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His pupil Lanfranc equalled his master in devotion to practical surgery and surpassed him in his development of the great science of medicine. Pagel, the well-known German historian of medicine, says that, in his text-book Lanfranc has excellent chapters on the affections of the eyes, the ears and mouth, the nose, even the teeth, and treats of hernia in a very practical common-sense way. He warns against the radical operation and says, in words that come home to us with strange familiarity at the present time, that many surgeons decide on operations too easily, not for the sake of the patient but for the sake of the money that is in them. Lanfranc's discussion of cystotomy, Pagel characterizes as prudent but rational, for he considers that the operations should not be feared too much but not delayed too long. In patients suffering from the inconvenience which comes from large quantities of fluid in the abdomen he advisesparacentesis abdominis, but warns against putting the patient in danger from such an operation without due consideration. Pagel says that Lanfranc must be considered as one of the greatest surgeons of the Middle Ages and the real establisher of the prestige of the French school of surgery which maintained its prominence down to the nineteenth century.
Lanfranc had been invited to Paris to take the chair of surgery, because the authorities of the university wanted to add prestige to the medical school, which was not as well known as the school{134}of philosophy. The fame of William of Salicet had spread throughout academic Europe, and so Lanfranc was offered the chair at the University of Paris in order to carry his master's message there. The next in the succession of great teachers at Paris was Mondeville, who found less to do in an original way than his master Lanfranc and his protomaster William, but who accomplished much for surgery. All that he did was thrown into the shade by what was accomplished for succeeding generations by the next in the series, Guy de Chauliac, who studied for a time in Paris under Mondeville, though his early medical education was obtained at Montpellier, but had also had the advantage of spending a year in Italy at the various medical schools which were famous at that time. These two incidents, Lanfranc's invitation to Paris to be a teacher there from Italy more than a thousand miles away, and Guy de Chauliac's studies in all the important universities of Europe of the time before he took up his own work, illustrate better than any words of ours can the ardent enthusiasm for study, the thoroughgoing anticipation of our most modern methods in education. Mondeville, like Chauliac, had made very nearly the same round of the universities. It is a custom, not a chance incident, that we have to deal with here.
Guy de Chauliac has been given the name of the father of modern surgery. Any one who wants to see why should read the text-book on surgery that{135}Chauliac wrote and which for two centuries after his time (he died about the middle of the fourteenth century) continued to be the most used text-book of surgery in the medical schools of Europe. Chauliac, for instance, describes the treatment of conditions within all three of the important cavities of the body, the skull, the thorax and the abdomen. Pagel has three closely-printed pages in small type of titles alone of subjects in surgery which Chauliac treated with distinction. His description of instruments and methods of operation is especially full and suggestive. He describes the passage of a catheter, for instance, with the accuracy and complete technique of a man who knew the difficulties of it in complicated cases from practical experience. He even recognizes the dangers for the patient from the presence of anatomical anomalies of various kinds and describes certain of the more important of them. He has very exact indications for trephining. For empyema he advises opening of the chest and indicates where and how. He says very frankly that in wounds of the abdomen the patient will die if the intestines have been perforated and left untreated, and he describes a method of suturing wounds of the intestines in order to save the patient's life.
His treatment of bone surgery and of fractures and dislocations is especially interesting and shows how far these very practical men had reached conclusions resembling those of our time.{136}It was in hernia particularly that Chauliac's surgical genius manifested itself. He operated for hernia and its radical cure, placing the patient in an exaggerated Trendelenberg position, head down, feet fastened to a slanting board. For such work anatomy had to be known very well, and Chauliac had made special studies at Bologna under Bertruccio, the successor of Mondino. Chauliac once declared that the surgeon ignorant of anatomy carves the human body as a blind man would carve wood. Of ulcers of all kinds Chauliac writes from a knowledge evidently derived from experience. Of ulcers due to cancer he has much to say. He considers them hopeless unless they can be excised at a very early stage and the incision followed by caustics. For carcinomatous ulcers there is not much that we can do beyond this, even in our day. It is no wonder that the great historians of medicine have been unanimous in praise of this wonderful scientific genius. For my lecture on "Old-Time Medical Education," before the Johns Hopkins Historical Club, last year, I quoted some of those opinions. Portal, for instance, says of him, "It may be averred that Guy de Chauliac said nearly everything that modern surgeons say and that his work is of infinite price, but unfortunately too little pondered." Malgaigne declares Chauliac's "Chirurgia Magna," "A masterpiece of learned and luminous writing." Pagel says, "Chauliac represents the summit of attainment in mediaeval{137}surgery, and he laid the foundation of that primacy in surgery which the French maintained down to the nineteenth century." Professor Clifford Allbutt says of Chauliac's treatise, "This great work I have studied carefully and not without prejudice; yet I cannot wonder that Fallopius compared the author with Hippocrates or that John Freind calls him the prince of surgeons. The book is rich, aphoristic, orderly and precise." In a word it has all the qualities that are usually said to be lacking in the work of mediaeval scientists, and it is a standing reproach to those who ignorantly have made so little of the work of these wonderful men of the olden time, who anticipated so many of the features of our modern medicine and surgery that we are prone to think of as representing climaxes in human progress, indications of a wonderful human evolution.
Two other names of great professors of surgery deserve to be mentioned because they make it very clear that this wonderful development of surgery was not confined to France and Italy, but made itself felt all over Europe. One of these is John Ypermann, a surgeon of the early fourteenth century, of whom almost nothing was known until about twenty-five years ago, when the Belgian historian, Broeck, brought to light his works and gathered some details of his life. He was a pupil of Lanfranc, and at the end of the thirteenth century studied at Paris on a scholarship voted by his native town of Ypres,{138}which provided maintenance and tuition fees for him at the great French university expressly in order that he might become expert in surgery. We are likely to think of Ypres as an unimportant town, but it was one of the great industrial centres of Europe and one of the most populous, busy towns of Flanders in the Middle Ages, noted for its manufacture of linens and fine laces. The famous Cloth Hall, erected in the thirteenth century, one of the most beautiful architectural monuments in Europe, and one of the finest buildings of its kind in the world, was the result of the same spirit that sent Ypermann to Paris.
After his return Ypermann settled down in his native town and obtained great renown not only at home, so that in that part of the country an expert surgeon is still spoken of as an Ypermann, but he became famous throughout all the Teutonic countries. He is the author of two books in Flemish. One of these is on medicine. Pagel calls it an unimportant compilation. The terms that occur in it, however, are enough to show us how much more than we are likely to think, these old masters in medicine discussed problems that are still puzzling us. He treats of dropsy, rheumatism, under which occur the terms coryza and catarrh, icterus, phthisis (he calls the tuberculous tysiken), apoplexy, epilepsy, frenzy, lethargy, fallen palate, cough, shortness of breath, lung abscess, hemorrhage, blood-spitting, liver abscess, hardening of the spleen, affections of the kidney,{139}bloody urine, diabetes, incontinence of urine, dysuria, strangury, gonorrhea and involuntary seminal emissions--all these terms are quoted directly from Pagel.
