View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 26

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

[502]

Usus Francisca, vulgari, et voce Latina.

Inst.i.tuit populos eloquio tripici.

Fontanini dell'Eloquenza Italiana, p. 15. Muratori, Dissert. x.x.xii.

[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 va.s.sal: 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 pa.s.sage in Eginhard, which has occasioned so much dispute, speaks for itself: Tentabat et scribere, tabulasque et codicillos ad hoc in lecticula sub cervicalibus circ.u.mferre solebat, ut, c.u.m vacuum tempus esset, manum effigiandis literis a.s.suefaceret; sed parum prospere successit labor praeposterus ac ser inchoatus.

Many are still unwilling to believe that Charlemagne could not write. M.

Ampere observes that the emperor a.s.serts 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 ma.n.u.script 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed 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.

Ma.n.u.scripts 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 n.o.bles 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.

In the gradual progress of learning, a very small number of princes thought it honourable to collect books. Perhaps no earlier instance can be mentioned than that of a most respectable man, William III., duke of Guienne, in the first part of the eleventh century. Fuit dux iste, says a contemporary writer, a pueritia doctus literis, et satis not.i.tiam Scripturarum habuit; librorum copiam in palatio suo servavit; et si forte a frequentia causarum et tumultu vacaret, lectioni per seipsum operam dabat longioribus noctibus elucubrans in libris, donec somno vinceretur. Rec. des Hist. x. 155.

[518] Robertson, Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note 13; Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 380; Hist. Litteraire de la France, t.

vi.

[519] Duelling, in the modern sense of the word, exclusive of casual frays and single combat during war, was unknown before the sixteenth century. But we find one anecdote which seems to ill.u.s.trate its derivation from the judicial combat. The dukes of Lancaster and Brunswick, having some differences, agreed to decide them by duel before John king of France. The lists were prepared with the solemnity of a real trial by battle; but the king interfered to prevent the engagement.

Villaret, t. ix. p. 71. The barbarous practice of wearing swords as a part of domestic dress, which tended very much to the frequency of duelling, was not introduced till the latter part of the 15th century. I can only find one print in Montfaucon's Monuments of the French monarchy where a sword is worn without armour before the reign of Charles VIII.: though a few, as early as the reign of Charles VI., have short daggers in their girdles. The exception is a figure of Charles VII. t. iii. pl.

47.

[520] Baluzii Capitularia, p. 444. It was prohibited by Louis the Debonair; a man, as I have noticed in another place, not inferior, as a legislator, to his father. Ibid. p. 668. "The spirit of party," says a late writer, "has often accused the church of having devised these barbarous methods of discovering truth--the duel and the ordeal; nothing can be more unjust. Neither one nor the other is derived from Christianity; they existed long before in the Germanic usages." Ampere, Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 180. Any one must have been very ignorant who attributed the invention of ordeals to the church. But during the dark ages they were always sanctioned. Agobard, from whom M. Ampere gives a quotation, in the reign of Louis the Debonair wrote strongly against them; but this was the remonstrance of a superior man in an age that was ill-inclined to hear him.

[521] Ordeals were not actually abolished in France, notwithstanding the law of Louis above-mentioned, so late as the eleventh century (Bouquet, t. xi. p. 430), nor in England till the reign of Henry III. Some of the stories we read, wherein accused persons have pa.s.sed triumphantly through these severe proofs, are perplexing enough: and perhaps it is safer, as well as easier, to deny than to explain them. For example, a writer in the Archaeologia (vol. xv. p. 172) has shown that Emma, queen of Edward the Confessor, did not perform her trial by stepping _between_, as Blackstone imagines, but _upon_ nine red-hot ploughshares.

But he seems not aware that the whole story is unsupported by any contemporary or even respectable testimony. A similar anecdote is related of Cunegunda, wife of the emperor Henry II., which probably gave rise to that of Emma. There are, however, medicaments, as is well known, that protect the skin to a certain degree against the effect of fire.

This phenomenon would pa.s.s for miraculous, and form the basis of those exaggerated stories in monkish books.

[522] The most singular effect of this crusading spirit was witnessed in 1211, when a mult.i.tude, amounting, as some say, to 90,000, chiefly composed of children, and commanded by a child, set out for the purpose of recovering the Holy Land. They came for the most part from Germany, and reached Genoa without harm. But, finding there an obstacle which their imperfect knowledge of geography had not antic.i.p.ated, they soon dispersed in various directions. Thirty thousand arrived at Ma.r.s.eilles, where part were murdered, part probably starved, and the rest sold to the Saracens. Annali di Muratori, A.D. 1211; Velly, Hist. de France, t.

iv. p. 206.

[523] Velly, t. iii. p. 295; Du Cange, v. Capuciati.

[524] Velly, Hist. de France, t. v. p. 7; Du Cange, v. Pastorelli.

[525] Velly, Hist. de France, t. viii. p. 99. The continuator of Nangis says, sicut fumus subit evanuit tota illa commotio. Spicilegium, t.

iii. p. 77.

[526] Velly, t. v. p. 279; Du Cange, v. Verberatio.

[527] Something of a similar kind is mentioned by G. Villani, under the year 1310. 1. viii. c. 122.

[528] Annal. Mediolan. in Murat. Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 832; G.

Stella. Ann. Genuens. t. xvii. p. 1072; Chron. Foroliviense, t. xix. p.

874; Ann. Bonincontri, t. xxi. p. 79.

[529] Dissert. 75. Sudden transitions from profligate to austere manners were so common among individuals, that we cannot be surprised at their sometimes becoming in a manner national. Azarius, a chronicler of Milan, after describing the almost incredible dissoluteness of Pavia, gives an account of an instantaneous reformation wrought by the preaching of a certain friar. This was about 1350. Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 375.

[530] Villaret, t. xii. p. 327.

[531] Rot. Parl. v. iii. p. 428.

[532] This is confessed by the authors of Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. ii. p. 4, and indeed by many catholic writers. I need not quote Mosheim, who more than confirms every word of my text.

[533] Middleton's Letter from Rome. If some of our eloquent countryman's positions should be disputed, there are still abundant catholic testimonies that imaginary saints have been canonized.

[534] Le Grand d'Aussy has given us, in the fifth volume of his Fabliaux, several of the religious tales by which the monks endeavoured to withdraw the people from romances of chivalry. The following specimens will abundantly confirm my a.s.sertions, which may perhaps appear harsh and extravagant to the reader.