The Thirteenth Part 44

With regard to post-graduate education; the best evidence that, far from any exaggeration of what was accomplished in the Thirteenth Century, there has been a very conservative estimate of it made in the book, may be gathered from the legally erected standards of the medical schools and the legal status of the medical profession. In the Appendix of The Popes and Science, two Bulls are published, issued by Pope John XXII. (_Circa_, 1320), establishing medical schools in Perugia, at that time in the Papal States, and in Cahors, the birthplace of this pope. These bulls were really the formal charters of the medical schools. They require three years of preliminary study at the university and four or five years at medicine before the degree of doctor may be granted, and in addition emphasized that the curricula of the new medical schools must be equal to those of Paris and Bologna. These bulls were issued in the early part of the fourteenth century, and show the height to which the standards of medical education had been raised. There will be found also a law of Frederick II., issued 1241, requiring for all physicians who wished to practice in the Two Sicilies three years of preliminary study--four years at the medical school and a year of practice with a physician before the diploma which const.i.tuted a license to practice would be issued. This law is also a pure drug law forbidding the sale of impure drugs under penalty of confiscation of goods, and the preparation of them under penalty of death. Our pure drug law was pa.s.sed about the time of the issue of the first edition of this book.

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Those who ask for the results of this post-graduate training may find them in the story of Guy de Chauliac, the Father of Modern Surgery.

His life formed the basis of a lecture before the Johns Hopkins Medical Club that is to be published in the Bulletin of John Hopkins Hospital. It is incorporated in Catholic Churchmen in Science, Second Series (The Dolphin Press, Phila., 1909). We know Chauliac's work not by tradition, but from his great text-book on surgery. This great Papal physician of the fourteenth century operated within the skull, did not hesitate to open the thorax, sewed up wounds of the intestines, and discussed such subjects as hernia, catheterization, the treatment of fractures, and manipulative surgery generally with wonderful technical ability. His book was the most used text-book for the next two centuries, and has won the admiration of everyone who has ever read it.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION OF THE Ma.s.sES.

Some of my friends courteously but firmly have insisted with me that I have greatly exaggerated the technical abilities of the village workmen of the Middle Ages. That every town of less than ten thousand inhabitants in England was able to supply such workmen as we can scarcely obtain in our cities of a million inhabitants, and in that scanty population supply them in greater numbers than we can now secure them from our teeming populations, seems to many simply impossible.

What I have been trying to say, however, in the chapters on the Arts and Crafts and on Popular Education, has been much better said by an authority that will scarcely be questioned by my critics. The Rev.

Augustus Jessopp, D. D., who has been for twenty years the Rector of Searning in England, who is an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College and of Worcester College, Oxford, besides being an Honorary Canon in the Cathedral of Norwich, has devoted much time and study to this question of how the cathedrals were built and finished. Twenty years of his life have been spent in the study of the old English parish and of parish life. He has studied the old parish registers, and talks, therefore, not from distant impressions, but from the actual facts as they are recorded. If to his position as an antiquarian authority I add the fact that he is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, to the credit of which so much of this popular education and accomplishment in the arts and crafts of the century accrues, the value of his evidence is placed entirely above suspicion of partisan partiality. In his chapter on Parish Life in England, in his book "Before the Great Pillage" (Before the Great Pillage with other Miscellanies, by Augustus Jessopp, D. D., London. T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster Square, 1901), he says:

"The evidence is abundant and positive, and is increasing upon us year by year, that the work done upon the fabrics of our churches, and the other work done in the beautifying of the interior of our churches, such as the woodcarving of our screens, the painting of the lovely {470} figures in the panels of those screens, the embroidery of the banners and vestments, the frescoes on the walls, the engraving of the monumental bra.s.ses, the stained gla.s.s in the windows, and all that vast aggregate of artistic achievements which existed in immense profusion in our village churches till the sixteenth century stripped them bare--all this was executed by local craftsmen. The evidence for this is acc.u.mulating upon us every year, as one antiquary after another succeeds in unearthing fragments of pre-Reformation church-wardens' accounts.

"We have actual contracts for church building and church repairing undertaken by village contractors. We have the cost of a rood screen paid to a village carpenter, of painting executed by local artists.

