Footnotes:

[1] The present work is not occupied with the brutalities of mediaeval life, nor with all the lower grades of ignorance and superstition abounding in the Middle Ages, and still existing, in a less degree, through parts of Spain and southern France and Italy. Consequently I have not such things very actively in mind when speaking of the mediaeval genius. That phrase, and the like, in this book, will signify the more informed and constructive spirit of the mediaeval time.

[2] There will be much to say of all these men in later chapters.

[3] Post, Chapter XI.

[4] See post, Chapter IX., as to the manner of the coming of Augustine to England.

[5] The Icelandic Sagas, for example, were then brought into written form. They have a genius of their own; they are realistic and without a trace of symbolism. They are wonderful expressions of the people among whom they were composed. Post, Chapter VIII. But, products of a remote island, they were unaffected by the moulding forces of mediaeval development, nor did they exert any influence in turn. The native traits of the mediaeval peoples were the great complementary factor in mediaeval progress—complementary, that is to say, to Latin Christianity and antique culture. Mediaeval characteristics sprang from the interaction of these elements; they certainly did not spring from any such independent and severed growth of native Teuton quality as is evinced by the Sagas. One will look far, however, for another instance of such spiritual aloofness. For clear as are the different racial or national traits throughout the mediaeval period, they constantly appear in conjunction with other elements. They are discerned working beneath, possibly reacting against, and always affected by, the genius of the Middle Ages, to wit, the genius of the mutual interaction of the whole. Wolfram’s very German Parzival, the old French Chanson de Roland, and above them all the Divina Commedia, are mediaeval. In these compositions in the vernacular, racial traits manifest themselves distinctly, and yet are affected by the mediaeval spirit.

[6] See post, Chapter V.

[7] The Predestination and Eucharistic controversies are examples; post, Chapter X.

[8] See post, Chapter X.

[9] The lack of originality in the first half of the tenth century is illustrated by the Epitome of Gregory’s Moralia, made by such an energetic person as Odo of Cluny. It occupies four hundred columns in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, 133. See post, Chapter XII.

[10] See post, Chapter XIII.

[11] See post, Chapter XI.

[12] See post, Chapter XVI.

[13] These men will be fully considered later, Chapters XXXIV.-XL.

[14] See post, Chapter XXXI.

[15] See post, Chapter XXXII.

[16] Post, Chapter XXIII.

[17] The term “spiritual” is here intended to signify the activities of the mind which are emotionalized with yearning or aversion, and therefore may be said to belong to the entire nature of man.

[18] The history of the spread of Latin through Italy and the provinces is from the nature of the subject obscure. Budinsky’s Die Ausbreitung der lateinischer Sprache (Berlin, 1881) is somewhat unsatisfactory. See also Meyer-Lübke, Die lateinische Sprache in den romanischen Ländern (Gröber’s Grundriss, 1², 451 sqq.; F. G. Mohl, Introduction à la chronologie du latin vulgaire (1899). The statements in the text are very general, and ignore intentionally the many difficult questions as to what sort of Latin—dialectal, popular, or literary—was spread through the peninsula. See Mohl, o.c. § 33 sqq.

[19] Tradition says from Gaul, but the sifted evidence points to the Danube north of the later province of Noricum. See Bertrand and Reinach, Les Celtes dans les vallées du Pô et du Danube (Paris, 1894).

[20] See Beloch, Bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen Welt, p. 507 (Leipzig, 1886).

[21] Mommsen says that in Augustus’s time fifty Spanish cities had the full privileges of Roman citizenship and fifty others the rights of Italian towns (Roman Provinces, i. 75, Eng. trans.). But this seems a mistake; as the enumeration of Beloch, Bevölkerung, etc., p. 330, gives fifty in all, following the account of Pliny.

[22] Cicero, Pro Archia, 10, speaks slightingly of poets born at Cordova, but, later, Latro of Cordova was Ovid’s teacher.

[23] The Roman law was used throughout Provincia. In this respect a line is to be drawn between Provincia and the North. See post, Chapter XXXIII.

[24] Bellum Gallicum, iii. 10.

[25] Bellum Gallicum, v. 6.

[26] Porcius Cato, in his Origines, written a hundred years before Caesar crossed the mountains, says that Gallia was devoted to the art of war and to eloquence (argute loqui). Presumably the Gallia that Cato thus characterized as clever or acute of speech, was Cisalpine Gaul, to wit, the north of Italy; yet Caesar’s transalpine Gauls were both clever of speech and often the fools of their own arguments. Lucian, in his Hercules (No. 55, Dindorf’s edition) has his “Celt” argue that Hercules accomplished his deeds by the power of words.

[27] See, generally, Fustel de Coulanges, Institutions politiques de l’ancienne France, vol. i. (La Gaule romaine).

[28] Bellum Gallicum, vi. 11, 12.

[29] Cf. Julian, Vercingetorix (2nd ed., Paris, 1902).

[30] Bellum Gallicum, iv. 5; vi. 20.

