The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries

By the close of the reign of Edward I., at the beginning of the Fourteenth Century, the Guild was wealthy in houses and lands, and the foundation was laid of its chapel and almshouses which, with the hall of meeting—the "Rode or Reed Hall"—stood where the Guild Hall is at the present day. Edward III. and Richard II., during the Fourteenth Century, confirmed the rights of the Guild and even added to its privileges. Though it was a purely local institution, the fame of its good works had spread so wide during these next centuries that affiliation with it became a distinction, and the nobility were attracted to its ranks. George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward, with his wife and children, and the Earl of Warwick, and the Lady Margaret were counted among its members, and merchants of distant towns counted it an honor to belong to it. Later, also, Judge Littleton, one of the famous founders of English law, was on its roll of membership.

The objects of the Guild were many and varied and touched the social life of Stratford at every point. The first object was mutual prayer. The Guild maintained five priests or chaplains who were to say masses daily, hour by hour, from six to ten o'clock for its members, it being expected that some of them would be present at each of the masses. Out of the fees of the Guild one wax candle was to be kept alight every day throughout the year at every mass in the church before the rood, or cross, "so that God and our Blessed Virgin and the Venerated Cross may keep and guard all the brethren and sisters of the Guilds from every ill." The second object was charity, under which was included all the various Works of Mercy. The needs of any brother or sister who had fallen into poverty or been robbed were to be provided for "as long as he bears himself rightly towards the brethren." When a brother died all the brethren were bound to follow the body to the church and to pray for his soul at its burial. The Guild candle and eight smaller ones were to be kept burning by the body from the time of death till the funeral. When a poor man died in the town the brethren and sisters were, for their soul's health, to find four wax candles, a sheet, and a hearse cloth for the corpse. This rule also applied in the event of a stranger's death, if the stranger had not the necessary means for burial. Nor were the efforts of the Guild at Stratford devoted solely to the alleviation of the ills of mankind and the more serious purposes of life. Once a year, in Easter Week, a feast of the members was held in order to foster peace and true brotherly love among them. At this time offerings were made for the poor in order that they too might share in the happiness of the festival time. There was attendance at church before the feasting and a prayer was offered by all the "brethren and sisters that God and our Blessed Virgin and the Venerated Cross in whose honor we have come together will keep us from all ills and sins." This frequent reference to the Cross will be better understood if it is recalled that the Guild at Stratford bore the name of the Guild of the Holy Cross, and the figure of the crucified One was one of its most respected symbols and was always looked upon as a special object of veneration on the part of the members.

The thoroughly progressive spirit of the Guild at Stratford will perhaps be best appreciated by the modern mind from the fact, that to it the town owed the foundation of its famous free school. During the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries the study of grammar, and of the various theoretical branches, was not considered the essential part of an education. Gradually, however, there had arisen the feeling that all the children should be taught the ground-work of the vulgar tongue, and that those whose parents wished it should receive education in Latin also; hence the establishment of grammar schools, that at Stratford being founded for the children of the members of the Guild about the middle of the Fifteenth Century. This was only the normal development of the earlier spirit of the Guild which enabled it to meet the growing social needs of the time. It was at this school, as reconstituted under Edward VI., that Shakespeare was educated, and the reestablishment by Edward was only in response to the many complaints which arose because of the absence of the school after its suppression by Henry VIII. The fact that Shakespeare was educated at an Edward VI. grammar school, has often given occasion for commentators to point out that it was practically the Reformation in England which led to the establishment of free schools. Any such suggestion, however, can be made only in complete ignorance of the preexisting state of affairs in which the people, by organization, succeeded in accomplishing so much for themselves.

As a matter of fact the Guild at Stratford, as in most of the towns in England—for we have taken this as an example only because it is easier to get at the details of its history—was the most important factor in the preservation of social order, in the distribution of charity, in the providing of education, and even the maintenance of the security of the life and property of its inhabitants. When it was dissolved, in 1547, Stratford found itself in a chaotic state and had to petition Edward VI. to reconstitute the Guild as a civil corporation, which he did by charter in 1553.

After this consideration of the guilds and their purpose and success, it is no wonder that we should declare that the wind of the spirit of democracy was blowing in England and carrying away the old landmarks of absolute government. It is to the spirit thus fostered that must be attributed the marvelous progress in representative government, the steps of which we recall.

In 1215, all England united against the odious John Lackland and obliged him to grant the Magna Charta—a declaration of national liberty.

In 1257, the Provisions of Oxford, under Henry III., established, for the moment, the stated recurrence of the great national council of Parliament.

In 1265, under the same Prince, the earl of Leicester admitted to Parliament the knights of the shire and the representatives of the townspeople, who formed later the lower house, or House of Commons, while those personally summoned to attend by the king from the great nobles formed the upper house, or House of Lords.

