XXIV. FAIRS AND MARKETS.

A chapter might well have been devoted to showing the significance of those curious old institutions, the fairs and market days of the {459} Middle Ages. The country folk flocked into town, bringing with them their produce, and found there gathered from many parts merchants come to exchange and barter. The expense of maintaining a store all the year around was done away with, and profits did not have to be large. Exchanges were direct, and the profits of the middlemen were to a great extent eliminated. It was distinctly to the advantage of the poor, for the expenses of commerce were limited to the greatest possible extent, and every advantage accrued to the customer.

Besides, these market days became days of innocent merriment, amusement and diversion. Wandering purveyors of amusement followed the fairs, and obtained their living from the generosity of the people who were amused. These amusements were conducted out of doors, and with very few of the objectionable features as regards hygiene and morality that are likely to attach themselves to the same things in our day. The amusement was what we would call now vaudeville, singing, dancing, the exhibition of trained animals, acrobatic feats of various kinds, so that we cannot very well say that our people are in advance of their medieval forbears in such matters, since their taste is about the same. Fairs and market days made country life less monotonous by their regular recurrence, and so prevented that emptying of the country into the city which we deprecate in our time. They had economic, social, even moral advantages, that are worth while studying.

XXV. INTENSIVE FARMING.

We hear much of intensive farming in the modern time, and it is supposed to be a distinctly modern invention mothered by the necessity due to great increase of population. One of the most striking features of the story of monasticism in the countries of Europe, however, during the Middle Ages, and especially during the Thirteenth Century, when so many of the greatest abbeys reached a climax of power and influence and beauty of construction, is their successful devotion paid to agriculture. In the modern time we are gradually learning the lesson of growing larger and larger crops on the same area of ground by proper selection of seed, and of developing cattle in such a way as to make them most valuable as a by-product of farming. This is exactly what the old monastic establishments did. At the beginning of the Thirteenth Century many of them were situated in rather barren regions, sometimes, indeed, surrounded by thick forests, but at the end of the century all the great monastic establishments had succeeded in making beautiful luxuriant gardens for themselves, and had taught their numerous tenantry the great lessons of agricultural improvement which made for plenty and happiness.

Many monasteries belonged to the same religious order, and the traditions of these were carried from one to the other by visiting {460} monks or sometimes by the transfer of members of one community to another. The monastic establishments were the great farmers of Europe, and it was their proud boast that their farming lands, instead of being exhausted from year to year, were rather increasing in value. They doubtless had many secrets of farming that were lost and had to be rediscovered in the modern time, just as in the arts and crafts, for their success in farming was as noteworthy. Their knowledge of trees must have been excellent, since they surrounded themselves with fine forests, at times arranged so as to provide shady walks and charming avenues. Their knowledge of simple farming must have been thorough, for the farms of the monasteries were always the most prosperous, and the tenantry were always the happiest. With the traditions that we have especially in English history, this seems almost impossible to credit, but these traditions, manufactured for a purpose, have now been entirely discredited. We have learned in recent years what wonderful scholars, architects, painters, teachers, engineers these monks were, and so it is not surprising to find that they had magnificently developed agricultural knowledge as well as that of every other department in which they were particularly interested.

XXVI. CARTOGRAPHY AND THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY.

In the chapter on Great Explorers and The Foundation of Geography, in the body of the book, much might have been said about maps and map-making, for the Thirteenth Century was a great period in this matter. Lecoy de la Marche among his studies of the Thirteenth Century has included a volume of a collection of the maps of the Thirteenth Century. If the purpose had been to make this a work of erudition rather than of popular information, much might have been said of the cartography of the time even from this work alone (Receuil de Charles du XIII e Siècle, Paris, 1878). One of the great maps of the Thirteenth Century, that on the Cathedral wall of Hereford, deserves a place here. It was made just at the end of the Thirteenth Century. The idea of its maker was to convey as much information as possible about the earth, and not merely indicate its political divisions and the relative size and position of the different parts. It is to a certain extent at least a resume of history, of physical geography, and even of geographical biology and anthropology, for it has indications as to the dwelling-place of animals and curious types of men. It contains, besides, references to interesting objects of other kinds. Because of its interest I have reproduced the map itself, and the key to it with explanations published at Hereford.

PRESERVED IN HEREFORD CATHEDRAL.

Key to the Photograph of the Ancient Map of the World.

