View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 37

These columns of reedy slenderness, so well described by juncea proceritas, are said to be found in the cathedral of Montreal in Sicily, built in the eighth century. Knight's Principles of Taste, p. 162. They are not however sufficient to justify the denomination of Gothic, which is usually confined to the pointed arch style.

[689] The famous abbot Suger, minister of Louis VI., rebuilt St. Denis about 1140. The cathedral of Laon is said to have been dedicated in 1114. Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. ix. p. 220. I do not know in what style the latter of these churches is built, but the former is, or rather was, Gothic. Notre Dame at Paris was begun soon after the middle of the twelfth century, and completed under St. Louis. Melanges tires d'une grande bibliotheque, t. x.x.xi. p. 108. In England, the earliest specimen I have seen of pointed arches is in a print of St. Botolphe's Priory at Colchester, said by Strutt to have been built in 1110. View of Manners, vol. i. plate 30. These are apertures formed by excavating the s.p.a.ce contained by the intersection of semicircular, or Saxon arches; which are perpetually disposed, by way of ornament, on the outer as well as inner surface of old churches, so as to cut each other, and consequently to produce the figure of a Gothic arch; and if there is no mistake in the date, they are probably among the most ancient of that style in Europe. Those of the church of St. Cross near Winchester are of the reign of Stephen; and generally speaking, the pointed style, especially in vaulting, the most important object in the construction of a building, is not considered as older than Henry II. The nave of Canterbury cathedral, of the erection of which by a French architect about 1176 we have a full account in Gervase (Twysden, Decem Scriptores, col. 1289), and the Temple church, dedicated in 1183, are the most ancient English buildings altogether in the Gothic manner.

The subject of ecclesiastical architecture in the middle ages has been so fully discussed by intelligent and observant writers since these pages were first published, that they require some correction. The oriental theory for the origin of the pointed architecture, though not given up, has not generally stood its ground; there seems more reason to believe that it was first adopted in Germany, as Mr. Hope has shown; but at first in single arches, not in the construction of the entire building.

The circular and pointed forms, instead of one having at once supplanted the other, were concurrent in the same building, through Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, for some centuries. I will just add to the instances mentioned by Mr. Hope and others, and which every traveller may corroborate, one not very well known, perhaps as early as any,--the crypt of the cathedral at Basle, built under the reign of the emperor Henry II., near the commencement of the eleventh century, where two pointed with three circular arches stand together, evidently from want of s.p.a.ce enough to preserve the same breadth with the necessary height.

The same circ.u.mstance will be found, I think, in the crypt of St. Denis, near Paris, which, however, is not so old. The writings of Hope, Rickman, Whewell, and Willis are prominent among many that have thrown light on this subject. The beauty and magnificence of the pointed style is acknowledged on all sides; perhaps the imitation of it has been too servile, and with too much forgetfulness of some very important changes in our religious aspect rendering that simply ornamental which was once directed to a great object. [1848.]

[690] The curious subject of freemasonry has unfortunately been treated only by panegyrists or calumniators, both equally mendacious. I do not wish to pry into the mysteries of the craft; but it would be interesting to know more of their history during the period when they were literally architects. They are charged by an act of parliament, 3 H. VI. c. i., with fixing the price of their labour in their annual chapters, contrary to the statute of labourers, and such chapters are consequently prohibited. This is their first persecution; they have since undergone others, and are perhaps reserved for still more. It is remarkable, that masons were never legally incorporated, like other traders; their bond of union being stronger than any charter. The article Masonry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica is worth reading.

[691] I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing a lively and eloquent pa.s.sage from Dr. Whitaker. "Could a curious observer of the present day carry himself nine or ten centuries back, and ranging the summit of Pendle survey the forked vale of Calder on one side, and the bolder margins of Ribble and Hadder on the other, instead of populous towns and villages, the castle, the old tower-built house, the elegant modern mansion, the artificial plantation, the inclosed park and pleasure ground: instead of uninterrupted inclosures which have driven sterility almost to the summit of the fells, how great must then have been the contrast, when ranging either at a distance, or immediately beneath, his eye must have caught vast tracts of forest ground stagnating with bog or darkened by native woods, where the wild ox, the roe, the stag, and the wolf, had scarcely learned the supremacy of man, when, directing his view to the intermediate s.p.a.ces, to the windings of the valleys, or the expanse of plains beneath, he could only have distinguished a few insulated patches of culture, each encircling a village of wretched cabins, among which would still be remarked one rude mansion of wood, scarcely equal in comfort to a modern cottage, yet then rising proudly eminent above the rest, where the Saxon lord, surrounded by his faithful cotarii, enjoyed a rude and solitary independence, owning no superior but his sovereign." Hist. of Whalley, p. 133. About a fourteenth part of this parish of Whalley was cultivated at the time of Domesday. This proportion, however, would by no means hold in the counties south of Trent.

