View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 44

[933] Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 140.

[934] Sanuto mentions an order of the senate in 1469, that John of Spira should print the epistles of Tully and Pliny for five years, and that no one else should do so. Script. Rerum Italic. t. xxii. p. 1189.

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX.

NOTE I. Page 288.

A rapid decline of learning began in the sixth century, of which Gregory of Tours is both a witness and an example. It is, therefore, properly one of the dark ages, more so by much than the eleventh, which concludes them; since very few were left in the church who possessed any acquaintance with cla.s.sical authors, or who wrote with any command of the Latin language. Their studies, whenever they studied at all, were almost exclusively theological; and this must be understood as to the subsequent centuries. By theological is meant the vulgate Scriptures and some of the Latin fathers; not, however, by reasoning upon them, or doing much more than introducing them as authority in their own words.

In the seventh century, and still more at the beginning of the eighth, very little even of this remained in France, where we find hardly a name deserving of remembrance in a literary sense; but Isidore, and our own Bede, do honour to Spain and Britain.

It may certainly be said for France and Germany, notwithstanding a partial interruption in the latter part of the ninth and beginning of the tenth century, that they were gradually progressive from the time of Charlemagne. But then this progress was so very slow, and the men in front of it so little capable of bearing comparison with those of later times, considering their writings positively and without indulgence, that it is by no means unjust to call the centuries dark which elapsed between Charlemagne and the manifest revival of literary pursuits towards the end of the eleventh century. Alcuin, for example, has left us a good deal of poetry. This is superior to what we find in some other writers of the obscure period, and indicates both a correct ear and a familiarity with the Latin poets, especially Ovid. Still his verses are not as good as those which schoolboys of fourteen now produce, either in poetical power or in accuracy of language and metre. The errors indeed are innumerable. Aldhelm, an earlier Anglo-Saxon poet, with more imaginative spirit, is further removed from cla.s.sical poetry. Lupus, abbot of Ferrieres, early in the ninth century, in some of his epistles writes tolerable Latin, though this is far from being always the case; he is smitten with a love of cla.s.sical literature, quotes several poets and prose writers, and is almost as curious about little points of philology as an Italian scholar of the fifteenth century. He was continually borrowing books in order to transcribe them--a proof, however, of their scarcity and of the low condition of general learning, which is the chief point we have to regard.[935] But his more celebrated correspondent, Eginhard, went beyond him. Both his Annals and the Life of Charlemagne are very well written, in a cla.s.sical spirit, unlike the church Latin; though a few words and phrases may not be of the best age, I should place Eginhard above Alcuin and Lupus, or, as far as I know, any other of the Caroline period.

The tenth century has in all times borne the worst name. Baronius calls it, in one page, _plumbeum_, _obscurum_, _infelix_ (Annales, A.D. 900).

And Cave, who dubs all his centuries by some epithet, a.s.signs _ferreum_ to the tenth. Nevertheless, there was considerably less ignorance in France and Germany during the latter part of this age than before the reign of Charlemagne, or even in it; more glimmerings of acquaintance with the Latin cla.s.sics appear; and the schools, cathedral and conventual, had acquired a more regular and uninterrupted scheme of instruction. The degraded condition of papal Rome has led many to treat this century rather worse than it deserves; and indeed Italy was sunk very low in ignorance. As to the eleventh century, the upward progress was extremely perceptible. It is commonly reckoned among the dark ages till near its close; but these phrases are of course used comparatively, and because the difference between that and the twelfth was more sensible than we find in any two that are consecutive since the sixth.

The state of literature in England was by no means parallel to what we find on the continent. Our best age was precisely the worst in France; it was the age of the Heptarchy--that of Theodore, Bede, Aldhelm, Caedmon, and Alcuin; to whom, if Ireland will permit us, we may desire to add Scotus, who came a little afterwards, but whose residence in this island at any time appears an unauthenticated tale. But we know how Alfred speaks of the ignorance of the clergy in his own age. Nor was this much better afterwards. Even the eleventh century, especially before the Conquest, is a very blank period in the literary annals of England. No one can have a conception how wretchedly scanty is the list of literary names from Alfred to the Conquest, who does not look to Mr.

Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, or to Mr. Wright's Biographia Literaria.

There could be no general truth respecting the past, as it appeared to me, more notorious, or more incapable of being denied with any plausibility, than the characteristic ignorance of Europe during those centuries which we commonly style the Dark Ages. A powerful stream, however, of what, as to the majority at least, I must call prejudice, has been directed of late years in an opposite direction. The mediaeval period, in manners, in arts, in literature, and especially in religion, has been regarded with unwonted partiality; and this favourable temper has been extended to those ages which had lain most frequently under the ban of historical and literary censure.

A considerable impression has been made on the predisposed by the Letters on the Dark Ages, which we owe to Dr. Maitland. Nor is this by any means surprising; both because the predisposed are soon convinced, and because the Letters are written with great ability, accurate learning, a spirited and lively pen, and consequently with a success in skirmishing warfare which many readily mistake for the gain of a pitched battle. Dr. Maitland is endowed with another quality, far more rare in historical controversy, especially of the ecclesiastical kind: I believe him to be of scrupulous integrity, minutely exact in all that he a.s.serts; and indeed the wrath and asperity, which sometimes appear rather more than enough, are only called out by what he conceives to be wilful or slovenly misrepresentation. Had I, therefore, the leisure and means of following Dr. Maitland through his quotations, I should probably abstain from doing so from the reliance I should place on his testimony, both in regard to his power of discerning truth and his desire to express it. But I have no call for any examination, could I inst.i.tute it; since the result of my own reflections is that every thing which Dr. M. a.s.serts as matter of fact--I do not say suggests in all his language--may be perfectly true, without affecting the great proposition that the dark ages, those from the sixth to the eleventh, were ages of ignorance. Nor does he, as far as I collect, attempt to deny this evident truth; it is merely his object to prove that they were less ignorant, less dark, and in all points of view less worthy of condemnation than many suppose. I do not gainsay this position; being aware, as I have observed both in this and in another work, that the mere ignorance of these ages, striking as it is in comparison with earlier and later times, has been sometimes exaggerated; and that Europeans, and especially Christians, could not fall back into the absolute barbarism of the Esquimaux. But what a man of profound and accurate learning puts forward with limitations, sometimes expressed, and always present to his own mind, a heady and shallow retailer takes up, and exaggerates in conformity with his own prejudices.

The Letters on the Dark Ages relate princ.i.p.ally to the theological attainments of the clergy during that period, which the author a.s.sumes, rather singularly, to extend from A.D. 800 to 1200; thus excluding midnight from his definition of darkness, and replacing it by the break of day. And in many respects, especially as to the knowledge of the vulgate Scriptures possessed by the better-informed clergy, he obtains no very difficult victory over those who have imbibed extravagant notions, both as to the ignorance of the Sacred Writings in those times and the desire to keep them away from the people. This latter prejudice is obviously derived from a confusion of the subsequent period, the centuries preceding the Reformation, with those which we have immediately before us. But as the word _dark_ is commonly used, either in reference to the body of the laity or to the general extent of liberal studies in the church, and as it involves a comparison with prior or subsequent ages, it cannot be improper in such a sense, even if the ma.n.u.scripts of the Bible should have been as common in monasteries as Dr. Maitland supposes; and yet his proofs seem much too doubtful to sustain that hypothesis.

