[Sidenote: The wealth of the Church.]

[Sidenote: The tithe.]

2. The medival Church did not rely for its support, as churches usually must to-day, upon the voluntary contributions of its members. It enjoyed, in addition to the revenue from its vast tracts of lands and a great variety of fees, the income from a regular tax, the tithe. Those upon whom this fell were forced to pay it, just as we all must now pay taxes imposed by the government.

[Sidenote: Resemblance of the Church to a state.]

3. It is obvious, moreover, that the medival Church was not merely a religious body, as churches are to-day. Of course it maintained places of worship, conducted devotional exercises, and cultivated the spiritual life; but it did far more. It was, in a way, a state, for it had an elaborate system of law, and its own courts, in which it tried many cases which are now settled in our ordinary tribunals.[134] It had also its prisons, to which it might sentence offenders to lifelong detention.

[Sidenote: Unity of organization in the Church.]

4. The Church not only performed the functions of a state; it had the organization of a state. Unlike the Protestant ministers of to-day, all churchmen and religious associations of medival Europe were under one supreme head, who made laws for all and controlled every church officer, wherever he might be, whether in Italy or Germany, Spain or Ireland. The whole Church had one official language, Latin, in which all communications were dispatched and in which its services were everywhere conducted.

[Sidenote: The medival Church a monarchy in its form of government.]

79. The medival Church may, therefore, properly be called a monarchy in its government. The pope was its all-powerful and absolute head and concentrated in his person its entire spiritual and disciplinary authority. He was the supreme lawgiver. No council of the Church, no matter how large and important, could make laws against his will, for its decrees, to be valid, required his sanction.

[Sidenote: Dispensations.]

The pope might, moreover, set aside or abrogate any law of the Church, no matter how ancient, so long as it was not ordained by the Scriptures or by Nature. He might, for good reasons, make exceptions to all merely human laws; as, for instance, permit cousins to marry, or free a monk from his vows. Such exceptions were known as dispensations.

[Sidenote: The pope the supreme judge of Christendom.]

The pope was not merely the supreme lawgiver; he was the supreme judge. As a distinguished legal writer has said, the whole of western Europe was subject to the jurisdiction of one tribunal of last resort, the pope's court at Rome. Any one, whether clergyman or layman, in any part of Europe, could appeal to him at any stage in the trial of a large class of cases. Obviously this system had serious drawbacks. Grave injustice might be done by carrying to Rome a case which ought to have been settled in Edinburgh or Cologne, where the facts were best known. The rich, moreover, always had the advantage, as they alone could afford to bring suits before so distant a court.

[Sidenote: The control of the pope over the clergy at large.]

The control of the pope over the clergy scattered throughout Christendom was secured in several ways. A newly elected archbishop might not venture to perform any of the duties of his office until he had taken an oath of fidelity and obedience to the pope and received from him the pallium, the archbishop's badge of office. This was a narrow woolen scarf made by the nuns of the convent of St. Agnes at Rome. Bishops and abbots were also required to have their election duly confirmed by the pope. He claimed, too, the right to settle the very frequent disputed elections of church officials. He might even set aside both of the rival candidates and fill the office himself, as did Innocent III when he forced the monks of Canterbury, after a double election, to choose Stephen Langton.

Since the time of Gregory VII the pope had claimed the right to depose and transfer bishops at will. The control of Rome over all parts of the Christian Church was further increased by the legates. These papal emissaries were intrusted with great powers. Their haughty mien often enough offended the prelates and rulers to whom they brought home the authority of the pope,—as, for instance, when the legate Pandulf grandly absolved all the subjects of King John of England, before his very face, from their oath of fealty to him.

[Sidenote: The Roman Curia.]

The task assumed by the pope of governing the whole western world naturally made it necessary to create a large body of officials at Rome in order to transact all the multiform business and prepare and transmit the innumerable legal documents.[135] The cardinals and the pope's officials constituted what was called the papal Curia, or court.

[Sidenote: Sources of the pope's income.]

To carry on his government and meet the expenses of palace and retinue, the pope had need of a vast income. This he secured from various sources. Heavy fees were exacted from those who brought suits to his court for decision. The archbishops were expected to make generous contributions on receiving their palliums, and the bishops and abbots upon their confirmation. In the thirteenth century the pope began to fill many benefices throughout Europe himself, and customarily received half the first year's revenues from those whom he appointed. For several centuries before the Protestants finally threw off their allegiance to the popes, there was widespread complaint on the part of both clergy and laymen that the fees and taxes levied by the Curia were excessive.



[Sidenote: The archbishops.]

80. Next in order below the head of the Church were the archbishops. An archbishop was a bishop whose power extended beyond the boundaries of his own diocese and who exercised a certain control over all the bishops within his province.[136] One of the chief prerogatives of the archbishop was the right to summon the bishops of his province to meet in a provincial council. His court received appeals from the bishops' courts. Except, however, for the distinction of his title and the fact that he generally lived in an important city and often had vast political influence, the archbishop was not very much more powerful, as an officer of the Church, than the other bishops.



[Sidenote: The importance of the bishops.]

There is perhaps no class of persons in medival times whose position it is so necessary to understand as that of the bishops. They were regarded as the successors of the apostles, whose powers were held to be divinely transmitted to them. They represented the Church Universal in their respective dioceses, under the supreme headship of their "elder brother," the Bishop of Rome, the successor of the chief of the apostles. Their insignia of office, the miter and crosier, are familiar to every one. Each bishop had his especial church, which was called a cathedral, and usually surpassed the other churches of the diocese in size and beauty.

[Sidenote: Duties of a Bishop.]

Only a bishop could ordain new members of the clergy or degrade the old. He alone could consecrate churches or anoint kings. He alone could perform the sacrament of confirmation, though as priest he might administer any of the other sacraments.[137] Aside from his purely religious duties, he was the overseer of all the churchmen in his diocese, including the monks.[138] He held a court where a great variety of suits were tried. If he were a conscientious prelate, he traveled about his diocese visiting the parish churches and the monasteries to see if the priests did their duty and the monks behaved themselves properly.

[Sidenote: The bishop's temporal duties.]

In addition to the oversight of his diocese, it was the bishop's business to see to the lands and other possessions which belonged to the bishopric. He had, moreover, to perform those governmental duties which the king, especially in Germany, had thrown upon him, and he was conspicuous among the monarch's counselors. Lastly, the bishop was usually a feudal lord, with the obligations that that implied. He might have vassals and subvassals, and often was himself a vassal, not only of the king but also of some neighboring lord. As one reads through the archives of a bishopric, it is hard to tell whether the bishop should be called, first and foremost, a churchman or a feudal lord. In short, the duties of the bishop were as manifold as those of the medival Church itself.

[Sidenote: Election of the bishops.]

The reforms of Gregory VII had resulted in placing the choice of the bishop in the hands of the cathedral chapter,[139] that is, the body of clergy connected with the cathedral church. But this did not prevent the king from suggesting the candidate, since the chapter did not venture to proceed to an election without procuring a license from the king. Otherwise he might have refused to invest the person they chose with the lands and political prerogatives attached to the office.



[Sidenote: The parish priest and his duties.]

The lowest division of the Church was the parish. This had definite limits, although the parishioners might vary in number from a few families to a considerable village or an important district of a town. At the head of the parish was the parish priest, who conducted services in the parish church and absolved, baptized, married, and buried his parishioners. The priests were supposed to be supported by the lands belonging to the parish church and by the tithes. But both of these sources of income were often in the hands of laymen or of a neighboring monastery, while the priest received the merest pittance, scarcely sufficient to keep soul and body together.

The parish church was the center of village life and the priest was the natural guardian of the community. It was his business, for example, to see that no undesirable persons lurked in the village,—heretics, sorcerers, or lepers. It will be observed that the priest, besides attending to the morals of his flock, was expected to see to their bodily welfare by preventing the presence of those afflicted with the only infectious disease against which precautions were taken in the Middle Ages.[140]

[Sidenote: Other sources of the Church's power.]

81. The unexampled authority of the medival Church is, however, only partially explained by its wonderful organization. To understand the hold which it had upon mankind, we must consider the exalted position of the clergy and the teachings of the Church in regard to salvation, of which it claimed to be the exclusive agent.

[Sidenote: The exalted position of the clergy.]

The clergy were set apart from the laity in several ways. The higher orders—bishop, priest, deacon, and sub-deacon—were required to remain unmarried, and in this way were freed from the cares and interests of family life. The Church held, moreover, that the higher clergy, when they had been properly ordained, received through their ordination a mysterious imprint, the "indelible character," so that they could never become simple laymen again, even if they ceased to perform their duties altogether or were cast out of the Church for crime. Above all, the clergy alone could administer the sacraments upon which the salvation of every individual soul depended.

[Sidenote: Peter Lombard's Sentences.]