His work in medicine, however, is as nothing compared to his writings on surgery. A special feature of his book is the presence of seventy illustrations of instruments of the most various kinds, together with a plate showing the anatomical features of the stitching of a wound in the head. Even Pagel's brief account of its contents will be a source of never-ending surprise for those who think that surgery has developed entirely in our time. Even in this work on surgery, however, there are many things that we now treat under medicine. As this gives us an opportunity to show how much more of medicine was known at this time than is usually thought, I venture to quote some of Pagel's brief resume of the contents of a single chapter. This is a chapter devoted to intoxications, which includes the effect of cantharides as well as alcohol, and treats of the bites of snakes, scorpions and of the fatal effects of wounds due to the bite of mad dogs.
The other great surgeon and surgical writer of the time, for there must have been many distinguished surgeons and only a few writers, if we can trust to common experience in that matter, was John Ardern, an English surgeon. He was educated in Montpellier, practised for a time in France, then settled for some years in the{140}small town of Newark in Nottinghamshire, and then for nearly thirty years in London. His "Practice of Surgery," as yet existing only in manuscript, is another one of these wonderful contributions to the applied sciences of anatomy and medicine at a time when such applications are often supposed to have been absent. He was an expert operator and had a wide reputation for his success in the treatment of diseases of the rectum. He was the inventor of a new clyster apparatus. Daremberg, the medical historian, who saw a copy of Ardern's manuscript in St. John's College, Oxford, says that it contained numerous illustrations of instruments and operations. We fortunately possess an excellent manuscript copy in the Surgeon General's Library at Washington, and sometime it is hoped this will be edited and published.
The most interesting feature of the work of all of these men is their dependence on personal observation and not on authority. Guy de Chauliac's position in this matter can be very well appreciated from his criticism of John of Gaddesden's book in which he bewails the blind following of those who had gone before. His bitterest reproach for many of his predecessors was that, "They followed one another like cranes, whether for fear or love he would not say." Pagel praises Ypermann for the well-marked striving which he has noted in him to free himself from the bondage of authority, and because most of his therapeutic{141}descriptions rest upon his own experience. William of Salicet, at the beginning of this great period of surgery, had insisted that notes of cases were the most valuable sources of wisdom in medicine and surgery. The last of them, Ardern, gave statistics of his cases and was quite as proud as any modern surgeon of the large number that he had operated on. He gives these carefully and accurately.
I have dwelt on the medical side of these universities mainly, of course, because this is more familiar to me as a historian of medicine than their work in other scientific departments, but also to a great extent because the medical schools gathered unto themselves nearly all the scientific knowledge of the time. Botany, mineralogy, climatology, meteorology were all studied for the sake of what could be learned from them for the benefit of medicine. Even astronomy which was then the old astrology, was cultivated seriously, because of the supposed effect of the stars on human constitutions. For this we surely cannot blame these mediaeval students of science since four centuries later Galileo and even Kepler were still making horoscopes for their patrons and laying down laws from astronomy that were supposed to be applicable to medicine. Even Copernicus studied astronomy and medicine side by side and this combination of studies was not at all infrequent.
The medical schools, then, are the real index of{142}the serious interest of the mediaeval universities in science. Our scientific departments in modern universities have developed other interests, because of various applications that these have to life and its concerns. Always in scientific universities applied science is sure to encroach upon the domain of pure science, and no one knows that better than we do, for we have been bewailing the presence of machine shops and boiler factories on the university grounds. The old universities did not teach applied mechanics or engineering, but that does not mean that these subjects were not taught. There were special technical schools conducted by the gilds by means of apprenticeship and the journeyman training, which enabled them to teach those who cared to have it all the knowledge necessary for construction work of various kinds. The wonderful architectural engineering exhibited in the cathedrals, university buildings, town halls and castles of this time, and the magnificent bridges, some of which are still in existence, show us that the technical subjects were by no means neglected. [Footnote 9] Our mediaeval forefathers in education had the wisdom not to let the technical subjects interfere with pure science too much, as they inevitably do whenever the two are brought too closely together. Culture is always overshadowed by the practical, but not to the ultimate benefit of the race.
[Footnote 9: See Address on "Ideal Education of the Masses."]
The proof for us here in America, close at{143}hand, that these universities of the Middle Ages were thoroughly scientific in spirit and not only capable of, but actually active and successful in scientific investigation, is to be found in our earliest American universities. We are prone to think, because of the curiously defective way in which our histories of education have been written, that the only things worth while talking about in the origins of education here in America are to be found in English America. Recent investigations have shown how utterly deceived we were by foolish self-conceit in this matter. Long before the English-American universities were founded, and still longer before they began to do any serious work in education, there were important universities having literally thousands of students in attendance in the Spanish-American countries. The University of Mexico and the University of Lima in Peru were both founded about the middle of the sixteenth century. Harvard came nearly a century later, Yale a full century and a half, Princeton more than two centuries. The contrast between our English-American institutions of learning, however, and their Spanish-American rivals in accomplishment and numbers in attendance is still more striking than the mere dates of foundation.
Of course there were chairs of many sciences, strange as that may seem to us with our ridiculous traditions with regard to the history of education. These Spanish-American universities were{144}the direct descendants of the old mediaeval universities. They were in close relationship with Salamanca, Valladolid and Alcala. They were the progeny of scientific universities and they were, of course, occupied mainly with science. In spite of the fact that already the influence of the Renaissance, with its classical studies as the basis of education, had begun to make itself felt, these Spanish-American universities retained, to a great extent, the scientific curriculum. Nor must it be thought that they were shilly-shally institutions of learning, doing nothing in reality, but making a great pretence of studying many things. To know the very opposite we turn to Bourne, himself at the time a professor at Yale, and writing one of the volumes of a series edited by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, who holds the chair of history at Harvard, to be told in very definite emphatic terms how successfully investigations in science and scientific education were carried on in Mexico. Professor Bourne says:
"Not all the institutions of learning founded in Mexico in the sixteenth century can be enumerated here, but it is not too much to say that in number, range of studies and standard of attainments by the officers they surpassed anything existing in English America until the nineteenth century.Mexican scholars made distinguished achievements in some branches of science, particularly medicine and surgery, but pre-eminently linguistics, history and anthropology.{145}Dictionaries and grammars of the native languages and histories of the Mexican institutions are an imposing proof of their scholarly devotion and intellectual activity. Conspicuous are Toribio de Motolinia's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva España,' Duran's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva España,' but most important of all Sahagun's great work on Mexican life and religion."
