APPENDIX II.
TWENTY-SIX CHAPTERS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
I. AMERICA IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY,
To most people it would seem quite out of the question that a chapter on America in the Thirteenth Century might
have been written. One of the most surprising chapters for most readers in the previous edition was that on Great
Explorers and the Foundation of Geography, for it was a revelation to learn that Thirteenth Century travelers had
anticipated all of our discoveries in the Far and in the Near East seven centuries ago. Certain documents have
turned up, however, which make it very clear that with the same motives as those which urged Eastern travelers,
Europeans went just as far towards the West at this time. Documents found in the Vatican Archives in 1903 and exhibited
at St. Louis in 1904, have set at rest finally and absolutely the long disputed question of the discovery of America
by the Norsemen, and in connection with these the story of America in the Thirteenth Century might well have been
told. There is a letter from Pope Innocent III., dated February 13, 1206, addressed to the Archbishop of Norway,
who held jurisdiction over Greenland, which shows not only the presence of the Norsemen on the American Continent
at this time, but also that they had been here for a considerable period, and that there were a number of churches
and pastors and large flocks in whom the Roman See had a lively interest.
There are Americana from three other Popes of the Thirteenth Century, John XXI wrote, in 1276, Nicholas III two
letters, one dated January 31, 1279, and another June 9, 1279, and Martin III wrote 1282. We have inserted on the
opposite page a reproduction of a portion of the first Papal document extant relating to America, the letter of
Pope Innocent III., taken from "The Norse Discovery of America" (The Norraena Society, N. Y., 1908).
The word Grenelandie, underscored, indicates the subject. The writing as an example of the chirography of the century
is of interest. [Editor: This letter has not been reproduced here due to its lack of clarity. A clear Latin reprint,
with English translation, is available at www.northvegr.org/lore/flatey/003.php ]
II. A REPRESENTATIVE UPPER HOUSE.
In most historical attempts at government by the people it has been recognized that legislation is better balanced
if there arc two chambers in the law-making body, one directly elected by the people, the other indirectly chosen
and representing important vested interests that are likely to make its members conservative. The initiative for
legislation comes, as a rule, from the direct representatives of the people, while the upper chamber represses
radical law-making or sudden changes in legislative policy, yet does not hamper too much the progress of democracy.
During the last few years a crisis in English politics has led to a very general demand for a modification of the
status of the House of Lords, while almost similar conditions have led to the beginning at least of a similar demand
for the modification of our Senate in this country. Both these upper chambers have come to represent vested interests
to too great a degree. The House of Lords has been the subject of special deprecation. The remark is sometimes
made that it is unfortunate that England is weighted down by this political incubus, the House of Lords, which
is spoken of as a heritage from the Middle Ages. The general impression, of course, is that the English House of
Lords, as at present constituted, comes down from the oldest times of constitutional government in England. Nothing
could well be more untrue than any such idea.
The old upper chamber of England, the medieval House of Lords, was an eminently representative body. Out of the
625 or more of members of the English House of Lords at the present time about five hundred and fifty hold their
seats by heredity. Only about seventy-five are in some sense elective. At least one-half of these elected peers,
however, must be chosen from the hereditary nobility of Ireland and Scotland. Nearly nineteen-twentieths of the
membership of the House of Lords, as at present constituted, owe their place in national legislation entirely to
heredity. Until the reformation so-called this was not so. More than one-half of the English House of Lords, a
good working majority, consisted of the Lords spiritual. Besides the Bishops and Archbishops there were the Abbots
and Priors of monasteries, and the masters of religious orders. These men as a rule had come up from the people.
They had risen to their positions by intellectual abilities and by administrative capacity. The abbots and other
superiors of religious orders had been chosen by their monks as a rule because, having shown that they knew how
to rule themselves, they were deemed most fitting to rule over others.
Even in our day, when the Church occupies nothing like the position in the hearts of the masses that she held in
the ages of faith, our Catholic Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, both here and in England, are chosen as members
of arbitration boards to settle strikes and other social difficulties, because it is felt that the working class
has full confidence in them, and that they are thoroughly representative of the spirit of democracy. In England
Cardinal Manning served more than once in critical social conditions. In this country we have had a series of such
examples. From these we can better understand what the Lords spiritual represented in the English House of Lords.
There were abuses, though they were not nearly so frequent as were thought, by which unworthy men sometimes reached
such positions, for men abuse even the best things, but in general these clerical members of the House of Lords
were the chosen intellectual and moral products of the kingdom. Since they were without families they had less
temptation to serve personal interests and, besides, they had received a life-long training in unselfishness, and
the best might be expected of them. For an ideal second chamber I know none that can compare with this old English
House of Lords of the Middle Ages. How much it was responsible for the foundation of the liberties of which the
English-speaking people are deservedly so proud, and which have been treated in some detail in the chapter on Origins
in Law, would be interesting to trace.
III. THE PARISH, AND TRAINING IN CITIZENSHIP.
Mr. Toulmin Smith, in his book on "The Parish," and Dom Gasquet, in his volume on "The Parish Before
the Reformation," have shown what a magnificent institution for popular self-government was the English medieval
parish, and how much this contributed to the solution of important social problems and to the creation of a true
democratic spirit. Mr. Toulmin Smith calls particular attention to the fact that when local self-government gets
out of the hands of the people of a neighborhood personal civic energy goes to sleep. The feeling of mutual responsibility
of the men of the place is lost, to the great detriment of their larger citizenship in municipality and nation.
In the parish, however, forming a separate community, of which the members had rights and duties, the primal solid
basis for government, the parish authorities took charge of the highways, the roads, the paths, the health, the
police, the constabulary, and the fires of their neighborhood. They kept, besides, a registry of births and deaths
and marriages. When these essentially local concerns are controlled in large bodies the liability to abuse at once
becomes easy and political corruption sets in. He mentions, besides many parochial institutions, a parochial friendly
society for loans on security, parish gilds for insurance, and many other phases of that thoroughly organized mutual
aid so characteristic of the Middle Ages.
These parishes became completely organized, so as to be thoroughly democratic and representative of all the possibilities
of local self government under King Edward at the end of the Thirteenth and the beginning of the Fourteenth Century.
Rev. Augustus Jessopp, in "After the Great Pillage," tells the story of how the parishes were broken
up as a consequence of the confiscation of their endowment during the so-called reformation. The quotation from
him may be found in Appendix III. in the section on " How it all stopped."
Toulmin Smith is not so emphatic, but he is scarcely less explicit than Jessopp. " The attempts of ecclesiastical
authority to encroach on the civil authorities of the parish have been more successful since the reformation."
As a matter of fact, at that time all government became centralized, and complete contradiction though it may seem
to be of what is sometimes declared the place of the reformation in the history of human liberty, the genuine democratic
institutions of England were to a great extent impaired by the reform, and an autocracy, which later developed
into an autocratic aristocracy, largely took its place. Out of that England has gradually lifted itself during
the Nineteenth Century. Even now, however, as pointed out in the preceding chapter that might have been, the House
of Lords is not at all what it was in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries when the majority of its members
were Lords spiritual, men who had come up from the masses as a rule.
IV. THE CHANCE TO RISE.
We are very prone to think that even though there may have been excellent opportunities for the higher education
in the Thirteenth Century and, in many ways, an ideal education of the masses, still there was one great social
drawback in those times, the lack of opportunity for men of humble birth to rise to higher stations. Nothing, however,
is less true. There probably never was a time when even members of the poorest families might rise more readily
or rapidly to the highest positions in the land. The sons of village merchants and village artisans, nay, the sons
and grandsons of farmers bound to the soil, could by educational success become clergymen in various ranks, and
by attaining a bishopric or the position of abbot or prior of a monastery, reach a seat in the House of Lords.
Most of the Lord High Chancellors of England during the Middle Ages-and some of them are famous for their genius
as canon and civil lawyers, for their diplomatic abilities and their breadth of view and capacity as administrators
- were the sons of humble parents.
Take the single example of Stratford, the details of whose inhabitants' lives, because of the greatness of one
of them, have attracted more attention than those of any other town of corresponding size in England. At the beginning
of the Fourteenth Century it is only what we would call a village, and it probably did not have 3,000 inhabitants,
if, indeed, the number was not less than 2,000. In his book, "Shakespeare the Boy," Mr. Rolfe calls attention
to certain conditions that interest us in the old village. He tells us of what happened as a result of the development
of liberty in the Thirteenth Century:
"Villeinage gradually disappeared in the reign of Edward VII. (1327-1337), and those who had been subject
to it became free tenants, paying definite rents for house and land. Three natives of the town, who, after the
fashion of the time, took their surnames from the place of their birth, rose to high positions in the Church, one
becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, and the others respectively Bishops of London and Chichester. John of Stratford
and Robert of Stratford were brothers, and Ralph of Stratford was their nephew. John and Robert were both for a
time Chancellors of England, and there is no other instance of two brothers attaining that high office in succession."
