Chamber (which was no other than the _consilium ordinarium_ under a
different name), these offences were cognizable in it, without the
regular forms of the common law.[473]

"From the reign of Edward IV. we do not trace any further opposition to
the authority either of the chancery or of the council. These courts had
become engrafted on the constitution; and if they excited fear or
jealousy, there was no one who dared to complain. Yet additional
parliamentary sanction was not considered as unnecessary by Henry VII.,
and in the third year of his reign an act was passed for giving the
Court of Star Chamber, which had now acquired its determinate name,
further authority to punish divers misdemeanours." (Palgrave, p. 97.)

It is really more than we can grant that the jurisdiction of the
_consilium ordinarium_ had been engrafted on the constitution, when the
statute-book was full of laws to restrain, if not to abrogate it. The
acts already mentioned, in the reign of Henry VI., by granting a
temporary and limited jurisdiction to the council, demonstrate that its
general exercise was not acknowledged by parliament. We can only say
that it may have continued without remonstrance in the reign of Edward
IV. I have observed in the text that the Rolls of Parliament under
Edward IV. contain no complaints of grievances. But it is not quite
manifest that the council did exercise in that reign as much
jurisdiction as it had once done. Lord Hale tells us that "this
jurisdiction was gradually brought into great disuse, though there
remain some straggling footsteps of their proceedings till near 3 Hen.
VII." (Hist. of Lords' Jurisdiction, p. 38.) And the famous statute in
that year, which erected a new court, sometimes improperly called the
Court of Star Chamber, seems to have been prompted by a desire to
restore, in a new and more legal form, a jurisdiction which was become
almost obsolete, and, being in contradiction to acts of parliament,
could not well be rendered effective without one.[474]

We cannot but discover, throughout the learned and luminous Essay on
the Authority of the King's Council, a strong tendency to represent its
exercise as both constitutional and salutary. The former epithet cannot,
I think, be possibly applicable in the face of statute law; for what
else determines our constitution? But it is a problem with some, whether
the powers actually exerted by this anomalous court, admitting them to
have been, at least latterly, in contravention of many statutes, may not
have been rendered necessary by the disorderly condition of society and
the comparative impotence of the common law. This cannot easily be
solved with the defective knowledge that we possess. Sometimes, no
doubt, the "might on one side, and unmight on the other," as the answer
to a petition forcibly expresses it, afforded a justification which,
practically at least, the commons themselves were content to allow. But
were these exceptional instances so frequent as not to leave a much
greater number wherein the legal remedy by suit before the king's
justices of assise might have been perfectly effectual? For we are not
concerned with the old county-courts, which were perhaps tumultuary and
partial enough, but with the regular administration, civil and criminal,
before the king's justices of oyer and terminer and of gaol delivery.
Had not they, generally speaking, in the reign of Edward III. and his
successors, such means of enforcing the execution of law as left no
sufficient pretext for recurring to an arbitrary tribunal? Liberty, we
should remember, may require the sacrifice of some degree of security
against private wrong, which a despotic government, with an unlimited
power of restraint, can alone supply. If no one were permitted to travel
on the high road without a licence, or, as now so usual, without a
passport, if no one could keep arms without a registry, if every one
might be indefinitely detained on suspicion, the evil doers of society
would be materially impeded, but at the expense, to a certain degree, of
every man's freedom and enjoyment. Freedom being but a means to the
greatest good, times might arise when it must yield to the security of
still higher blessings; but the immediate question is, whether such were
the state of society in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Now,
that it was lawless and insecure, comparatively with our own times or
the times of our fathers, is hardly to be disputed. But if it required
that arbitrary government which the king's council were anxious to
maintain, the representatives of the commons in parliament, knights and
burgesses, not above the law, and much interested in the conservation of
property, must have complained very unreasonably for more than a hundred
years. They were apparently as well able to judge as our writers can be;
and if they reckoned a trial by jury at _nisi prius_ more likely, on the
whole, to insure a just adjudication of a civil suit, than one before
the great officers of state and other constituent members of the
ordinary council, it does not seem clear to me that we have a right to
assert the contrary. This mode of trial by jury, as has been seen in
another place, had acquired, by the beginning of the fifteenth century,
its present form; and considering the great authority of the judges of
assise, it may not, probably, have given very frequent occasion for
complaint of partiality or corrupt influence.

NOTE XII. Page 156.

The learned author of the Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the Royal
Prerogative in England has founded his historical theory on the
confusion which he supposes to have grown up between the ideal king of
the constitution and the personal king on the throne. By the former he
means the personification of abstract principles, sovereign power, and
absolute justice, which the law attributes to the _genus_ king, but
which flattery or other motives have transferred to the possessor of the
crown for the time being, and have thus changed the Teutonic _cyning_,
the first man of the commonwealth, the man of the highest weregild, the
man who was so much responsible that he might be sued for damages in his
own courts or deposed for misgovernment, into the sole irresponsible
person of indefeasible prerogatives, of attributes almost divine, whom
Bracton and a long series of subsequent lawyers raised up to a height
far beyond the theory of our early constitution.

This is supported with great acuteness and learning; nor is it possible
to deny that the king of England, as the law-books represent him, is
considerably different from what we generally conceive an ancient
German chieftain to have been. Yet I doubt whether Mr. Allen has not
laid too much stress on this, and given to the fictions of law a greater
influence than they possessed in those times to which his inquiry
relates; and whether, also, what he calls the monarchical theory was so
much derived from foreign sources as he apprehends. We have no occasion
to seek, in the systems of civilians or the dogmas of churchmen, what
arose from a deep-seated principle of human nature. A king is a person;
to persons alone we attach the attributes of power and wisdom; on
persons we bestow our affection or our ill-will. An abstraction, a
politic idea of royalty, is convenient for lawyers; it suits the
speculative reasoner, but it never can become so familiar to a people,
especially one too rude to have listened to such reasoners, as the
simple image of the king, the one man whom we are to love and to fear.
The other idea is a sort of monarchical pantheism, of which the
vanishing point is a republic. And to this the prevalent theory, that
kings are to reign but not to govern, cannot but lead. It is a
plausible, and in the main, perhaps, for the times we have reached, a
necessary theory; but it renders monarchy ultimately scarcely possible.
And it was neither the sentiment of the Anglo-Saxons, nor of the Norman
baronage; the feudal relation was essentially and exclusively personal;
and if we had not enough, in a more universal feeling of human nature,
to account for loyalty, we could not mistake its inevitable connexion
with the fealty and homage of the vassal. The influence of Roman notions
was not inconsiderable upon the continent; but they never prevailed very
much here; and though, after the close alliance between the church and
state established by the Reformation, the whole weight of the former was
thrown into the scale of the crown, the mediæval clergy, as I have
observed in the text, were anything rather than upholders of despotic
power.

It may be very true that, by considering the monarchy as a merely
political institution, the scheme of prudent men to avoid confusion, and
confer the _minimum_ of personal authority on the reigning prince, the
principle of his irresponsibility seems to be better maintained. But the
question to which we are turning our eyes is not a political one; it
relates to the positive law and positive sentiments of the English
nation in the mediæval period. And here I cannot put a few necessary
fictions grown up in the courts, such as, the king never dies, the king
can do no wrong, the king is everywhere, against the tenor of our
constitutional language, which implies an actual and active personality.
Mr. Allen acknowledges that the act against the Despensers under Edward
II., and re-confirmed after its repeal, for promulgating the doctrine
that allegiance had more regard to the crown than to the person of the
king, "seems to establish, as the deliberate opinion of the legislature,
that allegiance is due to the person of the king generally, and not
merely to his crown or politic capacity, so as to be released and
destroyed by his misgovernment of the kingdom" (p. 14); which, he adds,
is not easily reconcilable with the deposition of Richard II. But that
was accomplished by force, with whatever formalities it may have been
thought expedient to surround it.

We cannot, however, infer from the declaration of the legislature, that
allegiance is due to the king's person and not to his politic capacity,
any such consequence as that it is not, in any possible case, to be
released by his misgovernment. This was surely not in the spirit of any
parliament under Edward II. or Edward III.; and it is precisely because
allegiance is due to the person, that, upon either feudal or natural
principles, it might be cancelled by personal misconduct. A contrary
language was undoubtedly held under the Stuarts; but it was not that of
the mediæval period.

The tenet of our law, that all the soil belongs theoretically to the
king, is undoubtedly an enormous fiction, and very repugnant to the
barbaric theory preserved by the Saxons, that all unappropriated land
belonged to the folk, and was unalienable without its consent.[475] It
was, however, but an extension of the feudal tenure to the whole
kingdom, and rested on the personality of feudal homage. William
established it more by his power than by any theory of lawyers; though
doubtless his successors often found lawyers as ready to shape the acts
of power into a theory as if they had originally projected them. And
thus grew up the high schemes of prerogative, which, for many centuries,
were in conflict with those of liberty. We are not able, nevertheless,
to define the constitutional authority of the Saxon kings; it was not
legislative, nor was that of William and his successors ever such; it
was not exclusive of redress for private wrong, nor was this ever the
theory of English law, though the method of remedy might not be
sufficiently effective; yet it had certainly grown before the Conquest,
with no help from Roman notions, to something very unlike that of the
German kings in Tacitus.

NOTE XIII. Page 172.

The reduction of the free ceorls into villenage, especially if as
general as is usually assumed, is one of the most remarkable innovations
during the Anglo-Norman period; and one which, as far as our published
records extend, we cannot wholly explain. Observations have been made on
it by Mr. Wright, in the Archæologia (vol. xxx. p. 225). After adverting
to the oppression of the peasants in Normandy, which produced several
rebellions, he proceeds thus:--"These feelings of hatred and contempt
for the peasantry were brought into our island by the Norman barons in
the latter half of the eleventh century. The Saxon laws and customs
continued; but the Normans acted as the Franks had done towards the
Roman coloni; they enforced with harshness the laws which were in their
own favour, and gradually threw aside, or broke through, those which
were in favour of the miserable serf."

In the Laws of Henry I. we find the weregild of the twyhinder, or
villein, set at 200 shillings in Wessex, "quæ caput regni est et legum"
(c. 70). But this expression argues an Anglo-Saxon source; and, in fact,
so much in that treatise seems to be copied, without regard to the
change of times, from old authorities, mixed up with provisions of a
feudal or Norman character, that we hardly know how to distinguish what
belongs to each period. It is far from improbable that villenage, in the
sense the word afterwards bore, that is, an absolutely servile tenure of
lands, not only without legal rights over them, but with an incapacity
of acquiring either immovable or movable property against the lord, may
have made considerable strides before the reign of Henry II.[476] But
unless light should be thrown on its history by the publication of more
records, it seems almost impossible to determine the introduction of
predial villenage more precisely than to say it does not appear in the
laws of England at the Conquest, and it does so in the time of Glanvil.
Mr. Wright's Memoir in the Archæologia, above quoted, contains some
interesting matter; but he has too much confounded the _theow_, or
Anglo-Saxon slave, with the _ceorl_; not even mentioning the latter,
though it is indisputable that _villanus_ is the equivalent of _ceorl_,
and _servus_ of _theow_.

But I suspect that we go a great deal too far in setting down the
descendants of these ceorls, that is, the whole Anglo-Saxon population
except thanes and burgesses, as almost universally to be counted such
villeins as we read of in our law-books, or in concluding that the
cultivators of the land, even in the thirteenth century, were wholly, or
at least generally, servile. It is not only evident that small
freeholders were always numerous, but we are, perhaps, greatly deceived
in fancying that the occupiers of villein tenements were usually
villeins. _Terre-tenants en villenage_ and tenants _par copie_, who were
undoubtedly free, appear in the early Year-books, and we know not why
they may not always have existed.[477] This, however, is a subject which
I am not sufficiently conversant with records to explore; it deserves
the attention of those well-informed and diligent antiquaries whom we
possess. Meantime it is to be observed that the lands occupied by
_villani_ or _bordarii_, according to the Domesday survey, were much
more extensive than the copyholds of the present day; and making every
allowance for enfranchisements, we can hardly believe that all these
lands, being, in fact, by far the greater part of the soil, were the
_villenagia_ of Glanvil's and Bracton's age. It would be interesting to
ascertain at what time the latter were distinguished from _libera
tenementa_; at what time, that is, the distinction of territorial
servitude, independent as it was of the personal state of the occupant,
was established in England.

NOTE XIV. Page 173.

