few that had been erected on the Rhine and Danube by the Romans. A house
with its stables and farm-buildings, surrounded by a hedge or enclosure,
was called a court, or, as we find it in our law-books, a curtilage; the
toft or homestead of a more genuine English dialect. One of these, with
the adjacent domain of arable fields and woods, had the name of a villa
or manse. Several manses composed a march; and several marches formed a
pagus or district.[558] From these elements in the progress of
population arose villages and towns. In France undoubtedly there were
always cities of some importance. Country parishes contained several
manses or farms of arable land, around a common pasture, where every one
was bound by custom to feed his cattle.[559]
[Sidenote: of internal trade;]
The condition even of internal trade was hardly preferable to that of
agriculture. There is not a vestige perhaps to be discovered for several
centuries of any considerable manufacture; I mean, of working up
articles of common utility to an extent beyond what the necessities of
an adjacent district required.[560] Rich men kept domestic artisans
among their servants; even kings, in the ninth century, had their
clothes made by the women upon their farms;[561] but the peasantry must
have been supplied with garments and implements of labour by purchase;
and every town, it cannot be doubted, had its weaver, its smith, and its
currier. But there were almost insuperable impediments to any extended
traffic--the insecurity of moveable wealth, and difficulty of
accumulating it; the ignorance of mutual wants; the peril of robbery in
conveying merchandise, and the certainty of extortion. In the domains of
every lord a toll was to be paid in passing his bridge, or along his
highway, or at his market.[562] These customs, equitable and necessary
in their principle, became in practice oppressive, because they were
arbitrary, and renewed in every petty territory which the road might
intersect. Several of Charlemagne's capitularies repeat complaints of
these exactions, and endeavour to abolish such tolls as were not founded
on prescription.[563] One of them rather amusingly illustrates the
modesty and moderation of the landholders. It is enacted that no one
shall be compelled to go out of his way in order to pay toll at a
particular bridge, when he can cross the river more conveniently at
another place.[564] These provisions, like most others of that age, were
unlikely to produce much amendment. It was only the milder species,
however, of feudal lords who were content with the tribute of merchants.
The more ravenous descended from their fortresses to pillage the wealthy
traveller, or shared in the spoil of inferior plunderers, whom they both
protected and instigated. Proofs occur, even in the later periods of the
middle ages, when government had regained its energy, and civilization
had made considerable progress, of public robberies systematically
perpetrated by men of noble rank. In the more savage times, before the
twelfth century, they were probably too frequent to excite much
attention. It was a custom in some places to waylay travellers, and not
only to plunder, but to sell them as slaves, or compel them to pay a
ransom. Harold son of Godwin, having been wrecked on the coast of
Ponthieu, was imprisoned by the lord, says an historian, according to
the custom of that territory.[565] Germany appears to have been, upon
the whole, the country where downright robbery was most unscrupulously
practised by the great. Their castles, erected on almost inaccessible
heights among the woods, became the secure receptacles of predatory
bands, who spread terror over the country. From these barbarian lords of
the dark ages, as from a living model, the romances are said to have
drawn their giants and other disloyal enemies of true chivalry.
Robbery, indeed, is the constant theme both of the Capitularies and of
the Anglo-Saxon laws; one has more reason to wonder at the intrepid
thirst of lucre, which induced a very few merchants to exchange the
products of different regions, than to ask why no general spirit of
commercial activity prevailed.
[Sidenote: and of foreign commerce.]
Under all these circumstances it is obvious that very little oriental
commerce could have existed in these western countries of Europe.
Destitute as they have been created, speaking comparatively, of natural
productions fit for exportation, their invention and industry are the
great resources from which they can supply the demands of the East.
Before any manufactures were established in Europe, her commercial
intercourse with Egypt and Asia must of necessity have been very
trifling; because, whatever inclination she might feel to enjoy the
luxuries of those genial regions, she wanted the means of obtaining
them. It is not therefore necessary to rest the miserable condition of
oriental commerce upon the Saracen conquests, because the poverty of
Europe is an adequate cause; and, in fact, what little traffic remained
was carried on with no material inconvenience through the channel of
Constantinople. Venice took the lead in trading with Greece and more
eastern countries.[566] Amalfi had the second place in the commerce of
those dark ages. These cities imported, besides natural productions, the
fine clothes of Constantinople; yet as this traffic seems to have been
illicit, it was not probably extensive.[567] Their exports were gold and
silver, by which, as none was likely to return, the circulating money of
Europe was probably less in the eleventh century than at the subversion
of the Roman empire; furs, which were obtained from the Sclavonian
countries; and arms, the sale of which to pagans or Saracens was vainly
prohibited by Charlemagne and by the Holy See.[568] A more scandalous
traffic, and one that still more fitly called for prohibitory laws, was
carried on in slaves. It is an humiliating proof of the degradation of
Christendom, that the Venetians were reduced to purchase the luxuries of
Asia by supplying the slave-market of the Saracens.[569] Their apology
would perhaps have been, that these were purchased from their heathen
neighbours; but a slave-dealer was probably not very inquisitive as to
the faith or origin of his victim. This trade was not peculiar to
Venice. In England it was very common, even after the Conquest, to
export slaves to Ireland, till, in the reign of Henry II., the Irish
came to a non-importation agreement, which put a stop to the
practice.[570]
From this state of degradation and poverty all the countries of Europe
have recovered, with a progression in some respects tolerably uniform,
in others more unequal; and the course of their improvement, more
gradual and less dependent upon conspicuous civil revolutions than their
decline, affords one of the most interesting subjects into which a
philosophical mind can inquire. The commencement of this restoration has
usually been dated from about the close of the eleventh century; though
it is unnecessary to observe that the subject does not admit of
anything approximating to chronological accuracy. It may, therefore, be
sometimes not improper to distinguish the first six of the ten centuries
which the present work embraces under the appellation of the _dark_
ages; an epithet which I do not extend to the twelfth and three
following. In tracing the decline of society from the subversion of the
Roman empire, we have been led, not without connexion, from ignorance to
superstition, from superstition to vice and lawlessness, and from thence
to general rudeness and poverty. I shall pursue an inverted order in
passing along the ascending scale, and class the various improvements
which took place between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries under three
principal heads, as they relate to the wealth, the manners, or the taste
and learning of Europe. Different arrangements might probably be
suggested, equally natural and convenient; but in the disposition of
topics that have not always an unbroken connexion with each other, no
method can be prescribed as absolutely more scientific than the rest.
That which I have adopted appears to me as philosophical and as little
liable to transitions as any other.
FOOTNOTES:
[479] The subject of the present chapter, so far as it relates to the
condition of literature in the middle ages, has been again treated by me
in the first and second chapters of a work, published in 1836, the
Introduction to the History of Literature in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth,
and Seventeenth Centuries. Some things will be found in it more exactly
stated, others newly supplied from recent sources.
[480] The authors of Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. i., can only
find three writers of Gaul, no inconsiderable part of the Roman Empire,
mentioned upon any authority; two of whom are now lost. In the preceding
century the number was considerably greater.
[481] Mosheim, Cent. 4. Tiraboschi endeavours to elevate higher the
learning of the early Christians, t. ii. p. 328. Jortin, however,
asserts that many of the bishops in the general councils of Ephesus and
Chalcedon could not write their names. Remarks on Ecclesiast. Hist. vol.
ii. p. 417.
[482] Gibbon roundly asserts that "the language of Virgil and Cicero,
though with some inevitable mixture of corruption, was so universally
adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, Great Britain, and Pannonia, that the
faint traces of the Punic or Celtic idioms were preserved only in the
mountains or among the peasants." Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 60 (8vo.
edit.). For Britain he quotes Tacitus's Life of Agricola as his voucher.
But the only passage in this work that gives the least colour to
Gibbon's assertion is one in which Agricola is said to have encouraged
the children of British chieftains to acquire a taste for liberal
studies, and to have succeeded so much by judicious commendation of
their abilities, ut qui modo linguam Romanam abnuebant, eloquentiam
concupiscerent. (c. 21.) This, it is sufficiently obvious, is very
different from the national adoption of Latin as a mother tongue.
[483] t. vii. preface.
[484] It appears, by a passage quoted from the digest by M. Bonamy, Mem.
de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xxiv. p. 589, that Celtic was spoken in
Gaul, or at least parts of it, as well as Punic in Africa.
[485] Atque eadem illa litera, quoties ultima est, et vocalem verbi
sequentis ita contingit, ut in eam transire possit, etiam si scribitur,
tamen parum exprimitur, ut _Multum ille_, et _Quantum erat_: adeo ut
pene cujusdam novae literae sonum reddat. Neque enim eximitur, sed
obscuratur, et tantum aliqua inter duos vocales velut nota est, ne ipsae
coeant. Quintilian, Institut. 1. ix. c. 4, p. 585, edit. Capperonier.
[486] The following passage of Quintilian is an evidence both of the
omission of harsh or superfluous letters by the best speakers, and of
the corrupt abbreviations usual with the worst. Dilucida vero erit
pronunciatio primum, si verba tota exegerit, quorum pars devorari, pars
destitui solet, plerisque extremas syllabas non proferentibus, dum
priorum sono indulgent. Ut est autem necessaria verborum explanatio, ita
omnes computare et velut adnumerare literas, molestum et odiosum.--Nam
et vocales frequentissime coeunt, et consonantium quaedam insequente
vocali dissimulantur; utriusque exemplum posuimus; Multum ille et
terris. Vitatur etiam duriorum inter se congressus, unde _pellexit_ et
_collegit_, et quae alio loco dicta sunt. 1. ii. c. 3, p. 696.
[487] Tiraboschi (Storia dell. Lett. Ital. t. iii. preface, p. v.)
imputes this paradox to Bembo and Quadrio; but I can hardly believe that
either of them could maintain it in a literal sense.
[488] M. Bonamy, in an essay printed in Mem. de l'Academie des
Inscriptions, t. xxiv., has produced several proofs of this from the
classical writers on agriculture and other arts, though some of his
instances are not in point, as any schoolboy would have told him. This
essay, which by some accident had escaped my notice till I had nearly
finished the observations in my text, contains, I think, the best view
that I have seen of the process of transition by which Latin was changed
into French and Italian. Add however, the preface to Tiraboschi's third
volume and the thirty-second dissertation of Muratori.
[489] See Lanzi, Saggio della Lingua Etrusca, t. i. c. 431; Mem. de
l'Acad. des Inscrip. t. xxiv. p. 632.
[490] No description can give so adequate a notion of this extraordinary
performance as a short specimen. Take the introductory lines; which
really, prejudices of education apart, are by no means inharmonious:--
Praefatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat,
Respectumque bonum, cum venerit saeculi meta,
AEternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda.
Ego similiter erravi tempore multo,
Fana prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis.
Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege.
Testificor Dominum, doleo, proh! civica turba
Inscia quod perdit, pergens deos quaerere vanos.
Ob ea perdoctus ignoros instruo verum.
Commodianus however did not keep up this excellence in every part. Some
of his lines are not reducible to any pronunciation, without the summary
rules of Procrustes; as for instance:--
Paratus ad epulas, et refugiscere praecepta; or, Capillos inficitis,
oculos fuligine relinitis.
It must be owned that this text is exceedingly corrupt, and I should not
despair of seeing a truly critical editor, unscrupulous as his
fraternity are apt to be, improve his lines into unblemished hexameters.
Till this time arrives, however, we must consider him either as utterly
ignorant of metrical distinctions, or at least as aware that the
populace whom he addressed did not observe them in speaking. Commodianus
is published by Dawes at the end of his edition of Minucius Felix. Some
specimens are quoted in Harris's Philological Inquiries.
[491] Archaeologia, vol. xiv. p. 188. The following are the first
lines:--
Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare;
Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos praemonere,
Comparans regnum coelorum reticulo misso in mare,
Congreganti multos pisces, omne genus hinc et inde,
Quos cum traxissent ad littus, tunc coeperunt separare,
Bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare.
This trash is much below the level of Augustin; but it could not have
been later than his age.
[492] Recueil des Historiens, t. i. p. 814; it begins in the following
manner:--
Praecelso expectabili bis Arbogasto comiti
Auspicius, qui diligo, salutem dico plurimam.
Magnas coelesti Domino rependo corde gratias
Quod te Tullensi proxime magnum in urbe vidimus.
Multis me tuis artibus laetificabas antea,
Sed nunc fecisti maximo me exultare gaudio.
[493] Chilpericus rex ... confecit duos libros, quorum versiculi debiles
nullis pedibus subsistere possunt: in quibus, dum non intelligebat, pro
longis syllabas breves posuit, et pro brevibus longas statuebat. 1. vi.
c. 46.
[494] Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, t. xvii. Hist. Litteraire de
la France, t. ii. p. 28. It seems rather probable that the poetry of
Avitus belongs to the fifth century, though not very far from its
termination. He was the correspondent of Sidonius Apollinaris, who died
in 489, and we may presume his poetry to have been written rather early
in life.
