The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries

VIII. SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES

In the first edition of this book I called attention to the fact, that science, even in our sense of physical science, was, in spite of impressions to the contrary, a favorite subject for students and teachers in the early universities. What might have been insisted on, however, is that these old universities were scientific universities resembling our own so closely in their devotion to science as to differ from them only in certain unimportant aspects. Because the universities for three centuries before the Nineteenth had been occupied mainly with classical studies, we are prone to think that these were the main subjects of university teaching for all the centuries before. Nothing could well be less true. The undergraduate studies consisted of the seven liberal arts so-called, though these were largely studied from the scientific standpoint. The quotation from Prof. Huxley ( Appendix III., Education) makes this very clear. What we would now call the graduate studies consisted of metaphysics, in which considerable physics were studied, astronomy, medicine, above all, mathematics, and then the ethical sciences, under which were studied what we now call ethics, politics and economics. The picture of these medieval universities as I have given them in my lecture on Medieval Scientific Universities, in "Education, How Old the New," makes this very clear. The interests and studies were very like those of our own time, only the names for them being different. Nature-study was a favorite subject, and, as I have pointed out in "The Popes and Science," Dante must be considered as a great nature student, for he was able to draw the most exquisite figures from details of knowledge of living things with which few poets are familiar. The books of the professors of the Thirteenth Century which have been preserved, those of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Aquinas, Duns Scotus and others, make it very clear that scientific teaching was the main occupation of the university faculties, while the preservation of these huge tomes by the diligent copying of disciples shows how deeply interested were their pupils in the science of the time.

IX. MEDICAL TEACHING AND PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS

At all times in the history of education, the standards of scientific education, and the institutions of learning, can be best judged from the condition of the medical schools. When the medical sciences are taken seriously, when thorough preparation is demanded before their study may be taken up, when four or five years of attention to theoretic and practical medicine are required for graduation, and when the professors are writing textbooks that are to attract attention for generations afterwards, then, there is always a thoroughly scientific temper m the university itself. Medicine is likely to suffer, first, whenever there is neglect of science. The studies of the German historians, Puschmann, Pagel, Neuberger, and Sudhoff in recent years, have made it very clear that the medical schools of the universities of the Thirteenth Century were maintaining high standards. The republication of old texts, especially in France, has called attention to the magnificent publications of their professors, while a review of their laws and regulations confirms the idea of the good work that was being done. Gurlt, in his history of surgery, "Geschichte der Chirurgie" (Berlin, 1898), has reviewed the textbooks of Roger and Roland and the Four Masters, of William of Salicet and Lanfranc and of many others, in a way to make it very clear that these men were excellent teachers.

When we discover that three years of preparatory university work was required before the study of medicine could be begun, and four years of medical studies were required, with a subsequent year of practice under a physician's direction, before a license for independent practice could be issued, then the scientific character of the medical schools and therefore of the universities to which they were attached is placed beyond all doubt. These are the terms of the law issued by the Emperor Frederick II. for the Two Sicilies. That, in substance, it applied to other countries we learn from the fact that the charters of medical schools granted by the Popes at this time require proper university preliminary studies, and four or five years at medicine before the degree of Doctor could be given. We know besides that in the cities only those who were graduates of properly recognized medical schools were allowed to practice medicine, so that there was every encouragement for the maintenance of professional standards. Indeed, strange as it may seem to our generation, the standards of the Thirteenth Century in medical education were much higher than our own, and their medical schools were doing fine work.

X. MAGNETISM

For proper understanding of the Thirteenth Century scholars, it is especially important to appreciate their thoroughly scientific temper of mind, their powers of observation, and their successful attainments in science. I know no more compendious way of reaching the knowledge of these qualities in the medieval mind, than a study of the letter of Peregrinus, which we would in our time call a monograph on magnetism. Brother Potamian, in his chapter in "Makers of Electricity" (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1909) on Peregrinus and Columbus, sums up the very interesting contributions of this medieval student of magnetism to the subject. The list of chapters alone in Peregrinus' monograph (Epistola) makes it very clear how deep were his interests and how thoroughly practical his investigations.

