The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries

By the close of the reign of Edward I., at the beginning of the Fourteenth Century, the Guild was wealthy in houses and lands, and the foundation was laid of its chapel and almshouses which, with the hall of meeting—the "Rode or Reed Hall"—stood where the Guild Hall is at the present day. Edward III. and Richard II., during the Fourteenth Century, confirmed the rights of the Guild and even added to its privileges. Though it was a purely local institution, the fame of its good works had spread so wide during these next centuries that affiliation with it became a distinction, and the nobility were attracted to its ranks. George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward, with his wife and children, and the Earl of Warwick, and the Lady Margaret were counted among its members, and merchants of distant towns counted it an honor to belong to it. Later, also, Judge Littleton, one of the famous founders of English law, was on its roll of membership.

The objects of the Guild were many and varied and touched the social life of Stratford at every point. The first object was mutual prayer. The Guild maintained five priests or chaplains who were to say masses daily, hour by hour, from six to ten o'clock for its members, it being expected that some of them would be present at each of the masses. Out of the fees of the Guild one wax candle was to be kept alight every day throughout the year at every mass in the church before the rood, or cross, "so that God and our Blessed Virgin and the Venerated Cross may keep and guard all the brethren and sisters of the Guilds from every ill." The second object was charity, under which was included all the various Works of Mercy. The needs of any brother or sister who had fallen into poverty or been robbed were to be provided for "as long as he bears himself rightly towards the brethren." When a brother died all the brethren were bound to follow the body to the church and to pray for his soul at its burial. The Guild candle and eight smaller ones were to be kept burning by the body from the time of death till the funeral. When a poor man died in the town the brethren and sisters were, for their soul's health, to find four wax candles, a sheet, and a hearse cloth for the corpse. This rule also applied in the event of a stranger's death, if the stranger had not the necessary means for burial. Nor were the efforts of the Guild at Stratford devoted solely to the alleviation of the ills of mankind and the more serious purposes of life. Once a year, in Easter Week, a feast of the members was held in order to foster peace and true brotherly love among them. At this time offerings were made for the poor in order that they too might share in the happiness of the festival time. There was attendance at church before the feasting and a prayer was offered by all the "brethren and sisters that God and our Blessed Virgin and the Venerated Cross in whose honor we have come together will keep us from all ills and sins." This frequent reference to the Cross will be better understood if it is recalled that the Guild at Stratford bore the name of the Guild of the Holy Cross, and the figure of the crucified One was one of its most respected symbols and was always looked upon as a special object of veneration on the part of the members.

The thoroughly progressive spirit of the Guild at Stratford will perhaps be best appreciated by the modern mind from the fact, that to it the town owed the foundation of its famous free school. During the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries the study of grammar, and of the various theoretical branches, was not considered the essential part of an education. Gradually, however, there had arisen the feeling that all the children should be taught the ground-work of the vulgar tongue, and that those whose parents wished it should receive education in Latin also; hence the establishment of grammar schools, that at Stratford being founded for the children of the members of the Guild about the middle of the Fifteenth Century. This was only the normal development of the earlier spirit of the Guild which enabled it to meet the growing social needs of the time. It was at this school, as reconstituted under Edward VI., that Shakespeare was educated, and the reestablishment by Edward was only in response to the many complaints which arose because of the absence of the school after its suppression by Henry VIII. The fact that Shakespeare was educated at an Edward VI. grammar school, has often given occasion for commentators to point out that it was practically the Reformation in England which led to the establishment of free schools. Any such suggestion, however, can be made only in complete ignorance of the preexisting state of affairs in which the people, by organization, succeeded in accomplishing so much for themselves.

As a matter of fact the Guild at Stratford, as in most of the towns in England—for we have taken this as an example only because it is easier to get at the details of its history—was the most important factor in the preservation of social order, in the distribution of charity, in the providing of education, and even the maintenance of the security of the life and property of its inhabitants. When it was dissolved, in 1547, Stratford found itself in a chaotic state and had to petition Edward VI. to reconstitute the Guild as a civil corporation, which he did by charter in 1553.

After this consideration of the guilds and their purpose and success, it is no wonder that we should declare that the wind of the spirit of democracy was blowing in England and carrying away the old landmarks of absolute government. It is to the spirit thus fostered that must be attributed the marvelous progress in representative government, the steps of which we recall.