To many people the fact that the avenue to rise was through the Clergy more than in any other way will be disappointing.
One advantage, however, that the old people would insist that they had from their system was that these men, having
no direct descendants, were less likely to pursue selfish aims and more likely to try to secure the benefit of
the Community than are those who, in our time, rise through the legal profession. The Lord High Chancellors of
recent time have all been lawyers. Would not most of the world confess that the advantage was with the medieval
peoples?
President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton realized sympathetically this great element of saving democracy in the Middle
Ages, and has paid worthy tribute to it. He said: " The only reason why government did not suffer dry rot
in the Middle Ages under the aristocratic systems which then prevailed was that the men who were efficient instruments
of government were drawn from the church - from that great church, that body which we now distinguish from other
church bodies as the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church then, as now, was a great democracy. There
was no peasant so humble that he might not become a priest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become Pope
of Christendom, and every chancellery in Europe was ruled by those learned, trained and accomplished men - the
priesthood of that great and then dominant church; and so, what kept government alive in the Middle Ages was this
constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from the rank and file of the great body of the people through the open
channels of the Roman Catholic priesthood."
V. INSURANCE.
Insurance is usually supposed to be a modern idea representing one of those developments of the capitalization
of mutual risks of life, property, and the like that have come as a consequence of modern progress. The insurance
system of the Middle Ages, the organization of which came in the Thirteenth Century, is therefore extremely interesting.
It was accomplished, as was every form of co-operation and co-ordination of effort, through special gilds or through
the trade or merchant gilds. Among the objects of the gilds enumerated by Toulmin Smith is insurance against loss
by fire. This was paid through the particular gild to which the merchant belonged, or in the case of the artisan
through a special gild which he joined for the purpose. Provision was made, however, for much more than insurance
by fire. Our fire insurance companies are probably several centuries old, so also are our insurance arrangements
against shipwreck. Other features of insurance, however, are much more recent. Practically all of these were in
active existence during the Middle Ages, though they disappeared with the so-called reformation, and then did not
come into existence again for several centuries and, indeed, not until our own time.
The old gilds, for instance, provided insurance against loss from flood, a feature of insurance that has not, so
far as I know, developed in our time, against loss by robbery (our burglary insurance is quite recent), against
loss by the fall of a house, by imprisonment, and then also insurance against the loss of cattle and farm products.
All the features of life insurance also were in existence. The partial disability clauses of life or accident insurance
policies are recent developments. In the old days there is insurance against the loss of sight, against the loss
of a limb, or any other form of crippling. The deaf and dumb might be insured so as to secure an income for them,
and corresponding relief for leprosy might be obtained; so that, if one were set apart from the community by the
law requiring segregation of lepers, there might be provision for food and lodging, even though productive work
had become impossible. In a word, the insurance system of the Middle Ages was thoroughly developed. It was not
capitalistic. The charges were only enough to maintain the system, and not such as to provide large percentage
returns on invested stock and on bonds, and the accumulation of huge surpluses that almost inevitably lead to gross
abuses.
What is best in our modern system of insurance is an imitation of the older methods. Certain
of the trade insurance companies which assume a portion of the risk on mills, factories and the like, are typical
examples. They know the conditions, enforce proper precautions, keep an absolute check on suspicious losses, accumulate
only a moderate surplus and present very few opportunities for insurance abuses. The same thing is true for the
fraternal societies that conduct life insurance. When properly managed they represent the lowest possible cost
and the best efficiency with least opportunities for fraud and without any temptations to interfere with legislation
and any allurements for legislators to spend their time making strike and graft bills instead of doing legislative
work.
VI. OLD AGE PENSIONS.
This generation has occupied itself much with the question of old age pensions. Probably most people feel that
this is the first time in the world's history that such arrangements have been made. The movement is supposed to
represent a recent development of humanitarian purpose, and to be a feature of recent philanthropic evolution.
It is rather interesting, in the light of that idea, to see how well they accomplish this same purpose in the Thirteenth
and Fourteenth Centuries. In our time it has been a government affair, with all the possibilities of abuse that
there are in a huge pension system, and surely no country knows it better than we do here in America. The old countries,
Germany and France, have established a contributing system of pension. This was the model of their system of caring
for the old and the disabled in the Middle Ages. Toulmin Smith cites a rule of one of the gilds which gives us
exactly the status of the old age disability pension question. After a workman had been seven years a member, the
gild assured him a livelihood in case of disability from any cause.
When we recall that employer as well as employee as a rule belonged to the gild and this was a real mutual organization
in which there was a sharing of the various risks of life, we see how eminently well adapted to avoid abuses this
old system was. Where the pensioners appeal to a government pension system, abuses are almost inevitable. There
is the constant temptation to exploit the system on the part of the pensioners, because they have the feeling that
if they do not, others will. Then the investigation of each particular case is difficult, and favoritism and graft
of various kinds inevitably finds its way in. Where the pension is paid by a small body of fellow workmen, the
investigation is easy, the temptation to exploit does not readily find place, and while abuses are to some extent
inevitable, these are small in amount, and not likely to be frequent. Friends and neighbors know conditions, and
men are not pauperized by the system, and if, after an injury that seemed at first so disabling as to be permanent,
the pensioner should improve enough to be able to get back to work, or, at least, to do something to support himself,
the system is elastic enough so that he is not likely to be tempted to continue to live on others rather than on
his own efforts,
VII. THE WAYS AND MEANS OF CHARITY-ORGANIZED CHARITY.
Most of us would be apt to think that our modern methods of obtaining funds for charitable purposes
represented definite developments, and that at least special features of our collections for charity were our own
invention. In recent years the value of being able to reach a great many people even for small amounts has been
particularly recognized. "Tag day" is one manifestation of that. Everyone in a neighborhood is asked
to contribute a small amount for a particular charitable purpose, and the whole collection usually runs up to a
snug sum. Practices very similar to this were quite common in the Thirteenth Century. As in our time, it was the
women who collected the money. A rope, for instance, was stretched across a marketplace, where traffic was busy,
and everyone who passed was required to pay a toll for charity. Occasionally the rope was stretched across a bridge
and the tolls were collected on a particular day each year. Other forms of charitable accumulation resembled ours
in many respects. Entertainments of various kinds were given for charity, and special collections were made during
the exhibition of mystery plays partly to pay the expenses of the representation, and the surplus to go to the
charities of the particular gild.
Most of the charity, however, was organized. Indeed, it is the organization of charity during
the Thirteenth Century that represents the best feature of its fraternalism. The needy were cared for by the gilds
themselves. There were practically no poorhouses, and if a man was willing to work and had already shown this willingness,
there were definite bureaus that would help him at least to feed his family while he was out of work. This system,
however, was flexible enough to provide also for the ne'er-do-wells, the tramps, the beggars, but they were given
not money, but tokens which enabled them to obtain the necessaries of life without being able to abuse charity.
The committees of the gilds consulted in various ways among themselves and with the church wardens so as to be
sure that, while all the needy were receiving help, no one was abusing charity by drawing help from a number of
different quarters.
Of course, they did not have the problem of large city life that we have, and so their comparatively simple organization
of charity sufficed for all the needs of the time, and at the same time anticipated our methods.
VIII. SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES.
In the first edition of this book I called attention to the fact, that science, even in our sense of physical science,
was, in spite of impressions to the contrary, a favorite subject for students and teachers in the early universities.
What might have been insisted on, however, is that these old universities were scientific universities resembling
our own so closely in their devotion to science as to differ from them only in certain unimportant aspects. Because
the universities for three centuries before the Nineteenth had been occupied mainly with classical studies, we
are prone to think that these were the main subjects of university teaching for all the centuries before. Nothing
could well be less true. The undergraduate studies consisted of the seven liberal arts so-called, though these
were largely studied from the scientific standpoint. The quotation from Prof. Huxley (Appendix III., Education)
makes this very clear. What we would now call the graduate studies consisted of metaphysics, in which considerable
physics were studied, astronomy, medicine, above all, mathematics, and then the ethical sciences, under which were
studied what we now call ethics, politics and economics. The picture of these medieval universities as I have given
them in my lecture on Medieval Scientific Universities, in " Education, How Old the New," makes this
very clear.
