adjusted themselves to the quantity of silver contained in the current
coin, in ages which appear too ignorant and too little commercial for
the application of this mercantile principle. But the extensive dealings
of the Jewish and Lombard usurers, who had many debtors in almost all
parts of the country, would of itself introduce a knowledge, that
silver, not its stamp, was the measure, of value. I have mentioned in
another place (vol. i. p. 211) the heavy discontents excited by this
debasement of the coin in France; but the more gradual enhancement of
nominal prices in England seems to have prevented any strong
manifestations of a similar spirit at the successive reductions in value
which the coin experienced from the year 1300. The connexion however
between commodities and silver was well understood. Wykes, an annalist
of Edward I.'s age, tells us, that the Jews clipped our coin, till it
retained hardly half its due weight, the effect of which was a general
enhancement of prices, and decline of foreign trade: Mercatores
transmarini cum mercimoniis suis regnum Angliae minus solito
frequentabant; necnon quod omnimoda venalium genera incomparabiliter
solito fuerunt cariora. 2 Gale, XV Script. p. 107. Another chronicler of
the same age complains of bad foreign money, alloyed with copper; nec
erat in quatuor aut quinque ex iis pondus unius denarii argentii....
Eratque pessimum saeculum pro tali moneta, et fiebant commutationes
plurimae in emptione et venditione rerum. Edward, as the historian
informs us, bought in this bad money at a rate below its value, in order
to make a profit; and fined some persons who interfered with his
traffic. W. Hemingford, ad ann. 1299.
[721] These will chiefly be found in Sir F. Eden's table of prices; the
following may be added from the account-book of a convent between 1415
and 1425. Wheat varied from 4_s._ to 6_s._--barley from 3_s._ 2_d._ to
4_s._ 10_d._--oats from 1_s._ 8_d._ to 2_s._ 4_d._--oxen from 12_s._ to
16_s._--sheep from 1_s._ 2_d._ to 1_s._ 4_d._--butter 3/4_d._ per
lb.--eggs twenty-five for 1_d._--cheese 1/2_d._ per lb. Lansdowne MSS.,
vol. i. No. 28 and 29. These prices do not always agree with those given
in other documents of equal authority in the same period; but the value
of provisions varied in different counties, and still more so in
different seasons of the year.
[722] I insert the following comparative table of English money from Sir
Frederick Eden. The unit, or present value, refers of course to that of
the shilling before the last coinage, which reduced it.
------------------+----------------+-------------
| Value of |
| pound |
| sterling, |
| present money. | Proportion.
+----------------+-------------
| L. s. d. |
Conquest, 1066 | 2 18 1-1/2 | 2.906
28 E. I. 1300 | 2 17 5 | 2.871
18 E. III. 1344 | 2 12 5-1/4 | 2.622
20 E. III. 1346 | 2 11 8 | 2.583
27 E. III. 1353 | 2 6 6 | 2.325
13 H. IV. 1412 | 1 18 9 | 1.937
4 E. IV. 1464 | 1 11 0 | 1.55
18 H. VIII. 1527 | 1 7 6-3/4 | 1.378
34 H. VIII. 1543 | 1 3 3-1/4 | 1.163
36 H. VIII. 1545 | 0 13 11-1/2 | 0.698
37 H. VIII. 1546 | 0 9 3-3/4 | 0.466
5 E. VI. 1551 | 0 4 7-3/4 | 0.232
6 E. VI. 1552 | 1 0 6-3/4 | 1.028
1 Mary 1553 | 1 0 5-3/4 | 1.024
2 Eliz. 1560 | 1 0 8 | 1.033
43 Eliz. 1601 | 1 0 0 | 1.000
------------------+----------------+-------------
[723] Macpherson's Annals, p. 424, from Matt. Paris.
[724] Difference of Limited and Absolute Monarchy, p. 133.
[725] Hist. of Hawsted, p. 141.
[726] Nicholls's Illustrations, p. 2. One fact of this class did, I own,
stagger me. The great earl of Warwick writes to a private gentleman, Sir
Thomas Tudenham, begging the loan of ten or twenty pounds to make up a
sum he had to pay. Paston Letters, vol. i. p. 84. What way shall we make
this commensurate to the present value of money? But an ingenious friend
suggested, what I do not question is the case, that this was one of many
letters addressed to the adherents of Warwick, in order to raise by
their contributions a considerable sum. It is curious, in this light, as
an illustration of manners.
[727] Paston Letters, vol. i. p. 224; Cullum's Hawsted, p. 182.
[728] Hist. of Hawsted, p. 228.
[729] Mr Malthus observes on this that I "have overlooked the
distinction between the reigns of Edw. III. and Henry VIII. (perhaps a
misprint for VI.), with regard to the state of the labouring classes.
The two periods appear to have been essentially different in this
respect." Principles of Political Economy, p. 293, 1st edit. He
conceives that the earnings of the labourer in corn were unusually low
in the latter years of Edward III., which appears to have been effected
by the statute of labourers (25 E. III.), immediately after the great
pestilence of 1350, though that mortality ought, in the natural course
of things, to have considerably raised the real wages of labour. The
result of his researches is that, in the reign of Edward III., the
labourer could not purchase half a peck of wheat with a day's labour;
from that of Richard II. to the middle of that of Henry VI., he could
purchase nearly a peck; and from thence to the end of the century,
nearly two pecks. At the time when the passage in the text was written
[1816], the labourer could rarely have purchased more than a peck with a
day's labour, and frequently a good deal less. In some parts of England
this is the case at present [1846]; but in many counties the real wages
of agricultural labourers are considerably higher than at that time,
though not by any means so high as, according to Malthus himself, they
were in the latter half of the fifteenth century. The excessive
fluctuations in the price of corn, even taking averages of a long term
of years, which we find through the middle ages, and indeed much later,
account more than any other assignable cause for those in real wages of
labour, which do not regulate themselves very promptly by that standard,
especially when coercive measures are adopted to restrain them.
[730] See these rates more at length in Eden's State of the Poor, vol.
i. p. 32, &c.
[731] In the Archaeologia, vol. xviii. p. 281, we have a bailiffs account
of expenses in 1387, where it appears that a ploughman had sixpence a
week, and five shillings a year, with an allowance of diet; which seems
to have been only pottage. These wages are certainly not more than
fifteen shillings a week in present value [1816]; which, though
materially above the average rate of agricultural labour, is less so
than some of the statutes would lead us to expect. Other facts may be
found of a similar nature.
[732] See that singular book, Piers Plowman's Vision, p. 145 (Whitaker's
edition), for the different modes of living before and after harvest.
The passage may be found in Ellis's Specimens, vol. i. p. 151.
[733] Fortescue's Difference between Abs. and Lim. Monarchy, p. 19. The
passages in Fortescue, which bear on his favourite theme, the liberty
and consequent happiness of the English, are very important, and
triumphantly refute those superficial writers who would make us believe
that they were a set of beggarly slaves.
[734] Besides the books to which I have occasionally referred, Mr.
Ellis's Specimens of English Poetry, vol. i. chap. 13, contain a short
digression, but from well-selected materials, on the private life of the
English in the middling and lower ranks about the fifteenth century. [I
leave the foregoing pages with little alteration, but they may probably
contain expressions which I would not now adopt. 1850.]
[735] Besides the German historians, see Du Cange, v. Ganerbium, for the
confederacies in the empire, and Hermandatum for those in Castile. These
appear to have been merely voluntary associations, and perhaps directed
as much towards the prevention of robbery, as of what is strictly called
private war. But no man can easily distinguish offensive war from
robbery except by its scale; and where this was so considerably reduced,
the two modes of injury almost coincide. In Aragon, there was a distinct
institution for the maintenance of peace, the kingdom being divided into
unions or juntas, with a chief officer, called Suprajunctarius, at their
head. Du Cange, v. Juncta.
[736] Henault, Abrege Chronol. a l'an. 1255. The institutions of Louis
IX. and his successors relating to police form a part, though rather a
smaller part than we should expect from the title, of an immense work,
replete with miscellaneous information, by Delamare, Traite de la
Police, 4 vols. in folio. A sketch of them may be found in Velly, t. v.
p. 349, t. xviii. p. 437.
[737] Velly, t. v. p. 162, where this incident is told in an interesting
manner from William de Nangis. Boulainvilliers has taken an
extraordinary view of the king's behaviour. Hist. de l'Ancien
Gouvernement, t. ii. p. 26. In his eyes princes and plebeians were made
to be the slaves of a feudal aristocracy.
[738] Velly, t. viii. p. 132.
[739] Id. xviii. p. 437.
[740] Fleury, 3me Discours sur l'Hist. Eccles.
[741] The most authentic account of the Paulicians is found in a little
treatise of Petrus Siculus, who lived about 870, under Basil the
Macedonian. He had been employed on an embassy to Tephrica, the
principal town of these heretics, so that he might easily be well
informed; and, though he is sufficiently bigoted, I do not see any
reason to question the general truth of his testimony, especially as it
tallies so well with what we learn of the predecessors and successors of
the Paulicians. They had rejected several of the Manichean doctrines,
those, I believe, which were borrowed from the Oriental, Gnostic, and
Cabbalistic philosophy of emanation; and therefore readily condemned
Manes, prothumos anathematizousi Maneta. But they retained his capital
errors, so far as regarded the principle of dualism, which he had taken
from Zerdusht's religion, and the consequences he had derived from it.
Petrus Siculus enumerates six Paulician heresies. 1. They maintained the
existence of two deities, the one evil, and the creator of this world;
the other good, called pater epouranios, the author of that which is to
come. 2. They refused to worship the Virgin, and asserted that Christ
brought his body from heaven. 3. They rejected the Lord's Supper. 4. And
the adoration of the cross. 5. They denied the authority of the Old
Testament, but admitted the New, except the epistles of St. Peter, and,
perhaps, the Apocalypse. 6. They did not acknowledge the order of
priests.
There seems every reason to suppose that the Paulicians, notwithstanding
their mistakes, were endowed with sincere and zealous piety, and
studious of the Scriptures. A Paulician woman asked a young man if he
had read the Gospels: he replied that laymen were not permitted to do
so, but only the clergy: ouk exestin hemin tois kosmikois ousi tauta
anaginoskein, ei me tois hiereusi monois. p. 57. A curious proof that
the Scriptures were already forbidden in the Greek church, which I am
inclined to believe, notwithstanding the leniency with which Protestant
writers have treated it, was always more corrupt and more intolerant
than the Latin.
[742] Gibbon, c. 54. This chapter of the historian of the Decline and
Fall upon the Paulicians appears to be accurate, as well as luminous,
and is at least far superior to any modern work on the subject.
[743] It is generally agreed, that the Manicheans from Bulgaria did not
penetrate into the west of Europe before the year 1000; and they seem to
have been in small numbers till about 1140. We find them, however, early
in the eleventh century. Under the reign of Robert in 1007 several
heretics were burned at Orleans for tenets which are represented as
Manichean. Velly, t. ii. p. 307. These are said to have been imported
from Italy; and the heresy began to strike root in that country about
the same time. Muratori, Dissert. 60 (Antichita Italiane, t. iii. p.
304). The Italian Manicheans were generally called Paterini, the meaning
of which word has never been explained. We find few traces of them in
France at this time; but about the beginning of the twelfth century,
Guibert, bishop of Soissons, describes the heretics of that city, who
denied the reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and
rejected the sacraments. Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. x. p. 451.
Before the middle of that age, the Cathari, Henricians, Petrobussians,
and others appear, and the new opinions attracted universal notice. Some
of these sectaries, however, were not Manicheans. Mosheim, vol. iii. p.
116.
The acts of the inquisition of Toulouse, published by Limborch, from an
ancient manuscript, contain many additional proofs that the Albigenses
held the Manichean doctrine. Limborch himself will guide the reader to
the principal passages, p. 30. In fact, the proof of Manicheism among
the heretics of the twelfth century is so strong (for I have confined
myself to those of Languedoc, and could easily have brought other
testimony as to the Cathari), that I should never have thought of
arguing the point, but for the confidence of some modern ecclesiastical
writers.--What can we think of one who says, "It was not unusual to
stigmatize new sects with the odious name of Manichees, though I _know
no evidence_ that there were any real remains of that ancient sect in
the twelfth century"? Milner's History of the Church, vol. iii. p. 380.
Though this writer was by no means learned enough for the task he
undertook, he could not be ignorant of facts related by Mosheim and
other common historians.
I will only add, in order to obviate cavilling, that I use the word
Albigenses for the Manichean sects, without pretending to assert that
their doctrines prevailed more in the neighbourhood of Albi than
elsewhere. The main position is, that a large part of the Languedocian
heretics against whom the crusade was directed had imbibed the Paulician
opinions. If any one chooses rather to call them Catharists, it will not
be material.
