The tournament was, as might be imagined, the most popular of the diversions of the Middle Ages. From far and near multitudes flocked to the scene of martial skill and splendor. The town where it was held presented the aspect of an immense fair. For leagues around the country was dotted with tents, and with pavilions surmounted by the pennons of the chivalry of many lands. The retinues of prince and noble not infrequently assumed the dimensions of an army. The followers of Gottfried, Duke von Löwen, at Trazignies in 1169 numbered three thousand. At a tournament near Soissons in 1175, Count Baldwin von Hennegau appeared with an escort of a hundred knights and twelve hundred esquires. The blazons of the most ancient and celebrated houses of Europe were conspicuous in the vast encampment. Kings frequently held their courts within its precincts. All classes were in holiday garb. The magnificence of the spectacle was enhanced by gorgeously caparisoned horses, damascened harnesses, waving plumes, many colored silks, sparkling jewels, the parade of men-at-arms, the pomp of marching squadrons, the resplendent charms of female beauty. The contest, repeatedly, but without effect, prohibited by the edicts of Pope and Council, was conducted with all the ferocity of battle. The thirst of blood predominated over every other sentiment. It was not an unusual occurrences for scores of knights to be carried lifeless from the lists after one of these fierce encounters.
The point of honor which inspired the conduct of the mediæval champion of distressed innocence and avenger of privileged oppression had no existence among the most civilized races of antiquity. The individuality implied by its exercise could not be comprehended by communities whose members, while capable of renouncing every tie of kindred in behalf of the interests of the state and of undergoing the most severe privations to sustain the national supremacy, were prevented by the peculiar circumstances of their surroundings from appreciating the qualities which ennobled even the vices of the knight of the Middle Ages. Without this prominent and compensating feature the condition of society during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries would have been one of unredeemed and unequivocal barbarism.
The coarse though abundant fare of the castle board, the more delicate but still far from dainty viands of the monastic refectory, the boisterous amusements which occupied the leisure and menaced the safety of the participants, the drunken revels of gluttonous banquets, the incessant perils of domestic warfare, to which baron and monk were alike exposed, were suggestive of absolute happiness and luxury when contrasted with the conditions under which was sustained the miserable existence of the serf. His habitation was shared by beasts of burden, the companions of his daily and nightly toil. Composed of unhewn logs or of sticks wattled with rushes, thatched with straw and plastered with mud, its primitive and defective construction afforded little security against the vicissitudes of the climate or the inclemency of the seasons. Through a hole in the centre of the roof the smoke emerged and the storm descended; the walls were blackened with soot; the earthen floor was covered with a trampled litter of hay, mingled with bones and the decaying fragments of many a repast which the occupants had never taken the trouble to remove. Of furniture there was almost none; a bench, perhaps, and a table of unsmoothed planks answered the simple requirements of the hapless villain. He reposed upon a heap of straw with a block of wood for a pillow; the few culinary utensils he possessed were of the rudest description, and had been fashioned by the hand of the owner. No provision was made for the decencies of life or the safeguards of virtue, which were indeed unknown; the family occupied a common apartment, and often a single bed, while the grunting of swine and the lowing of oxen, which animals ranged at will through the dwelling, were sounds too familiar to disturb the slumbers of the drowsy household. The accumulated filth of years, combined with indescribable personal neglect and revolting customs, attracted and multiplied swarming multitudes of every species of vermin. The garments of the peasant, usually of skins, descended uncleansed and unchanged from father to son through many generations, bearing in their contaminated folds the germs of pestilence and death. Where the circumstances of the serf were not sufficiently prosperous to afford even this protection against the weather, his shivering limbs were wrapped with ropes of straw. His head was uncovered, often even in the depth of winter. The most obvious precautions of hygiene were neglected; the simplest precepts of medical science had not yet penetrated to the isolated communities of Western Europe or were sedulously discountenanced by the interests of superstition; and the plague, assisted by favorable climatic conditions, as well as by the physical debasement and the fears of the people, at each visitation numbered its victims by myriads. With game in every grove and fish in every stream, the famishing peasant was often reduced to appease his hunger with unwholesome roots and bark when the meal of chestnuts and acorns, his most luxurious fare, was wanting. The severity of the forest laws visited upon the poacher, even when impelled by the pangs of starvation to trespass on the seignioral demesnes, the most barbarous of punishments. Around the monastery and the castle were visible the signs of unskilled and reluctant cultivation; but not far away was a wilderness diversified with vast forests, majestic rivers, and pestilential marshes. Intercommunication was irregular and limited to populous districts; many villages of no inconsiderable dimensions were as completely separated from the outside world as if they stood on islands in the midst of the ocean. Barter of commodities necessarily prevailed in the almost entire absence of money; there was no opportunity for the establishment of trade; no incitement to agricultural industry; no work for the artisan. The accumulation of property was effectually discouraged through the incapacity of the laborer to retain or enjoy it when his hopes were constantly frustrated by the insinuating artifices of the priest or the significant threats of the noble. The extortions of the inexorable tax-receiver, the inhumanity of licensed hirelings, the enormities countenanced by baronial tyranny, carried dismay into every hamlet. Epidemics appeared without warning, and spread with mysterious and appalling rapidity; the death-rate was frightful; fatal symptoms developed almost with the first attack, while in the ignorance of rational treatment the application of relics and the mummeries of the clergy proved signally ineffectual to avert what was considered the vengeance of Heaven.
