The Magnificent Century (53 page)

The hospitals of the Holy Ghost came about in this way. Innocent III, in some inspired moment when he laid aside his plans for bringing the whole Christian world into one great federation under the active control of the papacy, conceived the idea of having in Rome a model hospital which would serve to enlighten the nations in the proper treatment of the sick. Knowledge of medicine had been limited through the dark centuries to accepted ideas and practices, a great deal of superstition, a jumble of absurd cures from leech-books, a little practical understanding of the use of herbs, and very considerable skill in surface surgery. Connected with the school of medicine at Montpellier, France, there was, however, a physician who had created an institution for the sick which was a model of organization and new thought. This man, Guy of Montpellier, was summoned to Rome and given a free hand by the Pope. He built
the hospital of Santo Spiritu, which fulfilled every desire of the forward-looking Innocent. Thereafter it was pointed out to every churchman who came to Rome and the suggestion made that he should carry back with him a determination to create hospitals of a like nature. Many were built along these lines, mostly in Germany, France, and England.

The premature death of Innocent resulted in a loss of impetus, and it may be taken for granted that the finer type of hospital was found only in the larger cities. The Tonnerre in Paris was one of the best examples, having wards 270 feet long and 55 feet wide, the roof high and vaulted to admit plenty of air and light. In Germany at least one Holy Ghost institution still stands, exhibiting the admirable features which made them so remarkable in this early age. In London five royal hospitals were built or reorganized during the thirteenth century and had, no doubt, some of the new ideas: St. Thomas’s, St. Bartholomew’s, Bethlehem (which later became known as Bedlem), Bridewell, and Christ’s Hospital.

It must be conceded that the picture of medicine remained, in spite of this, a dark one. The number of houses for the segregation of lepers rose before the year 1300 to the staggering figure of nineteen thousand in all Europe, and the physician of the day seems at this distance a combination of quack and native medicine man. Still, an Italian named Salvenus de Armat invented spectacles in 1280, a somewhat crude aid to eyesight but a definite step in the forward direction.

Something in the nature of a miracle (or so it seemed to those who saw it) would be performed on rare occasions, and this is worth telling about. When a great nobleman had been thrown from his horse in the course of a tilting and a splinter of steel had become lodged in his head, or a bishop had fallen and suffered a fracture in a great fat thigh, the physician summoned to the case might resolve to ease the pain of what had to be done. His assistant always carried a bag wherever they went, containing a book in which the tides of the ocean and the phases of the moon were recorded (it being considered important not to do anything at the wrong time), and such varied items as saffron seed, soda, dried frogs’ legs, yarrow, belony, asses’ hoofs, and powders of crushed precious stones. From this assortment the assistant would produce a not overly clean sleeping sponge. A sleeping sponge was a very rare thing, and its use was
something to be whispered about in awed tones. The doctors knew little about the strange power it contained and were loath to make use of it. It was a plain sponge, nevertheless, which had been dipped at some previous time in a mixture of the juices of opium, hyoscyamus, mandragora, and conium and then dried in the sun.

The assistant, an overworked and usually not very clean individual who drew the teeth and administered clysters and such routine work, would dip the sponge in warm water. The doctor would then take it and place it over the mouth and nostrils of the sufferer. Sometimes, of course, nothing happened, but sometimes the patient would begin to breathe stertorously, indicating that he had fallen asleep and would continue unconscious while the doctor went to work with knife and searing iron and splints.

This secret was lost some time thereafter. The mists closed in again. Even as late as the nineteenth century people would suffer excruciating pain during operations, with no more aid to endurance than a glass of brandy or rum. But write it down to the credit of the thirteenth century that the mercy of anesthesia was known then, although not fully understood and most sparingly used.

A creative urge was felt in all the arts. Men composed, painted, wrote, with an almost feverish new interest. The beauty of the magnificent churches was reflected in the poems, the romances, the pictures, the Latin hymns, which this inspired century produced. It was then that
Dies Irae
and the
Stabat Mater
were first sung; that the songs of the Crusades, polyphonic and sonorous, grew out of the marching feet turned eastward. It was a poor parish church indeed which did not have a biblical painting, usually depicting the Second Coming, on its walls. An inn lacking gay decorations was counted no better than a spittlehouse. The meanest home had something to distinguish it, a boldness of line, a carved sign, a vigorous splash of paint.

The mind of man, awakening from its long torpor, had turned with vigorous energy to progress. He was no longer content with what he had known-before, the narrow limits and interests of the life he had been forced to live. He was questing in all directions, thinking, asking, demanding, inventing. New weapons were being produced,
new types of ships built Clocks were put up in church towers, at Westminster, Canterbury, St. Albans, to the great wonderment of Englishmen, and one Robertas Anglicus was experimenting with a mechanical clock which would be operated with weights.

Most remarkable of all, the inspired English friar, Roger Bacon, was beginning to speak of curious things, of glasses which would make it possible to see clearly across the Channel from Dover to France, of vehicles which would soar unsupported through the air, of a powder of the most secret kind, made up largely of saltpeter, which would explode with a flash of fire like lightning in the sky and a roar to equal the terror of winds at the end of the world.