The scientific products of these universities in America are interesting because almost as a rule we know absolutely nothing about them in English America, and, therefore, conclude there must have been none. The first book written on a medical topic in America was the "Secretos de Chirurgia," written by Dr. Pedrarias de Benavides, which was published at Valladolid in Spain in 1567. The first book on medicine actually published in this country was "Opera Medicinalia," by Francisco Bravo. [Footnote 10] On Columbus' second expedition, however, a Dr. Chança who had been physician-in-ordinary to the King and Queen of Spain, was sent with the expedition as what we would now call a scientific attaché. On his return he wrote a volume of scientific observations that he had made in America. Some of these were doubtless written while he was over here, though the book was published in Spain. Dr. Ybarra of New York recently published a résumé of this in the Smithsonian Publications and an article on it in theJournal of the American Medical Association.{146}It shows very well how wide were the scientific interests of the physicians of the time and how ardent their investigation of science, for there is scarcely a phase of modern science that would be touched on by the corps of scientists now attached to such an expedition which does not receive some serious treatment in Dr. Chança's book. Thus early did the Spanish-Americans take up scientific investigation seriously.
[Footnote 10: Published in Mexico, 1570.]
Professor Bourne of Yale, in his chapter on the "Transmission of the European Culture," in the third volume of the American Nation Series, [Footnote 11] says (p. 17): "Early in the eighteenth century the Lima University [Lima, Peru] counted nearly 2,000 students and numbered about one hundred and eighty doctors [in its faculty] in theology, civil and canon law, medicine and the arts. Ulloa reports that 'the university makes a stately appearance from without, and its inside is decorated with suitable ornaments.'There were chairs of all the sciences, and 'some of the professors have, notwithstanding the vast distance, gained the applause of the literati of Europe.' The coming of the Jesuits contributed much to the real educational work in America. They established colleges, one of which, the little Jesuit College at Juli, on Lake Titicaca, became a seat of genuine learning."
[Footnote 11: Harpers, New York, 1908.]
A distinguished professor of medicine in this country to whose attention this state of medical{147}education in the Spanish-American countries, so different from what is thought, was called, said: "What a surprise it is to find that while we have been accustomed to think that theprimum mobile[the active initiative] in education in this country came from the Anglo-Saxons, we now find that they were long anticipated in every department of education by the Spaniards, though we have been rather accustomed to despise them for their backwardness." With regard to the establishment of the first American medical school, it is no longer a surprise to find that it was established in Mexico, just as soon as we realize that the Mexican University was closely in touch with the traditions of the mediaeval universities generally and these all established medical schools as university departments. The standards of these mediaeval medical schools were transported to America and maintained. Our medical schools in the United States got away from the universities, became mere preparatory institutions, granted degrees for just as little study as possible, two terms of four months each in most cases, sometimes given in the same calendar year and requiring no preliminary training. We are reforming this now for a generation, but just inasmuch as we are, far from advancing, we are going straight back to the mediaeval universities and their standards and methods.
With all this evidence before us it seems perfectly clear that these old mediaeval universities{148}must be considered to have been scientific universities in our fullest modern sense of the term. They devoted all their time to the study of phenomena around them and the attempt to find the principles underlying them. They went at it somewhat differently in many departments of science than those which are now employed, but in all their practical work at least, they anticipated our methods as well as many of our results. The great professors wrote text-books and students who were ardent in the pursuit of knowledge copied out those text-books by hand. They had no way of easily multiplying them almost indefinitely, as we have at the present time. Probably nothing shows so well the enthusiastic zeal of these times in the pursuit of scientific knowledge as the fact that so many copies of these textbooks still remain for us. Much has been lost by war and fire, and still more by wanton destruction by people who could not understand, for there were many intervening generations that sold these old manuscripts by the ton for the use of grocers to wrap up butter and any other commodity. If we only had the wealth of manuscript that was originally created it would be easy to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, and show the wonderful scientific scholarship of these mediaeval universities.
As it is, there cannot be the slightest doubt that these were great scientific universities. How, then, has the opposite tradition of science only{149}coming to cultivation in our time obtained a foothold; above all, how has it happened that men have insisted that there was no science in these old days because the Church was opposed to science and would not permit its study or allow of scientific investigation? If we were to believe many writers who have been taken very seriously, anatomy was conducted only under the pain of death, chemistry made one liable to all sorts of penalties and other forms of science were absolutely banned. There is no reason at all for any such declarations from what we know of the history of science. The place where such groundless assertions are found is in the so-called history of religion. Theodium theologicumwas very bitter, and ignorant men said things without knowing, and then their statements were copied by others who knew even less.
Probably there is no more serious blot on the history of education and, above all, the history of science, than the fact that men supposed to be scholarly have been so ready to accept absolutely ignorant statements with regard to the state of science during the Middle Ages. It would be amusing, if it were not so amazing, to recall the utter lack of scholarship that characterized the men who wrote such things, but above all the generations that accepted such history as solemn truth and even conferred academic dignities and degrees on such men. Take a book like Dr. Draper's "Conflict of Science and Religion." It{150}is founded on the uttermost lack of knowledge of the subjects of which he speaks. It is true that he has consulted historical writers. They were all secondary authorities. He had never gone back to look up a single original document of any kind. He was a physician; supposedly at least, then, he should know the history of medicine. He knows nothing at all about the great medical schools of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; of the great period of surgery that occurred at this time he has no inkling. Had he cared really to know anything about the period he could have seen some of the text-books written by these men. Instead we have an exhibition, in his book, of the most consummate assumption of knowledge associated with sublime ignorance and bitter condemnation for old institutions, educational and ecclesiastical, in matters of which he knows nothing, though if he did know, his opinion would surely be just the opposite to that he has expressed.
To a great degree this is true of President White's "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology." Secondary authorities constantly figure in it, and they are quoted from, as a rule, with the definite idea of proving a particular thesis--that theology is opposed to science. Of course it is very different to that of Draper, there is much more of true scholarship in it, but it is sad to think that the prestige of a president of a great university who had been a professor of{151}history should have been lent to statements so egregiously misleading as those which are constantly to be found in his work. Even sadder it is to think that this has been accepted by many people as a scholarly work and as representing the last word on the subject.
The "Cambridge Modern History" in its preface said, that history has been a long conspiracy against the truth and that we must now go back once more to the original documents. "It has become impossible," the editors declare, "for the historical writers of the present age to trust without reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest student continually finds himself deserted, retarded, misled, by the classics of historical literature, and has to hew his own way through multitudinous transactions, periodicals and official publications in order to reach the truth." In no department of history is this expression more true than in that of education, and especially of science and the relation of educational institutions to scientific development. No man should now dare venture to say anything about the state of science at any time in the world's history who has not seen some of the books written at that time. Above all, no one should venture to make little of the past on the strength of what religiously prejudiced writers have said about it.
This story of the mediaeval universities is most illuminating from that standpoint. They were{152}scientific universities closely resembling our own. It has become the custom to talk of them as if they were institutions of learning that accomplished nothing, and wasted their time over trifles. We often hear of how much time was wasted in dialectics in the Middle-Age universities, but surely it was not more than is wasted over technics in our modern university. Hundreds of books were written about the quips and quiddities of logic, but thousands of volumes are full of technics and most of our scientific journals are crowded with it. Let us, then, if for no other reason than our fraternity with them, begin to do justice to these old universities. Their scholars were ardent and zealous, their professors were enthusiastic and laborious. The tomes they issued were larger and their writings more voluminous than those of our own professors. They are hard reading, but no one must dare to criticise them unless he has read them, and, above all, no one must make little of them without knowing something about them at first hand. This is scholarship; the secondary information that has been popular is sciolism. Let us get back to scholarship. That is what we need just now in America.
