambles, but "he feels it not at all." On the
other hand, when he finds Nicolette, though he is suffering from a
dislocated shoulder, he no longer feels any pain in it, because of his
joy at the meeting, and Nicolette (first aid to the injured) is able
to replace the dislocated part without difficulty (the trained nurse
in fiction) because he is so happy as not to notice the pain
(psychotherapy). The herdsman whom he meets wonders that Aucassin,
with plenty of money and victuals, should grieve so much over the loss
of Nicolette, {449} while he has so much more cause to grieve over the
loss of an ox, which means starvation to him. Toward the end of the
story we have the scene in which Nicolette, stolen from home when very
young, and utterly unable to remember anything about her childhood,
has brought back to her memory by the view of the city of Carthage
forgotten events of her childhood (subconscious memory). These
represent naively enough, it is true, the study of the mind under
varying conditions that has in recent years been given the rather
ambitious name of psychology in fiction.
XVI. GREAT ORATORS.
Without a chapter on the great orators of the period an account of the
Thirteenth Century is quite incomplete. Great as were the other forms
of literature, epic, lyric and religious poetry and the prose writing,
it is probable that the oratory of the time surpassed them all. When
we recall that the Cid, the Arthur Legends, the Nibelungen, the
Meistersingers, and the Minnesingers, Reynard the Fox, the Romance of
the Rose, the Troubadours, and even Dante are included in the other
term of the comparison thus made, it may seem extravagant, but what we
know of the effect of the orators of the time fully justifies it. Just
before the Thirteenth Century, great religious orators swayed the
hearts and minds of people, to the organization of the Crusades. At
the beginning of the Thirteenth Century the mendicant orders were
organized, and their important duties were preaching and teaching. The
Dominicans were of course the Order of Preachers, and we have
traditions of their sway over the minds of the people of the time
which make it very clear that their power was equal to that exerted in
any other department of human expression. There are traditions
particularly of the oratory of the Dominicans among the German races,
which serve to show how even a phlegmatic people can be stirred to the
very depths of their being by the eloquent spoken word. In France the
traditions are almost as explicit in this matter, and there are
remains of religious orations that fully confirm the reputation of the
orators of the time.
Rhetoric and oratory was studied very assiduously. Cicero was the
favorite reading of the great preachers of the time, and we find the
court preachers of St. Louis, Etienne de Bourbon, Elinand, Guillaume
de Perrault and others appealing to his precepts as the infallible
guide to oratory. Quintilian was not neglected, however, and Symmachus
and Sidonius Apollinaris were also faithfully studied. If we turn to
the speeches that are incorporated in the epics, as, for instance, the
Cid, or in some of the historians, as Villehardouin, we have definite
evidence of the thorough command of the writers of the time over the
forms of oratory. M. Paullin Paris, the authority in our time on the
literature of the Thirteenth Century, quotes a passage from
Villehardouin in which Canon de Bethune speaks in the {450} name of
the French chiefs of the Fourth Crusade to the Emperors Isaac and
Alexis Comnenus. M. Paris does not hesitate to declare that the
passage is equal to many of the same kind that have been much admired
in the classic authors. It has the force, the finish and the
compression of Thucydides.
XVII. GREAT BEGINNINGS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Only the fact that this work was getting beyond the number of printed
pages determined for it in the first edition prevented the insertion
of a chapter especially devoted to the great beginnings of English
literature in the Thirteenth Century. The most important contributions
to Early English were made at this period. The Ormulum and Layamon's
Brut, both written probably during the first decade of the Thirteenth
Century, have become familiar to all students of Old English. Mr.
Gollancz goes so far as to say that "The Ormulum is perhaps the most
valuable document we possess for the history of English sound. Orm was
a purist in orthography as well as in vocabulary, and may fittingly be
described as the first of English phoneticians."
[Illustration]
MANUSCRIPT OF ORMULUM (THIRTEENTH CENTURY)
Of Layamon, Garnett said in his "English Literature" (Garnett and
Gosse): "It would have sufficed for the fame of Layamon had he been no
more than the first minstrel to celebrate Arthur in English song, but
his own pretensions as a poet are by no means inconsiderate. He is
everywhere vigorous and graphic, and improved upon his predecessor,
Wace, alike by his additions and expansions, and by his more spiritual
handling of the subjects common to both." Even more important in the
history of language than these is _The Ancren Riwle_ (The Anchorites'
Rule). This was probably written by Richard Poore, Bishop of
Salisbury, for three Cistercian nuns. Its place in English literature
may be judged from a quotation or two with regard to it. Mr.
Kington-Oliphant says: "_The Ancren Riwle_ is the forerunner of a
wondrous change in our speech. More than anything else written outside
the Danelagh, that piece has influenced our standard {451} English."
Garnett says: "_The Ancren Riwle_ is a work of great literary merit
and, in spite of its linguistic innovations, most of which have
established themselves, well deserves to be described as 'one of the
most perfect models of simple eloquent prose in our language.'"
The religious poetry of the time is not behind the great prose of _The
Ancren Riwle_, and one of them, the _Luve Ron_ (Love Song) of Thomas
de Hales, is very akin to the spirit of that work, and has been well
described as "a contemplative lyric of the simplest, noblest mold."
