life of imagination, should have opened a new fountain of poesy in the
traditional songs, the fairy lays, the varied minstrelsy, and knightly
narratives of Germany and France, Spain and England, since in these
countries, chivalry was the ruling element of society, and had made
the greatest progress?--For the more immediate object of this
Philosophy of History,--and in order to contemplate the progress of
mankind in matters more serious and important, I have thought the
moral principles of men in the middle age, and their political
doctrines, as they were founded on religion, or on the system of
opposition to religion, to be of far greater moment and importance
than the mere æsthetic part of those ages; for sentimentalists may
indulge in a certain vague, superficial love and predilection for the
times of chivalry, for the romantic spirit of the chivalrous life, and
of the chivalrous poetry, and of the whole system of modern art which
has thence emanated; and nevertheless all the deeper problems of life
involved in that momentous epoch may remain unexamined, unsolved, or
even misunderstood.
On the nature of this romantic tendency, inasmuch as it exerted a
mighty influence on life, and was a motive of vast and undoubted
weight in many of the most important historical events of those ages,
I shall merely say a word by way of psychological illustration; for
this is applicable to the prevailing forms of mind, the peculiar
intellectual bearings of whole nations and ages, as to those of
individuals. As where opinion is the ruling principle of life--it is
very soon broken, divided, parcelled out and lost in a chaos of
heterogeneous theories, and the age--the world--life itself are
involved in interminable disputes; so when religious feeling
constitutes the primary principle of life; and it hath been
dismembered, and torn from its right centre, been driven to some
extreme; and opinions flowing from this source have been carried into
action; then all the great transactions of public life exhibit that
overruling influence of imagination, perceptible not in the earlier,
but in the later periods of the middle age, especially from the great
epoch of the Crusades. Although these and other like great historical
events of that period bear many noble traces of the high religious
source whence they sprang; yet such a paramount influence of
imagination over real life, must in this partial excess be regarded as
the consequence of the dismemberment of man's psychological powers--a
symptom of the dissolution of that internal harmony which can never
subsist in society, unless it be previously established in
consciousness. The radical vice of the middle age--that is to say, the
one most prevalent in its later period from the time of the
Ghibellines--if one may venture to characterize it with such
psychological generality--is discernible in the productions of the
poetry, art and science of that age. And the relations which these
bore to society--the distinctive character--the peculiar spirit of
this critical period in the progress of Christian nations, are matters
of the highest interest and greatest moment. This vice consisted in
that disposition to extremes--that leaning towards the absolute I have
already spoken of, as manifested in will, in determination, in
rule--or in science, speculation, and poetry. The first germ, or at
least the first disposition to this fault, lies in the very origin of
modern nations, especially those five whose political existence sprang
out of the union of the Germanic constitution, manners, and character,
with the Latin civilization, literature, and language in the Romanic
countries; or which at least were formed by a very strong infusion of
the Roman spirit--I mean the German and English, the French, Spanish,
and Italian nations. Where the character of the German tribes, the
free, heroic energy of Germanic nature was blended and incorporated
with the strong worldly sense of the Romans by the influence of
Christian principles and religious love; there sprang out of that
happy union those great and mild characters, to which I have already
drawn your attention, and which flourished during the first period of
the German Empire and of the middle age. But as soon as the influence
of the Christian religion began to decline, and its power was
enfeebled, clouded or obscured, the two elements, which had been
united in the human race, fell asunder; and on one side was to be seen
nothing but mere Roman astuteness (as is often enough the case in the
later history of France and Italy); and on the side of the Germanic
nations, nothing but a rude martial impetuosity and chivalric pride,
uncontrolled and unsoftened by the principle of religion. Or when
again the rigid principles of that old worldly sense and instinct of
dominion, which belonged to the Romans, were conjoined with the heroic
energy of the North, without however the healing and conciliatory
influence of the religion of love; this combination, which is
conspicuous in the vehement but fearful characters engaged in the
Ghibelline contests, was indeed the most unfortunate of all.
How the tendency towards the absolute--that abyss to mankind, which
along with love, confounds and swallows up all life--then hurried the
political world from one extreme to another, we have already
mentioned, so far as was necessary for our object.