[744] M. Paris, p. 267. (A.D. 1223.) Circa dies istos, haeretici
Albigenses constituerunt sibi Antipapam in finibus Bulgarorum, Croatiae
et Dalmatiae, nomine Bartholomaeum, &c. We are assured by good authorities
that Bosnia was full of Manicheans and Arians as late as the middle of
the fifteenth century. AEneas Sylvius, p. 407; Spondanus, ad an. 1460;
Mosheim.
[745] There has been so prevalent a disposition among English divines to
vindicate not only the morals and sincerity, but the orthodoxy of these
Albigenses, that I deem it necessary to confirm what I have said in the
text by some authorities, especially as few readers have it in their
power to examine this very obscure subject. Petrus Monachus, a
Cistercian monk, who wrote a history of the crusades against the
Albigenses, gives an account of the tenets maintained by the different
heretical sects. Many of them asserted two principles or creative
beings: a good one for things invisible, an evil one for things visible;
the former author of the New Testament, the latter of the Old. Novum
Testamentum benigno deo, vetus vero maligno attribuebant; et illud
omnino repudiabant, praeter quasdam auctoritates, quae de Veteri
Testamento Novo sunt insertae, quas ob Novi reverentiam Testamenti
recipere dignum aestimabant. A vast number of strange errors are imputed
to them, most of which are not mentioned by Alanus, a more dispassionate
writer. Du Chesne, Scriptores Francorum, t. v. p. 556. This Alanus de
Insulis, whose treatise against heretics, written about 1200, was
published by Masson at Lyons, in 1612, has left, I think, conclusive
evidence of the Manicheism of the Albigenses. He states their argument
upon every disputed point as fairly as possible, though his refutation
is of course more at length. It appears that great discrepancies of
opinion existed among these heretics, but the general tenor of their
doctrines is evidently Manichean. Aiunt haeretici temporis nostri quod
duo sunt principia rerum, principium lucis et principium tenebrarum, &c.
This opinion, strange as we may think it, was supported by Scriptural
texts; so insufficient is a mere acquaintance with the sacred writings
to secure unlearned and prejudiced minds from the wildest perversions of
their meaning! Some denied the reality of Christ's body; others his
being the Son of God; many the resurrection of the body; some even of a
future state. They asserted in general the Mosaic law to have proceeded
from the devil, proving this by the crimes committed during its
dispensation, and by the words of St. Paul, "the law entered that sin
might abound." They rejected infant baptism, but were divided as to the
reason; some saying that infants could not sin, and did not need
baptism; others, that they could not be saved without faith, and
consequently that it was useless. They held sin after baptism to be
irremissible. It does not appear that they rejected either of the
sacraments. They laid great stress upon the imposition of hands, which
seems to have been their distinctive rite.
One circumstance, which both Alanus and Robertus Monachus mention, and
which other authorities confirm, is their division into two classes; the
Perfect, and the Credentes, or Consolati, both of which appellations are
used. The former abstained from animal food, and from marriage, and led
in every respect an austere life. The latter were a kind of lay
brethren, living in a secular manner. This distinction is thoroughly
Manichean, and leaves no doubt as to the origin of the Albigenses. See
Beausobre, Hist. du Manicheisme, t. ii. p. 762 and 777. This candid
writer represents the early Manicheans as a harmless and austere set of
enthusiasts, exactly what the Paulicians and Albigenses appear to have
been in succeeding ages. As many calumnies were vented against one as
the other.
The long battle as to the Manicheism of the Albigensian sectaries has
been renewed since the publication of this work, by Dr. Maitland on one
side, and Mr. Faber and Dr. Gilly on the other; and it is not likely to
reach a termination; being conducted by one party with far less regard
to the weight of evidence than to the bearing it may have on the
theological hypotheses of the writers. I have seen no reason for
altering what is said in the text.
The chief strength of the argument seems to me to lie in the independent
testimonies as to the Manicheism of the Paulicians, in Petrus Siculus
and Photius, on the one hand, and as to that of the Languedocian
heretics in the Latin writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries on
the other; the connexion of the two sects through Bulgaria being
established by history, but the latter class of writers being
unacquainted with the former. It is certain that the probability of
general truth in these concurrent testimonies is greatly enhanced by
their independence. And it will be found that those who deny any tinge
of Manicheism in the Albigenses, are equally confident as to the
orthodoxy of the Paulicians. [1848.]
[746] The contemporary writers seem uniformly to represent Waldo as the
founder of the Waldenses; and I am not aware that they refer the
locality of that sect to the valleys of Piedmont, between Exiles and
Pignerol (see Leger's map), which have so long been distinguished as the
native country of the Vaudois. In the acts of the Inquisition, we find
Waldenses, sive pauperes de Lugduno, used as equivalent terms; and it
can hardly be doubted that the poor men of Lyons were the disciples of
Waldo. Alanus, the second book of whose treatise against heretics is an
attack upon the Waldenses, expressly derives them from Waldo. Petrus
Monachus does the same. These seem strong authorities, as it is not easy
to perceive what advantage they could derive from misrepresentation. It
has been however a position zealously maintained by some modern writers
of respectable name, that the people of the valleys had preserved a pure
faith for several ages before the appearance of Waldo. I have read what
is advanced on this head by Leger (Histoire des Eglises Vaudoises) and
by Allix (Remarks on the Ecclesiastical History of the Churches of
Piedmont), but without finding any sufficient proof for this
supposition, which nevertheless is not to be rejected as absolutely
improbable. Their best argument is deduced from an ancient poem called
La Noble Loicon, an original manuscript of which is in the public
library of Cambridge, and another in that of Geneva. This poem is
alleged to bear date in 1100, more than half a century before the
appearance of Waldo. But the lines that contain the date are loosely
expressed, and may very well suit with any epoch before the termination
of the twelfth century.
Ben ha mil et cent ans compli entierament,
Che fu scritta loro que sen al derier temp.
Eleven hundred years are now gone and past,
Since thus it was written; These times are the last.
See Literature of Europe in 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries, chap. 1, Sec.
33.
I have found however a passage in a late work, which remarkably
illustrates the antiquity of Alpine protestantism, if we may depend on
the date it assigns to the quotation. Mr. Planta's History of
Switzerland, p. 93, 4to. edit., contains the following note:--"A curious
passage, singularly descriptive of the character of the Swiss, has
lately been discovered in a MS. chronicle of the Abbey of Corvey, which
appears to have been written about the beginning of the twelfth century.
Religionem nostram, et omnium Latinae ecclesiae Christianorum fidem, laici
ex Suavia, Suicia, et Bavaria humiliare voluerunt; homines seducti ab
antiqua progenie simplicium hominum, qui Alpes et viciniam habitant, et
semper amant antiqua. In Suaviam, Bavariam et Italiam borealem saepe
intrant illorum (ex Suicia) mercatores, qui biblia ediscunt memoriter,
et ritus ecclesiae aversantur, quos credunt esse novos. Nolunt imagines
venerari, reliquias sanctorum aversantur, olera comedunt, raro
masticantes carnem, alii nunquam. Appellamus eos idcirco Manichaeos.
Horum quidam ab Hungaria ad eos convenerunt, &c." It is a pity that the
quotation has been broken off, as it might have illustrated the
connexion of the Bulgarians with these sectaries.
[747] The Waldenses were always considered as much less erroneous in
their tenets than the Albigenses, or Manicheans. Erant praeterea alii
haeretici, says Robert Monachus in the passage above quoted, qui
Waldenses dicebantur, a quodam Waldio nomine Lugdunensi. Hi quidem mali
erant, sed comparatione aliorum haereticorum longe minus perversi; in
multis enim nobiscum conveniebant, in quibusdam dissentiebant. The only
faults he seems to impute to them are the denial of the lawfulness of
oaths and capital punishment, and the wearing wooden shoes. By this
peculiarity of wooden sandals (sabots) they got the name of Sabbatati or
Insabbatati. (Du Cange.) William du Puy, another historian of the same
time, makes a similar distinction. Erant quidam Ariani, quidam Manichaei,
quidam etiam Waldenses sive Lugdunenses, qui licet inter se dissidentes,
omnes tamen in animarum perniciem contra fidem Catholicam conspirabant;
et illi quidem Waldenses contra alios acutissime disputant. Du Chesne,
t. v. p. 666. Alanus, in his second book, where he treats of the
Waldenses, charges them principally with disregarding the authority of
the church and preaching without a regular mission. It is evident
however from the acts of the Inquisition, that they denied the existence
of purgatory; and I should suppose that, even at that time, they had
thrown off most of the popish system of doctrine, which is so nearly
connected with clerical wealth and power. The difference made in these
records between the Waldenses and the Manichean sects shows that the
imputations cast upon the latter were not indiscriminate calumnies. See
Limborch, p. 201 and 228.
The History of Languedoc, by Vaissette and Vich, contains a very good
account of the sectaries in that country; but I have not immediate
access to the book. I believe that proof will be found of the
distinction between the Waldenses and Albigenses in t. iii. p. 446. But
I am satisfied that no one who has looked at the original authorities
will dispute the proposition. These Benedictine historians represent the
Henricians, an early set of reformers, condemned by the council of
Lombez, in 1165, as Manichees. Mosheim considers them as of the Vaudois
school. They appeared some time before Waldo.
[748] The general testimony of their enemies to the purity of morals
among the Languedocian and Lyonese sectaries is abundantly sufficient.
One Regnier, who had lived among them, and became afterwards an
inquisitor, does them justice in this respect. See Turner's History of
England for several other proofs of this. It must be confessed that the
Catharists are not free from the imputation of promiscuous
licentiousness. But whether this was a mere calumny, or partly founded
upon truth, I cannot determine. Their prototypes, the ancient Gnostics,
are said to have been divided into two parties, the austere and the
relaxed; both condemning marriage for opposite reasons. Alanus, in the
book above quoted, seems to have taken up several vulgar prejudices
against the Cathari. He gives an etymology of their name a catto; quia
osculantur posteriora catti; in cujus specie, ut aiunt, appareret iis
Lucifer, p. 146. This notable charge was brought afterwards against the
Templars.
As to the Waldenses, their innocence is out of all doubt. No book can be
written in a more edifying manner than La Noble Loicon, of which large
extracts are given by Leger, in his Histoire des Eglises Vaudoises. Four
lines are quoted by Voltaire (Hist. Universelle, c. 69), as a specimen
of the Provencal language, though they belong rather to the patois of
the valleys. But as he has not copied them rightly, and as they
illustrate the subject of this note, I shall repeat them here from
Leger, p. 28.
Que sel se troba alcun bon que vollia amar Dio e temer Jeshu Xrist,
Que non vollia maudire, ni jura, ni mentir,
Ni avoutrar, ni aucire, ni penre de l'autruy,
Ni venjar se de li sio ennemie,
Illi dison quel es Vaudes e degne de murir.
[749] It would be difficult to specify all the dispersed authorities
which attest the existence of the sects derived from the Waldenses and
Paulicians in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Besides
Mosheim, who has paid considerable attention to the subject, I would
mention some articles in Du Cange which supply gleanings; namely,
Beghardi, Bulgari, Lollardi, Paterini, Picardi, Pifli, Populicani.
Upon the subject of the Waldenses and Albigenses generally, I have
borrowed some light from Mr. Turner's History of England, vol. ii. p.
377, 393. This learned writer has seen some books that have not fallen
into my way; and I am indebted to him for a knowledge of Alanus's
treatise, which I have since read. At the same time I must observe, that
Mr. Turner has not perceived the essential distinction between the two
leading sects.
The name of Albigenses does not frequently occur after the middle of the
thirteenth century; but the Waldenses, or sects bearing that
denomination, were dispersed over Europe. As a term of different
reproach was derived from the word Bulgarian, so _vauderie_, or the
profession of the Vaudois, was sometimes applied to witchcraft. Thus in
the proceedings of the Chambre Brulante at Arras, in 1459, against
persons accused of sorcery, their crime is denominated _vauderie_. The
fullest account of this remarkable story is found in the Memoirs of Du
Clercq, first published in the general collection of Historical Memoirs,
t. ix. p. 430, 471. It exhibits a complete parallel to the events that
happened in 1682 at Salem in New England. A few obscure persons were
accused of _vauderie_, or witchcraft. After their condemnation, which
was founded on confessions obtained by torture, and afterwards
retracted, an epidemical contagion of superstitious dread was diffused
all around. Numbers were arrested, burned alive by order of a tribunal
instituted for the detection of this offence, or detained in prison; so
that no person in Arras thought himself safe. It was believed that many
were accused for the sake of their possessions, which were confiscated
to the use of the church. At length the duke of Burgundy interfered, and
put a stop to the persecutions. The whole narrative in Du Clercq is
interesting, as a curious document of the tyranny of bigots, and of the
facility with which it is turned to private ends.
