History of the Intellectual Development of Europe Volume II Part 6

Since it was by the power and patronage of the Saracens that the Jewish physicians were acting, it is not surprising that the language used in many of their compositions was Arabic. Translations were, however, commonly made into Hebrew, and, at a subsequent period, into Latin.

Through the ninth century the Asiatic colleges maintained their previous celebrity in certain branches of knowledge. Thus the Jew Shabtai Donolo was obliged to go to Bagdad to complete his studies in astronomy.

[Sidenote: Foundation of colleges.] As Arabian influence extended itself into Sicily and Italy, Jewish intelligence accompanied it, and schools were founded at Tarentum, Salerno, Bari, and other places. Here the Arab and Jew Orientalists first amalgamated with a truly European element--the Greek--as is shown by the circ.u.mstance that in the college at Salerno instruction was given through the medium of all three languages. At one time, Pontus taught in Greek, Abdallah in Arabic, and Elisha in Hebrew. A similar influence of the Arab and Jew combined founded the University of Montpellier.

[Sidenote: Medical studies among the Jews.] After the foundation of medical colleges, the progress of medicine among the Jews was very rapid. Judged by our standard, in some respects it was peculiar. Thus, they looked upon the practice of surgery as altogether mechanical, and therefore ign.o.ble. A long list of eminent names might be extracted from the tenth and eleventh centuries. In it we should find Haroun of Cordova, Jehuda of Fez, Amram of Toledo. Already it was apparent that the Saracenic movement would aid in developing the intelligence of barbarian Western Europe through Hebrew physicians, in spite of opposition encountered from theological ideas imported from Constantinople and Rome. Mohammedanism had all along been the patron of physical science; paganizing Christianity not only repudiated it, but exhibited towards it sentiments of contemptuous disdain and hatred.

[Sidenote: Imposture-medicine.] Hence physicians were viewed by the Church with dislike, and regarded as atheists by the people, who held firmly to the lessons they had been taught that cures must be wrought by relics of martyrs and bones of saints, by prayers and intercessions, and that each region of the body was under some spiritual charge--the first joint of the right thumb being in the care of G.o.d the Father, the second under that of the blessed Virgin, and so on of other parts. For each disease there was a saint. A man with sore eyes must invoke St. Clara, but if it were an inflammation elsewhere he must turn to St. Anthony. An ague would demand the a.s.sistance of St. Pernel. For the propitiating of these celestial beings it was necessary that fees should be paid, and thus the practice of imposture-medicine became a great source of profit.

In all this there was no other intention than that of extracting money from the illiterate. With men of education and position it was different. Bishops, princes, kings, and popes had each in private his Hebrew doctor, though all understood that he was a contraband luxury, in many countries pointedly and absolutely prohibited by the law.

[Sidenote: The rabbis cultivate medicine and other sciences.] In the eleventh century nearly all the physicians in Europe were Jews. This was due to two different causes: the Church would tolerate no interference with her spiritual methods of treating disease, which formed one of her most productive sources of gain; and the study of medicine had been formally introduced into the rabbinical schools. The monk was prohibited a pursuit which gave to the rabbi an honourable emolument. From the older inst.i.tutions offshoots in quick succession appeared, particularly in France. Thus the school at Narbonne was under the presidency of Doctor Rabbi Abou. There was also a flouris.h.i.+ng school at Arles. In these inst.i.tutions instruction was given through the medium of Hebrew and Arabic, the Greek element present at Salerno being here wanting. In the French schools, to the former languages Latin and Provencal were, in the course of time, added. The versatility of acquirement among the physicians, who were taking the lead in this intellectual movement, is ill.u.s.trated both by the Spanish and French Jews. Some, like Djanah, a native of Cordova, acquired reputation in grammar, criticism, astronomy; others in poetry or theology.

If thus the social condition of the rabbis, who drew no income from their religious duties, induced them to combine the practice of medicine with their pursuits, great facilities had arisen for mental culture through the establishment of so many schools. Henceforth the Jewish physician is recognised as combining with his professional skill a profound knowledge of theology, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, music, law. In a singular manner he stands aloof in the barbarian societies among whom he lives, looking down like a philosopher upon their idolatries, permitting, or even excusing them, like a statesman.

