Chapter V: Part 5

Without this central power, Europe would have been broken up into a multitude of petty states, and have sunk into eternal and irremediable anarchy; whereas now, great as might be at times the confusion, and fearfully wild the spirit of warfare, there was always a resource and a remedy against such calamities. As the religious vow of the knight dignified his duties into a sort of ecclesiastical warfare; so the high functions of the Emperor were considered as partly ecclesiastical, and he was looked on as the sworn liegeman of Almighty God, intrusted with the high sword of universal justice. It was the exalted idea of this arduous and momentous charge, far more than schemes of selfish ambition and idle glory, that filled up the lives of the most active and powerful of those ancient emperors. Hence this common regard for the general welfare of Christendom, which the obligations of their respective stations imposed upon them, produced a very intimate union between the heads of the spiritual and temporal authority in Europe, and placed them in a state of mutual dependance. When the mighty emperor, Otho the Great, had been called into Italy, and had witnessed with his own eyes the state of general corruption and degeneracy at Rome, where among the baronial factions which surrounded the Papal chair, one of the more powerful families sought by the most culpable intrigues to obtain a lasting, and as it were, hereditary possession of the holy see; he exerted his imperial authority, and deposed the Pope, who by means so unlawful had obtained his dignity, and on whom the general voice of the age had long pronounced a sentence of condemnation, causing a worthier Pontiff to be elected in his room. There still existed among those of the same mind in Christendom, an unerring feeling, whereby the righteousness or unrighteousness of any action, its real spirit and purpose, were easily and promptly determined without any anxious regard to mere outward forms. But when that uniformity of feeling had disappeared, and with it feeling itself had ceased to be a ruling principle of public and political life, the standard of political estimation rested almost exclusively on outward forms, and the contentious point of law involved in those forms; and as in every historical fact men saw but a precedent fertile of application, or even dangerous in its consequences, they no longer formed a pure historical judgment on the general spirit of any great action, and they almost lost the very notion of such a thing. The whole world at that time was unanimous in justifying the conduct of the great Otho in that affair. When however the clergy of Rome, in their first feelings of gratitude and admiration at their deliverance from intolerable anarchy, and the toils of an unworthy family, conferred on the emperor the future and permanent power of choosing the Pope, it might have been easily foreseen that so extended a prerogative, little compatible as it was with the independence of the church, would in the sequel provoke a strong reaction. This accordingly took place about a hundred years later, when a man of great energy of character, Pope Gregory VII. arose to reform the church, and achieve its independence against the many unlawful encroachments of the secular power. And when a prince, distinguished indeed for his warlike qualities, but utterly characterless and animated with an unquiet spirit, who, according to the unanimous testimony of his contemporaries, had incurred many and most serious charges; when this prince first attacked and deposed the Pope, and the latter laid him under an excommunication, the conduct of the Pontiff was not only in strict accordance with the general opinion of the age as to the mischievous rule of this secular potentate; but was quite conformable to the then prevailing doctrine of public law, which sanctioned the responsibility and accountability of the temporal power. Hence, Henry IV. found it more expedient to loose himself from this excommunication by a feint submission, than to impugn it by open force; although he never afterwards ceased persecuting the Pope, whose constancy was proved in adversity and persecution. In our own times, justice has been at last rendered to the great qualities of this Pontiff, and it has been allowed he was perfectly free from all selfish views, and that the austere and decisive energy of his character sprang from no other motive than a burning zeal for the reform of the church and of mankind. The German historians in particular, and in truth those on the Protestant side, have been the first to perform this act of justice; and the name of Gregory VII. who lived in times so different from our own, has long ceased to be with the Germans a watch-word for party strife.

But on the matter at issue, or rather on the opinion the world then entertained respecting it, it will be necessary to say a few words. That the Sovereign is in no way responsible seems in modern times to be considered an immutable axiom, or rather the first of all axioms in the science of government; and whenever a monarch in the history of the middle ages, however vicious he may be and however forgetful of his dignity, meets with the treatment of the Emperor Henry IV., political indignation is raised to the highest pitch. No one can have the slightest intention of questioning the perfect justness of the above state-axiom, under certain given circumstances. But, if the question be a parallel between the middle ages and modern times, we may oppose to the scandal of the ecclesiastical excommunication pronounced against this prince during the former period, the still more fatal example which has occurred within the last three centuries, of the public execution of several monarchs, and of the assassination of many others. Thus, in this respect, the history of the middle age stands purer; and this warns us to decide with less precipitancy on the superiority of our own standard of political morality, and on the greater perfection of modern principles of state-policy.[6] According to the feeling of right, and the prevailing maxims of public law in that age, a mutual controul and responsibility subsisted between church and state, and between the heads of either. In the most esteemed constitutions of modern states, there is also a mutual dependence and possible controul. Thus the prince may dissolve the parliament, or resist its enactments by his veto; and, on the other hand, the parliament, by withholding its sanction to the imposition of taxes, or refusing the grant of subsidies, may weaken the sinews of government, and summon, not indeed the king, who seems to be regarded as a mere cipher, but the ministry to a most severe reckoning. The government loses all stay and support, when the Opposition obtains a permanent and decided majority. Whether this mutual dependence and controul in the modern theory of government be less dangerous than in the ancient system, is a question which it is not so easy to decide. As all the institutions of the middle age had a religious spirit and character, it cannot excite our surprise that this opposition between the spiritual and temporal power, and this mutual dependence of the heads of church and state should have been founded in religion, and in the religious character and purpose of the Imperial, as well as of the Papal, dignity. It was only by the excesses of passion and violence, by the exaggerated proceedings of both the spiritual and temporal powers, as well as by unfortunate accidents and a human imperfection, by no means inherent in the nature of the thing itself, that the dispute between church and state grew to such a fearful magnitude, was so prolonged, and often became almost incurable. But how easily, even then, peace might be restored between the spiritual and temporal powers by the wisdom, the prudence, the good-will, and conciliatory temper of both, is proved by the peaceable termination of the quarrel respecting investiture under the successor of Henry IV. In the sequel, indeed, the harsh, stern, inflexible character of the Ghibelline Emperors, especially Barbarossa, again perplexed this question; when from the contest growing more and more violent betwixt the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the political schism became wider and wider, and discord seemed to be again the mistress of the world.

