Title: History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Author: S. P. Scott
Release date: April 29, 2024 [eBook #73492]
Language: English
Original publication: Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company
Credits: Wouter Franssen, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
BY
S. P. SCOTT
AUTHOR OF “THROUGH SPAIN”
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1904
Copyright, 1904
By J. B. Lippincott Company
Published March, 1904
Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A.
| CHAPTER XXIII | |
|---|---|
| INFLUENCE OF THE MOORS ON EUROPE THROUGH THE EMPIRE OF FREDERICK II. AND THE STATES OF SOUTHERN FRANCE | |
| PAGE | |
| Permanence of Arab Ideas in the South of Europe—Social Corruption—Revolts against the Papacy—Antagonism of the Holy See and the German Empire—Consolidation of the Papal Power under Innocent III.—Civilizing Agencies in Sicily—Influence of the Normans as Heirs of the Arabs—Birth of Frederick II.—Character of Innocent III.—Genius of the Emperor—His Reforms—System of Jurisprudence—Commerce—Legislation—The University of Naples—The Medical School of Salerno—Character of Frederick—His Court—The South of France—Its Early Civilization—Cosmopolitan Character of its Population—Its Wealth, Intelligence, and Profligacy—Debased Condition of the Clergy—The University of Montpellier—The Troubadours—The Albigenses—Their Defiance of Rome—A Crusade is preached against Them—They are annihilated—Cruelty of the Crusaders—Parallel between the Civilization of Sicily and Languedoc—Survival of the Philosophical Principles and Opinions of the Thirteenth Century | 1 |
| CHAPTER XXIV | |
| THE SPANISH JEWS | |
| Influence of the Semitic Race on Civilization—Enterprise of the Ancient Jews—Their Eminent Talents—Their Power during the Middle Ages—Their Universal Proscription—Their Condition under the Moors of Spain—Their Extraordinary Attainments—Their Devotion to Letters—Their Academies—Rabbis as Ambassadors of the Khalifs—Learned Men—Poets, Physicians, Statesmen, Philosophers—Maimonides: His Genius and His Works—His Character—Preponderating Influence of the Spanish Jews in Government and Society—Their Necessity to the Ruling Classes—They are driven to Usury—Their Prosperity—They are favored by Alfonso X. and Pedro el Cruel—Their Proficiency in Medicine—Obligations of Mediæval and Modern Science to the Jews—Their Wonderful Survival under Oppression—Their Exile from the Peninsula—Their Sufferings—The Taint of Hebrew Blood in the Aristocracy of Spain and Portugal | 105 |
| CHAPTER XXV | |
| THE CHRISTIANS UNDER MOSLEM RULE | |
| Scarcity of Information concerning the Tributary Christians—Supremacy of the Church under the Visigoths—Independence of the Spanish Hierarchy—Its Wealth—Civil Organization of the Christians under the Moors—Their Privileges—Restrictions imposed upon Them—Freedom of Worship—Churches, Monasteries, and Convents—Conditions in Sicily—Greater Severity of the Laws in that Island—Anomaly in the Ecclesiastical Government of Spain—The Khalif the Virtual Head of the Church—Abuse of His Power—Results of the Arab Occupation of Septimania—Increased Authority of the Spanish Hierarchy resulting from its Isolation—Social Life of the Christian Tributaries—Their Devotion to Arab Learning—They are employed by the Khalifs in Important Missions—Innate Hostility of Moslem and Christian—Number and Influence of the Renegades—The Martyrs—Causes of Persecution—Contrast between the Maxims and Policy of the Two Religions—Impediments to Racial Amalgamation | 177 |
| CHAPTER XXVI | |
| THE MORISCOES | |
| State of the Kingdom after the Conquest—Superiority of the Moors—Policy of the Crown—Introduction of the Holy Office—Administration of Talavera—His Popularity—He is superseded by Ximenes—The Two Great Spanish Cardinals—Their Opposite Characters—Influence on Their Age—Violence of Ximenes—He burns the Arabic Manuscripts—Insurrection of the Moriscoes—Rout in the Sierra Bermeja—Bigotry of Isabella—The Moors under Charles V.—Persecution by the Clergy and the Inquisition under Philip II.—War in the Alpujarras—Ibn-Ommeyah—Operations of Don John of Austria—Removal of the Moors of Granada—Death of Ibn-Ommeyah—Ibn-Abu becomes King—Siege of Galera—Atrocities of the Campaign—Fate of Ibn-Abu—Condition of the Moriscoes in Spain—They are Exiled by Philip III.—Their Sufferings—Effect of their Banishment upon the Prosperity of the Kingdom | 218 |
| CHAPTER XXVII | |
| GENERAL CONDITION OF EUROPE FROM THE VIII. TO THE XVI. CENTURY | |
| Effects of Barbarian Supremacy on the Nations of Europe—Rise of the Papal Power—Character of the Popes—Their Vices and Crimes—The Interdict—Corrupt Practices of Prelates and Degradation of the Papacy—Institution of the Monastic Orders—Their Great Influence—Their Final Degeneracy—Wealth of the Religious Houses—The Byzantine System—Its Characteristics—Power of the Eunuchs—Splendor of Constantinople—Destruction of Learning—Debased Condition of the Greeks—The People of Western Europe—Tyranny of Caste and its Effects—Feudal Oppression—Life of the Noble—His Amusements—The Serf and his Degradation—His Hopeless Existence—Treatment of the Jews—Prevalence of Epidemics—Religious Festivals—General Ignorance—Scarcity and Value of Books—Persecution of Learning—The Empire of the Church—Its Extraordinary Vitality | 324 |
| CHAPTER XXVIII | |
| THE HISPANO-ARAB AGE OF LITERATURE AND SCIENCE | |
| Intellectual Stagnation of Europe during the Period of Moslem Greatness—High Rank of Scholars in Spain—Attainments of the Khalifs—Character of Arab Literature—Progress of Science—The Alexandrian Museum—Its Wonderful Discoveries—Its Contributions to Learning—Its Influence on the Career of the Mohammedans—The Arabic Language—Poetry of the Arabs—Its General Characteristics—Theology and Jurisprudence—History—Geography—Philosophy—Libraries—Rationalism—Averroes—Mathematics—Astronomy—Al-Hazen—Gerbert—Botany—Alchemy—Chemistry—Pharmacy—Albertus Magnus, Robert Grossetête, and Roger Bacon—Medicine and Surgery—Ignorance of their Theories and Scientific—Application in Mediæval Europe—Prevalence of Imposture—Fatality of Epidemics—Great Advance of the Arabs in Medical Knowledge—Hospitals—Treatment of Various Diseases—The Famous Moslem Practitioners—Contrast between the Christian and Mohammedan Systems—Enduring Effects of Arab Science—Its Example and Benefits the Creative Influence of Modern Civilization | 423 |
| CHAPTER XXIX | |
| MOORISH ART IN SOUTHERN EUROPE | |
| Absolute Ignorance of Art among the Original Arabs—Their Debt to Antiquity—Their Early Architecture—Materials—Massive Character of the First Edifices of the Moslems—The Horseshoe Arch—Its Phallic Derivation—Progress of Artistic Embellishment—Its Wonderful Diversity—Byzantine Influence—Employment of Encaustic Tiles—Mosaics of the Mosque of Cordova—Stuccoes—Their Composition and Infinite Variety of Form—Stalactitic Pendentives—Woodwork—Its Beautiful and Intricate Designs—Disappearance of Arabic Architectural Monuments in Sicily—Military Structures of Mohammedan Spain—Typical Form of the Mosque—Its Hebrew Origin—Manifold Derivation of Hispano-Arab Architecture—Development of Art in Moorish Spain—Its Three Epochs—The Alhambra its Culmination—Representation of Animal Forms—Painting and Sculpture—Mural Decoration—The Industrial Arts—Working of Metals—Arms—Engraved Gems—Ceramics—The Leathern Tapestry of Cordova—Textile Fabrics—Calligraphy and Illumination—Destruction of the Artistic Remains of the Moors | 534 |
| CHAPTER XXX | |
| AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, AND COMMERCE OF THE EUROPEAN MOSLEMS; THEIR MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND AMUSEMENTS | |
| Disappearance of the Memorials of Arab Civilization—Agricultural System of the Spanish Moors—Its Wonderful Perfection—Irrigating Apparatus—The Tribunal of the Waters—The Work of Ibn-al-Awam—Universal Cultivation of the Soil—Mineral Resources of the Peninsula—Manufactures—The Great Moslem Emporiums of the Mediterranean—Commerce—Its Extensive Ramifications—Articles of Traffic—Commercial Prosperity of Sicily—The Magnetic Needle—Gunpowder and Artillery—War—Coinage—Characteristics of the Khalifs—Demoralization of the People—The Bath—General Prevalence of Superstition—Social Life of the Moslems of Europe—Privileges of Women—Polygamy and Morals—Slavery—Amusements—The Game of Chess—Other Pastimes—Dances—Music—Equestrian Sports—The Bull Fight—The Tilt of Reeds—The Course of the Rings—Hawking—Peculiarities of Hispano-Arab Civilization—The Crusades—Their Effect on Christendom—Unrivalled Achievements of the Moors in Europe—Conclusion | 595 |
[1]
HISTORY OF THE MOORISH EMPIRE IN EUROPE
Permanence of Arab Ideas in the South of Europe—Social Corruption—Revolts against the Papacy—Antagonism of the Holy See and the German Empire—Consolidation of the Papal Power under Innocent III.—Civilizing Agencies in Sicily—Influence of the Normans as Heirs of the Arabs—Birth of Frederick II.—Character of Innocent III.—Genius of the Emperor—His Reforms—System of Jurisprudence—Commerce—Legislation—The University of Naples—The Medical School of Salerno—Character of Frederick—His Court—The South of France—Its Early Civilization—Cosmopolitan Character of its Population—Its Wealth, Intelligence, and Profligacy—-Debased Condition of the Clergy—The University of Montpellier—The Troubadours—The Albigenses—Their Defiance of Rome—A Crusade is preached against Them—They are annihilated—Cruelty of the Crusaders—Parallel between the Civilization of Sicily and Languedoc—Survival of the Philosophical Principles and Opinions of the Thirteenth Century.
The extraordinary impulse to scientific investigation, to historical research, to the development and perfection of the industrial arts, to the extension of commerce, to the improvement of the social and economic[2] conditions which are so intimately connected with the comfort and happiness of mankind, imparted by the Saracen kingdoms of Southern Europe, was far from being destroyed by the absorption or conquest of their provinces or by the final extinction of their empire. The progress of their humanizing influence upon other nations had been slow and imperceptible. The philosophical ideas and principles advanced by the Arab universities were necessarily hostile to the doctrines of Christianity, to the opinions of the Fathers, to the inspiration of an infallible Pope, to the imperious claims of ecclesiastical supremacy. In consequence of their heretical tendency, they were perused in secret; and the diligence with which this prohibited literature was studied is revealed by the number of sects which arose, and the defiance of Papal authority, which is the distinguishing characteristic of European annals during the first half of the thirteenth century. The doctrines taught at Cordova and Palermo inspired those audacious mediæval reformers, far in advance of their age, whose aspirations for intellectual and religious liberty were promptly and mercilessly extinguished at the stake and on the scaffold. The spirit of resistance to Papal aggression, corruption, and tyranny, temporarily checked, in time revived, and found permanent expression in the bold and revolutionary theories of the Reformation. These great and radical changes were not spontaneously effected; the causes of their development had been in silent operation for many centuries.
The schools of Moslem Spain and Sicily had long been the resort of students, ambitious of literary attainments and distinction, from every country in Europe. Princes of Castile and France had for generations enjoyed the benefits of the educational advantages to be obtained in the Spanish Peninsula.[3] The proximity of the polished and luxurious towns of Sicily to the ancient seat of Roman greatness and power had produced a corresponding effect, less evident and less durable, it is true, but still most civilizing and beneficial, upon the ferocious barbarism which had succeeded the cruel and shameless vices of the Cæsars. The sacerdotal order had profited more largely than all others by the learning of the Mohammedans. Pope Sylvester II., the most accomplished ecclesiastic of his time, whose prodigious acquirements caused him to be accused of sorcery and led to his assassination by poison, was educated at the University of Cordova. Roger Bacon, another reputed wizard, had deeply imbibed the heretical but fascinating opinions of the sages of the Tagus and the Guadalquivir. In almost every European monastery, whose inmates, corrupted by wealth and depraved by sensual indulgence, had abandoned the ascetic habits of the cloister, the infidel works of the Arabian philosophers were studied with curiosity and delight by jovial monks, long strangers to the vows inculcated as cardinal precepts by the regulations of their order.
With the secular clergy, whose ostentatious luxury was proverbial, the case was even worse. While considerations of policy and self-interest prevented the avowal of principles totally at variance with the tenets of their profession, the fact that those principles were entertained was far from being a secret. The influential prelates of the Church, ignorant or heedless of the prejudicial effects which must inevitably ensue from familiarity with the works of the Moslem philosophers, did not vigorously attempt to suppress them until the mischief they had produced was almost irreparable. The unbelief and moral obliquity of the clergy reacted upon their flocks. The latter saw—first with surprise, then with indifference—the ill-concealed[4] skepticism and open immorality of their spiritual counsellors. As a result of this lax and inconsistent behavior, society became permeated with hypocrisy. The popular tales of the Middle Ages, many of them undoubtedly founded on fact, indicate only too plainly the estimation in which the clergy were held by the people. That such pictures of ecclesiastical life could be drawn and published without interference or punishment shows not only the extent of the evil, but the recognition of its existence by every class of the community. The licentious stories of the mediæval writers were read or repeated with delight both in the palace of the noble and the hovel of the serf. One of the most remarkable of these collections owes its origin to the patronage of Louis XI., the Most Christian King of France.
Although the clergy, and especially the members of the monastic orders, were, in these facetious productions, uniformly represented as objects of hatred and contempt, the practice of the vices and weaknesses imputed to them was evidently so common to their calling as not even to arouse those feelings of resentment which would naturally arise from accusations so nearly affecting their piety and virtue. So little attention, indeed, was paid to these disclosures of the habits of ecclesiastics, that their recital formed one of the ordinary diversions of conventual life, and the Gesta Romanorum, which long maintained a questionable celebrity, is a monkish compilation. When the spiritual guides of a community are deliberately held up to ridicule as the incarnation of all that is vile, rapacious, and bestial, their usefulness as directors of the public conscience and arbiters of private morals is at an end. Their pernicious example was not lost upon the people, although their influence for good declined. Universal corruption became the most prominent trait of every rank of society. The[5] most glaring acts of impiety remained unrebuked. National faith and personal obligations were alike unblushingly violated. Every revolting crime was committed by those whose means were sufficient to appease sacerdotal venality and purchase temporary absolution. No epoch in European history presents a more distressing picture of social demoralization, of royal perfidy, of priestly hypocrisy, of universal wickedness, than the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But while this condition of affairs was productive of widespread moral debasement, it was not wholly an unmixed evil. The weakening of the sentiments of fatuous reverence with which things denominated sacred had for ages been regarded, awakened among the masses a spirit of intellectual independence. The right of the exercise of private judgment began to be first tolerated, and afterwards tacitly recognized. Then originated the great moral revolution which, subsequently checked and almost overwhelmed by the power of the Papacy and disgraced by scenes of horror to which history affords no parallel, ended in the momentous struggle of the sixteenth century, and the permanent triumph of reason over dogma, of intelligence over ecclesiastical authority.
But it was not only by the removal of superstitious prejudice, through the comparison of creeds, the judicious employment of the principles of philosophical criticism, and the public exposure of the lives of the clergy, that this great and beneficial change was accomplished. The commerce of the European Moslems was almost coextensive with the world at that time familiar to mariners. The excellence and beauty of their wares, unequalled by those of any other nation, were eagerly sought after by the wealthy and luxurious inhabitants of Christian countries. Merchants, traders, and students had spread far and wide[6] accounts of the marvels to be seen beyond the Pyrenees,—opulent and flourishing communities, where the meanest citizen was in the daily enjoyment of comforts unattainable as luxuries by the greatest potentates of Christendom; edifices whose decorations surpassed in richness the wildest conceptions of Oriental fiction; vast plantations, where fruits, unknown to colder climes, grew in prodigal abundance; caravansaries and markets crowded with a profusion of costly fabrics, and resounding with a Babel of strange and guttural tongues; institutions of learning frequented by tens of thousands of students, whose attainments—extraordinary in a world of ignorance—were believed to have been secured by an unholy compact with the infernal powers.
The existence of this civilization in close proximity to the semi-barbarous Mediterranean nations and the salutary experience of its benefits could not fail to produce upon the latter a deep and lasting impression. The Crusades, also, to some extent had enlarged the minds of the fierce warriors of the West. Their respect had been inspired by the equal valor and superior intelligence of their Mohammedan adversaries; and a Saracen was no longer, as formerly, considered a demon incarnate, destitute of honor, insatiable of blood, incapable of compassion, ignorant alike of the courtesies of war and the suggestions of humanity. These various moral and physical agencies, acting through the maintenance of maritime intercourse and the promiscuous association with travellers of every description, gradually produced effects long unperceived and unappreciated by the class whose material interests were most vitally endangered.
The dawn of the thirteenth century witnessed the outbreak and the arrest of two most significant movements of the human mind, destined to exercise immense[7] influence on the intellectual character and political destiny of Europe. The one appeared in Sicily; arose under the auspices and was supported by the power of the Emperor Frederick II.,—that prodigy of mediæval learning and diplomacy, great by birth, and, through the hereditary traditions of his line, still greater through the talents with which he was endowed and the accomplishments that adorned his character; a colossal figure among the pygmy soldiers and churchmen of his time; a combination of opposite and eccentric qualities; brave but treacherous, impetuous but crafty; a skeptic, and an unrelenting persecutor of heretics; at one time heading a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; at another marshalling Saracen armies against the partisans of the Pope; a vassal of the Holy See, and an open ally and friend of the infidel; a professed champion of Christianity, while endeavoring to wrest from its acknowledged head that spiritual dominion which invested him with unlimited power over the lives, the fortunes, and the ultimate destiny of men; legislator, troubadour, author, naturalist; “a poet in an age of schoolmen, a philosopher in an age of monks, a statesman in an age of crusaders.”
The other intellectual revolution against ecclesiastical traditions and Papal despotism originated in the sunny lands of Provence and Languedoc, between the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees. That region, early overrun and colonized by the Saracen, had long remained subject to the Mohammedan princes of Spain. Although nominally Christian, its population was deeply infected with heterodox and atheistical opinions. The country had never lost the characteristics peculiar to the Moslem conqueror,—the intelligent and persevering cultivation of the soil, the venturesome spirit of commercial enterprise, the development and profitable adaptation of every natural resource,[8] the pride of ostentatious luxury, the profound distrust of the female sex, which condemns its members to the seclusion of the harem. Amidst the freedom and gayety of its semi-Oriental cities, sectaries of every creed lived unquestioned and undisturbed. Polygamy was practised without concealment or reproach; scarcely a castle of count or baron was without its numerous seraglio. Education was general, and remarkable in its scope and efficiency when contrasted with the ignorance of contemporaneous societies. The famous University of Montpellier, a manifestation of the intellectual ideas and spirit which pervaded the South of France, was for generations a monument of the progress and erudition of the inhabitants of Languedoc. Among the public teachers were many Jews and Mohammedans, who, in addition to the profound and varied learning of the schools of Cordova, brought to the notice of a curious and speculative race theories that boded ill to the ecclesiastical establishment, which, stained with every hideous and disgusting vice, was fast sinking into universal and deserved contempt. The practice of improvisation,—the composition of extemporaneous poetry,—derived from the imaginative but unlettered tribes of the Arabian Desert, and for generations the delight of the capitals of Moorish Spain, found here its most fascinating expression and its highest development. Next to the prince himself, the troubadour was the most important personage of the Provençal court. His accomplishments, often acquired by association with the Moslem, were the envy of the cavalier and the horror of the priest. His elegant manners and poetical talents gained for him the passionate adoration of high-born ladies, whose beauty he celebrated in florid and licentious verse. His satires were often directed against the clergy, whose lives too readily furnished cause for ridicule and censure. With him[9] occasionally travelled the jongleur, who, to the recitation of amorous chants, added the charm of harmonious minstrelsy. The ditties of the troubadours, like the coarse and facetious tales of this and subsequent periods, afforded an unfailing index of popular taste and prevalent opinions. In their lays the ecclesiastic is almost invariably an object of derision. His hypocrisy, his licentiousness, his greed, are depicted in language which admits of no palliating or ambiguous interpretation. He is constantly represented as the proverbial embodiment of all that is execrable and repulsive. If a butt for ridicule was needed, to give an appropriate climax to a story composed for the amusement of the court, the monastery could be relied upon to furnish an inexhaustible number of subjects, whose foibles were at once recognized by the delighted and scoffing auditors. The sacred calling of the ministers of religion was constantly made the occasion of ribald pleasantry; the tricks of practical jokers were played with impunity upon every incumbent of the sacerdotal dignity, from the haughty bishop to the cowled and barefooted friar. Even the populace, in whom the spirit of superstitious reverence is always the first to be awakened and the last to be destroyed, shared in an equal degree the feelings of their superiors. The vagrant rhymer, declaiming his sarcastic verses in the streets or by the wayside, was always sure of a liberal and appreciative audience. Such a condition of society indicates a certain degree of intellectual progress which can only result from independence of thought and moral irresponsibility of action. The extraordinary opinion began to be advanced and largely accepted that the investiture of the priesthood, of itself, conveyed no special virtue which dispensed with the rules of social morality or conferred immunity from public criticism. This idea, at variance with all the traditions[10] of a Church which attached the highest importance to the rigid observance of mere formalities, was followed by others of even more novel and startling character. The unbroken intercourse with the Moslem principalities of the Peninsula had introduced into a country, whose people might, in some degree, justly claim consanguinity with the Saracens of Andalusia, the arts, the philosophy, and the erudition which had long embellished the accomplished courts of the Western Khalifate. Hence arose the popularity of the works of Averroes, and the general familiarity with the pantheistic ideas of Indian origin, subsequently adopted by the heretical sects which, from time to time, sprang up to vex the Papal orthodoxy of Europe. With their importation into France, the doctrines of the Arab philosophers were invested with a far broader significance than had ever been claimed by those who first inculcated their truths. The gay ballads of the South assumed a greater license of sentiment and language than their prototypes, whose freedom had provoked the censure of the Mohammedan society of the Guadalquivir, little inclined to displays of prudish morality. It was from such beginnings that were derived the suggestions of those memorable religious revolutions which, headed by Wyclif in England, Huss in Bohemia, and Luther in Germany, in defiance of the tremendous power of the Vatican, impressed an indelible seal upon the character and belief of so large a portion of the inhabitants of the civilized globe. The influence that Troubadour and Trouvère—poets and minstrels—during their incessant wanderings exerted upon the provincial dialects in which their productions were composed, and the extensive distribution of the latter, did more than all else to form and perfect the language of France. It was the same in Italy. That country also indirectly owes the sweet and musical accents of its graceful idiom, equally[11] adapted to the descriptions of the historian, the representations of the dramatist, and the melodious versification of the poet, to a race foreign in all its characteristics and traditions to that quarter of the world where it exercised its greatest power. As with poetry, so it was with other manifestations of genius. Much of the architecture of Southern Europe, and especially those buildings devoted to religious worship, present unmistakable evidences of their Moorish origin; and thus the law of Mohammed, while it failed to retain its dominion over the minds of men, was enabled to perpetuate the memory of the arts, which it promoted in the construction of magnificent and imposing edifices raised for the celebration of the rites of another and an inimical religion. In a thousand ways, the march of intellectual improvement, suggested by the presence and example of Moslem skill and learning, was accelerated in the provinces of the South of France. The active minds of the inhabitants of the valley of the Rhone devoured with eagerness the extravagant tales of Moorish fiction, and their curiosity was stimulated by the study of the maxims of Plato and Aristotle contained in Arabic versions of those writers. Their manners insensibly became softened, their ideas were enlarged, their tastes were cultivated; they no longer regarded the torture of heretics and the massacre of infidels as conformable to the precepts of a religion based upon “peace and good-will to men.” With deep disgust they threw off their allegiance to the Church of Rome. Woman, hitherto a slave, subjected to the caprice of an imperious and irresponsible master, was raised by the hand of chivalry and made the cherished companion, if not the equal, of her lord. Semi-barbarous Europe looked with wonder upon a land so blessed by nature and adorned by art; where the remains of classic antiquity were taught in the same schools with the botany[12] of Syria and the chemistry of Spain; where a philosophic spirit of inquiry had awakened the noblest aspirations of the human intellect, and where knightly courtesy had replaced the rudeness of the sword.
This advanced civilization had, unfortunately, come four centuries too soon. The fears of the Papacy were excited, and a ferocious crusade, which spared neither rank, age, sex, nor infirmity, was published against the unfortunate Albigenses. Upon the ruins of one of the most refined societies that had arisen to instruct mankind since the days of Athenian greatness, a society which embodied all that was interesting, learned, profitable, or entertaining in human life, was erected the Inquisition, the bane of science, and the implacable foe of civil and religious liberty.
The great contest of the thirteenth century between the Empire and the Holy See for the mastery of the world derived its origin from the barbarian occupation of Italy. The imperial dignity of the Cæsars embodied, as is well known, not only its supreme exercise, but the prestige and the mysterious power which attached to the place of Pontifex Maximus, the prototype of the Papacy. That power had been solemnly confirmed, and materially enlarged, by the ambition and politic measures of Constantine. The occasional employment of the Bishop of Rome as arbiter of the differences between the Sees of Constantinople and Alexandria had magnified the importance and insensibly extended the jurisdiction of his office. Aspiring prelates, who held their court on the banks of the classic Tiber, in sight of the stupendous memorials of ancient civilization, soon began to arrogate to themselves a preponderance in the determination of secular matters to which their comparatively obscure predecessors had advanced no claim. The texts of Scripture were invoked and interpreted to confirm their pretensions. In addition to the alleged vicarious sovereignty[13] vested in them by the traditional choice of the Saviour, they asserted that the privileges and authority enjoyed by the Pontifex Maximus were theirs by the right of inheritance. They insisted, moreover, that as celestial matters were of far greater importance to mankind than any connected with the affairs of a transitory life, the sacredness of their exalted position conferred extraordinary prerogatives, and that the imperial power was subordinate to, and, under some circumstances, actually merged into, the pontifical dignity. By thus shrewdly taking advantage of every circumstance which could either strengthen its influence or extend its jurisdiction, the Holy See subjected to its tyrannical and irresponsible sway a far more extensive and populous territory than had ever paid reluctant tribute to the masters of imperial Rome. Excommunication, anathema, and interdict, the means by which this tremendous authority was enforced, were moral instruments which appealed with irresistible force to the fears of a superstitious age.
The barbarian invasions, which swept away the last vestige of imperial greatness, introduced the heretical doctrines of Arius into Southern Europe. The religious antagonism resulting from the incessant clash of adverse opinions was perpetuated by the mutual jealousies of king and bishop, until the accession of Charlemagne practically united in the hands of that emperor the temporal and sacerdotal powers,—the dominion of the earth, and the control of an order whose members were universally regarded as mediators with heaven. With his death the exercise of the exalted prerogative of spiritual jurisdiction reverted to the Papacy. The claim to its enjoyment was never afterwards successfully urged by any monarch who was entitled, by right of inheritance, to the dignities and privileges of the Carlovingian empire. By degrees,[14] the resistless influence of intellectual superiority, quietly, but none the less powerfully exerted, began to manifest itself. It was to the fact that the Church monopolized all the learning of early mediæval times, even more than to the reverence that attached to the holy calling of its ministers, that its boundless power over the most truculent and merciless barbarians is to be attributed. A mysterious and exaggerated importance was ascribed to that profession whose members held communion with past ages; who called down the blessings or the maledictions of celestial beings in a tongue unknown to the vulgar; who communicated, in unintelligible characters, with the learned and the wise of distant nations; and who, in the seclusion of the laboratory, indulged in pursuits condemned by the canons of their faith, but occasionally productive of results whose character, remarkable for that epoch, not infrequently acquired for the monkish chemist the unenviable and perilous title of conjuror. The literary and scientific attainments acquired in the cloister bore, however, no comparison to the erudition of those countries where Saracen energy and munificence had long promoted the exercise and expansion of the highest faculties of the human intellect. The knowledge possessed by the clergy was only extensive by contrast with the impenetrable ignorance by which they were surrounded, and which it was their interest to diligently propagate and maintain.
The era which witnessed the climax of Papal supremacy was coincident with the most thoroughly concerted and menacing attempt at its overthrow ever directed by any secular potentate. The birth of Frederick II. preceded the election of Innocent III. to the Holy See only three years. In the deadly struggle that arose between these two mighty antagonists,—a struggle which was far more political than[15] religious, and whose tempting prize was the dominion of the earth,—the influence of the Saracen was a powerful, and, in many instances, a predominant factor. Moslem laws, institutions, and customs had for centuries, amidst communities hostile in origin and belief, survived alike the existence of their own dynasties and the domination of their conquerors. Tribal dissensions and hereditary enmity had prompted and facilitated the destruction of the splendid Mohammedan empire in Sicily. In its turn, the Norman kingdom, after a prolonged and stormy existence, in which the Moorish tributaries played no inconsiderable part, lost its identity; and, by the marriage of Constance, the mother of Frederick II., with Henry VI., was merged into the German Empire. During the great political and moral revolutions which disposed of crowns and repeatedly changed the destinies of the island, the Arab element of the population maintained an undisputed superiority in arts, in commerce, in literature,—in short, in all professions and employments save that of war alone. The semi-barbarian conqueror, whose only passports to distinction were the dexterity with which he wielded lance and sword and the undaunted courage with which he faced tenfold odds, early recognized the advantages of that intellectual power which enabled his Moorish vassals to cope with, and overreach, in both trade and diplomacy, the astute politicians of Christian Italy. This exotic population, notwithstanding the successive calamities which had afflicted it, exhibited through long periods of time no extraordinary diminution of numbers, a fact no doubt largely attributable to the prevalence of polygamous customs. In the centre of the island many Moorish settlements, defended by impregnable fortresses, subsisting by pastoral occupations, and whose comparative poverty offered little inducement to invasion, remained in tranquillity and[16] in the enjoyment of a rustic independence. In the great seaports, on the other hand, the Moslem tributaries retained under foreign domination all of the refinement and much of the splendor which had distinguished the luxurious court of the emirs. In these vast emporiums, where were constantly assembled the merchants of every Christian and of every Mohammedan state, a numerous, motley, and industrious people pursued, without oppression or hinderance, all the avocations of thriving mercantile communities. The peculiar adaptability of the genius of the Norman to novel social and political conditions, a quality which was the main source of his prosperity and greatness, was never more prominently displayed than after the conquest which transferred the sceptre of Sicily from one race of foreign adventurers to another. No more striking antagonism of national customs, religious prejudices, habits, and traditions could be conceived than that existing between the victor and the vanquished. One came from the borders of the Arctic Circle; the original home of the other was in the Torrid Zone. Both traced their lineage to tribes steeped in barbarism and idolatry; but the Norman, though he had changed his system of worship, still retained many of its objectionable and degrading features, while the Arab professed a creed that regarded with undisguised abhorrence the adoration of images and the invocation of saints. In the arts of civilization, there was no corresponding advance which could suggest resemblance or justify comparison. Poverty, ignorance, ferocity, still remained the characteristics of the Norman, as when, with a handful of resolute companions, he scattered to the winds the armies of the Sicilian Mussulman. The latter, however, if inferior in endurance and martial energy to his conqueror, was possessed of accomplishments which justly entitled him to a prominent rank in the[17] community of nations. No circumstance of honor, of distinction, of inventive genius, was wanting to exalt his character or magnify his reputation. The fame of his military achievements had filled the world. His commercial relations had made his name familiar to and respected by remote and jealous races, to whom the Christian kingdoms of Europe were unknown. His civil polity was admirably adapted to the character and necessities of the people its laws were intended to govern. Under those laws, administered by a succession of great princes, Moslem society had become opulent, polished, and dissolute beyond all example, but eventually and inevitably enervated and decadent. Political and social disorganization had not, however, entirely destroyed the prestige earned by ages of military glory and intellectual pre-eminence. The schools of Cordova had been swept away by hordes of African fanatics. Her libraries had been scattered or destroyed. Her incomparable palaces had been levelled with the ground or had succumbed to the gradual decay to which they had been abandoned by ferocious chieftains, alike ignorant of the arts and indifferent to the claims of civilization. But the glory of the fallen metropolis had been reflected upon the provincial capitals of a distracted and dismembered monarchy. Malaga, Granada, Toledo, Seville, were still celebrated as seats of learning; civil war had interrupted but not extinguished the pursuit of science; a taste for letters counteracted in some degree the thirst for blood which prompted the atrocities of tribal hate and hostile faction; and the chivalrous intercourse established at intervals between the two races contending for national superiority afforded a happy if a deceptive image of affluence and security. ‘The Sicilian Mohammedans, while the vicissitudes and calamities of their history presented in miniature a general resemblance to those experienced by their[18] brethren of the Spanish Peninsula, were never subjected to such repeated and overwhelming disasters as fell to the lot of the subjects of the Ommeyade dynasty and of the principalities which inherited its enmities, and the shattered fragments of its once vast and populous but cumbersome empire. The Norman acquisition of Sicily, unlike the Spanish Reconquest, was accomplished with surprising ease and rapidity. In the former instance there was but little of that indiscriminate ferocity which was characteristic of the conflicts of the Middle Ages, and especially of these where religious interests were directly involved. The experience of the conquerors—obtained in many lands—enabled them to appreciate the value of the monuments of a highly developed civilization, whose promoters were soon to pass under their sceptre. For this reason there was no ruthless spoliation of cities, no indiscriminate devastation of a fertile country which had been reclaimed by infinite toil and perseverance from an unpromising prospect of marsh, ravine, and precipice. The tangible results of three hundred years of national progress and culture were transmitted, with but little impairment, to the victorious foreigner. These advantages were at once grasped and appropriated with an avidity absolutely phenomenal in a people whose career had been dictated by the predatory instincts of the bandit, and whose manners had been formed amidst the license of the camp, the superstition of the cloister, and the carnage of the field.
Norman Sicily exhibited, to all intents and purposes, a prolongation, under happier auspices, of that dominion to which the island owed its prosperity and its fame. The influence of Moorish thrift, capacity, and skill was everywhere manifest and acknowledged. Its silent operation facilitated its progress and increased its power. The maritime interests of the[19] island were in the hands of the Moslems; they controlled the finances; they negotiated treaties; to them was largely confided the administration of justice and the education of youth. Their integrity was acknowledged even by those whose practices appeared most unfavorable by contrast; their versatile talents not infrequently raised them to the highest and most responsible posts of the Norman court. That court is declared by contemporary historians to have equalled in splendor and culture those of Cairo and Bagdad. This comparison, while the highest encomium that could be pronounced upon its grandeur and brilliancy, also denoted unmistakably the Oriental influence which pervaded it. Great dignitaries, with pompous titles and retinues imposing in numbers and magnificence, exercised the principal employments of the crown. A rigid system of subordination and accountability was established, governing the conduct of the minor officials in their relations to their superiors and to the sovereign. The gradations in rank of these civil magistrates were numerous, and their respective duties plainly and accurately defined. The system of fiefs had never obtained in Northern Italy, owing to the extraordinary growth of maritime enterprise, the mutual jealousies engendered by commercial rivalry, the prejudices of the Lombard population, hostile to the restraints and abuses which the adoption of that system implied, the foundation of many independent and wealthy communities,—conditions naturally incompatible with the maintenance of an establishment based upon obligations of military service and baronial protection. In Apulia and Northern Sicily, however, Norman domination transplanted, to some extent, the laws and customs of Western Europe, which found a congenial soil in provinces already familiar with the exactions of Saracen despotism. But the feudal system of Norman rule had lost much of its original[20] severity, and had been curtailed of those oppressive privileges with difficulty endured even in countries for centuries accustomed to the suffering and degradation they entailed. These modifications were so extensive and radical as to be almost revolutionary in their nature. The disputes of lord and vassal, of noble and suzerain, were decided by a court of judicature. Villeinage, as recognized elsewhere in Europe, was practically unknown. While the villein was attached to the glebe and passed with its transfer, he could not be persecuted with impunity; he could own property and alienate it, make wills, ransom his services, and, in many other respects, exercise the rights of a freeman, while still subject to the disabilities of a serf. The days of compulsory labor enjoined upon him were prescribed by law. His testimony was admissible in the trial of causes; he could not be illegally deprived of the results of his industry when his duties to his lord had been faithfully discharged; and, under certain circumstances, he was permitted to enter the clerical profession, whose opportunities might open to an aspiring zealot a career of the highest distinction.
The barbarian prejudices of the Norman conqueror survived in many institutions inherited from ages of gross superstition and ignorance. Among these were the absurd and iniquitous trials by fire, water, and judicial combat, prevalent in societies dominated partly by priestcraft and partly by the sword. But more correct ideas of the true character of evidence and its application, acquired from association with a people familiar with the codes of Justinian and Mohammed, eventually mitigated the evils produced by such irrational procedure; and, while not entirely abandoned, its most offensive features were gradually suffered to become obsolete. In other respects, the administration of justice—for the excellence of its system, for the rapidity with which trials were conducted,[21] for the opportunity afforded the litigant for appeal and reversal of judgment—was remarkable. Invested with a sacred character, the judge, in the honor of his official position, was inferior to the king alone. His person was inviolable. No one might question his motives or dispute his authority under penalty of sacrilege. The head of the supreme court of the kingdom, by which all questions taken on appeal from the inferior tribunals were finally adjudicated, was called the Grand Justiciary. His powers and dignity claimed and received the highest consideration. None but men conspicuously eminent for learning and integrity were raised to this exalted office. The Grand Justiciary, although frequently of plebeian extraction, took precedence of the proud nobility, whose titles, centuries old and gained in Egypt and Palestine, had already become historic. A silken banner, the emblem of his office, was carried before him. In public assemblies and royal audiences he sat at the left hand of the sovereign. Only the constable, of all the officials of the crown, approached him in rank. These unusual honors paid to a dignitary whose title to respect was due, not to personal prowess or to hereditary distinction, but to the reverence attaching to his employment, indicate a great advance in the character of a people which, but a few years before, acknowledged no law but that of physical superiority, no tribunal but that of arms. In the other departments of government—in finance, in legislation, in the regulations of commerce, in the protection and encouragement of agriculture, in the maintenance of order—the Norman domination in Sicily presented an example of advanced civilization to be seen nowhere else in Europe, except in the Moorish principalities of Spain. The system of taxation not only embraced regular assessments, but authorized such extraordinary contributions as might be required for the construction[22] of great public works or demanded by the exigencies of war. A powerful and well-equipped navy enforced the authority and protected the rights of the Norman kings in the Mediterranean. In the classification of orders, ecclesiastics were not, as elsewhere, granted extraordinary privileges by reason of their sacred profession. Those of rank were enrolled among the feudatories; the inferior clergy were relegated to the intermediate grade of subjects placed between the noble and the serf; all were, equally with the laity, responsible for infractions of the laws. The monarch was the head of the Church under the Pope; the office of Papal legate, which he usurped, was assumed, by a convenient fiction, to have been transmitted by inheritance; he exercised the rights of the erection of bishoprics, the presentation of benefices, the translation of prelates, the exemption of abbeys; he imposed taxes on the priesthood, and, when occasion demanded, did not hesitate to seize and appropriate property set aside for the uses of public worship. In his dominions, the Pope, while the nominal head of Christendom, was merely a personage of secondary importance, with little real influence and with no prestige save that derived from his venerated title and from his residence in that city which had once given laws to the world. The Papacy, it is true, had not yet fully established those portentous claims to empire which subsequently brought the most remote countries under its jurisdiction; but its aspiring pontiffs had already laid the foundations of their despotism; and this defiance of their authority, at the very gates of the capital of Christendom, was fraught with the most vital consequences to the future peace and welfare of Europe.
No people presented greater variety in manners, language, habits, and religion than that of Norman Sicily. The mingling of strange tongues, the constant[23] recurrence of picturesque costumes, denoted the presence of many distinct nationalities. In general, although close relations were maintained and intermarriages were common, the different races were distributed in separate quarters and districts, and existed as castes. Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, as well as the harsh and barbaric dialects of Germany and France, were spoken; the laws of each nation were suffered to prevail, except when they conflicted with the supreme authority; enforced proselytism and religious persecution were unknown; and, in a society of such a diversified character, it was impossible that national prejudice could obtain a permanent foothold. The tendency of public opinion, as well as the policy of the government, was towards the indulgence of religious and intellectual freedom. In no respect was this liberality so apparent as in the treatment of the Jews. Elsewhere in Europe they were considered the legitimate prey of every oppressor; liable to be transferred by entire communities, like so many cattle, from one petty tyrant to another; robbed and tortured with impunity; incapacitated from invoking the protection of the laws; rendered powerless by centuries of systematic oppression to exert the right of self-defence or to successfully appeal to arms in an age of anarchy and violence. In Sicily, under the Normans, an enlightened public sentiment dictated the measures pursued in the treatment of an enterprising but unfortunate people. Their usefulness to the state was recognized by the immunities they enjoyed. For generations, no badge of infamy or servitude made them conspicuous in the crowded streets; no onerous taxes were laid upon them as a class; they shared, in large measure, the rights and privileges of other citizens; no tribunal was permitted to discriminate against them in the dispensation of justice; they were not prohibited from exercising the profession of bankers,[24] but the rate of interest they might exact was limited to ten per cent.
The lustre of Saracen civilization was rather heightened than tarnished by the Norman conquest. The stability and confidence which the rule of the victors produced more than compensated for the damage inevitably resulting from their military operations. The supremacy of law was everywhere established. Tribal animosity, which had been the curse of Moslem society, was suppressed, if not entirely eradicated. The seaports increased rapidly in extent and opulence. Palaces of equal dimensions and beauty, but more substantial in their construction, replaced the airy and picturesque villas which had displayed the taste of the Moorish princes. Massive stairways afforded access to the broad stone quays encumbered with the merchandise of the Mediterranean. The narrow and tortuous thoroughfares of the Orient gave way to wide and well-paved avenues adapted to the commercial necessities of a numerous trading population. As formerly, under Greek and Moslem, Palermo exhibited, in the highest degree, the influence and progress of the arts of civilization. Its citadel, defended by every resource of military science, was of such extent as to merit of itself the appellation of a city. Here were situated the warehouses, the bazaars, the baths, the markets, the churches, and the mosques. Above it rose the castle reared by the Normans, the solid blocks which composed its walls being covered with arabesques and inscriptions. The residences of the merchants and the nobility were conspicuous for their number and elegance; the royal palace was in itself a marvel of architectural grandeur and sybaritic luxury. But the edifices which struck the imagination of the stranger most forcibly were the two great shrines respectively allotted to Christian and to Moslem worship. Sectarian rivalry had exhausted itself[25] in their construction and adornment. The mosque was one of the most superb in all Islam. Its beauty was enhanced by its rich tapestries, and by the exquisite coloring and gilding it exhibited in the delicate carvings which embellished its interior. But grand and beautiful as it was, the Christian cathedral was generally conceded to surpass it in those material attractions which appeal most strongly to the senses of the enthusiastic and the devout. Arab writers have vied with each other in celebrating the majesty and splendor of this famous temple. The combined skill of the Moorish and the Byzantine artist had been laid under contribution in its embellishment. The walls were incrusted with gold, whose dazzling brilliancy was relieved by panels of precious marble of various colors bordered with foliage of green mosaic. The columns were sculptured with floral ornaments, interspersed with inscriptions in Cufic characters. The lofty cupola, covered with glistening tiles, was one of the landmarks of the capital, and, projected against the cloudless sky, was the most prominent object which caught the eye of the expectant mariner. Around the city, rising in terraces, like the seats of an amphitheatre, were the suburbs, verdant with the luxuriant vegetation of every country that could be reached by the enterprise of man, through whose leafy screen appeared at intervals the gayly painted villas of the merchant princes or the sumptuous and imposing palaces of the Norman aristocracy.
Amidst the numerous measures originated and brought to maturity by the new domination, it is remarkable that no especial encouragement was afforded to institutions of learning. A tradition exists of the academy of the great Count Roger, but it is only a tradition. No national university was founded to perpetuate the fame or to exalt the benefits of regal patronage. No general plan of promoting[26] the education of the masses was inaugurated. The Jewish and Saracen schools, however, still survived; they were often the recipients of royal generosity, and were resorted to by such Christians as were desirous of profiting by the valuable instruction they afforded. As elsewhere in Christendom, the clergy were the general depositaries of knowledge,—an advantage which they thoroughly understood, and were by no means willing to voluntarily relinquish. In one respect alone their power was seriously curtailed. The spurious medicine of the time, as practised under the sanction of the Holy See, had raised up a herd of ignorant and mercenary ecclesiastical charlatans. These operated by means of chants, relics, and incense; and their enormous gains were one of the chief sources of revenue to the parish and the monastery, and a corresponding burden on the people. King Roger abolished this abuse, and required an examination, by experienced physicians, of all candidates for the profession of medicine and surgery, restricting those whose superstition was ineradicable or whose learning was deficient to the clandestine ministrations of the shrine and the confessional.
In the subjugated race, which had inherited the wisdom and experience of many ages and peoples, is to be discerned the principal, and indeed the indispensable, factor of Norman prosperity and civilization. Its characteristics had been deeply impressed upon the various regulations which controlled the destinies of the island; they reappeared in the military organization, in the civil polity, in the social customs, in the architectural designs, even in the religious ceremonial, of the conquerors. The invaders were but a handful in number; but the moral influence they wielded, through invincible valor, prodigious personal strength, and inflexible tenacity of purpose, at once gave them almost undisputed ascendency. These qualities, however,[27] could not, unaided, found or maintain a flourishing state eminent in those arts which contribute to the welfare and opulence of nations. Oriental craft, refinement, and learning were able, however, to supply the deficiencies of whose existence the rude and unpolished Western adventurers were thoroughly cognizant. The Moslem stood high in the confidence and favor of the Norman princes. Quick to appreciate and meet the exigencies of every occasion, his prowess was invaluable in the suppression of anarchy and the establishment of order. Saracen cavalry were enrolled by thousands in the Norman armies. Saracen councillors stood in the shadow of the throne. Saracens collected taxes and administered the public revenues. They conducted, with the artful diplomacy characteristic of their race, important negotiations with foreign powers. Their religious assemblies were protected from intrusion and insult with the same solicitude which assured the inviolability of Christian worship. The unobstructed enjoyment and disposal of real and personal property was accorded to them by the laws. Their impress on the customs of social and domestic life was deep and permanent. The prevailing language of court and city alike was Arabic. Eunuchs, in flowing robes and snowy turbans, swarmed in the palaces of king, noble, and bishop. Dark-eyed beauties of Moorish lineage filled the harems of the martial and licentious aristocracy. The kadi, retaining the insignia and authority of his original official employment, was an important member of the Sicilian judiciary. He not only determined the causes of his countrymen, but was frequently the trusted adviser of the monarch. From the summits of a hundred minarets which seemed to pierce the skies, the muezzin, shrilly intoning the prescribed verses of the Koran, summoned the followers of Mohammed to prayer. As[28] was Palermo, such were the other Sicilian cities,—Messina, Syracuse, Enna, Agrigentum.
Moslem institutions, with the powerful influences resulting from their universal adoption, thus maintained an overwhelming preponderance throughout the provinces of the Norman kingdom. Even in Apulia and Calabria, the original seat of the new dynasty, the same conditions prevailed. The centre of the Papal power and of the various states subject to its immediate jurisdiction—a jurisdiction already important, but not as yet exercised with undisputed authority—could not fail to be profoundly impressed by the proximity of this anomalous empire; where Christian symbols and Koranic legends were blended in the embellishment of cathedrals; where the crucifixion and the mottoes of Mohammedan rulers were impressed together upon the coinage of the realm; where eminent prelates owed investiture, rendered homage, and paid tribute to the secular power; where Moslem dignitaries not infrequently took precedence of Papal envoys; and the hereditary enemies of Christendom fought valiantly under the standard of the Cross. Nor was the effect of this ominous example confined to localities where daily familiarity had caused it to lose its novelty. The traders who visited the remote and semi-barbarous courts of Europe, the Crusaders who from time to time enjoyed the hospitality of the Sicilian cities, the returned adventurers who had served in the armies of the princely House of De Hauteville, all spread, far and wide, exaggerated and romantic accounts of the strange and sacrilegious customs of the Norman monarchy. Ecclesiastics crossed themselves with dismay when they heard of the honors lavished upon infidels, whose co-religionists had profaned the Holy Sepulchre, evoking gigantic expeditions which had depopulated entire provinces and drained the wealth of credulous and[29] fanatic Europe. Others, whom study and reflection had made wise beyond the age in which they lived, saw, with open indifference and concealed delight, in this defiance and contempt of Popish tyranny, the dawn of a brighter era, the prospect of the ultimate emancipation of the human mind. The progress of the mental and moral changes which affected European society, acting through the intervention of Norman influence in the political and religious life of the continent, was gradual, indeterminate, and long imperceptible, but incessant and powerful. The universal deficiency of the means of information, the dearth of educational facilities, which promoted the dependence of the masses upon the only class capable of instructing and improving them, the terrible penalties visited upon heresy, deferred for nearly three hundred years the inevitable outbreak of an intellectual revolution. The principles on which that revolution was based, although at first discussed furtively and in secret, in time became so popular as to endanger the empire of the Church and to seriously impair its prestige.
The influence of the royal House of De Hauteville was extended, magnified, perpetuated, by the imperial House of Hohenstaufen. The traditions of the Arab, inherited by the Norman, were transmitted to and became the inspiration of the German. The genius of Frederick II. impressed itself indelibly upon the entire Teutonic race. It must not be forgotten that the most formidable revolt against Papal tyranny and corruption broke out in Saxony. The new German Empire owes largely its commanding position in Europe and its exalted rank in the scale of civilization to the talents, the energy, and the transcendent wisdom of the greatest monarch of mediæval times.
The fierce struggle between the Papacy and the Empire for universal rule began with the ascendency[30] of the House of Hohenstaufen, in the beginning of the twelfth century. The princes of that House, eminent for valor and diplomacy, early displayed a spirit of insubordination towards the Holy See which augured ill for the political supremacy which had begun to be the leading object of its ambition. The Papal power, not yet consolidated, nor even fully defined, was unable to successfully oppose to the encroachments of the haughty German sovereigns those measures which afterwards proved so effective against the recalcitrant monarchs of Europe in the settlement of disputes involving its doctrines and its authority. The chaotic state of European politics made it impossible for the Pope to enlist the aid of any potentate able to withstand the tyrants of the North, whose ambition aimed at the absorption of St. Peter’s patrimony, as their insolence had already menaced the independence of his throne. Diplomatic negotiation had proved of no avail. The once formidable weapon of excommunication was treated with contempt. No other resource remained. The influence of the Empire attained its maximum during the reign of Henry VI.; and the Pope, surrounded on every side by powerful and determined enemies, seemed about to be degraded to the rank of an imperial vassal, when the sudden death of the Emperor, and the election of one of the greatest of the Supreme Pontiffs ever raised to the chair of the Holy See, reversed the political and ecclesiastical conditions, to all appearances firmly established, and upon whose maintenance so much depended, and opened the way for a train of calamities unequalled in their atrocious character by any acts of tyranny that have ever stifled independent thought or retarded the progress of human civilization.
Innocent III., when elected to the Papal dignity, was already a man of mature years, wide experience,[31] and established reputation. His abilities as a scholar and a diplomatist, his familiarity with the principles of theology and law, had made his name known and respected throughout Europe, while the influence he exerted in the councils of the Church, long before his exaltation to its highest office, rendered him eminently conspicuous in the ecclesiastical affairs of Italy. With his extensive erudition and versatility of character were united talents for intrigue and administration equal to the most exacting requirements of statesmanship and command. Insinuating in address, jovial in conversation, by turns haughty and affable in manner, his unrivalled acquaintance with human nature, and his delicacy of tact, enabled him to regulate his conduct and his demeanor according to the circumstances of his political or religious environment. Conscious of his commanding genius, his insatiable ambition was not content with the enjoyment of the traditional honors and material advantages of Papal sovereignty; it aimed at the establishment of an autocracy, free from the interference of earthly potentates, nominally subject to celestial power alone, but, in fact, absolutely irresponsible and despotic.
Such was the formidable antagonist who, at the close of the twelfth century, confronted the majesty of the German Empire, represented by an infant less than four years of age. The minority of that infant, afterwards Frederick II., was one of degrading dependence and constant humiliation. His mother was compelled to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Pope in order to retain even nominal authority in her own hereditary dominions. Her death left her child the ward of the Holy See, in addition to being its vassal, and, in consequence, the entire ecclesiastical polity of his kingdom was changed; the clergy were declared independent of the secular power; grants of real property, confiscated by preceding emperors and[32] confirmed by long prescription, were revoked, and the lands restored to the Church; quarrels among the turbulent nobles were industriously fomented, to afford a pretext for Papal interference and an extension of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, for the nominal purpose of reconciling enmities and preserving order; the Jews and Moslems, left without a protector and subjected to horrible persecution, were driven to the desperate alternative of exile or brigandage. As a result of these impolitic measures, Sicily became oppressed by anarchy far more deplorable and vexatious than that produced by the crimes and follies of Saracen misgovernment. Its population diminished; its prosperity declined; its commerce almost disappeared. With the returning ascendency of the priesthood, the evils inseparable from that condition—ignorance, intolerance, private corruption, organized hypocrisy—once more became predominant. The irruption of a horde of greedy and insatiable ecclesiastics into the rich Sicilian benefices brought with it all the abuses of Papal Italy. Simony was openly practised. Some priests lent money at ruinous rates of interest; some kept taverns; others derived enormous incomes from even more questionable places of public entertainment. The impurity of their lives and the blasphemies in which they often indulged soon caused them to forfeit the respect of their parishioners, as had long been the case at Rome. They were so careless of the outward observances and duties enjoined by their profession as to neglect the service of the altar until their conduct became a scandal. It was a matter of common complaint that the sacred vestments were ragged and filthy; the chalices unpolished; the sacramental wine sour; the Host, the visible symbol of God, unprotected from insects and covered with dust. The habits of the clergy were incredibly vile. The more exalted the rank and the more conspicuous the prelate,[33] the greater was the example of pecuniary corruption and social depravity. The revenues of the Church, extorted from a reluctant and impoverished people, were squandered in the purchase of fine equipages, in sumptuous banquets, and upon rapacious courtesans. The duties of religion were forgotten in the general scramble for power. The palace of Palermo was the rallying point of these ecclesiastical politicians, whose broils and intrigues, so inconsistent with their calling, frequently disturbed the peace of the city, and whose vices were the reproach of a population which had never been able to boast of a high standard of personal morality.
The imperious spirit of Frederick, unwilling to brook interference in the affairs of his kingdom even from his feudal superior, first disclosed itself when he was but fourteen years old in a dispute with the clergy of Palermo, who appealed from his decision to the Pope. His defiance of the Pontiff was subsequently of such frequent occurrence as to be regarded as one of the leading principles of his administration. Innocent seems to have viewed with almost paternal indulgence the disobedience of a youth of excellent parts and undaunted resolution, who was subject to his authority not only as a member of the Christian communion, but in the double capacity of ward and vassal. His inability to appreciate the true character of Frederick was never so apparent as when he committed the fatal error which raised that prince to the greatest throne in Christendom. The paltry concessions extorted as the price of this great dignity were an indifferent compensation for the series of misfortunes its bestowal entailed upon Europe,—the rancorous hostility of faction; the perpetuation of intestine conflict, with its inseparable evils, widespread anarchy, the destruction of cities, the waste of provinces, the massacre of non-combatants, the obstruction[34] of national progress; and the partial return to the barbarous conditions of former ages induced by the relentless strife of Guelf and Ghibelline. It is not the object of this work to minutely set forth the events of that mighty struggle. The relations of the Holy See and the Empire are only important as they may have affected indirectly the influence of the reforms instituted by the great Emperor; reforms whose foundation had been laid by two preceding dynasties of widely different character, and whose principles derived their origin from the colonization of Sicily by a nation utterly foreign to the laws and traditions of contemporaneous Europe.
Born under a southern sky, accustomed from childhood to daily intercourse with the most intellectual society of the age, Frederick II. retained to the last a decided predilection for Sicily, the land of his birth. The classic memories and romantic history of that famous island exerted over his active mind a most potent and lasting influence. He had no sympathy with, and less inclination for, the rude and barbarous customs, the coarse festivities, the ferocity, drunkenness, and bestiality of that country which was the original seat of his royal House, the realm whence he derived the proudest and most grandiloquent of his numerous titles. Educated by two Moorish preceptors, under the superintendence of a cardinal,—a curious circumstance which indicates that infidel learning had not yet entirely succumbed to ecclesiastical prejudice,—he in time became proficient in all the arts and accomplishments possessed by that remarkable people whose erudition and industry were admired and feared by the dominant race whose members the fortune of arms had made the depositaries of power and the interpreters of orthodoxy. This early, intimate, and constant association with Mohammedans and Greeks, in each of whose systems of government[35] the temporal and spiritual functions were vested in one individual, undoubtedly suggested to the mind of the Emperor the stupendous project of merging the Papal office in the imperial dignity,—a combination of two despotisms under a single head, whose powers, of uncertain and indefinable extent, could not be questioned without incurring the penalties of both treason and sacrilege, and whose jurisdiction would eventually embrace the habitable world. The political and judicial systems instituted and perfected by Frederick II., remarkable in themselves, become almost marvellous when considered in relation to the era of their establishment, the difficulties encountered in their application, and the antagonism of the privileged classes whose designs they interfered with and whose abuses they were intended to correct and restrain. Two questions of paramount importance engaged the attention of this enlightened prince, questions containing in themselves the solution of every administrative and every social problem,—the promulgation of law and implicit obedience to its mandates, and the adoption of measures which might secure the greatest attainable happiness of the people. To the accomplishment of these noble and praiseworthy ends the talents and energy of the great ruler were constantly devoted,—in hours of triumph and in hours of humiliation; when engrossed with the cares of a vast and seditious empire; in the deserts of Syria; in the very face of death; in the bitterness of spirit induced by shattered dreams of long-nourished ambition.
The evils incident to a protracted minority had manifested themselves with more than ordinary prominence in the Kingdom of Sicily. The supervision of the Pope had, as usual, been uniformly exercised for the benefit of the ecclesiastical order and the aggrandizement of the Holy See. A fierce and rapacious aristocracy, impatient of restraint and eager for innovation,[36] defied the laws, and wreaked their hereditary vengeance upon each other with every circumstance of merciless atrocity. The mass of the population, probably composed of more diversified elements and nationalities than any community of equal numbers in the world, unable to prosper and scarcely able to live, endeavored to obtain, by different methods, exemption from the intolerable persecution of their enemies. The Greek, with the craft of his race, attached himself to the faction which, for the time being, enjoyed the best prospect of success. The Jew purchased a temporary immunity by the voluntary surrender of the greater part of his possessions. Alone among his companions, the Saracen took up arms. His martial spirit and the numbers of his countrymen obtained from his turbulent and disorganized adversaries a tacit recognition of independence, which the rugged nature of the country that contained his strongholds did not a little to confirm. In the effort to re-establish the royal authority, the Saracens rendered invaluable assistance; they were among the first to assemble around the imperial standard; without their co-operation the result would have been uncertain; and their valor and fidelity preserved the empire of Frederick, as that of their fathers had consolidated the power of the Norman domination.
The jurisprudence of the Emperor was based upon and included the system established by the Normans. Its rules were modified and improved as experience had suggested would be expedient and profitable. The main objects of the laws were the extinction of feudal tyranny, and the enjoyment of private liberty so far as it was not inconsistent with the prerogatives of the crown. No monarch of ancient or modern times was more solicitous for the happiness of his subjects, and none ever more fully appreciated the fact that the test of a nation’s greatness is the benefit derived by mankind[37] from its works, its history, its example. The difficulties encountered in the formation of a uniform code which could be enforced in such a cosmopolitan society as that of Sicily seemed insuperable. Feudal rights and ecclesiastical exemptions; the privileges of the Jews and Saracens, founded on prescription and confirmed by tribute; the jealous contentions of many forms of religious belief; the perpetual encroachments and usurpations of pontifical authority; the skepticism of Moslem philosophers, and the fanatical rage of persecuting zealots,—all of these antagonistic rights, claims, prejudices, and prerogatives it was necessary to correct, rearrange, amend, and embody in one practical, efficient, and harmonious system. The task, though stupendous, was not beyond the abilities and constructive genius of the great law-giver. The turbulence of the nobles was firmly restrained. All members of the clerical order were rendered amenable to the laws of the realm in cases which concerned the dignity and traditions of the empire. In matters relating to marriage alone they were permitted to exercise jurisdiction over those who had not taken the tonsure; the assent of the Emperor was necessary to the validity of an election; the prelate as well as the layman was compelled to assist in defraying the expenses of the government; nor, in any way, could he escape the discharge of duties enjoined by the Imperial Code or plead immunity from burdens necessary to the security of the state or the enforcement of order. The law of mortmain, framed under the direction of the Emperor, preceded the famous statute of Edward I., of which it was the prototype, nearly a century. Upon every individual the maxim was continually impressed that the sovereign was the fountain of justice, authority, and mercy. The criminal procedure, founded on Norman precedents, was singularly free from the legal atrocities generally prescribed[38] by feudal regulations; the penalty of death was only inflicted for the most heinous offences; mutilation was seldom permitted except in the cases of incorrigible criminals; torture, while recognized, was one of the rarest of punishments. The courts were invested with every outward circumstance of official pomp and dignity. From the decision of the supreme tribunal there was no appeal; even in the monarch vexatious litigation was systematically discouraged; judicial bribery was considered a crime of peculiar infamy; and the practice of holding the magistrate responsible for the maintenance of peace in his district was a most efficient check upon the violence and depredations of professional malefactors.
In the statutes relating to the detection and punishment of heresy, the character of Frederick appears to singular and manifest disadvantage. His long wars with the Pope, his close intimacy with infidels, his oppression of ecclesiastics, the repeated acts of sacrilege of which he was guilty, the blasphemous speeches constantly upon his tongue, the profane and mysterious studies in which he delighted, his employment of and confidence in wizards and astrologers, demonstrate beyond contradiction the weakness of his faith or the profoundness of his hypocrisy. But the latitude of opinion and conduct which he allowed himself was in an inverse ratio to that which he vouchsafed to others. No familiar of the Inquisition ever pursued heretics with greater zeal or pertinacity than the famous monarch whose name is constantly associated with all that is liberal, enlightened, and profitable in the annals of human progress, an inconsistency all the more glaring in a prince whose favorite sentiment was, “The glory of a ruler is the safe and comfortable condition of the subject.” History has never been able to advance a satisfactory or even a plausible explanation of this anomaly; its cause, at this distance of time, must remain[39] forever unknown, and may be ascribed, for want of a better solution, to the innate perversity of the human mind, which often by a single glaring defect obscures the brilliant lustre of a character eminently conspicuous for every princely quality, for every generous impulse, and for every literary and artistic excellence.
His commercial regulations were among the principal sources of Frederick’s power and greatness. His genius perceived at a glance the vast advantages which must result from an interchange of commodities with maritime nations; and, in the application of this principle, every facility was afforded those bold spirits whose energy the expectation of gain or the love of adventure directed into the channels of trade. Treaties more liberal in their provisions and more profitable in their effects than any which had heretofore been adopted by the powers of the Mediterranean were concluded with the greatest mercantile communities of Europe,—Constantinople, Venice, Genoa,—as well as with Damascus and Alexandria and the Moorish principalities of Africa and Spain.
The intimacy maintained by Frederick with Mohammedan sovereigns contributed greatly to the prosperity of his dominions. The Sultan of Egypt was his friend. The Emir of Tunis was his tributary. With the other Moslem princes he was on the best of terms. Treaties of commerce, framed for mutual advantage, were frequently negotiated with these potentates, who were only too willing to discriminate against other European monarchs in favor of the Emperor of Germany. In 1241, on the arrival of the Imperial ambassadors, Cairo was illuminated in their honor. The trade of Sicily extended to India. The luxuries of the Orient were brought to the ports of Palermo and Messina. In their markets the arms, the jewels, the stuffs, the porcelain, of countries remote[40] from civilization found a ready sale. In return, immense quantities of grain and manufactured articles were exported. It has been established upon undoubted authority that white female slaves of Christian birth formed no inconsiderable portion of the commodities dealt in by the subjects of Frederick II.
The fortunate geographical situation of Sicily, her magnificent harbors, the productiveness of her soil, the excellence and variety of her manufactures, had, in all ages, been factors of paramount importance in her commercial development. That development was now materially aided by the reciprocal observance of humane and courteous regulations, hitherto unrecognized in the intercourse of nations during the Middle Ages. Merchants in foreign ports were received with lavish hospitality; distrust of strangers gradually subsided; and unfortunates, cast away at sea, were no longer compelled to endure both the violence of the elements and the heartless rapacity of ferocious outlaws or amateur freebooters. In the widely distributed commerce of the monarchy the crown enjoyed no insignificant share. The ships of Frederick were anchored in every harbor; his warehouses were filled with the choicest and most costly fabrics of every country; and his agents, conspicuous for their enterprise and daring, collected, in the distant and almost unknown regions of the Orient, articles whose sale would most contribute to the benefit of the royal treasury. The principles of free trade seem to have been first promulgated in the maritime code of Sicily. The Emperor, however, in the application of those principles, evinced no reluctance in discriminating against his own subjects, whose vessels were not permitted to clear for foreign ports until those of the crown had been a certain time at sea. Every branch of commerce paid tribute to the imperial merchant. His ships carried pilgrims to the Holy Land. The grain he annually sent to Africa[41] returned an enormous and certain profit. His trade with India brought into European markets objects of unfamiliar uses and elaborate workmanship, whose rarity often increased their great intrinsic value. His friendly relations with Mohammedan princes, begun during the Crusade and terminated only by his death, made him frequently the recipient of magnificent presents. We read that on one occasion an eastern potentate sent him a dozen camels laden with silver and gold. All ships trading to Palestine were required to bring back a cross-bow for each of their cables, a measure which, while it replenished the royal arsenals with the most effective weapons of the age, was free from the dangers of official incapacity or corruption, and entailed no expense on the government. A great fleet of galleys, commanded by the Genoese admiral Spinola, maintained the naval power of the kingdom and protected the coasts from the depredations of pirates.
In the internal administration of the kingdom, the most progressive and equitable ideas of commercial honor and common advantage prevailed. No duty could be levied on articles of necessity transported from one province to another. While monopolies were not forbidden, they were restricted to the crown, and the oppression resulting from this measure in other countries was not felt by the subjects of Frederick. Annual fairs were held in all the principal cities; markets existed everywhere. Taxes were apportioned according to the wealth of the district where they were to be collected. Constant war made these impositions onerous at times, but there was some relief in the knowledge that the clergy were forced to contribute their share to the public burdens, an inconvenience from which they were elsewhere exempt. The coinage was one of the purest, the most convenient, the most beautifully executed that had ever been put in circulation[42] by any government. Agriculture, still largely in the hands of the Arabs, was carried to the highest perfection. Every plant or tree, whose culture was known to be profitable and which could adapt itself to a soil of phenomenal fertility, was to be found in the gardens and plantations of Sicily. The regulations of the kingdom concerning the rural economy of its people were minute and specific, even paternal, in their character. They were especially exact in details when directing how the royal demesnes should be administered. Records were kept of the crops produced in each district. Inventories of all the stock, poultry, grain, and fruit were made each year; the methods of their disposition and the prices they brought were noted on the public registers. The very uses to which even the feathers of the domestic fowls were destined was a matter of official inquiry. The breeds of horses, asses, and cattle were improved; the greatest care was taken of these animals. Food, which after experiment was found to be the most nutritious, was adopted; and the Emperor, whose interest in these matters was stimulated by the profit he derived from his stables, personally scrutinized their management with the most assiduous care. The supervision exercised by government officials over all occupations was most precise, and must have often proved vexatious. Weights and measures were prescribed by law, and any departure from honest dealing in this respect was visited with the severest penalties. Officers were appointed in every town for the detection of false weights and the sale of spurious merchandise. The laws of hygiene were understood and enforced with a degree of intelligence unknown to many European communities even at the present day. Unwholesome provisions could not be exposed for sale in the markets. Trades offensive to the senses or injurious to public health were prohibited within the walls of cities. A depth[43] was prescribed for graves, that the exhalations proceeding from them might not contaminate the air. No carrion was permitted to be left on the highways.
In questions of legislation, as well as in those relating to political economy, the kingdom of Sicily was far in advance of its contemporaries. The constitution of England, and especially the organization of the House of Commons, owe much to the Sicilian Parliament. While the duties of its members were ordinarily confined to the registering of royal edicts and the imposition of taxes, it presents the first example of a truly elective, representative assembly that is mentioned in history. From the institutions of Frederick, his relative, Alfonso X. of Castile, appropriated many of the legislative and judicial provisions of Las Siete Partidas,—a compilation for which that monarch is principally entitled for his fame. France and Germany also ultimately experienced the imperceptible but potent impulse communicated to society by the supremacy of law over theology, which had its beginning in Sicily during the thirteenth century.
Extensive and important as were the reforms of Frederick, it was from the munificent and discerning patronage extended to science and literature that is derived his most enduring claim to the gratitude and commendation of posterity. The impressions imparted by Moslem taste, in the prosecution of early studies, during the formation of his character, never lost their power. His court was frequented by the most accomplished Jews and Arabs of the age. They were the favorite instructors of youth. Their opinions, drawn from the sources of classic and Oriental learning, were heard with respect and awe, even by those who dissented from their creeds and deprecated their influence. They filled the most responsible and lucrative offices of the government. Admitted to friendly and confidential audiences with the sovereign,[44] who, himself an excellent mathematician, delighted to pose them with abstruse problems in geometry and algebra, their philosophy was regarded with signal disfavor by distinguished prelates that daily, in halls and antechambers, impatiently awaited the pleasure of the Emperor. So fond was Frederick of these intellectual diversions, that he sent certain questions for solution to the Mohammedan countries of Africa and the East; but no one was found competent to answer them until they reached the court of one of the princes of Moorish Spain. One of the most accomplished of linguists, Frederick sedulously encouraged the study of languages throughout his dominions. Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek were understood and spoken by all who made any pretensions to thorough education. Naples and Salerno were the most famous seats of learning in that epoch,—at the former was the University established by the Emperor; the Medical College of Salerno is justly celebrated as one of the most extraordinary academical institutions that has ever existed. The Faculty of the University was composed of the most eminent scholars who could be attracted by ample salaries, the prospect of literary distinction, and the certain favor of an enlightened monarch. The resources of all countries were diligently laid under contribution to insure the success of this noble foundation. The popularity of Frederick with the Moslem princes of the East gave him exceptional facilities for the acquirement of literary treasures. The collections of Egypt and Syria and of the monasteries of Europe were ransacked for rare and curious volumes with which to furnish the library of the great Neapolitan college. No city was better adapted to the necessities of a large scholastic institution than Naples. Its situation in the centre of the Mediterranean, the salubrity of the climate, the cheapness and variety of its[45] markets, offered unusual inducements to poor and ambitious students desirous of an education. Their interests were protected and their security assured by special and rigorous laws. Extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent their being molested during their journeys to and fro. The prices which might be charged for lodging were clearly and definitely established. Provision was made for loans, at a nominal interest, to such scholars as did not have the funds requisite to successfully prosecute their studies. The preparatory schools of the kingdom were conducted with equal care and prudence, and nowhere else in the world, in that age, could educational advantages of a similar character be enjoyed as in the Sicilian dominions of the Emperor.
Great as it was, the reputation of the University of Naples has been eclipsed by the superior renown of the Medical College of Salerno. There the study of surgery and medicine was pursued under the eyes of the most learned and distinguished practitioners of every nation familiar with the healing art. Ignorance of any language could scarcely be an impediment to the student, for instruction was given in Latin, Greek, German, Hebrew, Arabic. Scientific methods were invariably observed in its curriculum. The prevalent superstitions, which, encouraged by the clergy, appealed to the credulous fears of the vulgar, were contemptuously banished from its halls. While the School of Salerno had existed since the eighth century, and, from its origin, chiefly owed its fame and success to Arabic and Jewish influence, it attained its greatest prosperity under the fostering care of Frederick II. The writers principally relied on by its professors were Hippocrates and Galen, whose works had been preserved from barbarian destruction or oblivion by the Saracens of Egypt and Spain. But while these venerable authorities were always quoted[46] with reverence, no obstinate adherence to tradition, no devotion to errors consecrated by the usages of centuries, characterized the College of Salerno. Its spirit was eminently progressive, inquisitive, liberal. The monk, the rabbi, the imam, the atheist, were numbered among its teachers, and each maintained a position among his fellows in a direct ratio to his intellectual attainments. This anomalous condition, the more conspicuous in an era of general ignorance, and flourishing under the very shadow of the Papacy, itself inimical to all pursuits which tended to mental progress and interference with its spiritual emoluments, rendered the existence of such an institution all the more remarkable. To its researches are to be attributed many maxims, theories, and methods of practice still recognized as correct by modern physicians. Its investigations were thoroughly philosophical and based largely upon experiment. Information was communicated by lectures; anatomical demonstrations, as in modern times, were considered among the most useful and valuable means of instruction. Mediæval prejudice still opposed the mutilation of the human form, which, with the sectarian prohibition of ceremonial uncleanness, had long before been overcome by the Moorish surgeons of Cordova; and, in the Salernitan clinic, anatomists were forced to be apparently content with the dissection of hogs and monkeys. In secret, however, human bodies were not infrequently delivered to the scalpel, and the offices of many internal organs were observed and determined by the aid of vivisection,—a practice indispensable to a proper understanding of surgery, yet reprobated, even in our age of scientific inquiry, by a class of noisy, but well-meaning, fanatics. The unsatisfactory memorials of the School of Salerno which have descended to us—some of doubtful authenticity, others of unknown derivation—nevertheless disclose[47] the extraordinary discoveries its professors had made in anatomy; among them those of the functions of the chyle ducts, of the lymphatic system, of the capillaries, which then received their name; of the different coats and humors of the eye; of the phenomena of digestion, together with detailed descriptions of the office of the ovaries and their tubes, which anticipated the researches of Falloppio by more than four hundred years. Specialists then, as now, devoted their talents to the improvement and perfection of certain branches of medical science. There were many celebrated oculists and lithotomists, and practitioners who were highly successful in the treatment of hernia, of mechanical injuries of every kind, and of the diseases of women. The rules of hygiene, the properties of the various substances of the Materia Medica, the principles of pathology and therapeutics, as laid down by the faculty of Salerno, have been transmitted to us in a lengthy and curious poem entitled, “Flos Medicinæ Scholæ Salerni,” popularly known as Regimen Sanitatis.
This extraordinary production, none of which is probably later than the twelfth century, and whose origin is unknown, has been ascribed by Sprengel to Isaac ben Solomon, a famous Jewish practitioner of Cordova, who died in 950. Careful examination, however, discloses the fact that it is not the work of a single hand, but a compilation of various medical precepts and opinions belonging to different epochs. In its prologue, the pre-eminent value of temperance in all things is diligently inculcated:
[48]
It also contains hints on diagnosis and prognosis; information indicating no small degree of anatomical and physiological knowledge; formulas for antidotes of poisons; advice for the care of the body during every month in the year; and astrological indications of the favorable or malign influence of the signs of the zodiac and the stars. From the following couplet, designating the Seven Ages of Man,
seems to have been derived the inspiration of the familiar lines of Shakspeare.
The vitiated taste of an age not yet fully acquainted with the properties of correct literary composition caused the incorporation of verses into many of its most serious and dignified productions. These didactic poems seem singularly out of place in a medical treatise, and especially so where, as is usually the case, the poetry is, in both matter and harmony of numbers, below mediocrity.
Apothecaries and chemists, of whom a competent knowledge of drugs was required, were subject to the corps of physicians who were forbidden to join in their enterprises or share their profits; they were sworn to obey the Code; the number of pharmacies was limited; and they were liable to the visitation of imperial inspectors responsible for the purity of their merchandise and the observance of the law. The precautions required in the sale of poisons; the directions for compounding electuaries and syrups; the most approved methods for the preparation of the love-potions believed to be so efficacious by mediæval credulity; the fabrication of charms for the prevention of disease, are all set forth in the Salernitan Code with minute and tedious exactness.
[49]
In the city were many hospitals, the oldest of which was established in the ninth century, and was contemporaneous with similar institutions founded by the Ommeyade dynasty of Cordova. Some of them were richly endowed, others were entirely supported by charitable donations. The strict requirements of medical police were recognized in the isolation of patients suffering from contagious diseases. A systematic distinction was observed in the purposes of these beneficent foundations; they were of various classes and devoted to the care of the poor and the homeless, to the protection of invalid females of rank and fortune, to the support of foundlings; and the most intelligent treatment of every malady was gratuitously afforded. The members of monastic orders, for the most part, had charge of the hospitals, and acted in the capacity of nurses and attendants.
The regulations of Frederick, who united the various schools of Salerno into one vast institution of medical learning, exacted the possession of the highest abilities, dexterity, and experience by the expectant practitioner. A preparatory course of three years in the general branches of literature and philosophy was required of him. Five years at least were to be devoted to study in the colleges, and one year was then to be passed under the eye of an experienced physician before the aspirant for professional distinction was pronounced competent to prescribe for the suffering.
The remarkable attainments and skill of Roger of Parma, the great surgeon, who was famous for the treatment of wounds and fractures and the extirpation of tumors and polypi; of Maurus, Gaulterius, and Matthew Silvaticus, who published treatises on phlebotomy, general practice, and the Materia Medica; of Garipontus, an expert in operations for calculus and other diseases of the pelvic organs; of Giovanni da Procida, the accomplished court[50] physician of Frederick II., all graduates of the School of Salerno, are conspicuous in the annals of mediæval surgery and medicine. Then first appeared the patronymic of Farragut—afterwards destined to such renown in the naval history of the New World—borne by a Jew of Messina, who was educated at Salerno and Montpellier, and whose translation of the “Continent” of Rhazes, made in the latter part of the thirteenth century, was dedicated to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX., King of France.
Students of both sexes were permitted to enjoy the rare advantages afforded by the School of Salerno; no prejudice hampered the acquisition by woman of medical knowledge, in whose application her natural acuteness and sympathy rendered her remarkably proficient and successful. Many female physicians rose to great eminence in the different departments of their profession as lecturers, chemists, operators: among them the names of Rebecca, who wrote on fevers and the embryo; Abella, on generation and prenatal life; Trotula, on the Materia Medica, hernia, and obstetrics; Mercuriade, on general surgery; and Costanza Colenda, whose scientific accomplishments, as well as her beauty, made her famous in Europe, have descended to our time. A college of midwifery existed at Salerno, whose graduates were subjected to examinations fully as strict as those required of candidates for medical honors, and who, sworn to fidelity, enjoyed a lucrative practice in the opulent families of Naples and Messina. Although a lofty sense of professional etiquette distinguished the faculty of Salerno, imperial supervision, which, under Frederick, found nothing too minute for its attention, carefully protected the public from extortion. Fees were fixed by law; their amounts were regulated by circumstances. Even the ordinary number of visits required in a given time was defined; and attendance was[51] accorded without charge to the poor. In our age, so prolific of professional incompetence, the exalted rank and profound attainments of the graduates of the Salernitan school may well excite astonishment; amidst the darkness of mediæval ignorance it was the educational and literary phenomenon of Europe.
A generous patron of every art and occupation which could embellish his domains, benefit his subjects, or enrich his treasury, the Emperor gave also much attention to great public works,—the fortification of cities, the improvement of harbors, the construction of highways. His palaces disclosed a marked partiality for Moorish customs and Moorish architecture. Some of these beautiful edifices had come down from the Saracen domination, but many were constructed after the plans of the royal architect, who personally superintended their erection. They were finished with costly marbles and adorned with bas-reliefs, statues, and paintings. The eagles of Germany were sculptured over their portals. Outworks of vast extent defended their approaches. In all were courts and gardens odorous with the blossoms of jasmine and orange and surrounded by secluded apartments destined for the occupants of the imperial seraglio. Attached to some of these delightful retreats were extensive menageries, aviaries, and miniature lakes filled with gold and silver fish. There was no appliance of Oriental luxury, no means which could contribute to the gratification of the senses, that was not to be found in the Sicilian palaces of Frederick II. In the foundation of new cities, extensive districts were depopulated to provide them with inhabitants. This arbitrary proceeding was often a measure of profound policy, which insured the good behavior of a turbulent population that, removed from the influence of former associations, transplanted among strangers, and regarded by their new neighbors with suspicion and hostility,[52] were rendered incapable of serious mischief. In this manner was established the Saracen colony of Lucera, whose members, composed of rebellious Mussulmans of Sicily, became, soon after their settlement, the most faithful subjects of Frederick and the chief support of the imperial throne.
That city was built on the slope of the Apennines, in a location most advantageous for both the purposes of commerce and defence. Its citadel was a mile in circuit and protected by fortifications of enormous strength. In the centre stood a lofty tower, at once the palace and the treasury of the Emperor. Frederick neglected no opportunity of gratifying the pride and confirming the attachment of his Saracen subjects. The spoils of the Papal states were lavished upon them. The trade of the colony was encouraged by every available means. Armorers and workers in the precious metals were imported from Syria. From Egypt came laborers highly skilled in horticulture. Great orchards were planted in the environs. The soldiers of the imperial body-guard were Moslems of Lucera. Splendidly uniformed and mounted, they were constantly on duty at the palace, on the march, in the camp. Conspicuous in the funeral escort of the deceased monarch, their duties were only relinquished at the grave.
The maintenance of this infidel stronghold in the heart of Christian Europe was a standing reproach to the Papacy; and the horror of the clergy was aggravated by the knowledge that churches had been demolished to supply it with building materials; that the revenues of rich and populous districts were diverted through its agency from the coffers of the cathedral and the monastery; that it enjoyed exclusive and valuable commercial privileges; and that, worst of all, it was able at a moment’s notice to furnish more than twenty thousand well-equipped, valiant,[53] and incorruptible soldiers to the armies of the Emperor.
The patronage of letters, which distinguished this accomplished sovereign, is not the least of his titles to renown. No prince ever sought out books and manuscripts with greater assiduity, or more strenuously endeavored, by the bestowal of scholastic honors and pecuniary emoluments, to attract the learned to his court. Nationality, creed, partisanship, feudal enmity, private grudges, were alike forgotten in the friendly contest for literary pre-eminence. In the royal antechambers, in the halls of the University, no student was entitled to precedence, save only through his established claim to mental superiority. The incessant rivalry of many acute and highly cultivated intellects, stimulated by rewards and unhampered by restrictions, was productive of results most important for the revival of letters and the future benefit of humanity. Great advances were made in all departments of knowledge,—chemistry, natural history, botany, poetry, mathematics. The famous scholar, Michael Scott, whose rare attainments contemporaneous ignorance attributed to magic, and whose simple tomb in Melrose Abbey awakens to-day the veneration of every educated and appreciative traveller, was employed by the Emperor as a translator of the classics, and carried to Palermo vast stores of learning acquired in the schools of the Spanish Moslems. Theodore, called “The Philosopher,” published treatises on geometry and astrology; John of Palermo wrote on arithmetical problems; Leonardo Fibouacci brought to the general notice of Europe the science of algebra as known and used in modern schools; the versatile Pietro de Vinea, statesman, jurist, orator, amused his leisure in the composition of the first Italian lyric poetry, and of epistolary correspondence unsurpassed, in any age, for perspicuity, ease, and elegance of[54] diction. Frederick himself wrote amorous sonnets, and published in Latin a work on hawking and birds of prey, which is even now an authority on the subject. The apocryphal book, De Tribus Impostoribus, an alleged compendium of blasphemy and vileness, attributed to him by the clergy of the Middle Ages, is now known to have been an invention of ecclesiastical malice to blacken a character only too vulnerable to such attacks. At the Sicilian court was formed that melodious and graceful idiom afterwards employed with such success by Petrarch, Dante, and Boccaccio. The political, social, and literary revolutions of seven centuries have not materially altered the grammatical construction or orthography of the beautiful language spoken and sung by the knights and ladies of Palermo. The enduring fame of such an achievement far exceeds in value and utility the temporary and barren distinctions obtained by the gaining of battles, the sack of cities, the plunder of baronial strongholds, and the humiliation of popes.
Such was the Emperor Frederick II., and such the civilization which, inspired by Moslem precept, tradition, and example, his commanding genius established in Southern Europe. Not only was he the most intelligent, but he was the most powerful and illustrious sovereign of his age. In addition to the imperial dignity, he possessed the titles of King of Naples and Sicily, of Lombardy, of Poland, of Bohemia, of Hungary, of Denmark, of Sardinia, of Arles, and of Jerusalem. In birth and affinity he was first among the great potentates of the earth. He was the grandson of the famous Barbarossa and of King Roger of Sicily. He was the uncle of Jaime I. of Aragon, Lo Conquerador. He was the father-in-law of the Greek Emperor of Nicea. He was the son-in-law of the Latin Emperor of Constantinople. He was the brother-in-law of the King of England. His relations[55] with the Sultan of Egypt, dictated, in a measure, by state policy, but for the most part prompted by personal admiration, were of the most social and friendly character. He exchanged gifts with the chief of the execrated Ismailian sect known as the “Old Man of the Mountain.” Community of ideas, tastes, languages, and mercantile interests, which he shared with Mohammedan rulers, confirmed the intimacy already long existing between the Kingdom of Sicily and the fragments of the Hispano-Arab empire. His authority was respected from the Mediterranean to the Baltic; his matrimonial connections made his influence felt from the banks of the Nile to the Pillars of Hercules. It was this power, exercised over a territory of vast extent and unlimited resources, added to a consciousness of pre-eminent ability, that suggested to Frederick a renewal of the ancient Carlovingian jurisdiction, and the daring but imprudent attempt, by usurping the prerogatives of the Papacy, to realize a dream of more than imperial ambition.
That dream contemplated the foundation of a national, schismatical church, of which he was to be the head and Pietro de Vinea the vicar. The Pope was to be restricted to the exercise of spiritual functions, and finally deposed. In the Emperor were to be centred all the glory, the majesty, the sanctity, of an omnipotent ruler, presumably responsible only to the Almighty; really the sole arbiter of the religious professions and the actions of mankind. How the demands of such a system, which must necessarily be maintained, to a certain extent, by intellectual coercion, could be reconciled with the broad and equitable tolerance which was for the most part the distinguishing characteristic of the policy of Frederick, does not appear. The claim was, as has already been mentioned, that ecclesiastical supremacy was vested in the secular power of the empire, and dated[56] from the time of the Roman emperors. They were the Supreme Pontiffs from whom the Pope derived his title, but not his authority. That office was merged into, and was inferior to, the imperial dignity. Its inheritance by the monarch of Italy rested upon a more secure basis than the ambiguous and disputed commission alleged to have been conferred upon the fisherman of Galilee. Its validity had been strengthened by centuries of prescription. It had been exercised by many generations of sovereigns. The ministrations of the chief priest of a sect embracing millions of worshippers, the revered intermediary between the devotee and Heaven, are only too easily confounded with the attributes of divinity. These advantages were early recognized and diligently improved by Constantine. The Byzantine emperor was the head of the Greek Church. In Mohammed temporal and spiritual functions were united. Such examples, constantly present to the mind of Frederick, exerted no small influence in determining his course. In the eyes of his Sicilian subjects, the claim of the Imperial Crown to religious supremacy was regarded as a royal prerogative, which had been suspended but never relinquished. The usurpation of the Papal power was a favorite project of European monarchs in succeeding ages. It was seriously meditated by Philippe le Bel in France during the fourteenth century. It was effected by Henry VIII. in England during the sixteenth century. The defiance of the Pope by the great German Emperor was, even at the distance of three hundred years, one of the inspiring causes of the Reformation. The spirit of intellectual liberty, oppressed at first, was victorious in the end.
The genius of Frederick II. was five centuries in advance of his time. His most intelligent contemporaries were incapable of understanding his motives or of appreciating his efforts for the regeneration of[57] humanity. No individual of that age accomplished so much for civilization. He improved the condition of every class of society in his dominions. He diffused the learning of the Arabs throughout Europe. He imparted a new impulse to the cause of education in distant countries not subject to his sway; an impulse which, while it was often impeded, was never wholly suppressed. His liberal ideas excited the abhorrence of the devout. His superstitions evoked the anathemas of the clergy. In his expedition for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, his guards and councillors were Mohammedans. He attended service in the mosques. He knighted the Emir Fakr-al-Din at Acre. He feasted the envoy of the Sheik of the Assassins at Amalfi. At his court the astrologer was a more important personage than the logothete.
Under the administration of this great prince personal merit was the best title to official promotion. His most eminent ministers were of plebeian origin. From them he exacted unremitting attention to their duties. His suggestions to his ambassadors recall the maxims of Machiavelli. As a negotiator, he had no rivals in an age of shrewd and crafty politicians. His erudition was vast, varied, and profound. To aid the study of natural history he collected extensive menageries. He read medical works and prescribed rules of hygiene for his family and household. With his own hands he drew the plans for his palace at Capua. Magnificent hospitals, aqueducts, bridges, castles, arsenals, arose in the imperial domains of Sicily and Italy.
With all his accomplishments, Frederick was singularly deficient in military ability and generalship. He cared more for the pomp than for the victories of war. His crusade was a campaign of diplomacy. The defeat he sustained at the hands of the Parmesans, and which shook the foundations of his throne,[58] was effected by a rabble of peasants and women who attacked his camp while he was absent on a hunting excursion.
The gorgeous court of Palermo, with its stately ceremonial, its heterodox opinions, its intellectual atmosphere, and the predominant Moslem influence which controlled its policy, prescribed its customs, and contributed largely to its importance, was at once the envy and the scandal of Christendom. The bulk of the imperial armies was composed of Saracens. Philosophers and statesmen of the latter nationality often engrossed, to the exclusion of all others, the confidence and intimacy of the Emperor. His different consorts, in turn, subjected to Oriental restrictions, were attended by guards of African eunuchs, colossal in stature, hideous in feature, splendidly apparelled. His harems, luxuriant establishments, not confined to Palermo, but scattered through the cities of Southern Italy, were filled with Moorish beauties from Syria, Egypt, Morocco, and Spain. A number of their occupants always formed part of his retinue in both peace and war. They journeyed after the fashion of the East, in closed litters borne by gayly caparisoned camels. Arab ladies, as remarkable for wit and learning as for their personal charms, mingled freely with the brilliant society of the capital. Among the diversions of the court were the dances of the East, feats of jugglers and buffoons, amatory improvisations of minnesinger and troubadour, games, falconry, literary contests, magnificent banquets. In these merry assemblies, where pleasure reigned supreme, the sensual was, however, never permitted to prevail over the intellectual; they were enlivened by philosophical discussions, by the application of proverbs, by the stories of travellers, by the recitation of ballads.
The personal aspect of Frederick did not correspond[59] to the expectations of those who had formed an ideal from the fame of his talents and the extent of his erudition. His stature was short, his shoulders bent, his form ungainly and corpulent. He was bald and near-sighted. His reddish beard indicated the lineage of the Hohenstaufens. So insignificant was his appearance, that an Arab writer, who saw him at Jerusalem, asserts, with astonishment and contempt, that if he had been exposed for sale as a slave he would not have brought two hundred drachms of silver. The general lustre of his character was marred by many serious and fatal defects. He was tyrannical, perfidious, hypocritical, superstitious, and inordinately dissolute, even in a licentious age. The domestic relations of the greatest of mediæval emperors were the reproach of the Papacy and the horror of Christian Europe. Like the infamous Marquis de Sade, he considered tears and suffering the most desirable prelude to libidinous pleasures. The festivals of the imperial palace of Palermo were enlivened by the performances of the singing- and dancing-girls of the East. European females of the same profession, during the Crusade, travelled in the royal train to Acre, where the novelty of their appearance and costume amused the idle moments of the Moslem princes of Egypt and Syria. Nothing in the career of Frederick provoked the ire of the clergy more than this concession to infidel curiosity. The gigantic Nubians who watched over the Empress, and whose faces were compared to “ancient masks,” awakened the amazement of foreign travellers at the Sicilian court.
The most frightful torments, whose ingenious cruelty was long remembered with fear and hatred, were inflicted on his victims. Many were dismembered by wild horses; some were crushed by ponderous cloaks of lead; others were slowly roasted by fire applied to brazen helmets in which their heads had[60] been encased. The special objects of these punishments were the partisans of the Pope, who were charged with the offences of both heresy and rebellion. In the orders issued to his agents, he showed that he was an adept in the arts of deception. Devoted to the forbidden science of astrology, he became the dupe of charlatans; and even the consummation of his marriage with the Princess of England was deferred until the position of the planets was declared to be favorable. His genius was essentially Italian. From early childhood he had been familiar with the arts, the schemes, the casuistry, of unprincipled priests and politicians. In the formation of his character these associations had exercised a most pernicious influence. His education and experience had led him to doubt the existence of the virtues of truth, patriotism, integrity. He never forgave an injury to himself or an insult to his dignity. He sacrificed, without compunction, ministers who had long served him in the most responsible employments, who had profited by his generosity, who had shared his confidence. His utter want of feeling is revealed by a saying attributed to him which is more remarkable for its energy than its elegance, “I have never fattened a hog except to obtain its lard.”
His philosophical indifference to religion did not prevent him from posing as the representative of the orthodox faith and the restorer of primitive Christianity. He compared himself to Elias and to Christ. He humbly solicited enrolment among the monks of Casamara. In a communication to the successor of St. Francis of Assis, he declared his belief in the Scriptures and his hope of eternal salvation. He presided over important religious festivals and assumed the most prominent part in the celebration of their ceremonies. On his death-bed, he wished, in token of his pretended reverence for the humblest[61] ministers of the Gospel, to be clothed with the cowl of a Cistercian friar. Policy caused him to thus profess allegiance to the Church, but there is little doubt that he was an unbeliever, perhaps an atheist. In unguarded moments he scoffed at all religion. One of his favorite jests was in ridicule of the Eucharist. He criticised Divine Wisdom for the selection of the barren land of Palestine, instead of the rich and fertile Sicily, as the abode of the chosen people. In the very cradle of Christianity, at the spot once sanctified by the presence of the Saviour, he edified his Moslem hosts by comparing the throngs of pilgrims who crowded to the shrine to droves of the most stupid and unclean of animals. His unflinching antagonism to the Papacy caused the clergy and the rabble to regard him as Antichrist. He was deposed by the Council of Lyons; was four times excommunicated by the Pope; and was repeatedly disciplined by inferior prelates. In the implacable contest which broke his power and destroyed his house, the ecclesiastical autocracy of Rome, for the moment, triumphed. The civilization he had fostered was checked and obscured. His treasures were scattered. His libraries disappeared. The last of his race perished ignominiously on the scaffold. But the spirit of independent thought which he promoted, and whose exercise he bequeathed to posterity, survived the attack of intolerance and tyranny, to be revived in a better and a more auspicious age.
The South of France, not as yet incorporated into the monarchy, but existing as a semi-independent state, and governed by the Count of Toulouse, one of the most powerful feudatories in Europe, was the scene of another great mediæval revolt of the human mind against Papal despotism and intellectual servitude. From a period so remote that its beginning is lost in tradition, that region had been the seat of a[62] splendid civilization, at once the exemplar and the pride of antiquity. The Phœnicians had early established trading-posts on its shores, and had introduced, with the commercial policy and enterprise of their race, the arts, the learning, and the culture which had laid the foundation of the wealth and renown of Carthage. To the Phœnicians succeeded the Greeks of Phocæa, that flourishing Ionian seaport which, for dignity, elegance of manners, and erudition, ranked among the most famous cities of the Grecian name. Its principal colony, Massilia, exercised dominion over nearly all of the territory south of the Loire; a territory already rich and populous, and containing, among the twenty-five important cities subject to its jurisdiction, such great and opulent communities as Monaco, Nice, Arles, Nîmes, Béziers, Avignon. Unaided by extraneous support, the people of Massilia, in spite of the efforts of barbarian neighbors and jealous rivals, preserved their political and mercantile importance until their conquest by Cæsar degraded their commonwealth to a subordinate rank among the provinces composing the gigantic fabric of the Roman Empire. The policy of that great soldier despoiled them of their dependencies, crippled their resources, and turned to letters and the arts the restless spirit which had formerly been engrossed by the pursuits of commerce and the exercise of arms. Before its political annihilation, the colony of Massilia, in extent, in population, in wealth, and in intelligence, ranked higher than any Grecian republic that had ever existed, save Athens alone. Its possessions were not acquired by conquest. They were gradually absorbed through the imperceptible influence of superior knowledge, the example of prosperity and luxury, the acuteness of sagacious and aggressive rulers, the exhibition of magnificent monuments of artistic genius. Under the Romans, this region, designated as Narbonnese[63] Gaul, was one of the most flourishing provinces of the empire. Its literary culture was proverbial. Its schools were famous. It is mentioned by Livy as having preserved without contamination the arts, the manners, and the laws of Greece. The ancient polity of Massilia is eulogized by Cicero as a scheme of almost ideal perfection. The philosophers of that city enjoyed such a reputation for learning, that the patronage of such of the Roman youth as were ambitious of the most finished education was equally divided between it and Athens. The first three professors of Latin rhetoric at Rome were Gauls educated at Massilia. Its intellectual progress was greatly assisted by the mercantile spirit of its citizens, whose faculties were developed and enlarged by constant and familiar intercourse with other nations. Its navigators possessed all the skill and activity of their Phœnician ancestors. Their vessels were seen on the western coast of Africa, in the Euxine, in the Baltic, in the distant fjords of Norway. Their factories and their agents were established in Germany and Britain. Their internal trade was most extensive and important. They traversed the course of the Rhone and the Loire from their sources to the sea. Every tribe in communication with those waterways paid tribute to their shrewdness and shared the benefits of their experience. The Greek language was familiar to the inhabitants of Gaul; it was even adopted and used by the Druidical priesthood, and eventually became the general medium of commercial and social intercourse. The dark and cruel superstitions and legends of the country were supplanted by the elegant and graceful fictions of Paganism; by the songs, the dances, the floral games, the pomp of sacrifice, the joyous festivals, which characterized the religious ceremonials of Greece and Italy. The existence of such conditions could not fail to exert a marked[64] effect upon the minds of a people, barbarous indeed, yet highly susceptible to impressions which appealed equally to its imagination and its interest. Narbonnese Gaul, under the emperors, maintained the literary and artistic pre-eminence which had, from time immemorial, distinguished it among the provinces of Western Europe. The most copious, elegant, and euphonic of languages was still spoken throughout the various municipalities that formerly acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Massilian Republic. The capital was especially renowned for its philosophers and physicians; for its patronage of letters; for the refinement of its society; and for the number and excellence of its educational institutions, which, in the estimation of many distinguished Romans, took precedence of the schools of Greece. Imperial favor bestowed upon the Narbonnese province monuments whose perfection was eminently worthy of the taste and splendor of the Augustan age. Its cities were adorned with beautiful temples, porticos, and theatres. In the gardens were peristyles of precious marble, mosaic pavements, superb fountains, vases filled with flowers, and statues of gilded bronze. Sumptuous baths administered to the luxury of the populace. In the circus, the chariot race displayed a pomp but little inferior to that exhibited by the imperial spectacles of Rome. Aqueducts of colossal dimensions brought, for a distance of many leagues, the water demanded by the requirements of an immense population. In no portion of the Roman world have such a variety of the architectural memorials of classic elegance survived as in the district of Provence and Languedoc. From the magnificent ruins that still remain, we are enabled to form a grand but inadequate idea of the structures created by imperial munificence and Grecian taste which have perished by the neglect and the violence of thirteen centuries. After the Roman[65] came the Goth, and then the Arab, himself at first but a marauder. By degrees, however, his nobler instincts obtained the mastery over his love of rapine; his predatory strongholds were transformed into centres of trade; and with the habits and religion of the Orient were introduced all the benefits and all the vices of its voluptuous existence. The Moorish principality of Narbonne was subject to the Western Emirate only forty years; yet, during that short period, the impressions produced by Moorish occupancy were so deeply stamped upon the mental and physical characteristics of the population that no subsequent revolutions have ever been able to entirely efface them. The practical genius of the Arab, which considered utility as the first and most valuable of all the objects of civilization, was again exhibited in the improvements applied to all the arts and avocations of life which sprang up in the track of his victorious armies. The Oriental principles of agriculture, with its painstaking tillage of the soil, its perfect irrigating system, its introduction of foreign plants, were applied with wonderful success to the delightful region watered by the Rhone and the Garonne. Many varieties of grain, including the buckwheat, originally brought from Persia, and which at that time obtained its significant name of sarrasin, were imported from Spain. The bark of the cork-tree, still one of the greatest sources of wealth to Catalonia and Provence, was then first made known to Europe. The boundless evergreen forests on the slopes of the Pyrenees were utilized for the manufacture of pitch and rosin. In every district, the breed of horses was improved by crosses with the best blood of Arabia. Innumerable articles of luxury preserved in museums and private collections—beautiful objects of silver, ivory, and crystal, damascened armor, and silken robes—attest the variety and excellence of the Moorish manufactures.[66] The popular dances and other amusements of Southern France are also striking reminiscences of the Moslem ascendency. While Arabic literature must have exercised an important influence upon the public mind of Provence and Languedoc, no historical information has been transmitted to us relative to its character, and even its existence during this period is largely a matter of conjecture. There is no doubt, however, concerning the effects subsequently produced by familiarity with Moorish civilization, established by conquest and perpetuated by the aid of merchants and travellers. The learning, the elegance, the refinement, and the infidelity of the court of Cordova were carried beyond the Pyrenees. The writings of Averroes and other Arabian philosophers were studied with pleasure by the scholars of Southern France. That entire region was more Mohammedan than Christian and more infidel than either. The nobles adopted polygamous habits and maintained harems filled with concubines. A thriving trade in eunuchs was carried on with the Spanish Arabs, whose profits, it was notorious, were principally engrossed by ecclesiastics. A passionate love of poetry developed the troubadour, a most important factor of European intellectual progress, and the counterpart and representative of the Arab bard, whose improvisations had, from time immemorial, been the delight of the emotional tribes of the Desert. A language infinitely sweeter and more melodious than modern French, and exhibiting a strong similarity to the Italian formed at the court of Frederick II., became the vehicle of charming poetical compositions, which satirized the lives of the priesthood, recounted the achievements of the tournament and the foray, and celebrated, in graceful and rhythmic hyperbole, the beauty and fascinations of woman. This tongue, known as the Langue d’Oc, while indirectly derived from the Latin,[67] owed, in fact, nothing to classic associations or influence. It was the first of the numerous family of languages and dialects of Roman origin which, during mediæval times, attained to any marked degree of perfection in grammatical construction or in elegance of expression. It is a significant fact that it only obtained a permanent foothold in countries once subject to Arab domination. It spread eventually all over the South of Europe. It was spoken in Valencia, Barcelona, and the Balearic Isles, whose dialects are now corrupted forms of the ancient Limousin. The productions of which it formed the medium were read in Italy, Germany, Sicily, and England. It adapted itself with such ease to the purposes of the poet that it almost seemed constructed especially for that variety of composition. It early incurred the hostility of the Church on account of the Albigensian heresy; and in 1248, Innocent IV., by a special bull, forbade its study to all good Catholics. The rapidity with which it was perfected, the extent of its distribution, the number of provincial dialects to which it gave rise, the richness of the literature which adopted it, and the suddenness and completeness of its extinction constitute one of the most interesting and extraordinary phenomena in the annals of linguistics.
The literary and social condition of Southern France was, with the single exception of Sicily, which bore to it a remarkable resemblance, anomalous among the countries of civilized Europe. Its population was singularly cosmopolitan; half a score of races had contributed to its formation; it had inherited the culture of the Greek, the Roman, the Arab; mixture of blood and comparison of creeds had produced universal toleration of belief and widespread and uncompromising skepticism. In its courts, its schools, its learned professions, Semitic ideas, traditions, and influence preponderated. Not a few Moslems had[68] established themselves in the cities of Nîmes, Narbonne, and Toulouse, and the Jews abounded in every community which afforded encouragement to scientific attainments or facilities for traffic. The system of public instruction was essentially Hebrew; the faculty of the famous medical school of Montpellier, the successful competitor of that of Salerno, was at first principally composed of Jews and Mohammedans, and retained for centuries, amidst foreign conquest and domestic convulsion, the impress derived from the character of its founders. The closest relations were maintained between the academies of Languedoc and those of imperial Sicily and Moorish Spain. This intimacy was strengthened by the multiplicity of mercantile transactions arising from a constant interchange of commodities dependent upon a vast and profitable trade. The capitals of Cordova, Seville, and Palermo were better known to the people of Provence than any of the Mediterranean cities to the inland towns of continental Europe; now, great centres of wealth, commerce, and civilization; then, despised as semi-barbarous and rarely visited. The continuance of this friendly intercourse with Mohammedan countries, confirmed at once by congenial pursuits and by the powerful influence of pecuniary advantage, was portentous in its effects, and boded ill to the propagation of Christianity and the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline. The succession of numerous forms of worship, distinct in their origin, unlike in their ceremonial, irreconcilably hostile in their polity, each asserting divine infallibility, yet each, in turn, overthrown by a new and more popular belief, was not favorable to the existence of any religion. Strongly attached to the cheerful festivals of Paganism, the inhabitants of Southern France had embraced the precepts of the Gospel with insincerity and reluctance. Their disposition, their traditions, the[69] souvenirs of classic magnificence and beauty which surrounded them, all contributed to confirm the deeply grounded affection they entertained for the creed of their fathers. Nowhere else in Christendom was such a spectacle presented of all that is attractive to the luxurious, and all that is admired by the intellectual, as that disclosed by the life of the polished and corrupt society of Southern France. That entire region was subjected to the highest cultivation of which the soil, naturally fertile and improved by every resource of scientific agriculture, was susceptible. The cities, large and populous, enjoyed every advantage of wealth which could be derived from an extensive traffic. Béziers had sixty thousand inhabitants, a larger number than any town in England. Nîmes, Arles, Carcassonne, were but little inferior in size and grandeur. Every commercial device was familiar to the people. Their shrewdness was proverbial. Their trade was enormous. A knowledge of banking and bills of exchange, with many important fiscal regulations, had been introduced by the Jews of Barcelona.
Toulouse, one of the most beautiful and licentious of mediæval capitals, was the focus of this splendid civilization. It was the seat of the Muses, the home of chivalry, the goal of every devotee of love and of ambition. There the knightly adventurer sought distinction in the tournament and the tilt of reeds, martial amusements borrowed from the Moor. Thither journeyed the troubadour and the jongleur, sure of hospitality and reward in palace and castle, in the comfortable home of the merchant, in the humble dwelling of the laborer. There was crowned the poet, successful in the literary contest, two hundred years before the laurel was placed upon the brow of Petrarch in the Capitol at Rome. There were held the Courts of Love, where women argued and determined,[70] with all the grave impartiality of a judicial tribunal, questions involving the laws of gallantry, their observance and their violation. The potentate, who, under the modest title of count, governed this great and opulent realm, enjoyed a larger measure of authority than most representatives of the royal houses of Europe. His family was of high antiquity, and its rank dated back for many centuries. The rich fiefs of Béziers, Foix, Quercy, Montpellier, and Narbonne, with their numerous important dependencies, acknowledged his authority as suzerain. Wealthier than any of his Christian contemporaries, he was more powerful in all the attributes of monarchical dignity than the King of France. His dominions included the greater part of the territory south of the Loire, and embraced the fertile and flourishing districts bounded by the Garonne, the Isère, the Mediterranean, and the Alps. He had achieved renown in the Crusades. His sword had won for him the principality of Tripoli. He had been an unsuccessful but prominent competitor for the throne of Jerusalem. In his public relations he was the soul of chivalric courtesy; in his personal habits a fastidious voluptuary; in belief a skeptic; in tastes a Mohammedan. The conspicuous valor he displayed on the fields of Palestine was, in some degree, neutralized by a moral cowardice which instinctively shrank from a conflict involving the dearest privileges for which humanity can contend,—the preservation of political integrity and the exercise of the right of intellectual freedom. Brave, impetuous, sensual, vacillating, and insincere, such was Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, the representative of the most polished and dissolute state in Europe.
The political organization of the various cities and provinces composing the County of Toulouse presented a strange anomaly. Some were, in all but name, republican; their magistrates, under the title[71] of consuls, administered the affairs of government, and were elected by the public voice of the people. The civil regulations of others partook rather of the nature of feudal tenures in which the most oppressive privileges had been relaxed or entirely discharged. But neither the feeble copy of the institutions of ancient Rome nor the barbarous laws of mediæval tyranny were sufficient to compel the obedience of such a heterogeneous population. The authority of the elective magistracy was frequently defied. The fealty of the great vassals was but nominal. The jurisdiction of the suzerain was, under various, and sometimes under frivolous, pretexts, questioned or ignored. There was no organized military power to enforce the mandates of the ruling authority. Enervated by pleasure, the people of Languedoc and Provence passed their existence in a constant round of intellectual diversions and refined sensuality. The martial sports of the chase and the tourney did little but recall the profession of arms, once the only occupation worthy of the dignity of the mediæval cavalier. Thus, broken up into semi-independent communities, destitute of military resources, and incapable of systematic defence or united action, the power of the Count of Toulouse was ready to crumble at the approach of the first resolute aggressor. The civilization represented by that power lacked the indispensable essentials of every permanent government,—loyalty and religion. Want of centralization, and a multiplicity of rulers, weakened the patriotic attachment of the people, and discouraged the growth of an enlightened and healthy public sentiment. National pride could not exist when there was no royal personage to whom all could appeal, no common country to exalt and defend. In addition to these serious impediments to durability and progress was added an absolute want of religious feeling. Numerous causes[72] had combined to produce this condition. Comparisons of many forms of faith had exposed their defects and inconsistencies, and led to a general rejection of them all. The Crusaders had familiarized all Europe, and especially France, with the manners and religion of the Mussulmans. Hundreds of enterprising merchants had assumed the cross, much less for the piety it was presumed to indicate and the sacred privileges it conferred, than for the worldly advantages to be procured by traffic with distant, and otherwise inaccessible, regions. Their glowing reports of Oriental civilization had dissipated the remaining prejudices of a people whose intercourse with the Moslem kingdoms beyond the Pyrenees had long predisposed them in favor of a race held in peculiar abhorrence by the See of Rome. The silks and gold of Syria and Egypt appealed far more eloquently to the passions of the multitude than the genuflexions of the priest or the rosary and cowl of the friar. Even the sacred profession was invaded by the prevailing spirit of toleration, itself dependent on material interests; the inferior clergy dealt as brokers in the money of the East, and from the mints of bishops and metropolitans were issued coins impressed with Mohammedan texts and symbols. In addition to this extraordinary partiality for infidel customs, and the practical renunciation of the vow of poverty, which were calculated to arouse, especially among the vulgar, a suspicion of heterodoxy, the entire body of the Provençal clergy had become thoroughly debased and profligate. Those of high rank vied with the nobles in prodigal and ostentatious luxury. Prelates constantly abandoned the duties of their office for the fascinations of the chase and the licentious pleasures of intrigue. They travelled in state with numerous trains of ladies and attendants, the richness of whose appointments rivalled that of a royal equipage. The Archbishop of Narbonne kept[73] in his pay a band of foreign outlaws who levied blackmail on opulent citizens, and who, protected by their ecclesiastical patron, defied the weak and disorganized civil power of the land. In every gay assembly where the song of the troubadour recounted the triumphs of love and gallantry, or aimed its satirical shafts at the failings of the priesthood, the bishop was foremost in laughter and applause. It was a common saying among the people that while the apostles were poor, their successors, plunged in luxury, “loved fine horses and splendid garments, white women and red wine.” The vices of the higher class, confirmed by the possession of great wealth and secure from the censure of ecclesiastical tribunals, surpassed, in turpitude and effrontery, the excesses of any other society then existing in Christendom.