Garnett says: "The reflections are such as are common to all who have
in all ages pleaded for the higher life under whatsoever form, and
deplored the frailty and transitoriness of man's earthly estate. Two
stanzas on the latter theme as expressed in a modernized version might
almost pass for Villon's:--
"Paris and Helen, where are they,
Fairest in beauty, bright to view?
Amadas, Tristrem, Ideine, yea
Isold, that lived with love so true?
And Caesar, rich in power and sway,
Hector the strong, with might to do?
All glided from earth's realm away,
Like shaft that from the bow-string flew.
"It is as if they ne'er were here.
Their wondrous woes have been a' told,
That it is sorrow but to hear;
How anguish killed them sevenfold,
And how with dole their lives were drear;
Now is their heat all turned to cold.
Thus this world gives false hope, false fear;
A fool, who in her strength is bold."
XVIII. GREAT ORIGINS IN MUSIC.
In the chapter on the Great Latin Hymns a few words were said about
one phase of the important musical development in the Thirteenth
Century, that of plain chant. In that simple mode the musicians of the
Thirteenth Century succeeded in reaching a climax of expression of
human feeling in such chants as the _Exultet_ and the _Lamentation_
that has never been surpassed. Something was also said about the
origin of part music, but so little that it might easily be thought
that in this the century lagged far behind its achievements in other
departments. M, Pierre Aubry has recently published (1909) _Cent
Motets du XIIIe Siecle_ in three volumes. His first volume contains a
photographic reproduction of the manuscript of Bamberg from which the
hundred musical modes are secured, the second a transcription in
modern musical notation of the old music, and the third volume studies
and commentaries on the music and the times. If anything were needed
to show how utterly ignorant we have been of the interests and
artistic achievements of the Middle Ages, it is this book of M. Aubry.
Victor Hugo said that music dates from the Sixteenth Century, and it
has been quite the custom, even for people who thought they {452} knew
something about music, to declare that we had no remains of any music
before the Sixteenth Century worth while talking about. Ancient music
is probably lost to us forever, but M. Aubry has shown conclusively
that we have abundant remains to show us that the musicians of the
Thirteenth Century devoted themselves to their art with as great
success as their rivals in the other Gothic arts and, indeed, they
thought that they had nearly exhausted its possibilities and tried to
make a science of it. By their supposedly scientific rules they
succeeded in binding music so firmly as to bring about its obscuration
in succeeding centuries. This is, however, the old story of what has
happened in every art whenever genius succeeds in finding a great mode
of expression. A formula is evolved which often binds expression so
rigorously as to prevent natural development.
XIX. A CHAPTER ON MANNERS.
Whatever the people of the Middle Ages may have been in morals, their
manners are supposed to have been about as lacking in refinement as
possible. As for nearly everything else, however, this impression is
utterly false, and is due to the assumption that because we are
better-mannered than the generations of a century or two ago,
therefore we must be almost infinitely in advance, in the same
respect, of the people of seven centuries ago. There are ups and downs
in manners, however, as there are in education, and the beginnings of
the formal setting forth of modern manners are, like everything else
modern, to be found in the Thirteenth Century. About the year 1215
Thomasin Zerklaere wrote in German a rather lengthy treatise, _Der
Waelsche Gast_, on manners. It contains most of the details of polite
conduct that have been accepted in later times. Not long afterwards,
John Garland, an Oxford man who had lived in France for many years,
wrote a book on manners for English young men. He meant this to be a
supplement to Dionysius Cato's treatise, written probably in the
Fourth Century in Latin, which was concerned more with morals than
manners and had been very popular during the Middle Ages. Garland's
book was the first of a series of such treatises on manners which
appeared in England at the close of the Middle Ages. Many of them have
been recently republished, and are a revelation of the development of
manners among our English forefathers. The book is usually alluded to
in literature as Liber Faceti, or as Facet; the full title was, "The
Book of the Polite Man, Teaching Manners for Men, Especially for Boys,
as a Supplement to those which were Omitted by the Most Moral Cato."
The "Romance of the Rose" has, of course, many references to manners
which show us how courtesy was cultivated in France. In Italy, Dante's
teacher, Bruneto Latini, published his "Tesoretto," which treats of
manners, and which was soon followed by a number of similar treatises
in {453} Italian. In a word, we must look to the Thirteenth Century
for the origin, or at least the definite acceptance, of most of those
conventions which make for kindly courtesy among men, and have made
possible human society and friendly intercourse in our modern sense of
those words.
We are prone to think that refinement in table manners is a matter of
distinctly modern times. In "The Babees' Book," which is one of the
oldest books of English manners, the date of which in its present form
is about the middle of the Fourteenth Century, many of our rules of
politeness at table are anticipated. This book is usually looked upon
as a compilation from preceding times, and the original of it is
supposed to be from the preceding century. A few quotations from it
will show how closely it resembles our own instructions to children:
"Thou shalt not laugh nor speak nothing
While thy mouth be full of meat or drink;
Nor sup thou not with great sounding
Neither pottage nor other thing.
At meat cleanse not thy teeth, nor pick
With knife or straw or wand or stick.
While thou holdest meat in mouth, beware
To drink; that is an unhonest chare;
And also physic forbids it quite.
Also eschew, without strife.
To foul the board cloth with thy knife.
Nor blow not on thy drink or meat,
Neither for cold, neither for heat.
Nor bear with meat thy knife to mouth.
Whether thou be set by strong or couth.
Lean not on elbow at thy meat,
Neither for cold nor for heat.