[31] There are a number of texts from the second to the fifth century which bear on the matter. Taken altogether they are unsatisfying, if not blind. They have been frequently discussed. See Gröber, Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, i. 451 sqq. (2nd edition, 1904); Brunot, Origines de la langue française, which is the Introduction to Petit de Julleville’s Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française (Paris, 1896); Bonnet, Le Latin de Grégoire de Tours, pp. 22-30 (Paris, 1890); Mommsen’s Provinces of the Roman Empire, p. 108 sqq. of English translation; Fustel de Coulanges, Institutions politiques, vol. i. (La Gaule romaine), pp. 125-135 (Paris, 1891); Roger, L’Enseignement des lettres classiques d’ Ausone à Alcuin, p. 24 sqq. (Paris, 1905).

[32] Such words are, e.g., wine, street, wall. See Toller, History of the English Language (Macmillan & Co., 1900), pp. 41, 42.

[33] See Paul, Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, Band i. pp. 305-315, (Strassburg, 1891).

[34] A prime illustration is afforded by the Latin juristic word persona used in the Creed. The Latins had to render the three ὑποστάσεις of the Greeks; and “three somethings,” tria quaedam, was too loose, as Augustine says (De Trinitate, vii. 7-12). The true and literal translation of ὑπόστασις would have been substantia; but that word had been taken to render οὐσία. So the legal word persona was employed in spite of its recognized unfitness. Cf. Taylor, Classical Heritage, etc., p. 116 sqq.

[35] On these Peripatetics see Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen, 3rd ed. vol. ii. pp. 806-946.

[36] See Boissier, Étude sur M. T. Varron (Paris, 1861).

[37] Hist. naturalis, ii. 41.

[38] From the reign of Augustus onward, Astrology flourished as never before. See Habler, Astrologie im Alterthum, p. 23 sqq. (Zwickau, 1879).

[39] De abstinentia, ii. 34.

[40] De abstinentia, iii. 4.

[41] Porphyry before him had spoken of angels and archangels which he had found in Jewish writings.

[42] For authorities cited, see Zeller, Ges. der Phil., iii.² p. 686.

[43] De mysteriis, i. 3.

[44] Ibid. ii. 3, 9.

[45] Cf. Döllinger, Sektengeschichte.

[46] All my Christian examples are taken from among the representatives of Catholic Christianity, because it was that which triumphed, and set the lines of mediaeval thought. Consequently, I have not referred to the Gnostics, not wishing to complicate an already complex spiritual situation. Gnosticism was a mixture of Hellenic, oriental, and Christian elements. Its votaries represented one (most distorting) way in which the Gospel was taken. But Gnosticism neither triumphed nor deserved to. It flourished somewhat before the time of Plotinus.

[47] See Origen, De principiis, iii. 2.

[48] The Athanasian Vita Antonii is in Migne, Patr. Graec. 26, and trans. in Nicene Fathers, second series, iv. The Vita S. Martini is in Halm’s ed. of Sulp. Severus (Vienna, 1866), and in Migne, Pat. Lat. 20, and trans. in Nicene Fathers, second series, xi.

[49] See Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, ii. 413 sqq., especially 432 sqq. Also Taylor, Classical Heritage, pp. 94-97.

[50] In cap. iii. § 2 of the Celestial Hierarchy, Pseudo-Dionysius says that the goal of his system is the becoming like to God and oneness with Him (ἡ πρὸς θεὸν ἀφομοίωσίς τε καὶ ἕνωσις). He classifies his “celestial intelligences” even more systematically than the De mysteriis of Iamblicus’s school. His work is full of Neo-Platonism. Cf. Vacherot, Histoire de l’école d’Alexandrie, iii. 24 sqq.

[51] The cult of the Virgin and the saints was of very early growth. See Lucius, Die Anfänge des Heiligen Kults in der christlichen Kirche (ed. by Anrich, Tübingen, 1904).

[52] See, e.g., Grandgeorge, St. Augustin et le Néoplatonisme (Paris, 1896).

[53] On Gregory, see post, Chapter V.

[54] Epistola ad Gregorium Thaumaturgum.

[55] Cf. Boissier, Fin du paganisme.

[56] Civ. Dei, xix. caps. 49, 20, 27, 28.

[57] De moribus Ecclesiae, 14, 15; cf. Epist. 155, §§ 12, 13.

[58] Civ. Dei, xix. 25.

[59] See Clement of Rome, Ep. to the Corinthians (A.D. cir. 92), opening passage, and notes in Lightfoot’s edition.

[60] De doc. Chris. i. 4, 5.

[61] De doc. Chris. ii. 16.

[62] De doc. Chris. iii. cap. 10 sqq.

[63] Post, Chapter V.

[64] De moribus Ecclesiae, 21; Confessions, v. 7; x. 54-57.

[65] See Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, iii. 14 sqq.; Taylor, Classical Heritage, p. 117 sqq.

[66] Civ. Dei, ix. 21, 22; cf. Civ. Dei, xvi. 6-9.

[67] Civ. Dei, book xii., affords a discussion of such questions, e.g. why was man created when he was, and not before or afterwards. All these matters entered into the discussions of the mediaeval philosophers, Thomas Aquinas, for example.

Besides these dogmatic treatises, in which Scriptural texts were called upon at least for confirmation, the Fathers, Greek and Latin, composed an enormous mass of Biblical commentary, chiefly allegorical, following the chapter and verse of the canonical writings.

[68] See ante, Chapter III.

[69] See post, Chapter V.

