III. The Chief Moral Phenomena of the Period
Influence of the ideal of chivalry upon the history of the epoch
Just as the moral enthusiasm awakened by the monastic ideal gave a special character and trend to much of the history of the age of its ascendancy,—inspiring or helping to inspire the missionary propaganda among the barbarian tribes of Europe, giving birth to a special literature (the Lives of the Saints), and fostering the spirit of benevolence and self-renunciation,—so did the unmeasured enthusiasm created by the chivalric ideal give a distinctive character to much of the history of the age of its predominance—lending a romantic cast to the Crusades, creating a new form of literature, and giving a more assured place in the growing European ideal of character to several attractive traits and virtues. Respecting each of these matters we shall offer some observations in the immediately following pages, and then shall proceed to speak briefly of some reform movements which belong to the general moral history of the epoch under review.
Chivalry and the Crusades
The Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries against the Moslems of the East, in so far as those enterprises were inspired by moral feeling,—and religious-ethical feeling was the chief motive force behind them,—were largely the translation into action of the ideal of chivalry now commended and consecrated by the Church. The oath of the Knights of Malta, who were a perfect incarnation of the spirit of chivalry, was “to make eternal war upon the Turks; to recognize no cessation of hostilities with the infidel, on any pretext whatsoever.”
It is an amazing change that, in the course of a few generations, has come over the ethical spirit and temper of the peoples of Christendom. In the earlier medieval time the best conscience of the age was embodied in the monk-saints Augustine, Columba, Winfrid, and a great company of other unarmed missionary apostles to the pagan Celts and Germans; in this later time the best conscience of the age is incarnated in the armor-clad warriors Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond, Bohemond, Tancred, and a multitude of other knightly leaders of the hosts of Crusaders who go forth to redeem with blood and slaughter the tomb of their martyred Lord.
Romance literature as an expression of the ethical spirit of the age
No element of civilization responds more quickly to the changing ethical ideal of a people than its literature. The change that passed over the popular literature of Christendom in the transition of Europe from the age of asceticism to the age of chivalry is finely summarized by Lecky in these words: “When the popular imagination [in the earlier age] embodied in legends its conception of humanity in its noblest and most attractive form, it instinctively painted some hermit-saint of many penances and many miracles.... In the romances of Charlemagne and Arthur we may trace the dawning of a new type of greatness. The hero of the imagination of Europe is no longer the hermit but a knight.”[683]
An interesting monument of this new species of literature, in what we may view as a transition stage, is the Gesta Romanorum,[684] a collection of moral stories invented by the monks in their idle hours. These tales are a curious mixture of things Roman, monastic, and knightly.
But for a true expression of this romance literature we must turn to the legends of the Holy Grail, in which a lofty imagination blends, in so far as they can be blended, all the varied elements of the knightly ideal in a consistent whole. No age save the age of Christian knighthood could have produced this wonderful cycle of tales.
Contribution of chivalry to the moral heritage of the Christian world
But it is neither in the crusading enterprises nor in the literary products of the age of chivalry that we are to look for the real historical significance of the ideal of chivalry. Its chief import for the moral evolution of the European nations lies in the fact that it helped to give fuller and richer content to the Christian ideal by contributing to it, or by giving a surer place in it, certain nontheological virtues, some of which the Church had laid little emphasis upon or had entirely neglected.
Thus the enthusiasm for the ideal of chivalry, like the Church’s veneration of the Holy Virgin,[685] tended to elevate and refine the ideal of woman, and thus to counteract certain tendencies of the ascetic ideal. It helped to give a high valuation to the moral qualities of loyalty, truthfulness, magnanimity, self-reliance, and courtesy. We designate these attractive traits of character as chivalrous virtues for the reason that we recognize that knighthood made precious contributions to these elements of the moral inheritance which the modern received from the medieval world.
Restrictions on the right of private war: the Truce of God
Very closely connected ethically and historically with chivalry is the movement during the later medieval time for the abolition of the right of private war.[686] In the tenth century, as feudalism developed and the military spirit of knighthood came more and more to dominate society, the right of waging war, with which privilege every feudal lord of high rank was invested, resulted in a state of intolerable anarchy in all those lands where the feudal system had become established. Respecting this right, claimed and exercised by the feudal prince, of waging war against any and every other chieftain, even though this one were a member of the same state as that to which he himself belonged, there was in these medieval centuries precisely the same moral feeling, or rather lack of moral feeling, that exists to-day in regard to the right claimed and exercised by the different independent nations of waging war against one another.
As a result of this practice of private war, Europe reverted to a condition of primitive barbarism. Every land was filled with fightings and violence. “Every hill,” as one pictures it, “was a stronghold, every plain a battlefield. The trader was robbed on the highway, the peasant was killed at his plow, the priest was slain at the altar. Neighbor fought against neighbor, baron against baron, city against city.”