Beginning with the year 1295, in the reign of Edward I., the attendance of the county and town members became regular, making Parliament really representative of the country.

In 1309, in the reign of Edward II., Parliament revealed its possible strength by putting conditions on its vote for taxes.

There were other factors at work, however, and one of them at least, because of its importance, deserves to be recalled here. In the chapter on Great Beginnings of Modern Commerce we call attention to the fact, that the Crusades were responsible to a great degree for the spirit of enterprise which led to the formation of the Lombard league of cities, and later to the great Hanseatic League, which seems to have taken at least its incentive from the Southern Confederation. In the chapter on Louis IX. we point out that the Crusades, and his connection with them, far from being blots on Louis's career must rather be considered as manifestations of the great heart of the time which was awakening to all needs, and had its religious aspirations stirred so deeply that men were ready to give up everything in order to follow an idea. One thing is certain, the Crusades did more to set ferments at work in the social organization of Europe than would have been possible by any other movement. These ferments brought about two results, one the uplift of the common people, the other the centralization of power in the hands of the kings with the gradual diminution of the influence of the nobility. While fostering the spirit of democracy on the one hand, they gave birth to the spirit of nationality and to all that this has accomplished in modern history.

Storrs, in his life of St. Bernard, recently issued, has given expression to this thought in a very striking fashion. He says:

"It used to be the fashion to regard the Crusades as mere fantastic exhibitions of a temporary turbulent religious fanaticism, aiming at ends wholly visionary, and missing them, wasting the best life of Europe in colossal and bloody undertakings, and leaving effects only of evil for the time which came after. More reasonable views now prevail; and while the impulse in which the vast movement took its rise is recognized as passionate and semi-barbaric, it is seen that many effects followed which were beneficial rather than harmful, which could not perhaps have been at the time in other ways realized. As I have already suggested, properties were to an important extent redistributed in Europe, and the constitutions of states were favorably affected. Lands were sold at low prices by those who were going on the distant expeditions, very probably, as they knew, never to return; and horses and armor, with all martial equipments, were bought at high prices by the Jews, who could not hold land, and the history of whom throughout the Middle Ages is commonly traced in fearful lines of blood and fire, but who increased immeasurably their movable wealth through these transfers of property. Communes bought liberties by large contributions to the needs of their lord; and their liberties, once secured, were naturally confirmed and augmented, as the years went on. The smaller tended to be absorbed in the larger; the larger often to come more strictly under royal control, thus increasing the power of the sovereign—which meant at the time, general laws, instead of local, a less minutely oppressive administration, the furtherance of the movement toward national unity. It is a noticeable fact that Italy took but a comparatively small part in the Crusades; and the long postponement of organic union between different parts of the magnificent peninsula is not without relation to this. The influence which operated elsewhere in Europe to efface distinction of custom and language in separate communities, to override and extinguish local animosities, to make scattered peoples conscious of kinship, did not operate there; and the persistent severance of sections from each other, favored, of course, by the run of the rivers and the vast separating walls of the Apenines, was the natural consequence of the want of this powerful unifying force."32

As a matter of fact very few people realize how much was accomplished for the spirit of democracy, for liberty, for true progress, as regards the rights of men of all classes, and for the feeling of the brotherhood of man itself, by the Crusades. A practical money-making age may consider them examples of foolish religious fanaticism, but those who have studied them most profoundly and with most sympathy, who are deeply interested in the social amelioration which they brought about, and, above all, those who look at them in the higher poetic spirit of what they did to lift man above the sordid cares of everyday life, see them in a far different way. Charles Kingsley sang in the poem of The Saints Tragedy:

"Tell us how our stout crusading fathers

Fought and bled for God and not for gold."

But quite apart from the poetry of them, from the practical side much can be said which even the most matter of fact of men will appreciate. Here, for instance, are a series of paragraphs from the history of the Middle Ages by George Washington Greene, which he confesses to have taken chiefly from the French,33 which will make clear something of the place these great expeditions should be considered as holding in the history of democracy and of liberty:

"Christendom had not spent in vain its treasures and its blood in the holy wars. Its immense sacrifices were repaid by immense results, and the evils which these great expeditions necessarily brought with them were more than compensated for by the advantages which they procured for the whole of Europe.

"The Crusades saved Europe from the Mussulman invasion and this was their immediate good. Their influence was felt, too, in a manner less direct, but not less useful. The Crusades had been preached by a religion of equality in a society divided by odious distinctions. All had taken part in them, the weak as well as the strong, the serf and the baron, man and woman, and it was by them that the equality of man and woman, which Christianity taught, was made a social fact. St. Louis declared that he could do nothing without the consent of his queen, his wife. It was from this period that we must date that influence of woman which gave rise to chivalric courtesy, the first step towards refinement of manners and civilization. The poor, too, were the adopted children of the Christian chivalry of the Crusades. The celebrated orders of Palestine were instituted for the protection of poor pilgrims. The Knights of the hospitals called the poor their masters. Surely no lesson was more needed by these proud barons of the Middle Ages than that of charity and humility.

