ART. IV.-BEGINNINGS OF HUMANISM IN GERMANY. In his fragmentary poem, Der ewige Jude, Goethe attempts to picture the world as the Saviour finds it when he comes back to earth some thousands of years after his crucifixion: "Where," cried the Master, "is that light Alas! I see here in this night No cords of love in heaven twined. His striving, too, no longer shows. And then from own heart's deepest cave To still ofttimes his whimsied need He snatches at men's very bones; With loathsome gluttony to feed On others' hopes amid their groans." The lines might, however, have passed as a description of the declining years of the Middle Ages, and then fallen far short of the truth. By the time of the downfall of scholasticism the Church had sunken into such corruption and immorality that Rome's degeneracy in her decadence was virtue beside it. And it was not the laxness of ecclesiastics in the distant north or east, far from authority and supervision; the Roman curia itself could serve as a hideous example of depravity to the rest of Christendom. "Truth has become madness in the papal courts," said the great Petrarch in the fourteenth century; "continence passes there for rustic stupidity, chastity 3-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XIV. for disgrace. The more foul and abandoned a man is the greater the reputation he enjoys." The quotation does not end here, but when it comes to husbands delivering up their wives to priestly profligates it is a chronicle of infamy that one blushes to set down. Like priest like people, but here it was like pope like priest; for, certainly, in the days of the Unsittlichkeit of the Church, the clergy practiced merely as the popes preached, and from the eternal city that men had hoped would once more rule the world a contagion of uncleanness passed from pontiff, cardinal, and bishop till it reached the humblest priest and people. The monasteries were rich and powerful, but their preeminence was turned into licentiousness. When revenues, great as they were, became insufficient the cloisters resorted to simony to fill their coffers, and from Rome to the obscurest parish there was buying and selling in the positions of the Church. The sale of indulgences and relics was a legitimate branch of trade. Those who bought were usually those who could ill afford to buy, but this mattered but little to the sacerdotal hucksters so long as the gains went to swell the receipts of corruption and immorality. To relieve the austerity and irksomeness of a dead worship profane and sacrilegious rites were introduced. "Fools'" and "asses"" festivals, so called, were held, in the orgies of which masked communicants danced, sang, and even threw dice on the high altars themselves. No wonder that the coming of the black death seemed like a scourge from heaven to turn men's thoughts to terror and expectancy of doom. Levity became suddenly changed to superstition and complacency to frenzy, and in an excess of religious zeal processions of flagellants whipped themselves through the streets, the cries of the sufferers blending in wild fierceness with the chants of the priests. The Jews served as a convenient cause of all these calamities, and they were rich. In the year 1348, the year the plague came, two thousand Jews were martyred on the same scaffold in Strasburg, and the chronicler reported, "Thus were the Jews burned in all the cities of the Rhine." The * See Luther's address An den Christlichen Adel deutscher Nation. writer has himself read in the Urkundenbuch of the city of Freiburg a record of how, in 1349, all the Jews in the city were burned. In Erfurt six thousand of the unfortunates, overwhelmed by despair, barricaded themselves in their streets and were incinerated in their own homes. From Switzerland, north along the Rhine, and east and west over half the Continent, it was the same; and the heavens were blackened with the smoke of persecution, until the ghettos were desolate and deserted. This demoralization in the power and influence of the Church during the last two centuries of the Middle Ages forms the dark background upon which new social and civil formations shaped themselves. The Church was losing its hold upon the people; new thoughts and things were beginning to arrest attention. It was thinking, which in the end means the death of tyranny, whether ecclesiastic or spiritual. Foremost among the causes which helped to awaken Europe were the Crusades, movements religious in their inception but resulting in a beneficial worldliness, and opening the eyes of the West to a new civilization and culture.