CONCLUSION
Apparently nature needs to consume about three generations in
perfecting the selection of a new type. Accordingly the money-lenders
did not become absolute immediately after Waterloo, and a period
of some sixty years followed during which the adventurers kept up a
struggle, wherein they were aided by the discoveries of gold near the
middle of the century. Seemingly they met their final defeat at Sedan,
for the decay of the soldier, which had been in progress since the fall
of Napoleon, reached a point, after the collapse of the Second Empire,
even lower than after the consolidation of Rome.
From Alaric to Napoleon the soldier had served as an independent vent
to energy. Often, even when opposed to capital, he had been victorious,
and the highest function of a leader of men had been, in theory at
least, military command. The ideal statesman had been one who, like
Cromwell, Frederic the Great, Henry IV., William III., and Washington,
could lead his followers in battle, and, on the Continent, down to
1789, the aristocracy had professedly been a military caste. In France
and Germany the old tradition lasted to within a generation. Only
after 1871 came the new era, an era marked by many social changes. For
the first time in their history the ruler of the French people passed
admittedly from the martial to the monied type, and everywhere the same
phenomenon appeared; the whole administration of society fell into the
hands of the economic man. Nothing so radical happened at Rome, or even
at Byzantium, for there the pressure of the barbarians necessitated
the retention of the commander at the head of the State; in Europe
he lost this importance. Since the capitulation of Paris the soldier
has tended to sink more and more into a paid official, receiving his
orders from financiers with his salary, without being allowed a voice
even in questions involving peace and war. The same fate has overtaken
the producing classes; they have failed to maintain themselves, and
have become subjects of the possessors of hoarded wealth. Although
the conventions of popular government are still preserved, capital is
at least as absolute as under the Cæsars, and, among capitalists, the
money-lenders form an aristocracy. Debtors are in reality powerless,
because of the extension of that very system of credit which they
invented to satisfy their needs. Although the volume of credit is
gigantic, the basis on which it rests is so narrow that it may be
manipulated by a handful of men. That basis is gold; in gold debts must
be paid; therefore, when gold is withdrawn, the debtor is helpless
and becomes the servant of his master. The elasticity of the age of
expansion has gone.
The aristocracy which wields this autocratic power is beyond attack,
for it is defended by a wage-earning police, by the side of which the
legions were a toy; a police so formidable that, for the first time
in history, revolt is hopeless and is not attempted. The only question
which preoccupies the ruling class is whether it is cheaper to coerce
or to bribe.
On looking back over long periods of time, the sequence of causes may
be followed which have led to this result. First, inventions from the
East facilitated trade; then, the perfection of weapons of attack made
police possible, and individual bravery unnecessary; on this followed
the abasement of the martial and exaltation of the economic type; and
finally that intense acceleration of movement by machinery supervened,
which, in annihilating space, has destroyed the protection that the
costly races long enjoyed against the competition of simpler organisms.
Roman civilization was less complex than modern because of the relative
inflexibility of the Latin mind. Unable to quicken his motions by
inventions, the ancient Italian failed to discover America or absorb
India, and, for the same reason, collapsed without an effort under the
insidious attack of Asiatic and African labour. No industrial expansion
followed the influx of bullion under Cæsar, and therefore, when the
value of cereals fell, the evicted farmer either sank into slavery or
begged for bread from the magnates of the Senate. In modern times an
industrial period has intervened; the evicted long found employment
in the factories of the towns, and it has only been as contraction
has reduced the demand for merchandise, by diminishing the purchasing
power of the agricultural population, that those stagnant pools of the
unemployed have collected, which exactly correspond to the proletariat.
But, as each special faculty which, for a time, enables its possessor
to excel in competition, seems to bear with it the seeds of its own
decay, so the inventive, which once enabled the Western races to
undersell the Eastern in their homes seems destined to reduce all to a
common economic level, as Rome sank to the level of Egypt.
For nearly a century the inventions of Hargreaves, of Crompton, of
Cartwright, and of Watt, enabled Lancashire to supply Bombay and
Calcutta with fabrics, as, in the seventeenth century, Surat and
Calicut had supplied London, and this superiority appeared assured
until Orientals should acquire the momentum necessary for machinery.
One effect in Europe was the rapid increase of a population congregated
in towns, and bearing a marked resemblance to the “humiliores” of
Rome in their disinclination for war. True to their instincts, the
adventurers ever quickened their movements, ever extended the sphere
of their enterprises, and, finally, just as the Second Empire verged
upon its fall, they opened the Suez Canal in 1869. The consequences
of this great engineering triumph have probably equalled in gravity
the establishment of the gold standard, but the two phenomena had this
marked difference. The producers saw their danger and resisted to the
utmost the contraction of the currency, whereas the Canal was a case
of suicide. Thenceforward grain, raised by the most enduring labour of
the world, could be thrown without limit on the European market, and,
agricultural competition once established, industrial could only be a
question of time. The Canal made the importation and the reparation of
machinery cheap throughout Asia.
From a period, perhaps, as remote as Clive’s victories, the Hindoos
had experienced a certain impulsion from contact with the British,
but it was not until the building of railroads, under Lord Dalhousie,
that the severer phases of competition opened among the inhabitants
of India. Lord Dalhousie became Governor General in 1848, and, that
the acceleration of the next nine years culminated in a catastrophe
seems certain, for nothing can be plainer than that the Mutiny of 1857
was an outbreak of a martial Mohammedan population crushed under an
intolerable pressure.
The locality of the disturbance alone is enough to demonstrate the
accuracy of this inference. Dalhousie’s last act was the annexation
of the Kingdom of Oude. Of this province Lucknow is the capital, and
while Lucknow was one focus of the insurrection, Delhi, the capital
of the ancient Mogul empire, was the other. Once subdued by the
British, and reduced to an economic equality with subtler races, the
old Moslem gentry rapidly disappeared. Since 1857 these families,
which had maintained themselves for six or seven hundred years, have
rapidly fallen into ruin, and their estates have been bought by their
creditors, the rising usurer class.
Under immemorial native custom the money-lender, generally speaking,
had no forcible means of collecting debt; he relied on public opinion
and conducted himself accordingly. On the other hand, unrestricted
alienation of land was not usually incidental to proprietorship,
and thus the tenant for life, as he would be called in English law,
could only pledge his crops; he could not sell the succession. With
centralization came full ownership, and with it summary process for
debt. Following her immutable law, nature, having changed the form
of competition, proceeded to select a quality of mind to correspond
with the new conditions of life. She demanded improved vents for her
energy. Forthwith, under the pressure of accelerated movement and
advancing consolidation, the trammels of caste relaxed, the population
fused, and a new aristocracy arose, composed of the strongest economic
types culled from all the peoples who inhabit the plains south of
the Himalayas. This aristocracy is a strange mixture of blood, an
amalgam of the most diverse elements, of Parsees, Brahmins, Bunniahs
of different races, with gifted individuals from other castes, like
the leather-workers or the goldsmiths; but among them all the most
ruthless, the corruptest, the most hated, and the most successful, are
the Marwaris, who have been thus described by a British commission:--
“The average Marwari money-lender is not a pleasant character
to analyze; his most prominent characteristics are love of gain
and indifference to the opinions or feelings of his neighbour.
He has considerable self-reliance and immense industry, but the
nature of his business and the method by which it is pursued
would tend to degrade and harden even a humane nature, which
his is not. As a landlord he follows the instincts of the
usurer, making the hardest terms possible with his tenant,
who is also his debtor and often little better than his
slave.”[372]
The effect of the selection of such a type as a dominant class must be
destructive to a martial population, whether it be French or English,
Mohammedan or Hindoo. The social revolution which swept over Oude after
its annexation has been referred to, but the fate which overtook the
famous Mahratta nation is even more tragic and impressive.
When, toward the close of the last century, the British were pushing
their conquests inland, the most formidable enemy they met were the
Mahrattas; and, perhaps, the most renowned battle, next to Plassey,
ever fought by Europeans against natives, was Assaye, where Wellesley
defeated Sindhia in 1803. These Mahrattas were tribes of Hindoo
farmers, who inhabited the mountainous country about one hundred miles
to the east of Bombay; a territory of which Poona has always been
considered the capital. Mounted on their hill ponies, these bold and
hardy spearmen were always ready to follow their chiefs to battle,
and, in the eighteenth century, became the terror not only of the
Mohammedans of the Deccan, but of the Mogul himself, at Delhi. Even
the English respected and feared them, and only subdued them in 1818
after desperate fighting. Then they were disarmed and subjected to the
combined action of peace and English law.
Soon after this conquest an inflow of Marwaris began. As early as 1854,
in Dalhousie’s administration, Captain Anderson stated that “two-thirds
of the ryots [were] in the hands of the Marwaris, and that the average
debt of each individual [was] not less than Rs. 100.”[373] Competition
continued unchecked as time flowed on, and in 1875 disturbances
broke out in certain villages near Poona, serious enough to cause the
government to appoint a commission of inquiry. After full investigation
this commission reported that up to 1872 or 1873 the peasantry had
seemed relatively prosperous, but that afterward “prices fell quickly,”
and that this fall had been accompanied by a rise in taxation of
somewhat more than fifty per cent.[374] Under this double pressure the
peasantry had rapidly sunk into insolvency, and the whole real estate
of the Deccan was passing into the hands of usurers, while the farmers
had become serfs toiling on the soil they had once owned, to satisfy an
inextinguishable debt. Precisely like the _colonus_, the delinquent was
not evicted, but remained, “recorded as occupier of his holding, and
responsible for the payment of revenue assessed on it, but virtually
reduced by pressure of debt to a tenant-at-will, ... sweated by his
Marwari creditor. It is in that creditor’s power to eject him any day;
... and if allowed to hold on, it is only on condition of paying over
to his creditor all the produce of his land not absolutely necessary
for next year’s seed grain or for the support of life. He is indebted
on an average to the extent of sixteen or seventeen years’ payment of
the government revenue. He has nothing to hope for, but lives in daily
fear of the final catastrophe.”[375]
Since Assaye three generations have passed away, and the Mahratta
spearmen have vanished. The Western Ghats are now tilled by a sluggish
race whom the British officers deem unworthy of their cavalry, and in
the place of those renowned and daring chiefs Sivaji and Holkar, stands
the Marwari under whom no ryots can prosper save those “who having
received some education are able to combat the sowkars with their own
weapons, fraud, chicanery, and even forgery.”[376] Apparently the same
destiny awaits every people which requires more than the minimum of
nutriment, or which is not gifted with the economic mind,[377] for the
“money-lenders sweep off the crops as soon as harvested, only leaving
with the ryots barely sufficient to eke out a subsistence till the
following year.”[378] That allowance, in the Deccan, is estimated at
about a dollar a month in silver--too little to sustain any but the
most tenacious organisms, even among Asiatics. Consequently, though the
population of India is increasing rapidly, the increase lies chiefly
among the aboriginal tribes who form the lowest castes, or in other
words among the non-martial or servile races. Men who, though enslaved
by the Aryan invaders of prehistoric times, and who have always been
subjected to extremest hardship, have been gifted, like the Egyptian
fellah, with an endurance which has enabled them to survive.[379]
Herein, likewise, may be plainly perceived the destructive effects
of the policy of the Western usurers upon the population subject
to them. By enhancing the value of their own money they have nearly
doubled the intensity of this Asiatic competition. In India, silver has
substantially retained its purchasing power, therefore the ryot now, as
in the days of Captain Cunningham, can exist on two rupees a month, but
he cannot live on less. Accordingly, the severity of his competition
with Europeans must be measured by the value of his wages when reckoned
on the European scale. In 1854 the ryot’s two rupees were worth one
dollar; now, through the appreciation of gold, they are worth about
sixty cents, and the effect is the same as though the tenacity of life
of the Asiatic had been increased four-sixths. Everything the Indian or
Chinese peasant produces with his hands, whether on the farm or in the
factory, has been reduced in price, in relation to Western peoples, in
the ratio of six to ten.
The cheapest form of labour is thus being bred on a gigantic scale,
and this labour is being accelerated by an industrial development
which is stimulated by eviction of the farmers, as the “industrial
revolution” was stimulated in England one hundred and thirty years ago.
