Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

diplomacy, persecution, and war. Personally he was neither greedy

nor extravagant; his appetite was for power rather than for luxury,

and his greed was for his country, to make it one and strong. He had

no belief in democracy; under him local liberties languished and died;

he was readily convinced that the old communal institutions could

not be expanded to govern successfully a nation of so many states,

faiths, and tongues. His achievement, and Isabella's, was to replace

anarchy with monarchy, weakness with strength. He paved the way for

Charles V to maintain the royal supremacy despite long absences, and

for Philip II to concentrate all the government in one inadequate

head. To accomplish this he was guilty of what to our time seems

barbarous intolerance and inhuman cruelty, but seemed to his

contemporaries a glorious victory for Christ.

Ximenes as regent zealously preserved the absolutism of the

throne, perhaps as an alternative to a relapse into feudal

fragmentation. Though now eighty years old, he ruled Castile with

inflexible will, and defeated every effort of the feudality or the

municipalities to regain their former powers. When some nobles asked

by what right he curbed their privileges, he pointed not to the

insignia of office on his person but to the artillery in the courtyard

of the palace. Yet his will to power was subordinated to his sense

of duty, for he repeatedly urged the young King Charles to leave

Flanders and come to Spain to assume the royal authority. When Charles

came (September 17, 1517), Ximenes hurried north to meet him. But

Charles's Flemish counselors had seconded the Castilian nobles in

giving him so unfavorable a report of the Cardinal's administration

and character that the King, still an immature youth of seventeen,

dispatched a letter to Ximenes thanking him for his services,

deferring an interview, and bidding him retire to his see at Toledo

for a merited rest. Another letter, dismissing the old zealot from all

political office, reached him too late to deepen his humiliation; he

had died on November 8, 1517, aged eighty-one. People wondered how,

though apparently incorruptible, he had amassed the great personal

fortune that his will left to the University of Alcala.

He ended for Spain an age rich in honors, horrors, and forceful men.

The aftermath suggests that the victory of the crown over Cortes and

communes removed the medium through which the Spanish character

might have expressed and maintained independence and variety; that the

unification of faith was secured at the cost of riveting upon Spain

a machine for the suppression of original thought on first and last

things; that the expulsion of unconverted Jews and Moors undermanned

Spanish commerce and industry just when the opening of the New World

called for economic expansion and improvement; that the progressive

involvement of Spain in the politics and wars of France and Italy

(later of Flanders, Germany, and England), instead of turning policy

and enterprise toward the development of the Americas, laid unbearable

burdens upon the nation's resources in money and men. This, however,

is hindsight, and judges the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella in

terms that no European people of their time would have understood. All

religious groups except for a few Moslems and Anabaptists persecuted

religious dissent; all governments- Catholic France and Italy,

Protestant Germany and England- used force to unify religious faith;

all countries hungered for the gold of the "Indies," East or West; all

used war and diplomatic deceit to ensure their survival, extend

their boundaries, or increase their wealth. To all Christian

governments Christianity was not a rule of means but a means of

rule; Christ was for the people, Machiavelli was preferred by the

kings. The state in some measure had civilized man, but who would

civilize the state?

CHAPTER XII: The Growth of Knowledge: 1300-1517

I. THE MAGICIANS

-

THE two centuries whose European history has been so hastily

sketched in the preceding chapters were still part of what tradition

calls the Middle Ages- which we may loosely define as the life of

Europe between Constantine and Columbus, 325 to 1492 A.D. As we

summarize now the science, pedagogy, and philosophy of Western

Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we must remind

ourselves that rational studies had to fight for soil and air in a

jungle of superstition, intolerance, and fear. Amid famines,

plagues, and wars, in the chaos of a fugitive or divided papacy, men

and women sought in occult forces some explanation for the

unintelligible miseries of mankind, some magical power to control

events, some mystical escape from a harsh reality; and the life of

reason moved precariously in a milieu of sorcery, witchcraft,

necromancy, palmistry, phrenology, numerology, divination, portents,

prophecies, dream interpretations, fateful stellar conjunctions,

chemical transmutations, miraculous cures, and occult powers in

animals, minerals, and plants. All these marvels remain deathless with

us today, and one or another wins from almost every one of us some

open or secret allegiance; but their present influence in Europe falls

far short of their medieval sway.

