So decay worked on within the system, each failing element being both effect and cause, in a general subsidence of merit. There were also causes, as it were, from without; which possibly were likewise effects of this scholastic decay As the life of the world once had gone out of paganism, and put on the new vigour of Christianity, so the life of the world was now forsaking scholasticism, and deriding, shall we say, the womb it had escaped from. Was the embryo ripe, that the womb had become its mephitic prison? At all events, the fourteenth century brought forth, and the next was filled with, these men who called the readers of Duns Scotus Dunces—and the word still lives. Men had new thoughts; the power of the popes was shattered, and within the Church, popes and councils fought for supremacy; there was no longer any actual unity of the Church to preserve the unity of thought; Wicliffe had risen; Huss and Luther were close to the horizon; a new science of observation was also stirring, and a new humanism was abroad. The life of men had not lessened nor their energies and powers of thought. Yet life and power no longer pulsed and wrought within the old forms; but had gone out from them, and disdainfully were flouting the emptied husks.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE MEDIAEVAL SYNTHESIS: DANTE
It lies before us to draw the lines of mediaeval development together. We have been considering the Middle Ages very largely, endeavouring to fix in mind the more interesting of their intellectual and emotional phenomena. We have found throughout a certain spiritual homogeneity; but have also seen that the mediaeval period of western Europe is not to be forced to a fictitious unity of intellectual and emotional quality—contradicted by a disparity of traits and interests existing then as now. Yet just as certain ways of discerning facts and estimating their importance distinguish our own time, making it an “age” or epoch, so in spite of diversity and conflict, the same was true of the mediaeval period. From the ninth to the fourteenth century, inter-related processes of thought, beliefs, and standards prevailed and imparted a spiritual colour to the time. While not affecting all men equally, these spiritual habits tended to dominate the minds and tempers of those men who were the arbiters of opinion, for example, the church dignitaries, or the theologian-philosophers. Men who thought effectively, or upon whom it fell to decide for others, or to construct or imagine for them, such, whether pleasure-loving, secularly ambitious, or immersed in contemplation of the life beyond the grave, accepted certain beliefs, recognized certain authoritatively prescribed ideals of conduct and well-being, and did not reject the processes of proof supporting them.
The causes making the Middle Ages a characterizable period in human history have been scanned. We observed the antecedent influences as they finally took form and temper in the intellectual atmosphere of the latter-day pagan world and the cognate mentalities of the Church Fathers. We followed the pre-Christian Latinizing of Provence, Spain, Gaul, and the diffusion of Christianity throughout the same countries, where, save for sporadic dispossession, Christianity and Latin were to continue, and become, in the course of centuries, mediaeval and Romance. As waves of barbarism washed over the somewhat decadent society of Italy and her Latin daughters, we saw a new ignorance setting a final seal upon the inability of these epigoni to emulate bygone achievements. Plainly there was need of effort to rescue the disjecta membra of the antique and Christian heritages. The wreckers were famous men, young Boëthius, old Cassiodorus, the great pope Gregory, and princely Isidore. For their own people they were gatherers and conservers; but they proved veritable transmitters for Franks, Anglo-Saxons and Germans, who were made acquainted with Christianity and Latinity between the sixth and the ninth centuries, the period in the course of which the Merovingian kingdoms were superseded by the Carolingian Empire.
With the Carolingian period the Middles Ages unquestionably are upon us. The factors and material of mediaeval development, howsoever they have come into conjunction, are found in interplay. It was for the mediaeval peoples, now in presence of their spiritual fortunes, to grow and draw from life. Their task, as has appeared from many points of view, was to master the Christian and antique material, and change its substance into personal faculty. Under different guises this task was for all, whether living in Italy or dwelling where the antique had weaker root or had been newly introduced.
This Carolingian time of so much sheer introduction to the teaching of the past presented little intellectual discrimination. That would come very gradually, when men had mastered their lesson and could set themselves to further study of the parts suited to their taste. Nevertheless, there was even in the Carolingian period another sort of discrimination, towards which men’s consciences were drawn by the contrast between their antique and Christian heritages, and because the latter held a criterion of selection and rejection, touching all the elements of human life.
Whoever reflects upon his life and its compass of thought, of inclination, of passion, action, and capacity for happiness or desolation, is likely to consider how he may best harmonize its elements. He will have to choose and reject; and within him may arise a conflict which he must bring to reconcilement if he will have peace. He may need to sacrifice certain of his impulses or even rational desires. As with a thoughtful individual, so with thoughtful people of an epoch, among whom like standards of discrimination may be found prevailing. The ninth century received, with patristic Christianity, a standard of selection and rejection. In conformity with it, men, century after century, were to make their choice, and try to bring their lives to a discriminating unity and certain peace. Yet in every mediaeval century the soul’s peace was broken in ways demanding other modes of reconcilement.