The bearings of the discussion upon vital theology explain the furious energy of the disputants. If, for example, the universal is a mere symbol, Christ—the Infinite-is not really present in the Eucharist. If Realism is false, the doctrine of the Trinity, according to which the one divine essence is entirely present in each of the three divine persons, is false. Distinctions of less moment might in the Ages of Faith shatter an empire. Hence it was that the University of Paris, by a public edict (1339) solemnly condemned and prohibited the philosophy of Occam, as prejudicial to the interests of the Church. His party in consequence, flourished the more. What is more natural than to love and pursue the forbidden? Science. When, as here, the measure of probability is essentially theological, if scientific theories are discussed, they will be colored with religious thought. The scientist, 'Transported And rapt in secret studies,' is imagined to know more than the human faculties can acquire. The wise are magicians; and the enlightened, heretics. - Astrology-fortune-telling by the aspect of the heavens and the influence of the stars - was the favorite superstition of the East and West. Great circumspection was necessary; neglect of it was fatal. In 1327, Asculanus, having performed some experiments that seemed miraculous to the vulgar, and having also offended many by some predictions said to have been fulfilled, was supposed to deal with infernal spirits, and was committed to the flames by the inquisitors of Florence. Alchemy was generally confined to the mystery which all sought to penetrate,-the transmutation of metals into gold. Edward III, not less credulous than his grandfather, issued an order in the following terms: Know all men that we have been assured that John of Rous and Master William of Dalby know how to make silver by the art of alchemy; that they have made it in former times, and still continue to make it; and, considering that these men, by their art, and by making the precious metal, may be profitable to us and to our kingdom, we have commanded our well beloved Thomas Cary to apprehend the aforesaid John and William, wherever they can be found, within liberties or without, and bring them to us, together with all the instruments of their art, under safe and sure custody.' The art of medicine was still in the greater part a compound of superstition and quackery. Relics, shrines, and miracle-cures were a source of boundless profit to ecclesiastics. It forms an epoch, that in this century Mundinus publicly dissected two human bodies in Bologna. A French surgeon, writing in 1363, says: The practitioners in surgery are divided into five sects. The first follow Roger and Roland, and the four masters, and apply poultices to all wounds and abscesses; the second follow Brunus and Theodoric, and in the same cases use wine only; the third follow Saliceto and Lanfranc, and treat wounds with ointments and soft plasters; the fourth are chiefly Germans, who attend the armies, and promiscuously use charms, potions, oil, and wool; the fifth are old women and ignorant people, who have recourse to the saints in all cases.' One of Gower's most graceful passages is that in which he pictures Medea going forth at midnight to gather herbs for the incantations of her witchcraft: Thus it befell upon a night, Whann there was naught but sterre light, She was vanished right as hir list, That no wight but hirselfe wist: And that was at midnight tide; The world was still on every side. She glode forth, as an adder doth.' Theology. The central doctrine of the medieval Church was the carnal nature of the sacraments -Transubstantiation.' Long ago, in the ninth century, it had been denied that the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper were transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. Two centuries later, the dispute was famous; and Berenger, who had the temerity to teach that they were but symbols, was terrified into publicly signing a confession of faith, which, among other tenets, declared: The bread and wine, after consecration, are not only sacrament, but also the real body and blood of Jesus Christ; and this body and blood are handled by the priest and consumed by the faithful, not merely in a sacramental sense, but in reality and truth, as other sensible objects are.' The controversy continued. Bread was deified, carried in solemn pomp through the public streets to be administered to the sick or dying. By his exclusive right to the performance of the miracle in the mass, the humblest priest was exalted above princes. Against this cardinal belief of the early Church, as of the Roman Catholics now,- that the material flesh and blood of the Saviour could be eaten as ordinary meat,- Wycliffe issued a formal pro 1 A word introduced and established by Innocent III, at the fourth Lateran Council, 1215. test (1381), and with that memorable denial began the movement of revolt. Under every creed, however monstrous, beneath every formula, however obsolete, is a philosophy. Wherever the importance of conduct has been felt, one question has been of chief concern,'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Jew and Persian had witnessed, with idolatrous Greece, that the especial strength of evil lay in matter. How came this substance to be tainted and infirm? Plato had left the question doubtful. The Jew found his solution in the fatal apple. The earth was a garden of delight, over whose hospitable surface no beast or bird of prey broke the changeless peace: but Adam, the first-born, sinnedno matter how, and all this fair scene dissolved in carnage. Creation groaned in ruins, and the human frame-hitherto pure as immortal seraph - was infected with disease and decay, unruly appetites, jealousies, rapines, and