{opp422}
RATHHAUS (LÜBECK)
The extent and very natural development of this community of interests must ever attract attention. It is the first time in our modern history that it occurs and men of some seven different races and tongues were at last drawn into it. In this it represents the greatest advance of history, for it led to assimilation of laws and of liberties, with some of the best features of each nation's old-time customs preserved in the new codes. Its extension even to Novgorod, in what is now the heart of Russia is a surprising demonstration of successful enterprise and spread of influence almost incredible. The settling of the trade disputes of this distant Russian City in the courts of a North Sea town, is an evidence of advance in commercial relations emphasized by the writer in the Britannica, that deserves to be well weighed as a manifestation of what is often thought{423}to be the exclusively modern recognition of the rights of commerce and the claims of justice over even national feelings.
"The league between Lübeck and Hamburg was not the only, and possibly not the first, league among the German towns. But it gradually absorbed all others. Besides the influence of foreign commercial interests there were other motives which compelled the towns to union. The chief of these were the protection of commercial routes both by sea and land, and the vindication of town independence as opposed to claims of the landed aristocracy. The first to join the League were the Wendish towns to the East, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, etc., which had always been intimately connected with Lübeck, and were united by a common system of laws known as the 'Lübisches Recht' (Lübeck Laws). The Saxon and Westphalian towns had long possessed a league among themselves; they also joined themselves to Lübeck. Lübeck now became the most important town in Germany. It had already surpassed Cologne both in London and Bruges. It soon gained a similar victory over Wisby. At a great convention in which twenty-four towns from Cologne to Revel took part, it was decided that appeals from Novgorod which had hitherto been decided at Wisby should henceforth be brought to Lübeck."
After much travail and vexation of spirit, after much diplomacy and political and parliamentary discussion, after much striving on the part of the men in all nations, who have the great cause of universal peace for mankind at heart, we have reached a position where at least commercial difficulties can be referred to a sort of international court for adjudication. The standing of this court is not very clear as yet. Special arrangements at least are required, if not special treaties in many cases, even for the reference of such merely commercial difficulties as debt-collecting to it. In the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century special tribunals had to be erected for the settlement of such difficulties between nations. In the Twentieth Century the outlook is more hopeful and the actual accomplishment is indeed encouraging. In the Thirteenth Century with the absence of the telegraph and the cable, with the slowness of sailing vessels and the distance of towns{424}emphasizing all the difficulties of the situation, the Hanseatic League succeeded in obtaining an international tribunal, whose judgments with regard to commercial difficulties were final and were accepted by men of many different races and habits and customs, and to which causes were referred without any of the immense machinery apparently required at the present time.
This is the real triumph of the commercial development of the Thirteenth Century. While it may be astonishing to many modern people to learn how much was accomplished in this utterly unexpected quarter, it will not be a surprise to those who realize the thoroughly practical character of the century and the perfectly matter of fact way in which it went about settling all the difficulties that presented themselves; and how often they succeeded in reaching a very practical if not always ideal solution. The sad feature of the case is to think that most of this coming together of nations was lost by the gradual development of national feeling, much of benefit as there may have been in that for the human race, and by the drawing of the language lines between nations more closely than they had been before, for the next three centuries saw the development of modern tongues into the form which they have held ever since.
Hansa did more than almost any other institution in northern Europe to establish the reign of Law. If it had accomplished no other purpose, this would make it eminently worthy of the study of those who are interested in sociology and social evolution. Before the time of Hansa the merchant by sea or land was liable to all sorts of impositions, arbitrary taxes, injustices, and even the loss of life as well of his goods. As Hansa gained in power however, these abuses disappeared. Perhaps the most noteworthy improvement came with regard to navigation. There is a story told of a famous rock in Brittany on which many ships were wrecked during the Middle Ages. Even as late as the Thirteenth Century sometimes false lights were displayed on this rock with the idea of tempting vessels to their destruction on it. Everything that was thrown ashore in the neighborhood was considered to be the property of the people who gathered it, except that a certain portion of its value had to be paid to the Lord of the Manor.{425}This worthy representative of the upper classes is said to have pointed out the rock to some visiting nobleman friends one day, and declared that it was more precious to him than the most precious stone in the diadem of any ruling monarch in Europe. This represents the state of feeling with regard to such subjects when Hansa started in to correct the abuses.
