INDICATIONS OF THE SURVIVANCE OF ANCIENT LITERATURE, THROUGH A PERIOD
EXTENDING FROM THE DECLINE OF LEARNING IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY, TO ITS
RESTORATION IN THE FIFTEENTH.
General epithets usually carry with them a meaning that oversteps
the bounds of truth: we hear of “the dark ages”--“the period of
intellectual night”--“the season of winter in the history of man”--and
we are apt to imagine that during the times thus designated the human
mind had become utterly palsied, and that all learning was extinct.
But in fact throughout that period, reason, though often misdirected,
was not sleeping: philosophy was rather bewildered than inert; and
learning, although immured, was not lost.
In no part of the period that extends from the reign of Justinian,
when Greek and Roman literature everywhere lay open to the light of
day, till the fall of the Constantinopolitan empire, and the revival
of western learning in the fifteenth century, do we lose the traces
even of the classic authors, much less of those that belong to sacred
literature; for in each of the intervening ages, and in every quarter
of Europe, there were writers whose works, being still extant, give
evidence of their acquaintance with most of the principal authors of
more remote times.
Under the vague impression that has been created by certain loose modes
of speaking, relative to the deep and universal ignorance said to have
prevailed throughout Europe during a space of seven hundred years, the
existence of a large number of manuscripts of the classic authors,
undoubtedly executed during those very ages of ignorance, presents a
great apparent difficulty: for, from what motive, it may be asked, or
for whose use, were these works transcribed, so frequently as that they
were found in all parts of Europe, on the revival of earning in the
fifteenth century? The facts that are now to be mentioned, will furnish
a sufficient solution of this question, by proving that, in the West
and in the East, during those times of general intellectual lethargy,
there were more than a few individuals who cultivated polite literature
with ardour, and to whom the possession and preservation of books was a
matter of the liveliest interest. The names about to be mentioned--as
the well-informed reader will recollect--bear but a small proportion
to the whole number that might be adduced: it is sufficient for our
purpose to refer to one or two writers in each century.
But before naming individual men, whose extant writings give evidence
of the continuity of literature, and therefore assure us of the safe
transmission of ancient books to modern times, it will be serviceable
to bring clearly into view what it is which is needed for constituting
the LIVING MEDIUM of this transmission. Now, for bringing this matter
home to the convictions and the consciousness of the reader, let
him take up his own family history, and pursue it, retrogressively,
inquiring how many individuals are needed--or let us rather say how
_few_--to make up a chain of historical and literary conveyance,
through any given track of time past; for instance, from this present
time, 1858, into the mid-time of the Elizabethan era, as thus:--
I will now assume the fact--whether it be true or not does not signify
to the argument--that my progenitors in a direct line were educated
persons--or if not so--that each father in the line secured for his
son an ordinary grammar-school education--instruction just sufficient
for making him cognisant of the most noted persons and authors of
preceding times; so that, in each case, if the father himself did not
teach the son, the father’s friend and townsman, the schoolmaster,
did it, as for instance:--From my father’s own lips I received the
rudiments of general history, and of literary history, so that in my
boyhood I came to be familiar with all the principal names of public
men and authors, up from that time to times indefinitely remote. This
process of paternal instruction carries me up to the last decade of
the eighteenth century: say, to the time of the breaking out of the
French Revolution. But then, my father had received, either from his
father, or from his father’s proxy, the schoolmaster, a like kind and
amount of general information, by means of which we are carried up,
without a break, to the times of Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir
Joshua Reynolds; and in fact my father distinctly remembers, when a
boy, seeing, and being in company with, some of these illustrious men,
the friends of my grandfather. Then he had received--we will suppose--a
similar initiation in literary and political history, and if so, then
we are furnished with stepping-stones up to the times of Bentley, Pope,
Swift, Addison, Watts, and although this last name would seem to stand
beyond the limit of any immediate recollections, yet it is a fact that
the “Divine Songs” have come to me by means of a single intervening
person--from one who, as a favoured little girl, learned them, standing
at the amiable doctor’s knee. Thus it is that we travel safely, and
with a distinct cognisance of the way, through more than a century
of literary conveyance. At this rate, and if we may take this last
preceding period of time as our gauge of centuries past, then we shall
require the aid of only eight or nine persons, in series, to bring
us into correspondence with Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Fewer than
this--we might take six long-lived men to put us into this position of
proximity with the worthies of the Elizabethan era.
