| Pope Alexander III | 1159–81 |
| Emperor Philip II | 1197–1208 |
| Emperor Otto IV | 1197–1215 |
| Fourth Lateran Council | 1215 |
| The Sixth Crusade | 1228–9 |
| Battle of Cortenuova | 1237 |
| Death of Conradin | 1268 |
XV
LEARNING AND ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
The word ‘progress’ implies to modern men and women a moving forward towards a perfection as yet unknown, freshly imagined indeed by each generation: to the Middle Ages it meant rather a peering back through the mist of barbarian invasions to an idealized Christian Rome. Inspiration lay in the past, not merely in such political conceptions as the Holy Roman Empire, but in the domain of art and thought, where too often tradition laid her choking grip upon originality struggling for expression.
The painting of the early Middle Ages was stereotyped in the stiff though beautiful models of Byzantium, that ‘Fathers of the Church’ had insisted, by means of decrees passed at Church councils, should be considered as fitting representations of Christian subjects for all time. Less impressive but more lifelike were the illuminations of missals and holy books, that, in illustrating the Gospels or lives of the Saints, reproduced the artist’s own surroundings—the noble he could see from the window of his cell ride by with hawk or hounds, the labourer sowing or delving, the merchant with his money-bags, the man of fashion trailing his furred gown.
Vignettes such as these, with their neat craftsmanship of line and colour, their almost photographic love of detail, lend a reality to our glimpses of life in Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries; yet great as is the debt we owe them, the real art of the Middle Ages was not consummated with the brush but with the builder’s tools and sculptor’s chisel.
Mediaeval Architecture
Like the painter’s, the architect’s impulse was at first almost entirely religious, though guild-halls and universities followed on the erection of churches and monasteries. Nourished on St. Augustine’s belief in this life as a mere transitory journey towards the eternal ‘City of God’, mediaeval men and women saw this pilgrimage encompassed with a vast army of devils and saints, ranged in constant battle for the human soul. Only through faith and the kindly assistance of the Saints could man hope to beat off the legions of hell which hung like a pack of wolves about his footsteps, and nowhere with greater efficacy than in the sanctuary from which human prayer arose daily to God’s throne.
Churches and chapels in modern times have become the property of a section of the public—that is, of those who think or believe in a certain way; and sometimes through poverty of purse or spirit, through bad workmanship or material, the architecture that results is shoddy or insignificant. In the Middle Ages his parish church was the most certain fact in every Christian’s existence, from the day he was carried to the font for baptism until his last journey to rest beneath its shadow. Here he would make his confessions, his vows of repentance and amendment, and offer his worship and thanksgiving: here he would often find a fortified refuge from violence in the street outside, a school, a granary, a parish council-chamber.