The stars were studied not only to guide navigation and date

religious festivals, but also to forecast terrestrial occurrences

and personal destinies. The pervasive influences of climate and

season, the relation of tides to the moon, the lunar periodicity of

women, and the dependence of agriculture upon the modes and moods of

the sky, seemed to justify the claims of astrology that the heavens of

today forecast the events of tomorrow. Such predictions were regularly

published (as now), and reached a wide and avid audience. Princes

dared not begin a campaign, a battle, a journey, or a building without

assurance from the astrologers that the stars were in a propitious

configuration. Henry V of England kept his own astrolabe to chart

the sky, and when his queen was lying-in he cast his own horoscope

of the child. `06121 Astrologers were as welcome as humanists at

Matthias Corvinus's enlightened court.

The stars, men believed, were guided by angels, and the air was

congested with invisible spirits, some from heaven, some from hell.

Demons lurked everywhere, especially in one's bed; to them some men

ascribed their night losses, some women their untimely pregnancies;

and theologians agreed that such infernal concubines were real. `06122

At every turn, at any moment, the credulous individual could step

out of the sense world into a realm of magic beings and powers.

Every natural object had supernatural qualities. Books of magic were

among the "best sellers" of the day. The bishop of Cahors was

tortured, scourged, and burned at the stake (1317) after confessing

that he had burned a wax image of Pope John XXII in the hope that

the original, as the magic art promised, would suffer like the

effigy. `06123 People believed that a wafer consecrated by a priest

would, if pricked, bleed with the blood of Christ.

The repute of the alchemists had declined, but their honest research

and glittering chicanery went on. While royal and papal edicts

denounced them, they persuaded some kings that alchemy might replenish

exhausted treasuries, and simple people swallowed "potable

gold" `06124 guaranteed to cure anything but gullibility. (Gold is

still taken by patients and physicians in treating arthritis.)

The science of medicine contended at every step with astrology,

theology, and quackery. Nearly all physicians related the prognosis of

a disease to the constellation under which the sufferer had been

born or taken ill; so the great surgeon Guy de Chauliac could write

(1363), "If anyone is wounded in the neck while the moon is in Taurus,

the affliction will be dangerous." `06125 One of the earliest

printed documents was a calendar published at Mainz (1462)

indicating the astrologically best times for bloodletting. Epidemics

were widely ascribed to unlucky associations of the stars. Probably

through disillusionment with medicine, millions of Christians turned

to faith healing. Thousands came to the kings of France or England

to be cured of scrofula by a touch of the royal hand. Apparently the

custom had begun with Louis IX, whose saintliness led to the belief

that he could work miracles. His power was supposed to have gone

down to his successors, and, through Isabella of Valois, mother of

Edward III, to the rulers of England. More thousands made

pilgrimages to curative shrines, and turned some saints into medical

specialists; so a chapel of St. Vitus was frequented by sufferers from

chorea, since that saint was believed to be a specific for this

disease. The tomb of Pierre de Luxembourg, a cardinal who at

eighteen died of ascetic austerities, became a favorite goal, where,

within fifteen months after his death, 1,964 cures were ascribed to

the magic efficacy of his bones. `06126 Quacks flourished, but the law

began to hamper them. In 1382 Roger Clerk, who had pretended to cure

disease by applying charms, was condemned to ride through London

with urinals hanging from his neck. `06127

Most Europeans believed in sorcery- i.e., the power of persons to

control evil spirits and secure their help. The Dark Ages had been

comparatively enlightened in this respect: Saints Boniface and Agobard

denounced the belief in sorcery as sinful and ridiculous;

