Bab Bab 35 · Civilisation

The Renaissance was not a political or religious movement. It was a

state of mind.

The men of the Renaissance continued to be the obedient sons of the

mother church. They were subjects of kings and emperors and dukes and

murmured not.

But their outlook upon life was changed. They began to wear different

clothes—to speak a different language—to live different lives in

different houses.

They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their efforts upon

the blessed existence that awaited them in Heaven. They tried to

establish their Paradise upon this planet, and, truth to tell, they

succeeded in a remarkable degree.

I have quite often warned you against the danger that lies in

historical dates. People take them too literally. They think of the

Middle Ages as a period of darkness and ignorance. “Click,” says the

clock, and the Renaissance begins and cities and palaces are flooded

with the bright sunlight of an eager intellectual curiosity.

As a matter of fact, it is quite impossible to draw such sharp lines.

The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly to the Middle Ages.

All historians agree upon that. But was it a time of darkness and

stagnation merely? By no means. People were tremendously alive. Great

states were being founded. Large centres of commerce were being

developed. High above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked

roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built Gothic

cathedral. Everywhere the world was in motion. The high and mighty

gentlemen of the city-hall, who had just become conscious of their own

strength (by way of their recently acquired riches) were struggling for

more power with their feudal masters. The members of the guilds who

had just become aware of the important fact that “numbers count” were

fighting the high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall. The king and

his shrewd advisers went fishing in these troubled waters and caught

many a shining bass of profit which they proceeded to cook and eat

before the noses of the surprised and disappointed councillors and

guild brethren.

To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening when the badly

lighted streets did not invite further political and economic dispute,

the Troubadours and Minnesingers told their stories and sang their

songs of romance and adventure and heroism and loyalty to all fair

women. Meanwhile youth, impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked

to the universities, and thereby hangs a story.

The Middle Ages were “internationally minded.” That sounds difficult,

but wait until I explain it to you. We modern people are “nationally

minded.” We are Americans or Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians and

speak English or French or Italian and go to English and French and

Italian universities, unless we want to specialise in some particular

branch of learning which is only taught elsewhere, and then we learn

another language and go to Munich or Madrid or Moscow. But the people

of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely talked of themselves

as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians. They said, “I am a citizen

of Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa.” Because they all belonged to one

and the same church they felt a certain bond of brotherhood. And as

all educated men could speak Latin, they possessed an international

language which removed the stupid language barriers which have grown up

in modern Europe and which place the small nations at such an enormous

disadvantage. Just as an example, take the case of Erasmus, the

great preacher of tolerance and laughter, who wrote his books in the

sixteenth century. He was the native of a small Dutch village. He wrote

in Latin and all the world was his audience. If he were alive to-day,

he would write in Dutch. Then only five or six million people would be

able to read him. To be understood by the rest of Europe and America,

his publishers would be obliged to translate his books into twenty

different languages. That would cost a lot of money and most likely the

publishers would never take the trouble or the risk.

Six hundred years ago that could not happen. The greater part of the

people were still very ignorant and could not read or write at all. But

those who had mastered the difficult art of handling the goose quill

belonged to an international republic of letters which spread across

the entire continent and which knew of no boundaries and respected

no limitations of language or nationality. The universities were the

strongholds of this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they did

not follow the frontier. They were to be found wherever a teacher and a

few pupils happened to find themselves together. There again the Middle

Ages and the Renaissance differed from our own time. Nowadays, when a

new university is built, the process (almost invariably) is as follows:

Some rich man wants to do something for the community in which he lives

or a particular religious sect wants to build a school to keep its

faithful children under decent supervision, or a state needs doctors

and lawyers and teachers. The university begins as a large sum of money

which is deposited in a bank. This money is then used to construct

buildings and laboratories and dormitories. Finally professional

teachers are hired, entrance examinations are held and the university

is on the way.

But in the Middle Ages things were done differently. A wise man said to

himself, “I have discovered a great truth. I must impart my knowledge

to others.” And he began to preach his wisdom wherever and whenever he

could get a few people to listen to him, like a modern soap-box orator.

If he was an interesting speaker, the crowd came and stayed. If he

was dull, they shrugged their shoulders and continued their way. By

and by certain young men began to come regularly to hear the words of

wisdom of this great teacher. They brought copy-books with them and a

little bottle of ink and a goose quill and wrote down what seemed to be

important. One day it rained. The teacher and his pupils retired to an

empty basement or the room of the “Professor.” The learned man sat in

his chair and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the

University, the “universitas,” a corporation of professors and students

during the Middle Ages, when the “teacher” counted for everything and

the building in which he taught counted for very little.