For convenience of reference the Key Map is divided into squares marked by Roman capitals, with the more prominent objects in figures. I.—Commencing with sq. 1. the circle marked by Fig. 2 represents the Garden of Eden, with the four rivers, and Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. The remainder of the square, as also in II. and III., is occupied by India. At Fig. 3 is shown the expulsion of Adam and Eve, to the right of which is shown a race of Giants, and to the left the City of Enoch, and still further the Golden Mountains guarded by Dragons. Below these mountains are shown a race of pigmies. In a space bounded by two rivers is placed a crocodile, and immediately below a female warrior. To the left of the latter are a pair of birds called in the Map Alerions. The large {462} river to the left is the Ganges. II.—Shows one of the inhabitants of this part of India, who are said to have but one foot, which is sufficiently large to serve as an umbrella to shelter themselves from the sun. The city in the center is Samarcand. III.—In which is seen an Elephant, to the left a Parrot. A part of the Red Sea is also shown with the Island of Taprobana (Ceylon), on which are shown two Dragons. It also bears an inscription denoting that dragons and elephants are found there. The small Islands shown are Crise, Argire, Ophir, and Frondisia (Aphrodisia). IV.—Contains the Caspian Sea, below which is a figure holding its tail in his hand, and which the author calls the Minotaur. To the left is shown one of the Albani, who are said to see better at night than in the daytime. Below are two warriors in combat with a Griffin (Fig. 27). V.—In the upper part are Bokhara and Thrace, in the latter of which (Fig. 29) is shown the Pelican feeding its young, to the left a singular figure representing the Cicones, and to the right the Camel, in Bactria. Below to the left is the Tiger, and on the right an animal with a human head and the body of a lion, called the Mantichora. Still lower is seen Noah's ark (Fig. 28), in which are shown three human figures, with beasts, birds and serpents. In the lower corner, at Fig. 26, is the Golden Fleece. VI.—The upper parts contain Babylonia, with the City of Babylon (Fig. 4) on the river Euphrates, below which is the city of Damascus, which has on its right an unknown animal called the Marsok. To the right is Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt (Fig. 8). Decapolis and the River Jordan are near the bottom of the square. Above the River Euphrates is a figure in a frame representing the Patriarch Abraham's residence at Ur of the Chaldees. VII.—The Red Sea (Figs. 5, 5) is the most conspicuous object here. In the fork formed by it is shown the giving of the Tables of The Law on Mount Sinai. Below, and touching the line (Fig. 6) showing the wanderings of the Israelites, is seen the worship of the Golden Calf. The Dead Sea and submerged Cities are shown lower down to the left, and between this and the Red Sea is the Phoenix. At the bottom is a mythical animal with long horns, called the Eale. VIII.—In the upper part is the Monastery of St. Anthony in Ethiopia. The river to the left is the Nile, between this and a great interior lake (Figs. 7, 7) is a figure of Satyr. Beyond the lake, and extending a distance down the Map (Figs. 12, 12, 12), are various singular figures, supposed to represent the races dwelling there. In a circular island to the left (Meroe) is a man riding a crocodile, and at the bottom left-hand corner is a centaur. IX.—The upper part is Scythia, and shows some cannibals, below which (Fig. 25) are two Scythians in combat. Under this again is a man leading a horse with a human skin thrown over it, and to the right of the latter is placed the ostrich. X.—Asia Minor with the Black Sea (Fig. 24). Many cities are shown prominent, among which is Troy (Fig. 21), described as "Troja civitas bellicosissima." Near the bottom to the left is Constantinople. The lynx is shown near the center. XI.—Is nearly filled by the Holy Land. In the center is Jerusalem (Fig. 23), the supposed center of the world, surrounded by a high wall, and above is the Crucifixion. Below Jerusalem to the right is Bethlehem with the manger. Near a circular place to the right, called "Puteus Juramenti" (well of the oath), is an unknown bird, called on the Map Avis Cirenus. XII.—Egypt with the Nile. At the upper part (Fig. 9) are Joseph's granaries, i.e., the Pyramids, immediately below which is the Salamander, and to the right of that the Mandrake. Fig. 10 denotes the Delta with its cities. {463} On the other side of the Nile, and partly in sq. XIII., is the Rhinoceros, and below it the Unicorn. XIII.—Ethiopia. In the upper left-hand corner is the Sphinx, and near the bottom the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, represented by a singular horse-shoe shaped figure. The camp of Alexander the Great is in the bottom left-hand corner, immediately above which is the boundary line between Asia and Africa, XIV.—At the top of the left is Norway, in which the author has placed the Monkey. The middle is filled by Russia. The small circular islands on the left are the Orkneys, immediately below which is an inscription relating to the Seven Sleepers, Scotland and part of England are shown in the lower part, but the British Isles will be described in sq. XIX. The singular triangular figure in the center of this square cannot be identified. XV.—Germany, with part of Greece, in the upper part to the right. The Danube and its tributaries are seen in the upper part, in the lower is the Rhine. On the bank of the latter the scorpion is placed; Venice is shown on the right, XVI.—Contains Italy and a great part of the Mediterranean Sea (Fig. 14). About the center (Fig. 17) is Rome, which bears the inscription, "Roma caput mundi tenet orbis frena rotundi." In the upper part of the Mediterranean Sea is seen a Mermaid, below (Fig. 11) is the Island of Crete, with its famous labyrinth, to the left of which is the rock Scylla. Below Crete is Sicily (Fig. 15), on which Mount Etna is shown; close to Sicily is the whirlpool Charybdis, XVII.—Part of Africa; in the lower part to the left, on a promontory, is seen Carthage; on the right the Leopard is shown. XVIII.—Also part of Africa. The upper part is Fezzan, below is shown the basilisk, and still lower some Troglodytes or dwellers in caves. XIX.—On the left hand are the British Isles (Figs. 19, 20, 22), on the right France. Great Britain (Figs. 19, 22) is very fully laid down, but of Ireland the author seemed to know but little. In England twenty-six cities and towns are delineated, among which Hereford (H'ford) is conspicuous. Twenty rivers are also seen, but the only mountains shown are the Clee Hills. In Wales, Snowdon is seen, and the towns of Carnarvon, Conway and St. David's. In Ireland four towns, Armagh, Bangor, Dublin and Kildare, with two rivers, the Banne, which, as shown, divides the island in two, and the Shannon. In Scotland there are six towns. In France the City of Paris (Fig. 18) is conspicuous. XX.—The upper part is Provence, the lower Spain. In the Mediterranean Sea are laid down, among others, the Islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Majorca, and Minorca. At the bottom are (Fig. 16) the pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), which were considered the extreme western limits of the world. XXI.—At the top to the left (Fig. 13) is St. Augustine of Hippo, in his pontifical habit. And at the opposite corner the Lion, below which are the Agriophagi, a one-eyed people who live on the flesh of lions and other beasts. The kingdoms on the shore of the Mediterranean are Algiers, Setif, and Tangier.

