Europe: A History (89 page)

Medieval science, too, was inextricably bound up with theology. There was no clear sense of the separation of physical and spiritual phenomena, so that exploring the ‘secrets of nature’ was frequently seen as immodest prying ‘into the womb of Mother Church’. The medieval German language, for example, made no distinction between ‘gas’ and ‘spirit’. Both were
Geist
, the modern equivalent of the English ‘ghost’. Scientific experiments often risked charges of sorcery. Alchemy long outpaced physics and chemistry, and astrology outpaced astronomy. The Oxford of Robert Grosseteste (
c
.1170–1253), Chancellor of the University and Bishop of Lincoln, is sometimes taken as the first home of the scientific tradition.

But most of the landmark achievements came from the work of scattered individuals. Roger Bacon’s, experiments with optics and machines formed part of his general attack on corruption and superstition. He was trying to verify knowledge, in the same way that his unfashionable insistence on Greek was an effort to verify
the accuracy of the Latin Scriptures. Bacon’s master Pierre de Maricourt (Peter the Stranger) produced a fundamental treatise on magnetism, apparently as he whiled away the time during the Angevin siege of Lucera di Calabria in 1269. Witello, or Vitellon (1230–80), a Silesian, wrote a fundamental treatise on optics, the
Perspectiva
, which, by dividing the mechanical operations of the eye from the co-ordinating function of the mind, opened the way to modern psychology. Nicolas Oresme (
c
.1320–82), Bishop of Lisieux, produced an influential work on the economics of money, and another on astronomy,
De Coelo et Mundo
, which supported the theory of the rotation of the earth. He was an enthusiastic advocate of Reason, a man of the Enlightenment before his time, a denouncer of astrologers and miracle-mongers. ‘Everything contained in the Gospels’, he argued, ‘is
rationabilissima.’
A century later, Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus (1401–64), from Kues on the Moselle, repeated the idea of the earth’s rotation, predicted calendar reform, and prophesied the end of the world in 1734. All these men had little difficulty distinguishing the
mirabilia
of nature from the
miracula
of the Church.

Given the gradual accumulation of knowledge, a need was created for encyclopaedic compendia. Among the most widely distributed were the
Speculum Maius
(1264) of Vincent of Beauvais and the
Opus Mains
(1268) of Roger Bacon.

Religious belief, however, remained surrounded by every form of irrationality and superstition. In the later Middle Ages, Church dogma was still being formulated and systematized. The area of belief which people were ordered to accept unquestioningly was expanding. The Lateran Council of 1215 had made confession and penance obligatory. In 1439 the doctrine of the seven sacraments, from baptism to extreme unction, was regularized. The doctrine of transsubstantiation—the contention that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are miraculously transformed into the blood and body of Christ—was so refined that the priest alone was allowed to drink the wine of the chalice. Lay communicants could only partake of the bread. The separation of the people from the magical, priestly caste was emphasized. Masses were performed on every possible occasion. The cult of the Virgin Mary, the divine mediator with Christ, was officially adopted, the recitation of the
Ave Maria
, ‘Hail Mar’, being formally added to the order of the Mass after the
Pater Noster
. Every sort of organization, from guilds to chivalric orders, had its patron saint. The veneration of relics was ubiquitous. Pilgrimages were part of everyday life for everyone, not just for the devout. Belief in the supernatural was reinforced by official teaching about an elaborate hierarchy of good and evil angels, and by the universal fear of the Devil. Lucifer, the fallen archangel who once sat beside Gabriel in the empyrean of Heaven, now stalked the world in command of the forces of darkness. The horrors of Hell gave preachers their favourite theme and artists a popular subject.

The mystical tradition, which gave precedence to religious intuition over rational belief, had first found coherent expression in the twelfth century in the Augustinian monastery of St Victor in Paris. It later took deep root among the populace at large. Its leading exponents were headed by St Bonaventura
(
c
.1217–74), sometime Master of the Franciscans and author of the influential
Itinerarium Mentis in Deum;
by ‘Meister’ Johann Eckhart (1260–1327) of Strasbourg, Vicar-General of Bohemia, who reputedly claimed that the world was created by his little finger; by the Fleming Jan van Ruysbroeck (1294–1381), ‘the Ecstatic Teacher’, author of
De Septem Gradibus Amoris;
by the Englishman Walter Hilton (d. 1396), author of a similar work in the vernacular,
The Ladder of Perfection;
above all by Thomas Hemerken from Kempen, near Cologne, known as Thomas à Kempis (
c
.1380–1471), author of the
Imitatio Christi
. The anonymous Englishman who wrote
The Cloud of Unknowing was
also representative of the genre. Many of the mystics were speculative philosophers; but they taught Christians to cultivate the inner life, and to shun the evil world which they could not control. Their writings helped to fan the embers which eventually fired the Reformation.

