For proper understanding of the Thirteenth Century scholars, it is especially important to appreciate their thoroughly scientific temper of mind, their powers of observation, and their successful attainments in science. I know no more compendious way of reaching the knowledge of these qualities in the medieval mind, than a study of the letter of Peregrinus, which we would in our time call a monograph on magnetism. Brother Potamian, in his chapter in "Makers of Electricity" (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1909) on Peregrinus and Columbus, sums up the very interesting contributions of this medieval student of magnetism to the subject. The list of chapters alone in Peregrinus' monograph (Epistola) makes it very clear how deep were his interests and how thoroughly practical his investigations.
THE DOUBLE PIVOTED NEEDLE OF PEREGRINUS.
They are:—"Part I., Chapter i, purpose of this work; 2, qualifications of the experimenter; 3, characteristics of a good lodestone; 4, how to distinguish the poles of a lodestone; 5, how to tell which pole is north and which is south; 6, how one lodestone attracts another; 7, how iron touched by a lodestone turns toward the poles of the world; 8, how a lodestone attracts iron; 9, why the north pole of one lodestone attracts the south pole of another, and vice versa; 10, an inquiry into the natural virtue of the lodestone.
"Part II., Chapter 1, construction of an instrument for measuring the azimuth of the sun, the moon or any star then in the horizon; 2, construction of a better instrument for the same purpose; 3, the art of making a wheel of perpetual motion."
In order to illustrate what Peregrinus accomplished it has seemed worth while to reproduce here the sketches which illustrate his epistle. We have the double pivoted needle and the first pivoted compass.
In the light of certain recent events a passage from the "New Naval History or Complete Review of the British Marine" (London, 1757) is of special interest. It illustrates perhaps the new confidence that came to men in sailing to long distances as the result of the{443}realization of the practical value of the magnetic needle during the Thirteenth Century.
FIRST PIVOTED COMPASS (PEREGRINUS, 1269).
"In the year 1360 it is recorded that a friar of Oxford called Nicholas de Linna (of Lynn), being a good astronomer, went in company with others to the most northern island, and thence traveled alone, and that he went to the North Pole, by means of his skill in magic, or the black art; but this magic or black art may probably have been nothing more than a knowledge of the magnetic needle or compass, found out about sixty years before, though not in common use until many years after."
Of course only those who are quite unfamiliar with the history of philosophic thought are apt to think that the theory of evolution is modern. Serious students of biology are familiar with the long history of the theory, and especially its anticipations by the Greeks. Very few know, however, that certain phases of evolutionary theory attracted not a little attention from the scholastic philosophers. It would not be difficult to find expressions in Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, that would serve to show that they thought not only of the possibility of some very intimate relation of species but of developmental connections. The great teacher of the time, St. Thomas Aquinas, has some striking expressions in the matter, which deserve to be quoted, because he is the most important representative of the philosophy and science of the century and the one whose works most influenced succeeding generations. In the lecture on Medieval Scientific Universities, published in "Education, How Old the New" (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1910), I called particular attention to this phase of St. Thomas' teaching. Two quotations will serve to make it clear here.
Prof. Osborne, in "From the Greeks to Darwin," quotes Aquinas' commentary on St. Augustine's opinion with regard to the origin of things as they are. Augustine declared that the Creator had simply{444}brought into life the seeds of things, and given these the power to develop. Aquinas, expounding Augustine, says:
"As to production of plants, Augustine holds a different view, … for some say that on the third day plants were actually produced, each in his kind—a view favored by the superficial reading of Scripture. But Augustine says that the earth is then said to have brought forth grass and treescausaliter; that is, it then received power to produce them." (Quoting Genesis ii:4): "For in those first days, … God made creation primarily orcausaliter, and then rested from His work."
Like expressions might be quoted from him, and other writers of the Thirteenth Century might well be cited in confirmation of the fact that while these great teachers of the Middle Ages thoroughly recognize the necessity for creation to begin with and the placing by the Creator of some power in living things that enables them to develop, they were by no means bound to the thought that all living species were due to special creations. They even did not hesitate to teach the possibility of the lower order of living beings at least coming into existence by spontaneous generation, and would probably have found no difficulty in accepting a theory of descent with the limitations that most scientific men of our generation are prone to demand for it.