[70] The substance of Capella’s book is framed in an allegorical narrative of the Marriage of Philology and Mercury. For a nuptial gift, the groom presents the bride with seven maid-servants, symbolizing the Seven Liberal Arts—Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music. Cf. Taylor, Classical Heritage, etc., p. 49 sqq.

[71] In Eyssenhardt’s edition.

[72] On the symbolism of Numbers see Cantor, Vorlesungen über Ges. der Mathematik, 2nd ed. pp. 95, 96, 146, 156, 529, 531.

[73] See an extraordinary example taken from the treatise against Faustus, post, Chapter XXVII. Also De doc. Chris. ii. 16; De Trinitate, iv. 4-6.

[74] Migne, Pat. Lat. 14, col. 123-273. Written cir. 389.

[75] Hex. i. cap. 6.

[76] Hex. ii. caps. 2, 3.

[77] Aug. De Trinitate, iii. 5-9.

[78] Ante, Chapter III.

[79] Civ. Dei, xvi. 9.

[80] For the sources of these accounts see Lauchert, Ges. des Physiologus (Strassburg, 1889), p. 4 sqq. The wide use of this work is well known. It was soon translated into Ethiopian, Armenian, and Syrian; into Latin not later than the beginning of the fifth century; and subsequently, of course with many accretions, into the various languages of western mediaeval Europe. See Lauchert, o.c. p. 79 sqq.

[81] Cf. Boissier, Tacite (Paris, 1903).

[82] For example, what different truths can one speak afterwards of a social dinner of men and women at which he has sat. In the first place, there is the hostess, to whom he may say something pleasant and yet true. Then there is his congenial friend among the ladies present, to whom he will impart some intimate observations, also true. Thirdly, a club friend was at the dinner, and his ear shall be the receptacle of remarks on feminine traits illustrated by what was said and done there. Finally, there is himself, to whom in the watches of the night the dinner will present itself in its permanent values as an incident in human intercourse, which is so fascinating, so transitory, and so suggestive of topics of reflection. Here are four presentations; and if there was a company of twelve, we may multiply four by that number and imagine forty-eight true, although inexhaustive, accounts of that dinner which has now joined the fading circle of events that are no more.

[83] On Gregory of Nyssa, see Taylor, Classical Heritage, p. 125 sqq.

[84] Chiefly in Books III. and XV.-XVIII.

[85] Like the Civitas Dei, the patristic writings devoted exclusively to history were all frankly apologetic, yet following different manners according to the temper and circumstances of the writer. In the East, at the epoch of the formal Christian triumph and the climax of the Arian dispute, lived Eusebius of Caesarea, the most famous of the early Church historians. He was learned, careful, capable of weighing testimony, and possessed the faculty of presenting salient points. He does not dwell overmuch on miracles. His apologetic tendencies appear in his method of seeing and stating facts so as to uphold the truth of Christianity. If just then Christianity seemed no longer to demand an advocate, there was place for a eulogist, and such was Eusebius in his Church History and fulsome Life of Constantine. His Church History is translated by A. C. McGiffert, Library of Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. i. (New York, 1890). It was translated into Latin by Rufinus, friend and then enemy of St. Jerome.

[86] The best edition is Zangemeister’s in the Vienna Corpus scriptorum eccles. (1882). Orosius ignores the classic Greek historians, of whom he knew little or nothing. Cf. Taylor, Classical Heritage, pp. 219-221.

[87] Hist. ii. 3.

[88] Best edition that of Pauly, in Vienna Corpus scrip. eccles. (1883).

[89] An excellent statement of the nature and classes of the mediaeval Vitae sanctorum is “Les Légendes hagiographiques,” by Hipp. Delehaye, S.J., in Revue des questions historiques, t. 74 (1903), pp. 56-122. An English translation of this article has appeared as an independent volume.

[90] At Gregory’s statement of the marvellous deeds of Benedict, his interlocutor, the Deacon Peter, answers and exclaims: “Wonderful and astonishing is what you relate. For in the water brought forth from the rock (i.e. by Benedict) I see Moses, in the iron which returned from the bottom of the lake I see Elisha (2 Kings vi. 6), in the running upon the water I see Peter, in the obedience of the raven I see Elijah (1 Kings xvii. 6), and in his grief for his dead enemy I see David (2 Sam. i. 11). That man, as I consider him, was full of the spirit of all the just” (Gregorius Magnus, Dialogi, ii. 8. Quoted and expanded by Odo of Cluny, Migne, Pat. Lat. 133, col. 724). The rest of the second book contains other miracles like those told in the Bible. The Life of a later saint may also follow earlier monastic types. Francis kisses the wounds of lepers, as Martin of Tours had done. See Sulpicius Severus, Vita S. Martini. But often the writer of a vita deliberately inserts miracles to make his story edifying, or enhance the fame of his hero, perhaps in order to benefit the church where he is interred.

[91] Ambrose, Ep. 22, ad Marcellinam.

[92] On Paulinus of Nola, see Taylor, Classical Heritage, pp. 272-276.

[93] As this chapter has been devoted to the intellectual interests of the Fathers, it should be supplemented by a consideration of the emotions and passions approved or rejected by them. But this matter may be considered more conveniently in connection with the development of mediaeval emotion, post, Chapter XIV.