[6] In confirmation of what Schlegel asserts in the
text, I shall cite a few passages from some
distinguished Protestant Historians of Germany. To shew
my readers the enlarged, liberal and enlightened views
taken by the Protestant writers of that country on the
political influence of the Papacy in the middle age,
and on the services which at that momentous period the
hierarchy rendered to the cause of social order,
liberty and civilization, it were easy to transcribe
matter more than sufficient to fill a volume. Let a few
examples suffice.--"The Northern nations," says the
celebrated historian of Switzerland, John Muller,
rushing in upon the most beautiful countries of Europe,
trampling under foot, or disturbing and convulsing all
social institutions, menaced the whole Western world
with a barbarism similar to that which, under the
Ottoman sceptre, has obliterated every thing good,
great and beautiful that ancient Greece and Asia had
produced. Yet the Bishops and other Dignitaries
(Versteher) of the church, strong in their authority,
contrived to impose a restraint on those giants of the
North who, as regards intelligence, were but children.
They would not have been more successful than the Greek
prelates, had they been subject to four different
Patriarchs. The Popes of Rome, (whose primitive history
is as obscure and defective as that of the ancient
Roman Republic, since we know little of the first
Popes, except that they devoted their lives for the
faith, as Decius had done for his country,) the Popes,
we say, employed their authority with the same address
which we admire in the ancient Senate, to render their
see independent, subject to its immediate action the
whole Western hierarchy, and establish its sway, far
beyond the boundaries of the ancient empire, on the
ruins of the Northern religions. Thus whoever refused
to honour the Christ, trembled before the Pope; and one
faith and one church were preserved in Europe, amid the
breaking up and subdivision of the newly-founded
kingdoms into a thousand petty principalities. We know
what Pope made Charlemagne the first Emperor; _but who
made the first Pope_? The Pope, they say, was only a
Bishop; yes, but at the same time, the _Holy Father_,
the _Sovereign Pontiff_, the great Caliph, (as he was
called by Ho-Albufreda, Prince of Hamath) of all the
kingdoms and principalities, of all the lordships and
cities of the West. It is he who controuled by the fear
of God the stormy youth of our modern states. At
present even, when his authority is no longer
formidable, he is still very puissant by the
benedictions which he showers; he is still an object of
veneration to innumerable hearts, honoured by the kings
who honour the nations, invested with a power, before
which in the long succession of ages, from the Cæsars
to the House of Hapsburg, a host of nations and all
their great names have vanished.

"We declaim against the Pope! as if it were such a
misfortune that there should exist an authority to
superintend the practice of Christian morality, and to
say to ambition and to despotism, Halt!--so far, and no
further! _Bisher, und nicht weiter_!" So speaks the
illustrious John Muller. The celebrated Herder allows
"that without the hierarchy, Europe in all probability
had become the prey of tyrants, the theatre of eternal
wars, or even a desert."

"The hierarchy," says Beck, "opposed the progress of
despotism in Europe, preserved the elements of
civilization, and upheld in the recollection of men
what is so easily effaced--the ties which bind earth to
Heaven. Those ignorant men, as we affect to call them,
have settled almost all the countries of Europe. The
fruits of that time are the formation of the third
estate, whence dates the true existence of nations--and
the establishment of cities, wherein social life and
true liberty were developed."--_Beck on the Middle
Age_, page 13. _Leipzick_, 1824.

"The weak," says Ruhs, in his Manual of the History of
the Middle Age, "then found in spiritual authority a
better protection against the encroachments of the
powerful than afterwards in the balance of power--a
system which, as it was _a thing purely abstract,
devoid of all external guarantee_, must soon have lost
all influence. The Pope was always present to terminate
the wars which had broken out among Christian princes,
and to protect the people against the injustice and
tyranny of their rulers. The Clergy therefore every
where showed themselves opposed to the power of kings,
when the latter wished to become perfectly
absolute--they wished not to domineer over them, but
confine them within the legitimate bounds of their
authority. The Priesthood was consequently always for
princes, when powerful vassals attacked the rights of
the Sovereign--they were the natural and constant
guardians of the rights and liberty of all
classes."--_Manual of the History of the Middle Age_.
1816.--_Trans._

END OF LECTURE XIII.

