Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

At the close of the ninth century appeared Rollo, who led the flower of the Norwegian nobles, the chivalry of western Scandinavia. They embarked not for plunder, but to lay the foundations of empire, to seek an appropriate field whereon to work out the great destiny for which they were reserved. They founded the order of Gentlemen, whose mission was to diffuse that spirit of chivalry which had but dimly dawned on the imagination of the older world, in the isolated careers of a Pericles, Epaminondas, or Scipio. To them belonged a rank and a nobility that resides not in prerogative, and has no necessary connection with coronets and ermine. It was that innate dignity which kings can not give, or parliaments annul; a distinction the Norman might well be proud to recognize as the birth-right of his fathers and his own. The best qualities of the Teutonic nations, to whom the cause of universal civilization is intrusted, find their germ in the genius of the Norman race. It is for that reason that we should linger reverently through the aisles once echoing to their tread, by the columns once darkened with their shadows, the fortresses that sheltered them while living, and the tombs that received them when dead. Let us never forget that while the monasteries were preserving the precious monuments of the old world, the recesses of baronial heights witnessed the first essays of literature, and fostered the earliest productions of European imagination. But letters continued to decline from the fall of the western empire, for nearly five hundred years; they then gradually improved for about the same period, until they arrived at the highest splendor in the golden age of Leo X. From the opening of the eleventh century the prospects of literature began to brighten. Gerbert, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, and Roger Bacon, were resplendent lights to herald yet mightier names.

During the long period which elapsed from the growth of feudality out of the ruins of the Roman empire, and the complete development of the principle of monarchy out of the feudal system, only one country guarded the elements of representative government, and caused them finally to prevail. From the beginning, the Anglo-Saxons lived most upon their own resources, and gave birth to their own civilization. From the fifth to the eleventh century, their institutions received the most natural and perfect development. Soon after the Saxon Heptarchy had been founded, as early as A.D. 582, the Danes and Romans made their way into England, and contributed greatly to the national worth. Alfred was a glorious exemplification of the truth, at a later period illustrated by Gustavus Vasa and Henry IV. of France, that the greatest princes are those who, though born to the throne, are nevertheless obliged to conquer its possession. Canute, the Dane, ascended the throne after Alfred, and was succeeded by Edward the Confessor, who was the last of the old Saxon dynasty restored. William, Duke of Normandy, contested the English throne with Harold, after Edward died, and on the 14th of October 1066, triumphed on the field of Hastings. Thus were the feudal institutions introduced into England when in their fullest vigor on the continent. All this was most opportune, since it bound the Normans to one another, and united the Saxons among themselves. It brought the two nations into the presence of each other with mutual powers and rights, and effected an amalgamation of the two systems of institutions under the sway of a strong central power, the most auspicious of ulterior results. This led directly to the predominance of a system of free government in England, and was consummated at exactly the right place and hour.

It could not be expected that much literary worth would appear immediately after the Norman conquest. But the twelfth century, from the accomplished Henry Beauclerc to the chivalrous Cœur de Lion, was greatly distinguished for classical scholarship, and continental literature of a recent formation began to be studied in England. In the thirteenth century, the Great Charter was extorted from King John, and intellectual progress was equalled only by commercial advancement and constitutional freedom. During all this perpetual progress through its fluctuating stages, the English universities were founded or regularly organized, as the guarantees of mental enfranchisement; and the single-handed heroism of Wallace in Scotland gave assurance of that patriotic spirit which was predestined to achieve a thousand triumphs beyond the field of Bannockburn.

The commencement of the twelfth century saw the enfranchisement of the communes in France. Louis le Gros was the first monarch who granted royal charters to free cities, if he was not the first to found them. Kings began by granting privileges of freedom to towns, in order to use them in bridling the power of the nobility; but, contrary to human designs, the towns ended by exercising their newly developed rights in restricting the power of both kings and nobility. The old forms of dependencies dissolved, and the breaking up of the system of servitude caused the whole frame of society to be better adjusted than it was ever before. At this time, too, commenced the true nationality of Italy, which was signalized by the rise of a splendid literature in the vernacular tongue, and which, though it was different from that produced by the cotemporary spirit of the North, was equally prophetic of great improvement to the world. One common impulse for the attainment of a higher civilization reigned throughout the western world, and was now approaching the highest type of perfection. At this epoch commenced the ballad poetry, which was the foundation of all the best literature of modern times. Then was written those invaluable chronicles, which have preserved the living picture, the very form and pressure of society as it existed in the early centuries of chivalry and romance. Thus that feudal system, which was introduced into Italy by the Lombard kings, and proved fatal to its institutors, ended by snatching the sceptre from their hands. Democracy rose against feudalism with the same success with which feudalism had overthrown monarchy, and on the same eastern edge of empire, rose a new tide of yet more ennobling might which swept gloriously westward over the field so providentially prepared. As we ascend the stream of time, successive generations and their achievements vanish like bubbles from the surface; but they nevertheless swell the precious undercurrent of civilization which, with perpetually augmented wealth and momentum, flows onward to its goal.