The interests and studies were very like those of our own time, only the names for them being different. Nature-study
was a favorite subject, and, as I have pointed out in "The Popes and Science," Dante must be considered
as a great nature student, for he was able to draw the most exquisite figures from details of knowledge of living
things with which few poets are familiar. The books of the professors of the Thirteenth Century which have been
preserved, those of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Aquinas, Duns Scotus and others, make it very clear that scientific
teaching was the main occupation of the university faculties, while the preservation of these huge tomes by the
diligent copying of disciples shows how deeply interested were their pupils in the science of the time.
IX. MEDICAL TEACHING AND PROFESSIONAL
STANDARDS.
At all times in the history of education, the standards of scientific education, and the institutions of learning,
can be best judged from the condition of the medical schools. When the medical sciences are taken seriously, when
thorough preparation is demanded before their study may be taken up, when four or five years of attention to theoretic
and practical medicine are required for graduation, and when the professors are writing textbooks that are to attract
attention for generations afterwards, then, there is always a thoroughly scientific temper in the university itself.
Medicine is likely to suffer, first, whenever there is neglect of science. The studies of the German historians,
Puschmann, Pagel, Neuberger, and Sudhoff in recent years, have made it very clear that the medical schools of the
universities of the Thirteenth Century were maintaining high standards. The republication of old texts, especially
in France, has called attention to the magnificent publications of their professors, while a review of their laws
and regulations confirms the idea of the good work that was being done. Gurlt, in his history of surgery, "
Geschichte der Chirurgie" (Berlin, 1898), has reviewed the textbooks of Roger and Roland and the Four Masters,
of William of Salicet and Lanfranc and of many others, in a way to make it very clear that these men were excellent
teachers.
When we discover that three years of preparatory university work was required before the study of medicine could
be begun, and four years of medical studies were required, with a subsequent year of practice under a physician's
direction, before a license for independent practice could be issued, then the scientific character of the medical
schools and therefore of the universities to which they were attached is placed beyond all doubt. These are the
terms of the law issued by the Emperor Frederick II. for the Two Sicilies. That, in substance, it applied to other
countries we learn from the fact that the charters of medical schools granted by the Popes at this time require
proper university preliminary studies, and four or five years at medicine before the degree of Doctor could be
given. We know besides that in the cities only those who were graduates of properly recognized medical schools
were allowed to practice medicine, so that there was every encouragement for the maintenance of professional standards.
Indeed, strange as it may seem to our generation, the standards of the Thirteenth Century in medical education
were much higher 'than our own, and their medical schools were doing fine work.
X. MAGNETISM.
For proper understanding of the Thirteenth Century scholars, it is especially important to appreciate
their thoroughly scientific temper of mind, their powers of observation, and their successful attainments in science.
I know no more compendious way of reaching the knowledge of these qualities in the medieval mind, than a study
of the letter of Peregrinus, which we would in our time call a monograph on magnetism. Brother Potamian, in his
chapter in " Makers of Electricity " (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1909) on Peregrinus and Columbus,
sums up the very interesting contributions of this medieval student of magnetism to the subject. The list of chapters
alone in Peregrinus' monograph (Epistola) makes it very clear how deep were his interests and how thoroughly practical
his investigations.
They are:-
" Part I., Chapter 1, purpose of this work; 2, qualifications of the experimenter; 3, characteristics
of a good lodestone; 4, how to distinguish the poles of a lodestone; 5, how to tell which pole is north and which
is south; 6, how one lodestone attracts another; 7, how iron touched by a lodestone turns toward the poles of the
world; 8, how a lodestone attracts iron; 9, why the north pole of one lodestone attracts the south pole of another,
and vice versa; 10, an inquiry into the natural virtue of the lode stone.
" Part II., Chapter 1 construction of an instrument for measuring the azimuth of the sun, the moon or any
star then in the horizon; 2, construction of a better instrument for the same purpose ; 3, the art of making a
wheel of perpetual motion."
In order to illustrate what Peregrinus accomplished it has seemed worth while to reproduce here
the sketches which illustrate his epistle. We have the double pivoted needle and the first pivoted compass.[For
diagrams see Peter Peregrinus page at the end of Appendix III].
In the light of certain recent events a passage from the "New Naval History or Complete
Review of the British Marine " (London, 1757) is of special interest. It illustrates perhaps the new confidence
that came to men in sailing to long distances as the result of the realization of the practical value of the magnetic
needle during the Thirteenth Century.
" In the year 1360 it is recorded that a friar of Oxford called Nicholas de Linna (of Lynn), being a good
astronomer, went in company with others to the most northern island, and thence traveled alone, and that he went
to the North Pole, by means of his skill in magic, or the black art; but this magic or black art may probably have
been nothing more than a knowledge of the magnetic needle or compass, found out about sixty years before, though
not in common use until many years after."
XI. BIOLOGICAL THEORIES, EVOLUTION, RECAPITULATION.
Of course only those who are quite unfamiliar with the history of philosophic thought are apt to think that the
theory of evolution is modern. Serious students of biology are familiar with the long history of the theory, and
especially its anticipations by the Greeks. Very few know, however, that certain phases of evolutionary theory
attracted not a little attention from the scholastic philosophers. It would not he difficult to find expressions
in Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, that would serve to show that they thought not only of the possibility of somc
very intimate relation of species but of developmental connections. The great teacher of the time, St. Thomas Aquinas,
has some striking expressions in the matter, which deserve to be quoted, because he is the most important representative
of the philosophy and science of the century and the one whose works most influenced succeeding generations. In
the lecture on Medieval Scientific Universities, published in " Education, How Old the New " (Fordham
University Press, N. Y., 1910), I called particular attention to this phase of St. Thomas' teaching. Two quotations
will serve to make it clear here.
Prof. Osborne, in " From the Greeks to Darwin," quotes Aquinas' commentary on St. Augustine's opinion
with regard to the origin of things as they are. Augustine declared that the Creator had simply brought into life
the seeds of things, and given these the power to develop. Aquinas, expounding Augustine, says:
" As to production of plants, Augustine holds a different view, … for some say that on the third day plants
were actually produced, each in his kind- a view favored by the superficial reading of Scripture. But Augustine
says that the earth is then said to have brought forth grass and trees causaliter; that is, it then received power
to produce them." (Quoting Genesis ii: 4) : "For in those first days, God made creation primarily or
causaliter, and then rested from His work."
Like expressions might be quoted from him, and other writers of the Thirteenth Century might well be cited in confirmation
of the fact that while these great teachers of the Middle Ages thoroughly recognize the necessity for creation
to begin with and the placing by the Creator of some power in living things that enables them to develop, they
were by no means bound to the thought that all living species were due to special creations. They even did not
hesitate to teach the possibility of the lower order of living beings at least coming into existence by spontaneous
generation, and would probably have found no difficulty in accepting a theory of descent with the limitations that
most scientific men of our generation are prone to demand for it.
Lest it should be thought that this is a mere accidental agreement with modern thought, due much more to a certain
looseness of terms than to actual similarity of view, it seems well to point out how close St. Thomas came to that
thought in modern biology, which is probably considered to be one of our distinct modern contributions to the theory
of evolution, though, in recent years, serious doubts have been thrown on it. It is expressed by the formula of
Herbert Spencer, " Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." According to this, the completed being repeats
in the course of its development the history of the race, that is to say, the varying phases of foetal development
from the single cell in which it originates up to the perfect being of the special type as it is born into the
world, retrace the history by which from the single cell being the creature in question has gradually developed.
It is very curious to find that St. Thomas Aquinas, in his teaching with regard to the origin and development of
the human being, says, almost exactly, what the most ardent supporters of this so-called fundamental biogenetic
law proclaimed during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, thinking they were expressing an absolutely new
thought. He says that "the higher a form is in the scale of being and the farther it is removed from mere
material form, the more intermediate forms must be passed through before the finally perfect form is reached.
Therefore, in the generation of animal and man these having the most perfect forms - there occur
many intermediate forms in generations, and consequently destruction, because the generation of one being is the
destruction of another." St. Thomas draws the ultimate conclusions from this doctrine without hesitation.
He proclaims that the human material is first animated by a vegetative soul or principle of life, and then by an
animal soul, and only ultimately when the matter has been properly prepared for it by a rational soul. He said:
"The vegetative soul, therefore, which is first in embryo, while it lives the life of a plant, is destroyed,
and there succeeds a more perfect soul, which is at once nutrient and sentient, and for that time the embryo lives
the life of an animal: upon the destruction of this there succeeds the rational soul, infused from without."