[94] Migne, Pat. Lat. 63, col. 1079-1167. Also edited by Friedlein (Leipsic, 1867).

[95] I know of no earlier employment of the word to designate these four branches of study. But one might infer from Boëthius’s youth at this time that he received it from a teacher.

[96] See Cantor, Vorlesungen über die Ges. der Mathematik, i. 537-540.

[97] See Cantor, o.c. i. 540-551.

[98] Cassiodorus, Ep. variae, i. 45

[99] Upon the dates of Boëthius’s writings, see S. Brandt, “Entstehungszeit und zeitliche Folge der Werke des Boëtius,” Philologus, Band 62 (N.S. Bd. 16), 1903, pp. 141 sqq. and 234 sqq.

[100] Social position, his own abilities, and the favour of Theodoric, obtained the consulship for Boëthius in 510, when he was twenty-eight or -nine years old.

[101] Migne, Pat. Lat. 64, col. 201.

[102] In librum de interpretatione, editio secunda, beginning of Book II., Migne 64, col. 433.

[103] See De inter. ed. prima, Book I. (Migne 64, col. 193); ed. secunda, beginning of Book III. and of Book IV. (Migne 64, col. 487 and 517). The Boëthian translations are all in the 64th vol. of Migne’s Pat. Lat.

[104] See A. Hildebrand, Boëthius und seine Stellung zum Christentum (Regensburg, 1885), and works therein referred to.

[105] See Prantl, Ges. der Logik, i. 679 sqq.

[106] See his Life in Hodgkin’s Letters of Cassiodorus; also Roger, Enseignement des lettres classiques d’Ausone à Alcuin, pp. 175-187 (Paris, 1905).

[107] Migne 70, col. 1281.

[108] Migne 70, col. 1105-1219.

[109] Gregory’s works are printed in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 75-79. His epistles are also published in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. On Gregory, his life and times, writings and doctrines, see F. H. Dudden, Gregory the Great, etc., 2 vols. (Longmans, 1905).

[110] Migne, Pat. Lat. 75, col. 516.

[111] Ep. xi. 54 (Migne 77, col. 1171).

[112] This is the view expressed in the Commentary on Kings ascribed to Gregory, but perhaps the work of a later hand. Thus, in the allegorical interpretation of 1 Kings (1 Sam.) xiii. 20, “But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe.” Says the commentator (Migne, Pat. Lat. 79, col. 356): We go down to the Philistines when we incline the mind to secular studies; Christian simplicity is upon a height. Secular books are said to be in the plane since they have no celestial truths. God put secular knowledge in a plane before us that we should use it as a step to ascend to the heights of Scripture. So Moses first learned the wisdom of the Egyptians that he might be able to understand and expound the divine precepts; Isaiah, most eloquent of the prophets, was nobiliter instructus et urbanus; and Paul had sat at Gamaliel’s feet before he was lifted to the height of the third heaven. One goes to the Philistines to sharpen his plow, because secular learning is needed as a training for Christian preaching.

[113] See post, Chapter X.

[114] Migne 75, 76.

[115] Migne 77, col. 149-430. The second book is devoted to Benedict of Nursia.

[116] For illustrations see Dudden, o.c. i. 321-366, and ii. 367-68. Gregory’s interest in the miraculous shows also in his letters. The Empress Constantine had written requesting him to send her the head of St. Paul! He replies (Ep. iv. 30, ad Constantinam Augustam) in a wonderful letter on the terrors of such holy relics and their death-striking as well as healing powers, of which he gives instances. He says that sometimes he has sent a bit of St. Peter’s chain or a few filings; and when people come seeking those filings from the priest in attendance, sometimes they readily come off, and again no effort of the file can detach anything.

[117] Moralia xvi. 51 (Migne 75, col. 1151). Cf. Dudden, o.c. ii. 369-373.

[118] Mor. ix. 34, 54 (Migne 75, col. 889). Cf. Dudden, o.c. ii. 419-426.

[119] Dialogi, iv. caps. 39, 55.

[120] A better Augustinianism speaks in Gregory’s letter to Theoctista (Ep. vii. 26), in which he says that there are two kinds of “compunction, the one which fears eternal punishments, the other which sighs for the heavenly rewards, as the soul thirsting after God is stung first by fear and then by love.”

[121] Ep. iv. 21; vi. 32; ix. 6.

[122] See post, Chapter XXXVI., 1.

[123] Migne 83, col. 207-424. No reference need be made, of course, to the False Decretals, pseudonymously connected with Isidore’s name; they are later than his time.

[124] The Etymologiae is to be found in vol. 82 of Migne, col. 73-728; the other works fill vol. 83 of Migne.

[125] Aug. Quaest. in Gen. i. 152. See ante, Chapter IV.

[126] Isidore’s Books of Sentences present a topical arrangement of matters more or less closely pertinent to the Christian Faith, and thus may be regarded as a precursor of the Sentences of Peter Lombard (post, Chapter XXXIV.). But Isidore’s work is the merest compilation, and he does not marshal his extracts to prove or disprove a set proposition, and show the consensus of authority, like the Lombard. His chief source is Gregory’s Moralia. Prosper of Aquitaine, a younger contemporary and disciple of Augustine, compiled from Augustine’s works a book of Sentences, a still slighter affair than Isidore’s (Migne, Pat. Lat. 51, col. 427-496).