The episcopal dignitaries were usually of noble blood and connected with the most ancient and distinguished families of France. Not so, however, with the inferior members of the hierarchy. The avarice, the extortion, the hypocrisy, the drunkenness, and the debauchery universally imputed to all included in that sacred profession had made it infamous. The prelates, indeed, enjoyed all that could be purchased or exacted by eminent birth, boundless opulence, and irresistible power. The priests, however, were nearer the people, and were taken from the lowest ranks of society. Such was their degradation, that it had passed into a proverb. The populace, by way of imprecation, were accustomed to say, “May I become a priest before I do such a thing!” Livings were filled exclusively from the ranks of the coarse and brutal peasantry, for no citizen of the middle class would permit his son to be disgraced by the assumption of the tonsure. Even respectable vassals recoiled from the equivocal honors of the Church, and the lords, who regarded the tithes as a portion of their legal perquisites,[74] were forced to select as candidates for holy orders the most ignorant and degraded of their dependents and slaves. The rude manners and vicious tastes engendered by a debased and plebeian origin increased the hatred and contempt of the scoffing multitude. In some parts of Languedoc public feeling ran so high against the clergy, that priests, to avoid personal violence, were forced to conceal from the passers-by all outward evidences of their calling.
The Pope, long aware of the insults offered to his dignity and of the evils which threatened the faith of Rome, had frequently condemned in unmeasured terms the conditions which imperilled the existence of all religion in the South of France. Ecclesiastical fulminations, however, possessed no terrors for the blithe and careless inhabitants of Provence and Languedoc. The Papal bulls only furnished another amusing theme for the sarcasm of the poet. Interdicts, elsewhere so potent, in that land, alone of all those subject to Christian authority, were treated with derision. The pretensions of the legate of the Apostolic See were ridiculed in his very presence, and even the Holy Father himself was not able to escape the raillery and censure of those whom experience had made acquainted with the shocking venality and license of the Roman court. Every vestige of moral influence upon which rested public consideration for the clergy had disappeared. The churches were all but deserted. Latin, the language of the altar, had been discarded for the Langue d’Oc, the idiom of the skeptical and the dissolute. In many parishes bells had ceased to announce the hour of worship, for no one heeded them. The priest, intent on his pleasures, was only too ready to abandon the duties enjoined by his calling, especially when there were few to listen and still fewer to contribute. The revenues of the Church, greatly diminished, were diverted into channels entirely[75] foreign to the purpose for which they had nominally been collected. Some were appropriated by the nobles, whose vassals had been presented to livings. Vast sums were squandered by licentious prelates in vices whose enormity appalled every sincere Christian. The greatest profits which enured to the benefit of the clergy were derived from the uncanonical and prohibited practices of simony and usury. No effort was made to conceal the existence of these abuses, and the ecclesiastical residence was generally recognized as the head-quarters of brokerage in bills and benefices.
Thus had the Roman Catholic Church, by the corruption and effrontery of its ministers, forfeited the respect of mankind. Its edicts were disregarded. Its lessons were unheard. The pious turned with loathing from the hypocritical exhortations of religious teachers whose lives were stained with every crime, and whose conduct presented examples of flagrant iniquity, which fortunately had few parallels outside of their profession. The reverence once attaching to the Vatican was sensibly impaired. While its policy encouraged the promotion of the humble, its authority necessarily suffered through the enrolment into the priesthood of men without education, refinement, honor, decency, or independence. Public respect could not be retained by a class degraded by servile associations and still subject to the arbitrary caprices of a secular lord. As in every community are to be found many individuals to whom religion is a necessity, so in the Provençal cities and villages devout persons turned from the ancient and discredited hierarchy to other quarters for the inestimable consolations of forgiveness and hope. Such conditions infallibly generate heresy, and the eagerness and unanimity with which heterodox opinions were adopted in that populous region demonstrated at once the extent of the evil and the necessity for the[76] radical measures by which its removal was accomplished.
The centre of intellectual culture in Southern France was the University of Montpellier. It has been well said that the history of the faculty of that famous institution is to a great extent the history of medicine in Europe. During the early part of the twelfth century, Montpellier was the most important emporium of France. The trade of the entire country converged to that point. Its commercial establishments were upon a colossal scale. Its population was cosmopolitan. The conquests of Ferdinand and Jaime, the occupation of Cordova, Seville, Majorca, and Valencia had attracted to Languedoc, and especially to its most thriving city, tens of thousands of Mohammedan refugees. The Jews had long been numerous in that region, and were already conspicuous for wealth, intelligence, and power.
From that epoch dates, in reality, the foundation of the University. A school of medicine had existed there for nearly a century, but to the influx of Moorish and Hebrew learning must be attributed the reputation soon obtained by that institution throughout Europe. The majority of its professors belonged to those two nationalities. They brought with them the experience, the methods, the remedies, and the instruments of the most eminent and successful practitioners of the Peninsula. Many of them from time to time visited the colleges of Granada and Toledo for the purpose of adding to their stock of information, and of profiting by the superior facilities those schools afforded. A broad and catholic spirit controlled the organization and the policy of the University. Sectarian prejudice was unknown. Teacher and scholar were free to worship according to their belief, or to entertain and express the most radical philosophical opinions. Intellectual attainments and marked ability[77] were the principal qualifications for admission to the Faculty.
The Lords of Montpellier, and subsequently the Kings of France, were the patrons of the school. They conferred upon it at different times great and extraordinary privileges. The rights it had enjoyed under the Count were confirmed by the sovereign. Philip of Valois, in 1331, by a special edict placed its doctors under the royal protection. Charles VI., in 1350, granted its beadles permission to carry silver maces as symbols of its dignity. The Duke of Aragon, in 1364, exempted it from taxation. The patents of Charles VIII., in 1484, transferred all causes in which the professors and students were interested to the jurisdiction of the Governor of Montpellier. The execution of legal process could only be made in the presence of the Chancellor. To the officers of the Faculty were committed the supervision and inspection of the apothecary shops of the city, in order to insure the purity of the medicines dispensed.
At Montpellier were performed the first public anatomical demonstrations of Christian Europe. The surgical investigations of the School of Salerno had been principally confined to the lower animals. Moorish and Hebrew operators carried into France the advanced ideas of Mohammedan Spain, which, in defiance of ancient prejudice and mediæval superstition, sought for the knowledge of the location and functions of the human organs in the intelligent and systematic dissection of the human body. In the thirteenth century, the corpse of a criminal was every year given to the Faculty of Montpellier for this purpose. Two hundred years elapsed before similar demonstrations were authorized by the University of Paris.
The Medical Academy of Montpellier inherited the energetic and progressive spirit of its prototype, the[78] University of Cordova. It absorbed all the available learning of antiquity. It adopted the maxims and the methods of the great Arab surgeons and physicians of the Peninsula. Among its most celebrated professors were graduates of the School of Salerno. It utilized the talents and experience of famous practitioners of every country and of every creed. There the works of Hippocrates and Galen were translated from the Arabic, in which idiom they had been preserved, into the Latin, by which they were to be transmitted to posterity. There the learned disquisitions of Averroes, Avicenna, Rhazes, and Abulcasis were enriched with voluminous and invaluable commentaries.
A long and thorough course of study was required to obtain the title of Doctor. The office of Chancellor was one of great dignity, and carried with it many privileges. It may well be imagined that ecclesiastical imposture could not flourish in the shadow of such an institution. Such was its influence, even with a class naturally hostile, that as early as the last half of the twelfth century the First and Second Councils of Montpellier prohibited all members of the clergy from teaching medicine, under severe penalties. The scientific character of the studies pursued in that city, and the success of those who profited by them, discredited the practice of shrine-cure and the imposition of relics. The theological odium attaching to the University was not less than that which had stigmatized kindred seats of learning among the Arabian infidels. Many works of its professors were publicly burned by the Inquisition.
And yet no class of men was more highly esteemed by the orthodox sovereigns of Christendom than the graduates of the University of Montpellier. They were the friends and confidants of popes and kings. Their heretical principles were forgotten at the bedside of the sick and the afflicted. Arnold de Villanova[79] was the physician of Clement V., of Peter III., King of Aragon, of Frederick II., Emperor of Germany. Guy de Chauliac was the regular medical adviser of Clement VI., of Innocent VI., of Urban V. While its greatest reputation is derived from its influence on medicine, the labors of the School of Montpellier were not confined to that science. They gave rise to many valuable contributions to various branches of literature. The astronomical researches of the Spanish Jew, Profatius, in 1300,—his tables of longitude; his calculations, which established the declination of the sun and the inclination of the earth’s axis, by means of which terrestrial motion was conclusively demonstrated, have not lost their authority in our time.
The treatises of Gordonius on Diseases of the Kidneys, of Gerard de Solo on Hygiene, of Raymond de Vinario on the Plague, indicate to the medical scholar the extraordinary accomplishments of the members of the Faculty of Montpellier. The great work of Guy de Chauliac on General Surgery was the main reliance of European operators for two hundred and fifty years.
The mad extravagance of the Provençal nobility, their lavish expenditures, the pomp of their retinues, their efforts to surpass in prodigality and luxury the splendid festivals of imperial Rome, aroused the wonder of Europe. Their chargers were shod with silver. Their dogs wore collars set with precious jewels. It was an ordinary occurrence for a wealthy lord to scatter great sums to be scrambled for by the populace. One sowed like seed thirty thousand gold crowns in the neighborhood of his castle. Another enriched his noble guests by the bestowal of gifts of incalculable value. A third sacrificed upon a funeral pyre, in the presence of an immense assemblage, thirty of his finest horses. There was apparently no limit to[80] the intoxication produced by the pride, the opulence. and the voluptuousness of Provençal society. In that society differences in rank were not so sharply defined as in those of other countries. The serf, indeed, retained his degradation; but the ordinarily intermediate class of burghers were practically the equals of the feudal aristocracy. Many of them boasted a purer and a more distinguished lineage. They used coats of arms. They had their mansions, their embattled castles, their bodies of organized retainers. They excelled in martial exercises, and it was no unusual occurrence for knights who had crossed swords with the infidels of Palestine to be worsted by them in the tournament. The title to noble rank was thus to a considerable extent connected with municipal residence. In the cities all was splendor, gayety, courtesy. Outside of them, the inhabitants were for the most part condemned to villeinage. In the Courts of Love, whose absurdity has caused them to be regarded as mythical by many subsequent writers, judicial decisions were rendered on every point of amorous casuistry. The mock solemnity with which such matters were propounded and determined was only exceeded by the dissolute tendency of the customs that governed the proceedings of these extraordinary tribunals. No greater proof of the prevalent laxity of morals could be desired than that furnished by their canons. They encouraged the violation of the marriage vow. They defined with minute and curious particularity the rules of intrigue. The nature of the questions debated by high-born ladies in the presence of a numerous auditory was such as cannot be even designated, still less described, in a modern book. The brazen coarseness which characterized these ridiculous controversies afforded a remarkable contrast to the refinement of manners otherwise displayed by those who participated in them. The popularity of this unique system[81] of jurisprudence was so great, that, at the time of the Albigensian crusade, it was on the point of being generally established in every part of France. No institution, even in those times of heresy and unbelief, was so fatal to religion. It undermined the vital principles by which society is held together. It defied the injunctions and ridiculed the dogmas of the Church. The Virgin, as the object of adoration, was supplanted by the mistress of the cavalier, often a woman of dissolute character and the recipient of the adulation of a score of favored lovers.
A charming picture of mediæval society is presented by the life of the educated classes of Languedoc and Provence. Everywhere was dispensed the most elegant and lavish hospitality. The table was spread before the open door of the castle. Marked attention was shown to the guest, whether merchant, knight, pilgrim, minstrel, or troubadour. He was welcomed with unaffected cordiality. He was tendered the use of the hot-air bath. A wreath of flowers was placed upon his brow. The ladies themselves ministered to his necessities. In accordance with a custom borrowed from the Arabs, the choicest morsels were placed in his mouth by dainty white and jewelled fingers perfumed with lavender and rose. The diversions of the day were feats of strength and displays of horsemanship, the game of chess, the chase with the falcon, the contest for the prize of knightly dexterity in the lists of the tournament. In winter, the company gathered about the huge fireplace of the banqueting hall; in summer, under the rustling foliage of the park. The evening was spent with song and dance, with the recital of the story-teller, with the improvisations of the poet. The feast was enlivened by wit, by jest, by sparkling repartee. The returned crusader related his adventures in the Holy Land,—the bloody encounters of the siege of Acre; the[82] quarrels of the Christian chieftains; the events in which were displayed the dignity, the valor, the noble generosity of Saladin. The trader, just from the Moorish cities of Spain,—then, indeed, sadly fallen from their first estate, but still exhibiting in their fading splendor no unworthy image of their former grandeur and power,—described in glowing language the beauties of Cordova, Valencia, and Seville. Between cavalier and mistress communication was constantly maintained unobserved, through the silent and pantomimic medium of the language of flowers.
In this brilliant company the troubadour was pre-eminently conspicuous. Although often the butt of the equivocal speeches and practical jokes of his companions of both sexes,—attentions which he did not fail to repay with interest in the cutting satire of his verse,—his opinions, generally authoritative, were always heard with respect. He determined points of precedence and etiquette. He gave wholesome advice to young ladies on the care of their persons, on their behavior at table, on their treatment of lovers. His principal duties were, however, the glorification of the family of his patron and the celebration of the charms of his mistress. All courted his favor. Few were rash enough to provoke his enmity. In the society of Languedoc, whether the dependent of a noble house or a careless wanderer from court to court, he was always the central figure.
Among the inmates of the baronial palace, if an intrigue existed, it was concealed by the mask of decency. The poet, in the burning verses which enumerated the charms of his lady-love, never mentioned her name, or betrayed the slightest indication of her identity. His attachment he regarded in the same light as the tribute paid by a Pagan worshipper to his tutelary goddess. The laws of his code demanded impenetrable reserve. The object of his devotion was, to all[83] appearances, an imaginary personage, an ideal of feminine perfection.
The highest development of splendor, taste, intelligence, and luxury was to be found in the feudal castle. In the cities, it is true, great pomp and extravagance, the results of the accumulation of incredible wealth, were constantly displayed. The mansions of many opulent merchants far surpassed in the magnificence of their interiors the palaces of the King of France. On occasions of festivity priceless hangings of brocade and velvet, of silken tapestry and cloth of gold, were suspended over the streets. The households of these powerful citizens were on a scale commensurate with the dignity of their masters. Hundreds of retainers obeyed their bidding. Their apartments were full of singers, dancers, buffoons, and eunuchs. There was no delicacy not to be found upon their tables; no means of sensual enjoyment which did not contribute to the stimulation of their blunted appetites; no vice with which they were not familiar.
Thus in the courts of the numerous principalities of Southern France, amidst the delights of a society gay, skeptical, licentious, the troubadour was the arbiter of taste, the oracle of the populace, the idol of women. Public opinion was far from discouraging the practice of gallantry in an age which scoffed alike at the maxims of social morality and the ceremonies of religion. The mistress of the vagrant bard was always the wife of a noble, not infrequently a princess of the highest dignity. To her was addressed his passionate homage, often in strains whose expressions are too bold and ardent for translation into a modern language. The adoration they convey, unsurpassed in fervency by any vows ever offered at the shrine of a celestial divinity, affords a key to both the influence of the poet and the relaxation of manners. The life of the latter was passed in an intoxicating[84] atmosphere of music, flattery, and amorous intrigue. His power over society was not less important than that formerly exercised by the repudiated clergy, and was, morally speaking, fully as pernicious. The adulation he lavished upon the object of his affections, represented as the personification of every physical grace and every mental accomplishment, could not fail to fire the romantic imagination of the goddess in whose veins coursed the hot blood of the South, and whose vanity caused her to recognize in this extravagant flattery and devotion the highest tribute to her charms. Around the bard, in the brilliant circles of Arles or Carcassonne, was grouped a mirthful and appreciative auditory,—ladies in brocades and jewels, knights in burnished armor, pages in silk and gold. In that animated assemblage the restraints of rank, never rendered irksome by the exactions of pompous ceremonial, were for the moment entirely suspended. The conversation sparkled with epigram, equivocal allusions, and good-humored satire. Its character, formed by the dissolute customs of the age, often transgressed the rules of propriety which govern modern social intercourse. Inspired by such surroundings, the troubadour arose and began the recital of an impromptu amatory ode. Young, slender, and handsome, his physical appearance alone might well elicit female admiration. His long, dark locks fell in ringlets upon his shoulders. A golden chain hung about his neck. His fingers glittered with gems. From his belt an enamelled poniard was suspended. His picturesque costume of brilliant colors, his silken doublet, his velvet cloak, set off to the best advantage the graces of his person, and revealed the popularity which he enjoyed with his patrons. All eyes were turned upon him, for his talents were of the highest order, and the object of his admiration was present, perchance in the person of the chatelaine herself. As[85] he chanted his verses in accents, now ardent, now pathetic, now humorous, the enraptured audience, swayed by conflicting emotions, broke forth alternately into tears and laughter. His ambiguous expressions, his licentious images,—whose boldness the severity of modern criticism would reject as offensive to decency,—were received with every manifestation of approval by his delighted hearers. The nature of the entertainment was often varied by the performances of the jongleur. That personage, who, as a retainer of the troubadour, occupied a position analogous to that of esquire to knight, united in his calling the office of minstrel, juggler, story-teller, and buffoon. Sometimes he accompanied the song of the poet upon the harp or the guitar; sometimes, with expressive gesticulation, he recounted the legends, the martial exploits, and the popular romances whose relation was a favorite diversion of mediæval society. His rank was ordinarily far beneath that of his companion; yet it was not unusual for the two professions to be combined; and there were instances when their positions were reversed through the vicissitudes of success or misfortune.
The extraordinary privileges enjoyed by these vagrant sonneteers were by no means entirely attributable to the amusement which their talents afforded. Their compositions were the sole medium by which public opinion could be aroused and the abuse of power and the excesses of social depravity restrained. The influence of the pulpit, long omnipotent in the regulation of morals, had declined; in some localities it had wholly disappeared. Centuries were destined to elapse before the press, the most formidable weapon of political censure, could become available. The satire of the poet, whose verses, carried from place to place, in a fortnight became familiar to a hundred communities, was recognized as the instrument of[86] moral correction, the dread of the tyrant, the scourge of the shamelessly dissolute. Its potent effects were feared by wrong-doers of every class, and by none so much as by those of exalted position.
The fierceness and rancor displayed by the troubadours in their attacks upon obnoxious personages, in an age of irresponsible authority, can only be explained upon the hypothesis that they were encouraged and protected by the force of overwhelming public sentiment. Their poems were composed in the Langue d’Oc, the first perfected and the most important of the Romance languages,—an idiom of great compass and power, and beyond the Loire used by the educated and polished members of society alone. The finest of these productions frequently owed their origin to authors destitute of literary culture; many troubadours could not even read. They evinced no admiration of the beauties of nature. The stanzas were isolated, often absolutely without continuity. A common similarity of type and resemblance of ideas pervaded all. It is a singular circumstance, that in form and metrical arrangement the last poem of a troubadour was not, in any important particular, superior to the oldest, at present, known; there was no improvement in two hundred years. In delicacy of sentiment, in vigor of expression, in sweetness of melody, these compositions are not excelled by the lyrics of any nation. Their analogy to those of the Spanish Mohammedans is striking and self-evident. There is the same play of words, the same predominating class of subjects, the same far-fetched and extravagant similes, the same incessant obtrusion of the author’s personality. The Langue d’Oc contains a greater number of rhyming terminations than any other language except Arabic; a coincidence to be attributed to imitation or a common poetic taste, and certainly not the result of accident. In the productions[87] of both idioms the prevailing rhyme is by distichs, and occurs throughout the entire poem, the second verse of every distich always ending with the same sound; and the meaning is often obscured or sacrificed to preserve continuous harmony of versification.
The taste for letters was introduced into France partly as a consequence of the Moslem occupation, but principally by the Jews, who remained after their allies had been driven back over the Pyrenees. The similarity of taste and expression existing between the poets of these two branches of the Semitic race is apparent to every one who has compared the Bible and the Koran. Many of the Hebrew colonists of Narbonne and Marseilles had been educated at Cordova, and all spoke the Arabic language with fluency. Not a few were scholars of marked ability, gifted with poetic talents, the possessors of large libraries. These superior advantages had great weight with a semi-barbarous people steeped in ignorance, with no mental resources except the interchange of gossip, and the exhortations of a priest, who often could not understand his breviary. The ferocious and intolerant spirit with which the Jew was generally regarded, counteracted, in a measure, the effect of his influence, but the power of intellect and culture finally prevailed. The Hebrews familiarized the population of Languedoc and Provence with the art, the science, and the literature of the Arabs. Through their agency an acquaintance with the Arabic language and literature became in Southern France and in Sicily indispensable to the education of a scholar. Another factor of great importance in the intellectual development of Southern Europe was the number of Moslem refugees who sought safety in foreign lands from the influx of African barbarism and from the perils incident to constant revolution. A large proportion of these were[88] philosophers, whose high attainments had made them dangerously conspicuous, and whose heretical doctrines were obnoxious to the stern fanaticism of the Almoravides. Such an immigration could not fail to produce a profound impression upon the mental characteristics and literary habits of any people.
The intercourse of all classes of the population in Southern France was distinguished by every manifestation of courtesy. The degrees of precedence, the style of dress, the order of amusements, the arrangement of the banquet, were governed by established rules of etiquette.
Nor was this life by any means devoted to frivolous pursuits. The great hall of the castle was often the scene of debate between famous scholars and ecclesiastics. There, too, were performed the burlesque miracle-plays of the age. An expensive library was the pride of the count. The philosopher was frequently, the astrologer almost invariably, a member of his household. In the secret vaults of the laboratory, surrounded by crucibles and alembics, the adept sought for the secret of potable gold; from the summit of the keep the astronomer held nightly communion with the stars.
An inclination to dialectical controversy, inherited from their Greek ancestry; the subtle arguments of Arab metaphysicians and natural philosophers; commercial intercourse with the Orient, which familiarized them with the religious theories and principles of various heretical beliefs; and the corrupt and debauched lives of the clergy, which excited the universal abhorrence of all, predisposed the piously inclined to the acceptance of new forms of faith. Among the heterodox sects which arose in the early ages of Christianity, that of the Paulicians was the most numerous, the most popular, and the most enduring. Its tenets were partly borrowed from those of the Gnostics, but[89] largely derived from the ancient Persian doctrine of the two antagonistic Principles of Good and Evil, ever contending for the mastery of the universe and the empire of mankind. The peculiar ideas of this Manichean sect had, from the first, awakened the apprehensions and called forth the anathemas of the Church. The mysticism which characterized them, the ascetic life which they inculcated, appealed powerfully to the superstitions and devout impulses which most strongly influence the human mind. From Armenia the belief of the Paulicians rapidly invaded every province of the Byzantine Empire, and then, following the lines of trade, made innumerable proselytes in Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. It gave rise to the Waldenses and the Albigenses, names of sad and ominous import in the religious annals of Europe. In no country were these false doctrines embraced with such enthusiasm as in Provence and Languedoc. Their adoption was not confined to the ignorant and the obscure, for many personages of the most exalted rank openly avowed their adherence to this dangerous heresy. Simplicity of creed and purity of manners distinguished the new sectaries from the subjects of the ancient hierarchy. They denied the real presence in the Eucharist; the value of baptism as a ceremony; the efficacy of absolution granted by a priest whose calling was not unfrequently dishonored by acts of the most glaring profligacy. Their ministers discarded the splendid vestments of the Roman Catholic priesthood for simple robes of black. They rejected the Old Testament, as inspired by the Spirit of Evil, because of the sanguinary deeds authorized by a superior power, which, by the extermination of populous communities, indicated irreconcilable enmity to the human race. Bells and images of every kind alike shared their animadversion. They advocated benevolence, abstinence, chastity, celibacy. In self-abnegation[90] many of them exceeded the discipline of the most exacting of the monastic orders. They denounced as one of the most grievous offences against morality the practice of every form of lying and deceit. In their creed the sacerdotal office and the ceremonial of the Church were invested with no sanctity, and could confer no benefits, if not associated with honesty of purpose and purity of life. Their very existence was a protest against Papal infallibility and an assertion of the right of individual judgment. Their liberal opinions, their charity, the persuasive eloquence with which they promulgated their doctrines, obtained for them the respect of the nobility and the ardent devotion of the multitude. The name of the obnoxious sect was to every consistent member of the Catholic communion a term of peculiar infamy and reproach.
Throughout the region tainted with this heresy, which derived its name from the diocese of Albi, where its professors were most numerous, the authority of the Vatican was undermined or entirely destroyed. The habits of the clergy had prejudiced all classes against them. The churches were empty. Payment of tithes had ceased. Vassals subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction refused obedience and withheld their tribute. In certain districts it was unsafe for a priest to appear upon the highway. The public exhortations of friars, whose extraordinary influence was now for the first time disclosed, were interrupted by shouts of derision and flying missiles. At Toulouse, the centre of the Albigensian doctrines, a renegade prelate, usurping the functions of the Pope, convoked at intervals councils of heretic bishops. The recalcitrant sectaries possessed houses of worship, ecclesiastical residences, cemeteries. The piety or fears of the devout bestowed upon their clergy valuable estates and great sums in legacies. That portion of the community which did not accept the new belief—which[91] probably equalled the rest in numbers, and certainly surpassed it in wealth and social importance, infected with the theories of Arabic philosophy—was thoroughly infidel. Against such rebels the thunders of the Vatican availed nothing. Apostolic admonitions were treated with ridicule. Interdicts had lost their power. Even the Papal legate was treated with scant courtesy. The missionary efforts of Dominic, whose fiery zeal now began to raise him to eminence, met with signal and ignominious failure. The Church—menaced at the same time by this serious defection, by rebellion in her own temporal dependencies, and by the aspiring genius of the youthful emperor, Frederick II.—was in great distress. At no time in her history had she been confronted with such powerful enemies or been exposed to more deadly perils. And yet this beautiful land, now under the ban of the Papal See, had scarcely a century before been regarded as one of the bulwarks of the Christian faith. It was at Clermont that the first Crusade was proclaimed by the Languedocian Bishop of Puy, as the representative of the Pope. A hundred thousand persons from Southern France followed Peter the Hermit to Palestine. The famous Order of Hospitallers was a Provençal institution. A large proportion of its Grand Masters were natives of Languedoc. The treasure contributed by its people to the prosecution of these chimerical expeditions of Rome was far from inconsiderable. Such a radical change had increased intelligence and the untrammelled exercise of reason wrought in the minds of the inhabitants of the most civilized country of Christian Europe.
The malignant genius of Innocent III. was, however, equal to the emergency. In spite of the fact that ecclesiastical corruption was principally responsible for the widespread revolt against Papal authority, the Count of Toulouse and his feudatories[92] were, in exquisite irony, appointed the ministers of apostolic vengeance. The mandate was issued by the Vatican that the Provençal nobility should become the persecutors of their vassals and lay waste their own possessions with fire and sword. No family ties, no considerations of friendship or intimacy, no hereditary connections, were exempted from the operation of this atrocious decree. When it had failed, as it was certain to do, as a last decisive expedient, a bull was promulgated announcing a crusade against the infidels of France. Their lands and their lives were declared forfeited for the crime of heresy; all good Catholics were called to arms; and the property of the rebellious sectaries was promised as a reward to the faithful champions of the Holy See. Every resource of Papal ingenuity and power was invoked. From twelve hundred monasteries, bands of fanatics issued to preach the crusade in all the states of Christendom. Plenary indulgence was granted to the warrior who donned his armor in the cause of the Church. Excommunication and the withdrawal of ecclesiastical protection were denounced against any guilty of hesitation or lukewarmness. In addition to the general absolution authorized by the Pope, the Crusaders were during the continuance of this Holy War released from the payment of all pecuniary obligations contracted prior to their enlistment, a concession which was practically equivalent to the repudiation of their debts. The answer to the summons of the Vatican was ready and unanimous. Every absorbing passion and every ignoble impulse—love of fame, religious zeal, national prejudice, desire of novelty, insatiable cupidity, private malice—attracted the roving, the licentious, and the unprincipled to the standard of the Cross. At that time Europe swarmed with military adventurers, some of whom had served in Palestine, in the trains of eminent personages;[93] others, the refuse of disbanded armies, were outlaws and criminals who subsisted by plunder and extortion. To men like these, the announcement of such an enterprise appeared a singular stroke of good fortune. Provence and Languedoc embraced the richest territory, of its dimensions, west of Constantinople. Its luxury and its opulence, its elegant civilization, the magnificence of its cities, the vast treasures of its warehouses, the beauty of its women, were well known to its envious and ambitious neighbors. It was also known that no adequate means of defence existed, and that the hands, which had in the midst of barbarism evoked these marvels, lacked both the power and the resolution to protect them. The frontier was exposed to the invader. No efficient military force could be assembled to successfully resist a hostile advance. The stern qualifications of a soldier were not to be obtained in the effeminate atmosphere of the Provençal court, devoted to dancing, poetry, and amorous indulgence. Physically as well as morally the soft and idle population of the South was not fitted to cope with hardy adventurers accustomed to arms from childhood, tried in a hundred battles, and exercised daily in the broils and contests inseparable from the society of a turbulent and lawless age.
No incentive was wanting to arouse the enthusiasm of every rank,—from the king to the villain, from the archbishop to the monk. The monarchy of France, whose feudal obligations nominally included the powerful states of the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, was, in fact, unable to enforce its mandates beyond the Loire. The sovereignty of that rich country, now abandoned to conquest, could not fail to immeasurably augment the power and consequence of the crown. Ecclesiastical avarice and revenge looked longingly upon the wealthy benefices usurped and administered by heretics, the prospect of enormous[94] forfeitures, the certainty of a fearful retribution entailed by religious errors and impious defiance of the admonitions of the Pope. Hope of the unbridled indulgence of every brutal passion appealed to the baser and more selfish instincts of the rabble,—the beggars, the robbers, the soldiers of fortune. The popularity of the enterprise is shown by the numbers who assumed the cross. It is estimated that from three hundred thousand to half a million engaged in the war, of whom nearly a hundred thousand were fighting men who had seen military service. There was not a government in Europe at that time able to withstand the onslaught of such a force. Appalled by the frightful prospect of impending destruction, the Count of Toulouse consented to observe unconditionally the requirements of the Holy See, in the delusive hope of averting from his dominions the tempest which must involve all his subjects in one common ruin. His punishment was inflicted with every circumstance of public ignominy and personal degradation. His excommunication, long since pronounced for heretical opinions which he did not entertain, was not revoked. Summoned before an ecclesiastical council at Valence, he acknowledged his sins and promised future obedience. Stripped naked to the girdle, he was conducted, in the presence of a great multitude, to the front of the principal church, where he abjured his errors, and, his hands placed in those of the Legate, he swore allegiance to the Pope. He conveyed to the clergy, as security for his obligations, seven of the strongest castles in his dominions,—a fatal step, which rendered his downfall, hitherto scarcely doubtful, now a matter of absolute certainty. Then, a rope having been passed about his neck, he was dragged through the aisle to the altar, where he was scourged like the vilest criminal. His recantation was repeated, and absolution was finally pronounced under condition of[95] implicit submission, and with the promise that he would assist in the prosecution of a war which involved the devastation of his country and the extermination of his subjects. These humiliating sacrifices, made with the implied understanding that future immunity would be granted his vassals in case they submitted to pontifical authority, proved unavailing. The clergy placed their own construction upon matters in which they were at once prosecutors and judges. Although the Count of Toulouse observed as far as possible the degrading conditions through whose performance he became reconciled to the Church, it was not the policy of Innocent to deal leniently with those who had disobeyed her canons, questioned her inspiration, or intercepted her revenues. Pretexts were easily found under which Raymond was accused of having violated his covenants. His castles were declared escheated to the Papacy. His actions were carefully observed, and it became evident that his presence with the Crusaders was enforced rather than voluntary. The great army which had assembled to vindicate the outraged majesty of the Vicar of Christ now clamored to be led to battle. Their irresistible numbers darkened the plains of Lyons and spread consternation among the peasantry, whose women they insulted and whose substance they consumed. The eminent prelates of the French hierarchy sanctioned by their presence and their example the most awful of outrages on human rights and intellectual liberty. The religious character of the enterprise was indicated by the predominance of the sacerdotal order; by the omnipresence of holy emblems,—crosiers, censers, banners, relics; by the mitre of the metropolitan; by the scallop-shell of the pilgrim; by the cowl and the knotted cord of the friar; by the tattered garb and emaciated form of the hermit. The clergy were headed by Arnold, Abbot of Citeaux, the Papal Legate.[96] Four archbishops and ten bishops, in their official vestments, were conspicuous in the van. Monkish zealots, whose untaught eloquence had inflamed the worst passions of the ignorant populace of Europe, brandishing crucifix and sword, and calling for vengeance against the abhorred sectaries whom divine justice had delivered as a prey to the elect, foaming at the mouth, and uttering maledictions and inarticulate cries, rushed to and fro through the maddened and tumultuous throng. All wore the cross embroidered upon the breast, in contradistinction to the Crusaders of Palestine, who wore it upon the shoulder. In the train of the higher clergy were numerous priests and thousands of dependents and retainers. The Archdeacon of Paris, a distinguished member of the church militant, was present in the capacity of chief engineer. Despite his pacific calling, he proved himself, in the discharge of the seemingly incongruous duties of his new profession, one of the most talented soldiers of the age. The shrewd and politic Philip Augustus, while anxious to secure for the Crown of France the substantial benefits certain to result from the conquest and spoliation of the great feudatories of the South, yet unwilling to share the ignominy attaching to the undertaking, promoted it in secret, but refused to openly employ the resources of his kingdom in such a cause. The French nobility also, for the most part, held aloof; but the names of the Duke of Burgundy and the Counts of Nevers and St. Pol have come down to us as instruments of the apostolic wrath which extirpated the Albigensian heresy.
Of all the leaders, spiritual or secular, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, was the most zealous and distinguished. An English adventurer, of ancient and illustrious lineage, he had long followed the exciting career of a soldier of fortune, and had won a high[97] reputation for courage and military capacity among the Christian warriors who contended with the infidel in the wars of the Holy Land. In his political and social relations, De Montfort was a man of exceptional probity, courtesy, and honor; but in matters that involved the maintenance of ecclesiastical supremacy, he was a monster of savage brutality, a remorseless persecutor, an incarnate fiend. His bravery, his fanaticism, and his talents for war early secured for him the admiration of the clergy, whose influence eventually raised him to the supreme command of the motley host which their exhortations had assembled. The infamy of the Albigensian crusade is inseparably associated with his name, which has descended to posterity as the synonym of all that is merciless, base, and treacherous in the history of religious persecution. Attendant upon their feudal lords were long retinues of vassals, resplendent in sumptuous armor and gaudy liveries, and the sturdy yeomanry, now beginning to assert their importance in the mailed armies of Europe. The promise of booty and glory, of pardon for past offences and of immunity for future crimes, had, as in former Crusades, drawn from every quarter the dregs of the city and the camp, the footpad and the outlaw, the merciless slaves of rapine, lust, and superstition. This mob was for the most part unarmed, but many were provided with scythes and other implements of husbandry, impotent against the armor of the knight, but amply sufficient for the destruction of those whom age, infirmity, or the disadvantages of sex rendered incapable of defence. Confident in their immense superiority in numbers, this fanatical and disorderly rabble swept like a tornado over the smiling and fertile territory of the Rhone. The authority of the Count of Toulouse, who, incapacitated from hostile action by his humiliating compact with the Pope, was forced to aid[98] the invaders, had been assumed by his nephew, Raymond Roger. The latter, relying upon the strength of his principal cities, Béziers and Carcassonne, two of the best-fortified fortresses in Europe, awaited the approach of the enemy with the calm intrepidity born of the consciousness of right and the resolution of despair. While the Crusaders were pitching their camp, they were surprised by a sally of the besieged. Overwhelmed by numbers, the latter were driven back; the gateways, choked by the fugitives, permitted the ingress of the enemy, and almost in an instant the fate of the populous and thriving city of Béziers was decided. In the horrible butchery that ensued no quarter was shown. The old and the young, the strong and the weak, perished alike under the weapons of the infuriated assailants. Catholics obtained no immunity by reason of their belief, but fell by the side of their Albigensian neighbors. When the soldiers, in the heat of the massacre, demanded of the Papal Legate how they might distinguish the orthodox believer from the heretic, that pious monster replied, “Kill them all; God will know His own!” In the Roman Catholic cathedral seven thousand corpses were counted after the assault. Priests, clad in their sacred vestments, fell at the very foot of the altar. The population of the city had been greatly increased by the neighboring peasantry, who had sought protection behind its ramparts. Of all this multitude, not a single person escaped alive. The estimates of those thus devoted to slaughter are variously given by different writers at from twelve to sixty thousand. The city was pillaged and set on fire, and even the churches and monasteries belonging to the See of Rome disappeared in the indiscriminate destruction. The invading army, flushed with triumph, and not yet satiated with blood, next invested Carcassonne, whose fortifications, still stronger than those of Béziers,[99] offered some hope of successful resistance. Its resources, however, were seriously impaired by the number of refugees who had fled thither for safety. In a few days the water gave out. Defective sanitary conditions, increased by great masses of human beings crowded together in a limited space, produced a pestilence. A surrender was agreed upon, by which the inhabitants were permitted to depart, leaving behind them all their effects. In consequence of these rigorous measures, the entire country was filled with starving beggars, many of whom, but a week before, had been living in affluence and luxury. The Viscount, Raymond Roger, whose safe-conduct had been perfidiously violated, was imprisoned and died suddenly, probably of poison.
The examples of Béziers and Carcassonne were not lost upon the terror-stricken people of Languedoc. Strongholds and villages submitted by the hundred without resistance; the garrisons of those castles which held out were massacred to a man; the lands of the heretic were parcelled out among the crusaders, under the suzerainty of that faithful and consistent servant of the Papacy, the Earl of Leicester. The establishment of the Inquisition, under the auspices of the Dominican order of friars, completed the ruin of the country, whose civilization had long been a shining beacon amidst the intellectual darkness of Christendom. The classic monuments which had escaped the violence of former ages were broken to pieces or defaced. The destruction of great cities, the dread of mysterious tribunals, whose victims, immured in filthy dungeons or devoted, in the name of religion, to awful tortures and a lingering death, never saw again the light of day, the insatiable rapacity of the clergy, the tyranny of alien masters, depopulated entire districts and turned the commerce upon which the prosperity of Southern France principally depended into foreign[100] channels, where the property and person of the merchant could be reasonably secure. The beautiful and melodious language of the troubadours, the parent of the modern idioms of Latin derivation, which seemed about to be adopted by all the people of French extraction, was abandoned, and degraded to a patois which, much corrupted, is still spoken by the Gascon and Catalan peasantry. The gay diversions, the dances, the literary contests, the musical chants of the jongleur, the passionate and satirical verses of the poet, the banquets, the Courts of Love, the hunting parties, the tournaments, disappeared forever.
The Albigensian crusade is one of the darkest blots upon the religious history of Rome. It gave rise to the infamous maxim, then first officially promulgated by Papal authority, that no contract made with heretics was binding upon a member of the Roman Catholic faith. Then the civil power was for the first time employed in the systematic and unrelenting suppression of independent thought. Then was organized and set in motion the most gigantic and effective engine of persecution that the world has ever known. Then was perfected that grand and imposing fabric of government which, begun and improved by the genius of many successive pontiffs, rose to such a towering height during the administration of Innocent III.,—a system in whose policy the religious and the secular powers, while theoretically separate, were, in fact, closely co-ordinated and combined; which, while draining of its revenues every kingdom within its grasp, extolled beyond all virtues the merit of evangelical poverty; which, while discouraging philosophical studies, endeavored to secure a monopoly of learning, thus adding to the superiority attaching to a sacred character and profession the influence derived from mental attainments and unusual erudition; which fastened upon Europe an intolerable despotism, under[101] which it was doomed to suffer for more than three hundred years, and which brought to the prosecution of its ambitious designs every device of intrigue and every method of intimidation, enforced by the infliction of punishments whose ingenious and merciless atrocity had been hitherto unknown to the political oppression of ancient or of mediæval times.
In this way was the absolute power of the Papal system consolidated by one of the greatest of the Supreme Pontiffs, through the extirpation of two grand civilizations which for more than a century had represented the intelligence, the culture, and the science of Christian Europe.
I have thus related—not in their chronological order, but in the order of their importance—the events growing out of the rise, development, and suppression of the intellectual revolutions which, in the thirteenth century, appeared in Sicily and Southern France, for the reason that they were the direct and legitimate results of Arab conquest and the subsequent promulgation of Arab philosophical opinions. A striking analogy exists between the circumstances respectively connected with these two great movements of the human mind. Both arose in regions which had been subject to Moslem domination. In both, after the extinction of Saracen rule, the customs of the vanquished race long maintained their influence over the ruder conquerors, who insensibly adopted and diligently observed them. Commercial relations strengthened the bonds already existing between Christian master and Moslem tributary. In the heyday of their prosperity, the courts of Toulouse and Palermo were, in all but name and costume, Mohammedan. Indeed, one of these exceptions scarcely applied to the Sicilian capital, where the ample robes and spotless turbans of the Moorish philosophers suggested at every step the habits and traditions of the Orient. In Sicily, the[102] Arabic language was almost universally used by the nobility and the mercantile classes; in Provence and Languedoc, intercourse with the Moorish principalities of Spain rendered its adoption necessary to a large portion of the community; in both countries its study formed an essential part of a learned education. The general trend of scientific thought, and its practical adaptation to the intellectual requirements of the people, is disclosed by the establishment of those two great literary foundations, the medical colleges of Salerno and Montpellier. In the curriculums of these magnificent schools, which were by no means confined to instruction in the art of healing, Arabic and Hebrew literature, taught by professors of those nationalities, predominated. The Romance idiom, more widely diffused than any other tongue spoken in Europe since the dissolution of the Roman Empire, has, in a measure, survived the calamities of conquest and revolution; still indicates its Arabic derivation by words daily heard upon the banks of the Seine and the Danube; and forms no inconsiderable portion of the language of the English-speaking world. In Italy, it made greater progress than in any other country, advancing simultaneously through the North from France and through the South from Sicily, superseding the unformed dialects of the Latin Peninsula, and, through its adoption by the potentates of Ferrara and Montferrat, it reached even the Greek principality of Thessalonica; its impress is to-day apparent in Portuguese, in Castilian, and in the numerous soft and guttural dialects of Spain.
From Moorish sources, through intercourse with the Hispano-Arabs and the medium of French and Sicilian conquest, were derived those maxims of chivalry which modified the turbulent barbarism of feudal Europe, the courteous gallantry of the tournament, idolatrous devotion to the female character, a[103] high sense of honor and personal dignity, and the refining amenities of social life.
From these originals sprang the germ of modern literature and the earliest models of modern poetry. The Arabs were unrivalled masters of improvisation, an art which attained an extraordinary degree of popularity in the Middle Ages; and the employment of rhyme, the most important and striking characteristic of modern versification, was familiar to the Bedouin centuries before the appearance of Mohammed. The vagrant bard of the Desert was the literary progenitor of the troubadour, as was the Arabian buffoon and story-teller the prototype of his companion the jongleur, whose broad pleasantry and suggestive antics diverted the appreciative and not over-delicate assemblies of the Provençal and Sicilian courts. Through the schools of Montpellier and Salerno, contemporaneous seats of learning and both dominated by Arabian influence, the philosophy of Averroes, the botany of Ibn-Beithar, the surgery of Abulcasis, the agriculture of Ibn-al-Awam, the histories of Ibn-al-Khatib, became familiar to the benighted and priest-ridden people of Europe.
It was, however, in the impetus it gave to the assertion of the right of private interpretation in religious matters that Moorish influence was most marked and permanent. One of the principal tenets of the Moslem creed was toleration. On the other hand, the first duty of the Christian was unquestioning obedience to his spiritual advisers. The rapid and almost miraculous development of the human mind during the thirteenth century was the inevitable consequence of a policy based upon those principles whose application had promoted the wonderful progress of every nation ruled by the enlightened successors of Mohammed.
The parallel existing between the Sicilian and Languedocian civilizations in origin, in progress, in[104] thought, in education, in skepticism, in the repudiation of ecclesiastical interference, is continued even in the date and the method of their extirpation. Both reached their climax during the pontificate of Innocent III., the exemplar of Papal autocracy, the ruthless foe of religious freedom, the evil genius of the thirteenth century. Each was destroyed by a crusade which under the mask of piety appealed to the most sordid impulses and degrading instincts of humanity. Both were followed by conflicts, seditions, and persecutions which endured for centuries. But the fires, while apparently quenched, still smouldered under the ashes of their victims. The principles advocated by philosophical thinkers at the courts of Raymond and Frederick formed the basis of the creeds of Lollard, Huguenot, Puritan. All of the blessings of civil and religious liberty now enjoyed by the enlightened nations of the earth, all of the wonderful mechanical contrivances which lighten toil, diminish suffering, facilitate communication, encourage commerce, promote manufactures, and conduce to the general happiness of the human race, are indirectly derived from the impulse given to philosophical inquiry and scientific progress by the Norman kings of Sicily, the Emperor Frederick II., and the Counts of Provence, animated by the spirit and emulous of the achievements of Arab civilization. These inestimable benefits are inseparable from the innate right of every individual to freely exercise and profit by his mental faculties. That right the Church has always denied as subversive of her alleged prescriptive title to universal sovereignty over the opinions of mankind. In Europe it was first publicly asserted upon the banks of the Guadalquivir, and the advantages its untrammelled practice affords the present generation are a priceless legacy of the founders of the Moslem empire in Spain.
[105]
Influence of the Semitic Race on Civilization—Enterprise of the Ancient Jews—Their Eminent Talents—Their Power during the Middle Ages—Their Universal Proscription—Their Condition under the Moors of Spain—Their Extraordinary Attainments—Their Devotion to Letters—Their Academies—Rabbis as Ambassadors of the Khalifs—Learned Men—Poets, Physicians, Statesmen, Philosophers—Maimonides: His Genius and His Works—His Character—Preponderating Influence of the Spanish Jews in Government and Society—Their Necessity to the Ruling Classes—They are driven to Usury—Their Prosperity—They are favored by Alfonso X. and Pedro el Cruel—Their Proficiency in Medicine—Obligations of Mediæval and Modern Science to the Jews—Their Wonderful Survival under Oppression—Their Exile from the Peninsula—Their Sufferings—The Taint of Hebrew Blood in the Aristocracy of Spain and Portugal.
The preponderance of Semitic influence is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the annals of human civilization. The progress of those nations, which in ancient times attained the highest rank of intellectual culture, is directly traceable to that influence. The success of the Semitic element in modifying the character of every people with which it had been brought in intimate contact, either by conquest or through commercial intercourse, is one of the most striking and instructive incidents of history. From the days when the Phœnicians controlled the trade of antiquity, profiting by their thorough knowledge of humanity, whose avarice they stimulated by the introduction of unknown luxuries, and whose fears they excited by the invention of portentous fables; through[106] the Middle Ages, whose tyrants and inquisitors plundered and oppressed the Hebrew bankers and merchants of Europe, down to our time, when the Jew is not only the possessor of a large proportion of the wealth of the globe, but also a dominating force in the business community of every city and village of the Old and New Worlds, the enterprising genius of the Semitic race has been paramount in its control over the minds and the fortunes of men. And not merely in a mercantile but in a religious point of view is this influence manifest. The Scriptures and the Koran monopolize the pious reverence of the civilized world. The successors of Mohammed in Hindustan alone changed the faith of forty-one million souls. The most important dogmas of the Church, the leading maxims of kingly government, are of Semitic origin; the majority of the popular legends and tales which compose the folk-lore of France, Germany, Scandinavia, and Britain are indigenous to the Valley of the Nile or the plains of Arabia. Asiatic ideas, which dominated the comparatively insignificant geographical area of the continent of Europe whose appreciation of the advantages of literary and scientific investigation made it so conspicuous amidst mediæval ignorance, have maintained their power unshaken through many centuries. To the impulse thus imparted to letters, modern society owes a debt which it long repudiated, and which it is even now loath to acknowledge. Among those races which have exercised the greatest influence on human destiny that of the Hebrews is pre-eminently distinguished. From the earliest times of which history makes mention, the Jews have occupied an exalted place among civilized nations. They were among the first of traders, merchants, navigators. Neighbors of the Phœnicians, they imbibed the commercial spirit of that adventurous people, accompanied their expeditions, participated in[107] their enterprises, shared their profits, and with them overcame the obstacles which invested the navigation of unknown and mysterious seas. They were not slow to recognize the immense commercial advantages to be obtained from the development of the boundless resources of the Spanish Peninsula, whence the Tyrian and Sidonian mariners brought such quantities of silver that their vessels could scarcely transport it, notwithstanding that the anchors, the most common utensils, and even the ballast, were composed of that precious metal.
The accounts of the reign of Solomon afford abundant evidence of the wealth and prosperity of the Hebrews. Their abilities and services were highly appreciated by the most enlightened governments of antiquity. They were invited by the Ptolemies to establish colonies on the banks of the Nile. They were often intrusted by the Roman emperors with the collection and disbursement of the imperial revenues. The Emperor Hadrian declared that during his travels in Egypt he had never met a Jew of that country who was not an expert mathematician. In the far Orient, where their ancestors had once been detained in ignominious captivity, they rose to be the confidential friends of powerful monarchs. They were known and welcomed in every seaport of the Mediterranean, and their thirst for gain even induced them to boldly encounter the perils of the barbarous countries of Europe. In all their social and political relations, they maintained their reputation for that mental superiority which is still one of the marked characteristics of the Hebrew race. All of the knowledge extant among contemporaneous nations—the secret lore of the Egyptians, imparted in mysterious temples under the shadow of the Pyramids; the hoary traditions of the Magi; the rich inheritance of classic antiquity; the argumentative skill acquired in the[108] Museum of Alexandria and the philosophical schools of Athens—was the patrimony of the Jew. His curiosity was awakened by travel and by contact with a hundred different peoples included within the sphere of his commercial activity; his genius was developed and matured by studious industry; and the affluence resulting from his shrewdness enabled him to profit to the utmost by his unrivalled opportunities. No fact is better established than that the intellectual improvement of a nation, its progress in the arts, its scientific acquirements, its literary culture, have a direct and absolute dependence upon its material prosperity and the independent pecuniary circumstances of its scholars and learned men. While poverty is often an incentive to that perseverance which insures success, it is a condition which only affects individual and not national development. Without leisure, there can be no studies; without studies, no advance. Another factor of paramount importance in the evolution and maintenance of civilization, and one to which the Hebrew was deeply indebted, was the wide and varied experience derived from cosmopolitan habits and associations. This intercourse was facilitated by the easy and rapid means of international communication at the disposal of the Jewish trader. The Mediterranean, which washed the shores of three great continents, presented no obstacles to the enterprise of the Phœnicians, whose intimate connections with the Jews gave the latter advantages enjoyed by no other people; and the fabled monsters invented by those astute navigators to damp the ardor of other maritime adventurers, and which survive in the traditions of classic mythology, possessed no terrors for the allies and friends of the Tyrian merchants and sailors. No area of equal extent in the world offered so diversified and instructive a spectacle of human life and manners as the winding coast of that great inland sea. With its[109] cities and its kingdoms, founded under different political conditions, living under different systems, governed by different laws, frequent and prolonged visits had early made the Jew familiar. To the audacious navigator who had sailed over the mysterious Ocean, far beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the coasting of the Mediterranean was a trifle. In subsequent times the military highways of the Roman Empire—whose construction, the first work after the invasion of a country destined to subjection, indicated the fate of its people, and insured their obedience with far more certainty than the fortified camps of the legions—afforded the Hebrew merchant easy access to the utmost limits of the vast region subject to imperial authority. But it was not only in lands generally accessible to commercial enterprise that the mercantile and intellectual activity of the Jew was displayed. With the periodical caravans he traversed the Arabian Peninsula, and braving the perils of the Desert—the stifling heat, the sand-storms, the robbers who thrived amidst its desolation—collected and distributed the precious commodities of Yemen. He penetrated to the centre of Ethiopia; his costume and his wares were known to the inhabitants of every city on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The coast of Britain was visited by Jews long before the invasion of Cæsar. The restless, adventurous spirit, so universal that it became a national characteristic fostered through untold generations, and the extensive and profound acquaintance with the motives and the affairs of humanity which resulted from its exercise, is the principal secret of the prodigious and phenomenal development of the Hebrew mind. Other considerations of no less importance contributed largely to this result. In the estimation of those who strictly observed the precepts of the law, and to whom were committed the instruction of youth and the guidance[110] of the community, idleness was considered one of the most despicable of vices. “Whoever,” say the learned rabbis, “does not teach his son some trade, rears him for a life of brigandage;” and the sedulous inculcation of this principle led to its universal adoption and practice, until its effects are to-day discernible in the habits of every individual of Hebrew extraction. In ancient times there was no industrial occupation whose requirements were unfamiliar to the Jewish artisan, no profession in which the scholars of that nation did not excel. The talents of the latter were often unprofitably employed in commentaries on the Talmud and whimsical interpretations of the Scriptures, whose texts were at times distorted to support some absurd and extravagant conception which the fruitless ingenuity of the doctors of the law, devoted to metaphysical subtleties, had invented. The Talmud was regarded with even greater reverence than the Pentateuch. Its diligent perusal was required as a duty; children were familiar with its maxims long before their minds were sufficiently developed to thoroughly comprehend them; and the mastery of this voluminous and incongruous compilation was regarded as the rarest and most desirable of mental accomplishments. From the study of this work was derived the partiality for mysticism, magic, and oneiromancy, topics which formed so large a proportion of ancient Hebrew literature, and which frequently dissipated the efforts of genius which might have been exercised in more practical and advantageous employments. In the Talmud, however, are also to be found the germs of medical science in which, from the remotest antiquity, the Jews were distinguished, and whose pursuit, thus sanctioned by an authority regarded as divine, became the favorite pursuit of that extraordinary people. Some of its ideas and principles had been learned from the Magi of Persia; others were[111] borrowed from the Egyptian priesthood. The more numerous, and by far the most valuable, precepts of that science, however, were a portion of the inheritance transmitted by the noble school of the Ptolemies. With all were mingled not a few puerile superstitions which exalted the virtues of charms and amulets. The Bible gives many instances of diseases and their treatment, which in that age was the peculiar province of the Levites. The talents of the Hebrew thus early directed to medicine and botany arrived eventually at an extraordinary degree of development; and his adaptive ingenuity was revealed in the discovery and application of many indispensable drugs of the Materia Medica, and in the intelligent use of the instruments and caustics of the surgeon. In ancient Chaldea and Babylonia there were no physicians. The priesthood, as in the Middle Ages, enjoyed a monopoly of learning, which, so far as the practice of medicine was concerned, rested upon no more substantial foundation than the imposture of the charlatan. The cure of disease was effected by the exorcism of evil spirits; and such is the tenacity of venerable ideas and the lamentable credulity of the human mind that, through the influence of a certain class whose pecuniary interests are directly involved, this superstitious belief, with others equally absurd, still prevails among the members of educated communities even in our enlightened age. The difference between the fetichism of the African savage, the mediæval relic-cure, and the so-called Christian Science of modern days is one of degree and not of kind. In the infancy of civilization every malady was attributed to demoniacal possession. The Jews were the first to detect the true nature of disease and to realize the necessity for the employment of physical remedies, where heretofore, through the medium of spells and incantations, the aid of the supernatural alone had[112] been invoked. By the adoption and application of rational principles, they revolutionized the theory and practice of medicine. Their attempts to thus partially emancipate the human mind from the degrading thraldom of superstition brought upon them the anathemas of the priesthood wherever these innovations were attempted. The wonder-workers of Pagan temples and the monkish custodians of Christian shrines saw with dismay their incomes decreasing as a consequence of the successful ministrations of the Hebrew practitioner. It was not without reason that the latter became an object of clerical animadversion, for the offerings annually bestowed by grateful credulity upon the custodians of some apocryphal relic of imaginary virtues not infrequently exceeded in value the revenues of a city. Much of the prejudice everywhere existing against the Jewish name is thus attributable to sacerdotal malevolence, originally excited by interference with material interests. But even in an age of ignorance homage was paid, however reluctantly, to the ascendency of intellectual power; and the Jews flourished in countries where the laws did not tolerate their presence and sovereigns were pledged by their coronation oaths to their destruction. Political necessity proved stronger than popular odium; and the strange anomaly of a proscribed race, whose existence was condemned by the civil and ecclesiastical codes alike, flourishing in the midst of implacable enemies was exhibited in every country of mediæval Europe. This peculiar condition was due to the dominating force of intellect alone. It is true that toleration was frequently purchased with gold; but the Jews were the sole depositaries of real knowledge, and without their wise and practical counsels the wheels of government could not be kept in motion. This indispensable necessity of maintaining in positions of honor and power a class whose nominal disabilities degraded[113] them below the legal status of cattle was a result of the illiterate and priest-ridden state of the Dark Ages.
The cause of the universal prejudice existing against the Jews from time immemorial has been the subject of much speculation, but has never been definitely ascertained. That prejudice long antedates the Christian era. They were banished by the Egyptians, enslaved by the Persians, despised by the Greeks, persecuted by the Romans. So little were they esteemed by the latter, that during the wars with Hadrian four Jews were bartered for a modius of barley. A well-founded tradition, repeated time and again by classic historians, declared that they were expelled from Egypt for fear that the plague might be communicated by the loathsome diseases with which they were afflicted. In that country, as elsewhere subsequently, they were isolated from all other members of the community. Moses is designated by ancient writers as the “Chief of the Lepers.” It is well known that leprosy was first introduced into Italy by the soldiers of Pompey, who contracted it in Palestine. This awful malady was not only indigenous to the latter country, but was generally considered a morbid physiological condition peculiar to the Hebrew people, with whom, in fact, it was chronic and hereditary, and among whom it assumed its most malignant and appalling form.
The national customs of the Jews were regarded with peculiar abhorrence by the polished nations of antiquity. They practised human sacrifices. Tacitus says that they rendered distinguished homage to the ass, an animal sacred to the Phœnician goddess Astarte. A golden head of that animal was worshipped in their temples. The Bible repeatedly mentions the fact that they were debased and incorrigible idolaters. In Pagan Arabia they conformed to the religious[114] customs of the country, shaved their heads, venerated the images of the Kaaba, and made the circuit of that shrine upon their knees. The idea of the Resurrection, which, with that of the Trinity, formed no part of the primitive belief of any Semitic race, but is a purely Aryan conception, they learned during the latter part of the Babylonian captivity. Its adoption was far from unanimous, however, for it was always repudiated by the Sadducees, reputed the most orthodox and precisian sect of the Hebrew nation. They sold their children into slavery. Their personal habits were indescribably filthy. It was believed by the African Christians that a peculiarly offensive odor, an evidence of Divine wrath provoked by the tragedy of the crucifixion, and which could only be removed by baptism, emanated from them. Hatred of everything non-Jewish was a ruling principle of their nature and conduct, and every country in which they were domiciled they betrayed, in turn, to the invader.
The moral and physical condition—that of a race of pariahs infected with foul distempers—which characterized them in ancient times presents a singular contrast to that under which they actually existed subsequently, and under which they exist to-day. They were not affected by the great epidemics which swept with devastating force over Europe during the Middle Ages, although they were as fully exposed to contagion as any of the nations which were decimated by them. Their immunity to many of the most serious ailments which afflict mankind is demonstrated by every table of medical statistics. Their longevity, unquestionably due to a strong constitution, is proverbial. Their average annual death-rate, in both Europe and America, is less than one-half that of persons of other nationalities subjected to the influence of similar conditions of climate, food, and occupation. Their freedom from criminality and pauperism is one of[115] their most remarkable characteristics. Every lawyer knows how rarely a Jew is seen in courts of justice, either as a litigant, a malefactor, or a witness.
The propagation and improvement of a people under circumstances which indicated their speedy and inevitable extinction is one of the most curious problems in the annals of ethnology. Not only is it anomalous, but it is absolutely inexplicable under any scientific and logical hypothesis which can now be advanced. It would ordinarily be conceded that a race affected with congenital leprosy, whose habits were uncleanly, and whose members constantly intermarried, must certainly perish in a few generations. It would also not be denied that such a race would be especially liable to visitations by epidemics, and that its reduced capacity for resistance would induce an extraordinary fatality. Not so, however, with the Jews. They grew stronger by intermarriage. They threw off the disease which had once made them odious in the sight of men. The plague and the typhus which desolated the homes of their neighbors passed them by. They not only survived, but throve under persecution which would have exterminated any other branch of the human family. Their tenacity of life, the persistence of their institutions, the boundless power they wield in the commercial world, their versatility of character, their success in the most difficult undertakings, their national and religious organization maintained in the face of appalling obstacles, tend to confirm the ancient tradition that they are the Chosen People of God.
The Hebrew, whatever his capacity or experience, was in the eye of the law immeasurably inferior to the most humble and ignorant of those who ruled him. He paid higher taxes than any one else. His testimony was not competent in a court of justice. He was excluded from the enjoyment of office. If, having become[116] an apostate through force or policy, he addressed a word to one who was loyal to the faith and traditions of his people, even though of his own blood, he was condemned to slavery. He was not permitted to abstain from food which his ordinances declared unclean. The practice of the rite of circumcision, a rite pronounced by the rabbi more meritorious than all others, and enjoined by the Talmud, brought with it confiscation and death. The ancient national records—the books of the Law, the chronicles of bygone dynasties, the treatises of Hebrew physicians already prominent in the world of science—were diligently sought for and destroyed. Every effort was made to separate wives from their husbands and slaves from their masters, by the edict that the ceremony of baptism, when solicited by consort or bondsman, produced, according to circumstances, ipso facto, divorce or emancipation. All Jews were enrolled upon the public registers, and at stated times were mustered by the bishop. They were also required to report to the magistrate at every town they visited, to be examined as to their business and destination. The Seventeenth Council of Toledo, by a sweeping decree, seized the property of all the Jews in the kingdom and sentenced its owners, without exception, to absolute servitude. They were accused of practices alike revolting to humanity and subversive of morals,—of poisoning the sacramental elements, of the torture of children, of crimes against nature, of cannibalism. The ecclesiastical denunciations of offences concerning religion, such as the blasphemy of images and relics, the ridicule of orthodox tenets, the promulgation of the doctrines of the Talmud, and the soliciting of proselytes, were not less violent than those which reprobated the greatest enormities of which human frailty is susceptible. Every rank of society vied with the others in manifestations of hostility towards the[117] despised race. The monarch, upon frivolous pretexts, confiscated their property and abandoned them to the violence of the populace. In the eyes of the ferocious noble, who scarcely acknowledged the superior dignity of his king, they were sources of wealth to be utilized as occasion or inclination demanded; and the levy of an excessive contribution was regarded as an act of especial leniency, when the last ducat might have been exacted with impunity. The Church never failed to pour out upon these victims of prejudice the full measure of ecclesiastical oppression and hatred, and no deed was more meritorious than the persecution of a Jew. But it was with the lower orders that the unfortunate Children of Israel fared the worst. Their wealth aroused the basest passions of the ignorant and fanatical rabble. To the malice incited by poverty and envy was added the animosity engendered by religious prejudice, which found expression in every kind of maltreatment and outrage. Although necessary to the state and indispensable to its political and financial prosperity, the Jew was precluded from claiming the protection of the very laws he assisted to administer. Deprived of this unquestionable right, he was unfitted by his constitution, his habits, and his traditions for armed resistance. Centuries of oppression had taught him to rely on pacific rather than on violent measures for the discomfiture of his enemies. None understood more thoroughly than he the secret springs of action which control the movements of mankind; and with its worst and most degrading characteristics, his experience, reaching through many troubled generations, had rendered him especially familiar. His practical and thorough acquaintance with every foible of human nature thus made him equal to the exigencies of every occasion. He dispensed his gold with unstinted liberality. Powerful nobles, everywhere, were in his pay. Ecclesiastics[118] of eminent talents and reputed sanctity were not ashamed to accept his gifts, and, in return, to secretly and effectually protect his person and his interests. No efforts were spared to impress the sovereign with the extent of his attainments and the value of his services. The people, despite their prejudices, looked with awe and respect upon the members of a race who had visited lands whose very names were unknown to them, who conversed fluently in strange and guttural tongues, and who spread before their wondering and delighted eyes precious articles of merchandise of whose existence they had hitherto remained in ignorance.
Under such circumstances, however disadvantageous, the Jews, scattered throughout the countries of Europe, maintained from century to century the integrity of their social and religious organization. Their isolation was in many respects productive of personal safety and financial benefit. Exempted by their civil disabilities from exposure to the dangers of revolution, they escaped the penalties of unsuccessful treason and profited by the necessities of every faction. They alone of all classes flourished amidst the perils of internal disorder. By the liberal and judicious employment of money, they secured the favor of the party for the moment in power. Meanwhile the commerce of every country was almost exclusively under their control. No competition, of any importance, interposed to diminish their enormous profits. There was not a city, scarcely a hamlet, where the Hebrew was not sure of sympathy and assistance from his countrymen. With them his goods were secure. They afforded him valuable information. Their experience enabled him to obtain the highest prices for his wares, and the secret intelligence at their disposal gave him timely warning of the presence of danger and facilitated his escape. His cosmopolitan[119] habits prevented national affiliations, and permitted him to immediately change his residence whenever it was required by personal considerations or commercial interests. He bought amber on the Baltic. He sold slaves in Constantinople. He exchanged the commodities of Spain for the furs of Russia and the pearls and incense of Yemen. In France he found a profitable market for jewels, spices, and cochineal. His intimate and extensive relations with the great emporiums of the Orient were one of the most important factors of his success. In that quarter of the world, enjoying the protection and confidence of the rulers of Persia, Babylonia, Syria, and Egypt, were to be found the most powerful and wealthy communities of the Hebrew nation. The omnipresent Jew had established a chain of trading stations across every continent, and even far beyond the most distant limits of civilization. This immense advantage was his alone; no competitor possessed, or could ever hope to obtain, such extraordinary mercantile facilities. From the depths of the mysterious East came the rare products which commanded fabulous prices in the European capitals,—costly tissues, gems, dyes, aromatics, porcelain,—articles which often brought far more than their weight in gold. The monopoly enjoyed by the shrewd importers enabled them to receive for their commodities sums which far exceeded their intrinsic value, and placed them beyond the reach of any excepting the most opulent.
But the enterprise of the Jew was not confined to the importation and distribution of luxuries. He furnished society with every species of merchandise, from the crown of the monarch to the sandals of the beggar. The law forbade him to be seated by an ecclesiastic without the latter’s invitation, but the bishop was compelled to purchase of him the sacerdotal vestments in which his race was anathematized;[120] and the sacred furniture of the altar, including even the crucifix, the significant emblem of the Passion, was sold to the cathedral chapter by the descendants of those who had enacted the tragedy of Golgotha, and had trafficked in the body and blood of our Saviour. The Jews of Provence paid their tribute to the Church in wax, and provided the tapers used in the ceremonies of great religious festivals. The vessels destined for the celebration of the mass were frequently disposed of to Jewish merchants by dishonest custodians; and this sacrilegious trade became at one time so notorious and shameless in France as to call forth the indignant denunciation of the Holy See. The pawning of objects consecrated to Christian worship for loans ostensibly contracted for the benefit of the Church was one of the most flagrant abuses of ecclesiastical authority in mediæval times. These pledges, often forfeited, became the property of the lender, and the clergy were constantly subjected to the scandal arising from their exposure for sale in the shops and public markets. It was no unusual circumstance in those days for the greater part of the sacred plate of an entire diocese to be temporarily in the hands of Jewish usurers. It was, moreover, a matter of common notoriety that the families of wealthy Jewish brokers daily drank from golden chalices in which once had been offered the holy sacramental wine of the mass.
The confidence reposed by all classes in the Hebrews, despite the universal and ineradicable prejudice entertained against their nationality, affords undeniable proof of their integrity. Their financial capacity and experience procured for them the office of receiver of royal taxes in countries where public sentiment was absolutely opposed to their toleration. Their fitness for this important and responsible post was emphasized not only by their abilities, but by the[121] fact that their prosperous circumstances were, in a measure, a guaranty of their honesty, their wealth removing the principal incentive to peculation. The most bigoted Christians eagerly sought their services in the management of property and the settlement of estates; and to their sagacity and wisdom was frequently committed the solution of the difficult problems relating to the methods of taxation and enforced contribution adopted by both the Crown and the Church. During the Middle Ages, every court in Europe patronized the Hebrew physician. His practice, while by no means free from the prevailing charlatanism of the time, embodied many principles of the healing art still recognized as sound, and represented all that was then known of medical science.
In literary culture, as in commercial ability and scientific acquirements, the mediæval Jew of Christian Europe had no rivals. It was an extraordinary circumstance when a sovereign could even read, in an age when one of the greatest princes in Europe was invested with the title of Beauclerc because he could write his own name legibly, a remarkable distinction in an era of almost universal ignorance. Such accomplishments, when they did exist in any community, were almost entirely confined to the clerical profession, and, even among its members, were far from being generally diffused. The officiating priest had, ordinarily, sufficient education to enable him to stumble through the pages of his missal. In the monastic establishments, where the opportunity afforded by solitude and leisure permitted, and even encouraged, the cultivation of letters, the talents of able men were too often wasted in frivolous and unprofitable pursuits. While such unpromising conditions prevailed among the higher classes, the state of the populace was incredibly degraded. The latter naturally looked to its spiritual advisers for instruction and[122] guidance, and the evil influence of the Church was everywhere significantly disclosed by the crowds of stupid and fanatical devotees who listened with awe and rapture to the incoherent harangues of monkish zealots, or, bowed upon their faces, grovelled in the mire before the idolatrous shrine of some spurious saint.
In the midst of the darkness which obscured the face of the mediæval world, Hebrew learning emitted a small but brilliant ray of light. Priestly tyranny and popular odium prevented the regeneration of the masses, which, under different auspices, might readily have been accomplished. The erudition of the early rabbis, remarkable even at the present time, was, in the age in which they flourished, absolutely phenomenal. Their superior intelligence and extensive acquirements caused them to be universally branded as wizards and enchanters. Men shunned all intercourse with them, and even feared to encounter them upon the highways. No greater tribute could be paid to their knowledge and ability than the ecclesiastical decrees launched against the Jews at the very time when their talents were employed in directing the financial affairs of the Church. In spite of his indispensable usefulness to government and society, the proscribed Hebrew was always under the ban of the law and lived in a state of constant apprehension. Princes claimed and exercised the privilege of absolute ownership of all the Jews and their property in their dominions. Even such an enlightened sovereign as the Emperor Frederick II. published a sweeping edict reducing the Jews of his realms to servitude, and declaring their wealth forfeited to the state. In England, near the end of the thirteenth century, every Jew in the kingdom was arrested and held in durance until a ransom of twelve thousand pounds had been extorted. Three years afterwards all their property[123] was taken, and they were expelled from the country. The bishop often received, as a token of royal esteem, the present of the Jews of his diocese. This singular prerogative, which was neither based upon prescriptive custom, former enslavement, nor any claim excepting that of force, was first exerted in France; and the enormous profits resulting from its application led to its general adoption by all the Christian sovereigns of Europe. The Jew, by the stringent restrictions of savage laws, was degraded below the level of humanity. The owner of a beast was entitled to fixed legal compensation for its death, but no penalty was enacted and no damages could be claimed for the murder of a Jew. If maltreated, no evidence could be received against his assailant. The Jews of Toulouse, who, tradition declared, had surrendered the city to the Moors, were condemned each year on that anniversary to furnish one of their number to receive a box on the ear at the cathedral door. One of the oldest and most respectable of the community was always selected; the blow was usually given with a mailed hand, and the victim not infrequently died from the effects of it. During Passion Week, the active persecution of the accursed sect was considered so meritorious as to be almost equivalent to the performance of a religious duty. At that time no Hebrew could appear in the street without endangering his life. On Good Friday, in the year 1016, an earthquake destroyed many of the houses in Rome. Pope Benedict VIII., having learned that at the time of its occurrence the Jews were worshipping in their synagogue, and attributing the catastrophe to their influence, caused a great number to be massacred. At all times they were exposed to the contumely of adults and the petty persecutions of children. The isolated quarter in every community, to which their residence was restricted, and separated from the dwellings of[124] orthodox Christians to prevent contamination, is to-day, in nearly all the cities of Europe, still known by its once distinctive name; although, in most instances, its Jewish population has disappeared. It was also a common pastime of the mob to stone the houses of the Jews, and, as the latter were not permitted to defend themselves, all large towns resounded with tumult and disorder during the celebration of the most sacred festival of Christendom. Upon every occasion, these unfortunates were pursued and baited like wild animals; always with the tacit connivance, often with the open encouragement, of the authorities. Their intimate relations with the countries of the East offered substantial grounds for the belief that they introduced leprosy into France, Spain, and England,—a disease whose general dissemination has ordinarily been credited to the Crusades, but whose existence in France as early as the sixth century must be attributed to some anterior agency. The undoubted Oriental origin of this malady pointed strongly to the itinerant Jewish merchants as responsible for its appearance in Western Europe; while its loathsome and incurable character tended to increase the popular odium with which those suspected of infecting a portion of the human race hitherto exempt from this affliction were universally regarded.
Every precaution which could have a tendency to maintain the social and domestic ostracism that popular intolerance had placed upon the Jew was enforced by civil and ecclesiastical authority. He could not legally marry a Christian, inherit real property, hold slaves. In royal donations, where, without warrant of right or pretence of ancient custom, he was deprived of his liberty and his possessions, his person was thereafter attached to the glebe. He was forbidden the exercise of many of the most profitable mechanical arts in which he excelled. Christians could not eat[125] or drink with him, visit his house, listen to his conversation, or learn his language. The priesthood considered the integrity of the doctrines which were at once the foundation and the instruments of their power as of far greater importance than the material comfort and intellectual improvement of their parishioners. They were quick to recognize the peril with which ecclesiastical institutions would be threatened if exposed to the logic and sarcasm of Hebrew criticism. The necessities of society could not, as yet, permit the extermination of the Jews, but their practical isolation was imperatively demanded by considerations of prudence, and by the just apprehension that the toleration of social intimacy would eventually result in the emancipation of the masses from ignorance, and the consequent disintegration of the Church. The Dominican and Franciscan Orders were the sworn enemies of the Jew from the very day of their organization. The Inquisition was introduced into Spain for the express purpose of plundering the rich Jews of Aragon. The efforts of the Papacy were assisted by the policy of the more bigoted of the rabbis, who saw, with no less apprehension than their Christian oppressors, the diffusion of liberal ideas which threatened their own authority and importance. Under such discouraging conditions had the Jews maintained their national existence, the purity of their religion, the perpetuation of their customs, the permanence of their laws amidst the anarchy, corruption, and intolerance of mediæval Europe.
The origin of this strange people is absolutely unknown. Their roving propensity probably dates from the very foundation of the race, as the words Hebrew and pilgrim are derived from the same root. No question, however, can exist concerning their Semitic affiliations. Their geographical distribution was extensive in very early times. The most ancient collection[126] of myths extant describes their migrations. They were numerous in China during the third century before Christ. Profoundly superstitious, implicit believers in omens, idolaters while professing monotheism, the facile dupes of wizards and magicians, the simplest phenomena of nature were always, in their eyes, invested with a mysterious or an astrological significance. Even their division into tribes has been traced by Dozy to a cabalistic association with the twelve signs of the zodiac.
The Israelites are first noticed in history as a horde of vagabond herdsmen in Mesopotamia. Oppressed by powerful neighbors, repeatedly enslaved, and reduced to those depths of moral degradation incident only to long-continued servitude, they still succeeded in preserving inviolate the principles of their religious and social organization. They were almost universally considered as outcasts, with whom it was contamination to associate. But in all their adversity their peculiar theocratic belief confirmed their resolution and sustained their hopes. They were the Chosen People of God. His Spirit was ever with them, speaking through the voices of their teachers, directing the councils of their rulers, illuminating the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle, hovering about the Ark with its golden cherubim. They had the Divine assurance that one day their troubles would end, that the scattered members of their race would be again united, that they would inherit the kingdoms and possess the riches of the earth. Their arrogant exclusiveness was unconsciously, but none the less diligently, fostered by the prejudices and regulations of the countries within whose borders they fixed their residence. In each city they were confined to a certain quarter, within whose precincts Christian men were little disposed, and Christian women absolutely forbidden, to enter. The use of a distinctive costume, popularly[127] regarded as a badge of ignominy, was imposed upon them. They were not allowed to marry outside their sect. The minute and innumerable restrictions of Hindu caste were not more rigid or vexatious than those ordinances which regulated the intercourse of Jew and Christian during the Middle Ages. The enforcement of these social distinctions, as well as the inexorable requirements of the laws, increased the isolation of the Jews in every community. In this manner their unity was preserved, and the extraordinary vitality which characterized their existence in all its phases was promoted.
In no part of Europe had their influence exhibited such constant, marked, and permanent effects as in the Spanish Peninsula. On its coast, with which their ancestors had long been familiar, and where archæological research has placed the Tarshish of Holy Writ, the establishment of the Hebrew is of such high antiquity that history has failed to record it; and it may not unreasonably be assumed that it antedated the Christian era by at least a thousand years. The turbulent and perfidious character of the Hebrew sectaries caused them to be regarded with apprehension by the Romans. In the time of Hadrian, their old and powerful families were distributed, as a measure of public safety, among the most widely separated provinces of the empire. The fact is well ascertained that the Spanish Jews were rich and numerous in the fifth century, and then practically controlled the commerce and the financial resources of the country. Even at that early period they were renowned for their intellectual accomplishments, their extensive literature, their dexterity in the mechanical employments, the assiduity with which they pursued the most abstruse branches of science, and their proficiency in those practical arts which tend to the amelioration of the condition of the human race and the[128] prolongation of the term of human life. As has been mentioned in a previous chapter, although occasionally pursued by royal avarice and clerical animosity, the Jews did not experience in Spain the full effects of that hatred which seemed to be their unhappy birthright until the accession of Reccared, the first orthodox sovereign of the Visigothic dynasty. From the latter part of the sixth century, the malice accumulated in the church and the cloister through ages of alternate restraint and forbearance was unmercifully wreaked upon them. The Visigothic Code is largely taken up with the statement of their disabilities, the denunciation of their customs, the enumeration of their offences, and the description of the penalties to be inflicted by the avenging magistrate. The paternal character of the ecclesiastical legislation, then and long afterwards in the ascendant in the Councils, scrutinized with jealous vigilance not only the public actions of the offensive sectaries, but invaded with brutal violence the sacred privacy of domestic life. The celebration of all national religious festivals was prohibited. A Jew could not be a witness against a Christian; intermarriage of the two races was declared null and void, and all issue of such unions were subject to seizure by the clergy, to be reared and educated in monastic institutions; circumcision was declared illegal; and the grotesque cruelty of the law which enforced the use of pork as food violated without cause or excuse a rational prejudice of the Jew, established by Divine command and confirmed by the unbroken practice of countless generations of his kinsmen. The observance of these savage and unreasonable regulations was enforced by penalties of corresponding severity. The culprit was usually burned alive; in cases where it seemed that leniency might be properly exercised, he was stoned to death. The constant and systematic evasion of these laws, which even[129] priestly malevolence hesitated to enforce, was the consequence of their extreme rigor. Many circumstances then, as subsequently, intervened to mitigate the condition of the Jews; the necessities of the state, the jealousy of the nobles, the venal and corrupt disposition of the clergy, who were often the first to violate the ordinances which they themselves had been instrumental in having enacted, were all enlisted, from time to time, in securing for the objects of popular hatred a temporary and precarious indulgence.
Under the Visigothic domination, as a rule, the policy of the government was decidedly hostile. The opulent were, as is usual in such cases, considered the most guilty; and thousands were seized, despoiled, and murdered on no other provocation than the evidences of prosperity and the imprudent and ostentatious exhibition of their wealth. In the Council, which chose the sovereign, ecclesiasticism always preponderated; and through its influence a clause was early inserted in the coronation oath which bound the king to suffer no other religion but the Roman Catholic in his dominions. Powerful protectors, whose services were purchased by the lavish distribution of bribes, averted the storm for the time; but about the beginning of the seventh century public opinion declined to be longer conciliated, and a frightful persecution was begun. An immense number, amounting, it is said, to ninety thousand, apostatized and publicly received the rite of baptism. Multitudes, who preferred banishment to renunciation of their faith, fled to France, Italy, and other countries. Such extreme measures drove the suffering Israelites to resistance, but their hereditary cowardice and their total want of organization rendered their exertions hopeless, and produced no result but an aggravation of their misfortunes.
While these events were transpiring in the Visigothic kingdom, Mohammedan conquest had spread[130] from Central Arabia to the western extremity of the African continent. Before its irresistible force, the activity of the Berber savage and the discipline of the Roman veteran had alike been humbled in the dust. The dangerous proximity of the Moslem outposts at the south had more than once aroused the apprehensions of the proud and luxurious sovereigns of Spain. But their efforts had been directed rather to the indulgence of their passions and the extirpation of heresy than to the fortification of the frontiers of the kingdom against the ambition of an unknown and underrated foe. The Jews, however, fully realized the gravity of the situation, and were only too willing to promote the designs of an enemy whose success, they were convinced, would enure to their own advantage and security. Numerous considerations of profound significance impelled them to this course. They themselves and the Arabs were derived from a common origin. Both sprang from the same branch of the great human family. Many of their customs were identical; their traditions denote a similar source; their languages vary but little in construction and pronunciation, and have been so slightly modified by the vicissitudes of centuries that the Hebrew rabbi and the Bedouin sheik of to-day can readily communicate with each other by means of their respective idioms. Both nations had for centuries been accustomed to a pastoral life on the vast plains of Asia, where the illimitable monotony of the landscape, the unbroken stillness of immense solitudes, the magnificent spectacle of the unclouded heavens glowing with the most gorgeous constellations of the firmament, have always impressed upon the nations subject to these potent and omnipresent influences the conviction of the unity of God. The caravans that issued from the Desert exchanged the precious commodities of that region for the wares manufactured and imported by the Hebrews of Alexandria,[131] Damascus, and Antioch. Although in the early ages of Islam the Jews were often harshly treated, the Arabs were quick to perceive the advantages to be obtained from their commercial experience and literary knowledge. As Hebrew enterprise was instrumental in opening to the world the lucrative and important trade of the Arabian Peninsula, so Hebrew genius disclosed to the descendants of Ishmael the capacity of their own tongue, which until then had found no permanent mode of expression. The first book which appeared in the Arabic language was written by Javaich, a Syrian Jew. It was the translation of a medical work by a famous practitioner of Alexandria, and the practical character of the subject not only indicates the serious nature of early Hebrew research, but also becomes a matter of curious significance when the subsequent interest and proficiency of Arab scholars in everything concerning the scientific acquirements of that profession are considered.
The impulse thus early exerted by Jewish culture upon the Arab intellect was eventually productive of the most extraordinary results. The scholars soon surpassed their instructors in the extent and profundity of their knowledge. The Arab mind assimilated, with wonderful ease and insatiable avidity, the useful and valuable information afforded it, while its critical faculty enabled it to reject what it intuitively perceived to be spurious. In all the countries subject to the Khalifates of Mecca and Damascus, the Hebrew opened to the Moslem conqueror the avenues of literature and science. He was treated by the Mohammedan princes with far more consideration and justice than he had ever experienced under Pagan or Christian domination. His synagogues were erected in the shadow of Moslem minarets. His academies became famous as centres of learning. The works of Grecian philosophers, the fragmentary treasures of Alexandrian[132] erudition, were, through his efforts, made familiar to the studious of the great Mohammedan capitals. In the distribution of literary patronage the Jews were the most distinguished recipients of royal munificence. In proportion to the eminence they attained in the province of letters, their political power and financial prosperity increased. They enjoyed the familiar confidence of the monarch, when his favorite councillors dared not venture without a summons into his presence. They amassed great fortunes in the various branches of trade and industry. Their mercantile occupations brought them frequently in contact with their fellow-sectaries, who, in other parts of the world, maintained under the weighty sceptre of cruel and bigoted sovereigns an existence fraught with danger and hardship.
These facts were well known to the Spanish Jews who had, amidst the multiplied catastrophes afflicting their race, survived the effects of Visigothic tyranny. Notwithstanding the successive persecutions of which they had been the object, they were still numerous in the Peninsula. The phenomenal vitality of a people which, from time immemorial, has preserved its integrity under the most adverse conditions, enabled it to defy the malice of courts and the edicts of councils whose office and pastime was the pitiless extirpation of heresy. The Jews flourished in defiance of bloodthirsty laws. In many ways they evaded the effects of proscription. Thousands apostatized. Multitudes secretly purchased immunity by means of the arts of corruption. Of those who had gone into exile, the majority quickly returned and took up their residence in other provinces, where, unknown to the populace, and often with the venal connivance of civil officials and prelates, they were permitted to pursue their avocations in comparative security. The Israelitish element was so preponderant in Toledo, Lucena, and[133] Granada, at the time of the Moorish invasion, that they were known as Jewish cities. This large population formed a separate state, an imperium in imperio, whose members, exasperated by the memory of intolerable suffering and sustained by the hope of retribution, were ready to embrace the first opportunity to avenge the oppression of centuries. Thus the fatal policy of the Visigoths—weak, violent, and corrupt—had introduced an organized, powerful, unscrupulous, and vindictive enemy into every province and city of their tottering empire. With their African brethren the Jews of Spain maintained an intimate and frequent correspondence. Numbers of the latter had sought a refuge beyond the sea, as their descendants did, under similar circumstances, seven centuries afterwards. The settlements of the Mauritanian coast swarmed with indigenous or exiled Hebrews, attracted thither by the superior facilities they offered to commercial pursuits. All of these shrewd and intelligent traders were perfectly familiar with the condition of the Visigothic monarchy; with its apparent splendor and actual decay; with the political and social disorganization pervading every department of the state and every rank of society; with the tyranny of the King; with the universal disaffection of the nobles; with the grasping avarice of the clergy, whose exactions spared neither the plenty of the rich nor the starving wretchedness of the poor; with the weakness of the army, whose soldiers, subsisting by pillage, had neither weapons to arm nor officers to command them; with the abject misery of the people, who, protected by none and plundered by all, insecure in the pursuit of every employment, a constant prey to licensed brigandage, with no recollection of the past but the bitter reminiscence of unprovoked and repeated injury, with no hope of the future save in the intervention of a more powerful, perhaps a more[134] ruthless, oppressor, were certain of tranquillity only in the silence and oblivion of the grave.
The advent of Moslem supremacy, which promised a new and splendid career to the down-trodden race, was welcomed by the Jews of Africa with all the enthusiasm of an impulsive and excitable people. Al-Maghreb had scarcely been conquered before the Moslem generals were more conversant with the details of Visigothic weakness and demoralization than the councillors of Roderick himself. The minute and secret ramifications of Jewish society united in a common cause the widely distributed communities of Africa and Spain; the intelligence and resolution of the conspirators, whose hostility was increased by the bitterness of sectarian hatred, rendered their enterprise and activity the more dangerous; and a propitious opportunity alone was awaited to pour upon the fertile and defenceless plains of the Peninsula the resistless torrent of Moslem invasion. That opportunity soon arrived. The fortress of Ceuta, lost by treason, fell into the hands of the Arabs; the Visigothic power, crushed in one great battle, succumbed to the superior valor of an enterprising enemy; and within the short period of fourteen months the sceptre of empire passed from the feeble hands of a barbarian dynasty to the control of a foreign race, whose mental capacity and intellectual ambition, as yet untried, were subsequently found to be equal to the most exacting demands of a refined and highly developed civilization. In these events, whose consequences produced such radical modifications in the religious, political, and domestic conditions of European society, Hebrew energy and craft were eminently conspicuous. One of the principal divisions of Tarik’s army was commanded by a Jew. During the invasion, Jewish guides conducted the Moslem squadrons along the highways of an unknown country, furnished information of the[135] enemy’s movements, disclosed the whereabouts of military supplies and hidden wealth. When the slender numbers of the Arab forces would not admit of their diminution for garrison duty, the Jews volunteered their services to defend the conquered cities and faithfully discharged the important trust. The obligations thus incurred by the Moorish invaders to their allies were of the most important character. The latter not only facilitated an enterprise whose difficulty, without their co-operation, would have been enormously increased, if not actually rendered impracticable, but, the country once subdued, they directed the attention of the Arabs to elegant pursuits, of whose nature and value they had hitherto remained in ignorance. Moslem civilization in Europe owed an incalculable debt of gratitude to the Jews. They were its real founders. They inculcated a taste for letters. They promoted the investigations of science, the development of industry and the arts. Their refined tastes and intellectual employments aroused a noble emulation in the minds of their pupils and imitators, which, in turn, reacted upon their own talents and aspirations. Hebrew genius and ambition were no longer hampered by the malicious interference of royal councils and ecclesiastical synods. The Jewish merchant and the Jewish banker pursued their way to opulence and distinction, unmolested by the extortionate demands of corrupt officials and tyrannical farmers of the revenue. Their scholars were not insensible to the advantages to be derived from the study of ancient learning, and the Greek and Latin classics were thoroughly familiar to the Spanish Jew, whose commentaries upon them were of considerable extent and of unquestionable authority.
Under a government favorable to their existence and prosperity, their numbers rapidly increased. The depopulation resulting from the conquest of an[136] already impoverished and exhausted territory required an extraordinary and immediate remedy. Publication was everywhere made throughout the Orient inviting the settlement of immigrants in Spain. Lands and houses were promised to all who were willing to change their domiciles for new homes in the distant and recently founded Mohammedan empire. In the multitude that responded were, it is said, fifty thousand Hebrew families, amounting to not less than a quarter of a million individuals. These, with their fellow-sectaries already established in the Peninsula, composed a most important element of its population. Highly favorable social and domestic conditions, among which must be considered the prevalent institution of polygamy, caused in after years a prodigious multiplication of the race. The colonists brought with them the devotion to learning which they had imbibed in the presence of the great memorials of ancient civilization on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, and many volumes of native and foreign lore which were destined to form the nucleus of the magnificent libraries of Moorish Spain. History has repeatedly mentioned the tireless assiduity with which the Jews, secure and tranquil under the tolerant administration of the khalifs, devoted themselves to the cultivation of letters. Their diligence was only exceeded by the marvellous proficiency they attained in every branch of useful knowledge. They mastered with ease the most abstruse and perplexing mathematical problems. The rabbis were great linguists; there were few of them not thoroughly conversant with the numerous idioms of Europe and Asia. Medicine and astronomy, their favorite pursuits, under their direction soon acquired an unprecedented, almost a magical, development.
The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries represent the epoch of the greatest fame and influence of the[137] Spanish Jews. This period, coincident with the highest power and civilization of the Hispano-Arab empire, had, however, been preceded by two centuries of uninterrupted progress. The enlightened policy of the Western khalifs, from the accession of the Ommeyade dynasty, attracted to their capital the learned of every country and of every profession. Of these strangers, the Hebrews constituted the largest proportion of any one race, excepting the Arabs. The schools and academies they founded vied in educational opportunities and literary culture with the Moslem institutions of similar character whose reputation was unrivalled in the world. The interpretations of the Scriptures and the Talmud, as promulgated by the synagogues of Toledo and Cordova, were acknowledged everywhere as of the highest and most binding authority. A constant and profitable intercourse was maintained with their kinsmen of the Orient, which promoted an interchange of ideas, and was consequently of incalculable advantage to the mental development of both divisions of the race. The intellectual supremacy of the Spanish Jew was, however, rarely disputed. The opportunities he enjoyed in the society of the most splendid of mediæval capitals; the vast stores of information at his disposal; the great libraries collected by the khalifs to which he had access; the permanent distinction which awaited successful competition in the public contests for literary precedence; the favor of the sovereign, often himself a scholar of great erudition and varied accomplishments, always a liberal patron of science and the arts; the applause of the multitude; the substantial pecuniary benefits which promised a life of ease and opulence to all whose abilities were sufficiently eminent to merit public recognition and recompense; with these manifold privileges and incentives it is not singular that Hebrew genius obtained and preserved an exalted[138] rank in the literary society of the age. Encouraged by the influence which they wielded, and presuming upon the favor of a liberal and indulgent sovereign, the Jews of the Moorish empire formed an organization modelled after the institutions of their ancestors which could scarcely have been tolerated under a severe and jealous despotism. They elected as their king a prince of the house of Judah, who, while not openly invested with the insignia of royalty, received the homage and the tribute of his subjects. Under this potentate judges and priests were chosen, who exercised the functions performed centuries before in the days of the independence and renown of the Hebrew nation. The Moors countenanced, and even approved of, the establishment of this anomalous system. Its officials, despite their grandiloquent titles, were strictly subordinated to the authority of the khalifate. They were suffered, however, to administer the affairs of those who acknowledged their jurisdiction; their decisions in theological matters limited to their faith were unquestioned; and they were intrusted with the collection of taxes, whose amount and apportionment had been previously determined by the regular officers of the imperial treasury.
The eminently practical character of the Jewish mind did not confine itself to speculations upon the traditions of the Talmud or disquisitions concerning abstruse points of philosophy. The Hebrew sages embraced with the greatest ardor the fascinating pursuits of mechanical invention and scientific discovery. In medicine and surgery they particularly excelled. They wrote treatises on the application of hydraulics and the comparative merits of various systems of irrigation. They thoroughly understood the principles of horticulture. The excellence of the manufactures for which the Khalifate of Cordova was famous was, to a considerable extent, indebted to Jewish talents[139] and industry. In many instances the nationality of Hebrew scholars was obscured through the similarity of their names and occupations to those of their distinguished associates in the great Moslem centres of learning. Many Jewish doctors received Arab appellations and wrote almost exclusively in the Arabic language. Among these was Ibn-Zohr, who, for these reasons, has been generally considered a Mohammedan, but whose parentage, religion, associations, and education were entirely Hebrew.
The tenth century witnessed the culmination of Jewish greatness in Europe. In its rapid advancement, it had kept pace with the ever-progressive march of Moslem power and culture. Wherever the Saracens established themselves, the Jewish population increased. The harmonious co-operation of the two races—one of which, while nominally tributary to and dependent upon the other, was in reality upon a footing of friendly intimacy with its acknowledged superior—proved of immense advantage to both, in the promotion of every measure which could enure to the substantial benefit of humanity. In the consideration which they enjoyed, and in the prosperity and distinction which were the reward of intelligent and useful effort, the Jews lost the memory of the calamities which had been their lot for so many centuries. In common with all peoples who have attained the highest civilization, they abandoned themselves to luxury. The men were clothed in the richest of silken fabrics. The jewels of the women equalled in brilliancy and value the choicest treasures of the imperial harems. The great Hebrew functionaries of state, who possessed the confidence of the sovereign, appeared in public, guarded by retinues of armed and magnificently attired eunuchs. Their mansions exhibited all the luxurious appointments of the fastidious sybarite. The Rabbi Hasdai-ben-Schaprut was one of the principal[140] ministers of Abd-al-Rahman III. Al-Hakem II. enlisted the services of Jewish ambassadors in important embassies. Hischem II. ordered a translation of the Talmud to be made into Arabic, and caused its literature to be introduced as a branch of study in the Moslem colleges. The educated Moors treated with the greatest honor and respect the princes and officials of the hierarchy chosen by the assemblies of the Synagogue. The beginning of the tenth century witnessed the destruction of the renowned academies of Persia, whose members, by the promulgation of liberal doctrines, had rendered themselves obnoxious to Oriental despotism. Their societies dissolved, these learned men were forced to seek security in exile. Some of the most famous, including the Rabbi Moses, of the Academy of Pumbedita, were taken by African corsairs and exposed for sale in the slave-market of Cordova. Such was the eminent reputation of this doctor, that, as soon as his identity was disclosed, he was unanimously elected prince of the Hispano-Hebrew nation.
These Oriental scholars were not the only exiles who enriched the universities of Spain with their accumulated stores of wisdom. From every country where the hand of persecution was raised against the Jew refugees flocked by thousands into the Peninsula, until the Ommeyade khalif included among his subjects a larger proportion of the people of this race than any other sovereign of the age. The list of rabbis who illuminated with their genius and learning the reign of the Cordovan princes is both instructive and interesting, especially when we consider the benighted condition of contemporaneous Europe. In France, during the ninth century, a Christian bishop declared the rabbis preached better than the priests.
The active minds of these gifted scholars enabled them to master at the same time the most complicated[141] problems of widely different branches of scientific knowledge. The difficulty and novelty of the subject were always the strongest incentives to their industry. The study of jurisprudence enjoined by their law, as a religious duty, was always entered upon in the beginning of their literary career, no matter to what professions they were subsequently to be devoted. Rabbi Hasdai-ben-Schaprut wrote a commentary on the botanical treatise of Dioscorides, of which he had made an Arabic version; Rabbi Judah, who lived under Abd-al-Rahman III., was renowned for his acquaintance with both Hebrew and Arabic literature; Joseph translated the Talmud for Hischem II.; Manasseh-ben-Baruch compiled a critical lexicon, a colossal monument of patience and erudition. To Isaac-ben-Chanan is ascribed the rendering into classic Hebrew of the complete works of Aristotle. Isaac Alphes codified the laws of the Talmud; Samuel-ben-Alarif, the minister of Habus, King of Granada, renowned alike as statesman, astronomer, and poet, composed a panegyric of his sovereign in seven languages. Moses-ben-Ezra wrote poems which disclose instructive scenes of mediæval life and manners; the grammatical works of Judas-ben-David were recognized as authoritative wherever the Hebrew tongue was spoken; Isaac-ben-Baruch was one of the most learned and accomplished mathematicians of his time. In addition to these names, famous in the history of letters, the Hebrew community of Spain included poets like Judas Levi, whose works, translated into Arabic and Latin, obtained a wide and deserved popularity; astronomers like Ben-Chia; geographers like Isaac Latef; physicians like Charizi; travellers like Benjamin of Tudela, whose writings may still be perused with pleasure and advantage; natural philosophers like Solomon-ben-Gabirol, who had the rare faculty of clothing scientific conceptions in poetical language; universal geniuses[142] like Moses-ben-Maimon and Ben-Ezra, whose talents illustrated and embellished every subject within the realm of human knowledge. Not less noted were the Jewish physicians, who did not, however, exist as a distinctive profession, their commanding abilities being also displayed in other departments of literature and science.
Most prominent among the names which immortalize the golden age of Hebrew erudition is that of Moses-ben-Maimon, popularly known as Maimonides. A native of Cordova, and sprung from a family which had furnished many learned and distinguished members of the Jewish hierarchy, he enjoyed from his earliest youth the unrivalled educational advantages of the great Moslem capital. His mind was formed and his tastes developed under the most able instructors of the University of Cordova, and it has even been stated, upon disputed authority, however, that he was the pupil and friend of the famous philosopher Averroes. The profession of medicine which he adopted, and in which he afterwards so greatly excelled, he regarded rather as an instrument with which to observe the secret characteristics and incentives of human nature than as a means of livelihood. At the age of thirty, his reputation for prodigious erudition had spread far beyond the limits of the Moslem empire of the West. The fanatical policy of Abd-al-Mumen, founder of the Almohade dynasty, demanded the conversion of the Jews; thousands, under the fear of death, renounced their religion, and among them was Maimonides, whose resolution was not proof against the prospective sufferings of martyrdom. Escaping soon after to Egypt, where his renown had preceded his arrival, he became the friend and adviser of the Sultan. It is said that whenever he left his house he was compelled to pass through lines of people, some of whom desired his opinion on metaphysical[143] questions, and others, who were afflicted with various ailments, that sought the aid of his medical knowledge. Such was his devotion to his profession, that in the care of his patients he deprived himself of sleep, and many times fainted from sheer exhaustion. In the midst of his arduous duties he found time for the composition of many voluminous treatises,—on biblical and rabbinical literature; on the action of remedies; on the duties and responsibilities of man as inculcated by the higher philosophy. His principal work, More-Hanebushim, “The Guide of Lost Spirits,” is one of the masterpieces of Hebrew literature. The learning it displays, the profound knowledge of mankind it reveals, the originality of its conceptions, the ingenuity and logical force of the argument, the sublime moral maxims it inculcates, and the elegance and beauty of the style, owing little to the native harshness of the idiom in which it is written, stamp it as one of the most remarkable productions of the human mind. The genius of this great writer regarded as diversions undertakings which would have appeared formidable tasks to men of inferior capacity. His medical works, fourteen in number, and especially his learned commentary on Hippocrates, were long the guide of the profession, and to this day many of his precepts for the treatment of disease are employed by the intelligent practitioner. He was one of the first to recognize that mental derangement is often the result of physical indisposition. Maimonides was more familiar with the doctrines of Christian theology than the majority of the prelates whose duty it was to inculcate them. His understanding rejected with contempt the alluring and prevalent delusions of the age, which too frequently contaminated the wisdom of the scholar with the mummeries of the impostor. His condemnation of judicial astrology, in which he exposed by irrefutable arguments the[144] absurdities and dangers of that puerile but fascinating science, was adopted and promulgated as authoritative by both Popes Sixtus V. and Urban VIII. While he criticised with uncompromising severity the faults of his sect and the weakness and inconsistency of many of its traditions, Maimonides never intentionally swerved from the path of orthodox Judaism. His surroundings and associations were, however, on the whole not favorable to the maintenance of archaic theological systems. The intellectual society of Cordova was deeply infected with infidelity. The instructors of youth, the professors of the University, were disciples of Averroes. Religious commentary had long been supplanted by philosophical skepticism. Even the populace, always the last to abandon the obsolete opinions of theological infancy, were imbued with the same iconoclastic ideas. The sublime conceptions of India, the doctrine of Emanation and Absorption, had been largely adopted by the educated communities of Moorish Spain. The exposure of the Hebrew dogmas to the mocking and sarcastic raillery of his learned companions produced no effect upon the faith of Maimonides. His principles were too firmly grounded to be shaken by the jeers of polished atheism. While his progressive ideas caused him to be for a time regarded with suspicion by the stricter of the Hebrews, they eventually contended with each other in paying tribute to his lofty genius, and in their extravagant admiration styled him “The Eagle of Jewish Literature,” “The Guide of the Rabbis,” “The Light of the Occident.” The liberal character of his doctrines may be inferred from the following passage taken from the preface to his works: “The end of religion is to conduct us to perfection, and to teach us to act and think in conformity with reason. In this consists the distinctive attribute of human nature.”
[145]
Maimonides was one of the most eminent personages of his time. No writer of his nationality ever attained to such an exalted rank, even among those who dissented from his opinions. The kindness of his disposition was not less remarkable than the extent of his intellectual acquirements. Although a born polemic and controversialist, he never voluntarily wounded the feelings of an adversary. The object of his investigations was invariably the discovery of truth. His learning, his critical acumen, his quickness of perception, his accuracy of judgment, his talent for argument, were unrivalled. His system aimed at the reconciliation of revealed maxims and scientific deductions; at the co-ordination of Biblical and Talmudical ideas with the principles of ancient wisdom and contemporaneous philosophy. Such a task was beyond even his great abilities. The studies of the infidel schools of Spain had, unconsciously to himself, affected his religious belief. The instructions of Averroes were not conducive to the existence of rigid Judaism. Maimonides was, in fact, a pantheist. Throughout his writings, despite their mysticism, the doctrine of Emanation is everywhere prominent. He refers to successive spheres born of Divine thought. He considers the absorption of the souls of the good into the Divine Essence. While admitting the indestructibility of force, he rejects the idea of the eternity of matter. With him, as with the majority of scholars who had been educated under Arabic auspices, the authority of Aristotle was paramount. His works, while professedly written to elucidate and confirm the Talmud, really undermined it. His Mischne Thora and Commentary on the Mischna are prodigies of dialectical skill and varied erudition. In the first of these, a religious code, ten years of constant labor were expended.
The life of Maimonides was an eventful period in[146] the history of his race. Then it reached the highest point of intellectual distinction, but among its sages none ranked with the distinguished rabbi. In addition to his vast stores of universal knowledge, he had profited by the practical benefits of travel. He had visited Fez, Montpellier, Cairo, Bagdad, Jerusalem. He was the court physician of Saladin. He refused a similar employment tendered by Richard I., King of England. He was raised to the important office of Chief Rabbi of all the Hebrew communities of Egypt. From the East and West, his countrymen sought his opinion on abstruse questions of religion and philosophical doctrine, and accepted his answers as infallible. His influence was by no means confined to members of his own sect. His works, translated into Latin, were diligently studied by Christian polemics, and furnished arguments to successive generations of schoolmen. Diffused throughout the South of France, their rationalist opinions played no small part in the promotion of the Albigensian heresy.
But while the intellectual supremacy of Maimonides placed him far in advance of his contemporaries, he was by no means the only distinguished scholar of his epoch. Ben-Ezra, equally proficient in the departments of medicine, literature, and astronomy, enjoyed a reputation second only to that of the Greatest of the Hebrews. His inquisitive mind, stimulated by years of assiduous application, sought in the scenes of foreign lands the valuable experience and intimate acquaintance with human life which are not to be obtained by the perusal of books alone. The remarkable abilities of Ben-Ezra were exercised alike in the solution of mathematical problems and in the composition of sacred poems. In his knowledge of astronomy, he surpassed the most accurate observers of an age especially devoted to the cultivation of the grandest and most fascinating of sciences. In his moments[147] of mental relaxation he embodied in verse the rules of the game of chess; and the preface to this poem, in which the reader is warned against the evils of cards and dice, proves conclusively that gaming implements supposed to have been invented hundreds of years afterwards were familiar to the Spanish Jews and Moors in the early part of the thirteenth century.
Not unworthy rivals of Ben-Ezra in the contest for literary precedence were Nachmanides, who at the age of sixteen was the honored associate of the most learned of the Jewish nation, and whose precocious maturity acquired for him in early manhood the title of Abu-Harushma, “The Father of Wisdom;” Joseph Hadain, whose charming verses were the delight of the people of Cordova; Solomon-ben-Gabirol, and Abraham-ben-David-Halevi, distinguished philosophers, in whose writings were illustrated the principles of theological reform and independent criticism demanded by the bold and progressive spirit of the age. Among the Jews of Spain were also many original poets, fabulists, and writers of romance. Such were the most eminent scholars whose attainments reflected honor on the Hebrew name, under the beneficent rule of the Moslem princes of the West, an era coincident with the darkest period of European history. Besides these there were others in every community, some of rabbinical rank, some of humble station, with talents that elsewhere would have raised them far above mediocrity, but who were obscured and overwhelmed in the dazzling glare of literary excellence. The commercial prosperity of the Jews; the universality of education, whose institutions afforded facilities nowhere else attainable in the world; the naturally inquisitive bent of the Hebrew mind, whose acuteness seemed capable of solving questions when all others had failed, and whose versatility was equal to the most varied and arduous undertakings; the[148] superhuman industry which shrank from no task, however difficult; the consideration with which they were treated by sovereign and plebeian alike, gave full scope to the capabilities of a race of men who never previously, even in the days of Judea’s splendor, had been afforded such opportunities for development. The generous emulation provoked by the intellectual efforts of their Saracen rivals was exerted by the Jews in every branch of learning and every department of scientific research. Through the literary productions of these two nations alone was the way of knowledge accessible. A thorough acquaintance with Arabic and Hebrew was indispensable to the ambitious student. Latin, whose corrupted idiom was the language of the Church, was the vehicle of priestly intercourse, and the medium through which were transmitted Papal decrees and ecclesiastical tradition. The ancient classics of Greece and Rome were practically unknown outside the Peninsula; and there is good reason to believe that a majority of the famous prelates of the time were ignorant that they had ever existed. The accurate retranslations of these works into Latin from the Arabic, into which they had been originally transcribed, first revealed their merits to Western Europe, and paved the way to the revival of learning. The impulse imparted by this means to literary curiosity and investigation found its culmination in the epoch which produced Aretino, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Dante. The Italian Renaissance, the dawn of modern European intelligence and progress, received its inspiration from the civilizing influences and cultivated tastes brought to extraordinary perfection in the great cities of Southern Spain.
The dissolution of the Moslem empire, its subsequent division and gradual conquest, naturally effected great changes in the political relations and ultimate destiny of the Hebrew race. Under the[149] petty kings who administered with various fortune the shattered fragments of the magnificent inheritance bequeathed by the Ommeyade khalifs, the condition of the Jews changed with the caprices and the passions of each new tyrannical potentate. For the most part, however, they received indulgent and often flattering treatment. The Mohammedan sovereigns recognized the value of such subjects; there were many whose political sagacity was not obscured by prejudice, and who still observed the tolerant precepts of Islam. At Granada the Jews had always been popular; there is a tradition that the capital of the kingdom was founded by them. In the fourteenth century, there were fifteen thousand Hebrew families resident in that city. While the rest of the Peninsula was convulsed with revolution and disorder, and their kinsmen were being everywhere persecuted and robbed by Papal inquisitor and Christian king, the Jews of Granada pursued their occupations in peace, under the protection of the Zirite and Alhamar dynasties, until the final success of the Spanish arms involved their nation in irretrievable ruin.
The Jews were the principal medium through which Moorish civilization was permanently impressed upon Europe. Their peculiar characteristics; their vitality amidst the most dreadful misfortunes; the intimate relationship maintained by their communities, where distance and territorial isolation seemed matters of little importance, and their wide distribution were most important factors in the maintenance and dissemination of knowledge. The Jew travelled with safety in lands where a price was set upon his head; outside of Moslem jurisdiction, even among strangers unfamiliar with his story and his creed, the Saracen was an outcast. The requirements of royal and ecclesiastical incompetency contributed to the preservation of that learning which ignorance and fear constantly[150] incited to destroy. As the Peninsula yielded by degrees to the steady encroachments of Christian power, the superior abilities of the Jews proved a potent safeguard against oppression. In spite of the furious protests of fanatics, they exercised the most important public employments. Kings of irreproachable orthodoxy habitually availed themselves of their unrivalled medical attainments. The physicians of Alfonso X., Pedro el Cruel, Henry III., Juan II. of Castile, of Jaime I. of Aragon, of Duarte and Juan I. of Portugal, were all members of the detested sect. Their tact and discernment caused their services to be enlisted in the settlement of perplexing questions of diplomacy. The early times of the Reconquest were far from exhibiting the vindictive and intolerant spirit which marked its termination. The Hebrew colony at Toledo numbered twelve thousand souls. Its academy stood first in rank among similar institutions in Europe. A vast sum was annually paid by this tributary population into the royal treasury of Castile.
The king, the noble, and the scholar treated the Jew with favor, often with the highest consideration. The clergy and the mob were ever his bitterest enemies. His extraordinary influence was daily manifested in defiance of savage laws which public sentiment enacted and applauded, but was unable to enforce. The hated sectary, proscribed by both the ecclesiastical and civil powers, pursued his way, indifferent to the edicts of either the altar or the throne. He dictated the policy of the government. He made treaties with foreign nations. He flaunted his wealth in the faces of the rabble. With strange inconsistency, members of the priesthood sold him Christian serfs, whom their own decrees declared it was illegal for him to own. They pledged with him the consecrated vessels of their calling for money with which to indulge in forbidden[151] pleasures. His opulence was his most serious offence. In the thirteenth century, one-third of the entire real-property of Castile was in the possession or under the control of the Hebrews. At the death of Pedro II. of Aragon, they had acquired possession of all the demesnes of the crown, by the purchase of claims against the state. At one time they owned nearly all the city of Paris. Their pomp and insolence aroused the envy and hatred of the nobles, many of whom were virtually their prisoners for default in the payment of debts. During the reign of Pedro el Cruel, Joseph-ben-Ephraim, the royal tax-gatherer, rode in a magnificent coach, guarded by a retinue of fifty armed attendants. His clerks were the sons of Spanish grandees. It was long a popular saying in Europe that “The Castilians had the pride and the devotion, the Jews the talents and the money.”
The Spanish cavaliers who had experienced the prowess and courtesy of their Moorish adversaries, as a rule, cherished no bitterness against the Jews. Those who, in the course of events, were absorbed with the territory of the growing kingdom, often elicited admiration and respect by reason of their commanding talents and erudition. The political administration of Castile and Leon, under Alfonso VIII., was committed to a Jew; and his physician, who was of the same race and enjoyed the royal confidence, was chosen by the nobles as an intermediary between themselves and their sovereign in a transaction which required the exercise of the greatest ability and discretion. A beautiful Jewess was for many years the mistress of Alfonso IX., over whom her empire, while unbounded, was never abused; until at last the clergy, scandalized rather by the nationality of the favorite than by the gravity of the sin, caused her to be sacrificed to public resentment. It requires but a glance at the writings of the few mediæval[152] reformers to infer how much consistency there was in this simulated indignation. The works of these alone are sufficient to establish the existence of universal sacerdotal depravity among those censors of public morals whose scruples were excited by the influence ascribed to the charms of a lovely infidel. Under Alfonso el Sabio, the Jews received greater consideration than under any other Christian monarch of Spain. The famous Alphonsine Tables, drawn up under the direction of Hebrew astronomers, were the most memorable scientific achievement of the epoch. Their cost, which exceeded the enormous sum of four hundred thousand ducats, is indicative not only of the interest of that prince in undertakings whose importance was neither understood nor appreciated elsewhere, but of the value attached to the services of great scholars, whose knowledge had been imparted by a civilization which their royal patron considered it his political and religious duty to eradicate.
