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APPENDIX III.
CRITICISMS, COMMENTS, DOCUMENTS.
[CHURCHinHISTORY Editor: In the original the following chapters were unnumbered. For convenience
we have provided numbers].
[1]. HUMAN PROGRESS.
For most people the impossible would apparently be accomplished if a century so far back as the
Thirteenth were to be even seriously thought of as the greatest of centuries. Evolution has come to be accepted
so unquestioningly, that of course "we are the heirs of all the ages of the foremost files of time,"
and must be far ahead of our forbears, especially of the distant past, in everything. When a man talks glibly about
great progress in recent times, he usually knows only the history of his own time and not very much about that.
Men who have studied other periods seriously hesitate about the claim of progress, and the more anyone knows about
any other period, the less does he think of his own as surpassing. There are many exemplifications of this in recent
literature. Because this was a cardinal point in many criticisms of the book, it has seemed well to illustrate
the position here taken as to the absence of progress in humanity by quotations from recognized authorities. Just
as the first edition of this book came from the press, Ambassador Bryce delivered his address at Harvard on "
What is Progress? " It appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1907. Mr. Bryce is evidently not at all
persuaded that there is human progress in any real sense of the word. Some striking quotations may be made from
the address, but to get the full impression of Mr. Bryce's reasons for hesitation about accepting any progress,
the whole article needs to be read. For instance, he said:
"It does not seem possible, if we go back to the earliest literature which survives to us from Western Asia
and Southeastern Europe, to say that the creative powers of the human mind in such subjects as poetry, philosophy,
and historical narrative or portraiture, have either improved or deteriorated. The poetry of the early Hebrews
and of the early Greeks has never been surpassed and hardly ever equaled.
Neither has the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, nor the speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero. Geniuses like Dante,
Chaucer, and Shakespeare appear without our being able to account for them, and for aught we know another may appear
at any moment. It is just as difficult, if we look back five centuries, to assert either progress or decline in
painting. Sculpture has never again risen to so high a level as it touched in the fifth century, B. C., nor within
the last three centuries, to so high a level as it reached at the end of the fifteenth.
But we can found no generalizations upon that fact. Music is the most inscrutable of the arts, and whether there
is any progress to be expected other than that which may come from a further improvement in instruments constituting
an orchestra, I will not attempt to conjecture, any more than I should dare to raise controversy by inquiring whether
Beethoven represents progress from Mozart, Wagner progress from Beethoven."
Perhaps the most startling evidence on this subject of the absence of evolution in humanity is the opinion of Prof.
Flinders Petrie, the distinguished English authority on Egyptology, who has added nearly a millennium to the history
of Egypt. His studies have brought him in intimate contact with Egypt from 2,000 to 5,000 B. C. He has found no
reason at all for thinking that our generation is farther advanced in any important qualities than men were during
this period. In an article on " The Romance of Early Civilization " (The Independent, Jan. 7, 1909),
he said:
" We have now before us a view of the powers of man at the earliest point to which we can trace written history,
and what strikes us most is how very little his nature or abilities have changed in seven thousand years; what
he admired we admire; what were his limits in fine handiwork also are ours. We may have a wider outlook, a greater
understanding of things; our interests may have extended in this interval; but so far as human nature and tastes
go, man is essentially unchanged in this interval." . … "This is the practical outcome of extending our
view of man three times as far back as we used to look, and it must teach us how little material civilization is
likely in the future to change the nature, the weaknesses, or the abilities of our ancestors in ages yet to come."
Those who think that man has advanced in practical wisdom during 6,000 years of history, forget entirely the lessons
of literature. Whenever a great genius has written, he has displayed a knowledge of human nature as great as any
to be found at any other time in the world's history. The wisdom of Homer and of Solomon are typical examples.
Probably the most striking evidence in this matter is to be found in what is considered to be the oldest book ever
written. This is the Instructions of Ptah Hotep to his son. Ptah Hotep was the vizier of King Itosi, of the Fifth
Dynasty of Egypt (about 3650 B. C.).
There is nothing that a father of the modern time would wish to tell his boy as the result of his own experience
that is not to be found in this wise advice of a father, nearly 6,000 years ago. This was written longer before
Solomon than Solomon is before us, yet no practical knowledge to be gained from intercourse with men has been added
to what this careful father of the long ago has written out for his son.
[2]. THE CENTURY OF ORIGINS.
To many readers apparently, it has seemed that the main reason for writing of The Thirteenth
as the Greatest of Centuries was the fact that the Church occupied so large a place in the life of that time, and
that, therefore, most of what was accomplished must naturally revert to her account. It is not only those who are
interested in the old Church, however, who have written enthusiastically about the Thirteenth Century. Since writing
this volume, I have found that Mr. Frederick Harrison is almost, if not quite, as ardent in his praise of it as
I have been. There are many others, especially among the historians of art and of architecture, who apparently
have not been able to say all that they would wish in admiration of this supreme century. Most of these have not
been Catholics; and if we place beside Mr. Frederick Harrison, the great Positivist of our generation, Mr. John
Morley, the great Rationalist, the chorus of agreement on the subject of the greatness of the Thirteenth Century
ought to be considered about complete. 'Mr. Morley, in his address on Popular Culture, delivered as President of
the Midland Institute, England, October 1876 (Great Essays. Putman, New York), said:
"It is the present that really interests us; it is the present that we seek to understand
and to explain. I do not in the least want to know what happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my
way more clearly through what is happening to-day. I want to know what men thought and did in the Thirteenth Century,
not out of any dilettante or idle antiquarian's curiosity, but because the Thirteenth Century is at the root of
what men think and do in the nineteenth."
[3]. EDUCATION.
Many even of the most benevolent readers of the book have been quite sure that it exaggerated
the significance of medieval education and, above all, claimed too much for the breadth of culture given by the
early universities. Prof. Huxley is perhaps the last man of recent times who would be suspected for a moment of
exaggerating the import of medieval education. In his Inaugural Address on Universities Actual and Ideal, delivered
as Rector of Aberdeen University, after discussing the subject very thoroughly, he said:
"The scholars of the Medieval Universities seem to have studied grammar, logic and rhetoric;
arithmetic and geometry; astronomy, theology and music. Thus their work, however imperfect and faulty, judged by
modern lights, it may have been, brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind
of man. For these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo, sometimes it may be in caricature, what we
now call philosophy, mathematical and physical science, and art. And I doubt if the curriculum of any modern university
shows so clear and generous a comprehension of what is meant by culture, as this old Trivium and Quadrivium does."