Although the Church believed that all the sacraments were established by Christ, it was not until the middle of the twelfth century that they were clearly described. Peter Lombard (d. 1164), a teacher of theology at Paris, prepared a manual of the doctrines of the Church as he found them in the Scriptures and in the writings of the church fathers, especially Augustine. These Sentences (Latin, sententi, opinions) of Peter Lombard were very influential, for they appeared at a time when there was a new interest in theology, particularly at Paris, where a great university was growing up.[141]

[Sidenote: The seven sacraments.]

It was Peter Lombard who first distinctly formulated the doctrine of the seven sacraments. His teachings did not claim, of course, to be more than an orderly statement and reconciliation of the various opinions which he found in the Scriptures and the church fathers; but his interpretations and definitions constituted a new basis for medival theology. Before his time the word sacramentum (that is, something sacred, a mystery) was applied to a variety of sacred things, for example, baptism, the cross, Lent, holy water, etc. But Peter Lombard states that there are seven sacraments, to wit: baptism, confirmation, extreme unction, marriage, penance, ordination, and the Lord's Supper. Through these sacraments all righteousness either has its beginning, or when begun is increased, or if lost is regained. They are essential to salvation, and no one can be saved except through them.[142]

[Sidenote: Baptism.]

[Sidenote: Confirmation.]

[Sidenote: Extreme unction.]

[Sidenote: Marriage.]

[Sidenote: Penance.]

[Sidenote: Ordination.]

[Sidenote: The Lord's Supper, or Holy Eucharist.]

By means of the sacraments the Church accompanied the faithful through life. By baptism all the sin due to Adam's fall was washed away; through that door alone could a soul enter the spiritual life. With the holy oil and the balsam, typifying the fragrance of righteousness, which were rubbed upon the forehead of the boy or girl at confirmation by the bishop, the young were strengthened so that they might boldly confess the name of the Lord. If the believer fell perilously ill, the priest anointed him with oil in the name of the Lord and by this sacrament of extreme unction expelled all vestiges of former sin and refreshed the spirit of the dying. Through the priest alone might marriage be sanctified; and when the bonds were once legally contracted they might never be sundered. If evil desire, which baptism lessened but did not remove, led the Christian into deadly sin, as it constantly did, the Church, through the sacrament of penance, reconciled him once more with God and saved him from the jaws of hell. For the priest, through the sacrament of ordination, received the most exalted prerogative of forgiving sins. He enjoyed, too, the awful power and privilege of performing the miracle of the Mass,—of offering up Christ anew for the remission of the sinner's guilt.

[Sidenote: The sacrament of penance.]

82. The sacrament of penance is, with the Mass, of especial historical importance. When a bishop ordained a priest, he said to him: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven them: whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." In this way the priest was intrusted with the keys of the kingdom of heaven. There was no hope of salvation for one who had fallen into mortal sin unless he received—or at least desired and sought—the absolution of the priest. To one who scorned the priest's ministrations the most sincere and prayerful repentance could not by itself bring forgiveness in the eyes of the Church. Before the priest could utter the solemn "I absolve thee from thy sins," the sinner must have duly confessed his sins and have expressed his vehement detestation of them and his firm resolve never more to offend. It is clear that the priest could not pronounce judgment unless he had been told the nature of the case. Nor would he be justified in absolving an offender who was not truly sorry for what he had done. Confession and penitence were, therefore, necessary preliminaries to absolution.[143]

[Sidenote: Penance and purgatory.]

Absolution did not free the contrite sinner from all the results of his sin. It cleared the soul of the deadly guilt which would otherwise have been punished by everlasting suffering, but did not exempt the penitent from temporal penalties. These might be imposed by the priest in this world or suffered after death in the fires of purgatory, which cleansed the soul and prepared it for heaven.

[Sidenote: Nature of penance.]

The punishment prescribed by the priest was called penance. This took a great variety of forms. It might consist in fasting, repeating prayers, visiting holy places, or abstaining from one's ordinary amusements. A journey to the Holy Land was regarded as taking the place of all penance. Instead, however, of requiring the penitent actually to perform the fasts, pilgrimages, or other sacrifices imposed as penance by the priest, the Church early permitted him to change his penance into a contribution, to be applied to some pious enterprise, like building a church or bridge, or caring for the poor and sick.

[Sidenote: The Mass.]

[Sidenote: Transubstantiation.]

The priest not only forgave sin; he was also empowered to perform the stupendous miracle of the Mass. The early Christians had celebrated the Lord's Supper or Holy Eucharist in various ways and entertained various conceptions of its nature and significance. Gradually the idea came to be universally accepted that by the consecration of the bread and the wine the whole substance of the bread was converted into the substance of the body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine into his blood. This change was termed transubstantiation. The Church believed, further, that in this sacrament Christ was offered up anew, as he had been on the cross, as a sacrifice to God. This sacrifice might be performed for the sins of the absent as well as of the present, and for the dead as well as for the living. Moreover, Christ was to be worshiped under the form of the bread, or host (Latin, hostia, sacrifice), with the highest form of adoration. The host was to be borne about in solemn procession when God was to be especially propitiated, as in the case of a famine or plague.

[Sidenote: Consequences of conceiving the Mass as a sacrifice.]

This conception of the Mass as a sacrifice had some important practical consequences. It became the most exalted of the functions of the priest and the very center of the Church's services. Besides the public masses for the people, private ones were constantly celebrated for the benefit of individuals, especially of the dead. Foundations were created, the income of which went to support priests for the single purpose of saying daily masses for the repose of the soul of the donor or those of the members of his family. It was also a common practice to bestow gifts upon churches and monasteries on condition that annual or more frequent masses should be said for the giver.

[Sidenote: The dominant position of the clergy and the sources of their power.]

[Sidenote: Excommunication and interdict.]

83. The sublime prerogatives of the Church, together with its unrivaled organization and vast wealth, combined to make its officers, the clergy, the most powerful social class of the Middle Ages. They held the keys of heaven and without their aid no one could hope to enter in. By excommunication they could not only cast an offender out of the Church, but also forbid his fellow-men to associate with him, since he was accursed and consigned to Satan. By means of the interdict they could suspend the consolations of religion in a whole city or country by closing the church doors and prohibiting all public services.[144]

[Sidenote: Their monopoly of the advantages of education.]

The influence of the clergy was greatly enhanced by the fact that they alone were educated. For six or seven centuries after the overthrow of the Roman government in the West, very few outside of the clergy ever dreamed of studying or even of learning to read and write. Even in the thirteenth century an offender who wished to prove that he belonged to the clergy, in order that he might be tried by a church court, had only to show that he could read a single line; for it was assumed by the judges that no one unconnected with the Church could read at all.[145]

It was therefore inevitable that almost all the books should be written by priests and monks and that the clergy should become the ruling power in all intellectual, artistic, and literary matters,—the chief guardians and promoters of civilization. Moreover, the civil government was forced to rely upon churchmen to write out the public documents and proclamations. The priests and monks held the pen for the king. Representatives of the clergy sat in the king's councils and acted as his ministers; in fact, the conduct of the government largely devolved upon them.[146]

[Sidenote: Offices in the Church open to all classes.]

The offices in the Church were open to all ranks of men, and many of the popes themselves sprang from the humblest classes. The Church thus constantly recruited its ranks with fresh blood. No one held an office simply because his father had held it before him, as was the case in the civil government.

[Sidenote: Lea's description of the medival Church.]

The man who entered the service of the Church "was released from the distraction of family cares and the seduction of family ties. The Church was his country and his home and its interests were his own. The moral, intellectual, and physical forces, which throughout the laity were divided between the claims of patriotism, the selfish struggle for advancement, the provision for wife and children, were in the Church consecrated to a common end, in the success of which all might hope to share, while all were assured of the necessities of existence, and were relieved of anxiety as to the future." The Church was thus "an army encamped on the soil of Christendom, with its outposts everywhere, subject to the most efficient discipline, animated with a common purpose, every soldier panoplied with inviolability and armed with the tremendous weapons which slew the soul" (Lea).

General Reading.—CUTTS, Parish Priests and their People (E. & J.B. Young, $3.00). PRVOST, L'glise et les Campagnes au Moyen ge (Paris, $1.50).



CHAPTER XVII

HERESY AND THE FRIARS

[Sidenote: The question of the character of the medival clergy.]

84. It is natural to ask whether the commanders of the great army which made up the Church proved valiant leaders in the eternal warfare against evil. Did they, on the whole, resist the temptations which their almost limitless power and wealth constantly placed in their way? Did they use their vast resources to advance the cause of the Great Leader whose humble followers and servants they claimed to be? Or were they, on the contrary, selfish and corrupt, turning the teachings of the Church to their own advantage, and discrediting its doctrines in the eyes of the people by flagrant maladministration and personal wickedness?

[Sidenote: The debt of western Europe to the church.]