THE DOUBLE PIVOTED NEEDLE OF PEREGRINUS.

They are:—"Part I., Chapter i, purpose of this work; 2, qualifications of the experimenter; 3, characteristics of a good lodestone; 4, how to distinguish the poles of a lodestone; 5, how to tell which pole is north and which is south; 6, how one lodestone attracts another; 7, how iron touched by a lodestone turns toward the poles of the world; 8, how a lodestone attracts iron; 9, why the north pole of one lodestone attracts the south pole of another, and vice versa; 10, an inquiry into the natural virtue of the lodestone.

"Part II., Chapter 1, construction of an instrument for measuring the azimuth of the sun, the moon or any star then in the horizon; 2, construction of a better instrument for the same purpose; 3, the art of making a wheel of perpetual motion."

In order to illustrate what Peregrinus accomplished it has seemed worth while to reproduce here the sketches which illustrate his epistle. We have the double pivoted needle and the first pivoted compass.

In the light of certain recent events a passage from the "New Naval History or Complete Review of the British Marine" (London, 1757) is of special interest. It illustrates perhaps the new confidence that came to men in sailing to long distances as the result of the realization of the practical value of the magnetic needle during the Thirteenth Century.

FIRST PIVOTED COMPASS (PEREGRINUS, 1269).

"In the year 1360 it is recorded that a friar of Oxford called Nicholas de Linna (of Lynn), being a good astronomer, went in company with others to the most northern island, and thence traveled alone, and that he went to the North Pole, by means of his skill in magic, or the black art; but this magic or black art may probably have been nothing more than a knowledge of the magnetic needle or compass, found out about sixty years before, though not in common use until many years after."

XI. BIOLOGICAL THEORIES, EVOLUTION, RECAPITULATION

Of course only those who are quite unfamiliar with the history of philosophic thought are apt to think that the theory of evolution is modern. Serious students of biology are familiar with the long history of the theory, and especially its anticipations by the Greeks. Very few know, however, that certain phases of evolutionary theory attracted not a little attention from the scholastic philosophers. It would not be difficult to find expressions in Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, that would serve to show that they thought not only of the possibility of some very intimate relation of species but of developmental connections. The great teacher of the time, St. Thomas Aquinas, has some striking expressions in the matter, which deserve to be quoted, because he is the most important representative of the philosophy and science of the century and the one whose works most influenced succeeding generations. In the lecture on Medieval Scientific Universities, published in "Education, How Old the New" (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1910), I called particular attention to this phase of St. Thomas' teaching. Two quotations will serve to make it clear here.

Prof. Osborne, in "From the Greeks to Darwin," quotes Aquinas' commentary on St. Augustine's opinion with regard to the origin of things as they are. Augustine declared that the Creator had simply brought into life the seeds of things, and given these the power to develop. Aquinas, expounding Augustine, says:

"As to production of plants, Augustine holds a different view, … for some say that on the third day plants were actually produced, each in his kind—a view favored by the superficial reading of Scripture. But Augustine says that the earth is then said to have brought forth grass and trees causaliter; that is, it then received power to produce them." (Quoting Genesis ii:4): "For in those first days, … God made creation primarily or causaliter, and then rested from His work."

Like expressions might be quoted from him, and other writers of the Thirteenth Century might well be cited in confirmation of the fact that while these great teachers of the Middle Ages thoroughly recognize the necessity for creation to begin with and the placing by the Creator of some power in living things that enables them to develop, they were by no means bound to the thought that all living species were due to special creations. They even did not hesitate to teach the possibility of the lower order of living beings at least coming into existence by spontaneous generation, and would probably have found no difficulty in accepting a theory of descent with the limitations that most scientific men of our generation are prone to demand for it.