[Sidenote: Writings of the Spanish-Jewish physicians.] Of those who thus adorned the eleventh century was Rabbi Solomon Ben Isaac, better known under the abbreviation Raschi--called by his countrymen the Prince of Commentators. He was equally at home in writing commentaries on the Talmud, or in giving instructions for great surgical operations, as the Caesarean section. He was the greatest French physician of his age. Spain during the same century, produced a worthy compet.i.tor to him, Ebn Zohr, physician to the court of Seville. His writings were in Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and both in prose and verse. He composed a treatise on the cure of diseases, and two on fevers. In singular contrast with the superst.i.tious notions of the times, he possessed a correct view of the morbific nature of marsh miasm. He was followed by Ben Ezra, a Jew of Toledo, who was at once a physician, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, critic, poet. He travelled all over Europe and Asia, being held in captivity for some time in India. Among his medical writings was a work on theoretical and practical medicine, ent.i.tled "Book of Proofs."

Through the wars arising in Spain between the Mohammedans and Christians, many learned Jews were driven into France, imparting to that country, by their presence, a new intellectual impulse. Of such were Aben Tybbon, who gave to his own profession a pharmaceutical tendency by insisting on the study of botany and art of preparing drugs. Ben Kimchi, a Narbonnese physician and grammarian, wrote commentaries on the Bible, sacred and moral poems, a Hebrew grammar. Notwithstanding the opposition of the ecclesiastics, William, the Lord of Montpellier, pa.s.sed an edict authorizing all persons, without exception, to profess medicine in the university of his city. This was specially meant for the relief of the Jews, though expressed in a general way. [Sidenote: Maimonides.] Spain, though she had thus lost many of her learned men, still continued to produce others of which she had reason to be proud. Moussa Ben Maimon, known all over Europe as Maimonides, was recognized by his countrymen as "the Doctor, the Great Sage, the Glory of the West, the Light of the East, second only to Moses." He is often designated by the four initials R. M. B. M., that is Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, or briefly Rambam. His biography presents some points of interest. He was born at Cordova A.D.

1135, and, while yet young, wrote commentaries on the Talmuds both of Babylon and Jerusalem, and also a work on the Calendar; but, embracing Mohammedanism, he emigrated to Egypt, and there became physician to the celebrated Sultan Saladin. Among his works are medical aphorisms, derived from former Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources; an abridgment of Galen; and of his original treatises, which were very numerous, may be mentioned those "On Hemorrhoids," "On Poisons and Antidotes," "On Asthma," "On the Preservation of Health,"--the latter being written for the benefit of the son of Saladin--"On the Bites of Venomous Animals"--written by order of the sultan--"On Natural History."

His "Moreh Nevochim," or "Teacher of the Perplexed," was an attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the Old Testament with reason. In addition to these, he had a book on Idolatry, and one on Christ. Besides Maimonides, the sultan had another physician, Ebn Djani, the author of a work on the medical topography of the city of Alexandria. From the biographies of these learned men of the twelfth century it would seem that their religious creed hung lightly upon them. Not unfrequently they became converted to Mohammedanism.

[Sidenote: Later Jewish physicians.] It might be tedious if I should record the names and writings of the learned European Jews of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a period more prolific of these great men than even the preceding ages. But I cannot pa.s.s these later centuries without mentioning the Alphonsine Tables, calculated for Alphonso, the King of Castile, by Mascha, his Hebrew physician. The irreligious tendency of the times is ill.u.s.trated by the well-known sarcasm uttered by that Spanish monarch respecting the imperfect construction of the heavens, according to the Ptolemaic hypothesis. For long, however, the Jews had been dabbling in free-thinking speculations.

