conquests of the Mohammedans in Europe. It is true that the wave of
Saracenic invasion had been arrested by Charles Martel four or five
hundred years before; but in the mean time a new Mohammedan power sprang
up, of greater vigor, of equal ferocity, and of a more stubborn
fanaticism. This was that of the Turks, who had their eye on
Constantinople and all Eastern Europe. And Europe might have submitted
to their domination, had they instead of the Latins taken
Constantinople. The conquest of that city was averted several hundred
years; and when at last it fell into Turkish hands, Christendom was
strong enough to resist the Turkish armies. We must remember that the
Turks were a great power, even in the times of Peter the Great, and
would have taken Vienna but for John Sobieski. But when Urban II., at
the Council of Clermont, urged the nations of Europe to repel the
infidels on the confines of Asia, rather than wait for them in the heart
of Europe, the Asiatic provinces of the Greek Empire were overrun both
by Turks and Saracens. They held Syria, Armenia, Asia Minor, Africa,
Spain, and the Balearic Islands. Had not Godfrey come to the assistance
of a division of the Christian army, when it was surrounded by two
hundred thousand Turks at the battle of Dorylaeum, the Christians would
have been utterly overwhelmed, and the Turks would have pressed to the
Hellespont. But they were beaten back into Syria, and, for a time, as
far as the line of the Euphrates. But for that timely repulse, the
battles of Belgrade and Lepanto might not have been fought in subsequent
ages. It would have been an overwhelming calamity had the Turks invaded
Europe in the twelfth century. The loss of five millions on the plains
of Asia would have been nothing in comparison to an invasion of Europe
by the Mohammedans,--whether Saracens or Turks. It may be that the
chivalry of Europe would have successfully repelled an invasion, as the
Saracens repelled the Christians, on their soil. It may be that Asia
could not have conquered Europe any easier than Europe could
conquer Asia.
I do not know how far statesmanlike views entered into the minds of the
leaders of the Crusades. I believe the sentiment which animated Peter
and Urban and Bernard was pure hatred of the Mohammedans (because they
robbed, insulted, and oppressed the pilgrims), and not any controlling
fears of their invasion of Europe. If such a fear had influenced them,
they would not have permitted a mere rabble to invade Asia; there would
have been a sense of danger stronger than that of hatred,--which does
not seem to have existed in the self-confidence of the crusaders. They
thought it an easy thing to capture Jerusalem: it was a sort of holiday
march of the chivalry of Europe, under Richard and Philip Augustus.
Perhaps, however, the princes of Europe were governed by political
rather than religious reasons. Some few long-headed statesmen, if such
there were among the best informed of bishops and abbots, may have felt
the necessity of the conflict in a political sense; but I do not believe
this was a general conviction. There was, doubtless, a political
necessity--although men were too fanatical to see more than one side--to
crush the Saracens because they were infidels, and not because they were
warriors. But whether they saw it or not, or armed themselves to resist
a danger as well as to exterminate heresy, the ultimate effects were
all the same. The crusaders failed in their direct end. They did not
recover Palestine; but they so weakened or diverted the Mohammedan
armies that there was not strength enough left in them to conquer
Europe, or even to invade her, until she was better prepared to resist
it,--as she did at the battle of Lepanto (A.D. 1571), one of the
decisive battles of the world.
I have said that the Crusades were a disastrous failure. I mean in their
immediate ends, not in ultimate results. If it is probable that they
arrested the conquests of the Turks in Europe, then this blind and
fanatical movement effected the greatest blessing to Christendom. It
almost seems that the Christians were hurled into the Crusades by an
irresistible fate, to secure a great ultimate good; or, to use Christian
language, were sent as blind instruments by the Almighty to avert a
danger they could not see. And if this be true, the inference is logical
and irresistible that God uses even the wicked passions of men to effect
his purposes,--as when the envy of Haman led to the elevation of
Mordecai, and to the deliverance of the Jews from one of their
greatest dangers.
