UC-NRLF $B 3fll 2DM iJ^^ ^^^^5*^1^ N' /. REESE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY Ol-' CALIFORNIA "^'^'^'^ jUfj 14 1893 . z/lccessionsNo^^^^^^J^9. Class No. . i8g NOTES OF FOUR LECTURES 'LS^P^ ONJVEBsix,- THE LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY THE MIDDLE AGES PEESe ^'8/ ^Mri?' '., '^^^nPeliyeked in Edinburgh ^^^e^BY A. J. SCOTT l| OWENS COLLRGK, MANCHESTER. |)rintei for ^ribate Cirralution onlu. EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY THOMAS CONSTABLE, I'RINTKU TO UER M A 'KSTY. -M D C C C L V I 1 . (r 1 o^' 7 NOTE. It is much to be regretted that the idea of em- ploying a skilled reporter to take down Mr. Scott's Lectures did not occur to his friends till after the first had been delivered,' which is consequently very inadequately supplied from the recollections of one of the hearers. LECTURE I. You are aware that 1 have undertaken on this occasion to give a brief series of illustrations of the history of the Literature of the Middle Ages. I am glad that my Lectures have been preceded by those of Dr. Kinkel on Mediaeval Art, and those of Dr. Brewer on the Norman Conquest ; for, although the period comprised in Dr. Brewer's Lecture is com- paratively a very limited one, we shall find in this portion of our own history characteristics exhibiting in miniature a process which ultimately extended itself over the whole of North- Western Europe. And art is, in truth, the grand characteristic feature of the Mediaeval period. The characteristics of the old Roman civilisation are very varied. We read of the armies of Rome, of its poetry, its history, its palaces, its jurisprudence. Of the Gothic period its art is almost all we know. The Norman castle, the Gothic cathedral, rise up before us as almost the only images associated with this time in our minds, as that which alone gives any distinctness to our con- ceptions of a form of life so wonderfully different from that in which we exist. In the brief course of four Lectures, I can attempt little more than to illustrate the subject by some very C LECTURE I. general ideas. You will not expect that I should enter with you on any course of instruction. If we think of the space w^hich this period occupies in the works of our great historic WTiters, Sismondi, Hal- lam, &c. &c., any such attempt must be felt to be im- possible. Am I then to give a mere abridgment of what they have written 1 to put before you a dry chronological succession of events ? This would, on my part, be but labour thrown away ; it would not avail to you for either instruction or amusement : I utterly renounce the thought of doing either. All that I can hope for is, to put before you some general view of the relations that exist between the political bearings of this time and its literature ; to give some attractiveness to the subject to those hitherto ignorant of it ; w^hile to those who have already studied it, an opportunity may be afforded of comparing notes with me, and seeing how far our views and sympathies on the subject are at one. The Middle Ages ! What portion of the history of our race is to be comprised within this term 1 The classic period which goes before them lies all in light. With the glories of Athens we are all more or less familiar. Rome is before us with its early republic the heroism of its citizens the military grandeur of the later republic the gorgeous decay of its em- pire many great and glorious names are famihar to us all. After going through a long subterraneous pas- sage, we enter upon another period, our impressions of which are again distinct and living. Chaucer and Dante are names as familiar to us as are those of Homer and ^schylus. Then comes on like the dawn the still more recent time of Elizabeth, of Shakspere LECTURE I. 7 and Spenser and Milton, landing us at last in the actual world in which we find ourselves. But of the long intervening period between the classic age and that dawn which we have indicated of the successive changes of thought which have made us what we are how Uttle do we know ! In these, to us, dark ages, the transition was made which has issued in modern civilisation. Ages, I say, not age, for w^e must remember a thousand years are comprehended in the period so called. Compared with this the classic period is brief indeed ! And how vast and varied have been the changes ! New nations, new languages, have been created ; forms of thought wholly different from those of the old world have come into being. What, indeed, has not changed ! The great Roman historians Livy, Tacitus, Sue- tonius, among others give us a vivid picture of the first centuries after the Christian era. Then, although the north-west of Europe was coming into notice, and gradually assuming more importance, there was but one language and one civilisation. Whatever was not of Rome, was not civilized. Men of letters found in Rome their common home. There might be risings up against the central authority, attempts in various parts of the empire to set up independent emperors still all was Roman. Britain furnishes soldiers, ventures even, in the person of Carausius, to have an emperor of its own still it remained Roman ; Rome was everything, especially in literature. This was the state of things at the close of the first great period. How was it two or three centuries after, when we begin to emerge from that dark subter- ranean passage of which I spoke ? Italy has now a LECTURE I. new language ; it was one, it is now divided into a multiplicity of new republics ; two powers wholly new appear darkly brooding over society one calls itself Roman still, but what natural relation exists between such emperors as Otho or Henry IV. and Augustus or Vespasian 1 Instead of one vast centre of authority there are many ; Germany alone has many, France has one, England one. A new order of things is arising ; we become conscious that we are entering the world in which we now live. The old world seems to have passed away, our own is in existence, as different from that old one as to Columbus was the world he had discovered from that which he had left behind. It is curious to attempt to trace how the change has taken place. Has that old world really passed wholly away ? Has our own modern world no relation to it ? Have the forces in operation been like those of a volcano violently displacing previous relations ; or has there been rather a process of development during which the new has grown out of the old ? When we hear the former asserted, w^e may well suspect the soundness of the assertion. I believe w^e shall find there have been fewer violent inex- plicable revolutions in the world than men imagine. A great deal may be done without violence in a thousand years. I shall not attempt to say what all the forces were w^hich combined to bring about the change. Two I must mention as essential to it. But first let us fix precisely what period Ave are to understand as forming the dark ages. The limits have been fixed variously and very arbitrarily. Beginning from the LECTURK I. 9 fall of the Western Empire under Arcadius and Honorius in the fifth century, they have by some been conceived as ending with the invention of print- ing in the fourteenth century ; by others with the fall of Constantinople ; or, coming down still nearer to our own times, \vith the discovery of America, or the great German revolution of the sixteenth cen- tury. Some, endeavouring to be still more precise, have divided the whole into two periods, which they have distinguished as the dark and the middle ages ; and then, the transition-period is not to be regarded as extending from the classic to the modern, but only from the dark to the more illuminated. I venture to take the largest range ; to begin with the cessation the extinction by its own decay of the old world in the fifth century, and not to regard the period as closed but by the revolutionary events of the sixteenth. What, then, in the broadest view, are the causes of change 1 In attempting to indicate these, I may quote one name of great authority, an author not perhaps always perfectly accurate, but characterized by deep, strong thought. Hegel regards the middle period as distinctively the German or Teutonic age. Its characteristic feature is, he says, the entrance of the Teutonic race within the pale of civilisation ; the ascendency of German mind and forms of thought German mind prevailing over the old classic mind ; and, though we may not be dis- posed to ascribe such exclusive importance to the German element, it is a fact that the change was in- troduced by the Teutonic race beginning to form itself into nations,- to possess a literature of its own. Hitherto their history has been only a matter of 10 LECTURK 1. antiquarian research. If we look at all which had been wrought among the Germans before the time of Tacitus though a fabric which even Rome had not power to shake the history of it is as yet but a subject of archaeological interest : from this time it becomes as living as classic history itself ; we feel it must leave its trace on the literature of the com- ing age. And then another immense change has been going on, going on even before the coming in of the new Teutonic influence. This was the introduction of Christianity into the sphere of general civilisation. Civilisation is becoming more and more Christian during that time. It is interesting to mark, stand- ing as on a height from which we can take in the whole range of view, not so minutely as one standing on the plain but more entirely, the relation between these two great influences, and what the nev>^ cha- racter is which was brought out by the confluence of those two new elements Germanism and Chris- tianity. Guizot with his characteristic largeness of observation and sharpness of view, sees how Ger- man thought modified the Christianity of Western Europe ; how difierent it became from the Chris- tianity of the Eastern Church, because of its acting on these fresh new races. To those who wish to appreciate what the consequences were of this dif- ference in the form, if I may so express myself, of the vessel, I would recommend the study of Milman ; and having such an author to refer them to, I dis- charge myself from the task of pursuing this subject further now\ Before the Gothic tribes mingled with the races LECTURE I. 11 of Southern Europe, during the early period of Chris- tianity, the civilisation, the literature of Europe were wholly Roman ; this remained the case even when the literature became modified by Christianity. This new element gradually brought a change over the form, and still more over the spirit of the existing literature ; the tradition of the old classic literature was passing away, and in the sixth century finally died out. A new, strong, varied, deep litera- ture came in its place Ambrose, Jerome, Augustin lived, and imparted to it a new tone ; still it was in the old language, still essentially Roman. As the forces of the empire died out by internal causes of decay, slavery, the burden of an oppressive taxation, the enfeebling of the ties of family life by the ter- rible moral and social corruption that prevailed, a new organization takes its place, and (not mainly through ecclesiastical ambition, but by mere neces- sity of circumstances) the Church takes the place of the Empire. It is often brought as a reproach against the eccle- siastics of the dark ages, that they shut up all know- ledge in dead languages. But I ask. How could it have been otherwise 1 In what language could it have been preserved 1 In that of Italy ? But Latin ufos its language ; corrupted, no