No simple answer to this question is possible. One who realizes how completely the Church dominated every human interest and influenced every department of life in the Middle Ages must hesitate to attempt to balance the good and evil to be placed to its account. That the Church conferred incalculable benefits upon western Europe, few will question. To say nothing of its chief mission,—the moral uplifting of mankind through the Christian religion,—we have seen how, under its auspices, the barbarians were civilized and brought into the family of nations, how violence was checked by the "Truce of God," and how an educated class was maintained during the centuries when few laymen could either read or write. These are only the more obvious of its achievements; the solace and protection which it afforded to the weak, the wretched, and the heart-sore, no one can assume to estimate.

[Sidenote: The corruption of the clergy.]

On the other hand, no one can read the sources of our knowledge of the history of the Church without perceiving that there were always bad clergymen who abused their high prerogatives. Many bishops and priests were no more worthy to be intrusted with their extensive powers than the unscrupulous office-seekers to whom high stations in our modern governments sometimes fall.

[Sidenote: Tendency to exaggerate the evil in the Church.]

Yet as we read the fiery denunciations of the clergy's evil practices, which may be found in the records of nearly every age, we must not forget that the critic is always prone to take the good for granted and to dwell upon the evil. This is particularly true in dealing with a great religious institution, where corruption is especially shocking. One wicked bishop, or one form of oppression or immorality among the clergy, made a far deeper impression than the humble virtues of a hundred dutiful and God-fearing priests. If, however, we make all due allowance for the good which escaped the writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it must be admitted by all who read their testimony that they give us a gloomy picture of the life of many prelates, priests, and monks, and of the startling variety of abuses which developed in the Church.

[Sidenote: Temptations to corruption among the clergy.]

Gregory VII imagined that the reason for the existence of bad clergymen was that the kings and feudal lords forced their favorites into the offices of the Church. The root of the difficulty lay, however, in the wealth and power of the Church itself. It would have needed saints always to exercise righteously the tremendous powers which the clergy had acquired, and to resist the temptations to which they were subjected. When we consider the position of a rich prelate, it is not surprising that corruption abounded. The offices of the Church offered the same possibilities of money-making that civil offices, especially those in the great American cities, offer to the mere schemer to-day. The descriptions of some of the churchmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries remind us far more of the professional politician than of a modern clergyman, whether Catholic or Protestant.

[Sidenote: The chief forms of corruption in the Church.]

85. At least a brief description of the more notorious forms of corruption among the clergy will be necessary to an understanding of the various heresies or revolts against the Church. These began seriously to threaten its power in the twelfth century and culminated in the successful Protestant revolt of the sixteenth. The vices of the clergy serve to account also for the appearance of the begging monks, the Franciscans and Dominicans, and to explain the need of the great reform which they undertook in the thirteenth century.

[Sidenote: Simony.]

[Sidenote: The worldly and immoral lives of many bishops and abbots.]

In the first place, there was simony, a disease so deep-seated and persistent that Innocent III declared it incurable. This has already been described in an earlier chapter. Even boys were made bishops and abbots through the influence of their friends and relatives. Wealthy bishoprics and monasteries were considered by feudal lords an admirable means of support for their younger sons, since the eldest born usually inherited the fief. The life led by bishops and abbots was often merely that of a feudal prince. If a prelate had a taste for fighting, he organized military expeditions for conquest or to satisfy a grudge against a neighbor, exactly as if he belonged to the bellicose laity of the period.

[Sidenote: Corruption in the ecclesiastical courts.]

Besides simony and the scandalous lives of many of the clergy, there were other evils which brought the Church into disrepute. While the popes themselves, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were usually excellent men and sometimes distinguished statesmen, who honestly endeavored to exalt the vast institution over which they presided, their officials, who tried the innumerable cases which were brought to the papal court, had a reputation for grave corruption.[147] It was generally believed that the decision was always in favor of him who could pay most and that the poor received scant attention. The bishops' courts were notorious for their oppression, since a considerable portion of the bishop's income, like that of the feudal lord, came from the fines imposed upon those condemned by his officials. The same person was sometimes summoned to different courts at the same time and then fined for neglecting to appear at one or the other.

[Sidenote: The parish priests often no better than their superiors.]

As for the parish priests, they appear often to have followed the demoralizing example set by their superiors. The acts of church councils indicate that the priest sometimes turned his parsonage into a shop and sold wine or other commodities. He further increased his income, as we have seen, by demanding fees for merely doing his duty in baptizing, confessing, absolving, marrying, and burying his parishioners.

The monks of the twelfth century, with some remarkable exceptions, did little to supply the deficiencies of the secular clergy.[148] Instead of instructing the people and setting before them an example of a pure and holy life, they enjoyed no better reputation than the bishops and priests. Efforts were made, however, by newly founded orders in the eleventh and twelfth centuries—like that of the Cistercians to which St. Bernard belonged—to reform the monks.

[Sidenote: Corruption and abuses recognized and condemned by the better element in the clergy itself.]

The universal impression of selfishness and depravity which the corrupt churchmen made upon all observers is reflected in innumerable writings of the time,—in the letters of the popes, in the exhortations of holy men like St. Bernard, in the acts of the councils, in the satirical poems of the popular troubadours and the sprightly versifiers of the courts.[149] All agree in denouncing the iniquity of the clergy, their greed, and their reckless disregard of their sacred duties. St. Bernard sadly asks, "Whom can you show me among the prelates who does not seek rather to empty the pockets of his flock than to subdue their vices?"

[Sidenote: The lay critics of the Church.]

86. The evils which the churchmen themselves so frankly admitted could not escape the notice and comment of laymen. But while the better element among the clergy vigorously urged a reform of the existing abuses, no churchman dreamed of denying the truth of the Church's doctrines or the efficacy of its ceremonies. Among the laity, however, certain popular leaders arose who declared that the Church was the synagogue of Satan; that no one ought any longer to rely upon it for his salvation; that all its elaborate ceremonies were worse than useless; that its masses, holy water, and relics were mere money-getting devices of a depraved priesthood and helped no one to heaven. These bold rebels against the Church naturally found a hearing among those who felt that the ministrations of a wicked priest could not possibly help a sinner, as well as among those who were exasperated by the tithes and other ecclesiastical dues.

[Sidenote: Heresy.]

Those who questioned the teachings of the Church and proposed to cast off its authority were, according to the accepted view of the time, guilty of the supreme crime of heresy. To the orthodox believer nothing could exceed the guilt of one who committed treason against God by rejecting the religion which had been handed down in the Roman Church from the immediate followers of his Son. Moreover, doubt and unbelief were not merely sin, they were revolt against the most powerful social institution of the time, which, in spite of the depravity of some of its officials, continued to be venerated by people at large throughout western Europe. The extent and character of the heresies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the efforts of the Church to suppress them by persuasion, by fire and sword, and by the stern court of the Inquisition, form a strange and terrible chapter in medival history.

[Sidenote: Two classes of heretics.]

The heretics were of two sorts. One class merely abjured the practices and some of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church while they remained Christians and endeavored to imitate as nearly as possible the simple life of Christ and the apostles. On the other hand, there were popular leaders who taught that the Christian religion was false. They held that there were two principles in the universe, the good and the evil, which were forever fighting for the victory. They asserted that the Jehovah of the Old Testament was really the evil power, and that it was, therefore, the evil power whom the Catholic Church worshiped.

[Sidenote: The Albigenses.]

This latter heresy was a very old one, by which even St. Augustine had been fascinated in his early years. It was revived in Italy in the eleventh century and became very popular, especially in southern France, in the twelfth. Its adherents called themselves Cathari (the pure), but we shall call them Albigenses, a name derived from the town of Albi in southern France, where they were very numerous.[150]

[Sidenote: The Waldensians.]

Among those who continued to accept the Christian faith but refused to obey the clergy on account of their wickedness, the most important sect was that of the Waldensians. These were followers of Peter Waldo of Lyons, who gave up all their property and lived a life of apostolic poverty. They went about preaching the Gospel and expounding the Scriptures, which they translated into the language of the people. They made many converts, and before the end of the twelfth century there were great numbers of them scattered throughout western Europe.

The Church did not wish to condemn the efforts of good and simple men to imitate as exactly as possible the life of Christ and the apostles. Nevertheless these laymen, who claimed the right to preach and hear confession, and who asserted that prayer was quite as efficacious when uttered in bed or in a stable as in a church, seemed clearly to call in question the general belief in the Church as the exclusive agent of salvation, and seriously to threaten its influence among the people.

[Sidenote: Beginning of the fight against heresy.]

Before the end of the twelfth century the secular rulers began to take notice of heresy. Henry II of England, in 1166, ordered that no one should harbor heretics in England, and that any house in which they were received should be burned. The king of Aragon decreed (1194) that any one who listened to the preaching of the Waldensians, or even gave them food, should suffer the penalties for treason and should have his property confiscated by the state. These are the beginnings of a series of pitiless decrees which even the most enlightened kings of the thirteenth century issued against all who should be convicted of belonging either to the Albigenses or the Waldensians. The Church and the civil government agreed that heretics were dangerous to the welfare of both, and that they were criminals deserving the terrible death of burning alive.[151]

[Sidenote: Heresy regarded as treason.]

