Chapter 19

Love of field sports.

The favourite diversions of the middle ages, in the intervals of war, were those of hunting and hawking. The former must in all countries be a source of pleasure; but it seems to have been enjoyed in moderation by the Greeks and the Romans. With the northern invaders, however, it was rather a predominant appetite than an amusement; it was their pride and their ornament, the theme of their songs, the object of their laws, and the business of their lives. Falconry, unknown as a diversion to the ancients, became from the fourth century an equally delightful occupation.[d]From the Salic and other barbarous codes of the fifth century to the close of the period under our review, every age would furnish testimony to the ruling passion for these two species of chace, or, as they were sometimes called,the mysteries of woods and rivers. A knight seldom stirred from his house without a falcon on his wrist or a greyhound that followed him. Thus are Harold and his attendants represented, in the famous tapestry of Bayeux. And in the monuments of those who died anywhere but on the field of battle, it is usual to find the greyhound lying at their feet, or the bird upon their wrists. Nor are the tombs of ladies without their falcon; for this diversion, being of less danger and fatigue than the chace, was shared by the delicate sex.[e]

It was impossible to repress the eagerness with which the clergy, especially after the barbarians were tempted by rich bishoprics to take upon them the sacred functions, rushed into these secular amusements. Prohibitions of councils, however frequently repeated, produced little effect. In some instances a particular monastery obtained a dispensation. Thus that of St. Denis, in 774, represented to Charlemagne that the flesh of hunted animals was salutary for sick monks, and that their skins would serve to bind the books in the library.[f]Reasons equally cogent, we may presume, could not be wanting in every other case. As the bishops and abbots were perfectly feudal lords, and often did not scruple to lead their vassals into the field, it was not to be expected that they should debar themselves of an innocent pastime. It was hardly such indeed, when practised at the expense of others. Alexander III., by a letter to the clergy of Berkshire, dispenses with their keeping the archdeacon in dogs and hawks during his visitation.[g]This season gave jovial ecclesiastics an opportunity of trying different countries. An archbishop of York, in 1321, seems to have carried a train of two hundred persons, who were maintained at the expense of the abbeys on his road, and to have hunted with a pack of hounds from parish to parish.[h]The third council of Lateran, in 1180, had prohibited this amusement on such journeys, and restricted bishops to a train of forty or fifty horses.[i]

Though hunting had ceased to be a necessary means of procuring food, it was a very convenient resource, onwhich the wholesomeness and comfort, as well as the luxury, of the table depended. Before the natural pastures were improved, and new kinds of fodder for cattle discovered, it was impossible to maintain the summer stock during the cold season. Hence a portion of it was regularly slaughtered and salted for winter provision. We may suppose that, when no alternative was offered but these salted meats, even the leanest venison was devoured with relish. There was somewhat more excuse therefore for the severity with which the lords of forests and manors preserved the beasts of chace than if they had been considered as merely objects of sport. The laws relating to preservation of game were in every country uncommonly rigorous. They formed in England that odious system of forest laws which distinguished the tyranny of our Norman kings. Capital punishment for killing a stag or wild boar was frequent, and perhaps warranted by law, until the charter of John.[k]The French code was less severe, but even Henry IV. enacted the pain of death against the repeated offence of chasing deer in the royal forests. The privilege of hunting was reserved to the nobility till the reign of Louis IX., who extended it in some degree to persons of lower birth.[m]

This excessive passion for the sports of the field produced those evils which are apt to result from it—a strenuous idleness which disdained all useful occupations, and an oppressive spirit towards the peasantry. The devastation committed under the pretence of destroying wild animals, which had been already protected in their depredations, is noticed in serious authors, and has also been the topic of popular ballads.[n]What effect thismust have had on agriculture it is easy to conjecture. The levelling of forests, the draining of morasses, and the extirpation of mischievous animals which inhabit them, are the first objects of man's labour in reclaiming the earth to his use; and these were forbidden by a landed aristocracy, whose control over the progress of agricultural improvement was unlimited, and who had not yet learned to sacrifice their pleasures to their avarice.

Bad state of agriculture;

These habits of the rich, and the miserable servitude of those who cultivated the land, rendered its fertility unavailing. Predial servitude indeed, in some of its modifications, has always been the great bar to improvement. In the agricultural economy of Rome the labouring husbandman, a menial slave of some wealthy senator, had not even that qualified interest in the soil which the tenure of villenage afforded to the peasant of feudal ages. Italy, therefore, a country presenting many natural impediments, was but imperfectly reduced into cultivation before the irruption of the barbarians.[o]That revolution destroyed agriculture with every other art, and succeeding calamities during five or six centuries left the finest regions of Europe unfruitful and desolate. There are but two possible modes in which the produce of the earth can be increased; one by rendering fresh land serviceable, the other by improving the fertility of that which is already cultivated. The last is only attainable by the application of capital and of skill to agriculture, neither of which could be expected in the ruder ages of society. The former is, to a certain extent, always practicable while waste lands remain; but it was checked by laws hostile to improvement, such as the manerial and commonable rights in England, and by the general tone of manners.

Till the reign of Charlemagne there were no towns in Germany, except a few that had been erected on the Rhine and Danube by the Romans. A house with its stables and farm-buildings, surrounded by a hedge or enclosure, was called a court, or, as we find it in our law-books, a curtilage; the toft or homestead of a more genuine English dialect. One of these, with the adjacentdomain of arable fields and woods, had the name of a villa or manse. Several manses composed a march; and several marches formed a pagus or district.[p]From these elements in the progress of population arose villages and towns. In France undoubtedly there were always cities of some importance. Country parishes contained several manses or farms of arable land, around a common pasture, where every one was bound by custom to feed his cattle.[q]

of internal trade;

The condition even of internal trade was hardly preferable to that of agriculture. There is not a vestige perhaps to be discovered for several centuries of any considerable manufacture; I mean, of working up articles of common utility to an extent beyond what the necessities of an adjacent district required.[r]Rich men kept domestic artisans among their servants; even kings, in the ninth century, had their clothes made by the women upon their farms;[s]but the peasantry must have been supplied with garments and implements of labour by purchase; and every town, it cannot be doubted, had its weaver, its smith, and its currier. But there were almost insuperable impediments to any extended traffic—the insecurity of moveable wealth, and difficulty of accumulating it; the ignorance of mutual wants; the peril of robbery in conveying merchandise, and the certainty of extortion. In the domains of every lord a toll was to be paid in passing his bridge, or along his highway, or at his market.[t]These customs, equitable and necessary in their principle, became in practice oppressive, because they were arbitrary, and renewed in every petty territory which the road might intersect. Several of Charlemagne's capitularies repeat complaints of these exactions, and endeavour to abolish such tolls as were not founded on prescription.[u]One of them rather amusingly illustrates the modesty and moderation of the landholders. It is enacted that no one shall be compelled to go out of his way in order to pay toll at a particular bridge, when he can cross the river more conveniently at another place.[x]These provisions, like most others of that age, were unlikely to produce much amendment. It was only the milder species, however, of feudal lords who were content with the tribute of merchants. The more ravenous descended from their fortresses to pillage the wealthy traveller, or shared in the spoil of inferior plunderers, whom they both protected and instigated. Proofs occur, even in the later periods of the middle ages, when government had regained its energy, and civilization had made considerable progress, of public robberies systematically perpetrated by men of noble rank. In the more savage times, before the twelfth century, they were probably too frequent to excite much attention. It was a custom in some places to waylay travellers, and not only to plunder, but to sell them as slaves, or compel them to pay a ransom. Harold son of Godwin, having been wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu, was imprisoned by the lord, says an historian, according to the custom of that territory.[y]Germany appears to have been, upon the whole, the country where downright robbery was most unscrupulously practised by the great. Their castles, erected on almost inaccessible heights among the woods, became the secure receptacles of predatory bands, who spread terror over the country. From these barbarian lords of the dark ages, as from a living model, the romances are said to have drawn their giants and other disloyal enemies of true chivalry.Robbery, indeed, is the constant theme both of the Capitularies and of the Anglo-Saxon laws; one has more reason to wonder at the intrepid thirst of lucre, which induced a very few merchants to exchange the products of different regions, than to ask why no general spirit of commercial activity prevailed.

and of foreign commerce.

Under all these circumstances it is obvious that very little oriental commerce could have existed in these western countries of Europe. Destitute as they have been created, speaking comparatively, of natural productions fit for exportation, their invention and industry are the great resources from which they can supply the demands of the East. Before any manufactures were established in Europe, her commercial intercourse with Egypt and Asia must of necessity have been very trifling; because, whatever inclination she might feel to enjoy the luxuries of those genial regions, she wanted the means of obtaining them. It is not therefore necessary to rest the miserable condition of oriental commerce upon the Saracen conquests, because the poverty of Europe is an adequate cause; and, in fact, what little traffic remained was carried on with no material inconvenience through the channel of Constantinople. Venice took the lead in trading with Greece and more eastern countries.[z]Amalfi had the second place in the commerce of those dark ages. These cities imported, besides natural productions, the fine clothes of Constantinople; yet as this traffic seems to have been illicit, it was not probably extensive.[a]Their exports were gold and silver, by which, as none was likely to return, the circulating money of Europe was probably less in the eleventh century than at the subversionof the Roman empire; furs, which were obtained from the Sclavonian countries; and arms, the sale of which to pagans or Saracens was vainly prohibited by Charlemagne and by the Holy See.[b]A more scandalous traffic, and one that still more fitly called for prohibitory laws, was carried on in slaves. It is an humiliating proof of the degradation of Christendom, that the Venetians were reduced to purchase the luxuries of Asia by supplying the slave-market of the Saracens.[c]Their apology would perhaps have been, that these were purchased from their heathen neighbours; but a slave-dealer was probably not very inquisitive as to the faith or origin of his victim. This trade was not peculiar to Venice. In England it was very common, even after the Conquest, to export slaves to Ireland, till, in the reign of Henry II., the Irish came to a non-importation agreement, which put a stop to the practice.[d]

From this state of degradation and poverty all the countries of Europe have recovered, with a progression in some respects tolerably uniform, in others more unequal; and the course of their improvement, more gradual and less dependent upon conspicuous civil revolutions than their decline, affords one of the most interesting subjects into which a philosophical mind can inquire. The commencement of this restoration has usually been dated from about the close of the eleventh century; though it is unnecessary to observe that thesubject does not admit of anything approximating to chronological accuracy. It may, therefore, be sometimes not improper to distinguish the first six of the ten centuries which the present work embraces under the appellation of thedarkages; an epithet which I do not extend to the twelfth and three following. In tracing the decline of society from the subversion of the Roman empire, we have been led, not without connexion, from ignorance to superstition, from superstition to vice and lawlessness, and from thence to general rudeness and poverty. I shall pursue an inverted order in passing along the ascending scale, and class the various improvements which took place between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries under three principal heads, as they relate to the wealth, the manners, or the taste and learning of Europe. Different arrangements might probably be suggested, equally natural and convenient; but in the disposition of topics that have not always an unbroken connexion with each other, no method can be prescribed as absolutely more scientific than the rest. That which I have adopted appears to me as philosophical and as little liable to transitions as any other.

