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THE MEDIAEVAL MIND




  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
  LONDON. BOMBAY. CALCUTTA
  MELBOURNE

  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO
  ATLANTA. SAN FRANCISCO

  THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
  TORONTO




  THE MEDIAEVAL MIND

  A HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT
  OF THOUGHT AND EMOTION
  IN THE MIDDLE AGES


  BY HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR


  IN TWO VOLUMES

  VOL. I


  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
  ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
  1911




TO J. I. T.




PREFACE


The Middle Ages! They seem so far away; intellectually so preposterous,
spiritually so strange. Bits of them may touch our sympathy, please our
taste; their window-glass, their sculpture, certain of their stories,
their romances,--as if those straitened ages really were the time of
romance, which they were not, God knows, in the sense commonly taken. Yet
perhaps they were such intellectually, or at least spiritually. Their
_terra_--not for them _incognita_, though full of mystery and pall and
vaguer glory--was not the earth. It was the land of metaphysical
construction and the land of spiritual passion. There lay their romance,
thither pointed their veriest thinking, thither drew their utter yearning.

Is it possible that the Middle Ages should speak to us, as through a
common humanity? Their mask is by no means dumb: in full voice speaks the
noble beauty of Chartres Cathedral. Such mediaeval product, we hope, is of
the universal human, and therefore of us as well as of the bygone
craftsmen. Why it moves us, we are not certain, being ignorant, perhaps,
of the building's formative and earnestly intended meaning. Do we care to
get at that? There is no way save by entering the mediaeval depths,
penetrating to the _rationale_ of the Middle Ages, learning the
_doctrinale_, or _emotionale_, of the modes in which they still present
themselves so persuasively.

But if the pageant of those centuries charm our eyes with forms that seem
so full of meaning, why should we stand indifferent to the harnessed
processes of mediaeval thinking and the passion surging through the
thought? Thought marshalled the great mediaeval procession, which moved to
measures of pulsating and glorifying emotion. Shall we not press on,
through knowledge, and search out its efficient causes, so that we too may
feel the reality of the mediaeval argumentation, with the possible
validity of mediaeval conclusions, and tread those channels of mediaeval
passion which were cleared and deepened by the thought? This would be to
reach human comradeship with mediaeval motives, no longer found too remote
for our sympathy, or too fantastic or shallow for our understanding.

But where is the path through these footless mazes? Obviously, if we would
attain, perhaps, no unified, but at least an orderly presentation of
mediaeval intellectual and emotional development, we must avoid
entanglements with manifold and not always relevant detail. We must not
drift too far with studies of daily life, habits and dress, wars and
raiding, crimes and brutalities, or trade and craft and agriculture. Nor
will it be wise to keep too close to theology or within the lines of
growth of secular and ecclesiastical institutions. Let the student be
mindful of his purpose (which is my purpose in this book) to follow
through the Middle Ages the development of intellectual energy and the
growth of emotion. Holding this end in view, we, students all, shall not
stray from our quest after those human qualities which impelled the
strivings of mediaeval men and women, informed their imaginations, and
moved them to love and tears and pity.

The plan and method by which I have endeavoured to realize this purpose in
my book may be gathered from the Table of Contents and the First Chapter,
which is introductory. These will obviate the need of sketching here the
order of presentation of the successive or co-ordinated topics forming the
subject-matter.

Yet one word as to the standpoint from which the book is written. An
historian explains by the standards and limitations of the times to which
his people belong. He judges--for he must also judge--by his own best
wisdom. His sympathy cannot but reach out to those who lived up to their
best understanding of life; for who can do more? Yet woe unto that man
whose mind is closed, whose standards are material and base.