In 1215, all England united against the odious John Lackland and obliged him to grant the Magna Charta—a declaration of national liberty.

In 1257, the Provisions of Oxford, under Henry III., established, for the moment, the stated recurrence of the great national council of Parliament.

In 1265, under the same Prince, the earl of Leicester admitted to Parliament the knights of the shire and the representatives of the townspeople, who formed later the lower house, or House of Commons, while those personally summoned to attend by the king from the great nobles formed the upper house, or House of Lords.

Beginning with the year 1295, in the reign of Edward I., the attendance of the county and town members became regular, making Parliament really representative of the country.

In 1309, in the reign of Edward II., Parliament revealed its possible strength by putting conditions on its vote for taxes.

There were other factors at work, however, and one of them at least, because of its importance, deserves to be recalled here. In the chapter on Great Beginnings of Modern Commerce we call attention to the fact, that the Crusades were responsible to a great degree for the spirit of enterprise which led to the formation of the Lombard league of cities, and later to the great Hanseatic League, which seems to have taken at least its incentive from the Southern Confederation. In the chapter on Louis IX. we point out that the Crusades, and his connection with them, far from being blots on Louis's career must rather be considered as manifestations of the great heart of the time which was awakening to all needs, and had its religious aspirations stirred so deeply that men were ready to give up everything in order to follow an idea. One thing is certain, the Crusades did more to set ferments at work in the social organization of Europe than would have been possible by any other movement. These ferments brought about two results, one the uplift of the common people, the other the centralization of power in the hands of the kings with the gradual diminution of the influence of the nobility. While fostering the spirit of democracy on the one hand, they gave birth to the spirit of nationality and to all that this has accomplished in modern history.

Storrs, in his life of St. Bernard, recently issued, has given expression to this thought in a very striking fashion. He says:

"It used to be the fashion to regard the Crusades as mere fantastic exhibitions of a temporary turbulent religious fanaticism, aiming at ends wholly visionary, and missing them, wasting the best life of Europe in colossal and bloody undertakings, and leaving effects only of evil for the time which came after. More reasonable views now prevail; and while the impulse in which the vast movement took its rise is recognized as passionate and semi-barbaric, it is seen that many effects followed which were beneficial rather than harmful, which could not perhaps have been at the time in other ways realized. As I have already suggested, properties were to an important extent redistributed in Europe, and the constitutions of states were favorably affected. Lands were sold at low prices by those who were going on the distant expeditions, very probably, as they knew, never to return; and horses and armor, with all martial equipments, were bought at high prices by the Jews, who could not hold land, and the history of whom throughout the Middle Ages is commonly traced in fearful lines of blood and fire, but who increased immeasurably their movable wealth through these transfers of property. Communes bought liberties by large contributions to the needs of their lord; and their liberties, once secured, were naturally confirmed and augmented, as the years went on. The smaller tended to be absorbed in the larger; the larger often to come more strictly under royal control, thus increasing the power of the sovereign—which meant at the time, general laws, instead of local, a less minutely oppressive administration, the furtherance of the movement toward national unity. It is a noticeable fact that Italy took but a comparatively small part in the Crusades; and the long postponement of organic union between different parts of the magnificent peninsula is not without relation to this. The influence which operated elsewhere in Europe to efface distinction of custom and language in separate communities, to override and extinguish local animosities, to make scattered peoples conscious of kinship, did not operate there; and the persistent severance of sections from each other, favored, of course, by the run of the rivers and the vast separating walls of the Apenines, was the natural consequence of the want of this powerful unifying force."32

As a matter of fact very few people realize how much was accomplished for the spirit of democracy, for liberty, for true progress, as regards the rights of men of all classes, and for the feeling of the brotherhood of man itself, by the Crusades. A practical money-making age may consider them examples of foolish religious fanaticism, but those who have studied them most profoundly and with most sympathy, who are deeply interested in the social amelioration which they brought about, and, above all, those who look at them in the higher poetic spirit of what they did to lift man above the sordid cares of everyday life, see them in a far different way. Charles Kingsley sang in the poem of The Saints Tragedy:

"Tell us how our stout crusading fathers

Fought and bled for God and not for gold."

