86. This is surely a fact to be taken much to heart by our present communities of Liverpool and Manchester. They probably suppose, in their modesty, that lords and clergymen are the proper judges of art, and merchants can only, in the modern phrase, 'know what they like,' or follow humbly the guidance of their golden-crested or flat-capped superiors. But in the great ages of art, neither knight nor pope shows signs of true power of criticism. The artists crouch before them, or quarrel with them, according to their own tempers. To the merchants they submit silently, as to just and capable judges. And look what men these are, who submit. Donatello, Ghiberti, Quercia, Luca! If men like these submit to the merchant, who shall rebel?
87. But the still franker, and surer, judgment of innocent pleasure was awarded them by all classes alike: and the interest of the public was the final rule of right,—that public being always eager to see, and earnest to learn. For the stories told by their artists formed, they fully believed, a Book of Life; and every man of real genius took up his function of illustrating the scheme of human morality and salvation, as naturally, and faithfully, as an English mother of to-day giving her children their first lessons in the Bible. In this endeavour to teach they almost unawares taught themselves; the question "How shall I represent this most clearly?" became to themselves, presently, "How was this most likely to have happened?" and habits of fresh and accurate thought thus quickly enlivened the formalities of the Greek pictorial theology; formalities themselves beneficent, because restraining by their severity and mystery the wantonness of the newer life. Foolish modern critics have seen nothing in the Byzantine school but a barbarism to be conquered and forgotten. But that school brought to the art-scholars of the thirteenth century, laws which had been serviceable to Phidias, and symbols which had been beautiful to Homer: and methods and habits of pictorial scholarship which gave a refinement of manner to the work of the simplest craftsman, and became an education to the higher artists which no discipline of literature can now bestow, developed themselves in the effort to decipher, and the impulse to re-interpret, the Eleusinian divinity of Byzantine tradition.
88. The words I have just used, "pictorial scholarship," and "pictorial theology," remind me how strange it must appear to you that in this sketch of the intellectual state of Italy in the thirteenth century I have taken no note of literature itself, nor of the fine art of Music with which it was associated in minstrelsy. The corruption of the meaning of the word "clerk," from "a chosen person" to "a learned one," partly indicates the position of literature in the war between the golden crest and scarlet cap; but in the higher ranks, literature and music became the grace of the noble's life, or the occupation of the monk's, without forming any separate class, or exercising any materially visible political power. Masons or butchers might establish a government,—but never troubadours: and though a good knight held his education to be imperfect unless he could write a sonnet and sing it, he did not esteem his castle to be at the mercy of the "editor" of a manuscript. He might indeed owe his life to the fidelity of a minstrel, or be guided in his policy by the wit of a clown; but he was not the slave of sensual music, or vulgar literature, and never allowed his Saturday reviewer to appear at table without the cock's comb.
89. On the other hand, what was noblest in thought or saying was in those times as little attended to as it is now. I do not feel sure that, even in after times, the poem of Dante has had any political effect on Italy; but at all events, in his life, even at Verona, where he was treated most kindly, he had not half so much influence with Can Grande as the rough Count of Castelbarco, not one of whose words was ever written, or now remains; and whose portrait, by no means that of a man of literary genius, almost disfigures, by its plainness, the otherwise grave and perfect beauty of his tomb.
LECTURE IV. PARTED PER PALE.
90. The chart of Italian intellect and policy which I have endeavoured to put into form in the last three lectures, may, I hope, have given you a clear idea of the subordinate, yet partly antagonistic, position which the artist, or merchant,—whom in my present lecture I shall class together,—occupied, with respect to the noble and priest. As an honest labourer, he was opposed to the violence of pillage, and to the folly of pride: as an honest thinker, he was likely to discover any latent absurdity in the stories he had to represent in their nearest likelihood; and to be himself moved strongly by the true meaning of events which he was striving to make ocularly manifest. The painter terrified himself with his own fiends, and reproved or comforted himself by the lips of his own saints, far more profoundly than any verbal preacher; and thus, whether as craftsman or inventor, was likely to be foremost in defending the laws of his city, or directing its reformation.
91. The contest of the craftsman with the pillaging soldier is typically represented by the war of the Lombard League with Frederick II.; and that of the craftsman with the hypocritical priest, by the war of the Pisans with Gregory IX. (1241). But in the present lecture I wish only to fix your attention on the revolutions in Florence, which indicated, thus early, the already established ascendancy of the moral forces which were to put an end to open robber-soldiership; and at least to compel the assertion of some higher principle in war, if not, as in some distant day may be possible, the cessation of war itself.
The most important of these revolutions was virtually that of which I before spoke to you, taking place in mid-thirteenth century, in the year l250,—a very memorable one for Christendom, and the very crisis of vital change in its methods of economy, and conceptions of art.