For many years the cotton mills of Bombay have undersold Lancashire
in the coarser fabrics, and when, by means of a canal to the Pacific,
American cotton can be imported cheaply, they will spin the finer
also. Moreover, Hindostan is full of iron and coal which has never
been utilized because of the immense difference in the rapidity of
European and Asiatic labour, but the steadily falling range of Western
prices must force the cheapest product on the market, and when the
Indian railways have been assumed by the government, a new era will
have opened. The same causes are affecting China and Japan, and, under
precisely similar conditions, the centre of exchanges passed from the
Tiber to the Bosphorus sixteen hundred years ago.
Such uniformity of development in the most distant times, and among the
most divergent peoples, points to a progressive law of civilization,
each stage of progress being marked by certain intellectual, moral,
and physical changes. As the attack in war masters the defence, and the
combative instinct becomes unnecessary to the preservation of life, the
economic supersedes the martial mind, being superior in bread-winning.
As velocity augments and competition intensifies, nature begins to
sift the economic minds themselves, culling a favoured aristocracy
of the craftiest and the subtlest types; choosing, for example, the
Armenian in Byzantium, the Marwari in India, and the Jew in London.
Conversely, as the costly nervous system of the soldier becomes an
encumbrance, organisms, which can exist on less, successively supplant
each other, until the limit of endurance is reached. Thus the Slavs
exterminated the Greeks in Thrace and Macedonia, the Mahrattas and the
Moslems dwindle before the low caste tribes of India, and the instinct
of self-preservation has taught white races to resist an influx of
Chinese. When nature has finished this double task, civilization has
reached its zenith. Humanity can ascend no higher.
In view of this possible extermination of the martial blood in the
higher stages of civilization, the attention necessarily becomes
concentrated on what is, perhaps, the main point of divergence between
ancient and modern society,--the presence and the absence of a supply
of barbaric life. All the evidence points to the conclusion that the
infusion of vitality which Rome ever drew from territories beyond
her borders, was the cause both of her strength and of her longevity.
Without such aid she could never have consolidated the world. On the
other hand, the lack of this resource has been the weakness of modern
nations. One after another they have dreamed of universal conquest, and
one after another they have fallen through exhaustion in war.
Spain levied never a pikeman in America, and her colonies were a source
of debility in so far as they drained her of her youth. Had Rome been
similarly situated, she could hardly have carried the eagles beyond the
Bosphorus and the Alps. Perhaps Cæsar’s army was the best an ancient
general ever put in the field, and yet it was filled with barbarians.
All his legions were raised north of the Po, and most of them,
including the tenth, north of the Alps.[380] When pitted against this
force native Italians broke in rout, and one of the most striking pages
of Plutarch is the story of the gradual awakening of Pompey to a sense
of the impotence of Romans. Pompey himself was a commander of high
ability, and, until he split upon the rock of the pure martial blood,
battle had been with him synonymous with victory.
At first he felt such confidence, he laughed at the suggestion of an
attack within the Rubicon. With the conviction of the conqueror he
said: “Whenever I stamp with my foot in any part of Italy, there will
rise up forces enough in an instant, both horse and foot.”[381] A very
short experience of the men of the north sufficed to sober him; for,
though Cæsar’s command amounted to only twenty-two thousand, and his
to twice as many, he not only declined an action, but took what care
he could to keep the threats of the Gauls from his men, “who were out
of heart and despondent, through terror at the fierceness and hardiness
of their enemies, whom they looked upon as a sort of wild beasts.”[382]
Pharsalia stunned him. When the tenth legion routed his left wing, he
went to his tent and sat speechless until the invasion of the camp;
then he walked away “softly afoot, taken up altogether with thoughts
such as probably might possess a man that for the space of thirty-four
years together had been accustomed to conquest and victory, and was
then at last, in his old age, learning for the first time what defeat
and flight were.”[383]
Thus, in reality, barbarians consolidated the ancient world, and
the force which created the Empire, afterward upheld it. With each
succeeding century the drafts of centralized society upon the blood of
the country beyond the Danube and the Rhine increased, but the supply
proved limitless; and, when the Western provinces disintegrated, a new
imaginative race poured over Italy and France, creating a new religion,
a new art, a new literature, and new institutions. Among modern nations
the Russians alone have developed this power of absorbing kindred
conquered peoples; and yet, obviously, Napoleon would have fought his
campaigns under very different circumstances, and, perhaps, brought
them to a different end, had he, like Cæsar, had an exhaustless supply
of the best soldiers, altogether independent of the population of
France.
Religious phenomena become explicable when viewed from the same
standpoint. Unquestionably scepticism has been to the full as rife
in Paris since 1789 as it ever was in Rome, and yet no new religion
has been born. Supposing, however, that a vast and highly emotional
emigration flowed annually into France, the aspect of life would be
completely changed. Christian saints and martyrs were not begotten by
the usurers of Constantinople or of Rome, but by barbarian soldiers
and Asiatic serfs, and Christianity could hardly have become a State
religion had the composition of society, as it existed under Trajan,
remained unaltered. Even in the reign of Justinian the aristocracy
carped at faith, and Byzantine architecture did not bloom until the
invasions of Alaric and Attila.
If, then, although nature never precisely repeats herself, she operates
upon the human mind according to immutable laws, it should be possible
by comparing a living civilization with a dead, to estimate in some
degree the course which has been run. For such an attempt an infinite
variety of standards might be suggested, but few, perhaps, are more
suitable than the domestic relations which lie at the basis of the
reproduction of life.
In a martial and imaginative age, where energy vents itself through
fear, and every man must be a soldier, the family generally forms a
unit; the women and children being under the control of the father,
as they were under the control of the patriarchs in the Bible, or
of the paterfamilias in Rome. In such periods the woman is sought
after by the man, and even commands a high money value; “And Shechem
said unto her father, ... Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I
will give according as ye shall say unto me: but give me the damsel
to wife.”[384] The Homeric heroes bought their wives, and, moreover,
were very fond of them--an affection the women returned, for in all
classical literature there are few more charming legends than that
of Penelope. Divorce was unknown to Hector and Agamemnon, Ulysses
and Achilles. Marriage, in these simple ages, is usually a rite
half sacred, half warlike. When Abraham’s servant found Rebekah at
the well, he bowed his head, and blessed the Lord God of his master
Abraham, which had led him in the right way. A Roman wedding was a
solemn religious function accompanied by prayer and sacrifice, and, at
the end, the bride was carried to her husband’s house, where she was
violently torn from her mother’s arms.
Aristotle, with his unerring acumen, made this observation: “That all
warlike races are prone to the love of women,” and also that they tend
to “fall under the dominion of their wives.”[385] Undoubtedly this is
the instinct of the soldier, and, in martial ages, women are idealized.
When a foreigner asked the wife of Leonidas, “Why do you Lacedæmonian
wives, unlike all others, govern your husbands?” the Spartan answered,
“Because we alone are the mothers of men.” When at Rome Tiberius killed
the male serpent, thereby devoting himself to death to save Cornelia,
Plutarch, telling the story, remarked, “that Tiberius seemed to all men
to have done nothing unreasonable, in choosing to die for such a woman;
who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her his crown, and would have
married her, refused it, and chose rather to live a widow.”[386]
In the Middle Ages, that greatest of martial and imaginative epochs,
marriage developed into the most solemn of sacraments, and the worship
of women became the popular religion. In France, especially, the
centre of thought, enthusiasm, and war, from the mighty fane of Paris
downward, the churches were dedicated to Mary, and the vow of chivalry
bound the knight to fight for God and for his lady.
“It hath bene through all ages ever seene
That with the praise of armes and chevalrie
The prize of beautie still hath ioyned beene.”[387]
It might almost be said that the destinies of France have been moulded
by men’s love for women, and that this influence still prevailed down
to the advent of the usurers after the rout of Waterloo. On the other
hand, nature bred a type of woman fit to mate with the imaginative
man. The devotion of Saint Clara to Saint Francis is one of the most
exquisite lyrics of the Church, and for six hundred years Héloïse
remained an ideal of the West. Perhaps, indeed, that strange blending
of tenderness and enthusiasm, which was peculiar to the mediæval mind,
never found more refined and exalted expression than in the simple
hymn which Héloïse is said to have composed and sung at the grave of
Abélard:--
“Tecum fata sum perpessa;
Tecum dormiam defessa,
Et in Sion veniam.
Solve crucem,
Due ad lucem
Degravatam animam.”
In primitive ages children are not only a source of power, but of
wealth, and therefore the highest merit of the woman is fecundity.
“And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, ... be thou the mother
of thousands of millions.” Also maternity is then a glory, and
childlessness a shame; and Rachel said, “Give me children, or else
I die.” “And she conceived and bare a son; and said, God hath taken
away my reproach.” That she might live for her boys, Cornelia refused
a crown; and when they grew up, she would upbraid them because “the
Romans as yet rather called her the daughter of Scipio than the mother
of the Gracchi.” But Cornelia’s father was the conqueror of Hannibal,
and her son was an agrarian agitator, whom the monied oligarchy
murdered for reviving the Licinian Laws. Apparently, one of the first
signs of advancing civilization is the fall in the value of women in
men’s eyes. Not very long after the siege of Troy, husbands must have
ceased paying for their wives; for, at a comparatively early date, they
demanded a price for wedding them. Euripides, born in 480 B.C., made
Medea complain that women had to buy their husbands for great sums of
money. In other words, the custom of the wedding portion had come to
prevail.
As the pressure of economic competition intensifies with social
consolidation, the family regularly disintegrates, the children
rejecting the parental authority at a steadily decreasing age; until,
finally, the population fuses into a compact mass, in which all
individuals are equal before the law, and all are forced to compete
with each other for the means of subsistence. When at length wealth
has accumulated sufficiently to find vent through capitalistic methods
of farming and manufacture, children lose all value, for then hiring
labour is always cheaper than breeding. Thenceforward, among the more
extravagant races, the family dwindles, as in ancient Rome or modern
France, and marriage, having become a luxury, decreases. Moreover,
the economic instinct impels parents to reduce the number of possible
inheritors of their property, that its bulk may not shrink.
Upon women the effect of these changed conditions is prodigious.
Their whole relation to society is altered. From a religious sacrament
marriage is metamorphosed into a civil contract, dissoluble, like other
contracts, by mutual consent; and, as the obligations of maternity
diminish, the relation of husband and wife resolves itself into a
sort of business partnership, tending always to become more ephemeral.
Frequent as divorce now is, it was even more so under the Antonines.
On men the action of natural selection is, at least, as drastic. The
change wrought in Roman character in about three hundred years has
always been one of the problems of history. In the words of Aristotle,
the primitive Roman “was prone to the love of women.” Strong in his
passions, austere in his life, fierce in his jealousy, he set the
undisputed possession of the female as his supreme happiness. Virginius
slew his daughter to keep her from Appius Claudius, and his comrades in
the legions washed out his wrong in the Decemvir’s blood; while among
the stirring ballads of the fabled time which were sung at the farmer’s
fireside, none roused such emotion as the tale of the vengeance wreaked
on Tarquin for Lucretia’s death. Compare this virile race with the
aristocracy of the middle Empire. By the second century female purity
weighed light against money. Marcus Aurelius is said to have condensed
the whole economic moral code in one short sentence. His wife,
Faustina, was accused, by scandal, of being the most abandoned woman
of her generation, more notorious even than had been Messalina. When
the philosopher was urged to repudiate her, he replied, “Then I should
have to surrender her portion” (the Empire); and he not only lived with
her, but built a temple to her memory. Even if the story be false, it
reflects none the less truly the temper of the age.
The minds of noble Romans of the third and fourth centuries, under
the same impulsion, worked differently from those of their primitive
ancestors; they lacked the martial and the amatory instincts. As a
general rule one salient characteristic of the later reigns was a
sexual lassitude yielding only to the most potent stimulants. The same
phenomena were noticed among Frenchmen at the collapse of the Empire,
since when like symptoms have become notorious in London.