It may be looked upon as a serious disgrace to the Thirteenth Century that such a low state of ethical feeling should have existed, but it is the amelioration of conditions which obliterated such false sentiments that constitutes the triumph of the period. On the other hand we must not with smug self-complacency think that our generation is so much better than those of the past. It is easy to be pharisaical while we forget that many a fortune in modern times suffers shipwreck on the coasts of business and investment, because the false lights of advertising intended to deceive, are displayed very prominently, for those who are only anxious as were the mariners of the olden times to make their fortunes. Doubtless too the proprietors of many of the papers which display such advertisements, and it is nonsense to say that they are unconscious of the harm they do, are quite as proud of the magnificent revenue that their advertising columns bring to them as was the Breton noble of the Thirteenth Century. Man has not changed much in the interval.
Lest it should be thought that even the present-day initiation into secret societies of various kinds is the invention of modern times, it seems well to give some of the details of the tests through which those seeking to be members of the Hanseatic League were subjected, by those who were already initiated. It may possibly seem that some of these customs were too barbarous to mention in the same breath with the present-day initiations, but if it is recalled that at least once a year some serious accident is reported as the result of the thoughtless fooling of "frat" students at our universities, this opinion may be withdrawn. Miss Helen Zimmern in her story of the Hansa Towns already quoted several times, has a paragraph or two of descriptions of these that we shall quote. It may be well to remember that these tests were not entirely without a serious significance for the members of the Hansa. Much{426}was expected of those who belonged to the Hansa Guild. A number of precious trade secrets were entrusted them, and they alone knew the methods and mysteries of Hansa. In order that these might not by any possibility be betrayed, the members of Hansa who lived in foreign countries were forbidden to marry while abroad and were bound under the severest penalties to live a life of celibacy. They were not supposed to be absent from the houses assigned to them during the night, and their factories so called, or common-places of residence, were guarded by night watchman and fierce dogs in order to secure the keeping of these rules.
Besides torture was a very common thing in those times and a man who belonged to a country that happened to be at war for the moment, might very easily be subjected to torture for some reason or another with the idea of securing important information from him. If the members of Hansa wanted to be reasonably assured that new members would not give up their secrets without a brave struggle, they had no better way than by these tests, for which there was therefore some excuse. As to the brutality of the tests perhaps Miss Zimmern in maidenly way has said too much. We commend her paragraphs to the modern committees of reception of college secret societies, because here as elsewhere this generation may get points from the Thirteenth Century.
{opp426}
MINSTER (CHORIN, GERMANY)
CITY GATE (NEUBRANDENBURG)
"We cannot sully our pages by detailing the thirteen different games or modes of martyrdom that were in use at Bergen. Our more civilized age could not tolerate the recital. In those days they attracted a crowd of eager spectators who applauded the more vociferously the more cruel and barbarous the tortures. The most popular were those practices known as the smoke, water and flogging games; mad, cruel pranks calculated to cause a freshman to lose health and reason. Truly Dantesque hell tortures were these initiations into Hansa mysteries. Merely to indicate their nature we will mention that for the smoke game the victim was pulled up the big chimney of the Schutting while there burned beneath him the most filthy materials, sending up a most nauseous stench and choking wreaths of smoke. While in this position he was asked a number of questions, to which he was forced, under yet more terrible penalties, to reply. If{427}he survived his torture he was taken out into the yard and plied under the pump with six tons of water." (Even the "Water Cure" is not new).
There was a variety about the tests at different times and places that show no lack of invention on the part of the members of Hansa. With regard to other water tests Miss Zimmern has furnished some interesting details:
"The 'water' game that took place at Whitsuntide consisted in first treating the probationer to food, and then taking him out to sea in a boat. Here he was stripped thrown into the ocean, ducked three times, made to swallow much sea-water, and thereafter mercilessly flogged by all the inmates of the boats. The third chief game was no less dangerous to life and limb. It took place a few days after, and was a rude perversion of the May games. The victims had first to go out into the woods to gather the branches with which later they were to be birched. Returned to the factory, rough horse play pranks were practised upon them. Then followed an ample dinner, which was succeeded by mock combats, and ended in the victims being led into the so-called Paradise, where twenty-four disguised men whipped them till they drew blood, while outside this black hole another party made hellish music with pipes, drums and triangles to deafen the screams of the tortured. The 'game' as considered ended when the shrieks of the victims were sufficiently loud to overcome the pandemonic music." Some of the extreme physical cruelties of the initiations our modern fraternities have eliminated, but the whole story has a much more familiar air than we might have expected.