But even in the art and poetry, as well as the science of the middle
age, this leaning towards the absolute is equally apparent, and the
more so, as both reached their full maturity at that period only when
this had become the ruling spirit of the age. As, on one hand, the
chivalrous poetry, especially in its origin, was excessively
fantastical, until later it was fashioned into a form of milder
symmetry, and made to pour forth the touching, heart-felt tones of
romantic art; so on the other hand the scholastic philosophy was
bewildered in a maze of subtleties not so much metaphysical as merely
logical, and often quite destitute of sense. The singular manner,
indeed, in which the Italian poet Dante, has in his mighty poem of
visions, wherein he displays the most masterly and classical
condensation of language, and the profoundest poetical art, contrived
to sustain in his progress through the three regions of the invisible
world that fantastic spirit, (which was not confined to the chivalrous
poetry, but was common to every department of imagination in that
age,) next the stern maxims of the Ghibelline state-policy, and a
congenial worship of Roman antiquity, and has managed to unite all
these qualities with the subtle distinctions of the scholastic
philosophy; this singular manner, indeed, has never been an object of
general imitation, nor has it opened a path to the subsequent labours
of art. But this work will ever remain an extraordinary, wonderful,
and characteristic monument, wherein the peculiar spirit of this
first scholastico-romantic epoch of European art and science is
displayed in a most remarkable manner. In this spirit there were many
heterogeneous elements, not confined to their separate and distinct
spheres, but often in the strangest juxta-position, or rather
confusion. And thus a regular scholastic science of love, with all the
borrowed forms of the philosophy of the day, formed often the purport
of the most tender romantic lays or devices; and logical antitheses,
syllogisms, and subtleties were solved in rhyme and verse, with a most
charming play of fancy. It is these vagaries (and so they are in many
respects) which so captivate our feelings in the poetry of
Petrarch--one of the restorers of ancient literature and of modern
learning.
More strongly still than in its poetry, the richness of an inventive
imagination displayed itself in the wonderful architecture of the
middle age, as so many splendid monuments in Germany, England, a part
of France, and in the North of Italy and Venice can attest. The style
of the Byzantine churches was the first and principal model of this
Gothic architecture; though a fantastic monument of Arabic
architecture may here and there perhaps have had some influence in its
formation. The elaborate and ornate style, and the fantastic
singularity of this architecture, breathe the true spirit of the
German middle age. At this time, painting, too, began to make some
progress in Italy and Germany; though its progress was incomparably
slower than that of architecture, and the art reached its perfection
only in the fifteenth century; but devoted entirely to religious
subjects, and consecrated to the use of churches or private devotion,
painting remained, down to the time of Raphael, an art peculiarly
Christian, and displayed the profoundest import, and the most masterly
power. From this period, renouncing, for the most part, the religious
character of the elder Christian painting, art began to be affected by
that enthusiasm for the Pagan antique, which indeed was not limited to
the fine arts, but was the prevailing character of literature and
science in this second period of European culture. And I have made
these few remarks, not so much for the sake of art itself, which would
require a separate investigation, but as tending to elucidate the
various epochs and stages in the progress of modern civilization.
It was an ill-boding gift that the Ghibelline Emperor made to Europe
when he brought from the East the works of Aristotle, translated, or
rather burlesqued, into Arabic, and thence turned again into Latin,
till at last they became often perfectly unintelligible. The elder
Christian philosophers belonging to the first period of the middle
age, such as in England (which still retained a high pre-eminence in
Latin literature and Christian science,) a Scotus Erigena, the
contemporary of Alfred,--a St. Anselm, so highly revered in
theology,--and afterwards in France, an Abelard, and also a St.
Bernard, in whose eloquence there runs so pure a vein of piety--and so
charming a mysticism of feeling--all these elder Christian
philosophers, both in thought and language were incomparably clearer
and more precise than the schoolmen of succeeding times, and were for
the most part entirely free from that interminable play of an idle
logic, and those empty metaphysical subtleties. The natural sciences
were then in too low and feeble a state to form any distinct branch of
human inquiry; and this very circumstance contributed, as was then
indeed perfectly natural, to knit closer the ties which connected
philosophy with theology. But independently of the peculiar
circumstances of those times, it is evident that Christian philosophy
can be founded on religion only, and not on any theory, wherein nature
occupies the first and highest place--not on any doctrine, which
contains the germ of a Pagan worship of nature, renewed under a
scientific form. As little can a Christian philosophy rest on the
principle of Individualism--a reason which submits not humbly to God
and his revelation, but which, all concentrated in itself, aspires to
be all-sufficing and all-creative. In either respect, the Stagyrite,
when studied even in the original, and thoroughly understood, would
have been a guide very unsafe, very likely to mislead, as well in
natural philosophy as in the higher problems of Metaphysics. The best
and most instructive of his writings, his ethical or political works,
could not even be understood by those scholastic admirers of the
Grecian sage; for the profound allusions they contained to the customs
and political history of Greece made the knowledge of these, and a
complete investigation of the original sources of information,
absolutely necessary to their comprehension. Even his logical and
rhetorical books derive their chief and liveliest interest from the
fact that they were intended to remedy the dialectic malady of Grecian
intellect, and to oppose the all-usurping influence of a false
rhetoric among the Greeks. Lastly, to comprehend fully, rightly
appreciate, and turn to advantage, as our times are enabled to do, the
most solid works of the profound ancient--those on mixed physics and
natural history, the schoolmen were entirely destitute of the
necessary aids and preparatory information.