Taking history as a whole, women seem never to have more than
moderately appealed to the senses of the economic man. The monied
magnate seldom ruins himself for love, and chivalry would have been
as foreign to a Roman senator under Diocletian, as it would be now to
a Lombard Street banker. On the other hand, in proportion as women’s
influence has declined when measured by their power over men, it has
increased when measured by the economic standard. In many ways the
female seems to serve as a vent for the energy of capital almost as
well as men; in the higher planes of civilization they hold their
property in severalty, and, by means of money, wield a power not unlike
Faustina’s. If unmarried, the economic woman competes with the man on
nearly equal terms, and everywhere, and in all ages, the result is not
dissimilar. The stronger and more fortunate members of the sex have
grown rich and have bought social and political power. Roman politics
under Septimius Severus and Caracalla was much in the hands of women,
and Julia Mæsa, who was enormously wealthy, carried through a most
famous intrigue by purchasing the throne for Elagabalus.
In Rome, however, there was always a strong admixture of barbaric
blood, and, to the last, the barbarians married for love. Justinian
was an example. Born of an obscure race of barbarians in the desolate
Bulgarian country, he fell uncontrollably in love with Theodora, who
had scandalized even the theatres of Constantinople. His mother died of
shame; but Justinian persevered, and, while she lived, his devotion to
his wife never wavered.
In Rome and in Byzantium such women were the stronger or the more
fortunate; their counterparts are easily to be found in any economic
age. The fate of the weaker there was slavery; now they are forced by
competition into the ranks of the cheapest labour,--a lot, perhaps,
hardly preferable.
And yet art, perhaps, even more clearly than religion, love, or
war, indicates the pathway of consolidation; for art reflects with
the subtlest delicacy those changes in the forms of competition
which enfeeble or inflame the imagination. Of Greek art, in its
zenith, little need be said; its great qualities have been too fully
recognized. It suffices to point out that it was absolutely honest,
and that it formed a vehicle of expression as flexible as the language
itself. A temple apparently of marble, was of marble; a colonnade
apparently supporting a portico, did support it; and, while the
ornament formed an integral part of the structure, the people read it
as intelligently as they read the poems of Homer. Nothing similar ever
flourished in Rome.
Unlike the Greeks, the Romans were never sensitive or imaginative.
Properly speaking, they had nothing which they could express through
art; they were utilitarian from the outset, and their architecture
finally took shape in the most perfect system of materialistic building
which, probably, has ever existed. Obviously such a system could
only be matured in a capitalistic society, and, accordingly, Roman
architecture only reached perfection somewhat late, perhaps, toward the
close of the first century.
The Romans, though vulgar and ostentatious, understood business.
They knew how to combine economy and even solidity with display.
As Viollet-le-Duc has observed, “They were rich, and they wanted to
appear so,”[388] but they strove to attain their end without waste.
Therefore they first ran up a cheap core of rubble, bricks, and mortar,
which could be put together by rude slave labour under the direction
of an engineer and a few overseers; and their squalid interior they
afterward veneered with marble, adding, by way of ornament, tier above
tier of Greek columns ranged against the walls. That gaudy exterior
had nothing whatever to do with the building itself, and could be
stripped off without vital injury. From the Greek standpoint nothing
could be falser, more insulting to the intelligence, or, in a word,
more plutocratic; but the work was sound and durable, and, to a certain
degree, imposing from its mass. This system lasted, substantially
unimpaired, even to Constantine or until the final migration of
capital to the Bosphorus, the only difference between the monuments of
the fourth century and the first being that the former are somewhat
coarser, just as the coins of Diocletian are coarser than those of
Nero.
Yet, although the monied aristocracy remained supreme down to the
final disintegration of the West, emigration began very early to
modify the base of society, by the injection of a considerable amount
of imaginative blood; and, as early as the reign of Claudius, this
new store of energy made its presence felt through the outlet of
Christianity. The converts were, of course, the antipodes of the ruling
class. They were “humiliores,” poor people, below the notice of a rich
man like Tacitus; “quos, ... vulgus Christianos appellabat.”[389]
These Christians held a position analogous to that of Nihilists now,
whom they resembled save in respect to violence. They were socialists
living under a monied despotism, and they openly prayed for the end of
the world; therefore they were thought “haters of the human race,”[390]
and they suffered the penalty. Primitive Christianity was incompatible
with the existence of Roman society, against which it was a protest,
for it “fully accepted the idea that the rich, if he did not surrender
his superfluity, kept what belonged to another.”[391] By right the
Kingdom of Heaven was closed to the wealthy.
Probably very few of these early Christians were Italians; most of them
were from the Levant, and that they were intensely emotional is proved
by their lust for martyrdom--they voluntarily sought death as a means
of glorifying God. One day Arrius Antoninus, proconsul of Asia, having
ordered certain Christians arrested, saw all the faithful of the town
present themselves before his tribunal, demanding to share the fate of
those chosen for martyrdom. He dismissed them in wrath, telling them
that if they were so in love with death they might commit suicide;[392]
and Renan’s account of the persecutions under Nero shows an incredible
exaltation.[393]
Almost at once the effect of this emotional temperament became
perceptible. The paintings in the catacombs are, perhaps, the oldest
example of Christian art, and of these M. Vitet thus spoke many years
ago:--
“These decorations, made with the hand raised, in secret,
hurriedly, and more for pious reasons than for love of the
beautiful, nevertheless reveal to the most rebellious eyes
and in spite of strange negligence and incorrectness, I know
not what of animation, of youth, of fecundity, and, so to
speak, a real transformation of that very art which, in the
service of paganism, seemed then, we are all agreed, dying of
exhaustion.”[394]
As the world disintegrated, and the imagination everywhere acquired
power, and with power wealth and the means of expression, an entirely
new architecture sprang up in the East, whose growth closely followed
upon the barbarian invasions and the progressive failure of the
Roman blood. The system of construction was Asiatic modified by Greek
influences,[395] and with this new construction came an equally new
decoration, a decoration which once more served as a language.
Mosaics of stone had long been used, but mosaics of glass, which
give such an incomparable lustre to the dome, were the invention of
Levantine Christians, and seem to have come into general use toward
the beginning of the fifth century. But the fifth century was the
period of the great invasions of Alaric, Attila, and Theoderic, and
during this period the population of Italy, Macedonia, and Thrace
must have undergone profound changes. In Italy the whole fabric of
consolidated society crumbled; south of the Danube it survived, but
survived in a modified form, a form on which the recent migrations
left an unmistakable imprint. Galla Placidia, the first great patron
of the pure Byzantine school, died in 450, after an eventful life
largely passed among the barbarians, one of whom she married. She began
to embellish Ravenna, and a comparison of these remains with those of
France and Italy of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries,
exposes the difference in the forces which moulded these three
civilizations.
With all its grace and refinement the characteristic of Ravenna was not
religious ecstasy, but rather an absence of fear of the unknown, and a
respect for wealth. There is nothing mysterious or terrible about these
charming buildings, which are manifestly rather a glorification of the
Empire on the Bosphorus, than of the Kingdom of Heaven.
At San Vitale it is Justinian, with an aureole about his head and
surrounded by his courtiers, carrying a gift to the shrine; or
Theodora, blazing with jewels, and followed by the magnificent ladies
of her household. At San Apollinare the long procession of saints are
richly clad and bear crowns, while the Virgin herself, seated on a
throne and revered as a sovereign, is as far removed from the vulgar
as Theodora herself. “Byzantine etiquette no longer permits her to be
approached directly; four angels surround her and separate her from
humanity.”[396] The terrifying was scrupulously avoided. “By a most
significant scruple, the artist, in reproducing various episodes of the
Passion, avoided the most painful, the Crucifixion.”[397]
Saint Sophia offers every indication of having been expressly contrived
to provide the large light spaces needful for such functions as those
depicted in San Vitale, and the account given by Procopius of its
erection sustains this supposition. According to Procopius, Saint
Sophia was a hobby of Justinian, who not only selected the architect
Anthemius because he was the most ingenious mechanic of his age, but
who also supplied the funds and “assisted it by the labour and powers
of his mind.”[398] The dome, “from the lightness of the building ...
does not appear to rest upon a solid foundation, but to cover the
place beneath as though it were suspended from heaven by the fabled
golden chain”; and the interior “is singularly full of light and of
sunshine; you would declare that the place is not lighted by the sun
from without, but that the rays are produced within itself, such an
abundance of light is poured into this church.”[399] Of the decorations
it is impossible to speak with certainty, since it is probable that the
mosaics which now exist were of a later period.
Perhaps, however, the most significant phenomenon about the church is
its loneliness; nothing like it was built elsewhere, and the reason
seems plain. There was but one imperial court which needed so superb
a setting, and but one emperor who could pay for it. Herein lies the
radical divergence between the East and West; the great tabernacle of
Constantinople stood alone because it represented the wealth, the pomp,
and the imagination of the barbarian shepherd who had been raised by
fortune to be the chief of police of the city where the world’s wealth
had centralized. In France every diocese had a temple magnificent
according to its means, some of which exceeded in majesty that of
Paris; and the cause was that, in France, the artistic and imaginative
caste formed a theocracy, who were not hired by king or emperor, but
who were themselves the strongest force in all the land. In the East,
the imaginative inroad was not strong enough to cause disintegration,
and the artists always remained wage-earners. In the West, society fell
back a thousand years, and consolidation began afresh. Six centuries
intervened between the death of Galla Placidia and the famous dream of
the monk Gauzon which contained the revelation of the plan of the Abbey
of Cluny, and yet six hundred years by no means represented the gap
between the Franks and the Burgundians, and the Eastern Empire, even
when it sank lowest under Heraclius. To Justinian the building of Saint
Sophia was a matter of time and money; to Saint Hugh the church of
Cluny was a miracle.
In France the churches long were miracles; the chronicles are filled
with the revelations vouchsafed the monks; and none can cross the
threshold of one of these noble monuments and fail to grasp its
meaning. They are the most vigorous of all expressions of fear of the
unseen. The Gothic architect heeded no living potentate; he held kings
in contempt, and oftener represented them thrust down into hell than
seated on their thrones. With the enemy who lurked in darkness none
but the saints could cope, and them he idealized. No sculpture is more
terrible than the demons on the walls of Rheims, none more majestic
and pathetic than that over the door of the Virgin at Paris, while no
colour ever equalled the windows of Saint Denis and Chartres.
With the thirteenth century came the influx of the Eastern trade and
the rise of the communes. Immediately the glory of the Gothic began to
fade; by the reign of Saint Louis it had passed its prime, and under
Philip the Fair it fell in full decline. The men who put dead cats
in shrines were not likely to be inspired in religious sculpture. The
decay, and the reasons for it, can be readily traced in colour.
The monks who conceived the twelfth century windows, or painted
the pictures of the saints, only sought to render an emotion by a
conventional symbol which should rouse a response. Consequently
they used marvellous combinations of colours, in which blue was
apt to predominate, and they harmonized their colours with gold.
Viollet-le-Duc has elaborately explained how this was done.[400]
But such a system was not pretentious, and was incompatible with
perspective. The mediæval burgher, like the Roman, was rich, and wanted
to appear so. He demanded more for his money than a solemn portrait of
a saint. He craved a picture of himself, or of his guild, and above all
he insisted on display. The fourteenth century was the period when the
reds and yellows superseded the blues, and when the sense of harmony
began to fail. Furthermore, the burgher was realistic and required a
representation of the world he saw about him. Hence came perspective,
the abandonment of gold, and the final degradation of colour, which
sank into a lost art. For hundreds of years it has been impossible to
imitate the work of the monks of Saint Denis. In Italy, the economic
phenomena were yet more striking; for Italy, even in the Middle
Ages, was always a commercial community, which looked on art with the
economic eye. One example will suffice,--the treatment of the dome.
Placed between the masterpieces of the East and West, and having little
imagination of his own, the Florentine banker conceived the idea of
combining the two systems and embellishing them in a cheap and showy
manner. Accordingly on Gothic arches he placed an Eastern dome, and
instead of adorning his dome with mosaics, which are costly, he had his
interior painted at about one-quarter of the price. The substitution of
the fresco for the mosaic is one of the most typical devices of modern
times.