Probably the most interesting feature of the history of the Hanseatic League is the fact that this great combination for purposes of trade and commerce proved a source of liberty for the citizens of the various towns, and enabled them to improve their political status better than any other single means at this precious time of development of legal and social rights. This is all the more interesting because great commercial combinations with similar purposes in modern times have usually proved fruitful rather of opposite results. A few persons have been very much benefited by them, or at least have made much money by them, which is quite another thing, though money is{428}supposed to represent power and influence, but the great mass of the people have been deprived of opportunities to rise and have had taken from them many chances for the exercise of initiative that existed before.
There is a curious effect of Hansa upon the political fortunes of the people of the cities that were members of the League which deserves to be carefully studied. As with regard to so many other improvements that have come in the history of the race, it was not a question so much of the recognition of great principles as of money and revenues that proved the origin of amelioration of civic conditions. These commercial cities accumulated wealth. Money was necessary for their rulers for the maintenance of their power and above all for the waging of war. In return for moneys given for such purposes the cities claimed for the inhabitants and were granted many privileges. These became perpetuated and as time went on were added to as new opportunities for the collection of additional revenues occurred, until finally an important set of fundamental rights with documentary confirmation were in the hands of the city authorities. One would like to think that this state of affairs developed as the result of the recognition on the part of the ruling sovereign, of the benefits that were conferred on his realm by having in it, or associated with it, an important trading city whose enterprising citizens gave occupation to many hands. This was very rarely the case, however, but as was true of the legal rights obtained by England's citizens during the Thirteenth Century, it was largely a question of the coordination of taxation and legislative representation and the consequent attainment of privileges.
The most important effect on the life of Europe and the growth of civilization that the Hanseatic League exerted, was its success in showing that people of many different nations and races, living under very different circumstances, might still be united under similar laws that would enable them to accomplish certain objects which they had in view. Germans, Slavs and English learned to live in one another's towns and while observing the customs of these various places maintained the privileges of their homes. The mutual influence of these people on one another, many of them being the most practical and{429}enterprising individuals of the time, could scarcely fail to produce noteworthy effects in broadening the minds of those with whom they came in contact. It is to this period that we must trace the beginnings of international law. Hansa showed the world how much commercial relations were facilitated by uniform laws and by just treatment of even the citizens of foreign countries. It is to commerce that we owe the first recognition of the rights of the people of other countries even in time of war. If the Hanseatic League had done nothing else but this, it must be considered as an important factor in the development of our modern civilization and an element of influence great as any other in this wonderful century.
HINGE FROM CATHEDRAL, SCHLESTADT
{430}
EVENTS.
{432}
To most people it would seem quite out of the question that a chapter on America in the Thirteenth Century might have been written. One of the most surprising chapters for most readers in the previous edition was that on Great Explorers and the Foundation of Geography, for it was a revelation to learn that Thirteenth Century travelers had anticipated all of our discoveries in the Far and in the Near East seven centuries ago. Certain documents have turned up, however, which make it very clear that with the same motives as those which urged Eastern travelers, Europeans went just as far towards the West at this time. Documents found in the Vatican Archives in 1903 and exhibited at St. Louis in 1904, have set at rest finally and absolutely the long disputed question of the discovery of America by the Norsemen, and in connection with these the story of America in the Thirteenth Century might well have been told. There is a letter from Pope Innocent III., dated February 13, 1206, addressed to the Archbishop of Norway, who held jurisdiction over Greenland, which shows not only the presence of the Norsemen on the American Continent at this time, but also that they had been here for a considerable period, and that there were a number of churches and pastors and large flocks in whom the Roman See had a lively interest. There are Americana from three other Popes of the Thirteenth Century. John XXI. wrote, in 1276, Nicholas III. two letters, one dated January 31, 1279, and another June 9, 1279, and Martin III. wrote 1282. We have inserted on the opposite page a reproduction of a portion of the first Papal document extant relating to America, the letter of Pope Innocent III., taken from "The Norse Discovery of America" (The Norraena Society, N. Y., 1908). The wordGrenelandie, underscored, indicates the subject. The writing as an example of the chirography of the century is of interest.
