So fertile in new political ideas
The same age, too, which was so fertile in new political ideas and in grand spiritual effort, was no less rich in philosophy, in the germs of science, in reviving the in-heritance of ancient learning, in the scientific study of law, in the foundation of the great Northern universities, in the magnificent expansion of the architecture we call Gothic, in the beginnings of painting and of sculpture, in the foundation of modern literature, both in prose and verse, in the fullest development of the Troubadours, the Romance poets, the lays, sonnets, satires, and tales of Italy, Provence, and Flanders; and finally, in that stupendous poem, which we universally accept as the greatest of modern epical works, wherein the most splendid genius of the Middle Ages seemed to chant its last majestic requiem, which he himself, as I have said, emphatically dated in the year 1300. Truly, if we must use arbitrary numbers to help our memory, that year— 1300 — may be taken as the resplendent sunset of an epoch which had extended in one form back for nearly one thousand years to the fall of the Roman empire, and equally as the broken and stormy dawn of an epoch which has for six hundred years since been passing through an amazing phantasmagoria of change tours sofia.
Now this great century, the last of the true Middle Ages, which, as it drew to its own end, gave birth to Modern Society, has a special character of its own a character that gives to it an abiding and enchanting interest. We find in it a harmony of power, a universality of endowment, a glow, an aspiring ambition and confidence, such as we never again find in later centuries, at least so generally and so permanently diffused.
At the opening of the thirteenth century, Christendom, as a whole, rested united in profound belief in one religious faith. There had appeared in the age preceding teachers of new doctrines, like Abailard, Gilbert de la Poree, Arnold of Brescia, and others; but their new ideas had not at all penetrated to the body of the people. As a whole, Christendom had still, as the century began, an unquestioned and unquestionable creed, without schism, heresy, doubts, or sects. And this creed still sufficed to inspire the most profound thought, the most lofty poetry, the widest culture, the freest art of the age: it filled statesmen with awe, scholars with enthusiasm, and consolidated society around uniform objects of reverence and worship.
It bound men together, from the Hebrides to the Eastern Mediterranean, from the Atlantic to the Baltic, as European men have never since been bound. Great thinkers, like Albert of Cologne and Aquinas, found it to be the stimulus of their meditations. Mighty poets, like Dante, could not conceive poetry, unless based on it and saturated with it. Creative artists, like Giotto, found it an ever-living well-spring of pure beauty. The great cathedrals embodied it in a thousand forms of glory and power. To statesman, artist, poet, thinker, teacher, soldier, worker, chief, or follower, it supplied at once inspiration and instrument.
This unity of creed had existed, it is true, for five or six centuries in large parts of Europe, and, indeed, in a shape even more uniform and intense. But not till the thirteenth century did it co-exist with such acute intellectual energy, with such philosophic power, with such a free and superb art, with such sublime poetry, with so much industry, culture, wealth, and so rich a development of civic organisation. This thirteenth century was the last in the history of mankind in Europe when a high and complex civilisation has been saturated with a uniform and unquestioned creed.
As we all know, since then, civilisation has had to advance with ever-increasing multiplicity of creeds. What impresses us as the keynote of that century is the harmony of power it displays. As in the Augustan age, or the Periclean age, or the Homeric age, indeed, far more than in any of them, men might fairly dream, in the age of Innocent and St. Louis, that they had reached a normal state, when human life might hope to see an ultimate symmetry of existence. There have been since epochs of singular intellectual expansion, of creative art, of material progress, of moral earnestness, of practical energy. Our nineteenth century has very much of all of these in varying proportions. But we have long ceased to expect that they will not clash with each other; we have aban- K doned hope of ever seeing them work in organic harmony together.