doubt, though less by the influx of the German tribes, than by the decay of its own vital energies, for the German invaders were too few to produce any great effect. The same is true of Gaul and of Spain ; the language spoken there also was mainly Latin. Whence is it supposed that any other language could come ? Literature at this period meant Latin. What would have been 12 LECTURE 1. gained if they had attempted to preserve knowledge in the jargon which was gradually displacing Latin '? This jargon, which was beginning to be used in legal documents, had been created by the notaries simply because they had ideas to express for which there were no terms in the old classic tongue ; but it was in fact as yet no language, being wholly inadequate to the purposes of literature. For the conveyance of abstract ideas there was no provision in its voca- bulary, and if there had, they were beyond the men- tal reach of those who spoke it. It will be well then calmly to settle it in our minds that Latin literature was not an arbitrary arrangement of the monks, but simply a historic necessity of the time. In F'rance, Spain, and Italy, Latin bore then the same relation to the spoken language of the people, as the German of Goethe and Schiller bears to the popular dialects of Germany at this day. But these Latin-speaking nations did not, it will be said, constitute Europe. Latin was in no sense the language of the German tribes. But what, I ask, were the Germans of this period '? They were Pagans, dissociated entirely from literature. This is true also even of that portion of the race which began to occupy England within half a century from the breaking up of the great Roman Empire ; they were not developed enough to give a literature to those among whom they came. For, although Bede gives the middle of the fifth century as the date of the Saxon invasion of Britain, and although it was then that the Angles, who ultimately gave their name to the country, fully possessed themselves of it, there had been a gradual influx of Frisians from the close LECTURE I. 13 of the third century. Not even at the later of these dates, however, was there in England any other civilisation or any other literature than that of Rome. But why was there no language but Latin in Italy, France, and Spain '? The names of their Gothic con- querors fill a large space in the history of the time. We read of Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Franks, Visi- goths, Vandals. Had tliey no literature ? and why not ? Two reasons may be given. They were mere invading armies; the conquerors speedily adopted the language, learning, literature of the conquered, preserving nothing of their own but the military prowess which made them conquerors. It was im- possible that a vernacular language could grow up in these circumstances ; partly, also, the influence of Christianity prevented it. These thoughts are worth steady consideration ; that, instead of abusing the monks, we may be thankful that through their in- strumentality any literature was preserved. That a magnificent change afterwards took place we know ; that vernacular languages did spring up in Europe, mainly through Teutonic influence, and first in this country. To the illustration of this fact I shall devote what remains of the present lecture. On the Continent, there exists among the Teutonic races a kind of patriotism hardly known here ; not a boastful, but a pleasing pride in their own past. Look at their great epic poem, the Niebelungen Noth ! Monarchs have been proud to contribute to its illus- tration the people feel a national interest in its elucidation it is the object of general afi'ection and enthusiasm. I am glad to say there is the beginning 14 LECTURE I. of a similar spirit among ourselves, with regard to our own great national epic, Beowulf. This we owe to the recent elucidation of it by our greatest Anglo- Saxon scholar, Kemble. Yet it cannot be said that there is anything like national sympathy excited by his attempt. For five Englishmen who are interested in the Niehelungen, I find there is scarcely one who cares, perhaps even knows, of the edition of Beowulf by Kemble. Englishmen care more for the compara- tively recent foreign epic than for their own Saxon poem. The prevalent English tone is that of disdain for their own ancient literature ; they like to dis- parage the remote past of their own country to cut themselves off from all association with the times before the Reformation. I will not stay to ask whe- ther this spirit is the spirit of the Eeformation. Beowulf is written in undeniable Scotch, but it was also the English of that period. In that great revolution by which the unity of Kome passed into the multiformity of modern Europe " Unity in vast variety," as Guizot expressively calls it the Anglo- Saxons were distinguished by the special and lofty part they took in the new order of things. The German race began to enter the pale of Christianity in the fifth century ; and the thought had forced it- self on several of the leaders of the time, that if the Gothic tribes could be converted to the true faith, it would do more than aught else for the civiHsation of Europe. Gregory the Great, viewing the matter from the spiritual or religious point of view in which it naturally presented itself to him, thought that if he could effect this he would do much for them and more for Europe. LECTURE I. 1 ."> At the close of the sixth century, the mission began it soon extended itself ; at the end of the next, literature had been introduced here to an extent nearly incredible. It was, as might be expected, at first exclusively ecclesiastical. Theodore from Tarsus, Adrian from Africa came with books, and the result of their teaching was, Bede says, that before the end of the century, many were as familiar with Greek and Latin as with their own tongue. Bede is a sober honest man, and he is speaking of what occurred nearly about the period of his own birth ; we have no reason, therefore, to doubt his testi- mony. I have no doubt that, compared with modern classical attainments, their scholarship was very hum- ble, that their chance of first-class honours at Oxford would have been small ; but their scholarship, such as it was, was derived from men to whom Greek and Latin were living languages, men reading in their own native speech, and whose teaching would thus possess a great degree of liveliness and vivid reality, though accompanied by much of the inaccuracy of Hving use. The fact of the Anglo-Saxon nation thus becoming possessed of the literature of Europe gave rise to two important consequences. It was the first German nation which possessed itself of classic literature. Was this to germinate ? Was it to bear fruit 1 Bede himself is one great proof that in England literature had already become a vital thing. In the year 700, he wrote in Latin his history of Anglo-Saxon England, no small work, which he achieved laboriously and accurately. When therefore, we hear the eighth century spoken of as the darkest of the dark ages, 16 LECTURE I. we must reply, " Not here at least," and we produce Bede as our proof. But we may be asked, What has this to do with Europe at large ? It may be a great fact for us, but what is it for the mass of European states 1 Had they a literature of their own 1 Once more I ask. How could they 1 How could the literature of France or Spain for instance, but be merged in Latin, seeing they had no vernacular tongue, and no national oneness '? Here, on the contrary, we find, not a small aristocracy, governing serfs of a different race, but a compact homogeneous mass ; king, no- ble, churl, were all one. The high did not look down on the low with disdain, nor the low look up to the high with slavish hopelessness. So that we may say, not boastingly, but with earnest thankfulness, that before any other part of Europe, Anglo-Saxon Eng- land was capable of a vernacular literature, because in England there was a people. Abroad, Gothic literature was impossible ; here it was possible, because there was a Gothic nation. Bede was for a century regarded, on the Continent as well as at home, not as a teacher merely, but as in himself a library. He took his place side by side with the great Fathers of the Church, his authority being quoted and submitted to in a Council of the Church held at this time. I said there was the possibility of a vernacular literature in England, I did not say it as yet existed. Bede wrote in Latin, but in the beginning of the next century this education of the Saxon mind brought forth fruit. What Gregory had foreseen took place. Winfrith of Wessex, whose death was LECTURE I. only twenty years later than that of Bede, appeared, and he was not the first who lost his life in the effort to convert the Gothic tribes to Christianity. The importance of a vernacular language was felt to be so great that these missionaries were not even satis- fied with high German ; they sought a people who spoke low German, and therefore went among the Frisians. Boniface, by which name Winfrith is better known, went forth on his noble mission, and grateful Germany acknowledges him as its apostle. These are the first steps by which the Gothic tribes were brought within the pale of civilisation. So essential was their conversion to Christianity seen to be to their civilisation, and thus to the general peace of Europe, that Charlemagne, in his rough way, and our own Alfred in his milder one, both adopted the same policy. We read that when Alfred had con- quered a tribe of Danes, he refused to capitulate with them on any other terms but that the king and people should be all baptized. We may regard this as giving proof only of narrows-minded and hard-hearted bigot- ry, but it was not so ; Alfred was not either hard- hearted or narrow-minded. Daily experience had taught him, as it had taught Charlemagne, that no treaty could be relied on with the Pagan tribes ; that the only hope of erecting a barrier which would not be burst by the barbarians, lay in their being brought within the pale of civilisation by means of Christian- ity. I am not justifying the course they took, I am only explaining the fact, that when these kings re- fused to treat with the unbaptized, they were adopt- ing a policy deemed necessary for the peace of Eu- rope. And this necessity was acquiesced in by many B 18 LECTURE I. in this country who were not violent who devoted their own lives to the conversion of the heathen around them. There is a beautiful letter extant in which Boniface asks a friend to plead with the Emperor to allow him to lay down the archbishopric of Mentz, the metropolitan see, the possession of which made him primate of the Prankish empire, and invested him with an ecclesiastical supremacy little, if at all, in- ferior to the military supremacy of the Emperor him- self. Boniface was old ; it may seem little wonder- ful that he should wish to resign so burdensome a dignity. But for what did he resign it '? To what other works did he betake himself? Why did he strip himself of the mitre and the robe ? Not that he might rest, but that he might go down the Rhine, to his old work of converting the Frisians. Not long after, while engaged in baptizing a body of converts, a band of heathens came suddenly upon them. The converts wished to defend themselves and their bishop, but Boniface refused to oppose violence with violence. He fell ; and has been erected into a saint and a niartyr. I only call him a good, earnest, and devoted man. I must, in passing, however, correct a mistake into which I may have inadvertently led