The fact that the scholars and the profe_The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries

almost without exception believers in the possibility of the

transmutation of metals in the old days, used to be considered by many

educated people as quite sufficient to stamp them as lacking in

judgment and as prone to believe all sorts of incredible and even

impossible things without justification. Such supercilious

condemnation of the point of view of the medieval scholars in this

matter, however, has recently received a very serious jolt. Sometime

ago, Sir William Ramsey, the greatest of living English chemists,

announced at the meeting of the British Association for the

Advancement of Science, that he had succeeded in changing copper into

lithium. This created a sensation at the time, but represented, after

all, a culmination of effort in this direction that had long been

expected. More recently, Sir William has reported to the British

Chemical Society that he has succeeded in obtaining carbon from four

substances not containing this element--bismuth, hydro-fluo-silicic

acid, thorium and zirconium. An American professor of chemistry has

declared that he would like to remove all traces of silver from a

quantity of lead ore, and then, after allowing it to stand for some

years, have the opportunity to re-examine it, since he is confident

that he would find further traces of silver in it that had developed

in the meantime. He is sure that the reason why these two metals

always occur together, as do copper and, gold, is that they are

products of a developmental process, the precious metals being a step

farther on in that process than the so-called base metals. It would

seem, then, that the medieval scholars were not so silly as they used

to appear before we knew enough about the subject to judge them

properly. Only their supercilious critics were silly.

It is probably with regard to the exact sciences that most even

educated people are quite sure that the Thirteenth Century does not

deserve to be thought of as representing great human advance. For them

the Middle Ages were drowsily speculative, but never exact in

thinking. Of course, such people know nothing of the intense exactness

of thought of St. Thomas or Albertus Magnus or Duns Scotus. It would

be impossible, moreover, to make them realize, from the writings of

these men, how exact human thought actually was in the Thirteenth

Century, though the more that modern students devote themselves to

scholastic philosophy, the more surely do they appreciate and admire

this very quality in the medieval philosophy. For such people, very

probably, the only evidence that would have made quite an adequate

answer to their objection, would be a chapter on the mathematics of

the Thirteenth Century. {468} That might very easily have been made,

for Cantor, in his History of Mathematics (Vorlesungen Ueber Geschichte

der Mathematik, Leipzig, 1892), devotes nearly 100 pages of his second

volume to the mathematicians of the Thirteenth Century, two of whom,

Leonardo of Pisa and Jordanus Nemorarius, did so much in Arithmetic,

the Theory of Numbers, Algebra and Geometry, as to make a revolution

in mathematics. Cantor says that they accomplished so much, that their

contemporaries and successors could scarcely follow them, much less go

beyond them. They had great disciples, like John of Sacrobusco

(probably John of Holywood, near Dublin), Joannes Campanus and others.

Cantor calls attention particularly to the spread of arithmetical

knowledge among the masses, which is a well-deserved tribute to the

century, for it was a characteristic of the time that the new thoughts

and discoveries of scholars were soon made practical and penetrated

very widely among the people. Brewer, in the Preface to Roger Bacon's

works, quotes some of Bacon's expressions with regard to the value of

mathematics. The English Franciscan said: "For without mathematics,

nothing worth knowing in philosophy can be attained." And again: "For

he who knows not mathematics cannot know any other science; what is

more, he cannot discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedy."

The term mathematics, as used by Bacon, had a much wider application

then than now, and Brewer notes that the Thirteenth Century scientist

included therein Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music.

With regard to post-graduate education; the best evidence that, far

from any exaggeration of what was accomplished in the Thirteenth

Century, there has been a very conservative estimate of it made in the

book, may be gathered from the legally erected standards of the

medical schools and the legal status of the medical profession. In the

Appendix of The Popes and Science, two Bulls are published, issued by

Pope John XXII. (_Circa_, 1320), establishing medical schools in

Perugia, at that time in the Papal States, and in Cahors, the

birthplace of this pope. These bulls were really the formal charters

of the medical schools. They require three years of preliminary study

at the university and four or five years at medicine before the degree

of doctor may be granted, and in addition emphasized that the

curricula of the new medical schools must be equal to those of Paris

and Bologna. These bulls were issued in the early part of the

fourteenth century, and show the height to which the standards of

medical education had been raised. There will be found also a law of

Frederick II., issued 1241, requiring for all physicians who wished to

practice in the Two Sicilies three years of preliminary study--four

years at the medical school and a year of practice with a physician

before the diploma which constituted a license to practice would be

issued. This law is also a pure drug law forbidding the sale of impure

drugs under penalty of confiscation of goods, and the preparation of

them under penalty of death. Our pure drug law was passed about the

time of the issue of the first edition of this book.

{469}

Those who ask for the results of this post-graduate training may find

them in the story of Guy de Chauliac, the Father of Modern Surgery.

His life formed the basis of a lecture before the Johns Hopkins

Medical Club that is to be published in the Bulletin of John Hopkins

Hospital. It is incorporated in Catholic Churchmen in Science, Second

Series (The Dolphin Press, Phila., 1909). We know Chauliac's work not

by tradition, but from his great text-book on surgery. This great

Papal physician of the fourteenth century operated within the skull,

did not hesitate to open the thorax, sewed up wounds of the

intestines, and discussed such subjects as hernia, catheterization,

the treatment of fractures, and manipulative surgery generally with

wonderful technical ability. His book was the most used text-book for

the next two centuries, and has won the admiration of everyone who has

ever read it.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION OF THE MASSES.

Some of my friends courteously but firmly have insisted with me that I

have greatly exaggerated the technical abilities of the village

workmen of the Middle Ages. That every town of less than ten thousand

inhabitants in England was able to supply such workmen as we can

scarcely obtain in our cities of a million inhabitants, and in that

scanty population supply them in greater numbers than we can now

secure them from our teeming populations, seems to many simply

impossible.

What I have been trying to say, however, in the chapters on the Arts

and Crafts and on Popular Education, has been much better said by an

authority that will scarcely be questioned by my critics. The Rev.

Augustus Jessopp, D. D., who has been for twenty years the Rector of

Searning in England, who is an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College

and of Worcester College, Oxford, besides being an Honorary Canon in

the Cathedral of Norwich, has devoted much time and study to this

question of how the cathedrals were built and finished. Twenty years

of his life have been spent in the study of the old English parish and

of parish life. He has studied the old parish registers, and talks,

therefore, not from distant impressions, but from the actual facts as

they are recorded. If to his position as an antiquarian authority I

add the fact that he is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, to

the credit of which so much of this popular education and

accomplishment in the arts and crafts of the century accrues, the

value of his evidence is placed entirely above suspicion of partisan

partiality. In his chapter on Parish Life in England, in his book

"Before the Great Pillage" (Before the Great Pillage with other

Miscellanies, by Augustus Jessopp, D. D., London. T. Fisher Unwin,

Paternoster Square, 1901), he says:

"The evidence is abundant and positive, and is increasing upon us

year by year, that the work done upon the fabrics of our churches,

and the other work done in the beautifying of the interior of our

churches, such as the woodcarving of our screens, the painting of

the lovely {470} figures in the panels of those screens, the

embroidery of the banners and vestments, the frescoes on the walls,

the engraving of the monumental brasses, the stained glass in the

windows, and all that vast aggregate of artistic achievements which

existed in immense profusion in our village churches till the

sixteenth century stripped them bare--all this was executed by local

craftsmen. The evidence for this is accumulating upon us every year,

as one antiquary after another succeeds in unearthing fragments of

pre-Reformation church-wardens' accounts.

