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life of men and of society. It attacked and decried all that was ancient, and all that was eternal-history and religion—that is to say, it wished to rob men of the past and the future, to concentrate them in the present;" so that, conversely to what was prescribed by the Church, they should neither " meditate on the days of old, nor have in mind the eternal years."

The justice of this estimate of the present tendency of men's thoughts, would also be admitted by Lamartine; who, however, it must be remembered, is the poet of hope-for he has said that Dante is the poet of our epoque. But however this may be, it is impossible to deny that, even to men of secular learning, there is an immense source of interest and admiration, connected with their own studies, in the history of the middle ages; for all the discoveries to which the present race of men owe their superiority in those material acquirements, of which they are so proud, date from these ten centuries, which are accused of intellectual apathy, barbarism, and ignorance. Then it was, says a French writer, that a new spirit was breathed into the ancient world-all social relations were changed-vassalage, a kind of modified servitude, prepared the way for the abolition of slavery. The principle of association began to operate; corporations were formed. The stage of life presents great personages and sublime actions. Deeds of eternal fame were done; deeds which tell of Charlemagne, Philip Augustus, and St. Louis; Alfred and Canute; Richard the Lion-hearted, and the Black Prince: Gerbert and Hildebrand, Alcuin, Bede, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon. What names! what men! Who is not seized with astonishment at beholding the architectural monuments of these ages? such as the Gothic vaults of Cologne and Westminster, of Amiens and Jumiège, which had been preceded by others, the destruction of which had made men weep! Then too hospitals arose for the first time, asylums for all kinds of human misery, and innumerable establishments for the poor. Would we enter into still lower details, it was in the eighth century that paper was invented : in the tenth that the monks invented clocks; in the eleventh that the Benedictines raised the first windmills; and that a citizen of Middlebourg invented the telescope. In the same age was disclosed the loadstone, or the polarity of the needle, though there is a still earlier mention of it in the Romance of the Rose: and, during this period, the greatest problems of mechanics were defined. Linnæus even shows the successful labors of the monks in the cultivation of useful plants and vegetables, many of which were now, for the first time, introduced into Europe. Engraving dates from the fourteenth century, when a multitude of arts were invented, which in these times seem indispensable to domestic life. So that, upon the whole judging merely upon these principles, no ten other ages can be produced, which had results of greater importance, and contributed more to the happiness of mankind.

Frederick Schlegel divides the middle and later ages into the scholastic-romantic, which was a period essentially Christian, notwithstanding the horrors which occasionally appear in history; for from these Christianity never promised to free the

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world; then the heathen-antiquarian, the spirit of which extended to literature and to political theories; and then the barbaro-polemic, which included the seventeenth century. When we speak of the middle ages as barbarous, we should be understood, he says, as referring to this latter period, which was really barbarous, which was distinguished by the change of religion, and the religious wars.† To the first of these periods, the learned Danish Professor Grundtvig alludes, saying, in particular reference to England, "the fact that there once existed a civilized world, limited to the shores of the Mediterranean sea, is not more unquestionable than that a new one arose out of the chaos of those barbarous tribes, who destroyed the western empire." Indeed, the most superficial reader must have occasionally been struck at the startling manner in which the charges, so generally brought against these times of grossness and absurdity, are often disproved. Thus a French critic of our time, speaking of Petrarcha, says, "How can we convey an idea of that form of imagination, perhaps too delicate for us, though it dates from the middle age?" "In these ages, called dark," says St. Victor, "men possessed every one of these maxims, founded on good sense and morality, which belong to the most civilized society of these times." But it is in their character of Christian and holy ages, that, in accordance with the proposed course, we are invited to consider them: and here a far richer prospect will be found to open before us. Thus the seventh century was, to the eye of Mabillon, a golden age, in which men of the greatest innocence and sanctity spread the rule of St. Benedict to the farthest regions of Europe; "for the truth of Christ did not preach that only wise and learned men were the salt of the earth and light of the world, but also included under that title holy men who opposed the salt of integrity and the light of justice to corrupt manners and darkened minds."§ Neander points out a new path to lead us through the labyrinth of history, where he says that "it is impossible to despise an age, over which a man like St. Bernard was able to exercise such an influence, by the sole empire of his character and of his sanctity."|| From a multitude of re

marks of this kind, founded upon facts which cannot be questioned, we should be led to take a very uncommon, though judicious view, of this period. The ancient chronicle of Ely affirms of the time when the blessed Edelwold rebuilt that monastery, "These were golden ages of the world, when pure faith, peace, and true love flourished. Fraud, pride, and perjury were unknown. Then liberty had for itself sure seats.