Lest it should be thought that this is a mere accidental agreement with modern thought, due much more to a certain looseness of terms than to actual similarity of view, it seems well to point out how close St. Thomas came to that thought in modern biology, which is probably considered to be one of our distinct modern contributions to the theory of evolution, though, in recent years, serious doubts have been thrown on it. It is expressed by the formula of Herbert Spencer, "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." According to this, the completed being repeats in the course of its development the history of the race, that is to say, the varying phases of foetal development from the single cell in which it originates up to the perfect being of the special type as it is born into the world, retrace the history by which from the single cell being the creature in question has gradually developed.
It is very curious to find that St. Thomas Aquinas, in his teaching with regard to the origin and development of the human being, says, almost exactly, what the most ardent supporters of this so-called fundamental biogenetic law proclaimed during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, thinking they were expressing an absolutely new thought. He says that "the higher a form is in the scale of being and the farther it is removed from mere material form, the more intermediate forms must be passed through before the finally perfect form is reached. Therefore, in the generation of animal and man— these having the most perfect forms—there occur many intermediate forms in generations, and consequently destruction, because the{445}generation of one being is the destruction of another." St. Thomas draws the ultimate conclusions from this doctrine without hesitation. He proclaims that the human material is first animated by a vegetative soul or principle of life, and then by an animal soul, and only ultimately when the matter has been properly prepared for it by a rational soul. He said: "The vegetative soul, therefore, which is first in embryo, while it lives the life of a plant, is destroyed, and there succeeds a more perfect soul, which is at once nutrient and sentient, and for that time the embryo lives the life of an animal: upon the destruction of this there succeeds the rational soul, infused from without."
The absence of a chapter on the Pope of the Century has always seemed a lacuna in the previous editions of this book. Pope Innocent III., whose pontificate began just before the century opened, and occupied the first fifteen years of it, well deserves a place beside Francis the Saint, Thomas the Scholar, Dante the Poet, and Louis the Monarch of this great century. More than any other single individual he was responsible for the great development of the intellectual life that took place, but at the same time his wonderfully broad influence enabled him to initiate many of the movements that meant most for human uplift and for the alleviation of suffering in this period. It was in Councils of the Church summoned by him that the important legislation was passed requiring the development of schools, the foundation of colleges in every diocese and of universities in important metropolitan sees. What he accomplished for hospitals has been well told by Virchow, from whom I quote a magnanimous tribute in the chapter on the Foundation of City Hospitals. The legislation of Innocent III. did much to encourage, and yet to regulate properly the religious orders of this time engaged in charitable work. Besides doing so much for charity, he was a stern upholder of morals. As more than one king of the time realized while Innocent was Pope, there could be no trifling with marriage vows.
On the other hand, while Innocent was so stern as to the enforcement of marriage laws, his wonderfully judicious character and his care for the weak and the innocent can be particularly noted in his treatment of the children in these cases. While he compelled recalcitrant kings to take back the wives they would repudiate, and put away other women who had won their affections, he did not hesitate to make due provision as far as possible for the illegitimate children. Pirie Gordon, in his recent life of Pope Innocent III., notes that he invariably legitimated the offspring of these illegal unions of kings, and even declared them capable of succession. He would not visit the guilt of the parent on the innocent offspring.
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Innocent did more to encourage the idea of international arbitration than anyone up to his time. During his period more than once he was the arbitrator to whom rival national claims that might have led to war were referred. Probably his greatest claim on our admiration in the modern time is his attitude toward the Jews. In this he is centuries ahead of his time and, indeed, the policy that he laid down is far ahead of what is accorded to them by many of the nations even at the present time, and it must not be forgotten that it is only during the past hundred years that the Jew has come to have any real privileges comparable to those accorded to other men. At a time when the Jew had no real rights in law, Innocent insisted on according them all the rights of men. His famous edict in this regard is well known. "Let no Christian by violence compel them to come dissenting or unwilling to Baptism. Further let no Christian venture maliciously to harm their persons without a judgment of the civil power, to carry off their property or change their good customs which they have had hitherto in that district which they inhabit." When, in addition to all this, it is recalled that he was a distinguished scholar and graduate of the University of Paris, looked up to as one of the intellectual geniuses of the time, the author of a treatise "On the Contempt of the World" at a time when the kings of the earth were obeying him, known for his personal piety and for his thorough regulation of his own household, something of the greatness of the man will be appreciated. No wonder that historians who have taken up the special study of his career have always been won over to deep personal admiration of him, and though many of them began prejudiced in his regard, practically all of them were converted to be his sincere admirers.