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"According to my view he who would be good at anything must practise that thing from his youth upwards, both in sport and earnest, in the particular way which the work requires: for example, he who is to be a good builder, should play at building children's houses; and he who is to be a good husbandman at tilling the ground; those who have the care of their education should provide them when young with mimic tools. And they should learn beforehand the knowledge which they will afterwards require for their art. For example, the future carpenter should learn to measure or apply the line in play; and the future warrior should learn riding or some other exercise for amusement, and the teacher should endeavor to direct the children's inclinations and pleasures by the help of amusements to their final aim in life. The sum of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence in which, when he grows up to manhood, he will have to be perfected. Do you agree with me thus far?"--Plato,Laws(Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 173. Scribner, 1908."There will be gymnasia and schools in the midst of the city, and outside the city circuses (playgrounds) and open spaces for riding places and archery. In all of these there should be instructors of the young."--Plato,Laws(Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 82. Scribner, 1902.
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[Footnote 12: The material for this lecture was collected for a course on the History of Education delivered to the Sisters of Charity of Mount St. Vincent's, at St Stephen's Hall, New York City, in January and February, 1909. The material was subsequently developed for a similar set of lectures for the religious teachers in the parochial schools of Philadelphia in the spring of 1910.]
We have come to realize in recent years that in many ways our education of the masses is a failure. Teaching people to read and write and occupying them with books till they are fifteen years of age, when all that they will use their power to read for is to devote themselves to three or four editions of the daily paper and the huge, overgrown Sunday papers on their only day of leisure, with perhaps occasional recourse to a cheap magazine or a cheaper novel, in order to kill time, as they frankly declare, is scarcely worth while. Indeed we have even come to realize that such education gives opportunity rather for the development of discontent than of happiness. The learning to write which enables a man to be a clerk, or a bookkeeper, the occupations that are, as a rule, the least lucrative, that are so full that there is no question of organizing them, that confine men for long hours in dark rooms very often and furnish the least possible opportunity to rise, is of itself not ideal. With some rather{156}disconnected information this is practically all that our ordinary education teaches people, and yet we spend eight years and large sums of money on it. We are just beginning to realize that other forms of education and not these superficial introductions to supposed scholarship, which can mean so little, constitute realities in education.
We have come to realize that Germany, where it is said that more than sixty per cent. of the population has its opportunity for some technical training, so that men are taught the rudiments of a trade or a handicraft or some occupation other than that which shall make them mere routine servants of some one else, does far better than this. By contrast it is remarked that less than one per cent. of our children have the opportunity for such training. We are very prone to think, however, that the technical school is a modern idea. We assume that it owes its origin to the development of mankind in the process of evolution to a point where the recognition of the value of handiwork and craftsmanship has at length arisen. Nothing could well be less true than this. It is true that the eighteenth century saw practically no education of this kind and it was only at the end of the nineteenth century that any modern nation even began to wake up to the necessity for it. In the older times, however, and, above all, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was a magnificent training afforded the masses of the people in all sorts of arts and{157}crafts and trades and occupations, such as can now be obtained only in technical schools. They did not call these teaching institutions technical schools, but they had all the benefits that we would now derive from such schools.
This training the people of these times owed to the gilds. These were, of course, of many forms, the Arts Gilds, the Crafts Gilds, the Merchants Gilds, and then the various Trades Gilds. Boys were apprenticed to men following such an occupation as the youth had expressed a liking for, or that he seemed to be adapted to, or that his parents chose for him, and then began his training. It was conducted for five or six years usually in the house of the master or tradesman to whom he was apprenticed. The master provided him with board and clothes, at least, after the first year, and he gradually trained him in the trade or craft or industry, whatever it might be. After his apprenticeship was over the young man of eighteen or so became a journeyman workman and usually wandered from his native town to other places, sometimes going even over seas in order to learn the foreign secrets of his craft or art or trade, and after three years of this, when ready to settle down, presented evidence as to his accomplishments, and if this was accepted he became a master in his gild. If he were a craftsman or an artisan he made a lock or a bolt or some more artistic piece of work in the metals base or precious, and if this sample was{158}considered worthy of them by his fellow-gildsmen he was admitted as a master in the gild. This was the highest rank of workman, and the men who held it were supposed to be able to do anything that had been done by fellow-workmen up to that time. The piece that he presented was then called a masterpiece, and it is from this that our good old English word masterpiece was derived.
This might seem a very inadequate training, and perhaps appeal to many as not deserving of the name of technical training or schooling. The only way to decide as to that, however, is to appreciate the products turned out by these workmen. It was these graduates of the apprentice-journeyman system of technical training who produced the great series of marvellous art objects which adorn the English cathedrals, the English municipal buildings, the castles and the palaces and the monasteries of the thirteenth century. It was the graduates of these schools, or at least of this method of schooling, who produced the wonderful stained glass, the beautiful bells, the finished ironwork, the surpassing woodwork, the sculpture, the decoration,--in a word, all the artistic details of the architecture of the wonderful Gothic periods of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,--which we have learned to value so highly in recent years. If we wanted to produce such work in our large cities now, we would have to import the workmen. These wonderful{159}products were made in cities so small that we would be apt to think them scarcely more than insignificant towns in our time. No town in England during the thirteenth century, with the possible exception of London, had more than 25,000, and most of the cathedral towns were under 15,000 in population and many of them had less than 10,000.
The extent to which this teaching went and how much it partook of the nature of real technical training can be very well appreciated from recent studies of these early times. There has probably never been more beautiful handicraftsmanship nor better products of what we now call the arts and crafts than during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when this system of educating the masses became thoroughly organized. Any one who knows the details of the decoration of the great Gothic cathedrals or of the monasteries and castles and municipal buildings of these centuries will be well acquainted with these marvels of accomplishment, scattered everywhere throughout England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain in this period. Something of the story of it all I tried to tell, as far as the cathedrals are concerned, in my book, "The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries." Those who care to see another side of it will find it in Mr. A. Ralph Adams Cram's "The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain." [Footnote 13] Mr. Cram, himself a{160}successful modern architect, does not hesitate to declare some of this work as among the most beautiful that ever was made, even including the ancient Greek and Roman productions. In his searches into the ruins of these old abbeys he has found mutilated fragments so consummate in their faultless art that they deserve a place with the masterpieces of sculpture of every age.
[Footnote 13: New York, The Churchman Company, 1905.]