Lest it should be thought that this is a mere accidental agreement with modern thought, due much more to a certain looseness of terms than to actual similarity of view, it seems well to point out how close St. Thomas came to that thought in modern biology, which is probably considered to be one of our distinct modern contributions to the theory of evolution, though, in recent years, serious doubts have been thrown on it. It is expressed by the formula of Herbert Spencer, "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." According to this, the completed being repeats in the course of its development the history of the race, that is to say, the varying phases of foetal development from the single cell in which it originates up to the perfect being of the special type as it is born into the world, retrace the history by which from the single cell being the creature in question has gradually developed.

It is very curious to find that St. Thomas Aquinas, in his teaching with regard to the origin and development of the human being, says, almost exactly, what the most ardent supporters of this so-called fundamental biogenetic law proclaimed during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, thinking they were expressing an absolutely new thought. He says that "the higher a form is in the scale of being and the farther it is removed from mere material form, the more intermediate forms must be passed through before the finally perfect form is reached. Therefore, in the generation of animal and man— these having the most perfect forms—there occur many intermediate forms in generations, and consequently destruction, because the generation of one being is the destruction of another." St. Thomas draws the ultimate conclusions from this doctrine without hesitation. He proclaims that the human material is first animated by a vegetative soul or principle of life, and then by an animal soul, and only ultimately when the matter has been properly prepared for it by a rational soul. He said: "The vegetative soul, therefore, which is first in embryo, while it lives the life of a plant, is destroyed, and there succeeds a more perfect soul, which is at once nutrient and sentient, and for that time the embryo lives the life of an animal: upon the destruction of this there succeeds the rational soul, infused from without."

XII. THE POPE OF THE CENTURY

The absence of a chapter on the Pope of the Century has always seemed a lacuna in the previous editions of this book. Pope Innocent III., whose pontificate began just before the century opened, and occupied the first fifteen years of it, well deserves a place beside Francis the Saint, Thomas the Scholar, Dante the Poet, and Louis the Monarch of this great century. More than any other single individual he was responsible for the great development of the intellectual life that took place, but at the same time his wonderfully broad influence enabled him to initiate many of the movements that meant most for human uplift and for the alleviation of suffering in this period. It was in Councils of the Church summoned by him that the important legislation was passed requiring the development of schools, the foundation of colleges in every diocese and of universities in important metropolitan sees. What he accomplished for hospitals has been well told by Virchow, from whom I quote a magnanimous tribute in the chapter on the Foundation of City Hospitals. The legislation of Innocent III. did much to encourage, and yet to regulate properly the religious orders of this time engaged in charitable work. Besides doing so much for charity, he was a stern upholder of morals. As more than one king of the time realized while Innocent was Pope, there could be no trifling with marriage vows.

On the other hand, while Innocent was so stern as to the enforcement of marriage laws, his wonderfully judicious character and his care for the weak and the innocent can be particularly noted in his treatment of the children in these cases. While he compelled recalcitrant kings to take back the wives they would repudiate, and put away other women who had won their affections, he did not hesitate to make due provision as far as possible for the illegitimate children. Pirie Gordon, in his recent life of Pope Innocent III., notes that he invariably legitimated the offspring of these illegal unions of kings, and even declared them capable of succession. He would not visit the guilt of the parent on the innocent offspring.