Confined in the lazar-house with hundreds of his fellow-sufferers or banished to a lonely hut, far from the haunts of men, the hapless leper dragged out his melancholy existence in pain, in disgrace, in penury. The law declared him civilly dead. With a ceremony not less solemn than that performed over the remains of a Christian actually deceased, the priest announced his final separation from the society of mankind. His body was enveloped in a shroud. He was laid upon a bier. With the repetition of the legal formula which consigned him to a life of odium and sorrow, a few garments and necessary utensils were placed in his hands. He was forbidden to eat with any person but a leper; to wash his hands in running water; to give away any object he had touched; to frequent places of public resort; even to enter the house of a relative or a friend. With his shoulders covered with a tattered scarlet mantle,—a danger-signal, visible from afar,—hideous to the sight, emaciated to a skeleton, and horribly scarred with disease, he crouched by the wayside, sounding his rattle to arouse the compassion and solicit the charity of the passer-by. Deprived of civil rights and debarred from invoking the protection of the law, he was, however, not wholly an outcast, for with the exclusion from these privileges he became the ward and vassal of the Church. So loathed and dreaded was his malady—often considered a divine penalty for crime or sacrilege—that no physician could be induced to employ the scanty medical science of the day for the alleviation of his sufferings; and, even if wealthy, he was abandoned to the suspicious ministrations of wizards, barbers, and charlatans. Shunned as accursed and repulsive during his lifetime, when dead he was unceremoniously buried under the floor of his hovel.
The segregation of lepers in the Middle Ages, as a measure of public safety, was productive of singular results in subsequent times. The disease, which at different periods seems to have been both infectious and contagious, gradually disappeared. But the prejudice attaching to the posterity of the unfortunate outcasts, formerly cut off from all intercourse with their fellow-men, and who formed isolated communities, still remained. The origin of that prejudice was completely forgotten. The people in their ignorance attributed the cause of their enmity to religious differences. It was believed that the objects of their unreasoning aversion were variously sprung from the Goths, the Jews, the Saracens, the Albigenses. Modern research, however, has definitely established the fact that the former pariahs of Southwestern Europe, known in Languedoc and Gascony as Capots and Gahets, in Brittany as Cacous, in the Pyrenees as Cagots, in Spain as Agotes, were the descendants of mediæval lepers. A century has hardly elapsed since these victims of popular antipathy have been divested of that suspicion of uncleanness which was their ancient and unhappy heritage.
In the disorganized state of society which everywhere prevailed, facilities for the profitable and friendly intercourse which promote the intelligence and contribute to the temporal welfare of nations could not exist. Even in provinces of the same country the professional robber and the bandit noble united to imperil the life and seize the merchandise of the trader. The courses of the old Roman highways, unused for centuries, concealed by rubbish and sometimes overgrown with forests, had been utterly lost. There was no provision made by the state for the protection of commerce, and the universal insecurity discouraged the schemes of private enterprise. The mortality resulting from habitual violation of the most obvious sanitary laws, from the use of insufficient and innutritious food, from the hardships of incessant toil, and from daily exposure to the elements, effectually retarded the increase of population. That district was fortunate indeed where even a uniform standard was preserved. In many localities in kingdoms where modern civilization has achieved her most signal triumphs, a solitary shepherd pasturing his flock, or a tottering hovel standing in the centre of a dismal waste, alone proclaimed the presence of man.
