Whatever mention, therefore, we find of learning and the learned during these dark ages, must be understood to relate only to such as were within the pale of clergy, which indeed was pretty extensive, and comprehended many who did not exercise the offices of religious ministry. But even the clergy were, for a long period, not very materially superior, as a body, to the uninstructed laity. A cloud of ignorance overspread the whole face of the church, hardly broken by a few glimmering lights, who owe much of their distinction to the surrounding darkness. In the sixth century the best writers in Latin were scarcely read;[h] and perhaps from the middle of this age to the eleventh there was, in a general view of literature, little difference to be discerned. If we look more accurately, there will appear certain gradual shades of twilight on each side of the greatest obscurity. France reached her lowest point about the beginning of the eighth century; but England was at that time more respectable, and did not fall into complete degradation till the middle of the ninth. There could be nothing more deplorable than the state of letters in Italy and in England during the succeeding century; but France cannot be denied to have been uniformly, though very slowly, progressive from the time of Charlemagne.[]
Of this prevailing ignorance it is easy to produce abundant testimony. Contracts were made verbally, for want of notaries capable of drawing up charters; and these, when written, were frequently barbarous and ungrammatical to an incredible degree. For some considerable intervals scarcely any monument of literature has been preserved, except a few jejune chronicles, the vilest legends of saints, or verses equally destitute of spirit and metre. In almost every council the ignorance of the clergy forms a subject for reproach. It is asserted by one held in 992 that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself who knew the first elements of letters.[k] Not one priest of a thousand in Spain, about the age of Charlemagne, could address a common letter of salutation to another.[m] In England, Alfred declares that he could not recollect a single priest south of the Thames (the most civilized part of England), at the time of his accession, who understood the ordinary prayers, or could translate Latin into his mother tongue.[n] Nor was this better in the time of Dunstan, when, it is said, none of the clergy knew how to write or translate a Latin letter.[o] The homilies which they preached were compiled for their use by some bishops, from former works of the same kind, or the writings of the fathers.
Scarcity of books.
This universal ignorance was rendered unavoidable, among other causes, by the scarcity of books, which could only be procured at an immense price. From the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens at the beginning of the seventh century, when the Egyptian papyrus almost ceased to be imported into Europe, to the close of the eleventh, about which time the art of making paper from cotton rags seems to have been introduced, there were no materials for writing except parchment, a substance too expensive to be readily spared for mere purposes of literature.[p] Hence an unfortunate practice gained ground, of erasing a manuscript in order to substitute another on the same skin. This occasioned the loss of many ancient authors, who have made way for the legends of saints, or other ecclesiastical rubbish.
Want of eminent men in literature.
If we would listen to some literary historians, we should believe that the darkest ages contained many individuals, not only distinguished among their contemporaries, but positively eminent for abilities and knowledge. A proneness to extol every monk of whose production a few letters or a devotional treatise survives, every bishop of whom it is related that he composed homilies, runs through the laborious work of the Benedictines of St. Maur, the Literary History of France, and, in a less degree, is observable even in Tiraboschi, and in most books of this class. Bede, Alcuin, Hincmar, Raban, and a number of inferior names, become real giants of learning in their uncritical panegyrics. But one might justly say that ignorance is the smallest defect of the writers of these dark ages. Several of them were tolerably acquainted with books; but that wherein they are uniformly deficient is original argument or expression. Almost every one is a compiler of scraps from the fathers, or from such semi-classical authors as Boethius, Cassiodorus, or Martianus Capella.[q] Indeed I am not aware that there appeared more than two really considerable men in the republic of letters from the sixth to the middle of the eleventh century—John, surnamed Scotus or Erigena, a native of Ireland; and Gerbert, who became pope by the name of Silvester II.: the first endowed with a bold and acute metaphysical genius; the second excellent, for the time when he lived, in mathematical science and mechanical inventions.[r]
Causes of the preservation of learning—religion.
