§ 115.5. Catechisms and Prayer Books.—Next to preaching, the chief opportunity for imparting religious instruction was confession. Later catechisms drew largely upon the baptismal and confessional services. In the 13th and 14th centuries the decalogue was added, and afterwards the seven deadly sins and the seven principal virtues. Pictures were used to impress the main points on the minds of the people and the youth. The catechetical literature of this period, both in guides for priests and manuals for the people, was written in the vernacular.—During the 15th century there were also numerous so-called Artes moriendi, showing how to die well, in which often earnest piety appeared side by side with the grossest superstition. There were also many prayer books, Hortuli animæ, published, in which the worship of Mary and the saints often overshadowed that of God and Christ, and an extravagant belief in indulgences led to a mechanical view of prayer that was thoroughly pagan.
§ 115.6. The Dance of Death.—The fantastic humour of the Middle Ages found dramatic and spectacular expression in the Dance of Death, in which all classes, from the pope and princes to the beggars, in turn converse with death. It was introduced into Germany and France in the beginning of the 14th century, with the view of raising men out of the pleasures and troubles of life. It was called in France the Dance of the Maccabees, because first introduced at that festival. Pictures and verbal descriptions of the Dance of Death were made on walls and doors of churches, around MSS. and woodcuts, where death was generally represented as a skeleton. Hans Holbein the Younger gave the finishing touch to these representations in his Imagines Mortis, the originals of which are in St. Petersburg.In this masterpiece, the idea of a dancing pair is set aside, and in its place forty pictures, afterwards increased to fifty-eight, full of humour and moral earnestness, pourtray the power of death in the earthly life.[341]
§ 115.7. Hymnology (§ [104, 10]).—The Latin Church poetry of the 14th and 15th centuries was far beneath that of the 12th and 13th. Only the mystics, e.g. Thomas à Kempis, still composed some beautiful hymns. We have now however the beginnings of German and Bohemian hymnology. The German flagellators sang German hymns (§ [116, 3]), and so obtained much popular favour. The Hussite movement of the 15th century gave a great impulse to church song. Huss himself earnestly urged the practice of congregational singing in the language of the people, and himself composed Bohemian hymns. The Bohemian and Moravian Brethren were specially productive in this department (§ [119, 8]). In many churches, at least on high festivals, German hymns were sung, and in some even at the celebration of mass and other parts of public worship. The spiritual songs of this period were of four kinds: some half German, half Latin; others translations of Latin hymns and sequences; others, original German compositions by monks and minstrels; and adaptations of secular songs to spiritual purposes. In the latter case the original melodies were also retained. Popular forms and melodies for sacred songs were now secured, and these were subsequently appropriated by the Reformers of the 16th century.
§ 115.8. Church Music (§ [104, 11]).—Great improvements were made in organs by the invention of pedals, etc. Church music was also greatly developed by the introduction of harmony and counterpoint. The Dutch were pre-eminent in this department. Ockenheim, founder of the second Dutch school of music, at the end of the 15th century, was the inventor of the canon and the fugue. The greatest composer of this school was Jodocus Pratensis, about A.D. 1500, and next to him may be named the German, Adam of Fulda.
§ 115.9. Legendary Relics.—The legend of angels having transferred the house of Mary from Nazareth, in A.D. 1291, to Tersato in Dalmatia, in A.D. 1294 to Reccanati, and finally, in A.D. 1295, to Loretto in Ancona, arose in the 14th century, in connection with the fall of Acre (§ [94, 6]) and the overthrow of the last remnants of the kingdom of Jerusalem. When and how the legend arose of the Scala santa at Rome being the marble steps of Pilate’s prætorium, brought there by St. Helena, is unknown.—Even Frederick the Wise, at an enormous cost, brought together 1,010 sacred relics into his new chapel at Wittenberg, a mere look at which secured indulgence for 100 years. In a catalogue of relics in the churches of St. Maurice and Mary Magdalene at Halle, published in A D. 1520, are mentioned a piece of earth, from a field of Damascus, of which God made the first man; a piece from a field at Hebron, where Adam repented; a piece of the body of Isaac; twenty-five fragments of the burning bush of Horeb; specimens of the wilderness manna; six drops of the Virgin’s milk; the finger of the Baptist that pointed to the Lamb of God; the finger of Thomas that touched the wounds of Jesus; a bit of the altar at which John read mass for the Virgin; the stone with which Stephen was killed; a great piece of Paul’s skull; the hose of St. Thomas of Canterbury; the baret of St. Francis, etc. The collection consisted of 8,933 articles, and could afford indulgence for 39,245,100 years and 220 days! Benefit was to be had by contributions to the church, which went into the pocket of the elector-archbishop, Albert of Mainz. The craze for pilgrimages was also rife among all classes, old and young, high and low. Signs and wonders and newly discovered relics were regarded as consecrating new places of pilgrimage, and the stories of pilgrims raised the fame of these resorts more and more. In A.D. 1500 Düren, by the possession of a relic of Ann, stolen from Mainz, rapidly rose to first rank. The people of Mainz sought through the pope to recover this valuable property, but he decided in favour of Düren, because God had meanwhile sanctioned the transfer by working many miracles of healing.
§ 115b. National Literature and Ecclesiastical Art.