If the Christian philosophers of the middle age, instead of adopting
the Aristotelian system, had built and improved on the philosophy of
those first great original thinkers of Christian Europe already
mentioned, or on the philosophy of the primitive fathers, even those
of the Latin church, for by them also the Platonic doctrines (the only
doctrines of antiquity at all reconcileable with a philosophy of
revelation,) had long been planted and naturalized on the Christian
soil;--if this had been the case, the edifice of Christian philosophy
would have been raised with far greater ease and rapidity, and been
wrought into a much more beautiful structure. Or if even the Greek
originals had been deemed absolutely indispensable towards such an
object, it had been better that, instead of waiting till the
destruction of Constantinople, the powerful Emperors and Potentates,
who patronized art and science, had, during the short duration of the
Latin Empire at Constantinople, brought away with them those
philological treasures, instead of the works of Aristotle so absurdly
disfigured in the Arabic, and in the still more unintelligible Latin
version. It was, on one hand, the inclination of the age to absolute
modes of thinking, to the art of logical tournaments, and on the
other, a hope, secretly entertained, that by the pretended magical
power of these logical devices, one might learn and obtain the mastery
of many profound secrets of nature (which by the way should have been
sought anywhere but in the real Aristotle); finally, the unquenchable
thirst after a fruit of knowledge, deemed forbidden--it was all these
circumstances, which created now that universal and irresistible rage
for Aristotle, reputed as he was to contain the very essence of all
liberal science and philosophy.
The whole foundation of the scholastic philosophy was thoroughly and
essentially false; and it had the most prejudicial and injurious
influence, not only on theology, but on the whole spirit and modes of
thinking of this age. When however the evil appeared nearly incurable,
and the false current of opinion was too strong to be resisted, a
mighty service was rendered to mankind, when acute and sagacious
theologians, endowed with philosophical talents and discernment, like
a St. Thomas Aquinas, adopting the common, but erroneous, basis of
this old Aristotelian rationalism, founded on it a system in which
they attempted to reconcile this philosophy with the dictates of
faith, and thus, in this respect at least, avert from their age the
dangerous consequences of this false direction of the human mind. Yet,
on the whole, this was but an apparent reconciliation; and the
scholastic philosophy, or in other words, the rationalism of the
middle age, broke out often afterwards into a haughty and violent
opposition to the doctrines of revelation.
This scholastic spirit of the now degenerate middle age exerted its
pernicious influence on life itself, and on the sciences more
immediately connected with life, particularly jurisprudence. For when
the first Ghibelline Frederick, on the plains of Roncaglia, gave his
solemn sanction to the Roman law, and to all those absolute rights and
prerogatives of the crown which were thence to be deduced, he thereby
opened a door to an intricate scholastic jurisprudence, to all the
learned subtlety of processes, and the interminable logic of law; and
conferred on mankind a boon as little propitious as the Arabic
Aristotle, which his descendant, the second Frederick, afterwards
brought into Europe. The vast pandects of Justinian were already the
recognized code of laws, under the Eastern Franconian Emperors, long
before the German Jurist Irnerius opened his school of civil law in
the University of Bologna. Those old Roman Formulas of universal
dominion which are occasionally to be found in the Corpus Juris,
suited perfectly the spirit and policy of the Ghibelline Emperors,
who, in particular cases, alleged them against the Greek Emperors and
other Potentates, as clear proofs of the universal monarchy which
appertained to them. But it was particularly from the Ghibelline
period that the Roman law became a favourite science, and its study a
new mania among the European nations, especially on account of the
leaning to absolute principles in that system of jurisprudence, whose
artificial forms of rigid law were indeed little congenial to the
spirit of Christianity, to modern society, and German manners.
