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

by George Park Fisher

The discussions of the schoolmen were often carried into distinctions bewildering from their subtlety. There were individuals who were more disposed to the inductive method of investigation, and who gave attention to natural as well as metaphysical science. Perhaps the most eminent of these is Roger Bacon. He was an Englishman, was born in 1219, and died about 1294. He was imprisoned for a time on account of the jealousy with which studies in natural science and new discoveries in that branch were regarded by reason of their imagined conflict with religion. Astrology was cultivated by the Moors in Spain in connection with astronomy. It spread among the Christian nations. Alchemy, the search for the transmutation of metals, had its curious votaries. But such pursuits were popularly identified with diabolic agency.

THE VERNACULAR LITERATURES: THE TROUBADOURS.—Intellectual activity was for a long time exclusively confined to theology. The earliest literature of a secular cast in France belongs to the tenth and eleventh centuries, and to the dialect of Provence. The study of this language, and the poetry composed in it, became the recreation of knights and noble ladies. Thousands of poets, who were called Troubadours (from trobar, to find or invent), appeared almost simultaneously, and became well known in Spain and in Italy as well as in France. At the same time the period of chivalry began. The theme of their tender and passionate poems was love. They indulged in a license which was not offensive, owing to the laxity of manners and morals in Southern France at that day, but would be intolerable in a different state of society. Kings, as well as barons and knights, adopted the Provençal language, and figured as troubadours. In connection with jousts and tournaments, there would be a contest for poetical honors. The "Court of Love," made up of gentle ladies, with the lady of the castle at their head, gave the verdict. Besides the songs of love, another class of Provençal poems treated of war or politics, or were of a satirical cast. From the Moors of Spain, rhyme, which belonged to Arabian poetry, was introduced, and spread thence over Europe. After the thirteenth century the troubadours were heard of no more, and the Provençal tongue became a mere dialect.

THE NORMAN WRITERS.—The first writers and poets in the French language proper appeared in Normandy. They called themselves Trouvères. They were the troubadours of the North. They composed romances of chivalry, and Fabliaux, or amusing tales. They sang in a more warlike and virile strain than the poets of the South. Their first romances were written late in the twelfth century. About that time Villehardouin wrote in French a history of the conquest of Constantinople. From the poem entitled "Alexander," the name of Alexandrine verse came to be applied to the measure in which it was written. A favorite theme of the romances of chivalry was the mythical exploits of Arthur, the last Celtic king of Britain, and of the knights of the Round Table. Another class of romances of chivalry related to the court of Charlemagne. The Fabliaux in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were largely composed of tales of ludicrous adventures.

GERMAN, ENGLISH, AND SPANISH WRITERS.—In Germany, in the age of the Hohenstaufens, the poets called Minnesingers abounded. They were conspicuous at the splendid tournaments and festivals. In the thirteenth century numerous lays of love, satirical fables, and metrical romances were composed or translated. Of the Round Table legends, that of the San Graal (the holy vessel) was the most popular. It treated of the search for the precious blood of Christ, which was said to have been brought in a cup or charger into Northern Europe by Joseph of Arimathea. During this period the old ballads were thrown into an epic form; among them, the Nibelungenlied, the Iliad of Germany. The religious faith and loyalty of the Spanish character, the fruit of their long contest with the Moors, are reflected in the poem of the Cid, which was composed about the year 1200. It is one of the oldest epics in the Romance languages. In England during this period, we have the chronicles kept in the monasteries. Among their authors are William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk of St. Albans.

DANTE.—Dante, the chief poet of Italy, and the father of its vernacular literature, was born in Florence in 1265. The Divine Comedy is universally regarded as one of the greatest products of poetical genius.

