History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II (of 2)

Rise of a new social system. In Europe there had been incorporated old forms of worship and old festivals with Christian ones; the local gods and goddesses had been replaced by saints; for deification canonization had been substituted. There had been produced a civilization, the character of which was its extraordinary intolerance. A man could not be suspected of doubting the popular belief without risk to his goods, his body, or his life. As a necessary consequence, there could be no great lawgivers, no philosophers, no poets. Society was pervaded by a systematic hypocrisy. This tyranny over others sometimes led to strange results. It caused the Jews to discover the art of making wealth invisible by bills of exchange and other such like means, so that money might be imperceptibly but instantaneously moved.

Influence of that new system, Thus, after the dying out of Greek science, there followed, among the new populations, an intellectual immobility, which soon became the centre of a vast number of growing interests quickly and firmly crystallizing round it. For them it was essential that there should be no change – no advance. In the midst of jarrings and conflicts between those interests, that condition was steadfastly maintained, as if through instinct, by them all. It mattered not how antiquated were the forms insisted on, nor how far they outraged common sense. New life was given to decaying illusions, and, in return, strength was gathered from them. and degradation by African ideas. Isis, with the moon beneath her feet, was planted, under a new name, on the Bosphorus and the Tiber. African theology, African ecclesiastical machinery, and African monasticism were made objects of reverence to unsuspecting Europe. Juvenal says that the Roman painters of his day lived on the goddess Isis. The Italian painters of a later day lived on her modernized form.

No literature in the Age of Faith. In such a condition of things the literary state could be no other than barren. Political combinations had not only prescribed an intellectual terminus, but had even laid down a rail upon which mental excursions were to be made, and from which there was no departing; or, if a turn-out was permitted, it was managed by a tonsured man. For centuries together, if we exclude theological writings, there was absolutely no literature worth the name. Life seems to have been spent in the pursuit of mere physical enjoyment, and that enjoyment of a very low kind. When in the South of France and Sicily literature began to dawn, it is not to be overlooked how much of it was of an amatory kind; and love is the strongest of the passions. The first aspect of Western literature was animal, not intellectual. Its critical innocence. A taste for learning excited, there reappeared in the schools the old treatises written a thousand years before – the Elements of Euclid, the Geography of Ptolemy. Long after the Reformation there was an intellectual imbecility which might well excite our mirth, if it were not the index of a stage through which the human mind must pass. Often enough we see it interestingly in the interweaving of the new with the old ideas. If we take up a work on metallurgy, it commences with Tubal Cain; if on music, with Jubal. The history of each country is traced back to the sons of Noah, or at least to the fugitives from the siege of Troy. An admiration for classical authors may perhaps be excused. It exhibited itself amusingly in the eccentricity of interlarding compositions of every kind with Greek and Latin quotations. This was an age of literary innocence, when no legend was too stupendous for credulity; when there was no one who had ever suspected that Tully, as they delighted to call him, was not a great philosopher, and Virgil not a great poet.

Disuse of patristic works. Of those ponderous, those massive folios on ecclesiastical affairs, at once the product and representatives of the time, but little needs here to be said. They boasted themselves as the supreme effort of human intellect; they laid claim to an enduring authority; to many they had a weight little less than the oracles of God. But if their intrinsic value is to be measured by their pretensions, and their pretensions judged of by their present use, what is it that must be said? Long ago their term was reached, long ago they became obsolete. They have no reader. Such must be the issue of any literature springing from an immovable, an unexpanding basis, the offspring of thought that has been held in subjugation by political formulas, or of intellectual energies that have been cramped.

Spread of science in France. The Roman ecclesiastical system, like the Byzantine, had been irrevocably committed in an opposition to intellectual development. It professed to cultivate the morals, but it crushed the mind. Yet, in the course of events, this state of things was to come to an end through the working of other principles equally enduring and more powerful. They constitute what we may speak of under the title of the Arabian element. On preceding pages it has been shown that, when the Saracens conquered Egypt, they came under the influence of the Nestorians and Hellenizing Jews, acquiring from them a love of philosophy, which soon manifested itself in full energy from the banks of the Euphrates to those of Guadalquivir. The hammer of Charles Martel might strike down the ranks of the Saracens on the field of Tours, but there was something intangible, something indestructible accompanying them, which the Frank chivalry could not confront. To the Church there was an evil omen. It has been well remarked that in the Provençal poetry there are noble bursts of crusading religious sentiment, but they are incorporated with a sovereign contempt for the clergy.

