Book II. gives ample extracts from the Common and State Laws on

the subject, as well as quotations "from English reports, which are not generally accessible even to the legal profession in this country," making the work an indispensable addition to the library of every lawyer and physician in the country.

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The Knowledge And Love Of Jesus Christ. By the Rev. Father St. Jure, S.J. New York: P. O'Shea, 39 Barclay street.

St. Jure was one of the best spiritual writers in France of the early part of the seventeenth century, and this is one of his best works. It is full of solid thought and learning, as well as of the purest and warmest piety. I cannot, therefore, be too highly recommended as a book for spiritual reading, well adapted to the wants of the most intelligent and highly educated persons, and approved by the judgment of the most enlightened men in the church for two centuries. The translation was made by the accomplished authoress of the _Life of Catharine Macaulay_, and the publisher has issued it in a very good style.

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O'Shea's Popular Juvenile Library. Second Series. 12vols. Illustrated. New York: P. O'Shea. 1868.

This series is an acceptable addition to our rapidly increasing list of Catholic "juveniles." The titles of the volumes it contains are as follows: The Generous Enemy, and other stories; Anna's Vacation, and other stories; The Beggar's Will, and other stories; Bertrand du Guesclin; Kasem the Miser, and other stories; The Blind Grandfather, and other stories; Trifles; The True Son, and other stories; Marian's History; Patience Removes Mountains, and other tales; The Best Dowry, and other tales.

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Rural Poems, by William Barnes. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1869.

These poems have received unqualified praise by English critics in the principal literary reviews. It is said of them that they are "in a high degree pleasant and novel;" "invested with a simple beauty," "clothed in homely, healthy language," etc. We might, and do, say the same of the renowned Melodies of Mother Goose, whose "Poems" the greater part of the present collection very much resembles. Who will not be forcibly reminded of "Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross" by the following verses?

"Bright was the morning and bright was the moon, Bright was the forenoon and bright was the noon, Bright was the road down the sunshiny ridge, Bright was the water and bright was the bridge: Bright in the light were two eyes in my sight, On the road that I took up to Brenbury tower. The eyes at my side were my Fanny's, my bride, The day of my wedding, my wedding's gay hour.

{574}

We think that if the author had been an American, the English critics would have laughed at him. The book is elegantly published, with good illustrations, and would make a nice holiday present for children.

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Beginning German. Lessons introductory to the Study of the German Language. With a Vocabulary, Select Phrases for German Conversation, and Reading Lessons. By Dr. Emil Otto, Professor of Modern Languages and Lecturer at the University of Heidelberg. First American Edition. With additional reading matter and notes, arranged by L. Pylodet. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.

Dr. Otto deserves a great deal of praise for the attention that he has shown to the wants of the student. In the above work he has carefully collected all the necessary matter for the commencement of a systematic study of the German.

The book has been prepared for young persons; but contrary to the usual method, Dr. Otto does not overtask the memory of the learner with endless vocabularies, which serve only to hide the important parts. He first explains the alphabet, and also German accentuation and punctuation. Next he gives a thorough _drill_ upon each of the parts of speech, and by the aid of foot-notes, gradually places before the student the salient points of the German grammar. After which comes select phrases and reading lessons.

The vocabularies in nearly all French and German grammars are made up of the most foolish and impracticable sentences that could possibly be invented; and Dr. Otto cannot put forth the claim of originality for his selection of sentences.

The "partitive sense" and the possessive case create an immense amount of confusion in the minds of those who plan German methods, and they accordingly attempt to perpetuate their trouble by filling their exercises with childish and improbable examples. Dr. Otto forms no exception to the general custom. The rules given at the bottom of the pages in regard to declensions, are spread over so many pages that they will not be of much assistance, and the student will be obliged to turn at once to the synopsis of German Grammar, which the book also contains, if he desires to thoroughly understand this part of the German.

The reading lessons are simple and well selected; but there is no necessity for the abundant notes which are appended.

On the whole, this is a very excellent work: being far in advance of the German text-books that are so much used in the schools of this city, by serving to impress upon the minds of the learner a true regard for the grammatical formation of their own language.

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The Little Gypsy. By Elie Sauvage. Illustrated by Lorenz Frölich. Translated from the French by I. M. Lyster. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Pp. 133. 1868.

This is a charming little story--one that we can heartily recommend, both from its intrinsic merits and the beautiful manner in which it is got up, as a suitable Christmas present.

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Verses On Various Occasions. Boston. Published by Patrick Donahoe. 1868.

On the reception of the English edition of this exquisite volume, we called the attention of our readers to the true Catholic beauty and fervor of the poems which it contains. The edition by Mr. Donahoe is elegantly printed on toned paper, and faultlessly bound. We can think of no more appropriate book for a Christmas gift than this.

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The Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors: with some Inquiries respecting their Moral and Literary Characters, and Memoirs for our Literary History. By Isaac Disraeli. Edited by his Son, the Right Hon. B. Disraeli. New York: W. J. Widdleton. 2 vols. pp. 349, 411. 1868.

{575}

These two volumes complete an edition in nine volumes of the writings of the elder Disraeli. His works are too well known to need, even if the limited space at our disposal this month permitted, an extended notice.

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Twentieth Annual Report Of The Regents Of The University Of The State Of New York, On The Condition Of The State Cabinet Of Natural History, And The Historical And Antiquarian Collection Annexed Thereto. Albany: Van Benthuysen and Sons' Printing House. 1868.

The study of Natural History is in its infancy in the United States, yet it is encouraging to know that there are a few earnest men who continue their investigations in spite of the almost universal indifference upon the subject. It is not so much because there are no men of science to determine the species of our fauna, as that there is a general lack of attention to these questions. Perhaps one of the most gratifying features of the present Report is the indication of a newly-awakened interest among our citizens. A large number of types have been presented to the Museum by private collectors; among the more interesting of these is the skeleton of a Mastodon found recently at Cohoes. This animal has been imbedded in such an unusual stratum of rock, and in such a peculiar manner, that the learned Curator of the Cabinet believes it will afford a valuable guide in determining its natural history and geological relations. The Smithsonian Institute has generously presented more than two thousand specimens to the collection of shells. These, as will be seen from the catalogues given, are of great value, because they embrace almost exclusively species from distant quarters of the globe, and which consequently can only be obtained through some State institution.

However, the zealous efforts of the Curator and Regents seem to be much impeded by the want of proper cases for the display and arrangement of specimens. A similar difficulty was experienced by the Society of Natural History in this city; they at one time possessed a large and interesting collection of insects, which were packed in boxes and stored in the basement of the Medical College of the New York University. The destruction of that building by fire has relieved the officers of the society from any further trouble concerning them. It is to be hoped that a similar fate does not await the State Collection, but that the modest request of the trustees for a small appropriation will be granted at the present session of the Legislature. The catalogue of books scarcely numbers a hundred volumes, and does not merit the name of a library. This is a serious obstacle in the way of those who are charged with the duty of classifying the specimens sent to them, but one which the Regents of the Cabinet anticipate to see gradually removed.

The statement of the necessities and financial condition of the State Cabinet is followed by an essay of Prof. W. D. Wilson, of Hobart College, on Local Climatology. This is chiefly interesting because of a new theory accounting for the cold weather of winter. Of course, one of the principal reasons why the temperature is lower in winter than in summer is because the days of winter are several hours shorter. But the sun's heating power is also determined by its altitude. Herschel and Pouillet have demonstrated that a large proportion of the sun's rays are absorbed by passing through the atmosphere, or rather by the moisture in the atmosphere, so that only about seventy-five per cent of its heat reaches the earth. Hence, it is evident that the temperature will vary, not only for places of different latitudes, but also at the same place at different seasons of the year, and during the different hours of the day. Still, the mere fact of the absorption of heat does not explain the difference of temperature. Heat absorbed always increases the temperature of the absorbing body, except when the heat becomes latent by passing from a solid to a fluid, or from a fluid to a gaseous state. {576} As an atmosphere does not change the form of the heat, it would itself be increased in temperature, and consequently the influence of the heat would be felt in precisely the same degree as if it were conducted directly to the earth. But this difficulty is removed by Prof. Wilson, who claims that the atmosphere has the same power of reflecting as of absorbing heat; hence the heat is never transmitted beyond the outer boundary of our atmosphere, but is immediately reflected into space, and loses its influence upon anything within the power of our observation. The decrease of heat has long been known to depend greatly upon the sun's altitude. It varies with what is commonly termed the sine of the sun's altitude. It is worthy to be remarked, therefore, that on this theory the decrease of heat will depend upon the angle at which the sun's rays strike the atmosphere, and hence it must always, as in fact it does, coincide with the sun's height.

The result of Prof. Hall's labor for the year is seen in several elaborate notices upon the Palaeontology of the State. Those who feel interested in this enticing department of Natural History will take pleasure in the clear analysis of certain families and genera described in the Report. The effort to aid beginners in this study, as seen in the monogram upon the Graptolites, is particularly commendable. These sciences cannot make any substantial progress until they are brought down to the capacity of learned men engaged in other pursuits, because they all depend upon the careful observation of phenomena which require the united attention of many individuals. Hence, all domestic contributions to the determining of the species of our own fauna should be sufficiently elementary to be understood by amateurs in the science. And to the want of such works as these may fairly be attributed the fact, that many young men begin to investigate the various branches of natural science, but very few persevere.

The volume is increased in value by a number of well-executed plates, which appear to be accurate copies of the specimens in Prof. Hall's collection. It shows, at least, that he recognizes their importance in conveying scientific knowledge. A figure skilfully drawn will frequently determine a species in a moment's comparison, which would have cost many hours' careful study of the descriptions of even the most accurate and painstaking observer.

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Beginner's French Reader. Short and Easy Pieces in Prose and Verse, with a complete Vocabulary. Arranged by L. Pylodet. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.

This little book seems to be very well adapted to fully carry out the end indicated by its title-page.

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MESSRS. JOHN MURPHY & Co. have just published a small volume containing the life of _John M. Costelloe, or The Beauty of Virtue, exemplified in an American Youth_. The author simply proposes to lay before the reader "the virtues of a young man who passed seventeen years of his short life in the peaceful seclusion of his home, and the remaining two and a half in the quiet routine of a college, and who, therefore, could have practised only what St. Francis of Sales calls 'little virtues.'"

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Books Received.

From CHARLES SCRIBNER & Co., New York:

Madame Thérèse; or, The Volunteers of '98. By MM. Erckman-Chatrian. Translated from the thirteenth edition, with ten full-page illustrations.

From PATRICK DONAHOE, Boston:

Le Petit Catéchisme de Quebec.

The Farleyes of Farleye: or, Faithful and True. By Rev. Thomas J. Potter, All Hallows College, Dublin.

From LEE & SHEPARD, Boston:

Dr. Howell's Family. By Mrs. H. B. Goodwin.

Hillsboro Farms. By Sophia Dickinson Cobb.

The Mimic Stage. A series of Dramas, Comedies, Burlesques, and Farces, for Public Exhibitions and Private Theatricals. By George M. Baker.

From LEYPOLDT & HOLT, New York:

Madame de Beaupré. By Mrs. C. Jenkin.

From JOHN MURPHY & Co., Baltimore:

The Purgatorian Consoler. A manual of prayers, containing a selection of devotional exercises originally prepared for the use of the members of the Purgatorian Archconfraternity; enlarged and adapted to general use by a Redemptorist Father. Published with the approbation of the Most Reverend the Archbishop of Baltimore.

The Visitation Manual: A collection of prayers and instructions, compiled according to the Spiritual Directory and Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, founder of the Religious Order of the Visitation of B. V. Mary. Published with the approbation of the Most Reverend Archbishop of Baltimore. 1869.

---------- {577}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD,

Vol. VIII, No. 47. February, 1869.

Cardinal Ximenes.

The greatness of Cardinal Ximenes has weathered the storms of time. It has spread far beyond the people by whom it was first recognized and proclaimed. All Europe has done it homage, and the whole civilized world hails it with gratitude and joy. It is a small thing in comparison to excel as a prelate, a statesman, a general, or a man of letters; but to shine foremost in each and all of these capacities, as did Ximenes, to make a lasting impression on the age in a fourfold character, and to mould anew the destinies of a nation in virtue of it, have been the lot of few, and scarcely the ambition of any. Ximenes de Cisneros is part of the Spaniard's nationality. They admire, they love him, they boast of him; and so lately as April, 1857, they assembled in vast numbers in the city of Alcalá to deposit his remains in the Iglesia Magistral, just 340 years after his decease. The precious memoirs left by Gomez have never been employed with greater effect than by Dr. Von Hefele, who, from these--the basis of all lives of Ximenes--and from a variety of collateral sources, has produced a complete and most valuable history of the illustrious cardinal.

Like many eminent prelates in the Catholic Church, Ximenes was a self-made man. He was born at Tordelaguna--a small town--in 1436. His father, though of noble descent, was comparatively poor, and collected tithes for the king. His mother likewise came of a valiant stock decayed in fortune; so that Ximenes enjoyed on both sides the advantage of gentle blood. From an early age he was destined for the Church; at Alcalá he was well schooled, and at Salamanca he studied canon and civil law, theology, and the Scriptures. It was here that his love of biblical lore first displayed itself, and gave promise of that abundant growth which afterward made the name of Ximenes famous in the literary world. Poverty was his good angel. It urged him to exertion, and he supported himself at the university by giving lessons. Then, having taken his bachelor's degree in canon and civil law, he boldly turned his face toward Rome, and resolved to better his fortune, if possible, in the heart of Christendom. {578} Twice on the way he was plundered by robbers, and but for the kindness of a former school-fellow would have been stopped at Aix, in Provence, and compelled to return, _minus_ money, clothes, and horse. To Rome, however, he came, and worked steadily in the ecclesiastical courts during six years, till his father died, and he was recalled to Spain to perform a parent's part to his bereaved family. Happily he carried in his pocket an _expectative_ letter, by which the pope granted him the first vacant benefice in the diocese of Toledo. The right of bestowing benefices in this manner had often been questioned, often resisted; but with such controversies Ximenes had nothing to do. It was not till the Council of Trent that _Gratia Expectativae_ were finally suppressed; [Footnote 166] and it was clearly his interest to obtain a living from the holy father, if he could, according to established precedent. Uzeda soon fell vacant, and though Ximenes laid claim to it immediately, Carillo, the archbishop, was in no degree inclined to yield it to him. The more Ximenes pressed his claim, the more stoutly Carillo resisted, and the result was that the claimant, though backed by papal authority, soon found himself a prisoner in the very parish of which he sought to be pastor. Nothing could break his iron resolution, and being removed to the fortress of Santorcaz, he there spent six years in confinement, till the archbishop, wearied by his firm and constant refusal to forego his claim, at length yielding the point, restored him to liberty, and confirmed him in possession of the benefice.

[Footnote 166: Sess. xxiv. cap. 19.]

His constant study of the Scriptures could not escape observation, and he was often referred to as an authority in Hebrew and Chaldee. Being made vicar of the diocese of Sigüenza, and agent for the estates of a nobleman who had been taken prisoner by the Moors, Ximenes sighed for retirement, and entered as a novice a convent of the Franciscan order. But his interior life was still disturbed. Numbers resorted to him for counsel and instruction. He prayed to be sent to some more lonely retreat, and accordingly found his home in a small convent near Toledo, called after our Lady of Castañar. It stood in the midst of a forest of chestnuts, and here, like an anchorite of old, he built a hermitage and supported life on herbs and roots, with water from the neighboring rill. Though a scourge was in his hand and a hair-shirt on his body, the Bible he so prized was before him, angels surrounded him, and the Holy Ghost established within him a reign of serenity and light.