It was not alone, however, in the arts of sculpture and decoration, that is in those finer accomplishments that would occupy only a few of the workmen, but in every detail of adornment that these artistic craftsmen excelled. The locks and bolts, the latches and hinges, the grilles, even the very fences and gates made in wrought iron, are beautiful in every line and in the artistic efficiency of their designs. The carved woodwork is in many places a marvel. When a gate has to be moved, or a hinge is no longer used, or a lock or even a key from these early times goes out of commission, we would consider it almost a sacrilege to throw it away; it is transported to the museum--not alone because of its value as an antique but, as a rule, also because of its charm as a work of art. When a bench-end is no longer needed it, too, finds its way into the museum. As Rev. Augustus Jessopp has shown very clearly in his studies of the old English parishes, these marvels of iron and woodwork were made, in most cases, respectively by the village blacksmith and the village carpenter. In the archives of{161}some of the parishes of the Middle Ages the accounts are found showing that these men were paid for them. When the village blacksmith and the village carpenter becomes the artist artisan capable of producing such good work, then indeed is there an ideal education at work and a technical training that may be boasted of.
The most important feature of this education remains to be spoken of, however. It consisted of the fine development and occupation of the mind that came from this system. Men found happiness in their work. In a population of less than 3,000,000 of people many thousands of workmen, engaged in building these magnificent monuments of that old time, reaped a blessed pleasure in the doing of beautiful things. They, too, had a share in the great monument of which their town was worthily proud and the opportunity to make something worth while for it. Instead of idly envying others they devoted themselves to making whatever their contribution might be as beautiful as possible. It might be only the hinges for the doors or the latch for the gates, it might be only the stonework for the bases of pillars, though it might be the beautiful decoration of their capitals; but everything was being done beautifully and an artist hand was required everywhere. Men must have tried over and over again to make such fine things. They were not done at haphazard nor at one trial. There must have been many a spoiled piece{162}rejected, not so much by the foreman as by the critical, educated taste of the workmen themselves who were able to make such beautiful things. Men who could make such artistic products must have labored much and begun over and over again. This must have made the finest occupation of mind that a great mass of people has ever had in all the world's history.
American millionaires model the gates of their parks and the grille doors of their palaces under the wise direction of modern architects who fortunately know enough to follow the designs created by these village workmen of the olden time. Modern palatial residences are glad to have samples of the wood-carving of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as models for their decoration, and as attractive pieces around which present-day work may be done. We have to import our workmen, even our large cities cannot supply all that we want of them, and yet little towns of a few thousand inhabitants had them in sufficient abundance in the olden time to enable them to make every portion of their great monumental buildings, cathedrals, abbeys, universities, castles and town halls beautiful in every way. This represents the triumph of a technical training afforded by the gilds of workmen of the olden time. We have to insist on this because our present generation has been so sure that ours was the first generation that gave any serious attention to the education of the masses, that it is important to show by{163}contrast how much of a mistake we have made and how well an older generation accomplished its purpose.
The chapter of the "Lost Arts" might well be told with regard to this old time. They had secrets in glass-making which were the tradition of the teaching of particular gilds that we have been unable to find again in the modern time. There is a jewel-like lustre to their colors that is sometimes simply marvellous in its depth and purity. At Lincoln the contrast between old and new glass can be seen very well. The old windows of the thirteenth century time were stoned out by the Parliamentarians when they captured the town, because forsooth they could have no such idolatry as that in their presence. The old sexton, who as man and boy for over sixty years had lived his life under the beautiful tints of the old glass, now saw it scattered upon the floor in fragments. He could not part with it thus and so he gathered it up into bags, broken to pieces though it was, and hid it away in the crypt. In the nineteenth century when they were restoring the cathedral they found these fragments of the old windows. They pieced them together and they proved to be so beautiful that, though they could not fit them as they were in the olden time, at least they succeeded in making a beautiful patchwork of colored glass.
Over on the other side of Lincoln Cathedral they then placed some new windows of the{164}modern time. These were made in France, I believe. They were made about the middle of the nineteenth century, when stained-glass making was almost at its lowest ebb. They were considered to be very beautiful, however, and something like £20,000 sterling was paid for them. The contrast between the two sets of windows is very striking. The old windows are so beautiful, the new ones are so commonplace. The visitor, even though he knows nothing about art, notices the contrast and, if he has an eye for color, views with something of a shock this attempt of the nineteenth century to do something that had been so well done by the gild-trained workmen of the technical schools of the Middle Ages. Though they are represented here only by patched fragments of their work he can scarcely repress a smile at the effect of their work in cheapening the modern. Everywhere it is the same way. Mr. F. Rolfe, writing from Venice, where he has been studying thirteenth-century glass, and talking of its wonderful beauty as compared to anything modern, says: "There are also fragments of two windows, pieced together and the missing parts filled in with the best which modern Murano can do. These show the celebrated Beroviero Ruby Glass (secret lost) of marvellous depth and brilliancy in comparison with which the modern work is merely watery. (The ancient is just like a decanter of port wine.)"
This is the story, no matter where one goes,{165}throughout Europe. At York they would not surrender the town to the Parliamentary army until a guarantee had been given them that their cathedral would not be devastated as had been the case elsewhere. Besides General Ireton was a friend of the Yorkists and he was ready to agree to the stipulation. The agreement was not fully carried out, fanatic soldiers could not be entirely restrained, but some of the old glass remains. There is probably nothing more beautiful in all the realm of artistic glass-making than the famous Five Sisters window at York. In France the Revolution repeated what the Puritans accomplished of ruin in England. Notre Dame has no trace of its old glass. In some of the cathedrals, however, there has fortunately been preserved for us enough of it to know how wonderfully the makers of it must have been trained, and to let us realize how much of experiment, of investigation, of study that we would now call applied chemistry must have gone to the making of this wonderful old glass. These technical schools were not merely passing on arts and crafts traditions, but each generation was adding to the secrets of the gilds by original research of its own. We are prone to think that such work of original investigation was reserved for our time, but that is only because of the foolish self-complacency which blinds us to what other generations did.
The stained glass of the cathedrals of Bourges{166}and of Chartres shows the marvellous success of these old workers in glass and their power to make enduring products. It is a mystery to see how their blues have lasted while the sun has shone through them all these years and caused no deterioration or only such as softens and adds to beauty but not really causes to fade. Blue had to be used in great profusion on the windows because the symbolism of color was well determined and blue stood for the virtue of purity and was the Blessed Virgin's color. It had to come in, therefore, on nearly all occasions. Usually by irradiation blue causes surrounding colors to lose something of their tint, and by contrast often spoils what would ordinarily be expected to prove beautiful color effects. These old workmen had found the secret of using it in such a way as not thus to spoil surrounding colors, not to permit it to be too assertive, yet we have wonderful enduring blues that have come down to us practically unchanged through all these centuries. Where the workmen of the old time set themselves producing pure color effects, their windows look like jewels and coruscate in the light of the setting sun--for their most charming effects were particularly obtained in the west windows--with a glorious beauty that has appealed to every generation since.