APPENDIX III.

CRITICISMS, COMMENTS, DOCUMENTS.

HUMAN PROGRESS.

For most people the impossible would apparently be accomplished if a century so far back as the Thirteenth were to be even seriously thought of as the greatest of centuries. Evolution has come to be accepted so unquestioningly, that of course "we are the heirs of all the ages of the foremost files of time," and must be far ahead of our forbears, especially of the distant past, in everything. When a man talks glibly about great progress in recent times, he usually knows only the history of his own time and not very much about that. Men who have studied other periods seriously hesitate about the claim of progress, and the more anyone knows about any other period, the less does he think of his own as surpassing. There are many exemplifications of this in recent literature. Because this was a cardinal point in many criticisms of the book, it has seemed well to illustrate the position here taken as to the absence of progress in humanity by quotations from recognized authorities. Just as the first edition of this book came from the press, Ambassador Bryce delivered his address at Harvard on "What is Progress?" It appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1907. Mr. Bryce is evidently not at all persuaded that there is human progress in any real sense of the word. Some striking quotations may be made from the address, but to get the full impression of Mr. Bryce's reasons for hesitation about accepting any progress, the whole article needs to be read. For instance, he said:

"It does not seem possible, if we go back to the earliest literature which survives to us from Western Asia and Southeastern Europe, to say that the creative powers of the human mind in such subjects as poetry, philosophy, and historical narrative or portraiture, have either improved or deteriorated. The poetry of the early Hebrews and of the early Greeks has never been surpassed and hardly ever equaled. Neither has the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, nor the speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero. Geniuses like Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare appear without our being able to account for them, and for aught we know another may appear at any moment. It is just as difficult, if we look back five centuries, to assert either progress or decline in painting. Sculpture has never again risen to so high a level as it touched in the fifth century, B. C, nor within the last three centuries, to so high a level as it reached at the end of the fifteenth. But we can found no generalizations upon that fact. Music is the most inscrutable of the arts, and whether there is any progress to be expected other {465} than that which may come from a further improvement in instruments constituting an orchestra, I will not attempt to conjecture, any more than I should dare to raise controversy by inquiring whether Beethoven represents progress from Mozart, Wagner progress from Beethoven."