In making good our supposition, it is not necessary to assume the fact
(which we can seldom certainly know) that there has been, in any one
family, a continuous succession of fathers and sons--the father living
long enough to instruct the son. We should rather take the case of
the intellectual filiation of college life: we imagine the learned
professor, during the last ten years of his official life, imparting
his mental substance to a hundred or two of scholars, some two or three
of whom, at least, will live to do the like, from the same chair, in
behalf of their successors. On this ground the individual teachers need
not be more than twelve, upon whose oral testimony, in succession, we
rely in passing from an age of generally diffused intelligence, to the
times of the revival of learning, and of printed books.
It will be remembered that--if indeed there were grounds of doubt
concerning the safe transmission of ancient books to modern times,
any such suspicions can attach only to the period that is usually
designated as the “Dark Ages,” and _these_ need not be reckoned as more
than seven, reaching back from the times of Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer,
Wickliffe, to the pontificate of Gregory the Great, in whose times, as
appears from his writings, the learning of the preceding ages was still
familiarly known to more than a few.
The Sixth Century of the Christian era abounds with the names of
writers in all departments of literature, many of whose works, having
descended to modern times, present ample evidence of the scarcely
diminished diffusion of general learning. Among many others, such
were--Procopius, the historian of the reign of Justinian--and Agathias,
who continued that history, and was a learned man;--Boethius, author of
what is regarded as the last specimen of pure Latinity--a poem on “the
Consolations of Philosophy;”--Hesychius, the lexicographer--Proclus,
a platonic philosopher;--Fulgentius, and Cassiodorus, ecclesiastical
writers;--Priscianus, a grammarian;--Gildas the wise, an
Anglo-Saxon historian;--Evagrius Scholasticus, an ecclesiastical
historian;--Simplicius, the commentator upon Aristotle and
Epictetus;--Marcellinus Ammianus, an historian and critic, whose works
contain copious references to ancient literature; and Stephen, of
Byzantium, a grammarian and geographer. We might take in hand the work
of this last-named writer--ΠΕΡΙ ΠΟΛΕΩΝ, as furnishing, by itself, a
sufficient mass of evidence in proof of the extensive book-learning of
those times which immediately overlook the gulf--the dark ages. This
Stephen, the geographer, in the course of his account of the cities
and towns of the ancient world, cites, or makes some reference to, the
works of more than three hundred authors, to which he had access at any
moment, while compiling his own.
The Seventh Century produced fewer writers than perhaps any other
period that can be named within the compass of literary history.
Yet there are more than enough to serve our present purpose: such
are--Theophylact of Simocatta, who has left a history of the reign of
the emperor Maurice, not very highly esteemed indeed, but abounding in
allusions to the literature of the times.
Isidore, bishop of Seville, a complete collection of whose works fills
seven quarto volumes, is a writer very proper to be mentioned in
relation to our present purpose. Confessedly the age of Mahomet was a
dull time: few indeed are the writers whose mere names have come down
to us;--and yet, even in such a time, a voluminous writer, who treats
of all kinds of subjects--religion, Church history, grammar, poetry,
astronomy, physical science, and treats some of these systematically,
might not only employ himself in labours of this kind, but also find
among his contemporaries, and the men of the next age, numerous
readers, and admirers, and copyists too, who found their account in
transcribing so vast a product of literary industry. The times of
this bishop, therefore, dark as they might be, were nevertheless
times of book-knowledge: throughout the dim period there was a class
of the learned, numerous and intelligent enough, to keep watch upon
the intellectual treasures of brighter times, to conserve the rich
inheritance of mind, and to do their office in transmitting it down,
unimpaired, to after ages. This fact is all which just now we need
think of.
What we have thus said of the seventh century--of its darkness and
its light, might be affirmed with little difference, as to the next.
