P. L. Jacob

“ The dominant idea in this Flemish masterpiece is but the expression of those mysterious words which connect the thought of the grave with the vision of eternal bliss: “Christ is the first-born from the dead.” He is our elder brother in that new life where the bitterness of mourning and the sorrow of separation are unknown. At the archangel’s voice, at the blast of the trumpet, the dead bodies of those whom we have loved shall rise radiant from the earth, within whose bosom they laid in calm repose, awaiting the morning of the resurrection. ”

“ Christianity civilised the barbarians; by unity of faith, it established political unity amongst peoples who were split up into hostile races—a result which would only have been arrived at in former days by the annihilation of nationalities, the dominion of the sword, and the force of oppression. History presents no spectacle more worthy of our attention than the steady and deep operation of this new principle of life infused into a society in a state of decay. ”

“ The immense crowd of pilgrims, according to another historian of the Crusades, Glaber the monk, was far greater than religious devotion alone could possibly account for. The first to come were the poor and the working classes, and then counts, barons, and princes, who no longer attached any value to the possessions of this world. And further, as if the miraculous influence of this grand religious manifestation had inspired the infidels themselves with admiration and awe, the cruelties and the persecutions inflicted upon the Christians in Palestine suddenly ceased. ”

“ The Templars in time reached the summit of their fortunes, the height of their prosperity and their fame, and nothing was left to them but to decay. Inflated with wealth, laden with privileges which gave them almost sovereign power, the only judges they recognised were the pope and themselves. The order at last became so demoralised by luxury and idleness that it forgot the aim for which it was founded, disdained to obey its own rules, and gave itself up to the love of gain and thirst for pleasure. ”

“ In his splendid picture, “The Last Judgment,” the grouping of the elect is a chef-d’œuvre of Christian art. The green grass, the flowers springing up on all sides, bring before the mind the resurrection, and the elevated spiritualism of the faces which are depicted in this exquisite scene carries the imagination into an ideal world. Man, with the belief in a life to come, looked on death but as a sleep stealing over the traveller, wearied with his pilgrimage towards the heavenly country. The place of burial became the place of sleep (which is the meaning of the word cemetery) . ”

“ The barbarians, accustomed to carry all before them by the weight of arms, could not be subdued by a force or civilised by a literature which they despised or failed to understand; but the clergy, surrounded by that pomp which has so great an influence over uncultivated imaginations, combated them with simple and plain doctrines, with a vigorous and united hierarchy, and with a faith which, needing no subtle reasonings, imposes only the duty of belief, and leans for support upon a morality the sanctity of which they could not but feel, even while violating it. ”

“ Pope St. Leo, after having ordered a juridical inquiry to be held concerning the Manicheans who had taken refuge in Rome, stated, “What has been done is not enough; the Inquisition must continue not only as an inducement for the devout to hold fast by their faith, but in order that those who have been led astray may be converted from their errors.” The primitive and real object of the Inquisition was to discover errors in doctrine, to stop them from being propagated, and to endeavour to enlighten and to win back those who had been perverted by the apostles of error. ”

“ He wandered in this guise from town to town, from province to province, stirring up the courage of some and the piety of others; sometimes he addressed them from church pulpits, sometimes in the highways and public places. His eloquence was keen and vigorous, full of vehement appeals that carried away the multitudes who listened to him. He recalled to their memories the profanation of the holy places, and the Christian blood that had poured in rivers down the streets of Jerusalem ”

“ Christian Rome, bedewed with the martyrs’ blood and enriched with their relics, has since the first ages of Christianity been the central object of the great majority of pilgrimages. Her three hundred churches have one after another been visited by a host of believers drawn thither by pious recollections, by all kinds of effectual acts of grace or indulgences, by an abundant [375] hospitality, by a pompous ceremonial, and, above all, by the ardour of their faith. On great anniversaries, at jubilees and at the Inventions of the bodies of saints, the number of pilgrims multiplied indefinitely. ”

“ The accounts of these persecutions, which seemed intended to utterly annihilate the faith of the cross, filled the hearts of the faithful with gloom and anger. The day was already fast approaching when the groans and complaints that reached them from the Holy Land were to rouse and arm the nations of the West for the deliverance of Christ’s tomb, and the formidable struggle, soon to take place between the Christian and the Moslem—a struggle fated to last for two hundred years with alternate successes and reverses on either side—was destined to decide the future of European civilisation. ”

