[472] The Rev. Mr. Dowling, who looks back with great regret to this happy period, says, ‘Writers were almost universally ecclesiastics. Literature was scarcely anything but a religious exercise; for everything that was studied, was studied with a reference to religion. The men, therefore, who wrote history, wrote ecclesiastical history.’ Dowling's Introduction to the Critical Study of Ecclesiastical History, 8vo, 1838, p. 56; a work of some talent, but chiefly interesting as a manifesto by an active party.
[473] Thus, for instance, a celebrated historian, who wrote at the end of the twelfth century says of the reign of William Rufus: ‘Ejusdem regis tempore, ut ex parte supradictum est, in sole, luna, et stellis multa signa visa sunt, mare quoque littus persæpe egrediebatur, et homines et animalia submersit, villas et domos quamplures subvertit. In pago qui Barukeshire nominatur, ante occisionem regis sanguis de fonte tribus septimanis emanavit. Multis etiam Normannis diabolus in horribili specie se frequenter in silvis ostendens, plura cum eis de rege et Ranulfo, et quibusdam aliis locutus est. Nec mirum, nam illorum tempore ferè omnis legum siluit justitia, causisque justitiæ subpositis, sola in principibus imperabat pecunia.’ Rog. de Hoveden Annal. in Scriptores post Bedam, p. 268. See also the same work, pp. 356–358; and compare Matthæi Westmonast. Flores Historiarum, part i. pp. 266, 289, part ii. p. 298.
[474] Even the descriptions of natural objects which historians attempted in the Middle Ages, were marked by the same carelessness. See some good observations by Dr. Arnold, on Bede's account of the Solent Sea. Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, pp. 102, 103.
[475] In Le Long's Bibliothèque Historique de la France, vol. ii. p. 3, it is said, that the descent of the kings of France from the Trojans was universally believed before the sixteenth century: ‘Cette descendance a été crue véritable près de huit cents ans, et soutenue par tous les écrivains de notre histoire; la fausseté n'en a été reconnue qu'au commencement du seizième siècle.’ Polydore Vergil, who died in the middle of the sixteenth century, attacked this opinion in regard to England, and thereby made his history unpopular. See Ellis's Preface to Polydore Vergil, p. xx. 4to, 1844, published by the Camden Society. ‘He discarded Brute, as an unreal personage.’ In 1128, Henry I., king of England, inquired from a learned man respecting the early history of France. The answer is preserved by an historian of the thirteenth century: ‘Regum potentissime, inquiens, sicut pleræque gentes Europæ, ita Franci a Trojanis originem duxerunt.’ Matthæi Paris Hist. Major, p. 59. See also Rog. de Hov. in Scriptores post Bedam, p. 274. On the descent of the Britons from Priam and Æneas, see Matthæi Westmonast. Flores Historiarum, part i. p. 66. Indeed, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, their Trojan origin was stated as a notorious fact, in a letter written to Pope Boniface by Edward I., and signed by the English nobility. See Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. i. pp. 131, 132; and Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. i. p. 185.
[476] The general opinion was, that Brutus, or Brute, was the son of Æneas; but some historians affirmed that he was the great-grandson. See Turner's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 63, vol. vii. p. 220.
[477] In the Notes to a Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483, pp. 183–187, edit. 4to, 1827, there is a pedigree, in which the history of the bishops of London is traced back, not only to the migration of Brutus from Troy, but also to Noah and Adam. Thus, too, Goropius, in his history of Antwerp, written in the sixteenth century: ‘Vond zoowell de Nederlandsche taal als de Wysbegeerte van Orpheus in de ark van Noach.’ Van Kampen, Geschiedenis der Letteren, 8vo, 1821, vol. i. p. 91; see also p. 86. In the thirteenth century, Mathew Paris (Historia Major, p. 352) says of Alfred, ‘Hujus genealogia in Anglorum historiis perducitur usque ad Adam primum parentem.’ See, to the same effect, Matthæi Westmonast. Flores Historiarum, part i. pp. 323, 324, 415. In William of Malmesbury's Chronicle (Scriptores post Bedam, p. 22 rev.) the genealogy of the Saxon kings is traced back to Adam. For other, and similar, instances, see a note in Lingard's History of England, vol. i. p. 403. And Mr. Ticknor (History of Spanish Literature, vol. i. p. 509) mentions that the Spanish chroniclers present ‘an uninterrupted succession of Spanish kings from Tubal, a grandson of Noah.’
[478] Monteil, in his curious book, Histoire des divers Etats, vol. v. p. 70, mentions the old belief ‘que les Parisiens sont du sang des rois des anciens Troyens, par Paris, fils de Priam.’ Even in the seventeenth century this idea was not extinct; and Coryat, who travelled in France in 1608, gives another version of it. He says, ‘As for her name of Paris, she hath it (as some write) from Paris, the eighteenth king of Gallia Celtica, whom some write to have been lineally descended from Japhet, one of the three sons of Noah, and to have founded this city.’ Coryat's Crudities, 1611, reprinted 1776, vol. i. pp. 27, 28.
[479] ‘Erat ibi quidam Tros nomine Turonus Bruti nepos…. De nomine ipsius prædicta civitas Turonis vocabulum nacta est; quia ibidem sepultus fuit.’ Galfredi Monumet. Hist. Briton. lib. i. cap. xv. p. 19. And Mathew of Westminster, who wrote in the fourteenth century, says (Flores Historiarum, part i. p. 17): ‘Tros nomine Turnus…. De nomine verò ipsius Turonorum civitas vocabulum traxit, quia ibidem, ut testatur Homerus, sepultus fuit.’
[480] ‘On convient bien que les Troyens de notre Troyes sont du sang des anciens Troyens.’ Monteil, Divers Etats, vol. v. p. 69.
[481] Monconys, who was in Nuremberg in 1663, found this opinion still held there; and he seems himself half inclined to believe it; for, in visiting a castle, he observes, ‘Mais je ne sçai si c'est un ouvrage de Néron, comme l'on le dit, et que même le nom de Nuremberg en vient.’ Voyages de Monconys, vol. iv. p. 141, edit. Paris, 1695.