According to the rule of the Franciscans, he was, ere long, again removed. He became guardian of the convent of Salzeda, and it was here, in his fifty-sixth year, that his career, so far as it concerns history, began. A confessor was required for the devout and beautiful Queen Isabella, and Cardinal Mendoza, who had been Bishop of Sigüenza, and knew Ximenes well, recommended him as the fitting person to guide her conscience. Being summoned to court on pretence of business, the Franciscan recluse was introduced, as it were by accident, into the royal presence. Isabella was charmed by his candor, his modesty, and native dignity. In vain he declined the office for which he was designed. The queen would take no refusal, but consented to his residing still in his monastery, away from the splendor and temptations of a court. He strove to avoid interference in politics, but Isabella so much the more applied for his advice in the affairs of state. {579} Thus influence over others is often given to those whose only aim is to acquire the mastery over themselves. Not long after being made confessor to the queen, Ximenes was elected Provincial of the Franciscan order for Old and New Castile. He made his visitations on foot, begged his way like any other of his brethren, and often lived on raw roots. The order had relaxed its original strictness, and was divided into _Conventuals_ and _Observantines_, of whom the latter only adhered to the letter and spirit of their founder's laws. The report, therefore, which the provincial had to make to his royal mistress was anything but favorable, and he consequently became himself an object of calumny and dislike to those whose vices he sought to correct. Many of the _Conventuals_ who would not reform were ejected from their sanctuaries by his order, and his conflict with evil was silently and surely preparing him for the high post of Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain, and Chancellor of Castile. This see had generally been filled by one of noble birth, and Ferdinand was anxious to bestow it on his natural son, Alfonso, Bishop of Saragossa. But Isabella was strong in her resolve to promote Ximenes. On Good Friday, 1495, she sent for her confessor, and placed a paper in his hands. It was addressed by his holiness Alexander VI., "To our venerable brother, Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, Archbishop-elect of Toledo." As he read this the friar turned pale. "It cannot be meant for me," he said, and abruptly left the apartment, dropping the packet. "Come, brother," he exclaimed to his companion, "we must be gone in haste." But the royal messengers overtook him on the road to Ocaña, trudging along bravely in the noontide heat. He was flying from an archbishopric with 80,000 ducats a year, from power and influence second only to that of the king, and from towns and fortresses with numerous vassals. No arguments could induce him to accept these earthly goods. During six months he persisted in refusing them, and yielded at last only in obedience to a command from the sovereign pontiff.

He was now in his sixtieth year. In October, 1495, he was solemnly consecrated in presence of the two sovereigns, and when, after the ceremony, he came to do them homage, he said: "I come to kiss the hands of your majesties, not because they have raised me to the first see in Spain, but because I hope they will assist me in supporting the burden which they have placed on my shoulders." Ximenes was, on the whole, the model of a prelate; and accordingly we see in him modesty and self-confidence singularly combined. In the well-balanced mind they react upon each other and produce each other. Hence, humility is the source of moral power. No silver adorned Ximenes's table, no ornaments hung on his walls. His garment was the habit of St. Francis, his food was coarse, his journeys were made on foot or on a mule's back, and his palace was turned into a cloister. But many persons cavilled at this austerity and ascribed it to spiritual pride. The pope thought it undesirable in the case of a primate of Spain, and exhorted Ximenes, by letter, to "conform outwardly to the dignity of his state of life in his dress, attendants, and everything else relating to the promotion of that respect due to his authority."

{580}

In private, however, Ximenes continued as mortified as before. The hair-shirt was next his skin, and he mended with his own hand the coarse garments concealed by the silks and furs of office. The sumptuous bed, adorned with ivory, purple, and gold, which stood in the palace, was never used by him; he slept, though, his attendants knew it not, on the bare floor, and thus, by night and day, he kept up in his own person a ceaseless protest against the prevailing luxury of the times. He feared the seduction of wealth, and was ever on his guard against the temptations of his princely domain, consisting of fifteen cities, besides many villages and towns. But if any presumed on his unworldly habits, and thought that he must be pliant because he was devout, they were soon disabused of their mistake. He refused, at the outset of his primacy, to make any appointments at the instance of great men, and declared that he was willing at any time to return to his convent and his beads; but that "no personal considerations should ever operate with him in distributing the honors of the Church." Even the brother of Cardinal Mendoza was unable to obtain from Ximenes the confirmation of his appointment to the governorship of Cazorla, and his relations, highly incensed, could gain no redress from the queen. Having thus established his own independence and freed himself from importunate suitors, Ximenes saluted Don Pedro de Mendoza one day by the title of _Adelantado_ of Cazorla, saying that, as no suspicion of sinister influence could now attach to him, he was happy to restore Don Pedro to a post for which he knew him to be qualified.

In the biographies of Gomez and Quintanilla, of Oviedo and Robles, Marsollier, Fléchier, Baudier, Von Hefele, and Barrett, a number of such anecdotes may be found, illustrating the diocesan life of Ximenes, his wonderful penetration, piety, and zeal. But these, for the most part, we must pass over, and dwell rather on those events in his career with which the history of his country is concerned. Several years had passed since the last Moorish king in Spain had been defeated and stripped of his dominions. The genius of Washington Irving, the research of Prescott, and the fancy of Southey and Bulwer have found full scope in detailing the history of the war of Granada, the surprise of Zahara, the exploits of the Marquis of Cadiz, the fierce resistance of the Moors, and the capture of Alhama. But the Moors, though conquered, had reason to be satisfied with the terms of the victors. They were allowed by treaty to retain their mosques and mode of worship, their property, laws, commerce, and civil tribunals. They had some privileges of which even the Spaniards were deprived; and if, during the governorship of Tendilla and the archbishopric of Talavera, the Moors of Granada were brought under various Catholic influences, they could not complain of any force or severity being employed by those who sought to convert them. Talavera, indeed, whom Ximenes had succeeded as confessor to the queen, was ceaseless in his efforts for their salvation. He learned Arabic at an advanced age, and required his clergy also to do the same. He caused portions of the Scriptures, Liturgy, and Catechism to be translated, and so recommended the religion he professed by his consistent life and amiable temper that Mohammedanism in Granada melted away before the genial light of the gospel, and the Moors themselves came to love and revere the Christian bishop, whom they called "The Great Alfaqui," or Doctor.

{581}

Thus far all was progressing hopefully, when, in 1499, Ximenes was invited by the Catholic sovereigns to assist Talavera in his important mission. In addition to the means already employed, Ximenes resorted to a large distribution of presents. "In order," says Von Hefele, "that his instructions might make some impression on their sensual minds, he did not hesitate to make the Moorish priests and doctors agreeable presents, consisting chiefly of costly articles of dress and silks. For this object he encumbered the revenues of his see for many years." [Footnote 167] Conversions followed in great numbers, and Ximenes baptized in one day 4000 persons. Many of the mosques were converted into churches, and the sound of bells for Mass and vespers was heard continually in the midst of a Moslem population. But this success produced a reaction. The Moors who were zealous for the false prophet raised a clamor against the archbishop and the government. The most noisy were arrested by Ximenes's order, but "in the height of his zeal he overstepped the bounds of the treaty which the government had made with the Moors, by trying to impose on the prisoners the obligation of receiving instruction from his chaplains in the Christian religion. Those who refused he even punished very severely." [Footnote 168]

[Footnote 167: Von Hefele, translated by Canon Dalton, p. 62.]

[Footnote 168: _Id_. p. 64.]

Among those who were thus imprisoned was a noble Moor named Zegri, who had distinguished himself in the recent wars. Being obliged to fast several days and wear heavy irons, he suddenly declared that Allah had appeared to him in a vision and commanded him to embrace the Christian faith. Certain it is that during the remainder of his life he attached himself to Ximenes with constant fidelity, and gave undeniable proofs of the sincerity of his conversion.

Encouraged by this signal success, Ximenes became more and more averse to dilatory measures. He believed that Providence designed the extinction of Islamism in Spain, and that he should best co-operate with the divine will by prompt and energetic steps. Some thousand copies of the Koran and other religious books were delivered up to him by the Moorish _alfaquis_, and committed to the flames in the public square. Works on medicine only escaped, and these were afterward placed in the library of the university which he founded at Alcalá. The children of those Christians who had become renegades were taken from their parents and received into the Church, for Ximenes would not suffer a treaty, which he perhaps considered too temporizing, to stand in the way of rescuing souls from error and converting an entire people.

About the end of the year 1499, a terrible outbreak checked for a time the progress of evangelization. Salzedo, the archbishop's major-domo, was sent by his master into the city with another servant and an officer of justice to seize the daughter of an apostate from Christianity. The young woman, however, raised a cry against the violation of the treaty; the Moors rushed to her aid; the officer of justice was killed by a stone; and the major-domo escaped a like fate only by secreting himself under the bed of an old Moorish woman who offered him assistance. The Albaycin, or Moslem quarter of the city, containing 5,000 dwellings, rose in arms. The palace of Ximenes was the object of their attack, and they cried for the blood of him whom a few days before they had extolled with praises.

{582}

The archbishop's friends urged him to fly to the fortress by a secret passage. But they knew not the temper of the man whom they counselled. He would never, he said, desert his servants in the hour of danger. All night he was engaged with them in repelling the Moors' assaults, and in the morning the Count of Tendilla arrived from the Alhambra with an armed force, and rescued Ximenes from imminent peril. The outbreak, however, was not so easily subdued. The herald sent by the count to the rebels was murdered, and his staff of office was broken in contempt. Nine days this frantic resistance continued, though without even a remote prospect of ultimate success. Ximenes tried in vain to soothe the raging multitude; but the milder archbishop, Talavera, going forth with his cross and a single chaplain, like Pope Leo when he encountered Attila, the crowd of rebels became appeased, and pressed round him to kiss his garment's hem. The governor Tendilla then appeared before them in a civil attire, threw his scarlet bonnet among the crowd, promised his influence to obtain the royal pardon, and left his wife and two children as hostages in the Albaycin.

Meanwhile, Ximenes, on the third day of the revolt, sent to the sovereigns at Seville an account of what had happened. His messenger was an Ethiopian slave--one of the telegraphic wires of those days--who could run fifty leagues in forty-eight hours. But the slave got drunk on the way, and arrived in Seville five days after he was despatched, instead of two. Reports frightfully exaggerated had reached the king and queen. The court was in a panic. Ximenes was blamed for his indiscretion; and Ferdinand, who had not forgotten the preference given to Ximenes over Alfonso of Aragon, his natural son, bitterly reproached Isabella for having raised an incompetent monk to the see of Toledo. But the archbishop soon appeared to plead his own cause. The king and queen were not only satisfied with his explanations, but thanked him for his services, and assented to his proposal that the inhabitants of the Albaycin should be punished for high treason, unless they purchased their pardon by being baptized. The treaty made with the Moors was thought to be annulled by the violence of the Moslems themselves. Those who persisted in their errors retired to the mountains or crossed over into Barbary; but by far the greater part of the Moors embraced Christianity, and the number of the converts is computed at about 60,000. Ximenes and Talavera together catechised the people, working in perfect harmony, except in reference to the translation of the Bible into Arabic. Talavera wished to make the version complete, while Ximenes, on the contrary, was of opinion that the Scriptures should be preserved in the ancient languages hallowed by being used in the inscriptions on the cross. To place the Bible in the vulgar tongue in the hands of neophytes and ignorant persons was, he believed, to cast pearls before swine, and would certainly issue in spiritual revolt. But the friendship of the two prelates remained unbroken, and Talavera declared that the triumphs of Ximenes exceeded those of Ferdinand and Isabella, since they had conquered only the soil, while he had won the souls of Granada. There can be no doubt that in the mass of converts there were many unworthy persons who afterward disgraced their profession. It will always be thus when worldly advantages are held out to proselytes; but Ximenes knew that this would be the case, and was prepared to meet the evil with appropriate remedies. He believed that good on the whole would result from his decisive measures; that many, to say the least, of the conversions would be sincere, and that the children of the converts in general would be educated in the true religion. {583} We do not criticise his conduct, neither do we altogether set it up as exemplary. It was more suitable to his time and country than it would be to ours; and having recorded it faithfully, our work is done. By whatever means accomplished, the result has been a happy one. Islamism, after many spasmodic attempts at revival, has died out of Spain, and the cause of European morality and civilization has been saved from its most formidable enemy.

Ximenes was in his sixty-fourth year when extreme activity brought on a severe illness and endangered his life. Every day his energies were divided between the sovereigns who required his counsel and aid, and the converts, chiefs, and others who listened to his instructions. The king and queen evinced the greatest concern for him when smitten down with fever, and removed him from the fortress of the Alhambra, which was exposed to the wind, to the royal summer-house of Xeneralifa. Isabella in particular bestowed on the venerable prelate her utmost care. He was soon able to walk along the banks of the Darro and enjoy its pure and bracing air, soon able to return to his beloved Alcalá, where he was founding the university which has made his name blessed for ever; while the queen, so much younger than himself, who had raised him so high, and from whose sympathy and protection he had so much to expect, the queen who was "the mirror of every virtue, the shield of the innocent, and an avenging sword to the wicked," [Footnote 169] was ere long [Footnote 170] to be called away from her earthly throne, and leave her aged and faithful servant to fight his way in the midst of those who understood him less perfectly and prized him less highly than she had done.

[Footnote 169: Peter Martyr, _Epist_. 279.]

[Footnote 170: November 26th, 1504.]

He was engaged, at this time, in a great work. The new university, founded by him at Alcalá in 1500, became the rival of Salamanca, and was called by the Spaniards "the eighth wonder of the world." From the moment he was made Archbishop of Toledo, he resolved to devote its immense revenues to the construction of this seat of learning. The spot was pleasant, the air pure, and the site of the ancient Complutum was hallowed in the eyes of all whose sympathies were with the past. Gonsalvo Zegri, the converted Moor, assisted at laying the foundation-stone; and Ximenes obtained from his royal patrons an annual grant and sundry privileges for the projected establishment. Thither Ximenes repaired, as to his fondest occupation, whenever the duties of state and of his diocese permitted. Often he might be seen on the ground, with the rule in his hand, taking measurements of the works, and encouraging the laborers by his example and by suitable rewards. Pope Julius II. issued a brief authorizing the endowment, and Leo X. afterward augmented the liberties of the new foundation. The College of San Ildefonso stood at its head; in 1508, several students arrived, and 33 professors with 12 priests were installed, who answered in their numbers to the years of our Lord's life and his college of apostles. Schools were attached for boarders, lectures and disputations were set on foot, classes were formed, scholarships founded, examinations publicly conducted, and diplomas conferred. The intellect of the students was exercised in every branch of knowledge--in the ancient languages, including Hebrew, in theology, canon law, medicine, anatomy, surgery, philosophy, moral philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, and grammar. {584} The physical sciences were as yet little known and barely studied. Theology spread its arms widely beneath and around all attainable knowledge. In 1514, King Ferdinand visited the university, attended some of the lectures, and expressed his admiration of the grandeur and beauty of the buildings. They were but a feeble sign of the mental fabrics which Ximenes was raising to the honor of Spain and for her service. Patriotism blended in him with religion, and helped to make him what he was.

Some years after the death of Ximenes, Francis I., of France, on visiting Alcalá, is reported to have said: "Your cardinal has undertaken and accomplished a work I myself could not attempt. The University of Paris, which is the pride of my kingdom, is the work of many sovereigns. But Ximenes alone has founded one like it."

It was by a ruthless decree that this grand and famous seat of learning was finally broken up, in 1850, by the creation of a central university and the sale of the buildings to the Count de Quinto. [Footnote 171] The inhabitants resolved at least to save the rich tomb of the illustrious cardinal, and the translation of his remains was effected with great solemnity on the 27th of April, 1857.

[Footnote 171: _L'Univers_, June 6th, 1857.]

It was in this university that Ximenes published that noble Polyglot by which he earned the praise and gratitude of all biblical students. The text of the sacred Scriptures had become deplorably corrupt at the commencement of the fifteenth century, owing to the inattention or ignorance of copyists. But the invention of printing gave a new impetus to every branch of learning, and promised biblical scholars great advantages in their study of the Bible. From the year 1462 to 1500 no less than eighty editions of the Vulgate appeared; and the zeal of Jews in amending the Hebrew text became an invaluable assistance to the labors of Christians in the same field. The constant perversion of the meaning of Scripture by those who were aliens to the Church made it increasingly necessary to study the Bible in its original languages, so as to be able to refute the impudent assertions of upstart divines. Hence Ximenes, whose designs were naturally grand, formed the intention not only of raising a new university, but of publishing a new edition of the Scriptures in their original tongues, and of thus restoring in some measure the lost _Hexapla_ of Origen. No translation, he held, could perfectly represent the original, and the MSS. of the Latin Vulgate were painfully discrepant. It was needful, therefore, to go back to the prime sources, and "correct the books of the Old Testament by the Hebrew text, and those of the New Testament by the Greek text." [Footnote 172]

[Footnote 172: Prolegomena to the Polyglot.]