"We have actual contracts for church building and church repairing

undertaken by village contractors. We have the cost of a rood screen

paid to a village carpenter, of painting executed by local artists.

We find the name of an artificer, described as aurifaber, or worker

in gold and silver, living in a parish which could never have had

five hundred inhabitants; we find the people in another place

casting a new bell and making the mould for it themselves; we find

the blacksmith of another place forging the iron work for the church

door, or we get a payment entered for the carving of the bench ends

in a little church five hundred years ago, which bench ends are to

be seen in that church at the present moment. And we get fairly

bewildered by the astonishing wealth of skill and artistic taste and

aesthetic feeling which there must have been in this England of

ours, in times which till lately we had assumed to be barbaric

times. Bewildered, I say, because we cannot understand how it all

came to a dead-stop in a single generation, not knowing that the

frightful spoliation of our churches and other parish buildings, and

the outrageous plunder of the parish gilds in the reign of Edward

the Sixth by the horrible band of robbers that carried on their

detestable work, effected such a hideous obliteration, such a clean

sweep of the precious treasures that were dispersed in rich

profusion over the whole land, that a dull despair of ever replacing

what had been ruthlessly pillaged crushed the spirit of the whole

nation, and art died out in rural England, and King Whitewash and

Queen Ugliness ruled supreme for centuries."

My argument is that a century which produced such artist-artisans

everywhere, had technical schools in great profusion, though they may

not have been called by any such ambitious name.

HOW IT ALL STOPPED.

To most people it seems impossible to understand how it is that, if

artistic evolution proceeded to the perfection which it now seems

clear that it actually attained in the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries, we are only just getting back to a proper state of public

taste and a right degree of artistic skill in many of these same

accomplishments at the present time. That thought has come to many

others who, knowing and appreciating medieval progress in art and

literature, have tried to work out the reasons for the gap that exists

between medieval art and modern artistic endeavor. Some of these

explanations, because they serve to make clear why art evolution

stopped so abruptly and we are retracing our steps and taking models

from the past rather than doing original work that is an advance, must

be quoted here. Many people will find in them, I think, the reasons

for their misunderstanding of the old times.

{471}

Gerhardt Hauptmann, who is very well known, even among

English-speaking people, as one of the great living German dramatists,

and whose "Sunken Bell" attracted considerable attention in both its

German and English versions here in New York, in a recent criticism of

a new German book, declared that the reason for the gap between modern

and medieval art was the movement now coming to be known as the

religious revolt in Germany in the sixteenth century. He said:

"I, as a Protestant, have often had to regret that we purchased our

freedom of conscience, our individual liberty, at entirely too high

a price. In order to make room for a small, mean little plant of

personal life, we destroyed a whole garden of fancy and hewed down a

virgin forest of aesthetic ideas. We went even so far in the

insanity of our weakness as to throw out of the garden of our souls

the fruitful soil that had been accumulating for thousands of years,

or else we plowed it under sterile clay.

"We have to-day, then, an intellectual culture that is well

protected by a hedge of our personality, but within this hedge we

have only delicate dwarf trees and unworthy plants, the poorer

progeny of great predecessors. We have telegraph lines, bridges and

railroads, but there grow no churches and cathedrals, only sentry

boxes and barracks. We need gardeners who will cause the present

sterilizing process of the soil to stop, and will enrich the surface

by working up into it the rich layers beneath. In my work-room there

is ever before me the photograph of Sebaldus' Tomb (model

Metropolitan Museum, New York). This rich German symbol rose from

the invisible in the most luxuriant developmental period of German

art. As a formal product of that art, it is very difficult to

appreciate it as it deserves. It seems to me as one of the most

wonderful bits of work in the whole field of artistic

accomplishment. The soul of all the great medieval period encircles

this silver coffin, wrapping it up into a noble unity, and enthrones

on the very summit of death. Life as a growing child. Such a work

could only have come to its perfection in the protected spaces of

the old Mother Church."

Rev. Dr. Jessopp, in his book, already cited, "The Great Pillage,"

does not hesitate to state in unmistakable terms the reason why all

the beauty and happiness went out of English country life some two

centuries after the Thirteenth Century, and how it came about that the

modern generations have had to begin over again from the beginning,

and not where our Catholic forefathers of the medieval period left us,

in what used to be the despised Middle Ages. He says:

"When I talk of the great pillage, I mean that horrible and

outrageous looting of our churches other than conventual, and the

robbing of the people of this country of property in land and

movables, which property had actually been inherited by them as

members of those organized religious communities known as parishes.

It is necessary to emphasize the fact that in the general scramble

of the Terror under Henry the Eighth, and of the Anarchy in the days

of Edward the Sixth, there was only one class that was permitted to

retain any large portion of its endowments. The monasteries were

plundered even to their very pots and pans. Almshouses in which old

men and women were fed and clothed were robbed to the last pound,

the poor alms-folk being turned out into the cold at an hour's

warning to beg their bread. {472} Hospitals for the sick and needy,

sometimes magnificently provided with nurses and chaplains, whose

very raison d'etre was that they were to look after and care for

those who were past caring for themselves--these were stripped of

all their belongings, the inmates sent out to hobble into some

convenient dry ditch to lie down and die in, or to crawl into some

barn or hovel, there to be tended, not without fear of consequences,

by some kindly man or woman who could not bear to see a suffering

fellow creature drop down and die at their own doorposts.

"We talk with a great deal of indignation of the Tweed ring. The day

will come when someone will write the story of two other rings--the

ring of the miscreants who robbed the monasteries in the reign of

Henry the Eighth was the first; but the ring of the robbers who

robbed the poor and helpless in the reign of Edward the Sixth was

ten times worse than the first.

"The Universities only just escaped the general confiscation; the

friendly societies and benefit clubs and the gilds did not escape.

The accumulated wealth of centuries, their houses and lands, their

money, their vessels of silver and their vessels of gold, their

ancient cups and goblets and salvers, even to their very chairs and

tables, were all set down in inventories and catalogues, and all

swept into the great robbers' hoard. Last, but not least, the

immense treasures in the churches, the joy and boast of every man

and woman and child in England, who day by day and week by week

assembled to worship in the old houses of God which they and their

fathers had built, and whose every vestment and chalice and

candlestick and banner, organs and bells, and picture and image and

altar and shrine they looked upon as their own and part of their

birthright--all these were torn away by the rudest spoilers, carted

off, they knew not whither, with jeers and scoffs and ribald

shoutings, while none dared raise a hand or let his voice be heard

above the whisper of a prayer of bitter grief and agony.

"One class was spared. The clergy of this Church of England of ours

managed to retain some of their endowments; but if the boy king had

lived another three years, there is good reason for believing that

these too would have gone."

Graft prevailed, and the old order disappeared in a slough of

selfishness.

COMFORT AND POVERTY.