[692] "Of the Anglo-Saxon husbandry we may remark," says Mr. Turner, "that Domesday Survey gives us some indication that the cultivation of the church lands was much superior to that of any other order of society. They have much less wood upon them, and less common of pasture; and what they had appears often in smaller and more irregular pieces; while their meadow was more abundant, and in more numerous distributions." Hist. of Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii. p. 167.

It was the glory of St. Benedict's reform, to have subst.i.tuted bodily labour for the supine indolence of oriental asceticism. In the East it was more difficult to succeed in such an endeavour, though it had been made. "The Benedictins have been," says Guizot, "the great clearers of land in Europe. A colony, a little swarm of monks, settled in places nearly uncultivated, often in the midst of a pagan population, in Germany, for example, or in Britany; there, at once missionaries and labourers, they accomplished their double service through peril and fatigue." Civilis. en France, Lecon 14. The north-eastern parts of France, as far as the Lower Seine, were reduced into cultivation by the disciples of St. Columban, in the sixth and seventh centuries. The proofs of this are in Mabillon's Acta Sanctorum Ord. Bened. See Mem. de l'Acad. des Sciences Morales et Politiques, iii. 708.

Guizot has appreciated the rule of St. Benedict with that candid and favourable spirit which he always has brought to the history of the church: anxious, as it seems, not only to escape the imputation of Protestant prejudices by others, but to combat them in his own mind; and aware, also, that the partial misrepresentations of Voltaire had sunk into the minds of many who were listening to his lectures. Compared with the writers of the eighteenth century, who were too much alienated by the faults of the clergy to acknowledge any redeeming virtues, or even with Sismondi, who, coming in a moment of reaction, feared the returning influence of mediaeval prejudices, Guizot stands forward as an equitable and indulgent arbitrator. In this spirit he says of the rule of St.

Benedict--La pensee morale et la discipline generale en sont severes; mais dans le detail de la vie elle est humaine et moderee; plus humaine, plus moderee que les lois barbares, que les moeurs generales du temps; et je ne doute pas que les freres, renfermes dans l'interieur d'un monastere, n'y fussent gouvernes par une autorite, a tout prendre, et plus raisonnable, et d'une maniere moins dure qu'ils ne l'eussent ete dans la societe civile.

[693] Thus, in Marca Hispanica, Appendix, p. 770, we have a grant from Lothaire I. in 834, to a person and his brother, of lands which their father, ab eremo in Septimania trahens, had possessed by a charter of Charlemagne. See too p. 773, and other places. Du Cange, v. Eremus, gives also a few instances.

[694] Du Cange, v. Aprisio. Baluze, Capitularia, t. i. p. 549. They were permitted to decide petty suits among themselves, but for more important matters were to repair to the county-court. A liberal policy runs through the whole charter. See more on the same subject, id. p. 569.

[695] I owe this fact to M. Heeren, Essai sur l'Influence des Croisades, p. 226. An inundation in their own country is supposed to have immediately produced this emigration; but it was probably successive, and connected with political as well as physical causes of greater permanence. The first instrument in which they are mentioned is a grant from the bishop of Hamburgh in 1106. This colony has affected the local usages, as well as the denominations of things and places along the northern coast of Germany. It must be presumed that a large proportion of the emigrants were diverted from agriculture to people the commercial cities which grew up in the twelfth century upon that coast.

[696] Ingulfus tells us that the commissioners were pious enough to favour Croyland, returning its possessions inaccurately, both as to measurement and value; non ad verum pretium, nec ad verum spatium nostrum monasterium librabant misericorditer, praecaventes in futurum regis exactionibus. p. 79. I may just observe by the way, that Ingulfus gives the plain meaning of the word Domesday, which has been disputed.

The book was so called, he says, pro sua generalitate omnia tenementa totius terrae integre continente; that is, it was as general and conclusive as the last judgment will be.

[697] This of course is subject to the doubt as to the authenticity of Ingulfus.

[698] 1 Gale, XV Script. p. 77.

[699] Communi plebiscito viritim inter se diviserunt, et quidam suas portiones agricolantes, quidam ad foenum conservantes, quidam ut prius ad pasturam suorum animalium, separaliter jacere permittentes, terram pinguem et uberem repererunt. p. 94.