During the Peace Conference in New York in 1908 I was on the programme with Mr. William T. Stead of London, the editor of the EnglishReview of Reviews, who was very much interested in the volume on the Thirteenth Century, and who suggested that one chapter in the book should have been devoted to the consideration of what was accomplished for peace and for International Arbitration during this century. There is no doubt that there developed, as the result of many Papal decrees, a greater tendency than has existed ever before or since, to refer quarrels between nations that would ordinarily end in war to decision by some selected umpire. Usually the Pope, as the head of the Christian Church, to which all the nations of the civilized world belonged, was selected as the arbitrator. This international arbitration, strengthened by the decrees of Pope Innocent III., Pope Honorius III. and Pope Alexander III., developed in a way that is well worth while studying, and that has deservedly been the subject of careful investigation since the present{447}peace movement began. Certainly the outlook for the securing of peace by international arbitration was better at this time than it has been at any time since. What a striking example, for instance, is the choice of King Louis of France as the umpire in the dispute between the Barons and the King of England, which might have led to war. Louis' position with regard to the Empire and the Papacy was to a great extent that of a pacificator, and his influence for peace was felt everywhere throughout Europe. The spirit of the century was all for arbitration and the adjudication of intranational as well as international difficulties by peaceful means.
Most people will be quite sure that at least the question of Bible revision with critical study of text and comparative investigation of sources was reserved for our time. The two orders of friars founded in the early part of the Thirteenth Century, however, devoted themselves to the task of supplying to the people a thoroughly reliable edition of the Scriptures. The first systematic revision was made by the Dominicans about 1236. After twenty years this revision was set aside as containing too many errors, and another Dominican correction replaced it. Then came that great scholar, Hugh of St. Cher, known later as the Cardinal of Santa Sabina, the author of the first great Biblical Concordance. His Bible studies did much to clarify obscurities in the text. Sometime about 1240 he organized a commission of friars for the revision of what was known as the Paris Exemplar, the Bible text that was most in favor at that time. The aim of Hugh of St. Cher was to establish the old Vulgate of St. Jerome, the text which received this name during this century, but with such revision as would make this version correspond as nearly as possible to the Hebrew and the Greek.
This activity on the part of the Dominicans was rivaled by the Franciscans. We might not expect to find the great scientist, Roger Bacon, as a Biblical scholar and reviser, but such he was, working with Willermus de Mara, to whom, according to Father Denifle, late the Librarian of the Vatican Library, must be attributed the title given him by Roger Bacon of Sapientissimus Vir. The Dominicans under the leadership of Hugh of St. Cher with high ideals had hoped to achieve a perfect primitive text. The version made by de Mara, however, with the approval and advice of Bacon, was only meant to bring out St. Jerome's text as perfectly as possible. These two revisions made in the Thirteenth Century are typical of all the efforts that men have made since in that same direction. Contrary to usual present day impressions, they are characterized by critical scholarship, and probably represent as great a contribution to Biblical lore as was made by any other century.
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Ordinarily it would be presumed that life was taken entirely too seriously during the Thirteenth Century for the generation to pay much attention to fiction. In a certain sense this is true. In the sense, however, that they had no stories worthy of the great literature in other departments it would be quite untrue. There is a naiveté about their story telling that rather amuses our sophisticated age, yet all the elements of our modern fiction are to be found in the stories that were popular during the century, and arranged with a dramatic effect that must have given them a wide appeal.
The most important contribution to the fiction of the century is to be found in the collection known as theCento Novelle Anticheor "Hundred Ancient Tales," which contains the earliest prose fiction extant in Italian. Many of these come from a period anterior to Dante, and it is probable from what Manni, the learned editor of theNovelliero, says, that they were written out in the Thirteenth Century and collected in the early part of the Fourteenth Century. They did not all originate in Italy, and, indeed, Manni considers that most of them derived their origin from Provence. They represent the interest of the century in fiction and in anecdotal literature.