Having thus resolved to revive the dormant study of Holy Writ, Ximenes's next step was to procure assistance from learned men, and access to the most ancient MSS. Several Jewish converts were enlisted, and, besides other professors, a Greek named Demetrius Ducas. They were all handsomely paid and stimulated to the utmost exertion. "Make haste, my friends," Ximenes would say; "for, as all things in this world are transient, you may lose me or I may lose you. Let us work together while we can." Enormous sums were spent by him in the purchase of MSS., and some were lent to him by Pope Leo X., who honored him as sincerely as he loved the fine arts. {585} To these loans Ximenes refers in the introduction to the Polyglot. It is calculated by Gomez that nearly £25,000 sterling (50,000 ducats=$125,000) were spent in bringing the work to a conclusion. The sale bore no proportion to the publishing expenses, as 600 copies only were struck off, and these, though consisting of six folios, were sold at six and a half ducats each. The price of the copies still in existence varies according to the state in which they have been preserved; but it ranges from £40 to ^£75. The Polyglot occupied fifteen years in its completion, and the New Testament, which forms the sixth volume of the work, appeared first in order of time. The Greek, being without the accents, has a strange appearance, but the editors excuse themselves on the ground of the accents not having been used by the ancient Greeks, nor by the original writers of the New Testament. The volume, on the whole, is beautifully printed, while the grammar and lexicon which accompanies it made it a valuable means of promoting the study of Greek. The Pentateuch appeared in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek, together with three Latin translations. The roots of difficult words in the Hebrew and Chaldaic texts are given in the margin, and this is no mean assistance to beginners in studying these languages, in which the radical meaning pervades all the derivatives in so marked a degree. Altogether, it was a boon to mankind, munificent in its cost, noble in its design, beautiful in execution, and as profound in scholarship as it could be in the age in which it saw the light. When John Brocario, the printer's son, brought the last sheets to the cardinal in his best attire, Ximenes raised his eyes to heaven with great joy, and exclaimed: "I give thee thanks, O God most high! that thou hast brought to a long-wished-for end the work I undertook in thy name." Only four months later his eyes were closed in death. The Complutensian Polyglot became very useful in preparing subsequent editions of the Scriptures; and though the labors of Griesbach, Buxtorf, Michaelis, and other critics have thrown its authority into the shade, it was an important link in the chain which has issued in the present comparative purity of sacred texts. All real scholars award it cheerfully their meed of praise, and the charges brought against it by Wetstein and Semler have been amply refuted. It is an astonishing production, considering the disadvantages under which its compilers lay, that they had not access to the best and most ancient MSS., and that the _Codex Vaticanus_ was not within their reach. What MSS. were really used we shall never know; for, besides that many were returned to their owners after the Polyglot was completed, others, which had been purchased, were sold in 1749 as waste-paper to a rocket-maker named Torzo!

As the reform of the Franciscan order was the first glory of the hermit of Castañar, and the foundation of a great university the second, so the Bible of Alcalá will ever be regarded as the third durable monument of Ximenes's vast and varied powers.

But his literary labors were not confined to Holy Writ. He set on foot a complete edition of the works of Aristotle; and though his death interrupted the design, he was able to bring out many other useful books, in Latin and Spanish, for the use of the learned and the instruction of the people. The demand for such works was then steadily increasing, and the supply not being equal to it, there was difficulty in finding on sale, fifty years later, a single copy of the volumes Ximenes had edited. {586} Ecclesiastical music-books also, which had hitherto been in manuscript, were published by him, and distributed through the churches of his diocese, so that the Gregorian chant, to which he was strongly attached, might be better known and practised. Nor did he forget works on agriculture, being desirous of promoting in every way the welfare of his kind.

Finding among the MSS. in the library of Toledo a number of liturgies in old Gothic characters, he conceived a design of rescuing from destruction the Mozarabic or Mixt-Arabic rite. Its use was long confined to Toledo and to some parishes where Christians lived under Moorish dominion. Then, in course of time, the Mozarabic families having died out, and the reign of the Moors being at an end, the Gregorian rite superseded the old Gothic one, and the memory of it was kept alive only by occasional use on certain festivals. It was evidently desirable, for the sake of history and literature, to collate the MSS. of this ancient liturgy, and preserve it in a printed form for future generations. This task Ximenes accomplished in a manner worthy of his comprehensive genius. He printed a number of Mozarabic missals and breviaries, changing the Gothic characters into Castilian, and erected a chapel in his cathedral where the Mozarabic Mass might be said daily. He founded a college of thirteen priests, who should recite the canonical hours, and perform other functions according to this liturgy. Robles himself, Ximenes's biographer, was one of these chaplains. This foundation gave rise to others of the same kind in Salamanca and Valladolid. They have fully answered the purpose of the founder, and Mozarabic missals can easily be purchased at the present day.

The obstacles which Ximenes had to overcome in reforming his diocese were very serious, but he encountered them with the utmost firmness. The bishops enjoyed at that period immense revenues, the benefices of priests were richly endowed, and the clergy were too numerous, lax in morals, and often extremely ignorant. The corruption of the Castilian court was scandalous, and the natural children of kings and princes were constantly elevated to episcopal sees. The monasteries were changed into abodes of luxury, and it needed a queen like Isabella, and a primate like Ximenes, to stem the tide of licentiousness. His first effort was to reform the lives and habits of his chapter, and in this attempt he was opposed by a canon named Albornoz, whom he caused to be arrested on his way to Rome and cast into prison. Severe measures were indispensable in the state of society then existing. His own life as a bishop was strict in the extreme. He shunned all intercourse with women, and sitting always with a Bible open before him, he had no time for idle and intrusive visitors. His charities made him beloved by the poor, and all the decrees issued by the synods under his presidency tended to revive the spirit and the forms of true religion. The strict rule of the Observantines was introduced into the Franciscan order, and those who would not conform to it were expelled [from] the country. The valiant reformer raised up enemies enough by his courage and zeal; but honest intentions such as his and force of character only triumph the more signally by being opposed. His friends pointed to his works of mercy as the best answer to the calumnies of petty foes. {587} He raised twelve churches; he founded four hospitals and eight monasteries; he fed thirty poor persons daily at his palace, visited the hospitals, and pensioned desolate widows. Would his enemies, even if they had possessed the means, have done the like?

When Isabella died, Ximenes, holding in one hand the archbishop's cross, grasped in the other the sceptre of state. Joanna, the consort of Philip the Fair, who inherited the crown of Castile, had become the prey of a disordered imagination. Her husband would not reside in Spain, and she would not consent to live there without him. Isabella had foreseen her incompetency and probable absence. She had appointed Ferdinand of Aragon, her own husband, Regent of Castile, till her grandson Charles should have attained his twentieth year. The nobles of Castile factiously resisted this wise provision; and though Ferdinand acted with prudence and moderation, though he caused his daughter Joanna, with Philip her husband, to be proclaimed sovereigns, and contented himself with administering the affairs of state in their absence, a struggle ensued in which Ximenes sided constantly with Ferdinand, and adhered closely to the terms of Isabella's will. Philip prepared an army to drive his father-in-law from Castile, while Joanna wrote to him requesting that he would not resign the government, and surrendering her rights to him in the most earnest and affectionate terms.

By the wisdom and resolution of Ximenes, the rupture between Philip and Ferdinand was partially healed. He mediated between them with admirable _finesse_, and his success was the more remarkable because he found in Philip a faithless, wrong-headed, and vindictive man, the slave of passion and the dupe of evil counsellors; while the confidence reposed in him by Ferdinand was not always complete, nor equal at any time to that placed in him by the virtuous and noble Isabella. With his consent Philip was allowed to have his own way, and to govern Castile without the assistance of Ferdinand. But Philip was removed from this world in the flower of his age, and thus the path was opened for Ximenes becoming Regent of Castile. He was by this time thoroughly conversant with the affairs of state. Every Thursday he gave an audience to the king's chief ministers, and heard from them the most important matters which were next day to be brought before the council. On Friday he gave these matters again his careful consideration, and then handed in a report respecting them to the king.

It was in September, 1506, that Philip died after a short illness, and Ximenes, with several others, was chosen provisional administrator of the kingdom. His powers were soon increased, and exalted above those of his colleagues. He had a difficult part to play, for the Castilian nobles were passionate and intriguing, and the disconsolate widow Joanna refused to endorse his authority as regent. She sat nearly all day long in a dark chamber, with her face resting on her hand, silent, bitter, and sorrowful, listening only at intervals to sweet music which nursed her melancholy. These eccentricities ended in total derangement. She disinterred her husband's corpse at Miraflorés, contrary to the laws of the church and to Philip's will, and ordered it to be conveyed before her by torch-light to the town of Torquemada. Endless funereal ceremonies were performed, and fantastic images of death and grief were multiplied in virtue of her diseased imagination. {588} She insisted on residing in a little town where her court and attendants could scarcely find a cabin-roof to screen them from sun and storm.

In August, 1507, the unhappy queen, wild and haggard in appearance, attended by the corpse of her royal husband, met her father Ferdinand at Tortolés. With her consent he assumed the reins of government, and Ximenes resigned his powers into the hands of the king. His services had been great, and Ferdinand was too noble to leave them unrewarded. The archbishop was named Cardinal and Grand-Inquisitor of Castile and Leon. Never was a cardinal's hat bestowed at Rome with greater satisfaction; and the important office of grand-inquisitor, which was attached to the higher dignity, will be estimated more correctly after a few observations.

It was the opinion of St. Augustine, who herein followed that of St. Ambrose and St. Leo, that persons ought not to be put to death for heresy, but the great doctor did not disapprove of force being employed to restrain and correct heresy. This opinion became the basis of the civil laws of Theodosius II. and Valentinian III.; but in the middle ages the alliance between church and state was much closer than it had been in earlier years, and it was usual to punish obstinate heresy as a twofold crime worthy of death. St. Thomas Aquinas defends this as reasonable, but St. Bernard was in favor of a more lenient policy. Ecclesiastical tribunals were established in which cases of heresy were tried, and the civil magistrates were required by law to carry into effect the judgment of bishops. Papal legates also, like Peter de Castelnau, were often entrusted with inquisitorial powers. The Council of Toulouse, in 1229, issued various decrees relative to the suppression of heresy, [Footnote 173] and may thus be considered as founding the first inquisition. [Footnote 174] The Dominicans especially were employed in the work of extirpating heresy, and but for the exertions of such men the nations of Europe would have been overrun with Manichaeism and various other forms of pestilent error. The Jews settled in Spain, penetrated in disguise every branch of society, and strove in every age to Judaize the people. The inquisition was directed in a particular manner against this subtle influence, and the peculiar nature of the evil required peculiar remedies and antidotes. It was Judaism in the church that it labored to extirpate, and not the race of Israel dwelling in the Peninsula.

[Footnote 173: Harduin, tome vii. pp. 173-178.]

[Footnote 174: Von Hefele, p. 286.]

The inquisitors of Seville took office in 1481, and were appointed by the sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella. Nothing was more natural than that they should seek to rid the body politic of a gangrene so fatal as secret Judaism. Yet Sixtus IV. had occasion to rebuke the royal inquisitors for their needless severity and to take measures for the mitigation of their sentences. But the tribunal was placed more and more under the control of the state, and whether clergymen or laymen were employed, they were alike subservient to the Spanish government. In 1492, when, by a memorable edict, the Jews were ordered to quit Spain, unless they submitted to be baptized, the sphere of the inquisition's labors became greatly enlarged in consequence of the increased number of Jews who professed Christianity from worldly motives alone. The Moriscos also, or baptized Moors, came within the sphere of its action; and it was introduced into Granada by the advice of the second grand-inquisitor, Deza, in order to prevent their relapsing into Islamism.

{589}

The sovereigns of Castile and Aragon promoted the inquisition for other motives besides those here alluded to. They used it as an instrument for consolidating their own power and breaking that of the clergy and nobles. Piombal, at a later period, did the same in Portugal. Hence it was popular with the lower classes, detested by the aristocracy, and often censured by popes. To these facts Ranke and Balmez abundantly testify, and their evidence is confirmed by that of Henry Leo, Guizot, Havemann, Lenormant, De Maistre, and Spittler. The falsehoods of Llorente respecting the inquisition have been fully exposed, and those who sift the matter thoroughly will find that it was latterly more a political than a religious institution; that the cruelties it exercised have been enormously exaggerated; that it was in accordance with principles universally recognized in its day; that its punishments, however severe, were in keeping with the ordinary penal laws; that the popes constantly endeavored to mitigate its decrees; that Gregory XIII., Paul III., Pius IV., and Innocent XII., in particular, reclaimed against its rigors; that its intentions were good on the whole; its proceedings tempered with mercy; and that Ximenes, the third grand-inquisitor, conducted himself in that office with moderation and humanity, provided for the instruction of Jewish and Moorish converts, and "adopted every expedient to diminish the number of judicial cases reserved for the tribunal of the inquisition." [Footnote 175]

[Footnote 175: Von Hefele, p. 387.]

He caused Lucero, the cruel inquisitor of Cordova, to be arrested, tried, and deposed from his high functions. He protected Lebrija, Vergara, and other learned men from envious aspersions, and kept a strict watch over the officers of the inquisition, lest they should exceed their instructions or abuse their power. He endeavored, but without success in Ferdinand's lifetime, to exclude laymen from the council, and thus free the tribunal as far as possible from state influence. The number of those who suffered punishment under his _régime_ has been greatly exaggerated by Llorente; and if he introduced the inquisition into Oran, America, and the Canary Isles, it must be remembered that its jurisdiction extended over the old Christians settled there, and not over the natives.

In reviewing Ximenes's conduct in such matters, we must never lose sight of the fact that absolute unity of religion was then the aim of all Catholic governments, whereas circumstances are now altered, and the question of religious liberty, though the same in the abstract, is wholly changed in its practical application. But the scene now changes. We have seen the hermit of Castañar doff his cowl to wear a mitre, found the University of Alcalá, edit the famous Polyglot, and rule as regent the kingdom of Castile. We shall now behold him mount a war-charger, place himself at the head of an army, and lead it to victory on the coasts of Africa. We shall admire and wonder at the versatility of his genius, and the resolution and activity which no difficulties could break nor advancing years slacken. It would be easy to point out resemblances between Ximenes and the fiery Chatham, nor can we wonder that the latter statesman admired the former more than any other character in history. [Footnote 176]

[Footnote 176: Horace Walpole's _George II_. p. iii. 19.]

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The cardinal had a double reason for advising Ferdinand to employ the troops which Gonsalvo de Cordova had led to victory in Italy, in the conquest of some stronghold on the African coast. Mazarquivir was taken in 1505, and Ximenes, expanding his designs as usual, conceived a vaster project for a new crusade and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. It had been for ages the favorite and oft-baffled scheme of popes and Christian princes. It seemed to realize every hope of Catholic domination in Europe, and to involve the downfall of Islamism. The idea was as glorious as the accomplishment would be useful to humanity. It was the cause of civilization against barbarism, and of truth against error. But the strife between Philip and Ferdinand, already referred to, completely frustrated it, and the loss of Mazarquivir, in 1507, supplied Ximenes with an opportunity of opposing Mohammedanism nearer home and under more urgent circumstances. At his earnest request a fleet was fitted out for the conquest of Oran. That city was strongly fortified, rich and powerful, and in its harbors were a multitude of cruisers, ever ready to sweep the shores of the Mediterranean and carry off their victims to be sold as slaves. Though in his seventy-second year, though hampered by the infirmities common at such an age, Ximenes resolved to march in person to the conquest of this place, and to furnish the means required for the expedition out of his own revenues. He would thus, he thought, be able to pursue his own plans with greater freedom, and exempt the king from responsibility and loss which he might not be able or willing to incur. There were those who sneered at the cardinal's girding on his sword, and murmured that he had better tell his beads, but Ferdinand knew well the temper of his mind. He willingly placed at his disposal all the forces that could be raised, and gave him a large number of blank papers, signed only with the royal manual, to be filled up as the great cardinal might think proper. Fourteen thousand men were soon under arms, and Count Pedro Navarro was appointed by Ximenes commander of the forces. A titular bishop was at the head of one division, and all the generals were distinguished for their valor. During some years Ximenes had been husbanding his resources for some such enterprise, and subsidies flowed in from other churches and dioceses.

Intrigues and jealousies delayed for awhile the sailing of the expedition. Navarro strove to obtain the sole command. Ferdinand was often wavering. A mutiny broke out in the army. The soldiers demanded their pay in advance. But the voice of the cardinal calmed the storm, and the soldiers, being promised a part of their pay as soon as they had embarked, hastened to the ships with the merry sound of trumpets. On the 16th of May, 1509, the fleet weighed anchor. Ten galleys, eighty large transports, and many smaller vessels traversed the straits, and on the following day--the Feast of the Ascension--Ximenes with his fleet and army anchored in the port of Mazarquivir. He passed the night in giving his instructions; and though his health and strength were impaired by age, toil, and study, his energy filled the troops with confidence and enthusiasm. He summoned Navarro before him, and entrusted the conduct of the army to him alone, yet the relative positions of the cardinal and the commander were not, after all, clearly defined

{591}

The lines were formed in order of battle, when a striking scene presented itself. Oran was to be attacked by sea and land. A mendicant friar was transformed into a chieftain and a hero. Forth he rode, mounted on a mule, with a sword belted over his pontifical robes. Many ecclesiastics surrounded him. Canons and priests were his body-guard. Swords and scimitars hung from their girdles, and before them rode a giant Franciscan on a white charger, bearing the primate's silver cross and the arms of the house of Cisneros. The hymn _Vexilla regis prodeunt_ rose to heaven as the cavalcade advanced; and the cardinal, riding along the ranks, imposed silence and harangued the troops. His words were few, but full of fire. The mothers of Spain, he said, whose children had been dragged into slavery, were prostrate at that moment before the altar of God, praying for success to his soldiers' arms. He desired to share their danger, remembering how many bishops who had preceded him in the see of Toledo had died gloriously on the battle-field.