[495] One stanza of this song will suffice to show that the Latin
language was yet unchanged:--
De Clotario est canere rege Francorum,
Qui ivi pugnare cum gente Saxonum,
Quam graviter provenisset missis Saxonum,
Si non fuisset inclitus Faro de gente
Burgundionum.
[496] Praecavendum est, ne ad aures populi minus aliquid intelligibile
proferatur. Mem. de l'Acad. t. xvii. p. 712.
[497] Rustico et plebeio sermone propter exemplum et imitationem. Id.
ibid.
[498] Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. iii. p. 5. Mem. de l'Academie,
t. xxiv. p. 617. Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique, t. iv. p. 485.
[499] Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. vii. p. 12. The editors say that
it is mentioned by name even in the seventh century, which is very
natural, as the corruption of Latin had then become striking. It is
familiarly known that illiterate persons _understand_ a more correct
language than they use themselves; so that the corruption of Latin might
have gone to a considerable length among the people, while sermons were
preached, and tolerably comprehended, in a purer grammar.
[500] Mem. de l'Acad. des Insc. t. xvii. See two memoirs in this volume
by du Clos and le Boeuf, especially the latter, as well as that
already mentioned in t. xxiv. p. 582, by M. Bonamy.
[501] Muratori, Dissert. i. and xliii.
[502]
Usus Francisca, vulgari, et voce Latina.
Instituit populos eloquio tripici.
Fontanini dell'Eloquenza Italiana, p. 15. Muratori, Dissert. xxxii.
[503] Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. vi. p. 20. Muratori, Dissert.
xliii.
[504] Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique, t. ii. p. 419. This became, the
editors say, much less unusual about the end of the thirteenth century;
a pretty late period! A few signatures to deeds appear in the fourteenth
century; in the next they are more frequent. Ibid. The emperor Frederic
Barbarossa could not read (Struvius, Corpus Hist. German. t. i. p. 377),
nor John king of Bohemia in the middle of the fourteenth century
(Sismondi, t. v. p. 205), nor Philip the Hardy, king of France, although
the son of St. Louis. (Velly, t. vi. p. 426.)
[505] Louis IV., king of France, laughing at Fulk count of Anjou, who
sang anthems among the choristers of Tours, received the following pithy
epistle from his learned vassal: Noveritis, domines quod rex illiteratus
est asinus coronatus. Gesta Comitum Andegavensium. In the same book,
Geoffrey, father of our Henry II., is said to be optime literatus; which
perhaps imports little more learning than his ancestor Fulk possessed.
[506] The passage in Eginhard, which has occasioned so much dispute,
speaks for itself: Tentabat et scribere, tabulasque et codicillos ad hoc
in lecticula sub cervicalibus circumferre solebat, ut, cum vacuum tempus
esset, manum effigiandis literis assuefaceret; sed parum prospere
successit labor praeposterus ac sero inchoatus.
Many are still unwilling to believe that Charlemagne could not write. M.
Ampere observes that the emperor asserts himself to have been the author
of the Libri Carolini, and is said by some to have composed verses.
Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 37. But did not Henry VIII. claim a book
against Luther, which was not written by himself? _Qui facit per alium,
facit per se_, is in all cases a royal prerogative. Even if the book
were Charlemagne's own, might he not have dictated it? I have been
informed that there is a manuscript at Vienna with autograph notes of
Charlemagne in the margin. But is there sufficient evidence of their
genuineness? The great difficulty is to get over the words which I have
quoted from Eginhard. M. Ampere ingeniously conjectures that the passage
does not relate to simple common writing, but to calligraphy; the art of
delineating characters in a beautiful manner, practised by the copyists,
and of which a contemporaneous specimen may be seen in the well-known
Bible of the British Museum. Yet it must be remembered that
Charlemagne's early life passed in the depths of ignorance; and Eginhard
gives a fair reason why he failed in acquiring the art of writing, that
he began too late. Fingers of fifty are not made for a new skill. It is
not, of course, implied by the words, that he could not write his own
name; but that he did not acquire such a facility as he desired. [1848.]
[507] Spelman, Vit. Alfred. Append.
[508] Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. iii. p. 5.
[509] These four dark centuries, the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh,
occupy five large quarto volumes of the Literary History of France, by
the fathers of St. Maur. But the most useful part will be found in the
general view at the commencement of each volume; the remainder is taken
up with biographies, into which a reader may dive at random, and
sometimes bring up a curious fact. I may refer also to the 14th volume
of Leber, Collections Relatives a l'Histoire de France, where some
learned dissertations by the Abbes Lebeuf and Goujet, a little before
the middle of the last century, are reprinted. [Note I.]
Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura, t. iii., and Muratori's
forty-third Dissertation, are good authorities for the condition of
letters in Italy; but I cannot easily give references to all the books
which I have consulted.
[510] Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 198.
[511] Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, p. 55. The reason alleged, indeed, is
that they were wholly occupied with studying Arabic, in order to carry
on a controversy with the Saracens. But, as this is not very credible,
we may rest with the main fact that they could write no Latin.
[512] Spelman, Vit. Alfred. Append. The whole drift of Alfred's preface
to this translation is to defend the expediency of rendering books into
English, on account of the general ignorance of Latin. The zeal which
this excellent prince shows for literature is delightful. Let us
endeavour, he says, that all the English youth, especially the children
of those who are free-born, and can educate them, may learn to read
English before they take to any employment. Afterwards such as please
may be instructed in Latin. Before the Danish invasion indeed, he tells
us, churches were well furnished with books; but the priests got little
good from them, being written in a foreign language which they could not
understand.
[513] Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, p. 55. Ordericus Vitalis, a more
candid judge of our unfortunate ancestors than other contemporary
annalists, says that the English were, at the Conquest, rude and almost
illiterate, which he ascribes to the Danish invasion. Du Chesne, Hist.
Norm. Script. p. 518. However, Ingulfus tells us that the library of
Croyland contained above three hundred volumes, till the unfortunate
fire that destroyed that abbey in 1091. Gale, XV Scriptores, t. i. 93.
Such a library was very extraordinary in the eleventh century, and could
not have been equalled for some ages afterwards. Ingulfus mentions at
the same time a nadir, as he calls it, or planetarium, executed in
various metals. This had been presented to abbot Turketul in the tenth
century by a king of France, and was, I make no doubt, of Arabian or
Greek manufacture.
[514] Parchment was so scarce that none could be procured about 1120 for
an illuminated copy of the Bible. Warton's Hist. of English Poetry,
Dissert. II. I suppose the deficiency was of skins beautiful enough for
this purpose; it cannot be meant that there was no parchment for legal
instruments.
Manuscripts written on papyrus, as may be supposed from the fragility of
the material, as well as the difficulty of procuring it, are of extreme
rarity. That in the British Museum, being a charter to a church at
Ravenna in 572, is in every respect the most curious: and indeed both
Mabillon and Muratori seem never to have seen anything written on
papyrus, though they trace its occasional use down to the eleventh or
twelfth centuries. Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, 1. ii.; Muratori,
Antichita Italiane, Dissert. xliii. p. 602. But the authors of the
Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique speak of several manuscripts on this
material as extant in France and Italy. t. i. p. 493.
As to the general scarcity and high price of books in the middle ages,
Robertson (Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note x.), and Warton in the
above-cited dissertation, not to quote authors less accessible, have
collected some of the leading facts; to whom I refer the reader.
[515] Lest I should seem to have spoken too peremptorily, I wish it to
be understood that I pretend to hardly any direct acquaintance with
these writers, and found my censure on the authority of others, chiefly
indeed on the admissions of those who are too disposed to fall into a
strain of panegyric. See Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. iv. p. 281
et alibi.
[516] John Scotus, who, it is almost needless to say, must not be
confounded with the still more famous metaphysician Duns Scotus, lived
under Charles the Bald, in the middle of the ninth century. It admits of
no doubt that John Scotus was, in a literary and philosophical sense,
the most remarkable man of the dark ages; no one else had his boldness,
his subtlety in threading the labyrinths of metaphysical speculations
which, in the west of Europe, had been utterly disregarded. But it is
another question whether he can be reckoned an original writer; those
who have attended most to his treatise De Divisione Naturae, the most
abstruse of his works, consider it as the development of an oriental
philosophy, acquired during his residence in Greece, and nearly
coinciding with some of the later Platonism of the Alexandrian school,
but with a more unequivocal tendency to pantheism. This manifests itself
in some extracts which have latterly been made from the treatise De
Divisione Naturae; but though Scotus had not the reputation of
unblemished orthodoxy, the drift of his philosophy was not understood in
that barbarous period. He might, indeed, have excited censure by his
intrepid preference of reason to authority. "Authority," he says,
"springs from reason, not reason from authority--true reason needs not
be confirmed by any authority." La veritable importance historique, says
Ampere, de Scot Erigene n'est donc pas dans ses opinions; celles-ci
n'ont d'autre interet que leur date et le lieu ou elles apparaissent.
Sans doute, il est piquant et bizarre de voir ces opinions orientales et
alexandrines surgir au IXe siecle, a Paris, a la cour de Charles le
Chauve; mais ce qui n'est pas seulement piquant et bizarre, ce qui
interesse le developpement de l'esprit humain, c'est que la question ait
ete posee, des lors, si nettement entre l'autorite et la raison, et si
energiquement resolue en faveur de la seconde. En un mot, par ses idees,
Scot Erigene est encore un philosophe de l'antiquite Grecque; et par
l'independance hautement accusee de son point de vue philosophique, il
est deja un devancier de la philosophie moderne. Hist. Litt. iii. 146.
Silvester II. died in 1003. Whether he first brought the Arabic
numeration into Europe, as has been commonly said, seems uncertain; it
was at least not much practised for some centuries after his death.
[517] Charlemagne had a library at Aix-la-Chapelle, which he directed to
be sold at his death for the benefit of the poor. His son Louis is said
to have collected some books. But this rather confirms, on the whole, my
supposition that, in some periods, no royal or private libraries
existed, since there were not always princes or nobles with the spirit
of Charlemagne, or even Louis the Debonair.
"We possess a catalogue," says M. Ampere (quoting d'Achery's
Spicilegium, ii. 310), "of the library in the abbey of St. Riquier,
written in 831; it consists of 256 volumes, some containing several
works. Christian writers are in great majority; but we find also the
Eclogues of Virgil, the Rhetoric of Cicero, the History of Homer, that
is, the works ascribed to Dictys and Dares." Ampere, iii. 236. Can
anything be lower than this, if nothing is omitted more valuable than
what is mentioned? The Rhetoric of Cicero was probably the spurious
books Ad Herennium. But other libraries must have been somewhat better
furnished than this; else the Latin authors would have been still less
known in the ninth century than they actually were.
In the gradual progress of learning, a very small number of princes
thought it honourable to collect books. Perhaps no earlier instance can
be mentioned than that of a most respectable man, William III., duke of
Guienne, in the first part of the eleventh century. Fuit dux iste, says
a contemporary writer, a pueritia doctus literis, et satis notitiam
Scripturarum habuit; librorum copiam in palatio suo servavit; et si
forte a frequentia causarum et tumultu vacaret, lectioni per seipsum
operam dabat longioribus noctibus elucubrans in libris, donec somno
vinceretur. Rec. des Hist. x. 155.
[518] Robertson, Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note 13; Schmidt,
Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 380; Hist. Litteraire de la France, t.
vi.
[519] Duelling, in the modern sense of the word, exclusive of casual
frays and single combat during war, was unknown before the sixteenth
century. But we find one anecdote which seems to illustrate its
derivation from the judicial combat. The dukes of Lancaster and
Brunswick, having some differences, agreed to decide them by duel before
John king of France. The lists were prepared with the solemnity of a
real trial by battle; but the king interfered to prevent the engagement.
Villaret, t. ix. p. 71. The barbarous practice of wearing swords as a
part of domestic dress, which tended very much to the frequency of
duelling, was not introduced till the latter part of the 15th century. I
can only find one print in Montfaucon's Monuments of the French monarchy
where a sword is worn without armour before the reign of Charles VIII.:
though a few, as early as the reign of Charles VI., have short daggers
in their girdles. The exception is a figure of Charles VII. t. iii. pl.
47.
[520] Baluzii Capitularia, p. 444. It was prohibited by Louis the
Debonair; a man, as I have noticed in another place, not inferior, as a
legislator, to his father. Ibid. p. 668. "The spirit of party," says a
late writer, "has often accused the church of having devised these
barbarous methods of discovering truth--the duel and the ordeal; nothing
can be more unjust. Neither one nor the other is derived from
Christianity; they existed long before in the Germanic usages." Ampere,
Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 180. Any one must have been very ignorant
who attributed the invention of ordeals to the church. But during the
dark ages they were always sanctioned. Agobard, from whom M. Ampere
gives a quotation, in the reign of Louis the Debonair wrote strongly
against them; but this was the remonstrance of a superior man in an age
that was ill-inclined to hear him.