In most historical attempts at government by the people it has been recognized that legislation is better balanced if there are two chambers in the law-making body, one directly elected by the people, the other indirectly chosen and representing important vested interests that are likely to make its members conservative. The initiative for legislation comes, as a rule, from the direct representatives of the people, while the upper chamber represses radical law-making or sudden changes in legislative policy, yet does not hamper too much the progress of democracy.
{433}
PART OF LETTER OF POPE INNOCENT III. MENTIONING GREENLAND.
{434}
During the last few years a crisis in English politics has led to a very general demand for a modification of the status of the House of Lords, while almost similar conditions have led to the beginning at least of a similar demand for the modification of our Senate in this country. Both these upper chambers have come to represent vested interests to too great a degree. The House of Lords has been the subject of special deprecation. The remark is sometimes made that it is unfortunate that England is weighted down by this political incubus, the House of Lords, which is spoken of as a heritage from the Middle Ages. The general impression, of course, is that the English House of Lords, as at present constituted, comes down from the oldest times of constitutional government in England. Nothing could well be more untrue than any such idea.
The old upper chamber of England, the medieval House of Lords, was an eminently representative body. Out of the 625 or more of members of the English House of Lords at the present time about five hundred and fifty hold their seats by heredity. Only about seventy-five are in some sense elective. At least one-half of these elected peers, however, must be chosen from the hereditary nobility of Ireland and Scotland. Nearly nineteen-twentieths of the membership of the House of Lords, as at present constituted, owe their place in national legislation entirely to heredity. Until the reformation so-called this was not so. More than one-half of the English House of Lords, a good working majority, consisted of the Lords spiritual. Besides the Bishops and Archbishops there were the Abbots and Priors of monasteries, and the masters of religious orders. These men as a rule had come up from the people. They had risen to their positions by intellectual abilities and by administrative capacity. The abbots and other superiors of religious orders had been chosen by their monks as a rule because, having shown that they knew how to rule themselves, they were deemed most fitting to rule over others.
Even in our day, when the Church occupies nothing like the position in the hearts of the masses that she held in the ages of faith, our Catholic Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, both here and in England, are chosen as members of arbitration boards to settle strikes and other social difficulties, because it is felt that the working class has full confidence in them, and that they are thoroughly representative of the spirit of democracy. In England Cardinal Manning served more than once in critical social conditions. In this country we have had a series of such examples. From these we can better understand what the Lords spiritual represented in the English House of Lords. There were abuses, though they were not nearly so frequent as were thought, by which unworthy men sometimes reached such positions, for men abuse even the best things, but in general these clerical members of the House of Lords were the chosen intellectual and moral products of the kingdom. Since they were without families they had{435}less temptation to serve personal interests and, besides, they had received a life-long training in unselfishness, and the best might be expected of them. For an ideal second chamber I know none that can compare with this old English House of Lords of the Middle Ages. How much it was responsible for the foundation of the liberties of which the English-speaking people are deservedly so proud, and which have been treated in some detail in the chapter on Origins in Law, would be interesting to trace.
Mr. Toulmin Smith, in his book on "The Parish," and Dom Gasquet, in his volume on "The Parish Before the Reformation," have shown what a magnificent institution for popular self-government was the English medieval parish, and how much this contributed to the solution of important social problems and to the creation of a true democratic spirit. Mr. Toulmin Smith calls particular attention to the fact that when local self-government gets out of the hands of the people of a neighborhood personal civic energy goes to sleep. The feeling of mutual responsibility of the men of the place is lost, to the great detriment of their larger citizenship in municipality and nation. In the parish, however, forming a separate community, of which the members had rights and duties, the primal solid basis for government, the parish authorities took charge of the highways, the roads, the paths, the health, the police, the constabulary, and the fires of their neighborhood. They kept, besides, a registry of births and deaths and marriages. When these essentially local concerns are controlled in large bodies the liability to abuse at once becomes easy and political corruption sets in. He mentions, besides many parochial institutions, a parochial friendly society for loans on security, parish gilds for insurance, and many other phases of that thoroughly organized mutual aid so characteristic of the Middle Ages.
