Chapter XVII: Part I (2)

But though the contagion of fanaticism spreads much more rapidly among the populace, and in modern times is almost entirely confined to it, there were examples, in the middle ages, of an epidemical religious lunacy, from which no class was exempt. One of these occurred about the year 1260, when a multitude of every rank, age, and sex, marching two by two in procession along the streets and public roads, mingled groans and dolorous hymns with the sound of leathern scourges which they exercised upon their naked backs. From this mark of penitence, which, as it bears at least all the appearance of sincerity, is not uncommon in the church of Rome, they acquired the name of Flagellants. Their career began, it is said, at Perugia, whence they spread over the rest of Italy, and into Germany and Poland. As this spontaneous fanaticism met with no encouragement from the church, and was prudently discountenanced by the civil magistrate, it died away in a very short time.[526] But it is more surprising that, after almost a century and a half of continual improvement and illumination, another irruption of popular extravagance burst out under circumstances exceedingly similar.[527] "In the month of August 1399," says a contemporary historian, "there appeared all over Italy a description of persons, called Bianchi, from the white linen vestment that they wore. They passed from province to province, and from city to city, crying out Misericordia! with their faces covered and bent towards the ground, and bearing before them a great crucifix. Their constant song was Stabat Mater dolorosa. This lasted three months; and whoever did not attend their procession was reputed a heretic."[528] Almost every Italian writer of the time takes notice of these Bianchi; and Muratori ascribes a remarkable reformation of manners (though certainly a very transient one) to their influence.[529] Nor were they confined to Italy, though no such meritorious exertions are imputed to them in other countries. In France their practice of covering the face gave such opportunity to crimes as to be prohibited by the government;[530] and we have an act on the rolls of the first parliament of Henry IV., forbidding any one, "under pain of forfeiting all his worth, to receive the new sect in white clothes, pretending to great sanctity," which had recently appeared in foreign parts.[531]

[Sidenote: Pretended miracles.]

The devotion of the multitude was wrought to this feverish height by the prevailing system of the clergy. In that singular polytheism, which had been grafted on Christianity, nothing was so conspicuous as the belief of perpetual miracles--if indeed those could properly be termed miracles which, by their constant recurrence, even upon trifling occasions, might seem within the ordinary dispensations of Providence. These superstitions arose in what are called primitive times, and are certainly no part of popery, if in that word we include any especial reference to the Roman see. But successive ages of ignorance swelled the delusion to such an enormous pitch, that it was as difficult to trace, we may say without exaggeration, the real religion of the Gospel in the popular belief of the laity, as the real history of Charlemagne in the romance of Turpin. It must not be supposed that these absurdities were produced, as well as nourished, by ignorance. In most cases they were the work of deliberate imposture. Every cathedral or monastery had its tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, fabricated in order to enrich the churches under his protection, by exaggerating his virtues, his miracles, and consequently his power of serving those who paid liberally for his patronage.[532] Many of those saints were imaginary persons; sometimes a blundered inscription added a name to the calendar, and sometimes, it is said, a heathen god was surprised at the company to which he was introduced, and the rites with which he was honoured.[533]

[Sidenote: Mischiefs arising from this superstition.]

It would not be consonant to the nature of the present work to dwell upon the erroneousness of this religion; but its effect upon the moral and intellectual character of mankind was so prominent, that no one can take a philosophical view of the middle ages without attending more than is at present fashionable to their ecclesiastical history. That the exclusive worship of saints, under the guidance of an artful though illiterate priesthood, degraded the understanding and begot a stupid credulity and fanaticism, is sufficiently evident. But it was also so managed as to loosen the bonds of religion and pervert the standard of morality. If these inhabitants of heaven had been represented as stern avengers, accepting no slight atonement for heavy offences, and prompt to interpose their control over natural events for the detection and punishment of guilt, the creed, however impossible to be reconciled with experience, might have proved a salutary check upon a rude people, and would at least have had the only palliation that can be offered for a religious imposture, its political expediency. In the legends of those times, on the contrary, they appeared only as perpetual intercessors, so good-natured and so powerful, that a sinner was more emphatically foolish than he is usually represented if he failed to secure himself against any bad consequences. For a little attention to the saints, and especially to the Virgin, with due liberality to their servants, had saved, he would be told, so many of the most atrocious delinquents, that he might equitably presume upon similar luck in his own case.

This monstrous superstition grew to its height in the twelfth century. For the advance that learning then made was by no means sufficient to counteract the vast increase of monasteries, and the opportunities which the greater cultivation of modern languages afforded for the diffusion of legendary tales. It was now, too, that the veneration paid to the Virgin, in early times very great, rose to an almost exclusive idolatry. It is difficult to conceive the stupid absurdity and the disgusting profaneness of those stories which were invented by the monks to do her honour. A few examples have been thrown into a note.[534]

[Sidenote: Not altogether unmixed with good.]