The biography of any of the physicians or alchemists of the thirteenth century would serve the purpose of illustrating the watchfulness of the Church, the unsound condition of the universities, the indirect patronage extended to heretics by eminent men, and the manner in which the rival powers, ecclesiasticism and philosophy, were preparing for their final conflict. Illustration from the biography of Arnold. As an example of the kind, I may present briefly that of Arnold de Villa Nova, born about A.D. 1250. He enjoyed a great reputation for his knowledge of medicine and alchemy. For some years he was physician to the King of Aragon. Under an accusation of defective orthodoxy he lost his position at court, his punishment being rendered more effective by excommunication. Hoping to find in Paris more liberality than he had met with in Spain, he fled to that city, but was pursued by an adverse ecclesiastical influence with a charge of having sold his soul to the Devil, and of having changed a plate of copper into gold. In Montpellier, to which he was obliged to retire, he found a more congenial intellectual atmosphere, and was for long one of the regents of the faculty of medicine. In succession, he subsequently resided in Florence, Naples, Palermo, patronized and honoured by the Emperor Frederick II. – at that time engaged in the attempt to unite Italy into one kingdom and give it a single language – on account of his extraordinary reputation as a physician. Even the pope, Clement V., notwithstanding the unfortunate attitude in which Arnold stood toward the Church, besought a visit from him in hopes of relief from the stone. On his voyage for the purpose of performing the necessary operation, Arnold suffered shipwreck and was drowned. His body was interred at Genoa. The pope issued an encyclic letter, entreating those who owed him obedience to reveal where Arnold's Treatise on the Practice of Medicine might be found, it having been lost or concealed. It appears that the chief offences committed by Arnold against the Church were that he had predicted that the world would come to an end A.D. 1335; that he had said the bulls of the pope were only the work of a man, and that the practice of charity is better than prayer, or even than the mass. If he was the author of the celebrated book "De Tribus Impostoribus," as was suspected by some, it is not remarkable that he was so closely watched and disciplined. Like many of his contemporaries, he mingled a great deal of mysticism with his work, recommending, during his alchemical operations, the recitation of psalms, to give force to the materials employed. Among other such things, he describes a seal, decorated with scriptural phrases, of excellent use in preserving one from sudden death. It appears, however, to have failed of its effect on the night when Arnold's ship was drifting on an Italian lee-shore, and he had most need of it.

Two impulses – intellectual and moral – in operation. The two antagonistic principles – ecclesiastical and intellectual – were thus brought in presence of each other. On other occasions they had already been in partial collision, as at the iconoclastic dispute which originated in the accusations of the Mohammedans, and ended in the tearing of Christendom asunder.