Before the opening of the economic age, when the imagination glowed
with all the passion of religious enthusiasm, the monks who built
the abbeys of Cluny and Saint Denis took no thought of money, for
it regarded them not. Sheltered by their convents, their livelihood
was assured; their bread and their robe were safe; they pandered to
no market, for they cared for no patron. Their art was not a chattel
to be bought, but an inspired language in which they communed with
God, or taught the people, and they expressed a poetry in the stones
they carved which far transcended words. For these reasons Gothic
architecture, in its prime, was spontaneous, elevated, dignified, and
pure.
The advent of portraiture has usually been considered to portend
decay, and rightly, since the presence of the portrait demonstrates
the supremacy of wealth. A portrait can hardly be the ideal of
an enthusiast, like the figure of a god, for it is a commercial
article, sold for a price, and manufactured to suit a patron’s taste;
were it made to please the artist, it might not find a buyer. When
portraits are fashionable, the economic period must be well advanced.
Portraiture, like other economic phenomena, blossomed during the
Renaissance, and it was then also that the artist, no longer shielded
by his convent or his guild, stood out to earn his living by the sale
of his wares, like the Venetian merchants whom he met on the Rialto,
whose vanity he flattered, and whose palaces he adorned. From the
sixteenth century downward, the man of imagination, unable to please
the economic taste, has starved.
This mercenary quality forms the gulf which has divided the art of
the Middle Ages from that of modern times--a gulf which cannot be
bridged, and which has broadened with the lapse of centuries, until
at last the artist, like all else in society, has become the creature
of a commercial market, even as the Greek was sold as a slave to
the plutocrat of Rome. With each invention, with each acceleration
of movement, prose has more completely supplanted poetry, while the
economic intellect has grown less tolerant of any departure from those
representations of nature which have appealed to the most highly
gifted of the monied type among successive generations. Hence the
imperiousness of modern realism.
Thus the history of art coincides with the history of all other
phenomena of life; for experience has demonstrated that, since the
Reformation, a school of architecture, like the Greek or Gothic, has
become impossible. No such school could exist in a society where
the imagination had decayed, for the Greek and Gothic represented
imaginative ideals. In an economic period, like that which has followed
the Reformation, wealth is the form in which energy seeks expression;
therefore, since the close of the fifteenth century, architecture has
reflected money.
Viollet-le-Duc has said of the Romans, that, like all parvenus, the
true expression of art lay, for them, rather in lavish ornament than
in purity of form,[401] and what was true of the third century is true
of the nineteenth. The type of mind being the same, its operation must
be similar, and the economic, at once ostentatious and parsimonious,
produces a cheap core fantastically adorned. The Romans perched
the travesty of a Grecian colonnade upon the summit of a bath or an
amphitheatre, while the Englishman, having pillaged weaker nations of
their imaginative gems, delights to cover with coarse imitations the
exterior of banks and counting-houses.
And yet, though thus alike, a profound difference separates Roman
architecture from our own; the Romans were never wholly sordid, nor did
they ever niggle. When they built a wall, that wall was solid masonry,
not painted iron; and, even down to Constantine, one chord remained
which, when struck, would always vibrate. Usurers may have sat in the
Senate, but barbarians filled the legions, and, as long as the triumph
wound its way through the Forum, men knew how to raise triumphal arches
to the victor. Perhaps, in all the ages, no more serious or majestic
monument has been conceived to commemorate the soldier than the column
of Trajan, a monument which it has been the ambition of our century to
copy.
In Paris an imitation of this trophy was erected to the greatest
captain of France, and the column of the Place Vendôme serves to
mark the grave of the modern martial blood. Raised in 1810, almost at
the moment when Nathan Rothschild became despot of the London Stock
Exchange, the tide from thence ran swiftly, and, since Sedan, the
present generation has drained to the lees the cup of realism.
No poetry can bloom in the arid modern soil, the drama has died,
and the patrons of art are no longer even conscious of shame at
profaning the most sacred of ideals. The ecstatic dream, which some
twelfth-century monk cut into the stones of the sanctuary hallowed by
the presence of his God, is reproduced to bedizen a warehouse; or the
plan of an abbey, which Saint Hugh may have consecrated, is adapted to
a railway station.
Decade by decade, for some four hundred years, these phenomena have
grown more sharply marked in Europe, and, as consolidation apparently
nears its climax, art seems to presage approaching disintegration. The
architecture, the sculpture, and the coinage of London at the close of
the nineteenth century, when compared with those of the Paris of Saint
Louis, recall the Rome of Caracalla as contrasted with the Athens of
Pericles, save that we lack the stream of barbarian blood which made
the Middle Age.
[Footnotes]
[1] _History of Rome_, Mommsen, Dickson’s trans., i. 288, 290.
[2] _History of Rome_, Niebuhr, Hare’s trans., i. 576. Niebuhr
has been followed in the text, although the “nexum” is one
of the vexed points of Roman law. (See _Über das altrömische
Schuldrecht_, Savigny.) The precise form of the contract is,
however, perhaps, not very important for the matter in hand,
as most scholars seem agreed that it resembled a mortgage, the
breach of whose condition involved not only the loss of the
pledge, but the personal liberty of the debtor. See _Gaius_,
iv. 21.
[3] _History of Rome_, Niebuhr, Hare’s trans., ii. 599. But
compare _Aulus Gellius_, xx. 1.
[4] _Ibid._, i. 582.
[5] _History of Rome_, Niebuhr, Hare’s trans., i. 583.
[6] _History of Rome_, Mommsen, Dickson’s trans., i. 472.
[7] Livy, xlv. 18.
[8] _History of Rome_, Niebuhr, Hare’s trans., i. 583.
[9] _Ibid._, ii. 603.
[10] _History of Rome_, Niebuhr, Hare’s trans., i. 574.
[11] Preface to _Virginia_.
[12] _History of Rome_, Mommsen, Dickson’s trans., i. 484.
[13] See _History of Rome_, Mommsen, Dickson’s trans., i.
298–9.
[14] See _History of Rome_, Niebuhr, Hare’s trans., iii. 22,
30.
[15] Preface to _Virginia_, Macaulay.
[16] _Histoire de l’Esclavage_, Wallon, ii. 38.
[17] Suet. _Aug._, ii. 41.
[18] Tacitus, _Ann._, ii. 48.
[19] _Ann._, vi. 39.
[20] _Ibid._, iv. 21.
[21] _Sat._, iii. 164.
[22] _L’Invasion Germanique_, Fustel de Coulanges, 146–157.
[23] Diod. xxxiv. 38. On the subject of the Sicilian slavery,
see _Histoire de l’Esclavage_, Wallon, ii. 300 _et seq._
[24] _Polybius_, ii. 15, Shuckburgh’s trans.
[25] _Provinces of the Roman Empire_, Mommsen, ii. 233.
[26] _Ibid._, ii. 239.
[27] _Deipnosophists_, v. 37.
[28] Martial, _Ep._, xii. 76.
[29] Vopiscus, _Aurelianus_, 35.
[30] _L’Invasion Germanique_, Fustel de Coulanges, 190.
[31] _Le Colonat Romain: Recherches sur quelques Problèmes
d’Histoire_, Fustel de Coulanges, 143.
[32] _Organisation Financière chez les Romains_, Marquardt, 65
_et seq._
[33] Tacitus, _Ann._, Murphy’s trans., iii. 53.
[34] _Nat. Hist._, xii. 18.
[35] Vopiscus, _Saturninus_, 8.
[36] _Provinces of the Roman Empire_, Mommsen, ii. 140.
[37] _Ann._, vi. 16, 17.
[38] See _Geschichte des Römischen Münzwesens_, Mommsen, 756.
[39] _Monnaies Byzantines_, Sabatier, i. 51, 52.
[40] _Monnaies Byzantines_, Sabatier, i. 50.
[41] _Geschichte des Römischen Münzwesens_, Mommsen, 837.
[42] _Monnaies Byzantines_, Sabatier, i. 51, 52.
[43] Pliny’s _Letters_, iii. 19.
[44] _Ibid._, ix. 37.
[45] _Digest_, xix. 2, 15, and xxxiii. 7, 20.
[46] _Letters_, x. 24. On this whole subject see _Le Colonat
Romain: Recherches sur quelques Problèmes d’Histoire_, Fustel
de Coulanges, ch. i.
[47] _Code of Justinian_, xi. 51, 1.
[48] _Le Colonat Romain_, Fustel de Coulanges, 21.
[49] _Organisation Financière chez les Romains_, Marquardt,
240; _Les Manieurs d’Argent à Rome_, Deloume, 377.
[50] See _Decline and Fall_, ch. xvii.
[51] In _C. Verrem_, IV. lxxxix.
[52] _Cicero’s Letters_, Ad Att. vi. 2; also Ad Att. v. 21, and
vi. 1.
[53] Diod. xxxvi. 3. See also _Histoire de l’Esclavage_,
Wallon, ii. 42, 44.
[54] _Satire_, viii. 89, 90.
[55] _Letters_, viii. 24.
[56] _Dio Cassius_, lxii. 2.
[57] _Nat. Hist._, xiv., _Proœmium_.
[58] _Decline and Fall_, ch. xvii.
[59] _Morals, Trans. of_ 1718, 4, 11.
[60] _Histoire de l’Esclavage_, iii. 268.
[61] _Decline and Fall_, ch. xii.
[62] _L’Invasion Germanique_, 200, 204, 223.
[63] _Dio Cassius_, lvi. 7.
[64] _Dio Cassius_, lvi. 5–8.
[65] _Ann._, iii. 25.
[66] _Ibid._, xxviii. Latin literature is full of references
to these famous laws. Tacitus, Pliny, Juvenal, and Martial
constantly speak of them. There were also many commentaries on
them by Roman jurists.
[67] _L’Organisation Militaire chez les Romains_, Marquardt,
143.
[68] _Dio Cassius_, lxxiv. 2.
[69] _Monnaies Byzantines_, Sabatier, i. 50.
[70] _History of the Byzantine Empire_, Finlay, 9.
[71] Vopiscus, _Tacitus_, 10.
[72] _Greece under the Romans_, George Finlay, 214.
[73] _Byzantine Empire_, Finlay, 256.
[74] _Byzantine Architecture_, Texier, 24.
[75] _Decline and Fall_, ch. lii.
[76] _Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela_, trans. from the
Hebrew by Asher, 54.
[77] _Monnaies Byzantines_, i. 26.
[78] See treaty with Bohemund. Anna Comnena, xiii. 7.
[79] _L’Art Byzantin_, Bayet, 16, 17.
[80] _Theb._, iii. 661.
[81] _Decline and Fall_, ch. xx.
[82] Mark v. 28, 30.
[83] _Chronicles_, ii. 124.
[84] _Anglican Schism_, Sander, trans. by Lewis, 143.
[85] _A Relation, or rather a True Account of the Island of
England_, Camden Soc. 30.
[86] _Cal._ x. No. 364. References to the calendar of State
papers edited by Messrs. Brewer and Gairdner will be made by
this word only.
[87] _Histoire du Sacrament de l’Eucharistie_, Corblet, i.
474. See also on this subject _Cæsarii Dialogus Miraculorum; De
Corpore Christi_.
[88] _Hist. Lit. de la France_, xxii. 119.
[89] _Les Moines d’Occident_, Montalembert, vi. 34.
[90] _Histoire de la Grande-Sauve_, ii. 13.
[91] _Monasticon_, v. 628, Ed. 1846.
[92] _Les Moines d’Occident_, Montalembert, vi. 101.
[93] _Sacerdotal Celibacy_, Lea, 129.
[94] _Annales Lauressenses_, Perz, i. 188.
[95] _Recueil des Chartes de l’Abbaye de Cluny_, Bruel, i. 124.
[96] _Bull. Clun._, p. 2, col. 1. Also _Manuel des Institutions
Françaises_, Luchaire, 93, 95, where the authorities are
collected.
[97] _Annales Ecclesiastici_, Baronius, year 1076.
[98] Migne, cxlviii. 790.
[99] _Decline and Fall_, ch. lx.
[100] _Dictionnaire de l’Architecture_, v. 50.
[101] _Annales Ecclesiastici_, Baronius, year 1095.
[102] _Les Familles d’Outre-Mer_, ed. Rey, 3.