Perhaps the most startling evidence on this subject of the absence of evolution in humanity is the opinion of Prof. Flinders Petrie, the distinguished English authority on Egyptology, who has added nearly a millennium to the history of Egypt. His studies have brought him in intimate contact with Egypt from 2,000 to 5,000 B. C. He has found no reason at all for thinking that our generation is farther advanced in any important qualities than men were during this period. In an article on "The Romance of Early Civilization" (The Independent, Jan. 7, 1909), he said:

"We have now before us a view of the powers of man at the earliest point to which we can trace written history, and what strikes us most is how very little his nature or abilities have changed in seven thousand years; what he admired we admire; what were his limits in fine handiwork also are ours. We may have a wider outlook, a greater understanding of things; our interests may have extended in this interval; but so far as human nature and tastes go, man is essentially unchanged in this interval." … "This is the practical outcome of extending our view of man three times as far back as we used to look, and it must teach us how little material civilization is likely in the future to change the nature, the weaknesses, or the abilities of our ancestors in ages yet to come."

Those who think that man has advanced in practical wisdom during the 6,000 years of history, forget entirely the lessons of literature. Whenever a great genius has written, he has displayed a knowledge of human nature as great as any to be found at any other time in the world's history. The wisdom of Homer and of Solomon are typical examples. Probably the most striking evidence in this matter is to be found in what is considered to be the oldest book ever written. This is the Instructions of Ptah Hotep to his son. Ptah Hotep was the vizier of King Itosi, of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt (about 3650 B.C.). There is nothing that a father of the modern time would wish to tell his boy as the result of his own experience that is not to be found in this wise advice of a father, nearly 6,000 years ago. This was written longer before Solomon than Solomon is before us, yet no practical knowledge to be gained from intercourse with men has been added to what this careful father of the long ago has written out for his son.

THE CENTURY OF ORIGINS.

To many readers apparently, it has seemed that the main reason for writing of The Thirteenth as the Greatest of Centuries was the fact that the Church occupied so large a place in the life of that time, and that, therefore, most of what was accomplished must naturally revert {466} to her account. It is not only those who are interested in the old Church, however, who have written enthusiastically about the Thirteenth Century. Since writing this volume, I have found that Mr. Frederick Harrison is almost, if not quite, as ardent in his praise of it as I have been. There are many others, especially among the historians of art and of architecture, who apparently have not been able to say all that they would wish in admiration of this supreme century. Most of these have not been Catholics; and if we place beside Mr. Frederick Harrison, the great Positivist of our generation, Mr. John Morley, the great Rationalist, the chorus of agreement on the subject of the greatness of the Thirteenth Century ought to be considered about complete. Mr. Morley, in his address on Popular Culture, delivered as President of the Midland Institute, England, October, 1876 (Great Essays. Putnam, New York), said:

"It is the present that really interests us; it is the present that we seek to understand and to explain. I do not in the least want to know what happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my way more clearly through what is happening to-day. I want to know what men thought and did in the Thirteenth Century, not out of any dilettante or idle antiquarian's curiosity, but because the Thirteenth Century is at the root of what men think and do in the nineteenth."

The results of this system of education may be judged best perhaps from Dante as an example. In The Popes and Science (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1908) a chapter is devoted to Dante as the typical university man of the time, above all in his knowledge of science as displayed in his great poem. No poet of the modern time has {467} turned with so much confidence to every phase of science for his figures as this product of medieval universities. Anyone who thinks that the study of science is recent, or that nature study was delayed till our day, need only read Dante to be completely undeceived.

The fact that the scholars and the professors at the universities were almost without exception believers in the possibility of the transmutation of metals in the old days, used to be considered by many educated people as quite sufficient to stamp them as lacking in judgment and as prone to believe all sorts of incredible and even impossible things without justification. Such supercilious condemnation of the point of view of the medieval scholars in this matter, however, has recently received a very serious jolt. Sometime ago, Sir William Ramsey, the greatest of living English chemists, announced at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, that he had succeeded in changing copper into lithium. This created a sensation at the time, but represented, after all, a culmination of effort in this direction that had long been expected. More recently, Sir William has reported to the British Chemical Society that he has succeeded in obtaining carbon from four substances not containing this element—bismuth, hydro-fluo-silicic acid, thorium and zirconium. An American professor of chemistry has declared that he would like to remove all traces of silver from a quantity of lead ore, and then, after allowing it to stand for some years, have the opportunity to re-examine it, since he is confident that he would find further traces of silver in it that had developed in the meantime. He is sure that the reason why these two metals always occur together, as do copper and, gold, is that they are products of a developmental process, the precious metals being a step farther on in that process than the so-called base metals. It would seem, then, that the medieval scholars were not so silly as they used to appear before we knew enough about the subject to judge them properly. Only their supercilious critics were silly.

