An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 27

Secular works, too, were sometimes provided with pictures drawn from a wide variety of subjects. We find in their pages such homely and familiar figures as the farmer with his plow, the butcher at his block, the gla.s.s blower at his furnace; then, again, we are transported to an imaginary world, peopled with strange and uncouth beasts and adorned with fantastic architecture.

[Sidenote: The artist governed by fixed rules.]

The mediaeval love of symbols and of fixed rules for doing things is strikingly ill.u.s.trated in these illuminations. Each color had its especial significance. There were certain established att.i.tudes and ways of depicting various characters and emotions which were adhered to by generation after generation of artists and left comparatively little opportunity for individual talent or lifelike presentation. On the other hand, these little pictures--for of course they were always small[169]--were often executed with exquisite care and skill and sometimes in the smaller details with great truth to nature.

Beside the pictures of which we have been speaking, it was a common practice to adorn the books with gay illuminated initials or page borders, which were sometimes very beautiful in both design and color.

In these rather more freedom was allowed to the caprice of the individual artist, and they were frequently enlivened with very charming and lifelike flowers, birds, squirrels, and other small animals.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Romanesque Church]

[Sidenote: Sculpture subservient to architecture.]

The art of sculpture was more widely and successfully cultivated during the Middle Ages than painting. Mediaeval sculpture did not, however, concern itself chiefly with the representation of the human figure, but with what we may call _decorative carving_; it was almost wholly subservient to the dominant art of the Middle Ages, namely, architecture.

[Sidenote: Architecture the dominant art of the Middle Ages.]

It is in the great cathedrals and other churches scattered throughout England, France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, and Germany, that we find the n.o.blest and most lasting achievements of mediaeval art, which all the resources of modern skill have been unable to equal. Everybody belonged to the Church, but the Church, too, belonged to each individual. The building and beautifying of a new church was a matter of interest to the whole community,--to men of every rank. It gratified at once their religious sentiments, their local pride, and their artistic cravings.

All the arts and crafts ministered to the construction and adornment of the new edifice, and, in addition to its religious significance, it took the place of our modern art museum.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Durham Cathedral (Romanesque)]

[Sidenote: The Romanesque style.]

Up to the beginning of the thirteenth century the churches were built in the Romanesque style.[170] They were, generally speaking, in the form of a cross, with a main aisle, and two side aisles which were both narrower and lower than the main aisle. The aisles were divided from each other by ma.s.sive round pillars which supported the round vaulting of the roof and were connected by round arches. The round-arched windows were usually small for the size of the building, so that the interior was not very light. The whole effect was one of ma.s.sive simplicity. There was, however, especially in the later churches of this style, a profusion of carved ornament, usually in geometric designs.

[Sidenote: Introduction of the Gothic style.]

[Sidenote: The pointed arch.]

[Sidenote: Flying b.u.t.tresses.]

The _pointed_ form of arch was used occasionally in windows during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But about the beginning of the thirteenth century[171] it began to be employed much more extensively, and in an incredibly short time practically superseded the round arch and became the characteristic feature of a new style, called _Gothic_.

The adoption of the pointed arch had very important results. It enabled the builder to make arches of the same height but various widths, and of varying height and the same width. A round arch of a given span can be only half as high as it is wide, but the pointed arch may have a great diversity of proportions. The development of the Gothic style was greatly forwarded by the invention of the "flying b.u.t.tress." By means of this graceful outside prop it became possible to lighten the masonry of the hitherto ma.s.sive walls and pierce them with great windows which let a flood of light into the hitherto dark churches.[172]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Round and Pointed Arches]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAcADE OF RHEIMS CATHEDRAL]

[Sidenote: Stained gla.s.s.]

The light from all these great windows might even have been too glaring had it not been for the wonderful stained gla.s.s set in exquisite stone tracery with which they were filled. The stained gla.s.s of the mediaeval cathedral, especially in France, where the gla.s.s workers brought their art to the greatest perfection, was one of its chief glories. By far the greater part of this old gla.s.s has of course been destroyed, but it is still so highly prized that every bit of it is now carefully preserved, for it has never since been equaled. A window set with odd bits of it pieced together like crazy patch-work is more beautiful, in its rich and jewel-like coloring, than the finest modern work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Flying b.u.t.tresses of Notre Dame, Paris]

[Sidenote: Sculptured ornament.]

As the Gothic style developed and the builders grew all the time more skillful and daring, the churches became marvels of lightness and delicacy of detail and finish, while still retaining their dignity and beauty of proportion. Sculptors enriched them with the most beautiful creations of their art. Moldings and capitals, pulpits, altars, and choir screens, the wooden seats for the clergy and choristers, are sometimes literally covered with carving representing graceful leaf and flower forms, familiar animals or grotesque monsters, biblical incidents or homely scenes from everyday life. In the cathedral of Wells, in England, one capital shows us among its vines and leaves a boy whose face is screwed up with pain from the thorn he is extracting from his foot; another depicts a whole story of sin found out, thieves stealing grapes pursued by an angry farmer with a pitchfork. One characteristic of the mediaeval imagination is its fondness for the grotesque. It loved queer beasts, half eagle, half lion, hideous batlike creatures, monsters like nothing on land or sea. They lurk among the foliage on choir screens, leer at you from wall or column, or squat upon the gutters high on roof and steeple.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Window in the Cathedral of Sens, France]

[Sidenote: Gothic sculpture.]

A striking peculiarity of the Gothic structure is the great number of statues of apostles, saints, and rulers which adorn the facades and especially the main portal of the churches. These figures are cut from the same kind of stone of which the building is made and appear to be almost a part of it. While, compared with later sculpture, they seem somewhat stiff and unlifelike, they harmonize wonderfully with the whole building, and the best of them are full of charm and dignity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF EXETER CATHEDRAL]

[Sidenote: Secular buildings.]

