The curious circumstances which we could further produce, would add nothing to the opinion that must be already entertained of the happy influence of the crusades upon the progress of agriculture and industry. The riches of Asia, when brought into Europe, soon gave birth to a desire for the cultivation of the arts which embellish life, and of the sciences which double the faculties of man.
In the tenth century, architecture consisted in the construction of towers, ramparts, and fortresses. In the habitations of the great, everything was sacrificed to the necessity of providing defences against an enemy; nothing could be afforded to comfort or magnificence. The dwellings of the people, even in cities, scarcely protected them from the injuries of weather or the intemperance of seasons. The only architectural monuments were those which devotion raised to ancestors. Before magnificent palaces for princes, or convenient houses for the rich were thought of, edifices consecrated to religion were constructed. It is scarcely possible to enumerate the churches and monasteries built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. According to the opinion of the time, the most certain mode of expiating sins, was to build a church or a monastery. Thus architectural monuments arose at the voice of repentance, and religious inspirations revived, in some sort, the prodigies which fabulous antiquity attributed to the lyre of Amphion.
In every city, in every town, the inhabitants made it their pride to ornament their cathedral, and the altars at which they invoked the saint whom the parish had chosen for its patron. It may be said that there was something like patriotism in this pious zeal; for the basilic, or paternal church, was then the most noble and the most sensible image of the country.
At the commencement of the crusades, there existed a religious confraternity composed of men practised in the labours of building; they travelled about the world, offering their services to the faithful to build or repair churches. Another confraternity was formed with the useful design of constructing bridges for pilgrims and travellers. A chapel or an oratory reminded passengers that the bridge they were crossing was the work of charity.
The clergy, who were rich, and could only display their opulence in buildings, made it their glory to erect churches. To complete their work, they called in the aid of painting and sculpture, which, like architecture, owed their first encouragement to piety, and whose earliest masterpieces were consecrated to the ornamenting of the altars of the Christian religion.
Nothing was more common than to see noble Crusaders, on their departure for Palestine, or on their return to the West, found a monastery or a church. Several pilgrims are named, who, on coming back from Jerusalem, employed their treasures in constructing churches, the form of which might offer them an image of the holy sepulchre they had visited. The treasures conquered from the infidels were often appropriated to such buildings. Before the first crusade, some cities of Italy undertook an expedition into Africa, and the spoils were reserved for the ornamenting of churches. We read in an Italian chronicle, that the Pisans ceded to the Greek emperor Calo-John several cities which belonged to them in Asia Minor, upon the condition that this emperor would defray the expenses necessary for the building of the archbishop’s palace at Pisa, and ornamenting the cathedral of Palermo.
During the crusades, the sight of the monuments of architecture which were admired in the East, must have awakened the emulation of the western pilgrims. Nothing could exceed the surprise of the Crusaders at beholding the city of Constantine. Foucher de Chartres exclaimed in his enthusiasm: “Oh, what a vast and beautiful city is Constantinople!” The German historian Gunther likewise expresses his admiration, and says that such magnificence could not be believed if it were not seen. The marshal of Champagne relates that the French knights, on seeing the beautiful towers and the superb palaces of Byzantium, could not persuade themselves that there could be such a rich city in all the world!
Italy, which derived such advantages from its relations with the East, profited greatly by the masterpieces of Greece. The inhabitants of Rome, and of several other cities founded and embellished by the Romans, had before them remains of antiquity that might serve them as models. The riches which their commerce brought them furnished them with the means of encouraging industry and the arts, which assist in the embellishment of cities. The cities of Italy,—Venice in particular,—had palaces and sumptuous edifices before the crusades. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the taste for beautiful architecture changed the face of Italy, and spread by degrees throughout the rest of Europe.
We must add, however, that the fine arts, with the exception of architecture, owed very little to the frequent communications with the East. Painting was despised among the Mussulmans, to whom the Koran forbade the reproduction of the images of man or of animated beings. The Latins likewise, as our readers may remember, after the taking of Constantinople, destroyed most of the monuments raised by the genius of sculpture, and converted the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxiteles into pieces of coin.
The indolent and silent character of the orientals was not calculated to carry music to perfection, as this art bespeaks a lively and warm imagination in a people; and the Greeks had for a long time lost the secret of those melodious songs which, in the times of Linus and Orpheus, charmed the heights of Rhodope and the woods of Mænalus. The history of music, then, has very little to do with that of the holy wars. When Italy saw the fine arts revive, they sprang up as a natural production of the soil, as plants indigenous to the climate; they owed their splendour to the prosperous state of society, and followed, as a consequence of the opulence and luxury which commerce and industry had produced.[122]