Through the centuries called the Dark Ages, art and literature had not died; their fires were kept bright in the monkish cell, where some Alcuin, in England or in France, traced with painful pen the lives of the saints, or the romaunts of the Lady; and touched their illuminated margins with those exquisite colors which feed the eye with a pleasant surprise now, when centuries have passed, and books lie about our feet as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa’s vales. During this dark time art and literature flourished among the Saracens along the African coast, and grew into splendor in the halls of Cordova and Seville.
But a day was at hand when Peter the Hermit made his pilgrimage to the “Holy City” (1093), and came back to preach his fiery crusades against the abominations with which the Moslems defiled the sepulchre of the Lord. Then through some two centuries Europe was converted into religious camps, from which streamed out toward Jerusalem the armies of the Cross—the Crusaders—and that Oriental world was thus mingled in a great warlike confusion with the Occidental world of Europe.
How does all this touch upon the small matter of Italian maiolicas, of which I treat? Thus: these religious wars made Venice, Leghorn, and Genoa, into great centres of commercial activity, and into them flowed wealth, as well as every kind of merchandise and manufacture known in the East. The people of these small kingdoms grew rich, and vastly so. The Dandolos, the Dorias, the Medicis, founded princely families, and became patrons of learning and art. Then, too, the Church grew great, all-powerful, and rich; for the fervor of piety, which fired all hearts, sought expression not only in shedding its blood to rescue the holy places, it poured in of its earnings or plunderings rivers of wealth to enrich the coffers of the Church. The popes, the cardinals, the bishops, grew great, not so much in religious truth, but more in lands, in castles, in gold, and in goods. Thus every prelate and every patriarch became a prince, with gold to give, and favors to bestow. Then they became, all through Italy, patrons of art and fosterers of learning.
We see in this the spring out of which flowed the “Renaissance” of literature and the arts, and which resulted in the architecture, the painting, the poetry, the maiolicas, and the luxury, of that new Italian life.
The term maiolica, in its generic sense, means what delft does in Holland, faience in France, and earthen-ware in England. All are soft pottery, covered with an opaque glaze called enamel. The term was once applied only to the lustred wares of Spain and Italy; but now it has come to mean such dishes—ewers, vases, etc., etc.—as were made in Italy during the period of the Renaissance, which have an expression of art, and can be termed decorative; perhaps it goes still further, for the druggists’ pots ([Fig. 64]), then much in use, and which may perhaps be classed wholly with the useful, are not excluded; for upon some of these much decoration was put. The word also carries a subdivision called mezza-maiolica.