There is a tendency to set aside the verdict of the most approved writers, which gives too much of a polemical character, too much of the tone of an advocate who fights every point, rather than of a calm arbitrator, to the Letters on the Dark Ages. For it is not Henry, or Jortin, or Robertson, who are our usual testimonies, but their immediate masters, Muratori, and Fleury, and Tiraboschi, and Brucker and the Benedictine authors of the Literary History of France, and many others in France, Italy, and Germany. The latest who has gone over this rather barren ground, and not inferior to any in well-applied learning, in candour or good sense, is M. Ampere, in his Histoire Litteraire de la France avant le douzieme siecle (3 vols. Paris, 1840). No one will accuse this intelligent writer of unduly depreciating the ages which he thus brings before us; and by the perusal of his volumes, to which Heeren and Eichhorn may be added for Germany, we may obtain a clear and correct outline, which, considering the shortness of life compared with the importance of exact knowledge on such a subject, will suffice for the great majority of readers. I by no means, however, would exclude the Letters on the Dark Ages, as a spirited pleading for those who have often been condemned unheard.

I shall conclude by remarking that one is a little tempted to inquire why so much anxiety is felt by the advocates of the mediaeval church to rescue her from the charge of ignorance. For this ignorance she was not, generally speaking, to be blamed. It was no crime of the clergy that the Huns burned their churches, or the Normans pillaged their monasteries.

It was not by their means that the Saracens shut up the supply of papyrus, and that sheep-skins bore a great price. Europe was altogether decayed in intellectual character, partly in consequence of the barbarian incursions, partly of other sinister influences acting long before. We certainly owe to the church every spark of learning which then glimmered, and which she preserved through that darkness to re-kindle the light of a happier age--Sperma puros sozousa. Meantime, what better apology than this ignorance can be made by Protestants, and I presume Dr. Maitland is not among those who abjure the name, for the corruption, the superst.i.tion, the tendency to usurpation, which they at least must impute to the church of the dark ages? Not that in these respects it was worse than in a less obscure period; for the reverse is true; but the fabric of popery was raised upon its foundations before the eleventh century, though not displayed in its full proportions till afterwards. And there was so much of lying legend, so much of fraud in the acquisition of property, that ecclesiastical historians have not been loth to acknowledge the general ignorance as a sort of excuse.

[1848.]

NOTE II. Page 350.

The account of domestic architecture given in the text is very superficial; but the subject still remains, comparatively with other portions of mediaeval antiquity, but imperfectly treated. The best sketch that has. .h.i.therto been given is in an article with this t.i.tle in the Glossary of Ancient Architecture (which should be read in an edition not earlier than that of 1845), from the pen of Mr. Twopeny, whose attention has long been directed to the subject. "There is ample evidence yet remaining of the domestic architecture in this country during the twelfth century. The ordinary manor-houses, and even houses of greater consideration, appear to have been generally built in the form of a parallelogram, two stories high,[936] the lower story vaulted, with no internal communication between the two, the upper story approached by a flight of steps on the outside; and in that story was sometimes the only fireplace in the whole building. It is more than probable that this was the usual style of houses in the preceding century." Instances of houses partly remaining are then given. We may add to those mentioned by Mr.

Twopeny one, perhaps older than any, and better preserved than some, in his list. At Southampton is a Norman house, perhaps built in the first part of the twelfth century. It is nearly a square, the outer walls tolerably perfect; the princ.i.p.al rooms appear to have been on the first (or upper) floor; it has in this also a fireplace and chimney, and four windows placed so as to indicate a division into two apartments; but there are no lights below, nor any appearance of an interior staircase.

The sides are about forty feet in length. Another house of the same age is near to it, but much worse preserved.[937]

The parallelogram house, seldom containing more than four rooms, with no access frequently to the upper which the family occupied, except on the outside, was gradually replaced by one on a different type:--the entrance was on the ground, the staircase within; a kitchen and other offices, originally detached, were usually connected with the hall by a pa.s.sage running through the house; one or more apartments on the lower floor extended beyond the hall; there was seldom or never a third floor over the entire house, but detached turrets for sleeping-rooms rose at some of the angles. This was the typical form which lasted, as we know, to the age of Elizabeth, or even later. The superior houses of this cla.s.s were sometimes quadrangular, that is, including a court-yard, but seldom, perhaps, with more than one side allotted to the main dwelling; offices, stables, or mere walls filled the other three.