It is probably with regard to the exact sciences that most even educated people are quite sure that the Thirteenth Century does not deserve to be thought of as representing great human advance. For them the Middle Ages were drowsily speculative, but never exact in thinking. Of course, such people know nothing of the intense exactness of thought of St. Thomas or Albertus Magnus or Duns Scotus. It would be impossible, moreover, to make them realize, from the writings of these men, how exact human thought actually was in the Thirteenth Century, though the more that modern students devote themselves to scholastic philosophy, the more surely do they appreciate and admire this very quality in the medieval philosophy. For such people, very probably, the only evidence that would have made quite an adequate answer to their objection, would be a chapter on the mathematics of the Thirteenth Century. {468} That might very easily have been made, for Cantor, in his History of Mathematics (Vorlesungen Über Geschichte der Mathematik, Leipzig, 1892), devotes nearly 100 pages of his second volume to the mathematicians of the Thirteenth Century, two of whom, Leonardo of Pisa and Jordanus Nemorarius, did so much in Arithmetic, the Theory of Numbers, Algebra and Geometry, as to make a revolution in mathematics. Cantor says that they accomplished so much, that their contemporaries and successors could scarcely follow them, much less go beyond them. They had great disciples, like John of Sacrobusco (probably John of Holywood, near Dublin), Joannes Campanus and others. Cantor calls attention particularly to the spread of arithmetical knowledge among the masses, which is a well-deserved tribute to the century, for it was a characteristic of the time that the new thoughts and discoveries of scholars were soon made practical and penetrated very widely among the people. Brewer, in the Preface to Roger Bacon's works, quotes some of Bacon's expressions with regard to the value of mathematics. The English Franciscan said: "For without mathematics, nothing worth knowing in philosophy can be attained." And again: "For he who knows not mathematics cannot know any other science; what is more, he cannot discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedy." The term mathematics, as used by Bacon, had a much wider application then than now, and Brewer notes that the Thirteenth Century scientist included therein Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music.

With regard to post-graduate education; the best evidence that, far from any exaggeration of what was accomplished in the Thirteenth Century, there has been a very conservative estimate of it made in the book, may be gathered from the legally erected standards of the medical schools and the legal status of the medical profession. In the Appendix of The Popes and Science, two Bulls are published, issued by Pope John XXII. (Circa, 1320), establishing medical schools in Perugia, at that time in the Papal States, and in Cahors, the birthplace of this pope. These bulls were really the formal charters of the medical schools. They require three years of preliminary study at the university and four or five years at medicine before the degree of doctor may be granted, and in addition emphasized that the curricula of the new medical schools must be equal to those of Paris and Bologna. These bulls were issued in the early part of the fourteenth century, and show the height to which the standards of medical education had been raised. There will be found also a law of Frederick II., issued 1241, requiring for all physicians who wished to practice in the Two Sicilies three years of preliminary study—four years at the medical school and a year of practice with a physician before the diploma which constituted a license to practice would be issued. This law is also a pure drug law forbidding the sale of impure drugs under penalty of confiscation of goods, and the preparation of them under penalty of death. Our pure drug law was passed about the time of the issue of the first edition of this book.

Those who ask for the results of this post-graduate training may find them in the story of Guy de Chauliac, the Father of Modern Surgery. His life formed the basis of a lecture before the Johns Hopkins Medical Club that is to be published in the Bulletin of John Hopkins Hospital. It is incorporated in Catholic Churchmen in Science, Second Series (The Dolphin Press, Phila., 1909). We know Chauliac's work not by tradition, but from his great text-book on surgery. This great Papal physician of the fourteenth century operated within the skull, did not hesitate to open the thorax, sewed up wounds of the intestines, and discussed such subjects as hernia, catheterization, the treatment of fractures, and manipulative surgery generally with wonderful technical ability. His book was the most used text-book for the next two centuries, and has won the admiration of everyone who has ever read it.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION OF THE MASSES.