LECTURE XIV.

On the struggles of the Guelfs and Ghibellines.--Spirit of the
Ghibelline age.--Origin of romantic poetry and art.--Character
of the scholastic science and the old jurisprudence.--Anarchical
state of Western Europe.

The most rapid sketch of the history of the middle age, if it contained but a few lively, characteristic and faithful traits on a subject inexhaustible in itself, would suffice to convince any reasonable man that great characters, (abounding almost more than in any other period of history,) important interests, mighty motives, and lofty feelings and ideas were there in mutual collision; and that in what is called the anarchy of the middle age we find an active and stirring life, the most splendid feats of heroism, and many luminous traces of a higher power. The most careful consideration and profound investigation of the history of those ages, invariably discovers that all that was then great and good in the state, as well as in the church, proceeded from Christianity, and from the wonderful efficacy of religious principles. Whatever was imperfect, defective, and hurtful, belonged not to that moral principle which animated society, and which was itself the best, the noblest, and the soundest; but was in the character of men, we might almost say, in the character of the age itself, which, though perhaps not originally and purposely selfish, had yet become so in the violence of the conflict. And by selfishness, I do not precisely understand a vulgar self-interest, or an ordinary ambition, but that absolute will or conduct which springs from some unalterable resolution, which, hurrying from one extreme to another, is sure to produce a perpetual alternation of extreme measures. In some cases this conduct proceeded from a want of penetration, prudence, and steadiness, which did not always accompany the deeds of heroic enthusiasm, the astonishing energy of will and strength of character which distinguished the men of those ages. The principle then really bad, the principle hostile to good, must be ascribed to that inclination to discord, innate in man, or which at least has become his second nature--an inclination which, when united with those other mighty qualities of the age, assumed indeed the most formidable shape.

The whole middle age, however, must not by any means be depicted as a period of universal anarchy; as, from the great difference of times, and the fact that much in the manners and political institutions of those ages is now scarcely intelligible, modern writers are but too apt to indulge in this strain of censure. Above all, we must be careful to distinguish in the history of the middle ages the variety of epochs. As long as those religious principles on which church and state depended, were maintained in their unity and intregrity, the social stability of that first and happier period is indeed remarkable, and forms a striking contrast with the succeeding age. For private feuds, restrained within certain bounds by the manners of chivalry and the laws of honour, or the more protracted, and frequently renewed struggles of a warlike nation to repel the inroads of barbarians, or the aggressions of turbulent neighbours, are no adequate proofs of general anarchy. But a full knowledge and just appreciation of the power of principle, which during that better period was the Christian foundation of the state, is of so much more importance to our age, as in these times when principle has given way to the mutable opinion of the moment, and the latter exerts so mighty an influence on public life; though men have the power to throw off this ursurped dominion, they will not return to that unity and stabilty of principle, however strongly they may feel the necessity of restoring its saving influence. No parallel could be more profitable and instructive than the comparison between an age and a state, where principle was predominant, and another where opinion was paramount.

All that was great and good in the history of the middle age, as I observed at the commencement of this lecture, existed only in fragments, and this has very much contributed to heighten the appearance of anarchy throughout the whole of this great period of human history. Of this the blame must be sought for in a combination of many injurious causes, and in the resistance of many opposing elements. That wonderful power of regeneration, by which the whole of Western Christendom, after every mighty destruction, and reign of confusion in church and state, has, in a form somewhat modified, sprung up anew, renovated and exalted, can be ascribed only to that religion which was in Christian countries the first, and for so many centuries the apparently almost indestructible support of the social edifice. In many and memorable periods of regeneration, down to our own times, this truth has been repeatedly manifested; unless perhaps this self-renovating power conspicuous in the progress of Christian Europe, as well as of the particular nations composing it, languishing and decaying by degrees, become at last utterly extinct.

Among the characteristic, remarkable, and peculiarly Christian institutions of the middle age, we ought especially to mention that ecclesiastical truce, or peace of God, which towards the commencement of the eleventh century, opposed a powerful barrier to the growing and restless spirit of private warfare. Without its being possible to specify exactly, how or where this institution first arose, it was at once proclaimed in several places, and generally received with pious faith, as a voice of reconciliation from above, an immediate revelation and benign dispensation of divine Providence; and every week the tolling of the bell announced the sacred truce from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, during which time all feuds were to subside, and all hostilities to cease. It may indeed here be asked in the spirit of modern times, why were only four, and not the whole seven days of the week fixed upon, for the cessation of disorder? and it may be further said that a severe criminal code, and a prompt, vigorous and enlightened administration of the law, would have rendered such expedients unnecessary. And it is thus that men speak and reason without any knowledge of that age; for many feuds, troubles, and contests then existed, as in all ages have existed and still exist, which no criminal legislation can reach: and who will not deem it the part of prudence and a real gain, when peace is not attainable, to obtain at least a safe and honourable armistice, or to subtract from the principle of war four sevenths of its baneful influence and actual duration? And how happy would men have accounted themselves, if, in other and later times of disorder, when nought was reverenced or respected, and every thing sacred was an object of hatred and persecution, they could, amid the general confusion, have found shelter under such a wall of safety, or been blessed with such a holiday of peace, though only at particular times of the week! We should rather admire the power of religion, whereby such a prohibition without the aid of external force, or secular authority, and running directly counter to the ruling passion of the age, was received with such pious faith, and followed with such humble docility.