FOOTNOTES:[a]The subject of the present chapter, so far as it relates to the condition of literature in the middle ages, has been again treated by me in the first and second chapters of a work, published in 1836, the Introduction to the History of Literature in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. Some things will be found in it more exactly stated, others newly supplied from recent sources.[b]The authors of Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. i., can only find three writers of Gaul, no inconsiderable part of the Roman Empire, mentioned upon any authority; two of whom are now lost. In the preceding century the number was considerably greater.[c]Mosheim, Cent. 4. Tiraboschi endeavours to elevate higher the learning of the early Christians, t. ii. p. 328. Jortin, however, asserts that many of the bishops in the general councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon could not write their names. Remarks on Ecclesiast. Hist. vol. ii. p. 417.[d]Gibbon roundly asserts that "the language of Virgil and Cicero, though with some inevitable mixture of corruption, was so universally adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, Great Britain, and Pannonia, that the faint traces of the Punic or Celtic idioms were preserved only in the mountains or among the peasants." Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 60 (8vo. edit.). For Britain he quotes Tacitus's Life of Agricola as his voucher. But the only passage in this work that gives the least colour to Gibbon's assertion is one in which Agricola is said to have encouraged the children of British chieftains to acquire a taste for liberal studies, and to have succeeded so much by judicious commendation of their abilities, ut qui modo linguam Romanam abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent. (c. 21.) This, it is sufficiently obvious, is very different from the national adoption of Latin as a mother tongue.[e]t. vii. preface.[f]It appears, by a passage quoted from the digest by M. Bonamy, Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xxiv. p. 589, that Celtic was spoken in Gaul, or at least parts of it, as well as Punic in Africa.[g]Atque eadem illa litera, quoties ultima est, et vocalem verbi sequentis ita contingit, ut in eam transire possit, etiam si scribitur, tamen parum exprimitur, utMultum ille, etQuantum erat: adeo ut pene cujusdam novæ literæ sonum reddat. Neque enim eximitur, sed obscuratur, et tantùm aliqua inter duos vocales velut nota est, ne ipsæ coeant. Quintilian, Institut. 1. ix. c. 4, p. 585, edit. Capperonier.[h]The following passage of Quintilian is an evidence both of the omission of harsh or superfluous letters by the best speakers, and of the corrupt abbreviations usual with the worst. Dilucida vero erit pronunciatio primum, si verba tota exegerit, quorum pars devorari, pars destitui solet, plerisque extremas syllabas non proferentibus, dum priorum sono indulgent. Ut est autem necessaria verborum explanatio, ita omnes computare et velut adnumerare literas, molestum et odiosum.—Nam et vocales frequentissimè coeunt, et consonantium quædam insequente vocali dissimulantur; utriusque exemplum posuimus; Multum ille et terris. Vitatur etiam duriorum inter se congressus, undepellexitetcollegit, et quæ alio loco dicta sunt. 1. ii. c. 3, p. 696.[i]Tiraboschi (Storia dell. Lett. Ital. t. iii. preface, p. v.) imputes this paradox to Bembo and Quadrio; but I can hardly believe that either of them could maintain it in a literal sense.[k]M. Bonamy, in an essay printed in Mém. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, t. xxiv., has produced several proofs of this from the classical writers on agriculture and other arts, though some of his instances are not in point, as any schoolboy would have told him. This essay, which by some accident had escaped my notice till I had nearly finished the observations in my text, contains, I think, the best view that I have seen of the process of transition by which Latin was changed into French and Italian. Add however, the preface to Tiraboschi's third volume and the thirty-second dissertation of Muratori.[m]See Lanzi, Saggio della Lingua Etrusca, t. i. c. 431; Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscrip. t. xxiv. p. 632.[n]No description can give so adequate a notion of this extraordinary performance as a short specimen. Take the introductory lines; which really, prejudices of education apart, are by no means inharmonious:—Præfatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat,Respectumque bonum, cum venerit sæculi meta,Æternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda.Ego similiter erravi tempore multo,Fana prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis.Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege.Testificor Dominum, doleo, proh! civica turbaInscia quod perdit, pergens deos quærere vanos.Ob ea perdoctus ignoros instruo verum.Commodianus however did not keep up this excellence in every part. Some of his lines are not reducible to any pronunciation, without the summary rules of Procrustes; as for instance:—Paratus ad epulas, et refugiscere præcepta; or, Capillos inficitis, oculos fuligine relinitis.It must be owned that this text is exceedingly corrupt, and I should not despair of seeing a truly critical editor, unscrupulous as his fraternity are apt to be, improve his lines into unblemished hexameters. Till this time arrives, however, we must consider him either as utterly ignorant of metrical distinctions, or at least as aware that the populace whom he addressed did not observe them in speaking. Commodianus is published by Dawes at the end of his edition of Minucius Felix. Some specimens are quoted in Harris's Philological Inquiries.[o]Archæologia, vol. xiv. p. 188. The following are the first lines:—Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare;Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos præmonere,Comparans regnum cœlorum reticulo misso in mare,Congreganti multos pisces, omne genus hinc et inde,Quos cum traxissent ad littus, tunc cœperunt separare,Bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare.This trash is much below the level of Augustin; but it could not have been later than his age.[p]Recueil des Historiens, t. i. p. 814; it begins in the following manner:—Præcelso expectabili bis Arbogasto comitiAuspicius, qui diligo, salutem dico plurimam.Magnas cœlesti Domino rependo corde gratiasQuod te Tullensi proxime magnum in urbe vidimus.Multis me tuis artibus lætificabas antea,Sed nunc fecisti maximo me exultare gaudio.[q]Chilpericus rex ... confecit duos libros, quorum versiculi debiles nullis pedibus subsistere possunt: in quibus, dum non intelligebat, pro longis syllabas breves posuit, et pro brevibus longas statuebat. 1. vi. c. 46.[r]Mém. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, t. xvii. Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. ii. p. 28. It seems rather probable that the poetry of Avitus belongs to the fifth century, though not very far from its termination. He was the correspondent of Sidonius Apollinaris, who died in 489, and we may presume his poetry to have been written rather early in life.[s]One stanza of this song will suffice to show that the Latin language was yet unchanged:—De Clotario est canere rege Francorum,Qui ivi pugnare cum gente Saxonum,Quam graviter provenisset missis Saxonum,Si non fuisset inclitus Faro de genteBurgundionum.[t]Præcavendum est, ne ad aures populi minus aliquid intelligibile proferatur. Mém. de l'Acad. t. xvii. p. 712.[u]Rustico et plebeio sermone propter exemplum et imitationem. Id. ibid.[x]Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. iii. p. 5. Mém. de l'Académie, t. xxiv. p. 617. Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique, t. iv. p. 485.[y]Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. vii. p. 12. The editors say that it is mentioned by name even in the seventh century, which is very natural, as the corruption of Latin had then become striking. It is familiarly known that illiterate personsunderstanda more correct language than they use themselves; so that the corruption of Latin might have gone to a considerable length among the people, while sermons were preached, and tolerably comprehended, in a purer grammar.[z]Mém. de l'Acad. des Insc. t. xvii. See two memoirs in this volume by du Clos and le Bœuf, especially the latter, as well as that already mentioned in t. xxiv. p. 582, by M. Bonamy.[a]Muratori, Dissert. i. and xliii.[b]Usus Franciscâ, vulgari, et voce Latinâ.Instituit populos eloquio tripici.Fontanini dell'Eloquenza Italiana, p. 15. Muratori, Dissert. xxxii.[c]Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. vi. p. 20. Muratori, Dissert. xliii.[d]Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique, t. ii. p. 419. This became, the editors say, much less unusual about the end of the thirteenth century; a pretty late period! A few signatures to deeds appear in the fourteenth century; in the next they are more frequent. Ibid. The emperor Frederic Barbarossa could not read (Struvius, Corpus Hist. German. t. i. p. 377), nor John king of Bohemia in the middle of the fourteenth century (Sismondi, t. v. p. 205), nor Philip the Hardy, king of France, although the son of St. Louis. (Velly, t. vi. p. 426.)[e]Louis IV., king of France, laughing at Fulk count of Anjou, who sang anthems among the choristers of Tours, received the following pithy epistle from his learned vassal: Noveritis, domines quod rex illiteratus est asinus coronatus. Gesta Comitum Andegavensium. In the same book, Geoffrey, father of our Henry II., is said to be optime literatus; which perhaps imports little more learning than his ancestor Fulk possessed.[f]The passage in Eginhard, which has occasioned so much dispute, speaks for itself: Tentabat et scribere, tabulasque et codicillos ad hoc in lecticula sub cervicalibus circumferre solebat, ut, cum vacuum tempus esset, manum effigiandis literis assuefaceret; sed parum prosperè successit labor præposterus ac serò inchoatus.Many are still unwilling to believe that Charlemagne could not write. M. Ampère observes that the emperor asserts himself to have been the author of the Libri Carolini, and is said by some to have composed verses. Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 37. But did not Henry VIII. claim a book against Luther, which was not written by himself?Qui facit per alium, facit per se, is in all cases a royal prerogative. Even if the book were Charlemagne's own, might he not have dictated it? I have been informed that there is a manuscript at Vienna with autograph notes of Charlemagne in the margin. But is there sufficient evidence of their genuineness? The great difficulty is to get over the words which I have quoted from Eginhard. M. Ampère ingeniously conjectures that the passage does not relate to simple common writing, but to calligraphy; the art of delineating characters in a beautiful manner, practised by the copyists, and of which a contemporaneous specimen may be seen in the well-known Bible of the British Museum. Yet it must be remembered that Charlemagne's early life passed in the depths of ignorance; and Eginhard gives a fair reason why he failed in acquiring the art of writing, that he began too late. Fingers of fifty are not made for a new skill. It is not, of course, implied by the words, that he could not write his own name; but that he did not acquire such a facility as he desired. [1848.][g]Spelman, Vit. Alfred. Append.[h]Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. iii. p. 5.[i]These four dark centuries, the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh, occupy five large quarto volumes of the Literary History of France, by the fathers of St. Maur. But the most useful part will be found in the general view at the commencement of each volume; the remainder is taken up with biographies, into which a reader may dive at random, and sometimes bring up a curious fact. I may refer also to the 14th volume of Leber, Collections Relatives à l'Histoire de France, where some learned dissertations by the Abbés Lebeuf and Goujet, a little before the middle of the last century, are reprinted. [NoteI.]Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura, t. iii., and Muratori's forty-third Dissertation, are good authorities for the condition of letters in Italy; but I cannot easily give references to all the books which I have consulted.[k]Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 198.[m]Mabillon, De Re Diplomaticâ, p. 55. The reason alleged, indeed, is that they were wholly occupied with studying Arabic, in order to carry on a controversy with the Saracens. But, as this is not very credible, we may rest with the main fact that they could write no Latin.[n]Spelman, Vit. Alfred. Append. The whole drift of Alfred's preface to this translation is to defend the expediency of rendering books into English, on account of the general ignorance of Latin. The zeal which this excellent prince shows for literature is delightful. Let us endeavour, he says, that all the English youth, especially the children of those who are free-born, and can educate them, may learn to read English before they take to any employment. Afterwards such as please may be instructed in Latin. Before the Danish invasion indeed, he tells us, churches were well furnished with books; but the priests got little good from them, being written in a foreign language which they could not understand.[o]Mabillon, De Re Diplomaticâ, p. 55. Ordericus Vitalis, a more candid judge of our unfortunate ancestors than other contemporary annalists, says that the English were, at the Conquest, rude and almost illiterate, which he ascribes to the Danish invasion. Du Chesne, Hist. Norm. Script. p. 518. However, Ingulfus tells us that the library of Croyland contained above three hundred volumes, till the unfortunate fire that destroyed that abbey in 1091. Gale, XV Scriptores, t. i. 93. Such a library was very extraordinary in the eleventh century, and could not have been equalled for some ages afterwards. Ingulfus mentions at the same time a nadir, as he calls it, or planetarium, executed in various metals. This had been presented to abbot Turketul in the tenth century by a king of France, and was, I make no doubt, of Arabian or Greek manufacture.[p]Parchment was so scarce that none could be procured about 1120 for an illuminated copy of the Bible. Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, Dissert. II. I suppose the deficiency was of skins beautiful enough for this purpose; it cannot be meant that there was no parchment for legal instruments.Manuscripts written on papyrus, as may be supposed from the fragility of the material, as well as the difficulty of procuring it, are of extreme rarity. That in the British Museum, being a charter to a church at Ravenna in 572, is in every respect the most curious: and indeed both Mabillon and Muratori seem never to have seen anything written on papyrus, though they trace its occasional use down to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. Mabillon, De Re Diplomaticâ, 1. ii.; Muratori, Antichità Italiane, Dissert. xliii. p. 602. But the authors of the Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique speak of several manuscripts on this material as extant in France and Italy. t. i. p. 493.As to the general scarcity and high price of books in the middle ages, Robertson (Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note x.), and Warton in the above-cited dissertation, not to quote authors less accessible, have collected some of the leading facts; to whom I refer the reader.[q]Lest I should seem to have spoken too peremptorily, I wish it to be understood that I pretend to hardly any direct acquaintance with these writers, and found my censure on the authority of others, chiefly indeed on the admissions of those who are too disposed to fall into a strain of panegyric. See Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. iv. p. 281 et alibi.[r]John Scotus, who, it is almost needless to say, must not be confounded with the still more famous metaphysician Duns Scotus, lived under Charles the Bald, in the middle of the ninth century. It admits of no doubt that John Scotus was, in a literary and philosophical sense, the most remarkable man of the dark ages; no one else had his boldness, his subtlety in threading the labyrinths of metaphysical speculations which, in the west of Europe, had been utterly disregarded. But it is another question whether he can be reckoned an original writer; those who have attended most to his treatise De Divisione Naturæ, the most abstruse of his works, consider it as the development of an oriental philosophy, acquired during his residence in Greece, and nearly coinciding with some of the later Platonism of the Alexandrian school, but with a more unequivocal tendency to pantheism. This manifests itself in some extracts which have latterly been made from the treatise De Divisione Naturæ; but though Scotus had not the reputation of unblemished orthodoxy, the drift of his philosophy was not understood in that barbarous period. He might, indeed, have excited censure by his intrepid preference of reason to authority. "Authority," he says, "springs from reason, not reason from authority—true reason needs not be confirmed by any authority." La véritable importance historique, says Ampère, de Scot Erigène n'est donc pas dans ses opinions; celles-ci n'ont d'autre intérêt que leur date et le lieu où elles apparaissent. Sans doute, il est piquant et bizarre de voir ces opinions orientales et alexandrines surgir au IXesiècle, à Paris, à la cour de Charles le Chauve; mais ce qui n'est pas seulement piquant et bizarre, ce qui intéresse le développement de l'esprit humain, c'est que la question ait été posée, dès lors, si nettement entre l'autorité et la raison, et si énergiquement résolue en faveur de la seconde. En un mot, par ses idées, Scot Erigène est encore un philosophe de l'antiquité Grecque; et par l'indépendance hautement accusée de son point de vue philosophique, il est déjà un dévancier de la philosophie moderne. Hist. Litt. iii. 146.Silvester II. died in 1003. Whether he first brought the Arabic numeration into Europe, as has been commonly said, seems uncertain; it was at least not much practised for some centuries after his death.[s]Charlemagne had a library at Aix-la-Chapelle, which he directed to be sold at his death for the benefit of the poor. His son Louis is said to have collected some books. But this rather confirms, on the whole, my supposition that, in some periods, no royal or private libraries existed, since there were not always princes or nobles with the spirit of Charlemagne, or even Louis the Debonair."We possess a catalogue," says M. Ampère (quoting d'Achery's Spicilegium, ii. 310), "of the library in the abbey of St. Riquier, written in 831; it consists of 256 volumes, some containing several works. Christian writers are in great majority; but we find also the Eclogues of Virgil, the Rhetoric of Cicero, the History of Homer, that is, the works ascribed to Dictys and Dares." Ampère, iii. 236. Can anything be lower than this, if nothing is omitted more valuable than what is mentioned? The Rhetoric of Cicero was probably the spurious books Ad Herennium. But other libraries must have been somewhat better furnished than this; else the Latin authors would have been still less known in the ninth century than they actually were.In the gradual progress of learning, a very small number of princes thought it honourable to collect books. Perhaps no earlier instance can be mentioned than that of a most respectable man, William III., duke of Guienne, in the first part of the eleventh century. Fuit dux iste, says a contemporary writer, a pueritia doctus literis, et satis notitiam Scripturarum habuit; librorum copiam in palatio suo servavit; et si forte a frequentia causarum et tumultu vacaret, lectioni per seipsum operam dabat longioribus noctibus elucubrans in libris, donec somno vinceretur. Rec. des Hist. x. 155.[t]Robertson, Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note 13; Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 380; Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. vi.[u]Duelling, in the modern sense of the word, exclusive of casual frays and single combat during war, was unknown before the sixteenth century. But we find one anecdote which seems to illustrate its derivation from the judicial combat. The dukes of Lancaster and Brunswick, having some differences, agreed to decide them by duel before John king of France. The lists were prepared with the solemnity of a real trial by battle; but the king interfered to prevent the engagement. Villaret, t. ix. p. 71. The barbarous practice of wearing swords as a part of domestic dress, which tended very much to the frequency of duelling, was not introduced till the latter part of the 15th century. I can only find one print in Montfaucon's Monuments of the French monarchy where a sword is worn without armour before the reign of Charles VIII.: though a few, as early as the reign of Charles VI., have short daggers in their girdles. The exception is a figure of Charles VII. t. iii. pl. 47.[x]Baluzii Capitularia, p. 444. It was prohibited by Louis the Debonair; a man, as I have noticed in another place, not inferior, as a legislator, to his father. Ibid. p. 668. "The spirit of party," says a late writer, "has often accused the church of having devised these barbarous methods of discovering truth—the duel and the ordeal; nothing can be more unjust. Neither one nor the other is derived from Christianity; they existed long before in the Germanic usages." Ampère, Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 180. Any one must have been very ignorant who attributed the invention of ordeals to the church. But during the dark ages they were always sanctioned. Agobard, from whom M. Ampère gives a quotation, in the reign of Louis the Debonair wrote strongly against them; but this was the remonstrance of a superior man in an age that was ill-inclined to hear him.[y]Ordeals were not actually abolished in France, notwithstanding the law of Louis above-mentioned, so late as the eleventh century (Bouquet, t. xi. p. 430), nor in England till the reign of Henry III. Some of the stories we read, wherein accused persons have passed triumphantly through these severe proofs, are perplexing enough: and perhaps it is safer, as well as easier, to deny than to explain them. For example, a writer in the Archæologia (vol. xv. p. 172) has shown that Emma, queen of Edward the Confessor, did not perform her trial by steppingbetween, as Blackstone imagines, butuponnine red-hot ploughshares. But he seems not aware that the whole story is unsupported by any contemporary or even respectable testimony. A similar anecdote is related of Cunegunda, wife of the emperor Henry II., which probably gave rise to that of Emma. There are, however, medicaments, as is well known, that protect the skin to a certain degree against the effect of fire. This phenomenon would pass for miraculous, and form the basis of those exaggerated stories in monkish books.[z]The most singular effect of this crusading spirit was witnessed in 1211, when a multitude, amounting, as some say, to 90,000, chiefly composed of children, and commanded by a child, set out for the purpose of recovering the Holy Land. They came for the most part from Germany, and reached Genoa without harm. But, finding there an obstacle which their imperfect knowledge of geography had not anticipated, they soon dispersed in various directions. Thirty thousand arrived at Marseilles, where part were murdered, part probably starved, and the rest sold to the Saracens. Annali di Muratori,A.D.1211; Velly, Hist. de France, t. iv. p. 206.[a]Velly, t. iii. p. 295; Du Cange, v. Capuciati.[b]Velly, Hist. de France, t. v. p. 7; Du Cange, v. Pastorelli.[c]Velly, Hist. de France, t. viii. p. 99. The continuator of Nangis says, sicut fumus subitò evanuit tota illa commotio. Spicilegium, t. iii. p. 77.[d]Velly, t. v. p. 279; Du Cange, v. Verberatio.[e]Something of a similar kind is mentioned by G. Villani, under the year 1310. 1. viii. c. 122.[f]Annal. Mediolan. in Murat. Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 832; G. Stella. Ann. Genuens. t. xvii. p. 1072; Chron. Foroliviense, t. xix. p. 874; Ann. Bonincontri, t. xxi. p. 79.[g]Dissert. 75. Sudden transitions from profligate to austere manners were so common among individuals, that we cannot be surprised at their sometimes becoming in a manner national. Azarius, a chronicler of Milan, after describing the almost incredible dissoluteness of Pavia, gives an account of an instantaneous reformation wrought by the preaching of a certain friar. This was about 1350. Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 375.[h]Villaret, t. xii. p. 327.[i]Rot. Parl. v. iii. p. 428.[k]This is confessed by the authors of Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. ii. p. 4, and indeed by many catholic writers. I need not quote Mosheim, who more than confirms every word of my text.[m]Middleton's Letter from Rome. If some of our eloquent countryman's positions should be disputed, there are still abundant catholic testimonies that imaginary saints have been canonized.[n]Le Grand d'Aussy has given us, in the fifth volume of his Fabliaux, several of the religious tales by which the monks endeavoured to withdraw the people from romances of chivalry. The following specimens will abundantly confirm my assertions, which may perhaps appear harsh and extravagant to the reader.There was a man whose occupation was highway robbery; but whenever he set out on any such expedition, he was careful to address a prayer to the Virgin. Taken at last, he was sentenced to be hanged. While the cord was round his neck he made his usual prayer, nor was it ineffectual. The Virgin supported his feet "with her white hands," and thus kept him alive two days, to the no small surprise of the executioner, who attempted to complete his work with strokes of a sword. But the same invisible hand turned aside the weapon, and the executioner was compelled to release his victim, acknowledging the miracle. The thief retired into a monastery, which is always the termination of these deliverances.At the monastery of St. Peter, near Cologne, lived a monk perfectly dissolute and irreligious, but very devout towards the Apostle. Unluckily he died suddenly without confession. The fiends came as usual to seize his soul. St. Peter, vexed at losing so faithful a votary, besought God to admit the monk into Paradise. His prayer was refused; and though the whole body of saints, apostles, angels, and martyrs joined at his request to make interest, it was of no avail. In this extremity he had recourse to the Mother of God. "Fair lady," he said, "my monk is lost if you do not interfere for him; but what is impossible for us will be but sport to you, if you please to assist us. Your Son, if you but speak a word, must yield, since it is in your power to command him." The Queen Mother assented, and, followed by all the virgins, moved towards her Son. He who had himself given the precept, Honour thy father and thy mother, no sooner saw his own parent approach than he rose to receive her; and taking her by the hand inquired her wishes. The rest may be easily conjectured. Compare the gross stupidity, or rather the atrocious impiety of this tale, with the pure theism of the Arabian Nights, and judge whether the Deity was better worshipped at Cologne or at Bagdad.It is unnecessary to multiply instances of this kind. In one tale the Virgin takes the shape of a nun, who had eloped from the convent, and performs her duties ten years, till, tired of a libertine life, she returns unsuspected. This was in consideration of her having never omitted to say an Ave as she passed the Virgin's image. In another, a gentleman, in love with a handsome widow, consents, at the instigation of a sorcerer, to renounce God and the saints, but cannot be persuaded to give up the Virgin, well knowing that if he kept her his friend he should obtain pardon through her means. Accordingly she inspired his mistress with so much passion that he married her within a few days.These tales, it may be said, were the production of ignorant men, and circulated among the populace. Certainly they would have excited contempt and indignation in the more enlightened clergy. But I am concerned with the general character of religious notions among the people: and for this it is better to take such popular compositions, adapted to what the laity already believed, than the writings of comparatively learned and reflecting men. However, stories of the same cast are frequent in the monkish historians. Matthew Paris, one of the most respectable of that class, and no friend to the covetousness or relaxed lives of the priesthood, tells us of a knight who was on the point of being damned for frequenting tournaments, but saved by a donation he had formerly made to the Virgin. p. 290.