Chapter II (3)

48. The English language was slowly refining itself, and growing into general use. That which we sometimes call pedantry and innovation, the forced introduction of French words by Chaucer, though hardly more by him than by all his predecessors who translated our neighbours’ poetry, and the harsh latinisms that began to appear soon afterwards, has given English a copiousness and variety which perhaps no other language possesses. But as yet there was neither thought nor knowledge sufficient to bring out its capacities. After the death of Chaucer, in 1400, a dreary blank of long duration occurs in our annals. The poetry of Hoccleve is wretchedly bad, abounding with pedantry, and destitute of all grace or spirit.[295] Lydgate, the monk of Bury, nearly of the same age, prefers doubtless a higher claim to respect. An easy versifier, he served to make poetry familiar to the many, and may sometimes please the few. Gray, no light authority, speaks more favourably of Lydgate than either Warton or Ellis, or than the general complexion of his poetry would induce most readers to do.[296] But great poets have often the taste to discern, and the candour to acknowledge, those beauties which are latent amidst the tedious dulness of their humbler brethren. Lydgate, though probably a man of inferior powers of mind to Gower, has more of the minor qualities of a poet; his lines have sometimes more spirit, more humour, and he describes with more graphic minuteness. But his diffuseness becomes generally feeble and tedious; the attention fails in the schoolboy stories of Thebes and Troy; and he had not the judgment to select and compress the prose narratives from which he commonly derived his subject. It seems highly probable, that Lydgate would have been a better poet in satire upon his own times, or delineation of their manners; themes which would have gratified us much more than the fate of princes. The King’s Quair, by James I. of Scotland, is a long allegory, polished and imaginative, but with some of the tediousness usual in such productions. It is uncertain whether he or a later sovereign, James V., were the author of a lively comic poem, Christ’s Kirk o’ the Green; the style is so provincial, that no Englishman can draw any inference as to its antiquity. It is much more removed from our language than the King’s Quair. Whatever else could be mentioned as deserving of praise is anonymous and of uncertain date. It seems to have been early in the fifteenth century that the ballad of the northern minstrels arose. But none of these that are extant could be placed with much likelihood so early as 1440.[297]

[295] Warton, ii. 348.

[296] Warton, ii. 361-407. Gray’s works, by Mathias, ii. 55-73. These
remarks on Lydgate show what the history of English poetry would
have been in the hands of Gray, as to sound and fair criticism.

[297] Chevy Chace seems to be the most ancient of those ballads that
has been preserved. It may possibly have been written while Henry
VI. was on the throne, though a late critic would bring it down to
the reign of Henry VIII. Brydges’ Brit. Bibliography, iv. 97. The
style is often fiery, like the old war songs, and much above the
feeble, though natural and touching manner of the later ballads.
One of the most remarkable circumstances about this celebrated lay
is, that it relates a totally fictitious event with all historical
particularity, and with real names. Hence it was probably not
composed while many remembered the days of Henry IV., when the
story is supposed to have occurred.

|Restoration of classical learning due to Italy.|

49. We have thus traced in outline the form of European literature, as it existed in the middle ages and in the first forty years of the fifteenth century. The result must be to convince us of our great obligations to Italy for her renewal of classical learning. What might have been the intellectual progress of Europe if she had never gone back to the fountains of Greek and Roman genius, it is impossible to determine; certainly, nothing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries give prospect of a very abundant harvest. It would be difficult to find any man of high reputation in modern times, who has not reaped benefit, directly or through others, from the revival of ancient learning. We have the greatest reason to doubt whether, without the Italians of these ages, it would ever have occurred. The trite metaphors of light and darkness, of dawn and twilight, are used carelessly by those who touch on the literature of the middle ages, and suggest by analogy an uninterrupted progression, in which learning, like the sun, has dissipated the shadows of barbarism. But with closer attention, it is easily seen that this is not a correct representation; that, taking Europe generally, far from being in a more advanced stage of learning at the beginning of the fifteenth century than two hundred years before, she had, in many respects, gone backwards, and gave little sign of any tendency to recover her ground. There is, in fact, no security, as far as the past history of mankind assures us, that any nation will be uniformly progressive in science, arts, and letters; nor do I perceive, whatever may be the current language, that we can expect this with much greater confidence of the whole civilised world.