[103] _Dictionnaire de l’Architecture_, viii. 108.
[104] _L’Art Arabe_, 111 _et seq._
[105] _L’Art Arabe_, 203.
[106] _Mélanges_, 458.
[107] See _Dictionnaire de l’Architecture_, Viollet-le-Duc, vi.
446.
[108] See _Les Églises de la Terre Sainte_, Vogüé, 217; _Notre
Dame de Noyon; Études sur l’Histoire de l’Art_, Vitet, ii. 122;
_Dictionnaire de L’Architecture_, Viollet-le-Duc, ii. 301.
[109] _Hist. des Croisades_, xii. 7.
[110] See, on the Syrian castles, _Étude sur les Monuments de
l’Architecture Militaire des Croisés en Syrie_, Rey.
[111] Letter 363, ed. 1877, Paris.
[112] _Sancti Bernardi, Vita et Res Gestae, Auctore Guillelmo_,
1–3.
[113] _Secunda Vita S. Bernardi Auctore Alano_, vi.
[114] _Exordium Magnum Cisterciense_, viii.
[115] Nos. 363 and 423, ed. of 1877, Paris.
[116] Letter 363.
[117] _De Vita S. Bernardi, Auctore Gaufrido_, iv. 5.
[118] Letter 256, ed. of 1877, Paris.
[119] _Hist. des Croisades_, xvi. 25.
[120] _Hist. des Croisades_, xvi. 27.
[121] _De Consideratione_, ii. 1.
[122] _Willam of Tyre_, xvi. 11, 12.
[123] _Les Familles d’Outre-Mer_, Du Cange, 405.
[124] _Histoire de la Commerce de la France_, 132.
[125] _Histoire du Commerce du Levant_, Heyd, French trans., i.
163.
[126] _Histoire du Levant_, Heyd, French trans., i. 95.
[127] See, on this question of cheaper money in the
Carlovingian period, _Nouveau Manuel de Numismatique_,
Blanchet, i. 101; also _Histoire du Commerce de la France_,
Pigeonneau, 87 _et seq._
[128] _Le Monete di Venezia_, Papadopoli, 73.
[129] _Ville-Hardouin_, ed. Wailly, xiv. 65.
[130] _Ibid._
[131] _Historiens de la France_, xix. 23.
[132] _Patrologiæ Cursus Completus_, Migne, ccxiv. 1180.
[133] _Historiens de la France_, xix. 421.
[134] _Chronique_, ed. Buchon, 44.
[135] _Ville-Hardouin_, ed. Buchon, 51.
[136] _Chronique de Ville-Hardouin_, ed. Buchon, 69.
[137] _Chronique_, ed. Wailly, xxxvii. 178.
[138] _Chronique_, ed. Wailly, lii. 239.
[139] _Chronique_, ed. Buchon, 96.
[140] _Chronique_, ed. Buchon, 99.
[141] _Patrologiæ Cursus Completus_, Migne, ccxv. 454.
[142] _Migne_, ccxv. 712.
[143] _Historia Captæ a Latinis Constantinopoleos_, Migne,
ccxii. 19.
[144] _Bibl. de l’École des Chartes_, 3d series, ii. 353.
[145] _Histoire del’Abbaye de Saint Denis_, D’Ayzac, i. 361–9.
[146] _Vie de Louis le Gros_, Suger, ed. Molinier, 61, 62.
[147] _Vie de Louis le Gros_, Suger, ed. Molinier, 70.
[148] _Ibid._, 18.
[149] Suger, ed. Molinier, 18.
[150] _Ibid._
[151] _Études sur les origines de la commune de Saint Quentin_,
Giry, 9.
[152] See _Études sur les Faires de Champagne_, Bourquelot, 72,
74; and generally on this subject.
[153] _Les Communes Françaises_, Luchaire, 221–225.
[154] _Les Communes Françaises_, Luchaire, 85.
[155] _Les Communes Françaises_, Luchaire, 233–234.
[156] _Les Communes Françaises_, Luchaire, 260.
[157] _Documents sur les Relations de la Royauté avec les
Villes de France_, Giry, 59, 61.
[158] _Les Communes Françaises_, Luchaire, 189.
[159] _Manuel des Institutions Françaises_, Luchaire, 535.
[160] _Les Communes Françaises_, Luchaire, 283.
[161] _Mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon_, ed. 1874, xii. 19.
[162] _Le Commerce de Marseille au Moyen Age_, Blancard, 3.
[163] _La Libertà delle Banche a Venezia_, Lattes, 26.
[164] _Les Grandes Compagnies de Commerce_, Bonnassieux, 23.
[165] _La Rapport entre l’or et l’argent au Temps de Saint
Louis_, Marchéville, 22, 33.
[166] _Ibid._, 42.
[167] _Les Communes Françaises_, 200, 201.
[168] The documents relating to the controversy are printed in
the _Histoire du Differend_, Dupuy.
[169] Dupuy, 48.
[170] _Ibid._, 44.
[171] See letters of Beauvais and Laon, of 1303, _Documents_,
Giry, 160.
[172] Dupuy, 55.
[173] Dupuy, 351. Articles presented June, 1303.
[174] See _Cronica di Villani_, viii. 63.
[175] _Cronica di Villani_, viii. 80. Also _Ann. Eccl._,
Baronius, year 1305.
[176] _Documents Inédits sur l’Histoire de France, Procès des
Templiers_, Michelet, i. 166.
[177] _Procès des Templiers_, Michelet, i. 37.
[178] _Ibid._, 264.
[179] _Ibid._, 75.
[180] _Cronica di Villani_, viii. 92.
[181] _Continuatio Chronici Guilelmi de Nangiaco_, mcccxiii.
[182] _La Maison du Temple_, Curzon, 200, 204.
[183] _A History of Agriculture and Prices_, J. E. Thorold
Rogers, iv. 72.
[184] _On Justification_, Works, i. 60.
[185] _On Justification_, Works, i. 51.
[186] _Institutes_, I. vii. 1 and 5.
[187] _Zwinglis Theologie_, August Baur, 319, 320.
[188] _Institutes_, IV. viii. 9.
[189] _John Wicliffe and his English Precursors_, Lechler, Eng.
trans., 302.
[190] Lechler, 349, note 1.
[191] Lechler, 348, note. Extract from _De Eucharistia_.
[192] _Acts and Monuments_, iii. 204, 205.
[193] _The Praise of Folie_, 1541. Englished by Sir Thomas
Challoner.
[194] _Parl. Hist._, Cobbett, i. 295.
[195] _Ibid._, 310.
[196] _A Supplicacyon for Beggers_, 2. Early Eng. Text Soc.
[197] _Acts and Monuments_, v. 404.
[198] _Ibid._, iii. 218.
[199] _Acts and Monuments_, iv. 196.
[200] _Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 18.
[201] _Reformation of the Church of England_, Blunt, ii. 222.
[202] _Acts and Monuments_, iv. 706.
[203] _Industrial and Commercial History of England_, Rogers,
48.
[204] _Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 715.
[205] _Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 454.
[206] _Ibid._, iv. 200. For the average prices of grain see
tables in vol. i. 245, and iv. 292.
[207] _Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 734.
[208] Chapuys to Granville, _Cal._ ix. No. 862. The State
Papers edited by Messrs. Brewer and Gairdner are referred to by
the word “Cal.”
[209] _Acts and Monuments_, v. 365.
[210] _State Papers_, ii. 552.
[211] _Chronicles_, 1, clxvii.
[212] Chapuys to Perrenot, _Cal._ x. No. 901.
[213] See _Anne Boleyn_, Friedmann, i. 43, and elsewhere.
[214] _Cal._ x. No. 908.
[215] _Burleigh and his Times_, Essays.
[216] _Cal._ vii. No. 296.
[217] _Ibid._, xi. No. 576, Chapuys to Charles.
[218] _Ibid._, xi. No. 576.
[219] _Ibid._, xi. No. 864.
[220] _Cal._ xi. No. 1045.
[221] _Cal._ xi. No. 729.
[222] _Ibid._, xi. No. 826.
[223] _Ibid._, xii. pt. i. No. 698.
[224] _Cal._ xii. pt. i. No. 976.
[225] _Marillac au Connétable_, Kaulek, 211.
[226] _Acts and Monuments_, v. 180.
[227] _Cal._ viii. No. 726.
[228] _Sander_, Lewis’ trans., 119.
[229] _State Papers_, i. 538.
[230] _Cal._ xii. pt. i. No. 498.
[231] Kaulek, 193, 194.
[232] _Ibid._, 82.
[233] _Cal._ x. No. 909.
[234] Kaulek, 274; _Sander_, Lewis, 162, and note 2.
[235] Kaulek, 50.
[236] _Lettres de Henri VIII à Anne Boleyn_, Crapelet, Lettre
3.
[237] Kaulek, 199.
[238] _Acts and Monuments_, v. 229.
[239] _History of England_, chap. 1.
[240] _Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism_, Sander, trans.
by Lewis, 161.
[241] Chapuys to Charles, _Cal._ vi. No. 1510, date Dec., 1533.
[242] _The Homilies_, Corrie, 49.
[243] _The Homilies_, Corrie, 56, 58.
[244] 31 Henry VIII., c. 14.
[245] _Acts and Monuments_, v. 368, 369.
[246] _Cal._ x. pref. xliii.
[247] See citations to the original authorities in _Henry VIII.
and the English Monasteries_, Gasquet, i. 454, and note.
[248] _Cal._ ix. No. 622. In the _Calendar_ the letter is
condensed. The extract is given in full in Gasquet, i. 261,
262.
[249] _Ibid._, No. 630. In full in Gasquet, i. 263.
[250] _Ibid._, No. 630.
[251] _Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries_, i. 439.
[252] _Cal._ ix. No. 42.
[253] _Cal._ x. pref. xlv. note.
[254] _Ibid._, ix. No. 1005.
[255] _Ibid._, ix. No. 1005.
[256] _Cal._ x. No. 364.
[257] _Ibid._, No. 1191.
[258] _Ibid._, No. 364.
[259] _Ibid._, No. 1191.
[260] _Rites of Durham_, Surtees Soc., 86.
[261] Wright, 260.
[262] Ellis, 1st Series, ii. 99.
[263] Wright, 261, 262.
[264] Ellis, 1st Series, ii. 99.
[265] _Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 64.
[266] 6 Henry VIII., c. 5; 7 Henry VIII., c. 1.
[267] _Jewel of Joy_, Becon. Also _England in the Reign of
Henry VIII._, Early Eng. Text Soc., Extra Ser., No. xxxii. p.
75.
[268] _First Sermon before Edward VI. Sermons of Bishop
Latimer_, ed. of Parker Soc., 100, 101.
[269] 22 Henry VIII., c. 12.
[270] 27 Henry VIII., c. 25.
[271] 1 Edward VI., c. 3.
[272] Brit. Mus., Cole MS. xii. 41. Cited in _Henry VIII. and
the English Monasteries_, Gasquet, ii. 514, note.
[273] _Eccl. Mem._, ii. pt. 1, 260.
[274] Sermon on Rebellion, Cranmer, _Miscellaneous Writings and
Letters_, 194–6.
[275] Sermon on Rebellion, Cranmer, _Miscellaneous Writings and
Letters_, 195, 196.
[276] _Cal._ ix. No. 193.
[277] _Eccl. Mem._, ii. pt. 1, 152.
[278] 5 and 6 Edw. VI., c. 2.
[279] _Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches_, Carlyle, Speech XI.
[280] Raleigh to Burleigh, _Life of Sir Walter Raleigh_,
Edwards, ii. 76, letter xxxiv.
[281] _The Reformation of the Church of England_, ii. 68.
[282] _History of England_, v. 432.
[283] Gorham’s _Reformation Gleanings_, 61.
[284] Ridley’s disputation at Oxford in 1554, _Acts and
Monuments_, vi. 474.
[285] _A Godly Letter to the Faithful, Works_, iii. 176.
[286] _Ibid._, 177.
[287] _A Faithful Admonition, Works_, iii. 283.
[288] _Ibid._, iii. 281, 282.
[289] _On True Obedience_, Heywood’s ed., 73.