As for the longer fiction, the pure love story of the modern time, we have one typical example of it in that curious relic of the Middle Ages, "Aucassin and Nicolette." The manuscript which preserved this for us comes from the Thirteenth Century. Perhaps, as M. Paris suggests, the tale itself is from the preceding century. At least it was the interest of the Thirteenth Century in it that saved it for us. For those who think that the love romance in any of its features is novel, though we call it by that name, or that there has been any development of human nature which enables the writer of love stories to appeal to other and deeper, or purer and loftier feelings in his loved ones now than in the past, all that is needed, as it seems to me, is a casual reading of this pretty old song-story.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of this oldest specimen of modern fiction is the number of precious bits of psychologic analysis or, at least, what is called that in the recent time, which occur in the course of it. For instance, when Aucassin is grieving because he cannot find Nicolette he wanders through the forest on horseback, and is torn by trees and brambles, but "he feels it not at all." On the other hand, when he finds Nicolette, though he is suffering from a dislocated shoulder, he no longer feels any pain in it, because of his joy at the meeting, and Nicolette (first aid to the injured) is able to replace the dislocated part without difficulty (the trained nurse in fiction) because he is so happy as not to notice the pain (psychotherapy). The herdsman whom he meets wonders that Aucassin, with plenty of money and victuals, should grieve so much over the loss of Nicolette,{449}while he has so much more cause to grieve over the loss of an ox, which means starvation to him. Toward the end of the story we have the scene in which Nicolette, stolen from home when very young, and utterly unable to remember anything about her childhood, has brought back to her memory by the view of the city of Carthage forgotten events of her childhood (subconscious memory). These represent naively enough, it is true, the study of the mind under varying conditions that has in recent years been given the rather ambitious name of psychology in fiction.
Without a chapter on the great orators of the period an account of the Thirteenth Century is quite incomplete. Great as were the other forms of literature, epic, lyric and religious poetry and the prose writing, it is probable that the oratory of the time surpassed them all. When we recall that the Cid, the Arthur Legends, the Nibelungen, the Meistersingers, and the Minnesingers, Reynard the Fox, the Romance of the Rose, the Troubadours, and even Dante are included in the other term of the comparison thus made, it may seem extravagant, but what we know of the effect of the orators of the time fully justifies it. Just before the Thirteenth Century, great religious orators swayed the hearts and minds of people, to the organization of the Crusades. At the beginning of the Thirteenth Century the mendicant orders were organized, and their important duties were preaching and teaching. The Dominicans were of course the Order of Preachers, and we have traditions of their sway over the minds of the people of the time which make it very clear that their power was equal to that exerted in any other department of human expression. There are traditions particularly of the oratory of the Dominicans among the German races, which serve to show how even a phlegmatic people can be stirred to the very depths of their being by the eloquent spoken word. In France the traditions are almost as explicit in this matter, and there are remains of religious orations that fully confirm the reputation of the orators of the time.
Rhetoric and oratory was studied very assiduously. Cicero was the favorite reading of the great preachers of the time, and we find the court preachers of St. Louis, Étienne de Bourbon, Elinand, Guillaume de Perrault and others appealing to his precepts as the infallible guide to oratory. Quintilian was not neglected, however, and Symmachus and Sidonius Apollinaris were also faithfully studied. If we turn to the speeches that are incorporated in the epics, as, for instance, the Cid, or in some of the historians, as Villehardouin, we have definite evidence of the thorough command of the writers of the time over the forms of oratory. M. Paullin Paris, the authority in our time on the literature of the Thirteenth Century, quotes a passage from Villehardouin in which Canon de Bethune speaks in the{450}name of the French chiefs of the Fourth Crusade to the Emperors Isaac and Alexis Comnenus. M. Paris does not hesitate to declare that the passage is equal to many of the same kind that have been much admired in the classic authors. It has the force, the finish and the compression of Thucydides.
Only the fact that this work was getting beyond the number of printed pages determined for it in the first edition prevented the insertion of a chapter especially devoted to the great beginnings of English literature in the Thirteenth Century. The most important contributions to Early English were made at this period. The Ormulum and Layamon's Brut, both written probably during the first decade of the Thirteenth Century, have become familiar to all students of Old English. Mr. Gollancz goes so far as to say that "The Ormulum is perhaps the most valuable document we possess for the history of English sound. Orm was a purist in orthography as well as in vocabulary, and may fittingly be described as the first of English phoneticians."
MANUSCRIPT OF ORMULUM (THIRTEENTH CENTURY)
Of Layamon, Garnett said in his "English Literature" (Garnett and Gosse): "It would have sufficed for the fame of Layamon had he been no more than the first minstrel to celebrate Arthur in English song, but his own pretensions as a poet are by no means inconsiderate. He is everywhere vigorous and graphic, and improved upon his predecessor, Wace, alike by his additions and expansions, and by his more spiritual handling of the subjects common to both." Even more important in the history of language than these isThe Ancren Riwle(The Anchorites' Rule). This was probably written by Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury, for three Cistercian nuns. Its place in English literature may be judged from a quotation or two with regard to it. Mr. Kington-Oliphant says: "The Ancren Riwleis the forerunner of a wondrous change in our speech. More than anything else written outside the Danelagh, that piece has influenced our standard{451}English." Garnett says: "The Ancren Riwleis a work of great literary merit and, in spite of its linguistic innovations, most of which have established themselves, well deserves to be described as 'one of the most perfect models of simple eloquent prose in our language.'"