* The Crusades infused a new life-element into the blood of Christendom. They gave a glamour of romance to chivalry that still lingers in ballad and tradition, and at the same time crowded feudalism into a decline from which it never rallied. National differences and aspirations meant the weakening of feudal power. Commerce was greatly stimulated by the contact, or contest, of West and East. New customs originated, new tastes formed, new commodities were introduced. Wines, silks, sugars-all the luxurious products of the Orient-came back with the returning ships. Literature received new material, science new facts. Chemistry was enriched by new terms, medicine by new simples, gardens by new fruits and plants. Agriculture was improved, better ways of irrigation introduced, the windmill came from the East with those who fought for the holy grave. Strange animals were placed in public gardens, and the donkey and the mule were brought to bear the burdens of a new land. New ideas of elegance and * Adams, Civilization During the Middle Ages, chapter xi, “The Crusades." * home comfort prevailed, and at the same time people grew interested in what was beyond the horizon. Now and then some Marco Polo adventured into strange lands, and the tales he told became the gossip of a nation. The study of geogra phy in this way received a new interest that was a fitting preparation for the bold achievements of the fifteenth century. It was in the thirteenth century that this new impulse began to be felt in the commercial life of Europe, and as a result the cities awoke to new prosperity and importance. This was particularly true in Germany. In the north, where the Baltic and the German Ocean afforded highways for the trade of northern Europe, the Hanse towns flourished and in time even surpassed Venice and the other cities of the Mediterranean. In the height of its power the League numbered fourscore cities, and ruled the coast from Holland to the confines of Russia. The inland cities of Germany prospered also at this breath from without. Leagues were formed, as in the seaport towns, and guilds grew up to protect the working classes from the power of the patrician and wealthy families; the organization of labor against capital is no new thing. North and south the cities naturally became the centers of progress and civilization. No people were wealthier, no artisans more renowned, than those of the German cities. Art took on a new vigor, and sculptures, paintings, great minsters in Gothic style, were the results. But, sad to tell, as the burghers rose the peasants sunk; they had to support the estates above them, and they were unequal to the task. They became a "mühselig Volk," who toiled like slaves with the patience of beasts, and they reaped no reward but taxes, tolls, and hopeless service.† Let us now look for a moment at the condition of education in this period of transition which marks the close of the Middle Ages. As was inevitable, the growing depravity of the Church proved the decay of monastery and cathedral schools. The clergy grew more and more fond of fat benefices and good dinners, and less and less devoted to the seven liberal arts. Frequently it happened the priests could not comprehend the For the results of the Crusades see Thatcher and Schwill, Europe in the Middle Age, p. 431, et seq.; Guizot, Histoire de la Civilization, huitième leçon. ↑ See Scherr, Duetsche Kultur- und Sittengeschichte, t. 1, cap. ix. psalms they chanted; and the Abbey of St. Gallen, once the most famous cloister school north of the Alps, the home of Notker Labeo and Ekkehard, degenerated till neither the abbot nor any of his chapter could read or write; and the precious manuscripts of the classics and Church fathers, that had once delighted monkish scholars, were suffered to molder and decay under rubbish in a room which was never entered.* But learning seemed to prosper amid adversities, and when the cloister schools became too enfeebled to cherish it longer it transferred itself to the cities and lived upon their increas ing activity and greatness. Burgher schools grew up to give such training as was demanded by the new trend of things, and instruction in reading and writing was begun in the mother tongue. Following these schools were Latin schools, the germ of the modern gymnasium. The term "Latin" is no misnomer when applied to these advanced schools, for all instruction centered upon Latin-such as it was-as the corner stone of the curriculum. Here we find the influence of scholasticism still potent, and methods were regulated by scholastic ideals. Grammar was still the chief part of linguistics, and the works of ecclesiastical and doctrinal writers the only texts. Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophia, the books of Stephanus Fiscus de Sontino, a few scholastic definitions, the Symbolum Apostolicum, the seven penitential psalms, and Donatus-these were some of the sources from which pupils drew their inspiration. There were but few books, and lessons were dictated with blows and cuffs for punctuation. And still education lived; it even flourished, under such conditions, and hordes of wandering students, scholares vagantes, crossed and crisscrossed the land in search of learning. The Church was already in its decline when German universities were founded, and though as institutions they grew in numbers they could not rise above the low level of ecclesiastical example. The narrowness of decaying scholasticism prevailed in every faculty, and corporation and guild distinctions tyrannized in every student body. The students no longer were eager seekers for wisdom, but brawling, carousing vagabonds, who concealed a multitude of worldly sins under *Scherr, op. cit., p. 169. |