XII. THE POPE OF THE CENTURY.
The absence of a chapter on the Pope of the Century has always seemed a lacuna in the previous editions of this
book. Pope Innocent III., whose pontificate began just before the century opened, and occupied the first fifteen
years of it, well deserves a place beside Francis the Saint, Thomas the Scholar, Dante the Poet, and Louis the
Monarch of this great century. More than any other single individual he was responsible for the great development
of the intellectual life that took place, but at the same time his wonderfully broad influence enabled him to initiate
many of the movements that meant most for human uplift and for the alleviation of suffering in this period. It
was in Councils of the Church summoned by him that the important legislation was passed requiring the development
of schools, the foundation of colleges in every diocese and of universities in important metropolitan sees. What
he accomplished for hospitals has been well told by Virchow, from whom I quote a magnanimous tribute in the chapter
on the Foundation of City Hospitals. The legislation of Innocent III. did much to encourage, and yet to regulate
properly the religious orders of this time engaged in charitable work. Besides doing so much for charity, he was
a stern upholder of morals. As more than one king of the time realized while Innocent was Pope, there could be
no trifling with marriage vows.
On the other hand, while Innocent was so stern as to the enforcement of marriage laws, his wonderfully judicious
character and his care for the weak and the innocent can be particularly noted in his treatment of the children
in these cases.
While he compelled recalcitrant kings to take back the wives they would repudiate, and put away other women who
had won their affections, he did not hesitate to make due provision as far as possible for the illegitimate children.
Pixie Gordon, in his recent life of Pope Innocent III., notes that he invariably legitimated the offspring of these
illegal unions of kings, and even declared them capable of succession. He would not visit the guilt of the parent
on the innocent offspring.
Innocent did more to encourage the idea of international arbitration than anyone up to his time. During his period
more than once he was the arbitrator to whom rival national claims that might have led to war were referred. Probably
his greatest claim on our admiration in the modern time is his attitude toward the Jews. In this he is centuries
ahead of his time and, indeed, the policy that he laid down is far ahead of what is accorded to them by many of
the nations even at the present time, and it must not be forgotten that it is only during the past hundred years
that the Jew has come to have any real privileges comparable to those accorded to other men.
At a time when the Jew had no real rights in law, Innocent insisted on according them all the rights of men. His
famous edict in this regard is well known. "Let no Christian by violence compel them to come dissenting or
unwilling to Baptism. Further let no Christian venture maliciously to harm their persons without a judgment of
the civil power, to carry off their property or change their good customs which they have had hitherto in that
district which they inhabit." When, in addition to all this, it is recalled that he was a distinguished scholar
and graduate of the University of Paris, looked up to as one of the intellectual geniuses of the time, the author
of a treatise "On the Contempt of the World" at a time when the kings of the earth were obeying him,
known for his personal piety and for his thorough regulation of his own household, something of the greatness of
the man will be appreciated.
No wonder that historians who have taken up the special study of his career have always been won over to deep personal
admiration of him, and though many of them began prejudiced in his regard, practically all of them were converted
to be his sincere admirers.
XIII. INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.
During the Peace Conference in New York in 1908 I was on the programme with Mr. William T. Stead of London, the
editor of the English Review of Reviews, who was very much interested in the volume on the Thirteenth Century,
and who suggested that one chapter in the book should have been devoted to the consideration of what was accomplished
for peace and for International Arbitration during this century. There is no doubt that there developed, as the
result of many Papal decrees, a greater tendency than has existed ever before or since, to refer quarrels between
nations that would ordinarily end in war to decision by some selected umpire. Usually the Pope, as the head of
the Christian Church, to which all the nations of the civilized world belonged, was selected as the arbitrator.
This international arbitration, strengthened by the decrees of Pope Innocent III., Pope Honorius III. and Pope
Alexander III., developed in a way that is well worth while studying, and that has deservedly been the subject
of careful investigation since the present peace movement began. Certainly the outlook for the securing of peace
by international arbitration was better at this time than it has been at any time since. What a striking example,
for instance, is the choice of King Louis of France as the umpire in the dispute between the Barons and the King
of England, which might have led to war. Louis' position with regard to the Empire and the Papacy was to a great
extent that of a pacificator, and his influence for peace was felt everywhere throughout Europe. The spirit of
the century was all for arbitration and the adjudication of intranational as well as
international difficulties by peaceful means.
XIV. BIBLE REVISION.
Most people will be quite sure that at least the question of Bible revision with critical study of text and comparative
investigation of sources was reserved for our time. The two orders of friars founded in the early part of the Thirteenth
Century, however, devoted themselves to the task of supplying to the people a thoroughly reliable edition of the
Scriptures. The first systematic revision was made by the Dominicans about 1236. After twenty years this revision
was set aside as containing too many errors, and another Dominican correction replaced it. Then came that great
scholar, Hugh of St. Cher, known later as the Cardinal of Santa Sabina, the author of the first great Biblical
Concordance. His Bible studies did much to clarify obscurities in the text. Sometime about 1240 he organized a
commission of friars for the revision of what was known as the Paris Exemplar, the Bible text that was most in
favor at that time.
The aim of Hugh of St. Cher was to establish the old Vulgate of St. Jerome, the text which received
this name during this century, but with such revision as would make this version correspond as nearly as possible
to the Hebrew and the Greek.
This activity on the part of the Dominicans was rivaled by the Franciscans. We might not expect to find the great
scientist, Roger Bacon, as a Biblical scholar and reviser, but such he was, working with Willermus de Mara, to
whom, according to Father Denifle, late the Librarian of the Vatican Library, must be attributed the title given
him by Roger Bacon of Sapientissimus Vir.
The Dominicans under the leadership of Hugh of St. Cher with high ideals had hoped to achieve
a perfect primitive text. The version made by de Mara, however, with the approval and advice of Bacon, was only
meant to bring out St. Jerome's text as perfectly as possible. These two revisions made in the Thirteenth Century
are typical of all the efforts that men have made since in that same direction. Contrary to usual present day impressions,
they are characterized by critical scholarship, and probably represent as great a contribution to Biblical lore
as was made by any other century.
XV. FICTION OF THE CENTURY.
Ordinarily it would be presumed that life was taken entirely too seriously during the Thirteenth Century for the
generation to pay much attention to fiction. In a certain sense this is true. In the sense, however, that they
had no stories worthy of the great literature in other departments it would be quite untrue. There is a naivete
about their story telling that rather amuses our sophisticated age, yet all the elements of our modern fiction
are to be found in the stories that were popular during the century, and arranged with a dramatic effect that must
have given them a wide appeal.
The most important contribution to the fiction of the century is to be found in the collection known as the Cento
Novelle Antiche or " Hundred Ancient Tales," which contains the earliest prose fiction extant in Italian.
Many of these come from a period anterior to Dante, and it is probable from what Manni, the learned editor of the
Novelliero, says, that they were written out in the Thirteenth Century and collected in the early part of the Fourteenth
Century. They did not all originate in Italy, and, indeed, Manni considers that most of them derived their origin
from Provence. They represent the interest of the century in fiction and in anecdotal literature.
As for the longer fiction, the pure love story of the modern time, we have one typical example of it in that curious
relic of the Middle Ages, " Aucassin and Nocolette." The manuscript which preserved this for us comes
from the Thirteenth Century. Perhaps, as M. Paris suggests, the tale itself is from the preceding century. At least
it was the interest of the Thirteenth Century in it that saved it for us. For those who think that the love romance
in any of its features is novel, though we call it by that name, or that there has been any development of human
nature which enables the writer of love stories to appeal to other and deeper, or purer and loftier feelings in
his loved ones now than in the past, all that is needed, as it seems to me, is a casual reading of this pretty
old song-story.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of this oldest specimen of modern fiction is the number of precious bits of
psychologic analysis or, at least, what is called that in the recent time, which occur in the course of it. For
instance, when Aucassin is grieving because he cannot find Nicolette he wanders through the forest on horseback
and is torn by trees and brambles, but "he feels it not at all." On the other hand, when he finds Nicolette,
though he is suffering from a dislocated shoulder, he no longer feels any pain in it, because of his joy at the
meeting, and Nicolette (first aid to the injured) is able to replace the dislocated part without difficulty (the
trained nurse in fiction) because he is so happy as not to notice the pain (psychotherapy). The herdsman whom he
meets wonders that Aucassin, with plenty of money and victuals, should grieve so much over the loss of Nicolette,
while he has so much more cause to grieve over the loss of an ox, which means starvation to him. Toward the end
of the story we have the scene in which Nicolette, stolen from home when very young, and utterly unable to remember
anything about her childhood, has brought back to her memory by the view of the city of Carthage forgotten events
of her childhood (subconscious memory). These represent naively enough, it is true, the study of the mind under
varying conditions that has in recent years been given the rather ambitious name of psychology in fiction.