[Illustration: THE MEDIÆVAL LABORATORY]

As an example, let me tell you of something that happened in the ninth

century. In the town of Salerno near Naples there were a number of

excellent physicians. They attracted people desirous of learning the

medical profession and for almost a thousand years (until 1817) there

was a university of Salerno which taught the wisdom of Hippocrates, the

great Greek doctor who had practised his art in ancient Hellas in the

fifth century before the birth of Christ.

Then there was Abelard, the young priest from Brittany, who early in

the twelfth century began to lecture on theology and logic in Paris.

Thousands of eager young men flocked to the French city to hear him.

Other priests who disagreed with him stepped forward to explain their

point of view. Paris was soon filled with a clamouring multitude of

Englishmen and Germans and Italians and students from Sweden and

Hungary and around the old cathedral which stood on a little island in

the Seine there grew the famous University of Paris.

In Bologna in Italy, a monk by the name of Gratian had compiled a

text-book for those whose business it was to know the laws of the

church. Young priests and many laymen then came from all over Europe

to hear Gratian explain his ideas. To protect themselves against the

landlords and the innkeepers and the boarding-house ladies of the city,

they formed a corporation (or University) and behold the beginning of

the university of Bologna.

[Illustration: THE RENAISSANCE]

Next there was a quarrel in the University of Paris. We do not know

what caused it, but a number of disgruntled teachers together with

their pupils crossed the channel and found a hospitable home in a

little village on the Thames called Oxford, and in this way the

famous University of Oxford came into being. In the same way, in the

year 1222, there had been a split in the University of Bologna. The

discontented teachers (again followed by their pupils) had moved to

Padua and their proud city thenceforward boasted of a university of

its own. And so it went from Valladolid in Spain to Cracow in distant

Poland and from Poitiers in France to Rostock in Germany.

It is quite true that much of the teaching done by these early

professors would sound absurd to our ears, trained to listen to

logarithms and geometrical theorems. The point, however, which I want

to make is this—the Middle Ages and especially the thirteenth century

were not a time when the world stood entirely still. Among the younger

generation, there was life, there was enthusiasm, and there was a

restless if somewhat bashful asking of questions. And out of this

turmoil grew the Renaissance.

But just before the curtain went down upon the last scene of the

Mediæval world, a solitary figure crossed the stage, of whom you ought

to know more than his mere name. This man was called Dante. He was the

son of a Florentine lawyer who belonged to the Alighieri family and

he saw the light of day in the year 1265. He grew up in the city of

his ancestors while Giotto was painting his stories of the life of St.

Francis of Assisi upon the walls of the Church of the Holy Cross, but

often when he went to school, his frightened eyes would see the puddles

of blood which told of the terrible and endless warfare that raged

forever between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the followers of the

Pope and the adherents of the Emperors.

When he grew up, he became a Guelph, because his father had been one

before him, just as an American boy might become a Democrat or a

Republican, simply because his father had happened to be a Democrat

or a Republican. But after a few years, Dante saw that Italy, unless

united under a single head, threatened to perish as a victim of the

disordered jealousies of a thousand little cities. Then he became a

Ghibelline.

He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a mighty emperor

might come and re-establish unity and order. Alas! he hoped in vain.

The Ghibellines were driven out of Florence in the year 1302. From that

time on until the day of his death amidst the dreary ruins of Ravenna,

in the year 1321, Dante was a homeless wanderer, eating the bread of

charity at the table of rich patrons whose names would have sunk into

the deepest pit of oblivion but for this single fact, that they had

been kind to a poet in his misery. During the many years of exile,

Dante felt compelled to justify himself and his actions when he had

been a political leader in his home-town, and when he had spent his

days walking along the banks of the Arno that he might catch a glimpse

of the lovely Beatrice Portinari, who died the wife of another man, a

dozen years before the Ghibelline disaster.

He had failed in the ambitions of his career. He had faithfully

served the town of his birth and before a corrupt court he had been

accused of stealing the public funds and had been condemned to be

burned alive should he venture back within the realm of the city of

Florence. To clear himself before his own conscience and before his

contemporaries, Dante then created an Imaginary World and with great

detail he described the circumstances which had led to his defeat and

depicted the hopeless condition of greed and lust and hatred which had

turned his fair and beloved Italy into a battlefield for the pitiless

mercenaries of wicked and selfish tyrants.