Whether the superstition of these dark ages had actually passed that point when it becomes more injurious to public morals and the welfare of society than the entire absence of all religious notions is a very complex question, upon which I would by no means pronounce an affirmative decision.[535] A salutary influence, breathed from the spirit of a more genuine religion, often displayed itself among the corruptions of a degenerate superstition. In the original principles of monastic orders, and the rules by which they ought at least to have been governed, there was a character of meekness, self-denial, and charity that could not wholly be effaced. These virtues, rather than justice and veracity, were inculcated by the religious ethics of the middle ages; and in the relief of indigence it may, upon the whole, be asserted that the monks did not fall short of their profession.[536] This eleemosynary spirit indeed remarkably distinguishes both Christianity and Mohammedism from the moral systems of Greece and Rome, which were very deficient in general humanity and sympathy with suffering. Nor do we find in any single instance during ancient times, if I mistake not, those public institutions for the alleviation of human miseries which have long been scattered over every part of Europe. The virtues of the monks assumed a still higher character when they stood forward as protectors of the oppressed. By an established law, founded on very ancient superstition, the precincts of a church afforded sanctuary to accused persons. Under a due administration of justice this privilege would have been simply and constantly mischievous, as we properly consider it to be in those countries where it still subsists. But in the rapine and tumult of the middle ages the right of sanctuary might as often be a shield to innocence as an immunity to crime. We can hardly regret, in reflecting on the desolating violence which prevailed, that there should have been some green spots in the wilderness where the feeble and the persecuted could find refuge. How must this right have enhanced the veneration for religious institutions! How gladly must the victims of internal warfare have turned their eyes from the baronial castle, the dread and scourge of the neighbourhood, to those venerable walls within which not even the clamour of arms could be heard to disturb the chant of holy men and the sacred service of the altar! The protection of the sanctuary was never withheld. A son of Chilperic king of France having fled to that of Tours, his father threatened to ravage all the lands of the church unless they gave him up. Gregory the historian, bishop of the city, replied in the name of his clergy that Christians could not be guilty of an act unheard of among pagans. The king was as good as his word, and did not spare the estate of the church, but dared not infringe its privileges. He had indeed previously addressed a letter to St. Martin, which was laid on his tomb in the church, requesting permission to take away his son by force; but the honest saint returned no answer.[537]

[Sidenote: Vices of the monks and clergy.]

The virtues indeed, or supposed virtues, which had induced a credulous generation to enrich so many of the monastic orders, were not long preserved. We must reject, in the excess of our candour, all testimonies that the middle ages present, from the solemn declaration of councils and reports of judicial inquiry to the casual evidence of common fame in the ballad or romance, if we would extenuate the general corruption of those institutions. In vain new rules of discipline were devised, or the old corrected by reforms. Many of their worst vices grew so naturally out of their mode of life, that a stricter discipline could have no tendency to extirpate them. Such were the frauds I have already noticed, and the whole scheme of hypocritical austerities. Their extreme licentiousness was sometimes hardly concealed by the cowl of sanctity. I know not by what right we should disbelieve the reports of the visitation under Henry VIII., entering as they do into a multitude of specific charges both probable in their nature and consonant to the unanimous opinion of the world.[538] Doubtless there were many communities, as well as individuals, to whom none of these reproaches would apply. In the very best view, however, that can be taken of monasteries, their existence is deeply injurious to the general morals of a nation. They withdraw men of pure conduct and conscientious principles from the exercise of social duties, and leave the common mass of human vice more unmixed. Such men are always inclined to form schemes of ascetic perfection, which can only be fulfilled in retirement; but in the strict rules of monastic life, and under the influence of a grovelling superstition, their virtue lost all its usefulness. They fell implicitly into the snares of crafty priests, who made submission to the church not only the condition but the measure of all praise. "He is a good Christian," says Eligius, a saint of the seventh century, "who comes frequently to church; who presents an oblation that it may be offered to God on the altar; who does not taste the fruits of his land till he has consecrated a part of them to God; who can repeat the Creed or the Lord's Prayer. Redeem your souls from punishment while it is in your power; offer presents and tithes to churches, light candles in holy places, as much as you can afford, come more frequently to church, implore the protection of the saints; for, if you observe these things, you may come with security at the day of judgment to say, Give unto us, Lord, for we have given unto thee."[539]

With such a definition of the Christian character, it is not surprising that any fraud and injustice became honourable when it contributed to the riches of the clergy and glory of their order. Their frauds, however, were less atrocious than the savage bigotry with which they maintained their own system and infected the laity. In Saxony, Poland, Lithuania, and the countries on the Baltic Sea, a sanguinary persecution extirpated the original idolatry. The Jews were everywhere the objects of popular insult and oppression, frequently of a general massacre, though protected, it must be confessed, by the laws of the church, as well as in general by temporal princes.[540] Of the crusades it is only necessary to repeat that they began in a tremendous eruption of fanaticism, and ceased only because that spirit could not be constantly kept alive. A similar influence produced the devastation of Languedoc, the stakes and scaffolds of the Inquisition, and rooted in the religious theory of Europe those maxims of intolerance which it has so slowly, and still perhaps so imperfectly, renounced.

From no other cause are the dictates of sound reason and the moral sense of mankind more confused than by this narrow theological bigotry. For as it must often happen that men to whom the arrogance of a prevailing faction imputes religious error are exemplary for their performance of moral duties, these virtues gradually cease to make their proper impression, and are depreciated by the rigidly orthodox as of little value in comparison with just opinions in speculative points. On the other hand, vices are forgiven to those who are zealous in the faith. I speak too gently, and with a view to later times; in treating of the dark ages it would be more correct to say that crimes were commended. Thus Gregory of Tours, a saint of the church, after relating a most atrocious story of Clovis--the murder of a prince whom he had previously instigated to parricide--continues the sentence: "For God daily subdued his enemies to his hand, and increased his kingdom; because he walked before him in uprightness, and did what was pleasing in his eyes."[541]

[Sidenote: Commutation of penances.]