The condition of the towns, where an improvement in the manner of living might reasonably have been expected, was in but few respects superior to that of the scattered villages and isolated settlements of the country. Even the main thoroughfares were narrow, tortuous, and dirty. Without drainage or adequate municipal supervision, they were receptacles for the refuse of the household and the offensive carcasses of dead and decaying animals. Even as late as the reign of Francis I., the hogs belonging to the monks of St. Anthony, who asserted and exercised special privileges for the animals sacred to their patron, wandered at will through the fashionable quarters of the metropolitan city of Paris. From the overhanging balconies filthy slops were dashed, without warning, upon the head of the unwary passer-by. By night, daring criminals, secure from the risk of punishment, plied their lawless calling in these dismal and unlighted lanes. He who ventured, unattended, to thread the maze of alleys that wound through even the most frequented quarters of great cities did so at peril of his life. Each corner formed a convenient lair for the lurking assassin. The projecting gables of the houses aided in obscuring the gloomy footways. As the citizen stood in constant fear of robbers, his dwelling was always barred and silent. No light was visible anywhere save the flickering gleam in the lantern carried by the trembling pedestrian, always on his guard against some prowling assailant. Sometimes the mud was so deep that locomotion was impossible for the bearers of sedans, and women were carried from place to place upon the backs of porters, as the narrow and crooked streets precluded the use of vehicles drawn by horses. In the habitations of even those considered wealthy, a general air of discomfort was prevalent. The apartments were dark, ill-ventilated, and unclean. In the windows plates of horn and sheets of oiled paper supplied the place of glass, which was practically unknown. No carpet covered the floors, which were strewn with rushes. The foul surroundings assisted materially in the propagation of fevers and the spread of contagion. Provision for frequent ablution, so conducive to personal comfort as well as to immunity from disease, was unheard of. In many of the most populous capitals of Europe not a single public bath could be found. The attire of the prosperous burgher and merchant was prescribed by sumptuary laws dictated by the jealous spirit of the aristocracy, who could not tolerate a display of plebeian splendor to which their own resources were unable to attain. Their garments were limited to coarse woollen stuffs, whose cut and fashion were regulated according to the capricious decisions of the court. The use of golden ornaments and jewels, so indispensable to the gratification of female vanity, was prohibited to the wives and daughters of their households, who were also restricted to a sombre and unattractive garb. In some instances this contemptible exercise of authority went still further. It dictated the quantity and quality of the food and the beverages to be consumed at the table of the citizen, the description and the price of the light which illumined his home and of the fuel that warmed him. If he had anything to sell, he was paid by his superiors in the product of a debased coinage or with counterfeit money, whose manufacture was everywhere prosecuted with comparative impunity.
Drunkenness was so prevalent in England during the reign of Edgar that restrictions were placed upon the quantity of liquor to be consumed,—the amount allowed each guest being indicated by a mark on the side of the cup or the drinking-horn. The observance of these tyrannical and senseless ordinances was secured by a harassing system of espionage and informers, and their violation was punished by ruinous fines and by condemnation to the stocks or the pillory. The publication and enforcement of sumptuary laws necessarily prevented the development of commerce, already greatly retarded by the prevalent barbarism and poverty of the age. Countries enjoying unlimited natural resources of soil, minerals, timber, and water-power, and whose noble streams only required a portion of the energy and enterprise of man to bring the fertile regions they traversed into intimate contact with the humanizing influences and exquisite products of the highest civilization, were as backward as the savage kingdoms of central Africa are to-day.