This identity of condition between the villein regardant and in gross
appears to have been, even lately, called in question, and some adhere
to the theory which supposes an inferiority in the latter. The following
considerations will prove that I have not been mistaken in rejecting
it:--

I. It will not be contended that the words "regardant" and "in gross"
indicate of themselves any specific difference between the two, or can
mean anything but the title by which the villein was held; prescriptive
and territorial in one case, absolute in the other. For the proof,
therefore, of any such difference we require some ancient authority,
which has not been given. II. The villein regardant might be severed
from the manor, with or without land, and would then become a villein in
gross. If he was sold as a domestic serf, he might, perhaps, be
practically in a lower condition than before, but his legal state was
the same. If he was aliened with lands, parcel of the manor, as in the
case of its descent to coparceners who made partition, he would no
longer be regardant, because that implied a prescriptive dependence on
the lord, but would occupy the same tenements and be in exactly the same
position as before. "Villein in gross," says Littleton, "is where a man
is seised of a manor whereunto a villein is regardant, and granteth the
same villein by deed to another; then he is a villein in gross, and not
regardant." (Sect. 181.) III. The servitude of all villeins was so
complete that we cannot conceive degrees in it. No one could purchase
lands or possess goods of his own; we do not find that any one, being
strictly a villein, held by certain services; "he must have regard,"
says Coke, "to that which is commanded unto him; or, in the words of
Bracton, 'a quo præstandum servitium incertum et indeterminatum, ubi
scire non poterit vespere quod servitium fieri debet mane.'" (Co. Lit.
120, b.) How could a villein in gross be lower than this? It is true
that the villein had one inestimable advantage over the American negro,
that he was a freeman, except relatively to his lord; possibly he might
be better protected against personal injury; but in his incapacity of
acquiring secure property, or of refusing labour, he was just on the
same footing. It may be conjectured that some villeins in gross were
descended from the _servi_, of whom we find 25,000 enumerated in
Domesday. Littleton says, "If a man and his ancestors, whose heir he is,
have been seised of a villein and of his ancestors, as of villeins in
gross, time out of memory of man, these are villeins in gross." (Sect.
182.)

It has been often asserted that villeins in gross seem not to have been
a numerous class, and it might not be easy to adduce distinct instances
of them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though we should
scarcely infer, from the pains Littleton takes to describe them, that
none were left in his time. But some may be found in an earlier age. In
the ninth of John, William sued Ralph the priest for granting away lands
which he held to Canford priory. Ralph pleaded that they were his
freehold. William replied that he held them in villenage, and that he
(the plaintiff) had sold one of Ralph's sisters for four shillings.
(Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. iii. p. 860, 4to. edition.) And Mr. Wright
has found in Madox's Formulare Anglicanum not less than five instances
of villeins sold with their family and chattels, but without land.
(Archæologia, xxx. 228.) Even where they were sold along with land,
unless it were a manor, they would, as has been observed before, have
been villeins in gross. I have, however, been informed that in
valuations under escheats in the old records a separate value is never
put upon villeins; their alienation without the land was apparently not
contemplated. Few cases concerning villeins in gross, it has been said,
occur in the Year-books; but villenage of any kind does not furnish a
great many; and in several I do not perceive, in consulting the report,
that the party can be shown to have been regardant. One reason why
villeins in gross should have become less and less numerous was that
they could, for the most part, only be claimed by showing a written
grant, or by prescription through descent; so that, if the title-deed
were lost, or the descent unproved, the villein became free.

Manumissions were often, no doubt, gratuitous; in some cases the villein
seems to have purchased his freedom. For though in strictness, as
Glanvil tells us, he could not "libertatem suam suis denariis quærere,"
inasmuch as all he possessed already belonged to the lord, it would have
been thought a meanness to insist on so extreme a right. In order,
however, to make the deed more secure, it was usual to insert the name
of a third person as paying the consideration-money for the
enfranchisement. (Archæologia, xxx. 228.)

It appears not by any means improbable that regular money payments, or
other fixed liabilities, were often substituted instead of uncertain
services for the benefit of the lord as well as the tenant. And when
these had lasted a considerable time in any manor, the villenage of the
latter, without any manumission, would have expired by desuetude. But,
perhaps, an entry of his tenure on the court-roll, with a copy given to
himself, would operate of itself, in construction of law, as a
manumission. This I do not pretend to determine.

NOTE XV. Page 179.

The public history of Europe in the middle ages inadequately represents
the popular sentiment, or only when it is expressed too loudly to escape
the regard of writers intent sometimes on less important subjects. But
when we descend below the surface, a sullen murmur of discontent meets
the ear, and we perceive that mankind was not more insensible to wrongs
and sufferings than at present. Besides the various outbreakings of the
people in several counties, and their complaints in parliament, after
the commons obtained a representation, we gain a conclusive insight into
the spirit of the times by their popular poetry. Two very interesting
collections of this kind have been lately published by the Camden
Society, through the diligence of Mr. Thomas Wright; one, the Poems
attributed to Walter Mapes; the other, the Political Songs of England,
from John to Edward II.

Mapes lived under Henry II., and has long been known as the reputed
author of humorous Latin verses; but it seems much more probable, that
the far greater part of the collection lately printed is not from his
hand. They may pass, not for the production of a single person, but
rather of a class, during many years, or, in general words, a century,
ending with the death of Henry III. in 1272. Many of them are
professedly written by an imaginary Golias.

"They are not the expressions of hostility of one man against an order
of monks, but of the indignant patriotism of a considerable portion of
the English nation against the encroachments of civil and ecclesiastical
tyranny." (Introduction to Poems ascribed to Walter Mapes, p. 21.) The
poems in this collection reflect almost entirely on the pope and the
higher clergy. They are all in rhyming Latin, and chiefly, though with
exceptions, in the loose trochaic metre called Leonine. The authors,
therefore, must have been clerks, actuated by the spirit which, in a
church of great inequality in its endowments, and with a very numerous
body of poor clergy, is apt to gain strength, but certainly, as
ecclesiastical history bears witness, not one of mere envious malignity
towards the prelates and the court of Rome. These deserved nothing
better, in the thirteenth century, than biting satire and indignant
reproof, and the poets were willing enough to bestow both.

But this popular poetry of the middle ages did not confine itself to the
church. In the collection entitled 'Political Songs' we have some
reflecting on Henry III., some on the general administration. The famous
song on the battle of Lewes in 1264 is the earliest in English; but in
the reign of Edward I. several occur in that language. Others are in
French or in Latin; one complaining of the taxes is in an odd mixture of
these two languages; which, indeed, is not without other examples in
mediæval poetry. These Latin songs could not, of course, have been
generally understood. But what the priests sung in Latin, they said in
English; the lower clergy fanned the flame, and gave utterance to what
others felt. It may, perhaps, be remarked, as a proof of general
sympathy with the democratic spirit which was then fermenting, that we
have a song of exultation on the great defeat which Philip IV. had just
sustained at Courtrai, in 1302, by the burgesses of the Flemish cities,
on whose liberties he had attempted to trample (p. 187). It is true that
Edward I. was on ill terms with France, but the political interests of
the king would not, perhaps, have dictated the popular ballad.

It was an idle exaggeration in him who said that, if he could make the
ballads of a people, any one might make their laws. Ballads, like the
press, and especially that portion of the press which bears most analogy
to them, generally speaking, give vent to a spirit which has been at
work before. But they had, no doubt, an influence in rendering more
determinate, as well as more active, that resentment of wrong, that
indignation at triumphant oppression, that belief in the vices of the
great, which, too often for social peace and their own happiness, are
cherished by the poor. In comparison, indeed, with the efficacy of the
modern press, the power, of ballads is trifling. Their lively
sprightliness, the humorous tone of their satire, even their metrical
form, sheathe the sting; and it is only in times when political
bitterness is at its height that any considerable influence can be
attached to them, and then it becomes undistinguishable from more
energetic motives. Those which we read in the collection above mentioned
appear to me rather the signs of popular discontent than greatly
calculated to enhance it. In that sense they are very interesting, and
we cannot but desire to see the promised continuation to the end of
Richard II.'s reign.[478] They are said to have become afterwards less
frequent, though the wars of the Roses were likely to bring them,
forward.

Some of the political songs are written in France, though relating to
our kings John and Henry III. Deducting these, we have two in Latin for
the former reign; seven in Latin, three in French (or what the editor
calls Anglo-Norman, which is really the same thing), one in a mixture of
the two, and one in English, for the reign of Henry III. In the reigns
of Edward I. and Edward II. we have eight in Latin, three in French,
nine in English, and four in mixed languages; a style employed probably
for amusement. It must be observed that a large proportion of these
songs contain panegyric and exultation on victory rather than satire;
and that of the satire much is general, and much falls on the church; so
that the animadversions on the king and the nobility are not very
frequent, though with considerable boldness; but this is more shown in
the Latin than the English poems.

FOOTNOTES:

[460] This hypothetical clause is somewhat remarkable. Grand serjeanty
is of course included by parity under military service. But did any hold
of the king in socage, except on his demesne lands? There might be some
by petty serjeanty. Yet the committee, as we have just seen, absolutely
exclude these from any share in the great councils of the Conqueror and
his immediate descendants.

[461] Mr. Spence has ingeniously conjectured, observing that in some
passages of Domesday (he quotes two, but I only find one) the barons who
held more than six manors paid their relief directly to the king, while
those who had six or less paid theirs to the sheriff (Yorkshire, 298,
b), that "this may tend to solve the disputed question as to what
constituted one of the greater barons mentioned in the Magna Charta of
John and other early Norman documents; for, by analogy to the mode in
which the relief was paid, the greater barons were summoned by
particular writs, the rest by one general summons through the sheriff."
History of Equitable Jurisdiction, p. 40.

[462] See quotation from Spence's Equitable Jurisdiction, a little
above. The barony of Berkeley was granted in 1 Ric. I., to be holden by
the service of five knights, which was afterwards reduced to three.
Nicolas's Report of Claim to Barony of L'Isle, Appendix, p. 318.

[463] A charter of Henry I., published in the new edition of Rymer (i.
p. 12), fully confirms what is here said. Sciatis quod concedo et
præcipio, ut à modo comitatus mei et hundreda in illis locis et iisdem
terminis sedeant, sicut sederunt in tempore regis Edwardi, et non
aliter. Ego enim, quando voluero, faciam ea satis summoneri propter mea
dominica necessaria ad voluntatem meam. Et si modo exurgat placitum de
divisione terrarum, si est inter barones meos dominicos, tractetur
placitum in curea mea. Et si est inter vavassores duorum dominorum,
tractetur in comitatu. Et hoc duello fiat, nisi in eis remanserit. Et
volo et præcipio, ut omnes de comitatu eant ad comitatus et hundreda,
sicut fecerunt in tempore regis Edwardi. But it is also easily proved
from the Leges Henrici Primi.

[464] See the ensuing part of this note.

[465] This pedigree is elaborately, and with pious care, traced by Mr.
Stapleton, in his excellent introduction to the old chronicle of London,
already quoted. The name Alwyn appears rather Saxon than Norman, so that
we may presume the first mayor to have been of English descent; but
whether he were a merchant, or a landholder living in the city, must be
undecided.

[466] Hist. de Paris, vol. iii. p. 231.

[467] John of Troyes says, in 1467, that from sixty to eighty thousand
men appeared in arms. Dulaure (Hist. de Paris, vol. iii. p. 505) says
this gives 120,000 for the whole population; but it gives double, which
is incredible. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the houses
were still cottages: only four streets were paved; they were very narrow
and dirty, and often inundated by the Seine. Ib. p. 198.

[468] This doubt was soon afterwards changed into a proposition,
strenuously maintained by the supposed compiler of these Reports, lord
Redesdale, on the claim to the barony of L'Isle in 1829. The ancestor
had been called by writ to several parliaments of Edw. III.; and having
only a daughter, the negative argument from the omission of his
posterity is of little value; for though the husbands of heiresses were
frequently summoned, this does not seem to have been an universal
practice. It was held by lord Redesdale, that, at least until the
statute of 5 Richard II. c. 4, no hereditary or even personal right to
the peerage was created by the writ of summons. The house of lords
rejected the claim, though the language of their resolution is not
conclusive as to the principle. The opinion of lord R. has been ably
impugned by Sir Harris Nicolas, in his Report of the L'Isle Peerage,
1829.

[469] The Lords' committee (Second Report, p. 436) endeavour to elude
the force of this authority; but it manifestly appears that the Nevilles
were preferred to the Fanes for the particular barony in question;
though some satisfaction was made to the claimant of the latter family
by calling her to a different peerage.

[470] The continuance of barony by tenure has been controverted by Sir
Harris Nicolas, in some remarks on such a claim preferred by the present
earl Fitzharding while yet a commoner, in virtue of the possession of
Berkeley castle, published as an Appendix to his Report of the L'Isle
Peerage. In the particular case there seem to have been several
difficulties, independently of the great one, that, in the reign of
Charles II., barony by tenure had been finally condemned. But there is
surely a great general difficulty on the opposite side, in the
hypothesis that, while it is acknowledged that there were, in the reigns
of Edward I. and Edward II., certain known persons holding by barony and
called peers of the realm, it could have been agreeable to the feudal or
to the English constitution that the king, by refusing to the posterity
of such barons a writ of summons to parliament, might deprive them of
their nobility, and reduce them for ever to the rank of commoners.