"These ideas were the first to shake the stern despotism of feudality, by opposing to it the generous principles of chivalry which sprang all armed from the Crusades. Bound to the military orders by a solemn vow—and in the interests of all Christendom—the knight felt himself free from feudal dependence, and raised above national limits, as the immediate warrior and servant of the united Christendom and of God. Chivalry founded not upon territorial influence, but upon personal distinction, necessarily weakened nobility by rendering it accessible to all, and diminishing the interval which separated the different classes of society. Every warrior who had distinguished himself by his valor could kneel before the king to be dubbed a knight, and rise up the equal, the superior even, of powerful vassals. The poorest knight could sit at the king's table while the noble son of a duke or prince was excluded, unless he had won the golden spurs of knighthood. Another way by which the Crusades contributed to the decay of feudalism was by favoring the enfranchisement of serfs, even without the consent of their masters. Whoever took the cross became free, just as every slave becomes free on touching the soil of England or France.

"The communities whose development is to be referred to the period of the Crusades, multiplied rapidly; the nobility gladly granting charters and privileges in exchange for men and money. With the communities the royal power grew, and that of the aristocracy decreased. The royal domain was enlarged, by the escheating of a great number of fiefs which had been left vacant by the death of their lords. The kings protected the communities, favored their enfranchisement, and employed them usefully against insubordinate vassals. The extension of the royal power favored the organization of the nation, by establishing a principle of unity, for till then, and with that multitude of masters, the nation had been little else than an agglomeration of provinces, strangers to one another, and destitute of any common bond or common interest. The great vassals, themselves, often united under the royal banner, became accustomed during these distant expeditions to submission and discipline, and learned to recognize a legitimate authority; and if they lost by this submission a part of their personal power, they gained in compensation the honorable distinctions of chivalry.

"But it was not the national feeling alone which was fostered by the Crusades. Relations of fraternity, till then wholly unknown, grew up between different nations, and softened the deep-rooted antipathy of races. The knights, whom a common object united in common dangers, became brothers in arms and formally formed permanent ties of friendship. That barbarous law which gave the feudal lord a right to call every man his serf who settled in his domains was softened. Stranger and enemy seemed to be synonymous, and 'the Crusaders,' say the chroniclers of the times, 'although divided by language, seemed to form only one people, by their love for God and their neighbor.' And without coloring the picture too warmly, and making all due allowance for the exaggerations which were so natural to the first recorders of such a movement, we may say that human society was founded and united and Europe began to pass from the painful period of organization, to one of fuller and more rapid development."

Here in reality modern democracy had its rise, striking its roots deep into the disintegrating soil of the old feudalism whence it was never to be plucked, and though at times it languished it was to remain ever alive until its luxuriant growth in recent times.

ANIMALS FROM BESTIARIUM, THIRTEENTH CENTURY MS.

XXV

GREAT EXPLORERS AND THE FOUNDATION OF GEOGRAPHY

Geography is usually considered to be quite a modern subject. The idea that great contributions were made to it in the Thirteenth Century would ordinarily not be entertained. America was discovered at the end of the Fifteenth Century. Knowledge of the East was obtained during the Sixteenth Century. Africa was explored in the Nineteenth and a detailed knowledge of Asia came to us in such recent years that the books are still among the novelties of publication. Our knowledge of Persia, of Northern India, of Thibet, and of the interior of China are all triumphs of Nineteenth Century enterprise and exploration. As a matter of fact, however, all portions of the East were explored, the Capital and the dominions of Jenghis Khan described, Lhasa was entered and the greater part of China thoroughly explored by travelers of the Thirteenth Century, whose books still remain as convincing evidence of the great work that they accomplished. This chapter of Thirteenth Century accomplishment is, indeed, one of the most interesting and surprising in the whole story of the time.

It is usually considered that the teaching, supposed to have been more or less generally accepted, that the Antipodes did not exist, prevented any significant development of geography until comparatively modern times. While the question of the existence of antipodes was discussed in the schools of the Middle Ages, and especially of the Thirteenth Century when men's minds were occupied with practically all of the important problems even of physical science, and while many intelligent men accepted the idea that there could not be inhabitants on the other side of the world because of physical difficulties which supposedly made it impossible, it would be a mistake to think that this idea was universally accepted. We have already called attention to the fact in the chapter on "What was Taught at the Universities," that Albertus Magnus, for instance, ridiculed the notion that men could not live with their heads down, as was urged against the doctrine of the existence of antipodes, by suggesting very simply that for those on the other side of the earth what we call down was really not down but up. This expresses, of course, the very heart of the solution of the supposed difficulty.