It is a frequent complaint of ecclesiastical writers that the rigorous penances imposed by the primitive canons upon delinquents were commuted in a laxer state of discipline for less severe atonements, and ultimately indeed for money.[542] We must not, however, regret that the clergy should have lost the power of compelling men to abstain fifteen years from eating meat, or to stand exposed to public derision at the gates of a church. Such implicit submissiveness could only have produced superstition and hypocrisy among the laity, and prepared the road for a tyranny not less oppressive than that of India or ancient Egypt. Indeed the two earliest instances of ecclesiastical interference with the rights of sovereigns--namely, the deposition of Wamba in Spain and that of Louis the Debonair--were founded upon this austere system of penitence. But it is true that a repentance redeemed by money or performed by a substitute could have no salutary effect on the sinner; and some of the modes of atonement which the church most approved were particularly hostile to public morals. None was so usual as pilgrimage, whether to Jerusalem or Rome, which were the great objects of devotion; or to the shrine of some national saint--a James of Compostella, a David, or a Thomas a Becket. This licensed vagrancy was naturally productive of dissoluteness, especially among the women. Our English ladies, in their zeal to obtain the spiritual treasures of Rome, are said to have relaxed the necessary caution about one that was in their own custody.[543] There is a capitulary of Charlemagne directed against itinerant penitents, who probably considered the iron chain around their necks an expiation of future as well as past offences.[544]

The crusades may be considered as martial pilgrimages on an enormous scale, and their influence upon general morality seems to have been altogether pernicious. Those who served under the cross would not indeed have lived very virtuously at home; but the confidence in their own merits, which the principle of such expeditions inspired, must have aggravated the ferocity and dissoluteness of their ancient habits. Several historians attest the depravation of morals which existed both among the crusaders and in the states formed out of their conquests.[545]

[Sidenote: Want of law.]

While religion had thus lost almost every quality that renders it conducive to the good order of society, the control of human law was still less efficacious. But this part of my subject has been anticipated in other passages of the present work; and I shall only glance at the want of regular subordination, which rendered legislative and judicial edicts a dead letter, and at the incessant private warfare, rendered legitimate by the usages of most continental nations. Such hostilities, conducted as they must usually have been with injustice and cruelty, could not fail to produce a degree of rapacious ferocity in the general disposition of a people. And this certainly was among the characteristics of every nation for many centuries.

[Sidenote: Degradation of morals.]

It is easy to infer the degradation of society during the dark ages from the state of religion and police. Certainly there are a few great landmarks of moral distinctions so deeply fixed in human nature, that no degree of rudeness can destroy, nor even any superstition remove them. Wherever an extreme corruption has in any particular society defaced these sacred archetypes that are given to guide and correct the sentiments of mankind, it is in the course of Providence that the society itself should perish by internal discord or the sword of a conqueror. In the worst ages of Europe there must have existed the seeds of social virtues, of fidelity, gratitude, and disinterestedness, sufficient at least to preserve the public approbation of more elevated principles than the public conduct displayed. Without these imperishable elements there could have been no restoration of the moral energies; nothing upon which reformed faith, revived knowledge, renewed law, could exercise their nourishing influences. But history, which reflects only the more prominent features of society, cannot exhibit the virtues that were scarcely able to struggle through the general depravation. I am aware that a tone of exaggerated declamation is at all times usual with those who lament the vices of their own time; and writers of the middle ages are in abundant need of allowance on this score. Nor is it reasonable to found any inferences as to the general condition of society on single instances of crimes, however atrocious, especially when committed under the influence of violent passion. Such enormities are the fruit of every age, and none is to be measured by them. They make, however, a strong impression at the moment, and thus find a place in contemporary annals, from which modern writers are commonly glad to extract whatever may seem to throw light upon manners. I shall, therefore, abstain from producing any particular cases of dissoluteness or cruelty from the records of the middle ages, lest I should weaken a general proposition by offering an imperfect induction to support it, and shall content myself with observing that times to which men sometimes appeal, as to a golden period, were far inferior in every moral comparison to those in which we are thrown.[546] One crime, as more universal and characteristic than others, may be particularly noticed. All writers agree in the prevalence of judicial perjury. It seems to have almost invariably escaped human punishment; and the barriers of superstition were in this, as in every other instance, too feeble to prevent the commission of crimes. Many of the proofs by ordeal were applied to witnesses as well as those whom they accused; and undoubtedly trial by combat was preserved in a considerable degree on account of the difficulty experienced in securing a just cause against the perjury of witnesses. Robert king of France, perceiving how frequently men forswore themselves upon the relics of saints, and less shocked apparently at the crime than at the sacrilege, caused an empty reliquary of crystal to be used, that those who touched it might incur less guilt in fact, though not in intention. Such an anecdote characterizes both the man and the times.[547]

[Sidenote: Love of field sports.]

