The Mediaeval Mind (Vol. 1&2). Henry Osborn Taylor
feudal point of view, and might properly represent the duty of bishop or abbot to his lord.
Obviously, for the reform and emancipation of the Church, and in order that it should become a world-power, and not remain a semi-secular local institution in each land, it was necessary that the three closely connected corruptions of simony, lay investitures, and clerical concubinage should be destroyed. To this enormous task the papacy addressed itself under the leadership of Hildebrand.[291] In his pontificate the struggle with the supreme representative of secular power, to wit, the Empire, came to a head touching investitures. Gregory’s secular opponent was Henry IV., of tragic and unseemly fame; for whom the conflict proved to be the road by which he reached Canossa, dragged by the Pope’s anathema, and also driven to this shame by a rebellious Germany (1076, 1077). Henry was conquered, although a revulsion of the long-swaying war drove Gregory from Rome, to die an exile for the cause which he deemed that of righteousness.
Between the papacy and the secular power represented in this struggle by the Empire, a peaceful co-equality could not exist. The superiority of the spiritual and eternal over the carnal and temporal had to be vindicated; and in terms admitting neither limit nor condition, Hildebrand maintained the Church’s universal jurisdiction upon earth. The authority granted by Christ to Peter and his successors, the popes, was absolute for eternity. Should it not include the passing moment of mortal life, important only because determining man’s eternal lot? The divine grant was made without qualification or exception in saeculo as well as for the life to come. If spiritual men are under the Pope’s jurisdiction, shall he not also constrain secular folk from their wickedness?[292] Were kings excepted when the Lord said, Thou art Peter?[293] Nay; the salvation of souls demands that the Pope shall have full authority in terra to suppress the waves of pride with the arms of humility. The dictatus papae of the year 1075 make the Pope the head of the Christian world: the Roman Church was founded by God alone; the Roman pontiff alone by right is called universal; he alone may use the imperial insignia; his feet alone shall be kissed by all princes; he may depose emperors and release subjects from fealty; and he can be judged by no man.[294]
In the century and a half following Gregory’s reign the papacy well-nigh attained the realization of the claims made by this great upbuilder of its power.[295] Constantine’s forged donation was outdone, in fact; and the furthest hopes of Leo I. and the first, second, and third Gregories were more than realized.
II
One might liken the Carolingian period to a vessel at her dock, taking on her cargo, casks of antique culture and huge crates of patristic theology. Then western Europe in the eleventh century would be the same vessel getting under way, well started on the mediaeval ocean.
This would be one way of putting the matter. A closer simile already used is the likening of the Carolingian period to the lusty schoolboy learning his lessons, thinking very little for himself. By the eleventh century he will have left school, though still impressionable, still with much to learn; but he has begun to turn his conned lessons over in his mind, and to think a little, in the terms, of what he has acquired—has even begun to select therefrom tentatively, and still under the mastery of the whole. He perceives the charm of the antique culture, of the humanly inspiring literature, so exhaustless in its profane fascinations; he is realizing the spiritual import of the patristic share of his instruction, and already feels the power of emotion which lay implicit in the Latin formulation of the Christian Faith. Withal he is beginning to evolve an individuality of his own.
Speaking more explicitly, it should be said that instead of one such hopeful youth there are several, or rather groups of them, differing widely from each other. The forefathers of certain of these groups were civilized and educated men, at home in the antique and patristic curriculum with which our youths are supposed to have been busy. The forefathers of other groups were rustics, or rude herdsmen and hunters, hard-hitting warriors, who once had served, but more latterly had rather lorded it over, the cultivated forbears of the others. Still, again, the forefathers of other numerous groups had been partly cultivated and partly rude. Evidently these groups of youths are diverse in blood and in ancestral traits; evidently also the antique and patristic curriculum is quite a new thing to some of them, while others had it at their fathers’ knees.
Our different youthful groups represent Italians, Germans, and the inhabitants of France and the British Isles. One may safely speak of the ninth-century Germans as schoolboys just brought face to face with Christianity and the antique culture. So with the Saxon stock in England. The propriety is not so clear as to the Italians; for they are not newly introduced to these matters. Yet their household affairs have been disturbed, and they themselves have slackened in their study. So they too have much to learn anew, and may be regarded as truants, dirtied and muddied, and perhaps refreshed, by the scrambles of their time of truancy, and now returning to lessons which they have pretty well forgotten.
Obviously, in considering the intellectual condition of western Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries, it will be convenient to regard each country in turn: and, besides, a geographical is more appropriate than a topical arrangement, because there was still little choice of one branch of discipline rather than another. The majority still were conning indiscriminately what had come from the past, studying heterogeneous matters in the same books, the same forlorn compendia. They read the Etymologies of Isidore or the corresponding works of Bede, and followed as of course the Trivium and Quadrivium. In sacred learning they might read the Scriptural Commentaries of Rabanus Maurus or Walafrid Strabo, or study the works of Augustine. This was still the supreme study, and all else, properly viewed, was ancillary to it. Nevertheless, as between sacred study and profane literature, an even violent divergence of choice existed. Everywhere there were men who loved the profanities in themselves, and some who felt that for their souls’ sake they must abjure them.
For further diverging lines of preference, one should wait for the twelfth century. Many men will then be found absorbed in religious study, while others cultivate logic and metaphysics, with the desire to know more active in them than the fear of hell. Still others will study “grammar” and the classics, or, again, with conscious specializing choice, devote their energies to the civil or the canon law. In later chapters, and mainly with reference to this culminating mediaeval time which includes the twelfth, the thirteenth, and at least, for Dante’s sake, the first part of the fourteenth, century, we shall review these various branches of intellectual endeavour in topical order. But for the earlier time which still enshrouds us, we pass from land to land as on a tour of intellectual inspection.
III
We start with Italy. There was no break between her antique civilization and her mediaeval development, but only a period of depression and decay. Notwithstanding the change from paganism to Christianity and the influx of barbarians, both a race-continuity and a continuity of culture persisted. The Italian stock maintained its numerical preponderance, as well as the power of transforming newcomers to the likeness of itself. The natural qualities of the country, and the existence of cities and antique constructions, assisted in the Italianizing of Goth, Lombard, German, Norman. Latin civic reminiscence, tradition, custom, permeated society, and prevented the growth of feudalism. Italy remained urban, and continued to reflect the ancient time. “Consuls” and “tribunes” long survived the passing of their antique functions, and the fame endured of antique heroes, mythical and historical. Florence honoured Mars and Caesar; Padua had Antenor, Cremona Hercules. Such names remained veritably eponymous. Other cities claimed the birthplace of Pliny, of Ovid, of Virgil. An altar might no longer be dedicated to a pagan hero, yet the town would preserve his name upon monuments, would adorn his fancied tomb, stamp his effigy on coins or keep it in the communal seal. Of course the figments of the Trojan Saga were current through the land, which, however divided, was conscious of itself as Italy. Te Italia plorabit writes an eleventh-century Pisan poet of a young Pisan noble fallen in Africa.
In Italy, as in no other country, the currents of antique education, disturbed yet unbroken, carried clear across that long period of invasions, catastrophes, and reconstructions, which began with the time of Alaric. Under the later pagan emperors, and under Constantine and his successors, the private schools of grammar and rhetoric had tended to decline. There were fewer pupils with inclination and ability to pay. So the emperors established municipal schools