the moderns in general will not judge of these things as they really are, and as those know who beheld them, ἀλλ ̓ ἐξ ὧν ἂν τις εὖ λέγων διαβάλλοι. It is from whatever may be advanced by any who can speak well, by any vain flashy man declaiming, that they will be convinced.* One must be prepared also to witness more than incredulity. Many historical writers resemble those democratic leaders who used to denounce as enemies of the people all who questioned the justice of their particular views. Like Anathagoras the Syracusan, who on the approach of the Athenians being as Thucydides says, the man most credited by the multitude, cried out, "Whoever is of a different opinion, is either not a liberal man, or not a friend to the constitution of the state."† "This is an age," says Sylvio Pellico, "in which to lie and to mistrust to excess, are things so common, that they are hardly regarded as vices. Speak with twenty men in private, nineteen will only express their horror against such and such All seem inflamed with indignation against iniquity, as if each alone of all the world were just. To calumniate all the individuals of whom society is composed, with the exception of a few friends, appears to be the universal wish.” It is the same with writers of history. persons. If these insatiable but fickle wanderers were asked, as was the original tempter and calumniator of mankind, whence came they? their reply might be in his words "circuivi terram, et perambulavi eam." Like the troop described by Eschylus, εὐμήχανοι δὲ καὶ τέλειοι, κακῶν τε μνήμονες σεμναί, they show themselves at every turn ingenious, not forgetful of evils, and so pass on through regions which their breath has withered, to exercise their inglorious dishonoured office, insensible to mortal interests, and alienated from heaven.§ The old Roman historian expresses always a reluctance to credit a narrative of turpitude, saying, "non libet crederi." But nothing seems to give such pleasure to our historians, who pretend to represent the middle age, as the discovery of some deed of atrocity, in an ancient chronicle, though Thucyd. Lib. VII. c. 48. † Id. Lib. VI. 36. 1 Dei Doveri degli uomini? Eumenid. 381. || Livy IV. 29. indeed they need it not; for with them no might, nor greatness in mortality can censure 'scape "back-wounding calumny, the whitest virtue strikes." Their charges are general, and for that reason alone, their testimony would have been rejected by Socrates, who used always to say, où ζητῶ πανάμωμον ἄνθρωπον.* In fact, they have praise for no one. "" "He rides tolerably well, but what is it to a Hippocentaur ?" Thus they introduce into history, what Pasquier styles the Sçavoir courtisan, far more dangerous than the pedantic knowledge, for this consists in seeking the reputation of ability, by never giving praise to any object, however excellent, by refusing admiration; always having some defect to condemn, either in the style, or conduct, or choice, or motive, of the actions; or if it be impossible to do so believe there is still something wrong.t by significant gestures, that others may historian, saying, "When I think upon the Novalis judges better of the office of an historian ought necessarily to be a poet; general right, it appears to me, that an for it is a poet alone who can understand how to connect events together properly. In their narratives, I have remarked with calm delight, the tender feeling which is evinced for the mysterious spirit of life. There is more truth in their relations than in learned histories. Although their personages and events are invented, yet the sense in which they are conceived is true to nature." Whoever approaches modern history, with a sincere wish to avoid error, must bear in mind that it is a domain which hath been for three hundred years constantly infested with false guides, who, from different motives, were all equally ing the manners of the ancient Catholic disposed to lead men astray, by calumniatcivilization. In the first rank came the gions, who sought to justify their separarash judging proselytes of the new relireprobate, as if their reform was to extend tion, by denouncing the number of the heaven. even to what had been determined by "They behold," says Louis of Blois, "a great heap of straw in the Lord's granary, from which they judge that there is no grain amidst it.' Paleas vident, After these came the Rationalists; and it grana non vident, vel videre nolunt. Plato Protagoras. + Lettres de Pasquier, Liv. X. 7. Ludovic. Blos. Epist. ad Florentium. is a curious and just remark of Bonald, that the same doctrines which deny the original corruption of man, always exaggerate his social corruption. In fine, the In fine, the atheists and hypocrites laid the most dangerous snares of all, for being animated with an immortal hatred against Catholicism, they formed a diabolic school, which had its secret traditions, by means of which they were most skilled in all the cunning wiles of deception. These were the men who interrogated history with so much the greater severity, as their deductions and admonitions proceeded from a source different from charity. What is this cry from the broad way trodden by them who are not true to God or to themselves, which yet sounds like the voice that in the days of Damian, came from the desert? In the ages of faith, it would have deceived no one. Ives de Chartres was told by some calumnious persons, that the manners of the monks in his diocese were corrupt; but that holy and acute bishop, after hearing their testimony, came to the conclusion, that they were not to be believed; "quibus non est credendum de aliena injustitia, quamdiu non discesserint a sua."