Thus Aben Tybbon, above-mentioned, antic.i.p.ating that branch of science which has drawn upon itself, in later years, so much opprobrium, wrote a work containing a discussion of the causes which prevent the waters of the sea from encroaching on the land. Abba Mari, a Ma.r.s.eillese Jew, translated the Almagest of Ptolemy and the Commentary of Averroes upon it. The school of Salerno was still sending forth its doctors. In Rome, Jewish physicians were very numerous, the popes themselves employing them. Boniface VIII. had for his medical adviser Rabbi Isaac. At this period Spain and France were full of learned Jews; and perhaps partly by their exerting upon the higher cla.s.ses with whom they came in contact too much influence, for the physician of a Christian prince was very often the rival of his confessor, and partly because the practice of medicine, as they pursued it, interfered with the gains of the Church, the clergy took alarm, and caused to be re-enacted or enforced the ancient laws. The Council of Beziers, A.D. 1246, and the Council of Alby, A.D. 1254, prohibited all Christians from resorting to the services of an Israelitish physician. It would appear that these enactments had either fallen into desuetude or had failed to be enforced. The faculty of Paris, awakening at last to the danger of the case, caused, A.D. 1301, a decree to be published prohibiting either man or woman of the religion of Moses from practising medicine upon any person of the Catholic religion. A similar course was also taken in Spain. At this time the Jews were confessedly at the head of French medicine. It was the appointment of one of their persuasion, Profatius, as regent of the faculty of Montpellier A.D. 1300, which drew upon them the wrath of the faculty of Paris. This learned man was a skilful astronomer; he composed tables of the moon; of the longitudes of many Asiatic and African towns; he determined the obliquity of the ecliptic, his result being honourably alluded to by Copernicus. [Sidenote: The University of Paris causes the expulsion of the Jews from France.] The animosity of the French ecclesiastics against the Jewish physicians at last led to the banishment of all the Jews from France, A.D. 1306. "It was," say the historians of this event, "a most revolting spectacle to see so many learned men, who had adorned and benefited France, proscribed, wanderers without a country or an asylum. Some of them expired of grief upon the road. Abba Mari gives in his work heart-rending details of the expulsion of the Jews from Montpellier, at the head of whom were the professors and doctors of the faculty."

[Sidenote: Result that they had accomplished.] But, though thus driven into exile, these strangers had accomplished their destiny. They had silently deposited in France their ideas. They had sapped the credulity of the higher cla.s.ses in Europe, and taught them to turn away from the supernatural. A clear recognition of their agency in this matter fastened upon them the watchful eye of Inquisition, and made them the victims of its tyranny.

And so it might well be. Out of the Spanish peninsula there had come across the Pyrenees an intellectual influence, which reached the populace under the form of a fresh and pleasing literature, and the better cla.s.ses by novel but unorthodox ideas. To a very great extent the Jews had been its carriers. The result was the overthrow of supernaturalism. [Sidenote: Destruction of fairies by tobacco.] We shall hardly accept the affirmation of good Catholics that fairies disappeared on account of the Reformation, unable to bear the morose sectarianism with which it was accompanied, or the still more material explanation of the rustics that it was through the introduction of tobacco. However that may be, no longer is Robin Goodfellow the compeller of household duties--no longer do bad elves sit by the dying embers of the hearth-stone at night, in the shape of shrivelled frogs, after the family have gone to bed. For a long time there have been no miracles in Europe. Even Rome, the workshop of those artifices, has ceased to be the seat of that trade.

From human inst.i.tutions of any kind, a great principle, firmly inwrought and inwoven at the beginning, can never be removed. It will show itself whenever occasion permits. The animosity between the Byzantine ecclesiastical system and all true wisdom was inextinguishable, though it was utterly foreign to Christianity. [Sidenote: Causes of the ecclesiastical opposition.] It was fastened by imperial violence on the nations, and made its appearance, with unabated force, at intervals of ages. The same evil instinct which tore Hypatia piecemeal in the church at Alexandria brought Galileo into the custody of the familiars of the holy office at Rome. The necessary consequence of this upholding ignorance by force was the emergence of ideas successively more and more depraved. [Sidenote: Degraded state of Italy.] Whoever will ingenuously compare the religious state of Italy in the fourteenth century with its state in the fourth--that is, the recent Italian with the old Roman--will find that among the illiterate cla.s.ses nothing whatever had been accomplished. There were no elevated thoughts of holy things. From practical devotion G.o.d had altogether disappeared; the Saviour had been supplanted by the blessed Virgin; and she herself--such was the increasing degradation--had been abandoned for the ign.o.ble wors.h.i.+p of apotheosized men, who, under the designation of saints, had engrossed all the votaries. There had been a rapid descent to the last degree of more than African abas.e.m.e.nt in bleeding statues and winking pictures.

[Sidenote: Rise of a new social system.] In Europe there had been incorporated old forms of wors.h.i.+p and old festivals with Christian ones; the local G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses had been replaced by saints; for deification canonization had been subst.i.tuted. 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.

[Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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 G.o.ddess Isis. The Italian painters of a later day lived on her modernized form.