XVI. GREAT ORATORS.
Without a chapter on the great orators of the period an account of the Thirteenth Century is quite incomplete.
Great as were the other forms of literature, epic, lyric and religious poetry and the prose writing, it is probable
that the oratory of the time surpassed them all. When we recall that the Cid, the Arthur Legends, the Nibelungen,
the Meistersingers, and the Minnesingers, Reynard the Fox, the Romance of the Rose, the Troubadours, and even Dante
are included in the other term of the comparison thus made, it may seem extravagant, but what we know of the effect
of the orators of the time fully justifies it. Just before the Thirteenth Century, great religious orators swayed
the hearts and minds of people, to the organization of the Crusades. At the beginning of the Thirteenth Century
the mendicant orders were organized, and their important duties were preaching and teaching. The Dominicans were
of course the Order of Preachers, and we have traditions of their sway over the minds of the people of the time
which make it very clear that their power was equal to that exerted in any other department of human expression.
There are traditions particularly of the oratory of the Dominicans among the German races, which serve to show
how even a phlegmatic people can be stirred to the very depths of their being by the eloquent spoken word.
In France the traditions are almost as explicit in this matter, and there are remains of religious
orations that fully confirm the reputation of the orators of the time.
Rhetoric and oratory was studied very assiduously. Cicero was the favorite reading of the great preachers of the
time, and we find the court preachers of St. Louis, Etienne de Bourbon, Elinand, Guillaume de Perrault and others
appealing to his precepts as the infallible guide to oratory. Quintilian was not neglected, however, and Symmachus
and Sidonius Apollinaris were also faithfully studied. If we turn to the speeches that are incorporated in the
epics, as, for instance, the Cid, or in some of the historians, as Villehardouin, we have definite evidence of
the thorough command of the writers of the time over the forms of oratory. M. Paullin Paris, the authority in our
time on the literature of the Thirteenth Century, quotes a passage from Villehardouin in which Canon de Bethune
speaks in the name of the French chiefs of the Fourth Crusade to the Emperors Isaac and Alexis Comnenus. M. Paris
does not hesitate to declare that the passage is equal to many of the same kind that have been much admired in
the classic authors. It has the force, the finish and the compression of Thucydides.
XVII. GREAT BEGINNINGS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Only the fact that this work was getting beyond the number of printed pages determined for it in the first edition
prevented the insertion of a chapter especially devoted to the great beginnings of English literature in the Thirteenth
Century. The most important contributions to Early English were made at this period. The Ormulum and Layamon's
Brut, both written probably during the first decade of the Thirteenth Century, have become familiar to all students
of Old English. Mr. Gollancz goes so far as to say that "The Ormulum is perhaps the most valuable document
we possess for the history of English sound. Orm was a purist in othography as well as in vocabulary, and may fittingly
be described as the first of English phoneticians."
Of Layamon, Garnett said in his "English Literature" (Garnett and Gosse):
"It would have sufficed for the fame of Layamon had he been no more than the first minstrel to celebrate Arthur
in English song, but his own pretensions as a poet are by no means inconsiderate. He is everywhere vigorous and
graphic, and improved upon his predecessor, Wace, alike by his additions and expansions, and by his more spiritual
handling of the subjects common to both." Even more important in the history of language than these is The
Ancren Riwle (The Anchorites' Rule). This was probably written by Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury, for three
Cistercian nuns. Its place in English literature may be judged from a quotation or two with regard to it. Mr. Kington-Oliphant
says : " The Ancren Riwle is the forerunner of a wondrous change in our speech. More than anything else written
outside the Danelagh, that piece has influenced our standard English." Garnett says : " The Ancren Riwle
is a work of great literary merit and, in spite of its linguistic innovations, most of which have established themselves,
well deserves to be described as 'one of the most perfect models of simple eloquent prose in our language.' "
The religious poetry of the time is not behind the great prose of The Ancren Riwle, and one of them, the Luve Ron
(Love Song) of Thomas de Hales, is very akin to the spirit of that work, and has been well described as "
a contemplative lyric of the simplest;, noblest mold." Garnett says: " The reflections are such as are
common to all who have in all ages pleaded for the higher life under whatsoever form, and deplored the frailty
and transitoriness of man's earthly estate.
Two stanzas on the latter theme as expressed in a modernized version might almost pass for Villon's:-
"Paris and Helen, where are they,
Fairest in beauty, bright to view?
Amadas, Tristrem, Ideine, yea
Isold, that lived with love so true?
And Caesar, rich in power and sway,
Hector the strong, with might to do?
All glided from earth's realm away,
Like shaft that from the bow-string flew.
"It is as if they ne'er were here,
Their wondrous woes have been a' told,
That it is sorrow but to hear:
How anguish killed them sevenfold,
And how with dole their lives were drear;
Now is their heat all turned to cold.
Thus this world gives false hope, false fear;
A fool, who in her strength is bold."
XVIII. GREAT ORIGINS IN MUSIC.
In the chapter on the Great Latin Hymns a few words were said about one phase of the important musical development
in the Thirteenth Century, that of plain chant. In that simple mode the musicians of the Thirteenth Century succeeded
in reaching a climax of expression of human feeling in such chants as the Exultet and the Lamentation that has
never been surpassed. Something was also said about the origin of part music, but so little that it might easily
be thought that in this the century lagged far behind its achievements in other departments. M. Pierre Auhry has
recently published (1909) Cent Motets du XIIIe Siècle in three volumes. His first volume contains a photographic
reproduction of the manuscript of Bamberg from which the hundred musical modes are secured, the second a transcription
in modern musical notation of the old music, and the third volume studies and commentaries on the music and the
times. If anything were needed to show how utterly ignorant we have been of the interests and artistic achievements
of the Middle Ages, it is this book of M. Aubry.
Victor Hugo said that music dates from the Sixteenth Century, and it has been quite the custom,
even for people who thought they knew something about music, to declare that we had no remains of any music before
the Sixteenth Century worth while talking about. Ancient music is probably lost to us forever, but M. Aubry has
shown conclusively that we have abundant remains to show us that the musicians of the Thirteenth Century devoted
themselves to their art with as great success as their rivals in the other Gothic arts and, indeed, they thought
that they had nearly exhausted its possibilities and tried to make a science of it. By their supposedly scientific
rules they succeeded in binding music so firmly as to bring about its obscuration in succeeding centuries. This
is, however, the old story of what has happened in every art whenever genius succeeds in finding a great mode of
expression. A formula is evolved which often binds expression so rigorously as to prevent natural development.
XIX. A CHAPTER ON MANNERS.
Whatever the people of the Middle Ages may have been in morals, their manners are supposed to have been about as
lacking in refinement as possible. As for nearly everything else, however, this impression is utterly false, and
is due to the assumption that because we are better-mannered than the generations of a century or two ago, therefore
we must be almost infinitely in advance, in the same respect, of the people of seven centuries ago. There are ups
and downs in manners, however, as there are in education, and the beginnings of the formal setting forth of modern
manners are, like everything else modern, to be found in the Thirteenth Century. About the year 1215 Thomasin Zerklaere
wrote in German a rather lengthy treatise, Der Wdlsche Gast, on manners. It contains most of the details of polite
conduct that have been accepted in later times. Not long afterwards, John Garland, an Oxford man who had lived
in France for many years, wrote a book on manners for English young men. He meant this to be a supplement to Dionysius
Cato's treatise, written probably in the Fourth Century in Latin, which was concerned more with morals than manners
and had been very popular during the Middle Ages. Garland's book was the first of a series of such treatises on
manners which appeared in England at the close of the Middle Ages. Many of them have been recently republished,
and are a revelation of the development of manners among our English forefathers. The hook is usually alluded to
in literature as Liber Faceti, or as Facet; the full title was, "The Book of the Polite Man, Teaching Manners
for Men, Especially for Boys, as a Supplement to those which were Omitted by the Most Moral Cato."