To return to the Waldenses: the principal course of their emigration is
said to have been into Bohemia, where, in the fifteenth century, the
name was borne by one of the seceding sects. By their profession of
faith, presented to Ladislaus Posthumus, it appears that they
acknowledged the corporal presence in the eucharist, but rejected
purgatory and other Romish doctrines. See it in the Fasciculus Rerum
expetendarum et fugiendarum, a collection of treatises illustrating the
origin of the Reformation, originally published at Cologne in 1535, and
reprinted at London in 1690.
[750] Opera Innocent III. p. 468, 537. A translation of the Bible had
been made by direction of Peter Waldo; but whether this used in Lorrain
was the same, does not appear. Metz was full of the Vaudois, as we find
by other authorities.
[751] Schilteri Thesaurus Antiq. Teutonicorum.
[752] Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. t. xvii. p. 720.
[753] The Anglo-Saxon versions are deserving of particular remark. It
has been said that our church maintained the privilege of having part of
the daily service in the mother tongue. "Even the mass itself," says
Lappenberg, "was not read entirely in Latin." Hist. of England, vol. i.
p. 202. This, however, is denied by Lingard, whose authority is probably
superior. Hist. of Ang.-Sax. Church, i. 307. But he allows that the
Epistle and Gospel were read in English, which implies an authorized
translation. And we may adopt in a great measure Lappenberg's
proposition, which follows the above passage: "The numerous versions and
paraphrases of the Old and New Testament made those books known to the
laity and more familiar to the clergy."
We have seen a little above, that the laity were not permitted by the
Greek Church of the ninth century, and probably before, to read the
Scriptures, even in the original. This shows how much more honest and
pious the Western Church was before she became corrupted by ambition and
by the captivating hope of keeping the laity in servitude by means of
ignorance. The translation of the four Books of Kings into French has
been published in the Collection de Documens Inedits, 1841. It is in a
northern dialect, but the age seems not satisfactorily ascertained; the
close of the eleventh century is the earliest date that can be assigned.
Translations into the Provencal by the Waldensian or other heretics were
made in the twelfth; several manuscripts of them are in existence, and
one has been published by Dr. Gilly. [1848.]
[754] The application of the visions of the Apocalypse to the
corruptions of Rome has commonly been said to have been first made by
the Franciscan seceders. But it may be traced higher, and is remarkably
pointed out by Dante.
Di voi pastor s' accorse 'l Vangelista,
Quando colei, chi siede sovra l'acque,
Puttaneggiar co' regi a lui fu vista.
Inferno, cant. xix.
[755] Walsingham, p. 238; Lewis's Life of Pecock, p. 65. Bishop Pecock's
answer to the Lollards of his time contains passages well worthy of
Hooker, both for weight of matter and dignity of style, setting forth
the necessity and importance of "the moral law of kinde, or moral
philosophie," in opposition to those who derive all morality from
revelation.
This great man fell afterwards under the displeasure of the church for
propositions, not indeed heretical, but repugnant to her scheme of
spiritual power. He asserted, indirectly, the right of private judgment,
and wrote on theological subjects in English, which gave much offence.
In fact, Pecock seems to have hoped that his acute reasoning would
convince the people, without requiring an implicit faith. But he greatly
misunderstood the principle of an infallible church. Lewis's Life of
Pecock does justice to his character, which, I need not say, is unfairly
represented by such historians as Collier, and such antiquaries as
Thomas Hearne.
[756] Lewis's Life of Wicliffe, p. 115; Lenfant, Hist. du Concile de
Constance, t. i. p. 213.
[757] Huss does not appear to have rejected any of the peculiar tenets
of popery. Lenfant, p. 414. He embraced, like Wicliffe, the
predestinarian system of Augustin, without pausing at any of those
inferences, apparently deducible from it, which, in the heads of
enthusiasts, may produce such extensive mischief. These were maintained
by Huss (id. p. 328), though not perhaps so crudely as by Luther.
Everything relative to the history and doctrine of Huss and his
followers will be found in Lenfant's three works on the councils of
Pisa, Constance, and Basle.
[758] Lenfant, Hist. de la Guerre des Hussites et du Concile de Basle;
Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. v.
[759] Nihil neque publicae neque privatae rei nisi armati agunt. Sed arma
sumere non ante cuiquam moris, quam civitas suffecturum probaverit. Tum
in ipso concilio, vel principum aliquis, vel pater, vel propinquus,
scuto frameaque juvenem ornant; haec apud eos toga, hic primus juventae
honos; ante hoc domus pars videntur, mox reipublicae. De Moribus German.
c. 13.
[760] William of Malmsbury says that Alfred conferred knighthood on
Athelstan, donatum chlamyde coccinea, gemmato balteo, ense Saxonico cum
vagina aurea. 1. ii. c. 6. St. Palaye (Memoires sur la Chevalerie, p. 2)
mentions other instances; which may also be found in Du Cange's
Glossary, v. Arma, and in his 22nd dissertation on Joinville.
[761] Comites et vassalli nostri qui beneficia habere noscuntur, et
_caballarii_ omnes ad placitum nostrum veniant bene preparati.
Capitularia, A.D. 807, in Baluze, t. i. p. 460.
[762] We must take for this the more favourable representations of the
Indian nations. A deteriorating intercourse with Europeans, or a race of
European extraction, has tended to efface those virtues which possibly
were rather exaggerated by earlier writers.
[763] Since this passage was written, I have found a parallel drawn by
Mr. Sharon Turner, in his valuable History of England, between Achilles
and Richard Coeur de Lion; the superior justness of which I readily
acknowledge. The real hero does not indeed excite so much interest in me
as the poetical; but the marks of resemblance are very striking, whether
we consider their passions, their talents, their virtues, their vices,
or the waste of their heroism.
The two principal persons in the Iliad, if I may digress into the
observation, appear to me representatives of the heroic character in its
two leading varieties; of the energy which has its sole principle, of
action within itself, and of that which borrows its impulse from
external relations; of the spirit of honour, in short, and of
patriotism. As every sentiment of Achilles is independent and
self-supported, so those of Hector all bear reference to his kindred and
his country. The ardour of the one might have been extinguished for want
of nourishment in Thessaly; but that of the other might, we fancy, have
never been kindled but for the dangers of Troy. Peace could have brought
no delight to the one but from the memory of war; war had no alleviation
to the other but from the images of peace. Compare, for example, the two
speeches, beginning Il. Z. 441, and Il. II. 49; or rather compare the
two characters throughout the Iliad. So wonderfully were those two great
springs of human sympathy, variously interesting according to the
diversity of our tempers, first touched by that ancient patriarch,
a quo, ceu fonte perenni,
Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.
[764] Ingulfus, in Gale, XV Scriptores, t. i. p. 70. William Rufus,
however, was knighted by Archbishop Lanfranc, which looks as if the
ceremony was not absolutely repugnant to the Norman practice.
[765] Du Cange, v. Miles, and 22nd Dissertation on Joinville, St.
Palaye, Mem. sur la Chevalerie, part ii. A curious original illustration
of this, as well as of other chivalrous principles, will be found in
l'Ordene de Chevalerie, a long metrical romance published in Barbazan's
Fabliaux, t. i. p. 59 (edit. 1808).
[766] Y eut huit cens chevaliers seant a table; et si n'y eust celui qui
n'eust une dame on une pucelle a son ecuelle. In Launcelot du Lac, a
lady, who was troubled with a jealous husband, complains that it was a
long time since a knight had eaten off her plate. Le Grand, t. i. p. 24.
[767] Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. iii. p. 438; St. Palaye, t. i. p. 41. I
quote St. Palaye's Memoires from the first edition in 1759, which is not
the best.
[768] Statuimus, quod omnis homo, sive miles sive alius, qui iverit cum
domina generosa, salvus sit atque securus, nisi fuerit homicida. De
Marca, Marca Hispanica, p. 1428.
[769] Le Grand, t. i. p. 120; St. Palaye, t. i. p. 13, 134, 221;
Fabliaux, Romances, &c., passim.
[770] St. Palaye, p. 222.
[771] Froissart, p. 33.
[772] St. Palaye, p. 268.
[773] The romances will speak for themselves; and the character of the
Provencal morality may be collected from Millot, Hist. des Troubadours,
passim; and from Sismondi, Litterature du Midi, t. i. p. 179, &c. See
too St. Palaye, t. ii. p. 62 and 68.
[774] St. Palaye, part ii.
[775] Non laudem meruit, sed summae potius opprobrium vilitatis; nam idem
facinus est putandum captum nobilem vel ignobilem offendere, vel ferire,
quam gladio caedere cadaver. Rolandinus, in Script Rer. Ital. t. viii. p.
351.
[776] Froissart, 1. i. c. 161. He remarks in another place that all
English and French gentlemen treat their prisoners well; not so the
Germans, who put them in fetters, in order to extort more money, c. 136.
[777] St Palaye, part iv. p. 312, 367, &c. Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. i. p.
115, 167. It was the custom in Great Britain, (says the romance of
Perceforest, speaking of course in an imaginary history,) that noblemen
and ladies placed a helmet on the highest point of their castles, as a
sign that all persons of such rank travelling that road might boldly
enter their houses like their own. St. Palaye, p. 367.
[778] Fabliaux de Barbasan, t. i.
[779] Joinville in Collection des Memoires, t. i. p. 43.
[780] St. Palaye, part i.
[781] Du Cange, 5me Dissertation sur Joinville. St. Palaye, t. i. p.
87, 118. Le Grand, t. i. p. 14.
[782] St. Palaye, t. i. p. 191.
[783] Godfrey de Preuilly, a French knight, is said by several
contemporary writers to have invented tournaments; which must of course
be understood in a limited sense. The Germans ascribe them to Henry the
Fowler; but this, according to Du Cange, is on no authority. 6me
Dissertation sur Joinville.
[784] St. Palaye, part ii. and part iii. au commencement. Du Cange,
Dissert. 6 and 7: and Glossary, v. Torneamentum. Le Grand, Fabliaux, t.
i. p. 184.
[785] St. Palaye, part iv. Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 806. There was
not, however, so much distinction in England as in France.
[786] St. Palaye, vol. i. p. 70, has forgotten to make this distinction.
It is, however, capable of abundant proof. Gunther, in his poem called
Ligurinus, observes of the Milanese republic:
Quoslibet ex humili vulgo, quod Gallia foedum
Judicat, accingi gladio concedit equestri.
Otho of Frisingen expresses the same in prose. It is said, in the
Establishments of St. Louis, that if any one not being a gentleman on
the father's side was knighted, the king or baron in whose territory he
resides, may hack off his spurs on a dunghill, c. 130. The count de
Nevers, having knighted a person who was not noble exparte paterna, was
fined in the king's court. The king, however, (Philip III.) confirmed
the knighthood. Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Francoise, p. 98. Fuit
propositum (says a passage quoted by Daniel) contra comitem
Flandriensem, quod non poterat, nec debebat facere de villano militem,
sine auctoritate regis. ibid. Statuimus, says James I. of Aragon, in
1234, ut nullus faciat militem nisi filium militis. Marca Hispanica, p.
1428. Selden, Titles of Honour, p. 592, produces other evidence to the
same effect. And the emperor Sigismund having conferred knighthood,
during his stay in Paris in 1415, on a person incompetent to receive it
for want of nobility, the French were indignant at his conduct, as an
assumption of sovereignty. Villaret, t. xiii. p. 397. We are told,
however, by Giannone, 1. xx. c. 3, that nobility was not in fact
required for receiving chivalry at Naples, though it was in France.
The privilege of every knight to associate qualified persons to the
order at his pleasure, lasted very long in France; certainly down to the
English wars of Charles VII. (Monstrelet, part ii. folio 50), and, if I
am not mistaken, down to the time of Francis I. But in England, where
the spirit of independence did not prevail so much among the nobility,
it soon ceased. Selden mentions one remarkable instance in a writ of the
29th year of Henry III. summoning tenants in capite to come and receive
knighthood from the king, ad recipiendum a nobis arma militaria; and
tenants of mesne lords to be knighted by whomsoever they pleased, ad
recipiendum arma de quibuscunque voluerint. Titles of Honour, p. 792.
But soon after this time, it became an established principle of our law
that no subject can confer knighthood except by the king's authority.
Thus Edward III. grants to a burgess of _Lyndia_ in Guienne (I know not
what place this is) the privilege of receiving that rank at the hands of
any knight, his want of noble birth notwithstanding. Rymer, t. v. p.
623. It seems, however, that a different law obtained in some places.
Twenty-three of the chief inhabitants of Beaucaire, partly knights,
partly burgesses, certified in 1298, that the immemorial usage of
Beaucaire and of Provence had been, for burgesses to receive knighthood
at the hands of noblemen, without the prince's permission. Vaissette,
Hist. de Languedoc, t. iii. p. 530. Burgesses, in the great commercial
towns, were considered as of a superior class to the roturiers, and
possessed a kind of demi-nobility. Charles V. appears to have conceded a
similar indulgence to the citizens of Paris. Villaret, t. x. p. 248.