Struggle of ecclesiasticism against the intellectual principle. Again there was a collision, a few centuries later, when the Spanish Moors and Jews began to influence the higher European classes. Among the bishops, sovereigns, and even popes thus affected, there were many men of elevated views, who saw distinctly the position of Europe, and understood thoroughly the difficulties of the Church. It had already become obvious to them that it would be impossible to restrain the impulse arising from the vigorous movements of the Saracens, and that it was absolutely necessary so to order things that the actual condition of faith in Europe might be accommodated to or even harmonized with these philosophical conceptions, which it was quite clear would, soon or late, pervade the whole Continent. This, as we have seen, is the explanation of the introduction of Scholasticism from the Arabian schools, and its accommodation to the Christian code, on which authority looked with so much favour at first. But hardly had this attempt been entered upon before it became manifest that the risks to be incurred through the remedy itself were as great as the anticipated dangers. There was then no other course than for the Church to retrace her steps, ostensibly maintaining her consistency by permitting scholastic literature, though declining scholastic theology. She thus allured the active intellect, arising in all directions in the universities, to fruitless and visionary pursuits. This policy, therefore, threw her back upon a system of repression; it was the only course possible; yet there can be no doubt that it was entered upon with reluctance. The difficulty was in the system, not in the men. We do injustice to the great men who guided ecclesiastical policy in those times when we represent them as recklessly committing themselves to measures at once violent and indefensible. They did make the attempt to institute an opposite policy; it proved not only a failure, but mischievous. They were then driven to check the spread of knowledge – driven by the necessities of their position. The fault was none of theirs; it dated back to the time of Constantine the Great; and the impossibility of either correcting or neutralizing it is only an example, as has been said, of the manner in which a general principle, once introduced, will overbear the best exertions of those attempting to struggle against it. We can appreciate the false position into which those statesmen were thrown when we compare their personal with their public relations. Often the most eminent persons lived in intimacy and friendship with Jewish physicians, who, in the eye of the law, were enemies of society; often those who were foremost in the cultivation of knowledge – who, indeed, suffered excommunication for its sake – maintained amicable relations of a private kind with those who in public were the leaders of their persecutors. The systems were in antagonism, not the men. Arnold de Villa Nova, though excommunicated, was the physician of one pope; Roger Bacon, though harshly imprisoned, was the friend and correspondent of another. These incidents are not to be mistaken for that compassion which the truly great are ever ready to show to erring genius. They are examples of what we often see in our own day, when men engaged in the movements of a great political party loyally carry out its declared principles to their consequences, though individually they may find in those consequences many things to which they could mentally object. Their private objection they thus yield for the sake of what appears to them, in a general way, a practical good.

Such was the state of affairs when the Arab element, having pervaded France and Italy, made its formal intellectual attack. It might almost have been foreseen in what manner that attack would be made, and the shape it would be likely to assume. Of the sciences, astronomy was the oldest and most advanced. The intellectual impulse makes its attack through astronomy, Its beginning dates earlier than the historic period, and both in India and in Egypt it had long reached correctness, so far as its general principles were concerned. The Saracens had been assiduous cultivators of it in both its branches, observation and mathematical investigation. Upon one point, the figure and relations of the earth, it is evident that not the slightest doubt existed among them. Nay, it must be added that no learned European ecclesiastic or statesman could deny the demonstrated truths. Nevertheless, it so fell out that upon this very point the conflict broke out. In India the Brahmans had passed through the same trial – for different nations walk through similar paths – with a certain plausible success, by satisfying the popular clamour that there was, in reality, nothing inconsistent between the astronomical doctrine of the globular form and movement of the earth, and the mythological dogma that it rests upon a succession of animals, the lowest of which is a tortoise. But the strong common sense of Western Europe was not to be deluded in any such idle way. It is not difficult to see the point of contact, the point of pressure with the Church. The abstract question gave her no concern; it was the consequences that might possibly follow. The memorable battle was fought upon the question thus sharply defined: Is the earth a moving globe, a small body in the midst of suns and countless myriads of worlds, or is it the central and greatest object in the universe, flat, and canopied over with a blue dome, motionless while all is in movement around it? and the Church is defeated. The dispute thus definitely put, its issue was such as must always attend a controversy in which he who is defending is at once lukewarm and conscious of his own weakness. Never can moral interests, however pure, stand against intellect enforcing truth. On this ill-omened question the Church ventured her battle and lost it.

The moral impulse. Though this great conflict is embodied in the history of Galileo, who has become its historical representative, the prime moving cause must not be misunderstood. From the Pyrenees had passed forth an influence which had infected all the learned men of Western Europe. Its tendency was altogether unfavourable to the Church. Moreover, the illiterate classes had been touched, but in a different way. To the first action the designation of the intellectual impulse may be given; to the latter, the moral. It is to be especially observed that in their directions these impulses conspired. We have seen how, through the Saracens and Jews conjointly, the intellectual impulse came into play. Origin of the moral impulse. The moral impulse originated in a different manner, being due partly to the Crusades and partly to the state of things in Rome. On these causes it is therefore needful for us to reflect.