[Sidenote: 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 pa.s.sions.

The first aspect of Western literature was animal, not intellectual.

[Sidenote: 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 pa.s.s. 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 cla.s.sical 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.

[Sidenote: Disuse of patristic works.] Of those ponderous, those ma.s.sive 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 G.o.d. 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.

[Sidenote: 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 const.i.tute what we may speak of under the t.i.tle 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 h.e.l.lenizing 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 Provencal poetry there are n.o.ble 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 ill.u.s.trating 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. [Sidenote: Ill.u.s.tration 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 att.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+pwreck 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 ma.s.s. 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 s.h.i.+p was drifting on an Italian lee-sh.o.r.e, and he had most need of it.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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 cla.s.ses.

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 antic.i.p.ated 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. [Sidenote: 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 inst.i.tute 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 compa.s.sion 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 a.s.sume. Of the sciences, astronomy was the oldest and most advanced. [Sidenote: 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 a.s.siduous 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 pa.s.sed 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?

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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 pa.s.sed forth an influence which had infected all the learned men of Western Europe. Its tendency was altogether unfavourable to the Church.

Moreover, the illiterate cla.s.ses 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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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 birthplace 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 pa.s.sing hour. Statesmans.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed their comprehension if they could have been a.s.sured 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. [Sidenote: 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 pa.s.sed into Asia Minor, that garden of the world, presenting city after city, with palaces and edifices, the pride of twenty centuries! [Sidenote: 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 a.s.suage 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 antic.i.p.ated 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.

[Sidenote: 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 emanc.i.p.ated itself from that delusion, as likewise certain cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.s, 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 surpa.s.s in atrocity the maxims therein laid down.

[Sidenote: The principles of Italian statesmans.h.i.+p--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 cla.s.ses different methods must be used. The last cla.s.s, 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 statesmans.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s 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 n.o.bles; 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 rect.i.tude while there is no inconvenience, we should deviate from it at once if circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances following the ordinary law of cause and effect, but which, by interfering with the action of each other, have a.s.sumed a direction which the judgment of the wisest could not have foreseen.

Europe has visited with its maledictions the great political writer by whom these atrocious maxims have been recommended, forgetting that his offence consists not in inventing, but in divulging them. His works thus offer the purest example we possess of physical statesmans.h.i.+p. They are altogether impa.s.sive. He views the management of a state precisely as he might do the construction of a machine, recommending that such a wheel or such a lever should be introduced, his only inquiry being whether it will accomplish his intention. As to any happiness or misery it may work, he gives himself no concern, unless, indeed, they evidently ought to enter into the calculation. He had suffered the rack himself under a charge of conspiracy, and borne it without flinching. But, before Machiavelli wrote, his principles had all been carried into practice; indeed, it would not be difficult to give abundant examples in proof of the a.s.sertion that they had been for ages regarded in Italy as rules of conduct.

[Sidenote: Conjoined effect of the intellectual and moral impulses.]

Such was the morality which Europe detected as existing in Italy, carried out with inconceivable wickedness in public and private life; and thus the two causes we have been considering--contact with the Saracens in Syria and a knowledge of the real state of things in Rome--conspired together to produce what may be designated as the moral impulse, which, in its turn, conspired with the intellectual. Their a.s.sociation foreboded evil to ecclesiastical authority, thus taken at great disadvantage. Though, from its very birthday, that authority had been in absolute opposition to the intellectual movement, it might, doubtless, for a much longer time have successfully maintained its conflict therewith had the conditions remained unchanged. Up to this time its chief strength reposed upon its moral relations. It could point, and did point the attention of those whose mental culture enabled them to understand the true position of affairs, to Europe brought out of barbarism, and beginning a course of glorious civilization. That achievement was claimed by the Church. If it were true that she had thus brought it to pa.s.s, it had been altogether wrought by the agency of her moral power, intellectual influence in no manner aiding therein, but being uniformly, from the time of Constantine the Great to that of the Reformation, instinctively repulsed. When, now, the moral power suffered so great a shock, and was not only ready to go over to, but had actually allied itself with the intellectual, there was great danger to ecclesiastical authority. And hence we need not be surprised that an impression began to prevail among the clear-thinking men of the time that the real functions of that authority were completed in producing the partially-civilized condition to which Europe had attained, the course of events tending evidently to an elimination of that authority as an active element in the approaching European system. [Sidenote: The excuses of ecclesiasticism.] To such the Church might emphatically address herself, pointing out the signal and brilliant results to which she had given rise, and displaying the manifest evils which must inevitably ensue if her relations, as then existing, should be touched.