(Italics ours.) The results of this system of education may be judged best perhaps from Dante as an example. In
The Popes and Science (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1908) a chapter is devoted to Dante as the typical university
man of the time, above all in his knowledge of science as displayed in his great poem. No poet of the modern time
has turned with so much confidence to every phase of science for his figures as this product of medieval universities.
Anyone who thinks that the study of science is recent, or that nature study was delayed till our day, need only
read Dante to be completely undeceived.
The fact that the scholars and the professors at the universities were almost without exception believers in the
possibility of the transmutation of metals in the old days, used to be considered by many educated people as quite
sufficient to stamp them as lacking in judgment and as prone to believe all sorts of incredible and even impossible
things without justification. Such supercilious condemnation of the point of view of the medieval scholars in this
matter, however, has recently received a very serious jolt. Sometime ago, Sir William Ramsey, the greatest of living
English chemists, announced at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, that he had
succeeded in changing copper into lithium. This created a sensation at the time, but represented, after all, a
culmination of effort in this direction that had long been expected. More recently, Sir William has reported to
the British Chemical Society that he has succeeded in obtaining carbon from four substances not containing this
element-bismuth, hydro-fluo-silicic acid, thorium and zirconium. An American professor of chemistry has declared
that he would like to remove all traces of silver from a quantity of lead ore, and then, after allowing it to stand
for some years, have the opportunity to re-examine it, since he is confident that he would find further traces
of silver in it that had developed in the meantime. He is sure that the reason why these two metals always occur
together, as do copper and gold, is that they are products of a developmental process, the precious metals being
a step farther on in that process than the so-called base metals. It would seem, then, that the medieval scholars
were not so silly as they used to appear before we knew enough about the subject to judge them properly. Only their
supercilious critics were silly.
It is probably with regard to the exact sciences that most even educated people are quite sure that the Thirteenth
Century does not deserve to be thought of as representing great human advance. For them the Middle Ages were drowsily
speculative, but never exact in thinking. Of course, such people know nothing of the intense exactness of thought
of St. Thomas or Albertus Magnus or Duns Scotus. It would be impossible, moreover, to make them realize, from the
writings of these men, how exact human thought actually was in the Thirteenth Century, though the more that modern
students devote themselves to scholastic philosophy, the more surely do they appreciate and admire this very quality
in the medieval philosophy. For such people, very probably, the only evidence that would have made quite an adequate
answer to their objection, would be a chapter on the mathematics of the Thirteenth Century. That might very easily
have been made, for Cantor, in his History of Mathematics (Vorlesungen Uber Geschichte der Mathematik, Leipzig,
1892), devotes nearly 100 pages of his second volume to the mathematicians of the Thirteenth Century, two of whom,
Leonardo of Pisa and Jordanus Nemorarius, did so much in Arithmetic, the Theory of Numbers, Algebra and Geometry,
as to make a revolution in mathematics. Cantor says that they accomplished so much, that their contemporaries and
successors could scarcely follow them, much less go beyond them.
They had great disciples, like John of Sacrobusco (probably John of Holywood, near Dublin), Joannes
Campanus and others. Cantor calls attention particularly to the spread of arithmetical knowledge among the masses,
which is a well-deserved tribute to the century, for it was a characteristic of the time that the new thoughts
and discoveries of scholars were soon made practical and penetrated very widely among the people. Brewer, in the
Preface to Roger Bacon's works, quotes some of Bacon's expressions with regard to the value of mathematics. The
English Franciscan said: "For without mathematics, nothing worth knowing in philosophy can be attained."
And again: "For he who knows not mathematics cannot know any other science; what is more, he cannot discover
his own ignorance or find its proper remedy." The term mathematics, as used by Bacon, had a much wider application
then than now, and Brewer notes that the Thirteenth Century scientist included therein Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy,
and Music."
With regard to post-graduate education, the best evidence that, far from any exaggeration of
what was accomplished in the Thirteenth Century, there has been a very conservative estimate of it made in the
book, may be gathered from the legally erected standards of the medical schools and the legal status of the medical
profession. In the Appendix of The Popes and Science, two Bulls are published, issued by Pope John XXII. (Circa,
1320), establishing medical schools in Perugia, at that time in the Papal States, and in Cahors, the birthplace
of this pope. These bulls were really the formal charters of the medical schools. They require three years of preliminary
study at the university and four or five years at medicine before the degree of doctor may be granted, and in addition
emphasized that the curricula of the new medical schools must be equal to those of Paris and Bologna.
These bulls were issued in the early part of the fourteenth century, and show the height to which the standards
of medical education had been raised. There will be found also a law of Frederick II., issued 1241, requiring for
all physicians who wished to practice in the Two Sicilies three years of preliminary study-four years at the medical
school and a year of practice with a physician before the diploma which constituted a license to practice would
be issued. This law is also a pure drug law forbidding the sale of impure drugs under penalty of confiscation of
goods, and the preparation of them under penalty of death. Our pure drug law was passed about the time of the issue
of the first edition of this book.
Those who ask for the results of this post-graduate training may find them in the story of Guy de Chauliac, the
Father of Modern Surgery. His life formed the basis of a lecture before the Johns Hopkins Medical Club that is
to be published in the Bulletin of John Hopkins Hospital. It is incorporated in Catholic Churchmen in Science,
Second Series (The Dolphin Press, Phila., 1909). We know Chauliac's work not by tradition, but from his great text-book
on surgery. This great Papal physician of the fourteenth century operated within the skull, did not hesitate to
open the thorax, sewed up wounds of the intestines, and discussed such subjects as hernia, catheterization, the
treatment of fractures, and manipulative surgery generally with wonderful technical ability. His book was the most
used text-book for the next two centuries, and has won the admiration of everyone who has ever read it.
[4]. TECHNICAL, EDUCATION OF THE MASSES.
Some of my friends courteously but firmly have insisted with me that I have greatly exaggerated
the technical abilities of the village workmen of the Middle Ages. That every town of less than ten thousand inhabitants
in England was able to supply such workmen as we can scarcely obtain in our cities of a million inhabitants, and
in that scanty population supply them in greater numbers than we can now secure them from our teeming populations,
seems to many simply impossible.
What I have been trying to say, however, in the chapters on the Arts and Crafts and on Popular Education, has been
much better said by an authority that will scarcely be questioned by my critics. The Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D.