Tunc et libertas sedes habuit sibi certas.

Then Martha and Mary shone equally in the Church."

Sentences of this kind

may indeed be commonly received with a certain degree of abatement, from ascrib

*Philosophie der Geschichte, II. 190. +Ibid. 214. Tableau de Paris, Tom. I. 353. SPræfat. in II. Sæculum Benedict. [Der heilige Bernhard und sein Zeitalter. Berlin, 181. Hist. Eliensis apud Gale, Hist. Brit. Tom. III.

ing something to the rhetorical tone which pervades them: but in the present instance the writer describes a period not greatly remote from his time, and of which the most exact tradition must have reached him. He does not make the remark angrily, for the sake of contrast, but in order to edify and stimulate his contemporaries, who, let it be observed, considered these evangelical qualities, which he ascribed to their fathers, as the highest virtue for which a nation or an age could be illustrious. Throughout all this long period, there would have been nothing startling or questionable in a proposition like that which was assumed by St. Ambrose in writing to the Emperor Valentinian, when he said, "This is worthy of your times, that is, of Christian times."* Men would not have been instantly struck with an intimate sense that a falsehood was proposed to them. Still, indeed, was fulfilled the sentence of infallible wisdom, that the world cannot receive the spirit of truth: † but so was also fulfilled the divine prediction respecting the kings and princes of the earth. The Christians were sufficiently numerous and powerful to imprint a character upon society, protect the institutions of meek and holy men, and to sanctify the whole form of the political state, by founding it upon the principles of revealed wisdom.

Such a view of history, I am aware, is widely different from that which is generally proposed by modern writers, who follow one another in representing these ages as a period of the greatest misery and degradation : but before their testimony is received, would it not be of some importance to ascertain whether their opinions respecting misery and degradation agree with those which must necessarily be entertained by Christians; because, if it should prove the case, that what they regard as misery is happiness in a Christian sense, and that their standard of happiness is that of evil in the same, it would only follow from their censure, that there is an additional evidence in favor of our proposition respecting the peculiarly Christian character of these ages! Now, in fact, this would be the result from such an enquiry. For if we consult these teachers of the modern wisdom, who are so full of vile disdain for Christian antiquity; and if we consider what are the ends proposed in their speculations respecting political and domestic economy, and national happiness, we shall find that they are all foreign from those which are comprised in the beatitudes; that in many instances they are exactly opposed to them; and that, in fine, that terrible væ is pronounced by truth itself upon those who attain to their standard of excellence. To be rich, to be filled, or in the phrase of the economists, to have capital, to secure a life of luxury, ease, and dissipation; to be praised and extolled by men: to be the first in rank; to raise oneself to an eminent situation; what, they ask, is more lawful than to desire this? Well-woe to all who attain to this, says Christ. Now, it is from this celestial wisdom, opposed to that of the modern sophists, that the principles of action were formed, which were admitted and recognized during these ages, of

*Epist. XXX

+John XIV.

‡Luke VI.