[521] Ordeals were not actually abolished in France, notwithstanding the
law of Louis above-mentioned, so late as the eleventh century (Bouquet,
t. xi. p. 430), nor in England till the reign of Henry III. Some of the
stories we read, wherein accused persons have passed triumphantly
through these severe proofs, are perplexing enough: and perhaps it is
safer, as well as easier, to deny than to explain them. For example, a
writer in the Archaeologia (vol. xv. p. 172) has shown that Emma, queen
of Edward the Confessor, did not perform her trial by stepping
_between_, as Blackstone imagines, but _upon_ nine red-hot ploughshares.
But he seems not aware that the whole story is unsupported by any
contemporary or even respectable testimony. A similar anecdote is
related of Cunegunda, wife of the emperor Henry II., which probably gave
rise to that of Emma. There are, however, medicaments, as is well known,
that protect the skin to a certain degree against the effect of fire.
This phenomenon would pass for miraculous, and form the basis of those
exaggerated stories in monkish books.
[522] The most singular effect of this crusading spirit was witnessed in
1211, when a multitude, amounting, as some say, to 90,000, chiefly
composed of children, and commanded by a child, set out for the purpose
of recovering the Holy Land. They came for the most part from Germany,
and reached Genoa without harm. But, finding there an obstacle which
their imperfect knowledge of geography had not anticipated, they soon
dispersed in various directions. Thirty thousand arrived at Marseilles,
where part were murdered, part probably starved, and the rest sold to
the Saracens. Annali di Muratori, A.D. 1211; Velly, Hist. de France, t.
iv. p. 206.
[523] Velly, t. iii. p. 295; Du Cange, v. Capuciati.
[524] Velly, Hist. de France, t. v. p. 7; Du Cange, v. Pastorelli.
[525] Velly, Hist. de France, t. viii. p. 99. The continuator of Nangis
says, sicut fumus subito evanuit tota illa commotio. Spicilegium, t.
iii. p. 77.
[526] Velly, t. v. p. 279; Du Cange, v. Verberatio.
[527] Something of a similar kind is mentioned by G. Villani, under the
year 1310. 1. viii. c. 122.
[528] Annal. Mediolan. in Murat. Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 832; G.
Stella. Ann. Genuens. t. xvii. p. 1072; Chron. Foroliviense, t. xix. p.
874; Ann. Bonincontri, t. xxi. p. 79.
[529] Dissert. 75. Sudden transitions from profligate to austere manners
were so common among individuals, that we cannot be surprised at their
sometimes becoming in a manner national. Azarius, a chronicler of Milan,
after describing the almost incredible dissoluteness of Pavia, gives an
account of an instantaneous reformation wrought by the preaching of a
certain friar. This was about 1350. Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 375.
[530] Villaret, t. xii. p. 327.
[531] Rot. Parl. v. iii. p. 428.
[532] This is confessed by the authors of Histoire Litteraire de la
France, t. ii. p. 4, and indeed by many catholic writers. I need not
quote Mosheim, who more than confirms every word of my text.
[533] Middleton's Letter from Rome. If some of our eloquent countryman's
positions should be disputed, there are still abundant catholic
testimonies that imaginary saints have been canonized.
[534] Le Grand d'Aussy has given us, in the fifth volume of his
Fabliaux, several of the religious tales by which the monks endeavoured
to withdraw the people from romances of chivalry. The following
specimens will abundantly confirm my assertions, which may perhaps
appear harsh and extravagant to the reader.
There was a man whose occupation was highway robbery; but whenever he
set out on any such expedition, he was careful to address a prayer to
the Virgin. Taken at last, he was sentenced to be hanged. While the cord
was round his neck he made his usual prayer, nor was it ineffectual. The
Virgin supported his feet "with her white hands," and thus kept him
alive two days, to the no small surprise of the executioner, who
attempted to complete his work with strokes of a sword. But the same
invisible hand turned aside the weapon, and the executioner was
compelled to release his victim, acknowledging the miracle. The thief
retired into a monastery, which is always the termination of these
deliverances.
At the monastery of St. Peter, near Cologne, lived a monk perfectly
dissolute and irreligious, but very devout towards the Apostle.
Unluckily he died suddenly without confession. The fiends came as usual
to seize his soul. St. Peter, vexed at losing so faithful a votary,
besought God to admit the monk into Paradise. His prayer was refused;
and though the whole body of saints, apostles, angels, and martyrs
joined at his request to make interest, it was of no avail. In this
extremity he had recourse to the Mother of God. "Fair lady," he said,
"my monk is lost if you do not interfere for him; but what is impossible
for us will be but sport to you, if you please to assist us. Your Son,
if you but speak a word, must yield, since it is in your power to
command him." The Queen Mother assented, and, followed by all the
virgins, moved towards her Son. He who had himself given the precept,
Honour thy father and thy mother, no sooner saw his own parent approach
than he rose to receive her; and taking her by the hand inquired her
wishes. The rest may be easily conjectured. Compare the gross stupidity,
or rather the atrocious impiety of this tale, with the pure theism of
the Arabian Nights, and judge whether the Deity was better worshipped at
Cologne or at Bagdad.
It is unnecessary to multiply instances of this kind. In one tale the
Virgin takes the shape of a nun, who had eloped from the convent, and
performs her duties ten years, till, tired of a libertine life, she
returns unsuspected. This was in consideration of her having never
omitted to say an Ave as she passed the Virgin's image. In another, a
gentleman, in love with a handsome widow, consents, at the instigation
of a sorcerer, to renounce God and the saints, but cannot be persuaded
to give up the Virgin, well knowing that if he kept her his friend he
should obtain pardon through her means. Accordingly she inspired his
mistress with so much passion that he married her within a few days.
These tales, it may be said, were the production of ignorant men, and
circulated among the populace. Certainly they would have excited
contempt and indignation in the more enlightened clergy. But I am
concerned with the general character of religious notions among the
people: and for this it is better to take such popular compositions,
adapted to what the laity already believed, than the writings of
comparatively learned and reflecting men. However, stories of the same
cast are frequent in the monkish historians. Matthew Paris, one of the
most respectable of that class, and no friend to the covetousness or
relaxed lives of the priesthood, tells us of a knight who was on the
point of being damned for frequenting tournaments, but saved by a
donation he had formerly made to the Virgin. p. 290.
[535] This hesitation about so important a question is what I would by
no means repeat. Beyond every doubt, the evils of superstition in the
middle ages, though separately considered very serious, are not to be
weighed against the benefits of the religion with which they were so
mingled. The fashion of the eighteenth century, among protestants
especially, was to exaggerate the crimes and follies of mediaeval
ages--perhaps I have fallen into it a little too much; in the present we
seem more in danger of extenuating them. We still want an inflexible
impartiality in all that borders on ecclesiastical history, which, I
believe, has never been displayed on an extensive scale. A more
captivating book can hardly be named than the Mores Catholici of Mr.
Digby; and it contains certainly a great deal of truth; but the general
effect is that of a _mirage_, which confuses and deludes the sight. If
those "ages of faith" were as noble, as pure, as full of human kindness,
as he has delineated them, we have had a bad exchange in the centuries
since the Reformation. And those who gaze at Mr. Digby's enchantments
will do well to consider how they can better escape this consequence
than he has done. Dr. Maitland's Letters on the Dark Ages, and a great
deal more that comes from the pseudo-Anglican or Anglo-catholic press,
converge to the same end; a strong sympathy with the mediaeval church, a
great indulgence to its errors, and indeed a reluctance to admit them,
with a corresponding estrangement from all that has passed in the last
three centuries. [1848.]
[536] I am inclined to acquiesce in this general opinion; yet an account
of expenses at Bolton Abbey, about the reign of Edward II., published in
Whitaker's History of Craven, p. 51, makes a very scanty show of
almsgiving in this opulent monastery. Much, however, was no doubt given
in victuals. But it is a strange error to conceive that English
monasteries before the dissolution fed the indigent part of the nation,
and gave that general relief which the poor-laws are intended to afford.
Piers Plowman is indeed a satirist; but he plainly charges the monks
with want of charity.
Little had lordes to do to give landes from their heires
To religious that have no ruthe though it raine on their aultres;
In many places there the parsons be themself at ease,
Of the poor they have no pitie and that is their poor charitie.
[537] Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. i. p. 374.
[538] See Fosbrooke's British Monachism (vol. i. p. 127, and vol. ii. p.
8) for a farrago of evidence against the monks. Clemangis, a French
theologian of considerable eminence at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, speaks of nunneries in the following terms:--Quid aliud sunt
hoc tempore puellarum monasteria, nisi quaedam non dico Dei sanctuaria,
sed Veneris execranda prostibula, sed lascivorum et impudicorum juvenum
ad libidines explendas receptacula? ut idem sit hodie puellam velare,
quod et publice ad scortandum exponere. William Prynne, from whose
records (vol. ii. p. 229) I have taken this passage, quotes it on
occasion of a charter of king John, banishing thirty nuns of Ambresbury
into different convents, propter vitae suae turpitudinem.
[539] Mosheim, cent. vii. c. 3. Robertson has quoted this passage, to
whom perhaps I am immediately indebted for it. Hist. Charles V., vol. i.
note 11.
I leave this passage as it stood in former editions. But it is due to
justice that this extract from Eligius should never be quoted in future,
as the translator of Mosheim has induced Robertson and many others, as
well as myself, to do. Dr. Lingard has pointed out that it is a very
imperfect representation of what Eligius has written; for though he has
dwelled on these devotional practices as parts of the definition of a good
Christian, he certainly adds a great deal more to which no one could
object. Yet no one is, in fact, to blame for this misrepresentation,
which, being contained in popular books, has gone forth so widely.
Mosheim, as will appear on referring to him, did not quote the passage as
containing a complete definition of the Christian character. His
translator, Maclaine, mistook this, and wrote, in consequence, the severe
note which Robertson has copied. I have seen the whole passage in
d'Achery's Spicilegium (vol. v. p. 213, 4to. edit.), and can testify that
Dr. Lingard is perfectly correct. Upon the whole, this is a striking proof
how dangerous it is to take any authorities at second-hand.--_Note to
Fourth Edition._ Much clamour has been made about the mistake of Maclaine,
which was innocent and not unnatural. It has been commented upon,
particularly by Dr. Arnold, as a proof of the risk we run of
misrepresenting authors by quoting them at second-hand. And this is
perfectly true, and ought to be constantly remembered. But, so long as we
acknowledge the immediate source of our quotation, no censure is due,
since in works of considerable extent this use of secondary authorities is
absolutely indispensable, not to mention the frequent difficulty of
procuring access to original authors [1848.]
[540] Mr. Turner has collected many curious facts relative to the
condition of the Jews, especially in England. Hist. of England, vol. ii.
p. 95. Others may be found dispersed in Velly's History of France; and
many in the Spanish writers, Mariana and Zurita. The following are from
Vaissette's History of Languedoc. It was the custom at Toulouse to give
a blow on the face to a Jew every Easter; this was commuted in the
twelfth century for a tribute. t. ii. p. 151. At Beziers another usage
prevailed, that of attacking the Jews' houses with stones from Palm
Sunday to Easter. No other weapon was to be used; but it generally
produced bloodshed. The populace were regularly instigated to the
assault by a sermon from the bishop. At length a prelate wiser than the
rest abolished this ancient practice, but not without receiving a good
sum from the Jews. p. 485.
[541] Greg. Tur. 1. ii. c. 40. Of Theodebert, grandson of Clovis, the
same historian says, Magnum se et in omni bonitate praecipuum reddidit.
In the next paragraph we find a story of his having two wives, and
looking so tenderly on the daughter of one of them, that her mother
tossed her over a bridge into the river. 1. iii. c. 25. This indeed is a
trifle to the passage in the text. There are continual proofs of
immorality in the monkish historians. In the history of Ramsey Abbey,
one of our best documents for Anglo-Saxon times, we have an anecdote of
a bishop who made a Danish nobleman drunk, that he might cheat him of an
estate, which is told with much approbation. Gale, Script. Anglic. t. i.
p. 441. Walter de Hemingford recounts with excessive delight the
well-known story of the Jews who were persuaded by the captain of their
vessel to walk on the sands at low water, till the rising tide drowned
them; and adds that the captain was both pardoned and rewarded for it by
the king, gratiam promeruit et praemium. This is a mistake, inasmuch as
he was hanged; but it exhibits the character of the historian,
Hemingford, p. 21.
[542] Fleury, Troisieme Discours sur l'Histoire Ecclesiastique.
[543] Henry, Hist. of England, vol. ii. c. 7.