So far we have spoken only of the church architecture, and that was by far the most important during the period with which we have been dealing. Later, in the fourteenth century, many beautiful secular buildings were constructed in the Gothic style. The most striking and important of these were the guildhalls built by the rich merchant guilds, and the townhalls of some of the important cities. But the Gothic style has always been especially dedicated to, and seems peculiarly fitted for, ecclesiastical architecture. Its lofty aisles and open floor s.p.a.ces, its soaring arches leading the eye toward heaven, and its glowing windows suggesting the glories of paradise, may well have fostered the ardent faith of the mediaeval Christian.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figures (gargoyles) on Notre Dame, Paris]

[Sidenote: The mediaeval castle.]

We have already touched upon some of the characteristics of domestic architecture in referring to the mediaeval castle. This was rather a stronghold than a home,--strength and inaccessibility were its main requirements. The walls were many feet thick and the tiny windows, often hardly more than slits in the ma.s.sive walls, the stone floors, the great bare halls warmed only by large fireplaces, suggest nothing of the comfort of a modern household. At the same time they imply a simplicity of taste and manners and a hardihood of body which we may well envy.

[Sidenote: The schools before the eleventh century.]

103. On turning from the language and books of the people and the art of the period to the occupations of the learned cla.s.s, who carried on their studies and discussions in Latin, we naturally inquire where such persons obtained their education. During the long centuries which elapsed between the time when Justinian closed the government schools and the advent of Frederick Barbarossa, there appears to have been nothing in western Europe, outside of Italy and Spain, corresponding to our universities and colleges. Some of the schools which the bishops and abbots had established in accordance with Charlemagne's commands were, it is true, maintained all through the dark and disorderly times which followed his death. But the little that we know of the instruction offered in them would indicate that it was very elementary, although there were sometimes noted men at their head.

[Sidenote: Abelard, d. 1142.]

About the year 1100 an ardent young man named Abelard started out from his home in Brittany to visit all the places where he might hope to receive instruction in logic and philosophy, in which, like all his learned contemporaries, he was especially interested. He reports that he found teachers in several of the French towns, particularly in Paris, who were attracting large numbers of students to listen to their lectures upon logic, rhetoric, and theology. Abelard soon showed his superiority to his teachers by defeating them several times in debate.

Before long he began lecturing on his own account, and such was his success that thousands of students flocked to hear him.

[Sidenote: Abelard's _Yea and Nay_.]

He prepared a remarkable little text-book, called _Yea and Nay_, containing seemingly contradictory opinions of the church fathers upon particular questions. The student was left to reconcile the contradictions, if he could, by careful reasoning; for Abelard held that a constant questioning was the only path to real knowledge. His free way of dealing with the authorities upon which men based their religious beliefs seemed wicked to many of his contemporaries, especially to St.

Bernard, who made him a great deal of trouble. Nevertheless it soon became the fashion to discuss the various doctrines of Christianity with great freedom and to try to make a well-reasoned system of theology by following the rules of Aristotle's logic. It was just after Abelard's death (1142) that Peter Lombard published his _Sentences_, already described.

Abelard did not found the University of Paris, as has sometimes been supposed, but he did a great deal to make the discussions of theological problems popular, and by his attractive method of teaching he greatly increased the number of those who wished to learn. The sad story of his life, which he wrote when he was worn out with the calamities that had overtaken him, is the best and almost the only account which exists of the remarkable interest in learning which explains the origin of the University of Paris.[173]

[Sidenote: Origin of the University of Paris.]

Before the end of the twelfth century the teachers had become so numerous in Paris that they formed a union, or guild, for the advancement of their interests. This union of professors was called by the usual name for corporations in the Middle Ages, _universitas_; hence our word "university." The king and pope both favored the university and granted the teachers and students many of the privileges of the clergy, a cla.s.s to which they were regarded as belonging, because learning had for so many centuries been confined to the clergy.

[Sidenote: Study of the Roman and canon law in Bologna.]

[Sidenote: The _Decretum_ of Gratian.]

About the time that we find the beginnings of a university or guild of professors at Paris, a great inst.i.tution of learning was growing up at Bologna. Here the chief attention was given, not to theology, as at Paris, but to the study of the law, both Roman and canon. Very early in the twelfth century a new interest in the Roman law became apparent in Italy, where the old jurisprudence of Rome had never been completely forgotten. Then, in 1142 or thereabouts, a monk, Gratian, published a great work in which he aimed to reconcile all the conflicting legislation of the councils and popes and to provide a convenient text-book for the study of the church or canon law. Students then began to stream to Bologna in greater numbers than ever before. In order to protect themselves in a town where they were regarded as strangers, they organized themselves into a.s.sociations, which became so powerful that they were able to force the professors to obey the rules which they laid down.

[Sidenote: Other universities founded.]

The University of Oxford was founded in the time of Henry II, probably by English students and masters who had become discontented at Paris for some reason. The University of Cambridge, as well as numerous universities in France, Italy, and Spain, appeared in the thirteenth century. The German universities, which are still so famous, were established somewhat later, most of them in the latter half of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth centuries. The northern inst.i.tutions generally took the great mother university on the Seine as their model, while those in southern Europe usually adopted the habits of Bologna.

[Sidenote: The academic degree.]

When, after some years of study, a student was examined by the professors, he was, if successful, admitted to the corporation of teachers and became a master himself. What we call a degree to-day was originally, in the mediaeval universities, nothing more than the qualification to teach. But in the thirteenth century many began to desire the honorable t.i.tle of master or doctor (which is only the Latin word for _teacher_) who did not care to become professors in our sense of the word.[174]