Charlemagne made it a capital crime to execute anyone on a charge of

witchcraft; and Pope Gregory VII Hildebrand forbade inquisition to

be made for sorcerers as the cause of storms or plagues. `06128 But

the emphasis laid by preachers upon the reality of hell and the

wiles of Satan strengthened popular belief in the ubiquitous and

iniquitous presence of himself or one of his company; and many a

diseased mind or desperate soul harbored the idea of summoning such

devils to its aid. Accusations of sorcery were made against a great

variety of people, including Pope Boniface VIII. In 1315 the

aristocrat Enguerrand de Marigny was hanged for sorcery, and in 1317

Pope John XXII ordered the execution of various obscure persons for

plotting to kill him by invoking the assistance of demons. John

repeatedly denounced the appeal to demons, ordered prosecutions for

it, and prescribed penalties; but his edicts were interpreted by the

people as confirming their belief in the existence and availability of

demonic powers. After 1320 the indictments for sorcery multiplied, and

many of the accused were hanged or burned at the stake. It was a

common opinion in France that Charles VI had been made insane by magic

means; two sorcerers were engaged who promised to restore his wits;

when they failed they were beheaded (1397). In 1398 the theological

faculty of the University of Paris issued twenty-eight articles

condemning sorcery, but assuming its occasional efficacy. Chancellor

Gerson pronounced it a heresy to question the existence or activity of

demons. `06129

Witchcraft was the practice of sorcery by persons who were alleged

to worship Satan, in nocturnal assemblies or "Sabbaths," as the master

of the demons whom they affected to employ. According to popular

belief the witches, usually women, secured supernatural powers at

the price of this devil-worship. So commissioned, they were supposed

to override natural laws, and to bring misfortune or death to whom

they wished. Scholars like Erasmus and Thomas More accepted the

reality of witchcraft; some priests in Cologne doubted it; the

University of Cologne affirmed it. `061210 Most churchmen claimed- and

lay historians in some measure agree- that the secret gatherings by

night were excuses for promiscuous sexual relations, and for

initiating young people into the arts of debauchery. `061211 Whether

through insane delusion, or to secure release from torture, many

witches allegedly confessed to one or another of the evil practices

charged to them. It may be that these "witches' Sabbaths" served as

a moratorium on a burdensome Christianity, and as a partly playful,

partly rebellious worship of Satan as the powerful enemy of a God

who condemned so many pleasures to repression and so many souls to

hell; or these clandestine rites may have recalled and reaffirmed

pagan cults and feasts of the deities of earth and field and forest,

of procreation and fertility, of Bacchus, Priapus, Ceres, and Flora.

Secular and episcopal courts joined in efforts to suppress what

seemed to them the most blasphemous depravity. Several popes- in 1374,

1409, 1437, 1451, and especially Innocent VIII in 1484- commissioned

agents of the Inquisition to deal with witches as abandoned

heretics, whose sins and machinations blighted the fruit of fields and

wombs, and whose pretensions might seduce whole communities into

demonolatry. The popes took literally a passage in Exodus (22:18):