D., who has been for twenty years the Rector of Scarning in England, who is an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College
and of Worcester College, Oxford, besides being an Honorary Canon in the Cathedral of Norwich, has devoted much
time and study to this question of how the cathedrals were built and finished. Twenty years of his life have been
spent in the study of the old English parish and of parish life. He has studied the old parish registers, and talks,
therefore, not from distant impressions, but from the actual facts as they are recorded. If to his position as
an antiquarian authority I add the fact that he is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, to the credit of
which so much of this popular education and accomplishment in the arts and crafts of the century accrues, the value
of his evidence is placed entirely above suspicion of partisan partiality. In his chapter on Parish Life in England,
in his book "Before the Great Pillage" (Before the Great Pillage with other Miscellanies, by Augustus
Jessopp, D. D., London. T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster Square, 1901), he says:
"The evidence is abundant and positive, and is increasing upon us year by year, that the
work done upon the fabrics of our churches, and the other work done in the beautifying of the interior of our churches,
such as the woodcarving of our screens, the painting of the lovely figures in the panels of those screens, the
embroidery of the banners and vestments, the frescoes on the walls, the engraving of the monumental brasses, the
stained glass in the windows, and all that vast aggregate of artistic achievements which existed in immense profusion
in our village churches till the sixteenth century stripped them bare-all this was executed by local craftsmen.
The evidence for this is accumulating upon us every year, as one antiquary after another succeeds in unearthing
fragments of pre-Reformation church-wardens' accounts.
"We have actual contracts for church building and church repairing undertaken by village contractors. We have
the cost of a rood screen paid to a village carpenter, of painting executed by local artists. We find the name
of an artificer, descried as aurifaber, or worker in gold and silver, living in a parish which could never have
had five hundred inhabitants; we find the people in another place casting a new bell and making the mould for it
themselves; we find the blacksmith of another place forging the iron work for the church door, or we get a payment
entered for the carving of the bench ends in a little church five hundred years ago, which bench ends are to be
seen in that church at the present moment. And we get fairly bewildered by the astonishing wealth of skill and
artistic taste and aesthetic feeling which there must have been in this England of ours, in times which till lately
we had assumed to be barbaric times. Bewildered, I say, because we cannot understand how it all came to a dead-stop
in a single generation, not knowing that the frightful spoliation of our churches and other parish buildings, and
the outrageous plunder of the parish gilds in the reign of Edward the Sixth by the horrible band of robbers that
carried on their detestable work, effected such a hideous obliteration, such a clean sweep of the precious treasures
that were dispersed in rich profusion over the whole land, that a dull despair of ever replacing what had been
ruthlessly pillaged crushed the spirit of the whole nation, and art died out in rural England, and King Whitewash
and Queen Ugliness ruled supreme for centuries. "
My argument is that a century which produced such artist-artisans everywhere, had technical schools
in great profusion, though they may not have been called by any such ambitious name.
[5]. HOW IT ALL STOPPED.
To most people it seems impossible to understand how it is that, if artistic evolution proceeded
to the perfection which it now seems clear that it actually attained in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
we are only just getting back to a proper state of public taste and a right degree of artistic skill in many of
these same accomplishments at the present time. That thought has come to many others who, knowing and appreciating
medieval progress in art and literature, have tried to work out the reasons for the gap that exists between medieval
art and modern artistic endeavor. Some of these explanations, because they serve to make clear why art evolution
stopped so abruptly and we are retracing our steps and taking models from the past rather than doing original work
that is an advance, must be quoted here. Many people will find in them, I think, the reasons for their misunderstanding
of the old times.
Gerhardt Hauptmann, who is very well known, even among English-speaking people, as one of the
great living German dramatists, and whose " Sunken Bell " attracted considerable attention in both its
German and English versions here in New York, in a recent criticism of a new German book, declared that the reason
for the gap between modern and medieval art was the movement now coming to be known as the religious revolt in
Germany in the sixteenth century. He said:
"I, as a Protestant, have often had to regret that we purchased our freedom of conscience, our individual
liberty, at entirely too high a price. In order to make room for a small, mean little plant of personal life, we
destroyed a whole garden of fancy and hewed down a virgin forest of aesthetic ideas. We went even so far in the
insanity of our weakness as to throw out of the garden of our souls the fruitful soil that had been accumulating
for thousands of years, or else we plowed it under sterile clay.
" We have to-day, then, an intellectual culture that is well protected by a hedge of our personality, but
within this hedge we have only delicate dwarf trees and unworthy plants, the poorer progeny of great predecessors.
We have telegraph lines, bridges and railroads, but there grow no churches and cathedrals, only sentry boxes and
barracks. We need gardeners who will cause the present sterilizing process of the soil to stop, and will enrich
the surface by working up into it the rich layers beneath. In my work-room there is ever before me the photograph
of Sebaldus' Tomb (model Metropolitan Museum, New York). This rich German symbol rose from the invisible in the
most luxuriant developmental period of German art.
As a formal product of that art, it is very difficult to appreciate it as it deserves. It seems to me as one of
the most wonderful bits of work in the whole field of artistic accomplishment. The soul of all the great medieval
period encircles this silver coffin, wrapping it up into a noble unity, and enthrones on the very summit of death,
Life as a growing child. Such a work could only have come to its perfection in the protected spaces of the old
Mother Church."
Rev. Dr. Jessopp, in his book, already cited, "The Great Pillage," does not hesitate to state in unmistakable
terms the reason why all the beauty and happiness went out of English country life some two centuries after the
Thirteenth Century, and how it came about that the modern generations have had to begin over again from the beginning,
and not where our Catholic forefathers of the medieval period left us, in what used to be the despised Middle Ages.
He says:
"When I talk of the great pillage, I mean that horrible and outrageous looting of our churches
other than conventual, and the robbing of the people of this country of property in land and movables, which property
had actually been inherited by them as members of those organized religious communities known as parishes. It is
necessary to emphasize the fact that in the general scramble of the Terror under Henry the Eighth, and of the Anarchy
in the days of Edward the Sixth, there was only one class that was permitted to retain any large portion of its
endowments. The monasteries were plundered even to their very pots and pans. Almshouses in which old men and women
were fed and clothed were robbed to the last pound, the poor alms-folk being turned out into the cold at an hour's
warning to beg their bread.
Hospitals for the sick and needy, sometimes magnificently provided with nurses and chaplains,
whose very raison d'etre was that they were to look after and care for those who were past caring for themselves
these were stripped of all their belongings, the inmates sent out to hobble into some convenient dry ditch to lie
down and die in, or to crawl into some barn or hovel, there to be tended, not without fear of consequences, by
some kindly man or woman who could not bear to see a suffering fellow creature drop down and die at their own doorposts.
"We talk with a great deal of indignation of the Tweed ring. The day will come when someone will write the
story of two other rings- the ring of the miscreants who robbed the monasteries in the reign of Henry the Eighth
was the first; but the ring of the robbers who robbed the poor and helpless in the reign of Edward the Sixth was
ten times worse than the first.