The indulgent policy of Don Pedro el Cruel towards his Hebrew subjects was one of the most remarkable peculiarities of his sanguinary reign. His financiers and his confidential advisers were members of that proscribed race. The treasurer of the monarchy, Samuel Levi, whose position and favor enabled him to amass a princely fortune, is remembered by Jewish tradition as one of the great benefactors of humanity. The extraordinary power he wielded; the splendor of his retinue; the sumptuous appointments of his palace; his patronage of letters; the prodigal generosity he displayed in the relief of the unfortunate and the deserving of every nationality, have exalted, perhaps exaggerated, his merits in the memory of his countrymen. His greatest claim to distinction, however, consists in the erection, at his own expense, of a superb synagogue at Toledo. This edifice, unique of its kind, was built by the most skilful Moorish[153] artificers of Granada, and its decorations suggested the most finished and elegant models of Arab art. Its walls were embellished with miniature horseshoe and stalactitic arches, whose openings were relieved by polygonal ornaments and golden stars. Belts of foliage alternating with appropriate inscriptions composed the frieze; and the ceiling, which was of the incorruptible cedar of Lebanon, resembled, in the maze of its geometrical designs, the artesonados of the Alhambra. In common with the other principal synagogues of Toledo, the earth upon which the pavement was laid was said to have been brought from Mount Sion, a tradition which enhanced their sanctity in the eyes of the worshipper.
Many converted Hebrews, as the reward of their apostasy, were raised to the most exalted civil and episcopal dignities; unusual literary accomplishments in a Spanish prelate during the Middle Ages were almost infallible indications that his information had been derived from infidel sources; and Catholic piety recognized no more ardent defenders of the dogmas of the Church than the converted Jews, Paul, Bishop of Burgos and Grand Chancellor of Castile, and Alfonso de Spina, Rector of the University of Salamanca. The celebrated Bible produced at Alcalá de Henares through the munificence of Cardinal Ximenes, at a cost of fifty thousand pieces of gold, and which required the unremitting labor of fifteen years, was the work of apostate Jews. Three secretaries of Queen Isabella were of the despised nationality. One of them, the famous chronicler Pulgar, had held the same office of trust under King Henry IV.
The intolerance of the Spanish clergy increased in an exact ratio with the decadence of Moslem power. As ecclesiastical supremacy became strong enough to control the policy of the throne, the privileges of the Jews, already greatly curtailed, were almost entirely[154] abolished. As yet, however, the sovereign was unable to dispense either with the taxes they paid, which were the most important part of the royal revenues, or with the financial talents and sterling honesty which insured their proper disbursement. It was not until the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella that fanaticism was allowed to prevail over the wise and prudential considerations of policy which, though frequently interrupted by scenes of horror and carnage, had in practice ignored for centuries the fulminations of ecclesiastical synods and councils. As the rise of Hebrew greatness in the Peninsula dates from, and is attributable to, the Moslem conquest, in like manner its decay progressed with the declining fortunes of the Saracens, and its destruction was coincident with the disappearance of their empire.
Scattered throughout Europe, the Jews alone preserved for future generations the precious heritage of Arab science and culture; and had they not proved capable of retaining and transmitting it, the discoveries of Moorish genius, banished with those who made them, would have been forever lost to posterity. The effects of civilization, whose arts, distributed through the agency of the Hebrews, were productive of such great results, were principally manifested, as might readily be conjectured, in the countries contiguous to or most intimately connected with the Peninsula. The tide of Hebrew emigration and trade rolled steadily into France, Portugal, Italy. The states of Provence and Languedoc, under the Gothic name of Septimania, early overrun by the conquerors of Spain, were, long prior to that time, subject to Hebrew influence. Attracted by the salubrious climate and the excellent commercial facilities of the coast, the Jews settled there in great numbers. The overthrow of the Mohammedan power in that region was not followed by the immediate abolition of the social and educational[155] systems which it had inaugurated, and whose perpetuation was insured by the most favorable climatic and ethnological conditions. At Lyons, the Jews at one time were held in such esteem that the market day was changed from Saturday to Sunday in deference to their religious prejudices. In Provence, practically free from the humiliating distinctions of caste, they enjoyed the same privileges and were entitled to the same protection as other citizens. At Béziers, Carcassonne, Avignon, Montpellier, and Narbonne the Hebrew element predominated. It has already been stated that the famous school of Montpellier owed its origin to the Arabs and the Jews. The Moslem conquest vastly increased the Hebrew population, which had already been numerous in Southern France for more than eight hundred years. The mystery which in times of mediæval darkness enveloped everything derived from Hebrew and Arabic sources, the peculiarities of the written, the incomprehensibility of the spoken, idioms, in which education was imparted, the methodical treatment of disease, so thorough in application, so successful in results, pursued by its graduates, and immeasurably superior in every respect to the mummeries of priestly superstition, invested the University of Montpellier with a reputation which, acquired at the expense of sacerdotal influence, was attributed by the ignorant to the invocation of infernal spirits. The infidel physicians of that institution were shunned by the devout as sorcerers. The Church excommunicated all who had recourse to them. Not only in that city, but through the greater part of Christendom, it was considered far better to permit an invalid to perish than to secure his recovery by the aid of practitioners whose methods were denounced from every pulpit as diabolical and infamous. Christian women often died in childbed rather than summon a Jewish midwife,[156] whose profession was exercised with signal ability, and whose education was little less thorough and profound than that of the doctors of the medical school. Such sacrifices were regarded as peculiarly meritorious, as establishing beyond doubt the consistent piety of the victim. Under existing circumstances, there was no relief for the priest-ridden sufferer, for the practice of medicine was confined to the Jews. The application of relics, even when strengthened by the most edifying exhibition of faith, could hardly prevail against a fatal distemper. On the one hand was the terrifying prospect of impending dissolution; on the other, the assurance of divine displeasure and the certainty of sacerdotal condemnation. In the midst of this general intolerance the Lords of Montpellier stood firm. They were proud of their city,—proud of its wealth, its enterprise, its intelligence, its reputation. They thoroughly appreciated the conditions under which that reputation had been created. Their Jewish subjects were the wealthiest, the most learned, the most law-abiding of citizens. They had more than once discharged with credit important public employments. They had their exchange, their banks, their schools, their cemeteries, even their own wells for purposes of ablution. They worshipped in a magnificent synagogue, which in richness and beauty vied with the most splendid mosques, and from whose ceiling of aromatic woods were suspended hundreds of golden lamps. Not only had their hereditary commercial instincts made Montpellier a great and prosperous emporium, but their ingenuity was exhibited in the establishment of many important branches of manufactures. The cloths exported by them were especially noted for delicacy of finish and texture. In the goldsmiths’ shops was produced elegant jewelry of classic design. Not a few of the sacred vessels used for the celebration of the mass in the cathedrals[157] of Europe were fabricated by the Jewish artisans of Montpellier. Some of the most lucrative departments of industry for which Mohammedan Spain was famous were represented in that city, among them those of silk, leather, and porcelain. The incorporation of the dominions of the Lords of Montpellier into the French monarchy not only subjected the Jews to the disabilities and persecutions elsewhere the heritage of their race, but, as a necessary consequence, proved fatal to the prosperity of that flourishing provincial capital. Royal and episcopal avarice rioted in a new and productive field of legalized extortion. The Jews were robbed and expelled, recalled under promises of immunity, and plundered again and again. The feudal law of mortmain authorized the confiscation of their property if they were converted; if they refused this questionable privilege, official oppression at once reduced them to beggary.
With the increase of Christian influence in Southern Europe their condition grew more and more desperate. At Toledo, a riot having broken out on account of the levy of an obnoxious tax, the public disorder was made an excuse for the spoliation and massacre of the Jews. In many districts in Europe people were prohibited from furnishing them with the necessaries of life. At Aix, a Jew was flayed alive for alleged blasphemy, and a column was erected to commemorate the pious deed. The menacing eloquence of St. Vincent Ferrer is said to have driven fifteen thousand Valencian Hebrews to the Catholic communion. The cry raised against Jewish rapacity by dishonest or insolvent debtors enured to their benefit in the proceeds resulting from pillage, and by the forcible recovery of chattels deposited with brokers as security. Public hatred was not confined to denunciation of their financial methods; their learning and its depositories shared the common obloquy. Hebrew[158] manuscripts were destroyed whenever found. At Salamanca alone, six thousand were consumed in a single bonfire. In Paris, in one day, twenty-four cart-loads of literary treasures were committed to the flames. Monkish intolerance raged everywhere against these dangerous competitors for popular favor and pecuniary gain. This prejudice extended to their language; its study was forbidden under penalty of excommunication; and it was constantly proclaimed from the pulpit that whoever acquired it became from that moment to all intents and purposes a Jew. Gradually excluded from all mechanical trades and liberal professions, the unhappy people were driven to the business of brokerage. To this unpopular calling, whose commercial necessity was as yet unrecognized by European ignorance, Hebrew enterprise was ultimately, for the most part, restricted. The practice of usury, reprobated by those whose improvidence or vices forced them to have recourse to it for temporary relief, had existed in Europe long before the stigma arising from its abuse attached to the Jewish name. The Lombards and Florentines, whose unfeeling rapacity belied their claim to humanity, were those who first rendered it odious; and the Apostolic See repeatedly sold to commercial organizations the privilege of financial oppression. The small amount of cash in circulation authorized the imposition of enormous rates of interest. In Spain, under Christian domination, the rate was limited to thirty-three and a third per cent., and in other countries it was even more exorbitant, but regulated, as such matters always are, by the natural laws of supply and demand. The Italian brokers, who plied their calling in France, not infrequently exacted one hundred and twenty per cent. per annum. The edicts of kings and the anathemas of councils were ineffectually directed against this evil, which threatened[159] the impoverishment of every necessitous person of credit, produced unspeakable suffering, and seriously retarded the progress of national prosperity. Those loudest in their denunciations were generally the first to apply for pecuniary advances to the objects of their simulated wrath. Catholic sovereigns secretly pledged the royal jewels with Hebrew usurers; and it was the public boast of the latter that the sacred vessels of cathedrals and religious houses were the greater part of the time at their absolute or conditional disposal. The glaring inconsistency which characterized every phase of Jewish persecution was thus unusually conspicuous in the condemnation of their usurious practices.
In Portugal, whose proximity to and original incorporation with the Hispano-Arab empire had attracted a large Hebrew immigration, the Jews, as elsewhere, availing themselves of the superior attainments acquired under Moslem institutions, speedily grew rich and powerful. There, also, in an ignorant society debased by the predominance of a narrow and despotic ecclesiastical system, their toleration became for a time a political necessity. Their services were so indispensable to all orders of the state that the disabilities imposed upon them were regarded as merely nominal, and the laws regulating their intercourse with each other and with the Christians remained for the most part inoperative.
In Italy, the hand of the Jew was visible in the energy and enterprise of the maritime states of Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, and Naples. A less intolerable existence was insured to him under the shadow of the Papal throne. The exiles of Western Europe, expelled by the short-sighted policy of irrational fanatics, were coldly welcomed on the banks of the Po and the Tiber and on the sunny shores of the Adriatic. The industry and culture inherited from[160] the golden age of Moslem domination became sources of wealth, mercantile importance, and literary distinction to the Italians, whose reluctant hospitality was eventually repaid a hundred-fold by the profit derived from the labors of these refugees and the results of the emulation excited by their example. It was thus that, after the lapse of five centuries and at a distance of a thousand miles, the civilization of the Moslem empire in Spain produced, through the agency of an alien and exiled race, the glorious revival of arts and letters in Italy. That the Jews should be credited with the dissemination of Arab science and literature is demonstrated by the fact that in whatever country those of Spanish extraction, or their descendants, established themselves, the people of that country quickly experienced an intellectual impulse unknown to others not exposed to similar associations. Modern civilization has ill-requited the priceless benefits it has received from Jewish learning and Jewish skill.
The tenacity of the mind of the Israelite was amazing. It never relaxed its hold upon a valuable idea once within its grasp. Much as it communicated, its secretive character induced it always to suppress far more than it imparted, a habit which increased its mysterious influence. It had the peculiar quality of immediately quickening into life the more sluggish mental natures of all with whom it was brought in contact. No disposition, however harsh or ascetic, was proof against the exertion of its power. The Jewish colonies, transplanted into the midst of an ignorant population, became at once foci of learning. Bigotry itself regarded with awe and respect the intellectual superiority which anticipated and checked hostile measures directed against its continuance, and, without the employment of force, nullified laws especially enacted for its repression. It was not strange[161] that prosperity maintained in the presence of such obstacles should be attributed to diabolical interference. Into his new home the Jew brought not only the energy and acuteness which were the guaranty of his success, but the intelligent curiosity which was the principal factor of his extraordinary mental development. Not a few possessed extensive libraries, luxuries absolutely unknown in many European countries where even writing materials did not exist, or, if they did, were unavailable. The scattered books to be found in churches and monasteries were palimpsests, ancient parchments from which the productions of classic authors had been laboriously effaced to make room for saintly homilies and patristic legends. Perfection in calligraphy had kept pace with the other artistic achievements of the Spanish Hebrews. Their Biblical manuscripts had a world-wide celebrity for accuracy of text and beauty of ornamentation. Many were illuminated with arabesques and floral designs executed in colors and embellished with gold. So highly were these copies of the Scriptures valued that in Spain one of but ordinary merit readily brought a hundred crowns.
The number of Hebrew writers who attained distinction in the Middle Ages was enormous. The great catalogue of Bartholoccius, which enumerates those of Spain, Italy, and France—countries particularly subject, directly and individually, to Arab influence—fills four volumes in folio and contains four thousand names. Among these, authors of Spanish origin largely predominate. The activity of the Hebrew intellect was not hampered by conventional restrictions of sex, nor deterred by the difficulties or demands of any profession or calling. Among that people, precautions arising from Oriental jealousy, which had been observed from time immemorial, required the seclusion of women; and this custom was naturally[162] unfavorable to female education. They were practically the slaves, first of their fathers, then of their husbands. In public they always appeared veiled from head to foot. In so little esteem were they ordinarily held, that it was not considered necessary to instruct them even in the doctrines of religion. Whatever talents, therefore, Jewish females possessed were, until the Saracen domination in Europe, unknown and undeveloped.
The educational facilities afforded the Moorish women under the beneficent sway of the Ommeyade khalifs, and the prominence attained by many of them in the world of letters, did not fail to exercise its influence upon the habits and the career of their Jewish sisters. This fact is of the greatest importance, in view of the strict subordination enforced upon Hebrew women in all periods of their history, a regulation largely due to their naturally dependent condition and their alleged intellectual inferiority. In the cultivated society of Cordova, the stubborn tenacity of long-established prejudice vanished before the enlightened and progressive spirit of the age. Under such circumstances, even the severe authority of the rabbis became, in a measure, relaxed; and while the names of no Jewish women pre-eminently distinguished for learning have come down to us, it is an unquestionable fact that they were allowed to enjoy, to an extent hitherto unprecedented, the literary advantages whose possession was generally admitted to constitute an exclusive privilege of the masculine sex. As the policy and traditions of the Synagogue discouraged such innovations, it is not strange that no record of their results has been preserved. The exhaustive researches of Kayserling have brought to light the name of a single Hebrew poetess, Xemosa, of the era of the khalifate; but all particulars of time[163] and locality, of her literary career, and of the character of her works are missing.
The most remarkable peculiarity of the Hebrew character was its versatility. In every pursuit in which his talents were employed the Jew of Spanish origin rose to unrivalled distinction. The marvellous erudition and diversified accomplishments of their scholars were not inferior to those of the Moorish philosophers of Cordova in the most glorious days of Moslem dominion. They became equally proficient in many branches of abstruse science, any one of which was sufficient to exhaust the mental resources of an ordinary student. Their eminence in the practice of medicine gave rise to the popular belief that an admixture of Jewish blood was absolutely essential to success in that profession, an opinion not confined to the vulgar, but seriously discussed by a learned Italian historian. The fact that the study of astronomy should have been almost always combined with that of medicine is one of the most singular incidents in the annals of literature. It might be explained by a predilection for astrology, if Hebrew intelligence had not long outgrown the belief in that delusion, so prevalent in the infancy of knowledge. In familiarity with the visible heavens, with the motions of the planets, and the relative position of stars, in accuracy of mathematical calculation, in dexterous use of the astrolabe and the armillary sphere, they surpassed all other observers except the Arabs. So popular was this science among them in Spain during the thirteenth century that the Jewish astronomers of Toledo alone exceeded in numbers all the others of Christian Europe combined. The invaluable services they rendered to learning were not inferior to the ingenious methods by which they facilitated international communication and promoted the convenience and security of trade. When suddenly expelled from France by[164] Philip Augustus, they left with Christians in whom they could confide their personal property, which, from its bulk or its value, they were unable to carry with them. After their arrival in Italy, they drew through Lombard merchants upon the custodians of their chattels, either for the goods themselves or for the cash realized from their sale. In this way Europe became indebted to the Jews for the general introduction of bills of exchange, previously invented by their countrymen at Barcelona, which from a benefit to mercantile transactions in the settlement of foreign obligations have now grown to be a commercial necessity.
Popular prejudice against the Hebrew nationality was aggravated, not only because of the eminent ability in matters of literature and finance, implying superiority, which it displayed, but on account of its control of the markets of the world and of its possession of the greater part of the money in circulation west of the Bosphorus. From the tenth century, when the Moorish ports of Southern Spain had become the emporiums of the Mediterranean, to the sixteenth, when the discovery of Columbus and the passage of the Cape of Good Hope had opened a new field to the cupidity and ambition of Europe, the trade of three great continents was subservient to the enterprise of the Jews. The commercial heritage bequeathed to their allies by the Phœnicians had endured through changes of empire, through the wrecks of successive dynasties, through persecutions of incredible atrocity, for more than twenty centuries.
The persistency which is a marked ethnological peculiarity of the Jews is at once the cause and the effect of their claim to Divine favor. The more intelligent of that people have never expected the appearance of a personal Messiah. They regard the popular myth of his coming as symbolizing the[165] termination of national exile,—a mere allegorical allusion to the eventual independence and tranquillity which hope, deepening through ages into belief, assured them would one day be the condition of their race. This conviction, founded rather in the knowledge of its justice than in any well-defined prospect of its realization, sustained them through a long series of grievous trials and misfortunes. Accused of crimes such as the utmost ingenuity of malice has never imputed to any other sect, they retaliated by acts of self-sacrifice and generosity. In the midst of the futile solemnities of the Church, the pomp of processions, the intonation of litanies, the muttering of prayers, the smoking of censers, the exhibition of relics, they administered the remedies of scientific medicine to the suffering stricken with the pestilence. During the first visitation of the plague at Venice, in addition to a liberal donation, they lent the government a hundred thousand ducats for the relief of the poor. In time of national peril, their loyalty never faltered, except when their spirit had been exasperated by continued oppression. The funds they advanced were employed to drive the Arabs out of Spain. Moorish domination, established through their instrumentality, was thus indebted to their contributions for its overthrow. The most exacting requirements of retributive justice were certainly satisfied with the penalty exacted by fate for this perfidious act of ingratitude.
Modern prejudice, like mediæval ignorance, is reluctant to confess the obligations learning owes to Hebrew genius and industry. The Jews were, in turn, the teachers, the pupils, and the coadjutors of the Moors; the legatees and the distributors of the precious stores of Arab wisdom. The rabbis, few of whom, it may be remarked, were not expert workmen in the mechanical trades, a knowledge of which was enjoined by their religion, spread the love of letters[166] everywhere. All treatises in Arabic, of practical or scientific value, were translated into Hebrew. Their familiarity with every branch of classical literature is apparent in their writings; even the Fables of Æsop were reproduced in their language. Purity of diction and elegance of style were striking characteristics of all the literary productions of the Spanish Jews. The most eminent Christian prelates of Spain during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were apostate rabbis. The proficiency of their medical practitioners has already been repeatedly alluded to. For years after the banishment of the Jews from the Peninsula, entire districts remained without the benefits of medical treatment. Such as were able resorted to foreign countries at great expense and inconvenience; the vast majority of invalids suffered without relief. The reputation of the Hebrew was so great, even in the sixteenth century, that Francis I. sent to the Emperor Charles V. for a Jewish physician; and one who had been converted to Christianity having undertaken the journey to Paris, the French king refused to receive him as soon as he learned that he was an apostate. Hebrew erudition exercised no small influence on both Moorish and Spanish literature. Many of the treatises of the Jewish philosophers, written in Arabic, enjoyed a wide circulation in the cultivated society of the khalifate and of the principalities which succeeded it. The first biography of the Cid was written by Ibn-Alfange, a Jew. The collection of tales entitled El Conde Lucanor, by Don Juan Manuel, is borrowed from a composition of similar character by Moses Sephardi, a Hebrew fabulist.
In the works of all the distinguished Jewish writers who had either directly or remotely been subjected to the influence of the Moslem academies of Spain, Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic opinions prevail. Orthodox Judaism could not survive in the atmosphere of those[167] infidel institutions. The rabbis were, without exception, to a greater or less degree, infected with pantheistic ideas. They were firm believers in the heretical doctrine of Emanation and Absorption. In common with their Arabic associates, who had long since repudiated the legends of the Koran, they accepted in all its portentous significance the aphorism, “Science is religion.”
Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the Jews of the Middle Ages than their survival under persecution. The most awful calamities failed to impair their organization or destroy their faith. They were naturally a rebellious people. Their ancient history is a tale of breaches of faith, treason, and sedition. They were enslaved in a body by Egiza, King of the Visigoths, for a conspiracy which aimed at the overthrow of the monarchy. The Crusaders, inflamed by the harangues of the clergy, on their march to Palestine butchered them wherever found. In France alone a hundred thousand were massacred by the truculent soldiers of the Cross. The Almohade fanatics drove them out of Spain. Philippe le Bel confiscated their property and expelled them from his kingdom. Henry III., of England, sold all the Jews in his dominions to his brother Richard for a large sum of money. The Emperor Louis IV. pawned the Hebrew colony of the city of Spires, like so much merchandise, to the Bishop as security for a debt. In Aragon, at the close of the fifteenth century, fifty thousand were put to death and double that number compelled to renounce their religion. The popes alternately treated them with severity and indulgence, as the financial condition of the Holy See was prosperous or necessitous. Thus, while grievously oppressed in other countries of Europe, they often enjoyed temporary immunity in Italy. Possessed of no civil rights, existing only by sufferance, they were[168] the prey of every one clothed for the moment with power. Church and State, alike, regarded them as a most valuable source of income. The money annually extorted from the Jewish population of a kingdom was frequently far in excess of all other revenues combined.
The Hebrew works of mediæval antiquity contain the germs of scientific discoveries which modern pride is pleased to designate as of comparatively recent origin. In the Zohar, a collection of treatises belonging to the Kabbala, are embodied highly philosophic cosmological ideas, and rational conceptions relating to the vital principle of Nature, and the scientific treatment of disease, which were subsequently applied to public instruction and practical use in the famous schools of Salerno and Montpellier. The various physiognomical changes wrought upon the lineaments of the human countenance by the cultivation of benevolent instincts or the indulgence of evil passions are there described with a faithfulness which points to an extraordinary insight into the incentives and desires which control the actions of men. In this remarkable compilation of Hebrew learning, the doctrine of Pantheism, as suggested by the time-honored philosophy of India, is set forth; the globular form of the earth, its diurnal revolution on its axis, the varying phases of that planet, the difference in the length of day and night at the equator and the poles, and the scientific reasons for the existence of these phenomena, are all described with an accuracy which is wonderful when the general ignorance of the epoch during which these opinions, so far in advance of the time, were promulgated, is remembered. In the thirteenth century, Jedediah-ben-Abraham, of Béziers, advanced the hypothesis that all objects impelled in opposite directions, and undisturbed by other forces, move in straight lines,—the essential element of one of the[169] laws now universally recognized as governing the motions of the heavenly bodies. Solomon-ben-Virga, a Spanish refugee, in his historical treatise, Sebeth-Jehuda, published in the sixteenth century, states that the earth, equally attracted by the surrounding stars, remains suspended in the midst of space; an unmistakable conception of the principle of gravity which antedates its republication in Europe by more than a hundred years. The philosophical truths just enumerated, which anticipate the important discoveries of Boerhaave, Lavater, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, afford a suggestive idea of the attainments of the rabbis, the accuracy of their reasoning, and the extent and profundity of their scientific knowledge.
While Jewish exiles were instrumental in awakening the spirit which inspired the Renaissance, and the consequent intellectual regeneration of Europe, their literature produced no inconsiderable effect upon the fortunes of that other momentous revolution which changed its religious aspect, the Protestant Reformation. The right of unrestricted perusal and private interpretation of the Scriptures, which was the vital principle of that movement, had always been enjoyed by the Hebrews. Their commentaries on the Bible were surprisingly voluminous: whole libraries were composed of them. The writings of the rabbis which elucidated obscure passages of Holy Writ were composed in a spirit of judicious toleration, entirely foreign to the policy dictated by bigoted ecclesiasticism and Papal authority. To exercise private judgment in religious matters was to invite the discipline of the Inquisition. Not one priest in ten thousand understood a word of Hebrew. Its study was prohibited to Catholics as conducive to heresy. On the other hand, Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, Zwinglius, Conrad, in short, all the great Reformers, were thoroughly proficient in that language. Rabbinical literature exerted[170] a powerful influence on their minds, inspired their efforts, provoked their rivalry, confirmed their resolution. In this respect, as in numerous others, posterity owes much to the despised Israelites of the mediæval era. A vast interval of time divides the ages of Abd-al-Rahman I. and Luther; the cities of Cordova and Worms are separated by many hundred leagues; but the inherent ideas of personal liberty and private right recognized on the banks of the Guadalquivir ultimately prevailed in the centre of Germany, once the most unlettered of countries. Thus the inheritance of barbarism, rendered possible by Roman decadence, transmitted by Goth, Hun, and Vandal, and perpetuated for the material interests of the Church, was supplanted by the labors and the example of rabbinical industry and learning. The epoch of ignorance, during which men feared to be enlightened by a people whose transcendent knowledge was believed to be of infernal origin, was past; but their disabilities were never entirely removed, and Jew-baiting is, unfortunately, still a popular diversion in some of the countries of Europe.
The importance of the invention of printing was at once understood and appreciated by the Jews. Ten years after it became known, their presses in Italy produced typographical works of extraordinary beauty and excellence. Their prominence in every movement directed towards the weakening of superstition and the emancipation of the human intellect did not prevent them from sustaining intimate and confidential relations with the Holy See. The Papacy was, as a rule, not unfavorably inclined towards them; it borrowed their money, and availed itself of their talents in the conduct of public affairs. Many Jews of Rome attained to great political distinction. Jehid was the financial minister of Alexander III.; and the son of a wealthy Hebrew merchant, named Pietro il[171] Buono, is known to posterity as the anti-pope Anacletus. Such were the Hebrews of the Middle Ages, whose success in literature, art, science, commerce, politics, and diplomacy is to be attributed to the impulse originally imparted to their genius, and to the privileges enjoyed by their ancestors, under the generous and tolerant policy of the Khalifs of Cordova.
The expulsion of the Spanish Jews is one of the saddest and most deplorable tragedies in history. The royal edict which decided their fate, and whose execution had been deferred until the Moorish wars were ended, was published March 31, 1492. The charge brought against them of having menaced the security of the State and the tranquillity of the Church, by projected conspiracy, is too absurd to be seriously considered. To strengthen these unfounded accusations, the threadbare fables relating to the sacrifice of Christian infants at Easter, and the repeated solicitation of Catholics to apostasy, were once more utilized to inflame the passions of the fanatical multitude. Three months only were allowed for the disposal of their property and the completion of their preparations for departure; and, if that term were exceeded, the proclamation made them liable to the seizure of their chattels, and even to the penalty of death. They were prohibited from removing from the kingdom money or vessels of gold or silver; and the only objects specified in the royal ordinance which they were permitted to retain were bills of exchange and portable effects which could easily be transported. The Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, revered in the annals of the Church as one of her most famous champions, and the confessor of Queen Isabella, to whose credit stand the tortures of a hundred thousand heretics and the grief and misery of other unnumbered multitudes, was the inspiring spirit of this atrocious crime against humanity. His influence neutralized[172] the supplications of an entire people; the remonstrances of the few statesmen who, withstanding the popular clamor, foresaw the certain decline of commercial prosperity incident to the enforcement of this measure; the insidious and hitherto omnipotent agency of vast sums of gold. Accounts differ materially as to the number of Jews expelled from Spain; it was, however, not less than four hundred thousand, and was probably near a million. Their sufferings equalled, if they did not surpass, those of the Moriscoes, afterwards condemned by a similar proscription. The air was filled with their lamentations. Many remained for days in the cemeteries, weeping over the graves of their ancestors. The majority who travelled by land went on foot. With the exiles departed the greater portion of the learning, the skill, the wealth, the industry, and the prosperity of Spain. Their estates were confiscated by the crown. Rigid personal search was made of every individual for concealed valuables, which impelled many to swallow their gold. Brigands stripped them on the highway. Sailors robbed them on the sea. Their wives were ravished, their children despatched before their eyes. Many perished from want of food. A pestilence decimated an entire company, and the survivors were abandoned to die on a desert island, without water or shelter. Great numbers were sold by their barbarous custodians to slave traders. The inadvertent disclosure of wealth was fatal to its possessor; he was at once thrown overboard, and his property became the spoil of the murderer. Those who landed in Morocco were not permitted to enter the cities, and a famine which at that time was desolating the country made it impossible for such an increased population to obtain subsistence. Encamped in the arid desert, they were compelled to have recourse to unwholesome roots and herbs in a desperate effort to sustain life. Thousands died of[173] exposure. Many sold their children to avoid starvation. A large proportion of these refugees landed in Italy, where an enlightened public sentiment stood ready to profit by the wealth and industry that the narrow spirit of Spanish bigotry was so determined to throw away. Pope Alexander VI., the head of the house of Borgia, notwithstanding that the prominent Israelites of Rome offered him a thousand pieces of gold to exclude them, received the heretics proscribed by the most Catholic sovereigns with the utmost consideration and sympathy. The maritime states of the Adriatic compelled their Hebrew citizens, who, fearing commercial rivalry, were inclined to regard this influx of strangers with disfavor, to render substantial assistance to their unfortunate brethren. In Holland, also, the exiles were welcomed with a hospitality that in after years the advantages derived from their establishment abundantly repaid. The antipathy entertained by the Spanish populace towards the Jews, diligently fostered by the infamous arts of the Inquisition, was far from being dissipated by the banishment and extermination of the victims of its malevolence; in default of the living, its vengeance was wreaked upon the dead. Nearly a century after the expulsion, when an avowed Israelite could not be found in the Spanish monarchy, the Hebrew cemetery at Seville was invaded by a mob; the costly monuments were battered into fragments; the graves opened and rifled, and the mouldering bones found in them burned to ashes. A considerable booty in gold and silver trinkets, jewels, precious stuffs, and illuminated manuscripts rewarded this act of sacrilege, whose authors were neither molested nor punished by the authorities.
Among the most eminent victims of Jewish persecution was the great statesman and scholar, Abarbanel. No name in letters stood higher than his. In turn, the[174] favorite and absolute minister of the sovereigns of Portugal, Spain, and Naples, he shared the fate of his countrymen, and, deprived of his offices and home in each of these kingdoms, was three times driven into exile. Such was the respect which his talents inspired, that the princes who had been foremost in persecuting him were glad to avail themselves of his experience in settlements of important questions of diplomacy. His literary ability was so great that his admirers have classed him with Maimonides. In philosophy he was most liberal; in religion a polemic; in politics, strange to say, a republican. In private or in public life no stain or dishonor ever attached to his name.
The scenes witnessed during the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal were even more shocking in their barbarity than those that characterized their expatriation from any other country of Christian Europe. Only two months were allowed them to settle their affairs; if any remained beyond that time they were condemned to slavery. All males under the age of fourteen were to be separated from their relatives, that they might be brought into the pale of the Church, which aimed at the annihilation of their race. The latter part of the inexorable sentence was the first to be executed. The screaming boys were torn from the arms of their parents, who were brutally clubbed until they released their hold; many distracted mothers, unable to sustain the loss of their children, committed suicide or killed their offspring; of the latter some were cast into wells, others were strangled. Every obstacle was thrown in the way of the departure of the Jews until the limited time had expired, and then nearly the entire number was enslaved. Apostasy was now the only remedy for their distressed condition, and this many embraced. Their social status was thereby immensely improved at the expense of their conscience. They contracted distinguished alliances with[175] their recent oppressors, and their children were adopted into the families of the nobility.
The Spanish Jews, by reason of the peculiarities of their situation, the hostility of their rulers,—which their pecuniary resources and natural acuteness often baffled, yet never entirely overcame,—and their successive domination by races of different origin, faith, and language, were impressed with mental characteristics and peculiarities not to be met with in their brethren of other countries. Their rigid formalism was proverbial, and the Hebrew of Toledo observed more conscientiously the precepts of the Pentateuch and the Talmud than the Hebrew of Damascus or Jerusalem. But their traditional reserve did not prevent them from soliciting proselytes; and it is stated that the rabbis, ignoring the prohibitory injunctions of the national Code, upon one occasion challenged the bishops to a debate, in presence of the throne, upon the merits of their respective systems; an act of audacity which does not seem to have excited even the surprise of the prelates of that age. The Spanish grandee prides himself upon his Gothic ancestry, the sangre azul, whose presence is presumed to indicate conclusively that in the ascending line can be found no progenitor of the despised Semitic race. The falsity of this presumption was, however, established by the councils convoked by royal authority at Burgos, Valladolid, and Madrid during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to settle the question of purity of blood. According to the statutes adopted by these Informaciones de Nobleza, as they were called, descent from a Jewish ancestor was solemnly declared to be no blemish upon a noble escutcheon, a decision which affected not a few of the oldest and haughtiest families of Castile and Aragon.
There are to-day few of the great houses of Portugal and Spain which have not an admixture of[176] Hebrew blood. Works have been published by ecclesiastics tracing this contaminated lineage to its source, which all the authority of a despotic government was not able to suppress. It is said that the Portuguese King Joseph I. once ordered every male of Jewish descent in his dominions to wear a yellow hat. The Marquis of Pombal appeared with three; and on being asked by the King for what use he intended them, he answered, “In obedience to the royal decree, I have brought one for Your Majesty, one for the Grand Inquisitor, and one for myself.” This anecdote, whose authenticity is well established, shows the extent to which the blood of a once proscribed and persecuted people, despite all attempts at its annihilation, had been infused into the veins of the proudest and most exclusive aristocracy in Europe.
[177]
Scarcity of Information concerning the Tributary Christians—Supremacy of the Church under the Visigoths—Independence of the Spanish Hierarchy—Its Wealth—Civil Organization of the Christians under the Moors—Their Privileges—Restrictions imposed upon Them—Freedom of Worship—Churches, Monasteries, and Convents—Conditions in Sicily—Greater Severity of the Laws in that Island—Anomaly in the Ecclesiastical Government of Spain—The Khalif the Virtual Head of the Church—Abuse of His Power—Results of the Arab Occupation of Septimania—Increased Authority of the Spanish Hierarchy resulting from its Isolation—Social Life of the Christian Tributaries—Their Devotion to Arab Learning—They are employed by the Khalifs in Important Missions—Innate Hostility of Moslem and Christian—Number and Influence of the Renegades—The Martyrs—Causes of Persecution—Contrast between the Maxims and Policy of the Two Religions—Impediments to Racial Amalgamation.
No portion of Spanish annals presents such difficulties to historical research as that which relates to the condition of the Christians under the Moorish domination. Arab writers, usually so minute and circumstantial in their narratives, have scarcely mentioned the subject. The extraordinary conduct of the martyrs, who courted death by open violation of Moslem law, seems alone to have attracted their attention or deserved their notice. From this significant silence the inference would seem to be that the great mass of Christian tributaries were contented and peaceable. We learn from St. Eulogius and other eminent ecclesiastics that the majority of the conquered race had apostatized. It is with unconcealed[178] feelings of sorrow and vexation that they refer to the widespread defection from the ancient faith. Even among those whose constancy was unshaken, the zealots were in a minority. It is not strange, therefore, that the Arabs should have considered the latter as irresponsible persons, whose offences, unpardonable under the Code of Islam, were punished because the law permitted the exercise of no discretion on the part of the magistrate. It is evident that those who solicited the honors of martyrdom were not regarded as representatives of either their sect or their nationality. The Moorish historians recount the voluntary sacrifice of those enthusiasts with every manifestation of wonder and pity. It was not until their obstinacy, provoking dissension and revolt, began to menace the safety of the government, that their language reveals a feeling of vindictiveness against their misguided tributaries.
On the other hand, little information of value is to be gleaned from the Christian chroniclers. Those who have related the events of their times were all members of the persecuted faction. Both contemporary and subsequent writers were blinded by prejudice and actuated by every motive of sectarian bigotry to the perversion of the truth. Prolix in their enumeration of the sufferings of martyrs, their accounts of all other occurrences are remarkable for extreme meagreness of detail. No descriptions are given of the social relations of the dominant and subject races; no direct mention is ever made of the thousand incidents constantly transpiring in the intercourse of the two peoples, trivial in themselves, yet most important in forming a correct idea of the character, the aspirations, and the life of a nation. Such matters, so interesting to posterity as depicting the manners of a class during a period conspicuous in history, were too insignificant for the pen of the monkish annalist, and[179] must now be gathered at random from the narratives of other events, in the elucidation of which they have been casually and undesignedly mentioned. The works of these ecclesiastical writers are filled with errors. They are, as usual, overloaded with absurd legends and spurious miracles. It is apparent, even from a superficial perusal, that not only the sufferings, but the virtues of the saints whose lives they describe are largely fictitious and often exaggerated. To such authorities, therefore, little credit can be given by the historian.
No people mentioned in history ever attained to a high rank in the scale of civilization whose policy was founded on the systematic repression of religious opinions. Theological intolerance is the most serious of obstacles to intellectual progress. Among the great nations of antiquity, freedom in religious matters was generally conceded as a matter of right. Where invasions of that right occurred, they may almost invariably be traced to interference with the established government. The intimate connection of political and religious institutions in those times will readily account for occasional examples of apparent persecution. The most eminent Athenian statesmen not infrequently performed the functions of priest in the ceremonial of public worship. The title of Pontifex Maximus was one of the most honorable and coveted of the dignities of the Republic of Rome, and under the Empire it conferred additional distinction upon the attributes and the exercise of imperial power. Under that wise and politic dispensation, the gods of foreign countries were admitted into the national pantheon on an equal footing with the domestic divinities, and none could claim an excessive and undue pre-eminence in the national system. It was not until the Christians profaned the altars, and excited mutiny in the army, that their privileges were curtailed and their religious[180] ceremonies interrupted. The conditions formerly prevailing were then revolutionized. Indulgence was followed by persecution. Persecution disclosed and produced tens of thousands of proselytes. The experience of the Christian sect suggested the perpetuation in its religious constitution of the incomparable political system of the empire, a measure which in the end contributed so largely to its success, its discipline, and its permanence. In no country subject to the authority of the Papacy were the effects of these advantages of imperial organization more apparent than in the Spanish Peninsula.
During the era of Visigothic supremacy the influence of the Church was paramount in every department of the civil administration. Its councils regulated the succession, framed the laws, chose the sovereign. Its servants dictated every measure of national policy. Its sanction imparted a sacred character to the royal edicts. Eminent prelates, who even in trivial matters never permitted the pretensions of their order to be subordinated to the interests of the crown, constituted in reality the supreme power of the state. They negotiated treaties. They participated in campaigns. They imposed and collected taxes. In repeated contests with the nobility they generally emerged victorious. Their intellectual acquirements, superficial as they were, gave them a decided advantage over their illiterate and often brutal antagonists. The authority they obtained by superior knowledge, craft, and energy was in time confirmed by habit and strengthened by prescription. That authority, based upon public veneration and extending through countless generations, has often been shaken, but never abolished. The disastrous effects of its abuse are apparent in every period of Spanish history for more than a thousand years.
At the time of the Arab invasion, the Visigothic[181] hierarchy was at the summit of its importance and power. Its former adherence to the Arian heresy had engendered within it a spirit of independence, which was not relinquished with the return of the Spanish Church to the orthodox communion. The facility with which an entire people at the command of the monarch renounced the faith of their ancestors for unfamiliar and hitherto reprobated doctrines is one of the most extraordinary events in the annals of Christianity. Such a peaceful revolution, involving the most sacred interests of a numerous sect, affords incontestable proof of the slight hold possessed in those times by any religious dogma upon the popular mind. With the acceptance of the Athanasian creed was necessarily included the acknowledgment of Papal supremacy. The Gothic prelates, however, were never obsequious vassals of the Holy See. The Pope soon found that while he might solicit, he could not compel their obedience. His fulminations did not excite the terror in Spain which they did in other countries of Catholic Europe. Where he was not able to command, he was forced to flatter, to recommend, to temporize. A compact and powerful body of ecclesiastics, in whose hands were the government of their country and the election of its king, were naturally loath to submit to the arrogant dictation of a foreign potentate, whom their predecessors had regarded as a heretic, and whose faith they had adopted rather from policy than from sincere conviction.
The Spanish Church under the Visigoths was eminently worthy of the attention and the favor of the Holy Father. Its organization was thorough; its wealth enormous; its priesthood numerous and superior to their contemporaries in learning and ability; its national influence unrivalled. Its temples, in a country whose public monuments had least experienced the destructive effects of barbarian violence,[182] exhibited in their noble proportions and harmonious decoration the expiring efforts of classic taste and genius. The superb edifices of imperial power, visible on every side, had been at once the inspiration and the models of the ecclesiastical architect. The churches and cathedrals of the seventh and eighth centuries afforded the best examples of the ambition and opulence of the omnipotent hierarchy. Their plan was usually that of the basilica. Their walls were incrusted with precious marbles. Their floors were of mosaic. In the apse, where stood the altar, the skill of the artist exhausted itself in elaborate carvings, paintings, and sculpture. The sacred vessels were of solid gold and silver. Offerings of untold value, the tribute of grateful convalescents, were suspended before the shrine. The accession of each sovereign was marked by the donation of a magnificent votive crown to the Cathedral of Toledo. The pomp of worship in the Visigothic metropolis exceeded that of all others, excepting Constantinople and Rome. Its religious processions equalled in splendor those which awakened the pious enthusiasm of the devout in the metropolitan churches of those two famous capitals. The greatest deference was paid to the sacerdotal dignity. The congregation, when not kneeling, stood during the service. The women, always veiled, occupied galleries by themselves. No priesthood in Christendom was treated with more respect, enjoyed more extensive privileges, or lived in greater luxury than the Gothic clergy of Spain.
With the Arab occupation this imposing fabric of spiritual and temporal grandeur fell to the ground. The power of the hierarchy, formerly unlimited, vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Its sacred edifices were seized and devoted to the sacrilegious uses of the conqueror. The precious furniture of its altars[183] was deposited in the treasury of the khalif. Its revenues were confiscated. Many of its members fell victims to the rage of oppressed and injured vassals. Thousands of others fled almost penniless to Christian lands. Monks were enslaved and condemned to the performance of the most arduous and exhausting labors. Multitudes of nuns passed from the solitude and meditation of the cloister to the revelry and delights of the seraglio. In view of the popular opinions and prejudices of the time, it is not singular that this sudden and tremendous revolution should have been universally attributed to the vengeance of God.
When the first shock of conquest had passed, the overpowering terror inspired by the presence of the invaders subsided. They proved to be something very different from the incarnate demons which a distorted imagination had painted them. They were found to be lenient, generous, humane. The law of Mohammed had specifically designated the privileges of victory and the rights of the vanquished. The latter were not slow to recognize and accept the advantages arising from a speedy and unreserved submission, and were thus enabled to participate in the benefits of the civilization, almost from the very beginning inaugurated by their rulers.
The civil organization of the Christians under Moslem domination differed little from that under which they had been governed by the princes of Visigothic blood. The amount of tribute which permitted the free exercise of religious worship, the jurisdiction of their own tribunals, and the terms conferring the preservation and enjoyment of their national customs were definitely fixed by law. Each bishopric was assessed at the sum of one hundred ounces of silver annually, monasteries at fifty, churches at twenty-five. Individuals were classified according to their rank and possessions. The rich paid forty-eight dirhems, or[184] thirty-two dollars, per annum; the middle class, twenty-five dirhems; the laborer, twelve. From owners of land a tax upon its products of twenty per cent., called the Kharadj, was collected. Apostasy was rewarded by the remission of the former; the latter, however, was never abrogated. Women, children, cripples, beggars, and monks were exempt from all enforced contributions. Except in cases of obstinate resistance, private property was untouched. The wealth of the churches, except that of such as were expressly mentioned in treaties, was legitimate spoil. Under the rule of the Visigoths, the ownership of chattels was only conditional, and they could not be alienated; under the Moors, that ownership was absolute. The condition of the serfs that cultivated the royal demesnes—whose area was so vast that they embraced the fifth part of all confiscated territory—was greatly ameliorated. They still surrendered thirty-three per cent. of the crops, as under their former masters; but they were freed from the frequent and arbitrary impositions which often deprived them of the entire fruits of their labor. The conquest had caused the division of the extensive estates held by the privileged classes, and obtained by centuries of extortion and cruelty, into innumerable farms, a condition which facilitated cultivation and increased agricultural wealth. Many of these lands, formerly devoted to pasturage and to the sports of the nobility, were now improved, and under the skilful efforts of Moorish industry yielded immensely profitable returns.
Each Christian community was rigidly isolated from its Moslem neighbors. In the large cities, the quarter inhabited by the tributaries was walled, and at sunset the gates were closed. A count of their own selection, who was generally of noble blood, discharged the functions of governor and collected the[185] taxes, of which he rendered an account to the Divan. The proceedings of the judicial tribunals were conducted by Christian magistrates under the forms of Visigothic law. All disputes between Christians were decided there, and criminals paid the penalty of their misdeeds as prescribed by the ancient statutes. No sentence of death, however, could be executed without the approval of the Moslem authorities. Suits in which a Mohammedan was a party, and prosecutions where he was either the participant in, or the victim of, a crime, were removed from the jurisdiction of the Christian courts. The Code of Islam prescribed certain regulations to be observed by all tributaries, and obedience to which was a consideration for the protection which the latter enjoyed. Blasphemy of the Prophet or of his religion, entrance into a mosque, and apostasy were capital offences. Upon these points the law was inexorable. Violation of the chastity of a Moslem woman was also punishable with death, a penalty which, however, might be averted by the offender embracing the Mohammedan faith. The repetition of the familiar formula of Islam, even in jest, carried with it a renunciation of all former creeds, and an assumption of the responsibilities of a believer which could never thereafter be relinquished. These laws, while apparently of a religious character, were, owing to the Moslem constitution which united the functions of both spiritual and temporal sovereignty, vitally necessary to the dignity and maintenance of government. Christian fanatics, blinded by prejudice and eager for martyrdom, regarded them as unreasonable and tyrannical restrictions, whose public violation was a duty which they owed to their sect; meritorious, not only as evincing contempt for a detested religion, but as affording opportunities for exhibitions of self-sacrifice, certain to elicit the praise of their companions, and likely to deserve the coveted[186] honor of canonization. All, therefore, that was required of the Christians living under Moslem jurisdiction was that they should pay tribute regularly and obey the laws of the land.
To insure the protection to which they were entitled, and to secure them from insult and oppression, a special magistrate was appointed, under the khalifs, to watch over their interests and supervise their conduct. This official, whose title was that of katib, or secretary, was invested with extraordinary powers, and was usually a noble of distinguished rank as well as a personage of high consideration in the Divan.
At the time of the Conquest, a certain number of churches were set aside for Christian worship; but that number could not be increased, nor could additions be even made to the ancient edifices. In case reconstruction or repairs were necessary, the identical old materials were required to be used. The stringency of these rules was, however, often relaxed by the generous indulgence of the authorities. The law which forbade that a building erected by a Christian should be of greater height than that of a Moslem was also frequently evaded. In Spain and Sicily the towers of church and cathedral often overtopped the minaret of the mosque, an implication of superiority which, in other countries of the Mohammedan world, would have caused their instant demolition. In those two kingdoms of Islam alone the use of bells was tolerated. Elsewhere, boards suspended by cords and beaten with mallets took their place and announced the opening of Christian service. The greatest liberty was permitted in the exercise of public worship. The clergy wore their sacred vestments. They discharged the duties of their holy calling in peace and security, and those who ventured to interfere with them were liable to severe punishment. They celebrated mass with all the pomp of the ancient Visigothic ceremonial.[187] The priest carried the viaticum to the dying, in solemn procession through the crowded streets. The bodies of the dead, enveloped in the smoke of tapers and incense, and preceded by chanting choristers, were borne to the cathedral for the performance of the final rites of the Church. The toleration of the Spanish Moslems even went to the extent of permitting the use of images—execrated as idolatrous by every follower of the Prophet—in Christian temples. Effigies of saints were by no means rare. In the Cathedral of Santa Maria at Cordova was a statue of the Virgin. Her shrine was famous for its sanctity, and, more accessible than that of Santiago, yearly attracted multitudes of devout pilgrims from every part of Europe. In each church was preserved the body of the martyr to whom the sacred edifice was dedicated, and from whom it derived its name. The great city of Cordova contained six Christian houses of worship besides the cathedral. Eleven monasteries and convents offered a refuge to those who sought the devotional retirement of cloistered life. Of these, three were in the city and eight upon the wooded slopes of the Sierra Morena. Some, instituted probably with a view to the acquisition of increased merit by resistance to constant temptation, were occupied by both sexes under a single abbot. The monks appeared in cowl and tonsure; the nuns were constantly veiled. All members of the monastic orders, as well as those of the secular priesthood, traversed at will and unmolested the streets of the capital. St. Eulogius, Cyprian, Samson, and other contemporaneous ecclesiastical writers bear repeated and voluntary testimony to the indulgent forbearance extended to Christians by the Khalifs of Cordova.
In Sicily, practically the same conditions prevailed. As, however, the indigenous population overwhelmingly exceeded in number that of the invaders, toleration[188] was necessary for the maintenance of public tranquillity, and was, in fact, a measure of expediency as well as of justice. The civil organization of the Byzantine Empire was continued. The magistrates retained the same titles and exercised the same jurisdiction as formerly, subject always to the supervision of the officials of the Divan. The procedure of the ancient tribunals was but slightly modified. The rights of person and property were fully recognized. Freedom of worship was guaranteed to all law-abiding tributaries. Taxation was uniform and regular; the legal impositions were far less onerous than those exacted by the tyrannical rapacity of the Greek administration. Under the Moors, all persons whose condition or infirmities prevented them from obtaining a livelihood were exempt; the Byzantine fiscal agents carried their merciless perquisitions into the abodes of helplessness, disease, and destitution. The Moslem law regulating the distribution of estates and the rights of heirs was so admirably adapted to the purpose, that it was continued, with trifling modifications, by the Normans, after it had been in force for nearly two centuries. No lands were confiscated but those which had been abandoned by their owners. The number of these was so great that they afforded ample space for the settlements of the Saracen colonists, who occupied the most valuable portions of the States of Trapani, Palermo, and Agrigentum.
The restrictions imposed upon the Sicilian Christians were more harsh than the requirements exacted of their Spanish brethren. The general provisions of the Mohammedan code relating to the prohibited acts of misbelievers were, of course, rigidly enforced. The Christian priests of Sicily, like those of Spain, were compelled to perform the rites of their religion behind closed doors. Like them also, they were forbidden to publicly discuss the merits of their creed or to attempt[189] to secure proselytes. The laws of that island, considering the numerical weakness of the dominant race, were strangely severe. As tokens of degradation, peculiar marks were placed upon the houses of Christians; they were restricted to a costume distinctive in materials and color, and wore girdles of woollen cloth or leather. They were forbidden to mount a horse, to own saddles, to bear arms. They could not use seals with Arabic inscriptions or give their children Arabic names. In the streets they gave way to their Saracen masters, and always stood with bowed heads in their presence. Drinking wine in the sight of a Mussulman was visited with exemplary punishment. No Christian woman was allowed to remain in the bath with a Mohammedan, even though the latter were one of the humblest maid-servants of the harem. If one of the tributary sect admitted the slave of a Mussulman into his house, he was liable to a heavy fine. The ringing of the bells of church or monastery loudly was prohibited, as was also the reading of the Scriptures in the hearing of the followers of the Prophet. No Christian could cross himself in public. The slightest interference with Moslem worship was punishable with death.
Despite these arbitrary and often oppressive laws, the condition of the Christians of Sicily was, upon the whole, far more agreeable and prosperous under the Arabs than it had been under the Greeks. Relief from arbitrary taxation made secure the profits of industry. Every branch of commerce was open to the enterprising. The system of guilds and corporations, which had existed among tradesmen since the Roman domination, remained unimpaired. If a Christian distrusted the integrity or capacity of his own magistrate, he was at liberty to submit his cause to the kadi, who rendered judgment according to the maxims and precedents of Moslem jurisprudence.
[190]
In the Spanish Peninsula, the government of the Church presented a strange and portentous anomaly. As the representative of Islam was a member of the family of the Ommeyades, which had, in the beginning, exerted all the influence of a powerful caste to overwhelm its founder and render his teachings odious, so now the interests of Christianity were delivered over to the tender mercies of its hereditary and most unrelenting foe. The Visigothic sovereigns, chosen by ecclesiastical councils, were, by virtue of their election, clothed with a certain degree of sanctity, and enjoyed an ample measure of spiritual power. The monarch practically controlled the policy of the Church. His decision was final in all matters not important enough to be submitted to the assembled wisdom of the great ecclesiastical dignitaries of the kingdom. He consecrated bishops. He exercised without question the sacerdotal rights of presentation, translation, investiture. He convoked councils. The fate of every member of the hierarchy, from acolyte to archbishop, was in his hands. Even the metropolitan see of Toledo, the primacy of Spain, could not be filled without his sanction. He could appoint the most unworthy candidate to the most exalted station in the priesthood. He could arbitrarily depose ministers whose lives had exhibited the practice of every Christian virtue. He interpreted and dictated the application of intricate points of ecclesiastical law. Notwithstanding the apparent ascendency of the sacerdotal order in the temporal affairs of the government on the one hand, it was largely neutralized on the other by the influence of the Crown over the fortunes of the Church, an influence always weighty and often predominant.
These prerogatives, dangerous to religious liberty and liable to abuse even in the hands of an orthodox sovereign, were transmitted, in all their force, to the[191] Arabian khalifs, as the lords of the lost heritage of the Visigothic kings. The principle upon which such authority could pass to the head of a hostile sect, whose sworn purpose was the annihilation of the very religion which he was presumed, by virtue of his office, in duty bound to protect, has not been, and never can be, explained by any considerations of honor, consistency, or equity. It was practically a flagrant usurpation of privileges for which the Moslem sovereign could not allege even a shadow of right. It was not conferred by conquest. It could not be accounted for under the color of a legal fiction. Supremacy in ecclesiastical government, where the practice of public worship was guaranteed by treaty, and the clergy purchased by tribute the management of their affairs and the enforcement of discipline, certainly was not implied by the fact that it had been enjoyed by the ruling prince of the vanquished faith. Its peaceful exercise for centuries—for its validity does not seem to have been questioned in the writings of even the most bigoted ecclesiastics—is one of the most singular problems of religious history.
The consequences of this anomalous condition were, as may readily be conjectured, fatal to the dignity and order of the Catholic hierarchy. The khalif was, to all intents and purposes, the spiritual head of two hostile religions,—one of which it was his duty, as well as his inclination, to exalt; the other of which he was prompted by the prejudices of race, inheritance, and belief to destroy. There were few Hispano-Arab monarchs who did not contribute their share to the degradation of Christianity. The highest offices of the Church were put up at auction. The orthodoxy and fitness of the candidate were never considered; his qualifications were ignored; and his success was dependent upon the amount he was willing to disburse for the coveted dignity. In this scandalous traffic the[192] women of the harems and the eunuchs were the recognized agents of the purchaser. There was no secrecy about these transactions. The practice of simony was so universal that even the greatest offenders made no attempt to conceal it. A profligate canon, named Saul, entered into a written obligation to pay these corrupt intermediaries four hundred ounces of silver for the bishopric of Cordova. Some of those raised to the richest sees of the Peninsula were heretics or infidels. It was not unusual for a prelate, even during Holy Week, to abandon the service of the altar and indulge in the most shameless excesses of drunkenness and debauchery. The ordinances of the Church were interpreted by men ignorant of the first rudiments of ecclesiastical law. Priests, whose atheism was notorious, administered the sacraments with mock humility and imparted hypocritical consolation to the devout. If any of his flock eluded the search of the tax-collector, the bishop, more faithful to the power to which he owed his authority than to the interests of the congregation over which he presided, stood ready to furnish the desired information from the registers of the diocese, and to assist in the punishment of the delinquents. When a prelate disregarded the summons to a council, the vacancy was filled by the appointment of a Mussulman or a Jew. Such circumstances as these were not propitious to either sacerdotal welfare or successful proselytism.
Nor were abuses of power confined to the ecclesiastical system. The dignity of count, the most eminent office of the Christian magistracy, was also a subject of negotiation and barter. The opportunities it afforded for extortion and peculation made it one of the most lucrative employments in the gift of the khalif. It was ordinarily bestowed upon a member of the Visigothic nobility, but the rapacity of the eunuchs looked rather to the means than to the birth[193] of the aspirant; and persons of base origin and doubtful integrity not infrequently received the coveted distinction, which was utilized largely for the benefit of their patrons,—the fiscal officers and the degraded servitors of the harem. Count Servandus, the son of a slave, who lived during the reign of the Khalif Mohammed, has been handed down to the execration of all good Christians as one of the most cruel and infamous of oppressors. On a single occasion, he extorted from his unhappy vassals the enormous sum of a hundred thousand solidi, equal in our time to more than half a million dollars.
The various gradations of the hierarchy were preserved as before the Arab occupation. The archbishops had the usual number of suffragans subject to their jurisdiction; the lower orders of the clergy, their clerks, choristers, readers, and other subordinates. To exercise the office of priest it was necessary for both parents to be of the Christian faith; if the father were a Moslem, the law of the conqueror interposed its claim upon the candidate, who, regarded as a Mussulman by birth, was liable to condemnation for apostasy. Unlike the canonical practice of other Catholic countries, an ecclesiastic was eligible to offices of the most distinguished rank, even to the primacy itself, without being compelled to pass through the intermediate grades of the priesthood. There was no diminution of pomp or solemnity in the celebration of the rites of Christian worship. Councils for the regulation of church government and discipline were even more frequent than under the Visigoths; during the ninth century, three were held at Cordova alone in less than thirty-five years. In many of the monasteries, schools were established for the communication of instruction, on both sacred and profane subjects, to those whose religious scruples prevented them from profiting by the splendid opportunities[194] afforded by the great Arab institutions of learning. In some of these religious houses were extensive libraries, composed for the most part, however, of treatises of patristic science, polemics, and hagiology. To St. Eulogius, alarmed by the increasing influence of the Mussulman academies, which offered irresistible attractions to the Christian youth, is due the credit of having introduced to the notice of his countrymen the works of Horace, Virgil, Juvenal, and others of the Latin classics, copies of which he obtained during a visit to Navarre.
In Spain, as in Sicily, the influence of the Holy See disappeared with the advent of Moslem supremacy. The clergy of the khalifate became independent of the Papacy, and did not even recognize the authority of the Asturian priesthood, whose members held councils and promulgated canons, with a nominal allegiance to Rome. In the abeyance of Papal representation, the Metropolitan of Toledo was the supreme head of the Spanish hierarchy. The Christians of Sicily acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople. During the Moorish occupation of Southern France, the existing religion was scarcely interfered with. No counts were appointed to govern or oppress the conquered. No unworthy prelates were assigned to rich sees as the result of intrigue or corruption. Few churches were transformed into mosques. The only attempt to restrain the Christian tributaries was shown by a disposition to isolate, as far as possible, the clergy of the provincial settlements from those of the larger towns. The tolerance of Mussulman rule is disclosed by the great preponderance of the subject race existing at Narbonne, which was always rather a Christian than a Moslem capital.
The long independence of the Spanish Church exerted no inconsiderable influence upon its subsequent[195] history. Its isolation enabled it to preserve uncontaminated the ancient forms and discipline transmitted by ecclesiastical tradition from apostolic times. The authority of its councils or the validity of their canons was never questioned by the most exacting dignitaries of the Roman hierarchy after it had again acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Papal See. Its orthodoxy was never impeached. While Europe was distracted by heresy, no daring religious innovator threatened the integrity or disputed the power of the ecclesiastical government of the Peninsula. Its policy was inimical to change in organization, in ceremonial, in doctrine. Of all the religious ceremonials in Christendom its liturgy showed the least alteration, not even excepting that used in St. Peter’s at Rome. When in 1067 King Alfonso of Leon submitted the rival claims of the Gothic and Roman rituals first to the wager of battle and then to the ordeal of fire, the Christians of Arabian Spain resolutely adhered to the ancient and time-honored formulary. The only schisms recorded were those which sprang from the conflicting ambition of rival prelates. Under the iron rule of the khalifs no irregular councils assembled to disturb the harmony or excite the doubts of the Faithful. The principal abuse that existed was the fraudulent manufacture of charters, and the multitude of these pious forgeries whose spurious character has been exposed indicate at once the ease with which such documents could be issued, as well as the profit that must have attended their fabrication. The generally undisturbed condition of the Mozarabes under the sway of the House of Ommeyah is the best evidence of their enjoyment of the blessings of civil and religious liberty.
Their social customs and mode of life show in many particulars a close affiliation with their masters. They had forgotten the rude idiom of their fathers.[196] Arabic was the language in common use among all classes of the tributary population, both Jew and Christian. It was an indispensable requisite of official position that the incumbent should possess a competent knowledge of that tongue. St. Eulogius repeatedly deplores the fact that its prevalence was universal in the Peninsula. Its popularity increased with time, and was so great during the domination of the Almoravides that the Archbishop of Seville caused the Bible to be translated into Arabic, in order that it might be intelligible to the priests of his diocese. The peculiar phrases of Moslem intercourse, such as “God preserve you!” “May you rest in heaven!” constantly on the lips of the reverent Mohammedan, formed part of the daily greetings of every Christian. They gave their children Arabic names. Their attire and their furniture were similar to those of the dominant race. The conspicuous tokens of degradation imposed upon the Mozarabes of Sicily were unknown in Spain even under the Almoravide bigots. The confidence reposed in their fidelity, and the respect with which their courage was regarded, were evinced by their constant enrolment in the body-guard of the khalifs. Partly from a desire to propitiate the favor of their rulers, and perhaps through conviction of their physiological benefits, they abstained from pork, and adopted the rite of circumcision,—concessions which, once granted, practically left the repetition of the Moslem formula the sole remaining barrier between the followers of Christ and the sectaries of Mohammed. These practices, elsewhere unknown to the Christian communities of Europe, excited the wonder and abhorrence of the stout old monk, John de Gorza, ambassador of the German Emperor to the court of Abd-al-Rahman. He denounced them in unmeasured terms to the Archbishop of Cordova, who excused their observance under the plea of necessity, and as customs[197] long countenanced by the Church, a statement which indicates that in the tenth century they had already been in use for many generations. In a spirit of charity, greatly at variance with the intolerant hatred displayed towards the Moors in subsequent ages, prayers were regularly offered for the khalif in every Christian church of Arabian Spain.
Every circumstance relating to the habits and intercourse of the two races which has come down to us proves that, openly at least, they did not consider each other as enemies. Great numbers of Christians embraced with eagerness the extraordinary educational benefits afforded by the schools and academies of the khalifate. The University of Cordova, open to individuals of every rank, creed, and nationality, was attended by Christian students, not only resident in the Peninsula, but attracted from almost every country of Europe. The infidel doctrines taught in that famous institution had long provoked the animadversion of Moslem theologians; but the prejudices they excited among orthodox Mussulmans were far less intense and bitter than the aversion entertained towards the professors of these opinions by the Catholic clergy. Intermarriages were frequent, although public sentiment, as well as the policy of Islam, discouraged such alliances. A far greater number of women than of men renounced their ancestral faith in consequence of these unions, and the majority of proselytes were those who embraced the religion of Mohammed.
Important civil employments were repeatedly conferred upon Christians eminent for their talents and integrity. The expostulations of the faquis and the united influence of the Divan were hardly sufficient to prevent Abd-al-Rahman III. from appointing a renegade, whose parents were both Christians, to the office of Grand Kadi of Cordova, the highest judicial position of the empire. The latter monarch habitually[198] employed Christian prelates in missions requiring the exercise of the greatest tact and ability. Rabi, Archbishop of Cordova, was sent on different occasions as envoy to the courts of Germany and Constantinople. It was he who was intrusted with the conveyance of valuable gifts from the Emperor of the East to the Khalif, among them the fountains of the palace of Medina-al-Zahrâ. The Bishop of Granada was selected to secure the withdrawal by the German Emperor of the scurrilous letter which the fanatic John de Gorza was charged to deliver, a task of great responsibility and one which few were either competent or willing to undertake. Another prelate of episcopal rank was also despatched by Abd-al-Rahman to congratulate Otho on his victory over the Hungarians. The predilection of Ali for members of the nominally prescribed sect constantly aroused the indignation and alarm of the Almoravide zealots.
Christians were not excluded from the most responsible posts of the Moorish fiscal administration. They discharged with skill and fidelity the duties connected with all the various employments of the revenue. To members of their sect was invariably committed the collection of the tribute due from their co-religionists. Thousands of them served in the Mussulman armies. When Barcelona was besieged by the Franks, the Christian residents of that city fought side by side with the Moslems against the orthodox King of Aquitaine. Of all nationalities, the Spanish Christians were considered most worthy to guard the sacred person of the khalif. At no period of the Arab domination were they absolutely excluded from court. Under the administration of the Almoravide sultan, Ali, who was conspicuous among the fanatical princes of his line for the strictness of his orthodoxy and the austerity of his manners, the Mozarabes were in high[199] favor, and exerted an almost preponderating influence in the government.
Although in theory belonging to an inferior caste, in fact the tributary could not, by the unpractised eye, be distinguished from the votary of Islam. His life, his habits, his language, were the same. His house was an exact counterpart of that of his Moorish neighbor; his garments were cut after the pattern of the Orient. His manners were no longer suggestive of the rudeness of his Gothic ancestors. When his means permitted, he went to great lengths in the gratification of propensities censured by the canons of his Church,—entertained catamites, indulged in polygamous practices, and filled his harem with female slaves guarded by retinues of eunuchs.
But while the line of demarcation between Moslem and Christian was thus faintly drawn, and threatened, in the course of time, to entirely disappear through the fusion of the two races, there still existed in the minds not only of the zealots of the hostile sects, but also in those of the masses, a profound and irreconcilable antipathy. This prejudice was sedulously and successfully nourished by the Mohammedan faquis as well as by the Christian clergy. The tributaries, while apparently on the point of merging into the body of the conquerors, were in reality isolated from them by the most powerful emotions that can influence the human heart. No concessions could thoroughly eradicate the prejudices arising from difference of religious belief. No familiarities of social intercourse could banish the humiliating remembrance of conquest. No political honors could compensate for the injuries inflicted by racial animosity. The actual condition of the Spanish Christians was, therefore, the reverse of that exhibited by their daily life. In the presence of a mutual antagonism, all the more violent for being repressed, there could be no thorough amalgamation[200] of races. The exalted spirit of religious enthusiasm which could voluntarily solicit the tortures of martyrdom was not propitious to national apostasy.
And yet the circumstances which appear most conspicuous and vital in the consideration of this ethnological paradox would seem to point to an opposite conclusion. A community of customs generally existed in which those of the Arab always predominated. The harems of the Moslems were filled with Christian maidens who had, without hesitancy or compensation, renounced the faith of their fathers. The corrupted Latin dialect of the Visigoths, proscribed by Hischem I., was almost extinct. The law forbade it to be either written or spoken; and it survived only in the massive volumes of the Fathers or in the secluded intercourse of the occupants of monasteries and convents. By the same decree of the Khalif, education in the Arabian schools was made compulsory. Alvarus, who wrote about the middle of the ninth century, declares that not one Christian could be found among a thousand who could compose a letter in Latin. On the other hand, the popularity of the Arab writers, and the enthusiasm with which their compositions were perused by persons of all ages, were in the eyes of pious ecclesiastics a national scandal. The growing inclination to apostasy, the natural result of these associations, was also one of the crowning grievances of the Spanish clergy. As heretofore stated, it is a fact, well established by the reluctant testimony of the Fathers themselves, that the greater part of the conquered nation had fallen away from Christianity.
Many causes had conspired to produce this lamentable condition of affairs. The geographical isolation of the Peninsula, which has always had a tendency to preserve unaltered the mental and physical characteristics of its people, has also had no unimportant influence upon the national faith. That country, even[201] at the time of the Saracen invasion, was Christian only in name. It had never wholly discarded its Pagan forms or traditions. It was the last kingdom of Europe to nominally accept the new religion. Its creed had long been heterodox, and that creed it had abandoned, without remonstrance or regret, at the command of its sovereign. The despotic power of the hierarchy had never been able to abolish the ceremonies of Pagan antiquity which were incorporated with the ritual of the Church. The population, the offspring of a score of nations, each of which worshipped different divinities and was familiar with the fraudulent pretensions of many sacerdotal claimants to inspiration, was inclined to discredit and deride them all. To such a society religious professions and formalities were naturally matters of indifference. A nation which could spontaneously abandon the heresy of Arius would hardly hesitate to embrace the monotheistic doctrines of Mohammed. By the Moslems, so far as their tributaries were concerned, no open inducements were offered for apostasy. The practice of Islam discouraged the active proselytism advocated by other sects. The conversion of a Christian tributary, unless he had violated the law, must be voluntary, and the obligation, once assumed, could never be renounced.
The favor enjoyed by the renegade was, however, a far more powerful incentive than any that the promises of the ministers of religion could evoke. The apostate was at once received into full social communion with his former masters. He was eligible to the highest political and military honors. In theory, at least, no stigma could attach to his former condition or antecedents. The equality of all men who professed belief in its dogmas was, as is well known, the cardinal principle of the law of the Prophet.
To the slave, these considerations appealed with[202] peculiar force. Tens of thousands of this oppressed and degraded caste had been transferred, at a single stroke by the fortunes of war, from the hands of one master to those of another. A host of captives had been taken in battle. In the minds of but few of these unfortunates the obligations of religion were deeply founded. While emancipation did not invariably follow the profession of the faith of Islam, it usually did; and the condition of the slave was always greatly improved by this concession to the prejudices of him who regulated his conduct and controlled his destiny. In view of these facts, there is little wonder that multitudes of slaves embraced the Mussulman doctrines.
The religious freedom of the Christians under Moslem rule was mainly dependent on the prejudices of their own clergy, the character of the dominant faction, and the temper of the sovereign. The provisions of the treaties which guaranteed their privileges were at first strictly observed. The general influx of fanatical foreigners, in time, however, created a strong public sentiment against the proscribed tributaries. They were sometimes deprived of their houses of worship. Arbitrary contributions were frequently exacted from them. On one occasion, the Christians of Cordova were compelled to pay into the treasury the sum of a hundred thousand pieces of gold, nearly a million and a quarter dollars. The revenues of the Church were so impaired by these grievous impositions, that ecclesiastics were often forced to engage in commercial pursuits to provide for the pressing necessities of their order. Some carried the manufactures of Cordova to Germany. Others journeyed as peddlers through France. The trading priest of Moorish Spain was well known in the markets of Genoa and Constantinople. Persons in clerical garb were no longer safe in public places. In the time of[203] the Almoravides, when a Christian passed through the streets, the crowd shrank from contact with him as from one stricken with the plague. Religious processions were pelted by mobs of hooting children, and those who took part in them were fortunate if they escaped without serious personal injury. The ringing of the church-bells provoked the loud threats and curses of intemperate zealots. The breaking up of a congregation during Holy Week was often the signal for a riot. The vengeance of Allah upon the idolater was invoked by the scoffing bystanders when the corpse of a Christian was consigned to the grave.
The clergy, against whom these insults were principally aimed, were naturally exasperated by the indignity suffered by their creed and their profession. Their ignorance, in spite of the example and the benefits of Moslem civilization ever before their eyes, was not less dense than that of their brethren of Catholic Europe. With every opportunity to familiarize themselves with the tenets of Islam, and thoroughly conversant with Arabic, they steadfastly declined to honor the alleged revelations of the Prophet with their attention or perusal. Their opinions on this subject they obtained from the writings of fanatical monks, fully as ignorant as, and even more bigoted than, themselves. The sage conclusion which they arrived at from these researches was that the doctrines of the most uncompromising of monotheists and image-breakers were Pagan and idolatrous.
Apprehensive of violence if they ventured to show themselves in public, they remained almost constantly in the seclusion of their dwellings. Even the sacred calls of duty remained unanswered. Often, for weeks, mass was not celebrated. The pulpit and the confessional were deserted. The dying passed away unshriven. Maddened by rage and terror, they were scarcely accessible even to their sympathizing parishioners,[204] who themselves incurred the risk of ill-treatment from the populace in their visits to the episcopal palace and the parsonage. Brooding over their wrongs, encouraged by the promises and exhortations of the Fathers of the Church, wresting the texts of Scripture to their purpose, fasting many consecutive days, praying for hours at a time, exhausted by penance, their enthusiasm became wrought up to the highest pitch. From such a condition the progress to martyrdom is easy.
The persecution of the Christians of Spain was inflicted, for the most part, under the reigns of Abd-al-Rahman II. and Mohammed. The annoyances to which they were subjected were by no means so serious as they subsequently became, when the influence of the Africans preponderated. The word persecution, implying as it does the tyrannical abuse of superior power, is not applicable to the circumstances under which the Mozarabes were sent to the scaffold. They were rather criminals than martyrs. They voluntarily offered themselves for the sacrifice. They denounced the religion of Islam as false and idolatrous. They reviled the name of the Prophet. They rushed into the mosques. When the voice of the muezzin resounded from the minaret, they crossed themselves, and cried out, “Save us, O Lord, from the call of the Evil One, both now and in eternity!” In their eagerness to court destruction, they pushed their way into the tribunals, and, in the presence of the judge, gave utterance to their blasphemies. Even the majesty of the throne was not respected by these frantic enthusiasts. St. Pelayus called the Khalif a dog to his face. St. Isaac, not content with heaping abuse on Mohammed, grossly insulted the Grand Kadi of Cordova. Such offences were capital under the law, and admitted of neither extenuation nor pardon.
At first, the magistrates, moved by astonishment[205] and compassion, refused to condemn persons whose actions seemed attributable only to intoxication or insanity. But the deluded wretches would accept no indulgence. Thrown into prison, they continued their revilings. Their spurious zeal, mistaken constancy, and self-inflicted tortures produced many imitators. Their cells became places of pilgrimage. From them each day went forth new candidates for pious consideration, fresh victims for the executioner. Some were hanged, others beheaded. Not a few were burned at the stake and their ashes cast into the river. The bitter feelings engendered by religious controversy were not confined to Mohammedans. The ties of blood seemed for a time forgotten or ignored. The hiding-places of the accused were revealed by their own kindred. Brothers and sisters denounced each other for the sake of the property they might inherit. But the punishment only aggravated the evil. The number of martyrs constantly multiplied. A great many of these came from the laity. Youths of tender age excited the wonder and admiration of the devout by the boldness of their utterances and the unflinching courage with which they met their fate. Delicate women walked barefoot for leagues, nominally to share the glory of dying for the Faith, in reality to solicit the infliction of the extreme penalty of violated law.
The contagion of example spread fast through the Christian community of Cordova. No distinction was now so honorable as to stand in the foremost rank of the blasphemers of the Prophet. In this pious and meritorious performance, the secular clergy were, however, not conspicuous. Their lives were entirely too precious to be endangered so long as members of their flocks were eager to demonstrate their willingness to die for a perverted religious principle, involving an unprovoked breach of the contract from which they derived security of worship, life, and property.[206] In secret, they promoted the increasing madness by prayer and vehement exhortation. The impulse to the spirit of spontaneous martyrdom was not a little stimulated by the honors paid to the victims. Independent of both Roman and Asturian influence, the Andalusian hierarchy conferred without delay the distinction of canonization upon each aspirant for celestial glory. Their remains were conveyed to the churches, where they at once began to disclose their supernatural powers by response to prayer, by the cure of disease, by the working of portentous and astonishing miracles.
The Moslem authorities were appalled by the strange conduct of their tributaries, insensible alike to the inducement of clemency or the dread of punishment. In the hope of abating the evil by summary measures, Abd-al-Rahman II. authorized, by public edict, any one to kill on the instant a Christian who was guilty of blasphemy. This decree, while not fully accomplishing its object, lessened the number of applicants for martyrdom and produced a great increase of apostates and fugitives.
But the mania which impelled the most fanatical to self-sacrifice was far from infecting the entire Christian population of the capital. There were many who looked with disapproval upon a course which must eventually result in the oppression of their sect, in the increase of its burdens, in the curtailment of its privileges. They foresaw that the acts of a few irresponsible individuals would ere long be regarded by the Moslem government as the authorized policy of the Church. Many Christians held office under the administration. It was only a question of time, if these disturbances continued, when they would be dismissed from their employments. The khalifate was then at the height of its power. If an uprising provoked by the clergy should occur, as seemed not improbable, the[207] entire tributary sect might be exterminated; and, indeed, this measure had already been vehemently urged by the intolerant African marabouts. In any event, there would be arbitrary taxation, confiscation, violence, exile. In their extremity, the more sober-minded of the Christians petitioned the Khalif to summon a council, whose decision might be authoritative and final in determining the duty of the people in the present emergency.
All the prelates in the jurisdiction of the khalifate were accordingly convoked. Abd-al-Rahman appointed as his representative an official named Gomez, prominent in the administration, nominally attached to the Christian communion, but of suspicious morals and of more than suspicious orthodoxy. He was a man of fine education, conspicuous talents, polished manners, insufferable pride, and enormous wealth. The head of the faction which had, in vain, endeavored to check the increasing disposition to martyrdom which menaced the destruction of his sect, he had incurred the unmeasured hatred of the clergy. Realizing fully the fatal consequences of the insane acts of his co-religionists if unrestrained, his interest concurred with his inclination to repress the dangerous manifestations of their intemperate zeal before it became too late.
With great ability and eloquence he presented his views to the council. The assembled prelates, awed by the government and possessing little sympathy for those who were destroying the credit of their order, were not disinclined to condemn these fanatical suicides. But here a serious difficulty arose. The martyrs had been canonized. Their relics had already demonstrated their sanctity by the production of miracles. Their bodies were enshrined in the shadow of the altar; their deeds and their sufferings were now a part of the history of the Church. It was therefore[208] manifestly impolitic, as well as sacrilegious, to attempt to deprive them of the rank in the celestial hierarchy which had been conferred by the infallible wisdom of God. A middle course was possible. The council, silent upon past martyrdoms, prohibited them in the future. Like all temporizing measures intended to correct deeply rooted abuses, this evasion of the issue left matters worse than before. The extremists, headed by St. Eulogius, declared that the real sentiment of the council manifestly ran counter to the one it expressed, as it did not pronounce deserving of censure the acts of those who had suffered for the Faith. The priests continued to arouse the zeal of their misguided parishioners; enthusiasts continued to outrage the sanctity of the mosques and the dignity of the tribunals, and the executions went relentlessly on. Recafred, Archbishop of Cordova, exasperated by the contempt with which the decree of the council had been received, heartily co-operated with the Moslems in the punishment of the offenders, now under the ban of both the government and the Church. Many recalcitrant priests were seized and thrown into prison. Others eluded with the greatest difficulty the search of the authorities. Among the latter was St. Eulogius, with whom, as well as with many of his holy brethren, the merits of martyrdom seemed most glorious when obtained by the sufferings of others. These vigorous measures filled the souls of the elect with terror. A few escaped to the Asturias. A considerable number, including some who had been loudest in their praise of the saints and apparently most eager to emulate their example, apostatized.
The so-called persecution, begun under Abd-al-Rahman II. and continued under Mohammed, lasted eight years. The works of contemporaneous ecclesiastical writers conclusively establish the fact that it was provoked by the violence of the Christians themselves.[209] It is apparent from the same authorities that its effects and importance were grossly exaggerated. The Memorial of the Saints, by Eulogius, the last and most eminent of the alleged victims of Moslem tyranny, contains the names of comparatively few martyrs. But forty-four are mentioned by the erudite historian Florez, whose diligent industry has collated the voluminous records bearing upon the hagiology of that time, as having been executed at Cordova. Several of these were women, between whom and their male companions in suffering and glory, the pious chronicler naïvely declares, “mysterious affinities” existed.
With the decline of the empire, the prevalence of anarchy, and the ascendency of the Berbers, the condition of the Spanish Christians became more and more distressing. The suspension of the laws afforded every facility for their oppression. Their churches were torn down. Their property was confiscated. The descendants of the partisans of Ibn-Hafsun maintained a correspondence with the Castilian enemy. Alfonso of Aragon traversed the Peninsula from the Ebro to the sea, at the invitation of the Mozarabes of Granada. Ten thousand of the latter attended him in his retreat. The vengeance exacted of their treacherous vassals by the Moors of that kingdom was terrible. The expedition was productive of not less unhappy results at Cordova. Nearly every church was destroyed, the Christians were tortured, despoiled of their possessions, and deported in a body to Africa.
At the beginning of the twelfth century, the misfortunes of the maltreated sectaries had reached their culmination. The Almohades, when not dominated by the marabouts, were inclined to be tolerant. The Arab chronicles which treat of the Moorish principalities do not mention the subject of persecution, and no Christian records of that time have been preserved.[210] The Mozarabes of the kingdom of Granada enjoyed the largest liberty. In Sicily, during the entire period of Moslem supremacy, martyrdoms were exceedingly rare.
Considering the widely extended apostasy which followed the Arab conquest, it is remarkable, if viewed only from a worldly stand-point, that the entire Christian population of the Peninsula did not become Mohammedan. There is no doubt that those who remained consistently steadfast in the faith were in a decided minority. No inconsiderable number of proselytes was recruited from the patrician class. Among the great body of serfs and slaves, there were few who were not willing to renounce their religion for the certain enjoyment of liberty and the flattering prospect of future ease or distinction. The mass of the tributaries of the province of Seville had early abandoned the Christian communion, and during the reign of Abd-al-Rahman II. a magnificent mosque was built for their especial accommodation. The majority of the prisoners taken in war embraced without hesitation the doctrines of Islam. Leaving out of consideration the influence of that Divine Power which must have preserved its servants under the severest trials, circumstances of a political or social character may have arisen to prevent the wholesale apostasy of a nation.
And such was indeed the case. The treatment to which the renegades were subjected is a single instance of many, most important in determining the causes of the decline of proselytism. In this class, the freedmen largely preponderated in numbers. Notwithstanding the nominal equality of the renegade granted by his former masters in the beginning, this equality was now never conceded. The stigma of servitude which attached to the majority became the unjust reproach of the caste. While many were sincere in their belief, others took small pains to disguise the interested[211] motives which had prompted their conversion. The knowledge of this fact impelled the Moslems to treat all converts with the greatest indignity. They were publicly insulted. Opprobrious epithets were heaped upon them. Even those whose ancestors had ranked with the most distinguished of the Gothic aristocracy were not exempt from the sneers of the Mussulman rabble. Possession of vast wealth, reputation for genius, taste, or learning, afforded no immunity from outrage by the vilest of mankind. It was rare that a renegade, no matter how conspicuous his abilities, obtained a responsible office in the government. Even the Christian stood a far better chance of official promotion by the followers of the Prophet than the recent proselyte to Islam. It was not in the nature of a numerous and powerful caste, smarting under unmerited humiliation and conscious of its strength, to calmly submit to such injustice. Nor was it long before this destructive policy, which, like many of the evils that afflicted the Mussulman domination, had its origin in Arab pride, produced momentous political results. It encouraged treasonable correspondence with the Christians of the North. It raised up spies in every community. It provoked the bloody revolt of the southern suburb of Cordova during the reign of Al-Hakem I. It recruited the armies of Ibn-Hafsun, who for thirty years defied the power of the khalifate. The renegades, who outnumbered all other classes combined, lacked only organization and leadership to have driven their haughty oppressors into the sea. When the power of the Arab faction was destroyed, their condition was improved, but the ardor of proselytism had vanished. Such experiences tended rather to confirm than to weaken the faith of the hesitating.
Other causes contributed to the prevalent apathy. The semi-theocratical character of the Moslem constitution[212] implied to all believers the active exertion of supernatural power. The head of the government was at the same time the Successor and the Representative of the Prophet. A system which claims divine superiority should by all means be free from turmoil, from vices, from schism; its infallibility should be demonstrated by the pre-eminent wisdom of its decrees; its banners should never be lowered. Yet Islam was rent by faction and controversy. Rival princes, on every side, asserted their conflicting pretensions. In the confusion of warring sects, it was always impossible to distinguish the heretic from the orthodox. The Mussulman armies had often retired in disgrace from before the half-savage and ill-equipped Asturian mountaineers. Tried by the standards of mediæval ignorance, standards founded upon unity of purpose and invincibility in war, Islamism was no better than the creeds it had supplanted.
Again, the results of Moslem civilization, whose benefits were apparent to the least discerning, were not derived from the efforts of the devout. The theologians, without exception, were obstructionists. They decried learning. They denounced philosophy. To them the elegant pursuits of literature were an abomination. As a rule, they had nothing in common with the scholars of Cordova, renowned for their wit, their politeness, their culture. Their persons were neglected, their manners uncouth, their language coarse, ungrammatical, and insolent. In their opinion a madman was inspired, and a scientific instrument a device of Satan.
Not so, however, with the eminent instructors who directed the public mind of the nation, who imparted knowledge to eager pilgrims from foreign lands. It was to their lectures that the young Christians delighted to repair. There was no subject on which they were not competent to discourse; no topic which they[213] did not elucidate with their learning and adorn with their eloquence. They were, almost to a man, what would be called in our day agnostics. Some were acknowledged atheists. Others inclined to the Pantheism of India. None mentioned without a contemptuous smile the celestial origin of the Koran or the claims of the Prophet to divine inspiration.
The University of Cordova was the seat of the literary faction whose influence was long paramount in the empire. Although its exercises were sometimes held in the Great Mosque, it had no sympathy with religion or its ministers. Its infidel teachings had for generations been the reproach of the pious faquis and the abhorrence of the Catholic clergy. Its doors were open to the studious of every race; its honors were bestowed upon the meritorious scholar, without regard to his belief or his ancestry. In its great library, the Mussulman, the Christian, the Buddhist, and the Jew pursued their researches in generous rivalry or friendly co-operation.
Under such unfavorable circumstances, it is not surprising that the conversion of Christians to Islamism was permanently arrested. Outrages upon proselytes, frequent insurrections, confusion of doctrines, vulgarity of theologians, infidelity of those best qualified to determine the value of established opinions, and the unrestricted enjoyment of educational facilities were serious impediments, rather than incentives, to a change of religious belief.
The fierce hostility that has always been manifested by the Apostolic Church against every kind of profane learning—the outgrowth of the tremendous power successfully exerted for many centuries to degrade the mind, to pervert the understanding, to dwarf the noble faculty of reason—had no terrors for the more enlightened part of the Christian population of the khalifate. There, in the presence of the[214] unrivalled achievements of Moslem genius, the stern intolerance of Patristicism could not stand before the liberal policy of Islam and the daily application of the lofty sentiment of its Prophet, “Whoso pursues the road of knowledge, God will direct him to the road of Paradise. Verily, the superiority of a learned man over a mere worshipper is like that of the full moon over all the stars!” The exhibition of universal charity, of broad philanthropy, of educational advantages impartially bestowed, as contrasted with the narrow maxims of their own communion; the overwhelming superiority of Mussulman civilization; the powerful influence of daily intercourse and example; the prodigious augmentation of commercial prosperity and worldly grandeur; the alluring prospect of carnal pleasures, while they might not conduce to proselytism, nevertheless undermined the faith and constancy of the Christian youth.
The teachings of the philosophers of Cordova were not propitious to the maintenance of either established dogma or ecclesiastical superiority; and the clergy saw, with undisguised dismay, the growing prevalence of lukewarmness and skepticism. The predominance of the Spanish Arabs in every branch of literary culture, their eminent success in arms, their intelligence, their valor, their courtesy, the seductive power of their splendor and their opulence had far more effect upon the minds of the rising generation of Christians than the delusive promises and impotent anathemas proclaimed every week from a thousand pulpits. And, indeed, the contrast presented by the two rival religions was most striking to the unprejudiced seeker after truth. On the one hand was the church, with its resounding vaults and its gloomy and sepulchral crypt; the monastery, with its privations; the reliquaries, with their offensive hoards of withered flesh and mouldering bones; the inconsistencies of a system[215] which inculcated charity and commanded persecution; the inexorable tyranny of the priesthood; the systematic discouragement of learning; the confessional with its enforced revelation of secrets; the mass with its monotonous services and its ritual in an unknown tongue; the penance with its sufferings and humiliation. On the other hand rose the mosque, light, airy, beautiful; its graceful minaret pointing towards the heavens; its court shaded by palm- and orange-trees, redolent with the mingled fragrance of a thousand exotics, musical with the plashing of crystal waters; its walls covered with a maze of intricate and brilliant stuccoes; its ceiling emblazoned with the golden texts of the Koran; its sanctuary sparkling with mosaics, whose exquisite tracery rivalled the fabled creations of the genii; the sermon, intelligible to the most humble and untutored listener; the prayer, remarkable for earnestness, simplicity, reverence. On this side were exhibited the factitious virtues and revolting license inseparable from the unnatural condition of celibacy; the sacrifice of every diversion that renders health attainable or existence attractive; the morose austerity of monastic solitude; the ill-concealed excesses by which human nature attempts to indemnify itself for the restraints imposed by organized hypocrisy; the solicited martyrdom of the half-crazed zealot; the savage pursuit of infidels and schismatics; the sanctified example of ecclesiastical ignorance, moral abasement, and physical impurity. On the other were the delights of the harem; the physical and mental vigor derived from constant exercise of the muscular system and the intellectual faculties; the benefits arising from the practice of frequent ablution; the palatial appointments of the public bath; the innumerable conveniences invented or adopted by a society ever alert to grasp every new idea, to profit by every past experience; the advantages[216] of a method of education unparalleled in excellence and unapproached by even the wisest teachers of antiquity; the vast libraries, filled with the stores of ancient learning; the lectures of the lyceum; the curious experiments of scientific observers; the entertaining scenes of social festivity; the animated disputations of learned assemblies.
The jurisprudence of the orthodox believer was basely subservient to the claims of superstition. His cause was determined by the uncertain results of judicial combat, by the oaths of prejudiced compurgators, by the frivolous ordeals of water and fire. The sectary of Mohammed was tried by the kadi, a magistrate governed by established principles of law, and bound by religious as well as by temporal considerations to an impartial administration of justice.
When a Christian became ill, attempts were made to exorcise the evil spirit to which his sufferings were attributed by binding him to the altar, by the invocation of saints, by the application of relics and consecrated amulets. The Moslem was conveyed to the hospital provided and maintained by royal beneficence; the cause of his complaint was ascertained; and during his stay he received gratuitously the assiduous attentions of the nurse and the intelligent care of the surgeon.
While the priest-ridden peasantry of the Pyrenees and the Rhone denounced the Saracen as a foe of God and a scourge to humanity, the Christian who lived in security under his government, enjoyed his favor, shared his hospitality, profited by his instruction, knew but too well the calumny of these assertions, and that their maligned object exhibited upon occasion all the noble attributes of a faithful friend and a brave and chivalrous enemy. The dissensions of the Arabs, and their ungenerous treatment of those who voluntarily embraced their faith, were largely instrumental in preventing[217] the amalgamation of races, even then far on the way towards accomplishment. Had not these causes intervened, only a few centuries would probably have elapsed before the subject nation, already closely united with the predominant caste by the bonds of marriage, consanguinity, and interest, by intimate mercantile associations, by the powerful influence of habits, education, and language, might have become thoroughly Mohammedanized. As it was, a greater affinity always existed between the Christian vassals of the Spanish khalifs and their lords than between the members of the several factions of the Arabs themselves, whose inextinguishable hatred, the fruit of countless generations of hostility, eventually compassed the destruction of their empire.
[218]
State of the Kingdom after the Conquest—Superiority of the Moors—Policy of the Crown—Introduction of the Holy Office—Administration of Talavera—His Popularity—He is superseded by Ximenes—The Two Great Spanish Cardinals—Their Opposite Characters—Influence on Their Age—Violence of Ximenes—He burns the Arabic Manuscripts—Insurrection of the Moriscoes—Rout in the Sierra Bermeja—Bigotry of Isabella—The Moors under Charles V.—Persecution by the Clergy and the Inquisition under Philip II.—War in the Alpujarras—Ibn-Ommeyah—Operations of Don John of Austria—Removal of the Moors of Granada—Death of Ibn-Ommeyah—Ibn-Abu becomes King—Siege of Galera—Atrocities of the Campaign—Fate of Ibn-Abu—Condition of the Moriscoes in Spain—They are Exiled by Philip III.—Their Sufferings—Effect of their Banishment upon the Prosperity of the Kingdom.
The close of the Reconquest left the Spanish monarchy in a condition of physical and financial collapse. The maintenance of a great army for ten years, with the resultant casualties of battle, exposure, and disease, had sensibly diminished the population. The treasury had long been depleted. The Queen had pawned her jewels to the bankers of Valencia and Barcelona. Wealthy subjects had been induced to advance funds to the government by methods equivalent to confiscation, and which held out but slender hopes of ultimate reimbursement. National credit was practically destroyed. The absence of the more industrious citizens in military service, the incorrigible idleness of those who remained, had impaired the pursuit of agriculture, upon which the resources of the[219] kingdom depended. Had it not been for the taxes and extraordinary contributions levied upon the Jewish and Moslem tributaries, the war could not have been prosecuted to a successful conclusion. These two sects, which occupied an anomalous position in the body politic, numbered over two million. Although so inferior in numbers, they engrossed the trade and controlled the personal property of the Peninsula. The Jew, who practised with enormous profit the congenial but unpopular profession of usury, converted his gains into money and jewels. The Mudejar, who, after the Conquest, gave place to the Morisco, mindful of the Koranic precept which inculcates industry as a virtue and stigmatizes idleness as a crime, was the most laborious and successful of agriculturists, the most skilful of artisans. Representatives of these two classes directed the operations of the largest mercantile houses in the principal cities, and the commerce of the entire country was practically in their hands. Their prosperity was regarded with an evil eye by their Castilian masters, and the Moslem was especially the object of this animadversion. For generations the former had pursued the glorious but brutalizing calling of arms. With them, every occupation that implied or necessitated the performance of manual labor was considered undignified and degrading. Centuries of unremitting warfare had impressed upon the whole nation a military character, with its inevitable concomitants of pride, tyranny, and insolence; and these sentiments were intensified a hundred-fold by racial hatred and sectarian prejudice. From the earliest times the Moors had been regarded as interlopers, scarcely entitled to the ordinarily indisputable rights of conquest. The acquisition of their domain by Spanish prowess was always considered as the recovery of former inalienable possession, not as new territory wrested from an adversary by dint of superior[220] strength and valor. The establishment of the Catholic faith was, in the opinion of adroit casuists, an additional argument in favor of their title, for it was held that the consecration of altars to Christianity conferred rights which could never be abrogated through occupation by infidels. With the inconsistency of ignorance, the Castilians asserted their title both by inheritance and prescription. They forgot that Spain had ever been the rich prize for which almost every warlike nation of the ancient world had contended. The Visigoths overran and ravaged it in the fifth century, and their occupancy, derived solely from conquest, lasted three hundred years. Then came the Saracens, whose domination, obtained in precisely the same manner, required about the same length of time for the conquest, but endured for more than twice as long. It was evident, therefore, to every mind not obscured by prejudice, that the title of the Moslems, even from the Spanish point of view, was better than that of their conquerors. In more than one respect, indeed, had the followers of Mohammed claims upon the country of their adoption as well as upon the gratitude and admiration of mankind. Their industry and enterprise had developed beyond all precedent the wonderful resources of the Peninsula. Its prosperity had never been so great, its people so happy, its sovereigns so renowned, as at the meridian of the Moslem power. In intellectual attainments, and the skilful adaptation of scientific principles to the practical affairs of life, the subjects of the khalifate far surpassed all their contemporaries. The civilization—if it is worthy of the name—which the Saracens overthrew was infinitely inferior to the one that they created. The Visigoths had scarcely emerged from barbarism. Their monarchs attempted to emulate, in their magnificence and luxury, the brilliant court of the Eastern Empire, and to[221] supply, by the splendor and richness of the materials, the glaring deficiencies in skill and workmanship which characterized the productions of their artisans. They never discarded the savage customs engendered and perpetuated by ages of violence and injustice. Sedentary and industrial occupations were repugnant to the genius of a people whose national traditions from time immemorial had breathed a spirit of truculence and war. And yet, even in their chosen field, they at once demonstrated their inferiority to an enemy who had hardly completed his apprenticeship in arms.
After the Conquest, the insignificant number of Christians saved by the inaccessible fastnesses of the Asturias from Mohammedan subjection had little left but their swords and their independence. Their previous habits had unfitted them for labor. The ungenerous nature of the soil and the severity of the climate offered few inducements for tillage. They had, therefore, no resource but war by which to maintain their existence and repair their broken fortunes. Their children were reared in ignorance and under conditions favorable to the development of the highest degree of ferocity and fanaticism. They were taught to regard their enemies as monsters, unworthy of the name and attributes of humanity, and having nothing in common with the remainder of mankind but an erect form and the capacity of speech. In the course of time, greater familiarity with their adversaries insensibly produced a change of feeling, and many of these absurd and unjust prejudices were modified or entirely discarded. Numerous Mohammedan customs were adopted, especially by the nobility of Castile, whose inherent profligacy especially inclined them to the forbidden and unorthodox license of the seraglio. Moslem kings were not infrequently appointed arbiters of disputes between Christian[222] princes of the blood. In arms, in manners, in costume, in amusements, the despised infidel furnished models to the proud and boorish descendants of Pelayus and his mountaineers. Even the language was contaminated. Thousands of terms familiar to the reader of the Koran were incorporated unchanged into its comprehensive vocabulary, and the noble and sonorous Castilian idiom remains to-day almost one-third Arabic. The system of warfare, the evolutions of cavalry, the adoption of lighter armor, all exhibited the effect of the pervading Moorish influence. Architects from Granada were employed by Castilian monarchs in the construction of palaces, and even by orthodox prelates in the ornamentation of cathedrals. It was the custom of many sovereigns in those turbulent times to intrust their safety to a body-guard of Saracen mercenaries, who could neither be intimidated nor corrupted. The honors paid to deceased Castilian royalty by the Moslems were not inferior to those with which the obsequies of the greatest emirs were celebrated. The court of Granada went into mourning for Ferdinand III., and a guard of Moorish nobles escorted his remains to the tomb. Henry IV. gave audience to ambassadors seated upon a divan and supported by cushions, in the traditional Saracen fashion. The tilt of reeds and the bull-fight, the exercises of the grand arena, which, requiring the greatest address and agility, were so popular with the Spanish chivalry, superseded the ruder and more dangerous exhibitions of the tournament. In innumerable examples, in every phase of the public and domestic life of the Christians, the influence of Mohammedan association was manifested. It is a curious fact, as already stated, that, in spite of this, the deep-seated prejudices of the two races, so far from being eradicated, were scarcely even perceptibly modified. Notwithstanding intermarriages, the formal[223] and elaborate display of public courtesy, the frequency of appeals to royal arbitration, the adoption of official ceremonials by one people, the voluntary solicitation of protection by the other, all appearances of amity were fallacious, and a feeling of irreconcilable hostility constantly prevailed between the two races. Both reduced their prisoners to slavery, a condition which generally implied the most inhuman treatment. The captives taken by the Castilians were branded upon the forehead, a mark of degradation which could never be erased; the slaves of the Moslems were confined in damp and unwholesome dungeons, and compelled to labor daily in the construction of mosques and fortifications. It was no unusual occurrence, when a place had provoked the animosity of either by an obstinate resistance, for the entire population, irrespective of age or sex, to be ruthlessly put to the sword. In the heat of conflict, quarter was seldom expected. Despite the omnipresent and irrefutable evidences of superior knowledge, refinement, and culture, the arrogant and conceited Castilians always stigmatized their adversaries as barbarians. With them, implicit belief in and attachment to the Roman Catholic faith was the infallible touchstone of civilization. Whatever they did not understand they attributed to magic. The mysterious accents of the Arabic language, and the intricate manner in which its characters were combined in the inscriptions which adorned the public edifices, aroused in the minds of the ignorant suspicions of sorcery, with its accompaniments of talismans, amulets, charms, and incantations. The magnificent architectural works of Arab genius were attributed to infernal agency, as beyond the efforts of unaided human power; an opinion still entertained by the Spanish peasantry, who not only firmly believe that the Moslem palaces were constructed by evil spirits, but also ascribe the origin of[224] the gigantic, and apparently eternal, monuments of classic antiquity to the hands of the devil himself.
Besides the inveterate prejudices arising from antagonistic faiths and protracted warfare, other circumstances intervened to preclude the fusion of the two races after the Conquest. The Spaniard, with characteristic pride, asserted the superiority and predominance of his race and origin, and the slightest suspicion of Moorish blood constituted a blemish which no political or military distinction was ever able to eradicate. The industry of the Mudejares, their frugality, their clannishness, the seclusion of their women, aroused unfavorable comment among a people whose prejudices associated these practices with the name of an hereditary and implacable enemy. It had long been a subject of universal complaint that the larger proportion of the wealth of the kingdom was possessed by these unpopular tributaries. The idle Castilian, whose ancestors had for twenty-three generations subsisted by rapine, could not regard with indifference the plodding industry that conferred upon a subjugated and misbelieving race those substantial benefits which he had always been taught to regard as the birthright of a Christian. It was also publicly stated, to the prejudice of the tributary Moors, that even when they renounced their faith they still adhered to their former laborious habits; that none of them ever entered convents or monasteries; and that their contributions to the Church were not of the value to be expected from the zeal and generosity of sincere proselytes. Their conversion did not bring with it that indulgence and those privileges to which their ghostly instructors assured them they would be entitled; it did not even confer immunity from insult. Until the reign of Henry II. the Mudejares were exempt from the inconvenience of wearing a distinctive mark indicative of their social condition,[225] which, long before imposed upon the Jews, was justly considered a badge of ignominy. After that time, however, they were required to wear upon their caps and turbans a blue crescent “of the size of an orange,” which constantly brought upon them the affronts of children, and not infrequently the taunts and violence of a fanatical populace. In spite of the serious restrictions imposed upon the Mudejares, and the enormous contributions levied upon their industry, they continued to prosper, and at the time of the surrender of Granada they were the most valuable subjects of the Spanish Crown. Policy, based upon a sense of weakness, had long repressed the avarice and envy of the Castilian sovereigns in their relations with a class whose skill and labor were the principal sources of the opulence of the realm. The time had now come when all restraint could be cast aside without danger, and royal aggression, not only sanctioned but suggested and encouraged by ecclesiastical authority, could violate every obligation, human and divine, that had been entered into with a conquered people, whose principal crime was their prosperity, and whose independence had been voluntarily relinquished under solemn treaties which had absolutely guaranteed their personal safety and the unmolested exercise of their civil and religious rights and privileges. A most pernicious maxim, but one entirely consonant with the prevailing sentiments of the age, had been recently adopted, and declared by the highest ecclesiastical authority susceptible of unlimited application. This was that, the original conquest of the Peninsula by the Moors partaking of the nature of an usurpation, or rather of a theft obtained by violence, all treaties or engagements entered into with the descendants of the invaders were valid only so long as the Christians chose to observe them, as having been dictated by necessity and contracted with persons outside the pale of the[226] law. The peculiar casuistry, which deduced from Biblical precedent and the exterminating wars of the Jews analogies whose application wrought such havoc among the conquered nations of Spain and the New World, found no difficulty in the acceptation of the broader, and consequently even more atrocious, principle that no faith whatever was to be kept with infidels. Ecclesiastical ingenuity has never invented more potent weapons for the attainment of absolutism than these two maxims, which, rigorously applied, demonstrated their temporary and apparent efficacy by the utter extermination of millions of nominal enemies of the Spanish monarchy.
By the union of Castile and Aragon and the Conquest of Granada national unity had been secured; it now remained to place the religious establishment of the kingdom upon the same advantageous footing. The Inquisition, an engine of tremendous power, whose operations were attended by the most gratifying results, had, for more than two centuries, been employed in subduing recalcitrant heretics, procuring conversions, and replenishing the exhausted coffers of Church and State. First introduced into Aragon from France, its efforts were mainly directed against the Jews, whose wealth had brought upon them a convenient suspicion of heresy. The main objects of the Inquisition were in reality secular and political. That hideous institution aimed at the establishment of unquestioned sovereignty by the instruments of persecution. Religious dogmas, while nominally of vital importance in its procedure, were but pretexts by which the clergy, and indirectly the orthodox monarch, profited in the acquirement and consolidation of irresponsible authority. The stifling of human thought, the suppression of every branch of knowledge, the prohibition of the exercise of private judgment, the infinite multiplication of offences against religion, the[227] minute gradation of penances, many of them of barbarous and incredible severity, were all means to the accomplishment of one base and ignoble end. The theological aspect of the Inquisition has engrossed the attention of historians to the exclusion of its genuine but concealed objects. That the punishment of heresy was not the real mission of its tribunal is proved by the fact that its sentences were frequently suspended, commuted, or abrogated by the sovereign, conditional on the payment of money. The rich were the especial objects of its hostility; the denunciation of a wealthy person was equivalent to conviction; and if a Hebrew or a Moslem, he could hardly escape the extreme penalty. The mystery of its organization, its unexpected arrests, its secret procedure, its frightful dungeons, the fiendish cruelty of the tortures it inflicted, and the atrocities of its public exhibitions—which partook of the nature of religious festivals, and, with shocking inconsistency, were supposed to be devoted to popular recreation—struck terror into every community and every family.
The successful prosecution of heresy by the Inquisition, as well as the financial advantages it promised, and the increase of ecclesiastical and royal power which followed its establishment, appealed forcibly to the bigoted and arbitrary mind of the Spanish Queen. Not so, however, with Ferdinand, whose experience with that dread tribunal had caused him to regard its operations with disfavor, and who had rendered his orthodoxy liable to suspicion by intrusting to Jewish bankers the administration of the finances of the Crown of Aragon. His remonstrances were, however, unheeded by his obstinate and despotic consort. The Kingdom of Castile had always enjoyed an unquestioned preponderance of authority and prestige in the affairs of the Peninsula. The compact which consolidated the two great realms into one empire[228] expressly conferred upon Isabella the exclusive control of all matters relating to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The right of presentation to benefices—long asserted by Castilian princes as a royal prerogative, and whose exercise, denounced by the Papacy as an usurpation, had repeatedly brought upon them the censures of the Holy See—invested the Queen with a power of vast and indefinable extent over the members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, who owed their offices to her generosity, and whose revenues were largely dispensed in accordance with her advice. Her policy and her apparent interest induced her, therefore, to consent to the introduction of the Holy Office; and its tribunal was established at Cordova, under the direction of Tomas de Torquemada, first Inquisitor-General of the kingdom, a name of awful prominence in the history of Spanish persecution.
The capitulation of Granada had been concluded with every indication of sincerity, and with the most solemn assurances with which it is possible to invest the provisions and confirm the faith of treaties. The unsuspecting Moslems did not long remain in ignorance of the duplicity of their conquerors. Excesses were publicly committed by licentious cavaliers, who, instead of undergoing the penalty of death adjudged for such offences, escaped with a gentle reprimand, and were even conspicuously distinguished by the favor of their royal mistress. The seclusion of domestic life, so jealously guarded by Mohammedan custom, was unceremoniously invaded upon the most frivolous pretexts by the rude and insolent soldiery. The mosques, whose possession had been especially guaranteed by the articles of the treaty, were one after another seized and consecrated to the Christian worship. For these flagrant breaches of trust, the stupid and remorseless bigotry of Isabella was largely responsible. The city had hardly passed into the[229] hands of the conquerors, before the advisability of forcible conversion began to be seriously discussed, and the Queen listened with pleasure to suggestions of indiscriminate and compulsory baptism. The efforts of priestly avarice and intolerance, secure in the royal support, began to encroach more and more upon the acknowledged rights of these unfortunate victims of persecution, until a revolution broke out, which threatened the integrity of the newly acquired dominions, and required the entire resources of the kingdom to suppress it. The government of Granada had been left in the hands of three men, whose excellent qualifications, previous experience, and inborn sense of justice rendered them eminently qualified for the difficult task to which they had been assigned. The famous Count of Tendilla was appointed Captain-General of the province. The interests of the Church were committed to Hernando de Talavera, Archbishop of Granada, a prelate in whose mind fanaticism never attained predominance over the noble impulses which assert the dignity of human nature; and whose liberality, rare in his age and profession, never refused indulgence and compassion to those of different blood or hostile faith. To these two representatives of royal and ecclesiastical authority was added as an adviser, and an interpreter of the treaty of capitulation, which he himself had drafted, Hernando de Zafra, secretary of the Catholic sovereigns, a man of talent, intelligence, and spotless integrity, who enjoyed the confidence of his superiors, and who, while conspicuously devout, was far less tinctured with the prejudices of the time than his theological education and previous associations would seem to imply.
Under the administration of these three dignitaries, the territory of Granada once more assumed an appearance of prosperity. Their probity won the confidence of the Moors, which had been shaken by the[230] arbitrary and indefensible proceedings following the surrender. The capital, fallen into neglect and decay during years of insurrection and war, was repaired; new streets were opened, sanitary regulations were enforced, the markets were again crowded with traders; the Vega, long the scene of desolation, began to blossom once more under the patient hands of the industrious laborer. While a high sense of honor and an unusual diplomatic tact obtained for the Count of Tendilla the respect of his dependents, it was upon the disposition of the Archbishop that the security of the government and the pacification of the Moslems principally depended. The first great difficulty was, in reality, not with the latter, but with the Christian colonists, who had received, in recompense for real or fictitious services, establishments in the city, and whose licentious conduct provoked the animosity of the vanquished, and rendered the streets unsafe at night for wayfarers of every description.
The conduct of the Archbishop was beyond all praise. He endeavored by every conceivable means to improve the condition of his diocese, to revive decaying industry, and to promote the friendly relations of the two races whose previous traditions made complete fusion impossible. He dispensed at all times the most unbounded and discerning charity. He caused public works to be inaugurated, by which the needy poor were provided with employment. His apostolic zeal never stooped to the violence of persecution; his appeals were made to reason alone; and his subordinates, for the effectual performance of their duties, were compelled to learn the Arabic language, in which he himself, although far advanced in years, became sufficiently proficient to employ it successfully for the noble purposes of religious instruction. From the printing-presses, established by his munificence, issued sumptuous volumes printed in[231] Castilian and Arabic, whose perusal might not only arouse the interest of old believer and recent proselyte, but could not fail to alike confirm the faith and facilitate the intercourse of both Christian and Moslem. Under his direction schools were founded; rituals and works embodying the doctrines and discipline of the Church translated; and regular conferences organized, wherein, at stated intervals, the comparative merits of the Christian and Mohammedan creeds were publicly discussed by learned theologians of both religions.