Our countryman, the “Venerable Bede,” flourished in the seventh, but
lived far on into the eighth century. The writings of Bede--and we
should remember that he passed his life in the seclusion of a remote
monastery--St. Peter and St. Paul, on the Tyne, in the diocese of
Durham--afford ample proof of a wide diffusion of books, in that
age. Bede displays extensive, if not profound learning, the whole of
which he had acquired from sources that were ordinarily within the
reach of monastic students. Bede “was a man of universal learning,
not less skilled in the Greek than in the Latin tongue: a poet, a
rhetorician, an historian, an astronomer, an arithmetician, a master
of chronology and geography, a philosopher, and theologian. So much
was he admired in his own times that it became a proverbial saying
among the learned--“A man born in the farthest corner of the earth has
compassed the earth with the line of his genius.” “He was,” says Bale,
“versed in the profane authors beyond any man of that age. Physics and
general learning he derived, not from turbid streams, but from the pure
fountains; that is, from the chief Greek and Latin authors. Indeed,
there is hardly anything of value in the compass of ancient literature,
that is not to be met with in Bede, although he never travelled beyond
the limits of his native land.”
The conservative function was taken up by several of Bede’s disciples;
among them we may name Alcuin, who did much, by his learning and his
influence at the court of Charlemagne, to aid the endeavours of that
enlightened prince for the restoration of literature. He was skilled
in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages; gave lectures in all the
sciences, and founded many public schools. His works, historical and
theological, are in part extant, and they justify the reputation he
enjoyed. In his letters he familiarly quotes the classic writers.
Charlemagne, himself tolerably well acquainted with Latin and Greek
authors, zealously laboured to restore learning in the Church, and out
of it. He invited learned men to his court, employed them in making
Latin translations of the Greek classics and of the fathers, founded
public schools, and introduced regulations tending to make some degree
of education indispensable to all who held office in the Church. Of
the professors invited by Charlemagne to his court, as many came from
the British Isles as from Italy. We must not forget, says Muratori, the
praise of Britain, Scotland, and Ireland, which, in the study of the
liberal arts, surpassed all other nations of the West in those times;
nor omit to record the diligence of the monks of those countries, who
roused and maintained the glory of letters which everywhere else was
languishing or fallen.
Raban Maurus, a disciple of Alcuin, created archbishop of Mentz,
in 847, had, before his elevation, taught theology, philosophy,
poetry, and rhetoric at Paris, in the school established there by the
Anglo-Saxon monks. “A man well versed in the Holy Scriptures, and
thoroughly learned in profane literature, as his writings abundantly
testify.” He enriched the monastery of Fulda, on the Rhine, where he
received his early education, with a large collection of books; and
there he founded a school. Two hundred and seventy monks belonged to
the establishment, who were trained by him in every branch of learning.
Disciples flocked to him from all countries, and he reared for the
Church a great number of ministers well furnished for its service. He
died, 856.
One of the first professors in the University of Oxford founded (or
restored) by King Alfred, was John Scot; he afterwards went into
France, where he was honourably entertained at the court of Charles the
Bald, at whose request he translated some Greek authors into Latin:
but these versions, in which a literal adherence to the original was
observed, were scarcely intelligible to those for whose use they were
intended. His writings display, however, much various learning; they
were condemned as heretical by the Church on account of his opinions
relative to the Eucharist. Being driven from France by the order of
the pope, he took refuge in an English monastery; but there, at the
instigation of the monks, he, it is said, like Cassianus, was killed by
his scholars, with their iron styles.
Before the Danish incursions, the English monasteries and churches
abounded with men of learning; but these establishments being
broken up and the monks dispersed by the rude invaders, literature
and the arts became almost extinct in the country. Alfred, himself
a man of learning, and a various writer, effected, as is known,
much towards their restoration, by the re-establishment of the
ruined monasteries--the erection of many new ones--the endowment of
schools--the foundation of lectureships at Oxford, and by the diffusion
of his own writings, which, even if he had not been a king, would have
perpetuated his name.
Contemporary with the last-named writer was Photius, with whom no
author of that, or of several succeeding ages, can be compared: his
works hold up a mirror of the literature that was extant in his times.