Dip not thy thumb thy drink into;
Thou art uncourteous if thou it do.
In salt-cellar if thou put
Or fish or flesh that men see it,
That is a vice, as men me tells;
And great wonder it would be else."
The directions, "how to behave thyself in talking with any man," in
one of these old books, are very minute and specific:--
"If a man demand a question of thee.
In thine answer making be not too hasty;
Weigh well his words, the case understand
Ere an answer to make thou take in hand;
Else may he judge in thee little wit,
To answer to a thing and not hear it.
Suffer his tale whole out to be told.
Then speak thou mayst, and not be controlled;
In audible voice thy words do thou utter,
Not high nor low, but using a measure.
Thy words see that thou pronounce plaine.
And that they spoken be not in vain;
In uttering whereon keep thou an order,
Thy matter thereby thou shalt much forder
Which order if thou do not observe.
From the purpose needs must thou swerve."
{454}
XX. TEXTILE WORK OF THE CENTURY.
A special chapter might easily have been written on the making of fine
cloths of various kinds, most of which reached their highest
perfection in the Thirteenth Century. Velvet, for instance, is
mentioned for the first time in England in 1295, but existed earlier
on the continent, and cut velvets with elaborate patterns were made in
Genoa exactly as we know finished velvet now. Baudekin or Baldichin, a
very costly textile of gold and silk largely used in altar coverings
and hangings, came to very high perfection in this century also. The
canopy for the Blessed Sacrament is, because of its manufacture from
this cloth, still called in Italy a _baldichino_. Chaucer in the next
century tells how the streets in royal processions were "hanged with
cloth of gold and not with serge." Satin also was first manufactured
very probably in the Thirteenth Century. It is first mentioned in
England about the middle of the Fourteenth Century, when Bishop
Grandison made a gift of choice satins to Exeter Cathedral. The word
satin, however, is derived from the silks of the Mediterranean, called
by the Italians _seta_ and by the Spanish _seda_, and the art of
making it was brought to perfection during the preceding century.
The art of making textiles ornamented with elaborate designs of animal
forms and of floral ornaments reached its highest perfection in the
Thirteenth Century. In one of the Chronicles we learn that in 1295 St.
Paul's in London owned a hanging "patterned with wheels and two-headed
birds." We have accounts of such elaborate textile ornamentation as
peacocks, lions, griffins and the like. Almeria in Andalusia was a
rich city in the Thirteenth Century, noted for its manufactures of
textiles. A historian of the period writes: "Christians of all nations
came to its port to buy and sell. Then they traveled to other parts of
the interior of the country, where they loaded their vessels with such
goods as they wanted. Costly silken robes of the brightest colors are
manufactured in Almeria." Marco-Polo says of the Persians that, when
he passed through that country (end of the Thirteenth Century), "there
are excellent artificers in the city who make wonderful things in
gold, silk and embroidery. The women make excellent needlework in silk
with all sorts of creatures very admirably wrought therein." He also
reports the King of Tartary as wearing on his birthday a most precious
garment of gold, and tells of the girdles of gold and silver, with
pearls and ornaments of great price on them.
Unfortunately English embroidery fell off very greatly at the time of
the Wars of the Roses. These wars constitute the main reason why
nearly every form of intellectual accomplishment and artistic
achievement went into decadence during the Fourteenth Century, from
which they were only just emerging when the so-called {455}
reformation, with its confiscation of monastic property, and its
destruction of monastic life, came to ruin schools of all kinds, and,
above all, those in which the arts and crafts had been taught so
successfully. France at the end of the Thirteenth Century saw a
similar rise to excellence of textile and embroidery work. In 1299
there is an allusion to one Clement le Brodeur who furnished a
magnificent cope for the Count of Artois. In 1316 a beautifully
decorated set of hangings was made for the Queen by Gautier de
Poulleigny. There are other references to work done in the early part
of the Fourteenth Century, which serve to show the height which art
had reached in this mode during the Thirteenth Century. In Ireland,
while the finer work had its due place, the making of woolens was the
specialty, and the dyeing of woolen cloth made the Irish famous and
brought many travelers from the continent to learn the secret.
The work done in England in embroidery attracted the attention of the
world. English needlework became a proverb. In the body of the book I
mentioned the cope of Ascoli, but there were many such beautiful
garments. The Syon cope is, in the opinion of Miss Addison, author of
"Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages," the most conspicuous example of
the medieval embroiderers' art. It was made by nuns about the middle
of the Thirteenth Century, that is, just about the same time as the
cope of Ascoli, but in a convent near Coventry. According to Miss
Addison "it is solid stitchery on a canvas ground, wrought about with
divers colors' on green. The design is laid out in a series of
interlacing square forms, with rounded and barbed sides and corners.
In each of these is a figure or a Scriptural scene. The orphreys, or
straight borders, which go down on both fronts of the cope, are
decorated with heraldic charges. Much of the embroidery is raised, and
wrought in the stitch known as Opus Anglicanum. The effect was
produced by pressing a heated metal knob into the work at such points
as were to be raised. The real embroidery was executed on a flat
surface, and then bossed up by this means until it looked like
bas-relief. The stitches in every part run in zig-zags, the vestments,
and even the nimbi about the heads, are all executed with the stitches
slanting in one direction, from the center of the cope outward,
without consideration of the positions of the figures. Each face is
worked in circular progression outward from the center, as well. The
interlaces are of crimson, and look well on the green ground. The
wheeled cherubim is well developed in the design of this famous cope,
and is a pleasing decorative bit of archaic ecclesiasticism. In the
central design of the Crucifixion, the figure of the Lord is rendered
in silver on a gold ground."