Another and still more noticeable result of the Crusades was the
weakening of the power of those very barons who embarked in the wars.
Their fanaticism recoiled upon themselves, and undermined their own
system. Nothing could have happened more effectually to loosen the
rigors of the feudal system. It was the baron and the knight that
marched to Palestine who suffered most in the curtailment of the
privileges which they had abused,--even as it was the Southern planter
of Carolina who lost the most heavily in the war which he provoked to
defend his slave property. In both cases the fetters of the serfs and
slaves were broken by their own masters,--not intentionally, of course,
but really and effectually. How blind men are in their injustices! They
are made to hang on the gallows which they have erected for others. To
gratify his passion of punishing the infidels, whom he so intensely
hated, the baron or prince was obliged to grant great concessions to the
towns and villages which he ruled with an iron hand, in order to raise
money for his equipment and his journey. He was not paid by Government
as are modern soldiers and officers. He had to pay his own expenses, and
they were heavier than he had expected or provided for. Sometimes he was
taken captive, and had his ransom to raise,--to pay for in hard cash,
and not in land: as in the case of Richard of England, when, on his
return from Palestine, he was imprisoned in Austria,--and it took to
ransom him, as some have estimated, one third of all the gold and silver
of the realm, chiefly furnished by the clergy. But where was the
imprisoned baron to get the money for his ransom? Not from the Jews,
for their compound interest of fifty per cent every six months would
have ruined him in less than two years. But the village guilds had money
laid by. Merchants and mechanics in the towns, whom he despised, had
money. Monasteries had money. He therefore gave new privileges to all;
he gave charters of freedom to towns; he made concessions to the
peasantry.
As the result of this, when the baron came back from the wars, he found
himself much poorer than when he went away,--he found his lands
encumbered, his castle dilapidated, and his cattle sold. In short, he
was, as we say of a proud merchant now and then, "embarrassed in his
circumstances." He was obliged to economize. But the feudal family would
not hear of retrenchment, and the baron himself had become more
extravagant in his habits. As travel and commerce had increased he had
new wants, which he could not gratify without parting with either lands
or prerogatives. As the result of all this he became not quite so
overbearing, though perhaps more sullen; for he saw men rising about him
who were as rich as he,--men whom his ancestors had despised. The
artisans, who belonged to the leading guilds, which had become enriched
by the necessities of barons, or by that strange activity of trade and
manufactures which war seems to stimulate as well as to destroy,--these
rude and ignorant people were not so servile as formerly, but began to
feel a sort of importance, especially in towns and cities, which
multiplied wonderfully during the Crusades. In other words, they were no
longer brutes, to be trodden down without murmur or resistance. They
began to form what we call a "middle class." Feudalism, in its proud
ages, did not recognize a middle class. The impoverishment of nobles by
the Crusades laid the foundation of this middle class, at least in
large towns.
The growth of cities and the decay of feudalism went on simultaneously;
and both were equally the result of the Crusades. If the noble became
impoverished, the merchant became enriched; and the merchant lived, not
in the country, but in some mercantile mart. The crusaders had need of
ships. These were furnished by those cities which had obtained from
feudal sovereigns charters of freedom. Florence, Pisa, Venice, Genoa,
Marseilles, became centres of wealth and political importance. The
growth of cities and the extension of commerce went hand in hand.
Whatever the Crusades did for cities they did equally for commerce; and
with the needs of commerce came improvement in naval architecture. As
commerce grew, the ships increased in size and convenience; and the
products which the ships brought from Asia to Europe were not only
introduced, but they were cultivated. New fruits and vegetables were
raised by European husbandmen. Plum-trees were brought from Damascus and
sugar-cane from Tripoli. Silk fabrics, formerly confined to
Constantinople and the East, were woven in Italian and French villages.
The Venetians obtained from Tyrians the art of making glass. The Greek
fire suggested gunpowder. Architecture received an immense impulse: the
churches became less sombre and heavy, and more graceful and beautiful.