Officers and men were excited to the utmost by Ximenes's address, but when he was about to place himself at their head, they entreated him with one voice not to expose so precious a life. He retired, therefore, within the fortress of Mazarquivir, and there, in the oratory of St. Michael, implored the God of battles to crown his troops with victory. Scarcely had he entered the fort, when the folly of Navarro compelled the cardinal to interfere. The commander had ordered the cavalry to remain inactive, because the country was so hilly, and if Ximenes had not resolutely insisted on their supporting the foot-soldiers, the day would probably have been lost. With like energy Ximenes condemned any delay as criminal, and prevented Navarro from deferring the combat, as he proposed, to the next day, when the arrival of the chief-vizier of Tremesen with strong re-enforcements would have been dangerous, if not fatal, to the Spaniards' prospect of success.

The infantry, therefore, in four battalions, advanced immediately up the sides of the sierra, shouting, "Santiago, Santiago!" A shower of stones and arrows was hurled on them by the Moors, and the position was obstinately disputed. But a battery of guns playing on the enemy's flank, they wavered and fled, while the Spaniards, in spite of contrary orders, pursued and slaughtered them with great havoc. The fleet, meanwhile, bombarded the city, and, though ill provided with ladders, the Christian troops scaled the walls, planted their colors, and with loud cries of "Santiago y Ximenes!" opened the gates to their comrades. In vain did their general call them off from the work of carnage. No age or sex was spared; till at last, weary with plunder and butchery, they sank down in the streets, and slept beside the corpses of their foes. Four thousand Moors were said to have fallen, and only thirty Spaniards. The booty was counted at half a million of gold ducats.

The cardinal spent the night in praising God, and the next day, proceeding by sea to Oran, made a solemn entry. The troops hailed him as the conqueror, but he was heard to say aloud, "_Non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam_." He set at liberty three hundred Christian captives; and when the entire spoil of the city was presented to him, he reserved nothing for himself, but set apart a portion for the king, and divided the rest among his troops. Sixty pieces of cannon fell into his hands, and it seemed little less than a miracle that a place so defended should have been taken in a few hours. {592} Others affirmed that there had been traitors among the inhabitants, and that Ximenes had gained over to his side some persons who acted as spies and gave him secret intelligence. The mosques were soon converted into churches, and a branch of the inquisition was established, lest convert Jews should hasten from Spain to Oran and renounce the Christian religion with impunity.

It now became a question whether the war should be pushed further into Africa. The people of Tremesen, stung to madness by the fall of Oran, had massacred the Christian merchants and slaughtered even the Jews. But Navarro had grown jealous of Ximenes, and scorned to obey orders issued by a monk. He informed the cardinal that his power expired with the siege of Oran, and that, if he remained with the army any longer, he would be treated as a private individual. To this indignity Ximenes would not submit, yet he had no desire to continue in Africa. A letter of Ferdinand's, which he saw by chance, instructed Navarro to detain him there as long as might be needful; and he suspected that the king wished him to languish and die on a foreign shore. He knew that Ferdinand could ill bear to see the glory of Gonsalvo de Cordova, "the great captain," and his special friend, to be obscured by that of a general in a monk's cowl, but he was not disposed to gratify his royal master by dying before his time.

Just a week after he had landed, the cardinal set sail on his return. He remained seven days at Carthagena; established a line of transports to run between it and Oran, and then departed for Alcalá, where he made his entry with a sort of military triumph. A part of the walls had been broken down for him to pass through, but this honor he declined, and contented himself with entering through the usual gate, preceded by Moorish slaves leading camels laden with booty. The keys of Oran, chandeliers from the mosques, banners, and Arabic MSS. on medicine and astrology were presented to the university; and a tablet was placed in the Mozarabic chapel of the cathedral of Toledo, with an inscription recording the success of the expedition. Some of these curiosities are still shown to visitors in the cathedral; but the fame of Ximenes has little need of such memorials. As a martial expedition was an enterprise least to be expected of him, so it is that which marks him most prominently on the page of history.

The capture of Oran led to further conquests on the coasts of Africa; yet, after all, the declining power of Spain made it difficult to retain what she had acquired, and impossible to extend her dominions. In 1790, after a dreadful earthquake, Oran fell into the hands of the Dey of Algiers. Since then, it has been annexed to the French empire, under conditions more favorable to civilization than it enjoyed under Spanish rule.

One of the conditions attached by Ximenes to the conquest of Oran had been that it should either be annexed to the archbishopric of Toledo, or that the expenses he might incur should be refunded from the treasury. Cabals, however, were raised against him. He was charged with having enriched himself, and the promised conditions seemed likely to stay unfulfilled. He persisted in his claim, wrote to Ferdinand on the subject, and was mortified by seeing a commission appointed to examine his private apartments, in order to ascertain what part of the spoils he had reserved for himself. {593} The account-book, which he handed to the commissioner, was the only reply he made to this indignity. Not long after, the king proposed that he should exchange the archbishopric of Toledo for that of Zaragoza, and yield the primacy to Ferdinand's natural son, a brave warrior and able politician, but a worldly prelate. To this unworthy proposal Ximenes made answer that he would never exchange his see for any other. He was willing to return to the poverty of a cloister, but if he held any see at all it should be that one over which Providence had appointed him to rule.

Cold and capricious as Ferdinand was sometimes toward the cardinal, he treated him with the same respect as ever when his own interests or those of the state seemed to require it. When he had espoused the cause of Julius II. against the King of France, he sent for Ximenes to meet him at Seville and aid him with his counsels. It was in the depth of winter, but the cardinal promptly obeyed the summons. He admired the bold attitude assumed by the pope, and heartily sympathized with his efforts to recover the territories which had been torn from the Church, to extend the temporal sovereignty of the successor of St. Peter, to compel his vassals to obey him, and to humble the power of Venice, then mistress of almost all his seaports. He saw with satisfaction the blows inflicted on the pride and insolence of the Baglionis and Bentivoglios, and he approved of the League of Cambray, by which Julius II., Louis XII., the Emperor of Germany, and the King of Spain bound themselves to enfeeble Venice and avenge the injuries she had done to the domains of the Church. But Ximenes, though he concurred in the papal policy as regards Venice, shared also the fears of the sovereign pontiff lest France should extend her possessions in the north of Italy. He justified Julius II. in withdrawing from the League into which he had entered, and was prepared to afford him every assistance in resisting the arrogance of Louis XII. when he seized on Bologna and convened a council at Pisa, in defiance of the Holy See. The adhesion of Ferdinand and Ximenes encouraged Pope Julius to form an alliance with Venice, and thus to oppose the united forces of the Emperor Maximilian and Louis XII. Under the auspices of these princes a schismatical council dared to assemble at Pisa, and afterward at Milan. Seven insubordinate cardinals and twenty bishops, chiefly French, were present at the opening, and in the eighth and ninth sessions they audaciously declared Julius II. deposed. But a general council, convened by the pope, met in the Lateran in 1512, condemned these schismatical proceedings, and restored the wavering to obedience. Even Maximilian deserted the King of France, and Henry VIII. of England sided with Ferdinand against the pope's enemies.

It may here be mentioned that Ximenes was averse to the distribution of indulgences under Julius II. and Leo X. for the completion of St. Peter's in Rome. The ground on which he disapproved of it was, that the relaxation of temporal punishment which these indulgences conferred might weaken and disturb ecclesiastical discipline. Devoutly submissive as he was to the Holy See, he nevertheless, as Gomez relates, advised Ferdinand to enact a law by which all papal bulls should, before publication, be submitted to a minister of state. His object was to guard against abuses, since dispensations were often obtained too easily from Rome.

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During Ferdinand's last illness, Ximenes occupied a prominent post in the affairs of state; and on one occasion, when the sovereign was absent from Castile, the government was entrusted to him, in concert with the royal council. It was, therefore, natural that, when the king died, he should be appointed regent during the minority of Charles V. Ferdinand had, it is true, objected to him as too austere, but he yielded to the advice of others, and consented to the appointment immediately before receiving the last sacraments. It was, he thought, an advantage in his case not to have been born of a noble family, since he could on that account conduct the administration with greater impartiality. Thus, on the 23d of January, 1516, Ximenes became once more the ruler of a nation daily rising in importance.

Another claimant of supreme power appeared on the scene. This was Dean Hadrian, afterward pope, who had been tutor to Prince Charles, and who produced a document signed by the prince, authorizing him to assume the regency of Castile in the event of Ferdinand's demise. The legal decision on the question was unfavorable to Hadrian's claim; but Ximenes, wishing to avoid disputes, consented to rule conjointly with his rival until Charles himself should decide by which of the two he would be represented. Nothing could exceed the promptitude and energy of the cardinal's measures. If an insurrection broke out, troops were despatched instantly to suppress it. Madrid was in the neighborhood of his own vassals, and he therefore chose it as the seat of government, lest he might in some other place be exposed to the violence of interfering grandees.

The authority given in the first instance to Ximenes was fully confirmed by Charles, and in a letter which he addressed to the cardinal he declared that "the most excellent clause he had found in his grandfather's will was that by which Ximenes was invested with the government of the kingdom and the administration of justice." The fame of the consummate wisdom, experience, and eminent virtues of the cardinal had reached, he said, even Flanders; and he therefore enjoined on all the members of his family, the nobles and prelates, to recognize him as regent. To Hadrian the prince assigned a subordinate post, and every arrangement was made with due regard to the rights of the unhappy Queen Joanna, whose derangement made her practically a cipher, though nominally supreme ruler. Her name preceded that of her son Charles in all public documents; but the prince was proclaimed King of Castile by order of Ximenes. It was not until Charles arrived in Spain that the Cortes of Aragon consented to recognize his title as king of that country also.

The height of power is generally the height of discomfort. Many of the nobles combined to harass Ximenes, and incite the people to rebel against "a monk of base extraction." They questioned his authority, and decided on sending messengers to Flanders to demand his dismissal. The cardinal, however, was fully apprised of all their plans; and it is said by Gomez that, when some of them waited on him to ask for the documents in virtue of which he held the regency, he took them to the window, and showing them a park of artillery, said, "These are the powers by which I govern Castile according to the king's will and command."

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He took, indeed, if Peter Martyr can be credited, great interest and pleasure in military affairs. He had heard Ferdinand expatiate on the advantages of a militia as opposed to an army recruited from different countries; and now that he was wielding dictatorial power, he resolved to put the scheme in execution. He conferred with the senate, and issued a proclamation inviting the enlistment of volunteers. They were, with the exception of officers and musicians, to serve without pay, but in return they were exempted from taxes, socages, and all other charges. Immediate success attended this measure. Thirty thousand citizens were speedily enrolled, and were daily drilled in public. The compliments paid to Ximenes by ambassadors, and the envious cavillings of foreign princes, sufficiently proved the wisdom of this organization. It encountered great opposition from the nobles, but, being endorsed by the special approval of Charles, it triumphed ultimately over every obstacle.

Ximenes's attention, at the same time, was turned to the maritime power of the kingdom. He added twenty trireme galleys to the navy, and put the entire fleet in movement against the Moors and pirates who infested the Spanish coasts. The seas were thus cleared of "Red Rovers," and Pope Leo X. congratulated the cardinal on the success of his marine administration. His government was assailed on all sides, but the great churchman was never at a loss. Whether he had to meet invading forces on the frontier, or suppress rebellion in the interior, he was in the highest degree prompt and resolute; he struck terror into his foes, and earned the absent sovereign's warmest gratitude. He was equally attentive to the details of government and to its general aims. He caused exact accounts to be drawn up of the revenues, finances, and laws of the three military orders; and was preparing similar documents relative to the kingdom at large when arrested in his labors by the hand of death. To relieve the royal treasury he suppressed numerous sinecures, beginning with those held by his own friends, and remonstrated with Charles on his lavish expenditure.

Successful as Ximenes had been in the capture of Oran, it was his misfortune afterward to be foiled and worsted by a robber. The name of Horac Barbarossa was feared throughout the Mediterranean. He was scarcely twenty years of age when a pirate-fleet of forty galleys sailed under his command. Though a cannon-ball carried off his left arm in an attack on Bugia in 1515, he returned to the assault, took the citadel, and put the entire Christian garrison to death. He roused the fanaticism of the Moslems, and excited them to throw off the Spanish yoke. The King of Algiers sought his aid against the Spaniards; but the treacherous pirate murdered his friend in a bath, seized the throne, and refused to pay tribute to Spain. He also took the King of Tunis prisoner, and put him to death. A talkative and bragging general, named Vera, was sent by Ximenes with 8000 men to reduce this brigand and usurper to subjection. But he was too strong and skilful for the blundering Vera. The Spanish expedition utterly failed, and the two-armed general who could not beat the one-armed buccaneer was an object of ridicule and scorn to women and children when he returned to Spain.

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The conquest of Granada had been the means of bringing into public notice two of the greatest men of that or any other age. The appointment of Talavera to the see of Granada led to Ximenes being summoned to court to fill his place as confessor to the queen; and in the joy felt by Isabella at the final victory over the Moors in Spain she granted Columbus the vessels he had solicited during many years. In March, 1493, the glorious adventurer returned from the far West, and brought with him numerous proofs of the extent and importance of his distant discoveries. The natives whom he had on board his ships increased the desire of Ferdinand and Isabella to impart the blessings of Christianity to their new subjects; and Ximenes, then occupied with the conversion of the Spanish Moors, was anxious to co-operate with the sovereigns for the repression of crime and cruelty in the American colonies, and in the instruction of the caciques and the Indian tribes in the faith of the gospel. It is well known how long and how miserably these pious designs were frustrated by the barbarity of Spanish governors, the rapacity and license of Spanish sailors, convicts, and settlers. It is not surprising that the cacique Hatuey vowed he would rather not go to heaven if the Spaniards were there.

The royal decrees respecting slavery had been hesitating and contradictory; nor were the religious orders in the New World agreed as to the practice that should be pursued. Some of the governors allowed the natives to be treated as slaves, while others received orders from the home government to limit slavery to the case of cannibals. When Ximenes became regent, he carefully investigated the matter, heard a number of witnesses, and formed his own resolution independently of other counsellors. The principal caciques were to be called together, and informed, in the name of Queen Isabella and her son Charles, that they were free subjects, and that, though the tribes would be required to pay a certain tribute, their rights, liberties, and interests would be protected. The caciques would rule in the several territories and villages in conjunction with a priest and royal administrator; religion would be taught, civilization promoted, merciful laws introduced, and traffic in slaves, whether Indian or negro, strictly forbidden. It was found by subsequent experience that these wise and merciful regulations were too good for the purpose required; that it would be dangerous to emancipate the Indians suddenly; and that it could only be done after a sufficient number of negro slaves had been imported from Africa.

The authority of Ximenes during the latter part of his regency was disputed, not merely by factious nobles, but also by Dean Hadrian and the Seigneur de la Chaux. They sought to establish a triumvirate, and reduce Ximenes to a second-rate power. But the cardinal receiving some papers to which they had first affixed their signatures, he immediately ordered fresh copies to be made, and signed them himself only. From that time neither La Chaux nor Hadrian was ever allowed to sign a decree. They complained, indeed, to the king, but with little effect. Ximenes paid no attention to the remonstrance of the royal ambassador, and the affair ended by his exclusive authority being recognized and approved.

