The universal distress which afflicted the peasantry, as well as the poorer classes of the cities, is revealed by the inhumanity with which they were accustomed to treat their offspring. Robbed and oppressed by both priest and baron, and barely able to eke out a miserable existence by themselves, they regarded the birth of an infant as a domestic calamity. Parents deliberately abandoned their children in unfrequented places to perish by starvation or to be torn to pieces by birds of prey. Many were drowned like puppies. Some were buried alive. Others were deposited at the doors of churches and convents, where they were often killed by dogs. The extent of the evil, as well as the prevalent immorality existing in a single country, may be inferred from the fact that the Hospital of Santa Cruz, founded by Cardinal Mendoza of Spain in the sixteenth century, received and sheltered during twenty years more than thirteen thousand foundlings.
The great epidemics that from time to time raged throughout Europe afford glimpses of the life and character of the people not readily obtained from other sources. Medical science recognizes to-day that the principal causes of such visitations are private uncleanness and the accumulation of filth in public places. During the Middle Ages, the regulations of sanitary police were wholly unknown. On every side heaps of garbage and putrefying offal met the eye and offended the nostrils. The necessity for the thorough ventilation and drainage of dwellings was unsuspected. The prejudice against bathing, which universally existed, was partly due to the example of the clergy, who were not supposed to have time to spare from their sacred duties to care for their persons, and partly due to contempt for the Mohammedans, whose lustrations were a peremptory religious duty. As Christianity spread, the practice of ablution gradually declined. The Roman thermæ, one of the wonders of the capital, were at first abandoned and afterwards utilized as quarries for the palace and the cathedral. A general idea prevailed that the ceremony of baptism removed all necessity for the subsequent application of water to the body. Filth became a test of devotion, and, following the example of their spiritual guides, the multitude came finally, by the natural law of association, to regard the unsavory manifestations of personal neglect as prima-facie evidence of Christian orthodoxy. Thus, sanctioned by public opinion and confirmed by ecclesiastical authority, a stigma was placed upon cleanliness, and a premium offered for corporeal foulness and offensive surroundings. Those who violated the established custom were in danger of being denounced as heretics. It was one of the most serious accusations against the Emperor Frederick II. that he was addicted to the frequent use of the bath. Among the upper classes of society, the unpleasant consequences of untidy habits were in a measure neutralized by the excessive use of strong perfumes, such as musk, civet, and ambergris. Among the lower orders many of the physical conditions of life were indescribable. In the vicinity of towns, as well as of isolated habitations, equal negligence of the laws of health prevailed. From the moat, with its stagnant waters reeking with the refuse of the castle, to the vast marshes, with their exhalations poisoning the air around the hut of the shepherd, the atmosphere was charged with the miasma of death. When to the effects of such surroundings were added the depressing influences of contagion and terror, the results were appalling. The plague of the sixth century, whose course raged unchecked from the Bosphorus to the Atlantic, desolated entire countries; the Black Death of the fourteenth carried off seventy-five million persons, one-half the inhabitants of Christendom. So favorable to the spread of the pestilence were the climatic conditions of the country and the personal habits of the people of England that the majority of them perished in a few months by a single visitation of this dreadful epidemic. It so diminished the population that the pursuits of mechanical industry were seriously and permanently affected. Wages became higher than ever before, and legislation concerning the vexed question of the mutual rights of employer and employed was inaugurated, a question which has not been settled to the present day. The vicinity of the dying and the dead carried with it almost certain infection. Even the extraordinary brilliancy of the eyes of patients suffering from delirium was supposed, in conformity with the prevailing superstition, to convey a malignant and fatal influence upon all within the range of their glances. The air was so tainted that domestic animals, cattle, horses, sheep, even the birds, died by hundreds of strange and fatal distempers. The mortality was so great in some districts that the helpless convalescents were unable to perform the burial rites for their friends and neighbors. Ships encumbered with the corpses of their crews drifted about in the ocean without sailor or helmsman. Men became insane through fright, and thousands committed suicide. The wealthy flocked to the churches and poured their gold upon the altars; but for once ecclesiastical avarice was forgotten, and the timid priests, through dread of the scourge, often refused the proffered treasure. As a result of the universal consternation