XXI. GLASS-MAKING.
A chapter might well have been devoted to Thirteenth Century
glass-making quite apart from the stained glass of the cathedral {456}
windows. All over Europe some of the most wonderful specimens of
colored glass we possess were made in the Thirteenth Century. Recently
Mr. Frederick Rolfe has looked up for me Venetian glass, of the three
centuries, the Twelfth, the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth. He says
Twelfth Century glass is small in form, simple and ignorant in model,
excessively rich and brilliant in colors; the artist evidently had no
ideal, but the Byzantine of jewels and emeralds.
"Thirteenth Century glass is absolutely different. The specimens are
pretty. The work of the Beroviero family is large and splendid in
form, exquisite and sometimes elaborate in model, mostly crystal
glass reticently studded with tiny colored gem-like knobs. There are
also fragments of two windows pieced together, and missing parts
filled with the best which modern Murano can do. These show the
celebrated Beroviero Ruby glass (secret lost) of marvelous depth and
brilliancy in comparison with which the modern work is merely
watery. The ancient is just like a decanter of port-wine.
"Fourteenth Century returns to the wriggling ideal and exiguous form
of the Twelfth Century, and fails woefully in brilliance of color.
It is small and dull and undistinguished. One may find out what war
or pest afflicted Murano at this epoch to explain the singular
degradation."
This same curious degradation took place in the manufacture of most
art objects during the Fourteenth Century. One would feel in Mr.
Rolfe's words like looking for some physical cause for it. The
decadence is so universal, however, that it seems not unlikely that it
follows some little known human law, according to which, after man has
reached a certain perfection of expression in an art or craft, there
comes, in the striving after originality yet variety, an overbalancing
of the judgment, a vitiation of the taste in the very luxuriance of
beauty discovered that leads to decay. It is the very contradiction of
the supposed progress of mankind through evolution, but it is
illustrated in many phases of human history and, above all, the
history of art, letters, education and the arts and crafts.
XXII. INVENTIONS.
Most people are sure to think that, at least in the matter of
inventions, ours is the only time worth considering. The people of the
Thirteenth Century, however, made many wonderful inventions and
adaptations of mechanical principles, as well as many ingenious
appliances. Their faculty of invention was mainly devoted to work in
other departments besides that of mechanics. They were inventors of
designs in architecture, in decoration, in furnishings, in textiles,
and in the beautiful things of life generally. Their inventiveness in
the arts and crafts was especially admirable and, indeed, has been
fruitful in our time, since, with the reawakening in this matter, we
have gone back to imitate their designs. Good authorities declare
these to be endless in number and variety. Such mechanical inventions
as were {457} needed for the building of their great cathedrals, their
municipal buildings, abbeys, castles, piers, bridges and the like were
admirably worked out. Necessity is the mother of invention, and
whenever needs asserted themselves, these old generations responded to
them, very successfully. There are, however, a number of inventions
that would attract attention even, in the modern time for their
practical usefulness and ingenuity. With the growth of the
universities writing became much more common, textbooks were needed,
and so paper was invented. With the increase of reading, to replace
teaching by hearing, spectacles were invented. Time became more
precious, clocks were greatly improved, and we hear of the invention
of something like an alarm clock, an apparatus which, after a fixed
number of hours, woke the monk of the abbey whose duty it was to
arouse the others. Organs for churches were greatly improved, bells
were perfected, and everything else in connection with the churches so
well fashioned that we still use them in their Thirteenth Century
forms. Gunpowder was not invented, but a great many new uses were
found for it, and Roger Bacon even suggested, as I have said, that
sometime explosives would enable boats to move by sea without sails or
oars, or carriages to move on land without horses or men. Roger Bacon
even suggested the possibility of airships, described how one might be
made, the wings of which would be worked by a windlass, and thought
that he could make it. His friend and pupil, Peregrinus, invented the
double pivoted compass, and, as the first perpetual-motion faddist,
described how he would set about making a magnetic engine that he
thought would run forever. When we recall how much they accomplished
mechanically in the construction of buildings, it becomes evident that
any mechanical problem that these generations wanted solved they
succeeded in solving very well. What they have left us as inventions
are among the most useful appliances that we have. Without paper and
without spectacles, the intellectual world would be in a sad case,
indeed. Many of the secrets of their inventions in the arts and crafts
have been lost, and, in spite of all our study, we have not succeeded
in rediscovering them.