Innocent did more to encourage the idea of international arbitration than anyone up to his time. During his period more than once he was the arbitrator to whom rival national claims that might have led to war were referred. Probably his greatest claim on our admiration in the modern time is his attitude toward the Jews. In this he is centuries ahead of his time and, indeed, the policy that he laid down is far ahead of what is accorded to them by many of the nations even at the present time, and it must not be forgotten that it is only during the past hundred years that the Jew has come to have any real privileges comparable to those accorded to other men. At a time when the Jew had no real rights in law, Innocent insisted on according them all the rights of men. His famous edict in this regard is well known. "Let no Christian by violence compel them to come dissenting or unwilling to Baptism. Further let no Christian venture maliciously to harm their persons without a judgment of the civil power, to carry off their property or change their good customs which they have had hitherto in that district which they inhabit." When, in addition to all this, it is recalled that he was a distinguished scholar and graduate of the University of Paris, looked up to as one of the intellectual geniuses of the time, the author of a treatise "On the Contempt of the World" at a time when the kings of the earth were obeying him, known for his personal piety and for his thorough regulation of his own household, something of the greatness of the man will be appreciated. No wonder that historians who have taken up the special study of his career have always been won over to deep personal admiration of him, and though many of them began prejudiced in his regard, practically all of them were converted to be his sincere admirers.

XIII. INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION

During the Peace Conference in New York in 1908 I was on the programme with Mr. William T. Stead of London, the editor of the English Review of Reviews, who was very much interested in the volume on the Thirteenth Century, and who suggested that one chapter in the book should have been devoted to the consideration of what was accomplished for peace and for International Arbitration during this century. There is no doubt that there developed, as the result of many Papal decrees, a greater tendency than has existed ever before or since, to refer quarrels between nations that would ordinarily end in war to decision by some selected umpire. Usually the Pope, as the head of the Christian Church, to which all the nations of the civilized world belonged, was selected as the arbitrator. This international arbitration, strengthened by the decrees of Pope Innocent III., Pope Honorius III. and Pope Alexander III., developed in a way that is well worth while studying, and that has deservedly been the subject of careful investigation since the present peace movement began. Certainly the outlook for the securing of peace by international arbitration was better at this time than it has been at any time since. What a striking example, for instance, is the choice of King Louis of France as the umpire in the dispute between the Barons and the King of England, which might have led to war. Louis' position with regard to the Empire and the Papacy was to a great extent that of a pacificator, and his influence for peace was felt everywhere throughout Europe. The spirit of the century was all for arbitration and the adjudication of intranational as well as international difficulties by peaceful means.

XIV. BIBLE REVISION

Most people will be quite sure that at least the question of Bible revision with critical study of text and comparative investigation of sources was reserved for our time. The two orders of friars founded in the early part of the Thirteenth Century, however, devoted themselves to the task of supplying to the people a thoroughly reliable edition of the Scriptures. The first systematic revision was made by the Dominicans about 1236. After twenty years this revision was set aside as containing too many errors, and another Dominican correction replaced it. Then came that great scholar, Hugh of St. Cher, known later as the Cardinal of Santa Sabina, the author of the first great Biblical Concordance. His Bible studies did much to clarify obscurities in the text. Sometime about 1240 he organized a commission of friars for the revision of what was known as the Paris Exemplar, the Bible text that was most in favor at that time. The aim of Hugh of St. Cher was to establish the old Vulgate of St. Jerome, the text which received this name during this century, but with such revision as would make this version correspond as nearly as possible to the Hebrew and the Greek.

This activity on the part of the Dominicans was rivaled by the Franciscans. We might not expect to find the great scientist, Roger Bacon, as a Biblical scholar and reviser, but such he was, working with Willermus de Mara, to whom, according to Father Denifle, late the Librarian of the Vatican Library, must be attributed the title given him by Roger Bacon of Sapientissimus Vir. The Dominicans under the leadership of Hugh of St. Cher with high ideals had hoped to achieve a perfect primitive text. The version made by de Mara, however, with the approval and advice of Bacon, was only meant to bring out St. Jerome's text as perfectly as possible. These two revisions made in the Thirteenth Century are typical of all the efforts that men have made since in that same direction. Contrary to usual present day impressions, they are characterized by critical scholarship, and probably represent as great a contribution to Biblical lore as was made by any other century.

