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These are answers that curious98 has provided in Medieval History
| Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 02/22/05 - What can you tell me about... ...the Priory of Scion?
Many thanks.
Paul. curious98 answered on 02/23/05:
Hi Paul,
I would have been surprised if you would not have brought up this subject.
The only proven fact related to the Priory of Sion, seems to be that in 1956, an organization called the Priory of Sion registers [its Registration Papers existing at the Sub-Prefecture of Saint Julien-en-Genevois, and it was named after a small hill outside Annemasse (Haute Savoie –France, close to Geneve), named Mont Sion] with the Annemasse bureau of records.
Its four officers ware Andre Bonhomme, president; Jean Delaval, Vice-President; Pierre Plantard, Secretary-General; Armand Defago, Treasurer. Whether this organization continued to exist after the resignation of Grand Master Pierre Plantard in 1984, no one knows.
According to the Priory Documents registered and Pierre Plantard’s own claim, he was a lineal descendant of Dagobert II. But again, if the Priory Documents are false - and they seem to be - then Plantard had nothing to do with the Merovingians, the Jesus bloodline, or Rennes-le-Château. I believe that in his attempts to revive the old legends re. this Priory of Sion from the 1960s onwards, Pierre Plantard was trying to create a mythology based on his right-wing beliefs. With the help of people like de Sède and de Chérisey, this mythology took on a life of its own, finally going "global" when Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh (BLL), authors of the great hit of the 60s. “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”, added their Jesus bloodline theory into the mix. I could not tell exact motives of BLL, de Sède or de Chérisey. Perhaps the desire to write a best-seller played a part in BLL’s case. At any rate, it indeed was a best seller, and Dan Brown has, no doubt, inspired de Da Vinci Code and even copied large fragments on that book.
Whatever the case, André Bonhomme’s resignation reportedly occurred following his reading an issue of the Midi-Libre, revealing to him how Pierre Plantard had revived the name of the Priory of Sion during the early 1960s and how he had tied it in with his fictitious history and pedigree of the Order - being concocted from the early 1960s onwards.
French researchers have traced the original founder members of the original 1956 Priory of Sion, who have confirmed that they had never heard of Gisors, Rennes-le-Château, Merovingians, Godfrey of Bouillon, Parchments, Poussin, etc in relation to the original 1956 Priory of Sion – and that these elements (the so-called ‘links’) were all later products of Pierre Plantard’s fertile imagination…
Pierre Plantard was more or less recorded as having some political activity with French extreme right wing Le Pin, but right now he has disappeared or is dead.
However, BBL actually digged on the subject and related it to the Rennes-le-Chateau affair. I was there myself (it is not far from Barcelona, right in the middle of the old Cathar country, see of the Albingense Heressy) to investigate the case.
Steve Mizrach says on the subject:
Quote: Here are the basic outlines of the mystery of Rennes-le-Château. It was clear that Berenger Sauniere, the parish priest of the small village during the late 19th and early 20th century, had been receiving vast sums of money to refurbish the local church and also to build many structures in the area, such as his Tower of the Magdalene (Tour Magdala). Sauniere died in 1917, leaving the secret of where he got his fabulous wealth to his housekeeper, Marie Dernaud, who promised to reveal it on her deathbed -- but sadly she had a stroke which left her paralyzed and unable to speak before her death in 1953. Speculation was rife on the source of the parish priest's money. Was it the lost treasure of the Templars or the Cathars in the area? Might it have been buried Visigothic gold? Or was he blackmailing the Church with some terrible secret? The evidence that points to the last possibility is that Sauniere's confession before his death was so shocking that the priest who heard it denied him absolution and last rites.
The mystery is rendered greater by a series of parchments found by the cleric in 1891, which contained an easily discovered cipher. They were apparently written by his predecessor, Abbe Antoine Bigou, confessor to Marie d'Hautpoul, in 1781. (The same cipher appears on her tombstone.) The parchments were, on the face of it, Latin transcriptions of passages from the Gospels, but they contained deeper mysteries. Sauniere also appears to have left certain other "clues" in the highly unusual redesign of his church and of the other structures in the area. Hidden within those Latin parchments was a message in French:
"THIS TREASURE BELONGS TO DAGOBERT II KING AND TO SION AND HE IS THERE DEAD."
Within the second parchment was an even stranger message:
SHEPHERDESS NO TEMPTATION THAT POUSSIN TENIERS HOLD THE KEY PEACE 681 BY THE CROSS AND THIS HORSE OF GOD I COMPLETE THIS DAEMON GUARDIAN AT MIDDAY BLUE APPLES.
A third cipher that appears, not in the documents, but at Shugborough Hall's Shepherd Monument, is the curious "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M" which has never been translated.
There is a famous painting by Poussin entitled "Les Bergers D'Arcadie" (the Arcadian shepherds) which shows them around a tomb containing the mysterious inscription "Et in Arcadia Ego..." This tomb appears to be a virtual replica of one not too dissimilar to it right outside of Rennes-le-Château. Three intrepid historians searched far and away for others to help decipher the puzzle. Suffice to say, Lincoln, Baigent, and Leigh did a masterful job of "unearthing" the Merovingian monarch Dagobert and tied together many mysteries of history with a fantastic thesis that can be stated as thus: Jesus and Mary Magdalene, legitimate nobility from the Judaic Houses of Benjamin and David, married and sired heirs. Jesus did not die on the cross but went either to England or India. (See Holy Blood, Holy Grail.)
The Magdalene's heirs married into the Visigoth families of the time and gave birth to the sacred Merovingian ruling family. The Visigoths of the area might have themselves been descended from the House of Benjamin, which had fled to the Arcadia region of Greece, and thence north into France, a thousand years earlier. The Merovingians were not wiped out by the Carolingian usurpers, and their lineage survives in some of the other royal families of Europe; apparently the goal of the secret society entitled the Prieure du Sion is a Merovingian restoration in France. Nothing is as it seems with the Rennes mystery. But in the hands of Leigh, Lincoln, and Baigent, it seems to encompass myriads of others -- the dissolution of the Templars, the downfall of the Cathars, the bizarre Rosicrucian manifesto, and other political intrigues of French history. For it seems that Sion has a grievance against the Church, who betrayed the Merovingian dynasty and crowned its destroyers. If Sauniere was an agent of Sion, it might explain why he was denied absolution.
Village of Mystery
Henri Boudet, the Abbe of Rennes-les-Bains (which neighbors Rennes-le-Château) who wrote "The True Celtic Language and the Cromlech at Rennes-les-Bains" may have been the "brains" behind Sauniere. Lincoln thinks his book may offer the key to the mystery. Boudet appears to argue in the book the silly thesis that the Celts spoke Anglo-Saxon, and that it -- English, in effect -- was the language which was spoken by Noah's sons before the Tower of Babel. But David Wood and Henry Lincoln conclude that the book may be averring something else -- that perhaps there was a universal language before the Deluge: Number (or Measure). And that the "key" to the "Cromlech" of Rennes-les-Bains might be the old English mile. Lincoln believes that metrology may play an important part in the Rennes-le-Château mystery. In any case, other authors have noted that Boudet died under strange circumstances, and that his book may have been sought out and destroyed by the Bishop de Beausejour. Boudet, a linguistic scholar, would have been a logical choice for Sauniere to approach with his curious Latin parchments.
There are a few grisly murders that have taken place in the area to add to the air of mystery. One was that of the old priest Jean-Antoine-Maurice Gelis. Toward the end of his life he became a paranoid hermit and recluse; the only person he would admit to his presbytery was his niece, to bring him food. Despite his absurd precautions, someone surprised him on All Saints' Eve in 1897, bashed him with some fire tongs, delivered four blows from an ax, and then reverently laid the corpse on the ground with the hands crossed over the chest. Whoever it was ransacked the room but took no money. A team of researchers found three corpses in Sauniere's garden in 1956, all of them shot. Were they World War II victims? Or something else? Noel Corbu, who took care of Marie Denarnaud after her paralyzing stroke, and who may have learned of something from her incoherent dying whispers, was killed in a horrendous car crash in 1953, that some suspect was not an accident. Sauniere's "heart attack" in 1917 came on the suspicious date of January 17th (St. Anthony's Day) and there are hints that the coffin had been ordered in advance. A courier who carried the secret dossiers found by Sauniere, Fakhur el Islam, was found dead on train tracks just outside of Melun, East Germany, in 1967.
There are many more tantalizing things about Rennes-le-Château. According to one researcher, it may be laid out in the shape of a "Ship of the Dead" with a helmeted warrior borne to sea. Yet another thinks that the Paris Meridian may have been drawn so that it quite deliberately passes, ley-fashion, straight through Rennes-le-Château, Arques, and Conques. (It actually does).Still others see links between the site and Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland or Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England. It is known that Sauniere took his parchments to the Abbe Bieil, of the seminary of St. Sulpice, which was where the Abbe's nephew Emile Hoffet launched the Catholic Modernist rebellion which would eventually land Modernist works on the Vatican's "banned" list. Saint Sulpice's feast day, January 17th, is the date of Sauniere's sudden stroke. He was the bishop of Bourges, on the Paris Meridian, and in his seminary is an obelisk with a copper line marking the exact point of the alignment.
Codes, Ciphers, and Scripts
Perhaps the most enigmatic elements mentioned in the text as decoded by Lionel Fanthorpe is the phrase "Blue Apples at Noon." The code in the parchments is only decipherable through the use of the "knight's tour" -- a logic puzzle wherein one "jumps" a knight to every square on a chess board, once and only once. It is a puzzle which has only one solution -- as does the code, clearly. But the use of chessboard imagery at Rennes-le-Château is striking.
Clearly, to some degree, the puzzle lies in the layout of the redesign of Sauniere's church, and his other building projects. The village parish church had been dedicated to the Magdalene in 1059; during the restoration, he found the mysterious parchment (supposedly) in a hollow Visigothic pillar underneath the altar stone. A statue of the demon Asmodeus guards near the door. The plaques depicting the Stations of the Cross contain bizarre inconsistencies. One shows a child swathed in Scottish plaid. Another has Pontius Pilate wearing a veil. St. Joseph and Mary are each depicted holding a Christ child, as if to allude to the old legend that Christ had a twin. Other statues are of rather esoteric saints in unusual postures: St. Roch displays his wounded thigh (like the Grail King Anfortas), St. Anthony the Hermit holds a closed book, St. Germaine releases a bevy of roses from her apron, and the Magdalene is shown holding a vase. Sauniere's library and study, the Tour Magdala, is placed precariously over a precipitous chasm at a place where one would be foolish to build such a permanent structure, unless...
The Once and Future King
Up until recently, little was known about the Merovingian kings, as they inhabited that historical epoch derided as the Dark Ages. The founder of the royal line, Merovech, was said to be of two fathers -- his mother, already pregnant by King Chlodio, was seduced while swimming in the ocean by a Quinotaur, whatever that was, and Merovech was formed somehow by the commingling of Frankish blood and that of the mysterious aquatic creature. Like the Nazoreans of old, the Merovingian monarchs never cut their hair and bore a distinctive birthmark -- said to be a red cross over the shoulder blades. Their robes were fringed with tassels which were said to carry magical curative powers. They were known as occult adepts, and in one Merovingian tomb was found such items as a golden bull's head, a crystal ball, and several golden miniature bees. Strangely, many skulls of these monarchs appear to have been ritually incised; i.e., trepanned.
The Sicambrians, ancestors of the Franks, were known as the "people of the Bear" for their worship of the bear-goddess Arduina. The word "Arcadia" comes from Arkas, patron god of that area of Greece, the son of the nymph Callisto, sister of the huntress Artemis. Callisto's constellation is also known to many as Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The name "Arthur" comes from the Celtic arth, related to "Ursus" -- namely, "bear." In legend, the Merovingians were said to be descended from the Trojans, and Homer reports that Troy was founded by a colony of Arcadians. The "Prieure documents" claim that the Arcadians were descended from Benjamites driven out of Palestine by their fellow Israelites for idolatry. "Arcadia" was also known as the source of the River Alphaeus, the "underground stream" which figures so prominently in Coleridge's poetry and in esoteric literature. The Merovingians were "sacred kings" who reigned but did not rule, leaving the secular governing function to chancellors known as the Mayors of the Palace. It was one of these Mayors, Pepin the Fat, who founded the dynasty that came to supplant them -- the Carolingians.
One of the great Merovingian kings, Clovis, struck a deal with the newly nascent Roman church. He would subdue their enemies, the Arian Visigoths and the pagan Lombards, in return for baptism into the faith and recognition of his right to rule a new Roman empire as "Novus Constantinus." Yet one of his descendants, Dagobert II, was murdered by a lance pierced through his eye (or poison poured in the ear -- accounts vary) at the orders of Pepin. The church endorsed the assassination, flatly betrayed its pact with Clovis, and in turn recognized the family of usurpers as legitimate, culminating with the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor. It was thought that the Merovingian lineage was extinguished; in any case it was excised from the history books. But there is some evidence that Dagobert's son, Siegebert IV, survived and that a Merovingian principality continued to be ruled in Septimania by Guillem de Gellone, a descendant -- and ancestor -- of Godfroi de Bouillon. If the Prieure documents are to be believed, the Merovingian lineage persists to this day, largely due to efforts to preserve it through intermarriage. The significance of such alliances is the key. Dagobert married the daughter of the Visigothic Count of Razes, giving his descendants hereditary title to the lands surrounding Rennes-le-Château.”
Unquote:
When you go visit that little village, you cannot help by surrounded by esoteric tales, gossip, and facts. Facts are the Church, the Magdala Tower and his own home, that l’Abbé Saunière built when he came back from Paris, completely “loaded” with money. For when he asked his bishop permission to go to Paris, he could hardly afford the train fare.
The Arch-Cabal
The Prieure du Notre Dame du Sion, or Priory of Zion, is said to be the cabal behind many of the events that occurred at Rennes-le-Château. According to the Prieure's own documents, its history is long and convoluted. Its earliest roots are in some sort of Hermetic or Gnostic society led by a man named Ormus. This individual is said to have reconciled paganism and Christianity. The story of Sion only comes into focus in the Middle Ages. In 1070, a group of monks from Calabria, Italy, led by one Prince Ursus, founded the Abbey of Orval in France near Stenay, in the Ardennes. These monks are said to have formed the basis for the Order de Sion, into which they were "folded" in 1099 by Godfroi de Bouillion. For about one hundred years, the Order of the Temple (Knights Templar) and Sion were apparently unified under one leadership, though they are said to have separated at the "cutting of the elm" at Gisors in 1188. (The Templar order was then destroyed by King Phillipe the Fair, of France, in 1307, as I have already told you.) Sion appears to have been at the nexus of two French antimonarchical movements, the Compagnie du St.-Sacrament of the 17th century (acting on behalf on the Guise-Lorraine families) and the Fronde of the 18th, as well as behind an attempt to make the Hapsburgs emperors of all Europe in the 19th -- the Hieron du Val d'Or. It appears that there are vast connections between Sion and numerous sociocultural strata in European thought -- Roscicrucianism, Freemasonry, Arthurian and Grail legends, "Arcadianism," Catharism, chivalry, ou name them...
From here on, fantasy takes over. Depending on what statutes one considers, Sion either has 9,841 members in nine grades, or 1,093 members in seven, with the supreme member, the "Nautonnier" or Grand Master of the Order being, till 1963, Jean Cocteau, although of course, there is no evidence of that, and M. Cocteau is, unfortunately, no longer there to affirm or deny it. According to Dan Brown the Priory had illustrious predecessors: Jacques DeMolay, Leonardo de Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Claude Debussy, among others! Despite its registry, however, the organization remains untraceable, its given address and number leading to dead ends -- which might lead one to wonder why the government never bothered to verify the information.
Some interesting things have come to light about the Prieure recently. One is that the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina (GLA), the highest body of Swiss Freemasonry (akin to the Grand Lodge of England), may have been the recruiting body for the Prieure. But the GLA is also said by some to be the meeting place of the "Gnomes of Zurich" who are said to be the Power Elite of Swiss bankers and international financiers. The GLA is said by David Yallop to be the body which controlled the P2 Masonic Lodge in Italy. (P2 controlled the Italian secret police in the 1970s, took money from the CIA and KGB, may have had a hand in the kidnapping of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades, had 900 agents in other branches of the Italian government and the highest positions of the Vatican, bombed a train station and tried to blame it on the Communists, used the Vatican Bank to launder Mafia drug money, fomented fascist coups in South America, and is allegedly linked to the arch-conservative Knights of Malta and Opus Dei in the Vatican, though I find it hard to believe it.) P2's Lucio Gelli may have had a role in the death of John Paul I, and perhaps even the assassination attempt on John Paul II. You may recall he was found dead hanging from the London Bridge!
One of the most interesting people to write about the Prieure may be Michael Lamy. He claims that Jules Verne was a member of both the Prieure and the Illuminati. Further, he maintains that the Prieure's politics must be understood as "Orleanist," which he describes as "aristocratic, anarchistic, and Nietzchean." Perhaps it all becomes most clear when Lamy reveals to the reader that the true secret of the village of Rennes-le-Château is that the extinct volcano Mount Bugarach leads down into the hollow earth to a realm of supermen. Ean Begg feels it is connected with many of the Black Virgin sites all over Europe. Certainly, if the organization's full name is the Prieure de Notre Dame du Sion, and if it is site of Orval is connected to the worship of the bear-goddess Arduina, venerated by the Sicambrian Franks of the area and their Merovingian kings, then this may be the case. There are hints, of course, that "Notre Dame" is not the mother of Jesus, but Mary of Bethany AKA "Magdalene" a princess of the tribe of Benjamin, which is itself notorious for an outbreak of goddess-idolatry in the period of the Judges. That Mary may also be the one also known to the Gypsies of the south of France as one of the three "Maries-de-la-Mer," whom they call "Sarah the Egyptian," the sun-burnt one.
Sailing and Grailing Across the Atlantic
The most bizarre chapter in the story of Rennes-le-Château may have to do with the Money Pit mystery on Oak Island just off Nova Scotia. According to Michael Bradley, some of the keepers of the Grail may have come to the New World long before Columbus. (Key proof: acorns do not float, he notes.) He believes that some of the Templars may have fled to Canada after the dissolution of their order, carrying the Grail. (The Money Pit has more often been associated with pirates' buried treasure, but as many know, the "Jolly Roger" flag's skull-and-crossbones icon has long been associated with Masonic and Templar legend.) The so-called Venetian "Zeno Map" of the 15th century shows a knight with a sword standing where Nova Scotia is. (The Sinclairs of Scotland are "hereditary lords of Rosslyn Chapel" and are said to be descended from the Scots Guards, a clique loyal to the Stuart dynasty, which in turn are thought to have contained converted members of the Templar Order who fought with Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn, and to have provided the basis of Freemasonry.) In the Money Pit on Oak Island, a mysterious stone inscription was found: "FORTY FEET BELOW TWO MILLION POUNDS ARE BURIED." Every company that has tried to locate this treasure has failed.
Along with the supposed visits of Prince Madoc of Wales and St. Brendan of Ireland, Prince Henry the Navigator's trip to the New World with the Zeno brothers makes it one of numerous European pre-Columbian voyages. The Zeno map, along with those culled by Viking travelers, may have even helped Columbus make his way across the Atlantic. Recently, a UFO "contactee" in Canada who calls himself only "Guardian" speculated wildly about some "Brotherhood of the Grail" being operative there for centuries. Geographically speaking, there are in fact two Oak Islands, surrounding a central river, at the confluence of which is a mysterious ruin, which appears to be a fortress or old castle. It does appear that there may be strands connecting Rennes-le-Château and the New World. Ultimately, the Rosicrucian ideas behind the American experiment (as documented by Manly Palmer Hall) may have deeper "Arcadian" roots. Bradley hints, but does not come out and say, that what is beneath the Money Pit may be the Grail.
It is not the only weird trail in the Rennes mystery. One researcher insists that the inventor Barnes Wallis was one of the most recent Grand Masters of Sion. Yet another feels it is worth pursuing the origins of the Cajun people of Louisiana. Others have even found connections to the so-called "Baconian" theory, which suggests that Sir Francis Bacon authored Shakespeare's plays. Bacon's works suggest a Rosicrucian experiment taking place in the New World. Fanthorpe seems to believe that ultimately Rennes-le-Château may be a "doorway unto the invisible" -- a gateway to other dimensions, through the Emerald Tablet, which he speculates may have been a tesseract (3-dimensional representation of a 4-dimensional figure).
The Visigothic kingdom of Rhedae was in the area, and the Visigoths are known to have seized at least some portion of the treasure of the Temple (taken by the Romans during the Jewish Revolt of 70 CE) when they sacked Rome in the 5th century CE. Could that treasure have been the Ark of the Covenant, concealed at Rennes? Alternatively, the Copper Scroll of the Dead Sea sect (the Qumran Essenes) suggested some of the Temple treasure was hidden before the Roman invasion. Could the "Nestorian" Christians of the area have concealed the Ark and given it to the Templars for safekeeping? Or could it have been hidden in Solomon's Stables underneath the Mosque of Omar, where the Templars are known to have excavated? Might the Ark have been the item "smuggled" out by two Cathars under highly dangerous circumstances right before their brethren fell at Montsegur? The Ark may not have been an extraterrestrial "power source," as some authors have claimed, but if it is the possession of Sion, it is an explosive secret, to say the least. Sion has claimed that they have items "which will be returned to the government of Israel, when the time is right." Is the Grail in fact the Ark under a new guise?
As you can see, there is material here to write 20 books, and if you have some imagination you may write a plot just as good as Dan Brown's. But from this to say Jesus didn't die in the cross...
Regards
Claude
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 01/15/05 - Do you think you could... Hi Claude!
Do you think you could send me the entry in your encyclopedia for the CATHARI? They were alluded to in the last reply but one you sent me, the one on Fred.
Thanks,
Paul. curious98 answered on 01/16/05:Hi Paul,
There you are:
From the Greek katharos, pure), literally "puritans", a name specifically applied to, or used by, several sects at various periods. The Novatians of the third century were frequently known as Cathari, and the term was also used by the Manichæans. In its more usual sense, Cathari was a general designation for the dualistic sects of the later Midde Ages. Numerous other names were in vogue to denominate these heretics. Without speaking of the corrupted forms of "Cazzari", "Gazzari", in Italy, and "Ketzer" in Germany, we find the following appellations: "Piphili", "Piphles", in Northern France and Flanders; "Arians", "Manichæans", and "Patareni", owing to real or alleged doctrinal similarity; "Tesserants", "Textores" (Weavers), from the trade which many of the members followed. Sometimes they were erroneously styled "Waldenses" by their contemporaries. From the demagogue Arnold of Brescia and the heretical bishop Robert de Sperone, they were called "Arnoldistæ" and "Speronistæ". To their geographical distribution they owed the names of "Cathari of Desenzano" or "Albanenses" (from Desenzano, between Brescia and Verona, or from Alba in Piedmont, Albano, or perhaps from the provinces of Albania); "Bajolenses" or "Bagnolenses" (from Bagnolo in Italy); "Concorrezenses" (probably from Concorrezo in Lombardy); "Tolosani" (from Toulouse); and especially "Albigenses" (from Albi). The designations "Pauliciani", of which "Publicani", "Poplicani", were probably corruptions, and "Bulgari", "Bugri", "Bougres", point to their probable Oriental origin.
Among recent historians there is a pronounced tendency to look upon the Cathari as the lineal descendants of the Manichæans. The doctrine, organization, and liturgy of the former, in many points, reproduce the doctrine, organization, and liturgy of the early disciples of Manes. The successive appearance of the Priscillianists, the Paulicians, and the Bogomili, representatives to some extent of similar principles, fairly establishes the historical continuity between the two extreme links of the chain -- the Manichæans of the third, and the Cathari of the eleventh, century. In the present state of our knowledge, however, conclusive proofs in favour of the genetical dependence of the Cathari on the Manichæans are lacking. Some differences between the two religious systems are too radical to find a sufficient explanation in the appeal to the evolution of human thought. Among the Cathari we look in vain for that astronomical mythology, that pagan symbolism, and the worship of the memory of Manes, which were important characteristics of Manichæism. However attractive it may be to trace the origin of the Cathari to the first centuries of Christianity, we must be cautious not to accept as a certain historical fact what, up to the present, is only a probable conclusion.
I. CATHARIST PRINCIPLES
The essential characteristic of the Catharist faith was Dualism, i.e. the belief in a good and an evil principle, of whom the former created the invisible and spiritual universe, while the latter was the author of the material world. A difference of opinion existed as to the nature of these two principles. Their perfect equality was admitted by the absolute Dualists, whereas in the mitigated form of Dualism the beneficent principle alone was eternal and supreme, the evil principle being inferior to him and a mere creature. In the the East and the West these two different interpretations of Dualism coexisted. The Bogomili in the East professed it in its modified form. In the West, the Albanenses in Italy and almost all the non-Italian Cathari were rigid Dualists; mitigated Dualism prevailed among the Bagnolenses and Concorrezenses, who were more numerous than the Albanenses in Italy, though but little represented abroad. (For an exposition of absolute Dualism, see ALBIGENSES; on the mitigated form, see BOGOMILI.) Not only were the Albanenses and Concorrezenses opposed to each other to the extent of indulging in mutual condemnations, but there was division among the Albanenses themselves. John of Lugio, or of Bergamo, introduced innovations into the traditional doctrinal system, which was defended by his (perhaps only spiritual) father Balasinansa, or Belesmagra, the Catharist Bishop of Verona. Towards the year 1230 John became the leader of a new party composed of the younger and more independent elements of the sect. In the two coeternal principles of good and evil he sees two contending gods, who limit each other's liberty. Infinite perfection is no attribute even of the good principle; owing to the genius of evil infused into all its creatures, it can produce only imperfect beings. The Bagnolenses and Concorrezenses also differed on some doctrinal questions. The former maintained that human souls were created and had sinned before the world was formed. The Concorrezenses taught that Satan infused into the body of the first man, his handiwork, an angel who had been guilty of a slight transgression and from whom, by way of generation, all human souls are derived. The moral system, organization, and liturgy of absolute and mitigated Dualism exhibit no substantial difference, and have been treated in the article on the Albigenses.
II. HISTORY
France, Belgium and Spain
Although there is no historical foundation for the legend that the Manichæan Fontanus, one of St. Augustine's opponents, came to the castle of Montwimer (Montaimé in the Diocese of Châlons-sur-Marne) and there spread dualistic principles, yet Montwimer was perhaps the oldest Catharist centre in France and certainly the principal one in the country north of the Loire. It is in the central part of France that we come upon the first important manifestation of Catharism. At a council held in 1022 at Orléans in presence of King Robert the Pious, thirteen Cathari were condemned to be burned. Ten of these were canons of the church of the Holy Cross and another had been confessor to Queen Constance. About the same time (1025), heretics of similar tenets, who acknowledged that they were disciples of the Italian Gundulf, appeared at Liège and Arras. Upon their recantation, perhaps more apparent than real, they were left unmolested. The sectarians appeared again at Châlons under Bishop Roger II (1043-65), who in 1045 applied to his fellow-bishop, Wazo of Liège, for advice regarding their treatment. The latter advised indulgence. No manifestation of the heresy in North France is recorded during the second half of the eleventh century; its secret existence, however, cannot be doubted.
A new outbreak of the evil occurred in the twelfth century both in France and Belgium. In 1114 several heretics who had been captured in the Diocese of Soissons were seized and burned by the populace while their case was under discussion at the Council of Beauvais. Others were either threatened with, or actually met a similar fate at Liège in 1144; some of them were spared owing only to the energetic intervention of the local bishop, Adalbero II. During the rest of the twelfth century, Cathari appeared in rapid succession in different places. In 1162 Henry, Archbishop of Reims, while on a visit to Flanders, found them widely spread in that part of his ecclesiastical province. Upon his refusal of a bribe of six hundred marks, which they are said to have offered him for toleration, the heretics appealed to the pope, Alexander III, who was inclined to mercy in spite of King Louis VII's advocacy of rigorous measures. At Vézelay in Burgundy seven heretics were burned in 1167. Towards the end of the century the Count of Flanders, Phililp I, was remarkable for his severity towards them, and the Archbishop of Reims, Guillaume de Champagne (1176-1202), vigorously seconded his efforts. Confiscation, exile, and death were the penalties inflicted upon them by Hugues, Bishop of Auxerre (1183-1206). The execution of about one hundred and eighty heretics at Montwimer in May, 1239, was the death-blow of Catharism in those countries. Southern France, where its adherents were known as Albigenses, was its principal stronghold in Western Europe. Thence the Cathari penetrated into the northern provinces of Spain: Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, and Leon. Partisans of the heresy existed in the peninsula about 1159. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, King Pedro II of Aragon personally led his troops to the assistance of Raymond VI of Toulouse against the Catholic Crusaders, and fell at the battle of Muret in 1213. During that century a few sporadic manifestations of the heresy took place, at Castelbo in 1225 and again in 1234, at Leon in 1232. The Cathari however never gained a firm foothold in the country and are not mentioned after 1292.
Italy
Upper Italy was, after Southern France, the principal seat of the heresy. Between 1030-1040 an important Catharist community was discovered at the castle of Monteforte near Asti in Piedmont. Some of the members were seized by the Bishop of Asti and a number of noblemen of the neighbourhood, and, on their refusal to retract, were burned. Others, by order of thc Archbishop of Milan, Eriberto, were brought to his archiepiscopal city, where he hoped to convert them. They answered his fruitless efforts by attempts to make proselytes; whereupon the civil magistrates gave them the choice between the Cross and the stake. For the most part, they preferred death to conversion. In the twelfth century, when, after prolonged silence, historical records again speak of Catharism, it exhibits itself as strongly organized. We find it very powerful in 1125 at Orvieto, a city of the Papal States, which, in spite of the stringent measures taken to suppress the heresy, was for many subsequent years deeply infected. Milan was the great heretical capital; but there was hardly a part of Italy where the heresy was not represented. It penetrated into Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia, and appeared even in Rome. The prohibitions and penalties enacted by the civil and ecclesiastical rulers of the thirteenth century could not crush the evil, although the merciless Frederick II occupied the imperial throne and Popes Innocent III, Honorius III, and Gregory IX were not remiss in their efforts to suppress it. To prevent the enforcement of the punishment decreed against them, the members of the sect, on a few occasions, resorted to assassination, as is proved by the deaths of St. Peter Parenzo (1199) and St. Peter of Verona (1252); or, like Pungilovo, who after his death (1269) was temporarily honoured as a saint by the local Catholic population, they outwardly observed Catholic practices while remaining faithful Catharists. According to the Dominican inquisitor, Rainier Sacconi, himself a former adherent of the heresy, there were in the middle of the thirteenth century about 4000 perfected Cathari in the world. Of these there were in Lombardy and the Marches, 500 of the Albanensian sect, about 200 Bagnolenses, 1500 Concorrezenses, and 150 French refugees; at Vicenza 100, and as many at Florence and Spoleto. Although the increase in the number of "Believers" was very probably not proportionate to that of the "Perfecti", in consequence of the arrival of refugees from France, yet the Cathari of the northern half of Italy formed at this time over three-fifths of the total membership. The heresy, however, could not hold its own during the second half of the thirteenth century, and although it continued in existence in the fourteenth, it gradually disappeared from the cities and took refuge in less accessible places. St. Vincent Ferrer still discovered and converted some Cathari in 1403 in Lombardy and also in Piedmont, where in 1412 several of them, already deceased, were executed in effigy. No definite reference to their existence is found at a subsequent date.
Germany and England
Catharism was comparatively unimportant in Germany and England. In Germany it appeared principally in the Rhine lands. Some members were apprehended in 1052 at Goslar in Hanover and hanged by order of the emperor, Henry III. About 1110 some heretics, probably Cathari, and among them two priests, appeared at Trier, but do not seem to have been subjected to any penalty. Some years later (c. 1143) Cathari were discovered at Cologne. Some of them retracted; but the bishop of the sect and his socius (companion), not so ready to change their faith, were cited before an ecclesiastico-lay tribunal. During the trial they were, against the will of the judges, carried off by the people and burned. The heretical Church must have been completely organized in this part of Germany, as the presence of the bishop seems to prove. To these events we owe the refutation of the heresy written by St. Bernard at the request of Everwin, Abbot of Steinfeld. In 1163 the Rhenish city witnessed another execution, and a similar scene was almost simultaneously enacted at Bonn. Other districts, Bavaria, Suabia, and Switzerland, were infected, but the heresy did not gain a firm foothold. It disappeared almost completely in the thirteenth century.
About 1159, thirty Cathari, German in race and speech, left an unknown place, perhaps Flanders, to seek refuge in England. Their proselytizing efforts were rewarded by the temporary conversion of one woman. They were detected in 1166 and handed over to the secular power by the bishops of the Council of Oxford. Henry II ordered them to be scourged, branded on the forehead, and cast adrift in the cold of winter, and forbade any of his subjects to shelter or succour them. They all perished from hunger or exposure.
The Balkan States
Eastern Europe seems to have been, in point of date, the first country in which Catharism manifested itself, and it certainly was the last to be freed from it. The Bogomili, who were representatives of the heresy in its milder dualistic form, perhaps existed as early as the tenth century and, at a later date, were found in large numbers in Bulgaria. Bosnia was another Catharist centre. Some recent writers make no distinction between the heretics found there and the Bogomili, whereas others rank them with the rigid Dualists. In the Western contemporary documents they are usually called "Patareni", the designation then applied to the Cathari in Italy. At the end of the twelfth century, Kulin, the ban or civil ruler of Bosnia (1168-1204) embraced the heresy, and 10,000 of his subjects followed his example. The efforts made on the Catholic side, under the direction of Popes Innocent III, Honorius III, and Gregory IX, to eradicate the evil, were not productive of any permanent success. Noble work was accomplished by Franciscan missionaires sent to Bosnia by Pope Nicholas IV (1288-92). But though arms and persuasion were used against the heresy, it continued to flourish. As the country was for a long time a Hungarian dependency, Hungary was conspicuous in its resistance to the new faith. This situation developed into a source of weakness on the Catholic side, as the Cathari identified their religious cause with that of national independence. When, in the fifteenth century, the Bosnian king, Thomas, was converted to the Catholic Faith, the severe edicts which he issued against his former coreligionists were powerless against the evil. The Cathari, 40,000 in number, left Bosnia and passed into Herzegovina (1446). The heresy disappeared only after the conquest of these provinces by the Turks in the second half of the fifteenth century. Several thousand of its members joined the Orthodox Church, while many more embraced Islam.
III. THE CATHARI AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
The Catharist system was a simultaneous attack on the Catholic Church and the then existing State. The Church was directly assailed in its doctrine and hierarchy. The denial of the value of oaths, and the suppression, at least in theory, of the right to punish, undermined the basis of the Christian State. But the worst danger was that the triumph of the heretical principles meant the extinction of the human race. This annihilation was the direct consequence of the Catharist doctrine, that all intercourse between the sexes ought to be avoided and that suicide or the Endura, under certain circumstances, is not only lawful but commendable. The assertion of some writers, like Charles Molinier, that Catholic and Catharist teaching respecting marriage are identical, is an erroneous interpretation of Catholic doctrine and pratice. Among Catholics, the priest is forbidden to marry, but the faithful can merit eternal happiness in the married state. For the Cathari, no salvation was possible without previous renunciation of marriage. Mr. H.C. Lea, who cannot be suspected of partiality towards the Catholic Church, writes: "However much we may deprecate the means used for its (Catharism) suppression and commiserate those who suffered for conscience' sake, we cannot but admit that the cause of orthodoxy was in this case the cause of progress and civilization. Had Catharism become dominant, or even had it been allowed to exist on equal terms, its influence could not have failed to prove disastrous.
Hope to have helpe
Claude | | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 01/14/05 - Fred II again
Does your Catholic encyclopedia have an entry on Fred himself, or just as a part of the Inquisition? If so, could you send it to me?
Many thanks as always,
Paul.
curious98 answered on 01/14/05:Hi Paul,
There you are!
"Frederik II - German King and Roman Emperor, son of Henry VI and Constance of Sicily; born 26 Dec., 1194; died at Fiorentina, in Apulia, 13 Dec., 1250.