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The machinations of his enemies ceased only with his life. To the last, intrigues, jealousies, and calumnies hedged in his path with thorns. In August, 1517, it is said, an attempt was made to poison him; and it would have succeeded had not his servant, according to custom, first tasted every dish set before him, and fallen seriously ill at Bozeguillas. His health was failing fast when Charles arrived from Flanders, and the courtiers used every artifice to prevent his having an interview with the young prince. They feared the influence of his genius and experience, and hoped that death might speedily rid them of his presence. Issuing vigorous orders daily for the government of the state, he calmly awaited the arrival of the king, and of his own approaching end, in the monastery of Aguilera. There he renewed and corrected the will by which he left the bulk of his vast property to the University of Alcalá. He often blessed God for enabling him to say that he had never knowingly injured any man, but had administered justice even-handed. The peace of his own conscience did not preserve him from the persecution and insults of his enemies. They even indulged their spite by the paltry annoyance of quartering his servants in a neighboring village, instead of their being under the same roof with their master, when, wrapped in furs, he took his last journey to meet Charles, and welcome him to his kingdom and throne. From the sovereign himself he received a heartless letter, thanking him for all his great services, and expressing a hope that they should meet at Mojados; but after their meeting, he suggested that the cardinal should be relieved of his arduous duties; in other words, that he should share no longer in the conduct of public affairs. This cruel letter is thought by many writers to have hastened Ximenes's death, while others are of opinion that it was never delivered to him, and that he was thus spared a wanton addition to the pangs of dying. Ximenes died in all respects the death of the righteous. The language of contrition and praise was on his lips, and the crucifix in his hand. He recommended the University of Alcalá to the king in his last moments, together with the monasteries he had founded. He expired, exclaiming, "_In te, Domine, speravi_" on Sunday, the 8th of November, 1517, in the eighty-second year of his age. All the surrounding country hastened to kiss his hands while his body lay in state. The corpse was embalmed, and conveyed by slow stages, and amid the blaze of numberless torches, to Torrelaguna, his birthplace, and afterward to Alcalá, the city of his adoption. Arriving there on the Feast of St. Eugene, the first Archbishop of Toledo, the day was celebrated yearly from that time by a funeral service and panegyric in honor of Ximenes. Fifty-eight years after the university was founded, his monument was enclosed in bronze tablets, on which the chief events in his career were represented. Thus, by sermons, by external images, by tradition, and by history, the memory of this remarkable man was kept alive. Posterity became indulgent to his defects. They were specks in a blaze of light. Heroism and saintdom encircled his memory with effulgent halos. His person became familiar to the Spaniard's eye: his tall, thin frame, his aquiline nose, his high forehead, his piercing, deep-set eyes, and those two prominent eye-teeth which gained him the nickname of "the elephant." According to the custom of the time, he kept a jester, and his dwarf's jokes diverted him when depressed with violent headaches, or worn with the affairs of state and opposition of factious men. Study was his delight. He never felt too old to learn, and he frequently assisted at public disputations. {598} Prayer lay at the root of his greatness; it regulated his ambition, tamed his impetuosity, and filled him with the love of justice. It made him severe toward himself, firm and fearless, equally capable of wielding a sceptre of iron and a pastoral crook. You may search as you will for historical parallels, but Ximenes is the only prime-minister in the world who was held to be a saint by the people he ruled, and the only primate who has acquired lasting renown in such varied characters as ascetic, soldier, chieftain, scholar, man of letters, statesman, reformer, and regent.

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From La Revue Du Monde Catholique.

The Ignorance Of The Middle Ages.

A recent and famous circular respecting the education of women has called attention to the public schools of France, and the revolutionary journals have unanimously profited by the opportunity to load past ages with sarcasm and irony. It is because there is a question of religion in this case, as in all the principal incidents of the time. The antichristian press is but little interested in the degree of knowledge diffused in the middle ages, or in the pretended degradation of the people of Rome; [Footnote 177] but under these deceitful pretexts is concealed a design, persistently and ardently pursued--the annihilation of Christianity. Christianity must be put down because it is now the only force that strongly resists unruly passions, and because modern barbarians, eager to possess the goods they covet, wish to submit no longer to any obstacle or delay.

[Footnote 177: The degradation of which an editor of the _Journal des Débats_ (M. J. Janin) wrote in 1836: "Talk to me of the enslaved country of the Holy Father as free!"]

Let not Christians be deceived by the hypocritical protestations of respect uttered by this enemy, to whom falsehood is a jest. Let them not grow weary of countermining the subterranean attacks carried on against the city. For each assault let there be a sortie; for each new battery, a new bastion! Resources are not wanting; we possess facts, works, men, the testimony of history, and even the admission of our enemies, and we are sure victory will be ours in the end.

A former essay [Footnote 178] depicted the savage brutality of the barbarous nations converted to Christianity, their passions, their vices, their ferocity, and their excesses. We will now show what the church did in one particular to subdue, civilize, and elevate them, by diffusing with unparalleled munificence the most extended, the most general and complete course of instruction ever given to the world; how, in the most troublous times--in the tenth century, for example--the church was the inviolable guardian of the productions of the human mind; what ardor for knowledge it excited in these men, but recently so violent and so material; and besides its saints, what learned men, it formed--what great men, full of talent and genius!

[Footnote 178: "Les Barbares et le Moyen Age," _Revue du Monde Cath_., of Aug. 10 and Sept. 10, 1867.]

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I.

Christian Antiquity.

Some writers, having lost the spirit of Christianity, have denied that Christian antiquity had a taste for science and literature, and have stigmatized the middle ages as _dark_. If they had been Christians, they would have known that this accusation is as erroneous as it is injurious--was contrary to the very principles of Christianity.

Pagan society, established, with a view to this life, for the well-being of a few, kept the people in ignorance in order to keep them in servitude. Ignorance, by rendering men material, disposes them to servility and strengthens tyranny. It had academies for the free-born, but not for the slave. Why trouble themselves about the minds of those miserable creatures who were "incapable of good, of evil, and of virtue," who were called speaking instruments and chattels? It had philosophers, poets, and learned men, but no popular schools; for it loved science and not man.

The first principle of Christianity, on the contrary, is love. Love is without narrowness: it does not repel, it attracts: it is not exclusive, it is all-embracing: it seeketh not its own, it is generously and openly diffusive, it searches out and summons the whole world: _Venite ad me omnes_. Christianity knows only one race of men who are all equal. Its other name is _Catholicism, universality_. It has but one object, which is supernatural--to lead men to God.

In order that man may aspire to this sublime end, he must be made free--_cui liber, est liber_--must be enlightened, that he may comprehend the Supreme Intelligence that created him. Christianity breathes into man "that ardent love of knowledge" [Footnote 179] which buoys up his wings: it lights up before him a perspective extending to the very confines of heaven. "The more fully man comprehends in what way God has established everything in number, weight, and measure, the more ardent is his love for him," says a simple nun [Footnote 180] of the middle ages, beautifully expressing the idea of the church. This is the reason why Christianity has patronized science, and diffused and cultivated it.

[Footnote 179: J. de Maistre, _Du Pape_, iv. 3.]

[Footnote 180: Roswitha, _Paphnuce_.]

As soon as Christianity had a foothold in the world, instead of turning toward a few, like the philosophers, it addresses all--the poor who had been despised, the lowly who had been made use of, and the slaves who had not been counted. The door of knowledge was opened wide to plebeians. "We teach philosophy to fullers and shoemakers," says St. Chrysostom. From the depths of the catacombs, where they were obliged to conceal themselves, the first pontiffs, whose lives for three centuries terminated by martyrdom, founded schools in every parish of Rome, and ordered the priests to assemble the children of the country in order to instruct them. What, then, was the result when Christianity, issuing from the bowels of the earth, bloomed forth in freedom? There were schools everywhere, monastic schools, schools in the priests' houses, [Footnote 181] episcopal schools, established by Gregory the Great, and schools at the entrance of churches, (as in the portico of the cathedral of Lucca, in the eighth century.)

[Footnote 181: A council of the sixteenth century speaks of schools in the priests' houses.]

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The decrees of councils, the decretals of popes, attest the desire of distributing to all the food of the mind, and of multiplying schools. [Footnote 182] And who were their first masters? The priests, bishops, and doctors of the church. "It is our duty," (it is a pope who speaks,) "to endeavor to dispel ignorance." [Footnote 183] Ulphidas, a bishop of the fifth century, translated the Bible into the language of the Goths, for the instruction of the barbarians; and at a later period, Albertus Magnus and St. Bonaventura composed abridgments of the Scriptures for the poor, called the _Bible of the Poor, Biblia Pauperum_. "If the important knowledge of reading and writing was spread among the people, it was owing to the church," says St. Simon the Reformer. [Footnote 184]

[Footnote 182: Report of the Minister of Public Instruction, M. Duruy, 1865.]

[Footnote 183: Innocent III. at the Council of 1215.]

[Footnote 184: _La Science de l'Histoire_.]

And how did the church bestow it? Gratuitously, "to all who could not pay for it." The church is truly democratic, according to the modern expression, or rather, it is an institution of charity; gratuitous instruction is its conception which it put into execution. (Ventura.) Listen to its councils: "Every cathedral and every church that has the means is obliged to found a professorship of theology for ecclesiastics, and provide a master for the gratuitous instruction of the poor, _according to the ancient customs_. [Footnote 185] It is thus it understood obligatory instruction, not imposed on those who received it, which would be tyranny, but exacted from those who gave it, which was an act of virtue.

[Footnote 185: The Council of Constantinople in 680; then the Councils of Lateran in 1179 and 1215, and the Council of Lyons in 1245. In the eighth century Theodolphus, Bishop of Orleans, wrote to his priests: "Exact no pay for the instruction of children, and receive nothing, except what is offered voluntarily and through affection, by the parents."]

But was it elementary knowledge alone? Does the church disdain literature, which a father calls the ornament and consolation of the wretchedness of man--polite literature, the humanities _par excellence_, because they sustain humanity in the combat of life? Certainly not; the church found the pagan world powerful and renowned for its attainments in literature, the sciences, and the arts; it would not leave to that world its superiority; it would also become the patron of knowledge, because that would aid in the progress of truth. "We ought," says St. Basil, "to study the profane sciences before penetrating the mysteries of sacred knowledge, that we may become accustomed to their radiance." [Footnote 186] The church exhorted its children to the acquirement of knowledge; nay, it even wished itself to excel therein, and it succeeded so as to terrify its enemies, as in the case of Julian the Apostate, who, to crush the church, undertook to prohibit it from studying the sciences. Where shall we find men more learned than Clement of Alexandria, who fathomed and explained the origin of pagan mythology; St. Basil and the two Gregorys, who, pupils of the Athenian school, acquired there the eloquence in which they equalled Demosthenes; St. Augustine, whose work, _De Civitate Dei,_ is the compendium of all knowledge, philosophy, literature, science, and the entire history of the world; and Origen, before whom the most celebrated masters of the East rose up and ceased to teach, intimidated by his presence? "We are not afraid," says St. Jerome, "of any kind of comparison!"

[Footnote 186: _Discourse on the Utility of reading Profane Literature_. See also St. Gregory of Nazianzen, _Discourse at the Funeral of St. Basil_.]

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The church thus continues: "Study," wrote Cassiodorus, in the fifth century, to his monks--"study Galen, Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and the other authors you find in the library." The course of study at Salernum was pursued by a great number of clerics, priests, and bishops: [Footnote 187] priests learned history, grammar, Greek, and geometry at the school in the basilica of Lateran. [Footnote 188]

[Footnote 187: Daremberg, _Cours de 1866 sur l'Histoire de la Medecine_.]

[Footnote 188: And in the Benedictine monasteries.]

Where did the Greek artists, driven out by iconoclasts, take refuge? In Rome, under the protection of the popes. Who were the first historians of the West? Priests and bishops: Gregory of Tours, Fredegarius, Eginhard, Odo, and Flodoard. There is an ecclesiastical tone throughout the entire Merovingian literature--the legends, hymns, and chronicles. [Footnote 189] Even the poets, Fortunatus and Sidonius Apollinaris, are priests familiar with the works of antiquity. "I am engaged," wrote Alcuin to Charlemagne, "in giving instruction to some by drawing from the fount of Holy Writ, and intoxicating others with the old wine of the ancient schools." And for what purpose? He continues: "In order that the church may profit by the increase of knowledge." Finally, when a pope, great through his genius and his sanctity--Gregory VII.--was inspired with the noble ambition of christianizing the world, he called science to his aid, revived the ancient canons that instituted schools for the liberal arts in the vicinity of cathedrals; [Footnote 190] "desiring a saintly clergy, he wished them also learned." [Footnote 191]

[Footnote 189: D'Espinay, _Influence of Canon Law on French Legislation_.]

[Footnote 190: Innocent III. continued the work; he extended the obligation of acquiring knowledge among the priests. "The bishop will ascertain," says he, "the capacity of those on whom he confers holy orders. It is better to have a few who are learned to serve the altar than many who are ignorant." And in our own day the Roman College gives gratuitous instruction in the classics and in the higher sciences, theology, philosophy, law, medicine, astronomy, etc., which does not prevent the revolutionary journals from declaring the pontifical government an enemy of progress and of light.]

[Footnote 191: Ozanam, _Le Christianisme chez les Barbares_.]

And it is so truly the spirit of Christianity that schools are multiplied in proportion to its diffusion. Clovis hardly received baptism when schools were established even in his palace; [Footnote 192] the more fully kings were imbued with a Christian spirit, the more letters were protected and honored. Theodosius, who almost attained to sanctity by his penitence, decreed that masters, after teaching twenty years, should be ennobled with the title of count, and be on an equality with the lieutenants of the prefect of the pretorian guards; and Charlemagne, the great Christian emperor, established under his eye an academy, which, we are told, was called the Palatial School: the palace was consecrated to science, and its true name would have been the Scholastic Palace. [Footnote 193]

[Footnote 192: Dom Pitra, _Rapport sur une Mission scientifique_, 1850.]

[Footnote 193: Dom Pitra, _Histoire de St. Léger_, ix.]

II.

The Tenth Century.

We are not contradicted. Yes, in the first centuries the church favored knowledge; but there is an exception: from the ninth to the eleventh century, letters almost entirely disappeared, the light of knowledge was obscured, and this epoch is justly called _the night of the middle ages_.

It is not so; a multitude of witnesses prove how unfounded is this prejudice. [Footnote 194]

[Footnote 194: That is to say, the erudite men who have carefully studied this confused epoch and have arrived at the same conclusion, whatever their philosophical opinions: Littré and Ozanam, Daremberg and Villemain, Renan and Dantier, Hallam and Berrington, etc,]

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Letters never perished. In the sanguinary tumult, the royal offspring of intelligence was saved by a pious hand, and protected that it might be restored some day to the world-- great, powerful, and fit to reign. [Footnote 195]

[Footnote 195: In the tenth century, we include the end of the ninth and the beginning of the eleventh, as men who lived at the end of the seventeenth century and the commencement of the nineteenth are considered as belonging to the eighteenth; Fontenelle and Delille, for example.]

Charlemagne was hardly laid in his tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle, when his lords, barons, counts, dukes, and the inferior leaders dispersed and established in a thousand places their divided rule; furious and devastating wars overwhelmed the people and spread terror in every heart through the country; there was no longer peace, security, or leisure. Were intellectual pursuits suspended during that time? No. Throughout Europe, then a field of battle, sheltered in the valleys and intrenched on the summits of the mountains, were fortresses, which became the asylum of knowledge, with an army resolved to defend it--monks in their convents. Italy was like a camp with a reserve corps of instruction: there soldiers were formed and organized and drilled in the use of all kinds of arms; the Benedictines of Monte Casino, "where ancient literature was constantly studied," [Footnote 196] the ecclesiastical schools of Modena, the episcopal schools of Milan, the school of jurisprudence at Lucca, of rhetoric at Ravenna, of literature at Verona, of the seven arts at Parma, of grammar at Pavia, and, in the midst, Rome, guardian of the heritage of ancient traditions and the seat of the papacy, "which has always surpassed all other nations in learning." [Footnote 197]

[Footnote 196: And a great number of other religious houses; as late as the seventeenth century there were more than three hundred.]

[Footnote 197: Villemain, _Histoire de la. Littérature au Moyen Age_, lesson xx.]

Beyond the Alps, traverse Provence, almost Italian, Languedoc, also half Roman in learning and in language, on the banks of the Loire you will find these abbeys, famous as seats of learning: Fleury, St. Benoit, and Ligugé, (near Poitiers;) and proceeding to the north, Ferrière, Saint Wandrille, Luxeuil, Corbie, and Le Bec, (in the eleventh century.) From Lyons you could see, far away on the mountain-heights of Switzerland, Reichnau, whose garrison was re-enforced by foreigners who crossed the water, (Irish monks,) and St. Gall, whose monks quote the _Iliad_. In Spain, Christians did not strive in valor alone with the Moors; they vied in learning with the Arabs, and studied and translated their works. The _mélée_ was universal. Luitprand, an Englishman, who took part in it, as well as Gerbert, a Frenchman, heard ten languages spoken there; among others, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. [Footnote 198]

[Footnote 198: Greek by merchants, Hebrew by the Jews, Arabic everywhere, while Latin is the foundation of the national tongue.]

