Flowers from Mediæval History

“Never have I called you into my councils that I have not been belittled,” observes History. “My romance is democracy not courtship and it commenced with the inspiration of the Greeks. My first votary taught that ‘it is clear not in one thing alone, but wherever you test it, what a good thing is equality among men.’ He adds, ‘A tyrant disturbs ancient laws, violates women, kills men without trial. But a people ruling: first, the very name of it is so beautiful—Isonomiê; and secondly, a people does none of these things.’

“And this beautiful ‘equality among men’ I have followed in its ideal, in its fruition and alas, sometimes, in its debasement throughout the ages. I watched its short and glorious days in Greece, its orderly development in Rome, its splendid resurrection in Venice, which led the line of free cities of the Middle Ages that handed it down. I watched the American and the French Republics rise in the eighteenth century, the French to totter, but to rise again, the American to live to fight another chivalrous war for human rights; and, the justice of republics proven, the twentieth century built one in a day. Then the distant continent, that drained the bravest blood of Portugal in the sixteenth century, wiped out its debt with the ‘fruits of the spirit,’ the romantic spirit of the twentieth century.

“Herodotus placed his faith in the people long ago, probably on more evidence than he reported in support of what to him seemed self-evident. Were he to come back to his native town now he would find his beautiful city of Halicarnassus replaced by a mean Turkish village, but through it are ringing the words ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ and the Father of History might be less surprised than men of today by the revolution that has suddenly established a constitution in Turkey. Indeed, nowhere has the very name of equality proved more beautiful. Since July 25, 1908, the lion and the lamb have actually lain down together on the once bloody fields of the Turk. Over a little Turkish shop two inscriptions appeared, side by side, above the three beautiful words: ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ and ‘The beginning is from God; so victory is sure.’

“And if the great traveler of old were to push on westward across Europe, westward across the Atlantic, he might bequeath his visions to earth, and bidding us hope on, go back well pleased to the Courts of the Dead, his simple thesis proved—‘A people does none of these things.’”

Romance aside, “In her self-satisfaction she has forgotten all about the Golden Age. It never was hers. It is mine, and I will recast it safely in the future. There will I hold Courts of Love to define all new ideals, my pleaders shall be poets and their words shall be spoken under correction of those that have feeling in the art of this broader love, and my good knights shall swear ‘To defy power that seems omnipotent, to love and bear, to hope till Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates.’”

Thus does the romantic twentieth century realize the fruition of the ideals of democrats of the past.

The original documents[6] consulted for this book have been the works of art of which it treats. In the case of old books, I have also availed myself of facsimiles, which have this advantage over originals, they may be freely handled. Most interesting among them are The Book of Kells, notes from copy of plates, with remarks by Westwood and Digby Watts; and Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages, by Humphrey Jones. The authorities on Gothic architecture, which I have accepted as final, are Viollet-le-Duc and Corroyer. I have drawn much of my material from modern technical periodicals, most useful of which have been Les Arts, Revue Archeologique, Revue des Questions Historiques and the American Historical Review. Though I have had recourse to general historians who treat of the Middle Ages,—Duruy, Gibbon, Guizot, Kitchin, Saint Martin, etc.; to guide books of accepted accuracy,—Baedeker, Guerber, Guides Joanne, and Dent’s Mediæval Town Series; to encyclopedias, English and French,—to the appended list of authorities I acknowledge especial indebtedness. Even when I have not borrowed statements from them I have been influenced by them in my interpretations of the Middle Ages:

• Blades, Wm., Books in Chains.
• Boulting, Wm., Torquato Tasso and His Times.
• Bruun, J. A., An Inquiry into the Arts of the Middle Ages.
• Bryce, James, Holy Roman Empire.
• Chéreul, Dictionnaire des Institutions Françaises.
• Clerval, A., Guide Chartrain (Docteur es-Lettres, Lauréat
• de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
• et Membre de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires).
• Cutts, Edward Lewes, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages.
• Dill, Samuel, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire.
• Fletcher (Prof. Bannister and Bannister F. Fletcher),
• History of Architecture on the Comparative Method.
• Gray, Geo. Zabriskie, The Children’s Crusade.
• Gould, Sabine Baring-, Myths of the Middle Ages.
• Hawkins, John Sidney, History of the Origin and Establishment
• of Gothic Architecture.
• Hay, John, Castilian Days.
• Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris.
• Ivo, Letters of Ivo (reprint of original documents).
• Jusserand, J. J., La Vie Nomade.
• Lacroix, Paul, Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages.
• Lang, Andrew, Books and Bookmen.
• Lecoy-de-la Manche, Richard Albert: France under St. Louis and
• Philip le Hardi; Les Manuscripts et la Miniature;
• Le Troisième Siècle Artistique; Suger.
• Mabillon (edited by), Life of Bishop Arnold of Le Mans.
• Maitland, Samuel Roffey, The Dark Ages.
• Mandan, Books in Manuscript.
• Matthews, Story of Architecture.
• Merlet, Eugene, Bulletin Monumental, Number 67, of 1903.
• Norton, Chas. Eliot, Church Building in the Middle Ages.
• Reber, Dr. Franz von, History of Mediæval Art.
• Reinach, Salomon, Apollo.
• Rennert, Hugo Albert, Life of Lope de Vega.
• Rowbotham, J. F., Troubadours and Courts of Love.
• Stetson, F. M., William the Conqueror.
• Ticknor, Geo., History of Spanish Literature.
• Trumble, Alfred, Sword and Scimitar.
• Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Painters (Blashfield’s edition).
• Wiseman, Preface to Cardinal Wiseman’s novel, Fabiola.