† Severe and unforgiving men, do you not fear to have some searching questions addressed in turn to yourselves? You do, indeed, reprove with indignation, the crimes, real or imputed, of the ancient Christian society. You proclaim many things respecting abuse, superstition, and hypocrisy, which might have been, and which very often were delivered by S. Bernard, or a Gregory. But whence to you this zeal? The moral discourse which the creature, eminent in beauty once, addresses to our Saviour, in the immortal poem of Paradise Regained, is sufficient to undeceive us with regard to such professions. Yours is an old comedy. readers to believe that an attachment to the manners of the ancient Catholic civilization, is synonymous with robust profligacy in every form. The weak credulity with which such compositions are received, presents no unprecedented phenomenon ; nor is even the artful nature of their calumny due to any progress in the science of deception. In protestations of regard for justice and morality the pagan oracles were equally loud; in allusion to which St. Augustin said, "the malignity of demons, unless it transformed itself into an angel of light could not have fulfilled its object." ject." Indeed, there is no great difficulty here; for when disposed to triumph in their own social progress, they turn round with exultation to display, not the obedience and charity, the filial love, fidelity, and honour of their contemporaries, but the different signs, real or imagined, of commercial prosperity, national glory, and of a wondrous material civilization, the goodness of their manufactures, goodness of their laws, goodness of their police, goodness of their prisons perhaps, "as if," to use the words of St. Augustin, "it were the greatest good of man to have all things good excepting himself.”+ "The eyes of perverse men meet with scandals every where, but," says an ancient ascetic, "the good man enjoys tranquillity and repose." Who can be deceived as to the cause which troubles the repose of these modern writers, so shocked at the profligacy of the middle ages, when, in order to prove it, we find them furnishing out their pages with the most detestable pictures, and adopting a style which cannot be reconciled with a very tender solicitude for the virtues of their own time? No, let them be ingenious, let them compose books that may indicate ever such extensive, such multifarious research, still, when all is done, when they have displayed before us all the regions of the bad, their evidence must be rejected as partial, and their judgment as untrue. Without doubt it is an easy task from the class of facetious writers, from the author of the Fabliaux, from the troubadours, and the poets who favoured the religious innovators, to draw a picture of the middle ages most inviting to a licentious imagination, and favourable to the conclusions of those who advocated the overthrow of the ancient society; but where philosophy is heard, collections of • De Civitat. Dei, Lib. II. 26. + Ib. Lib. III. 1. this kind cannot be received as evidence, and, therefore, with such researches we need have nothing to do. I shall follow Plato's rule, καὶ τὸ μὲν αἰσχρὸν καὶ ἀνόσιον οὔτε παρίεμαι ἔγωγε, οὔτέ λέγω· πολλοῖς γὰρ καὶ ἄλλοις ὑμνεῖν ταῦτα ἐπιμελὲς, καὶ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα μελήσει χρόνον.* Nevertheless, to these historic walks, reader, come not expecting to be led through a region of pure serenity, unclouded and untroubled. "Good with bad expect to hear;" supernal grace contending with sinfulness of men. "We do not," says St. Clemens Alexandrinus, "receive simply all philosophy, but that concerning which Socrates speaks in Plato; for there are, as they say, round the mysteries, many rod-bearers, but few Bacchanals, Tooi μὲν ναρθηκοφόροι, Βάκχοι δέ τε παῦροι, obscurely signifying that many are called but few chosen."+ "In all places and times of the saints," says Thomas à Kempis, "there have been good and evil, faithful and incredulous, devout and dissolute, benevolent and perverse, spiritual and carnal; and the good by their patience advanced daily to greater good, and the evil, like smoke, evanesced in the malice of their own desires."‡ It is from the heights of this ascetic philosophy that we should survey the various ages of the world, rather than from any ground, however agreeable, of historic theory, which can never be perfectly solid, since it fails, even under the genius of that illustrious Catholic historian, of whose views some Protestant writers have availed themselves, in contrasting what they represent as the manners of the primitive times with those of the middle ages. What skills it to declaim about primitive times, when we find St. Paul telling the Corinthians that there are vices among them which are not even among the Pagans; and when we can read the account which St. Cyprian gives of the manners of a Christian society in his age? "Recollect," says Benedict Aretino, "how many hereticks endeavoured to stain the tunic of Christ in early times, and what corruption of manners arose from the Donatists, Manichæans, Priscilianists, and other monsters of that kind, from which the Church, during the middle ages, was in great measure free. What evil men, were opposed to Athanasius, Basil, and Chrysostom? If the multitude of martyrs was great, there were many also who through fear or ambition denied Christ and returned to idolatry. On the other hand, if you will look at the history of the last 400 years, you will find in the first place, those two great lights, than which none ever shone with greater lustre or sanctity, Francis and Dominick, from whom such institutions arose as antiquity had never seen, producing an incredible multitude of saints and of illustrious men, by whom the Christian faith has been so much aided, that men have learned to live in a manner far more Christian than before; for many vices in the world have been by their means either diminished or wholly extirpated."