[290] _The Institution of a Christian Man_, Preface,
_Formularies of Faith of Henry VIII._, Lloyd, 26.
[291] See Burnet’s _History of the Reformation, Records_, part
I. book iii. quest. 9.
[292] _S. P. Dom. Eliz._ vol. 176, No. 69.
[293] _Zurich Letters_, 1st Series, 287.
[294] _Towchinge the bill and the booke exhibited in the
Parliament 1586 for a further reformation of the Churche, S. P.
Dom. Eliz_. 199, No. 1.
[295] _History of the Non-jurors_, Lathbury, 50.
[296] See _History of the Reformation_, Burnet, Pocock’s ed.
_Records_, part I. book iii. quest 9.
[297] _History of England_, ch. 1.
[298] _History of England_, ch. iii.
[299] _Ibid._, ch. vi.
[300] _History of England_, ch. xiv.
[301] _Queen’s conference upon Graunt of a Subsedy, etc._,
1584. _State Papers, Dom. Eliz._, 176, No. 69.
[302] _History of England_, ch. iii.
[303] _Cal._ x., No. 570.
[304] _Ambassades_, v. 150. Quotation from _History of the
Church of England_, Dixon, iv. 450.
[305] _Pretended Divorce of Henry VIII._, Harpsfield, Camden
Society, 291.
[306] Burnet’s _History of the Reformation_, Pocock’s ed., i.
428.
[307] _Ibid._, iii. 376.
[308] Blunt’s _Reformation_, i. 475.
[309] _Anglican Schism_, Sander, Lewis’ trans., 181. Also
_Pretended Divorce of Henry VIII._, Harpsfield, 290.
[310] _Acts and Monuments_, v. 230.
[311] _Agriculture and Prices_, Rogers, v. 804.
[312] _History of England_, viii. 425.
[313] _Influence of the Sea Power upon History_, Mahan, 41.
[314] _English Seamen of the Sixteenth Century_, 6.
[315] Anderson’s _History of Commerce_, i. 400.
[316] _S. P. Dom. Eliz._, 53.
[317] _Wealth of Nations_, book 4, ch. i.
[318] _Discourse of Trade_, Child, ed. 1775, 8.
[319] _History of England_, ch. iii.
[320] _Discourse of Trade_, Josiah Child, ed. 1775, 8, 9, 10.
[321] _Ibid._, Pref. xxxi.
[322] _Ibid._, 41.
[323] _American Biography_, Sparks, ii. 388.
[324] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. iv. c. 3, pt. 1.
[325] Thurloe’s _State Papers_, v. 433, 434.
[326] _Annals of the Coinage of Britain_, Ruding, iii. 378.
[327] _Annals of the Coinage_, Ruding, iii. 470.
[328] _Investigations in Currency and Finance_, Jevons, 140.
[329] _Annals of the Coinage_, Ruding, iv. 26.
[330] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. iv. c. 1.
[331] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. ii. c. 2.
[332] _Lord Clive._
[333] Macaulay’s essays have been the subject of much recent
adverse criticism; but, in regard to the plundering of
Hindostan, nothing of consequence has been brought forward
against him. All recent historical work relating to India must
be taken with suspicion. The whole official influence has been
turned to distorting evidence in order to make a case for the
government.
[334] _Lord Clive._
[335] _Lord Clive._
[336] _Warren Hastings._
[337] _History of the Cotton Manufacture_, 115.
[338] _A Tour Thro’ the whole Island of Great Britain_, ed.
1753, iii. 136, 137.
[339] _Lives of Boulton and Watt_, Smiles, 484.
[340] _First Letter on a Regicide Peace._
[341] _Theory and Practice of Banking_, i. 507.
[342] _Considerations of the Lowering of Interests. Works_, ed.
1823, v. 49.
[343] _The Rothschilds_, Reeves, 51.
[344] The Rothschilds, Reeves, 192, 199.
[345] _Ibid._, 200.
[346] Wherever reference is made to comparative prices of
commodities, the authority used has been the tables published
by W. S. Jevons in _Investigations in Currency and Finance_,
144.
[347] _Annals of the Coinage_, Ruding, iv. 37.
[348] _Overstone Tracts_, 49.
[349] _History of Prices_, i. 158.
[350] _Political Life of Sir Robert Peel_, Doubleday, i. 218,
note.
[351] _Theory and Practice of Banking_, Macleod, ed. 1893, ii.
103.
[352] See Hansard, New Series, viii. 189.
[353] _History of the Bank of England_, i. 348.
[354] _History of the Bank of England_, i. 347.
[355] _History of the Currency_, Maclaren, 161.
[356] _Theory and Practice of Banking_, Macleod, ii. 117, 118.
[357] _Overstone Tracts_, 325.
[358] _Ibid._, 191.
[359] _Ibid._, 318.
[360] _Theory and Practice of Banking_, ii. 147.
[361] _Overstone Tracts_, 573, 574.
[362] _Cobden and the League_, Ashworth, 174.
[363] _Theory and Practice of Banking_, Macleod, ii. 169, 170.
[364] Hansard, Third Series, xcv. 399.
[365] _Theory and Practice of Banking_, ii. 170.
[366] Hansard, Third Series, xcv. 398.
[367] _Overstone Tracts_, 319.
[368] See _Journal of Roy. Stat. Soc._, liv. 464.
[369] Dénombrement de 1891, 261.
[370] _Annuaire de l’Économie Politique_, 1894, Block, 18.
[371] _La Population Française_, ii. 214.
[372] _Report of the Commission appointed in India to enquire
into the Causes of the Riots which took place in the year
1875, in the Poona and Ahmednagar Districts of the Bombay
Presidency_, 12.
[373] _Report Of The Commission Appointed In India To Enquire
Into The Causes Of The Riots Which Took Place In The Year
1875, In The Poona And Ahmednagar Districts Of The Bombay
Presidency_, 159.
[374] _Report of the Commission, etc._, 25, 26.
[375] _Ibid._, 167.
[376] _Report of the Commission, etc._, 168.
[377] See _Musalmans and Money-lenders in the Punjab_,
Thorburn.
[378] _Report of the Commission, etc._, 168.
[379] See _Brief History of the Indian Peoples_, Hunter, 50.
[380] See _History of the Romans_, ed. of 1852, Merivale, ii.
81, where the authorities are collected.
[381] Plutarch’s _Lives_, Clough’s trans., iv. 123.
[382] _Ibid._, 298.
[383] _Ibid._, 142.
[384] Genesis xxxiv. 11, 12.
[385] Aristotle, _Pol._, ii. 9.
[386] Plutarch’s _Lives_, Clough’s trans., iv. 507.
[387] _Faery Queene_, Spenser, iv. 5, 1.
[388] _Entretiens sur l’Architecture_, i. 102.
[389] _Ann._, xv. 44.
[390] _Ann._, xv. 44.
[391] _Marc-Aurèle_, Renan, 600.
[392] Tertullian, _Ad Scapulam_, 5.
[393] _L’Antechrist_, 163 _et seq._
[394] _Études sur l’Histoire de l’Art_, Vitet, i. 200.
[395] _L’Art de Batir chez les Byzantins_, Choisy, 5, 6.
[396] _Recherches pour servir à l’Histoire de la Peinture et de
la Sculpture Chrétiennes en Orient_, Bayet, 99.
[397] _Ibid._, 99.
[398] _Buildings of Justinian_, Procopius, trans. by Stewart,
i. 1.
[399] _Ibid._
[400] _Dictionnaire de l’Architecture_, Art. “Peinture.”
[401] _Entretiens_, i. 102.
INDEX
Acre: siege of 130;
defence of by Templars 171.
Alaric: served in Roman army 61.
Alexander, Emperor of Russia: breach with Napoleon 324.
Alexis: treats with crusaders 139;
death of 143.
Anastasius: wealth of 51;
builds long wall 51.
Anglicanism, _see_ Church of England.
Antwerp: rise of 201;
centre of exchanges 201;
sack of 287.
Architecture: Italian 88;
Gothic 89;
Byzantine 89;
Saracenic 90;
crusading 100;
Greek and Roman 372;
Byzantine 375 _et seq._;
Gothic 378;
modern 382;
_see_ Ogive.
Armada: defeated by yeomen 256;
loss of 287.
Army, _see_ Police.
Art: decline of 380, 381;
_see_ Architecture.
Articles, ecclesiastical: Six 232, 268;
Forty-two 262;
Lambeth 268.
Attila: ransoms Constantinople 50;
vision of 63.
Aureus: depreciation of 27;
passes by weight 31.
Baldwin, Count of Edessa: 105;
King of Jerusalem 105.
Baldwin, Emperor of the East: 146;
reproved by Innocent 147.
Bank of England: incorporated 303;
early issues of 319;
suspends cash payments 327;
policy of prior to 1810 327;
resumes specie payments 330;
hoards gold 331–333;
paper in panic of 1825 335;
Bank Act of 1844 336;
suspension of Bank Act 344.
Bank of Genoa: 168.
Bank of Venice: 168, 169.
Bankers: mediæval 168;
increase of English country after 1760 319;
poor credit of 320;
increase issues in 1823 333;
rise of great modern houses 321;
policy of 328;
supremacy of 344;
absolute government by 353.
Barbarians: imported by Roman emperors 39;
lack of in modern times 363;
formed strength of Roman armies 363;
want of weakness in modern civilization 364;
_see_ Coloni.
Boadicea: revolt of 37.
Boleyn, Anne: 212;
sweating sickness 226;
crowned 230.
Boleyn, Thomas: character and rise of 213.
Boniface VIII.: character of 172;
quarrel with Philip 173;
bulls of 174, 175;
seized at Anagni 177.
Bosra: retreat from 119;
miracle at 119, 120.
Boulton, Matthew: rise of 314;
partnership with Watt 316;
debts of 316.
Bullion Committee: 328, 329.
Burleigh, Lord: rise of 213;
hostile to adventurers 256;
family of typical landlords 267.
Cæsar: army of 363.
Capital: centres at Constantinople 28;
Mill’s definition of 313;
accelerates movement 314;
accumulates at London 319;
_see_ England and London.
Carthusians: martyrdom of 221.
Cecil, _see_ Burleigh.
Champagne: fairs of 158;
centres of Eastern trade 158;
decline of 201.
Chantries: confiscation of 259.
Child, Sir Josiah: rise of 294;
estimates England’s wealth 295.
Church, Catholic: _see_ Early Christian;
becomes dominant in Italy 63;
secular character of mediæval clergy of 71;
secular clergy of 73;
claims of under Hildebrand 75;
makes papacy self-perpetuating 75;
emancipates itself from civil power 76, 77;
schism of with Constantinople 78;
character of clergy of at Reformation 264, 265;
miracles of, _see_ Miracles, Cluny, Convents.
Church, Early Christian: socialistic 60;
acquires wealth in third century 60;
officially recognized 61;
favours barbarians 62;
subservient to Roman emperors 62;
based on miracles 63 _et seq._;
imaginative 373;
poverty of 373;
art of 374.
Church, Eastern: remains subject to the emperors 78–88;
architecture of 89;
plundered 145;
art of 376.
Church of England: an economic phenomenon 228;
Henry supreme head of 228;
robbed by landlords 230;
orthodox under Henry VIII. 232;
spoiled by Edward VI. 259, 260;
Calvinistic 262;
docile to lay dictation 264;
faith of regulated by statute 266;
without fixed faith 268;
ruled by Elizabeth 269;
hated by Puritans and Catholics 270;
divine right distinctive doctrine of 271;
organized as police by landlords 272;
mercenary 273;
types of clergy of 275;
great bishops of 276 _et seq._;
upheld by James I. 284;
persecutes Puritans under Bancroft 285.
Clairvaux: foundation of 109;
appeals to pope against Philip the Fair 172;
_see_ Saint Bernard.
Claudius, Appius: a usurer 7;
enslaves Virginia 8;
enforces usury laws 9.
Clement V.: election of 178;
bargain with Philip 178;
entices Molay to Paris 180;
persecutes Templars 181;
tries Molay 184;
death of 185.
Clermont: council of 83.
Clive, Lord: birth of 306;
campaigns of 307;
Plassey 308;
wealth of 309;
attacked by landlords 310.