[471] It has been doubted, notwithstanding the authority of Spelman, and
some earlier but rather precarious testimony, whether the chancellor
before the Conquest was any more than a scribe or secretary. Palgrave,
in the Quarterly Review, xxxiv. 291. The Anglo-Saxon charters, as far as
I have observed, never mention him as a witness; which seems a very
strong circumstance. Ingulfus, indeed, has given a pompous account of
chancellor Turketul; and, if the history ascribed to Ingulfus be
genuine, the office must have been of high dignity. Lord Campbell
assumes this in his Lives of the Chancellors.

[472] The words of the petition and answer are the following:--

"Item, que nul franc homme ne soit mys a respondre de son franc
tenement, ne de riens qui touche vie et membre, fyns ou redemptions, par
apposailles devant le conseil notre seigneur le roi, ne devant ses
ministres queconques, sinoun par proces de ley de ces en arere use."

"Il plest a notre seigneur le roi que les leies de son roialme soient
tenuz et gardez en lour force, et que nul homme soit tenu a respondre de
son fraunk tenement, sinoun par processe de ley: mes de chose que touche
vie ou membre, contemptz ou excesse, soit fait come ad este use ces en
arere." Rot. Par. ii. 228.

It is not easy to perceive what was reserved by the words "chose que
touche vie ou membre;" for the council never determined these. Possibly
it regarded accusations of treason or felony, which they might entertain
as an inquest, though they would ultimately be tried by a jury.
Contempts are easily understood; and by excesses were meant riots and
seditions. These political offences, which could not be always safely
tried in a lower court, it was the constant intention of the government
to reserve for the council.

[473] See Note in p. 145, for the statute 31 H. VI. c. 2.

[474] See Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 49. (1842.)

[475] It has been mentioned in a former note, on Mr. Allen's authority,
that the folcland had acquired the appellation _terra regis_ before the
Conquest.

[476] A presumptive proof of this may be drawn from a chapter in the
Laws of Henry I. c. 81, where the penalty payable by a villein for
certain petty offences is set at thirty pence; that of a _cotset_ at
fifteen; and of a theow at six. The passage is extremely obscure; and
this proportion of the three classes of men is almost the only part that
appears evident. The cotset, who is often mentioned in Domesday, may
thus have been an inferior villein, nearly similar to what Glanvil and
later law-books call such.

[477] The following passage in the Chronicle of Brakelond does not
mention any manumission of the ceorl on whom abbot Samson conferred a
manor:--Unum solum manerium carta sua confirmavit cuidam Anglico
natione, _glebæ adscripto_, de cujus fidelitate plenius confidebat quia
bonus agricola erat, et quia nesciebat loqui Gallicè. p. 24.

[478] Mr. Wright has given a few specimens in Essays on the Literature
and Popular Superstitions of England in the Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 257.
In fact we may reckon Piers Plowman an instance of popular satire,
though far superior to the rest.

CHAPTER IX.[479]

ON THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

PART I.

     Introduction--Decline of Literature in the latter Period of the Roman
     Empire--Its Causes--Corruption of the Latin Language--Means by which
     it was effected--Formation of new Languages--General Ignorance of the
     Dark Ages--Scarcity of Books--Causes that prevented the total
     Extinction of Learning--Prevalence of Superstition and Fanaticism--
     General Corruption of Religion--Monasteries--their Effects--
     Pilgrimages--Love of Field Sports--State of Agriculture--of Internal
     and Foreign Trade down to the End of the Eleventh Century--Improvement
     of Europe dated from that Age.

It has been the object of every preceding chapter of this work, either
to trace the civil revolutions of states during the period of the middle
ages, or to investigate, with rather more minute attention, their
political institutions. There remains a large tract to be explored, if
we would complete the circle of historical information, and give to our
knowledge that copiousness and clear perception which arise from
comprehending a subject under numerous relations. The philosophy of
history embraces far more than the wars and treaties, the factions and
cabals of common political narration; it extends to whatever illustrates
the character of the human species in a particular period, to their
reasonings and sentiments, their arts and industry. Nor is this
comprehensive survey merely interesting to the speculative philosopher;
without it the statesman would form very erroneous estimates of events,
and find himself constantly misled in any analogical application of them
to present circumstances. Nor is it an uncommon source of error to
neglect the general signs of the times, and to deduce a prognostic from
some partial coincidence with past events, where a more enlarged
comparison of all the facts that ought to enter into the combination
would destroy the whole parallel. The philosophical student, however,
will not follow the antiquary into his minute details; and though it is
hard to say what may not supply matter for a reflecting mind, there is
always some danger of losing sight of grand objects in historical
disquisition, by too laborious a research into trifles. I may possibly
be thought to furnish, in some instances, an example of the error I
condemn. But in the choice and disposition of topics to which the
present chapter relates, some have been omitted oh account of their
comparative insignificance, and others on account of their want of
connexion with the leading subject. Even of those treated I can only
undertake to give a transient view; and must bespeak the reader's
candour to remember that passages which, separately taken, may often
appear superficial, are but parts of the context of a single chapter, as
the chapter itself is of an entire work.

The Middle Ages, according to the division I have adopted, comprise
about one thousand years, from the invasion of France by Clovis to that
of Naples by Charles VIII. This period, considered as to the state of
society, has been esteemed dark through ignorance, and barbarous through
poverty and want of refinement. And although this character is much less
applicable to the last two centuries of the period than to those which
preceded its commencement, yet we cannot expect to feel, in respect of
ages at best imperfectly civilized and slowly progressive, that interest
which attends a more perfect development of human capacities, and more
brilliant advances in improvement. The first moiety indeed of these ten
ages is almost absolutely barren, and presents little but a catalogue of
evils. The subversion of the Roman empire, and devastation of its
provinces, by barbarous nations, either immediately preceded, or were
coincident with the commencement of the middle period. We begin in
darkness and calamity; and though the shadows grow fainter as we
advance, yet we are to break off our pursuit as the morning breathes
upon us, and the twilight reddens into the lustre of day.

[Sidenote: Decline of learning in Roman empire.]

No circumstance is so prominent on the first survey of society during
the earlier centuries of this period as the depth of ignorance in which
it was immersed; and as from this, more than any single cause, the moral
and social evils which those ages experienced appear to have been
derived and perpetuated, it deserves to occupy the first place in the
arrangement of our present subject. We must not altogether ascribe the
ruin of literature to the barbarian destroyers of the Roman empire. So
gradual, and, apparently, so irretrievable a decay had long before
spread over all liberal studies, that it is impossible to pronounce
whether they would not have been almost equally extinguished if the
august throne of the Cæsars had been left to moulder by its intrinsic
weakness. Under the paternal sovereignty of Marcus Aurelius the
approaching declension of learning might be scarcely perceptible to an
incurious observer. There was much indeed to distinguish his times from
those of Augustus; much lost in originality of genius, in correctness of
taste, in the masterly conception and consummate finish of art, in
purity of the Latin, and even of the Greek language. But there were men
who made the age famous, grave lawyers, judicious historians, wise
philosophers; the name of learning was honourable, its professors were
encouraged; and along the vast surface of the Roman empire there was
perhaps a greater number whose minds were cultivated by intellectual
discipline than under the more brilliant reign of the first emperor.

[Sidenote: Its causes.]

It is not, I think, very easy to give a perfectly satisfactory solution
of the rapid downfall of literature between the ages of Antonine and of
Diocletian. Perhaps the prosperous condition of the empire from Trajan
to Marcus Aurelius, and the patron age which those good princes bestowed
on letters, gave an artificial health to them for a moment, and
suspended the operation of a disease which had already begun to
undermine their vigour. Perhaps the intellectual energies of mankind can
never remain stationary; and a nation that ceases to produce original
and inventive minds, born to advance the landmarks of knowledge or
skill, will recede from step to step, till it loses even the secondary
merits of imitation and industry. During the third century, not only
there were no great writers, but even few names of indifferent writers
have been recovered by the diligence of modern inquiry.[480] Law
neglected, philosophy perverted till it became contemptible, history
nearly silent, the Latin tongue growing rapidly barbarous, poetry rarely
and feebly attempted, art more and more vitiated; such were the symptoms
by which the age previous to Constantine announced the decline of human
intellect. If we cannot fully account for this unhappy change, as I have
observed, we must, however, assign much weight to the degradation of
Rome and Italy in the system of Severus and his successors, to the
admission of barbarians into the military and even civil dignities of
the empire, to the discouraging influence of provincial and illiterate
sovereigns, and to the calamities which followed for half a century the
first invasion of the Goths and the defeat of Decius. To this sickly
condition of literature the fourth century supplied no permanent remedy.
If under the house of Constantine the Roman world suffered rather less
from civil warfare or barbarous invasions than in the preceding age, yet
every other cause of decline just enumerated prevailed with aggravated
force; and the fourth century set in storms, sufficiently destructive in
themselves, and ominous of those calamities which humbled the majesty of
Rome at the commencement of the ensuing period, and overwhelmed the
Western Empire in absolute and final ruin before its termination.

The diffusion of literature is perfectly distinguishable from its
advancement; and whatever obscurity we may find in explaining the
variations of the one, there are a few simple causes which seem to
account for the other. Knowledge will be spread over the surface of a
nation in proportion to the facilities of education; to the free
circulation of books; to the emoluments and distinctions which literary
attainments are found to produce; and still more to the reward which
they meet in the general respect and applause of society. This cheering
incitement, the genial sunshine of approbation, has at all times
promoted the cultivation of literature in small republics rather than
large empires, and in cities compared with the country. If these are the
sources which nourish literature, we should naturally expect that they
must have become scanty or dry when learning languishes or expires.
Accordingly, in the later ages of the Roman empire a general
indifference towards the cultivation of letters became the
characteristic of its inhabitants. Laws were indeed enacted by
Constantine, Julian, Theodosius, and other emperors, for the
encouragement of learned men and the promotion of liberal education. But
these laws, which would not perhaps have been thought necessary in
better times, were unavailing to counteract the lethargy of ignorance in
which even the native citizens of the empire were contented to repose.
This alienation of men from their national literature may doubtless be
imputed in some measure to its own demerits. A jargon of mystical
philosophy, half fanaticism and half imposture, a barren and inflated
eloquence, a frivolous philology, were not among those charms of wisdom
by which man is to be diverted from pleasure or aroused from indolence.

In this temper of the public mind there was little probability that new
compositions of excellence would be produced, and much doubt whether the
old would be preserved. Since the invention of printing, the absolute
extinction of any considerable work seems a danger too improbable for
apprehension. The press pours forth in a few days a thousand volumes,
which, scattered like seeds in the air over the republic of Europe,
could hardly be destroyed without the extirpation of its inhabitants.
But in the times of antiquity manuscripts were copied with cost, labour,
and delay; and if the diffusion of knowledge be measured by the
multiplication of books, no unfair standard, the most golden ages of
ancient learning could never bear the least comparison with the three
last centuries. The destruction of a few libraries by accidental fire,
the desolation of a few provinces by unsparing and illiterate
barbarians, might annihilate every vestige of an author, or leave a few
scattered copies, which, from the public indifference, there was no
inducement to multiply, exposed to similar casualties in succeeding
times.

We are warranted by good authorities to assign, as a collateral cause of
this irretrievable revolution the neglect of heathen literature by the
Christian church. I am not versed enough in ecclesiastical writers to
estimate the degree of this neglect; nor am I disposed to deny that the
mischief was beyond recovery before the accession of Constantine. From
the primitive ages, however, it seems that a dislike of pagan learning
was pretty general among Christians. Many of the fathers undoubtedly
were accomplished in liberal studies, and we are indebted to them for
valuable fragments of authors whom we have lost. But the literary
character of the church is not to be measured by that of its more
illustrious leaders. Proscribed and persecuted, the early Christians had
not perhaps access to the public schools, nor inclination to studies
which seemed, very excusably, uncongenial to the character of their
profession. Their prejudices, however, survived the establishment of
Christianity. The fourth council of Carthage in 398 prohibited the
reading of secular books by bishops. Jerome plainly condemns the study
of them except for pious ends. All physical science especially was held
in avowed contempt, as inconsistent with revealed truths. Nor do there
appear to have been any canons made in favour of learning, or any
restriction on the ordination of persons absolutely illiterate.[481]
There was indeed abundance of what is called theological learning
displayed in the controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries; and
those who admire such disputations may consider the principal champions
in them as contributing to the glory, or at least retarding the decline,
of literature. But I believe rather that polemical disputes will be
found not only to corrupt the genuine spirit of religion, but to degrade
and contract the faculties. What keenness and subtlety these may
sometimes acquire by such exercise is more like that worldly shrewdness
we see in men whose trade it is to outwit their neighbours than the
clear and calm discrimination of philosophy. However this may be, it
cannot be doubted that the controversies agitated in the church during
these two centuries must have diverted studious minds from profane
literature, and narrowed more and more the circle of that knowledge
which they were desirous to attain.