[544] Du Cange, v. Peregrinatio. Non sinantur vagari isti nudi cum
ferro, qui dicunt se data poenitentia ire vagantes. Melius videtur, ut
si aliquod inconsuetum et capitale crimen commiserint, in uno loco
permaneant laborantes et servientes et poenitentiam agentes, secundum
quod canonice iis impositum sit.
[545] I. de Vitriaco, in Gesta Dei per Francos, t. i.; Villani, 1. vii.
c. 144.
[546] Henry has taken pains in drawing a picture, not very favourable,
of Anglo-Saxon manners. Book II. chap. 7. This perhaps is the best
chapter, as the volume is the best volume, of his unequal work. His
account of the Anglo-Saxons is derived in a great degree from William of
Malmsbury, who does not spare them. Their civil history, indeed, and
their laws, speak sufficiently against the character of that people. But
the Normans had little more to boast of in respect of moral correctness.
Their luxurious and dissolute habits are as much noticed as their
insolence. Vid. Ordericus Vitalis, p. 602; Johann. Sarisburiensis
Policraticus, p. 194; Velly, Hist. de France, t. iii. p. 59. The state
of manners in France under the first two races of kings, and in Italy
both under the Lombards and the subsequent dynasties, may be collected
from their histories, their laws, and those miscellaneous facts which
books of every description contain. Neither Velly, nor Muratori,
Dissert. 23, are so satisfactory as we might desire.
[547] Velly, Hist. de France, t. ii. p. 335. It has been observed, that
Quid mores sine legibus? is as just a question as that of Horace; and
that bad laws must produce bad morals. The strange practice of requiring
numerous compurgators to prove the innocence of an accused person had a
most obvious tendency to increase perjury.
[548] Muratori, Dissert. 23, t. i. p. 306 (Italian); Beckman's Hist. of
Inventions, vol. i. p. 319; Vie privee des Francais, t. ii. p. 1.
[549] Vie privee des Francais, t. i. p. 320; t. ii. p. 11.
[550] Ibid. t. i. p. 324.
[551] Rymer, t. i. p. 61.
[552] Whitaker's Hist. of Craven, p. 340, and of Whalley, p. 171.
[553] Velly, Hist. de France, t. iii. p. 236.
[554] John of Salisbury inveighs against the game-laws of his age, with
an odd transition from the Gospel to the Pandects. Nec veriti sunt
hominem pro una bestiola perdere, quem unigentius Dei Filius sanguine
redemit suo. Quae ferae naturae sunt, et de jure occupantium fiunt, sibi
audet humana temeritas vindicare, &c. Polycraticon, p. 18.
[555] Le Grand, Vie privee des Francais, t. i. p. 325.
[556] For the injuries which this people sustained from the seigniorial
rights of the chace, in the eleventh century, see the Recueil des
Historiens, in the valuable preface to the eleventh volume, p. 181. This
continued to be felt in France down to the revolution, to which it did
not perhaps a little contribute. (See Young's Travels in France.) The
monstrous privilege of free-warren (monstrous, I mean, when not
originally founded upon the property of the soil) is recognised by our
own laws; though, in this age, it is not often that a court and jury
will sustain its exercise. Sir Walter Scott's ballad of the Wild
Huntsman, from a German original, is well known; and, I believe, there
are several others in that country not dissimilar in subject.
[557] Muratori, Dissert. 21. This dissertation contains ample evidence
of the wretched state of culture in Italy, at least in the northern
parts, both before the irruption of the barbarians, and, in a much
greater degree, under the Lombard kings.
[558] Schmidt, Hist. des Allem. t. i. p. 408. The following passage
seems to illustrate Schmidt's account of German villages in the ninth
century, though relating to a different age and country. "A toft," says
Dr. Whitaker, "is a homestead in a village, so called from the small
tufts of maple, elm, ash, and other wood, with which dwelling-houses
were anciently overhung. Even now it is impossible to enter Craven
without being struck with the insulated homesteads, surrounded by their
little garths, and overhung with tufts of trees. These are the genuine
tofts and crofts of our ancestors, with the substitution only of stone
for the wooden crocks and thatched roofs of antiquity." Hist. of Craven,
p. 380.
[559] It is laid down in the Speculum Saxonicum, a collection of feudal
customs which prevailed over most of Germany, that no one might have a
separate pasture for his cattle unless he possessed three mansi. Du
Cange, v. Mansus. There seems to have been a price paid, I suppose to
the lord, for agistment in the common pasture.
[560] The only mention of a manufacture, as early as the ninth or tenth
centuries, that I remember to have met with, is in Schmidt, t. ii. p.
146, who says that cloths were exported from Friesland to England and
other parts. He quotes no authority, but I am satisfied that he has not
advanced the fact gratuitously.
[561] Schmidt, t. i. p. 411; t. ii. p. 146.
[562] Du Cange, Pedagium, Pontaticum, Teloneum, Mercatum, Stallagium,
Lastagium, &c.
[563] Baluz. Capit. p. 621 et alibi.
[564] Ut nullus cogatur ad pontem ire ad fluvium transeundum propter
telonei causas quando ille in alio loco compendiosius illud flumen
transire potest. p. 764 et alibi.
[565] Eadmer apud Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, t. xi. preface, p.
192. Pro ritu illius loci, a domino terrae captivitati addicitur.
[566] Heeren has frequently referred to a work published in 1789, by
Marini, intitled, Storia civile e politica del Commerzio de' Veneziani,
which casts a new light upon the early relations of Venice with the
East. Of this book I know nothing; but a memoir by de Guignes, in the
thirty-seventh volume of the Academy of Inscriptions, on the commerce of
France with the East before the crusades, is singularly unproductive;
the fault of the subject, not of the author.
[567] There is an odd passage in Luitprand's relation of his embassy
from the Emperor Otho to Nicephorus Phocas. The Greeks making a display
of their dress, he told them that in Lombardy the common people wore as
good clothes as they. How, they said, can you procure them? Through the
Venetian and Amalfitan dealers, he replied, who gain their subsistence
by selling them to us. The foolish Greeks were very angry, and declared
that any dealer presuming to export their fine clothes should be
flogged, Luitprandi Opera, p. 155, edit. Antwerp. 1640.
[568] Baluz. Capitul. p. 775. One of the main advantages which the
Christian nations possessed over the Saracens was the coat of mail, and
other defensive armour; so that this prohibition was founded upon very
good political reasons.
[569] Schmidt, Hist. des Allem, t. ii. p. 146; Heeren, sur l'Influence
des Croisades, p. 316. In Baluze we find a law of Carloman, brother to
Charlemagne: Ut mancipia Christiana paganis non vendantur. Capitularia,
t. i. p. 150, vide quoque, p. 361.
[570] William of Malmsbury accuses the Anglo-Saxon nobility of selling
their female servants, even when pregnant by them, as slaves to
foreigners, p. 102. I hope there were not many of these Yaricoes; and
should not perhaps have given credit to an historian rather prejudiced
against the English, if I had not found too much authority for the
general practice. In the canons of a council at London in 1102 we read,
Let no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic by
which men of England have hitherto been sold like brute animals.
Wilkins's Concilia, t. i. p. 383. And Giraldus Cambrensis says that the
English before the Conquest were generally in the habit of selling their
children and other relations to be slaves in Ireland, without having
even the pretext of distress or famine, till the Irish, in a national
synod, agreed to emancipate all the English slaves in the kingdom. Id.
p. 471. This seems to have been designed to take away all pretext for
the threatened invasion of Henry II. Lyttelton, vol. iii. p. 70.
PART II.
Progress of Commercial Improvement in Germany, Flanders, and England
--in the North of Europe--in the Countries upon the Mediterranean Sea
--Maritime Laws--Usury--Banking Companies--Progress of Refinement in
Manners--Domestic Architecture--Ecclesiastical Architecture--State of
Agriculture in England--Value of Money--Improvement of the Moral
Character of Society--its Causes--Police--Changes in Religious Opinion
--Various Sects--Chivalry--its Progress, Character, and Influence--
Causes of the Intellectual Improvement of European Society--1. The
Study of Civil Law--2. Institution of Universities--their Celebrity--
Scholastic Philosophy--3. Cultivation of Modern Languages--Provencal
Poets--Norman Poets--French Prose Writers--Italian--early Poets in
that Language--Dante--Petrarch--English Language--its Progress--
Chaucer--4. Revival of Classical Learning--Latin Writers of the
Twelfth Century--Literature of the Fourteenth Century--Greek
Literature--its Restoration in Italy--Invention of Printing.
[Sidenote: European commerce.]
The geographical position of Europe naturally divides its maritime
commerce into two principal regions--one comprehending those countries
which border on the Baltic, the German and the Atlantic oceans; another,
those situated around the Mediterranean Sea. During the four centuries
which preceded the discovery of America, and especially the two former
of them, this separation was more remarkable than at present, inasmuch
as their intercourse, either by land or sea, was extremely limited. To
the first region belonged the Netherlands, the coasts of France,
Germany, and Scandinavia, and the maritime districts of England. In the
second we may class the provinces of Valencia and Catalonia, those of
Provence and Languedoc, and the whole of Italy.
[Sidenote: Woollen manufacture of Flanders.]
1. The former, or northern division, was first animated by the woollen
manufacture of Flanders. It is not easy either to discover the early
beginnings of this, or to account for its rapid advancement. The
fertility of that province and its facilities of interior navigation
were doubtless necessary causes; but there must have been some temporary
encouragement from the personal character of its sovereigns, or other
accidental circumstances. Several testimonies to the flourishing
condition of Flemish manufactures occur in the twelfth century, and
some might perhaps be found even earlier.[571] A writer of the
thirteenth asserts that all the world was clothed from English wool
wrought in Flanders.[572] This, indeed, is an exaggerated vaunt; but the
Flemish stuffs were probably sold wherever the sea or a navigable river
permitted them to be carried. Cologne was the chief trading city upon
the Rhine; and its merchants, who had been considerable even under the
emperor Henry IV., established a factory at London in 1220. The woollen
manufacture, notwithstanding frequent wars and the impolitic regulations
of magistrates,[573] continued to flourish in the Netherlands (for
Brabant and Hainault shared it in some degree with Flanders), until
England became not only capable of supplying her own demand, but a rival
in all the marts of Europe. "All Christian kingdoms, and even the Turks
themselves," says an historian of the sixteenth century, "lamented the
desperate war between the Flemish cities and their count Louis, that
broke out in 1380. For at that time Flanders was a market for the
traders of all the world. Merchants from seventeen kingdoms had their
settled domiciles at Bruges, besides strangers from almost unknown
countries who repaired thither."[574] During this war, and on all other
occasions, the weavers both of Ghent and Bruges distinguished themselves
by a democratical spirit, the consequence, no doubt, of their numbers
and prosperity.[575] Ghent was one of the largest cities in Europe, and,
in the opinion of many, the best situated.[576] But Bruges, though in
circuit but half the former, was more splendid in its buildings, and the
seat of far more trade; being the great staple both for Mediterranean
and northern merchandise.[577] Antwerp, which early in the sixteenth
century drew away a large part of this commerce from Bruges, was not
considerable in the preceding ages; nor were the towns of Zealand and
Holland much noted except for their fisheries, though those provinces
acquired in the fifteenth century some share of the woollen manufacture.
[Sidenote: Export of wool from England.]
For the first two centuries after the Conquest our English towns, as has
been observed in a different place, made some forward steps towards
improvement, though still very inferior to those of the continent. Their
commerce was almost confined to the exportation of wool, the great
staple commodity of England, upon which, more than any other, in its raw
or manufactured state, our wealth has been founded. A woollen
manufacture, however, indisputably existed under Henry II.;[578] it is
noticed in regulations of Richard I.; and by the importation of woad
under John it may be inferred to have still flourished. The disturbances
of the next reign, perhaps, or the rapid elevation of the Flemish towns,
retarded its growth, though a remarkable law was passed by the Oxford
parliament in 1261, prohibiting the export of wool and the importation
of cloth. This, while it shows the deference paid by the discontented
barons, who predominated in that parliament, to their confederates the
burghers, was evidently too premature to be enforced. We may infer from
it, however, that cloths were made at home, though not sufficiently for
the people's consumption.[579]
Prohibitions of the same nature, though with a different object, were
frequently imposed on the trade between England and Flanders by Edward
I. and his son. As their political connexions fluctuated, these princes
gave full liberty and settlement to the Flemish merchants, or banished
them at once from the country.[580] Nothing could be more injurious to
England than this arbitrary vacillation. The Flemings were in every
respect our natural allies; but besides those connexions with France,
the constant enemy of Flanders, into which both the Edwards occasionally
fell, a mutual alienation had been produced by the trade of the former
people with Scotland, a trade too lucrative to be resigned at the king
of England's request.[581] An early instance of that conflicting
selfishness of belligerents and neutrals, which was destined to
aggravate the animosities and misfortunes of our own time.[582]
[Sidenote: English woollen manufacture.]