Photius, educated for secular employments, and for some time engaged
in the service of Michael III., was by that emperor forcibly invested
with the dignity of patriarch of Constantinople (858) in the room
of Ignatius. That he might pass regularly to this elevation, he was
made monk, reader, sub-deacon, deacon, priest, and patriarch, in the
course of six days. From the office thus violently assumed, he was,
with little ceremony, expelled by Basilius, the successor of Michael.
Once again, at the head of a band of soldiers, he possessed himself of
the patriarchate, of which, by similar means, he was at length finally
deprived; after which he retired to a monastery, where he ended his
days. Before his elevation, he had composed the most useful and the
most celebrated of his works, the _Myriobiblon_, which contains, in the
form of criticisms, analyses, and extracts, an account of upwards of
270 works. This treasury of learning preserves many valuable fragments
from authors whose works have perished, and affords important aid
in ascertaining the genuineness of many of the remains of ancient
literature.
Eutychius, an Egyptian physician, and afterwards (933) patriarch
of Alexandria, wrote a universal history, which is still extant,
and which, though it contains numerous fables, exhibits the various
learning of the author, and of his times. Though so large a number
of existing manuscripts as appear to have been executed in the tenth
century, prove that a great degree of activity in the reproduction of
books prevailed in that age, it presents the names of few authors whose
works have descended to modern times.
The Eleventh Century is much richer in distinguished names, of which it
may suffice to mention these:--
Avicenna, an Arabian physician and Mahometan doctor, reduced the
science of medicine to a systematic form, including almost everything
that had been written on the subject by his predecessors: he was
versed in Greek literature, and is said to have committed Aristotle’s
Metaphysics to memory. The first conquests of the Saracens in Asia,
Africa, and Spain, during the seventh and eighth centuries, were
almost fatal to the interests of learning. But no sooner had they
well established their power in the conquered countries, than the
Caliphs sought to rekindle the light of knowledge. During two or three
centuries, Bagdat in the East, and Cordova in the West, were the seats,
not only of splendid monarchies, but of science, general learning,
and great refinement. It was, however, chiefly the mathematical and
physical sciences that were cultivated by the Arabians. They possessed
imperfect and corrupted translations of several of the Greek authors,
especially of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Euclid, and Dioscorides; and
they had some general, though imperfect, acquaintance with the Greek
historians. Some of the Latin translations, made by the order of
Charlemagne, were derived from these Arabian versions.
Michael Psellus, a Greek physician, and a monk, wrote upon subjects of
all kinds: “There was no science which he did not either illustrate
by his comments, or abridge, or reduce to a better method.--A man
celebrated for the extent of his acquirements in divine and human
learning, as his many works, both printed and in manuscript, evince.”
Lanfranc, by birth an Italian, was created archbishop of Canterbury by
William of Normandy; he promoted learning among the clergy, and was
himself reputed to be universally accomplished in the literature extant
in that age.
Anselm, the disciple and successor of Lanfranc, in the see of
Canterbury, was also in repute for general learning.
The works of Suidas, a Byzantine monk, like those of Photius, contain
a vast store of various learning, singularly useful on points of
criticism and literary history. The lexicon of this writer, besides
the definition of words, contains accounts of ancient authors of all
classes, and many quotations from works that have since perished.
Sigebert, a monk of Brabant, has left a chronicle of events from A.
D. 381 to his own times, 1112, and a work containing the lives of
illustrious men.
The name of Anna Comnena, daughter of the emperor Alexius Comnenus,
and wife of Nicephorus Bryennius, distinguishes the early part of the
twelfth century. She wrote an elegant and eloquent history of her
father’s reign. This work displays not only a masculine understanding,
but an extensive acquaintance with literature and the sciences.
England produced during this century several eminent writers, who
were accomplished in the learning of the age. Such were William of
Malmesbury, Henry of Huntington, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Joseph of
Exeter--author of two Latin poems, on the Trojan war, and the war
of Antioch, or the Crusade--and, somewhat later, Stephen Langton,
archbishop of Canterbury, reckoned the most learned man of western
Europe in those times.
Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, flourished towards the close
of the twelfth century. His commentaries on Homer, besides serving to
elucidate the Greek language by many important criticisms, drawn from
sources that have since been lost, contain, like the works of Photius
and Suidas, innumerable references to the Greek classics, and thus
furnish the means of ascertaining the integrity and the genuineness of
the text of those authors, as they are now extant.