50. Before we proceed to a more minute and chronological history, let us consider for a short time some of the prevailing trains of sentiment and opinion which shaped the public mind at the close of the mediæval period.

|Character of classical poetry lost.|

51. In the early European poetry, the art sedulously cultivated by so many nations, we are struck by characteristics that distinguish it from the remains of antiquity, and belong to social changes which we should be careful to apprehend. The principles of discernment as to works of imagination and sentiment, wrought up in Greece and Rome by a fastidious and elaborate criticism, were of course effaced in the total oblivion of that literature to which they had been applied. The Latin language, no longer intelligible except to a limited class, lost that adaptation to popular sentiment, which its immature progeny had not yet attained. Hence, perhaps, or from some other cause, there ensued, as has been shown in the last chapter, a kind of palsy of the inventive faculties, so that we cannot discern for several centuries any traces of their vigorous exercise.

|New schools of criticism of modern languages.|

52. Five or six new languages, however, besides the ancient German, became gradually flexible and copious enough to express thought and emotion with more precision and energy; metre and rhyme gave poetry its form; a new European literature was springing up, fresh and lively, in gay raiment, by the side of that decrepid latinity, which, rather ostentatiously, wore its threadbare robes of more solemn dignity than becoming grace. But in the beginning of the fifteenth century, the revival of ancient literature among the Italians seemed likely to change again the scene, and threatened to restore a standard of critical excellence by which the new Europe would be disadvantageously tried. It was soon felt, if not recognised in words, that what had delighted Europe for some preceding centuries depended upon sentiments fondly cherished, and opinions firmly held, but foreign, at least in the forms they presented, to the genuine spirit of antiquity. From this time we may consider as beginning to stand opposed to each other two schools of criticism, latterly called the classical and romantic; names which should not be understood as absolutely exact, but, perhaps, rather more apposite in the period to which these pages relate than in the nineteenth century.

|Effect of chivalry on poetry.|

53. War is a very common subject of fiction; and the warrior’s character is that which poets have ever delighted to pourtray. But the spirit of chivalry, nourished by the laws of feudal tenure and limited monarchy, by the rules of honour, courtesy, and gallantry, by ceremonial institutions and public shows, had rather artificially modified the generous daring which always forms the basis of that character. It must be owned that the heroic ages of Greece furnished a source of fiction not unlike those of romance; that Perseus, Theseus, or Hercules answer pretty well to knights errant, and that many stories of the poets are in the very style of Amadis or Ariosto. But these form no great part of what we call classical poetry; though they show that the word, in its opposition to the latter style, must not be understood to comprise everything that has descended from antiquity. Nothing could less resemble the peculiar tone of chivalry, than Greece in the republican times, or Rome in any times.

|Effect of gallantry towards women.|

54. The popular taste had been also essentially affected by changes in social intercourse, rendering it more studiously and punctiliously courteous, and especially by the homage due to women under the modern laws of gallantry. Love, with the ancient poets, is often tender, sometimes virtuous, but never accompanied by a sense of deference or inferiority. This elevation of the female sex through the voluntary submission of the stronger, though a remarkable fact in the philosophical history of Europe, has not, perhaps, been adequately developed. It did not originate, or at least very partially, in the Teutonic manners, from which it has sometimes been derived. The love songs again, and romances of Arabia, where others have sought its birthplace, display, no doubt, a good deal of that rapturous adoration which distinguishes the language of later poetry, and have, perhaps, in some measure, been the models of the Provençal troubadours; yet this seems rather consonant to the hyperbolical character of oriental works of imagination, than to a state of manners where the usual lot of women is seclusion, if not slavery. The late editor of Warton has thought it sufficient to call “that reverence and adoration of the female sex which has descended to our own times, the offspring of the Christian dispensation.”[298] But until it can be shown that Christianity establishes any such principle, we must look a little farther down for its origin.

[298] Preface, p. 123.

|Its probable origin.|

55. Without rejecting, by any means, the influence of these collateral and preparatory circumstances, we might ascribe more direct efficacy to the favour shown towards women in succession to lands through inheritance or dower, by the later Roman law, and by the customs of the northern nations; to the respect which the clergy paid them (a subject which might bear to be more fully expanded); but, above all, to the gay idleness of the nobility, consuming the intervals of peace in festive enjoyments. In whatever country the charms of high-born beauty were first admitted to grace the banquet or give brilliancy to the tournament,--in whatever country the austere restraints of jealousy were most completely laid aside,--in whatever country the coarser, though often more virtuous, simplicity of unpolished ages was exchanged for winning and delicate artifices,--in whatever country, through the influence of climate or polish, less boisterousness and intemperance prevailed,--it is there that we must expect to find the commencement of so great a revolution in society.