The religious poetry of the time is not behind the great prose ofThe Ancren Riwle, and one of them, theLuve Ron(Love Song) of Thomas de Hales, is very akin to the spirit of that work, and has been well described as "a contemplative lyric of the simplest, noblest mold." Garnett says: "The reflections are such as are common to all who have in all ages pleaded for the higher life under whatsoever form, and deplored the frailty and transitoriness of man's earthly estate. Two stanzas on the latter theme as expressed in a modernized version might almost pass for Villon's:—
"Paris and Helen, where are they,Fairest in beauty, bright to view?Amadas, Tristrem, Ideine, yeaIsold, that lived with love so true?And Caesar, rich in power and sway,Hector the strong, with might to do?All glided from earth's realm away,Like shaft that from the bow-string flew."It is as if they ne'er were here.Their wondrous woes have been a' told,That it is sorrow but to hear;How anguish killed them sevenfold,And how with dole their lives were drear;Now is their heat all turned to cold.Thus this world gives false hope, false fear;A fool, who in her strength is bold."
In the chapter on the Great Latin Hymns a few words were said about one phase of the important musical development in the Thirteenth Century, that of plain chant. In that simple mode the musicians of the Thirteenth Century succeeded in reaching a climax of expression of human feeling in such chants as theExultetand theLamentationthat has never been surpassed. Something was also said about the origin of part music, but so little that it might easily be thought that in this the century lagged far behind its achievements in other departments. M, Pierre Aubry has recently published (1909)Cent Motets du XIIIe Sièclein three volumes. His first volume contains a photographic reproduction of the manuscript of Bamberg from which the hundred musical modes are secured, the second a transcription in modern musical notation of the old music, and the third volume studies and commentaries on the music and the times. If anything were needed to show how utterly ignorant we have been of the interests and artistic achievements of the Middle Ages, it is this book of M. Aubry.
Victor Hugo said that music dates from the Sixteenth Century, and it has been quite the custom, even for people who thought they{452}knew something about music, to declare that we had no remains of any music before the Sixteenth Century worth while talking about. Ancient music is probably lost to us forever, but M. Aubry has shown conclusively that we have abundant remains to show us that the musicians of the Thirteenth Century devoted themselves to their art with as great success as their rivals in the other Gothic arts and, indeed, they thought that they had nearly exhausted its possibilities and tried to make a science of it. By their supposedly scientific rules they succeeded in binding music so firmly as to bring about its obscuration in succeeding centuries. This is, however, the old story of what has happened in every art whenever genius succeeds in finding a great mode of expression. A formula is evolved which often binds expression so rigorously as to prevent natural development.
Whatever the people of the Middle Ages may have been in morals, their manners are supposed to have been about as lacking in refinement as possible. As for nearly everything else, however, this impression is utterly false, and is due to the assumption that because we are better-mannered than the generations of a century or two ago, therefore we must be almost infinitely in advance, in the same respect, of the people of seven centuries ago. There are ups and downs in manners, however, as there are in education, and the beginnings of the formal setting forth of modern manners are, like everything else modern, to be found in the Thirteenth Century. About the year 1215 Thomasin Zerklaere wrote in German a rather lengthy treatise,Der Wälsche Gast, on manners. It contains most of the details of polite conduct that have been accepted in later times. Not long afterwards, John Garland, an Oxford man who had lived in France for many years, wrote a book on manners for English young men. He meant this to be a supplement to Dionysius Cato's treatise, written probably in the Fourth Century in Latin, which was concerned more with morals than manners and had been very popular during the Middle Ages. Garland's book was the first of a series of such treatises on manners which appeared in England at the close of the Middle Ages. Many of them have been recently republished, and are a revelation of the development of manners among our English forefathers. The book is usually alluded to in literature as Liber Faceti, or as Facet; the full title was, "The Book of the Polite Man, Teaching Manners for Men, Especially for Boys, as a Supplement to those which were Omitted by the Most Moral Cato." The "Romance of the Rose" has, of course, many references to manners which show us how courtesy was cultivated in France. In Italy, Dante's teacher, Bruneto Latini, published his "Tesoretto," which treats of manners, and which was soon followed by a number of similar treatises in{453}Italian. In a word, we must look to the Thirteenth Century for the origin, or at least the definite acceptance, of most of those conventions which make for kindly courtesy among men, and have made possible human society and friendly intercourse in our modern sense of those words.