A good index of the force of the bigoted prejudice and public intolerance of the time is discernible in the treatment universally received by the Jew. He was the financier, the physician, the merchant, the broker, the scholar of the Middle Ages. He managed with eminent success the fiscal departments of vast empires and kingdoms. In the great catastrophes which overwhelmed entire nations,—amidst the want and despair occasioned by earthquakes, wars, famine, pestilence,—his shrewdness and his resources always afforded relief to the suffering induced by the prevalent evils, although it must be confessed rarely without exorbitant compensation. His medical talents and surgical skill brought him under the ban of the clergy as a dealer in magic; but neither the statutes of Parliament nor the anathemas of priests could deprive him of the protection and friendship of orthodox monarchs, or of even the Sovereign Pontiff himself. True to the adventurous and acquisitive character of his race, he introduced the knowledge and use of foreign commodities in lands rarely trodden by the foot of the stranger, defying the storms of sea and ocean, braving alike the unprincipled rapacity of the noble, the violence of the highwayman, the perils of remote and unexplored solitudes. In maritime cities he established depôts for the importation and exchange of every description of merchandise. His credit and his tact enabled him to negotiate loans for improvident princes, which, more than once, saved distressed nations from bankruptcy. Amidst the multifarious variety of his occupations, he found time for the recreation derived from the pursuits of literature. In this sphere, as in all others to which he devoted his talents, he attained to the highest distinction. In philosophy, in astronomy, in chemistry, in mathematics, his opinions were regarded by his contemporaries with the reverence attaching to oracles. His poetry and his eloquence delighted such courts as those of Cordova and Bagdad; his erudition instructed and his genius illumined schools like those of Salerno, Montpellier, and Narbonne.
How then did society reward such inestimable benefits? Alas! for the credit of humanity, it must be confessed that the intolerance fostered by centuries of hatred obliterated every generous impulse, every sentiment of gratitude. The remembrance of the decision of the Sanhedrim, the story of the sacrifice on Calvary, extinguished in the minds of the fanatical populace the sense of any subsequent obligation. The anniversary of that tremendous event was the signal for insult and outrage. The most heinous accusations, many of them extravagant and improbable in their very nature, were brought by popular clamor, instigated by ecclesiastical malice, against the defenceless Hebrew. His commercial relations with the East had introduced the leprosy. The plague was caused by poison which he had thrown into the wells. The meat he sold was sometimes whispered to be human flesh; and the milk he dealt in not yielded by the cow, but drawn from the breasts of the females of his household. He kidnapped children, whose blood he made use of in the concoction of magical potions. On Good Friday, aided by his kinsmen, he re-enacted the tragedy of Golgotha, the victim being a Christian youth who played, perforce, the rôle of the Saviour, and who, with unavailing struggles and lamentations, endured the humiliation and agony of the Crucifixion. Kings, merely by proclamation, appropriated the Jews of their realms as the absolute property of the crown. Then, by virtue of this arbitrary proceeding, they confiscated the possessions of these victims of royal avarice, under pretence of fines or ransom. Under these significant circumstances it requires no extraordinary degree of discernment to perceive that the wealth of the Jews was the principal cause of their persecution. By their talents and industry they had reached the highest posts in the learned professions; had monopolized the trade; had controlled, to a greater or less extent, the policy of every government in Christendom. Under Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnair their condition was more prosperous than under succeeding monarchs for eight hundred years. In every walk of life they received the consideration merited by their commanding abilities. Their influence was unrivalled. They maintained royal state. Great concessions were made to their convenience and religious prejudices. Their prosperity excited the envy of the rabble. Their influence with the monarch enraged the courtiers. The clergy, whose profits were reduced by their enterprise and whose monopolies they antagonized by their insinuating arts, regarded them with the double hatred engendered by imperilled temporal interests and ferocious bigotry. Among every class and rank their superior intelligence was believed to be due to sacrilegious bargains with the powers of darkness. The prejudice attaching to their name and religion always afforded a specious pretext for persecution. In every Christian kingdom they were the objects of popular execration. They were unceremoniously robbed by the government. They were banished without notice. Their debtors were encouraged to repudiate contracts made with them. The officials of the Inquisition took exquisite pleasure in burning Hebrews, always selecting the most wealthy for its victims. Of the one hundred and sixty thousand persons burnt or disciplined during the twenty-eight years comprising the administrations of Torquemada and Ximenes as Inquisitors-General, the majority were of that unfortunate race. The cause of a Jew was prejudged before every tribunal, and it was often difficult for him to obtain a hearing, and still more to secure the protection to which he was legally entitled. Under such intolerable oppression it is not strange that he should, by the adoption of unprincipled methods and by the exaction of enormous usury, have endeavored to compensate himself, in some degree, for the degradation and hardships he was compelled to undergo. This course, however, only intensified the popular hatred until the term Jew was considered the epitome of all dishonor, deceit, and unprincipled villany. These discreditable prejudices, dictated by general ignorance and by the sacerdotal malice of the Middle Ages, are still, it is well known, far from being eradicated even by the superior understanding and liberal opinions of the twentieth century.