Cluny: founded 72;
growth of 73;
controls papacy 75.
Cobden: attacks landlords 341;
origin of 341.
Cobham, Lord: trial of 193;
attempts conventual confiscation 195.
Cœur-de-Lion: leads crusade 130;
treats with Saladin 131.
Coinage, Roman: copper 15;
silver 20;
debasement of 26;
becomes gold monometallic 27, 30;
passes by weight 31;
of Constantinople 55;
debasement of coinage of Constantinople 56;
becomes silver under Charlemagne 129;
Venetian 129;
gold of thirteenth century 129;
debasement of French pound 170;
debasement of English penny 195;
base money of Henry VIII. 206;
standard restored by Elizabeth 300;
recoinage by William III. 302;
depreciation in eighteenth century 303;
English gold of nineteenth century 330;
passes by weight 326, 330;
_see_ Gold standard.
Coloni: debtors 33;
barbarians settled as 39;
predecessors of mediæval serfs 244.
Commerce: _see_ Eastern trade, Fairs of Champagne, Slaving,
West Indies.
Commons: rights of tenants in 244;
enclosure of, in sixteenth century 245;
cause of Kett’s rebellion 250;
final absorption of 317.
Communes: rise of 157;
character of 160;
hostile to clergy 162;
not martial 164;
insolvency of 169.
Constantine: built Constantinople 28;
vision of 60;
victory of Milvian Bridge 61.
Constantinople: becomes the economic centre of the world 28;
prosperity of after fall of Western Empire 49, 50;
colonized by Roman capitalists 49;
taxation of 49;
poverty of under Theodosius II. 50;
prosperity of under Justinian I. 51;
population changes under Heraclius 52;
becomes an Asiatic city 52;
declines in eleventh century 53;
civilization of economic 53;
description of by Rabbi Benjamin 53;
population of economic and cowardly 54;
economic condition of in twelfth century 87;
army of 88;
sack of 144;
_see_ Coinage and Architecture.
Convents: mediæval founders of 68;
efficacy of intercession of 69;
Benedictine 72;
early discipline of 72;
consolidation of 72;
Cluny 73;
control papacy 78;
armies organized by 99;
fortresses built by 99;
patronized for miracles 109;
wealth of 154;
attacked by feudal nobles 155;
hostile to communes 160, 161;
taxed by Philip the Fair 172;
revenues seized by Edward I. 195;
attacked by Lollards 196;
bill to suppress 231;
visitation of 235;
visitors of 235–238;
spoliation of 239.
Corn: price of at Rome 17;
distribution of at Rome 18;
price of in 1849 345;
Corn Laws 340;
repeal of 340.
Councils of the Church: Hildebrand’s propositions at council
of 1076 75;
of Clermont 83;
of Troyes 98;
of Étampes 110;
Néelle 136;
Vienne 184.
Cranmer: rise of 278;
character of 279;
death of 280.
Credit: dawn of in thirteenth century 167;
rise of modern system of 303;
extension of after Plassey 319;
regulated by Bank Act of 1844 336;
prices dependent on 337;
weapon of the creditor class 349.
Cromwell, Oliver: raises Ironsides 252;
attacks Spanish America 301;
intercepts plate fleet 301.
Cromwell, Thomas: rise of 208;
arrest of 224;
vicar general 231;
proceeds against convents 233:
prosecutes Abbot of Glaston 240;
death of 242.
Cross: miracle worked by at Bosra 119;
_see_ Relics.
Crusade: first 84;
takes Jerusalem 85;
second, preached by Saint Bernard 112;
suffers before Atalia 115;
defeat of 118;
crusading becomes commercial 124;
third, led by Cœur-de-Lion 129;
takes Acre 130;
of Constantinople, preached 132;
reaches Venice 134;
diverted by Dandolo 139;
attacks Zara 138;
sacks Constantinople 145;
of Damietta 150;
defeated in Egypt 151.
Currency: regulated by Charlemagne 129;
mediæval 168;
contraction of in thirteenth century 169;
debasement of English 194;
depreciation of in Middle Ages 204;
under Henry VIII. 207;
paper 303;
management of by producers 326;
by bankers 330;
_see_ Coinage, Bank of England, Bankers.
Dalhousie, Lord: administration of 356.
Damietta, _see_ Crusade.
Dandolo, Henry: character of 132;
treats with Franks 133;
takes command of crusade 137;
diverts crusade 139;
excommunicated 139;
assaults Constantinople 141;
shriven 147.
Darcy, Thomas, Loid: character of 216;
declines to betray Aske 217;
execution of 219;
dying speech to Cromwell 219.
Denarius: depreciation of at Rome 26;
repudiation of 26;
of Charlemagne 128;
of Venice 129;
_see_ Penny.
Diocletian: a slave 27;
established capital at Nicomedia 27;
returns to silver coinage 30.
Divine right: defined 272;
_see_ Church of England.
Divorce: _see_ Domestic relations.
Domestic relations: ancient and modern 365 _et seq._
Dovercourt: rood of 200.
Drake: rise of 255;
death of 256;
cruises of 288.
Dudley, John, Duke of Northumberland: rise of 251;
suppresses Kett’s rebellion 252;
supersedes Seymour 261;
quarrel with Knox 262.
East India Companies: organized 292;
English company commercial up to 1757 306;
administration of 309.
Eastern Empire, _see_ Constantinople.
Eastern trade: in Rome 23, 24;
centres at Constantinople 28;
migrates to Italy 126;
early routes of 128;
character of in twelfth century 128;
brings bullion to Europe 129;
centres in Champagne 159;
centres at Antwerp 201;
at Amsterdam 287;
at London 291;
drains silver from Europe 299;
effect of Plassey on 310.
Edessa: position of 86;
capture of 103;
occupied by Baldwin 105.
Egypt: cheap labour of 19;
grain ships of 19;
architecture of 90;
conquered by Saladin 103;
slave trade with Venice of 126;
crusaders defeated in 151.
Elizabeth: greed of 257;
severe to clergy 269;
letter about Ely House 270.
England: Lollardy in 186;
Reformation in, an economic phenomenon 190;
debasement of currency in 194;
martyrdoms in 199;
condition of in Middle Ages 202;
new nobility of 212 _et seq._;
convents suppressed in 233 _et seq._;
population of in Middle Ages 243;
social revolution in, in sixteenth century 245, 246;
not originally maritime 254;
seamen of 255;
prosperity of in seventeenth century 292;
industrial revolution in 315;
distress in after 1815 332;
ruin of aristocracy of 341, 348;
money-lenders autocratic in 344;
_see_ Bank, and Church of England, and Yeomen.
Exchanges: _see_ Rome, Constantinople, Eastern trade, Fairs of
Champagne, Venice.
Fairs, _see_ Champagne.
Fetish, _see_ Relics.
Fisher: temperament of 277.
Flotte: chancellor of Philip the Fair 165.
France: convents of in tenth century 72;
Cluny 73;
decentralization of in eleventh century 80;
money of 80;
barbarian invasions of 80;
seat of Gothic architecture 89;
ogive introduced into 95;
emotional in eleventh century 107;
disintegration of in tenth century 152;
kings of enjoy supernatural powers 153;
alliance of crown with clergy 154;
consolidation of under Philip Augustus 158;
centralization of under Saint Louis 165;
depreciation of coinage of 170;
estates of sustain Philip the Fair 174;
castles of 202.
Frumentariæ Leges, _see_ Corn.
Gardiner, Stephen: on _True Obedience_ 265;
rise of 276;
death of 277.
Germans: hunted by Romans for slaves 39;
used as recruits 40;
invade the Empire 46;
character of in fourth century 48;
adopt the gold standard 347.
Glastonbury: suppression of 240.
Godfrey de Bouillon: elected King of Jerusalem 85;
his kingdom 86;
his alliance with Venice 127.
Gold: ratio of to silver in Roman Empire 30;
fall of value of in sixth century 48;
ratio of to silver in thirteenth century 169.
Gold standard: in Rome 31;
under the Merovingians 80;
in England 330;
Overstone’s views on 337;
in Germany 347;
elsewhere 348;
effect of 347.
Gunther: chronicle of 137;
sails with Dandolo 138.
Hanse of London: organization of 158;
trades at fairs of Champagne 159;
Italian merchants frequent 159.
Hastings: Governor-General 310;
policy of 311.
Hattin: battle of 123.
Hawkins, John: a slaver 289.
Héloïse, hymn of 368.
Henry IV., Emperor: breach with Hildebrand 75;
penance at Canossa 77;
death of 77.
Henry VIII.: court of 212;
character of 220;
Lambert’s trial 226;
supreme head 228;
orthodox 229;
suppresses convents 233;
revises Formularies of Faith 266;
helpless without landlords 267.
Heraclius: disasters under 52.
Hildebrand: prior of Cluny 74;
propositions presented by in council of Rome 75;
excommunicates Henry IV. 76;
Canossa 77.
Holland: decay of 318.
Hospital, _see_ Knights of.
Howard, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk: family of 214;
character of 215;
commands against Pilgrims of Grace 215;
tries to corrupt Darcy 217;
arrests Cromwell 224.
Hugh Capet: elected by clergy 153.
Hugh du Puiset, _see_ Louis the Fat.
Hun, Richard: death of 198.
Imagination: basis of mediæval Church 60;
gives power to priesthood 63;
cause of relic worship 64;
vivid in age of decentralization 69;
most intense in tenth century 72;
evolves Cluny 73;
cause of Hildebrand’s power 78;
cause of crusades 82;
inspires Gothic architecture 89;
strong in Saint Bernard 108;
weakness of Louis VII. 117:
lacking in Venetians 126;
its power in France in thirteenth century 136;
strength of in Church up to 1200 148;
a weakness in war 151;
economic mind lacks 162;
cause of Templars’ martyrdom 183;
lacking in English reformers 191;
Anglican clergy without 259;
Tudor aristocracy without 268;
strong in early Christians 373;
in contempt in nineteenth century 380, 381.
India: failure of Romans to conquer 12;
hoards in 305;
conquered by England 307 _et seq._;
spoliation of 309–311;
influx of treasure from 313;
flow of silver to 320;
value of bullion exported to in 1810 321;
in 1840 339;
centralization of 356;
mutiny in 356;
money-lenders of 357;
fate of warlike tribes in 358;
_see_ Eastern trade.
Industrial revolution: begins 313;
caused by Indian treasure 314.
Innocent III.: incites crusade 132;
excommunicates Philip Augustus 135;
Dandolo 138;
absolves Dan dolo 147;
reproves Baldwin 147.
Inquisition: organized 191.
Jacques de Vitry: hates bourgeoisie 163.
Jerusalem: capture of 85;
kingdom of 86;
conquest of kingdom by Saracens 123.
Joscelin de Courtney, Count of Edessa: 105;
death of 106;
son’s death 118.
Justification by faith: corner stone of Protestantism 187;
economic device 188;
taught by Cranmer 231;
included in Forty-two Articles 262.
Justinian I.: prosperity of 51;
army of 51;
taxation by 52;
architecture under 53.
Karak: castle of 86, 121.
Kett, _see_ Rebellion.
Knights of Temple and Hospital: origin of 97, 98;
manors owned by in Europe 98;
castles of 99;
Knights of the Temple: possessions of 170;
faith of 171;
arrested 180;
tortured 181;
defence of 181;
burned 183;
disposition of property of 185.
Knox, John: appointed royal chaplain 262;
offered bishopric 262;
breach with Dudley 263.
Krak des Chevaliers: 100.
Lambert: martyrdom of 281.
Landlords: Roman 21;
enslave their tenants 33;
form aristocracy of Empire 41;
not martial 42;
English mercenary 212;
rise of 227;
confiscate Church property 230;
evict yeomen 245;
despoil chantries 259, 200;
control Crown 267;
without faith 268;
organize Church 272;
fear army 273;
not martial 227, 245, 254, 255, 256, 267, 268, 283;
persecute Nonconformists 295;
persecute adventurers 295;
conquered in 1688 297;
jealous of Clive and Hastings 309;
suffer after 1815 332;
distressed in 1841 340;
attacked by Cobden 341;
ruined 348;
of Oude 356.