|It is not shown in old Teutonicpoetry; but appears in the stories of Arthur.|

56. Gallantry, in this sense of a general homage to the fair, a respectful deference to woman independent of personal attachment, seems to have first become a perceptible element of European manners in the south of France, and, probably, not later than the end of the tenth century,[299] it was not at all in unison with the rough habits of the Carlovingian Franks, or of the Anglo-Saxons. There is little, or, as far as I know, nothing of it in the poem of Beowulf, or in the oldest Teutonic fragments, or in the Nibelungen Lied;[300] love may appear as a natural passion, but not as a conventional idolatry. It appears, on the other hand, fully developed in the sentiments as well as the usages of northern France, when we look at the tales of the court of Arthur, which Geoffrey of Monmouth gave to the world about 1128. Whatever may be thought of the foundation of this famous romance,--whatever of legendary tradition he may have borrowed from Wales or Britany, the position that he was merely a faithful translator appears utterly incredible.[301] Besides the numerous allusions to Henry I. of England, and to the history of his times, which Mr. Turner and others have indicated, the chivalrous gallantry, with which alone we are now concerned, is not characteristic of so rude a people as the Welsh or Armoricans. Geoffrey is almost our earliest testimony to these manners; and this gives the chief value to his fables. The crusades were probably the great means of inspiring an uniformity of conventional courtesy into the European aristocracy, which still constitutes the common character of gentlemen; but it may have been gradually wearing away their national peculiarities for some time before.

[299] It would be absurd to assign an exact date for that which in its
nature must be gradual. I have a suspicion, that sexual respect,
though not with all the refinements of chivalry, might be traced
earlier in the south of Europe than the tenth century; but it would
require a long investigation to prove this.

A passage, often quoted, of Radulphus Glaber, on the affected and
effeminate manners, as he thought them, of the southern nobility
who came in the train of Constance, daughter of the Count of
Toulouse, on her marriage with Robert, king of France, in 999,
indicates that the roughness of the Teutonic character, as well
perhaps as some of its virtues, had yielded to the arts and
amusements of peace. It became a sort of proverb; Franci ad bella,
Provinciales ad victualia. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. i. Append. 73.
The social history of the tenth and eleventh centuries is not
easily recovered. We must judge from probabilities founded on
single passages, and on the general tone of civil history. The
kingdom of Arles was more tranquil than the rest of France.

[300] Von eigentlicher galanterie ist in dem nibelungen Lied wenig zu
finden, von Christlichen mysticismus fast gar nichts. Bouterwek,
ix. 147. I may observe that the positions in the text, as to the
absence of gallantry in the old Teutonic poetry, are borne out by
every other authority; by Weber, Price, Turner, and Eichhorn. The
last writer draws rather an amusing inference as to the want of
politeness towards the fair sex from the frequency of abductions in
Teutonic and Scandinavian story, which he enumerates. Allg. Gesch.
i. 37. Append. p. 37.

[301] See, in Mr. Turner’s Hist. of England, iv. 256-269, two
dissertations on the romantic histories of Turpin and of Geoffrey,
wherein the relation between the two, and the motives with which
each was written, seem irrefragably demonstrated.

|Romances of chivalry, of two kinds.|

57. The condition and the opinions of a people stamp a character on its literature; while that literature powerfully reacts upon and moulds afresh the national temper from which it has taken its distinctive type. This is remarkably applicable to the romances of chivalry. Some have even believed, that chivalry itself, in the fulness of proportion ascribed to it by these works, had never existence beyond their pages; others, with more probability, that it was heightened and preserved by their influence upon a state of society which had given them birth. A considerable difference is perceived between the metrical romances, contemporaneous with or shortly subsequent to the crusades, and those in prose after the middle of the fourteenth century. The former are more fierce, more warlike, more full of abhorrence of infidels; they display less of punctilious courtesy, less of submissive deference to woman, less of absorbing and passionate love, less of voluptuousness and luxury; their superstition has more of interior belief, and less of ornamental machinery, than those to which Amadis de Gaul and other heroes of the later cycles of romance furnished a model. The one reflect, in a tolerably faithful mirror, the rough customs of the feudal aristocracy in their original freedom, but partially modified by the gallant and courteous bearing of France; the others represent to us, with more of licensed deviation from reality, the softened features of society, in the decline of the feudal system through the cessation of intestine war, the increase of wealth and luxury, and the silent growth of female ascendency. This last again was, no doubt, promoted by the tone given to manners through romance; the language of respect became that of gallantry; the sympathy of mankind was directed towards the success of love; and, perhaps, it was thought, that the sacrifices which this laxity of moral opinion cost the less prudent of the fair, were but the price of the homage that the whole sex obtained.