“ The worship of relics, as well as that of miraculous images, had, beyond question, sometimes degenerated into superstition; but it is impossible to deny the services which it rendered to Christianity in these ages of barbarism. The people, without anything to restrain or to guide them, were in a state of perpetual commotion, easily tempted to evil, a prey to the first adventurer who could show them some ready road to plunder, impatient of all social restraint, moving about from place to place, and dead to all family ties and love of country. ”

“ The dogma of a common origin and destiny for all men [vii] alike, was an unceasing argument for the emancipation of the people; it brought together men of all stations, and opened the way for modern civilisation. Men, though they did not cease to oppress one another, began to recognise the fact that they were all members of the same family, and were led, through religious equality, up to civil and political equality; being brothers in the sight of God, they became equal before the law, the Christian became the citizen. ”

“ Indeed, it may be said that organs and church bells had an equal share in raising the prestige of the ceremonial liturgy, which charmed and captivated both the senses and the souls of its hearers, by the display of its numerous officiating clergy, by the solemn gravity of its chants, by the noble simplicity of the vestments, and by the chaste and majestic arrangement of its ritual. ”

“ Political chaos, a chaos that Christianity alone was destined to regenerate, was at its height in the old world, when, towards the close of the sixth century, Theodoric, King of the Eastern Goths, who had protected Byzantium when threatened by the Bulgarians, and who had remained in the pay of the Emperor Zeno, determined to find occupation for his warlike and restless subjects by leading them against Odoacer, the sovereign of the Herulians, who at that time united under his sway Sicily and the Italian peninsula, but whose subjects were at best but a ferocious and turbulent mob. ”

“ Besides these, varlets and sergeants, who were specially entrusted with the duty of keeping order, of picking up and replacing broken weapons, and of raising unhorsed knights, were posted everywhere in and about the lists; while musicians on separate stands held themselves ready to celebrate with noisy flourishes every great feat of arms and every fortunate and brilliant stroke. The sound of their clarions announced the entry of the knights into the lists, stepping with slow and solemn cadence, magnificently armed and equipped, and followed by their esquires on horseback. ”

“ Between these two extreme points of the history of the Middle Ages, Charlemagne, Godefroi de Bouillon, St. Louis, the age of chivalry and the Crusades, prove to us that this combined action of military and religious life is a true exponent of the character of France. But when we come to consider the ordinary condition of things as they absolutely existed, we find it to be full of evils. Military life amongst the German people had produced feudalism, and with it a terrible anarchy. ”

“ This time the cry of sorrow and indignation was uttered by Pope Gregory VII., that illustrious pontiff whose ardent and resolute nature, in the midst of the universal disorder and disorganization of government and society, seemed to have a divine mission to fulfil in settling upon an indestructible basis the supreme authority of the Church. “The miseries suffered by the Eastern Christians,” he wrote, “have so stirred up my heart that I almost long for death, and I would rather expose my life in delivering the holy places than reign over the universe. ”

“ In fact, in the Middle Ages there were an immense number of festivals which gave rise to processions (Fig. 196) and to other religious ceremonies. It must not be forgotten that all great festivals were indifferently termed Easters. The anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the great Easter, and in order to prepare worthily for it, the body was purified by baths, and the hair and the beard were cut, as tokens of the care with which the Christian ought to preserve the purity of his soul, and to remove the vices that infect the unregenerated man. ”

“ Peter the Hermit, says the historian whose account we are following, left Italy, crossed the Alps, and wandered over France and a great part of Europe, infusing into all the burning zeal with which he was filled. He journeyed on a mule, a crucifix in his hand, his feet bare, his head uncovered, his body girdled with a thick cord, and clad in a long frock and mantle of the commonest, coarsest stuff. His peculiar garments excited the curiosity of the [112] people, while the austerity of his life, his charity, and the morality he inculcated, made them reverence him as a saint. ”

“ The Templars were bound to go to mass three times a week, and to communicate thrice a year; they wore a white robe symbolical of purity, to which Pope Eugenius III. added a red cross, to remind them of their oath to be always ready to shed their blood in defence of the Christian religion. Their rules were of great austerity; they prescribed perpetual exile, and war for the holy places to the death. The knights were to accept every combat, however outnumbered they might be, to ask no quarter, and to give no ransom. ”

“ Beyond the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine, feudalism flourished. Lofty fortresses, surrounded with a triple moat, everywhere cast their shadows athwart the land, though the towns enjoyed a full share of municipal liberty, and were not unfrequently the disinterested spectators of the terrible struggles that the feudal nobility carried on between themselves. ”