The " Romance of the Rose" has, of course, many references to manners which show us
how courtesy was cultivated in France. In Italy, Dante's teacher, Bruneto Latini, published his "Tesoretto,"
which treats of manners, and which was soon followed by a number of similar treatises in Italian. In a word, we
must look to the Thirteenth Century for the origin, or at least the definite acceptance, of most of those conventions
which make for kindly courtesy among men, and have made possible human society and friendly intercourse in our
modern sense of those words.
We are prone to think that refinement in table manners is a matter of distinctly modern times. In "The Babees'
Book," which is one of the oldest books of English manners, the date of which in its present form is about
the middle of the Fourteenth Century, many of our rules of politeness at table are anticipated. This book is usually
looked upon as a compilation from preceding times, and the original of it is supposed to he from the preceding
century. A few quotations from it will show how closely it resembles our own instructions to children:
"Thou shalt not laugh nor speak nothing
While thy mouth be full of meat or drink;
Nor sup thou not with great sounding
Neither pottage nor other thing.
At meat cleanse not thy teeth, nor pick
With knife or straw or wand or stick.
While thou boldest meat in mouth, beware
To drink; that is an unhonest chare;
And also physic forbids it quite.
Also eschew, without strife,
To foul the board cloth with thy knife.
Nor blow not on thy drink or meat,
Neither for cold, neither for heat.
Nor bear with meat thy knife to mouth,
Whether thou be set by strong or couth.
Lean not on elbow at thy meat,
Neither for cold nor for heat.
Dip not thy thumb thy drink into;
Thou art uncourteous if thou it do.
In salt-cellar if thou put
Or fish or flesh that men see it,
That is a vice, as men me tells;
And great wonder it would be else"
The directions, "how to behave thyself in talking with any man,"
in one of these old books, are very minute and specific:-
If a man demand a question of thee,
In thine answer making be not too hasty;
Weigh well his words, the case understand
Ere an answer to make thou take in hand;
Else may he judge in thee little wit,
To answer to a thing and not hear it.
Suffer his tale whole out to betold,
Then speak thou mayst, and not be controlled;
In audible voice thy words do thou utter,
Not high nor low, but using a measure.
Thy words see that thou pronounce plaine,
And that they spoken be not in vain;
In tittering whereon keep an order,
Thy matter thereby thou much forder
Which order if thou do not observe,
From the purpose needs must thou swerve."
XX. TEXTILE WORK OF THE CENTURY.
A special chapter might easily have been written on the making of fine cloths of various kinds, most of which reached
their highest perfection in the Thirteenth Century. Velvet, for instance, is mentioned for the first time in England
in 1295, but existed earlier on the continent, and cut velvets with elaborate patterns were made in Genoa exactly
as we know finished velvet now. Baudekin or Baldichin, a very costly textile of gold and silk largely used in altar
coverings and hangings, came to very high perfection in this century also. The canopy for the Blessed Sacrament
is, because of its manufacture from this cloth, still called in Italy a baldichino. Chaucer in the next century
tells how the streets in royal processions were "hanged with cloth of gold and not with serge." Satin
also was first manufactured very probably in the Thirteenth Century. It is first mentioned in England about the
middle of the Fourteenth Century, when Bishop Grandison made a gift of choice satins to Exeter Cathedral.
The word satin, however, is derived from the silks of the Mediterranean, called by the Italians seta and by the
Spanish seda, and the art of making it was brought to perfection during the preceding century.
The art of making textiles ornamented with elaborate designs of animal forms and of floral ornaments reached its
highest perfection in the Thirteenth Century. In one of the Chronicles we learn that in 1295 St. Paul's in London
owned a hanging " patterned with wheels and two-headed birds." We have accounts of such elaborate textile
ornamentation as peacocks, lions, griffins and the like. Almeria in Andalusia was a rich city in the Thirteenth
Century, noted for its manufactures of textiles. A historian of the period writes: " Christians of all nations
came to its port to buy and sell. Then they traveled to other parts of the interior of the country, where they
loaded their vessels with such goods as they wanted. Costly silken robes of the brightest colors are manufactured
in Almeria." Marco-Polo says of the Persians that, when he passed through that country (end of the Thirteenth
Century), "there are excellent artificers in the city who make wonderful things in gold, silk and embroidery.
The women make excellent needlework in silk with all sorts of creatures very admirably wrought therein." He
also reports the King of Tartary as wearing on his birthday a most precious garment of gold, and tells of the girdles
of gold and silver, with pearls and ornaments of great price on them.
Unfortunately English embroidery fell off very greatly at the time of the Wars of the Roses. These wars constitute
the main reason why nearly every form of intellectual accomplishment and artistic achievement went into decadence
during the Fourteenth Century, from which they were only just emerging when the so-called reformation, with its
confiscation of monastic property, and its destruction of monastic life, came to ruin schools of all kinds, and,
above all, those in which the arts and crafts had been taught so successfully. France at the end of the Thirteenth
Century saw a similar rise to excellence of textile and embroidery work. In 1299 there is an allusion to one Clement
le Brodeur who furnished a magnificent cola for the Count of Artois. In 1316 a beautifully decorated set of hangings
was made for the Queen by Gautier de Poulleigny. There are other references to work done in the early part of the
Fourteenth Century, which serve to show the height which art had reached in this mode during the Thirteenth Century.
In Ireland, while the finer work had its due place, the making of woolens was the specialty, and the dyeing of
woolen cloth made the Irish famous and brought many travelers from the continent to learn the secret.
The work done in England in embroidery attracted the attention of the world. English needlework became a proverb.
In the body of the book I mentioned the cope of Ascoli, but there were many such beautiful garments. The Syon cope
is, in the opinion of Miss Addison, author of " Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages," the most conspicuous
example of the medieval embroiderers' art. It was made by nuns about the middle of the Thirteenth Century, that
is, just about the same time as the cope of Ascoli, but in a convent near Coventry. According to Miss Addison "
it is solid stitchery on a canvas ground, `wrought about with divers colors' on green. The design is laid out in
a series of interlacing square forms, with rounded and barbed sides and corners. In each of these is a figure or
a Scriptural scene.
The orphreys, or straight borders, which go down on both fronts of the cope, are decorated with heraldic charges.
Much of the embroidery is raised, and wrought in the stitch known as Opus Anglicanum. The effect was produced by
pressing a heated metal knob into the work at such points as were to be raised. The real embroidery was executed
on a flat surface, and then bossed up by this means until it looked like bas-relief. The stitches in every part
run in zig-zags, the vestments, and even the nimbi about the heads, are all executed with the stitches slanting
in one direction, from the center of the cope outward, without consideration of the positions of the figures. Each
face is worked in circular progression outward from the center, as well. The interlaces are of crimson, and look
well on the green ground. The wheeled cherubim is well developed in the design of this famous cope, and is a pleasing
decorative bit of archaic ecclesiasticism. In the central design of the Crucifixion, the figure of the Lord is
rendered in silver on a gold ground."
XXI. GLASS-MAKING.
A chapter might well have been devoted to Thirteenth Century glass-making quite apart from the stained glass of
the cathedral windows. All over Europe some of the most wonderful specimens of colored glass we possess were made
in the Thirteenth Century. Recently Mr. Frederick Rolfe has looked up for me Venetian glass, of the three centuries,
the Twelfth, the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth. He says Twelfth Century glass is small in form, simple and ignorant
in model, excessively rich and brilliant in colors; the artist evidently had no ideal, but the Byzantine of jewels
and emeralds.
"Thirteenth Century glass is absolutely different. The specimens are pretty. The work of the Beroviero family
is large and splendid in form, exquisite and sometimes elaborate in model, mostly crystal glass reticently studded
with tiny colored gem-like knobs.
There are also fragments of two windows pieced together, and missing parts filled with the best which modern Murano
can do. These show the celebrated Beroviero Ruby glass (secret lost) of marvelous depth and brilliancy in comparison
with which the modern work is merely watery. The ancient is just like a decanter of port-wine.
"Fourteenth Century returns to the wriggling ideal and exiguous form of the Twelfth Century, and fails woefully
in brilliance of color. It is small and dull and undistinguished. One may find out what war or pest afflicted Murano
at this epoch to explain the singular degradation."
This same curious degradation took place in the manufacture of most art objects during the Fourteenth
Century. One would feel in Mr. Rolfe's words like looking for some physical cause for it. The decadence is so universal,
however, that it seems not unlikely that it follows some little known human law, according to which, after man
has reached a certain perfection of expression in an art or craft, there comes, in the striving after originality
yet variety, an overbalancing of the judgment, a vitiation of the taste in the very luxuriance of beauty discovered
that leads to decay. It is the very contradiction of the supposed progress of mankind through evolution, but it
is illustrated in many phases of human history and, above all, the history of art, letters, education and the arts
and crafts.