you. Boniface was not the contemporary of Charlemagne, but rather of his immediate predecessors, Pepin d'Heri- stal and Carloman ; but the unity of policy in the Carlovingian race is the point of main importance ; along with the fact, that though there was much in that policy which our consciences cannot justify, it was at the time virtually acquiesced in, and regarded LECTURE I. 19 as necessary by good and devoted men, who were ready to go forth and be slain in a cause which they knew to be of God, and who themselves endeavoured to acquire influence only in order to use it in pro- moting Christian ends and aims. In the year 800, when Charlemagne became not only king of France, but head of the Roman empire, he associated with himself the highest men his dis- cerning eye could mark, in a kind of labour very much resembling some of our own modern efforts to promote civilisation. Their first object was to edu- cate the transcribers of manuscripts, in order to secure their competency to produce accurate copies ; but they soon rose higher in their aims, and attempted the correction of the MSS. Scriptures in Latin, Greek, and even Hebrew. Amongst these men not the least distinguished was Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon, whom the Emperor em- ployed as a kind of Minister of Instruction, for pro- moting the interests of literature and science. Alcuin had been the favourite of two successive archbishops in England, and. would gladly have lived and died in his original place as master of a school at York ; but the direct practical and earnest mind of Charle- magne saw that he was the right man for his pur- pose ; he gave him the bishopric of Tours, and would never afterwards part with him. We have now arrived at the end of our proposed course ; having shown the importance to Europe of the admission of the German race within the pale of civilisation, as reaUzed first in the Anglo-Saxons, and exemplified, as we have seen, in three striking individual instances, those of Bede, Boniface, and 20 LECTURE I. Alcuin, and shown also that the possibility of a ver- nacular literature depended, not on taste or choice, but on the possession of a nationality; that Latin could not hut he the language of the literature of Europe till nationality was attained, that it ceased to be so whenever any tribe became a nation. To one man of practical energy, the greatest not only in England, but, may I not venture to say, in all European history to our own King Alfred, oc- curred the simple English idea simple and evident to common sense when found out, but so uncommon till he suggested it that a nation must have a verna- cular language. Seeing that learning (which still meant Latin) was ever at the mercy of the Danish invaders, who so ruthlessly swept over the country ; that there are records of but one man and one boy being left in a monastery after one of their inroads ; and seeing that the result of this was a degree of ignorance of this only literature, the extent of which, as described by writers of the time, is nearly incredi- ble, and that consequently the learning of the Church was wholly at the mercy of the heathen, Alfred writes a letter which he sends all round to the bishops and heads of monasteries " Let us have learning with all speed put into English, let that he the first ohject of education, then let those who have leisure pursue the study of Greek and Latin." And what was the fruit of this 1 Alfred, who was a working ma7i, with much of the sailor in him (he was, in truth, the real founder of the English navy), translated Bede's History himself. It was he also who incited the monks, or, at least, coincident with his efforts, the attempt was made in many mona- LECTURE I. 21 stories, to keep an Anglo-Saxon chronicle. Aelfric, another scholar of the time, wrote a homily to familiarize the people with the history of their own country ; another to awaken their interest in the Scriptures. As another instance of common sense, I may tell you of Alfred doing what would never have occurred to a mere scholar, he took down with his own hand the narrative of some sailors who had visited the Baltic and the White Seas. The extent to which the vernacular literature was now studied is proved by the quantity of MSS. still in existence, which, especially considering the num- ber that must have been destroyed in the general devastation of the English monasteries at the time of the Reformation, cannot be paralleled in the history of any other nation, and in itself is sufficient evi- dence of the extent to which the public had been brought into contact with literature. For the benefit of those who prefer proof to asser- tion, I shall conclude w^ith two quotations. Aelfric, in a homily ad populum, in urging the importance of knowing the history of Gregory, which had been translated by Alfred the king, says, " But as it may not have been read by all." In no other country in Europe could such language have been used at that time, implying such a general amount of reading in the vernacular speech. Again, he says, in reference to some fact to which he had alluded, " This is spoken of in many English books ; but there are so many errors in these books, that I think it w^ell to state it correctly." Books at this time, then, were so common as to influence a 22 LECTURE I. general audience, and therefore correction was neces- sary where there had been error. Thus our nation anticipated a process which was afterwards to be extended to the whole of Europe. It anticipated a popularization of hterature which was to become universal, but which was as yet found in England alone. LECTURE 11. In my last lecture I endeavoured to show what were those circumstances which, throughout a great and important part of Europe, identified learning with Latin, how it came to pass that for centuries there not only was not, but there could not be, any properly vernacular literature in Italy, or France, or Spain, and what those very peculiar circumstances were which qualified the Anglo-Saxon race to be the great channel of communication between the Ro- manized peoples of the south and the as yet un- civilized Teutonic races of the Continent, how it was that the Anglo-Saxons were the first among the Germanic races to possess a Latin literature, how important and fresh that literature was in itself, com- pared with the literature in Latin of the southern nations of Europe, how it was, again, that during the time which is represented by Bede, Boniface, and Aldhelm, the learned, literary, Latin-speaking and writing class of Anglo-Saxon Englishmen were the great means of introducing Christianity, civilisation, and literature into continental Germany ; and, lastly, how it came to pass that they were the first nation of Europe to have a properly vernacular literature of their own. I pointed out to you how the genius 24 LECTURE II. for such broad and effective common sense as was manifested on this occasion deserves that name how the genius of Alfred operated in this matter ; how he came to what, from the grandeur of its results, we may call the magnificent decision that henceforward " it was needful for his kingdom that whatever knowledge was contained in the Latin lan- guage should, as fast as possible, be transferred into English, that all men should first learn English, and then afterwards those who had leisure might give themselves to the study of the Latin tongue." Thus far had we advanced in the lecture of last Tuesday evening. On the Continent, meanwhile, great revolutions were going on. A century before Alfred, Charlemagne had made his gigantic attempt, ineffectual as to its immediate object, that of uniting all civilized continental Europe, west of Greece, into one vast monarchy ; but, nevertheless, leaving great and permanent results on the social, political, intel- lectual, and, perhaps, above all, on the ecclesiastical condition of the whole of that great region. But it was destined to be broken up : as he left it, it could not remain ; and, as I have shown you, it was impossible that it should have as yet either a Teutonic literature the Franks being merely a handful of military leaders, forming the nobility of a conquered country, which was rapidly losing not only its language but all its traditions, or that it should have a Romanic litera- ture, that is, a literature in a new language formed out of the Roman ; for on the one hand, such lan- guages were not yet sufficiently developed, while on the other (and this is a very important element in the consideration of the subject), the relation of the new LECTURE II. languages now forming from the Latin, was so close to it that Latin continued to bear to them the rela- tion of a classical form of the same speech. If you were to ask what was the classical form of the popular language of France at that period, I would reply, it was Latin ; of Italy, it was Latin ; of Spain, it was Latin : and, therefore, learned and cultivated men continued to study, and to wTite, nay, even to speak in Latin, and to feel that they were ex- pressing themselves substantially in the same lan- guage with the mass of the people, only with greater correctness and elegance. But there were the elements at least of a litera- ture, though we can hardly as yet call them a lite- rature, and these deserving of great consideration, existing among the Teutonic races ; and other ele- ments began very soon to display themselves among the Romance races also. For convenience, and to save the necessity of frequent repetitions, I shall use this word ; signifying by it the races so Romanized, as that a language based on the Roman has con- tinued to be spoken by them even to the present day : in that sense I will speak of Romance races, Romance language, Romance literature ; and the word, in some variety of form, is now pretty generally adopted for that purpose. We turn now to our own country : let us consider for a little what ingredients existed for a popular literature there ; for, although I have called the literature founded in the days of Alfred, and very mainly by his means, by the name of a vernacular literature a literature in the lan- guage of the country it could hardly as yet be called ?i popular literature. Translations, for example, of the 26 LECTURE II. Ecclesiastical History of Bede, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, were the writings which then had the nearest relation to the popular mind. But there were in Anglo-Saxon England ingredients of a lite- rature strictly popular, long before the time of Alfred. I have already named the poem of Beowulf. It is admitted by the best authorities that the poem in its existing form belongs to the eighth, or at latest to the ninth century. Its materials are, however, altogether derived from ancient Angle traditions : not only so, but there is no reason at all to believe that the substance of the poem has been altered in giving it the shape which it wears at present. It is the Angle dialect, using that word in the sense in which it used to be employed, as distinguishing the kingdoms of the north and east among the Anglo- Saxons, from those of the west and south ; it is the Angle dialect of the Saxon tongue in which it is written, and it is the dialect of the eighth or ninth century. This is not disputed. But let us consider further : supposing the Angles had brought with them a national poem or series of poems of the sixth or seventh centuries, or even earlier, previous to the final occupation of so great a part of this island in the fifth century by the Angles and Saxons, sup- posing they were in possession of such a