II. Some Essential Facts in the Moral History of the Age
Revival of the classical conception of life: the new birth of the European conscience
When Christianity entered the Greco-Roman world with its new moral ideal, the old classical ideal of character, as we have seen, was practically superseded. There were, it is true, certain elements of this pagan morality which were consciously or unconsciously absorbed by Christianity; but the classical ideal as a whole was rejected, just as the greater part of the cultural elements of Greco-Roman civilization were cast aside. For a thousand years Hebrew-Christian conceptions of the world and of life shaped the thought and conduct of men. Then came the Renaissance.[697]
In the study of this movement the attention of the historian has ordinarily been centered on the literary, artistic, and intellectual phases of the revival, while the ethical phase has been given but slight attention or has been dismissed with the facile observation that the movement induced a revival of pagan immorality. This is true. But the really significant thing was not the revival of pagan immorality but the revival of pagan morality. For just as this classical revival meant a new enthusiasm for the artistic, literary, and cultural elements of the earlier Greco-Roman civilization, so did it also mean a new enthusiasm for the Greco-Roman ideal of character. To many it was no longer the Church ideal but the classical that seemed the embodiment of what is ethically most noble and worthy. Such persons gave up the practice of the distinctively Christian theological virtues, or, if they still outwardly observed the Church code, this was merely insincere conformity suggested by prudence or policy; the code of morals which their minds and hearts approved and which they observed, if they observed any at all, was the code of pagan antiquity. It is in this secularization of the ethical ideal, in this divorce of morality from theology, in this announcement of the freedom and autonomy of the individual spirit, that is to be sought the real significance of the classical revival of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for the moral history of the Western world.
In two ways chiefly did the Renaissance exert its transforming influence upon European morals: first, by awakening a new intellectual life, for, as we have had repeatedly shown us, a new mental life means a new moral life; and second, by the direct introduction of various elements of Greco-Roman morals into the Christian ideal of character. Thus at the same time that the cultural life of Europe was being enlarged and enriched by the incorporation of those literary and art elements of classical civilization which had been rejected or underestimated by the Middle Ages, the moral life of Christendom was being profoundly modified by the incorporation of those ethical elements which constituted the precious product of the moral aspirations and achievements of the best generations of the ancient world. The conscience of those persons in the modern world who are imbued with the true scientific spirit, that is to say, with the humanistic spirit of the Renaissance, is quite as largely Greek as Hebraic. A recent writer reviewing the life of a distinguished personage (Julia Ward Howe) recognized this mingling in modern culture of these diverse elements in these words: “She has blended and lived, as no other eminent American woman, the humanistic and the Christian ideals of life. She has preached love and self-sacrifice, and she has loved beauty and self-realization.”
Theological morality: the ethics of persecution
In the domain of theological morality the history of the Renaissance affords one of the most painful chapters in European history. This chapter has to do with the establishment of the Inquisition to maintain uniformity of religious belief.
It is not an accident that this chapter should form an integral part of the history of the Renaissance. The spread of heresy, which threatened the unity of the medieval Church, was largely the outgrowth of the new intellectual life awakened by the revival of learning.[698] Hence it was inevitable that the age of the Renaissance should be also the age of persecution. It is not a recital of the history of the Holy Office during the period under review which is our concern in this place, but only a consideration of the motives of Christian persecution. That intolerance should ever have been regarded by the followers of the tolerant Nazarene as a virtue and persecution of misbelievers as a pious duty, challenges the attention of the historian of morals and incites earnest inquiry into the causes of such an aberration of the moral sentiment.
It cannot be made a matter of reasonable doubt that one of the chief causes of Christian intolerance is the theological doctrine that salvation is dependent upon right belief in religious matters, and that error in belief, even though honest, is a crime that merits and receives eternal punishment.[699] This dogma leads logically and inevitably to intolerance and persecution;[700] for if wrong belief is a crime of so heinous a nature as justly to subject the misbeliever to everlasting and horrible torments, and if the misbeliever is likely to bring others into the same fatal way of thinking, then it follows that heresy should be extirpated, just as the germs of a dreaded contagion are stamped out, by any and every means however seemingly harsh and cruel. Thus St. Thomas Aquinas and other theologians logically “argued that if the death penalty could be rightly inflicted on thieves and forgers, who rob us only of worldly goods, how much more righteously on those who cheat us out of supernatural goods—out of faith, the sacraments, the life of the soul.”[701]
It was this theological teaching that heresy is a fault of unmeasured sinfulness, an “insidious preventable contagion,” which was the main root that fostered Christian intolerance and persecution.[702] The activities of the Holy Office were maintained not by bad men but by good men. “With such men it was not hope of gain, or lust of blood, or pride of opinion, or wanton exercise of power [that moved them], but sense of duty, and they but represented what was universal public opinion from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century.”[703]
Reflecting on these facts, we readily give assent to the charitable judgment of the historian Von Holst in commenting on the acts of the Terrorists in the French Revolution, that “wrongdoing to others lies not so much in the will as in the understanding.” The greatest crime of history was committed by men who knew not what they did.[704] It was a theological doctrine which is to-day rejected by the reason and conscience of a large section of the Church itself, that caused the loss for centuries of the virtue of toleration, which in the ethical systems of the classical world had been assigned a prominent place among the virtues, and which, could it have found a place in the standard of goodness of the Church, would have saved Christendom the horrors of the Albigensian crusades, the pious cruelties of the Inquisition, and the mutual persecutions of Catholics and Protestants throughout the age of the Reformation.