Witchcraft developed in parallel to Christian mysticism, and for some of the same reasons. Witches, black and white, were undoubtedly a hangover from the pagan animism of the pre-Christian countryside, as was the firm belief in pixies, elves, sprites, and hobgoblins. Yet the systematic practice of witchcraft seems to have been a product of the late medieval period. What is more, by openly entering into combat with witchcraft, the Church inadvertently fostered the climate of hysteria on which the alleged witches and sorcerers thrived. The crucial Bull
Summis Desiderantes
, which launched the Church’s official counter-offensive, was issued by Innocent VIII as late as 1484. The standard handbook for witchhunters, the
Malleus Maleficarum
, was published in i486 by the Dominicans. If previously there had been reticence about witches’ doings, now there could be none. Henceforth all Christendom knew that the legions of the Devil were led by evil women who anointed themselves with grease from the flesh of unbaptized children, who rode stark naked on flying broomsticks or on the backs of rams and goats, and who attended their nocturnal ‘sabbaths’ to work their spells and copulate with demons. Women were classified as weak, inferior beings, who could not resist temptation. Once the Church gave public credence to such things, the potency of witchcraft was greatly increased. Large sums of money could be obtained by people who undertook to ruin a neighbour’s crops or to cause an enemy’s wife to miscarry. The frontiers between fact and delusion, between charlatanry and hallucination, were hopelessly blurred.

‘It has lately come to our ears’, declared Innocent VIII, ‘that … many people of both sexes have abandoned themselves to devils,
incubi et succubi
, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations and other accursed charms … have slain infants in their mother’s womb … have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of the trees … These wretches, furthermore, blasphemously renounce the Faith, which is theirs by Baptism, and at the instigation of the Enemy of Mankind they do not shrink … from perpetrating the … filthiest excesses to the deadly peril of their souls.’
³¹

After that, for 300 years and more, witchcraft and witch-hunting were endemic to most parts of Europe,
[HEXEN]

Medieval ethics, as expounded by the Church, were governed by hierarchical notions both of the social order and of the moral code. Everyone and everything that was inherently inferior should be subordinated to their superiors: serfs should be obedient to their masters; women should be ruled by men. Venial sins should be distinguished from the seven mortal sins. In those countries where the ancient practice of ‘head-money’ survived, the murder or rape of a noble person was judged more serious, and hence more costly, than that of ignoble victims. Penitential tariffs emphasized that minor transgressions should not be punished in the same way as major ones. Despite the repressive teaching of St Augustine on sexual matters, sexual peccadilloes were not judged severely. ‘Misdirected Love’, as Dante put it, could not be compared to sins driven by hatred or betrayal. Adulterers pined in the highest circle of Hell; traitors languished in the Pit. Betrayal of God was the ultimate evil. Blasphemy and heresy carried the greatest opprobrium. The Council of Constance of 1414–17, which burned Jan Hus at the stake, attracted an estimated 700 prostitutes,
[PROSTIBULA]

Medieval law, too, was governed by a hierarchy of values. In theory at least, human laws were subject to divine law as defined by the Church; in practice, diversity was the norm. A welter of competing jurisdictions—canon law in the ecclesiastical courts, local custom in city or manor courts, royal decrees in the king’s courts—were matched by a profusion of legal sources, practices, and penalties. Roman law remained the principal source in southern Europe; Germanic and Slavonic tribal custom were the main source in northern and eastern Europe.

Customary law, however, should not be thought of as the mere survival of primitive practices. It was the product of a long process of detailed bargaining between princes and their subjects, and was often written down in elaborate codes. The
Weistümer
, for example, proliferated throughout Austria and parts of western Germany. In Austria they were known as
Banntaidingen
, in Switzerland as
Öffnungen
. Over 600 have survived from Alsace, where they were known as
Dingofrodeln
. Their existence greatly strengthened the concept of
Gutherrschaft
, as opposed to the prevailing
Grundherrschaft
east of the Elbe, whilst conserving the position of the peasant
Gemeinde
or communes in the countryside. They provide one of the basic explanations why western Germany escaped the tide of ‘neoserfdom’ which was to occur in the East (see pp. 583–4). In some parts of eastern Europe, such as Bohemia and Silesia, the influx of German settlers led to the merger of German and of local legal customs.

