Civil freedom, as we have seen, dawned first in the great commercial
cities of Italy, whence it spread to Germany, Flanders, and Britain.
This important change in society may be traced to the institution of
free communities of traders, or guilds of merchants; and such
confederacies were a necessary consequence of the usurpation and
tyranny of the nobles and feudal possessors of the soil. In the
eleventh and twelfth centuries the usurpations of the nobility became
intolerable; they had reduced the great body of the people to a state
of actual servitude. Nor was such oppression the portion of those
alone who dwelt in the country, and were employed in cultivating the
estates of their masters. Cities and villages found it necessary to
hold of some great lord, on whom they might depend for protection, and
became no less subject to his arbitrary jurisdiction. The inhabitants
were deprived of those rights which, in social life, are deemed most
natural and inalienable. They could not dispose of the effects which
their own industry had acquired, either by a later will, or by any
deed executed during their lives. Neither could they marry, nor carry
on lawsuits, without the consent of their lord. But as soon as the
cities of Italy began to turn their attention towards commerce, and to
conceive some idea of the advantages which they might derive from it,
they became impatient to shake off the yoke of their insolent lords,
and to establish among themselves such a free and equal government as
would render property and industry secure. The Italian cities were the
first to emancipate themselves, and their example was followed in
other great seats of population, the king of the country in general
countenancing the establishment of free communities, in order to gain
support against the encroachments of the overgrown power of the
barons. The first community of this description formed in Scotland is
understood to have been that of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which received its
charter from William the Lion. Towns, upon acquiring the right of
community, became so many little republics, governed by known and
equal laws. The inhabitants being trained to arms, and being
surrounded by walls, they soon began to hold the neighboring barons in
contempt, and to withstand aggressions on their property and
privileges. Another great good, of fully more importance, was
produced. These free communities were speedily admitted, by their
representatives, into the great council of the nation, whether
distinguished by the name of a Parliament, a Diet, the Cortes, or the
States-General. This is justly esteemed the greatest event in the
history of mankind in modern times. Representatives from the English
boroughs were first admitted into the great national council by the
barons who took up arms against Henry III in the year 1265; being
summoned to add to the greater popularity of their party, and to
strengthen the barrier against the encroachments of regal power.
Readers may draw their own conclusions from an event which ultimately
had the effect of revolutionising the framework of society, and of
rearing that great body of the people commonly styled ‘the middle
class.’
The enfranchising of burghal communities led to the manumission of
slaves. Hitherto the tillers of the ground, all the inferior classes
of the country, were the bondsmen of the barons. The monarchs of
France, in order to reduce the power of the nobles, set the example,
by ordering (1315-1318) all serfs to be set at liberty on just and
reasonable conditions. The edicts were carried into immediate
execution within the royal domain. The example of their sovereigns,
together with the expectation of considerable sums which they might
raise by this expedient, led many of the nobles to set their
dependents at liberty; and servitude was thus gradually abolished in
almost every province of the kingdom. This beneficial practice
similarly spread over the rest of Europe; and in England, as the
spirit of liberty gained ground, the very name and idea of personal
servitude, without any formal interposition of the legislature to
prohibit it, was totally banished.
While society was assuming the semblance of the form it now bears, the
progress of improvement was accelerated by various collateral
circumstances, the first of which worth noticing was:
_The Revival of Letters._ The first restorers of learning in Europe
were the Arabians, who, in the course of their Asiatic conquests,
became acquainted with some of the ancient Greek authors, discovered
their merits, and had them translated into Arabic, esteeming those
principally which treated of mathematics, physics, and metaphysics.
They disseminated their knowledge in the course of their conquests,
and founded schools and colleges in all the countries which they
subdued. The western kingdoms of Europe became first acquainted with
the learning of the ancients through the medium of those Arabian
translations. Charlemagne caused them to be retranslated into Latin;
and, after the example of the caliphs, founded universities at Bonona,
Pavia, Osnaburg, and Paris. Similar efforts were made in England by
Alfred; and to him we owe the establishment, or at least the
elevation, of the university of Oxford. The first efforts, however, at
literary improvement were marred by the subtleties of scholastic
divinity. Perhaps the greatest and wisest literary character of the
middle ages was an English friar, named Roger Bacon. This
extraordinary individual was not only learned, but, what was more
uncommon in those times, he was scientific. Hallam asserts that he was
acquainted with the nature of gunpowder, though he deemed it prudent
to conceal his knowledge. He saw the insufficiency of school
philosophy, and was the first to insist on experiment and the
observation of nature as the fittest instruments by which to acquire
knowledge. He reformed the calendar, and made discoveries in
astronomy, optics, chemistry, medicine, and mechanics.