The true problem for the legal science of Christian Europe to solve
would have been this--to adopt the forms of the old Roman
jurisprudence, so highly wrought and finished in its way, and to
reform its spirit by the doctrines and principles of Christian
justice; and at the same time to employ the many excellent materials
to be found in the native laws of European nations, and in all the old
Germanic codes. These laws were indeed of a very local nature, adapted
mostly to infant communities and the simple manners of warlike tribes,
and by no means appropriate to a more advanced stage of civilization;
yet they contained the solid substance of genuine freedom and exalted
equity. But this task ought to have been accomplished in that earlier
period when Christianity, which had united and harmonized so many
discordant elements, had still retained all its influence--an
influence which was afterwards wanting. Those ages, however, which
were so thoroughly Christian, and on that very account of such
political importance, were deficient in science; and hence, as I have
already observed, it was not so much deliberate selfishness, or
hostile opposition, but the real want of knowledge and foresight which
occasioned the civil and political institutions of Christian states to
be left imperfect. It is only in very recent times that an attempt has
been made to solve the problem which earlier ages had left unexecuted,
or to supply this old deficiency of a Christian system of
jurisprudence. And if hitherto this task has never been adequately, or
completely, accomplished, though all the conditions have long existed
for the solution of this necessary problem of European society; it
would not be right to defer again the execution of the work, and thus
lose once more the seasonable moment.
How, after the struggle of parties had become more general, and an
absolute mode of thinking the ruling character of the age, the violent
contests between church and state, between the Secular and
Ecclesiastical authorities tended to promote their mutual injury and
destruction, I shall now endeavour briefly to state. After the last
excommunication pronounced against Frederick II., one anti-emperor had
followed another in succession; and German princes, a prince of the
royal household of England, and a king of Castile, had filled
successively the imperial throne; none were generally and legally
recognized, and it was the reign of universal anarchy and savage
club-law. It was a dark interregnum in social order, as if the sun of
justice and of peace had withdrawn its light from a world of
corruption and irreconcilable hate; and for a whole generation this
state of wild disorder, and fear of still greater calamities, lasted.
The loss of Jerusalem and all the Holy Land to the Christians, which
now took place, added to the general gloom of the times.
In vain had St. Lewis in his last Crusade against Egypt, once more
exerted all his energies for the deliverance and preservation of the
Christian possessions in the East; possessions, which had they been
retained, might in the end have formed a rampart and a barrier against
the inroads of the Mussulman power into the adjoining provinces of
Europe. Still the danger from this quarter was not so imminent; for it
was not till a hundred years later that the Turks burst from Asia
Minor into Europe, conquered the Northern provinces of the Byzantine
Empire, and began to menace the Christian kingdoms of the West. But
there was a nearer and mightier danger rolling on against Europe--the
formidable power of the Moguls, which surprised it in this period of
the great interregnum. As if the hostile spirit of destruction had
anticipated or known that the power of Christendom could be subverted
only by internal discord; an old sage or priest of the still Pagan
Moguls, had, about a generation before, announced to the youth, who
was afterwards called Zingis Khan, (that is to say lord of the world,
and who is known by this name in history,) that in a vision, he had
seen the Great Spirit, seated on his flaming throne, judge the nations
of the earth, and that, by his decision, the dominion of the world had
been allotted to the young Khan of the Moguls. Filled with this
spirit, Zingis traversed the world with his countless hosts; conquered
China, Thibet and Japan, subdued the Mussulman Empire of Carizme, and
penetrated as far as the Caspian Sea. The conqueror's four sons
continued the work which he had commenced, and divided the earth into
four parts for their task of desolation. The one to whom was assigned
the Western portion of the earth invaded Christendom with his
innumerable squadrons; the throne of Rurick, the greatest Christian
potentate in the North, was overturned; and for several centuries,
Russia, incorporated with the government of Kipzak, groaned under the
oppressive yoke of the Mogul sway. Poland was overrun by the
all-wasting hosts of Moguls; the King of Hungary was defeated, and
forced to flee his country; Silesia was laid waste, and the bloody
discomfiture of the Christian army at Lignitz filled the whole Western
world with consternation. Happily the destroyers penetrated no further
into Europe; and the stream of their conquests, as if diverted by a
protecting hand, took its course first towards the Arabian Caliphate
of Bagdad, which they put an end to; and afterwards towards India, and
other Asiatic and Mahometan countries. This was a passing, but awful,
warning to Christendom, how much she needed the strong arm of a
powerful Protector, and that union alone would enable her to resist
the assaults and inroads of barbarous nations. It was the strong
feeling of such a necessity which had first inspired the idea of the
Western Empire.