Like the painter’s, the architect’s impulse was at first almost entirely religious, though guild-halls and universities followed on the erection of churches and monasteries. Nourished on St. Augustine’s belief in this life as a mere transitory journey towards the eternal ‘City of God’, mediaeval men and women saw this pilgrimage encompassed with a vast army of devils and saints, ranged in constant battle for the human soul. Only through faith and the kindly assistance of the Saints could man hope to beat off the legions of hell which hung like a pack of wolves about his footsteps, and nowhere with greater efficacy than in the sanctuary from which human prayer arose daily to God’s throne.

Churches and chapels in modern times have become the property of a section of the public—that is, of those who think or believe in a certain way; and sometimes through poverty of purse or spirit, through bad workmanship or material, the architecture that results is shoddy or insignificant. In the Middle Ages his parish church was the most certain fact in every Christian’s existence, from the day he was carried to the font for baptism until his last journey to rest beneath its shadow. Here he would make his confessions, his vows of repentance and amendment, and offer his worship and thanksgiving: here he would often find a fortified refuge from violence in the street outside, a school, a granary, a parish council-chamber.

What more natural than that mediaeval artists, their souls attune with the hopes and fears of their age, should realize their genius best in constructing and ornamenting buildings that were to all citizens alike the symbol of their belief? ‘Let us build,’ said the people of Siena in the thirteenth century, ‘such a church to the glory of God that all men shall wonder!’

The cathedral, when completed, was but a third in size and grandeur of the original design, for the Black Death fell upon Siena and carried off her builders in the midst of their work; yet it remains magnificently arresting to modern eyes, as though the faith of those who planned and fashioned its slabs of black and white marble for the love of God and their city had breathed into their workmanship something of the mediaeval soul.

The same is true of ‘Nôtre Dame de la Victoire’ in Paris, founded by Philip Augustus, of which Victor Hugo says ‘each face, each stone, is a page of history’. It is true of nearly all mediaeval churches that have outlived the ravages of war and fire, memorials of an age, that if it lagged behind our own in ultimate achievement, was pre-eminent in one art at least—ecclesiastical architecture.

Where the architect stopped the mediaeval sculptor took up his work, at first with simple severity but later in a riot of imagination that peopled façades, vaulted roofs, and capitals of columns with the angels, demons, and hybrid monsters that haunted the fancy of the day. The flying buttress, the invention of which made possible lofty clerestories with vast expanses of window, brought to perfection another art, the painting of glass. Here also the mediaeval artist excelled, and the crucibles in which he mixed the colours that hold us wrapt before the windows of Leon, Albi, and Chartres, still keep unsolved the secret of their transparent delicacy and depth.

In the architecture, the sculpture, and in the stained glass of the Middle Ages we see original genius at work, but in learning and culture Europe was slower to throw off the giant influence of Rome. Even under the crushing inroads of barbarian ignorance Italy had managed to keep alive the study of classical authors and of Roman law. Latin remained the language of the educated man or woman, the language in which the services of the Church were recited, sermons were preached, correspondence carried on, business transacted, and students in universities and schools addressed by their professors.

The advantages of a common tongue can be imagined: the comparative ease with which a pope or king could keep in touch with bishops or subjects of a different race; the accessibility of the best books to students of all nations, since scarcely a mediaeval author of repute would condescend to employ his own tongue: above all perhaps the ease with which an ambassador, a merchant, or a pilgrim could make himself understood on a journey across Europe, instead of torturing his brain with struggles after the right word in first one foreign dialect and then another.

This classical form, so rigidly withholding knowledge from the grasp of the ignorant, had also its disadvantage; for many a mediaeval pen, that could have flown across the vellum in joyful intimacy in its owner’s tongue, stumbled clumsily amidst Latin constructions, leaving in the end not a spontaneous record of current events, but a ‘dry-as-dust’ catalogue, in bad imitation of some Latin stylist. The modern world is more grateful to mediaeval culture for such lapses as Dante’s Divina Commedia than for all the heavy Latin tomes, whose authors hoped for laurelled immortality.

For those in England and France who could not easily master Latin or found its stately periods too cumbrous for ordinary conversation, French, descended from the spoken Latin of the Roman soldier or merchant in Gaul, was in the Middle Ages, as to-day, the language of polite society. It possessed two distinct dialects, the ‘langue d’œil’ and the ‘langue d’oc’, so called because the northern Frenchman, including the Norman, was supposed to pronounce oui as œil, while his southern fellow countryman pronounced it as oc.