|Effect of difference of religion upon poetry.|

58. Nothing, however, more showed a contrast between the old and the new trains of sentiment in points of taste than the difference of religion. It would be untrue to say, that ancient poetry is entirely wanting in exalted notions of the Deity; but they are rare in comparison with those which the Christian religion has inspired into very inferior minds, and which, with more or less purity, pervaded the vernacular poetry of Europe. They were obscured in both by an enormous superstructure of mythological machinery; but so different in names and associations, though not always in spirit, or even in circumstances, that those who delighted in the fables of Ovid usually scorned the Golden Legend of James de Voragine, whose pages were turned over with equal pleasure by a credulous multitude, little able to understand why any one should relish heathen stories which he did not believe. The modern mythology, if we may include in it the saints and devils, as well as the fairy and goblin armies, which had been retained in service since the days of paganism, is so much more copious, and so much more easily adapted to our ordinary associations than the ancient, that this has given an advantage to the romantic school in their contention, which they have well known how to employ and to abuse.

|General tone of romance.|

59. Upon these three columns,--chivalry, gallantry, and religion,--repose the fictions of the middle ages, especially those usually designated as romances. These, such as we now know them, and such as display the characteristics above mentioned, were originally metrical, and chiefly written by natives of the north of France. The English and Germans translated or imitated them. A new æra of romance began with the Amadis de Gaul, derived, as some have thought, but upon insufficient evidence, from a French metrical original, but certainly written in Portugal, though in the Castilian language, by Vasco de Lobeyra, whose death is generally fixed in 1325.[302] This romance is in prose; and though a long interval seems to have elapsed before those founded on the story of Amadis began to multiply, many were written in French during the latter part of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, derived from other legends of chivalry, which became the popular reading, and superseded the old metrical romances, already somewhat obsolete in their forms of language.[303]

[302] Bouterwek, Hist. of Spanish Literature, p. 48.

[303] The oldest prose romance, which also is partly metrical, appears
to be Tristan of Leonois, one of the cycle of the round table,
written or translated by Lucas de Gast, about 1170. Roquefort, Etat
de la Poésie Française, p. 147.

|Popular moral fictions.|

60. As the taste of a chivalrous aristocracy was naturally delighted with romances, that not only led the imagination through a series of adventures, but presented a mirror of sentiments to which they themselves pretended, so that of mankind in general found its gratification, sometimes in tales of home growth, or transplanted from the east, whether serious or amusing, such as the Gesta Romanorum, the Dolopathos, the Decameron (certainly the most celebrated and best written of these inventions), the Pecorone; sometimes in historical ballads, or in moral fables, a favourite style of composition, especially with the Teutonic nations; sometimes, again, in legends of saints, and the popular demonology of the age. The experience and sagacity, the moral sentiments, the invention and fancy of many obscure centuries may be discerned more fully and favourably in these various fictions than in their elaborate treatises. No one of the European nations stands so high in this respect as the German; their ancient tales have a raciness and truth which has been only imitated by others. Among the most renowned of these we must place the story of Reynard the Fox; the origin of which, long sought by literary critics, recedes, as they prolong the inquiry, into greater depths of antiquity. It was supposed to be written, or at least first published, in German rhyme, by Henry of Alkmaar, in 1498; but earlier editions, in the Flemish language, have since been discovered. It has been found written in French verse by Jaquemars Gielée, of Lille, near the end, and in French prose by Peter of St. Cloud, near the beginning, of the thirteenth century. Finally, the principal characters are mentioned in a Provençal song by Richard Cœur de Lion.[304] But though we thus bring the story to France, where it became so popular as to change the very name of the principal animal, which was always called goupil (vulpes) till the fourteenth century, when it assumed, from the hero of the tale, the name of Renard,[305] there seems every reason to believe that it is of German origin; and, according to probable conjecture, a certain Reinard of Lorraine, famous for his vulpine qualities in the ninth century, suggested the name to some unknown fabulist of the empire.

[304] Recueil des anciens poètes, i. 21. M. Raynouard observes that
the Troubadours, and, first of all, Richard Cœur de Lion, have
quoted the story of Renard, sometimes with allusions not referrible
to the present romance. Journal des Sav. 1826, p. 340. A great deal
has been written about this story; but I shall only quote
Bouterwek, ix. 347; Heinsius, iv. 104, and the Biographie
Universelle; arts. Gielée. Alkmaar.