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Nevertheless the

ecclesiastical courts, before 1446, contented themselves with mild

penalties, unless a pardoned offender relapsed. In 1446 the

Inquisition burned several witches at Heidelberg; in 1460 it burned

twelve men and women at Arras; and the name Vaudois given them, as

generally to heretics (Waldenses) and witches in France, survived an

Atlantic voyage to generate the word Voodooism for Negro sorcery

in the French colonies of America. `061212 In 1487 the Dominican

inquisitor Jacob Sprenger, honestly frightened by the apparent

spread of sorcery, published an official guide for the detection of

witches, Malleus maleficarum (Hammer of Witches). Maximilian I, then

King of the Romans, prefaced with a letter of warm recommendation this

"most portentous monument of superstition which the world has

produced." `061213 These maleficent women, said Sprenger, by

stirring up some devilish brew in a caldron, or by other means, can

summon swarms of locusts and caterpillars to devour a harvest; they

can make men impotent and women barren; they can dry up a woman's

milk, or bring abortion; by a look alone they can cause love or

hatred, sickness or death. Some of them kidnap children, roast them,

and eat them. They can see things at a distance, and foresee the

weather; they can transform themselves, and others, into

beasts. `061214 Sprenger wondered why there were more female than male

witches, and concluded that it was because women were more lightheaded

and sensual than men; besides, he added, they had always been favorite

instruments of Satan. `061215 He burned forty-eight of them in five

years. From his time onward the ecclesiastical attack upon

witchcraft was intensified until it reached its full fury in the

sixteenth century, under Catholic and Protestant auspices alike; in

this type of fearful ferocity the Middle Ages were outdone by modern

times. In 1554 an officer of the Inquisition boasted that in the

preceding 150 years the Holy Office had burned at least 30,000

witches, who, if they had been left unpunished, would have brought the

whole world to destruction. `061216

-

Many books were written in this age against superstition, and all

contained superstitions. `061217 Agostino Trionfo addressed to Pope

Clement V a treatise advising him to outlaw occult practices, but

Trionfo held it unpardonable in a physician to perform a phlebotomy

during certain phases of the moon. `061218 Pope John XXII issued

powerful blasts against alchemy (1317) and magic (1327); he mourned

what he thought was the increasing prevalence of sacrifices to demons,

pacts with the Devil, and the making of images, rings, and potions for

magical purposes; he pronounced ipso facto excommunication upon

all practitioners of such arts; but even he implied a belief in

their possible efficacy. `061219

The great antagonist of astrology in this age was Nicole Oresme, who

died as bishop of Lisieux in 1382. He laughed at astrologers who could

not predict the sex of an unborn child but, after its birth, professed

to foretell its earthly fate; such horoscopes, said Oresme, are old

wives' tales. Repeating the title and effort of Cicero fourteen

centuries back, he wrote De divinatione against the claims of

soothsayers, dream interpreters, and the like. Amid his general

skepticism of the occult he admitted that some events could be

explained as the work of demons or angels. He accepted the notion of

the "evil eye"; he thought that a criminal would darken a mirror by

looking into it, and that the glance of a lynx could penetrate a wall.

He acknowledged the miracles of the Bible, but he repudiated

supernatural explanations where natural causes sufficed. Many

people, said Nicole, are credulous of magic because they lack

acquaintance with natural causes and processes. They accept on hearsay

what they have not seen, and so legend- as of a magician climbing a

rope thrown into the air- may become a popular belief. `061220 (This

is the oldest-known mention of the rope-climbing myth.)

Consequently, Oresme argued, the wide prevalence of a belief is no

proof of its truth. Even if many persons claim to have witnessed an

event contrary to our ordinary experience of nature, we should

hesitate to believe them. Moreover, the senses are so easily deceived!

The color, shape, and sound of objects vary with distance, light,

and the condition of the sensory organs; an object at rest may seem to

be moving, and one in motion may seem at rest; a coin at the bottom of

a vase filled with water appears more remote than one so placed in

an empty vase. Sensations must be interpreted by judgment, and this

too may err. These deceptions of senses and judgment, says Oresme,

explain many of the marvels ascribed to supernatural or magical

powers. `061221

Despite such brave advances toward a scientific spirit, the old

superstitions survived, or merely changed their form. Nor were they

confined to the populace. Edward III of England paid a great sum for a

phial which, he was assured, had belonged to St. Peter. Charles V of

France was shown, in Sainte Chapelle, a phial allegedly containing

some of Christ's blood; he asked his savants and theologians whether

this could be true; they answered cautiously in the

affirmative. `061222 It was in this atmosphere that education,

science, medicine, and philosophy struggled to grow.

II. THE TEACHERS

-

The rise of commerce and industry put a new premium on education.

Literacy had been a costly luxury in an agricultural regime; it was

a necessity in an urban commercial world. Law tardily recognized the

change. In England (1391) the feudal landowners petitioned Richard

II to enforce the old rule that forbade a serf to send his son to

school without his lord's consent and reimbursement for the loss of

a farm hand. Richard refused, and in the next reign a statute

decreed that any parent might send any of his children to

school. `061223

Under this education-emancipation act elementary schools multiplied.