The family of Alighieri, to which Dante belonged, was noble, but not of the highest rank. He was placed under the best masters, and became not only an accomplished student of Virgil and other Latin poets, but also an adept in theology and in various other branches of knowledge. His training was the best that the time afforded. His family belonged to the anti-imperial party of Guelfs. The spirit of faction raged at Florence. Dante was attached to the party of "Whites" (Bianchi), and, having held the high office of prior in Florence, was banished, with many others, when the "Blacks" (Neri) got the upper hand (1302). Until his death, nineteen years later, he wandered from place to place in Italy as an exile. Circumstances, especially the distracted condition of the country, led him to ally himself with the Ghibellines, and to favor the imperial cause. All that he saw and suffered until he breathed his last, away from his native city, at Ravenna, combined to stir within him the thoughts and passions which find expression in his verse.

No poet before Dante ever equaled him in depth of thought and feeling. His principal work is divided into three parts. It is an allegorical vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven. Through the first two of these regions, the poet is conducted by Virgil. In the third, Beatrice is his guide. When he was a boy of nine years of age, he had met, at a May-day festival, Beatrice, who was of the same age; and thenceforward he cherished towards her a pure and romantic affection. Before his twenty-fifth year she died; but, after her death, his thoughts dwelt upon her with a refined but not less passionate regard. She is his imaginary guide through the abodes of the blest. His Young Life (Vita Nuova) gives the history of his love. The "Divine Comedy"—so called because the author would modestly place it below the rank of tragedy,—besides the lofty genius which it exhibits, besides the matchless force and beauty of its diction, sums up, so to speak, what is best and most characteristic in the whole intellectual and religious life of the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas was Dante's authority in theology· The scholastic system taught by the Church is brought to view in his pictures of the supernatural world, and in the comments connected with them.

PAINTING.—After the Lombard conquest of Italy, art branched off into two schools. The one was the Byzantine, and the other the Late Roman. In the Byzantine paintings, the human figures are stiff, and conventional forms prevail. The Byzantine school conceived of Jesus as without beauty of person,—literally "without form or comeliness." The Romans had a directly opposite conception. Byzantine taste had a strong influence in Italy, especially at Venice. This is seen in the mosaics of St. Mark's Cathedral. The first painter to break loose from Byzantine influence, and to introduce a more free style which flourished under the patronage of the Church, was Cimabue (1240-1302), who is generally considered the founder of modern Italian painting. The first steps were now taken towards a direct observation and imitation of nature. The artist is no longer a slavish copyist of others. "Cimabue" says M. Taine, "already belongs to the new order of things; for he invents and expresses." But Cimabue was far outdone by Giotto (1276-1337), who cast off wholly the Byzantine fetters, studied nature earnestly, and abjured that which is false and artificial. Notwithstanding his technical defects, his force, and "his feeling for grace of action and harmony of color," were such as to make him, even more than Cimabue, "the founder of the true ideal style of Christian art, and the restorer of portraiture." "His, above all, was a varied, fertile, facile, and richly creative nature." The contemporary of Dante, his portrait of the poet has been discovered in recent times on a wall in the Podesta at Florence. "He stands at the head of the school of allegorical painting, as the latter of that of poetry." The most famous pupil of Giotto was Taddeo Gaddi (about 1300-1367).

SCULPTURE.—In the thirteenth century, the era of the revival of art in Italy, a new school of sculpture arose under the auspices especially of two artists, Niccolo of Pisa and his son Giovanni. They brought to their art the same spirit which belonged to Giotto in painting and to Dante in poetry. The same courage that moved the great poet to write in his own vernacular tongue, instead of in Latin, emboldened the artists to look away from the received standards, and to follow nature. In the same period a new and improved style of sculpture appears in other countries, especially in the Gothic cathedrals of Germany and France.

ARCHITECTURE.—The earliest Christian churches were copies of the Roman basilica,—a civil building oblong in shape, sometimes with and sometimes without rows of columns dividing the nave from the aisles: at one end, there was usually a semicircular apse. Most of the churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were built after this style. Then changes were introduced, which in some measure paved the way for the Gothic, the peculiar type of mediæval architecture. The essential characteristic of this style is the pointed arch. This may have been introduced by the returning crusaders from buildings which they had observed in the East. Its use and development in the churches and other edifices of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were without previous example. The Gothic style was carried to its perfection in France, and spread over England and Germany. The cathedrals erected in this form are still the noblest and most attractive buildings to be seen in the old European towns.