"The Universities only just escaped the general confiscation; the friendly societies and benefit clubs and
the gilds did not escape. The accumulated wealth of centuries, their houses and lands, their money, their vessels
of silver and their vessels of gold, their ancient cups and goblets and salvers, even to their very chairs and
tables, were all set down in inventories and catalogues, and all swept into the great robbers' hoard. Last, but
not least, the immense treasures in the churches, the joy and boast of every man and woman and child in England,
who day by day and week by week assembled to worship in the old houses of God which they and their fathers had
built, and whose every vestment and chalice and candlestick and banner, organs and bells, and picture and image
and altar and shrine they looked upon as their own and part of their birthright-all these were torn away by the
rudest spoilers, carted off, they knew not whither, with jeers and scoffs and ribald shoutings, while none dared
raise a hand or let his voice be heard above the whisper of a prayer of bitter grief and agony.
"One class was spared. The clergy of this Church of England of ours managed to retain some of their endowments;
but if the boy king had lived another three years, there is good reason for believing that these too would have
gone."
Graft prevailed, and the old order disappeared in a slough of selfishness.
[6]. COMFORT AND POVERTY.
A number of friendly critics have insisted that of course the Thirteenth Century was far behind later times in
the comfort of the people. Poverty is supposed to have been almost universal. Doubtless many of the people were
then very poor. Personally, I doubt if there was as much poverty, that is, misery due to actual want of necessaries
of life, as there is at the present time. Certainly it was not emphasized by having close to it, constantly rendering
the pains of poverty poignant by contrast, the luxury of the modern time. They had not the large city, and people
in the country do not suffer as much as people in the city. In recent years, investigations of poverty in England
have been appalling in the statistics that they have presented. Mr. Robert Hunter, in his book Poverty, has furnished
us with some details that make one feel that our generation should be the last to say that the Thirteenth Century
was behind in progress, because so many of the people were so poor.
Ruskin once said that the ideal of the great nation is one wherein there must be "as many as possible full-breathed,
bright-eyed and happy-hearted human creatures. "I am sure that, tried by this standard, the Thirteenth Century
in Merrie England is ahead of any other generation and, above all, far in advance of our recent generations.
By contrast to what we know of the merrie English men and women of the Thirteenth Century, I would quote Mr. Hunter's
paragraphs on the Poverty of the Modern English People. He says:
"A few years ago, England did not know the extent of her own poverty. Economists and writers gave opinions
of all kinds. Some said conditions were 'bad,' others said such statements were misleading; and here they were,
tilting at each other, backward and forward, in the most ponderous and serious way, until Mr. Booth, a business
man, undertook to get at the facts.
No one, even the most radical economist, would have dared to have estimated the poverty of London
as extending to 30 per cent of the people (as it proved). The extent of poverty-the number of underfed, underclothed
in insanitary houses was greater than could reasonably have been estimated."
Some of the details of this investigation by Mr. Booth were so startling that some explanation had to be found.
They could not deny, in the face of Mr. Booth's facts, but they set up the claim that the conditions in London
were exceptional. Then Mr. Rountree made an investigation in York with precisely the same results. More than one
in four of the population was in poverty. To quote Mr. Hunter once more
"As has been said, it was not until Mr. Charles Booth published, in 1891, the results of his exhaustive inquiries
that the actual conditions of poverty in London became known. About 1,000,000 people, or about thirty per cent
of the entire population of London, were found to be unable to obtain the necessaries for a sound livelihood. They
were in a state of poverty, living in conditions, if not of actual misery, at any rate bordering upon it. In many
districts, considerably more than half of the population were either in distress or on the verge of distress When
these results were made public, the more conservative economists gave it as their opinion that the conditions in
London were, of course, exceptional, and that it would be unsafe to make any generalizations for the whole of England
on the basis of Mr. Booth's figures for London. About ten years later, Mr. B. S. Rountree, incited by the work
of Mr. Booth, undertook a similar inquiry in his native town, York, a small provincial city, in most ways typical
of the smaller towns of England. In a large volume in which the results are published, it is shown that the poverty
in York was only slightly less extensive than that of London.
In the summary, Mr. Rountree compares the conditions of London with those of York. His comments
are as follows: 'The proportions arrived at for the total populations living in poverty in London and York respectively
were as under:
London 30.7 per cent
York 27.84 per cent
The proportion of the population living in poverty in York may be regarded as practically the
same as in London, especially when we remember that Mr. Booth's information was gathered in 1887-1892, a period
of only average trade prosperity, whilst the York figures were collected in 1899, when trade was unusually prosperous.'
"
He continues: "We have been accustomed to look upon the poverty in London as exceptional,
but when the result of careful investigation shows that the proportion of poverty in London is practically equalled
in what may be regarded as a typical provincial town, we are faced by the startling probability that from 25 to
30 per cent of the town populations of the United Kingdom are living in poverty."
Most of us will be inclined to think that Mr. Rountree must exaggerate, and what he calls poverty
most of us would doubtless be inclined to think a modest competency a little below respectability. He fixed the
standard of twenty-one shillings eight pence ($5.25) a week as a necessary one for a family of ordinary size. He
says:
"A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate, must never spend a penny on railway fare or
omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or
spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot
afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, nor give any help to
a neighbor which costs them money. They cannot save, nor can they join sick club or trade union, because they cannot
pay the necessary subscription. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles or sweets. The father
must smoke no tobacco nor drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children,
the character for the family wardrobe, as for the family diet, being governed by the regulation, 'Nothing must
be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and that which is bought
must be of the plainest and most economical description.' Should a child fall ill, it must be attended by the family
parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by the parish.
Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day."
More than one in four of the population living below this scale!
Conditions are, if anything, worse on the Continent. In Germany, industry is at the best. Conditions in Berlin
have been recently reported in the Daily Consular Reports by a U. S. Government official. Of the somewhat more
than two millions of people who live in Berlin, 1,125,000 have an income. Nearly one-half of the incomes, however,
are exempt from taxation because they do not amount to the minimum taxable income, though that is only $214-$4
per week. Of the 600,000 who have taxable incomes, nearly 550,000 have less than $700 a year, that is, get about
$2 a day or less. Less than sixty thousand out of the total population get more than $2 a day. It is easy to say,
but hard to understand, that this is a living wage, because things are cheaper in Germany. Meat is, however, nearly
twice as dear; sugar is twice as dear; bread is dearer than it is in this country; coffee is dearer; and only rent
is somewhat cheaper.