The brothers John and Isaac Tzetzes, critics and grammarians of
Constantinople, are still consulted as commentators upon some of the
Greek authors. John Tzetzes is a voluminous writer: his extant works
give evidence at once of his vast acquaintance with literature, and
of the literary facilities of that age, at least in cities such as
Constantinople.
Robert Grostest (Greathead), bishop of Lincoln, was famed for his
skill in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, as well as for the
bold resistance he made to the exactions of the popes upon the English
church. Camden says of him that “he was a man versed in the languages
and in general literature in a degree scarcely credible, when the age
in which he lived is considered; a terrible reprover of the pope, the
adviser of his king (Henry III.), and a lover of truth.”
Matthew Paris, one of the earliest of the English historians, displays
in his works an acquaintance with ancient literature, as well as a
familiar knowledge of the antiquities of his native country. Like the
bishop last named, Paris vigorously opposed the papal usurpations in
England; nor did he less courageously reprove vice in every rank at
home. His reputation as a man of learning and virtue enabled him to
effect a considerable reformation in many of the English monasteries.
He died 1259. The “Historia Major” of this writer begins with the
Norman Conquest, and is continued to the year of the author’s death,
1259.
The works of Albert, called the Great, a Dominican friar, and
afterwards, in 1260, bishop of Ratisbon, fill one-and-twenty volumes.
They are chiefly on the physical sciences, but include a sort of
encyclopædia of the learning of the age. “A man of wonderful erudition,
to whom few things in theological science, and hardly any in secular
learning, were unknown. On account of the extent and variety of his
acquirements surnamed ‘the Great’--an honour conferred upon no other
learned man during life.” Albert, like Roger Bacon, incurred among
his contemporaries the suspicion of being a magician. Learning, in
the restricted sense of the term, or the knowledge of books, though
possessed by a comparatively small class of persons, was too frequent
to excite wonder or envy; but Science, or a knowledge of nature, and
this acquired, not from Aristotle, but from experiment, was so rare,
that it seldom failed to engender both, and to occasion a dangerous
accusation of correspondence with infernal spirits.
The revival of learning is usually reckoned to have commenced in the
fifteenth century: but in the fourteenth a very decided advancement
in almost every department of literature had taken place. That the
ignorance which had prevailed in the preceding century was wearing away
from the bulk of the community in several parts of Europe, and that the
educated classes were acquiring a better taste and more expanded views,
needs no other evidence than that which is so abundantly presented in
the works of Dante, of Petrarch, of Boccatio, of Chaucer, and of Gower,
which were not merely produced in that period, but were extensively
read and admired.
Fewer instances than those given above might suffice to prove, that
at no part of that tract of time, which extends from the decline of
learning in the sixth century, to its revival in the fifteenth, was
there anything which can be called an extinction of the knowledge
of ancient literature. This proof, it must be acknowledged, is much
more complete in reference to the Greek, than to the Latin authors;
it is also more ample in relation to ecclesiastical and sacred, than
to profane literature. Of all the extant manuscripts, executed in the
middle ages, perhaps nineteen in twenty belong to the former class.
The continuance of the eastern empire till the middle of the fifteenth
century, afforded an uninterrupted protection to Greek learning during
those periods in which western Europe was laid waste by the Gothic
nations. Yet even those devastations were never universal either in
their extent, or in their kind. At times when Italy was in ashes, the
British Islands were secure. And if cities were sacked and burned, and
if castles, palaces, and cathedrals were pillaged and overthrown,
hundreds of religious houses, in strong or secluded situations,
remained untouched; or if occasionally they were subjected to the
violence of armies, or to the exactions of conquerors, they more often
lost their chests, their cups and their salvers, than their books.
Learning and the sciences can _flourish_ and advance only where
there are the means of a wide and quick diffusion of the fruits of
intellectual labour: but they may _exist_ even under the almost total
absence of such means. This was the case in Europe during the middle
ages. Knowledge rested with the few whom the inward fire of native
genius constrained to pursue it: and these few were often insulated
from each other, and unknown beyond the walls within which they spent
their lives; and often secluded also by their tastes, even from their
fellows of the same society.
