CHARACTER OF MEDIEVAL KNOWLEDGE. 631 professional study, which a noble or a knight might altogether neglect without much discredit. But when all allowances have been made, the fame which Oxford achieved in spite of its poverty, and the numerous students who flocked to Paris for further or better instruction, are splendid evidence of our ancestors' zeal for letters. The reproaches of barbarism sometimes cast upon them may be reduced to two charges, that books were few and costly before printing was discovered, and that the facts of the mind and the relations of God to man were studied to the disparagement of experimental science.' 'For a very full account of education in England down to the sixteenth century, I must refer the reader to Mr. Furnivall's preface to the Babees' Boke, edited for the Early English Text Society. CHAPTER XXXVI. ANGLO-NORMAN SOCIETY. DUALISM OF CHURCH IT AND STATE. BELIEF IN SYSTEMS. SECULAR CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH. ECCLESIASTICAL INFLUENCES T is not unusual to compare the simple organizations of Athens and Rome, which had no established Church, and where the priest scarcely differed from other citizens, with the two-fold constitution of early Christian society. The fact of the contrast is undoubted and rests upon two causes. One of these is the sharp antagonism of Christianity to the world which it regenerated. Other religions were local, and reflected the institutions and thoughts of the countries in which they were developed. But Christianity spread from a small province of the Roman empire over nations that differed from one another in population, polity, and tone of life. The gospel proscribed unsparingly both the bloodshed on which the imperial dominion was founded, and the traditional vices of the upper classes. Its preachers went further, and declared the intellect and civilization of Rome anathema. For centuries there was no thought of compromise between the Church and SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 633 actualities. The best men desired not so much to make the State Christian as to create a separate world outside secular society. The miseries of the times when the empire was breaking up, and the constant expectation that Christ was coming in person to judge the world, favoured this disregard of temporal monarchies. "Watch and pray, for ye know not at what time the Master cometh," was the thought that guided the conduct of early Christians. By the twelfth century these feelings had partially passed away. New nations had arisen, and a cheerful faith in actual life replaced the hope of a millennium. But nothing could now bridge over the separation of Church and State, whose rival fabrics had been built up by theorists of the cloister, and warriors roughly completing the legal traditions inherited from their fathers. That the State ought to assist, perhaps to obey the Church, was felt generally. But that citizenship might be Christian in itself was a theory yet undeveloped. Only its dim outlines can be traced in chivalry. The other cause of the twofold organization of society lies in the wealth of thought, which the tribes that broke up Europe derived from Rome. Its laws of property and succession, its municipal constitutions, were as far beyond the actual legal training of Franks and Saxons in the fifth and sixth centuries, as the metaphysics of Plato and the logic of Aristotle surpassed their capacities of abstract thought. They felt the wonder and reverence of children for the civilization whose spoils they entered upon; and even where they retained their old customs, enriched them with a meaning derived from Rome or Greece. The philosophy of their times taught them to seek all truth in the mind. Habit and speculation thus conspired to create a belief in laws rather than in law 634 BELIEF IN SYSTEMS. givers. The fiction of a "natural law," and the vague truth that there was a divine order in the universe, found expression in a hundred theories of medieval legists and schoolmen. But they dared not follow out their conclusions, and blend the two systems which they saw before them into one theocratic state. Under a pious king, Alfred or St. Louis, something like this union might seem to be realized. But no pope, however statesmanlike, were he Hildebrand or Innocent himself, could prevail against the logic of daily life, and the instinct of revolt against a commonwealth based on the destruction of moral liberty. Throughout the middle ages, therefore, Church and State remained separate, yet inextricably involved, like the real and ideal in common life. Each, in the same mechanical manner, was seeking to fence in society with some perfect system which should make error impossible. Each accumulated laws and legal fictions till mankind groaned under the burden laid upon it. The failure of both is now matter of history. But until the time was ripe for self-government in its widest sense and liberty of conscience, generation after generation went down to the grave, believing in the power of the mind to reproduce God's order in earthly government, and with the infinite elasticity of Omnipotence, to regulate the smallest as well as the greatest concerns of life. Existing legislation might be incomplete; but a higher tone, a subtler thought, a few more enactments, would surely complete the ideal fabric, that should be wide and deep as the actions and heart of man. So strong a belief in systems might have petrified the growth of society. Spain is an instance of a country which developed the theories of the middle ages with all the appliances of modern civilization. The genius LEARNING ABSORBED BY THE CHURCH. 635 of Cervantes, the heroism of nameless thousands who died on every possible battle-field under Don John or Alva, the devotion of Loyola and St. Teresa, have gilded, but could not arrest, the decay of the nation. Medieval Europe was saved from this fate by the rudeness of its organization, by the vivid contrasts of Church and State, and by the large latitude which a power confident of its foundations can afford to leave to opinion. The two rival codes of law, the privileges of Church, barons, and towns, were so many standing protests against administrative unity. There was little fear, in the twelfth century, that the State would cease to be religious. The dread lest the Church should again separate itself from actual life might seem better founded. It was saved by the vastness of its empire. Its monasteries were the seats of learning, and the tonsure was a title to respect which the student could not dispense with. Hence the Church was another name for the learned professions. Architect, poet, painter, historian, philosopher, and grammarian, lawyer and physician, escaped from the plough or the service of arms by ministering at the altar. No wonder if art was religious, when all its associations were sacred. In one respect, religion suffered by the services of men who often brought with them the secular tastes and passions of the world they professed to leave. But it gained in culture and breadth by occupying the energies of such thinkers as Abelard, Lanfranc, and Roger Bacon. Six centuries later, Abelard might have been an encyclopædist, Lanfranc a cabinet minister, and Roger Bacon 1 Thus Faritius, abbot of Abingdon, was a physician, and apparently an architect, though so distinguished as an ecclesiastic that if it had not been for his medical eminence he would have been made archbishop of Canterbury. Chron. Mon. de Abingdon, vol. ii. pp. 286, 287. |