It is easy to talk about the spread of comfort among the people of our generation and the raising of the standard
of living, but if one compares these wages with the price of things as they are now, it is hard to understand on
just what basis of fact the claim for betterment in our time, meaning more general comfort and happiness, is made.
People always refuse to believe that conditions are as bad as they really are in these matters. Americans will
at once have the feeling, on reading Mr. Hunter and Mr. Rountree's words and the account of the American Consul
at Berlin, that this may be true for England and Germany, but that of course it is very different here in America.
It is extremely doubtful whether it is very different here in America. In this matter, Mr. Hunter's opinion deserves
weight. He has for years devoted himself to gathering information with regard to this subject. He seems to be sure
that one in seven of our population is in poverty. Probably the number is higher than this. Here is his opinion:
" How many people in the country are in poverty? Is the number yearly growing larger? Are there each year
more and more of the unskilled classes pursuing hopelessly the elusive phantom of selfsupport and independence?
Are they, as in a dream, working faster, only the more swiftly to move backward? Are there each year more and more
hungry children and more and more fathers whose utmost effort may not bring into the home as much energy in food
as it takes out in industry? These are not fanciful questions, nor are they sentimental ones.
I have not the slightest doubt that there are in the United States ten million persons in precisely
these conditions of poverty, but I am largely guessing, and there may be as many as fifteen or twenty millions!"
Perhaps Mr. Hunter exaggerates. As a physician, I should be inclined to think not; but certainly his words and,
above all, the English statistics will give any one pause who is sure, on general principles, that the great mass
of the people are happier now or more comfortable, above all, in mind-the only real happiness-than they were in
the Thirteenth Century. After due consideration of this kind, no one will insist on the comparative misery and
suffering of the poor in old times. England had less than 3,000,000 in the Thirteenth Century, and probably there
was never a time in her history when a greater majority of her people fulfilled Ruskin's and Morris' ideals of
happy-hearted human beings. The two-handed worker got at least what the four-footed worker, in Carlyle's words,
has always obtained, due food and lodging. England was not " a nation with sleek, well-fed English horses,
and hungry, dissatisfied Englishmen."
[7]. COMFORT AND HAPPINESS.
There is another side to the question of comparative happiness that may be stated in the words
of Wihiam Morris, when he says, in " Hopes and Fears for Art," that a Greek or a Roman of the luxurious
time (and of course a fortiori a medieval of the Thirteenth Century) would stare astonished could he be brought
back again and shown the comforts of a well-to-do middle-class house. This expression is often reechoed, and one
is prone to wonder how many of those who use it realize that it is a quotation, and, above all, appreciate the
fact that Morris made the statement in order to rebut it. His answer is in certain ways so complete that it deserves
to be quoted.
"When you hear of the luxuries of the Ancients, you must remember that they were not like
our luxuries, they were rather indulgence in pieces of extravagant folly than what we to-day call luxury which,
perhaps, you would rather call comfort; well, I accept the word, and say that a Greek or a Roman of the luxurious
time would stare astonished could he be brought back again and shown the comforts of a well-to-do middle-class
house.
" But some, I know, think that the attainment of these very comforts is what makes the difference between
civilization and uncivilization-that they are the essence of civilization.
Is it so indeed? Farewell my hope then! I had thought that civilization meant the attainment
of peace and order and freedom, of good-will between man and man, of the love of truth and the hatred of injustice,
and by consequence the attainment of the good life which these things breed, a life free from craven fear, but
full of incident; that was what I thought it meant, not more stuffed chairs and more cushions, and more carpets
and gas, and more dainty meat and drink-and therewithal more and sharper differences between class and class.
" If that be what it is, I for my part wish I were well out of it and living in a tent in the Persian desert,
or a turf hut on the Iceland hillside. But, however it be, and I think my view is the true view, I tell you that
art abhors that side of civilization; she cannot breath in the houses that lie under its stuffy slavery.
" Believe me, if we want art to begin at home, as it must, we must clear our houses of troublesome superfluities
that are forever in our way, conventional comforts that are no real comforts, and do but make work for servants
and doctors. If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: 'Have nothing in your houses that you
do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.' "
[8]. COMFORT AND HEALTH.
A comment on William Morris's significant paragraphs may be summed up in some reflections on the scornful expression
of a friend who asked, how is it possible to talk of happiness at a time when there were no glass in windows and
no heating apparatus except the open fireplace in the great hall of the larger houses, or in the kitchen of the
dwelling houses. To this there is the ready answer that, in the modern time, we have gone so far to the opposite
extreme as to work serious harm to health. When a city dweller develops tuberculosis, his physician now sends him
out to the mountains, asks him to sleep with his window wide open, and requires him to spend just as much of his
time as possible in the open air, even with the temperature below zero. In our hospitals, the fad for making patients
comfortable by artificial heat is passing, and that of stimulating them by cold, fresh air is gaining ground. We
know that, for all the fevers and all the respiratory diseases this brings about a notable reduction in the mortality.
Surely, what is good for the ailing must be even better to keep them well from disease. Many a physician now arranges
to sleep out of doors all winter. Certainly all the respiratory diseases are rendered much more fatal and modern
liability to them greatly increased by our shut-up houses.
The medieval people were less comfortable, from a sensual standpoint, but the healthy glow and reaction after cold
probably made them enjoy life better than we do in our steam-heated houses.
They secured bodily warmth by an active circulation of their blood. We secure it by the circulation of hot water
or steam in our houses. Ours may be the better way, but the question is not yet absolutely decided.
A physician friend points to the great reduction in the death-rate in modern times, and insists that this, of course,
means definite progress. Even this is not quite so sure as is often thought. We are saving a great many lives that
heretofore, in the course of nature, under conditions requiring a more vigorous life, passed out of existence early.
It is doubtful, however, whether this is an advantage for the race, since our insane asylums, our hospitals for
incurables and our homes of various kinds now have inmates in much greater proportion to the population than ever
before in history. These are mainly individuals of lower resistive vitality, who would have been allowed to get
out of existence early, save themselves and their friends from useless suffering, and whose presence in life does
not add greatly if at all to the possibilities of human accomplishment. Our reduced death-rate is, because of comfort
seeking, more than counterbalanced by a reduced birth-rate, so that no advantage is reaped for the race in the
end. These reflections, of course, are only meant to suggest how important it is to view such questions from all
sides before being sure that they represent definite progress for humanity. Progress is much more elusive than
is ordinarily thought, and is never the simple, unmistakable movement of advance it is often thought.
[9]. HYGIENE.
The objection that medical friends have had to the claims of The Thirteenth as the Greatest of
Centuries is that it failed to pay any attention to hygiene. Here, once more, we have a presumption that is not
founded on real knowledge of the time. It is rather easy to show that these generations were anticipating many
of our solutions of hygienic problems quite as well as our solutions of other social and intellectual difficulties.