poem, and supposing it retained its popularity ; first of all let us inquire by what means it could do so. The two anecdotes, one of which at least I mentioned to you in my last lecture, will illustrate this. I told you that Csedmon, in the end of the seventh century, complains that when the song and harp went round he was not able to use them ; so customary even LECTURE II. 27 among his class, was the enjoyment of poetry with music, as an addition to the charms of what they in very downright German called a berscipe (beer-drinking) that is, a feast, a merry-making. Again, Aldhelm, precisely at the same time the close of the seventh century was wont to take his harp, and to attract audiences by singing Saxon glees, that is, traditional songs or ballads, and then addressed himself to the more serious objects which he had in view. Abund- ance of proof is ready, but these two instances show what were the habits of the Anglo-Saxons in this respect. Well, if they had a poem containing tradi- tions of their ancestors, full of the kind of excitement which their imaginations loved, if it had been brought with them across the sea, if it continued to be sung during the seventh and eighth centuries on such occasions as I have mentioned, what would be likely to happen to it "? Two things certainly. It would be I will not say Christianized, but de-paganized : it would, in the first place, be de-paganized ; and, in the second place, modernized in its language. It would be de-paganized : the Anglo-Saxons of that age were too earnest and too simple in their Chris- tian faith to listen with any pleasure to songs about their ancestors, which should remind them of their false faith in those whom they now looked on as demons of a faith which they now regarded as in- volving perdition ; everything of this sort would be instinctively dropped. Then, again, the dialect would be modernized ; and this would happen insensibly. The extent to which all manuscript writings passing through the hands of copyists, are, in course of cen- turies, liable to change of this sort, is well known. 28 LECTURE II. I have seen three or four manuscripts of the same work, all belonging to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, and yet written in completely different dialects, without any intention of translating, but simply because the transcriber wished to write the manuscript in the form most intelligible to himself and those around him. ]3ut, far more, the popular rhapsodist, singing for the immediate entertainment of those gathered around him, would sing in a lan- guage sure to be intelligible to them. And many changes would take place without his being aware of it. One would take down from the song of an- other the poem which he himself intended to recite ; and thus, by insensible gradations, it would pass from the language let us say of the fifth century into that in which we now find it, the eighth or ninth. As to the de-paganizing, as I called it, it does not amount at all to the degree of change which passed on the Niehelungen Noth. For example, in that poem of the ancient southern races of Germany, the heroes and ladies the different characters intro- duced have not only ceased to be Pagans, as in Beowulf, but they have become positive Chris- tians ; they go to mass, they practise the obser- vances which were regarded as essential to reli- gious character in the thirteenth century, in the forms of which the poem has been preserved to us. And, therefore, without comparing the intrinsic merits, the vividness or fulness of the two poems, I venture to place the Beowulf much higher than the Niehelungen, in a purely antiquarian point of view. It is intrinsically older, and we have it much nearer in shape to the original composition. LECTURE II. 29 My object in such a brief course of lectures tra- versing (not by my choice) so vast a space of time must necessarily be to select certain great groups of facts, persons, and works and to characterize them in a way which may guide you whether you be after- wards engaged in the study of individual works, or seeking to form an acquaintance with the general history of the period. Specimens of Beowulf^ there- fore, I shall not attempt to give you. Its tone is that of a north-west Homeric age. There is more of the sea ; there is a far gloomier imagination ; su- perstition as distinguished from the imaginative Polytheism of the east, holds, perhaps, a larger place ; there is something that seems to aim to be greater, but cannot make itself nearly so distinct or so har- monious. Grand is the picture in the beginning of the poem of the old hero who feels his arm growing too weak for battle, who does not choose if he die not in the field to die in the sight of men at all, for whom a magnificent ship is provided, of which the poet gives the most brilliant description that the northern love of the sea and of ships can enable him to do abundance of treasure is heaped upon its deck, the old hero is placed alone lying at the root of its mast, and it is then driven forth to sea ; no man of that age or this, no eye under heaven hath seen, says the poet, what became of it. Not the description only, but the fact itself, is altogether characteristic of that vast-reaching romance of the imagination of these north-w^estern regions ; which was not the romance of thought only, but which from the period of the occupation of this island by the Anglo-Saxons, through the whole history of the 30 LECTURE II. Danish invasion, and down to the possession of Sicily and the south of Italy by the Normans of the eleventh century turned itself into the romance of action. Such were some of the materials I call them materials rather than actual literature which the Anglo-Saxons had for a popular literature. Very soon this poetry-loving people began to put their new thoughts, their Christian thoughts, into poetic forms. Csedmon and Aldhelm I have already men- tioned. There are fragments of Anglo-Saxon poetry in print, on subjects drawn from the Old Testament, from the New Testament, sometimes from legends of the Church, having perhaps a higher tone of poetry than the works of Csedmon ; but everywhere we see the effects of that which I described to you in my former lecture a homogeneous people continuing to speak their ancient mother-tongue, and predisposed to form a literature, popular in the true sense of the word, that is, belonging to the people as a whole, in a manner in which no other European nation at that time could be expected to do. How fared it with the rest of Europe meanwhile 1 England, very soon after the time to which my last lecture reached, that is about the middle of the tenth century, fell first under one foreign yoke, and then under another. It became for a short season an appendage to the kingdom of Denmark, and then the Norman conquest took place. The popular literature persisted. We have what is called semi- Saxon, that is, Saxon in the alteration of form to which it was naturally liable ; we have poems and other works in the twelfth century in that dialect, and that dialect continued to be used in works intended LECTUKE II. 31 for the mass of the population down to the thirteenth. The popular literature still subsisted, but it could not be what it had been. It had not the character which a language derives from all classes of the com- munity alike speaking it those who stand highest and who are most cultivated, as well as the mass of the population. We shall have occasion to take it up at this later stage afterwards. Meanwhile, we go on to consider what there was on the Continent most analogous to this popular literature which I have been describing as at so early a date, forming itself in Anglo-Saxon England. Now, you will re- member that the hope of this taking place on the Continent depended on the development of new lan- guages. In the thirteenth century we find works in the French language as we now understand it, although in a somewhat antiquated form. We also find works in the Italian language. By the suc- ceeding century, the fourteenth, we have works in the English language, not the ancient Anglo-Saxon, but substantially that complex and modified tongue which we now speak. But none of the languages which I have named existed at the period to which I am specially directing your attention. In the time of Alfred there was not on the Con- tinent such a thing as the French, Italian, or Spanish tongues, as we understand them. Yet there was a vernacular literature growing up in very singular circumstances, and the history of whose extinction, if we may not exactly say in blood, yet bi/ blood, is one of the most conspicuous events in the history of the Middle Ages. As early as Charlemagne's time, an effort was made to give a literai-y character to 32 LECTURE II. the Romance languages to this extent and no farther. The Council of Mentz having ordered that the priest should in the language of the country, that is, in the Teutonic language, convey the substance of the homily which had been drawn up in Latin, the Council of Rheims and of Tours gave similar directions in re- gard to the Romance provinces, where a modified Latin was the popular language of the country. It is very remarkable that while we have multi- tudes of Anglo-Saxon homilies, centuries earlier than any vernacular literature elsewhere of the time I am describing, and while the Anglo-Saxon Hterature has been permanent, there is no trace whatever of any popular religious addresses either in the Germanic language of the empire of Charlemagne on the one hand, or, on the other hand, in the popular language of France. M. Fauriel, the author of the excellent history of the Troubadour poetry, has called our at- tention to a singular fact connected with this matter, his explanation of which appears, at all events, worthy of consideration. He says that while the Council of Mentz ordered that popular audiences should be addressed in German, and while the Council of Rheims and Tours gave similar direc- tions for northern and central France, viz., that the Romance or growing French language should be employed there in popular religious addresses, the Councils of Aries and Ch^ilons in the south and east of France gave no such directions. Now, how is this to be understood ? He says there are only two possible explanations. The time is nearly the same, the objects of the Councils in general are so very similar that we must suppose that they intended, LFXTURE II. \ ^ ^^^^-^38' on the whole, to accomplish similar results. ''^nd he says there are only two possible explanations of the omission in the latter case ; the one is this, that the Latin discourse was understood by the people in Southern France ; and the other is, that the use of the popular language from the pulpit was already familiar there. It appears to me that something be- tween the two is probably the truth of the matter, and will quite account for the omission. If the popular language were near to the Latin, two consequences would follow. One we are very familiar with in the history of that period the learned class would speak worse Latin and come nearer to the popular language than elsewhere. We find a priest in the Middle Ages complaining that in the north of Italy the clergj^ found it difficult to keep their language pure, because the language which they were accustomed to speak, was so near the Latin, that they were constantly con- fusing the two. This appears to me to be probably the cause that in the south of France no interference on the subject was required from the Councils of the Church. It may seem that we are making much of