We find the name of an artificer, described as aurifaber, or worker in gold and silver, living in a parish which could never have had five hundred inhabitants; we find the people in another place casting a new bell and making the mould for it themselves; we find the blacksmith of another place forging the iron work for the church door, or we get a payment entered for the carving of the bench ends in a little church five hundred years ago, which bench ends are to be seen in that church at the present moment. And we get fairly bewildered by the astonishing wealth of skill and artistic taste and aesthetic feeling which there must have been in this England of ours, in times which till lately we had a.s.sumed to be barbaric times. Bewildered, I say, because we cannot understand how it all came to a dead-stop in a single generation, not knowing that the frightful spoliation of our churches and other parish buildings, and the outrageous plunder of the parish gilds in the reign of Edward the Sixth by the horrible band of robbers that carried on their detestable work, effected such a hideous obliteration, such a clean sweep of the precious treasures that were dispersed in rich profusion over the whole land, that a dull despair of ever replacing what had been ruthlessly pillaged crushed the spirit of the whole nation, and art died out in rural England, and King Whitewash and Queen Ugliness ruled supreme for centuries."

My argument is that a century which produced such artist-artisans everywhere, had technical schools in great profusion, though they may not have been called by any such ambitious name.

HOW IT ALL STOPPED.

To most people it seems impossible to understand how it is that, if artistic evolution proceeded to the perfection which it now seems clear that it actually attained in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we are only just getting back to a proper state of public taste and a right degree of artistic skill in many of these same accomplishments at the present time. That thought has come to many others who, knowing and appreciating medieval progress in art and literature, have tried to work out the reasons for the gap that exists between medieval art and modern artistic endeavor. Some of these explanations, because they serve to make clear why art evolution stopped so abruptly and we are retracing our steps and taking models from the past rather than doing original work that is an advance, must be quoted here. Many people will find in them, I think, the reasons for their misunderstanding of the old times.

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Gerhardt Hauptmann, who is very well known, even among English-speaking people, as one of the great living German dramatists, and whose "Sunken Bell" attracted considerable attention in both its German and English versions here in New York, in a recent criticism of a new German book, declared that the reason for the gap between modern and medieval art was the movement now coming to be known as the religious revolt in Germany in the sixteenth century. He said:

"I, as a Protestant, have often had to regret that we purchased our freedom of conscience, our individual liberty, at entirely too high a price. In order to make room for a small, mean little plant of personal life, we destroyed a whole garden of fancy and hewed down a virgin forest of aesthetic ideas. We went even so far in the insanity of our weakness as to throw out of the garden of our souls the fruitful soil that had been acc.u.mulating for thousands of years, or else we plowed it under sterile clay.

"We have to-day, then, an intellectual culture that is well protected by a hedge of our personality, but within this hedge we have only delicate dwarf trees and unworthy plants, the poorer progeny of great predecessors. We have telegraph lines, bridges and railroads, but there grow no churches and cathedrals, only sentry boxes and barracks. We need gardeners who will cause the present sterilizing process of the soil to stop, and will enrich the surface by working up into it the rich layers beneath. In my work-room there is ever before me the photograph of Sebaldus' Tomb (model Metropolitan Museum, New York). This rich German symbol rose from the invisible in the most luxuriant developmental period of German art. As a formal product of that art, it is very difficult to appreciate it as it deserves. It seems to me as one of the most wonderful bits of work in the whole field of artistic accomplishment. The soul of all the great medieval period encircles this silver coffin, wrapping it up into a n.o.ble unity, and enthrones on the very summit of death. Life as a growing child. Such a work could only have come to its perfection in the protected s.p.a.ces of the old Mother Church."

Rev. Dr. Jessopp, in his book, already cited, "The Great Pillage,"

does not hesitate to state in unmistakable terms the reason why all the beauty and happiness went out of English country life some two centuries after the Thirteenth Century, and how it came about that the modern generations have had to begin over again from the beginning, and not where our Catholic forefathers of the medieval period left us, in what used to be the despised Middle Ages. He says:

"When I talk of the great pillage, I mean that horrible and outrageous looting of our churches other than conventual, and the robbing of the people of this country of property in land and movables, which property had actually been inherited by them as members of those organized religious communities known as parishes.

It is necessary to emphasize the fact that in the general scramble of the Terror under Henry the Eighth, and of the Anarchy in the days of Edward the Sixth, there was only one cla.s.s that was permitted to retain any large portion of its endowments. The monasteries were plundered even to their very pots and pans. Almshouses in which old men and women were fed and clothed were robbed to the last pound, the poor alms-folk being turned out into the cold at an hour's warning to beg their bread. {472} Hospitals for the sick and needy, sometimes magnificently provided with nurses and chaplains, whose very raison d'etre was that they were to look after and care for those who were past caring for themselves--these were stripped of all their belongings, the inmates sent out to hobble into some convenient dry ditch to lie down and die in, or to crawl into some barn or hovel, there to be tended, not without fear of consequences, by some kindly man or woman who could not bear to see a suffering fellow creature drop down and die at their own doorposts.