murders. Thenceforward every material organization contained in itself the elements of destruction. How shall the soul be saved, unless the body-its companion and antagonist, which bears it down-is purified? The old substance must be transfigured-leavened by the flesh of the Redeemer, which is free from the limitations of sin. So will the new creature, thus fed and sustained, go on from strength to strength, and at last, dropping in the gate of the grave the 'muddy vesture' which is death's, stand robed in glorified form, like refined gold. Such, we doubt not, is the root-idea of the Eucharist. It was the conscious idea, not in metaphor, but in fact. As a symbolism, beautiful still. The weary fasts of the saints may be their glory or their reproach; but the same desire - however expressed-that set St. Simeon on his pillar, tunes the heart and forms the mind of the noblest of mankind,— similitude with the divine through victory, however wrought, over the fleshly lusts. Ethics.-About this time, more writers than in any former century occupied themselves in collecting and solving what they styled Cases of Conscience. Their industry may have tended as freely to a wrangling spirit as to a suitable practice, but it indicates an advance along the line of moral consciousness. The moral law, in the view of Occam as in that of Scotus, is founded upon the will of God. The just and the unjust are what He has declared to be such, by attaching to them the rewards and punishments of another life. Had His will been different, He would have sanctioned other principles than those which we are now taught to consider as the foundation of the good. It is worthy of remark, also, that moral duties were explained, and moral precepts enforced by allegories of a new and whimsical kind, as the Vision, and by examples drawn from the qualities and habits of brutes. A thousand picturesque legends centre on the intimate connection of the hermit with the animal world in the lonely deserts of the East or in the vast forests of Europe. Christianity, as the main source of the moral development of nations, has discharged its office less by the inculcation of a system of ethics than by the attractive influence of its perfect ideal,- the character of the Christian Founder. Résumé.-Parliament grew steadily in power and importance. The popular element was beginning to manifest itself in government. Feudal bondage was relaxing. The spirit of freedom, which heretofore had animated only the noble and the high-born, was now inflaming the heart of the serf. There was an almost simultaneous movement of the lower orders in various countries, owing plainly to general causes affecting European society. Amalgamation of races and hard-won concessions from despotic kings were creating an independent body of freemen. Laws were inadequately administered. Property was insecure. The dwelling of the peasant was open to plunder, without hope of redress. Poverty and ignorance hovered over the masses. Domestic virtues were but slightly felt. Ideas of feasting and defense were pushed into the foreground. Luxury was inelegant, pleasures indelicate, pomp cumbersome and unwieldy. War stood on the right, and riot on the left. The angry, fretful spirit of the working classes was joined to a restless state on religious matters, issuing in satire and stern attack. The multiplied abuses in different branches of the Church, strongly supported indeed by the overshadowing superstition of the land, were yet at war with stubborn English instincts, love of home, industry, and justice. Theory and practice were corrupt, and the corruption irritated the ethical sense of the few and the common sense of the many; the first result finding representation in Wycliffe, the second in Chaucer. Every department of life was penetrated with the beliefs, or interwoven with the interests of theology. Astronomy was bewildered with astrology, chemistry ran into alchemy, philosophy traversed mechanically the region of arid abstractions, science. -pursued in suspicious secrecy-wantoned in the grotesque chimeras of magical phantoms, and the physician's medicines were powerless unless the priests said prayers over them. Four chief causes were operating to emancipate the intellect from its servile submission and faith: 1. The rapid growth of the industrial classes,―at all times separated from theological tendencies. 2. The awakening of a spirit of bold inquiry. 3. The discredit fallen upon the Church on account of the rival popes. 4. The corruption of the monasteries. Literature was affected and shaped by two generic forces,foreign and indigenous: 1. Classical, wrought into Latin Christianity or translated into scholastic tomes, as a benefit of instruction, but shown chiefly and most directly in a trading-stock of semi-historical tales. 2. Italian, embodied in the sweet and stately measures of Dante or Petrarch and the studied prose or verse of Boccaccio, in which the spirit of the antique was seen as in a modern mirror. 3. French, steeped in the imagery of Southern beauty and closely connected with the over-strained sentiments of chivalry, rising to its height and dying in the translation of the Romaunt of the Rose. 4. Religious, the atmosphere, the climate, under which the literary product springs, grows, and derives its vigor of life; a perpetual irritant, arousing, with individual energy, the Teutonic conscience and the English good sense. 5. Social, of half-barbaric cast, violent in pride, prodigal in splendor, extravagant in its fanciful virtues, gross in its real vices. 6. Linguistic, able- since now almost devoid of inflections to receive all the words of other languages that any might bring to it; open for all uses, waiting for the hand of a master-builder to consolidate and temper it. |