XV. FICTION OF THE CENTURY

Ordinarily it would be presumed that life was taken entirely too seriously during the Thirteenth Century for the generation to pay much attention to fiction. In a certain sense this is true. In the sense, however, that they had no stories worthy of the great literature in other departments it would be quite untrue. There is a naiveté about their story telling that rather amuses our sophisticated age, yet all the elements of our modern fiction are to be found in the stories that were popular during the century, and arranged with a dramatic effect that must have given them a wide appeal.

The most important contribution to the fiction of the century is to be found in the collection known as the Cento Novelle Antiche or "Hundred Ancient Tales," which contains the earliest prose fiction extant in Italian. Many of these come from a period anterior to Dante, and it is probable from what Manni, the learned editor of the Novelliero, says, that they were written out in the Thirteenth Century and collected in the early part of the Fourteenth Century. They did not all originate in Italy, and, indeed, Manni considers that most of them derived their origin from Provence. They represent the interest of the century in fiction and in anecdotal literature.

As for the longer fiction, the pure love story of the modern time, we have one typical example of it in that curious relic of the Middle Ages, "Aucassin and Nicolette." The manuscript which preserved this for us comes from the Thirteenth Century. Perhaps, as M. Paris suggests, the tale itself is from the preceding century. At least it was the interest of the Thirteenth Century in it that saved it for us. For those who think that the love romance in any of its features is novel, though we call it by that name, or that there has been any development of human nature which enables the writer of love stories to appeal to other and deeper, or purer and loftier feelings in his loved ones now than in the past, all that is needed, as it seems to me, is a casual reading of this pretty old song-story.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this oldest specimen of modern fiction is the number of precious bits of psychologic analysis or, at least, what is called that in the recent time, which occur in the course of it. For instance, when Aucassin is grieving because he cannot find Nicolette he wanders through the forest on horseback, and is torn by trees and brambles, but "he feels it not at all." On the other hand, when he finds Nicolette, though he is suffering from a dislocated shoulder, he no longer feels any pain in it, because of his joy at the meeting, and Nicolette (first aid to the injured) is able to replace the dislocated part without difficulty (the trained nurse in fiction) because he is so happy as not to notice the pain (psychotherapy). The herdsman whom he meets wonders that Aucassin, with plenty of money and victuals, should grieve so much over the loss of Nicolette, while he has so much more cause to grieve over the loss of an ox, which means starvation to him. Toward the end of the story we have the scene in which Nicolette, stolen from home when very young, and utterly unable to remember anything about her childhood, has brought back to her memory by the view of the city of Carthage forgotten events of her childhood (subconscious memory). These represent naively enough, it is true, the study of the mind under varying conditions that has in recent years been given the rather ambitious name of psychology in fiction.

XVI. GREAT ORATORS

Without a chapter on the great orators of the period an account of the Thirteenth Century is quite incomplete. Great as were the other forms of literature, epic, lyric and religious poetry and the prose writing, it is probable that the oratory of the time surpassed them all. When we recall that the Cid, the Arthur Legends, the Nibelungen, the Meistersingers, and the Minnesingers, Reynard the Fox, the Romance of the Rose, the Troubadours, and even Dante are included in the other term of the comparison thus made, it may seem extravagant, but what we know of the effect of the orators of the time fully justifies it. Just before the Thirteenth Century, great religious orators swayed the hearts and minds of people, to the organization of the Crusades. At the beginning of the Thirteenth Century the mendicant orders were organized, and their important duties were preaching and teaching. The Dominicans were of course the Order of Preachers, and we have traditions of their sway over the minds of the people of the time which make it very clear that their power was equal to that exerted in any other department of human expression. There are traditions particularly of the oratory of the Dominicans among the German races, which serve to show how even a phlegmatic people can be stirred to the very depths of their being by the eloquent spoken word. In France the traditions are almost as explicit in this matter, and there are remains of religious orations that fully confirm the reputation of the orators of the time.