Not only shalt thou do what seems well to thee; but thou shalt do right,
with wisdom. History has laid some thousands of years of emphasis on this.
Thou shalt not only be sincere, but thou shalt be righteous, and not
iniquitous; beneficent, and not malignant; loving and lovable, and not
hating and hateful. Thou shalt be a promoter of light, and not of
darkness; an illuminator, and not an obscurer. Not only shalt thou seek to
choose aright, but at thy peril thou shalt so choose. "Unto him that hath
shall be given"--nothing is said about sincerity. The fool, the maniac, is
sincere; the mainsprings of the good which we may commend lie deeper.

So, and at _his_ peril likewise, must the historian judge. He cannot state
the facts and sit aloof, impartial between good and ill, between success
and failure, progress and retrogression, the soul's health and loveliness,
and spiritual foulness and disease. He must love and hate, and at his
peril love aright and hate what is truly hateful. And although his
sympathies quiver to understand and feel as the man and woman before him,
his sympathies must be controlled by wisdom.

Whatever may be one's beliefs, a realization of the power and import of
the Christian Faith is needed for an understanding of the thoughts and
feelings moving the men and women of the Middle Ages, and for a just
appreciation of their aspirations and ideals. Perhaps the fittest standard
to apply to them is one's own broadest conception of the Christian scheme,
the Christian scheme whole and entire with the full life of Christ's
Gospel. Every age has offered an interpretation of that Gospel and an
attempt at fulfilment. Neither the interpretation of the Church Fathers,
nor that of the Middle Ages satisfies us now. And by our further
understanding of life and the Gospel of life, we criticize the judgment of
mediaeval men. We have to sympathize with their best, and understand their
lives out of their lives and the conditions in which they were passed. But
we must judge according to our own best wisdom, and out of ourselves offer
our comment and contribution.

HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR.


Many translations from mediaeval (chiefly Latin) writings will be found in
this work, which seeks to make the Middle Ages speak for themselves. With
a very few exceptions, mentioned in the foot-notes, these translations are
my own. I have tried to keep them literal, and at all events free from the
intrusion of thoughts and suggestions not in the originals.




CONTENTS


                                                                      PAGE

  BOOK I

  THE GROUNDWORK

  CHAPTER I

    GENESIS OF THE MEDIAEVAL GENIUS                                      3

  CHAPTER II

  THE LATINIZING OF THE WEST                                            23


  CHAPTER III

    GREEK PHILOSOPHY AS THE ANTECEDENT OF THE PATRISTIC
    APPREHENSION OF FACT                                                33

  CHAPTER IV

    INTELLECTUAL INTERESTS OF THE LATIN FATHERS                         61

  CHAPTER V

    LATIN TRANSMITTERS OF ANTIQUE AND PATRISTIC THOUGHT                 88

  CHAPTER VI

    THE BARBARIC DISRUPTION OF THE EMPIRE                              110

  CHAPTER VII

    THE CELTIC STRAIN IN GAUL AND IRELAND                              124

  CHAPTER VIII

    TEUTON QUALITIES: ANGLO-SAXON, GERMAN, NORSE                       138

  CHAPTER IX

    THE BRINGING OF CHRISTIANITY AND ANTIQUE KNOWLEDGE TO THE
    NORTHERN PEOPLES                                                   169

        I. Irish Activities; Columbanus of Luxeuil.

       II. Conversion of the English; the learning of Bede and Alfred.

      III. Gaul and Germany; from Clovis to St. Winifried-Boniface.


  BOOK II

  THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

  CHAPTER X

    CAROLINGIAN PERIOD: THE FIRST STAGE IN THE APPROPRIATION OF
    THE PATRISTIC AND ANTIQUE                                          207

  CHAPTER XI

    MENTAL ASPECTS OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY: ITALY                      238

        I. From Charlemagne to Hildebrand.

       II. The Human Situation.

      III. The Italian Continuity of Antique Culture.

       IV. Italy's Intellectual Piety: Peter Damiani and St. Anselm.

  CHAPTER XII

    MENTAL ASPECTS OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY: FRANCE                     280