It is very difficult for us who live in a tolerant age to understand the universal and deep-rooted horror of heresy which prevailed not only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but also down at least to the eighteenth. Too much stress cannot be laid upon the fact that heresy was considered treason against an institution which practically all, both the learned and the unlearned, agreed was not only essential to salvation but was necessary also to order and civilization. Frank criticism of the evil lives of the clergy, not excluding the pope himself, was common enough. But this did not constitute heresy. One might believe that the pope and half the bishops were bad men, and yet in no way question the necessity for the Church's existence or the truth of every one of its dogmas; just as nowadays we might call particular rulers and government officials fools or knaves, without being suspected of repudiating government altogether. The heretic was the anarchist of the Middle Ages. He did not simply denounce the immorality of the officers of the Church; he claimed that the Church was worse than useless. He sought to lead people to throw off their allegiance to it and to disregard its laws and commands. The Church and the civil government consequently proceeded against him as against an enemy of society and order. Heresy was, moreover, a contagious disease, and spread rapidly and unobserved, so that to the rulers of the times even the harshest measures appeared justifiable in order to prevent its dissemination.

[Sidenote: Different methods of opposing heresy.]

[Sidenote: Internal reform.]

87. There were several ways of opposing heresy. First, a reform of the character of the clergy and a suppression of the abuses in the Church would have removed a great cause of that discontent to which the writers of the time attributed the rapid growth of heresy. The attempt of Innocent III to improve the conditions in the Church by summoning a great council at Rome in 1215 failed, however, and, according to his successor, matters grew worse rather than better.

[Sidenote: Extermination by the sword.]

A second plan was to organize an expedition against the rebels and annihilate them by the sword. This policy was only possible if a large number of heretics could be found in a single district. In southern France there were many adherents of both the Albigenses and the Waldensians, especially in the county of Toulouse. At the beginning of the thirteenth century there was in this region an open contempt for the Church and a bold defense of heretical teachings even among the higher classes.

[Sidenote: Albigensian crusade.]

Against the people of this flourishing land Innocent III preached a crusade in 1208. An army under Simon de Montfort[152] marched from northern France into the doomed region and, after one of the most atrocious and bloody wars upon record, suppressed the heresy by wholesale slaughter. At the same time the war checked the civilization and destroyed the prosperity of the most enlightened portion of France.

[Sidenote: The Inquisition.]

The third and most permanent defense against heresy was the establishment, under the headship of the pope, of a system of tribunals designed to ferret out secret cases of unbelief and bring the offenders to punishment. These courts of experts, who devoted their whole attention to the discovery and conviction of heresy, constituted the Holy Inquisition, which gradually took form after the Albigensian crusade. We cannot stop to describe these courts, which became especially notorious in Spain some two centuries after their establishment. The unfairness of the trials and the cruel treatment to which those suspected of heresy were subjected, through long imprisonment or torture—inflicted with the hope of forcing them to confess their crime or implicate others—have rendered the name of the Inquisition infamous.

Without by any means attempting to defend the methods employed, it may be remarked that the inquisitors were often earnest and upright men whose feelings were not unlike those of a New England judge presiding at a witch trial in the seventeenth century. The methods of procedure of the Inquisition were not more cruel than those used in the secular courts of the period.

The assertion of the suspected person that he was not a heretic did not receive any attention, for it was assumed that he would naturally deny his guilt, as would any other criminal. A person's belief had, therefore, to be judged by outward acts. Consequently one might fall into the hands of the Inquisition by mere inadvertent conversation with a heretic, by some unintentional neglect to show due respect toward the Church rites, or by the malicious testimony of one's neighbors. This is really the most dreadful aspect of the Inquisition and its procedure. It put a premium on talebearing and resorted to most cruel means to convict those who earnestly denied that their beliefs were different from those of the Church.

[Sidenote: Fate of the convicted heretic.]

If the suspected person confessed his guilt and abjured his heresy, he was forgiven and received back into the Church; but a penance of life imprisonment was imposed upon him as a fitting means of wiping away the unspeakable sin of which he had been guilty. If he remained impenitent, he was "relaxed to the secular arm"[153]; that is to say, the Church, whose law forbade it to shed blood, handed over the convicted person to the civil power, which burned him alive without further trial.

[Sidenote: Founding of the mendicant orders.]

88. We may now turn to that far more cheerful and effective method of meeting the opponents of the Church, which may be said to have been discovered by St. Francis of Assisi. His teachings and the example of his beautiful life probably did far more to secure continued allegiance to the Church than all the hideous devices of the Inquisition.

We have seen how the Waldensians tried to better the world by living simple lives and preaching the Gospel. Owing to the disfavor of the church authorities, who declared their teachings erroneous and dangerous, they were prevented from publicly carrying on their missionary work. Yet all conscientious men agreed with the Waldensians that the world was in a sad plight owing to the negligence and the misdeeds of the clergy. St. Francis and St. Dominic strove to meet the needs of their time by inventing a new kind of clergyman, the begging brother, or mendicant friar (Latin, frater, brother). He was to do just what the bishops and parish priests ordinarily failed to do,—namely, lead a holy life of self-sacrifice, defend the orthodox beliefs against the reproaches and attacks of the heretics, and awaken the people at large to a new spiritual life. The founding of the mendicant orders is one of the most important and interesting events of the Middle Ages.

[Sidenote: St. Francis of Assisi, 1182-1226.]

There is no more lovely and fascinating figure in all history than St. Francis. He was born (probably in 1182) at Assisi, a little town in central Italy. He was the son of a well-to-do merchant, and during his early youth he lived a very gay life, spending his father's money freely. He read the French romances of the time and dreamed of imitating the brave knights whose adventures they described. Although his companions were wild and reckless, there was a delicacy and chivalry in Francis' own make-up which made him hate all things coarse and heartless. When later he voluntarily became a beggar, his ragged coat still covered a true poet and knight.

[Sidenote: Francis forsakes his life of luxury and his inheritance and becomes a hermit.]

The contrast between his own life of luxury and the sad state of the poor early afflicted him. When he was about twenty, after a long and serious illness which made a break in his gay life and gave him time to think, he suddenly lost his love for the old pleasures and began to consort with the destitute, above all with the lepers. Now Francis, being delicately organized and nurtured, especially loathed these miserable creatures, but he forced himself to kiss their hands, as if they were his friends, and to wash their sores. So he gained a great victory over himself, and that which seemed bitter to him became, as he says, "sweet and easy."

His father does not appear to have had any fondness whatever for beggars, and the relations between him and his son grew more and more strained. When finally he threatened to disinherit the young man, Francis cheerfully agreed to surrender all right to his inheritance. Stripping off his clothes and giving them back to his father, he accepted the worn-out garment of a gardener and became a homeless hermit, busying himself in repairing the dilapidated chapels near Assisi.

[Sidenote: He believes he receives a direct message from Heaven.]

One day in February, 1209, as he was listening to Mass, the priest, turning toward him by chance, read: "And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.... Get you no gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, no wallet for your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staff; for the laborer is worthy of his food" (Matt. x. 7-10). This seemed to the expectant Francis the answer of Christ himself to his longings for guidance. Here was a complete programme laid out for him. He threw aside his stick, wallet, and shoes and resolved thereafter to lead, literally and absolutely, the life the apostles had led.

[Sidenote: Francis begins to preach and to attract followers.]

He began to preach in a simple way, and before long a rich fellow-townsman resolved to sell all and give to the poor, and follow Francis' example. Others soon joined them, and these joyous penitents, free of worldly burdens, calling themselves "God's troubadours," went barefoot and moneyless about central Italy preaching the Gospel. Some of those they met "listened willingly, others scoffed, the greater number overwhelmed them with questions, 'Whence come you? Of what order are you?' and they, though sometimes it was wearisome to answer, said simply, 'We are penitents, natives of the city of Assisi.'"

[Sidenote: Seeks and obtains the approval of the pope.]

When, with a dozen followers, Francis appealed to the pope in 1210 to approve his plan, Innocent III hesitated. He did not believe that any one could lead a life of absolute poverty. Then might not these ragged, ill-kempt vagabonds appear to condemn the Church by adopting a life so different from that of the rich and comfortable clergy? Yet if he disapproved the friars, he would seem to disapprove at the same time Christ's directions to his apostles. He finally decided to give his oral sanction and to authorize the brethren to continue their missions. They were to receive the tonsure, and to come under the spiritual authority of the Roman Church.

[Sidenote: Missionary work undertaken.]

89. Seven years later, when Francis' followers had greatly increased, missionary work was begun on a large scale, and brethren were dispatched to Germany, Hungary, France, Spain, and even to Syria. It was not long before an English chronicler was telling with wonder of the arrival in his country of these barefoot men, in their patched gowns and with ropes about their waists, who, with Christian faith, took no thought for the morrow, believing that their Heavenly Father knew what things they had need of.

[Sidenote: Francis did not desire to found a powerful order.]