"We talk with a great deal of indignation of the Tweed ring. The day will come when someone will write the story of two other rings--the ring of the miscreants who robbed the monasteries in the reign of Henry the Eighth was the first; but the ring of the robbers who robbed the poor and helpless in the reign of Edward the Sixth was ten times worse than the first.

"The Universities only just escaped the general confiscation; the friendly societies and benefit clubs and the gilds did not escape.

The acc.u.mulated wealth of centuries, their houses and lands, their money, their vessels of silver and their vessels of gold, their ancient cups and goblets and salvers, even to their very chairs and tables, were all set down in inventories and catalogues, and all swept into the great robbers' h.o.a.rd. Last, but not least, the immense treasures in the churches, the joy and boast of every man and woman and child in England, who day by day and week by week a.s.sembled to worship in the old houses of G.o.d which they and their fathers had built, and whose every vestment and chalice and candlestick and banner, organs and bells, and picture and image and altar and shrine they looked upon as their own and part of their birthright--all these were torn away by the rudest spoilers, carted off, they knew not whither, with jeers and scoffs and ribald shoutings, while none dared raise a hand or let his voice be heard above the whisper of a prayer of bitter grief and agony.

"One cla.s.s was spared. The clergy of this Church of England of ours managed to retain some of their endowments; but if the boy king had lived another three years, there is good reason for believing that these too would have gone."

Graft prevailed, and the old order disappeared in a slough of selfishness.

COMFORT AND POVERTY.

A number of friendly critics have insisted that _of course_ the Thirteenth Century was far behind later times in the comfort of the people. Poverty is supposed to have been almost universal. Doubtless many of the people were then very poor. Personally, I doubt if there was as much poverty, that is, misery due to actual want of necessaries of life, as there is at the present time. Certainly it was not emphasized by having close to it, constantly rendering the pains of poverty poignant by contrast, the luxury of the modern time. They had not the large city, and people in the country do not suffer as much as people in the city. In recent years, investigations of poverty in England have been appalling in the statistics that they have presented. Mr. Robert Hunter, in his book Poverty, has furnished us with some details that make one feel that our generation should be the last to say {473} that the Thirteenth Century was behind in progress, because so many of the people were so poor. Ruskin once said that the ideal of the great nation is one wherein there must be "as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed and happy-hearted human creatures." I am sure that, tried by this standard, the Thirteenth Century in Merrie England is ahead of any other generation and, above all, far in advance of our recent generations.

By contrast to what we know of the merrie English men and women of the Thirteenth Century, I would quote Mr. Hunter's paragraphs on the Poverty of the Modern English People. He says:

"A few years ago, England did not know the extent of her own poverty. Economists and writers gave opinions of all kinds. Some said conditions were 'bad,' others said such statements were misleading; and here they were, tilting at each other, backward and forward, in the most ponderous and serious way, until Mr. Booth, a business man, undertook to get at the facts. _No one, even the most radical economist, would have dared to have estimated the poverty of London as extending to 30 per cent of the people_ (as it proved).

The extent of poverty--the number of underfed, underclothed in insanitary houses--was greater than could reasonably have been estimated."

Some of the details of this investigation by Mr. Booth were so startling that some explanation had to be found. They could not deny, in the face of Mr. Booth's facts, but they set up the claim that the conditions in London were exceptional. Then Mr. Rountree made an investigation in York with precisely the same results. More than one in four of the population was in poverty. To quote Mr. Hunter once more:

"As has been said, it was not until Mr. Charles Booth published, in 1891, the results of his exhaustive inquiries that the actual conditions of poverty in London became known. About 1,000,000 people, or about thirty per cent of the entire population of London, were found to be unable to obtain the necessaries for a sound livelihood. They were in a state of poverty, living in conditions, if not of actual misery, at any rate bordering upon it. In many districts, considerably more than half of the population were either in distress or on the verge of distress. When these results were made public, the more conservative economists gave it as their opinion that the conditions in London were, of course, exceptional, and that it would be unsafe to make any generalizations for the whole of England on the basis of Mr. Booth's figures for London.