For it must have been plain that the first effect arising from the coalition of the intellectual with the moral element would be an a.s.sertion of the right of private judgment in the individual--a condition utterly inconsistent with the dominating influence of authority. It was actually upon that very principle that the battle of the Reformation was eventually fought. She might point out--for it needed no prophetic inspiration--that, if once this principle was yielded, there could be no other issue in Christendom than a total decomposition; that though, for a little while, the separation might be limited to a few great confessions, these, under the very influence of the principle that had brought themselves into existence, must, in their turn, undergo disintegration, and the end of it be a complete anarchy of sects. [Sidenote: Her feeble resistance.] In one sense it may be said that it was in wisdom that the Church took her stand upon this point, determining to make it her base of resistance; unwisely in another, for it was evident that she had already lost the initiative of action, and that her very resistance would const.i.tute the first stage in the process of decomposition.

[Sidenote: Contemporaneous changes in Europe.] Europe had made a vast step during its Age of Faith. Spontaneously it had grown through its youth; and the Italians, who had furnished it with many of its ideas, had furnished it also with many of its forms of life. In that respect justice has still to be done them. When Rome broke away from her connexions with Constantinople, a cloud of more than Cimmerian darkness overshadowed Europe. It was occupied by wandering savages. Six hundred years organized it into families, neighbourhoods, cities. Those centuries found it full of bondmen; they left it without a slave. They found it a scene of violence, rapine, l.u.s.t; they left it the abode of G.o.d-fearing men. Where there had been trackless forests, there were innumerable steeples glittering in the sun; where there had been b.l.o.o.d.y chieftains, drinking out of their enemies' skulls, there were grave ecclesiastics, fathoming the depths of free-will, predestination, election. Investing the clergy with a mysterious superiority, the Church a.s.serted the equality of the laity from the king to the beggar before G.o.d. It disregarded wealth and birth, and opened a career for all. Its influence over the family and domestic relations was felt through all cla.s.ses. It fixed paternity by a previous ceremony; it enforced the rule that a wife pa.s.ses into the family of her husband, and hence it followed that legitimate children belong to the father, illegitimate to the mother. It compelled women to domestic life, shut them out from the priesthood, and tried to exclude them from government. In a worldly sense, the mistake that Rome committed was this: she attempted to maintain an intellectual immobility in the midst of an advancing social state. She saw not that society could no more be stopped in its career through her mere a.s.sertion that it could not and should not move, than that the earth could be checked in its revolution merely because she protested that it was at rest. She tried, first by persuasion and then by force, to arrest the onward movement, but she was overborne, notwithstanding her frantic resistance, by the impetuous current. Very different would it have been had the Italian statesmen boldly put themselves in the van of progress, and, instead of a.s.serting an immutability and infallibility, changed their dogmas and maxims as the progress of events required. Europe need not have waited for Arabs and Jews.

[Sidenote: Loss of power in Church organizations.] In describing these various facts, I have endeavoured to point out impressively how the Church, so full of vigour at first, contained within itself the seeds of inevitable decay. From the period when it came into collision with the intellectual and moral elements, the origin of which we have traced, and which conspired together for its overthrow, it exhibited a gradual decline; first losing its influence upon nations, and ceasing to be in them a principle of public action; next, witnessing the alienation of the higher and educated cla.s.ses, the process descending downward through the social scale, therein retracing the steps of its advance. When ecclesiasticism became so weak as to be unable to regulate international affairs, and was supplanted by diplomacy, in the castle the physician was more than a rival for the confessor, in the town the mayor was a greater man than the abbot. There remained a lingering influence over individuals, who had not yet risen above a belief that it could control their state after death. This decline of its ancient influence should be a cause of rejoicing to all intelligent men, for an ecclesiastical organization allying itself to political power can never now be a source of any good. In America we have seen the bond that held the Church and State together abruptly snapped. [Sidenote: Return of things to the ancient Christian times.] It is therefore well that, since the close of the Age of Faith, things have been coming back with an accelerated pace, to the state in which they were in the early Christian times, before the founder of Constantinople beguiled the devotional spirit to his personal and family benefit--to the state in which they were before ambitious men sought political advancement and wealth by organizing hypocrisy--when maxims of morality, charity, benevolence, were rules of life for individual man--when the monitions of conscience were obeyed without the suggestions of an outward, often an interested and artful prompter--when the individual lived not under the sleepless gaze, the crus.h.i.+ng hand of a great overwhelming hierarchical organization, surrounding him on all sides, doing his thinking for him, directing him in his acts, making him a mere automaton, but in simplicity, humility, and truthfulness guiding himself according to the light given him, and discharging the duties of this troublesome and transitory life "as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye."

