Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/225

Rh or nine months old) refusing to be consoled by the prefect, and thrown into the abyss.

Here, again, it is the dominant idealism which makes people relish the excellence of virtue in an extra strong dose. Virtue is conceived as an idea; its beauty shines more brightly in the hyperbolic perfection of its essence than in the imperfect practice of everyday life.

Nothing shows better the primitive character of the hyper-idealist mentality, called realism in the Middle Ages, than the tendency to ascribe a sort of substantiality to abstract concepts. Though philosophic realism did never admit these materialist tendencies, and strove to avoid such consequences, it cannot be denied that medieval thought frequently yielded to the inclination to pass from pure idealism to a sort of magic idealism; in which the abstract tends to become concrete. Here the ties which bind the Middle Ages to a very remote cultural past are very clearly displayed.

It was about 1300 that the doctrine of the treasure of the works of supererogation of Christ and the saints took a fixed form. The idea itself of such a treasure, the common possession of all the faithful, in so far as they are members of the mystic body of Christ, which is the Church, was by that time very ancient. But the way in which it was applied, in the sense that the superabundant good works constitute an inexhaustible reserve, which the Church can dispose of by retail, does not appear before the thirteenth century. Alexandre de Halès was the first to use the word thesaurus in the technical sense, which it has kept ever since. The doctrine did not fail to excite resistance. In the end, however, it prevailed and was officially formulated in 1343 in the bull Unigenitus of Clement VI. There the treasure has altogether the form of a capital confided by Christ to Saint Peter, and still increasing every day. For, in proportion as men are more drawn to justice by the distribution of this treasure, the merits, of which it is composed, will go on accumulating.

The material conception of ethical categories made itself felt more with regard to sin than to virtue. The Church, it is true, has always explicitly taught that sin is not a thing or an entity. But how could it have prevented the error, when everything concurred to insinuate it into men’s minds? The