The favourite diversions of the middle ages, in the intervals of war, were those of hunting and hawking. The former must in all countries be a source of pleasure; but it seems to have been enjoyed in moderation by the Greeks and the Romans. With the northern invaders, however, it was rather a predominant appetite than an amusement; it was their pride and their ornament, the theme of their songs, the object of their laws, and the business of their lives. Falconry, unknown as a diversion to the ancients, became from the fourth century an equally delightful occupation.[548] From the Salic and other barbarous codes of the fifth century to the close of the period under our review, every age would furnish testimony to the ruling passion for these two species of chace, or, as they were sometimes called, the mysteries of woods and rivers. A knight seldom stirred from his house without a falcon on his wrist or a greyhound that followed him. Thus are Harold and his attendants represented, in the famous tapestry of Bayeux. And in the monuments of those who died anywhere but on the field of battle, it is usual to find the greyhound lying at their feet, or the bird upon their wrists. Nor are the tombs of ladies without their falcon; for this diversion, being of less danger and fatigue than the chace, was shared by the delicate sex.[549]

It was impossible to repress the eagerness with which the clergy, especially after the barbarians were tempted by rich bishoprics to take upon them the sacred functions, rushed into these secular amusements. Prohibitions of councils, however frequently repeated, produced little effect. In some instances a particular monastery obtained a dispensation. Thus that of St. Denis, in 774, represented to Charlemagne that the flesh of hunted animals was salutary for sick monks, and that their skins would serve to bind the books in the library.[550] Reasons equally cogent, we may presume, could not be wanting in every other case. As the bishops and abbots were perfectly feudal lords, and often did not scruple to lead their vassals into the field, it was not to be expected that they should debar themselves of an innocent pastime. It was hardly such indeed, when practised at the expense of others. Alexander III., by a letter to the clergy of Berkshire, dispenses with their keeping the archdeacon in dogs and hawks during his visitation.[551] This season gave jovial ecclesiastics an opportunity of trying different countries. An archbishop of York, in 1321, seems to have carried a train of two hundred persons, who were maintained at the expense of the abbeys on his road, and to have hunted with a pack of hounds from parish to parish.[552] The third council of Lateran, in 1180, had prohibited this amusement on such journeys, and restricted bishops to a train of forty or fifty horses.[553]

Though hunting had ceased to be a necessary means of procuring food, it was a very convenient resource, on which the wholesomeness and comfort, as well as the luxury, of the table depended. Before the natural pastures were improved, and new kinds of fodder for cattle discovered, it was impossible to maintain the summer stock during the cold season. Hence a portion of it was regularly slaughtered and salted for winter provision. We may suppose that, when no alternative was offered but these salted meats, even the leanest venison was devoured with relish. There was somewhat more excuse therefore for the severity with which the lords of forests and manors preserved the beasts of chace than if they had been considered as merely objects of sport. The laws relating to preservation of game were in every country uncommonly rigorous. They formed in England that odious system of forest laws which distinguished the tyranny of our Norman kings. Capital punishment for killing a stag or wild boar was frequent, and perhaps warranted by law, until the charter of John.[554] The French code was less severe, but even Henry IV. enacted the pain of death against the repeated offence of chasing deer in the royal forests. The privilege of hunting was reserved to the nobility till the reign of Louis IX., who extended it in some degree to persons of lower birth.[555]

This excessive passion for the sports of the field produced those evils which are apt to result from it--a strenuous idleness which disdained all useful occupations, and an oppressive spirit towards the peasantry. The devastation committed under the pretence of destroying wild animals, which had been already protected in their depredations, is noticed in serious authors, and has also been the topic of popular ballads.[556] What effect this must have had on agriculture it is easy to conjecture. The levelling of forests, the draining of morasses, and the extirpation of mischievous animals which inhabit them, are the first objects of man's labour in reclaiming the earth to his use; and these were forbidden by a landed aristocracy, whose control over the progress of agricultural improvement was unlimited, and who had not yet learned to sacrifice their pleasures to their avarice.

[Sidenote: Bad state of agriculture;]

These habits of the rich, and the miserable servitude of those who cultivated the land, rendered its fertility unavailing. Predial servitude indeed, in some of its modifications, has always been the great bar to improvement. In the agricultural economy of Rome the labouring husbandman, a menial slave of some wealthy senator, had not even that qualified interest in the soil which the tenure of villenage afforded to the peasant of feudal ages. Italy, therefore, a country presenting many natural impediments, was but imperfectly reduced into cultivation before the irruption of the barbarians.[557] That revolution destroyed agriculture with every other art, and succeeding calamities during five or six centuries left the finest regions of Europe unfruitful and desolate. There are but two possible modes in which the produce of the earth can be increased; one by rendering fresh land serviceable, the other by improving the fertility of that which is already cultivated. The last is only attainable by the application of capital and of skill to agriculture, neither of which could be expected in the ruder ages of society. The former is, to a certain extent, always practicable while waste lands remain; but it was checked by laws hostile to improvement, such as the manerial and commonable rights in England, and by the general tone of manners.

Till the reign of Charlemagne there were no towns in Germany, except a few that had been erected on the Rhine and Danube by the Romans. A house with its stables and farm-buildings, surrounded by a hedge or enclosure, was called a court, or, as we find it in our law-books, a curtilage; the toft or homestead of a more genuine English dialect. One of these, with the adjacent domain of arable fields and woods, had the name of a villa or manse. Several manses composed a march; and several marches formed a pagus or district.[558] From these elements in the progress of population arose villages and towns. In France undoubtedly there were always cities of some importance. Country parishes contained several manses or farms of arable land, around a common pasture, where every one was bound by custom to feed his cattle.[559]

[Sidenote: of internal trade;]