“ The stronghold of the Middle Ages had precisely the same characteristic as the ancient castellum. The methods of attack against which the engineers had to guard were the assault by escalade, either by surprise or by force of numbers, and the breach, caused either by sapping, mining, or by the battering-rams of the besiegers. The employment of machines or engines of this description was much less frequent after than before the fall of the Roman empire, when the art of war knew no higher flight than to lay siege to a place or sustain a siege. ”

“ Every pursuivant was perfectly well acquainted with the meaning of the ordination of knighthood. The vigil of arms, the strict fasts, the three nights spent in prayer in a lonely chapel, the white garments of the neophyte, the consecration of his sword in front of the altar, were sufficient to prove to the novice the gravity of the engagement he was contracting under the auspices of religion. ”

“ The Benedictine rule, the result of profound physiological and philosophical studies, a work of moral science, of wisdom, and of piety, divided the monks’ time between prayer and manual labour, to be succeeded by the cultivation or exercise of the intellect whenever the glory of God, the interests of the monastery, and the education of the people might require it. St. Benedict soon had under his control an army of monks who spread throughout the whole Christian world the rules of their illustrious chief. ”

“ Civil and foreign wars laid waste and exhausted France, without bringing to the surface one single creative mind, with the exception perhaps of Jean Bureau, the grand master of artillery under Charles VIII. It is by no means going beyond the mark to state that the reverses sustained in Italy, in the reigns of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., were owing less to the chivalrous recklessness of the nobility and their ignorance of the first principles of warfare, than to the gross faults of the military administration of the country. ”

“ And while the most perfect respect and courtesy to ladies were the first duties instilled into each youthful aspirant, it must be owned that the education received by the former was one calculated to make them in every way worthy of such homage. To fit ladies for the queenly part they were destined to play in the world of chivalry, they were taught from their childhood to practise every virtue, to cherish every noble feeling, and generally [150] to emulate the dignity demanded by the social privileges of their rank. ”

“ Charlemagne’s successors were, in fact, neither the kings of France nor the emperors of Germany, but the feudal lords, the great landowners; and their power waxed all the greater from the fact that, in 853, an edict of Charles the Bald ordered the reconstruction of the ancient manors, the repair of their fortifications, and the construction of new ones, so as to arrest the devastating invasions of the Normans, of the Saracens, of the Hungarians, and of the Danes. Thus Europe became dotted with fortresses, behind which both nobles and villains found a refuge against the new flood of barbarians. ”

“ In fact, experience has shown only too plainly since the formation of civilised States, that a change of religious belief necessarily brings about a social transformation, and that a political revolution is but the putting into practice of a theory invented and propounded by a more or less hostile and mischievous philosophy; hence the established principle which ordains that human and divine law should alike be respected. It would therefore be erroneous to regard the Inquisition as an exceptional and abnormal fact, peculiar to the Middle Ages. ”

“ Nurtured in the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, the people had got to be familiar with the wholesome teaching of St. Paul, when he so eloquently drew a comparison between the seed sown in the ground and the corruptible body of the Christian changed into the incorruptible. All men at that time steadfastly believed in the truth of those sublime words: “The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” ”

“ The republic of the human race is what we demand.”
Such was the work of Christianity in that society of the Middle Ages of which it was the life and soul. It is necessary to follow it in the accomplishment of this varied task, and, if we would thoroughly understand it, we must consider it in itself, in its inward life, in its form of worship and liturgy, in its monasteries, in its clergy, and in its different institutions, for herein lay its means of action. ”

“ The disasters of the Crusaders in the East, after two centuries of useless heroism and tremendous efforts, were principally due to the defects in their military administration, which foresaw nothing, and was incapable of adjusting itself to the difficulties inherent to a war in a distant and almost unknown land whither the enthusiastic crowds who wore the cross bent their adventurous steps. Famine, plague, leprosy, and fever destroyed the Christian armies on their journey to Palestine, and during their stay there ”

“ Charlemagne came to Rome in the following year, when, convoking an assembly of the people, he declared the object of his visit and summoned the accusers of the pope to appear before his tribunal. As they did not dare to put in an appearance, he declared that the holy father should be allowed to justify himself on oath. Then in the great cathedral of St. Peter, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, Leo, with his hand upon the books of the Evangelists, cried out, “I know nothing of the crimes with which the Romans have charged me.” ”

“ It had indeed required all the personal influence of the revered monarch to re-awaken the religious enthusiasm, to quicken into life the zeal and faith of a state of society which had become more sceptical, if not more corrupt, as it had become more civilised, and which occupied itself less with the spiritual consolations of the soul than with the material pleasures of the body. ”