Some of my friends courteously but firmly have insisted with me that I have greatly exaggerated the technical abilities of the village workmen of the Middle Ages. That every town of less than ten thousand inhabitants in England was able to supply such workmen as we can scarcely obtain in our cities of a million inhabitants, and in that scanty population supply them in greater numbers than we can now secure them from our teeming populations, seems to many simply impossible.

What I have been trying to say, however, in the chapters on the Arts and Crafts and on Popular Education, has been much better said by an authority that will scarcely be questioned by my critics. The Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D. D., who has been for twenty years the Rector of Searning in England, who is an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College and of Worcester College, Oxford, besides being an Honorary Canon in the Cathedral of Norwich, has devoted much time and study to this question of how the cathedrals were built and finished. Twenty years of his life have been spent in the study of the old English parish and of parish life. He has studied the old parish registers, and talks, therefore, not from distant impressions, but from the actual facts as they are recorded. If to his position as an antiquarian authority I add the fact that he is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, to the credit of which so much of this popular education and accomplishment in the arts and crafts of the century accrues, the value of his evidence is placed entirely above suspicion of partisan partiality. In his chapter on Parish Life in England, in his book "Before the Great Pillage" (Before the Great Pillage with other Miscellanies, by Augustus Jessopp, D. D., London. T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster Square, 1901), he says:

"The evidence is abundant and positive, and is increasing upon us year by year, that the work done upon the fabrics of our churches, and the other work done in the beautifying of the interior of our churches, such as the woodcarving of our screens, the painting of the lovely {470} figures in the panels of those screens, the embroidery of the banners and vestments, the frescoes on the walls, the engraving of the monumental brasses, the stained glass in the windows, and all that vast aggregate of artistic achievements which existed in immense profusion in our village churches till the sixteenth century stripped them bare—all this was executed by local craftsmen. The evidence for this is accumulating upon us every year, as one antiquary after another succeeds in unearthing fragments of pre-Reformation church-wardens' accounts.

"We have actual contracts for church building and church repairing undertaken by village contractors. We have the cost of a rood screen paid to a village carpenter, of painting executed by local artists. We find the name of an artificer, described as aurifaber, or worker in gold and silver, living in a parish which could never have had five hundred inhabitants; we find the people in another place casting a new bell and making the mould for it themselves; we find the blacksmith of another place forging the iron work for the church door, or we get a payment entered for the carving of the bench ends in a little church five hundred years ago, which bench ends are to be seen in that church at the present moment. And we get fairly bewildered by the astonishing wealth of skill and artistic taste and aesthetic feeling which there must have been in this England of ours, in times which till lately we had assumed to be barbaric times. Bewildered, I say, because we cannot understand how it all came to a dead-stop in a single generation, not knowing that the frightful spoliation of our churches and other parish buildings, and the outrageous plunder of the parish gilds in the reign of Edward the Sixth by the horrible band of robbers that carried on their detestable work, effected such a hideous obliteration, such a clean sweep of the precious treasures that were dispersed in rich profusion over the whole land, that a dull despair of ever replacing what had been ruthlessly pillaged crushed the spirit of the whole nation, and art died out in rural England, and King Whitewash and Queen Ugliness ruled supreme for centuries."

My argument is that a century which produced such artist-artisans everywhere, had technical schools in great profusion, though they may not have been called by any such ambitious name.

HOW IT ALL STOPPED.

To most people it seems impossible to understand how it is that, if artistic evolution proceeded to the perfection which it now seems clear that it actually attained in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we are only just getting back to a proper state of public taste and a right degree of artistic skill in many of these same accomplishments at the present time. That thought has come to many others who, knowing and appreciating medieval progress in art and literature, have tried to work out the reasons for the gap that exists between medieval art and modern artistic endeavor. Some of these explanations, because they serve to make clear why art evolution stopped so abruptly and we are retracing our steps and taking models from the past rather than doing original work that is an advance, must be quoted here. Many people will find in them, I think, the reasons for their misunderstanding of the old times.

Gerhardt Hauptmann, who is very well known, even among English-speaking people, as one of the great living German dramatists, and whose "Sunken Bell" attracted considerable attention in both its German and English versions here in New York, in a recent criticism of a new German book, declared that the reason for the gap between modern and medieval art was the movement now coming to be known as the religious revolt in Germany in the sixteenth century. He said:

"I, as a Protestant, have often had to regret that we purchased our freedom of conscience, our individual liberty, at entirely too high a price. In order to make room for a small, mean little plant of personal life, we destroyed a whole garden of fancy and hewed down a virgin forest of aesthetic ideas. We went even so far in the insanity of our weakness as to throw out of the garden of our souls the fruitful soil that had been accumulating for thousands of years, or else we plowed it under sterile clay.