A more prosperous era began with Edward III., the father, as he may
almost be called, of English commerce, a title not indeed more glorious,
but by which he may perhaps claim more of our gratitude than as the hero
of Crecy. In 1331 he took advantage of discontents among the
manufacturers of Flanders to invite them as settlers into his
dominions.[583] They brought the finer manufacture of woollen cloths,
which had been unknown in England. The discontents alluded to resulted
from the monopolizing spirit of their corporations, who oppressed all
artisans without the pale of their community. The history of
corporations brings home to our minds one cardinal truth, that political
institutions have very frequently but a relative and temporary
usefulness, and that what forwarded improvement during one part of its
course may prove to it in time a most pernicious obstacle. Corporations
in England, we may be sure, wanted nothing of their usual character; and
it cost Edward no little trouble to protect his colonists from the
selfishness and from the blind nationality of the vulgar.[584] The
emigration of Flemish weavers into England continued during this reign,
and we find it mentioned, at intervals, for more than a century.
[Sidenote: Increase of English commerce.]
Commerce now became, next to liberty, the leading object of parliament.
For the greater part of our statutes from the accession of Edward III.
bear relation to this subject; not always well devised, or liberal, or
consistent, but by no means worse in those respects than such as have
been enacted in subsequent ages. The occupation of a merchant became
honourable; and, notwithstanding the natural jealousy of the two
classes, he was placed, in some measure, on a footing with landed
proprietors. By the statute of apparel, in 37 Edw. III., merchants and
artificers who had five hundred pounds value in goods and chattels might
use the same dress as squires of one hundred pounds a year. And those
who were worth more than this might dress like men of double that
estate. Wool was still the principal article of export and source of
revenue. Subsidies granted by every parliament upon this article were,
on account of the scarcity of money, commonly taken in kind. To prevent
evasion of this duty seems to have been the principle of those
multifarious regulations which fix the staple, or market for wool, in
certain towns, either in England, or, more commonly, on the continent.
To these all wool was to be carried, and the tax was there collected. It
is not easy, however, to comprehend the drift of all the provisions
relating to the staple, many of which tend to benefit foreign at the
expense of English merchants. By degrees the exportation of woollen
cloths increased so as to diminish that of the raw material, but the
latter was not absolutely prohibited during the period under
review;[585] although some restrictions were imposed upon it by Edward
IV. For a much earlier statute, in the 11th of Edward III., making the
exportation of wool a capital felony, was in its terms provisional,
until it should be otherwise ordered by the council; and the king almost
immediately set it aside.[586]
[Sidenote: Manufactures of France and Germany.]
A manufacturing district, as we see in our own country, sends out, as it
were, suckers into all its neighbourhood. Accordingly, the woollen
manufacture spread from Flanders along the banks of the Rhine and into
the northern provinces of France.[587] I am not, however, prepared to
trace its history in these regions. In Germany the privileges conceded
by Henry V. to the free cities, and especially to their artisans, gave a
soul to industry; though the central parts of the empire were, for many
reasons, very ill-calculated for commercial enterprise during the middle
ages.[588] But the French towns were never so much emancipated from
arbitrary power as those of Germany or Flanders; and the evils of
exorbitant taxation, with those produced by the English wars, conspired
to retard the advance of manufactures in France. That of linen made some
little progress; but this work was still, perhaps, chiefly confined to
the labour of female servants.[589]
[Sidenote: Baltic trade.]
The manufactures of Flanders and England found a market, not only in
these adjacent countries, but in a part of Europe which for many ages
had only been known enough to be dreaded. In the middle of the eleventh
century a native of Bremen, and a writer much superior to most others of
his time, was almost entirely ignorant of the geography of the Baltic;
doubting whether any one had reached Russia by that sea, and reckoning
Esthonia and Courland among its islands.[590] But in one hundred years
more the maritime regions of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, inhabited by a
tribe of heathen Sclavonians, were subdued by some German princes; and
the Teutonic order some time afterwards, having conquered Prussia,
extended a line of at least comparative civilization as far as the gulf
of Finland. The first town erected on the coasts of the Baltic was
Lubec, which owes its foundation to Adolphus count of Holstein, in 1140.
After several vicissitudes it became independent of any sovereign but
the emperor in the thirteenth century. Hamburgh and Bremen, upon the
other side of the Cimbric peninsula, emulated the prosperity of Lubec;
the former city purchased independence of its bishop in 1225. A colony
from Bremen founded Riga in Livonia about 1162. The city of Dantzic grew
into importance about the end of the following century. Konigsberg was
founded by Ottocar king of Bohemia in the same age.
But the real importance of these cities is to be dated from their
famous union into the Hanseatic confederacy. The origin of this is
rather obscure, but it may certainly be nearly referred in point of time
to the middle of the thirteenth century,[591] and accounted for by the
necessity of mutual defence, which piracy by sea and pillage by land had
taught the merchants of Germany. The nobles endeavoured to obstruct the
formation of this league, which indeed was in great measure designed to
withstand their exactions. It powerfully maintained the influence which
the free imperial cities were at this time acquiring. Eighty of the most
considerable places constituted the Hanseatic confederacy, divided into
four colleges, whereof Lubec, Cologne, Brunswic, and Dantzic were the
leading towns. Lubec held the chief rank, and became, as it were, the
patriarchal see of the league; whose province it was to preside in all
general discussions for mercantile, political, or military purposes, and
to carry them into execution. The league had four principal factories in
foreign parts, at London, Bruges, Bergen, and Novogorod; endowed by the
sovereigns of those cities with considerable privileges, to which every
merchant belonging to a Hanseatic town was entitled.[592] In England the
German guildhall or factory was established by concession of Henry III.;
and in later periods the Hanse traders were favoured above many others
in the capricious vacillations of our mercantile policy.[593] The
English had also their factories on the Baltic coast as far as Prussia
and in the dominions of Denmark.[594]
[Sidenote: Rapid progress of English trade.]
This opening of a northern market powerfully accelerated the growth of
our own commercial opulence, especially after the woollen manufacture
had begun to thrive. From about the middle of the fourteenth century we
find continual evidences of a rapid increase in wealth. Thus, in 1363,
Picard, who had been lord mayor some years before, entertained Edward
III. and the Black Prince, the kings of France, Scotland, and Cyprus,
with many of the nobility, at his own house in the Vintry, and
presented them with handsome gifts.[595] Philpot, another eminent
citizen in Richard II.'s time, when the trade of England was
considerably annoyed by privateers, hired 1000 armed men, and despatched
them to sea, where they took fifteen Spanish vessels with their
prizes.[596] We find Richard obtaining a great deal from private
merchants and trading towns. In 1379 he got 5000_l._ from London, 1000
marks from Bristol, and in proportion from smaller places. In 1386
London gave 4000_l._ more, and 10,000 marks in 1397.[597] The latter sum
was obtained also for the coronation of Henry VI.[598] Nor were the
contributions of individuals contemptible, considering the high value of
money. Hinde, a citizen of London, lent to Henry IV. 2000_l._ in 1407,
and Whittington one half of that sum. The merchants of the staple
advanced 4000_l._ at the same time.[599] Our commerce continued to be
regularly and rapidly progressive during the fifteenth century. The
famous Canynges of Bristol, under Henry VI. and Edward IV., had ships of
900 tons burthen.[600] The trade and even the internal wealth of England
reached so much higher a pitch in the reign of the last-mentioned king
than at any former period, that we may perceive the wars of York and
Lancaster to have produced no very serious effect on national
prosperity. Some battles were doubtless sanguinary; but the loss of
lives in battle is soon repaired by a flourishing nation; and the
devastation occasioned by armies was both partial and transitory.
[Sidenote: Intercourse with the south of Europe.]
A commercial intercourse between these northern and southern regions of
Europe began about the early part of the fourteenth century, or, at most,
a little sooner. Until, indeed, the use of the magnet was thoroughly
understood, and a competent skill in marine architecture, as well as
navigation, acquired, the Italian merchants were scarce likely to attempt
a voyage perilous in itself and rendered more formidable by the imaginary
difficulties which had been supposed to attend an expedition beyond the
straits of Hercules. But the English, accustomed to their own rough seas,
were always more intrepid, and probably more skilful navigators. Though it
was extremely rare, even in the fifteenth century, for an English trading
vessel to appear in the Mediterranean,[601] yet a famous military
armament, that destined for the crusade of Richard I., displayed at a very
early time the seamanship of our countrymen. In the reign of Edward II. we
find mention in Rymer's collection of Genoese ships trading to Flanders
and England. His son was very solicitous to preserve the friendship of
that opulent republic; and it is by his letters to his senate, or by royal
orders restoring ships unjustly seized, that we come by a knowledge of
those facts which historians neglect to relate. Pisa shared a little in
this traffic, and Venice more considerably; but Genoa was beyond all
competition at the head of Italian commerce in these seas during the
fourteenth century. In the next her general decline left it more open to
her rival; but I doubt whether Venice ever maintained so strong a
connexion with England. Through London and Bruges, their chief station in
Flanders, the merchants of Italy and of Spain transported oriental produce
to the farthest parts of the north. The inhabitants of the Baltic coast
were stimulated by the desire of precious luxuries which they had never
known; and these wants, though selfish and frivolous, are the means by
which nations acquire civilization, and the earth is rendered fruitful of
its produce. As the carriers of this trade the Hanseatic merchants
resident in England and Flanders derived profits through which eventually
of course those countries were enriched. It seems that the Italian vessels
unloaded at the marts of London or Bruges, and that such part of their
cargoes as were intended for a more northern trade came there into the
hands of the German merchants. In the reign of Henry VI. England carried
on a pretty extensive traffic with the countries around the Mediterranean,
for whose commodities her wool and woollen cloths enabled her to pay.
[Sidenote: Commerce of the Mediterranean countries.]
[Sidenote: Amalfi.]
The commerce of the southern division, though it did not, I think,
produce more extensively beneficial effects upon the progress of
society, was both earlier and more splendid than that of England and the
neighbouring countries. Besides Venice, which has been mentioned
already, Amalfi kept up the commercial intercourse of Christendom with
the Saracen countries before the first crusade.[602] It was the singular
fate of this city to have filled up the interval between two periods of
civilization, in neither of which she was destined to be distinguished.
Scarcely known before the end of the sixth century, Amalfi ran a
brilliant career, as a free and trading republic, which was checked by
the arms of a conqueror in the middle of the twelfth. Since her
subjugation by Roger king of Sicily, the name of a people who for a
while connected Europe with Asia has hardly been repeated, except for
two discoveries falsely imputed to them, those of the Pandects and of
the compass.
[Sidenote: Pisa, Genoa, Venice.]
But the decline of Amalfi was amply compensated to the rest of Italy by
the constant elevation of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in the twelfth and
ensuing ages. The crusades led immediately to this growing prosperity of
the commercial cities. Besides the profit accruing from so many naval
armaments which they supplied, and the continual passage of private
adventurers in their vessels, they were enabled to open a more extensive
channel of oriental traffic than had hitherto been known. These three
Italian republics enjoyed immunities in the Christian principalities of
Syria; possessing separate quarters in Acre, Tripoli, and other cities,
where they were governed by their own laws and magistrates. Though the
progress of commerce must, from the condition of European industry, have
been slow, it was uninterrupted; and the settlements in Palestine were
becoming important as factories, an use of which Godfrey and Urban
little dreamed, when they were lost through the guilt and imprudence of
their inhabitants.[603] Villani laments the injury sustained by commerce
in consequence of the capture of Acre, "situated, as it was, on the
coast of the Mediterranean, in the centre of Syria, and, as we might
say, of the habitable world, a haven for all merchandize, both from the
East and the West, which all the nations of the earth frequented for
this trade."[604] But the loss was soon retrieved, not perhaps by Pisa
and Genoa, but by Venice, who formed connexions with the Saracen
governments, and maintained her commercial intercourse with Syria and
Egypt by their licence, though subject probably to heavy exactions.
Sanuto, a Venetian author at the beginning of the fourteenth century,
has left a curious account of the Levant trade which his countrymen
carried on at that time. Their imports it is easy to guess, and it
appears that timber, brass, tin, and lead, as well as the precious
metals, were exported to Alexandria, besides oil, saffron, and some of
the productions of Italy, and even wool and woollen cloths.[605] The
European side of the account had therefore become respectable.