Many dwellings erected in the fourteenth century may be found in England; but neither of that nor the next age are there more than a very few, which are still, in their chief rooms, inhabited by gentry. But houses, which by their marks of decoration, or by external proof, are ascertained to have been formerly occupied by good families, though now in the occupation of small farmers, and built apparently from the reign of the second to that of the fourth Edward, are common in many counties.

They generally bear the name of court, hall, or grange; sometimes only the surname of some ancient occupant, and very frequently have been the residence of the lord of the manor.

The most striking circ.u.mstance in the oldest houses is not so much their precautions for defence in the outside staircase, and when that was disused, the better safeguard against robbery in the moat which frequently environed the walls, the strong gateway, the small window broken by mullions, which are no more than we should expect in the times, as the paucity of apartments, so that both s.e.xes, and that even in high rank, must have occupied the same room. The progress of a regard to decency in domestic architecture has been gradual, and in some respects has been increasing up to our own age. But the mediaeval period shows little of it; though in the advance of wealth, a greater division of apartments distinguishes the houses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from those of an earlier period.

The French houses of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were probably much of the same arrangement as the English; the middle and lower cla.s.ses had but one hall and one chamber; those superior to them had the solarium or upper floor, as with us. See Archaeological Journal (vol. i.

p. 212), where proofs are adduced from the fabliaux of Barbasan. [1848.]

NOTE III. Page 451.

The Abbe de Sade, in those copious memoirs of the life of Petrarch, which ill.u.s.trate in an agreeable though rather prolix manner the civil and literary history of Provence and Italy in the fourteenth century, endeavoured to establish his own descent from Laura, as the wife of Hughes de Sade, and born in the family de Noves. This hypothesis has since been received with general acquiescence by literary men; and Tiraboschi in particular, whose talent lay in these petty biographical researches, and who had a prejudice against every thing that came from France, seems to consider it as decisively proved. But it has been called in question in a modern publication by the late Lord Woodhouselee. (Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch, 1810.) I shall not offer any opinion as to the ident.i.ty of Petrarch's mistress with Laura de Sade; but the main position of Lord W.'s essay, that Laura was an unmarried woman, and the object of an honourable attachment in her lover, seems irreconcileable with the evidence that his writings supply. 1. There is no pa.s.sage in Petrarch, whether of poetry or prose, that alludes to the virgin character of Laura, or gives her the usual appellations of unmarried women, puella in Latin, or donzella in Italian; even in the Trionfo della Cast.i.ta, where so obvious an opportunity occurred. Yet this was naturally to be expected from so ethereal an imagination as that of Petrarch, always inclined to invest her with the halo of celestial purity. We know how Milton took hold of the mystical notions of virginity; notions more congenial to the religion of Petrarch than his own:

Quod tibi perpetuus pudor, et sine labe juventas Pura fuit, quod nulla tori libata voluptas, En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores.

Epitaphium Damonis.

2. The coldness of Laura towards so pa.s.sionate and deserving a lover, if no insurmountable obstacle intervened during his twenty years of devotion, would be at least a mark that his attachment was misplaced, and show him in rather a ridiculous light. It is not surprising, that persons believing Laura to be unmarried, as seems to have been the case with the Italian commentators, should have thought his pa.s.sion affected, and little more than poetical. But upon the contrary supposition, a thread runs through the whole of his poetry, and gives it consistency. A love on the one side, instantaneously conceived, and retained by the susceptibility of a tender heart and ardent fancy; nourished by slight encouragement, and seldom presuming to hope for more; a mixture of prudence and coquetry on the other, kept within bounds either by virtue or by the want of mutual attachment, yet not dissatisfied with fame more brilliant and flattery more refined than had ever before been the lot of woman--these are surely pretty natural circ.u.mstances, and such as do not render the story less intelligible. Unquestionably such a pa.s.sion is not innocent. But Lord Woodhouselee, who is so much scandalized at it, knew little, one would think, of the fourteenth century. His standard is taken not from Avignon, but from Edinburgh, a much better place, no doubt, and where the moral barometer stands at a very different alt.i.tude. In one pa.s.sage (p. 188) he carries his strictness to an excess of prudery. From all we know of the age of Petrarch, the only matter of astonishment is the persevering virtue of Laura. The troubadours boast of much better success with Provencal ladies. 3. But the following pa.s.sage from Petrarch's dialogues with St. Augustin, the work, as is well known, where he most unbosoms himself, will leave no doubt, I think, that his pa.s.sion could not have been gratified consistently with honour. At mulier ista celebris, quam tibi certissimam ducem fingis, ad superos cur non haesitantem trepidumque direxerit, et quod caecis fieri solet, manu apprehensum non tenuit, qu et gradiendum foret admonuit?