* The language of the primitive fathers will never sanction an exclusive admiration for their times. 66 It is certain, brethren," says St. Augustin, "that all we who are in the body of the Lord, and who remain in him, that he also may remain in us, must of necessity in this world until the end live amidst the wicked. I do not say amidst those wicked who blaspheme Christ, for it is rare now to find any one with their tongue blaspheme him, but there are many who do so in their lives. Of necessity, therefore, amongst such men we must live, even until the end."+ St. Augustin was obliged to warn the catechumens against being scandalized by the lives of unworthy Christians, in words which would well become the Catholic missionary of the present day, addressing his separated brethren, who might well warn the illustrious Protestant from being unwilling to be in the Church where they are, or from wishing to be there such as they are. "Let not the vain Pagans," saith he, "deceive you, or the false Jews, or the deceitful hereticks, nec non in ipsa Catholica mali Christiani, tanto nocentiores quanto interiores inimici.'§ You, therefore, believing these things, beware of temptations, lest that enemy should deceive you, not only by means of those who are without the Church, whether Pagans, or Jews, or heretics, but also by those whom you may behold living ill within the Catholic Church; that you may not imitate. those who are either abandoned to luxurious and shameful pleasures, or addicted to vain and illicit curiosity, whether of Bened. Accolti Aretini de Præstantia virorum sui ævi dialog. Thesaur. Antiq. Italia, tom. IX. + St. August. Tract. in Joan. 27. St. August. de Catechizandis rudibus. § Id. De fide rerum quæ non videntur. theatrical exhibitions, or of remedies, or of diabolic divinations, or engaged in pomp and avarice, and pride, or in any life which the law condemns and punishes. You must not suppose that these perverse men, although they enter the walls of the church, will hereafter enter the kingdom of heaven, because at the proper time they will be separated, if they do not previously separate themselves from the evil."* The middle ages were ages of crime, and in that respect they form no singular epoch in the world's history; but mark, it was crime along with infinite pity, infinite horror for sin, and infinite desire of justice; and on this side what parallel to them can we find in human annals? Amidst social disorders what multitudes were obeying the call to perfection, and at the voice of the preacher leaving all to follow Christ! There were wars and crimes in abundance, of which 1 shall hereafter speak, but luxury, more cruel than arms, did not avenge the wrongs of the oppressed. Assuredly, there are names belonging to our ancient history of horrible dispraise, recalling the deeds of men upon whom the multiplied villanies of nature did swarm, men possessed by seven demons that drank iniquity like water. Each generation had sad experience of all malicious acts abhorred in heaven; but on all sides what cries of horror, ἰὼ δίκα, ἰπ θρόνοι τ' ἐριννύων ; what a profound sense of injustice! "Iniquitatem odio habui et abominatus sum!” what innocence, goodness, sanctity, and wisdom: "custodivit anima mea testimonia tua et dilexit ea vehementer!" What a minority, to use a modern phrase, opposed to the wretched, godless crew + Instead, too, of imitating the malice of our adversary, and gathering evil from good, misconstruing or abusing it, men in those times gathered good out of the gross and palpable evil which existed around them. "I confess," says Muratori, "that when young, I was of the opinion of those admirers of ancient Greece and Rome who thought that there was nothing but horror and barbarism in the history of the middle ages. I need not say how completely I had to free my mind from that error. In St. August. de Catechiz. rudibus. + Mabill. Præfat. in V. S. Benedict, s. I. these ages which are stigmatized by so many, there were not wanting admirable princes, and great examples of fortitude, sanctity, and other virtues. There are many reasons why we should embrace and love the history of Europe from the decline of the Roman empire till the sixteenth century."* "You speak of the evils of these times, but I maintain," says Benedict Aretino, "without fear of being misled, that crimes were not practised openly as in the ancient world, nor so frequently; that there were many nations by whom they were held in horror, and that almost all who professed the religion of Christ were more timid to do wrong; so that I am astonished how any man of learning can assert, without blushing, that he prefers the ancient civilization to that of the middle ages."† Our ancient writers remark the importance of producing in history things reprehensible, as well as those worthy of praise. That the crimes of the unjust were often designedly, and almost with affectation, brought into prominent relief for the instruction of men, is a fact that can be witnessed even in the wild fabling of chivalrous romance, which furnished, in many respects, a true picture of cotemporaneous manners. Thus we find a lady saying to a knight in Gyron le Courtois, "Certes, you speak not as a knight errant, but as a villain and envious knight, and I doubt not you are as vile in deeds as you are in words! and sooth for your villany I am greatly desirous to know you for as one desires to know men of honour and virtue on account of their goodness, so in like manner, one desires to know bad men on account of their wickedness, that one may know where one ought to shun them."