This excellent prelate, whose virtues are the more conspicuous and admirable when contrasted with the generally dissolute character of the ecclesiastics of the Spanish court, voluntarily renounced the larger portion of the emoluments of his office, reserving only what was sufficient for his immediate necessities, and dispensing with the pomp which the dignitaries of the hierarchy were accustomed to assume in the exercise of their calling. Two hundred and fifty persons shared daily the hospitality of his table; his bounty was enjoyed alike by officials of the highest rank, by Moors of every degree, by pilgrims and travellers soliciting alms. In his visits to the sick and the unfortunate he permanently impaired his health. Recognizing the importance of a consistent example, he instituted extensive reforms among the clergy. Their luxury was repressed, their intemperate zeal restrained, the systematic observance of their duties compelled, and those vices which had long been the scandal of the pious were either entirely checked, or, driven from public view, were forced into seclusion for their indulgence. In every possible manner he attempted to relieve the oppressive burdens imposed upon his parishioners by the fiscal regulations. His notaries were forbidden to collect the fees, which formed an important part of the revenues of the[232] archiepiscopal see. He interposed his authority to prevent illegal and oppressive exactions by the tax-collectors. In his sermons, and by the exertion of his authority, he discouraged the practice of professional mendicity, the scourge and the disgrace of both Catholic and Mussulman countries.
With the secular and the ecclesiastical power vested in the hands of such men as the Count of Tendilla and Hernando de Talavera, the greatest results could not fail of accomplishment. The manners of the Spaniards were insensibly reformed. Such was the public tranquillity, that a mere handful of soldiers sufficed for the garrison of the Alhambra and the guard of the captain-general. The pious and unselfish example of the Archbishop soon bore fruit. Great numbers of Moors voluntarily signified their desire to become Christians. In one day three thousand were baptized, not one of whom ever afterwards recanted. These conversions were not obtained through suggestions of temporal advantage or the influence of fear; nor were the proselytes admitted to communion without previous instruction in the doctrines they were expected to profess or the duties they would be required to perform. The affection and respect of the Moslems for their instructor and friend were unbounded. They called him the “Holy Faqui of the Christians.” The churches were found unable to accommodate the increasing numbers of converts, and altars and pulpits were erected in the three principal squares of the city; the nightly brawls excited by the turbulent soldiers of fortune, domiciled by the Conquest in the Moorish capital, became more and more infrequent; a sense of security began to prevail in the community; the relations of noble and vassal were modified, to the decided advantage of the latter; ancient prejudices, confirmed by the enmity of centuries, were softened; and the political union of the two peoples, which could[233] only be effected by a just and conciliatory policy, and upon which, in fact, depended the future prosperity of the Peninsula, seemed at length to offer a flattering prospect of realization.
Under these favorable auspices, for the space of several years, order, tranquillity, and contentment reigned in Granada. The courteous and equitable, but firm, administration of the governor; the blameless life, the humble piety, the sympathetic interest of the Archbishop had awakened the love and compelled the obedience of the tributary Moslems, who compared with wonder and gratification the operation of a system of kindness and justice with the arbitrary and violent measures of the despotism to which they had heretofore always been accustomed. During that period many important and tragic events transpired. Al-Zagal, oppressed with years and calamities and broken in spirit, had gone into voluntary exile. Boabdil, by means of an ignoble and treacherous device, whose adoption was alike unworthy of a monarch and a Christian, had been deprived of the principality for which he had bartered his crown and forced to retire into Africa. Every important provision of the capitulation had been repeatedly violated, and only the tact of those who controlled the government of Granada had prevented the most serious consequences. The Jews, under circumstances of unspeakable cruelty, had been expelled from the kingdom. In the hierarchy changes had taken place which boded no good to the heretic and the suspected apostate. Cardinal Mendoza, Primate of Spain, had died, and Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, a Franciscan friar and the confessor of the Queen, had been promoted to that exalted dignity, whose power and emoluments rivalled those of the crown. The life, the associations, the studies of this man had developed a mind whose feelings were in perfect accordance with the narrow and[234] intolerant spirit of the age. Without indulgence for the inherent weakness of human nature, without patience to await the effect of the deliberate and rational methods of discussion which promote religious conviction, absolutely devoid of generosity, of tenderness, of sympathy, he regarded unquestioning obedience to the Church as the most imperative of all obligations and mortification of the flesh as the most meritorious of virtues. He had recently secured the appointment of Diego de Deza, one of his creatures, to the place of Inquisitor-General, which gave him absolute control of the operations of the Holy Office.
The characters of the two great churchmen who in succession dictated the policy of the crown, though widely different in many respects, in general faithfully represent the prevalent ideas and aspirations of every class of society in the kingdom. The aim of both was religious unity, which during the long crusade against the infidel had usurped the place and depreciated the worth of patriotism. Both governed the sovereign, and with the sovereign the monarchy. Both filled the highest ecclesiastical office in the Peninsula, an office second in dignity and power only to the Papacy. Both were zealous patrons of the Inquisition. One recommended the expulsion of the Jews. The other inaugurated the persecution of the Moriscoes. Both commanded armies. Both founded institutions of learning. Both were regarded at Rome as the most valuable servants of the Holy See. Here, however, all resemblance ends. Mendoza belonged to the haughtiest of the Castilian aristocracy; he traced his lineage in a direct line to Roman patricians on one side and to the Gothic Dukes of Cantabria on the other; the Cid was his ancestor, as were also the Lords of Biscay; the blood of royalty coursed in his veins; he was the cousin of Ferdinand and Isabella; he was nearly related to the princely house of Infantado,[235] whose duke took precedence of all Spanish grandees; more than seventy titles of nobility were in his family, which was the first in the Peninsula and one of the most celebrated in Europe.
Ximenes sprang from the people. His ancestry, while respectable and deserving recognition as of the hidalgo class, was not noble. He renounced his baptismal name for that of the founder of his order, the Franciscans. He had no relatives, a fact which afterwards obtained for him the Regency.
The dignities of Mendoza were the most eminent in the hierarchy and the kingdom, and were all conferred before he had reached the meridian of life. He was Bishop of Calahorra and Siguenza, Archbishop of Seville and Toledo, Primate of Spain, a Prince of the Church, Patriarch of Alexandria, Legate of the Pope. He became Chancellor of Castile. He was appointed Captain-General under both Henry IV. and Isabella. He was most prominent in all the events of the civil and the Moorish wars. He won the battle of Olmedo for Juan II. He defeated the King of Portugal on the field of Toro. At twenty-four he was practically minister of state. At sixty-four he planned the last campaign before Granada as commander-in-chief of the besieging army. His hands raised upon the Tower of Comares the archiepiscopal cross of his diocese, the symbol of Christian supremacy and ecclesiastical power.
In habits, tastes, demeanor, and personal appearance a marked contrast existed between the two most famous prelates of the fifteenth century. Mendoza was epicurean, Ximenes ascetic. The table of the Great Cardinal was furnished with every luxury. His garments were of the finest quality, as befitted his rank. Jewels sparkled upon his fingers. His cleanliness excited the wonder and often the disapprobation of the pious, as savoring of heresy. None but[236] youths of distinguished birth were admitted to his household. His morals partook of the laxity of the time. The ladies honored with his attentions were members of the aristocracy, daughters of noble houses, maids of honor to the Queen. His three sons were legitimatized by Pope Innocent VIII. in 1486 and by Isabella in 1487. Through their matrimonial connections, the blood of this famous ecclesiastical grandee has been mingled with that of many of the proudest families of Castile.
While the promotion of Mendoza to the highest offices of Church and State was due partly to his illustrious ancestry and partly to his eminent talents, that of Ximenes was derived entirely from his reputation for piety and wisdom. Honors were literally thrust upon him. With real or affected humility, he attempted to evade the search and disobey the commands of those who wished to raise him to absolute power. He loudly protested his unworthiness. He declared his preference for the duties and the seclusion of a private station. Even while at the height of his greatness, he never abandoned the habits of the monastery. He carried into the splendid archiepiscopal see of Toledo, the highest post in the ecclesiastical system of Europe, the practices of the penitent and the anchorite. Under his cardinal’s robes of scarlet and gold he wore constantly the cowl and knotted girdle of the Franciscan friars. A haircloth shirt, which was never changed, irritated his flesh. His diet was frugal to excess. “He only ate enough,” says his biographer, “to sustain the little life that penance had left him.” His food consisted principally of herbs, his only drink was water. His virtue was impregnable,—even St. Anthony himself might have envied him his constancy under temptation. To him was never imputed the reproach of frequent ablution, the stigma of the Moslem heretic. The constant use of a haircloth undergarment,[237] while not conducive to personal purity, is readily productive of those physical conditions which, in the Middle Ages, were almost infallible signs of a good Christian.
The early life of Mendoza was passed amidst the atmosphere of the most dignified and punctilious court in Europe. His experience from boyhood fitted him for any service to which he might be assigned by the order of his king. He was thoroughly familiar with the arts of diplomacy. He had led his vassals in many a bloody encounter. With the skill of a successful general he had directed the movements of large bodies of troops in action. In every conflict he had fearlessly exposed himself to danger. He was indulgent to the faults of his ecclesiastical inferiors. For the glory of the Church he built and endowed the College of Valladolid. The Hospital of Santa Cruz at Toledo was a superb monument to his munificence. He expended great sums in charity. The debasing vice of bigotry was far from dominating his character.
The person of Mendoza was tall, erect, and commanding; his features handsome; his bearing that of a soldier and a gentleman; his manners affable and unaffected; in all respects he was the model of dignity, of gentleness, and of courtesy. His influence in the government was so great that he was everywhere known as “The Third King of Spain.” It was said of him as of Cæsar, “Quicquid volebat, valde volebat.”
Ximenes brought to the management of a great empire none of that familiarity with public affairs so essential to the statesman. His life had been bounded by the narrow horizon of the cloister. His reading had been confined to the homilies and polemics of the Fathers. At the assault of Oran, instead of leading his troops, he retired to pray in his tent. The university he established at Alcalá, as a rival to that of Salamanca,[238] was far from realizing his hopes. His appearance disclosed his obscure lineage and his plebeian associations. His form was bent, his face emaciated, his manners shy and awkward. He possessed none of that winning grace which is the common birthright of his countrymen. In the administration of his office he was arbitrary and irascible. His obstinacy was only exceeded by the severity with which he enforced his decrees; his pursuit of heresy and monastic license, only by the vigor with which he encountered and crushed all opposition. His reputation for ability, for learning, for sanctity, for every attribute that evokes the admiring applause of mankind, far surpassed that of his predecessor among all ranks of his contemporaries.
Such were the two churchmen, both of whom had obtained the finest education afforded by their age and country; both founders of great colleges; both gifted with extraordinary talents; both clothed with despotic power; to whose agency is to be principally attributed the absolute annihilation of Jewish and Moslem science and literature in the Spanish Peninsula.
It is impossible for us at this distance of time to fully appreciate the enormous influence wielded by a prelate who dispensed the wealth and patronage of the ecclesiastical establishment of the Spanish monarchy. His capacity for good or evil was practically unlimited. He was the keeper of the royal conscience. The sentiments of every community, the decision of important questions of diplomacy, the adoption of measures vital to the permanence of national existence, the prosecution of war, the negotiation of peace, all depended upon the opinions and advice which emanated from the throne of the metropolitan see of Toledo. When to the prestige and revenues of the primacy were added the mysterious procedure and dreadful energy of the Inquisition, the formidable[239] character of the power possessed by Ximenes may be conjectured. His will was law in every parish in the kingdom. Through the fears and mistaken devotion of a superstitious queen he was already the virtual ruler of Castile. His zeal was the more dangerous from the fact that it was sincere; no element of hypocrisy discredited the motives or impaired the supremacy of this uncompromising fanatic. The sweeping reforms he instituted among the clergy, and the rigor with which all disobedience was punished, awakened the resentment of every ecclesiastic whose lax morality or religious indifference had rendered him the object of official admonition or discipline. Those who appealed to the Pope were thrown into prison. Petitions for indulgence were treated with contempt. Remonstrances were chastised by suspension from functions and deprivation of benefices. The energy of his measures, the rudeness of his manners, the arbitrary, almost brutal, defiance of precedent and custom with which he treated his inferiors, his well-known control over the infamous tribunal whose public sacrifices in the name of religious unity had already terrorized the kingdom, his incorruptibility and self-mortification, invested the office of Ximenes with more than imperial authority. Isabella congratulated herself on her discernment. Her pious ambition was excited. In the hands of this active prelate the Moors of Granada might be speedily Christianized. The slow and pacific methods of Talavera had frequently aroused the displeasure and invoked the censures of the impatient Queen. Her partiality for the eccentric and determined churchman whose enforcement of long-neglected monastic regulations and whose condemnation of the luxurious habits of his subordinates had procured for him the open homage and secret execration of bishop and friar alike, whose inflexible decision, whose disregard of[240] humanity and justice whenever he conceived the interests of the Church were involved, rendered him so offensively conspicuous, suggested him at once as a pre-eminently suitable instrument for the extermination of Moslem heresy and the rapid propagation of the Faith. He was, therefore, ordered to Granada, nominally as the adviser of Talavera in the work of spiritual regeneration, with the secret understanding, however, that his superior rank would exempt him from even the apparent exercise of official duties in a subordinate capacity. His first step, and one of which it is scarcely possible that Isabella could have been ignorant, was to procure a formal authorization from the Holy Office to investigate and punish the crime of heresy.
Armed with this document, and confident in the support of the Queen, Ximenes arrived at Granada in October, 1499. His conduct from the beginning was marked by unflinching audacity and resolution. The prestige of his dignity and the arrogance of his manners at once overawed the gentle Archbishop, who, renouncing the means which had achieved such great success, henceforth abandoned himself blindly to the merciless impulses of his distinguished superior. The latter was not long in profiting by the ascendency he had obtained. He claimed for himself supreme and dictatorial authority in matters not only ecclesiastical, but in questions often affecting the jurisdiction of the civil power. His first measures evinced none of the unrelenting severity of the inquisitor; they were corrupt, politic, conciliatory. The faquis and santons, whose influence with their countrymen was supposed to be the greatest and whose mercenary character had been notorious in the evil days preceding the surrender, were enlisted in the service of conversion by magnificent gifts of silken garments, jewels, and gold. With their zeal quickened[241] by these potent arguments, the new missionaries had no difficulty in securing multitudes of proselytes. Their ardor was further stimulated by forcible representations of the inconveniences and trials which would inevitably be visited upon all who persisted in their adherence to error. Great emulation was excited by these extraordinary inducements to Mohammedan apostasy; each faqui reckoned with pride the number of converts he had conducted to the altar; the unprincipled populace welcomed, with feigned and interested enthusiasm, a religious compliance purchased with the mammon of unrighteousness; the Great Mosque of the Albaycin—in which quarter the Moors had, by a highly impolitic decree, been concentrated after the Conquest—was consecrated to Christianity, and within its precincts more than four thousand alleged penitents received the rite of baptism. This ceremony was effected without previous examination or instruction; and the candidates were equally ignorant of their duties and of the dreadful consequences involved in the sin of recantation. From that moment their moral responsibility was fixed. No excuse could be pleaded for the unconscious maintenance of heretical opinions or even for involuntary infractions of ecclesiastical discipline; the voice of the informer was ever ready to denounce, the hand of the inquisitor to punish.
This triumph of the Faith, while exceedingly gratifying, was proportionately expensive. The entire available revenues of the See of Toledo, amounting to seventy thousand ducats, were expended in its accomplishment. Even this great sum proved insufficient, and Ximenes was forced to pledge his private credit to appease the demands of the crowd of mercenary sycophants and spurious converts who claimed the reward of their abasement and dishonor. Among the sincere disciples of the Prophet, and there were[242] many in Granada, the course of their perfidious brethren was regarded with unconcealed abhorrence. The more earnest and devout of these endeavored to counteract the growing inclination to religious defection by public exhortations and remonstrances. It was not in the imperious nature of the Primate to brook such opposition. The offending faquis were thrown into prison. History has not revealed the nature of the arguments employed to shake their constancy, but the persecuted Moslems were evidently not of the stuff of which martyrs and saints are made. One after another recanted and were baptized; many of their fellow-sectaries profited by their example; resistance was for the time effectually suppressed; and Ximenes pursued, without molestation, his favorite and inexorable method of wholesale conversion. To his narrow and arbitrary mind the employment of the most radical measures seemed to promise the greatest assurances of success. In the furtherance of this idea, and with a view to eradicating the apparent cause of the evil, he now planned what he considered a master-stroke of policy. Without previous notice, a diligent search was made of every house throughout the entire city, and every manuscript in the Arabic language which could be found was seized. The number thus secured amounted to nearly a million. Among them were not only superb copies of the Koran, but relics of the great Ommeyade body of literature, which had been the pride of the imperial court of Cordova, and had been cherished as priceless through many generations; the contents of the public libraries, whose preservation and increase had been the especial care of the enlightened Alhamares; treatises on history and science, which described the events and pictured the intellectual advancement of what had been the most learned and polished of nations; and the literary treasures of every scholar and philosopher[243] in the capital. The works on chemistry, botany, astronomy, and medicine, subjects which had always engaged the diligent curiosity of the Spanish Arab, predominated. There, too, were doubtless to be found many translations of the classics, inheritances from the Grecian school of Alexandria,—henceforth forever lost,—which had found their way into the Peninsula from the distant banks of the Nile. These volumes exhibited in the beauty of their calligraphy and the magnificence of their adornment all the pomp, the pride, the luxury, of Saracen art. Beautiful arabesques in gold, silver, and many colors, embellished pages written with a delicacy and regularity which equalled that of the finest type. The bindings were of inlaid leather; some were embroidered; others were incrusted with tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, ivory, and jewels; the clasps were of solid gold. All of these inestimable stores of learning were heaped in one immense pile in the centre of the Plaza de la Babal-Rambla, set on fire, and consumed. The importance of this sacrifice to bigotry may be inferred from the fact that there was probably in the entire world no collection of equal extent and value as that destroyed by Ximenes in this historic square, where, in the time of the emirs, national festivals had been celebrated, and the emulation of distinguished warriors in the martial sports of the tournament excited by the presence of the beauty and the gallantry of the Moslem court; where the differences of Castilian princes had been settled by a chivalric appeal to arms; where cultured audiences had witnessed the friendly rivalry of Moorish poets and troubadours, and the reward of the victor had been bestowed by the hand of royalty, all little suspecting that on the scene of their pleasures would one day be exhibited such a melancholy spectacle.
The pecuniary loss entailed by this vandalism was[244] of itself immense, but the destructive effect it produced upon society was incalculable. By it perished unique literary monuments which it was impossible to replace; it offered a premium upon ignorance, for through such deeds alone was the favor of the all-powerful sacerdotal order to be secured; it discouraged learning to such a degree that from that time forth no Moslem writer of distinction appeared to illustrate the annals or depict the manners of his race; and it annihilated in a single hour the precious accumulation of ages, from which the modern historian might have collected data relative to Moorish civilization elsewhere unattainable in the world of letters. The intellectual degradation resulting from this intolerant act of Ximenes was most deplorable. All knowledge was thereafter filtered through the narrow channels of ecclesiastical inspection and thoroughly cleansed of every suspicion of heresy; the missal and the breviary supplanted the works of Arabic annalists and philosophers; and the enduring results of this crime against learning and of its pernicious example are still apparent in the remarkably illiterate and fanatical character of the inhabitants of Granada. Three hundred volumes on the science of medicine were saved from the flames, for the library of the University of Alcalá; but no entreaties or remonstrances from his companions could move the ferocious bigot to exempt from the sacrifice volumes whose jewelled covers and clasps of gold represented in themselves a princely fortune.
The destruction of Arabic manuscripts was the first step towards the employment of violence. With characteristic energy, the Primate availed himself of the authority with which he had been armed by the Holy Office. Persons suspected of heresy were summarily seized, imprisoned, tortured; and those who for the moment escaped experienced all the indignities[245] which could be inflicted by the hands of ecclesiastical malice strengthened by boundless power. These outrages, and the repeated violation of the rights granted in their treaty with the crown, aroused the populace to desperation; and the arrest of a widow, whose wealth had attracted the cupidity of the authorities, was the signal for a dangerous revolt. The gates of the Albaycin were closed and guarded. The streets were barricaded. The towers were occupied, and Ximenes, whom the indignant threats of the people openly devoted to death, was besieged by an armed multitude in his palace, from which perilous situation he was with difficulty released by the Count of Tendilla. The news of the insurrection called down upon the tyrannical prelate the wrath of his sovereigns, but the singular credit he enjoyed and the vast influence he was able to wield soon restored him to royal favor.
It was now resolved to carry matters to extremes, and the choice of baptism or death was offered to the Moors, whose rebellion, although provoked by the oppression of their masters, was declared to have caused a forfeiture of all their privileges. The disaffection spread rapidly to the provinces; the mountaineers of the Alpujarras and the adjacent rugged country, which were the resorts of bands of desperate outlaws who entertained intimate relations with the Barbary corsairs, became involved; and the Catholic monarchs, so far from the religious triumph which they had anticipated, saw themselves suddenly confronted by a war which promised to assume formidable proportions. Space will not permit a detailed description of the repeated insurrections and final subjugation of the Moriscoes, and only the more important events of that memorable struggle can be touched upon. The mountain ranges of Southern Spain were admirably adapted to the desultory tactics in which they excelled, and the prolongation of the struggle was the natural[246] consequence of the difficulties of the ground, of the boldness and activity of the insurgents, of the incapacity of the Castilian commanders, and of the proverbial want of discipline and fatal recklessness of the Christian soldiery. The general disarmament of the Moors had deprived them of the greater part of their weapons, but this disadvantage was eventually repaired by the spoils of battle and by the enterprise of Aragonese and Castilian traders, who, undismayed by the prospect of detection and punishment, were always ready, for an extravagant compensation, to furnish the enemies of their king with arms of the most approved pattern and workmanship. The operations of the contending forces were prosecuted with a cruelty hitherto unknown, even in the bloody annals of the Peninsula; and the ultimate triumph of the Spaniards was signalized by acts of such merciless vengeance that the foreign soldiers of fortune, enlisted for plunder and long seasoned by bloodshed, were appalled by their dreadful atrocity. The massacre of the population of a place taken by storm was the rule and not the exception; the wounded remaining on fields of battle were exterminated; prisoners were subjected to horrible tortures; every crime suggested by the incentives of lust, rapine, and hereditary aversion was perpetrated; and the most desirable fate of a captive was to be consigned for life to the tyranny of an unfeeling master dominated by every vice, inaccessible to mercy, and unrestrained by any law either of God or man.
An army of nearly a hundred thousand men assembled, at the summons of the Spanish sovereigns, for the suppression of the insurrection, at Alhendin near Granada. Formidable in numbers alone, this great host was composed of materials very different from the soldiery that had achieved the Conquest. It was indifferently equipped, unorganized, and absolutely[247] deficient in discipline. The flower of the Castilian youth, inspired by the discoveries of Columbus, had sought new scenes of adventure on the shores of mysterious lands beyond the ocean. Commercial pursuits had weakened the military spirit; a peace of many years had impaired the energy of the nation and incapacitated, for the exposure of a perilous service, a people who had been reared and nurtured amidst the din of arms. The blessings of internal tranquillity, almost forgotten in the conflict of centuries, had once more permitted the unmolested exercise of the mechanical arts and the practice of agricultural industry. The better class of citizens, in the full enjoyment of security, were loath to resume, for the sake of a religious principle, whose enforcement promised much danger and trifling advantage, the hazards of the uncertain game of war. The army was therefore mainly composed of the retainers and vassals of the nobility, whose duty required their presence, and an innumerable horde of penniless adventurers, who sought, in the excitements and vicissitudes of a campaign against the infidel, an opportunity for the improvement of their desperate fortunes. Aided by a smaller force operating from Almeria, the rebellion was, after some fighting and much cruel retaliation, put down; the insurgents, impelled by the promise of immunity or the menace of death, consented to embrace the Catholic faith; the ancient chroniclers relate with becoming pride that during a single day ten thousand proselytes were baptized in the Sierra de Filabres alone; and through material inducements, or from the contagion of example, the inhabitants of Baza and Guadix, of the Alpujarras, and of the mountain regions to the south as far as the sea, were reckoned among those who acknowledged the authority of the Church and accepted the doctrines of Christianity.
With the advent of the sixteenth century, a royal[248] decree was promulgated, establishing at Granada the same civil jurisdiction which obtained in the other provincial capitals of the kingdom. The magistracy was nominally divided between the Spaniards and the Moors, but the equality was only apparent, and the preponderance of power virtually remained with the conquerors. Allured by the delusive prospect of a voice in the affairs of the government, and despairing of assistance from their brethren in Africa, whose good offices they had repeatedly but vainly solicited, the Moors of the Albaycin finally consented to baptism. They required, as a condition of their compliance, permission to wear their national costume and to use the Arabic language, privileges which were subsequently made pretexts for oppression. It was also agreed that the Holy Office should not be established at Granada for the space of forty years; a provision which ecclesiastical acumen readily evaded by placing that city under the jurisdiction of the Inquisitorial tribunal of Cordova.
Still dissatisfied with the slow progress made by her ministers in bringing the obdurate Moors within the pale of Christianity, Isabella a second time ordered Ximenes to Granada. Instructed by his prior experience, he conducted himself with more discretion than before; but his proselytes, driven into the Church by hundreds, without previous instruction, remained, like their predecessors, profoundly ignorant of its doctrines and of the responsibilities imposed upon them by their enforced conversion. This time the stay of the Primate was short; his ascetic habits had impaired a constitution never extremely robust; and a pulmonary affection of a serious character, whose symptoms were aggravated by unremitting excitement and toil, speedily developed. The available resources of medical science were unable to relieve his malady, and, abandoned as hopeless by regular practitioners, in the[249] hour of his extremity he was induced to submit to the treatment of a venerable Moorish woman, who combined with Arabic science the mysterious and uncanny ceremonies of the witch and the empiric. Under her ministrations the distinguished sufferer improved with a rapidity which, under other conditions, would have been deemed miraculous; and he was soon able to leave the scene of his labors, owing his life to the skill of a member of that race which he had relentlessly persecuted,—after a career which, however short, had made a more profound and fatal impress upon the policy of the Spanish Crown than that of any other dignitary of his time, and which was destined subsequently to exert a powerful influence upon the political fate and the future civilization of Europe.
A sequence of calamities, traceable to royal perfidy and ecclesiastical usurpation, was now about to descend upon the Spanish monarchy. The apprehensions of the inhabitants of the Serrania of Ronda had been aroused by reports of the injustice and violence visited upon their countrymen of Granada. The Moorish citizens of the ancient capital and its environs were now all nominally Christians. The persuasive methods of Talavera and the severity of Ximenes had enrolled upon the registers of the Church more than seventy thousand proselytes. Under the circumstances, the professions of a vast majority of these were necessarily insincere. It was an example of the organization of hypocrisy upon a gigantic scale, where religious principle was subordinated to material interests, and an outward observance of superstitious rites was accepted as an equivalent of earnest devotion and genuine piety. These reputed converts had not, however, by any means abandoned the faith of their forefathers. They diligently celebrated its rites in secret. Their children were early, and with secrecy, instructed in the doctrines of Islam. In defiance of royal decrees,[250] they practised many suspicious ceremonies not recognized even by orthodox Moslems, performed incantations, wore talismans and charms. A concealed system of communication was established between them and their brethren in the provinces; and each important event that took place in the city was known within a few hours to every inhabitant of the sierras. The Moors of the Serrania of Ronda did not receive the Gospel with the same docility as their kinsmen of the Alpujarras, whose doubts had been speedily removed by the cogent argument of a hundred thousand armed men. The missionaries, who tried to carry matters with a high hand, were maltreated and driven away. The mountaineers rose; the country was swept by bands of merciless brigands; the corsairs of Africa repaired in large numbers to the scene of booty and adventure; the passes were barricaded; and the region in the vicinity of Ronda assumed the appearance of a fortified camp. Offers of amnesty, conditional on baptism, were received with scorn. An army under Don Alonso de Aguilar, the Count of Cifuentes, and the Count of Ureña then entered the mountains. The Moors, evacuating their villages, slowly retired to the Sierra Bermeja, where they made a final stand. The impetuosity and want of discipline of the Christians lured them into a disadvantageous situation, whence there was no escape. After a day of fighting, they were surrounded in the darkness and routed with frightful slaughter. Don Alonso de Aguilar, Francisco Ramirez de Madrid, chief of ordnance of the Spanish army, and many other cavaliers, were killed; and the mountain slopes were strewn with the bodies of soldiers who had been butchered as they fled. The victory of the Sierra Bermeja was the only important one gained by the insurgents in the long course of the Morisco wars. It was productive of no substantial advantage; and its only permanent effect was to exasperate[251] the Queen, who, now regarding herself as the injured party, devoted henceforth all her energy to the oppression of a heretic race whose existence she considered a blemish upon her piety and a scandal to her dominions.
The submission of the Moors, during the gradual subjugation of the Peninsula, had left large numbers in different conditions of life scattered through the provinces of the various kingdoms. A few had early apostatized; many were held in a state of servitude; but by far the larger portion enjoyed a nominal freedom, and purchased immunity from molestation by the payment of tribute. All who complied with the laws regulating their responsibilities to the government were allowed the peaceful exercise of their religious ceremonies. The principal wealth of the Castilian nobility consisted in the industry of these their intelligent and laborious dependents. On what are now known as the dehesas and despoblados—“pastures” and “deserts”—of Castile and Estremadura, the Moorish agriculturists produced from an ungrateful soil the wheat which supplied the population of the entire Peninsula. These invaluable tributaries of the Spanish Crown had never evinced the slightest concern for the fate of their fellow-sectaries contending for liberty and religion on the distant banks of the Genil. Not only had they failed to manifest their sympathy, but the extraordinary contributions for the prosecution of the war levied upon the products of their thrift largely contributed to the successful termination of a struggle in whose result they naturally must have felt a more than passing interest. Had their feelings been sufficiently ardent to have induced active and armed co-operation, the difficulties of the Reconquest must have been vastly increased. As it was, their apathetic and selfish conduct was far from securing them immunity from persecution.[252] The malignant bigotry of the Queen, flinging to the winds every sentiment of justice, piety, and humanity, had now usurped over her better nature an imperious and undisputed dominion; and on the twelfth of February, 1502, she published an edict ordering the banishment of all the Moors of Leon and Castile. The extraordinary lack of political discernment disclosed by such a step affords painful evidence to what dishonorable and injurious expedients a mind of more than ordinary capacity may be impelled by the fury of religious passion. These objects of her animadversion were, as a class, her most faithful, obedient, and valuable subjects. They had always observed the laws with scrupulous fidelity. Those most prejudiced against their blood and their belief had never imputed to them the crimes of sacrilege, of conspiracy, of treason. Under their patient and skilful hands, the most unpromising regions, heretofore abandoned by native ignorance and sloth as totally unproductive, now blossomed with unsurpassed fertility. Their industry filled the granaries of the kingdom; there was no other available source of supply, and with their expulsion a famine was imminent; in the future, as was subsequently demonstrated, there were none competent or willing to take their place. The slaves of her powerful vassals, serfs who represented infinite blood and treasure expended in the service of the crown, were not originally exempted from the force of this sweeping decree, and the infringement of private rights resulting from the arbitrary confiscation of this property, without excuse or recompense, promised disastrous political complications. These considerations had, however, no weight in the mind of the obstinate Isabella. The fact that in the midst of a Christian population an infidel community was suffered to exist, especially after the Moslems of Granada had declared their adherence to the Faith, was[253] repugnant to her intolerant nature, and a standing reproach to the religion she professed. In support of her policy, she coined the atrocious maxim, worthy of the ingenious casuistry of a Jesuit, “It is better to prevent than to punish; and it is right to punish the little for the crimes of the great.” The vicarious sufferings of the Castilian Arabs were now to atone for the offences of the rebels of Granada, with whom they had nothing in common but a similar origin and an inherited creed, and in whose behalf they had never exhibited the slightest indication of countenance or sympathy. The enforcement of this measure, whose inhuman provisions subjected the unhappy objects of its severity to the treatment due outlaws and criminals, was only partially observed. At the very beginning it was seen that, if carried out to the letter, a considerable part of the kingdom would become a barren and uninhabited solitude. The decree was therefore revoked. A compromise, by which the delicate scruples of the Queen were satisfied, was effected,—baptism was substituted for exile; the scenes of indiscriminate and wholesale aspersion were repeated; a large and industrious population bartered their religious convictions for safety, and, by the force of a royal proclamation, were transformed from a self-respecting body of colonists into a nation of hypocrites.
With the death of Isabella, which occurred at this time, the Moriscoes were relieved from the persecution of a vindictive and persevering enemy. The permanent elimination of her influence from the politics of the Peninsula did not, however, improve the condition of the recent victims of her fiery and unrelenting zeal. The system by which she governed; the infamous maxims which guided her conduct in the relations existing between sovereign and subject; the shameless violation of treaties; the audacious usurpations of the[254] clergy; the prejudices engendered by years of oppression, were perpetuated by her successors, and adopted by their ministers as an essential part of the policy of the crown. The reverence with which her memory is regarded is to be attributed, not so much to the greatness of her abilities, eminent as they were, but to their misapplication; not to the military achievements of her armies, but to the sanguinary revenge they inflicted upon vanquished enemies; not to the blessings of a wise, a just, and a stable government,—the most substantial foundation upon which the fame of a monarch can be erected,—but to the inauguration of measures which eventually purged the kingdom of misbelievers, who were the source of its material wealth and of its commercial and agricultural prosperity. A princess who could deliberately repudiate the obligations of national honor can scarcely be regarded in the light of a public benefactor. The patroness of the Inquisition has but a slender claim to the admiration of posterity. The popularity of Isabella is based upon the fact that she was the representative of contemporaneous popular sentiment. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries no proceeding was so meritorious as the torture of heretics. All questions of political expediency were rigidly subordinated to the claims of what was universally regarded as a paramount religious duty. The progressive decadence of Spanish power dates from its very establishment, and is directly traceable to the incessant intervention of ecclesiastical authority in civil affairs, and to the awful consequences resulting from the unlimited application of the atrocious principle that national faith and public honor must be always sacrificed to the interests of the Roman Catholic religion.
The different aspects under which the same things appeared, during the sixteenth century, to people of a common nationality, living under the same laws and[255] professing the same doctrines, are remarkable. During the bitter persecutions in Castile, the Aragonese Moslems retained their privileges unimpaired. Not only that, but while the spirit of fanaticism was driving the tributaries of Isabella by thousands to simulated conversion, Ferdinand issued a decree granting to the Moors of Valencia the enjoyment of their religious and social rights in perpetuity. On the one hand, therefore, was the most radical suppression of individual thought and action; on the other, a toleration worthy of the most enlightened statesmanship, and, it must be added, little to be anticipated under the circumstances. But the sagacity of Ferdinand never willingly countenanced the employment of force in matters of religion. His jealousy of power caused him to resent the encroachments of the priesthood; and he secretly discouraged the oppression of a race which he recognized as controlling the material resources upon whose maintenance depended the preservation of his dignity and prestige.
During the twelve years that intervened between the death of Isabella and that of Ferdinand, the Moors enjoyed comparative peace and immunity; and the advent of Charles V. brought at first no unfavorable changes in their political or social conditions. That prince was scarcely seated upon the throne which he had inherited, and by whose acceptance there devolved upon him responsibilities of the greatest moment and the government of a people of whose disposition and character he was profoundly ignorant, when serious internal disturbances began to menace his authority. In Castile, the Comuneros, a conspiracy of nobles and municipalities, arose to assert their ancient privileges, impaired by foreign influence; and, at the same time, the Valencian populace banded together under the name of Germania, or Brotherhood, to repress the growing insolence of the aristocracy.[256] The encroachments of the latter had long been a serious grievance in the kingdom of Valencia. Its members, ever since the Conquest, had maintained an insulting deportment with their inferiors, which had exasperated the latter beyond all endurance. They borrowed money of wealthy merchants and repaid them with curses and ridicule. The establishment of a regency had weakened the administration of the laws; the nobles were not slow to observe the advantages which a virtual interregnum afforded the development of private ambition; and, in the assertion of obsolete feudal privileges, every wrong which avarice or hatred could suggest was inflicted upon the citizens of a rich and defenceless community. The Moors, who were the vassals of the Valencian nobles, were not infrequently the instruments of their malevolence, and shared with their masters the general obloquy which attached to their conduct. The organization of the Germania had an important and disastrous effect upon the fortunes of the former. Their lot was cast with their lords, and the predominance temporarily acquired by the rebels through the incapacity of the Viceroy proved fatal in the end to the liberties of the vassal. The popular cry of infidel was raised by the insurgents, who numbered many ecclesiastics in their ranks, and sixteen thousand Moslems submitted to the infliction of compulsory baptism. The Emperor, who seems to have inherited with his dominions a taste for persecution, was not satisfied while a single Mohammedan remained within the jurisdiction of the Spanish Crown. With great difficulty he extorted a bull from the Pope which absolved him from the oath he had taken to observe the ancient laws and treaties of the kingdom, and expressly authorizing the reduction to slavery of every Mussulman whose scruples or obstinacy might prevent him from renouncing the belief of his fathers. Secure of Papal sanction, Charles now[257] issued a proclamation requiring the Moors, under mysterious but unspecified penalties, to become Christians within ten days. The latter, who did not manifest the submissive spirit of their brethren, maintained a sullen demeanor, and, disposing of their personal effects for whatever they could obtain, prepared to go into exile. The publicity of their intention, however, defeated it; the authorities forbade the sale of their property as well as their departure, and nothing remained for them but apostasy or armed resistance. The former alternative was embraced by far the greater number. With such a multitude individual aspersion was impossible; the water of regeneration was sprinkled over kneeling thousands with branches of hyssop, and more than one unrepentant infidel, who had submitted with secret disgust to an obnoxious ceremony, was heard to mutter, “Praise be to Allah! Not a drop defiled me!”
The rural communities of Valencia regarded the prospect of conversion with even more disfavor than did the inhabitants of the capital. The ecclesiastical commissioners sent to enforce the royal edicts were excluded from the dwellings of the peasantry, who refused to hear their exhortations. In some localities open violence was manifested; the Baron of Cortes, who had urged submission, was killed by his retainers, and his body left to be devoured by swine. Resistance to royal authority was soon followed by organized revolt, and the Sierra de Espadan became the seat of a formidable insurrection. Including the banditti who habitually infested the mountains, and the African freebooters who hailed every disturbance as a source of plunder and profit, the army of the rebels amounted to more than four thousand well-armed men. A farmer named Selim Carbaic was elected their general, whose natural abilities and the valor of whose followers maintained for months an unequal struggle[258] with the combined resources of the monarchy. Overcome at last, two thousand of the insurgents with their leader perished in a single battle; and a general amnesty was declared, under the sole condition by which any Moslem was now permitted to retain life or liberty. The Moors of Catalonia and Aragon were tendered the same alternative. Without hesitation they preferred hypocrisy to martyrdom; and by the year 1526 there no longer remained within the limits of the Spanish Peninsula a single individual who dared to openly acknowledge his belief in the creed of Mohammed.
This flattering result having been finally accomplished, it was now considered advisable to reform the proselytes. In nearly all localities where the Moriscoes predominated they occupied an anomalous position, so far as their spiritual welfare was concerned, for they were practically living without any religion. They neglected to conform to the ordinances or to observe the canons of the Church whose pale they had entered under compulsion. The evasion of their duties was connived at by the priests, who, so long as their parishioners were quiet and regularly paid their contributions, closed their eyes to all formal irregularities, and never troubled themselves with the instructions which it was their office to impart. This indulgence was further secured by donatives that exempted unwilling sinners from penance, whose vexatious performance might always be commuted for a pecuniary consideration. In the sight of the clergy, spiritual duties were thus entirely obscured by the more palpable advantages to be derived from worldly benefits and the maintenance of their flocks in ignorance,—a policy which at the same time confirmed their authority and increased their revenues. But the Moriscoes, while they shunned the mass, could not with safety resort to any other source of religious consolation.[259] They were more than suspected of practising the rites of Islam in secret; but the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion. In the eyes of devout Christians, who did not fail to notice and reprobate their shortcomings, they were regarded as something worse than Pagans. Although they possessed all the requisites of good citizenship, and their intercourse with their neighbors was marked by every evidence of honor and probity, these qualities were ignored when their religious consistency was called in question.
The visit of Charles V. to Granada in 1526 was made the occasion for a strenuous appeal for the reform of the Moriscoes. Petitions and remonstrances without number, reinforced with all the arts of sacerdotal eloquence, were presented to the Emperor, urging that radical measures be taken to correct an evil which was seriously affecting the credit and the discipline of the Church. A commission of thirteen members, most of them high ecclesiastical dignitaries, and presided over by Don Alonso Manrique, Grand Inquisitor of Spain, was therefore appointed, and began an investigation. There was no difficulty in anticipating the decision of such a tribunal. That its decrees might be properly executed, the Holy Office was brought from Jaen and formally established in one of the palaces of the city. Ten sessions sufficed to determine a question in which were involved matters of the greatest consequence to the welfare of the kingdom, the maintenance of national honor, and the justice and integrity of the crown. Every accusation against the Moriscoes was received and considered, but they were not permitted to be heard in their own defence. The determination of the commission was published in a royal edict, which prohibited the Moriscoes the use of their family names, their dress, their language;[260] which compelled the exposure of the faces of their women to the insulting gaze of the loungers in the streets; which required the abandonment of the peculiar ceremonies employed in the slaughter of animals for food; which sanctioned by domiciliary visits invasion of the privacy of their homes; and forbade them to ever lose sight of the Inquisitorial palace, whose officials were directed to henceforth exercise careful supervision over their conduct, and to punish with their customary rigor all infractions of religious discipline.
The terror experienced by the victims of this atrocious decree, which not only violated the conditions upon which Spanish supremacy depended, but deliberately sacrificed every consideration of justice for which national honor had solemnly pledged its faith, can hardly be imagined. But the Moriscoes, whose experience with their spiritual advisers had taught them the efficacy of certain methods in averting impending evil, had recourse to an expedient which, on a smaller scale, had repeatedly proved successful. It was no secret that the royal treasury was empty; and it was suspected that the depressed condition of the national finances was largely responsible for the proselyting zeal so unexpectedly exerted against a peaceable and inoffensive class. In consideration of a “gift” of eight thousand ducats, the execution of the obnoxious decree was suspended, during the pleasure of the Emperor, as soon as it had been signed; but this indulgence, it was expressly declared, did not affect the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. The parasites who surrounded the throne demanded and received an equal amount for an influence they claimed to possess, but which was probably never exerted. Thus a monarch, who posed as the secular representative of Roman Catholicism, consented to sacrifice the religious interests of a large body of his subjects and[261] to compromise the imperial dignity for a sum equivalent at the present day to nine hundred thousand dollars in gold. No event in Spanish history discloses more clearly than this the true motives which instigated the prosecution of heresy, or the extraordinary wealth of those who were the objects of official cupidity and public malevolence.
The Moors of Granada, who had heretofore been almost exempt from the exactions of inquisitorial tyranny, now experienced for the first time the dire powers of the Holy Office. One of the first acts of Isabella, after the Conquest, was the foundation of innumerable monasteries. The favorite sites of these establishments were the suburban palaces of the Moslem princes, it being considered a peculiarly meritorious achievement to erect on the ruins of a splendid villa, devoted to the pleasures of a votary of Islam, an abode for holy men, who, by a pious fiction, were supposed to employ their abundant leisure in praying for the salvation of heretics. In building these structures the baths were first demolished, on account of the scandal the sight of apartments devoted to ablution and luxury caused every good Christian, as well as for the reason that their use was always considered entirely superfluous in a monastic institution. As a result of the partiality exhibited by successive princes towards the monachal orders, the city swarmed with friars of every description. Their prejudices made them the bitter enemies of the Moriscoes, while their numbers and audacity rendered them both influential and formidable. The fact that the inferior officials of the Inquisition were principally recruited from their ranks augmented the terror which their insolence and rapacity inspired, and no familiar who wore the Dominican or Franciscan garb was ever known to incline to the side of mercy. To such hands was now committed the fate of the Moors of Granada. The[262] compact with the Emperor, by which they had been confirmed for the time in the enjoyment of their customs, was broken. Their property was confiscated. They were subjected to the diabolical tortures adopted by the direst of tribunals for the production of testimony and the confession of guilt. In the famous Plaza de la Bab-al-Rambla, the scene of many knightly encounters and of the destruction of Moslem learning by Ximenes, the condemned underwent the final penance, the sacrifice of the auto-da-fé. The annoying restraints imposed upon them by priestly intolerance were the least oppressive of the many evils the Moriscoes were condemned to endure. In the frequent controversies which arose concerning the interpretation of imperial edicts and canonical decrees, the authority of the latter always prevailed. Every official, civil, religious, or military, asserted the privilege of magistracy, and claimed the right to compound an offence or to impose a penalty. In the art of extorting money, as in the direction of all matters pertaining to civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the servants of the Church displayed an extraordinary aptitude. The regular taxes imposed upon the Moriscoes, a grievous burden in themselves, were augmented a hundred-fold by impositions unauthorized by law, and which had no other foundation than the demands of official rapacity. The sums obtained from these enforced contributions were enormous. An idea may be formed of the probable amount they yielded when it is remembered that the legitimate tax paid annually by the silk markets of Almeria, Malaga, and Granada added more than a million dollars to the royal treasury. The irregular means employed were far more profitable in their results than those countenanced by legal authority; and there were few demands, however iniquitous, which a Morisco dared refuse when confronted with the menacing power of the Inquisition.
[263]
In Valencia also the Holy Office, supported by Papal sanction and imperial duplicity, found a rich and most fruitful field for its nefarious operations. It was in this kingdom, so remarkable for its natural advantages and the industry of its people, that the Spanish proverb, “Quien tiene Moro, tiene oro,” had its origin. The relation of vassalage which the Moors of that kingdom in general sustained to the nobility was far from sufficient to protect them against the effects of secular and ecclesiastical prejudice. The unquestioned orthodoxy of the lord, his generosity to the Church, the antiquity of his family, the prestige of his name, his services to the crown, were swept aside when the question of disciplining his retainers was involved. The slightest suspicion attaching to a Moslem was enough to invite the descent of a horde of familiars and alguazils, who never failed to discover evidences of irregularity sufficient to render their examination profitable. The visitations of these functionaries were doubly offensive by reason of the unfeeling and insolent manner in which they were conducted. They left no corner of a dwelling unsearched; they destroyed property, insulted women, and without color of right or pretence of concealment appropriated such jewels and trinkets as struck their fancy. Spies of the Holy Office swarmed in the Moorish quarter, ever alert for signs of heresy. For these outrages there was no possibility of redress, and the trembling victim gladly purchased, by the confiscation of his effects, temporary security from greater misfortunes, which, if his worldly possessions were sufficient to warrant further interference, he was certain sooner or later to undergo. The intolerable nature of these persecutions impelled thousands of Moriscoes to seek by flight the only available relief from oppression. The Holy Fathers of the Inquisition were horrified by the retaliatory measures[264] adopted by the friends of those who, for the welfare of their souls, were subjected to the salutary restraints of ecclesiastical discipline. Every time that the Moors condemned by that tribunal expiated their heresies in an auto-da-fé, information was promptly sent to Barbary, and an equal number of Christian captives perished by fire.
The African corsairs, under the command of the relentless Barbarossa, at that time held the empire of the Mediterranean, and by their aid multitudes of Moriscoes succeeded in escaping to Morocco. In vain the nobles protested against a policy which depreciated the value of their estates, depopulated their villages, and daily deprived them of laborers whose services could not be dispensed with and whose loss could not be replaced; both royal power and popular sentiment sanctioned the course of the Church, and the material prosperity of a single province was not worthy of consideration when weighed with the perishing souls of thousands of suspected heretics. Pecuniary arguments were then employed, and after several years of negotiation the operations of the Holy Office were suspended upon the payment of a yearly donative of twenty-five hundred ducats. Once more free from the perils of Inquisitorial visitation and punishment, the Moriscoes at once relapsed into their former religious indifference; the clergy viewed with unconcern the unmistakable evidences of apostasy among their parishioners; the nobles welcomed with undisguised satisfaction the relief of their vassals, the increase of their revenues, and the indications of returning prosperity; while the inquisitors, whose treasury had been filled to overflowing with the gold wrung by fines and confiscations from the wealthiest subjects of the kingdom, sought in other quarters new material for the stake and the dungeon, to be condemned[265] to present torture and eternal infamy in the name of an All-Merciful God.
The abdication of Charles V. brought a grateful respite to the harassed and suffering Moors. The mighty interests of an empire which extended over two worlds engrossed the attention of Philip II., and he had, at first, no time to devote to the persecution of a handful of alleged heretics lost in a corner of his vast dominions. The Roman Pontiff, who, perhaps influenced by motives of humanity, but certainly not absolutely free from political bias or resentment for the outrage inflicted by the Emperor upon the Holy See, had always discountenanced his oppression of the Moriscoes, now heartily co-operated with Philip in alleviating the misery of their condition. A brief issued from the Vatican in 1556 empowered confessors to absolve from the offence of heresy without penance, and deprived the Inquisition of the greater part of its jurisdiction and authority. The nature of the young King had not yet been corrupted by absolute power; nor were his actions now controlled by that morose and pitiless spirit subsequently developed by remorse, disease, and bigotry, which, added to the hereditary taint of insanity which afflicted his family, rendered him, during the greater portion of his life, one of the most unfeeling monsters that has ever disgraced a throne.
The beneficial effects of leniency upon the Moriscoes, as contrasted with the employment of violent measures, were soon disclosed. They conformed, with seeming alacrity, to the often vexatious regulations imposed upon their conduct. They wore the Spanish costume; they adopted, in all public transactions at least, the use of the Castilian language. Colleges were founded for their instruction by devout and enterprising prelates. Their children, male and female, were educated in the schools, and assumed the ecclesiastical[266] habit of the various monastic orders within whose jurisdiction they were enrolled. From Morisco seminaries missionaries went forth to instruct and reconcile their doubting countrymen. In imitation of their patrons, they founded and supported religious brotherhoods. Their professions were apparently sincere; they began to perform their duties with scrupulous regularity; and it seemed as if at last the hitherto delusive hope of Moslem conversion was about to be realized. But the spirit of ferocious intolerance, ever predominant in the Spanish character, and which in the sixteenth century amounted to a frenzy, regarded with anything but complacency the indulgent consideration extended towards the unhappy objects of hereditary aversion. With this sentiment generally prevalent, fresh pretexts for encroachment were easily invented. In 1560 the assistance of the government was invoked by the Christians of Granada to restrain the purchase of slaves by the Moriscoes, who, it was stated, were in the habit of instructing their servants secretly in the doctrines of Islam and thereby multiplying the number of its adherents, to the scandal of the Church and the prejudice of the royal authority. No attempt was made to ascertain the truth or falsity of this accusation, and the Moriscoes were deprived, by royal decree, of the right of possessing slaves, a measure seriously affecting the rural and domestic economy of the entire population of Granada, which was dependent upon the cultivation of the soil by a multitude of negroes held by the Moorish farmers in servitude.
In addition to this virtual confiscation of property for no valid cause and without indemnity, the Moors were compelled to produce the arms whose possession had already been licensed, in order to have them stamped by the government, and thus contribute still further to the gratification of official greed. The[267] penalty incurred for the possession of a weapon without permission was six years in the galleys; that for counterfeiting the royal stamp was death. The enforcement of these regulations, the first of which threatened to paralyze agricultural labor, the principal occupation of the Moriscoes and the main dependence of the revenues of the crown, exasperated beyond endurance those affected by their enactment. The loss of their slaves impoverished many. Some surrendered their arms and procured others clandestinely. Others enlisted in the organized bands of outlaws who, under the name of monfis, roamed through the sierras and levied at will contributions upon the wealthy Spaniards of the Vega. Many of these brigands, through the connivance of their sympathizers, entered the capital by night in force, bore away the wives and children of their enemies, and left in the squares and highways the mutilated corpse of every Christian they encountered. The numbers of the monfis increased with alarming rapidity. Their incursions began to resemble the operations of an organized army; preparations for an insurrection were secretly instituted, and the assistance of the rulers of Fez, Algiers, and Constantinople was earnestly solicited in behalf of those who represented themselves as persecuted Mohammedans, abandoned without any other resource to the tyranny of Christian avarice and power.
Untaught by experience and regardless of consequences, the officials of the various civil and ecclesiastical tribunals pursued their extortionate policy without pity or restraint. The competition existing between them, and the adverse claims involving contested jurisdiction and disputed plunder which constantly arose, often caused serious conflicts of authority, from which the representatives of the Church and the Inquisition generally emerged victorious. These quarrels between these two classes of oppressors embittered[268] them both against their common victims, and dissension increased instead of alleviating the sufferings of the latter. To make their situation even more desperate, the decree of Charles V., promulgated in 1526, was now put in force by the King. The Moriscoes, unable longer to sustain the grievous exactions which they well understood were but preliminaries to the expulsion of their race, now rapidly matured their plans of rebellion. In the accomplishment of this they displayed extraordinary tact and shrewdness. A considerable estate had been granted to them in the neighborhood of Granada for the erection of a hospital. Under pretence of soliciting funds for its completion, trusty emissaries of revolt were despatched to every Moorish community of the kingdom. The collectors employed in this dangerous service visited in their journey one hundred and ten thousand families. The incorruptible faith of the Moors and their loyalty to their race were unprecedented; for among the multitudes intrusted with a secret for which a traitor would have received a fortune not a single individual abused the confidence of his countrymen. The entire sum obtained by this means is not known; it must, however, have been amply sufficient, for the contributions of those who were fit for military service alone amounted to forty-five thousand pieces of gold.
Messengers were next despatched to Africa to purchase arms. Secret and well-organized communication was perfected. The election of a leader now became imperative. In the old Moorish capital there lived a young man of amiable disposition and excellent mental capacity, but of prodigal and licentious habits, named Don Fernando de Valor, in whose veins coursed the blood of the famous Ommeyade dynasty of Cordova. A prince by birth, and enjoying the greatest popularity as a citizen, his prominence in the community had secured for him a place among the[269] councillors who, under the constitution granted by the crown, assisted in the nominal government of the city. Although his dissolute manners and frivolous associations exempted him from the suspicion of the authorities, and his public observance of religious ceremonies stamped him as an orthodox believer, he had not forgotten the glorious traditions of his royal line, and in spite of his apparent sloth was active, brave, aspiring, and unscrupulous. In the house of a wealthy resident of the Albaycin, and within a stone’s throw of the inquisitorial palace, the chiefs of the conspiracy conferred upon this youth the perilous honor of leading a hopeless insurrection. With all the ceremonial of the ancient khalifate, he was invested with the royal insignia; his new subjects rendered him obeisance; he named the dignitaries of his court, and the assemblage invoked the blessing of heaven upon the Servant of Allah and the Representative of the Prophet, Muley Mohammed-Ibn-Ommeyah, King of Granada and Andalusia! The performance of this farcical ceremony neither inspired confidence nor awakened enthusiasm among the Moriscoes of the city. The character of the personage selected to re-establish the glories of Moslem dominion was too well known in Granada to arouse any other sentiments than those of ridicule and contempt. Intolerable as their condition was, the wealthy Moors hesitated to hazard their lives and property in support of a cause in whose success they had little faith; and the populace, while ever prone to riot, waited patiently for the signal from their superiors. For this reason, although several uprisings were projected, and even the hours of their accomplishment appointed, popular indecision and apathy rendered all designs abortive.
In the Alpujarras, where everything was already upon a hostile footing, the case was different, and the wild mountaineers hailed with enthusiasm the advent[270] of a sovereign and the welcome prospect of war and depredation. The tempest of rebellion burst forth at once in every settlement of the sierras. The excesses committed by the insurgents are incredible in their atrocity and worthy of a race of savages. Their animosity was especially directed against the priests, whom they considered as the instigators and the instruments of their misfortunes. Some had their mouths stuffed with gunpowder and their heads blown to atoms. Others were compelled to sit before the altar while their former parishioners tore out the hairs of their heads and eyebrows one by one and then slashed them to death with knives and razors. Others, still, were subjected to ingenious tortures and barbarous mutilation; compelled to swallow their own eyes, which had been torn from the sockets; to be gradually dismembered; to have their tongues and hearts cut out and thrown to dogs. Hundreds of monks were seethed in boiling oil. Nuns were subjected to shocking indignities and then tortured to death. The glaring hypocrisy in which the Moriscoes had been living was disclosed by their conduct as soon as they believed themselves emancipated from the restraints under which they had chafed so long. They exulted in every form of sacrilege. Dressed in sacerdotal habiliments, they travestied the solemn ceremonies of the mass. They defiled and trampled upon the Host. The churches were filled with laughing, jeering crowds that polluted every portion of the sanctuary. Sacred images, donated by pious monarchs and blessed by famous prelates, were broken to pieces and burnt. Ecclesiastical hatred had, as an indispensable sign of regeneration, forced all Moslem converts to eat pork, a kind of food doubly offensive from inherited prejudice and Koranic prohibition. In retaliation for this annoying requirement, the insurgents, with mock solemnity, and invested with all the paraphernalia[271] of Catholic worship, sacrificed hogs upon the Christian altars. Every form of violence, every outrage which newly-found freedom exasperated by the memory of long-continued injury could devise, was perpetrated by the enraged Moriscoes. So unbridled was their fury that even the common usages of war were constantly violated; prisoners taken in battle were put to death without mercy, and it was publicly declared that not a Christian should be left alive within the insurgent territory. This resolution, promulgated without his knowledge, was discountenanced by Ibn-Ommeyah, and he deposed the commanders who had by their arbitrary conduct and impolitic cruelty insulted the honor of his crown, but not until irreparable wrong had been committed.
The news of the insurrection, the exaggeration of its extent, and the horrors which followed in its train produced a general panic in Granada. All Christians who could do so took refuge in the Alhambra. The Moriscoes, in vain protesting their innocence, barricaded themselves in their houses, and such as imprudently ventured into the streets perished at the hands of the infuriated mob. The contest of jurisdiction which had so long existed between the civil and military authorities, each of whom claimed the supremacy, and neither of whom was willing to sacrifice his pretensions, even in the face of a cunning and dangerous enemy, added to the perplexities of the situation. Thoroughly acquainted with the discord of their masters, the Moriscoes, already elated by the exploits of their countrymen, of which they had early and accurate intelligence, began to manifest a suspicious activity. The prospect of war called to arms the turbulent and dissolute spirits of the kingdom. The feudal laws, which were still in force in the Peninsula, prevented, through the disputes of the nobles for precedence, that submission to authority requisite for successful[272] operations. With these independent bands there was no question of patriotism; the national standard was merely a rallying point for pillage, and that commander was the most popular whose neglect of discipline afforded the greatest opportunities for unbounded license. These troops were commanded by the Marquis de Mondejar, Governor of Granada, and the Marquis de los Velez, both of whom were indebted rather to their names than to their qualifications for the prominence they enjoyed, for the one was without discretion and the other without experience.
In the campaign that ensued every consideration of military virtue, of pity, of humanity, was cast aside. The Christians fought with an energy dictated by fanaticism and rapacity, the Moors with all the reckless courage of despair. The Castilian officers, so far from restraining the excesses of the soldiery, encouraged them in order to increase their ferocity and render reconciliation impossible till all the available booty could be secured. The Moors of Granada paid dearly for the apathy with which they had received the overtures of their more daring countrymen. The lawless rabble of the Spanish camp, which recognized no restraint but that of superior force, was quartered upon the wealthy citizens of the Albaycin. It is notorious that even the plain-spoken old chroniclers of the time blushed to record the outrages inflicted by these savage volunteers, callous to every appeal of decency or honor. An extraordinary tax of six thousand ducats was imposed upon the Albaycin for the purpose of provisioning the army; and the Moorish farmers of the Vega were compelled under heavy penalties to furnish every day twenty thousand pounds of bread at a price arbitrarily fixed by the authorities. Thus the unhappy Moriscoes of the capital, too timorous to second an attempt to regain their independence, were[273] forced to contribute to the discomfiture of their friends, to undergo unspeakable insults and frightful suffering, and in the end to sacrifice their property and in many instances their lives as the result of their distrust of a cause which lack of intelligent co-operation rendered hopeless from the very beginning. The activity of the Spanish generals, and the superiority in numbers of their troops, soon gained for them the advantage. The campaign resolved itself into a succession of skirmishes and marauding expeditions, whose monotony was occasionally relieved by promiscuous butchery. In consequence of a disturbance provoked by the insolent conduct of a Spanish soldier, thirteen hundred prisoners, of whom a thousand were women, were massacred at the Castle of Jubiles. The plans of the royal commanders were hampered by the insubordination of the soldiery; their insatiable greed placed the army in desperate situations, whence by good fortune alone it could be extricated, and the frequency of desertion seriously threatened the efficiency of a force unrestrained either by self-respect or military law. Driven from point to point, the army of Ibn-Ommeyah was finally beaten and dispersed. The Alpujarras were occupied by lines of fortified posts, which prevented the assembling of any considerable body of insurgents; the mountaineers of the adjacent sierras were gradually reduced to submission, and the insurrection was at last only represented by the fugitive prince and a handful of followers, whose fidelity was sorely tried by the tempting reward offered for the head of their sovereign.
The Moriscoes, terrified by the misfortunes which they had undergone, offered, for the sake of present security, to submit to any conditions that might be imposed,—to deportation, to exile, to confiscation, to the maintenance of the troops that might be detailed as their guards against future hostility. Different[274] and irreconcilable opinions prevailed among the officials of the crown as to the policy to be adopted; one party advocated amnesty, another extermination. In the mean time, while their superiors were wrangling, the soldiers pursued without interruption the agreeable diversion of rapine. Although hostilities had ceased, small bands of military brigands roamed everywhere without control, robbing houses, destroying property, ravishing women. Inoffensive peasants, who had never borne arms, were seized, carried to Granada, and publicly sold as slaves in the markets of the city by these outlaws, with the knowledge and connivance of the authorities. The latter quarrelled over the division of the spoil and the questionable distinction acquired by conflagration and massacre. No faith was kept with the vanquished. Safe-conducts signed by the highest officials were not respected. No Morisco was exempt from molestation and violence; no house was secure from the intrusion of prowling and bloodthirsty ruffians. When a body of Christian troops passed through a Moorish community everything portable departed with it, the rest was burned. There was deliberate method in this wholesale destruction of property. The army desired nothing so little as peace. War had been profitable even beyond expectation. The booty already secured was immense, but the greater portion had as yet escaped the avarice of the conqueror. The general and the common soldier alike cast longing glances upon the wealth of the Albaycin; upon the productive estates of the Vega, still cultivated by Moorish industry; upon the untold wealth in gold and jewels known to be hoarded by the residents of Guadix, Baza, and Almeria. Leaving all else out of consideration, the Moriscoes themselves, who numbered more than half a million, if condemned to slavery, would realize a prodigious sum. These were the sinister motives which urged an indefinite[275] prosecution of the war, and it was not long before the desired object was attained. The Moriscoes, driven to despair by the duplicity of their enemies whose violence they could not resist, again fled to the mountains and sought the standard of Ibn-Ommeyah. The Spanish mob of Granada, excited by rumors of conspiracy, at once massacred the defenceless Moorish occupants of the prisons to the number of several hundred. Their personal effects were appropriated by the governor; their lands were confiscated for the benefit of the crown; and their widows and orphans were reduced to beggary. A judgment of the court subsequently obtained confirmed this arbitrary act, stating that its decision was based upon the fact that, “while some of the prisoners were actually guilty, all were guilty in intention.” The affair was regarded as a suggestive warning, and in the future the insurgents did not receive or expect assistance from their friends in Granada.
Once more the flames of war were kindled in the sierras, and the scenes of indiscriminate butchery were resumed. The power of Ibn-Ommeyah, strengthened by thousands of desperate men fleeing from persecution, by the monfis, by the corsairs, and by numbers of savage adventurers from the northern coast of Africa, now became more formidable than ever. That power he exercised with ferocious severity. The discipline of his troops was improved. Marauding parties of Christians from the principal cities were surprised and cut to pieces. Prominent officials who had ventured to advocate surrender were promptly executed for treason. The discouraging and hitherto hopeless task of enlisting the sympathy and aid of the Mohammedan princes of Fez and Algiers was resumed, but with no better prospect of success than before.
Philip, fully informed of the incapacity and mutual[276] distrust of those hitherto charged with the government of Granada, now determined to commit the subjection of the rebels to a general whose rank and talents would command the obedience and check the insubordination of the ill-disciplined bands composing the bulk of the Spanish army. Don John of Austria, his half-brother, the natural son of Charles V., a youth whose opportunities had as yet given little indication of the military genius he possessed, but in whom discerning eyes had already perceived the existence of those brilliant qualities subsequently displayed with such lustre at Lepanto, was assigned to the command.
The greatest enthusiasm was aroused by this appointment. Nobles and peasants alike, ambitious of serving under a prince of the blood, flocked by hundreds to the royal standard. The new commander, although inexperienced, perfected his arrangements with all the caution and skill of a veteran. The army was thoroughly reorganized. Disorder was checked. Outlaws and beggars were expelled from the camp. As far as the annoying feudal regulations would permit, discipline was enforced. Licensed brigandage, which had done so much to destroy the efficiency of the troops, was punished with impartial rigor. Under these improved conditions the army, which had hitherto resembled a disorderly mob, now assumed the appearance of a compact and formidable force. Meanwhile, the insurgents had not been idle. Instructed by experience and adversity, Ibn-Ommeyah introduced many necessary reforms into his civil and military administration; purchased arms in Africa; invited the presence of corsairs; procured supplies; and, dividing his territory into districts whose arrangement facilitated mutual support and defence, awaited with resolution and confidence the approach of the enemy. The first operations of the campaign were favorable to the Moriscoes, whose[277] successes, while neither material nor decisive, nevertheless resulted in substantial additions to their ranks. Although able to bring several thousand men into the field, their want of artillery, ignorance of engineering science, and traditional dependence on partisan warfare made their victories worthless. The latter were obtained in skirmishes where but a few hundreds were engaged, the nature of the ground and the opportunities for surprise giving unperceived assailants the advantage.
Irritated by these reverses, a decisive step, long contemplated, and frequently from politic motives postponed, was now resolved upon by the government. The rumor of impending revolt was diligently circulated throughout Granada. As no evidence was subsequently disclosed to confirm this report, it was probably entirely fictitious, but it accomplished the object for which it was promulgated. A panic seized the excitable populace, and a universal demand arose for the expulsion of the Moriscoes. The authorities were quick to profit by the commotion and the fears which their own perfidy aroused; and, at a concerted signal, twenty thousand arquebusiers, with lighted fuses, occupied the approaches to the Albaycin. The Moriscoes, when ordered to assemble in their churches, anticipating a massacre, abandoned themselves to despair. It required all the influence of the municipal authorities, and the royal word of Don John of Austria himself that their lives would be spared, to reassure the terror-stricken prisoners. Crowded together in the aisles, they passed an agonizing and sleepless night. The next morning the males between the ages of ten and sixty years, with their hands bound behind them, were conducted outside the walls, where a decree of perpetual banishment was pronounced against them and their kindred. A few days of grace were accorded to these unfortunates to dispose of, or[278] rather to sacrifice, their personal property; and then, divided into several companies, each escorted by a strong guard, they began their journey towards central Andalusia, Estremadura, and Castile, whither, for purposes of security, it had been decided to conduct them.
The exiles were about eleven thousand in number. They included the descendants of the wealthiest and noblest Moorish families of Granada, and, indeed, of the entire Peninsula. Many of them traced their ancestry back to the princely families of the khalifate, eminent alike for intellectual accomplishments and military renown. In their keeping were the ancient traditions of their race; the rare memorials of the Moslem conquest and domination; the remnants of Arabic literature which had escaped the destructive zeal of Ximenes and the exhaustive search of prying alguazils and inquisitors. Their houses still displayed the splendid decorations peculiar to the palmy days of the emirate; marble halls and alabaster fountains; hangings of embossed and gilded leather; stuccoes that in elegance of design and delicacy of execution equalled those of the Alhambra. In the Vega were many estates, cultivated by their dependents, which returned each year a large and profitable income. All of these landed possessions were unceremoniously appropriated by the Spaniards, and the personal effects sold by the exiles yielded scarcely a tithe of their value. Driven by force from their homes, and despoiled on every side, the Moriscoes pursued their sorrowful way. Reared in comfort and affluence and accustomed to luxury, they were ill-fitted for a long and toilsome journey. Few of the multitude that started arrived at their destination. The hardships incident to travel and exposure to the burning heat proved fatal to hundreds. Many expired from grief, from hunger, from disease. Others were wantonly[279] killed by their guards, who plundered, without hesitancy or compunction, both the living and the dead. When this source of profit was exhausted, the strongest men and the most attractive women were sold as slaves. The condition of the few survivors who arrived at Seville was so deplorable that even the compassion of ecclesiastics, whose lives had been passed in the infliction of persecution and torture, was excited. The greater portion of the inhabitants, however, regarded these victims of tyranny with indifference or curiosity. The sufferings of tender youth, of decrepit age, of beauty in distress, awakened no sympathy; and if any feelings were exhibited by the throngs that lined the highways along which, under a scorching sun, the fainting exiles staggered, they were those of bitter enmity and of exultation at the misfortunes of heretics who had forfeited all title to humanity through the inherited blood of a despised and conquered race.
No beneficial consequences resulted from this measure, as cruel as it was unwise. The insurgents continued their depredations. Every straggler was killed; and no foraging party whose force was less than that of a regiment could hope to return. The Moriscoes by degrees became more daring, and it was no longer safe for individuals to venture beyond the limits of the camp. The encounters were all to the advantage of the rebels; and the great city of Almeria, by the merest accident, escaped falling into their hands. The latter, however, were not only unable to cope with the entire power of the Spanish monarchy, but were even unprovided with the means necessary for the retention of their paltry conquests. Even in a situation where unity was more than ever indispensable to self-preservation, the irrepressible tendency of the Arab mind to factional disturbance began to manifest itself. Nine centuries of national disaster had been insufficient[280] to repress the tribal hatred and the thirst for private vengeance which had sapped the vitality and finally torn into fragments the realm of a vast and splendid empire. The Moor was incapable of profiting by experience. The law of reprisal, that accursed legacy of his Bedouin forefathers, had never been lost sight of, even amidst all the culture and all the wisdom of his civilization. It was the most powerful and effective weapon that his enemies possessed, and it was eternally used to his prejudice. To its aid the Reconquest was far more indebted than to the energy of Alfonso VI. or to the craft of Ferdinand the Catholic. It won more battles than all the conquering sovereigns from Pelayus to Isabella. No Castilian prince had ever failed to recognize its importance or to profit by its employment. And now, in the remote Alpujarras, the last resort of Moorish valor and ambition, it was again to be wielded with even more fatal and demoralizing effects than had ever marked its use since the troublous epoch which followed the decline of the Ommeyade supremacy.
The popularity of Ibn-Ommeyah had of late greatly suffered through the strictness of the discipline which he had inaugurated and the oppressive acts of his advisers, for the most part men of obscure lineage and grasping avarice. The soldiers, accustomed to the exercise of the greatest freedom in their conduct and in their treatment of the enemy, viewed with unconcealed disgust the restraints to which they were subjected. In the councillors of their king, the rich Moriscoes, who had forfeited their lives and expended their treasure in sustaining his pretensions, saw a band of robbers, who abused the opportunities of their positions for their own pecuniary benefit. Especially were those whose wealth made them conspicuous the objects of the selfish animadversion of these base-born officials. No person of eminence,[281] whether civilian or military officer, was safe from the denunciation of informers. The experience of Ibn-Ommeyah, and his frequent escapes from premeditated treachery, had made him impulsive, vindictive, and cruel. Constantly exposed to danger, he was only too ready to listen to the voice of suspicion, and in the court of a despot the punishment follows swiftly upon the accusation. Besides the alienation of many of his principal adherents from the above-mentioned causes, Ibn-Ommeyah had recently gained for himself, by an egregious act of folly, the enmity of one of the most powerful tribes in the kingdom.
Among the most distinguished families of Granada was that of the Beni-Alguazil-al-Karimi, in which was vested, by hereditary right, the office of vizier of the district of Ujijar. Inherited rivalry, the pride of conscious merit, and the jealousy of power had made the Beni-Alguazil the enemies of the house of Ibn-Ommeyah. Their hostility, manifested upon more than one occasion, had aroused the apprehensions of the Moorish prince; and the assassination of Miguel de Rojas, the chief of the tribe, was, not without probability, attributed to his instigation. In consequence, the Beni-Alguazil, while unwilling to assist the Christian foe, maintained a suspicious and sullen demeanor, and, with the characteristic vindictiveness of the Arab, awaited patiently the moment of reprisal. With a perfidy natural to his character, and from the effects of which he was ultimately destined to perish, Ibn-Ommeyah had adopted the custom of promoting to favor and apparent confidence those whom he had already marked for destruction. Among those who shared this perilous honor was Diego Alguazil, a member of the rival clan, whose animosity had been soothed by the gifts and the consideration he received at the hands of his sovereign. In his harem was a lovely slave, the perfection of whose charms, imprudently[282] disclosed by her master, aroused the curiosity and inflamed the desires of Ibn-Ommeyah. Considerations of policy or justice were of trifling moment where the ungovernable passions of the Moorish king were concerned; the slave was rudely appropriated without apology or compensation; and this arbitrary invasion of the rights of a subject raised up for Ibn-Ommeyah an implacable enemy. The ambition of the beautiful Zahrâ, who aspired to the position of Sultana, was disappointed by her continuance in an inferior rank, and, her hopes thus blasted, she found in her former master a pliant and serviceable instrument of revenge. The support of other malcontents, dissatisfied with the cruelty and arrogance of their king, was readily secured; the fears of the royal guard of six hundred Turks were excited by an ingenious, but discreditable, stratagem; and Ibn-Ommeyah, torn from the arms of his women and thrown into prison, perished miserably before morning at the hands of the executioner. His death seemed not entirely unjustifiable, for he proclaimed with his last breath his secret and unshaken belief in the Christian religion. The hypocrisy, which, for the sake of luxury and power, could feign attachment to a creed that upon the slightest pretext it was ready to betray, was not unworthily punished by the treachery of a slave. Ibn-Abu, a cousin of Ibn-Ommeyah, succeeded to the empty honors and dangerous responsibilities of a tottering throne. The treasures of the palace and the seraglio were divided among the conspirators. The guards, whose fidelity to the new administration was suspected, were disbanded; the unpopular officials, deprived of the power which they had abused and the wealth which they had accumulated by extortion and perfidy, were despoiled and exiled; and the new King, crowned at Lanjar with all the pomp which the limited resources that a fugitive court and an impoverished[283] treasury could command, assumed, with an appearance of confidence, the direction of a government divided against itself and confronted with the combined and resistless power of the Spanish monarchy.
Ibn-Abu, when invested with the royal dignity, of whose precarious character he was perfectly aware, but whose acceptance he was afraid to refuse, was far past the prime of life. In the course of an eventful and romantic career, he had undergone many exciting and hazardous experiences. From his youth identified with the party hostile to the Christians, his fidelity to the Moslem cause had been severely tested on numerous occasions. Implicated with the monfis, he had submitted to torture and had been sent to the galleys rather than betray his comrades. Again, for refusing to disclose the hiding-place of his sovereign, he was subjected to a shocking and indescribable mutilation. His sufferings had confirmed his loyalty and intensified his hatred; the noble qualities with which he was endowed endeared him to his countrymen; but his indecision, his lack of energy, and his inability to profit by the means at his disposal in the presence of any sudden exigency unfitted him for the position of responsibility to which he had been so unexpectedly promoted. In spite of the disadvantages under which he labored, he, however, soon placed his forces upon a more effective footing, and his position was greatly strengthened by the discord of his enemies.
The reforms inaugurated by Don John of Austria proved impracticable when their full import became known to the soldiers and they began to experience the inconveniences attendant upon military restraint. Feudal customs also interfered with the enforcement of discipline; and the lords, fearful of a retrenchment of their own privileges, indulged their vassals in acts of rapine prejudicial to the well-being of the entire army. The quarrels and recriminations of the[284] Marquis de Mondejar and the Marquis de los Velez, so far from being extinguished by the appointment of a commander-in-chief, became more aggravated and violent than ever. The power of the latter was hampered by contradictory orders from Madrid, and the prosecution of energetic measures was prevented by incessant and acrimonious disputes. As soon as the prospect of booty was diminished, the army was threatened with dissolution. Desertions were so common and their effect was so demoralizing that all reviews were abandoned, in order that the enemy might not become acquainted with the diminished numbers of their antagonists. Scores of officers were cashiered for peculation; but their successors, unintimidated by the penalty, followed, without hesitation, their disgraceful example. In the markets of the city, the government supplies were publicly exposed for sale by the commissaries. The camp was filled with spies. Not only had many Moriscoes enlisted with the object of betraying their comrades, but the Spaniards themselves constantly sold both official secrets and arms to the rebels. Entire garrisons mutinied because of the necessary precautions instituted by their commanders; and it was not unusual for parties organized for robbery to leave their posts in violation of the express orders of the general. Of these marauders few returned, but their fate failed to deter others; the love of plunder prevailed over every other incentive; and the safety of the troops was often jeopardized by the misconduct of unprincipled adventurers, whose insolence and insubordination even the highest authority seemed unable to restrain. These breaches of order and discipline were by no means confined to the ranks; every grade of the military was affected; and no less a personage than the Marquis de los Velez himself assumed the right to act independently of the commander-in-chief, and to disregard all orders from[285] head-quarters unless they suited his convenience or promoted his interest.
The army of Ibn-Abu amounted to twelve thousand men, of whom four thousand were thoroughly drilled arquebusiers. This force, though for the most part well equipped, experienced in war, aided by the advantages of situation, and fighting for liberty on its own ground, was unable to accomplish any important result, even when engaged with a demoralized enemy. The achievements of the Moriscoes, limited to the blockade of a few fortresses and to marauding expeditions that harassed the cultivators of the Vega, are scarcely worthy of notice, still less of detailed narration. In the vicinity of Orgiba and Baza their troops appeared in force, but retired at once at the approach of the Christians. It was only by the practice of treacherous methods that the Moorish tactics ever prevailed. The want of stability and resolution which had proved fatal to the permanence of the Hispano-Arab empire survived in the final operations of the Morisco rebellion. The superior steadiness of the Spanish infantry invariably carried the day, even against overwhelming odds. The Moors were easily disheartened; after a trifling repulse it was impossible to rally them; and, even when protected by fortifications, they could not withstand the dogged pertinacity which was a prominent trait of the Castilian.
With the appearance of Don John of Austria in the field, hostilities were prosecuted with more rigor and with greater cruelty. The unimportant but bloody successes of the Moors had infused into the Spanish soldiery an even more pitiless spirit than before. The Austrian prince, at first disposed to leniency, soon became, through association and prejudice, as unfeeling as the meanest soldier in the ranks. The siege and assault of Galera, which was the turning-point of the war, exemplified, in a striking degree, the[286] dominant principle which actuated the minds of those who directed the campaign. That town, situated upon an isolated rock, was one of the most strongly fortified places in Spain. In addition to its position, its facilities for defence were excellent. Its garrison was composed of three thousand veterans. Its supplies were ample, and the prudence of Ibn-Abu, who fully appreciated its value, had long before filled to overflowing its magazine and its arsenal. Two falconets, one of which had been captured from the Marquis de los Velez, defended the castle, an unusual advantage, for the Moriscoes were generally unprovided even with such insignificant artillery. A concealed gallery cut through the mountain, and extending below the bed of the river at its base, provided the inhabitants with water, whose existence, unknown to the enemy, made its destruction impossible. In addition to the garrison, the walls of Galera sheltered a population of five thousand, including residents and refugees.
Every precaution that skill and experience could suggest had been adopted to strengthen the defences of a place regarded as already impregnable. Barricades were erected at frequent intervals in the streets, and between them the houses were pierced with openings, to facilitate communication and afford means of retreat. The town, built in terraces upon the sloping rock, offered an ascending series of lines of resistance. Those ordinarily considered as non-combatants were animated by a spirit of determination equal, if not superior, to that of the garrison, and their presence promised to be an important aid rather than a drawback in the impending contest.
Twelve thousand men, commanded by Don John of Austria in person, invested Galera on the eighteenth day of January, 1570. The approaches to the town were defended with stubborn resolution. When[287] forced behind the walls, it became evident that the position of the Moriscoes was so strong that ordinary methods of assault must prove useless. Mining was therefore resorted to; and a passage, terminating under the citadel, was cut with infinite trouble through the solid rock. As soon as it was completed, a storming party was detailed for the attack, and the explosion of forty-five barrels of gunpowder announced that the mine had been sprung. Little damage was done to the castle, however; the walls remained intact; and the Spaniards were driven back with heavy loss. Two other mines were opened and exploded, and three assaults were made simultaneously. One explosion effected some injury, but the ruins raised by the other counteracted it; the loss of the insurgents was trifling; and again the Spaniards sustained a bloody and serious repulse.
Another charge, in which the besiegers—infuriated by the fall of their general, who was struck by a bullet which his armor of proof fortunately deflected—succeeded in passing the ramparts, procured for them admission into the streets. Here they were met by scarcely less formidable obstacles, and their advance was, foot by foot, contested. Amidst these frightful scenes, the people of Galera vied in gallantry with the soldiers of the garrison. Old men fought bravely in the foremost line for the preservation of their homes. The wounded and dying received the grateful ministrations of delicate women, who fearlessly exposed themselves to fire in the discharge of the offices of mercy. Even children of tender years, undismayed by the smoke and din of battle, carried missiles to repel the enemy. The contest soon assumed the character of a hand-to-hand encounter. The barricaded streets, the battlemented houses—built of stone and with few openings—checked at each step the progress of the assailants.[288] For nine hours with incessant fury the battle raged. At length the survivors were driven into an angle of the fortifications from whence there was no escape. Here, in the face of a relentless foe, the Moriscoes made their final stand, without the hope of clemency or the fear of death. Young girls died, scimetar in hand, with a resolution foreign to their age and sex. Fathers deliberately killed their wives and children, and then rushed forward to perish on the weapons of the Spaniards. Even the veterans of Italy, accustomed to the atrocities characteristic of the wars of the sixteenth century, were sickened by the frightful carnage. The population was almost annihilated. Of eight thousand persons who had composed it, fifteen hundred women and children alone survived the final assault, which, not inclusive of the losses of the besiegers, cost thirty-six hundred lives. The avarice of the victors had spared four hundred helpless captives, whom Don John of Austria, enraged at the casualties which his army had suffered, caused to be butchered in his presence. In this diabolical massacre the halberdiers of the royal guard took a conspicuous part, encouraged by the approving gestures of their commander, who regarded with pious complacency the extermination of these rebellious infidels.
The siege of Galera is memorable, not only on account of the gallantry of the defence, but also from the fact that it indicates the true beginning of the military career of the future hero of Lepanto. While in reality reflecting but little credit upon the reputation of that prince, the popularity he acquired by the achievement discloses the moral perversity of the public mind in that fanatical age. Not a word was uttered in censure of the savage vindictiveness directed against the aged and the helpless, a class whose condition appeals to the most generous impulses of mankind, but whose fate was universally applauded by bigots[289] of every degree, as one step more towards the extirpation of heresy. A spirit of inherent deviltry seemed to distinguish for centuries the princes of the monarchy established by Ferdinand and Isabella. The progressive decadence of that monarchy from the day of its foundation—imperceptible at first, and concealing the incurable defects of the Castilian polity by the spurious glory of unprofitable wars and ruinous triumphs, and the genuine splendors of unparalleled discoveries, whose proceeds were employed for the oppression and debasement of countless millions of human beings—is one of the most significant and instructive events in the history of mankind.
The capture of Galera was a dearly purchased victory. The character of the resistance offered by its defenders did not afford a flattering prospect for the success of similar enterprises in the future. Many important strongholds, as difficult of approach, of equal strength, and of larger population, were still in the hands of the insurgents. The fate of the place, while a warning, served rather to confirm the obstinacy than to arouse the trepidation of the Moriscoes. Their dauntless courage had left hundreds of their enemies on the field. The bodies of Moor and Christian alike strewed the ramparts; and in the streets through which had surged the ever-advancing tide of battle had fallen many of the most distinguished nobles in the Spanish service. Realizing the difficulties he was liable to encounter, Don John made a demand upon the King for men and money. Reinforcements were easily obtained, but only through the clergy, who, as a rule, were always ready to profit by a crusade, but who generally regarded their spiritual aid as abundantly sufficient, and were never eager to furnish substantial contributions, could funds for the prosecution of the war be procured. This was accomplished by the establishment of religious brotherhoods[290] in every diocese, whose members, by the purchase of indulgences, could thus perform a service of signal merit to the Church and, at the same time, secure absolution for their sins. The scheme proved remarkably successful; and larger sums were eventually collected than those yielded by the sale of similar concessions issued for this purpose directly from the Holy See.
Papal influence, at that time predominant in European politics, had, immediately after the storming of Galera, tendered to the Austrian prince, through Philip, the place of generalissimo of the Holy League against the Turks. The vast international interests which depended upon the proper exercise of this office could not be neglected or their protection deferred until after many months had been consumed in suppressing the revolt of a few thousand rebels. By that time the Ottoman fleet would have obtained the supremacy of the Mediterranean, and an innumerable horde of bloodthirsty fanatics have descended upon the continent of Europe. While military prestige was presumably essential to one accepting a position of such responsibility and power, the risks were too great and the field too narrow to seek it in a campaign of such doubtful results as that against the Moriscoes. Peremptory orders were sent Don John to hasten by diplomacy what it had been demonstrated would be both difficult and tedious to secure by arms. An attempt was therefore made to corrupt the fidelity of Fernando-al-Habaqui, the favorite councillor of Ibn-Abu, whose wisdom and discernment, like those of many statesmen of his time, were superior to his patriotism and integrity. In various interviews, nominally appointed for purposes relating to the exchange of prisoners, the co-operation of this influential personage was obtained; he was promised an unconditional pardon; and the lives of those who surrendered[291] voluntarily were to be spared. As second in command, he was enabled to control a large extent of territory in the accomplishment of his treacherous design; all the detachments of Morisco troops outside the Alpujarras and within his jurisdiction were suddenly withdrawn; the dismayed inhabitants were abandoned to their fate; many of those taken were reduced to slavery or sent to the galleys; some succeeded in escaping to the mountains; and the entire district of the River Almanzora, thus driven to submission, yielded such a multitude of captives that the general, unable to feed or control them, was compelled to leave them unmolested until arrangements could be made for their final disposition. A royal decree recently promulgated had ordered the removal of all the Moriscoes of the lately conquered districts to Castile. This measure, nominally adopted for public security, had, in fact, its origin in more ignoble motives; in the country of the insurgents a considerable number of Moorish proprietors had succeeded, amidst the general confusion, in retaining their estates; and the effectual means of disposing of obnoxious neighbors by enforced migrations had demonstrated its value when the Moriscoes of the Albaycin had perished miserably on the highways. The unfortunate victims of state policy and religious persecution were surrounded and herded like cattle; their number is unrecorded, but it must have amounted to thousands; the few effects which they possessed they were generously permitted to sell for a trifle; and, shelterless and almost naked, they were distributed over the deserts of La Mancha, where the savage peasantry, considering them as intruders, inflicted upon these wretched exiles every outrage which malignity could devise or lawlessness execute. The presence of the Moriscoes in Castile, at that time a recent event, no doubt suggested to the fertile mind[292] of Cervantes one of the most entertaining episodes in the crowning masterpiece of Spanish literature.
The remaining Morisco strongholds, contrary to general expectation, and discouraged by the treason of Al-Habaqui, were far from emulating the heroic example of Galera. Seron, Purchena, Tijola, all well-fortified towns, submitted without serious resistance. Negotiations, now authorized by Ibn-Abu, were still carried on with Al-Habaqui, whose treachery does not seem to have destroyed the harmony existing between himself and his sovereign. The impatience of Don John for the termination of hostilities induced him to publish a proclamation of partial and conditional amnesty. Its terms granted life to all, without distinction, who within twenty days should surrender; promised that men between the ages of fifteen and fifty, who within the specified time should deliver to the proper officials an arquebuse or a cross-bow, should not be sold as slaves; and required that the leaders of the revolt, and such as were unwilling to take advantage of the proclamation, should be given up as an indispensable preliminary to leniency towards those who submitted. The ambiguity which pervaded the document caused it to be regarded with suspicion, and the Moriscoes, who had learned by repeated experience the duplicity of their enemies, declined to accept conditions whose uncertainty offered such inducements to abuse and misconstruction, even if they had not been actually drawn up for that purpose.
Unable any longer to cope with his adversaries in the open field, Ibn-Abu adopted the more effective policy of guerilla warfare. His army, divided into strong detachments, was posted at advantageous points whence the operations of the enemy could be observed and communication easily maintained. In this way the invaders were placed at a great disadvantage.[293] The Moors retired before their advance; the towns were evacuated; all property was removed or concealed; convoys were cut off; and the army of the Duke of Sesa, who commanded the Christians, was almost reduced to extremity by famine. It became absolutely necessary to establish a base of supplies, and the Marquis of Favara was despatched with a considerable force to Calahorra. The Spaniards reached their destination in safety; but their movements had not escaped the vigilance of the mountaineers; and their return march, conducted without the precautions adopted by every wise commander, encountered an ambuscade in the valley of Ravaha. Here the road, so constructed that four men could with difficulty move abreast, was blocked by loaded beasts of burden, purposely left there by the Moors; and the soldiers, tempted by the hope of plunder, broke into disorder to seize them. The measures of Ibn-Abu had been taken with consummate skill. The Spaniards, hopelessly entangled in the narrow defile and completely surrounded, were ruthlessly slaughtered. In former attacks the mountains had always resounded with the piercing war-cries of the assailants, but now not a sound, save the scattering reports of arquebuses and the whistling of arrows, broke the ominous stillness of the scene. The advance guard and the centre had been destroyed before the Marquis was even apprized of the presence of an enemy. He effected his escape only by superhuman exertion, and of the sixteen hundred soldiers who composed his command fourteen hundred atoned for the military crimes of official negligence and disregard of discipline. On the Moorish side not a man was killed, and less than twenty were wounded. History affords but few parallels to the battle of Ravaha when both the numbers engaged and the immunity of the victors are considered.
[294]
This disaster compelled a precipitate retreat, and, unmolested by the enemy, who had ample opportunities to intercept them, the Spaniards fell back upon Adra. Such was their desperate condition from hunger that the gardens and orchards in the neighborhood were stripped of everything edible, and the chronicles relate that not even a leaf remained. The capture of the insignificant fortress of Castil-de-Ferro, whose garrison numbered less than a hundred, was the only exploit which relieved the disastrous monotony of the Duke of Sesa’s campaign. The Alpujarras, although still occupied by the Moriscoes, were practically untenable. Every hostile army which had entered their defiles had marked with utter devastation an area of many square leagues. The fields were laid waste. The villages were burned. Information of the hidden magazines of the inhabitants was sold by their countrymen, and the stores destined for the winter were carried away or destroyed. At many points the peasantry had sought refuge in caves. It was a favorite diversion of the Spaniards to stifle these wretches with smoke, like so many wild animals in their burrows. The survivors were hunted like game through the mountains. On a single occasion, Don John received a most acceptable gift of four hundred heads and eleven hundred captives. It was a remarkable circumstance when any considerable body of insurgents were taken, for indiscriminate massacre was the rule of every campaign. It was considered a peculiarly pious and meritorious action to ransom prisoners and present them to the Inquisition. The fate for which these unfortunate victims were reserved made the most shocking enormities of open warfare seem trivial in comparison.
The relations of Al-Habaqui with the Christians were now generally known; his influence was constantly solicited by his countrymen; and his power[295] became so great that even Ibn-Abu himself was compelled to pay court to his minister, and countenance proceedings of which he heartily disapproved to avoid incurring the hostility of a favorite in whom was practically vested the supreme authority. The latter considered that the time had at last arrived for the conclusion of his treasonable negotiations. With the countenance of Ibn-Abu, and accompanied by seventeen Moriscoes of rank, he met the commissioners of Don John at Andarax. Nothing came of the conference, but the secret understanding between the minister and the Spaniards was carried out as pre-arranged. An adroit substitution of a document embodying the concessions of the Spaniards for the one containing the demands of the Moriscoes completed the deception of the latter; the arrogance of the Castilians caused a withdrawal of the envoys; and Al-Habaqui, with a single companion, appeared before Don John and, in the name of Ibn-Abu, gave up his own scimetar and answered for the surrender of the insurgents. This farce had but little effect, and was speedily repudiated by the Morisco king. Then Al-Habaqui received eight hundred gold ducats from the Spanish general, with which to raise a company whose especial mission it was to bring in Ibn-Abu, dead or alive. The prominence of Al-Habaqui had turned his head. His imprudent boasts betrayed him; he was seized by the Turks, imprisoned, and strangled. The treaty he had negotiated at the sacrifice of every principle of honor and patriotism died with him. Ibn-Abu used every expedient to keep the execution of his treacherous minister from obtaining publicity. Still resolved on resistance, he hoped by temporizing with the enemy to procure better terms. His resources were by no means exhausted. Five thousand well-equipped veterans were under his command. He entertained hopes of assistance from Africa—that[296] ignis fatuus of every Moslem revolution, which promised so much and always ended in nothing. In the mean time all was uncertainty in the Christian camp. Although a formal capitulation by an authorized functionary had been formally signed, no insurgents surrendered. The whereabouts of Al-Habaqui were unknown, and, while his death was unsuspected, his absence could not be explained. Under a safe-conduct an envoy was despatched to the Morisco king; he soon ascertained the truth and carried back a message of defiance. Preparations were at once made for a renewal of hostilities; the Spanish army, in three divisions, advanced upon the Alpujarras from as many different directions, and every effort was exerted to close the war by a vigorously prosecuted campaign. The situation of Ibn-Abu now became critical. The country in which he was compelled to operate had been stripped of everything that could sustain life. Much of it that a few years previously exhibited a high degree of cultivation had been transformed into a primeval solitude, where only the charred remnants of once flourishing settlements attested the former presence of man. His army was discouraged by the unrelenting pursuit of the enemy. As usual, the faithfully promised support from Africa proved a delusion.
The Moorish prince sent his brother, Mohammed-al-Galipa, an experienced captain, to direct the insurrection in the Serrania de Ronda. Betrayed by a Christian guide, who led him within the Spanish lines, he was killed, and his escort of two hundred picked soldiers destroyed. In Valencia, a conspiracy formed in collusion with the Moriscoes of the Alpujarras was detected before it had time to mature, and its instigators were punished with merciless cruelty. Encompassed by a numerous and powerful foe, Ibn-Abu recognized the impossibility of resistance and disbanded his army. A few of his adherents took refuge among[297] their kindred in Barbary. The majority, however, unable to escape and disdaining submission, which implied a slavery worse than death or inquisitorial torture, remained with their sovereign. All were scattered through the mountains and found shelter in the caves of that region, which were known only to shepherds and to those whose haunts were in the wildest and most rugged parts of the sierra. The march of the Spaniards was accomplished amidst the silence of desolation. In the distance at times could be seen flying parties of scouts, but no resistance was encountered. Whatever had escaped the destructive progress of former expeditions was now annihilated. Soldiers wandering in quest of plunder occasionally stumbled upon an inhabited cavern; its inmates were driven out by fire, and the infliction of torture soon disclosed the location of others. In one of these the wife and daughters of Ibn-Abu were suffocated, while he, with two companions, escaped through a secret opening in the mountain. The insatiable thirst of blood and booty which urged on the invaders rendered protracted concealment impossible. With each new discovery, other places of refuge were successively revealed through the unsparing and diabolical torments devised by the Castilians. The women were spared and condemned to slavery. Male captives under twenty, as a rule, shared a similar fate; all over that age were put to death, some amidst prolonged and frightful sufferings. Rank, innocence, the helplessness of age, the touching infirmity of disease, important services previously rendered to the royal cause, the prospect of future loyalty which might result from clemency judiciously bestowed, considerations of public welfare, dependent upon the preservation of an industrious people, afforded no exemption from the inexorable decree of destruction, enforced with every circumstance of savage malignity. The tracking of[298] fugitive Moriscoes was as exciting and far more profitable than the chase of wild beasts. It was no unusual occurrence for a party of these terrified wretches to be pursued for a distance of fifty miles. No obstacles were sufficient to deter the Spaniards in the tireless search for their prey; the more arduous the hardships undergone, the greater the enjoyment when the victims, vainly suppliant for mercy, were put to the sword or burned at the stake. This time no organized enemy was left in the Alpujarras to disturb in future the peace of the monarchy. More than ten thousand insurgents were murdered or enslaved in the space of a month. Wherever the soldiery could penetrate, every vestige of human life and artificial vegetation were alike swept away. The terraced slopes of the mountains, reclaimed by infinite toil to profitable culture, the once smiling and fertile valleys, were restored to their native wildness. No voice remained in that infinite solitude to dispute the dogmas of the Church or to offend the scruples of the orthodox by the celebration of the profane and detested rites of Islam.
In the Serrania de Ronda the rebels still continued active, but the ambition of rival chieftains aiming at supreme power frustrated each other’s plans and eventually caused the discomfiture of all. The reputation for valor which the mountaineers of Ronda had attained was national; military operations in that locality were not prosecuted with the same energy as elsewhere, but the irreconcilable spirit of faction, ever so fatal to the progress and stability of the Arab race, again interposed as a potent factor of disorganization. A sharp campaign directed by the Duke of Arcos scattered the forces of the rebels, and the Serrania de Ronda, while not actually conquered, no longer contained a force capable of even temporary resistance.
The war now substantially ended, it was announced[299] by royal proclamation that every Morisco, without a single exception, should be forever expelled from the kingdom of Granada. The order was carried out to the letter, under the supervision of Don John of Austria. The number of the exiles was from fifty to a hundred thousand. Superior discipline and the personal attention of the prince prevented the horrors that had attended the banishment of the residents of the Albaycin. Some were sent to Seville and Murcia, others to Estremadura, La Mancha, and Navarre. The Castilian peasantry resented their appearance among good Christians and resisted the soldiers, whose presence alone prevented a massacre. As usual, the lands which the Moriscoes possessed were seized for the benefit of the crown; their personal property was sacrificed for much less than its value, and many hitherto accustomed to luxury, plundered of the little they had saved from Spanish rapacity, reached their new homes in a state of absolute destitution. The remote fastnesses of the Alpujarras still concealed a number of fugitives, who cherished the fallacious hope that amidst the rejoicings incident to victory they might remain unnoticed and forgotten. Among them was Ibn-Abu, whose followers, the infamous monfis, alike inaccessible to honor or pity, were ready for every act of treachery, and some of whom had already discussed the expediency of obtaining pardon by the sacrifice of the King. These homeless wanderers soon realized that they were still the objects of Spanish animosity. The establishment of regular garrisons and the disbanding of the rest of the army were coincident with the formation of bands of scouts, whose duty it was to scour the country and capture every Morisco that could be found. In order to stimulate their activity, a reward of twenty ducats was offered for each insurgent. The chase of Moriscoes now became a more lucrative diversion than ever. The wildest portion of[300] the sierra was examined foot by foot. Large numbers of fugitives were taken, and the prisons soon became too small to contain the multitudes that crowded them to suffocation. The utmost diligence of the authorities was unequal to the task of providing quarters for the new-comers, even by the wholesale execution of the old. The most distinguished prisoners were hung. Others were tortured. Many were handed over to the Inquisition, which, while never unsupplied with victims, was glad of the opportunity to make a signal example of such troublesome heretics. The majority were condemned to the galleys, which, all things being taken into account, was perhaps the most severe punishment that a prisoner could undergo. To be considered a mere machine, almost without identity and destitute of feeling, chained for days to the oar, exposed alike to the burning sun and the tempest, subject to hourly laceration by the scourge of a brutal overseer; ill-fed and unprotected from the weapons of an enemy, no fate to which unfortunate humanity is liable would not seem preferable to the lot of the galley-slave. Finally, the available facilities of Granada proved totally inadequate for the disposition of captive Moriscoes; extraordinary powers were conferred upon the commanders of the fortresses and outposts; the scenes of carnage were transferred from the capital to every accessible point of the Alpujarras, and the objects of national hatred and intolerance daily paid by hundreds the extreme penalty of misfortune and defeat.
The capture or death of Ibn-Abu now alone was necessary for the full gratification of Christian vengeance. With trifling difficulty Gonzalo-al-Seniz, who enjoyed his confidence and had shared his tent, was persuaded to betray him. The rewards of treachery were definitely stipulated in advance, the principal inducements being a pension of a hundred thousand[301] maravedis and a promise of amnesty. An attempt to take the unfortunate prince alive failed of success; he was killed in the struggle; of his faithful companions, some were cut to pieces, some implored the doubtful clemency of the Christians, and others, after many perilous adventures, succeeded in escaping to Africa. The body of the Morisco king, strapped like a bale of goods upon a beast of burden, was transported to Granada and deposited at the door of the municipal palace. Then preparations were made for a ceremony unparalleled in the history of civilized nations, and whose character shows to what a depth the base descendants of Castilian chivalry had fallen. Proclamation was issued for the celebration of a travesty of regal authority and the offer of a public insult to the dead. At the appointed time a vast multitude of people, attracted by the novelty of the spectacle from every corner of the city and for a distance of many leagues around, crowded the streets and squares of the picturesque old Moorish capital. The line of march led from the Plaza de la Bab-al-Rambla to the foot of the Alhambra hill, a route which in the glorious days of the emirs had been the scene of many a martial triumph. The procession was headed by the corpse of Ibn-Abu, held erect by a concealed wooden framework, which was fastened upon the back of a mule. To insure its preservation, the body had been opened, the viscera extracted, and the cavity filled with salt; it was dressed in the scarlet and gold habiliments of royalty; upon its head was the turban of the khalifs; the face was uncovered, and the pallid, ghastly features seemed, in their fixed and mournful expression, to gaze reproachfully upon the jeering throng. By the side of the mule walked the traitor Gonzalo-al-Seniz, bearing the splendid arms of the king he had betrayed, a cross-bow and a scimetar embossed and damascened with gold. In the rear marched a company of Moriscoes,[302] exempted from the general proscription for participation in this ceremony, laden with the personal effects and the baggage of the Moslem prince. A numerous escort of arquebusiers enclosed the cortége, which was received with becoming pomp by the captain-general and all the military and civil functionaries of the kingdom. As Gonzalo-al-Seniz delivered to the Duke of Arcos the glittering weapons which he carried, he remarked in the figurative language of the Orient, “The shepherd could not bring the sheep alive, but he has brought the fleece.” In the presence of the assembled dignitaries of the realm the head of Ibn-Abu was cut off, and afterwards, placed in an iron cage, was fixed upon the battlements of the gate of Bab-al-Racha, which faced the Alpujarras. The trunk was abandoned to a mob of children, who amused themselves by hacking and disfiguring it until, wearied of this extraordinary pastime, they consumed it in a bonfire.
Such was the unworthy fate of the last of the imperial line of the Ommeyades. Eight hundred years before, Abd-al-Rahman, hunted like a wild animal through the Libyan Desert, had been summoned from a life of obscurity and danger to found a great and powerful empire. Although it rapidly reached its meridian, that empire required many centuries for its final overthrow. The proud dynasty of the Western Khalifate ended as it had begun, in proscription, in exile, in treachery, in violence. The causes which hastened its maturity also contributed largely to its decay. The aspirations of its sovereigns were, on the main, noble and generous. Their services to humanity were of incalculable value and of far-reaching effect. The fire and sword of tyranny and persecution could not efface the lasting impression made by the ideas they promulgated, the science they developed, the literature they created. These survived the tortures of[303] the Inquisition, the anathemas of the Pope, the turmoil of revolution, the funeral pyres of Ximenes. It is a remarkable fact that while the Hispano-Arabs brought within the sphere of their influence and culture the most remote nations, their nearest neighbors were incapable of appreciating their attainments or profiting by their knowledge. The inveterate prejudice against every phase of Moorish life and manners entertained by the Spanish Christians was fatal to their intellectual development. They regarded the intruders as barbarians, as, indeed, the majority of their descendants do even to this day. They were brought in intimate contact with no other form of civilization, and, rather than adopt what their ignorance and fanaticism prompted them to detest and despise, they chose to rely on their own limited resources. In consequence, their mental and social condition, so far from improving, gradually retrograded. The Goths of the age of Roderick were more polished, more intelligent, actuated by better motives, capable of higher aspirations, susceptible to nobler impulses than the Spaniards governed by Charles and Philip. In their progress from the banks of the Vistula to the shores of the Mediterranean, they had encountered many nations long subject to the civilizing influence of Rome. Not a few of them had visited the Eternal City itself. Some had served in the armies of the decaying empire; all had been impressed by the grand and imposing monuments of its magnificence and power. In the court of the last of the Gothic kings were men not unfamiliar with the masterpieces of classic literature. Its publicists had framed a code of laws which is the foundation of every modern system of jurisprudence. In the mechanical arts Gothic skill and industry had made no inconsiderable progress. While feudalism had retarded the development of society, its privileges, contrary to the practice of subsequent times, had not[304] as yet seriously encroached upon the dignity and prerogatives of the throne. The institution of councils under ecclesiastical influence was not entirely subservient to the interests of superstition, and often exercised a wholesome check upon the arbitrary designs of a tyrannical sovereign.
With the Spaniards of the sixteenth century, everything was subordinated to a single principle, the exaltation of the Church. Its servants were the chosen confidants of the monarch; its policy guided his movements, controlled his actions, furnished his ideas, inflamed his prejudices. Whatever was worthy of the name of learning the clergy monopolized and perverted. They diligently fostered the ignorance of the masses, until in all the continent of Europe there is not at the present time a more benighted class than the peasantry of the Spanish Peninsula. The treasures of the world were lavished with unparalleled prodigality upon religious institutions and edifices. A tithe of the wealth squandered upon these vast foundations, whose history is tainted with scandal, would have sufficed, under intelligent direction, to have transformed the entire country into a garden and to have rendered Spain one of the richest of nations. Ecclesiasticism promoted crime and idleness by making beggary respectable, and by countenancing the indiscriminate bestowal of alms as a cardinal virtue. The expulsion of the Jews and the Moriscoes were acts entirely consistent with the general scheme of its polity. They were indispensable for the realization of religious unity, to which every consideration of national welfare, public faith, and individual probity were unhesitatingly sacrificed. The atrocities which accompanied these violent and disastrous measures were regarded as peculiarly meritorious and most acceptable to an avenging God. Upon such insecure foundations was the splendid but unsubstantial fabric of Spanish[305] greatness erected. A sad inheritance has descended to the progeny of those stern warriors who founded an empire on the wreck of civilization, the repudiation of treaties, and the obliteration of entire races from the face of the earth.
The war which had effected the conquest and enslavement of the Moriscoes lasted a little more than three years. No period of the same duration in the history of the Peninsula was fraught with more important consequences. The Spaniards lost by the casualties of battle, exposure, and disease sixty thousand men. The losses of the Moors were much greater; twenty thousand were killed with arms in their hands, but no account has survived of those who were massacred in cold blood. The expense involved in the destruction of the most useful element of the population appalled the corrupt and incompetent financiers of the kingdom. Extraordinary and unwise fiscal methods, devised to remedy the evil, only rendered it more aggravated and desperate. Repeated campaigns of desolation had turned the whole country into a waste. Not only was the material wealth annihilated, but the means of recuperation were forever removed. Under the iron hand of remorseless persecution, industry had vanished. In vain the government offered alluring inducements to immigrants and colonists,—fertile lands, moderate rents, nominal taxation. Few accepted these offers and still fewer remained. The provinces of the South continued a prey to the brigands of the mountains and the corsairs of Barbary. Life and property were notoriously insecure. Castilian pride and indolence were unequal to the patient drudgery which had made hill-side and valley blossom with teeming vegetation; and men whose chosen trade for ages had been war were wholly destitute of the agricultural experience and skill necessary to reproduce these marvellous effects. The royal demesnes,[306] in 1592, yielded annually a sum equal to fifteen thousand dollars; during the closing years of Moslem rule, when the kingdom had been exhausted by incessant war and rebellion, the revenues from this source produced by territory of equal area and fertility had been more than ten times as great. Plundered, tortured, expatriated, the Moriscoes were still subjected to innumerable vexations; the curse of their race was ever upon them. But they were at last comparatively exempt from the odious imputation of heresy. After 1595 the most rigid inquisitorial vigilance was unable or unwilling to detect any heterodox opinions or breaches of ecclesiastical discipline among these unpromising proselytes. And yet it was notorious that they were ignorant of the doctrines of the Church, and that competent persons were not appointed to instruct them. Some zealots, indeed, maintained that they should not be permitted to communicate, and that the exposure of the Host in their churches was a desecration; others, on the other hand, refused absolution to such as would not acknowledge apostasy. Their confessions were often regarded as feigned, and the priests who received them did not hesitate to violate the obligations of their order by divulging privileged confidences to the magistrate. The Morisco could not change his residence without permission; he was not allowed the possession of arms; the approach within forty miles of the kingdom of Granada was punishable with death. Notwithstanding these severe regulations, many succeeded in evading the vigilance of the authorities. Some took refuge in Valencia, where the feudal lords still protected their brethren; others concealed themselves in the Alpujarras; many escaped to Africa. In their new homes they were generally treated with far more indulgence than in the old. Prelates and nobles who profited by their industry not infrequently interposed their influence to[307] prevent persecution, interested officials connived at breaches of the law, and it was a common occurrence for the alguazil appointed to prevent the observance of the feast of Ramadhan to pass his time carousing with those whom it was his office to restrain. The condition of the Moriscoes was also rendered less intolerable by the secret employment of both civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries of high rank and extensive influence, at a regular salary, to guard their rights and frustrate the iniquitous designs of their enemies.
The once flourishing land of Granada was a desert, but the demands of orthodox Christianity at last were satisfied. The devout regarded with unconcealed complacency the fertile territory formerly rich in every variety of agricultural products, and now abandoned to sterility, but which was defiled no longer by the contaminating presence of the heretic and the infidel. But, while the Faith was vindicated by the expulsion of these objects of pious detestation, the secret of prosperity had departed with them. The imported colonists were unable, under new and unfamiliar conditions and heedless of the frugality and patience which insure success, to render their undertakings profitable; indeed, most of them could hardly exist. Their taxes had, in violation of contract and on account of the pressing exigencies of the state, been gradually increased; the demands of importunate creditors and tyrannical officials made them desperate; and these exactions, which exhausted the scanty returns of an ill-conducted cultivation, kept the unfortunate immigrants in a state of hopeless penury. They either abandoned their farms or were forcibly ejected, and in 1597 the royal estates were sold because it was found impossible to operate them at a profit.
While in Granada such discouraging conditions prevailed, those portions of the kingdom which had unwillingly received the banished Moriscoes experienced[308] the beneficial results of their labors. The hitherto barren regions of La Mancha and Estremadura began to exhibit signs of unexampled fertility. The new settlers were peaceable, frugal, industrious. In Castile they were generally farmers; in Aragon, merchants; in Valencia, manufacturers. Not a few attained great distinction in the practice of medicine and surgery; and, like the Jews of former ages, they were frequently employed by the court and the family of the sovereign. The life of Philip III. when a child was saved by the skill of a Moorish physician, a service which was ill-requited by the deeds of his manhood. The exiles practically contributed the funds which supported the monarchy. The insatiable rapacity of adventurers had soon exhausted the available wealth of a magnificent colonial empire. Official corruption constantly drained the ordinary sources of revenue. In all financial difficulties taxation of the Moriscoes afforded an unfailing and profitable means of replenishing the treasury. Their burdens were first doubled, then quadrupled. Every species of imposition was practised upon them. Their debtors paid them in spurious coin, struck for their benefit. False jewels were pledged with them for loans. The chicanery of the law was employed to defraud them with impunity, while the most severe penalties were inflicted upon them for trifling breaches of trust. They were systematically swindled by cheats and usurers. In all possible ways they were made to feel the unmerited degradation of their caste and the utter hopelessness of relief. Yet under this weight of malevolence and injustice they prospered and preserved at least the appearance of equanimity. Nothing could, with truth, be alleged against their morals. They were nominally good Christians. They attended mass. They conformed to the customs of their rulers, wore their dress, participated in their festivals, spoke Castilian.[309] Their regular and temperate lives and their buoyant spirits under misfortune promoted extraordinary longevity. It was by no means unusual to encounter individuals whose age had passed the limit of a century. Early marriages and polygamous unions caused the population to increase with amazing rapidity. The census taken regularly by the Moriscoes to ascertain the proportion of taxes to be levied upon them and to insure its equitable distribution demonstrated conclusively that this growth was in a progressive ratio that was phenomenal in its character. The enumeration made at Valencia in 1602 showed an increase of ten thousand in three years. Modern investigation has established the fact that a population existing under the most favorable economic conditions will double itself every twenty-five years. The Moriscoes were far exceeding that estimate, for their rate of increase was triple. This wonderful augmentation must have been coincident with the highest degree of prosperity, otherwise subsistence could not have been provided for the multitudes of children. This condition was not peculiar to Valencia: it was the same in Aragon, in Castile, in Estremadura, in Andalusia. The Moors who had failed to conquer their enemies by arms now threatened to overwhelm them by sheer force of numbers. The Spaniards, not being sufficiently civilized to take their census regularly or accurately, were ignorant of the numerical strength of their own population, as compared with that of their Moorish subjects; but it was evident that there was a tremendous preponderance in favor of the latter.