[Illustration: DANTE]

He tells us how on the Thursday before Easter of the year 1300 he had

lost his way in a dense forest and how he found his path barred by a

leopard and a lion and a wolf. He gave himself up for lost when a white

figure appeared amidst the trees. It was Virgil, the Roman poet and

philosopher, sent upon his errand of mercy by the Blessed Virgin and

by Beatrice, who from high Heaven watched over the fate of her true

lover. Virgil then takes Dante through Purgatory and through Hell.

Deeper and deeper the path leads them until they reach the lowest pit

where Lucifer himself stands frozen into the eternal ice surrounded by

the most terrible of sinners, traitors and liars and those who have

achieved fame and success by lies and by deceit. But before the two

wanderers have reached this terrible spot, Dante has met all those who

in some way or other have played a rôle in the history of his beloved

city. Emperors and Popes, dashing knights and whining usurers, they

are all there, doomed to eternal punishment or awaiting the day of

deliverance, when they shall leave Purgatory for Heaven.

It is a curious story. It is a handbook of everything the people of the

thirteenth century did and felt and feared and prayed for. Through it

all moves the figure of the lonely Florentine exile, forever followed

by the shadow of his own despair.

And behold! when the gates of death were closing upon the sad poet

of the Middle Ages, the portals of life swung open to the child who

was to be the first of the men of the Renaissance. That was Francesco

Petrarca, the son of the notary public of the little town of Arezzo.

Francesco’s father had belonged to the same political party as Dante.

He too had been exiled and thus it happened that Petrarca (or Petrarch,

as we call him) was born away from Florence. At the age of fifteen he

was sent to Montpellier in France that he might become a lawyer like

his father. But the boy did not want to be a jurist. He hated the law.

He wanted to be a scholar and a poet—and because he wanted to be a

scholar and a poet beyond everything else, he became one, as people of

a strong will are apt to do. He made long voyages, copying manuscripts

in Flanders and in the cloisters along the Rhine and in Paris and Liège

and finally in Rome. Then he went to live in a lonely valley of the

wild mountains of Vaucluse, and there he studied and wrote and soon

he had become so famous for his verse and for his learning that both

the University of Paris and the king of Naples invited him to come and

teach their students and subjects. On the way to his new job, he was

obliged to pass through Rome. The people had heard of his fame as an

editor of half-forgotten Roman authors. They decided to honour him and

in the ancient forum of the Imperial City, Petrarch was crowned with

the laurel wreath of the Poet.

From that moment on, his life was an endless career of honour and

appreciation. He wrote the things which people wanted most to hear.

They were tired of theological disputations. Poor Dante could wander

through hell as much as he wanted. But Petrarch wrote of love and

of nature and the sun and never mentioned those gloomy things which

seemed to have been the stock in trade of the last generation. And when

Petrarch came to a city, all the people flocked out to meet him and

he was received like a conquering hero. If he happened to bring his

young friend Boccaccio, the story teller, with him, so much the better.

They were both men of their time, full of curiosity, willing to read

everything once, digging in forgotten and musty libraries that they

might find still another manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucretius or

any of the other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course

they were! Everyone was. But no need of going around with a long face

and wearing a dirty coat just because some day or other you were going

to die. Life was good. People were meant to be happy. You desired proof

of this? Very well. Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you

find? Beautiful old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient

buildings. All these things were made by the people of the greatest

empire that ever existed. They ruled all the world for a thousand

years. They were strong and rich and handsome (just look at that bust

of the Emperor Augustus!). Of course, they were not Christians and they

would never be able to enter Heaven. At best they would spend their

days in purgatory, where Dante had just paid them a visit. But who

cared? To have lived in a world like that of ancient Rome was heaven

enough for any mortal being. And anyway, we live but once. Let us be

happy and cheerful for the mere joy of existence.

Such, in short, was the spirit that had begun to fill the narrow and

crooked streets of the many little Italian cities.

You know what we mean by the “bicycle craze” or the “automobile craze.”

Some one invents a bicycle. People who for hundreds of thousands of

years have moved slowly and painfully from one place to another go

“crazy” over the prospect of rolling rapidly and easily over hill and

dale. Then a clever mechanic makes the first automobile. No longer

is it necessary to pedal and pedal and pedal. You just sit and let

little drops of gasoline do the work for you. Then everybody wants

an automobile. Everybody talks about Rolls-Royces and Flivvers and

carburetors and mileage and oil. Explorers penetrate into the hearts

of unknown countries that they may find new supplies of gas. Forests

arise in Sumatra and in the Congo to supply us with rubber. Rubber and

oil become so valuable that people fight wars for their possession.

The whole world is “automobile mad” and little children can say “car”

before they learn to whisper “papa” and “mamma.”