small indications, but we have only small indications in the matter. And the most striking fact connected w^ith these attempts in the reign of Charlemagne is, as I have said, that in the immediately succeeding century, or in the century after that, there is not the slightest trace or record of any discourses similar to the homilies of Alcuin in England, and to the great number of Anglo-Saxon homilies that still remain unedited in our libraries. But vernacular literature was to show itself in Southern France. The country was peculiarly situ- 34 LECTURE 11. ated : a country of trade from as early a period almost as we know anything of Gaul the mere name of Marseilles will be sufficient to recall this to your re- collection a country retaining to a greater extent than any other part of the Roman empire the Ro- man forms of municipal government. They had given up the strict forms of the law, but they still continued to have their Magistrates and Town Councils ; and the organization of their towns was very similar to what the Romans had left them. Then came the Crusades in the end of the eleventh century, in which this country of trade and municipalities, so favourably situated by nature, both as to the production of ar- ticles of export and the facihty of import, took a prominent part, and which were the first means of bringing Western Europe into free communication with the thoughts, the manners, and social condition of remote regions not belonging to the communion of the Western Church. All the effects justly ascribed to the Crusades seem to have been felt in Southern France more than elsewhere. Wealth continued to increase along with a certain liberalism of notions ; and an appreciation of the chivalry of the Mahome- tans of Syria, Egypt, and particularly of Spain, re- sulted from intercourse sometimes in war and some- times in peace with the Saracens. This continued during a period of nearly two hundred years to cha- racterize and strongly to influence the development of Southern France the development, you may say generally, of Languedoc and Dauphine, and in a vaguer manner, and not to the same extent, of the whole country from Lyons on the east to Bordeaux on the south-west. LECTURE ir. 35 It was not wonderful that a country such as I have described, should be less settled in a rehgious sense than other parts of Europe. They were compelled to think of differences of faith they were compelled to acknowledge good in those who differed extremely from themselves. But besides this, there was of old standing an element alien to the Catholic orthodoxy of the time strongly established in Southern France, or rather I ought to say, several elements. I owe to Dean Milman what, after some previous study of the subject, appears to me an exceedingly just classification of these elements. He speaks of the simple Anti-sacerdotalism, then of the Scriptural Anti-sacerdotalism, and then again of the Mani- chseism of this country. By simple Anti-sacerdo- talists, he means men who, under the instruction of the Catholic Church itself, had got to lay hold exclusively of the spiritual and moral elements of Christianity, who had got to feel that doing right and keeping from wrong, believing in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and, above all, waiting for illumination from God, were sufficient to keep a man and a body of men right, even without that supernal efficacy of the Sacraments of the Church, dependent on the powers of the priesthood, which the Catholic Europe around them regarded as absolutely^ vitally, indispensably essential and necessary. In the 12th century, in St. Bernard's time, there are signal out- breaks of this spirit in the south of France. Bernard, the most electric man that ever lived, who seemed to have the power, like a thunder-cloud in nature, of prostrating before him whole rows of men prostrat- ing them on the spot, whatever previous differences 36 LECTURE II. of opinion or of purpose there might have been be- tween him and them ; he was sent to encounter this people, and, for a time, he prostrated them ; but his back seems hardly to have been turned before they got up again, and returned to the work in which they were formerly engaged. Then there were the Scriptural Anti-sacerdotalists. It has been well established by Dr. Gilly and others, indeed, the grand fact had been very much settled by Raynouard, in his edition of the Nobla Leyczion, and by the discovery of a version of the Scriptures of the 12th century that the Waldenses and the Poor Men of Lyons w^ere in the possession of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. Here was a great commencement for a popular literature. These men used it at religious meetings ; and two of them ven- tured, in the end of the 11th century, to appear before the dangerous and formidable Pope Alexander the Third, and to present him with a copy of their Scriptures, accompanied, it appears, by some admoni- tions. The Pope received them apparently with a contemptuous indulgence ; but the grand charge made against them was that of preaching without being in holy orders, and the only admonition given to the ecclesiastical authorities in regard to them for a while, was that they should not allow them thus to encroach on the priestly office. The influence of these heretics, as they were called, was not small over the whole region which I have marked out for you, although, certainly, prevailing chiefly in the east towards the Alps and towards Lyons. But, finally, there was an influence very distin- guishable from both of these. One of the most LKCTUKE II. 3Y brilliant specimens of miniature painting of a great historical subject which you will find in Gibbon, is a description of the Paulician heretics of Samosata, and the heretics of Cappadocia. It is a brilliant subject in point of novelty, unlikeness to anything else, and no wonder it laid hold on the mind of Gib- bon. He describes how the heresy arose from read- ing the New Testament, and especially the w orks of the Apostle Paul, from whom some think the sect derived its name. Milman has an ingenious sugges- tion founded on a passage of a French historian, that the fact of some of them at least being charged with believing that the Apostle Paul w^as a re- appear- ance of the Spirit of Christ, may have given rise to the name Paulicians. However this may be, it seems not at all doubted that it was one of the many con- fluences of Christianity with oriental beliefs and spiritual notions which were at that time not un- common in that part of the East. The Paulicians were accused of Manicha)ism. It is not at all dis- puted that they held the two eternal principles the material principle of evil, and the immaterial prin- ciple of good ; that they had the oriental feeling that the life of a man is to be spent in disengaging him- self from the power of the eternal evil principle which has hold upon him by means of the flesh, and that he is, therefore, to get above and out of whatever is fleshly. There is something singularly oriental in much belonging to Southern France at this time. I have spoken of its connexion with the East by the Crusades, of its connexion with the Saracens of Spain ; and there certainly seems to have been in the Mani- cha3ism of Languedoc a great deal that would lead us 38 LECTURE II. to seek for some remote oriental origin for the im- pressions and the mental habits of the people. But the influence of all these three sects, or different schools of belief in Languedoc, was astonishing. The PauKcians, I ought to have said, as you will see in that passage of Gibbon to which I have referred, had made their way across from Bulgaria and along the Danube, through Germany and into France, especially into Southern France. There they had established themselves, and there tradition had associated itself with whatever was congenial with it, and calculated to feed and foster it. While there was so much heresy, to speak in the language of the time, there was rapidly increasing wealth ; there w^as wealth and luxury in the towns, wealth and luxury at the seats of the great lords ; lavish ostentation of wealth, ploughing ground and sowing silver money in it, and then turning the people into the field that they might search it out again ; burning all manner of splendid drapery and furniture, nay, even fine horses at great feasts, by way of mere ostentation of prodigal opulence, these things indicated a state of society in which men were willing to show and to seek the utmost enjoyment of their wealth, even in the lowest forms of enjoyment. The Church had sunk to a very low state. The Gallo-Roman bishops in the time of Charlemagne I ought rather to say in the time of the Carlovingian monarchs were in a condition which formed one p-reat reason for the earnest desire of these monarchs o to bring a reforming order of priests and bishops into the country ; these they found chiefly, as I showed you, in Anglo-Saxon England. But the influence LECTURE II. 39 of the Prankish Episcopacy of the Rhine never ex- tended into the south, and especially the south-west of France. The Gallo-Roman bishops were in the first instance men of high family, and were appointed for the sake of their wealth. Having got the bishop- ric, according to the expression of one of them, they then set themselves to enjoy it. The priests, on the other hand, were taken from the poorest, least edu- cated, least cultivated classes of the community. The influence of the Church was all but entirely gone, while the influence of these heretical teachers whom I have described to you had attained a great height. Ladies of noble family were joining themselves in numbers to their societies. But apart from the actual accession to their numbers, they shook the faith of the country in the authority of the Church, whether as to belief or practice. This is a pheno- menon that constantly takes place. Where there are earnest disbelievers, those w^ho are not earnest at all avail themselves rapidly and readily of all their suggestions, their arguments, and their example : so it was in Southern France. The grand enjoyment of that country appears to have been at what was called the Cours d'amour, of which such ludicrous accounts used to be given in our books on the literature of the Middle Ages. The Cour d'amour, in fact, was simply the name for a festivity at the seat of a great noble. It was a fes- tivity for all orders of persons. Open house was kept during a certain period ; only the very highest of the guests were specially invited ; under a given rank, whoever would might come, down to the very poorest of the people. There entertainments of all 40 LECTURE 11. sorts were carried on ; but above all there the Trou- badour was expected, and there it was sure he would be heard. About the eleventh century the Troubadours first made their appearance. It is common to name William of Poitiers, Duke of Aquitaine, as a type of the troubadour character. He was an ancestor of the family of Henry the Second of England, for Eleanor of England was the daughter of another William, Duke of Aquitaine, the son or grandson, I am not sure which, of this William the Troubadour. If I were asked what was the prominent feature in his charac- ter, I should say, recklessness. He is fond of war, and of excitement of every kind ; his poetry, taking the account of Fauriel, and the small specimens which Raynouard gives us, is characterized by the same recklessness. There is a certain quaint humour in it, abundance of licentiousness, and everything to show that the enjoyment of the man's life consisted in lawlessness. All