Even the idea of the arch, some think, came from the East. The domes and
minarets of Venice were borrowed from Constantinople. The ornaments of
Byzantine churches and palaces were brought to Europe. The horses of
Lysippus, carried from Greece to Rome, and from Rome to Constantinople,
at last surmounted the palace of the Doges. Houses became more
comfortable, churches more beautiful, and palaces more splendid. Even
manners improved, and intercourse became more polished. Chivalry
borrowed many of its courtesies from the East. There were new
refinements in the arts of cookery as well as of society. Literature
itself received a new impulse, as well as science. It was from
Constantinople that Europe received the philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle, in the language in which it was written, instead of
translations through the Arabic. Greek scholars came to Italy to
introduce their unrivalled literature; and after Grecian literature came
Grecian art. The study of Greek philosophy gave a new stimulus to human
inquiry, and students flocked to the universities. They went to Bologna
to study Roman law, as well as to Paris to study the Scholastic
philosophy.
Thus the germs of a new civilization were scattered over Europe. It so
happened that at the close of the Crusades civilization had increased in
every country of Europe, in spite of the losses they had sustained.
Delusions were dispelled, and greater liberality of mind was manifest.
The world opened up towards the East, and was larger than was before
supposed. "Europe and Asia had been brought together and recognized each
other." Inventions and discoveries succeeded the new scope for energies
which the Crusades opened. The ships which had carried the crusaders to
Asia were now used to explore new coasts and harbors. Navigators learned
to be bolder. A navigator of Genoa--a city made by the commerce which
the Crusades necessitated--crosses the Atlantic Ocean. As the magnetic
needle, which a Venetian traveller brought from Asia, gave a new
direction to commerce, so the new stimulus to learning which the Grecian
philosophy effected led to the necessity of an easier form of writing;
and printing appeared. With the shock which feudalism received from the
Crusades, central power was once more wielded by kings, and standing
armies supplanted the feudal. The crusaders must have learned something
from their mistakes; and military science was revived. There is scarcely
an element of civilization which we value, that was not, directly or
indirectly, developed by the Crusades, yet which was not sought for, or
anticipated even,--the centralization of thrones, the weakening of the
power of feudal barons, the rise of free cities, the growth of commerce,
the impulse given to art, improvements in agriculture, the rise of a
middle class, the wonderful spread of literature, greater refinements in
manners and dress, increased toleration of opinions, a more cheerful
view of life, the simultaneous development of energies in every field of
human labor, new hopes and aspirations among the people, new glories
around courts, new attractions in the churches, new comforts in the
villages, new luxuries in the cities. Even spiritual power became less
grim and sepulchral, since there was less fear to work upon.
I do not say that the Crusades alone produced the marvellous change in
the condition of society which took place in the thirteenth century, but
they gave an impulse to this change. The strong sapling which the
barbarians brought from their German forests and planted in the heart of
Europe,--and which had silently grown in the darkest ages of barbarism,
guarded by the hand of Providence,--became a sturdy tree in the feudal
ages, and bore fruit when the barons had wasted their strength in Asia.
The Crusades improved this fruit, and found new uses for it, and
scattered it far and wide, and made it for the healing of the nations.
Enterprise of all sorts succeeded the apathy of convents and castles.
The village of mud huts became a town, in which manufactures began. As
new wants became apparent, new means of supplying them appeared. The
Crusades stimulated these wants, and commerce and manufactures supplied
them. The modern merchant was born in Lombard cities, which supplied the
necessities of the crusaders. Feudalism ignored trade, but the baron
found his rival in the merchant-prince. Feudalism disdained art, but
increased wealth turned peasants into carpenters and masons; carpenters
and masons combined and defied their old masters, and these masters left
their estates for the higher civilization of cities, and built palaces
instead of castles. Palaces had to be adorned, as well as churches; and
the painters and handicraftsmen found employment. So one force
stimulated another force, neither of which would have appeared if feudal
life had remained _in statu quo_.