The officials became so alarmed that just before the death of Philip II. he was requested to prohibit any further enumeration of the Moriscoes, because it acquainted them with their power and must eventually prove prejudicial to the interests of the monarchy. Besides their menacing increase, which no supervision,[310] however effective, could prevent, they possessed qualities that made them highly obnoxious to their masters. Their frugality and thrift, their shrewdness and enterprise, rendered competition with them impossible. There was no profitable occupation in which they did not excel. In agriculture they had no rivals. They monopolized every industrial employment; all of the most useful trades were under their control. They undersold the Castilian peasantry in their own markets. Even the most opulent, instructed by previous experience, sedulously avoided every exhibition of luxury; but the Moorish artisan had not lost the taste and dexterity of his ancestors, and the splendid products of the loom and the armory still commanded high prices in the metropolitan cities of Europe. It was known that the Moriscoes were wealthy, and popular opinion, as is invariably the case, delighted in exaggerating the value of their possessions. While they sold much, they consumed comparatively little and purchased even less. Although the offence of heresy could no longer be consistently imputed to them, specious considerations of public policy, as well as deference to ineradicable national prejudice, demanded their suppression. Their prosperity, secured at the expense of their neighbors, and a standing reproach to the idleness and incapacity of the latter, was the measure of Spanish decay. In the existing state of the public mind, and under the direction of the statesmen who controlled the actions of the King, a pretext could readily be found for the perpetration of any injustice. The Moriscoes of Valencia, the most numerous, wealthy, and influential body of their race, protected by the nobles, had always shown less alacrity in the observance of the duties of the Church than their brethren, and had thus rendered themselves liable to the suspicion of apostasy. It was declared that after a generation of espionage, prayer, and religious instruction[311] they were still secret Mussulmans. This opinion, perhaps in some instances not without foundation, amounted to absolute certainty in the narrow mind of Don Juan de Ribera, Archbishop of Valencia, a prelate of vindictive temper, arbitrary disposition, limited abilities, and violent prejudices. He owed much of his reputation for piety to the fact that he had denounced to the Inquisition more than four thousand alleged Moorish apostates. Knowing his feelings towards them, the Moriscoes generally turned a deaf ear to his admonitions and threats, and thus further incurred his displeasure. The energy of Ribera was incessantly exerted for the ruin of these supposed heretics, either by exile or by extermination. With this end in view he addressed several memorials to Philip III., who had now ascended the throne, in which the objects of his wrath were accused of every crime against the civil and the moral law,—treason, murder, kidnapping, blasphemy, sacrilege. In these appeals the Moriscoes were called “the sponge that absorbed the riches of Spain.” He enforced his arguments by the extraordinary statement that the destruction of the Armada was a divine judgment for the indulgence exhibited towards these enemies of the Faith, and that Philip II. was aware of it, for he himself had informed him of that fact. The recent occurrence of earthquakes, tempests, and comets was also sagely attributed to the same cause. The Moriscoes were not ignorant of the designs which the Archbishop was prosecuting to their injury, and endeavored to obtain the assistance of France and England, both of which countries were then hostile to Spain. They offered King Henry IV. the services of a hundred thousand well-armed soldiers if he would invade the Peninsula. The Duke of Sully says they even signalized their willingness to embrace Protestantism in consideration of support, it being a form of worship not tainted[312] with idolatry, like that of Rome. Negotiations were privately opened with the courts of Paris and London, and commissions were even appointed by the latter to verify the claims of the Moriscoes; but no conclusion was arrived at, and the plot was eventually betrayed by the very sovereigns whose honor was pledged to the maintenance of secrecy. An embassy was also sent to the Sultan of Turkey by the Moors, soliciting his aid and tendering him their allegiance. No plan which promised relief was neglected. The furious Ribera again urged upon the King the dangers that the toleration of such a numerous and perfidious people implied; he alleged their prosperity and their superior intelligence as crimes against the state; and as absolute extermination did not seem to be feasible, he suggested expulsion as of greater inconvenience, but of equal efficacy. Once more the nobles interposed in behalf of their vassals, and while the King was hesitating the Moriscoes endeavored to anticipate his decision by the formation of an extensive conspiracy. Again they were betrayed, this time by one of their own number. Public opinion, aroused by these occurrences, and further inflamed by ecclesiastical malice and by the pernicious influence of the Duke of Lerma, the all-powerful minister of Philip III., now imperatively demanded their banishment. This nobleman, of base antecedents and unprincipled character, and whose dominating passion was avarice, was Viceroy of Valencia. His brother was the Grand Inquisitor Their influence easily overweighed the remonstrances of the Pope, whose voice was raised on the side of mercy.
On the fourth of August, 1609, the royal decree which announced the fate of the Moriscoes of Valencia was signed at Segovia. No precaution which prudence could suggest was neglected to prevent disaster consequent upon its enforcement. Great bodies of[313] troops were placed under arms. The frontiers of the kingdom were patrolled by cavalry. Seventy-seven ships of war, the largest in the navy, were assembled on the coast. In every town the garrison was doubled. Several thousand veterans disembarked from the fleet and were distributed at those points where the Morisco population was most numerous. Such preparations left no alternative but submission, and the Valencians, anticipating the final movement which would deliver the unhappy Moors into their hands, began to rob and persecute them without pity. Even after all had been arranged for the removal, the nobles urged Philip to revoke an order which must cause incalculable injury to his kingdom. The most solemn and binding guarantees were offered for the public safety and for the peaceable behavior of the Moriscoes. It was demonstrated that the manufacturing and agricultural interests of the entire monarchy were involved; that a population of a million souls, whose industry represented of itself a source of wealth which could not be replaced, would be practically exterminated; that the educational and religious foundations of the realm alone received from Moorish tributaries an annual sum exceeding a million doubloons of gold. It was also shown that the vassals of the Valencian nobles paid them each year four million ducats, nearly thirty-two million dollars. The alleged conspiracies were imputed to the malice of the monks, who invented them in the cloister; the heresies to ignorance of the clergy, too idle or too negligent to afford their parishioners instruction. The evil results of the iniquitous decree had already begun to manifest themselves. The cultivation of the soil had almost ceased. The markets were deserted. Commerce languished, and the Moriscoes, to avoid the insults of the populace to which they were now subjected, only appeared in the streets when impelled to do so by absolute necessity.[314] The Archiepiscopal See of Valencia, which derived its revenues almost entirely from Morisco taxation, was threatened with bankruptcy, and Don Juan de Ribera, realizing when too late the disastrous consequences of the project he had so sedulously advocated, now in vain endeavored to stem the tide of public bigotry and official madness. While bewailing his unhappy condition to his clerical subordinates, he was heard to plaintively remark, “My brethren, hereafter we shall be compelled to live upon herbs and to mend our own shoes.”
Philip refused to reconsider his determination, and the nobility manifested their loyalty by the unflinching support of a measure running directly counter to their interests. On the twenty-second of September, 1609, the edict of expulsion was proclaimed by heralds throughout the kingdom of Valencia. It represented that by a special act of royal clemency “the heretics, apostates, traitors, criminals guilty of lése-majesté human and divine,” were punished with exile rather than with death, to which the strict construction of the laws condemned them. It permitted the removal of such effects as could be carried, and as much of their harvests as was necessary for subsistence during their journey; all else was to be forfeited to their suzerains. They were forbidden to sell their lands or houses. Three days of preparation were granted; after that they were declared the legitimate prey of every assailant. Dire penalties were denounced against all who should conceal them or in any way assist in the evasion of the edict. Those who had intermarried with Christians could remain, if they desired; and six per cent. of the families were to be reserved by the lords, that the horticultural and mechanical dexterity which had enriched the country might not be absolutely extinguished. These subjects of interested clemency[315] refused to accept this invidious concession, however, and hastened to join their countrymen beyond the sea.
The wretched Moriscoes received the tidings of their expatriation with almost the despair with which they would have listened to a sentence of death. Astonishment, arising from the suddenness of the notice and the inadequate time allotted them for preparation, was mingled with their dismay. The traditions of centuries, the souvenirs of national glory, the memory of their ancestors, contributed to endear them to their native land. There were centred the most cherished associations of a numerous and cultivated race. All around were the visible signs of thrift and opulence and their results, won by laborious exertion from the soil. The disfigured but still magnificent monuments of fallen dynasties recalled the departed glory of Arab genius and Moslem power. The loss of their wealth, the sacrifice of their possessions, portended the endurance of calamities for which they were ill-prepared, and of whose dreadful character their most gloomy apprehensions could convey no adequate conception. In every Moorish community appeared the signs of unutterable misery and woe. The shrieks of frenzied women pierced the air. Old men sobbed upon the hearthstones where had been passed the happy days of infancy and youth. Overcome with grief, life-long friends met in the streets without notice or salutation. Even little children, unable to comprehend, yet awed by the prevailing sorrow, ceased their play to mingle their tears with those of their parents.
As the disconsolate and sobbing multitude, urged on by the ferocious soldiery taught by their religion to regard these victims of national prejudice as the enemies of Christ, left their homes behind forever, their trials and sufferings increased with their progress. The government provided them with neither[316] food, shelter, nor transportation. The difficulties of the march were aggravated by clouds of dust and by the pitiless heat of summer. Many were born on the highway. Great numbers fell from exhaustion. Some, in desperation, committed suicide. Every straggler was butchered by the armed rabble which, equally ravenous for plunder or blood, constantly hung on the flanks of the slowly moving column. Many were assassinated by Old Christians, men of Moorish ancestry, the conversion of whose forefathers dated before the Conquest, and who told their beads and muttered prayers after each murder, as if they had committed an action acceptable to God. The armed brigands who composed the escort vied with the mob in their atrocities. The men were openly killed, the women violated. Their property was appropriated by force. Some died of hunger. Parents, in their extremity, became so oblivious of the instincts of nature as to barter their children for a morsel of bread. When they embarked for Africa they fared even worse than they had done on land. On the sea the opportunities for outrage were multiplied, the means of escape and detection diminished. No pen can portray the horrors visited upon the unhappy Moriscoes, helpless in the midst of savage enemies who were insensible to pity, hardened by cruelty, and dominated by the furious lust of beauty and gold.
The decree was not received everywhere with the same submission as at the city of Valencia. There the exiles, overawed by the large military force, yielded without disturbance. Half-crazed by misfortune, they even feigned exultation, marched on board the ships dressed in holiday costume and headed by bands of music, and in token of delight gave themselves up to the most extravagant exhibitions of joy. Some kissed the shore, others plunged into the sea, others again quaffed the briny water as if it were a delicious[317] beverage. Before embarking they sold much of their property, and articles of great elegance and beauty—curiously wrought vessels of gold and enamel, silken veils embroidered with silver, magnificent garments—were disposed of for a small fraction of their value. During these transactions, and in settlement of their passage to Africa, the Moriscoes succeeded in placing in circulation an immense amount of counterfeit money which they had obtained in Catalonia, thus literally paying the Spaniards in their own coin. The portable wealth of which the kingdom was deprived by their banishment cannot be estimated. It amounted, however, to many millions of ducats. Some of the exiles were known to possess a hundred thousand pieces of gold, an enormous fortune in those times. It was ascertained after their departure that their lords, in defiance of law, had purchased many of their estates, and had connived at the sale or concealment of a great amount of their personal property. Those who succeeded in reaching the cities were received with courteous hospitality, but the desert tribes showed scant mercy to the multitudes that fell into their hands.
Elsewhere in the kingdom the Moriscoes stubbornly resisted the decree of expatriation. The Sierra de Bernia and the Vale of Alahuar were the scene of the most serious disturbances, and at one time twenty thousand insurgents were in the field. Armed for the most part with clubs, their valor was ineffectual in the presence of veteran troops. The women alone were spared; the men were butchered; the brains of children were beaten out against the walls. The garrison of the castle of Pop, which for a few weeks defied the Spanish army, alone obtained advantageous terms. Of the one hundred and fifty thousand Moors exiled from Valencia, at least two-thirds perished. A large number had previously succumbed to persecution or[318] had escaped, and including these the total number of victims of the inauguration of the insane policy of Philip III. was at least two hundred thousand. The continuance of that policy until its aim had been fully accomplished had already been determined on by the councillors of the King. The secrecy which concealed their design did not impose upon those who were the objects of it. They began by tens of thousands to emigrate quietly to Africa. Then the decree, which had been signed a month before, was published, with an attempt to give the impression that it had been provoked by a circumstance of which it was really the cause, namely, the agitation of the Moriscoes. The latter were peremptorily commanded to leave the kingdom within eight days. They were forbidden to take with them money, gold, jewels, bills of exchange, or merchandise. They were not permitted to dispose of their estates. In Catalonia their property was confiscated, “in satisfaction of debts which they might have owed to Christians,” and three days only were allowed them in which to prepare for departure. Their little children were to be left behind to the tender mercies of their oppressors, in order that their salvation might be assured. Those of the northern provinces were prohibited from moving southward; those of Andalusia were directed to emigrate by sea. Within the allotted time all were in motion. The embarkation of the exiles destined for Africa was effected without difficulty. But their brethren of Castile and Aragon were refused admission into France, by the direct order of Henry IV., to whose agency was largely attributable their deplorable condition. His opportune death somewhat relaxed official severity, and a great number entered Provence. Although they were peaceable and inoffensive, the French were anxious to be rid of their unwelcome guests. Free transportation was furnished them by the city of Marseilles, and they[319] were distributed through Turkey, Italy, and Africa. So many died during the passage by sea that their dead bodies encumbered the beach, and the peasants refused for a long time to eat fish, declaring that it had the taste of human flesh. The progress of the unfortunates driven northward was marked by daily scenes of persecution and agony. The commissioners appointed to supervise the emigration connived at the evasion of the decree for their own profit. They extorted enormous sums for protection, which their duty required them to afford without compensation, and which, even after these impositions, was insolently denied. Those things which the ordinary dictates of humanity delight to bestow were sold to the hapless wanderers at fabulous prices. For the shade of the trees on the highway the grasping and unprincipled peasant exacted a rental; and the water dipped from the streams in the trembling hands of the sufferers commanded a higher price than that usually paid for the wine of the country. The little which the commissioners overlooked was seized by rapacious French officials, and the condition of the Moriscoes was still further aggravated by the absconding of those of their number to whom the common purse had been intrusted.
In the merciless proscription thus imposed upon an entire people, an insignificant number temporarily escaped. In the latter were included young children torn from their parents to be educated by the Church, and such persons “of good life and religion” as the clergy, through interested or generous motives, chose to recommend to royal indulgence. In 1611 the exemption enjoyed by these classes was removed; searching inquiry was instituted throughout the kingdom, and every individual of Moorish blood who could be discovered was inexorably condemned to banishment or slavery. By the persecution of the Moriscoes[320] and the losses by war, assassination, voluntary emigration, and enforced exile, Spain was deprived of the services of more than a million of the most intelligent, laborious, and skilful subjects in Christendom. Those who were finally excluded were probably not more than half of the entire Moorish population. No statistics are accessible in our day from which an estimate can be formed of the vast number that perished by famine, by torture, by massacre. Their trials were not at an end even in Africa; they were pursued for sectarian differences, and some who were sincere Christians returned to Spain, where they were at once sentenced to the galleys. The skill and thrift of the Moriscoes, qualities which should have made them desirable, rendered them everywhere unpopular; they monopolized the trade of the Barbary coast, even driving out the Jews; in Algiers the populace rose against them, all were expelled, and large numbers were remorselessly butchered. Hatred of their oppressors induced many of hitherto peaceful occupations to embrace the trade of piracy, and the southern coast of the Peninsula had reason to long remember the exploits of the Morisco corsairs.
The ruthless barbarity, the blind and reckless folly of this measure, was followed by an everlasting curse of barrenness, ignorance, and penury. The sudden removal of enormous amounts of portable wealth deranged every kind of trade. The circulation of counterfeit money impaired public confidence. In Valencia four hundred and fifty villages were abandoned. The absence of the most industrious and prosperous class of its inhabitants was apparent in every community of Castile. Catalonia lost three-quarters of its population. The districts of Aragon rendered desolate by Moorish expulsion have never been repeopled. Agricultural science and mechanical skill disappeared. The hatred and disdain entertained by the Spaniards[321] for the conquered race had never permitted them to profit by the experience and ingenuity of the latter. Intercourse with a Moor brought moral and social contamination. Still less could the admission of inferiority, which the adoption of his methods implied, be tolerated by the haughty, the vainglorious, the impecunious hidalgo.
The effects of the discouragement of all forms of art and industry consequent upon war and persecution had been felt long previous to the expulsion of the Moriscoes in every part of the Peninsula. For many years after the capture of Cordova by Ferdinand III., it was found necessary to bring provisions from the North, not only for the support of the army, but to rescue from famine the sparse and thriftless population of a province which under the Ommeyade khalifs maintained with ease the great capital, as well as twelve thousand villages and hamlets.
The decline in the number of inhabitants under Spanish rule indicates the utter stagnation of trade and agriculture. In 1492 the population of Castile was six and three-quarter million; in 1700 there were in the entire kingdom of Spain but six million souls—such had been the significant retrogression in two hundred years.
The combined revenues of the Spanish Crown at the close of the fifteenth century amounted to a sum equal to three hundred thousand dollars, about one-thousandth of the annual receipts of the imperial treasury at the death of Abd-al-Rahman III., seven hundred years before.
Fifty years after the banishment of the Moors, the combined population of the cities of Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Granada, had decreased by more than four-fifths; it is now about one-tenth of its amount during the Moslem domination. In 1788 there were fifteen hundred and eleven deserted towns in the Peninsula.[322] Toledo, celebrated for its silken fabrics, in the latter part of the fifteenth century had sixty thousand looms; in 1651 it had five thousand; to-day it has none. The same industry was pursued with great success at Seville; in the seventeenth century the number of its looms had decreased from sixteen thousand to sixteen. All other branches of manufactures declined in the same proportion. Even a large part of the kingdom of Valencia, the garden of Europe, was for years an uninhabited wilderness. With the Moslem expulsion the knowledge of many arts, once the source of great profit, was hopelessly lost.
To the pious Spaniard all these sacrifices were as nothing when compared with the triumph of the Faith. The ports were unoccupied, the quays grass-grown, but the armies of the Cross had conquered. The manufactories had fallen into decay, the streets were silent, the highways were deserted except by the timorous traveller and the lurking robber, but not a Moslem or a Jewish heretic was to be encountered in His Most Catholic Majesty’s dominions. At the close of the seventeenth century, throughout the entire Peninsula, once the centre of learning in Europe, the resort of scholars of every land, the seat of the greatest educational institutions of the Middle Ages, not a single academy existed where instruction could be obtained in astronomy, natural philosophy, or any branch of mathematics. A hundred years later no one could be found who understood even the rudiments of chemistry. To-day, among the inhabitants of Spain, according to the published tables of statistics, only one person in every four can read. But what mattered the destruction of commerce, the decay of production, the dearth of intelligence, if the land was purged of false doctrines?, Was it not a source of national congratulation that ecclesiastical authority was once more paramount; that half of the able-bodied population, male[323] and female, were devoted to monastic life; that magnificent religious foundations, such as the world had never before seen, arose on every side; that, though the royal treasury was bankrupt, the annual revenues of the Church amounted to nearly fifty-three million dollars? Surely these manifold divine blessings were not to be weighed with the transitory benefits derived from the labors of a mass of perverse and unregenerate heretics!
The results, both immediate and remote, of this crime against civilization thus proved fatal to Spain. Its principal sources of subsistence removed, the kingdom was desolated by famine. It became necessary to extend public aid to many noble families, once affluent, but now impoverished by the suicidal course of the crown. Popular sentiment, exasperated by distress, denounced in unsparing terms the authors of the national calamity. The Archbishop of Valencia, unable to endure the daily reproaches to which he was subjected, and overcome by the sufferings for which he was responsible, died of remorse. Silence and gloom occupied vast tracts formerly covered by exuberant vegetation. In the place of the farmer and the mechanic appeared the brigand and the outlaw. Deprived of protection, the open country was abandoned; the peasantry sought the security of fortified places, and all occupations whose pursuit implied exposure to the danger of violence were necessarily suspended. The conditions controlling every rank of society which were established in the Peninsula by the blind and savage prejudices of the seventeenth century are largely prevalent to-day. A dreadful retribution has followed a tragedy whose example happily no other nation has ventured to imitate; and which, from the hour of its occurrence, has afflicted with every misfortune to the last generation the people responsible for its hideous atrocities.
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Effects of Barbarian Supremacy on the Nations of Europe—Rise of the Papal Power—Character of the Popes—Their Vices and Crimes—The Interdict—Corrupt Practices of Prelates and Degradation of the Papacy—Institution of the Monastic Orders—Their Great Influence—Their Final Degeneracy—Wealth of the Religious Houses—The Byzantine System—Its Characteristics—Power of the Eunuchs—Splendor of Constantinople—Destruction of Learning—Debased Condition of the Greeks—The People of Western Europe—Tyranny of Caste and its Effects—Feudal Oppression—Life of the Noble—His Amusements—The Serf and his Degradation—His Hopeless Existence—Treatment of the Jews—Prevalence of Epidemics—Religious Festivals—General Ignorance—Scarcity and Value of Books—Persecution of Learning—The Empire of the Church—Its Extraordinary Vitality.
In order that the reader may thoroughly understand and properly appreciate the moral and intellectual supremacy of the Spanish Arabs and their prodigious advance in the domain of science and the arts, I have thought it advisable, by way of contrast, to present to him a short and superficial sketch of the religious, political, and domestic conditions which prevailed in the society of contemporaneous Europe. The extent of this vast and comprehensive subject—one which has exhausted the erudition of many great historians, whose works of themselves would constitute a considerable library—must, therefore, excuse the incomplete and cursory character of this chapter; while its importance[325] as a standard of comparison will account for an apparent deviation from the general plan embraced by these volumes.
The elegant luxury and refined civilization of the Romans had disappeared amidst the universal anarchy which followed the dissolution of their empire. The boundaries of great states and kingdoms had been obliterated. Provinces once famed for their fertility were now the haunts of prowling beasts and truculent barbarians. The despotic but generally salutary government of the Cæsars had everywhere, save in the immediate vicinity of Byzantium, been replaced by the capricious and irregular jurisdiction of petty chieftains, whose violent passions were restrained only by their weakness, and of marauding princes, ambitious to destroy every vestige of that architectural magnificence and mental culture whose monuments they despised, and whose example they had neither the desire nor the capacity to emulate. Instead of a smiling landscape, everywhere exhibiting the traces of agricultural skill and laborious and patient industry, a prospect of universal desolation met the eye of the anxious and hurrying wayfarer. Moss-grown heaps of rubbish alone marked the site of many a once flourishing and opulent city. The towering aqueducts,—those engineering marvels of the ancient world,—whose majestic ruins still excite the admiration of all mankind, were broken and fallen into decay. The peerless temples and altars of the gods had been desecrated by the hands of sacrilegious Goth, Hun, and Lombard. Bands of brigands, insensible to pity, swarmed upon the highways. In the cities the equitable decisions of the prætor had been supplanted by the extortions of ecclesiastical fraud and barbarian insolence. The vices prevalent during the most abandoned period of Roman licentiousness had survived, and had been aggravated by the unfeeling cruelty of[326] the conquerors. No scruples of humanity or delicacy suggested the concealment of the most revolting orgies. The streets of the Eternal City exhibited enormities whose very mention the rules of modern propriety do not tolerate. Banquets where the brutal propensities of the turbulent and uncouth guests were indulged to the utmost constantly afforded provocation for bloodshed and murder. Knowledge of letters, understanding and appreciation of the arts, had already wholly vanished. The literary masterpieces of classic genius remained unknown or forgotten in the insignificant collections of scattered libraries, or had been buried under the smoking ruins of those institutions of learning which once adorned the capitals and the provincial cities of Greece and Italy.
By the accident of geographical position, by the adoption of familiar political maxims, and by the incorporation into its ritual of many ceremonies long endeared to the votaries of Paganism, the Church of Rome had secured an influence over the minds of men which under any other circumstances it could scarcely have acquired. The revered name and dignity of Supreme Pontiff imparted authority to its decrees and gave prestige to its decisions on questions of doctrine. The five Christian emperors, from Constantine to Gratian, adopted without alteration the attributes and wore the insignia of the sacred office established by Numa and usurped by Augustus. The assumption of imperial power is shown by the extent of Papal jurisdiction long sharply defined by the ancient limits of the empire. The adoption of the Latin idiom enabled the Church to communicate secretly with its servants in the most distant countries; while at the same time it invested the proceedings of its worship with a mystery which awed the ignorant and fanatic believer. The splendid ceremonial, the imposing temples, the elaborate vestments, the costly furniture of the altar[327] enriched with gold and jewels, the incense, the solemn chants, the consecration of the Host,—all powerfully impressed the superstitious children of the slaves of ancient mythology, in whose minds still lingered traces of those traditions which had been received by their fathers with the implicit faith due to the oracles of the gods.
In the course of centuries, the primitive simplicity of the Gospel and the purity of life which distinguished the first Christians had been lost in the complex theology, in the unseemly contests for precedence, in the crimes and the licentiousness which distracted the society of the Eternal City. From a simple priest, whose tenure of office was dependent on the pleasure of his associates, the Bishop of Rome had been exalted into a mighty sovereign, responsible only to the powers of Heaven. The palace of the Vatican exhibited all the vices of the most corrupt of courts. The assumption of infallibility,—an inevitable result of the preposterous claims of the Papacy,—through the contradictory interpretations of different individuals whose interests were conflicting led to the most opposite conclusions, often to results fatal to the peace and honor of the Church. The faith of the populace was weakened. Infidelity in the priesthood became too common to excite remark. The universal depravity was incredible and appalling. The general demoralization resulting from the example of the clergy, whose atheism and debauchery were proverbial, threatened the existence of society, a catastrophe which the thorough organization of the hierarchy alone prevented. Even in the fifteenth century Machiavelli wrote, “The nearer a nation is to Rome the more impious are the people.” When the German Schopp called the famous scholar, Casaubon, an atheist, the latter retorted: “If I were an atheist I should now be at Rome, where I have often been invited.” The effects of this superb ecclesiastical[328] organization were not long in manifesting themselves. The legitimate resources of power were aided by every device of fraud, of oppression, of imposture, of forgery. A succession of able and unprincipled pontiffs fastened on Christendom a yoke which the intelligence and the science of subsequent generations have not even yet been able to entirely remove. The temporal supremacy of the Cæsars was re-established over Europe; the dogmas of Catholicism were preached in distant continents unknown to the ancient world; and a tyranny far more terrible in its consequences than that experienced under the cruel rule of Nero and Domitian was imposed upon the intellectual aspirations of mankind.
No branch of history affords such a significant illustration of human craft and human weakness as the story of the ambition, the intrigues, and the vices of the Popes. In its consideration, the fact must never be lost sight of that the Holy Father was, as a necessary consequence of his creed, the earthly embodiment of spiritual perfection,—the vicegerent of Almighty God. Either the admission of a single error of judgment, or a controversy involving the most insignificant tenet sustained by one pope and disputed by his successor, was fatal to the claim of infallibility, which was the foundation of the entire ecclesiastical system. The omniscience conferred by the apostolic succession, which traced its origin to the Saviour Himself, could never be mistaken. The example of the Supreme Pontiff, the relations he sustained to the great officials of his court, his occupations, his diversions, his tastes, his habits, his conversation, were of far greater importance in the eyes of the meanest peasant of some remote kingdom who acknowledged his mission than were the most glorious achievements of any temporal sovereign. The possibilities for the attainment to positions of such authority and influence as were offered[329] by the Roman Catholic hierarchy had been unknown to Paganism. These opportunities enabled men of base origin, but of extraordinary talents, to reach the chair of St. Peter, men whose faults were overlooked or palliated by the indulgent spirit of the age on account of the successful prosecution of their schemes and the veneration which attached to their calling.
Thus, among the powers of the earth, highest in rank, greatest in renown, supreme in influence, pre-eminent in infamy, was the Papacy of Rome. The maintenance of an uniform standard of orthodoxy was little considered by the spiritual potentate whose will was the law of Christendom. It is well known to every student of Church history that Jewish doctrines predominated in the early days of Christianity and controlled the policy of its priesthood. The Pagan ideas and ceremonies inherited from the Roman pontiffs it never laid aside. Every form of heterodox belief was entertained at different periods by the incumbents of the Holy See. St. Clement was an Arian; Anastasius a Nestorian; Honorius a Monothelite; John XXII. an unconcealed atheist. The contradictory dogmas, the acrimonious disputes, the frightful anathemas, that resulted from the adoption of these heretical principles of doctrine were the public reproach of the Christian world. As the power of the Papacy increased, its possession became more and more an object to ambitious and unscrupulous adventurers. It was sought and obtained by arts countenanced only by the vilest of demagogues. It was sold by one Pope to another; and, like the imperial laurel appropriated by the Pretorian Guards, it was put up at auction by cardinals and became the property of the most wealthy purchaser. Some of the Holy Fathers had not taken orders; others had not even received the sacraments of baptism and communion before being invested with the pontifical dignity.[330] In some instances the tiara and the mitre were placed upon the brows of children. Neither John XII. nor Benedict IX. had attained the age of thirteen years when intrusted with the direction of the spiritual affairs of Christendom. An infant of five years was consecrated Archbishop of Rheims. Another who was only ten was placed upon the episcopal throne of Narbonne. Alonso of Aragon, the natural son of Ferdinand the Catholic, was made Archbishop of Saragossa at the age of six. The origin of the vicars of Christ was sometimes of the most obscure and often of the most disgraceful character. Stephen VII., John X., John XI., John XII., Boniface VII., Gregory VII., were the sons of courtesans. In some instances the infamy was further increased by the additional stigma attaching to the crime of incest. The famous courtesan Marozia, who for the greater part of her life disposed of the Papacy at her will, is credited with the installation of eight Popes, all her lovers or her children, one of whom was at once her son and grandson. The empire she acquired by her talents and her beauty lasted almost a quarter of a century. To that epoch is ascribed an occurrence that many writers have designated as fabulous, but which is established by evidence far more convincing than many events that have successfully withstood the most formidable assaults of hostile criticism. It was long asserted by chroniclers of the orthodox faith, and universally credited, that in the capital of Christianity, hallowed by the glorious deaths of countless martyrs, linked with the proud associations of the rise and progress of the spiritual power of the Papacy, and ennobled by the most signal victories of the Church, a monstrous prodigy had occurred. It was said that Pope John VIII., whose sex had hitherto been unsuspected save by those favored with her intimacy, while returning from the celebration of a solemn festival,[331] at the head of a procession of cardinals and bishops and surrounded with the glittering emblems of pontifical power and majesty, had been seized with the throes of parturition in one of the most public thoroughfares of Rome.
The original acceptance of and belief in this portentous catastrophe, and its subsequent denial, form one of the most curious episodes in the annals of the Church. For five centuries it was implicitly received as historic truth. The life of Pope Joan long occupied a prominent place in the biographies of the successors of St. Peter, dedicated to eminent prelates, often to the Pontiffs themselves. The occurrence—whose locality was marked by the statue of a woman wearing the Papal insignia and holding a child in her arms—was minutely described in the works of learned and respectable historians. This memorial was thrown into the Tiber by the order of Sixtus V. Her bust, destroyed by Charles VIII. during the French invasion of Italy, was long an ornament of one of the churches of Sienna. Until the time of Leo X. certain ceremonies, which cannot be described, were publicly instituted at the election of every Pope to determine his sex. To these even the licentious Borgia was forced to conform. John Huss, when arraigned before the Council of Constance, amidst an unbroken silence, reproached the ecclesiastical dignitaries assembled to condemn him, and whom the slightest heretical assertion roused to tumultuous fury, with the imposture which had so signally demonstrated the weakness of the vaunted inspiration of the Papacy. More than five hundred writers, whose interests were identical with those of the Vatican—among them chroniclers, polemic divines, authorities on the history of the Church and its discipline, all enthusiastic members of the Roman Catholic communion—have confirmed the existence of a female Pope.
[332]
But, whether true or false, the disgrace consequent upon this gigantic scandal was insignificant when compared with the moral effect of the long series of crimes which disfigure the annals of Papal Rome. The shameless venality of the Princes of the Church had from the most remote times disgraced the proceedings by which was elevated to the throne of the apostles the immaculate Vicar of God. So corrupt was the ecclesiastical society of the capital that no Pontiff who endeavored to live a moral life was secure for a single hour. Celestine was poisoned at the instance of the cardinals eighteen days after receiving the tiara. Adrian V. was poisoned in the conclave itself before his election. The partisans of antagonistic claimants of the Papacy pursued each other with a vindictiveness scarcely equalled by the most intense bitterness of political faction. Each aspirant to the pontifical dignity denounced his opponent as an anti-pope, and exhausted the rich vocabulary of clerical invective in consigning him to the vengeance of Heaven. The defeated candidate was subjected to every variety of torture; to the deprivation of his nose, his eyes, his tongue; to the suffering of confinement in noisome dungeons; to the pangs of prolonged starvation. The temporal enemies of the Holy Father fared even worse than his rivals for spiritual supremacy. No deed was considered too flagitious for the removal of a dangerous and obstinate adversary. Innocent IV. employed the trusted physician and friend of the Emperor Frederick II. to compass his destruction. The Emperor Henry VII. was poisoned by order of Clement V. The assassination of the Medici under Sixtus IV. was planned by that Pope, and carried out before the altar, the signal for attack being the elevation of the Host by the celebrant, an archbishop. Half of the population of Rome was sacrificed to gratify the malignity of Formosus, whose quarrels[333] long survived him and desolated the fairest provinces of Italy. Three years after the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain by Gregory IX. its victims already numbered tens of thousands.
In the variety and shrewdness of schemes for procuring money the statesmen of no government have ever equalled the astute financiers of the Apostolic See. In addition to the infinite number of vexatious and cruel expedients suggested by the possession and exercise of irresponsible power, the Popes employed means which violated every precept of morality, but whose successful issue demonstrated the practical wisdom which had inspired them. Simony was invariably practised, and not infrequently defended, even by those whose manifest duty it was to suppress it. The wealthiest candidate for the Papacy, whose physical infirmities indicated a speedy demise, had the best prospect for the realization of his ambition. The price of a cardinal’s hat varied from one thousand to ten thousand florins; the pallium of an archbishop was rated still higher in the ecclesiastical market, for the dignity of which it was the symbol usually brought thirty thousand ducats in gold. To meet this tax demanded at the death of every metropolitan, the new incumbent was sometimes reduced to pledge the furniture of the altar as security to Jewish usurers, who alone were able to raise such exorbitant amounts; and it was a source of complaint among the devout that Hebrew children had been seen to amuse themselves with the utensils consecrated to pious uses, and that in the unhallowed orgies of their fathers sacred vessels were habitually profaned which had originally been destined to receive the body and blood of Christ. When the exigencies of the Pontiff required it, the sacrifice of a few cardinals afforded a safe and easy means of replenishing the Papal treasury by the sale of the vacant dignities and by the reversion of the[334] estates of the victims to the domain of the Holy See. It is a well-known fact that Alexander VI. died from drinking poisoned wine intended for certain princes of the Church whom he had invited to share his treacherous hospitality. Great wealth was obtained by the sale of absolutions granted by one Pope from the anathemas of his predecessor. This device suggested the traffic in indulgences, promising immunity from all punishment for crime. The avarice of John XXII. prompted him to draw up and promulgate a schedule of fines, so that by the payment of trifling sums the culprit was completely absolved from the moral and secular consequences of the most atrocious offences in the criminal calendar.
In their relations with foreign courts the Popes brought to bear every source of corruption and violence for the accomplishment of their ends. They availed themselves of the prestige attaching to their sacred office for the encouragement of insurrection and parricide. They openly sold the investitures of distant kingdoms. They armed the servant against his master, the vassal against his lord, the subject against his king. They prohibited the education of children as inimical to the interests of the clergy, who alone were declared worthy to enjoy the benefits of learning. When an obnoxious enemy was to be removed, they did not shrink from selecting instruments at whose employment honor and piety alike revolt,—the envenomed poniard, the sacramental elements mingled with deadly poisons and yet blessed by the ceremonies of the officiating prelate, whose instructions impressed the unsuspicious victim with the belief that he knelt in the very presence of God. According to Montaigne, the Holy Father was accustomed to use during the pontifical mass a contrivance which counteracted the effects of a consecrated draught which might otherwise be a messenger[335] of death. From having been the vassals of the Emperor, the tributaries of the Saracen Emirs, and the tools of the Kings of France, the Popes in time arrogated to themselves imperial prerogatives; and his title to the crown was not considered as vested in a sovereign until it had been placed upon his brow by an ecclesiastic duly commissioned by the Successor of St. Peter. Through the insidious influence of a superstition, fostered by the ignorance of the time, the authority of powerful monarchs was disputed in their capitals. Degrading penances were imposed upon and performed by them without remonstrance. The humiliation of the prince in the eyes of his people increased, in a corresponding degree, the importance of the spiritual ruler who could inflict such punishments.
By excommunication and interdict—the one cutting off an individual from the fellowship of believers, the other aimed at an entire community or kingdom and involving the innocent with the guilty—the vengeance of the Church was visited upon all, of whatever rank, who had violated her canons or interfered with her projects of ambition. It is difficult in our age to appreciate the grave effects of ecclesiastical fulminations which the progress of intelligence and the development of civilization have long since deprived of their terrors. Of excommunication, anything besides a human being might be the subject, from a comet to rats, worms, and every kind of vermin. The interdict was equivalent to a dreadful curse inflicted by the vicegerent of God. With awe-inspiring ceremonies, usually performed at midnight to increase their impressive effect, the decree of the Holy See was solemnly proclaimed. In gloomy silence, occasionally broken by sobs and half-stifled lamentations, the terror-stricken multitude listened to a sentence which, in their eyes, exceeded, through the direful consequences it entailed, the severest penalty that any earthly tribunal could inflict.[336] The churches were closed. The bells were silent. The tapers burning on the altars were extinguished. The relics were concealed. Before every house of worship where the Host was enshrined the consecrated wafer was publicly committed to the flames. The crucifixes of chapel and cathedral alike, enveloped in folds of black cloth, were hidden from the reverential gaze of those on whose heads had fallen the censure of the Almighty. All religious ceremonies were suspended save the aspersion, which secured for the Church the hope of another devotee, the solemnization of marriage, and the final rites which dismissed the passing soul on the threshold of eternity. The endearments of conjugal affection, the last blessing of the parent, the diversions of youth, the familiar greetings of friendship and esteem, were all prohibited. Surrounded by black-garbed priests bearing torches, an officiating cardinal, robed in violet,—the mourning of his order,—read the fatal edict which cut off absolutely the only medium of communication between the sinner and his God. From that moment the people were deprived of those welcome ministrations which had been their pleasure and consolation from infancy; which had directed their footsteps; which had confirmed their wavering resolution in many an emergency; which had relieved their sufferings; which had enhanced their happiness and furnished almost their sole amusements. No opportunity was neglected to impress the offending children of Rome with the awful consequences of the malediction which the perversity of their rulers had inflicted upon them. Subjects were absolved from their allegiance. The channels of commerce were closed. Trade of every kind was suspended. Worshippers, whose piety urged them, in spite of ecclesiastical menace, to frequent the portals of the church, were rudely driven back. The use of meat was forbidden, as in Lent; the familiar[337] objects connected with the service of religion disappeared; the bells, deprived of their clappers, were taken down from the steeples; the sacred effigies of the saints were laid upon the ground and sedulously concealed from the profane gaze of an accursed people; the rich trappings of the shrines, the utensils of the mass, the vestments of the priests, were collected and carried away. The festivals which stimulated the devotion and amused the leisure of the gay and careless multitude were discontinued; the procession, which impressed all classes with its solemnity and magnificence, no longer moved with barbaric pomp through the crowded streets lined with long rows of kneeling worshippers; the voice of prayer was unheard; marriages were celebrated in church-yards; the bodies of the dead, denied a resting-place in consecrated ground and deprived even of the ordinary rites of sepulture, were cast unceremoniously beyond the walls of cities, to be devoured by unclean beasts and to poison the air with noxious odors.
When the ban was removed, the purification of every edifice, altar, and vessel, the reconsecration of every relic and image,—rites which demanded heavy contributions,—evinced the foresight and thrift of the priesthood.
Such were the frightful methods by which the Papacy, in an age of ignorance, punished a nation for the offences of a sovereign who had thwarted its schemes, defied its power, or incurred its enmity. In the estimation of the credulous—and in those days all were credulous—the interdict was not only a general curse enforced by every circumstance which could appeal to the prejudices of the devout; it was the sudden intercepting of the means of salvation, only attainable through the agency of the servants of the Church. Mediæval writers have left us affecting accounts of the universal wretchedness which the use[338] of this instrument of ecclesiastical tyranny produced. It rarely failed of success, for no monarch, however bold or arbitrary, could long withstand its power; and the mere threat of its exercise was often sufficient to strike terror into a whole people and to peremptorily check the well-conceived designs of ambitious royalty. The interdict only fell into disuse after the foundation of the Inquisition, the most effective and formidable weapon ever devised by the merciless spirit of Papal despotism.
With the financial exhaustion induced by profuse expenditure in every species of luxury and vice, new and ingenious expedients were invented for the relief of the pressing necessities of the Vatican. The institution and frequent recurrence of the Jubilee, with its concourse of millions of fanatics, each bearing his offering to the insatiable genius of Rome; the Crusades, which acquired for the Papacy incalculable wealth by the conveyance of lands for a nominal consideration and the generous contributions of pilgrims; the Constitutions of Leo, which declared the real property of ecclesiastical foundations to be inalienable; the Inquisition, whose origin was more political than moral, and by whose rules one-half of the property of the condemned was forfeited to the sovereign and one-half to the Church, are prominent examples of the financial ability of the Popes.
The personal characters of the infallible and inspired guides of the Christian world cannot be delineated in the fulness of their impious depravity. The moral supremacy assumed by them as the representatives of celestial power was presumed to excuse the open indulgence of vices which even the most licentious temporal potentates sedulously veiled from the eyes of mankind. For more than two centuries the Papal court presented an almost uninterrupted exhibition of profligacy, which scandalized devout believers, whose[339] imagination had invested the Holy Father with the attributes of divinity, and excited the horror of the few eminent and consistent Christian prelates who remained pure amidst the general contamination. Some priests celebrated mass in a state of intoxication. Others paraded the streets with a train of bacchantes singing profane and licentious songs. They presented their boon companions with the sacred vessels of the altar. Archbishops appointed women of infamous antecedents to the superintendence of convents. The Vatican swarmed with catamites and courtesans. Colonies of nuns, members of the seraglios of the cardinals and the Pope, occupied houses adjoining the sanctuary of St. Peter’s. The satellites of the Papacy obtained the most lucrative employments by means of unnatural blandishments and ministrations of unspeakable vileness. The most debased ideas were entertained of the ecclesiastical functions devolving upon the head of the Christian communion. Ministers of religion were consecrated in stables. Cathedrals were made the theatre of mummeries and obscene dances. Virgins were torn from the precincts of the sanctuary and dragged to the Papal harem. In the time of John XII. no woman was safe from indignity and outrage in the very temple of God. Boniface IX. sold a cardinal’s hat to a profligate adventurer named Bathalzar Cossa, who afterwards seized the tiara by force and passed from the deck of a pirate galley to the Apostolic Throne. The latter, under the name of John XXIII., in a few years attained a reputation remarkable even in the annals of Papal degradation. He was deposed by the Council of Constance after conviction of every offence of which a depraved imagination could conceive. The infallibility of his mission was thus impugned both by his irregular appointment and by the intervention of his spiritual subordinates who effected his deposition. It was an axiom[340] of the canon law, inevitably resulting from the original spurious grant of pontifical authority, that no guilt or heresy of the Pope could divest him of his spiritual powers or of the sanctity which enveloped his person as the Vicar of God. A dire necessity alone could impel a council to violate this fundamental principle upon which depended the prestige of the Papacy. The impiety of the Holy Fathers was not less prominent than their defiance of the rules of morality. Boniface VIII. openly blasphemed the name of Christ. John XXII. ridiculed the sacraments. At the banquets of John XII., Venus and Bacchus were in turn toasted by noisy revellers of both sexes, the favorite associates of that Pontiff.
The admissions of Pius II., in his correspondence preserved in the Vatican, indicate without concealment the practice of the grossest libertinage. From the orgies of Benedict XII. dates the famous proverb, “Bibere papaliter,” “To drink like a Pope.” Sixtus IV., who inaugurated the custom of licensing the brothels of Rome, derived annually from this horrible traffic the enormous sum of thirty thousand ducats. Innocent X. sold to the starving peasantry, at an advance of a hundred per cent., the grain he had purchased at the price he himself had fixed. Sixtus IV. gravely decreed that the illegitimate children of the Popes should, by reason of their birth alone, be placed on an equality with the descendants of the princely houses of Italy. The scandals of the court of Avignon under Clement VI. and his successors surpassed even those which had for ages made the Eternal City a reproach to civilization and Christianity. Of the latter, Benedict XII. has been conspicuously held up to the execration of posterity as the violator of the sister of Petrarch, whose connivance he attempted to purchase with a cardinal’s hat and a purse of a thousand florins of gold. The bull of Alexander VI.,[341] which countenanced the slaughter of fifteen million inoffensive natives of the New World, is a fitting climax to this revolting chronicle of crime and infamy. Well might the indignant Cardinal Baronius exclaim, that “the Popes were monsters who installed themselves on the throne of Christendom by simony and murder.” Few indeed there were of the Holy Fathers who tolerated even the suspicion of profane learning in their jurisdiction. Most of them were the implacable enemies of every kind of knowledge. Gregory I. burned all the copies of Livy that the most rigorous search could disclose. Gregory VIII., scandalized by the “superstitious tales” contained in the work of the great Roman historian, completed, as far as human energy and malignity could effect, the destructive task of his predecessor. In consequence, out of a hundred and forty-two books known to have existed during the reign of these two Pontiffs, but thirty-five have survived. Sylvester II. is said by Petrarch to have been “Negromante, e di dottrina eccellente,” qualifications which seem rather incongruous with the duties and the traditions of the Papacy. Nor was the famous Gerbert the only Pope devoted to uncanonical and prohibited investigations of the false science of the age. John XIX. was skilled in hydromancy; John XX. was an expert in the casting of horoscopes and in divination; Benedict IX. consulted the familiar geniuses of the forests and the mountains; Gregory VII. possessed a manual of enchantment, and shook clouds of sparks from his sleeves when he pronounced the Pontifical blessing; Alexander VI. had the reputation throughout Italy of “an abominable sorcerer.”
The spirit of infidelity and blasphemy which prevailed in the highest ranks of the priesthood also infected the occupants of the throne. The lives of some of the most devout sovereigns presented incredible examples of cruelty, hypocrisy, and deceit. Ecclesiastical[342] example and the facility of absolution had apparently destroyed all reverence for the precepts of the Gospel, all apprehension of Divine wrath. The contempt often entertained by royalty for the decrees of the Almighty is disclosed by the impious speech of Alfonso X., the Most Catholic King, “If God had consulted me when He created the world, I would have given Him some good advice.”
The spurious donation of Constantine, by which the first Christian sovereign was alleged to have conveyed to Pope Sylvester I. the title to the Western Empire, and with it the inherited authority of the Cæsars, was supplemented in the eighth century by the Forged Decretals, a series of epistles declared to have been promulgated by the first Bishops of Rome, whose names and order of apostolic succession are themselves either apocryphal or based entirely on uncertain tradition. The inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities of the Decretals, which afford abundant internal evidence of the ignorance of those who composed them, and their entire want of concord on important points of doctrine, have demonstrated beyond question their fraudulent origin. But in an age of superstition their authority was amply sufficient to accomplish the object for which they were invented,—the autocracy of the Popes. The general deficiency of critical knowledge, assisted by the reverence entertained by the masses for the decisions of the Successor of St. Peter, caused these glaring forgeries to be accepted with the same faith which was accorded to the precepts of the Gospel. They conferred the most extensive and dangerous prerogatives on the Papacy. They subjected the claims of every temporal sovereign to the extravagant pretensions of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The right of regal investiture was by their maxims declared to be inherent in members of the sacerdotal order, and the title of a monarch[343] alleged to be imperfect until he had been crowned by a servant of the Church. By their incorporation into the civil procedure of Europe,—for centuries dominated by the canon law,—they established on a permanent basis the ideas and the principles of Papal supremacy. No measure of statecraft has ever advanced the interests of the Holy See to such an extent as the publication of the Decretals, nor has any genuine series of laws exercised over society a more potent influence than that imposed by these fraudulent epistles upon subsequent legislation.
The vast ecclesiastical system, whose ramifications extended to the most insignificant hamlets of every country in Europe and whose jurisdiction was paramount in the domains of the most powerful monarchs, carried with it the abuses and vices of the central and irresponsible authority. The spiritual courts of provincial metropolitans and bishops presented on a diminished scale the greed and sensuality of the Vatican. The same organized simony regulated the presentation and promotion of clerk and prelate. The same iniquitous expedients were adopted for the augmentation of ecclesiastical revenues. Priests and bishops lived in avowed and unblushing concubinage. The seraglio of the Abbot of San Pelayo de Antealtaria contained seventy concubines. Henry III., Bishop of Liege, acknowledged the paternity of sixty-five illegitimate children. In Spain, the metropolitans, as well as their subordinates, maintained harems guarded by eunuchs. In Germany, sacerdotal dignitaries of the highest rank endeavored to overturn the empire by the aid of idolaters, and enlisted bands of robbers who plundered cities and extorted enormous ransoms from wealthy merchants and defenceless travellers. In France, the clergy of Verdun regularly furnished Jewish traders with Christian children who had been emasculated for the slave-markets of Cordova[344] and Seville. In Italy, the sale of young and beautiful maidens to the Moors of Sicily and Mauritania, which had invoked the indignant protest of Charlemagne, was for many years one of the most lucrative perquisites of the priesthood.
The laxity of morals prevalent in the hierarchy was fatal to the preservation of ecclesiastical discipline. Priests and nuns, divesting themselves of their sacred character, which was supposed to present an edifying example to the laity, contended with each other for the infamous superiority of promiscuous lewdness. The contributions of charity, the oblations of the devout, were squandered in drunken orgies and midnight banquets. In certain Swiss cantons a new priest was compelled, on his arrival, to choose a concubine as a theoretical safeguard of the honor of his female parishioners. These connections were authorized by the laws of some countries, among them the fueros of Castile, which permitted the sons of a celibate to inherit half his property. The sale of licenses to entertain what were known as “sub-introduced women” was for centuries a profitable source of revenue to the bishops of England, and no priest was exempt from this tax whether he wished to avail himself of its privileges or not. The dignity of the sacred profession in France had been degraded by the sacrilege of the Carlovingians, who appointed their favorite officers to the richest benefices; and the antecedents and manners of these rude veterans were, as may be supposed, but ill-adapted to the solemn ceremonies of the altar and the confessional. Following this worthy example, churchmen of the highest rank conferred the best livings at their disposal on panders, lackeys, and barbers. The coarse and unfeeling nature of the German ecclesiastics did not hesitate to prompt the violation of every sentiment of honor in the gratification of its brutal instincts. The holding of pluralities in[345] England had become an evil of national importance. Many foreign prelates had never even visited the sees whose revenues they enjoyed. The possession of from twenty to thirty benefices was not uncommon, and some fortunate individuals are mentioned who held from three to four hundred. The deplorable condition of the priesthood was largely due to the enforcement of celibacy on the one hand, and the sale of dispensations to violate it on the other.
The poems, the satires, and the tales which have come down to us from the Middle Ages reveal the profligate manners of the clergy, as well as the general contempt in which they were held by those whose consciences were nominally in their keeping. In these amusing literary productions the priest, the monk, and the cardinal are almost invariably objects of ridicule. Their peculiar garb, their uncouth manners, their lubricity, their gluttony, their avarice, are made the butt of profane and vulgar witticisms. They are entrapped in ludicrous and compromising situations. They are made the victims of severe practical jokes. The language put into their mouths is a compound of obscenity and blasphemy. A society which could countenance such scandalous revelations must have had scanty respect for the clerical profession and its ministers. Assemblages of eminent episcopal dignitaries fare little better than individuals at the hands of the irreverent narrator. Nor can we wonder that such is the case when we recall the conditions and the accessories associated in the public mind with the Councils of the Church. At the departure of the Papal court from Lyons, in the thirteenth century, Cardinal Hugo, a distinguished prelate, in the presence of an immense concourse, made the increased depravity of that city, for which its reverend visitors were confessedly responsible, the subject of a pleasing jest. The Holy Fathers of the famous Council of Constance convoked[346] to reform the priesthood, punish heresy, and establish a more exalted standard of moral discipline for the edification of the ungodly, beguiled the moments snatched from the labors of pious deliberations and religious controversy in the society of crowds of buffoons and dancers and of seven hundred courtesans. The institution of the monastic orders not only contributed greatly to the power of the Papacy but exercised, as well, a direct and generally a most pernicious influence on society. An immense body of fanatics, blindly devoted to the See of Rome, was placed at the absolute disposal of the Pope,—invaluable allies in the bitter contests between the Altar and the Throne. The mutual jealousies and enmities of the secular and the regular clergy made both the more dependent on the favor of the Supreme Pontiff. Every individual in a religious house was sworn to inviolable secrecy concerning all that took place within its walls, a regulation which became in subsequent times a convenient precaution for the concealment of orgies that shunned the light of day. The assumption of the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience imparted to the monk and the begging friar a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the credulous multitude. They mortified the flesh and suppressed carnal provocations by frequent bleeding and long abstinence from food. They disclaimed the aristocratic tastes which were a reproach to the luxurious members of the secular priesthood. They renounced all the allurements, even all the comforts, of life. Their physical necessities were supplied by alms. Their fervid oratory, not confined by the pillared vaults of churches, but which, in the open air, appealed to the imagination and the prejudices of the ignorant, their voluntary renunciation of the pleasures of the world, the ostentatious self-sacrifice of their lives, made them universal favorites with the people. Men[347] of all classes showered gifts upon them. Women eagerly sought their services as confessors. Their visits to the isolated villages of the simple peasantry were hailed as harbingers of good fortune. Their abodes offered gratuitous rest and refreshment to the belated traveller. Their benediction attended the birth and the christening of the infants of the poorest cottage. Their prayers brought consolation and relief to the bedside of the earnest Christian and the repentant sinner alike. At every fireside their temporary and accidental presence was regarded as a blessing.
But a change soon came over the monastic orders. The temptations of wealth, luxury, and personal enjoyment proved too strong to be resisted. The robe of coarse cloth was metamorphosed into a mantle of the finest fabric, trimmed with costly furs. The prior no longer travelled alone and on foot, but rode an ambling palfrey, followed by a train of obsequious attendants. The hermitage developed into a stately palace, whose appointments and surroundings equalled and not infrequently eclipsed in splendor the seats of princes. The monk became a great landed proprietor. By purchase, by gift, by inheritance, by forfeiture, he acquired in every country large and profitable estates. Half of the lands of France were at one time in his possession. The German nobility complained that monasteries had absorbed the bulk of the real property of the empire. The visitation of Henry VIII., which led to the suppression of the religious houses of England, revealed the fact that the regular clergy had for centuries enjoyed the fruits of the most productive and valuable portion of the public domain. The peculiar character of its tenure made ecclesiastical proprietorship the more oppressive. Its title was in mortmain, and its estates inalienable. It could always acquire, but never relinquish, territorial rights. The transfers of land, which constitute so important an[348] incentive to commercial activity in every community, were not merely discountenanced, but were absolutely prohibited, by its selfish and unjust regulations.
Monastic life, while nominally ascetic, presented in the more opulent communities a picture of sybaritic indulgence. In the cloister the refining influence of literature had, even with the gratification of sensual appetites, modified in the monk the degrading propensities and ferocious temper which actuated his associate, the feudal baron. The dishes were more varied and delicate; the choicest wines took the place of the coarse product of the brewery; and the conversation, while fully as irreverent and licentious as that which entertained the guests of the noble, was deprived of much of its repulsiveness by an outward observance of decency. When overcome with too much hospitality, the genial votary of Bacchus, instead of being left under the table, exposed to the ridicule of his companions or the swords of brawlers, was quietly conveyed to his cell by his more sober brethren. The customs of the age imperatively demanded that the head of a religious house should possess all the attributes of aristocratic birth and gentle breeding. In the eyes of the Celt especially, symmetry of form and dignity of carriage were indispensable characteristics of the ruler of a monastic community. Both abbot and abbess were selected for corporeal rather than for moral or intellectual qualifications,—for handsome features, commanding presence, and elegant manners. Popular opinion insensibly associated mental superiority and pious inclinations with physical perfection; and personal deformity was supposed, especially by the ignorant multitude, to indicate a disposition to crime. This belief, no doubt unconsciously derived from the impressions left by the Pagan deities of antiquity, in whose statues, models of beauty, were embodied the unrivalled conceptions of the ancient[349] sculptor, demonstrates the persistent survival of time-honored tradition and religious prejudice in the human mind.
With the unlimited opportunities for their gratification, uncanonical practices were at first secretly indulged in and afterwards openly tolerated. The refectory, once noted for frugality and pious exhortation, was now the scene of gluttonous feasts and licentious jesting. Foreign delicacies and wines of exquisite flavor appeared daily on the table. Monks and nuns maintained unholy relations under the same roof. Many priors had acknowledged concubines, and he who restricted himself to a single mistress was regarded as a paragon of ecclesiastical virtue. In contravention of every rule of their order, monks assumed disguises and wandered over the country in search of amorous adventures. Through their agency obnoxious relatives were kidnapped and forced into perpetual confinement, or, if sufficient pecuniary inducements were offered, made to disappear forever from the knowledge of man. In England they frequently figured in disgraceful brawls with other dissipated patrons of lupanars and taverns. The monasteries of Spain, France, and Italy presented an even more disgraceful picture of drunkenness, licentiousness, and disorder.
The reputation for dissolute practices sustained by the convent was in no respect inferior to that of the monastery. The nuns notoriously affected all the airs and graces of the most accomplished coquetry. They arrayed themselves in rich garments covered with beautiful embroidery, the work of their own skilful hands. Their chemises of violet silk, their scarlet shoes, their veils of silver tissue, were the delight of their admirers and the abomination of the pious. They wore chains and bracelets of gold and rings set with precious gems. They painted their faces. King Edgar[350] publicly reproved the nuns of his kingdom for their attire of purple and their jewels. The inmates of Fontevrault wore the horned head-dress affected by the fashionable ladies of the time. The spouses of Christ adopted every art to attract the attention of the sinful passer-by. In the orgies which defiled even the houses dedicated to divine worship their shamelessness was proverbial. They bathed in perfect nudity with monks and deacons. They sang bacchanalian songs. Their conversation was spiced with blasphemous ribaldry. The universal prevalence of the evil is proved by the frequency with which it is denounced by the Councils of the Church. The Council of Cologne, held in 1307, was especially severe in its reprobation of the custom by which nuns abandoned for a time the conventual life for a career of debauchery and then resumed their former relations with the Church, without repentance, and, what was even worse, without remonstrance from their superiors.
For indulgence in these pleasures prohibited by the laws of God and man, the revenues of the religious houses, although in many instances enormous, were entirely inadequate. The extravagant demands of the Holy See, which collected its tribute at frequent and irregular intervals, further reduced the financial resources of the monastic treasury. The ingenuity of the abbots was not at a loss, however, to devise means to replenish their exhausted coffers. Noble forests, many of them contemporaneous with the reign of the Druidical priesthood, were cut down and sold. Chalices, patens, ciboria, and crucifixes were placed in pawn with Jewish goldsmiths and merchants. Jewels were extracted from votive offerings and altar ornaments and disposed of at a fraction of their real value. These thefts of sacred articles were so serious that inventories of the furniture and utensils of cathedrals were often taken by the orders of primates and sovereigns,[351] rather with a view to discover the losses than to put a stop to a practice which under the existing system was incurable. Absolutions, some forged, but many genuine, bearing the Papal seal and ready to be filled up with the name of the purchaser and the description of the offence of which he was guilty or which he was about to commit, were at the disposal of every criminal. The official visitors of the English abbeys discovered in the cells of recluses who were popularly supposed to be laying up treasures in heaven implements of the counterfeiter and quantities of spurious coin. With the ministrations to the dying the duty of the sufferer to the Church was unceasingly inculcated by the shrewd confessor, until it came to be considered an act of impiety, ranked with sacrilege and suicide, to refuse to bequeath a large share of one’s wealth to the servants of God.
The number, riches, and influence of these ecclesiastical establishments were enormous. At the end of the thirteenth century, there were six hundred monasteries and convents in England, two thousand three hundred and thirty-seven in France, and fifteen hundred in the remaining countries of Europe. Many of these supported communities of more than a thousand monks; that of the great Abbey of Bangor—the largest in Great Britain—numbered three thousand. Towns, villages, and immense tracts of arable soil, pasture, and forest were included in their possessions. Multitudes of tenants and vassals tilled these lands, the lion’s share of whose produce found its way into the storehouses and granaries of the prosperous Fathers. The religious duties of the latter did not hinder them from profiting by the advantages of domestic and foreign trade. They bought and sold almost every description of merchandise. The usurious rates of interest which they obtained from necessitous borrowers extorted the admiration of the shrewd and experienced[352] Hebrew broker. They managed tanneries, dealt extensively in cloth and leather, and imported many luxuries from the Orient. The wool market of England was absolutely controlled by them. The popular clamor aroused by this monopoly, which dispossessed and ruined tenants by turning tillable land into pasture and depriving large numbers of industrious people of the means of livelihood, contributed, in no small degree, to the suppression of the English monasteries. An inexhaustible mine of wealth was made available by traffic in relics and the entertainment and fleecing of pilgrims. The methods of the Holy See in the sale of sacred objects of more than doubtful authenticity were improved upon by the cunning and audacity of monkish charlatans. Immense quantities of bones were imported from Italy and disposed of to the devout at fabulous prices. Most of these sacred treasures were taken from the catacombs, where was deposited a practically unlimited supply of Pagan and barbarian skeletons, whose original owners never dreamed of the adoration they were destined one day to receive on the banks of the Thames, the Seine, the Rhine, and the Danube. When a church was to be constructed, no difficulty was ever experienced in procuring the relics of the saint to which it was dedicated, and the mouldering remains of some priest of Jupiter or Venus were probably not infrequently laid, with every token of reverence, under the altar of a magnificent cathedral, whose idolatrous ceremonies would have presented many striking points of resemblance with heathen rites to the frequenters of the ancient temples. Other sacred mementos of equal virtue often presented a singular mixture of absurdity and blasphemy. The reproductions of the crown of thorns and the nails of the Crucifixion were infinite in number. The list included the coals that roasted St. Lawrence, the cloth used at the Lord’s Supper, a finger[353] of the Holy Ghost, and some of the milk of the Mother of God. The tail of Balaam’s ass was for a century one of the most precious treasures of St. John Lateran at Rome. When the zeal of the pious flagged, the genius of the monks resorted to extraordinary means to stimulate this unprofitable apathy. The sympathies and fanaticism of the superstitious were appealed to by processional images which could weep and bleed. Letters were exhibited purporting to have been penned by the divine hands of the Almighty and the Saviour. The composition and style of these productions, it may be remarked, indicate an extraordinary degree of illiteracy in the exalted personages to whom their execution was profanely attributed. Many relics were supposed to possess marvellous healing virtues, an opinion diligently propagated by those whose interest it was to have it generally entertained. Pilgrims crowded in enormous numbers to these shrines, whose reputation promised speedy and certain relief from every physical infirmity. As few came empty handed, the contents of a single reliquary were often a more important source of revenue than all the royal demesnes of a kingdom. In the Middle Ages the Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury was by far the richest in Christendom. It had for three hundred years received the tribute of pilgrims from every land. Kings had placed crowns and priceless jewels upon its altar. The great tomb of the saint was entirely covered with plates of gold, but the precious metal was hardly visible on account of the profusion of gems with which it was incrusted. The value of the gold and silver obtained by its confiscation under Henry VIII. was nearly one million pounds sterling, and this estimate did not include the precious stones, of which no appraisement was made. Much of this wealth had been accumulated by the thrifty monks through the sale of water alleged to contain a portion[354] of the blood of St. Thomas shed at the time of his martyrdom, whose supply, by the miraculous power of multiplication enjoyed by certain relics, was never exhausted, and which, aided by implicit faith and religious enthusiasm, may really have been instrumental in temporarily relieving diseases induced by disordered functions of the nervous system.
The power of the rulers of these populous communities was very extensive. In most instances the abbot enjoyed not a few of the highest privileges of the nobility. In addition to his spiritual functions, he exercised the duties of a civil and criminal magistrate, and in extreme cases could inflict the penalty of death. He was expected to act as sponsor to children of royal lineage. While bound to observe the rules of his order, his interpretation of those rules was final and his decision absolute. In England, if entitled to wear the mitre, he sat in the Upper House of Parliament by the side of the bishops. Usually he was a veritable epicurean, more fond of field sports than of his breviary, a jovial companion, a connoisseur of wines, an adorer of women. His table, his attire, and his habits exhibited all the fastidiousness of a sybarite. Numerous dishes, prepared by skilful cooks, tempted his pampered tastes. The wines of his cellar were the choicest and most expensive in the market. His garments were sometimes of party-colored and embroidered silk, sometimes of scarlet cloth lined with white satin. His boots, of the softest leather, fitted his burly limbs without a wrinkle. Jewels sparkled upon his snowy fingers. The retainers of his household were clad in gaudy liveries. He maintained jesters and buffoons. To the noble amusement of hawking he was so devoted, and his falcons were so excellent, that for these reasons he often incurred the envy of his aristocratic companions and the severe censure of his more rigid ecclesiastical superiors.[355] Troops of strolling players always found a welcome and munificent largess for their exhibitions in the great hall of the abbey. In addition to the nuns, of whom he was the especial patron, high-born ladies were delighted to receive his amorous compliments and to partake of his dangerous but splendid hospitality.
The inmates of the religious houses entertained far closer relations with the great body of the population than did the secular clergy. The original simplicity of their lives, the apparent fervor of their devotion, acquired for them a peculiar sanctity which their subsequent irregularities could never entirely abrogate. Unlike the secular priesthood, whose traditions were of an aristocratic tendency, their necessities and their ministrations brought them in intimate contact with the lower orders of the people, who repaid their services with fulsome idolatry. Of the two divisions of the regular clergy, the friars, who only differed from the monks in that they subsisted on alms, enjoyed the greater consideration. Their blessing was earnestly solicited by the traveller on the highway. Ladies wore their rope girdles in Lent, partly by way of penance, partly as amulets of sovereign virtue against the machinations of evil spirits. The spurious relics which they hawked about were supposed to be endowed with more miraculous qualities than those retailed by the bishop in the cathedral. Their eloquence carried with its pathetic appeals and homely illustrations a conviction denied to the labored efforts of the most accomplished and popular preacher.
It was not within the power of human nature to long withstand the allurements which such opportunities for luxurious indulgence afforded. Within less than half a century from their foundation, the mendicant friars of St. Francis could boast of wealth equal to that of any of the monastic orders. Their common appellation Cordelier, derived from their hempen[356] girdle, became a synonym of lubricity and drunkenness. Both monks and friars enticed wives from their husbands, and not infrequently reduced the latter to beggary. They administered narcotics and aphrodisiacs to nuns, and pointed to their contortions and incoherent ravings as the effects of divine inspiration. It was an ordinary occurrence for young girls to don male attire and take up their abode in a monastery; and a memorial of the time of Henry VII. of England is extant in which the royal protection is solicited by the farmers and gentry of Carnarvonshire against the dissolute practices of the regular clergy. The profanity of the monks during the celebration of the mass, and their offensive language in the confessional, sometimes resulted in temporary suspension from those sacerdotal functions. Gaming was a common amusement in which even abbesses had been known to indulge. Whenever an abbot died the treasury was plundered, and its contents distributed among the brethren fortunate enough to be present.
These excesses were encouraged by the insignificant penances imposed for their commission. Some escaped with a reprimand, especially when the prior was known to be equally guilty. Among the English clergy, mortal sin could be condoned for the trifling sum of six shillings and eight pence. Bearing a crucifix through the aisles of the church and a fine of three shillings and four pence entitled a delinquent to absolution for incest. Fornication was expiated by an offering of candles and the repetition of a few Paters and Aves. As in the case of the laity, a regular schedule existed, accurately defining the punishments to be inflicted for every degree of ecclesiastical misconduct.
The ordinary criminal courts of judicature, through the operation of privileges extorted from stupid and fanatical sovereigns by the astuteness of designing churchmen and the prejudices of a superstitious age,[357] had no authority over a clerk until he had been condemned by a religious tribunal. The course of prosecution, in which the sympathies of the judges were enlisted on the side of the culprit, through the bond of a common profession, and often by reason of participation in similar offences, was always slow and sometimes interminable. By these delays, and the purposely complicated process of the spiritual courts, the civil statutes were practically nullified. The mutual antagonism of the lay and clerical professions indirectly encouraged the most revolting crimes. As the learning of Europe was monopolized by the clergy, every one who was able to read was deemed a “clerk,” and could demand the interference and protection of the ecclesiastical authorities in case of arrest. The tonsure was also regarded as prima-facie evidence of being in orders, and of equal efficacy in obtaining immunity, as many of the priesthood were ignorant of letters. By taking advantage of these privileges, so dangerous to the welfare of society, desperate malefactors continually escaped the consequences of their deeds; and the criminal, whose scanty learning or shaven crown suggested a connection with the all-powerful hierarchy, was demanded in vain by the official avengers of the outraged laws. The benefit of clergy was carried to such extremes in England that Parliament found it necessary on one occasion to proceed by bill of attainder against the Bishop of Rochester’s cook, who, wearing the tonsure and assisted by the influence of his master, had defied the criminal magistracy and tribunals of the realm. The rendition of a trifling service, the payment of a sum of money proportioned to the means of the applicant, and which was often the proceeds of the crime for which absolution was requested, relieved the highwayman and the murderer from all apprehension of the penalties of secular justice.
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Thus had the monastic orders fatally degenerated from the simplicity and purity of their original institution. In common with the other branches of the ecclesiastical profession, they had become infected with every vice and steeped in every sin. They were especially noted for their propensity to the most disgraceful offences in the calendar of human infirmities,—to drunkenness, fornication, rape, and incest. Men who habitually defied the canons of morality by indulgence in such practices must necessarily have entertained but little respect for a system which, so far from restraining, was known to secretly encourage them. As a consequence, hypocrisy prevailed everywhere among the ministers of the Church, from the Holy Father, surrounded by the beauties of his seraglio, to the mendicant friar, who repaid the services of the obsequious peasant by the plunder of his goods and the corruption of his family. The morals of the ecclesiastic were, as a rule, far worse than those of the layman. In Southern France it was a custom, which precedent had almost invested with the force of law, for a priest, after the celebration of his first mass, to invite his clerical friends to a carousal at the nearest tavern. Bishops read the service in bed. The lower clergy divided the solemn office of the Eucharist into several parts, and, demanding a fee for each, quadrupled their emoluments. A French Council, in 1317, menaced with excommunication any magistrate who should, at sound of trumpet, expose priests in public, with their weapons about their necks,—an ordinary penalty for fighting and riotous conduct. The policy of the Church considered the most flagrant injustice, the most atrocious crime, as venial in comparison with neglect of the outward obedience of her rules and the observance of the formalities of her ritual, such as rare attendance at mass, blaspheming of relics, withholding of tithes, eating meat in Lent, labor on holidays.[359] In the prosecution of the Templars, the articles of accusation did not regard the charge of incontinence as important in comparison with those of atheism and idolatry, although it was notorious that more than thirteen thousand concubines were maintained at the expense of the priories of that Order in Europe.
The violation of the vow of chastity was so common that only the most outrageous indecency could excite comment, and the spiritual authorities, whom the Church had appointed to exercise a censorship over public morals, hesitated to perform their duties lest their own delinquencies might thereby be exposed. It was considered not only meritorious, but convenient, to have a clergyman for a lover, on account of the facility of concealment and the certainty of immediate absolution. The presence of the mistresses of bishops, priests, and canons insulted the wives of honest nobles and burghers at coronations and tournaments. The vicinity of abbeys and convents swarmed with the natural children of ecclesiastics. These members of priestly households were liberally provided for from revenues ostensibly collected for pious uses and the propagation of religious truth. So degraded had some of the monks become that they utilized even the House of God for the basest purposes. Guyot de Provins, a writer of the thirteenth century and himself the member of a monastic fraternity, relates that he had seen Cistercians turn church-yards into pigsties and tether asses in chapels. In addition to immoderate indulgence in the strongest of wines, the successors of Pachomius and Antony held eating contests, in which the palm was awarded to the brother possessing the greatest abdominal capacity. Among these were the Glutton Masses of England, celebrated five times a year in honor of the Virgin, when the parish church was made the scene of the voracious exploits of the priest and the clerks, who contended for this[360] enviable distinction with an ardor that often terminated in riot. Every effort to reform these depraved communities proved futile. The abbot who attempted to correct the vices of his flock was harassed until he was glad to relinquish his unpromising task or abandon his charge. If he boldly attempted to enforce his authority, he stood an excellent chance of being poisoned. The famous Abelard narrowly escaped this fate, and the pronounced and vindictive hostility manifested by the inmates of his abbey finally compelled him to insure his safety by flight. Even the determined character of Cardinal Ximenes was forced to succumb to the obstinacy of his Franciscan brethren, whose extortions and irregular lives had excited his horror and disgust. For seven years, William, Bishop of Paderborn, employed in vain the authority vested in his high office to free the monasteries of his diocese from the scandal produced by the vices of their occupants.
Much of the corruption of the regular clergy was to be attributed to the impostors and malefactors who found shelter and safety in their ranks. The assumption of the tonsure alone was sufficient to insure immunity to the most notorious outlaw. The slave, impatient under the lash of a cruel master or apprehensive of the consequences of inexcusable faults, acquired security and freedom in the shadow of the towers of the abbey. The identity of the criminal and the fugitive, the schemes of the hypocrite and the knave, were effectually disguised by the cowl of the friar. The humane and beneficent privilege of sanctuary was abused by the reception and shelter of every class of dangerous and disreputable offenders against the public peace. Association with persons of this abandoned character could not fail to be demoralizing, even to those of the fraternity who observed their vows, and must have still further corrupted the idle[361] and the dissolute who had already embraced the alluring and luxurious routine of conventual life.
The incapacity, arrogance, and debauchery of the clergy at length grew intolerable, even to a bigoted and priest-ridden people. The translation of the Bible by Wyclif, the teachings of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, paved the way for the exercise of private judgment and the privilege of independent thought. All over Europe a reaction took place. It was least felt in Italy, where the masses had for ages been familiar with the impostures and crimes of the Papacy. It was most marked in England, where the grievances imposed on the laity by their religious instructors had become insufferable, and the wealth of the kingdom had been absorbed by the creatures of Rome. The heresies of France for a time threatened the existence of the hierarchy, and were only suppressed by a crusade and the diabolical energy of the Inquisition. Reverence for every form of belief had been shaken by the universal prevalence of sacerdotal iniquity. In Provence and Languedoc priests were insulted by the mob and lampooned by minstrels. Their services were rejected with contempt, their gestures were mocked, their vices satirized with pitiless severity. The English populace, exasperated beyond measure by their wrongs, occasionally proceeded to acts of violence. In some towns an ecclesiastic was hardly safe on the streets. No clerk dared to commit himself or his cause to the verdict of a jury. A handful of worshippers was lost in the nave of the cathedral, where thousands once had congregated. Women went unshriven rather than trust themselves in the confessional, whose precincts, from being the abode of religious advice and consolation, had grown dangerous to the preservation of feminine honor. In 1746 a remonstrance was made to the Primate of England against the participation of women in pilgrimages,[362] as the cities of France, Lombardy, and the Rhine were filled with courtesans, who had abused these opportunities for the exhibition of religious zeal. The authority of the ecclesiastical tribunals was openly defied, their proceedings derided, their judges insulted, their subordinate officers maltreated. In London, towards the close of the fifteenth century, it was a serious matter to attempt to serve a process of the Consistorial Court. The power for evil of this once formidable engine of persecution, which had exercised an offensive censorship over every community, had become hopelessly impaired.
Of such a character were the religious instructors of the people of Western Christendom for five hundred years. The original austerity of the monastic orders had disappeared. In no instance had it actually survived the first century dating from the institution of any ecclesiastical fraternity. With it had departed by far the greater portion of its capacity for usefulness. The daily lives of the secular priesthood presented disgusting examples of human depravity. Among the laity, the rich, at least, were secure from damnation; for by a judicious and liberal offering and the deposit of a schedule of their sins under the altar-cloth of a compassionate saint, in a few hours the sheet was found to be blank and the generous penitent, by the immediate intercession of his patron, was absolved from the consequences of his transgressions without the delay or the exposure of confession. The foundation of a religious house was often derived from the fears or the repentance of a wealthy and superstitious sinner. An immense tract of unimproved land was conveyed to a colony of monks. In the most sequestered spot, far removed from the turmoil, the vanities, and the temptations of the world, an unpretending structure, composed of wattled boughs and thatched with straw or rushes, was constructed. The[363] surrounding forest was stocked with game. A neighboring lake or streamlet furnished a supply of fish. In many fraternities, however, such food was forbidden, for the austerity of discipline sometimes permitted nothing but a meagre diet of herbs and pulse washed down with water. The obligations of their profession as well as the necessity of sustenance required that a portion of their time should be spent in the cultivation of the soil. A number of the brethren labored in the fields while the others attended to the domestic and sacred duties enjoined by their monastic vows. In some monkish abodes the voice of praise was never silent. Relays of choristers occupied the chapel without intermission day or night. The summons to devotion were frequent. To preserve decorum, spies were appointed to report irregularities of conduct within the monastery. No monk was permitted to leave its precincts without a companion, that each might restrain the other from the indulgence in sinful thoughts and carnal recreations. In the cloister the recluse was constantly reminded of the requirements and obligations of his profession by the fervent exhortations of his superior and the enforced observance of silence, meditation, and prayer. By self-infliction of grievous penances,—scourging, fasting, wearing of shirts of haircloth or mail, immersion in water of icy coldness,—worldly temptations and sensual desires were effectually suppressed, and mind and body were devoted to the ostensible and original objects of monachal life,—the service and the glorification of God.
In time their modest and contracted habitations became too small to accommodate the increasing numbers or to satisfy the ambitious zeal of the pious brethren. The wealth derived from the assiduous cultivation of their lands, the profits of their trade, the contributions of royal visitors, and the generosity of their founders enabled them to erect buildings whose imposing[364] proportions and exquisite ornamentation are the delight and the despair of modern architects. The church dedicated to a certain saint was founded on the day preserved by tradition as the date of his birth. A vigil was maintained, and when the first rays of the sun reddened the horizon the work was commenced. As the point where that luminary appeared was taken for the east, on account of the constantly varying position of the sun in the heavens there are but few ecclesiastical edifices constructed during the Middle Ages whose walls correspond with the four cardinal points of the compass. In the ranks of the religious brotherhoods were to be found artisans of every description, whose professional efforts were prompted and encouraged by the inspiring spirit of religious devotion. Such were the dimensions of these magnificent structures that the chapels of many abbeys—such as St. Albans, Southwell, St. Ouen, Durham, Canterbury—are now cathedral churches of some of the richest dioceses of France and England. The architectural splendor of Westminster is familiar to every traveller. The buildings included in the great Cistercian Abbey of Tinterne, which were enclosed by a wall, were distributed over thirty-four acres. The symmetry and beauty of the Gothic temples of Normandy are unimpaired and unrivalled after the revolutions of more than seven centuries. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction of some sees extended over as many as seven thousand mansi, or cottages of serfs; those who only received the tribute of two thousand were so numerous as to be comparatively insignificant.
All the possessions of the clergy were exempt from taxation. Tithes, at first limited to a tenth of the products of the soil, were, by ecclesiastical artifice and Papal rapacity, extended and made to include the entire yield of every crop, the increase of every herb, the labor of every artisan. Without taking into account[365] the territorial area in the hands of the See of Rome at the period of the Reformation, the monastic guilds and corporations had absorbed half of the livings of Great Britain. The revenues of some religious foundations in that country were not less than fifty thousand pounds sterling, reckoning voluntary donations alone. In the thirteenth century the English clergy bore to the laity the ratio of one to four hundred in number, while their lands amounted to thirty-three per cent. of the entire real property of the kingdom. In Spain during the same period the proportion of ecclesiastics was one to seven, and fifty per cent. of the landed possessions under Christian control belonged to them. The pressing necessities of grasping and irreverent princes, who did not scruple to appropriate under various pretexts the riches of the ecclesiastical order, alone prevented the eventual exclusion of the laity of Europe from all ownership of or jurisdiction over the soil.
No religious service could be more solemn, no spectacle more awe-inspiring, than the celebration of a Church festival in one of the grand old abbey chapels in mediæval times. The edifice itself was the ideal of architectural beauty. Through the elegant designs of painted windows, the light, in iridescent hues, shone in tempered radiance over the richly sculptured tombs of prelate and crusader and the checkered pavement brilliant with its graceful patterns of tile and marble mosaic. The walls of nave and transept were hung with tapestry, embroidered sometimes with representations of scriptural events, sometimes with the figures of departed abbots or the portraits of a line of famous kings. The altar, before whose holy presence constantly burned rows of waxen tapers, glittered with ornaments bestowed by the hand of opulent piety and massive reliquaries set with priceless gems. The resounding notes of the Gregorian chant filled[366] the air; the officiating monks in splendid vestments, the pomp of crucifix and incense, added to the impressiveness of the ceremonial and imparted to the scene a striking representation of divine worship which could hardly be paralleled in Rome itself. Truly, in its palmy days the monastery was an important adjunct to Papal power and grandeur!
From the consideration of the manifold vices and flagrant corruption with which the life of monastic institutions was tainted, it becomes a pleasure to enumerate the benefits that these establishments conferred upon humanity. First in importance is the fact that they were the depositories of learning during the Dark Ages. The requirements of the sacred profession, whose dogmas they were designed to uphold and propagate, demanded the possession of some degree of knowledge. The standard of intelligence was far higher in the monastery than in the chapter house of the cathedral or in the episcopal palace. Many of the secular clergy could neither read nor write; their exposition of the sacraments was pronounced in an incoherent jargon, and a canon who understood grammar was an object of general wonder and respect. The lewd and profane character of the discourses from the pulpit was often such that it would not be tolerated for an instant by the fastidious delicacy of a modern audience. The enjoyment of abundant leisure, the praiseworthy impulse of accumulating information which might prove of advantage, both in disseminating the truths of the Gospel and in magnifying the importance of their order, actuated a certain number of the inmates of every cloister to the transcription of books, to the study of authors, to the illumination of missals. Some wrote poems in Latin. Others, like Hrotswitha, the German nun of Gandersheim, composed dramas in imitation of the classics. These literary efforts, while often coarse in sentiment,[367] immoral in tendency, and crude in execution, seem prodigies of learning when we recall the dense atmosphere of ignorance in which they were produced. In the abbey were preserved contemporaneous records not only of all transactions in which that institution was concerned, but also many details of affairs of national interest, which furnished in after ages invaluable data to the historian. In many convents there existed schools where novices as well as the children of the peasantry could receive rudimentary instruction. Books, among which is mentioned the Fables of Æsop, were chained to tables in the halls for the benefit of those pupils. The great impulse given to intellectual progress by Wyclif’s incomplete translation of the Bible in the fourteenth century is indicated by the ludicrous complaint of an old monkish chronicler, who lamented that “Women are now grown more versed in the New Testament than learned clerks.” Coincident with that auspicious event, the monopoly of letters, so long enjoyed and perverted by the clergy, came to an end. In cases where the interests of religion were thought to be imperilled, the monks did not hesitate to obstruct the path of knowledge. Through their influence the study of physics and of law was forbidden in the twelfth century to the students of the University of Montpellier. In contradistinction to this spirit of offensive bigotry, it must not be forgotten that the first printing-presses used in Europe were placed in monasteries.
The seclusion of monasticism encouraged to a considerable extent the love of the arts. In beauty of design and completeness of finish the efforts of the Gothic architect have never been surpassed. Bookmaking was carried to an advanced state of perfection. From unwieldy volumes with wooden leaves, bound in leaden covers, manuscripts developed into the exquisite[368] specimens of calligraphic and decorative elegance so prized by modern collectors. Some were written in gold and silver letters on purple vellum. The illuminations—whence was derived the first inspiration of modern painting—were often the work of years. The bindings were of carved ivory or of the precious metals, not infrequently enriched with jewels. Those volumes destined for the service of the altar sometimes enclosed a reliquary and became doubly precious, as well by reason of the sacred memento they contained as on account of their costly materials and the labor expended upon them. The art of the sculptor owes much to the diligence and skill displayed by the mediæval wood-carver, whose handiwork is visible in the stalls and altar-screens of Gothic cathedrals. The embroidered vestments wrought by nuns during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are marvels of ornamentation, patience, and dexterity. Constant practice in the choir led to a considerable advance in the knowledge of poetry and music. Nor were philosophical pursuits, despite their confessed antagonism to the Church, altogether neglected. The name and acquirements of Pope Sylvester II. were to his contemporaries as well as to posterity long suggestive of a compact with the Devil and the practice of magic. Modern science, in its indiscriminate censure of monasticism, should not forget that the great natural philosophers of the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, belonged to the orders of mendicant friars, for the one was a Franciscan and the other a Dominican.
In the monastery was dispensed not only medical aid, so far as the rudeness and ignorance of the superstitious practitioner allowed, but also unstinted and gratuitous hospitality. The conventual establishment was at once the hospital and the hotel of mediæval society. In the thinly peopled districts usually selected[369] by its founders, no public provision was made for the relief of the sufferings of the invalid or the necessities of the traveller, and both found within its walls a generous and cordial greeting. Its sanctuary covered the trembling victim of feudal oppression with the mantle of its comfort and protection. Its towers, secure in their sacred character, passed unscathed through the wreck of dynasties and the perils of revolutionary violence. The substantial walls of donjon and barbican went down under the assaults of Norman, Saxon, Dane, and Lombard, but the abbey, defenceless save in the immunity afforded by the holy calling of its inmates, remained unchanged amidst these scenes of universal disorder and ruin, the depository of ancient learning, the refuge of the remnant of those elegant social courtesies which had survived the fall of imperial greatness, the asylum of the persecuted, the home of the arts, the preserver of civilization in a martial and unenlightened age.
While Rome was the centre of ecclesiastical and temporal power, Constantinople was the undisputed seat of the refinement and culture of Christian Europe. The transfer of the government of the Empire to the confines of Asia had not, however, destroyed the prestige which the Eternal City had obtained by her glorious achievements in arts, in arms, in literature, in politics, during so many centuries. The new capital of the Cæsars could not properly be called a Roman city. Its population, after the first fifty years following its foundation, was more Greek than Latin, but its most distinctive features were always Asiatic. The ordinary idiom of its citizens was that of Ionia and Attica. The despotism of its court, the manners of its people, bore the pronounced stamp of the Orient. Its society was cosmopolitan, and the relations it maintained through the channels of trade with remote countries constantly filled its[370] thoroughfares with picturesque and barbaric costumes. The brutality of the West, the vices of the East, the superstitions of Africa, the cruelty of Italy, found a congenial home on the shores of the Bosphorus. The successors of Constantine claimed and exercised prerogatives wholly inconsistent with the security of the community or the principles of equity. They interposed their authority to annul the sentences of judicial tribunals. They inflicted frightful tortures without the warrant of law or precedent. They imposed taxes which impoverished even the wealthiest of their subjects. They permitted their flatterers to extort ransoms, traffic in justice, and dispose of employments without even the decorous pretext of concealment. The mutual hatred existing between the bloodthirsty factions of the capital, the ancient enmity of the nobles, the jealousy of rival princes, which had more than once caused disastrous riots, the tumultuous fury of the rabble, induced the emperors to habitually distrust the fidelity of those statesmen whose birth and education best qualified them to direct the policy of a great empire. As a necessity, therefore, eunuchs were intrusted with the management of affairs of state and filled the responsible offices of the imperial household. Surrounded by a crowd of dependents and flatterers, these monsters were the fountain of all honor and the recipients of all homage; while the sovereign of the East, shorn of his actual power, was left to the society of monks and parasites. An excessive love of pomp and of magnificent attire was a marked trait of the Byzantine character. The imperial train often included more than twenty thousand servants, the majority of whom were eunuchs. The eunuch was the most conspicuous personage in the government, in the hierarchy, in commercial adventure, in social amusement, in political intrigue. He discharged the functions of a general often with[371] credit, sometimes with consummate skill. His secretive habits and demeanor admirably fitted him for the tortuous paths and insidious methods of diplomatic intercourse. He was a power in the Byzantine hierarchy. Members of his caste were exalted to high positions in the ecclesiastical order. Some attained to the supreme dignity of Patriarch, an office for centuries of greater importance than that of Bishop of Rome. Others controlled the wealthiest sees of the Eastern Church. Monastic life seemed to possess a peculiar attraction for them, and many convents in Constantinople were peopled exclusively by the victims of man’s deliberate cruelty. Some of these institutions contained nearly a thousand inmates. The prominent part taken by this odious class in establishing the standard of modern orthodoxy, through its influence on the ladies of the imperial household in the early days of Christianity, is familiar to every reader of Church history. The insatiable avarice and rapacity of the eunuch impelled him to the accumulation of wealth through the legitimate channels of foreign commerce and domestic enterprise, as well as by the more questionable means of servility and corruption. His ships were known in every port of the Mediterranean. He was identified with the largest mercantile establishments of the capital. In every social assembly he was conspicuous, in every conspiracy his concealed but powerful hand was felt. His equipage was the gayest, his train the most imposing on the streets. In the circus he took precedence of haughty patricians, whom he far eclipsed in splendor of costume. Ever with an eye to his own aggrandizement, he whispered treason in the ears of the nobles and instigated the rabble to revolt. The sentiments of gratitude, of sympathy, of charity, were unknown to him. The frightful punishments inflicted by the court on political offenders were notoriously suggested by his malignant[372] genius. With the loss of his procreative power seemed to have vanished every trace of honor, of justice, of humanity, of loyalty, of devotion. He was execrated by the Byzantine populace, whose feelings were expressed by the current saying, “If you have a eunuch, kill him; if you have none, buy one and kill him!”
The government of the Byzantine Empire exhibited a curious mixture of irresponsible power and abject dependence. The emperors displayed all the insignia and all the arrogance of despotism, while at the same time they were really the slaves of their parasites. The career of a sovereign was certain to be a short one if he manifested an inclination to independence and to the assertion of his legal prerogatives. In the court of Constantinople poisoning was reduced to a science, and eunuchs, astrologers, priests, and charlatans were ready instruments of ambition and revenge. The formalities attending the intercourse of members of the royal family and the aristocracy were so complicated as to require a long course of study to master them. They were reduced to a code, familiarity with whose rules was considered the greatest accomplishment of a courtier. While this frivolous ceremonial was being sedulously perfected, the constantly receding frontiers of the Empire were abandoned to the encroachments of the barbarians of the Baltic and the Caspian. The state revenues were squandered by ecclesiastics and insatiable favorites. Rapacious tax-collectors displayed the character and adopted the customs of licensed brigands. Their extortions became so excessive and the distress of the people was so great that three-fourths of the inhabitants of the monarchy were officially inscribed upon the public registers as mendicants.
From the eighth to the twelfth century Constantinople was, in all probability, the most opulent and[373] populous city in the world. It had inherited the traditions of the ancient Roman capital, while it had in a great measure discarded the policy which had made those traditions famous. The most exquisite of the works of art that had escaped the fury of the barbarous hordes of Scythia and Gaul had been conveyed within its walls. Its streets were lined with magnificent mansions, colonnades, temples. Everywhere rose suggestive mementos of that great power whose name had been renowned and feared from the Highlands of Scotland to the banks of the Oxus. In forum and garden the mean and stolid visages of sainted monk and anchorite stood side by side with the noble busts and statues of the most illustrious heroes and citizens of classic Rome. The royal palaces were modelled, some after the beautiful villas which had once adorned the Campagna, others after plans suggested by the Saracen architects of Bagdad. The churches also bore evidence of the imitative character of Byzantine art, which borrowed its inspiration from Greece and the Orient. It is said that in 1403 there were three thousand of them in the city. Monolithic columns of different colored marble supported their domes,—sometimes as many as five in number,—roofed with tiles of gilded bronze. Their walls were incrusted with lapis-lazuli and jasper. The sculpture in relief was covered with gold. Elaborate patterns of arabesques in mosaics embellished the walls and formed the pavements. The fountains were of silver and their basins were filled with wine instead of water, for the benefit of the Byzantine mob, whose struggles often diverted the indolent leisure of the monarch and his luxurious court. A separate dwelling was used by the Emperor during each season of the year, and the appointments and furniture of each of them were adapted to the atmospheric vicissitudes of the climate of Constantinople. In all the decorations of these[374] sumptuous edifices jewels were lavished in ostentatious and semi-barbaric profusion. The perverted ingenuity of the Byzantine inventor was expended in the construction of curious toys that might delight the simplicity of childhood, but which could hardly be expected to engage the attention of royalty, even in a degenerate age. One of the masterpieces of these skilful artisans was a tree of the precious metals with foliage occupied by golden birds, whose shrill notes filled the halls of the palace. Notwithstanding its vast expenditure of treasure, such were the resources of the Byzantine monarchy that even after its territory was contracted almost to the walls of the capital, it still embraced the wealthiest community in Christendom. The unrivalled commercial facilities enjoyed by Constantinople more than counterbalanced for centuries the disadvantages of political incapacity, national idleness, and official corruption. The losses resulting from ecclesiastical quarrels, the sanguinary revolutions of political factions, the ravages of Crusaders and the pestilence were speedily supplied from the cities of Greece and the colonies of Asia Minor. The heterogeneous elements of its population, thus recruited from so many sources, early caused it to assume the appearance and the character of the most cosmopolitan of cities; and as the capital was the type of the entire region subject to the sovereign, it has been remarked, not incorrectly, that the Byzantine Empire was a government without a nation.
So marked, however, was the religious and intellectual debasement of contemporaneous Europe that the weakness and crimes of the Greek emperors passed unnoticed amidst the recognized superiority of the civilization which their wanton extravagance polluted. The extent and magnitude of their commerce, the splendor of their embassies, the munificence with which they rewarded their allies, afforded the most[375] exaggerated ideas of their importance and power. The pomp which invested their presence concealed the deplorable conditions under whose restraints they were compelled to direct the affairs of their empire. The political imbecility of the Greeks was, therefore, not visible to their neighbors. These observed only the gorgeous theatrical effects which sustained the prestige of a decaying monarchy, and the alliance of the princes of Constantinople was solicited alike by the khalifs of Bagdad, Cairo, and Cordova, by the emperors of the West, and by the kings of England. In the social polity of the Greeks the court was everything and the people nothing. The natural law of progress, by which man is encouraged to accumulate wealth by the knowledge that he can enjoy it unmolested, and is impelled to intellectual pursuits through the hope of political advancement,—a law practically annulled by the Cæsars of Rome,—was entirely abolished under the emperors of Byzantium. Little security could be expected from a government which attempted to extort from the wretched peasant, whose harvests had been swept away by the barbarian, the same tax demanded from the prosperous merchant, and made no allowance for the destitution for which its own incapacity and corruption were responsible.
The most pernicious ideas relative to the duties and privileges of citizenship had been imported from Italy. The people were divided into castes. The aristocracy considered all occupations carried on for profit as disgraceful to a patrician. It was a maxim with the populace, and one which it would have been dangerous to controvert, that the state owed it sustenance and amusement. In maintaining such a principle, the lower classes could have no motive for labor, and the rabble of Constantinople had not forgotten that the Roman citizen who so far disregarded his dignity as to become an artisan was ignominiously driven from[376] his tribe. The only career open to the aspiring plebeian was through the Church. To obtain a commanding position in the hierarchy, the favor and assistance of a eunuch or of a princess of the royal family was indispensable. The duties of the priesthood required the possession of little intelligence and less education. The affairs of palace and cathedral were usually administered by emasculated monks, indebted for their places to the ostentatious devotion or convenient servility by which they demonstrated their usefulness in furthering the designs of ambitious patrons. While the general licentiousness which scandalized the papal court did not prevail to an equal extent among the clergy of Constantinople, the lives of many of the patriarchs were stained with vices equal in baseness and impiety to any that defiled the character of the worst of the pontiffs. Soldiers, eunuchs, parasites, and tools of intriguing statesmen were elevated in turn to the most eminent dignity of the Eastern Church. Some carried with them into the episcopal palace the manners and the license of the camp. Others, by enlisting the services of the monks and the populace, fomented sanguinary and disastrous revolutions. Others again, by the monstrous extravagance of their behavior and the irreverence which they displayed in the discharge of their sacred functions, aroused the indignation and incurred the censure of the devout. Of the latter, Theophylactus offers a conspicuous example. The sale of ecclesiastical preferments furnished him regularly with means for the gratification of his unholy passions. He was raised to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople at the age of twelve years. He introduced into the Greek ritual absurd ceremonies and licentious hymns which, strange to relate, survived him for almost two centuries. To this practice are traceable the riotous and obscene festivals of the Middle Ages, when religion was travestied and[377] the rites of the Church profaned by license as gross as that which characterized the excesses of the decadent empire of the Cæsars. He deprecated the wrath of the Devil with heathen sacrifices. In his stable were two thousand horses, which were fed on almonds and figs steeped in wine, regaled with costly liquors, and sprinkled with the most exquisite perfumes. Not infrequently in the midst of the mass he left his congregation to visit the stall of some favorite charger. Could piety or virtue be expected from a people whose spiritual necessities were ministered to by such a prelate?
With moral degeneracy came also intellectual decrepitude. A scanty but inestimable remnant of the vast stores of learning which had instructed and delighted the Pagan world had been rescued from the hands of the ruthless barbarian and preserved on the shores of the Bosphorus. But the scarcity of writing materials and the ignorance and prejudice of the unlettered ecclesiastics into whose hands many of these treasures fell insured their destruction. Great numbers of the productions of classic authors were erased from the precious parchment to make room for the legendary miracles of fictitious saints. Others perished by mould and mildew in the dripping vaults of monasteries and churches. Near the Cathedral of St. Sophia there stood in the eighth century a great basilica of unique and elegant design called the Octagon. It was approached by eight magnificent porticos supported by pillars of white marble. The edifice itself displayed the taste and skill of the Grecian architect, whose type, while suggestive of the decline of an art once carried to a perfection without parallel, was, even in its decadence, superior to the masterpieces of all other nations. Erected by Constantine the Great for purposes of religious worship, Julian had consecrated it to literature, had deposited within its halls his extensive[378] library, and had established there an academy in imitation of the famous Museum founded by the Ptolemies at Alexandria. Here a corps of teachers, maintained at the expense of the state, imparted instruction gratuitously on all branches of theology and the arts. The library was open to every student of whatever creed or nationality. A number of expert calligraphists and scholars were constantly employed in adding to the collection, or in reproducing manuscripts that had been damaged by abuse or neglect. The professors of this university—the only institution worthy of the name in the entire realm of the empire—were held in the highest reverence. Sometimes their opinions were taken on important questions of law and diplomacy. Often their mediation was solicited by the heads of contending factions. By the pre-eminence of their acquirements and the weight attaching to their decisions, they averted many a national catastrophe. The incumbents of the most exalted places in the Church were frequently taken from their ranks. During the season of its prosperity no institution of learning outside of the dominions of the khalifs wielded such a salutary influence or was regarded with such respect and homage by all classes of mankind as the Octagon of Constantinople. In the reign of Zeno, when it was consumed by fire, this famous edifice contained a library of a hundred and twenty thousand volumes. Among the treasures lost in the conflagration was a wonderful manuscript of the works of Homer, more than one hundred feet long, composed of serpent skins inscribed with characters of gold. Restored by the emperors to some degree of its former splendor, Leo the Isaurian, who, after repeated interviews, had failed to convert to his iconoclastic views the teachers of the University, determined to effectually silence those who had so signally refuted his arguments. Secretly, and during the night, an immense quantity of[379] combustibles was distributed about the building, the torch was applied, detachments of troops prevented all attempts at rescue, and the assembled wisdom and learning of the Byzantine Empire perished in one indiscriminate ruin. From this inexcusable act of vandalism dates the disappearance of many of the greatest works of the poets, philosophers, and historians of antiquity. What the iconoclast had begun the crusader completed. The storming of the capital by the Latins dealt another destructive blow to literature. The martial fanaticism of the West saw nothing to admire and much to execrate in the immortal productions of Pagan genius. The ignorant monks who followed in the train of the Count of Flanders and the Marquis of Montferrat showed scant consideration to such of the classics as fell into their hands. The precious remains that survived this age of violence, superstition, and intellectual apathy rested uncared for and forgotten in the seclusion of private libraries and the sacred recesses of the cloister until they were resurrected by the insatiable demand for knowledge which distinguished the people of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In every phase of social as well as of intellectual life, the national inferiority of the Byzantine was manifest. He could copy with a fair degree of skill, but he could not originate. He absorbed little and created almost nothing. The works of art in which he took most pride were rather indebted for their value to the nature of their materials than to the labor and ingenuity that had produced them. In the style of ornamentation,—especially as regards the pattern of textile fabrics and the settings of jewels,—the Syrian taste, which delighted in floral designs and the forms of grotesque animals, predominated. There was little in the work of the Byzantine sculptor to call to mind the simplicity and delicacy that pre-eminently distinguished[380] the exquisite products of the Attic chisel. Yet its imitative tendency induced the genius of the Eastern Empire to borrow from all its neighbors, and especially from Greece, whose art had greatly retrograded even before the accession of Constantine. The adoption of Christianity as the religion of the state was most unfavorable to sculpture, which was associated by the ignorant with the representation and worship of the gods of antiquity. The term “Byzantine,” as applied to decoration, is most comprehensive, and, employed by writers at will, has become indefinite. When examples of this style possess marked characteristics, however, and can readily be identified, they show clearly the impress of foreign influence, resulting commercial activity, and intimate diplomatic relations of the Greek Empire with nations of the most discordant customs and religious traditions. The mural designs in mosaic peculiar to Constantinople were reproduced in temples dedicated to the ceremonial of widely different creeds, as the Mosque of Cordova, the Church of St. Mark at Venice, and the Cathedral of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg.
The division of society into castes was the most serious and insurmountable impediment to progress encountered by the people of the Greek Empire. Public opinion was voiced by the court at the instigation of the clergy. There was one law for the members of the imperial household and another for all who did not enjoy that adventitious privilege. What was a crime in the citizen was scarcely considered an error in the patrician. The tradesmen, who to some extent constituted a middle class, were not wealthy or influential enough to own slaves,—a criterion of social importance,—and in nine cases out of ten sympathized with, if they did not actually support, the claims of the rabble. The cultivator of the soil, uncertain whether he would be permitted to enjoy the fruit of his labors,[381] through the rapacity of the imperial officials or the relentless fury of the barbarians, pursued his useful vocation to little purpose. In a region proverbial for fertility, under a sky unusually favorable to the husbandman, there was no uniformity in the amount of the yield, no certainty of even a moderate harvest. Under the same atmospheric conditions a year of famine often succeeded a year of the greatest abundance. The most lucrative branch of commerce was the slave-trade. The Saracen pirates, who swarmed in the Mediterranean, exchanged their captives in the markets of Byzantium for Baltic amber, Chinese silks, Arabian spices, and Indian jewels. These slaves, both male and female, were sold to Jews, who disposed of them to the Moslems of Persia, Egypt, Mauritania, and Spain. The manufacture of eunuchs was not only a profitable industry, but was often resorted to with a view to the future political or ecclesiastical promotion of the unfortunate subject. Parents mutilated their children in the hope that they might rise to the administration of important dignities in the palace or the Church. Unsuccessful aspirants to the throne were compelled to undergo this painful and dangerous operation, and were then confined for life in some secluded monastery. The abject degeneracy of the nation further revealed itself by the infliction of even more inhuman and revolting punishments. Political conspirators were flayed alive. Vivisection was practised upon criminals not sufficiently adroit or wealthy to escape the vigilance of the magistrate. Offenders guilty of public sacrilege were scourged, crucified, or burnt. With the intellectual debasement indicated by the enjoyment of human suffering were mingled the most puerile superstitions. Every class of society, from the emperor to the peasant, was a firm believer in visions, omens, auguries. The flight of birds was observed, the entrails of a slaughtered animal examined[382] with an eagerness never surpassed by that of the votaries of Paganism. The occurrence of an inauspicious event, an unusual dream, an apparent prodigy, overwhelmed the unhappy Byzantine with dismay. Still tinctured with the idolatrous superstition of his fathers, he secretly placed gifts upon the defaced altars of ruined temples, consulted the silent oracles, endeavored to propitiate the neglected gods by nocturnal sacrifices. Belief in the evil-eye was universal, a delusion not extinct even in our day among the more ignorant peasantry of Italy, who think that the possession and exercise of this mysterious power is one of the prerogatives of the Pope. In such a community the charlatans who thrive by the weakness of mankind were not wanting. Astrologers were considered necessary appendages to the grandeur of the imperial court. They abounded in every quarter of the city, and were regarded by the populace with feelings of mingled fear and veneration. Even members of the priesthood, terrified by some unfamiliar natural phenomenon, which their ignorance suggested might portend an imminent calamity, did not hesitate to openly visit these impostors.
To the hands of these two great powers, the Papacy of Rome and the Empire of the Greeks, were virtually intrusted the destinies of the vast and constantly increasing population of Europe. Their evil influence over the minds of men was incalculable. What the unprincipled methods and insolent pretensions of the former failed to effect was supplied by the political duplicity of the latter. While often apparently at variance, they were in reality, though unconsciously, seeking to compass a common end,—the moral, social, and intellectual degradation of humanity. No conceptions of honor, consistency, generosity, or patriotism affected the policy of either. Is it surprising that under such circumstances and with such[383] masters the society of the Christian world should have remained for many centuries absolutely stagnant, without advancement in the arts, without incentives to literary effort, without exertion in the fascinating domain of science, almost without the consolation of hope beyond the grave? When we consider the boundless opportunities for good in the grasp of these two great enemies of human progress, and the energy and ability employed by one of them especially to stifle all inquiry and every aspiration for mental improvement, we may realize the extent of the darkness which enveloped the society of Europe for nearly a thousand years, and appreciate the efforts of the Mohammedan nations, whose self-instructed genius illumined with such a brilliant light the path of civilization and knowledge.
The most pernicious and debasing conditions of Byzantine society prevailed to even a greater degree in the brutalized communities of Central and Western Europe. In no country of that continent did there exist a firmly established or legally constituted government. The authority of the sovereign was nominal and complimentary,—obeyed when it was more convenient to do so than to dispute it, and practically recognized under protest. The order of succession was perpetually violated. Ambitious vassals overturned thrones won by the valor of great chieftains, or ruled with despotic power in the names of their feeble progeny. Anarchy prevailed throughout those provinces whose population was not intimidated by the immediate presence of the court. Property and life were at the mercy of banditti in the pay and under the protection of powerful nobles, who complacently shared the spoils and the infamy of these highway plunderers. The savage and absurd customs imported by barbarians from the forests of Germany and Britain usurped the office of laws approved by the wisdom[384] and practice of Roman jurisprudence. The decay of that science under the later emperors, and especially under the system established by Constantine, must be attributed to the increasing interest in religious doctrines and theological controversy, which ignored the talents and ambition once exercised in the profession of the civil law. The priest had become the successful rival of the advocate, and ecclesiastical preferment was prized more highly by the educated than the triumphs of judicial learning and forensic eloquence. The arm of the strongest determined the justice of a cause without the formalities of evidence and argument. A graduated tariff of compensation for bodily injury existed, and any offence could be expiated by the payment of a stipulated sum. The imposition and collection of taxes were not regulated by any established principles, and the obvious rules of political economy were violated in the application and enforcement of the fiscal regulations. Amidst the universal disorder, the Church lost no opportunity to increase her acquisitions and consolidate her power. She encouraged the continuance of the incredible ignorance and inhumanity of the age. She resolutely set her face against every attempt of the laity to shake off the fetters imposed upon it by violence and superstition. She punished with atrocious severity the slightest manifestation to question the genuineness of her pretensions or the validity of her canons.
The warlike and pugnacious spirit of an age governed by force affected even a profession generally associated with the offices of mercy and peace. For centuries among the Saxons it was the bishop and not the king who conferred the distinction of knighthood. In martial assemblies no difference existed in the appearance of the prelate and the warrior. The panoply and weapons of the field were often also a feature of ecclesiastical convocations. Godfrey, Archbishop of[385] Narbonne, presided in complete armor over councils called to determine points of religious doctrine. The Bishop of Cahors, in Provence, refused to say mass unless his sword and gauntlets had been previously deposited on the altar. The Treasurer of the Cathedral of Nevers appeared in the choir armed to the teeth and with his hawk upon his wrist. In Languedoc, during the thirteenth century, it was the practice of priests to settle questions in dispute by fisticuffs.
After the destruction of the Roman Empire, the first attempt to reorganize society was made by the institution of the Feudal System. It was an instance of the selection of the lesser of two evils. In consideration of protection, the vassal paid homage to his lord and promised him military and other services under certain ill-defined conditions. Defective and susceptible of enormous abuses as this arrangement was, it alleviated to some degree the misery of the lower orders. Its jurisdiction was coextensive with the dominions formerly embraced by the empire of Charlemagne. The temptation it held out to oppression more than neutralized the benefits it occasionally conferred. It organized and perpetuated the most vexatious of thraldoms, the tyranny of caste. It appropriated all property in the soil, and a person not of noble birth or ecclesiastical distinction was doomed to the humiliating dependence of vassalage or serfdom. The nominal liberty originally enjoyed by the descendants of the ancient Roman colonists was easily forfeited by the non-payment of taxes, whose amount was regulated by the caprice of the lord; the failure to perform military service or even the neglect to observe obligations of trifling importance of themselves was sufficient to reduce the offender to a condition of servitude.
The serfs were divided into two principal classes, known to the technical jargon of the law as villains in[386] gross and villains regardant. The authority of the lord over both of these was absolute and irresponsible; the former were attached to his person and, like other chattels, could be sold or otherwise disposed of; the latter belonged to the soil and could under no circumstances be alienated. In every case villains were inventoried and valued as beasts of burden. They experienced all the hardships that greed and malice could invent or cruelty inflict. Not only were they exposed to the violence and rapacity of their superiors, but they were subject to the exaction of certain privileges which could only have been tolerated in an age wholly devoid of the principles of honor, justice, and decency. A conveyance for the transfer of a fief scarcely deigned to mention the wretched creatures who in the eye of the law formed a part of the glebe, and one from which the latter derived its principal value. The avarice of unfeeling lords compelled the peasant to labor throughout the night and to share the lodgings of the cattle. Around his neck was soldered a metal collar, sometimes of brass, often of silver, on which were engraved his name and that of his master. His manhood was entirely destroyed; he possessed no rights, enjoyed no liberties, participated in no diversions. His identity was lost, his very being was merged into the soil on whose surface he toiled from early childhood until released by death. No more pathetic and forlorn example of the deplorable effects of human tyranny and human suffering exists than that presented by the life of the villain regardant of the Middle Ages.
The code of seignioral rights which governed the lord in the relations he maintained with his vassals is one of the most curious and remarkable collections in the entire system of jurisprudence. Voluminous treatises have been written upon it. Dictionaries have been compiled in explanation of the obscure and technical[387] terms by which its customs are designated. The abuse of its prerogatives has led to more than one event whose effects have been experienced in the fall of empires, the institution of anarchy, the weakening of religious sentiment, the destruction of social order.