About ten years later, Mr. B. S. Rountree, incited by the work of Mr. Booth, undertook a similar inquiry in his native town, York, a small provincial city, in most ways typical of the smaller towns of England. In a large volume in which the results are published, it is shown that the poverty in York was only slightly less extensive than that of London. In the summary, Mr. Rountree compares the conditions of London with those of York. His comments are as follows: 'The proportions arrived at for the total populations living in poverty in London and York respectively were as under:

London--30.7 per cent York--27.84 per cent

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The proportion of the population living in poverty in York may be regarded as practically the same as in London, especially when we remember that Mr. Booth's information was gathered in 1887-1892, a period of only average trade prosperity, whilst the York figures were collected in 1899, when trade was unusually prosperous.'"

He continues: "We have been accustomed to look upon the poverty in London as exceptional, but when the result of careful investigation shows that the proportion of poverty in London is practically equalled in what may be regarded as a typical provincial town, we are faced by the startling probability that from 25 to 30 per cent of the town populations of the United Kingdom are living in poverty."

Most of us will be inclined to think that Mr. Rountree must exaggerate, and what he calls poverty most of us would doubtless be inclined to think a modest competency a little below respectability.

He fixed the standard of twenty-one shillings eight pence ($5.25) a week as a necessary one for a family of ordinary size. He says:

"A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate, must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a half-penny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, nor give any help to a neighbor which costs them money. They cannot save, nor can they join sick club or trade union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscription. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco nor drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children, the character for the family wardrobe, as for the family diet, being governed by the regulation, 'Nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and that which is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description.' Should a child fall ill, it must be attended by the family parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day."

_More than one in four of the population living below this scale!_

Conditions are, if anything, worse on the Continent. In Germany, industry is at the best. Conditions in Berlin have been recently reported in the Daily Consular Reports by a U. S. Government official.

Of the somewhat more than two millions of people who live in Berlin, 1,125,000 have an income. Nearly one-half of the incomes, however, are exempt from taxation because they do not amount to the minimum taxable income, though that is only $214--$4 per week. Of the 600,000 who have taxable incomes, nearly 550,000 have less than $700 a year; that is, get about $2 a day or less. Less than sixty thousand out of the total population get more than $2 a day. It is easy to say, but hard to understand, that this is a living wage, because things are cheaper in Germany. Meat is, however, nearly twice as dear; sugar is twice as dear; bread is dearer than it is in this country; coffee is dearer; and only rent is somewhat cheaper.

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It is easy to talk about the spread of comfort among the people of our generation and the raising of the standard of living, but if one compares these wages with the price of things as they are now, it is hard to understand on just what basis of fact the claim for betterment in our time, meaning more general comfort and happiness, is made.

People always refuse to believe that conditions are as bad as they really are in these matters. Americans will at once have the feeling, on reading Mr. Hunter and Mr. Rountree's words and the account of the American Consul at Berlin, that this may be true for England and Germany, but that of course it is very different here in America. It is extremely doubtful whether it is very different here in America. In this matter, Mr. Hunter's opinion deserves weight. He has for years devoted himself to gathering information with regard to this subject.

He seems to be sure that one in seven of our population is in poverty.

Probably the number is higher than this. Here is his opinion:

"How many people in the country are in poverty? Is the number yearly growing larger? Are there each year more and more of the unskilled cla.s.ses pursuing hopelessly the elusive phantom of self-support and independence? Are they, as in a dream, working faster, only the more swiftly to move backward? Are there each year more and more hungry children and more and more fathers whose utmost effort may not bring into the home as much energy in food as it takes out in industry?

These are not fanciful questions, nor are they sentimental ones. I have not the slightest doubt that there are in the United States ten million persons in precisely these conditions of poverty, but I am largely guessing, and there may be as many as fifteen or twenty millions!"

Perhaps Mr. Hunter exaggerates. As a physician, I should be inclined to think not; but certainly his words and, above all, the English statistics will give any one pause who is sure, on general principles, that the great ma.s.s of the people are happier now or more comfortable, above all, in mind--the only real happiness--than they were in the Thirteenth Century. After due consideration of this kind, no one will insist on the comparative misery and suffering of the poor in old times. England had less than 3,000,000 in the Thirteenth Century, and probably there was never a time in her history when a greater majority of her people fulfilled Ruskin's and Morris' ideals of happy-hearted human beings. The two-handed worker got at least what the four-footed worker, in Carlyle's words, has always obtained, due food and lodging.

England was not "a nation with sleek, well-fed English horses, and hungry, dissatisfied Englishmen."

COMFORT AND HAPPINESS.