Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

NEW INDUSTRIES.—It has been already stated that the crusaders brought back to Europe the knowledge as well as the products of various branches of industry. Such were the cloths of Damascus, the glass of Tyre, the use of windmills, of linen, and of silk, the plum-trees of Damascus, the sugar-cane, the mulberry-tree. Cotton stuffs came into use at this time. Paper made from cotton was used by the Saracens in Spain in the eighth century. Paper was made from linen at a somewhat later date. In France and Germany it was first manufactured early in the fourteenth century.

THE JEWS.—The Jews in the Middle Ages were often treated with extreme harshness. An outburst of the crusading spirit was frequently attended with cruel assaults upon them. As Christians would not take interest, money-lending was a business mainly left to the Hebrews. By them, bills of exchange were first employed.

OBSTACLES TO TRADE.—The great obstacle to commerce was the insecurity of travel. Whenever a shipwreck took place, whatever was cast upon the shore was seized by the neighboring lord. A noble at Leon, in Brittany, pointing out a rock on which many vessels had been wrecked, said, "I have a rock there more precious than the diamonds on the crown of a king." It was long before property on the sea was respected, even in the same degree as property on the land. Not even at the present day has this point been reached. The infinite diversity of coins was another embarrassment to trade. In every fief, one had to exchange his money, always at a loss. Louis IX. ordained that the money of eighty lords, who had the right to coin, should be current only in their own territories, while the coinage of the king should be received everywhere.

GUILDS.—A very important feature of mediæval society was the guilds. Societies more or less resembling these existed among the Romans, and were called collegia,—some being for good fellowship or for religious rites, and others being trade-corporations. There were, also, similar fraternities among the Greeks in the second and third centuries B.C. In the Middle Ages, there were two general classes of guilds: First, there were the peace-guilds, for mutual protection against thieves, etc., and for mutual aid in sickness, old age, or impoverishment from other causes. They were numerous in England, and spread over the Continent. Secondly, there were the trade-guilds, which embraced the guilds-merchant, and the craft-guilds. The latter were associations of workmen, for maintaining the customs of their craft, each with a master, or alderman, and other officers. They had their provisions for mutual help for themselves and for their widows and orphans, and they had their religious observances. Each had its patron saint, its festivals, its treasury. They kept in their hands the monopoly of the branch of industry which belonged to them. They had their rules in respect to apprenticeship, etc. Almost all professions and occupations were fenced in by guilds.

MONASTICISM.—Society in the Middle Ages presented striking and picturesque contrasts. This was nowhere more apparent than in the sphere of religion. Along with the passion for war and the consequent reign of violence, there was a parallel self-consecration to a life of peace and devotion. With the strongest relish for pageantry and for a brilliant ceremonial in social life and in worship, there was associated a yearning for an ascetic course under the monastic vows. As existing orders grew rich, and gave up the rigid discipline of earlier days, new orders were formed by men of deeper religious earnestness. In the eleventh century, there arose, among other orders, the Carthusian and Cistercian; in the twelfth century, the Premonstrants and the Carmelites, and the order of Trinitarians for the liberation of Christian captives taken by the Moslems. The older orders, especially that of the Benedictines in its different branches, became very wealthy and powerful. The Cistercian Order, under its second founder, St. Bernard (who died in 1153), spread with wonderful rapidity.

THE MENDICANT ORDERS.—In the thirteenth century, when the papal authority was at its height, the mendicant orders arose. The order of St. Francis was fully established in 1223, and the order of St. Dominic in 1216. They combined with monastic vows the utmost activity in preaching and in other clerical work. These orders attracted young men of talents and of a devout spirit in large numbers. The mendicant friars were frequently in conflict with the secular clergy,—the ordinary priesthood,—and with the other orders. But they gained a vast influence, and were devotedly loyal to the popes. It must not be supposed that the monastic orders generally were made up of the weak or the disappointed who sought in cloisters a quiet asylum. Disgust with the world, from whatever cause, led many to become members of them; but they were largely composed of vigorous minds, which, of their own free choice, took on them the monastic vows.

THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES.—The Crusades were accompanied by a signal revival of intellectual activity. One of the most important events of the thirteenth century was the rise of the universities. The schools connected with the abbeys and the cathedrals in France began to improve in the eleventh century, partly from an impulse caught by individuals from the Arabic schools in Spain. After the scholastic theology was introduced, teachers in this branch began to give instruction near those schools in Paris. Numerous pupils gathered around noted lecturers. An organization followed which was called a university,—a sort of guild,—made up of four faculties,—theology, canon law, medicine, and the arts. The arts included the three studies (trivium) of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, with four additional branches (the quadrivium),—arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy. Paris became the mother of many other universities. Next to Paris, Oxford was famous as a seat of education. Of all the universities, Bologna in Italy was most renowned as a school for the study of the civil law.

SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY.—The scholastic theology dates from the middle of the eleventh century. It was the work of numerous teachers, many of them of unsurpassed acuteness, who, at a time when learning and scholarship were at a low ebb, made it their aim to systemize, elucidate, and prove on philosophical grounds, the doctrines of the Church. Aristotle was the author whose philosophical writings were most authoritative with the schoolmen. In theology, Augustine was the most revered master.

The main question in philosophy which the schoolmen debated was that of Nominalism and Realism. The question was, whether a general term, as man, stands for a real being designated by it (as man, in the example given, for humanity), or is simply the name of divers distinct individuals.

THE LEADING SCHOOLMEN.—In the eleventh century Anselm of Canterbury was a noble example of the scholastic spirit. In the thirteenth century Abelard was a bold and brilliant teacher, but with less depth and discretion. He, like other eminent schoolmen, attracted multitudes of pupils. The thirteenth century was the golden age of scholasticism. Then flourished Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventura, and others very influential in their day. There were two schools of opinion,—that of the Thomists, the adherents of Aquinas, the great theologian of the Dominican order; and that of the Scotists, the adherents of Duns Scotus, a great light of the Franciscans. They differed on various theological points not involved in the common faith.