[305] Something like this nearly happened in England: bears have had
a narrow escape of being called only bruins, from their
representative in the fable.

|Exclusion of politics from literature.|

61. These moral fictions, as well as more serious productions, in what may be called the ethical literature of the middle ages, towards which Germany contributed a large share, speak freely of the vices of the great. But they deal with them as men responsible to God, and subject to natural law, rather than as members of a community. Of political opinions, properly so called, which have in later times so powerfully swayed the conduct of mankind, we find very little to say in the fifteenth century. In so far as they were not merely founded on temporary circumstances, or at most on the prejudices connected with positive institutions in each country, the predominant associations that influenced the judgment were derived from respect for birth, of which opulence was as yet rather the sign than the substitute. This had long been, and long continued to be, the characteristic prejudice of European society. It was hardly ever higher than in the fifteenth century; when heraldry, the language that speaks to the eye of pride, and the science of those who despise every other, was cultivated with all its ingenious pedantry; and every improvement in useful art, every creation in inventive architecture, was made subservient to the grandeur of an elevated class in society. The burghers, in those parts of Europe which had become rich by commerce, emulated in their public distinctions, as they did ultimately in their private families, the ensigns of patrician nobility. This prevailing spirit of aristocracy was still but partially modified by the spirit of popular freedom on one hand, or of respectful loyalty on the other.

|Religious opinions.|

|Attacks on the church.|

62. It is far more important to observe the disposition of the public mind in respect of religion, which not only claims to itself one great branch of literature, but exerts a powerful influence over almost every other. The greater part of literature in the middle ages, at least from the twelfth century, may be considered as artillery levelled against the clergy: I do not say against the church, which might imply a doctrinal opposition by no means universal. But if there is one theme upon which the most serious as well as the lightest, the most orthodox as the most heretical writers are united, it is ecclesiastical corruption. Divided among themselves, the secular clergy detested the regular; the regular monks satirised the mendicant friars; who, in their turn, after exposing both to the ill-will of the people, incurred a double portion of it themselves. In this most important respect, therefore, the influence of mediæval literature was powerful towards change. But it rather loosened the associations of ancient prejudice, and prepared mankind for revolutions of speculative opinion, than brought them forward.

|Three lines of religious opinion in fifteenth century.|

|Treatise de Imitatione Christi.|

63. It may be said in general, that three distinct currents of religious opinion are discernible, on this side of the Alps, in the first part of the fifteenth century. 1. The high pretensions of the Church of Rome to a sort of moral, as well as theological, infallibility, and to a paramount authority even in temporal affairs, when she should think fit to interfere with them, were maintained by a great body in the monastic and mendicant orders, and had still, probably, a considerable influence over the people in most parts of Europe. 2. The councils of Constance and Basle, and the contentions of the Gallican and German Churches against the encroachments of the holy see, had raised up a strong adverse party, supported occasionally by the government, and more uniformly by the temporal lawyers and other educated laymen. It derived, however, its greatest force from a number of sincere and earnest persons, who set themselves against the gross vices of the time, and the abuses grown up in the church through self-interest or connivance. They were disgusted, also, at the scholastic systems, which had turned religion into a matter of subtle dispute, while they laboured to found it on devotional feeling and contemplative love. The mystical theology, which, from seeking the illuminating influence and piercing love of the Deity, often proceeded onward to visions of complete absorption in his essence, till that itself was lost, as in the east, from which this system sprung, in an annihilating pantheism, had never wanted, and can never want, its disciples. Some, of whom Bonaventura is the most conspicuous, opposed its enthusiastic emotions to the icy subtleties of the schoolmen. Some appealed to the hearts of the people in their own language. Such was Tauler, whose sermons were long popular and have often been printed; and another was the unknown author of The German Theology, a favourite work with Luther, and known by the Latin version of Sebastian Castalio. Such, too, were Gerson and Clemangis, and such were the numerous brethren who issued from the college of Deventer.[306] One, doubtless of this class, whenever he may have lived, was author of the celebrated treatise De Imitatione Christi (a title which has been transferred from the first chapter to the entire work), commonly ascribed to Thomas von Kempen or à Kempis, one of the Deventer society, but the origin of which has been, and will continue to be, the subject of strenuous controversy. Besides Thomas à Kempis, two candidates have been supported by their respective partisans; John Gerson, the famous chancellor of the university of Paris, and John Gersen, whose name appears in one manuscript, and whom some contend to have been abbot of a monastery at Vercelli in the thirteenth century, while others hold him an imaginary being, except as a misnomer of Gerson. Several French writers plead for their illustrious countrymen, and especially M. Gence, one of the last who has revived the controversy; while the German and Flemish writers, to whom the Sorbonne acceded, have always contended for Thomas à Kempis, and Gersen has had the respectable support of Bellarmin, Mabillon, and most of the Benedictine order.[307] The book itself is said to have gone through 1800 editions, and has probably been more read than any one work after the Scriptures. 3. A third religious party consisted of the avowed or concealed heretics, some disciples of the older sectaries, some of Wicliffe or Huss, resembling the school of Gerson and Gerard Groot in their earnest piety, but drawing a more decided line of separation between themselves and the ruling power, and ripe for a more complete reformation than the others were inclined to desire. It is not possible, however, for us to pronounce on all the shades of opinion that might be secretly cherished in the fifteenth century.