XXIII. INDUSTRY AND TRADE.
We are rather inclined to think that large organizations of industry
and trade were reserved for comparatively modern times. To think so,
however, is to forget the place occupied by the monasteries and
convents in the olden time. We have heard much of the lazy monks, but
only from those who know nothing at all about them. Idleness in the
monasteries was one of the accusations made by the commission set to
furnish evidence to Henry VIII. on which he might suppress the
monasteries, but every modern historian has rejected the findings of
that commission as false. Many forms of manufacture were carried on in
the monasteries and convents. They were {458} the principal bookmakers
and bookbinders. To a great extent they were the manufacturers of art
fabrics and arts-and-crafts work intended for church use, but also for
the decoration of luxurious private apartments. Most of us have known
something of all this finer work, but not that they had much to do
with cruder industries also. They were millers, cloth-makers,
brush- and broom-makers, shoemakers for themselves and their tenantry;
knitting was done in the convents, and all the finer fancy work. A
recent meeting of the Institute of Mining Engineers in England brought
out some discussion of coal mining in connection with the early
history of the coal mines in England. The records of many of the
English monasteries show that in early times the monks knew the value
of coal, and used it rather freely. They also mined it for others. The
monks at Tynemouth are known to have been mining coal on the Manor of
Tynemouth in 1269, and shipping it to a distance. At Durham and at
Finchale Abbey they were doing this also about the same time. It would
require special study to bring out the interesting details, but there
is abundant material not alone for a chapter, but for a volume on the
industries of the Thirteenth Century, which, like the education and
the literature and the culture of the time, we have thought
undeveloped, because we knew nothing of them.
The relation of the monasteries to trade, domestic and foreign, is
very well brought out in a paragraph of Mr. Ralph Adams Cram's book on
"The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain" (New York, The Churchman Co.,
1905), in which he describes the remains at Beaulieu, which show the
place of that monastery, not by any means one of the most important in
England, in trade. For the benefit of their tenantry others had done
even more.
"Some idea of the power of one of these great monasteries may be
gained from traces still existing of the center of trade built up by
the monks outside their gates. Here, at the head of tide water, in a
most out-of-the-way spot, a great stone quay was constructed, to
which came ships from foreign lands. Near by was a great
marketplace, now, as then, called Cheapside, though commerce exists
there no longer. At the height of monastic glory the religious
houses were actually the chief centers of industry and civilization,
and around them grew up the eager villages, many of which now exist,
even though their impulse and original inspiration have long since
departed. Of course, the possessions of the abbey reached far away
from the walls in every direction, including many farms even at a
great distance, for the abbeys were then the great landowners, and
beneficent landlords they were as well, even in their last days, for
we have many records of the cruelty and hardships that came to the
tenants the moment the stolen lands came into the hands of laymen."
XXIV. FAIRS AND MARKETS.
A chapter might well have been devoted to showing the significance of
those curious old institutions, the fairs and market days of the {459}
Middle Ages. The country folk flocked into town, bringing with them
their produce, and found there gathered from many parts merchants come
to exchange and barter. The expense of maintaining a store all the
year around was done away with, and profits did not have to be large.
Exchanges were direct, and the profits of the middlemen were to a
great extent eliminated. It was distinctly to the advantage of the
poor, for the expenses of commerce were limited to the greatest
possible extent, and every advantage accrued to the customer.
Besides, these market days became days of innocent merriment,
amusement and diversion. Wandering purveyors of amusement followed the
fairs, and obtained their living from the generosity of the people who
were amused. These amusements were conducted out of doors, and with
very few of the objectionable features as regards hygiene and morality
that are likely to attach themselves to the same things in our day.
The amusement was what we would call now vaudeville, singing, dancing,
the exhibition of trained animals, acrobatic feats of various kinds,
so that we cannot very well say that our people are in advance of
their medieval forbears in such matters, since their taste is about
the same. Fairs and market days made country life less monotonous by
their regular recurrence, and so prevented that emptying of the
country into the city which we deprecate in our time. They had
economic, social, even moral advantages, that are worth while
studying.
XXV. INTENSIVE FARMING.
We hear much of intensive farming in the modern time, and it is
supposed to be a distinctly modern invention mothered by the necessity
due to great increase of population. One of the most striking features
of the story of monasticism in the countries of Europe, however,
during the Middle Ages, and especially during the Thirteenth Century,
when so many of the greatest abbeys reached a climax of power and
influence and beauty of construction, is their successful devotion
paid to agriculture. In the modern time we are gradually learning the
lesson of growing larger and larger crops on the same area of ground
by proper selection of seed, and of developing cattle in such a way as
to make them most valuable as a by-product of farming. This is exactly
what the old monastic establishments did. At the beginning of the
Thirteenth Century many of them were situated in rather barren
regions, sometimes, indeed, surrounded by thick forests, but at the
end of the century all the great monastic establishments had succeeded
in making beautiful luxuriant gardens for themselves, and had taught
their numerous tenantry the great lessons of agricultural improvement
which made for plenty and happiness.
Many monasteries belonged to the same religious order, and the
traditions of these were carried from one to the other by visiting
{460} monks or sometimes by the transfer of members of one community
to another. The monastic establishments were the great farmers of
Europe, and it was their proud boast that their farming lands, instead
of being exhausted from year to year, were rather increasing in value.
They doubtless had many secrets of farming that were lost and had to
be rediscovered in the modern time, just as in the arts and crafts,
for their success in farming was as noteworthy. Their knowledge of
trees must have been excellent, since they surrounded themselves with
fine forests, at times arranged so as to provide shady walks and
charming avenues. Their knowledge of simple farming must have been
thorough, for the farms of the monasteries were always the most
prosperous, and the tenantry were always the happiest. With the
traditions that we have especially in English history, this seems
almost impossible to credit, but these traditions, manufactured for a
purpose, have now been entirely discredited. We have learned in recent
years what wonderful scholars, architects, painters, teachers,
engineers these monks were, and so it is not surprising to find that
they had magnificently developed agricultural knowledge as well as
that of every other department in which they were particularly
interested.