For the progressive degradations exhibited by the Roman Church during the Age of Faith, something may be offered as at once an explanation and an excuse. Machiavelli relates, in his "History of Florence"--a work which, if inferior in philosophical penetration to his "Prince," is of the most singular merit as a literary composition--that Osporco, a Roman, having become pope, exchanged his unseemly name for the more cla.s.sical one Sergius, and that his successors have ever since observed the practice of a.s.suming a new name. [Sidenote: Connexion of religious ideas in Italy with its ethnical state.] This incident profoundly ill.u.s.trates the psychical progress of that Church. During the fifteen centuries that we have had under consideration--counting from a little before the Christian era--the population of Italy had been constantly changing. The old Roman ethnical element had become eliminated partly through the republican and imperial wars, and partly through the slave system. The degenerated half-breeds, of whom the Peninsula was full through repeated northern immigrations, degenerated, as time went on, still more and more. After that blood admixture had for the most part ceased, it took a long time for the base ethnical element which was its product to come into physiological correspondence with the country, for the adaptation of man to a new climate is a slow, a secular change.

But blood-degeneration implies thought-degeneration. It is nothing more than might be expected that, in this mongrel race, customs, and language, and even names should change--that rivers, and towns, and men should receive new appellations. As the great statesman to whom I have referred observes, Caesar and Pompey had disappeared; John, Matthew, and Peter had come in their stead. Barbarized names are the outward and visible signs of barbarized ideas. Those early bishops of Rome whose dignified acts have commanded our respect, were men of Roman blood, and animated with sentiments that were truly Latin; but the succeeding pontiffs, whose lives were so infamous and thoughts so base, were engendered of half-breeds. Nor was it until the Italian population had re-established itself in a physiological relation with the country--not until it had pa.s.sed through the earlier stages of national life--that manly thoughts and true conceptions could be regained.

Ideas and dogmas that would not have been tolerated for an instant in the old, pure, h.o.m.ogeneous Roman race, found acceptance in this adulterated, festering ma.s.s. This was the true cause of the increasing debas.e.m.e.nt of Latin Christianity. Whoever will take the trouble of constructing a chart of the religious conceptions as they successively struggled into light, will see how close was their connexion with the physiological state of the Italian ethnical element at the moment.

[Sidenote: Successive steps in the religious decline.] It is a sad and humiliating succession. Mariolatry; the invocation of saints; the supreme value of virginity; the working of miracles by relics; the satisfaction of moral crimes by gifts of money or goods to the clergy; the wors.h.i.+p of images; Purgatory; the sale of benefices; transubstantiation, or the making of G.o.d by the priest; the materialization of G.o.d--that He has eyes, feet, hands, toes; the virtue of pilgrimages; vicarious religion, the sinner paying the priest to pray for him; the corporeality of spirits; the forbidding of the Bible to the laity; the descent to shrine-wors.h.i.+p and fetichism; the doctrine that man can do more than his duty, and hence have a claim upon G.o.d; the sale by the priests of indulgences in sin for money.