        I. Gerbert.

       II. Odilo of Cluny.

      III. Fulbert and the School of Chartres; Trivium and Quadrivium.

       IV. Berengar of Tours, Roscellin, and the coming time.

  CHAPTER XIII

    MENTAL ASPECTS OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY: GERMANY; ENGLAND           307

        I. German Appropriation of Christianity and Antique Culture.

       II. Othloh's Spiritual Conflict.

      III. England; Closing Comparisons.

  CHAPTER XIV

    THE GROWTH OF MEDIAEVAL EMOTION                                    330

        I. The Patristic Chart of Passion.

       II. Emotionalizing of Latin Christianity.


  BOOK III

  THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: THE SAINTS

  CHAPTER XV

    THE REFORMS OF MONASTICISM                                         353

      Mediaeval Extremes; Benedict of Aniane; Cluny; Citeaux's
      _Charta Charitatis_; the _vita contemplativa_ accepts the
      _vita activa_.

  CHAPTER XVI

    THE HERMIT TEMPER                                                  368

      Peter Damiani; Romuald; Dominicus Loricatus; Bruno and Guigo,
      Carthusians.

  CHAPTER XVII

    THE QUALITY OF LOVE IN ST. BERNARD                                 392

  CHAPTER XVIII

    ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI                                              415

  CHAPTER XIX

    MYSTIC VISIONS OF ASCETIC WOMEN                                    442

      Elizabeth of Schoenau; Hildegard of Bingen; Mary of Ognies;
      Liutgard of Tongern; Mechthild of Magdeburg.

  CHAPTER XX

    THE SPOTTED ACTUALITY                                              471

      The Testimony of Invective and Satire; Archbishop Rigaud's
      _Register_; Engelbert of Cologne; Popular Credences.

  CHAPTER XXI

    THE WORLD OF SALIMBENE                                             494


  BOOK IV

  THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: SOCIETY

  CHAPTER XXII

    FEUDALISM AND KNIGHTHOOD                                           521

      Feudal and Christian Origin of Knightly Virtue; the Order of
      the Temple; Godfrey of Bouillon; St. Louis; Froissart's
      _Chronicles_.

  CHAPTER XXIII

    ROMANTIC CHIVALRY AND COURTLY LOVE                                 558

      From Roland to Tristan and Lancelot.

  CHAPTER XXIV

    PARZIVAL, THE BRAVE MAN SLOWLY WISE                                588




BOOK I

THE GROUNDWORK




CHAPTER I

GENESIS OF THE MEDIAEVAL GENIUS


The antique civilization of the Roman Empire was followed by that
depression of decadence and barbarization which separates antiquity from
the Middle Ages. Out of the confusion of this intervening period emerged
the mediaeval peoples of western Europe. These, as knowledge increased
with them, began to manifest spiritual traits having no clear counterpart
in the ancient sources from which they drew the matter of their thought
and contemplation.

The past which furnished the content of mediaeval thought was twofold,
very dual, even carrying within itself the elements of irreconcilable
conflict; and yet with its opposing fronts seemingly confederated, if not
made into one. Sprung from such warring elements, fashioned by all the
interests of life in heaven as well as life on earth, the traits and
faculties of mediaeval humanity were to make a motley company. Clearly
each mediaeval century will offer a manifold of disparity and
irrelationship, not to be brought to unity, any more than can be followed
to the breast of one mighty wind-god the blasts that blow from every
quarter over the waters of our own time. Nevertheless, each mediaeval
century, and if one will, the entire Middle Ages, seen in distant
perspective, presents a consistent picture, in which dominant mediaeval
traits, retaining their due pre-eminence, may afford a just conception of
the mediaeval genius.[1]


I

While complex in themselves, and intricate in their interaction, the
elements that were to form the spiritual constituency of the Middle Ages
of western Europe may be disentangled and regarded separately. There was
first the element of the antique, which was descended from the thought and
knowledge current in Italy and the western provinces of the Roman Empire,
where Latin was the common language. In those Roman times, this fund of
thought and knowledge consisted of Greek metaphysics, physical science,
and ethics, and also of much that the Latins had themselves evolved,
especially in private law and political institutions.