which I shall soon attempt to unfold the moral history. I shall not fear to be contradicted in stating, that during that period religion, with all the apparently new and remarkable peculiarities of the doctrine of Christ, was uppermost in the thoughts of men, and even adopted universally as the basis of civil government, and of their whole domestic customs and manners: the justice of which proposition is so certain, that Guizot could not avoid observing that "the religious society played a grand part in the history of modern civilization." So that, in fact, notwithstanding the number of evils and abuses which then prevailed, in consequence of human passions, these entire ages might be described in the words of the great Apostle, as exhibiting themselves to our view;-"In much patience and tribulation, by glory and dishonor, by evil fame and good fame, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing, and yet possessing all things:"-words, which might be received as almost a literal description of the precise interval which the moderns have affirmed to be the darkest in the annals of mankind. For, as the learned author of the "Perpétuité de la Foi" says of the tenth century, which even Baronius himself was tempted to concede to them, from limiting his view to one country,-"we must conclude that this tenth age, vulgarly so reviled, was one of the most fortunate times of the church, since the vices which are ascribed to that age, are common to it with others; whereas the fact is otherwise respecting the good which recommends it." He proves this position by showing, that there flourished then, in various parts of the Western Church, a multitude of bishops, eminently illustrious for piety and sound doctrine: many theologians, deeply versed in ecclesiastical matters; many holy men, who restored decayed discipline in monasteries; and many princes, of eminent and saintly virtue. But above all, he observes, that it was in this century that the Danes, Bohemians, Poles, Hungarians, Normans, and other people, were converted to the Christian Faith by the labors of holy missionaries: facts which sufficiently clear it from the charge of ignorance, superstition, and corruption ;"* and which could hardly be summed up in more precise language than that used by St. Paul, in alluding to the qualities which should belong to the apostolic character. The truth is, from a fixed law and a principle inherent in nature, which the reason of Plato was able to expose clearly, it is with nations and with whole ages as with men individually —their energies must be devoted either to religion or to the world; they must adopt the views and perform the service of either the one or the other; and on their choice depends the whole order of life, and all that gives a character and peculiar expression to their spirit, manners, customs, and institutions.

As the subject which is here to be proposed, is full of interest, so is it one that may be applied to the most important purposes of life. There was a book in the middle ages called "Universale bonum." This was nothing but a collection of edifying accounts of holy men, and, if we reflect upon the great end of all educa

* Perpétuité de la Foi, Tom. I. part iii. c. 6, 7.

tion, and the admirable force of examples in the instruction of ingenuous minds, it must be admitted, that the author evinced excellent judgment in choosing that It is to the effects of such a study, that a modern poet seems to allude, in

title. saying:

a man so bred,

(Take from him what you will upon the score
Of ignorance or illusion,) lives and breathes
For nobler purposes of mind: his heart
Beats to the heroic song of ancient days.*

As to instruction by examples generally, its importance has always been felt by wise men. Quinctilian thought it of essential use, that boys should even learn by heart the sayings of the illustrious men,† with whose lives they were to be familiar. St. Augustin says, that men can more easily follow things themselves, than the precepts and discipline of those who would teach them in a scientific manner; that if any one were to give lessons in walking, he would have to specify many things which men would not so easily learn from him, as they would practice them without his instruction: and that generally the spectacle of truth itself more delights and assists us, than the process by which rhetoricians would teach it. "Perchance, indeed,” he adds, " such exercises may render the mind more expert, though they may also render it more malignant and inflated." "The philosopher setting down with thorny arguments, the bare rule is so hard of utterance, and so misty to be conceived, that one that hath no other guide but him shall wade in him, until he be old before he shall find sufficient cause to be honest; but as for the poet," continues Sir Philip Sidney, "he cometh with a tale, forsooth he cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner."§ Moreover, books, especially those connected with history, instruct the great when no one but flatterers can approach them. Books instruct and wound not. Therefore Don Alphonzo, king of Arragon, being once asked who were the best councellors, replied,—“The dead, (meaning books,) because we learn easily from them what we wish to know." || But above all, it is to Christians that a study of this kind is most important and delightful. Quidnam dulcius," as William of Malmesbury says, "quam majorum recensere gratiam ut eorum acta cognoscas, à quibus acceperis et rudimenta fidei et incitamenta bene vivendi." ¶ "Who would not wish to know," says a learned Dane, who has directed his studies to Anglo Saxon literature; "Who would not wish to know how those patriarchs of the new Christian world preached and reasoned, what lessons they taught, what examples they referred to, in what manner they attuned the minds of their heathen converts to the doctrines they communicated, whether these doctrines were instilled in humble prose, or to gain their holy ends, they thought it needful to build

*The Excursion.

Instit. Lib. I. II.

De Doctrin. Christ. Lib. II. chap. 37.

§ Defence of Poesy. | Æneas Sylvius de dictis Regis Alphonsi.
¶ De Gestis Pontif. Anglorum. Prolog.

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