In the sketch of Pope John XXI., the physician who became Pope during the second half of the Thirteenth Century,
which was published in Ophthalmology, a quarterly review of eye diseases (Jan., 1909), because Pope John wrote
a little book on this subject which has many valuable anticipations of modern knowledge, I called attention to
the fact that, while a physician and professor of medicine at the medical school of the University of Sienna, this
Pope, then known as Peter of Spain, had made some contributions to sanitary science. Later he was appointed Archiater,
that is, Physician in charge of the City of Rome.
As pointed out in the sketch of him as enlarged for the volume containing a second series of Catholic Churchmen
in Science (The Dolphin Press, Phila., 1909), he seems to have been particularly interested in popular health,
for we have a little book, Thesaurus Pauperum-The Treasure of the Poor-which contains many directions for the maintenance
of health and the treatment of disease by those who are too poor to secure physicians' advice. The fact that the
head of the Bureau of Health in Rome should have been made Pope in the Thirteenth Century, itself speaks volumes
for the awakening of the educated classes at least to the value of hygiene and sanitation.
Their attention to hygiene can be best shown by a consideration of the hospitals. Ordinarily it is assumed that
the hospitals provided a roof for the sick and the injured, but scarcely more. Most physicians will probably be
quite sure that they were rather hot-beds of disease than real blessings to the ailing. That is not what we find
when we study them carefully. These generations gave us a precious lesson by eradicating leprosy, which was quite
as general as tuberculosis is now, and they made special hospitals for erysipelas, which materially lessened the
diffusion of that disease. In rewriting the chapter on The Foundation of City Hospitals for my book, The Popes
and Science (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1908), I incorporated into it a description of the hospital erected
at Tanierre, in France, in 1293, by Marguerite of Bourgogne, the sister of St. Louis. Of this hospital Mr. Arthur
Dillon, from the standpoint of the modern architect, says:
" It was an admirable hospital in every way, and it is doubtful if we to-day surpass it. It was isolated,
the ward was separated from the other buildings; it had the advantage we often lose, of being but one story high,
and more space was given to each patient than we now afford.
" The ventilation by the great windows and ventilators in the ceiling was excellent; it was cheerfully lighted,
and the arrangement of the gallery shielded the patients from dazzling light and from draughts from the windows,
and afforded an easy means of supervision, while the division by the roofless, low partitions isolated the sick
and obviated the depression that tomes from the sight of others in pain.
" It was, moreover, in great contrast to the cheerless white wards of to-day. The vaulted ceiling was very
beautiful; the woodwork was richly carved, and the great windows over the altars were filled with colored glass.
Altogether, it was one of the best examples of the best period of Gothic architecture."
In their individual Hygiene there was, of course, much to be desired among the people of the Thirteenth Century,
and it has been declared that the history of Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century might, from the hygienic
standpoint, he summed up as a thousand years without a bath. The more we know about this period, however, the less
of point do we find in the epigram. Mr. Cram, in the Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain (Pott & Co., N. Y., 1907),
has described wonderful arrangements within the monasteries (!) for the conduction of water from long distances
for all toilet purposes. There was much more attention to sanitary details than we have been prone to think. Mr.
Cram, in describing what was by no means one of the greatest of the English abbeys of the Thirteenth Century, says:
"Here at Beaulieu the water was brought by an underground conduit from an unfailing spring a mile away, and
this served for drinking, washing and bathing, the supply of the fish ponds, and for a constant flushing of the
elaborate system of drainage. In sanitary matters, the monks were as far in advance of the rest of society as they
were in learning and agriculture."
[10]. WAGES AND THE CONDITION OF WORKING PEOPLE.
What every reader of the Thirteenth Century seems to be perfectly sure of is that, whatever else there may have
been in this precious time, at least the workmen were not well paid and men worked practically for nothing. It
is confessed that, of course, working as they did on their cathedrals, they had a right to work for very little
if they wished, but at least there has been a decided step upward in evolution in the gradual raising of wages,
until at last the workman is beginning to be paid some adequate compensation. There is probably no phase of the
life of the Middle Ages with regard to which people are more mistaken than this supposition that the workmen of
this early time were paid inadequately. I have already called attention to the fact that the workmen of this period
claimed and obtained "the three eights" -eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep and eight hours for
recreation and bodily necessities. They obtained the Saturday half-holiday, and also release from work on the vigils
of all feast days, and there were nearly forty of these in the year.
After the vesper hour, that is, three in Summer and two in Winter, there was no work on the Eves of Holy-days of
Obligation. With regard to wages, there is just one way to get at the subject, and that is, to present the legal
table of wages enacted by Parliament, placing beside it the legal maximum price of necessities of life, as also
determined by Parliamentary enactment.
An Act of Edward III. fixes the wages, without food, as follows. There are many other things mentioned, but the
following will be enough for our purpose:
| A woman hay-making, or weeding corn for the day |
1 pence |
| A man filling dung-cart |
3 ½ pence |
| A reaper |
4 pence |
| Mowing an acre of grass |
4 pence |
| Threshing a quarter of wheat |
4 pence |
The price of shoes, cloth and provisions, throughout the time that this law continued in force,
was as follows:
| |
£.
|
s.
|
d.
|
| A pair of shoes |
0
|
0
|
4
|
| Russet broadcloth, the yard |
0
|
1
|
1
|
| A stall fed ox |
1
|
4
|
0
|
| A grass fed ox |
0
|
16
|
0
|
| A fat sheep unshorn |
0
|
1
|
8
|
| A fat sheep shorn |
0
|
1
|
2
|
| A fat hog two years old |
0
|
3
|
4
|
| A fat goose |
0
|
0
|
2 1/2
|
| Ale, the gallon, by proclamation |
0
|
0
|
1
|
| Wheat, the quarter |
0
|
3
|
4
|
| White wine, the gallon |
0
|
0
|
6
|
| Red wine |
0
|
0
|
4
|
An Act of Parliament of the fourteenth century, in fixing the price of meat, names the four sorts of meat-beef,
pork, mutton and veal, and sets forth in its preamble the words, "these being the food of the poorer sort."
The poor in England do not eat these kinds of meat now, and the investigators of the poverty of the country declare
that most of the poor live almost exclusively on bread.
The fact of the matter is, that large city populations are likely to harbor many very miserable people, while the
rural population of England in the Middle Ages, containing the bulk of the people, were happy-hearted and merry.