Political morality: Machiavellian ethics
The matter of dominant importance in the sphere of political morality during the Renaissance was the creation of a code of morals for princes. This was a system formulated by the Italian philosopher Machiavelli, who wrote under the secularizing influences of the classical revival and of the paganized courts of the Italian princes of his time.[705] It was a code which the ruling class, for whom it was designed, eagerly adopted, for the reason that it harmonized with their desires, ambitions, and practices, and sanctioned as not only morally permissible, but even as obligatory and meritorious, policies and acts which, without such sanction, might have awakened in some at least inconvenient and hampering scruples of conscience.
This princely ideal, notwithstanding that the conduct of the prince who acted in accordance with it was generally condoned, was not one which, like the ascetic or the knightly ideal, awakened moral enthusiasm. It was a standard of conduct never approved by the best conscience of Christendom. On the contrary, the work in which Machiavelli embodied this ideal for princes was, on its first appearance, fiercely assailed as grossly immoral, and ever since has called forth the severest condemnation of moralists.
The fundamental principle of Machiavelli’s system is that the moral code binding on the subject is not binding on the ruler; or rather that ethics has nothing to do with politics.[706] With the prince the end justifies the means. He is at liberty to lie, defraud, steal, and kill, in fine, to employ all and every form of deception, injustice, cruelty, and unrighteousness in dealing with his enemies and with other princes or states.
This moral standard set for princes by Machiavelli was the dominant force in international affairs from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century. During this period it debased the public morals not only of Italy but of every other land in Christendom. Its vicious principles were acted upon by every court of Europe.[707] Even to-day Machiavellism, though condemned in theory, is still too often followed in practice. It would not be an exaggeration to say that The Prince has exercised a more baneful influence over the political morals of Europe than any other book ever written.
It is instructive to contrast the influence of Machiavellism with that of Stoicism. Among the good effects of Roman Stoicism was its ennobling influence upon the imperial government. It gave the Roman Empire such a succession of high-minded and conscientious rulers as scarce is shown by the history of any other state ancient or modern. In contrast to the influence of this noble philosophy which apotheosized duty and exalted in rulers the virtues of clemency, truthfulness, magnanimity, and justice, Machiavellism filled, or contributed to fill, the thrones of Christendom with rulers whose moral sense was so blunted by its sinister doctrines that for generations truth speaking, sincerity, regard for the obligations of treaties, and respect for the rights of sister states were almost unknown in the diplomacy and mutual dealings of the governments of Europe. It is only after the lapse of more than three centuries that Christendom is freeing itself from the evil influence of Machiavelli’s teachings, and that there has been generated a new public conscience which recognizes that states like individuals are subjects of the moral law, and that the code which is binding on individuals is binding likewise on governments and communities.
The ethical value of the ideal of the courtier
We have already mentioned the ideal of the courtier as one of the ethical or semi-ethical products of the age of the Renaissance. This was a conception of perfect manhood which was nurtured in the socially brilliant and refined courts of the Italian princes of this period. It was a fusion and modification of selected virtues and qualities of the knight and of the scholar. The Christian theological virtues had no necessary place in it.
It was the distinctive virtues of the knight, elevated and refined, which formed the heart and core of the ideal. Like the ideal of knighthood, the courtly ideal was an aristocratic one; the courtier, like the knight, must be “nobly born and of gentle race.”[708] Martial exploits were accounted to him as virtues; “his principal and true profession ought to be that of arms.”[709] As loyalty to his superior was a supreme virtue in the knight, so was absolute loyalty to his prince the pre-eminent virtue of the courtier. Not less prominent was the place accorded in the ideal to the knightly virtues of courage and courtesy.[710]
But to these qualities and virtues of the knight the courtier must needs add those of the scholar. The ordinary knight despised learning and held the virtues of the scholar in contempt. But the ideal of courtliness grew up in a land where humanistic studies had become a ruling passion, and in an age when the highest ambition of many an Italian prince was to be known as a patron of learning. It was natural that, developing in the atmosphere of these courts, the new standard of perfect manhood should give a prominent place to the qualifications and virtues of the scholar.