The commercial cities enjoyed as great privileges at Constantinople as
in Syria, and they bore an eminent part in the vicissitudes of the
Eastern empire. After the capture of Constantinople by the Latin
crusaders, the Venetians, having been concerned in that conquest,
became, of course, the favoured traders under the new dynasty;
possessing their own district in the city, with their magistrate or
podesta, appointed at Venice, and subject to the parent republic. When
the Greeks recovered the seat of their empire, the Genoese, who, from
jealousy of their rivals, had contributed to that revolution, obtained
similar immunities. This powerful and enterprising state, in the
fourteenth century, sometimes the ally, sometimes the enemy, of the
Byzantine court, maintained its independent settlement at Pera. From
thence she spread her sails into the Euxine, and, planting a colony at
Caffa in the Crimea, extended a line of commerce with the interior
regions of Asia, which even the skill and spirit of our own times has
not yet been able to revive.[606]
The French provinces which border on the Mediterranean Sea partook in
the advantages which it offered. Not only Marseilles, whose trade had
continued in a certain degree throughout the worst ages, but Narbonne,
Nismes, and especially Montpelier, were distinguished for commercial
prosperity.[607] A still greater activity prevailed in Catalonia. From
the middle of the thirteenth century (for we need not trace the
rudiments of its history) Barcelona began to emulate the Italian cities
in both the branches of naval energy, war and commerce. Engaged in
frequent and severe hostilities with Genoa, and sometimes with
Constantinople, while their vessels traded to every part of the
Mediterranean, and even of the English Channel, the Catalans might
justly be reckoned among the first of maritime nations. The commerce of
Barcelona has never since attained so great a height as in the fifteenth
century.[608]
[Sidenote: Their manufactures.]
The introduction of a silk manufacture at Palermo, by Roger Guiscard in
1148, gave perhaps the earliest impulse to the industry of Italy. Nearly
about the same time the Genoese plundered two Moorish cities of Spain,
from which they derived the same art. In the next age this became a
staple manufacture of the Lombard and Tuscan republics, and the
cultivation of mulberries was enforced by their laws.[609] Woollen
stuffs, though the trade was perhaps less conspicuous than that of
Flanders, and though many of the coarser kinds were imported from
thence, employed a multitude of workmen in Italy, Catalonia, and the
south of France.[610] Among the trading companies into which the
middling ranks were distributed, those concerned in silk and woollens
were most numerous and honourable.[611]
[Sidenote: Invention of the mariner's compass.]
A property of a natural substance, long overlooked even though it
attracted observation by a different peculiarity, has influenced by its
accidental discovery the fortunes of mankind more than all the
deductions of philosophy. It is, perhaps, impossible to ascertain the
epoch when the polarity of the magnet was first known in Europe. The
common opinion, which ascribes its discovery to a citizen of Amalfi in
the fourteenth century, is undoubtedly erroneous. Guiot de Provins, a
French poet, who lived about the year 1200, or, at the latest, under St.
Louis, describes it in the most unequivocal language. James de Vitry, a
bishop in Palestine, before the middle of the thirteenth century, and
Guido Guinizzelli, an Italian poet of the same time, are equally
explicit. The French, as well as Italians, claim the discovery as their
own; but whether it were due to either of these nations, or rather
learned from their intercourse with the Saracens, is not easily to be
ascertained.[612] For some time, perhaps, even this wonderful
improvement in the art of navigation might not be universally adopted by
vessels sailing within the Mediterranean, and accustomed to their old
system of observations. But when it became more established, it
naturally inspired a more fearless spirit of adventure. It was not, as
has been mentioned, till the beginning of the fourteenth century that
the Genoese and other nations around that inland sea steered into the
Atlantic Ocean towards England and Flanders. This intercourse with the
northern countries enlivened their trade with the Levant by the exchange
of productions which Spain and Italy do not supply, and enriched the
merchants by means of whose capital the exports of London and of
Alexandria were conveyed into each other's harbours.
[Sidenote: Maritime laws.]
The usual risks of navigation, and those incident to commercial
adventure, produce a variety of questions in every system of
jurisprudence, which, though always to be determined, as far as
possible, by principles of natural justice, must in many cases depend
upon established customs. These customs of maritime law were anciently
reduced into a code by the Rhodians, and the Roman emperors preserved or
reformed the constitutions of that republic. It would be hard to say how
far the tradition of this early jurisprudence survived the decline of
commerce in the darker ages; but after it began to recover itself,
necessity suggested, or recollection prompted, a scheme of regulations
resembling in some degree, but much more enlarged than those of
antiquity. This was formed into a written code, Il Consolato del Mare,
not much earlier, probably, than the middle of the thirteenth century;
and its promulgation seems rather to have proceeded from the citizens of
Barcelona than from those of Pisa or Venice, who have also claimed to be
the first legislators of the sea.[613] Besides regulations simply
mercantile, this system has defined the mutual rights of neutral and
belligerent vessels, and thus laid the basis of the positive law of
nations in its most important and disputed cases. The king of France and
count of Provence solemnly acceded to this maritime code, which hence
acquired a binding force within the Mediterranean Sea; and in most
respects the law merchant of Europe is at present conformable to its
provisions. A set of regulations, chiefly borrowed from the Consolato,
was compiled in France under the reign of Louis IX., and prevailed in
their own country. These have been denominated the laws of Oleron, from
an idle story that they were enacted by Richard I., while his expedition
to the Holy Land lay at anchor in that island.[614] Nor was the north
without its peculiar code of maritime jurisprudence; namely, the
Ordinances of Wisbuy, a town in the isle of Gothland, principally
compiled from those of Oleron, before the year 1400, by which the Baltic
traders were governed.[615]
[Sidenote: Frequency of piracy.]
[Sidenote: Law of reprisals.]
There was abundant reason for establishing among maritime nations some
theory of mutual rights, and for securing the redress of injuries, as
far as possible, by means of acknowledged tribunals. In that state of
barbarous anarchy which so long resisted the coercive authority of civil
magistrates, the sea held out even more temptation and more impunity
than the land; and when the laws had regained their sovereignty, and
neither robbery nor private warfare was any longer tolerated, there
remained that great common of mankind, unclaimed by any king, and the
liberty of the sea was another name for the security of plunderers. A
pirate, in a well-armed quick-sailing vessel, must feel, I suppose, the
enjoyments of his exemption from control more exquisitely than any
other freebooter; and darting along the bosom of the ocean, under the
impartial radiance of the heavens, may deride the dark concealments and
hurried flights of the forest robber. His occupation is, indeed,
extinguished by the civilization of later ages, or confined to distant
climates. But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a rich vessel
was never secure from attack; and neither restitution nor punishment of
the criminals was to be obtained from governments who sometimes feared
the plunderer and sometimes connived at the offence.[616] Mere piracy,
however, was not the only danger. The maritime towns of Flanders,
France, and England, like the free republics of Italy, prosecuted their
own quarrels by arms, without asking the leave of their respective
sovereigns. This practice, exactly analogous to that of private war in
the feudal system, more than once involved the kings of France and
England in hostility.[617] But where the quarrel did not proceed to such
a length as absolutely to engage two opposite towns, a modification of
this ancient right of revenge formed part of the regular law of nations,
under the name of reprisals. Whoever was plundered or injured by the
inhabitant of another town obtained authority from his own magistrates
to seize the property of any other person belonging to it, until his
loss should be compensated. This law of reprisal was not confined to
maritime places; it prevailed in Lombardy, and probably in the German
cities. Thus, if a citizen of Modena was robbed by a Bolognese, he
complained to the magistrates of the former city, who represented the
case to those of Bologna, demanding redress. If this were not
immediately granted, letters of reprisals were issued to plunder the
territory of Bologna till the injured party should be reimbursed by sale
of the spoil.[618] In the laws of Marseilles it is declared, "If a
foreigner take anything from a citizen of Marseilles, and he who has
jurisdiction over the said debtor or unjust taker does not cause right
to be done in the same, the rector or consuls, at the petition of the
said citizen, shall grant him reprisals upon all the goods of the said
debtor or unjust taker, and also upon the goods of others who are under
the jurisdiction of him who ought to do justice, and would not, to the
said citizen of Marseilles."[619] Edward III. remonstrates, in an
instrument published by Rymer, against letters of marque granted by the
king of Aragon to one Berenger de la Tone, who had been robbed by an
English pirate of 2000_l._, alleging that, inasmuch as he had always
been ready to give redress to the party, it seemed to his counsellors
that there was no just cause for reprisals upon the king's or his
subjects' property.[620] This passage is so far curious as it asserts
the existence of a customary law of nations, the knowledge of which was
already a sort of learning. Sir E. Coke speaks of this right of private
reprisals as if it still existed;[621] and, in fact, there are instances
of granting such letters as late as the reign of Charles I.
[Sidenote: Liability of aliens for each other's debts.]
A practice, founded on the same principles as reprisal, though rather
less violent, was that of attaching the goods or persons of resident
foreigners for the debts of their countrymen. This indeed, in England,
was not confined to foreigners until the statute of Westminster I. c.
23, which enacts that "no stranger who is of this realm shall be
distrained in any town or market for a debt wherein he is neither
principal nor surety." Henry III. had previously granted a charter to
the burgesses of Lubec, that they should "not be arrested for the debt
of any of their countrymen, unless the magistrates of Lubec neglected to
compel payment."[622] But by a variety of grants from Edward II. the
privileges of English subjects under the statute of Westminster were
extended to most foreign nations.[623] This unjust responsibility had
not been confined to civil cases. One of a company of Italian merchants,
the Spini, having killed a man, the officers of justice seized the
bodies and effects of all the rest.[624]
[Sidenote: Great profits of trade,]
[Sidenote: and high rate of interest.]
[Sidenote: Money dealings of the Jews.]
If under all these obstacles, whether created by barbarous manners, by
national prejudice, or by the fraudulent and arbitrary measures of
princes, the merchants of different countries became so opulent as
almost to rival the ancient nobility, it must be ascribed to the
greatness of their commercial profits. The trading companies possessed
either a positive or a virtual monopoly, and held the keys of those
eastern regions, for the luxuries of which the progressive refinement of
manners produced an increasing demand. It is not easy to determine the
average rate of profit;[625] but we know that the interest of money was
exceedingly high throughout the middle ages. At Verona, in 1228, it was
fixed by law at twelve and a half per cent.; at Modena, in 1270, it
seems to have been as high as twenty.[626] The republic of Genoa,
towards the end of the fourteenth century, when Italy had grown wealthy,
paid only from seven to ten per cent. to her creditors.[627] But in
France and England the rate was far more oppressive. An ordinance of
Philip the Fair, in 1311, allows twenty per cent. after the first year
of the loan.[628] Under Henry III., according to Matthew Paris, the
debtor paid ten per cent. every two months;[629] but this is absolutely
incredible as a general practice. This was not merely owing to scarcity
of money, but to the discouragement which a strange prejudice opposed,
to one of the most useful and legitimate branches of commerce. Usury, or
lending money for profit, was treated as a crime by the theologians of
the middle ages; and though the superstition has been eradicated, some
part of the prejudice remains in our legislation. This trade in money,
and indeed a great part of inland trade in general, had originally
fallen to the Jews, who were noted for their usury so early as the sixth
century.[630] For several subsequent ages they continued to employ their
capital and industry to the same advantage, with little molestation from
the clergy, who always tolerated their avowed and national infidelity,
and often with some encouragement from princes. In the twelfth century
we find them not only possessed of landed property in Languedoc, and
cultivating the studies of medicine and Rabbinical literature in their
own academy at Montpelier, under the protection of the count of
Toulouse, but invested with civil offices.[631] Raymond Roger, viscount
of Carcasonne, directs a writ "to his bailiffs, Christian and
Jewish."[632] It was one of the conditions imposed by the church on the
count of Toulouse, that he should allow no Jews to possess magistracy in
his dominions.[633] But in Spain they were placed by some of the
municipal laws on the footing of Christians, with respect to the
composition for their lives, and seem in no other European country to
have been so numerous or considerable.[634] The diligence and expertness
of this people in all pecuniary dealings recommended them to princes who
were solicitous about the improvement of their revenue. We find an
article in the general charter of privileges granted by Peter III. of
Aragon, in 1283, that no Jew should hold the office of a bayle or judge.
And two kings of Castile, Alonzo XI. and Peter the Cruel, incurred much
odium by employing Jewish ministers in their treasury. But, in other
parts of Europe, their condition had, before that time, begun to change
for the worse--partly from the fanatical spirit of the crusades, which
prompted the populace to massacre, and partly from the jealousy which
their opulence excited. Kings, in order to gain money and popularity at
once, abolished the debts due to the children of Israel, except a part
which they retained as the price of their bounty. One is at a loss to
conceive the process of reasoning in an ordinance of St. Louis, where,
"for the salvation of his own soul and those of his ancestors, he
releases to all Christians a third part of what was owing by them to
Jews."[635] Not content with such edicts, the kings of France sometimes
banished the whole nation from their dominions, seizing their effects at
the same time; and a season of alternative severity and toleration
continued till, under Charles VI., they were finally expelled from the
kingdom, where they never afterwards possessed any legal
settlement.[636] They were expelled from England under Edward I., and
never obtained any legal permission to reside till the time of Cromwell.