In the first crusade, religious feeling and enthusiasm was the great spring of action; and in the outset, at least, it was far more the glowing eloquence of Peter the hermit, his affecting description of the Holy Land, and of the holy places groaning under the Saracen yoke, which contributed to bring about this memorable expedition, than the pretended policy of the Popes for causing the depression of regal power, and the promotion of popular freedom. These mighty consequences, though in fact historically true, became apparent only at a much later period, and so far from being pre-concerted, were then not even foreseen. As the first Crusade occurred in the most brilliant period of Norman glory, the Norman heroes, especially those from France, took a very active and prominent part in it. The warfare which the Saracens waged against Christendom was considered (and then perhaps not without reason,) as a state of permanent and universal hostility. The chivalrous and defensive wars of Christian nations against the unbelievers were looked upon in the same light; and if we may judge from posterior events, Jerusalem and Egypt, in that long and memorable contest between Europe and Asia, could very well be regarded, both in a military and political point of view, as the bulwarks of Christendom. Feats of prodigious, and almost incredible, heroism were achieved in the Holy Land; and, at the close of the eleventh century, the victorious cross was planted in the holy city, and the pious Christian hero, Godfrey, proclaimed King of Jerusalem, though this title, as suited only to the divine Son of David, he with all humility renounced.

In this holy city the first two spiritual orders of chivalry sprang up; the knights of St. John, who took up arms for the defence of pilgrimage, and in their vows combined the care of the sick pilgrims with the management of the sword; and the Templars, so called after the temple of Solomon, and from a recollection of the remarkable secrets connected with that edifice. Chivalrous institutions of this kind, wherein Christianity contrived to blend the most opposite qualities and inclinations of human nature, could not have sprung up under a mathematical government of reason, or in a state where every thing is reduced to the level of a dead uniformity, and general equality, and where all feeling and personality are effaced. But the voice of ages has decided completely in favour of these marvellous institutes, and even in our own times, amid all the changes and fluctuations of opinion, they have preserved the respect, and obtained the forbearance, of mankind.

Even in the second Crusade which took place about fifty years later, when the new progress of the Saracen arms appeared to threaten the safety of the holy city, it was far more the pious eloquence of St. Bernard than any scheme or calculation of policy, which set the whole European world in motion. The number of warriors and armed pilgrims who, under the guidance of the Emperor Conrad, and the King of France, poured in upon the Holy Land, is computed at more than half a million. The religious enthusiasm and chivalric heroism which formed the sole and animating principle of the whole enterprise, were not always accompanied with sufficient prudence, wisdom and circumspection. The want of these qualities at least, as regarded the influences of climate, the physical wants of so vast an army, and a geographical knowledge of localities, is too often apparent; and in default of this necessary foresight and preparatory information, many thousands perished in the second as well as in the first Crusade; a fate which indeed is not unfrequent in wars, where great bodies of people are exposed to toil and hardship in a foreign climate. These expeditions were indeed like new migrations of nations, which took an opposite direction from the first, and rolled backward from Europe towards ancient Asia. The great multitude of men engaged, would sufficiently account for these memorable expeditions, as it proves the redundance of population in Europe, which sought on this occasion, and by means of this kind, to disburden itself of its surplus numbers. And if this numerous population may have given rise to, or afforded materials for, turbulence and anarchy, still on the other hand, it furnishes a proof that that anarchy was not of so destructive and depopulating a nature, as the descriptions of modern historians would sometimes lead us to suppose.

The real point of transition in German history from good to evil,--from those Christian principles which were ever predominant in the earlier period, to the unappeasable contests of the Guelfs and Ghibellines in the later middle age, must be fixed in the reign of the Emperor Frederick the First. The hostile treatment of the old Saxon race, the destruction of that first and greatest of the old national dutchies of the Germans, was occasioned by the jealousy of the East Franconians under the dynasty of that race; and this measure, begun during the reign, (in every respect so mischievous) of Henry the Fourth, who thus became chargeable with this mighty injustice towards the whole German nation, was now brought to a head by the Emperor Barbarossa. And thus, with the most signal ingratitude, was cut off by the root that noble stem whence German glory and German power had sprung; for the reigns of the great Saxon Emperors form precisely the most prosperous and most brilliant period of German history, such indeed as has never been again witnessed. With the same unrelenting severity and atrocious cruelty, this Ghibelline Emperor destroyed the confederate cities of Lombardy, and with them crushed the fair plant of Italian civilization just then beginning to blossom.