In the midst of this universal anarchy the Church lifted a protesting voice. Toward the end of the tenth century there was started in France a movement which aimed at the complete abolition of private war. The Church aspired to do what had been done by pagan Rome. It proclaimed what was called the Peace of God. It commanded all men everywhere to refrain from fighting and robbery and violence of every kind as contrary to the spirit and teachings of Christianity.
But it was found utterly impossible to make the great feudal barons refrain from fighting one another even though they were threatened with the eternal torments of hell. They were just as unwilling to surrender this highly prized privilege and right of waging private war as the nations of to-day are to surrender their prized privilege and right to wage public war.
Then the leaders of the clergy of France, seeing that they could not suppress the evil entirely, resolved to attempt to regulate it. This led to the proclamation of what was called the Truce of God. The first certain trace of this movement dates from the year 1041.[687] In that year the abbot of the monastery of Cluny and the other French abbots and bishops issued an edict commanding all men to maintain a holy and unbroken peace during four days of every week, from Wednesday evening till Monday morning.[688] Every man was required to take an oath to observe this Truce of God. The oath was renewed every three years, and was administered to boys on their reaching their twelfth year.
This movement to redeem at least a part of the days from fighting and violence came gradually to embrace all the countries of Western Europe. The details of the various edicts issued by Church councils and popes vary greatly, but all embody the principle of the edict of 1041. Holydays, and especially consecrated periods, as Easter time and Christmas week, came to be covered by the Truce. The Council of Clermont, which inaugurated the First Crusade, extended greatly the terms of the Truce, forbidding absolutely private wars while the Crusade lasted, and placing under the ægis of the Church the person and property of every crusader.
The Truce of God was never well observed, yet it did something during the eleventh and twelfth centuries to mitigate the evils of private war and to render life more secure and tolerable. After the twelfth century the kings of Europe, who were now strengthening their authority and consolidating their dominions, took the place of the Church in maintaining peace among their feudal vassals. They came to regard themselves as responsible for the “peace of the land,” which phrase now superseded those of the “Peace of God” and the “Truce of God.” Thus the movement to which moral forces had given the first impulse was carried to its consummation by political motives. To the Church, however, history will ever accord the honor of having begun this great reform which enforced peace upon the members of the same state, and which has made private wars in civilized lands a thing of the past.
The abolition of private warfare was the first decisive step marking the advance of Europe toward universal peace. Public war, that is, war between nations, is still an established and approved institution of international law; but in the moral evolution of humanity a time approaches when public war shall also, like private war, be placed under the ban of civilization, and will have passed upon it by the truer conscience of that better age the same judgment that the conscience of to-day pronounces on that private warfare upon which the Truce of God laid the first arresting hand.
Progress in the ethics of war: sale into slavery of Christian captives condemned
Although the Church has done little in a direct way to abolish public war, or even directly to create in society at large a new conscience in regard to the wickedness of war in itself as an established method of settling international differences, its influence has been felt from early Christian times in the alleviation of its barbarities and cruelties. One of the first ameliorations in the rules of war effected through Christian influence concerned the treatment of war captives.
Among the ancient Greeks, as we have seen, under the influence of the sentiment of Panhellenism, there was developed a vague feeling that Greeks should not enslave Greeks. But aside from this Panhellenic sentiment, which had very little influence upon actual practice, there was in the pre-Christian period seemingly little or no moral feeling on the subject, and the custom of reducing prisoners of war to slavery was practically universal.
But the custom, in so far as it concerned Christian prisoners, was condemned by the Christian conscience as incompatible with the spirit of Christianity, and the rule was established that such captives should not be enslaved.[689] We observe the first clear workings of this new war conscience in Britain after the conversion of the Saxon invaders. The Celts of Britain were Christians, and the Saxons, after they themselves had been won over to Christianity, ceased to sell into slavery their Celtic captives. Gradually this new rule was adopted by all Christian nations. No other advance of equal importance marks the moral history of public war during the medieval period.
This humane rule, however, did not, as we have intimated, embrace non-Christians. Our word “slave” bears witness to this fact. This term came to designate a person in servitude from the circumstance that up to the eleventh century, which saw the evangelization of Russia, the slave class in Europe was made up largely of Slavs, who, as pagans, were without scruple reduced to slavery by their Christian captors.
But the earlier rights which the immemorial laws of war conferred upon the captor were not wholly annulled in the case of Christian captives. The practice of holding for ransom took the place of sale into slavery. This custom prevailed throughout the feudal period, but gradually during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this practice finally yielded to the more humanitarian custom of exchange of prisoners.[690] Thus in this department of ethics there is to be traced a gradual humanization of the code, which, beginning in savagery with gross cannibalism and torture, advances through killing in cold blood, sale into slavery, and holding for ransom, to equal exchange.
Morality in the monasteries: moral significance of the rise of the Mendicant Orders
During the age of chivalry the ideal of the knight overshadowed the ideal of the monk. Nevertheless throughout the whole period the monastic ideal inspired a great deal of moral enthusiasm. The founding and endowment of monasteries divided with the equipping of knightly expeditions for the Crusades the zeal and efforts and sacrifices of the European peoples.