These parishes became completely organized, so as to be thoroughly democratic and representative of all the possibilities of local self-government under King Edward at the end of the Thirteenth and the beginning of the Fourteenth Century. Rev. Augustus Jessopp, in "After the Great Pillage," tells the story of how the parishes were broken up as a consequence of the confiscation of their endowment during the so-called reformation. The quotation from him may be found in Appendix III. in the section on "How it all stopped."
Toulmin Smith is not so emphatic, but he is scarcely less explicit than Jessopp. "The attempts of ecclesiastical authority to encroach on the civil authorities of the parish have been more successful since the reformation." As a matter of fact, at that time all government became centralized, and complete contradiction though it may seem to be of what is sometimes declared the place of the reformation in the history{436}of human liberty, the genuine democratic institutions of England were to a great extent impaired by the reform, and an autocracy, which later developed into an autocratic aristocracy, largely took its place. Out of that England has gradually lifted itself during the Nineteenth Century. Even now, however, as pointed out in the preceding chapter that might have been, the House of Lords is not at all what it was in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries when the majority of its members were Lords spiritual, men who had come up from the masses as a rule.
We are very prone to think that even though there may have been excellent opportunities for the higher education in the Thirteenth Century and, in many ways, an ideal education of the masses, still there was one great social drawback in those times, the lack of opportunity for men of humble birth to rise to higher stations. Nothing, however, is less true. There probably never was a time when even members of the poorest families might rise more readily or rapidly to the highest positions in the land. The sons of village merchants and village artisans, nay, the sons and grandsons of farmers bound to the soil, could by educational success become clergymen in various ranks, and by attaining a bishopric or the position of abbot or prior of a monastery, reach a seat in the House of Lords. Most of the Lord High Chancellors of England during the Middle Ages—and some of them are famous for their genius as canon and civil lawyers, for their diplomatic abilities and their breadth of view and capacity as administrators—were the sons of humble parents.
Take the single example of Stratford, the details of whose inhabitants' lives, because of the greatness of one of them, have attracted more attention than those of any other town of corresponding size in England. At the beginning of the Fourteenth Century it is only what we would call a village, and it probably did not have 3,000 inhabitants, if, indeed, the number was not less than 2,000. In his book, "Shakespeare the Boy," Mr. Rolfe calls attention to certain conditions that interest us in the old village. He tells us of what happened as a result of the development of liberty in the Thirteenth Century:
"Villeinage gradually disappeared in the reign of Edward VII. (1327-1337), and those who had been subject to it became free tenants, paying definite rents for house and land. Three natives of the town, who, after the fashion of the time, took their surnames from the place of their birth, rose to high positions in the Church, one becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, and the others respectively Bishops of London and Chichester. John of Stratford and Robert of Stratford were brothers, and Ralph of Stratford was their nephew. John and Robert were both for a time Chancellors of England, and there is no other instance of two brothers attaining that high office in succession."
{437}
To many people the fact that the avenue to rise was through the Clergy more than in any other way will be disappointing. One advantage, however, that the old people would insist that they had from their system was that these men, having no direct descendants, were less likely to pursue selfish aims and more likely to try to secure the benefit of the Community than are those who, in our time, rise through the legal profession. The Lord High Chancellors of recent time have all been lawyers. Would not most of the world confess that the advantage was with the medieval peoples?
President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton realized sympathetically this great element of saving democracy in the Middle Ages, and has paid worthy tribute to it. He said: "The only reason why government did not suffer dry rot in the Middle Ages under the aristocratic systems which then prevailed was that the men who were efficient instruments of government were drawn from the church—from that great church, that body which we now distinguish from other church bodies as the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church then, as now, was a great democracy. There was no peasant so humble that he might not become a priest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become Pope of Christendom, and every chancellery in Europe was ruled by those learned, trained and accomplished men—the priesthood of that great and then dominant church; and so, what kept government alive in the Middle Ages was this constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from the rank and file of the great body of the people through the open channels of the Roman Catholic priesthood."
Insurance is usually supposed to be a modern idea representing one of those developments of the capitalization of mutual risks of life, property, and the like that have come as a consequence of modern progress. The insurance system of the Middle Ages, the organization of which came in the Thirteenth Century, is therefore extremely interesting. It was accomplished, as was every form of co-operation and co-ordination of effort, through special gilds or through the trade or merchant gilds. Among the objects of the gilds enumerated by Toulmin Smith is insurance against loss by fire. This was paid through the particular gild to which the merchant belonged, or in the case of the artisan through a special gild which he joined for the purpose. Provision was made, however, for much more than insurance by fire. Our fire insurance companies are probably several centuries old, so also are our insurance arrangements against shipwreck. Other features of insurance, however, are much more recent. Practically all of these were in active existence during the Middle Ages, though they disappeared with the so-called reformation, and then{438}did not come into existence again for several centuries and, indeed, not until our own time.