These two great historical parties--the Guelfs and Ghibellines, are the same which we meet with in other periods of history, and even in our own times, though under other names, often in a form very different from that of the present day, and not always in the same relative position towards each other; but in the middle age they appeared in the larger and more gigantic proportions of the vigorous, heroic character belonging to that epoch. There is ever the one party aspiring after greater freedom, and the other immovably attached to the ancient faith, and to the principles it inculcates. That the liberal principles of innovation should, according to the peculiar complexion which these opinions take in every age, have emanated even from imperial power, and should have sought to establish their dominion in the world by force of arms, is not improbable in itself; and examples of a like kind are not wanting in history. And in this shape we find these principles in the middle age, where for a long while they exerted the greatest influence, and at last became almost predominant. On the other hand the legitimate attachment to the old permanent principle of faith appeared here in the form of an ecclesiastical opposition to secular ascendancy. But in the time of Barbarossa, the solemn reconciliation which took place between this Emperor and the Pope, restored harmony between the heads of church and state, and at last composed the long feud. This powerful Emperor, accompanied by the King of France, and the lion-hearted Richard, undertook a new crusade, in order to deliver Jerusalem which had been wrested from the Christians by Saladin; but before he could accomplish his design, death terminated his active career.

Although the last Ghibelline Emperor Frederick the Second, had been educated by Pope Innocent III., a Pontiff distinguished by his enlarged views, and great intellectual endowments, and who had undertaken the care and guardianship of the Emperor's childhood; yet the old dispute broke out again under this monarch with more violence and more implacable animosity than ever. This quarrel was never more appeased, at least during the sway of Frederick II. and his family; and it terminated only with the downfal of the Hohenstaufen, the most powerful of all the princely houses of the middle age. Yet the Ghibelline name, heretofore stamped in characters of blood upon the earth, subsisted a long while yet; and for ages after, the Ghibelline spirit continued to be the prevailing one in Europe. Although the later Swabian Princes and Emperors of this house, such as Henry VI. and others, were the patrons of poetry, and of the Provençal minstrels and German Minnesingers; yet they all resembled one another in an unbending sternness of character. Henry VI. perpetrated the most enormous cruelties at Naples; the blood-thirsty Ezzelin, while Governor of Lombardy under Frederick the Second, has left behind him so fearful a recollection in Italy, such a character in the pages of history, that his very name need only be mentioned, and will dispense with all minuter historical details. The last of this family, Conradin, was an innocent victim of the public hatred borne to his ancestors, and he perished on a scaffold at Naples by the hands of Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Lewis, who had seized on the kingdom of the two Sicilies, the lawful patrimony of the royal youth. The Emperor Frederick the Second--a prince who for his times had received a most polite education, and was endowed with the greatest and most original powers of mind,--was not only accused by the Pope in the excommunication he pronounced against him of a secret but decided enmity to the Christian religion; but in the general opinion of the world, laboured under the same suspicion. However, by a prudent peace, which this prince concluded with the Sultan of Egypt, he terminated his crusade more successfully than his grandfather had done his own; for by this he won back the holy places, and placed the crown of Jerusalem on his head. He was the first who brought into Europe the Arabic translation of Aristotle's works; and as at this period a mighty change took place in the science and philosophy of the middle age, and as even the art and poetry of European nations began to display new life and energy, it may not be amiss to give here a rapid sketch of these important changes, as they serve to characterize the times.

Chivalry was in itself the poetry of life; what wonder then that that life of imagination, should have opened a new fountain of poesy in the traditional songs, the fairy lays, the varied minstrelsy, and knightly narratives of Germany and France, Spain and England, since in these countries, chivalry was the ruling element of society, and had made the greatest progress?--For the more immediate object of this Philosophy of History,--and in order to contemplate the progress of mankind in matters more serious and important, I have thought the moral principles of men in the middle age, and their political doctrines, as they were founded on religion, or on the system of opposition to religion, to be of far greater moment and importance than the mere æsthetic part of those ages; for sentimentalists may indulge in a certain vague, superficial love and predilection for the times of chivalry, for the romantic spirit of the chivalrous life, and of the chivalrous poetry, and of the whole system of modern art which has thence emanated; and nevertheless all the deeper problems of life involved in that momentous epoch may remain unexamined, unsolved, or even misunderstood.