[787] St. Palaye, part iii. passim.
[788] The word bachelor has been sometimes derived from bas chevalier;
in opposition to banneret. But this cannot be right. We do not find any
authority for the expression bas chevalier, nor any equivalent in Latin,
baccalaureus certainly not suggesting that sense; and it is strange that
the corruption should obliterate every trace of the original term.
Bachelor is a very old word, and is used in early French poetry for a
young man, as bachelette is for a girl. So also in Chaucer:
"A yonge Squire,
A lover, and a lusty _bachelor_."
[789] Du Cange, Dissertation 9me sur Joinville. The number of men at
arms, whom a banneret ought to command, was properly fifty. But Olivier
de la Marche speaks of twenty-five as sufficient; and it appears that,
in fact, knights-banneret often did not bring so many.
[790] Ibid. Olivier de la Marche (Collection des Memoires, t. viii. p.
337) gives a particular example of this; and makes a distinction between
the bachelor, created a banneret on account of his estate, and the
hereditary banneret, who took a public opportunity of requesting the
sovereign to unfold his family banner which he had before borne wound
round his lance. The first was said relever banniere; the second, entrer
en banniere. This difference is more fully explained by Daniel, Hist. de
la Milice Francoise, p. 116. Chandos's banner was unfolded, not cut, at
Navarette. We read sometimes of esquire-bannerets, that is, of bannerets
by descent, not yet knighted.
[791] Froissart, part i. c. 241.
[792] Mem. sur la Chevalerie, part v.
[793] The prerogative exercised by the kings of England of compelling
men sufficiently qualified in point of estate to take on them the honour
of knighthood was inconsistent with the true spirit of chivalry. This
began, according to Lord Lyttelton, under Henry III. Hist. of Henry II.
vol. ii. p. 238. Independently of this, several causes tended to render
England less under the influence of chivalrous principles than France or
Germany; such as, her comparatively peaceful state, the smaller share
she took in the crusades, her inferiority in romances of
knight-errantry, but above all, the democratical character of her laws
and government. Still this is only to be understood relatively to the
two other countries above named; for chivalry was always in high repute
among us, nor did any nation produce more admirable specimens of its
excellences.
I am not minutely acquainted with the state of chivalry in Spain, where
it seems to have flourished considerably. Italy, except in Naples, and
perhaps Piedmont, displayed little of its spirit; which neither suited
the free republics of the twelfth and thirteenth, nor the jealous
tyrannies of the following centuries. Yet even here we find enough to
furnish Muratori with materials for his 53rd Dissertation.
[794] The well-known Memoirs of St. Palaye are the best repository of
interesting and illustrative facts respecting chivalry. Possibly he may
have relied a little too much on romances, whose pictures will naturally
be overcharged. Froissart himself has somewhat of this partial tendency,
and the manners of chivalrous times do not make so fair an appearance in
Monstrelet. In the Memoirs of la Tremouille (Collect. des Mem. t. xiv.
p. 169), we have perhaps the earliest delineation from the life of those
severe and stately virtues in high-born ladies, of which our own country
furnished so many examples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and which were derived from the influence of chivalrous principles. And
those of Bayard in the same collection (t. xiv. and xv.) are a beautiful
exhibition of the best effects of that discipline.
It appears to me that M. Guizot, to whose judgment I owe all deference,
has dwelt rather too much on the feudal character of chivalry. Hist. de
la Civilisation en France, Lecon 36. Hence he treats the institution as
in its decline during the fourteenth century, when, if we can trust
either Froissart or the romancers, it was at its height. Certainly, if
mere knighthood was of right both in England and the north of France, a
territorial dignity, which bore with it no actual presumption of merit,
it was sometimes also conferred on a more honourable principle. It was
not every knight who possessed a fief, nor in practice did every
possessor of a fief receive knighthood.
Guizot justly remarks, as Sismondi has done, the disparity between the
lives of most knights and the theory of chivalrous rectitude. But the
same has been seen in religion, and can be no reproach to either
principle. Partout la pensee morale des hommes s'eleve et aspire fort au
dessus de leur vie. Et gardez vous de croire que parce qu'elle ne
gouvernait pas immediatement les actions, parceque la pratique demontait
sans cesse et etrangement la theorie, l'influence de la theorie fut
nulle et sans valeur. C'est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les
actions humaines; tot ou tard il devient efficace.
It may be thought by many severe judges, that I have over-valued the
efficacy of chivalrous sentiments in elevating the moral character of
the middle ages. But I do not see ground for withdrawing or modifying
any sentence. The comparison is never to be made with an ideal standard,
or even with one which a purer religion and a more liberal organization
of society may have rendered effectual, but with the condition of a
country where neither the sentiments of honour nor those of right
prevail. And it seems to me that I have not veiled the deficiencies and
the vices of chivalry any more than its beneficial tendencies.
A very fascinating picture of chivalrous manners has been drawn by a
writer of considerable reading, and still more considerable ability, Mr.
Kenelm Digby, in his Broad Stone of Honour. The bravery, the
courteousness, the munificence, above all, the deeply religious
character of knighthood and its reverence for the church, naturally took
hold of a heart so susceptible of these emotions, and a fancy so quick
to embody them. St. Palaye himself is a less enthusiastic eulogist of
chivalry, because he has seen it more on the side of mere romance, and
been less penetrated with the conviction of its moral excellence. But
the progress of still deeper impression seems to have moderated the
ardour of Mr. Digby's admiration for the historical character of
knighthood; he has discovered enough of human alloy to render
unqualified praise hardly fitting, in his judgment, for a Christian
writer; and in the Mores Catholici, the second work of this amiable and
gifted man, the colours in which chivalry appears are by no means so
brilliant [1848.]
[795] Four very recent publications (not to mention that of Buhle on
modern philosophy) enter much at large into the middle literature; those
of M. Ginguene and M. Sismondi, the history of England by Mr. Sharon
Turner, and the Literary History of the Middle Ages by Mr. Berington.
All of these contain more or less useful information and judicious
remarks; but that of Ginguene is among the most learned and important
works of this century. I have no hesitation to prefer it, as far as its
subjects extend, to Tiraboschi.
[A subsequent work of my own, Introduction to the History of Literature
in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries, contains, in the first and second
chapters, some additional illustrations of the antecedent period, to
which the reader may be referred, as complementary to these pages.
1848.]
[796] Heineccius, Hist. Juris German. c. 1. p. 15.
[797] Giannone, 1. iv. c. 6. Selden, ad Fletam, p. 1071.
[798] Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 359. Ginguene, Hist. Litt. de l'Italie, t.
i. p. 155.
[799] Irnerius is sometimes called Guarnerius, sometimes Warnerius: the
German W is changed into Gu by the Italians, and occasionally omitted,
especially in latinizing, for the sake of euphony or purity.
[800] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 38; t. v. p. 55.
[801] Tiraboschi, t. v. Vaissette, Hist. de Languedoc, t. ii. p. 517; t.
iii. p. 527; t. iv. p. 504.
[802] Duck, de Usu Juris Civilis, 1. ii. c. 6.
[803] Idem, 1. ii. 2.
[804] Duck, 1. ii. c. 5, s. 30, 31. Fleury, Hist. du Droit Francois, p.
74 (prefixed to Argou, Institutions au Droit Francois, edit. 1787), says
that it was a great question among lawyers, and still undecided (i.e. in
1674), whether the Roman law was the common law in the pays coutumiers,
as to those points wherein their local customs were silent. And, if I
understand Denisart, (Dictionnaire des Decisions, art. Droit-ecrit,) the
affirmative prevailed. It is plain at least by the Causes Celebres, that
appeal was continually made to the principles of the civil law in the
argument of Parisian advocates.
[805] Crevier, Hist. de l'Universite de Paris, t. i. p. 316; t. ii. p.
275.
[806] Johan. Salisburiensis, apud Selden ad Fletam, p. 1082.
[807] Selden, ubi supra, p. 1095-1104. This passage is worthy of
attention. Yet, notwithstanding Selden's authority, I am not satisfied
that he has not extenuated the effect of Bracton's predilection for the
maxims of Roman jurisprudence. No early lawyer has contributed so much
to form our own system as Bracton; and if his definitions and rules are
sometimes borrowed from the civilians, as all admit, our common law may
have indirectly received greater modification from that influence, than
its professors were ready to acknowledge, or even than they knew. A full
view of this subject is still, I think, a desideratum in the history of
English law, which it would illustrate in a very interesting manner.
[808] Duck, De Usu Juris Civilis, 1. i. c. 87.
[809] Gravina, Origines Juris Civilis, p. 196.
[810] Those who feel some curiosity about the civilians of the middle
ages will find a concise and elegant account in Gravina, De Origine
Juris Civilis, p. 166-206. (Lips. 1708.) Tiraboschi contains perhaps
more information; but his prolixity is very wearisome. Besides this
fault, it is evident that Tiraboschi knew very little of law, and had
not read the civilians of whom he treats; whereas Gravina discusses
their merits not only with legal knowledge, but with an acuteness of
criticism which, to say the truth, Tiraboschi never shows except on a
date or a name.
[The civil lawyers of the mediaeval period are not at all forgotten on
the continent, as the great work of Savigny, History of Roman Law in the
Middle Ages, sufficiently proves. It is certain that the civil law must
always be studied in Europe, nor ought the new codes to supersede it,
seeing they are in great measure derived from its fountain; though I
have heard that it is less regarded in France than formerly. In my
earlier editions I depreciated the study of the civil law too much, and
with too exclusive an attention to English notions.]
[811] Ante ipsum dominum Carolum regem in Gallia nullum fuit studium
liberalium artium. Monachus Engolismensis, apud Launoy, De Scholis per
occidentem instauratis, p. 5. See too Histoire Litteraire de la France,
t. iv. p. 1. "Studia liberalium artium" in this passage, must be
understood to exclude literature, commonly so called, but not a certain
measure of very ordinary instruction. For there were episcopal and
conventual schools in the seventh and eighth centuries, even in France,
especially Aquitaine; we need hardly repeat that in England, the former
of these ages produced Bede and Theodore, and the men trained under
them; the Lives of the Saints also lead us to take with some limitation
the absolute denial of liberal studies before Charlemagne. See Guizot,
Hist. de la Civilis. en France, Lecon 16; and Ampere, Hist. Litt. de la
France, iii. p. 4. But, perhaps, philology, logic, philosophy, and even
theology were not taught, as sciences, in any of the French schools for
these two centuries; and consequently those established by Charlemagne
justly make an epoch.
[812] Id. Ibid. There was a sort of literary club among them, where the
members assumed ancient names. Charlemagne was called David; Alcuin,
Horace; another, Dametas, &c.
[813] Hist. Litteraire, p. 217, &c.
[814] This division of the sciences is ascribed to St. Augustin; and we
certainly find it established early in the sixth century. Brucker,
Historia Critica Philosophiae, t. iii. p. 597.
[815] Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 126.
[816] Crevier, Hist. de l'Universite de Paris, t. i. p. 28.
[817] Brucker, t. iii. p. 612. Raban Maurus was chief of the cathedral
school at Fulda, in the ninth century.
[818] Crevier, p. 66.
[819] Crevier, p. 171; Brucker, p. 677; Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 275.
[820] Brucker, p. 750.
[821] A great interest has been revived in France for the philosophy, as
well as the personal history of Abelard, by the publication of his
philosophical writings, in 1836, under so eminent an editor as M.
Cousin, and by the excellent work of M. de Remusat, in 1845, with the
title Abelard, containing a copious account both of the life and
writings of that most remarkable man, the father, perhaps, of the theory
as to the nature of universal ideas, now so generally known by the name
of _conceptualism_.
[822] The faculty of arts in the university of Paris was divided into
four nations; those of France, Picardy, Normandy, and England. These had
distinct suffrages in the affairs of the university, and consequently,
when united, outnumbered the three higher faculties of theology, law,
and medicine. In 1169, Henry II. of England offers to refer his dispute
with Becket to the provinces of the school of Paris.
[823] Crevier, t. i. p. 279. The first statute regulating the discipline
of the university was given by Robert de Courcon, legate of Honorius
III., in 1215, id. p. 296.
[824] No one probably would choose to rely on a passage found in one
manuscript of Asserius, which has all appearance of an interpolation. It
is evident from an anecdote in Wood's History of Oxford, vol. i. p. 23
(Gutch's edition), that Camden did not believe in the authenticity of
this passage, though he thought proper to insert it in the Britannia.