[o]This hesitation about so important a question is what I would by no means repeat. Beyond every doubt, the evils of superstition in the middle ages, though separately considered very serious, are not to be weighed against the benefits of the religion with which they were so mingled. The fashion of the eighteenth century, among protestants especially, was to exaggerate the crimes and follies of mediæval ages—perhaps I have fallen into it a little too much; in the present we seem more in danger of extenuating them. We still want an inflexible impartiality in all that borders on ecclesiastical history, which, I believe, has never been displayed on an extensive scale. A more captivating book can hardly be named than the Mores Catholici of Mr. Digby; and it contains certainly a great deal of truth; but the general effect is that of amirage, which confuses and deludes the sight. If those "ages of faith" were as noble, as pure, as full of human kindness, as he has delineated them, we have had a bad exchange in the centuries since the Reformation. And those who gaze at Mr. Digby's enchantments will do well to consider how they can better escape this consequence than he has done. Dr. Maitland's Letters on the Dark Ages, and a great deal more that comes from the pseudo-Anglican or Anglo-catholic press, converge to the same end; a strong sympathy with the mediæval church, a great indulgence to its errors, and indeed a reluctance to admit them, with a corresponding estrangement from all that has passed in the last three centuries. [1848.][p]I am inclined to acquiesce in this general opinion; yet an account of expenses at Bolton Abbey, about the reign of Edward II., published in Whitaker's History of Craven, p. 51, makes a very scanty show of almsgiving in this opulent monastery. Much, however, was no doubt given in victuals. But it is a strange error to conceive that English monasteries before the dissolution fed the indigent part of the nation, and gave that general relief which the poor-laws are intended to afford.Piers Plowman is indeed a satirist; but he plainly charges the monks with want of charity.Little had lordes to do to give landes from their heiresTo religious that have no ruthe though it raine on their aultres;In many places there the parsons be themself at ease,Of the poor they have no pitie and that is their poor charitie.[q]Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. i. p. 374.[r]See Fosbrooke's British Monachism (vol. i. p. 127, and vol. ii. p. 8) for a farrago of evidence against the monks. Clemangis, a French theologian of considerable eminence at the beginning of the fifteenth century, speaks of nunneries in the following terms:—Quid aliud sunt hoc tempore puellarum monasteria, nisi quædam non dico Dei sanctuaria, sed Veneris execranda prostibula, sed lascivorum et impudicorum juvenum ad libidines explendas receptacula? ut idem sit hodie puellam velare, quod et publicè ad scortandum exponere. William Prynne, from whose records (vol. ii. p. 229) I have taken this passage, quotes it on occasion of a charter of king John, banishing thirty nuns of Ambresbury into different convents, propter vitæ suæ turpitudinem.[s]Mosheim, cent. vii. c. 3. Robertson has quoted this passage, to whom perhaps I am immediately indebted for it. Hist. Charles V., vol. i. note 11.I leave this passage as it stood in former editions. But it is due to justice that this extract from Eligius should never be quoted in future, as the translator of Mosheim has induced Robertson and many others, as well as myself, to do. Dr. Lingard has pointed out that it is a very imperfect representation of what Eligius has written; for though he has dwelled on these devotional practices as parts of the definition of a good Christian, he certainly adds a great deal more to which no one could object. Yet no one is, in fact, to blame for this misrepresentation, which, being contained in popular books, has gone forth so widely. Mosheim, as will appear on referring to him, did not quote the passage as containing a complete definition of the Christian character. His translator, Maclaine, mistook this, and wrote, in consequence, the severe note which Robertson has copied. I have seen the whole passage in d'Achery's Spicilegium (vol. v. p. 213, 4to. edit.), and can testify that Dr. Lingard is perfectly correct. Upon the whole, this is a striking proof how dangerous it is to take any authorities at second-hand.—Note to Fourth Edition.Much clamour has been made about the mistake of Maclaine, which was innocent and not unnatural. It has been commented upon, particularly by Dr. Arnold, as a proof of the risk we run of misrepresenting authors by quoting them at second-hand. And this is perfectly true, and ought to be constantly remembered. But, so long as we acknowledge the immediate source of our quotation, no censure is due, since in works of considerable extent this use of secondary authorities is absolutely indispensable, not to mention the frequent difficulty of procuring access to original authors [1848.][t]Mr. Turner has collected many curious facts relative to the condition of the Jews, especially in England. Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 95. Others may be found dispersed in Velly's History of France; and many in the Spanish writers, Mariana and Zurita. The following are from Vaissette's History of Languedoc. It was the custom at Toulouse to give a blow on the face to a Jew every Easter; this was commuted in the twelfth century for a tribute. t. ii. p. 151. At Beziers another usage prevailed, that of attacking the Jews' houses with stones from Palm Sunday to Easter. No other weapon was to be used; but it generally produced bloodshed. The populace were regularly instigated to the assault by a sermon from the bishop. At length a prelate wiser than the rest abolished this ancient practice, but not without receiving a good sum from the Jews. p. 485.[u]Greg. Tur. 1. ii. c. 40. Of Theodebert, grandson of Clovis, the same historian says, Magnum se et in omni bonitate præcipuum reddidit. In the next paragraph we find a story of his having two wives, and looking so tenderly on the daughter of one of them, that her mother tossed her over a bridge into the river. 1. iii. c. 25. This indeed is a trifle to the passage in the text. There are continual proofs of immorality in the monkish historians. In the history of Ramsey Abbey, one of our best documents for Anglo-Saxon times, we have an anecdote of a bishop who made a Danish nobleman drunk, that he might cheat him of an estate, which is told with much approbation. Gale, Script. Anglic. t. i. p. 441. Walter de Hemingford recounts with excessive delight the well-known story of the Jews who were persuaded by the captain of their vessel to walk on the sands at low water, till the rising tide drowned them; and adds that the captain was both pardoned and rewarded for it by the king, gratiam promeruit et præmium. This is a mistake, inasmuch as he was hanged; but it exhibits the character of the historian, Hemingford, p. 21.[x]Fleury, Troisième Discours sur l'Histoire Ecclésiastique.[y]Henry, Hist. of England, vol. ii. c. 7.[z]Du Cange, v. Peregrinatio. Non sinantur vagari isti nudi cum ferro, qui dicunt se datâ pœnitentiâ ire vagantes. Melius videtur, ut si aliquod inconsuetum et capitale crimen commiserint, in uno loco permaneant laborantes et servientes et pœnitentiam agentes, secundum quod canonicè iis impositum sit.[a]I. de Vitriaco, in Gesta Dei per Francos, t. i.; Villani, 1. vii. c. 144.[b]Henry has taken pains in drawing a picture, not very favourable, of Anglo-Saxon manners. Book II. chap. 7. This perhaps is the best chapter, as the volume is the best volume, of his unequal work. His account of the Anglo-Saxons is derived in a great degree from William of Malmsbury, who does not spare them. Their civil history, indeed, and their laws, speak sufficiently against the character of that people. But the Normans had little more to boast of in respect of moral correctness. Their luxurious and dissolute habits are as much noticed as their insolence. Vid. Ordericus Vitalis, p. 602; Johann. Sarisburiensis Policraticus, p. 194; Velly, Hist. de France, t. iii. p. 59. The state of manners in France under the first two races of kings, and in Italy both under the Lombards and the subsequent dynasties, may be collected from their histories, their laws, and those miscellaneous facts which books of every description contain. Neither Velly, nor Muratori, Dissert. 23, are so satisfactory as we might desire.[c]Velly, Hist. de France, t. ii. p. 335. It has been observed, that Quid mores sine legibus? is as just a question as that of Horace; and that bad laws must produce bad morals. The strange practice of requiring numerous compurgators to prove the innocence of an accused person had a most obvious tendency to increase perjury.[d]Muratori, Dissert. 23, t. i. p. 306 (Italian); Beckman's Hist. of Inventions, vol. i. p. 319; Vie privée des Français, t. ii. p. 1.[e]Vie privée des Français, t. i. p. 320; t. ii. p. 11.[f]Ibid. t. i. p. 324.[g]Rymer, t. i. p. 61.[h]Whitaker's Hist. of Craven, p. 340, and of Whalley, p. 171.[i]Velly, Hist. de France, t. iii. p. 236.[k]John of Salisbury inveighs against the game-laws of his age, with an odd transition from the Gospel to the Pandects. Nec veriti sunt hominem pro unâ bestiolâ perdere, quem unigentius Dei Filius sanguine redemit suo. Quæ feræ naturæ sunt, et de jure occupantium fiunt, sibi audet humana temeritas vindicare, &c. Polycraticon, p. 18.[m]Le Grand, Vie privée des Français, t. i. p. 325.[n]For the injuries which this people sustained from the seigniorial rights of the chace, in the eleventh century, see the Recueil des Historiens, in the valuable preface to the eleventh volume, p. 181. This continued to be felt in France down to the revolution, to which it did not perhaps a little contribute. (See Young's Travels in France.) The monstrous privilege of free-warren (monstrous, I mean, when not originally founded upon the property of the soil) is recognised by our own laws; though, in this age, it is not often that a court and jury will sustain its exercise. Sir Walter Scott's ballad of the Wild Huntsman, from a German original, is well known; and, I believe, there are several others in that country not dissimilar in subject.[o]Muratori, Dissert. 21. This dissertation contains ample evidence of the wretched state of culture in Italy, at least in the northern parts, both before the irruption of the barbarians, and, in a much greater degree, under the Lombard kings.[p]Schmidt, Hist. des Allem. t. i. p. 408. The following passage seems to illustrate Schmidt's account of German villages in the ninth century, though relating to a different age and country. "A toft," says Dr. Whitaker, "is a homestead in a village, so called from the small tufts of maple, elm, ash, and other wood, with which dwelling-houses were anciently overhung. Even now it is impossible to enter Craven without being struck with the insulated homesteads, surrounded by their little garths, and overhung with tufts of trees. These are the genuine tofts and crofts of our ancestors, with the substitution only of stone for the wooden crocks and thatched roofs of antiquity." Hist. of Craven, p. 380.[q]It is laid down in the Speculum Saxonicum, a collection of feudal customs which prevailed over most of Germany, that no one might have a separate pasture for his cattle unless he possessed three mansi. Du Cange, v. Mansus. There seems to have been a price paid, I suppose to the lord, for agistment in the common pasture.[r]The only mention of a manufacture, as early as the ninth or tenth centuries, that I remember to have met with, is in Schmidt, t. ii. p. 146, who says that cloths were exported from Friesland to England and other parts. He quotes no authority, but I am satisfied that he has not advanced the fact gratuitously.[s]Schmidt, t. i. p. 411; t. ii. p. 146.[t]Du Cange, Pedagium, Pontaticum, Teloneum, Mercatum, Stallagium, Lastagium, &c.[u]Baluz. Capit. p. 621 et alibi.[x]Ut nullus cogatur ad pontem ire ad fluvium transeundum propter telonei causas quando ille in alio loco compendiosius illud flumen transire potest. p. 764 et alibi.[y]Eadmer apud Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, t. xi. preface, p. 192. Pro ritu illius loci, a domino terræ captivitati addicitur.[z]Heeren has frequently referred to a work published in 1789, by Marini, intitled, Storia civile e politica del Commerzio de' Veneziani, which casts a new light upon the early relations of Venice with the East. Of this book I know nothing; but a memoir by de Guignes, in the thirty-seventh volume of the Academy of Inscriptions, on the commerce of France with the East before the crusades, is singularly unproductive; the fault of the subject, not of the author.[a]There is an odd passage in Luitprand's relation of his embassy from the Emperor Otho to Nicephorus Phocas. The Greeks making a display of their dress, he told them that in Lombardy the common people wore as good clothes as they. How, they said, can you procure them? Through the Venetian and Amalfitan dealers, he replied, who gain their subsistence by selling them to us. The foolish Greeks were very angry, and declared that any dealer presuming to export their fine clothes should be flogged, Luitprandi Opera, p. 155, edit. Antwerp. 1640.[b]Baluz. Capitul. p. 775. One of the main advantages which the Christian nations possessed over the Saracens was the coat of mail, and other defensive armour; so that this prohibition was founded upon very good political reasons.[c]Schmidt, Hist. des Allem, t. ii. p. 146; Heeren, sur l'Influence des Croisades, p. 316. In Baluze we find a law of Carloman, brother to Charlemagne: Ut mancipia Christiana paganis non vendantur. Capitularia, t. i. p. 150, vide quoque, p. 361.[d]William of Malmsbury accuses the Anglo-Saxon nobility of selling their female servants, even when pregnant by them, as slaves to foreigners, p. 102. I hope there were not many of these Yaricoes; and should not perhaps have given credit to an historian rather prejudiced against the English, if I had not found too much authority for the general practice. In the canons of a council at London in 1102 we read, Let no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic by which men of England have hitherto been sold like brute animals. Wilkins's Concilia, t. i. p. 383. And Giraldus Cambrensis says that the English before the Conquest were generally in the habit of selling their children and other relations to be slaves in Ireland, without having even the pretext of distress or famine, till the Irish, in a national synod, agreed to emancipate all the English slaves in the kingdom. Id. p. 471. This seems to have been designed to take away all pretext for the threatened invasion of Henry II. Lyttelton, vol. iii. p. 70.