He adopted his father's policy of making Italy the centre of his power, and was interested in Germany only because it guaranteed to him his title to Upper and Central Italy. On the other hand, he could not arrest the dissolution of the empire hastened by the failure of his predecessor Otto IV. The possessions of the empire and those of his own Hohenstaufen family, by means of which Frederick I had sought to build up his power, were plundered. Frederick's sole desire was for peace in Germany, even if to secure this he had to make the greatest sacrifices; and for this reason, he granted to the ecclesiastical and temporal lords a series of privileges, which subsequently developed into the independent sovereignty of these princes. This emperor's policy was entirely dominated by the idea that without Sicily the possession of Italy would always be insecure, and that a king of Italy could not maintain himself without being at the same time emperor. This policy was naturally antagonistic to the papacy. The popes, isolated as they were in Central Italy, felt themselves compelled to prevent the union of Southern Italy with the empire. Frederick recognized this fact, and for several years strove to maintain peace by extreme concessions. Innocent III had chosen Frederick to be his instrument for the destruction of the Guelph, Otto IV. In return for Innocent's support, Frederick had been obliged to make promises to the pope at Eger (12 July, 1215), which would put an end to the undue influence of the civil power over the German bishops. The emancipation of the Church from the royal power dates from this time. The cause of Frederick's concessions to the Church lay not in his religious convictions but in his political aims.
Frederick had also been obliged to acknowledge the pope as his overlord in Sicily, thus abandoning his father's cherished hopes of uniting Sicily with the imperial crown of Germany, though the attempts of the pope to entirely nullify this "personal union" were far from successful. Italian affairs continued to be the hinge on which turned the papal policy towards the emperor, for the popes in their efforts to sustain their traditional supremacy could not allow the emperor a controlling influence in Italy. The conflict between the two powers strangely influenced the Crusades. Frederick had been forced to pledge himself to take part in a new crusade, for which inadequate preparations had been made by the pope, and the Council of Lateran (1215) fixed 1 June, 1216, as the time for beginning the crusade.
The condition of Germany, however, did not permit the absence of thet emperor. At Frankfort in April, 1220, the Germany diet passed regulations concerning the Roman expedition and the crusade. After Frederick's young son Henry had been chosen king, and Engelbert, the powerful Archbishop of Cologne, named vice-regent, Frederick set out for Italy. He was crowned emperor at Rome (22 Nov., 1220), and renewed his vow to take the cross, promising to begin the campaign in the following year. By a severe edict against heretics, he placed the secular power at the service of the Church, and thus appeared to have arrived at a complete understanding with the pope. Even when he failed to keep his promise to start the crusade in the following year, the friendly relations of pope and emperor remained unaltered. For this the peace-loving pope deserved the chief credit, though Frederick also strove to avoid a breach by his loyal policy towards the Holy See. Both Pope and emperor, however, saw that this peace was maintained only by skilful diplomacy, and that it was constantly imperilled by their conflicting interests.
Frederick at this time was chiefly solicitous about Sicily, towards which he was drawn by his Norman parentage on the mother's side, while the character of his own German people did not attract his sympathies. He had grown up in Sicily where Norman, Greek, and Mohammedan civilization had intermingled, at once strengthening and repelling one another. The king, endowed with great natural ability, had acquired a wonderful fund of learning which made him appear a prodigy to his contemporaries, but, although he was intimately acquainted with the greatest productions of eastern and western genius, his soaring spirit never lost itself in romantic dreams. He eagerly studied both the more and the less important interests of the political and economical life of Southern Italy. The funding of the University of Naples sufficiently attests his interest in education. He was an intelligent admirer of the beauties of nature, his love for which was intensified by his natural powers of observation. The unlimited resources of the physical world and its constantly multiplying problems increased the inclination of this sceptical spirit towards a thorough empiricism. In none of his contemporaries does intellectual subjectivism show itself so strongly and at the same time so one-sidedly. This desire to penetrate into the secrets of the universe, as well as his scandalous sensual indulgence, brought on Frederick the reputation of an atheist. In spite, however, of his sceptical tendencies, he was not an atheist. An epigrammatic utterance about "the three impostors, Moses, Christ and Mohammed" has been unjustly ascribed to him in later times, and he remained true to the Church. Perhaps his rationalistic mind took pleasure in the strictly logical character of Catholic dogma. He was not, however, a champion of rationalism, nor had he any sympathy with the mystico-heretical movements of the time; in fact he joined in suppressing them. It was not the Church of the Middle Ages that he antagonized, but its representatives. It is in his conflict with the pope that his colossal character becomes manifest. At the same time, it becomes apparent how he combined force and ability with cunning and the spirit of revenge. His most prominent characteristic was his self-conceit. In Germany this megalomania was kept in check, but not so in Sicily. Here he could build up a modern state, the foundation of which it is true had already been laid by the great Norman kings.
The organization of his Sicilian hereditary states was completed by the "Constitutiones imperiales", published at Amalfi, 1231. In these laws, Frederick appears as sole possessor of every right and privilege, an absolute monarch, or rather an enlightened despot standing at the head of a well-ordered civil hierarchy. His subjects in this system had duties only, but they were well defined. After practically completing the reorganization of Sicily (1235), the emperor attempted, like his powerful grandfather, to re-establish the imperial power in Upper Italy, but with insufficient resources. The result was a new hostile league of the Italian cities. Through the mediation of the pope, however, peace was maintained. During this time Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne, supported by several princes of the empire who had been efficiently assisted by the royal power in their struggle with the cities, preserved the peace in Germany. After the archbishop's death, however, a new order set in–a time of savage feuds and widespread disorder followed by the first open quarrel between the papacy and the emperor. Frederick had completed extensive preparations for a crusade in 1227. Four years previously, he had espoused Isabella (or Iolanthe), heiress of Jerusalem, and now styled himself "Romanorum imperator semper Augustus; Jerusalem et Siciliæ rex". It was his serious intention to carry out his promise to begin his crusade in August, 1227 (under pain of excommunication), but a malignant fever destroyed a great part of his army and prostrated the king himself. Nevertheless Gregory IX declared Frederick excommunicated (29 Sept., 1227), showing by this step that he considered the time had come to break the illusive peace and to clear up the situation.
Although the radical antagonim between empire and papacy did not appear on the surface, it was at the root of the ensuing conflict between Church and State. At the beginning of this struggle the excommunicated emperor started on his crusade against the express wish of the pope, wishing no doubt to justify his attitude by success. On 17 March, 1229, he crowned himself King of Jerusalem. On 10 June, 1229, he landed at Brindisi on his return. During the emperor's absence the curia had taken vigorous measures against him. Frederick's energetic action after his return forced the pope to recognize the emperor's success in the East and to release him from excommunication. The treaty of San Germano (20 July, 1230), in spite of many concessions made by the Emperor, was in reality an evidence of papal defeat. The pope had been unable to break the power of his dangerous adversary. Frederick forthwith resumed his North Italian policy. Again his attempts were frustrated, on this occasion by the threatening attitude of his son Henry, who now appeared as independent ruler of Germany, thereby becoming his father's enemy and unfurling the banner of rebellion (1234). After a long absence, Frederick now returned to Germany, where he took prisoner his rebel son (1235). Henry died in 1242.
About this time Frederick married Elizabeth of England (at Worms), and in 1235 held a brilliant diet at Mainz, where he promulgated the famous Laws of the Empire, a landmark in the development of the empire and its constitutions. New measures for the maintenance of peace were enacted, the right of private feuds was greatly restricted, and an imperial court with its own seal was constituted, thereby establishing a base for the future national law. As soon as the emperor had established order in Germany, he again marched against the Lombards, which conflict soon brought on another with the pope. The latter had several times mediated between the Lombards and the emperor, and now reasserted his right to arbitrate between the contending parties. In the numerous manifestos of the pope and the emperor the antagonism of Church and State becomes daily more evident. The pope claimed for himself the "imperium animarum" and the "principatus rerum et corporum in universo mundo". The emperor on the other hand wished to restore the "imperium mundi" Rome was again the be the capital of the world and Frederick was to become the real emperor of the Romans. He published an energetic manifesto protesting against the world-empire of the pope. The emperor's successes, especially his victory over the Lombards at the battle of Cortenuova (1237), only embittered the opposition between Church and State. The pope, who had allied himself with Venice, again excommunicated the "self-confessed heretic", the "blasphemous beast of the Apocalypse" (20 March, 1239). Frederick now attempted to conquer the rest of Italy, i.e. the papal states. His son Enrico captured in a sea-fight all the prelates who by the command of Gregory were coming from Genoa to Rome to assist at a general council. Gregory's position was now desperate, and, after his death (22 Aug., 1241), the Holy See remained vacant for almost two years save for the short reign of Celestine IV.
During this interval the bitterness existing between the rival parties seemed to moderate somewhat, and about this time the emperor was threatened by a new and dangerous movement in Germany. The German episcopate could ill bear the prospect of being henceforth at the mercy of the reckless tyrant of Italy. Frederick sought to weaken the hostile bishops by favouring the secular princes and granting privileges to the cities. The energetic Innocent IV ascended the papal throne on 25 June, 1243. To secure peace with the newly elected pontiff, the emperor was inclined to make concessions. The main issue at stake however was not settled, i.e., the jurisdiction of the emperor in North Italy. In order to nullify Frederick's military superiority in the future phases of the struggle, Innocent left Rome secretly and went by way of Genoa to Lyons. Here he summoned a general council (21 June, 1245) by which Frederick was again excommunicated. Immediately there appeared several pretenders in Germany, i.e., Henry Raspe of Thuringia and William of Holland. It was only with the greatest difficulty that Frederick's son Conrad could hold his own in Germany, since the greater part of the clergy supported the pope. Most of the lay lords, however, remained faithful to the emperor and exhibited an attitude of hostility to the clergy. A contemporary writer describes as follows the situation in 1246: "Injustice reigned supreme. The people were without leaders and Rome was troubled. Clerical dignity was lost sight of and the laity were split into various factions. Some were loyal to the Church and took the cross, others adhered to Frederick and became the enemies of God's religion."
For some time fortune alternately smiled and frowned on Frederick in Italy, buit, after completing all his preparations for a decisive battle, he died at Florentina in Apulia, and was buried at Palermo. In German legend he continued to live as the emperor fated to return and reform both Church and State. In more recent times, however, he has had to yield his place in popular legend to Frederick Barbarossa, a figure more in harmony with German sentiment"
Regards
Claude | | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 01/13/05 - Did Frederick II set up the Inquisition?
Am I right in saying that the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II set up the Inquisition? Yes, I know there were two Inquisitions, the Papal and the Spanish, but am I right in saying that Frederick II set up one of them?
Thanks,
Paul.
curious98 answered on 01/14/05:I'm giving you the full text of what the Catholic Encyclopedia says in this respect:
"During the first three decades of the thirteenth century the Inquisition, as the institution, did not exist. But eventually Christian Europe was so endangered by heresy, and penal legislation concerning Catharism had gone so far, that the Inquisition seemed to be a political necessity. That these sects were a menace to Christian society had been long recognized by the Byzantine rulers. As early as the tenth century Empress Theodora had put to death a multitude of Paulicians, and in 1118 Emperor Alexius Comnenus treated the Bogomili with equal severity, but this did not prevent them from pouring over all Western Europe. Moreover these sects were in the highest degree aggressive, hostile to Christianity itself, to the Mass, the sacraments, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and organization; hostile also to feudal government by their attitude towards oaths, which they declared under no circumstances allowable. Nor were their views less fatal to the continuance of human society, for on the one hand they forbade marriage and the propagation of the human race. and on the other hand they made a duty of suicide through the institution of the Endura (see CATHARI). It has been said that more perished through the Endura (the Catharist suicide code) than through the Inquisition. It was, therefore, natural enough for the custodians of the existing order in Europe, especially of the Christian religion, to adopt repressive measures against such revolutionary teachings.
In France Louis VIII decreed in 1226 that persons excommunicated by the diocesan bishop, or his delegate, should receive "meet punishment" (debita animadversio). In 1249 Louis IX ordered barons to deal with heretics according to the dictates of duty (de ipsis faciant quod debebant). A decree of the Council of Toulouse (1229) makes it appear probable that in France death at the stake was already comprehended as in keeping with the aforesaid debita animadversio. To seek to trace in these measures the influence of imperial or papal ordinances is vain, since the burning of heretics had already come to be regarded as prescriptive. It is said in the "Etablissements de St. Louis et coutumes de Beauvaisis", ch. cxiii (Ordonnances des Roys de France, I, 211): "Quand le juge [ecclésiastique] laurait examiné [le suspect] se il trouvait, quil feust bougres, si le devrait faire envoier à la justice laie, et la justice laie le dolt fere ardoir. "The "Coutumes de Beauvaisis" correspond to the German "Sachsenspiegel", or "Mirror of Saxon Laws", compiled about 1235, which also embodies as a law sanctioned by custom the execution of unbelievers at the stake (sal man uf der hurt burnen). In Italy Emperor Frederick II, as early as 22 November, 1220 (Mon. Germ., II, 243), issued a rescript against heretics, conceived, however quite in the spirit of Innocent III, and Honorius III commissioned his legates to see to the enforcement in Italian cities of both the canonical decrees of 1215 and the imperial legislation of 1220. From the foregoing it cannot be doubted that up to 1224 there was no imperial law ordering, or presupposing as legal, the burning of heretics. The rescript for Lombardy of 1224 (Mon. Germ., II, 252; cf. ibid., 288) is accordingly the first law in which death by fire is contemplated (cf. Ficker, op. cit., 196). That Honorius III was in any way concerned in the drafting of this ordinance cannot be maintained; indeed the emperor was all the less in need of papal inspiration as the burning of heretics in Germany was then no longer rare; his legists, moreover, would certainly have directed the emperors attention to the ancient Roman Law that punished high treason with death, and Manichaeism in particular with the stake. The imperial rescripts of 1220 and 1224 were adopted into ecclesiastical criminal law in 1231, and were soon applied at Rome. It was then that the Inquisition of the Middle Ages came into being.
What was the immediate provocation? Contemporary sources afford no positive answer. Bishop Douais, who perhaps commands the original contemporary material better than anyone, has attempted in his latest work (LInquisition. Ses Origines. Sa Procedure, Paris, 1906) to explain its appearance by a supposed anxiety of Gregory IX to forestall the encroachments of Frederick II in the strictly ecclesiastical province of doctrine. For this purpose it would seem necessary for the pope to establish a distinct and specifically ecclesiastical court. From this point of view, though the hypothesis cannot be fully proved, much is intelligible that otherwise remains obscure. There was doubtless reason to fear such imperial encroachments in an age yet filled with the angry contentions of the Imperium and the Sacerdotium. We need only recall the trickery of the emperor and his Pretended eagerness for the purity of the Faith, his Increasingly rigorous legislation against heretics, the numerous executions of his personal rivals on the pretext of heresy, the hereditary passion of the Hohenstaufen for supreme control over Church and State, their claim of God-given authority over both, of responsibility in both domains to God and God only etc. What was more natural than that the Church should strictly reserve to herself her own sphere, while at the same time endeavouring to avoid giving offence to the emperor? A purely spiritual or papal religious tribunal would secure ecclesiastical liberty and authority for this court could be confided to men of expert knowledge and blameless reputation, and above all to independent men in whose hands the Church could safely trust the decision as to the orthodoxy or heterodoxy of a given teaching. On the other hand, to meet the emperors wishes as far as allowable, the penal code of the empire could be taken over as it stood (cf. Audray, "Regist. de Grégoire IX", n. 535).
(2) The New Tribunal
(a) Its essential characteristic
The pope did not establish the Inquisition as a distinct and separate tribunal; what he did was to appoint special but permanent judges, who executed their doctrinal functions In the name of the pope. Where they sat, there was the Inquisition. It must he carefully noted that the characteristic feature of the Inquisition was not its peculiar procedure, nor the secret examination of witnesses and consequent official indictment: this procedure was common to all courts from the time of Innocent III. Nor was it the pursuit of heretics in all places: this had been the rule since the Imperial Synod of Verona under Lucius III and Frederick Barbarossa. Nor again was it the torture, which was not prescribed or even allowed for decades after the beginning of the Inquisition, nor, finally, the various sanctions, imprisonment, confiscation, the stake, etc., all of which punishments were usual long before the Inquisition. The Inquisitor, strictly speaking, was a special but permanent judge, acting in the name of the pope and clothed by him with the right and the duty to deal legally with offences against the Faith; he had, however, to adhere to the established rules of canonical procedure and pronounce the customary penalties.
Many regarded it, as providential that just at this time sprang up two new orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, whose members, by their superior theological training and other characteristics, seemed eminently fitted to perform the inquisitorial task with entire success. It was safe to assume that they were not merely endowed with the requisite knowledge, but that they would also, quite unselfishly and uninfluenced by worldly motives, do solely what seemed their duty for the Good of the Church. In addition, there was reason to hope that, because of their great popularity, they would not encounter too much opposition. It seems, therefore, not unnatural that the inquisitors should have been chosen by the popes prevailingly from these orders, especially from that of the Dominicans. It is to he noted, however, that the inquisitors were not chosen exclusively from the mendicant orders, though the Senator of Rome no doubt meant such when in his oath of office (1231) he spoke of inquisitores datos ab ecclesia. In his decree of 1232 Frederick II calls them inquisitores ab apostolica sede datos. The Dominican Alberic, in November of 1232, went through Lombardy as inquisitor haereticae pravitatis. The prior and sub-prior of the Dominicans at Friesbach were given a similar commission as early as 27 November, 1231; on 2 December, 1232, the convent of Strasburg, and a little later the convents of Würzburg, Ratisbon, and Bremen, also received the commission. In 1233 a rescript of Gregory IX, touching these matters, was sent simultaneously to the bishops of Southern France and to the priors of the Dominican Order. We know that Dominicans were sent as inquisitors in 1232 to Germany along the Rhine, to the Diocese of Tarragona in Spain and to Lombardy; in 1233 to France, to the territory of Auxerre, the ecclesiastical provinces of Bourges, Bordeaux, Narbonne, and Auch, and to Burgundy; in 1235 to the ecclesiastical province of Sens. In fine, about 1255 we find the Inquisition in full activity in all the countries of Central and Western Europe in the county of Toulouse, in Sicily, Aragon, Lombardy, France, Burgundy, Brabant, and Germany (cf. Douais, op. cit., p. 36, and Fredericq, "Corpus documentorum inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis Neerlandicae, 1025-1520", 2 vols., Ghent, 1884-96).
That Gregory IX, through his appointment of Dominicans and Franciscans as inquisitors, withdrew the suppression of heresy from the proper courts (i.e. from the bishops), is a reproach that in so general a form cannot be sustained. So little did he think of displacing episcopal authority that, on the contrary he provided explicitly that no inquisitional tribunal was to work anywhere without the diocesan bishops co-operation. And if, on the strength of their papal jurisdiction, inquisitors occasionally manifested too great an inclination to act independently of episcopal authority it was precisely the popes who kept them within right bounds. As early as 1254 Innocent IV prohibited anew perpetual imprisonment or death at the stake without the episcopal consent. Similar orders were issued by Urban IV in 1262, Clement IV in 1265, and Gregory X in 1273, until at last Boniface VIII and Clement V solemnly declared null and void all judgments issued in trials concerning faith, unless delivered with the approval anti co-operation of the bishops. The popes always upheld with earnestness the episcopal authority, and sought to free the inquisitional tribunals from every kind of arbitrariness and caprice.
It was a heavy burden of responsibility -- almost too heavy for a common mortal -- which fell upon the shoulders of an inquisitor, who was obliged, at least indirectly, to decide between life and death. The Church was bound to insist that he should possess, in a pre-eminant degree, the qualities of a good judge; that he should be animated with a glowing zeal for the Faith, the salvation of souls, and the extirpation of heresy; that amid all difficulties and dangers he should never yield to anger or passion; that he should meet hostility fearlessly, but should not court it; that he should yield to no inducement or threat, and yet not be heartless; that, when circumstances permitted, he should observe mercy in allotting penalties; that he should listen to the counsel of others, and not trust too much to his own opinion or to appearances, since often the probable is untrue, and the truth improbable. Somewhat thus did Bernard Gui (or Guldonis) and Eymeric, both of them inquisitors for years, describe the ideal inquisitor. Of such an inquisitor also was Gregory IX doubtlessly thinking when he urged Conrad of Marburg: "ut puniatur sic temeritas perversorum quod innocentiae puritas non laedatur" -- i.e., "not to punish the wicked so as to hurt the innocent". History shows us how far the inquisitors answered to this ideal. Far from being inhuman, they were, as a rule, men of spotless character and sometimes of truly admirable sanctity, and not a few of them have been canonized by the Church. There is absolutely no reason to look on the medieval ecclesiastical judge as intellectually and morally inferior to the modern judge. No one would deny that the judges of today, despite occasional harsh decisions and the errors of a, few, pursue a highly honourable profession. Similarly, the medieval inquisitors should be judged as a whole Moreover, history does not justify the hypothesis that the medieval heretics were prodigies of virtue, deserving our sympathy in advance.
(b) Procedure
This regularly began with a months "term of grace", proclaimed by the inquisitor whenever he came to a heresy-ridden district. The inhabitants mere summoned to appear before the inquisitor. On those who confessed of their own accord a suitable penance (e.g. a pilgrimage) was imposed, but never a severe punishment like incarceration or surrender to the civil power. However, these relations with the residents of a, place often furnished important indications, pointed out the proper quarter for investigation, and sometimes much evidence was thus obtained against individuals. These mere then cited before the judges -- usually by the parish priest, although occasionally by the secular authorities -- and the trial began. If the accused at once made full and free confession, the affair was soon concluded, and not to the disadvantage of the accused. But in most instances the accused entered denial even after swearing on the Four Gospels, and this denial was stubborn in the measure that the testimony was incriminating. David of Augsburg (cf. Preger, "Der Traktat des David von Augshurg uber die Waldenser", Munich, 1878 pp. 43 sqq.) pointed out to the inquisitor four methods of extracting open acknowledgment:
fear of death, i.e. by giving the accused to understand that the stake awaited him if he would not confess;
more or less close confinement, possibly emphasized by curtailment of food;
visits of tried men, who would attempt to induce free confession through friendly persuasion;
torture, which will be discussed below.
(c) The Witnesses
When no voluntary admission was made, evidence was adduced. Legally, there had to be at least two witnesses, although conscientious judges rarely contended themselves with that number. The principle had hitherto been held by the Church that the testimony of a heretic, an excommunicated person, a perjurer, in short, of an "infamous", was worthless before the courts. But in its destination of unbelief the Church took the further step of abolishing this long established practice, and of accepting a heretics evidence at nearly full value in trials concerning faith. This appears as early as the twelfth century in the "Decretum Gratiani". While Frederick II readily assented to this new departure, the inquisitors seemed at first uncertain as to the value of the evidence of an "infamous" person. It was only in 1261, after Alexander IV had silenced their scruples, that the new principle was generally adopted both in theory and in practice. This grave modification seems to have been defended on the ground that the heretical conventicles took place secretly, and were shrouded in great obscurity, so that reliable information could be obtained from none but themselves. Even prior to the establishment of the Inquisition the names of the witnesses were sometimes withheld from the accused person, and this usage was legalized by Gregory IX, Innocent IV, and Alexander IV. Boniface VIII, however, set it aside by his Bull "Ut commissi vobis officii" (Sext. Decret., 1. V, tit. ii ); and commanded that at all trials, even inquisitorial, the witnesses must be named to the accused. There was no personal confrontation of witnesses, neither was there any cross-examination. Witnesses for the defence hardly ever appeared, as they would almost infallibly be suspected of being heretics or favourable to heresy. For the same reason those impeached rarely secured legal advisers, and mere therefore obliged to make personal response to the main points of a charge. This, however, was also no innovation, for in 1205 Innocent III, by the Bull "Si adversus vos" forbade any legal help for heretics: "We strictly prohibit you, lawyers and notaries, from assisting in any way, by council or support, all heretics and such as believe In them, adhere to them, render them any assistance or defend them in any way. But this severity soon relaxed, and even in Eymerics day it seems to have been the universal custom to grant heretics a legal adviser, who, however, had to be in every way beyond suspicion, "upright, of undoubted loyalty, skilled in civil and canon law, and zealous for the faith."
Meanwhile, even in those hard times, such legal severities were felt to be excessive, and attempts were made to mitigate them in various ways, so as to protect the natural rights of the accused. First he could make known to the judge the names of his enemies: should the charge originate with them, they would be quashed without further ado. Furthermore, it was undoubtedly to the advantage of the accused that false witnesses were punished without mercy. The aforesaid inquisitor, Bernard Gui, relates an instance of a father falsely accusing his son of heresy. The sons innocence quickly coming to light, the false accuser was apprehended, and sentenced to prison for life (solam vitam ei ex misericordia relinquentes). In addition he was pilloried for five consecutive Sundays before the church during service, with bare head and bound hands. Perjury in those days was accounted an enormous offence, particularly when committed by a false witness. Moreover, the accused had a considerable advantage in the fact that the inquisitor had to conduct the trial in co-operation with the diocesan bishop or his representatives, to whom all documents relating to the trial had to he remitted. Both together, inquisitor and bishop, were also made to summon and consult a number of upright and experienced men (boni viri), and to decide in agreement with their decision (vota). Innocent IV (11 July. 1254), Alexander IV (15 April, 1255, and 27 April, 1260), and Urban IV (2 August, 1264) strictly prescribed this institution of the boni viri -- i.e. the consultation in difficult cases of experienced men, well versed in theology and canon law, and in every way irreproachable. The documents of the trial were either in their entirety handed to them, or a least an abstract drawn up by a public notary was furnished; they were also made acquainted with the witnesses names, and their first duty was to decide whether or not the witnesses were credible.
The boni viri were very frequently called on. Thirty, fifty, eighty, or more persons -- laymen and priests; secular and regular -- would be summoned, all highly respected and independent men, and singly sworn to give verdict upon the cases before them accordingly to the best of their knowledge and belief. Substantially they were always called upon to decide two questions: whether and what guilt lay at hand, and what punishment was to be inflicted. That they might be influenced by no personal considerations, the case would be submitted to them somewhat in the abstract, i.e., the name of the person inculpated was not given. Although, strictly speaking, the boni viri were entitled only to an advisory vote, the final ruling was usually in accordance with their views, and, whether their decision was revised, it was always in the direction of clemency, the mitigation of the findings being indeed of frequent occurrence. The judges were also assisted by a consilium permanens, or standing council, composed of other sworn judges. In these dispositions surely lay the most valuable guarantees for all objective, impartial, and just operation of the inquisition courts. Apart from the conduct of his own defence the accused disposed of other legal means for safeguarding his rights: he could reject a judge who had shown prejudice, and at any stage of the trial could appeal to Rome. Eymeric leads one to infer that in Aragon appeals to the Holy See were not rare. He himself as inquisitor had on one occasion to go to Rome to defend in person his own position, but he advises other inquisitors against that step, as it simply meant the loss of much time and money; it were wiser, he says, to try a case in such a manner that no fault could be found. In the event of an appeal the documents of the case were to be sent to Rome under seal, and Rome not only scrutinized them, but itself gave the final verdict. Seemingly, appeals to Rome were in great favour; a milder sentence, it was hoped, would be forthcoming, or at least some time would be gained.
(d) Punishments
The present writer can find nothing to suggest that the accused were imprisoned during the period of inquiry. It was certainly customary to grant the accused person his freedom until the sermo generalis, were he ever so strongly inculpated through witnesses or confession; he was not yet supposed guilty, though he was compelled to promise under oath always to be ready to come before the inquisitor, and in the end to accept with good grace his sentence, whatever its tenor. The oath was assuredly a terrible weapon in the hands of the medieval judge. If the accused person kept it, the judge was favourably inclined; on the other hand, if the accused violated it, his credit grew worse. Many sects, it was known, repudiated oaths on principle; hence the violation of an oath caused the guilty party easily to incur suspicion of heresy. Besides the oath, the inquisitor might secure himself by demanding a sum of money as bail, or reliable bondsmen who would stand surety for the accused. It happened, too, that bondsmen undertook upon oath to deliver the accused "dead or alive" It was perhaps unpleasant to live under the burden of such an obligation, but, at any rate, it was more endurable than to await a final verdict in rigid confinement for months or longer.
Curiously enough torture was not regarded as a mode of punishment, but purely as a means of eliciting the truth. It was not of ecclesiastical origin, and was long prohibited in the ecclesiastical courts. Nor was it originally an important factor in the inquisitional procedure, being unauthorized until twenty years after the Inquisition had begun. It was first authorized by Innocent IV in his Bull "Ad exstirpanda" of 15 May, 1252, which was confirmed by Alexander IV on 30 November, 1259, and by Clement IV on 3 November, 1265. The limit placed upon torture was citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum -- i.e, it was not to cause the loss of life or limb or imperil life. Torture was to applied only once, and not then unless the accused were uncertain in his statements, and seemed already virtually convicted by manifold and weighty proofs. In general, this violent testimony (quaestio) was to be deferred as long as possible, and recourse to it was permitted in only when all other expedients were exhausted. Conscientiousness and sensible judges quite properly attached no great importance to confessions extracted by torture. After long experience Eymeric declared: Quaestiones sunt fallaces et inefficaces -- i.e the torture is deceptive and ineffectual.
Had this papal legislation been adhered to in practice, the historian of the Inquisition would have fewer difficulties to satisfy. In the beginning, torture was held to be so odious that clerics were forbidden to be present under pain of irregularity. Sometimes it had to be interrupted so as to enable the inquisitor to continue his examination, which, of course, was attended by numerous inconveniences. Therefore on 27 April, 1260, Alexander IV authorized inquisitors to absolve one another of this irregularity. Urban IV on 2 August, 1262, renewed the permission, and this was soon interpreted as formal licence to continue the examination in the torture chamber itself. The inquisitors manuals faithfully noted and approved this usage. The general rule ran that torture was to be resorted to only once. But this was sometimes circumvented -- first, by assuming that with every new piece of evidence the rack could be utilized afresh, and secondly, by imposing fresh torments on the poor victim (often on different days), not by way of repetition, but as a continuation (non ad modum iterationis sed continuationis), as defended by Eymeric; "quia, iterari non debent [tormenta], nisi novis supervenitibus indiciis, continuari non prohibentur." But what was to be done when the accused, released from the rack, denied what he had just confessed? Some held with Eymeric that the accused should be set at liberty; others, however, like the author of the "Sacro Arsenale" held that the torture should be continued. because the accused had too seriously incriminated himself by his previous confession. When Clement V formulated his regulations for the employment of torture, he never imagined that eventually even witnesses would be put on the rack, although not their guilt, but that of the accused, was in question. From the popes silence it was concluded that a witness might be put upon the rack at the discretion of the inquisitor. Moreover, if the accused was convicted through witnesses, or had pleaded guilty, the torture might still he used to compel him to testify against his friends and fellow-culprits. It would be opposed to all Divine and human equity -- so one reads in the "SacroArsenale, ovvero Pratica dell Officio della Santa Inquisizione" (Bologna, 1665) -- to inflict torture unless the judge were personally persuaded of the guilt of the accused.
But one of the difficulties of the procedure is why torture was used as a means of learning the truth. On the one hand, the torture was continued until the accused confessed or intimated that he was willing to confess, On the other hand, it was not desired, as in fact it was not possible, to regard as freely made a confession wrung by torture.
It is at once apparent how little reliance may be placed upon the assertion so often repeated in the minutes of trials, "confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum" (the confession was true and free), even though one had not occasionally read in the preceding pages that, after being taken down from the rack (postquam depositus fuit de tormento), he freely confessed this or that. However, it is not of greater importance to say that torture is seldom mentioned in the records of inquisition trials -- but once, for example in 636 condemnations between 1309 and 1323; this does not prove that torture was rarely applied. Since torture was originally inflicted outside the court room by lay officials, and since only the voluntary confession was valid before the judges, there was no occasion to mention in the records the fact of torture. On the other hand it, is historically true that the popes not only always held that torture must not imperil life or but also tried to abolish particularly grievous abuses, when such became known to them. Thus Clement V ordained that inquisitors should not apply the torture without the consent of the diocesan bishop. From the middle of the thirteenth century, they did not disavow the principle itself, and, as their restrictions to its use were not always heeded, its severity, though of tell exaggerated, was in many cases extreme.
The consuls of Carcassonne in 1286 complained to the pope, the King of France, and the vicars of the local bishop against the inquisitor Jean Garland, whom they charged with inflicting torture in an absolutely inhuman manner, and this charge was no isolated one. The case of Savonarola has never been altogether cleared up in this respect. The official report says he had to suffer three and a half tratti da fune (a sort of strappado). When Alexander VI showed discontent with the delays of the trial, the Florentine government excused itself by urging that Savonarola was a man of extraordinary sturdiness and endurance, and that he had been vigorously tortured on many days (assidua quaestione multis diebus, the papal prothonotary, Burchard, says seven times) but with little effect. It is to be noted that torture was most cruelly used, where the inquisitors were most exposed to the pressure of civil authority. Frederick II, though always boasting of his zeal for the purity of the Faith, abused both rack and Inquisition to put out of the way his personal enemies. The tragical ruin of the Templars is ascribed to the abuse of torture by Philip the Fair and his henchmen. At Paris, for instance, thirty-six, and at Sens twenty-five, Templars died as the result of torture. Blessed Joan of Are could not have been sent to the stake as a heretic and a recalcitrant, if her judges had not been tools of English policy. And the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition are largely due to the fact that in its administration civil purposes overshadowed the ecclesiastical. Every reader of the "Cautio criminalis" of the Jesuit Father Friedrich Spee knows to whose account chiefly must be set down the horrors of the witchcraft trials. Most of the punishments that were properly speaking inquisitional were not inhuman, either by their nature or by the manner of their infliction. Most frequently certain good works were ordered, e.g. the building of a church, the visitation of a church, a pilgrimage more or less distant, the offering of a candle or a chalice, participation in a crusade, and the like. Other works partook more of the character of real and to some extent degrading punishments, e.g. fines, whose proceeds were devoted to such public purposes as church-building, road-making, and the like; whipping with rods during religious service; the pillory; the wearing of coloured crosses, and so on.
The hardest penalties were imprisonment in its various degrees exclusion from the communion of the Church, and the usually consequent surrender to the civil power. "Cum ecclesia" ran the regular expression, "ultra non habeat quod faciat pro suis demeritis contra ipsum, idcirco, eundum reliquimus brachio et iudicio saeculari" -- i.e. since the Church can no farther punish his misdeeds , she leaves him to the civil authority. Naturally enough, punishment as a legal sanction is always a hard and painful thing, whether decreed by civil of ecclesiastical justice. There is, however, always an essential distinction between civil and ecclesiastical punishment. While chastisement inflicted by secular authority aims chiefly at punishment violation of the law, the Church seeks primarily the correction of the delinquent; indeed his spiritual welfare frequently so much in view that the element of punishment is almost entirely lost sight of. Commands to hear Holy Mass on Sundays and holidays, to frequent religious services, to abstain from manual labour, to receive Communion at the chief festivals of the year, to forbear from soothsaying and usury, etc., can efficacious as helps toward the fulfillment of Christian duties. It being furthermore incumbent on the inquisitor to consider not merely the external sanction, but also the inner change of heart, his sentence lost the quasi-mechanical stiffness so often characteristic of civil condemnation. Moreover, the penalties incurred were on numberless occasions remitted, mitigated, or commuted. In the records of the Inquisition we very frequently read that because of old age, sickness, or poverty in the family, the in the family, the due punishment was materially reduced owing to the inquisitor sheer pity, or the petition of a good Catholic. Imprisonment for life was altered to a fine, and this to an alms; participation in a crusade was commuted into a pilgrimage, while a distant and costly pilgrimage became a visit to a neighboring shrine or church, and so on. If the inquisitors leniency were abused, he was authorized to revive in full the original punishment. On the whole, the Inquisition was humanely conducted. Thus we read that a son obtained his fathers release by merely asking for it, without putting forward any special reasons. Licence to leave risen for three weeks, three months, or an unlimited period-say until the recovery or decease of sick parents was not infrequent. Rome itself censured inquisitioners or deposed them because they were too harsh, but never because they mere too merciful.
Imprisonment was not always accounted punishment in the proper sense: it was rather looked on as an opportunity for repentance, a preventive against backsliding or the infection of others. It was known as immuration (from the Latin murus, a wall), or incarceration, and was inflicted for a definite time or for life. Immuration for life was the lot of those who had failed to profit by the aforesaid term of grace, or had perhaps recanted only from fear of death, or had once before abjured heresy. The murus strictus seu arctus, or carcer strictissimus, implied close and solitary confinement, occasionally aggravated by fasting or chains. In practice, however, these regulations were not always enforced literally. We read of immured persons receiving visits rather freely, playing games, or dining with their jailors. On the other hand, solitary confinement was at times deemed insufficient, and then the immured were put in irons or chained to the prison wall. Members of a religious order, when condemned for life, were immured in their own convent nor ever allowed to speak with any of their fraternity. The dungeon or cell was euphemistically called "In Pace" it was, indeed, the tomb of a man buried alive. It was looked upon as a remarkable favour when, in 1330, through the good offices of the Archbishop of Toulouse, the French king permitted a dignitary of a certain order to visit the "In Pace" twice a month and comfort his imprisoned brethren, against which favour the Dominicans lodged with Clement VI a fruitless protest. Though the prison cells were directed to be kept in such a way as to endanger neither the life nor the health of occupants, their true condition was sometimes deplorable, as we see from a document published by J. B. Vidal (Annales de St-Louis des Francais, 1905 P. 362):
In some cells the unfortunates were bound in stocks or chains, unable to move about, and forced to sleep on the ground . . . . There was little regard for cleanliness. In some cases there was no light or ventilation, and the food was meagre and very poor.