The only question to settle is, how far the marked progress of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries may be traced to the natural
development of the Germanic races under the influence of religion, or
how far this development was hastened by those vast martial expeditions,
indirectly indeed, but really. Historians generally give most weight to
the latter. If so, then it is clear that the most disastrous wars
recorded in history were made the means--blindly, to all appearance,
without concert or calculation--of ultimately elevating the European
races, and of giving a check to the conquering fanaticism of the enemies
with whom they contended with such bitter tears and sullen
disappointments.
AUTHORITIES.
Michaud's Histoire des Croisades; Mailly's L'Esprit des Croisades;
Choiseul; Daillecourt's De l'Influence des Croisades; Sur l'État des
Peuples en Europe; Heeren's Ueber den Einfluss der Kreuzzüge;
Sporschill's Geschichte der Kreuzzüge; Hallam's Middle Ages; Mill's
History of the Crusades; James's History of the Crusades; Michelet's
History of France (translated); Gibbon's Decline and Fall; Milman's
Latin Christianity; Proctor's History of the Crusades; Mosheim.
WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.
* * * * *
A.D. 1324-1404.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
A.D. 1100-1400.
Church Architecture is the only addition which the Middle Ages made to
Art; but even this fact is remarkable when we consider the barbarism and
ignorance of the Teutonic nations in those dark and gloomy times. It is
difficult to conceive how it could have arisen, except from the stimulus
of religious ideas and sentiments,--like the vast temples of the
Egyptians. The artists who built the hoary and attractive cathedrals and
abbey churches which we so much admire are unknown men to us, and yet
they were great benefactors. It is probable that they were practical and
working architects, like those who built the temples of Greece, who
quietly sought to accomplish their ends,--not to make pictures, but to
make buildings,--as economically as they could consistently with the end
proposed, which end they always had in view.
In this Lecture I shall not go back to classic antiquity, nor shall I
undertake to enter upon any disquisition on Art itself, but simply
present the historical developments of the Church architecture of the
Middle Ages. It is a technical and complicated subject, but I shall try
to make myself understood. It suggests, however, great ideas and
national developments, and ought to be interesting.
The Romans added nothing to the architecture of the Greeks except the
arch, and the use of brick and small stones for the materials of their
stupendous structures. Now Christianity and the Middle Ages seized the
arch and the materials of the Roman architects, and gradually formed
from these a new style of architecture. In Roman architecture there was
no symbolism, no poetry, nothing to represent consecrated sentiments. It
was mundane in its ideas and ends; everything was for utility. The
grandest efforts of the Romans were feats of engineering skill, rather
than creations inspired by the love of the beautiful. What was beautiful
in their edifices was borrowed from the Greeks; what was original was
intended to accommodate great multitudes, whether they sought the sports
of the amphitheatre or the luxury of the bath. Their temples were small,
comparatively, and were Grecian.
The first stage in the development of Church architecture was reached
amid the declining glories of Roman civilization, before the fall of the
Empire; but the first model of a Christian church was not built until
after the imperial persecutions. The early Christians worshipped God in
upper chambers, in catacombs, in retired places, where they would not be
molested, where they could hide in safety. Their assemblies were small,
and their meetings unimportant. They did nothing to attract attention.
The worshippers were mostly simple-minded, unlettered, plebeian people,
with now and then a converted philosopher, or centurion, or lady of rank
They met for prayer, exhortation, the reading of the Scriptures, the
singing of sacred melodies, and mutual support in trying times. They did
not want grand edifices. The plainer the place in which they assembled
the better suited it was to their circumstances and necessities. They
scarcely needed a rostrum, for the age of sermons had not begun; still
less the age of litanies and music and pomps. For such people, in that
palmy age of faith and courage, when the seeds of a new religion were
planted in danger and watered with tears; when their minds were directed
almost entirely to the soul's welfare and future glory; when they loved
one another with true Christian disinterestedness; when they stimulated
each other's enthusiasm by devotion to a common cause (one Lord, one
faith, one baptism); when they were too insignificant to take any social
rank, too poor to be of any political account, too ignorant to attract
the attention of philosophers,--_any_ place where they would be
unmolested and retired was enough. In process of time, when their
numbers had increased, and when and wherever they were tolerated; when
money began to flow into the treasuries; and especially when some gifted
leader (educated perhaps in famous schools, yet who was fervent and
eloquent) desired a wider field for usefulness,--then church edifices
became necessary.