"We have to-day, then, an intellectual culture that is well protected by a hedge of our personality, but within this hedge we have only delicate dwarf trees and unworthy plants, the poorer progeny of great predecessors. We have telegraph lines, bridges and railroads, but there grow no churches and cathedrals, only sentry boxes and barracks. We need gardeners who will cause the present sterilizing process of the soil to stop, and will enrich the surface by working up into it the rich layers beneath. In my work-room there is ever before me the photograph of Sebaldus' Tomb (model Metropolitan Museum, New York). This rich German symbol rose from the invisible in the most luxuriant developmental period of German art. As a formal product of that art, it is very difficult to appreciate it as it deserves. It seems to me as one of the most wonderful bits of work in the whole field of artistic accomplishment. The soul of all the great medieval period encircles this silver coffin, wrapping it up into a noble unity, and enthrones on the very summit of death. Life as a growing child. Such a work could only have come to its perfection in the protected spaces of the old Mother Church."

Rev. Dr. Jessopp, in his book, already cited, "The Great Pillage," does not hesitate to state in unmistakable terms the reason why all the beauty and happiness went out of English country life some two centuries after the Thirteenth Century, and how it came about that the modern generations have had to begin over again from the beginning, and not where our Catholic forefathers of the medieval period left us, in what used to be the despised Middle Ages. He says:

"When I talk of the great pillage, I mean that horrible and outrageous looting of our churches other than conventual, and the robbing of the people of this country of property in land and movables, which property had actually been inherited by them as members of those organized religious communities known as parishes. It is necessary to emphasize the fact that in the general scramble of the Terror under Henry the Eighth, and of the Anarchy in the days of Edward the Sixth, there was only one class that was permitted to retain any large portion of its endowments. The monasteries were plundered even to their very pots and pans. Almshouses in which old men and women were fed and clothed were robbed to the last pound, the poor alms-folk being turned out into the cold at an hour's warning to beg their bread. {472} Hospitals for the sick and needy, sometimes magnificently provided with nurses and chaplains, whose very raison d'etre was that they were to look after and care for those who were past caring for themselves—these were stripped of all their belongings, the inmates sent out to hobble into some convenient dry ditch to lie down and die in, or to crawl into some barn or hovel, there to be tended, not without fear of consequences, by some kindly man or woman who could not bear to see a suffering fellow creature drop down and die at their own doorposts.

"We talk with a great deal of indignation of the Tweed ring. The day will come when someone will write the story of two other rings—the ring of the miscreants who robbed the monasteries in the reign of Henry the Eighth was the first; but the ring of the robbers who robbed the poor and helpless in the reign of Edward the Sixth was ten times worse than the first.

"The Universities only just escaped the general confiscation; the friendly societies and benefit clubs and the gilds did not escape. The accumulated wealth of centuries, their houses and lands, their money, their vessels of silver and their vessels of gold, their ancient cups and goblets and salvers, even to their very chairs and tables, were all set down in inventories and catalogues, and all swept into the great robbers' hoard. Last, but not least, the immense treasures in the churches, the joy and boast of every man and woman and child in England, who day by day and week by week assembled to worship in the old houses of God which they and their fathers had built, and whose every vestment and chalice and candlestick and banner, organs and bells, and picture and image and altar and shrine they looked upon as their own and part of their birthright—all these were torn away by the rudest spoilers, carted off, they knew not whither, with jeers and scoffs and ribald shoutings, while none dared raise a hand or let his voice be heard above the whisper of a prayer of bitter grief and agony.

"One class was spared. The clergy of this Church of England of ours managed to retain some of their endowments; but if the boy king had lived another three years, there is good reason for believing that these too would have gone."

Graft prevailed, and the old order disappeared in a slough of selfishness.

COMFORT AND POVERTY.

A number of friendly critics have insisted that of course the Thirteenth Century was far behind later times in the comfort of the people. Poverty is supposed to have been almost universal. Doubtless many of the people were then very poor. Personally, I doubt if there was as much poverty, that is, misery due to actual want of necessaries of life, as there is at the present time. Certainly it was not emphasized by having close to it, constantly rendering the pains of poverty poignant by contrast, the luxury of the modern time. They had not the large city, and people in the country do not suffer as much as people in the city. In recent years, investigations of poverty in England have been appalling in the statistics that they have presented. Mr. Robert Hunter, in his book Poverty, has furnished us with some details that make one feel that our generation should be the last to say {473} that the Thirteenth Century was behind in progress, because so many of the people were so poor. Ruskin once said that the ideal of the great nation is one wherein there must be "as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed and happy-hearted human creatures." I am sure that, tried by this standard, the Thirteenth Century in Merrie England is ahead of any other generation and, above all, far in advance of our recent generations.