[700] 1 Gale, XV Script. p. 201.

[701] A good deal of information upon the former state of agriculture will be found in Cullum's History of Hawsted. Blomefield's Norfolk is in this respect among the most valuable of our local histories. Sir Frederic Eden, in the first part of his excellent work on the poor, has collected several interesting facts.

[702] 1. ii. c. 8.

[703] Cullum, p. 100, 220. Eden's State of Poor, &c. p. 48. Whitaker's Craven, p. 45, 336.

[704] I infer this from a number of pa.s.sages in Blomefield, Cullum, and other writers. Hearne says, that an acre was often called Solidata terrae; because the yearly rent of one _on the best land_ was a s.h.i.+lling.

Lib. Nig. Scacc. p. 31.

[705] Rot. Parl. vol. v. p. 275.

[706] A pa.s.sage in Bishop Latimer's sermons, too often quoted to require repet.i.tion, shows that land was much underlet about the end of the fifteenth century. His father, he says, kept half a dozen husbandmen, and milked thirty cows, on a farm of three or four pounds a year. It is not surprising that he lived as plentifully as his son describes.

[707] Rymer, t. xii. p. 204.

[708] Velly and Villaret scarcely mention this subject; and Le Grand merely tells us that it was entirely neglected; but the details of such an art, even in its state of neglect, might be interesting.

[709] Muratori, Dissert. 21.

[710] Denina, 1. xi. c. 7.

[711] Denina, 1. vi.

[712] t. iii. p. 145; t. x.x.xi. p. 258.

[713] De la Mare, Traite de la Police, t. iii. p. 380.

[714] Eden's State of Poor, vol. i. p. 51.

[715] Sir F. Eden, whose table of prices, though capable of some improvement, is perhaps the best that has appeared, would, I think, have acted better, by omitting all references to mere historians, and relying entirely on regular doc.u.ments. I do not however include local histories, such as the Annals of Dunstaple, when they record the market-prices of their neighbourhood, in respect of which the book last mentioned is almost in the nature of a register. Dr. Whitaker remarks the inexactness of Stowe, who says that wheat sold in London, A.D. 1514, at 20_s._ a quarter: whereas it appears to have been at 9_s._ in Lancas.h.i.+re, where it was always dearer than in the metropolis. Hist. of Whalley, p. 97. It is an odd mistake, into which Sir F. Eden has fallen, when he a.s.serts and argues on the supposition, that the price of wheat fluctuated in the thirteenth century, from 1_s._ to 6_l._ 8_s._ a quarter, vol. i. p. 18.

Certainly, if any chronicler had mentioned such a price as the latter, equivalent to 150_l._ at present, we should either suppose that his text was corrupt, or reject it as an absurd exaggeration. But, in fact, the author has, through haste, mistaken 6_s._ 8_d._ for 6_l._ 8_s._, as will appear by referring to his own table of prices, where it is set down rightly. It is observed by Mr. Macpherson, a very competent judge, that the arithmetical statements of the best historians of the middle ages are seldom correct, owing partly to their neglect of examination, and partly to blunders of transcribers. Annals of Commerce, vol. i, p. 423.

[716] The table of comparative values by Sir George Shuckburgh (Philosoph. Transact. for 1798, p. 196) is strangely incompatible with every result to which my own reading has led me. It is the hasty attempt of a man accustomed to different studies; and one can neither pardon the presumption of obtruding such a slovenly performance on a subject where the utmost diligence was required, nor the affectation with which he apologizes for "descending from the dignity of philosophy."

[717] M. Guerard, editor of "Paris sous Philippe le Bel," in the Doc.u.mens Inedits (1841, p. 365), after a comparison of the prices of corn, concludes that the value of silver has declined since that reign, in the ratio of five to one. This is much less than we allow in England.

M. Leber (Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. Nouvelle Serie, xiv. 230) calculates the power of silver under Charlemagne, compared with the present day, to have been as nearly eleven to one. It fell afterwards to eight, and continued to sink during the middle ages; the average of prices during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, taking corn as the standard, was six to one; the comparison is of course only for France.

This is an interesting paper, and contains tables worthy of being consulted.

[718] Blomefield's History of Norfolk, and Sir J. Cullum's of Hawsted, furnish several pieces even at this early period. Most of them are collected by Sir F. Eden. Fleta reckons 4_s._ the average price of a quarter of wheat in his time. 1. ii. c. 84. This writer has a digression on agriculture, whence however less is to be collected than we should expect.