The condition even of internal trade was hardly preferable to that of agriculture. There is not a vestige perhaps to be discovered for several centuries of any considerable manufacture; I mean, of working up articles of common utility to an extent beyond what the necessities of an adjacent district required.[560] Rich men kept domestic artisans among their servants; even kings, in the ninth century, had their clothes made by the women upon their farms;[561] but the peasantry must have been supplied with garments and implements of labour by purchase; and every town, it cannot be doubted, had its weaver, its smith, and its currier. But there were almost insuperable impediments to any extended traffic--the insecurity of moveable wealth, and difficulty of accumulating it; the ignorance of mutual wants; the peril of robbery in conveying merchandise, and the certainty of extortion. In the domains of every lord a toll was to be paid in passing his bridge, or along his highway, or at his market.[562] These customs, equitable and necessary in their principle, became in practice oppressive, because they were arbitrary, and renewed in every petty territory which the road might intersect. Several of Charlemagne's capitularies repeat complaints of these exactions, and endeavour to abolish such tolls as were not founded on prescription.[563] One of them rather amusingly illustrates the modesty and moderation of the landholders. It is enacted that no one shall be compelled to go out of his way in order to pay toll at a particular bridge, when he can cross the river more conveniently at another place.[564] These provisions, like most others of that age, were unlikely to produce much amendment. It was only the milder species, however, of feudal lords who were content with the tribute of merchants. The more ravenous descended from their fortresses to pillage the wealthy traveller, or shared in the spoil of inferior plunderers, whom they both protected and instigated. Proofs occur, even in the later periods of the middle ages, when government had regained its energy, and civilization had made considerable progress, of public robberies systematically perpetrated by men of noble rank. In the more savage times, before the twelfth century, they were probably too frequent to excite much attention. It was a custom in some places to waylay travellers, and not only to plunder, but to sell them as slaves, or compel them to pay a ransom. Harold son of Godwin, having been wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu, was imprisoned by the lord, says an historian, according to the custom of that territory.[565] Germany appears to have been, upon the whole, the country where downright robbery was most unscrupulously practised by the great. Their castles, erected on almost inaccessible heights among the woods, became the secure receptacles of predatory bands, who spread terror over the country. From these barbarian lords of the dark ages, as from a living model, the romances are said to have drawn their giants and other disloyal enemies of true chivalry. Robbery, indeed, is the constant theme both of the Capitularies and of the Anglo-Saxon laws; one has more reason to wonder at the intrepid thirst of lucre, which induced a very few merchants to exchange the products of different regions, than to ask why no general spirit of commercial activity prevailed.

[Sidenote: and of foreign commerce.]

Under all these circumstances it is obvious that very little oriental commerce could have existed in these western countries of Europe. Destitute as they have been created, speaking comparatively, of natural productions fit for exportation, their invention and industry are the great resources from which they can supply the demands of the East. Before any manufactures were established in Europe, her commercial intercourse with Egypt and Asia must of necessity have been very trifling; because, whatever inclination she might feel to enjoy the luxuries of those genial regions, she wanted the means of obtaining them. It is not therefore necessary to rest the miserable condition of oriental commerce upon the Saracen conquests, because the poverty of Europe is an adequate cause; and, in fact, what little traffic remained was carried on with no material inconvenience through the channel of Constantinople. Venice took the lead in trading with Greece and more eastern countries.[566] Amalfi had the second place in the commerce of those dark ages. These cities imported, besides natural productions, the fine clothes of Constantinople; yet as this traffic seems to have been illicit, it was not probably extensive.[567] Their exports were gold and silver, by which, as none was likely to return, the circulating money of Europe was probably less in the eleventh century than at the subversion of the Roman empire; furs, which were obtained from the Sclavonian countries; and arms, the sale of which to pagans or Saracens was vainly prohibited by Charlemagne and by the Holy See.[568] A more scandalous traffic, and one that still more fitly called for prohibitory laws, was carried on in slaves. It is an humiliating proof of the degradation of Christendom, that the Venetians were reduced to purchase the luxuries of Asia by supplying the slave-market of the Saracens.[569] Their apology would perhaps have been, that these were purchased from their heathen neighbours; but a slave-dealer was probably not very inquisitive as to the faith or origin of his victim. This trade was not peculiar to Venice. In England it was very common, even after the Conquest, to export slaves to Ireland, till, in the reign of Henry II., the Irish came to a non-importation agreement, which put a stop to the practice.[570]

From this state of degradation and poverty all the countries of Europe have recovered, with a progression in some respects tolerably uniform, in others more unequal; and the course of their improvement, more gradual and less dependent upon conspicuous civil revolutions than their decline, affords one of the most interesting subjects into which a philosophical mind can inquire. The commencement of this restoration has usually been dated from about the close of the eleventh century; though it is unnecessary to observe that the subject does not admit of anything approximating to chronological accuracy. It may, therefore, be sometimes not improper to distinguish the first six of the ten centuries which the present work embraces under the appellation of the _dark_ ages; an epithet which I do not extend to the twelfth and three following. In tracing the decline of society from the subversion of the Roman empire, we have been led, not without connexion, from ignorance to superstition, from superstition to vice and lawlessness, and from thence to general rudeness and poverty. I shall pursue an inverted order in passing along the ascending scale, and class the various improvements which took place between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries under three principal heads, as they relate to the wealth, the manners, or the taste and learning of Europe. Different arrangements might probably be suggested, equally natural and convenient; but in the disposition of topics that have not always an unbroken connexion with each other, no method can be prescribed as absolutely more scientific than the rest. That which I have adopted appears to me as philosophical and as little liable to transitions as any other.

FOOTNOTES:

[479] The subject of the present chapter, so far as it relates to the condition of literature in the middle ages, has been again treated by me in the first and second chapters of a work, published in 1836, the Introduction to the History of Literature in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. Some things will be found in it more exactly stated, others newly supplied from recent sources.