[825] 1 Gale, p. 75. The mention of Aristotle at so early a period might
seem to throw some suspicion on this passage. But it is impossible to
detach it from the context; and the works of Aristotle intended by
Ingulfus were translations of parts of his Logic by Boethius and
Victorin. Brucker, p. 678. A passage indeed in Peter of Blois's
continuation of Ingulfus, where the study of Averroes is said to have
taken place at _Cambridge_ some years before he was born, is of a
different complexion, and must of course be rejected as spurious. In the
Gesta Comitum Andegavensium, Fulk, count of Anjou, who lived about 920,
is said to have been skilled Aristotelicis et Ciceronianis
ratiocinationibus.
[The authenticity of Ingulfus has been called in question, not only by
Sir Francis Palgrave, but by Mr. Wright. Biogr. Liter., Anglo-Norman
Period, p. 29. And this implies, apparently, the spuriousness of the
continuation ascribed to Peter of Blois, in which the passage about
Averroes throws doubt upon the whole. I have, in the Introduction to the
History of Literature, retracted the degree of credence here given to
the foundation of the university of Oxford by Alfred. If Ingulfus is not
genuine, we have no proof of its existence as a school of learning
before the middle of the twelfth century.]
[826] It may be remarked, that John of Salisbury, who wrote in the first
years of Henry II.'s reign, since his Polycraticon is dedicated to
Becket, before he became archbishop, makes no mention of Oxford, which
he would probably have done if it had been an eminent seat of learning
at that time.
[827] Wood's Hist. and Antiquities of Oxford, p. 177. The Benedictines
of St. Maur say, that there was an eminent school of canon law at Oxford
about the end of the twelfth century, to which many students repaired
from Paris. Hist. Litt. de la France, t. ix. p. 216.
[828] Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 259, et alibi; Muratori, Dissert. 43.
[829] "But among these," says Anthony Wood, "a company of varlets, who
pretended to be scholars, shuffled themselves in, and did act much
villany in the university by thieving, whoring, quarrelling, &c. They
lived under no discipline, neither had they tutors; but only for
fashion's sake would sometimes thrust themselves into the schools at
ordinary lectures, and when they went to perform any mischief, then
would they be accounted scholars, that so they might free themselves
from the jurisdiction of the burghers." p. 206. If we allow three
varlets to one scholar, the university will still have been very fully
frequented by the latter.
[830] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 47. Azarius, about the middle of the
fourteenth century, says the number was about 13,000 in his time.
Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 325.
[831] Villaret, Hist. de France, t. xvi. p. 341. This may perhaps
require to be taken with allowance. But Paris owes a great part of its
buildings on the southern bank of the Seine to the university. The
students are said to have been about 12,000 before 1480. Crevier, t. iv.
p. 410.
[832] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 43 and 46.
[833] The earliest authentic mention of Cambridge as a place of
learning, if I mistake not, is in Matthew Paris, who informs us, that in
1209, John having caused three clerks of Oxford to be hanged on
suspicion of murder, the whole body of scholars left that city, and
emigrated, some to Cambridge, some to Reading, in order to carry on
their studies (p. 191, edit. 1684). But it may be conjectured with some
probability, that they were led to a town so distant as Cambridge by the
previous establishment of academical instruction in that place. The
incorporation of Cambridge is in 1231 (15 Hen. III.), so that there is
no great difference in the legal antiquity of our two universities.
[834] Crevier, Hist. de l'Universite de Paris, t. ii. p. 216; t. iii. p.
140.
[835] Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologique de l'Hist. de l'Allemagne, p. 550,
607.
[836] Rymer, t. vi. p. 292.
[837] Crevier, t. ii. p. 398.
[838] Crevier and Villaret, passim.
[839] Brucker, Hist. Crit. Philosophiae, t. iii. p. 678.
[840] Id. Ibid. Tiraboschi conceives that the translations of Aristotle
made by command of Frederic II. were directly from the Greek, t. iv. p.
145; and censures Brucker for the contrary opinion. Buhle, however
(Hist. de la Philosophie Moderne, t. i. p. 696), appears to agree with
Brucker. It is almost certain that versions were made from the Arabic
Aristotle: which itself was not immediately taken from the Greek, but
from a Syriac medium. Ginguene, Hist. Litt. de l'Italie, t. i. p. 212
(on the authority of M. Langles).
It was not only a knowledge of Aristotle that the scholastics of Europe
derived from the Arabic language. His writings had produced in the
flourishing Mohammedan kingdoms a vast number of commentators, and of
metaphysicians trained in the same school. Of these Averroes, a native
of Cordova, who died early in the thirteenth century, was the most
eminent. It would be curious to examine more minutely than has hitherto
been done the original writings of these famous men, which no doubt have
suffered in translation. A passage from Al Gazel, which Mr. Turner has
rendered from the Latin, with all the disadvantage of a double remove
from the author's words, appears to state the argument in favour of that
class of Nominalists, called Conceptualists, with more clearness and
precision than any thing I have seen from the schoolmen. Al Gazel died
in 1126, and consequently might have suggested this theory to Abelard,
which however is not probable. Turner's Hist. of Engl. vol. i. p. 513.
[841] Brucker, Hist. Crit Philosophiae, t. iii. I have found no better
guide than Brucker. But he confesses himself not to have read the
original writings of the scholastics; an admission which every reader
will perceive to be quite necessary. Consequently, he gives us rather a
verbose declamation against their philosophy than any clear view of its
character. Of the valuable works lately published in Germany on the
history of philosophy, I have only seen that of Buhle, which did not
fall into my hands till I had nearly written these pages. Tiedemann and
Tennemann are I believe, still untranslated.
[842] Buhle, Hist. de la Philos. Moderne, t. i. p. 723. This author
raises upon the whole a favourable notion of Anselm and Aquinas; but he
hardly notices any other.
[843] Mr. Turner has with his characteristic spirit of enterprise
examined some of the writings of our chief English schoolmen, Duns
Scotus and Ockham (Hist of Eng. vol. i.), and even given us some
extracts from them. They seem to me very frivolous, so far as I can
collect their meaning. Ockham in particular falls very short of what I
had expected; and his nominalism is strangely different from that of
Berkeley. We can hardly reckon a man in the right, who is so by
accident, and through sophistical reasoning. However, a well-known
article in the Edinburgh Review, No. liii. p. 204, gives, from
Tennemann, a more favourable account of Ockham.
Perhaps I may have imagined the scholastics to be more forgotten than
they really are. Within a short time I have met with four living English
writers who have read parts of Thomas Aquinas; Mr. Turner, Mr.
Berington, Mr. Coleridge, and the Edinburgh Reviewer. Still I cannot
bring myself to think that there are four more in this country who can
say the same. Certain portions, however, of his writings are still read
in the course of instruction of some Catholic universities.
[I leave this passage as it was written about 1814. But it must be owned
with regard to the schoolmen, as well as the jurists, that I at that
time underrated, or at least did not anticipate, the attention which
their works have attracted in modern Europe, and that the passage in the
text is more applicable to the philosophy of the eighteenth century than
of the present. For several years past the metaphysicians of Germany and
France have brushed the dust from the scholastic volumes; Tennemann and
Buhle, Degerando, but more than all Cousin and Remusat, in their
excellent labours on Abelard, have restored the mediaeval philosophy to a
place in transcendental metaphysics, which, during the prevalence of the
Cartesian school, and those derived from it, had been refused. 1848.]
[844] Roger Bacon, by far the truest philosopher of the middle ages,
complains of the ignorance of Aristotle's translators. Every translator,
he observes, ought to understand his author's subject, and the two
languages from which and into which he is to render the work. But none
hitherto, except Boethius, have sufficiently known the languages; nor
has one, except Robert Grostete (the famous bishop of Lincoln), had a
competent acquaintance with science. The rest make egregious errors in
both respects. And there is so much misapprehension and obscurity in the
Aristotelian writings as thus translated, that no one understands them.
Opus Majus, p. 45.
[845] Brucker, p. 733, 912. Mr. Turner has fallen into some confusion as
to this point, and supposes the nominalist system to have had a
pantheistical tendency, not clearly apprehending its characteristics, p.
512.
[846] Petrarch gives a curious account of the irreligion that prevailed
among the learned at Venice and Padua, in consequence of their unbounded
admiration for Aristotle and Averroes. One of this school, conversing
with him, after expressing much contempt for the Apostles and Fathers,
exclaimed: Utinam tu Averroim pati posses, ut videres quanto ille tuis
his nugatoribus major sit! Mem. de Petrarque, t. iii. p. 759.
Tiraboschi, t. v. p. 162.
[847] Brucker, p. 898.
[848] This mystical philosophy appears to have been introduced into
Europe by John Scotus, whom Buhle treats as the founder of the
scholastic philosophy; though, as it made no sensible progress for two
centuries after his time, it seems more natural to give that credit to
Roscelin and Anselm. Scotus, or Erigena, as he is perhaps more
frequently called, took up, through the medium of a spurious work,
ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, that remarkable system, which has
from time immemorial prevailed in some schools of the East, wherein all
external phenomena, as well as all subordinate intellects, are
considered as _emanating_ from the Supreme Being, into whose essence
they are hereafter to be absorbed. This system, reproduced under various
modifications, and combined with various theories of philosophy and
religion, is perhaps the most congenial to the spirit of solitary
speculation, and consequently the most extensively diffused of any which
those high themes have engendered. It originated no doubt in sublime
conceptions of divine omnipotence and ubiquity. But clearness of
expression, or indeed of ideas, being not easily connected with
mysticism, the language of philosophers adopting the theory of emanation
is often hardly distinguishable from that of the pantheists. Brucker,
very unjustly, as I imagine from the passages he quotes, accuses John
Erigena of pantheism. Hist. Crit. Philos. p. 620. The charge would,
however, be better grounded against some whose style might deceive an
unaccustomed reader. In fact, the philosophy of emanation leads very
nearly to the doctrine of an universal substance, which, begot the
atheistic system of Spinoza, and which appears to have revived with
similar consequences among the metaphysicians of Germany. How very
closely the language of this oriental philosophy, or even that which
regards the Deity as the soul of the world, may verge upon pantheism,
will be perceived (without the trouble of reading the first book of
Cudworth) from two famous passages of Virgil and Lucan. Georg. I. iv. v.
219; and Pharsalia, I. viii. v. 578.
[849] This subject, as well as some others in this part of the present
chapter, has been touched in my Introduction to the Literature of the
15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries.
[850] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 150.
[851] There is a very copious and sensible account of Roger Bacon in
Wood's History of Oxford, vol. i. p. 332 (Gutch's edition). I am a
little surprised that Antony should have found out Bacon's merit.
The resemblance between Roger Bacon and his greater namesake is very
remarkable. Whether Lord Bacon ever read the Opus Majus, I know not; but
it is singular, that his favourite quaint expression, _praerogativae_
scientiarum, should be found in that work, though not used with the same
allusion to the Roman comitia. And whoever reads the sixth part of the
Opus Majus, upon experimental science, must be struck by it as the
prototype, in spirit, of the Novum Organum. The same sanguine and
sometimes rash confidence in the effect of physical discoveries, the
same fondness for experiment, the same preference of inductive to
abstract reasoning, pervade both works. Roger Bacon's philosophical
spirit may be illustrated by the following passage: Duo sunt modi
cognoscendi; scilicet per argumentum et experimentum. Argumentum
concludit et facit nos concludere quaestionem; sed non certificat neque
removet dubitationem, ut quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi eam
inveniat via experientiae; quia multi habent argumenta ad scibilia, sed
quia non habent experientiam, negligunt ea, neque vitant nociva nec
persequuntur bona. Si enim aliquis homo, qui nunquam vidit ignem,
probavit per argumenta sufficientia quod ignis comburit et laedit res et
destruit, nunquam propter hoc quiesceret animus audientis, nec ignem
vitaret antequam poneret manum vel rem combustibilem ad ignem, ut per
experientiam probaret quod argumentum edocebat; sed assumta experientia
combustionis certificatur animus et quiescit in fulgore veritatis, quo
argumentum non sufficit, sed experientia. p. 446.
[852] See the fate of Cecco d'Ascoli in Tiraboschi, t. v. p. 174.
[853] Le Boeuf, Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. t. xvii. p. 711.
[854] Gregorius, cognomento Bechada, de Castro de Turribus, professione
miles, subtilissimi ingenii vir, aliquantulum imbutus literis, horum
gesta praeliorum materna lingua rhythmo vulgari, ut populus pleniter
intelligeret, ingens volumen decenter composuit, et ut vera et faceta
verba proferret, duodecim annorum spatium super hoc opus operam dedit.
Ne vero vilesceret propter verbum vulgare, non sine praecepto episcopi
Eustorgii, et consilio Gauberti Normanni, hoc opus aggressus est. I
transcribe this from Heeren's Essai sur les Croisades, p. 447; whose
reference is to Labbe, Bibliotheca nova MSS. t. ii. p. 296.