The torrent of irrational superstitions which carried all before it in
the fifth century, and the progress of ascetic enthusiasm, had an
influence still more decidedly inimical to learning. I cannot indeed
conceive any state of society more adverse to the intellectual
improvement of mankind than one which admitted of no middle line between
gross dissoluteness and fanatical mortification. An equable tone of
public morals, social and humane, verging neither to voluptuousness nor
austerity, seems the most adapted to genius, or at least to letters, as
it is to individual comfort and national prosperity. After the
introduction of monkery and its unsocial theory of duties, the serious
and reflecting part of mankind, on whom science most relies, were turned
to habits which, in the most favourable view, could not quicken the
intellectual energies; and it might be a difficult question whether the
cultivators and admirers of useful literature were less likely to be
found among the profligate citizens of Rome and their barbarian
conquerors or the melancholy recluses of the wilderness.

Such therefore was the state of learning before the subversion of the
Western Empire. And we may form some notion how little probability there
was of its producing any excellent fruits, even if that revolution had
never occurred, by considering what took place in Greece during the
subsequent ages; where, although there was some attention shown to
preserve the best monuments of antiquity, and diligence in compiling
from them, yet no one original writer of any superior merit arose, and
learning, though plunged but for a short period into mere darkness, may
be said to have languished in a middle region of twilight for the
greater part of a thousand years.

But not to delay ourselves in this speculation, the final settlement of
barbarous nations in Gaul, Spain, and Italy consummated the ruin of
literature. Their first irruptions were uniformly attended with
devastation; and if some of the Gothic kings, after their establishment,
proved humane and civilized sovereigns, yet the nation gloried in its
original rudeness, and viewed with no unreasonable disdain arts which
had neither preserved their cultivators from corruption nor raised them
from servitude. Theodoric, the most famous of the Ostrogoth kings in
Italy, could not write his name, and is said to have restrained his
countrymen from attending those schools of learning by which he, or
rather perhaps his minister Cassiodorus, endeavoured to revive the
studies of his Italian subjects. Scarcely one of the barbarians, so long
as they continued unconfused with the native inhabitants, acquired the
slightest tincture of letters; and the praise of equal ignorance was
soon aspired to and attained by the entire mass of the Roman laity.
They, however, could hardly have divested themselves so completely of
all acquaintance with even the elements of learning, if the language in
which books were written had not ceased to be their natural dialect.
This remarkable change in the speech of France, Spain, and Italy is most
intimately connected with the extinction of learning; and there is
enough of obscurity as well as of interest in the subject to deserve
some discussion.

[Sidenote: Corruption of the Latin language.]

It is obvious, on the most cursory view of the French and Spanish
languages, that they, as well as the Italian, are derived from one
common source, the Latin. That must therefore have been at some period,
and certainly not since the establishment of the barbarous nations in
Spain and Gaul, substituted in ordinary use for the original dialects of
those countries which are generally supposed to have been Celtic, not
essentially differing from those which are spoken in Wales and Ireland.
Rome, says Augustin, imposed not only her yoke, but her language, upon
conquered nations. The success of such an attempt is indeed very
remarkable. Though it is the natural effect of conquest, or even of
commercial intercourse, to ingraft fresh words and foreign idioms on the
stock of the original language, yet the entire disuse of the latter, and
adoption of one radically different, scarcely takes place in the lapse
of a far longer period than that of the Roman dominion in Gaul. Thus, in
part of Britany the people speak a language which has perhaps sustained
no essential alteration from the revolution of two thousand years; and
we know how steadily another Celtic dialect has kept its ground in
Wales, notwithstanding English, laws and government, and the long line
of contiguous frontier which brings the natives of that principality
into contact with Englishmen. Nor did the Romans ever establish their
language (I know not whether they wished to do so) in this island, as we
perceive by that stubborn British tongue which has survived two
conquests.[482]

In Gaul and in Spain, however, they did succeed, as the present state of
the French and peninsular languages renders undeniable, though by
gradual changes, and not, as the Benedictine authors of the Histoire
Littéraire de la France seem to imagine, by a sudden and arbitrary
innovation.[483] This is neither possible in itself, nor agreeable to
the testimony of Irenæus, bishop of Lyons at the end of the second
century, who laments the necessity of learning Celtic.[484] But although
the inhabitants of these provinces came at length to make use of Latin
so completely as their mother tongue that few vestiges of their original
Celtic could perhaps be discovered in their common speech, it does not
follow that they spoke with the pure pronunciation of Italians, far less
with that conformity to the written sounds which we assume to be
essential to the expression of Latin words.

[Sidenote: Ancient Latin pronunciation.]

It appears to be taken for granted that the Romans pronounced their
language as we do at present, so far at least as the enunciation of all
the consonants, however we may admit our deviations from the classical
standard in propriety of sounds and in measure of time. Yet the example
of our own language, and of French, might show us that orthography may
become a very inadequate representative of pronunciation. It is indeed
capable of proof that in the purest ages of Latinity some variation
existed between these two. Those numerous changes in spelling which
distinguish the same words in the poetry of Ennius and of Virgil are
best explained by the supposition of their being accommodated, to the
current pronunciation. Harsh combinations of letters, softened down
through delicacy of ear or rapidity of utterance, gradually lost their
place in the written language. Thus _exfregit_ and _adrogavit_ assumed a
form representing their more liquid sound; and _auctor_ was latterly
spelled _autor_, which has been followed in French and Italian. _Autor_
was probably so pronounced at all times; and the orthography was
afterwards corrected or corrupted, whichever we please to say, according
to the sound. We have the best authority to assert that the final _m_
was very faintly pronounced, rather it seems as a rest and short
interval between two syllables than an articulate letter; nor indeed can
we conceive upon what other ground it was subject to elision before a
vowel in verse, since we cannot suppose that the nice ears of Rome would
have submitted to a capricious rule of poetry for which Greece presented
no analogy.[485]

A decisive proof, in my opinion, of the deviation which took place,
through the rapidity of ordinary elocution, from the strict laws of
enunciation, may be found in the metre of Terence. His verses, which are
absolutely refractory to the common laws of prosody, may be readily
scanned by the application of this principle. Thus, in the first act of
the Heautontimorumenos, a part selected at random, I have found, I.
Vowels contracted or dropped so as to shorten the word by a syllable; in
_rei_, _viâ_, _diutius_, _ei_, _solius_, _eam_, _unius_, _suam_,
_divitias_, _senex_, _voluptatem_, _illius_, _semel_; II. The
proceleusmatic foot, or four short syllables, instead of the dactyl;
scen. i. v. 59, 73, 76, 88, 109; scen. ii. v. 36; III. The elision of
_s_ in words ending with _us_ or _is_ short, and sometimes even of the
whole syllable, before the next word beginning with a vowel; in scen. i.
v. 30, 81, 98, 101, 116, 119; scen. ii. v. 28. IV. The first syllable
of _ille_ is repeatedly shortened, and indeed nothing is more usual in
Terence than this licence; whence we may collect how ready this word was
for abbreviation into the French and Italian articles. V. The last
letter of _apud_ is cut off, scen. i. v. 120; and scen. ii. v. 8. VI.
_Hodie_ is used as a pyrrhichius, in scen. ii. v. 11. VII. Lastly, there
is a clear instance of a short syllable, the antepenultimate of
_impulerim_, lengthened on account of the accent at the 113th verse of
the first scene.

[Sidenote: Its corruption by the populace,]

[Sidenote: and the provincials.]

These licences are in all probability chiefly colloquial, and would not
have been adopted in public harangues, to which the precepts of
rhetorical writers commonly relate. But if the more elegant language of
the Romans, since such we must suppose to have been copied by Terence
for his higher characters, differed so much in ordinary discourse from
their orthography, it is probable that the vulgar went into much greater
deviations. The popular pronunciation errs generally, we might say
perhaps invariably, by abbreviation of words, and by liquefying
consonants, as is natural to the rapidity of colloquial speech.[486] It
is by their knowledge of orthography and etymology that the more
educated part of the community is preserved from these corrupt modes of
pronunciation. There is always therefore a standard by which common
speech may be rectified; and in proportion to the diffusion of knowledge
and politeness the deviations from it will be more slight and gradual.
But in distant provinces, and especially where the language itself is
but of recent introduction, many more changes may be expected to occur.
Even in France and England there are provincial dialects, which, if
written with all their anomalies of pronunciation as well as idiom,
would seem strangely out of unison with the regular language; and in
Italy, as is well known, the varieties of dialect are still more
striking. Now, in an advancing state of society, and especially with
such a vigorous political circulation as we experience in England,
language will constantly approximate to uniformity, as provincial
expressions are more and more rejected for incorrectness or inelegance.
But, where literature is on the decline, and public misfortunes contract
the circle of those who are solicitous about refinement, as in the last
ages of the Roman empire, there will be no longer any definite standard
of living speech, nor any general desire to conform to it if one could
be found; and thus the vicious corruptions of the vulgar will entirely
predominate. The niceties of ancient idiom will be totally lost, while
new idioms will be formed out of violations of grammar sanctioned by
usage, which, among a civilized people, would have been proscribed at
their appearance.

Such appears to have been the progress of corruption in the Latin
language. The adoption of words from the Teutonic dialects of the
barbarians, which took place very freely, would not of itself have
destroyed the character of that language, though it sullied its purity.
The worst law Latin of the middle ages is still Latin, if its barbarous
terms have been bent to the regular inflections. It is possible, on the
other hand, to write whole pages of Italian, wherein every word shall be
of unequivocal Latin derivation, though the character and personality,
if I may so say, of the language be entirely dissimilar. But, as I
conceive, the loss of literature took away the only check upon arbitrary
pronunciation and upon erroneous grammar. Each people innovated through
caprice, imitation of their neighbours, or some of those indescribable
causes which dispose the organs of different nations to different
sounds. The French melted down the middle consonants; the Italians
omitted the final. Corruptions arising out of ignorance were mingled
with those of pronunciation. It would have been marvellous if illiterate
and semi-barbarous provincials had preserved that delicate precision in
using the inflections of tenses which our best scholars do not clearly
attain. The common speech of any people whose language is highly
complicated will be full of solecisms. The French inflections are not
comparable in number or delicacy to the Latin, and yet the vulgar
confuse their most ordinary forms.

But, in all probability, the variation of these derivative languages
from popular Latin has been considerably less than it appears. In the
purest ages of Latinity the citizens of Rome itself made use of many
terms which we deem barbarous, and of many idioms which we should reject
as modern. That highly complicated grammar, which the best writers
employed, was too elliptical and obscure, too deficient in the
connecting parts of speech, for general use. We cannot indeed ascertain
in what degree the vulgar Latin differed from that of Cicero or Seneca.
It would be highly absurd to imagine, as some are said to have done,
that modern Italian was spoken at Rome under Augustus.[487] But I
believe it may be asserted not only that much the greater part of those
words in the present language of Italy which strike us as incapable of a
Latin etymology are in fact derived from those current in the Augustan
age, but that very many phrases which offended nicer ears prevailed in
the same vernacular speech, and have passed from thence into the modern
French and Italian. Such, for example, was the frequent use of
prepositions to indicate a relation between two parts of a sentence
which a classical writer would have made to depend on mere
inflection.[488]

From the difficulty of retaining a right discrimination of tense seems
to have proceeded the active auxiliary verb. It is possible that this
was borrowed from the Teutonic languages of the barbarians, and
accommodated both by them and by the natives to words of Latin origin.
The passive auxiliary is obtained by a very ready resolution of any
tense in that mood, and has not been altogether dispensed with even in
Greek, while in Latin it is used much more frequently. It is not quite
so easy to perceive the propriety of the active habeo or teneo, one or
both of which all modern languages have adopted as their auxiliaries in
conjugating the verb. But in some instances this analysis is not
improper; and it may be supposed that nations, careless of etymology or
correctness, applied the same verb by a rude analogy to cases where it
ought not strictly to have been employed.[489]

Next to the changes founded on pronunciation and to the substitution of
auxiliary verbs for inflections, the usage of the definite and
indefinite articles in nouns appears the most considerable step in the
transmutation of Latin into its derivative languages. None but Latin, I
believe, has ever wanted this part of speech; and the defect to which
custom reconciled the Romans would be an insuperable stumbling-block to
nations who were to translate their original idiom into that language. A
coarse expedient of applying _unus_, _ipse_, or _ille_ to the purposes
of an article might perhaps be no unfrequent vulgarism of the
provincials; and after the Teutonic tribes brought in their own grammar,
it was natural that a corruption should become universal, which in fact
supplied a real and essential deficiency.