A number of friendly critics have insisted that _of course_ the

Thirteenth Century was far behind later times in the comfort of the

people. Poverty is supposed to have been almost universal. Doubtless

many of the people were then very poor. Personally, I doubt if there

was as much poverty, that is, misery due to actual want of necessaries

of life, as there is at the present time. Certainly it was not

emphasized by having close to it, constantly rendering the pains of

poverty poignant by contrast, the luxury of the modern time. They had

not the large city, and people in the country do not suffer as much as

people in the city. In recent years, investigations of poverty in

England have been appalling in the statistics that they have

presented. Mr. Robert Hunter, in his book Poverty, has furnished us

with some details that make one feel that our generation should be the

last to say {473} that the Thirteenth Century was behind in progress,

because so many of the people were so poor. Ruskin once said that the

ideal of the great nation is one wherein there must be "as many as

possible full-breathed, bright-eyed and happy-hearted human

creatures." I am sure that, tried by this standard, the Thirteenth

Century in Merrie England is ahead of any other generation and, above

all, far in advance of our recent generations.

By contrast to what we know of the merrie English men and women of the

Thirteenth Century, I would quote Mr. Hunter's paragraphs on the

Poverty of the Modern English People. He says:

"A few years ago, England did not know the extent of her own

poverty. Economists and writers gave opinions of all kinds. Some

said conditions were 'bad,' others said such statements were

misleading; and here they were, tilting at each other, backward and

forward, in the most ponderous and serious way, until Mr. Booth, a

business man, undertook to get at the facts. _No one, even the most

radical economist, would have dared to have estimated the poverty of

London as extending to 30 per cent of the people_ (as it proved).

The extent of poverty--the number of underfed, underclothed in

insanitary houses--was greater than could reasonably have been

estimated."

Some of the details of this investigation by Mr. Booth were so

startling that some explanation had to be found. They could not deny,

in the face of Mr. Booth's facts, but they set up the claim that the

conditions in London were exceptional. Then Mr. Rountree made an

investigation in York with precisely the same results. More than one

in four of the population was in poverty. To quote Mr. Hunter once

"As has been said, it was not until Mr. Charles Booth published, in

1891, the results of his exhaustive inquiries that the actual

conditions of poverty in London became known. About 1,000,000

people, or about thirty per cent of the entire population of London,

were found to be unable to obtain the necessaries for a sound

livelihood. They were in a state of poverty, living in conditions,

if not of actual misery, at any rate bordering upon it. In many

districts, considerably more than half of the population were either

in distress or on the verge of distress. When these results were

made public, the more conservative economists gave it as their

opinion that the conditions in London were, of course, exceptional,

and that it would be unsafe to make any generalizations for the

whole of England on the basis of Mr. Booth's figures for London.

About ten years later, Mr. B. S. Rountree, incited by the work of

Mr. Booth, undertook a similar inquiry in his native town, York, a

small provincial city, in most ways typical of the smaller towns of

England. In a large volume in which the results are published, it is

shown that the poverty in York was only slightly less extensive than

that of London. In the summary, Mr. Rountree compares the conditions

of London with those of York. His comments are as follows: 'The

proportions arrived at for the total populations living in poverty

in London and York respectively were as under:

London--30.7 per cent

York--27.84 per cent

{474}

The proportion of the population living in poverty in York may be

regarded as practically the same as in London, especially when we

remember that Mr. Booth's information was gathered in 1887-1892, a

period of only average trade prosperity, whilst the York figures were

collected in 1899, when trade was unusually prosperous.'"

He continues: "We have been accustomed to look upon the poverty in

London as exceptional, but when the result of careful investigation

shows that the proportion of poverty in London is practically equalled

in what may be regarded as a typical provincial town, we are faced by

the startling probability that from 25 to 30 per cent of the town

populations of the United Kingdom are living in poverty."

Most of us will be inclined to think that Mr. Rountree must

exaggerate, and what he calls poverty most of us would doubtless be

inclined to think a modest competency a little below respectability.

He fixed the standard of twenty-one shillings eight pence ($5.25) a

week as a necessary one for a family of ordinary size. He says:

"A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate, must

never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go

into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a

half-penny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular

concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they

cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute

anything to their church or chapel, nor give any help to a neighbor

which costs them money. They cannot save, nor can they join sick

club or trade union, because they cannot pay the necessary

subscription. The children must have no pocket money for dolls,

marbles or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco nor drink no

beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or

for her children, the character for the family wardrobe, as for the

family diet, being governed by the regulation, 'Nothing must be

bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of

physical health, and that which is bought must be of the plainest

and most economical description.' Should a child fall ill, it must

be attended by the family parish doctor; should it die, it must be

buried by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent

from his work for a single day."

_More than one in four of the population living below this scale!_

Conditions are, if anything, worse on the Continent. In Germany,

industry is at the best. Conditions in Berlin have been recently

reported in the Daily Consular Reports by a U. S. Government official.

Of the somewhat more than two millions of people who live in Berlin,

1,125,000 have an income. Nearly one-half of the incomes, however, are

exempt from taxation because they do not amount to the minimum taxable

income, though that is only $214--$4 per week. Of the 600,000 who have

taxable incomes, nearly 550,000 have less than $700 a year; that is,

get about $2 a day or less. Less than sixty thousand out of the total

population get more than $2 a day. It is easy to say, but hard to

understand, that this is a living wage, because things are cheaper in

Germany. Meat is, however, nearly twice as dear; sugar is twice as

dear; bread is dearer than it is in this country; coffee is dearer;

and only rent is somewhat cheaper.

{475}

It is easy to talk about the spread of comfort among the people of our

generation and the raising of the standard of living, but if one

compares these wages with the price of things as they are now, it is

hard to understand on just what basis of fact the claim for betterment

in our time, meaning more general comfort and happiness, is made.

People always refuse to believe that conditions are as bad as they

really are in these matters. Americans will at once have the feeling,

on reading Mr. Hunter and Mr. Rountree's words and the account of the

American Consul at Berlin, that this may be true for England and

Germany, but that of course it is very different here in America. It

is extremely doubtful whether it is very different here in America. In

this matter, Mr. Hunter's opinion deserves weight. He has for years

devoted himself to gathering information with regard to this subject.

He seems to be sure that one in seven of our population is in poverty.

Probably the number is higher than this. Here is his opinion:

"How many people in the country are in poverty? Is the number yearly

growing larger? Are there each year more and more of the unskilled

classes pursuing hopelessly the elusive phantom of self-support and

independence? Are they, as in a dream, working faster, only the more

swiftly to move backward? Are there each year more and more hungry

children and more and more fathers whose utmost effort may not bring

into the home as much energy in food as it takes out in industry?

These are not fanciful questions, nor are they sentimental ones. I

have not the slightest doubt that there are in the United States ten

million persons in precisely these conditions of poverty, but I am

largely guessing, and there may be as many as fifteen or twenty

millions!"

Perhaps Mr. Hunter exaggerates. As a physician, I should be inclined

to think not; but certainly his words and, above all, the English

statistics will give any one pause who is sure, on general principles,

that the great mass of the people are happier now or more comfortable,

above all, in mind--the only real happiness--than they were in the

Thirteenth Century. After due consideration of this kind, no one will

insist on the comparative misery and suffering of the poor in old

times. England had less than 3,000,000 in the Thirteenth Century, and

probably there was never a time in her history when a greater majority

of her people fulfilled Ruskin's and Morris' ideals of happy-hearted

human beings. The two-handed worker got at least what the four-footed

worker, in Carlyle's words, has always obtained, due food and lodging.