When we recall this in connection with what I have given in the text with regard to the trades-unions and their
care for the people, the foolish notion, founded on a mere assumption and due to that Aristophanic joke, our complacent
self-sufficiency, which makes us so ready to believe that our generation must be better off than others were, vanishes
completely.
It is easy to understand that beef, pork, mutton, veal and even poultry were the food of the poor, when a workman
could earn the price of a sheep in less than four days or buy nearly two fat geese for his day's wages. A day laborer
will work from forty to fifty days now to earn the price of an ox on the hoof, and it was about the same at the
close of the Thirteenth Century. When a fat hog costs less than a dollar, a man's wages, at eight cents a day,
are not too low. When a gallon of good ale can be obtained for two cents, no workman is likely to go dry. When
a gallon of red wine can be obtained for a day's wages, it is hard to see any difference between a workman of the
olden time and the present in this regard. Two yards of cloth made a coat for a gentleman and cost only a little
over two shillings. The making of it brought the price of it up to two shilling and six pence. These prices are
taken from the Preciosum of Bishop Fleetwood, who took them from the accounts kept by the bursars of convents.
Fleetwood's book is accepted very generally as an excellent authority in the history of economics.
Cobbett, in his History of the Protestant Reformation, has made an exhaustive study of just this
question of the material and economic condition of the people of England before and since the reformation. He says:
"These things prove, beyond all dispute, that England was, in Catholic times, a real wealthy country; that
wealth was generally diffused; that every part of the country abounded in men of solid property; and that, of course,
there were always great resources at hand in cases of emergency" ….. "In short, everything shows that
England was then a country abounding in men of real wealth."
Fortesque, the Lord High Chancellor of England under Henry VI., king a century after the Thirteenth, has this to
say with regard to the legal and economic conditions in England in his time. Some people may think the picture
he gives an exaggeration, but it was written by a great lawyer with the definite idea of giving a picture of the
times, and, under ordinary circumstances, we would say that there could be no better authority.
"The King of England cannot alter the laws, or make new ones, without the express consent of the whole kingdom
in Parliament assembled. Every inhabitant is at his liberty fully to use and enjoy whatever his farm produceth,
the fruits of the earth, the increase of his flock and the like -all the improvements he makes, whether by his
own proper industry or of those he retains in his service, are his own, to use and enjoy, without the let, interruption
or denial of any. If he be in any wise injured or oppressed, he shall have his amends and satisfactions against
the party offending. Hence it is that the inhabitants are rich in gold, silver, and in all the necessaries and
conveniences of life. They drink no water unless at certain times, upon a religious score, and by way of doing
penance. They are fed in great abundance, with all sorts of flesh and fish, of which they have plenty everywhere;
they are clothed throughout in good woollens, their bedding and other furniture in the house are of wool, and that
in great store. They are also well provided with all sorts of household goods and necessary implements for husbandry.
Every one, according to his rank, hath all things which conduce to make mind and life easy and happy. "
[11]. INTEREST AND LOANS.
A number of commercial friends have been interested in the wonderful story of business organizations traced in
the chapter on Great Beginnings of Modern Commerce. They have all been sure, however, that it is quite idle to
talk of great commercial possibilities at a time when ecclesiastical regulations forbade the taking of interest.
This would seem to make it quite impossible that great commercial transactions could be carried on, yet somehow
these people succeeded in accomplishing them.
A number of writers on economics in recent years have suggested that possibly one solution of
the danger to government and popular rights from the accumulation of large fortunes might be avoided by a return
to the system of prohibition of interest taking. There is much more in that proposition than might possibly be
thought by those who are unfamiliar with it from serious consideration. They did succeed in getting on without
it in the Thirteenth Century, and at the same time they solved the other problem of providing loans, not alone
for business people, but for all those who might need them. We are solving the "loan shark" evil at the
present time in nearly the same way that they solved it seven centuries ago.
Abbot Gasquet, in his "Parish Life in England Before the Reformation, " describes the methods of the
early days as follows:
"The parish wardens had their duties towards the poorer members of the district. In more
than one instance they were guardians of the common chest, out of which temporary loans could be obtained by needy
parishioners, to tide over persons in difficulties. These loans were secured by pledges and the additional security
of other parishioners. No interest was charged for the use of the money, and in case the pledge had to be sold,everything
over and above the sum lent was returned to the borrower".
[12]. THE EIGHTEENTH LOWEST OF CENTURIES.
There is no doubt that the nineteenth century, and especially the latter half of it, saw some
very satisfactory progress over immediately preceding times. With the recognition of this fact, that the last century
so far surpassed its predecessor there has been a tendency to assume, because evolution occupies men's minds, that
the eighteenth must have quite as far surpassed the seventeenth, and the seventeenth the sixteenth, and so on,
so that of course we are far ahead in everything of the despised Middle Ages. In recent years, indeed, we have
dropped the attitude of blaming the earlier ages, for one of complacent pity that they were not born soon enough,
and, therefore, could not enjoy our advantages. Unfortunately for any such conclusion as this, the term of comparison
nearest to us, the eighteenth century is without doubt the lowest hundred years in human accomplishment, at least
during the past seven centuries.
This is true for every form of human endeavor and every phase of human existence. Prof. Goodyear,
of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science, the well-known author of a series of books on art and history, in
one of the chapters of his Handbook on Renaissance and Modern Art (New York, The McMillan Co.), in describing the
Greek revival of the latter part of the eighteenth century says: "According to our accounts so far throughout
this whole book, either of architecture, painting, or sculpture, it will appear that the earlier nineteenth century
represents the foot of a hill, whose gradual descent began about 1530. " As a matter of fact in every department
of artistic expression the taste of the eighteenth century was almost the worst possible. The monuments that we
have from that time, in the shape of churches and municipal buildings, are few, but such as they are, they are
the least worthy of imitation, and the art ideas they represent are most to be deprecated of any in the whole history
of modern art.
Perhaps the most awful arraignment of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century that was ever made is that of
Mr. Cram, in the Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain, from which I have already quoted.
He calls attention to the fact that, during this century, some of the most beautiful sculptured work that ever
came from the hand of man was torn out of the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, York, to serve no better purpose than
to make lime. His description of the sculpture of the Abbey will give some idea of its beauty and render all the
more poignant the loss that was thus inflicted on art. He says:
"Most wonderful of all amongst a horde of smaller statues, a mutilated fragment of a statue of Our Lady and
the Holy Child, so consummate in its faultless art that it deserves a place with the masterpieces of sculpture
of every age and race. Here in this dim and scanty undercraft is an epitome of the English art of four centuries,
precious and beautiful beyond the power of words to describe.