[Sidenote: Pronunciation no longer regulated by quantity.]

That the quantity of Latin syllables is neglected, or rather lost, in
modern pronunciation, seems to be generally admitted. Whether, indeed,
the ancient Romans, in their ordinary speaking, distinguished the
measure of syllables with such uniform musical accuracy as we imagine,
giving a certain time to those termed long, and exactly half that
duration to the short, might very reasonably be questioned; though this
was probably done, or attempted to be done, by every reader of poetry.
Certainly, however, the laws of quantity were forgotten, and an
accentual pronunciation came to predominate, before Latin had ceased to
be a living language. A Christian writer named Commodianus, who lived
before the end of the third century according to some, or, as others
think, in the reign of Constantine, has left us a philological
curiosity, in a series of attacks on the pagan superstitions, composed
in what are meant to be verses, regulated by accent instead of quantity,
exactly as we read Virgil at present.[490]

It is not improbable that Commodianus may have written in Africa, the
province in which more than any the purity of Latin was debased. At the
end of the fourth century St. Augustin assailed his old enemies, the
Donatists, with nearly the same arms that Commodianus had wielded
against heathenism. But as the refined and various music of hexameters
was unlikely to be relished by the vulgar, he prudently adopted a
different measure.[491] All the nations of Europe seem to love the
trochaic verse; it was frequent on the Greek and Roman stage; it is more
common than any other in the popular poetry of modern languages. This
proceeds from its simplicity, its liveliness, and its ready
accommodation to dancing and music. In St. Austin's poem he united to a
trochaic measure the novel attraction of rhyme.

As Africa must have lost all regard to the rules of measure in the
fourth century, so it appears that Gaul was not more correct in the next
two ages. A poem addressed by Auspicius bishop of Toul to count
Arbogastes, of earlier date probably than the invasion of Clovis, is
written with no regard to quantity.[492] The bishop by whom this was
composed is mentioned by his contemporaries as a man of learning.
Probably he did not choose to perplex the barbarian to whom he was
writing (for Arbogastes is plainly a barbarous name) by legitimate Roman
metre. In the next century Gregory of Tours informs us that Chilperic
attempted to write Latin verses; but the lines could not be reconciled
to any division of feet; his ignorance having confounded long and short
syllables together.[493] Now Chilperic must have learned to speak Latin
like other kings of the Franks, and was a smatterer in several kinds of
literature. If Chilperic therefore was not master of these distinctions,
we may conclude that the bishops and other Romans with whom he conversed
did not observe them; and that his blunders in versification arose from
ignorance of rules, which, however fit to be preserved in poetry, were
entirely obsolete in the living Latin of his age. Indeed the frequency
of false quantities in the poets even of the fifth, but much more of the
sixth century, is palpable. Fortunatus is quite full of them. This seems
a decisive proof that the ancient pronunciation was lost. Avitus tells
us that few preserved the proper measure of syllables in singing. Yet he
was bishop of Vienne, where a purer pronunciation might be expected than
in the remoter parts of Gaul.[494]

[Sidenote: Change of Latin into Romance.]

Defective, however, as it had become in respect of pronunciation, Latin
was still spoken in France during the sixth and seventh centuries. We
have compositions of that time, intended for the people, in grammatical
language. A song is still extant in rhyme and loose accentual measure,
written upon a victory of Clotaire II. over the Saxons in 622, and
obviously intended for circulation among the people.[495] Fortunatus
says, in his Life of St. Aubin of Angers, that he should take care not
to use any expression unintelligible to the people.[496] Baudemind, in
the middle of the seventh century, declares, in his Life of St. Amand,
that he writes in a rustic and vulgar style, that the reader may be
excited to imitation.[497] Not that these legends were actually perused
by the populace, for the very art of reading was confined to a few. But
they were read publicly in the churches, and probably with a
pronunciation accommodated to the corruptions of ordinary language.
Still the Latin syntax must have been tolerably understood; and we may
therefore say that Latin had not ceased to be a living language, in Gaul
at least, before the latter part of the seventh century. Faults indeed
against the rules of grammar, as well as unusual idioms, perpetually
occur in the best writers of the Merovingian period, such as Gregory of
Tours; while charters drawn up by less expert scholars deviate much
further from purity.[498]

The corrupt provincial idiom became gradually more and more dissimilar
to grammatical Latin; and the lingua Romana rustica, as the vulgar
_patois_ (to borrow a word that I cannot well translate) had been
called, acquired a distinct character as a new language in the eighth
century.[499] Latin orthography, which had been hitherto pretty well
maintained in books, though not always in charters, gave way to a new
spelling, conformably to the current pronunciation. Thus we find lui,
for illius, in the Formularies of Marculfus; and Tu lo juva in a liturgy
of Charlemagne's age, for Tu illum juva. When this barrier was once
broken down, such a deluge of innovation poured in that all the
characteristics of Latin were effaced in writing as well as speaking,
and the existence of a new language became undeniable. In a council held
at Tours in 813 the bishops are ordered to have certain homilies of the
fathers translated into the rustic Roman, as well as the German
tongue.[500] After this it is unnecessary to multiply proofs of the
change which Latin had undergone.

[Sidenote: Its corruption in Italy.]

In Italy the progressive corruptions of the Latin language were
analogous to those which occurred in France, though we do not find in
writings any unequivocal specimens of a new formation at so early a
period. But the old inscriptions, even of the fourth and fifth
centuries, are full of solecisms and corrupt orthography. In legal
instruments under the Lombard kings the Latin inflections are indeed
used, but with so little regard to propriety that it is obvious the
writers had not the slightest tincture of grammatical knowledge. This
observation extends to a very large proportion of such documents down to
the twelfth century, and is as applicable to France and Spain as it is
to Italy. In these charters the peculiar characteristics of Italian
orthography and grammar frequently appear. Thus we find, in the eighth
century, diveatis for debeatis, da for de in the ablative, avendi for
habendi, dava for dabat, cedo a deo, and ad ecclesia, among many similar
corruptions.[501] Latin was so changed, it is said by a writer of
Charlemagne's age, that scarcely any part of it was popularly known.
Italy indeed had suffered more than France itself by invasion, and was
reduced to a lower state of barbarism, though probably, from the greater
distinctness of pronunciation habitual to the Italians, they lost less
of their original language than the French. I do not find, however, in
the writers who have treated this subject, any express evidence of a
vulgar language distinct from Latin earlier than the close of the tenth
century, when it is said in the epitaph of Pope Gregory V., who died in
999, that he instructed the people in three dialects--the Frankish or
German, the vulgar, and the Latin.[502]

[Sidenote: Ignorance consequent on the disuse of Latin.]

When Latin had thus ceased to be a living language, the whole treasury
of knowledge was locked up from the eyes of the people. The few who
might have imbibed a taste for literature, if books had been accessible
to them, were reduced to abandon pursuits that could only be cultivated
through a kind of education not easily within their reach. Schools,
confined to cathedrals and monasteries, and exclusively designed for the
purposes of religion, afforded no encouragement or opportunities to the
laity.[503] The worst effect was, that, as the newly-formed languages
were hardly made use of in writing, Latin being still preserved in all
legal instruments and public correspondence, the very use of letters, as
well as of books, was forgotten. For many centuries, to sum up the
account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman, of whatever
rank, to know how to sign his name.[504] Their charters, till the use of
seals became general, were subscribed with the mark of the cross. Still
more extraordinary it was to find one who had any tincture of learning.
Even admitting every indistinct commendation of a monkish biographer
(with whom a knowledge of church-music would pass for literature[505]),
we could make out a very short list of scholars. None certainly were
more distinguished as such than Charlemagne and Alfred. But the former,
unless we reject a very plain testimony, was incapable of writing;[506]
and Alfred found difficulty in making a translation from the pastoral
instruction of St. Gregory, on account of his imperfect knowledge of
Latin.[507]

Whatever mention, therefore, we find of learning and the learned during
these dark ages, must be understood to relate only to such as were
within the pale of clergy, which indeed was pretty extensive, and
comprehended many who did not exercise the offices of religious
ministry. But even the clergy were, for a long period, not very
materially superior, as a body, to the uninstructed laity. A cloud of
ignorance overspread the whole face of the church, hardly broken by a
few glimmering lights, who owe much of their distinction to the
surrounding darkness. In the sixth century the best writers in Latin
were scarcely read;[508] and perhaps from the middle of this age to the
eleventh there was, in a general view of literature, little difference
to be discerned. If we look more accurately, there will appear certain
gradual shades of twilight on each side of the greatest obscurity.
France reached her lowest point about the beginning of the eighth
century; but England was at that time more respectable, and did not fall
into complete degradation till the middle of the ninth. There could be
nothing more deplorable than the state of letters in Italy and in
England during the succeeding century; but France cannot be denied to
have been uniformly, though very slowly, progressive from the time of
Charlemagne.[509]

Of this prevailing ignorance it is easy to produce abundant testimony.
Contracts were made verbally, for want of notaries capable of drawing up
charters; and these, when written, were frequently barbarous and
ungrammatical to an incredible degree. For some considerable intervals
scarcely any monument of literature has been preserved, except a few
jejune chronicles, the vilest legends of saints, or verses equally
destitute of spirit and metre. In almost every council the ignorance of
the clergy forms a subject for reproach. It is asserted by one held in
992 that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself who
knew the first elements of letters.[510] Not one priest of a thousand in
Spain, about the age of Charlemagne, could address a common letter of
salutation to another.[511] In England, Alfred declares that he could
not recollect a single priest south of the Thames (the most civilized
part of England), at the time of his accession, who understood the
ordinary prayers, or could translate Latin into his mother tongue.[512]
Nor was this better in the time of Dunstan, when, it is said, none of
the clergy knew how to write or translate a Latin letter.[513] The
homilies which they preached were compiled for their use by some
bishops, from former works of the same kind, or the writings of the
fathers.

[Sidenote: Scarcity of books.]

This universal ignorance was rendered unavoidable, among other causes,
by the scarcity of books, which could only be procured at an immense
price. From the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens at the beginning
of the seventh century, when the Egyptian papyrus almost ceased to be
imported into Europe, to the close of the eleventh, about which time the
art of making paper from cotton rags seems to have been introduced,
there were no materials for writing except parchment, a substance too
expensive to be readily spared for mere purposes of literature.[514]
Hence an unfortunate practice gained ground, of erasing a manuscript in
order to substitute another on the same skin. This occasioned the loss
of many ancient authors, who have made way for the legends of saints, or
other ecclesiastical rubbish.

[Sidenote: Want of eminent men in literature.]

If we would listen to some literary historians, we should believe that
the darkest ages contained many individuals, not only distinguished
among their contemporaries, but positively eminent for abilities and
knowledge. A proneness to extol every monk of whose production a few
letters or a devotional treatise survives, every bishop of whom it is
related that he composed homilies, runs through the laborious work of
the Benedictines of St. Maur, the Literary History of France, and, in a
less degree, is observable even in Tiraboschi, and in most books of this
class. Bede, Alcuin, Hincmar, Raban, and a number of inferior names,
become real giants of learning in their uncritical panegyrics. But one
might justly say that ignorance is the smallest defect of the writers of
these dark ages. Several of them were tolerably acquainted with books;
but that wherein they are uniformly deficient is original argument or
expression. Almost every one is a compiler of scraps from the fathers,
or from such semi-classical authors as Boethius, Cassiodorus, or
Martianus Capella.[515] Indeed I am not aware that there appeared more
than two really considerable men in the republic of letters from the
sixth to the middle of the eleventh century--John, surnamed Scotus or
Erigena, a native of Ireland; and Gerbert, who became pope by the name
of Silvester II.: the first endowed with a bold and acute metaphysical
genius; the second excellent, for the time when he lived, in
mathematical science and mechanical inventions.[516]

[Sidenote: Causes of the preservation of learning--religion.]