[480] The authors of Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. i., can only find three writers of Gaul, no inconsiderable part of the Roman Empire, mentioned upon any authority; two of whom are now lost. In the preceding century the number was considerably greater.

[481] Mosheim, Cent. 4. Tiraboschi endeavours to elevate higher the learning of the early Christians, t. ii. p. 328. Jortin, however, asserts that many of the bishops in the general councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon could not write their names. Remarks on Ecclesiast. Hist. vol. ii. p. 417.

[482] Gibbon roundly asserts that "the language of Virgil and Cicero, though with some inevitable mixture of corruption, was so universally adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, Great Britain, and Pannonia, that the faint traces of the Punic or Celtic idioms were preserved only in the mountains or among the peasants." Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 60 (8vo. edit.). For Britain he quotes Tacitus's Life of Agricola as his voucher. But the only passage in this work that gives the least colour to Gibbon's assertion is one in which Agricola is said to have encouraged the children of British chieftains to acquire a taste for liberal studies, and to have succeeded so much by judicious commendation of their abilities, ut qui modo linguam Romanam abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent. (c. 21.) This, it is sufficiently obvious, is very different from the national adoption of Latin as a mother tongue.

[483] t. vii. preface.

[484] It appears, by a passage quoted from the digest by M. Bonamy, Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xxiv. p. 589, that Celtic was spoken in Gaul, or at least parts of it, as well as Punic in Africa.

[485] Atque eadem illa litera, quoties ultima est, et vocalem verbi sequentis ita contingit, ut in eam transire possit, etiam si scribitur, tamen parum exprimitur, ut _Multum ille_, et _Quantum erat_: adeo ut pene cujusdam novae literae sonum reddat. Neque enim eximitur, sed obscuratur, et tantum aliqua inter duos vocales velut nota est, ne ipsae coeant. Quintilian, Institut. 1. ix. c. 4, p. 585, edit. Capperonier.

[486] The following passage of Quintilian is an evidence both of the omission of harsh or superfluous letters by the best speakers, and of the corrupt abbreviations usual with the worst. Dilucida vero erit pronunciatio primum, si verba tota exegerit, quorum pars devorari, pars destitui solet, plerisque extremas syllabas non proferentibus, dum priorum sono indulgent. Ut est autem necessaria verborum explanatio, ita omnes computare et velut adnumerare literas, molestum et odiosum.--Nam et vocales frequentissime coeunt, et consonantium quaedam insequente vocali dissimulantur; utriusque exemplum posuimus; Multum ille et terris. Vitatur etiam duriorum inter se congressus, unde _pellexit_ et _collegit_, et quae alio loco dicta sunt. 1. ii. c. 3, p. 696.

[487] Tiraboschi (Storia dell. Lett. Ital. t. iii. preface, p. v.) imputes this paradox to Bembo and Quadrio; but I can hardly believe that either of them could maintain it in a literal sense.

[488] M. Bonamy, in an essay printed in Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, t. xxiv., has produced several proofs of this from the classical writers on agriculture and other arts, though some of his instances are not in point, as any schoolboy would have told him. This essay, which by some accident had escaped my notice till I had nearly finished the observations in my text, contains, I think, the best view that I have seen of the process of transition by which Latin was changed into French and Italian. Add however, the preface to Tiraboschi's third volume and the thirty-second dissertation of Muratori.

[489] See Lanzi, Saggio della Lingua Etrusca, t. i. c. 431; Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscrip. t. xxiv. p. 632.

[490] No description can give so adequate a notion of this extraordinary performance as a short specimen. Take the introductory lines; which really, prejudices of education apart, are by no means inharmonious:--

Praefatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat,
Respectumque bonum, cum venerit saeculi meta,
AEternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda.
Ego similiter erravi tempore multo,
Fana prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis.
Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege.
Testificor Dominum, doleo, proh! civica turba
Inscia quod perdit, pergens deos quaerere vanos.
Ob ea perdoctus ignoros instruo verum.

Commodianus however did not keep up this excellence in every part. Some of his lines are not reducible to any pronunciation, without the summary rules of Procrustes; as for instance:--

Paratus ad epulas, et refugiscere praecepta; or, Capillos inficitis, oculos fuligine relinitis.

It must be owned that this text is exceedingly corrupt, and I should not despair of seeing a truly critical editor, unscrupulous as his fraternity are apt to be, improve his lines into unblemished hexameters. Till this time arrives, however, we must consider him either as utterly ignorant of metrical distinctions, or at least as aware that the populace whom he addressed did not observe them in speaking. Commodianus is published by Dawes at the end of his edition of Minucius Felix. Some specimens are quoted in Harris's Philological Inquiries.

[491] Archaeologia, vol. xiv. p. 188. The following are the first lines:--

Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare;
Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos praemonere,
Comparans regnum coelorum reticulo misso in mare,
Congreganti multos pisces, omne genus hinc et inde,
Quos cum traxissent ad littus, tunc coeperunt separare,
Bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare.

This trash is much below the level of Augustin; but it could not have been later than his age.

[492] Recueil des Historiens, t. i. p. 814; it begins in the following manner:--

Praecelso expectabili bis Arbogasto comiti
Auspicius, qui diligo, salutem dico plurimam.
Magnas coelesti Domino rependo corde gratias
Quod te Tullensi proxime magnum in urbe vidimus.
Multis me tuis artibus laetificabas antea,
Sed nunc fecisti maximo me exultare gaudio.