PETR. Fecit hoc illa quantum potuit. Quid enim aliud egit, c.u.m nullis mota precibus, nullis victa blanditiis, muliebrem tenuit decorem, et adversus suam semel et meam aetatem, adversus multa et varia quae flectere adamantium spiritum debuissent, inexpugnabilis et firma permansit?

Profect animus iste foemineus quid virum decuit admonebat, praestabatque ne in sectando pudicitiae studio, ut verbis utar Senecae, aut exemplum aut convitium deesset; postrem c.u.m lorifragum ac praecipitem videret, deserere maluit potius quam sequi. AUGUST. Turpe igitur aliquid interdum voluisti, quod supra negaveras. At iste vulgatus amantium, vel, ut dicam verius, amantium furor est, ut omnibus merit dici possit: volo nolo, nolo volo. Vobis ipsis quid velitis, aut nolitis, ignotum est.

PET. Invitus in laqueum offendi. Si quid tamen olim aliter forte voluissem, amor aetasque coegerunt; nunc quid velim et cupiam scio, firmavique jam tandem animum labentem; contra autem illa propositi tenax et semper una permansit, quare constantiam foemineam qu magis intelligo, magis admiror: idque sibi consilium fuisse, si unquam debuit, gaudeo nunc et gratias ago. AUG. Semel fallenti, non facile rursus fides habenda est: tu prius mores atque habitum, vitamque mutavisti, quam animum muta.s.se persuadeas; mitigatur forte si tuus leniturque ignis, extinctus non est. Tu ver qui tantum dilectioni tribuis, non animadvertis, illam absolvendo, quantum te ipse condemnas; illam fateri libet fuisse sanctissimam dum te insanum scelestumque fateare.--De Contemptu Mundi, Dialog. 3, p. 367, edit. 1581.

NOTE IV. Page 456.

The progress of our language in proceedings of the legislature is so well described in the preface to the authentic edition of Statutes of the Realm, published by the Record Commission, that I shall transcribe the pa.s.sage, which I copy from Mr. Cooper's useful account of the Public Records (vol. i. p. 189):--

The earliest instance recorded of the use of the English language in any parliamentary proceeding is in 36 Edw. III. The style of the roll of that year is in French as usual, but it is expressly stated that the causes of summoning the parliament were declared _en Englois_; and the like circ.u.mstance is noted in 37 and 38 Edw. III.[938] In the 5th year of Richard II., the chancellor is stated to have made _un bone collacion en Engleys_ (introductory, as was then sometimes the usage, to the commencement of business), though he made use of the common French form for opening the parliament. A pet.i.tion from the 'Folk of the Mercerye of London,' in the 10th year of the same reign, is in English; and it appears also that in the 17th year the Earl of Arundel asked pardon of the Duke of Lancaster by the award of the King and Lords, in their presence in parliament, in a form of English words. The cession and renunciation of the crown by Richard II. is stated to have been read before the estates of the realm and the people in Westminster Hall, first in Latin and afterwards in English, but it is entered on the parliament roll only in Latin. And the challenge of the crown by Henry IV., with his thanks after the allowance of his t.i.tle, in the same a.s.sembly, are recorded in English, which is termed his maternal tongue.