Cross the Channel: in England at every step are colleges and seminaries: that far-off murmur comes from the seven thousand students of Armagh, in Ireland. And if you penetrate the wilds of Germany, among the Saxons but just converted, you will discover the advanced posts--the school of Fulden, founded by St. Boniface; New Corbie on the Weser, where, at a later day, were found the five books of the _Annals_ of Tacitus; and what is more, a convent of learned nuns--the Monastery of Roswitha.

This is the main army, and it is not without support. The leaders of the people and the directors of souls do not abandon these valiant troops. Kings, when they have the power and the leisure, send them reenforcements: there are the schools of Eugene II. for the study of the liberal arts; of grammar under Lothaire in France of jurisprudence at Angers; of Edward the Confessor in England. It is not till the time of Henry of Germany that princes are unmindful of them. He would not listen to the petition of a poet for schools of _belles-lettres_ and law. These are the scattered forts that support and bind together the main army.

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But perhaps they are destitute of arms and have no arsenals and ammunition? What, then, are all these books of medicine dating from the seventh to the tenth century, "accumulated in all the convents"? [Footnote 199]--the celebrated libraries of Ferrière and Bobbio, which owned Aristotle and Demosthenes; of Reichnau, which in 850 possessed four hundred volumes catalogued; the Greek manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries discovered at Rome, Verona, Monte Casino, [Footnote 200] and at Tournay:[Footnote 201] the copies of ancient authors, made in the ninth and tenth centuries by the monks of St. Gall? [Footnote 202] Do you not hear resounding the most illustrious names--of poets, historians, philosophers, and orators--Homer, Seneca, Ovid, Sallust, and Pliny? [Footnote 203] This one, like a watchman who calls for help from the mountain-heights, (Lupus, abbot of Ferrière to Pope Benedict III.,) requests the loan of the _Orator_ of Cicero, the _Institutions_ of Quintilian, and a commentary of Terence; another (see _Life of St. Columba_) quotes Titus Livius; others (see _Acts of the Saints_) quote Horace; treaties are fortified with passages from Cicero; [Footnote 204] and there is not a barbarous chronicle in which there are not lightning-like flashes from the inspired lines of Virgil. [Footnote 205]

[Footnote 199: Dander, _Missions scientifiques_.]

[Footnote 200: Renan, _Missions scientifiques_.]

[Footnote 201: Dom Pitra, _ibid_.]

[Footnote 202: Dander, _ibid_.]

[Footnote 203: There are proofs, says Daremberg, that the Franks of the age of Charlemagne read Pliny. These books were not lost, but preserved in the convents.]

[Footnote 204: Dom Pitra, _Missions scientifiques_.]

[Footnote 205: See Villemain, _Histoire de la Littérature du Moyen Age_, lesson x.]

They do not lack arms, and they make use of them. They have captains--leaders who are capable, learned, and indefatigable. They are well known: Abbo, abbot of Fleury-sur-Loire, who is called the "Alcuin of the tenth century," who wrote a history of the popes, on philosophy, physics, and astronomy, and the commander of a numerous corps of more than five thousand students, among whom is one who translated Euclid; [Footnote 206] Flodoard, author of _La Chronique de France_; the thirty-two professors of _belles-lettres_ at Salernum; St. Fulbert and Henry of Auxerre, in France; Elphege at Monte Casino; in Spain, Petrus Alphonsus, who compares the literature of France with that of his own country; [Footnote 207] in England, Odo and St. Dunstan, a geometrician, musician, painter, and sculptor;[Footnote 208] and finally, that wonderful man, who made the tour of the world of learning and was familiar with every part of it--mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, literature, and philosophy--at once a prince of the church and of science-- Gerbert. [Footnote 209]

[Footnote 206: There is a second Abbo in the tenth century-- a monk also, and a poet.]

[Footnote 207: In his book _De Disciplina Cleri_. See Dom Pitria, _Histoire de St. Léger_.]

[Footnote 208: Berrington, _History of Literature in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries_.]

[Footnote 209: Gaillard, in his _Histoire de Charlemagne_, gives a list of masters who succeeded each other without interruption from Alcuin till the twelfth century.]

But, blockaded in their fortresses by barbarism, brigandage, and tyranny, what important deeds could they achieve, what feats of arms, what expeditions? In the first place, they held their position by keeping the ramparts in constant repair. {604} In the scriptorium of every abbey, a numerous detachment of patient copyists, bending all day over manuscripts, transcribed the holy books and the masterpieces of antiquity, and rendered eminent service to the arts, to letters, and to history by preserving and keeping in order the store of munitions which otherwise would have been squandered and for ever lost. At the same time, watchful sentinels on the walls observed all that was passing in the world without, and made an exact report of it; that is to say, they drew up those chronicles, charters, and cartularies in which were recorded facts, names, contracts, donations, and the changes in the countries in which they lived, among the people they directed, in the lands they cultivated, the sovereigns who ruled over them, and the conquerors who despoiled them. [Footnote 210]

[Footnote 210: It is sufficient to mention the _Polyptique_ of the abbot Irminon, (tenth century,) and the numerous cartularies that have been published within half a century.]

And that the descriptions might be complete, painters illuminated the margins of the vellum manuscripts, supplying by delicate and faithful miniatures in the brightest colors what was wanting in the text, general details respecting the splendor of the vestments, the sculptures on the walls and the ornaments of the houses, thus bequeathing to posterity a lively and true portrayal of their time. And the whole makes up the immense and inexhaustible treasure where we find depicted the manners, customs, classes of society, the nature of the soil, and facts respecting the tillers of the earth, their lords, and the church, forming the moral, industrial, and agricultural history of all Christendom. These transcripts, chronicles, and paintings are the magazines, casemates, and bastions without which the citadel of letters and science would have been dismantled and rendered uninhabitable for generations to come!

They did not confine themselves to this; nothing was neglected that should occupy a well-organized army; first, regular exercise, which makes the soldier active, robust, and ready for any duty; the study of the liberal arts, divided into two classes for the recruits and the veterans: the _quadrivium_, (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy,) and the _trivium_ (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics. [Footnote 211] ) These labors were carried on in the interior of the fortress. They also made expeditions and sallies to keep the ways of access clear--commentaries upon authors, variations of texts, (as the commentaries on the _Fasti_ of Ovid, [Footnote 212] the treatise _De Senectute_, with different readings of the same text, [Footnote 213] and numerous manuscripts with Greek annotations.[Footnote 214]) They undertook sieges, for a translation may be called a siege; everywhere you could find real workshops for translating Greek authors into Latin, such as books of medicine, (Galen, Hippocrates, and Oribasus,) the fathers, (the _Homilies_ of St. John Chrysostom,) and the principal ancient authors, [Footnote 215] (the _Logic_ of Aristotle.) Under the guidance of the leaders already named, they went forth to daily combat and even to fight great battles; in the schools, colleges, monasteries, and public lectures, professors, doctors, and students [Footnote 216] stimulated the public mind; they touched on every science, and treated, under the names of nominalism and realism, of all those questions about which man is continually agitated--his nature, his origin, his relations with God, and his destiny;

[Footnote 211: Mentioned by Roswitha in the tenth century.]

[Footnote 212: Found at Reichnau by M. Dantier.]

[Footnote 213: At Mr. Philipps's in England, by Dom Pitra.]

[Footnote 214: At Monte Casino, by M. Renan.]

[Footnote 215: See Daremberg, _ibid_. A proof, says M. Littré, in _Les Barbares et le Moyen Age_, that during the Merovingian and Carlovingian periods the Greek filiation of the sciences was preserved. As to medical science, he adds, it is evidently not a simple question of medicine.]

[Footnote 216: Béranger, Lanfranc, Roscelin, etc.]

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struggles constantly renewed, in which they fought furiously and displayed all their strength by quotations from authors, allusions to celebrated events and to sayings of antiquity, (for example, the sarcasm of Julian to the Christians, mentioned by Roswitha; [Footnote 217] the veil given by a king of England to the Abbey of Croyland, on which was embroidered the Ruin of Troy; [Footnote 218] the Latin war hymn chanted at Modena, which alludes to the devotedness of Codrus; [Footnote 219]) brilliant tournaments in which, like knights of prowess, some endeavored to distinguish themselves by a display of erudition better suited, it might seem, to the refined age of the sixteenth century than to the tenth. They signed acts written in Greek; [Footnote 220] in Latin verse; [Footnote 221] they wrote the lives of the saints in French verse; [Footnote 222] the kings of England prided themselves on the name of [Greek text]; they spoke Greek in ordinary intercourse. [Footnote 223] These knights of science, like the paladins in the combats with giants, displayed wondrous feats. "I am over shoes in Cicero's _Rhetoric,_" writes Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland. [Footnote 224]

[Footnote 217: Christians should congratulate themselves on being deprived of their riches, for Christ said: "Every one of you that doth not renounce all that he possesseth cannot be my disciple." See the _Gallicanus_.]

[Footnote 218: See Darboy, _Life of St. Thomas of Canterbury_.]

[Footnote 219: A Latin hymn was also chanted at Pisa, in the eleventh century, to celebrate a victory over the Saracens.]

[Footnote 220: At Poitiers, at the end of the ninth century.]

[Footnote 221: At Sienna.]

[Footnote 222: In 1050, Thibaud de Vernon, canon at Rouen.]

[Footnote 223: The monks of England and Ireland.]

[Footnote 224: Tenth century.]

They did not confine themselves to the defensive. In studying the ancient writers they were inspired to imitate them, and they went forth into the open field and vied in a thousand works of the imagination--fiction, poetry--(hymns, poems of the eleventh century, and history.) What is more, they undertook fatiguing and dangerous expeditions into far-off and almost unknown countries-- archaeology, which had not then a name, (see "the valuable manuscripts of the tenth century, discovered by Mabillon at Einsiedeln, which treat of Roman inscriptions;") cosmography, in which they divined truths of the highest importance. The Irish monk Virgilius taught in Bohemia the antipodes, and consequently that the earth is round. He was not comprehended: they supposed him to believe there were other lands under our earth, with another sun, another moon, and inhabitants for whom Christ did not die, and he was excommunicated. He went to Rome, where he was permitted to explain his theory; the pope withdrew his anathema and elevated him to the episcopacy. [Footnote 225] Finally, the drama, into which was infused a new and original character. Whilst the monk Virgilius taught the true form of the earth, the nun Roswitha composed her tragedies, the first specimens of the Christian drama, at once full of the reminiscences of antiquity and the spirit of the gospel.

[Footnote 225: Quatrefages, _Peuplement de l'Amérique_, which proves: 1. The geographical knowledge of the times. 2. The perpetuity of tradition. 3. The intercourse of different nations. 4. The tolerance of the church. Bouillet, in his _Dictionnaire universelle d'Histoire et de Géographie_, is deceived on this point.]

You will see by all this activity, this animation, and these names, "that the tenth century has been unjustly accused of barbarism" (Magnin)--that age in which there was such a taste for classical studies that "many Christians," says Roswitha, "preferred the vanity of pagan books to the utility of the Holy Scriptures, on account of the elegance of their style," and that, far from meriting the appellation of the Iron Age, it should rather be called "a great centre of light." [Footnote 226]

[Footnote 226: Dom Pitra, _Rapport sur une Mission scientifique._ To all these works add the memoir of Ozanam, _Des Ecoles et de l'Instruction publique en Italie au Temps barbares_, in which he clearly demonstrates that letters never ceased to be cultivated.]

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When we look down from the lofty elevation of the nineteenth century, which is called the age of progress, into this deep gulf of the middle ages--the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries--we are not astonished at its darkness, but by the brilliant rays that issue from it. It is not an abyss. At the first glance there seem to be only a few points of light; but the eye is soon attracted by a multitude of peaks everywhere rising up with brilliant summits and resplendent glaciers sparkling with radiant light. We are astonished and give ourselves up to admiration, in the words of the poet who, perceiving the Alps afar off, thinks that

"Ces monts glacés Ne sont qu'affreux déserts, rochers, torrents, abîmes,"

but who, when he reaches them,

"Y trouve, ravi, De l'ombre, des rayons, des solitudes vertes, Des vergers pleins de dons, des chaumières ouvertes A l'hospitalité. ... Des coteaux aux flancs d'or, de limpides vallées, Et des lacs étoilés des feux du firmament" [Footnote 227]

--finds the hospitality of the church, the solitude of monasteries, and the firmament of Christianity!

[Footnote 227: Lamartine.]

III.

Intercourse Of Nations.

Doubt is still displayed. There are other objections. Noblemen did not know how to read, women lived in ignorance; how could knowledge be diffused when people within fortified walls and the narrow limits of their territories could with so much difficulty hold communication with each other?

There is a false idea of the middle ages. It is imagined that men, so independent and so wilful, remained stationary and shut up in their fortresses without endeavoring to see and know each other. It is precisely the contrary. There was a constant and ardent desire for intercourse which caused nations to mingle and exchange languages, ideas, and customs. What was the consequence of the incessant wars, if not to lead men of the North to the South, those of the East to the West, the people of Normandy to Naples and to England, the Britons of Armorica into Great Britain, and _vice versa_, (from the fifth to the eleventh century;) [Footnote 228] the Burgundians into Lusitania, where they founded the kingdom of Portugal, (Henry of Burgundy, in the eleventh century, accompanied by knights and troubadours)? And then the varied and extensive commerce of the great cities of France and of the rich and industrious Flemish cities, whose ports, filled with vessels from every land, resounded, as we are told by the chroniclers, with the sounds of all languages? And the celebrated fairs, Beaucaire, Novgorod, and the Landit, (at St. Denis,) rallying-points for the merchants of Europe, Egypt, Asia, and the islands of the Levant--and which were the universal expositions of the productions of the middle ages? The bold enterprises of the Italian republics, powerful through commerce, which owned vessels enough to transport the entire army of the crusaders, and which owned a part of the East--the Genoese, the faubourgs of Constantinople; the Pisans, several ports in Syria; the Venetians, the Morea and Crete, the Archipelago; which trafficked not only with the rest of Europe, but with the coast of Barbary, Tunis, and Morocco, [Footnote 229] in fact, with the interior of Asia, into which its adventurous citizens penetrated, (as in the case of Marco Polo and several others,) and with the extreme East, which the nineteenth century has only just discovered, if we may dare say so, and allied with the rest of the world. [Footnote 230]

[Footnote 228: La Villemarqué, _Discours au Congrès celtigue de Saint-Brieuc_, 1867.]

[Footnote 229: Malastrie, _Missions scientifiques_.]

[Footnote 230: The Venetian Sanuto penetrated as far as Cambodia; a goldsmith of Paris settled in China; merchants from Breslau and Poland met Genoese, Pisan, and Venetian merchants in the interior of Tartary, etc. See Le Bas, _Précis de l'Histoire du Moyen Age_.]

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The love of knowledge also drew nations together. Learned men did not hesitate to undertake long journeys, to cross the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the sea, that they might pursue their studies in Italy, (as Fortunatus at Ravenna in the sixth century,) obtain books on medicine, (Richer in the eleventh century,) [Footnote 231] meet English students in Spain, (Peter the Venerable in the twelfth century,) hold converse with some doctor at Bologna, or some monk in a monastery of the Apennines. How could there be no intercourse between the universities of Salamanca, of Pavia, of Oxford, and of Paris, when the same questions were discussed at them all; when the metaphysical heresies which sprang from one were refuted in another five hundred leagues distant; [Footnote 232] when the masters and pupils of Germany, England, Spain, France, and Italy flocked to these schools; from France to Padua, from England to Valencia, and from all countries to Paris, where, almost at the same time, disputations were carried on by Englishmen, Italians, Irishmen, and Germans, who were to be known as Dante, Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, Brunetto Latini, Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, and St. Thomas Aquinas?

[Footnote 231: Daremberg, _ibid_.]

[Footnote 232: And there were such close relations between the factions in France and those of England, that, in the fourteenth century, the revolutionary movements in Paris coincided with those in London. See Naudet, _Conjuration d Etienne Marcel_.]

It has been said that for literature to flourish, a nation must be invigorated by powerful and varied deeds: [Footnote 233] at what epoch was there a more stirring and varied life than in the middle ages?

[Footnote 233: Madame de Staël.]

Follow the continued journeys of the poet-historian Froissart to and fro in every direction, in France and without, now at the foot of the Pyrenees at the Chateau de Foix, and now in Italy, where, at Milan, he meets another poet, Chaucer of England, who had come to visit Genoa, Padua, etc. From Brittany he goes to Flanders, and even to Zealand, where he forms a friendship with a Portuguese lord. He thinks nothing of crossing the water; he goes to England repeatedly, dwells there, and penetrates even to Scotland, then "an unknown land." He traverses France from one end to the other; is in Spain to-day and to-morrow in Germany. Would you not think you were reading the life of a modern individual? He is called a chronicler: a chronicler indeed, and after the manner of the men of our own time; like them, chronicler and tourist, traversing earth and sea to participate in festivities, witness battles, and mingle in courts. [Footnote 234]

[Footnote 234: But with this difference: he did not travel in a cushioned car going at the rate of forty miles an hour, but on horseback, at a good round trot, with spurs on his heels and his luggage behind.]