[855] De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. i. p. 155. Sismondi, Litt. du Midi,
t. i. p. 228.
[856] For the Courts of Love, see De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. ii. note
19. Le Grand. Fabliaux, t. i. p. 270. Roquefort, Etat de la Poesie
Francoise. p. 94. I have never had patience to look at the older writers
who have treated this tiresome subject.
[857] Histoire Litteraire des Troubadours Paris, 1774.
[858] Two very modern French writers, M. Ginguene (Histoire Litteraire
d'Italie, Paris, 1811) and M. Sismondi (Litterature du Midi de l'Europe,
Paris, 1813), have revived the poetical history of the troubadours. To
them, still more than to Millot and Tiraboschi, I would acknowledge my
obligations for the little I have learned in respect of this forgotten
school of poetry. Notwithstanding, however, the heaviness of Millot's
work, a fault not imputable to himself, though Ritson as I remember,
calls him, in his own polite style, "a blockhead," it will always be
useful to the inquirer into the manners and opinions of the middle ages,
from the numerous illustrations it contains of two general facts; the
extreme dissoluteness of morals among the higher ranks, and the
prevailing animosity of all classes against the clergy.
[859] Hist. Litt. de la France, t. vii. p. 58. Le Boeuf, according to
these Benedictines, has published some poetical fragments of the tenth
century; and they quote part of a charter as old as 940 in Romance. p.
59. But that antiquary, in a memoir printed in the seventeenth volume of
the Academy of Inscriptions, which throws more light on the infancy of
the French language than anything within my knowledge, says only that
the earliest specimens of verse in the royal library are of the eleventh
century _au plus tard_. p. 717. M. de la Rue is said to have found some
poems of the eleventh century in the British Museum. Roquefort, Etat de
la Poesie Francoise, p. 206. Le Boeuf's fragment may be found in this
work, p. 379; it seems nearer to the Provencal than the French dialect.
[860] Gale, XV Script. t. i. p. 88.
[861] Ritson's Dissertation on Romance, p. 66. [The laws of William the
Conqueror, published in Ingulfus, are translated from a Latin original;
the French is of the thirteenth century. It is now doubted whether any
French, except a fragment of a translation of Boethius, in verse, is
extant of an earlier age than the twelfth. Introduction to Hist. of
Literat. 3rd edit. p. 28.]
[862] Hist. Litt. t. ix. p. 149; Fabliaux par Barbasan, vol. i. p. 9,
edit. 1808; Mem. de l'Academie des Inscr. t. xv. and xvii, p. 714, &c.
[863] Mabillon speaks of this as the oldest French instrument he had
seen. But the Benedictines quote some of the eleventh century. Hist.
Litt. t. vii. p. 59. This charter is supposed by the authors of Nouveau
Traite de Diplomatique to be translated from the Latin, t. iv. p. 519.
French charters, they say, are not common before the age of Louis IX.;
and this is confirmed by those published in Martenne's Thesaurus
Anecdotorum, which are very commonly in French from his reign, but
hardly ever before.
[864] Ravaliere, Revol. de la Langue Francoise, p. 116, doubts the age
of this translation.
[865] Archaeologia, vols. xii. and xiii.
[866] Millot says that Richard's sirventes (satirical songs) have
appeared in French as well as Provencal, but that the former is probably
a translation. Hist. des Troubadours, vol. i. p. 54. Yet I have met with
no writer who quotes them in the latter language, and M. Ginguene, as
well as Le Grand d'Aussy, considers Richard as a trouveur.
[Raynouard has since published, in Provencal, the song of Richard on his
captivity, which had several times appeared in French. It is not
improbable that he wrote it in both dialects. Leroux de Lincy, Chants
Historiques Francais, vol. i. p. 55. Richard also composed verses in the
Poitevin dialect, spoken at that time in Maine and Anjou, which
resembles the Langue d'Oc more than that of northern France, though,
especially in the latter countries, it gave way not long afterwards. Id.
p. 77.]
[867] This derivation of the romantic stories of Arthur, which Le Grand
d'Aussy ridiculously attributes to the jealousy entertained by the
English of the renown of Charlemagne, is stated in a very perspicuous
and satisfactory manner by Mr. Ellis, in his Specimens of Early English
Metrical Romances.
[868] [Though the stories of Arthur were not invented by the English out
of jealousy of Charlemagne, it has been ingeniously conjectured and
rendered highly probable by Mr. Sharon Turner, that the history by
Geoffrey of Monmouth was composed with a political view to display the
independence and dignity of the British crown, and was intended,
consequently, as a counterpoise to that of Turpin, which never became
popular in England. It is doubtful, in my judgment, whether Geoffrey
borrowed so much from Armorican traditions as he pretended.]
[869] Prose e Rime di Dante, Venez. 1758, t. iv. p. 261. Dante's words,
biblia cum Trojanorum Romanorumque gestibus compilata, seem to bear no
other meaning than what I have given. But there may be a doubt whether
_biblia_ is ever used except for the Scriptures; and the Italian
translator renders it, cioe la bibbia, i fatti de i Trojani, e de i
Romani. In this case something is wrong in the original Latin, and Dante
will have alluded to the translations of parts of Scripture made into
French, as mentioned in the text.
[870] The Assises de Jerusalem have undergone two revisions; one, in
1250, by order of John d'Ibelin, count of Jaffa, and a second in 1369,
by sixteen commissioners chosen by the states of the kingdom of Cyprus.
Their language seems to be such as might be expected from the time of
the former revision.
[871] Several prose romances were written or translated from the Latin
about 1170, and afterwards. Mr. Ellis seems inclined to dispute their
antiquity. But, besides the authorities of La Ravaliere and Tressan, the
latter of which is not worth much, a late very extensively informed
writer seems to have put this matter out of doubt. Roquefort
Flamericourt, Etat de la Poesie Francaise dans les 12me et 13me
siecles, Paris, 1815 p. 147.
[872] Villaret, Hist. de France, t. xi. p. 121; De Sade, Vie de
Petrarque, t. iii. p. 548. Charles V. had more learning than most
princes of his time. Christine de Pisan, a lady who has written memoirs,
or rather an eulogy of him, says that his father le fist introdire en
lettres moult suffisamment, et tant que competemment entendoit son
Latin, et souffisamment scavoit les regles de grammaire; la quelle chose
pleust a dieu qu'ainsi fust accoutumee entre les princes. Collect. de
Mem. t. v. p. 103, 190, &c.
[873] The earliest Spanish that I remember to have seen is an instrument
in Martenne, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, t. i. p. 263; the date of which is
1095. Persons more conversant with the antiquities of that country may
possibly go further back. Another of 1101 is published in Marina's
Teoria de las Cortes, t. iii. p. 1. It is in a Vidimus by Peter the
Cruel, and cannot, I presume, have been a translation from the Latin.
Yet the editors of Nouveau Tr. de Diplom. mention a charter of 1243, as
the earliest they are acquainted with in the Spanish language. t. iv. p.
525.
Charters in the German language, according to the same work, first
appear in the time of the emperor Rodolph, after 1272, and became usual
in the next century. p. 523. But Struvius mentions an instrument of
1235, as the earliest in German. Corp. Hist. Germ. p. 457.
[874] An extract from this poem was published in 1808 by Mr. Southey, at
the end of his "Chronicle of the Cid," the materials of which it partly
supplied, accompanied by an excellent version by a gentleman, who is
distinguished, among many other talents, for an unrivalled felicity in
expressing the peculiar manner of authors whom he translates or
imitates. M. Sismondi has given other passages in the third volume of
his History of Southern Literature. This popular and elegant work
contains some interesting and not very common information as to the
early Spanish poets in the Provencal dialect, as well as those who wrote
in Castilian.
[875] Dissert. 32.
[876] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 340.
[877] Dante, in his treatise De vulgari Eloquentia, reckons fourteen or
fifteen dialects, spoken in different parts of Italy, all of which were
debased by impure modes of expression. But the "noble, principal, and
courtly Italian idiom," was that which belonged to every city, and
seemed to belong to none, and which, if Italy had a court, would be the
language of that court. p. 274, 277.
Allowing for the metaphysical obscurity in which Dante chooses to
envelop the subject, this might perhaps be said at present. The
Florentine dialect has its peculiarities, which distinguish it from the
general Italian language, though these are seldom discerned by
foreigners, nor always by natives, with whom Tuscan is the proper
denomination of their national tongue.
[878] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 309-377. Ginguene, vol. i. c. 6. The style
of the Vita Nuova of Dante, written soon after the death of his
Beatrice, which happened in 1290, is hardly distinguishable, by a
foreigner, from that of Machiavel or Castiglione. Yet so recent was the
adoption of this language, that the celebrated master of Dante, Brunetto
Latini, had written his _Tesoro_ in French; and gives as a reason for
it, that it was a more agreeable and useful language than his own. Et
se aucuns demandoit pourquoi chis livre est ecris en Romans, selon la
raison de France, pour chose que nous sommes Ytalien, je diroie que
ch'est pour chose que nous sommes en France; l'autre pour chose _que la
parleure en est plus delitable et plus commune a toutes gens_. There is
said to be a manuscript history of Venice down to 1275, in the
Florentine library, written in French by Martin de Canale, who says that
he has chosen that language, parceque la langue franceise cort parmi le
monde, et est la plus delitable a lire et a oir que nulle autre.
Ginguene, vol. i. p. 384.
[879]
Tu proverai si (says Cacciaguida to him) come sa di sale
Il pane altrui, e come e duro calle
Il scendere e 'l salir per altrui scale.
Paradis. cant. 16.
[880] Paradiso, cant. 16.
[881] Velli, Vita di Dante. Tiraboschi.
[882] The source from which Dante derived the scheme and general idea of
his poem has been a subject of inquiry in Italy. To his original mind
one might have thought the sixth AEneid would have sufficed. But besides
several legendary visions of the 12th and 13th centuries, it seems
probable that he derived hints from the Tesoretto of his master in
philosophical studies, Brunetto Latini. Ginguene, t. ii. p. 8.
[883] There is an unpleasing proof of this quality in a letter to
Boccaccio on Dante, whose merit he rather disingenuously extenuates; and
whose popularity evidently stung him to the quick. De Sade, t. iii. p.
512. Yet we judge so ill of ourselves, that Petrarch chose envy as the
vice from which of all others he was most free. In his dialogue with St.
Augustin, he says: Quicquid libuerit, dicito; modo me non accuses
invidiae. AUG. Utinam non tibi magis superbia quam invidia nocuisset: nam
hoc crimine, me judice, liber es. De Contemptu Mundi, edit. 1581, p.
342.
I have read in some modern book, but know not where to seek the passage,
that Petrarch did not intend to allude to Dante in the letter to
Boccaccio mentioned above, but rather to Zanobi Strata, a contemporary
Florentine poet, whom, however forgotten at present, the bad taste of a
party in criticism preferred to himself.--Matteo Villani mentions them
together as the two great ornaments of his age. This conjecture seems
probable, for some expressions are not in the least applicable to Dante.
But whichever was intended, the letter equally shows the irritable
humour of Petrarch.
[884] A goldsmith of Bergamo, by name Henry Capra, smitten with an
enthusiastic love of letters, and of Petrarch, earnestly requested the
honour of a visit from the poet. The house of this good tradesman was
full of representations of his person, and of inscriptions with his name
and arms. No expense had been spared in copying all his works as they
appeared. He was received by Capra with a princely magnificence; lodged
in a chamber hung with purple, and a splendid bed on which no one before
or after him was permitted to sleep. Goldsmiths, as we may judge by this
instance, were opulent persons; yet the friends of Petrarch dissuaded
him from the visit, as derogatory to his own elevated station. De Sade,
t. iii. p. 496.
[885] See the beautiful sonnet, Erano i capei d'oro all'aura sparsi. In
a famous passage of his Confessions, he says: Corpus illud egregium
morbis et crebris partubus exhaustum, multum pristini vigoris amisit.
Those who maintain the virginity of Laura are forced to read
_perturbationibus_, instead of _partubus_. Two manuscripts in the royal
library at Paris have the contraction _ptbus_, which leaves the matter
open to controversy. De Sade contends that "crebris" is less applicable
to "perturbationibus" than to "partubus." I do not know that there is
much in this; but I am clear that corpus exhaustum partubus is much the
more elegant Latin expression of the two.
[886] [Note III.]
[887] [I leave this as it stood. But my own taste has changed. I retract
altogether the preference here given to the Triumphs above the Canzoni,
and doubt whether the latter are superior to the Sonnets. This at least
is not the opinion of Italian critics, who ought to be the most
competent. 1848.]
[888] A sufficient extract from this work of Layamon has been published
by Mr. Ellis, in his Specimens of Early English Poetry, vol. i. p. 61.
This extract contains, he observes, no word which we are under the
necessity of ascribing to a French origin.