" York Abbey was a national monument, the aesthetic and historic value of which was beyond computation. It
is with feelings of horror and unutterable dismay that, as we stand beside the few existing fragments, realizing
the irreparable loss they make so clear, we call into mind Henry's sacrilege in the sixteenth century, and his
silly palace doomed to instant destruction, and the crass ignorance and stolidity of the eighteenth century with
its grants of building material, and the mercenary savagery of the nineteenth century when, from smoking lime kilns
rose into the air the vanishing ghosts of the noblest creations that owed their existence to man.
" Nothing is sadder to realize than the failure of appreciation for art of the early nineteenth and the eighteenth
century. Men had lost, apparently, all proper realization of the value of artistic effort and achievement. It was
an era of travel and commerce and, unfortunately, of industrial development. As a consequence, in many parts of
Europe, and especially of England, art remains of inestimable value suffered at the hands of utilitarians who found
them of use in their enterprises. We are accustomed to rail against the barbarians and the Turks for their failure
to appreciate the remains of Latin and Greek art and for their wanton destruction of them, but what shall we say
of modern Englishmen, who quite as ruthlessly destroyed objects of art of equal value at least with Roman and Greek,
while the great body of the nation made no complaint, and no protest was heard anywhere in the kingdom. "
What is so true of the arts is, as might be reasonably expected, quite as true of other phases of intellectual
development. Education, for instance, is at the lowest ebb that it has reached since the foundation of the Universities
at the end of the twelfth century. In Germany, there was only one university, that of Gottingen, in which there
was a professorship of Greek.
When Winckelmann introduced the study of Greek into his school at Seehausen, no school-hooks for this language
were available, and he was obliged to write out texts for his students. What was the case in Germany was also true,
to a great degree, of the rest of Europe. Leading French critics ridiculed the Greek authors. Homer was considered
a ballad singer and compared to the street singers of Paris. Voltaire thought that the Aeneid of Virgil was superior
to all that the Greek writers had ever done. No edition of Plato had been published in Europe since the end of
the sixteenth century. Other Greek authors were almost as much neglected, and of true scholarship there was very
little. When Cardinal Newman, in his Idea of a University, wants to find the lowest possible term of comparison
for the intellectual life of the university, he takes the English universities of the middle of the eighteenth
century.
With this neglect of education, and above all of the influence that Greek has always had in chastening and perfecting
taste, it is not surprising that literature was in every country of Europe at a very low ebb. It was not so feeble
as art, but the two are interdependent, much more than is usually thought. Only France has anything to show in
literature that has had an enduring influence in the subsequent centuries. When we compare the French literature
of the eighteenth with that of the seventeenth century, however, it is easy to see how much of a descent there
has been from Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, La Fontaine, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Fenelon to Voltaire, Marivaux,
Lesage, Diderot, and Bernardin de St. Pierre. This same decadence of literature can be noted even more strikingly
in England, in Spain, and in Italy. The seventeenth, especially the first half of it, saw the origin of some of
the greatest works of modern literature. The eighteenth century produced practically nothing that was to live and
be a vital force in aftertimes.
What is true in art, letters and education is, above all, true in what men did for liberty and
for their fellow-men. Hospital organization and the care of the ailing was at its lowest ebb during the eighteenth
century. Jacobson, the German historian of the hospitals, says: [Beitrage zur Geschichte de Krankencomforts. Deutache
Krankenpflege Zeitung, 1898, in 4 parts].
" It is a remarkable fact that attention to the well-being of the sick, improvements in hospitals and institutions
generally and to details of nursing care, had a period of complete and lasting stagnation after the middle of the
seventeenth century, or from the close of the Thirty Years' War. Neither officials nor physicians took any interest
in the elevation of nursing or improving the conditions of hospitals.
During the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century, nothing was done to bring either construction or nursing
to a better state. Solely among the religious orders did nursing remain an interest, and some remnants of technique
survive. The result was that, in this period, the general level of nursing fell far below that of earlier periods.
The hospitals of cities were like prisons, with bare, undecorated walls and little dark rooms, small windows where
no sun could enter, and dismal wards where fifty or one hundred patients were crowded together, deprived of all
comforts and even of necessaries. In the municipal and state institutions of this period, the beautiful gardens,
roomy halls, and springs of water of the old cloister hospital of the Middle Ages were not heard of, still less
the comforts of their friendly interiors."
As might be expected, with the hospitals so badly organized, the art of nursing was in a decay that is almost unutterable.
Miss Nutting, of Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Superintendent of Nurses, and Miss Dock, the Secretary of the International
Council of Nurses, have in their History of Nursing a chapter on the Dark Period of Nursing, in which the decadence
of the eighteenth century, in what regards the training of nurses for the intelligent care of the sick, is brought
out very clearly.
They say: [A History of Nursing, by M. Adelaide Nutting and Lavinia L. Dock, in two volumes, illustrated. G. P.
Putnam's Sons, New York. 1907].
" It is commonly agreed that the darkest known period in the history of nursing was that from the latter part
of the seventeenth up to the middle of the nineteenth century. During the time, the condition of the nursing art,
the well-being of the patient, and the status of the nurse, all sank to an indescribable level of degradation.
"
Taine, in his History of the Old Regime of France, has told the awful story of the attitude of the so-called better
classes toward the poor. While conditions were at their worst in France, every country in Europe saw something
of the same thing. In certain parts of Germany conditions were, if possible, worse. It is no wonder that the French
Revolution came at the end of the eighteenth century, and that a series of further revolutions during the nineteenth
century were required to win back some of the rights which men had gained for themselves in earlier centuries and
then lost, sinking into a state of decadence out of which we are only emerging, though in most countries we have
not reached quite the level of human liberty and, above all, of Christian democracy that our forefathers had secured
seven centuries ago.
With these considerations in mind, it is easier to understand how men in the later nineteenth century and beginning
twentieth century are prone to think of their periods as representing an acme in the course of progress. There
is no doubt that we are far above the eighteenth century. That, however, was a deep valley in human accomplishment,
indeed, a veritable slough of despond, out of which we climbed; and, looking back, are prone to think how fortunate
we are in having ascended so high, though beyond our vision on the other side of the valley the hills rise much
higher into the clouds of human aspiration and artistic excellence than anything that we have attained as yet.
Indeed, whenever we try to do serious work at the present time, we confessedly go back from four to seven centuries
for the models that we must follow. With Renaissance art and Gothic architecture and the literature before the
end of the sixteenth century cut out of our purview, we would have nothing to look to for models. This phase of
history needs to be recalled by all those who would approach with equanimity the consideration of The Thirteenth
as the Greatest of Centuries.
End
This version: 23rd March 2008
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