If it be demanded by what cause it happened that a few sparks of ancient
learning survived throughout this long winter, we can only ascribe their
preservation to the establishment of Christianity. Religion alone made a
bridge, as it were, across the chaos, and has linked the two periods of
ancient and modern civilization. Without this connecting principle,
Europe might indeed have awakened to intellectual pursuits, and the
genius of recent times needed not to be invigorated by the imitation of
antiquity. But the memory of Greece and Rome would have been feebly
preserved by tradition, and the monuments of those nations might have
excited, on the return of civilization, that vague sentiment of
speculation and wonder with which men now contemplate Persepolis or the
Pyramids. It is not, however, from religion simply that we have derived
this advantage, but from religion as it was modified in the dark ages.
Such is the complex reciprocation of good and evil in the dispensations
of Providence, that we may assert, with only an apparent paradox, that,
had religion been more pure, it would have been less permanent, and that
Christianity has been preserved by means of its corruptions. The sole
hope for literature depended on the Latin language; and I do not see why
that should not have been lost, if three circumstances in the prevailing
religious system, all of which we are justly accustomed to disapprove,
had not conspired to maintain it--the papal supremacy, the monastic
institutions, and the use of a Latin liturgy. 1. A continual intercourse
was kept up, in consequence of the first, between Rome and the several
nations of Europe; her laws were received by the bishops, her legates
presided in councils; so that a common language was as necessary in the
church as it is at present in the diplomatic relations of kingdoms. 2.
Throughout the whole course of the middle ages there was no learning,
and very little regularity of manners, among the parochial clergy.
Almost every distinguished man was either the member of a chapter or of
a convent. The monasteries were subjected to strict rules of discipline,
and held out, at the worst, more opportunities for study than the
secular clergy possessed, and fewer for worldly dissipations. But their
most important service was as secure repositories for books. All our
manuscripts have been preserved in this manner, and could hardly have
descended to us by any other channel; at least there were intervals when
I do not conceive that any royal or private libraries existed.[517] 3.
Monasteries, however, would probably have contributed very little
towards the preservation of learning, if the Scriptures and the liturgy
had been translated out of Latin when that language ceased to be
intelligible. Every rational principle of religious worship called for
such a change; but it would have been made at the expense of posterity.
One might presume, if such refined conjectures were consistent with
historical caution, that the more learned and sagacious ecclesiastics of
those times, deploring the gradual corruption of the Latin tongue, and
the danger of its absolute extinction, were induced to maintain it as a
sacred language, and the depository, as it were, of that truth and that
science which would be lost in the barbarous dialects of the vulgar.
But a simpler explanation is found in the radical dislike of innovation
which is natural to an established clergy. Nor did they want as good
pretexts, on the ground of convenience, as are commonly alleged by the
opponents of reform. They were habituated to the Latin words of the
church-service, which had become, by this association, the readiest
instruments of devotion, and with the majesty of which the Romance
jargon could bear no comparison. Their musical chants were adapted to
these sounds, and their hymns depended, for metrical effect, on the
marked accents and powerful rhymes which the Latin language affords. The
vulgate Latin of the Bible was still more venerable. It was like a copy
of a lost original; and a copy attested by one of the most eminent
fathers, and by the general consent of the church. These are certainly
no adequate excuses for keeping the people in ignorance; and the gross
corruption of the middle ages is in a great degree assignable to this
policy. But learning, and consequently religion, have eventually derived
from it the utmost advantage.

[Sidenote: Superstitions.]

In the shadows of this universal ignorance a thousand superstitions,
like foul animals of night, were propagated and nourished. It would be
very unsatisfactory to exhibit a few specimens of this odious brood,
when the real character of those times is only to be judged by their
accumulated multitude. In every age it would be easy to select proofs of
irrational superstition, which, separately considered, seem to degrade
mankind from its level in the creation; and perhaps the contemporaries
of Swedenborg and Southcote have no right to look very contemptuously
upon the fanaticism of their ancestors. There are many books from which
a sufficient number of instances may be collected to show the absurdity
and ignorance of the middle ages in this respect. I shall only mention
two, as affording more general evidence than any local or obscure
superstition. In the tenth century an opinion prevailed everywhere that
the end of the world was approaching. Many charters begin with these
words, "As the world is now drawing to its close." An army marching
under the emperor Otho I. was so terrified by an eclipse of the sun,
which it conceived to announce this consummation, as to disperse
hastily on all sides. As this notion seems to have been founded on some
confused theory of the millennium, it naturally died away when the
seasons proceeded in the eleventh century with their usual
regularity.[518] A far more remarkable and permanent superstition was
the appeal to Heaven in judicial controversies, whether through the
means of combat or of ordeal. The principle of these was the same; but
in the former it was mingled with feelings independent of religion--the
natural dictates of resentment in a brave man unjustly accused, and the
sympathy of a warlike people with the display of skill and intrepidity.
These, in course of time, almost obliterated the primary character of
judicial combat, and ultimately changed it into the modern duel, in
which assuredly there is no mixture of superstition.[519] But, in the
various tests of innocence which were called ordeals, this stood
undisguised and unqualified. It is not necessary to describe what is so
well known--the ceremonies of trial by handling hot iron, by plunging
the arm into boiling fluids, by floating or sinking in cold water, or by
swallowing a piece of consecrated bread. It is observable that, as the
interference of Heaven was relied upon as a matter of course, it seems
to have been reckoned nearly indifferent whether such a test was adopted
as must, humanly considered, absolve all the guilty, or one that must
convict all the innocent. The ordeals of hot iron or water were,
however, more commonly used; and it has been a perplexing question by
what dexterity these tremendous proofs were eluded. They seem at least
to have placed the decision of all judicial controversies in the hands
of the clergy, who must have known the secret, whatever that might be,
of satisfying the spectators that an accused person had held a mass of
burning iron with impunity. For several centuries this mode of
investigation was in great repute, though not without opposition from
some eminent bishops. It does discredit to the memory of Charlemagne
that he was one of its warmest advocates.[520] But the judicial combat,
which indeed might be reckoned one species of ordeal, gradually put an
end to the rest; and as the church acquired better notions of law, and a
code of her own, she strenuously exerted herself against all these
barbarous superstitions.[521]

[Sidenote: Enthusiastic risings.]

But the religious ignorance of the middle ages sometimes burst out in
ebullitions of epidemical enthusiasm, more remarkable than these
superstitious usages, though proceeding in fact from similar causes. For
enthusiasm is little else than superstition put in motion, and is
equally founded on a strong conviction of supernatural agency without
any just conceptions of its nature. Nor has any denomination of
Christians produced, or even sanctioned, more fanaticism than the church
of Rome. These epidemical frenzies, however, to which I am alluding,
were merely tumultuous, though certainly fostered by the creed of
perpetual miracles which the clergy inculcated, and drawing a legitimate
precedent for religious insurrection from the crusades. For these, among
other evil consequences, seem to have principally excited a wild
fanaticism that did not sleep for several centuries.[522]

The first conspicuous appearance of it was in the reign of Philip
Augustus, when the mercenary troops, dismissed from the pay of that
prince and of Henry II., committed the greatest outrages in the south of
France. One Durand, a carpenter, deluded it is said by a contrived
appearance of the Virgin, put himself at the head of an army of the
populace, in order to destroy these marauders. His followers were styled
Brethren of the White Caps, from the linen coverings of their heads.
They bound themselves not to play at dice nor frequent taverns, to wear
no affected clothing, to avoid perjury and vain swearing. After some
successes over the plunderers, they went so far as to forbid the lords
to take any dues from their vassals, on pain of incurring the
indignation of the brotherhood. It may easily be imagined that they were
soon entirely discomfited, so that no one dared to own that he had
belonged to them.[523]

During the captivity of St. Louis in Egypt, a more extensive and
terrible ferment broke out in Flanders, and spread from thence over
great part of France. An impostor declared himself commissioned by the
Virgin to preach a crusade, not to the rich and noble, who for their
pride had been rejected of God, but the poor. His disciples were called
Pastoureaux, the simplicity of shepherds having exposed them more
readily to this delusion. In a short time they were swelled by the
confluence of abundant streams to a moving mass of a hundred thousand
men, divided into companies, with banners bearing a cross and a lamb,
and commanded by the impostor's lieutenants. He assumed a priestly
character, preaching, absolving, annulling marriages. At Amiens,
Bourges, Orleans, and Paris itself, he was received as a divine prophet.
Even the regent Blanche, for a time, was led away by the popular tide.
His main topic was reproach of the clergy for their idleness and
corruption--a theme well adapted to the ears of the people, who had long
been uttering similar strains of complaint. In some towns his followers
massacred the priests and plundered the monasteries. The government at
length began to exert itself; and the public sentiment turning against
the authors of so much confusion, this rabble was put to the sword or
dissipated.[524] Seventy years afterwards an insurrection, almost
exactly parallel to this, burst out under the same pretence of a
crusade. These insurgents, too, bore the name of Pastoureaux, and their
short career was distinguished by a general massacre of the Jews.[525]

But though the contagion of fanaticism spreads much more rapidly among
the populace, and in modern times is almost entirely confined to it,
there were examples, in the middle ages, of an epidemical religious
lunacy, from which no class was exempt. One of these occurred about the
year 1260, when a multitude of every rank, age, and sex, marching two by
two in procession along the streets and public roads, mingled groans and
dolorous hymns with the sound of leathern scourges which they exercised
upon their naked backs. From this mark of penitence, which, as it bears
at least all the appearance of sincerity, is not uncommon in the church
of Rome, they acquired the name of Flagellants. Their career began, it
is said, at Perugia, whence they spread over the rest of Italy, and into
Germany and Poland. As this spontaneous fanaticism met with no
encouragement from the church, and was prudently discountenanced by the
civil magistrate, it died away in a very short time.[526] But it is more
surprising that, after almost a century and a half of continual
improvement and illumination, another irruption of popular extravagance
burst out under circumstances exceedingly similar.[527] "In the month
of August 1399," says a contemporary historian, "there appeared all over
Italy a description of persons, called Bianchi, from the white linen
vestment that they wore. They passed from province to province, and from
city to city, crying out Misericordia! with their faces covered and bent
towards the ground, and bearing before them a great crucifix. Their
constant song was Stabat Mater dolorosa. This lasted three months; and
whoever did not attend their procession was reputed a heretic."[528]
Almost every Italian writer of the time takes notice of these Bianchi;
and Muratori ascribes a remarkable reformation of manners (though
certainly a very transient one) to their influence.[529] Nor were they
confined to Italy, though no such meritorious exertions are imputed to
them in other countries. In France their practice of covering the face
gave such opportunity to crimes as to be prohibited by the
government;[530] and we have an act on the rolls of the first parliament
of Henry IV., forbidding any one, "under pain of forfeiting all his
worth, to receive the new sect in white clothes, pretending to great
sanctity," which had recently appeared in foreign parts.[531]

[Sidenote: Pretended miracles.]

The devotion of the multitude was wrought to this feverish height by the
prevailing system of the clergy. In that singular polytheism, which had
been grafted on Christianity, nothing was so conspicuous as the belief
of perpetual miracles--if indeed those could properly be termed miracles
which, by their constant recurrence, even upon trifling occasions, might
seem within the ordinary dispensations of Providence. These
superstitions arose in what are called primitive times, and are
certainly no part of popery, if in that word we include any especial
reference to the Roman see. But successive ages of ignorance swelled the
delusion to such an enormous pitch, that it was as difficult to trace,
we may say without exaggeration, the real religion of the Gospel in the
popular belief of the laity, as the real history of Charlemagne in the
romance of Turpin. It must not be supposed that these absurdities were
produced, as well as nourished, by ignorance. In most cases they were
the work of deliberate imposture. Every cathedral or monastery had its
tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, fabricated in order to enrich
the churches under his protection, by exaggerating his virtues, his
miracles, and consequently his power of serving those who paid liberally
for his patronage.[532] Many of those saints were imaginary persons;
sometimes a blundered inscription added a name to the calendar, and
sometimes, it is said, a heathen god was surprised at the company to
which he was introduced, and the rites with which he was honoured.[533]

[Sidenote: Mischiefs arising from this superstition.]

It would not be consonant to the nature of the present work to dwell
upon the erroneousness of this religion; but its effect upon the moral
and intellectual character of mankind was so prominent, that no one can
take a philosophical view of the middle ages without attending more than
is at present fashionable to their ecclesiastical history. That the
exclusive worship of saints, under the guidance of an artful though
illiterate priesthood, degraded the understanding and begot a stupid
credulity and fanaticism, is sufficiently evident. But it was also so
managed as to loosen the bonds of religion and pervert the standard of
morality. If these inhabitants of heaven had been represented as stern
avengers, accepting no slight atonement for heavy offences, and prompt
to interpose their control over natural events for the detection and
punishment of guilt, the creed, however impossible to be reconciled with
experience, might have proved a salutary check upon a rude people, and
would at least have had the only palliation that can be offered for a
religious imposture, its political expediency. In the legends of those
times, on the contrary, they appeared only as perpetual intercessors,
so good-natured and so powerful, that a sinner was more emphatically
foolish than he is usually represented if he failed to secure himself
against any bad consequences. For a little attention to the saints, and
especially to the Virgin, with due liberality to their servants, had
saved, he would be told, so many of the most atrocious delinquents, that
he might equitably presume upon similar luck in his own case.

This monstrous superstition grew to its height in the twelfth century.
For the advance that learning then made was by no means sufficient to
counteract the vast increase of monasteries, and the opportunities which
the greater cultivation of modern languages afforded for the diffusion
of legendary tales. It was now, too, that the veneration paid to the
Virgin, in early times very great, rose to an almost exclusive idolatry.
It is difficult to conceive the stupid absurdity and the disgusting
profaneness of those stories which were invented by the monks to do her
honour. A few examples have been thrown into a note.[534]

[Sidenote: Not altogether unmixed with good.]