[719] The fluctuations of price have unfortunately been so great of late years, that it is almost as difficult to determine one side of our equation as the other. Any reader, however, has it in his power to correct my proportions, and adopt a greater or less multiple, according to his own estimate of current prices, or the changes that may take place from the time when this is written [1816].

[720] I have sometimes been surprised at the facility with which prices adjusted themselves to the quant.i.ty of silver contained in the current coin, in ages which appear too ignorant and too little commercial for the application of this mercantile principle. But the extensive dealings of the Jewish and Lombard usurers, who had many debtors in almost all parts of the country, would of itself introduce a knowledge, that silver, not its stamp, was the measure, of value. I have mentioned in another place (vol. i. p. 211) the heavy discontents excited by this debas.e.m.e.nt of the coin in France; but the more gradual enhancement of nominal prices in England seems to have prevented any strong manifestations of a similar spirit at the successive reductions in value which the coin experienced from the year 1300. The connexion however between commodities and silver was well understood. Wykes, an annalist of Edward I.'s age, tells us, that the Jews clipped our coin, till it retained hardly half its due weight, the effect of which was a general enhancement of prices, and decline of foreign trade: Mercatores transmarini c.u.m mercimoniis suis regnum Angliae minus solito frequentabant; necnon quod omnimoda venalium genera incomparabiliter solito fuerunt cariora. 2 Gale, XV Script. p. 107. Another chronicler of the same age complains of bad foreign money, alloyed with copper; nec erat in quatuor aut quinque ex iis pondus unius denarii argentii....

Eratque pessimum saeculum pro tali moneta, et fiebant commutationes plurimae in emptione et venditione rerum. Edward, as the historian informs us, bought in this bad money at a rate below its value, in order to make a profit; and fined some persons who interfered with his traffic. W. Hemingford, ad ann. 1299.

[721] These will chiefly be found in Sir F. Eden's table of prices; the following may be added from the account-book of a convent between 1415 and 1425. Wheat varied from 4_s._ to 6_s._--barley from 3_s._ 2_d._ to 4_s._ 10_d._--oats from 1_s._ 8_d._ to 2_s._ 4_d._--oxen from 12_s._ to 16_s._--sheep from 1_s._ 2_d._ to 1_s._ 4_d._--b.u.t.ter 3/4_d._ per lb.--eggs twenty-five for 1_d._--cheese 1/2_d._ per lb. Lansdowne MSS., vol. i. No. 28 and 29. These prices do not always agree with those given in other doc.u.ments of equal authority in the same period; but the value of provisions varied in different counties, and still more so in different seasons of the year.

[722] I insert the following comparative table of English money from Sir Frederick Eden. The unit, or present value, refers of course to that of the s.h.i.+lling before the last coinage, which reduced it.

------------------+----------------+------------- Value of pound sterling, present money. Proportion.

+----------------+------------- . s. d. Conquest, 1066 2 18 1-1/2 2906 28 E. I. 1300 2 17 5 2871 18 E. III. 1344 2 12 5-1/4 2622 20 E. III. 1346 2 11 8 2583 27 E. III. 1353 2 6 6 2325 13 H. IV. 1412 1 18 9 1937 4 E. IV. 1464 1 11 0 155 18 H. VIII. 1527 1 7 6-3/4 1378 34 H. VIII. 1543 1 3 3-1/4 1163 36 H. VIII. 1545 0 13 11-1/2 0698 37 H. VIII. 1546 0 9 3-3/4 0466 5 E. VI. 1551 0 4 7-3/4 0232 6 E. VI. 1552 1 0 6-3/4 1028 1 Mary 1553 1 0 5-3/4 1024 2 Eliz. 1560 1 0 8 1033 43 Eliz. 1601 1 0 0 1000 ------------------+----------------+-------------

[723] Macpherson's Annals, p. 424, from Matt. Paris.

[724] Difference of Limited and Absolute Monarchy, p. 133.

[725] Hist. of Hawsted, p. 141.

[726] Nicholls's Ill.u.s.trations, p. 2. One fact of this cla.s.s did, I own, stagger me. The great earl of Warwick writes to a private gentleman, Sir Thomas Tudenham, begging the loan of ten or twenty pounds to make up a sum he had to pay. Paston Letters, vol. i. p. 84. What way shall we make this commensurate to the present value of money? But an ingenious friend suggested, what I do not question is the case, that this was one of many letters addressed to the adherents of Warwick, in order to raise by their contributions a considerable sum. It is curious, in this light, as an ill.u.s.tration of manners.

[727] Paston Letters, vol. i. p. 224; Cullum's Hawsted, p. 182.

[728] Hist. of Hawsted, p. 228.