It is to Italy, however, that we owe the first and greatest exertions
in the revival of letters. The spirit of liberty which had arisen
among its republics was favorable to the cultivation of literature and
accordingly we find that not only did they produce many individuals
who were most active and successful in bringing to light the relics of
classical lore, but that there also arose among them men possessed of
the highest order of original genius. Florence produced Dante so early
as 1265. Dante was associated with the magistracy of his native city
in his earlier years; but having given dissatisfaction in that
capacity, he was banished, and in his exile produced his great poem
entitled the ‘Divine Comedy.’ It is a representation of the three
supposed kingdoms of futurity――Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise――divided
into one hundred cantos, and containing about 14,000 lines. The poem
has been much praised. Petrarch, born in the year 1304, was likewise a
Florentine by birth. The misfortunes of his father had impoverished
the family, and Petrarch was too proud to take the usual method of
retrieving his affairs. His genius, however, earned for him the
friendship of many Italian princes, and even of more popes than one,
although he had exerted his talents to expose the vices of their
courts. Petrarch’s personal character seems to have exhibited some
unamiable traits; but he has sung of love, friendship, glory,
patriotism, and religion, in language of such sweetness and power as
to have made him the admiration of every succeeding age. Boccaccio,
like the two great poets named, was a Florentine. He was born in 1313,
and his name has descended to posterity less associated with his
poetry than the light, elegant, and easy prose of his novels.
_The discovery of Justinian’s Laws_, as detailed in the Pandects, was
another event which powerfully tended to modify the barbarism that
prevailed during the middle ages in Europe.
_The invention of the Mariner’s Compass_ must be reckoned of still
greater importance, and yet it is absolutely unknown to whom we owe
it. That honor has been often bestowed on Gioia, a citizen of Amalphi,
who lived about the commencement of the fourteenth century. But the
polarity of the magnet at least was known to the Saracens two hundred
years before that time; though even after the time of Gioia, it was
long before the magnet was made use of as a guide in navigation. ‘It
is a singular circumstance,’ says Mr. Hallam, ‘and only to be
explained by the obstinacy with which men are apt to reject
improvement, that the magnetic needle was not generally adopted in
navigation till very long after the discovery of its properties, and
even after their peculiar importance had been perceived. The writers
of the thirteenth century, who mentioned the polarity of the needle,
mention also its use in navigation; yet Campany has found no distinct
proof of its employment till 1403, and does not believe that it was
frequently on board Mediterranean ships at the latter part of the
preceding age.’ The Genoese, however, are known in the fourteenth
century to have come out of that inland sea, and steered for Flanders
and England. But by far the greatest sailors of the age were the
Spaniards and Portuguese. This latter nation had little or no
existence during the greater part of the middle ages, but in the
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, they were able to expel
the Moors from a great part of their country; and in the beginning of
the fifteenth, John, surnamed the Bastard, who was then their king,
was the first European prince who exhibited a respectable navy. It was
in 1486 that this adventurous people first doubled the Cape of Good
Hope.
_The discovery of America_ (1493) may be mentioned supplementarily to
the invention of the mariner’s compass, as an event which, without it,
could never have taken place. The immortal honor of that discovery
rests with Christopher Columbus, a sailor of Genoa. After unsuccessful
applications at almost every court in Europe, and braving obloquy and
contempt, Columbus at last obtained a miserable force from Ferdinand
and Isabella of Spain; and with no landmark but the heavens, nor any
guide but his compass, he launched boldly into the sea, and at last
conducted Europeans to the great western hemisphere.
In the course of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth
centuries, various discoveries in the arts were made, which powerfully
tended to the advancement of society; among these the more important
were the invention of gunpowder and firearms, clocks and watches,
paper-making and printing. This last, the greatest of all, prepared
the way for the Reformation in religion, in the sixteenth century, by
which religious was added to civil freedom, and a great spur given to
individual activity.