Toward the close of the 13th century, and throughout the 14th, a national literature, in prose and poetry, sprang up in Italy, which in several respects has close relations to the history of the church. The three Florentines, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, boldly burst through the barriers of traditional usage, which had made Latin the only vehicle for literature and science, and became the creators of a beautiful Italian style; while their example powerfully influenced their own countrymen, and those of other western nations, during the immediately succeeding ages. The exclusive use of the Latin language had produced a uniform hierarchical spirit, and was a restraint to the anti-hierarchical movements of the age after independent national development in church and State. The breaking down of this barrier to progress was an important step. But all the three great men of letters whom we have named were also highly distinguished for their classical culture. They introduced the study of the ancient classics, and were thus the precursors of the humanists. They also presented a united front against the corruptions of the church, against hierarchical pretensions, the greed and moral debasement of the papacy, as well as against the moral and intellectual degradation of the clergy and the monks. Petrarch and Boccaccio too warred against the depraved scholasticism. The Augustan age of German national poetry was contemporary with the age of the Hohenstaufens. It consisted in popular songs, these often of a sacred character. During the 14th century the sacred drama reached the highest point of its development, especially in Germany, England, France, and Spain. The spirit of the Renaissance, which during the 15th century dominated Italian art, made itself felt also in the domain of ecclesiastical architecture and painting.
§ 115.10. The Italian National Literature.[342]—Dante Alighieri, born at Florence in A.D. 1265, was in A.D. 1302 banished as a Ghibelline from his native city, and died an exile at Ravenna, in A.D. 1321. His boyish love for Beatrice, which after her early death continued to fill his soul to the end of his life, gave him an impulse to a “New Life,” and proved the unfailing source of his poetic inspiration. His studies at Bologna, Padua, and Paris made him an enthusiastic admirer of Thomas, but alongside of his scholastic culture there lay the quick perception of the beautiful, combined with a lively imagination. He was thus able to deal with the burning questions of his day in one of the greatest poetic masterpieces of any age, people, or tongue. His Divina Commedia describes a vision in which the poet is led, first by the hand of Virgil, as the representative of human wisdom, through Hell and Purgatory, then by Beatrice, whose place at times is taken by the German Matilda (§ [107, 2]), and finally by St. Bernard, as representatives of revealed religion, through Paradise and the several heavens up to the empyræum, the eternal residence of the triune God. The poet presents his readers with a description of what he saw, and reports his conversations with his guides and the souls of more important personages, most of them shortly before deceased, in which the problems of philosophy, theology, and politics are discussed. His political views, of which he treats ex professo in the three books of his De monarchia, are derived from Aquinas’ theory of the State, but breathe a strong Italian Ghibelline patriotism, so that he places not only Boniface VIII. but also Frederick II. in Hell. In the struggle between the empire and the papacy he stands decidedly on the side of the former.With profound sorrow he bewails the corruption of the church in its head and members, but holds firmly by its confession of faith. And while lashing vigorously the corruptions of monkery, he eulogizes the heavenliness of the lives of Francis and Dominic.[343] Petrarch, who died in A.D. 1374, broke away completely from scholasticism, and turned with enthusiasm to classical studies.He combated superstition, e.g. astrology, but also contends against the unbelief of his age, and in his letters and poems lashes with merciless severity the immorality of the papacy and the secularization of the church.[344] In Boccaccio again, who died in A.D. 1375, antipathy to scholasticism, monkery, and the hierarchy had reached its utmost stage. He has no anger and denunciation, but only contempt, reproach, and wit to shoot against them. He also makes light of the moral requirements of Christianity and the church, especially the seventh commandment. But in later years he manifested deep penitence for the lascivious writing of his youth, to which he had given reckless and shameless expression in his “Decameron.”
§ 115.11. The German National Literature.—The German prose style was greatly ennobled by the mystics (§ [114]), and the highest development of German satire against the hierarchy, clergy, and monks was reached by Sebastian Brant, of Strassburg, who wrote in A.D. 1494 his “Ship of Fools.”Among popular preachers John Tauler held the first rank (§ [114, 2]). In Strassburg, Geiler of Kaisersberg distinguished himself as an original preacher. His sermons were full of biting wit, keen sarcasm, and humorous expressions, but also of profound earnestness and withering exposures of the sins of the clergy and monks. His best known work is a series of sermons on Brant’s “Ship of Fools,” published in A.D. 1498.
§ 115.12. The Sacred Drama (§ [105, 5]).—The poetic merit of most of the German mysteries performed at high festivals is not great. The Laments of Mary however often rose to true poetic heights. Comedy and burlesque too found place especially in connection with Judas, or the exchangers, or the unconverted Magdalene. A priest, Theodoric Schernberg, wrote a play on the fall and repentance of the popess Johanna (§ [82, 6]). On Shrove Tuesday plays were performed, in which the clergy and monks were held up to ridicule. Hans Roseuplüt of Nuremberg, about A.D. 1450, was the most famous writer of German Shrovetide plays. In France, about the end of the 14th century, a society of young people of the upper rank was formed, called Enfans sans souci, whose Sotties, buffooneries, in which the church was ridiculed, were in high repute in the cities and at the court. Their most distinguished poet was Pierre Gringoire, who, in the beginning of the 16th century, in the French Chasse du Cerf des Cerfs, parodied the Servus servorum (§ [46, 10]), and the church is represented as the old befooled mother. The numerous Italian mysteries were produced mainly by the gifted and cultured sons of Tuscany, who had already developed their native tongue into a beautiful and flexible language. In Spain, during the 15th century, the Autos, partly as Christmas plays and partly as sacramental or passion plays, were based on the ancient mysteries, and in form inclined more to the allegorical moralities.