[306] Eichhorn, vi. 1-136, has amply and well treated the theological
literature of the fifteenth century. Mosheim is less satisfactory,
and Milner wants extent of learning; yet both will be useful to the
English reader. Eichhorn seems well acquainted with the mystical
divines, in p. 97, et post.

[307] I am not prepared to state the external evidence upon this keenly
debated question with sufficient precision. In a few words, it may,
I believe, be said, that in favour of Thomas à Kempis has been
alleged the testimony of many early editions bearing his name,
including one about 1471, which appears to be the first, as well as
a general tradition from his own time, extending over most of
Europe, which has led a great majority, including the Sorbonne
itself, to determine the cause in his favour. It is also said that
a manuscript of the treatise De Imitatione bears these words at the
conclusion: Finitus et completus per manum Thomæ de Kempis, 1441;
and that in this manuscript are so many erasures and alterations,
as give it the appearance of his original autograph. Against Thomas
à Kempis it is urged, that he was a professed caligrapher or
copyist for the college of Deventer; that the chronicle of St.
Agnes, a contemporary work, says of him: Scripsit Bibliam nostram
totaliter, et multos alios libros pro domo et pro pretio; that the
entry above mentioned is more like that of a transcriber than of an
author; that the same chronicle makes no mention of his having
written the treatise De Imitatione, nor does it appear in an early
list of works ascribed to him. For Gerson are brought forward a
great number of early editions in France, and still more in Italy,
among which is the first that bears a date (Venice, 1483), both in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and some other probabilities
are alleged. But this treatise is not mentioned in a list of his
writings given by himself. As to Gersen, his claim seems to rest on
a manuscript of great antiquity, which ascribes it to him, and
indirectly on all those manuscripts which are asserted to be older
than the time of Gerson and Thomas à Kempis. But, as I have before
observed, I do not profess to give a full view of the external
evidence, of which I possess but a superficial knowledge.

From the book itself, two remarks, which I do not pretend to be
novel, have suggested themselves. 1. The Gallicisms or Italicisms
are very numerous, and strike the reader at once; such as, Scientia
sine timore Dei quid importat?--Resiste in principio inclinationi
tuæ--Vigilia serotina--Homo passionatus--Vivere cum nobis
contrariantibus--Timoratior in cunctis actibus--Sufferentia crusis.
It seems strange that these barbarous adaptations of French or
Italian should have occurred to any one, whose native language was
Dutch; unless it can be shown, that through St. Bernard, or any
other ascetic writer, they had become naturalised in religious
style. 2. But, on the other hand, it seems impossible to resist the
conviction, that the author was an inhabitant of a monastery, which
was not the case with Gerson, originally a secular priest at Paris,
and employed for many years in active life, as chancellor of the
university, and one of the leaders of the Gallican church. The
whole spirit breathed by the treatise De Imitatione Christi is that
of a solitary ascetic:--Vellem me pluries tacuisse et inter homines
non fuisse--Sed quare tam libenter loquimur, et invicem fabulamur,
cum raro sine læsione conscientiæ ad silentium redimus.--Cella
continuata dulcescit, et male custodita tædium generat. Si in
principio conversionis tuæ bene eam incolueris et custodieris, erit
tibi posthac dilecta, amica, et gratissimum solatium.