[127] For example, Reason begins her reply thus: “Quaeso te, anima, obsecro te, deprecor te, imploro te, ne quid ultra leviter agas, ne quid inconsulte geras, ne temere aliquid facias,” etc. (Migne 83, col. 845).

[128] De rerum natura, Praefatio (Migne 83, col. 963).

[129] See Prolegomena to Becker’s edition.

[130] Migne 82, col. 367.

[131] See Kübler, “Isidorus-Studien,” Hermes xxv. (1890), 497, 518, and literature there cited.

An analysis of the Etymologies would be out of the question. But the captions of the twenty books into which it is divided will indicate the range of Isidore’s intellectual interests and those of his time:

[132] The exaggerated growth of grammatical and rhetorical studies is curiously shown by the mass of words invented to indicate the various kinds of tropes and figures. See the list in Bede, De schematis (Migne 90, col. 175 sqq.).

[133] Cf. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, 8 vols.; Villari, The Barbarian Invasions of Italy, 2 vols.

[134] This demand was not so extraordinary in view of the common Roman custom in the provinces of billeting soldiers upon the inhabitants, with the right to one-third of the house and appurtenances.

[135] Cf. post, Chapter XXXIII., II.

[136] On the Codes see Hodgkin, o.c. vol. vi.

[137] The Lombard language was still spoken in the time of Paulus Diaconus (eighth century).

[138] Apollinaris Sidonius, Ep. i. 2 (trans. by Hodgkin, o.c. vol. ii. 352-358), gives a sketch of a Visigothic king, Theodoric II., son of him who fell in the battle against the Huns. He ascended the throne in 453, having accomplished the murder of his brother Thorismund. In 466, he was himself slain by his brother Euric. In the meanwhile he appears to have been a good half-barbaric, half-civilized king.

[139] See post, Chapter XXXIII., II. For the Visigothic kingdom of Spain the great reigns were those of Leowigild (568-586) and his son Reccared (586-601). In Justinian’s time the “Roman Empire” had again made good its rule over the south of Spain. Leowigild pushed the Empire back to a narrow strip of southern coast, where there were still important cities. Save for this, he conquered all Spain, finally mastering the Suevi in the north-west. His capital was Toledo. Great as was his power, it hardly sufficed to hold in check the overweening nobles and landowners. Under the declining Empire there had sprung up a system of clientage and protection, in which the Teutons found an obstacle to the establishment of monarchies. In Spain this system hastened the downfall of the Visigothic kingdom. Another source of trouble for Leowigild, who was still an Arian, was the opposition of the powerful Catholic clergy. Reccared, his son, changed to the Catholic or “Roman” creed, and ended the schism between the throne and the bishops.

[140] The Spanish Roman Church, which controlled or thwarted the destinies of the doomed Visigothic kingdom, was foremost among the western churches in ability and learning. It had had its martyrs in the times of pagan persecution; it had its universally venerated Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, and prominent at the Council of Nicaea; it had its fiercely quelled heresies and schisms; and it had an astounding number of councils, usually held at Toledo. Its bishops were princes. Leander, Bishop of Seville, had been a tribulation to the powerful, still Arian, King Leowigild, who was compelled to banish him. That king’s son, Reccared, recalled him from banishment, to preside at the Council of Toledo in 589, when the Visigothic monarchy turned to Roman Catholicism. Leander was succeeded in his more than episcopal see by his younger brother Isidore (Bishop of Seville from 600 to 636). A princely prelate, Isidore was to have still wider and more lasting fame for sanctity and learning. The last encyclopaedic scholar belonging to the antique Christian world, he became one of the great masters of the Middle Ages (see ante, Chapter V.). The forger and compiler of the False Decretals in selecting the name of Isidore rather than another to clothe that collection with authority, acted under the universal veneration felt for this great Spanish Churchman.

[141] Marriages between Romans and Franks were legalized as early as 497.

[142] See Flach, Les Origines de l’ancienne France, vol. i. chap. i. sqq. (Paris, 1886).

[143] See post, Chapter XXXIII., II.

[144] The physiological criterion of a race is consanguinity. But unfortunately racial lineage soon loses itself in obscurity. Moreover, during periods as to which we have some knowledge, no race has continued pure from alien admixture; and every people that has taken part in the world’s advance has been acted upon by foreign influences from its prehistoric beginnings throughout the entire course of its history. Indeed, foreign suggestions and contact with other peoples appear essential to tribal or national progress. For the historian there exists no pure and unmixed race, and even the conception of one becomes self-contradictory. To him a race is a group of people, presumably related in some way by blood, who appear to transmit from generation to generation a common heritage of culture and like physical and spiritual traits. He observes that the transmitted characteristics of such a group may weaken or dissipate before foreign influence, and much more as the group scatters among other people; or again he sees its distinguishing traits becoming clearer as the members draw to a closer national unity under the action of a common physical environment, common institutions, and a common speech. The historian will not accept as conclusive any single kind of evidence regarding race. He may attach weight to complexion, stature, and shape of skull, and yet find their interpretation quite perplexing when compared with other evidence, historical or linguistic. He will consider customs and implements, and yet remember that customs may be borrowed, and implements are often of foreign pattern. Language affords him the most enticing criterion, but one of the most deceptive. It is a matter of observation that when two peoples of different tongues meet together, they may mingle their blood through marriage, combine their customs, and adopt each other’s utensils and ornaments; but the two languages will not structurally unite: one will supplant the other. The language may thus be more single in source than the people speaking it; though, conversely, people of the same race, by reason of special circumstances, may not speak the same tongue. Hence linguistic unity is not conclusive evidence of unity of race.