It was not alone in the building trades, however, that these fine things were accomplished. Bookmaking reached a degree of perfection that{167}has never been excelled. Humphreys, the authority on illuminated books, declares that the manuscript volumes of the thirteenth century, illuminated as they are by the patient labor and the finely developed taste of this time, are the most beautiful ever made. We have one example of the thirteenth-century illuminated book in the Lenox Library in New York for which, I believe, the museum authorities were quite willing to pay some $18,000, and it is worth much more than that now, for it is a wondrously beautiful example of the illuminations of the time. Like the glassmakers, these bookmakers had secrets that have been lost, and that we with all our knowledge of science and of art in the modern time, or at least our fondly complacent notion of our knowledge of art and science, are unable to find the formulas for. They used blues in their illuminating work that have never faded, though blues are so prone to fade on parchment. They managed their blues in wonderful way and they still are as fresh and as undisturbing of the harmony of other colors as in the long ago. They could burnish gold and it stays as bright as when it was first applied to the leaves, even after seven centuries. We have lost the art of burnishing gold in such applied work and ours becomes dull after a time.
Nor was this teaching of technics confined only to the men. From this period we have the most beautiful needlework in the world. The famous{168}Cope of Ascoli has recently attracted wide attention. Mr. Pierpont Morgan purchased it and was willing to pay $60,000 for it, though the jewels that had been on it originally had been removed. His experts assured him that it was the most beautiful piece of needlework in the world. Afterwards it was found to have been stolen, and so he restored it to the Italian Government, who did not return it to the little convent of Ascoli in North Central Italy, from which it had been stolen and where it was made at the end of the thirteenth century (1284), Elsewhere in Europe they were doing just as charming work with the needle. In fact England, not Italy, was the acknowledged home of it. The English Cope of Cyon is another notable example of needlework from this time. Thirteenth-century work with the needle is famous in the history of the art. It was the product of just the same forces that gave us the wonderful stained glass. They, too, used colors and applied great art principles to this unpromising mode of expression and accomplished great results. I have had the privilege of seeing the copy of the Cope of Ascoli that was made while in Mr. Morgan's possession, and, like the stained glass of York or Bourges or Chartres, it is one of the things not likely ever to be forgotten, so beautiful a realization is it of what is best in taste and art.
The supremely interesting feature of this popular education was its effect upon the lives, and{169}minds, and happiness of the workmen. Men got up to their work in the morning not as to a routine occupation in which they did the same things over and over again, until they were so tired that they could scarcely do them any more, and then came home to rest from fatigue in weariness of mind and of body. But they awoke from sound sleep with the memory that ideas had been coming to them the day before, and especially towards evening that, now with fresh bodies, they might be able to execute better, and that it would surely be a pleasure to work out. They came to their work with an artist's spirit, hopeful that they would be able to express in the material what they saw so clearly with their mind's eye. It was tiresome working but the hours were not long, and always there was the thought of accomplishment worthy of the cathedral or the abbey or the town hall, worthy to be placed beside the masterpieces in the best sense of that dear old word, that their fellow-workmen of the other gilds were accomplishing around them. They went to bed healthily tired but not weary, sometimes to dream of their work, not as a nightmare, but as something that represented possibilities of accomplishment. When technical schools can lift men up to this plane then, indeed, there is a chance for happiness even for the workmen.
Compare with this for a moment the lot of the modern workman. He goes out in the morning to work that seldom is interesting, that he{170}practically never cares to do only that he must get money enough to support himself and his family, and that requires the frequent repetition of routine movements until he is weary, body and soul. He must work or starve. He has very little interest in it as a rule, often none at all, and sometimes he is thoroughly disgusted with it. He must earn money enough to get bread to live to-day so that he shall be able to go and work again tomorrow. And so the humdrum round from day to day with nothing to relieve the prospect until the darkness comes when no man can work. As to dreams of accomplishment or pleasure in his work, as the artist has, there is practically none. He needs must go on, and that is all about it. Is it any wonder that this breeds discontent?
Happy is the man who has found his work. There is only one happiness in this little life of ours and that consists in having work to do that one cares to do, and the chance to do it in such order and with such rewards as make life reasonably pleasant, satisfying from the material side. There are no pleasures in life equal to the joy of the worker in his work when he cares for it. Pleasures are at most but passing incidents. The work is what counts. These workmen of the Middle Ages taught in the technical schools of that olden time had chances for happiness, chances that were well taken, such as perhaps no other generation of workmen could have.
Of course it may be said that, after all, there{171}were only opportunities for a few to work at the great architectural monuments of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In a sense this is true, but it must not be forgotten that without modern mechanical means and with the slow, patient laborious effort required to raise these huge edifices, much time and many men were required. Besides the cathedrals and the abbeys there were many private castles and town halls, and then in many places the homes of the gilds themselves, some of which, as, for instance, the famous hall of the clothmakers at Ypres, are among the most beautiful monuments of the architecture of that period. In everything, however, the workmen had a chance to do beautiful work. In the textile industries this is the time when some of the most beautiful cloth ever made was invented and brought to perfection. Linen was woven with wonderful skill, satin was invented and brought to perfection, silk brocades of marvellous designs of many kinds were made, threads of gold and silver were introduced into the textures, wonderfully fine effects were studied out and applied in the industries, and just as in the decorative arts so in the arts of cloth-weaving and of many other forms of human endeavor, there was an artistic craftsmanship such as we have lost sight of to a great extent in our age of machinery.
The Irish poet, Yeats, in bidding a group of American friends good-bye some five years ago, said that we had many opportunities for culture{172}in life here in America, but we must be careful to take them fully and not deceive ourselves with counterfeits, or we would surely miss something of the precious privilege and development that might be ours. Among other things he said, that we must not forget "that until the very utensils in the kitchen are useful as well as beautiful no nation can think of itself as really cultured." If men and women can bear without constraint to handle things that are merely useful without beauty in them, there is something seriously lacking in their culture. Whatever is merely useful is hideous. Nature never made anything that was merely useful in all the world's history. The things of nature around us are all wonderful utilities and yet charmingly beautiful. The pretty flowers are seed envelopes meant to attract birds and insects, so that the seeds may be scattered. The beautiful fruits are other seed envelopes meant to attract man and the animals, so that the seeds may be carried far and wide. The leaves of trees are eminently useful as lungs and stomach and yet are beautiful and have a wondrous variety and a charm all their own.
This precious lesson of nature they seem to have understood well in the Middle Ages and applied it with marvellous perfection. It has often been called to attention that portions of Gothic edifices in dark corners, out of the sight of the ordinary visitor, are just as beautifully decorated in their own way as those which are{173}especially on exhibition. The gravestones in their churches, though meant to be trodden under foot and often covered by the dirt from the shoes of passersby, yet had bronze ornaments that are so beautiful that in the modern time artists take rubbings of them so as to carry the designs away with them. While every portion of the church is beautiful, the same thing was true in the castles and to a great extent in their own homes. The furniture of that time, even in the houses of smaller tradesmen, was beautiful in its simplicity, its solidity, its charm of line, and then, above all, its absolute rejection of all pretence of seeming to be anything other than it was. Their drinking cups were beautiful, their domestic utensils of various kinds had charming lines and, though they did not have as many as we have in the modern time, what they had were so beautiful that now we find them on exhibition in museums, and we are beginning to imitate them in order that the wealthy may have as bric-à-brac ornaments in their houses, the utensils which were in ordinary use in the homes of the middle classes of the thirteenth century.