As the former consideration seems to exclude Thomas à Kempis, so
the latter is unfavourable to the claims of Gerson. It has been
observed, however, that in one passage, l. i. c. 24, there is an
apparent allusion to Dante; which, if intended, must put an end to
Gersen, abbot of Vercelli, whom his supporters place in the first
part of the thirteenth century. But the allusion is not
indisputable. Various articles in the Biographie Universelle, from
the pen of M. Gence, maintain his favourite hypothesis; and M.
Daunou, in the Journal des Savans for 1826, and again in the volume
for 1827, seems to incline the same way. This is in the review of a
defence of the pretensions of Gersen, by M. Gregory, who adduces
some strong reasons to prove that the work is older than the
fourteenth century.

The book contains great beauty and heart-piercing truth in many of
its detached sentences, but places its rule of life in absolute
seclusion from the world, and seldom refers to the exercise of any
social, or even domestic duty. It has naturally been less a
favourite in Protestant countries, both from its monastic
character, and because those who incline towards Calvinism do not
find in it the phraseology to which they are accustomed. The
translations are very numerous, but there seems to be an inimitable
expression in its concise and energetic, though barbarous Latin.

|Scepticism. Defences of Christianity.|

64. Those of the second class were, perhaps, comparatively rare at this time in Italy, and those of the third much more so. But the extreme superstition of the popular creed, the conversation of Jews and Mahometans, the unbounded admiration of pagan genius and virtue, the natural tendency of many minds to doubt and to perceive difficulties, which the schoolmen were apt to find everywhere, and nowhere to solve, joined to the irreligious spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy, especially as modified by Averroes, could not but engender a secret tendency towards infidelity, the course of which may be traced with ease in the writings of those ages. Thus the tale of the three rings in Bocacce, whether original or not, may be reckoned among the sports of a sceptical philosophy. But a proof, not less decisive, that the blind faith we ascribe to the middle ages was by no means universal, results from the numerous vindications of Christianity written in the fifteenth century. Eichhorn, after referring to several passages in the works of Petrarch, mentions defences of religion by Marcilius Ficinus, Alfonso de Spina, a converted Jew, Savanarola, Æneas Sylvius, Picus of Mirandola. He gives an analysis of the first, which, in its course of argument, differs little from modern apologies of the same class.[308]

[308] Vol. vi. p. 24.

|Raimond de Sebonde.|

65. These writings, though by men so considerable as most of those he has named, are very obscure at present; but the treatise of Raimond de Sebonde is somewhat better known, in consequence of the chapter in Montaigne entitled an apology for him. Montaigne had previously translated into French the Theologia Naturalis of this Sebonde, professor of medicine at Barcelona in the early part of the fifteenth century. This has been called by some the first regular system of natural theology; but, even if nothing of that kind could be found in the writings of the schoolmen, which is certainly not the case, such an appellation, notwithstanding the title, seems hardly due to Sebonde’s book, which is intended, not so much to erect a fabric of religion independent of revelation, as to demonstrate the latter by proofs derived from the order of nature.

|His views misunderstood.|

66. Dugald Stewart, in his first dissertation prefixed to the Encyclopædia Britannica, observes, that “the principal aim of Sebonde’s book, according to Montaigne, is to show that Christians are in the wrong to make human reasoning the basis of their belief, since the object of it is only conceived by faith, and by a special inspiration of the divine grace.” I have been able to ascertain that the excellent author was not misled in this passage by any carelessness of his own, but by confiding in Cotton’s translation of Montaigne, which absolutely perverts the sense. Far from such being the aim of Sebonde, his book is wholly devoted to the rational proofs of religion: and what Stewart, on Cotton’s authority, has taken for a proposition of Sebonde himself, is merely an objection which, according to Montaigne, some were apt to make against his mode of reasoning. The passage is so very clear, that every one who looks at Montaigne (l. ii. c. 12) must instantaneously perceive the oversight which the translator has made; or he may satisfy himself by the article on Sebonde in Bayle.

|His real object.|

67. The object of Sebonde’s book, according to himself, is to develop those truths as to God and man, which are latent in nature, and through which the latter may learn everything necessary; and especially may understand Scripture, and have an infallible certainty of its truth. This science is incorporate in all the books of the doctors of the church, as the alphabet is in their words. It is the first science, the basis of all others, and requiring no other to be previously known. The scarcity of the book will justify an extract; which, though in very uncouth Latin, will serve to give a notion of what Sebonde really aimed at; but he labours with a confused expression, arising, partly, from the vastness of his subject.[309]