Occasionally the popes had to put an end through their legates to similarly atrocious conditions. After inspecting the Carcassonne and Albi prisons in 1306, the legates Pierre de la Chapelle and Béranger de Frédol dismissed the warden, removed the chains from the captives, and rescued some from their underground dungeons. The local bishop was expected to provide food from the confiscated property of the prisoner. For those doomed to close confinement, it was meagre enough, scarcely more than bread and water. It was, not long, however, before prisoners were allowed other victuals, wine and money also from outside, and this was soon generally tolerated.
Officially it was not the Church that sentenced unrepenting heretics to death, more particularly to the stake. As legate of the Roman Church even Gregory IV never went further than the penal ordinances of Innocent III required, nor ever inflicted a punishment more severe than excommunication. Not until four years after the commencement of his pontificate did he admit the opinion, then prevalent among legists, that heresy should be punished with death, seeing that it was confessedly no less serious an offence than high treason. Nevertheless he continued to insist on the exclusive right of the Church to decide in authentic manner in matters of heresy; at the same time it was not her office to pronounce sentence of death. The Church, thenceforth, expelled from her bosom the impenitent heretic, whereupon the state took over the duty of his temporal punishment. Frederick II was of the same opinion; in his Constitution of 1224 he says that heretics convicted by an ecclesiastical court shall, on imperial authority, suffer death by fire (auctoritate nostra ignis iudicio concremandos), and similarly in 1233 "praesentis nostrae legis edicto damnatos mortem pati decernimus." In this way Gregory IX may be regarded as having had no share either directly or indirectly in the death of condemned heretics. Not so the succeeding popes. In the Bull "Ad exstirpanda" (1252) Innocent IV says:
When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podestà or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them.
Moreover, he directs that this Bull and the corresponding regulations of Frederick II be entered in every city among the municipal statutes under pain of excommunication, which was also visited on those who failed to execute both the papal and the imperial decrees. Nor could any doubt remain as to what civil regulations were meant, for the passages which ordered the burning of impenitent heretics were inserted in the papal decretals from the imperial constitutions "Commissis nobis" and "Inconsutibilem tunicam". The aforesaid Bull "Ad exstirpanda" remained thenceforth a fundamental document of the Inquisition, renewed or reinforced by several popes, Alexander IV (1254-61), Clement IV (1265-68), Nicholas IV (1288-02), Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and others. The civil authorities, therefore, were enjoined by the popes, under pain of excommunication to execute the legal sentences that condemned impenitent heretics to the stake. It is to he noted that excommunication itself was no trifle, for, if the person excommunicated did not free himself from excommunication within a year, he was held by the legislation of that period to be a heretic, and incurred all the penalties that affected heresy.
The Number of Victims.
How many victims were handed over to the civil power cannot be stated with even approximate accuracy. We have nevertheless some valuable information about a few of the Inquisition tribunals, and their statistics are not without interest. At Pamiers, from 1318 to 1324, out of twenty-four persons convicted but five were delivered to the civil power, and at Toulouse from 1308 to 1323, only forty-two out of nine hundred and thirty bear the ominous note "relictus culiae saeculari". Thus, at Pamiers one in thirteen, and at Toulouse one in forty-two seem to have been burnt for heresy although these places were hotbeds of heresy and therefore principal centres of the Inquisition. We may add, also, that this was the most active period of the institution. These data and others of the same nature bear out the assertion that the Inquisition marks a substantial advance in the contemporary administration of justice, and therefore in the general civilization of mankind. A more terrible fate awaited the heretic when judged by a secular court. In 1249 Count Raylmund VII of Toulouse caused eighty confessed heretics to be burned in his presence without permitting them to recant. It is impossible to imagine any such trials before the Inquisition courts. The large numbers of burnings detailed in various histories are completely unauthenticated, and are either the deliberate invention of pamphleteers, or are based on materials that pertain to the Spanish Inquisition of later times or the German witchcraft trials (Vacandard, op. cit., 237 sqq.).
Once the Roman Law touching the crimen laesae majestatis had been made to cover the case of heresy, it was only natural that the royal or imperial treasury should imitate the Roman fiscus, and lay claim to the property of persons condemned. was fortunate, though inconsistent and certainly not strict justice, that this penalty did not affect every condemned person, but only those sentenced to perpetual confinement or the stake. Even so, this circumstance added not a little to the penalty, especially as in this respect innocent people, the culprits wife and children, were the chief sufferers. Confiscation was also decreed against persons deceased, and there is a relatively high number of such judgments. Of the six hundred and thirty-six cases that came before the inquisitor Bernard Gui, eighty-eight pertained to dead people.
(e) The Final Verdict
The ultimate decision was usually pronounced with solemn ceremonial at the sermo generalis -- or auto-da-fé (act of faith), as it was later called. One or two days prior to this sermo everyone concerned had the charges read to him again briefly, and in the vernacular; the evening before he was told where and when to appear to hear the verdict. The sermo, a short discourse or exhortation, began very early in the morning; then followed the swearing in of the secular officials, who were made to vow obedience to the inquisitor in all things pertaining to the suppression of heresy. Then regularly followed the so-called "decrees of mercy" (i.e. commutations, mitigations, and remission of previously imposed penalties), and finally due punishments were assigned to the guilty, after their offences had been again enumerated. This announcement began with the minor punishments, and went on to the most severe, i.e., perpetual imprisonment or death. Thereupon the guilty were turned over to the civil power, and with this act the sermo generalis closed, and the inquisitional proceedings were at an end.
(3) The chief scene of the Inquisitions activity was Central and Southern Europe. The Scandinavian countries were spared altogether. It appears in England only on the occasion of the trial of the Templars, nor was it known in Castile and Portugal until the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was introduced into the Netherlands with the Spanish domination, while in Northern France it was relatively little known. On the other hand, the Inquisition, whether because of the particularly perilous sectarianism there prevalent or of the greater severity of ecclesiastical and civil rulers, weighed heavily on Italy (especially Lombardy), on Southern France (in particular the country of Toulouse and on Languedoc) and finally on the Kingdom of Aragon and on Germany. Honorius IV (1285-87) introduced it into Sardinia, and in the fifteenth century it displayed excessive zeal in Flanders and Bohemia. The inquisitors were, as a rule, irreproachable, not merely in personal conduct, but in the administration of their office. Some, however, like Robert le Bougre, a Bulgarian (Catharist) convert to Christianity and subsequently a Dominican, seem to have yielded to a blind fanaticism and deliberately to have provoked executions en masse. On 29 May, 1239, at Montwimer in Champagne, Robert consigned to the flames at one time about a hundred and eighty persons, whose trial had begun and ended within one week. Later, when Rome found that the complaints against him were justified, he was first deposed and then incarcerated for life.
(4) How are we to explain the Inquisition in the light of its own period? For the true office of the historian is not to defend facts and conditions, but to study and understand them in their natural course and connection. It is indisputable that in the past scarcely any community or nation vouchsafed perfect toleration to those who set up a creed different from that of the generality. A kind of iron law would seem to dispose mankind to religious intolerance. Even long before the Roman State tried to check with violence the rapid encroachments of Christianity, Plate had declared it one of the supreme duties of the governmental authority in his ideal state to show no toleration towards the "godless" -- that is, towards those who denied the state religion -- even though they were content to live quietly and without proselytizing; their very example, he said would be dangerous. They were to be kept in custody; "in a place where one grew wise" (sophronisterion), as the place of incarceration was euphemistically called; they should be relegated thither for five years, and during this time listen to religious instruction every day. The more active and proselytizing opponents of the state religion were to be imprisoned for life in dreadful dungeons, and after death to be deprived of burial. It is thus evident what little justification there is for regarding intolerance as a product of the Middle Ages. Everywhere and always in the past men believed that nothing disturbed the common weal and public peace so much as religious dissensions and conflicts, and that, on the other hand, a uniform public faith was the surest guarantee for the States stability and prosperity. The more thoroughly religion had become part of the national life, and the stronger the general conviction of its inviolability and Divine origin, the more disposed would men be to consider every attack on it as an intolerable crime against the Deity and a highly criminal menace to the public peace. The first Christian emperors believed that one of the chief duties of an imperial ruler was to place his sword at the service of the Church and orthodoxy, especially as their titles of "Pontifex Maximus" and "Bishop of the Exterior" seemed to argue in them Divinely appointed agents of Heaven.
Nevertheless the principal teachers of the Church held back for centuries from accepting in these matters the practice of the civil rulers; they shrank particularly from such stern measures against heresy as punishment, both of which they deemed inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity. But, in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Faith became alone dominant, and the welfare of the Commonwealth came to be closely bound up with the cause of religious unity. King Peter of Aragon, therefore, but voiced the universal conviction when he said: "The enemies of the Cross of Christ and violators of the Christian law are likewise our enemies and the enemies of our kingdom, and ought therefore to be dealt with as such." Emperor Frederick II emphasized this view more vigorously than any other prince, and enforced it in his Draconian enactments against heretics. The representative of the Church were also children of their own time, and in their conflict with heresy accepted the help that their age freely offered them, and indeed often forced upon them. Theologians and canonists, the highest and the saintliest, stood by the code of their day, and sought to explain and to justify it. The learned and holy Raymund of Pennafort, highly esteemed by Gregory IX, was content with the penalties that dated from Innocent III, viz.. the ban of the empire, confiscation of property-, confinement in prison, etc. But before the end of the century, St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theol., II-II:11:3 and II-II:11:4>) already advocated capital punishment for heresy though it cannot be said that his arguments altogether compel conviction. The Angelic Doctor, however speaks only in a general way of punishment by death, and does not specify more nearly the manner of its infliction. This the jurists did in a positive way that was truly terrible. The celebrated Henry of Segusia (Susa), named Hostiensis after his episcopal See of Ostia (d. 1271), and the no less eminent Joannes Andreae (d. 1345), when interpreting the Decree "Ad abolendam" of Lucius III, take debita animadversio (due punishment) as synonymous with ignis crematio (death by fire), a meaning which certainly did not attach to the original expression of 1184. Theologians and jurists based their attitude to some extent on the similarity between heresy and high treason (crimen laesae maiestatis), a suggestion that they owed to the Law of Ancient Rome. They argued, moreover, that if the death penalty could be rightly inflicted on thieves and forgers, who rob us only of worldly goods, how much more righteously on those who cheat us out of supernatural goods -- out of faith, the sacraments, the life of the soul. In the severe legislation of the Old Testament (Deut., xiii, 6-9; xvii, 1-6) they found another argument. And lest some should urge that those ordinances were abrogated by Christianity, the words of Christ were recalled: "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matt., v. 17); also His other saying (John, xv 6): "If any one abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" (in ignem mittent, et ardet).
It is well known that belief in the justice of punishing heresy with death was so common among the sixteenth century reformers -- Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and their adherents -- that we may say their toleration began where their power ended. The Reformed theologian, Hieronymus Zanchi, declared in a lecture delivered at the University of Heidlelberg:
We do not now ask if the authorities may pronounce sentence of death upon heretics; of that there can be no doubt, and all learned and right-minded men acknowledge it. The only question is whether the authorities are bound to perform this duty.
And Zanchi answers this second question in the affirmative, especially on the authority of "all pious and learned men who have written on the subject in our day" [Historisch-politische Blatter, CXL, (1907), p. 364]. It may be that in modern times men judge more leniency the views of others, but does this forthwith make their opinions objectively more correct than those of their predecessors? Is there no longer any inclination to persecution? As late as 1871 Professor Friedberg wrote in Holtzendorffs "Jahrbuch fur Gesetzebung": "If a new religious society were to be established today with such principles as those which, according to the Vatican Council, the Catholic Church declares a matter of faith, we would undoubtedly consider it a duty of the state to suppress, destroy, and uproot it by force" (Kölnische Volkszeitung, no. 782, 15 Sept., 1909). Do these sentiments indicate an ability to appraise justly the institutions and opinions of former centuries, not according to modern feelings, but to the standards of their age?
In forming an estimate of the Inquisition, it is necessary to distinguish clearly between principles and historical fact on the one hand, and on the other those exaggerations or rhetorical descriptions which reveal bins and an obvious determination to injure Catholicism, rather than to encourage the spirit of tolerance and further its exercise. It is also essential to note that the Inquisition, in its establishment and procedure, pertained not to the sphere of belief, but to that of discipline. The dogmatic teaching of the Church is in no way affected by the question as to whether the Inquisition was justified in its scope, or wise in its methods, or extreme in its practice. The Church established by Christ, as a perfect society, is empowered to make laws and inflict penalties for their violation. Heresy not only violates her law but strikes at her very life, unity of belief; and from the beginning the heretic had incurred all the penalties of the ecclesiastical courts. When Christianity became the religion of the Empire, and still more when the peoples of Northern Europe became Christian nations, the close alliance of Church and State made unity of faith essential not only to the ecclesiastical organization, but also to civil society. Heresy, in consequence, was & crime which secular rulers were bound in duty to punish. It was regarded as worse than any other crime, even that of high treason; it was for society in those times what we call anarchy. Hence the severity with which heretics were treated by the secular power long before the Inquisition was established.
As regards the character of these punishments, it should be considered that they were the natural expression not only of the legislative power, but also of the popular hatred for heresy in an age that dealt both vigorously and roughly with criminals of every type. The heretic, in a word, was simply an outlaw whose offence, in the popular mind, deserved and sometimes received a punishment as summary as that which is often dealt out in our own day by an infuriated populace to the authors of justly detested crimes. That such intolerance was not peculiar to Catholicism, but was the natural accompaniment of deep religious conviction in those, also, who abandoned the Church, is evident from the measures taken by some of the Reformers against those who differed from them in matters of belief. As the learned Dr. Schaff declares in his "History of the Christian Church" (vol. V, New York, 1907, p. 524),
To the great humiliation of the Protestant churches, religious intolerance and even persecution unto death were continued long alter the Reformation. In Geneva the pernicious theory was put into practice by state and church, even to the use of torture and the admission of the testimony of children against their parents, and with the sanction of Calvin. Bullinger, in the second Helvetic Confession, announced the principle that heresy could be punished like murder or treason.
Moreover, the whole history of the Penal Laws against Catholics in England and Ireland, and the spirit of intolerance prevalent in many of the American colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may be cited in proof thereof. It would obviously be absurd to make the Protestant religion as such responsible for these practices. But having set up the principle of private judgment, which, logically applied, made heresy impossible, the early Reformers proceeded to treat dissidents as the medieval heretics had been treated. To suggest that this was inconsistent is trivial in view of the deeper insight it affords into the meaning of a tolerance which is often only theoretical and the source of that intolerance which men rightly show towards error, and which they naturally though not rightly, transfer to the erring.
B. The Inquisition in Spain
(1) Historical Facts
Religious conditions similar to those in Southern France occasioned the establishment of the Inquisition in the neighboring Kingdom of Aragon. As early as 1226 King James I had forbidden the Catharists his kingdom, and in 1228 had outlawed both them and their friends. A little later, on the advice of his confessor, Raymond of Pennafort, he asked Gregory IX to establish the Inquisition in Aragon. By the Bull "Declinante jam mundi" of 26 May, 1232, Archbishop Esparrago and his suffragans were instructed to search, either personally or by enlisting the services of the Dominicans or other suitable agents, and condignly punish the heretics in their dioceses. At the Council of Lérida in 1237 the Inquisition was formally confided to the Dominicans and the Franciscans. At the Synod of Tarragona in 1242, Raymund of Pennafort defined the terms haereticus, receptor, fautor, defensor, etc., and outlined the penalties to be inflicted. Although the ordinances of Innocent IV, Urban IV, and Clement VI were also adopted and executed with strictness by the Dominican Order, no striking success resulted. The Inquisitor Fray Pence de Planes was poisoned, and Bernardo Travasser earned the crown of martyrdom at the hands of the heretics. Aragons best-known inquisitor is the Dominican Nicolas Eymeric (Quétif-Echard, "Scriptores Ord. Pr.", I, 709 sqq.). His "Directorium Inquisitionis" (written in Aragon 1376; printed at Rome 1587, Venice 1595 and 1607), based on forty-four years experience, is an original source and a document of the highest historical value.
The Spanish Inquisition, however, properly begins with the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella. The Catholic faith was then endangered by pseudo converts from Judaism (Marranos) and Mohammedanism (Moriscos). On 1 November, 1478, Sixtus IV empowered the Catholic sovereigns to set up the Inquisition. The judges were to be at least forty years old, of unimpeachable reputation, distinguished for virtue and wisdom, masters of theology, or doctors or licentiates of canon law, and they must follow the usual ecclesiastical rules and regulations. On 17 September, 1480, Their Catholic Majesties appointed, at first for Seville, the two Dominicans Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin as inquisitors, with two of the secular clergy assistants. Before long complaints of grievous abuses reached Rome, and were only too well founded. In a Brief of Sixtus IV of 29 January 1482, they were blamed for having, upon the alleged authority of papal Briefs, unjustly imprisoned many people, subjected them to cruel tortures, declared them false believers, and sequestrated the property of the executed. They were at first admonished to act only in conjunction with, the bishops, and finally were threatened with deposition, and would indeed have been deposed had not Their Majesties interceded for them. Fray Tomás Torquemada (b. at Valladolid In 1420, d. at Avila, 16 September, 1498) was the true organizer of the Spanish Inquisition. At the solicitation of their Spanish Majesties (Paramo, II, tit. ii, c, iii, n. 9) Sixtus IV bestowed on Torquemada the office of grand inquisitor, the institution of which indicates a decided advance in the development of the Spanish Inquisition. Innocent VIII approved the act of his predecessor, and under date of 11 February, 1486, and 6 February, 1487, Torquemada was given dignity of grand inquisitor for the kingdoms of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Valencia, etc. The institution speedily ramified from Seville to Cordova, Jaen, Villareal, and Toledo, About 1538 there were nineteen courts, to which three were afterwards added in Spanish America (Mexico, Lima, and Cartagena). Attempts at introducing it into Italy failed, and the efforts to establish it in the Netherlands entailed disastrous consequences for the mother country. In Spain, however, it remained operative into the nineteenth century. Originally called into being against secret Judaism and secret Islam, it served to repel Protestantism in the sixteenth century, but was unable to expel French Rationalism and immorality of the eighteenth. King Joseph Bonaparte abrogated it in 1808, but it was reintroduced by Ferdinand VII in 1814 and approved by Pius VII on certain conditions, among others the abolition of torture. It was definitely abolished by the Revolution of 1820.
(2) Organization
At the head of the Inquisition, known as the Holy Office, stood the grand inquisitor, nominated by the king and confirmed by the pope. By virtue of his papal credentials he enjoyed authority to delegate his powers to other suitable persons, and to receive appeals from all Spanish courts. He was aided by a High Council (Consejo Supremo) consisting of five members -- the so-called Apostolic inquisitors, two secretaries, two relatores, one advocatus fiscalis -- and several consulters and qualificators. The officials of the supreme tribunal were appointed by the grand inquisitor after consultation with the king. The former could also freely appoint, transfer, remove from office, visit, and inspect or call to account all inquisitors and officials of the lower courts. Philip III, on 16 December, 1618, gave the Dominicans the privilege of having one of their order permanently a member of the Consejo Supremo. All power was really concentrated in this supreme tribunal. It decided important or disputed questions, and heard appeals; without its approval no priest, knight, or noble could be imprisoned, and no auto-da-fé held; an annual report was made to it concerning the entire Inquisition, and once a month a financial report. Everyone was subject to it, not excepting priests, bishops, or even the sovereign. The Spanish Inquisition is distinguished from the medieval its monarchical constitution and and a greater consequent centralization, as also by the constant and legally provided-for influence of the crown on all official appointments and the progress of trials.
(3) Procedure
The procedure, on the other hand, was substantially the same as that already described. Here, too, a "term of grace" of thirty to forty days was invariably granted, and was often prolonged. Imprisonment resulted only when unanimity had been arrived at, or the offence had been proved. Examination of the accused could take place only in the presence of two disinterested priests, whose obligation it was to restrain any arbitrary act in their presence the protocol had to be read out twice to the accused. The defence lay always in the hands of a lawyer. The witnesses although unknown to the accused, were sworn, and very severe punishment, even death, awaited false witnesses, (cf. Brief of Leo X of 14 December, 1518). Torture was applied only too frequently and to cruelly, but certainly not more cruelly than under Charles V's system of judicial torture in Germany.
(4) Historical Analysis
The Spanish Inquisition deserves neither the exaggerated praise nor the equally exaggerated vilification often bestowed on it. The number of victims cannot be calculated with even approximate accuracy; the much maligned autos-da-fé were in reality but a religious ceremony (actus fidei); the San Benito has its counterpart in similar garbs elsewhere; the cruelty of St. Peter Arbues, to whom not a single sentence of death can be traced with certainty, belongs to the realms of fable. However, the predominant ecclesiastical nature of the institution can hardly be doubted. The Holy See sanctioned the institution, accorded to the grand inquisitor canonical installation and therewith judicial authority concerning matters of faith, while from the grand inquisitor jurisdiction passed down to the subsidiary tribunals under his control. Joseph de Maistre introduced the thesis that the Spanish Inquisition was mostly a civil tribunal; formerly, however, theologians never questioned its ecclesiastical nature. Only thus, indeed, can one explain how the Popes always admitted appeals from it to the Holy See, called to themselves entire trials and that at any stage of the proceedings, exempted whole classes of believers from its jurisdiction, intervened in the legislation, deposed grand inquisitors, and so on. (See TOMÁS DE TORQUEMADA.)
C. The Holy Office at Rome
The great apostasy of the sixteenth century, the filtration of heresy into Catholic lands, and the progress of heterodox teachings everywhere, prompted Paul III to establish the "Sacra Congregatio Romanae et universalis Inquisitionis seu sancti officii" by the Constitution "Licet ab initio" of 21 July, 1542. This inquisitional tribunal, composed of six cardinals, was to be at once the final court of appeal for trials concerning faith, and the court of first instance for cases reserved to the pope. The succeeding popes -- especially Pius IV (by the Constitutions "Pastoralis Oficii " of 14 October, 1562, "Romanus Pontifex" of 7 April, 1563, "Cum nos per" of 1564, "Cum inter crimina" of 27 August, 1562) and Pius V (by a Decree of 1566, the Constitution "Inter multiplices" of 21 December, 1566, and "Cum felicis record." of 1566) -- made further provision for the procedure and competency of this court. By his Constitution "Immensa aeterni" of 23 January, 1587, Sixtus V became the real organizer, or rather reorganizer of this congregation.
The Holy Office is first among the Roman congregations. Its personnel includes judges, officials, consulters, and qualificators. The real judges are cardinals nominated by the pope, whose original number of six was raised by Pius IV to eight and by Sixtus V to thirteen. Their actual number depends on the reigning pope (Benedict XIV, Const. "Sollicita et Provida", 1733). This congregation differs from the others, inasmuch as it has no cardinal-prefect: the pope always presides in person when momentous decisions are to be announced (coram Sanctissimo). The solemn plenary session on Thursdays is always preceded by a session of the cardinals on Wednesdays, at the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and a meeting of the consultors on Mondays at the palace of the Holy Office. The highest official is the commissarius sancti oficii, a Dominican of the Lombard province, to whom two coadjutors are given from the same order. He acts as the proper judge throughout the whole case until the plenary session exclusive, thus conducting it up to the verdict. The assessor sancti officii, always one of the secular clergy, presides at the plenary sessions. The promotor fiscalis | | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 11/04/04 - The eastern and western Roman empires
Why did the eastern Byzantine empire outlast the western Roman empire by a thousand years?
Many thanks.
curious98 answered on 11/04/04:Excerpt from the Britannica.
"
The causes of the collapse of this mighty Empire are more complex than a simple series of military defeats. In essence, the empire had grown too big for its resources. Extended frontiers required a huge army, always a vast drain on revenues, and in turn generating an increasingly unwieldy bureaucracy: too many unproductive mouths were being fed by too few farmers and peasants. This situation was worsened in the areas most exposed to barbarian invasion, where conditions were most unstable. Political competition between rivals for power resulted in continual civil wars, which drained the exchequer, depleted manpower, and exhausted the countryside. Massive rates of inflation, following debasement of the coinage in order to increase the money supply to pay the army and administrators, reduced confidence in the currency and inhibited economic production. Roman society had become inflexible and fossilized, caught in a cycle of economic depression and bureaucratic stagnation. All these factors were exacerbated by the ceaseless pressure on the frontiers of the empire, and by the constant need for more troops and more taxes.
The fall of Rome to the Ostrogoths in 476 marked the end of the western half of the Roman Empire.
The eastern half continued as the Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople as its capital. Constantine the Great wanted this city to be built from scratch as the center of the Christian world. He and his following emperors made Constantinople into one of the most elaborate and civilized cities in the world. The wealth that was displayed was incredible. Until the Fourth Crusade, Constantinople enjoyed 874 years of growth and stability. Few cities in history have lasted as long without being overrun by an invading army.
The monetary history was probably the most important aspect of the success of the empire. Constantine the Great introduced several monetary reforms with one of them being the creation of the gold Solidus at 72 to the Roman pound. This standard lasted throughout the history with only periodic debasement in economically stressed parts of the empire or during periods of extremely weak leadership. If anything can be learned from the Eastern Roman Empire is that monetary stability and strength lead to strength within a civilization.
The eastern realm differed from the western in many respects. It was heir to the Hellenistic civilization, a blending of Greek and Middle Eastern elements dating back to the conquests of Alexander the Great.
It was more commercial, more urban, and richer than the West, and its emperors, who in the Hellenistic tradition combined political and religious functions, had firmer control over all classes of society.
They were also more skillful in fending off invaders, through both warfare and diplomacy.
With these advantages, the Byzantine emperors, who still considered themselves Romans, long nourished the dream of subduing the barbarian kingdoms of the West and reuniting the empire.
The greatest of these emperors was Justinian I (reigned 527-565), who with his able wife Theodora prepared for the reconquest by defeating the Persians on the eastern frontier and extirpating various heresies that had alienated the Roman Catholic church.
He sponsored a compilation and recodification of Roman law and built the magnificent Hagia Sophia cathedral. Justinian's reconquest of North Africa and Italy were short-lived.
The later years of his reign were marred by renewed war with the Persians and incursions by Bulgar and Slavic tribes, which created severe shortages of manpower and revenue.
The weakened empire, preoccupied with internal problems, grew less and less concerned with the West.
Although its rulers continued to style themselves "Roman" long after the death of Justinian, the term "Byzantine" more accurately describes the very different medieval empire.
Perhaps the most significant cultural feature of the Byzantine Empire was the type of Christianity developed there. More mystical and more liturgical than Roman Christianity, it was also less unified because of age-old ethnic hostilities in the region, the survival of various heresies among the clergy in Syria, Egypt, and other provinces, and the early use of the demotic (vernacular) languages in religious services.
This disunity partly caused the sweeping success of the Arab invasions that began after Muhammad's death in 632. Within 10 years Syria and Palestine, Egypt and North Africa were under Muslim Arab control.
Religious disunity continued to weaken the empire throughout the Iconoclastic Controversy (a dispute over the use of religious images, or icons) of the 8th and early 9th centuries, which left the Eastern Orthodox church split into factions and further alienated from Rome.
A formal schism between Eastern and Western churches was mutually agreed to in 1054.
By that time the Eastern Orthodox church had been revitalized by successful missions among the Russians, Bulgars, and Slavs, some of them directed by the monks Cyril and Methodius, whose invention of Slavonic alphabets (still called Cyrillic) made possible the translation of the Bible and the spread of literacy along with Christianity in Slavic lands.
Although the empire had lost much territory to the Arabs and to the independent kingdoms established in the Balkan Peninsula, its remnants were strengthened by a number of institutional reforms.
A new administrative unit, the theme, was introduced along with a system of military land grants and hereditary service that ensured an adequate supply of soldiers.
It also laid the foundation for the emergence of great landed families who in later centuries would wage dynastic struggles for the imperial throne.
The Byzantine economy was actually strengthened by the loss of territory, as the shrinking empire allowed greater freedom to merchants and agricultural labor.
All of these developments led to a golden age marked by a literary renaissance and brief resurgence of military and naval power under the Macedonian dynasty, whose founder, a peasant adventurer named Basil, murdered his way to the throne in 867.
The Macedonian emperors supervised the Hellenization of the Code of Justinian, into which they wrote the principle of imperial absolutism tempered only by the spiritual authority of the church.
They also reversed for a time the military defeats of their predecessors and reconquered large areas from the Arabs and Bulgars.
No matter how centralized their administration or how absolute their power on paper, the emperors were unable to stop the feudalization of the empire and the concentration of land and wealth in a few great families.
The rivalry between rural and urban aristocracies led each faction to nominate its own imperial candidates.
While they were engaged in civil disputes, new enemies, the Normans and the Seljuq Turks, increased their power around the eastern Mediterranean.
In the late 11th century, Emperor Alexius I reluctantly sought help from the outside.
He appealed to Venice, to whom he gave the first of the commercial concessions that helped make it a great maritime power, and to the pope, who in turn appealed to the feudal rulers of the West, many of them, ironically, Normans.
These doubtful allies rapidly turned the ensuing Crusades into a series of plundering expeditions not only against the Turks but also against the heart of the Byzantine Empire.
The Fourth Crusade resulted in the fall of Constantinople to Venetians and crusaders in 1204 and the establishment of a line of Latin emperors. The empire was recaptured by Byzantine exiles in 1261, but under the final Palaeologus dynasty it was little more than a large city-state besieged from all sides.
In the 14th century the Ottoman Turks replaced the Seljuqs as the major enemy in the east.
Almost the entire Balkan Peninsula fell to them, but their siege of Constantinople, begun in 1395, was prolonged by the city's near-impregnable strategic position and by Turkish factionalism.
It ended in 1453, when the last emperor, also named Constantine, died fighting on the walls and the Turks took the city.
The final stronghold of Greek power, Trapezus (modern Trabzon, Turkey), fell to the Turks in 1461."
Regards
Curious98 | | Question/Answer | whisperjx asked on 10/27/04 - Where can I find articles on medieval?
I need to write an essay on medieval. Where can I find information?
Thank you. curious98 answered on 10/29/04:try this:
http://scienceview.berkeley.edu/VI/worksheet_longtutorial.html
http://www.the-orb.net/
www.fordham.edu/halsall/medweb/
www.luc.edu/publications/medieval/
Tell me how you did with those sites.
Regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 12/12/03 - What was Nominalism? Can anyone tell me what the philosophy of "nominalism" was in medieval Europe? I know it was something to do with the way words were used to name things, and apparently it was very important indeed. Can anyone explain it in one or two paragraphs?
Many thanks,
Paul,
UK. curious98 answered on 12/15/03:Hi Denberg,
Nominalism, in philosophy, is a theory of the relation between universals and particulars. Nominalism gained its name in the Middle Ages, when it was contrasted with realism. The problem arises because in order to perceive a particular object as being of a certain kind, say a table, we must have a prior notion of table. Does the kind "table," described by this prior notion, then have an existence independent of particular tables? Nominalism says that it does not, that it is just a name for a group of particular objects. Nominalism is appropriate to materialist and empirical philosophy and hence has also been popular in modern thought.
Hope to have helped
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 11/23/03 - The Holy Roman Empire I read something the other day in which the author tried to insist that Charlemagne was not the first Holy Roman Emperor, but Otto. I'm sure that's wrong. Am I right?
Thanks,
Paul,
UK. curious98 answered on 11/23/03:
In my opinión, and if we stick to chronology Charlemagne was the first one, since he was crowned Emperor in 800.
However, this is what my Encyclopeadia says in this respect:
“Otto I the Great (912 - May 7, 973), son of Henry I the Fowler, king of the Germans, and Matilda of Ringelheim, was Duke of Saxony, King of Germany and arguably the first Holy Roman Emperor.
Succeeding his father as king in 936, Otto defeated the Magyars in 955 at the Battle of Lechfeld near Augsburg, halting their advance in central Europe. In 963, Otto defeated Mieszko I, duke of Poland and compelled him to pay tribute.
On February 2, 962 Pope John XII crowned Otto Emperor. Though the term "Holy Roman Empire" was not used for more than 200 years afterwards, Otto is sometimes considered its founder, and is counted as the first in a succession of emperors of various dynasties which ended only in 1806. (Note: Charlemagne was crowned Emperor in 800, reviving the idea of a western Roman Emperor, so is also seen by some as the first Holy Roman Emperor. He was followed by a number of Carolingian Emperors. Otto began the association between the title of Emperor and the German kingship.)
His younger brother was Archbishop Bruno I of Cologne.”
So I’m afraid this is –as it is said above- totally arguable.
Regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 11/16/03 - Dracula's descendants Can anyone tell me anything about Dracula's living descendants? Before you say, "he doesn't have any" I can tell you that I saw a TV documentary a few weeks ago which had a very brief - ten seconds or so - interview with a descendant, but I didn't tape it or think to note down his name. So, my question is, how many descendants does the count have,where are they now,and what are they doing? curious98 answered on 11/18/03:
From what I have been able to find, the last living descendant of Count Dracula is, Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracula Prince Kretzulesco who claims to be is the last living heir to one branch of the Bassaraba family, whose roots date back to the 13th Century. The Bassarabas spawned over 40 rulers throughout the region, including Moldavia, Wallachia, Romania, and Hungary.
The Kretzulescos, direct descendants of Vlad Tepes, whose legend still lives on in Romania as one of the greatest folk heroes of all time despite being one of the most brutal rulers ever, fled Romania for France during World War II to escape the threats of Nazism and Communism.
Today, the last living male heir, Prince Kretzulesco is a modest man whose sole aim is to reclaim his family´s proud name and tradition, which have been lost through the association made with Stoker´s creature, and Hollywood´s portrayal of vampires. A noble and worthy cause beset with imposing difficulties, and yet one he enthusiastically undertakes each day.
The Prince´s efforts and work are succeeding by creatively weaving history and reality into existing fiction, thereby creating an entertaining aura around this popular legend, dividing it up into its various components, and thereby attracting the varying interests on this subject from historians, sociologists, supernatural enthusiasts, and horror fans.
In doing so, all associations with Dracula are introduced and entered into record, opening each up for careful inspection, clarification, and discussion. By including these perspectives in an open forum, all of the facts can be presented, providing a clearer picture and delineation between myth and legend.
This in turn ultimately serves to identify and document his family´s significant role in European history, which effectively restores their honor without detracting from the mystique associated with his name.
Included among the most important of the Prince´s immediate goals are:
- The creation of a medieval based theme park that will combine history and fantasy to create an enjoyable experience for visitors young and old
- The continuation and proliferation worldwide of his fund raising projects and charities he supports and sponsors.
Regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 11/15/03 - The development of religion in Britain... I did actually ask this question on the Religion boards some time ago but never received a proper answer from anyone, so I'm asking it here on the history boards...
It's a really difficult one and I challenge as many people as possible to have a go:
If Christ had never been born, what religion would most people be in Britain today?
Muslim? Jew? Pagan? Shinto? Something else? curious98 answered on 11/18/03:My dear Denberg,
You seem to have a special attraction for questions that can have no definite answer.
If Christ would not have been born, GOD might have probably presented us with some other Personage who might have founded some other monotheistic religion.
In any case, I do not think England might have become pagan, because the English BC already had some sort of religion (druidic).
You might have, perhaps, become part of the Islam, assuming, of course, the Arabs had not been stopped in the famous battle of Poitiers, in 732, by Charles Martel.
Regards
Curious98 | | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 11/15/03 - Who was the worst Pope? Who was the worst Pope? Most corrupt? Most disastrous? curious98 answered on 11/18/03:You are, I suppose, referring to the worst Pope morally speaking. This is of course a most subjective matter of opinion.
In mine, I would choose Pope Alexander VI, of the Borgia's.
For your information I copy here his biography, which is taken from the Catholich Enciclopaedya.
But, if you consult other less subjective sources, you will see what I mean.
"Rodrigo Borgia, born at Xativa, near Valencia, in Spain, 1 January, 1431; died in Rome, 18 August, 1503. His parents were Jofre Lançol and Isabella Borja, sister of Cardinal Alfonso Borja, later Pope Callixtus III.