By the provisions of this code, whose authority was usually presumed to be based upon charters or capitularies conferred by reigning monarchs, the suzerain, always an individual of noble lineage or clerical importance, was invested with all the powers of despotism, so far as the jurisdiction of his estates was concerned. The infliction of the death penalty was within his discretion. He could impose taxes at will, and there was no check upon his rapacity except that suggested by considerations of private interest. The rights of legalized plunder were multiplied to an astonishing degree—for every important action of life, for the performance of every labor, for every change of condition, for birth, death, marriage, for the gathering of harvests, for the construction of buildings, for the keeping of animals, permission was required and a contribution demanded. The virtue of the female serf was absolutely at the mercy of her lord. She was the subject of the most flagitious and degrading section in this code of infamy. The charters or the prescriptive regulations of many fiefs conceded to the lord the exercise of certain prior rights over the bride of a vassal. Where such a privilege existed, none of any rank who owed homage to prince or noble were exempt from its enforcement. Known in different countries by various names,—in France, as Cuissage; in Italy, as Cazzagio; in Flanders, as Bednood; in Germany, as Reit-Schot; in England, as Maidenrent,—it was one of the most widely diffused of all feudal exactions. The gentlemen of the clergy practised it most assiduously; they were among the first to adopt and the last to relinquish it. This odious privilege[388] attached to the estates of most of the great abbeys and sees of Catholic Europe. Its exertion might be commuted for a sum of money, but this was a matter entirely dependent on the caprice of him who enjoyed it. In different localities the interpretation of the general law which sanctioned its use was, by common consent, enlarged, and its indiscriminate infliction was not infrequently imposed upon the serfs of a neighbor as a penalty for trespass and other misdemeanors. Modern propriety will not tolerate the enumeration of the curious and revolting details concerning the “Droit de prélibation,” with which the ancient charters of mediæval times are filled. The evils resulting from this custom frequently aroused the indignation of even the meek and plodding villain, and incited him to assassination and rebellion. It is an extraordinary circumstance, however, that the victim most nearly affected by the operation of this iniquitous law, which had a direct tendency permanently to impair domestic happiness and cast a stigma upon the offspring of every family, never complained of its hardships. Among all the remonstrances and memorials presented during the Middle Ages to monarchs and legislative bodies which have been preserved, and many of which are signed by women, not a single instance can be found where a female vassal requested the abolition of a custom whose continuance was a constant menace to her modesty and virtue.
The essential principles of feudalism were territorial and martial. The right to receive homage implied the possession of real property and the privilege of private warfare. The soldier was the controlling power in the state. Questions affecting the integrity or loyalty of an individual, the liability for civil forfeiture or criminal punishment, the settlement of a boundary, the vindication of personal honor, were referred, not to a judicial tribunal to be determined by[389] the application of well-established rules and precedents, but to the wager of battle. In cases where heresy was suspected, other and even more absurd tests, such as the ordeals by fire and water, were adopted. No rational ideas existed for the ascertainment of truth or the dispensation of justice. Every nation was subject to a haughty and cruel aristocracy, whose tyranny was sometimes tempered and sometimes aggravated by the influence of the clerical order, as its interests or its passions at the time might dictate. Whenever a rebellious spirit was evinced by the peasantry, and the authority of the barons was not strong enough to suppress it, bands of foreign mercenaries and outlaws were enlisted, who were paid with the effects of the serfs which had escaped the rapacity of the suzerain. The maintenance of a system which countenanced the settlement of private feuds by the sword and admitted the virtual independence of the nobles was, of course, inimical to the dignity and power of the sovereign. In France the seignioral fiefs bestowed by charters numbered five thousand, and their lords exercised jurisdiction over thirty thousand villages. There were abbeys whose domains were tilled by as many as twenty thousand serfs attached to the glebe. This enumeration did not include the villains in gross, who sometimes exceeded in number all the other retainers and dependents of the lords. The greater portion of the vast territory administered by the hierarchy under the customs of feudalism was obtained from wealthy pilgrims and crusaders, who sacrificed their earthly possessions to the thrifty priesthood for a trifle in the vain expectation of securing a celestial inheritance. By means of this folly, as well as through the effects of ecclesiastical oppression and torture, France lost thirty-three per cent. of its population during the thirteenth century. In Saxon England the peasants had absolutely no guaranty of protection.[390] Their property was appropriated and their persons enslaved by the petty kings and piratical chieftains who contended in incessant warfare for control of the affairs of Britain. The conquest by the Normans was productive of little improvement. A tyranny of race and caste arose, aggravated by the worst features of the Feudal System, and the despised and humiliated Saxon was degraded almost to the level of a brute. During this unhappy epoch the law of force was paramount throughout Europe. The moral influence exerted by the clergy through the medium of superstitious fear afforded the only instance where obedience was not dependent upon the sword. Where the privileges of feudalism were combined with the exactions of sacerdotal avarice and intolerance, the lot of the serf was indeed grievous. But in cases that did not compromise the prestige or affect the revenues of the hierarchy, the Church not infrequently interposed to protect the victim of aristocratic persecution and injustice. The savage baron, all but omnipotent elsewhere, dared not invade the hallowed precincts of her sanctuary. Under the beneficent shadow of her altar the fugitive peasant was safe from the vengeance of his oppressor. By the tender of her mediation in the quarrels of powerful chieftains, peace was re-established over extensive provinces where anarchy and implacable hatred had long held sway. And it was by her aid, combined with the efforts of the outraged Third Estate, and encouraged by monarchs whose prerogatives had been usurped, that the offensive and cruel rights of feudalism were finally abolished. The Crusades struck a fatal blow at the system by impoverishing the lords through the alienation of their estates and the consequent overthrow of their power. For this service, if for no other, posterity owes to the priesthood an incalculable debt of gratitude. So firmly rooted were many of the[391] practices of the Feudal System that to this day they have not been entirely eradicated. Ceremonies unquestionably derived from seignioral privileges are still observed in remote districts of France and Italy. The statutes of England and her colonies have not yet been purged of provisions and terms which suggest to the legal antiquary the mutual obligations of vassal and suzerain.
The relative position of nations in the scale of barbarism or civilization is largely determined by the nature of their tastes and favorite occupations, by their pastimes, by the means which they invent or adopt to add to the comforts and conveniences of daily life. During the greater portion of the period under consideration in this chapter, the existence of the people of Europe, without distinction of rank or resources, was a purely animal one. The necessities of the fortress, the camp, and the hovel were easily supplied. Articles of the simplest construction and most inexpensive materials, whose uses must have occurred spontaneously to the most unimaginative mind, and are now considered indispensable in every household, were unknown. The castle of the noble partook of all the forbidding characteristics of a prison. Its frowning donjon, its impassable moat, its embattled walls, its jealously guarded portals, were suggestive of tyranny and disorder. The interior was not more inviting. The halls were cold and cheerless; the gloomy chambers, into whose damp recesses the rays of the sun struggled with difficulty through narrow, unglazed windows, the stone seats, the massive furniture and mildewed tapestry were typical of the coarse simplicity and unsettled condition of society in that age. The banqueting hall, where hospitality was dispensed on state occasions with rude magnificence, was at almost every meal the scene of gluttony and uncontrolled inebriety.
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The decorations and their surroundings exhibited the greatest possible incongruity. Hangings of silk and velvet embroidered with gold were suspended against whitewashed walls. Plate of the precious metals was served upon tables of rough and uneven boards. The mailed foot of the knight and the dainty slipper of the chatelaine reposed upon undressed flags, whose coldness was somewhat counteracted by a covering of straw or fragrant herbs. In the viands abundance was considered rather than excellence of flavor, which, however, on extraordinary occasions was supposed to be supplied by the use of rose-water profusely sprinkled over every dish. The repast, where incredible quantities of food were consumed, was characterized by coarse jests and barbaric revelry. The favorite beverage was beer, often brewed in the castle and indulged in to disgusting excess; for through its potency the festivities became the fatal cause of indescribable libertinism and sanguinary encounters. The guests were served by squires and pages, youths of rank, who, inmates of the castle, acquired there a knowledge of arms as well as an acquaintance with the more doubtful accomplishments of gaming and amorous intrigue. The intimate associations and domestic character of mediæval society arising from a sparse population removed all suspicion of menial service from this duty, which was considered highly honorable, and was gladly performed by the proudest noble at the board of his royal suzerain.
The amusements of the feudal lord were confined to war or its substitute, the chase. In the intervals of peace the tournament supplied the necessary practice in arms as well as the military pomp and excitement of the field. One of the favorite diversions of both the nobility and the wealthier clergy was flying the falcon. An extraordinary importance attached to the possession and use of these birds of prey. Property[393] in them was inviolate. They were inseparably connected with the aristocratical or personal privileges of the owner, and could not be alienated, even with his consent, for the ransom of their master. Persons of plebeian station were not permitted to purchase or keep them. They were universally recognized symbols of suzerainty. Kings, bishops, abbots, ladies never went abroad without these birds upon their fists. Warriors carried them in battle. Prelates deposited them in the chancel while they recited the service of the altar. The regulations of falconry constituted a science only to be mastered after months of assiduous study. The education of these birds required the exertion of great skill and boundless patience. Each falcon was carried upon a glove which could not be used for any other. It bore the arms of the master, and was often embroidered with gold and ornamented with jewels. In many kingdoms the office of Grand Falconer was one of the greatest distinction and importance. In France the emoluments of this dignitary were eighty thousand francs a year, and gentlemen of rank eagerly competed for the subordinate employments at his disposal.
The supreme ambition of baronial life was the fame that attached to martial deeds and romantic adventure. The first care of the noble was to secure himself against the treachery and violence of his neighbors. His castle, perched upon a lofty eminence, was furnished with every device to render it impregnable. The most incessant vigilance was adopted to provide against surprise. In front of the gateway, or projected from the summit of the keep and overhanging the moat, was a gibbet, a significant reminder to malefactors of the consequences of violated law or resisted oppression. By the over-scrupulous, immunity was purchased from the Church with the proceeds of the spoliation of the helpless. On all sides—in the bloody[394] traditions of the moated stronghold, with its subterranean dungeons and its instruments of torture; in the license of the armored troop that rode down the ripening harvest and levied blackmail on the trader and the pilgrim; in the perpetual labors of the uncomplaining serf; in the outraged modesty of weeping womanhood; in the summary execution of suspected offenders against feudal privilege,—everywhere were visible the brutalizing effects of unrestrained cruelty and irresponsible power.
But with all their defects, the baronial institutions of mediæval times bestowed upon society advantages that in some measure compensated for the evil which they too often occasioned. The military tastes of the age gave rise to the laws of chivalry and the institution of knighthood, whence in turn were derived graces and amenities of social intercourse hitherto unpractised by the savage warriors of Gallic and Saxon Europe.
The tournament was, as might be imagined, the most popular of the diversions of the Middle Ages. From far and near multitudes flocked to the scene of martial skill and splendor. The town where it was held presented the aspect of an immense fair. For leagues around the country was dotted with tents, and with pavilions surmounted by the pennons of the chivalry of many lands. The retinues of prince and noble not infrequently assumed the dimensions of an army. The followers of Gottfried, Duke von Löwen, at Trazignies in 1169 numbered three thousand. At a tournament near Soissons in 1175, Count Baldwin von Hennegau appeared with an escort of a hundred knights and twelve hundred esquires. The blazons of the most ancient and celebrated houses of Europe were conspicuous in the vast encampment. Kings frequently held their courts within its precincts. All classes were in holiday garb. The magnificence of the spectacle was enhanced by gorgeously caparisoned[395] horses, damascened harnesses, waving plumes, many colored silks, sparkling jewels, the parade of men-at-arms, the pomp of marching squadrons, the resplendent charms of female beauty. The contest, repeatedly, but without effect, prohibited by the edicts of Pope and Council, was conducted with all the ferocity of battle. The thirst of blood predominated over every other sentiment. It was not an unusual occurrences for scores of knights to be carried lifeless from the lists after one of these fierce encounters.
The point of honor which inspired the conduct of the mediæval champion of distressed innocence and avenger of privileged oppression had no existence among the most civilized races of antiquity. The individuality implied by its exercise could not be comprehended by communities whose members, while capable of renouncing every tie of kindred in behalf of the interests of the state and of undergoing the most severe privations to sustain the national supremacy, were prevented by the peculiar circumstances of their surroundings from appreciating the qualities which ennobled even the vices of the knight of the Middle Ages. Without this prominent and compensating feature the condition of society during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries would have been one of unredeemed and unequivocal barbarism.
The coarse though abundant fare of the castle board, the more delicate but still far from dainty viands of the monastic refectory, the boisterous amusements which occupied the leisure and menaced the safety of the participants, the drunken revels of gluttonous banquets, the incessant perils of domestic warfare, to which baron and monk were alike exposed, were suggestive of absolute happiness and luxury when contrasted with the conditions under which was sustained the miserable existence of the serf. His habitation was shared by beasts of burden, the companions[396] of his daily and nightly toil. Composed of unhewn logs or of sticks wattled with rushes, thatched with straw and plastered with mud, its primitive and defective construction afforded little security against the vicissitudes of the climate or the inclemency of the seasons. Through a hole in the centre of the roof the smoke emerged and the storm descended; the walls were blackened with soot; the earthen floor was covered with a trampled litter of hay, mingled with bones and the decaying fragments of many a repast which the occupants had never taken the trouble to remove. Of furniture there was almost none; a bench, perhaps, and a table of unsmoothed planks answered the simple requirements of the hapless villain. He reposed upon a heap of straw with a block of wood for a pillow; the few culinary utensils he possessed were of the rudest description, and had been fashioned by the hand of the owner. No provision was made for the decencies of life or the safeguards of virtue, which were indeed unknown; the family occupied a common apartment, and often a single bed, while the grunting of swine and the lowing of oxen, which animals ranged at will through the dwelling, were sounds too familiar to disturb the slumbers of the drowsy household. The accumulated filth of years, combined with indescribable personal neglect and revolting customs, attracted and multiplied swarming multitudes of every species of vermin. The garments of the peasant, usually of skins, descended uncleansed and unchanged from father to son through many generations, bearing in their contaminated folds the germs of pestilence and death. Where the circumstances of the serf were not sufficiently prosperous to afford even this protection against the weather, his shivering limbs were wrapped with ropes of straw. His head was uncovered, often even in the depth of winter. The most obvious precautions of hygiene were neglected; the simplest precepts[397] of medical science had not yet penetrated to the isolated communities of Western Europe or were sedulously discountenanced by the interests of superstition; and the plague, assisted by favorable climatic conditions, as well as by the physical debasement and the fears of the people, at each visitation numbered its victims by myriads. With game in every grove and fish in every stream, the famishing peasant was often reduced to appease his hunger with unwholesome roots and bark when the meal of chestnuts and acorns, his most luxurious fare, was wanting. The severity of the forest laws visited upon the poacher, even when impelled by the pangs of starvation to trespass on the seignioral demesnes, the most barbarous of punishments. Around the monastery and the castle were visible the signs of unskilled and reluctant cultivation; but not far away was a wilderness diversified with vast forests, majestic rivers, and pestilential marshes. Intercommunication was irregular and limited to populous districts; many villages of no inconsiderable dimensions were as completely separated from the outside world as if they stood on islands in the midst of the ocean. Barter of commodities necessarily prevailed in the almost entire absence of money; there was no opportunity for the establishment of trade; no incitement to agricultural industry; no work for the artisan. The accumulation of property was effectually discouraged through the incapacity of the laborer to retain or enjoy it when his hopes were constantly frustrated by the insinuating artifices of the priest or the significant threats of the noble. The extortions of the inexorable tax-receiver, the inhumanity of licensed hirelings, the enormities countenanced by baronial tyranny, carried dismay into every hamlet. Epidemics appeared without warning, and spread with mysterious and appalling rapidity; the death-rate was frightful; fatal symptoms developed almost with the first[398] attack, while in the ignorance of rational treatment the application of relics and the mummeries of the clergy proved signally ineffectual to avert what was considered the vengeance of Heaven.
Confined in the lazar-house with hundreds of his fellow-sufferers or banished to a lonely hut, far from the haunts of men, the hapless leper dragged out his melancholy existence in pain, in disgrace, in penury. The law declared him civilly dead. With a ceremony not less solemn than that performed over the remains of a Christian actually deceased, the priest announced his final separation from the society of mankind. His body was enveloped in a shroud. He was laid upon a bier. With the repetition of the legal formula which consigned him to a life of odium and sorrow, a few garments and necessary utensils were placed in his hands. He was forbidden to eat with any person but a leper; to wash his hands in running water; to give away any object he had touched; to frequent places of public resort; even to enter the house of a relative or a friend. With his shoulders covered with a tattered scarlet mantle,—a danger-signal, visible from afar,—hideous to the sight, emaciated to a skeleton, and horribly scarred with disease, he crouched by the wayside, sounding his rattle to arouse the compassion and solicit the charity of the passer-by. Deprived of civil rights and debarred from invoking the protection of the law, he was, however, not wholly an outcast, for with the exclusion from these privileges he became the ward and vassal of the Church. So loathed and dreaded was his malady—often considered a divine penalty for crime or sacrilege—that no physician could be induced to employ the scanty medical science of the day for the alleviation of his sufferings; and, even if wealthy, he was abandoned to the suspicious ministrations of wizards, barbers, and charlatans. Shunned as accursed and repulsive during his lifetime, when[399] dead he was unceremoniously buried under the floor of his hovel.
The segregation of lepers in the Middle Ages, as a measure of public safety, was productive of singular results in subsequent times. The disease, which at different periods seems to have been both infectious and contagious, gradually disappeared. But the prejudice attaching to the posterity of the unfortunate outcasts, formerly cut off from all intercourse with their fellow-men, and who formed isolated communities, still remained. The origin of that prejudice was completely forgotten. The people in their ignorance attributed the cause of their enmity to religious differences. It was believed that the objects of their unreasoning aversion were variously sprung from the Goths, the Jews, the Saracens, the Albigenses. Modern research, however, has definitely established the fact that the former pariahs of Southwestern Europe, known in Languedoc and Gascony as Capots and Gahets, in Brittany as Cacous, in the Pyrenees as Cagots, in Spain as Agotes, were the descendants of mediæval lepers. A century has hardly elapsed since these victims of popular antipathy have been divested of that suspicion of uncleanness which was their ancient and unhappy heritage.
In the disorganized state of society which everywhere prevailed, facilities for the profitable and friendly intercourse which promote the intelligence and contribute to the temporal welfare of nations could not exist. Even in provinces of the same country the professional robber and the bandit noble united to imperil the life and seize the merchandise of the trader. The courses of the old Roman highways, unused for centuries, concealed by rubbish and sometimes overgrown with forests, had been utterly lost. There was no provision made by the state for the protection of commerce, and the universal insecurity discouraged[400] the schemes of private enterprise. The mortality resulting from habitual violation of the most obvious sanitary laws, from the use of insufficient and innutritious food, from the hardships of incessant toil, and from daily exposure to the elements, effectually retarded the increase of population. That district was fortunate indeed where even a uniform standard was preserved. In many localities in kingdoms where modern civilization has achieved her most signal triumphs, a solitary shepherd pasturing his flock, or a tottering hovel standing in the centre of a dismal waste, alone proclaimed the presence of man.
The condition of the towns, where an improvement in the manner of living might reasonably have been expected, was in but few respects superior to that of the scattered villages and isolated settlements of the country. Even the main thoroughfares were narrow, tortuous, and dirty. Without drainage or adequate municipal supervision, they were receptacles for the refuse of the household and the offensive carcasses of dead and decaying animals. Even as late as the reign of Francis I., the hogs belonging to the monks of St. Anthony, who asserted and exercised special privileges for the animals sacred to their patron, wandered at will through the fashionable quarters of the metropolitan city of Paris. From the overhanging balconies filthy slops were dashed, without warning, upon the head of the unwary passer-by. By night, daring criminals, secure from the risk of punishment, plied their lawless calling in these dismal and unlighted lanes. He who ventured, unattended, to thread the maze of alleys that wound through even the most frequented quarters of great cities did so at peril of his life. Each corner formed a convenient lair for the lurking assassin. The projecting gables of the houses aided in obscuring the gloomy footways. As the citizen stood in constant fear of robbers, his dwelling was[401] always barred and silent. No light was visible anywhere save the flickering gleam in the lantern carried by the trembling pedestrian, always on his guard against some prowling assailant. Sometimes the mud was so deep that locomotion was impossible for the bearers of sedans, and women were carried from place to place upon the backs of porters, as the narrow and crooked streets precluded the use of vehicles drawn by horses. In the habitations of even those considered wealthy, a general air of discomfort was prevalent. The apartments were dark, ill-ventilated, and unclean. In the windows plates of horn and sheets of oiled paper supplied the place of glass, which was practically unknown. No carpet covered the floors, which were strewn with rushes. The foul surroundings assisted materially in the propagation of fevers and the spread of contagion. Provision for frequent ablution, so conducive to personal comfort as well as to immunity from disease, was unheard of. In many of the most populous capitals of Europe not a single public bath could be found. The attire of the prosperous burgher and merchant was prescribed by sumptuary laws dictated by the jealous spirit of the aristocracy, who could not tolerate a display of plebeian splendor to which their own resources were unable to attain. Their garments were limited to coarse woollen stuffs, whose cut and fashion were regulated according to the capricious decisions of the court. The use of golden ornaments and jewels, so indispensable to the gratification of female vanity, was prohibited to the wives and daughters of their households, who were also restricted to a sombre and unattractive garb. In some instances this contemptible exercise of authority went still further. It dictated the quantity and quality of the food and the beverages to be consumed at the table of the citizen, the description and the price of the light which illumined his home and of the fuel[402] that warmed him. If he had anything to sell, he was paid by his superiors in the product of a debased coinage or with counterfeit money, whose manufacture was everywhere prosecuted with comparative impunity.
Drunkenness was so prevalent in England during the reign of Edgar that restrictions were placed upon the quantity of liquor to be consumed,—the amount allowed each guest being indicated by a mark on the side of the cup or the drinking-horn. The observance of these tyrannical and senseless ordinances was secured by a harassing system of espionage and informers, and their violation was punished by ruinous fines and by condemnation to the stocks or the pillory. The publication and enforcement of sumptuary laws necessarily prevented the development of commerce, already greatly retarded by the prevalent barbarism and poverty of the age. Countries enjoying unlimited natural resources of soil, minerals, timber, and water-power, and whose noble streams only required a portion of the energy and enterprise of man to bring the fertile regions they traversed into intimate contact with the humanizing influences and exquisite products of the highest civilization, were as backward as the savage kingdoms of central Africa are to-day.
A good index of the force of the bigoted prejudice and public intolerance of the time is discernible in the treatment universally received by the Jew. He was the financier, the physician, the merchant, the broker, the scholar of the Middle Ages. He managed with eminent success the fiscal departments of vast empires and kingdoms. In the great catastrophes which overwhelmed entire nations,—amidst the want and despair occasioned by earthquakes, wars, famine, pestilence,—his shrewdness and his resources always afforded relief to the suffering induced by the prevalent evils, although it must be confessed rarely without[403] exorbitant compensation. His medical talents and surgical skill brought him under the ban of the clergy as a dealer in magic; but neither the statutes of Parliament nor the anathemas of priests could deprive him of the protection and friendship of orthodox monarchs, or of even the Sovereign Pontiff himself. True to the adventurous and acquisitive character of his race, he introduced the knowledge and use of foreign commodities in lands rarely trodden by the foot of the stranger, defying the storms of sea and ocean, braving alike the unprincipled rapacity of the noble, the violence of the highwayman, the perils of remote and unexplored solitudes. In maritime cities he established depôts for the importation and exchange of every description of merchandise. His credit and his tact enabled him to negotiate loans for improvident princes, which, more than once, saved distressed nations from bankruptcy. Amidst the multifarious variety of his occupations, he found time for the recreation derived from the pursuits of literature. In this sphere, as in all others to which he devoted his talents, he attained to the highest distinction. In philosophy, in astronomy, in chemistry, in mathematics, his opinions were regarded by his contemporaries with the reverence attaching to oracles. His poetry and his eloquence delighted such courts as those of Cordova and Bagdad; his erudition instructed and his genius illumined schools like those of Salerno, Montpellier, and Narbonne.
How then did society reward such inestimable benefits? Alas! for the credit of humanity, it must be confessed that the intolerance fostered by centuries of hatred obliterated every generous impulse, every sentiment of gratitude. The remembrance of the decision of the Sanhedrim, the story of the sacrifice on Calvary, extinguished in the minds of the fanatical populace the sense of any subsequent obligation. The anniversary[404] of that tremendous event was the signal for insult and outrage. The most heinous accusations, many of them extravagant and improbable in their very nature, were brought by popular clamor, instigated by ecclesiastical malice, against the defenceless Hebrew. His commercial relations with the East had introduced the leprosy. The plague was caused by poison which he had thrown into the wells. The meat he sold was sometimes whispered to be human flesh; and the milk he dealt in not yielded by the cow, but drawn from the breasts of the females of his household. He kidnapped children, whose blood he made use of in the concoction of magical potions. On Good Friday, aided by his kinsmen, he re-enacted the tragedy of Golgotha, the victim being a Christian youth who played, perforce, the rôle of the Saviour, and who, with unavailing struggles and lamentations, endured the humiliation and agony of the Crucifixion. Kings, merely by proclamation, appropriated the Jews of their realms as the absolute property of the crown. Then, by virtue of this arbitrary proceeding, they confiscated the possessions of these victims of royal avarice, under pretence of fines or ransom. Under these significant circumstances it requires no extraordinary degree of discernment to perceive that the wealth of the Jews was the principal cause of their persecution. By their talents and industry they had reached the highest posts in the learned professions; had monopolized the trade; had controlled, to a greater or less extent, the policy of every government in Christendom. Under Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnair their condition was more prosperous than under succeeding monarchs for eight hundred years. In every walk of life they received the consideration merited by their commanding abilities. Their influence was unrivalled. They maintained royal state. Great concessions were made to their convenience and religious[405] prejudices. Their prosperity excited the envy of the rabble. Their influence with the monarch enraged the courtiers. The clergy, whose profits were reduced by their enterprise and whose monopolies they antagonized by their insinuating arts, regarded them with the double hatred engendered by imperilled temporal interests and ferocious bigotry. Among every class and rank their superior intelligence was believed to be due to sacrilegious bargains with the powers of darkness. The prejudice attaching to their name and religion always afforded a specious pretext for persecution. In every Christian kingdom they were the objects of popular execration. They were unceremoniously robbed by the government. They were banished without notice. Their debtors were encouraged to repudiate contracts made with them. The officials of the Inquisition took exquisite pleasure in burning Hebrews, always selecting the most wealthy for its victims. Of the one hundred and sixty thousand persons burnt or disciplined during the twenty-eight years comprising the administrations of Torquemada and Ximenes as Inquisitors-General, the majority were of that unfortunate race. The cause of a Jew was prejudged before every tribunal, and it was often difficult for him to obtain a hearing, and still more to secure the protection to which he was legally entitled. Under such intolerable oppression it is not strange that he should, by the adoption of unprincipled methods and by the exaction of enormous usury, have endeavored to compensate himself, in some degree, for the degradation and hardships he was compelled to undergo. This course, however, only intensified the popular hatred until the term Jew was considered the epitome of all dishonor, deceit, and unprincipled villany. These discreditable prejudices, dictated by general ignorance and by the sacerdotal malice of the Middle Ages, are still, it is well known, far from being eradicated even[406] by the superior understanding and liberal opinions of the twentieth century.
The universal distress which afflicted the peasantry, as well as the poorer classes of the cities, is revealed by the inhumanity with which they were accustomed to treat their offspring. Robbed and oppressed by both priest and baron, and barely able to eke out a miserable existence by themselves, they regarded the birth of an infant as a domestic calamity. Parents deliberately abandoned their children in unfrequented places to perish by starvation or to be torn to pieces by birds of prey. Many were drowned like puppies. Some were buried alive. Others were deposited at the doors of churches and convents, where they were often killed by dogs. The extent of the evil, as well as the prevalent immorality existing in a single country, may be inferred from the fact that the Hospital of Santa Cruz, founded by Cardinal Mendoza of Spain in the sixteenth century, received and sheltered during twenty years more than thirteen thousand foundlings.
The great epidemics that from time to time raged throughout Europe afford glimpses of the life and character of the people not readily obtained from other sources. Medical science recognizes to-day that the principal causes of such visitations are private uncleanness and the accumulation of filth in public places. During the Middle Ages, the regulations of sanitary police were wholly unknown. On every side heaps of garbage and putrefying offal met the eye and offended the nostrils. The necessity for the thorough ventilation and drainage of dwellings was unsuspected. The prejudice against bathing, which universally existed, was partly due to the example of the clergy, who were not supposed to have time to spare from their sacred duties to care for their persons, and partly due to contempt for the Mohammedans, whose[407] lustrations were a peremptory religious duty. As Christianity spread, the practice of ablution gradually declined. The Roman thermæ, one of the wonders of the capital, were at first abandoned and afterwards utilized as quarries for the palace and the cathedral. A general idea prevailed that the ceremony of baptism removed all necessity for the subsequent application of water to the body. Filth became a test of devotion, and, following the example of their spiritual guides, the multitude came finally, by the natural law of association, to regard the unsavory manifestations of personal neglect as prima-facie evidence of Christian orthodoxy. Thus, sanctioned by public opinion and confirmed by ecclesiastical authority, a stigma was placed upon cleanliness, and a premium offered for corporeal foulness and offensive surroundings. Those who violated the established custom were in danger of being denounced as heretics. It was one of the most serious accusations against the Emperor Frederick II. that he was addicted to the frequent use of the bath. Among the upper classes of society, the unpleasant consequences of untidy habits were in a measure neutralized by the excessive use of strong perfumes, such as musk, civet, and ambergris. Among the lower orders many of the physical conditions of life were indescribable. In the vicinity of towns, as well as of isolated habitations, equal negligence of the laws of health prevailed. From the moat, with its stagnant waters reeking with the refuse of the castle, to the vast marshes, with their exhalations poisoning the air around the hut of the shepherd, the atmosphere was charged with the miasma of death. When to the effects of such surroundings were added the depressing influences of contagion and terror, the results were appalling. The plague of the sixth century, whose course raged unchecked from the Bosphorus to the Atlantic, desolated entire countries; the Black Death[408] of the fourteenth carried off seventy-five million persons, one-half the inhabitants of Christendom. So favorable to the spread of the pestilence were the climatic conditions of the country and the personal habits of the people of England that the majority of them perished in a few months by a single visitation of this dreadful epidemic. It so diminished the population that the pursuits of mechanical industry were seriously and permanently affected. Wages became higher than ever before, and legislation concerning the vexed question of the mutual rights of employer and employed was inaugurated, a question which has not been settled to the present day. The vicinity of the dying and the dead carried with it almost certain infection. Even the extraordinary brilliancy of the eyes of patients suffering from delirium was supposed, in conformity with the prevailing superstition, to convey a malignant and fatal influence upon all within the range of their glances. The air was so tainted that domestic animals, cattle, horses, sheep, even the birds, died by hundreds of strange and fatal distempers. The mortality was so great in some districts that the helpless convalescents were unable to perform the burial rites for their friends and neighbors. Ships encumbered with the corpses of their crews drifted about in the ocean without sailor or helmsman. Men became insane through fright, and thousands committed suicide. The wealthy flocked to the churches and poured their gold upon the altars; but for once ecclesiastical avarice was forgotten, and the timid priests, through dread of the scourge, often refused the proffered treasure. As a result of the universal consternation inspired by the calamity, negligent and hasty interment was, in many instances, responsible for the rapid propagation of the pestilence. Multitudes of corpses, covered only with a thin layer of earth, were placed in shallow trenches. Others were cast into[409] the rivers, to be in time lodged against their banks, fresh sources of contagion and death. Through all these scenes of physical and mental agony no scientific medical aid was available. The few skilled Jewish practitioners, who, graduates of the schools of the Moslem, had ventured into the dangerous precincts of Christian courts, were looked upon with suspicion as professors of sorcery and members of a proscribed and accursed race. In the South of France it was unlawful to consult them or to receive their prescriptions. No correct theories were entertained concerning the cause and prevention of disease, even by the intelligent and educated. The malady was attributed to the active intervention of the devil or his agents, and the sick were bound and brought, dozens at a time, to the Church as the most suitable place for exorcism, where, in general, their sufferings were speedily terminated by agony and neglect. There was no comfort for the terrified but the whispers of the confessional; no resource for the pest-stricken sufferer but the Host and the reliquary. Indeed, it was but natural that these should be appealed to for succor, for it had long been assiduously taught that Divine wrath was the immediate cause of all physical misfortune. The pestilence was now considered a tremendous judgment for the derelictions of mankind. The ravings of insanity and delirium were declared to be due to possession by demons, only to be relieved by bell, book, and candle, and all the manifold impostures of sacerdotal mummery. During the continuance of the plague the Church prospered amazingly, as she always does prosper by the woes and the misery of mankind. Her gains were far greater than during the Crusades. The zeal of the devout, the superstitious fear and remorse of the wicked, alike paid enormous tribute to her rapacity. Valuable estates were devised by dying penitents to her ministers. Sumptuous cathedrals[410] were raised and endowed by the grateful piety of those who attributed their recovery to the intercession of her saints. Monasteries and chapels were founded by those whom her prayers were supposed to have rescued from the very jaws of death. The portable wealth of empires poured daily into her treasury. But all these sacrifices, all this generosity, all this religious display, afforded no perceptible relief. If they proved anything, they demonstrated effectually the worthlessness of cure by the resorting to shrines and the application of relics. The pestilence ceased its ravages on account of the want of material, not because its progress was stayed by priestly intercession. But while its violence abated and its characteristic symptoms disappeared, its effects remained, and it bequeathed a frightful legacy to posterity. Although respectable medical authority has contended for a different origin of the disease, there can be little doubt in the minds of those who have thoroughly familiarized themselves with the subject that syphilis is either the result of a recrudescent form of leprosy or of a modified morbid condition developed from the plague. Such is a portion of the foul inheritance for which the twentieth century is indebted to the ignorance, the filth, and the superstition of the Middle Ages.
Wretched as was the physical condition of the people of Europe, their moral state was even more deplorable. The revolting characteristics and manners of the clergy have already been considered in these pages. Under such instructors, whose admonitions were so palpably at variance with their unholy lives, it cannot be wondered at that society was permeated with treachery and hypocrisy. It is one of the most remarkable of mental phenomena that man should earnestly solicit the intercession of the members of a sacred profession with Heaven, while at the same time he demonstrates unequivocally by his actions[411] that he has no respect for their calling and no faith in their prayers. Such was largely the case of the Roman Catholics of the Dark Ages. They lavished their wealth with unstinted profusion upon the Church. They greeted her ministers with servile tokens of respect and homage. They sought her advice in worldly affairs; they obeyed her oppressive edicts; they voluntarily relinquished their natural rights at her despotic bidding. But when opportunity offered, the insincerity of these professions became unmistakably evident. In the midst of the apparent blind and devoted subserviency to the principles of a debased religion, ancient Pagan ideas were constantly manifesting themselves. The worship of fairies, often scarcely concealed, was widespread throughout the Christian world. The knight placed far more confidence in his armor, consecrated by heathen ceremonies, than in the reliquary that was attached to his saddle-bow or the Agnus Dei suspended about his neck. The anxious housewife on the eve of a feast preferred to address her petitions to some popular and beneficent Pagan spirit, accustomed to good living and luxury, than to a female saint with whom abstinence was a duty, and whose life had been passed amidst the privations of the convent or the hermitage.
The death of a pope was hailed with indecorous joy in every quarter of Rome. The election of a new pontiff was the signal for disorder, riot, massacre. Yelling mobs filled the streets, singing impious and obscene songs. The most indecent actions were perpetrated in the face of open day. The papal palace was repeatedly sacked and its precious contents destroyed. The mansions of the cardinals and the nobility were plundered. It was not safe for these dignitaries to appear in public until the popular excitement had subsided, and the death of the spiritual sovereign of the Christian world was often concealed[412] until his successor had been chosen, in order to prevent the scenes of anarchy certain to result if this precaution was not taken. So far from conceding divine attributes to the pontifical character, the Roman populace habitually and openly derided its pretensions to infallibility. It not infrequently interfered with the freedom of the conclave and, intimidating the cardinals, dictated the selection of a pope. If such was the disrespect manifested by the inhabitants of the papal capital towards the head of the Church, little courtesy could be expected by his ecclesiastical subordinates anywhere. The veneration they claimed by reason of their calling was offered only by the more ignorant of the masculine sex and by women. The latter, more weak and credulous in their nature, were the bulwark of superstition, as indeed they have always been in every age. But with the educated the case was far different. As has been already remarked, the ecclesiastic was represented in the most popular writings of the time as a foolish, licentious, and degraded hypocrite. Public opinion would not have tolerated this holding up the sacerdotal profession to derision had there not been ample provocation for such a course. There are good reasons for believing that the awkward and disgraceful predicaments of profligate clerks described in the entertaining pages of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, Boccaccio, Poggio, the Queen of Navarre, and similar collections were actual occurrences. It is indisputable that many of these tales were obtained from the archives of religious houses and the humorous traditions of monastic life. The existence of universal corruption among the regular clergy indicated by these satirical authors receives a significant illustration from the fact that they invariably include the nunnery and the brothel in the same category, and indiscriminately designate the heads of these establishments by the title of “abbess.”
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In the religious festivals and dramatic representations there also appeared conspicuous indications of the prevalent irreverence and mockery of the age. The most solemn and awful events of sacred history were absurdly burlesqued amidst the jeers of a scoffing and delighted mob. The grotesque features of these ceremonies were a survival of the Roman Saturnalia not yet extinct among the less enlightened peasantry of Europe. The most holy mysteries of the Church were parodied in obscene and sacrilegious scenic exhibitions. The actors in these profane representations were selected from the lower orders of the priesthood. They assumed the characters of popes, cardinals, bishops. Sometimes they were dressed in the vestments and equipped with the insignia of their rank,—the tiara, the mitre, the crosier, the crucifix; but often they donned the parti-colored attire of the professional fool and jester and carried his truncheon. The mass was celebrated in due form, but accompanied with a thousand extravagant and often indecent gestures by these privileged buffoons. Men entirely nude were conducted into the churches and deluged with pailfuls of holy water. Old shoes burned in the censers filled the atmosphere with a sickening stench. A repast was spread upon the altar, and all who desired regaled themselves while the representative of the celebrant recited the impressive service of the Church. In the mean time, the aisles were swarming with maskers, whose coarse jests and lascivious contortions evoked the applause and laughter of the audience. Men gambled within the rail of the chancel. Every excess was indulged in without check or remonstrance during the continuance of these festivals. Debauchery ran riot even in the most holy places. Priests, stripped of their clerical vestments, danced half-naked in the streets. The bells were removed from the church-towers and concealed. During the Feast of[414] Asses, a donkey with his rider was conducted into the choir, and the responses of the congregation were made in imitation of the unmelodious voice of that useful but proverbially stupid animal. In this instance, sausages seasoned with garlic supplied the place of frankincense. In the celebration of another festival, a fox, dressed in the habiliments of the Papacy, was carried in state by an escort of mock cardinals. A quantity of poultry was distributed at intervals in the streets through which this singular procession was to pass, and when the fox, dropping his tiara and trailing his purple robes in the dust, occasionally attempted to seize a hen, the delighted multitude fairly rent the air with acclamations.
The dramas, known under the name of miracle and moral plays, were often fully as depraved in tone and as demoralizing in effect as the festivals. They owed their origin to the lively imagination and love of spectacular display characteristic of the Greeks of Constantinople. In some instances, the actors represented Scriptural personages, in others the virtues and vices of an allegory. The greatest incongruities of locality, time, and character were introduced without question or criticism. With the absurdities of the plot were mingled impious sentiments and vulgar witticisms. Notwithstanding the coarseness and profanity of these dramas, their value in controlling the minds of the impressionable populace was fully recognized by the hierarchy. Generally enacted by members of the priesthood, funds were appropriated from the treasury of the Church for their celebration, and indulgences granted to induce pilgrims to attend them.
The dramatic spectacles of the Middle Ages were, however, not confined to representations of a nominally religious character. As early as the tenth century, the plays of the nun Hrotswitha were enacted in monasteries and convents for the amusement of[415] their inmates. These productions, imitations of the comedies of Terrence, far surpassed the latter in freedom of language and action. Their coarseness is such that they will not bear translation. The poems of the same author, whose life was ostensibly devoted to pious thoughts and communion with the saints, are even more extraordinary. The sentiments they express and the scenes they depict are the last which the reader would ordinarily expect to find in compositions proceeding from such a source, and must have been suggested by an extensive and varied experience.
These things, necessarily transitory in their character, have vanished with the gross ignorance and credulity of mediæval life. But more permanent memorials, carved upon the corbels, capitals, and architraves of edifices dedicated to divine worship, disclose more forcibly, if possible, the want of reverence for the rites of the Church, and the callous indifference of the priesthood to what cannot be construed otherwise than as a deliberate insult to religion. Monks, priests, and bishops in full canonicals are depicted with the attributes of cunning and filthy animals, such as foxes, wolves, asses, and baboons. The hog is a favorite subject, and seems to have been considered by the medieval sculptor as possessing traits peculiarly applicable to delineations of monastic life and character. These grotesque caricatures are frequently interspersed with indescribable obscenities. A partial explanation of their occurrence may be found in the fact that they were sculptured by the monks themselves. The latter were the only class of their age skilled in the practice of the mechanical arts. In their order was centred the architectural as well as the literary knowledge of the time. They built and decorated their own churches and abbeys. It is difficult to reconcile the spirit which could conceive and execute such representations with that which could endure their[416] publicity, especially in the temples of God. For the fact is only too well established that mediæval churchmen were far from being noted for toleration. Still, the ruling sentiments of society in those days were far different from those which obtain in ours. Its standard of morality was lower, but, at the same time, it was evidently not disposed to conceal its favorite vices. One thing, however, is certain, the failings of the clergy were so open and notorious as to have become a common jest, in whose merriment even the subjects themselves were not ashamed to participate. It is not a pleasing reflection upon the state of public morals that its teachers had not only become insensible to contempt for their violation of human and divine laws, but encouraged and even rewarded the preservation of their monstrous vices in imperishable materials for the amazement and disgust of posterity.
With the fall of the Roman Empire the knowledge of letters, in common with every other accomplishment, had departed. From the time of Charlemagne, no instruction was accessible save that transmitted through the doubtful medium of ecclesiastical institutions. That monarch had imparted a great impulse to learning by the foundation of academies; by attracting to his court the wisdom of other lands; by the appointment of monastic chroniclers; and by the encouragement of the Jews. As it was the policy of the Church to keep the masses in ignorance, the scanty and general information to be derived from that source was restricted to members of the privileged classes. The general and incredible abasement of the people in those times may be inferred from the fact that so late as 1590, when a mouse had devoured the sacramental wafer in one of the churches of Italy, it was gravely discussed by an ecclesiastical council convoked for that purpose, in the presence of a pious and wondering audience, whether the Holy Ghost[417] had entered the animal or not, and if the demands of religion required that it should be killed or be made an object of worship!
Many of the priesthood could neither read nor write, and, having memorized the service by rote, celebrated mass like so many parrots, as ignorant of what they were saying as their stolid congregations. Bishops made their marks upon important documents with their fingers dipped in sacramental wine. The books used in the service were more esteemed for their pecuniary value than on account of the precepts they contained. Their golden, jewel-studded covers often attracted the cupidity of the brethren, who defaced, pawned, or bodily abstracted the volumes as opportunity offered or their carnal necessities required. Almost incredible difficulties attended the dissemination of learning. In addition to the hostility, negligence, and incapacity of the clergy, who were its privileged custodians, great expense was involved in the manufacture of books. Parchment was generally of wretched quality and commanded extravagant prices. The supply to be obtained by the erasure of ancient manuscripts was limited, and, in the universal decline of the arts, the knowledge of its preparation had been lost. The skins which were brought to the monasteries were required to be cleaned and smoothed by the writers themselves before they could be rendered available. The time required for the completion of a book was a serious impediment to the scholar. The transcription and illumination of a manuscript often consumed years of arduous labor. With the Hebrews, the copying of the Scriptures was a proceeding not less solemn than the invocation of the sacred name of Jehovah. The materials were prepared, with every precaution, by the orthodox of the Jewish faith. The most dextrous and pious calligraphists were employed. Every other occupation was abandoned until this holy[418] task—whose performance was considered as not less important than the celebration of the rites of the synagogue—had been completed.
As a rule, the productions of the scribe and the illuminator were considered too valuable to be used for any other than religious purposes. The donation was accompanied with the ceremony of music and prayer as the missal, often enclosed in an exquisite golden casket, was deposited upon the altar.
It was only through political or pecuniary necessity, or to obtain the favor of royalty, that these specimens of art were allowed, even temporarily, to leave the hands of their owners. In 1190 the Bishop of Ely pawned with the Jews of Cambridge thirteen volumes, to aid in obtaining the ransom of Richard Cœur de Lion. To secure the loan of a single missal, a king of France was compelled to give a bond, with his nobles as sureties, and to deposit with the cathedral chapter a quantity of plate of enormous value. One of the kings of Northumberland gave a productive estate for a copy of the Gospels. The Elector of Bavaria offered a city in exchange for a manuscript, and was refused. The illuminated romance of chivalry, worth more than its weight in gold, was the most highly prized possession of the opulent baron. So valuable, in fact, were these treasures that those destined for public inspection were fastened to the walls with massive chains, and guardians were appointed to turn over the leaves. Peter de Nemours, Bishop of Paris, on his departure for the Crusade, presented to the Abbey of St. Victor “his great library, consisting of eighteen volumes;” a gift at that time worth a prince’s ransom. It will be seen from these examples that during the Middle Ages books were not always at the command of the greatest princes, and a collection of a few hundred volumes was a marvel; that of Queen Isabella contained two hundred and one, of[419] which sixty-seven were treatises on theology. Other circumstances contributed to their scarcity. Written usually in a learned language, it required a special education to read them, to say nothing of their composition. The expensiveness of writing materials prevented many from acquiring familiarity with the use of the pen. The dimensions of leaves designed for various purposes were established by law, but the original sizes into which a sheepskin could be folded have been preserved in the quartos, octavos, and duodecimos of the modern bookseller. As a menace to the irreverent and the dishonest, the author frequently appended to his manuscript a malediction on whomsoever should steal or mutilate the product of his industry. The donor also added his imprecations upon the head of the borrower when the book was presented to a church or monastery. As the modern languages of Europe were not formed, communication by other than oral means was not possible among the uneducated; and the art of writing was in some localities entirely lost. With the great mass of the people the word “library” was understood to mean the Holy Scriptures; they were ignorant of the existence of any other books. The immense advantages accruing to the clergy from the habitual use of an idiom unfamiliar to the vulgar, as well as from the monopoly of the simplest rudiments of knowledge, were not lost upon these shrewd observers of human nature. The church became the point whence royal edicts were promulgated and where commercial bargains were concluded. Proclamations were issued at its doors. Contracts were entered into before its altar. Oaths were taken upon the Scriptures and the crucifix. The Host was used in the detection of criminals and in the solemnization of treaties. Land was conveyed by the mere transfer of a twig or a clod of earth in the presence of clerical witnesses. The cross still traced upon legal[420] documents by the hands of the illiterate, in lieu of a signature, is a suggestive reminiscence of an age when the potency of ecclesiastical influence was recognized in every important transaction of life.
The persecution of learning was systematized and maintained, first, by the creation of theological odium, and subsequently by the institution of such tribunals as the Holy Office; not through a desire to preserve a becoming reverence for religious worship, but from a consciousness of the inability of the existing system to withstand the examination of reason. Heresy was a convenient and ever available pretext for crushing that independence of thought which threatened the integrity of doctrine or the permanence of sacerdotal supremacy. The Inquisition was, when its real object is considered, as has already been stated, a temporal rather than an ecclesiastical device. Its unspeakable atrocities and their effects are too well known to require description. In refutation of its claim as a means of moral purification may be introduced the indisputable fact that during the period of its greatest power the worst atheists, blasphemers, and criminals in Europe were to be found masquerading in the cowl and the surplice. The outrages it committed on humanity must be regarded as the legitimate results of the papal system, which, inheriting to a great extent the organization, the prestige, and the traditions of imperial authority, encouraged, by immunity purchased with corruption and by the profligate example of the Holy See, the neglect of every duty and the commission of every crime.
The exercise of the faculties of the human mind in the Dark Ages, when they were permitted to develop and be employed for the benefit of the Church,—their only profitable patron,—are eminently suggestive of the capacity which it possessed when afforded encouragement. The cathedrals, the carvings, and the missals,[421] which, in their respective departments of art, far surpass the efforts of modern times, are appropriate examples of the scope and fertility of mediæval genius.
I have now endeavored to depict the general and more striking features which distinguished society during the Middle Ages coincident with the period of the Hispano-Arab domination. The description, from the limited space allotted to the subject, is necessarily imperfect. Volumes might still be composed on the events and customs of that dismal period whose most prominent characteristic is the intellectual degradation of mankind. The reader cannot have failed to remark, in every instance—whether merely the trifling incidents of private life were affected or whether the interests of extensive kingdoms were involved—the incessant interference as well as the unquestioned predominance of the ecclesiastical power. He cannot but respect, if he is unable to admire, the commanding genius of an organization which could appropriate and utilize with success the profound policy, the consummate skill, the incomparable talents for administration, the heartless selfishness, of its political exemplar and religious prototype, the Roman Empire. He may turn with disgust from its crimes and its horrors; from papal grandeur built upon forgery and maintained by fraud and torture; from the shamelessness of monastic life; from the duplicity of a system which could avail itself of the uncertain caprices and hideous brutality of barbarian kings; from the repulsive chronicles of famous churchmen, with their long catalogue of appalling cruelties, their obscene and portentous legends. But while disapproving of its methods, he must admit its eminent adaptability to secure the end at which it aimed, and acknowledge that since the institution of society no government has ever exercised such a powerful influence[422] over the bodies and minds of men as the Papacy. From that influence no potentate, however great, was free. The reputation of many a mediæval monarch and statesman with posterity is based, in reality, not upon talents and merit, but upon the standing and relations he maintained during his lifetime with the sacerdotal order.
In the universal ignorance of mankind, the familiar phenomena of nature contributed to the ascendency of unprincipled charlatans, who based their hopes of success and its necessary incidents, wealth, power, and glory, on the invention and sedulous propagation of falsehood. The personification of everything material and immaterial, the globe of the earth, the sparkling orbs of the visible heavens, the sudden and often unexpected effects of the action of the imponderable agents, the most ordinary operation of nature’s laws, were classed as supernatural manifestations, were engrafted upon religion and received the obsequious homage of fear and superstition. The wily ecclesiastic never forgot that
Gnomes, witches, goblins, those imaginary denizens of the spiritual world whose weird and mischievous antics were so well authenticated as to strike the simple masses with terror and to cause even the learned to shudder when their sins had not been removed by the godly solace of confession and absolution, were enlisted as the allies of the politic Church. By the aid of such auxiliaries and the ability to profit by every phase of human weakness and every incitement to human ambition, she has maintained her authority even under the most discouraging circumstances until her achievements in defiance of law and progress, arduous as they seem, are even less remarkable than the apparently eternal duration of her empire.
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Intellectual Stagnation of Europe during the Period of Moslem Greatness—High Rank of Scholars in Spain—Attainments of the Khalifs—Character of Arab Literature—Progress of Science—The Alexandrian Museum—Its Wonderful Discoveries—Its Contributions to Learning—Its Influence on the Career of the Mohammedans—The Arabic Language—Poetry of the Arabs—Its General Characteristics—Theology and Jurisprudence—History—Geography—Philosophy—Libraries—Rationalism—Averroes—Mathematics—Astronomy—Al-Hazen—Gerbert—Botany—Alchemy—Chemistry—Pharmacy—Albertus Magnus, Robert Grossetete, and Roger Bacon—Medicine and Surgery—Ignorance of their Theories and Scientific Application in Mediæval Europe—Prevalence of Imposture—Fatality of Epidemics—Great Advance of the Arabs in Medical Knowledge—Hospitals—Treatment of Various Diseases—The Famous Moslem Practitioners—Contrast between the Christian and the Mohammedan Systems—Enduring Effects of Arab Science—Its Example and Benefits the Creative Influence of Modern Civilization.
While the Christian world was enveloped in darkness, and all learning save that of worthless metaphysics and polemic theology had been banished from the minds of men; while England was distracted by Danish and Norman invasion, and barbarous monks defied the authority of her kings in the very presence of the throne; while Charlemagne was desolating the provinces of Germany by sweeping and merciless proscription; while ecumenical councils were proclaiming the virtues of celibacy and the sanctity of images; while the populace of Rome was amused by the scandal[424] of a female pope; during this period of intellectual stagnation the Moorish princes of Spain and Sicily, alone among the sovereigns of the West, kept alive the sacred fires of art, science, and philosophy. The thirst of empire, stimulated by the fervor of religious enthusiasm, had subjected to the Moslem sceptre a territory exceeding in extent and opulence the vast and fertile area which, in its most prosperous age, acknowledged the authority of the Cæsars. The Arab capitals of Cordova, Cairo, Damascus, and Bagdad did not yield in magnificence of architecture, in pomp of ceremonial, in the skilful adaptation of the mechanical arts, in the accumulation of prodigious wealth, in the opportunities for luxurious indulgence, to the traditional precedence of imperial Rome. In scientific attainments no comparison existed between the vague and unprofitable speculations derived from the schools of Greek and Latin philosophy and the results obtained from the practical application of principles conducive to the development of the human reason and the promotion of the welfare of mankind. In the intellectual as well as in the physical world the success of the Arabs was unprecedented. During the most splendid period of the Spanish-Mohammedan empire, ignorance was accounted so disgraceful that men who had not enjoyed opportunities of education in early life concealed the fact as far as possible, just as they would have hidden the commission of a crime. On the other hand, the learned—trusted by the sovereign, the oracles of the schools, the depositaries of influence and power—never relaxed their efforts for the development of their talents and the increase of their knowledge; and such was their ardor and their perseverance, that they gave rise to the popular proverb, “There are two creatures that are insatiable,—the man of money and the man of science.” The thorough instruction imparted by the[425] Hispano-Arab institutions of learning was highly appreciated by foreign nations, and students went from the most bigoted communities of Europe to enter the Universities of Cordova and Seville. In every branch of polite literature the indefatigable Moslem manifested his genius and his diligence. His versatile talents and his prolixity are at once the wonder and the despair of the most patient and studious reader. One remarkable personage, Ibn-al-Khatib, of Cordova, who died in the tenth century, is credited with nearly eleven hundred works on metaphysics, history, and medicine. Ibn-Hasen composed four hundred and fifty books on philosophy and jurisprudence. Another writer left behind him eighty thousand pages of closely written manuscript. It was no unusual circumstance for a dictionary or an encyclopædia to number fifty volumes. Commentaries on theology, religious tradition, and law were almost infinite in the extent and diversity of their topics. The historical productions of the Spanish Arabs were probably the most minute and voluminous ever published by any people, and their scrupulous fidelity to truth has been repeatedly established by the comparison of their descriptions with the architectural monuments which have descended to us, and by the corroborative evidence of distant and often hostile writers. The authors are usually deficient, however, in the application, and often even in the knowledge, of the canons of historical criticism; their love of the marvellous occasionally interferes with their judgment, and their descriptions, overloaded with florid rhetoric, belong rather to the province of the orator than to that of the accurate and discriminating historian. More than a thousand chroniclers have illustrated the annals of Moorish Spain. Their style, at once turgid and obscure, often renders their meaning unintelligible, while their text is overburdened with puerile anecdotes,[426] Koranic allusions, and perplexing Oriental metaphors. Generations passed in another land, under conditions of extraordinary political and industrial activity, seemed powerless to eradicate or even to substantially modify the mental characteristics of a race bred amidst the solitude and dominated by the prejudices and the superstitions of the Asiatic Desert. The stubborn persistence of these traits is one of the most singular phases of its life and history. Its polity and its religious belief were foreign to, and irreconcilable with, those that prevailed elsewhere in Europe. Its customs, its language, its literature were all exotic. In works of imagination, the elegant fictions of the East, fascinating to the highest degree, and better adapted to the expanding intellect of man than the coarse and barbaric tales of Gothic origin, soon supplanted the latter, as the light and keen-edged scimetar had already driven out the clumsy broadsword of the followers of Roderick. The practical methods of thought founded upon the system of Aristotle everywhere obtained precedence over the unsubstantial and visionary theories of the Platonic school. In public assemblies, where men and women alike competed for the prize of literary superiority; in social intercourse, where the fair sex were accorded far more liberty than had ever been vouchsafed to the matrons and virgins of antiquity, or than is now enjoyed in the harems of the Orient, were developed and practised those amenities and graces which, fostered by songs of love and gallantry, eventually, through the agency of bard and minstrel, were distributed far and wide throughout the continent of Europe. The desire for learning and the appreciation of its advantages were so universal as to be considered national characteristics. The Khalif was the discriminating and generous patron of genius. His favorite ministers were those whose productions had raised them to deserved eminence in the world of[427] letters. In the Moslem system, a competent acquaintance with the principles of jurisprudence was an essential requisite of every finished education. The wonderful grasp of the Arab mind, which seemed to adapt itself with equal facility to the most opposite conditions, was especially fitted for the exacting requirements of diplomacy,—a calling for which proficiency in learning has, in later times, come to be regarded rather as a disqualification than an advantage. The greatest scholars, therefore, discharged the most important employments, and stood highest in the precarious favor of the Moslem princes of Europe. Their literary productions were recompensed with even greater munificence than their services to the state. They almost constituted a caste, so marked were their pride and exclusiveness. Untold wealth was lavished upon them. They took precedence of nobles who traced their ancestry to a period lost in the mazes of Arabic tradition. Their daughters, occupants of the imperial harems, not infrequently became the mothers of sovereigns. Their ostentatious magnificence moved the envy of the most opulent subjects of the empire. Their residences were not inferior in extent and splendor to the habitations of royalty. Great retinues of slaves attended their progress through the streets. Soldiers in uniforms of silk and gold guarded their palaces, preceded their march, and protected their persons from the effects of popular violence. The most lovely women to be procured in the slave-markets of Europe and Asia filled their seraglios.
The poet, the astronomer, and the historian, raised to posts of high political responsibility, enjoyed the confidence and the intimate familiarity of the monarch in whose presence the most distinguished soldiers trembled. Such was the grateful tribute paid by imperial power to intellectual pre-eminence. That this[428] extraordinary favor should not be abused could scarcely have been expected from even the strongest understandings when subjected to the temptations of flattery and ambition. The lessons of philosophy were insufficient to correct the ignoble vices inseparably incident to human nature, and which, in all ages, have exercised despotic influence over the mind of man. The insolence and rapacity of these ministers rendered them offensive to the people; their dangerous aspirations eventually excited the fears of the sovereign. No class of men was so universally detested. The ancient chronicles are filled with accounts of their cruelty, their injustice, and their misfortunes. Some were sacrificed to the jealousy of their master, others fell victims to the unreasoning fury of the populace. Few there were who retained, in the midst of greatness, those virtues and that modesty which should always characterize the noble pursuit of letters, success in which had raised these statesmen to places of such consideration and authority. While the Koran, as interpreted by the more rigid Mussulman theologians, discourages scientific inquiry and the study of natural philosophy, the Khalifs of Cordova, in more than one instance, incurred the reproach of heterodoxy through the indulgence of investigations prohibited by law to their subjects, and, thus encouraged, the intelligent society of the capital did not disdain to adopt the noble maxim of the head of a rival sect. which declares that “the ink of the learned is as precious as the blood of the martyrs,” while the consistent believer kept constantly in remembrance the statement of the Prophet that on the Day of Judgment a rigid account will be required of the literary opportunities improved or abused by the Faithful. Not only did these great princes encourage literature by the bestowal of substantial honors and rewards, but they themselves won in that field laurels more profitable and[429] enduring than any gained in the most successful campaign against the infidel. Abd-al-Rahman I. was an astronomer and a poet of unusual ability. Hischem I. and Al-Hakem I. were among the best informed scholars and critics of their time. The talents and learning which rendered illustrious the life and character of Abd-al-Rahman II., his acquaintance with the sciences of law and natural philosophy, his patronage of letters, caused him to be compared to Al-Mamum, the most renowned of the Khalifs of Bagdad. The erudition and acquirements of Al-Hakem II. were prodigious; the volumes of the immense library of Cordova were enriched by notes and comments in his own hand, and such was his zeal that his eyesight was ultimately sacrified to the assiduity with which he applied himself to every branch of knowledge. The imperial dignity, great as it appeared at its culmination, during his reign was the least important of his titles to eminence. In the golden age of Arabic literature, he stood conspicuous amidst thousands of distinguished writers, jurists, annalists, biographers. A critical history of Andalusia which he composed was famous for its accuracy and for the vast stores of information it contained, and, widely read, it long remained a monument to the remarkable erudition and industry of its author. No scholar of his time was his superior in depth and variety of intellectual attainments. He was the master of many languages and dialects. He wrote with equal fluency and elegance on almost every subject. Nothing pleased him so much as the perusal of a new and valuable work, and the accumulation of books was with him a passion, which supplanted the duty of proselytism and the lust of power. His library was so extensive that it overflowed the great building which had been erected for its reception, and whose treasures, the masterpieces of every nation—Greek, Roman, Byzantine,[430] Egyptian, Persian, Hebrew, and Arabic—were the delight of the learned and the marvel of an illiterate and superstitious age.
Abdallah attained distinction by the plaintive elegies in which he celebrated the misfortunes of his house; Suleyman was dreaded for the cutting verses in which he satirized the treachery and hypocrisy of the city and the court.
The spirit of literary taste and rivalry which had inspired the accomplished society of the khalifate was not lost with the dismemberment of the empire. The capital of each principality became a centre of culture, of learning, of the arts. The rulers of these petty states, whose population still retained, amidst the turbulent scenes of civil discord and foreign encroachment, no small measure of that intelligence and taste which had so eminently distinguished their fathers, vied with each other in their encouragement of science and in their patronage of learned men. In this noble emulation, as well as in their own scholastic acquirements, the Moorish princes maintained the fame of their ancestors and the traditions of the monarchy. Every facility was afforded to the professors of experimental science. Political honors, salaries, pensions, attracted the scholars of distant countries. Religious intolerance had no place in a society whose cardinal principle was absolute liberty of thought, and which had long been accustomed to consider the untrammelled exercise of reason as an inherent and inalienable right. Al-Moktadir, King of Saragossa, was renowned for his erudition; his knowledge of philosophy, geometry, and astronomy was superior to that of any of the wise men of his court. Al-Modhaffer, King of Badajoz, compiled a great encyclopædia. The rulers of Almeria, Valencia, and Seville were not less distinguished for their profound scholarship and the protection they afforded to letters. The[431] monarchs of the Abbadide dynasty, and especially Motamid II., were renowned for the harmony and pathos of their verses. The Almohade sovereign, Abd-al-Mumen, the nominal representative of the destroying principle of fanaticism, was the admiring patron of Ibn-Tofail, Ibn-Zohr, and Averroes, three of the greatest writers who ever embellished by their talents the literature of any age. The achievements of the Alhamares of Granada in the world of art and science, and the culture of their court—the last refuge of learning in mediæval Europe—form the most attractive episode in the annals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Encouraged by the example and the patronage of royalty, the mental development of the masses advanced with gigantic strides. The spirit of progress, the incentives of a lofty ambition, animated all orders and conditions of men. So universal was the thirst for knowledge that even the blind, though hampered by the unkindness of nature, were still able, in that age of intellectual rivalry, to attain a high rank in the scale of literary excellence. The rhyming dictionaries, suggestive memorials of perverted and laborious ingenuity; the impassioned poems, born of a tropical clime and a sensual religion; the unprecedented and rapid progress attained in the exact sciences; the voluminous works on theology and history, and the incredible erudition of their authors, the numerous universities, the grand libraries, the competitive examinations, the public contests for literary precedence and royal favor, attest a degree of enlightenment little to be expected from a people sprung from a barbarian and idolatrous ancestry, and are all the more remarkable when contrasted with the degradation of contemporaneous Europe. Fanaticism and prejudice closed to the inquisitive mind of the Moslem some of the most important stores of classic[432] wisdom. For, while the natural philosophers and historians of Athens were studied with the greatest assiduity, Mohammedan piety rejected with abhorrence the sublime creations of Grecian poetry on account of the gross fictions of its mythology, so repugnant to the exalted ideas of the unity and perfection of God. Nor was the fiery and impassioned nature of the Arab capable of appreciating the dignity of heroic verse or the measured cadence and majestic pomp of the Attic drama. It delighted in stirring lyrics, satirical epigrams, amatory songs, and pathetic elegiac lays. The marked influence exerted by Arabic poetry on the civilization of Europe has already been referred to in these pages. Its matter is frequently overloaded with quaint conceits and obscure allusions, its lucidity habitually sacrificed to difficult feats of rhyme, its style disfigured by extravagant metaphor and hyperbole. Love of the beautiful, the marvellous, the supernatural were the most prominent characteristics of Arabic writers, and from the effects of these national propensities even dignified works on scientific subjects were not entirely free.
Learned and voluminous as were the purely literary productions of the Hispano-Arab scholars, they were of secondary importance when compared with the practical achievements of the experimenters in the world of science. The Saracens introduced into Western Europe the Indian numerals, the tabulated observations of Babylon, and the discoveries of the astronomers of the Alexandrian School. These wise investigators examined the effect of gravity, and narrowly missed ascertaining its principles; they constructed the pendulum clock and the balance; they explained with perspicuity and exactness the origin of many hitherto mysterious physical occurrences which popular ignorance was accustomed to ascribe to supernatural[433] intervention rather than to the inexorable and necessary operation of Nature’s laws. They were the first to demonstrate that the aerolite was a cosmic fragment and not a missile of Divine wrath, and to subject the substances of which it was composed to chemical analysis. They formulated a table of specific gravities, and the densities of bodies as laid down by them is said by Tyndall not to vary essentially from those accepted at the present day. They understood the force of capillary attraction; they had approximated to the true height of the atmosphere, and had noted its diminished weight at a distance from the earth. As early as the tenth century they had formed singularly correct ideas of the nature and causes of many geological phenomena,—such as the varying erosion of strata by the action of the elements, the presence of fossil remains on the summits of mountain ranges and the different characteristics they exhibited according as their origin was terrestrial or aquatic, the elevation and depression of the surface of the globe extending through inconceivably protracted periods of time. Both chemistry and pharmacy were pursued with remarkable success in the laboratories of Moorish Spain. Medicine and surgery especially engaged the attention of the ambitious student, who found an enthusiastic and dangerous competitor for distinction in the Hebrew, whose attainments and skill not unfrequently placed him at the head of his profession. Dissection was not unknown, but reverence for the dead preserved the human form from the scalpel, and the anatomical researches of the Arab surgeon were, in public at least, limited to animals of the lower orders, multitudes of which were annually sacrificed to the demands of science. In that noble pursuit which has for its object the determination of the motions of the celestial bodies, and the establishment of their relations with each other and with the[434] universe, the Hispano-Arab, as in the investigation of other natural phenomena and in the solution of abstruse philosophical problems, evinced a rare and peculiar aptitude. In Moorish Spain, as in Chaldea, Babylonia, and ancient Egypt—where all astronomers were priests—the sanctuary of God was in part devoted to the study of the most sublime and wonderful of His creations, the visible heavens. Gnomous, astrolabes, dioptras, solstitial and equinoctial armils, were placed upon the minarets of the most sacred temples. The calculations of the observer were completed in the academical institution which Moslem tradition and practice caused to be attached to every building consecrated to the worship of Allah. No profession ranked higher than that of the astronomer. The sovereign loaded him with wealth and honors. In the mosque he was received with a consideration not inferior to that exacted by the most revered expounders of the Mohammedan law. The populace, recognizing in him a mysterious personage who in secret held communion with other worlds, and too often confounding him with the astrologer, gave way as he traversed the streets, and in whispers spoke of him as the heir of the wisdom of Solomon and as a mortal invested with supernatural powers. The study of the heavens was greatly promoted by the progress made in the science of optics, and by the lucid explanation of illusions due to atmospheric refraction. In this way the twinkling of the stars, the apparent inequality of the horizontal and vertical diameters of the planets, and the prolongation of the day after sunset were accounted for. The invention of the telescope, the comparison of observations taken at widely distant stations in every portion of the globe, the perfection of apparatus which measures, weighs, and separates the component elements of our atmosphere, the intelligent application of the principles of physics, and the progressive[435] experience of nine hundred years have not affected the definiteness and scientific accuracy of these conclusions.
The Spanish Moslems possessed both terrestrial and celestial globes; some were composed of brass, others of massy silver. Their astronomical instruments were beautifully made, and were graduated with the greatest minuteness and precision. They had ten different kinds of quadrants, one of the most ingenious and complete having been invented by Al-Zarkal, of Toledo. They made use of clocks moved by water, sand, and weights. The Arabic armillary spheres and astrolabes preserved in the museums of Europe are not surpassed by the most laborious efforts of modern ingenuity in excellence of finish, and in the accuracy of adjustment which implies the possession by the artisan of a competent knowledge of the delicate operations for which they were intended. It must not be forgotten that these instruments, through whose agency such wonderful results were achieved, will compare favorably in elegance of construction with the optical appliances of the best equipped observatory of to-day.
To facilitate the investigations of the natural historian, there were numerous zoological collections, where the habits and characteristics of animals and birds of every description could be observed and noted for the present entertainment and future profit of mankind. The royal botanical gardens contained an endless variety of plants, both indigenous and exotic, cultivated for their brilliant foliage, their grateful fragrance, or their culinary and medicinal virtues.
The portentous development of Arabic intellectual activity presents one of the most interesting and instructive examples of progress in the history of the human mind. The Bedouin was a typical barbarian and freebooter. He had no organized government,[436] and acknowledged no permanent authority. Without a settled habitation, he despised all who pursued the avocations of peace. He subsisted by pillage. His religion was debased, cruel, idolatrous. With the exception of a few poems and some collections of tales recounting the exploits of spirits and magicians, he had nothing which could be dignified by the name of literature. It is true that his language was one of the most copious and flexible ever devised by man, but its powers had never been tested and were practically unknown. Even the courage of the Arab was not exempt from suspicion, and he notoriously preferred the advantages of ambuscade and surprise to the more hazardous encounter of the open field. Almost his sole, certainly his most conspicuous, virtue was hospitality; but every consideration of friendship and courtesy was forgotten as soon as the guest of the night had quitted the precincts of his camp. The prevalence of such conditions was, it must be admitted, eminently unfavorable to the encouragement of science and letters. The Arab conqueror, therefore, in the prosecution of his literary career, owed nothing to the usually powerful influence of national tradition and example. His first important act was the destruction of the great library of Alexandria, his second the spoliation of the monuments of the Pharaohs, and the razing—in order to obtain materials for his own inferior constructions—of the vast structures of Greek and Roman antiquity which adorned that famous capital. The thoroughness with which this work was accomplished is demonstrated by the total absence of any remains of those superb edifices which were alike the pride of the Macedonian dynasty and the boast of the age of Augustus and Hadrian. In these acts of violence he only followed the inherent destructive and predatory instincts of his race. Contact with civilization and experience of its benefits,[437] however, soon wrought a change in his nature, a change momentous in its results and which has no parallel in the annals of human advancement. A century after the Hegira, the descendant of the vagrant Bedouin had attained a remarkable predominance in every department of polite literature and scientific knowledge. The impulse which wrought this mighty intellectual transformation was imparted by Egypt, and sprang from the historical and philosophical reminiscences of the Alexandrian Museum. That renowned institution was the unique and practical embodiment of the passion for innovation, of the inventive faculty, of the utilitarian spirit of the ancient world. The doctrines of the higher antiquity were, as is well known, largely theoretical and speculative. The occasional appearance of men of genius like Hippocrates and Aristotle only served to emphasize the worthless character of the verbose and unprofitable disquisitions of the schools of Greek philosophy. Anterior to the fourth century before Christ, science owed little to experiment, and all knowledge of any value was empirical, or the result of purely accidental discovery. No intelligent method of investigation existed. No system which had for its object the physical amelioration of humanity was deemed worthy of attention. Such practical aims were trifles and beneath the dignity of the wise man of that age. His time was occupied in attempts to explain the nature of the soul, to define the supreme good, to discover the original essence of all created things, to demonstrate the fancied harmony or dissonance of numbers. In these absurd and fruitless occupations were wasted intellectual abilities which, properly directed, might have changed the aspect of nature and the condition of society many centuries before modern inventive genius was afforded an opportunity to exhibit its marvellous powers. The shrewd and discerning soldier,[438] who, in the partition of empire, received as his share the ancient dominion of Egypt, pursued a diametrically opposite course in the policy he adopted for the promotion of education and literature. He united the culture of Macedon and the venerable traditions of the civilization of Persia with the experience gained in many campaigns. His skeptical and arbitrary nature had little sympathy with the abject superstitions of his Egyptian subjects, and still less with the despotic pretensions of their priesthood. His position as ruler invested him with almost theocratical authority. Scarcely was he seated upon the throne before a radical change was resolved upon. The genius of Ptolemy impelled him to attempt the modification of a system, sanctified by the practice of immemorial antiquity, in such a way that its outward observance would not be repugnant to Greek intelligence nor, by the violation of long-established prejudices, the stability of the newly constituted government be endangered. To accomplish this end, the worship of Serapis, the representative of Oriental Pantheism, was introduced. This strange co-ordination of skepticism and idolatry was productive of remarkable consequences. The Egyptians admitted with enthusiasm a new god into their Pantheon. The Ptolemaic dynasty was placed upon a firm and enduring basis. In the magnificent temple where was enshrined the image of the divinity, whose nominal worship became of such importance to future civilization, a grand institution of learning, totally unlike any that had hitherto imparted instruction to man, was established. Considerations of practical utility were recognized as the sole and legitimate objects of its foundation. Observation, experiment, debate, occupied the leisure of its professors. The principles of every known science whose application could enure to the benefit of humanity—medicine, surgery, astronomy,[439] botany, physics—were expounded in its halls. Its library, subsequently destroyed by Amru, was the greatest collection of books ever assembled in ancient times. The fame of this great university soon spread throughout the world. The number of students who attended its lectures was incredible, not infrequently reaching the enormous figure of thirteen thousand. Their ambition was excited by the presence of the sovereign, who often assisted in the experiments and participated in the discussions.
The most prominent characteristic of this unique educational institution was the catholic spirit which it manifested towards the representatives of hostile religious systems. Paganism was the recognized worship of the state. Its temples were numerous, its ceremonials of sacrifice, divination, and augury were performed with every accessory which could be afforded by unlimited wealth and prodigal munificence. Yet the philosophical doctrines consecrated by a hoary antiquity, and whose study has given rise to modern agnosticism, were highly esteemed by the educated classes of Egypt. It was to facilitate their introduction and acceptance that the scoffing Greeks had consented with mock solemnity to prostrate themselves before the altar of Serapis. The Jew, elsewhere despised, readily found a respectful audience for his monotheistic principles in the cosmopolitan society of Alexandria, and, what was to him of far greater moment, an opportunity to reap enormous profits from the commercial advantages offered by the most flourishing metropolis in the world. The fabled genealogies of the Olympian deities were perused by Jewish scholars with the same attention, if not with the same respect, as the sacred legends of the Hebrew race. The poems of Homer survived to delight posterity through the editions of the Alexandrian Museum; the Greek version of the Old Testament, known[440] as the Septuagint, published by Ptolemy Philadelphus, is still an authority with erudite theologians. The spirit of inquiry was the dominating factor of the Ptolemaic educational and philosophical systems. Every hypothesis was rejected which could not stand the test of practical experiment and demonstration. No fact was considered too insignificant to be made the subject of intelligent and exhaustive scrutiny. The most abstruse problems of mathematical and physical science, the most obscure and difficult questions concerning life—its origin, its progress, its decay—were daily proposed for investigation and solution. The study of biology was one of the favorite pursuits of the Alexandrian School, and it is not impossible that topics which in recent years have so deeply engaged the attention of the learned may have been a subject of its profound and labored disquisitions. Among these was, perhaps, the doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest, which was not unfamiliar to the Greeks, for its adoption is advocated by Plato in his Republic, and its practical application was long a leading principle of the Code of Lacedæmon. The rational procedure employed in the study of medicine and surgery was most favorable to the prosecution of biological and physiological research. These sciences were established upon the solid foundation of anatomical demonstration. Autopsies and vivisections were of daily occurrence. The active participation of the kings in the operations of the clinic was due, no doubt, to a desire to discover the secret of longevity, and to justify by their sanction proceedings which the prejudices of all the races of antiquity branded as desecrations, actions abhorrent to reverence and decency. Many notable discoveries were the result of these enlightened methods. The offices of the internal organs, the ramifications of the venous system, the form and convolutions of the brain, the phenomena[441] of respiration, digestion, and procreation, were described in terms remarkable for correctness and lucidity. It is a singular fact that in the midst of all these anatomical investigations, many of which were made upon the bodies of living animals, the peculiar function of the arteries remained unknown. The Alexandrian academicians supposed that they were intended, in their normal condition, for the circulation of air, and the vast period of thirteen centuries was destined to elapse before the genius of Harvey designated their true place in the human economy. Herophilus explained the relations of the brain and the nervous system. Erasistratus established the distinction between the nerves of sensation and motion. Alexandria abounded in specialists of every kind,—oculists, lithotomists, surgeons who treated the diseases of women. The practice of medicine was indirectly aided by a pursuit of a widely divergent character, the cultivation of alchemy. As, afterwards, under the Arabs, though not with such marked results, this delusion, through the discoveries induced by its study, proved of substantial service to the intelligent physician. The department of the Materia Medica was enriched by the importation of drugs, and by the cultivation, in botanical gardens, of foreign plants of great medicinal value. The school of the Ptolemies was so famous that an attendance upon its lectures, for however short a period, conferred upon a practitioner great professional distinction. All of the celebrated medical men of antiquity, with the single exception of Hippocrates, derived their information, and were indebted for their success, to the Alexandrian Museum. The extraordinary impulse imparted to all branches of science by this splendid institution was not materially checked for centuries. Before its foundation astronomy had long been stationary, but with the facilities it afforded a[442] gigantic advance was accomplished. The heavens were mapped out and the constellations defined. The stars were catalogued. The motions of the planets were observed and compared, and the erroneous but plausible system of eccentrics and epicycles invented to account for the various phases they presented at different times. The globular form of the earth was demonstrated to the satisfaction of every intelligent mind. The mechanism and cycles of eclipses, the precession of the equinoxes, the first and second inequalities of the moon were explained. Estimates, more or less approximated to correctness, were made of the dimensions of the globe. Its surface was delineated, its climates described, hypotheses to account for the phenomena of its atmospheric changes advanced. Besides those already referred to, all sciences of a practical tendency—geometry, botany, natural history—were accorded a place in the course of the Museum; even the ordinarily prohibited studies of astrology and divination were not excluded. The names of such mathematicians as Euclid, Archimedes, and Conon; of such astronomers as Ptolemy and Hipparchus; of such geographers as Eratosthenes; of such geometers as Apollonius Pergæus; of such ornithologists as Callimachus; of such poets as Theocritus and Lycophron, suggest the infinite obligations of posterity to the noble institution established by Ptolemy Philadelphus at the mouth of the Nile. From such a source was derived the inspiration of Arab intellectual progress that preserved and multiplied the precious literary treasures in which were embodied the wisdom and the achievements of antiquity. That inspiration was, however, destined to long remain dormant. A melancholy period of eleven centuries of bigotry, ferocity, and ignorance separates the Alexandrian Museum from the University of Cordova.
To the unrivalled capabilities of the Arabic language[443] was principally due the success of those who employed it in all branches of literature. That rich and sonorous idiom, isolated for centuries in the Desert, had been formed and perfected without contamination by extraneous influences. The peculiarities of its alphabet, the infinite multitude of its terms, the complexity of its conjugations, and the obscurity of style which its writers regard as an excellence worthy of assiduous cultivation, render its mastery by one not native to the soil a task of almost insuperable difficulty. The perfection of its grammar and the elegance of its construction imply many centuries of use and much literary practice for their establishment. Each tribe had contributed to its copious vocabulary. The number of synonyms by which objects of common occurrence or habitual usage are designated is enormous. It contains eighty names for honey, two hundred for a serpent, five hundred for a lion, one thousand for a sword. It has exerted a marked and permanent influence on the idioms and the literature of Europe. Many of our most familiar English terms have come down from it unaltered. French abounds in words and expressions derived from the same source. Spanish has been called a corrupt Arabic dialect, and its richness in proverbs is due to the use of that tongue in the Peninsula for nine hundred years. The influence of the Sicilian Moslems on Italian is very apparent. The Romance languages were largely Arabic and Hebrew. This exuberance gave the poet an immense advantage for the exercise of his talents. The periodical literary assemblies, popular in Arabia, had the effect of improving the diction of the competitors, and contributed greatly to the embellishment of the language in which their poems were composed. Facility of versification was so common that its possession was not regarded as an accomplishment, except where it produced results denoting unusual[444] ability. So many words have a similar termination in Arabic, that in poems of considerable length the same rhyme is alternately made use of from beginning to end. Improvisatorial skill, so highly esteemed by the Moors, was rather mechanical than the result of poetic inspiration, and was immensely facilitated by the abundance of terms at the command of the poet, whose mind was trained to this mental exercise from childhood. Arabic versification readily adapts itself to every quantity and variation of numbers required by the practice of the art of poetical composition. It is lavish in the use of metaphor, simile, antithesis. In elegance of style, in brilliancy of expression, and in fertility of fancy it presents examples not inferior to the finest models of classic antiquity. Its characteristic extravagance was the result of national taste, a taste often perverted by a passion for the weird and the supernatural. It delights in the representation of abstractions as material beings; it bestows life and speech upon the zephyr and the rose. The play of words in which it abounds, the elaborate and quaint conceits dependent upon pronunciation and upon phrases susceptible of varied significance, while they may obscure the diction, are never suffered to interfere with the harmony. The vivacity of Arabic poetry is one of its greatest charms. Its imagery is born of the fiery imagination of the East; its proficiency in the delineation of human passion is the fruit of centuries of study, reflection, and jealous rivalry. Perfect familiarity with the poems of the pre-Islamic Bedouins, regarded as models by every generation of their descendants, was considered an indispensable qualification of every well-informed scholar. The Arabs were so deeply impressed by the potent influence of poetical genius that they assigned it a place among the kabbala of magical science. Rhymes were introduced into the most solemn discussions. An impromptu[445] couplet opportunely spoken was often the surest recommendation to the favor of a prince. Poetic sentiment was such an essential characteristic of the Arab intellect that even grave metaphysical and historical treatises were designated by the most romantic and whimsical titles.
Under the Mohammedan dynasties of Spain the wit and skill of the successful poet claimed and enjoyed the highest consideration. It has been aptly remarked that poetry was the central point about which revolved the intellectual life of the Andalusian Moors. Its influence upon the invaders was rather augmented than diminished by the transplantation of the lyrics and satires of the Desert to the soil of Southern Europe. The universality of its cultivation and the honors and emoluments which rewarded popularity expanded its productions to an enormous volume. At the close of the reign of Al-Hakem II., hundreds of manuscripts were required for the catalogues of the poetical works which crowded the shelves of the imperial libraries. Verse was employed alike in the most momentous and the most unimportant transactions of life, in the congratulation of royalty, in the celebration of triumphs, in the familiar intercourse of neighbors and friends, in the frivolities and gossip of the seraglio. Its power over the nature of the sensitive and impulsive Asiatic cannot be measured. It diminished the agony of the suffering. It hastened the cure of the convalescent. Its voice brought temporary oblivion to the dungeon of the captive, its pictures of paradise lighted the dark pathway to the grave. Rhyming prose was used in private correspondence by all persons who laid claim to good breeding. The Hispano-Arab histories are filled with verses. They were frequently employed to relieve the severity of scientific works, whose authors were equally celebrated as philosophers and as poets. Diplomatists inserted couplets and stanzas of more or less[446] merit and propriety into their state papers. The passport given to the great scholar Ibn-Khaldun by Mohammed V., King of Granada, was written in rhyme.
In the classification of subjects, amatory poems, as in all countries which acknowledge the power of the lyric muse, claim precedence. It is obviously unfair to judge Hispano-Arab poetry by the accepted rules of modern criticism. The totally different conditions of society, the education of an audience whose ideas of literary excellence and correctness of expression were strongly at variance with ours; the similes, now obscure, but then full of meaning to the appreciative listener, the idioms of a copious and extremely complicated language but imperfectly understood by the most accomplished scholars of our day, ignorance of the physical environment of the writer, the distance and vicissitudes of nine centuries, all contribute to render the formation of an accurate and impartial opinion on the merits of Arab poetry an arduous, indeed an almost hopeless, task.
The exalted position occupied by women under the Arab domination in Spain gave them an influence, and invested them with an importance, elsewhere unknown in the Mohammedan world. This peculiar social condition had a tendency to restrain the sensual instincts of the bard, not yet entirely emancipated from the coarse traditions of the Desert, while at the same time it encouraged the cultivation of generous and lofty sentiments. Admiration for the qualities and accomplishments of the mind gradually supplanted the hyperbolical praise of corporeal perfection, which had hitherto predominated in the compositions of the Arabian poet. The verses of the later era of the khalifate allude to the perfections and graces of the sex in terms of honor and veneration worthy of the noblest paladin of chivalry. This admiration was[447] intensified by the eminent rank attained by many women in the literary profession. The female relatives of khalifs and courtiers vied with each other in the patronage and cultivation of letters. Ayesha, the daughter of Prince Ahmed, excelled in rhyme and oratory; her speeches aroused the tumultuous enthusiasm of the grave philosophers of Cordova; her library was one of the finest and most complete in the kingdom. Valada, a princess of the Almohades, whose personal charms were not inferior to her talents, was renowned for her knowledge of poetry and rhetoric; her conversation was remarkable for its depth and brilliancy; and, in the academical contests of the capital which attracted the learned and the eloquent from every quarter of the Peninsula, she never failed, whether in prose or in poetical composition, to distance all competitors. Algasania and Safia, both of Seville, were also distinguished for poetical and oratorical genius; the latter was unsurpassed for the beauty and perfection of her calligraphy; the splendid illuminations of her manuscripts were the despair of the most accomplished artists of the age. The literary attainments of Miriam, the gifted daughter of Al-Faisuli, were famous throughout the Peninsula; the caustic wit and satire of her epigrams were said to have been unrivalled. Umm-al-Saad was famous for her familiarity with Moslem tradition. Labana, of Cordova, was thoroughly versed in the exact sciences; her talents were equal to the solution of the most complex geometrical and algebraic problems, and her vast acquaintance with general literature obtained for her the important employment of private secretary to the Khalif Al-Hakem II. Inherited genius for poetical composition, joined to constant familiarity with its exercise, the tendency of early education, the influence of intellectual association and example, the exalted estimation in which proficiency in it was held, the extraordinary[448] facility afforded by the Arabic language for the formation of rhyme, the inherent predilection of the Asiatic for the employment of epigram, hyperbole, and allegory, called into existence a race of juvenile poets whose number and abilities seem, in our practical and unimaginative age, absolutely incredible. In readiness of improvisation and quickness of repartee these youthful rhymers displayed talents scarcely to be expected of the most precocious intellect. Some of the rhyming couplets composed by the children of Moorish Spain which have descended to us, in propriety of expression and elevation of feeling, in aptness of comparison and in elegance of style, are not inferior to the classic productions of educated maturity.
Nor was the taste for and the delight in the arts of extemporaneous composition confined to the eminent and the learned; all classes practised it, and it was said that in the district of Silves alone there was hardly a laborer to be encountered who could not improvise creditable verses with facility. Volumes devoted to the lives and productions of the princely and noble poets of Andalusia were published; the palaces of royalty and the mansions of the great fairly swarmed with men of genius and poetasters, greedy of wealth and ambitious of renown. The ancient and venerated models of the Desert were never lost sight of in the productions of Moslem Europe. Their striking peculiarities, their lofty sentiments, their obscure metaphors, their extravagant panegyrics, their fantastic imagery, were regarded as merits which, while they might provoke, would ever defy imitation. In Andalusia, however, the enlarged and humanizing ideas of an advanced civilization, the steady march of material and intellectual improvement, familiarity with the literary masterpieces of antiquity and intercourse with foreign nations, modified to some extent the character[449] of the subjects treated by the Moorish poet, although his style remained the same. Similes deduced from the nomadic life of the Bedouin—a life abandoned, centuries before, for the monotonous occupations of trade and agriculture—still, in the midst of conditions incompatible with the existence of predatory habits, and side by side with the tribal hatred whose intensity never diminished, maintained their universal ascendency. Adroitness in the metrical art; the gift of combining the infinite resources of the Arabic idiom in complicated phrases and rhymes which nothing but the enthusiasm and penetration of the illuminated could understand and unravel; the introduction of mysterious allegories, remote and obscure analogies, bold and striking antitheses,—these were the artificial excellences of Hispano-Arab poetry. The perfect comprehension of its productions implies an acquaintance with the language practically unattainable by a foreigner. The original form of Semitic poetry, whether Hebrew or Arabic, was improvisatorial; it was inspired by passing events; it was gay or plaintive, didactic or satirical, but never solemn and grandly impressive, like the sublime flights of the Grecian muse. The Arab poet was deficient in the dramatic faculty. His versatility, elsewhere remarkable, was unequal to the composition of an epic. His ignorance was so profound that he could not even give a correct definition of tragedy or comedy. To the greatest scholars of Mohammedan Spain, men who knew Aristotle by heart, and who were capable of the instant solution of the most difficult equations of Conon and Euclid, the works of Sophocles, Æschylus, and Euripides were unknown. The mental constitution of the Arab was thus not adapted to the creation of plays, a form of literature also discouraged by his traditions; while his prejudices forbade the study of the classic models which his religion stigmatized as[450] idolatrous and indecent. Poetical narration was not unfamiliar to him, but a lengthy historic or allegorical composition, either in blank verse or rhyme, which required sustained and protracted action, was both repugnant to his taste and beyond his powers.
While love-ditties were the favorite productions of the Hispano-Arab, the martial lyrics of battle and triumph, sonnets depicting the pleasures of wine with more than Roman freedom, and the mourful elegies suggested by the events of a decadent empire, claimed a large proportion of the efforts of his poetic genius. Among the myriad poets whose compositions have adorned the Moorish domination in Spain, it is difficult to attempt to distinguish a few of superior merit; yet the following may be designated as masters in that art whose possession was a passport alike to political eminence and popular veneration. Ibn-Hasn, Ibn-Zeidun, of Cordova, Abbas-Ibn-Ahnaf, were noted for the sweetness and beauty of their amorous songs; the martial airs of Ibn-Chafadscha, of Valencia, chanted by the Moslems in the front of battle, assisted in turning the tide of many a doubtful day; the bacchanalian verses of Ibn-Said, of Seville, were the delight of the corrupt and voluptuous Andalusian capital, and were even sung by the children in the streets; the keen satires of Ibn-Ammar of Silves—the unhappy memories of whose early life, passed in mendicity, tinctured his writings with bitterness even when raised by his talents to the highest posts in the kingdom—spared neither prince nor courtier in their indiscriminate and playful wit; Abul-Beka, of Ronda, Ibn-al-Lebburn, of Murviedro, and Ibn-al-Khatib, of Granada, described, in language of inexpressible beauty and pathos, the national calamities inflicted by Christian supremacy,—the dissolution of empire, the desecration of the sanctuary, the dismemberment of families, the exile of the vanquished, the horrors of servitude.
[451]
The ordinary lyrics of the Spanish Moslems were technically known as the Kasida and the Ghazal, and, in the composition of both, only the alternate verses were in rhyme. The sonnets of Petrarch are modelled after this peculiar method of versification, or rather after its imitations prevalent among the vagrant poets of Southern Europe. It was principally through the example afforded by the Moorish kingdom of Sicily that an intellectual impulse was imparted to the founders of Italian mediæval literature. The Mohammedan princes who governed that fertile island were generous and enthusiastic patrons of letters. The Normans, whose enlightened spirit preserved with little modification the laws and customs of a civilization whose benefits were so apparent, encouraged with especial favor the labors of the Arab muse. The compositions of the Sicilian poets embodied principles and were governed by canons identical with those in vogue beyond the Pyrenees. In a land abounding in classic associations, the scene of military and maritime events upon whose issue had depended the destiny of empires; whose striking natural features had given rise to the most charming fictions that adorn the productions of antiquity, and where the architectural monuments of Grecian elegance and grandeur recalled the magnificence of former ages; the Arab, enveloped in the exclusiveness of his own personality, fettered by the influence of inherited tradition, never departed from the beaten track of his ancestors. Physical environment, unusually so potent in the formation of taste and the modification of national impulse and individual characteristics, produced no visible effect upon the mental constitution of the Moorish poet. Everything else—physiological peculiarities, the general tendency of thought, the nature of the objects of intellectual inquiry, opinions of the benefits to be obtained from the prosecution of scientific pursuits,[452] the occupations of daily life—underwent radical changes, but the methods of the poet remained to the last invariable. The persistence of this spirit of immobility is further demonstrated by the popular ballads of the conquerors to whom the Moslems bequeathed it. The striking resemblance of the songs of the troubadours to those of the Arabs indicate plainly the source whence the former derived their inspiration. Other circumstances, based upon national customs, go far towards confirming this opinion. The Mohammedan Peninsula abounded with itinerant rhymers and sonneteers. They travelled from mansion to mansion, everywhere welcomed with joy and hospitality. They attended the person of the prince. They formed an indispensable part of the retinue of every great household. Their poems were ordinarily improvisations, evoked by the occurrences of the moment or the suggestions of the locality. Their compensation was gratuitous, entirely dependent upon the caprice of the patron or the generosity of the auditory. The privileged character of their profession enabled them to use a boldness of speech and a freedom of criticism which an ordinary personage would not have dared to exercise. In their train often followed the story-teller, the prototype of the jongleur, whose lineal descendant may still be seen amusing with his coarse buffoonery the idle crowds of Tangier and Cairo.
The graceful courtesy and deference to the sex, which were the indispensable attributes of every gallant cavalier, in short, the very genius of chivalry, originated among the Spanish Mohammedans. The women of Christian Europe—except in countries influenced by Moslem culture—from the tenth to the fifteenth century received no such social consideration and enjoyed no such educational advantages as did their infidel sisters of the Peninsula. In Southern[453] France and Italy a tolerant spirit, fostered by a light and pleasing literature, had invested woman with an eminent, indeed with a despotic, authority. Elsewhere it was far different. Condemned to unspeakable hardships; degraded by brutal associations; if of high rank, the mere plaything of a tyrannical master; if born in an inferior position, classed with beasts of burden; in every situation of life kept in ignorance; subject to insult, to oppression, to all the sufferings incident to a condition of humiliating dependence little removed from servitude, such was the lot of woman in orthodox Christendom. This state of moral and physical degradation long prevailed, save where intimate contact with Arab civilization produced a substantial and permanent improvement of social and intellectual conditions. The most important factor of this metamorphosis was the poetry of which the troubadour was the exponent. This erratic calling drew its members from every rank of society: it included sovereigns, princesses, nobles, peasants, beggars. As the rhyming instinct is not innate and almost universal in Europe as in Asia, the often unlettered troubadour was more highly considered in Languedoc and Calabria than was the wandering poet among the hypercritical literary dilettanti of Seville and Granada.
In addition to the presumption afforded by the resemblance of subject, style, and metre, the fact that only countries contiguous to, or directly influenced by, Moorish civilization during the Middle Ages developed a taste for poetry similar to that of the Arabs, furnishes strong corroborative evidence that the gai science, as the art of improvising verses was called, was of Arabic derivation. The natural haunt of the troubadour was the romantic, semi-tropical region washed by the waves of the northwestern Mediterranean. The genius of his poetry—ardent, extravagant, voluptuous—had[454] nothing in common with the cold and sluggish spirit of the North. France and Italy were the only European countries whose boundaries coincided with those of the Moslems. In both the revival of learning, after centuries of darkness, first arose. France was the abode of the Huguenot and the Camisard; the birthplace of Henry IV. and Coligny; the seat of the Great Schism which rent the Church in twain; the vantage-ground of the philosophers who precipitated the frightful struggle for civil and religious freedom in the eighteenth century. Italy was the land of Galileo, of Bruno, of Savonarola, of the Medici; the home of the Florentine academicians, whose labors and experiments effected so much for the advancement of science; the scene of the most extensive reaction against mediæval ignorance,—a movement inaugurated in the immediate neighborhood of Rome, and in defiance of the vehement protest of the Papal See. The greatest names in Italian literature insensibly acknowledged their obligations to Arabic poetry, by adopting the style and rhythm of its European imitators, the troubadours. The peerless Dante himself did not disdain to follow and to advocate the observance of its rules. The Canzoni of Petrarch present innumerable points of resemblance to the productions of Moslem Sicily. Ariosto is greatly indebted to Elmacin. In the melodious and charming songs of Lorenzo, the same sources of inspiration are discernible, and the same rhyme is used. In England, the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer bear an unmistakable relation in form and metre to the mediæval compositions of Southern France. Nor was this powerful and all-pervading influence confined to poetry. The tales of Boccaccio have an Oriental cast. The very manner of their recital recalls the customs of the Desert. They are reminiscences of the popular calling of the Provençal jongleur and the Arabic story-teller. In the license[455] of their expressions, in the wit of their repartee, in the amusing character of the events which they describe, they may be classed as realistic adaptations of the Thousand and One Nights. The patronage and example of the Emperor Frederick II. carried beyond the Alps the cultivation of letters, and with it the traditions of Sicilian civilization. From this literary transmigration originated the Minnesingers, German counterparts of the troubadours, whose elegant verses sensibly modified the innate coarseness of the Teutonic character, and introduced a spirit of refinement, in pleasing contrast with the drunken orgies of the banquet and the festival. Their two principal productions, the Minnesong and the Minnelay, were models of elegance of diction, beauty of sentiment, and perfection of rhyme. For more than a century they were the delight of all classes of German society, nor did any compositions of equal merit succeed them until the age of Goethe and Schiller. Into Germany were also introduced, by the influence of the Emperor, a spirit of inquiry, the foundation of all true knowledge, and the philosophical and heterodox ideas entertained by the educated Moslems of his Sicilian dominions. The ultimate effect of this enlightened policy upon the national mind, imperceptible at the time, but increasing in intensity with the lapse of centuries, was the defiant course of Luther, which established the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures and shook the foundations of the papal throne. The fact that these three countries, which alone were directly acted upon by the spirit of Arabic learning and the example of Moorish civilization, were the scene of the revival of letters, when the rest of Christendom was plunged in the most abject ignorance, is of profound significance in ascertaining the causes that, promoting the intellectual advancement of Europe,[456] have culminated in the great scientific achievements of modern times.
In Moorish Spain great attention was paid to the study of the kindred subjects of theology and law. The commentaries on the rites of the various sects into which Islam is divided; the arrangement and review of the enormous mass of tradition which tends to elucidate or to confirm the ambiguous texts of the Koran; the digests of the decisions whose authority is considered unimpeachable, form a stupendous body of literature chiefly remarkable for the patience, the learning, and the labor necessarily employed in its compilation. The muftis and the faquis were the authorities whose office it was to explain perplexing questions of Mohammedan jurisprudence. In the system of the latter, a system generally remarkable for its simplicity and efficiency, the Koran was the guide of every magistrate. The rules were supplemented by the precepts and suggestions of the Sunnah, a collection of traditions derived from sources more or less authoritative, and transmitted through many generations. The conflicting interpretation placed upon ancient customs sanctified by prescription, and the disputed authenticity of many of them, gave rise to a swarm of sects whose rancorous disputes were often terminated by bloodshed. In the Moslem judicature, the sovereign was the sole fountain of justice. Heir to the patriarchal customs of the East, he often sat in judgment at the gate of his palace, heard the complaints of his subjects, composed their quarrels, reproved their faults, condemned their animosity, and decided upon their merits all controversies between worthy litigants. Under him was the kadi, in whom was vested civil and criminal jurisdiction, whose judgments were rendered and whose sentences—from the scourging and the cruel mutilations enjoined by the law to the supreme penalty of[457] decapitation—were executed with a relentless promptitude little in accordance with modern ideas of criminal procedure. In these courts there were no opportunities for oratorical display; custom discouraged such exhibitions; and Arab eloquence, unlike that of other nations, was most concise and laconic. The doctors of the law and the commentators on the Koran received greater homage than any other class of Moslem men of letters. Their occupation invested them with a measure of the reverence enjoyed by the works to which their labors were consecrated; it implied the possession of superior knowledge, perhaps of inspiration; they were ordinarily personages of venerable appearance and irreproachable character; and upon their opinions, promulgated with all the authority of age, wisdom, and experience, depended the administration of justice and the preservation of order throughout the vast extent of the empire.
The extensive and diversified character of the works of the Arabs is one of the wonders of literature. This extraordinary fertility attained a greater development in Spain than in any other portion of the Mussulman empire. Al-Modhaffer, King of Badajoz, wrote fifty volumes; Ibn-Hayyan, sixty; Honein, a hundred; Abdallatif and Ahmed-Ibn-Iban, the same; Ibn-al-Heitsam, two hundred; Abu-Mohammed-Ibn-Han, four hundred; Ibn-Habib-al-Solami and Abu-Merwan-Abd-al-Melik, each a thousand.
In the realm of history and biography the genius of the Hispano-Arab was most prolific. The subjects treated are of great variety, and are usually expanded into a prodigious number of books. Tedious and obscure as is much of their narrative, its minuteness of detail and extraordinary fidelity to truth render the surviving collections—which, extensive as they are, compose but a fragment of the historical literature that once existed—invaluable to the[458] student. The biographical dictionary of Hadji Khalfa contains notices of twenty thousand works, of which twelve hundred are historical. The Arabic critical, theological, and geographical cyclopædias were scarcely less voluminous.
The plan of this work does not contemplate more than a passing allusion to the principal historical writers whose learning and talents were conspicuous during the Moorish domination in Spain. Among them may be mentioned Ibn-al-Afttas, Prince of Badajoz, who composed a valuable treatise on the political and literary events of the Peninsula; Ibn-Ahmed-al-Toleytoli, of Toledo, who wrote a General History of Nations; Al-Khazraji, of Cordova, to whom is attributed a History of the Khalifs; Al-Ghazzal and Al-Hijari, who published, the one a rhyming history, the other a topographical description of Andalusia; Ibn-Bashkuwal, of Cordova, and Mohammed Al-Zuluyide, famous for their biographical dictionaries; Ibn-al-Khatib, of Granada, whose marvellous erudition was displayed in the greatest of his works, The Universal Library, an immense epitome of the literary and historical facts obtainable in his time. Disquisitions on general topics were not, however, the favorite employment of Moorish authors; their subtle minds preferred the narration of important events, the tracing of remote causes, the solution of obscure historical problems. In the treatment of special subjects they displayed a wonderful, often a tedious, prolixity. Each khalif and prince entertained at his court an historian charged with the description of the principal occurrences of his reign. Every town had its annalist, every province its chronicler. There was not an art or a science, not a profession or a calling, whose origin and influence had not been described, and its distinguished teachers enumerated, by some eminent writer. Mohammed Abu-Abdallah, of Granada,[459] compiled an historical dictionary of the sciences; Al-Assaker is credited with a curious and instructive history of inventors. Even animals famous for their superior qualities were assigned an honorable place in the biographical productions of the Spanish Mohammedans. Abu-al-Monder, of Valencia, and Ibn-Zaid-al-Arabi, of Cordova, composed memoirs recounting the genealogy, the endurance, the speed, and the beauty of certain horses conspicuous in a race proverbial for its excellence. Abd-al-Malik wrote an account of celebrated camels. The names given to books, even by the grave and pious, partake of the fanciful and figurative imagery of the Orient, and were suggestive of the most precious objects admired and coveted by man, such as “The Silken Vest,” “Strings of Pearls,” “Links of Gems,” “Prairies of Gold.” From a remote antiquity similar titles had been adopted, for, as has already been remarked, the earliest of Arabic poems, the Moallakat, derive their collective appellation, not from having been suspended in the Kaaba of Mecca, but on account of their figurative resemblance to the pendants of a necklace.
The Arabic language, regarded by Moslems as the most perfect of all idioms, received great attention from grammarians. Their works upon this subject are infinite, exhaustive, perplexing. One treatise, in a hundred parts, treats solely of genders. Knowledge of this character was held in the highest estimation. Abu-Ghalib, of Murcia, refused a thousand dinars of gold from the sultan of that kingdom, who had solicited, as an honor, the dedication of a work upon grammar composed by that celebrated scholar, whose labors were devoted to the instruction of the people, and not to the flattery of power. Natural history, chronology, numismatics, were treated at great length by the European Moslems. The menageries and aviaries maintained in the principal cities afforded[460] unusual advantages to the student of zoology. Chronological computations were based upon the deductions of the Alexandrian Museum. The Moorish scholars of Spain and Sicily made invaluable contributions to the general stock of geographical knowledge. The measurement of a degree which they effected approximates very nearly to the one accepted by modern science. Abulfeda enumerates sixty Arabic geographers who lived before the thirteenth century. Many of their maps were veritable works of art, in which, upon a ground of silk, continents, mountains, lakes, and streams, represented in relief, were embroidered in gold and silver. Their researches were aided by the historical remains of antiquity, by the accounts of merchants and mariners, and by the reports of travellers despatched by their sovereigns to collect information in the remotest corners of the earth. Ibn-Hamid penetrated to the most inaccessible regions of Central Asia. Ibn-Djobair visited and described Sicily and the countries of the Orient. The travels of Ibn-Batutah were prolonged through twenty-four years. Obeyd-al-Bekri, of Onoba, was the author of a geographical dictionary, in which were described an immense number of cities, principalities, and kingdoms. The reputation of all medieval geographers, however distinguished, was obscured by the fame of the great Edrisi. A native of Malaga, of royal blood, and a lineal descendant of Mohammed, he united to pride of birth and the advantages of fortune all the learning and all the accomplishments to be acquired in an enlightened age. His relationship to the Prophet invested him with a dignity and an importance second to none, in the sight of every devout Mussulman. His education at Cordova was the best that the ancient capital of the khalifs, still the intellectual centre of the world, could afford. His mind, improved by travel, was familiar with many countries[461] whose physical features he afterwards depicted with such ability. Invited to Palermo by Roger, King of Sicily, he speedily attained a high rank among the scholars of that brilliant court. The geography he composed, partly from his own information, partly from data furnished by the King, who had long made a study of that science, represented the labor of fifteen years. In vividness of description, in accuracy of detail, in correct estimation of distances, it is one of the most remarkable literary productions of mediæval times. The incomplete work of Ptolemy had for centuries been the recognized, indeed the only, authority. The configuration of the earth’s surface, its climates, the locations of continents and seas, of cities and empires, were facts little known, even to persons of the best education. In Christian lands the Church sedulously discouraged all such studies as inimical to Scriptural revelation. Geographical works had already appeared in Arabic, but they were grossly inaccurate, and largely based on fable, romance, and tradition. The compilation of Edrisi marks an era in the history of science. Not only is its historical information most interesting and valuable, but its descriptions of many parts of the earth are still authoritative. For three centuries geographers copied his maps without alteration. The relative position of the lakes which form the Nile, as delineated in his work, does not differ greatly from that established by Baker and Stanley more than seven hundred years afterwards, and their number is the same. The mechanical genius of the author was not inferior to his erudition. The celestial and terrestrial planisphere of silver which he constructed for his royal patron was nearly six feet in diameter, and weighed four hundred and fifty pounds; upon the one side the zodiac and the constellations, upon the other—divided for convenience into segments—the bodies of land and water,[462] with the respective situations of the various countries, were engraved. As a recompense for his skill, Edrisi received from King Roger the remainder of the precious material, amounting to two-thirds, a hundred thousand pieces of silver, and a ship laden with valuable merchandise. Such was the munificence with which the son of a Norman freebooter, bred to arms and rapine and ignorant of letters, rewarded the genius of a scholar whose race was stigmatized by every Christian power in Europe as barbarian and infidel.
In philosophical studies, the European Arab evinced the same curious and inquiring spirit which characterized his investigations of natural phenomena. The multiplicity of sects into which the religion of Mohammed was divided, and the incessant religious controversies which the disputed texts of the Koran and the conflicting interpretations of doubtful traditions evolved, were not favorable either to proselytism or to the maintenance of orthodoxy. The Moslems had their Nominalists and their Realists, their Mystics and their Epicureans. They understood the esoteric doctrines of the most renowned schools of antiquity. They had read and commented upon Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Empedocles, Plato. They were familiar with the atomic theory of Democritus. They recognized the argumentative ability of the Stoics. With the productions of the Alexandrian School—through whose medium was derived their knowledge of the dogmas of the Portico and the Academy—they were thoroughly conversant. The prolonged and attentive consideration of these vain and unprofitable opinions did not, however, commend itself to the ingenious and practical mind of the Arab. He indulged in no abstract speculations concerning the origin, nature, and destiny of man. He wasted no time in attempts to decide the vexed and frivolous[463] question of the supreme good. He regarded with boundless favor the works of Aristotle, a predilection destined with years to develop into an undiscerning admiration akin to idolatry. To the influence of this sage of the ancients, the educated Moorish population of Spain was peculiarly susceptible. The doctrines of Al-Ghazzali, of Bagdad, who lived in the eleventh century, had also obtained general acceptance. His teachings involved the absolute separation of philosophy from superstition. He believed in a higher sphere than that of human reason, where was exhibited the manifestation of the Divine Essence pervading all space, all matter, a form of the Pantheism of India.
The Peninsula had for centuries experienced the ascendency of different races of men, the successive predominance and decay of many forms of religious belief. The transmission of national peculiarities; the survival of various, often hostile, political and social opinions; the comparison of a series of creeds, each claiming divine origin and inspiration, yet each, in its turn, supplanted by a more powerful adversary, had disposed the minds of men to investigation and reason. It was only among the intellectual, however, that such a disposition prevailed. With no class of fanatics did intolerance exist in greater intensity than among the orthodox masses of Mohammedan Spain. Their antipathy to all who questioned the revelation of the Koran or the authenticity of accepted tradition was irreconcilable. In the unreasoning fury engendered by prejudice, they forgot the marvels of the civilization that surrounded them; the encouragement that their greatest princes had extended to learning; the statement of the Prophet that the first thing created by God was Intelligence. While they loved the material pomp which thinly disguised the forms of despotism, while they cringed before the pride of rank and opulence, they found the quiet and unassuming[464] pre-eminence derived from superior wisdom and a profound acquaintance with letters intolerable. These narrow ideas, so prejudicial to mental development, were diligently fostered by the doctors of the law, who discerned, in the general diffusion of philosophical opinions, a serious menace to their importance and dignity. Natural philosophy was the object of their especial abhorrence. A system which professed to account for the familiar phenomena daily manifested on the earth and in the heavens by the operation of natural causes and inexorable necessity, and which absolutely dispensed with divine revelation, might well awaken the suspicion and alarm of a class whose worldly interests absolutely depended upon the suppression of knowledge and the maintenance of orthodoxy. The populace, as usual, sided with their teachers. As a result the philosopher was an object of aversion, often of horror, to the conscientious Mohammedan. In the eyes of the irrational zealot the pursuit of science was a certain indication of a bargain with the devil. No rank, however exalted, was proof against this odious imputation. The greatest of the Ommeyade and Abbaside khalifs, whose highest title to fame was the encouragement of letters, were stigmatized as wizards and magicians. The union of the powers of Church and State in a single individual, and the number and importance of the institutions for the diffusion of knowledge, alone prevented the extinction of learning by popular violence. The majority of the Hispano-Arab princes were men of unusual intellectual attainments,—historians, poets, chemists, philosophers. The patronage they afforded to science had a deterrent effect on those who longed for the restoration of purity of doctrine, which had disappeared, as it invariably does, before the progressive march of civilization. Emulating the examples of the khalifs, the governors of provinces vied with their[465] royal masters in the propagation of knowledge. They founded schools and academies. They offered prizes for new and useful discoveries. At their invitation, the greatest scholars in their jurisdiction assembled once a year at the seat of government, for public discussion of subjects of interest to the learned professions, or of such as could, through the medium of practical inventions, be made to enure to the benefit of the community.