There was a satisfaction for the workman in making all these beauteous things. He knew, as a rule, for whom they were to be made. He knew where they were to be placed. He often saw his handiwork afterwards. His reputation depended on it. There was a happiness then in doing it well, and in taking his time to it, that surpasses{174}any idle pleasure away from his work, as happiness always surpasses pleasure. There was the joy of the doing, and joys we are coming to appreciate mean ever so much more than pleasures. What we want at the present time are more joys and less pleasures. How many men and women were blessed in that time because they had found their work. That is the only real happiness in life. How profusely it was scattered over the mediaeval world.
Almost nothing that was made was of a character that could be done by mere routine. A man had to occupy both mind and body in the making of the textiles, of the kitchen utensils, of the furniture, of the various metal utensils required for houses, and so for nearly everything else. It is the workman who has mere routine work that has opportunity to think about other things and brood over his lot and grow more and more dissatisfied. It is the man who does not have to give his mind to what he is doing, but who while his body grows more and more tired accomplishing a limited set of constantly repeated movements, may allow his mind to ponder gloomily over his condition, compare it with that of others and grow envious, who has the worst possible seeds of discontent in his occupation.
Men who did this sort of work that required active mental attention, learned to think for themselves. When they had moments of leisure, not having newspapers and superficial shallow books{175}to waste their time on, they did some thinking. Any one who has had a little intimate contact with the old-fashioned artisans, the shoemakers, the harnessmakers, the cabinetmakers who work at benches, the woodcarvers, men who have real trades, knows how often one finds among them a deep, serious thinker with regard to the problems of life around. They do not drink in other people's opinions and then think that they are thinking, because they are able to repeat some formulas of words. Such men are not easily led. They make good jurymen, they have logic; above all, they are thoughtful. There must have been much of this in the old time among the handicraftsmen of the Middle Ages. It is doubtless to this that we owe the fact that these men were gradually organized in many wonderful ways into the basic democracy on which the liberties of the English-speaking people of the world are founded. We shall have much more to say of this in treating of the wonderful fraternal organizations, with solutions for nearly every problem of social need, which these men succeeded in working out for themselves in times considered to have been benighted.
There was another phase of the education of these members of the gilds that is even more interesting because it trenches particularly on the intellectual side of life, the provision of entertainment and solves an important social problem. This was the organization of dramatic{176}performances for the people in which the members of the gilds took part. The stories of the Old Testament and of the New, and of the lives of the Saints, and of various incidents connected with Church history, were worked up into plays and were presented in the various cities. We have the remains of many cycles of these plays. They represent the beginnings of our modern dramatic literature. They were simple and very naive, but they were interesting and they concerned some of the deepest and most beautiful thoughts with which man has ever been concerned. The members of the gilds and their families took part in them. The principal sets of plays were given in the springtime at the various festivals of the Church, so frequent then. Most of the spare time from Christmas on, especially the long hours of the winter evenings, were occupied in preparations of various kinds for these spring dramatic performances. It is impossible to conceive of anything more likely to give people innocent and joyful yet absorbing occupations of mind than these preparations.
Some of the young men and women were chosen as the actors and had to learn their parts and be rehearsing them. Choruses had to be trained, costumes had to be made, some scenery had to be arranged, everything was done by the members of the particular gild for each special portion of the cycle of the play assigned to them. Garments had actually to be manufactured out of the wool,{177}the dyeing of them had to be managed, spangles had to be made for them, there must have been busy occupation of the most interesting kind for many hands. Of course it is easy to say that these naive productions could not have meant very much for the people. Any one who thinks so, however, has had no experience with private theatricals, and above all has never had the opportunity to see how much they mean for the occupation of young folks' minds and the keeping of them out of mischief during the winter months when they are much indoors. When the Jesuits founded their great schools in Europe they laid it down as one of the rules of the institute to be observed in all their schools, that plays in certain number should be given every year, partly for the sake of the educational effect of such occupation with dramatic literature, but mainly because of the interest aroused by them and the occupation of mind for young folks which they involve.
As to how much they may mean, perhaps the best way for those of our day to realize it is to take the example of Oberammergau with its great Passion Play still given. Here we have a typical instance of a Passion play of the olden time maintaining itself. The preparations for it occupy the villagers in their mountain home not for months only, but for years before it is given. It represents the centre of the village life, is the main portion of its activities. The place of a{178}family with regard to the play constitutes its position in the village aristocracy. Something of this must have been true in the gilds of the Middle Ages in these dramatic performances. Just as at Oberammergau nearly every one of the villagers has something to do or is in some way connected with the preparation of the play, so most of the members of the particular gilds and probably their families had some connection with their plays. The children had their interest and curiosity aroused and were allowed to help in their measure, and then when the glorious day of the performance came, there must have been joy in the hearts of all and rejoicing over its success. This is the sort of occupation of mind that we would like to be able to provide for our people in the cities and towns, but circumstances are such that we cannot.
Those who would think that these old Passion and mystery plays meant very little for the people who did not take part in them and, above all, very little for the spectators, in an educational way, forget entirely that this side of the work of the old plays can also be studied at Oberammergau. This little town of 1,400 inhabitants occupies itself for years to such good effect that, when the performances are given crowds flock from all over the world to witness them. When I was there in 1900 I think that I saw the most cosmopolitan gathering that I had ever been in, though I have been to several International{179}Medical Congresses. There were Russians and Poles, and Scandinavians and Americans and Australians, and there stayed in the house with us a little party from Buenos Ayres, and our seat companions in the train were English, who had been born in India, and they pointed out to us some South Africans who had come to see the Passion Play. This village of 1,400 inhabitants succeeds in producing actors who are capable of arousing thus the interest of the world, and they have artistic taste enough to mount it well, and they manage their performances in thoroughly dignified fashion, and yet in many ways they have the simplicity and, above all, the dear old simple faith of the mediaeval people from whom they come. This is the best possible evidence that we could have of the place of the old plays in the life of the people.
We have another form of evidence that is extremely interesting. Out of these old mystery plays, dramas of the Nativity and of the Passion with the introductions and interludes to these central facts of creation, there developed first the morality plays and then the drama of the modern time. Twice in the history of the world, each time quite independent of the other, the drama has originated anew out of religious ceremonials. In old Greece this is the origin of the drama; in the Middle Ages exactly the same thing happened. Nor was this origin unworthy in any way of the great development that came. Some of the old{180}mystery plays were written with wonderful dramatic insight and with a capacity to bring out dramatic moments that is very admirable. As for the morality plays we have had one of them repeated to us in recent years, "Everyman," and well it has served to show how able was the genius of these old dramatic writers. People of the modern sordid time listened for two hours enraptured and then went away, paying the tribute of silence to this wonderful arrangement of the ideas connected with such a familiar theme as the four last things to be remembered--death, judgment, heaven and hell. Fine as is "Everyman," there are some critics who think the "Castle of Perseverance," written about the same time, the latter part of the fifteenth century, an even greater play.