The young Rodrigo had not yet definitely chosen his profession when the elevation of his uncle to the papacy (1455) opened up new prospects to his ambition. He was adopted into the immediate family of Callixtus and was known henceforward to the Italians as Rodrigo Borgia. Like so many other princely cadets, he was obtruded upon the Church, the question of a clerical vocation being left completely out of consideration. After conferring several rich benefices on him, his uncle sent him for a short year to study law at the University of Bologna. In 1456, at the age of twenty-five, he was made Cardinal Deacon of St. Nicolo in Carcere, and held that title until 1471, when he became Cardinal-Bishop of Albano; in 1476 he was made Cardinal-Bishop of Porto and Dean of the Sacred College (Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica, II, 12). His official position in the Curia after 1457 was that of Vice-Chancellor of the Roman Church, and though many envied him this lucrative office he seems in his long administration of the Papal Chancery to have given general satisfaction. Even Guicciardini admits that "in him were combined rare prudence and vigilance mature reflection, marvellous power of persuasion, skill and capacity for the conduct of the most difficult affairs". On the other hand, the list of archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbacies, and other dignities held by him, as enumerated by the Bishop of Modena in a letter to the Duchess of Ferrara (Pastor, History of the Popes, V, 533, English tr.) reads like the famous catalogue of Leparello; and since, notwithstanding the magnificence of his household and his passion for card-playing, he was strictly abstemious in eating and drinking, and a careful administrator, he became one of the wealthiest men of his time. In his twenty-ninth year he drew a scathing letter of reproof from Pope Pius II for misconduct in Sienna which had been so notorious as to shock the whole town and court (Raynaldus Ann. eccl. ad. an. 1460, n. 31). Even after his ordination to the priesthood, in 1468, he continued his evil ways. His contemporaries praise his handsome and imposing figure, his cheerful countenance, persuasive manner, brilliant conversation, and intimate mastery of the ways of polite society. The best portrait of him is said to be that painted by Pinturicchio in the Appartimento Borgia at the Vatican; Yriarte (Autour des Borgia, 79) praises its general air of grandeur incontestable. Towards 1470 began his relations with the Roman lady, Vanozza Catanei, the mother of his four children: Juan, Caesar, Lucrezia and Jofre, born, respectively according to Gregorovius (Lucrezia Borgia 13) in 1474, 1476, 1480, and 1482.
Borgia, by a bare two-thirds majority secured by his own vote, was proclaimed Pope on the morning of 11 Aug., 1492, and took the name of Alexander VI. [For details of the conclave see Pastor, "Hist. of the Popes", (German ed., Freiburg, 1895), III, 275-278; also Am. Cath. Quart. Review, April, 1900.] That he obtained the papacy through simony was the general belief (Pastor, loc. cit.) and is not improbable (Raynaldus, Ann. eccl. ad an. 1492, n. 26), though it would be difficult to prove it juridically, at any rate, as the law then stood the election was valid. There is no irresistible evidence that Borgia paid anyone a ducat for his vote; Infessura's tale of mule-loads of silver has long since been discredited. Pastor's indictment, on closer inspection, needs some revision, for he states (III, 277) that eight of the twenty-three electors, viz. della Rovere, Piccolomini, Medici, Caraffa, Costa, Basso, Zeno, and Cibò, held out to the end against Borgia. If that were true, Borgia could not have secured a two-thirds majority. All we can affirm with certainty is that the determining factor of this election was the accession to Borgia of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza's vote and influence, it is almost equally certain that Sforza's course was dictated not by silver, but by the desire to be the future Pontiff's chief adviser.
The elevation to the papacy of one who for thirty-five years had conducted the affairs of the Roman chancery with rare ability and industry met with general approbation; we find no evidence of the "alarm and horror" of which Guicciardini speaks. To the Romans especially, who had come to regard Borgia as one of themselves, and who predicted a pontificate at once splendid and energetic, the choice was most acceptable; and they manifested their joy in bonfires, torchlight processions, garlands of flowers, and the erection of triumphal arches with extravagant inscriptions. At his coronation in St. Peter's (26 Aug.), and during his progress to St. John Lateran, he was greeted with an ovation, "greater", says the diarist, "than any Pontiff had ever received". He proceeded at once to justify this good opinion of the Romans by putting an end to the lawlessness which reigned in the city, the extent of which we can infer from the statement of Infessura that within a few months over two hundred and twenty assassinations had taken place. Alexander ordered investigations to be made, every culprit discovered to be hanged on the spot and his house to be razed to the ground. He divided the city into four districts, placing over each a magistrate with plenary powers for the maintenance of order; in addition, he reserved the Tuesday of each week as a day on which any man or woman could lay his or her grievances before himself personally; "and", says the diarist, "he set about dispensing justice in an admirable manner." This vigorous method of administering justice soon changed the face of the city, and was ascribed by the grateful populace to "the interposition of God."
Alexander next turned his attention to the defence and embellishment of the Eternal City. He changed the Mausoleum of Adrian into a veritable fortress capable of sustaining a siege. By the fortification of Torre di Nona, he secured the city from naval attacks. He deserves to be called the founder of the Leonine City, which he transformed into the most fashionable quarter of Rome. His magnificent Via Alessandrina, now called Borgo Nuovo, remains to the present day the grand approach to St. Peter's. Under his direction, Pinturicchio adorned the Appartimento Borgia in the Vatican, pointing the way to his immortal disciple, Raphael. In addition to the structures erected by himself, his memory is associated with the many others built by monarchs and cardinals at his instigation. During his reign Bramante designed for Ferdinand and Isabella that exquisite architectural gem, the Tempietto, on the traditional site of St. Peter's martyrdom. If not Bramante, some other great architect, equally attracted to Rome by the report of the Pope's liberality, built for Cardinal Riario the magnificent palace of the Cancellaria. In 1500, the ambassador of Emperor Maximilian laid the cornerstone of the handsome national church of the Germans, Santa Maria dell' Anima. Not to be outdone, the French Cardinal Briconnet erected SS. Trinità dei Monti, and the Spaniards Santa Maria di Monserrato. To Alexander we owe the beautiful ceiling of Santa Maria Maggiore, in the decoration of which tradition says he employed the first gold brought from America by Columbus.
Although he laid no great claim to learning, he fostered literature and science. As cardinal he had written two treatises on canonical subjects and a defence of the Christian faith. He rebuilt the Roman University and made generous provision for the support of the professors. He surrounded himself with learned men and had a special predilection for jurists. His fondness for theatrical performances encouraged the development of the drama. He loved pontifical ceremonies, to which his majestic figure lent grace and dignity. He listened to good sermons with a critical ear, and admired fine music. In 1497, Alexander decreed that the "Praefectus Sacrarii Pontificii", commonly called "Sacristan of the Pope", but virtually parish-priest of the Vatican and keeper of the Pope's conscience, should be permanently and exclusively a prelate chosen from the Augustinian Order, an arrangement that still endures.
Alexander earned the enmity of Spain, the obloquy of many narrow minded contemporaries, and the gratitude of posterity, by his tolerant policy towards the Jews, whom he could not be coerced into banishing or molesting. The concourse of pilgrims to Rome in the Jubilee year, 1500, was a magnificent demonstration of the depth and universality of the popular faith. The capacity of the city to house and feed so many thousands of visitors from all parts of Europe was taxed to the utmost, but Alexander spared no expense or pains to provide for the security and comfort of his guests. To maintain peace among Christians and to form a coalition of the European Powers against the Turks was the policy he had inherited from his uncle. One of the first of his public acts was to prevent a collision between Spain and Portugal over their newly-discovered territories, by drawing his line of demarcation, an act of truly peaceful import, and not of usurpation and ambition [Civiltà Cattolica (1865), I, 665-680]. He did his best to dissuade Charles VIII of France from his projected invasion of Italy; if he was unsuccessful, the blame is in no slight degree due to the unpatriotic course of that same Giuliano della Rovere who later, as Julius II, made futile efforts to expel the "barbarians" whom he himself had invited. Alexander issued a wise decree concerning the censorship of books, and sent the first missionaries to the New World.
Notwithstanding these and similar actions, which might seem to entitle him to no mean place in the annals of the papacy, Alexander continued as Pope the manner of life that had disgraced his cardinalate (Pastor, op. cit., III, 449 152). A stern Nemesis pursued him till death in the shape of a strong parental affection for his children. The report of the Ferrarese ambassador, that the new Pope had resolved to keep them at a distance from Rome, is quite credible, for all his earlier measures for their advancement pointed towards Spain. While still a cardinal, he had married one daughter, Girolama, to a Spanish nobleman. He had bought for a son, Pedro Luis, from the Spanish monarch the Duchy of Gandia, and when Pedro died soon after he procured it for Juan, his oldest surviving son by Vanozza. This ill-starred young man was married to a cousin of the King of Spain, and became grandfather to St. Francis Borgia, whose virtues went a great way towards atoning for the vices of his kin. The fond father made a great mistake when he selected his boy Caesar as the ecclesiastical representative of the Borgias. In 1480, Pope Innocent VIII made the child eligible for Orders by absolving him from the ecclesiastical irregularity that followed his birth de episcopo cardinali et conjugatâ, and conferred several Spanish benefices on him, the last being the Bishopric of Pampeluna, in the neighbourhood of which, by a strange fatality, he eventually met his death. A week after Alexander's coronation he appointed Caesar, now eighteen years old, to the Archbishopric of Valencia; but Caesar neither went to Spain nor ever took Orders. The youngest son, Jofre, was also to be inflicted upon the Church of Spain. A further evidence that the Pope had determined to keep his children at a distance from court is that his daughter Lucrezia was betrothed to a Spanish gentleman, the marriage, however, never took place. It had already become the settled policy of the popes to have a personal representative in the Sacred College, and so Alexander chose for this confidential position Cardinal Giovanni Borgia, his sister's son. The subsequent abandonment of his good resolutions concerning his children may safely be ascribed to the evil counsels of Ascanio Sforza, whom Borgia had rewarded with the vice-chancellorship, and who was virtually his prime minister. The main purpose of Ascanio's residence at the papal court was to advance the interests of his brother, Lodovico il Moro, who had been regent of Milan for so many years, during the minority of their nephew Gian Galeazzo, that he now refused to surrender the reins of government, though the rightful duke had attained his majority. Gian Galeazzo was powerless to assert his rights; but his more energetic wife was granddaughter to King Ferrante of Naples, and her incessant appeals to her family for aid left Lodovico in constant dread of Neapolitan invasion. Alexander had many real grievances against Ferrante, the latest of which was the financial aid the King had given to the Pope's vassal, Virginio Orsini, in the purchase of Cervetri and Anguillara, without Alexander's consent. In addition to the contempt of the papal authority involved in the transaction, this accession of strength to a baronial family already too powerful could not but be highly displeasing. Alexander was, therefore, easily induced to enter a defensive alliance with Milan and Venice; the league was solemnly proclaimed, 25 April, 1493. It was cemented by the first of Lucrezia's marriages. Her first husband was a cousin of Ascanio, Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. The wedding was celebrated in the Vatican in the presence of the Pope, ten cardinals, and the chief nobles of Rome with their ladies, the revelries of the occasion, even when exaggerations and rumours are dismissed, remain a blot upon the character of Alexander. Ferrante talked of war, but, through the mediation of Spain, he came to terms with the Pope and, as a pledge of reconciliation, gave his granddaughter, Sancia, in marriage to Alexander's youngest son Jofre, with the principality of Squillace as dower. Caesar Borgia was created Cardinal 20 September. Ferrante's reconciliation with the Pope came none too soon.
A few days after peace had been concluded, an envoy of King Charles VIII arrived in Rome to demand the investiture of Naples for his master. Alexander returned a positive refusal, and when Ferrante died, January, 1494, neglecting French protests and threats, he confirmed the succession of Ferrante's son, Alfonso II, and sent his nephew, Cardinal Giovanni Borgia, to Naples to crown him. The policy of Alexander was dictated not only by a laudable desire to maintain the peace of Italy, but also because he was aware that a strong faction of his cardinals, with the resolute della Rovere at their head, was promoting the invasion of Charles as a means towards deposing him on the twofold charge of simony and immorality. In September, 1494, the French crossed the Alps; on the last day of that year they made their entry into Rome, needing no other weapon in their march through the peninsula, as Alexander wittily remarked (Commines vii, 15), than the chalk with which they marked out the lodgings of the troops. The barons of the Pope deserted him one after the other. Colonna and Savelli were traitors from the beginning, but he felt most keenly the defection of Virginio Orsini, the commander of his army. Many a saintlier pope than Alexander VI would have made the fatal mistake of yielding to brute force and surrendering unconditionally to the conqueror of Italy; the most heroic of the popes could not have sustained the stability of the Holy See at this crucial moment with greater firmness. From the crumbling ramparts of St. Angelo, the defences of which were still incomplete, he looked calmly into the mouth of the French cannon; with equal intrepidity he faced the cabal of della Rovere's cardinals, clamorous for his deposition. At the end of a fortnight it was Charles who capitulated. He acknowledged Alexander as true Pope, greatly to the disgust of della Rovere, and "did his filial obedience", says Commines, "with all imaginable humility" but he could not extort from the Pontiff an acknowledgment of his claims to Naples. Charles entered Naples, 22 February, 1495, without striking a blow. At his approach the unpopular Alfonso abdicated in favour of his son Ferrantino, the latter, failing to receive support, retired to seek the protection of Spain. Whilst Charles wasted over two months in fruitless attempts to induce the Pope by promises and threats to sanction his usurpation, a powerful league, consisting of Venice, Milan, the Empire, Spain, and the Holy See, was formed against him. Finally, on 12 May, he crowned himself, but in the following July he was cutting his way home through the ranks of the allied Italians. By the end of the year the French had re-crossed into France. No one wished for their return, except the restless della Rovere, and the adherents of Savonarola. The story of the Florentine friar will be related elsewhere, here it suffices to note that Alexander's treatment of him was marked by extreme patience and forbearance.
The French invasion was the turning point in the political career of Alexander VI. It had taught him that if he would be safe in Rome and be really master in the States of the Church, he must curb the insolent and disloyal barons who had betrayed him in his hour of danger. Unfortunately, this laudable purpose became more and more identified in his mind with schemes for the aggrandizement of his family. There was no place in his programme for a reform of abuses. Quite the contrary; in order to obtain money for his military operations he disposed of civil and spiritual privileges and offices in a scandalous manner. He resolved to begin with the Orsini, whose treason at the most critical moment had reduced him to desperate straits. The time seemed opportune; for Virginio, the head of the house, was a prisoner in the hands of Ferrantino. As commander of his troops he selected his youthful son Juan, Duke of Gandia. The struggle dragged on for months. The minor castles of the Orsini surrendered, but Bracciano, their main fortress, resisted all the efforts of the pontifical troops. They were finally obliged to raise the siege, and on 25 January, 1497, they were completely routed at Soriano. Both sides were now disposed to peace. On Payment of 50,000 golden florins the Orsini received back all their castles except Cervetri and Anguillara, which had been the original cause of their quarrel with the Pope. In order to reduce the strong fortress of Ostia, held by French troops for Cardinal della Rovere, Alexander wisely invoked the aid of Gonsalvo de Cordova and his Spanish veterans. It surrendered to the "Great Captain" within two weeks. Unsuccessful in obtaining for his family the possessions of the Orsini, the Pope now demanded the consent of his cardinals to the erection of Benevento, Terracina, and Pontecorvo into a duchy for the Duke of Gandia. Cardinal Piccolomini was the only member who dared protest against this improper alienation of the property of the Church. A more powerful protest than that of the Cardinal of Sienna reverberated through the world a week later when, on the sixteenth of June, the body of the young Duke was fished out of the Tiber, with the throat cut and many gaping wounds. Historians have laboured in vain to discover who perpetrated the foul deed, but that it was a warning from Heaven to repent, no one felt more keenly than the Pope himself. In the first wild paroxysm of grief he spoke of resigning the tiara. Then, after three days and nights passed without food or sleep, he appeared in consistory and proclaimed his determination to set about that reform of the Church "in head and members" for which the world had so long been clamouring. A commission of cardinals and canonists began industriously to frame ordinances which foreshadowed the disciplinary decrees of Trent. But they were never promulgated. Time gradually assuaged the sorrow and extinguished the contrition of Alexander. From now on Caesar's iron will was supreme law. That he aimed high from the start is evident from his resolve, opposed at first by the Pope, to resign his cardinalate and other ecclesiastical dignities, and to become a secular prince. The condition of Naples was alluring. The gallant Ferrantino had died childless and was succeeded by his uncle Federigo, whose coronation was one of Caesar's last, possibly also one of his first, ecclesiastical acts. By securing the hand of Federigo's daughter, Carlotta, Princess of Tarento, he would become one of the most powerful barons of the kingdom, with ulterior prospects of wearing the crown. Carlotta's repugnance, however, could not be overcome. But in the course of the suit, another marriage was concluded which gave much scandal. Lucrezia's marriage with Sforza was declared null on the ground of the latter's impotence, and she was given as wife to Alfonso of Biseglia, an illegitimate son of Alfonso II.
Meanwhile, affairs in France took an unexpected turn which deeply modified the course of Italian history and the career of the Borgias. Charles VIII died in April, 1498, preceded to the tomb by his only son, and left the throne to his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, King Louis XII, who stood now in need of two papal favours. In his youth he had been coerced into marrying Jane of Valois, the saintly but deformed daughter of Louis XI. Moreover, in order to retain Brittany, it was essential that he should marry his deceased cousin's widow, Queen Anne. No blame attaches to Alexander for issuing the desired decree annulling the King's marriage or for granting him a dispensation from the impediment of affinity. The commission of investigation appointed by him established the two fundamental facts that the marriage with Jane was invalid, from lack of consent, and that it never had been consummated. It was the political use made by the Borgias of their opportunity, and the prospective alliance of France and the Holy See, which now drove several of the Powers of Europe to the verge of schism. Threats of a council and of deposition had no terrors for Alexander, whose control of the Sacred College was absolute. Della Rovere was now his agent in France. Ascanio Sforza was soon to retire permanently from Rome. Louis had inherited from his grandmother, Valentina Visconti, strong claims to the Duchy of Milan, usurped by the Sforzas, and he made no secret of his intention to enforce them. Alexander cannot be held responsible for the second "barbarian" invasion of Italy, but he was quick to take advantage of it for the consolidation of his temporal power and the aggrandizement of his family. On 1 October, 1498, Caesar, no longer a cardinal, but designated Duke of Valentinois and Peer of France set outs from Rome to bring the papal dispensation to King Louis, a cardinal's hat to his minister D'Amboise, and to find for himself a wife of high degree. He still longed for the hand of Carlotta, who resided in France, but since that princess persisted in her refusal, he received instead the hand of a niece of King Louis, the sister of the King of Navarre, Charlotte D'Albret. On 8 October, 1499, King Louis, accompanied by Duke Caesar and Cardinal della Rovere made his triumphal entry into Milan. It was the signal to begin operations against the petty tyrants who were devastating the States of the Church. Alexander would have merited great credit for this muchneeded work, had he not spoiled it by substituting his own family in their place. What his ultimate intentions were we cannot fathom. However, the tyrants who were expelled never returned, whilst the Borgian dynasty came to a speedy end in the pontificate of Julius II. In the meantime Caesar had carried on his campaign 80 successfully that by the year 1501 he was master of all the usurped papal territory and was made Duke of Romagna by the Pope, whose affection for the brilliant young general was manifested in still other ways. During the war, however, and in the midst of the Jubilee of 1500 there occurred another domestic murder. On 15 July of that year the Duke of Biseglia, Lucretia's husband was attacked by five masked assassins, who grievousiy wounded him. Convinced that Caesar was the instigator of the deed, he made an unsuccessful attempt, on his recovery, to kill his supposed enemy, and was instantly dispatched by Caesar's bodyguard. The latter, having completed, in April, 1501, the conquest of the Romagna, now aspired to the conquest of Tuscany; but he was soon recalled to Rome to take part in a different enterprise. On 27 June of that year the Pope deposed his chief vassal, Federigo of Naples, on the plea of an alleged alliance with the Turks to the detriment of Christendom, and approved the secret Treaty of Granada, by the terms of which the Kingdom of Naples was partitioned between Spain and France.
Alexander's motive in thus reversing his former policy with respect to foreign interference was patent. The Colonna, the Savelli, the Gaetani and other barons of the Patrimony had always been supported in their opposition to the popes by the favour of the Aragonese dynasty, deprived of which they felt themselves powerless. Excommunicated by the Pontiff as rebels, they offered to surrender the keys of their castles to the Sacred College, but Alexander demanded them for himself. The Orsini, who might have known that their turn would come next, were so shortsighted as to assist the Pope in the ruin of their hereditary foes. One after another, the castles were surrendered. On 27 July, Alexander left Rome to survey his conquest; at the same time he left the widowed Lucrezia in the Vatican with authority to open his correspondence and conduct the routine business of the Holy See. He also erected the confiscated Possessions of the aforesaid families into two duchies, bestowing one on Rodrigo, the infant son of Lucrezia, the other on Juan Borgia, born to him a short while after the murder of Gandia, and to whom was given the latter's baptismal name (Pastor, op. cit., III 449). Lucrezia, now in her twenty-third year, did not long remain a widow; her father destined her to be the bride of another Alfonso, son and heir of Duke Ercole of Ferrara. Although both father and son at first spurned the notion of a matrimonial alliance between the proud house of Este and the Pope's illegitimate daughter, they were favourably influenced by the King of France. The third marriage of Lucrezia, celebrated by proxy in the Vatican (30 December, 1501), far exceeded the first in splendour and extravagance. If her father meant her as an instrument in her new position for the advancement of his political combinations, he was mistaken. She is known henceforth, and till her death in 1519, as a model wife and princess, lauded by all for her amiability, her virtue, and her charity. Nothing could well be more different from the fiendish Lucrezia Borgia of the drama and the opera than the historical Duchess of Ferrara. Caesar, however, continued his infamous career of simony, extortion, and treachery, and by the end of 1502 had rounded out his possessions by the capture of Camerino and Sinigaglia. In October of that year the Orsini conspired with his generals to destroy him. With coolness and skill Caesar decoyed the conspirators into his power and put them to death. The Pope followed up the blow by proceeding against the Orsini with greater success than formerly. Cardinal Orsini the soul of the conspiracy, was committed to Castle St. Angelo- twelve days later he was a corpse. Whether he died a natural death or was privately executed, is uncertain Losing no time, Caesar returned towards Rome, and so great was the terror he inspired that the frightened barons fled before him, says Villari (I, 356), "as from the face of a hydra". By April nothing remained to the Orsini except the fortress of Bracciano and they begged for an armistice. The humiliation of the Roman aristocracy was complete; for the first time in the history of the papacy the Pope was, in the fullest sense, ruler of his States.
Alexander, still hale and vigorous in his seventy-third year, and looking forward to many mere years of reign, proceeded to strengthen his position by repleting his treasury in ways that were more than dubious. The Sacred College now contained so many of his adherents and countrymen that he had nothing to fear from that quarter. He enjoyed and laughed at the scurrilous lampoons that were in circulation in which he was accused of incredible crimes, and took no steps to shield his reputation. War had broken out in Naples between France and Spain over the division of the spoils. Alexander was still in doubt which side he could most advantageously support, when his career came to an abrupt close. On 6 August, 1503, the Pope, with Caesar and others, dined with Cardinal Adriano da Corneto in a villa belonging to the Cardinal and very imprudently remained in the open air after nightfall. The entire company paid the penalty by contracting the pernicious Roman fever. On the twelfth the Pope took to his bed. On the eighteenth his life was despaired of; he made his confession, received the last sacraments, and expired towards evening. The rapid decomposition and swollen appearance of his corpse gave rise to the familiar suspicion of poison. Later the tale ran that he had drunk by mistake a poisoned cup of wine which he had prepared for his host. Nothing is more certain than that the poison which killed him was the deadly microbe of the Roman campagna [Pastor, op. cit., III, 469-472; Creighton, Hist. of the Papacy (London 1887), IV, 44]. His remains lie in the Spanish national church of Santa Maria di Monserrato.
An impartial appreciation of the career of this extraordinary person must at once distinguish between the man and the office. "An imperfect setting", says Dr. Pastor (op. cit., III, 475), "does not affect the intrinsic worth of the jewel, nor does the golden coin lose its value when it passes through impure hands. In so far as the priest is a public officer of a holy Church, a blameless life is expected from him, both because he is by his office the model of virtue to whom the laity look up, and because his life, when virtuous, inspires in onlookers respect for the society of which he is an ornament. But the treasures of the Church, her Divine character, her holiness, Divine revelation, the grace of God, spiritual authority, it is well known, are not dependent on the moral character of the agents and officers of the Church. The foremost of her priests cannot diminish by an iota the intrinsic value of the spiritual treasures confided to him." There have been at all times wicked men in the ecclesiastical ranks. Our Lord foretold, as one of its severest trials, the presence in His Church not only of false brethren, but of rulers who would offend, by various forms of selfishness, both the children of the household and "those who are without". Similarly, Ho compared His beloved spouse, the Church, to a threshing floor, on which fall both chaff and grain until the time of separation. The most severe arraignments of Alexander, because in a sense official, are those of his Catholic contemporaries, Pope Julius II (Gregorovius, VII, 494) and the Augustinian cardinal and reformer, Aegidius of Viterbo, in his manuscript "Historia XX Saeculorum", preserved at Rome in the Bibliotheca Angelica. The Oratorian Raynaldus (d. 1677), who continued the semi-official Annals of Baronius, gave to the world at Rome (ad an. 1460, no. 41) the above-mentioned paternal but severe reproof of the youthful Cardinal by Pius II, and stated elsewhere (ad an. 1495, no. 26) that it was in his time the opinion of historians that Alexander had obtained the papacy partly through money and partly through promises and the persuasion that ho would not interfere with the lives of his electors. Mansi, the scholarly Archbishop of Lucca editor and annotator of Raynaldus, says (XI, 4155) that it is easier to keep silence than to write write moderation about this Pope. The severe judgment of the late Cardinal Hergenroether, in his "Kirchengeschichte", or Manual of Church History (4th. ed., Freiburg, 1904, II, 982-983) is too well known to need more than mention.
So little have Catholic historians defended him that in the middle of the nineteenth century Cesare Cantu could write that Alexander VI was the only Pope who had never found an apologist. However, since that time some Catholic writers, both in books and periodicals, have attempted to defend him from the most grievous accusations of his contemporaries. Two in particular may be mentioned: the Dominican Ollivier, "Le Pape Alexandre VI et les Borgia" (Paris, 1870), of whose work only one volume appeared, dealing with the Pope's cardinalate; and Leonetti "Papa Alessandro VI secondo documenti e carteggi del tempo" (3 vols., Bologna, 1880). These and other works were occasioned, partly by a laudable desire to remove a stigma from the good repute of the Catholic Church, and partly by the gross exaggerations of Victor Hugo and others who permitted themselves all licence in dealing with a name so helpless and detested. It cannot be said, however, that these works have corresponded to their authors' zeal. Dr. Pastor ranks them all as failures. Such is the opinion of Henri de l'Epinois in the "Revue des questions historiques" (1881), XXIX, 147, a study that even Thuasne, the hostile editor of the Diary of Burchard, calls "the indispensable guide of all students of Borgia history". It is also the opinion of the Bollandist Matagne, in the same review for 1870 and 1872 (IX, 466-475; XI, 181-198), and of Von Reumont, the Catholic historian of medieval Rome, in Bonn. Theol. Lit. Blatt (1870), V. 686. Dr. Pastor considers that the publication of the documents in the supplement to the third volume of Thuasne's edition of the Diary of Burchard (Paris, 1883) renders "forever impossible" any attempts to save the reputation of Alexander VI. There is all the less reason, therefore, says Cardinal Hergenroether (op. cit., II, 583), for the false charges that have been added to his account, e. g. his attempt to poison Cardinal Adriano da Corneto and his incestuous relations with Lucrezia (Pastor, op. cit., III, 375, 450-451, 475). Other accusations, says the same writer, have been dealt with, not unsuccessfully, by Roscoe in his "Life of Leo the Tenth" by Capefigue in his "Eglise pendant les quatre derniers siècles" (I, 41-46), and by Chantrel, "Le Pape Alexandre VI" (Paris, 1864). On the other hand, while immoral writers have made only too much capital out of the salacious paragraphs scattered through Burchard and Infessura, there is no more reason now than in the days of Raynaldus and Mansi for concealing or perverting the facts of history. "I am a Catholic", says M. de l'Epinois (loc. cit.), "and a disciple of the God who hath a horror of lies. I seek the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth Although our weak eyes do not see at once the uses of it, or rather see damage and peril, we must proclaim it fearlessly." The same good principle is set forth by Leo XIII in his Letter of 8 September, 1889, to Cardinals De Luca, Pitra, and Hergenroether on the study of Church History: "The historian of the Church has the duty to dissimulate none of the trials that the Church has had to suffer from the faults of her children, and even at times from those of her own ministers." Long ago Leo the Great (440-461) declared, in his third homily for Christmas Day, that "the dignity of Peter suffers no diminution even in an unworthy successor" (cujus dignitas etiam in indigno haerede non deficit). The very indignation that the evil life of a great ecclesiastic rouses at all times (nobly expressed by Pius II in the above-mentioned letter to Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia) is itself a tribute to the high spiritual ideal which for so long and on so broad a scale the Church has presented to the world in so many holy examples, and has therefore accustomed the latter to demand from priests. "The latter are forgiven nothing", says De Maistre in his great work, "Du Pape", "because everything is expected from them, wherefore the vices lightly passed over in a Louis XIV become most offensive and scandalous in an Alexander VI" (II, c. xiv)."
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 11/15/03 - Why has there only ever been one English Pope? The only English Pope in history was Nicholas Breakspeare, in the thirteenth century. Why weren't their others? curious98 answered on 11/18/03:There is no such Pope as Nicholas Breakspere in the list of popes, in the 13th century. I’m sure you are referring to Pope Adrian IV (12th century), whose place of birth is not well known, although it is supposed to be England.
This is what the encyclopeadia says about him:
“Born 1100 (?); died 1 September, 1159. Very little is known about the birthplace, parentage, or boyhood of Adrian. Yet, as is usual in such cases, very various, and sometimes very circumstantial, accounts have reached us about him. Our only reliable information we owe to two writers, Cardinal Boso and John of Salisbury. The former wrote a life of Adrian, which is included in the collection of Nicolas Roselli, made Cardinal of Aragon in 1356 during the pontificate of Innocent VI. Boso's life, published by Muratori (SS. Rer. Ital. III, I 441-446) and reprinted in Migne (P.L., CLXXXVIII, 135-160), also edited by Watterich (Vitae Pontificum II, 323- 374), and now to be read in Duchesne's edition of the Liber Pontificalis (II, 388-397; cf. proleg XXXVII-XLV), states that Boso, the author of it; was created cardinal-deacon of the title of Sts Cosmas and Damian, was chamberlain to Adrian and in constant and familiar attendance upon him from the commencement of his apostolate. [Ciacconius says that Boso was the nephew of Adrian, but Watterich observes (op. cit. prolegomena) that he finds no proof of this.] Boso tells us that Adrian was born in England in or near the burg of St. Albans, and that he left his country and his relations in his boyhood to complete his studies, and went to Arles in France. During the vacation he visited the monastery of St. Rufus near Avignon, where he took the vows and habit of an Austin canon. After some time he was elected abbot and, going to Rome on important business connected with the monastery, was retained there by Pope Eugenius III, and made a cardinal and Bishop of Albano (1146). Matthew Paris agrees in some measure with this, for he tells us that on Adrian's applying to the abbot of St. Alban's to be received as a monk, the abbot, after examining him, found him deficient and said to him kindly: "Have patience, my son, and stay at school yet a while till you are better fitted for the position you desire." He states further that he was "a native of some hamlet under the abbey, perhaps Langley," and I may add that it is now tolerably certain that he was born at Abbot's Langley in Hertfordshire, about the year 1100; that his father was Robert Brekespear, a man of humble means, though of a decent stock; and that Adrian went abroad as a poor wandering scholar, like John of Salisbury and many others at that time. However, William of Newburgh, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, an Austin canon and a historian of high repute (1136-98?), gives a very different account, which he probably had from the neighbouring Cistercian houses of Rievaulx and Byland. "Eugenius III", he tells us,
Quote: …was succeeded by Nicolas, Bishop of Albano, who, changing his name with his fortune, called himself Adrian. Of this man it may be well to relate how he was raised as it were from the dust to sit in the midst of princes and to occupy the throne of apostolic glory. He was born in England, and his father was a clerk of slender means who, abandoning his youthful son, became a monk at St. Albans. As the boy grew up, seeing that through want he could not afford the time to go to school, he attended the monastery for a daily pittance. His father was ashamed of this, taunted him with bitter words for his idleness, and, highly indignant, drove him away disconsolate. The boy, left to himself, and compelled to do something by hard necessity, ingenuously ashamed either to dig or beg, crossed over to France. Unquote:
As to the reasons for not having other English Popes, I think this a rather rhetorical question. There has never been a ban on English and/or foreign popes that I know of. What happens is that the Roman Catholic Church, almost always located in Rome, has had a great majority of Italian cardinals, who are the ones that elect Popes. Since most were Italian it makes sense that Popes were Italian too. The proportion of non-Italian Popes if really very small.
But, relax; I do not think there was anything against English Catholics, at least, not until Henry VIII…!
Best regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 11/01/03 - How exactly did they learn subjects in the middle ages? What I want to know is this: there were no blackboards, no proper paper to write on (most books were illuminated manuscripts) yet we hear of people going to university and studying and getting degrees in philosophy, geometry, physics...this that and the other...how?
1/ How did they take notes, and actually physically learn things?
2/ How did these leading philosophers become able to (allegedly) read books in god knows how many different languages, and then write books on every subject under the sun?
As you can see, I'm not a top scholar myself as I'm baffled by the subject of the middle ages. What have I completely failed to grasp?
Anyone answering this question: keep it as simple as possible and don't be afraid of talking down! curious98 answered on 11/02/03:
The fact that Middle Age was a particular obscure time of our History does not imply that BEFORE it was too. In fact, it was particularly bright.
Paper was invented in China.
Chinese records give the credit to Ts‘ai Lun who presented a sheet of paper to the Emperor Ho Ti as a substitute writing surface to silk about the year 105 A.D. Archaeological records from China indicate the invention may have been earlier. From China, paper spread through South East and West Asia and into Eastern Europe (Greece, Rome, etc.)
As for writing, it is virtually certain that writing developed on the basis of earlier existing pictographs and ideographs.
Modern humans seem to have begun drawing pictures 40,000 years ago (San in SW Africa, Australian Aborigines, Cro Magnon in southwest Europe).
True writing is thought to have been invented independently at least twice and perhaps three times in different places and times in human history: in ancient Sumeria by 3200BC--where a type of writing called cuneiform developed, and they use clay tablets to write in; and in ancient Mexico by the Olmecs before 400BC--the precursor to the Maya glyphs (used 200--1500AD).
Writing may have been invented a third time independently: North China by 1200BC--the precursor of modern Chinese characters; In each of these three instances, it is believed that pictures began to be used to denote syllables of sound, not meaning alone.
The Sumerians were a people who built a series of city-states in the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers after 3500BC. It is now well known that Sumerians developed a writing system known today as cuneiform. It flourished between 3100 and 2000BC.
Although it fell into disuse after this time, scholars succeeded in deciphering it last century and today we can read all of the many thousands of surviving cuneiform inscriptions.
Writing in Southwest Asia--the earliest anywhere-- seems to have developed out of economic expediency. The earliest uses of pictograms in Mesopotamia--pre-writing-- predated the Sumerians.
Beginning with farming some 9000 years ago, tokens marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce. With the rise of cities and urban centers of manufacture 6000 years ago, more complex pictographic tokens were also devised to label manufactured goods. E
ventually, the tokens were replaced by impressions made on clay tablets. To write on he clay tablets they used blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform, wedge-writing.
The transition to full writing in Sumeria must have occurred sometime between 3500 and 3000BC, as more and more signs came to be used for their sound value only.
When the transition from icon to sound symbol was completed, and it became possible to symbolize all the syllables of the Sumerian language regardless of how abstract their meaning, true writing was born.
Homonymy thus seems to have been one of the vehicles whereby pictures of concrete objects began to be used as abstract symbols representing sound. The morphological structure of the Sumerian language undoubtedly facilitated the invention of writing: in Sumerian many single syllables are separate words or at least separate morphemes.
After the Sumerians, the idea of writing seems to have diffused to many peoples of Southwest Asia and adjacent areas developed writing. These include the Egyptians, the Cretans, the Elamites, and the Indus Valley peoples. It is virtually certain that these peoples borrowed the idea of writing syllable of sound by using pictures. This is an example of stimulus diffusion.
