THE sketch just concluded of the composition of society during the Middle Ages by no means accords with the idea of that epoch which still holds its place in the mind of the general public. In spite of the researches and labours of enlightened historians in recent times, such as Hallam in the early part of the century, and, of late years, of men like Green, Freeman, and Stubbs, the representation of the Middle Ages put forward by bourgeois historians, whose aim was the praising of the escape of modern society from a period of mere rapine and confusion, into peace, order, and prosperity, is generally accepted.
Doubtless there was a rough side to 77 the Middle Ages as to every other epoch, but there was also genuine life and progress in them. This, as we have seen, expressed itself on one side in the hierarchical order of feudal society, which was so far from being lawless that, on the contrary, law received somewhat undue observance therein. And on the other side that there were certain compensations to the shortcomings of the epoch, which we shall have to consider before long.
At present, however, let us look at the rough side of the mediæval cloth, with the preliminary remark, that those who have drawn so violent a contrast between mediæval disadvantages and the gains of modern life, have been by nature and circumstances incapable of seeing the compensations above-said.
The shortcomings of the life of the Middle Ages resolve themselves in the main, firstly, to the rudeness of life and absence of material comforts: secondly, to the element of oppression and violence in which men lived; and thirdly, to the. ignorance and superstition which veiled so much of our truth from their minds.
As to the rudeness of life it must be 78 remembered that men do not suffer from the lack of comforts which they have never had before their eyes, and of which they cannot even conceive. Indeed, in our own day, though we can conceive that flying would be a pleasanter method of progression than an express train, nevertheless we are not made unhappy by the fact of our not being able to fly. The sensitiveness of men adapts itself easily to their surrounding conditions, and such inconveniences as may exist in these are not felt by those who consider them unavoidable. It is true that this argument can only be put forward when the shortcomings are not of a nature to degrade those who have to bear them; but it must be admitted that there is no degradation in mere external roughness of life. For the rest, though it would be a shock for the modern man to be transplanted, without preparation, into mediæval conditions, the mediæval man in his turn would probably be as ill at ease amid the “comforts” of modern London.
Another consideration is far more 79 serious than this, and far more calculated to shake our complacency in modern civil1sation, to wit that whatever advantages we have gained over the Middle Ages are not shared by the greater part of our population. The whole of our unskilled labouring classes are in a far worse position as to food, housing, and clothing than any but the extreme fringe of the corresponding class in the Middle Ages.
Let us look next at the ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages. In the main this ignorance meant a naiveté in their conceptions of the universe, which was partly a survival of the animism of the earlier world. The ignorance was not a matter of brutal choice; on the contrary, there was a keen and disinterested search after truth and knowledge : and the very fact of the region of discovery being so unknown added the charm of wonder and scientific imagination to the research. Nor should it be forgotten that what to us has become superstition was to them science, and that in all probability our science will be the superstition of future times. It is being 80 acknowledged every day that modern accepted scientific explanations of the “nature of things” are becoming more and more inadequate to the satisfaction of true knowledge. The Ptolemaic theory of astronomy was good enough for the data of its day; and though it has been superseded by the Copernican system, that in its turn is limited as an explanation by the present condition of our knowledge of the universe. Though the world will never go back to Ptolemy’s explanation, it will go forward to something more complete than any yet put forth.
There remains the charge of violence and misery to be dealt with. As to the misery, the result partly of that violence and partly of the deficient grasp of the resources of nature, its manifestations were so much more dramatic than the misery of our time produces, that at this distance they have the effect of overshadowing the everyday life of the period, which in fact was not constantly burdened by them. What misery exists in our own days is not spasmodic and accidental, but chronic and essential to the system under which we live. The 81 well-to-do bourgeois of the nineteenth century may indeed make light of this misery, while he shudders at the horrors of torture, and sack, and massacre of the Middle Ages, because he does not feel the modern misery in his own person: but the proletarian of our commercial age, though he be hardened to bear his lot, is not only degraded by the constant pressure of sordid troubles, but cannot fail to note the contrast which every hour thrusts before his eyes between that lot and the easy life of his masters—the possessing classes. In mediæval times the violence and suffering did not spare one class and fall wholly upon another, the most numerous in the community. Even the king’s person was found by many examples to be by no means sacred: “Strike the lords and spare the commons” was the cry that went up in the chase of the bloody battles of the Roses. The unsuccessful politician did not retire to the ease and pleasure of a country house, flavoured with a little literary labour and apologetics for his past mistakes, but paid with his head, or the torment of his body, 82 for his miscalculations as to possible majorities.
Furthermore, the very roughness and adventure of life of those days made people less sensitive to bodily pain than they are now. Their nerves were not so high-strung as ours are, so that the apprehension of torture or death did not weigh heavily upon them. Of this history affords abundant evidence. Death, moreover, to them seemed but a temporary interruption of the course of their life. Men in those days really conceived of the icontinuity of life as a simple and absolute fact. The belief in a future state had not as yet become a mere vague and metaphorical expression, as it is to-day, when no one attempts even in thought to realise it for himself; it was as real to them as palpable everyday matters. In this it will be evident that it was different from the spiritualised belief in a union with God or Christ which seems to have animated the early Christian, and which survived in some of the medieval saints and mystics, such as St. Francis and St. Catherine of Siena. In short it is clear that such misery as 83 existed in the Middle Ages, was different in essence from that of our times; one piece of evidence alone forces this conclusion upon us: the Middle Ages were essentially the epoch of Popular Art, the art of the people; whatever were the conditions of the life of the time, they produced an enormous volume of visible and tangible beauty, even taken per se, and still more extraordinary when considered beside the sparse population of those ages. The “misery” from amidst of which this came, whatever it was, must have been something totally unlike, and surely far less degrading than the misery of modern Whitechapel, from which not even the faintest scintilla of art can be struck, in spite of the idealising of slum life by the modern philanthropic sentimentalist and his allies, the impressionist novelist and painter.
We have thought it necessary to meet objections as to over-valuing the importance of the Middle Ages, but it must be understood that we do not stand forward as apologists for them except in relation to modern times. The part which they played in the course of history 84 was not only necessary to the development of the life of the world, but was so special and characteristic that it will leave its mark on future ages in spite of the ignorant contemplation of them from which we are slowly emerging. They had their own faults and miseries, their own uses and advantages, and they left behind them works to show that at least happiness and cheerful intelligence were possible sometimes and somewhere in them, even amongst that working class, which now has to bear the whole burden of our follies and mistakes.