This original church was modelled after the ancient Basilica, or hall of
justice or of commerce: at one end was an elevated tribunal, and back of
this what was called the "apsis,"--a rounded space with arched roof. The
whole was railed off or separated from the auditory, and was reserved
for the clergy, who in the fourth century had become a class. The apsis
had no window, was vaulted, and its walls were covered with figures of
Christ and of the saints, or of eminent Christians who in later times
were canonized by the popes. Between the apsis and the auditory, called
the "nave," was the altar; for by this time the Church was borrowing
names and emblems from the Jews and the old religions. From the apsis to
the extremity of the other end of the building were two rows of pillars
supporting an upper wall, broken by circular arches and windows, called
now the "clear story." In the low walls of the side aisles were also
windows. Both the nave and the aisles supported a framework of roof,
lined with a ceiling adorned with painting.
For some time we see no marked departure, at this stage, from the
ancient basilica. The church is simple, not much adorned, and adapted to
preaching. The age in which it was built was the age of pulpit orators,
when bishops preached,--like Basil, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, and
Leo,--when preaching was an important part of the service, by the
foolishness of which the world was to be converted. Probably there were
but few what we should call fine churches, but there was one at Rome
which was justly celebrated, built by Theodosius, and called St. Paul's.
It is now outside the walls of the modern city. The nave is divided into
five aisles, and the main one, opening into the apsis, is spanned by a
lofty arch supported by two colossal columns. The apsis is eighty feet
in breadth. All parts of the church--one of the largest of Rome--are
decorated with mosaics. It has two small transepts at the extremity of
the nave, on each side of the apsis. The four rows of magnificent
columns, supporting semicircular arches, are Corinthian. In this church
the Greek and Roman architecture predominates. The essential form of the
church is like a Pagan basilica. We see convenience, but neither
splendor nor poetry. Moreover it is cheerful. It has an altar and an
apsis, but it is adapted to preaching rather than to singing. The
public dangers produce oratory, not chants. The voice of the preacher
penetrates the minds of the people, as did that of Savonarola at
Florence announcing the invasion of Italy by the French,--days of fear
and anxiety, reminding us also of Chrysostom at Antioch, when in his
spacious basilican church he roused the people to penitence, to avert
the ire of Theodosius.
The first transition from the basilica to the Gothic church is called
the _Romanesque_, and was made after the fall of the Empire, when the
barbarians had erected new kingdoms on its ruins; when literature and
art were indeed crushed, yet when universal desolation was succeeded by
new forms of government and new habits of life; when the clergy had
become an enormous power, greatly enriched by the contributions of
Christian princes. This transition retained the traditions of the fallen
Empire, and yet was adapted to a semi-civilized people, nominally
converted to Christianity. It arose after the fall of the Merovingians,
when Charlemagne was seeking to restore the glory of the Western Empire.
Paganism had been suppressed by law; even heresies were extinguished in
the West. Kings and people were alike orthodox, and bowed to the
domination of the Church. Abbeys and convents were founded everywhere
and richly endowed. The different States and kingdoms were poor, but the
wealth that existed was deposited in sacred retreats. The powers of the
State were the nobles, warlike and ignorant, rapidly becoming feudal
barons, acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the Crown. Kings had no
glory, defied by their own subjects and unsupported by standing armies.
But these haughty barons were met face to face by equally haughty
bishops, armed with spiritual weapons. These bishops were surrounded and
supported by priests, secular and regular,--by those who ruled the
people in small parishes, and those who ruled the upper classes in their
monastic cells. Learning had fled to monasteries (what little there
was), and the Church became a new attraction.