The most famous of these secondary scripts is, of course, found in Egypt. The rebus principle of writing seems to have been borrowed by the Egyptians from the Sumerians shortly after 3000BC, when Egyptian writing appears suddenly, as a fully developed phonetic system, without any gradual transition from pictographic writing. Egyptian hieroglyphs, or holy writing, are either syllabic symbols or alphabetic symbols representing single sounds such as [t] or [m].
The principle of using symbols for sound seems also to have been borrowed by the peoples of the Indus Valley civilization in present day Pakistan, and various ancient peoples of Crete and present-day Iran. Clay inscriptions dating back as far a 2500BC have been found in these areas. As yet none of these inscriptions have been deciphered.
Maya glyphs were also a syllabic system. Writing seems to have been first devised by the Olmecs before 400BC, but developed to its full flower under the Maya from 200AD to the time of the Spanish conquest in the early 16th century. The glyphs seem to have been used entirely by the priestly ruling class to record events of royal and religious significance. As in ancient China, no commoners seemed to have used them.
Within a century of the Spanish conquest, no one was left who could even read the glyphs, let alone understand them. They have been deciphered only in the last decade.
So, as you can see Humankind has had, since practically its beginning, the possibility to communicate among itself in some sort of writing, and this was, of course, the way knowledge and traditions were transmitted from one generation to the next.
It is now well proven that in Sumeria there were already schools very much like the ones we have to-day. And as for the Middle Age (and basically in Europe), it was thanks to the Christian Monasteries, that most of the knowledge acquired during the Greek and Roman civilizations could be kept.
In the Arab world, however, in the Middle Ages, there was an extraordinary flourishing of culture in fields so separated as poetry and medicine. Same was happening in China and India.
It is only thanks to the Barbarian invasions from central Asia, and later on, to the total lack of interest of central European tribes in whatever not smelling of war, that Europe was kept in the dark until the 14th/15th Centuries when the Renaissance eclosion took place in Italy and spread later on through France, Spain, England, giving finally lieu to the age of Enlightment, already in the 18th century.
Best regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 10/31/03 - Why was Roger Bacon imprisoned?
Why was Roger Bacon imprisoned?
curious98 answered on 11/01/03:Just a few minutes ago, I have written in the Religion Forum the following:
“When we do not listen to what others have to say, in any field of knowledge, we may always be missing something. But, as I have often said in these posts, man’s arrogance is incredible, and in religious matters, even more so. Michael Servetus was a Christian living in the 1500's who incurred the wrath of John Calvin and was murdered by him and his cronies for illegitimate reasons. He was accused of heresy, railroaded through a mock trial and put to death, being burned alive at the stake, in Geneva. His sin, the discovering of the pulmonary circulation. Doctors of that time, could not simply accept that discovery… Yet such an atrocity was praised by even well known Calvinists as Bullinger and others for generations. . Galileo Gallilei suffered the wrath of the Inquisition for similar reasons…
Bigotry, currently expanding in all religions, does not accept that others may have something to say worth listening to. The one and only truth is MY truth. All the rest are wrong.
That’s also why Bacon was sent to prison.
The Encyclopaedia says:
“In 1267-68, at the request of Pope Clement IV, Bacon prepared three works, the Opus maius, Opus minus, and Opus tertium, in which he outlined proposals for a reform of education, arguing that a study of the natural world using observation and exact measurement was the surest foundation for a knowledge of the world's creator. In place of the curriculum followed in medieval universities, he recommended the study of languages, mathematics, alchemy, and experimental sciences--especially optics. In later works, the Compendium of the Study of Philosophy (1272) and Compendium of the Study of Theology (1292), he harshly criticized the philosophical and theological methods of his day.” Of course, this could not be admitted by the Pope. How could they be wrong?
Suspected of promoting "dangerous novelties," Bacon was imprisoned for a time (probably between 1277 and 1279) by order of the minister-general of the Franciscans. After his death Bacon acquired the reputation of having been a sorcerer and wonder-worker. Later, because he had speculated about such things as gunpowder, flying machines, telescopes, and mechanically driven carriages, he became celebrated for his foresight. Modern research has shown that although Bacon borrowed many of his ideas from others, he did have a real influence on subsequent scientific thought
Regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | stiamo_bene_insieme asked on 10/14/03 - the stirrup controversy b/w 2 authors Can you please explain, paraphrase this in simpler words not in one sentence, so I can understand it better? Please it’s very important.
In 1887 Heinrich Brunner proposed that feudalism was a side-effect of the development of mounted shock warfare by the Franks.
Brunner used the undeniable fact that the early Franks had fought, using the francisca, a long-handled axe, on foot. Indeed, as late as the battle of Poitiers in 732, in which Charles Martel had defeated an invading Moslem army from Spain, the French had fought on foot. But, argued Brunner, by the battle of the Dyle, in 891, they were unaccustomed to fighting on foot and had fought on horseback alone. Thus, he reasoned, at some time between those dates the Frankish army had transformed itself from an infantry force to mounted cavalry.
Further, Brunner concluded, certain events taking place during the reigns of Charles Martel and his son Pippin III indicated a change in social organization in France. For example Charles Martel had confiscated sizable amounts of church lands and distributed them to his leading supporters. And the " tribute", formerly payable in cattle, was changed by Pippin and made payable in horses instead.
Why were these things done? Brunner explained it this way: Prior to Charles Martel the Franks had raised their armies by calling on all free men to gather at a specified place, bringing their weapons with them. While not all free men came, the fact that a large fraction of the Franks were free men guaranteed a sizable army. But, Brunner said, this was now changed. The Franks had converted themselves into a mounted army.
He argued that the Moslems had fought on horseback at Poitiers. Charles Martel, Brunner felt, in spite of winning the battle, was so impressed by the fighting ability of the Moslem cavalry that he forced the Frankish army to become primarily a cavalry army.
But it was very expensive to support a mounted warrior. Foot soldiers were much cheaper. So the church lands, Brunner decided, had been confiscated so that they could be given to suitable men to provide them the income needed to support themselves as mounted warriors. But these lands, Brunner felt, were not just given away. They were awarded with the condition that the holder of the land had to provide a specified number of mounted warriors when called by the king. Thus, argued Brunner, a new class of landowners was formed and feudalism was born.
______________________________________________________________
Lynn White Jr. successfully challenged Brunner' thesis. White argued that though it was true that feudalism arose out of military necessity, Brunner' details were wrong. It was not, White argued, the battle of Poitiers that convinced the French to fight on horseback; indeed it was even unlikely that the Moslems had used large numbers of cavalry in that battle.
So what had caused the great shift in French military organization? White argued that it was the introduction of the stirrup. White claimed that it was the stirrup that made the use of the lance by cavalry possible. Without stirrups, White claimed, the impact of the lance on an enemy would knock the mounted warrior off the back of the horse. But with stirrups, the rider could brace himself against the blow. White argued that Charles Martel had recognized this and forced his army to change.
Cavalry had existed prior to this. And the lance had long been a major cavalry weapon . Indeed, there were several types of lance. One was really a javelin to be thrown at the enemy. Another was a ""-type of lance, meant to poke holes in an enemy. What did not exist in France was the "" lance, carried under the arm by a mounted warrior charging full-speed directly at an enemy. The couched lance made possible shock warfare.
In White' view, the simple stirrup had made mounted shock warfare possible. And Charles Martel had distributed church land to support shock warriors. The new class of chevaliers were the owners of the land granted to them by the King. They were the military elite. And in their creation feudalism was born.
This feudalism, first local to France, was spread throughout Europe by Charles Martel' son Pippin III and by his grandson, Charlemagne. It spread to Italy with the defeat of the Lombards and to Eastern Europe with the defeat of the Saxons and the Avars. In the next hundred years it was adopted by the Byzantines and in 1066 it arrived in England. curious98 answered on 10/16/03:Are you referring to this one?
In any case, it's the only one I have. All the others have been deleted.
Regards
Curious98
"As you surely know, during the middle ages the main economic units were the villages and/or manors. These were self-contained economic units which ate most of the food that was raised. They sold the surplus food only in good years. There were basically two levels of people in this society; the peasant and the lord or priest.
First were the peasants or serfs who raised the food. "Serfs were peasant farmers who were neither fully free nor slaves. They could not leave the village, sell an ox, or marry without the lord of the manor's permissions."
The second level of society was the lords and priests. The lords required taxes from the serfs in both food and labor from each family. The church required 10% of everything the serf produced. The largest building in the village was normally the church. This higher level lived off the labors of the peasant class.
Each serf would have to pay to work a strip of land. The strip was defined by the acre. The acre was the amount one could plow in one days work. As well, the serf would have a set amount of days they would be required to work on the lords land. The system was called the open field system. In this system, temporary hedges would be set up to keep cattle out of the fields. The strips were only regarded as owned by the serf during the time of crop growing. After the crop was harvested the land would revert to common land for cattle grazing. This system was a disincentive to developing the land or conserving the soil.
During the middle ages, they used a three or four crop rotation in their fields. The rotation might be wheat the first year, barley the next, and the third year the land would lay fallow with nothing growing in it. The village or manor also had lands, which were known as the commons, where all the serfs or peasants could graze their animals.
Under the Medieval system, land was communal and split into strips given out each year to different serfs. During the Rennaissance a new system, known as the enclosure system, started to develop; the farms were now divided up into small compact farms. The commons of the old system were also divided up under the new system. Now, instead of communal farming, the land was farmed by individuals. This encouraged these individuals to experiment with new types of farming techniques and fertilizes. The farmers now could profit from better farm production year after year.
During the eighteen hundreds, there was also improvement to the crop rotation system used during the Middle Ages. "Lord Charles 'Turnip' Townshend (1674-1738) was famous for adding turnips and clover (grown for cattle feed) to the crops. In this way, over four years the crop rotation for one field might be; year one wheat; year two turnips; year three barley or oats; year four clover." This system eliminated the need for the soil to lay empty or fallow for a year. The turnip crop uses different nutrients and clover help to preserver the soils properties. Add to this, rich manure from the cattle, and it made for a very effective food production system. With these additional crops, farmers could now keep cattle though the winter, thus providing meat year around.
In addition to improvement in crop production, there was also improvement in live stock. During the middle ages, the cattle were grazed in common areas which limited the possibility for any selective breeding. In the 1700's we know a British farmer named John (Robert) Bakewell, along with others of his time, brcame very active in breeding. Many of the more popular breeds used in livestock today date back to this time. Bakewell and the others bred cattle, pig and other live stock for specific characteristics such as size or milk production. Farmers today still used selective breeding to produce the best livestock for their specific purpose.
From my Encyclopaedia I have come out with the:
Common Tasks for Middle-Aged workers
January & February - work indoors repairing hunting nets, sharpening tools, making utensils - on mild days work outdoors gather firewood, prune vines and mend fences.
March - work in the fields, plowing and cultivating.
April - clean ditches, pruning trees, fixing sheds, hauling timber, and repairing roofs
May - sheep cleaning and shearing, planting and field maintenance
June - mowing hay crop and raking it into piles
July - harvest grains, bundle sheaves, weeding gardens
August - threshing and winnowing of grains, grinding of grains into flower
September - fruits picked and dried or stored, grapes picked and pressed for juice and wine
October - gather nuts, roots, berries, and mushrooms, fields plowed and empty fields sown with winter wheat, repairing and cleaning equipment.
November - firewood gathered, split, and stacked for themselves and the lord, pigs and cows slaughtered and meat smoked, flex and hemp processed to make thread and rope
December - trim trees, grape vines pruned, and hunting
Adapted from Nikola-Lisa, W. "Till year's good end: a calendar of Medieval Labor/" 1997
I copy also this paper for your knowledge:
Agriculture in General
In the Byzantine Region of the Middle Ages, the agricultural techniques were generally the same as those used in ancient Rome. The two-field rotation method of cultivation prevailed: one field was cultivated while the other left fallow, and this was alternated with each growing season. This procedure gave the soil rest, allowing for moisture and minerals to accumulate, such that the land would be able to support future crops. During the 10th century, livestock was very cheaply sold in this region, particularly in Sangarios, which is now Bulgaria. This province of Sangarios became the richest empire in cattle, and was famous for its cheese, pork, wool, and poultry. It was also the first to have bred sheep, swine, and oxen. During the 11th and 12th centuries, livestock was given the privilege of indoor maintenance in the forms of stalls and sties. Mule fertilizer gradually became more commonly used, and the percentage of cattle increased during this time period.
Equipment Used
Tillage did not make use of the horse, for there was no such beast of burden in this region during the Middle Ages. Instead, human labour accomplished most of the tillage and ploughing that was necessary on the farmland. These labourers made use of tools such as plain or two-pronged matlocks and spades; hoes were also used in the vegetable gardens and vineyards. However, some Byzantine farmers preferred to use ploughs in order to help them till the raw land. The most common type of plough in use was that of the sole-ard, which had no wheels and served as a breaker for the top soil. It consisted of a stilt, a sole, which was a beam of hardwood set in a horizontal position, and a curved beam, which was connected to the sole by pegs. This plough was fitted with an iron-socketed plough-share, or cutting edge, increasing its effectiveness. These sole-ard ploughs were drawn by a pair of oxen. They were ideal in semi-arid zones, where light and frequent stirring of soils were greatly needed. Sickles, known as drepana, were used by labourers during the harvesting seasons. The grain was cut halfway up the stalk, so that only the ears were reaped, simply for the reason that straw was regarded more valuable as a fertilizer than as livestock feed. Another method used to thresh a large area of grain was the employment of an oxen-drawn implement: it consisted of a wooden board and pieces of flint or iron, which were embedded on the underside. Mills were used in order to grind the harvested grain and produce the flour needed for daily medieval life. These were often powered by water or beasts of burden, and even windmills were introduced to this region by the 13th century. Another interesting machine was one that prepared dough; this was powered by animal labour.
Types of Crops
The grain fields were the most important crops of the Byzantine region. Barley was the most common grain used to make bread; other grains used were wheat, millet, bran, and flax. Millet was grown mainly for the purpose of feeding livestock, as was oat and vetch, a weed-like plant. Another important crop in the vineyard was the grape vine, which was used to make wine. Orchards were grown which produced apples, peaches, pears, figs, walnuts, cherries, almonds, mulberries, pomegranates, chestnuts, and lemons. Olive trees were not grown in this region simply because they could not survive in such semi-arid areas. Farmers in this region also kept gardens that produced cabbage, onions, leeks, carrots, garlic, squash, melons, and cucumbers.
The Arab Green Revolution
This special Arab Green Revolution of cultivation occurred in the Byzantine period during the Middle Ages. A variety of new crops emerged, which were originally grown in tropical regions whose climates were characterized by heavy summer rains. Thus, a form of irrigation technique was needed to sustain these new products. The variety of soils during the revolution was much greater than ever before in the Byzantine region. Lands previously deemed unfit for agriculture were cultivated. The soil was dressed with different kinds of fertilizers and additives in order to correct natural deficiencies.
Types of Crops
The original crop triad, known as the classical triad, consisted of winter wheat, the grapevine, and the olive tree. This enriched food base was what allowed for the provisioning of dense urban populations in the Byzantine region during this revolution. Foreign products brought by the revolution were: the sour orange, banana, watermelon, artichoke, eggplant, citrus varieties, rice, and cotton; it might be surprising to note that several of these examples were of East Indian origin. The Arabs further introduced various yields, such as non-irrigated cereals, hard wheat-which was known for its durability in the storage room--, and sorghum-a summer rice crop. Furthermore, new varieties of crops were acclimated in this region through botanical gardens, during the 16th century; these gardens were left under the direction of agronomists, since they were so difficult to cultivate. One such crop was that of the sugar cane: it was cultivated in a wide strip of land extending from northern India to the Tigris Euphrates Valleys. By the 10th century, it was first grown, but only as animal fodder. The banana and the plantain originated from Southeast Asia, and the watermelon originated from Northwest India. Spinach came from central Asia; Colocasia was a tuber of Southeast Asia. The eggplant came from India, and cotton was also a fibre of Indian origin. During the Arab Green Revolution, The Maiaga was an important growing centre for fig trees. These figs were sold as far away as India and China. Alsharaf was the best known olive-growing region in the Byzantine. aljarate oil was imported throughout the East. Grape vines were widely grown in the region.
Christian Spain
As wheat-growing Christians began to immigrate to Spain in the Byzantine region, they were not being replaced in their native country, and the agricultural balance shifted from dry farming to irrigation and agriculture. The single-rotation method prevailed.
Types of Crops
Eventually, the sorghum replaced the millet as the staple cereal grain used by the peasants. Arriving in the 11th century, its production has since then decreased. A grain, called herenales, was harvested green simply for livestock forage. Oats, which were rarely grown before the 10th century, experienced a dramatic increase in popularity. Fields of turnip were cultivated, a vegetable introduced during the late 13th century. Wheat was harvested in the summer, while the turnips were planted and harvested in the spring; barley and millet were also planted in the spring. This cycle was repeated every two years. In Calalonia, grape-wines invaded the hill countryside. During the 10th century, extensive terracing was practiced. Although the soil was quite acidic, these grapes were one of the most important crops in medieval life. Since the 7th century, free or state peasantry had become dominated by the Byzantine countryside. As a result, slave labour was restricted mostly to the pasture. Peasants separated large strips of land into different fields, called zeuglogia, and these were used collectively as a common arable field by a large farming community.
MEDITERRANEAN REGION
General Information
The Mediterranean region consisted mainly of the Iberian peninsula, Midi, Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, and the Balearic Islands. The landscape was irregular: most of the soil was light and sandy. The summers in this region were hot and dry, since the rains were sparse; the winters were warm and humid. The abrupt autumn season resulted in the limitation of olive cultivation and, since the olive governed the boundary of the region, the expanse of the medieval Mediterranean region was limited. Most Mediterranean people consumed their fat energy from olive oil, a small amount of lard, and goat cheese.
Equipment Used
The Roman plough was used in this region, as were common agronomical procedures and principles. The deep-share ard plough, which evolved from the digging stick, was used in Portugal, Galicia, Morocco, Algeria, Italy, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, and Midi. On the other hand, the crook plough, which did not cultivate soil as deeply, was utilized on drier soils. These soils were located in Spain, Tunisia, the Moroccan Rif, and Majorca. Another tool used in this region was the pitchfork or the forquier.
The Arab Green Revolution
During the early Middle Ages, the Arab Green Revolution also occurred in the Mediterranean, resulting in the introduction of new crops and an intensified practice of irrigation. In Islamic areas, such as central and northern Italy, and southern France, it ensured that areas of agricultural practice would be inevitably united by the end of the Middle Ages.
Characteristic Techniques
Distinctive characteristics can be found of the types of techniques used during this revolution. Examples of such labour-intensive techniques were: irrigation-a supplementary technique since it was not dependent on summer crops--terracing, more complex rotations, and horticultural methods-which were used in areas of extensive dry-farming. The Roman biennial rotational method was practiced, which used an intense technique in spite of the low yield. The Castilian triennial rotational method allowed one course of wheat to be followed by two courses which were left fallow. This method was particularly effective in the arid summer season. Polyculture was also exercised in this region when fruit trees were interplanted with grapevines, vegetables, or cereal grains; this served as a means of intensifying their agricultural worth due to habitually low yields. In Portugal, the wheeled plough was used as an agricultural technique; rye was also cultivated in this region. In the Northwest, extensive arboriculture and pastures with irrigation were highly important. By the 13th century, shepherding became a dominant form of agriculture. However, of all the techniques used during the Arab Green revolution, the most distinguishing was the practice of variegated planting methods. Although this intercultivation technique was inherited from the ancient Romans, the Arabs of this revolution encouraged the introduction of a longer roster of irrigated summer crops and the utilization of a wider variety of soil types.
Types of Crops
The central Mediterranean area was reserved for the cultivation of cereal grains. However, in Italy, there was a great variety of winter grains; these compensated for the lack of spring planting. The apple tree was the most popular fruit in the Basque country. In Valencia, oranges were grown for ornamental use, as were lemons, limes, sorghum, rice, carob bean, and figs. Pears, cherries, peaches, plums-these were all also widely grown, as was the staple fodder. After the conquest of Toledo, in 1085, olive production had decreased until the 14th century, simply due to the fact that the new settlers were unaccustomed to the cultivation of this crop. Fruit trees were also grown intercultivated with vines in wine country, since they were able to serve as vineyard borders. Vegetable gardens were also evident, which were irrigated by hydraulic wheels. Rice and sugar cane appeared near the end of this revolution.
NORTHERN EUROPE
Agriculture in General
In the Northern European region, the great rolling plains extended from the Atlantic ocean deep into the Soviet Union. In contrast to the Mediterranean region, the summer rains were frequent, and thus soils rich in clay were produced. Fields in this region were square in shape, and suited for chalky, upland soils and climates. One agricultural technique, called cross-ploughing, was utilized in this region due to the aridity of the soil in this region: it preserved the moisture below the surface, and fertilized the land by capillary attractions that drew up minerals from the subsoil. However, the three field rotation system, was the most common technique practiced in this region. This technique proved to be effective in areas which received adequate summer rains, and was completed biannually. During the first year, the first field was left fallow, while the second was planted with grain in late autumn; this was harvested in the following summer, while the third field was planted with oats, barley, peas, and broad beans in the following spring; finally, the last field was harvested in the following autumn. During the second year, the fallow field was planted with winter crops, the field previously planted with winter crops would be planted with summer crops, and the field previously planted with summer crops would remain fallow. Many new villages converted to the three field rotation system when they realized all the benefits. It increased the production of legumes, improved soil fertility, and it provided a better diet for lower class peasants. In addition, it reduced the risks of crop failure, since the planting and harvesting was divided into two seasons, it distributed the ploughing labour more evenly, and it enabled a group of peasants to cultivate considerably more land with the same amount of labour, as opposed to using the two-field rotation method.
Equipment Used
The heavy plough was first invented in the near East. Originating from a digging stick drawn by two oxen, it stirred soil and created furrows. Since the rainfall was quite frequent in northern Europe, there grew an importance in the need to drain the soil rather than to retain the water. By cutting deep into the earth with a plough, in order to turn the lower layers of dirt, fields began to be refreshed. A larger, heavier plough was required to accomplish this task: it required wheels for better mobility, and two extra oxen to pull it. There were advantages with such a heavy plough: the iron blade was vertically fixed beneath the plough beam, allowing an accurate line of furrow to have been carved; a flat iron share was set horizontally to undercut the soil at the desired level; finally, a wooden moldboard scooped and turned over the ribbon of sod. This new plough was able to cultivate a richer, slicker, bottomland soil, thus making cross-ploughing unnecessary. The rapid harrowing exercised by this technique broke up the larger clods while covering the seeds. Since it took so much time to turn such a big team of oxen around, the field eventually acquired the shape of a long strip. Although this plough cost much greater than the lighter plough, the disadvantages were far outweighed by the advantages. The scythe was symbolic of the harvest of the growth because it could cut the stalk with ease, and was less likely able to shatter the grain head into pieces. This tool indicated that the peasants had a strong interest in working the meadows and fields, and that they were concerned with feeding their livestock in the winter. The introduction of the oat grain in Northern Europe was essential, because it enabled the peasants to replace the ox with the domesticated horse as the chief draft animal on the field. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the horse was generally used as an animal for battles or for sports, because the yoke harness was entirely unsuited to their external anatomy. Once this animal was recognized for its efficiency and speed, 800 new forms of horse harnesses began to appear in Europe; these harnesses were composed of breast straps and rigid collars. Peasants realized that the horse was four to five times stronger than the ox; by the 9th century, horseshoes appeared, which greatly increased their staying power. Although the oats were expensive, the horse was able to work for longer hours. By 1095, plough horses became so common that Pope Urban II placed these horses under the peace of God.
Diet of the Region
The Northern European diet consisted mainly of carbohydrates and cereals, such as wheat, rye, oats, barley, and buckwheat. These grains were used in breads, porridges, dumplings, and beer. The spread of water-powered mills shifted the diet from porridges to bread. In times of famine, the people ate beech nuts, acorns, and staple vegetable proteins, like peas and broad beans. The pig was an important discovery during the Middle Ages. It could produce two liters of seven piglets every year at the least. Unlike other livestock, the pig grew quickly and was able to range the surrounding forests by eating the acorns and beech-nuts. Another domestication was the free-range, omnivorous chicken. Finally, the rabbit was also another source of meat in Northern Europe. This was the most recently added animal to the "to be eaten" list for the middle Ages, and was first mentioned in cookbooks at around 1186. The meat itself was quite meaty for such a small animal, and the fur was very useful. However, rabbits were particularly special: they used internal bacteria to turn the grass they ate into a high-protein excretion, which they then consumed for their own benefit. Thus, even the poorest peasant could gather weeds to feed his rabbits; they did not require much maintenance. In conjunction with the domestication of the rabbit, the ferret was introduced, who chased the rabbits out of their warrens and into the waiting nets. The ferret no longer exists in its wild form. Cheese was a major source of protein and fat in Northern Europe; it was often used to pay food taxes. Many sorts shipped quite well, and ended up being used as items of commerce. Each peasant house boasted a garden, which was totally owned and laboured on by the peasants. Scattered fruit trees and orchards were also evident in these gardens. Some vegetables grown during the Middle Ages included the kohlrabi; cauliflower, which originated from the Muslims; Brussels sprouts, which came from Flanders; spinach, native of Islamic Spain; and romaine lettuce. During the 14th century, carrots arrived from Afghanistan. However, these were an unpleasant purple-yellowish in colour, and they only became the standard orange vegetable we know in Netherlands, during the 17th century. Celery was used as a spice and a medicine. Again, the fleshy version of the vegetable with which we are familiar emerged only in the 19th century.
THE SLAVIC REGION
West Slavs
Agriculture in General
Agriculture played a central role in the lives of the whole Slavic Region. The West Slavs was a group of people consisting of Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks. For them, in particular, the harvest was a major event. West Slavs used primitive farming implements and techniques: their hook-plow barely created furrows in the topsoil, while their slash-and-burn technique for clearing forests was quite brutal. When the Slavs became Christian, German colonists began to arrive at around the 12th century, and German immigrants flooded to Poland and Bohemia during the first half of the 15th century. This allowed for the many positive contributions to agriculture experienced in this region; it brought superior farming implements, such as the heavy-plough, and water-driven mills. From the Germans, the Slavs learned to drain marshes, build dams, and eventually adopt the three-field rotation system of tillage. As a result, new markets, towns, and cities sprung up along the countryside. The slash-and-burn technique required one to chop down a large number of trees, and allow them to dry. Underbrush was then added, and the wood set on fire so that it would burn clear off the field. Sometimes, trees were killed ahead of time by stripping the bark around the trunk. This technique was used to clear fields and raise crops, providing an ash-covered surface which was ideal for the planting of seeds. After the first year of crop burning, an excellent yield was produced; however, so little was produced after the second or third clears, that the field had to be abandoned after two to three years. Before slash-and-burn could be used in the area again, new trees had to grow; it was a laborious and wasteful technique. Improved harnesses and connecting gear allowed the Slavs to gain more control over the livestock as draft animals. Ash was used as an early fertilizer. Organic fertilizer was used as well, which often consisted of a mixture between straw and manure. By the late Middle Ages, all Slavs eventually discovered the value of using organic fertilizers through the observance of their own animal enclosures. As more animals were being raised, more natural fertilizer was available.
Equipment Used
Among the West Slavs, an evolution of tillage methods was apparent. First of all, pointed sticks and hoes were used by the people to loosen the topsoil. Secondly, wooden furrowing sticks were introduced, which dug out longed rows. The third step marked the development of the wooden scratch plough, which was pulled by either a labourer or a beast of burden. Next, ploughs with metal tips were employed during the 7th and 8th centuries. Finally, some form of crop-rotation emerged after the 10th century, and the slash-and-burn technique disappeared. To accomplish the three-field rotational system, the chief tools that were in use were the light and heavy ploughs. The heavy plough was generally used during the 12th century, originating in Germany. Drawn by two or more oxen, it dramatically increased the production of the field. The two front wheels aided with the furrowing, making it easier for the plowshare to pass through the soil. Attached to the moldboard, the plough also opened up the earth and turned it over. By the 14th century, the ploughshare evolved to acquire an asymmetrical shape, and the moldboard was no longer needed. Deep furrows could now be easily made. By turning up the soil using this technique, the soil was aerated, the water retention was improved, and mineral nutrients became more accessible to the plants. Furrowing was beneficial, because it destroyed the habitats of insects and pests, while burying many weeds so that they could not germinate. Other equipment used included iron-tipped harrows, and sickles and scythes. The latter were used to harvest grains and cut down the fodder for the livestock. The sickle preceded the scythe; however, although the scythe was harder to wield, less grain fell from the stalk during reaping than if the sickle was used. Milling Equipment became bigger and better, as hand-operated mills in the early Middle Ages evolved into the larger, animal-driven mills of the 9th century. By the 12th century, water driven mills prevailed, and, by the 14th century, wind-mills were present.
Diet of the Region
The milleti grain was an oriental contribution. Wheat and Barley came from East Asia and north Africa, respectively. Oats and rye arrived from Persia and Asia Minor. Finally, in Buckuneat, legumes, flax, and hemp . The Slavs were famous for their honey and wax, which were obtained from the forest or from raised bees in tree-trunk hives. In Rome, during the 11th and 12th centuries, fruit growing was organized in this region, and the need for wine in Christian liturgy led to the planting of vineyards in the East. The Slavs fished and hunted using traps, bows, and arrows; they raised livestock and practiced falconry, which was an aristocratic past-time originating in the Orient. Even sheep raising had risen to the point when wool trading was able to dominate grain cultivation in certain areas of the region.
South Slavs
Agriculture in General
The South Slavs was a group of people consisting of the Yugoslavs and the Bulgarians. They also engaged in the slash-and-burn tillage technique at the beginning of the Middle Ages. However, they, too, began to make the transition towards ploughs and ironshares during the 8th and 9th centuries. By the 10th century, the light plough was in use; it even developed a foot to dig up and remove the sod during tilliage. The farming conditions were far from ideal. Many areas either had poor soil, or lacked sufficient rainfall. There were years of drought, years of flood, and years of frost. On top of this, swarms of locusts periodically ravaged the land.
Diet of the Region
Although they adopted the fruit cultivation from the Germans in the 11th and 12th centuries, the South Slavs also began planting vineyards in order to meet the Lithurgical needs as early as the 8th and 9th centuries. .
East Slavs
Agriculture in General
The East Slavs were a group of people consisting of the Ukrainians, the White Russians, and the Great Russians. They lived in settled farming communities, and tended fields with definite boundaries and enclosures. Farming, hunting, fishing, and forestry were among the major strengths of this region. Farming was undeniably primitive in both tools and methods of tillage. The most primitive technique for farming took place in the northern area of the region, where the population was relatively sparse and the temperature was often frigid.
North Area
A sandy loamy soil was not as fit for agriculture; in addition, much of the land in the North remained as forest. Thus, the slash-and-burn technique was widely used here. In any case, by the 10th century, pre-plough agriculture gave way to ploughing agriculture, which required the use of horses and oxen. Crops grown in this area of the Slavic Region might include: Millet, wheat, vetch, various beans, and peas. Grain was harvested by sickles, then ground up by manually operated mills. Forests served as homes for many game: it was full of elk, bear, and hare. Rivers and lakes brimmed with fish, while the breeding of livestock played a large role in the economy of the Middle Ages.
South Area
The two-field rotation system, of which each field lay fallow in alternate years, prevailed in this area of the Slavic Region. By the 15th century, the three-field rotation system came into practice, as well as the use of natural fertilizer. Eventually, tools such as the hoe, light, and heavy ploughs were utilized. Unfortunately, many small farmers could afford neither the heavy plough, nor the horse, nor the oxen. However sickles and scythes were widely used, and by the 12th century, water mills appeared. Farmers in this area raised a variety of field crops: oats, wheat, millet, rye, buckwheat, five types of flax, poppies, and hemp.
Hope to have helped
Curious98"
| | Question/Answer | stiamo_bene_insieme asked on 10/14/03 - Water-driven mills and windmills
Water-driven mills and windmillsCan you please paraphrase this so I can understand it better?
thanks
Water-driven mills were machineries that was run by water power. Windmills worked by the action of the wind upon a wheel of vanes or sails set around a horizontal shaft, usually mounted on a tall tower. People used these windmills mostly used to pump water or to grind grain.
By the 1100', windmills had spread to Europe. About this time, inventors discovered that windmills produced more power if the sails or blades turned on a horizontal shaft. This discovery eventually led to the development of Dutch windmills. These windmills were widely used in the Netherlands to drain water from the land and to mill grain. Dutch windmills had four long arms, and cloth sails or wooden slats or shutters were mounted on the arms.
The Romans are believed to be the first to use waterpower for milling flour, around 100 BC. Windmills were developed much later -in France in 1180 A.D., in England in 1185 A.D. and in Syria in 1190 A.D. Wooden blades later replaced sails of stretched cloth. The wind powered the main drive wheel, which turned the top stone against the stationary bottom stone. Development of water-driven and wind-driven mills changed agriculture. Building a mill was quite expensive so the mills were usually owned by a landlord, the church, or royalty. Each farmer who brought grain to the mill paid a fee or toll, usually one-sixteenth of the grain milled.
In Europe, many of the smaller querns were destroyed in an effort to force people to use the king' or church' official mill. This also forced families to buy flour, rather than being able to produce a small quantity for their own use.
curious98 answered on 10/15/03:have already answered it. Must be a duplicate.
Regards
Curious98
PS: Anche da noi stiamo bene insieme! | | Question/Answer | | stiamo_bene_insieme asked on 10/14/03 - windmills in the middle ages Can you please paraphrase this so I can understand it better?
thanks
Water-driven mills were machineries that was run by water power. Windmills worked by the action of the wind upon a wheel of vanes or sails set around a horizontal shaft, usually mounted on a tall tower. People used these windmills mostly used to pump water or to grind grain.
By the 1100', windmills had spread to Europe. About this time, inventors discovered that windmills produced more power if the sails or blades turned on a horizontal shaft. This discovery eventually led to the development of Dutch windmills. These windmills were widely used in the Netherlands to drain water from the land and to mill grain. Dutch windmills had four long arms, and cloth sails or wooden slats or shutters were mounted on the arms.
The Romans are believed to be the first to use waterpower for milling flour, around 100 BC. Windmills were developed much later -in France in 1180 A.D., in England in 1185 A.D. and in Syria in 1190 A.D. Wooden blades later replaced sails of stretched cloth. The wind powered the main drive wheel, which turned the top stone against the stationary bottom stone. Development of water-driven and wind-driven mills changed agriculture. Building a mill was quite expensive so the mills were usually owned by a landlord, the church, or royalty. Each farmer who brought grain to the mill paid a fee or toll, usually one-sixteenth of the grain milled.
In Europe, many of the smaller querns were destroyed in an effort to force people to use the king' or church' official mill. This also forced families to buy flour, rather than being able to produce a small quantity for their own use.
curious98 answered on 10/15/03:I have shortened it a little. But not too much, because otherwise you are missing some important information.
"
By the 1100', windmills had spread to Europe, when it was discovered they produced more power if the sails or blades turned on a horizontal shaft.
This discovery eventually led to the development of Dutch windmills. These windmills were widely used in the Netherlands to drain water from the land and to mill grain.
The Romans are believed to be the first to use waterpower for milling flour, around 100 BC. Wooden blades later replaced sails of stretched cloth.
The wind powered the main drive wheel, which turned the top stone against the stationary bottom stone. Development of water-driven and wind-driven mills changed agriculture. Building a mill was quite expensive so the mills were usually owned by a landlord, the church, or royalty.
Each farmer who brought grain to the mill paid a fee or toll, usually one-sixteenth of the grain milled.
In Europe, many of the smaller querns were destroyed in an effort to force people to use the king' or church' official mill.
Hope to have helped | | Question/Answer | | stiamo_bene_insieme asked on 10/14/03 - explain the stirrup controversy b/w 2 authors Can you please explain, paraphrase this in simpler words not in one sentence, so I can understand it better? Please it’s very important.
In 1887 Heinrich Brunner proposed that feudalism was a side-effect of the development of mounted shock warfare by the Franks.
Brunner used the undeniable fact that the early Franks had fought, using the francisca, a long-handled axe, on foot. Indeed, as late as the battle of Poitiers in 732, in which Charles Martel had defeated an invading Moslem army from Spain, the French had fought on foot. But, argued Brunner, by the battle of the Dyle, in 891, they were unaccustomed to fighting on foot and had fought on horseback alone. Thus, he reasoned, at some time between those dates the Frankish army had transformed itself from an infantry force to mounted cavalry.
Further, Brunner concluded, certain events taking place during the reigns of Charles Martel and his son Pippin III indicated a change in social organization in France. For example Charles Martel had confiscated sizable amounts of church lands and distributed them to his leading supporters. And the " tribute", formerly payable in cattle, was changed by Pippin and made payable in horses instead.