[309] Duo sunt libri nobis dati a Deo: scilicet liber universitatis
creaturarum, sive liber naturæ, et alius est liber sacræ scripturæ.
Primus liber fuit datus homini a principio, dum universitas rerum
fuit condita, quoniam quælibet creatura non est nisi quædam litera
digito Dei scripta, et ex pluribus creaturis sicut ex pluribus
literis componitur liber. Ita componitur liber creaturarum, in quo
libro etiam continetur homo; et est principalior litera ipsius
libri. Et sicut literæ et dictiones factæ ex literis important et
includunt scientiam et diversas significationes et mirabiles
sententias: ita conformiter ipsæ creaturæ simul conjunctæ et ad
invicem comparatæ important et significant diversas significationes
et sententias, et continent scientiam homini necessariam. Secundus
autem liber scripturæ datus est homini secundo, et hoc in defectu
primi libri; eo quia homo nesciebat in primo legere, quia erat
cœcus; sed tamen primus liber creaturarum est omnibus communis,
quia solum clerici legere sciunt in eo [_i.e._ secundo].

Item primus liber, scilicet naturæ, non potest falsificari, nec
deleri, neque false interpretari; ideo hæretici non possunt eum
false intelligere, nec aliquis potest in eo fieri hæreticus. Sed
secundus potest falsificari et false interpretari et male
intelligi. Attamen uterque liber est ab eodem, quia idem Dominus et
creaturas condidit, et sacram Scripturam revelavit. Et ideo
conveniunt ad invicem, et non contradicit unus alteri, sed tamen
primus est nobis connaturalis, secundus supernaturalis. Præterea
cum homo sit naturaliter rationalis, et susceptibilis disciplinæ et
doctrinæ; et cum naturaliter a sua creatione nullam habeat actu
doctrinam neque scientiam, sit tamen aptus ad suscipiendum eam; et
cum doctrina et scientia sine libro, in quo scripta sit, non possit
haberi, convenientissimum fuit, ne frustra homo esset capax
doctrinæ et scientiæ, quod divina scientia homini librum creaverit,
in quo per se et sine magistro possit studere doctrinam
necessariam; propterea hoc totum istum mundum visibilem sibi
creavit, et dedit tanquam librum proprium et naturalem et
infallibilem, Dei digito scriptum, ubi singulæ creaturæ quasi
literæ sunt, non humano arbitrio sed divino juvante judicio ad
demonstrandum homini sapientiam et doctrinam sibi necessariam ad
salutem. Quam quidem sapientiam nullus potest videre, neque legere
per se in dicto libro semper aperto, nisi fuerit a Deo illuminatus
et a peccato originali mundatus. Et ideo nullus antiquorum
philosophorum paganorum potest legere hanc scientiam, quia erant
excæcati quantum ad propriam salutem, quamvis in dicto libro
legerunt aliquam scientiam, et omnem quam habuerunt ab eodem
contraxerunt; sed veram sapientiam quæ ducit ad vitam æternam,
quamvis fuerat in eo scripta, legere non potuerunt.

Ista autem scientia non est aliud nisi cogitare et videre
sapientiam scriptam in creaturis, et extrahere ipsam ab illis, et
ponere in animâ, et videre significationem creaturarum. Et sic
comparando ad aliam et conjungere sicut dictionem dictioni, et ex
tali conjunctione resultat sententia et significatio vera, dum
tamen scia homo intelligere et cognoscere.

|Nature of his arguments.|

68. Sebonde seems to have had floating in his mind, as this extract will suggest, some of those theories as to the correspondence of the moral and material world, which were afterwards propounded, in their cloudy magnificence, by the Theosophists of the next two centuries. He afterwards undertakes to prove the Trinity from the analogy of nature. His argument is ingenious enough, if not quite of orthodox tendency, being drawn from the scale of existence, which must lead us to a being immediately derived from the First Cause. He proceeds to derive other doctrines of Christianity from principles of natural reason; and after this, which occupies about half a volume of 779 closely printed pages, he comes to direct proofs of revelation: first, because God, who does all for his own honour, would not suffer an impostor to persuade the world that he was equal to God, which Mahomet never pretended; and afterwards by other arguments more or less valid or ingenious.

69. We shall now adopt a closer and more chronological arrangement than before, ranging under each decennial period the circumstances of most importance in the general history of literature, as well as the principal books published within it. This course we shall pursue till the channels of learning become so various, and so extensively diffused through several kingdoms, that it will be found convenient to deviate in some measure from so strictly chronological a form, in order to consolidate better the history of different sciences, and diminish, in some measure, what can never wholly be removed from a work of this nature--the confusion of perpetual change of subject.