The old gilds, for instance, provided insurance against loss from flood, a feature of insurance that has not, so far as I know, developed in our time, against loss by robbery (our burglary insurance is quite recent), against loss by the fall of a house, by imprisonment, and then also insurance against the loss of cattle and farm products. All the features of life insurance also were in existence. The partial disability clauses of life or accident insurance policies are recent developments. In the old days there is insurance against the loss of sight, against the loss of a limb, or any other form of crippling. The deaf and dumb might be insured so as to secure an income for them, and corresponding relief for leprosy might be obtained; so that, if one were set apart from the community by the law requiring segregation of lepers, there might be provision for food and lodging, even though productive work had become impossible. In a word, the insurance system of the Middle Ages was thoroughly developed. It was not capitalistic. The charges were only enough to maintain the system, and not such as to provide large percentage returns on invested stock and on bonds, and the accumulation of huge surpluses that almost inevitably lead to gross abuses. What is best in our modern system of insurance is an imitation of the older methods. Certain of the trade insurance companies which assume a portion of the risk on mills, factories and the like, are typical examples. They know the conditions, enforce proper precautions, keep an absolute check on suspicious losses, accumulate only a moderate surplus and present very few opportunities for insurance abuses. The same thing is true for the fraternal societies that conduct life insurance. When properly managed they represent the lowest possible cost and the best efficiency with least opportunities for fraud and without any temptations to interfere with legislation and any allurements for legislators to spend their time making strike and graft bills instead of doing legislative work.
This generation has occupied itself much with the question of old age pensions. Probably most people feel that this is the first time in the world's history that such arrangements have been made. The movement is supposed to represent a recent development of humanitarian purpose, and to be a feature of recent philanthropic evolution. It is rather interesting, in the light of that idea, to see how well they accomplish this same purpose in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. In our time it has been a government affair, with all the possibilities of abuse that there are in a huge pension system, and surely no country knows it better than we do here in America. The old countries, Germany and France, have established a contributing{439}system of pension. This was the model of their system of caring for the old and the disabled in the Middle Ages. Toulmin Smith cites a rule of one of the gilds which gives us exactly the status of the old age disability pension question. After a workman had been seven years a member, the gild assured him a livelihood in case of disability from any cause.
When we recall that employer as well as employee as a rule belonged to the gild and this was a real mutual organization in which there was a sharing of the various risks of life, we see how eminently well adapted to avoid abuses this old system was. Where the pensioners appeal to a government pension system, abuses are almost inevitable. There is the constant temptation to exploit the system on the part of the pensioners, because they have the feeling that if they do not, others will. Then the investigation of each particular case is difficult, and favoritism and graft of various kinds inevitably finds its way in. Where the pension is paid by a small body of fellow workmen, the investigation is easy, the temptation to exploit does not readily find place, and while abuses are to some extent inevitable, these are small in amount, and not likely to be frequent. Friends and neighbors know conditions, and men are not pauperized by the system, and if, after an injury that seemed at first so disabling as to be permanent, the pensioner should improve enough to be able to get back to work, or, at least, to do something to support himself, the system is elastic enough so that he is not likely to be tempted to continue to live on others rather than on his own efforts.
Most of us would be apt to think that our modern methods of obtaining funds for charitable purposes represented definite developments, and that at least special features of our collections for charity were our own invention. In recent years the value of being able to reach a great many people even for small amounts has been particularly recognized. "Tag day" is one manifestation of that. Everyone in a neighborhood is asked to contribute a small amount for a particular charitable purpose, and the whole collection usually runs up to a snug sum. Practices very similar to this were quite common in the Thirteenth Century. As in our time, it was the women who collected the money. A rope, for instance, was stretched across a marketplace, where traffic was busy, and everyone who passed was required to pay a toll for charity. Occasionally the rope was stretched across a bridge and the tolls were collected on a particular day each year. Other forms of charitable accumulation resembled ours in many respects. Entertainments of various kinds were given for charity, and special collections were made during the exhibition of mystery plays{440}partly to pay the expenses of the representation, and the surplus to go to the charities of the particular gild.
