Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/401

Rh RENAISSANCE 383 1 i ire rdic mysticism, symptomatic of a widespread desire to grasp at something simpler, purer, and less rigid than Latin theology afforded. Devoid of criticism, devoid of sound learning, devoid of a firm hold on the realities of life, these heresies passed away without solid results and were forgotten. We are too apt to take for granted that the men of the Middle Ages were immersed in meditations on the other world, and that their intellectual exercises were confined to abstractions of the schools, hallucinations of the fancy, allegories, visions. This assumption applies indeed in a broad sense to that period which was dominated by intolerant theology and deprived of positive knowledge. Yet there are abundant signs that the native human instincts, the natural human appetites, remained unaltered and alive beneath the crust of orthodoxy. In the person of a pope like Boniface VIII. those ineradicable forces of the natural man assumed, if we may trust the depositions of ecclesiastics well acquainted with his life, a form of brutal atheistic cynicism. In the person of an emperor, Frederick II., they emerged under the more agreeable garb of liberal culture and Epicurean scepticism. Frederick dreamed of remodelling society upon a mundane type, which anticipated the large toleration and cosmopolitan enlightenment of the actual Renaissance. But his efforts were defeated by the unrelenting hostility of the church, and by the incapacity of his contemporaries to understand his aims. After being forced in his lifetime to submit to authority, he was consigned by Dante to hell. Frederick's ideal of civilization was derived in a large measure from Provence, where a beautiful culture had prematurely bloomed, filling southern Europe with the perfume of poetry and gentle living. Here, if anywhere, it seemed as though the ecclesiastical and feudal fetters of the Middle Ages might be broken, and humanity might enter on a new stage of joyous unimpeded evolution. This was, however, not to be. The church preached Simon de Montfort's crusade, and organized Dominic's Inquisi- tion; what Quinet calls the "Renaissance sociale par I'Amour " was extirpated by sword, fire, famine, and pesti- lence. Meanwhile the Provengal poets had developed their modern language with incomparable richness and dexterity, creating forms of verse and modes of emotional expression which determined the latest mediaeval phase of literature in Europe. The naturalism of which we have been speaking found free utterance now in the fabliaux of jongleurs, lyrics of minnesingers, tales of trouveres, romances of Arthur and his knights,- compositions varied in type and tone, but in all of which sincere passion and real enjoyment of life pierce through the thin veil of chivalrous mysticism or of allegory with which they were sometimes conventionally draped. The tales of Lancelot and Tristram, the lives of the troubadours and the Wachtlieder of the minnesingers, sufficiently prove with what sensual freedom a knight loved the lady whom custom and art made him profess to worship as a saint. We do not need to be reminded that Beatrice's adorer had a wife and children, or that Laura's poet owned a son and daughter by a concubine, in order to perceive that the mystic passion of chivalry was compatible in the Middle Ages with commonplace matrimony or vulgar illegitimate connexions. But perhaps the most con- vincing testimony to the presence of this ineradicable naturalism is afforded by the Latin songs of wandering students, known as Carmina Burana, written by the self- styled Goliardi. In these compositions, remarkable for their facile handling of mediaeval Latin rhymes and rhythms, the allegorizing mysticism which envelops chival- rous poetry is discarded. Love is treated from a frankly carnal point of view. Bacchus and Venus go hand in hand, as in the ancient ante-Christian age. The open- air enjoyments of the wood, the field, the dance upon the village green, are sung with juvenile lightheartedness. No grave note, warning us that the pleasures of this earth are fleeting, that the visible world is but a symbol of the invisible, that human life is a probation for the life beyond, interrupts the tinkling music as of castanets and tripping feet which gives a novel charm to these unique relics of the 13th century. Goliardic poetry is further curious as showing how the classics even at that early period were a fountainhead of pagan inspiration. In the taverns and low places of amusement haunted by those lettered songsters, on the open road and in the forests trodden by their vagrant feet, the deities of Greece and Rome were not in exile, but at home within the hearts of living men. Thus, while Christendom was still preoccupied with the crusades, two main forces of the Renaissance, naturalism and enthusiasm for antique modes of feeling, already brought their latent potency to light, prematurely indeed and precociously, yet with a promise that was destined to be kept. When due regard is paid to these miscellaneous evi- Mediaeval dences of intellectual and sensual freedom during the attitude Middle Ages, it will be seen that there were by no means mind - lacking elements of native vigour ready to burst forth. What was wanting was not vitality and licence, not audacity of speculation, not lawless instinct or rebellious impulse. It was rather the right touch on life, the right feeling for human independence, the right way of approach- ing the materials of philosophy, religion, scholarship, and literature, that failed. The courage that is born of knowledge, the calm strength begotten by a positive attitude of mind, face to face with the dominant over- shadowing Sphinx of theology, were lacking. We may fairly say that natural and untaught people had more of the just intuition that was needed than learned folk trained in the schools. But these people were rendered licentious in revolt or impotent for salutary action by ignorance, by terror, by uneasy dread of the doom declared for heretics and rebels. The massive vengeance of the church hung over them, like a heavy sword suspended in the cloudy air. Superstition and stupidity hedged them in on every side, so that sorcery and magic seemed the only means of winning power over nature or insight into mysteries surrounding human life. The path from dark- ness to light was lost; thought was involved in alle- gory ; the study of nature had been perverted into an inept system of grotesque and pious parable-mongering ; the pursuit of truth had become a game of wordy dialectics. The other world with its imagined heaven and hell haunted the conscience like a nightmare. How- ever sweet this world seemed, however fail- the flesh, both world and flesh were theoretically given over to the devil. It was not worth while to master and economize the resources of this earth, to utilize the goods and ameliorate the evils of this life, while every one agreed, in theory at any rate, that the present was but a bad prelude to an infinitely worse or infinitely better future. To escape from these preoccupations and prejudices except upon the path of conscious and deliberate sin was impossible for all but minds of rarest quality and courage ; and these were too often reduced to the recantation of their supposed errors no less by some secret clinging sense of guilt than by the church's iron hand. Man and the actual universe kept on reasserting their rights and claims, announcing their goodliness and delightfulness, in one way or another ; but they were always being thrust back again into Cimmerian regions of abstractions, fictions, visions, spectral hopes and fears, in the midst of which the intellect somnambulistically moved upon an unknown way.