• Abbey aux Dames, 79.
• Abbey aux Hommes, 79.
• Abelard, 121.
• Ambrose, 18.
• Amiens, viii.
• Amiens Copy, 107.
• Angelo, xii, 102.
• Bayeux, viii.
• Beauvais, viii.
• Bernard, Saint, 47.
• Bibliotheque Nationale, 116.
• Bologne sur Mer, viii.
• Bouillon, Godfrey de, 45.
• Bourg, viii.
• Browning, 113.
• Brunelleschi, 33.
• Caen, viii, 73.
• Calderon, 90.
• Carpio (see de Vega), 88.
• Cassiodorus, 105.
• Charlemagne, 106.
• Charles le Bel, 56.
• Charles the Bald, 55.
• Charles the Wise, 116.
• Chartres, viii, 51.
• Chaucer, xiii, 126.
• Cherbourg, viii.
• Cicely, 79.
• Clovis, 26, 27, 28, 52, 55.
• Cnut, 62.
• Coutances, viii.
• Corday, 97.
• Court of Love, 129.
• Crusade of Children, xv.
• Denis, Abbey de Saint, 38.
• Denis, Saint, 40.
• Dieppe, viii.
• Dinan, ix, 85.
• Dinard, ix.
• Dols, ix.
• Dürer, xiv.
• Durrow, 106.
• Ebbon, 29, 30.
• Eleanor, Queen, 129.
• Eloi, Saint, 40.
• Francis, xvi.
• Fulbert, 62, 121.
• Fulda, Abbot of, 107.
• Georgebus, 133.
• Ghiberti, 102.
• Gibbon, 55.
• Glass, 44, 69.
• Gothic, 9, 12, 43.
• Gothic, viii, 76.
• Gothic, 69.
• Gregory, 19, 22.
• Grey, Lady Jane, 111.
• Griselda, 125.
• Guibert, 64.
• Haimon, Abbé, 67.
• Halicarnassus, 136.
• Harold, 82.
• Heloise, 121.
• Henry of Navarre, 56.
• Herodotus, 136.
• Hildebrand, 77.
• Hugh of Rouen, 67.
• Imagier, 34, 43, 47, 69.
• Iona, 103.
• Ivo, Saint, 63, 77.
• Jerome, Saint, 50, 104.
• Keats, 72.
• Kells, Book of, 100.
• Lactance, 50.
• Laon, viii, 6, 121.
• Lanfranc, 74.
• Le Mans, viii, 78.
• Louis VI, 39.
• Louis VII, 39.
• Louis the Pious, 29, 30, 107.
• Louis, Saint, 10, 56, 115.
• Love, Court of, 129.
• Lowell, 72.
• Lubin, Well of Saint, 58.
• Maclou, Saint, viii.
• Madonna, 31, 51, 54, 70.
• Maria of Champagne, 129.
• Margaret, Saint, 108.
• Marlo, San, ix.
• Martin, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26.
• Mathilda, 63, 79.
• Mazarin, 115, 116.
• Michele, Mt. San, viii.
• Molière, 116, 132.
• Napoleon, 71.
• Naudé, 115.
• Norsemen, 30, 57, 59.
• Ouen, Saint, viii, frontispiece.
• Paris, viii, 5, 116.
• Parthenon, 17.
• Patiens de Lyons, 17.
• Pavia, Certosa di, 23.
• Philippe le Bel, 56.
• Portugal, 136.
• Provence, 128.
• Ravenna, 24.
• Remi, Saint, 26.
• Revolution, 52.
• Rheims, viii, 7, 30.
• Richard of Normandy, 60.
• Richelieu, 115.
• Rodin, 12, 53.
• Rollo, 59, 73.
• Rouen, viii.
• Rumald, 30.
• Ruskin, 12.
• Saint Denis, viii.
• Sebastian, Saint, 19.
• Suger, 39, 46, 47, 48.
• Tertullian, 50.
• Thierry, Saint, 63.
• Valencia, 92.
• Vega, Lope de, 88.
• Vega, Micaela de, 93.
• Viollet-le-Duc, 12.
• William I, 74, 81, 82.