The ill treatment which the friars received in their distant journeys led them to appeal to the pope for a letter which should request the faithful everywhere to treat them kindly, since they were good Catholics. This was the beginning of numberless privileges from the pope. It grieved Francis, however, to see his little band of companions converted into a great and powerful order. He foresaw that they would soon cease to lead their simple, holy life, and would become ambitious and perhaps rich. "I, little Brother Francis," he writes, "desire to follow the life and the poverty of Jesus Christ, persevering therein until the end; and I beg you all and exhort you to persevere always in this most holy life of poverty, and take good care never to depart from it upon the advice and teachings of anyone whomsoever."

[Sidenote: Francis reluctantly draws up a new rule for the guidance of the friars.]

Francis sorrowfully undertook to draw up a new and more elaborate constitution to take the place of the few Gospel passages which he had originally brought together as a guide. After many modifications, to suit the ideas of the pope and the cardinals, the Franciscan Rule was solemnly ratified (1228) by Honorius III. It provides that "The brothers shall appropriate nothing to themselves, neither a house, nor a place, nor anything; but as pilgrims and strangers in this world, in poverty and humility serving God, they shall confidently seek alms. Nor need they be ashamed, for the Lord made Himself poor for us in this world." Yet the friars are to work if they are able and if their charitable and religious duties leave them time to do so. They may be paid for this labor in necessities for themselves or their brethren, but never may they receive coin or money. Those may wear shoes who cannot get along without them. They may repair their garments with sackcloth and other remnants. They must live in absolute obedience to their superior and may not, of course, marry nor may they leave the order.[154]

After the death of St. Francis (1226), many of the order, which now numbered several thousand members, wished to maintain the simple rule of absolute poverty. Others, including the new head of the order, believed that much good might be done with the wealth which people were anxious to give them. They argued that the individual friars might still remain absolutely possessionless, even if the order had beautiful churches and comfortable monasteries. A stately church was immediately constructed at Assisi to receive the remains of their humble founder, who in his lifetime had chosen a deserted hovel for his home; and a great chest was set up in the church to receive offerings.

[Sidenote: St. Dominic.]

90. St. Dominic (b. 1170), the founder of the other great mendicant order, was not a simple layman like Francis. He was a churchman and took a regular course of instruction in theology for ten years in a Spanish university. He then (1208) accompanied his bishop to southern France on the eve of the Albigensian crusade and was deeply shocked to see the prevalence of heresy. His host at Toulouse happened to be an Albigensian, and Dominic spent the night in converting him. He then and there determined to devote his life to the extirpation of heresy. The little we know of him indicates that he was a man of resolute purpose and deep convictions, full of burning zeal for the Christian faith, yet kindly and cheerful, and winning in manner.

[Sidenote: Founding of the Dominican order.]

By 1214 a few sympathetic spirits from various parts of Europe had joined Dominic, and they asked Innocent III to sanction their new order. The pope again hesitated, but is said to have dreamed a dream in which he saw the great Roman Church of the Lateran tottering and ready to fall had not Dominic supported it on his shoulders. So he inferred that the new organization might sometime become a great aid to the papacy and gave it his approval. As soon as possible Dominic sent forth his followers, of whom there were but sixteen, to evangelize the world, just as the Franciscans were undertaking their first missionary journeys. By 1221 the Dominican order was thoroughly organized and had sixty monasteries scattered over western Europe. "Wandering on foot over the face of Europe, under burning suns or chilling blasts, rejecting alms in money but receiving thankfully whatever coarse food might be set before the wayfarer, enduring hunger in silent resignation, taking no thought for the morrow, but busied eternally in the work of snatching souls from Satan and lifting men up from the sordid cares of daily life, of ministering to their infirmities and of bringing to their darkened souls a glimpse of heavenly light" (Lea),—in this way did the early Franciscans and Dominicans win the love and veneration of the people.

[Sidenote: Contrast between the mendicants and the older orders.]

91. Unlike the Benedictine monks, each of the friars was under the command not only of the head of his particular monastery, but also of the "general" of the whole order. Like a soldier, he was liable to be sent by his commander upon any mission that the work of the order demanded. The friars indeed regarded themselves as soldiers of Christ. Instead of devoting themselves to a life of contemplation apart from the world, like the earlier monks, they were accustomed and required to mix with all classes of men. They must be ready to dare and suffer all in the interest of their work of saving not only themselves but their fellow-men.

[Sidenote: Contrast between the Dominicans and the Franciscans.]

The Dominicans were called the "Preaching Friars" and were carefully trained in theology in order the better to refute the arguments of the heretics. The pope delegated to them especially the task of conducting the Inquisition. They early began to extend their influence over the universities, and the two most distinguished theologians and teachers of the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, were Dominicans. Among the Franciscans, on the other hand, there was always a considerable party who were suspicious of learning and who showed far more anxiety to remain absolutely poor than did the Dominicans. Yet as a whole the Franciscans, like the Dominicans, accepted the wealth that came to them, and they, too, contributed distinguished scholars to the universities.

[Sidenote: Importance and influence of the new orders.]

The pope quickly recognized the importance of these new orders. He granted them successive privileges which freed them from all control of the bishops, and finally declared that they were to be bound only by their own rules. What was still more important, he gave them the right, if they were priests, to celebrate Mass everywhere, to preach and to perform the ordinary functions of the parish priests, such as hearing confession, granting absolution, and conducting burials. The friars invaded every parish, and appear to have largely replaced the parish priests. The laity believed them to be holier than the secular clergy and therefore regarded their prayers and ministrations as more efficient. Few towns were without a gray friars' (Franciscan) or a black friars' (Dominican) cloister; few princes but had a Dominican or a Franciscan confessor.

[Sidenote: Opposition of the secular clergy.]

It is hardly necessary to say that the secular clergy took these encroachments very ill. They repeatedly appealed to the pope to abolish the orders, or at least to prevent them from enriching themselves at the expense of the parish priests. But they got little satisfaction. Once the pope quite frankly told a great deputation of cardinals, bishops, and minor clergy that it was their own vain and worldly lives which made them hate the mendicant brothers, who spent the bequests they received from the dying for the honor of God, instead of wasting it in pleasure.

The mendicant orders have counted among their numbers men of the greatest ability and distinction,—scholars like Thomas Aquinas, reformers like Savonarola, artists like Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo, and scientists like Roger Bacon. In the busy world of the thirteenth century there was no agency more active for good than the friars. Yet their vagrant lives, free from the ordinary control of the Church, and the great wealth which was showered upon them, afforded many obvious temptations which they did not long withstand. Bonaventura, who was made head of the Franciscan order in 1257, admits the general dislike aroused by the greed, idleness, and vice of its degenerate members, as well as by their importunate begging, which rendered the friar more troublesome to the wayfarer than the robber. Nevertheless the friars were preferred to the ordinary priests by high and low alike; it was they, rather than the secular clergy, who maintained and cultivated the religious life in both city and country.

General Reading.—The opening chapter of Lea's monumental work, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (Harper Bros. & Co., 3 vols., $10.00), gives a remarkable account of the medival Church and the abuses which prevailed. The first volume also contains unexcelled chapters upon the origin of both the Franciscan and Dominican orders. For St. Francis, by far the best work is Sabatier's beautiful biography, St. Francis of Assisi (Charles Scribner's Sons, $2.50). The earliest and best source for Francis is The Mirror of Perfection (Page, Boston, 75 cents), by Brother Leo, which shows the love and admiration in which "Little Brother Francis" was held by one of his companions. See also JESSOPP, The Coming of the Friars, and Other Historic Essays (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.25), Chapter I.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE PEOPLE IN COUNTRY AND TOWN

[Sidenote: Little known of the life of the people in the Middle Ages.]

92. Since the development of the rather new science of political economy, historical writers have become much interested in the condition and habits of the farmer, tradesman, and artisan in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately no amount of research is likely to make our knowledge very clear or certain regarding the condition of the people at large during the five or six centuries following the barbarian invasions. It rarely occurred to a medival chronicler to describe the familiar things about him, such as the way in which the peasant lived and tilled his land. Only the conspicuous personages and the startling events caught his attention. Nevertheless enough is known of the medival manor and town to make them very important subjects for the student of general history.

[Sidenote: Unimportance of town life in the early Middle Ages.]

There was little town life in western Europe before the twelfth century. The Roman towns were decreasing in population before the German inroads. The confusion which followed the invasions hastened their decline, and a great number of them disappeared altogether. Those which survived and such new towns as sprang up were, to judge from the chronicles, of very little importance during the early Middle Ages. We may assume, therefore, that during the long period from Theodoric to Frederick Barbarossa by far the greater part of the population of England, Germany, and northern and central France were living in the country, on the great estates belonging to the feudal lords, abbots, and bishops.[155]

[Sidenote: The manor, or vill.]