INVENTIONS
Most people are sure to think that, at least in the matter of inventions, ours is the only time worth considering.
The people of the Thirteenth Century, however, made many wonderful inventions and adaptations of mechanical principles,
as well as many ingenious appliances. Their faculty of invention was mainly devoted to work in other departments
besides that of mechanics. They were inventors of designs in architecture, in decoration, in furnishings, in textiles,
and in the beautiful things of life generally.
Their inventiveness in the arts and crafts was especially admirable and, indeed, has been fruitful in our time,
since, with the reawakening in this matter, we have gone back to imitate their designs. Good authorities declare
these to be endless in number and variety.
Such mechanical inventions as were needed for the building of their great cathedrals, their municipal
buildings, abbeys, castles, piers, bridges and the like were admirably worked out. Necessity is the mother of invention,
and whenever needs asserted themselves, these old generations responded to them, very successfully.
There are, however, a number of inventions that would attract attention even in the modern time for their practical
usefulness and ingenuity. With the growth of the universities writing became much more common, textbooks were needed,
and so paper was invented. With the increase of reading, to replace teaching by hearing, spectacles were invented.
Time became more precious, clocks were greatly improved, and we hear of the invention of something like an alarm
clock, an apparatus which, after a fixed number of hours, woke the monk of the abbey whose duty it was to arouse
the others. Organs for churches were greatly improved, bells were perfected, and everything else in connection
with the churches so well fashioned that we still use them in their Thirteenth Century forms. Gunpowder was not
invented, but a great many new uses were found for it, and Roger Bacon even suggested, as I have said, that sometime
explosives would enable boats to move by sea without sails or oars, or carriages to move on land without horses
or men. Roger Bacon even suggested the possibility of airships, described how one might be made, the wings of which
would be worked by a windlass, and thought that he could make it. His friend and pupil, Peregrinus, invented the
double pivoted compass, and, as the first perpetual-motion faddist, described how he would set about making a magnetic
engine that he thought would run forever. When we recall how much they accomplished mechanically in the construction
of buildings, it becomes evident that any mechanical problem that these generations wanted solved they succeeded
in solving very well. What they have left us as inventions are among the most useful appliances that we have. Without
paper and without spectacles, the intellectual world would be in a sad case, indeed. Many of the secrets of their
inventions in the arts and crafts have been lost, and, in spite of all our study, we have not succeeded in rediscovering
them.
XXIII. INDUSTRY AND TRADE.
We are rather inclined to think that large organizations of industry and trade were reserved for comparatively
modern times. To think so, however, is to forget the place occupied by the monasteries and convents in the olden
time. We have heard much of the lazy monks, but only from those who know nothing at all about them. Idleness in
the monasteries was one of the accusations made by the commission set to furnish evidence to Henry VIII. on which
he might suppress the monasteries, but every modern historian has rejected the findings of that commission as false.
Many forms of manufacture were carried on in the monasteries and convents. They were the principal bookmakers and
bookbinders. To a great extent they were the manufacturers of art fabrics and arts-and-crafts work intended for
church use, but also for the decoration of luxurious private apartments. Most of us have known something of all
this finer work, but not that they had much to do with cruder industries also. They were millers, cloth-makers,
brush- and broom-makers, shoemakers for themselves and their tenantry; knitting was done in the convents, and all
the finer fancy work. A recent meeting of the Institute of Mining Engineers in England brought out some discussion
of coal mining in connection with the early history of the coal mines in England. The records of many of the English
monasteries show that in early times the monks knew the value of coal, and used it rather freely. They also mined
it for others.
The monks at Tynemouth are known to have been mining coal on the Manor of Tynemouth in 1269,
and shipping it to a distance. At Durham and at Finchale Abbey they were doing this also about the same time. It
would require special study to bring out the interesting details, but there is abundant material not alone for
a chapter, but for a volume on the industries of the Thirteenth Century, which, like the education and the literature
and the culture of the time, we have thought undeveloped, because we knew nothing of them.
The relation of the monasteries to trade, domestic and foreign, is very well brought out in a
paragraph of Mr. Ralph Adams Cram's book on "The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain " (New York, The Churchman
Co., 1905), in which he describes the remains at Beaulieu, which show the place of that monastery, not by any means
one of the most important in England, in trade. For the benefit of their tenantry others had done even more.
"Some idea of the power of one of these great monasteries may be gained from traces still existing of the
center of trade built up by the monks outside their gates. Here, at the head of tide water, in a most out-of-the-way
spot, a great stone quay was constructed, to which came ships from foreign lands. Near by was a great marketplace,
now, as then, called Cheapside, though commerce exists there no longer. At the height of monastic glory the religious
houses were actually the chief centers of industry and civilization, and around them grew up the eager villages,
many of which now exist, even though their impulse and original inspiration have long since departed. Of course,
the possessions of the abbey reached far away from the walls in every direction, including many farms even at a
great distance, for the abbeys were then the great landowners, and beneficent landlords they were as well, even
in their last days, for we have many records of the cruelty and hardships that came to the tenants the moment the
stolen lands came into the hands of laymen."
XXIV. FAIRS AND MARKETS.
A chapter might well have been devoted to showing the significance of those curious old institutions, the fairs
and market days of the Middle Ages. The country folk flocked into town, bringing with them their produce, and found
there gathered from many parts merchants come to exchange and barter. The expense of maintaining a store all the
year around was done away with, and profits did not have to be large. Exchanges were direct, and the profits of
the middlemen were to a great extent eliminated. It was distinctly to the advantage of the poor, for the expenses
of commerce were limited to the greatest possible extent, and every advantage accrued to the customer.
Besides, these market days became days of innocent merriment, amusement and diversion. Wandering purveyors of amusement
followed the fairs, and obtained their living from the generosity of the people who were amused. These amusements
were conducted out of doors, and with very few of the objectionable features as regards hygiene and morality that
are likely to attach themselves to the same things in our day. The amusement was what we would call now vaudeville,
singing, dancing, the exhibition of trained animals, acrobatic feats of various kinds, so that we cannot very well
say that our people arc in advance of their medieval forbears in such matters, since their taste is about the same.
Fairs and market days made country life less monotonous by their regular recurrence, and so prevented that emptying
of the country into the city which we deprecate in our time. They had economic, social, even moral advantages,
that are worth while studying.
XXV. INTENSIVE FARMING.
We hear much of intensive farming in the modern time, and it is supposed to be a distinctly modern invention mothered
by the necessity due to great increase of population. One of the most striking features of the story of monasticism
in the countries of Europe, however, during the Middle Ages, and especially during the Thirteenth Century, when
so many of the greatest abbeys reached a climax of power and influence and beauty of construction, is their successful
devotion paid to agriculture. In the modern time we are gradually learning the lesson of growing larger and larger
crops on the same area of ground by proper selection of seed, and of developing cattle in such a way as to make
them most valuable as a by-product of farming. This is exactly what the old monastic establishments did. At the
beginning of the Thirteenth Century many of them were situated in rather barren regions, sometimes, indeed, surrounded
by thick forests, but at the end of the century all the great monastic establishments had succeeded in making beautiful
luxuriant gardens for themselves, and had taught their numerous tenantry the great lessons of agricultural improvement
which made for plenty and happiness.
Many monasteries belonged to the same religious order, and the traditions of these were carried from one to the
other by visiting monks or sometimes by the transfer of members of one community to another. The monastic establishments
were the great farmers of Europe, and it was their proud boast that their farming lands, instead of being exhausted
from year to year, were rather increasing in value. They doubtless had many secrets of farming that were lost and
had to be rediscovered in the modern time, just as in the arts and crafts, for their success in farming was as
noteworthy. Their knowledge of trees must have been excellent, since they surrounded themselves with fine forests,
at times arranged so as to provide shady walks and charming avenues, Their knowledge of simple farming must have
been thorough, for the farms of the monasteries were always the most prosperous, and the tenantry were always the
happiest. With the traditions that we have especially in English history, this seems almost impossible to credit,
but these traditions, manufactured for a purpose, have now been entirely discredited.
We have learned in recent years what wonderful scholars, architects, painters, teachers, engineers these monks
were, and so it is not surprising to find that they had magnificently developed agricultural knowledge as well
as that of every other department in which they were particularly interested.