[493] Chilpericus rex ... confecit duos libros, quorum versiculi debiles nullis pedibus subsistere possunt: in quibus, dum non intelligebat, pro longis syllabas breves posuit, et pro brevibus longas statuebat. 1. vi. c. 46.

[494] Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, t. xvii. Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. ii. p. 28. It seems rather probable that the poetry of Avitus belongs to the fifth century, though not very far from its termination. He was the correspondent of Sidonius Apollinaris, who died in 489, and we may presume his poetry to have been written rather early in life.

[495] One stanza of this song will suffice to show that the Latin language was yet unchanged:--

De Clotario est canere rege Francorum,
Qui ivi pugnare cum gente Saxonum,
Quam graviter provenisset missis Saxonum,
Si non fuisset inclitus Faro de gente
Burgundionum.

[496] Praecavendum est, ne ad aures populi minus aliquid intelligibile proferatur. Mem. de l'Acad. t. xvii. p. 712.

[497] Rustico et plebeio sermone propter exemplum et imitationem. Id. ibid.

[498] Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. iii. p. 5. Mem. de l'Academie, t. xxiv. p. 617. Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique, t. iv. p. 485.

[499] Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. vii. p. 12. The editors say that it is mentioned by name even in the seventh century, which is very natural, as the corruption of Latin had then become striking. It is familiarly known that illiterate persons _understand_ a more correct language than they use themselves; so that the corruption of Latin might have gone to a considerable length among the people, while sermons were preached, and tolerably comprehended, in a purer grammar.

[500] Mem. de l'Acad. des Insc. t. xvii. See two memoirs in this volume by du Clos and le Boeuf, especially the latter, as well as that already mentioned in t. xxiv. p. 582, by M. Bonamy.

[501] Muratori, Dissert. i. and xliii.

[502]
Usus Francisca, vulgari, et voce Latina.
Instituit populos eloquio tripici.

Fontanini dell'Eloquenza Italiana, p. 15. Muratori, Dissert. xxxii.

[503] Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. vi. p. 20. Muratori, Dissert. xliii.

[504] Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique, t. ii. p. 419. This became, the editors say, much less unusual about the end of the thirteenth century; a pretty late period! A few signatures to deeds appear in the fourteenth century; in the next they are more frequent. Ibid. The emperor Frederic Barbarossa could not read (Struvius, Corpus Hist. German. t. i. p. 377), nor John king of Bohemia in the middle of the fourteenth century (Sismondi, t. v. p. 205), nor Philip the Hardy, king of France, although the son of St. Louis. (Velly, t. vi. p. 426.)

[505] Louis IV., king of France, laughing at Fulk count of Anjou, who sang anthems among the choristers of Tours, received the following pithy epistle from his learned vassal: Noveritis, domines quod rex illiteratus est asinus coronatus. Gesta Comitum Andegavensium. In the same book, Geoffrey, father of our Henry II., is said to be optime literatus; which perhaps imports little more learning than his ancestor Fulk possessed.

[506] The passage in Eginhard, which has occasioned so much dispute, speaks for itself: Tentabat et scribere, tabulasque et codicillos ad hoc in lecticula sub cervicalibus circumferre solebat, ut, cum vacuum tempus esset, manum effigiandis literis assuefaceret; sed parum prospere successit labor praeposterus ac sero inchoatus.

Many are still unwilling to believe that Charlemagne could not write. M. Ampere observes that the emperor asserts himself to have been the author of the Libri Carolini, and is said by some to have composed verses. Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 37. But did not Henry VIII. claim a book against Luther, which was not written by himself? _Qui facit per alium, facit per se_, is in all cases a royal prerogative. Even if the book were Charlemagne's own, might he not have dictated it? I have been informed that there is a manuscript at Vienna with autograph notes of Charlemagne in the margin. But is there sufficient evidence of their genuineness? The great difficulty is to get over the words which I have quoted from Eginhard. M. Ampere ingeniously conjectures that the passage does not relate to simple common writing, but to calligraphy; the art of delineating characters in a beautiful manner, practised by the copyists, and of which a contemporaneous specimen may be seen in the well-known Bible of the British Museum. Yet it must be remembered that Charlemagne's early life passed in the depths of ignorance; and Eginhard gives a fair reason why he failed in acquiring the art of writing, that he began too late. Fingers of fifty are not made for a new skill. It is not, of course, implied by the words, that he could not write his own name; but that he did not acquire such a facility as he desired. [1848.]

[507] Spelman, Vit. Alfred. Append.

[508] Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. iii. p. 5.

[509] These four dark centuries, the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh, occupy five large quarto volumes of the Literary History of France, by the fathers of St. Maur. But the most useful part will be found in the general view at the commencement of each volume; the remainder is taken up with biographies, into which a reader may dive at random, and sometimes bring up a curious fact. I may refer also to the 14th volume of Leber, Collections Relatives a l'Histoire de France, where some learned dissertations by the Abbes Lebeuf and Goujet, a little before the middle of the last century, are reprinted. [Note I.]

Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura, t. iii., and Muratori's forty-third Dissertation, are good authorities for the condition of letters in Italy; but I cannot easily give references to all the books which I have consulted.

[510] Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 198.

[511] Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, p. 55. The reason alleged, indeed, is that they were wholly occupied with studying Arabic, in order to carry on a controversy with the Saracens. But, as this is not very credible, we may rest with the main fact that they could write no Latin.