T
HE
WEAK
EFFORTS
Henry had made to regain the lost provinces across the Channel had disturbed the even tenor of life in England scarcely at all. The long struggle with the barons took its toll in lives, in financial loss, in trade disturbances, but again the effects on the common people were relatively light. The country was prosperous in the main through the years of this long reign. The soil seemed to have grown in fertility. The painstaking Cistercians raised the standards of husbandry, and the value of English wool soared. The country became prosperous in a new sense, the cities grew larger, the villages around the castles teemed with active life.

In spite of poor government and the strife it produced, England was merrie.

There was a law that any yeoman with less than one hundred pence a year in land was obligated to have a bow and to practice regularly. This was no hardship, for one of the great pleasures of the common man was shooting at the butts. During the hours of leisure, sounds of loud laughter and approving cries of “Shorten!” would be heard from the archery grounds. The thud of arrows striking the clout squarely told the story of the skill English hands were developing with the mighty longbow, They came to the targets
eagerly, these heavy-set men of the land, with their bows as tall as they were themselves, their arrows a yard long. They were not content to shoot at the marks which men of other countries used. They took willow wands instead, and rose garlands, and a very special target called a popinjay, an artificial parrot or pheasant. Every village produced its champions, and it was no wonder that in later days it was easy to recruit the expert bowmen who won the great victories of the Hundred Years’ War.

Boys, always eager to ape their elders, had bows of their own and would cover up their lack of skill by capering and singing:

Younger children amused themselves on teeter-totters, although the name used then was merrytotter. They often played a game called Nine Men’s Morris, which required a whole field.

The English, in fact, were great lovers of sport. In winter they fastened the bones of animals to their feet and skated on frozen ponds and streams. Those who could afford such luxuries had a kind of skate with a metal edge, but they did not call them skates; they were termed scrick-shoes. A very popular game was known as bandy-ball, in which a crooked stick was used to clout a ball about a field. This form of amusement sired two quite different types of game,
goff
and shinny. Men bowled on the green and also played kayles or closh, a form of ninepins. They differed from most people in preferring games in which they could participate. Whole villages would turn to kick a ball or frisk around a Maypole.

At the same time they were avid followers of less healthy forms of sport in which they played the part of spectators—bear-baiting, bull-running, badger-baiting, and cockfighting.

The recreations of the nobility were somewhat more dignified. The tournament was the great amusement of the age and it drew all classes of people. Between joustings the brave knights kept the eye in for the next splintering of lances by practicing at the quintain, a special type of target Sometimes live quintains were used, men who covered themselves with a shield and defied the champions to bowl them over.

Hunting and hawking engaged most of the waking time of the nobility.
Ladies of gentle blood took an active interest in both. Their participation sometimes took the form of sitting in an enclosure and shooting arrows at game driven past them. This, needless to state, did not suffice for the bolder ones who preferred to go into the field with their own harehounds. Ladies became expert hawkers and were seldom seen in the saddle without a hooded marlyon on wrist. The love of hawking, in fact, was universal. The poor man with his tercel and the yeoman with his goshawk (a certain type of hawk was designated for each class) were seen as often as the earl with his falcon and the knight with his sacret.

The indoor amusements of the nobility included chess and an early form of backgammon. After supper in the great hall the minstrels would fill the hours with their ballades while the well-stuffed guests drank their wine. Minstrels were often well paid for their efforts, it being a not uncommon thing for the host to reward a particularly good performance with a gift of the cloak he was wearing or a drinking cup from the table.

When people are happy they turn to music, and so it is not surprising that during the years of this remarkable century there was a great revival of minstrelsy. The bardy-coats (so called because of the shortened garments they wore) went up and down the land, singing the songs of Assanduan and Hastings, the ballades of Richard the Lion-Heart and Henry and the Fair Rosamonde. They were a race apart, these itinerant musicians, capable of playing on harp or vielle (which the common people called a fydel, or fiddle), with the use of an arched bow which produced a long-drawn-out accompaniment called a “drone bass.” Sometimes the vielle was operated by the turning of a handle, which made it the distant ancestor of the modern hurdy-gurdy. Sometimes the bardy-coats would lay their instruments aside and tell losel tales instead; and then the villagers would roar with laughter and slap their muscular thighs over anecdotes of scolds and cuckolds and fustian adventure. Sometimes a party of entertainers would roam up and down the land, consisting of jugglers and tumblers as well as minstrels, and even girls who danced on the shoulders of the gleemen.

The better class of minstrel found employment in the household
of a nobleman. He then wore a distinctive dress, a red jacket over a parti-colored tunic and a yellow hood, the costume later used by court jesters. Even these musicians of a relatively lordly stature were under the ban of the Church, however, being forbidden the sacraments; which placed them in the company of excommunicates, sorcerers, prostitutes, and epileptics.

Music up to this time had been largely liturgical, the one-voiced Gregorian plain song which had the sanction of the Church. Now folk music, which went back some centuries and was polyphonic, began to come into its own at last In England folk singing in the form of the
motet
can be traced back centuries before the Conquest. The first records of actual music for more than one voice are found, therefore, in the island kingdom. The
motet
sounds very confusing to the modern ear. It has three parts, each with a different number of syllables to the measure and each with different words. There can be no doubt that dramatic intensity was achieved by this method, and by the end of the thirteenth century it had come into steady use, even in the secular church. The center had shifted from England to France, where in the cathedral later known as Notre Dame there was a quite fabulous musical school under the direction of the great Magister Perotinus Magnus.