England was not "a nation with sleek, well-fed English horses, and

hungry, dissatisfied Englishmen."

COMFORT AND HAPPINESS.

There is another side to the question of comparative happiness that

may be stated in the words of William Morris, when he says, in "Hopes

and Fears for Art," that a Greek or a Roman of the luxurious time (and

of course _a fortiori_ a medieval of the Thirteenth Century) would

{476} stare astonished could he be brought back again and shown the

comforts of a well-to-do middle-class house. This expression is often

re-echoed, and one is prone to wonder how many of those who use it

realize that it is a quotation, and, above all, appreciate the fact

that Morris made the statement in order to rebut it. His answer is in

certain ways so complete that it deserves to be quoted.

"When you hear of the luxuries of the Ancients, you must remember

that they were not like our luxuries, they were rather indulgence in

pieces of extravagant folly than what we to-day call luxury--which,

perhaps, you would rather call comfort; well, I accept the word, and

say that a Greek or a Roman of the luxurious time would stare

astonished could he be brought back again and shown the comforts of

a well-to-do middle-class house.

"But some, I know, think that the attainment of these very comforts

is what makes the difference between civilization and

uncivilization--that they are the essence of civilization. Is it so

indeed? Farewell my hope then! I had thought that civilization meant

the attainment of peace and order and freedom, of good-will between

man and man, of the love of truth and the hatred of injustice, and

by consequence the attainment of the good life which these things

breed, a life free from craven fear, but full of incident; that was

what I thought it meant, not more stuffed chairs and more cushions,

and more carpets and gas, and more dainty meat and drink--and

therewithal more and sharper differences between class and class.

"If that be what it is, I for my part wish I were well out of it and

living in a tent in the Persian desert, or a turf hut on the Iceland

hillside. But, however it be, and I think my view is the true view,

I tell you that art abhors that side of civilization; she cannot

breath in the houses that lie under its stuffy slavery.

"Believe me, if we want art to begin at home, as it must, we must

clear our houses of troublesome superfluities that are forever in

our way, conventional comforts that are no real comforts, and do but

make work for servants and doctors. If you want a golden rule that

will fit everybody, this is it: 'Have nothing in your houses that

you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.'"

COMFORT AND HEALTH.

A comment on William Morris's significant paragraphs may be summed up

in some reflections on the scornful expression of a friend who asked,

how is it possible to talk of happiness at a time when there were no

glass in windows and no heating apparatus except the open fireplace in

the great hall of the larger houses, or in the kitchen of the dwelling

houses. To this there is the ready answer that, in the modern time, we

have gone so far to the opposite extreme as to work serious harm to

health. When a city dweller develops tuberculosis, his physician now

sends him out to the mountains, asks him to sleep with his window wide

open, and requires him to spend just as much of his time as possible

in the open air, even with the temperature below zero. In our

hospitals, the fad for making patients comfortable by artificial heat

is passing, and that of stimulating them by cold, fresh air is gaining

ground. We know that, for all the fevers and all the respiratory {477}

diseases this brings about a notable reduction in the mortality.

Surely, what is good for the ailing must be even better to keep them

well from disease. Many a physician now arranges to sleep out of doors

all winter. Certainly all the respiratory diseases are rendered much

more fatal and modern liability to them greatly increased by our

shut-up houses. The medieval people were less comfortable, from a

sensual standpoint, but the healthy glow and reaction after cold

probably made them enjoy life better than we do in our steam-heated

houses. They secured bodily warmth by an active circulation of their

blood. We secure it by the circulation of hot water or steam in our

houses. Ours may be the better way, but the question is not yet

absolutely decided. A physician friend points to the great reduction

in the death-rate in modern times, and insists that this, of course,

means definite progress. Even this is not quite so sure as is often

thought. We are saving a great many lives that heretofore, in the

course of nature, under conditions requiring a more vigorous life,

passed out of existence early. It is doubtful, however, whether this

is an advantage for the race, since our insane asylums, our hospitals

for incurables and our homes of various kinds now have inmates in much

greater proportion to the population than ever before in history.

These are mainly individuals of lower resistive vitality, who would

have been allowed to get out of existence early, save themselves and

their friends from useless suffering, and whose presence in life does

not add greatly if at all to the possibilities of human

accomplishment. Our reduced death-rate is, because of comfort seeking,

more than counterbalanced by a reduced birth-rate, so that no

advantage is reaped for the race in the end. These reflections, of

course, are only meant to suggest how important it is to view such

questions from all sides before being sure that they represent

definite progress for humanity. Progress is much more elusive than is

ordinarily thought, and is never the simple, unmistakable movement of

advance it is often thought.

HYGIENE.

The objection that medical friends have had to the claims of The

Thirteenth as the Greatest of Centuries is that it failed to pay any

attention to hygiene. Here, once more, we have a presumption that is

not founded on real knowledge of the time. It is rather easy to show

that these generations were anticipating many of our solutions of

hygienic problems quite as well as our solutions of other social and

intellectual difficulties. In the sketch of Pope John XXI., the

physician who became Pope during the second half of the Thirteenth

Century, which was published in Ophthalmology, a quarterly review of

eye diseases (Jan., 1909), because Pope John wrote a little book on

this subject which has many valuable anticipations of modern

knowledge, I called attention to the fact that, while a physician and

professor of {478} medicine at the medical school of the University of

Sienna, this Pope, then known as Peter of Spain, had made some

contributions to sanitary science. Later he was appointed Archiater,

that is, Physician in charge of the City of Rome. As pointed out in

the sketch of him as enlarged for the volume containing a second

series of Catholic Churchmen in Science (The Dolphin Press, Phila.,

1909), he seems to have been particularly interested in popular

health, for we have a little book, Thesaurus Pauperum--The Treasure of

the Poor--which contains many directions for the maintenance of health

and the treatment of disease by those who are too poor to secure

physicians' advice. The fact that the head of the Bureau of Health in

Rome should have been made Pope in the Thirteenth Century, itself

speaks volumes for the awakening of the educated classes at least to

the value of hygiene and sanitation.

Their attention to hygiene can be best shown by a consideration of the

hospitals. Ordinarily it is assumed that the hospitals provided a roof

for the sick and the injured, but scarcely more. Most physicians will

probably be quite sure that they were rather hot-beds of disease than

real blessings to the ailing. That is not what we find when we study

them carefully. These generations gave us a precious lesson by

eradicating leprosy, which was quite as general as tuberculosis is

now, and they made special hospitals for erysipelas, which materially

lessened the diffusion of that disease. In rewriting the chapter on

The Foundation of City Hospitals for my book, The Popes and Science

(Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1908), I incorporated into it a

description of the hospital erected at Tanierre, in France, in 1293,

by Marguerite of Bourgogne, the sister of St. Louis. Of this hospital

Mr. Arthur Dillon, from the standpoint of the modern architect, says:

"It was an admirable hospital in every way, and it is doubtful if we

to-day surpass it. It was isolated, the ward was separated from the

other buildings; it had the advantage we often lose, of being but

one story high, and more space was given to each patient than we now

afford.

"The ventilation by the great windows and ventilators in the ceiling

was excellent; it was cheerfully lighted, and the arrangement of the

gallery shielded the patients from dazzling light and from draughts

from the windows, and afforded an easy means of supervision, while

the division by the roofless, low partitions isolated the sick and

obviated the depression that comes from the sight of others in pain.