On the nature of this romantic tendency, inasmuch as it exerted a mighty influence on life, and was a motive of vast and undoubted weight in many of the most important historical events of those ages, I shall merely say a word by way of psychological illustration; for this is applicable to the prevailing forms of mind, the peculiar intellectual bearings of whole nations and ages, as to those of individuals. As where opinion is the ruling principle of life--it is very soon broken, divided, parcelled out and lost in a chaos of heterogeneous theories, and the age--the world--life itself are involved in interminable disputes; so when religious feeling constitutes the primary principle of life; and it hath been dismembered, and torn from its right centre, been driven to some extreme; and opinions flowing from this source have been carried into action; then all the great transactions of public life exhibit that overruling influence of imagination, perceptible not in the earlier, but in the later periods of the middle age, especially from the great epoch of the Crusades. Although these and other like great historical events of that period bear many noble traces of the high religious source whence they sprang; yet such a paramount influence of imagination over real life, must in this partial excess be regarded as the consequence of the dismemberment of man's psychological powers--a symptom of the dissolution of that internal harmony which can never subsist in society, unless it be previously established in consciousness. The radical vice of the middle age--that is to say, the one most prevalent in its later period from the time of the Ghibellines--if one may venture to characterize it with such psychological generality--is discernible in the productions of the poetry, art and science of that age. And the relations which these bore to society--the distinctive character--the peculiar spirit of this critical period in the progress of Christian nations, are matters of the highest interest and greatest moment. This vice consisted in that disposition to extremes--that leaning towards the absolute I have already spoken of, as manifested in will, in determination, in rule--or in science, speculation, and poetry. The first germ, or at least the first disposition to this fault, lies in the very origin of modern nations, especially those five whose political existence sprang out of the union of the Germanic constitution, manners, and character, with the Latin civilization, literature, and language in the Romanic countries; or which at least were formed by a very strong infusion of the Roman spirit--I mean the German and English, the French, Spanish, and Italian nations. Where the character of the German tribes, the free, heroic energy of Germanic nature was blended and incorporated with the strong worldly sense of the Romans by the influence of Christian principles and religious love; there sprang out of that happy union those great and mild characters, to which I have already drawn your attention, and which flourished during the first period of the German Empire and of the middle age. But as soon as the influence of the Christian religion began to decline, and its power was enfeebled, clouded or obscured, the two elements, which had been united in the human race, fell asunder; and on one side was to be seen nothing but mere Roman astuteness (as is often enough the case in the later history of France and Italy); and on the side of the Germanic nations, nothing but a rude martial impetuosity and chivalric pride, uncontrolled and unsoftened by the principle of religion. Or when again the rigid principles of that old worldly sense and instinct of dominion, which belonged to the Romans, were conjoined with the heroic energy of the North, without however the healing and conciliatory influence of the religion of love; this combination, which is conspicuous in the vehement but fearful characters engaged in the Ghibelline contests, was indeed the most unfortunate of all.

How the tendency towards the absolute--that abyss to mankind, which along with love, confounds and swallows up all life--then hurried the political world from one extreme to another, we have already mentioned, so far as was necessary for our object.

But even in the art and poetry, as well as the science of the middle age, this leaning towards the absolute is equally apparent, and the more so, as both reached their full maturity at that period only when this had become the ruling spirit of the age. As, on one hand, the chivalrous poetry, especially in its origin, was excessively fantastical, until later it was fashioned into a form of milder symmetry, and made to pour forth the touching, heart-felt tones of romantic art; so on the other hand the scholastic philosophy was bewildered in a maze of subtleties not so much metaphysical as merely logical, and often quite destitute of sense. The singular manner, indeed, in which the Italian poet Dante, has in his mighty poem of visions, wherein he displays the most masterly and classical condensation of language, and the profoundest poetical art, contrived to sustain in his progress through the three regions of the invisible world that fantastic spirit, (which was not confined to the chivalrous poetry, but was common to every department of imagination in that age,) next the stern maxims of the Ghibelline state-policy, and a congenial worship of Roman antiquity, and has managed to unite all these qualities with the subtle distinctions of the scholastic philosophy; this singular manner, indeed, has never been an object of general imitation, nor has it opened a path to the subsequent labours of art. But this work will ever remain an extraordinary, wonderful, and characteristic monument, wherein the peculiar spirit of this first scholastico-romantic epoch of European art and science is displayed in a most remarkable manner. In this spirit there were many heterogeneous elements, not confined to their separate and distinct spheres, but often in the strangest juxta-position, or rather confusion. And thus a regular scholastic science of love, with all the borrowed forms of the philosophy of the day, formed often the purport of the most tender romantic lays or devices; and logical antitheses, syllogisms, and subtleties were solved in rhyme and verse, with a most charming play of fancy. It is these vagaries (and so they are in many respects) which so captivate our feelings in the poetry of Petrarch--one of the restorers of ancient literature and of modern learning.

More strongly still than in its poetry, the richness of an inventive imagination displayed itself in the wonderful architecture of the middle age, as so many splendid monuments in Germany, England, a part of France, and in the North of Italy and Venice can attest. The style of the Byzantine churches was the first and principal model of this Gothic architecture; though a fantastic monument of Arabic architecture may here and there perhaps have had some influence in its formation. The elaborate and ornate style, and the fantastic singularity of this architecture, breathe the true spirit of the German middle age. At this time, painting, too, began to make some progress in Italy and Germany; though its progress was incomparably slower than that of architecture, and the art reached its perfection only in the fifteenth century; but devoted entirely to religious subjects, and consecrated to the use of churches or private devotion, painting remained, down to the time of Raphael, an art peculiarly Christian, and displayed the profoundest import, and the most masterly power. From this period, renouncing, for the most part, the religious character of the elder Christian painting, art began to be affected by that enthusiasm for the Pagan antique, which indeed was not limited to the fine arts, but was the prevailing character of literature and science in this second period of European culture. And I have made these few remarks, not so much for the sake of art itself, which would require a separate investigation, but as tending to elucidate the various epochs and stages in the progress of modern civilization.