inspired by the calamity, negligent and hasty interment was, in many instances, responsible for the rapid propagation of the pestilence. Multitudes of corpses, covered only with a thin layer of earth, were placed in shallow trenches. Others were cast into the rivers, to be in time lodged against their banks, fresh sources of contagion and death. Through all these scenes of physical and mental agony no scientific medical aid was available. The few skilled Jewish practitioners, who, graduates of the schools of the Moslem, had ventured into the dangerous precincts of Christian courts, were looked upon with suspicion as professors of sorcery and members of a proscribed and accursed race. In the South of France it was unlawful to consult them or to receive their prescriptions. No correct theories were entertained concerning the cause and prevention of disease, even by the intelligent and educated. The malady was attributed to the active intervention of the devil or his agents, and the sick were bound and brought, dozens at a time, to the Church as the most suitable place for exorcism, where, in general, their sufferings were speedily terminated by agony and neglect. There was no comfort for the terrified but the whispers of the confessional; no resource for the pest-stricken sufferer but the Host and the reliquary. Indeed, it was but natural that these should be appealed to for succor, for it had long been assiduously taught that Divine wrath was the immediate cause of all physical misfortune. The pestilence was now considered a tremendous judgment for the derelictions of mankind. The ravings of insanity and delirium were declared to be due to possession by demons, only to be relieved by bell, book, and candle, and all the manifold impostures of sacerdotal mummery. During the continuance of the plague the Church prospered amazingly, as she always does prosper by the woes and the misery of mankind. Her gains were far greater than during the Crusades. The zeal of the devout, the superstitious fear and remorse of the wicked, alike paid enormous tribute to her rapacity. Valuable estates were devised by dying penitents to her ministers. Sumptuous cathedrals were raised and endowed by the grateful piety of those who attributed their recovery to the intercession of her saints. Monasteries and chapels were founded by those whom her prayers were supposed to have rescued from the very jaws of death. The portable wealth of empires poured daily into her treasury. But all these sacrifices, all this generosity, all this religious display, afforded no perceptible relief. If they proved anything, they demonstrated effectually the worthlessness of cure by the resorting to shrines and the application of relics. The pestilence ceased its ravages on account of the want of material, not because its progress was stayed by priestly intercession. But while its violence abated and its characteristic symptoms disappeared, its effects remained, and it bequeathed a frightful legacy to posterity. Although respectable medical authority has contended for a different origin of the disease, there can be little doubt in the minds of those who have thoroughly familiarized themselves with the subject that syphilis is either the result of a recrudescent form of leprosy or of a modified morbid condition developed from the plague. Such is a portion of the foul inheritance for which the twentieth century is indebted to the ignorance, the filth, and the superstition of the Middle Ages.
Wretched as was the physical condition of the people of Europe, their moral state was even more deplorable. The revolting characteristics and manners of the clergy have already been considered in these pages. Under such instructors, whose admonitions were so palpably at variance with their unholy lives, it cannot be wondered at that society was permeated with treachery and hypocrisy. It is one of the most remarkable of mental phenomena that man should earnestly solicit the intercession of the members of a sacred profession with Heaven, while at the same time he demonstrates unequivocally by his actions that he has no respect for their calling and no faith in their prayers. Such was largely the case of the Roman Catholics of the Dark Ages. They lavished their wealth with unstinted profusion upon the Church. They greeted her ministers with servile tokens of respect and homage. They sought her advice in worldly affairs; they obeyed her oppressive edicts; they voluntarily relinquished their natural rights at her despotic bidding. But when opportunity offered, the insincerity of these professions became unmistakably evident. In the midst of the apparent blind and devoted subserviency to the principles of a debased religion, ancient Pagan ideas were constantly manifesting themselves. The worship of fairies, often scarcely concealed, was widespread throughout the Christian world. The knight placed far more confidence in his armor, consecrated by heathen ceremonies, than in the reliquary that was attached to his saddle-bow or the Agnus Dei suspended about his neck. The anxious housewife on the eve of a feast preferred to address her petitions to some popular and beneficent Pagan spirit, accustomed to good living and luxury, than to a female saint with whom abstinence was a duty, and whose life had been passed amidst the privations of the convent or the hermitage.