"It was, moreover, in great contrast to the cheerless white wards of

to-day. The vaulted ceiling was very beautiful; the woodwork was

richly carved, and the great windows over the altars were filled

with colored glass. Altogether, it was one of the best examples of

the best period of Gothic architecture."

In their individual Hygiene there was, of course, much to be desired

among the people of the Thirteenth Century, and it has been declared

that the history of Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century

might, from the hygienic standpoint, he summed up as a thousand years

without a bath. The more we know about this period, however, the less

of {479} point do we find in the epigram. Mr. Cram, in the Ruined

Abbeys of Great Britain (Pott & Co., N. Y., 1907), has described

wonderful arrangements within the monasteries (!) for the conduction

of water from long distances for all toilet purposes. There was much

more attention to sanitary details than we have been prone to think.

Mr. Cram, in describing what was by no means one of the greatest of

the English abbeys of the Thirteenth Century, says:

"Here at Beaulieu the water was brought by an underground conduit

from an unfailing spring a mile away, and this served for drinking,

washing and bathing, the supply of the fish ponds, and for a

constant flushing of the elaborate system of drainage. In sanitary

matters, the monks were as far in advance of the rest of society as

they were in learning and agriculture."

WAGES AND THE CONDITION OP WORKING PEOPLE.

What every reader of the Thirteenth Century seems to be perfectly sure

of is that, whatever else there may have been in this precious time,

at least the workmen were not well paid and men worked practically for

nothing. It is confessed that, of course, working as they did on their

cathedrals, they had a right to work for very little if they wished,

but at least there has been a decided step upward in evolution in the

gradual raising of wages, until at last the workman is beginning to be

paid some adequate compensation. There is probably no phase of the

life of the Middle Ages with regard to which people are more mistaken

than this supposition that the workmen of this early time were paid

inadequately. I have already called attention to the fact that the

workmen of this period claimed and obtained "the three eights"--eight

hours of work, eight hours of sleep and eight hours for recreation and

bodily necessities. They obtained the Saturday half-holiday, and also

release from work on the vigils of all feast days, and there were

nearly forty of these in the year. After the vesper hour, that is,

three in Summer and two in Winter, there was no work on the Eves of

Holy-days of Obligation. With regard to wages, there is just one way

to get at the subject, and that is, to present the legal table of

wages enacted by Parliament, placing beside it the legal maximum price

of necessities of life, as also determined by Parliamentary enactment.

An Act of Edward III. fixes the wages, without food, as follows. There

are many other things mentioned, but the following will be enough for

our purpose:

[Price in Shillings and Pence; s. d.] s. d.

A woman hay-making, or weeding corn for the day--0 1

A man filling dung-cart--0 3-1/2

A reaper--0 4

Mowing an acre of grass--0 4

Threshing a quarter of wheat--0 4

{480}

The price of shoes, cloth and provisions, throughout the time that

this law continued in force, was as follows:

[Price in Pounds, Shillings and Pence; s. d.] L. s. d.

A pair of shoes--0 0 4

Russet broadcloth, the yard--0 1 1

A stall fed ox--1 4 0

A grass fed ox--0 16 0

A fat sheep unshorn--0 1 8

A fat sheep shorn--0 1 2

A fat hog two years old--0 3 4

A fat goose--0 0 2-1/2.

Ale, the gallon, by proclamation--0 0 1

Wheat, the quarter--0 3 4

White wine, the gallon--0 0 6

Red wine--0 0 4

An Act of Parliament of the fourteenth century, in fixing the price of

meat, names the four sorts of meat--beef, pork, mutton and veal, and

sets forth in its preamble the words, "these being the food of the

poorer sort." The poor in England do not eat these kinds of meat now,

and the investigators of the poverty of the country declare that most

of the poor live almost exclusively on bread. The fact of the matter

is, that large city populations are likely to harbor many very

miserable people, while the rural population of England in the Middle

Ages, containing the bulk of the people, were happy-hearted and merry.

When we recall this in connection with what I have given in the text

with regard to the trades-unions and their care for the people, the

foolish notion, founded on a mere assumption and due to that

Aristophanic joke, our complacent self-sufficiency, which makes us so

ready to believe that our generation _must_ be better off than others

were, vanishes completely.

It is easy to understand that beef, pork, mutton, veal and even

poultry were the food of the poor, when a workman could earn the price

of a sheep in less than four days or buy nearly two fat geese for his

day's wages. A day laborer will work from forty to fifty days now to

earn the price of an ox on the hoof, and it was about the same at the

close of the Thirteenth Century. When a fat hog costs less than a

dollar, a man's wages, at eight cents a day, are not too low. When a

gallon of good ale can be obtained for two cents, no workman is likely

to go dry. When a gallon of red wine can be obtained for a day's

wages, it is hard to see any difference between a workman of the olden

time and the present in this regard. Two yards of cloth made a coat

for a gentleman and cost only a little over two shillings. The making

of it brought the price of it up to two shilling and six pence. These

prices are taken from the Preciosum of Bishop Fleetwood, who took them

from the accounts kept by the bursars of convents. Fleetwood's book is

accepted very generally as an excellent authority in the history of

economics.

{481}

Cobbett, in his History of the Protestant Reformation, has made an

exhaustive study of just this question of the material and economic

condition of the people of England before and since the reformation.

He says:

"These things prove, beyond all dispute, that England was, in

Catholic times, a real wealthy country; that wealth was generally

diffused; that every part of the country abounded in men of solid

property; and that, of course, there were always great resources at

hand in cases of emergency." ... "In short, everything shows that

England was then a country abounding in men of real wealth."

Fortesque, the Lord High Chancellor of England under Henry VI., king a

century after the Thirteenth, has this to say with regard to the legal

and economic conditions in England in his time. Some people may think

the picture he gives an exaggeration, but it was written by a great

lawyer with the definite idea of giving a picture of the times, and,

under ordinary circumstances, we would say that there could be no

better authority.

"The King of England cannot alter the laws, or make new ones,

without the express consent of the whole kingdom in Parliament

assembled. Every inhabitant is at his liberty fully to use and enjoy

whatever his farm produceth, the fruits of the earth, the increase

of his flock and the like--all the improvements he makes, whether by

his own proper industry or of those he retains in his service, are

his own, to use and enjoy, without the let, interruption or denial

of any. If he be in any wise injured or oppressed, he shall have his

amends and satisfactions against the party offending. Hence it is

that the inhabitants are rich in gold, silver, and in all the

necessaries and conveniences of life. They drink no water unless at

certain times, upon a religious score, and by way of doing penance.

They are fed in great abundance, with all sorts of flesh and fish,

of which they have plenty everywhere; they are clothed throughout in

good woollens, their bedding and other furniture in the house are of

wool, and that in great store. They are also well provided with all

sorts of household goods and necessary implements for husbandry.

Every one, according to his rank, hath all things which conduce to

make mind and life easy and happy."

INTEREST AND LOANS.