[145] As to the Celts in Gaul and elsewhere, and the early non-Celtic population of Gaul, see A. Bertrand, La Gaule avant les Gaulois (Paris, 1891); La Religion des Gaulois (Paris, 1897); Les Celtes dans les vallées du Pô et du Danube (in conjunction with S. Reinach); D’Arbois de Jubainville, Les Premiers Habitants de l’Europe (second edition, Paris, 1894); Fustel de Coulanges, Institutions politiques de l’ancienne France (Paris, 1891); Karl Müllenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, Bde. I. and II.; Zupitza, “Kelten und Gallier,” Zeitschrift für keltische Philologie, 1902.

[146] See ante, Chapter II.

[147] The Latin literature produced by their descendants in the fourth century is usually good in form, whatever other qualities it lack. This statement applies to the works of the nominally Christian, but really pagan, rhetorician and poet, Ausonius, born in 310, at Bordeaux, of mingled Aquitanian and Aeduan blood; likewise to the poems of Paulinus of Nola, born at the same town, in 353, and to the prose of Sulpicius Severus, also born in Aquitaine a little after. In the fifth century, Avitus, an Auvernian, Bishop of Vienne, and Apollinaris Sidonius continue the Gallo-Latin strain in literature.

[148] Without hazarding a discussion of the origin of the Irish, of their proportion of Celtic blood, or their exact relation to the Celts of the Continent, it may in a general way be said, that Ireland and Great Britain were inhabited by a prehistoric and pre-Celtic people. The Celts came from the Continent, conquered them, and probably intermarried with them. The Celtic inflow may have begun in the sixth century before Christ, and perhaps continued until shortly before Caesar’s time. Evidences of language point to a dual Celtic stock, Goidelic and Brythonic. It may be surmised that the former was the first to arrive. The Celtic dialect spoken by them is now represented by the Gaelic of Ireland, Man, and Scotland. The Brythonic is still represented by the speech of Wales and the Armoric dialects of Brittany. This was the language of the Britons who fought with Caesar, and were subdued by later Roman generals. After the Roman time they were either pressed back into Wales and Cornwall by Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, or were absorbed among these conquering Teutons. Probably Caesar was correct in asserting the close affinity of the Britons with the Belgic tribes of the Continent. See the opening chapters of Rhys and Brynmor-Jones’s Welsh People; also Rhys’s Early Britain (London, 1882); Zupitza, “Kelten und Gallier,” Zeitschrift für keltische Phil., 1902; T. H. Huxley, “On some Fixed Points in British Ethnology,” Contemporary Review for 1871, reprinted in Essays (Appleton’s, 1894); Ripley, Races of Europe, chap. xii. (New York, 1899).

[149] The Irish art of illumination presents analogies to the literature. The finesse of design and execution in the Book of Kells (seventh century) is astonishing. Equally marvellous was the work of Irish goldsmiths. Both arts doubtless made use of designs common upon the Continent, and may even have drawn suggestions from Byzantine or late Roman patterns. Nevertheless, illumination and the goldsmith’s art in Ireland are characteristically Irish and the very climax of barbaric fashions. Their forms pointed to nothing further. These astounding spirals, meanders, and interlacings, combined with utterly fantastic and impossible drawings of the human form, required essential modification before they were suited to form part of that organic development of mediaeval art which followed its earlier imitative periods.

Irish illumination was carried by Columba to Iona, and spread thence through many monasteries in the northern part of Britain. It was imitated in the Anglo-Saxon monasteries of Northumbria, and from them passed with Alcuin to the Court of Charlemagne. Through these transplantings the Irish art was changed, under the hands of men conversant with Byzantine and later Roman art. The influence of the art also worked outward from Irish monasteries upon the Continent, St. Gall, for example. The Irish goldsmith’s art likewise passed into Saxon England, into Carolingian France, and into Scandinavia. See J. H. Middleton, Illuminated Manuscripts (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1892), and the different view as to the sources of Irish illuminating art in Muntz, Études iconographiques (Paris, 1887); also Kraus, Geschichte der christlichen Kunst, i. 607-619; Margaret Stokes, Early Christian Art in Ireland (South Kensington Museum Art Hand-Books, 1894), vol. i. p. 32 sqq., and vol. ii. pp. 73, 78; Sophus Müller, Nordische Altertumskunde, vol. ii. chap. xiv. (Strassburg, 1898).

[150] The classification of ancient Irish literature is largely the work of O’Curry, Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History (Dublin, 1861, 2nd ed., 1878). See also D. Hyde, A Literary History of Ireland, chaps. xxi.-xxix. (London, 1899); D’Arbois de Jubainville, Introduction à l’étude de la littérature celtique, chap. préliminaire (Paris, 1883). The tales of the Ulster Cycle, in the main, antedate the coming of the Norsemen in the eighth century; but the later redactions seem to reflect Norse customs; see Pflugk-Hartung, in Revue celtique, t. xiii. (1892), p. 170 sqq.

[151] This comparison with Homeric society might be extended so as to include the Celts of Britain and Gaul. Close affinities appear between the Gauls and the personages of the Ulster Cycle. Several of its Sagas have to do with the “hero’s portion” awarded to the bravest warrior at the feast, a source of much pleasant trouble. Posidonius, writing in the time of Cicero, mentions the same custom among the Celts of Gaul (Didot-Müller, Fragmenta hist. Graec. t. iii. p. 260, col. 1; D’Arbois de Jubainville, Introduction, etc., pp. 297, 298).

[152] Probably first written down in the seventh century. Some of the Cuchulain Sagas are rendered by D’Arbois de Jubainville, Épopée celtique; they are given popularly in E. Hull’s Cuchulain Saga (D. Nutt, London, 1898). Also to some extent in Hyde’s Lit. Hist., etc.

[153] See the famous Battle of the Ford between Cuchulain and Ferdiad (Hyde, Lit. Hist. of Ireland, pp. 328-334). A more burlesque hyperbole is that of the three caldrons of cold water prepared for Cuchulain to cool his battle-heat: when he was plunged in the first, it boiled; plunged into the second, no one could hold his hand in it; but in the third, the water became tepid (D’Arbois de Jubainville, Épopée celtique, p. 204).

[154] Certain interpolated Christian chapters at the end tell how Mældun is led to forgive the murderers—an idea certainly foreign to the original pagan story, which may perhaps have had its own ending. The tale is translated in P. W. Joyce’s Old Celtic Romances (London, 1894), and by F. Lot in D’Arbois de Jubainville’s Épopée celtique, pp. 449-500.

[155] Perhaps no one of the Ulster Sagas exhibits these qualities more amusingly than The Feast of Bricriu, a tale in which contention for the “hero’s portion” is the leading motive. Its personae are the men and women who constantly appear and reappear throughout this cycle. In this Saga they act and speak admirably in character, and some of the descriptions bring the very man before our eyes. It is translated by George Henderson, Vol. II. Irish Texts Society (London, 1899), and also by D’Arbois de Jubainville in his Épopée celtique (Paris, 1892).

[156] For example, in a historical Saga the great King Brian speaks, fighting against the Norsemen: “O God ... retreat becomes us not, and I myself know I shall not leave this place alive; and what would it profit me if I did? For Aibhell of Grey Crag came to me last night, and told me that I should be killed this day.”

[157] “Deirdre, or the Fate of the Sons of Usnach,” is rendered in E. Hull’s Cuchulain Saga; Hyde, Lit. Hist., chap, xxv., and D’Arbois de Jubainville, Épopée celtique, pp. 217-319. The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne was edited by O’Duffy for the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language (Dublin, Gill and Son, 1895), and less completely in Joyce’s Old Celtic Romances (London, 1894).

[158] Cf. Hyde, o.c., chaps. xxi. xxxvi.

[159] The Voyage of Bran, edited and translated by Kuno Meyer, with essays on the Celtic Otherworld, by Alfred Nutt (2 vols., David Nutt, London, 1895). A Saga usually is prose interspersed with lyric verses at critical points of the story.

[160] On Tara, see Index in O’Curry’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish; also Hyde, Literary History, pp. 126-130. For this story, see O’Grady, Silva Gaedelica, pp. 77-88 (London, 1892); Hyde, pp. 226-232.

[161] See D’Arbois de Jubainville, Introduction à la lit. celtique, pp. 259-271 (Paris, 1883).

[162] See D’Arbois de Jubainville, Introduction, etc., p. 129 sqq.; Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois, chap. xx. (Paris, 1897). Also O’Curry, o.c. passim.

[163] For this whole story see H. Zimmer, “Über die frühesten Berührungen der Iren mit den Nordgermanen,” Sitzungsbericht der Preussischen Akad., 1891 (1), pp. 279-317.

[164] For the life of Saint Columba the chief source is the Vita by Adamnan, his eighth successor as abbot of Iona. It contains well-drawn sketches of the saint and much that is marvellous and incredible. It was edited with elaborate notes by Dr. W. Reeves, for the Irish Archaeological Society, in 1857. His work, rearranged and with a translation of the Vita, was republished as Vol. VI. of The Historians of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1874). The Vita may also be found in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 88, col. 725-776. Bede, Ecc. Hist. iii. 4, refers to Columba. The Gaelic life from the Book of Lismore is published, with a translation by M. Stokes, Anecdota Oxoniensia (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1890). The Bodleian Eulogy, i.e. the Amra Choluim chille, was published, with translation by M. Stokes, in Revue celtique, t. xx. (1899); as to its date, see Rev. celtique, t. xvii. p. 41. Another (later) Gaelic life has been published by R. Henebry in the Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 1901, and later. There is an interesting article on the hymns ascribed to Columba in Blackwood’s Magazine for September 1899. See also Cuissard, Rev. celtique, t. v. p. 207. The hymns themselves are in Dr. Todd’s Liber Hymnorum. Montalembert’s Monks of the West, book ix. (vol. iii. Eng. trans.), gives a long, readable, and uncritical account of “St. Columba, the Apostle of Caledonia.”

[165] The Irish monastery was ordered as an Irish clan, and indeed might be a clan monastically ordered. At the head was an abbot, not elected by the monks, but usually appointed by the preceding abbot from his own family; as an Irish king appointed his successor. The monks ordinarily belonged to the abbot’s clan. They lived in an assemblage of huts. Some devoted themselves to contemplation, prayer, and writing; more to manual labour. There were recluses among them. Besides the monks, other members of the clan living near the “monastery” owed it duties and were entitled to its protection and spiritual ministration. The abbot might be an ordained priest; he rarely was a bishop, though he had bishops under him who at his bidding performed such episcopal functions as that of ordination. But he was the ruler, lay as well as spiritual. Not infrequently he also was a king. Although there was no common ordering of Irish monasteries, a head monastery might bear rule over its daughter foundations, as did Columba’s primal monastery of Iona over those in Ireland or Northern Britain which owed their origin to him. Irish monasteries might march with their clan on military expeditions, or carry on a war of monastery against monastery. “A.D. 763. A battle was fought at Argamoyn, between the fraternities of Clonmacnois and Durrow, where Dermod Duff, son of Donnell, was killed with 200 men of the fraternity of Durrow. Bresal, son of Murchadh, with the fraternity of Clonmacnois, was victor” (Ancient Annals). This entry is not alone, for there is another one of the year 816, in which a “fraternity of Colum-cille” seems to have been worsted in battle, and then to have gone “to Tara to curse” the reigning king. See Reeve’s Adamnan’s Life of Columba, p. 255. Of course Irish armies felt no qualms at sacking the monasteries and slaying the monks of another kingdom. The sanctuaries of Clonmacnois, Kildare, Clonard, Armagh were plundered as readily by “Christian” Irishmen as by heathen Danes. In the ninth century, Phelim, King of Munster, was an abbot and a bishop too; but he sacked the sacred places of Ulster and killed their monks and clergy. See G. T. Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church; Killen, Eccl. Hist. of Ireland, vol. i. p. 145 sqq.

[166] The title of saint is regularly given to the higher clergy of this period in Ireland.

[167] “The History of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating” in the original Gaelic with an English translation, by Comyn and Dineen (Irish Texts Society. David Nutt, London, 1902-1908).

[168] This means that he copied a manuscript belonging to Finnian.

[169] The Life of Colomb Cille from the Book of Lismore.

[170] Adamnan.

[171] B.G. iv. 1-3; vi. 21-28. For convenience I use the word Teuton as the general term and German as relating to the Teutons of the lands still known as German. But with reference to the times of Caesar and Tacitus the latter word must be taken generally.

[172] These views are set forth brilliantly, but with exaggeration, by Fustel de Coulanges, in L’Invasion germanique, vol. ii. of his Institutions politiques, etc. (revised edition, Paris, 1891).

[173] Apoll. Sid. Epist. viii. 6 (Migne, Pat. Lat. 58, col. 697).

[174] See Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law; and Pollock, English Law before the Norman Conquest, Law Quarterly Review.

[175] The ancient Anglo-Saxon version is Anglo-Saxon through and through. The considerable store of Latin (or Greek) words retained by the “authorized” English version (for example, Scripture, Testament, Genesis, Exodus, etc., prophet, evangelist, religion, conversion, adoption, temptation, redemption, salvation, and damnation) were all translated into sheer Anglo-Saxon. See Toller, Outlines of the History of the English Language (Macmillan & Co., 1900), pp. 90-101. Some hundreds of years before, Ulfilas’s fourth century Gothic translation had shown a Teutonic tongue capable of rendering the thought of the Pauline epistles.

[176] See the “Beowulf” translated in Gummere’s Oldest English Epic (Macmillan & Co., 1909).

[177] This is the closing sentence of Alfred’s Blossoms, culled from divers sources. Hereafter (Chapter IX.) when speaking of the introduction of antique and Christian culture there will be occasion to note more specifically what Alfred accomplished in his attempt to increase knowledge throughout his kingdom.

[178] See e.g. in Otfried’s Evangelienbuch, post, Chapter IX.

[179] For example: skidunga (Scheidung), saligheit (Seligkeit), fiantscaft (Feindschaft), heidantuom (Heidentum). By the eighth century the High German of the Bavarians and Alemanni began to separate from the Low German of the lower Rhine, spoken by Saxons and certain of the Franks. The greater part of the Frankish tribes, and the Thuringians, occupied intermediate sections of country and spoke dialects midway between Low German and High.

[180] Text in Piper’s Die älteste Literatur (Deutsche National Lit.).

[181] On the Waltari poem, see Ebert, Allgemeine Gesch. der Literatur des Mittelalters, Bd. iii. 264-276; also K. Strecker, “Probleme in der Walthariusforschung,” Neue Jahrbücher für klass. Altertumsgesch. und Deutsche Literatur, 2te Jahrgang (Leipzig, 1899), pp. 573-594, 629-645. The author is called Ekkehart I. (d. 973), being the first of the celebrated monks bearing that name at St. Gall. The poem is edited by Peiper (Berlin, 1873), and by Scheffel and Holder (Stuttgart, 1874); it is translated into German by the latter, by San Marte (Magdeburg, 1853), and by Althof (Leipzig, 1902).