The death of a pope was hailed with indecorous joy in every quarter of Rome. The election of a new pontiff was the signal for disorder, riot, massacre. Yelling mobs filled the streets, singing impious and obscene songs. The most indecent actions were perpetrated in the face of open day. The papal palace was repeatedly sacked and its precious contents destroyed. The mansions of the cardinals and the nobility were plundered. It was not safe for these dignitaries to appear in public until the popular excitement had subsided, and the death of the spiritual sovereign of the Christian world was often concealed until his successor had been chosen, in order to prevent the scenes of anarchy certain to result if this precaution was not taken. So far from conceding divine attributes to the pontifical character, the Roman populace habitually and openly derided its pretensions to infallibility. It not infrequently interfered with the freedom of the conclave and, intimidating the cardinals, dictated the selection of a pope. If such was the disrespect manifested by the inhabitants of the papal capital towards the head of the Church, little courtesy could be expected by his ecclesiastical subordinates anywhere. The veneration they claimed by reason of their calling was offered only by the more ignorant of the masculine sex and by women. The latter, more weak and credulous in their nature, were the bulwark of superstition, as indeed they have always been in every age. But with the educated the case was far different. As has been already remarked, the ecclesiastic was represented in the most popular writings of the time as a foolish, licentious, and degraded hypocrite. Public opinion would not have tolerated this holding up the sacerdotal profession to derision had there not been ample provocation for such a course. There are good reasons for believing that the awkward and disgraceful predicaments of profligate clerks described in the entertaining pages of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, Boccaccio, Poggio, the Queen of Navarre, and similar collections were actual occurrences. It is indisputable that many of these tales were obtained from the archives of religious houses and the humorous traditions of monastic life. The existence of universal corruption among the regular clergy indicated by these satirical authors receives a significant illustration from the fact that they invariably include the nunnery and the brothel in the same category, and indiscriminately designate the heads of these establishments by the title of “abbess.”
In the religious festivals and dramatic representations there also appeared conspicuous indications of the prevalent irreverence and mockery of the age. The most solemn and awful events of sacred history were absurdly burlesqued amidst the jeers of a scoffing and delighted mob. The grotesque features of these ceremonies were a survival of the Roman Saturnalia not yet extinct among the less enlightened peasantry of Europe. The most holy mysteries of the Church were parodied in obscene and sacrilegious scenic exhibitions. The actors in these profane representations were selected from the lower orders of the priesthood. They assumed the characters of popes, cardinals, bishops. Sometimes they were dressed in the vestments and equipped with the insignia of their rank,—the tiara, the mitre, the crosier, the crucifix; but often they donned the parti-colored attire of the professional fool and jester and carried his truncheon. The mass was celebrated in due form, but accompanied with a thousand extravagant and often indecent gestures by these privileged buffoons. Men entirely nude were conducted into the churches and deluged with pailfuls of holy water. Old shoes burned in the censers filled the atmosphere with a sickening stench. A repast was spread upon the altar, and all who desired regaled themselves while the representative of the celebrant recited the impressive service of the Church. In the mean time, the aisles were swarming with maskers, whose coarse jests and lascivious contortions evoked the applause and laughter of the audience. Men gambled within the rail of the chancel. Every excess was indulged in without check or remonstrance during the continuance of these festivals. Debauchery ran riot even in the most holy places. Priests, stripped of their clerical vestments, danced half-naked in the streets. The bells were removed from the church-towers and concealed. During the Feast of Asses, a donkey with his rider was conducted into the choir, and the responses of the congregation were made in imitation of the unmelodious voice of that useful but proverbially stupid animal. In this instance, sausages seasoned with garlic supplied the place of frankincense. In the celebration of another festival, a fox, dressed in the habiliments of the Papacy, was carried in state by an escort of mock cardinals. A quantity of poultry was distributed at intervals in the streets through which this singular procession was to pass, and when the fox, dropping his tiara and trailing his purple robes in the dust, occasionally attempted to seize a hen, the delighted multitude fairly rent the air with acclamations.
The dramas, known under the name of miracle and moral plays, were often fully as depraved in tone and as demoralizing in effect as the festivals. They owed their origin to the lively imagination and love of spectacular display characteristic of the Greeks of Constantinople. In some instances, the actors represented Scriptural personages, in others the virtues and vices of an allegory. The greatest incongruities of locality, time, and character were introduced without question or criticism. With the absurdities of the plot were mingled impious sentiments and vulgar witticisms. Notwithstanding the coarseness and profanity of these dramas, their value in controlling the minds of the impressionable populace was fully recognized by the hierarchy. Generally enacted by members of the priesthood, funds were appropriated from the treasury of the Church for their celebration, and indulgences granted to induce pilgrims to attend them.