Why were these things done? Brunner explained it this way: Prior to Charles Martel the Franks had raised their armies by calling on all free men to gather at a specified place, bringing their weapons with them. While not all free men came, the fact that a large fraction of the Franks were free men guaranteed a sizable army. But, Brunner said, this was now changed. The Franks had converted themselves into a mounted army.
He argued that the Moslems had fought on horseback at Poitiers. Charles Martel, Brunner felt, in spite of winning the battle, was so impressed by the fighting ability of the Moslem cavalry that he forced the Frankish army to become primarily a cavalry army.
But it was very expensive to support a mounted warrior. Foot soldiers were much cheaper. So the church lands, Brunner decided, had been confiscated so that they could be given to suitable men to provide them the income needed to support themselves as mounted warriors. But these lands, Brunner felt, were not just given away. They were awarded with the condition that the holder of the land had to provide a specified number of mounted warriors when called by the king. Thus, argued Brunner, a new class of landowners was formed and feudalism was born.
______________________________________________________________
Lynn White Jr. successfully challenged Brunner' thesis. White argued that though it was true that feudalism arose out of military necessity, Brunner' details were wrong. It was not, White argued, the battle of Poitiers that convinced the French to fight on horseback; indeed it was even unlikely that the Moslems had used large numbers of cavalry in that battle.
So what had caused the great shift in French military organization? White argued that it was the introduction of the stirrup. White claimed that it was the stirrup that made the use of the lance by cavalry possible. Without stirrups, White claimed, the impact of the lance on an enemy would knock the mounted warrior off the back of the horse. But with stirrups, the rider could brace himself against the blow. White argued that Charles Martel had recognized this and forced his army to change.
Cavalry had existed prior to this. And the lance had long been a major cavalry weapon . Indeed, there were several types of lance. One was really a javelin to be thrown at the enemy. Another was a ""-type of lance, meant to poke holes in an enemy. What did not exist in France was the "" lance, carried under the arm by a mounted warrior charging full-speed directly at an enemy. The couched lance made possible shock warfare.
In White' view, the simple stirrup had made mounted shock warfare possible. And Charles Martel had distributed church land to support shock warriors. The new class of chevaliers were the owners of the land granted to them by the King. They were the military elite. And in their creation feudalism was born.
This feudalism, first local to France, was spread throughout Europe by Charles Martel' son Pippin III and by his grandson, Charlemagne. It spread to Italy with the defeat of the Lombards and to Eastern Europe with the defeat of the Saxons and the Avars. In the next hundred years it was adopted by the Byzantines and in 1066 it arrived in England. curious98 answered on 10/15/03:
Though I’m not an expert, as the two scholars you mention, I feel more inclined to accept Lynn White Jr.’s theory.
Cavalry had been used previously, even as far back as the Egyptians, in battles. But, in fact, the horses were pulling small chariots, where normally, there were the horse driver and the armed warrior. Some of these chariots were pulled by 2 horses (bigas) and, exceptionally, by 4 horses (cuadrigas).
But Lynn is right, I think, when saying that it wasn’t possible to charge holding a lance at full speed directly against the enemy without being able to lean your feet on something. Hence the quick adoption of the stirrup, which as I said before, came from Asia.
That this helped creating a new kind of knights, which eventually became landlords –for reasons also explained in my previous answers- and gave place to Feudalism is also a fact.
So from that point of view it can be concluded that, indeed, stirrups were influential in the creation of Feudalism.
My theory – and this is why I said they were not THAT influential – is that Feudalism would have appeared as well, had the stirrups not been known, for it was a consequence of how life was being developed in France, and subsequently, all over the rest of Europe.
But, you can, of course, take the Lynn’s approach and not mine, for at this stage of the game, we are all toying with speculation.
Regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | stiamo_bene_insieme asked on 10/14/03 - the stirrup controversy b/w 2 authors Can you please explain, paraphrase this in simpler words not in one sentence, so I can understand it better? Please it’s very important.
In 1887 Heinrich Brunner proposed that feudalism was a side-effect of the development of mounted shock warfare by the Franks.
Brunner used the undeniable fact that the early Franks had fought, using the francisca, a long-handled axe, on foot. Indeed, as late as the battle of Poitiers in 732, in which Charles Martel had defeated an invading Moslem army from Spain, the French had fought on foot. But, argued Brunner, by the battle of the Dyle, in 891, they were unaccustomed to fighting on foot and had fought on horseback alone. Thus, he reasoned, at some time between those dates the Frankish army had transformed itself from an infantry force to mounted cavalry.
Further, Brunner concluded, certain events taking place during the reigns of Charles Martel and his son Pippin III indicated a change in social organization in France. For example Charles Martel had confiscated sizable amounts of church lands and distributed them to his leading supporters. And the " tribute", formerly payable in cattle, was changed by Pippin and made payable in horses instead.
Why were these things done? Brunner explained it this way: Prior to Charles Martel the Franks had raised their armies by calling on all free men to gather at a specified place, bringing their weapons with them. While not all free men came, the fact that a large fraction of the Franks were free men guaranteed a sizable army. But, Brunner said, this was now changed. The Franks had converted themselves into a mounted army.
He argued that the Moslems had fought on horseback at Poitiers. Charles Martel, Brunner felt, in spite of winning the battle, was so impressed by the fighting ability of the Moslem cavalry that he forced the Frankish army to become primarily a cavalry army.
But it was very expensive to support a mounted warrior. Foot soldiers were much cheaper. So the church lands, Brunner decided, had been confiscated so that they could be given to suitable men to provide them the income needed to support themselves as mounted warriors. But these lands, Brunner felt, were not just given away. They were awarded with the condition that the holder of the land had to provide a specified number of mounted warriors when called by the king. Thus, argued Brunner, a new class of landowners was formed and feudalism was born.
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Lynn White Jr. successfully challenged Brunner' thesis. White argued that though it was true that feudalism arose out of military necessity, Brunner' details were wrong. It was not, White argued, the battle of Poitiers that convinced the French to fight on horseback; indeed it was even unlikely that the Moslems had used large numbers of cavalry in that battle.
So what had caused the great shift in French military organization? White argued that it was the introduction of the stirrup. White claimed that it was the stirrup that made the use of the lance by cavalry possible. Without stirrups, White claimed, the impact of the lance on an enemy would knock the mounted warrior off the back of the horse. But with stirrups, the rider could brace himself against the blow. White argued that Charles Martel had recognized this and forced his army to change.
Cavalry had existed prior to this. And the lance had long been a major cavalry weapon . Indeed, there were several types of lance. One was really a javelin to be thrown at the enemy. Another was a ""-type of lance, meant to poke holes in an enemy. What did not exist in France was the "" lance, carried under the arm by a mounted warrior charging full-speed directly at an enemy. The couched lance made possible shock warfare.
In White' view, the simple stirrup had made mounted shock warfare possible. And Charles Martel had distributed church land to support shock warriors. The new class of chevaliers were the owners of the land granted to them by the King. They were the military elite. And in their creation feudalism was born.
This feudalism, first local to France, was spread throughout Europe by Charles Martel' son Pippin III and by his grandson, Charlemagne. It spread to Italy with the defeat of the Lombards and to Eastern Europe with the defeat of the Saxons and the Avars. In the next hundred years it was adopted by the Byzantines and in 1066 it arrived in England. curious98 answered on 10/15/03:
Though I’m not an expert, as the two scholars you mention, I feel more inclined to accept Lynn White Jr.’s theory.
Cavalry had been used previously, even as far back as the Egyptians, in battles. But, in fact, the horses were pulling small chariots, where normally, there were the horse driver and the armed warrior. Some of these chariots were pulled by 2 horses (bigas) and, exceptionally, by 4 horses (cuadrigas).
But Lynn is right, I think, when saying that it wasn’t possible to charge holding a lance at full speed directly against the enemy without being able to lean your feet on something. Hence the quick adoption of the stirrup, which as I said before, came from Asia.
That this helped creating a new kind of knights, which eventually became landlords –for reasons also explained in my previous answers- and gave place to Feudalism is also a fact.
So from that point of view it can be concluded that, indeed, stirrups were influential in the creation of Feudalism.
My theory – and this is why I said they were not THAT influential – is that Feudalism would have appeared as well, had the stirrups not been known, for it was a consequence of how life was being developed in France, and subsequently, all over the rest of Europe.
But, you can, of course, take the Lynn’s approach and not mine, for at this stage of the game, we are all toying with speculation.
Regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | stiamo_bene_insieme asked on 10/13/03 - Is it possible that the roleof the stirrup played in the shift from feudalism? Hi
Is it possible that the roleof the stirrup played in the shift from feudalism?
Thanks curious98 answered on 10/14/03:
It is a matter of opinion; But, in any case,I do not think so. Stirrups did play an important role in how battles were fought as they helped horse riders to better manoeuvre with their arms spears and swords. As you know, they were brought by the Huns who were rather frightful in the combat.
As I think you may find it of interest, I’m copying an interesting paper on the subject of feudalism:
Feudalism. . .
Without the Roman legions and a central authority to protect communities, people had to depend upon themselves for military defense. They looked to the largest landowner or the physically strongest among them to organize and lead them against invaders. In return, the people pledged to such protectors obedience, services and/or payments. Over the centuries grew the manorial or feudal system. Power became centralized in a feudal lord who ruled the subjects living on his estates. In the manor house or castle, the lord was served by his peasants and supported by his knights.
Feudalism thus evolved as a system or organization in Medieval society.
It was based on an exchange of loyalty and service for protection and land. Feudalism could be divided into two kinds. Economic feudalism refers to the relationship between a lord and his free peasants, serfs and slaves. In return for his protection and the right to work the lands, the peasants performed services and paid fees. The lord became lawgiver, judge, and defender. The second kind, political feudalism, was the relationship among the nobles and the king. The king was God’s vassal, and every other man was another man’s vassal. Christianity emphasized that loyalty and service be given to God, and the church portrayed Christ as the embodiment of both. Christ was regarded “as a young warrior, hastening to do combat with evil through his death of the Cross” according to John B. Morall (in The Medieval Imprint, p.96.) Feudalism’s emphasis on loyalty and service just paralleled the values of the Christian Church.
A man became a vassal by kneeling before the lord and placing his hands between those of his superior; he would swear fealty to the lord as long as he lived. At this investiture, the vassal received a written charter or a staff or even a clod of dirt as a symbol of the land (fief) that was being given to him. Sometimes he was given the right to collect a toll on a road or bridge. The lord promised to protect the fief and to administer justice to his vassal and family. Vassalage obliged a man to pay his lord a regular fee and to follow his lord in war. A vassal might have more than one lord but his first allegiance was to his first (ledge) lord. Even bishops and abbots might be vassals and lead their own vassals into battle.
As time passed, lords came to make alliances with each other to insure the safety of their landholdings. A lesser lord, whose lands were held in fief, would become a vassal of a greater lord, placing himself under the protection of the overlord and agree to perform certain services and give military support. More powerful lords had many vassals to maintain their power. This system of personal loyalties became the basis of the form of government called feudalism, a term from the Latin “feudum” or grant of land. In its early development, feudalism was essentially a system of private local government, but during the tenth century, as a method of governing, it could be defined as a regulated system of private war. Feudalism developed a formal hierarchy with the king at the top. Below him were the “tenants in chief”, vassals who held their lands by a direct grant from the king. These lords, in time, divided their estates among lesser vassals. At the bottom were the individual knights who may have had only one estate and no vassals. The hierarchy was in constant struggle over power as stronger lords sought territories from weaker lords. Townsmen were excluded from the hierarchy; as a 12th century sermon noted, “God made knights, clergy, and laborers, but the devil made burghers and usurers”.
Feudalism had begun in France, spread to England, and then to the rest of western Europe during the 11th century. It reached its highest development in France. The Scandinavian countries never fully developed the system; in Russia the impact was smaller than in the West, and in Italy it had a short life. Changing needs in Europe brought new relationships. But throughout the Middle Ages, feudalism established customs that remained long after the system, based upon mutual protection, ceased to serve a useful purpose. Some feudal lords, by political skill or military conquest, would gain control over larger domains. After the 11th century, royal domains were no longer parceled out but were consolidated, and new modes of social organization began to appear. As the king’s power increased, they could enforce stricter obedience on all the people within their realms. Thus by the end of the Middle Ages, powerful kingdoms were established throughout Europe.
The Squire’s Tale
Across the hot, dusty courtyard, the figure appeared tall and menacing.
Except for the heavy breathing of the horse and his pounding heart, there was the silence of death. He could feel the eyes of the onlookers as he urged his horse forward into battle.
As the horse reached a full gallop, the squire steadied his lance on the target. Nearer they charged. With murderous intent, the lance struck with a crushing force—hurling the enemy to the ground.
Turning the horse, the rider looked at the faces of the onlookers for approval. He felt satisfied with his show of skill; it had been developed by long hours of practice. Many strawfilled dummies had fallen under his lance. He was the best of the squires in mock combat and none of the other would-be warriors could defeat him with sword and shield. Filled with confidence in his ability, he was anxious for real battle.
Another boy took his horse, mounted and rode off to tilt with a new imaginary enemy.
Tired, the squire sat to watch the practice session. How long had it been since his father had sent him to the neighbor’s castle? Since he had left his home, eleven years had passed. At first the separation had been hard and the work unexciting, but his preparation for knighthood had begun when he learned to walk. His father had told him that a person could no more be born a priest or a guild master. As a son of a lord, it would be necessary for him to earn knighthood through years of difficult training. He had felt special. Only the sons of noblemen could be trained; only nobles could afford the expense. Knighthood was his fate.
At the age of seven, he had arrived at the castle; there, as a page or “varlet” (little vassal), as he was called, he learned proper manners, waited on the ladies, served at mealtime, and took care of the armor and horses. As he grew and became stronger, he had learned to ride and to fight. He learned quickly and by the age of fourteen, he could handle a lance and sword on horseback. At fifteen, he had become a squire, a “shieldbearer” for a knight and learned to control a war horse and to use the other weapons. Once he went with his knight into battle leading the extra horse. He remembered the sounds of battle and how excited he had become. He had hoped for an opportunity to prove his bravery and become a “knight-of-the-sword”. But the enemy fled too quickly and he returned once again to his training in the castle, serving his knight and enjoying the hunting in the forest. Now, almost nineteen, he dreamed of the day that he would be knighted by the lord; it would be a ceremony by which he would enter adulthood.
It would begin with the ritual bath and then a night of prayer before the church altar on which his sword would lay. As a firm believer in the Christian faith, he knew that God’s help would be needed in the struggle against the devil and his temptations. In the morning, the priest would bless his weapon. Then dressed in full armor, he would kneel before the lord to receive his dubbing into nighthood. “Conduct yourself as a true knight,” were the words that he would hear as the flat side of the sword would slap against his neck. He would swear an oath to defend the Church, fight only for his lord, and honor the code of chivalry.
In his imagination, he saw himself clad in gleaming armor under which would be a coat of heavy links of iron. With his iron glove, he held his shield, on which was painted his family’s coat-of-arms. With dagger, sword and lance, he would be ready to serve God and king, defend the realm, and protect the innocent.
The noise from a rearing horse brought him back to activity in the courtyard. Rubbing his eyes, he thought, “One day I will be a true knight . . . one day soon”.
Chivalry
Before the Middle Ages, soldiers on horseback were not effective fighters. From central Asia, the invaders introduced Europeans to the stirrup which would improve the horse soldier’s ability in combat. Attached to a horse’s saddle, the stirrup would hold the rider’s feet and enable him to sit firmly. Now he could charge against a line of foot soldiers and be better secured against getting knocked off by long spears. After the stirrup came the horseshoe. Made of iron and nailed into the hoofs, they helped the horse maintain his footing in soft ground and to gallop longer over hard ground. Now the horse could carry a heavy load such as an armored knight and not damage its hoofs.
With the medieval knight’s evolution as a warrior, a code of conduct developed known as chivalry, “chivalry” is derived from the French words “cheval” (horse) and “chevalier” (mounted warrior). At first, chivalry was military and secular; it referred to a loose fellowship among the warrior class, where king and knight were equal. It emphasized courage, loyalty to one’s superior, and devotion to military duty. By the twelfth century, when society was more sophisticated, the Christian church encouraged that the rules of chivalry include such ideas as courtesy towards women and protection of the defenseless. Although many knights did not live up to all of the rules, in time it would become a guide to behavior. The church also influenced the idea that Christian knights swear to defend the faith against enemies, especially the Moslems. Despite these additions, chivalry remained a code in which physical prowess was demonstrated.
Today we may think of chivalry as referring to a moral quality rather than to its origin with the horse. Chivalry’s ideals were military, and without the horse nobody could have been a horse warrior or knight, as the terms became synonymous after the Norman Conquest. The warhorse was the result of improved breeding and was a costly animal. Only wealthy nobles could provide the riding equipment and the knightly training and the expensive armor. Thus the qualities of early chivalry were originally connected to fighting. Bravery, even to the point of absolute recklessness, was expected of the true knight. The slightest insult was to be avenged and no knight could afford any suspicion of cowardice or treachery. Honor required that he never fail his lord or avoid a challenge. In battle, the true knight disdained all tricks and engaged the enemy as an equal. He would not strike an unarmed or unprepared foe. If defeated or captured, he expected honorable treatment until he was ransomed. A knight was rarely killed in battle due to his protective armor and to the fact that a live knight was more valuable for ransom than a dead one. While chivalry emphasized loyalty and truthfulness, it accepted war as a fact of life.
The battle trumpet sounded the theme of the secular Middle Ages. War was a normal condition. Knights made private war against knights, coalitions of lords fought other lords, lords against kings, and often churchmen fought on both sides. Knights kept themselves in training for war by mock combats which were often violent and fatal. They practiced their skills in tournaments which were imitation battles. Sometimes they fought in enclosures before an audience. Other times teams of knights would participate in battles covering the countryside. The object was not to kill one another but to capture the opponent. Jousts and tournaments were held to celebrate holidays and important events in the life of a noble family. Jousts were tests of a knight’s strength and endurance. Mounted knights rode full speed at each other; the object was to unseat the other by striking his shield with the force of the lance. Sometimes legal disputes would be settled after the contestants had asked God to grant victory to the righteous. If fighting was a knight’s main occupation, the tournament was his favorite amusement along with hunting deer or wild boar and falconry.
By the fourteenth century, knights in armor no longer provided the most efficient fighting force. Armor was made obsolete by the development of firearms. The new age of warfare allowed the striking down of the bravest knight from a distance. The knights’ military importance declined as a result. As well, Eugene F. Rice, Jr. in The Foundation of Early Modern Europe states that “gunpower hastened the decay of chivalry”, (p. 16); no longer were knights able to fight according to personal code of honor. The feudal nobles could only continue to maintain their chivalrous traditions through tournaments and ceremonies. The glamour of knighthood was translated into the song and story of heroic and virtuous men. The legacy of chivalry as a code of behavior would become the idea for good manners in polite society and translate into the concept of the gentleman.
Loyalty and service connected the people of the Middle Ages, from king, through the Church lords, to the lowest serf. The feudal system structured early medieval society to deal in orderly fashion with its main activitiesfighting, farming and praying.
The Castle
The art of fortification had its beginnings at the dawn of history. It was natural to build some type of structure for protection and security. Because of continuous conflicts, civilization learned from each other and improved their defenses. Roman fortifications were a credit to the inventive and engineering skills of their builders. But it is in the Middle Ages that the castle, as a fortress, became identified with a period of history. The medieval castle became the symbol for Europe during this period, and by the twelfth century there were as many as 10,000 in Germany alone. In general, medieval castles developed according to available material, different climates, and society’s characteristics in various parts of Europe. For the purpose of this unit, castles will be presented in a universal way without consideration to their individual architecture.
From the fifth century into the tenth, Europeans were primarily engaged in repairing existing Roman fortifications or building similar ones and repairing city walls. During the ninth century, private castles began to appear in response to the introduction of the feudal system and to a slackening of barbarian raids. These early fortifications were known as “motte and bailey”. They consisted of a mound (motte), 10 to 100 feet in height by 100 to 300 feet in diameter. The outer wall (bailey) was a stockade of stakes which stood at the edge of a moat or ditch; a gatehouse protected the entrance, which was across a drawbridge. A wooden, square tower known as the keep or donjon was built on the mound, and if attacked, the people from nearby could seek safety within the wall of stockade and tower.
Wooden towers gave way to stone because of the fire hazard, and their shape became rounded in order to deflect batteringrams. The stone walls of the keep were thick and strengthened by buttresses; the keep might be two to four stories high with the floors connected by spiral stairways. Inside the keep were the hall, living chambers, kitchen and a chapel. A well was dug inside so that water was available during sedges and would be safe from poisoning by enemies.
Later castles built in the 12th and 13th centuries were more complex; as a result of the crusades, Europeans were introduced to more elaborate construction. These great stone, turreted castles were impregnable fortresses and became a symbol of a man’s refuge against the world. They further distinguished the nobles from the other classes; it set them apart physically, commanding the landscape as the lord commanded his vassals.
The castles continued to serve their defensive purpose with inner and outer circles of walls forming a concentric design. Towers were placed at intervals and watched over every section of walls. Entrance was by a drawbridge and through portcullis or heavy oak and iron gate. Inside the gate was a large open area before the keep in which the household people lived. Nearby were the kitchen, chapel, stables, rooms for guests, barracks, and craft shops of smiths and carpenters. Food was stored so that the inhabitants could hold out against attack. With its own crops, livestock, ovens, even a wine press, the castle was selfsufficient and could survive for many months against sedge. Fireplaces were found in a number of rooms and their flues conducted the smoke through the walls and out loopholes on the outside or to chimneys on the roof. Latrines were placed in the outer walls; they consisted of a slab of stone with a hole cut in it. Natural light came from windows, small and barred near the ground level but larger higher up the keep walls. A lord’s castle was certainly not luxurious; its rooms were often dark and drafty.
Comfort was not the purpose of castles; they were designed to resist direct attack and to withstand a sedge. During time of war, the castle became the crowded home for soldiers, servants, and peasants seeking protection. Even the lord and the lady of the place would be fortunate if they had a private room. Privacy was not something people had during the Middle Ages. Especially in time of sedge, the people would have to sleep anywhere including the tables in the great hall and in the kitchen.
Usually at the castle’s base was a village where peasants lived and from which they could run into the castle for protection during wars and raids. This damp, almost windowless structure was home for the lord, his family, servants, and officials such as the chamberlain, who ran the housekeeping, and the marshal, who was in charge of the stables. For the lord, homelife consisted of managing the land, hunting and fishing for recreation, and holding court. Wandering minstrels and musicians would provide entertainment, and peddlers would stop at the gates to sell gloves, buckles and other items. Travelers might seek food and shelter, and bring news of the world beyond the village.
By the end of the 13th century, castle construction had grown beyond the single tower protected by an outer wall and moat. The castle was a structure that combined many bastions, which commanded all the parts of the fortress, and contained a variety of sections that could be defended separately. The castle could only be captured by a slow method of starvation. However, by the fifteenth century, artillery fire, from a safe distance, had developed and now proved the walled defenses useless. From then on, the castle became more of a palatial residence, as is implied by the word “chateau”.
The Fair Maiden
She found herself, more and more, wandering along the castle’s walls that connected its tall towers. Except for the lookouts, she was alone and she used the silence to think and to dream.
The lord’s young daughter looked out over the farmland; the serfs were returning to their houses after plowing. As it was springtime, they were working hard to get the soil ready for planting. She was glad that her father was the lord of the castle so that she didn’t have to toil in the fields; she knew from the servant girls that it was backbreaking work, endless and dirty. The breeze smelled sweet to her; the days were getting longer, warmer, and soon the land would be green again.
She thought back to this morning. She had been alone in her sleeping chamber looking through the iron grills which protected her windows. The room was small and from the single window, came the only light which brightened the plastered stone walls. Her bed was a platform built high against the wall; the bed’s thick coverings gave her the only warmth at night now because as it was spring, the fireplace was no longer lit. The straw on the wooden floor was broken and dusty, but soon it would be replaced with fresh straw and dried herbs to make it smell nice. She couldn’t wait until summer when the servants added mint leaves to the straw. A table and chair for doing lessons, a wooden chest for her clothes and a painted wall hanging were the only other things in her room. The knock at the door made her jump; her mother entered.
The Lady wore a long, green linen shift and a furlined tunic over a snugfitting blouse with wide sleeves. The look on her mother’s face told her that the decision had been made. Her mother said that the marriage ceremony would take place after the harvest next fall and when the fees paid by the serfs had been collected. They would be used to increase her dowry which would be given to her new husband and lord.
It seemed so sudden; in a few months, she would be leaving her home. She would become the Lady of a castle herself. She would be responsible for overseeing the household, supervising the young girls’ training in cooking, weaving cloth, and embroidering, and raising the children. Tears came to her eyes at the thought of leaving her brothers and sisters; she was twelve years of age. But her mother reminded her that a woman’s main duty was marriage, and her’s had been arranged by her father over two years ago. The marriage would strengthen both families economically and give them more influence with the king. This was the role that she had been prepared for since birth. Her mother told her not to worry; she was a fair maiden, with a noble upbringing, her dowry was sizable and God would watch over her.
Now, from the tower wall, she saw a flock of birds circle and disappear behind the woods. The birds’ singing reminded her of the laughter at the feasts in the castle’s great hall and their gliding looked like the dancing she always enjoyed when the traveling minstrels performed at the festivities. Often the music played on the horns and lutes made her imagine herself as the lord’s lady, noble and beautiful. She was educated, had musical talent and knew a number of crafts; she would be in charge of the castle and its estates when her husband was traveling, and she would raise the children to be strong and good Christian nobles. Her influence would be great. And soon she would be what she had dreamed.
What would he be like, this husband tobe? Older she knew; rich with vast land holdings, a brave knight in war, she had been told. She dreamed by day that he was handsome, gentle and caring; at night, she dreamed that he would fall in love with her.
The chapel bell rang, calling her and the castle’s inhabitants to supper. As the young maiden turned from the wall, she knew that she had no choice; all had been arranged. To deny this marriage might mean never being chosen for marriage again. She didn’t want to remain single and become a burden to her family or perhaps become a nun. Marriage was her duty, her future. “I will be a great Lady,” she vowed to herself as she descended the stone steps to the courtyard.
Tonight after supper, she would play backgammon with her sister, the maiden thought, and practice being a great Lady.
Women and Childhood
The Feudal Age was a maledominated society. It was commonly held that due to women’s physical inferiority their place was in the home and that they owed strict obedience to the male. But in practice, even without a political voice, women played an important economic and social role in society.
Because of their role as mistress on larger estates, women exercised considerable influence depending upon their ability, personality, dowry and family connections. Upperclass women knew how to read and write and often were better educated than their noble husbands. While lords and knights were away on crusades or pilgrimages, it was the wives who ran the affairs of the castle or manorial estates, often for years at a time. However, women were primarily regarded as necessary housekeepers and breeders of children. Marriages among the nobility were for the most part arranged for land and dowries and not as a result of love. Women were often married by age twelve, and since there was a high mortality rate, remarriage was common. If by age twentyone they were not married, they could expect to stay single and sometimes, they retired to a cloister as nuns.
The position of women improved during the Middle Ages due to the church’s influence on chivalry. Medieval religious devotion to the Mother of Christ also helped to raise the status of women. There is no doubt that women had influence in the family and the community. When the lord was away, his lady was in charge; she supervised the training of young girls living in the castle and had to know about cooking, spinning,
embroidering and medicine. The development of towns also had an effect upon the status of women. Daughters often learned their fathers’ craft along with their brothers. In the towns, many women received an education and, some qualified for the professions or creative arts. More and more, women came to be regarded as individuals.
There was no place for childhood in the medieval world; children were considered small adults. The literature of the period deals with war and quests, male stories of knights and lords, and not with children or family. Children were a result of the duty of procreation and the necessity to breed laborers. Loyalty, for king, God, and religion, was the substitute for family attachments; even the guild system with its control over economic and political life caused the family to be second in importance. Children were prepared at an early age to fulfill their adult role in society as noble, serf, wife or craftsman. Medieval clothing did not even distinguish child from adult. The clothing differences that did exist were related to social standing. From birth, children were regarded as small adults in dress, in work and in play.
When the child was able to live without mother or nanny, he belonged to the adult world. At about the age of seven, male and female children were put out to service in the houses of people for seven or nine years. As servants they performed menial tasks such as waiting tables, making beds and helping in the kitchen; at the same time, they learned manners and practical skills. The Babees Book of 1475, concerning medieval manners for the young, cites some rules for table manners:
Stand before the lord until he bids you sit, and be always ready to serve him with clean hands.
Do not hang your head over your dish, or in any way drink with full mouth.
If you eat with another turn the nicest pieces to him and do not go picking out the finest and largest for yourself.
When you have done, look they that you rise up without laughter, or joking, or boisterous word and go to your lord’s table, and there stand, and pass not from him until grace be said and brought to an end.
Then some of you should go for water, some hold the cloth, and some pour water upon his hands. (pp4Ð8)
“All education was carried out by means of apprenticeship. . . . They were sent to another house, with or without a contract, to live and start their life there, or to learn the good manners of a knight, or a trade, or even to go to school and learn Latin.” (According to Philippe Aries in his work, Centuries of Childhood, p.366.) The separation from the family did not mean that the parents did not care for their children. In the medieval family the unit was a moral and social one rather than a sentimental unit. The family shared the common experiences of daily living, not just from close physical quarters, but from communal working, praying, and playing together. Family ties remained strong under the leadership of the male parent whose duty was to provide for the family. Parents were interested and attempted to insure a place for their children in society with the knowledge of a craft or in a marriage by arrangement for possible freedom from serfdom. Early separation cut across class lines; poor people’s children spent time away from home just as a noble’s child would serve as a page in another castle.
The Manor. . . .
It must be remembered that the majority of people in the Middle Ages were peasants who lived on rural estates called manors. By the tenth century, most of northern Europe had been divided into manors which were ruled by lords and worked by peasants. These great estates were fortified farming communities that a lord would govern and from which he would collect the income. Each manor usually had one or two tiny villages near its castle or manor house. Each village might have a priest and a chapel which was the center of religious and social life. The bells of the churches, which could be heard for miles, marked the daily life, tolling for matins and vespers, announcing war, fire, or feast day.
The manor was the smallest unit of feudal government. The land was divided into fields for crops, meadows for grazing animals, and woodland. Farming methods were primitive; an oxdrawn plow was used, and crop rotation was practiced.
One field was used for spring planting, another for fall crops, and a third was left fallow or unplanted for a year. The fallow piece was planted in the spring. The next year it was planted in the fall, and the third year it was allowed to remain unplanted. Wheat was planted one year and rye the next. With this crude system of crop rotation, the soil slowly deteriorated, and famines were not uncommon. The three field system encouraged people to cooperate in planting and harvesting because they did not own a complete set of farm tools and the plows and wagons had to be shared. The system did discourage ambitious peasants from planting new crops or trying new methods. The lord of the manor had very little interest in increasing production since there was no market nearby the estate until towns developed in the later Middle Ages.
One of the technological advances during the Middle Ages was the “heavy plow”, which eliminated crossfield plowing. Usually it had wheels and because of its weight needed to be pulled by a large team of oxen. This requirement meant that the peasants, who did not own the needed six or eight, would pool the oxen to plow cooperatively. The new heavy plow “was an agricultural engine which substituted animal power for human energy and time.” (Lynn White, Jr. Medieval Technology and Change, p. 43.) With the use of the horseshoe and improved harnesses, plow horses, where they were available, replaced oxen. Thus, the speed of plowing increased, labor was saved, productivity increased, and the horse increased the range over which crops could be transported.
The land which belonged to the lord was sometimes located all in one place and was called the “close”. On some manors the land was scattered in strips among the peasant’s strips. One of the duties owed by peasants was to work a certain number of days on the lord’s land and to give him the crops from it. They also had to pay fees to the lord out of their own property, for example, a percentage of their grain harvest or a number of chickens or young pigs. For every right the peasant had, he had obligations to the lord. Usually a third of the land was reserved for the lord’s use and the peasant was required to work about three days a week on it. From the work on their own land, they were expected to share the crops with the lord as well. The lord would also share in fish caught on the manor. The lord benefited from his processing monopolies; some of the grain that was milled into flour, grapes crushed, beer brewed in his vats or bear baked in his ovens, became the property of the lord or a fee was paid for use of the equipment. A bailiff, appointed by the lord, supervised the peasants’ work on the manor. Peasants were expected to pay tithes equal to one tenth of their products to the church for its support. The lord often received a share of that according to his influence.
Three different groups of peasants might live on the manor. Slaves, who could be bought and sold, existed, but their number declined after the early Middle Ages. Serfs, would could neither leave the manor nor be forced to go, made up the majority of peasants. Freemen, who owned small pieces of land and could move about freely, were a small portion of the society until the rise of towns. Although the contrast in status and living conditions between lord and peasant was great, each had certain rights according to the custom of the manner. The lord needed grain for the castle’s storehouse, and any unjust treatment might result in a decline in production. Also a runaway serf was hard to replace. Justice had to be enforced in open court. A peasant could not refuse to work, and the lord could not evict him, so they respected each other’s rights.
The Peasant’s Lot
“Something new! What could it be?” he wondered. Today he was impatient to get to the field. His father had said that he would see something new and that it would make his work faster. His life was not all work, but the work was hard. At the age of thirteen, work was what he knew most about, and it was only broken by the celebration of frequent religious holidays.
The sun had only appeared a short time before, but it shined brightly on the peasants’ cottages in the village. The smoke from the early morning fires drifted skyward; some of it came out of chimneys, but most escaped from holes in the thatched roofs.
Standing in front of his family’s hut, he wished that his younger brother would hurry. His father had already left. Today it would be a long walk to the fields north of the manor house. This day was the first, of three days each week, that the peasants had to work in the fields owned by the lord of the manor. After that service, his family would begin plowing its own plots of land, which were scattered across the lord’s estate. Getting up at dawn didn’t bother him anymore, but the walk today would be hot as the sun rose higher. “What was keeping his brother?” he thought.
His brother ran up to him and with an important tone of voice said, “Let’s go! What are you waiting for?” Off they started on the fourmile walk to the field. “I know what it is. I know what father said that we would see,” his brother said and began to run.
“No you don’t. He wouldn’t tell just you,” the older brother yelled after him. The words, “Yes, he did,” came drifting back.
Quickly he caught up to his brother and grabbed him by the neck. “What do you know?” he demanded.
Turning and twisting to break the grip proved unsuccessful; he was held firmly by his brother’s strong hand. “I’ll tell! I’ll tell, let go!” The younger brother told him that the crops were all grown; some wizard or giant from the forest had made them grow by magic and there would be no need to plow and plant this season.
“Wizard!” he shouted. “Wizards only cause trouble; they would only make our work harder. Father didn’t tell you that!” The younger brother just smiled and ran on again.
In silence, they passed the sheep grazing in the meadow and crossed over the bridge that the villagers had just repaired. The huts of the village stopped after the river; from here there was just farmland and forest. He wished that by some magic the plowing could be done more easily. The old plow worked well when the soil was dry and loose. But when the ground was wet and hard, the wooden blade would break very often. The plow was just a large digging stick dragged by a pair of oxen and since it only scratched the soil, the field had to be plowed twice.
As they reached the field, he could see that no plowing had started yet. Seeing his father among a group of men and boys that were gathered in a circle, he hurried towards them. Pushing into the crowd, he saw what held their attention; it was a new kind of plow. It looked heavy and had an iron blade, like a knife.
The lord’s bailiff, or overseer of the peasants’ work on the manor, was instructing the group. “This knife will cut the soil first and the other blade, a plowshare, will then dig into the soil. Attached to the plowshare is a moldboard which will turn the soil over, leaving a ridge and a furrow or tiny valley. When it rains, the water will run down the furrow and keep the young plants from rotting. Because this plow is so heavy, it will need six to eight oxen to pull it even with the wheels on it”.
The bailiff explained that another plow was being made in the manor’s workshop. The villagers could share it for their own plowing—at a fee, of course—and pool their oxen because no peasant owned more than two oxen.
“Well it wasn’t the work of a wizard”, he thought, “but it would make their labor faster.” “Hitch up the oxen,” his father said to him, “there’s work to be done”.
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The Peasants’ Life
Most peasants were “jacks of all trades”; besides farming, they fixed their tools and made their own clothes and shoes. There were some who specialized, such as blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, tanners, and bakers. Most worked the land, but some peasants were shepherds. All worked from the necessity to survive; the workday was long, but everyday activities were varied, and numerous holidays existed for recreation.