the troubadours, however, were not like this man. In the next century, during the reign of Henry the Second of England, many of us are familiar with the figure of Bertrand de Born, the troubadour Tyrta)us ; the most passionate lover of war for war's sake that ever existed on this earth. Not a little of a barbarian he certainly was ; part of the enjoyment of war, as he describes it in his songs, is the peasantry flying in all directions as the army advances, seeking to save their lives, their property, and their cattle. But the sparkKng of the spear- points, the shining of the standards in the sun, the clash of shields, the rolling of horse and man upon ^ the ground, he speaks of with the intense zest of one I.ECTU]{E II. 41 possessed by an appetite. He is the troubadour whom, you will remember, in the Gommedia of Dante, as condemned eternally to hold in his hands his head separated from his body, because of the schism he had promoted the schism, namely, between Henry the Second of England and his sons. The amorous poetry of the troubadours is often spoken of. Much of it is licentious, none of it in the least dangerous. The pleasure is not the pleasure of passion at all, but the pleasure of tricks of fancy, combined with tricks of melody. It appears to me that this is a correct definition of the troubadour poetry in the 12th century, and part of the 13th, when it was at its height. I shall use a homely illustration, but a very appropriate one. Take one of Thackeray's ballads, say the " Battle of the Shannon," and observe how much of the amusement is found in the dexterity with which certain words are apphed, making the versification lively, and yet in consistency with the subject : or take another of his dolorous poems, a complaint of being found unexpectedly without the means of paying a bill at a hotel : there is only one rhyme in it from beginning to end, and the pleasure of reading it consists in the dexterity of the writer the constant falHng on his feet the dexterity with which, under these hampers of rhyme, he still gets on, keeping up the merry jingle of versification with which he started. Now, as to form, this is the troubadour poetry always. You may make a child dance to a real troubadour ballad, without under- standing its meaning in the least, provided you . humour the rhythm and the rhyme to the extent which evidently gratified the ear of the people at 42 LECTUKE II. that time. And as regards meaning, it is a constant effort of dexterity ; the pleasure is as dependent on this dexterity as in the poems of Cowley at a later period. That any one will be dangerously fascinated Avith this poetry is not at all to be dreaded, even if it were written in a language conveying warmer associations than the extinct Romance language of the 12th century. But this was not by any means true of all the poetry of the troubadours. Recent writers dispose of it much too rapidly, as mainly characterized by the light grace of those essentially frivolous works, however ingenious in form these may be. The influence of a mere form was very promi- nent and very strong on the poetry of the southern races of Europe ; but in the next century the 1 3th that terrible age of Innocent in., of Foulques of Marseilles, of the Abbot Arnold, of Dominic, of the Spanish improvements in the Inquisition of the south of France ; that frightful age in which the col- lision took place between the luxurious orientalism half Buddhist, half Saracen, which somehow im- planted itself in Southern France and the very sternest form of Latin Christianity ; in that age there were troubadours, whose voice deepened into a solemnity and earnestness becoming the period. Pierre Cardinal is of that time ; Sordello of Mantua also, who makes such a magnificent figure in the Purgatorio of Dante, and may indeed be regarded as the hero of that division of the great poem. I cannot stop to illustrate in any way from the works of those writers, which, indeed, Raynouard has made partially accessible, the characteristics I have ascribed to them. Cardinal appears to have LECTURE II. 43 been an orthodox Catholic ; but he was disgusted with the cruelties of the Papal legates, and especially of our Simon de Montfort, the leader of the army of the Cross in Southern France. I have now to answer the question, How was it that this first vernacular literature of the south of Europe did not continue to develop itself? How have we no classical Provence literature as we have French and Italian literature 1 The south of France was, at the time I am describing, substantially an independent kingdom ; it was seeking a national de- velopment it seemed to have in its favour many of the most important conditions of a national develop- ment, and these, with a central government of its own, it had in a much higher degree than Northern France itself You will naturally ask, Had not Nor- thern France the King 1 No doubt, but the king was king of the Isle of France, and almost of that alone. He was Suzerain of Normandy, but what power was he likely to have over the Norman dukes ? He was Suzerain of Anjou and Aquitaine : what power would he have over Henry of England 1 He was Suzerain over Languedoc, but there he had less power than even in Normandy or Aquitaine. Languedoc was pursuing its career of national development, and its career of independent literary development, with nearly as good prospects of continuous progress as England itself What put a stop to if? As I have said, It was quenched in blood. Innocent iii. remon- strated with the lords and bishops of the country : he then threatened, and at last by legates he ex- comminiicated, Raymond of Toulouse ; and then the stern 6piscopacy of Northern and Eastern France 44 LECTUKE II. was let loose on them, heading an army, composed in part of the very off-scourings of the French, German, and Italian frontiers. The Roi des ribaulds the king of the ragamuffins is a very important person in the wars of that time. In a short period the great- est military leader that perhaps Europe could furnish, was put at the head of the army Simon de Mont- fort, Earl of Leicester, a man earnest I do not doubt, but who knew not what spirit he was of What things were done by him, what things were done by the ecclesiastical leaders of the crusading army, I will not sicken your hearts by describing in the detail that history enables us to do. There is this peculiar feature about that frightful history, that it is most fully recorded by a man having the lowest and most brutal sympathy with all the horrors that he has recorded a man who puts down dehberately in his pages his delight in the howls of his victims from the flames, his delight in violation of truth, and in scenes which we turn from with horror. But when we hear of the in- habitants of two entire towns being put to the sword ; when we hear the acknowledged principle, that not the heresy merely, but the heretics are to be exterminated ; and when we know, on the authority of the enemies themselves, how widely spread that heresy had previously been, we can understand how Languedoc was thrown back cen- turies, and her progress of independent develop- ment finally arrested. For a yet more important circumstance than the temporary suffering of indi- viduals is to be attended to. When she began to recover she found hGraelf provincialized ; she was no LECTURE II. longer a nation. The King of {"ranee had been going on steadily towards resuming not the mere claims of suzerainty, but the actual rule of the great provinces of the Empire, and Languedoc was one of his first achievements in this way. Sismondi describes the period from Hugh Capet to St. Louis as a period during which it was not worth while to count the kings, because France was not truly a monarchy. '* It was," he says, " the period of feudal anarchy" Now, where does he close this period of feudal anarchy 1 With St. Louis, in the middle of the thirteenth century; and in the middle of the thir- teenth century tliis great accession of the province of Languedoc had been achieved : it w^as completed under the father of St. Louis, Louis viii., and this was indeed the main cause of the possibility of fixing this date for the establishment of actual monarchy in France. Thus the Troubadour literature passed away, but not without having exercised great influence on the hterature of all Southern Europe. Perhaps the earliest specimen of romance (except those in the Greek language) which we have in Europe, preserving all the conditions of romance, is that which Fauriel describes, and which is called Walter of Aquitaine. The poem is written in Latin, and the hero is a Languedocian. He represents the national feeling of Southern France as sternly and passionately opposed to the Frankish monarchy, and to all its characteristics in Church and State, in language, and in popular character. Fauriel has established, I think, that this poem was known to the German romance writers of a later period. 46 LECTURE II. He has shown that it had not a Httle influence on the development of romance in other nations of Europe. In the language of that country, 1 mean the Proven^ale, we have subsequently many romances. Raynouard has published a very live- ly romance, probably of the thirteenth century, in ratthng rhyme, like one of Walter Scott's poems : it shows the long cultivation of that style of poetical art, and proves the mistake of those who think that the narrative form of poetry was at that early time peculiar to the north of France, as the lyrical form was to the south. The subjects of the romances of Southern France were those of the same great cycle of poetry elsewhere in Europe : Charlemagne and his Peers on the one hand, and Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table on the other. FaurieFs notion, that these ideas had never become poetry among the nations themselves to w^hich they referred, is a very extravagant one. I cannot for one moment suppose that the Britons of England, or the Bretons of France, had not talked familiarly about Arthur at all, while the people of Languedoc had made him the subject of poetry. I would just as Httle suppose that the Franks had no traditions about Charle- magne and his Peers till the Aquitanians began to take up such subjects. But this much is certain, that at a very early period, and in the languages of the south of France, romances on these subjects had, at great length and with great liveliness of style, been composed before the close of the thirteenth century. I have said that Troubadour literature had great influence over the rest of Southern Europe. Think LECTURE II. 47 first of all of the lyrical poetry of Italy. In each one of the great divisions of the Commedia of Dante there is a Troubadour prominent : in the first there is Bertrand de Born ; in the second, Sordello of Mantua ; and in the third, there is that dreadful Foulques of Marseilles, the troubadour Bishop of Toulouse, who seems to have been a wanton rhymster in his early days, and in after life a despotic bigot. To other troubadours there is frequent reference in that poem. Sordello, whom Dante renders thus prominent, was himself an Italian. His poems are composed in the language of Southern France, as being the only classical modern language then exist- ing ; and the poets of Florence immediately preced- ing Dante, wrote in the Proven^ale language. I must not venture to say that Dante himself did so ; for Signor Mazzini has expressed the greatest wrath and indignation against the supposition that so patriotic a man should have polluted himself by writing verses in a foreign language. I therefore