Ierne L. Plunket

“ The great secret of the Renaissance is indeed this release of the restless spirit of inquiry after truth, that is as old as humanity itself, and that, swooping like a bird through the door of a cage out into the air and sunshine, reckless of danger, carried along by the sheer joy of unfettered life, sometimes foolish and extravagant in its zest for experience, was at first too absorbed in the glory and interest of freedom to feel any regret for the prison that had been at least a shelter from the many stormy problems that were to rend the modern world. ”

“ The word ‘progress’ implies to modern men and women a moving forward towards a perfection as yet unknown, freshly imagined indeed by each generation: to the Middle Ages it meant rather a peering back through the mist of barbarian invasions to an idealized Christian Rome. Inspiration lay in the past, not merely in such political conceptions as the Holy Roman Empire, but in the domain of art and thought, where too often tradition laid her choking grip upon originality struggling for expression. ”

“ Thus it was that a strong monarchy, such as Louis XI was able to establish in France at the end of the Hundred Years’ War, and the Tudors in England after the Wars of the Roses, was also organized and maintained in Spain. Under its despotic sway many popular liberties were lost, but peace was gained at home, and glory and honour abroad above all expectations. The perpetual crusade against the Moors had always touched the imagination of Europe—now its crowning achievement, the Conquest of Granada, dazzled their eyes with all the pageantry and pomp of victory so dear to mediaeval minds. ”

“ In one sense it was a complete triumph for the Pope; but Leo was a clear-sighted statesman and knew that the power to which he had been restored rested on a weak foundation. The very fact that he had been compelled to appeal for justice to a temporal sovereign lowered the office that he held in the eyes of the world; and he possessed no guarantee that, once the Franks had left Rome, his enemies would not again attack him. Without a recognized champion, always ready to enforce her will, the Papacy remained at the mercy of those who chose to oppose or hinder her. ”

“ A modern student, when he passes from school to a university, soon finds that he is standing at a cross-roads: he cannot hope, like a philosopher of the sixteenth century, to ‘take all knowledge for his province’, but must choose which of the many signposts he will follow—law, classics, science, economics, chemistry, medicine, to name but a few of the more important. Mediaeval minds would have been sorely puzzled by some of these avenues of knowledge, while the rest they would denounce as mere sidetracks, leading by a devious route to the main high road of theology. ”

“ Churches and chapels in modern times have become the property of a section of the public—that is, of those who think or believe in a certain way; and sometimes through poverty of purse or spirit, through bad workmanship or material, the architecture that results is shoddy or insignificant. In the Middle Ages his parish church was the most certain fact in every Christian’s existence, from the day he was carried to the font for baptism until his last journey to rest beneath its shadow. ”

“ What message had these classical philosophers, that tradition held had lived in a golden age, for struggling humanity more than a thousand years later? The men and women of the Renaissance, as they put this question, hoped that the answers they discovered would agree with the Faith that the Church had taught them; but there was no longer the same insistence that they must or be disregarded as heresy. The interest in an immortal soul had become mingled with interest in what was human and transitory, with the beauty and charm of this life as well as with the glory of the next. ”

“ The central road of mediaeval commerce had been the Mediterranean, the highway of the modern world was to be the Atlantic, and the commercial future of Europe lay not with the city republics of the South but with the nations of the North and West, with Portugal and Spain, with Flanders and England, that had lain upon the fringe of the Old World but stood at the very heart of the New. ”

“ Suspicion made the timid Emperor writhe with terror through sleepless nights. It seemed to him that he would never know peace of mind again until he had rid himself of his formidable commander-in-chief; and so by his orders Stilicho was put to death and Italy lay at the mercy of Alaric and his followers.
Sweeping across the Alps, the Visigoths paused at last before the gates of Rome. ‘We are many in number and prepared to fight,’ boldly began the ambassadors sent out from the city. ‘Thick grass is easier to mow than thin,’ replied Alaric. ”

“ Cities to-day that have universities in their midst are proud of the fact, and welcome new students; but in early mediaeval times an influx of young men of all ages from every part of Europe, many of them wild and unruly, some so poor that they must beg or steal their daily bread, was at first sight a very doubtful blessing. Street fights between nationalities who hated one another on principle, or between bands of students and citizens, were a common occurrence in the towns that learning honoured with her presence, and had their usual accompaniment of broken heads, fires, and looting. ”

“ Chaste, industrious, devoted to the interests of husband and children, yet so patriotic that, watching the battle, she would urge them rather to perish than retreat, the barbarian woman struck Tacitus as a living reproach to the many faithless, idle, pleasure-seeking wives and mothers of Rome in his own day. The German tribes might be uncouth, their armies without discipline, even their nobles ignorant of culture, but they were brave, hospitable, and loyal. ”