The dramatic spectacles of the Middle Ages were, however, not confined to representations of a nominally religious character. As early as the tenth century, the plays of the nun Hrotswitha were enacted in monasteries and convents for the amusement of their inmates. These productions, imitations of the comedies of Terrence, far surpassed the latter in freedom of language and action. Their coarseness is such that they will not bear translation. The poems of the same author, whose life was ostensibly devoted to pious thoughts and communion with the saints, are even more extraordinary. The sentiments they express and the scenes they depict are the last which the reader would ordinarily expect to find in compositions proceeding from such a source, and must have been suggested by an extensive and varied experience.
These things, necessarily transitory in their character, have vanished with the gross ignorance and credulity of mediæval life. But more permanent memorials, carved upon the corbels, capitals, and architraves of edifices dedicated to divine worship, disclose more forcibly, if possible, the want of reverence for the rites of the Church, and the callous indifference of the priesthood to what cannot be construed otherwise than as a deliberate insult to religion. Monks, priests, and bishops in full canonicals are depicted with the attributes of cunning and filthy animals, such as foxes, wolves, asses, and baboons. The hog is a favorite subject, and seems to have been considered by the medieval sculptor as possessing traits peculiarly applicable to delineations of monastic life and character. These grotesque caricatures are frequently interspersed with indescribable obscenities. A partial explanation of their occurrence may be found in the fact that they were sculptured by the monks themselves. The latter were the only class of their age skilled in the practice of the mechanical arts. In their order was centred the architectural as well as the literary knowledge of the time. They built and decorated their own churches and abbeys. It is difficult to reconcile the spirit which could conceive and execute such representations with that which could endure their publicity, especially in the temples of God. For the fact is only too well established that mediæval churchmen were far from being noted for toleration. Still, the ruling sentiments of society in those days were far different from those which obtain in ours. Its standard of morality was lower, but, at the same time, it was evidently not disposed to conceal its favorite vices. One thing, however, is certain, the failings of the clergy were so open and notorious as to have become a common jest, in whose merriment even the subjects themselves were not ashamed to participate. It is not a pleasing reflection upon the state of public morals that its teachers had not only become insensible to contempt for their violation of human and divine laws, but encouraged and even rewarded the preservation of their monstrous vices in imperishable materials for the amazement and disgust of posterity.
With the fall of the Roman Empire the knowledge of letters, in common with every other accomplishment, had departed. From the time of Charlemagne, no instruction was accessible save that transmitted through the doubtful medium of ecclesiastical institutions. That monarch had imparted a great impulse to learning by the foundation of academies; by attracting to his court the wisdom of other lands; by the appointment of monastic chroniclers; and by the encouragement of the Jews. As it was the policy of the Church to keep the masses in ignorance, the scanty and general information to be derived from that source was restricted to members of the privileged classes. The general and incredible abasement of the people in those times may be inferred from the fact that so late as 1590, when a mouse had devoured the sacramental wafer in one of the churches of Italy, it was gravely discussed by an ecclesiastical council convoked for that purpose, in the presence of a pious and wondering audience, whether the Holy Ghost had entered the animal or not, and if the demands of religion required that it should be killed or be made an object of worship!
Many of the priesthood could neither read nor write, and, having memorized the service by rote, celebrated mass like so many parrots, as ignorant of what they were saying as their stolid congregations. Bishops made their marks upon important documents with their fingers dipped in sacramental wine. The books used in the service were more esteemed for their pecuniary value than on account of the precepts they contained. Their golden, jewel-studded covers often attracted the cupidity of the brethren, who defaced, pawned, or bodily abstracted the volumes as opportunity offered or their carnal necessities required. Almost incredible difficulties attended the dissemination of learning. In addition to the hostility, negligence, and incapacity of the clergy, who were its privileged custodians, great expense was involved in the manufacture of books. Parchment was generally of wretched quality and commanded extravagant prices. The supply to be obtained by the erasure of ancient manuscripts was limited, and, in the universal decline of the arts, the knowledge of its preparation had been lost. The skins which were brought to the monasteries were required to be cleaned and smoothed by the writers themselves before they could be rendered available. The time required for the completion of a book was a serious impediment to the scholar. The transcription and illumination of a manuscript often consumed years of arduous labor. With the Hebrews, the copying of the Scriptures was a proceeding not less solemn than the invocation of the sacred name of Jehovah. The materials were prepared, with every precaution, by the orthodox of the Jewish faith. The most dextrous and pious calligraphists were employed. Every other occupation was abandoned until this holy task—whose performance was considered as not less important than the celebration of the rites of the synagogue—had been completed.