XXVI. CARTOGRAPHY AND THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY.
In the chapter on Great Explorers and The Foundation of Geography, in the body of the book, much might have been
said about maps and map-making, for the Thirteenth Century was a great period in this matter. Lecoy de la Marche
among his studies of the Thirteenth Century has included a volume of a collection of the maps of the Thirteenth
Century. If the purpose had been to make this a work of erudition rather than of popular information, much might
have been said of the cartography of the time even from this work alone (Receuil de Chartes du XIIIe Siècle,
Paris, 1878).
One of the great maps of the Thirteenth Century, that on the Cathedral wall of Hereford, deserves a place here.
It was made just at the end of the Thirteenth Century. The idea of its maker was to convey as much information
as possible about the earth, and not merely indicate its political divisions and the relative size and position
of the different parts. It is to a certain extent at least a resume of history, of physical geography, and even
of geographical biology and anthropology, for it has indications as to the dwelling-place of animals and curious
types of men. It contains, besides, references to interesting objects of other kinds. Because of its interest I
have reproduced the map itself, and the key to it with explanations published at Hereford.
[CHURCHinHISTORY editor: For map and key see end of Appendix III].
The Map is executed on a single sheet of vellum, 54 in. in breadth, by 63 in. in extreme height.
It is fixed on a strong framework of oak. At the top (Fig. 1) is a representation of the Last Judgment. Our Saviour
is represented in glory, and below is the Virgin Mary interceding for mankind.
For convenience of reference the Key Map is divided into squares marked by Roman capitals, with the more prominent
objects in figures. I.-Commencing with sq. 1. the circle marked by Fig. 2 represents the Garden of Eden, with the
four rivers, and Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. The remainder of the square, as also in II. and III.,
is occupied by India. At Fig. 3 is shown the expulsion of Adam and Eve, to the right of which is shown a race of
Giants, and to the left the City of Enoch, and still further the Golden Mountains guarded by Dragons. Below these
mountains are shown a race of pigmies. In a space bounded by two rivers is placed a crocodile, and immediately
below a female warrior. To the left of the latter age a pair of birds called in the Map Alerions.
The large river to the left is the Ganges. II-Shows one of the inhabitants of this part of India,
who are said to have but one foot, which is sufficiently large to serve as an umbrella to shelter themselves from
the sun. The city in the center is Samarcand. III.-In which is seen an Elephant, to the left a Parrot. A part of
the Red Sea is also shown with the Island of Taprobana (Ceylon) on which are shown two Dragons. It also bears an
inscription denoting that dragons and elephants are found there. The small Islands shown are Crise, Argire, Ophir,
and Frondisia (Aphrodisia).
IV.-Contains the Caspian Sea, below which is a figure holding its tail in his hand, and which
the author calls the Minotaur. To the left is shown one of the Albani, who are said to see better at night than
in the daytime. Below are two warriors in combat with a Griffin (Fig. 27). V.-In the upper part are Bokhara and
Thrace, in the latter of which (Fig. 29) is shown the Pelican feeding its young, to the left a singular figure
representing the Cicones, and to the right the Camel, in Bactria. Below to the left is the Tiger, and on the right
an animal with a human head and the body of a lion, called the Mantichora. Still lower is seen Noah's ark (Fig.
28), in which are shown three human figures, with beasts, birds and serpents. In the lower corner, at Fig. 26,
is the Golden Fleece.
VI.-The upper parts contain Labylonia, with the City of Babylon (Fig. 4) on the river Euphrates,
below which is the city of Damascus, which has on its right an unknown animal called the Marsok. To the right is
Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt (Fig. 8). Decapolis and the River Jordan are near the bottom of the square.
Above the River Euphrates is a figure in a frame representing the Patriarch Abraham's residence at Ur of the Chaldees.
VII.-The Red Sea (Figs. 5) is the most conspicuous object here. In the fork formed by it is shown the giving of
the Tables of The Law on Mount Sinai. Below, and touching the line (Fig. 6) showing the wanderings of the Israelites,
is seen the worship of the Golden Calf. The Dead Sea and submerged Cities are shown lower down to the left, and
between this and the Red Sea is the Phoenix. At the bottom is a mythical animal with long horns, called the Eale.
VIII.-In the upper part is the Monastery of St. Anthony in Ethiopia. The river to the left is
the Nile, between this and a great interior lake (Figs. 7, 7) is a figure of Satyr. Beyond the lake, and extending
a distance down the Map (Figs. 12, 12, 12), are various singular figures, supposed to represent the races dwelling
there. In a circular island to the left (Meroe) is a man riding a crocodile, and at the bottom left-hand corner
is a centaur. IX.-The upper part is Scythia, and shows some cannibals, below which (Fig. 25) are two Scythians
in combat.
Under this again is a man leading a horse with a human skin thrown over it, and to the right of the latter is placed
the ostrich. X.-Asia Minor with the Black Sea (Fig. 24). Many cities are shown prominent, among which is Troy (Fig.
21), described as "Troja civitas bellicosissima." Near the bottom to the left is Constantinople. The
lynx is shown near the center. XI.-Is nearly filled by the Holy Land. In the center is Jerusalem (Fig. 23), the
supposed center of the world, surrounded by a high wall, and above is the Crucifixion. Below Jerusalem to the right
is Bethlehem with the manger. Near a circular place to the right, called "Puteus Juramenti" (well of
the oath), is an unknown bird, called on the Map Avis Cirenus.
XII. Egypt with the Nile. At the upper part (Fig. 9) are Joseph's granaries, i.e., the Pyramids, immediately below
which is the Salamander, and to the right of that the Mandrake. Fig. 10 denotes the Delta with its cities. On the
other side of the Nile, and partly in sq. XIII., is the Rhinoceros, and below it the Unicorn. XIlI.-Ethiopia. In
the upper left-hand corner is the Sphinx, and near the bottom the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, represented by a singular
horse-shoe shaped figure. The camp of Alexander the Great is in the bottom left-hand corner, immediately above
which is the boundary line between Asia and Africa. XIV.-At the top of the left is Norway, in which the author
has placed the Monkey. The middle is filled by Russia. The small circular islands on the left are the Orkneys,
immediately below which is an inscription relating to the Seven Sleepers. Scotland and part of England are shown
in the lower part, but the British Isles will be described in sq. XIX. The singular triangular figure in the center
of this square cannot be identified.
XV.Germany, with part of Greece, in the upper part to the right. The Danube and its tributaries are seen in the
upper part, in the lower is the Rhine. On the bank of the latter the scorpion is placed ; Venice is shown on the
right. XVI.-Contains Italy and a great part of the Mediterranean Sea (Fig. t4). About the center (Fig. 17) is Rome,
which bears the inscription, " Roma caput mundi tenet orbis frena rotundi." In the upper part of the
Mediterranean Sea is seen a Mermaid, below (Fig. 11) is the Island of Crete, with its famous labyrinth, to the
left of which is the rock Scylla. Below Crete is Sicily (Fig. 15), on which Mount Etna is shown; close to Sicily
is the whirlpool Charybdis.
XVII.-Part of Africa; in the lower part to the left, on a promontory, is seen Carthage; on the right the Leopard
is shown. XVIII.-Also part of Africa. The upper part is Fezzan, below is shown the basilisk, and still lower some
Troglodytes or dwellers in caves. XIX.-On the left hand are the British Isles (Figs. 19, 20, 22), on the right
France.
Great Britain (Figs. 19, 22) is very fully laid down, but of Ireland the author seemed to know but little. In England
twenty-six cities and towns are delineated, among which Hereford (H'ford) is conspicuous. Twenty rivers are also
seen, but the only mountains shown are the Clee Hills. In Wales, Snowdon is seen, and the towns of Carnarvon, Conway
and St. David's. In Ireland four towns, Armagh, Bangor, Dublin and Kildare, with two rivers, the Banne, which,
as shown, divides the island in two, and the Shannon. In Scotland there are six towns. In France the City of Paris
(Fig. 18) is conspicuous.
XX.-The upper part is Provence, the lower Spain. In the Mediterranean Sea are laid down, among others, the Islands
of Corsica, Sardinia, Majorca, and Minorca. At the bottom are (Fig. 16) the pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), which
were considered the extreme western limits of the world. XXI.-At the top to the left (Fig, 13) is St. Augustine
of Hippo, in his pontifical habit. And at the opposite corner the Lion, below which arc the Agriophagi, a one-eyed
people who live on the flesh of lions and other beasts. The kingdoms on the shore of the Mediterranean are Algiers,
Setif, and Tangier.
APPENDIX III
This Version: 23rd March 2008
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