During this entire cycle, Florence was the great centre around which all elements gathered and were blended in an identity of character and influence. Under the Medici, the first Cosmo, and Lorenzo the Great, this fair city became the central seminary of elegant letters and profound erudition before the culminative excellence of art therein was reached under the auspices of Leo X. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries classical learning was highly esteemed, and a thorough acquaintance with it was an absolute necessity to any one with pretensions to learning. Tuscany soon revelled in a glorious native literature, one as fresh as when it grew on the rich soils of Rome and Greece. Its truths were everywhere received, as Bacon beautifully says, like "the breath and purer spirit of the earliest knowledge floating to us in tones made musical by Grecian flutes." Unlike the Augustan age of literature, the Leoine was not suffocated under the wealth it had plundered. If the knowledge of modern Europe had been otherwise compounded, it would have been neither so permanent nor effectual. Just enough of classic art and literature remained to facilitate and direct the growth of original excellence, and too little to destroy the characteristics of native worth. The materials of a former world were subordinated to a new structure, but both plan and elevation bore the aspect of a mightier spirit and more progressive race.

To the Phœnicians, a nation of merchants, the ancient world was indebted for the invention of letters; and to the Florentines, a city of merchants, the modern world is indebted for the greatest literary improvements. As the commercial republics of Greece were the first to carry to perfection the arts of poetry, sculpture, and painting, the commercial republics of Italy and the Netherlands were the first to promote them at the revival, and to add new inventions to the ancient heritage. From the remains of Byzantine libraries, and the scriptoria of British and German monasteries, a merchant of Florence collected the long forgotten works of antique writers, and greatly enriched the first library of the West, by importations from Alexandria and Greece. A descendant of that merchant, in the same city, instituted a school for the study of antiquities; and, as the friend of Michael Angelo, was the munificent patron of learning and genius. A son of the latter followed in the same glorious career, and by his exertions in behalf of liberal culture, like Augustus and Pericles, gave his name to a brilliant age.

As Florence was the central city of the age now under review, so Dantè Alighieri was its central literary light. He represented in perfect balance the moral and intellectual faculties then employed, and in him the romantic element reached at once the most distinct and noble development. Born at Florence, A.D. 1265, in harmony with the manifest rule of Providence he appeared at the time and place wherein he could best do his appointed work. The epoch in which he lived followed immediately upon that in which the Swabian minstrelsy began to echo on the northern side of the Alps; and it would seem that he emulated their picturesqueness as he described the moving breeze, the trembling light of the gently moving sea, the bursting of the clouds, the swelling of the rivers, and the entrance into the thick grove of the earthly paradise. Modern poetry began with Dantè, who, in a great measure, perfected the Italian tongue, which was before rude and inharmonious, but by him was fitted for the muses to adopt as their own. In 1302, the political party he had espoused was vanquished, and Dantè was forced into exile. But he continued to prosecute his glorious career until 1321, when he died at Ravenna.

Hiding its infancy amid the darkness of ages, the Italian language became silently matured by the working of the secret people, until the moment arrived for a literature of life to spring full-grown and armed, like Minerva, from the head of its great father, Dantè. He was not, like Homer, the creator of poetry in the simplicity of childhood out of the arms of mother earth; rather, he was like Noah, the father of a second poetical world, fraught with all the treasures of antediluvian wealth, and yet glowing amidst superior charms of more recent growth. This fact he has himself strikingly portrayed, by representing his awful pilgrimage through other worlds as being made under the guidance of Virgil. The influence of the great epic by Dantè upon Italy has been compared to that which was exerted by the spark of the sun upon the personified clay of Prometheus. And yet his pen was a strong chisel rather than a delicate one; by a few bold strokes giving the outlines of life to the rough marble, but requiring the hand of a finer organization to elaborate the rude unfinished block.

To meet this want, Petrarch was born A.D. 1304. He was gifted with a gentler temper than his great predecessor, and steered his bark with a rare prosperity amidst the perils of a stormy age. Invited to the same courts where Dantè had languished in neglect, Petrarch acted the part of a mediator; and his presence was solicited by opposite factions like that of the blind old Œdipus, produced by turns by his unnatural sons, as a pledge of the justice of their claims in the eyes of the Thebans. Petrarch had seen Dantè at his paternal house, in Arezzo, and the stern features of that solitary genius left an indelible impression among the gorgeous dreams of his young mind. Following the destinies of his parent, and of universal humanity, he went early to the western court at Avignon, where he dissolved his heart in his writings, and anticipated the laurel which was to press heavily on his dazzling but weary brow.

If Dantè and Petrarch are to be regarded as the morning stars of modern literature, it should be noted that the bright luminary of Boccaccio came early into the auspicious group. The latter was born A.D. 1313, at Paris. Petrarch gave purity and elegance to the Italian sonnet, and Boccaccio created the first masterpiece of native prose. These two kindred minds, coming into efficient co-operation at the close of Dantè's tempestuous career, took up the mantle at the moment it fell from the shoulders of the great prophet, and achieved the consummation of his mission. They first met at the court of King Robert in Naples, and thenceforth strengthened a mutual esteem, while they indulged genial tastes in the favorite haunts of their evening walks around Virgil's tomb.