Most of the charity, however, was organized. Indeed it is the organization of charity during the Thirteenth Century that represents the best feature of its fraternalism. The needy were cared for by the gilds themselves. There were practically no poorhouses, and if a man was willing to work and had already shown this willingness, there were definite bureaus that would help him at least to feed his family while he was out of work. This system, however, was flexible enough to provide also for the ne'er-do-wells, the tramps, the beggars, but they were given not money, but tokens which enabled them to obtain the necessaries of life without being able to abuse charity. The committees of the gilds consulted in various ways among themselves and with the church wardens so as to be sure that, while all the needy were receiving help, no one was abusing charity by drawing help from a number of different quarters. Of course, they did not have the problem of large city life that we have, and so their comparatively simple organization of charity sufficed for all the needs of the time, and at the same time anticipated our methods.
In the first edition of this book I called attention to the fact, that science, even in our sense of physical science, was, in spite of impressions to the contrary, a favorite subject for students and teachers in the early universities. What might have been insisted on, however, is that these old universities were scientific universities resembling our own so closely in their devotion to science as to differ from them only in certain unimportant aspects. Because the universities for three centuries before the Nineteenth had been occupied mainly with classical studies, we are prone to think that these were the main subjects of university teaching for all the centuries before. Nothing could well be less true. The undergraduate studies consisted of the seven liberal arts so-called, though these were largely studied from the scientific standpoint. The quotation from Prof. Huxley (Appendix III., Education) makes this very clear. What we would now call the graduate studies consisted of metaphysics, in which considerable physics were studied, astronomy, medicine, above all, mathematics, and then the ethical sciences, under which were studied what we now call ethics, politics and economics. The picture of these medieval universities as I have given them in my lecture on Medieval Scientific Universities, in "Education, How Old the New," makes this very clear. The interests and studies were very like those of our own time, only the names for them being different. Nature-study was a favorite subject, and, as I have pointed out in "The Popes and Science," Dante must be considered as a great nature student, for he was able to draw the most exquisite figures from details of knowledge of living things with which few{441}poets are familiar. The books of the professors of the Thirteenth Century which have been preserved, those of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Aquinas, Duns Scotus and others, make it very clear that scientific teaching was the main occupation of the university faculties, while the preservation of these huge tomes by the diligent copying of disciples shows how deeply interested were their pupils in the science of the time.
At all times in the history of education, the standards of scientific education, and the institutions of learning, can be best judged from the condition of the medical schools. When the medical sciences are taken seriously, when thorough preparation is demanded before their study may be taken up, when four or five years of attention to theoretic and practical medicine are required for graduation, and when the professors are writing textbooks that are to attract attention for generations afterwards, then, there is always a thoroughly scientific temper m the university itself. Medicine is likely to suffer, first, whenever there is neglect of science. The studies of the German historians, Puschmann, Pagel, Neuberger, and Sudhoff in recent years, have made it very clear that the medical schools of the universities of the Thirteenth Century were maintaining high standards. The republication of old texts, especially in France, has called attention to the magnificent publications of their professors, while a review of their laws and regulations confirms the idea of the good work that was being done. Gurlt, in his history of surgery, "Geschichte der Chirurgie" (Berlin, 1898), has reviewed the textbooks of Roger and Roland and the Four Masters, of William of Salicet and Lanfranc and of many others, in a way to make it very clear that these men were excellent teachers.
When we discover that three years of preparatory university work was required before the study of medicine could be begun, and four years of medical studies were required, with a subsequent year of practice under a physician's direction, before a license for independent practice could be issued, then the scientific character of the medical schools and therefore of the universities to which they were attached is placed beyond all doubt. These are the terms of the law issued by the Emperor Frederick II. for the Two Sicilies. That, in substance, it applied to other countries we learn from the fact that the charters of medical schools granted by the Popes at this time require proper university preliminary studies, and four or five years at medicine before the degree of Doctor could be given. We know besides that in the cities only those who were graduates of properly recognized medical schools were allowed to practice medicine, so that there was every encouragement for the maintenance of professional standards. Indeed,{442}strange as it may seem to our generation, the standards of the Thirteenth Century in medical education were much higher than our own, and their medical schools were doing fine work.