If it be demanded by what cause it happened that a few sparks of ancient learning survived throughout this long winter, we can only ascribe their preservation to the establishment of Christianity. Religion alone made a bridge, as it were, across the chaos, and has linked the two periods of ancient and modern civilization. Without this connecting principle, Europe might indeed have awakened to intellectual pursuits, and the genius of recent times needed not to be invigorated by the imitation of antiquity. But the memory of Greece and Rome would have been feebly preserved by tradition, and the monuments of those nations might have excited, on the return of civilization, that vague sentiment of speculation and wonder with which men now contemplate Persepolis or the Pyramids. It is not, however, from religion simply that we have derived this advantage, but from religion as it was modified in the dark ages. Such is the complex reciprocation of good and evil in the dispensations of Providence, that we may assert, with only an apparent paradox, that, had religion been more pure, it would have been less permanent, and that Christianity has been preserved by means of its corruptions. The sole hope for literature depended on the Latin language; and I do not see why that should not have been lost, if three circumstances in the prevailing religious system, all of which we are justly accustomed to disapprove, had not conspired to maintain it—the papal supremacy, the monastic institutions, and the use of a Latin liturgy. 1. A continual intercourse was kept up, in consequence of the first, between Rome and the several nations of Europe; her laws were received by the bishops, her legates presided in councils; so that a common language was as necessary in the church as it is at present in the diplomatic relations of kingdoms. 2. Throughout the whole course of the middle ages there was no learning, and very little regularity of manners, among the parochial clergy. Almost every distinguished man was either the member of a chapter or of a convent. The monasteries were subjected to strict rules of discipline, and held out, at the worst, more opportunities for study than the secular clergy possessed, and fewer for worldly dissipations. But their most important service was as secure repositories for books. All our manuscripts have been preserved in this manner, and could hardly have descended to us by any other channel; at least there were intervals when I do not conceive that any royal or private libraries existed.[] 3. Monasteries, however, would probably have contributed very little towards the preservation of learning, if the Scriptures and the liturgy had been translated out of Latin when that language ceased to be intelligible. Every rational principle of religious worship called for such a change; but it would have been made at the expense of posterity. One might presume, if such refined conjectures were consistent with historical caution, that the more learned and sagacious ecclesiastics of those times, deploring the gradual corruption of the Latin tongue, and the danger of its absolute extinction, were induced to maintain it as a sacred language, and the depository, as it were, of that truth and that science which would be lost in the barbarous dialects of the vulgar. But a simpler explanation is found in the radical dislike of innovation which is natural to an established clergy. Nor did they want as good pretexts, on the ground of convenience, as are commonly alleged by the opponents of reform. They were habituated to the Latin words of the church-service, which had become, by this association, the readiest instruments of devotion, and with the majesty of which the Romance jargon could bear no comparison. Their musical chants were adapted to these sounds, and their hymns depended, for metrical effect, on the marked accents and powerful rhymes which the Latin language affords. The vulgate Latin of the Bible was still more venerable. It was like a copy of a lost original; and a copy attested by one of the most eminent fathers, and by the general consent of the church. These are certainly no adequate excuses for keeping the people in ignorance; and the gross corruption of the middle ages is in a great degree assignable to this policy. But learning, and consequently religion, have eventually derived from it the utmost advantage.
Superstitions.
In the shadows of this universal ignorance a thousand superstitions, like foul animals of night, were propagated and nourished. It would be very unsatisfactory to exhibit a few specimens of this odious brood, when the real character of those times is only to be judged by their accumulated multitude. In every age it would be easy to select proofs of irrational superstition, which, separately considered, seem to degrade mankind from its level in the creation; and perhaps the contemporaries of Swedenborg and Southcote have no right to look very contemptuously upon the fanaticism of their ancestors. There are many books from which a sufficient number of instances may be collected to show the absurdity and ignorance of the middle ages in this respect. I shall only mention two, as affording more general evidence than any local or obscure superstition. In the tenth century an opinion prevailed everywhere that the end of the world was approaching. Many charters begin with these words, "As the world is now drawing to its close." An army marching under the emperor Otho I. was so terrified by an eclipse of the sun, which it conceived to announce this consummation, as to disperse hastily on all sides. As this notion seems to have been founded on some confused theory of the millennium, it naturally died away when the seasons proceeded in the eleventh century with their usual regularity.[t] A far more remarkable and permanent superstition was the appeal to Heaven in judicial controversies, whether through the means of combat or of ordeal. The principle of these was the same; but in the former it was mingled with feelings independent of religion—the natural dictates of resentment in a brave man unjustly accused, and the sympathy of a warlike people with the display of skill and intrepidity. These, in course of time, almost obliterated the primary character of judicial combat, and ultimately changed it into the modern duel, in which assuredly there is no mixture of superstition.[] But, in the various tests of innocence which were called ordeals, this stood undisguised and unqualified. It is not necessary to describe what is so well known—the ceremonies of trial by handling hot iron, by plunging the arm into boiling fluids, by floating or sinking in cold water, or by swallowing a piece of consecrated bread. It is observable that, as the interference of Heaven was relied upon as a matter of course, it seems to have been reckoned nearly indifferent whether such a test was adopted as must, humanly considered, absolve all the guilty, or one that must convict all the innocent. The ordeals of hot iron or water were, however, more commonly used; and it has been a perplexing question by what dexterity these tremendous proofs were eluded. They seem at least to have placed the decision of all judicial controversies in the hands of the clergy, who must have known the secret, whatever that might be, of satisfying the spectators that an accused person had held a mass of burning iron with impunity. For several centuries this mode of investigation was in great repute, though not without opposition from some eminent bishops. It does discredit to the memory of Charlemagne that he was one of its warmest advocates.[x] But the judicial combat, which indeed might be reckoned one species of ordeal, gradually put an end to the rest; and as the church acquired better notions of law, and a code of her own, she strenuously exerted herself against all these barbarous superstitions.[y]