As a matter of fact it seems clear that many of the great travelers and explorers of the later Middle Ages harbored the notion that the earth was round. As we shall note a little later in mentioning Sir John Mandeville's work, the writer, whomever he was who took that pseudonym, believed thoroughly in the rotundity of the earth and did not hesitate to use some striking expressions—which have been often quoted—that he had heard of travelers who by traveling continually to the eastward had come back eventually to the point from which they started. While in the schools, then, the existence of antipodes may have been under discussion, there was a practical acceptance of their existence among those who were better informed with regard to countries and peoples and all the other topics which form the proper subject matter of geography.

It must be realized, moreover, that though the existence of the Antipodes is an important matter in geography, at this early period it was a mere theory, not a condition antecedent to progress. It was really a side issue as compared with many other questions relating to the earth's surface and its inhabitants with which the medieval mind was occupied. To consider that no knowledge of geography could be obtained until there was a definite acceptance of the right view of the earth's surface, would be to obliterate much precious knowledge. The argument as to the existence of antipodes, as it was carried on, was entirely outside of geography properly so-called. It never influenced in the slightest degree the men who were consciously and unconsciously laying deep and broad the foundations of modern geography. To consider such a matter as vital to the development of as many sided a subject as geography, illustrates very typically the narrowness of view of so many modern scholars, who apparently can see the value of nothing which does not entirely accord with modern knowledge. The really interesting historian of knowledge, however, is he who can point out the beginnings of what we now know, in unexpected quarters in the medieval mind.

As the story of these travels and explorations is really a glorious chapter in the history of the encouragement of things intellectual, as well as an interesting phase of an important origin whose foundations were laid broad and deep in the Thirteenth Century, it must be told here in some detail. Our century was the great leader in exploration and geography as in so many other matters in which its true place is often unrecognized.

The people of the time are usually considered to have had such few facilities for travel that they did not often go far from home, and that what was known about distant countries, therefore, was very little and mainly legendary. Nothing could be more false than any such impression as this. The Crusades during the previous century had given the people not only a deep interest in distant lands, but the curiosity to go and see for themselves. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land were frequent, ecclesiastics often traveled at least as far as Italy, and in general the tide of travel in proportion to the number of population must have been not very much less in amount than in our own day. After the establishment of the religious orders, missionary expeditions to the East became very common and during the Thirteenth Century, as we shall see, the Franciscans particularly, established themselves in many parts of the Near East, but also of the Far East, especially in China. Many of those wrote accounts of their travels, and so the literature of travel and exploration during the Thirteenth Century is one of the most interesting chapters of the literature of these times, while the wonderfully deep foundations that were laid for the science of geography, are worthy to be set beside the great origins in other sciences and in the arts, for which the century is so noteworthy.

To most people it will come as a distinct surprise to learn that the travelers and explorers of the Thirteenth Century—merchants, ambassadors, and missionaries—succeeded in solving many of the geographical problems that have been of deepest interest to the generations of the last half of last century. The eastern part of Asia particularly was traveled over and very thoroughly described by them. Even the northern part of India, however, was not neglected in spite of the difficulties that were encountered, and Thibet was explored and Lhasa entered by travelers of the Thirteenth Century. Of China as much was written as had been learned by succeeding generations down practically to our own time. This may sound like a series of fairy-tales instead of serious science, but it is the travelers and explorers of the modern time who have thought it worth while to comment on the writings of these old-time wanderers of the Thirteenth Century, and who have pointed out the significance of their work. These men described not only the countries through which they passed, but also the characters of the people, their habits and customs, their forms of speech, with many marvelous hints as regards the relationship of the different languages, and even something about the religious practises of these countries and their attitude toward the great truths of Christianity when they were presented to them.

Undoubtedly one of the greatest travelers and explorers of all times was Marco Polo, whose book was for so long considered to be mainly made up of imaginary descriptions of things and places never seen, but which the development of modern geographical science by travels and expeditions has proved to be one of the most valuable contributions to this department of knowledge that has ever been made. It took many centuries for Marco Polo to come to his own in this respect but the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries have almost more than made up for the neglect of their predecessors. Marco Polo suffered the same fate as did Herodotus of whom Voltaire sneered "father of history, say, rather, father of lies." So long as succeeding generations had no knowledge themselves of the things of which both these great writers had written, they were distrusted and even treated contemptuously. Just as soon, however, as definite knowledge began to come it was seen how wonderfully accurate both of them were in their descriptions of things they had actually seen, though they admitted certain over-wonderful stories on the authority of others. Herodotus has now come to be acknowledged as one of the greatest of historians. In his lives of celebrated travelers, James Augustus St. John states the change of mind with regard to Marco Polo rather forcibly: