Yes, kings, conquerors, and those in pursuit of adventures took long journeys with their armed followers, their vehicles, machines, and engines of war; princes, nobles, and warriors traversed Europe, escorted by brilliant cavalcades, upon their steeds and palfreys; merchants landed on foreign shores, the winds swelling the sails of their vessels; even learned men crossed the water and the mountains to add to their knowledge; conquerors to found empires, princes to strengthen their power by alliances, and merchants to gain wealth. But there were men who surpassed all these who were borne by chariots, vessels, and noble horses—the pilgrims who went on foot.
Crowds, in constant succession, of men, women, and children, from all countries, undertook these pilgrimages to hundreds of holy places in Flanders, Spain, Rome, (where, says Villani, the jubilee of 1300 led more than two hundred thousand pilgrims,) and, above all, to the Holy Land, which led to the wonderful outpouring of all Europe into Asia and Africa for three centuries—the crusades, during which the West was brought into contact with Egypt, and through Egypt with India; through Constantinople, where the Latins founded an empire that lasted more than fifty years, with the Greeks, and through them with the chefs-d'oeuvre of pagan and Christian antiquity, and from whom they obtained books, manuscripts, agricultural implements, and a knowledge of industrial pursuits literature, and the arts. [Footnote 235]
[Footnote 235: They brought back, among other books, Aristotle's works on metaphysics, and cane, millet, camel's-hair stuffs, etc.]
And the monks, what long journeys they made in the world! Carried away by zeal for religion, they dispersed in every direction to preach the gospel; some to Prussia, Poland, and the extremities of Europe—to Norway; others from Greece, Egypt, and Syria to Ireland; others still (in the time of St. Louis) into Tartary, and even into China, where they found traces of Christianity left there by other monks who had preceded them. They went still farther beyond Ireland and Norway into Iceland, and from Iceland (St. Brandan in the eighth century) into an unknown land, peopled by strange men, clad with the skins of marine animals, where they built monasteries and churches, whence they penetrated still farther into the interior, even as far as Mexico perhaps, leaving behind them an ineffaceable remembrance, thus being the first to discover [Footnote 236] and inhabit the country to which they did not give its present name, but which was really the southern extremity of the New World which, four centuries after, Columbus discovered, and which is called America.
[Footnote 236: "When, in the eleventh century, the Scandinavians landed in Greenland, the Esquimaux told them that at the south there were white men clad in long black robes, who walked chanting and carrying banners before them; they were the monks who, in the eighth century, had set sail for Iceland, and had been thrown by the wind on the American coast." (Ozanam, Le Christianisme chez les Barbares.) Dom Pitra (Histoire de St. Léger) mentions a book of the sixteenth century on the voyages of the Benedictines into America—doubtless these monks lost among the savages, who left those signs of Christianity, crosses, a kind of baptism, etc., which were afterward found, and which otherwise would be inexplicable.]
It was neither thirst for riches, nor love of conquest, nor longing for power, nor even enthusiasm for knowledge, that induced them to undertake these extensive, dangerous, and fruitful enterprises; they were inspired by a more sublime sentiment—the love of God and of souls—the desire of devoting themselves to God, and of leading to him new followers out of strange nations.
IV.
Woman
There is no mark more distinctive of the character of individuals or nations than the treatment of woman. Christianity emancipated woman; it brought her forth from the obscurity to which she had been banished, and taking her by the hand, introduced her into the social world, and gave her a place beside man, that she might receive the spiritual aliment which would develop her mind, as well as elevate her soul. Taught by the example of Christ, the most eloquent and learned of the fathers—those philosophers of no sect—Jerome, Gregory of Nazianzen, Augustine, Paulinus, and Basil, address numerous letters to women—to women, so disdained by paganism that not a single letter to a woman is to be found in all the correspondence of Cicero. [Footnote 237]
[Footnote 237: And of Pliny. If Seneca composed two treatises, De Consolatione, for Marcia and Helvia it was because his ideas were modified by contact with Christianity. And I see herein a proof, which has not been sufficiently noticed, of his knowledge of the Christian doctrine or of his acquaintance with St. Paul.]