Recurring famines and epidemics of disease were common. Peasant living was primitive. Clothes were shabby and seldom taken off, which contributed to skin and related ailments. The neglect of personal cleanliness was shared by the nobility in their distaste for taking baths. The peasants wore cloth or sheepskin blouses and trousers with a knee-length mantle. Usually they were barefoot or wore wooden clogs. Women’s clothes were the same as the men’s except that skirts were worn instead of trousers.
The average peasant lived in a cottage that was constructed of mudplastered branches and straw (cob) or of stone or wood, depending on the area, with a roof of thatch. Two rooms with dirt floors served their needs. During the winter the animals were kept at one end of the allpurpose room which helped to keep everyone warm. The average peasant owned few furnishings, and the household utensils were made out of wood. Furnishings might include stools, a trestle table, and a chect to hold clothes. In the second room or bedroom, bags of straws would be used for sleeping, or a wooden couch with a straw mattress large enough for the whole family. Privacy was hardly known during the Middle Ages; people of all classes shared their living space and their resources. A welltodo peasant might own a bedstead and a number of iron pots. The main dish at mealtime was a thick soup or porridge with black bread and dairy products. Garden vegetables were plentiful when in season, and homemade wine and beer were available. Meat was scarce since cattle were too valuable to slaughter; pigs and fish were more plentiful.
A serf had no political rights; he was bound to the soil. A peasant who could escape might locate in a town which offered opportunities for the skilled craftsman. If he remained free, for a year and a day, freedom from the manor was his. Other peasants escaped their burdens by taking up a career in the Church. The hard daily life was balanced for those who remained on the land by the security of the land and work, coupled with knowing that the children would be cared for if anything happened to their parents. A serf was valuable to the landowner primarily because of the work he could do and the fees that he could pay. Contact with the world beyond the manor’s village was only through wandering peddlers, beggars and friars.
Besides working on the lord’s land, usually three days a week, the peasants were expected to do repair work around the manor on roads and bridges. They were excused from military service except in time of siege. They paid taxes in the form of products or in coin when it became common. Fees were collected by the lord on a number of occasions, such as when a daughter married off of the manor, when a son inherited his father’s land, or when peasants used the lord’s oven, winepress, or mill. There were fees paid for marriages, at death and, of course, to the Church.
The peasants’ lot was cast in the medieval world; they were simply the work force. Their medieval name, “villein,” became our word “villain’,. As the Middle Ages wore on, the most intelligent, ambitious, or luckiest peasants became the craftsmen, traders, and merchants of the early towns.
The Changing Medieval World. . . . Conclusion
The castle and the manor were all the average peasant knew; they were his world. From one generation to another, the castle and manor provided the most important measure of order and safety in the medieval world. After the ninth century the decline of commerce leveled off; slowly the population began to grow and there was an increase of wealth. As more and more of the European forests were cleared for farming and sheep herding, agriculture could support a larger population. Food production increased in Europe due to the use of more iron tools, shovels and hoes, and the draining of swampland. As the amount of food increased so did the population, from about 16 million in 1000 A.D. to 40 million by 1400. The steady supply of grain, meat, and wool promoted increased trade and a greater opportunity for men to specialize in different kinds of work.
By the eleventh century, Italian towns were opening new trade routes with the Middle East, and along the North Sea in the province of Flanders, the number of weavers and merchants multiplied. Scandinavian merchants were sailing south to Flemish markets to exchange furs and hunting hawks for cloth, and English traders came to sell tin. By the twelfth century, commerce and industry began to revive the economic life of Europe. Craftsmen, at first, had traveled from manor to manor practicing their trades; now they found it better to settle in one place where goods could be produced and traded for food. Merchants and adventurers brought into Europe commodities such as silks, rugs, perfumes, spices, and tapestries along with other items for which they had traded furs, leather, grain and timber to the people of the Middle East. Towns that began to operate as centers of exchange drew more artisans; “town air makes free” was the saying that attracted still others from the manors. The market city developed and “wealth rather than birth thus became the main basis of class distinction, the foundation of power and prestige” Robert S. Lopez (in “The Crossroads Within the Wall”, p. 34.) With the renewal of trade, banking and industry developed. As the number of towns grew and trade continued to expand, town governments rivaled the power of the nobility.
The last story provides an opportunity to investigate the shift of medieval development from the manor to the rise of towns and their new opportunities. An organization of tradesmen, the guild system, beginning after the eleventh century, developed a system of price, weights and measures, set standards for workmanship and materials, and determined the steps to craft mastery. The 13th to 15th centuries were the peak period of guild influence, which encompassed the economic, political, and social lives of townspeople. But as trade and industry continued to expand, the guild’s economic dominance declined and was hastened by rising political and social expectations.
During the Middle Ages, Europeans had evolved from a relative primitive existence to a point where their interests began to extend beyond their daily existence. The unity, once provided only by Christendom, now was challenged by diversity with the rise of nations, different cultures and even within Christianity. The personal relationships to feudal lords was broken down with the development of towns. The medieval person began to think of himself as an individual rather than a member of a church, social class, community or guild. The feudal world had provided a certain order and social structure, but by the end of the Middle Ages, it was the individual who was looking toward new horizons. As part of Renaissance history, a new sense of order would emerge where humans became the measure of all things.
The Master’s Apprentice
My Brother, You must come. Run away and join me.
I know that it has been months since I wrote to you, but I have been thinking of you. Remember that morning, last year, and how anxious you were to get to the field and to see father’s surprise. Everyone was excited about the new plow and you were the first to try it out. I was jealous! But that night father told me that I would be leaving our village. “A new life,” he said “a new future would be mine in the town.”
He was right; the town is so. . .different from the manor. There is so much going on, so many shops, large guild halls, churches and many people—craftsmen, traders, merchants, teachers, lawyers, such a variety of activity and business.
Let me tell you of my dream. A shop! Someday I dream that I will have my own shop. Last night I was out making a delivery for the master and the bell in the town hall rang out the curfew; it was nine o’clock. When curfew sounds, the fires in each house’s fireplace have to be covered with ashes. The danger of fire is great because the wooden houses are crowded together, and a spark could ignite a roof and spread quickly, rooftop to rooftop.
I was running over the unpaved street, jumping the muddy puddles in the narrow streets because I was anxious to return to the shop and get to sleep after the jewelry had been delivered. “Someday, I’ll have an apprentice to run errands for me,” I thought as I turned off Candlewick Street. Looking up I saw the sign on my master’s shop; it is a unicorn—a horse with a single long horn—the symbol for the goldsmith’s craft, like the one I will have someday. I reached the door and knocked; soon it opened.
“Where have you been?” was the greeting I got from the old man. “Did you make the delivery? Where is the receipt?”
I held out the paper, which he snatched from my hand and examined carefully in the candle light. The goldsmith folded it and turned to bolt the door. “Put out the candle and go to bed,” he said. Then he went to the back of the small shop and into his house, closing the door that separates them.
I extinguished the candle and climbed onto the shelf under the counter which serves as my bed. It was late and I had to be awake early, before sunrise, to get water from the town well and then light the morning fire for the master’s family. I had learned from the other apprentices, whom I met each morning at the well, that some of them had their own room in the attic, over their shop. But my master has a large family and not many rooms.
It has been a year since father signed the contract with the master requiring me to be an apprentice for seven years. I won’t get any wages but have been given a bed, food and clothes. For the many chores I do for the master, he will teach me the methods of the craft which are only known to the guild masters. I am eleven years old now, but I am determined to learn the goldsmith’s skills and secrets. I was tired but happy; I know that someday I will be a master goldsmith and have my own shop. I drifted into a deep sleep and dreamed. . .
The little hammer tapped the soft gold causing it to take the shape that I saw in my mind. I just had to bend the wings back slightly and the golden butterfly would be finished.
The years after my apprentice ones had been long; as a journeyman, I traveled from town to town working for different goldsmiths. I practiced hard making jewelry and fine objects out of gold. I learned much from many masters and gained the needed experience in my craft. This is what a journeyman is supposed to do.
Now, at age twentythree, I was passing the last test—making a masterpiece in the presence of a judge from the goldsmith’s guild. If my work was satisfactory, I would become a guild member—be a master goldsmith—and open my own shop! The room was still as the judge inspected the butterfly closely.
I knew that my skilled hands had performed well; the butterfly seemed ready to fly.
The judge looked up and turned to me. . . .
I woke with such a jerk that I bumped my head on the counter. The bell in the town hall sounded the hour before sunrise. I got up slowly to begin another day.
Dear Brother, you must come; we can make the dream happen.
Hope you enjoy the reading
Regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 09/17/03 - History of Religion From what century, and until what century, was it compulsory to attend church in Britain? And what about other countries? curious98 answered on 09/17/03:Dear Denberg,
I guess this is a most difficult question for anybody to answer. In the Middle Ages and well until Victorian times, religion was about one of the few things humble people could turn to for some solace and spiritual comfort.
However, assistance to public services was, in general voluntary, although amongst nobility people used to attend those services, rather for exhibition than for devotion.
In year 1549, however, the Second Act of Supremacy repealed legislation passed during Mary’s reign and restored to the Crown jurisdiction over the Church as well as the Realm. A further act in 1562 assured the Queen’s Power over all estates and subjects within her dominions.
Under the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacrament attendance at church became compulsory and non-attendance was punishable by censure, fine or imprisonment. Now, as to how long this Act was respected, I couldn’t tell.
Yet. I’m copying for you, this article on the subject from the Catholic Encyclopaedia, which I hope you find of interest.
Regards
Curious98
I. HISTORY
On 21 January, 1549, the first Act of Uniformity was passed imposing upon the whole realm of England "The Book of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church after the Use of the Church of England". Before this date (with some recent exceptions) the services had always been conducted in Latin; and though there were various "uses", e.g. Salisbury, Hereford, Bagor, York, and Lincoln, these were all derived from, and for the most part identical with, the Roman liturgy. "Altogether some eighteen English uses are known . . . . Without exemption these English Missals are Roman -- they have the Roman Canon to begin with; they have the Roman variables; in short, their structure is identical with that of the Roman Missal" (J. Wickham Legg, 27 February, from a correspondence in "The Guardian", February and March, 1907). Though the motive for the introduction of the new liturgy is stated to be the desire for uniformity, simplicity, and the edification of the people, it is clear that this was merely a pretext. The real motive was the removal from the service books of the doctrines rejected by the Protestant Reformers. Lex orandi, Lex credendi. The old books clearly contained the Real Presence, the Sacrifice of the Mass, Invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, Prayer for the Dead, the Seven Sacraments, with Auricular Confession, and a Sacrificing Priesthood. The Act of Uniformity states that the king by the advice of Somerset and the rest of the Council, "appointed the archbishop of Canterbury and certain of the most learned and discreet bishops and other learned men of this realm" to draw up the new book. Who these were, besides Cranmer, cannot now be determined. No list is known earlier than that given in Fullers "Church History", published 1657. However, "the history of the Prayerbook down to the end of Edward's reign is the biography of Cranmer, for there can be no doubt that almost every line of it is his composition" (Mason, Thomas Cranmer, 139). With regard to the authority by which it was composed and issued, Abbot Gasquet and Mr. Bishop have carefully gone over the evidence (Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer, ch. x), and they have come to the same conclusion as the Anglican Canon Dixon, who affirms that "the Convocation Of the clergy had nothing to do with the first Act of Uniformity of religion. Laymen made the first English Book of Common Prayer into a schedule of a penal statute. As little in the work itself which was then imposed upon the realm, had the clergy originally any share" (Hist. of the Ch. of England, III, 5). The instruction given by royal authority was that the framers of the book should "have as well eye and respect to the most sincere and pure Christian religion taught by scripture as to the usages in the primitive Church." How this was carried out will appear when we come to examine the contents of the book. Meantime we may observe that the Communion Service cannot be classed with any of the old liturgies, but rather resembles the form drawn up by Luther in 1523 and 1526. Both agree in the elimination of anything denoting offertory or sacrifice in the true sense of the words, "Even if it were not an ascertained fact that during the year when it was in preparation, Cranmer was under the influence of his Lutheran friends, the testimony of the book itself would be sufficient to prove beyond doubt that it was conceived and drawn up after the Lutheran pattern" (Gasquet and Bishop, op. cit., 228; cf. ch. xiii). Though there were of course some who welcomed the new service, the imposition of it gave rise to strenuous opposition in most parts of the country. By the time, however, that the Book of 1549 appeared, Cranmer had already adopted views more advanced than those contained in it, and was preparing for further revision. Early in 1550 an act was passed approving of the new ordinal (see ANGLICAN ORDERS) and the altars were removed and tables substituted for them in many places. In the same year Gardiner, while still a prisoner in the Tower, made use of the words of the Prayer Book to refute Cramner's own work on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Savior. About the same time Bucer completed his elaborate "Censura" of the Prayer Book. Accordingly in 1552 a second Book of Common Prayer was published, in which everything in the First Book which had been fixed upon by Gardiner is evidence that the new liturgy did not reject the old beliefs and everything which Bucers had objected to was in the revision carefully swept away and altered. Before this book could come into general use the old Catholic services were restored by Mary. After her death the Second Book was imposed by Elizabeth in 1559 with some few, though important, changes. Further changes were made in 1604 and again in 1662, but the Prayer Book as a whole practically remains what it was in 1552. "The position which was deliberately abandoned in 1549 and still further departed from in 1552 has never been recovered. The measure of the distance traversed in these new liturgies by those who controlled the English reformation can only be duly estimated on an historical survey of the period in which the ground was lost" (Gasquet find Bishop, op. cit., 307).
II. CONTENTS
The Book of Common Prayer is really a combination of four of our liturgical books: the Breviary, Missal, Pontifical, and Ritual.
(1) The New Calendar
The old Sarum and other calendars in use before the Reformation contained the fast days and the feasts for most of the days in the year. Among these were the Purification, Annunciation, Visitation, Assumption, Nativity, and Conception of "the Blessed Mary", a large number of purely Roman saints; and All Souls' Day. Corpus Christi was kept on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. The Calendar of the First Prayer Book omitted the fast days altogether and gave only twenty-two saints' days, all being New Testament saints; the only feasts of the Blessed Virgin retained are the Purification and the Annunciation; All Souls' Day is omitted, and there is no office for Corpus Christi. Hardly any change was made in this part in the Second Prayer Book, though the "dog Daies" are characteristically noted. The Calendar of the Third Prayer Book (1559-61) reintroduced the mention of the fast days and a goodly number of feasts; among the latter, the Visitation of the "Blessed Virgin Mary", the Conception and the Nativity of "the Virgin Mary" but no special offices were appointed for any of these feasts. "The reason why the names of these Saints-days and Holy-days were resumed into the calendar are various", says Wheatly in "A Rational Illustration of the Book of Comm. Prayer" (Pt. II. Introd.), "some of them being retained upon account of our Courts of Justice. . . . Others are probably kept for the sake of such tradesmen as are wont to celebrate in the memory of their tutelar Saints . . . . And again, it has been the custom to have Wakes or Fairs kept upon these days; so that the people should be left out . . . For these reasons our second reformers under Queen Elizabeth . . . . though convenient to restore the names of them to the Calendar, though not with any regard of being kept holy by the Church".
(2) The Brievary
The Sarum Breviary contained the canonical Hours, the Psalms distributed through the week, antiphons, versicles, and responses, and Little Chapters much the same as the modern breviary -- of course without the modifications since introduced by St. Pius V and later pontiffs. But in 1535 there appeared a new breviary drawn up by Cardinal Quignonez, in which a complete break had been made with the old order of the Office. The canonical Hours had indeed been retained but the antiphons, versicles, responses, and Little Chapters had been omitted, the Psalms were distributed in such that three were said at each hour, and the same Psalms said every day of the week in the same order. A striking feature of this breviary was the great length of the Scriptures lessons which enabled the priest to read through in the course of the year almost the whole of the Old Testament and the whole of the New Testament with Epistles of St. Paul twice over. It was this book which Cranmer had before him when framing the office portion of the First Prayer Book. Indeed he copied word for word in his preface a considerable portion of Quignonez's preface. (See Gasquet and Bishop, op. cit., App. III.) He reduced, however, the hours to two -- Matins and Evensong (called Morning and Evening Prayer in the Second Book) -- and arranged the Psalms for recital once a month instead of once a week. He also introduced two Scripture lessons, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament at both hours of prayer, and entirely omitted the lessons of the saints. In the Second Book he introduced "When the wicked man", "nearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us", the general confession ("Almighty and most merciful Father"), and the Absolution ("Almighty God, the Fatter of our Lord Jesus Christ"), which have remained to the present day. When we remember that more than a hundred editions of Quignonez's breviary were printed during the short space of twenty years, and that it was on the point of being adopted universally, we can see that this portion of the Book of Common Prayer has some justification. No doctrinal questions were at stake -- unless it might be the omission of the intercession of the saints.
(3) The Missal
The Canon of the Mass in the Sarum Missal is taken almost word for word from the Roman Missal. In the First Prayer Book the Communion service is styled "'The Supper of the Lord and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass" in the Second, and also in the present book, "The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or the Holy Communion". It is not possible within the limits of the present article to compare in detail the first Book with the Sarum on the one hand, and with the subsequent books on the other. (See Gasquet and Bishop, ch. xii and xvi). The word altar is used in the First Book, though with the alternative of "God's board" in the Second Book and subsequent Books "table" and "board" alone occur. As regards vestments the First Book directs that the priest shall wear "a white alb plain, with a vestment (chasuble?) or cope", find the assisting clergy "albs with tunacles" the Second Book "the minister at the time of the Communion find all other times in his ministration, shall use neither alb, vestment nor cope; but being archbishop or bishop, he shall have and wear a rochet, and being a priest or deacon, he shall have and wear a surplice only". In the Third Book (1559) "it is to be noted that such ornaments of the church and of the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as were in the Church of England by the authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth". As is well known, the meaning of this rubric has long been a matter of dispute. The First book directs the priest to stand "humbly before the midst of the altar" the Second, to stand "at the north side of the table", as is still the rule. No mention is made of incense, or lights, or holy water in any of the books. As to the service itself, the changes may be briefly summed up as follows: The First Book omitted all mention of any true sacrifice, but retained expressions capable of referring to the Real Presence; the Second Book excluded these; the Third and subsequent books re-admitted and combined expressions which might be taken in either sense. "On comparing and the first with the second Communion office what is obvious at first sight is, that whilst the former, in spite of the substantial change made in the ancient mass, manifested a general order and disposition of parts similar to the mass itself, the latter was changed beyond recognition" (Gasquet and Bishop, 288). It will be sufficient to note here that while the First retained something like the prepatory prayer of Consecration ("Vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these thy gifts, and creatures of bread and wine that they may be unto us the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ"), the Second and subsequent Books omitted this altogether; in the Second Book no directions were given as to the acts of the minister -- he might recite the words of Consecration as a mere lesson; but in the later Books he was directed to take the paten and cup into his hands. Most significant, too, are the changes made in the form of administering the Holy Communion. In 1549:
When he deliverith the Sacrament of the Body of Christ, he shall say unto every one these words: "The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life". And the Minister delivering the Sacrament of the Blood shall say "The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life."
In 1552:
And when he deliverith the bread, he shall say: "Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee. and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving." And the Minister that deliverith the cup shall say: "Drink this in remembrance that Christ's blood was shed for thee, and be thankful".
In 1559 and the present Book:
And when he delivereth the Bread to any one be shall say, "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this In remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving." And the Minister that delivereth the cup shall say: "The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ's Blood was shed for thee, and be thankful."
The First Book forbade "any elevation or showing the Sacrament to the people" the Second Book added the so-called "Black Rubric" denying any "real and essential presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood". This was omitted in 1559, but was reintroduced in 1632, shortened and slightly altered, "corporal presence" being substituted for "real and essential".
(4) The Ritual
The order of the administration of Baptism in the old Sarum Manuale (Ritual) was almost identical in words and ceremonies with that now in use among us. (For the differences see SARUM.) The principal changes in 1549 were the omission of the blessing of the font, of the giving of the blessed salt, and of the first anointing. New prayers were also introduced, but the general character of the old service was preserved, including the exorcisms, the giving of the white garment, and the second anointing. All of these met with Bucer's disapproval, and were accordingly removed in 1552, and have never been restored. The present rite is exactly the same as that of 1552, with few verbal alterations.
As the Reformers did not recognize Confirmation as a sacrament, we are not surprised to find that the rite of administering it has undergone great changes. In 1549 the anointing with chrism was omitted, but the prayer that the Holy Ghost might come down upon those about to be confirmed was retained, and they were signed with the sign of the cross on their forehead. In 1552, owing again to Bucers influence, the first prayer was altered ("strengthen them with the Holy Ghost"); the signing with the cross was omitted; and a colourless form of words used. This latter rite is still in use; but in 1662 the renewal of baptismal vows was prefixed to it.
The "Form of Solemnization of Matrimony" comes next. As the essential part of the ceremony is the contracting of the parties, considerable latitude has existed in the Church with regard to the rest of the service. The First Book followed the old rite rather closely, but the blessing of the ring and the nuptial Mass were omitted. Of course the Reformers looked upon matrimony merely as a "state of life allowed in the Scriptures", and not as a sacrament.
"The Order of the Visitation of the Sick" contains matters of grave importance. In the First Book and in all subsequent Books, the "sick person shall make a special confession, if he feels his conscience troubled with any weighty matter; after which the priest shall absolve him after this form [sort] . . . . I absolve thee from thy sins'". The First Book alone adds: "and the same form of absolution shall be used in all private confessions." Moreover the First Book alone contains the anointing of the sick: "If the sick person desire to be anointed, then shall the priest anoint him upon the forehead or breast only, making the sign of the cross", and afterwards reciting a long prayer entirely different from the old forms, which were the same as the present Catholic ones. This ceremony was removed at Bucer's suggestion. The First Book also has a rubric about reservation of the Blessed Sacrament: "If there be more sick persons to be visited the same day then shall the curate reserve so much of the sacrament of the body and blood as shall serve the other sick persons, and such as be appointed to communicate with them if there be any; and shall immediately carry it and minister it unto them." Bucer does not seem to have objected to this; nevertheless no mention of reservation is made in any of the later Books.
The Sarum Office of the Dead included Vespers (Placebo), Matins (Dirige), Lauds, Mass (Requiem), the Absolution, and the Burial. As might be expected from the views of the Reformers on prayer for the dead, nothing was preserved in the new Books but the "Order for the Burial of the Dead". The First Book, indeed, contains distinct prayers for the soul of the departed, but these were removed in 1552, and have never been restored. For the Thirty-nine Articles sec the article under that heading.
In recent years attempts have been made to reform the prayer Book in two opposite directions. The Evangelicals have considered it as still containing too much of the old "propery", while the High Church party have endeavoured to get back the portions omitted or altered since 1549. Various changes have actually been made in the Prayer Book as used by the Protestant churches of Scotland, Ireland and America.
It is only fair, in concluding, to note Cranmers "splendid command of the English language and his instinctive sense of what would suit average English minds. His genius for devotional composition in English is universally recognized, even by those who have least sympathy with his character and career" (Mason, Thomas Cranmer, 140). "I value the Prayer Book, as you cannot do", says one of the Anglican characters in Newman's "Loss and Gain" (ch. viii), "for I have known what it is to one in affliction. May it be long before you know it in a similar way; but if affliction comes on you, depend on it all these new fancies and fashions will vanish from you like the wind, and the good old Prayer Book alone will stand you in any stead."
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 09/06/03 - H G Wells Has anyone read H G Wells's A Short History of the World or his The Outline of History, and does anyone disagree with his conclusions re medieval history? curious98 answered on 09/06/03:
I have read The Outline of History, but that was centuries ago...
I do not know therefore what conclusions you are talking about, although I can tell you, offhand, that I agreed with most of what H.G.Wells had to say in this Outline.
What I have done is to scan the following chapter, with the hope you are referring to some ideas Mr. Wells exposes here, or for you to point out more precisely the concepts you are referring to.
Quote:
“ THROUGHOUT the twelfth century there were many signs that the European intelligence was recovering courage and leisure, and preparing to take up again the intellectual enterprises of the first Greek scientific enquiries and such speculations as those of the Italian Lucretius. The causes of this revival were many and complex. The suppression of private war, the higher standards of comfort and security that followed the crusades, and the stimulation of men’s minds by the experiences of these expeditions were no doubt necessary preliminary conditions. Trade was reviving; cities were recovering ease and safety; the standard of education was arising in the church and spreading among laymen. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a period of growing, independent or quasi-independent cities; Venice, Florence, Genoa, Lisbon, Paris, Bruges, London, Antwerp, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Novgorod, Wisby and Bergen for example. They were all trading cities with many travellers, and where men trade and travel they talk and think. The polemics of the Popes and princes, the conspicuous savagery and wickedness of the persecution of heretics, were exciting men to doubt the authority of the church and question and discuss fundamental things.
We have seen how the Arabs were the means of restoring Aristotle to Europe, and how such a prince as Frederick II acted as a channel through which Arabic philosophy and science played upon the renascent European mind. Still more influential in the stirring up of men’s ideas were the Jews. Their very existence was a note of interrogation to the claims of the church. And finally the secret, fascinating enquiries of the alchemists were spreading far and wide and setting men to the petty, furtive and yet fruitful resumption of experimental science.
And the stir in men’s minds was by no means confined now to the independent and well educated. The mind of the common man was awake in the world as it had never been before in all the experience of mankind. In spite of priest and persecution, Christianity does seem to have carried a mental ferment wherever its teaching reached. It established a direct relation between the conscience of the individual man and the God of Righteousness, so that now if need arose he had the courage to form his own judgment upon prince or prelate or creed.
As early as the eleventh century philosophical discussion had begun again in Europe, and there were great and growing universities at Paris, Oxford, Bologna and other centres. There medieval “schoolmen” took up again and thrashed out a series of questions upon the value and meaning of words that were a necessary preliminary to clear thinking in the scientific age that was to follow. And standing by himself because of his distinctive genius was Roger Bacon (circa 1210 to circa 1293), a Franciscan of Oxford, the father of modern experimental science. His name deserves a prominence in our history second only to that of Aristotle.
His writings are one long tirade against ignorance. He told his age it was ignorant, an incredibly bold thing to do. Nowadays a man may tell the world it is as silly as it is solemn, that all its methods are still infantile and clumsy and its dogmas childish assumptions, without much physical danger; but these peoples of the middle ages when they were not actually being massacred or starving or dying of pestilence, were passionately convinced of the wisdom, the completeness and finality of their beliefs, and disposed to resent any reflections upon them very bitterly. Roger Bacon’s writings were like a flash of light in a profound darkness. He combined his attack upon the ignorance of his times with a wealth of suggestion for the increase of knowledge. In his passionate insistence upon the need of experiment and of collecting knowledge, the spirit of Aristotle lives again in him. “Experiment, experiment,” that is the burthen of Roger Bacon.
Yet of Aristotle himself Roger Bacon fell foul. He fell foul of him because men, instead of facing facts boldly, sat in rooms and pored over the bad Latin translations which were then all that was available of the master. “If I had my way,” he wrote, in his intemperate fashion, “I should burn all the books of Aristotle, for the study of them can only lead to a loss of time, produce error, and increase ignorance,” a sentiment that Aristotle would probably have echoed could he have returned to a world in which his works were not so much read as worshipped—and that, as Roger Bacon showed, in these most abominable translations.
Throughout his books, a little disguised by the necessity of seeming to square it all with orthodoxy for fear of the prison and worse, Roger Bacon shouted to mankind, “Cease to be ruled by dogmas and authorities; look at the world!” Four chief sources of ignorance he denounced; respect for authority, custom, the sense of the ignorant crowd, and the vain, proud unteachableness of our dispositions. Overcome but these, and a world of power would open to men:—
“Machines for navigating are possible without rowers, so that great ships suited to river or ocean, guided by one man, may be borne with greater speed than if they were full of men. Likewise cars may be made so that without a draught animal they may be moved cum impetu inœstimable, as we deem the scythed chariots to have been from which antiquity fought. And flying machines are possible, so that a man may sit in the middle turning some device by which artificial wings may beat the air in the manner of a flying bird.”
So Roger Bacon wrote, but three more centuries were to elapse before men began any systematic attempts to explore the hidden stores of power and interest he realized so clearly existed beneath the dull surface of human affairs
But the Saracenic world not only gave Christendom the stimulus of its philosophers and alchemists; it also gave it paper. It is scarcely too much to say that paper made the intellectual revival of Europe possible. Paper originated in China, where its use probably goes back to the second century B.C. In 751 the Chinese made an attack upon the Arab Moslems in Samarkand; they were repulsed, and among the prisoners taken from them were some skilled papermakers, from whom the art was learnt. Arabic paper manuscripts from the ninth century onward still exist. The manufacture entered Christendom either through Greece or by the capture of Moorish paper-mills during the Christian reconquest of Spain. But under the Christian Spanish the product deteriorated sadly. Good paper was not made in Christian Europe until the end of the thirteenth century, and then it was Italy which led the world. Only by the fourteenth century did the manufacture reach Germany, and not until the end of that century was it abundant and cheap enough for the printing of books to be a practicable business proposition. Thereupon printing followed naturally and necessarily, for printing is the most obvious of inventions, and the intellectual life of the world entered upon a new and far more vigorous phase. It ceased to be a little trickle from mind to mind; it became a broad flood, in which thousands and presently scores and hundreds of thousands of minds participated.
One immediate result of this achievement of printing was the appearance of an abundance of Bibles in the world. Another was a cheapening of school-books. The knowledge of reading spread swiftly. There was not only a great increase of books in the world, but the books that were now made were plainer to read and so easier to understand. Instead of toiling at a crabbed text and then thinking over its significance, readers now could think unimpeded as they read. With this increase in the facility of reading, the reading public grew. The book ceased to be a highly decorated toy or a scholar’s mystery. People began to write books to be read as well as looked at by ordinary people. They wrote in the ordinary language and not in Latin. With the fourteenth century the real history of the European literature begins
So far we have been dealing only with the Saracenic share in the European revival. Let us turn now to the influence of the Mongol conquests. They stimulated the geographical imagination of Europe enormously. For a time under the Great Khan, all Asia and Western Europe enjoyed an open intercourse; all the roads were temporarily open, and representatives of every nation appeared at the court of Karakorum. The barriers between Europe and Asia set up by the religious feud of Christianity and Islam were lowered. Great hopes were entertained by the papacy for the conversion of the Mongols to Christianity. Their only religion so far had been Shumanism, a primitive paganism. Envoys of the Pope, Buddhist priests from India, Parisian and Italian and Chinese artificers, Byzantine and Armenian merchants, mingled with Arab officials and Persian and Indian astronomers and mathematicians at the Mongol court. We hear too much in history of the campaigns and massacres of the Mongols, and not enough of their curiosity and desire for learning. Not perhaps as an originative people, but as transmitters of knowledge and method their influence upon the world’s history has been very great. And everything one can learn of the vague and romantic personalities of Jengis or Kublai tends to confirm the impression that these men were at least as understanding and creative monarchs as either that flamboyant but egotistical figure Alexander the Great or that raiser of political ghosts, that energetic but illiterate theologian Charlemagne
One of the most interesting of these visitors to the Mongol Court was a certain Venetian, Marco Polo, who afterwards set down his story in a book. He went to China about 1272 with his father and uncle, who had already once made the journey. The Great Khan had been deeply impressed by the elder Polos; they were the first men of the “Latin” peoples he had seen; and he sent them back with enquiries for teachers and learned men who could explain Christianity to him, and for various other European things that had aroused his curiosity. Their visit with Marco was their second visit
The three Polos started by way of Palestine and not by the Crimea, as in their previous expedition. They had with them a gold tablet and other indications from the Great Khan that must have greatly facilitated their journey. The Great Khan had asked for some oil from the lamp that burns in the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem; and so thither they first went, and then by way of Cilicia into Armenia. They went thus far north because the Sultan of Egypt was raiding the Mongol domains at this time. Thence they came by way of Mesopotamia to Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, as if they contemplated a sea voyage. At Ormuz they met merchants from India. For some reason they did not take ship, but instead turned northward through the Persian deserts, and so by way of Balkh over the Pamir to Kashgar, and by way of Kotan and the Lob Nor into the Hwang-ho valley and on to Pekin. At Pekin was the Great Khan, and they were hospitably entertained.
Marco particularly pleased Kublai; he was young and clever, and it is clear he had mastered the Tartar language very thoroughly. He was given an official position and sent on several missions, chiefly in south-west China. The tale he had to tell of vast stretches of smiling and prosperous country, “all the way excellent hostelries for travellers,” and “fine vineyards, fields and gardens,” of “many abbeys” of Buddhist monks, of manufactures of “cloth of silk and gold and many fine taffetas,” a “constant succession of cities and boroughs,” and so on, first roused the incredulity and then fired the imagination of all Europe. He told of Burmah, and of its great armies with hundreds of elephants, and how these animals were defeated by the Mongol bowmen, and also of the Mongol conquest of Pegu. He told of Japan, and greatly exaggerated the amount of gold in that country. For three years Marco ruled the city of Yang-chow as governor, and he probably impressed the Chinese inhabitants as being very little more of a foreigner than any Tartar would have been. He may also have been sent on a mission to India. Chinese records mention a certain Polo attached to the imperial council in 1277, a very valuable confirmation of the general truth of the Polo story.
The publication of Marco Polo’s travels produced a profound effect upon the European imagination. The European literature, and especially the European romance of the fifteenth century, echoes with the names in Marco Polo’s story, with Cathay (North China) and Cambulac (Pekin) and the like.
Two centuries later, among the readers of the Travels of Marco Polo was a certain Genoese mariner, Christopher Columbus, who conceived the brilliant idea of sailing westward round the world to China. In Seville there is a copy of the Travels with marginal notes by Columbus. There were many reasons why the thought of a Genoese should be turned in this direction. Until its capture by the Turks in 1453 Constantinople had been an impartial trading mart between the Western world and the East, and the Genoese had traded there freely. But the “Latin” Venetians, the bitter rivals of the Genoese, had been the allies and helpers of the Turks against the Greeks, and with the coming of the Turks Constantinople turned an unfriendly face upon Genoese trade. The long forgotten discovery that the world was round had gradually resumed its sway over men’s minds. The idea of going westward to China was therefore a fairly obvious one. It was encouraged by two things. The mariner’s compass had now been invented and men were no longer left to the mercy of a fine night and the stars to determine the direction in which they were sailing, and the Normans, Catalonians and Genoese and Portuguese had already pushed out into the Atlantic as far as the Canary Isles, Madeira and the Azores.
Yet Columbus found many difficulties before he could get ships to put his idea to the test. He went from one European Court to another. Finally at Granada, just won from the Moors, he secured the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and was able to set out across the unknown ocean in three small ships. After a voyage of two months and nine days he came to a land which he believed to be India, but which was really a new continent, whose distinct existence the old world had never hitherto suspected. He returned to Spain with gold, cotton, strange beasts and birds, and two wild-eyed painted Indians to be baptized. They were called Indians because, to the end of his days, he believed that this land he had found was India. Only in the course of several years did men begin to realize that the whole new continent of America was added to the world’s resources.
The success of Columbus stimulated overseas enterprise enormously. In 1497 the Portuguese sailed round Africa to India, and in 1515 there were Portuguese ships in Java. In 1519 Magellan, a Portuguese sailor in Spanish employment, sailed out of Seville westward with five ships, of which one, the Vittoria, came back up the river to Seville in 1522, the first ship that had ever circumnavigated the world. Thirty-one men were aboard her, survivors of two-hundred-and-eighty who had started. Magellan himself had been killed in the Philippine Isles.
Printed paper books, a new realization of the round world as a thing altogether attainable, a new vision of strange lands, strange animals and plants, strange manners and customs, discoveries overseas and in the skies and in the ways and materials of life burst upon the European mind. The Greek classics, buried and forgotten for so long, were speedily being printed and studied, and were colouring men’s thoughts with the dreams of Plato and the traditions of an age of republican freedom and dignity. The Roman dominion had first brought law and order to Western Europe, and the Latin Church had restored it; but under both Pagan and Catholic Rome curiosity and innovation were subordinate to and restrained by organization. THE REIGN OF THE LATIN MIND WAS NOW DRAWING TO AN END. BETWEEN THE THIRTEENTH AND THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY THE EUROPEAN ARYANS, THANKS TO THE STIMULATING INFLUENCE OF SEMITE AND MONGOL AND THE REDISCOVERY OF THE GREEK CLASSICS, BROKE AWAY FROM THE LATIN TRADITION AND ROSE AGAIN TO THE INTELLECTUAL AND MATERIAL LEADERSHIP OF MANKIND.”
Unquote:
Is it perhaps the above capitalized fragment the one you refer to? Because, if it is, as a Mediterranean I do not like it THOUGH I’ve to agree, much to my regret, that Mr. Wells is right in what he says about the Eurpean Aryans – probably thanks to their being less romantic and more pragmatic –“taking the leadership of mankind”.