It was an ill-boding gift that the Ghibelline Emperor made to Europe when he brought from the East the works of Aristotle, translated, or rather burlesqued, into Arabic, and thence turned again into Latin, till at last they became often perfectly unintelligible. The elder Christian philosophers belonging to the first period of the middle age, such as in England (which still retained a high pre-eminence in Latin literature and Christian science,) a Scotus Erigena, the contemporary of Alfred,--a St. Anselm, so highly revered in theology,--and afterwards in France, an Abelard, and also a St. Bernard, in whose eloquence there runs so pure a vein of piety--and so charming a mysticism of feeling--all these elder Christian philosophers, both in thought and language were incomparably clearer and more precise than the schoolmen of succeeding times, and were for the most part entirely free from that interminable play of an idle logic, and those empty metaphysical subtleties. The natural sciences were then in too low and feeble a state to form any distinct branch of human inquiry; and this very circumstance contributed, as was then indeed perfectly natural, to knit closer the ties which connected philosophy with theology. But independently of the peculiar circumstances of those times, it is evident that Christian philosophy can be founded on religion only, and not on any theory, wherein nature occupies the first and highest place--not on any doctrine, which contains the germ of a Pagan worship of nature, renewed under a scientific form. As little can a Christian philosophy rest on the principle of Individualism--a reason which submits not humbly to God and his revelation, but which, all concentrated in itself, aspires to be all-sufficing and all-creative. In either respect, the Stagyrite, when studied even in the original, and thoroughly understood, would have been a guide very unsafe, very likely to mislead, as well in natural philosophy as in the higher problems of Metaphysics. The best and most instructive of his writings, his ethical or political works, could not even be understood by those scholastic admirers of the Grecian sage; for the profound allusions they contained to the customs and political history of Greece made the knowledge of these, and a complete investigation of the original sources of information, absolutely necessary to their comprehension. Even his logical and rhetorical books derive their chief and liveliest interest from the fact that they were intended to remedy the dialectic malady of Grecian intellect, and to oppose the all-usurping influence of a false rhetoric among the Greeks. Lastly, to comprehend fully, rightly appreciate, and turn to advantage, as our times are enabled to do, the most solid works of the profound ancient--those on mixed physics and natural history, the schoolmen were entirely destitute of the necessary aids and preparatory information.

If the Christian philosophers of the middle age, instead of adopting the Aristotelian system, had built and improved on the philosophy of those first great original thinkers of Christian Europe already mentioned, or on the philosophy of the primitive fathers, even those of the Latin church, for by them also the Platonic doctrines (the only doctrines of antiquity at all reconcileable with a philosophy of revelation,) had long been planted and naturalized on the Christian soil;--if this had been the case, the edifice of Christian philosophy would have been raised with far greater ease and rapidity, and been wrought into a much more beautiful structure. Or if even the Greek originals had been deemed absolutely indispensable towards such an object, it had been better that, instead of waiting till the destruction of Constantinople, the powerful Emperors and Potentates, who patronized art and science, had, during the short duration of the Latin Empire at Constantinople, brought away with them those philological treasures, instead of the works of Aristotle so absurdly disfigured in the Arabic, and in the still more unintelligible Latin version. It was, on one hand, the inclination of the age to absolute modes of thinking, to the art of logical tournaments, and on the other, a hope, secretly entertained, that by the pretended magical power of these logical devices, one might learn and obtain the mastery of many profound secrets of nature (which by the way should have been sought anywhere but in the real Aristotle); finally, the unquenchable thirst after a fruit of knowledge, deemed forbidden--it was all these circumstances, which created now that universal and irresistible rage for Aristotle, reputed as he was to contain the very essence of all liberal science and philosophy.

The whole foundation of the scholastic philosophy was thoroughly and essentially false; and it had the most prejudicial and injurious influence, not only on theology, but on the whole spirit and modes of thinking of this age. When however the evil appeared nearly incurable, and the false current of opinion was too strong to be resisted, a mighty service was rendered to mankind, when acute and sagacious theologians, endowed with philosophical talents and discernment, like a St. Thomas Aquinas, adopting the common, but erroneous, basis of this old Aristotelian rationalism, founded on it a system in which they attempted to reconcile this philosophy with the dictates of faith, and thus, in this respect at least, avert from their age the dangerous consequences of this false direction of the human mind. Yet, on the whole, this was but an apparent reconciliation; and the scholastic philosophy, or in other words, the rationalism of the middle age, broke out often afterwards into a haughty and violent opposition to the doctrines of revelation.