England, where, ever since the Conquest of William I, French had been the natural tongue of a semi-foreign court, owed an enormous literary impulse to the ‘langue d’œil’ during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; while the ‘langue d’oc’ that gave its name to a district in the south of France shared its poetry and romance between Provençals and Catalans. The descendants of the former are to-day French, of the latter Spanish: but in the eleventh century they were fellow subjects of the Counts of Toulouse, who ruled over a district stretching from the source of the Rhone to the Mediterranean, from the Italian Alps to the Ebro.

In this semi-independent kingdom there developed a civilization and culture of hot-house growth, precocious in its appreciation of the less violent pleasures of life, such as love, art, music, literature, but often corrupt in their enjoyment. The gay court of Toulouse paid no heed to St. Augustine’s hell, whose fears haunted the rest of Europe in its more thoughtful moments. Joyous and inconsequent, it lived for the passing hour, and out of its atmosphere of dalliance and culture was born a race of poet-singers. These troubadours (trouvers = discoverers) sang of love, whose silken fetters could hold in thrall knights and fair ladies; and their golden lyrics, now plaintive, now gay, were carried to the crowded cities of Italy and Spain, or found schools of imitators elsewhere, as in Germany amongst her thirteenth-century minnesingers (love-singers). In the north of France and in England appeared minstrels also, but their themes were less of love than of battle; and audiences revelled by castle and camp-fire in the ‘gestes’ or ‘deeds’ of Charlemagne and his Paladins, the chivalry of Arthur and his Knights, or in stirring Border ballads such as Chevy Chase.

The market-place, the camp, and the baronial hall, where were sung or recited these often imaginary stories of the past, were the schools of the many unlettered; just as the conversation of Arabs and Jews around the desert fires had stimulated the imagination of the young Mahomet; but for the few who could afford a sounder education there were the universities—Paris, Bologna, Oxford, to name but three of the most famous.

The word universitas implied in the Middle Ages a union of men; such a corporation as the ‘guilds’ formed by fishmongers and drapers to protect their trade interests; and the universities had indeed originated for a similar purpose. Cities to-day that have universities in their midst are proud of the fact, and welcome new students; but in early mediaeval times an influx of young men of all ages from every part of Europe, many of them wild and unruly, some so poor that they must beg or steal their daily bread, was at first sight a very doubtful blessing. Street fights between nationalities who hated one another on principle, or between bands of students and citizens, were a common occurrence in the towns that learning honoured with her presence, and had their usual accompaniment of broken heads, fires, and looting. But for the universitas formed by masters and students to control and protect their members, these centres of education would probably have been stamped out by indignant tradesmen: as it was they had to fight for their existence.

Municipalities looked with no lenient eye upon a corporation that seemed to them a ‘state within a state’, threatening their own right to govern all within the city. It was not until after many generations that they understood the meaning of the word co-operation, that is, the possibility of assisting instead of hindering the work of the universitas. Sometimes a king like Philip Augustus insisted on toleration by granting to his students the ‘privilege of clergy’, but as the University grew it became able to enforce its own lessons. In the thirteenth century the Masters of Paris closed their lecture-halls and led away their flock, in protest for what they considered unfair treatment by the city authorities during a riot, and their absence taught Parisians that, in spite of head-breakings, the students were an asset, not a loss, to municipal life. Under the protection therefore of a papal ‘bull’, they returned a few weeks later in triumph to the Latin Quarter.

It was only by degrees that colleges where the students could live were erected, or that anything resembling the elaborate organization of a modern university was evolved. Students lodged where they could, and ‘masters’ lived on the goodwill of those who paid their fees, and starved if their popularity waned and with it their audience. The life of both teacher and pupil was vague and hazardous, with a background of poverty and crime lurking at the street corners to ruin the unwary or foolish. Nor was the period of study a mere ‘passing sojourn’ like some modern ‘terms’: the Bachelor of Arts at Oxford or Paris must be a student of five years’ standing, the Master of Arts calculated on devoting three years more to gaining his final degree, a Doctor of Theology would be faced with eight years’ hard work at least. It might almost be said that higher education under these circumstances became a profession.

To Bologna, the greatest of Italian universities, went those who wished to study Roman law at the fountain-head. This does not mean to stir up the legal dust of a dead empire out of a student’s curiosity, but to master a living system of law that barbarian invaders had gradually grafted on to their own national codes. In the eleventh century the laws of Justinian21 were as much or more revered than in his own day. We have seen that Frederick Barbarossa set the lawyers of Bologna to work to justify from old legal documents the claims he wished to establish over Lombardy; and when they had succeeded to his satisfaction he rewarded them with gifts and knighthood, showing what value he put on their achievement. This is a very good example of the respect felt by mediaeval minds for the laws and title-deeds of an earlier age, even though the tyranny that resulted led the ‘Lombard League’ to dispute such claims.

Still more closely allied than the civil codes of Europe to the old Roman legal texts was the ‘Canon’ law of the Church that had been directly based upon classic models; and with the rise of Hildebrand’s world-wide ambitions its decisions assumed a growing importance and demanded an enormous army of trained lawyers to interpret and arrange them. For youths of a practical and ambitious turn of mind here was a course of study leading to a profession profitable in all ages; and a text-book was provided for such budding lawyers in the decretum of Gratian, a monk who in the twelfth century compiled a full and authoritative text of Canon law.

The existence of the Ecclesiastical Courts, in which Canon law was administered, we have already mentioned in discussing the quarrel of Henry II of England and Thomas Becket.22 Founded originally to deal with purely ecclesiastical cases and officials, they tended in time to draw within their competence any one over whom the Church could claim protection and any causes that affected the rites of the Catholic Church. It was a wide net with a very small mesh, as the Angevin Henry II and other lay rulers of Europe found. The protection that spread its wings over priests and clerks stretched also to crusaders, widows, and orphans: the jurisdiction of the Church Courts claimed not merely moral questions such as heresy, sacrilege, and perjury, but all matters connected with probate of wills, marriage and divorce, and even libel.

Rome became a hive of ecclesiastical lawyers, with the Pope, like the Roman emperors of old, the supreme law-giver and final court of appeal for all Church Courts of Europe. His rule was absolute, at least in theory, for by his power of ‘dispensation’ he could set aside, if he considered advisable, the very Canon law his officials administered. He could also summon to his curia, or papal court, any case on which he wished to pronounce judgement, at whatever stage in its litigation in an inferior ecclesiastical court.

Under the Pope in an ordered hierarchy, corresponding to the feudal arrangement of lay society, came the metropolitans, who received from his hand or from those of his legates the narrow woollen scarf, or pallium, that was the symbol of their authority. Next in order came the diocesan bishops with their ‘officials’, the archdeacons and rural deans, each with their own court and measure of jurisdiction.

The Pope’s will went forth to Christendom in the form of letters called ‘bulls’, from the bulla or heavy seal that was attached to them. Against those who paid no heed to their contents he could hurl either the weapon of excommunication—that is, of personal outlawry from the Church—or else, if the offender were a king or a city, the still more blasting ‘interdict’ that fell on ruler and ruled alike. The land that groaned under an interdict was bereft of all spiritual comfort: no priest might say public Mass, baptize a new-born child, perform the marriage service, console the dying with ‘supreme unction’, or bury the dead. The very church bells would ring no more.

It was under this pressure of spiritual starvation, when the Saints seemed to have withdrawn their sheltering arms and the demons to have gathered joyfully to a harvest of lost souls, that John of England was brought by the curses of his people to turn to Rome in repentance and submission. Yet, as in the case of most weapons, familiarity bred contempt, and too frequent use of powers of ‘interdict’ and ‘excommunication’ was to blunt their efficacy—a Frederick II, the oft-excommunicated, proved able to conquer Jerusalem and dominate Italy even under the papal ban.

The Church, in her claims to world empire, demanded in truth an obedience it was beyond her ability to enforce. She also laid herself open to temptations to which from the nature of her temporal ambitions she must inevitably succumb. No such elaborate and expensive administration as emanated from her curia could continue without an inexhaustible flow of money into her treasury. Lawyers, priests, legates, cardinals, the Pope himself, had each to be maintained in a state befitting their office in the eyes of a world, as ready in the thirteenth century as in the twentieth to judge by appearances and offer its homage accordingly.

In addition to the ordinary expenses of a ruler, whose court was a centre of religious and intellectual life for Europe, there was the constant burden of war, first with neighbouring Italian rulers and then with the Empire. Innocent IV triumphed over the Hohenstaufen; but largely by dipping his hands into English money-bags, to such an extent indeed during the reign of John’s son, Henry III, that England gained the scoffing name of the ‘milch cow of the Papacy’.

At first, when the ecclesiastical courts had offered to criminals a justice at once more humane and comprehensive than the rough-and-ready tyranny of a king or feudal lord, the upholders of the rights of Canon law were regarded as popular heroes. Later, however, with the growth of national feeling and the development and better administration of the civil codes, men and women began to falter in their allegiance. Canon law was found to be both expensive and tardy, especially in the case of ‘appeals’, that is, of cases, called from some inferior court to Rome. The key also to the judgements given at Rome was often too obviously gold and of heavy weight.

Nor was justice alone to be bought or sold. A large part of the money that filled the Roman treasury was derived from benefices and livings in different countries of Europe that had by one means or another accumulated in papal hands. The constant pressure of the wars with emperors and Italian Ghibellines made it necessary for the Popes to administer this patronage as profitably as possible; and so the spiritual needs of dioceses and parishes became sacrificed to the military calls on the Roman treasury.

Sometimes it was not a living itself for which a clerical candidate paid heavily, but merely the promise of ‘preferment’ to the next vacancy; or he would pledge himself in the case of nomination to send his ‘firstfruits’, that is, his first year’s revenue, to Rome. Those who could afford the requisite sum might be natives of the country in which the vacant bishopric or living occurred; often they were not, and the successful nominee, instead of going in person to exercise his duties, would merely send an agent to collect his dues. These dues came from many different sources, but in the case of livings principally from the ‘tithe’, a tax for the maintenance of the Church, supposed to represent one-tenth of every man’s income.

People usually grumble when they are continually asked for money, and mediaeval men and women were no exception to this rule. Thus, to take the case of England, while the wars between Emperor and Pope left her comparatively indifferent as to the issues involved, the growing exactions of the Roman curia that touched her pockets awoke a smouldering resentment that every now and then flared into hostility.

’In these times’, wrote the chronicler, Matthew Paris, ‘the small fire of faith began to grow exceeding chill, so that it was well nigh reduced to ashes ... for now was simony practised without shame.... Every day illiterate persons of the lowest class, armed with bulls from Rome, feared not to plunder the revenues which our pious forefathers had assigned for the maintenance of the Religious, the support of the poor, and the sustaining of strangers.’

At Oxford in the reign of Henry III (1216–72), the papal legate was forced to fly from the town by indignant ‘clerks’ of the university, or undergraduates as we should call them to-day. ‘Where is that usurer, that simoniac, that plunderer of revenues, that thirster for money?’ they cried, as they hunted him and his retinue through the streets, ‘it is he who perverts the King and subverts the kingdom to enrich foreigners with our spoils.’

At Lincoln Bishop Grosstete indignantly refused to invest Innocent IV’s nephew, a boy of twelve, with the next vacant prebendary of his cathedral. Other papal relatives were absorbing livings and bishoprics elsewhere in Europe, for under Innocent IV began the open practice of ‘nepotism’, that is, of Popes using their revenues and their office in order to provide for their nephews and other members of their families.

‘He laid aside all shame,’ says Matthew Paris of this Pope, ‘he extorted larger sums of money than any before him.’ The ‘sums of money’ enabled Rome to cast down her imperial foe, but the extortion was a dangerous expedient. Throughout the early Middle Ages the Pope had been accepted by Western Christendom as speaking for the Church with the voice of Christ’s authority. In his disputes with kings the latter could never be sure of the loyalty of their people, should they call on them to take up arms against the ‘Holy Father’.

With the growth of nations and of Rome as a temporal power a gradual change came over the European outlook; subjects were more inclined to obey rulers whom they knew than a distant potentate whom they did not; they were also less ready to accept papal interference without criticism. Thus a distinction was for the first time drawn between the Pope and the Church.

When King Hako of Norway was offered the imperial crown on the deposition of Frederick II by Innocent IV, he refused, saying, ‘I will gladly fight the enemies of the Church, but I will not fight against the foes of the Pope.’ His words were significant of a new spirit. In the feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines that racked the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were laid the foundations of a movement to control the Popes by Universal Councils in the fifteenth, and of that still more drastic opposition to his powers in the sixteenth that we call the Reformation.