Mind you, despite everything, I still prefer our way of life… oh yes! And our food.
Regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 08/30/03 - Illiterate rulers Who was the last king or queen of Britain to be illiterate?
We all know that King John did not actually sign the Magna Carta, he sealed it. So up until when were British monarchs illiterate? Who was the last one?
Paul Murphy,
London UK. curious98 answered on 08/30/03:Hi Paul,
That’s a very difficult question indeed, which, I’m afraid only a good specialist in British History can properly answer.
From what I have read it is possible that the last illiterate king of England would be Richard Lionsheart, or may be King John, as you suggest. Though I believe King Richard was just as illiterate. In the Middle Age it was rather strange for English kings to know how to read and write. This was mostly left for women to learn, while kings were more interested in fighting and wars.
If you were asking instead for the first king to be literate I think we could go as back as the IX century with famous King Alfred, the Great (849/899).
This is what the Encyclopaedia says about him:
Quote:
King Alfred's Literacy Program
878-892
Erich W. Guthrie
Copyright 2000
The entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, one of the products of Alfred's vernacular literary renaissance, for the year 793 reads
In this year dire portents appeared over Northumbria and sorely frightened the people. They consisted of immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine immediately followed those signs, and a little after that in the same year, on 8 June, the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter (qtd. in Abels 104).
This first landing of the Vikings in 793 inaugurated a period of cultural devastation for the Anglo-Saxons. Eighty-five years of routine Viking raids had, by the time of Alfred's important victory over Guthrum at Edington in 878, reduced the condi tions of Anglo-Saxon religious life and learning to a state of figurative and literal rubble. The period following King Alfred's victory at Edington has been called a "cultural renaissance," for it is during the fourteen-year span of easy peace which fol lowed (878-892) that Alfred instituted new social policies which endeavoured to restore Anglo-Saxon culture to a former golden age of wisdom and prosperity.
The passage from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles can be read as indicating a specific concern about the state of England at the time of the first Viking raids. It positions the arrival of the raiders alongside what are clearly intended to be signs of God's displeasure with the English people. Alfred believed that the affliction of the Vikings was the consequence of the general decay of English learning, church life, and morality, not the cause of it; hence, the Vikings were a punishment. As an example of the sort of degeneracy which God would punish Alfred was known to have complained of the fact that at the time of his ascendency to the throne only a few men either north or south of the Humber could understand the meaning of the church services they performed or even translate a letter of Latin into English.
And yet there was another angle to the reforms in education of "Alfred's renaissance." Alfred thought that an educated populace was a fortified populace. The project of educating the English population -- or least specific and important parts of the population -- was inherently part of the military defense of the kingdom, akin to the system of fortified towns he created in prevision of the possible return of the Viking raiders.
The writing of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which can be viewe d as a concerted effort to order and unite the multiple, fragmented histories of the various English populations which eventually came under Alfred's rule, was an important part of Alfred's project of literary fortification. With a sense of a united and ordered history, Alfred hoped that his peoples would unite under the threat of further Viking raids, wanting to preserve their "historical" bonds.
Alfred's educational reforms entailed two phases. The first was the translation into English of Latin works the king deemed "most necessary for all men to know." This would ameliorate the situation of both the clergy and the laity. By rendering into the vernacular certain books which would then be distributed to all of his bishops throughout the kingdom Alfred took a crucial first step toward improving the quality of religious life. Alfred also knew that a supply of texts in English could add t o a base of marginal literacy among laymen, as English had increasingly become the language of secular administrative documents through the ninth century, especially in wills and charters. The second phase of Alfred's educational reforms was the esta blishment of a court school for his children, the children of his noblemen, and selected children of lesser birth. The idea was to equip the generation which would one day occupy the seats of power with the skills and habits of learning that would enable them to properly and responsibly administer their powers. Alfred may also have recognized other benefits of a literate administration: they would be able to read and carry out instructions given to them, and they would be able to refer to written laws i n matters relating to judicial principles and procedures. In other words, they could be controlled. Out of these two basic phases would emerge a resultant third, which Alfred described as
bring[ing] it to pass, as we can very easily do with God's help, if we have the peace, that all the youth now in England, born of free men who have the wherewithal may be devoted to learning as long as they cannot be of use in any other employment, unt il such time as they can read well what is written in English (qtd. in Abels 227).
The issue of improving literacy (to debatable ends) was at the core of Alfred's reforms.
The necessary first step toward this goal was the procurement of texts. Since Alfred's own education needed supplementing before he could share the power of knowledge with his people he began assembling around him a group of men who would assist in both his own education and in the task of producing texts in English. From Mercia came Plegmund, Werferth, Aethelstan, and Werwulf, from the Frankish empire came Grimbald and John (The Old Saxon), and from Wales came Asser, who would eventually write the Life of King Alfred.
In cooperation with these men and under their tutelage Alfred translated Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, Boethius's Cons olation of Philosophy, St. Augustine's Soliloquies, and the first fifty psalms of the Psalter. Additionally, at the direction of Alfred were translated Gregory's Dialogues, Orosius's Histories against the Pagans, and Bede's Ec clesiastical History. Along with these books, Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge suggest that Bald's Leechbook and an anonymously compiled Old English Martyrology were also among the works produced, translated, or acquired as part of a po licy of general availability of works in English and of public readings of these translations.
Modern scholarship has raised the possibility that Alfred's motives for improving literacy were less benevolent than has previously been thought. Feeling that the impulse for Alfred's program could not solely have been a sense of duty to protect h is "flock," scholars view Alfred as attempting to secure the cooperation of his nobles by retraining them to think of themselves as an "aristocracy of service" (Szarmach 19). Citing what occurs in Alfred's translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care, i t is argued that the work becomes imbued with a subjective intentionality, transforming it from a treatise which specifically addresses those who oversee spiritual matters into a treatise about power and authority generally.
Also of note is the fact that Alfred threatened his nobles with the loss of their offices should they not learn to read. What is most important about the issues raised by this scholarship is that it forces one to consider that the pragmatic, political implications of the program mus t be viewed alongside what might simply have been Alfred's generous impulse to share learning and knowledge with his people.
Unfortunately, no charter exists detailing how Alfred intended to implement his educational program. Though he seems to have been comitted to a qualified "universal" literacy, there is no trace of laity schools.
It is beyond doubt that Alfred him self was an enthusiastic proponent of the virtues of education, and at least some records of the actual steps he took toward systematizing this enthusiasm and transforming it into actual reformation remain. Alfred's literacy program sought both to share his own joy of learning with those entrusted to his care, and to assist them in arming themselves against a wrathful God who, Alfred believed, would surely not hesitate to again afflict His people with a tribulation by heathens should they not maintain th e standards of morality He impelled of them. Modern scholars add an important political dimension to a "reading" of the program: its political effects, insofar as it would produce a more useful population, seem to have been carefully designed.
Unquote:
An additional paper on King Alfred, you may like:
From the Righteous:
A Man for our Time: King Alfred The Great (849-899)
Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem,
Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem,
And Christian India, through her widespread clime,
In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares.
Wordsworth
Ecclesiastical Sonnets, No XXVI, 'Alfred'.
Alfred the King, Alfred the Hero,
Alfred the Great, Alfred the Good,
Alfred the Wise, Alfred the Learned,
Alfred the Law-Giver, Alfred the Just,
Alfred the Merciful, Alfred the Truth-Teller,
Alfred the Father of his Land and of our Land,
Alfred the Defender,
Alfred the Father of the Navy,
Alfred the Founder of English Shire and English Town,
Alfred the Philosopher,
Alfred the Father of English Literature,
Alfred - England's Shepherd and England's Darling.
Alfred is the mighty warrior who quelled and drove off the terrible enemy that had baffled the prowess of his forebears; Father of his people who listened to all complaints and redressed all wrongs; Philosopher who raised a barbarous age towards the height of his own mind and founded anew the civilization of England; Lawgiver whose laws, a thousand years on, make part of the freedom of this land.
Severe and purifying trials cleansed him like a noble metal from all dross. 'So long as I live', he wrote, as life was closing about him, 'I have striven to live worthily' everywhere, indeed, throughout his writings, is the Name and Thought of God. Faith was the groundwork of Alfred's character. It is this height and singleness and nobility of purpose that lift Alfred out of the narrow bounds of Wessex and raise him to the moral greatness of the few whom the world owns as its greatest: Alfred shines brightly in the book of world history as the King, who setting aside every personal aim, lived only for the good of his people.
It is this that still hallows his memory among Englishmen. He stands at the forefront of the Nation, for he is the noblest, as he is the fullest, embodiment of all that is great and lovable in the English temper, of its practical energy, of its patient and enduring force, of the reserve and self-control that give steadiness and sobriety to a broad outlook and restless daring, of its temperance and fairness, of its frankness and openess, of its sensitive kind-heartedness, of its poetic tenderness, of its deep and reverent piety.
From one end of his reign to the other every power was bent to the work of rule. His practical energy found scope for itself in a material and administrative restoration of the wasted land; the energy of his mind breathed fresh life into education and literature; while his ability to inspire trust and affection drew the hearts of English folk to a common aim, and so began anew the upbuilding of England.
In Alfred we venerate the Ideal Englishman, the Victor David overcoming the Great Heathen Army of Goliath and a Forerunner of Spiritual Greatness. His influence pervades English history. Over eleven hundred years since his repose on 26 October 899, still his name resounds. He not only preserved his native Christian Wessex from the Heathen, he also laid the groundwork for the idea of the English Nation. He went down that path of unity that within two generations led to the creation of the Kingdom of England. But that was not enough.
In order to be worthy of survival, Alfred believed it needful to rededicate himself and his people to God. The heathen were not only the foe, but also the scourge allowed by God in order to recall his people from their spiritual and moral failings. Previously folk had not cherished their faith and learning and passed it on to others: 'We were Christians in name only, and very few of us possessed Christian virtues', as Alfred wrote in his rendering of Pastoral Care, the book written by England's Apostle, St Gregory the Great. Thus Alfred fulfilled Bede's vision of an English race united in Christ, he made identical the words English and Christian.
Alfred was the only King of England until the Scotsman James I in the early seventeenth century to write a book. As a translator he actually Christianised the ancient writings of the semi-Christian Boethius and the speculations of the still unbaptized Augustine of Hippo. Alfred is not only the Father of the English Nation but also the Father of English Literature.
The towns and strongholds and ships he built, the books he translated and spread, the chronicle he sponsored and the great law-code he made, were all meant to make him and his people worthy of the grace of God. Alfred was determined to restore England to what it had been, a place of spiritual and cultural life, a place of godliness and learning, ruled by those who obeyed God's laws and preserved peace and moral life. Thus he based his laws on the Law of Moses and the Golden Rule of St Matthew's Gospel: 'That which you would that others do not unto you, do not unto them'. He was a lover of true wisdom, for what he most desired was to live a worthy life, a profoundly Orthodox Christian desire. This lover of true wisdom combined the spiritual and the practical, for inside his English Orthodox head the two were the same: without Christ no man can either live a good life on earth, or gain a place in heaven. He sought wisdom, for the destinies of kings and all men and nations alike are subject to the Wisdom of God for, as he wrote, 'Wisdom is God'.
Still only sixty years ago, Alfred was our model of patriotic inspiration in our darkest hour. His longships were a symbol of an embattled Island-Nation's defences against the weapons of a heathen Reich: Christian against anti-Christian. May his name be an inspiration to us again now. For there is nothing that he needed to do in his time that does not need to be done in our time. It was he whose legacy helped to build the foundations of this land, which today are being set at nought and are being dismantled. As is inscribed on his statue in his birth-place of Wantage:
Alfred found learning dead, and he restored it.
Education neglected, and he revived it.
The laws powerless, and he gave them force.
The Church debased, and he raised it.
The land ravaged by a fearful enemy, from which he delivered it.
Alfred's name shall live as long as mankind respects the past.
Unquote:
I’m sorry I have not been able to answer with certainty your question, but we must bear in mind that in those days, illiteracy was quite common, and cases like that of King Alfred must have been an exception.
Best regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 08/25/03 - History and Divorce Who was the first person in Britain to get divorced? And who was the second?
The reason I ask this is that I always used to think it was Henry VIII, then someone pointed out that King John divorced his queen earlier. So, who was the first person in Britain to get divorced, and who was the second? curious98 answered on 08/25/03:Hi there Danberg,
Henry VIII’s divorce was not the first one at royal levels, but it certainly was the most notorious.
Henry had married his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon, in 1509. Catherine had produced only one surviving child - a girl, Princess Mary, born in 1516. By the end of the 1520s, Henry's wife was in her forties and he was desperate for a son. The Tudor dynasty had been established by conquest in 1485 and Henry was only its second monarch. England had not so far had a ruling queen, and the dynasty was not secure enough to run the risk of handing the Crown on to a woman, risking disputed succession or domination of a foreign power through marriage.
Henry had, on the other hand, fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, the sister of one of his many mistresses, and tried to persuade the Pope to grant him an annulment of his marriage on the grounds that it had never been legal. However, a previous Pope had specifically granted Henry a licence to marry his brother's widow in 1509. In May 1529, Wolsey failed to gain the Pope's agreement to resolve Henry's case in England. All the efforts of Henry and his advisers came to nothing; Wolsey was dismissed and arrested, but died before he could be brought to trial.
Since the attempts to obtain the divorce through pressure on the papacy had failed, Wolsey's eventual successor Thomas Cromwell (Henry's chief adviser from 1532 onwards) turned to Parliament, using its powers and anti-clerical attitude (encouraged by Wolsey's excesses) to decide the issue. The result was a series of Acts cutting back papal power and influence in England and bringing about the English Reformation. In 1532, an Act against Annates - although suspended during 'the king's pleasure' - was a clear warning to the Pope that ecclesiastical revenues were under threat. In 1532, Cranmer was promoted to Archbishop of Canterbury and, following the Pope's confirmation of his appointment, in May 1533 Cranmer declared Henry's marriage invalid; Anne Boleyn was crowned queen a week later.
The Pope responded with excommunication, and Parliamentary legislation enacting Henry's decision to break with the Roman Catholic Church soon followed. An Act in restraint of appeals forbade appeals to Rome, stating that England was an empire, governed by one supreme head and king who possessed 'whole and entire' authority within the realm, and that no judgements or excommunications from Rome were valid. An Act of Submission of the Clergy and an Act of Succession followed, together with an Act of Supremacy (1534) which recognised that the king was 'the only supreme head of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia'. The breach between the king and the Pope forced clergy, office-holders and others to choose their allegiance - the most famous being Sir Thomas More, who was executed for treason in 1535, as he had chosen to remain loyal to the Pope.
It is true that royal divorces had happened before: Louis XII, of France had been granted a divorce in 1499, and in 1527 James IV's widow Margaret (Henry VIII's sister) had also been granted one.)
Louis XII married Joan de Valois, daughter of Louis XI of France de Valois and Charlotte d' Savoie, on 8 Sep 1476. The marriage ended in divorce. (Joan de Valois was born in 1464 and died in 1505.)
As for Margaret Tudor, Henry's elder sister, she was widowed when her husband, James IV of Scotland, died attacking the English at Flodden Field, a Scottish disaster. She later married a Douglas, Lord Angus, an enemy of the volatile Scottish ruling clans, causing herself much angst while fleeing danger with her two sons, potential heirs to the English throne. Eventually, she divorced Lord Angus and after a life of turmoil in near-anarchic Scotland, she is basically remembered in history as the grandmother of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and great-grandmother of James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England.
As for King John (Lackland) Shakespeare says -'Foul as Hell is, Hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of King John' – and so his enemies believed. The nicknames for England's most notorious medieval king ring down the centuries: 'Lackland', 'Softsword', 'Doll-heart'. John accumulated crime upon crime and failure upon failure. Before his accession to the throne he proved a traitor to his father, Henry II, and brother, Richard the Lionheart. At the beginning of his reign he lost most of his hereditary lands in France, and by his death he had lost half of England to rebels and foreign invaders. He was excommunicated by the pope and for six years there were no church services in England. His life was characterised by treachery, cruelty, murder, adultery, incest and possibly paedophilia. So, although, I have found no evidence of his divorce, it would not be surprising he had divorced to suit his interests.
Yet John's name will be forever associated with the most potent symbol of English freedom: Magna Carta. The significance of this document has been hotly debated since the day it was sealed by John; even today politicians invoke it as the guarantor of your liberty. John's turbulent reign is also crucially important for the place of England and 'the English' in the European history. It witnessed the collapse of the Angevin Empire in France, ending England's special association with Normandy since the Norman Conquest. John's quarrel with the pope over the archbishopric of Canterbury defined England's place within the Catholic Church for the remainder of the Middle Ages. His campaigning in Ireland, Wales and Scotland led to a major shift in the balance of power between England and its neighbours, foreshadowing English domination of the British Isles
Another king who probably underwent a divorce from his wife Eleanor, was Henry II Plantagenet (March 25, 1133 - July 6, 1189). He was Duke of Anjou and King of England (1154 - 1189) and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland, eastern Ireland, and western France. His soubriquets include "Curt Mantle" (because of the practical short cloaks he wore), "Fitz Empress," and sometimes "The Lion of Justice," which had been used for his grandfather Henry I. He would be known as the first of the Angevin Kings.
Following the disastrous reign of King Stephen, Henry's reign was one of efficient consolidation. Henry II is regarded as England's greatest medieval king.
He was born on March 5, 1133, to the Empress Matilda and her second husband, Geoffrey the Fair, Duke of Anjou. He was brought up in Anjou and visited England in 1142 to help his mother in her disputed claim to the English throne.
Prior to coming to the throne he already controlled Normandy and Anjou on the continent; his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152 added her land holdings to his, including vast areas such as Touraine, Aquitaine, and Gascony. He was thus effectively more powerful than the king of France with an empire that stretched from Solway Firth almost to the Mediterranean and from the Somme to the Pyrenees. As king, he would make Ireland a part of his vast domain. He also was in lively communication with the Emperor of Byzantium Manuel I Comnenus.
In August 1152 Henry, who had been fighting Eleanor's ex-husband Louis VII of France and his allies, rushed back to her, and they spent several months together. Around the end of November 1152 they parted: Henry went to spend some weeks with his mother and then sailed for England, arriving on 6 January 1153. Some historians believe that the couple's first child, William, Count of Poitiers, was born in 1152. It is possible that this was why Henry came home at that time, and the progress they made through Eleanor's lands was to mark the birth of the new heir -- that is, that their stated purpose of "introducing the new count" to the people meant Count William, not Count Henry. Others think William was born in 1153, and point out that Henry might still have been there nine months before William was born.
During Stephen's reign, the barons had subverted feudal legislation to undermine the monarch's grip on the realm; Henry saw it as his first task to reverse this shift in power. Castles which had been built without authorisation during Stephen's reign, for example, were torn down, and an early form of taxation replaced military service as the primary duty of vassals. Record-keeping was dramatically improved in order to streamline this taxation.
Henry II established courts in various parts of the country and was the first king to grant magistrates the power to render legal decisions on a wide range of civil matters in the name of the Crown. Under his reign, the first written legal textbook was produced, proving the basis of what today is referred to as Common Law. By the Assize of Clarendon (1166), trial by jury became the norm. Since the Norman Conquest, jury trials had been largely replaced by trial by ordeal and "wager of battel" (which was not abolished in England until 1819). This was one of Henry's major contributions to the social history of England. As a consequence of the improvements in the legal system, the power of church courts waned. The church, not unnaturally, opposed this, and its most vehement spokesman was Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, formerly a close friend of Henry's and his chancellor. Henry had appointed Becket to the archbishopric precisely because he wanted to avoid conflict.
The conflict with Becket effectively began with a dispute over whether clergy who had committed a secular offence could be tried by the secular courts. Henry attempted to subdue Becket and his fellow churchmen by making them swear to obey the "customs of the realm", but there was controversy over what constituted these customs, and the church was reluctant to submit. Becket left England in 1164 to solicit personally the support of the Pope in Rome and the king of France, where he stayed for a time. After a reconciliation between Henry and Thomas in Normandy in 1170, he returned to England. Becket again confronted Henry, this time over the coronation of Prince Henry. The much-quoted words of Henry II echo down the centuries: "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" Four of his knights took their king literally (as he may have intended for them to do, although he later denied it) and travelled immediately to England, where they assassinated Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170.
William, Count of Poitiers, had died in infancy. In 1170, Henry and Eleanor's fifteen-year-old son Henry was crowned king, but he never actually ruled and is not counted as a monarch of England; he is now known as Henry the Young King to distinguish him from his nephew Henry III of England.
Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had four sons and three daughters. (Henry also had some ten children by at least four other women, and Eleanor had several of those children reared in the royal nursery with her own children; some remained members of the household in adulthood.) His attempts to wrest control of her lands from her (and her heir Richard) led to confrontation between Henry on the one side and his wife and legitimate sons on the other.
Henry's notorious liaison with Rosamund Clifford, the "fair Rosamund" of legend, is thought to have begun in 1165, during one of his Welsh campaigns, and continued until her death in 1176. However, it was not until 1174, at around the time of his break with Eleanor, that Henry acknowledged Rosamund as his mistress. Almost simultaneously, he began negotiating to divorce Eleanor and marry Alice, daughter of King Louis VII of France, who was already betrothed to his son, Richard. His affair with her continued for some years, and, unlike Rosamund Clifford, Alice is believed to have given birth to several of his illegitimate children.
Henry II's attempt to divide his titles amongst his sons but keep the power associated with them provoked them into trying to take control of the lands assigned to them, which amounted to treason, at least in Henry's eyes. Henry was fortunate to have on his side a knight who was both loyal and unbeatable in battle: William Marshal; Henry's illegitimate son Geoffrey Plantagenet (1151-1212), Archbishop of York, also stood by him the whole time and was the only son with Henry when he died.
When Henry's legitimate sons rebelled against him, they often had the help of King Louis VII of France. The death of Henry the Young King, in 1183, was followed by the death of the next in line to the throne, Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany who was trampled to death by a horse in 1186. His third son, Richard the Lionheart, with the assistance of Philippe II Auguste, attacked and defeated Henry on July 4, 1189; Henry died at the Chateau Chinon on July 7, 1189 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey, near Chinon and Saumur in the Anjou Region that today is part of France.
Richard the Lionheart then became king of England. He was followed by King John, the youngest son of Henry II, laying aside the claims of Geoffrey's son, Arthur, and daughter, Eleanor.
At any rate, middle age kings did not really need to divorce for they normally had as many mistresses as they could desire with few, if any, problems with the Church.
In fact, if Henry VIII had problems was because he had actually married his brother’s widow thanks to a special licence from the Pope himself. Had he decided to go on with Anne Boleyn as his mistress (what she already was, anyway), he might had been able to get away at a later stage with Rome.
Anyway, I hope this will help you
Regards
Curious98
| | Question/Answer | | denberg asked on 07/28/03 - Popes leading armies into battle How many Popes have personally led armies into battle and actually physically fought on the battlefield themselves, and who were the first and last to do so?
The reason I ask this is that I recently saw on TV the Hollywood movie "The Agony and the Ecstasy," starring Charlton Heston as Michelangelo and Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II. In one scene, Julius is putting on his armour as he prepares to lead troops into battle in Italy in the sixteenth century. curious98 answered on 08/04/03:It is not conveniente to believe 100% wthat Hollywood movie producers have to say when they are making historical films.
For your information, I copy what the Encyclopeadya sais re. Pope Julius II who, certainly, seems to have more interested in soldiery matters than in his activities as a Pope.
Born on 5 December, 1443, at Albissola near Savona; crowned on 28 November, 1503; died at Rome, in the night of 20-21 February, 1513. He was born of a probably noble but impoverished family, his father being Raffaelo della Rovere and his mother Theodora Manerola, a lady of Greek extraction. He followed his uncle Francesco della Rovere into the Franciscan Order, and was educated under his tutelage at Perugia. With the elevation of his uncle to the papacy as Sixtus IV on 9 August, 1471, begins the public career of Giuliano. On 15 December, 1471, he was created Cardinal Priest of San Pietro in Vincoli, and thereafter literally overwhelmed with benefices, although during the lifetime of Sixtus IV he never took a prominent part in ecclesiastical diplomacy. He held the episcopal sees of Carpentras (1471-2), Lausanne (1472-6), Catania (1473-4), Coutances (1476-7), Mende (1478-83), Viviers (1477-9), Sabina (1479-83), Bologna (1483-1502), Ostia (1483-1503), Lodève (1488-9), Savona (1499-1502), Vercelli (1502-3), and the Archiepiscopal See of Avignon (1474-1503). In addition he was commendatory Abbot of Nonantola, Grottaferrata, and Gorze, and drew the revenues of various other ecclesiastical benefices. These large incomes, however, he did not spend in vain pomp and dissipation, as was the custom of many ecclesiastics of those times. Giuliano was a patron of the fine arts, and spent most of his superfluous money in the erection of magnificent palaces and fortresses. Still his early private life was far from stainless, as is sufficiently testified by the fact that before he became pope he was the father of three daughters, the best known of whom, Felice, he gave in marriage to Giovanni Giordano Orsini in 1506.
In June, 1474, Giuliano was sent at the head of an army to restore the papal authority in Umbria. He succeeded in reducing Todi and Spoleto, but for the subjugation of Citth di Castello he needed the assistance of Duke Federigo of Urbino. In February, 1476, he was sent as legate to France to regulate the affairs of his Archdiocese of Avignon, and probably to oppose the council which Louis XI intended to convene at Lyons. In 1480 he was sent as legate to the Netherlands and France to accomplish three things, viz. to settle the quarrel concerning the Burgundian inheritance between Louis XI and Maximilian of Austria, to obtain the help of France against the Turks, and to effect the liberation of Cardinal Balue whom Louis XI had held in strict custody since 1469 on account of treasonable acts. After successfully completing his mission he returned to Rome in the beginning of 1482, accompanied by the liberated Cardinal Balue. At that time a war was just breaking out between the pope and Venice on one side and Ferrara on the other. Giuliano made various attempts to restore peace, and was probably instrumental in the dissolution of the Veneto-Papal alliance on 12 December, 1482. He also protected the Colonna family against the cruel persecutions of Cardinal Girolamo Riario in 1484. After the death of Sixtus IV on 12 August, 1484, Giuliano played a disreputable role in the election of Innocent VIII. Seeing that his own chances for the papacy were extremely meagre, he turned all his efforts to securing the election of a pope who was likely to be a puppet in his hands. Such a person he saw in the weak and irresolute Cardinal Cibo, who owed his cardinalate to Giuliano. To effect the election of his candidate he did not scruple to resort to bribery. Cibo ascended the papal throne as Innocent VIII on 29 August, 1484, and was greatly influenced during the eight years of his pontificate by the strong and energetic Giuliano. The war that broke out between the pope and King Ferrante of Naples must be attributed chiefly to Giuliano, and it was also due to him that it did not come to an earlier conclusion.
After the death of Innocent VIII on 25 July, 1492, Giuliano again aspired to the papacy, but his great influence during Innocent's pontificate and his pronounced sympathy for France had made him hateful to the cardinals. He was shrewd enough to understand the situation. He was, however, loath to see the tiara go to Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, not because the latter was an unworthy candidate, but on account of his personal aversion towards the Borgia. Despite Giuliano's efforts to the contrary, Rodrigo Borgia was the successful candidate, and ascended the papal throne as Alexander VI on 11 August, 1492. Fearing for his safety in Rome, Giuliano withdrew to his strongly fortified castle at Ostia towards the end of 1492. An apparent reconciliation between Alexander VI and Giuliano was effected in July, 1493, but Giuliano did not trust in the sincerity of the pope and fled by way of Genoa to the court of Charles VIII of France, whom he induced to make an expedition into Italy with the purpose of dethroning Alexander VI. Giuliano accompanied the king on his expedition, but by liberal concessions Alexander gained Charles to his side. In the treaty effected between them, it was stipulated that Giuliano should remain in possession of all his dignities and benefices, and should be guaranteed secure and undisturbed residence in Rome. Giuliano, however, still feared the secret machinations of Alexander and returned to France. Another apparent reconciliation took place in June, 1497, when Giuliano assisted the pope in the matrimonial affairs of Cesare Borgia. But Giuliano's distrust of Alexander remained. He evaded Rome, spending most of his time in France and Northern Italy.
After the death of Alexander on 18 August, 1503, he returned to Rome on 3 September to take part in the election of the new pope. He was again a strong candidate for the papacy, but his great ambition was not yet to be realized. The sick and aged Francesco Piccolomini ascended the papal throne as Pius III, but died on 18 October, 1503, after a reign of only twenty-six days. Giuliano's chance of being elected was now better than at any previous election. To ensure his success he made great promises to the cardinals, and did not hesitate to employ bribery. The conclave began on 31 October, and after a few hours the cardinals united their votes on Giuliano, who as pope took the name of Julius II. It was the shortest conclave in the history of the papacy. In the capitulation preceding the election, the following terms were secured by the cardinals: (1) the continuation of the war against the Turks; (2) the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline and the convocation of a general council for that purpose within two years; (3) that no war was to be undertaken with another nation without the consent of two-thirds of the cardinals, who were to be consulted on all important matters, especially concerning the creation of new members for the Sacred College; (4) that the pope with two-thirds of the cardinals were to determine upon the place of the next general council. Such an unlawful restriction of papal rights no pope could tolerate, much less the impatient, irascible, ambitious, and warlike Julius II, whose fearless and awe-inspiring presence gained for him the epithet of pontefice terribile. The chief task of his pontificate he saw in the firm establishment and the extension of the temporal power. For the accomplishment of this task no pope was ever better suited than Julius, whom nature and circumstances had hewn out for a soldier.
Venice was the first to feel the strong hand of Julius II. Under pretence of humiliating Cesare Borgia, whom Alexander VI had made Duke of the Romagna, the Venetians had reduced various places in the Romagna under their own authority. The Romagna was ecclesiastical territory, and every one of its cities added to the Venetian republic was lost to the papacy. Julius, therefore, ordered Cesare Borgia to surrender the fortified places of the Romagna into his own hands. Cesare Borgia refused and was arrested by the pope's order. Venice, however, stubbornly refused to give back the cities which it had previously taken. A temporary settlement was reached in March, 1505, when Venice restored most of its conquests in the Romagna. Meanwhile trouble was brewing at Perugia and Bologna, two cities that belonged to the Papal States. At Perugia the Baglioni and at Bologna the Bentivogli were acting as independent despots. The warlike Julius II personally directed the campaign against both, setting out at the head of his army on 26 August, 1506. Perugia surrendered without any bloodshed on 13 September, and the pope proceeded towards Bologna. On 7 October he issued a Bull deposing and excommunicating Giovanni Bentivoglio and placing the city under interdict. Bentivoglio fled, and Julius II entered Bologna triumphantly on 10 November. He did not leave the city until 22 February, 1507, arriving again at Rome on 27 March.
The Venetians meanwhile continued to hold Rimini and Faenza, two important places in the Romagna: they moreover encroached upon the papal rights by filling the vacant episcopal sees in their territory independently of the pope, and they subjected the clergy to the secular tribunal and in many other ways disrespected the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Julius II. Unable to cope alone with the powerful Republic of Venice, he reluctantly joined the League of Cambrai on 23 March, 1509. This League had been formed by Emperor Maximilian I and Louis XII of France chiefly with the purpose of forcing Venice to restore its recent continental conquests to their original owners. On 27 April, 1509, Julius II placed Venice under interdict and dispatched his troops into the Romagna. Venice was too weak to contend against the combined forces of the League, and suffered a complete defeat at the battle of Agnadello on 14 May, 1509. The Venetians were now ready to enter negotiations with Julius II, who withdrew from the League and freed the Venetians from the ban on 24 February, 1510, after they agreed upon the following terms. (1) to restore the disputed towns in the Romagna; (2) to renounce their claims to fill vacant benefices; (3) to acknowledge the ecclesiastical tribunal for ecclesiastics and exempt them from taxes; (4) to revoke all treaties made with papal cities; (5) to permit papal subjects free navigation on the Adriatic.
Julius II was now again supreme temporal master over the entire Pontifical States, but his national pride extended beyond the Patrimony of St. Peter. His ambition was to free the whole of Italy from its subjection to foreign powers, and especially to deliver it from the galling yoke of France. His efforts to gain the assistance of Emperor Maximilian, Henry VIII of England, and Ferdinand of Spain, proved futile for the moment, but the Swiss and the Venetians were ready to take the field against the French. Julius II inaugurated the hostilities by deposing and excommunicating his vassal, Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, who supported France. Louis XII retaliated by convoking a synod of French bishops at Tours in September, 1510, where it was decreed that the pope had no right to make war upon a foreign prince, and, in case he should undertake such a war, the foreign prince had the right to invade the Ecclesiastical States and to withdraw his subjects from their obedience to the pope. The synod also threatened the pope with a general council. Taking no notice of this synod, Julius again assumed personal command of his army and set out for Northern Italy. At Bologna he fell severely sick, and would probably have been captured by the French had it not been for the timely appearance of the Venetians. He had scarcely recovered, when, braving the inclemency of the weather, he marched against Mirandola which he took on 20 January, 1511. On 23 May, 1511, the French made a descent upon Bologna which Julius II had left nine days previously, drove out the papal troops and reinstated the Bentivogli.
Some of the cardinals were displeased with the pope's anti-French policy, and five of them went so far as to convoke a schismatic council at Pisa on 1 September. They were supported in their schism by the King of France and for some time also by Emperor Maximilian. The pope now looked for aid to Spain, Venice, and England, but before completing negotiations with these powers he fell dangerously sick. From 25 to 27 August, 1511, his life was despaired of. It was during this sickness of Julius II that Emperor Maximilian conceived the fantastic plan of uniting the tiara with the imperial crown on his own head (see Schulte, "Kaiser Maximilian als Kandidat für den papstlichen Stuhl", Leipzig, 1906; and Naegle, "Hat Kaiser Maximilian I in Jahre 1507 Papst werden wollen" in "Historisches Jahrbuch", XXVIII, Munich, 1907, pp. 44-60, 278-305). But Julius II recovered on 28 August, and on 4 October the so-called Holy League was formed for the purpose of delivering Italy from French rule. In the beginning the League included only the pope, the Venetians, and Spain, but England joined it on 17 November, and was soon followed by the emperor and by Switzerland. Under the leadership of the brilliant Gaston de Foix the French were at first successful, but after his death they had to yield to the superior forces of the League, and, being defeated in the bloody battle of Ravenna on 11 April, 1512, they were driven beyond the Alps. Bologna again submitted to Julius II and the cities of Parma, Reggio, and Piacenza were added to the Ecclesiastical States.
Julius II was chiefly a soldier, and the fame attached to his name is greatly due to his re-establishment of the Pontifical States and the deliverance of Italy from its subjection to France. Still he did not forget his duties as the spiritual head of the Church. He was free from nepotism; heard Mass almost daily and often celebrated it himself; issued a strict Bull against simony at papal elections and another against duels; erected dioceses in the recently discovered American colonies of Haiti (Espanola), San Domingo, and Porto Rico; condemned the heresy of Piero de Lucca concerning the Incarnation on 7 September, 1511; made various ordinances for monastic reforms; instituted the still existing Capella Julia, a school for ecclesiastical chant which was to serve as a feeder for the Capella Palatina; and finally convoked the Fifth Lateran Council to eradicate abuses from the Church and especially from the Roman Curia, and to frustrate the designs of the schismatic cardinals who had convened their unsuccessful council first at Pisa, then at Milan (see LATERAN COUNCILS). Julius II has also gained an enviable reputation as a patron of arts. Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo gave to the world some of their greatest masterpieces while in his service. He laid the cornerstone of the gigantic Basilica of St. Peter on 18 April, 1506, and conceived the idea of uniting the Vatican with the Belvedere, engaging Bramante to accomplish the project. The famous frescoes of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel and of Raphael in the Stanze, the Court of St. Damasus with its loggias, the Via Giulia and Via della Lungara, the colossal statue of Moses which graces the mausoleum of Julius II in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, and many other magnificent works in and out of Rome are lasting witnesses of his great love of art.
Another Pope I know of that actually went into war was:
Clement VIII (1378-1394)
Robert of Geneva was the son of Count Amadeus III of Savoy. Although from the beginning a careerist in the papal curia, Robert was also son of a nobleman, and saw much worldly service. He was legate to northern Italy from 1376 to 1378 where he led armies and fought a number of battles. Most notoriously, he authorized the sacking of the town of Cesena in 1377, at which four thousand citizens were massacred.
As pope, Clement made the decision to return to Avignon, where he created his own papal government, appointed cardinals and bishops, and so on.
The Vatican States were many times at war with Islam and even with other Catholic countries in what is now Italy. That does not mean the Popes themselves were at war, though it cannot be excluded. Middle Age and Renaissance times were not an epoch Christianity should be proud of.
Regards
Curious98
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