We are prone to think that refinement in table manners is a matter of distinctly modern times. In "The Babees' Book," which is one of the oldest books of English manners, the date of which in its present form is about the middle of the Fourteenth Century, many of our rules of politeness at table are anticipated. This book is usually looked upon as a compilation from preceding times, and the original of it is supposed to be from the preceding century. A few quotations from it will show how closely it resembles our own instructions to children:
"Thou shalt not laugh nor speak nothingWhile thy mouth be full of meat or drink;Nor sup thou not with great soundingNeither pottage nor other thing.At meat cleanse not thy teeth, nor pickWith knife or straw or wand or stick.While thou holdest meat in mouth, bewareTo drink; that is an unhonest chare;And also physic forbids it quite.Also eschew, without strife.To foul the board cloth with thy knife.Nor blow not on thy drink or meat,Neither for cold, neither for heat.Nor bear with meat thy knife to mouth.Whether thou be set by strong or couth.Lean not on elbow at thy meat,Neither for cold nor for heat.Dip not thy thumb thy drink into;Thou art uncourteous if thou it do.In salt-cellar if thou putOr fish or flesh that men see it,That is a vice, as men me tells;And great wonder it would be else."
The directions, "how to behave thyself in talking with any man," in one of these old books, are very minute and specific:—
"If a man demand a question of thee.In thine answer making be not too hasty;Weigh well his words, the case understandEre an answer to make thou take in hand;Else may he judge in thee little wit,To answer to a thing and not hear it.Suffer his tale whole out to be told.Then speak thou mayst, and not be controlled;In audible voice thy words do thou utter,Not high nor low, but using a measure.Thy words see that thou pronounce plaine.And that they spoken be not in vain;In uttering whereon keep thou an order,Thy matter thereby thou shalt much forderWhich order if thou do not observe.From the purpose needs must thou swerve."
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A special chapter might easily have been written on the making of fine cloths of various kinds, most of which reached their highest perfection in the Thirteenth Century. Velvet, for instance, is mentioned for the first time in England in 1295, but existed earlier on the continent, and cut velvets with elaborate patterns were made in Genoa exactly as we know finished velvet now. Baudekin or Baldichin, a very costly textile of gold and silk largely used in altar coverings and hangings, came to very high perfection in this century also. The canopy for the Blessed Sacrament is, because of its manufacture from this cloth, still called in Italy abaldichino. Chaucer in the next century tells how the streets in royal processions were "hanged with cloth of gold and not with serge." Satin also was first manufactured very probably in the Thirteenth Century. It is first mentioned in England about the middle of the Fourteenth Century, when Bishop Grandison made a gift of choice satins to Exeter Cathedral. The word satin, however, is derived from the silks of the Mediterranean, called by the Italianssetaand by the Spanishseda, and the art of making it was brought to perfection during the preceding century.
The art of making textiles ornamented with elaborate designs of animal forms and of floral ornaments reached its highest perfection in the Thirteenth Century. In one of the Chronicles we learn that in 1295 St. Paul's in London owned a hanging "patterned with wheels and two-headed birds." We have accounts of such elaborate textile ornamentation as peacocks, lions, griffins and the like. Almeria in Andalusia was a rich city in the Thirteenth Century, noted for its manufactures of textiles. A historian of the period writes: "Christians of all nations came to its port to buy and sell. Then they traveled to other parts of the interior of the country, where they loaded their vessels with such goods as they wanted. Costly silken robes of the brightest colors are manufactured in Almeria." Marco-Polo says of the Persians that, when he passed through that country (end of the Thirteenth Century), "there are excellent artificers in the city who make wonderful things in gold, silk and embroidery. The women make excellent needlework in silk with all sorts of creatures very admirably wrought therein." He also reports the King of Tartary as wearing on his birthday a most precious garment of gold, and tells of the girdles of gold and silver, with pearls and ornaments of great price on them.