This decline of the Jews was owing to the transference of their trade in
money to other hands. In the early part of the thirteenth century the
merchants of Lombardy and of the south of France[637] took up the
business of remitting money by bills of exchange,[638] and of making
profit upon loans. The utility of this was found so great, especially by
the Italian clergy, who thus in an easy manner drew the income of their
transalpine benefices, that in spite of much obloquy, the Lombard
usurers established themselves in every country, and the general
progress of commerce wore off the bigotry that had obstructed their
reception. A distinction was made between moderate and exorbitant
interest; and though the casuists did not acquiesce in this legal
regulation, yet it satisfied, even in superstitious times, the
consciences of provident traders.[639] The Italian bankers were
frequently allowed to farm the customs in England, as a security
perhaps for loans which, were not very punctually repaid.[640] In 1345
the Bardi at Florence, the greatest company in Italy, became bankrupt,
Edward III. owing them, in principal and interest, 900,000 gold florins.
Another, the Peruzzi, failed at the same time, being creditors to Edward
for 600,000 florins. The king of Sicily owed 100,000 florins to each of
these bankers. Their failure involved, of course, a multitude of
Florentine citizens, and was a heavy misfortune to the state.[641]
[Sidenote: Banks of Genoa and others.]
The earliest bank of deposit, instituted for the accommodation of
private merchants, is said to have been that of Barcelona, in 1401.[642]
The banks of Venice and Genoa were of a different description. Although
the former of these two has the advantage of greater antiquity, having
been formed, as we are told, in the twelfth century, yet its early
history is not so clear as that of Genoa, nor its political importance
so remarkable, however similar might be its origin.[643] During the wars
of Genoa in the fourteenth century, she had borrowed large sums of
private citizens, to whom the revenues were pledged for repayment. The
republic of Florence had set a recent, though not a very encouraging
example of a public loan, to defray the expense of her war against
Mastino della Scala, in 1336. The chief mercantile firms, as well as
individual citizens, furnished money on an assignment of the taxes,
receiving fifteen per cent. interest, which appears to have been above
the rate of private usury.[644] The state was not unreasonably
considered a worse debtor than some of her citizens, for in a few years
these loans were consolidated into a general fund, or _monte_, with some
deduction from the capital and a great diminution of interest; so that
an original debt of one hundred florins sold only for twenty-five.[645]
But I have not found that these creditors formed at Florence a corporate
body, or took any part, as such, in the affairs of the republic. The
case was different at Genoa. As a security, at least, for their
interest, the subscribers to public loans were permitted to receive the
produce of the taxes by their own collectors, paying the excess into the
treasury. The number and distinct classes of these subscribers becoming
at length inconvenient, they were formed, about the year 1407, into a
single corporation, called the bank of St. George, which was from that
time the sole national creditor and mortgagee. The government of this
was intrusted to eight protectors. It soon became almost independent of
the state. Every senator, on his admission, swore to maintain the
privileges of the bank, which were confirmed by the pope, and even by
the emperor. The bank interposed its advice in every measure of
government, and generally, as is admitted, to the public advantage. It
equipped armaments at its own expense, one of which subdued the island
of Corsica; and this acquisition, like those of our great Indian
corporation, was long subject to a company of merchants, without any
interference of the mother country.[646]
[Sidenote: Increase of domestic expenditure.]
The increasing wealth of Europe, whether derived from internal
improvement or foreign commerce, displayed itself in more expensive
consumption, and greater refinements of domestic life. But these effects
were for a long time very gradual, each generation making a few steps in
the progress, which are hardly discernible except by an attentive
inquirer. It is not till the latter half of the thirteenth century that
an accelerated impulse appears to be given to society. The just
government and suppression of disorder under St. Louis, and the
peaceful temper of his brother Alfonso, count of Toulouse and Poitou,
gave France leisure to avail herself of her admirable fertility.
England, that to a soil not greatly inferior to that of France united
the inestimable advantage of an insular position, and was invigorated,
above all, by her free constitution and the steady industriousness of
her people, rose with a pretty uniform motion from the time of Edward I.
Italy, though the better days of freedom had passed away in most of her
republics, made a rapid transition from simplicity to refinement. "In
those times," says a writer about the year 1300, speaking of the age of
Frederic II., "the manners of the Italians were rude. A man and his wife
ate off the same plate. There was no wooden-handled knives, nor more
than one or two drinking cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were
unknown; a servant held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were
of leather unlined: scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress.
The common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept their cold
meat for supper. Many did not drink wine in summer. A small stock of
corn seemed riches. The portions of women were small; their dress, even
after marriage, was simple. The pride of men was to be well provided
with arms and horses; that of the nobility to have lofty towers, of
which all the cities in Italy were full. But now frugality has been
changed for sumptuousness; every thing exquisite is sought after in
dress; gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs. Foreign wines and
rich meats are required. Hence usury, rapine, fraud, tyranny," &c.[647]
This passage is supported by other testimonies nearly of the same time.
The conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou in 1266 seems to have been
the epoch of increasing luxury throughout Italy. His Provencal knights
with their plumed helmets and golden collars, the chariot of his queen
covered with blue velvet and sprinkled with lilies of gold, astonished
the citizens of Naples.[648] Provence had enjoyed a long tranquillity,
the natural source of luxurious magnificence; and Italy, now liberated
from the yoke of the empire, soon reaped the same fruit of a condition
more easy and peaceful than had been her lot for several ages. Dante
speaks of the change of manners at Florence from simplicity and virtue
to refinement and dissoluteness, in terms very nearly similar to those
quoted above.[649]
Throughout the fourteenth century there continued to be a rapid but
steady progression in England of what we may denominate elegance,
improvement, or luxury; and if this was for a time suspended in France,
it must be ascribed to the unusual calamities which befell that country
under Philip of Valois and his son. Just before the breaking out of the
English wars an excessive fondness for dress is said to have
distinguished not only the higher ranks, but the burghers, whose foolish
emulation at least indicates their easy circumstances.[650] Modes of
dress hardly perhaps deserve our notice on their own account; yet so far
as their universal prevalence was a symptom of diffused wealth, we
should not overlook either the invectives bestowed by the clergy on the
fantastic extravagances of fashion, or the sumptuary laws by which it
was endeavoured to restrain them.
[Sidenote: Sumptuary laws.]
The principle of sumptuary laws was partly derived from the small
republics of antiquity, which might perhaps require that security for
public spirit and equal rights--partly from the austere and injudicious
theory of religion disseminated by the clergy. These prejudices united
to render all increase of general comforts odious under the name of
luxury; and a third motive more powerful than either, the jealousy with
which the great regard anything like imitation in those beneath them,
co-operated to produce a sort of restrictive code in the laws of Europe.
Some of these regulations are more ancient; but the chief part were
enacted, both in France and England, during the fourteenth century,
extending to expenses of the table as well as apparel. The first statute
of this description in our own country was, however, repealed the next
year;[651] and subsequent provisions were entirely disregarded by a
nation which valued liberty and commerce too much to obey laws conceived
in a spirit hostile to both. Laws indeed designed by those governments
to restrain the extravagance of their subjects may well justify the
severe indignation which Adam Smith has poured upon all such
interference with private expenditure. The kings of France and England
were undoubtedly more egregious spendthrifts than any others in their
dominions; and contributed far more by their love of pageantry to excite
a taste for dissipation in their people than by their ordinances to
repress it.
[Sidenote: Domestic manners of Italy.]
Mussus, an historian of Placentia, has left a pretty copious account of
the prevailing manners among his countrymen about 1388, and expressly
contrasts their more luxurious living with the style of their ancestors
seventy years before, when, as we have seen, they had already made
considerable steps towards refinement. This passage is highly
interesting, because it shows the regular tenor of domestic economy in
an Italian city rather than a mere display of individual magnificence,
as in most of the facts collected by our own and the French antiquaries.
But it is much too long for insertion in this place.[652] No other
country, perhaps, could exhibit so fair a picture of middle life: in
France the burghers, and even the inferior gentry, were for the most
part in a state of poverty at this period, which they concealed by an
affectation of ornament; while our English yeomanry and tradesmen were
more anxious to invigorate their bodies by a generous diet than to
dwell in well furnished houses, or to find comfort in cleanliness and
elegance.[653] The German cities, however, had acquired with liberty the
spirit of improvement and industry. From the time that Henry V. admitted
their artisans to the privileges of free burghers they became more and
more prosperous;[654] while the steadiness and frugality of the German
character compensated for some disadvantages arising out of their inland
situation. Spire, Nuremberg, Ratisbon, and Augsburg were not indeed like
the rich markets of London and Bruges, nor could their burghers rival
the princely merchants of Italy; but they enjoyed the blessings of
competence diffused over a large class of industrious freemen, and in
the fifteenth century one of the politest Italians could extol their
splendid and well furnished dwellings, their rich apparel, their easy
and affluent mode of living, the security of their rights and just
equality of their laws.[655]
[Sidenote: Civil architecture.]
No chapter in the history of national manners would illustrate so well,
if duly executed, the progress of social life as that dedicated to
domestic architecture. The fashions of dress and of amusements are
generally capricious and irreducible to rule; but every change in the
dwellings of mankind, from the rudest wooden cabin to the stately
mansion, has been dictated by some principle of convenience, neatness,
comfort, or magnificence. Yet this most interesting field of research
has been less beaten by our antiquaries than others comparatively
barren. I do not pretend to a complete knowledge of what has been
written by these learned inquirers; but I can only name one book in
which the civil architecture of our ancestors has been sketched, loosely
indeed, but with a superior hand, and another in which it is partially
noticed. I mean by the first a chapter in the Appendix to Dr. Whitaker's
History of Whalley; and by the second Mr. King's Essays on Ancient
Castles in the Archaeologia.[656] Of these I shall make free use in the
following paragraphs.
The most ancient buildings which we can trace in this island, after the
departure of the Romans, were circular towers of no great size, whereof
many remain in Scotland, erected either on a natural eminence or on an
artificial mound of earth. Such are Conisborough Castle in Yorkshire and
Castleton in Derbyshire, built perhaps, according to Mr. King, before
the Conquest.[657] To the lower chambers of those gloomy keeps there was
no admission of light or air except through long narrow loop-holes and
an aperture in the roof. Regular windows were made in the upper
apartments. Were it not for the vast thickness of the walls, and some
marks of attention both to convenience and decoration in these
structures, we might be induced to consider them as rather intended for
security during the transient inroad of an enemy than for a chieftain's
usual residence. They bear a close resemblance, except by their circular
form and more insulated situation, to the peels, or square towers of
three or four stories, which are still found contiguous to ancient
mansion-houses, themselves far more ancient, in the northern
counties,[658] and seem to have been designed for places of refuge.
In course of time, the barons who owned these castles began to covet a
more comfortable dwelling. The keep was either much enlarged, or
altogether relinquished as a place of residence except in time of siege;
while more convenient apartments were sometimes erected in the tower of
entrance, over the great gateway, which led to the inner ballium or
court-yard. Thus at Tunbridge Castle, this part of which is referred by
Mr. King to the beginning of the thirteenth century, there was a room,
twenty-eight feet by sixteen, on each side of the gateway; another above
of the same dimensions, with an intermediate room over the entrance; and
one large apartment on the second floor occupying the whole space, and
intended for state. The windows in this class of castles were still
little better than loop-holes on the basement story, but in the upper
rooms often large and beautifully ornamented, though always looking
inwards to the court. Edward I. introduced a more splendid and
convenient style of castles, containing many habitable towers, with
communicating apartments. Conway and Carnarvon will be familiar
examples. The next innovation was the castle-palace--of which Windsor,
if not quite the earliest, is the most magnificent instance. Alnwick,
Naworth, Harewood, Spofforth, Kenilworth, and Warwick, were all built
upon this scheme during the fourteenth century, but subsequent
enlargements have rendered caution necessary to distinguish their
original remains. "The odd mixture," says Mr. King, "of convenience and
magnificence with cautious designs for protection and defence, and with
the inconveniences of the former confined plan of a close fortress, is
very striking." The provisions for defence became now, however, little
more than nugatory; large arched windows, like those of cathedrals,
were introduced into halls, and this change in architecture manifestly
bears witness to the cessation of baronial wars and the increasing love
of splendour in the reign of Edward III.