say not so. I have no doubt Signor Mazzini knows better than most of us the probable genuineness of the Proven9ale sonnet ascribed to Dante ; but that Dante hneiu that literature, and that it greatly in- fluenced him, I have given sufficient evidence. The poetry of Petrarch is a continuation of the trouba- dour poetry. I w^ould say the lyrical poetry of Dante is a continuation of the troubadour poetry, but I confess I cannot say so, it seems to me so high above it. He meant to imitate the Troubadours, but he could not keep down to their standard. A ballata of Dante is as high above the troubadour poetry as a sonnet of Michael Angelo is above the rhymes of 48 LECTURE II. Foulques of Marseilles ; still the influence is trace- able. This was the only classical modern language in Europe before the Northern French became de- veloped in the beginning of the thirteenth century, and before the Italian developed itself first in the poetry of Cavalcanti and others, next in that of Dante, and then in that of Petrarch and Boccaccio. LECTURE 111, Let us consider as the leading idea in this course in which it is very necessary that we should have general views to guide us through a vast range of details the difference between the classical litera- ture of the first two or three centuries, and the ver- nacular literature of modern Europe, arising in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. According to this guiding principle we have first to consider that throughout a large portion of Europe, the classical language of Western Europe, that is, the Latin, con- tinued to be a spoken tongue, in a gradual process of decay indeed losing by degrees many of its forms, becoming, as it were, blunted in its gramma- tical character, and receiving slowly infusions of barbaric speech ; but yet in the main, substantially the Roman language, as even to this day we find it to be, in Italy, in Spain, and in France. In conse- quence of this, the literature of the learned class, that is, literature written in the Latin language, was the only literature of these countries, throughout the whole of the earlier portion of this period. Latin there was, Latin chronicles, Latin lives of the saints, theology and philosophy written in Latin, but there was no modern language special to these countries D 50 LECTURE III. during at least six centuries of that portion of time of which we speak. Whence, we have asked, was a modern or vernacular literature to arise ? We have shown that there were two attempts of this kind at comparatively early periods one in North-western Europe, and the other in Southern Europe ; the one in North-western Europe (the Anglo-Saxon litera- ture making its appearance in the very century after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity), the other in Southern Europe, the literature of Provence, best known as that of the Troubadours, although the troubadour literature of lyric poetry was only a part of a literature which was in some measure historical, and in a much larger measure consisted of romances in the modern sense of the word a sense of the word derived from the very language of which we are speaking the language of Southern France. It was a peculiar language, but I do not need to dwell on this point. You know that the distinction between the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oyl or Langue d'Oui, is one which has perpetuated itself in the name of a great pro- vince of France. In the one part of France the word for " yes" was hoc or this, which gradually became oc ; in the other it was illud or that, which gradually became 01/ or hoc-illud, as it is supposed by some to have been. The classification of the lan- guages according to the form for "yes," seems to have been an established one before the time of Dante's famous treatise on speech in the modern vernacular tongues. There he lays down the divi- sion of European languages into the Lingua de Si, the Italian ; the Lingua d'Oyl, the Northern French ; LECTURE III. 51 the Lingua (VOc, the Southern French ; and the Lingua de Jo, the language of "ya" or "yes," in which of course the German and English are in- cluded. The principle is so very natural a one that it constantly re-appears without the least historical connexion. The people in the South Sea Islands call the French at the present day the Wee-wees, or the people of the Lingua de Oui, as it might be trans- lated, on the same principle as Dante's. What became of these two first attempts at national vernacular literature in Europe "? That of the Anglo-Saxons, if we regard it in one point of view, may be said to have been terminated first by the Danish Conquest, and then by the Norman Con- quest. But, in another and truer point of view, it may be said that the Anglo-Saxon tongue has con- tinued to be a literary language from the days of Csedmon and of Aldhelm down to the present time ; it forms the great bulk of our actual speech, and there is no period of absolute cessation. Indeed the grand break, the most palpable fault as a geologist might call it, that takes place at all in the history of the Anglo-Saxon literature, arises from the change in the nature of the language, which took place mainly in the thirteenth century. It used to be said that the Anglo-Saxon lost its grammatical forms, and approximated to the present English forms, in consequence of the Norman invasion. It is now ad- mitted by the most competent judges, by Mr. Hallam and Dr. Latham for example, that this was not the case ; that the Anglo-Saxon was gradually losing its synthetic form, and that, apart from the Norman invasion altogether, we should have had a language 52 LECTURE III. with comparatively little of inflection little either of conjugation or declension. In what, then, would it have differed from actual English 1 It would have differed mainly in the absence of an infusion of about one-fifth of Norman French, which, beyond doubt, we owe to the Conquest. But the change did not take place at the Conquest. It is interesting to observe the remarkable purity of the Saxon language even after the Conquest purity I mean not as to its grammatical form, for it was losing this, but purity as to its vocables. In the twelfth, and in the early part of the thirteenth century, you have what is called semi-Saxon with hardly a word of Norman French, that is the language of the people. You have, indeed, three languages and three literatures side by side ; you have the Northern and Southern French of the Court and nobility ; you have the Latin of the learned and ecclesiastical class, and you have the semi-Saxon of the people. And one of the most wonderful phenomena in the history of lan- guage, is the rapidity with which English, in our sense of the word, supersedes them all in the close of the thirteenth century, and in the beginning of the fourteenth. So that, then, truly we may say it is no longer Anglo-Saxon or semi-Saxon, but requires a new name, and for convenience' sake we call it English. But, unluckily, we are giving it the same name that Alfred and Bede gave to the Anglo-Saxon of their time ; for when Alfred, in drawing up a law, for example, is stating the vulgar name of a place which he has already spoken of b}'- the Latin name, he says, " in English," it is so called. Why I should have adverted to these circumstances relating more LKCTUKE III. 53 particularly to the history of language than of lite- rature will be seen more clearly perhaps as we pro- ceed. I wished to explain to you at what period, and in what manner, the Anglo-Saxon literature may be considered as having come to a close in what degree this is true and yet to remind you that by carrying the conception too far we should introduce a false view of the matter, as though it had received a sudden extinction, instead of gradually but steadily passing into a new form the form of the English literature, the literature of that language in which the works of Wyclifie and of Chaucer are written. Then, again, in Southern France, while I speak of the Komance literature being quenched in blood by the war against the Albigenses, do not for a moment suppose that that extinction was immediate and total. I tried to impress on you that the great moving prin- ciple then w^as not so much the war in itself as the result of the war ; namely, that Languedoc, instead of being elevated to an independent national develop- ment, became attached to the destinies of Northern France, that the question was settled whether he who had originally been Count or Duke of Paris, or the Isle of France, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, the Count of Toulouse, was to be the ruling central power over the French nation. Had the latter been the case, we should have had even now a literature in the Langue d'Oc ; the former was the case, and therefore we have now a French literature in the Langue d'Oui. But all the while the ecclesiastical hterature, the literature of the learned class, was going on. It steadily persisted. It was never in- terrupted in the southern countries of Europe. In 54 LECTURE 111. England it had been introduced by the Roman mis- sionaries, and there it continued more or less to be cultivated down to the Norman Conquest. But the great difference is this, that in the eighth century England was, beyond all question, at the head of the learned or ecclesiastical literature of Europe. In that century, called by some the darkest of the dark ages, we can boast of Bede, and Boniface, and Alcuin, and these are names not easily paralleled even in the most enlightened portion of the mediaeval period ; while, for a reason which I explained in the last lecture, the mind of England was diverted from the special cultivation of the Latin or ecclesiastical literature, and turned to the culture of its own speech, and to the application of that speech to all the objects of knowledge and thought w^hich then occupied the attention of Europe, still the ecclesiastical literature, as I have said, went on. It was the fashion in the last century to speak as if it were a great misfortune for history and for truth, that during this period the clergy, and especially monks, were the main authors. It w^as said, that with their narrow and bigoted view^s, with their ignorance of the affairs of the world, they could not be expected to measure the real interests of history, and must have left out much that is most worth knowing. In all this there is one grand over- sight. If the main movement of European life at that time ivas ecclesiastical, then it is better for his- tory that ecclesiastics should have put it on record. Now this is a question of fact ; and as to the deci- sion of the question of fact, there seems to me hardly any doubt. The grand work to be done was to bring LKCTUKE HI. ^ ^ ' ' ' r:iii aright, tlie very reverse of what is imputed to them. ^ You speak of God, of eternity, of incarnation. You say these are supreme truths," I conceive one of these poor young clerks might say to Abelard. " Well, then, they are, I do not doubt it ; but what the Church, what the Bible gives as the utterance of truth, to me is as yet only a word. What may it be more 1 It may be something more. To me it is only a w^ord standing for an unknown quantity : its relations I know, but then I know not what it is in itself. It is a theological xy z. 1 see how it stands in the system, and in relation to other assumed or known truths, but what it is, I do not know ; therefore, if I say, *I believe it,' I utter an untruth. Can you help me ? Can you deliver me V These I understand to have been the questions put to Abelard. He had