So also is the speech of Lord William Thyrning, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, to the late King Richard, announcing to him the sentence of his deposition, and the yielding up, on the part of the people, of their fealty and allegiance. In the 6th year of the reign of Henry IV.

an English answer is given to a pet.i.tion of the Commons, touching a proposed resumption of certain grants of the crown to the intent the king might live of his own. The English language afterwards appears occasionally, through the reigns of Henry IV. and Henry V. In the first and second and subsequent years of Henry VI., the pet.i.tions or bills, and in many cases the answers also, on which the statutes were afterwards framed, are found frequently in English; but the statutes are entered on the roll in French or Latin. From the 23rd year of Henry VI.

these pet.i.tions or bills are almost universally in English, as is also sometimes the form of the royal a.s.sent; but the statutes continued to be enrolled in French or Latin. Sometimes Latin and French are used in the same statute,[939] as in 8 Hen. VI., 27 Hen. VI., and 39 Hen. VI. The last statute wholly in Latin on record is 33 Hen. VI. c. 2. The statutes of Edward IV. are entirely in French. The statutes of Richard III. are in many ma.n.u.scripts in French in a complete statute form; and they were so printed in his reign and that of his successor. In the earlier English editions a translation was inserted in the same form; but in several editions, since 1618, they have been printed in English, in a different form, agreeing, so far as relates to the acts printed, with the inrolment in Chancery at the Chapel of the Rolls. The pet.i.tions and bills in parliament, during these two reigns, are all in English. The statutes of Henry VII. have always, it is believed, been published in English; but there are ma.n.u.scripts containing the statutes of the first two parliaments, in his first and third year, in French. From the fourth year to the end of his reign, and from thence to the present time, they are universally in English.

FOOTNOTES:

[935] The writings of Lupus Servatus, abbot of Ferrieres, were published by Baluze; and a good account of them will be found in Ampere's Hist.

Litt. (vol. iii. p. 237), as well as in older works. He is a much better writer than Gregory of Tours, but quite as much inferior to Sidonius Apollinaris. I have observed in Lupus quotations from Horace, Virgil, Martial, Cicero, Aulus Gellius, and Trogus Pompeius (meaning probably Justin).

[936] This is rather equivocal, but it is certainly not meant that there were ever two _floors_ above that on the ground. In the review of the "Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs," published in the Archaeological Journal (vol. iv. p. 273), we read--"The houses in London, of whatever material, seem never to have exceeded one story in height." (p. 282.) But, soon afterwards--"The ground floor of the London houses at this period was aptly enough called a cellar, the upper story a solar." It thus appears that the reviewer does not mean the same thing as Mr.

Twopeny by the word _story_, which the former confines to the floor above that on the ground, while the latter includes both. The use of language, as we know, supports, in some measure, either meaning; but perhaps it is more correct, and more common, to call the first story that which is reached by a staircase from the ground-floor. The solar, or sleeping-room, raised above the cellar, was often of wood.

[937] See a full description in the Archaeological Journal, vol. iv. p.

11. Those who visit Southampton may seek this house near a gate in the west wall. We may add to the contribution of Mr. Twopeny one published in the Proceedings of the Archaeological Inst.i.tute, by Mr. Hudson Turner, Nov. 1847. This is chiefly founded on doc.u.ments, as that of Mr. Twopeny is on existing remains. These give more light where they can be found; but the number is very small. Upon the whole, it may be here observed, that we are frequently misled by works of fiction as to the domestic condition of our forefathers. The house of Cedric the Saxon in Ivanhoe, with its distinct and numerous apartments, is very unlike any that remain or can be traced. This is by no means to be censured in the romancer, whose aim is to delight by images more splendid than truth; but, especially when presented by one who possessed in some respects a considerable knowledge of antiquity, and was rather fond of displaying it, there is some danger lest the reader should believe that he has a faithful picture before him.

[938] References are given to the Rolls of Parliament throughout this extract.

[939] All the acts pa.s.sed in the same session are legally one statute; the difference of language was in separate chapters or acts.

THE END.