[512] Spelman, Vit. Alfred. Append. The whole drift of Alfred's preface to this translation is to defend the expediency of rendering books into English, on account of the general ignorance of Latin. The zeal which this excellent prince shows for literature is delightful. Let us endeavour, he says, that all the English youth, especially the children of those who are free-born, and can educate them, may learn to read English before they take to any employment. Afterwards such as please may be instructed in Latin. Before the Danish invasion indeed, he tells us, churches were well furnished with books; but the priests got little good from them, being written in a foreign language which they could not understand.

[513] Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, p. 55. Ordericus Vitalis, a more candid judge of our unfortunate ancestors than other contemporary annalists, says that the English were, at the Conquest, rude and almost illiterate, which he ascribes to the Danish invasion. Du Chesne, Hist. Norm. Script. p. 518. However, Ingulfus tells us that the library of Croyland contained above three hundred volumes, till the unfortunate fire that destroyed that abbey in 1091. Gale, XV Scriptores, t. i. 93. Such a library was very extraordinary in the eleventh century, and could not have been equalled for some ages afterwards. Ingulfus mentions at the same time a nadir, as he calls it, or planetarium, executed in various metals. This had been presented to abbot Turketul in the tenth century by a king of France, and was, I make no doubt, of Arabian or Greek manufacture.

[514] Parchment was so scarce that none could be procured about 1120 for an illuminated copy of the Bible. Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, Dissert. II. I suppose the deficiency was of skins beautiful enough for this purpose; it cannot be meant that there was no parchment for legal instruments.

Manuscripts written on papyrus, as may be supposed from the fragility of the material, as well as the difficulty of procuring it, are of extreme rarity. That in the British Museum, being a charter to a church at Ravenna in 572, is in every respect the most curious: and indeed both Mabillon and Muratori seem never to have seen anything written on papyrus, though they trace its occasional use down to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, 1. ii.; Muratori, Antichita Italiane, Dissert. xliii. p. 602. But the authors of the Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique speak of several manuscripts on this material as extant in France and Italy. t. i. p. 493.

As to the general scarcity and high price of books in the middle ages, Robertson (Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note x.), and Warton in the above-cited dissertation, not to quote authors less accessible, have collected some of the leading facts; to whom I refer the reader.

[515] Lest I should seem to have spoken too peremptorily, I wish it to be understood that I pretend to hardly any direct acquaintance with these writers, and found my censure on the authority of others, chiefly indeed on the admissions of those who are too disposed to fall into a strain of panegyric. See Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. iv. p. 281 et alibi.

[516] John Scotus, who, it is almost needless to say, must not be confounded with the still more famous metaphysician Duns Scotus, lived under Charles the Bald, in the middle of the ninth century. It admits of no doubt that John Scotus was, in a literary and philosophical sense, the most remarkable man of the dark ages; no one else had his boldness, his subtlety in threading the labyrinths of metaphysical speculations which, in the west of Europe, had been utterly disregarded. But it is another question whether he can be reckoned an original writer; those who have attended most to his treatise De Divisione Naturae, the most abstruse of his works, consider it as the development of an oriental philosophy, acquired during his residence in Greece, and nearly coinciding with some of the later Platonism of the Alexandrian school, but with a more unequivocal tendency to pantheism. This manifests itself in some extracts which have latterly been made from the treatise De Divisione Naturae; but though Scotus had not the reputation of unblemished orthodoxy, the drift of his philosophy was not understood in that barbarous period. He might, indeed, have excited censure by his intrepid preference of reason to authority. "Authority," he says, "springs from reason, not reason from authority--true reason needs not be confirmed by any authority." La veritable importance historique, says Ampere, de Scot Erigene n'est donc pas dans ses opinions; celles-ci n'ont d'autre interet que leur date et le lieu ou elles apparaissent. Sans doute, il est piquant et bizarre de voir ces opinions orientales et alexandrines surgir au IXe siecle, a Paris, a la cour de Charles le Chauve; mais ce qui n'est pas seulement piquant et bizarre, ce qui interesse le developpement de l'esprit humain, c'est que la question ait ete posee, des lors, si nettement entre l'autorite et la raison, et si energiquement resolue en faveur de la seconde. En un mot, par ses idees, Scot Erigene est encore un philosophe de l'antiquite Grecque; et par l'independance hautement accusee de son point de vue philosophique, il est deja un devancier de la philosophie moderne. Hist. Litt. iii. 146.

Silvester II. died in 1003. Whether he first brought the Arabic numeration into Europe, as has been commonly said, seems uncertain; it was at least not much practised for some centuries after his death.

[517] Charlemagne had a library at Aix-la-Chapelle, which he directed to be sold at his death for the benefit of the poor. His son Louis is said to have collected some books. But this rather confirms, on the whole, my supposition that, in some periods, no royal or private libraries existed, since there were not always princes or nobles with the spirit of Charlemagne, or even Louis the Debonair.

"We possess a catalogue," says M. Ampere (quoting d'Achery's Spicilegium, ii. 310), "of the library in the abbey of St. Riquier, written in 831; it consists of 256 volumes, some containing several works. Christian writers are in great majority; but we find also the Eclogues of Virgil, the Rhetoric of Cicero, the History of Homer, that is, the works ascribed to Dictys and Dares." Ampere, iii. 236. Can anything be lower than this, if nothing is omitted more valuable than what is mentioned? The Rhetoric of Cicero was probably the spurious books Ad Herennium. But other libraries must have been somewhat better furnished than this; else the Latin authors would have been still less known in the ninth century than they actually were.