By contrast to what we know of the merrie English men and women of the Thirteenth Century, I would quote Mr. Hunter's paragraphs on the Poverty of the Modern English People. He says:

"A few years ago, England did not know the extent of her own poverty. Economists and writers gave opinions of all kinds. Some said conditions were 'bad,' others said such statements were misleading; and here they were, tilting at each other, backward and forward, in the most ponderous and serious way, until Mr. Booth, a business man, undertook to get at the facts. No one, even the most radical economist, would have dared to have estimated the poverty of London as extending to 30 per cent of the people (as it proved). The extent of poverty—the number of underfed, underclothed in insanitary houses—was greater than could reasonably have been estimated."

Some of the details of this investigation by Mr. Booth were so startling that some explanation had to be found. They could not deny, in the face of Mr. Booth's facts, but they set up the claim that the conditions in London were exceptional. Then Mr. Rountree made an investigation in York with precisely the same results. More than one in four of the population was in poverty. To quote Mr. Hunter once more:

"As has been said, it was not until Mr. Charles Booth published, in 1891, the results of his exhaustive inquiries that the actual conditions of poverty in London became known. About 1,000,000 people, or about thirty per cent of the entire population of London, were found to be unable to obtain the necessaries for a sound livelihood. They were in a state of poverty, living in conditions, if not of actual misery, at any rate bordering upon it. In many districts, considerably more than half of the population were either in distress or on the verge of distress. When these results were made public, the more conservative economists gave it as their opinion that the conditions in London were, of course, exceptional, and that it would be unsafe to make any generalizations for the whole of England on the basis of Mr. Booth's figures for London. About ten years later, Mr. B. S. Rountree, incited by the work of Mr. Booth, undertook a similar inquiry in his native town, York, a small provincial city, in most ways typical of the smaller towns of England. In a large volume in which the results are published, it is shown that the poverty in York was only slightly less extensive than that of London. In the summary, Mr. Rountree compares the conditions of London with those of York. His comments are as follows: 'The proportions arrived at for the total populations living in poverty in London and York respectively were as under:

London—30.7 per cent
York—27.84 per cent

The proportion of the population living in poverty in York may be regarded as practically the same as in London, especially when we remember that Mr. Booth's information was gathered in 1887-1892, a period of only average trade prosperity, whilst the York figures were collected in 1899, when trade was unusually prosperous.'"

He continues: "We have been accustomed to look upon the poverty in London as exceptional, but when the result of careful investigation shows that the proportion of poverty in London is practically equalled in what may be regarded as a typical provincial town, we are faced by the startling probability that from 25 to 30 per cent of the town populations of the United Kingdom are living in poverty."

Most of us will be inclined to think that Mr. Rountree must exaggerate, and what he calls poverty most of us would doubtless be inclined to think a modest competency a little below respectability. He fixed the standard of twenty-one shillings eight pence ($5.25) a week as a necessary one for a family of ordinary size. He says:

"A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate, must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a half-penny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, nor give any help to a neighbor which costs them money. They cannot save, nor can they join sick club or trade union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscription. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco nor drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children, the character for the family wardrobe, as for the family diet, being governed by the regulation, 'Nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and that which is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description.' Should a child fall ill, it must be attended by the family parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day."

More than one in four of the population living below this scale!

Conditions are, if anything, worse on the Continent. In Germany, industry is at the best. Conditions in Berlin have been recently reported in the Daily Consular Reports by a U. S. Government official. Of the somewhat more than two millions of people who live in Berlin, 1,125,000 have an income. Nearly one-half of the incomes, however, are exempt from taxation because they do not amount to the minimum taxable income, though that is only $214—$4 per week. Of the 600,000 who have taxable incomes, nearly 550,000 have less than $700 a year; that is, get about $2 a day or less. Less than sixty thousand out of the total population get more than $2 a day. It is easy to say, but hard to understand, that this is a living wage, because things are cheaper in Germany. Meat is, however, nearly twice as dear; sugar is twice as dear; bread is dearer than it is in this country; coffee is dearer; and only rent is somewhat cheaper.