The high estimation in which letters were held was indicated by the honors paid to writers and the consideration attaching to the office of public librarian. In the catalogues were inscribed not only the title of the work, but the name, the parentage, the dates of the birth and of the decease of the author; and, not infrequently, interesting biographical notices were appended to the already ample record. In the provinces, the custody of the assembled manuscripts was entrusted to a noble of distinction; but at the capital the charge of the magnificent library of Al-Hakem was considered an employment worthy of royalty itself, and was committed to Abd-al-Aziz, a brother of the Khalif. The general supervision of all educational institutions was exercised by Al-Mondhir, another brother of Al-Hakem, who, in the absence of the sovereign, presided over the contests of the famous literary institute in which were exhibited the talents and the learning of the aspiring scholars of the empire.
The indefatigable energy of the Arabs exhausted every source of knowledge. Not only did they translate the masterpieces of Greek and Roman literature, but they familiarized themselves with Persian, Chaldaic, Hebrew, Chinese, Hindu, and Sanscrit works. Honein translated the Septuagint into Arabic. Abulfeda was the first to direct attention to the so-called inconsistencies of the Pentateuch and the pronounced[466] materialistic character pervading it; to its want of coherence; to its apparent solecisms; to state that it contains no mention of a future life, of heaven or hell, of the immortality of the soul; and to suggest that its legends indicate a Persian rather than a Jewish derivation. Averroes had mastered and embraced the philosophical ideas of India; he believed in the Universal Intellect; the popular religious fictions which evoke the hopes and fears of the vulgar he treated with contempt. The precocity and vast intellectual powers of the great scholars of Islam are almost beyond belief. Avicenna, at sixteen, had attained to such eminence that learned and experienced physicians came from remote countries to enjoy the benefit of his wisdom; at twenty-two he was Grand Vizier. Abul-Hamid-al-Isfaraini was accustomed to lecture every day on a new topic to a class of seven hundred students of jurisprudence. Yezid-Ibn-Harun, of Bagdad, knew by heart thirty thousand traditions. All were pantheists or agnostics. The generally irreverent spirit of the age is disclosed by the epigram of Abu-Ala-Temouki, “The world is divided into two classes of people,—one with wit and no religion, the other with religion and little wit.”
The instruction imparted by the provincial academies of the empire and by the University of Cordova—the centre of the intellectual activity of Europe—was essentially infidel in character and tendency. The influence of these institutions upon the public mind was immense and far-reaching. Thousands of students attended their lectures. Their professors were the first scholars of the age, whose genius and abilities were not limited to the duties of their calling, but who at times administered with equal dexterity and success the most important judicial and diplomatic employments. Education was in a measure compulsory, and, to obtain additional force for the mandates[467] of the law, the sanction of religion was enlisted, and the school became an indispensable appendage to the mosque. The various institutions appertaining to the academic system of the Peninsula which culminated in the University were graded much as are those of modern times. In Cordova were eight hundred public schools frequented alike by Moslems, Christians, and Jews, where instruction was imparted by lectures. The natural quickness which distinguished the intellectual faculties of the Arab, and his phenomenally retentive memory, enabled him to achieve results of incalculable value to the development of his civilization. This marvellous progress was promoted by every incentive which could arouse the energies of the aspiring or the covetous,—by the expected favor of the monarch, by the prospect of exalted and honorable dignities, by the certainty of magnificent rewards, by the hope of social distinction, by the ambition of literary fame. There was not a village within the limits of the empire where the blessings of education could not be enjoyed by the children of the most indigent peasant, and the universities of Granada, Seville, and Cordova were held in the highest estimation by the scholars of Asia, Africa, and Europe. In the various departments of these great institutions were taught, in addition to the doctrines of the Koran and the principles of Mohammedan law, the classics, the exact sciences, medicine, music, poetry, and art. In the superintendence of academies and colleges, the profession of Islamism was not considered an indispensable prerequisite by a liberal and enlightened public sentiment; scholarly acquirements and devotion to learning were the accepted criterions of fitness for the direction of youth; and both Jews and Christians attained to acknowledged distinction as professors in the great University of the capital. In the ninth century, in the department of theology[468] alone, four thousand students were enrolled, and the total number in attendance at the University reached almost eleven thousand. Nor were these priceless educational privileges restricted to one people or to the votaries of a single faith. The doors of the college were open to students of every nationality, and the Andalusian Moor received the rudiments of knowledge at the same time and under the same conditions as the literary pilgrims from Asia Minor and Egypt, from Germany, France, and Britain. A remarkable correspondence exists between the procedure established by those institutions and the methods of the present day. They had their collegiate courses, their prizes for proficiency in scholarship, their oratorical and poetical contests, their commencements, their degrees. In the department of medicine, a severe and prolonged examination, conducted by the most eminent physicians of the capital, was exacted of all candidates desirous of practising their profession, and such as were unable to stand the test were formally pronounced incompetent. Great and invaluable contributions to the fund of historical and scientific information were made by the members of the various academies and schools. They composed voluminous treatises on surgery and medicine. They bestowed upon the stars the Arabic names which still cover the map of the heavens. Above the lofty station of the muezzin, as he called the devout to prayer, were projected against the sky the implements of science to whose uses religion did not refuse the shelter of her temples,—the gnomon, the astrolabe, the pendulum clock, and the armillary sphere.
The trading expeditions of the adventurous Arab had long before familiarized him with the relative positions, areas, and natural productions of the principal countries of the globe. But the princes of the Western Khalifate, not satisfied with the results accidentally[469] obtained, frequently despatched to the most distant regions accomplished scholars with the object of making new contributions to art, literature, and geography. In consequence of these extensive voyages, no science was better understood by the Moorish teachers than that treating of the earth’s surface; and its practical application was demonstrated by means of accurate representations of its principal features carved in relief upon globes of copper and silver.
In the cultivation of the two sciences, geography was considered as dependent on history, and was often treated in connection with it and in a subordinate capacity. The Chaldean shepherds had already, upon the plains of Asia Minor, by the measurement of a degree of a great circle, determined the form and dimensions of the earth; their observations had been confirmed by the experiments of the Khalif Al-Mamun; and these important data were carried into Spain with many other treasures of Oriental wisdom. The earth was whimsically divided into seven zones or climates, to correspond with the seven planets and the seven metals known to the Arabs, that number having with them, as with other branches of the Semitic race, a peculiar and mystic significance. With the Arab, however, the study of the earth was rather topographical than geometric; his measurements were confined to the estimated distances between important points; and his figures were approximately calculated according to the popular but unreliable conception of the length of a day’s journey, which was usually twenty-five miles on land and a hundred miles by sea. The geographer, in his description of the provinces of a country, devoted much space to the location of springs, wells, and rivulets, a consideration of more importance in the mind of the traveller whose antecedents were to be traced to the pathless and arid wastes of Arabia than were even the woody shores and[470] unruffled harbors of an hospitable coast to the eye of the shipwrecked mariner.
Nor must the libraries be omitted from this list of those factors of progress which so signally contributed to public enlightenment and to the formation of national character. There was no city of importance without at least one of these treasure-houses of literature. Their shelves were open to every applicant. Catalogues facilitated the examination of the collections and the classification of the various subjects. Many of the volumes were enriched with illuminations of wonderful beauty; the more precious were bound in embossed leather and fragrant woods; some were inlaid with gold and silver. Here were to be found all the learning of the past and all the discoveries of the present age,—the philosophy of Athens, the astronomy of Babylon, the science of Alexandria, the results of prolonged observation and experiment on the towers and in the laboratories of Cordova and Seville. Here also were mysterious treatises of Indian lore, whose origin ascended beyond the records of history, whose doctrines, perused for centuries in a dead language, had travelled through the medium of Greek and Arabic versions from the Indus to the Guadalquivir, and were ultimately destined to form the basis of the pantheistic ideas popular among educated persons at the present day. These opinions had, long anterior to the invasion of Tarik, provoked the curiosity and engaged the attention of studious Mohammedans. Under the khalifate, and subsequently, they were taught in the schools of the Peninsula, figured in elaborate disquisitions of philosophers, formed the subject of learned discussion in lyceums and literary assemblies. Their vital principles were founded upon the eternity of matter, the unity of intellect, the final absorption of the spirit of the individual into the Soul of the World. They accounted for the succession[471] of natural phenomena by laws resulting from inevitable necessity. They refused to acknowledge the possibility of the supernatural, and renounced the time-honored and popular idea of incessant providential interventions. They ridiculed the apparitions of angels and demons as phantasms evoked by the credulity and fears of the ignorant. The tenets and ceremonial of religion were regarded as the convenient pretexts and apparatus of imposture. The origin of life was explained by the development of the germ through its latent force. The law of progressive evolution was considered susceptible of universal application, as embracing animal, vegetable, even mineral, forms. The theory of Lord Monboddo, promulgated in the eighteenth century and elaborated with such ingenuity by Darwin in our own time, was, it is evident, far from being original with either; for Moorish philosophers had, ages before, elucidated its leading principles. Thus, in the end, they even went to the extent of including in its operations every description of matter,—a course of thought evidently suggested by advanced Hindu conceptions and confirmed by the fancied analogy between the transmutation of metals and the transmigration of souls, doctrines also imported from the extreme Orient. These ideas, so antagonistic to the dogmas of religion, while long entertained in secret, had been first publicly advocated by Solomon-ben-Gabirol, the Jewish philosopher of Malaga, during the eleventh century. The Moorish school of rationalism soon included many distinguished names. The development of the mental faculties of humanity was declared to be a manifestation of the incessant activity of the omnipotent, intellectual principle that pervaded all Nature. The supreme object of human existence was the mastery of the sensations by the purer and nobler parts of the soul.
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From these speculations, generally accepted, the opinions of many of the Hispano-Arab philosophers in time exhibited wide and radical divergence. Some, it is true, adhered to Peripatetic Pantheism in its integrity. Others oscillated between the extremes of mysticism and materialism. Against all, without exception, the doctors and the populace displayed a mortal hatred, whose influence even royal favor was not always able to withstand. Those who had risen to political eminence were compelled to relinquish their employments. Many were driven into exile. The intensity of popular odium forced those who still pursued their studies into obscurity, sometimes into penury. Consciousness of a defective title to the crown often impelled a prince to resort to the ignoble expedient of persecuting science for the sake of obtaining popularity. It was thus that Al-Mansur, the greatest of Moorish conquerors, himself an enthusiast for and an adept in the very studies he professed to condemn, as a political measure for the consolidation of his power discouraged literature and oppressed philosophy.
In spite of the extraordinary literary privileges within their grasp, the masses of Moorish Spain—largely dominated by African influence—never advanced beyond the primary stage of learning. It is true that they appreciated, in a measure, the benefits accruing from the employment of scientific methods in their various occupations of a mechanical or agricultural character. But this reluctant acknowledgment of the advantages of science extended no further. The invincible prejudices of the Semitic race clung to them through all the phases of their civilization. They never discarded the opinions born of a pastoral life, of all the most conducive to the perpetuation of ignorance. Their antipathy to innovation was only exceeded by the aversion they entertained[473] towards all who questioned the authenticity of their religious belief. Greek philosophy they regarded with undisguised detestation. For their countrymen who devoted themselves to its study they evinced an abhorrence greater even than that with which they regarded apostasy.
The most famous of the natural philosophers of Mohammedan Spain, whose transcendent ability has caused him to be considered the exemplar of all, was Ibn-Roschid, popularly known as Averroes. His life embraced the greater portion of the twelfth century; his voluminous works on theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and medicine denote an important epoch in Arabic literature; and his influence, which preponderated over that of any writer of his age, has survived the overthrow of his government, the dispersion of his people, the abandonment of his language, and the manifold catastrophes of more than seven hundred years. His industry was indefatigable. It is said that during the greater part of his life there were but two nights which he did not pass in study,—the night of his marriage and that of the death of his father. The genius he displayed in other professions has been overshadowed by the reputation he acquired as a philosopher. He occupied the responsible position of first physician to the Almohade Emir, Yakub-Al-Mansur-Billah. He administered for a time the office of Grand Kadi of Cordova. His immense erudition was the wonder of Europe. His commentaries on Aristotle were more highly esteemed by his disciples and admirers than were even the originals, the masterpieces of the great founder of the Peripatetics. His popularity with the Jews was so great that manuscripts of his works are more numerous in Hebrew than any other book except the Pentateuch. By his Mussulman contemporaries he was believed to have concluded a compact with Satan; to Christian theologians[474] his name has ever been a synonym of evil. The audacity of his opinions was indeed calculated to provoke ecclesiastical indignation. He diligently inculcated the Indian dogma of Emanation and Absorption. He treated all revelations as impostures. Religions he pronounced convenient instruments of statecraft, admirable contrivances for the preservation of order and the encouragement of morality. The three then predominant in the world he held in equal contempt,—the Christian he declared was impossible; the Jewish he characterized as a creed adapted only to children; the Mohammedan as a doctrine for swine. He indulged in sarcasms highly derogatory to the sanctity of the Eucharist. His popularity among the clerical profession was not enhanced by the saying attributed to him: “The tyrant is he who governs for himself and not for the people, and the worst of tyrannies is that of the priest.”
The power of public opinion, stimulated by the efforts of orthodox Mussulmans, procured the disgrace of Averroes. He was deprived of his judicial office. The honorable post of court physician was taken from him. He was compelled to seek refuge in Africa; his property was confiscated; and, in age and infirmity, he was exposed to the insults of the fanatical rabble, who spat in his face as he sat helpless at the door of the mosque of Fez. With his death in 1198 disappeared from the Peninsula every outward trace of the doctrines of which he had been both the champion and the representative. Posterity, on account of the variety and excellence of his intellectual gifts, the extent of his erudition, and the boldness with which he asserted his opinions, has seen fit to dissociate him from the other learned men of his epoch, his instructors, his collaborators, his disciples. There were many other philosophers, however, such as Solomon-ben-Gabirol, Ibn-Badja, Ibn-Tofail, Ibn-Zohr, who[475] were his equals in learning and scarcely inferior to him in natural courage and in argumentative ingenuity and eloquence.
The apparent extinction of his theories, obnoxious alike to muftis and populace, was illusory. Introduced with other branches of Moslem science by the Jews, through the convenient channels of France and Italy, they eventually permeated the intellectual life of Europe. The Universities of Paris and Padua, the literary centres of the age, were from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century foci of infidelity. The impiety of propositions openly promulgated by the faculties of those two great institutions would to-day shock any one except the most daring agnostic. The seed thus sown bore abundant fruit. All Italy became tainted with heresy. The Lateran Council, summoned to place the official stamp of ecclesiastical condemnation upon the prohibited doctrines, was unable to check their progress. The Jews carried these ideas everywhere; scholastics adopted them; they were even disseminated by members of the monastic orders. Alexander de Hales, of the Franciscans, was one of their ardent advocates. Robert Grossetête, Bishop of Lincoln, second in attainments and reputation only to his great contemporary Roger Bacon, believed in the Universal Intellect. It was Savonarola who wrote, “Ille ingenio divinus homo Averroes philosophus.” From the propagation of these theories was derived the idea of the mythical book, entitled De Tribus Impostoribus, an alleged satire aimed at Moses, Christ, and Mohammed, variously attributed to a score of authors; supposed to be filled with blasphemy; whose very title was a powerful weapon in the hands of the clergy, yet whose publication was apocryphal, and whose contents were necessarily purely imaginary.
The general acceptance and perpetuation of the[476] opinions of Averroes, denounced from every pulpit, persecuted by the secular authority and anathematized by councils, is a striking proof of the universal decline of ecclesiastical power. The most popular poetical compositions bore the impress of the prevailing spirit of incredulity and pantheism, which indeed pervaded, to a greater or less extent, every class of literature. It was in vain that those most deeply concerned vehemently protested against the alarming growth of this detested heresy. No rank of the clerical order was exempt from its effects; it was whispered that its insidious influence had even penetrated the sacred precincts of the Vatican. That influence was transmitted unimpaired to posterity, and modern science is largely indebted for its inquisitive and impartial spirit to the doctrines of the great Arabian philosopher of the twelfth century.
In their treatment and application of the exact sciences, and especially in the development of the higher branches of mathematics, the Spanish Mohammedans exhibited pre-eminent ability. The Arabs were the first to ascertain with accuracy the length of the year. They tabulated the movements of the stars. They discovered the third lunar inequality of 45´ six hundred and fifty years before Tycho Brahe. They determined the eccentricity of the sun’s orbit; the movement of its apogee; the progressive diminution of the obliquity of the ecliptic; the amount of the precession of the equinoxes. To them is due the credit of having introduced to the knowledge of Europe many ingenious devices and processes of calculation which diminished labor, and, at the same time, opened new fields of investigation that otherwise might have remained unknown and unexplored. The grand work of Ptolemy, the Syntaxis, had, under the name of the Almagest, been translated before the ninth century, and been revised by Isaac-ben-Honein[477] in 827. In the tenth century, the famous Abul-Wefa, of Bagdad, wrote an astronomical treatise to which he gave the same name, which caused the two to be long confounded by scholars. Both of these compositions, equally wonderful for their learning, were early known to the Spanish Arabs. The numerals of India, which they adopted, at once superseded the cumbersome Roman characters hitherto in use. The decimal system was also introduced by them. They greatly advanced the study of algebra, whose scope and possibilities had previously been imperfectly understood, and applied it to geometry. They substituted sines for chords, invented modern trigonometry, proposed a formula for the solution of cubic equations. They understood the principles of the calculus. Geber, of Seville, published rules for one of the most important demonstrations of spherical trigonometry. Al-Zarkal, of Toledo, was the first to suggest the substitution of the elliptical orbit to correct the errors of the generally accepted Ptolemaic system, thus anticipating Copernicus and Kepler. In his attempts to determine the movement of the sun’s apogee alone, he made four hundred and two observations; and the result he obtained was within a fraction of a second of the amount declared to be correct by modern astronomers. Abul-Hassan-Ali, by a series of observations extending over a distance of nine hundred leagues to establish the elevation of the pole, estimated with precision the dimensions of the Mediterranean. The catalogue made by Ibn-Sina contains a thousand and twenty-two stars. Ibn-Abi-Thalta studied the movements of the heavenly bodies without intermission for thirty years. Averroes, while computing the motion of the planet Mercury, discovered spots upon the sun. The far greater portion of the results of the labors of the Moorish astronomical observers of the Peninsula, having shared the[478] general fate of the monuments of Moslem learning, are lost. No complete copy of the works of any Arab astronomer who lived since the ninth century is known to exist. The extent of this calamity may be inferred from the fact that in the royal library of Cairo there were six thousand works on mathematics, copies of many of which must have been in the hands of the Moslems of Spain, and none of which have survived. They made constant use of the formulas of Ibn-Junis for tangents and secants, of whose existence Europe was ignorant for six hundred years after their publication. As the duty of pilgrimage promoted the study of geography, so an acquaintance with astronomy was rendered necessary to Mohammedans by the requirements of their religion. In order to determine the direction of Mecca, an exact knowledge of the points of the compass was indispensable. It was equally important to establish, without error, the hours of prayer and of diurnal ablution, and the dates of festivals which began with the rising of the moon. These considerations, which invested astronomical pursuits with a semi-religious character, greatly promoted their popularity. The study of mathematics was, independently of this influence, an occupation especially congenial to the Arab mind. In all the schools were globes, both terrestrial and celestial, of wood and metal, planispheres, and astrolabes. The construction of these latter instruments, the precursors of the sextant, as perfected by the Arabs, was very complicated, and demanded the exercise of the highest degree of scientific ingenuity. They were used for the measurement of angles, and for ascertaining the hour either of the day or night. Some had as many as five tables, were engraved on both sides, and were provided at the bottom with eleven different projections for as many horizons. On them were represented the movement[479] of the celestial sphere, the signs of the zodiac, and the position of the principal stars and constellations. Interchangeable plates, calculated for different latitudes, facilitated observations wherever made. It was not unusual for an astrolabe to give the latitudes of nearly a hundred cities. The invention of the pierced gnomon by Ibn-Junis greatly simplified observations made to determine the altitude of the sun. The passage of time was usually marked by sundials, and by clepsydras of complex and elaborate mechanism. The oscillatory property of suspended bodies, represented by the isochronism of the pendulum, was familiar to the Arabs, who had adapted it to a contrivance whose construction resembled that of the modern clock, an invention generally attributed to Galileo. Many of the instruments used by them in their astronomical observations were of enormous dimensions. Some of their armillary spheres were twenty-five feet in diameter, and quadrants with a radius of fifteen feet were not uncommon. The bronze sextant, employed in the tenth century for the determination of the obliquity of the ecliptic and described by Abul-Hassan, of Morocco, had a radius of fifty-eight feet, and its arc was divided into seconds. At that time astronomy, especially among the Spanish Moslems, had advanced as far as was possible without the use of the telescope. It was through the influence of the Arabs that knowledge of that science, as well as of all other branches of mathematics, was universally diffused. The modern almanac, as its name denotes, is their invention, and the signs by which it designates the seven planets have been transmitted through their agency. As with all pastoral nations, their attention was early directed to the phenomena of the heavens. They noted the rising and setting of certain stars which seemed intended to mark the advent of the seasons; they divided the[480] most prominent groups into constellations, and assigned to them, as did the Greeks, a fanciful and legendary origin and nomenclature. With the practice of astral worship, incident to every race at a certain stage of its intellectual progress, was associated the study of astrology, whose principles, based upon the imaginary effect of benign or malignant planetary influence, has still in educated as well as in ignorant communities its enthusiastic votaries. The practice of this false but attractive science was, however, in no age confined to impostors. Some of the greatest minds of mediæval or modern times believed in its delusions, which were especially popular with the most eminent astronomers of the Middle Ages. Tycho Brahe, who gravely interpreted dreams, drew the horoscope of the Emperor Rudolph. Even the ability of Kepler did not preserve him from the prevalent superstition; he also cast horoscopes and published prophetic almanacs. Its pursuit led to the cultivation of other and more debased superstitions,—the chimerical follies of geomancy and oneiromancy, the profane rites of divination and magic, the belief in the occult virtues of talismans and amulets. The persistence of those practices, through unnumbered centuries to the present time, is a singular commentary on human credulity in enlightened as well as in unlettered ages. In many parts of Germany the horoscope of an infant is cast at its nativity, and is religiously preserved, with its baptismal certificate, until the hour of dissolution. Our farmers sow and reap and perform the various duties incident to rural economy with diligent attention to the phases of the moon. Confidence in the efficacy of talismans is even in our generation far from extinct. It is unconsciously manifested in the cruciform plan of our majestic cathedrals; in the gilded emblem which points heavenward on the summits of their loftiest towers;[481] in the curves of their painted windows, glowing with all the hues of the rainbow; in the armorial bearings of some of the proudest royal houses of Europe; in the carvings of our furniture; in the horseshoe suspended over doorways; in the Teraphim and the phylacteries of the Jew; in the holy symbols embroidered upon the vestments of the Catholic clergy; in the badges of our secret societies; in the settings of the jewels which rise and fall on the voluptuous bosom of Beauty. The superstition of the evil-eye, universally prevalent in the Orient, is largely responsible for the employment of charms. It is not improbable that this belief may have been originally derived from the peculiar influence exercised by some person endowed with an extraordinary degree of hypnotic power. To animal magnetism—as a mysterious force—is certainly due a large proportion of the magic fascinations of ancient times; and the power of the serpent over birds and animals probably gave rise to the popular fable of the basilisk. The virtues of amulets were derived, according to common opinion, not from the substance of which they were composed, but from the portion of the Universal Intelligence by which they were supposed to be tenanted.
Thus a desire to penetrate the secrets of futurity and avert impending misfortune gave rise to the spurious science of astrology, itself the parent of astronomy. The European Arabs cultivated both with almost equal assiduity. The mind of the philosopher, disciplined by the daily habit of mathematical calculation, was yet unable to discard the delusions of the horoscope or to forget the visionary and fictitious properties of talismans. In the mental constitution of the ablest Arabian scholars, the fascination of the occult and the forbidden predominated over the experience of centuries, the influence of letters, and the dictates of reason.
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The discoveries of Al-Hazen in optics, communicated to Europe by the Spanish and Sicilian Mohammedans, have had a marked effect on the development of that science, and are the basis of all that we know on the subject. He understood the cause of the twilight; estimated the density and calculated the height of the atmosphere. He explained by the principle of refraction why celestial bodies are visible when they are actually below the horizon. He discussed the effect upon vision of the varying transparency of the air, and suggested that beyond our atmosphere there was nothing but ether, a proposition which modern astronomy accepts. First of all investigators, he corrected the prevalent fallacy that the rays of light proceed from the eye to the object seen, an error which had hitherto deceived all who had written on the science of optics. The works of Al-Hazen were used as text-books in the Andalusian colleges, and they were first made known to Christendom through the foreigners who came to study Arabic learning in the schools of Toledo. Among such literary pilgrims of the twelfth century were the Englishmen Adelard of Bath, Robert of Reading, Daniel Morley, William Shelley, and the Italian Gerard of Cremona. The translations of Arabic works into Latin introduced by the labors of these and subsequent scholars in the department of medicine alone amount to nearly four hundred.
Great as was the reputation of these ambitious ecclesiastics among the ignorant masses of their countrymen, it did not approach that of the famous Gerbert, whose genius had unsuccessfully attempted the enlightenment of Europe nearly two hundred years before. The attainments of that accomplished scholar, respectable in any age, were so superior to those of his contemporaries that, as has been previously stated, they procured for him the unenviable[483] and dangerous title of magician. A native of Aquitaine, of obscure birth and without resources, his talents early attracted the notice of the Count of Barcelona, who provided for his education in that city. Thence, after a time, he visited the principal Moorish cities of Andalusia. It was the tenth century, the epoch of the highest prosperity and magnificence of the Ommeyade Khalifate. Everywhere were visible the effects of that civilization which had no rival in the world. The thorough agricultural development of the country; the busy seaports; the luxurious palaces; the populous cities; the well-paved streets, filled by day with surging multitudes, and lighted at night by tens of thousands of twinkling lamps; the illimitable expanse of verdure which marked the environs of the great Moorish capital, broken only by occasional watch-towers and gilded minarets; the gorgeous splendor of the court; the prodigious libraries; the innumerable schools and colleges, equipped with every scientific appliance known to Moslem culture—colored maps, armils, sundials, clepsydras, hydrometers, parallactic rules, quadrants, astrolabes, planispheres, globes; the mosque with its throngs of pilgrims gay with the costumes of every land acknowledging the creed of Islam,—these scenes did not fail to profoundly impress the young French ecclesiastic, already imbued with prohibited ideas and fresh from the intolerance, the barbarism, the credulity, and the intellectual debasement of Christian Europe. The mind of Gerbert was prompt to recognize the manifold advantages to be derived from familiarity with Moslem institutions and erudition. He became a student of the University of Cordova. During the few years he remained in that city, his talents and perseverance procured for him a fund of scientific information unexampled for that period. On his return he established schools in both Italy and[484] France. He imported books from every quarter of the world, and especially from Spain. His pupils, reckoned by thousands, diffused throughout Europe the fame of their teacher and the precepts of his works. The instruction he imparted embodied the forbidden learning taught beyond the Pyrenees. He was the first to explain to Europeans the abacus, the Indian numerals, the science of arithmetic. He taught geography and astronomy from globes constructed at Cordova. He observed the motions of the planets and determined the elevation of the pole through diopters. The results of the mechanical ingenuity which amused his leisure moments awakened the horror of his ignorant and pious contemporaries. He invented a steam or hydraulic organ; a clock whose mechanism was largely composed of wheels and pinions; and automatons whose mysterious movements suggested to the vulgar a diabolical agency. He improved the science of music. His system of imparting knowledge, based upon experiment and demonstration, exhibited a radical difference from the prevalent methods of an epoch whose instruction was limited to Scriptural texts and ecclesiastical admonition. The renown of the great scholar excited the envy of the monks, to whom the popular imputation of infernal communion afforded a pretext for persecution. They instigated marauders to plunder his abbey at Bobbio, in Italy. His library was burned, his instruments were destroyed, his students dispersed. This ill-treatment, so far from being, as intended, prejudicial to the fortunes of Gerbert, ultimately promoted them. His reputation was everywhere known, and the awe his wisdom excited was increased by the supernatural means he was believed to employ. He was patronized by the King of France and the Emperor of Germany; he became successively Bishop of Rheims and of Ravenna; and, through the influence[485] of the latter sovereign, he was, in the year 999, raised to the pontifical dignity, under the name of Sylvester II. Even in that exalted position, the relentless spirit of ecclesiastical malice did not permit him to rest. His attempts to reform clerical abuses brought down upon him the vengeance of the corrupt and rapacious ministers of the papal court. The most absurd fables were invented to account for the results of his scientific experiments, otherwise incomprehensible by mediæval ignorance. He was accused of gross immorality, blasphemy, magical incantations, the invocation of demons. It was whispered that goblins of fantastic dress and repulsive aspect attended him at midnight during the celebration of impious orgies and profane sacrifices. The diligent propagation of these scandals prepared the way for the punishment meted out in that age to all daring reformers, and especially to those who presumed to interfere with the prerogatives and emoluments of the clergy. A victim of slow poison, Sylvester II. survived his elevation to the Papacy less than four years. His name was anathematized, his doctrines condemned as heretical, and the perusal of his writings prohibited as contrary to the canons of the Church and prejudicial to the interests of religion. After his decease, a long period of darkness again clouded the Christian world. The dawning spirit of inquiry thus suppressed, men once more turned to the priest for counsel, for assistance, for the explanation of natural phenomena, for the cure of disease. Such was the inauspicious and apparently futile result of the first introduction of Arabian learning into Roman Catholic Europe.
The unrivalled excellence of the agricultural methods employed by the Spanish Mohammedans was, in large measure, due to their profound botanical knowledge. That science, practically unknown in the desert wastes of Arabia, to which nature has begrudged[486] the wealth of her vegetable kingdom, was early pursued with great energy and success by the conquering Moslems. In no other part of their empire, however, was such progress made in its study or such beneficial results obtained from the culture of plants as in Andalusia. Their analysis and classification, and the determination of their properties, were sedulously encouraged by the government. The scientific expeditions of the khalifs collected specimens and seeds from every quarter of the world. Gardens for the propagation of both native plants and exotics were established in the environs of all the great cities, and the results of intelligent observation and experiment were regularly tabulated for the public benefit. In the oases of the Desert, along the banks of the Nile, on the fertile plains of Mesopototamia, on the arid plateaus of Central Asia, in the pestilent delta of the Ganges, the botanists of Cordova added to the stock of ideas and principles to be subsequently developed and advantageously applied in the valley of the far distant Guadalquivir. Nor were their efforts confined to the mere collection and examination of products of the vegetable kingdom. Every novel appliance, every useful invention, which might prove beneficial to horticulture, to irrigation, to the various branches of rural economy, were diligently noted and carefully preserved. As a consequence of these laborious researches, the Andalusian Arabs became more proficient in the kindred sciences of botany and agriculture than any people who have ever existed. In their country were concentrated all the fruits of the learning and experience of centuries then extant in the world. It is said that they added to the herbals of the ancients more than two thousand varieties of plants. They described the circulation of the sap; they understood the offices of the bark and the leaves. Every source of information was thoroughly[487] explored. Already, in the tenth century, the treatise of Dioscorides had been translated into Arabic by a monk of Constantinople, sent by the Emperor at the special request of the Khalif, because the subjects of the latter were ignorant of Greek. The botanical works of the Hispano-Arabs were enriched with drawings from nature, beautifully executed in colors. When Ibn-Beithar, of Malaga, the most famous of Moslem botanists, travelled in the Orient, he was accompanied by a corps of artists, whose skill preserved the form and tints of unfamiliar flora in all their beauty and perfection. His is the greatest name in the annals of this important branch of learning from Dioscorides to Linnæus, an interval of fifteen hundred years.
In the wide range of philosophical and experimental study, however, no subject was so congenial to the taste of the Arab or appealed more strongly to his imagination than the pursuit of the spurious science of alchemy. That science originated in Egypt, the land of isolation, of enchantment, of prodigy. Its investigation, confined to a privileged class, had been protected by the double safeguard of religion and secrecy. For innumerable centuries the Egyptian priesthood, the sole depositaries of knowledge, had, in laboratories hidden in temples or excavated in the rocky sides of mountains, eagerly devoted themselves to the discovery of the universal panacea, of the elixir of life, of the transmutation of inferior metals into gold. The Ptolemaic dynasty, heir to these delusions so acceptable to human egotism and avarice, had contributed to their universal dissemination over Europe and Asia. The Arabs, from the first hour of their intellectual emancipation, prosecuted with alacrity a study especially adapted to their national inclination and genius. The fact that the Koran prohibits such occupations made their association with[488] religion, contrary to the custom in Egypt, impracticable. At Toledo and Cordova, alchemy was not designated, as at Memphis and Thebes, the “Sacred Art,” cultivated in the precincts of temples, communicated only to royalty, screened from the profanation of the vulgar by the delusive mummeries of processions and sacrifices. Its close relations with thaumaturgy and divination, with astrology and magic, were inevitable consequences of the uncertainty of its results, and of the mystery that enveloped its professors. Ancient Hebrew tradition, as disclosed by the apocryphal books of the Bible, asserts that the occult arts and sciences were the gift of evil spirits to the children of men. The Romans punished such practices with death, probably for the reason that they came into competition with the oracles, a fruitful source of revenue and prestige to the state. Thus, in a measure, placed under the ban of religion and law, a subject of suspicion and fear to the masses, the study of alchemy was fraught with danger, even amidst the Pagan associations of antiquity. In the Middle Ages, the endangered interests of priestcraft added to legal prohibition and the prejudice of public opinion the resistless force of their condemnation.
The Spanish Arabs, passionately fond of experiment and novelty, were eminently proficient in the technicalities of the Hermetic Art. They entertained the idea that the same elements, in different proportions, were present in all metals, and that, by certain processes of elimination, any metal,—as, for instance, gold,—could be obtained. Like their masters, the Alexandrian Greeks, they concealed their discoveries in the obscurities of a learned jargon. The principles of their calling were indicated by mysterious symbols, enigmatical phrases, mutilated formulas, capable of interpretation only by themselves. With the advancement of learning, the operations of the alchemist[489] were practised with less concealment and mystery. His labors were encouraged by the khalifs, of whom some were themselves adepts, and prosecuted their investigations in well-equipped laboratories. The prevalence of one delusion led to the propagation of others, and the original objects of alchemical research became confounded with astrology, mysticism, and all their chimerical relations and incidents,—theories involving the seven planets and the seven metals, the ceremonies of exorcism, the procuring of happiness by the identification of the soul with the Universal Intellect. Attracted by the profits to be obtained from human credulity, a swarm of charlatans sprang up in every community,—prototypes of the impostors who infested the society of Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Among these the Jews attained an unenviable notoriety, a reputation destined in subsequent ages to produce most deplorable consequences. Even under the Pharaohs, Hebrew astuteness had succeeded in penetrating the well-guarded arcana of the Egyptian priesthood. It was mainly through their traditional avarice that the precepts and formulas of the Sacred Art, divulged to the Greeks and afterwards to the Arabs, became the property of mediæval Europe. In Mohammedan Spain the Jews excelled in this unpopular but lucrative profession, as they did in every pursuit requiring intelligence, energy, craft, and skill. From this confused medley of philosophy, magic, and imposture were unconsciously obtained results of superlative value to the human race. The adept, poring over his retorts and crucibles in vaulted chambers far removed from inquisitive eyes, stumbled upon discoveries more important than that of the philosopher’s stone. In attempts to accomplish the transmutation of metals, processes were invented by which the analysis, separation, and smelting of ores were, hundreds[490] of years afterwards, facilitated, and the visionary aim of the alchemist, in a measure, accomplished. From these secret experiments came the knowledge of the working of metals, of the composition of alloys, of the fusing of glass, of the application of enamels. Alchemy was thus the precursor of chemistry, and, so intimately are their principles and relations connected, that it is impossible to determine where the false science terminates and where the true science begins. The Hispano-Arabs carried the operations of both to a point not hitherto attained by the experimenters of the ancient world. While they profited largely by the learning of the East, it would be unjust to deny them the merit of conspicuous and striking originality. They practically invented modern chemistry. Their writers describe with clearness and precision the processes of crystallization, sublimation, distillation, filtration, solution. They introduced nitric and sulphuric acids, those powerful solvents, without whose agency chemical combinations could not be effected. To them is due the discovery of alcohol, muriate of ammonia, potassa, bichloride of mercury, nitrate of silver, and phosphorus. The adaptation of these substances to the multifarious purposes of daily existence has bestowed upon the inventor almost boundless resources for the development of the industrial arts, and has provided the surgeon with efficacious means of alleviating human suffering. The use of caustics and acids produced a revolution in medicine, and the skill of the physician, even in Christendom, was no longer classed with the exorcisms of the necromancer or subordinated to the mummeries of the priest. The Moslems of the Peninsula were aware that a calcined metal gains instead of loses weight, a fact whose knowledge foreshadows an acquaintance with gases and the discovery of oxygen; nor were they ignorant of[491] the existence and the properties of hydrogen. Processes for the oxidation of metals and for the generation of gases are first mentioned by Djabar-al-Kufi, or Geber, whose personal history is unknown, and who is often confounded with the mathematician, Djabar-Ibn-Aflah, of Spain. The greatest Arabian chemist of any age, his abilities have been recognized and his name has been mentioned with respect by every investigator of the exact and experimental sciences down to the present day. It has been well said that he bears the same relation to chemistry that Hippocrates does to medicine. His writings—calm, judicious, eminently logical—are not obscured or disfigured by the absurdity and charlatanism of the epoch. Aside from his reference to the generation of gases by heat, and the radical alterations undergone by the substances from which they are derived, his fame would have been permanently established by his discovery of nitric acid and aqua regia, products of the laboratory not previously described by any author. Thus the philosophical methods of the Spanish Moslems gradually developed the visionary operations of alchemy into the science of chemistry. To the latter, however, still clung numerous indications of an origin fraught with imposture. Important experiments were deferred until the planetary influences were declared to be auspicious. The elixir of life was sought for with undiminished ardor. Monarchs were still deluded and plundered by means of fallacious promises of wealth to be obtained by the transmutation of metals. But, in many respects, notable changes were discernible, harbingers of incalculable benefit to both the physical and intellectual condition of humanity. Then was first effected the permanent separation between experimental science and religious mysticism, a union fatal to mental development and to the arts of civilization.[492] From the earliest times, every important undertaking had been invested with a sacred character, and supplemented with ceremonies adopted to avoid publicity and to enhance its mysterious significance. It was no longer accounted sacrilege to explain the secrets of nature or necessary to enshroud the discoveries of the philosopher with the terms of an allegorical jargon. The scientific lectures of the Moorish universities of Spain were open to all students; the analyses of the laboratory were daily performed in the presence of thousands. Familiarity with its operations, experience of its advantageous application, diminished in time the suspicion with which chemistry was viewed by the populace. That science, necessarily slow in its development, originally based upon erroneous principles, profiting by the opportunities of accidental discovery, retarded by innumerable failures, hated by the priesthood, feared by the ignorant, classed as diabolical by the superstitious, was far from possessing the capability for progressive advancement and permanence of which mathematics was susceptible. Although practically its inventors, the Arabs paid more attention to the adaptation of its discovery to medicine than to the improvement of its processes or the purification of its products. This predilection induced them to separate pharmacy from chemistry as well as from medicine, thus creating a new and most important branch of science, of universal application and of practical benefit.
Europe is indebted to the Moslems of Spain and Sicily for the introduction of such drugs as nux vomica, cassia, croton, tamarind, myrrh, sandal, cubebs, ergot, senna, rhubarb, and camphor; for such spices as cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon; for such compounds as juleps, elixirs, syrups, and electuaries, still known to commerce by their Arabic names. Under the khalifs, pharmacies were established[493] in all the principal towns of the empire, subordinated to great central depôts at Toledo and Cordova. These were placed under government supervision, were visited by inspectors, and their owners held accountable for the purity of their commodities and the methods of their preparation. In Sicily the laws were even more stringent: every dispenser of drugs was subjected to a rigid examination as to his qualifications, and the professional oath of the physician required him to denounce to the proper authorities any pharmacist whose wares were inferior in quality to the regular standard. In addition to these salutary precautions against dishonesty and fraud, a scale of prices, publicly displayed, prevented extortion; and violation of the law subjected the offender to serious penalties. These regulations, adopted in the thirteenth century by the Emperor Frederick II., contributed greatly to the success attained by the medical schools of Salerno and Naples, and made Sicily the most famous market for medicaments in the world.
It is a remarkable circumstance that the science of the Saracens was largely diffused among the nations of Northern Europe through the agency of the ecclesiastical order, to whose faith, organization, and traditions it had always evinced an implacable hostility. The general dearth of educational facilities in the Middle Ages, the monopoly by the clergy of such learning as existed, and the fact that, among the latter, would be found, sooner or later, superior minds dissatisfied with the ignorance and the absurdities of the Fathers, were conditions that inevitably tended to this result despite the anathemas of pontiffs and the decrees of synods. Many of these innovators came from the monastic orders. It must not be forgotten that both Savonarola and Bruno were Dominicans. For more than a century there emanated from Toledo[494] translations into Latin of classical works that had long before been rendered from Greek into Arabic. The pioneer of this intellectual movement was Archbishop Raymond, a Frenchman. His example was followed by Herman of Dalmatia, Michael Scott, and John of Seville. The three greatest Christian disseminators of the science derived from the Moors, however, were Albertus Magnus, Bishop of Ratisbon; Robert Grossetête, Bishop of Lincoln; and Roger Bacon, professor in the University of Oxford, all of the thirteenth century. The first is popularly known to posterity as an alchemist and a magician. He was, besides, a man of extensive knowledge, and a writer of voluminous treatises on theology, philosophy, alchemy, and chemistry. He described successfully the action of acids, the character of alkalies, the forms and alloys of metals. The method used to-day in the manufacture of caustic potash is identical with the one he recommends. He was the first to prove by sublimation that cinnabar was a compound of sulphur and mercury. He understood perfectly the preparation of acetate of copper, of arsenic, of oxide of lead. The process of refining metals was also familiar to him. He gives the composition of gunpowder,—an invention also attributed to Friar Bacon, but unquestionably due to the Arabs. The idle legends attaching to his name, which have ascribed to him supernatural powers derived from an intercourse with demons, are a part of the homage that mediæval credulity was accustomed to pay to superior intelligence. His life, devoted to science, was as exemplary in its character, in an age of ecclesiastical corruption, as his talents were great and his deeds meritorious. His mathematical knowledge and his mechanical skill were the marvel of his contemporaries. The curious automaton that he constructed, which could open doors and utter guttural sounds, was broken to pieces by St.[495] Thomas Aquinas, who had previously satisfied himself of its magical origin and diabolical character.
Robert Grossetête, Bishop of Lincoln, eminent alike in scientific attainments and theological controversy, is one of the prominent and interesting characters of English mediæval history. An accomplished scholar, he was profoundly versed in all the learning of his time. Anticipating Wyclif by more than a century, he was not afraid to criticise publicly the abuses of the Papacy, to defy its mandates, and to advocate the exercise of individual judgment in ecclesiastical matters. In these daring innovations we obtain the first glimpse of the audacious spirit which animated the founders of the English Reformation. He resisted successfully the presentation of Italian prelates to the vacant benefices of England, a prerogative hitherto exercised by the See of Rome, almost without remonstrance. He elevated the standard of scholarship at Oxford by introducing the methods of examination which obtained in the University of Paris, at that time the first institution of learning in Christian Europe. Although of distinguished rank in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the unconcealed exultation of the Pope at his decease is a suggestive indication of the broadness of his views, and of the danger to the cause of ecclesiastical supremacy incurred by the extent of his knowledge, the boldness of his sentiments, and the unchecked propagation of his heretical doctrines.
But the greatest of this trio of illustrious names, in both renown and influence, is that of Roger Bacon. Born in 1214, he was early distinguished for his extraordinary abilities. He studied at Oxford and Paris, mastered without difficulty the sciences as taught at those two universities, and, unfortunately for himself, adopted the habit of the Franciscan Order. His inclinations, little in accordance with the[496] maxims of his profession, impelled him to the investigation of natural phenomena. He seems to have had well-defined notions of many practical devices which have contributed largely to the triumphs of modern civilization. He regarded experiment and demonstration as the only rational method of arriving at philosophical truth. A mind endowed with remarkable versatility, a spirit of indomitable perseverance, acquired for him an acquaintance with languages unexampled in his age. In addition to being thoroughly conversant with the classics, Hebrew and Arabic, generally unknown in the thirteenth century except to the Jew and the Saracen, were as familiar to Bacon as the accents of his mother tongue. It is said that he devoted forty consecutive years to the study of science. He expended for rare books and for the apparatus necessary for its researches the sum of two thousand pounds sterling, an amount corresponding to seventy-five thousand dollars of our money. In his writings, he especially recommends the study of mathematics as the most potent instrument of mental culture, the only key which can unlock the secrets of Nature. His erudition embraced the most recondite branches of learning, and some of his suggestions viewed in connection with subsequent discoveries almost seem prompted by supernatural inspiration. He recognized the necessity for the reform of the calendar, and applied to Pope Clement IV. for permission to rectify its errors, but the latter refused. He declared a thorough knowledge of optics to be indispensable for the construction of astronomical instruments. After the perusal of his writings, a doubt can hardly be entertained that he was the inventor of spectacles,—whose idea he obtained from Al-Hazen,—and that he also understood the adjustment of the lenses in the telescope. He explained the phenomena of the rainbow as due to refraction.[497] The power of magnifying-glasses he correctly states to vary with the size of the angle under which the object is seen. He gives the ingredients and describes the effects of gunpowder, a discovery in which he was, however, anticipated by Albertus Magnus. He discourses on the possibilities of inventions similar to the steam-engine, the balloon, and the application of electricity, obscure, it is true, yet with an accuracy of perception that seems incredible, and which cannot be questioned without denying the authenticity of his works. He apparently understood the theory of the suspension-bridge. He refers to the inflammable product obtained by the sublimation of organic matter, probably an allusion to hydrogen. The properties of carbonic acid gas, unfavorable to combustion and fatal to animal life, he mentions in terms whose meaning cannot be misunderstood. He entertained the ancient idea of the compound nature of metals, and declares that, in order to effect their transmutation, a reduction to their primary elements is an essential requisite to success. He explains their artificial coloration, a trick very popular with charlatans, who passed off inferior metals subjected to processes that changed their appearance for silver and gold. The latter metal he asserts to be perfect, because in its formation the operations of countless ages have been completed, and similar processes must be devised by man before he can hope to enter into competition with Nature. In addition to his proficiency in mathematics and chemistry, Bacon was a learned astronomer and a physician. He also constructed automatons, which brought down upon his head the censures of the Church and the enmity of the ignorant. Accused of magic, although he wrote a treatise against it, fanaticism and hatred sentenced him to imprisonment and anathematized his works. After ten years of confinement in a dungeon,[498] he was liberated, only to die with the first return of the blessings of freedom. The intolerant spirit of the age that condemned him is epitomized in a sentence taken from a chapter in which he deplores the irrational bigotry that obstructs the progress of scientific investigation, “Animus ignorans veritatem sustinere non potest.” The versatility of his talents was only surpassed by the audacity with which he attacked and the success with which he controverted the absurd prejudices of his epoch. His name, synonymous with progress, stands forth in prominent contrast with the intellectual abasement and unquestioning credulity with which he was surrounded. His prophetic foresight, while it provoked the ridicule of the thirteenth century, commands alike the respect and astonishment of ours. Like every innovator, he experienced the penalties of superior genius,—persecution, contumely, deprivation of liberty. Among the representative scholars of the Middle Ages, he deserves pre-eminent celebrity as a bold and original exponent of experimental philosophy and scientific thought.
Although unappreciated by his contemporaries, Roger Bacon found a host of imitators during the next three centuries. Members of every rank and profession embraced the study of alchemy. The clerical order included the larger number; the secrecy of the cloister was made subservient to the purposes of magic; and the formulas of the laboratory claimed far more attention than the accomplishment of penance or the ceremonies of devotion. It was even alleged that Pope John XXII. found time at Avignon to engage in a fruitless search for the philosopher’s stone. From these illusory occupations were, as already remarked, occasionally derived discoveries of great practical value. The benefits resulting from the exercise of the spirit of inquiry and the vigorous[499] employment of the intellectual faculties were of even greater consequence to the growth of civilization and the future welfare of mankind.
In no department of scientific investigation was the genius of Arabian culture more signally displayed than in the noble profession of medicine. In ancient Arabia, disease was supposed to be an indication of the anger of God, which it was the peculiar province of the sorcerer to remove. The erroneous ideas of morbific conditions common to nations in their intellectual infancy, among the primitive Arabs, conspicuous for their ignorance, were even more pronounced than was characteristic of other races not less barbarous. It was a long step from the fetichism of the Desert to the sacrificial ceremonies of Rome and the Asclepiads of Greece, yet all were of a similar character, though the latter represented the origin of the medical science of antiquity. Temperance was at once the precaution and the remedy of the abstemious Bedouin. Mohammed diligently inculcated the doctrine that the stomach was the seat of all diseases, and fasting their cure.
The beneficent art which has for its object the alleviation of human suffering was in the seventh century degraded to the vilest purposes of the priest and the charlatan. The writings of the celebrated Greek practitioners, lost in the universal destruction of learning consequent upon barbarian supremacy or hidden in the seclusion of the cloister, had been forgotten. The reputation of the medical school of Alexandria, whose methods had wrought such miracles in the advancement of science, was, in the minds of the more intelligent, but an indistinct and doubtful tradition; to the ignorant it was wholly unknown. Then, and for centuries afterwards, throughout Christendom, medicine was closely allied with sorcery and imposture, partly astrological, partly mystical,[500] but never scientific. The supernatural] character with which ecclesiastical shrewdness and cunning had invested it,—the accepted principle that disease was punishment inflicted for the commission of sin,—a principle which, strange to say, has still its advocates even in our enlightened age,—rendered all progress impossible. Maladies were largely attributed to the influence of spirits or to the possession of devils, to be exorcised by prayer, holy water, the application of relics, the invocation of saints. The superstitions inherited from Pagan antiquity, and of incalculable potency in their action upon the minds of the multitude, were a source of great revenue to the clergy. Among the vast number of holy men whose names fill the pages of the Roman Catholic calendar there were many individuals whose intercession was considered especially efficacious in the treatment of certain diseases. The policy of the Church, which lost no opportunity of impressing the fancy of its votaries, even went so far as to expel from the constellations of the zodiac the familiar forms of the ancients, and to substitute in their stead representations of cenobites and martyrs, the piety of whose lives, often of questionable authenticity, had obtained for them the honor of canonization. The identification of the treatment of disease with religious ceremonial, and indirectly with celestial interference, conferred upon the priesthood a new and formidable weapon of spiritual power. Their influence, already great at the bedside of the sick and the dying, soon became paramount. To the weight which their ecclesiastical functions imposed, they added the dictatorial manner which is essential to the successful ministrations of the physician. They collected enormous fees. They disposed of estates. Often, in the very presence of death, they engaged in unseemly disputes over the division of the spoil. They forced[501] the afflicted to the most humiliating compliances. Profoundly ignorant of the nature of disease and its cure, they supplied their glaring deficiencies by the employment of every resource of imposture known to their calling. By aspersions and the exhibition of the Host they cast out demons. They removed pain with the sovereign virtues of relics. Chronic affections were treated by protracted prayer and vicarious penance. Pilgrimages to sacred localities, supplemented by frequent and generous contributions, were also of notable efficacy. The waters of certain wells and springs under the patronage of a saint, and which had been the scenes of well-attested miracles, were classed among the most popular therapeutic agents. The gift of healing, especially efficacious in cases of goitre and scrofula, with which royal personages were supposed to be endowed, was another of the delusions in which mediæval times were so remarkably prolific. This singular idea, probably of British origin, can be traced to the reign of Edward the Confessor, and was not discarded until the accession of the House of Brunswick. Its institution was undoubtedly ecclesiastical; the repetition of a religious formula accompanied the touch of the sovereign; and the practice of the ceremony at Pentecost was always a source of much edification to the multitude, and of substantial profit to the religious establishment under whose auspices it happened to be conducted.
Side by side with clerical impostors, another class of practitioners, equally ignorant and scarcely less dangerous, preyed upon the superstitious and credulous of mediæval society. These were the charlatans who posed as astrologers, alchemists, magicians. Their encroachments upon the territory of the Church, and the suspicious methods they employed, necessitated a certain degree of concealment and secrecy, but their haunts were well known to their[502] victims. They professed to consult the appearance of the heavens, the motions of the planets, the recurrence of eclipses, the apparition of comets and meteors, in the compounding of medicines and the treatment of distempers. Celestial phenomena were thus regarded as of the highest importance in the determination of symptoms and the administration of remedies. The curative virtues of plants were entirely dependent on the position of the star under which they were gathered. A correspondence of qualities was presumed to exist between objects having the same color or form, an idea possibly as old as man himself. Hence were derived the imaginary aphrodisiacal virtues of the mandrake, and the alleged properties of red and white substances as calorifacients and refrigerants. The occupations of these pretenders, usually confined to the fleecing of their dupes, were, however, not always so innocuous. They were eminently skilled in the composition of love-philters and poisons, whose secret administration is believed to have more than once changed the succession of certain of the royal houses of Europe. The criminal history of the Middle Ages is not more remarkable for the nefarious deeds of these fraudulent practitioners than for the immunity which the possession of dangerous secrets enabled them to enjoy.
To the ministrations of these two classes—that of the ecclesiastic and that of the charlatan—was the health of Christian Europe thus committed for many centuries. A striking similarity characterized the proceedings of both. Each employed mummeries, exorcisms, incantations. Each professed to believe in the efficacy of amulets. One invoked the intercession of the saints; the other was credited with holding nightly intercourse with the spirits of the infernal world. Both, by the alleged exercise of supernatural affiliation, wielded great power, and lived in luxury at the[503] expense of those whom they habitually deluded. While each considered the other as encroaching on his peculiar domain and an object of suspicion, a community of sentiment between them generally prevented any serious outbreak of hostility. The favor and protection of the prince was equally accorded to these two appendages of the court. One was the keeper of the royal conscience; the other was valued as an unscrupulous and ever available instrument of secret vengeance. Both at times exercised the important functions of physician. Unfortunate, indeed, was the invalid dependent upon such inadequate resources. For him there was no prospect of substantial relief; no system of intelligent treatment; no remedies but incense, relics, and the mysterious formulas of imposture; no prophylactic but the talisman; no diagnosis but the consultation of the stars; no prescription but the Pater and the Ave. In the estimation of the populace, the calling of the physician was identical with that of the necromancer. In the advice of the priest the greater confidence was reposed, his connection with the Church investing his opinions with a divine, even an infallible, sanction. When failure resulted, as was often the case, it was not attributed to inexperience and ignorance, but to neglect to propitiate the saints and the Virgin. The commonest rules of hygiene, upon which are absolutely dependent the health of communities, were habitually ignored. The streets were open sewers. The court-yards steamed with miasmatic vapors engendered by decaying garbage. Into most houses the purifying rays of the sun could never penetrate. Floors and walls alike were grimy with filth. Linen and cotton garments worn next the skin, and which contribute so much to personal comfort and cleanliness, were unknown; the Arabs, by whom they were invented, had not yet introduced them to the knowledge of Europe.[504] The supply of water, everywhere contaminated, became a prolific source of infection. Public baths did not exist; a profane luxury of the Pagan and the Saracen, their use was contrary to the traditions of Christianity; the Gospels contain no general precepts for ablution; and its practice was abhorrent to the meditative simplicity of clerical and monastic life. The universal existence of these pathogenic conditions is alone sufficient to account for the rapid diffusion and frightful mortality of contagious diseases. Leprosy had under the filthy habits and promiscuous intercourse of the populations of the Middle Ages assumed a character of extraordinary virulence. France, at that time certainly not the least civilized country of Europe, furnishes a suggestive instance of the prevalence and disastrous effects of this incurable disorder. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, there was not a village—scarcely a hamlet—without its lazar-house; the streets of great cities swarmed with leprous beggars in every stage of loathsome deformity; and in 1250 there were known to be two thousand leper-asylums in that kingdom,—there were nineteen thousand in Europe. The result of the disregard of sanitary precautions, and the deplorable lack of medical knowledge, is also established by the fatality of great epidemics, previously mentioned. Such was the awful penalty entailed by hatred of learning, personal neglect, and public indifference to the laws of health, conditions sedulously maintained by the policy of the papal system, whose ministers collected immense revenues from shrines, relics, amulets, and the endless paraphernalia of superstition, and discouraged, by all the insidious arts of their profession, every rational method for the prevention and treatment of disease.
In the Orient, on the other hand, great progress had early been made in the various branches of the[505] healing art. The number of Arab physicians was prodigious. An entire volume of the biographical work of Abu-Osaibah is taken up with their names. In the city of Bagdad, at one time during the eleventh century, there were nearly nine hundred. The Nestorian school of Djondisabour had already, in the sixth century, sent forth many eminent practitioners. Some of these, in search of more extensive knowledge, travelled in India; at least one of them, Harets-Ibn-Keladah, an Arab, established himself at Mecca. From him Mohammed, who was his friend, obtained something more than the rudiments of medicine, an accomplishment which contributed greatly to his success. The Prophet attended the sick, gave consultations, and imparted his learning to his wives. He recognized the paramount importance of hygiene, and inculcated its maxims upon every occasion. “God has not caused a single disease to descend upon men without providing a remedy,” “Diet is the principle of cure, and intemperance the source of all physical ills,” were some of the aphoristical sayings whose truth he constantly impressed upon his followers. The renowned Khalif Al-Mamun was the first Moslem prince to impart a decided impulse to the study of scientific medicine. To Bagdad, his capital, which he had named the City of Peace, he attracted, by the promise of magnificent rewards, the chief professors of the medical school of Djondisabour. The fact that they were Christians was in the eyes of that great monarch no impediment to their employment or promotion. Under their intelligent direction colleges and dispensaries were established. The first hospital of which history makes mention was founded at Bagdad. The world was diligently explored for medical treatises of every description. The Greek authors were rendered into Arabic by a body of translators especially employed for that purpose. The vast importance[506] of this intellectual movement, guided by the spirit of scientific inquiry whose conclusions were based on results obtained by observation and experiment, is disclosed by the great minds it produced and through the influence it exerted on other nations.
In medicine, as in all other sciences, the Spanish Arabs enjoyed peculiar advantages. The accumulated wisdom of the Alexandrian School was theirs by right of conquest. The learning, the inventions, and the methods of the great colleges of Djondisabour, of Bagdad, of Cairo, of Damascus, were theirs by appropriation or inheritance. Many of the most accomplished scholars of those institutions established a residence in the Peninsula, and enriched with their knowledge the already gigantic stock of scientific facts, the result of years of study and experiment by the brightest minds in the most highly intellectual and cultivated society of Europe. Neither national nor religious prejudice proscribed the fruits produced by the labors of the philosophical observer. The contributions of the skeptic, the Christian, the Jew, and the Worshipper of Fire were received with the same respect and rewarded with the same liberality as were those of the orthodox Moslem. The enterprising surgeons and pharmacists of Moorish Spain travelled, studied, and pursued their investigations in every country which promised a profitable return to their industry or their researches. The academies of the Peninsula were illumined by the genius and the erudition of such great writers and operators as the Bakhtichous, Masués, and Serapions, the Nestorian pioneers of medicine and surgery; Honein-Ibn-Ishak, Albategnius, Abu-Yusuf-al-Kendi, Tsabit-Ibn-Korra, Ibn-Bothan, Ibn-Sina, Abu-Bekr-Mohammed, of Persia; Ibn-al-Heitsam, Al-Hazen, Abul-Mena-Ibn-Naso, of Egypt; Ibn-al-Mathran, Ibn-al-Dakhnar, Ibn-Khalifa, Abd-al-Atif, Djimal-al-Dire, of Syria;[507] Ibn-al-Djezzar, Constantine Africanus, and Edrisi, of Barbary. These names, famous in the annals of the profession, and gathered from every quarter of the Mohammedan world, are equalled if not surpassed in renown by those of Moorish Spain. The schools in the empire of Islam, already celebrated, were also rendered doubly illustrious by many other distinguished scholars of scarcely inferior ability, whose talents and discoveries produced a revolution in the practice of every department of medical science. All of the institutions where it was taught were not public. Many were established by practising physicians, who had also their private hospitals. The sons adopted the profession of their fathers for many consecutive generations, and added to the learning obtained by example and experience the natural advantages derived from the hereditary transmission of genius and skill.
The khalifs often attended the lectures of eminent practitioners, and always bestowed upon them the most substantial marks of their favor. Capable of the exercise of every public employment, the court physician was often raised to the post of vizier. Many accumulated immense fortunes. Djabril-Ibn-Bakhtichou left ninety million drachmas; Al-Mamum gave Honein for every volume he translated from the Greek its weight in gold.
The versatility of many of these learned men is one of the marvels of the educational system under which their talents were developed. Their medical knowledge was often the least conspicuous of their intellectual accomplishments. They were famous mathematicians, astronomers, metaphysicians, grammarians, botanists. Some left hundreds of works on the different sciences. Even in that remote age there were specialists who wrote with signal ability on the morbid anatomy of the different portions of the body.[508] Affections of the eye, obstetrics, eruptive fevers, were exhaustively treated. The book of Rhazes on the diseases of children is the first on that topic known to exist. Medical encyclopædias were common. The number of translators produced by the school of Bagdad alone exceeded one hundred. The multiplication of copies of Greek medical and philosophical works by this means, and their consequent wide distribution, preserved them from the fate encountered by so many other memorials of Attic genius. The salutary example of the Abbaside khalifs was not lost upon the Moslem princes of Syria and Egypt. In the polished capitals of Damascus and Cairo numbers of splendidly appointed medical institutions—colleges, hospitals, dispensaries, laboratories—arose. The services of the most distinguished physicians were gratuitously rendered to the inmates of the hospitals. The hygienic arrangements of the latter were, in many respects, superior even to those dictated by the spirit of modern scientific progress. They were larger, better arranged, and more commodious. Purity of air was assured by a system of thorough ventilation. There were fountains everywhere,—in the courts, in the halls, in the gardens. Wards placed under the direction of competent specialists were appointed for the treatment and study of every disease. Insane patients were prescribed for like the others, and had their attendants, their baths, and their amusements. For them, as well as for the unfortunate victim of insomnia and the convalescent, there were the diverting mirth of the story-teller and the soothing powers of music. When a patient was discharged as cured from the Moristan of Cairo, founded in the tenth century, and the most luxuriously equipped hospital of ancient or modern times,—where cooling waters rippled by the bedside of the sick, and their senses were refreshed by the sight and odors of beds of[509] flowers,—he received five pieces of gold, to provide for his necessities until his strength was completely restored. These institutions were supported by the government, and placed under the supervision of the court physician, the head of his profession, who was held to a strict accountability for their proper management. For this important and responsible employment belief in Islamism was by no means essential; honesty, skill, and industry were the sole recommendations to imperial favor, and the medical advisers of the Successors of the Prophet were frequently Christians and Jews. In all hospitals registers of cases were opened and preserved, and far more importance was attached to the observations made at the bedside of the patient than to the information obtained by the perusal of books.
The fame of the medical colleges of the Orient spread rapidly throughout the world, and attracted the ambitious of every creed,—Christian, Hebrew, Mohammedan. In the eleventh century there were more than six thousand students of medicine in the schools of Bagdad. The methods of the professors and writers who directed the policy of these institutions owed their efficacy and success to their severely practical character. No course of treatment was approved until it had been repeatedly tested. Rhazes boasted that his knowledge had been acquired in hospitals and not from libraries. It was the leading principle of the practice of Ibn-Zohr that the resources of nature, if properly directed, are generally sufficient to cure disease. Abulcasis insisted that a thorough knowledge of anatomy was indispensable to success in surgical practice, a statement which, in his day, had the merit of novelty. The original principles of science transmitted from the great Greek physicians were again promulgated for the benefit of mankind, after having been divested of the mass of[510] superstition and imposture with which they had long been encumbered. Almost every disease incident to humanity was treated by the Arab practitioner. Ophthalmia, endemic in countries subjected to the incessant glare of a tropical sun, received particular attention. The Moorish surgeons describe eleven different operations for cataract. Smallpox and leprosy were the subject of protracted and exhaustive investigation. There were specialists for affections of the nerves and the brain, and of the pectoral organs; for complaints resulting from physical excesses; for the various forms of insanity. Considerations of delicacy and the jealous prejudice resulting from the life of the harem debarred the physician from the application of the principles of gynæcology, and the practice of obstetrics was relinquished to women. Surgery, whose practice now implies the possession of the highest degree of professional skill, was for ages among the Arabs considered of inferior importance, and was abandoned to barbers and charlatans. The Mohammedan doctrine that the soul remained with the body for a certain time after dissolution was a serious obstacle to the acquisition of anatomical knowledge, vital to the success of the operator. This feeling was intensified by an idea prevalent among the rabble that handling a corpse was a source of frightful, nay, even of ineffaceable, pollution. The same impediments to the study of anatomy also existed in Christian Europe under the rules of the Church. One of the most heinous offences of the Emperor Frederick II. was that he encouraged dissections, a practice which, as it violated the sacred tabernacle of the soul and, according to ecclesiastical precept, might cause serious embarrassment on the day of the General Resurrection, had been rigidly proscribed by the policy of Rome.
The Arabs attached the greatest importance to hygienic[511] precautions for the prevention as well as for the cure of disease. It was a cardinal principle of their pathology that overtaxing the digestive organs was the cause of a multitude of disorders. The abstemious and temperate habits which characterized the life of the Desert were impressively inculcated by the Koran and the entire body of Moslem tradition. Their observance was constantly suggested by the familiar use of amusing and pertinent aphorisms and proverbial phrases, such, for instance, as, “The worst things that an old man can have are a young wife and a good cook.”
The science of medicine, in common with the other branches of practical knowledge already enumerated, was introduced into Christendom through the Moslem kingdoms of Southern Europe. The Spanish and Sicilian Arabs were the distributors of the accumulated wisdom of the East. The munificent patronage of their rulers, the enterprise of their merchants, the ambition of their scholars, enabled them to profit by the literary resources and invaluable observations of the great medical schools of Bagdad, Cairo, and Damascus. The Continent of Rhazes, the Canon of Avicenna, the Meliki of Ali-Ibn-Abbas, each a vast compendium of scientific information, whose principles form the basis of all modern practice, were early familiar to the Moorish physicians of the Peninsula. The works of Al-Hazen and Ali-Ibn-Issa, indispensable to oculists, were used by the students of Cordova even before their adoption by the colleges of Teheran and Cairo. Every medical treatise of importance was to be found in the libraries of the khalifate. Nor were the efforts of the Hispano-Arab practitioners limited to the collection of the literary productions of their professional brethren of the Orient. They translated the ancient Greek masters. They composed voluminous commentaries on famous[512] authors whose opinions were regarded as oracular. No names in the long catalogue of Moslem genius stand higher than those of Abulcasis, the originator of modern surgery; than Avenzoar, whose family was prominent for three hundred years in the medical annals of Moorish Spain; than Averroes, whose great professional attainments have been obscured by his pre-eminent reputation as a natural philosopher. Arib-Ibn-Said-al-Khatib, whose works exceeded a thousand in number, composed treatises on gynæcology and obstetrics, and was the author of the Calendar of Cordova, a wonderful compilation of medical truths, surgical maxims, astronomical and agricultural knowledge. Ibn-Wafed, of Toledo, who lived in the tenth century, and whose extraordinary abilities made him conspicuous among hundreds of eminent contemporaries, consumed twenty years in the preparation of his work on the general practice of medicine. Ibn-Zohr, of Seville, was the first to discover that scabies was produced by a diminutive parasite, and to prescribe sulphur as a remedy. The treatise of Mohammed-Ibn-Quassum on diseases of the eye occupied six hundred pages; that of Mohammed-al-Temini on hernia and tumors nearly four hundred. Daoud-al-Agrebi wrote on fumigations, collyriums, hemostatics; he recommends the administration of narcotics in lithotomy, in the incision of abscesses, and in emasculation for the production of eunuchs. Saladin-Ibn-Yusuf published a book on the anatomy of the eye and the theories of vision. The scientific and logical methods inaugurated by the khalifs of the East were perfected in the medical colleges of Mohammedan Spain. The study of anatomy attained a development previously unknown to the traditions and experience of the profession. From the contemplation of bone-heaps in the cemeteries the student advanced to the performance of autopsies; to[513] the determination, by actual survey, of the location and offices of the internal organs; to the vivisection of quadrupeds and criminals. A material advance in general intelligence is implied from the fact that these inquiries, heretofore so repugnant to popular feeling and religious tradition, could be prosecuted in peace. In etiology, pathology, therapeutics, great progress was made. Surgery, whose practice had entailed reproach rather than distinction upon its professors, was, by the removal of the prejudice attaching to anatomical demonstration, relieved of the obloquy with which it was generally regarded. A blind reverence for precedent and authority was not recognized by the practitioners of the Hispano-Arab school. They inculcated the paramount importance of a competent knowledge of the functions of the organs of the human body, which they well knew could only be obtained from the practice of dissection, abhorrent to the minds of both the Moslem and the Jew. They advised great caution in all operations. Every new theory was subjected to severe and exhaustive tests. Heroic treatment was adopted only where milder means had proved unsuccessful. Whenever possible, the curative powers of nature were allowed full exercise; and a change of climate, especially in pulmonary affections, was one of the principal resources of the Moorish physicians. Their works were elucidated by the introduction into the text of drawings of instruments adapted to the removal of the morbid conditions described; and science is indebted to the Spanish Moslems for this innovation, now an essential part of all treatises on surgery. The treatment of the eye received more attention from the Arabs than any other branch of the profession. Their oculists were most accomplished operators; the heat and dryness of the climate being favorable to ophthalmic affections and affording the surgeon varied and incessant[514] practice. They enumerate nine different forms of cataract, which they treated by couching and by puncture. Their needles were both round and triangular; some were hollow and made of glass. The Arabs were the first to perform the important operation of lithotomy and to reduce old dislocations. They knew how to ligature the arteries four centuries before Ambrose Paré. They used hooks for the extraction of polypi. They made frequent and intelligent use of counter-irritants. The seton is their invention. The application of leeches in apoplexy was a common incident in their practice. They were familiar with the effects of caustics and acids as escharotics. They substituted refrigerants for tonics in certain affections of the nerve-centres. They understood the value of cold water in arresting hemorrhage. They originated the modern method of bandaging. The treatment of slow fevers, like typhoid, by baths of low temperature, was frequently employed by them; it was recommended by Rhazes nine hundred years before its announcement to the present generation as a new and remarkable discovery. To Ibn-Zohr medical science owes the operation of tracheotomy and the original description of pericarditis. Abulcasis, in explaining lithotomy, advises the section used by surgeons ever since he wrote, in the tenth century. Nor had the advantages derived from anæsthesia escaped the notice of these profound and ingenious observers. They suggest the administration, in decoction, of darnel—the Lolium Temulentum—and other plants of narcotic properties, until complete loss of consciousness and sensation is obtained, to facilitate the performance of severe operations. Even the results of microbial infection appear to have been recognized by them, although its cause remained unknown. When, in the tenth century, Rhazes was directed by the Khalif to select a hospital site in the[515] city of Bagdad, he caused pieces of meat to be suspended in different localities, and the building was erected in that place where, after a given time, the least putrefaction was visible. Nor in that early day was the care of animals neglected, and the name of Abu-Bekr-Ibn-Bedr has descended to posterity as that of a famous veterinary surgeon.
In their contributions to the pharmacopœia, the Spanish Mohammedans rendered invaluable services to medicine. Abul-Abbas, of Seville, was the first to apply the principles of botanical science—heretofore principally devoted to agriculture—to the purposes of the apothecary and the physician. In the work of Ibn-al-Awam six hundred plants possessing medicinal properties are enumerated; in that of Ibn-Beithar more than three hundred, hitherto unclassified or unknown, are mentioned and described. Ibn-Essouri, in his work on the Materia Medica, painted the herbs which had been the subject of his investigations not only as they grew, but as they appeared, when dried, on the shelves of the druggist; his is the first example of an Arabic book illustrated in colors. The methods of the Moorish practitioners were conservative. They attempted no doubtful or hazardous experiments. They discarded the drastic remedies of the ancients. Profoundly versed in the science of horticulture, they watered the roots of plants and trees with strong infusions of purgative drugs, and afterwards administered their fruits. Their personal attention to the rules of hygiene was often evidenced by their remarkable longevity. Rhazes was in active practice at Bagdad for more than half a century; Abulcasis attained the great age of one hundred and one years.
The superior excellence of the Spanish-Arab school is attributable to the fact that its members devoted their talents to a single profession. For the most part, they avoided the example of the Oriental, whose[516] medical researches were hampered by philosophical speculations, and who turned from the diagnosis of ailments and the application of remedies to the fascinations of alchemy and to vagaries concerning the imaginary relations of humanity to the mysterious influence of the stars. They were not altogether free from these delusions, nevertheless, for they pulverized jewels, supposed to be efficacious in certain diseases, and coated their drugs with gold and silver leaf, a proceeding which to the adept had a profound alchemical significance. From this custom is derived our expression, “to gild the pill.” They usually, however, confined their observations to the legitimate sphere of the physician—to the subjects of medicine, surgery, pharmacy, hygiene.
The various topical applications used at present by the profession—such as unguents, plasters, counter-irritants, and pomades—originated in Mohammedan Spain. The hospital service of that country has received little attention from historians, but it is highly improbable that, in the general advance of civilization, this important auxiliary to medicine should have been at all neglected. It is a singular fact that the only detailed notice of a Moorish hospital in the Peninsula is of that of Algeziras, which was founded in the twelfth century. Tradition reports, however, that fifty public institutions of this kind existed at one time at Cordova. The Hispano-Arab practitioners held consultations at the bedside of the patient; some, employed by the government, visited the sick of remote localities at regular intervals; for the poor there was gratuitous attendance and treatment. The discoveries of Arab medicine were mainly preserved and diffused through the translations of Gerard of Cremona, whose indefatigable industry imposed such lasting obligations on modern science. For fifty years he was employed at Toledo,[517] until his translations reached the enormous number of seventy-six. Had it not been for his efforts, and those of his patient collaborators, the works of the Moorish physicians would have shared the fate of the voluminous collections of Arabic miscellaneous literature. Of the millions of volumes which represented the intellectual glory of the khalifate scarcely a copy exists in Spain. What escaped the malignant vigilance of Ximenes perished at the hands of the Inquisition. It is not generally known that the bulk of the manuscripts of the Escorial library constitutes no part of the literary inheritance of the Moslem domination. They represent the spoil of vessels captured on the coast of Morocco in the early part of the seventeenth century. In nearly all of these the invocation of Allah and Mohammed, with which every important Arabic work begins, has been carefully erased.
Of such a character were the literary and scientific achievements of the Arabs, whose highest mental development was reached under the influence of the Mohammedan dynasties of the Peninsula. In the fierce and relentless struggle prosecuted for centuries between pontifical iniquity and intolerance and Moslem learning, the former ultimately triumphed. It may not be inappropriate at the close of this chapter to recount the consequences of that triumph; to disclose the aims of the victor; to enumerate the sacrifices of the vanquished; to contrast the effects of the supremacy of either upon the welfare of humanity and the march of civilization. From the Arabian Prophet, reared amidst the pastoral simplicity and barbaric ignorance of the Desert, came such utterances as these,—utterances which, if not inspired, are yet certainly of priceless value to the human race: “Teach science: whoever teaches it fears God; whoever desires it adores God; whoever speaks of it praises God; whoever diffuses it distributes alms; whoever possesses[518] it becomes an object of veneration and respect. Science preserves us from error and from sin; it illuminates the road to Paradise; it is our protector in travel, our confidant in the Desert, our companion in solitude. It guides us through the pleasures and the sorrows of life; it serves us alike as an ornament among our friends and as a buckler against our enemies; it is through its instrumentality that the Almighty raises up those whom he has appointed to determine the good and the true. The memories of such men are the only ones which shall survive, for their noble deeds will serve as models for the imitation of the great minds that shall come after them. Science is a potent remedy for the infirmities of ignorance, a brilliant beacon in the night of injustice. The study of letters is as meritorious as fasting; their communication is not inferior in efficacy to prayer; in a generous heart they awaken the most elevated sentiments; to the wicked they impart the corrective and humanizing precepts of virtue.” These words, spoken by Mohammed in the seventh century, were received by the votaries of Islam with the respect due to a revelation destined to guide their policy, with reference to literary pursuits, through all subsequent ages.
Far different was the attitude assumed by the ecclesiastical power whose despotic mandates were for a thousand years recognized and obeyed by the proudest sovereigns of Christendom. It early perceived the incompatibility of its pretensions with the untrammelled exercise of the faculties of the human intellect. Founded upon principles whose acceptance, as maxims of divine origin, necessarily precluded all ideas of improvement and progress, it had no resource but quiescence; it could countenance no condition but that of immobility. It placed a premium upon ignorance, and enjoined the employment of persecution as a virtue. It blighted every noble aspiration which came[519] within the sphere of its destructive energy. Through the oracular mouths of the Fathers it denounced all philosophy as “empty and false.” In its Constitution of Faith, promulgated in the nineteenth century by the Vatican Council,—many of whose articles are indorsed as sound by every consistent member of the Evangelical Communion,—it anathematized all “who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine.”
Such were the various aspects under which scientific thought was regarded respectively by the Founder of Islam and the infallible representatives of Christianity. The effects of such spiritual admonitions upon the physical condition of those subjected to their influence are disclosed by the material and intellectual prosperity or debasement of nations. In no examples of the political and economic life of the Middle Ages or of subsequent times are such striking, such incredible, contrasts exhibited as in the annals of Mohammedan Spain and Catholic Europe. In the tenth century Andalusia was traversed in every direction by magnificent aqueducts; Cordova was a city of fountains; its thoroughfares, for a distance of miles, were brilliantly illuminated, substantially paved, kept in excellent repair, regularly patrolled by guardians of the peace. In Paris there were no pavements until the thirteenth century; in London none until the fourteenth; the streets of both capitals were receptacles of filth, and often impassable; at night shrouded in inky darkness; at all times dominated by outlaws; the haunt of the footpad, the nursery of the pestilence, the source of every disease, the scene of every crime. It was not until the close of the reign of Charles II. that even a defective system of street lighting was adopted; in London the mortality of the plague is a[520] convincing proof of the unsanitary conditions that everywhere prevailed; the supply of water was derived from the polluted river or from wells reeking with contamination. Nor did time and experience bring to the public mind a realization of the importance of improvements vitally affecting the health and convenience of every community. As late as 1825, water of doubtful purity was hawked about from door to door in the city of New York; a solitary wooden pump in Chatham Street sufficed for the general necessities of the poor; sewage was carried in tubs on the heads of negroes and thrown into the river; and only three hundred lamps and gas-jets diffused their uncertain and flickering glare through the squares and avenues of the metropolis of the western world.
The annual receipts of the state from all sources under Abd-al-Rahman III. in the first half of the tenth century exceeded three hundred million dollars; the revenues of the English Crown at the close of the seventeenth century were fifteen million; those of the United Provinces less than eighteen million; those of France sixty million, estimated at the present value of money. At the decease of this Moorish sovereign in 961, there were found in the royal coffers five million pieces of gold, equal to one hundred million dollars. When Louis XIV., the greatest potentate of his time, died in 1715, the treasury of France was bankrupt. The inhabitants of England at the death of Elizabeth were about four million; the population of Moorish Spain six centuries previous to that date could not have been less than thirty million, and was probably nearer fifty. In 1700, London, the most populous city of Christian Europe, was only half as large as Cordova was in 900, when Almeria and Seville had each as numerous a population as the capital of the British Empire eight hundred years[521] afterwards. At the dawn of the eleventh century the Moslem dominions of Sicily and Spain presented a picture of universal cultivation and consequent prosperity, where industry was promoted and idleness was punished; where an enlightened spirit of humanity had provided asylums within whose walls the infirm and the aged might pass their remaining days in comfort and peace. Six hundred years afterwards what are now the richest and most valuable agricultural districts of Great Britain were unclaimed and uninhabitable bog and coppice, abandoned to game and frequented by robbers; and one-fourth of the inhabitants of England, incapable of the task of self-support, were during the greater part of the year dependent upon public charity, for which purpose a sum equal to one-half of the revenues of the crown was annually disbursed. In the middle of the tenth century there were nine hundred public baths in the capital of Moorish Spain; in the eighteenth century there were not as many in all the countries of Christian Europe. In the eighth century, the cottages occupied by the lower classes of the Spanish Moslems were embowered in roses, were surrounded by fields of waving grain and orchards of luscious fruits, were furnished with all the comforts and many of the luxuries of life; in the sixteenth century, the peasantry of France and Germany, ill-clad, begrimed with filth, and ignorant of the taste of bread, were living in squalid huts, sleeping upon reeking heaps of straw, drinking the waters of pond and morass, and feeding on carrots and acorns. Seven centuries after the cities of the Peninsula had been drained by a system of great sewers, their streets kept free from rubbish, and subjected to daily cleansing, Paris was still worthy of its ancient appellation of Lutetia, “The Muddy;” the way of the pedestrian was blocked by heaps of steaming offal and garbage; and droves of swine, the only scavengers,[522] roamed unmolested through court-yard and thoroughfare.
Under the conditions of intellectual culture which characterized Moslem and Christian society even a greater inequality prevailed. The library of Mostandir, Sultan of Egypt, contained eighty thousand volumes; that of the Fatimites of Cairo, a million; that of Tripoli, two hundred thousand; in the thirteenth century, when Bagdad was sacked by the Mongols, the books cast into the Tigris completely covered its surface, and their ink dyed its waters black, while a far greater number were destroyed by fire; the public collections of the Moorish khalifate of Spain were seventy in number, and the great library of Al-Hakem II. alone included six hundred thousand volumes. The collections of many private individuals were proportionately large. In that of Ibn-al-Mathran, the physician of Saladin, were ten thousand manuscripts; upon the shelves of Dunasch-ben-Tamin, the great Jewish surgeon of Cairo, were more than twenty thousand. Four centuries afterwards few books existed in Christian Europe excepting those preserved in monasteries; the royal library of France consisted of nine hundred volumes, two-thirds of which were theological works; their subjects were limited to pious homilies, the miracles of saints, the duties of obedience to ecclesiastical superiors,—their sole merit consisted in the elegance of their chirography and the beauty of their illuminations. During the Hispano-Arab domination it was difficult to encounter even a Moorish peasant who could not read and write; during the same period in Europe many great personages could not boast these accomplishments. From the ninth to the thirteenth century the Spanish-Arabs possessed an educational system not inferior to the most improved ones of modern times; they taught astronomy from globes and planispheres;[523] they measured the circumference of the earth; they observed the motions of the planets; they calculated the density of the atmosphere; they were familiar with the natural and artificial conditions under which vapors and gases are generated. For the European of that epoch there were no schools, for popular learning was discountenanced as conducive to heresy; education was confined to the cloister; the stars were but celestial lamps, whose only office was the nocturnal illumination of the earth; the latter was flat, and above it rose, in regular gradation, the seven regions of heaven; the ebullition and the explosion of gases were attributed to demoniac influence and to the agency of mischievous imps and goblins. Five centuries after the Moorish physicians of Spain had treated disease by the rational principles of medicine, surgery, and hygiene, Europe still adhered to the archaic conceptions of barbaric ignorance; to the belief that all illness was a manifestation of divine displeasure; to the possession by evil spirits; to the delusive expedients of priestly artifice,—the exhibition of relics, the muttering of texts, the performance of exorcisms. Six hundred years after the celebrated astronomer, Ibn-Junis—who constructed the Hakemite Table, advanced proofs of the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, and utilized the pendulum for the purposes of chronometry—was honored and awarded with the friendship of the Khalif of Egypt, Galileo, in the degrading robe of the penitent, horrible with painted flames and devils, was forced, kneeling before the familiars of the Holy Office, to abjure, as dangerous heresies, the scientific truths he had subjected to mathematical and ocular demonstration,—the grand discoveries which have made his name immortal; and Bruno was sent to the stake for admitting the philosophical doctrine of the all-pervading Divine Essence, for teaching the heresy[524] of a plurality of worlds, and for insisting that the earth revolved on its axis and round the sun. Seven hundred years after universal toleration was enforced throughout the domain of the Ommeyade Khalifate,—where even the populace had learned to respect the weaknesses of senile eccentricity, and the belief in demoniacal possession had been contemptuously abandoned to the most ignorant of the provincial rabble,—the Duke of York was subjecting the unhappy Covenanters of Scotland to promiscuous massacre and to the excruciating torture of the boot, and Cotton Mather was burning witches on Salem Common. More than twenty generations had elapsed since the Arab geographer was first regarded by his countrymen as a public benefactor, by his king as worthy of the highest honors that royalty can bestow, by the learned with the respect attaching to the possessor of unusual attainments; when Calvin tortured Servetus at Geneva for publishing the unscriptural assertion that Palestine, so far from being a land flowing with milk and honey, was, in fact, a barren waste of volcanic desolation,—Servetus, the great anatomist, who came within a hair’s-breadth of anticipating Harvey in his discovery of the circulation of the blood. From time immemorial among unenlightened races insanity has been attributed to the influence of malignant spirits, who could only be expelled by the unsparing use of the scourge or by the intervention of the priest. The Arabs were the first of nations to discard this idea, to use kindness and the administration of remedies in the treatment of the demented, and to establish asylums.
These conditions disclose the comparative value of two great politico-religious systems, both claiming divine authority, each uniting in its head the functions of Church and State,—one the exponent and zealous promoter of every scientific impulse, the other[525] the ever-consistent representative of intellectual repression. The influence of Moslem genius is felt to-day in the numerous inventions, the insatiable thirst for knowledge, the marvellous development of art, science, and letters which have made the closing years of the nineteenth century ever memorable in the annals of civilization. Apparently extinguished by the noxious vapors of superstition that had darkened the Christian world for so many ages, the vital spark of learning still remained, which, rekindled in an epoch more propitious to mental culture, was destined to advance in an even more marked degree the material interests, as well as the most noble aspirations, of mankind. The law of human progress even under the most unfavorable conditions is constant, invariable, eternal. Its manifestations differ only in the degree of their advancement. The latter may be checked, but its retardation is only temporary. The ground lost by scientific truth in one century it will surely make up in the next, and, despite the hostile agencies which may conspire for its suppression, it is destined eventually to triumph.
The consideration of Arabic intellectual life, and especially of its culmination in the Spanish Peninsula, the astonishing energy, curiosity, and perseverance that characterized every stage of its development from its very origin to its extinction, the phenomenal rapidity of its advance, the superhuman greatness of its deeds, suggest the infinite possibilities to which its revival may ultimately give rise as affecting the destiny of nations.
At the present day, when every year, nay, almost every month, brings forth some new and wonderful discovery; when vocal communication between distant points is maintained solely by atmospheric aid; when chemistry is resolving into numerous constituents substances for ages considered elementary; when[526] by the employment of enormous lenses the heavenly bodies are brought within almost tangible propinquity to the earth; when even the most humble offices of domestic economy are performed by the mysterious agency of electrical apparatus; when the invention of tremendously powerful means of destruction daily renders war more difficult and peace more desirable; when the gases of the atmosphere are artificially decomposed and separately made the objects of commercial traffic; when the skill of the physician has practically eradicated diseases long deemed incurable; in this era of scientific progress and of unparalleled intellectual achievement who will be so bold as to assert that even the dreams of the alchemist, the cherished phantoms of Moorish imagination, may not soon be realized? In scores of laboratories in Europe and America there are to-day chemists, diligently and quietly, with the patience, if not with the enthusiasm, of the ancient adept, endeavoring to determine by the aid of the prodigious resources of modern science the ever doubtful question of the transmutation of metals. From all quarters of the civilized world come well-authenticated reports that some of the greatest minds of the century, minds whose every utterance claims attention and respect, are engaged in investigations whose effects may surpass those of the imagined universal panacea, and which will impart to the listless energy, to the deformed symmetry, and to hoary and decrepit age the strength of long departed manhood;
Is it too much to assume that our age, so prolific of marvels that what excites astonishment to-day is certain to become commonplace to-morrow, will accomplish these and even greater results; an age ingenious in theory, fertile in invention, phenomenal[527] in versatility, skilful in practice; an age of eccentric and startling propositions; an age which looks forward with audacious confidence to the solution of even that most recondite problem of biology, the artificial production of organic life? Is it unreasonable to expect that those secrets of nature which have hitherto eluded the researches of philosophical experiment and scientific inquiry will erelong be revealed?
These being among the assumed possibilities of science, let us turn to what it has actually done for mankind. In what respect are these investigations preferable to that absolute resignation to ecclesiastical authority which so generally prevailed when devotion was exalted and intelligence enchained? What advantage has resulted from this poring over manuscripts, this collecting of plants, this delving in the earth, this star-gazing, this mixing of acids, this study of skeletons? Cui bono?
The answer comes back from every phase of an advancing civilization, from the din of a thousand workshops and the clatter of a million looms; from the whistle of the locomotive in the desert and the bell of the steamer stranded amidst the polar ice; from the network of railways seaming each continent from centre to circumference; from canal and aqueduct, from tunnel and bridge, and all the grand monuments of civil engineering; from the safety-lamp, flickering through the poisonous vapors of the miner’s cave; from the seats of commerce crowded with the appliances of enjoyment and luxury; from the harbors with their forests of shapely masts; from the innumerable triumphs of inventive genius which alike increase the pleasures of the wealthy and ease the burdens of the poor, and are gratefully felt at the desk of the speculative philosopher and the bench of the artisan. But even more than this has science accomplished. It has explored new regions in the[528] boundless domain of human knowledge. It has discovered and applied the laws of planetary motion; determined the distances of the heavenly bodies; estimated their masses; laid down the substances of which they are composed; and described the complex relations in which they stand to each other. It has measured time down to the incredibly small fraction of the millionth part of a second. It has scanned the borders of the universe, and brought within the scope of vision stars so distant that the image formed to-day upon the retina of the observer is produced by light emitted five million years ago. By means of the microscope, it has opened a fairy world teeming with myriad types of animal and vegetable life, more curious than the fabled regions of the Orient, more wonderful than the enchanted garden of Armida. It has placed upon the photographic negative faces, flowers, landscapes, depicted in the exquisite and harmonious colors of Nature. By the discovery of the radiferous salts,—polonium, radium, thorium, actinium, titanium,—it has disclosed to the chemist a new and enchanting field of research, whose extent and possibilities cannot yet even be made the subject of intelligent conjecture; and has instituted the study of substances whose astonishing properties tend to overthrow the hitherto well-founded theories of the various relations of matter, and, in some instances, to imperatively demand their modification or radical reconstruction; whose investigation has established as truisms the most glaring apparent physical paradoxes; in the presence of whose marvellous effects the properties of solidity, cohesion, and opacity seem to vanish; which exhibit such a subdivision of matter into infinitesimal particles as to suggest their practical dissociation, and in comparison with whose dimensions the inconceivably minute primordial atoms of Democritus are absolutely colossal; the origin of whose mysterious[529] power no hypothesis, no analysis, no apparatus, has so far been able to satisfactorily determine; which not improbably may afford solutions of cosmical phenomena whose manifestations alone have been observed; and which, by their application to anatomical, medical, and mechanical science, may ultimately serve to explain the origin of life, and confer inestimable material benefits upon the human race. Of these metallic, radio-active bodies, radium, the most important and wonderful, is one that presents pre-eminently interesting and inexplicable peculiarities; a substance which possesses the remarkable qualities of self-luminosity, thermogenesis, and actinism; which is endowed with a singular recuperative power, by means of which its recently diminished force is restored without the apparent aid of any external agency; whose primary and apparently inexhaustible source of potency has been variously and inconclusively asserted to be the sun, the earth, the atmosphere; whose emanations, charged with negative electricity, impart the latter to the solid, liquid, or gaseous medium through which they pass, and communicate temporary phosphorescence and permanent coloring to objects subjected to their impact; whose rays travel with such inconceivable velocity that they would traverse a distance equal to five times the circumference of the earth in a single second; which have mass as well as energy; which, despite the enormous rapidity with which they move, may be instantaneously deflected from a direct to a curvilinear path by the interposition of a magnet; and by whose aid photographs may readily be taken through thick plates of lead and iron. Science has invented explosives that rend mountains asunder; by the application of the carbon point, it has caused the hardest steel to fluidize in the twinkling of an eye. From the black and glutinous refuse of gas manufacture, it has extracted pigments whose tints vie in[530] brilliancy with those of the rainbow, and remedial agents which in certain departments have revolutionized the practice of medicine. It has perfected the transmission of light, so that by the mere touching of a button great cities are in an instant illuminated. With no small degree of probability, it has suggested that incessant and universal molecular activity, pervading all matter both organic and inorganic, may be the controlling principle of the mysterious condition which we designate as life, and that the weight of every substance is in an inverse ratio to its atomic energy. It has made objects hitherto opaque transparent, and has opened to the view of the surgical operator the inmost recesses of the human body. It has removed without apparent injury organs whose functions were long considered indispensable to animal existence. By simple manipulation it has cured congenital deformities formerly considered hopeless, and restored distorted limbs to their normal strength and symmetry. It has discovered the specific pathogenic bacteria which produce many diseases, and rendered them innocuous by means of their own cultures. Through the injection of an extract obtained from a glandular secretion it has prolonged the pulsations of the heart in an animal for hours after decapitation; by rhythmic compression it has restored the action of that organ after it had completely ceased—when life was practically extinct.
Science has told us that the clear blue of the firmament, seemingly of spotless purity, is caused by floating particles of atmospheric dust; that every twig, and leaf, and blade of grass—even every newly-fallen drop of rain—are radiferous centres of electric energy; that motion is the rule, and quiescence the exception, affecting the component atoms of the universe,—if, indeed, quiescence at all exists; that the parasite, infesting the body of the smallest of insects,[531] is itself the abode of minute organisms; that the very air we breathe is swarming with the germs of suffering, disease, and death. It has pressed into its service the imponderable agents, and demonstrated their interconvertibility; has bestowed priceless blessings upon the living; has soothed the pillow of languishing humanity, and extended its welcome offices even to the grave. It has given us an idea of the duration of our globe, and established a system of chronology the immensity of which we endeavor in vain to comprehend, where centuries are as nothing, and cycles but fleeting periods of time. From a single fossil bone it has reproduced the form and described the habits of the monster to which, in prehistoric ages, it belonged. It has measured the movement of thought, which, despite its proverbial rapidity, has been proved to be only about one hundred feet a second. By investigation of the mental phenomena of hypnotism and telepathy, it has added to the evidence which tends to establish the existence of the Soul of the World. It has taught all to exert the proudest prerogatives of intelligence,—to think, to doubt, to reason,—and has rescued the mind of man long buried beneath the accumulated absurdities of venerable tradition. These great results it has achieved in its childhood, under adverse influences, opposed by the fanatical and the ignorant, with its devotees menaced by the dungeon, the scaffold, and the fires of the Inquisition; but who, with that stern, unflinching perseverance which at last reaps its reward in the tardy honors of posterity, have pursued their way, conscious of the nobility of their calling, and fortified by the reflections of that sublime philosophy which “looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.”
Society has progressed far beyond that intellectual stage when the comet was dreaded as a harbinger of universal misfortune; when the appearance of the[532] pestilence was considered a manifestation of the wrath of the Almighty; when superstitious fear transformed every floating mist into a cloak for goblins; regarded every rustling of the foliage as an evidence of supernatural presence; saw in every ebullition of gaseous water a mysterious phenomenon, in every subterranean rumble an omen of sinister and portentous augury. This emancipation of the human intellect, this impetus to every expression of material progress, cannot be attributed to ecclesiastical inspiration. They were not a product of the Crusades. They were not the effect of the Reformation. They are not the work of Christianity, whose policy has indeed been constantly inimical to their toleration or encouragement. They are a legitimate consequence of the liberal policy adopted and perpetuated by the Ommeyade Khalifs throughout their magnificent empire, whose civilization was the wonder, as its power was the dread, of mediæval Europe.
Modern science unquestionably owes everything to Arab genius. From the mass of debased superstitions, mummeries, and fetichism, entertained and cultivated by the Bedouin, emerged, as has been seen, a thorough knowledge of the mutual relations of the different parts of the Universe and a familiarity with the wonderful phenomena of Nature. From the study of astrology astronomy was evolved; from alchemy, chemistry; from geomancy, geography; from magic, natural philosophy. The principles of government by law were established. Anthropomorphism was discarded. It was no longer attempted to control the inexorable operation of physical agencies by prayers and incantations. In one especially important respect the Moslems differed from their European predecessors. The Roman system and the Gothic polity were founded entirely upon force; Arabic power was largely controlled by intellectual conditions.
[533]
With this great people the love of scientific investigation was an absorbing passion. It pervaded every department of government, every occupation of life, every branch of study; it even invaded the sanctuaries of religion. The cultivation of letters, the prosecution of experiments, were, for eight centuries, the most prominent characteristics of the Arab race, the highest distinction of Mussulman sovereigns. It is far from creditable to modern civilization, indebted for its existence to these pursuits, to ignore such claims to gratitude and renown, through prejudice against the religious principles of those who engaged in them. Surely in all literature there exists no nobler or more elevated sentiment than that expressed in the saying of Mohammed, “A mind without culture is like a body without a soul, and glory does not consist in riches, but in knowledge.”
[534]
Absolute Ignorance of Art among the Original Arabs—Their Debt to Antiquity—Their Early Architecture—Materials—Massive Character of the First Edifices of the Moslems—The Horseshoe Arch—Its Phallic Derivation—Progress of Artistic Embellishment—Its Wonderful Diversity—Byzantine Influence—Employment of Encaustic Tiles—Mosaics of the Mosque of Cordova—Stuccoes—Their Composition and Infinite Variety of Form—Stalactitic Pendentives—Woodwork—Its Beautiful and Intricate Designs—Disappearance of Arabic Architectural Monuments in Sicily—Military Structures of Mohammedan Spain—Typical Form of the Mosque—Its Hebrew Origin—Manifold Derivation of Hispano-Arab Architecture—Development of Art in Moorish Spain—Its Three Epochs—The Alhambra its Culmination—Representation of Animal Forms—Painting and Sculpture—Mural Decoration—The Industrial Arts—Working of Metals—Arms—Engraved Gems—Ceramics—The Leathern Tapestry of Cordova—Textile Fabrics—Calligraphy and Illumination—Destruction of the Artistic Remains of the Moors.
The origin, development, and decadence of the arts among the Arabs present one of the most remarkable aspects of mediæval history. As in the architectural monuments of every people can be read the chronicle of its religion, its government, and its manners, so the scanty memorials of the Spanish and Sicilian Moslems, which the destructive accidents of foreign and domestic violence and the intemperate zeal of superstition have permitted to descend to posterity, constitute an invaluable record of the canons of their faith, the customs of their social and intellectual[535] life, the growth and consolidation of their wonderful empire. From the remotest antiquity to the advent of Mohammed in the seventh century nothing worthy of the name of architecture existed in the Arabian Peninsula. The very name of that art, which implies a settled and permanent habitation, was antagonistic to the habits and the traditions of a nomadic existence. As a rule, the nature of the country, the character of the soil, the scarcity of water, the difficulties of intercommunication, were insuperable obstacles to the foundation of cities and the promotion of mercantile and manufacturing industry. The roving Bedouin regarded with aversion and contempt all those whose avocations necessitated a fixed residence, and whose security was dependent upon walls and towers. His jealousy of power, which based the authority of his sheik upon a nominal allegiance, to be thrown off or resumed at will, was repugnant to and wholly inconsistent with the principles which insure the preservation of established government or the maintenance of regular communities organized for the common protection and benefit. It is true that in the kingdoms of Hira and Yemen, which formed respectively the northern and southern extremities of Arabia, towns of considerable magnitude existed. Mecca, the revered centre of a widely diffused idolatrous system, could boast a numerous population; and the commerce of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf sustained upon those waters a few insignificant and miserable seaports; but in none of these settlements—which scarcely deserved the name of cities—was to be found a single example of architectural symmetry or magnificence. Everywhere else throughout the illimitable area of the Peninsula appeared a monotonous solitude of barren rocks and shifting sands, unrelieved by vegetation, unpeopled by human beings, save the ferocious occupants of the[536] Bedouin camp or the traders who guarded the straggling caravan. Agriculture, the substantial basis of every nation’s prosperity, was manifestly impossible in the Desert. Mechanical ingenuity, with such a limited field for its exercise, was necessarily reduced to the simplest apparatus which could produce the most ordinary and primitive results.
At long and irregular intervals merchants and pilgrims brought to Mecca and Medina uncertain and romantic accounts of the pomp and luxury of distant empires. Compared with the edifices of the nations which inhabited them, the dwelling of the wealthiest Arabian—of mean appearance, suggestive of little comfort, utterly devoid of taste, and with no attempt at ornamentation—was hardly superior to a hovel. The famous Kaaba was itself an insignificant structure, deriving its importance solely from its sacred traditions, a mere barbarian depository of idols.
As was natural, and, indeed, inevitable, the Arab, in his career of victory, absorbed and insensibly appropriated the ideas and knowledge of the subjugated races who were his superiors in the arts of civilization. This process was greatly facilitated by the wholesale proselytism which was one of the principal incidents of Moslem conquest, and which led not infrequently to the practical apostasy of entire nations and their enlistment under the banners of Islam. In Egypt, Syria, Persia, the architectural memorials of the Arabs partook of the characteristics of the race whose influence predominated in the regions subjected to their authority, just as had been the case with all the victorious nations that had preceded them. In Spain, however, and also in Sicily, so far as we are able to conjecture, a greater originality distinguished the works of the conquerors than is to be observed in other countries. No well-defined connection with Oriental architecture can be detected in the splendid[537] vestiges of taste and elegance which have survived their dominion nearly five hundred years. In the land illuminated by his genius and enriched by his industry, the Spanish Moslem is forgotten or absolutely unknown to the majority of the people; his memory is execrated as that of an infidel; his works are denounced as barbaric; the effects and the influence of his civilization are disputed or depreciated; his temples have been mutilated or entirely destroyed; his palaces transformed into the squalid haunts of mendicity and vice; while the leather-clad shepherd watches his flock on the once famous site of gardens adorned with magnificent villas and beautiful with all the luxuriant and fanciful horticulture of the East.
The Hispano-Arab age of architecture embraces a period of six hundred and ninety years from the foundation of the Mosque of Cordova in the eighth century to the completion of the Alhambra in the fifteenth. In that time it passed through many phases, whose peculiarities are clearly indicated by its surviving monuments, but whose order of progression is imperfect and whose limits are not accurately defined. Although the great temple of Islam, raised by Abd-al-Rahman, was largely composed of materials taken from the remains of classic antiquity, Arabic architecture borrowed nothing in design from the stupendous Roman ruins of the Peninsula. Admiration of their proportions and beauty had awakened a desire, not so much to imitate them, as to create something with which they might worthily be compared; edifices which would correspond with the tastes and necessities of an impetuous, highly organized, and passionate race, immoderately fond of variety and adornment, easily intoxicated with religious enthusiasm, devoted to the arts and whims of riotous sensuality. The gigantic mass of the pyramid, the elaborately sculptured façade of the Persian palace, the elegant[538] forms of the Grecian temple and the Roman triumphal arch, might excite the awe of the Arab; but they appealed but slightly to his ardent sensibilities, and to his enthusiastic nature which wantoned in the creation of a thousand extravagant and fantastic visions. Ideas evoked by the masterpieces of antiquity, however, opened a new and alluring prospect to his talents and his ambition, and he soon became as proficient in the most durable of the arts of peace as he had been in the prosecution of conquest and the extension of dominion.
No people ever utilized to such an extent as the Arabs the materials perfected by the skill and the labor of their predecessors; and, it may be added, none in ancient or in modern times enjoyed such opportunities for, and reaped such benefits from, the ignoble work of spoliation. From the Bay of Biscay to the Himalayas, sumptuous palaces and temples were constructed by the Moslem conqueror from the splendid relics of Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Sassanian, and Indian civilization. Great capitals rose near the sites of cities whose origin was lost in antiquity, whose history went back to the beginning of the world. These works, while they displayed rather the consciousness of power than the evidences of taste, were eminently useful in laying the foundation of new forms of architecture, whose decorations were to exhibit forms of unparalleled magnificence and beauty. The plans of these structures were at first of the simplest character, their ornamentation coarse and barbaric. It was only when the supply of materials, great as it was, became exhausted, and the Arab architect was restricted to the efforts of his own unaided genius, that was developed that peculiar style, which, differing in its arrangement in every country, yet preserved a general resemblance in all, a type suggestive of the poetic rhapsodies of the Koran and[539] the exigencies of a system of domestic seclusion and mystery; whose luxury recalled, by contrast, the heat and privations of the Desert; whose legends breathed a spirit of pious resignation and gratitude; whose adornments bewildered the eye with their complexity of form and variety of color; whose apartments were admirably contrived for the gratification of all the caprices of unbridled indulgence. The intimate connections and common belief of the different portions of the great Moslem empire disseminated far and wide the various stores of learning and experience acquired by each; the principles of every branch of art became more thoroughly understood, and their application facilitated and promoted through the encouragement afforded by increasing wealth and royal liberality. The early predilection displayed by the Arab student for the exact sciences contributed largely to the development and perfection of architectural excellence.
At first, the art of building had been merely constructive, without embellishment, merit, or originality; the materials, the plunder of antiquity; the style, a feeble and debased imitation of the simplest parts of those noble piles which had been the admiration and the glory of the ancient world. Familiarity with these models, acquaintance with the principles of mathematical science, a spirit of emulation excited by the hope of substantial reward, erelong produced a race of builders whose creations denote a new and splendid epoch in the history of architecture. As in the beginning, no conditions could have been more unfavorable to the development of this art; in the end, on the contrary, no people ever attained to greater distinction in the graceful outlines, the exquisite beauty, the elaborate decoration of their edifices. The importance of these results is manifest from the circumstance that they were ordinarily achieved by the[540] use of the most homely materials and by the application of the simplest rules of geometry.
The Arabs of Africa and Spain usually employed in their more massive constructions a conglomerate material composed of lime, clay, and pebbles, called “tabbi” or “tapia,” which was well known to the Romans and is mentioned by Pliny. This mixture, which formed the body of the edifice and in time acquired an extraordinary solidity and hardness, was often faced with dressed stone or a coating of cement, which united compactly with the central mass, and whose excellent quality is attested by specimens of masonry that have existed, practically intact, for the long period of eleven centuries. In some instances, large bricks, often deeply grooved to admit the mortar, were used instead of tapia; in others, the entire wall was composed of hewn stone; the Mosque of Cordova presents examples of all three of these methods of construction. Where the clay of the material contained oxide of iron, which was sometimes the case, it imparted to the building a delicate tint, like that of the petals of a rose, as in the Alhambra, which derived its name from the color of its walls.
The excellent preservation which characterizes the Moorish monuments of the Peninsula after centuries of spoliation and neglect attests the substantial nature of their foundations, and the care and skill which must have been employed in their erection. Many of these structures, from their massive proportions, their projecting buttresses, their elevated towers and bristling ramparts, suggested rather a defensive fortress than the abode of princely luxury or a temple dedicated to the God of mercy and of peace. While no creed was so much abhorred by the Arab as that of the Magi, still he did not disdain to crown the summits of his mosques and minarets with the flame-shaped battlements of Persia, emblematic of the adoration[541] of Fire. The Mosque of Cordova, the Giralda of Seville, and many of the edifices of Northern Africa display this striking and favorite ornament, which was preserved throughout the entire Moslem domination in the Peninsula, and glitters alike in the mosaics of the Alhambra, in the golden embroidery of textile fabrics, and among the rich and splendid illuminations of the Koran.
In both the strengthening and the embellishment of his work, no artist ever made use of the arch with greater effect than did the Moslem. The variations of its curve indicate successively the different phases assumed by Hispano-Arab architecture from the eighth to the fifteenth century. Some of its adaptations, for instance, that of the ajimez, or double window divided by slender columns, probably originated in Moorish Spain, whose buildings offer exquisite examples of its employment for the combined purposes of utility and decoration. The earliest arch, and the one most frequently adopted during the Ommeyade Khalifate, was the horseshoe form, whose symbolic derivation ascends to the primitive ages of phallicism and recalls the homage once paid to the vivifying principles of Nature. The emblems of that worship, a worship whose impressions Christianity could modify but was unable to extirpate, were, from the earliest times, regarded as potent talismans against every species of malign or demoniac influence. In the Middle Ages, European Christians wore these emblems as amulets; they carved them upon the altars of their shrines; they perpetuated them in their spires and the pinnacles of their cathedrals; they revered them in the sacred forms of the cross and the crucifix. It has been from time immemorial a custom in Northern Africa to place by the entrances of houses, as a security against the evil-eye, the symbol familiar to Hindu superstition as the Yoni. From this ancient[542] practice was derived the sweeping curve of the ultra-semicircular arch, which occupies such an important place in Arab architecture, and whose appearance was considered an augury of good fortune to all who passed the portals of Moslem palace, mosque, or private residence. The facility of modification which this object affords has caused it to be represented under a great variety of forms; and the persistence of a custom whose origin is popularly unknown and whose peculiar significance has long been forgotten is demonstrated by the practice of fixing a horseshoe above the doors of dwellings, as a sign of auspicious greeting, still prevalent in many parts of the world.
The other Indian symbol, the Lingam, sculptured upon the eternal rock-temples of Hindustan, carried by the Egyptian priests in solemn procession during the festivals of Osiris, carved upon the Roman Termini, and fashioned into the crest of the cap peculiar to the Doges of Venice, it may be added, appears, to-day, delineated with startling fidelity to nature upon the coinage of the most practical and progressive of modern nations,—the United States of America.
The survival of the emblems and ceremonies of phallicism in both the Christian and Mohammedan systems demonstrates the ineradicable influence that worship has always maintained over the superstitious of every class, a class whose members are generally the most zealous for those observances which they do not comprehend; and presents one of the most curious and entertaining episodes in the annals of human inconsistency and unquestioning devotion.
The employment of the arch, at first solely utilitarian, with the progressive development of artistic conceptions, became in the end merely a means of architectural adornment. The effect of the delicate filigree arcades of the Alhambra, whose fragile materials[543] seem inadequate to support the cornices and entablatures apparently resting upon them, is illusory; they are mere structural fictions of the Moorish designer. A regular series of progressions is traceable from the bold horseshoe sweep of the early khalifate, through the engrailed, the slightly pointed, the polyfoil, the ogival arches, to the highly ornate and graceful curves of the palace of the Alhamares. Throughout all its modifications, however, certain characteristics survived; among them the spring of one or several arches from a bracket formed by the moulding of the capital, an arrangement peculiar to Arab architecture, and preserved long after the arch had ceased to be an essential element of its construction. Every variation of the segment of a circle which human ingenuity could devise furnished new resources to the Arab. The horseshoe form was more or less pronounced; the Roman received fresh embellishment at his hands; the ogival was plain, festooned, or serrated. The columns were unusually slender, after their type had been definitely established; in the edifices first erected, they were necessarily dissimilar in dimensions, in material, in form, in color, and in ornamentation, constituting, as they did, the spoil of a hundred edifices, collected in many and widely separated countries. In the Mosque of Cordova, the most striking instance of this indiscriminate employment of the plunder of antiquity, the columns had no bases, and were disposed at random without regard to the rules of architectural symmetry.
The weight of evidence seems to fully justify the opinion that the ogival or pointed arch, whose adaptation is so prominent a feature of Gothic construction, was introduced into Europe either through Sicily or Spain. Its invention cannot be attributed to the Arabs. It was known in Asia long before the time of Mohammed. It appears in the ruined palace of[544] the Persian kings at Ctesiphon. It is by no means certain that it was not used in Sicily before the invasion of the Arabs. The latter were familiar with its form before the ninth century, for it was employed extensively in the Mosque of Tulun at Cairo.
The capital offers as great a variety in form and decoration as the arch; in some, the Corinthian, in others, the Composite order, prevailed; many again presented the most ornate and fantastic patterns, examples of the florid and decadent taste of Constantinople; in the last period golden inscriptions from the Koran in the graceful Arabic script replaced the Ionian volute and the classic acanthus.