This scholastic spirit of the now degenerate middle age exerted its pernicious influence on life itself, and on the sciences more immediately connected with life, particularly jurisprudence. For when the first Ghibelline Frederick, on the plains of Roncaglia, gave his solemn sanction to the Roman law, and to all those absolute rights and prerogatives of the crown which were thence to be deduced, he thereby opened a door to an intricate scholastic jurisprudence, to all the learned subtlety of processes, and the interminable logic of law; and conferred on mankind a boon as little propitious as the Arabic Aristotle, which his descendant, the second Frederick, afterwards brought into Europe. The vast pandects of Justinian were already the recognized code of laws, under the Eastern Franconian Emperors, long before the German Jurist Irnerius opened his school of civil law in the University of Bologna. Those old Roman Formulas of universal dominion which are occasionally to be found in the Corpus Juris, suited perfectly the spirit and policy of the Ghibelline Emperors, who, in particular cases, alleged them against the Greek Emperors and other Potentates, as clear proofs of the universal monarchy which appertained to them. But it was particularly from the Ghibelline period that the Roman law became a favourite science, and its study a new mania among the European nations, especially on account of the leaning to absolute principles in that system of jurisprudence, whose artificial forms of rigid law were indeed little congenial to the spirit of Christianity, to modern society, and German manners.

The true problem for the legal science of Christian Europe to solve would have been this--to adopt the forms of the old Roman jurisprudence, so highly wrought and finished in its way, and to reform its spirit by the doctrines and principles of Christian justice; and at the same time to employ the many excellent materials to be found in the native laws of European nations, and in all the old Germanic codes. These laws were indeed of a very local nature, adapted mostly to infant communities and the simple manners of warlike tribes, and by no means appropriate to a more advanced stage of civilization; yet they contained the solid substance of genuine freedom and exalted equity. But this task ought to have been accomplished in that earlier period when Christianity, which had united and harmonized so many discordant elements, had still retained all its influence--an influence which was afterwards wanting. Those ages, however, which were so thoroughly Christian, and on that very account of such political importance, were deficient in science; and hence, as I have already observed, it was not so much deliberate selfishness, or hostile opposition, but the real want of knowledge and foresight which occasioned the civil and political institutions of Christian states to be left imperfect. It is only in very recent times that an attempt has been made to solve the problem which earlier ages had left unexecuted, or to supply this old deficiency of a Christian system of jurisprudence. And if hitherto this task has never been adequately, or completely, accomplished, though all the conditions have long existed for the solution of this necessary problem of European society; it would not be right to defer again the execution of the work, and thus lose once more the seasonable moment.

How, after the struggle of parties had become more general, and an absolute mode of thinking the ruling character of the age, the violent contests between church and state, between the Secular and Ecclesiastical authorities tended to promote their mutual injury and destruction, I shall now endeavour briefly to state. After the last excommunication pronounced against Frederick II., one anti-emperor had followed another in succession; and German princes, a prince of the royal household of England, and a king of Castile, had filled successively the imperial throne; none were generally and legally recognized, and it was the reign of universal anarchy and savage club-law. It was a dark interregnum in social order, as if the sun of justice and of peace had withdrawn its light from a world of corruption and irreconcilable hate; and for a whole generation this state of wild disorder, and fear of still greater calamities, lasted. The loss of Jerusalem and all the Holy Land to the Christians, which now took place, added to the general gloom of the times.

In vain had St. Lewis in his last Crusade against Egypt, once more exerted all his energies for the deliverance and preservation of the Christian possessions in the East; possessions, which had they been retained, might in the end have formed a rampart and a barrier against the inroads of the Mussulman power into the adjoining provinces of Europe. Still the danger from this quarter was not so imminent; for it was not till a hundred years later that the Turks burst from Asia Minor into Europe, conquered the Northern provinces of the Byzantine Empire, and began to menace the Christian kingdoms of the West. But there was a nearer and mightier danger rolling on against Europe--the formidable power of the Moguls, which surprised it in this period of the great interregnum. As if the hostile spirit of destruction had anticipated or known that the power of Christendom could be subverted only by internal discord; an old sage or priest of the still Pagan Moguls, had, about a generation before, announced to the youth, who was afterwards called Zingis Khan, (that is to say lord of the world, and who is known by this name in history,) that in a vision, he had seen the Great Spirit, seated on his flaming throne, judge the nations of the earth, and that, by his decision, the dominion of the world had been allotted to the young Khan of the Moguls. Filled with this spirit, Zingis traversed the world with his countless hosts; conquered China, Thibet and Japan, subdued the Mussulman Empire of Carizme, and penetrated as far as the Caspian Sea. The conqueror's four sons continued the work which he had commenced, and divided the earth into four parts for their task of desolation. The one to whom was assigned the Western portion of the earth invaded Christendom with his innumerable squadrons; the throne of Rurick, the greatest Christian potentate in the North, was overturned; and for several centuries, Russia, incorporated with the government of Kipzak, groaned under the oppressive yoke of the Mogul sway. Poland was overrun by the all-wasting hosts of Moguls; the King of Hungary was defeated, and forced to flee his country; Silesia was laid waste, and the bloody discomfiture of the Christian army at Lignitz filled the whole Western world with consternation. Happily the destroyers penetrated no further into Europe; and the stream of their conquests, as if diverted by a protecting hand, took its course first towards the Arabian Caliphate of Bagdad, which they put an end to; and afterwards towards India, and other Asiatic and Mahometan countries. This was a passing, but awful, warning to Christendom, how much she needed the strong arm of a powerful Protector, and that union alone would enable her to resist the assaults and inroads of barbarous nations. It was the strong feeling of such a necessity which had first inspired the idea of the Western Empire.