These medival estates were called vills, or manors, and closely resembled the Roman villas described in an earlier chapter. A portion of the estate was reserved by the lord for his own use; the rest of it was divided up among the peasants,[156] usually in long strips, of which each peasant had several scattered about the manor. The peasants were generally serfs who did not own their fields, but could not, on the other hand, be deprived of them so long as they worked for the lord and paid him certain dues. They were attached to the land and went with it when it changed hands. The serfs were required to till those fields which the lord reserved for himself and to gather in his crops. They might not marry without their lord's permission. Their wives and children rendered such assistance as was necessary in the manor house. In the women's buildings the daughters of the serfs engaged in spinning, weaving, sewing, baking, and brewing, thus producing clothes, food, and drink to be used by the whole community.



[Sidenote: The obligations of the serfs.]

We get our clearest ideas of the position of the serfs from the ancient descriptions of manors, which give an exact account of what each member of a particular community owed to the lord. For example, we find that the abbot of Peterborough held a manor upon which Hugh Miller and seventeen other serfs, mentioned by name, were required to work for him three days in each week during the whole year, except one week at Christmas, one at Easter, and one at Whitsuntide. Each serf was to give the lord abbot one bushel of wheat and eighteen sheaves of oats, three hens and one cock yearly, and five eggs at Easter. If he sold his horse for more than ten shillings, he was to give the said abbot four pence. Five other serfs, mentioned by name, held but half as much land as Hugh and his companions, by paying and doing in all things half as much service.

There were sometimes a few people on the manor who did not belong to the great body of cultivators. The limits of the manor and those of the parish often coincided; in that case there would be a priest who had some scattered acres and whose standing was naturally somewhat superior to that of the people about him. Then the miller, who ground the flour and paid a substantial rent to the lord, was generally somewhat better off than his neighbors, and the same may be said of the blacksmith.

[Sidenote: The manor independent of the outside world.]

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the manor was its independence of the rest of the world. It produced nearly everything that its members needed and might almost have continued to exist indefinitely without communication with those who lived beyond its bounds. Little or no money was necessary, for the peasants paid what was due to the lord in the form of labor and farm products. They also rendered the needful help to one another and found little occasion for buying and selling.

[Sidenote: The monotony and misery of the peasants' lives.]

There was almost no opportunity to better one's condition, and life, in the greater part of the hamlets, must have gone on for generation after generation in a weary routine. The life was not merely monotonous, it was miserable. The food was coarse and there was little variety, as the peasants did not even take pains to raise fresh vegetables. The houses usually had but one room. This was ill-lighted by a single little window and had no chimney.

[Sidenote: The manor court.]

Yet the very dependence upon one another can hardly have failed to produce a certain spirit of brotherhood and mutual assistance in the community. It was not only separated from the outside world, but its members were brought together constantly by their intermingled fields, their attendance at one church, and their responsibility to one proprietor. The men were all expected to be present at the "court" which was held in each manor, where the business of the manor was transacted under the supervision of a representative of the lord. Here, for instance, disputes were settled, fines imposed for the violation of the customs of the manor, and redistributions of the strips of land took place.

[Sidenote: The serf an inferior farmer who could only exist when there was plenty of land.]

The serf was ordinarily a bad farmer and workman. He cultivated the soil in a very crude manner, and his crops were accordingly scanty and inferior. Obviously serfdom could exist only as long as land was plentiful. But in the twelfth and thirteenth century western Europe appears to have been gaining steadily in population. Serfdom would, therefore, naturally tend to disappear when the population so increased that the carelessly cultivated fields no longer supplied the food necessary for the growing numbers.

[Sidenote: Barter replaced by money transactions.]

The increased use of money in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which came with the awakening trade and industry, also tended to break up the manor. The old habit of bartering one thing for another without the intervention of money began to disappear. As time went on, neither the lord nor the serf was satisfied with the ancient primitive arrangements, which had answered well enough in the time of Charlemagne. The serfs, on the one hand, began to obtain money by the sale of their products in the markets of neighboring towns. They soon found it more profitable to pay the lord a certain sum instead of working for him, for they could then turn their whole attention to their own farms. The proprietors, on the other hand, found it to their advantage to accept money in place of the services of their tenants. With this money the landlord could hire laborers to cultivate his fields and could buy the luxuries which were brought to his notice as commerce increased. So it came about that the lords gradually renounced their control over the peasants, and the serf was no longer easily distinguishable from the freeman who paid a regular rent for his land.[157] A serf might also gain his liberty by fleeing to a town. If he remained undiscovered, or was unclaimed by his lord, for a year and a day, he became a freeman.

[Sidenote: Disappearance of serfdom.]

The slow extinction of serfdom in western Europe appears to have begun as early as the twelfth century. A very general emancipation had taken place in France by the end of the thirteenth century (and in England somewhat later), though there were still some serfs in France when the revolution came in 1789. Germany was far more backward in this respect. We find the peasants revolting against their hard lot in Luther's time, and it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the serfs were freed in Prussia.

[Sidenote: Importance of town life.]

93. It is hardly necessary to point out that the gradual reappearance of town life in western Europe is of the greatest interest to the student of history. The cities had been the centers of Greek and Roman civilization, and in our own time they dominate the life, culture, and business enterprise of the world. Were they to disappear, our whole life, even in the country, would necessarily undergo a profound change and tend to become primitive again like that of the age of Charlemagne.

[Sidenote: Origin of the medival towns.]

[Sidenote: Compactness of a medival town.]

A great part of the medival towns, of which we begin to have some scanty records about the year 1000, appear to have originated on the manors of feudal lords or about a monastery or castle. The French name for town, ville, is derived from vill, the name of the manor. The need of protection was probably the usual reason for establishing a town with a wall about it, so that the neighboring country people might find safety in it when attacked. The way in which a medival town was built seems to justify this conclusion. It was generally crowded and compact compared with its more luxurious Roman predecessors. Aside from the market place there were few or no open spaces. There were no amphitheaters or public baths as in the Roman cities. The streets were often mere alleys over which the jutting stories of the high houses almost met. The high, thick wall that surrounded it prevented its extending easily and rapidly as our cities do nowadays.

[Sidenote: Townsmen originally serfs.]

All towns outside of Italy were evidently small in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and, like the manors on which they had grown up, they had little commerce as yet with the outside world. They produced almost all that their inhabitants needed except the farm products which came from the neighboring country. There was likely to be little expansion so long as the town remained under the absolute control of the lord or monastery upon whose land it was situated. The townspeople were scarcely more than serfs, in spite of the fact that they lived within a wall and engaged in industry instead of farming. They had to pay irritating dues to their lord, just as if they had still formed a farming community. The emancipation of the townsmen from their lords and the establishment of a suitable form of government for their town were necessary preliminaries to the free development of town life.

[Sidenote: Increase of trade promotes the growth of the towns.]

With the increase of trade came the longing for this freedom. For when new and attractive commodities began to be brought from the East and the South, the people of the towns were encouraged to produce goods with the idea of exchanging them at some neighboring fair for the products of distant lands. But no sooner did the townsmen begin to engage in manufacturing and to enter into relations with the outside world, than they became conscious that they were greatly hampered by their half-servile condition and were subject to exactions and restrictions which would render progress impossible. Consequently during the twelfth century there were many insurrections of the towns against their lords and a general demand that the lords should grant the townsmen charters in which the rights of both parties should be definitely stated.



[Sidenote: The communes.]

In France the citizens organized themselves into what were called communes, or unions for the purpose of gaining their independence. This word commune appeared a new and detestable one to the lords, for, to their minds, it was merely another name for a company of serfs leagued against their masters. The nobles sometimes put down the insurrections of their townsmen with great cruelty. On the other hand, the lords often realized that they would increase the prosperity of their towns by granting them freedom from arbitrary taxation and the right to govern themselves. In England the towns gained their privileges more gradually by purchasing them from the lords.

[Sidenote: Town charters.]

The town charters were written contracts between the lord and the commune or the guild of merchants of a town. The charter served at once as the certificate of birth of the town and as its constitution. It contained a promise on the part of the lord or king to recognize the existence of the guild of merchants. It limited the rights of the lord in calling the townsmen before his court and fining them, and enumerated the taxes which he might exact from the townspeople. The old dues and services were either abolished or changed into money payments.

King Henry II of England promised the inhabitants of Wallingford that "wheresoever they shall go on their journeys as merchants through my whole land of England and Normandy, Aquitaine and Anjou, 'by water and by strand, by wood and by land,' they shall be free from toll and passage fees and from all customs and exactions; nor are they to be troubled in this respect by anyone under penalty of ten pounds." In the case of the town of Southampton he concedes "that my men of Hampton shall have and hold their guild and all their liberties and customs, by land and by sea, in as good, peaceable, just, free, quiet, and honorable a manner as they had the same most freely and quietly in the time of King Henry, my grandfather; and let no one upon this do them any injury or insult."

[Sidenote: Customs revealed in the charters.]