Whether the superstition of these dark ages had actually passed that
point when it becomes more injurious to public morals and the welfare of
society than the entire absence of all religious notions is a very
complex question, upon which I would by no means pronounce an
affirmative decision.[535] A salutary influence, breathed from the
spirit of a more genuine religion, often displayed itself among the
corruptions of a degenerate superstition. In the original principles of
monastic orders, and the rules by which they ought at least to have been
governed, there was a character of meekness, self-denial, and charity
that could not wholly be effaced. These virtues, rather than justice
and veracity, were inculcated by the religious ethics of the middle
ages; and in the relief of indigence it may, upon the whole, be asserted
that the monks did not fall short of their profession.[536] This
eleemosynary spirit indeed remarkably distinguishes both Christianity
and Mohammedism from the moral systems of Greece and Rome, which were
very deficient in general humanity and sympathy with suffering. Nor do
we find in any single instance during ancient times, if I mistake not,
those public institutions for the alleviation of human miseries which
have long been scattered over every part of Europe. The virtues of the
monks assumed a still higher character when they stood forward as
protectors of the oppressed. By an established law, founded on very
ancient superstition, the precincts of a church afforded sanctuary to
accused persons. Under a due administration of justice this privilege
would have been simply and constantly mischievous, as we properly
consider it to be in those countries where it still subsists. But in the
rapine and tumult of the middle ages the right of sanctuary might as
often be a shield to innocence as an immunity to crime. We can hardly
regret, in reflecting on the desolating violence which prevailed, that
there should have been some green spots in the wilderness where the
feeble and the persecuted could find refuge. How must this right have
enhanced the veneration for religious institutions! How gladly must the
victims of internal warfare have turned their eyes from the baronial
castle, the dread and scourge of the neighbourhood, to those venerable
walls within which not even the clamour of arms could be heard to
disturb the chant of holy men and the sacred service of the altar! The
protection of the sanctuary was never withheld. A son of Chilperic king
of France having fled to that of Tours, his father threatened to ravage
all the lands of the church unless they gave him up. Gregory the
historian, bishop of the city, replied in the name of his clergy that
Christians could not be guilty of an act unheard of among pagans. The
king was as good as his word, and did not spare the estate of the
church, but dared not infringe its privileges. He had indeed previously
addressed a letter to St. Martin, which was laid on his tomb in the
church, requesting permission to take away his son by force; but the
honest saint returned no answer.[537]

[Sidenote: Vices of the monks and clergy.]

The virtues indeed, or supposed virtues, which had induced a credulous
generation to enrich so many of the monastic orders, were not long
preserved. We must reject, in the excess of our candour, all testimonies
that the middle ages present, from the solemn declaration of councils
and reports of judicial inquiry to the casual evidence of common fame in
the ballad or romance, if we would extenuate the general corruption of
those institutions. In vain new rules of discipline were devised, or the
old corrected by reforms. Many of their worst vices grew so naturally
out of their mode of life, that a stricter discipline could have no
tendency to extirpate them. Such were the frauds I have already noticed,
and the whole scheme of hypocritical austerities. Their extreme
licentiousness was sometimes hardly concealed by the cowl of sanctity. I
know not by what right we should disbelieve the reports of the
visitation under Henry VIII., entering as they do into a multitude of
specific charges both probable in their nature and consonant to the
unanimous opinion of the world.[538] Doubtless there were many
communities, as well as individuals, to whom none of these reproaches
would apply. In the very best view, however, that can be taken of
monasteries, their existence is deeply injurious to the general morals
of a nation. They withdraw men of pure conduct and conscientious
principles from the exercise of social duties, and leave the common mass
of human vice more unmixed. Such men are always inclined to form schemes
of ascetic perfection, which can only be fulfilled in retirement; but in
the strict rules of monastic life, and under the influence of a
grovelling superstition, their virtue lost all its usefulness. They fell
implicitly into the snares of crafty priests, who made submission to the
church not only the condition but the measure of all praise. "He is a
good Christian," says Eligius, a saint of the seventh century, "who
comes frequently to church; who presents an oblation that it may be
offered to God on the altar; who does not taste the fruits of his land
till he has consecrated a part of them to God; who can repeat the Creed
or the Lord's Prayer. Redeem your souls from punishment while it is in
your power; offer presents and tithes to churches, light candles in holy
places, as much as you can afford, come more frequently to church,
implore the protection of the saints; for, if you observe these things,
you may come with security at the day of judgment to say, Give unto us,
Lord, for we have given unto thee."[539]

With such a definition of the Christian character, it is not surprising
that any fraud and injustice became honourable when it contributed to
the riches of the clergy and glory of their order. Their frauds,
however, were less atrocious than the savage bigotry with which they
maintained their own system and infected the laity. In Saxony, Poland,
Lithuania, and the countries on the Baltic Sea, a sanguinary persecution
extirpated the original idolatry. The Jews were everywhere the objects
of popular insult and oppression, frequently of a general massacre,
though protected, it must be confessed, by the laws of the church, as
well as in general by temporal princes.[540] Of the crusades it is only
necessary to repeat that they began in a tremendous eruption of
fanaticism, and ceased only because that spirit could not be constantly
kept alive. A similar influence produced the devastation of Languedoc,
the stakes and scaffolds of the Inquisition, and rooted in the religious
theory of Europe those maxims of intolerance which it has so slowly, and
still perhaps so imperfectly, renounced.

From no other cause are the dictates of sound reason and the moral sense
of mankind more confused than by this narrow theological bigotry. For as
it must often happen that men to whom the arrogance of a prevailing
faction imputes religious error are exemplary for their performance of
moral duties, these virtues gradually cease to make their proper
impression, and are depreciated by the rigidly orthodox as of little
value in comparison with just opinions in speculative points. On the
other hand, vices are forgiven to those who are zealous in the faith. I
speak too gently, and with a view to later times; in treating of the
dark ages it would be more correct to say that crimes were commended.
Thus Gregory of Tours, a saint of the church, after relating a most
atrocious story of Clovis--the murder of a prince whom he had
previously instigated to parricide--continues the sentence: "For God
daily subdued his enemies to his hand, and increased his kingdom;
because he walked before him in uprightness, and did what was pleasing
in his eyes."[541]

[Sidenote: Commutation of penances.]

It is a frequent complaint of ecclesiastical writers that the rigorous
penances imposed by the primitive canons upon delinquents were commuted
in a laxer state of discipline for less severe atonements, and
ultimately indeed for money.[542] We must not, however, regret that the
clergy should have lost the power of compelling men to abstain fifteen
years from eating meat, or to stand exposed to public derision at the
gates of a church. Such implicit submissiveness could only have produced
superstition and hypocrisy among the laity, and prepared the road for a
tyranny not less oppressive than that of India or ancient Egypt. Indeed
the two earliest instances of ecclesiastical interference with the
rights of sovereigns--namely, the deposition of Wamba in Spain and that
of Louis the Debonair--were founded upon this austere system of
penitence. But it is true that a repentance redeemed by money or
performed by a substitute could have no salutary effect on the sinner;
and some of the modes of atonement which the church most approved were
particularly hostile to public morals. None was so usual as pilgrimage,
whether to Jerusalem or Rome, which were the great objects of devotion;
or to the shrine of some national saint--a James of Compostella, a
David, or a Thomas à Becket. This licensed vagrancy was naturally
productive of dissoluteness, especially among the women. Our English
ladies, in their zeal to obtain the spiritual treasures of Rome, are
said to have relaxed the necessary caution about one that was in their
own custody.[543] There is a capitulary of Charlemagne directed against
itinerant penitents, who probably considered the iron chain around their
necks an expiation of future as well as past offences.[544]

The crusades may be considered as martial pilgrimages on an enormous
scale, and their influence upon general morality seems to have been
altogether pernicious. Those who served under the cross would not indeed
have lived very virtuously at home; but the confidence in their own
merits, which the principle of such expeditions inspired, must have
aggravated the ferocity and dissoluteness of their ancient habits.
Several historians attest the depravation of morals which existed both
among the crusaders and in the states formed out of their
conquests.[545]

[Sidenote: Want of law.]

While religion had thus lost almost every quality that renders it
conducive to the good order of society, the control of human law was
still less efficacious. But this part of my subject has been anticipated
in other passages of the present work; and I shall only glance at the
want of regular subordination, which rendered legislative and judicial
edicts a dead letter, and at the incessant private warfare, rendered
legitimate by the usages of most continental nations. Such hostilities,
conducted as they must usually have been with injustice and cruelty,
could not fail to produce a degree of rapacious ferocity in the general
disposition of a people. And this certainly was among the
characteristics of every nation for many centuries.

[Sidenote: Degradation of morals.]

It is easy to infer the degradation of society during the dark ages from
the state of religion and police. Certainly there are a few great
landmarks of moral distinctions so deeply fixed in human nature, that no
degree of rudeness can destroy, nor even any superstition remove them.
Wherever an extreme corruption has in any particular society defaced
these sacred archetypes that are given to guide and correct the
sentiments of mankind, it is in the course of Providence that the
society itself should perish by internal discord or the sword of a
conqueror. In the worst ages of Europe there must have existed the seeds
of social virtues, of fidelity, gratitude, and disinterestedness,
sufficient at least to preserve the public approbation of more elevated
principles than the public conduct displayed. Without these imperishable
elements there could have been no restoration of the moral energies;
nothing upon which reformed faith, revived knowledge, renewed law, could
exercise their nourishing influences. But history, which reflects only
the more prominent features of society, cannot exhibit the virtues that
were scarcely able to struggle through the general depravation. I am
aware that a tone of exaggerated declamation is at all times usual with
those who lament the vices of their own time; and writers of the middle
ages are in abundant need of allowance on this score. Nor is it
reasonable to found any inferences as to the general condition of
society on single instances of crimes, however atrocious, especially
when committed under the influence of violent passion. Such enormities
are the fruit of every age, and none is to be measured by them. They
make, however, a strong impression at the moment, and thus find a place
in contemporary annals, from which modern writers are commonly glad to
extract whatever may seem to throw light upon manners. I shall,
therefore, abstain from producing any particular cases of dissoluteness
or cruelty from the records of the middle ages, lest I should weaken a
general proposition by offering an imperfect induction to support it,
and shall content myself with observing that times to which men
sometimes appeal, as to a golden period, were far inferior in every
moral comparison to those in which we are thrown.[546] One crime, as
more universal and characteristic than others, may be particularly
noticed. All writers agree in the prevalence of judicial perjury. It
seems to have almost invariably escaped human punishment; and the
barriers of superstition were in this, as in every other instance, too
feeble to prevent the commission of crimes. Many of the proofs by ordeal
were applied to witnesses as well as those whom they accused; and
undoubtedly trial by combat was preserved in a considerable degree on
account of the difficulty experienced in securing a just cause against
the perjury of witnesses. Robert king of France, perceiving how
frequently men forswore themselves upon the relics of saints, and less
shocked apparently at the crime than at the sacrilege, caused an empty
reliquary of crystal to be used, that those who touched it might incur
less guilt in fact, though not in intention. Such an anecdote
characterizes both the man and the times.[547]

[Sidenote: Love of field sports.]