In the later centuries, the revival of classical studies helped Roman law to extend its sphere at the expense of customary law. In 1495, for example, it was admitted to the
Reichskammergericht
or Supreme Court of Justice of the German Empire. Its impact was to be profound. Given the growing fragmentation of sovereignty in the Empire, it encouraged all princes to regard themselves as the sole fount of legislation, and in due course to flood every aspect of life with regulations. The German
Rechtsstaat
or ‘state ordered by law’ would grow into a land which could produce the famous road sign in Baden: ‘It is permitted to travel on this road.’
³²

England alone remained exclusively attached to its common law. In England, as in other countries west of the Rhine, it was assumed that where the law was silent, the citizen was free. France, apart from the growing power of the royal
ordonnances
and of the central
Parlement
, continued to be divided between the sphere of customary law in the north and the sphere of Roman law in the Midi.

Many countries undertook extensive codifications at an early date. In Castile, the
Leyes de las Siete Partidas
(1264–6), which formed the core of later Spanish law, served the same purpose as, for example, the Statutes (1364) of Casimir the Great and the
Dygesta
(1488) in Poland, or the
Sudiebnik
of Casimir Jagiellon in Lithuania. In the absence of police forces, enforcement tended to be weak. Fugitives from justice were ubiquitous. Punishments for those apprehended, therefore, tended to be ferocious and exemplary: hanging was often accompanied by drawing and quartering; mutilation by branding or by amputation was designed to be a social deterrent. Imprisonment and fines, which developed with statute law, led to inhuman conditions for poor prisoners, since little or no provision was made for their upkeep.

Medieval education built on the foundations laid down in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Primary learning, of letters and numbers, was largely left to the supervision of the family or the village priest. Secondary learning was supported by the cathedrals and increasingly by city councils. The content, though less so the clintele, was still geared to the training of clergy. The three disciplines of the Trivium—Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic—were the basic diet. Well-established foundations such as Winchester College (1382) or the Latin School at Deventer enjoyed a national, if not an international, reputation. Several of the large cities in Italy and Germany opened commercial schools. Fourteenth-century Florence possessed six such schools, with over 1,200 pupils. University foundations spread during the fifteenth century to all countries of Latin Christendom: such foundations included Leipzig (1409), St Andrews (1413), and Louvain (1425).

Medieval literature remained predominantly devotional in character, although the secular tradition promoted by the
chansons de geste
and the
byliny
continued to develop. Most books were written in Latin or Greek. Many of them remained within the milieu for which they were written. The fifteenth-century discovery of the works of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, for instance, a German nun who had written a series of Latin comedies five centuries earlier, suggests that a significant part of medieval literature may never have come into general circulation. An extensive popular literature, however, such as ballads and lives of the saints, was increasingly found in the vernacular, partly because formal education was not available for women. Popular theatre began with the miracle plays staged by the Church. New developments, though pregnant for the future, were confined to narrow circles (see Chapter VII).

Medieval historiography remained the realm of the chroniclers and the annalists—men, often monks, who sought to record the past but not to explain it. Divine Providence was accepted as sufficient causation. The corpus of medieval
chronicles contains several hundred major items. Some, such as the early
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
in England or Nestor’s eleventh-century
Primary Chronicle
from Kiev, were written in the vernacular. So too were the great series of French chronicles—Villehardouin (
c
.1150–1212), Joinville (
c
.1224–1317), Froissart (1337–1400), Commynes (1447–1511). Latin or Greek, however, predominated. The chroniclers’ bias fell heavily in favour of the Church’s view on events, or that of the ruling prince. ‘Qui Diex vielt aidier’, concluded Villehardouin, ‘nuls horn ne li puet nuire’ (he whom God wishes to help, no man can harm). Political thought centred on the perennial problem of defining the powers of Church and State. Carolingian thinking had approximated to the Caesaropapism of Byzantium. Feudalism stressed the concept of contract. The investiture dispute and its derivatives produced ardent apologists both for papal supremacy or, like Dante’s
De Monarchia
, for the imperial cause. Roman ideas on sovereign monarchy re-emerged with the study of Roman law, especially in France. But nothing was so revolutionary as the anti-papal treatise,
Defensor Pacis
, of Marsilio of Padua (1270–1342), sometime rector of the University in Paris, who dared to propose that supreme authority should be wielded by a sovereign people controlling a secular state.