In the fourteenth century, the Italian people went crazy about the

newly discovered beauties of the buried world of Rome. Soon their

enthusiasm was shared by all the people of western Europe. The finding

of an unknown manuscript became the excuse for a civic holiday. The

man who wrote a grammar became as popular as the fellow who nowadays

invents a new spark-plug. The humanist, the scholar who devoted his

time and his energies to a study of “homo” or mankind (instead of

wasting his hours upon fruitless theological investigations), that man

was regarded with greater honour and a deeper respect than was ever

bestowed upon a hero who had just conquered all the Cannibal Islands.

In the midst of this intellectual upheaval, an event occurred which

greatly favoured the study of the ancient philosophers and authors.

The Turks were renewing their attacks upon Europe. Constantinople,

capital of the last remnant of the original Roman Empire, was hard

pressed. In the year 1393 the Emperor, Manuel Paleologue, sent Emmanuel

Chrysoloras to western Europe to explain the desperate state of old

Byzantium and to ask for aid. This aid never came. The Roman Catholic

world was more than willing to see the Greek Catholic world go to the

punishment that awaited such wicked heretics. But however indifferent

western Europe might be to the fate of the Byzantines, they were

greatly interested in the ancient Greeks whose colonists had founded

the city on the Bosphorus five centuries after the Trojan war. They

wanted to learn Greek that they might read Aristotle and Homer and

Plato. They wanted to learn it very badly, but they had no books and

no grammars and no teachers. The magistrates of Florence heard of the

visit of Chrysoloras. The people of their city were “crazy to learn

Greek.” Would he please come and teach them? He would, and behold! the

first professor of Greek teaching alpha, beta, gamma to hundreds of

eager young men, begging their way to the city of the Arno, living in

stables and in dingy attics that they might learn how to decline the

verb παιδευω παιδευεις παιδευει and enter into the companionship of

Sophocles and Homer.

Meanwhile in the universities, the old schoolmen, teaching their

ancient theology and their antiquated logic; explaining the hidden

mysteries of the old Testament and discussing the strange science of

their Greek-Arabic-Spanish-Latin edition of Aristotle, looked on in

dismay and horror. Next, they turned angry. This thing was going too

far. The young men were deserting the lecture halls of the established

universities to go and listen to some wild-eyed “humanist” with his

new-fangled notions about a “reborn civilization.”

They went to the authorities. They complained. But one cannot force

an unwilling horse to drink and one cannot make unwilling ears listen

to something which does not really interest them. The schoolmen were

losing ground rapidly. Here and there they scored a short victory. They

combined forces with those fanatics who hated to see other people enjoy

a happiness which was foreign to their own souls. In Florence, the

centre of the Great Rebirth, a terrible fight was fought between the

old order and the new. A Dominican monk, sour of face and bitter in his

hatred of beauty, was the leader of the mediæval rear-guard. He fought

a valiant battle. Day after day he thundered his warnings of God’s holy

wrath through the wide halls of Santa Maria del Fiore. “Repent,” he

cried, “repent of your godlessness, of your joy in things that are not

holy!” He began to hear voices and to see flaming swords that flashed

through the sky. He preached to the little children that they might not

fall into the errors of these ways which were leading their fathers to

perdition. He organised companies of boy-scouts, devoted to the service

of the great God whose prophet he claimed to be. In a sudden moment of

frenzy, the frightened people promised to do penance for their wicked

love of beauty and pleasure. They carried their books and their statues

and their paintings to the market place and celebrated a wild “carnival

of the vanities” with holy singing and most unholy dancing, while

Savonarola applied his torch to the accumulated treasures.

But when the ashes cooled down, the people began to realise what they

had lost. This terrible fanatic had made them destroy that which they

had come to love above all things. They turned against him, Savonarola

was thrown into jail. He was tortured. But he refused to repent for

anything he had done. He was an honest man. He had tried to live a

holy life. He had willingly destroyed those who deliberately refused

to share his own point of view. It had been his duty to eradicate evil

wherever he found it. A love of heathenish books and heathenish beauty

in the eyes of this faithful son of the Church, had been an evil.

But he stood alone. He had fought the battle of a time that was dead

and gone. The Pope in Rome never moved a finger to save him. On the

contrary, he approved of his “faithful Florentines” when they dragged

Savonarola to the gallows, hanged him and burned his body amidst the

cheerful howling and yelling of the mob.

It was a sad ending, but quite inevitable. Savonarola would have

been a great man in the eleventh century. In the fifteenth century

he was merely the leader of a lost cause. For better or worse, the

Middle Ages had come to an end when the Pope had turned humanist and

when the Vatican became the most important museum of Roman and Greek

antiquities.