gone through a severe training by this time. I do not say that that proud spirit was thoroughly sub- dued ; I do not say he was beyond the temptations of intellectual ambition; but greatly humbled he was, and I believe he would not have rushed into new difficulties and dangers, without the feeling that it was a reasonable requirement that these men ad- dressed to him, and that if he were in any way ca- pable of helping them out of their difficulties there was an obligation on him to attempt it. I do not believe I am over-rating the importance of this man in the history of intellectual philosophy, and therefore I have dw^elt on him so long. I have referred to what afterwards happened, when, retir- ing from St. Denis as he had over and over again gone from the places where his popularity was at its a 98 LECTURE IV. height, he went to ca remote part of Frince, to an absolute desert, according to the description of the writers of the time, and there inhabited a soUtary cell. One cell after another was built around it, cottages or huts rather, of the rudest kind ; a sort of Crimean encampment or bivouac was made there by multitudes of men with the same eager thirst for knowledge that brought them to St. Denis. Men of all ranks rushed in upon him. Was that disgraceful to the age ? They may have sought to drink at a fountain very incapable of quenching the thirst by which they were actuated ; but it was a noble thirst. It was the desire to exercise and to have satisfied faculties which had been bestowed on them, and the gift of which was a warrant for their exercise. It may seem as though the portico were to be enormous, and the building very small, when I tell you that, strictly speaking, we have not arrived at scholasticism yet. But a very few words will dis- pose of what I have now to say in regard to it. The thirteenth century is the age of the great scholastics there is no doubt of that. We all know that Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, that Bona- venture and Duns Scotus, are among the highest names in that region of thought. But there is the less reason that we should detain ourselves, in a sketch like this, on that period, for causes which I hope to make clear to you in the few sentences that remain. Abelard speaks always as though his intel- lectual activity were a thing outside of the Church, and as though it belonged rather to the secular life, as though conscious that however honestly he is LECTURE JV. 99 engaged in it, and however honest his utterances may appear to himself, still he was not employed in the proper business of a monk, in the proper business of a religious man. And this, remember, is not only during the earlier period of his hfe when he acknowledges the vanity and ambition by which he was actuated, but during that later and more sober period, preceding at least the great Council of Sens, where Bernard, the great contemplative genius of the Church of that age, encountered him, and pro- cured sentence against him unheard, (not by the fault of Bernard, for Abelard refused to appear ;) and then again, Abelard's appeal to the Pope is set aside, and he takes refuge, as I have described to you, in the Abbey of Clugni, under Peter the vener- able, where he ends his days. But this closes a period during which philosophy had no acknowledged place in the system of the Church. It is altogether otherwise after this. The thirteenth century a marvellous central period in the history of Europe is distinguished, among many things by which it is distinguished, by the rise of the mendicant orders. It is the century when great laymen began to appear, and with quite a laic cha- racter. A great layman was St. Louis of France, if I had time to vindicate that description of him : a great layman, Dante, belongs by birth to the latter half of this century also. But it is the century of Dominic and of Francis, and their relation to philo- sophy and literature is of the most important and intimate kind. They take philosophy into tlw Church; it becomes part of the ecclesiastical system. Its doctrines, its system, are, within certain limits, com- 100 LECTURE IV. pletely recognised as a portion of service done to the cause of Christian truth ; and much that is achieved by other means is even accepted into the standard of the faith. The founders of these two great orders were men exceedingly different. Do- minic was a man of great capacity both of thought and of action ; taking a journey through Languedoc he found the secular clergy of that region trying to win over the heretics by mere authority or compul- sion ; he showed them that poverty, that devoted- ness, that self-denial, were, in the first place, the proper means to recover the unbelievers : and this man was the founder of that order with which the whole his- tory of the inquisition, especially in its beginning, is so intimately associated. But in regard to our sub- ject, the history of the Dominicans of the thirteenth century is one of the most interesting portions of literary history. The fruits of the labours of Abe- lard, and the like men, were showing themselves in Paris especially, which was the great seat of learn- ing at that time. The mental activity which in- quired at first " what we were to believe in accord- ance with the faith," soon turned to inquire what we were to believe, without scrupulous regard to whether it was in accordance with the faith or no. The rage for speculation went to a height to which, perhaps, nothing in more recent history is comparable, unless it were that generated by the writings of Kant in Germany in the close of the last century. In this state of things the Dominican order resolved to be- come missionaries of a new kind, apostles of a new sort. They were to go among those men inhabit- ing an intellectual region, foreign to the Church ; LECTURE IV. 101 to make converts there by the means adapted for their conversion ; they educated themselves to the office of preaching, but, in the first instance, to the office of preaching to the learned ; they went to all the great universities, to Oxford, Paris, Bologna, and everywhere encountered the greatest thinkers, met them with their own weapons, but still always bearing in view the faith and the practical religious life, as they conceived it, as the end to be chiefly contemplated. The results were wonderful : in many instances there were conversions, humilia- tions, shame, and remorse acknowledged with regard to the past life. But I have referred to this cir- cumstance because it will explain to you how a new intensity, and, at the same time, a new harmony, was sure to be given to the scholastic theology by this complete recognition of it as a portion of the ec- clesiastical system. Very soon the formal acceptance of the two orders the Dominican and Franciscan by the Pope, that is, by the Church, consecrated all that had been done. The whole scholastic history of the thirteenth century is mainly the history of their activity. I will merely name to you Albertus Magnus, the German representative of the Germanic intellect of that period, regarded as one of the highest among the scholastic theologians of the Dominican order. Of that order was also Thomas Aquinas, who is considered as an anti-Realist on this ground, that he maintains that ideas I must not stop to explain the Platonic use of the expression have not a real ex- istence in themselves, but that their real existence is in the mind of God alone, and that out of it they are no realities ; that they are not, as William of Cham- 102 LECTURE IV. peaux held, in the individual things where they are represented. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, as lie was called, is, in a corresponding manner, charac- teristic of the Franciscan order. Perhaps the most acute and original, during his own period, of all these speculators, and one, at the same time, entirely orthodox, is the last I shall name to you, Johannes Duns Scotus, who was born in the year 1307, which will give you some general indication of the period to which I refer. He prolongs the history of the great scholastics of the thirteenth century far on into the fourteenth. In regard to these great men for men of most comprehensive intellects they were, of prodigious subtlety some of them, and others of them of the very loftiest aspirations. I will only remind you that the great work of Aquinas is his Sum of Theology, where there is hardly any question, moral or philosophical, on which principles deduced from religion can be brought to bear, that is not included, and where the subjects directly and obviously in- cluded under its title are dealt with, with a free and at the same time an exceedingly delicate hand ; while the title of the great work of Bonaventure, Of the Reduction of all the Arts to Theology, shows the grand ambition of the spiritual intellectualists of that time. And here I have finished what is purely and pro- perly characteristic of the mediseval philosophy in regard to its literary history. What did these MEN FOR us 1 To answcr that question would be a prodigious undertaking ; but I think it can hardly be doubted by those who have paid even a very slight attention to the subject which I have this LECTURE IV. 103 evening presented to you, that we speak and think diftcrently every day of our lives, in consequence of the cultivation given to formal thought as applied to the highest subjects, and in consequence, especially, of the cultivation given to language as the organ of that formal thought, by the class of men who have been so hastily passing in review before us. I felt that any reference to the history of literature during the mediaeval period would be exceedingly incom- plete without some endeavour to explain the nature of these specific influences. I am now about to take leave of you. I have certainly long enough detained you on a subject so far out of the common range. If it has at all inter- ested you, there are two authors to whom I can refer you very confidently for further satisfaction. The very unpretending little volume of Mr. Maurice on the Mediaeval Philosophy is, perhaps, strange to say, the most popularly written of all his works, although on a subject apparently so unfitted for popularity. Dr. Milman, whom I have had occasion so frequently to acknowledge as an aid and a guide, has paid a commendable attention to the history of philosophy throughout all the periods embraced in his history of Latin Christianity. From the nature of ray subject, and from the narrowness of my limits, I have had often to request your indulgence. I am very conscious of the measure in which I have ex- perienced it. On the other hand, I should have had no right to come before you, unless I had hoped I might afford aid to some of you who were interested in inquiries as to the past intellectual life of Europe, 104 LECTURE IV and who might see that the mental activity of that period was not altogether without capacity for guid- ance of the present. If I have in any measure suc- ceeded in communicating this, my labour has had its best reward. f/f^t^ Of THf ^ EDINBURGH : T. CONSTABLE, PRINTER TO UEK MAJ ESTV. ^'o*;;"f HOME USE CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT MAIN LIBRARY This book is due on the last date stamped below. 1-month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405. 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk. Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO RECALL 7 DAYS AFTER DATE CHECKED OUT. CJRCDEPr SEP 74 LD21 A-40m-5, (R8191L) General Library University of California Berkeley 'f .4 ;,4^j m /. m^---''-i i., -t^