XXVI. CARTOGRAPHY AND THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY.
In the chapter on Great Explorers and The Foundation of Geography, in
the body of the book, much might have been said about maps and
map-making, for the Thirteenth Century was a great period in this
matter. Lecoy de la Marche among his studies of the Thirteenth Century
has included a volume of a collection of the maps of the Thirteenth
Century. If the purpose had been to make this a work of erudition
rather than of popular information, much might have been said of the
cartography of the time even from this work alone (_Receuil de Charles
du XIII e Siecle_, Paris, 1878). One of the great maps of the
Thirteenth Century, that on the Cathedral wall of Hereford, deserves a
place here. It was made just at the end of the Thirteenth Century. The
idea of its maker was to convey as much information as possible about
the earth, and not merely indicate its political divisions and the
relative size and position of the different parts. It is to a certain
extent at least a resume of history, of physical geography, and even
of geographical biology and anthropology, for it has indications as to
the dwelling-place of animals and curious types of men. It contains,
besides, references to interesting objects of other kinds. Because of
its interest I have reproduced the map itself, and the key to it with
explanations published at Hereford.
{461}
[Illustration]
_Key to the Photograph of the Ancient Map of the World_.
PRESERVED IN HEREFORD CATHEDRAL.
[Illustration]
MAP OF THE WORLD (HEREFORD CATHEDRAL)
The Map is executed on a single sheet of vellum, 54 in. in breadth, by
63 in. in extreme height, it is fixed on a strong framework of oak. At
the top (Fig. 1) is a representation of the Last Judgment. Our Saviour
is represented in glory, and below is the Virgin Mary interceding for
mankind.
For convenience of reference the Key Map is divided into squares
marked by Roman capitals, with the more prominent objects in figures.
I.--Commencing with sq. 1. the circle marked by Fig. 2 represents the
Garden of Eden, with the four rivers, and Adam and Eve eating the
forbidden fruit. The remainder of the square, as also in II. and III.,
is occupied by India. At Fig. 3 is shown the expulsion of Adam and
Eve, to the right of which is shown a race of Giants, and to the left
the City of Enoch, and still further the Golden Mountains guarded by
Dragons. Below these mountains are shown a race of pigmies. In a space
bounded by two rivers is placed a crocodile, and immediately below a
female warrior. To the left of the latter are a pair of birds called
in the Map Alerions. The large {462} river to the left is the Ganges.
II.--Shows one of the inhabitants of this part of India, who are said
to have but one foot, which is sufficiently large to serve as an
umbrella to shelter themselves from the sun. The city in the center is
Samarcand. III.--In which is seen an Elephant, to the left a Parrot. A
part of the Red Sea is also shown with the Island of Taprobana
(Ceylon), on which are shown two Dragons. It also bears an inscription
denoting that dragons and elephants are found there. The small Islands
shown are Crise, Argire, Ophir, and Frondisia (Aphrodisia).
IV.--Contains the Caspian Sea, below which is a figure holding its
tail in his hand, and which the author calls the Minotaur. To the left
is shown one of the Albani, who are said to see better at night than
in the daytime. Below are two warriors in combat with a Griffin (Fig.
27). V.--In the upper part are Bokhara and Thrace, in the latter of
which (Fig. 29) is shown the Pelican feeding its young, to the left a
singular figure representing the Cicones, and to the right the Camel,
in Bactria. Below to the left is the Tiger, and on the right an animal
with a human head and the body of a lion, called the Mantichora. Still
lower is seen Noah's ark (Fig. 28), in which are shown three human
figures, with beasts, birds and serpents. In the lower corner, at Fig.
26, is the Golden Fleece. VI.--The upper parts contain Babylonia, with
the City of Babylon (Fig. 4) on the river Euphrates, below which is
the city of Damascus, which has on its right an unknown animal called
the Marsok. To the right is Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt
(Fig. 8). Decapolis and the River Jordan are near the bottom of the
square. Above the River Euphrates is a figure in a frame representing
the Patriarch Abraham's residence at Ur of the Chaldees. VII.--The Red
Sea (Figs. 5, 5) is the most conspicuous object here. In the fork
formed by it is shown the giving of the Tables of The Law on Mount
Sinai. Below, and touching the line (Fig. 6) showing the wanderings of
the Israelites, is seen the worship of the Golden Calf. The Dead Sea
and submerged Cities are shown lower down to the left, and between
this and the Red Sea is the Phoenix. At the bottom is a mythical
animal with long horns, called the Eale. VIII.--In the upper part is
the Monastery of St. Anthony in Ethiopia. The river to the left is the
Nile, between this and a great interior lake (Figs. 7, 7) is a figure
of Satyr. Beyond the lake, and extending a distance down the Map
(Figs. 12, 12, 12), are various singular figures, supposed to
represent the races dwelling there. In a circular island to the left
(Meroe) is a man riding a crocodile, and at the bottom left-hand
corner is a centaur. IX.--The upper part is Scythia, and shows some
cannibals, below which (Fig. 25) are two Scythians in combat. Under
this again is a man leading a horse with a human skin thrown over it,
and to the right of the latter is placed the ostrich. X.--Asia Minor
with the Black Sea (Fig. 24). Many cities are shown prominent, among
which is Troy (Fig. 21), described as "_Troja civitas
bellicosissima_." Near the bottom to the left is Constantinople. The
lynx is shown near the center. XI.--Is nearly filled by the Holy Land.