In every myriad of the human race, take the number where or when we
may, there will be found a few individuals--born for thought; and if
the vocation of nature is not always stronger than every obstacle,
it is, for the most part, strong enough to overcome such as are of
ordinary magnitude. Those who are thus endowed with the appetite for
knowledge, will certainly follow the impulse, if the means of its
acquirement are presented to them in early life. Now these means were
everywhere interspersed among the nations of Europe during the middle
ages, by the monastic system; and it may be questioned whether there
were not then greater chances for drawing within the pale of learning
the native mind of every district, than are afforded even by the
present constitutions of society. The religious houses were so thickly
scattered through every country, and the continual draught from the
population for the maintenance of the numbers of their inmates (a
standing rule of the monastic establishments enjoined that the original
number of each congregation should be maintained) was so great, that
they must have taken up many more than the gifted individuals of
every neighbourhood; and yet such individuals would almost certainly
be included within that enlistment; for whenever a youth displayed a
fondness for learning, nothing better could be done for him, whether he
was the son of a peasant or a noble, than to devote him to the service
of the Church. The monasteries usually contained schools for the youth
of their vicinities. From these schools the superiors of the house had
the opportunity of selecting any who gave promise of intelligence.
In the very darkest times, learning insured to its possessor a degree
of reputation; and the heads of religious houses, in most instances,
sought to decorate their establishments with some particles of the
honours of erudition, as well as to recommend them by the possession
of relics; and many were eagerly ambitious to enhance the literary
celebrity of their communities. With this view it would be their policy
to afford the necessary means and encouragement to those who seemed
most likely to support the credit of the society. “The education of a
monk, at least in the fourteenth century, consisted of church music and
the primary sciences, grammar, logic, and philosophy--obviously that
of Aristotle. Some French and Latin must also have been included; for
these were the languages the monks were enjoined to speak on public
occasions. They were afterwards sent to Oxford or Paris to learn
theology. Such indeed was the encouragement held out to literature,
that in a provincial chapter of abbots and priors of the Benedictine
order, held at Northampton A.D. 1343, men of letters and masters of art
were invited to become monks, by a promise of exemption from all daily
services.”--_Fosbrooke._
Independently therefore of any more direct evidence, there would
be reason to believe that many if not most of the monasteries and
conventual churches, at all times, included an individual or two whose
tastes led him to devote his life to study, and who would become
the sedulous guardian and conservator of the books of the house,
directing the labours of his less intelligent brethren in the work of
transcribing such as might be falling into decay.
In the estimation of minds ruled by the love of books, even if
incapable of discriminating the precious from the worthless--the
worthless, by a principle of association, partakes, to a large degree,
of the respect that belongs in reason only to what is intrinsically
valuable. A BOOK, whatever be its subject or its merits, is viewed with
a fond covetousness by those whose passion it is to love books. This
feeling must have been strong indeed in times when books were hardly
to be purchased, and when their ideal value included a recollection
of the toil of transcription. The spirit of the ruling superstition,
which taught the attachment of an incalculable importance to objects
intrinsically worthless, must also have favoured an undistinguishing
reverence for books. We need not then be surprised to find that works
of all classes, though altogether unsuited to the taste of the times,
were reproduced, from age to age, by the monkish copyists.
While, therefore, all taste for instruction had disappeared from the
face of society--while kings and nobles were often as ignorant as
artisans and peasants, while even many of the clergy retained only some
shreds of learning, the productions of brighter ages were still hoarded
and perpetuated, and were made accessible to the few whose intellectual
ardour carried them beyond the standard of their times.
The reader who would extend his acquaintance with the subjects so
briefly referred to in this chapter will find the means of doing so
amply supplied in the work of Mr. Maitland which so conclusively
establishes the fact of the uninterrupted _continuance_ of the
intellectual life of Europe through those ages which too hastily have
been spoken of by modern writers as times of universal ignorance.[4]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] The Dark Ages; a series of Essays, intended to illustrate the state
of Religion and Literature in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth
Centuries. By the Rev. S. R. Maitland, &c.