A number of commercial friends have been interested in the wonderful

story of business organizations traced in the chapter on Great

Beginnings of Modern Commerce. They have all been sure, however, that

it is quite idle to talk of great commercial possibilities at a time

when ecclesiastical regulations forbade the taking of interest. This

would seem to make it quite impossible that great commercial

transactions could be carried on, yet somehow these people succeeded

in accomplishing them. A number of writers on economics in recent

years have suggested that possibly one solution of the danger to

government and popular rights from the accumulation of large fortunes

might be avoided by a return to the system of prohibition of interest

taking. There is {482} much more in that proposition than might

possibly be thought by those who are unfamiliar with it from serious

consideration. They did succeed in getting on without it in the

Thirteenth Century, and at the same time they solved the other problem

of providing loans, not alone for business people, but for all those

who might need them. We are solving the "loan shark" evil at the

present time in nearly the same way that they solved it seven

centuries ago. Abbot Gasquet, in his "Parish Life in England Before

the Reformation," describes the methods of the early days as follows:

"The parish wardens had their duties towards the poorer members of

the district. In more than one instance they were guardians of the

common chest, out of which temporary loans could be obtained by

needy parishioners, to tide over persons in difficulties. These

loans were secured by pledges and the additional security of other

parishioners. No interest was charged for the use of the money, and

in case the pledge had to be sold, everything over and above the sum

lent was returned to the borrower."

THE EIGHTEENTH

LOWEST OF CENTURIES.

There is no doubt that the nineteenth century, and especially the

latter half of it, saw some very satisfactory progress over

immediately preceding times. With the recognition of this fact, that

the last century so far surpassed its predecessor there has been a

tendency to assume, because evolution occupies men's minds, that the

eighteenth must have quite as far surpassed the seventeenth, and the

seventeenth the sixteenth, and so on, so that of course we are far

ahead in everything of the despised Middle Ages. In recent years,

indeed, we have dropped the attitude of blaming the earlier ages, for

one of complacent pity that they were not born soon enough, and,

therefore, could not enjoy our advantages. Unfortunately for any such

conclusion as this, the term of comparison nearest to us, the

eighteenth century is without doubt the lowest hundred years in human

accomplishment, at least during the past seven centuries.

This is true for every form of human endeavor and every phase of human

existence. Prof. Goodyear, of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and

Science, the well-known author of a series of books on art and

history, in one of the chapters of his Handbook on Renaissance and

Modern Art (New York, The McMillan Co.), in describing the Greek

revival of the latter part of the eighteenth century says: "According

to our accounts so far throughout this whole book, either of

architecture, painting, or sculpture, it will appear that the earlier

nineteenth century represents the foot of a hill, whose gradual

descent began about 1530." As a matter of fact, in every department of

artistic expression the taste of the eighteenth century was almost the

worst possible. The monuments that we have from that time, in the

shape of churches and municipal buildings, are few, but such as they

are, they are the least {483} worthy of imitation, and the art ideas

they represent are most to be deprecated of any in the whole history

of modern art.

Perhaps the most awful arraignment of the eighteenth and early

nineteenth century that was ever made is that of Mr. Cram, in the

Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain, from which I have already quoted. He

calls attention to the fact that, during this century, some of the

most beautiful sculptured work that ever came from the hand of man was

torn out of the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, York, to serve no better

purpose than to make lime. His description of the sculpture of the

Abbey will give some idea of its beauty and render all the more

poignant the loss that was thus inflicted on art. He says:

"Most wonderful of all amongst a horde of smaller statues, a

mutilated fragment of a statue of Our Lady and the Holy Child, so

consummate in its faultless art that it deserves a place with the

masterpieces of sculpture of every age and race. Here in this dim

and scanty undercraft is an epitome of the English art of four

centuries, precious and beautiful beyond the power of words to

describe.

"York Abbey was a national monument, the aesthetic and historic

value of which was beyond computation. It is with feelings of horror

and unutterable dismay that, as we stand beside the few existing

fragments, realizing the irreparable loss they make so clear, we

call into mind Henry's sacrilege in the sixteenth century, and his

silly palace doomed to instant destruction, and the crass ignorance

and stolidity of the eighteenth century with its grants of building

material, and the mercenary savagery of the nineteenth century when,

from smoking lime kilns rose into the air the vanishing ghosts of

the noblest creations that owed their existence to man.

"Nothing is sadder to realize than the failure of appreciation for

art of the early nineteenth and the eighteenth century. Men had

lost, apparently, all proper realization of the value of artistic

effort and achievement. It was an era of travel and commerce and,

unfortunately, of industrial development. As a consequence, in many

parts of Europe, and especially of England, art remains of

inestimable value suffered at the hands of utilitarians who found

them of use in their enterprises. We are accustomed to rail against

the barbarians and the Turks for their failure to appreciate the

remains of Latin and Greek art and for their wanton destruction of

them, but what shall we say of modern Englishmen, who quite as

ruthlessly destroyed objects of art of equal value at least with

Roman and Greek, while the great body of the nation made no

complaint, and no protest was heard anywhere in the kingdom."

What is so true of the arts is, as might be reasonably expected, quite

as true of other phases of intellectual development. Education, for

instance, is at the lowest ebb that it has reached since the

foundation of the Universities at the end of the twelfth century. In

Germany, there was only one university, that of Goettingen, in which

there was a professorship of Greek. When Winckelmann introduced the

study of Greek into his school at Seehausen, no school-books for this

language were available, and he was obliged to write out texts for his

students. What was the case in Germany was also true, to a great {484}

degree, of the rest of Europe. Leading French critics ridiculed the

Greek authors. Homer was considered a ballad singer and compared to

the street singers of Paris. Voltaire thought that the AEneid of

Virgil was superior to all that the Greek writers had ever done. No

edition of Plato had been published in Europe since the end of the

sixteenth century. Other Greek authors were almost as much neglected,

and of true scholarship there was very little. When Cardinal Newman,

in his Idea of a University, wants to find the lowest possible term of

comparison for the intellectual life of the university, he takes the

English universities of the middle of the eighteenth century.

With this neglect of education, and above all of the influence that

Greek has always had in chastening and perfecting taste, it is not

surprising that literature was in every country of Europe at a very

low ebb. It was not so feeble as art, but the two are interdependent,

much more than is usually thought. Only France has anything to show in

literature that has had an enduring influence in the subsequent

centuries. When we compare the French literature of the eighteenth

with that of the seventeenth century, however, it is easy to see how

much of a descent there has been from Corneille, Racine, Moliere,

Boileau, La Fontaine, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Fenelon to Voltaire,

Marivaux, Lesage, Diderot, and Bernardin de St. Pierre. This same

decadence of literature can be noted even more strikingly in England,

in Spain, and in Italy. The seventeenth, especially the first half of

it, saw the origin of some of the greatest works of modern literature.

The eighteenth century produced practically nothing that was to live

and be a vital force in aftertimes.

What is true in art, letters and education is, above all, true in what

men did for liberty and for their fellow-men. Hospital organization

and the care of the ailing was at its lowest ebb during the eighteenth

century. Jacobson, the German historian of the hospitals, says:

[Footnote 36]

[Footnote 36: Beitraege zur Geschichte des Krankencomforts.

Deutsche Krankenpflege Zeitung, 1898, in 4 parts.]