[a]The subject of the present chapter, so far as it relates to the condition of literature in the middle ages, has been again treated by me in the first and second chapters of a work, published in 1836, the Introduction to the History of Literature in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. Some things will be found in it more exactly stated, others newly supplied from recent sources.

[b]The authors of Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. i., can only find three writers of Gaul, no inconsiderable part of the Roman Empire, mentioned upon any authority; two of whom are now lost. In the preceding century the number was considerably greater.

[c]Mosheim, Cent. 4. Tiraboschi endeavours to elevate higher the learning of the early Christians, t. ii. p. 328. Jortin, however, asserts that many of the bishops in the general councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon could not write their names. Remarks on Ecclesiast. Hist. vol. ii. p. 417.

[d]Gibbon roundly asserts that "the language of Virgil and Cicero, though with some inevitable mixture of corruption, was so universally adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, Great Britain, and Pannonia, that the faint traces of the Punic or Celtic idioms were preserved only in the mountains or among the peasants." Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 60 (8vo. edit.). For Britain he quotes Tacitus's Life of Agricola as his voucher. But the only passage in this work that gives the least colour to Gibbon's assertion is one in which Agricola is said to have encouraged the children of British chieftains to acquire a taste for liberal studies, and to have succeeded so much by judicious commendation of their abilities, ut qui modo linguam Romanam abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent. (c. 21.) This, it is sufficiently obvious, is very different from the national adoption of Latin as a mother tongue.

[e]t. vii. preface.

[f]It appears, by a passage quoted from the digest by M. Bonamy, Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xxiv. p. 589, that Celtic was spoken in Gaul, or at least parts of it, as well as Punic in Africa.

[g]Atque eadem illa litera, quoties ultima est, et vocalem verbi sequentis ita contingit, ut in eam transire possit, etiam si scribitur, tamen parum exprimitur, utMultum ille, etQuantum erat: adeo ut pene cujusdam novæ literæ sonum reddat. Neque enim eximitur, sed obscuratur, et tantùm aliqua inter duos vocales velut nota est, ne ipsæ coeant. Quintilian, Institut. 1. ix. c. 4, p. 585, edit. Capperonier.

[h]The following passage of Quintilian is an evidence both of the omission of harsh or superfluous letters by the best speakers, and of the corrupt abbreviations usual with the worst. Dilucida vero erit pronunciatio primum, si verba tota exegerit, quorum pars devorari, pars destitui solet, plerisque extremas syllabas non proferentibus, dum priorum sono indulgent. Ut est autem necessaria verborum explanatio, ita omnes computare et velut adnumerare literas, molestum et odiosum.—Nam et vocales frequentissimè coeunt, et consonantium quædam insequente vocali dissimulantur; utriusque exemplum posuimus; Multum ille et terris. Vitatur etiam duriorum inter se congressus, undepellexitetcollegit, et quæ alio loco dicta sunt. 1. ii. c. 3, p. 696.

[i]Tiraboschi (Storia dell. Lett. Ital. t. iii. preface, p. v.) imputes this paradox to Bembo and Quadrio; but I can hardly believe that either of them could maintain it in a literal sense.

[k]M. Bonamy, in an essay printed in Mém. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, t. xxiv., has produced several proofs of this from the classical writers on agriculture and other arts, though some of his instances are not in point, as any schoolboy would have told him. This essay, which by some accident had escaped my notice till I had nearly finished the observations in my text, contains, I think, the best view that I have seen of the process of transition by which Latin was changed into French and Italian. Add however, the preface to Tiraboschi's third volume and the thirty-second dissertation of Muratori.

[m]See Lanzi, Saggio della Lingua Etrusca, t. i. c. 431; Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscrip. t. xxiv. p. 632.

[n]No description can give so adequate a notion of this extraordinary performance as a short specimen. Take the introductory lines; which really, prejudices of education apart, are by no means inharmonious:—Præfatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat,Respectumque bonum, cum venerit sæculi meta,Æternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda.Ego similiter erravi tempore multo,Fana prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis.Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege.Testificor Dominum, doleo, proh! civica turbaInscia quod perdit, pergens deos quærere vanos.Ob ea perdoctus ignoros instruo verum.Commodianus however did not keep up this excellence in every part. Some of his lines are not reducible to any pronunciation, without the summary rules of Procrustes; as for instance:—Paratus ad epulas, et refugiscere præcepta; or, Capillos inficitis, oculos fuligine relinitis.It must be owned that this text is exceedingly corrupt, and I should not despair of seeing a truly critical editor, unscrupulous as his fraternity are apt to be, improve his lines into unblemished hexameters. Till this time arrives, however, we must consider him either as utterly ignorant of metrical distinctions, or at least as aware that the populace whom he addressed did not observe them in speaking. Commodianus is published by Dawes at the end of his edition of Minucius Felix. Some specimens are quoted in Harris's Philological Inquiries.

Præfatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat,Respectumque bonum, cum venerit sæculi meta,Æternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda.Ego similiter erravi tempore multo,Fana prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis.Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege.Testificor Dominum, doleo, proh! civica turbaInscia quod perdit, pergens deos quærere vanos.Ob ea perdoctus ignoros instruo verum.

Commodianus however did not keep up this excellence in every part. Some of his lines are not reducible to any pronunciation, without the summary rules of Procrustes; as for instance:—

Paratus ad epulas, et refugiscere præcepta; or, Capillos inficitis, oculos fuligine relinitis.

It must be owned that this text is exceedingly corrupt, and I should not despair of seeing a truly critical editor, unscrupulous as his fraternity are apt to be, improve his lines into unblemished hexameters. Till this time arrives, however, we must consider him either as utterly ignorant of metrical distinctions, or at least as aware that the populace whom he addressed did not observe them in speaking. Commodianus is published by Dawes at the end of his edition of Minucius Felix. Some specimens are quoted in Harris's Philological Inquiries.

[o]Archæologia, vol. xiv. p. 188. The following are the first lines:—Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare;Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos præmonere,Comparans regnum cœlorum reticulo misso in mare,Congreganti multos pisces, omne genus hinc et inde,Quos cum traxissent ad littus, tunc cœperunt separare,Bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare.This trash is much below the level of Augustin; but it could not have been later than his age.

[o]Archæologia, vol. xiv. p. 188. The following are the first lines:—

Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare;Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos præmonere,Comparans regnum cœlorum reticulo misso in mare,Congreganti multos pisces, omne genus hinc et inde,Quos cum traxissent ad littus, tunc cœperunt separare,Bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare.

This trash is much below the level of Augustin; but it could not have been later than his age.

[p]Recueil des Historiens, t. i. p. 814; it begins in the following manner:—Præcelso expectabili bis Arbogasto comitiAuspicius, qui diligo, salutem dico plurimam.Magnas cœlesti Domino rependo corde gratiasQuod te Tullensi proxime magnum in urbe vidimus.Multis me tuis artibus lætificabas antea,Sed nunc fecisti maximo me exultare gaudio.

[p]Recueil des Historiens, t. i. p. 814; it begins in the following manner:—

Præcelso expectabili bis Arbogasto comitiAuspicius, qui diligo, salutem dico plurimam.Magnas cœlesti Domino rependo corde gratiasQuod te Tullensi proxime magnum in urbe vidimus.Multis me tuis artibus lætificabas antea,Sed nunc fecisti maximo me exultare gaudio.

[q]Chilpericus rex ... confecit duos libros, quorum versiculi debiles nullis pedibus subsistere possunt: in quibus, dum non intelligebat, pro longis syllabas breves posuit, et pro brevibus longas statuebat. 1. vi. c. 46.

[r]Mém. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, t. xvii. Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. ii. p. 28. It seems rather probable that the poetry of Avitus belongs to the fifth century, though not very far from its termination. He was the correspondent of Sidonius Apollinaris, who died in 489, and we may presume his poetry to have been written rather early in life.

[s]One stanza of this song will suffice to show that the Latin language was yet unchanged:—De Clotario est canere rege Francorum,Qui ivi pugnare cum gente Saxonum,Quam graviter provenisset missis Saxonum,Si non fuisset inclitus Faro de genteBurgundionum.

[s]One stanza of this song will suffice to show that the Latin language was yet unchanged:—

De Clotario est canere rege Francorum,Qui ivi pugnare cum gente Saxonum,Quam graviter provenisset missis Saxonum,Si non fuisset inclitus Faro de genteBurgundionum.

[t]Præcavendum est, ne ad aures populi minus aliquid intelligibile proferatur. Mém. de l'Acad. t. xvii. p. 712.

[u]Rustico et plebeio sermone propter exemplum et imitationem. Id. ibid.

[x]Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. iii. p. 5. Mém. de l'Académie, t. xxiv. p. 617. Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique, t. iv. p. 485.

[y]Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. vii. p. 12. The editors say that it is mentioned by name even in the seventh century, which is very natural, as the corruption of Latin had then become striking. It is familiarly known that illiterate personsunderstanda more correct language than they use themselves; so that the corruption of Latin might have gone to a considerable length among the people, while sermons were preached, and tolerably comprehended, in a purer grammar.

[z]Mém. de l'Acad. des Insc. t. xvii. See two memoirs in this volume by du Clos and le Bœuf, especially the latter, as well as that already mentioned in t. xxiv. p. 582, by M. Bonamy.

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

[b]Usus Franciscâ, vulgari, et voce Latinâ.Instituit populos eloquio tripici.Fontanini dell'Eloquenza Italiana, p. 15. Muratori, Dissert. xxxii.

[b]

Usus Franciscâ, vulgari, et voce Latinâ.Instituit populos eloquio tripici.

[c]Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. vi. p. 20. Muratori, Dissert. xliii.

[d]Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique, t. ii. p. 419. This became, the editors say, much less unusual about the end of the thirteenth century; a pretty late period! A few signatures to deeds appear in the fourteenth century; in the next they are more frequent. Ibid. The emperor Frederic Barbarossa could not read (Struvius, Corpus Hist. German. t. i. p. 377), nor John king of Bohemia in the middle of the fourteenth century (Sismondi, t. v. p. 205), nor Philip the Hardy, king of France, although the son of St. Louis. (Velly, t. vi. p. 426.)

[e]Louis IV., king of France, laughing at Fulk count of Anjou, who sang anthems among the choristers of Tours, received the following pithy epistle from his learned vassal: Noveritis, domines quod rex illiteratus est asinus coronatus. Gesta Comitum Andegavensium. In the same book, Geoffrey, father of our Henry II., is said to be optime literatus; which perhaps imports little more learning than his ancestor Fulk possessed.