The favourite diversions of the middle ages, in the intervals of war,
were those of hunting and hawking. The former must in all countries be a
source of pleasure; but it seems to have been enjoyed in moderation by
the Greeks and the Romans. With the northern invaders, however, it was
rather a predominant appetite than an amusement; it was their pride and
their ornament, the theme of their songs, the object of their laws, and
the business of their lives. Falconry, unknown as a diversion to the
ancients, became from the fourth century an equally delightful
occupation.[548] From the Salic and other barbarous codes of the fifth
century to the close of the period under our review, every age would
furnish testimony to the ruling passion for these two species of chace,
or, as they were sometimes called, the mysteries of woods and rivers. A
knight seldom stirred from his house without a falcon on his wrist or a
greyhound that followed him. Thus are Harold and his attendants
represented, in the famous tapestry of Bayeux. And in the monuments of
those who died anywhere but on the field of battle, it is usual to find
the greyhound lying at their feet, or the bird upon their wrists. Nor
are the tombs of ladies without their falcon; for this diversion, being
of less danger and fatigue than the chace, was shared by the delicate
sex.[549]

It was impossible to repress the eagerness with which the clergy,
especially after the barbarians were tempted by rich bishoprics to take
upon them the sacred functions, rushed into these secular amusements.
Prohibitions of councils, however frequently repeated, produced little
effect. In some instances a particular monastery obtained a
dispensation. Thus that of St. Denis, in 774, represented to Charlemagne
that the flesh of hunted animals was salutary for sick monks, and that
their skins would serve to bind the books in the library.[550] Reasons
equally cogent, we may presume, could not be wanting in every other
case. As the bishops and abbots were perfectly feudal lords, and often
did not scruple to lead their vassals into the field, it was not to be
expected that they should debar themselves of an innocent pastime. It
was hardly such indeed, when practised at the expense of others.
Alexander III., by a letter to the clergy of Berkshire, dispenses with
their keeping the archdeacon in dogs and hawks during his
visitation.[551] This season gave jovial ecclesiastics an opportunity of
trying different countries. An archbishop of York, in 1321, seems to
have carried a train of two hundred persons, who were maintained at the
expense of the abbeys on his road, and to have hunted with a pack of
hounds from parish to parish.[552] The third council of Lateran, in
1180, had prohibited this amusement on such journeys, and restricted
bishops to a train of forty or fifty horses.[553]

Though hunting had ceased to be a necessary means of procuring food, it
was a very convenient resource, on which the wholesomeness and comfort,
as well as the luxury, of the table depended. Before the natural
pastures were improved, and new kinds of fodder for cattle discovered,
it was impossible to maintain the summer stock during the cold season.
Hence a portion of it was regularly slaughtered and salted for winter
provision. We may suppose that, when no alternative was offered but
these salted meats, even the leanest venison was devoured with relish.
There was somewhat more excuse therefore for the severity with which the
lords of forests and manors preserved the beasts of chace than if they
had been considered as merely objects of sport. The laws relating to
preservation of game were in every country uncommonly rigorous. They
formed in England that odious system of forest laws which distinguished
the tyranny of our Norman kings. Capital punishment for killing a stag
or wild boar was frequent, and perhaps warranted by law, until the
charter of John.[554] The French code was less severe, but even Henry
IV. enacted the pain of death against the repeated offence of chasing
deer in the royal forests. The privilege of hunting was reserved to the
nobility till the reign of Louis IX., who extended it in some degree to
persons of lower birth.[555]

This excessive passion for the sports of the field produced those evils
which are apt to result from it--a strenuous idleness which disdained
all useful occupations, and an oppressive spirit towards the peasantry.
The devastation committed under the pretence of destroying wild animals,
which had been already protected in their depredations, is noticed in
serious authors, and has also been the topic of popular ballads.[556]
What effect this must have had on agriculture it is easy to conjecture.
The levelling of forests, the draining of morasses, and the extirpation
of mischievous animals which inhabit them, are the first objects of
man's labour in reclaiming the earth to his use; and these were
forbidden by a landed aristocracy, whose control over the progress of
agricultural improvement was unlimited, and who had not yet learned to
sacrifice their pleasures to their avarice.

[Sidenote: Bad state of agriculture;]

These habits of the rich, and the miserable servitude of those who
cultivated the land, rendered its fertility unavailing. Predial
servitude indeed, in some of its modifications, has always been the
great bar to improvement. In the agricultural economy of Rome the
labouring husbandman, a menial slave of some wealthy senator, had not
even that qualified interest in the soil which the tenure of villenage
afforded to the peasant of feudal ages. Italy, therefore, a country
presenting many natural impediments, was but imperfectly reduced into
cultivation before the irruption of the barbarians.[557] That revolution
destroyed agriculture with every other art, and succeeding calamities
during five or six centuries left the finest regions of Europe
unfruitful and desolate. There are but two possible modes in which the
produce of the earth can be increased; one by rendering fresh land
serviceable, the other by improving the fertility of that which is
already cultivated. The last is only attainable by the application of
capital and of skill to agriculture, neither of which could be expected
in the ruder ages of society. The former is, to a certain extent, always
practicable while waste lands remain; but it was checked by laws hostile
to improvement, such as the manerial and commonable rights in England,
and by the general tone of manners.

Till the reign of Charlemagne there were no towns in Germany, except a
few that had been erected on the Rhine and Danube by the Romans. A house
with its stables and farm-buildings, surrounded by a hedge or enclosure,
was called a court, or, as we find it in our law-books, a curtilage; the
toft or homestead of a more genuine English dialect. One of these, with
the adjacent domain of arable fields and woods, had the name of a villa
or manse. Several manses composed a march; and several marches formed a
pagus or district.[558] From these elements in the progress of
population arose villages and towns. In France undoubtedly there were
always cities of some importance. Country parishes contained several
manses or farms of arable land, around a common pasture, where every one
was bound by custom to feed his cattle.[559]

[Sidenote: of internal trade;]

The condition even of internal trade was hardly preferable to that of
agriculture. There is not a vestige perhaps to be discovered for several
centuries of any considerable manufacture; I mean, of working up
articles of common utility to an extent beyond what the necessities of
an adjacent district required.[560] Rich men kept domestic artisans
among their servants; even kings, in the ninth century, had their
clothes made by the women upon their farms;[561] but the peasantry must
have been supplied with garments and implements of labour by purchase;
and every town, it cannot be doubted, had its weaver, its smith, and its
currier. But there were almost insuperable impediments to any extended
traffic--the insecurity of moveable wealth, and difficulty of
accumulating it; the ignorance of mutual wants; the peril of robbery in
conveying merchandise, and the certainty of extortion. In the domains of
every lord a toll was to be paid in passing his bridge, or along his
highway, or at his market.[562] These customs, equitable and necessary
in their principle, became in practice oppressive, because they were
arbitrary, and renewed in every petty territory which the road might
intersect. Several of Charlemagne's capitularies repeat complaints of
these exactions, and endeavour to abolish such tolls as were not founded
on prescription.[563] One of them rather amusingly illustrates the
modesty and moderation of the landholders. It is enacted that no one
shall be compelled to go out of his way in order to pay toll at a
particular bridge, when he can cross the river more conveniently at
another place.[564] These provisions, like most others of that age, were
unlikely to produce much amendment. It was only the milder species,
however, of feudal lords who were content with the tribute of merchants.
The more ravenous descended from their fortresses to pillage the wealthy
traveller, or shared in the spoil of inferior plunderers, whom they both
protected and instigated. Proofs occur, even in the later periods of the
middle ages, when government had regained its energy, and civilization
had made considerable progress, of public robberies systematically
perpetrated by men of noble rank. In the more savage times, before the
twelfth century, they were probably too frequent to excite much
attention. It was a custom in some places to waylay travellers, and not
only to plunder, but to sell them as slaves, or compel them to pay a
ransom. Harold son of Godwin, having been wrecked on the coast of
Ponthieu, was imprisoned by the lord, says an historian, according to
the custom of that territory.[565] Germany appears to have been, upon
the whole, the country where downright robbery was most unscrupulously
practised by the great. Their castles, erected on almost inaccessible
heights among the woods, became the secure receptacles of predatory
bands, who spread terror over the country. From these barbarian lords of
the dark ages, as from a living model, the romances are said to have
drawn their giants and other disloyal enemies of true chivalry.
Robbery, indeed, is the constant theme both of the Capitularies and of
the Anglo-Saxon laws; one has more reason to wonder at the intrepid
thirst of lucre, which induced a very few merchants to exchange the
products of different regions, than to ask why no general spirit of
commercial activity prevailed.

[Sidenote: and of foreign commerce.]

Under all these circumstances it is obvious that very little oriental
commerce could have existed in these western countries of Europe.
Destitute as they have been created, speaking comparatively, of natural
productions fit for exportation, their invention and industry are the
great resources from which they can supply the demands of the East.
Before any manufactures were established in Europe, her commercial
intercourse with Egypt and Asia must of necessity have been very
trifling; because, whatever inclination she might feel to enjoy the
luxuries of those genial regions, she wanted the means of obtaining
them. It is not therefore necessary to rest the miserable condition of
oriental commerce upon the Saracen conquests, because the poverty of
Europe is an adequate cause; and, in fact, what little traffic remained
was carried on with no material inconvenience through the channel of
Constantinople. Venice took the lead in trading with Greece and more
eastern countries.[566] Amalfi had the second place in the commerce of
those dark ages. These cities imported, besides natural productions, the
fine clothes of Constantinople; yet as this traffic seems to have been
illicit, it was not probably extensive.[567] Their exports were gold and
silver, by which, as none was likely to return, the circulating money of
Europe was probably less in the eleventh century than at the subversion
of the Roman empire; furs, which were obtained from the Sclavonian
countries; and arms, the sale of which to pagans or Saracens was vainly
prohibited by Charlemagne and by the Holy See.[568] A more scandalous
traffic, and one that still more fitly called for prohibitory laws, was
carried on in slaves. It is an humiliating proof of the degradation of
Christendom, that the Venetians were reduced to purchase the luxuries of
Asia by supplying the slave-market of the Saracens.[569] Their apology
would perhaps have been, that these were purchased from their heathen
neighbours; but a slave-dealer was probably not very inquisitive as to
the faith or origin of his victim. This trade was not peculiar to
Venice. In England it was very common, even after the Conquest, to
export slaves to Ireland, till, in the reign of Henry II., the Irish
came to a non-importation agreement, which put a stop to the
practice.[570]

From this state of degradation and poverty all the countries of Europe
have recovered, with a progression in some respects tolerably uniform,
in others more unequal; and the course of their improvement, more
gradual and less dependent upon conspicuous civil revolutions than their
decline, affords one of the most interesting subjects into which a
philosophical mind can inquire. The commencement of this restoration has
usually been dated from about the close of the eleventh century; though
it is unnecessary to observe that the subject does not admit of
anything approximating to chronological accuracy. It may, therefore, be
sometimes not improper to distinguish the first six of the ten centuries
which the present work embraces under the appellation of the _dark_
ages; an epithet which I do not extend to the twelfth and three
following. In tracing the decline of society from the subversion of the
Roman empire, we have been led, not without connexion, from ignorance to
superstition, from superstition to vice and lawlessness, and from thence
to general rudeness and poverty. I shall pursue an inverted order in
passing along the ascending scale, and class the various improvements
which took place between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries under three
principal heads, as they relate to the wealth, the manners, or the taste
and learning of Europe. Different arrangements might probably be
suggested, equally natural and convenient; but in the disposition of
topics that have not always an unbroken connexion with each other, no
method can be prescribed as absolutely more scientific than the rest.
That which I have adopted appears to me as philosophical and as little
liable to transitions as any other.

FOOTNOTES:

[479] The subject of the present chapter, so far as it relates to the
condition of literature in the middle ages, has been again treated by me
in the first and second chapters of a work, published in 1836, the
Introduction to the History of Literature in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth,
and Seventeenth Centuries. Some things will be found in it more exactly
stated, others newly supplied from recent sources.

[480] The authors of Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. i., can only
find three writers of Gaul, no inconsiderable part of the Roman Empire,
mentioned upon any authority; two of whom are now lost. In the preceding
century the number was considerably greater.

[481] Mosheim, Cent. 4. Tiraboschi endeavours to elevate higher the
learning of the early Christians, t. ii. p. 328. Jortin, however,
asserts that many of the bishops in the general councils of Ephesus and
Chalcedon could not write their names. Remarks on Ecclesiast. Hist. vol.
ii. p. 417.

[482] Gibbon roundly asserts that "the language of Virgil and Cicero,
though with some inevitable mixture of corruption, was so universally
adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, Great Britain, and Pannonia, that the
faint traces of the Punic or Celtic idioms were preserved only in the
mountains or among the peasants." Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 60 (8vo.
edit.). For Britain he quotes Tacitus's Life of Agricola as his voucher.
But the only passage in this work that gives the least colour to
Gibbon's assertion is one in which Agricola is said to have encouraged
the children of British chieftains to acquire a taste for liberal
studies, and to have succeeded so much by judicious commendation of
their abilities, ut qui modo linguam Romanam abnuebant, eloquentiam
concupiscerent. (c. 21.) This, it is sufficiently obvious, is very
different from the national adoption of Latin as a mother tongue.

[483] t. vii. preface.

[484] It appears, by a passage quoted from the digest by M. Bonamy, Mém.
de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xxiv. p. 589, that Celtic was spoken in
Gaul, or at least parts of it, as well as Punic in Africa.

[485] Atque eadem illa litera, quoties ultima est, et vocalem verbi
sequentis ita contingit, ut in eam transire possit, etiam si scribitur,
tamen parum exprimitur, ut _Multum ille_, et _Quantum erat_: adeo ut
pene cujusdam novæ literæ sonum reddat. Neque enim eximitur, sed
obscuratur, et tantùm aliqua inter duos vocales velut nota est, ne ipsæ
coeant. Quintilian, Institut. 1. ix. c. 4, p. 585, edit. Capperonier.

[486] The following passage of Quintilian is an evidence both of the
omission of harsh or superfluous letters by the best speakers, and of
the corrupt abbreviations usual with the worst. Dilucida vero erit