This ideal of the courtier was never such a moral force in history as that of the monk or of the knight, but there were in it ethical elements of positive value to the moral life of the world. It was the inspiration of many of the finest spirits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[711] Of the noble-minded Sir Philip Sidney a biographer says, “He conscientiously molded his life on the model of the perfect courtier of Cortelliani.” Nor has the ideal ever ceased to appeal to the imagination, or lost its power to soften and refine manners and ennoble conduct. It inspires gentle consideration for others of whatsoever estate, incites to unselfish service, and induces absolute good faith and self-forgetting loyalty to friends and to the cause espoused, all of which are moral qualities of high value, and all of which have entered or are entering as permanent elements into the growing world ideal of perfect manhood.
The ethics of industry: the medieval towns the cradle of the modern business conscience
In the medieval town was developed a moral ideal as distinct and individual as that of the monastery or of the castle. Central in this type of goodness were the homely virtues of industry, carefulness in workmanship, punctuality, honesty, faithful observance of engagements, and general fair dealing. To these lay virtues were added all those which made up the Church ideal for the ordinary life, for there had not yet been effected that divorce of business from theology which had been effected in the case of politics.
The development of this ideal of goodness was a matter of immense importance for the moral life of the West, because, acted upon by the practical ethical spirit of Protestantism and other agencies, it was destined to supersede the ascetic and chivalric ideals of life, which for more than a thousand years had been the ruling moral forces in the life of Christendom, for neither of these ideals of goodness could be more than a partial and passing form of the moral life. The ascetic ideal, having for its distinctive qualities such virtues as celibacy, poverty, solitary contemplation, vigils, fastings, and mortifications of the body, could not possibly become the standard for all men. It was confessedly a standard of perfection for the few only.
As to the knightly ideal, this was too exclusively a martial one to become the supreme rule of life and conduct for the multitude. Furthermore, it was an aristocratic ideal, an ideal for the noble born alone. This precluded the possibility of its becoming, as a distinct type, a permanent force in civilization.
But the ethical type of the towns, embracing those native human virtues which spring up everywhere out of the usual and universal relationships of everyday life and occupations, was sure of a permanent place among the ethical types of the classes and professions of modern society. In the same sense that the medieval towns (as the birthplace of the third estate) were the cradle of modern democracy, were they the cradle of modern business morality. Just as through the medieval monastery passes the direct line of descent of the present-day social conscience of Christendom,[712] just so through the medieval town passes the direct line of descent of the present-day business conscience of the Western world.
Disuse of trial by wager of battle
The influence of the spirit generated in the medieval towns is seen in that important reform, the abolition of the judicial duel, which was one of the most noteworthy matters in the moral history of the Middle Ages.[713]
It was the military spirit of the German barbarians which, as we have seen, was a chief agency in the introduction of the wager of battle or trial by combat in the jurisprudence of the European peoples.[714] Besides the influence of the towns, a number of other causes concurred in gradually effecting the abrogation of this method of settling disputes, among which the most efficient were the opposition of the Church, the revival of the Roman law in the eleventh century, and the advance in general intelligence. Into every one of these agencies there entered an ethical element, so that we may regard this great reform, in its causes as well as in its effects, as distinctively a moral reform. Thus the influence of the towns was essentially ethical, for the rise of these communities, as we have just seen, meant the superseding of the ethics of aristocracy and war by the ethics of democracy and industry. Consequently the influence exerted by the towns was largely that of a new ideal of character.
The opposition of the Church was motived chiefly by moral feeling, the pontiffs and the bishops who opposed the practice doing so on the ground that the ordeal by battle was “brutal, unchristian, and unrighteous.”
The advocates of the civil law opposed the practice not only because it interfered with the royal and imperial administration of justice, but because it was a practice based on ignorance and superstition and “incompatible with every notion of equity and justice,” since brutal force was allowed to usurp the place of testimony and reason. Thus the Roman law, as the embodiment of right reason, was here as everywhere else a moral force making for what is reasonable and just.
The influence of the general progress in enlightenment was also profoundly ethical, since this movement resulted, as intellectual advance always normally does, in a growing refinement of the moral feelings, in progress in moral ideas, and in truer ethical judgments.
By the opening of the modern age trial by combat, acted on by these various influences, had become obsolete or obsolescent in most of the countries of Europe.[715] Strangely enough, the international duel or public war, resting on substantially the same basis as the private judicial duel, has held its place as the instituted and legalized method of settling controversies between nations down to the present time, without, till just yesterday, being seriously challenged by the awakening conscience of the world as equally repugnant to the moral law and incompatible with every principle of reason, humanity, and justice.