The customs of the times, as revealed in the charters, seem to us very primitive. We find in the charter of the French town of St. Omer, in 1168, provisions like the following: He who shall commit a murder in the town shall not find an asylum anywhere within the walls. If he shall seek to escape punishment by flight, his buildings shall be torn down and his goods confiscated; nor may he come back into the town unless he be first reconciled with the relations of his victim and pay ten pounds, of which a half shall go to the lord's representatives and the other half to the commune, to be spent on its fortifications. He who strikes another one in the town shall pay one hundred sous; he who pulls out the hair of another shall pay forty sous, etc.



Many of the towns had, as a visible sign of their freedom, a belfry, a high building with a watchtower, where a guard was kept day and night in order that the bell might be rung in case of approaching danger. It contained an assembly hall, where the commune held its meetings, and a prison. In the fourteenth century the wonderful townhalls began to be erected, which, with the exception of the cathedrals and other churches, are usually the most remarkable buildings which the traveler sees to-day in the old commercial cities of Europe.

[Sidenote: Craft guilds.]

The tradesmen in the medival towns were at once artisans and merchants; they not only made, but offered for sale, the articles which they produced in their shops. In addition to the original guild of merchants which helped the towns to gain and preserve their privileges, many new corporations of tradesmen grew up, the so-called craft guilds. The oldest statutes of a guild in Paris are those of the candle makers, which go back to 1061. The number of trades differed greatly in different towns, but the guilds all had the same object,—to prevent every one from practicing a trade who had not been duly admitted to the corporation.

[Illustation: LINES OF TRADE AND MEDIVAL TOWNS]

[Sidenote: The guild system.]

A young man had to spend several years in learning his trade. He lived in the house of a master workman, but received no remuneration. He then became a "journeyman" and could earn wages, although he could still work only for master workmen and not directly for the public. A simple trade might be learned in three years, but to become a goldsmith one must be an apprentice for ten years. The number of apprentices that a master workman might employ was strictly limited, in order that the journeymen might not become too numerous. The way in which each trade was to be practiced was carefully regulated, as well as the time that should be spent in work each day. The system of guilds discouraged enterprise but maintained a uniform efficiency everywhere. Had it not been for these unions, the defenseless, isolated workmen, serfs as they had formerly been, would have found it impossible to secure freedom and municipal independence from the feudal lords who had formerly been their masters.

[Sidenote: Practical disappearance of commerce in the early Middle Ages.]

94. The chief reason for the growth of the towns and their increasing prosperity was a great development of trade throughout western Europe. Commerce had pretty much disappeared with the decline of the Roman roads and the general disorganization produced by the barbarian invasions. There was no one in the Middle Ages to mend the ancient Roman roads. The great network of highways from Persia to Britain fell apart when independent nobles or poor local communities took the place of a world empire. All trade languished, for there was little demand for those articles of luxury which the Roman communities in the North had been accustomed to obtain from the South. There was little money and scarcely any notion of luxury, for the nobility lived a simple life in their dreary and rudely furnished castles.

[Sidenote: Italian cities trade with the Orient.]

In Italy, however, trade does not seem to have altogether ceased. Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, and other towns appear to have developed a considerable Mediterranean commerce even before the Crusades. Their merchants, as we have seen, supplied the destitute crusaders with the material necessary for the conquest of Jerusalem. The passion for pilgrimages offered inducements to the Italian merchants for expeditions to the Orient, whither they transported the pilgrims and returned with the products of the East. The Italian cities established trading stations in the East and carried on a direct traffic with the caravans which brought to the shores of the Mediterranean the products of Arabia, Persia, India, and the Spice Islands. The southern French towns and Barcelona entered also into commercial relations with the Mohammedans in northern Africa.



[Sidenote: Commerce stimulates industry.]

This progress in the South could not but stir the lethargy of the rest of Europe. The new commerce encouraged a revolution in industry. So long as the manor system prevailed and each man was occupied in producing only what he and the other members of his group needed, there was nothing to send abroad and nothing to exchange for luxuries. But when merchants began to come with tempting articles, the members of a community were encouraged to produce a surplus of goods above what they themselves needed, and to sell or exchange this surplus for commodities coming from a distance. Merchants and artisans gradually directed their energies toward the production of what others wished as well as what was needed by the little group to which they belonged.

[Sidenote: The luxuries of the East introduced into Europe.]

The romances of the twelfth century indicate that the West was astonished and delighted by the luxuries of the East,—the rich fabrics, Oriental carpets, precious stones, perfumes, drugs (like camphor and laudanum), silks and porcelains from China, spices from India, and cotton from Egypt. Venice introduced the silk industry from the East and the manufacture of those glass articles which the traveler may still buy in the Venetian shops. The West learned how to make silk and velvet as well as light and gauzy cotton and linen fabrics. The eastern dyes were introduced, and Paris was soon imitating the tapestries of the Saracens. In exchange for those luxuries which they were unable to produce, the Flemish towns sent their woolen cloths to the East, and Italy its wines. But there was apparently always a considerable cash balance to be paid to the Oriental merchants, since the West could not produce enough to pay by exchange for all that it demanded from the Orient.

[Sidenote: Some of the important commercial centers.]

The northern merchants dealt mainly with Venice and brought their wares across the Brenner Pass and down the Rhine, or sent them by sea to be exchanged in Flanders. By the thirteenth century important centers of trade had come into being, some of which are still among the great commercial towns of the world. Hamburg, Lbeck, and Bremen carried on active trade with the countries on the Baltic and with England. Augsburg and Nuremberg, in the south of Germany, became important on account of their situation on the line of trade between Italy and the North. Bruges and Ghent sent their manufactures everywhere. English commerce was relatively unimportant as yet compared with that of the great ports of the Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: Restrictions on trade.]

[Sidenote: Idea of a 'just' price.]

95. A word must be said of the numerous and almost incredible obstacles in the way of commerce in the Middle Ages. There was very little of that freedom which we now regard as essential to successful business. Our wholesale dealers would have been considered an abomination in the Middle Ages. Those who bought up a quantity of a commodity in order to sell it at a high rate were called by the ugly name of forestallers. It was universally believed that everything had a "just" price, which was merely enough to cover the cost of the materials used in its manufacture and remunerate the maker for the work he had put upon it. It was considered outrageous to sell a thing for more than the just price, no matter how anxious the purchaser might be to obtain it. Every manufacturer was required to keep a shop in which he offered at retail all that he made. Those who lived near a town were permitted to sell their products in the market place within the walls on condition that they sold directly to the consumers. They might not dispose of their whole stock to one dealer, for fear that if he had all there was of a commodity he might raise the price above a just one.

[Sidenote: Payment of interest on money forbidden.]

Akin to these prejudices against wholesale trade was that against interest. Money was believed to be a dead and sterile thing, and no one had a right to demand any return for lending it. Interest was wicked, since it was exacted by those who took advantage of the embarrassments of others. Usury, as the taking of even the most moderate and reasonable rate of interest was then called, was strenuously forbidden by the laws of the Church. We find church councils ordering that impenitent usurers should be refused Christian burial and have their wills annulled. So money-lending, necessary to all great commercial and industrial undertakings, was left to the Jews, from whom Christian conduct was not expected.

[Sidenote: The Jews as money-lenders.]

This ill-starred people played a most important part in the economic development of Europe, but they were terribly maltreated by the Christians, who held them guilty of the supreme crime of putting Christ to death. The active persecution of the Jews did not, however, become common before the thirteenth century, when they first began to be required to wear a peculiar cap, or badge, which made them easily recognized and exposed them to constant insult. Later they were sometimes shut up in a particular quarter of the city, called the Jewry. Since they were excluded from the guilds, they not unnaturally turned to the business of money-lending, which no Christian might practice. Undoubtedly their occupation had much to do in causing their unpopularity. The kings permitted them to make loans, often at a most exorbitant rate; Philip Augustus allowed them to exact forty-six per cent, but reserved the right to extort their gains from them when the royal treasury was empty. In England the usual rate was a penny a pound for each week.

[Sidenote: The 'Lombards' as bankers.]

In the thirteenth century the Italians—"Lombards"—began to go into a sort of banking business and greatly extended the employment of bills of exchange. They lent for nothing, but exacted damages for all delay in repayment. This appeared reasonable and right even to those who condemned ordinary interest. Capitalists, moreover, could contribute money towards an enterprise and share the profits as long as no interest was exacted. In these and other ways the obstacles offered by the prejudice against interest were much reduced, and large commercial companies came into existence, especially in Italy.

[Sidenote: Tolls, duties, and other annoyances to which merchants were subjected on land.]

96. Another serious disadvantage which the medival merchant had to face was the payment of an infinite number of tolls and duties which were exacted by the lords through whose domains his way passed. Not only were duties exacted on the highways, bridges, and at the fords, but those barons who were so fortunate as to have castles on a navigable river blocked the stream in such a way that the merchant could not bring his vessel through without a payment for the privilege. The charges were usually small, but the way in which they were exacted and the repeated delays must have been a serious source of irritation and loss to the merchants. For example, a certain monastery lying between Paris and the sea required that those hastening to town with fresh fish should stop and let the monks pick out what they thought worth three pence, with little regard to the condition in which they left the goods. When a boat laden with wine passed up the Seine to Paris, the agent of the lord of Poissy could have three casks broached, and, after trying them all, he could take a measure from the one he liked best. At the markets all sorts of dues had to be paid, such, for example, as payments for using the lord's scales or his measuring rod. Besides this, the great variety of coinage which existed in feudal Europe caused infinite perplexity and delay.