[f]The passage in Eginhard, which has occasioned so much dispute, speaks for itself: Tentabat et scribere, tabulasque et codicillos ad hoc in lecticula sub cervicalibus circumferre solebat, ut, cum vacuum tempus esset, manum effigiandis literis assuefaceret; sed parum prosperè successit labor præposterus ac serò inchoatus.Many are still unwilling to believe that Charlemagne could not write. M. Ampère observes that the emperor asserts himself to have been the author of the Libri Carolini, and is said by some to have composed verses. Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 37. But did not Henry VIII. claim a book against Luther, which was not written by himself?Qui facit per alium, facit per se, is in all cases a royal prerogative. Even if the book were Charlemagne's own, might he not have dictated it? I have been informed that there is a manuscript at Vienna with autograph notes of Charlemagne in the margin. But is there sufficient evidence of their genuineness? The great difficulty is to get over the words which I have quoted from Eginhard. M. Ampère ingeniously conjectures that the passage does not relate to simple common writing, but to calligraphy; the art of delineating characters in a beautiful manner, practised by the copyists, and of which a contemporaneous specimen may be seen in the well-known Bible of the British Museum. Yet it must be remembered that Charlemagne's early life passed in the depths of ignorance; and Eginhard gives a fair reason why he failed in acquiring the art of writing, that he began too late. Fingers of fifty are not made for a new skill. It is not, of course, implied by the words, that he could not write his own name; but that he did not acquire such a facility as he desired. [1848.]

Many are still unwilling to believe that Charlemagne could not write. M. Ampère observes that the emperor asserts himself to have been the author of the Libri Carolini, and is said by some to have composed verses. Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 37. But did not Henry VIII. claim a book against Luther, which was not written by himself?Qui facit per alium, facit per se, is in all cases a royal prerogative. Even if the book were Charlemagne's own, might he not have dictated it? I have been informed that there is a manuscript at Vienna with autograph notes of Charlemagne in the margin. But is there sufficient evidence of their genuineness? The great difficulty is to get over the words which I have quoted from Eginhard. M. Ampère ingeniously conjectures that the passage does not relate to simple common writing, but to calligraphy; the art of delineating characters in a beautiful manner, practised by the copyists, and of which a contemporaneous specimen may be seen in the well-known Bible of the British Museum. Yet it must be remembered that Charlemagne's early life passed in the depths of ignorance; and Eginhard gives a fair reason why he failed in acquiring the art of writing, that he began too late. Fingers of fifty are not made for a new skill. It is not, of course, implied by the words, that he could not write his own name; but that he did not acquire such a facility as he desired. [1848.]

[g]Spelman, Vit. Alfred. Append.

[h]Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. iii. p. 5.

[i]These four dark centuries, the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh, occupy five large quarto volumes of the Literary History of France, by the fathers of St. Maur. But the most useful part will be found in the general view at the commencement of each volume; the remainder is taken up with biographies, into which a reader may dive at random, and sometimes bring up a curious fact. I may refer also to the 14th volume of Leber, Collections Relatives à l'Histoire de France, where some learned dissertations by the Abbés Lebeuf and Goujet, a little before the middle of the last century, are reprinted. [NoteI.]Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura, t. iii., and Muratori's forty-third Dissertation, are good authorities for the condition of letters in Italy; but I cannot easily give references to all the books which I have consulted.

Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura, t. iii., and Muratori's forty-third Dissertation, are good authorities for the condition of letters in Italy; but I cannot easily give references to all the books which I have consulted.

[k]Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 198.

[m]Mabillon, De Re Diplomaticâ, p. 55. The reason alleged, indeed, is that they were wholly occupied with studying Arabic, in order to carry on a controversy with the Saracens. But, as this is not very credible, we may rest with the main fact that they could write no Latin.

[n]Spelman, Vit. Alfred. Append. The whole drift of Alfred's preface to this translation is to defend the expediency of rendering books into English, on account of the general ignorance of Latin. The zeal which this excellent prince shows for literature is delightful. Let us endeavour, he says, that all the English youth, especially the children of those who are free-born, and can educate them, may learn to read English before they take to any employment. Afterwards such as please may be instructed in Latin. Before the Danish invasion indeed, he tells us, churches were well furnished with books; but the priests got little good from them, being written in a foreign language which they could not understand.

[o]Mabillon, De Re Diplomaticâ, p. 55. Ordericus Vitalis, a more candid judge of our unfortunate ancestors than other contemporary annalists, says that the English were, at the Conquest, rude and almost illiterate, which he ascribes to the Danish invasion. Du Chesne, Hist. Norm. Script. p. 518. However, Ingulfus tells us that the library of Croyland contained above three hundred volumes, till the unfortunate fire that destroyed that abbey in 1091. Gale, XV Scriptores, t. i. 93. Such a library was very extraordinary in the eleventh century, and could not have been equalled for some ages afterwards. Ingulfus mentions at the same time a nadir, as he calls it, or planetarium, executed in various metals. This had been presented to abbot Turketul in the tenth century by a king of France, and was, I make no doubt, of Arabian or Greek manufacture.

[p]Parchment was so scarce that none could be procured about 1120 for an illuminated copy of the Bible. Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, Dissert. II. I suppose the deficiency was of skins beautiful enough for this purpose; it cannot be meant that there was no parchment for legal instruments.Manuscripts written on papyrus, as may be supposed from the fragility of the material, as well as the difficulty of procuring it, are of extreme rarity. That in the British Museum, being a charter to a church at Ravenna in 572, is in every respect the most curious: and indeed both Mabillon and Muratori seem never to have seen anything written on papyrus, though they trace its occasional use down to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. Mabillon, De Re Diplomaticâ, 1. ii.; Muratori, Antichità Italiane, Dissert. xliii. p. 602. But the authors of the Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique speak of several manuscripts on this material as extant in France and Italy. t. i. p. 493.As to the general scarcity and high price of books in the middle ages, Robertson (Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note x.), and Warton in the above-cited dissertation, not to quote authors less accessible, have collected some of the leading facts; to whom I refer the reader.

Manuscripts written on papyrus, as may be supposed from the fragility of the material, as well as the difficulty of procuring it, are of extreme rarity. That in the British Museum, being a charter to a church at Ravenna in 572, is in every respect the most curious: and indeed both Mabillon and Muratori seem never to have seen anything written on papyrus, though they trace its occasional use down to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. Mabillon, De Re Diplomaticâ, 1. ii.; Muratori, Antichità Italiane, Dissert. xliii. p. 602. But the authors of the Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique speak of several manuscripts on this material as extant in France and Italy. t. i. p. 493.

As to the general scarcity and high price of books in the middle ages, Robertson (Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note x.), and Warton in the above-cited dissertation, not to quote authors less accessible, have collected some of the leading facts; to whom I refer the reader.

[q]Lest I should seem to have spoken too peremptorily, I wish it to be understood that I pretend to hardly any direct acquaintance with these writers, and found my censure on the authority of others, chiefly indeed on the admissions of those who are too disposed to fall into a strain of panegyric. See Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. iv. p. 281 et alibi.

[r]John Scotus, who, it is almost needless to say, must not be confounded with the still more famous metaphysician Duns Scotus, lived under Charles the Bald, in the middle of the ninth century. It admits of no doubt that John Scotus was, in a literary and philosophical sense, the most remarkable man of the dark ages; no one else had his boldness, his subtlety in threading the labyrinths of metaphysical speculations which, in the west of Europe, had been utterly disregarded. But it is another question whether he can be reckoned an original writer; those who have attended most to his treatise De Divisione Naturæ, the most abstruse of his works, consider it as the development of an oriental philosophy, acquired during his residence in Greece, and nearly coinciding with some of the later Platonism of the Alexandrian school, but with a more unequivocal tendency to pantheism. This manifests itself in some extracts which have latterly been made from the treatise De Divisione Naturæ; but though Scotus had not the reputation of unblemished orthodoxy, the drift of his philosophy was not understood in that barbarous period. He might, indeed, have excited censure by his intrepid preference of reason to authority. "Authority," he says, "springs from reason, not reason from authority—true reason needs not be confirmed by any authority." La véritable importance historique, says Ampère, de Scot Erigène n'est donc pas dans ses opinions; celles-ci n'ont d'autre intérêt que leur date et le lieu où elles apparaissent. Sans doute, il est piquant et bizarre de voir ces opinions orientales et alexandrines surgir au IXesiècle, à Paris, à la cour de Charles le Chauve; mais ce qui n'est pas seulement piquant et bizarre, ce qui intéresse le développement de l'esprit humain, c'est que la question ait été posée, dès lors, si nettement entre l'autorité et la raison, et si énergiquement résolue en faveur de la seconde. En un mot, par ses idées, Scot Erigène est encore un philosophe de l'antiquité Grecque; et par l'indépendance hautement accusée de son point de vue philosophique, il est déjà un dévancier de la philosophie moderne. Hist. Litt. iii. 146.Silvester II. died in 1003. Whether he first brought the Arabic numeration into Europe, as has been commonly said, seems uncertain; it was at least not much practised for some centuries after his death.

Silvester II. died in 1003. Whether he first brought the Arabic numeration into Europe, as has been commonly said, seems uncertain; it was at least not much practised for some centuries after his death.

[s]Charlemagne had a library at Aix-la-Chapelle, which he directed to be sold at his death for the benefit of the poor. His son Louis is said to have collected some books. But this rather confirms, on the whole, my supposition that, in some periods, no royal or private libraries existed, since there were not always princes or nobles with the spirit of Charlemagne, or even Louis the Debonair."We possess a catalogue," says M. Ampère (quoting d'Achery's Spicilegium, ii. 310), "of the library in the abbey of St. Riquier, written in 831; it consists of 256 volumes, some containing several works. Christian writers are in great majority; but we find also the Eclogues of Virgil, the Rhetoric of Cicero, the History of Homer, that is, the works ascribed to Dictys and Dares." Ampère, iii. 236. Can anything be lower than this, if nothing is omitted more valuable than what is mentioned? The Rhetoric of Cicero was probably the spurious books Ad Herennium. But other libraries must have been somewhat better furnished than this; else the Latin authors would have been still less known in the ninth century than they actually were.In the gradual progress of learning, a very small number of princes thought it honourable to collect books. Perhaps no earlier instance can be mentioned than that of a most respectable man, William III., duke of Guienne, in the first part of the eleventh century. Fuit dux iste, says a contemporary writer, a pueritia doctus literis, et satis notitiam Scripturarum habuit; librorum copiam in palatio suo servavit; et si forte a frequentia causarum et tumultu vacaret, lectioni per seipsum operam dabat longioribus noctibus elucubrans in libris, donec somno vinceretur. Rec. des Hist. x. 155.

"We possess a catalogue," says M. Ampère (quoting d'Achery's Spicilegium, ii. 310), "of the library in the abbey of St. Riquier, written in 831; it consists of 256 volumes, some containing several works. Christian writers are in great majority; but we find also the Eclogues of Virgil, the Rhetoric of Cicero, the History of Homer, that is, the works ascribed to Dictys and Dares." Ampère, iii. 236. Can anything be lower than this, if nothing is omitted more valuable than what is mentioned? The Rhetoric of Cicero was probably the spurious books Ad Herennium. But other libraries must have been somewhat better furnished than this; else the Latin authors would have been still less known in the ninth century than they actually were.

In the gradual progress of learning, a very small number of princes thought it honourable to collect books. Perhaps no earlier instance can be mentioned than that of a most respectable man, William III., duke of Guienne, in the first part of the eleventh century. Fuit dux iste, says a contemporary writer, a pueritia doctus literis, et satis notitiam Scripturarum habuit; librorum copiam in palatio suo servavit; et si forte a frequentia causarum et tumultu vacaret, lectioni per seipsum operam dabat longioribus noctibus elucubrans in libris, donec somno vinceretur. Rec. des Hist. x. 155.