First, of the Crusades. There had been wrenched from Christendom its fairest and most glorious portions. Spain, the north of Africa, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, were gone. The Mohammedans had been repeatedly under the walls of Constantinople; its fall was only a question of time. They had been in the streets of Rome. They had marched across Italy in every direction. Loss of the holy places. But perhaps the geographical losses, appalling as they were, did not appear so painful as the capture of the holy places; the birth-place of our Redeemer; the scene of His sufferings; the Mount of Olives; the Sea of Galilee; the Garden of Gethsemane; Calvary; the Sepulchre. Too often in their day of strength, while there were Roman legions at their back, had the bishops taunted Paganism with the weakness of its divinities, who could not defend themselves, their temples, or their sacred places. That logic was retaliated now. To many a sincere heart must many an ominous reflexion have occurred. In Western Europe there was a strong common sense which quickly caught the true position of things – a common sense that could neither be blinded nor hoodwinked. The astuteness of the Italian politicians was insufficient to conceal altogether the great fact, though it might succeed in dissembling its real significance for a time. The Europe of that day was very different from the Europe of ours. It was in its Age of Faith. Recently converted, as all recent converts do, it made its belief a living rule of action. In our times there is not upon that continent a nation which, in its practical relations with others, carries out to their consequences its ostensible, its avowed articles of belief. Catholics, Protestants, Mohammedans, they of the Greek communion, indiscriminately consort together under the expediences of the passing hour. Statesmanship has long been dissevered from religion – a fact most portentous for future times. But it was not so in the Middle Ages. Men then believed their form of faith with the same clearness, the same intensity with which they believed their own existence or the actual presence of things upon which they cast their eyes. The doctrines of the Church were to them no mere inconsequential affair, but an absolute, an actual reality, a living and a fearful thing. It would have passed their comprehension if they could have been assured that a day would come when Christian Europe, by a breath, could remove from the holy places the scandal of an infidel intruder, but, upon the whole, would consider it not worth her while to do so. How differently they acted. Effect of the Crusades. When, by the preaching of Peter the Hermit and his collaborators, who had received a signal from Rome, a knowledge had come to their ears of the reproach that had befallen Jerusalem and the sufferings of the pilgrims, their plain but straightforward common sense taught them at once what was the right remedy to apply, and forthwith they did apply it, and Christendom, precipitated headlong upon the Holy Land, was brought face to face with Mohammedanism. But what a scene awaited the zealous, the religious barbarians – for such they truly were – when Constantinople, with its matchless splendours, came in view! What a scene when they had passed into Asia Minor, that garden of the world, presenting city after city, with palaces and edifices, the pride of twenty centuries! Change of opinion in the Crusaders. How unexpected the character of those Saracens, whom they had been taught, by those who had incited them to their enterprise, to regard as no better than bloodthirsty fiends, but whom they found valiant, merciful, just! When Richard the Lion-hearted, King of England, lay in his tent consumed by a fever, there came into the camp camels laden with snow, sent by his enemy, the Sultan Saladin, to assuage his disease, the homage of one brave soldier to another. But when Richard was returning to England, it was by a Christian prince that he was treacherously seized and secretly confined. This was doubtless only one of many such incidents which had often before occurred. Even down to the meanest camp-follower, every one must have recognized the difference between what they had anticipated and what they had found. They had seen undaunted courage, chivalrous bearing, intellectual culture far higher than their own. They had been in lands filled with the prodigies of human skill. They did not melt down into the populations to whom they returned without imparting to them a profound impression destined to make itself felt in the course of time.

They discover the immoralities of Italy. But, secondly, as to the state of things in Rome. The movement into which all Europe had been thrown by these wars brought to light the true condition of things in Italy as respects morality. Locomotion in a population is followed by intellectual development. The old stationary condition of things in Europe was closed by the Crusades. National movement gave rise to better observation, better information, and could not but be followed by national reflexion. And though we are obliged to speak of the European population as being in one sense in a barbarous state, it was a moral population, earnestly believing the truth of every doctrine it had been taught, and sincerely expecting that those doctrines would be carried to their practical application, and that religious profession must, as a matter of course, be illustrated by religious life. The Romans themselves were an exception to this. They had lived too long behind the scenes. Indeed, it may be said that all the Italian peninsula had emancipated itself from that delusion, as likewise certain classes in France, who had become familiar with the state of things during the residence of the popes at Avignon. It has been the destiny of Southern France to pass, on a small scale, under the same influence, and to exhibit the same results as were appointed for all Europe at last.