[Sidenote: Dangers by sea.]

[Sidenote: Pirates.]

[Sidenote: Strand laws.]

Commerce by sea had its own particular trials, by no means confined to the hazards of wind and wave, rock and shoal. Pirates were numerous in the North Sea. They were often organized and sometimes led by men of high rank, who appear to have regarded the business as no disgrace. Then there were the so-called strand laws, according to which a ship with its cargo became the property of the owner of the coast upon which it might be wrecked or driven ashore. Lighthouses and beacons were few and the coasts dangerous. Moreover, natural dangers were increased by false signals which wreckers used to lure ships to shore in order to plunder them.

[Sidenote: The Hanseatic League.]

With a view to mitigating these manifold perils, the towns early began to form unions for mutual defense. The most famous of these was that of the German cities, called the Hanseatic League. Lbeck was always the leader, but among the seventy towns which at one time and another were included in the confederation, we find Cologne, Brunswick, Dantzig, and other centers of great importance. The union purchased and controlled settlements in London,—the so-called Steelyard near London Bridge,—at Wisby, Bergen, and the far-off Novgorod in Russia. They managed to monopolize nearly the whole trade on the Baltic and North Sea, either through treaties or the influence that they were able to bring to bear.

The League made war on the pirates and did much to reduce the dangers of traffic. Instead of dispatching separate and defenseless merchantmen, their ships sailed out in fleets under the protection of a man-of-war. On one occasion the League undertook a successful war against the king of Denmark, who had interfered with their interests. At another time it declared war on England and brought her to terms. For two hundred years before the discovery of America, the League played a great part in the commercial affairs of western Europe; but it had begun to decline even before the discovery of new routes to the East and West Indies revolutionized trade.

[Sidenote: Trade regulated by the towns (thirteenth to fifteenth century), not by nations or individuals.]

It should be observed that, during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, trade was not carried on between nations, but by the various towns, like Venice, Lbeck, Ghent, Bruges, Cologne. A merchant did not act or trade as an independent individual but as a member of a particular merchant guild, and he enjoyed the protection of his town and of the treaties it arranged. If a merchant from a certain town failed to pay a debt, a fellow-townsman might be seized where the debt was due. At the period of which we have been speaking, an inhabitant of London was considered a foreigner or an alien in Bristol, just as was the merchant from Cologne or Antwerp. Only gradually did the towns merge into the nations to which their people belonged.[158]

[Sidenote: The burghers, or commons, become an influential class.]

The increasing wealth of the merchants could not fail to raise them to a position of importance in society which they had not hitherto enjoyed. Their prosperity enabled them to vie with the clergy in education and with the nobility in the luxury of their dwellings and surroundings. They began to give some attention to reading, and as early as the fourteenth century many of the books appear to have been written with a view of meeting their tastes and needs. Representatives of the towns were called into the councils of the king, who was obliged to take their advice along with their contributions to the support of the government. The rise of the burgher class alongside the older orders of the clergy and nobility, which had so long dominated the life of western Europe, is one of the most momentous changes of the thirteenth century.

General Reading.—GIBBINS, History of Commerce in Europe (The Macmillan Company, 90 cents), the best short account of the subject, with good maps of trade routes. INGRAM, History of Slavery and Serfdom (Black, London, $2.00), especially Chapters IV and V. CUNNINGHAM, Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects, Vol. II, Medival and Modern Times (The Macmillan Company, $1.25), is very suggestive. There are several excellent accounts of the economic situation in England in the Middle Ages, which, in many respects, was similar to the conditions on the continent. CHEYNEY, Industrial and Social History of England (The Macmillan Company, $1.40); GIBBINS, The Industrial History of England (Methuen, $1.00), and a more elaborate treatise by the same writer, Industry in England (Methuen, $3.00); CUNNINGHAM, Outlines of English Industrial History (The Macmillan Company, $1.50), and much fuller by the same writer, Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Middle Ages (The Macmillan Company, $4.00). All these give excellent accounts of the manor, the guilds, the fairs, etc. See also JESSOPP, Coming of the Friars, second essay, "Village Life Six Hundred Years Ago."



CHAPTER XIX

THE CULTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

97. The interest of the Middle Ages lies by no means exclusively in the statesmanship of kings and emperors, their victories and defeats; in the policy of popes and bishops; or even in feudalism and Europe's escape from it. Important as all these are, we should have but a very imperfect idea of the period which we have been studying if we left it without considering the intellectual life and the art of the time, the books that were written, the universities that were founded, and the cathedrals that were built.

[Sidenote: General use of Latin in the Middle Ages.]

To begin with, the Middle Ages differed from our own time in the very general use then made of Latin, both in writing and speaking. In the thirteenth century, and long after, all books that made any claim to learning were written in Latin;[159] the professors in the universities lectured in Latin, friends wrote to one another in Latin, and state papers, treaties, and legal documents were drawn up in the same language. The ability of every educated person to make use of Latin, as well as of his native tongue, was a great advantage at a time when there were many obstacles to intercourse among the various nations. It helps to explain, for example, the remarkable way in which the pope kept in touch with all the clergymen of western Christendom, and the ease with which students, friars, and merchants could wander from one country to another. There is no more interesting or important revolution than that by which the language of the people in the various European countries gradually pushed aside the ancient tongue and took its place, so that even scholars scarcely ever think now of writing books in Latin.

In order to understand how it came about that two languages, the Latin and the native speech, were both commonly used in all the countries of western Europe all through the Middle Ages, we must glance at the origin of the modern languages. These all fall into two quite distinct groups, the Germanic and the Romance.

[Sidenote: The Germanic languages derived from the dialects of the German barbarians.]

Those German peoples who had continued to live outside of the Roman Empire, or who, during the invasions, had not settled far enough within its bounds to be led, like the Franks in Gaul, to adopt the tongue of those they had conquered, naturally adhered to the language they had always used, namely, the particular Germanic dialect which their forefathers had spoken for untold generations. From the various languages spoken by the German barbarians, modern German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic are derived.

[Sidenote: The Romance languages derived from the spoken Latin.]

The second group of languages developed within the territory which had formed a part of the Roman Empire, and includes modern French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. It has now been clearly proved, by a very minute study of the old forms of words, that these Romance languages were one and all derived from the spoken Latin, employed by the soldiers, merchants, and people at large. This differed considerably from the elaborate and elegant written Latin which was used, for example, by Cicero and Csar. It was undoubtedly much simpler in its grammar and doubtless varied a good deal in different regions;—a Gaul, for instance, could not pronounce the words like an Italian. Moreover, in conversation people did not always use the same words as those in the books. For example, a horse was commonly spoken of as caballus, whereas a writer would use the word equus; it is from caballus that the word for horse is derived in Spanish, Italian, and French (caballo, cavallo, cheval).

As time went on the spoken language diverged farther and farther from the written. Latin is a troublesome speech on account of its complicated inflections and grammatical rules, which can be mastered only after a great deal of study. The people of the Roman provinces and the incoming barbarians naturally paid very little attention to the niceties of syntax and found easy ways of saying what they wished.[160] Yet several centuries elapsed after the German invasions before there was anything written in the language of conversation. So long as the uneducated could understand the correct Latin of the books when they heard it read or spoken, there was no necessity of writing anything in their familiar daily speech. But the gulf between the spoken and the written language had become so great by the time Charlemagne came to the throne, that he advised that sermons should be given thereafter in the language of the people, who, apparently, could no longer follow the Latin. The Strasburg oaths[161] are, however, about the first example which has come down to us of the speech which was growing into French.

[Sidenote: Earliest examples of the Germanic languages.]

[Sidenote: Gothic.]

98. As for the Germanic languages, one at least was reduced to writing even before the break-up of the Empire. An eastern bishop, Ulfilas (d. 381), had undertaken to convert the Goths while they were still living north of the Danube before the battle of Adrianople. In order to carry on his work, Ulfilas translated a great part of the Bible into Gothic, using the Greek letters to represent the sounds. With the single exception of the Gothic, there is no example of writing in any German language before Charlemagne's time. There is no doubt, however, that the Germans possessed an unwritten literature, which was passed down by word of mouth for several centuries before any of it was written out. Charlemagne caused certain ancient poems to be collected, which presumably celebrated the great deeds of the German heroes during the invasions. These invaluable specimens of ancient German are said to have been destroyed by the order of Louis the Pious, who was shocked by their paganism. The great German epic, the Song of the Niebelungs, was not reduced to writing until the end of the twelfth century, after it had been transmitted orally for many generations.