Unfortunately English embroidery fell off very greatly at the time of the Wars of the Roses. These wars constitute the main reason why nearly every form of intellectual accomplishment and artistic achievement went into decadence during the Fourteenth Century, from which they were only just emerging when the so-called{455}reformation, with its confiscation of monastic property, and its destruction of monastic life, came to ruin schools of all kinds, and, above all, those in which the arts and crafts had been taught so successfully. France at the end of the Thirteenth Century saw a similar rise to excellence of textile and embroidery work. In 1299 there is an allusion to one Clément le Brodeur who furnished a magnificent cope for the Count of Artois. In 1316 a beautifully decorated set of hangings was made for the Queen by Gautier de Poulleigny. There are other references to work done in the early part of the Fourteenth Century, which serve to show the height which art had reached in this mode during the Thirteenth Century. In Ireland, while the finer work had its due place, the making of woolens was the specialty, and the dyeing of woolen cloth made the Irish famous and brought many travelers from the continent to learn the secret.
The work done in England in embroidery attracted the attention of the world. English needlework became a proverb. In the body of the book I mentioned the cope of Ascoli, but there were many such beautiful garments. The Syon cope is, in the opinion of Miss Addison, author of "Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages," the most conspicuous example of the medieval embroiderers' art. It was made by nuns about the middle of the Thirteenth Century, that is, just about the same time as the cope of Ascoli, but in a convent near Coventry. According to Miss Addison "it is solid stitchery on a canvas ground, wrought about with divers colors' on green. The design is laid out in a series of interlacing square forms, with rounded and barbed sides and corners. In each of these is a figure or a Scriptural scene. The orphreys, or straight borders, which go down on both fronts of the cope, are decorated with heraldic charges. Much of the embroidery is raised, and wrought in the stitch known as Opus Anglicanum. The effect was produced by pressing a heated metal knob into the work at such points as were to be raised. The real embroidery was executed on a flat surface, and then bossed up by this means until it looked like bas-relief. The stitches in every part run in zig-zags, the vestments, and even the nimbi about the heads, are all executed with the stitches slanting in one direction, from the center of the cope outward, without consideration of the positions of the figures. Each face is worked in circular progression outward from the center, as well. The interlaces are of crimson, and look well on the green ground. The wheeled cherubim is well developed in the design of this famous cope, and is a pleasing decorative bit of archaic ecclesiasticism. In the central design of the Crucifixion, the figure of the Lord is rendered in silver on a gold ground."
A chapter might well have been devoted to Thirteenth Century glass-making quite apart from the stained glass of the cathedral{456}windows. All over Europe some of the most wonderful specimens of colored glass we possess were made in the Thirteenth Century. Recently Mr. Frederick Rolfe has looked up for me Venetian glass, of the three centuries, the Twelfth, the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth. He says Twelfth Century glass is small in form, simple and ignorant in model, excessively rich and brilliant in colors; the artist evidently had no ideal, but the Byzantine of jewels and emeralds.
"Thirteenth Century glass is absolutely different. The specimens are pretty. The work of the Beroviero family is large and splendid in form, exquisite and sometimes elaborate in model, mostly crystal glass reticently studded with tiny colored gem-like knobs. There are also fragments of two windows pieced together, and missing parts filled with the best which modern Murano can do. These show the celebrated Beroviero Ruby glass (secret lost) of marvelous depth and brilliancy in comparison with which the modern work is merely watery. The ancient is just like a decanter of port-wine."Fourteenth Century returns to the wriggling ideal and exiguous form of the Twelfth Century, and fails woefully in brilliance of color. It is small and dull and undistinguished. One may find out what war or pest afflicted Murano at this epoch to explain the singular degradation."
This same curious degradation took place in the manufacture of most art objects during the Fourteenth Century. One would feel in Mr. Rolfe's words like looking for some physical cause for it. The decadence is so universal, however, that it seems not unlikely that it follows some little known human law, according to which, after man has reached a certain perfection of expression in an art or craft, there comes, in the striving after originality yet variety, an overbalancing of the judgment, a vitiation of the taste in the very luxuriance of beauty discovered that leads to decay. It is the very contradiction of the supposed progress of mankind through evolution, but it is illustrated in many phases of human history and, above all, the history of art, letters, education and the arts and crafts.
Most people are sure to think that, at least in the matter of inventions, ours is the only time worth considering. The people of the Thirteenth Century, however, made many wonderful inventions and adaptations of mechanical principles, as well as many ingenious appliances. Their faculty of invention was mainly devoted to work in other departments besides that of mechanics. They were inventors of designs in architecture, in decoration, in furnishings, in textiles, and in the beautiful things of life generally. Their inventiveness in the arts and crafts was especially admirable and, indeed, has been fruitful in our time, since, with the reawakening in this matter, we have gone back to imitate their designs. Good authorities declare these to be endless in number and variety. Such mechanical inventions as were{457}needed for the building of their great cathedrals, their municipal buildings, abbeys, castles, piers, bridges and the like were admirably worked out. Necessity is the mother of invention, and whenever needs asserted themselves, these old generations responded to them, very successfully. There are, however, a number of inventions that would attract attention even, in the modern time for their practical usefulness and ingenuity. With the growth of the universities writing became much more common, textbooks were needed, and so paper was invented. With the increase of reading, to replace teaching by hearing, spectacles were invented. Time became more precious, clocks were greatly improved, and we hear of the invention of something like an alarm clock, an apparatus which, after a fixed number of hours, woke the monk of the abbey whose duty it was to arouse the others. Organs for churches were greatly improved, bells were perfected, and everything else in connection with the churches so well fashioned that we still use them in their Thirteenth Century forms. Gunpowder was not invented, but a great many new uses were found for it, and Roger Bacon even suggested, as I have said, that sometime explosives would enable boats to move by sea without sails or oars, or carriages to move on land without horses or men. Roger Bacon even suggested the possibility of airships, described how one might be made, the wings of which would be worked by a windlass, and thought that he could make it. His friend and pupil, Peregrinus, invented the double pivoted compass, and, as the first perpetual-motion faddist, described how he would set about making a magnetic engine that he thought would run forever. When we recall how much they accomplished mechanically in the construction of buildings, it becomes evident that any mechanical problem that these generations wanted solved they succeeded in solving very well. What they have left us as inventions are among the most useful appliances that we have. Without paper and without spectacles, the intellectual world would be in a sad case, indeed. Many of the secrets of their inventions in the arts and crafts have been lost, and, in spite of all our study, we have not succeeded in rediscovering them.
We are rather inclined to think that large organizations of industry and trade were reserved for comparatively modern times. To think so, however, is to forget the place occupied by the monasteries and convents in the olden time. We have heard much of the lazy monks, but only from those who know nothing at all about them. Idleness in the monasteries was one of the accusations made by the commission set to furnish evidence to Henry VIII. on which he might suppress the monasteries, but every modern historian has rejected the findings of that commission as false. Many forms of manufacture were carried on in the monasteries and convents. They were{458}the principal bookmakers and bookbinders. To a great extent they were the manufacturers of art fabrics and arts-and-crafts work intended for church use, but also for the decoration of luxurious private apartments. Most of us have known something of all this finer work, but not that they had much to do with cruder industries also. They were millers, cloth-makers, brush- and broom-makers, shoemakers for themselves and their tenantry; knitting was done in the convents, and all the finer fancy work. A recent meeting of the Institute of Mining Engineers in England brought out some discussion of coal mining in connection with the early history of the coal mines in England. The records of many of the English monasteries show that in early times the monks knew the value of coal, and used it rather freely. They also mined it for others. The monks at Tynemouth are known to have been mining coal on the Manor of Tynemouth in 1269, and shipping it to a distance. At Durham and at Finchale Abbey they were doing this also about the same time. It would require special study to bring out the interesting details, but there is abundant material not alone for a chapter, but for a volume on the industries of the Thirteenth Century, which, like the education and the literature and the culture of the time, we have thought undeveloped, because we knew nothing of them.
The relation of the monasteries to trade, domestic and foreign, is very well brought out in a paragraph of Mr. Ralph Adams Cram's book on "The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain" (New York, The Churchman Co., 1905), in which he describes the remains at Beaulieu, which show the place of that monastery, not by any means one of the most important in England, in trade. For the benefit of their tenantry others had done even more.
"Some idea of the power of one of these great monasteries may be gained from traces still existing of the center of trade built up by the monks outside their gates. Here, at the head of tide water, in a most out-of-the-way spot, a great stone quay was constructed, to which came ships from foreign lands. Near by was a great marketplace, now, as then, called Cheapside, though commerce exists there no longer. At the height of monastic glory the religious houses were actually the chief centers of industry and civilization, and around them grew up the eager villages, many of which now exist, even though their impulse and original inspiration have long since departed. Of course, the possessions of the abbey reached far away from the walls in every direction, including many farms even at a great distance, for the abbeys were then the great landowners, and beneficent landlords they were as well, even in their last days, for we have many records of the cruelty and hardships that came to the tenants the moment the stolen lands came into the hands of laymen."