Yes, kings, conquerors, and those in pursuit of adventures took long journeys with their armed followers, their vehicles, machines, and engines of war; princes, nobles, and warriors traversed Europe, escorted by brilliant cavalcades, upon their steeds and palfreys; merchants landed on foreign shores, the winds swelling the sails of their vessels; even learned men crossed the water and the mountains to add to their knowledge; conquerors to found empires, princes to strengthen their power by alliances, and merchants to gain wealth. But there were men who surpassed all these who were borne by chariots, vessels, and noble horses--the pilgrims who went on foot.

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Crowds, in constant succession, of men, women, and children, from all countries, undertook these pilgrimages to hundreds of holy places in Flanders, Spain, Rome, (where, says Villani, the jubilee of 1300 led more than two hundred thousand pilgrims,) and, above all, to the Holy Land, which led to the wonderful outpouring of all Europe into Asia and Africa for three centuries--the crusades, during which the West was brought into contact with Egypt, and through Egypt with India; through Constantinople, where the Latins founded an empire that lasted more than fifty years, with the Greeks, and through them with the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of pagan and Christian antiquity, and from whom they obtained books, manuscripts, agricultural implements, and a knowledge of industrial pursuits literature, and the arts. [Footnote 235]

[Footnote 235: They brought back, among other books, Aristotle's works on metaphysics, and cane, millet, camel's-hair stuffs, etc.]

And the monks, what long journeys they made in the world! Carried away by zeal for religion, they dispersed in every direction to preach the gospel; some to Prussia, Poland, and the extremities of Europe--to Norway; others from Greece, Egypt, and Syria to Ireland; others still (in the time of St. Louis) into Tartary, and even into China, where they found traces of Christianity left there by other monks who had preceded them. They went still farther beyond Ireland and Norway into Iceland, and from Iceland (St. Brandan in the eighth century) into an unknown land, peopled by strange men, clad with the skins of marine animals, where they built monasteries and churches, whence they penetrated still farther into the interior, even as far as Mexico perhaps, leaving behind them an ineffaceable remembrance, thus being the first to discover [Footnote 236] and inhabit the country to which they did not give its present name, but which was really the southern extremity of the New World which, four centuries after, Columbus discovered, and which is called America.

[Footnote 236: "When, in the eleventh century, the Scandinavians landed in Greenland, the Esquimaux told them that at the south there were white men clad in long black robes, who walked chanting and carrying banners before them; they were the monks who, in the eighth century, had set sail for Iceland, and had been thrown by the wind on the American coast." (Ozanam, _Le Christianisme chez les Barbares_.) Dom Pitra (_Histoire de St. Léger_) mentions a book of the sixteenth century on the voyages of the Benedictines into America--doubtless these monks lost among the savages, who left those signs of Christianity, crosses, a kind of baptism, etc., which were afterward found, and which otherwise would be inexplicable.]

It was neither thirst for riches, nor love of conquest, nor longing for power, nor even enthusiasm for knowledge, that induced them to undertake these extensive, dangerous, and fruitful enterprises; they were inspired by a more sublime sentiment--the love of God and of souls--the desire of devoting themselves to God, and of leading to him new followers out of strange nations.

IV.

Woman

There is no mark more distinctive of the character of individuals or nations than the treatment of woman. Christianity emancipated woman; it brought her forth from the obscurity to which she had been banished, and taking her by the hand, introduced her into the social world, and gave her a place beside man, that she might receive the spiritual aliment which would develop her mind, as well as elevate her soul. Taught by the example of Christ, the most eloquent and learned of the fathers--those philosophers of no sect--Jerome, Gregory of Nazianzen, Augustine, Paulinus, and Basil, address numerous letters to women--to women, so disdained by paganism that not a single letter to a woman is to be found in all the correspondence of Cicero. [Footnote 237]

[Footnote 237: And of Pliny. If Seneca composed two treatises, _De Consolatione_, for Marcia and Helvia it was because his ideas were modified by contact with Christianity. And I see herein a proof, which has not been sufficiently noticed, of his knowledge of the Christian doctrine or of his acquaintance with St. Paul.]

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But it may be said that these women who showed themselves worthy of holding converse with such great men read and wrote Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and belonged to the highest Roman society. There are no women who are not noble. The church opened schools for women where they received the same instructions as men. [Footnote 238]

[Footnote 238: Dom Pitra, _Histoire de St. Léger_, vi.]

There is, from the time of the illustrious patrician ladies who followed St. Jerome into the desert, St. Paula, St. Eustochium, etc., [Footnote 239:] an uninterrupted list of nuns, of abbesses, whom the church reveres as saints, and who might be claimed by the literary world on account of their attainments. For example, St. Radegonde, (in the sixth century,) who introduced into the monastery of St. Croix, at Poitiers, the rule of St. Caesarius, which obliged all the nuns to the study of letters, that is to say, Latin, the fathers, canonical law, history, cosmography, etc., to devote two hours a day to reading besides that which they listened to during labor and their meals, and to the transcribing of books, etc. etc.; Lioba, at Bischofsheim, in Germany, the mistress of a school in a barbarous country who only left her books to pray; [Footnote 240]

[Footnote 239: And Marcella, Blezilla, Paulina. Fabiola, (of the family of Fabii,) Furia, (of the family of Camillus, Melania, Marcellina, etc.)]

[Footnote 240: See Dom Pitra, _ib_. He mentions St. Aldegondes, St. Anstrude, etc. The monastery of Lioba, he says, was like a normal school with respect to the other schools springing up in Germany.]

St. Bertille, at Chelles; St. Gertrude, in Belgium, (seventh century,) who sent to Ireland and to Italy for books; and those poor women who studied theology under St. Boniface, (eighth century;) and Roswitha, whose dramatic works display not only the inventive imagination of the poet, but a learning rare among women of any age, shown by her quotations from the ancient poets, the historical facts she mentions, her knowledge of foreign languages, etc. [Footnote 241] A Gerbert and a Roswitha are sufficient to redeem a whole century from the charge of ignorance and barbarism; and if nuns in the heart of Germany made such attainments in literature, what must have been the women of the age of Charlemagne, of St. Bernard, and of St. Louis? Then the daughters and nieces of the emperor took lessons of Alcuin: a queen sang the sweet serenity of the cloister in graceful Latin verse; [Footnote 242] a young girl of Paris had for her teacher one of the most celebrated professors of her time; [Footnote 243] and then was drawn up a course of studies in which were prescribed, such as these: [Footnote 244]

[Footnote 241: Spanish particularly, proved by the _Hispanismes_ in her style, pointed out by her learned editor, Magnin.]

[Footnote 242: Richarde, wife of Charles le Gros.]

[Footnote 243: Heloïse, and doubtless she was not the only one among the bourgeoisie of Paris. Recall also the learned nun mentioned in the beginning of Du Guesclin's life, who, in predicting his success, removed, as it were, the obstacles to his glorious career.]

[Footnote 244: Boutaric, _Vie et OEuvres de Pierre du Bois_, in the memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, 1864.]

"Children of both sexes, from five to twelve years of age: _reading_, (in the Psalter,) _singing, grammar, moral distichs_, (of Cato,) and, a little later, Latin, which they will learn to speak. Young girls: _natural history, surgery, medicine, logic, Latin, and the oriental languages_"--a plan drawn up in the dark and ignorant middle ages, which could not be easily pursued even in this age, distinguished and enlightened by the romances of so many women of genius!

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We need not wait till the time of Clemence Isaure (fourteenth century) to find a woman whom Christianity had imbued with taste and a delicate poetical nature. History, chronicles, and ballads have opened to us the chateaux where, whilst the mail-clad baron and his armed followers fought without, his wife, seated in some deep embrasure, would cast a glance from time to time through the narrow window upon the varied landscape, and then resume, in the large, open volume before her, the fabulous and heroic exploits of knights and brave men among the paynim and giants; where, at nightfall, in the midst of her servants and followers, she listened smilingly and thoughtfully to some wandering troubadour singing of war, of love, and of tournaments, and relating his adventures--a charming picture which allies the romantic chatelaine--passing by the elegant and trifling ladies of the court of the Restoration--with the strong-minded women of the seventeenth century, so captivating and so learned, who read philosophical treatises, spoke several languages, studied the doctors and fathers of the church, and who are considered by the world as models of wit, taste, elegance, and grace: Longueville, Montausier, Lafayette, Rambouillet, Jacqueline Pascal, Maintenon, and Sévigné!

V.

The Nobility.

But it is necessary to make a painful avowal. In the midst of the general diffusion of knowledge in monasteries, schools, universities, towns, boroughs, and villages, and even among the poor and lowly, there is one class of society which remained during all the middle ages in shameful ignorance--the nobility.

The kings, however, who issued from its ranks, and who in all ages prided themselves on the name of gentleman, were an exception. The sons of Clovis were the first pupils of the school established in his palace and directed by his chaplain. This example was perpetuated. The princes of the Merovingian dynasty pursued their studies in the monasteries, and literary habits became so congenial to them that, in some instances, they were carried to excess and became a kind of mania, as in the case of the prince called the _Clerc couronné_. (Chilperic.) As to Charlemagne, who spoke the Latin language, understood Greek, made astronomical calculations, brought professors from Italy, (Peter of Pisa and Paul the Hellenist deacon,) and founded the first academy and the first university, it is useless to insist on him, for he is universally acknowledged to be at once a hero, a learned man, and a saint. Nor are the literary tastes of the most eminent sovereigns denied, as Alfred the Great, the translator of AEsop and commentator of Bede; Charles le Chauve, who had Aristotle and Plato explained to him by masters from Constantinople; Alfonso the Wise, astronomer, legislator, and historian; Robert the Pious; Otto II., who appointed Gerbert, the wisest man of the age, tutor to his son; Frederick II., who spoke German, French, Arabic, Latin, and Greek; and Philip Augustus, the patron of literature and the arts, "who, for that age, was as magnificent as Louis XIV." [Footnote 245]

[Footnote 245: Villemain, _ibid_.]

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And later than the twelfth century, is it astonishing that St. Louis admitted St. Thomas of Aquin to his table, where, in his presence, were discussed the highest questions of philosophy? That the rule of study drawn up for John, son of Philip of Valois, included Latin and several languages? [Footnote 246] That Charles V. collected at the Louvre a library of considerable size, and that his brothers, the dukes of Burgundy and Berri, carried away by love for the arts, ordered miniatures, which are admirable paintings, from the celebrated painters, Memling, Van Eyck, and Jean Fouquet? But we are approaching the time of the Restoration, and consequently all these facts prove nothing.

[Footnote 246: In a memoir addressed to the queen in 1334 and composed of one hundred and six articles, the unknown author gives the king's daily rule of life as follows: "Rise at six all the year round--Mass at seven--business till ten--supper at six--to bed at ten--to have his son taught several languages, even Latin, to fit him to travel."]

But were these enlightened, well-informed, and even learned monarchs satisfied with their own attainments, and did they live in their courts among brutal, ignorant, and coarse warriors who could only talk of combats and gallantry? No; it is well known that their principal vassals, the minor sovereigns, especially those of Southern France, where the learning of Rome was diffused, were not wholly unlettered. In the ninth century, there was the son of a Count (Maguelonne) St. Benedict of Amiane, who was at the head of all the monasteries in France, and who compared, modified, and wrote commentaries on the rules of the various religious orders--Greek as well as Latin; Foulques, Count of Anjou, in the tenth century--yes, in the tenth century, that darkest period of the middle ages--understood Aristotle and Cicero, as has been proved, and in the following century, when the leaders of the crusades assembled at Jerusalem to draw up a code of laws--a civil and political code--charter of citizenship, etc., they evidently understood not only the general customs, but Roman law; and several of them (Iselin, etc.) were no less proficients in the law than valiant knights; [Footnote 247] finally, if the muse of France would trace its ancestry back to former times, it would find two princes, William of Poitiers and Thibaut of Champagne. It is right, then, to leave out the testimony of sovereigns.

[Footnote 247: Robertson, in his introduction to the _History of Charles V._, is mistaken when he says the middle ages were ignorant of Roman law until the twelfth century. Roman law was not revived by the discovery of a copy of the Pandects at Amalfi: it was always known and practised: it was cited at the tribunals, and generally known during all the middle ages, as demonstrated by Savigny, _Histoire du Droit romain au Moyen Age._ See also Fauriel, _Histoire des Populations méridionales_.]

History also certifies a very singular fact: the leaders, the _leudes_, under the Merovingians, sent their children to the school at the palace "to be initiated in palatial learning." There they underwent examinations, studied the fathers, history, law, religious dogmas, received degrees, etc. This fact is thus explained: these young men were hostages that the king kept at court to insure the fealty of their fathers, no doubt; and the consequence of this truly barbarous idea was to convert a prison into a school and an academy! There was another custom almost as singular: these young men are represented as travelling, even in the earliest ages, in the various countries of Europe--France, Spain, and Italy--and in the East. Yes, notwithstanding the insecurity of the routes, it was the fashion in the seventh century to send young Englishmen to France to be reared, and even in many cases across the Alps to Rome, Padua, etc. Some went to complete their education in Greece, and, after the establishment of the Latin Empire, at Constantinople. These young men apparently belonged to wealthy and noble families. {612} And we would recall the fact that in the schools directed by Clement, a Scotchman, Charlemagne assembled--strange idea!--"a great number of children of all classes from the highest to the lowest rank;" [Footnote 248] that among the pupils of Lanfranc, at the abbey of Bec, were a great number of the children of lords and barons, and, among others, William, Duke of Normandy, and that son of an Italian nobleman who, later, was known as Pope Alexander II. It would appear that these young men did not allow the faculties they had developed to remain unproductive and useless, from the fact that the earliest poets were princes and nobles. But then, poetry is the offspring of the imagination and of genius, and the French race, particularly in the South, are so richly gifted therewith!

[Footnote 248: The monk of St. Gall, mentioned by Phil. le Bas, _ibid_.]

What is more surprising, the first French historians were two lords: Villehardoin in the twelfth century, and Joinville in the thirteenth--historians not without culture. There are in their language elegance, distinction, and Attic wit. They mention, _en passant_, and without affectation, names and facts that attest varied knowledge, and their style is so perfect that competent writers have concluded that the nobility moulded the French language to history and poetry--the ideal and the practical! [Footnote 249] It is probably to these studious habits and this inclination for intellectual pursuits, perpetuated for ages like a tradition, is due the delicate and correct taste peculiar to the French nobility of the last two centuries, and the noble ambition of the great lords who have not been satisfied with protecting the arts, but have deemed it an honor to have their historical names inscribed on the list of the academies, have striven to acquire a knowledge of letters, to excel in it, and to add to the lustre of their descent brilliancy of talent and the glory reserved for intellectual labors.

[Footnote 249: Villemain, _ibid_., Léop. Delisle, A. de la Borderie, Marchegay. See also Audé, Mémoires de la Société d'Emulation de la Vendée, and the works already mentioned of Boutaric, Littré, Pierre Clémnent, etc.]

Finally--for we must collect testimony for the acquittal of the accused--since the judgment has been so severe, the most conscientious and erudite men of modern times, having traversed the middle ages and returned laden with documents, declare that, among the numberless titles that passed through their hands, they never met this formula, so often mentioned: this one, being a nobleman, attests his inability to sign his name.

Yet in spite of these proofs, these attestations, and the authority of the witnesses, there is one fact beyond doubt, _the absolute ignorance of the nobility of the middle ages_, and we are forced, to our great regret, to conclude that this opinion must be accepted as a historical fact of the same class, and as clearly proved, as the so well authenticated facts of Sixtus V. throwing away his crutches as soon as he was elected Pope, Gilles de Raiz slaughtering his wives like Bluebeard, Charles V. participating in his own funeral rites at St. Just, Marie de Medicis dying of hunger in a garret at Cologne, and Galileo imprisoned in a dungeon of the Inquisition!

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VI.

Character Of The Knowledge Of The Middle Ages.