Latimer: describes his father’s farm 247;
martyrdom of 282.
Leo the Great: visits Attila 63.
Leo IX.: election of 75.
Licinian Laws 10;
effect of 11.
Lollards: description of 187;
_Book of Conclusions_ of 193;
policy of toward monks 195.
London: hot-bed of Lollardism 197;
population of in 1500 203;
power of 293;
population of in 1685 295;
economic centre of the world 322;
art of 381–383;
_see_ Eastern trade and Hanse of London.
Louis the Fat: defeats Hugh du Puiset 155;
obtains Montlhéri 157.
Louis VII.: character of 112;
leads second crusade 114;
quarrels at Antioch 117;
superstition of 117;
repulsed at Damascus 117;
_see_ Crusade.
Madre-de-Dios: capture of 257.
Mahrattas: conquest of 358;
disappearance of 350.
Margat: castle of 101.
Marriage: _see_ Domestic relations.
Martin, Abbot: sails with Dandolo 138;
steals relics 148.
Marwaris: 357;
destroy Mahrattas 359.
Milo, Archbishop of Rheims: 71.
Miracles: early Christian 63;
mediæval 64 _et seq._;
_see_ Bosra, Relics.
Molay, Grand Master: lured to Paris 180;
burned 184.
Monasticism: _see_ Convents.
Money: Rome depleted of 23;
centres at Constantinople 28;
rises in value under Empire 35;
falls in value under Charlemagne 129;
rises in value in thirteenth century 169;
rises in fifteenth century 194;
rises under Henry VIII. 206;
falls after opening of Potosi 207;
abundant stimulates movement 299;
a form of energy 304;
hoarded in India 304;
falls at close of eighteenth century 320;
rises in nineteenth century 337, 360;
_see_ Capital, Coinage, Currency, Prices.
Mons Sacer: secession to 9.
Monte Casino: founded 72.
Montfort, Simon de: joins crusade 132;
leaves Dandolo 138.
Montlhéri: lords of 156;
castle 157.
Nantes: revocation of Edict of 318.
Napoleon: decline of 324;
lacking soldiers 364;
column erected to 381.
Nobility: feudal French 154;
English 216, 243;
Tudor, _see_ Landlords.
Nogaret: captures Boniface 176, 177.
Northumberland: _see_ Dudley.
Nour-ed-Din: Sultan of Aleppo 103;
occupies Cairo 103;
repulses Louis VII. 117;
kills Raymond de Poitiers 118.
Ogive: of Eastern origin 95;
appears in transition architecture 96.
Overstone, Lord: rise of 336;
conceives Bank Act 336;
financial policy of 337 _et seq._
Panic: under Tiberius 25;
of thirteenth century 169, 170;
of 1810 325;
of 1825 334;
allayed by paper money 335;
of 1847 342.
Passive obedience: _see_ Divine right.
Patricians: usurers 7;
not martial 7;
sanction Licinian Laws 10;
_see_ Usury.
Pauperism: under Henry VII I. 249;
in 1848 345.
Peel, Sir Robert: represents Lombard Street 330;
separates from his father on money issue 330;
his Resumption Act 331;
effect of 331;
repeals Corn Laws 340;
parentage 342.
Pelagius, Cardinal: commands crusade 150.
Penny: the Roman, _see_ Denarius;
of Charlemagne 129;
depreciation of Venetian 129;
depreciation of English in fourteenth century 195;
under Henry VIII. 206, 207.
Philip Augustus: regal of France vowed for recovery of 65;
belief in intercession 69;
commands crusade 129;
returns to Fiance 130;
divorced from Ingeburga 135;
excommunicated 135.
Philip the Fair: character of 171;
quarrel with Boniface 172;
defeated at Courtray 175;
seizes Boniface 177;
makes Clement V. pope 178;
arrests Templars 180;
tortures Templars 182;
death of 185.
Pilgrimage of Grace: _see_ Rebellion.
Plassey: battle of 308;
effect of 313.
Plebeians: farmers 6;
form infantry 6;
sold for debt 7;
secede to Mons Sacer 9;
favoured by Licinian Laws 10;
overthrow patricians 10;
suffer from Asiatic competition 11;
suffer from slave labour 12;
insolvent 22;
become _coloni_ 33;
disappear 44, 45.
Police, a paid: lack of, causes defeat of patricians 39;
an effect of money 45;
organized by Augustus 45;
makes capital autocratic at Rome 46;
impossible when the defence in war is superior to the attack 79;
lack of, causes weakness of the Kingdom of Jerusalem 99, 121, 122;
the weapon of an economic community 164;
an effect of wealth and the basis of centralization 165;
in England under Henry VIII. 245;
destroys martial type 245;
drives adventurers from England 254;
resistless in nineteenth century 353.
Pompey: defeat of 364.
Potosi: discovery 207.
Prices: fall of, under Trajan 33;
rise of in thirteenth century 167;
fall of in fifteenth century 203;
rise of in sixteenth century 207, 283;
rise of after Plassey 319;
culminate in 1809 324;
fall of in England after 1815 330;
depressed by gold standard 337;
fall of after Bank Act 339;
rise of after 1849 345;
fall of since 1873 349.
Producers: predominance of 321;
currency system of 328, 329;
weakness of modern 349;
Indian 360.
Puritans: reject royal supremacy 264;
resist ecclesiastical confiscation 270;
eviction of clergy 285;
emigration of 285;
foes of Spaniards 289.
Pyrrhus: admires Roman infantry 11;
defeat of 11.
Raleigh: family of 255;
captures Madre-de-Dios 257;
death of 257.
Raymond de Poitiers: at feud with de Courtney 107;
breach with Louis VII. 117;
death of 118.
Rebellion: of Pilgrimage of Grace 216;
suppression of 222;
Kett’s 250;
in West of England 250, 252.
Reformation: an economic movement 188;
in England 230;
under Edward VI. 259, 260;
_see_ Church of England, Convents, Lollards.
Reginald de Chatillon 121.
Regulus: poverty of 15.
Relics: magical 64;
gifts to 65;
list of English 66;
worship of cause of crusades 81;
true cross 119;
plunder of at Constantinople 148;
despised 151;
relic worship costly 192–196;
desecrated in England 200.
Rent: rise of money value of in Rome 32;
effect of 33, 34;
substitution of for military service 245;
rises in sixteenth century 247;
effect of rise 248;
rise of in seventeenth century 283;
fall of after 1815 causes insolvency of landlords 332;
dependent on Corn Laws 340;
fall of after 1873 ruins gentry 348.
Ridley: doctrine concerning sacrament 261;
burned 282.
Robinson, John: congregation of 285.
Rome: early society of 1;
classes in 2;
law of debt in 2–4;
early army of 9;
not maritime 12;
slavery in 13;
economic revolution in 14;
a plutocracy 15;
annexes Egypt 17;
senators land-owners 21;
great domains of 21;
conquests of 23;
unable to compete with Asia 23;
foreign exchanges unfavourable to 23;
insolvent 28;
decline of 37;
ceases breeding soldiers 40;
later emperors of foreign adventurers 40;
governed by a monied oligarchy 41;
economic type autocratic in 42;
women of emancipated 43;
paid police of 45;
barbarian invasions 46, 47;
domestic relations in 369;
art of 372;
architecture of 381;
_see_ Coinage, Slaving, Usurers, Usury.
Rothschilds: rise of 322;
establish house in London 323.
Russell, John, Earl of Bedford: conducts trial of
Abbot of Glaston 241.
Saint Bernard: birth of 108;
enters Citeaux 108;
founds Clairvaux 109;
recognizes Innocent II. 110;
preaches second crusade 112;
miracles of 113;
declines to lead crusade 114;
remarks on defeat of crusade 118.
Saint Cuthbert: plunder of shrine of 239.
Saint Denis: Abbey of 154.
Saint Riquier: sacrilege at 162.
Saint Sophia: architecture of 89, 377;
desecration of 145.
Saint Thomas à Becket: shrine of 65.
Saint Thomas Aquinas: veneration of for Eucharist 67.
Saladin: sends physician to Richard 94;
crowned Sultan 104;
kills Reginald de Chatillon 121;
Hattin 122;
campaign against Richard 130;
treats with Richard 131.
Saracens: architecture of 89, 90;
household decorations of 90;
philosophy of 93;
sciences of 94;
_see_ Crusades, Nour-ed-Din, Saladin, Zenghi.
Schism: Greek 78.
Seymour, Protector: confiscations under 261;
executed 261.
Sicily: cheap labour in 16;
servile war in 16;
cheap grain of 17.
Silver: Roman standard 26;
discarded in Rome 31;
restored by Charlemagne 128;
ratio of to gold in Rome 30;
to gold in thirteenth century 169;
Potosi 204;
Spaniards plundered of 288;
brought to England by piracy 291;
ratio to gold in seventeenth century 300;
standard in England 300;
exported to India in eighteenth century 299–302;
in 1810 320;
discarded by England 330;
by Germany 347;
relation to Asiatic competition 360;
_see_ Coinage, Currency, Denarius, Gold standard.
Slavery: for debt in Rome 5;
plebeians sink into 33;
Roman population exhausted by 36;
in West Indies 289, 290.
Slaving: part of Roman fiscal system 34;
by Roman emperors 39;
Venetian 126;
English 291;
_see_ Hawkins.
Smith, Captain John: career of 295.
Solidus: _see_ Aureus.
Somerset: Duke of, _see_ Seymour.
Spain: empire of 286;
war with Flanders 287;
plundered by Drake 288;
attacked by Cromwell 301;
_see_ Armada, West Indies.
Spanish America: revolution of 324.
Suez Canal: effect of 355.
Sylvester II.: thought a sorcerer 81;
proposes a crusade 83.
Syria: industrial 25;
_see_ Architecture, Crusades, Eastern trade, Saracens.
Temple, _see_ Knights of the.
Tenures: primitive Roman 1;
servile Roman 33;
English military 244;
the manor 244;
modern economic 245;
Indian peasant 356.
Thompson, Charles Andrew: petition of 332.
Tiberias: battle of, _see_ Hattin.
Tortosa: fortress of 101;
surrender of 171.
Trade, _see_ Eastern trade, Fairs of Champagne, Slaving.
Urban II.: preaches at Clermont 83.
Usurers: form Roman aristocracy 2;
checked by Licinian Laws 10;
absolute in Rome 46;
rise of in England 321;
absolute in Europe 353;
Indian 357;
_see_ Bankers.
Usury: a patrician privilege 2;
stronghold of in Roman fiscal system 5;
ruins Roman provinces 35;
basis of Roman slaving 36;
_see_ Usurers.
Vagrant Acts: English 248.
Venice: rise of 125;
slave trade of 126;
illicit trade of with Saracens 126;
population unimaginative 126;
navy of 127;
co-operates with Godfrey de Bouillon 127;
holds Syrian ports 127;
coinage of 129;
participates in crusade of Constantinople 137;
_see_ Crusade;
packet service to Flanders 201;
decline of 298.
Vézelay: second crusade preached at 112;
feud with Counts of Nevers 161.
Ville-Hardouin: chronicle of 132.
Virginia: story of 8.
War: _see_ Police.
Watt, James: invents engine 314;
partnership with Boulton 316.
West Indies: Spanish revenue drawn from 287;
trade of lucrative 291;
Cromwell attacks 301.
Whiting, Abbot of Glaston: martyrdom of 241.
Wickliffe: begins his agitation 192.
William of Tyre: describes origin of Temple 97;
defeat of Louis VII. in Cadmus Mountains 115;
breach between Louis and Prince Raymond 117;
the collapse of Kingdom of Jerusalem 118.
Wiltshire: Earl of, _see_ Boleyn.
Yeomen: form British infantry 243;
small farmers 244;
decline of under Henry VIII. 245;
form Ironsides 252;
weaker become agricultural labourers 253;
become merchants 254;
become adventurers 254;
form English martial type 255;
extinction of 317;
migration to towns of 317;
descendants of become manufacturers and usurers 341, 342.
Zara: attack on 134;
stormed 138.
Zenghi: rise of 103;
captures Edessa 103.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Law of Civilization and Decay, by Brooks Adams