“ In their dragon-ships, the huge prows fashioned into the heads of fierce animals or monsters, the Viking ‘Earls’, weary of dicing and throwing the javelin at home, or exiled by their kings for some misdeeds, would sweep in fleets across the North Sea, some to explore Iceland and the far-off shores of Greenland and North America, some to burn the monasteries along the Irish coast, others to raid North Germany, France, or England. At first their only object was plunder, for unlike the Huns they did not despise the luxuries of civilization—only those who allowed its influence to make them ‘soft’. ”

“ To-day we know that neither suppression nor burnings can ultimately extinguish that independence of thought and spirit of inquiry that are as much the motive power of some human natures as the acceptance of authority is of others. Tolerance, and how far it can be extended to actions as well as beliefs, is one of the problems that the world is still studying. The towns and provinces, where the first battles were fought, are sown with the blood and ashes of those who neither sought nor offered the way of compromise as a solution. ”

“ Italy and Gaul ceased to be merely a paradise for looters, but were sought by barbarians, who had learned something of Rome’s civilization, as a refuge from other barbarians who trod women and children underfoot, leaving a track wherever their cruel hordes passed red with blood and fire. With their coming, Europe passed from the brightness of Rome into the ‘Dark Ages’. ”

“ Rome stood for military glory, luxury, culture, at her best for even-handed justice, but no longer for an ideal of liberty. If national pride was satisfied, and adequate food and amusement provided, the Roman populace was content to be ruled from above and to hail rival senators as masters, according to the extent of their promises and success. A failure to fulfil such promises, resulting in a lost campaign or a dearth of corn, would throw the military tyrant of the moment from his pedestal, but only to set up another in his place. ”

“ The lords of Milan in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were the Visconti, typical tyrants of the Italy of their day, quick with their swords, but still more ready with poison or a dagger, profligate and luxurious, patrons of literature and art, bad enemies and still worse friends, false and cruel, subtle as the serpent they so fittingly bore as an emblem. No bond but fear compelled their subject’s loyalty, and deliberate cruelty to inspire fear they had made a part of their system. ”

“ In the dungeons of Perugia the mirth of Francis Bernadone had been called by his companions ‘craziness’, and to those whose eyes read evil rather than good in this world his message still borders on madness. Yet the Saint of Assisi has had his followers in all ages since his death, distinguished not necessarily by the Grey Friar’s robe, but by their silent spending of themselves for others and their joyous belief in God and man. ”

“ Of all mediaeval warriors of whom we read she was the bravest; for she knew what fear was and would often pray not to fall into the hands of her enemies alive, yet she never shirked a battle or went into danger with a downcast face. A slim figure, with her close-cropped dark hair and shining eyes, she rode wherever the fight was thickest, always, in the words of a modern biographer, ‘gay and gaily glad,’ quick to see her opportunities and follow them up, joyful in victory, generous to her foes, pitiful to the wounded and prisoners. ”

“ The advantages of a common tongue can be imagined: the comparative ease with which a pope or king could keep in touch with bishops or subjects of a different race; the accessibility of the best books to students of all nations, since scarcely a mediaeval author of repute would condescend to employ his own tongue: above all perhaps the ease with which an ambassador, a merchant, or a pilgrim could make himself understood on a journey across Europe, instead of torturing his brain with struggles after the right word in first one foreign dialect and then another. ”

“ Since the Lombard kingdom had split up into a number of duchies each with its own capital, Italy, in the early Middle Ages, tended to become a group of city states, each jealous of its neighbours and ambitious only for local interests. This provincial influence was so strong that it has lasted into modern times. An Englishman or a Frenchman will claim his country before thinking of the particular part from which he comes, but it is more natural for an Italian to say first ‘I am Roman,’ or ‘Neapolitan,’ or ‘Florentine,’ as the case may be. ”

“ A fierce war followed, but in spite of defeats, treaties that would have sacrificed her to the interests of kings, and continuous papal threats, Sicily clung staunch to her new ally, gaining at last as a recognized Aragonese possession a triumphant independence of the Angevin kingdom of Naples.
Rome, under a pope who was merely the puppet of Charles of Anjou, had hurled anathemas at Peter III; but his successors of more independent mind envied the Sicilians. It was of little use for Rome to throw off Hohenstaufen chains if she must rivet in their stead those of the French House of Anjou. ”