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

[u]Duelling, in the modern sense of the word, exclusive of casual frays and single combat during war, was unknown before the sixteenth century. But we find one anecdote which seems to illustrate its derivation from the judicial combat. The dukes of Lancaster and Brunswick, having some differences, agreed to decide them by duel before John king of France. The lists were prepared with the solemnity of a real trial by battle; but the king interfered to prevent the engagement. Villaret, t. ix. p. 71. The barbarous practice of wearing swords as a part of domestic dress, which tended very much to the frequency of duelling, was not introduced till the latter part of the 15th century. I can only find one print in Montfaucon's Monuments of the French monarchy where a sword is worn without armour before the reign of Charles VIII.: though a few, as early as the reign of Charles VI., have short daggers in their girdles. The exception is a figure of Charles VII. t. iii. pl. 47.

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

[y]Ordeals were not actually abolished in France, notwithstanding the law of Louis above-mentioned, so late as the eleventh century (Bouquet, t. xi. p. 430), nor in England till the reign of Henry III. Some of the stories we read, wherein accused persons have passed triumphantly through these severe proofs, are perplexing enough: and perhaps it is safer, as well as easier, to deny than to explain them. For example, a writer in the Archæologia (vol. xv. p. 172) has shown that Emma, queen of Edward the Confessor, did not perform her trial by steppingbetween, as Blackstone imagines, butuponnine red-hot ploughshares. But he seems not aware that the whole story is unsupported by any contemporary or even respectable testimony. A similar anecdote is related of Cunegunda, wife of the emperor Henry II., which probably gave rise to that of Emma. There are, however, medicaments, as is well known, that protect the skin to a certain degree against the effect of fire. This phenomenon would pass for miraculous, and form the basis of those exaggerated stories in monkish books.

[z]The most singular effect of this crusading spirit was witnessed in 1211, when a multitude, amounting, as some say, to 90,000, chiefly composed of children, and commanded by a child, set out for the purpose of recovering the Holy Land. They came for the most part from Germany, and reached Genoa without harm. But, finding there an obstacle which their imperfect knowledge of geography had not anticipated, they soon dispersed in various directions. Thirty thousand arrived at Marseilles, where part were murdered, part probably starved, and the rest sold to the Saracens. Annali di Muratori,A.D.1211; Velly, Hist. de France, t. iv. p. 206.

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

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

[c]Velly, Hist. de France, t. viii. p. 99. The continuator of Nangis says, sicut fumus subitò evanuit tota illa commotio. Spicilegium, t. iii. p. 77.

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

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

[f]Annal. Mediolan. in Murat. Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 832; G. Stella. Ann. Genuens. t. xvii. p. 1072; Chron. Foroliviense, t. xix. p. 874; Ann. Bonincontri, t. xxi. p. 79.

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

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

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

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

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

[n]Le Grand d'Aussy has given us, in the fifth volume of his Fabliaux, several of the religious tales by which the monks endeavoured to withdraw the people from romances of chivalry. The following specimens will abundantly confirm my assertions, which may perhaps appear harsh and extravagant to the reader.There was a man whose occupation was highway robbery; but whenever he set out on any such expedition, he was careful to address a prayer to the Virgin. Taken at last, he was sentenced to be hanged. While the cord was round his neck he made his usual prayer, nor was it ineffectual. The Virgin supported his feet "with her white hands," and thus kept him alive two days, to the no small surprise of the executioner, who attempted to complete his work with strokes of a sword. But the same invisible hand turned aside the weapon, and the executioner was compelled to release his victim, acknowledging the miracle. The thief retired into a monastery, which is always the termination of these deliverances.At the monastery of St. Peter, near Cologne, lived a monk perfectly dissolute and irreligious, but very devout towards the Apostle. Unluckily he died suddenly without confession. The fiends came as usual to seize his soul. St. Peter, vexed at losing so faithful a votary, besought God to admit the monk into Paradise. His prayer was refused; and though the whole body of saints, apostles, angels, and martyrs joined at his request to make interest, it was of no avail. In this extremity he had recourse to the Mother of God. "Fair lady," he said, "my monk is lost if you do not interfere for him; but what is impossible for us will be but sport to you, if you please to assist us. Your Son, if you but speak a word, must yield, since it is in your power to command him." The Queen Mother assented, and, followed by all the virgins, moved towards her Son. He who had himself given the precept, Honour thy father and thy mother, no sooner saw his own parent approach than he rose to receive her; and taking her by the hand inquired her wishes. The rest may be easily conjectured. Compare the gross stupidity, or rather the atrocious impiety of this tale, with the pure theism of the Arabian Nights, and judge whether the Deity was better worshipped at Cologne or at Bagdad.It is unnecessary to multiply instances of this kind. In one tale the Virgin takes the shape of a nun, who had eloped from the convent, and performs her duties ten years, till, tired of a libertine life, she returns unsuspected. This was in consideration of her having never omitted to say an Ave as she passed the Virgin's image. In another, a gentleman, in love with a handsome widow, consents, at the instigation of a sorcerer, to renounce God and the saints, but cannot be persuaded to give up the Virgin, well knowing that if he kept her his friend he should obtain pardon through her means. Accordingly she inspired his mistress with so much passion that he married her within a few days.These tales, it may be said, were the production of ignorant men, and circulated among the populace. Certainly they would have excited contempt and indignation in the more enlightened clergy. But I am concerned with the general character of religious notions among the people: and for this it is better to take such popular compositions, adapted to what the laity already believed, than the writings of comparatively learned and reflecting men. However, stories of the same cast are frequent in the monkish historians. Matthew Paris, one of the most respectable of that class, and no friend to the covetousness or relaxed lives of the priesthood, tells us of a knight who was on the point of being damned for frequenting tournaments, but saved by a donation he had formerly made to the Virgin. p. 290.

There was a man whose occupation was highway robbery; but whenever he set out on any such expedition, he was careful to address a prayer to the Virgin. Taken at last, he was sentenced to be hanged. While the cord was round his neck he made his usual prayer, nor was it ineffectual. The Virgin supported his feet "with her white hands," and thus kept him alive two days, to the no small surprise of the executioner, who attempted to complete his work with strokes of a sword. But the same invisible hand turned aside the weapon, and the executioner was compelled to release his victim, acknowledging the miracle. The thief retired into a monastery, which is always the termination of these deliverances.

At the monastery of St. Peter, near Cologne, lived a monk perfectly dissolute and irreligious, but very devout towards the Apostle. Unluckily he died suddenly without confession. The fiends came as usual to seize his soul. St. Peter, vexed at losing so faithful a votary, besought God to admit the monk into Paradise. His prayer was refused; and though the whole body of saints, apostles, angels, and martyrs joined at his request to make interest, it was of no avail. In this extremity he had recourse to the Mother of God. "Fair lady," he said, "my monk is lost if you do not interfere for him; but what is impossible for us will be but sport to you, if you please to assist us. Your Son, if you but speak a word, must yield, since it is in your power to command him." The Queen Mother assented, and, followed by all the virgins, moved towards her Son. He who had himself given the precept, Honour thy father and thy mother, no sooner saw his own parent approach than he rose to receive her; and taking her by the hand inquired her wishes. The rest may be easily conjectured. Compare the gross stupidity, or rather the atrocious impiety of this tale, with the pure theism of the Arabian Nights, and judge whether the Deity was better worshipped at Cologne or at Bagdad.

It is unnecessary to multiply instances of this kind. In one tale the Virgin takes the shape of a nun, who had eloped from the convent, and performs her duties ten years, till, tired of a libertine life, she returns unsuspected. This was in consideration of her having never omitted to say an Ave as she passed the Virgin's image. In another, a gentleman, in love with a handsome widow, consents, at the instigation of a sorcerer, to renounce God and the saints, but cannot be persuaded to give up the Virgin, well knowing that if he kept her his friend he should obtain pardon through her means. Accordingly she inspired his mistress with so much passion that he married her within a few days.

These tales, it may be said, were the production of ignorant men, and circulated among the populace. Certainly they would have excited contempt and indignation in the more enlightened clergy. But I am concerned with the general character of religious notions among the people: and for this it is better to take such popular compositions, adapted to what the laity already believed, than the writings of comparatively learned and reflecting men. However, stories of the same cast are frequent in the monkish historians. Matthew Paris, one of the most respectable of that class, and no friend to the covetousness or relaxed lives of the priesthood, tells us of a knight who was on the point of being damned for frequenting tournaments, but saved by a donation he had formerly made to the Virgin. p. 290.

[o]This hesitation about so important a question is what I would by no means repeat. Beyond every doubt, the evils of superstition in the middle ages, though separately considered very serious, are not to be weighed against the benefits of the religion with which they were so mingled. The fashion of the eighteenth century, among protestants especially, was to exaggerate the crimes and follies of mediæval ages—perhaps I have fallen into it a little too much; in the present we seem more in danger of extenuating them. We still want an inflexible impartiality in all that borders on ecclesiastical history, which, I believe, has never been displayed on an extensive scale. A more captivating book can hardly be named than the Mores Catholici of Mr. Digby; and it contains certainly a great deal of truth; but the general effect is that of amirage, which confuses and deludes the sight. If those "ages of faith" were as noble, as pure, as full of human kindness, as he has delineated them, we have had a bad exchange in the centuries since the Reformation. And those who gaze at Mr. Digby's enchantments will do well to consider how they can better escape this consequence than he has done. Dr. Maitland's Letters on the Dark Ages, and a great deal more that comes from the pseudo-Anglican or Anglo-catholic press, converge to the same end; a strong sympathy with the mediæval church, a great indulgence to its errors, and indeed a reluctance to admit them, with a corresponding estrangement from all that has passed in the last three centuries. [1848.]

[p]I am inclined to acquiesce in this general opinion; yet an account of expenses at Bolton Abbey, about the reign of Edward II., published in Whitaker's History of Craven, p. 51, makes a very scanty show of almsgiving in this opulent monastery. Much, however, was no doubt given in victuals. But it is a strange error to conceive that English monasteries before the dissolution fed the indigent part of the nation, and gave that general relief which the poor-laws are intended to afford.Piers Plowman is indeed a satirist; but he plainly charges the monks with want of charity.Little had lordes to do to give landes from their heiresTo religious that have no ruthe though it raine on their aultres;In many places there the parsons be themself at ease,Of the poor they have no pitie and that is their poor charitie.

Piers Plowman is indeed a satirist; but he plainly charges the monks with want of charity.

Little had lordes to do to give landes from their heiresTo religious that have no ruthe though it raine on their aultres;In many places there the parsons be themself at ease,Of the poor they have no pitie and that is their poor charitie.

[q]Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. i. p. 374.

[r]See Fosbrooke's British Monachism (vol. i. p. 127, and vol. ii. p. 8) for a farrago of evidence against the monks. Clemangis, a French theologian of considerable eminence at the beginning of the fifteenth century, speaks of nunneries in the following terms:—Quid aliud sunt hoc tempore puellarum monasteria, nisi quædam non dico Dei sanctuaria, sed Veneris execranda prostibula, sed lascivorum et impudicorum juvenum ad libidines explendas receptacula? ut idem sit hodie puellam velare, quod et publicè ad scortandum exponere. William Prynne, from whose records (vol. ii. p. 229) I have taken this passage, quotes it on occasion of a charter of king John, banishing thirty nuns of Ambresbury into different convents, propter vitæ suæ turpitudinem.

