Kitabı oku: «The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries», sayfa 35
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. Pirie 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 naiveté 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 Nicolette." 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, Étienne 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 orthography as well as in vocabulary, and may fittingly be described as the first of English phoneticians."
MANUSCRIPT OF ORMULUM (THIRTEENTH CENTURY)
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 Aubry 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 Wälsche 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 book 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 be 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 holdest 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 be told.
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 uttering whereon keep thou an order,
Thy matter thereby thou shalt much forder
Which order if thou do not observe.
From the purpose needs must thou swerve."