But there is another, a very different aspect under which we must regard this Church. Enveloped as it was with the many evils of the times, the truly Christian principle which was at its basis perpetually vindicated its power, giving rise to numberless blessings in spite of the degradation and wickedness of man. [Sidenote: Statement of what the Church had actually done.] As I have elsewhere (Physiology, Book II., Chap. VIII.) remarked, "The civil law exerted an exterior power in human relations; Christianity produced an interior and moral change. The idea of an ultimate accountability for personal deeds, of which the old Europeans had an indistinct perception, became intense and precise. The sentiment of universal charity was exemplified not only in individual acts, the remembrance of which soon pa.s.ses away, but in the more permanent inst.i.tution of establishments for the relief of affliction, the spread of knowledge, the propagation of truth. Of the great ecclesiastics, many had risen from the humblest ranks of society, and these men, true to their democratic instincts, were often found to be the inflexible supporters of right against might. Eventually coming to be the depositaries of the knowledge that then existed, they opposed intellect to brute force, in many instances successfully, and by the example of the organization of the Church, which was essentially republican, they showed how representative systems may be introduced into the state. Nor was it over communities and nations that the Church displayed her chief power. Never in the world before was there such a system. From her central seat at Rome, her all-seeing eye, like that of Providence itself, could equally take in a hemisphere at a glance, or examine the private life of any individual. Her boundless influences enveloped kings in their palaces, and relieved the beggar at the monastery gate. In all Europe there was not a man too obscure, too insignificant, or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities, every one received his name at her altar; her bells chimed at his marriage, her knell tolled at his funeral. She extorted from him the secrets of his life at her confessionals, and punished his faults by her penances. In his hour of sickness and trouble her servants sought him out, teaching him, by her exquisite litanies and prayers, to place his reliance on G.o.d, or strengthening him for the trials of life by the example of the holy and just. Her prayers had an efficacy to give repose to the souls of his dead. When, even to his friends, his lifeless body had become an offence, in the name of G.o.d she received it into her consecrated ground, and under her shadow he rested till the great reckoning-day. From little better than a slave she raised his wife to be his equal, and, forbidding him to have more than one, met her recompense for those n.o.ble deeds in a firm friend at every fireside.

Discountenancing all impure love, she put round that fireside the children of one mother, and made that mother little less than sacred in their eyes. In ages of lawlessness and rapine, among people but a step above savages, she vindicated the inviolability of her precincts against the hand of power, and made her temples a refuge and sanctuary for the despairing and oppressed. Truly she was the shadow of a great rock in many a weary land!"

[Sidenote: a.n.a.lysis of the career of the Church.] This being the point which I consider the end of the Italian system as a living force in European progress, its subsequent operation being directed to the senses and not to the understanding, it will not be amiss if for a moment we extend our view to later times and to circ.u.mstances beyond the strict compa.s.s of this book, endeavouring thus to ascertain the condition of the Church, especially as to many devout persons it may doubtless appear that she has lost none of her power.

[Sidenote: Four revolts against the Italian system.] On four occasions there have been revolts against the Italian Church system: 1st, in the thirteenth century, the Albigensian; 2nd, in the fourteenth, the Wiclifite; 3rd, in the sixteenth, the Reformation; 4th, in the eighteenth, at the French Revolution. On each of these occasions ecclesiastical authority has exerted whatever offensive or defensive power it possessed. Its action is a true indication of its condition at the time. Astronomers can determine the orbit of a comet or other celestial meteor by three observations of its position as seen from the earth, and taken at intervals apart.

[Sidenote: The Albigensian revolt.] 1st. Of the Albigensian revolt. We have ascertained that the origin of this is distinctly traceable to the Mohammedan influence of Spain, through the schools of Cordova and Granada, pervading Languedoc and Provence. Had these agencies produced only the gay scenes of chivalry and courtesy as their material results, and, as their intellectual, war-ballads, satires, and amorous songs, they had been excused; but, along with such elegant frivolities, there was something of a more serious kind. A popular proverb will often betray national belief, and there was a proverb in Provence, "Viler than a priest." The offensive sectaries also quoted, for the edification of the monks, certain texts, to the effect that, "if a man will not work neither let him eat." The event, in the hands of Simon de Montfort, taught them that there is such a thing as wresting Scripture to one's own destruction.

How did the Church deal with this Albigensian heresy? As those do who have an absolutely overwhelming power. She did not crush it--that would have been too indulgent; she absolutely annihilated it. Awake to what must necessarily ensue from the imperceptible spread of such opinions, she remorselessly consumed its birthplace with fire and sword; and, fearful that some fugitives might have escaped her vigilant eye, or that heresy might go wherever a bale of goods might be conveyed, she organized the Inquisition with its troops of familiars and spies. Six hundred years have elapsed since these events, and the south of France has never recovered from the blow.

That was a persecution worthy of a sovereign--a persecution conducted on sound Italian principles of policy--to consider clearly the end to be attained, and adopt the proper means without any kind of concern as to their nature. But it was a persecution that implied the possession of unlimited and irresponsible power.