Theodoric strove to stem the tide of demoralization which succeeded the overthrow of the pagans in Italy. He was a semi-barbarian, but a man of genius, and ten years of his youth, spent at Constantinople, taught him the value of civilization. Under his reign there was a restoration of the common industries, work on internal improvements was resumed, and there was a revival of polite literature and the fine arts. But there was no general prosperity because there was no general system of education. Polite literature must rest upon a basis of general culture, or it is valueless to the country in which it flourishes. So of the fine arts; they can exist legitimately only as the natural outgrowth and embellishment of the useful arts.[80] In the due order of development the useful precede the fine arts. Theodoric began the reconstruction of the exhausted Roman civilization from the top, and his work was a complete failure, of course, because it had no foundation. It was like the Greek and Roman philosophy, it had no basis of things to rest upon. Hence the order evoked from chaos by the great Ostrogoth to chaos soon returned.
[80] “But it is one thing to admit that æsthetic culture is in a high degree conducive to human happiness, and another thing to admit that it is a fundamental requisite to human happiness. However important it may be, it must yield precedence to those kinds of culture which bear more directly upon the duties of life. As before hinted, literature and the fine arts are made possible by those activities which make individual and social life possible; and manifestly that which is made possible must be postponed to that which makes it possible.”—“Education,” p. 72. By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1883.
Charlemagne also attempted to reconstruct a worn-out civilization through the revival of polite literature and the fine arts. He assembled at his court distinguished littérateurs from all parts of the world, with the view of reviving classical learning. He established a normal school called “The Palatine,” whence classically trained teachers were sent into the provinces. He constructed gorgeous palaces, some of which were ornamented with columns and sculptural fragments, the spoil of the earlier architectural triumphs of Italy. But he did not found schools for the education of the common people. The common people were serfs. The theory of Plato still prevailed, namely, that the majority is always dull, and always wrong; that wisdom and virtue reside in the minority. In pursuance of this theory, which happens, curiously enough, to inure to the exclusive benefit of its inventors and supporters, education was confined to a small class. The training of the masses was wholly neglected, and they were poor, ignorant, and brutal. The state of mediæval society is graphically summarized by a modern historian:
“In the castle sits the baron, with his children on his lap, and his wife leaning on his shoulder; the troubadour sings, and the page and the demoiselle exchange a glance of love. The castle is the home of music and chivalry and family affection; the convent is the home of religion and of art. But the people cower in their wooden huts, half starved, half frozen, and wolves sniff at them through the chinks in the walls. The convent prays and the castle sings; the cottage hungers and groans and dies.”[81]
[81] “The Martyrdom of Man.” By Winwood Reade. New York: Charles P. Somerby, 1876.
Enterprise was the slave of superstition and ignorance. Some monks in Germany desired to erect a corn-mill, but a neighboring lord objected, declaring that the wind belonged to him. The useful arts were unknown and unstudied except by the monks, and their practice of them was confined chiefly to fashioning utensils for the use of the altar. Mankind lay in a state of intellectual and moral paralysis. Feudalism emasculated human energy. One art only flourished—the art of war. The pursuit of any of the useful arts, beyond that of agriculture, by the serfs, was impracticable, since sufficient time could not be spared from feudal strife for the proper tillage of the soil. The vassal was always subject to summary call to arms. If in the spring the noble wished to fight, the fields remained unplanted; if he wished to fight in the fall, the harvest remained ungathered. The serf, therefore, led a precarious life. If he escaped death in battle, he was still quite likely to die of starvation. In the fertile plains of Lombardy, in the first half of the thirteenth century, there were five famines!
Nothing happens without due cause. The misfortunes suffered by the people of Europe during the Middle Ages did not fall upon them from the clouds. The moral darkness which veiled the face of justice, and the intellectual stupor which prevented scientific and art researches, are not inexplicable mysteries. The vices, the cruelties, the poverty, and the pitiable superstitions of that time were the product of a false philosophy, an odious social caste, and a state of general ignorance.
It happens that for hundreds of years of this period of wretchedness and crime there was in the heart of Europe an industrious, cultured, prosperous, and happy people. Their religion forbade the taking of usurious interest under terrible moral penalties; it also forbade “all distinctions of caste,” and enjoined full social equality. They were the friends of education. “To every mosque was attached a public school, in which the children of the poor were taught to read and write.” They established libraries in their chief cities, and were the patrons of the sciences and of the useful arts in all their forms. In a word, to the general prevalence of superstition and ignorance in Europe the Moors in Spain constituted a glowing exception.
Wherever the Saracen went he carried science and art. He honored labor, and genius and learning followed in his footsteps. Taught by learned Jews, he studied the works of the ancient philosophers, and preserved and extended their knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, algebra, and geography. Cordova was the abode of wealth, learning, refinement, and the arts. Its mosques and palaces were models of architectural splendor, and its industries employed 200,000 families. Seville contained 16,000 silk-looms, and employed 130,000 weavers. The banks of the Guadalquivir were thickly studded with those gems of free labor, manufacturing villages. The dyeing of silk and wool fabrics was carried to great perfection, and the Moorish metal-workers were the most expert of the time. The Saracen invented cotton paper, introduced into Spain cotton and leather manufactures, and promoted the cultivation of sugar-cane, rice, and the mulberry. Nor did he neglect agriculture in any of its branches; he created a new era in husbandry. His kingdom in Spain was the richest and most prosperous in the Western world; indeed, its prosperity was in striking contrast with the poverty and misery of the peoples by whom it was surrounded. Under the third caliph its revenue reached £6,000,000 sterling, a sum, as Gibbon remarks, which in the tenth century probably surpassed the united revenues of all the Christian monarchs. But these industrious, cultured people were the descendants of invaders, and the Spaniards, under the influence of a blind and unreasoning impulse of religious and patriotic zeal, drove them from the soil they had literally made to “blossom like the rose,” and themselves relapsed into a state of indolence, ignorance, and poverty.
From the effects of the persecution of a race of artificers, and the proscription of the useful arts, Spain has never recovered. She has since always been, and is to-day, a striking exemplification of the verity of the proposition that stagnation in the useful arts is the death of civilization. In the last half of the seventeenth century the people of Madrid were threatened with starvation. To avert the impending calamity the adjacent country was scoured by the military, and the inhabitants compelled to yield supplies. There was danger that the Royal family would go hungry to bed. The tax-gatherer sold houses and furniture, and the inhabitants were forced to fly; the fields were left uncultivated, and multitudes died from want and exposure. During the seventeenth century Madrid lost half its population; the looms of Seville were silenced; the woollen manufactures of Toledo were transferred by the exiled Moriscoes to Tunis; Castile, Segovia, and Burgos lost their manufactures, and their inhabitants were reduced to poverty and despair.[82]