In the old orders of monks, however, zeal for the ascetic ideal would often grow cold, and the high moral standard of the earlier time would be lowered. Then some select soul, set aflame by a fresh vision of the ideal, would draw together a group of devoted followers, and thus would come into existence a new order of monks, among whom the flame of a holy enthusiasm would burn brightly for a time.[691]
Among the numerous new orders called into existence by these reform movements there were two which, in the ideal of duty which they followed, stand quite apart from the ordinary monastic orders. This new ideal had its incarnation in St. Francis[692] and St. Dominic, the founders respectively of the Franciscan and the Dominican order of friars.
In this new conception of what constitutes the worthiest and most meritorious life, the quietistic virtues of the earlier ascetic ideal, which had developed during the period of terror and suffering which followed the subversion of classical civilization by the northern barbarians, gave place to the active, benevolent virtues. In the earlier monastic movement there was a self-regarding element. The monk fled from the world in order to make sure of his own salvation. The world was left to care for itself. In the new orders, the brother, in imitation of the Master who went about among men teaching and healing, left the cloister and went out into the world to rescue and save others. In its lofty call to absolute self-forgetfulness and complete consecration to the service of humanity, the early ideal of the Mendicants was one of the noblest and most attractive that had grown up under Christian influence. The loftiness of the ideal attracted the select spirits of the age—for noble souls love self-sacrifice. “Whenever in the thirteenth century,” says the historian Lea, “we find a man towering above his fellows, we are almost sure to trace him to one of the Mendicant Orders.”[693]
It is in the exaltation of this virtue of self-renunciation that we find one of the chief services rendered by the Mendicant Orders, especially by the Franciscan, to European morality. Just as the early monks, through the emphasis laid on the virtue of chastity, made a needed protest against the sensuality of a senile and decadent civilization, so did the friars, through the stress laid on the virtue of self-denial for others, make a needed protest against the selfishness and hardness of an age that seemed to have forgotten the claims of the poor and the lowly.[694] It can hardly be made a matter of reasonable doubt that the slowly growing fund of altruistic feeling in Christendom was greatly enriched by the self-devoted lives and labors of the followers of Saints Francis and Dominic.
But the value of the ideal of the friars as an ethical force in the evolution of European civilization was seriously impaired by certain theological elements it contained. It was an ideal in which, as in the ordinary monastic ideal, the duty of correct opinion came to be exalted above all others. The ethics of belief took precedence of the ethics of service. Thus the friars, particularly the Dominicans, through their zeal for orthodoxy, fostered the grave moral fault of intolerance. The growth of this conception of Christian duty, concurring with other causes of which we shall speak in the next chapter, ushered in the age of the Inquisition.
The ethics of Scholasticism
The ethical history of the friars or the preaching orders mingles with the ethical history of Scholasticism. The ethics of the Schoolmen was a syncretism of two moral systems, the pagan-classical or Aristotelian and the Christian. With the four classical virtues of wisdom, prudence, temperance, and justice were combined the three Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love. But these two moral types, the classical and the theological, each being taken in its entirety, were mutually inconsistent ideals of virtue. The pagan code was a morality based on the autonomy of the individual reason; the Church code was based on an external authority. The one was inner and natural, the other outer and supernatural. The scholastic system was thus an incongruous combination of naturalism and supernaturalism in ethics, of native virtues and “virtues of grace.” This dualism is the essential fact in the history of the ethics of Scholasticism.
As it was the great effort of the Schoolmen in the domain of dogma to justify the doctrines of the Church, to show their reasonableness and consistency, so was it their great effort in the domain of ethics to justify the Church’s composite moral ideal, to show all its duties and virtues to form a reasonable and consistent system. The best representative of this effort of reconciliation was the great Schoolman Thomas Aquinas. But a perfect fusion of the diverse elements was impossible. There were ever striving in the system two spirits—the spirit of Greek naturalism and the spirit of Hebrew-Christian supernaturalism.
But there was another line of cleavage in the system which was still more fateful in its historical consequences than the cleavage between the Aristotelian and the Church morality. This cleavage was created by the twofold ethics of the Church, for the ecclesiastical morality, considered apart from the Aristotelian element, was itself made up of two mutually inconsistent ethics, namely, Gospel ethics and Augustinian ethics.[695] The saving virtue of the first was loving, self-abnegating service; the saving virtue of the second was faith, which was practically defined as “the acceptance as true of the dogma of the Trinity and the main articles of the creed.” Such was the emphasis laid by certain of the Schoolmen upon the metaphysical side of this dual system that there was in their ethics more of the mind of Augustine than of the mind of Christ. This making of an external authority the basis of morality, this emphasizing of the theological virtues, especially the virtue of right belief, had two results of incalculable consequences for the moral evolution in Christendom. First, it led naturally and inevitably to that system of casuistry[696] which was one of the most striking phenomena of the moral history of the later medieval and earlier modern centuries; and second, it laid the basis of the tribunal of the Inquisition. Thus does the theological ethics of Scholasticism stand in intimate and significant relation to these two important matters in the moral history of Europe.