But quite apart from the poetry of them, from the practical side much can be said which even the most matter of fact of men will appreciate. Here, for instance, are a series of paragraphs from the history of the Middle Ages by George Washington Greene, which he confesses to have taken chiefly from the French,33 which will make clear something of the place these great expeditions should be considered as holding in the history of democracy and of liberty:

"Christendom had not spent in vain its treasures and its blood in the holy wars. Its immense sacrifices were repaid by immense results, and the evils which these great expeditions necessarily brought with them were more than compensated for by the advantages which they procured for the whole of Europe.

"The Crusades saved Europe from the Mussulman invasion and this was their immediate good. Their influence was felt, too, in a manner less direct, but not less useful. The Crusades had been preached by a religion of equality in a society divided by odious distinctions. All had taken part in them, the weak as well as the strong, the serf and the baron, man and woman, and it was by them that the equality of man and woman, which Christianity taught, was made a social fact. St. Louis declared that he could do nothing without the consent of his queen, his wife. It was from this period that we must date that influence of woman which gave rise to chivalric courtesy, the first step towards refinement of manners and civilization. The poor, too, were the adopted children of the Christian chivalry of the Crusades. The celebrated orders of Palestine were instituted for the protection of poor pilgrims. The Knights of the hospitals called the poor their masters. Surely no lesson was more needed by these proud barons of the Middle Ages than that of charity and humility.

"These ideas were the first to shake the stern despotism of feudality, by opposing to it the generous principles of chivalry which sprang all armed from the Crusades. Bound to the military orders by a solemn vow—and in the interests of all Christendom—the knight felt himself free from feudal dependence, and raised above national limits, as the immediate warrior and servant of the united Christendom and of God. Chivalry founded not upon territorial influence, but upon personal distinction, necessarily weakened nobility by rendering it accessible to all, and diminishing the interval which separated the different classes of society. Every warrior who had distinguished himself by his valor could kneel before the king to be dubbed a knight, and rise up the equal, the superior even, of powerful vassals. The poorest knight could sit at the king's table while the noble son of a duke or prince was excluded, unless he had won the golden spurs of knighthood. Another way by which the Crusades contributed to the decay of feudalism was by favoring the enfranchisement of serfs, even without the consent of their masters. Whoever took the cross became free, just as every slave becomes free on touching the soil of England or France.

"The communities whose development is to be referred to the period of the Crusades, multiplied rapidly; the nobility gladly granting charters and privileges in exchange for men and money. With the communities the royal power grew, and that of the aristocracy decreased. The royal domain was enlarged, by the escheating of a great number of fiefs which had been left vacant by the death of their lords. The kings protected the communities, favored their enfranchisement, and employed them usefully against insubordinate vassals. The extension of the royal power favored the organization of the nation, by establishing a principle of unity, for till then, and with that multitude of masters, the nation had been little else than an agglomeration of provinces, strangers to one another, and destitute of any common bond or common interest. The great vassals, themselves, often united under the royal banner, became accustomed during these distant expeditions to submission and discipline, and learned to recognize a legitimate authority; and if they lost by this submission a part of their personal power, they gained in compensation the honorable distinctions of chivalry.

"But it was not the national feeling alone which was fostered by the Crusades. Relations of fraternity, till then wholly unknown, grew up between different nations, and softened the deep-rooted antipathy of races. The knights, whom a common object united in common dangers, became brothers in arms and formally formed permanent ties of friendship. That barbarous law which gave the feudal lord a right to call every man his serf who settled in his domains was softened. Stranger and enemy seemed to be synonymous, and 'the Crusaders,' say the chroniclers of the times, 'although divided by language, seemed to form only one people, by their love for God and their neighbor.' And without coloring the picture too warmly, and making all due allowance for the exaggerations which were so natural to the first recorders of such a movement, we may say that human society was founded and united and Europe began to pass from the painful period of organization, to one of fuller and more rapid development."

Here in reality modern democracy had its rise, striking its roots deep into the disintegrating soil of the old feudalism whence it was never to be plucked, and though at times it languished it was to remain ever alive until its luxuriant growth in recent times.

ANIMALS FROM BESTIARIUM, THIRTEENTH CENTURY MS.