"It is a remarkable fact that attention to the well-being of the

sick, improvements in hospitals and institutions generally and to

details of nursing care, had a period of complete and lasting

stagnation after the middle of the seventeenth century, or from the

close of the Thirty Years' War. Neither officials nor physicians

took any interest in the elevation of nursing or improving the

conditions of hospitals. During the first two-thirds of the

eighteenth century, nothing was done to bring either construction or

nursing to a better state. Solely among the religious orders did

nursing remain an interest, and some remnants of technique survive.

The result was that, in this period, the general level of nursing

fell far below that of earlier periods. The hospitals of cities were

like prisons, with bare, undecorated walls and little dark rooms,

small windows where no sun could enter, and dismal wards where fifty

or one hundred patients were crowded together, deprived of all

comforts and even of necessaries. In the municipal and state

institutions of this period, the beautiful gardens, roomy halls, and

{485} springs of water of the old cloister hospital of the Middle

Ages were not heard of, still less the comforts of their friendly

interiors."

As might be expected, with the hospitals so badly organized, the art

of nursing was in a decay that is almost unutterable. Miss Nutting, of

Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Superintendent of Nurses, and Miss Dock,

the Secretary of the International Council of Nurses, have in their

History of Nursing a chapter on the Dark Period of Nursing, in which

the decadence of the eighteenth century, in what regards the training

of nurses for the intelligent care of the sick, is brought out very

clearly. They say: [Footnote 37]

[Footnote 37: A History of Nursing, by M. Adelaide Nutting and

Lavinia L. Dock, in two volumes, illustrated. G. P. Putnam's Sons,

New York, 1907.]

"It is commonly agreed that the darkest known period in the history

of nursing was that from the latter part of the seventeenth up to

the middle of the nineteenth century. During the time, the condition

of the nursing art, the well-being of the patient, and the status of

the nurse, all sank to an indescribable level of degradation."

Taine, in his History of the Old Regime of France, has told the awful

story of the attitude of the so-called better classes toward the poor.

While conditions were at their worst in France, every country in

Europe saw something of the same thing. In certain parts of Germany

conditions were, if possible, worse. It is no wonder that the French

Revolution came at the end of the eighteenth century, and that a

series of further revolutions during the nineteenth century were

required to win back some of the rights which men had gained for

themselves in earlier centuries and then lost, sinking into a state of

decadence out of which we are only emerging, though in most countries

we have not reached quite the level of human liberty and, above all,

of Christian democracy that our forefathers had secured seven

centuries ago.

With these considerations in mind, it is easier to understand how men

in the later nineteenth century and beginning twentieth century are

prone to think of their periods as representing an acme in the course

of progress. There is no doubt that we are far above the eighteenth

century. That, however, was a deep valley in human accomplishment,

indeed, a veritable slough of despond, out of which we climbed; and,

looking back, are prone to think how fortunate we are in having

ascended so high, though beyond our vision on the other side of the

valley the hills rise much higher into the clouds of human aspiration

and artistic excellence than anything that we have attained as yet.

Indeed, whenever we try to do serious work at the present time, we

confessedly go back from four to seven centuries for the models that

we must follow. With Renaissance art and Gothic architecture and the

literature before the end of the sixteenth century cut out of our

purview, we would have nothing to look to for models. This phase of

history needs to be recalled by all those who would approach with

equanimity the consideration of The Thirteenth as the Greatest of

Centuries.

{486}

INDEX.

Abbey schools, 26;

of St. Victor, 150

Aberration of light, 44

Abingdon, Edmund of, 327

Adam of St. Victor, 204

Age of Students, 25-63

Albertus Magnus, 46

Alchemies, 93

Alfonso the Wise, 2

Aliens' rights, 358

Allbutt, Prof., 83

Amiens, 105

Andrew II, Golden Bull, 369

Angel Choir, 13, 108

Angelo on Dante, 305

Anselm, 80

Antipodes, 50, 392

Ants in Dante, 314

Appreciation of art, 146

Aquinas, 38;

and Albertus, 271;

appreciation of, 283;

capacity for work, 286;

education, 270;

on Existence of God, 276;

on liberty and society, 279;

at Paris, 272;

as a poet, 287;

and Pope Leo XIII, 374;

on Resurrection, 278;

tributes to, 281

Arbitration, 382

Arena Padua, 144

Arezzo, 23

Arnaud, Daniel, 189

Arnaud de Marveil, 189

Arnold, Matthew, and Francis, 256

Art and the Friars, 139

Artemus Ward, 52

Arts and Crafts, 124

Arthur Legends, 10, 173

Arundel, Countess of, 320

Asbestos, 398

Ascoli, Cope, 14, 134

Assisi, 144

Assizes of Clarendon, 351;

of Jerusalem, 365

Avignon, 24

Bacon, 41

Barbarossa, 1

Barbizon School, 145

Basil Valentine, 94

Bateson, Miss, 328

Beau Dieu, 13

Beautiful God, 105

Beauty and usefulness, 113

Beauvoisis, Statutes of, 365

Bell-making, 133

Beowulf, 180

Berrengaria, Queen, 320

Bernardo del Carpio, 170

Bernart de Ventadorn, 183

Bernard of Cluny, or Morlaix, 205

Bertrand de Born, 191

Bestiarium, 164

Bible study, 234, 252

Blanche of Castile, 289, 320;

as a mother, 326;

as a ruler, 326

Blessed work, 125

Boileau, Stephen, 365

Boniface VII and American Revolution, 374

Books, beautiful, 150;

bequests, 155;

collecting, 154, 157;

great stone, 115

Booklovers, 155

Book-learning, 129

Book of Arts, Deeds, Words, 5

Borgo Allegri, 141

Botany, 149

Bracton, 361

Bracton's digest, 15, 82

Bremen, 420

Brook farm, 264

Cahors, 34

Calendar, 43

Calvi, College of, 26

Capital, English, created, 357

Canon law, codified, 370

Canticle of Sun, 258

Carlyle,

Minnesong, 183;

Nibelungen, 178

Case histories, 84

Casimir the Great, 369

Caspian not a gulf, 406

Castles and armories, 120

Catalogues of libraries, 151

Cathedral Symbolism, 118

Cavalcanti, 10

Celano, 197

Chalices, 113

Charity organizations, 27, 345

Chartres, glass, 14;

windows, 111

Chauliac, 92

Chemistry, 46;

not forbidden, 93

Chester cycle, 240, 242

Chrestien de Troyes, 175

Chronicles, 224

Cid, El, 9

Cimabue, 2, 12, 140

Cino da Pistoia, 10

Circulating libraries, 149

Clare, St., and St. Francis, 322

Clare, St., 320;

character, 321;

happiness, 322;

life, 320

Clarendon assizes, 351;

constitutions, 351

Clerics at the universities, 71

Cloisters, Lateran, 121;

St. Paul's, Rome, 121

Coal, 397

Code of Hammurabi, 3

Coeducation, 330

Colleges, Origin of, 29

Cologne, 420

Common Law, 361

Commentaries on Law, 371

Common pleas, 35

Comparative university attendance, 61

Compayre, 67

Complaints of books, 158

Composition of matter, 38

Condorcet, 34

Conrad of Kirchberg, 188

Conservation of energy, 39

Cope of Ascoli, 115

Corrections, Optical, 131

{487}

Cost of books, 156

Crusades and democracy, 389;

Greene, on, 389;

Storrs on, 388;