In the countryside monastic schools survived; in the cities grade

schools were provided by churches, hospitals, chantries, and guilds.

Attendance was voluntary but general, even in villages. Usually the

teachers were priests, but the proportion of lay instructors rose in

the fourteenth century. The curriculum stressed the catechism, the

Creed, the basic prayers, reading, writing, arithmetic, singing, and

flogging. Even in secondary schools flogging was the staff of

instruction. A divine explained that "the boys' spirits must be

subdued"; `061224 the parents agreed with him; and perhaps 'tis so.

Agnes Paston urged the tutor of her unstudious son to "belash him"

if he did not amend, "for I had lever he were fairly buried than

lost by default." `061225

Secondary schools continued the religious training, and added

grammatica, which included not merely grammar and composition, but

the language and expurgated literature of classic Rome; the

students- boys of the middle class- learned to read and write Latin,

however indifferently, as a necessity in foreign trade as well as in a

church career. The best secondary schools of the time were those

established in the Lowlands and Germany by the Brethren of the

Common Life; the one at Deventer drew 2,000 pupils. The wealthy and

energetic Bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham, set a precedent by

founding there (1372) the first of England's "public" schools-

institutions endowed, by private or public philanthropy, to provide

college preparatory training for a limited selection of boys. The

example was followed by Henry VI, who established (1440) and richly

endowed Eton School to prepare students for King's College, Cambridge.

Above the elementary level the education of women, with some

highborn exceptions, was confined to the home. Many women of the

middle class, like Margaret Paston, learned to write fair English, and

a sprinkling of women acquired some acquaintance with literature and

philosophy. The sons of the aristocracy received an education quite

different from that of the schools. Till the age of seven they were

taught by the women of the house; then they were sent to serve, as

pages, a related or neighboring noble. Safe there from the excesses of

affection, they learned reading, writing, religion, and manners from

the ladies and the local priest. At fourteen they became squires-

i.e., adult servitors of their lord. Now they learned to ride,

shoot, hunt, joust, and wage war. Book learning they left to their

inferiors.

These were meanwhile developing one of the noblest legacies of the

Middle Ages- the universities. While the ecstasy of ecclesiastical

architecture cooled, the zeal for founding colleges mounted. In this

period Oxford saw the establishment of Exeter, Oriel, Queen's, New,

Lincoln, All Souls, Magdalen, Brasenose, and Corpus Christi

colleges, and the Divinity School. They were not yet colleges in the

modern sense; they were "halls," places of residence for selected

students; hardly a tenth of the pupils at Oxford lived in them. Most

university instruction was given by clergymen in schoolrooms or

auditoriums scattered about the town. Benedictine monks, Franciscan,

Dominican, and other friars maintained their own colleges at Oxford;

and from these monastic academies came some of the most brilliant

men of the fourteenth century; among them were Duns Scotus and William

of Ockham, both of whom did some damage to orthodox theology. Students

of law received their training in London, at the Inns of Court.

In Oxford no love was wasted between town and gown- citizens and

scholars. In 1355 the hostile camps rushed into open war, and so

many heroes were killed that the year was known as that of the Great

Slaughter. Despite the introduction of flogging into the

universities of England (c. 1350), the students were a troublesome

lot. Forbidden to engage in intramural athletics, they spent their

energy in profanity, tippling, and venery; taverns and brothels throve

on their patronage. Attendance at Oxford fell from its

thirteenth-century peak to as low as a thousand; and after the

expulsion of Wyclif academic freedom was rigorously curtailed by

episcopal control.

Cambridge profited from the Wyclif controversy and the Lollard

scare; cautious conservatives kept their sons from Oxford and sent

them to the younger university, so that by the end of the fifteenth

century the rival institutions had a fairly equal registration. New

"halls" were founded along the Cam: Michaelhouse, University or Clare,

Pembroke, Gonville and Caius, Trinity, Corpus Christi, King's,

Queen's, St. Catherine's, Jesus', Christ's, and St. John's. Like the

residence halls at Oxford, these became colleges in our sense during

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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