CHAPTER XVIII
THE TRANSITION FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE
This intervening period—the twilight between the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Modern World—needs a little further emphasis, from the very fact that it is a period of transition and sheds light both on the time before and the time after. On its emotional side it belonged to the Middle Ages, on its intellectual side it belonged to the Modern World.
Its religion was essentially mediæval. For instance, a religious wave arose in Perugia, spread through Italy, and crossed the Alps. Hosts of penitents, hundreds and thousands, lamenting, praying, scourging themselves, went from city to city. Men, women, and children, barefoot, walked by night over the winter's snow, carrying tapers, to find relief for their emotional frenzy. These Flagellants were like a primitive Salvation Army, and gave unconscious expression to the profound and widespread discontent with the Church. Their actions, however, so clearly exhibited religious mania that governments took alarm; the hard-headed rulers of Milan erected six hundred gallows on their borders and threatened to hang every Flagellant who came that way.
Other forms of religious sentiment were more rational, and expressed themselves in passionate calls for peace between neighbours and countrymen. Priests adjured the fighting cities to be friends: "Oh, when will the day come that Pavia shall say to Milan, Thy people are my people, and Crema to Cremona, Thy city is my city?" In Genoa, one morning before daybreak, the church bells rang, and the astonished citizens, huddling on their clothes, beheld their archbishop, surrounded by his clergy with lighted candles, making the factional leaders swear on the bones of St. John Baptist to lay aside their mutual hate. Gregory X (1271-76) pleaded with the Florentine Guelfs to take back the banished Ghibellines. "A Ghibelline is a Christian, a citizen, a neighbour; then, shall these great names, all joined, yield to that one word, Ghibelline? And shall that single word—an idle term for none know what it means—have greater power for hate than all those three, which are so clear and strong, for love and charity? And since you say that you have taken up this factional strife for the sake of the Popes of Rome, now, I, Pope of Rome, have taken back to my bosom these prodigal citizens of yours, however far they may have offended, and putting behind me all past wrongs, hold them to be my sons."[13] In consequence of Gregory's passionate entreaty, one hundred and fifty leaders of each party met and embraced on the sandy flats of the Arno.
The most famous of these emotional peace-makings was the work of a Dominican monk of Vicenza. On a great plain just outside Verona, a vast congregation assembled (a contemporary said 400,000 people), from all the warring cities far and near, bishops, barons, burghers, artisans, serfs, women, and children. The monk preached upon the text, "My peace I give unto you." The great company beat their breasts, wept for repentance and joy, and embraced one another. Then the friar raised the crucifix and cried, "Blessed be he who shall keep this peace, and cursed be he who shall violate it;" and the audience answered "Amen." It is hardly necessary to say that these emotional peace-makings were soon followed by martial emotions; freed prisoners were hurried back to prison, the recalled were banished again, and sword and halberd were picked up with appetites whetted by abstinence.
The intellectual side of this period is best represented by the universities, which had sprung up in many of the North Italian cities in the preceding century. The term university signified a guild of students, and possessed many of the characteristics of our colleges. The university was composed of students and professors, and governed itself. It owned neither lands nor buildings, and in case of need could shift its abode with little trouble. The students, at least in a great university like that of Bologna whither young men flocked by thousands from all Europe, were divided into two bodies, those from beyond the Alps and Italians. These two bodies were subdivided into groups according to their state or city. Each group elected representatives, and these, together with special electors, elected the rector. This representative body made a formal treaty with the town authorities, and secured good terms, because the presence of a university, bringing money and fame, was of great consequence to the town. The professors were appointed by the students. At Bologna Roman law was the chief study, and very famous jurists lectured there. We may remember that Barbarossa had recourse to Bologna when he was in need of lawyers to determine his Imperial rights. It was Roman law that attracted the great concourse of students, for the growing needs of civilization made a constant demand for men learned in the law; but other branches of knowledge were also taught, theology, canon law, medicine, and astrology, as well as the so-called quadrivium, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy.
The universities, although theology and canon law were taught in them, distinctly represented the secular side of intellectual life. The religious, at least the theological side, was represented by the Church, and more particularly by those philosophers who devoted themselves to that mixture of theology and philosophy known as scholasticism. The greatest of them was Thomas Aquinas (1227-74), whose surname is derived from a little village, Aquino, once existing near Monte Cassino in Neapolitan territory. Aquinas lectured at various universities. His great work, "Summa Theologiæ," was a justification of the Roman Catholic faith by an appeal to the reason and to science as then accepted. He started on premises laid down by the Church, and justified all the derivative doctrines by close logic and clear reasoning, as well as by appeals to the Bible, to Aristotle, then deemed the possessor of all knowledge, and to the Church fathers. His work is a complete exposition of God, nature, and man, as conceived by mediæval theology, and is still taught by the Catholic Church as the true exposition of its doctrines. The grateful Church canonized him, his treatise being the miracles he had performed, and named him the Angelic Doctor. Those of us whose minds have no natural aptitude for scholasticism, find his views on purely earthly matters much easier to understand, and not uninteresting, as they throw light on the democratic character of the Church. Speaking of positive law, Aquinas says that it should consist of "reasonable commands for the common good, promulgated by him who has charge of the public weal;" and of kings, that "a prince who makes personal gratification instead of the general happiness his aim, ceases to be legitimate, and it is not rebellion to depose him, provided the attempt shall not cause greater ills than his tyranny;" and, of the nobility, that "many men make a mistake and deem themselves noble, because they come of a noble house.... This inherited nobility deserves no envy, except that noblemen are bound to virtue for shame of being unworthy of their stocks; true nobility is only of the soul." St. Thomas Aquinas is also interesting because his theology inspires Dante throughout the "Divine Comedy."
These diverse traits, emotional and intellectual, were natural to a period of transition, when society was passing from an age in which the chief interests were emotional to one in which the chief interests were intellectual; and it is interesting to notice that at the same time social life was passing from a stage of extreme simplicity to one of comparative luxury. The accumulation of wealth had its effect in every department of life; it gave people time and opportunity for intellectual interests, and also for luxury and more delicate needs. The advance in wealth was very rapid. By the year 1300 men had already begun to blame the luxurious habits of their time, and to look back to the simplicity of their grandfathers as to an age of primitive innocence. Dante gives full expression to these sentiments through the mouth of his ancestor, Cacciaguida, in the "Paradiso." Others speak in the same way. One of them, referring to the time of Frederick II, says: "In those times the manners of the Italians were rude. A man and his wife ate off the same plate. There were no wooden-handled knives, nor more than one or two drinking-cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather unlined; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress. The common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did not drink wine in summer. A small stock of corn seemed riches. The portions of women were small; their dress, even after marriage, was simple. The pride of men was to be well provided with arms and horses; that of the nobility to have lofty towers, of which all the cities in Italy were full. But now frugality has been changed for sumptuousness; everything exquisite is sought after in dress,—gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs. Foreign wines and rich meats are required. Hence usury, rapine, fraud, tyranny," etc.[14]
To us to-day this period of transition, with its mediæval mixture of commerce, religion, and war, of emotion and logic, of admiration for St. Augustine and belief in the infallibility of Aristotle, looks extremely odd. We forget that our generation may be in danger of similar criticism. Odd or not, this was the state of Italy in the period preceding that great burst of the arts and intellectual life known as the Renaissance.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Storia degli Italiani, Cesare Cantù, vol. ii, p. 851 (19).
[14] Europe in the Middle Ages, Hallam, p. 630.