Rome had borrowed her philosophy and the motives of her literature and art
from Greece. At first, quite provincially, she drew as from a foreign
source; but as the great Republic extended her boundaries around the
Mediterranean world, and brought under her levelling power the Hellenized
or still Asiatic East, and Africa and Spain and Gaul as well, Greek
thought, as the informing principle of knowledge, was diffused throughout
all this Roman Empire, and ceased to be alien to the Latin West. Yet the
peoples of the West did not become Hellenized, or change their speech for
Greek. Latin held its own against its subtle rival, and continued to
advance with power through the lands which had spoken other tongues before
their Roman subjugation; and it was the soul of Latium, and not the soul
of Hellas, that imbued these lands with a new homogeneity of civic order.
The Greek knowledge which spread through them was transmuted in Latin
speech or writings; while the great Latin authors who modelled Latin
literature upon the Greek, and did so much to fill the Latin mind with
Greek thoughts, recast their borrowings in their own style as well as
language, and re-tempered the matter to accord with the Roman natures of
themselves and their countrymen. Hence only through Latin paraphrase, and
through transformation in the Latin classics, Greek thought reached the
mediaeval peoples; until the thirteenth century, when a better
acquaintance was opened with the Greek sources, yet still through closer
Latin translations, as will be seen.

Thus it was with the pagan antique as an element of mediaeval culture. Nor
was it very different with the patristic, or Christian antique, element.
For in the fourth and fifth centuries, the influence of pagan Greece on
pagan Rome tended to repeat itself in the relations between the Greek and
the Latin Fathers of the Church. The dogmatic formulation of Christianity
was mainly the work of the former. Tertullian, a Latin, had indeed been an
early and important contributor to the process. But, in general, the Latin
Fathers were to approve and confirm the work of Athanasius and of his
coadjutors and predecessors, who thought and wrote in Greek. Nevertheless,
Augustine and other Latin Fathers ordered and made anew what had come from
their elder brethren in the East, Latinizing it in form and temper as well
as language. At the same time, they supplemented it with matter drawn from
their own thinking. And so, the thoughts of the Greek Fathers having been
well transmuted in the writings of Ambrose, Hilary, and Augustine,
patristic theology and the entire mass of Christianized knowledge and
opinion came to the Middle Ages in a Latin medium.

A third and vaguest factor in the evolution of the mediaeval genius
consisted in the diverse and manifold capacities of the mediaeval peoples:
Italians whose ancestors had been very part of the antique; inhabitants of
Spain and Gaul who were descended from once Latinized provincials; and
lastly that widespread Teuton folk, whose forbears had barbarized and
broken the Roman Empire in those centuries when a decadent civilization
could no longer make Romans of barbarians. Moreover, the way in which
Christianity was brought to the Teuton peoples and accepted by them, and
the manner of their introduction to the pagan culture, reduced at last to
following in the Christian train, did not cease for centuries to react
upon the course of mediaeval development.

The distinguishing characteristics which make the Middle Ages a period in
the history of western Europe were the result of the interaction of the
elements of mediaeval development working together, and did not spring
from the singular nature of any one of them. Accordingly, the proper
beginning of the Middle Ages, so far as one may speak of a beginning,
should lie in the time of the conjunction of these elements in a joint
activity. That could not be before the barbaric disturbers of the Roman
peace had settled down to life and progress under the action of Latin
Christianity and the surviving antique culture. Nor may this beginning be
placed before the time when Gregory the Great (died 604) had refashioned
Augustine, and much that was earlier, to the measure of the coming
centuries; nor before Boethius (died 523), Cassiodorus (died 575), and
Isidore of Seville (died 636), had prepared the antique pabulum for the
mediaeval stomach. All these men were intermediaries or transmitters, and
bel