The language of a people is One of the Signs that mark its progress Or decay. If the genius of a language is fully developed, the nation is in its apogee; if it is not developed, or if it is losing its purity, the nation is progressing or declining. This is a truth remarked by one of the most active minds of the last century. "In the thirteenth century," says Rivarol, "the French language had more nearly attained a certain perfection than in the sixteenth." [Footnote 250] He is astonished: he finds the fact "very extraordinary," but he does not explain it. The explanation is easy. The French language was much nearer perfection in the thirteenth than in the sixteenth century, because society was more firmly established. The sixteenth century was an age of transition, the dawn of a great era--an avenue leading to a large city which we pass through, but in which we do not linger. The men of that time, without being aware of it, were preparing for the future. They collected materials for building from the remains of antiquity and the attempts of foreigners; they imitated and did not invent. Consequently their language was obscure and loaded with foreign idioms and antiquated expressions; it was neither bold, nor expressive, nor clear; it was ornamented, rich, and redundant; it was overladen like a tree not pruned; the fruit was hidden by an excess of foliage. A great wind--the agitation of civil war-- shook off this exuberant foliage and the fruit appeared; the sun of the seventeenth century warmed and colored it with its rays; then it ripened, and the French language attained its definite form and became immortal.

[Footnote 250: In his _Discours sur l'Universalité de la Langue Française_, always to the point, and often profound, a writer of our time goes still further: "The language was fully developed and equal to our own," says M. Villemain, _Histoire de la Litérature du Moyen Age_, lesson x.]

The language of the thirteenth century was as complete and perfect as it could be. At that period were laid the foundations of Christian science. [Footnote 251] Doubtless, each age adding to the knowledge of mankind, that science was not as extended as now, but it had the essential qualities of true science: it was analytical; it constantly applied this axiom, which is the condition of progress: _Multùm, non multa_. Everything corresponds: the science of the Egyptians was on a level with their arts; their philosophy was as complex as their religion was mysterious. It was the same in the middle ages. They possessed the true religion, had right views of philosophy, attained to eminence in the arts, and made accurate scientific observations. And late researches have shown that they greatly extended the knowledge they inherited from antiquity. [Footnote 252] Their alchemists and physicians were not charlatans. The general principles of Albertus Magnus and the Jewish and Arabian physicians of Spain and Asia harmonize with those of modern science. They were ignorant of certain phenomena, as a certain skill was wanting to the artists of the time; but this ignorance can no more be raised as an objection than against the learned men of our time for not knowing the scientific discoveries of a thousand years hence. It is not extent of knowledge that stamps an epoch as great, but the use it makes of it, and the logical conclusions it draws from its principles.

[Footnote 251: _La Raison Catholique et la Raison philosophe_, ii., by Ventura.]

[Footnote 252: Littré, _ibid_.]

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The science of the middle ages was eminently logical, for it had its source in a mountain whose summit rises to heaven--in theology--whence it flows in streams upon all minds. Theology, it has been said, [Footnote 253] is only the expression of an idea: it is much more, it is the sublime end of thought--the first of all sciences, the science _par excellence_--the science of God. The sceptre of science belongs to Europe only because it had its source in theology, [Footnote 254] which occupied every mind in the middle ages--the greatest as well as the narrowest minds--"which, dwelling on great things, became great." It prompted them to other attainments. To climb to the heights of knowledge, they had to lay hold of the asperities of the mountain and of all the branches of science one after another; of jurisprudence, civil law--the branch nearest the surface of the earth; then of the physical sciences; afterward of geometry, algebra, astronomy, and the still higher branches, canon law and philosophy! [Footnote 255]

[Footnote 253: Villemain, _Histoire de la Littérature da Moyen Age_, lesson xviii. He evidently does not comprehend the influence of theology, for he adds, "As in another age the public mind is expressed by politics, the theology of one epoch is the philosophy of another."]

[Footnote 254: J. de Maistre.]

[Footnote 255: The Oxford students and those of other universities studied at the same time civil and canon law.]

And above all, and mingled with all, literature; for letters are the expression of the mind itself--the universal mind--whilst "the sciences require only a partial application of it." [Footnote 256] In the literature of a people are embodied its ideas, manners, arts, industrial pursuits, worship, and its whole life. By it man traverses countries and ages, imbibes their spirit, and strengthens his mind more than by any other study. Thence the incessant study of ancient literature, which, in the thirteenth century, was more generally diffused than ever. Latin, the language of tradition and of the church, the original language of the present dominant nations of France, Italy, Spain, and even England, (Latin was spoken in England until the fourteenth century, and a great number of words in the English language is derived from the Latin,) was understood by all classes; discussions in Latin were carried on in universities, and grammar and Latin were taught in the village schools. [Footnote 257] They were constantly making researches; Villani at Rome read Lucan, Virgil, Valerius Maximus; the scholars of Cambridge wrote commentaries on Cicero. In France, Sallust and Titus Livius were translated, soon followed by Caesar, Ovid, and Suetonius, (under Charles V.) Greek became more universally known after the taking of Constantinople by the crusaders; Aristotle was translated into Latin by Michael Scott, and bishops in Italy wrote homilies in the language of Chrysostom. [Footnote 258] Theologians, philosophers, and poets were nourished by the valuable and concise remains of antiquity; Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, as well as the Franciscan lyrics and the _Romance of the Rose_. All the works of that time are full of ancient reminiscences.

[Footnote 256: Expression of Napoleon I.]

[Footnote 257: Léop. Delisle, _Les Classes agricoles en Normandie au treizième siècle_.]

[Footnote 258: Manuscripts seen by M. Renan, in the Vatican. _Missions scientifiques_.]

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Nevertheless, they did not neglect other languages. In the great intercourse of nations there was an exchange of idioms. How much is proved respecting that intercourse and the knowledge of languages, by the single fact that the Archbishop of Toledo, at the Council of Lateran in 1215, delivered a discourse in Latin, and then repeated it for the laity in Spanish, French, and German. But they did not restrict themselves to the European languages. Why should not the learned men who went to seek knowledge from the Jews and the Moors, and studied Aristotle as often from the Arabian commentators as from the original works, endeavor to acquire the language of those they so often came in contact with? and the adventurers who crossed the deserts into the heart of Asia; and the Italian republics that traded with Africa; the ambassadors that kings sent to the Khan of Tartary; the merchants who daily saw, landing in their ports and mingling in their fairs, the turbans, pelisses, and caftans of merchants from Cairo, Aleppo, Bagdad, Novgorod, and Sarmacand? Besides, the oriental languages had never been neglected. In the sixth century, King Gontran, at his entrance into Orleans, was addressed in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. [Footnote 259] In the crowded schools of the eighth century were studied all languages, even the oriental, says Dom Pitra. From the tenth century the pilgrimages to the Holy Land and the crusades made the language of the Saracens (Arabic) familiar to a great number. But there was a still stronger reason which led to the acquisition of the Eastern languages--the conversion of the infidels.

[Footnote 259: See Gregory of Tours.]

The course of study already mentioned was inspired by a great idea--Christian in its nature--the conquest of the East by the infusion of Christianity; regeneration by civilization, to use the modern expression. The noble mind that conceived it wished to continue the work of the crusades by diffusing the doctrines, opinions, and arts of Christendom: after arms, the sciences. France, in its enthusiasm for proselyting, wished to send on a mission of priests, artisans, physicians, women, entire families, in fact, a whole colony. These people would establish themselves in the Holy Land, colonize it, found a Christian race, and from that sacred spot--from Mount Zion--diverge on every side, into Africa as well as Asia, into Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Arabia; mingle among the people enveloped in darkness, (the term is just in this case,) influence them by their actions, morals, intelligence and good deeds, and accomplish in that age--the thirteenth century--the providential work that Europe, without entirely knowing what it is effecting, is realizing in our day--the transformation of the rest of the world, the union of savage, barbarous, and brutal people into a universal nation who will be guided by the spirit of the gospel. [Footnote 260]

[Footnote 260: Abel de Rémusat, _Mémoire sur les Relations des Princes Chrétiens avec les Empereurs Moguls_, quoted by M. Guizot, _Histoire de la Civilization en Europe_.]

It was in order to prepare laborers for this sublime enterprise that this plan of studies, as varied as extended, was prepared. Do you not see all it supposes--the comprehension of the authors, schools, and men capable of applying the plan? And it did not remain a mere project; it began to be executed. The University of Paris proposed to establish a professorship of the Tartar language. It was not done till a later day, because the university only acts with a view to science; but the church did not delay, prompted by a more noble motive. At Rome it taught the oriental languages in its colleges; at Paris, the monks of St. Père de-Chartres, at the annual expense of one thousand francs, opened, for the space of three years, a school for young men from the East, who returned to their country carrying with them the acquirements of the West and the eternal truths of religion. [Footnote 261]

[Footnote 261: Cartulary of St. Père de Chartres.]

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The councils (that of Vienna in 1311) decreed that the oriental languages. should be taught at Paris, Salamanca, Bologna, Oxford, and all the great universities. The church wishes to diffuse knowledge in order to evangelize the world; it arms men with science that they may be more powerful, and it pushes them forward in the career of learning, that, at the end, they may find God.

VII.

Ardor For Learning.

And the church has always found disciples eager to listen to its instructions. The very barbarians, it has been remarked, were not averse to study; they had, on the contrary, that innate taste for letters which distinguishes the Germanic race. The Franks were easily instructed; they mingled among the Gauls of the South in the course of rhetoric and poetry, (at Bordeaux in the fifth and sixth centuries;) St. Medard, Bede, and Mici counted them by thousands in their schools. When the twelfth century opened more numerous schools, an immense crowd hastened to them. It was an invasion of recruits, who wished to learn the use of the arms of knowledge, in England, Germany, and Italy; at Milan there were eighty masters who were laymen; France above all, displayed its characteristic ardor. At Paris, colleges were founded one after another; two at the end of the twelfth century, fifteen in the thirteenth and fourteenth; one half of Paris was transformed into schools. That of the Canons of Notre Dame extended from the church to the Petit-Pont; then it passed over the left bank and ascended the mountain [Footnote 262] --the mountain that has preserved the name of _Quartier Latin_--the true realm of science imagined by the poets, where lived, in close proximity, turbulent bands of students from every land, in groups, according to their nations and languages.

[Footnote 262: Vict. le Clerc, _Histoire de la Litterature au treizième siècle_.]

Foreigners [Footnote 263] proclaimed Paris the centre of knowledge, and, in a right and elevated sense, the leader of Europe. There was then some merit in the pursuit of knowledge. The name of one of the streets of Paris, the Rue du Fouare, so-called from the straw and hay upon which they seated themselves, bears witness to the ardor of these students of the dark ages, less anxious for their ease than to obtain knowledge. They rewarded their own masters, and valued no expense to obtain those most renowned; they sent to all parts of Europe for them, and gave them a position often ten times more valuable than that of the professors of our time. [Footnote 264]

[Footnote 263: John of Salisbury, Dante, Brunetto Latini, etc.]

[Footnote 264: Le Play, _Réforme sociale_, (47,) and Mateucci, _Les Universites d'Italie, (Revue des Cours scientifiques_, 1867.)]

It was difficult for many to contribute their share in all this expense, in addition to the cost of living in a large city; but in the hope of acquiring the knowledge, the poorer subjected themselves to the most painful sacrifices. The romance of _Gil Blas_ depicts the young men of the University of Salamanca as valets and students. What existed in Spain in the eighteenth century was the condition of many students of the middle ages. Yes, they reduced themselves to servitude to obtain degrees, and made themselves valets to gain their daily bread--a noble servitude for which they did not blush, which put the body in subjection, and left the mind free, showing the superiority of mind over matter; it was a voluntary humiliation, which, for a time, put the indigent scholar beneath the rich, but aided him to attain in the world the place due to intelligence and knowledge, to rise to the level of the most powerful, and often to the most eminent dignities of the church and state--to the councils of kings and the purple of cardinals.

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And what ardent scholars! It was the age of the schoolmen. Scholastic learning, afterward so disdained by forgetfulness or ignorance, was the animated, living, and natural form which gave expression to the passionate love of those young men for study. Those descendants of the Franks rushed forward with the same eagerness as to battle to share in the close reasoning, the logic that contended so fiercely, that made every effort and climbed tooth and nail to obtain a position strongly contested. What valiant armies! what soldiers in "these tournaments that are like combats!" [Footnote 265] But what captains also! what leaders! what masters! St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus--at once theologians, philosophers, moralists, politicians, writers on political economy, and savants! What a trio in one century and at the same period!

[Footnote 265: Bonald.]

But do you know what took place in the thirteenth century at the course of Albertus Magnus? Not hundreds but thousands of pupils hastened to his lessons. [Footnote 266]

[Footnote 266: It was the same throughout the middle ages. At Bologna there were, in the thirteenth century, ten thousand pupils at the law school; in the eleventh century, they came from every land to attend the instructions of Abelard; he counted several thousand auditors, and among them twenty cardinals and fifty bishops. We could multiply these examples indefinitely.]

It was not ardor that animated them, but enthusiasm; an apartment was not required to contain them, but a square! No enclosure would have sufficed for such a multitude. A great commotion forced the master to leave his chair--a commotion such as is rarely seen in our days, in which the crowd cried to their teacher, "Away from here!" "_Exi! Foras!_"--a respectful uprising in which the master is proud to obey; he descends from his chair into the midst of the crowd, which is roaring like the sea, and is borne away by a thousand arms to a large square, where, on an elevation of stone, he can overlook the countless human heads which extend back to the houses and fill up the openings of the streets, but which are now motionless, attentive, and mute before the sound of a single voice that enchains them. O barbarous generation! O age of darkness in which a master required the open air of heaven and the paved square for a classroom! Compare the literary dilettantism of a few hundred young men enclosed within the walls of an amphitheatre of a hundred feet, with the ardent thirst of this crowd, which required not a jar, but a whole river, to satisfy its thirst for knowledge, and which has left a proof of its eager desire in the capital and in the language, the name of the square into which so many students crowded to hear their master--the Place Maubert, Magni Alberti--the Square of the great Albert!

We see how erroneous is the opinion that attributes to the epoch between the middle of the fifteenth and the middle of the seventeenth centuries the revival of letters and the arts. Letters were not revived; they still existed and enlightened the world. "The great agitation of the Reformation is often represented as having contributed to literary and scientific development," says M. A. Maury, a writer not suspected of partiality to the middle ages. "This is not absolutely true. {618} The contests to which it gave rise retarded for a time the diffusion of knowledge; many monasteries, libraries, and schools were suppressed, which had been, up to that time, the _great sources of light_." Christian historians were the first to become suspicious of error and to point it out. Hurter, the great German historian, says: "Only superficial minds that disdain the study of documents and are blinded by the pretended superiority of our epoch, or by systematic hatred, dare accuse the church of having favored ignorance." [Footnote 267] All truly learned men soon became of the same mind. One of them, who has made the middle ages his study for twenty years, cannot restrain his indignation: "Our historians, even those who are considered the best, dwelling on the grossest conjectures and influenced by obsolete prejudices, without thinking of verifying, still less of rectifying, old assertions, have summed up the whole history of the first part of the middle ages in these two words, _ignorance and superstition_; but it is to themselves," he adds severely, "and not to the ages they have misunderstood and calumniated, that these two words should be applied." [Footnote 268] "The idea of progress is not a pagan idea," says Ozanam. [Footnote 269]

[Footnote 267: _History of Innocent III_., book xxi.]

[Footnote 268: Daremberg, _Cours of 1867_; and to the support of his opinions he brings Guizot, Dom Pitra, Ozanam, Heeren, etc.]

[Footnote 269: _Histoire de la Civilisation an cinquième siècle_, chap. iv.]

The doctrine of progress is as old as the gospel; and the author of _Les Etudes sur les Barbares et le Moyen Age_ confirms this: "The people of the middle ages felt the necessity of knowledge; they studied and labored conscientiously and energetically, and marked each age by important developments." The more carefully we examine those ages, the better shall we understand the extent of knowledge in the church. The most eminent men of those times--who does not know them?--are bishops, monks, and popes: Gerbert, St. Bernard, Innocent III., and St. Thomas Aquinas, who can only be compared to Aristotle; the most original writers--who does not forget it?--are priests: Froissart, Petrarch, and later, Calderon, Lope de Vega, and Tirso de Molina; the greatest poet of the middle ages, Dante, was he not a theologian? Cimabue, who revived the art of painting, was he not reared among the Dominicans of Florence? Was not the first press in Paris set up at the Sorbonne? The best informed class of men were so incontestably the clergy that the names of priest and savant were confounded. The word _clergie_ in the middle ages signified learned. [Footnote 270] The church takes the highest rank in the world of science. It does not acquire knowledge for itself alone, but to diffuse everywhere, that the whole earth may be enlightened. Like the sun, it is a great centre diffusing the light it derives from God--its eternal source!

[Footnote 270: J. de Maistre, _Du Pape_, ii. 16.]

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From The French Of Erckmann And Chatrian.

The Invasion; Or, Yegof The Fool.