“ He did not want the praetorship in order to be of use to the Empire, but merely that the Empire might crown his career with a coveted honour. The same narrow outlook and lack of public spirit was common to the majority of the other men and women of his class, and so great was their blindness that they could not even see that they were undermining Rome’s power, far less avail to save her.
More fatal even than the corruption of the aristocracy was the decline of the middle classes, usually called the backbone of a nation’s greatness. ”

“ Italy, we have seen, was pre-eminently the home of the Renaissance—the teacher destined to give the world the ‘New Learning’ as she had preserved the old during the Dark Ages. In those sunny days, when Lorenzo ‘the Wise’, as well as ‘the Magnificent’, ruled in Florence, and by his statesmanship preserved so neat a balance of politics that the peninsula, divided by five ambitious Powers, yet remained at peace, a glorious future seemed assured; but in 1492, the year that Columbus discovered America, Lorenzo died. ”

“ It was the expression of a belief that, though humanity must die and personal ambitions fade away, yet Rome herself was eternal and unconquerable, and what was wrought in her name would outlast the ages.
In the modern world it is sometimes necessary to remind people of their citizenship, but the Roman never forgot the greatness of his inheritance. ”

“ Yet in spite of her shorn territories Constantinople remained the greatest city in Europe, not merely in her magnificent site and architecture, nor even in her commerce, but in the hold she preserved over the imagination of men. ”

“ As a summary of mediaeval theories as to the life eternal, and also as the reflection of a fourteenth-century mind on politics of the day, the Divine Comedy is indeed an historical treasury as well as a masterpiece of Italian literature. It is, however, a great deal more—the revelation of the development of a human soul. Dante’s journey is told with a mastery of atmosphere and detail that holds our imaginations to-day with the sense of reality. ”

“ As joint rulers of Castile and Aragon Isabel and Ferdinand dominated Spain, and were able to impose their will even on the most powerful of their rebellious subjects, taking back the crown lands that had been recklessly given away, organizing a Santa Hermandad, or ‘Holy Brotherhood’, on the model of previous local efforts to ensure order, and themselves holding supreme tribunals to judge important cases of robbery and murder. In this display of authority the land not merely acquiesced but rejoiced, utterly weary of an independence the misuse of which had produced licence instead of freedom. ”

“ Augustine’s belief in this life as a mere transitory journey towards the eternal ‘City of God’, mediaeval men and women saw this pilgrimage encompassed with a vast army of devils and saints, ranged in constant battle for the human soul. Only through faith and the kindly assistance of the Saints could man hope to beat off the legions of hell which hung like a pack of wolves about his footsteps, and nowhere with greater efficacy than in the sanctuary from which human prayer arose daily to God’s throne. ”

“ Rome, he maintained, was not and never could be eternal; for the one eternal kingdom was the Civitas Dei, or ‘City of God’, towards whose reign of triumph the human race had been tending since earliest times. Before her glory the kingdoms of this world, and all the culture and civilization of which men boasted, must fade away. ”

“ There is another reason also for the changing character of the Crusades, namely, the loss of the religious enthusiasm in which they had their origin. Men and women had believed that the cross on their arms could turn sinners into saints, break down battlements, and destroy infidels, as if by miracle. When they found that human passions flourished as easily in Palestine as at home and that the way of salvation was, as ever, the path of hard labour and constant effort, they were disillusioned, and eager multitudes no longer clamoured to go to the East. ”

“ For some years after the Second Crusade Western Europe turned a deaf ear to entreaties for help from Palestine, and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem continued to decline steadily not only in territory but in its way of life. The ennervating climate, the temptations to an unhealthy luxury that forgot Christian ideals, the almost unavoidable intermarriage of the races of East and West: all these sapped the vitality and efficiency of the crusading settlers; while the establishment of a feudal government at Jerusalem resulted in the usual quarrels amongst tenants-in-chief and their sub-tenants. ”

“ Even the feeble king was moved; and, when she had been questioned and approved by his bishops, he allowed her to ride forth, as she wished, with the armies of France to save for him the important town of Orleans that was closely besieged by the English. She went in armour with a sword in hand and a banner, and those who rode with her felt her absolute belief in victory, and into their hearts stole the magic influence of her own gay courage and hope.
We have often spoken of ‘chivalry’, the ideal of good conduct in the Middle Ages. ”

“ Stained, indeed, must the Black Prince have felt his honour when he discovered what a brother-in-arms he had crossed the Pyrenees to aid—one who would massacre prisoners for sheer love of butchery, burn a priest for prophesying his death, and murder an archbishop in a fit of savagery. It is probably true to describe this worst of the Spanish kings as mad: many of his atrocities were so meaningless, such obvious steps to his own downfall, because they alienated those who tried to remain loyal to his cause. ”