[s]Mosheim, cent. vii. c. 3. Robertson has quoted this passage, to whom perhaps I am immediately indebted for it. Hist. Charles V., vol. i. note 11.I leave this passage as it stood in former editions. But it is due to justice that this extract from Eligius should never be quoted in future, as the translator of Mosheim has induced Robertson and many others, as well as myself, to do. Dr. Lingard has pointed out that it is a very imperfect representation of what Eligius has written; for though he has dwelled on these devotional practices as parts of the definition of a good Christian, he certainly adds a great deal more to which no one could object. Yet no one is, in fact, to blame for this misrepresentation, which, being contained in popular books, has gone forth so widely. Mosheim, as will appear on referring to him, did not quote the passage as containing a complete definition of the Christian character. His translator, Maclaine, mistook this, and wrote, in consequence, the severe note which Robertson has copied. I have seen the whole passage in d'Achery's Spicilegium (vol. v. p. 213, 4to. edit.), and can testify that Dr. Lingard is perfectly correct. Upon the whole, this is a striking proof how dangerous it is to take any authorities at second-hand.—Note to Fourth Edition.Much clamour has been made about the mistake of Maclaine, which was innocent and not unnatural. It has been commented upon, particularly by Dr. Arnold, as a proof of the risk we run of misrepresenting authors by quoting them at second-hand. And this is perfectly true, and ought to be constantly remembered. But, so long as we acknowledge the immediate source of our quotation, no censure is due, since in works of considerable extent this use of secondary authorities is absolutely indispensable, not to mention the frequent difficulty of procuring access to original authors [1848.]

[s]Mosheim, cent. vii. c. 3. Robertson has quoted this passage, to whom perhaps I am immediately indebted for it. Hist. Charles V., vol. i. note 11.

I leave this passage as it stood in former editions. But it is due to justice that this extract from Eligius should never be quoted in future, as the translator of Mosheim has induced Robertson and many others, as well as myself, to do. Dr. Lingard has pointed out that it is a very imperfect representation of what Eligius has written; for though he has dwelled on these devotional practices as parts of the definition of a good Christian, he certainly adds a great deal more to which no one could object. Yet no one is, in fact, to blame for this misrepresentation, which, being contained in popular books, has gone forth so widely. Mosheim, as will appear on referring to him, did not quote the passage as containing a complete definition of the Christian character. His translator, Maclaine, mistook this, and wrote, in consequence, the severe note which Robertson has copied. I have seen the whole passage in d'Achery's Spicilegium (vol. v. p. 213, 4to. edit.), and can testify that Dr. Lingard is perfectly correct. Upon the whole, this is a striking proof how dangerous it is to take any authorities at second-hand.—Note to Fourth Edition.Much clamour has been made about the mistake of Maclaine, which was innocent and not unnatural. It has been commented upon, particularly by Dr. Arnold, as a proof of the risk we run of misrepresenting authors by quoting them at second-hand. And this is perfectly true, and ought to be constantly remembered. But, so long as we acknowledge the immediate source of our quotation, no censure is due, since in works of considerable extent this use of secondary authorities is absolutely indispensable, not to mention the frequent difficulty of procuring access to original authors [1848.]

[t]Mr. Turner has collected many curious facts relative to the condition of the Jews, especially in England. Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 95. Others may be found dispersed in Velly's History of France; and many in the Spanish writers, Mariana and Zurita. The following are from Vaissette's History of Languedoc. It was the custom at Toulouse to give a blow on the face to a Jew every Easter; this was commuted in the twelfth century for a tribute. t. ii. p. 151. At Beziers another usage prevailed, that of attacking the Jews' houses with stones from Palm Sunday to Easter. No other weapon was to be used; but it generally produced bloodshed. The populace were regularly instigated to the assault by a sermon from the bishop. At length a prelate wiser than the rest abolished this ancient practice, but not without receiving a good sum from the Jews. p. 485.

[u]Greg. Tur. 1. ii. c. 40. Of Theodebert, grandson of Clovis, the same historian says, Magnum se et in omni bonitate præcipuum reddidit. In the next paragraph we find a story of his having two wives, and looking so tenderly on the daughter of one of them, that her mother tossed her over a bridge into the river. 1. iii. c. 25. This indeed is a trifle to the passage in the text. There are continual proofs of immorality in the monkish historians. In the history of Ramsey Abbey, one of our best documents for Anglo-Saxon times, we have an anecdote of a bishop who made a Danish nobleman drunk, that he might cheat him of an estate, which is told with much approbation. Gale, Script. Anglic. t. i. p. 441. Walter de Hemingford recounts with excessive delight the well-known story of the Jews who were persuaded by the captain of their vessel to walk on the sands at low water, till the rising tide drowned them; and adds that the captain was both pardoned and rewarded for it by the king, gratiam promeruit et præmium. This is a mistake, inasmuch as he was hanged; but it exhibits the character of the historian, Hemingford, p. 21.

[x]Fleury, Troisième Discours sur l'Histoire Ecclésiastique.

[y]Henry, Hist. of England, vol. ii. c. 7.

[z]Du Cange, v. Peregrinatio. Non sinantur vagari isti nudi cum ferro, qui dicunt se datâ pœnitentiâ ire vagantes. Melius videtur, ut si aliquod inconsuetum et capitale crimen commiserint, in uno loco permaneant laborantes et servientes et pœnitentiam agentes, secundum quod canonicè iis impositum sit.

[a]I. de Vitriaco, in Gesta Dei per Francos, t. i.; Villani, 1. vii. c. 144.

[b]Henry has taken pains in drawing a picture, not very favourable, of Anglo-Saxon manners. Book II. chap. 7. This perhaps is the best chapter, as the volume is the best volume, of his unequal work. His account of the Anglo-Saxons is derived in a great degree from William of Malmsbury, who does not spare them. Their civil history, indeed, and their laws, speak sufficiently against the character of that people. But the Normans had little more to boast of in respect of moral correctness. Their luxurious and dissolute habits are as much noticed as their insolence. Vid. Ordericus Vitalis, p. 602; Johann. Sarisburiensis Policraticus, p. 194; Velly, Hist. de France, t. iii. p. 59. The state of manners in France under the first two races of kings, and in Italy both under the Lombards and the subsequent dynasties, may be collected from their histories, their laws, and those miscellaneous facts which books of every description contain. Neither Velly, nor Muratori, Dissert. 23, are so satisfactory as we might desire.

[c]Velly, Hist. de France, t. ii. p. 335. It has been observed, that Quid mores sine legibus? is as just a question as that of Horace; and that bad laws must produce bad morals. The strange practice of requiring numerous compurgators to prove the innocence of an accused person had a most obvious tendency to increase perjury.

[d]Muratori, Dissert. 23, t. i. p. 306 (Italian); Beckman's Hist. of Inventions, vol. i. p. 319; Vie privée des Français, t. ii. p. 1.

[e]Vie privée des Français, t. i. p. 320; t. ii. p. 11.

[f]Ibid. t. i. p. 324.

[g]Rymer, t. i. p. 61.

[h]Whitaker's Hist. of Craven, p. 340, and of Whalley, p. 171.

[i]Velly, Hist. de France, t. iii. p. 236.

[k]John of Salisbury inveighs against the game-laws of his age, with an odd transition from the Gospel to the Pandects. Nec veriti sunt hominem pro unâ bestiolâ perdere, quem unigentius Dei Filius sanguine redemit suo. Quæ feræ naturæ sunt, et de jure occupantium fiunt, sibi audet humana temeritas vindicare, &c. Polycraticon, p. 18.

[m]Le Grand, Vie privée des Français, t. i. p. 325.

[n]For the injuries which this people sustained from the seigniorial rights of the chace, in the eleventh century, see the Recueil des Historiens, in the valuable preface to the eleventh volume, p. 181. This continued to be felt in France down to the revolution, to which it did not perhaps a little contribute. (See Young's Travels in France.) The monstrous privilege of free-warren (monstrous, I mean, when not originally founded upon the property of the soil) is recognised by our own laws; though, in this age, it is not often that a court and jury will sustain its exercise. Sir Walter Scott's ballad of the Wild Huntsman, from a German original, is well known; and, I believe, there are several others in that country not dissimilar in subject.

[o]Muratori, Dissert. 21. This dissertation contains ample evidence of the wretched state of culture in Italy, at least in the northern parts, both before the irruption of the barbarians, and, in a much greater degree, under the Lombard kings.

[p]Schmidt, Hist. des Allem. t. i. p. 408. The following passage seems to illustrate Schmidt's account of German villages in the ninth century, though relating to a different age and country. "A toft," says Dr. Whitaker, "is a homestead in a village, so called from the small tufts of maple, elm, ash, and other wood, with which dwelling-houses were anciently overhung. Even now it is impossible to enter Craven without being struck with the insulated homesteads, surrounded by their little garths, and overhung with tufts of trees. These are the genuine tofts and crofts of our ancestors, with the substitution only of stone for the wooden crocks and thatched roofs of antiquity." Hist. of Craven, p. 380.

[q]It is laid down in the Speculum Saxonicum, a collection of feudal customs which prevailed over most of Germany, that no one might have a separate pasture for his cattle unless he possessed three mansi. Du Cange, v. Mansus. There seems to have been a price paid, I suppose to the lord, for agistment in the common pasture.

[r]The only mention of a manufacture, as early as the ninth or tenth centuries, that I remember to have met with, is in Schmidt, t. ii. p. 146, who says that cloths were exported from Friesland to England and other parts. He quotes no authority, but I am satisfied that he has not advanced the fact gratuitously.

[s]Schmidt, t. i. p. 411; t. ii. p. 146.

[t]Du Cange, Pedagium, Pontaticum, Teloneum, Mercatum, Stallagium, Lastagium, &c.

[u]Baluz. Capit. p. 621 et alibi.

[x]Ut nullus cogatur ad pontem ire ad fluvium transeundum propter telonei causas quando ille in alio loco compendiosius illud flumen transire potest. p. 764 et alibi.

[y]Eadmer apud Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, t. xi. preface, p. 192. Pro ritu illius loci, a domino terræ captivitati addicitur.

[z]Heeren has frequently referred to a work published in 1789, by Marini, intitled, Storia civile e politica del Commerzio de' Veneziani, which casts a new light upon the early relations of Venice with the East. Of this book I know nothing; but a memoir by de Guignes, in the thirty-seventh volume of the Academy of Inscriptions, on the commerce of France with the East before the crusades, is singularly unproductive; the fault of the subject, not of the author.

[a]There is an odd passage in Luitprand's relation of his embassy from the Emperor Otho to Nicephorus Phocas. The Greeks making a display of their dress, he told them that in Lombardy the common people wore as good clothes as they. How, they said, can you procure them? Through the Venetian and Amalfitan dealers, he replied, who gain their subsistence by selling them to us. The foolish Greeks were very angry, and declared that any dealer presuming to export their fine clothes should be flogged, Luitprandi Opera, p. 155, edit. Antwerp. 1640.

[b]Baluz. Capitul. p. 775. One of the main advantages which the Christian nations possessed over the Saracens was the coat of mail, and other defensive armour; so that this prohibition was founded upon very good political reasons.

[c]Schmidt, Hist. des Allem, t. ii. p. 146; Heeren, sur l'Influence des Croisades, p. 316. In Baluze we find a law of Carloman, brother to Charlemagne: Ut mancipia Christiana paganis non vendantur. Capitularia, t. i. p. 150, vide quoque, p. 361.

[d]William of Malmsbury accuses the Anglo-Saxon nobility of selling their female servants, even when pregnant by them, as slaves to foreigners, p. 102. I hope there were not many of these Yaricoes; and should not perhaps have given credit to an historian rather prejudiced against the English, if I had not found too much authority for the general practice. In the canons of a council at London in 1102 we read, Let no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic by which men of England have hitherto been sold like brute animals. Wilkins's Concilia, t. i. p. 383. And Giraldus Cambrensis says that the English before the Conquest were generally in the habit of selling their children and other relations to be slaves in Ireland, without having even the pretext of distress or famine, till the Irish, in a national synod, agreed to emancipate all the English slaves in the kingdom. Id. p. 471. This seems to have been designed to take away all pretext for the threatened invasion of Henry II. Lyttelton, vol. iii. p. 70.

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