Innocent did more to encourage the idea of international arbitration than anyone up to his time. During his period more than once he was the arbitrator to whom rival national claims that might have led to war were referred. Probably his greatest claim on our admiration in the modern time is his attitude toward the Jews. In this he is centuries ahead of his time and, indeed, the policy that he laid down is far ahead of what is accorded to them by many of the nations even at the present time, and it must not be forgotten that it is only during the past hundred years that the Jew has come to have any real privileges comparable to those accorded to other men. At a time when the Jew had no real rights in law, Innocent insisted on according them all the rights of men. His famous edict in this regard is well known. "Let no Christian by violence compel them to come dissenting or unwilling to Baptism. Further let no Christian venture maliciously to harm their persons without a judgment of the civil power, to carry off their property or change their good customs which they have had hitherto in that district which they inhabit." When, in addition to all this, it is recalled that he was a distinguished scholar and graduate of the University of Paris, looked up to as one of the intellectual geniuses of the time, the author of a treatise "On the Contempt of the World" at a time when the kings of the earth were obeying him, known for his personal piety and for his thorough regulation of his own household, something of the greatness of the man will be appreciated. No wonder that historians who have taken up the special study of his career have always been won over to deep personal admiration of him, and though many of them began prejudiced in his regard, practically all of them were converted to be his sincere admirers.
XIII. INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.
During the Peace Conference in New York in 1908 I was on the programme with Mr. William T. Stead of London, the editor of the English Review of Reviews, who was very much interested in the volume on the Thirteenth Century, and who suggested that one chapter in the book should have been devoted to the consideration of what was accomplished for peace and for International Arbitration during this century. There is no doubt that there developed, as the result of many Papal decrees, a greater tendency than has existed ever before or since, to refer quarrels between nations that would ordinarily end in war to decision by some selected umpire. Usually the Pope, as the head of the Christian Church, to which all the nations of the civilized world belonged, was selected as the arbitrator. This international arbitration, strengthened by the decrees of Pope Innocent III., Pope Honorius III. and Pope Alexander III., developed in a way that is well worth while studying, and that has deservedly been the subject of careful investigation since the present [{447}] peace movement began. Certainly the outlook for the securing of peace by international arbitration was better at this time than it has been at any time since. What a striking example, for instance, is the choice of King Louis of France as the umpire in the dispute between the Barons and the King of England, which might have led to war. Louis' position with regard to the Empire and the Papacy was to a great extent that of a pacificator, and his influence for peace was felt everywhere throughout Europe. The spirit of the century was all for arbitration and the adjudication of intranational as well as international difficulties by peaceful means.
XIV. BIBLE REVISION.
Most people will be quite sure that at least the question of Bible revision with critical study of text and comparative investigation of sources was reserved for our time. The two orders of friars founded in the early part of the Thirteenth Century, however, devoted themselves to the task of supplying to the people a thoroughly reliable edition of the Scriptures. The first systematic revision was made by the Dominicans about 1236. After twenty years this revision was set aside as containing too many errors, and another Dominican correction replaced it. Then came that great scholar, Hugh of St. Cher, known later as the Cardinal of Santa Sabina, the author of the first great Biblical Concordance. His Bible studies did much to clarify obscurities in the text. Sometime about 1240 he organized a commission of friars for the revision of what was known as the Paris Exemplar, the Bible text that was most in favor at that time. The aim of Hugh of St. Cher was to establish the old Vulgate of St. Jerome, the text which received this name during this century, but with such revision as would make this version correspond as nearly as possible to the Hebrew and the Greek.
This activity on the part of the Dominicans was rivaled by the Franciscans. We might not expect to find the great scientist, Roger Bacon, as a Biblical scholar and reviser, but such he was, working with Willermus de Mara, to whom, according to Father Denifle, late the Librarian of the Vatican Library, must be attributed the title given him by Roger Bacon of Sapientissimus Vir. The Dominicans under the leadership of Hugh of St. Cher with high ideals had hoped to achieve a perfect primitive text. The version made by de Mara, however, with the approval and advice of Bacon, was only meant to bring out St. Jerome's text as perfectly as possible. These two revisions made in the Thirteenth Century are typical of all the efforts that men have made since in that same direction. Contrary to usual present day impressions, they are characterized by critical scholarship, and probably represent as great a contribution to Biblical lore as was made by any other century.
XV. FICTION OF THE CENTURY.
Ordinarily it would be presumed that life was taken entirely too seriously during the Thirteenth Century for the generation to pay much attention to fiction. In a certain sense this is true. In the sense, however, that they had no stories worthy of the great literature in other departments it would be quite untrue. There is a naiveté about their story telling that rather amuses our sophisticated age, yet all the elements of our modern fiction are to be found in the stories that were popular during the century, and arranged with a dramatic effect that must have given them a wide appeal.