The most important feature of this work in dramatics of the old gilds was not the entertainment, though with what we know of how low entertainment can sink and how much it can mean for degradation, surely that would be sufficient, but the fact that all of the workmen and their families in the towns were occupied with the high thoughts and the beautiful phrases and the uplifting motives and the deep significance of the Bible stories. These are so simple that no one could fail to understand. They are written so close to the heart of human nature that even the simplest child can appreciate their meaning. They are full of the most precious lessons, yet without{181}any of that moralizing that is often so sterile and so characteristic of what we call mere preaching. All the townspeople were occupied for months beforehand with these stories. They got ever closer and closer to the heart of the mystery in them. They got closer thus to the heart of the mystery of life. They were made to feel the presence of the Creator and of Providence while occupying themselves with thoughts that are the essence of deepest poetry. What would one not give to be able to occupy a great number of people, for many hours every winter, with such thoughts, not alone for their moral effect but their real educational value. They did not add useless information to useless information, but they did bring development of mind and, above all, heart. In my book "The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries," [Footnote 14] I tell the story of how the various trades gilds in the towns divided these phases of the mystery plays among themselves. Every one had an opportunity to do something. They were the tanners and the plasterers, the cardmakers and the fullers, the coopers, the armorers, the gaunters and glovers, the shipwrights, the pessners, fishmongers and mariners, the parchment-makers and bookbinders, the hosiers, the spicers, the pewterers and founders, the tylers and smiths, the chandlers, the orfevers, the goldsmiths, the goldbeaters, the money-makers, and then many other trades whose names sound curious to us of{182}the modern time. The bowyers or makers of bows; the fletchers or arrow featherers; the hay-resters or workers in horsehair, the bowlers or bowlmakers, the feystours, makers of saddle-trees; the verrours, glaciers; the dubbers, refurbishers of clothes; the lumniners or illuminators, the scriveners or public writers; the drapers, the mercers; the lorymers or bridle-makers; the spurriers, makers of spurs; the cordwaners; the bladesmiths; the curriers; the scalers, and many others, all had their chances to take part in these old plays.
[Footnote 14: Catholic Summer School Press, New York, 1907.]
They were not being entertained, but were themselves active agents in the doing of things for themselves and for others. This is what brings real contentment with it. Superficial entertainment that occupies the surface of the mind for the moment means very little for real recreation of mind. What men need is to have something that makes them think along lines different to those in which they are engaged in their daily work. This gives real rest. The blood gets away from parts of the brain where it has been all day, flows to new parts, and recreation is the result. Such entertainment, however, must occupy the very centre of interest for the moment and not be something seen in passing and then forgotten. The modern psychotherapeutist would say, that no better amusement than this could possibly be obtained since it brought real diversion of mind. Above all, we of the modern time who know how vicious, how immoral in its tendencies, how{183}suggestive of all that is evil, how familiarizing with what is worst in men until familiarity begets contempt, commercial entertainment in the shape of dramatics, so-called at least, may be, cannot help but admire and envy and would emulate, if we could, this fine solution of a very pressing social problem that the gilds found in an educational feature that is of surpassing value.
There are three post-graduate courses in modern life that are quite beyond the control of our educational authorities, though we talk much of our interest and our accomplishments in education. These three have more influence over the people than all of our popular education. They are the newspaper, the library and the theatre. Some of us who know what the library is doing are not at all satisfied with it. We are spending an immense amount of money mainly to furnish the cheapest kind of mere superficial amusement to the people of our cities. In so doing we are probably hurting their power of concentration of mind instead of helping it, and it is this concentration of mind that is the best fruit of education. This is, however, another story. Of the newspaper, as we now have it, the less said the better. It is bringing our young people particularly into intimate contact with many of the vicious and brutalizing things of life, the sex crimes, brutal murders and prize-fights, so that uplift and refinement almost become impossible. As for the theatre, no one now thinks of it as{184}educationally valuable. Our plays are such superficial presentations of the life around us that once they have had their run no one thinks of reviving them. This is the better side of the theatre. The worst side is absolutely in the hands of the powers of evil and is confessedly growing worse all the time.
Besides these indirect educational features the gilds encouraged certain formal educational institutions that are of great interest, and that have been misunderstood for several centuries until recent years. In many places they maintained grammar schools and these grammar schools were eminently successful in helping to make scholars of such of the sons of the members of the gilds as wanted to lift themselves above their trades into the intellectual life. We know more about the grammar school at Stratford-on-Avon than of any of the others. The reason for this is that we have been interested in the antiquities of Shakespeare's town and the conditions which obtained in it, before as well as during his lifetime. The Gild of the Holy Cross of Stratford maintained a grammar school in which many pupils were educated. That this was not a singular feature of gild work is evident from what we know of many other gilds. These gild schools were suppressed in the reformation time and then later had to be replaced by the so-called Edward VI grammar schools, in one of which it is usually said that Shakespeare was educated. As the English{185}historian Gairdner declared not long since in his "History of the Pre-Reformation Times in England," Edward has obtained a reputation for foundations in charity and in education that he by no means deserved. The schools founded by him particularly were nothing more than re-establishments of popular schools of the olden time whose endowment had been confiscated. The new foundations were makeshifts to appease popular clamor.
The old gilds did not believe in devoting all the early years of children to mere book-learning. Some few with special aptitudes for this were provided with opportunities. The rest were educated in various ways at home until their apprenticeship to a trade began, and then their real education commenced. Our own experience with education in the early years from six to eight or nine is not particularly favorable. Children who enter school a little later than the legal age graduate sooner and with even higher marks than those who begin at the age of six. This has been shown by statistics in England in many cities. What is learned with so much fuss and worry and bother for the children and the teachers from six to eight, is rapidly picked up in a few months at the age of eight or nine, and then is better assimilated. The grammar schools of the gilds took the children about the age of nine or ten and then gave them education in letters. That education, by the way, began at six in the morning and,{186}with two hours of intervals, continued until four in the afternoon. They believed in the eight-hour day for children, but they began it good and early so that artificial light might not constitute a problem.
The best schooling, however, afforded by the gilds, after that in self-help of course, was that in mutual aid. We are establishing schools of philanthropy in the modern time and we talk much about the organization of charity and other phases of mutual aid. In this as in everything else we map out, as George Eliot once said, our ignorance of things, or at least our gropings after solutions of problems, in long Greek names, which often serve to produce the idea that we know ever so much more about these subjects than we really do. The training in brotherly love and helpfulness in the old gilds was a fine school. Those who think that it is only now that ideas of mutuality in sharing responsibilities, of co-operation and co-ordination of effort for the benefit of all, of community interests, are new, should study Toulmin Smith's work on the gilds, or read Brentano on the foreign gilds. There is not a phase of our organization of charity in the modern time that was not well anticipated by the members of the gilds, and that, too, in ways such as we cannot even hope to rival unless we change the basis on which our helpfulness is founded. Theirs was not a stooping down of supposed better, or so-called upper classes, to help the lower,{187}but organization among the people to help themselves so that there was in no sense a pauperization.