In the center is Jerusalem (Fig. 23), the supposed center of the
world, surrounded by a high wall, and above is the Crucifixion. Below
Jerusalem to the right is Bethlehem with the manger. Near a circular
place to the right, called _"Puteus Juramenti"_ (well of the oath), is
an unknown bird, called on the Map Avis Cirenus. XII.--Egypt with the
Nile. At the upper part (Fig. 9) are Joseph's granaries, i.e., the
Pyramids, immediately below which is the Salamander, and to the right
of that the Mandrake. Fig. 10 denotes the Delta with its cities. {463}
On the other side of the Nile, and partly in sq. XIII., is the
Rhinoceros, and below it the Unicorn. XIII.--Ethiopia. In the upper
left-hand corner is the Sphinx, and near the bottom the Temple of
Jupiter Ammon, represented by a singular horse-shoe shaped figure. The
camp of Alexander the Great is in the bottom left-hand corner,
immediately above which is the boundary line between Asia and Africa,
XIV.--At the top of the left is Norway, in which the author has placed
the Monkey. The middle is filled by Russia. The small circular islands
on the left are the Orkneys, immediately below which is an inscription
relating to the Seven Sleepers, Scotland and part of England are shown
in the lower part, but the British Isles will be described in sq. XIX.
The singular triangular figure in the center of this square cannot be
identified. XV.--Germany, with part of Greece, in the upper part to
the right. The Danube and its tributaries are seen in the upper part,
in the lower is the Rhine. On the bank of the latter the scorpion is
placed; Venice is shown on the right, XVI.--Contains Italy and a great
part of the Mediterranean Sea (Fig. 14). About the center (Fig. 17) is
Rome, which bears the inscription, "Roma caput mundi tenet orbis frena
rotundi." In the upper part of the Mediterranean Sea is seen a
Mermaid, below (Fig. 11) is the Island of Crete, with its famous
labyrinth, to the left of which is the rock Scylla. Below Crete is
Sicily (Fig. 15), on which Mount Etna is shown; close to Sicily is the
whirlpool Charybdis, XVII.--Part of Africa; in the lower part to the
left, on a promontory, is seen Carthage; on the right the Leopard is
shown. XVIII.--Also part of Africa. The upper part is Fezzan, below is
shown the basilisk, and still lower some Troglodytes or dwellers in
caves. XIX.--On the left hand are the British Isles (Figs. 19, 20,
22), on the right France. Great Britain (Figs. 19, 22) is very fully
laid down, but of Ireland the author seemed to know but little. In
England twenty-six cities and towns are delineated, among which
Hereford (H'ford) is conspicuous. Twenty rivers are also seen, but the
only mountains shown are the Clee Hills. In Wales, Snowdon is seen,
and the towns of Carnarvon, Conway and St. David's. In Ireland four
towns, Armagh, Bangor, Dublin and Kildare, with two rivers, the Banne,
which, as shown, divides the island in two, and the Shannon. In
Scotland there are six towns. In France the City of Paris (Fig. 18) is
conspicuous. XX.--The upper part is Provence, the lower Spain. In the
Mediterranean Sea are laid down, among others, the Islands of Corsica,
Sardinia, Majorca, and Minorca. At the bottom are (Fig. 16) the
pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), which were considered the extreme
western limits of the world. XXI.--At the top to the left (Fig. 13) is
St. Augustine of Hippo, in his pontifical habit. And at the opposite
corner the Lion, below which are the Agriophagi, a one-eyed people who
live on the flesh of lions and other beasts. The kingdoms on the shore
of the Mediterranean are Algiers, Setif, and Tangier.
{464}
APPENDIX III.
CRITICISMS, COMMENTS, DOCUMENTS.
HUMAN PROGRESS.
For most people the impossible would apparently be accomplished if a
century so far back as the Thirteenth were to be even seriously
thought of as the greatest of centuries. Evolution has come to be
accepted so unquestioningly, that of course "we are the heirs of all
the ages of the foremost files of time," and must be far ahead of our
forbears, especially of the distant past, in everything. When a man
talks glibly about great progress in recent times, he usually knows
only the history of his own time and not very much about that. Men who
have studied other periods seriously hesitate about the claim of
progress, and the more anyone knows about any other period, the less
does he think of his own as surpassing. There are many
exemplifications of this in recent literature. Because this was a
cardinal point in many criticisms of the book, it has seemed well to
illustrate the position here taken as to the absence of progress in
humanity by quotations from recognized authorities. Just as the first
edition of this book came from the press, Ambassador Bryce delivered
his address at Harvard on "What is Progress?" It appeared in the
_Atlantic Monthly_ for August, 1907. Mr. Bryce is evidently not at all
persuaded that there is human progress in any real sense of the word.