§ What is it that demands tears from the just and thoughtful, that desolates the heart, and leaves it almost without strength or hope? It is not the crimes of the wicked-it is not the persecution of the Church, to which the world and the Christian society have been always accustomed. It is, if it be not a solecism to utter such a sentence, the assent of the good. Edipus of Colonna declares that "he knows no just man who praises and defends all causes alike;" but for what degree or form of • In Scriptores rer. Italic. Præfat. + De præstantia virorum sui ævi dialog. Thesaur. antiq. Italiæ IX. Wadding an. Ann. Epist. ad lector. It is injustice have not the moderns invented an excuse, and where shall one find a head that is not crammed with all the sophisms which England, France, and Germany have produced during forty years? the men who come forward as the just, who now condemn the just, and find a thousand reasons for absolving their persecutors. None are so sure of being left defenceless as the innocent and holy. The Poet says in general of this earthly world, that "here to do harm is often laudable: to do good sometimes accounted dangerous folly." What would he have said had he seen later times? In the general movement and agitation of minds individual reason seems to have lost its power of distinguishing in morals, as if the tree of knowledge, for which we gave up all, had lost its ancient virtue. Amidst the general wreck of intelligences, the very sense of justice seems to have perished. Every thing innocent in humanity, and noble in the poesy of heroes-every thing that was formerly of good report, and enshrined in the hearts of men and women with universal veneration, is now, as if by common consent, pronounced to be either a superstition, or a false principle, or a matter of indifference, perhaps even of scorn; and no longer for the children of perdition, but for the just, dishonoured in their own eyes by witnessing to what degradation their moral nature is subjected, seems reserved the crimson brow. This is what the sinful nations, the people laden with iniquity, have come to, for having forsaken the Lord, and blasphemed the Holy One of Israel. In the middle ages, which men stigmatize as barbarous, an act of injustice or dishonour was regarded with a feeling of abhorrence which could not be uttered. The disdainful and hardly translateable expression of Eschylus, karánTvOTOS, "a thing to be spit upon," is the only word that can convey any idea of the intensity of that indignation.* Nothing seemed more admirable to Marsilius Ficinus in the character of Lorenzo de Medicis than this horror which he always evinced of bad men. On the other hand, the joy inspired by just deeds, and by beholding the sweet and gracious order of holy institutions, gave birth to rapturous strains, which indicated an habitual and almost angelic felicity. To speak of justice, and to recount high deeds of virtue, every one sought, whether in grave and solemn history, or in fabulous and poetic symbol, and since the draught is grateful ever as their thirst is keen, no words may speak the fulness of content. Religion, and chivalry inspired by religion, existed amidst all the disorders of the worst part of society. "It is precisely this contrast," says a modern historian, "which constitutes the great characteristic of the middle ages. Contemplate the heroic times of all other societies, and you find no trace of a similar contradiction. The practice and the theory of manners are nearly conformable. It is not seen that the ideas of men were purer or more elevated than their daily actions. The heroes of Homer have no scruples or sorrow for their brutality and egotism. Their moral sense is not better than their conduct. It is the same every where else excepting in our middle ages. There crimes and disorders abound, and men have evidently in their minds and imaginations lofty and pure desires and ideas. Principles were better than actions. Their notions of virtue are much more developed, their ideas of justice incomparably better than what is practised around them, or than what they often practise themselves. A certain moral ideal soars above this stormy society, and draws the attention and respect of men." "Chris tianity, no doubt," he adds, "was the cause of this fact, whch is, at all events, unquestionable. It presents itself every where in studying the middle ages; in the popular poetry, as well as in the exhortations of the priests. Throughout, the moral understanding of men rises and aspires far above their lives."* The Let it be observed, that in ages of faith crime assumes a still darker and more diabolic form, at least in the imagination, than in times when the supernatural grace and light have been withdrawn. vicious, like scorpions, when the sun darts its brightest flames, are most inflamed with the poison of their malignity when the sun of justice most serenely shines. It is only after knowing the perfect good, that men can know absolute evil; in point of fact, indeed, a countenance of Judas would probably be found in the vicious quarters of London or Berlin sooner than in the Borghetto at Milan, where Leonardo da Vinci went every morning and evening, for more than a year, in search of one, without success: but in the order of con * Guizot, Cours d'Hist. IV. 6. |