Stubbs on, 298

Curtain lectures, 331

Dante da Maiano, 10

Dante and children, 313;

and Milton, 315;

and Virgil, 316;

education, 300;

in America, 311;

in England, 305;

in Germany, 309;

in Italy, 304;

not alone, 300;

power of observation, 313;

present estimation, 317;

sonnets, 302;

troubadour, 303;

universality, 301

Dante-Gesellschaft, 310

Dean Church's Dante, 306

Decay of Philosophy, 282

Declaration of Independence, Swiss, 377

Degrees, 36

De Maistre, 66

Democracy and the Crusades, 388;

guilds, 378

Denifle, 35

De Roo on pre-Columbian America, 400

Dialectics, 33

Dies Irae, Admirers of, 199;

supreme, 197

Dietmar von Eist, 186

Digest of common law, 361

Discipline at universities, 73;

and democracy, 76

Disease segregation, 343

Dissection not forbidden, 91

Dominicans and art, 139;

and books, 156

St. Dominic, 266;

and St. Francis, 267

Donatus, Deposition for ignorance of, 30

Drama and St. Francis, 238

Durandus, 117, 234

Education, classes, 7;

masses, 8;

popular, 129;

of women, four periods, 331

Edward I, 2, 361

Edward VI and charity, 340;

education, 386

El Cid, 169;

battle scene, 170;

daughters' innocence, 172;

marriage, 171;

single author, 169

Emulation of workers, 125

Encyclopedia, 231

Enforcement of law, 366

English democracy, 378

Enterprise, commercial, 421

Epic poetry, 167

Equality of women, 324, 389

Erysipelas segregated, 344

Evelyn's diary, 131

Evolution and man, 3

Experiment, 44

Explosives, 42

Exultet, 207

Fehmic Courts, 368

Felix of Valois, 347

Feminine education, 330;

four periods, 331

reasons for decline, 333

Ferguson, 97

Francis, St., great disciples, 263;

in drama, 239;

influence still, 266;

life, 259;

literary man, 255;

modern interest in, 261;

Ruskin on, 260;

second order, 265;

third order, 265;

troubadour, 255

Franciscans and Art, 139;

explorers, 394

Fraternal insurance, 382

Fraternity, initiations, 425

Frederick II, 2

Freedom, development of, 375

Free cities, 377;

schools, 385

Freemen's rights, 358

Friars, 267;

Green's tribute to, 268;

explorers, 409

Froude, 97;

on Reynard, 211

Furniture, 122

Finsen anticipated, 89

Five Sisters, York, 14, 110

Founder of Hospitals, 337

Gaddi, 2, 142

Galsang Gombeyev, 402

Geography, 50

German Guild-hall, London, 421

Gerontius' dream, 308

Gild merchant, 383

Giotto, 2, 12, 142;

appreciation of, 145;

immense work, 146

Giotto's tower, 122

Gladstone and Richard de Bury, 160

Glosses, Law, 371

Goethe's Reynard, 213

Goerres, 255

Gohier, Urbain, 379

Golden Bull, 369

Golden Legend, 213

Goodyear, 131

Gothic, development, 102;

English, 100;

French, North German, 167;

Sculpture, 105-107;

Spanish, 100;

varieties, 12, 100, 167

Grail Legends, 174

Gratian, 81

Gray, 32

Green on Matthew Paris, 229

Greatness of an epoch, 6

Gregorian chant, 207

Grotesque in Dante, 309

Grounds of ignorance, 41

Guido de Montpelier, 338

Guido, 142

Guilds, 132;

and the drama, 136;

and democracy, 378;

Boston, 382;

London, 382;

number, 381;

rules, 38;

list of, 245

Hamburg, 420

Hamilton, 34

Hammurabi, 4

Hansa Alamanniae, 422;

and Denmark, 419;

geese cackle, 419;

obscurity of origin, 416

Harper, 52

Hartman von Aue, 186

Hayton, 412

Healing by first intention, 85

Herodotus and Marco Polo, 396

History, so-called, 127, appendix

Hollandus, 94

{488}

Homer, 3

Hospitals, earliest, 337;

England, 339

Hotel Dieu, 339;

endowment, 339

Human life, value, 367

Human rights, 366

Humboldt on Dante, 311-315

Humboldt, 47

Humor in mystery plays, 241

Humphreys, 162

Huysmans, 120

Hymns often heard, 195;

and languages, 203;

seven greatest, 199

Ignorance and servitude, 127

Illuminated books, 162

Indestructibility of matter, 39

International court, 424;

comity, 428;

fraternity, 391

Irnerius, 18, 81

Iron work, 114

Jenghis Khan, 2

Jerusalem the Golden, 205

Jessopp, Rev. Augustus, 133

Job, 3

Jocelyn of Brakelond, 226;

and Boswell, 227;

selection, 227

John of Carpini, 400

John of Matha, 347

John of Monte Corvino, 410-412

Joinville and the poor, 297;

selection, 228

Journeymen, 135

Justinian, English, 363

Kenilworth, 121

Kidney disease, 84

Lafenestre, 138-144

Lamentations, 207

Lanfranc, 37, 83

Lancelot, 175

Lateran, Council of, 28

Laurie, 59, 63, 65, 76

Law, Canon, 370;

French, 364;

German, 368;

Glosses, 371;

Hungarian, 369;

Polish, 369;

Spanish, 15

Lea, Henry C, 60

League, Lombard, 417

Legenda Aurea, 213

Lending of books, 152

Lending of professors, 56

Leo XIII, 81

Lepers, Louis IX and, 297

Leprosy eradicated, 343

Lerida, 24

Lhasa entered, 410

Liberties and customs, 360;

English, 358;

Hungary and Poland, 369

Library of La Ste. Chapelle, 152;

circulating, 152, 165;

of Hotel Dieu, 153;

of the Sorbonne, 153

Lincoln, 96

Lingard, 61

Literature for women, 334

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 40

Longfellow, 209;

Dante, 311

Louis IX, 289;

books, 164;

charity, 296;

crusades, 298;

education, 291;

father, 290-294;

husband, 289;

justice, 293, 294;

law, 365;

monks, 295;

son, 289

Lowell on Dante, 311

Luebeck punished, 418;

laws, 422

Lully, 57

Lunar rainbows, 48

Mabel Rich, 327

MacCarthy, 201

Magna Charta, 1, 350;

development of, 353;

excerpts, 352, et seq.

Malory, 175

Mandeville, 408

Manning on Dante, 308

Map or Mapes, Walter, 174-176

March on Latin Hymns, 195

Marco Millioni, 396

Maria di Novella, 331

Masterpieces, 135

Matter and form, 40;

constitution of, 40

Matthew Paris, 229;

Green's tribute, 229

Meaning of Cathedral, 118

Meistersingers, 10

Merchants' privileges, 359

Merrie England, 126

Metaphysical speculations, 33-37

Method of study, 53

Meyer, 49

Middle Ages, place of, 5

Middle class students, 72

Mill, 34

Millet, 145

Minnesingers, 10

Modern war correspondents anticipated, 225, 228

Mondino, 93

Money and privileges, 426

Money grabbers, 217

Monks, Idle, 414;

explorers, 413

Monroe, 55

Montalembert, monks, 414;

laws, 364

Montpelier, 23

Morley, Henry, 42, 157, 173, 244

The fact that the scholars and the professors at the universities were