Some striking quotations may be made from the address, but to get the
full impression of Mr. Bryce's reasons for hesitation about accepting
any progress, the whole article needs to be read. For instance, he
said:
"It does not seem possible, if we go back to the earliest literature
which survives to us from Western Asia and Southeastern Europe, to
say that the creative powers of the human mind in such subjects as
poetry, philosophy, and historical narrative or portraiture, have
either improved or deteriorated. The poetry of the early Hebrews and
of the early Greeks has never been surpassed and hardly ever
equaled. Neither has the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, nor the
speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero. Geniuses like Dante, Chaucer,
and Shakespeare appear without our being able to account for them,
and for aught we know another may appear at any moment. It is just
as difficult, if we look back five centuries, to assert either
progress or decline in painting. Sculpture has never again risen to
so high a level as it touched in the fifth century, B. C, nor within
the last three centuries, to so high a level as it reached at the
end of the fifteenth. But we can found no generalizations upon that
fact. Music is the most inscrutable of the arts, and whether there
is any progress to be expected other {465} than that which may come
from a further improvement in instruments constituting an orchestra,
I will not attempt to conjecture, any more than I should dare to
raise controversy by inquiring whether Beethoven represents progress
from Mozart, Wagner progress from Beethoven."
Perhaps the most startling evidence on this subject of the absence of
evolution in humanity is the opinion of Prof. Flinders Petrie, the
distinguished English authority on Egyptology, who has added nearly a
millennium to the history of Egypt. His studies have brought him in
intimate contact with Egypt from 2,000 to 5,000 B. C. He has found no
reason at all for thinking that our generation is farther advanced in
any important qualities than men were during this period. In an
article on "The Romance of Early Civilization" (_The Independent_,
Jan. 7, 1909), he said:
"We have now before us a view of the powers of man at the earliest
point to which we can trace written history, and what strikes us
most is how very little his nature or abilities have changed in
seven thousand years; _what he admired we admire; what were his
limits in fine handiwork also are ours_. We may have a wider
outlook, a greater understanding of things; our interests may have
extended in this interval; but so far as human nature and tastes go,
man is essentially unchanged in this interval." . . . "This is the
practical outcome of extending our view of man three times as far
back as we used to look, and it must teach us how little material
civilization is likely in the future to change the nature, the
weaknesses, or the abilities of our ancestors in ages yet to come."
Those who think that man has advanced in practical wisdom during the
6,000 years of history, forget entirely the lessons of literature.
Whenever a great genius has written, he has displayed a knowledge of
human nature as great as any to be found at any other time in the
world's history. The wisdom of Homer and of Solomon are typical
examples. Probably the most striking evidence in this matter is to be
found in what is considered to be the oldest book ever written. This
is the Instructions of Ptah Hotep to his son. Ptah Hotep was the
vizier of King Itosi, of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt (about 3650 B.C.).
There is nothing that a father of the modern time would wish to tell
his boy as the result of his own experience that is not to be found in
this wise advice of a father, nearly 6,000 years ago. This was written
longer before Solomon than Solomon is before us, yet no practical
knowledge to be gained from intercourse with men has been added to
what this careful father of the long ago has written out for his son.
THE CENTURY OF ORIGINS.
To many readers apparently, it has seemed that the main reason for
writing of The Thirteenth as the Greatest of Centuries was the fact
that the Church occupied so large a place in the life of that time,
and that, therefore, most of what was accomplished must naturally
revert {466} to her account. It is not only those who are interested
in the old Church, however, who have written enthusiastically about
the Thirteenth Century. Since writing this volume, I have found that
Mr. Frederick Harrison is almost, if not quite, as ardent in his
praise of it as I have been. There are many others, especially among
the historians of art and of architecture, who apparently have not
been able to say all that they would wish in admiration of this
supreme century. Most of these have not been Catholics; and if we
place beside Mr. Frederick Harrison, the great Positivist of our
generation, Mr. John Morley, the great Rationalist, the chorus of
agreement on the subject of the greatness of the Thirteenth Century
ought to be considered about complete. Mr. Morley, in his address on
Popular Culture, delivered as President of the Midland Institute,
England, October, 1876 (Great Essays. Putnam, New York), said:
"It is the present that really interests us; it is the present that
we seek to understand and to explain. I do not in the least want to
know what happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my
way more clearly through what is happening to-day. I want to know
what men thought and did in the Thirteenth Century, not out of any
dilettante or idle antiquarian's curiosity, but because the
Thirteenth Century is at the root of what men think and do in the
nineteenth."
EDUCATION.
Many even of the most benevolent readers of the book have been quite
sure that it exaggerated the significance of medieval education and,
above all, claimed too much for the breadth of culture given by the
early universities. Prof. Huxley is perhaps the last man of recent
times who would be suspected for a moment of exaggerating the import
of medieval education. In his Inaugural Address on Universities Actual
and Ideal, delivered as Rector of Aberdeen University, after
discussing the subject very thoroughly, he said:
"The scholars of the Medieval Universities seem to have studied
grammar, logic and rhetoric; arithmetic and geometry; astronomy,
theology and music. Thus their work, however imperfect and faulty,
judged by modern lights, it may have been, brought them face to face
with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man. For
these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo, sometimes
it may be in caricature, what we now call philosophy, mathematical
and physical science, and art. _And I doubt if the curriculum of any
modern university shows so clear and generous a comprehension of
what is meant by culture, as this old Trivium and Quadrivium does_."
(Italics ours.)
The results of this system of education may be judged best perhaps
from Dante as an example. In The Popes and Science (Fordham University
Press, N. Y., 1908) a chapter is devoted to Dante as the typical
university man of the time, above all in his knowledge of science as
displayed in his great poem. No poet of the modern time has {467}
turned with so much confidence to every phase of science for his
figures as this product of medieval universities. Anyone who thinks
that the study of science is recent, or that nature study was delayed
till our day, need only read Dante to be completely undeceived.