And now, what was it that awakening Europe found to be the state of things in Italy? I avert my eyes from looking again at the biography of the popes; it would be only to renew a scene of sin and shame. Nor can I, without injustice to truth, speak of the social condition of the inhabitants of that peninsula without relating facts which would compel my reader to turn over the page with a blush. I prefer to look at the maxims of political life which had been followed for many centuries, and which were first divulged by one of the greatest men that Italy has produced, in a work – A.D. 1513 – truly characterized as a literary prodigy. Certainly nothing can surpass in atrocity the maxims therein laid down.

The principles of Italian statesmanship – Machiavelli. Machiavelli, in that work, tells us that there are three degrees of capacity among men. That one understands things by his own natural powers; another, when they are explained to him; a third, not at all. In dealing with these different classes different methods must be used. The last class, which is by far the most numerous, is so simple and weak that it is very easy to dupe those who belong to it. If they cease to believe of their own accord they ought to be constrained by force, in the application of which, though there may be considerable difficulties at first, yet, these once overcome by a sufficient unscrupulousness – veneration, security, tranquillity, and happiness will follow. That, if a prince is constrained to make his choice, it is better for him to be feared than loved; he should remember that all men are ungrateful, fickle, timid, dissembling, and self-interested; that love depends on them, but fear depends on him, and hence it is best to prefer the latter, which is always in his own hands. The great aim of statesmanship should be permanence, which is worth everything else, being far more valuable than freedom. That, if a man wants to ruin a republic, his proper course is to set it on bold undertakings, which it is sure to mismanage; that men, being naturally wicked, incline to good only when they are compelled; they think a great deal more of the present than the past, and never seek change so long as they are made comfortable.

He recommends a ruler to bear in mind that, while the lower class of men may desert him, the superior will not only desert, but conspire. If such cannot with certainty be made trustworthy friends, it is very clearly necessary to put it out of their power to be enemies. Thus it may be observed that the frequent insurrections in Spain, Gaul, and Greece against the Romans were entirely due to the petty chiefs inhabiting those countries; but that, after these had been put to death, everything went on very well. Up to a certain point, it should be the grand maxim of a wise government to content the people and to manage the nobles; but that, since hatred is just as easily incurred by good actions as by bad ones, there will occasionally arise the necessity of being wicked in order to maintain power, and, in such a case, there should be no hesitation; for, though it is useful to persevere in the path of rectitude while there is no inconvenience, we should deviate from it at once if circumstances so advise. A prudent prince ought not keep his word to his own injury; he ought to bear in mind that one who always endeavours to act as duty dictates necessarily insures his own destruction; that new obligations never extinguish the memory of former injuries in the minds of the superior order of men; that liberality, in the end, generally insures more enemies than friends; that it is the nature of mankind to become as much attached to one by the benefits they render as by the favours they receive; that, where the question is as to the taking of life or the confiscation of property, it is useful to remember that men forget the death of their relatives, but not the loss of their patrimony; that, if cruelties should become expedient, they should be committed thoroughly and but once – it is very impolitic to resort to them a second time; that there are three ways of deciding any contest – by fraud, by force, or by law, and a wise man will make the most suitable choice; that there are also three ways of maintaining control in newly-conquered states that have once been free – by ruining them, by inhabiting them, or by permitting them to keep their own laws and to pay tribute. Of these the first will often be found the best, as we may see from the history of the Romans, who were experienced judges of such cases. That, as respects the family of a rival but conquered sovereign, the greatest pains should be taken to extinguish it completely; for history proves, what many fabulous traditions relate, that dangerous political consequences have originated in the escape of some obscure or insignificant member; that men of the highest order, who are, therefore, of sound judgment – who seek for actual social truths for their guidance rather than visionary models which never existed – will conform to the decisions of reason, and never be influenced by feelings of sentiment, unless it is apparent that some collateral advantage will arise from the temporary exhibition thereof; and that they will put a just estimate on the delusions in which the vulgar indulge, casting aside the so-called interventions of Divine Providence, which are, in reality, nothing more than the concatenation of certain circumstances following the ordinary law of cause and effect, but which, by interfering with the action of each other, have assumed a direction which the judgment of the wisest could not have foreseen.