[Layamon, as is now supposed, wrote in the reign of John. See Sir
Frederick Madden's edition, and Mr. Wright's Biographia Literaria. The
best reason seems to be that he speaks of Eleanor, queen of Henry, as
then dead, which took place in 1204. But it requires a vast knowledge of
the language to find a date by the use or disuse of particular forms;
the idiom of one part of England not being similar to that of another in
grammatical flexions. See Quarterly Review for April 1848.
The entire work of Layamon contains a small number of words taken from
the French; about fifty in the original text, and about forty more in
that of a manuscript, perhaps half a century later, and very
considerably altered in consequence of the progress of our language.
Many of these words derived from the French express new ideas, as
admiral, astronomy, baron, mantel, &c. "The language of Layamon," says
Sir Frederick Madden, "belongs to that transition period in which the
groundwork of Anglo-Saxon phraseology and grammar still existed,
although gradually yielding to the influence of the popular forms of
speech. We find in it, as in the later portion of the Saxon Chronicle,
marked indications of a tendency to adopt those terminations and sounds
which characterize a language in a state of change, and which are
apparent also in some other branches of the Teutonic tongue. The use of
_a_ as an article--the change of the Anglo-Saxon terminations _a_ and
_an_ into _e_ and _en_, as well as the disregard of inflections and
genders--the masculine forms given to neuter nouns in the plural--the
neglect of the feminine terminations of adjectives and pronouns, and
confusion between the definite and indefinite declensions--the
introduction of the preposition _to_ before infinitives, and occasional
use of weak preterites of verbs and participles instead of strong--the
constant recurrence of _er_ for _or_ in the plurals of verbs--together
with the uncertainty of the rule for the government of prepositions--all
these variations, more or less visible in the two texts of Layamon,
combined with the vowel-changes, which are numerous, though not
altogether arbitrary, will show at once the progress made in two
centuries, in departing from the ancient and purer grammatical forms, as
found in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts." Preface, p. xxviii.]
[889] Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, Ellis's Specimens.
[890] This conjecture of Scott has not been favourably received by later
critics.
[891] Warton printed copious extracts from some of these. Ritson gave
several of them entire to the press. And Mr. Ellis has adopted the only
plan which could render them palatable, by intermingling short passages,
where the original is rather above its usual mediocrity, with his own
lively analysis.
[892] The evidences of this general employment and gradual disuse of
French in conversation and writing are collected by Tyrwhitt, in a
dissertation on the ancient English language, prefixed to the fourth
volume of his edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; and by Ritson, in
the preface to his Metrical Romances, vol. i. p. 70.
[893] Rymer, t. v. p. 490; t. vi. p. 642, et alibi.
[894] Ritson, p. 80. There is one in Rymer of the year 1385.
[895] [Note IV.]
[896] See Tyrwhitt's essay on the language and versification of Chaucer,
in the fourth volume of his edition of the Canterbury Tales. The opinion
of this eminent critic has lately been controverted by Dr. Nott, who
maintains the versification of Chaucer to have been wholly founded on
accentual and not syllabic regularity. I adhere, however, to Tyrwhitt's
doctrine.
[897] Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. i. Dissertation II.
Roquefort, Etat de la Poesie Francaise du douzieme Siecle p. 18. The
following lines from the beginning of the eighth book of the Philippis
seem a fair, or rather a favourable specimen of these epics. But I am
very superficially acquainted with any of them.
Solverat interea zephyris melioribus annum
Frigore depulso veris tepor, et renovari
Coeperat et viridi gremio juvenescere tellus;
Cum Rea laeta Jovis rideret ad oscula mater,
Cum jam post tergum Phryxi vectore relicto
Solis Agenorei premeret rota terga juvenci.
The tragedy of Eccerinus (Eccelin da Romano), by Albertinus Mussatus, a
Paduan, and author of a respectable history, deserves some attention, as
the first attempt to revive the regular tragedy. It was written soon
after 1300. The language by no means wants animation, notwithstanding an
unskilful conduct of the fable. The Eccerinus is printed in the tenth
volume of Muratori's collection.
[898] Booksellers appear in the latter part of the twelfth century.
Peter of Blois mentions a law book which he had procured a quodam
publico mangone librorum. Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. ix. p. 84.
In the thirteenth century there were many copyists by occupation in the
Italian universities. Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 72. The number of these at
Milan before the end of that age is said to have been fifty. Ibid. But a
very small proportion of their labour could have been devoted to
purposes merely literary. By a variety of ordinances, the first of which
bears date in 1275, the booksellers of Paris were subjected to the
control of the university. Crevier, t. ii. p. 67, 286. The pretext of
this was, lest erroneous copies should obtain circulation. And this
appears to have been the original of those restraints upon the freedom
of publication, which since the invention of printing have so much
retarded the diffusion of truth by means of that great instrument.
[899] Tiraboschi, t. v. p. 85. On the contrary side are Montfaucon,
Mabillon, and Muratori; the latter of whom carries up the invention of
our ordinary paper to the year 1000. But Tiraboschi contends that the
paper used in manuscripts of so early an age was made from cotton rags,
and, apparently from the inferior durability of that material, not
frequently employed. The editors of Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique are
of the same opinion, and doubt the use of linen paper before the year
1300. t. i. p. 517, 521. Meerman, well known as a writer upon the
antiquities of printing, offered a reward for the earliest manuscript
upon linen paper, and, in a treatise upon the subject, fixed the date of
its invention between 1270 and 1300. But M. Schwandner of Vienna is said
to have found in the imperial library a small charter bearing the date
of 1243 on such paper. Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 394.
Tiraboschi, if he had known this, would probably have maintained the
paper to be made of cotton, which he says it is difficult to
distinguish. He assigns the invention of linen paper to Pace da Fabiano
of Treviso. But more than one Arabian writer asserts the manufacture of
linen paper to have been carried on at Samarcand early in the eighth
century, having been brought thither from China. And what is more
conclusive, Casiri positively declares many manuscripts in the Escurial
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries to be written on that substance.
Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispanica, t. ii. p. 9. This authority appears much
to outweigh the opinion of Tiraboschi in favour of Pace da Fabiano, who
must perhaps take his place at the table of fabulous heroes with
Bartholomew Schwartz and Flavio Gioja. But the material point, that
paper was very little known in Europe till the latter part of the
fourteenth century, remains as before. See Introduction to History of
Literature, c. i. Sec. 58.
[900] Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 122.
[901] Velly, t. v. p. 202; Crevier, t. ii. p. 36.
[902] Warton, vol. i; Dissert. II.
[903] Ibid.
[904] Warton, vol. i. Dissert. II. Fifty-eight books were transcribed in
this abbey under one abbot, about the year 1300. Every considerable
monastery had a room, called Scriptorium, where this work was performed.
More than eighty were transcribed at St. Albans under Whethamstede, in
the time of Henry VI. ibid. See also Du Cange, V Scriptores.
Nevertheless we must remember, first, that the far greater part of these
books were mere monastic trash, or at least useless in our modern
apprehension; secondly, that it depended upon the character of the
abbot, whether the scriptorium should be occupied or not. Every head of
a monastery was not a Whethamstede. Ignorance and jollity, such as we
find in Bolton Abbey, were their more usual characteristics. By the
account books of this rich monastery, about the beginning of the
fourteenth century, three books only appear to have been purchased in
forty years. One of those was the Liber Sententiarum of Peter Lombard,
which cost thirty shillings, equivalent to near forty pounds at present.
Whitaker's Hist. of Craven, p. 330.
[905] Ibid.; Villaret, t. xi. p. 117.
[906] Niccolo Niccoli, a private scholar, who contributed essentially to
the restoration of ancient learning, bequeathed a library of eight
hundred volumes to the republic of Florence. This Niccoli hardly
published any thing of his own; but earned a well-merited reputation by
copying and correcting manuscripts. Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 114;
Shepherd's Poggio, p. 319. In the preceding century Colluccio Salutato
had procured as many as eight hundred volumes. Ibid. p. 23. Roscoe's
Lorenzo de' Medici, p. 55.
[907] Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. v. p. 520.
[908] He had lent it to a needy man of letters, who pawned the book,
which was never recovered. De Sade, t. i. p. 57.
[909] Tiraboschi, p. 89.
[910] Idem, t. v. p. 83; De Sade, t. i p. 88.
[911] Tiraboschi, p. 101.
[912] Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 104; and Shepherd's Life of Poggio, p. 106,
110; Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici, p. 38.
[913] Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 374; Tiraboschi, t. iii.
p. 124, et alibi. Bede extols Theodore primate of Canterbury and Tobias
bishop of Rochester for their knowledge of Greek. Hist. Eccles. c. 9 and
24. But the former of these prelates, if not the latter, was a native of
Greece.
[914] Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. iv. p. 12
[915] Greek characters are found in a charter of 943, published in
Martenne, Thesaurus Anecdot. t. i. p. 74. The title of a treatise peri
phuseon merismou, and the word theotokos, occur in William of Malmsbury,
and one or two others in Lanfranc's Constitutions. It is said that a
Greek psalter was written in an abbey at Tournay about 1105. Hist. Litt.
de la France, t. ix. p. 102. This was, I should think, a very rare
instance of a Greek manuscript, sacred or profane, copied in the western
parts of Europe before the fifteenth century. But a Greek psalter
written in Latin characters at Milan in the 9th century was sold some
years ago in London. John of Salisbury is said by Crevier to have known
a little Greek, and he several times uses technical words in that
language. Yet he could not have been much more learned than his
neighbours; since, having found the word ousia in St. Ambrose, he was
forced to ask the meaning of one John Sarasin, an Englishman, because,
says he, none of our masters here (at Paris) understand Greek. Paris,
indeed, Crevier thinks, could not furnish any Greek scholar in that age
except Abelard and Heloise, and probably neither of them knew much.
Hist. de l'Univers. de Paris, t. i. p. 259.
The ecclesiastical language, it may be observed, was full of Greek words
Latinized. But this process had taken place before the fifth century;
and most of them will be found in the Latin dictionaries. A Greek word
was now and then borrowed, as more imposing than the correspondent
Latin. Thus the English and other kings sometimes called themselves
Basileus, instead of Rex.
It will not be supposed that I have professed to enumerate all the
persons of whose acquaintance with the Greek tongue some evidence may be
found; nor have I ever directed my attention to the subject with that
view. Doubtless the list might be more than doubled. But, if ten times
the number could be found, we should still be entitled to say, that the
language was almost unknown, and that it could have had no influence on
the condition of literature. [See Introduction to Hist. of Literature,
chap. 2, Sec. 7.]
[916] Nemo est qui Graecas literas norit; at ego in hoc Latinitati
compatior, quae sic omnino Graeca abjecit studia, ut etiam non noscamus
characteres literarum. Genealogiae Deorum, apud Hodium de Graecis
Illustribus, p. 3.
[917] Mem. de Petrarque, t. i. p. 407.
[918] Mem. de Petrarque, t. i. p. 447; t. iii. p. 634. Hody de Graecis
Illust. p. 2. Boccace speaks modestly of his own attainments in Greek:
etsi non satis plene perceperim, percepi tamen quantum potui; nee
dubium, si permansisset homo ille vagus diutius penes nos, quin plenius
percepissem. id. p. 4.
[919] Hody places the commencement of Chrysoloras's teaching as early as
1391. p. 3. But Tiraboschi, whose research was more precise, fixes it at
the end of 1396 or beginning of 1397, t. vii. p. 126.
[920] Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 102; Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici, vol. i. p.
43.
[921] The authors most conversant with Byzantine learning agree in this.
Nevertheless, there is one manifest difference between the Greek writers
of the worst period, such as the eighth century, and those who
correspond to them in the West. Syncellus, for example, is of great use
in chronology, because he was acquainted with many ancient histories now
no more. But Bede possessed nothing which we have lost; and his
compilations are consequently altogether unprofitable. The eighth
century, the Saeculum Iconoclasticum of Cave, low as it was in all polite
literature, produced one man, John Damascenus, who has been deemed the
founder of scholastic theology, and who at least set the example of that
style of reasoning in the East. This person, and Michael Psellus, a
philosopher of the eleventh century, are the only considerable men, as
original writers, in the annals of Byzantine literature.
[922] The honour of restoring ancient or heathen literature is due to
the Caesar Bardas, uncle and minister of Michael II. Cedrenus speaks of
it in the following terms: epemelethe de kai tes exo sophias, (en gar ek
pollou chronou pararrhueisa, kai pros te meden holos choresasa te ton
kratounton argia kai amathia) diatribas hekaste ton epistemon aphorisas,
ton men allon hope per etuche, tes d' epi pason epochou philosophias
kat' auta ta basileia en te Magnaura; kai houto ex ekeinou anebaskein
hai epistemai erxanto. k. t. l. Hist. Byzant. Script. (Lutet.) t. x. p.