To these succeeded the castellated houses of the fifteenth century, such
as Herstmonceux in Sussex, Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, and the older part
of Knowle in Kent.[659] They resembled fortified castles in their strong
gateways, their turrets and battlements, to erect which a royal licence
was necessary; but their defensive strength could only have availed
against a sudden affray or attempt at forcible dispossession. They were
always built round one or two court-yards, the circumference of the
first, when they were two, being occupied by the offices and servants'
rooms, that of the second by the state-apartments. Regular quadrangular
houses, not castellated, were sometimes built during the same age, and
under Henry VII. became universal in the superior style of domestic
architecture.[660] The quadrangular form, as well from security and
convenience as from imitation of conventual houses, which were always
constructed upon that model, was generally preferred--even where the
dwelling-house, as indeed was usual, only took up one side of the
enclosure, and the remaining three contained the offices, stables, and
farm-buildings, with walls of communication. Several very old parsonages
appear to have been built in this manner.[661] It is, however, not very
easy to discover any large fragments of houses inhabited by the gentry
before the reign, at soonest, of Edward III., or even to trace them by
engravings in the older topographical works, not only from the
dilapidations of time, but because very few considerable mansions had
been erected by that class. A great part of England affords no stone fit
for building, and the vast though unfortunately not inexhaustible
resources of her oak forests were easily applied to less durable and
magnificent structures. A frame of massive timber, independent of walls
and resembling the inverted hull of a large ship, formed the skeleton,
as it were, of an ancient hall--the principal beams springing from the
ground naturally curved, and forming a Gothic arch overhead. The
intervals of these were filled up with horizontal planks; but in the
earlier buildings, at least in some districts, no part of the walls was
of stone.[662] Stone houses are, however, mentioned as belonging to
citizens of London, even in the reign of Henry II.;[663] and, though not
often perhaps regularly hewn stones, yet those scattered over the soil
or dug from flint quarries, bound together with a very strong and
durable cement, were employed in the construction of manerial houses,
especially in the western counties and other parts where that material
is easily procured.[664] Gradually even in timber buildings the
intervals of the main beams, which now became perpendicular, not
throwing off their curved springers till they reached a considerable
height, were occupied by stone walls, or where stone was expensive, by
mortar or plaster, intersected by horizontal or diagonal beams, grooved
into the principal piers.[665] This mode of building continued for a
long time, and is still familiar to our eyes in the older streets of the
metropolis and other towns, and in many parts of the country.[666] Early
in the fourteenth century the art of building with brick, which had been
lost since the Roman dominion, was introduced probably from Flanders.
Though several edifices of that age are constructed with this material,
it did not come into general use till the reign of Henry VI.[667] Many
considerable houses as well as public buildings were erected with bricks
during his reign and that of Edward IV., chiefly in the eastern
counties, where the deficiency of stone was most experienced. Few, if
any, brick mansion-houses of the fifteenth century exist, except in a
dilapidated state; but Queen's College and Clare Hall at Cambridge, and
part of Eton College, are subsisting witnesses to the durability of the
material as it was then employed.
[Sidenote: Meanness of ordinary mansion-houses.]
It is an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged in
stately or even in well-sized houses. Generally speaking, their
dwellings were almost as inferior to those of their descendants in
capacity as they were in convenience. The usual arrangement consisted of
an entrance-passage running through the house, with a hall on one side,
a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above, and on the opposite
side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices.[668] Such was the ordinary
manor-house of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as appears not
only from the documents and engravings, but as to the latter period,
from the buildings themselves, sometimes, though not very frequently,
occupied by families of consideration, more often converted into
farm-houses or distinct tenements. Larger structures were erected by men
of great estates during the reigns of Henry IV. and Edward IV.; but very
few can be traced higher; and such has been the effect of time, still
more through the advance or decline of families and the progress of
architectural improvement, than the natural decay of these buildings,
that I should conceive it difficult to name a house in England, still
inhabited by a gentleman and not belonging to the order of castles, the
principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. The
instances at least must be extremely few.[669]
France by no means appears to have made a greater progress than our own
country in domestic architecture. Except fortified castles, I do not
find in the work of a very miscellaneous but apparently diligent
writer,[670] any considerable dwellings mentioned before the reign of
Charles VII., and very few of so early a date.[671] Jacques Coeur, a
famous merchant unjustly persecuted by that prince, had a handsome house
at Paris, as well as another at Bourges.[672] It is obvious that the
long calamities which France endured before the expulsion of the English
must have retarded this eminent branch of national improvement.
Even in Italy, where from the size of her cities and social refinements
of her inhabitants, greater elegance and splendour in building were
justly to be expected, the domestic architecture of the middle ages did
not attain any perfection. In several towns the houses were covered with
thatch, and suffered consequently from destructive fires. Costanzo, a
Neapolitan historian near the end of the sixteenth century, remarks the
change of manners that had occurred since the reign of Joanna II. one
hundred and fifty years before. The great families under the queen
expended all their wealth on their retainers, and placed their chief
pride in bringing them into the field. They were ill lodged, not
sumptuously clothed, nor luxurious in their tables. The house of
Caracciolo, high steward of that princess, one of the most powerful
subjects that ever existed, having fallen into the hands of persons
incomparably below his station, had been enlarged by them, as
insufficient for their accommodation.[673] If such were the case in the
city of Naples so late as the beginning of the fifteenth century, we may
guess how mean were the habitations in less polished parts of Europe.
[Sidenote: Invention of chimneys and glass windows.]
The two most essential improvements in architecture during this period,
one of which had been missed by the sagacity of Greece and Rome, were
chimneys and glass windows. Nothing apparently can be more simple than
the former; yet the wisdom of ancient times had been content to let the
smoke escape by an aperture in the centre of the roof; and a discovery,
of which Vitruvius had not a glimpse, was made, perhaps in this country,
by some forgotten semi-barbarian. About the middle of the fourteenth
century the use of chimneys is distinctly mentioned in England and in
Italy; but they are found in several of our castles which bear a much
older date.[674] This country seems to have lost very early the art of
making glass, which was preserved in France, whence artificers were
brought into England to furnish the windows in some new churches in the
seventh century.[675] It is said that in the reign of Henry III. a few
ecclesiastical buildings had glazed windows.[676] Suger, however, a
century before, had adorned his great work, the abbey of St. Denis,
with windows, not only glazed but painted;[677] and I presume that other
churches of the same class, both in France and England, especially after
the lancet-shaped window had yielded to one of ampler dimensions, were
generally decorated in a similar manner. Yet glass is said not to have
been employed in the domestic architecture of France before the
fourteenth century;[678] and its introduction into England was probably
by no means earlier. Nor indeed did it come into general use during the
period of the middle ages. Glazed windows were considered as moveable
furniture, and probably bore a high price. When the earls of
Northumberland, as late as the reign of Elizabeth, left Alnwick Castle,
the windows were taken out of their frames, and carefully laid by.[679]
[Sidenote: Furniture of houses.]
But if the domestic buildings of the fifteenth century would not seem
very spacious or convenient at present, far less would this luxurious
generation be content with their internal accommodations. A gentleman's
house containing three or four beds was extraordinarily well provided;
few probably had more than two. The walls were commonly bare, without
wainscot or even plaster; except that some great houses were furnished
with hangings, and that perhaps hardly so soon as the reign of Edward
IV. It is unnecessary to add, that neither libraries of books nor
pictures could have found a place among furniture. Silver plate was very
rare, and hardly used for the table. A few inventories of furniture that
still remain exhibit a miserable deficiency.[680] And this was
incomparably greater in private gentlemen's houses than among citizens,
and especially foreign merchants. We have an inventory of the goods
belonging to Contarini, a rich Venetian trader, at his house in St.
Botolph's Lane, A.D. 1481. There appear to have been no less than ten
beds, and glass windows are especially noticed as moveable furniture. No
mention however is made of chairs or looking-glasses.[681] If we compare
this account, however trifling in our estimation, with a similar
inventory of furniture in Skipton Castle, the great honour of the earls
of Cumberland, and among the most splendid mansions of the north, not at
the same period, for I have not found any inventory of a nobleman's
furniture so ancient, but in 1572, after almost a century of continual
improvement, we shall be astonished at the inferior provision of the
baronial residence. There were not more than seven or eight beds in this
great castle; nor had any of the chambers either chairs, glasses, or
carpets.[682] It is in this sense, probably, that we must understand
AEneas Sylvius, if he meant any thing more than to express a traveller's
discontent, when he declares that the kings of Scotland would rejoice to
be as well lodged as the second class of citizens at Nuremberg.[683] Few
burghers of that town had mansions, I presume, equal to the palaces of
Dumferlin or Stirling, but it is not unlikely that they were better
furnished.
[Sidenote: Farm-houses and cottages.]
In the construction of farm-houses and cottages, especially the latter,
there have probably been fewer changes; and those it would be more
difficult to follow. No building of this class can be supposed to exist
of the antiquity to which the present work is confined; and I do not
know that we have any document as to the inferior architecture of
England, so valuable as one which M. de Paulmy has quoted for that of
France, though perhaps more strictly applicable to Italy, an illuminated
manuscript of the fourteenth century, being a translation of
Crescentio's work on agriculture, illustrating the customs, and, among
other things, the habitations of the agricultural class. According to
Paulmy, there is no other difference between an ancient and a modern
farm-house than arises from the introduction of tiled roofs.[684] In the
original work of Crescentio, a native of Bologna, who composed this
treatise on rural affairs about the year 1300, an Italian farm-house,
when built at least according to his plan, appears to have been
commodious both in size and arrangement.[685] Cottages in England seem
to have generally consisted of a single room without division of
stories. Chimneys were unknown in such dwellings till the early part of
Elizabeth's reign, when a very rapid and sensible improvement took place
in the comforts of our yeomanry and cottagers.[686]
[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical architecture.]
It must be remembered that I have introduced this disadvantageous
representation of civil architecture, as a proof of general poverty and
backwardness in the refinements of life. Considered in its higher
departments, that art is the principal boast of the middle ages. The
common buildings, especially those of a public kind, were constructed
with skill and attention to durability. The castellated style displays
these qualities in great perfection; the means are well adapted to
their objects, and its imposing grandeur, though chiefly resulting no
doubt from massiveness and historical association, sometimes indicates a
degree of architectural genius in the conception. But the most
remarkable works of this art are the religious edifices erected in the
twelfth and three following centuries. These structures, uniting
sublimity in general composition with the beauties of variety and form,
intricacy of parts, skilful or at least fortunate effects of shadow and
light, and in some instances with extraordinary mechanical science, are
naturally apt to lead those antiquaries who are most conversant with
them into too partial estimates of the times wherein they were founded.
They certainly are accustomed to behold the fairest side of the picture.
It was the favourite and most honourable employment of ecclesiastical
wealth, to erect, to enlarge, to repair, to decorate cathedral and
conventual churches. An immense capital must have been expended upon
these buildings in England between the Conquest and the Reformation. And
it is pleasing to observe how the seeds of genius, hidden as it were
under the frost of that dreary winter, began to bud in the first
sunshine of encouragement. In the darkest period of the middle ages,
especially after the Scandinavian incursions into France and England,
ecclesiastical architecture, though always far more advanced than any
other art, bespoke the rudeness and poverty of the times. It began
towards the latter part of the eleventh century, when tranquillity, at
least as to former enemies, was restored, and some degree of learning
reappeared, to assume a more noble appearance. The Anglo-Norman
cathedrals were perhaps as much distinguished above other works of man
in their own age, as the more splendid edifices of a later period. The
science manifested in them is not, however, very great; and their style,
though by no means destitute of lesser beauties, is upon the whole an
awkward imitation of Roman architecture, or perhaps more immediately of
the Saracenic buildings in Spain and those of the lower Greek
empire.[687] But about the middle of the twelfth century, this manner
began to give place to what is improperly denominated the Gothic
architecture;[688] of which the pointed arch, formed by the segments of
two intersecting semicircles of equal radius and described about a
common diameter, has generally been deemed the essential characteristic.
We are not concerned at present to inquire whether this style originated
in France or Germany, Italy or England, since it was certainly almost
simultaneous in all these countries;[689] nor from what source it was
derived--a question of no small difficulty. I would only venture to
remark, that whatever may be thought of the origin of the pointed arch,
for which there is more than one mode of accounting, we must perceive a
very oriental character in the vast profusion of ornament, especially on
the exterior surface, which is as distinguishing a mark of Gothic
buildings as their arches, and contributes in an eminent degree both to
their beauties and to their defects. This indeed is rather applicable to
the later than the earlier stage of architecture, and rather to
continental than English churches. Amiens is in a far more florid style
than Salisbury, though a contemporary structure. The Gothic species of
architecture is thought by most to have reached its perfection,
considered as an object of taste, by the middle or perhaps the close of
the fourteenth century, or at least to have lost something of its
excellence by the corresponding part of the next age; an effect of its
early and rapid cultivation, since arts appear to have, like
individuals, their natural progress and decay. The mechanical
execution, however, continued to improve, and is so far beyond the
apparent intellectual powers of those times, that some have ascribed the
principal ecclesiastical structures to the fraternity of freemasons,
depositaries of a concealed and traditionary science. There is probably
some ground for this opinion; and the earlier archives of that
mysterious association, if they existed, might illustrate the progress
of Gothic architecture, and perhaps reveal its origin. The remarkable
change into this new style, that was almost contemporaneous in every
part of Europe, cannot be explained by any local circumstances, or the
capricious taste of a single nation.[690]
[Sidenote: Agriculture in some degree progressive.]