547. Bardas found out and promoted Photius, afterwards patriarch of
Constantinople, and equally famous in the annals of the church and of
learning. Gibbon passes perhaps too rapidly over the Byzantine
literature, chap. 53. In this, as in many other places, the masterly
boldness and precision of his outline, which astonish those who have
trodden parts of the same field, are apt to escape an uninformed reader.
[923] Du Cange, Praefatio ad Glossar. Graecitatis Medii Evi. Anna Comnena
quotes some popular lines, which seem to be the earliest specimen extant
of the Romaic dialect, or something approaching it, as they observe no
grammatical inflexion, and bear about the same resemblance to ancient
Greek that the worst law-charters of the ninth and tenth centuries do to
pure Latin. In fact, the Greek language seems to have declined much in
the same manner as the Latin did, and almost at as early a period. In
the sixth century, Damascius, a Platonic philosopher, mentions the old
language as distinct from that which was vernacular, ten archaian
glottan huper ten idioten meletousi. Du Cange, ibid. p. 11. It is well
known that the popular, or _political_ verses of Tzetzes, a writer of
the twelfth century, are accentual; that is, are to be read, as the
modern Greeks do, by treating every acute or circumflex syllable as
long, without regard to its original quantity. This innovation, which
must have produced still greater confusion of metrical rules than it did
in Latin, is much older than the age of Tzetzes; if, at least, the
editor of some notes subjoined to Meursius's edition of the Themata of
Constantine Porphyrogenitus (Lugduni, 1617) is right in ascribing
certain political verses to that emperor, who died in 959. These verses
are regular accentual trochaics. But I believe they have since been
given to Constantine Manasses, a writer of the eleventh century.
According to the opinion of a modern traveller (Hobhouse's Travels in
Albania, letter 33) the chief corruptions which distinguish the Romaic
from its parent stock, especially the auxiliary verbs, are not older
than the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II. But it seems difficult
to obtain any satisfactory proof of this; and the auxiliary verb is so
natural and convenient, that the ancient Greeks may probably, in some of
their local idioms, have fallen into the use of it; as Mr. H. admits
they did with respect to the future auxiliary thelo. See some instances
of this in Lesbonax, peri schematon, ad finem Ammonii, cura Valckenaer.
[924] Photius (I write on the authority of M. Heeren) quotes Theopompus,
Arrian's History of Alexander's Successors, and of Parthia, Ctesias,
Agatharcides, the whole of Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, and Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, twenty lost orations of Demosthenes, almost two hundred
of Lycias, sixty-four of Isaeus, about fifty of Hyperides. Heeren
ascribes the loss of these works altogether to the Latin capture of
Constantinople, no writer subsequent to that time having quoted them.
Essai sur les Croisades, p. 413. It is difficult however not to suppose
that some part, of the destruction was left for the Ottomans to perform.
AEneas Sylvius bemoans, in his speech before the diet of Frankfort, the
vast losses of literature by the recent subversion of the Greek empire.
Quid de libris dicam, qui illic erant innumerabiles, nondum Latinis
cogniti!... Nunc ergo, et Homero et Pindaro et _Menandro_ et omnibus
illustrioribus poetis, secunda mors erit. But nothing can be inferred
from this declamation, except, perhaps, that he did not know whether
Menander still existed or not. AEn. Sylv. Opera, p. 715; also p. 881.
Harris's Philological Inquiries, part iii. c. 4. It is a remarkable
proof, however, of the turn which Europe, and especially Italy, was
taking, that a pope's legate should, on a solemn occasion, descant so
seriously on the injury sustained by profane literature.
An useful summary of the lower Greek literature, taken chiefly from the
Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius, will be found in Berington's Literary
History of the Middle Ages, Appendix I.; and one rather more copious in
Schoell, Abrege de la Litterature Grecque. (Paris, 1812.)
[925] Wood's Antiquities of Oxford, vol. i p. 537.
[926] Roper's Vita Mori, ed. Hearne, p. 75.
[927] Crevier, t. iv. p. 243; see too p. 46.
[928] Incredibilis ingeniorum barbaries est; rarissimi literas norunt,
nulli elegantiam. Papiensis Epistolae, p. 377. Campano's notion of
elegance was ridiculous enough. Nobody ever carried further the pedantic
affectation of avoiding modern terms in his Latinity. Thus, in the life
of Braccio da Montone, he renders his meaning almost unintelligible by
excess of classical purity. Braccio boasts se numquam deorum immortalium
templa violasse. Troops committing outrages in a city are accused
virgines vestales incestasse. In the terms of treaties he employs the
old Roman forms; exercitum trajicito--oppida pontificis sunto, &c. And
with a most absurd pedantry, the ecclesiastical state is called Romanum
imperium. Campani Vita Braccii, in Muratori Script. Rer. Ital. t. xix.
[929] A letter from Master William Paston at Eton (Paston Letters, vol.
i. p. 299) proves that Latin versification was taught there as early as
the beginning of Edward IV.'s reign. It is true that the specimen he
rather proudly exhibits does not much differ from what we denominate
nonsense verses. But a more material observation is, that the sons of
country gentlemen living at a considerable distance were already sent to
public schools for grammatical education.
[930] De Bure, t. i. p. 30. Several copies of this book have come to
light since its discovery.
[931] Id., p. 71.
[932] Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xiv. p. 265. Another edition
of the Bible is supposed to have been printed by Pfister at Bamberg in
1459.
[933] Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 140.
[934] Sanuto mentions an order of the senate in 1469, that John of Spira
should print the epistles of Tully and Pliny for five years, and that no
one else should do so. Script. Rerum Italic. t. xxii. p. 1189.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IX.
NOTE I. Page 288.
A rapid decline of learning began in the sixth century, of which Gregory
of Tours is both a witness and an example. It is, therefore, properly
one of the dark ages, more so by much than the eleventh, which concludes
them; since very few were left in the church who possessed any
acquaintance with classical authors, or who wrote with any command of
the Latin language. Their studies, whenever they studied at all, were
almost exclusively theological; and this must be understood as to the
subsequent centuries. By theological is meant the vulgate Scriptures and
some of the Latin fathers; not, however, by reasoning upon them, or
doing much more than introducing them as authority in their own words.
In the seventh century, and still more at the beginning of the eighth,
very little even of this remained in France, where we find hardly a name
deserving of remembrance in a literary sense; but Isidore, and our own
Bede, do honour to Spain and Britain.
It may certainly be said for France and Germany, notwithstanding a
partial interruption in the latter part of the ninth and beginning of
the tenth century, that they were gradually progressive from the time of
Charlemagne. But then this progress was so very slow, and the men in
front of it so little capable of bearing comparison with those of later
times, considering their writings positively and without indulgence,
that it is by no means unjust to call the centuries dark which elapsed
between Charlemagne and the manifest revival of literary pursuits
towards the end of the eleventh century. Alcuin, for example, has left
us a good deal of poetry. This is superior to what we find in some other
writers of the obscure period, and indicates both a correct ear and a
familiarity with the Latin poets, especially Ovid. Still his verses are
not as good as those which schoolboys of fourteen now produce, either in
poetical power or in accuracy of language and metre. The errors indeed
are innumerable. Aldhelm, an earlier Anglo-Saxon poet, with more
imaginative spirit, is further removed from classical poetry. Lupus,
abbot of Ferrieres, early in the ninth century, in some of his epistles
writes tolerable Latin, though this is far from being always the case;
he is smitten with a love of classical literature, quotes several poets
and prose writers, and is almost as curious about little points of
philology as an Italian scholar of the fifteenth century. He was
continually borrowing books in order to transcribe them--a proof,
however, of their scarcity and of the low condition of general learning,
which is the chief point we have to regard.[935] But his more celebrated
correspondent, Eginhard, went beyond him. Both his Annals and the Life
of Charlemagne are very well written, in a classical spirit, unlike the
church Latin; though a few words and phrases may not be of the best age,
I should place Eginhard above Alcuin and Lupus, or, as far as I know,
any other of the Caroline period.
The tenth century has in all times borne the worst name. Baronius calls
it, in one page, _plumbeum_, _obscurum_, _infelix_ (Annales, A.D. 900).
And Cave, who dubs all his centuries by some epithet, assigns _ferreum_
to the tenth. Nevertheless, there was considerably less ignorance in
France and Germany during the latter part of this age than before the
reign of Charlemagne, or even in it; more glimmerings of acquaintance
with the Latin classics appear; and the schools, cathedral and
conventual, had acquired a more regular and uninterrupted scheme of
instruction. The degraded condition of papal Rome has led many to treat
this century rather worse than it deserves; and indeed Italy was sunk
very low in ignorance. As to the eleventh century, the upward progress
was extremely perceptible. It is commonly reckoned among the dark ages
till near its close; but these phrases are of course used comparatively,
and because the difference between that and the twelfth was more
sensible than we find in any two that are consecutive since the sixth.
The state of literature in England was by no means parallel to what we
find on the continent. Our best age was precisely the worst in France;
it was the age of the Heptarchy--that of Theodore, Bede, Aldhelm,
Caedmon, and Alcuin; to whom, if Ireland will permit us, we may desire to
add Scotus, who came a little afterwards, but whose residence in this
island at any time appears an unauthenticated tale. But we know how
Alfred speaks of the ignorance of the clergy in his own age. Nor was
this much better afterwards. Even the eleventh century, especially
before the Conquest, is a very blank period in the literary annals of
England. No one can have a conception how wretchedly scanty is the list
of literary names from Alfred to the Conquest, who does not look to Mr.
Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, or to Mr. Wright's Biographia
Literaria.
There could be no general truth respecting the past, as it appeared to
me, more notorious, or more incapable of being denied with any
plausibility, than the characteristic ignorance of Europe during those
centuries which we commonly style the Dark Ages. A powerful stream,
however, of what, as to the majority at least, I must call prejudice,
has been directed of late years in an opposite direction. The mediaeval
period, in manners, in arts, in literature, and especially in religion,
has been regarded with unwonted partiality; and this favourable temper
has been extended to those ages which had lain most frequently under the
ban of historical and literary censure.
A considerable impression has been made on the predisposed by the
Letters on the Dark Ages, which we owe to Dr. Maitland. Nor is this by
any means surprising; both because the predisposed are soon convinced,
and because the Letters are written with great ability, accurate
learning, a spirited and lively pen, and consequently with a success in
skirmishing warfare which many readily mistake for the gain of a pitched
battle. Dr. Maitland is endowed with another quality, far more rare in
historical controversy, especially of the ecclesiastical kind: I believe
him to be of scrupulous integrity, minutely exact in all that he
asserts; and indeed the wrath and asperity, which sometimes appear
rather more than enough, are only called out by what he conceives to be
wilful or slovenly misrepresentation. Had I, therefore, the leisure and
means of following Dr. Maitland through his quotations, I should
probably abstain from doing so from the reliance I should place on his
testimony, both in regard to his power of discerning truth and his
desire to express it. But I have no call for any examination, could I
institute it; since the result of my own reflections is that every thing
which Dr. M. asserts as matter of fact--I do not say suggests in all his
language--may be perfectly true, without affecting the great proposition
that the dark ages, those from the sixth to the eleventh, were ages of
ignorance. Nor does he, as far as I collect, attempt to deny this
evident truth; it is merely his object to prove that they were less
ignorant, less dark, and in all points of view less worthy of
condemnation than many suppose. I do not gainsay this position; being
aware, as I have observed both in this and in another work, that the
mere ignorance of these ages, striking as it is in comparison with
earlier and later times, has been sometimes exaggerated; and that
Europeans, and especially Christians, could not fall back into the
absolute barbarism of the Esquimaux. But what a man of profound and
accurate learning puts forward with limitations, sometimes expressed,
and always present to his own mind, a heady and shallow retailer takes
up, and exaggerates in conformity with his own prejudices.
The Letters on the Dark Ages relate principally to the theological
attainments of the clergy during that period, which the author assumes,
rather singularly, to extend from A.D. 800 to 1200; thus excluding
midnight from his definition of darkness, and replacing it by the break
of day. And in many respects, especially as to the knowledge of the
vulgate Scriptures possessed by the better-informed clergy, he obtains
no very difficult victory over those who have imbibed extravagant
notions, both as to the ignorance of the Sacred Writings in those times
and the desire to keep them away from the people. This latter prejudice
is obviously derived from a confusion of the subsequent period, the
centuries preceding the Reformation, with those which we have
immediately before us. But as the word _dark_ is commonly used, either
in reference to the body of the laity or to the general extent of
liberal studies in the church, and as it involves a comparison with
prior or subsequent ages, it cannot be improper in such a sense, even if
the manuscripts of the Bible should have been as common in monasteries
as Dr. Maitland supposes; and yet his proofs seem much too doubtful to
sustain that hypothesis.