In the art of mural decoration the Arab stands alone and unrivalled. The exterior of his edifices, as a rule, was bare and sombre, but within, the glowing imagination of the artist revelled in a myriad forms of exquisite taste and beauty. A religious system, whose simple doctrines appealed rather to the heart than to the senses; social customs, whose jealous observance forbade even the appearance of publicity, screened from the eyes of the curious the celebration of religious ceremonies and the instructive exhibition of domestic life and manners. For these reasons, few openings appeared in Moslem dwellings; windows were discouraged by the traditions of the harem; a single door was generally considered sufficient; and even the approaches to the mosques, whose crowds of worshippers necessitated many entrances, were so contrived that the interiors were not visible from the street.
In some cases where the peculiar sacredness of the structure appeared to justify a prodigality of adornment, the Spanish Arab departed from the rule which he ordinarily observed. The twenty-one portals of the great temple of Cordova were surmounted by ornamental panels, composed of bricks and stucco disposed[545] in arabesque designs, one of the earliest forms of this charming method of mural decoration. Here also are exhibited the first examples of the marble lattice, whose interstices admit the air but exclude the light; and of the ajimez, or niche-shaped window, with its sweeping border and diminutive columns of verde-antique and alabaster. Carved in the lattices and mingled with the Persian ornaments of the doorways is to be seen the ancient suastika, or Sanskrit cross, symbolic of happiness and moral regeneration, and revered by the Aryan race as a precious talisman more than a thousand years before the Christian era. The recurrence of this emblem upon the walls of a Semitic temple—now dedicated to a worship to which the tenets of both Mohammedan and Hindu are equally abhorrent—is ironically suggestive of the instability of religious institutions. Another singular circumstance is the appearance of the Latin cross upon some of the capitals, unquestionably sculptured there before the erection of the building. When the antipathy of Moslems to the Christian emblem of salvation is remembered, this fact becomes not only extraordinary, but inexplicable. The Giralda of Seville, now believed to have been raised as a memorial of conquest, and to have served the double purpose of minaret and observatory, in the eyes of the Andalusian Moslems only inferior in sanctity to the Djalma of Cordova, displays, to a remarkable degree, the talent of the Moorish artist in the work of mural embellishment. Its majestic proportions, the unique and lavish character of its ornamentation, extended its renown to the uttermost regions of the East and made it the architectural pride and glory of Mohammedan Spain. Both it and the Mosque of Cordova are known to have been painted; the interstices of the elegant tracery of brick arabesques which covers its sides are said to have presented the brilliant hues of scarlet and[546] azure, while the projecting designs were gilded, the whole forming a blazing mass of color whose combinations must have produced an inconceivably gorgeous effect.
The Byzantine derivation of many of the characteristics of early Hispano-Arab architecture is emphasized in the Giralda, whose construction, aside from its decorations, is almost the counterpart of that of the Campanile of Venice, with which it was practically contemporaneous. Inclined planes, or ramps, instead of stairways, afford, in both, access to the summit; and, while the Giralda is by far the more beautiful, their general similarity in plan, dimensions, and appearance cannot fail to impress the most heedless observer.
On the two principal structures of Moorish Spain devoted to the service of religion, the use of enamelled tiles as an element of external decoration, an art whose latest adaptations were also peculiar to the Arab and which was subsequently carried to such a degree of perfection, is first to be remarked. The Mosque affords but a few coarse and ill-arranged specimens; those of the Giralda are of far superior material and finish, and from the comparatively small number remaining we can form some idea of the appearance of this magnificent tower when, intact, its summit was girdled with these brilliant ornaments, whose polished surfaces flashed like jewels in the Andalusian sunlight.
The improvement in the manufacture and disposition of encaustic tiles is an index of the progress of the Spanish Moslems in the mechanical arts, as well as in the application of the principles of architectural ornamentation. During the final period of their dominion in the Peninsula, the use of tilework was practically confined to interiors, and it was in the Alhambra that it attained its highest development. In the[547] bewildering complexity of patterns, in the accuracy with which their minute pieces are united, in the variety of colors, and in the exquisite taste with which they are combined, the mosaics of that palace are absolutely unapproachable by any similar work which has ever been produced by human skill. Their surfaces have all the brilliancy and polish of the finest porcelain. The edges of fragments which have been detached show marks of the file, evidence of the painstaking and conscientious labors of the Moorish artisan. These enamels are remarkable not only for their elegance, but for the radical difference which they present to the mosaics employed during the existence of the Khalifate of Cordova. The latter were not ceramic, but were prepared by laying the colors upon the wall, and then covering them with minute cubes of glass embedded in a transparent cement.
The Mihrab of the Great Mosque shows what results can be accomplished by this simple process. In its rich panels, arches, and cupolas, in the belts of inscriptions glowing with a score of brilliant hues, in the graceful interlacing arabesques, the crystal mosaics, in themselves imperishable, shine with undiminished lustre after a lapse of more than nine hundred years. The most celebrated productions of this description extant in the churches and mosques of Constantinople and in the cathedrals of Venice and Ravenna bear no comparison, save in the character of the materials employed, to those which adorn the sanctuary of the famous Moslem temple. The designs were undoubtedly traced by Arab artists, whose versatility is disclosed by their extraordinary proficiency in an art with which they must have been hitherto unfamiliar, and in whose successful manipulation they surpassed the masterpieces of Byzantine genius. No explanation has been given to account for the[548] sudden disuse of a method of architectural embellishment at its culmination, in an example which has called forth the praise of thirty generations; but it is a well-established fact that, after the destruction of the khalifate in the tenth century, the employment of Byzantine mosaics, the most exquisite of the ornamental processes known to the Spanish Arabs, disappeared forever from the Peninsula. It may have been that its exotic derivation was to some extent responsible for its sudden and absolute extinction. The soseifesa, from the Greek ψήφοσις, “made of little stones,” as this mosaic was known to the Moors, was a distinctive product of Byzantine ingenuity. The material destined for the Mosque, as well as the workmen skilled in its use, were sent to the Khalif Al-Hakem II. by the Greek Emperor of Constantinople; and it was from these foreigners that the Moors learned the leading principles of an art which, long practised on the shores of the Bosphorus, had now become familiar to many cities of the Mediterranean coast. The jealous pride of the Arab—who was not averse to borrowing architectural ideas from different nations that were his masters in the science of construction, and many of which bowed under his yoke as tributaries—revolted perhaps at the open appropriation of an entire system from an enemy of his religion, and especially at the confession of intellectual inferiority that such an act might imply.
In the perfection of enamelled mosaics, however, his originality was undisputed; his artistic conceptions were untrammelled; and the proofs of his creative genius are written upon walls and columns which have excited the admiring wonder of architectural critics from countries unknown to both Europe and Asia at the date of their completion. The dadoes of the Alhambra, its pavement and its roofs, before systematic neglect and vandalism had accomplished their[549] destructive work, undoubtedly presented a spectacle of unique and dazzling splendor. The total disappearance of at least one-third of the palace, and the shameless mutilation of the rest, have unfortunately deprived the architect of standards of comparison at different epochs, by which the various steps in the progressive development of the application of encaustic tiles might be definitely traced.
The most distinguishing characteristic of Arabic mural ornamentation, however, is the stucco work, which seems to have been of contemporaneous origin with the earliest monuments of the khalifate. Such was its prodigious improvement that specimens of the rude tracery executed in the eighth century on the walls of the Djalma of Cordova, and the delicate, lace-like effects produced in the fourteenth by the builders of the Alhambra, bear to each other scarcely a single point of resemblance. The secret of the composition of this material, which in time became as hard and durable as stone, is lost. It is supposed to have been made of pulverized marble, lime, and gypsum, mixed in certain proportions with the whites of eggs, and then, while in an almost fluid condition, run into moulds. It contained some substance noxious to all insects, for neither flies nor spiders are ever noticed on the walls of the Moorish palace. This singular property, which has contributed as much as any other cause to the preservation of this precious monument of Arab art, has been attributed by popular tradition to the presence of garlic in the mortar; but the odor of that plant, however pungent, must certainly have been dissipated in the course of years; and no substance known to modern chemistry will, if exposed to atmospheric influences, retain for centuries its qualities unimpaired. The moulding of the stucco ornaments facilitated their reproduction, and the multiplication of an infinite variety of designs. Of the[550] latter, Contreras counted one hundred and fifty-two, all different, in a single apartment, the Hall of Comares in the Alhambra. Their effect was that of the richest embroidered tapestry, an illusion heightened by the hangings of embossed and painted leather often suspended beneath them. The peculiar textile resemblance of Arab mural decoration owed its origin to the drapery of the tent, and is a reminiscence of the nomadic life of the Desert.
In the presence of this gorgeous embroidery in stone, now resembling tissues of silken and gold brocade, and again assuming the delicate texture of lace, whose filmy and transparent meshes almost seem to move with every passing breeze, all appearance of solidity is lost. This pleasing artistic deception extends even to the construction of the arches, which appear to sustain the weights resting upon their curves by the influence of some mysterious principle unknown to the laws of mechanics. The explanation of the apparent phenomenon, however, disclosed a method as simple as it is ingenious. Upon the capitals were placed light but strong wooden beams, which, covered with plaster, were lost in the maze of ornament, while they formed the real support of the arcades whose substantial character is demonstrated by their successful resistance to the violence of the elements and the vandalism of man through many centuries. The interiors of the apartments of public institutions and royal habitations were covered with this kind of ornament disposed in high relief, and in which the stalactitic or pendentive vault—original with the Moorish architect—constituted a most attractive and prominent feature.
It would be impossible to enumerate the wonderful variety of forms which this plastic material was made to assume under the skilful manipulation of the artist. Diminutive colonnades, surmounted by delicate engrailed[551] arches, medallions, festoons and wreaths, the armorial bearings and mottoes of the Alhamares, Arabic texts and legends which can be read from right or left with equal facility, and geometrical designs, whose elements are susceptible of an infinite number of changes and combinations, are the salient points which strike the eye and appeal to the imagination in those palatial halls which in their original condition must have exhibited a magnificence which baffled all description.
The stalactitic patterns, in whose elegant arrangement and marvellous diversity the constructive genius of the Moor especially delighted, were applied, not only to the cupolas, but in the angles along the frieze and upon the plane surface of the walls. The domes of the principal chambers of the Alhambra are entirely composed of these pendentives, whose pieces, in the most elaborate of their examples of artistic taste, number many thousand. The tenacity and strength of the material was vastly increased by the use of twigs and rushes buried in the fresh and yielding mortar, which was fastened to a wooden framework by nails plated with tin, which even now, when exposed to the air, show no evidence of corrosion.
With the exception of the columns, so conspicuous a peculiarity of Arabic construction, marble was sparingly used, although the quarries of Spain had been renowned from the highest antiquity for the quantity and excellence of their products. While a difference of opinion prevails among antiquaries upon this point, it is reasonably certain that the columns supporting the arcades of the Alhambra were originally gilded. In the Hall of Justice some of them are encased in mosaic, which produces an unique, if not a pleasing, effect.
Of equal originality and magnificence were the ceilings and the doors of the grand Moorish edifices. The[552] art of marquetry offered to the Arab workman a field in which his characteristic love of detail and intricate combinations, aided by his unflagging industry, found full expression. In the buildings of the khalifate, the ceilings, instead of being either flat or vaulted, usually conformed in number and inclination to the roofs, which in the Mosque were nineteen, one for every nave. The rafters, carved upon three sides, enclosed spaces forming a regular series of panels painted with brilliant colors, and whose mouldings and other elevated portions were covered with gold. The woodwork was not infrequently inlaid with rare and precious substances, such as ebony and ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell, lazulite, and various gems. In the later periods of the Moslem domination, the same materials were used, but more correct ideas of architectural construction governed their disposition. The primitive angular ceilings were supplanted by the hemispherical dome, whose surface, covered with superb geometrical tracery, blazing with vermilion, blue, and gold, displayed, in all its perfection, the utmost skill of the Moorish artisan. The doors and the lattices of the harem corresponded in style and workmanship with the ornamented interiors of the buildings, and it was not unusual for a single lattice which screened an opening but a few feet square to contain fifteen hundred pieces, combined in many complex and graceful geometrical patterns. The mimbar and the lectern of the Mosque of Cordova, already described in these pages, whose odoriferous and precious woodwork was fastened together with golden nails and enriched with jewels,—long the pride of the faithful and now the subject of the fruitless speculations of the historian,—were also examples of Arab marquetry produced in the very infancy of that art. The perfection subsequently attained in the carving of hard woods, which were often inlaid with arabesques[553] in gold, silver, and copper, has never been surpassed.
In Sicily, less fortunate in this respect than Spain, not a single well-authenticated edifice of the Mohammedan domination is known to exist. The two great structures—the Ziza and the Cuba—in the vicinity of Palermo, assigned by doubtful authority to the tenth century, and certainly remodelled, if not entirely reconstructed, by the Normans, are the only examples by which we can form any conception of the architecture of a kingdom not inferior to the Cordovan khalifate in everything that implies an advanced state of intellectual culture and civilization. Their proportions are bold and massive; their exteriors, while by no means ornate, are decorated with a series of lofty recessed arches extending from the foundation to the frieze, the latter being formed by an Arabic inscription of gigantic dimensions which cannot now be deciphered. These buildings, with the exception of a few mosaics and some stalactitic ornamentation evidently of the time of the Normans, possess none of the distinguishing features of contemporaneous Saracenic architecture, a fact which has cast a well-founded suspicion upon their imputed Arab origin. The unprotected situation of Sicily, which exposed it to the incursions of every marauder, its succession of semi-barbarous rulers, its long and bloody civil wars, the unrelenting hostility of the See of Rome to everything connected with Mohammedanism, may account for the total disappearance of the superb architectural monuments which history informs us abounded during the Moslem rule. The same fate has befallen the productions of the mechanical and industrial arts, none of which, of any importance, or, indeed, of established authenticity, are preserved in either national museums or private collections. The memorials of Moslem civilization in Sicily, of which[554] such copious and interesting details survive in the works of contemporaneous native authors, have therefore been practically annihilated. The absolute dearth of these objects of architectural and artistic ingenuity is the more extraordinary when the magnitude of the manufacturing and commercial interests of mediæval Sicily, the protection and encouragement afforded the Moslems by their conquerors, and the close relations they sustained with neighboring countries are considered.
The military structures of Mohammedan Spain exhibit the same general characteristics as do the other surviving examples of defensive architecture during the Middle Ages. As might be supposed from the purposes for which they were destined, and from their exposure to the uninterrupted warfare of many centuries, they have undergone radical changes, and at this distance of time it is usually impossible to determine which portions are of Arabic and which of Castilian origin. The only perfect surviving exemplar of Moorish fortification in the Peninsula is the Gate of the Sun at Toledo. The defensive works of the Spanish Arab were generally on an immense scale, and their construction was in strict conformity with the best known principles of military engineering. The walls were of great thickness and solidity, the towers square and disposed at frequent intervals, as, for instance, those of Granada, whose lines of circumvallation, while not of extraordinary extent, contained more than thirteen hundred. Covered ways and barbicans provided with battlements defended the approaches and protected the fortress itself from sudden and unexpected assault. The citadel, which frequently enclosed a considerable area, and whose precincts presented the appearance of a diminutive city, was at once the seat of the court with its numerous retinue, the head-quarters of the army, and the depository[555] of the products of the mint and the arsenal. It communicated by means of subterranean passages, known only to certain officials of the government, with the other defences, and always with the outer wall of the city, thus affording a speedy and unsuspected means of escape in time of conspiracy or insurrection. With the exception of the Gate of the Sun at Toledo, Moorish citadels exhibit little attempt at ornamentation; the serious and important destination of these gigantic works is realized in their frowning aspect and their massive walls, which offered neither temptation nor opportunity for the exercise of decorative skill. Water was provided for the garrison not only by immense cisterns, but by galleries cut for long distances through the solid rock, below the bed of the stream which usually encircled the eminences upon which these strongholds were erected. Occasionally, when the situation of a tower afforded unusual security, its interior was finished with all the pomp and beauty of a royal residence.
The mosque, one of the most characteristic types of Arab architecture, preserved to the last in its plan and principles of construction the striking peculiarities of its origin. Although its design has been supposed to have been derived from the basilica, there can be little doubt that it was modelled after the Hebrew temple. Its rectangular form, its rows of colonnades, its mihrab, corresponding to the holy of holies, the fountains for ceremonial lustration, are all suggestive of the numerous points of resemblance existing between the Moslem and the Jewish faith. In spite of inherited prejudice, but a vague and ill-defined boundary has always separated these two great divisions of the Semitic race, which trace their common origin to Abraham. The simple luxuries of the Desert were commemorated, not only by the grateful sound of rippling waters, but by the perfume and the[556] shade of the orange-trees of the court, which refreshed the senses of the worshipper and suggested to his vivid imagination dreams of a material and voluptuous paradise. The moderate height of the building exaggerated its already vast dimensions; the eye, bewildered by the forest of columns, vainly attempted to penetrate its interminable depths; and the impression of the infinite was heightened by superimposed tiers of interlacing arches, whose combinations recalled the graceful foliage of their prototype, the palm grove of Arabia.
The Moorish architecture of the Peninsula, as the reader has no doubt already observed, is remarkable rather for elegance than for grandeur. It was not like that of Egypt, dependent for its effect upon the lofty, the imposing, the colossal. The spirit of Grecian art, which found expression in structures whose perfect symmetry of form and correctness of detail have never been equalled, furnished to the Arab architect none of those artistic conceptions which were the inspiration of painters, sculptors, and builders in subsequent ages. The genius of the Arab was in general rather adaptive than creative, rather imitative than original. But while many of its ideas can be traced to the examples of former civilizations, a people who profited by and improved upon the suggestions of a score of races can hardly be said to have borrowed from any. While art, especially as applied to architecture, is an infallible index of the sentiments and mental peculiarities of the people by whom it is developed, none can claim absolute originality for its productions; all are necessarily dependent upon their predecessors for much of the creative influence by which they are actuated. This is particularly true of the Arabs of the Occident. Every nation of antiquity as well as of the contemporaneous world paid intellectual tribute to the great Moslem Empire of the[557] West. Its mosques were Jewish, its fortifications Roman, its minarets Byzantine. The finest ornamentation of the exterior of its magnificent temple was derived from Ctesiphon, that of the interior from Constantinople. Its stuccoes came from Syria, its enamels from ancient Nineveh. The infinite combinations of its geometrical designs and its method of hanging doors had been familiar to the Egyptians three thousand years before they were employed in Spain. The capitals of the earliest columns are clumsy imitations of Grecian models. The researches of antiquaries have disclosed the germ of the pendentive vault in Persia, and the carved and painted ceiling of wood was used in the Orient long before the appearance of Mohammed. Even rubble-work, the basis of every kind of Arabic architecture, was a process which had been adopted in the construction of edifices from a remote antiquity.
Hispano-Arab architecture is ordinarily divided for convenience into three arbitrary and ill-defined periods,—the age of its origin, embracing the works attributable to the Ommeyade Khalifate; the age of its transition, which includes all constructions erected by the principalities which arose after the dismemberment of the Moslem empire; and the age of its culmination, which began with the rise of the independent kingdom of Granada in the thirteenth century and closed with the unrivalled excellence of the Alhambra. The monuments of the first period, of which the Mosque of Cordova is the most striking, and, indeed, practically the sole perfect exemplar, are widely scattered and incomplete.
The sumptuous edifices which abounded in every city have disappeared or have been mutilated almost beyond recognition. Barbaric violence has annihilated the palaces which lined the Guadalquivir, and whose richness and beauty were the admiration of[558] the world. Ecclesiastical malignity has demolished to their very foundations or sedulously effaced the characteristics of the innumerable temples raised for the propagation of a hostile religion, and the extent of this systematic enmity may be inferred from the suggestive fact that of the seven hundred mosques required for the worship of the Moslem capital, but one has survived. Diligent antiquarian research has failed to establish even the sites of all but three or four of the remainder, of whose existence and splendor both history and tradition afford abundant and indisputable evidence. The ignorance and prejudice of successive generations have, in addition to the above-named destructive agencies, contributed their share, and no unimportant one, to the obliteration of these memorials of Arab taste and ingenuity.
The Mosque of Cordova represents every phase of Arabian constructive and decorative art during the period of two centuries which elapsed between its foundation and completion. It is, therefore, to that extent an architectural epitome of the development of Moslem civilization, in which, in a measure, can be deciphered the history of the race under whose auspices it was erected and adorned. While the technically independent character of Moorish architecture in the Peninsula has been long established, its originality is, as has already been stated, for the most part dependent upon ingenious combinations of elements afforded by the examples of former civilized nations. This fact becomes evident when the various portions of the Great Mosque are examined in detail, and is especially apparent in the magnificent decorations of the sanctuary. Here, while the plan and the designs were clearly of Arabic origin, the materials and the method of their application, and, indeed, even some of the artisans, were Byzantine. But these precious mosaics bear but little resemblance to those of contemporaneous[559] Christian churches, which were identical with them in composition and in the manner of attaching them to the walls. What in the one instance seems the perfection of artistic beauty and excellence, in the others appears glaring, harsh, and grotesque; the sublime artistic genius, alone capable of creating these marvels, is absent. The Mihrab of the Mosque of Cordova had no prototype in Islam or elsewhere, and both its plan and details have defied all imitation.
The evolution of Arabic art in Spain is one of the most curious problems in the annals of its exotic civilization. Its origin and the impulse that first prompted its development, as well as the principal models from which it obtained its ideas, are buried in obscurity. No country in Europe contains such a variety of gigantic and well-preserved memorials of Roman imperial greatness as the Peninsula. But with the exception of the city walls and the castles, there is no evidence that the Arabs were ever so impressed with their grandeur as to make even an ineffectual attempt to imitate them. The isolation of Mohammedan Spain, whose dominant sect was discredited, and whose dynasty was proscribed by the ruling Houses of Syria and Persia, was long unfavorable to the maintenance of those relations by means of which an interchange of ideas and the rapid progress of a nation in the arts of peace is ordinarily effected. The steps by which the architectural conceptions of many Oriental nations became the inspiration of the builders of the Western Khalifate are therefore undiscernible. It is possible, however, that these ideas, apparently borrowed but developed under similar conditions along the same lines of thought, are after all original. The great importance attached by the Arabs to mathematics, in the study of which they attained to such unrivalled proficiency, must, as already suggested, have contributed more to architectural[560] improvement than any other cause. The application of algebra to geometry—an invention ascribed, with a considerable degree of certainty, to the Spanish Moslems—immeasurably facilitated the development of every art dependent upon mechanical and mathematical conditions, and none is more indebted to it, in this respect, than the art of construction. Long anterior to the tenth century, the epoch of the most advanced civilization of the khalifate, the schools of Cordova, Seville, Valencia, Malaga, and Toledo gave instruction in geometry, drawing, and other branches of mathematics pertaining to architecture, the lessons being supplemented by practical demonstrations of the application of their principles under the direction of experienced masters. Under such circumstances, the standard of Moorish taste was formed, and its ideas of constructive excellence definitely established in the first and most important stage of its development. The genius which inspired its early creations, the dreams which spurred on its youthful ambition, were never lost until the crowning glory of its achievements fell before the conqueror, and its artisans and their productions alike were trampled in the dust by the ruthless chivalry of Castile.
The age of transition has left no memorials from which an intelligent idea of its progress can be obtained. The Giralda of Seville is the only one which exists in tolerable preservation, and it affords an example of exterior ornamentation alone. In the Alcazar may be observed labors which were evidently completed at different epochs; but no information is available of the dates at which they were executed, nor can it now be ascertained how much is of Arab origin and how much should be attributed to Mudejar influence. The damage this palace has suffered, and the material alterations it has undergone at the hands of monarchs[561] devoid of taste and of appreciation of the noble works of the Moors, have practically destroyed its identity, and have rendered it, on account of its absurd and incongruous additions and reparations, the despair of both the archeologist and the architect. The characteristics of Arabian art are better preserved and more easily traced in the edifices of Granada erected by the dynasty of the Alhamares, and which represent the final period of its development.
The Alhambra—a structure in whose luxurious elegance are embodied the results of seven centuries of progress—is the type and crowning triumph of this epoch. In its sumptuous apartments are to be found none of the peculiar features to be observed in the buildings of the first era of the Moslem domination; none of the severe dignity, the sombre majesty, the fatalistic conceptions, the tendency to exclude all but the simplest forms of ornamentation, which distinguish the earliest portions of the Djalma of Cordova. The horseshoe arch has disappeared or has been radically modified; its importance as a talisman is apparently no longer recognized; and it has given place to other symbols of less obscure origin and meaning. Here one of the most important of Koranic precepts is violated; animal forms are represented in paintings as well as in sculpture; and the curiosity of the artist is gratified by a delineation of physiognomy, costume, and manners, unique of its kind, and still abhorred as idolatrous by the orthodox zealots of the Mohammedan world. The conditions of domestic life, exacted by and dependent upon the traditions of the harem, are everywhere observed,—in the frowning exterior; in the isolated courts; in the guarded communications; in the ponderous doors; in the mysterious lattices; in the exquisite decorations; in the distribution of appliances for physical enjoyment which have exhausted the resources of Oriental luxury. The[562] Arabic love of variety and magnificence, so characteristic of an impulsive, a versatile, a highly romantic race, is visible on every side; in the arrangement of columns, now single, now grouped; some smooth, others belted with rings, the majority once covered with gilding, a few still encased in an enamel of sparkling mosaic; in the composite curves of the arches, each disclosing the distinctive traits of its original type,—horseshoe, ogival, semicircular,—some engrailed, others stalactitic, all of incomparable grace and symmetry; in the spandrels, at short distance, apparently identical, yet upon close inspection moulded in a score of fantastic designs, through whose lace-like interstices the rays of sunlight diffuse a mellowed glow; in the maze of polished tilework, whose bewildering combinations are but broken sections of the nine polygons of geometry, arranged by the aid of algebraic science; in the fretted walls with their gorgeous arabesques; in the intertwined mottoes, doubly legible; in the cupolas, whose decorations of azure, scarlet, and gold sparkle in the semi-obscurity of the interior like a setting of precious gems. The eye of the hypercritical architect sees in the Alhambra but a confused jumble of incongruous ideas; a construction without recognized precedent; a monument which belongs to no order of architecture, and which transgresses the established rules of that science as radically as the productions of many authors, whose genius is the delight of millions, do the unities of time and place, once universally considered the essentials of poetic excellence. But it is this very irregularity, this independence of the arbitrary and inflexible principles of art, that, to the unprofessional observer, constitutes its greatest charm. The originality of its component parts when analyzed may be disputed, but no question can arise as to the consummate skill that arranged and combined them in a whole, which, although[563] it may offend the canons of artistic criticism, if strictly construed, is yet beautiful, harmonious, enchanting. The famous Arabian palace is the masterpiece of the Moorish architects of Spain; the crowning achievement of the labors of twenty generations; the embodiment of the most elegant conceptions of the art, the industry, and the intellectual culture of that polished age. So long as the slightest portion of it survives, it will convey an instructive lesson to the student and the antiquary, and call up memories of that great empire, whose literary remains, whose scientific discoveries, whose large tolerance, whose inquiring spirit, were at once the harbingers and the incentives of modern civilized life. All that is valuable in the economic institutions of society, in its multitudinous inventions, in its facility of intercommunication, in the excellence of its fabrics, in the perfection of its agricultural operations, has long been recognized as dependent upon the practical and judicious application of the principles of science. Of these considerations, the Alhambra, which was the centre of the most accomplished and progressive community of the Middle Ages, is particularly suggestive. It is a monument of national genius. It is a symbol of national progress. It looked down upon the libraries which sheltered the fragments of that civilization whose learning had enlightened the mediæval world. In its halls the prodigal luxury of the Moorish princes daily exhibited exquisite specimens of the experience and dexterity of the artisans of the kingdom,—the masterpieces of the weaver, the cutler, the armorer, the jeweller, the enameller. Its painted battlements towered above the lists where Moslem and Christian knights had competed for the prize of chivalry and daring, bestowed by the emir surrounded by the pomp of arms and the beauty of the seraglio. Thus was the Alhambra the emblem of the greatness and[564] splendor of Granada, the boast of its monarchs, the wonder of strangers, the pride of the people. Its glory has departed, its lustre is tarnished, but the mournful traditions with which poetry and romance have invested its history can never pass away; and its fate is emphasized by the mottoes of the sovereigns who respectively founded and mutilated it, still emblazoned upon its walls, the arrogant vaunt of the Spaniard, “Plus Ultra;” the pious device of the Moor, “There is no conqueror but God.”
The injunction of Mohammed concerning the representation of animal forms was disregarded almost from the earliest days of Moslem dominion. Even before the tenth century, Mussulman artists who depicted living beings seem to have abounded in the countries subject to Islam. A biography of them is given by Makrisi, in which great talents are ascribed to those of Egypt. Their works were displayed not only in wood and stone, but on silk, velvet, and cloth of gold. The treasury of the Fatimite Khalif, Mostansir, contained peacocks and gazelles of life-size, made of the precious metals enriched with magnificent gems. Al-Amin, the son and successor of Harun-al-Raschid, possessed a number of magnificent barges, fashioned like birds and animals and painted in imitation of their living models, whose oarsmen were concealed from view. As these monsters, apparently instinct with life, moved mysteriously over the Tigris, they excited the astonishment of the multitude as inventions of the genii. From the statement of the great historian, Ibn-Khaldun, who visited Granada in 1363, the representation of well-known events, as well as of the features of distinguished personages on the walls of houses in that city, must have been common. He was greatly scandalized by this unorthodox custom, which, although deriving its origin from the Castilians, was constantly practised by those who called[565] themselves good Mussulmans, among whom were numbered many artists who had been instructed by the Byzantine and Persian residents of the capital.
Nor was sculpture, an art implying an even more flagrant violation of Koranic precept than that exhibited by the less conspicuous objects produced by the brush and the pencil, neglected by Mohammedans. Arabic histories are full of allusions to these productions. Khumaruyah, Sultan of Egypt, in the ninth century had a great hall in his palace filled with statues of the women of his harem. The knockers on the doors of many of the mansions of Bagdad were carved in the shapes of grotesque animals. Existing examples, few as they are, of the sculpture of the Hispano-Arab period show to what an extent religious prejudice was defied by the Mussulmans of Spain.
The doctors of the law disagreed as to the interpretation of the command of the Koran which banished from the realm of art one of its most useful and suggestive features. Some regarded it in the light of an absolute prohibition to be construed in its broadest significance; to others it seemed to refer only to the fabrication and worship of idols. The Spanish Arabs, who had greater liberality and a larger share of philosophical indifference than their Oriental brethren, apparently adhered to the latter opinion. At all events, the admonition generally respected as a cardinal principle of the orthodox believer was ignored from the very foundation of the khalifate, and even the sanctuary of Islam was defiled by the presence of sculptured forms of animal life; in the Great Mosque of Abd-al-Rahman, the Seven Sleepers and the raven despatched from the ark by Noah are chiselled upon the capitals; over the portal of Medina-al-Zahrâ stood the effigy of the beautiful favorite whose vanity had suggested the erection of that magnificent edifice; its principal fountain was embellished[566] with the figures of twelve different quadrupeds of gold incrusted with precious stones; in the designs of its rich hangings were interwoven wild beasts and birds of brilliant plumage, whose forms, delineated with amazing skill, appeared to move with the swaying of the silken tapestry; in one of the squares of the capital stood a lion, cast in bronze and plated with gold, whose eyes were rubies, and from whose mouth gushed the refreshing waters brought from the springs of the distant sierra. In the fairy palace of Rusafah, equal to its rival in the splendor of its appointments and inferior only in dimensions, silver swans floated upon the glossy surface of the lakes, and the fountains displayed the effigies of men and animals carved in marble and jasper by a cunning hand. The talismanic horseman of King Habus, described in history and immortalized by fiction, is another instance of this disregard of Koranic injunction, again confirmed by the two marble lions of the Moorish mint and by the famous twelve of the Alhambra.
But the most curious of these examples of violated law are the paintings upon the ceiling of the Hall of Justice in that palace, and which are supposed to have been executed during the fourteenth century. Two of them represent scenes of war and the chase, but no data survive by which it can be determined whether they are historic or legendary. The third contains portraits of ten kings of Granada, whose rank is indicated by the royal blazons represented in the central painting. The faces, sober, dignified, majestic, are evidently drawn from life, and a tradition exists that the features of some of them were recognized by old Moslems of Granada when, after the Reconquest, they were for the first time exposed to public inspection; while the turbans, the flowing robes of various colors, the swords with curious hilts and scabbards of gold and silver, the yellow slippers, at[567] once suggest the Orient; and place before the eye the exact costumes, and perhaps the lineaments, of those princes who long maintained in a corner of hostile Europe the legends, the belief, and the civilization of the Mohammedan world. These unique works are of Arabic origin, a fact established by the monograms traced upon them, which denote unmistakably the nationality of the artist. In numerous particulars they indicate lack of experience and cultivation. The figures are rudely delineated, the positions strained and awkward. None exhibit the slightest grace; some are absolutely grotesque; the colors are not distributed harmoniously; no attention is paid to the rules of perspective; the lines are sharply and unpleasantly defined; there is no symmetry of proportion, no dexterous imitation of those natural features which impart to a painting life and energy. The mechanical arrangement is as crude as the pictorial execution. Upon a wooden framework, pigskins were stretched and fastened, and over these a layer of gypsum was spread, forming the foundation for the colors. The flatness of the latter and the golden ground of the portraits are indications of Byzantine taste and influence.
Among the architectural decorations employed by Moorish artists, none were more popular or more susceptible of variety of arrangement and harmony of effect than those formed by the letters of the Arabic alphabet. The inscriptions on the walls of Moorish edifices constitute no inconsiderable part of their choicest ornamentation. Those of the Peninsula are principally devoted to mottoes of a religious nature or to legends illustrating the grandeur and munificence of the sovereign. In some instances, a poem, evidently composed for the purpose, and celebrating the virtues of the prince or the beauty of the building it adorned, glittered upon the panelled walls or encircled[568] the apartment with characters of living fire. The square Cufic letters used in the first buildings of the khalifate were eventually superseded by the graceful curves of the Neshki, of African script, which is seen in all its perfection in the Alhambra. So admirably are these characters adapted to the purposes of decoration that Spanish and Italian workmen, ignorant of their significance and supposing them to be arabesques, have frequently inserted Koranic inscriptions among the carvings of Christian churches; and it is said that they are even to be seen upon the proud façade of St. Peter’s at Rome. What a circumstance of exquisite irony it would be, as a French writer pertinently suggests, if, over the portal of the grandest temple of Christendom, the fountain of trinitarian orthodoxy, the stronghold of Catholicism, the seat of the infallible Vicar of Christ, should be found inscribed the Mohammedan declaration of faith proclaiming the mission of the Arabian Prophet and the unity of God!
The colors most affected by the Spanish-Moslem in his interior decorations were vermilion and ultramarine, both esteemed by artists as much for durability as for brilliancy; and the permanence of those used by the Moors of Granada, whose vivid tints have been perfectly preserved through the lapse of ages, attest their extraordinary purity and excellence. While these remained the basis of artistic coloring, others—such as green, black, yellow, and purple—were sparingly employed, excepting in the mosaics, which blaze with a mingled mass of gorgeous hues.
No feature of Moslem civilization has lingered more persistently in the Peninsula than its architecture. The scanty knowledge of the Visigothic builder was swept away by the Conquest. The pride of the Castilian, bred to arms and incompetent by education and experience, revolted at the restraints and drudgery incident to such an occupation. As a result, Arabic[569] artisans constructed most of the edifices erected for years after the fall of the Saracen power, and the predominance of their artistic ideas gave rise to a new style called Mudejar, whose creations are often difficult to distinguish from those of the original Moorish order. No more flattering tribute can be paid to their accomplishments than the circumstance that no class of buildings profited so much by their talents as those erected under the auspices of the Church. After the capture of Cordova by the Castilians, Moorish masons and carpenters were compelled to work for a specified period every year on these sacred structures, in consideration of which they were exempted from the payment of taxes. Turbaned artificers, vassals of the clergy, assisted in the construction of some of the noblest piles of the Peninsula; the walls of great monasteries, the windows of lofty spires, exhibit the engrailed and horseshoe arches of the Moor; his skill was exercised in the chiselling of the intricate designs which cover the fronts of magnificent cathedrals; a chapel in the grand metropolitan church of Toledo, the seat of the Primate of Spain, which dates from the thirteenth century, is a beautiful specimen of Mudejar art. This influence is also apparent in many of the finest ecclesiastical edifices of France,—in the churches of Maguelonne, in the cathedral of Puy, and in the ancient abbeys of Provence and Languedoc. It is said by Dulaure, in his “Histoire de Paris,” that Moorish architects assisted in the construction of Notre Dame.
The absence of all remains of sepulchral architecture dating from the Mohammedan period deprives posterity of one of the most reliable standards by which the customs, the sentiments, and the characteristics of a nation may be determined. In common with all Semitic races, the Arabs seldom reared imposing monuments to the dead. No trace of a tomb which[570] enclosed the body of any of the Ommeyade khalifs has been discovered; the very place of their erection was lost in the tempest of ruin which accompanied the Almoravide conquest. The few existing in the Alhambra were simple marble sarcophagi, without ornament, upon whose lids were sculptured long inscriptions in letters of gold on a ground of blue. Of these slabs but one remains, for the tombs, abandoned to the curiosity of the rabble when Granada was taken, perished, and the bones of the princes who had illumined all Europe by their genius and learning were unceremoniously cast outside the walls.
Deprived to a great extent of the artistic resources to be obtained from the representation of the forms of animal life, the Moslem utilized with unrivalled skill the segments of geometrical figures and the graceful foliage of the vegetable world for the manifold purposes of decoration. Every line in the complex designs of mosaic is the side or the curve of a polygon, a circle, or an ellipse; the eminently beautiful domes of wood and of stucco were suggested by the symmetrical productions of nature,—the hemispherical were modelled after the section of an orange, by which name they were known to the Arab; the stalactitic were striking adaptations of the pomegranate divested of its seeds. The arabesques are but reproductions of vines and tendrils combined in wonderful mazes of tracery; the lotus, that sacred emblem of India and Egypt whose mysterious significance was long a secret of the sacerdotal office, is sculptured upon panel, cornice, and capital; the rose nestles amidst the entwined ornamentation of the walls; the frondage of the palm is simulated by the sweeping arches which cross and intersect like the drooping branches of the date-forests of the Nile. By other classes of natural and inanimate objects, by the jewels of the firmament, and by the denizens of the sea, was[571] contributed the inspiration that imparted to architectural adornment its choicest forms of elegance and beauty. The great marble shell, fifteen feet in diameter and carved from a single block, which covers the sanctuary of the Mosque of Cordova, is one of the most curious and highly finished works that ever proceeded from the chisel of the Moslem sculptor. Its fidelity to nature, its perfect proportions, the striking position it occupies, render it one of the most interesting objects in the ancient temple whose holy of holies it embellishes. Stars are scattered in endless profusion throughout the Alhambra; in the centre of mosaic designs; through the belts of floral patterns which encompass the halls; in the lofty ceilings, where in the uncertain light their golden lustre recalls the sparkle of their originals on the spotless ground of the Southern heavens.
The painted windows, sparingly distributed in buildings erected by the jealous Moslem, were yet one of their most enchanting and characteristic features. No trace of them appears in the constructions of the khalifate; their existence during the age of transition is a matter of conjecture; and it is only in the last half of the final period of Hispano-Arab architecture that this art attained its highest development. The labors of the Gothic artist have from time immemorial been celebrated as the most perfect of their kind; and the jewelled designs whose tints illumine the aisles of mediæval cathedrals would seem to be of incomparable brilliancy of color and harmony of effect. And yet competent judges have pronounced that these superb works were rivalled, if not surpassed, by the rich and elegant combinations of Arabian genius. There is no reason to believe that the execution of the windows was inferior in beauty to the decoration of the walls; the same dexterity of hand, accuracy of eye, and correctness of taste must[572] have presided over both; and a glaring deficiency in any prominent part must have been prejudicial to all. The patience which was not exhausted by years of toil upon an object intended for the uses of the harem, and to be seen by comparatively few, would not be likely to neglect the designs whose gorgeous hues were a principal attraction of the palace, the ornament and the glory of the capital. The stained glass employed was of every color, and corresponded in pattern with the arabesques of the interiors; and the blazons and devices of royalty disposed at intervals through the mass of ornament reminded the observer of the greatness of the monarch under whose auspices the work was completed. The exquisite charm of these effects when combined with those of the walls and cupolas must be imagined, for no description can convey an adequate idea of their surpassing excellence.
Such was the rise, the progress, the culmination of architectural construction and embellishment in the states of Mohammedan Spain. The modifications—dependent upon economic conditions, upon wide and varied acquaintance with the masterpieces of other races, upon the development of more correct conceptions of the harmonious and the beautiful—which were undergone by this branch of the arts are more pronounced than is usually noticeable in the material and intellectual progress of a people from a state of barbarism to the highest point in the scale of civilization. The character of the Arab is, however, anomalous, independent of precedent, and apparently subject to few of those laws whose operation prescribes the career and fixes the ultimate fate of nations. The simplicity of form and comparative absence of decoration characteristic of a nomadic race are conspicuous in its first great architectural achievement,—a temple dedicated to the unity of God. In glaring contrast appears the culminating effort of its labors, a palace[573] reared for the purposes of voluptuous indulgence, where even the principles of durable construction were apparently sacrificed to the pomp and prodigality of excessive adornment, a precursor of impending dissolution, an unmistakable indication of decadence. Thus the Arabs, like all races that preceded them, have recorded their deeds in the forms and inscriptions of their architectural monuments; permanent registers of the grandeur and depth of religious sentiment; suggestive memorials of proficiency in the arts of peace; potent manifestations of national genius, energy, and culture.
The artistic tastes of the Moslems, always largely controlled by pious considerations, were displayed, not only in the construction of splendid edifices, but in the embellishment of their most common accessories. The well-curbs, cylinders of marble or of enamelled pottery, girdled with raised inscriptions in gold and originally placed in court-yards, are examples of the persistence of Oriental tradition as well as of the reverence with which the Arab regarded that element which was the most precious treasure of the Desert.
The use of water for the purposes of ceremonial lustration is a custom of unknown antiquity. It was constantly employed in the sacerdotal mysteries of Egypt, India, Persia. The inhabitants of those countries venerated it as representing an active force in their systems of cosmogony. The Egyptians worshipped the Nile; the Hindus still sacrifice to the Ganges. By the former the rare geological formation of water crystals was regarded with peculiar reverence, because the drops thus mysteriously inclosed in their transparent envelope were believed to be spirits imprisoned by divine agency. In the traditions of Phœnicia the sacredness of springs was continually referred to; the Greeks assigned to each element a place in Olympus; the superstitious Roman sculptured[574] his well-curbs with scenes of mythology or with graceful garlands of flowers. No nation of antiquity, however, ascribed such extraordinary importance to the divine virtues of water as the Hebrews. In the time of Abraham wells were regarded as of peculiar sanctity. Their locality confirmed the sacredness and obligation of an oath; it was a token of alliance, a place of reconciliation for enemies, a symbol which ratified and enforced the validity of contracts. The only permanent characteristic recognized by the nomadic Israelite was the possession of a well, which established the residence and station of his tribe.
The sacred character which invested the sources of water was intensified by the climatic conditions which magnified its importance and increased its value. It is not strange that the heat and drought of the Desert should have imparted to that indispensable fluid some of the beneficent attributes of Divine Power. The unsettled state of tribal existence is attributable solely to its scarcity. Its profusion was synonymous with fertility, prosperity, abundance. Its prominence, actual and symbolic, in the Jewish religious system constantly recurs in the Bible. The Hebrews made use of it on every important occasion, in every ceremony which called for the exercise of its mysterious virtues. They sprinkled it over the victims of sacrifice. They purified themselves with it before entering the precincts of the Temple. The veneration with which they regarded its ceremonial usage was transmitted to Christianity, which has consecrated its application as a rite indispensable to salvation. The dispersion of the Jews by the Romans familiarized every nation that received them with their customs, and not a few adopted the latter after more or less modification. Many of the fugitives settled in Yemen and other parts of Arabia, where their influence subsequently played an important rôle in the formation of[575] the creed of Mohammed, whose doctrines are so largely of Hebrew and Christian derivation. From them the Arabs absorbed many traditions centuries old, which had been transmitted through numerous nations to the credulous Jews, who thus became the depositaries of all.
In the extensive and varied domain of the industrial and the useful arts, Hispano-Arab genius developed no less grace and dexterity than in the conspicuous and permanent creations of the architect. The effect of Koranic restrictions was to impede all advance until the artisan evaded or openly disregarded them. To the last, however, the universal prevalence of that religious sentiment, which was at once the incentive and the power of Islamism and inspired the skill that designed even the most homely articles of domestic use, as well as the exquisite ornaments of the palace, was disclosed by all the products of Arabian industry. Texts from the Koran were carved upon the wooden stamps used by the baker. They formed the bit of the key that unlocked the great door of the castle. On swords and knives, on vases and thimbles, on garments and banners, on the massive bracelets of the rich, on the rudely fashioned but highly treasured amulets of the poor, were engraved or embroidered legends of pious origin and significance. These objects have for the greater part disappeared. The prejudice fostered by centuries of unrelenting hostility, the aversion entertained by the ministers of an antagonistic and triumphant faith, have, as far as human diligence could accomplish it, destroyed all the smaller and more inconspicuous evidences of Moorish civilization. The durability of their materials, the excellence of their workmanship, and the multiplicity of uses to which these articles were destined, would imply that vast numbers of them would still be met with, especially in the old Moslem provinces of Spain.[576] But such is not the case. The hatred of the Spaniard for everything Mohammedan extended even to the inanimate objects on which his vanquished enemies had exercised their skill, and which were at once suggestive of heresy and, indirectly, of his own ignorance and mechanical incapacity. It was the Christian custodians of the Mosque of Cordova who broke to pieces its magnificent pulpit and lectern for the jewels and ivory they contained; it was Ximenes, one of the greatest scholars of his time, who raised in the square of Granada the funeral pyre of Arabic literature; it was Philip II., the most powerful of European sovereigns and the worthy representative of his nation and his age, who ordered every stone in Toledo which bore an Arabic inscription to be destroyed. Much perished by the African invasions and the bloody seditions which followed them. Many articles of gold and silver, far more precious for their workmanship than for their intrinsic value, were consigned by the ignorant and the avaricious to the blow-pipe and the crucible. In the face of such indiscriminate and systematic destruction, whose spirit even massive edifices have not been able to withstand, it is not strange that so few of the minor objects of general utility have survived. Indeed, the work of ruin has been so thorough that there are now many educated persons in Spain who refuse to credit the artistic ability of the Saracens, on account of the dearth of evidence produced by the instrumentality of their own ancestors.
Chief among the branches of mechanical industry in which the Spanish Moors excelled was the treatment of metals. The casting of bronze, especially in large pieces,—an art requiring the greatest skill even in our day,—they understood to perfection. The specimens which have been preserved exhibit a smoothness unusual in works of this description, and reveal no subsequent finish with the burin or the file. Not only[577] statuary, but utensils for worship as well as for domestic use—lamps, censers, vases, knives, cups, and hundreds of other articles—were produced by this convenient process. Their ornamentation, especially when they were destined for the service of the mosque, was rich and graceful; interlaced with the arabesques were pious mottoes and inscriptions; in some the parts in relief were gilded. An exquisite Arab vase, which tradition referred to the Crusades, but which most probably derived its origin from the Mussulmans of Spain, was for several centuries used in the baptismal ceremony of the infant princes of France.
The complete destruction of portable objects of the Mohammedan period during the centuries of ignorance and fanaticism which followed the Reconquest may be inferred from the non-existence of Moorish lamps, necessarily one of the most common utensils of both temple and habitation. It is a matter of historic record that in the Great Mosque of Cordova were suspended nearly two thousand; and, as there were seven hundred other edifices devoted to the worship of Islam in the Saracen metropolis, the number in use in that city was obviously immense, and the total amount throughout the empire must have been incalculable. And yet, of all these, not one is known to have survived uninjured. The so-called lamp of the Alhambra, which was captured at the taking of Oran and is supposed to have belonged to the mosque of that palace, is the only remaining example of this branch of Arab art once so flourishing, but which, with innumerable others, disappeared forever with the Castilian occupation. Their connection with the detested worship of Mohammed no doubt supplied the motive for this thorough annihilation.
Arabic lamps were of various metals, gold, silver, copper, or bronze. They contained two or more lights, placed one above the other, their rays being[578] tempered by a polygonal screen, whose sides presented different patterns in arabesques cast or carved in the metal, producing a charming effect from the illumination within. From the base usually hung four spheres of open-work formed of lotus or palm leaves and pomegranates, and which exhibited verses of poetry or Koranic legends,—reminiscences of the “knops and flowers” which were suspended from each branch of the sacred candlestick in the Hebrew Tabernacle. In addition to metals, glass of different colors was frequently employed in these works of art, whose exquisite finish constituted their greatest value. The materials were almost always obtained from the spoil of Christian churches,—from the gold and silver vessels of the altar, from the candelabra and from the bells,—trophies which gratified the piety of the Moslem, and contributed in no small degree to the pride and exultation of victory.
Accident or good fortune has preserved for the examination of posterity a few of the numerous images which the Arab artists cast in bronze. Among them are a lion and a gazelle, whose history cannot be traced, but which the researches of archæology have assigned to one of the sumptuous palaces which adorned the suburbs of Cordova. These rare and interesting evidences of Moslem dexterity no doubt originally formed part of a fountain; they belong to the most advanced period of the khalifate; the forms are somewhat grotesque, but the mechanical execution is not inferior in delicacy to that of the best examples of the present age. Cufic legends are inscribed upon them, and there are indications that their eyes were formed of precious stones, as was the custom in Moorish Spain.
The frequent recurrence of the lion among the sculptures of Moslem civilization attests the symbolic importance with which that animal was regarded by[579] those whose religion prohibited the representation of every species of animal life. In Arabic tradition that royal beast had acquired an important, almost a sacred, significance. With the eagle, it had been assigned a place in the eighth heaven of the Mohammedan faith. From the earliest ages its strength and ferocity had awakened the awe of the superstitious and imperfectly protected tribes of the Desert. It was recognized as the representative of power; the emblem of energy, nobility, and courage. With the Spanish Arabs, these sentiments of fear and respect were intensified by considerations of policy, custom, and tradition. In the enchanting gardens of palaces reared by the greatest khalifs stood bronze statues of lions with eyes of rubies and emeralds. They were the supporters of the arms of the Nazerite kings. Their marble effigies guarded the entrance to the royal mint. In the famous court of the Alhambra, they replaced the twelve oxen that sustained the brazen laver of Solomon, of which the fountain of that palace is an imitation. The Moslem princes of the Peninsula gloried in the title of “Lion of Battle.” Arabic tradition was in time confirmed and strengthened by the influx of Persian ideas through constant intercourse with the Orient, where the lion was a symbol of the Principle of Good.
The art of damascening metals was, as the name itself implies, of Syrian origin, and was practised as early as the twelfth century. In its application to arms and armor the Moorish artificers of Spain had no superiors. Exquisite specimens of their skill have descended to our time, not only in helmets and cuirasses,—trophies of many a bloody field,—but in the suits eagerly sought after in intervals of peace by the knights of Christian Europe. The arms forged upon the Tagus, whose waters, it was supposed, possessed some peculiar property that imparted an unrivalled[580] temper to blades of steel, were famous even during the Visigothic domination. Under the Moors, however, the weapons that issued from the armories of that ancient city attained their greatest excellence and reputation. Toledo did not by any means enjoy a monopoly of this manufacture, which was carried on with great success in many other towns; the swords of Seville especially enjoyed a wide and deserved celebrity. This chosen weapon of the Arab was cherished with peculiar pride and fondness. Upon its hilt and scabbard were lavished the finest efforts of the enameller’s and the jeweller’s art. The temper of its blade was of such perfection that an iron rod could be easily cloven without its edge exhibiting the slightest blemish. Broad and heavy, as was required by the rough usage they were destined to undergo, these weapons were curiously wrought with gold and silver tracery, alternating with quaint or pious inscriptions. No nation excelled the Spanish Moslems in the costly and exquisite adornment of their arms. The hilts were not infrequently of massy gold enriched with many colored enamels and set with gems. The scabbards, of purple or scarlet velvet, glittered with filigreed and jewelled mountings. Of most capricious forms were the guards, sometimes representing the heads of elephants or dragons, at others carved in ovals, globes, and crosses; always inlaid with arabesques of the precious metals, representing floral designs and intricate geometrical figures, with the omnipresent legend, suggestive of the unquenchable fervor of the Moslem faith.
The peculiar veneration with which the Hispano-Arab regarded his favorite weapon is thus disclosed by the beauty and excellence of its form and materials and by the sacred texts inscribed upon its blade. Many considerations contributed to invest the sword with a religious character, and to enhance its moral[581] influence as well as its material value. Its adoption was intimately connected with the most cherished associations of the Arab race. Its use was derived from the Hebrews, that nation of common ancestry, mode of life, and historical traditions. It was carried by the cherubim who guarded the gates of Paradise. The Khalif Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, whose valor was proverbial, rejoiced in the appellation of the “Sword of God.” Although not a weapon adapted to the desultory warfare of a nomadic people, it had won the victories of Islam from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas, from the Oxus to the equator. It had established the prowess of the champion of the tribe in many a chivalric encounter before the camel’s-hair tents grouped in the unbroken solitude of the Desert. Its manufacture, perfected at Damascus, had travelled to the Spanish Peninsula in the train of the Ommeyade partisans, who sought protection and honor under the beneficent rule of that famous dynasty; and it was in Syria that Biblical and Koranic tradition placed the forge of Tubal-Cain, the first of smiths and armorers. Popular superstition imputed to it many mysterious and talismanic attributes, such as the emission of peculiar odors and the utterance of a groan at the death of the owner. In the Arabic language, as already stated, a thousand different names are used to designate the sword, a fact which indicates the significance attaching to this weapon, ever in the hand of the warrior, as well as the infinite capacity of the idiom in which its varieties and its qualities are expressed.
The last epoch of Moslem civilization was especially remarkable for the ingenious processes and exquisite workmanship developed in the fabrication of vitreous mosaics and filigree jewelry. The Moorish craftsmen understood the difficult art of encrusting metals with various crystals and artificial stones; their enamels[582] were of every color and of exceeding fineness; their goldsmiths had acquired such dexterity that they could make a single grain of that metal, beaten into a sheet, cover a space of fifty-six square inches. Their wares, originally Byzantine in style, kept pace with the progress of other branches of artistic industry, and, before the close of their domination, were not inferior in any respect to those made in Italy and Germany four centuries afterwards.
In the glyptic art, as developed by the Spanish Arabs, the inclination to the mysterious and the supernatural, common to all members of the Semitic race, found full expression. The traditional seal of Solomon, whose wonderful power made the forces of nature and the genii of the spirit world alike subservient to his will, confirmed the hereditary belief of the Moslem in amulets, charms, and talismans. The device of that famous ring is variously supposed to have been the ineffable name of God, or a star formed by the combination of two equilateral triangles. Be this as it may, its magical virtues were a part of the creed of every uneducated Arab, in whose mind the idolatrous and superstitious practices of Paganism seemed ineradicable. The imaginary talismanic qualities of certain stones—such as the carnelian, the garnet, and the onyx—had far more connection with their popular use than any passion for ornament or love of display. Many were regarded as specifics for various ailments, others were efficacious in averting the malign influences of sorcery. The engraving of gems conformed to the general principles and characteristics of the arts as pursued by the Arabs. The process of the cameo does not seem to have been adopted by them, but the word itself, which does not exist in the vocabularies of antiquity, would seem to be derived from the Arabic kamh, meaning “hump” or “projection.” The name or monogram of the owner, a[583] verse of the Koran, a wreath of entwined foliage, a complex design of geometric lines and curves, these were the sole objects upon which the talents of the artist might be legitimately exercised. As in ancient Egypt, when the name of Deity appeared in the inscription, it was placed on the highest part of the stone; and this concession to celestial dignity was observed even in the signets of the proudest of sovereigns. Here also artistic skill was greatly hampered by the prohibition relating to the representation of animal life, but no example of its violation in this department of the arts is known to exist. The engraved stones of the Spanish Mohammedan period are notable for the sharpness of their lines, the harmony of their patterns, and the grace and delicacy of their ornamentation. Signets formed the greater number, but amulets constituted no small part of the productions of the Moorish lapidary. The hand, symbolic of the five cardinal precepts of Islam, and the heart, whose mystic influence is still tacitly recognized even by Christian nations, were the favorite forms in which objects of this kind were carved. These two were considered as especially efficacious in counteracting the dreaded power of the evil-eye. The inscription of the signet was not only a mark of the individuality of the owner, but indicated his piety by its formulas from the Koran, a love of ostentation too frequently a trait of the Arab character, and hardly reconcilable with the constantly inculcated spirit of religious humility. On the other hand, the more devout Moslems were always accustomed to remove their rings during the hour of prayer.
In none of the countries of Europe did the ceramic art attain such excellence in materials, design, and execution as in Mohammedan Spain. The conquest of Africa was the first signal for its development, and from that time its progress was steady and rapid.[584] The fragments of porcelain dating from the khalifate, while showing Byzantine features, reveal the germs of that perfection of form and style which characterize the vases of the latest period, when the products of the potteries of Valencia and Malaga were exported to the utmost limits of the commercial world. Even the shattered specimens of unglazed clay that have come down to us are remarkable for the symmetry of their lines, and suggest the finest models of Grecian and Roman origin. The influence of Persia—whose colonists settled at Granada, and whose traditions exerted such a marked effect upon the civilization of the Peninsula—is plainly discernible in all the most elaborate efforts of the potter’s skill. Besides the island of Majorca, whose towns were noted for their ceramic wares, eight cities of Moorish Spain were engaged in this lucrative and artistic branch of industry. Of these Malaga ranked first; the extraordinary lustre by which her ceramics were distinguished defied imitation. The peculiarity of this pottery consisted in the brilliancy of the enamels, into which one or more metals were introduced in such a manner as not to interfere with its transparency and yet to retain all the beautiful reflection to be obtained from a metallic surface. This unique appearance has been supposed by some writers to have been produced by alloys of different kinds, laid in a stratum of almost inconceivable thinness upon the bisque. By this means a play of colors, iridescent in character, was obtained, whose brilliancy or softness was dependent upon the predominance of one or the other of the metals employed. The glaze was effected by the application of silicates. In this method of decoration silver and copper were most frequently used, along with those gorgeous colors whose harmonious adaptation to ornament of every description was so thoroughly understood by the[585] Moorish artist. When the copper was united with silver the latter diminished the intensity of lustre, and produced the most superb effects. The combinations of different metals exhibited an indefinite variety of beautiful hues, whose exquisite delicacy could only be compared to the iris-like refraction of mother-of-pearl. This singular process imparted the double quality of transparency and distinctness of coloring in a very high degree, for, examined at an angle and in a strong light, the sheen of the metallic ingredients could be readily discerned, while at the same time the tints which formed the base of the ornamentation appeared with undiminished brilliancy through the shining and transparent enamel. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the finishing operations of these works of art demanded the greatest skill and experience.
The forms of the Hispano-Arab vases were suggestive of those of the classic amphoræ. Largest above the centre, and tapering rapidly towards the base, they were designed to be placed in metallic stands or upon hollow wooden pedestals. Their curves were exceedingly graceful, their decorations most profuse and elaborate. The handles were large and massive; in some instances covered with arabesques, in others representing hands grasping human eyes,—talismans against demoniac influence. The designs of the latter were often radically different in the same vase, yet they harmonized so perfectly with the work as a whole that the closest inspection was required to detect any want of resemblance. The colors most affected by the Arab potter were blue, white, black, brown, and yellow, and their dexterous and exquisite combinations afford convincing proof of his remarkable proficiency.
While this industry—probably originally derived from Assyria and Egypt—was improved by the[586] Etruscans and brought to perfection by Greece and Rome, it disappeared with the influx of the barbarians, who trampled in the dust every token of European civilization. Revived during the early years of the khalifate, its history is a record of continued improvement.
The traditions of the Orient, the models of antiquity, the absorbing passion of the Persian for flowers, were all adopted and perpetuated in Mohammedan Spain. The beauties of the rose and the tulip were celebrated alike by the poets of Andalusia and Cashmere; and the national predilection for the blossom of the latter is recalled by its appearance upon the magnificent and unique vase of the Alhambra. The Moorish potters did not restrict themselves to the more brilliant colors; they possessed also neutral tints, and, by the skilful blending of both, succeeded in producing that perfect harmony of design and tone which is perhaps the greatest charm of their artistic efforts. They anticipated by three hundred years the methods rediscovered by Palissy, which wrought such a revolution in the manufacture of porcelain. The Moorish secret of metallic enamelling is now completely lost, along with the pre-eminence once enjoyed by Spain in every department of the ceramic art, and few specimens of pottery of undoubted Arabic origin remain. The royal ordinances published by Ferdinand IV. and Charles V., at the instance of the Inquisition, prohibited the possession of articles of Moorish manufacture, and were, no doubt, directly instrumental in causing the destruction of innumerable objects of priceless value, whose discovery might result in the confiscation of property and a lingering death by torture.
The mosaics which were such a prominent factor of the architectural decoration of the Mohammedan period constituted a notable branch of this important[587] industry. The use of vitrified materials in building is an art of high antiquity. It was familiar to India, China, Assyria, long anterior to the dawn of historical narration. Glazed tiles were used in the palaces of Chaldea twenty-three hundred years before the Christian era. They covered the interior walls of the pyramid of Sakkarah, the oldest in Egypt. The fragmentary specimens found in the ruins of Assyrian cities are identical in color with those preferred by the Arabs. The Greeks employed them in the embellishment of the temple of Theseus. They were adopted by the Arabs in the construction of the tomb of Mohammed. Among the Moors of Spain, the process reached its greatest development, and the permanent character which distinguishes it has preserved for the admiration of modern times some of the most original artistic effects wrought by the prolific genius of Hispano-Arab civilization. Suggested by the Byzantine mosaics, from which, however, it differed essentially in material and design, it was never able to rival them in splendor, although in durability it far surpassed those rich and brilliant productions of the artists of Constantinople. The patterns of the latter were floral, those of the former geometrical. In the one, the effects were produced by colors seen through minute cubes of glass; in the other, by intricate combinations of opaque pieces of porcelain.
Like all articles manufactured in the Moorish potteries of Spain, mosaics were subjected to a long and tedious method of preparation. They underwent a threefold baking process before and after painting and when glazed. Metals were used in their composition, and in rare instances the peculiar iridescent decoration for which Malaga was renowned was employed. The evident costliness of this must have prevented its adoption, except in edifices of the greatest[588] importance, for no example of it exists even in the Alhambra.
The fabrication of leathern hangings—whose surface exhibited the play of many hues brightened with gold and silver—was early one of the specialties of Cordovan industry, from which city it derived its name. Superb effects must have been produced by this curious tapestry, embossed and gilded, stamped and embroidered with graceful arabesques, and suspended between rich and capricious cornices of stucco and dadoes blazing with a score of colors in mosaic. These elegant hangings find no counterpart in modern decorative art save perhaps in the finest binding of a book. Goatskins formed the material, but the process by which they were prepared and ornamented passed away from the Peninsula with the expulsion of the Moriscoes, and its memory alone remains in the leather of Morocco, the most valuable known to commerce.
In the perfection of their textile fabrics, the Spanish Moors demonstrated their infinite superiority to all contemporaneous nations. In other kingdoms of Europe, silk was reserved for the use of royalty. Constantinople alone, by reason of its relations with the Orient, was able to provide a limited supply of this precious material. From Sicily the manufacture had been introduced into Spain, and, as already mentioned, was the most lucrative industry of Granada in the days of its greatest prosperity. After the eleventh century, in both those countries all classes used this fabric, elsewhere regarded as so valuable; the garments of men and women of the middle class of Granada were made of it, as were also the uniforms of the royal guards of Norman Palermo. The lightness and strength of these silks were remarkable, and their beautiful ornamentation displayed to the utmost the finished efforts of the designer and the artisan. The great Moslem banner captured at the battle of[589] Las Navas de Tolosa and preserved in the Abbey of Las Huelgas near Burgos is an elegant example of the weaver’s art. Upon the ground of crimson silk appear inscriptions, medallions, and interlacing curves, interwoven in blue, white, green, and yellow. The harmonious arrangement of these colors denotes the exercise of the greatest taste and dexterity. Throughout the maze of graceful designs the name of God appears thousands of times, emblazoned in gold. In the patterns of the cloaks and robes of royal personages, mingled with brilliantly tinted arabesques, rich floral embroidery, and formulas from the Koran, appeared portraits of the owners, in the colors of nature, depicted with consummate skill. The tiraz, or tunic of Hischem II., preserved in the Museum of the Academy of History at Madrid, is the only specimen of this branch of the textile fabrics for which the khalifate of Spain was so celebrated now to be found in the world.
Modern science with all its improvements has never been able to equal in strength and delicacy of texture the products of the Moorish looms of the Peninsula. The extraordinary permanence of the dyes employed in these fabrics constitutes one of their best established claims to superior excellence. Of the few examples which have survived the revolutions of ages, little, if any, diminution of brilliancy in color is discernible. In this department of industry, also, Asiatic influence, transmitted successively through Byzantine and Sicilian channels, was disclosed in the manufactures of Mohammedan Spain, a country whose life and traditions have bequeathed to our times so many impressive reminiscences of the luxurious Orient. In numerous other fields of industry was the artistic and inventive spirit of the Hispano-Arab artisan developed,—in damascened treasure-chests of iron and steel, the complicated structure of whose locks is the[590] wonder of the mechanic of to-day; in furniture, inlaid with precious and aromatic woods, and embellished with ebony, tortoise-shell, and pearl; in gem-incrusted caskets of ivory and onyx which Christian superstition has not deemed unworthy to enshrine the relics of her saints; in manuscripts, upon whose bindings fortunes were lavished, embossed with jewels, glittering with silver, lapis-lazuli, malachite, and gold.
The art of calligraphy, so greatly appreciated by the Arabs that it was styled The Golden Profession, and in which the Spanish Moslems acquired extraordinary proficiency, was developed, under the Khalifates of both the East and West, to a condition of almost absolute perfection. Before the invention of paper, their parchments exhibited a luxury which far surpassed that of the Byzantines, until that time the most renowned calligraphists in the world. The skins they used had a ground of gold or silver or were dyed of various colors,—scarlet, green, purple, blue, and black; their lustre was so great that they reflected light like the polished surface of a mirror. Their inks were also of many kinds; their brilliancy and durability exceeded those of any known to modern manufacture; the writing in distinctness, accuracy of alignment, and elegance—accomplishments in which the Mussulmans of Spain, who wrote a peculiarly graceful hand, excelled all the other nations of Islam—rivalled the most finished labors of the compositor; in epistles and documents destined for royalty the characters were written in liquid gold. The manuscripts were enriched with illuminations, an art which, carried into France and Italy, was subsequently borrowed by the mediæval monks, whose missals represent the highest, and, indeed, almost the sole, artistic manifestations of their time. The designs of the Arabs were not only geometric, floral, and grotesque, they included medallion portraits and representations[591] of men and animals delineated with astonishing skill. These products of Moorish talent and ingenuity have, so far as is known at present, entirely perished; their curiously wrought borders, without the mysterious and unintelligible script which was supposed to contain formulas for the invocation of evil spirits, were alone sufficient to proscribe them.
The knowledge of the various mechanical processes referred to in this chapter—methods by which the artistic conceptions of Arabic genius were endowed with form and stability—has absolutely vanished. Not only is this the fact, but even all tangible evidences, upon whose existence was dependent the reputation for proverbial dexterity enjoyed by the Moorish artisan, have been destroyed, and we are forced to rely for their enumeration and character upon the vague and imperfect accounts of ill-informed and often unfriendly historians. In the eyes of the fanatic Castilian, everything derived from Moslem sources was necessarily tainted with heresy. The articles of luxury displayed in such profusion by the vanquished were indisputable proofs of mental superiority, and, as such, offensive to his pride. He denounced the splendidly bound and embossed volumes of the libraries as magic scrolls, whose contents should be regarded by good Christians with every demonstration of aversion and contempt. The mysterious and unfamiliar characters of the Arabic alphabet assumed in his superstitious eyes the symbols of witchcraft, sorcery, and incantation. He hastened to prohibit the use or preservation of the souvenirs of Moslem culture and power by sumptuary laws, whose provisions were enforced by every resource of original and ingenious cruelty. In the estimation of the clergy, Mohammedanism, blasphemy, and scientific knowledge were, to all intents and purposes, synonymous terms. Without taste to admire or capacity to emulate the[592] achievements of Arabian skill, alike inestimable for their variety and excellence, they could at least annihilate the material evidences of that civilization whose monuments were at once an open challenge and a secret reproach. How thoroughly this congenial task was performed has been described in these pages. No people mentioned in history who rose to eminence in the various arts that contribute to national glory or domestic happiness have left behind them so few memorials upon which their title to superiority can be founded. But while the architectural remains have been defaced and destroyed, the libraries abandoned to the flames, the mechanical processes that gave to the world artistic results unrivalled in that age and unapproached in this, have been neglected and forgotten, priceless treasures, representing years of industry, broken to pieces for the sake of the materials of which they were composed, tens of thousands of skilful artisans exiled, plundered, murdered, there still remained in the public mind the impression insensibly produced by contact with a race of superior attainments, which, in its turn, was destined to form the germ of a new and far more widely extended civilization.
Africa, despite its innate barbarism, exercised some influence on the arts in Spain. As the Moslem conquest was planned in that country, so it subsequently became the avenue by which architectural and artistic ideas were transmitted to the people of the Peninsula, many of whom were natives of its soil. By the latter, still under the spell of Ommeyade culture and traditions, the crude, robust, and semi-barbaric conceptions of Mauritania were, however, soon refined and improved beyond recognition. The door of the Mosque of the Aljaferia at Saragossa, and an arch in the Cathedral of Tarragona, are almost the only remaining examples of the primitive African style. The[593] Almohade princes made a more distinct and permanent impression on architecture than any sovereigns who had preceded them. They introduced many novel and striking features in exterior mural ornamentation. They were the first to make use of the raised terra-cotta work, the graceful festoons, the glazed bricks of many colors, which render the Giralda of Seville the most elaborate and majestic tower ever reared by the hand of an architect. While the largest and most superb, this magnificent minaret had yet many counterparts, in all but size, throughout the provinces of Moorish Spain. Those attached to the mosques of Toledo, Valencia, and Almeria were but little inferior to it in elegance. Their prominence, and the uses to which they were destined, were sufficient to insure their early demolition. The modified African style differed from that of the khalifate in that it was more florid than graceful, and exhibited a barbaric love of pomp rather than an inclination to observe the principles of good taste and just architectural proportion.
The artistic relics of a people are the surest criterion of its manual dexterity, its material progress, its intellectual culture. The paucity of souvenirs relating to the Hispano-Arab period has in certain quarters, as already mentioned, raised serious doubts as to the claim of that race to mediæval supremacy.
The same skepticism as to the influence of the literary and philosophical principles adopted and promulgated by the Mohammedans of Spain prevailed for centuries. After a closer acquaintance with the educational facilities they possessed, the scientific methods they employed, the intimate mercantile relations they established with every state accessible to commerce, the extent of that influence becomes strikingly apparent. Even among the descendants of the conqueror, bound by faith and tradition to eternal hostility, it was, and is still, manifested in a thousand forms. There is to-day[594] in the Spaniard far more of the romantic and artistic temperament of the Saracen, whose blood is a reproach, than of the sullen ferocity of the Goth, whose lineage is the glory of Castilian ancestry. Reminiscences of that domination which seven centuries of warfare were required to overthrow survive in the forms and ornamentation of garments; in the terms, the construction and the pronunciation of language; in the crude imitation of mosaic effects; in the florid sculpture of magnificent cathedrals. In other countries of Southern Europe, their traces, while not so marked or general, are none the less distinguishable; Moorish customs and traditions, eminently congenial to the national disposition of Gaul and Latin, reacted strongly upon the literary and social life of France and Italy. In the latter country the glowing artistic conceptions of the Arab speedily succumbed to the omnipresent examples of classic genius; in France they were somewhat more persistent; in both countries they exercised no unimportant influence in the suppression of barbarism, in the promotion of efforts that tend to the material improvement of society, in the cultivation of politeness, in the revival of letters.
[595]
Disappearance of the Memorials of Arab Civilization—Agricultural System of the Spanish Moors—Its Wonderful Perfection—Irrigating Apparatus—The Tribunal of the Waters—The Works of Ibn-al-Awam—Universal Cultivation of the Soil—Mineral Resources of the Peninsula—Manufactures—The Great Moslem Emporiums of the Mediterranean—Commerce—Its Extensive Ramifications—Articles of Traffic—Commercial Prosperity of Sicily—The Magnetic Needle—Gunpowder and Artillery—War—Coinage—Characteristics of the Khalifs—Demoralization of the People—The Bath—General Prevalence of Superstition—Social Life of the Moslems of Europe—Privileges of Women—Polygamy and Morals—Slavery—Amusements—The Game of Chess—Other Pastimes—Dances—Music—Equestrian Sports—The Bull-Fight—The Tilt of Reeds—The Course of the Rings—Hawking—Peculiarities of Hispano-Arab Civilization—The Crusades—Their Effect on Christendom—Unrivalled Achievements of the Moors in Europe—Conclusion.
In all the vast domain of historical inquiry there is probably no subject which has been treated with such studied neglect, with such flagrant injustice, as the civilization of the Arabs in the Spanish Peninsula. Its story has been written in the majority of instances by the implacable enemies of those who founded and promoted it. Theological hatred has lent its potent aid to the prejudice of race and the envy arising from conscious inferiority to deny or[596] belittle its achievements. The greatest of Moorish princes have been represented by zealous but malignant churchmen as barbarians, persecutors, idolaters. The accumulated wisdom and labor of centuries manifested in rare copies of the literary treasures of antiquity, chronicles descriptive of epochs now veiled in hopeless obscurity, elegant productions of the most accomplished poets of Cordova and Seville, innumerable treatises of mathematical and physical science, have been consigned to the flames by ignorant prelates, who regarded these precious works as copies of the Koran or works on magic and necromancy. Others, which the negligence of clerical enmity permitted to escape for the time, were subsequently ruined by damp, by insects, by accidental conflagration. The carelessness of inappreciative governments, aided by the stupidity of the masses and the innate levelling tendencies of the uneducated, the invasions of foreign armies and the vicissitudes of revolution, have wrought the partial or complete destruction of many of the noblest monuments of architectural genius that ever illustrated the history of any people. The defiled ruins of mosque and palace, the mutilated fragments of products of the industrial arts whose form and materials indicate the highest degree of mechanical knowledge and classical culture, the remains of that wonderful system of irrigation, whose perfection was the secret of Moorish prosperity and opulence, constitute almost all the remaining data by whose aid we may attempt to picture the splendors and the glory of the mighty Khalifate of the West. No just idea of the greatness and power of the Peninsula under the Ommeyade sovereigns can be formed from the present condition of even those states whose inhabitants in physical aspect, mental disposition, manners, habits, and industry have preserved, in a striking degree, the characteristics of their Mohammedan progenitors.
[597]
It has been happily remarked that “facts are the mere dross of history.” The rise and fall of dynasties, the evolutions of armies, the recital of battles, sieges, and skirmishes, the enumeration of captives and booty, the exultation of the victor, the distress of the vanquished, the crimes and excesses engendered by sedition, have, it is true, in all periods of the world, been considered the most important, often the only, subjects worthy of historical narration. These, however, are but the manifestations of conditions upon which are dependent all that is valuable and all that is instructive in the noble science which depicts the occurrences of past ages. The true interest and utility of that science, the benefits to be derived from the lessons it teaches, the warnings pronounced by the triumphs or the disgrace of its heroes, the application of principles by which universal prosperity may be advanced and national disaster diminished or wholly averted, are not usually apparent to the superficial and careless observer. They are to be laboriously traced in the analysis of the incentives of human actions; in the gradual development of schemes of ambition; in the contention of religious sects for political supremacy; in the exhibition of the prejudices, the foibles, the superstitions of mankind; in the incessant mutations of social life; in the delineation of manners. No event is too trivial, no custom too unimportant for notice, which, by even its most remote consequences, may serve to disclose the motives of a government or illustrate the policy of a nation. The prevalence of certain habits, the existence of certain inclinations are often of more weight in determining the career of a people than the fortunate issue of a campaign or the disastrous result of a revolution. It is in the chronicle of prosaic, every-day existence that we must search for the origin of momentous events, that we must study the philosophy of history.
[598]
One great cause of the phenomenally rapid establishment of Islam was polygamy, which absolutely confiscated the means of racial propagation. Mohammed, like Moses and all other ancient lawgivers, recognized and inculcated the supreme importance of the increase of mankind,—a principle on which was founded Phallic Worship as well as the widely diffused practice of Communal Marriage. The vast power of its empire was dependent upon the culture of the soil and the marketing of the products of labor, in which no people were more successful than the Arabs. Its decline is attributable to the many inherent faults of its political and religious organization; to the uncertain course of royal succession; to the implacable spirit of tribal enmity which survived and dominated every other feeling; to the inevitable want of harmonious co-operation existing between the numerous and conflicting elements representing a score of nations governed by force; to the treasonable schemes of zealots, envious of the consideration extended to literary merit; to the social corruption incident to a society abandoned to boundless prodigality, vice, and luxury.
The agricultural system of the Spanish Mohammedans, who understood the soil and the resources of their country better than any nation that has ever inhabited it, was the most complex, the most scientific, the most perfect, ever devised by the ingenuity of man. Its principles were derived from the extreme Orient, from the plains of Mesopotamia, and from the valley of the Nile,—those gardens of the ancient world where, centuries before the dawn of authentic history, the cultivation of the earth had been carried to a state of extraordinary excellence. To the knowledge thus appropriated were added the results obtained from investigation and experiment; from the introduction of foreign plants; from the adoption[599] of fertilizing substances; from close and intelligent observation of the effects of geographical distribution and climatic influence.
The statesmanlike policy pursued by the khalifs was productive of incalculable advantage to every branch of agriculture. As previously stated, accomplished botanists, provided with unlimited funds, were regularly despatched to the most fertile regions of the East,—to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hindustan,—under instructions to collect seeds of useful plants and fruits for experimental cultivation in the royal demesnes. There is scarcely a country in the temperate zone to-day which has attained to even a moderate degree of civilization, whose inhabitants are not the beneficiaries of this zeal for agricultural improvement constantly manifested by the sovereigns of Moorish Spain, nor one, unhappily, which is willing to even reluctantly concede to those entitled to the gratitude of nations credit for that progressive spirit which has contributed so essentially to the physical well-being and advancement of mankind.
The divine origin assigned to agriculture by Arabic as well as by Persian tradition had almost as much to do with its development as the imperative necessity which demanded its practice. The rural economy of every people was diligently explored for advantageous suggestions by the Moors of the Peninsula. Their tastes, although the pursuits of their ancestors were pastoral and manual labor of every description is distasteful to a nomadic and predatory race, seemed to adapt themselves at once to the circumstances of their new environment. Their progress in that science is not less striking than the rapid succession of their military triumphs. No nation in so short a period achieved such extensive and important conquests. No people so quietly abandoned the excitements resulting from the profession of arms and embraced the[600] toils of a sedentary life as the Arabs of the Peninsula. No sooner did they change their mode of existence than they began to excel in the new pursuits to which they devoted themselves. Many inducements were afforded by the cultivation of the soil, whose results, despite its hardships, seemed to more than counterbalance the benefits to be derived from life in large communities. The Koran declared it to be especially meritorious. The air of the country, like the atmosphere of the Desert, seemed congenial to independence. The vast estates acquired by the followers of Musa, their wealth, and the social superiority which they assumed, did much to incite others to emulate their example. In villages and on plantations larger harems could be maintained, and more numerous families could be reared than in cities,—considerations of great weight in the mind of the luxurious and ambitious Moslem. Every encouragement was afforded by a succession of wise and generous rulers to those who embraced an agricultural life. A considerable portion of the country which had never been subjected to tillage because of its aridity became suddenly metamorphosed, as if by the wand of an enchanter. Barren valleys were transferred into flourishing orchards of olives, oranges, figs, and pomegranates. Rocky slopes were covered with verdant terraces. In districts where, according to ancient tradition, no water had ever been seen, now flowed noisy rivulets and broad canals. Where marshes existed, the rich lands they concealed were drained, reclaimed, and placed under thorough cultivation. On all sides were visible the works of the hydraulic engineer,—which supplied the necessary moisture to the fields by every device then known to human skill,—the reservoir, the well, the sluice, the tunnel, the siphon, the aqueduct. The ingenuity of the Moors improved methods of terrestrial culture, for centuries regarded as perfect by many[601] highly civilized nations. They adopted and extended the irrigating system of Egypt. They appropriated the Persian wheel, which, with the rows of jars on its periphery and propelled by cattle, served as a pump; or, driven by the rapid current of streams, distributed the waters of the latter through lands of higher level. Some of these wheels were very large, not infrequently attaining a diameter of seventy feet; one at Toledo was ninety cubits high. Their number was immense; within an area of a few square leagues five hundred might often be counted. Fields were surveyed and grades ascertained by means of the astrolabe. The public works constructed for irrigating purposes were on a gigantic scale. The artificial basin near Alicante, elliptical in shape, is three miles in circumference and fifty feet deep; the dam at Elche is two hundred and sixty-four feet long, fifty-two feet high, and a hundred and fifty feet wide at the bottom; that over the Segura, near Murcia, is seven hundred and sixty feet long and thirty-six feet in height. The aqueduct at Manesis, in Valencia, is seven hundred and twenty feet long, and is supported by twenty-eight arches. The principle of the siphon, familiar to the Arabs eight hundred years before it was known in France, was utilized to a remarkable degree in the Moorish hydraulic system. The length of the curve in the great siphon at Almanzora is five hundred and seven feet; the diameter of the latter is six feet, and it passes ninety feet under the bed of a mountain stream. The subterranean aqueduct at Maravilla, which waters the plain of Urgel, is a mile long and thirty feet in diameter; that of Crevillente, north of Orihuela, is fifty-five hundred and sixty-five feet long and thirty-six feet in diameter. All of these underground conduits are cut through the solid rock. The masonry of the reservoirs is of the finest description, and the cement made use of has become harder than[602] stone itself. Contingencies are provided for with such skill and foresight that no overflow occurs, and no damage ever results, even in time of the greatest inundations. The excellence of construction which characterizes these massive works of Arab engineering genius is demonstrated by the fact that they have needed practically no repairs in a thousand years.
As was necessary under the conditions which prevailed in a region where water was so valuable, the greatest care was exercised in its apportionment and distribution. The irrigating system of the khalifate was governed by a peculiar code of laws, perfect familiarity with whose provisions was only to be obtained by a life-long experience. The strictest economy was enforced. All waste was forbidden. The water conducted from one canal to another was used again and again. The sluices were opened at certain times, the quantity furnished being accurately graduated according to the requirements of the cultivator. Theft was punished with exemplary severity. In some provinces those whose crops for the time did not need irrigation might dispose of their diurnal supply to their neighbors; in others this privilege was not conceded. No one could be served out of his turn. The complexity of the system may be inferred from the variety of distributing outlets dependent upon the extent and character of the soil to be watered. There were two hundred and twenty-four of these, all different, and each designated by a separate name. Under the especial care of the imperial authorities, a vigilant police patrolled the canals and guarded the reservoirs of every district. All disputes and violations of law were passed upon by a court—whose judges were chosen by the farmers themselves—called The Tribunal of the Waters, which sat on Thursdays at the door of the principal mosque. The place where its sessions were held imparted to it a semi-religious[603] character. To it the complicated and expensive organization of modern judicature was unknown, and, secure in the good sense and integrity of its magistrates, it was equally free from royal interference, political interest, judicial corruption, absurd technicalities, and legal chicanery. Its proceedings were not embarrassed by vexatious delays. No official was required to preserve order. No record was kept of its deliberations. No costs were incurred. No advocate was present to perplex by subtle arguments and frivolous distinctions the plain interpretation of the law. Each party stated his own case. The accused conducted his own defence. Judgment was rendered after a brief consultation, and from it there was no appeal. The most exalted rank, the greatest wealth, the most distinguished public service, did not confer exemption from the jurisdiction of the court or affect the impartiality of its decrees. The noble was summoned to its bar with but little more ceremony than the slave. Infractions of the various ordinances which protected the canals and their supply were punished by fines. Where the offence was repeated, the culprit was deprived of the right to enjoy the privileges upon which the existence of his crop depended.
The wisdom of these regulations is demonstrated by their longevity. Preserved by tradition, they have descended to our times almost unchanged, and The Tribunal of the Waters still sits every Thursday, the last day of the Mussulman week, at the door of the Cathedral of Valencia, as it did before the portals of the Great Mosque under the rule of the famous Ommeyade monarchs ten centuries ago.
In the distribution of water the measurement was by volume, a certain quantity being allotted to a stated area during a given period of the day or night at intervals of ten to fifteen days. The sides of the canals were provided with flood-gates, kept under lock and[604] key, by which the adjoining fields could be submerged at the proper time. Drains carried the surplus back into the original channels, so that there was the least possible loss.
The same care and economy were observed in fertilizing the soil, which the requirements of a dense population never permitted to rest. Unlike the policy adopted under the Roman and Gothic dominations, there were few large estates. The land was divided into small tracts, and for that reason was much more thoroughly tilled. Manure and dust were collected from the highways. The contents of sewers and vaults were preserved, desiccated, and, mingled with less powerful substances, were used to supply the impairment consequent upon incessant cultivation. Ashes, the burned and pulverized seeds of fruits, the blood and bones of slaughtered animals, all played an important part in the intelligent and systematic treatment of the rich and productive valleys of the South, whose surface, resting on an impenetrable subsoil of clay, required continual renovation. The curious and minute investigations of the skilled agriculturist had determined the best composts, the most advantageous modes of applying them, the kind of vegetation to which they were specially adapted.
Manures were deposited in stone reservoirs contrived to prevent evaporation or leakage. Nothing was wasted; every substance available for the fertilization of crops was carefully preserved, the different varieties being separated and applied to such soils as experience had taught were most productive under their use. No natural obstacle was sufficiently formidable to check the enterprise and industry of the Moorish cultivator. He tunnelled through mountains. His aqueducts traversed deep ravines. He levelled with infinite patience and labor the rocky slopes of the sierra. Where the vast public works of[605] Roman genius could be utilized, they were repaired and extended. The vegetable products of the remotest countries of the globe—the grains of Asia, the nuts and berries of Europe, the luscious fruits of the African coast—were transported to Andalusia.
Profound botanical knowledge, which went hand in hand with Arab horticulture, wonderfully promoted these researches. The Spanish Moslems were perfectly familiar with the circulation of the sap, with the difference of sex in plants, with the process of artificial fecundation. They invested them with the conditions of activity and repose, of motion and sleep. They employed eight distinct methods of grafting; and the injurious effects of the sun were obviated by the use of a perforated vessel, from which the water fell drop by drop upon the graft, which, without this precaution, would have been withered by the heat. The Moorish gardeners devised numerous expedients for the improvement of their products, not a few of which modern ignorance has assigned to a more recent date. An example of these was the removal from the tree of a portion of the fruit before maturity to insure the superior size and excellence of that which remained. They cultivated such dye-stuffs as madder and indigo, products of India. They introduced on a diminished scale the hanging gardens of Babylon. In floral ornamentation they had no superiors. They contrived labyrinths, artificial grottoes, concealed fountains. They traced texts and inscriptions by means of gorgeous blossoms on a ground of living emerald. The intricate designs of tapestry were imitated by an infinite variety of flowering plants, whose tints blended in perfect harmony, like the colors of the material they were intended to represent. They acquired such dexterity in the culture of roses that, at all seasons of the year, they bloomed in profusion in every garden. Like our modern florists, they endeavored[606] to produce them of unusual tints, and met with corresponding failures. They understood how to extract opium from the poppy, but the process they employed has not come down to us. They treated with success the diseases of all the known species of the vegetable kingdom. They were exceedingly skilful in the distillation and refining of essences, and great plantations of flowers were cultivated for the sake of the exquisite perfumes they afforded. Twenty-five different kinds of these are mentioned, and they were so abundant and cheap that they were scarcely accounted a luxury. In all the multifarious duties of his occupation the Moorish horticulturist possessed expert knowledge. He could preserve fruits for an indefinite period; banish noxious insects; expel poisonous gases from wells and excavations. He was versed in meteorology, and could foresee atmospheric changes with an accuracy incomprehensible to those whose daily pursuits did not require familiarity with the varying aspects of the seasons and the annual recurrence of natural phenomena. In the principal cities of the Peninsula were schools where practical instruction in the various departments of husbandry was given.
As the Koran explicitly forbade the exportation of grain, the surplus of the harvests was deposited in subterranean granaries hewn in the rock. When a child attained his majority, one of these magazines was presented to him, and such was the dryness of the receptacles that wheat in perfect preservation was found in some of them near Granada, where it had lain two centuries after the capture of that city. The wisdom of this arrangement was apparent during the famines which, despite the industry of the people, occasionally afflicted the Peninsula. Reliance was sometimes placed upon less palatable food, however, and near Pedroche, from time immemorial, forests of giant oaks were[607] carefully preserved for the sake of their acorns, which furnished a coarse but nutritious diet when all other resources failed.
The great work of Ibn-al-Awam, of Seville, a vast monument of industry and erudition embracing every conceivable branch of the subject, shows to what extraordinary perfection the science of agriculture had been carried in the twelfth century by the Spanish Mohammedans. It treats, in a comprehensive and exhaustive manner, not only of the methods found by the experience of centuries to be the best adapted to the sowing and harvesting of grain, to the planting and cultivation of orchards, to the propagation of edible and aromatic plants; but it also, with infinite minuteness of detail, describes the breeding and care of every species of domestic animals, their qualities, their relative excellence, their defects, their habits, their diseases. It discourses at length upon the different breeds of horses and upon the rearing of that useful animal so prized by the Arab. It explains the details of artificial incubation, a process borrowed from Egypt. It directs how to produce in geese the abnormal hepatic conditions which induce the foie gras, that artificial delicacy so dear to the epicure, and a thousand years ago, as to-day, an invaluable adjunct to fashionable gluttony. It teaches different methods of cooking and the preparation of various confections, jellies, syrups, and sweetmeats of every description. The manufacture of wine, so rigidly forbidden to the Moslem, and whose immense consumption had already, in the time of the khalifate, scandalized the pious, is detailed in all its stages in this remarkable book. In it are given recipes for cordials of many kinds, cooling beverages, and hydromel. It also prescribes the rules by which the household of the farmer should be governed, and defines the reciprocal duties of employer and employee. In every operation[608] of rural life and domestic economy, it enforces by repeated admonition the necessity for cleanliness, system, and order.
From the treatise of Ibn-al-Awam we learn that much of his information was derived from Sicilian sources, where agriculture and its dependent occupations were fully as advanced as in the Peninsula. In that rich island, saffron and numerous other herbs were indigenous, and thence with many vegetables and fruits were carried into Spain. The vineyards and the wines of Sicily, famous in antiquity, maintained their reputation during the Moslem and Norman dominations, but, during the contest of the Empire with the Papacy, the culture of the grape declined and was practically extinct for more than a century.
To Moorish enterprise Europe owes such fruits as the strawberry, the lemon, the quince, the date, the fig, the mulberry, the banana, the pomegranate; such nuts as the pistachio and the almond; such cereals as rice, sesame, buckwheat; such vegetables as spinach and asparagus; such spices as mace, nutmeg, and pepper; such condiments as the caper and saffron. The coffee and the cotton plant, which grew wild in Arabia; the sugar-cane, whose product bears, almost unaltered, the name bestowed by those who were the first to extract it, were also introduced by the Arabs. The olive plantations in the vicinity of Seville alone, containing millions of trees, indicate the estimation in which its culture was held, and the enormous profits it must have yielded the owners. Grapes were so abundant at Ubeda that there was no market for them; at Malaga, Ibn-Batutah says, eight pounds sold for a dirhem. Al-Makkari refers to the prodigious size of the melons of Cintra. The pears grown at Daroca, unequalled in richness of flavor, weighed three pounds. The apples of Santarem were thirty inches in circumference. Oranges were of not inferior dimensions;[609] and to-day in Southeastern Spain it is not unusual to see them eight inches in diameter. It is impossible at the present time to realize the extent and thoroughness of the culture of the soil which obtained under the Moslem domination in the Peninsula. The southern portion, in its exuberant fertility now the admiration of the traveller, was under the Moors infinitely more productive. La Mancha, the Castiles, and Estremadura, which offer at present an unhappy picture of sterility and want, were as late as the twelfth century covered with luxuriant harvests, interspersed with groves and orchards, amidst which nestled countless villages, farm-houses, towers, and hamlets.
These scenes of rural thrift and beauty were traversed by thousands of canals and conduits diffusing on every side their refreshing and fertilizing waters. The gardens were enclosed by trellises made of reeds woven together and covered with trailing roses and climbing vines, the mingled odors of whose blossoms filled the air. Salamanca, now the centre of one of the most poverty-stricken and deserted districts in Spain, was in the tenth century a populous and flourishing provincial capital with a hundred and twenty-five towns, many of them of considerable magnitude, subject to its jurisdiction. Segovia, whose present condition is even more deplorable, was during the khalifate the centre of the woollen manufacture of the country, a source of great wealth to all who embarked in it. Horticulture in Aragon, where every product of the vegetable world not prohibited by the asperity of the climate grew in profuse abundance, reached its climax in the exquisite scenery of the valley of the Ebro, called the River of Fruits, from the interminable orchards that lined its banks. The entire kingdom was formerly dotted with forests, and in its deserts are to be discerned the clay-beds of many a lake and water-course, whose moisture once brought prosperity[610] to a numerous Moorish population. The capital, Saragossa, long the seat of an enlightened dynasty, was celebrated far and near for the accomplishments of its princes, the learning of its scholars, the skill of its artisans, the wealth of its Jews, and the superb decorations of its mosques. No city of the khalifate possessed a better class of inhabitants, greater wealth, or a higher degree of civilization. Its walls were nearly two leagues in circuit. Its gardens extended for a distance of eight miles in every direction. Its atmosphere was perfumed by the flowers which covered its plain. A territory of great extent containing many villages and castles acknowledged the authority of the Beni-Hud, its rulers. The entire region was a paradise, which foreigners compared to Chaldea on account of its fertility, its numerous groves, and its profusion of waters. In its climate wood did not decay or grain mildew, and provisions might be kept for years without deterioration. The royal palace, called the Abode of Pleasures, contained a magnificent hall of state, whose marbles and arabesques were one of the wonders of the Peninsula. Abulfeda refers to the Moorish capital of Aragon as, “the Silver City surrounded by emeralds mingled with gold.” The present dreary aspect of Toledo offers no suggestion of its former grandeur under Arab rule when its population numbered two hundred thousand, and from the towers of its citadel a succession of farms and plantations could be discerned stretching away to the verge of the horizon. It was in the tropical South, however, that the inexhaustible resources of the Moorish agriculturist rioted in the exhibition of their amazing power. The Mediterranean coast from Gibraltar to Barcelona was an unbroken belt of verdure. For fifteen miles below Seville the Guadalquivir was shaded by a succession of orchards. Near that city the district of the Axarafe—which embraced fifty square leagues[611] and was thickly planted with olive- and fig-trees—in the twelfth century contained a thousand thriving villages, two hundred and twenty-five years after the dismemberment of the Ommeyade empire. Here flourished in close proximity representatives of the vegetable kingdom collected from the most widely separated portions of the globe. Here were to be seen hundreds of varieties of plants, some gathered on the slopes of the Himalayas, others collected in the forests of Germany; others again transplanted with infinite labor from Ethiopia and the sources of the Nile. Here were propagated the orange and the pomegranate of Syria; the palm of Egypt; the tamarind of Barbary; the fragrant balsam of Arabia. Vast groves of mulberries indicated the importance attached to the manufacture of silk.
In the manifold avocations either connected with or dependent upon the pursuit of agriculture,—in the rearing of cattle and horses, in the breeding of sheep, in the culture of bees,—the Moor of the Peninsula attained to the highest degree of proficiency. The Arabian horse lost none of his incomparable qualities in the climate of Andalusia, and to his swiftness and endurance are to be attributed many of the most signal victories which attended the progress of the Moslem arms. The silky and abundant fleece of the merino sheep owes its fineness as well as its name to the peculiar method by which flocks were tended and propagated under the laws of the Western Khalifate. Immense numbers were conducted twice each year between the Pyrenean slopes and the plains of Estremadura, by this means securing fresh and continual pasturage, and equally avoiding the droughts of summer and the storms of winter. The organization which controlled these migrations, protected by the authority of the government, eventually acquired the importance and the power of a political institution. It was[612] designated the Mesta, and, adopted by the Castilians, its privileges, become oppressive through abuses long practised with impunity, were, until the middle of the last century, when they were largely curtailed, one of the most intolerable grievances endured by the Spanish peasantry.
The richness of the Peninsula in valuable minerals not only facilitated the development of the arts, but aided materially in the establishment of commerce with foreign nations. The silver mines of Iberia were famous from all antiquity, and after centuries of neglect under barbarian misrule their treasures were again made available under the energetic administration of the Khalifs of Cordova. In the neighborhood of Linares are still to be traced the square pits of the Arab, side by side with the circular excavations of the Roman; and their number, exceeding five hundred in this single locality, indicates the magnitude of mining operations, a pursuit whose intelligent prosecution and economical management contribute so much to the material wealth of a community. From the sands of the Darro and the Tagus were extracted considerable quantities of gold. In Spain, the centre of the largest deposits of cinnabar in the ancient world, the production of quicksilver was one of the most profitable employments of Moorish industry. At Abâl, a day’s journey from the capital, were mines where a thousand workmen were constantly employed. The superior quality of the copper utensils, the unrivalled temper of the steel blades, for which Andalusia especially was renowned, attest not only the excellence of the respective ores from which those metals were obtained, but the skill required for the fabrication of the latter into objects of utility and beauty in the workshops and armories of Almeria, Seville, Granada, and Toledo.
For leagues before approaching the great Andalusian[613] cities the traveller traversed by highways covered with arching foliage districts so thickly settled as to resemble a succession of contiguous hamlets. The air was sweet with the fragrance of flowers; the murmur of waters was everywhere; along each stream was a row of picturesque mills; on one side rose the towers and cupolas of some palace rich with gilding and sparkling tiles; on the other a line of cottages embowered in jasmine and roses. Nothing impressed him more forcibly than the thrift which seemed to universally prevail. Every foot of land susceptible of cultivation was carefully tilled. Every drop of water was used. Great crowds filled the narrow streets. No beggars plied their annoying trade on the thoroughfares or infested the portals of the mosques. The teeming population of the country was the best indication of the general prosperity. In the year 910, there were more people in any one of the Hispano-Arab provinces bordering on the Mediterranean than there were in all Great Britain at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Every indulgence and encouragement was afforded by the laws to the Moorish cultivator. The independence so necessary to the successful prosecution of agricultural pursuits, he enjoyed to the utmost degree compatible with the maintenance of social order. For the most part, he himself instituted the regulations of husbandry, which were enforced by magistrates taken from his class and of his own selection. His taxes were not oppressive. The productiveness of the soil, the equability of the climate, never permitted his labors to go unrewarded. In Valencia, where each week yielded a new crop to the farmer, rest of the land, essential to the preservation of fertility elsewhere, was unknown. In Murcia, the wonderful vegetation had given to the country a name suggested by its resemblance to the luxuriant Valley of the Nile.[614] The annual yield of oil by the Axarafe at Seville was two million one hundred and eighty-seven thousand five hundred gallons; every day during the olive harvest a hundred and twenty-five thousand gallons were brought into the city. All Africa, Asia, and Europe were supplied with this useful article of food by the plantations of Southern Spain. It was not without reason that the olive-tree—the source of such wealth, the emblem of peace—should have been regarded as blessed by both the Moslem and the Jew. Roses were so abundant at Cordova that twenty-five pounds of the leaves only brought two dirhems, and every one was at liberty to pluck all the flowers he desired from the hedges that bordered the highways or in private grounds, a privilege which was never abused. In localities unfavorable to cultivation the deficiencies of the soil were supplied by untiring industry. Walls of ponderous masonry supported terraces where the very cliffs were made productive, and where only a bush or a vine could be planted the narrow space was utilized. Not only water, but loam and fertilizing materials were brought from great distances.
The dimensions, the splendor, the opulence, of the principal cities amazed the foreigner accustomed to the crowded quarters and squalid wretchedness of the European capitals. All were surrounded by suburbs, themselves of vast extent, stretching as far as the eye could reach. The mountain slopes of Almeria and Malaga were covered with vineyards; in the plains were thousands of acres of sugar-cane; in the marshes, rice plantations. The gardens of Almeria extended for a radius of twenty miles north, east, and west from the harbor. The supreme importance of the agricultural interest as affecting the general welfare of a community was never more conclusively demonstrated than by the disastrous results consequent upon[615] the expulsion of the Jews and the Moriscoes. These results have already been alluded to in these pages. The destructive policy which blotted out a great civilization brought with it its own punishment. Extensive regions, which under the Moslems produced immense revenues, are at the present day barren and uninhabited. The sole traces of former prosperity in districts now relinquished to the bandit and the smuggler are disclosed by mounds designating the sites of former villages. Where were once endless plantations of valuable trees are now dreary wastes destitute of all vegetation, incapable of supporting animal life, cursed with eternal drought and hopeless sterility. The cities have lost by far the greater portion of their inhabitants; the villages have dwindled to hamlets; the ancient hamlets have disappeared. In the Peninsula, under the Arabs, there were no uncultivated tracts except those covered by the forests; in the middle of the last century in Estremadura—not including the mountain regions which embraced one-third of the area of the province—there were two hundred thousand acres abandoned; in La Mancha forty-five thousand; in the district of Utrera thirty-one thousand. The only localities where agriculture still flourishes are those where Nature has distributed her choicest favors; where the necessity for arduous labor does not tax the capacity of native indolence; where the products of the earth grow in spontaneous profusion; where the systems of irrigation and tillage introduced by the Moors still prevail without substantial alteration, disclosing their unrivalled adaptability to the purposes of rural industry.
The great productiveness of the soil and the proximity of the Mediterranean naturally suggested the development of natural resources and the extension of commerce in Moorish Spain. With the ancient Arab, the predatory instinct alone took precedence of[616] the mercantile propensity. That propensity received a tremendous impulse from the foundation of Islam. Encouraged by the precepts and example of the Prophet, who, as the factor of Khadijah, had visited the cities of Syria, the calling of the merchant soon came to be regarded by every Moslem as a profession of honor as well as of profit. The inhabitants of the Desert were, for the most part, divided into two classes,—those who organized caravans and those who plundered them. Centuries before the Hegira, a lucrative trade was carried on between the districts of Mecca and Yemen and the rich cities of India, Assyria, and Egypt. Little effort therefore was required for the establishment of profitable commercial intercourse between the seaports of the Spanish Peninsula and those which at frequent intervals dotted the shores of the Mediterranean. Almost coincident with the Conquest an extensive trade was inaugurated. The control of the sea by the navy of the khalifs extended immeasurably the facilities of mercantile intercommunication. The great markets of Christendom maintained the closest relations with the opulent houses of Almeria and Malaga; the wares of Constantinople, Venice, and Genoa found ready purchasers in the bazaars of Cordova as well as in those of the provincial capitals of Andalusia and Al-Maghreb. But the dauntless spirit of the Moorish Moslem was not limited to maritime trade; his factors were to be found in every country accessible to the influences and the enterprise of civilization; his caravans traversed with equal rapidity and perseverance the forests of Europe, the deserts of Ethiopia, the illimitable plains of Central Asia, the marshes and jungles of Hindustan. The mysterious perils of unexplored seas, the fierce aspect and savage manners of wild and barbarous tribes, the formidable obstacles presented by trackless wastes and pestilential swamps, were all[617] forgotten in the thirst for gain and the excitement of adventure. The memory of the expeditions periodically despatched by their ancestors from the cities of Arabia, the sight of the enormous profits accumulated by the Jews, at once their instructors, their allies, and their competitors, stimulated the ambition of the Spanish Arabs, already predisposed to mercantile occupations, and whose extraordinary energy seemed to promise success in every undertaking. Mussulman legislation, so eminently favorable to the requirements of internal and foreign commerce, offered aid to the followers of the Prophet in a more effective manner than had ever been suggested by the founders of other religions. The duties imposed by the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina were intimately connected with the conditions of traffic. Long before Mohammed, the altar and the bazaar had been placed in a position of mutual dependence by the sagacious and thrifty traders of Yemen. The idolatrous shrine of Mecca looked for its support to the pilgrims who, allured partly by superstition, partly by avarice, at regular intervals swarmed within the walls of the Holy City. The Koran enjoins under all circumstances the strict observance of contracts and the practice of honesty, and menaces with the justice of heaven such as violate the principles of equitable dealing in business transactions. In addition to the general principles of Mohammedan law which promoted the intercourse of nations, the Ommeyade khalifs of Spain exempted from taxation many products of manufacture and objects of luxury,—among them weapons, armor, and jewelry,—aware that the increased wealth which must result from this privilege would enure to the benefit of the people far more in the end than the transitory advantage resulting from the imposition of taxes or duties.
The sea, as well as the land, was made tributary[618] to the enterprise of the Saracens. Amber was thrown up in considerable quantities around Lisbon. The pearl fishery was an important occupation of the natives of Valencia and Alicante. In the neighborhood of Almeria quantities of exquisite onyx and agates were found. Rock salt was abundant,—a great hill of it stood near Saragossa. The mountains of Alhama were composed of gypsum, which afforded the finest quality of plaster. Deposits of lapis-lazuli existed at Lorca. At Macael were inexhaustible beds of white marble that rivalled in lustre and beauty the product of the Grecian quarries of Pentelicus. The mountains of Andalusia abounded with jasper. Carthagena yielded amethysts. Rubies were mined near Malaga.
Inland traffic was assisted by means of fairs,—those popular mercantile expedients which foster trade and at the same time develop the social instincts of humanity,—institutions especially acceptable to semi-barbarous nations and long familiar to the people of Arabia. Ease of communication, the most potent of civilizing influences, promoted this national interchange of both commodities and ideas. The disposition of merchandise, profitable as it was, while the ostensible motive, was by no means the most important object of these popular assemblies. Familiarity with distant communities, the conversation of strangers, the varying panorama of novel and interesting scenes, the excitement and bustle attendant upon the congregation of vast multitudes, are wonderful stimulants to the intellectual faculties. The literary contests for poetical supremacy which were said to have formed a distinctive feature of the mighty concourse of Okhad were revived in the fairs of Andalusia. While the latter were designed for provincial benefit, they, in fact, partook largely of a cosmopolitan character. Their fame attracted commercial[619] speculators from the most distant countries. Articles of great rarity and value were exposed for sale in their booths. The transactions concluded within their limits were not inferior in importance to those which had created the commercial prosperity of Malaga and Almeria. The circumstances incident to their institution and surroundings offered representations of tropical life strange to the eyes of Christendom. The endless lines of plodding camels, loaded with precious stuffs; the splendidly caparisoned horses; the sumptuous litters enclosing the beauties of the harem; the sullen and ferocious eunuchs; the retinues of the nobles glittering with steel and gold; the swarming crowds in the white robes of the Oriental; the enchanting landscape, with its groves of palm, orange, and pomegranate, its rippling waters, its fragrant exotics; the narrow streets covered with awnings to exclude the sun; the gay pavilions; the strange costumes of luxurious Asia and barbaric Africa; the mingled accents of a score of idioms, manifested on highway, thoroughfare, and plain the foreign influence which, apparently established forever, had obliterated the Roman and Gothic traditions of the Peninsula. No such spectacle could be elsewhere exhibited unless in countries where Eastern customs had held sway from time immemorial. The effect of these periodical assemblies upon the commercial, literary, and social life of Mohammedan Spain was of the highest importance.
Great as was its internal traffic, it was necessarily to its foreign mercantile connections that the Moorish empire looked for its most profitable returns. Its geographical position was unusually favorable for the prosecution of maritime enterprise. The Mediterranean gave its traders ready access to all the most civilized countries of the world. But a few hours’ sail separated them from the ports of Northern Africa,[620] where were amassed the rich commodities of that vast continent. The Bay of Biscay afforded a passage for their vessels to the harbors of France and Britain. According to Edrisi, they explored Madeira, the Canaries, and the Azores four hundred years before those islands were occupied by Europeans. Through the passes of the Pyrenees they could reach the markets of Northern Europe. Thus brought in contact with remote nations which had no other means of communication, the European Moors enjoyed peculiar commercial advantages which they were not slow to improve. The carrying trade of the Peninsula was largely in the hands of the Jews. The latter had been a lucrative source of revenue to the Goths, as they were subsequently to the persecuting Spaniards. They were the bankers, the importers, the carriers of the empire. They imparted a large share of their energy and enterprise to the Moslems, already envious of their success and their opulence. In the ninth century an extraordinary impetus was communicated to the intercourse with the Orient; in the tenth the merchants of Spain and Sicily practically engrossed the commerce of the Mediterranean. Every provision was made for both security and profit. Armed galleys patrolled the coasts and convoyed the fleets of merchantmen as they traversed the seas. The inland mercantile transactions of the Spanish Moslems were probably not inferior in importance to their maritime ventures. The discovery of innumerable coins and pieces of jewelry on the coast of Scandinavia and along the rivers of Germany and Poland indicates, more certainly than any historical record could do, the former presence of the adventurous traders of the Peninsula. The khalifs had consular agents in India, China, and Persia. They sent magnificent gifts to Oriental potentates. They negotiated treaties with the barbarian princes of Central Africa. Tribal hostility[621] was forgotten in the mutual advantages arising from traffic with the Mussulman cities of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, and with the settlements of the Indian archipelago. Policy as well as interest confirmed the friendship early established between the Moslem sovereigns of Spain and the Greek emperors of Constantinople. They exchanged presents, despatched special embassies, received the representatives of imperial dignity and hostile faith with every demonstration of honor and respect. The exclusive commercial privileges enjoyed by the merchants of the two empires gave them a vast superiority over all competitors. Colonies of foreign Christians who occupied quarters by themselves and were governed by their own laws were established in all the seaports and in many of the inland cities. The number of these in Granada at the time of the Conquest was twenty-five thousand, the majority of whom were Italians. The traders of the Bosphorus were frequently seen at the fairs of Castile; the great houses of Almeria and Barcelona maintained agencies in the Byzantine capital which controlled the rich commerce of the Euxine and the Baltic.
In the great markets of the East and West the choicest articles of luxury passed through the hands of the shrewd and enterprising dealers of Mohammedan Spain. From the borders of the Arctic Circle came the precious furs of the lynx, the fox, and the ermine, the least valuable of which was worth a hundred dinars; from Norway and Siberia stores of fossil ivory; from Arabia balsams and aromatics; from Germany honey and wax; from the countries of the Baltic mastic, storax, and amber; from China tea and porcelain; from Ethiopia gold-dust and asbestos; from Persia perfumes; from India spices and sandalwood; from Sweden and Finland female slaves with faultless complexions and flaxen tresses, whose ordinary[622] price in the bazaars of Cairo and Cordova was a thousand pieces of gold. The Jews and the monks of France, adepts in an execrable occupation, provided the harems with white eunuchs. Timbuctoo and the districts of the Niger contributed blacks of gigantic proportions and ferocious aspect, to be enrolled in the body-guard of the khalifs. The hawks, so generally used in the sport of the Middle Ages, were for the most part bred or furnished by the Moslem merchants. They also imported from Africa wild animals, such as lions, giraffes, and leopards, for zoological collections and for sale in distant countries. A lion in the markets of China was valued at thirty thousand rolls of silk. The camel, easily domesticated in Andalusia, always commanded a high price as a beast of burden. The principal emporiums of mediæval commerce and international exchange, where were collected the most valuable products of a hundred kingdoms, all of which paid tribute to Moorish enterprise and wealth, were Constantinople, Alexandria, Malaga, and Palermo.
The great centres of manufacturing and mercantile activity were situated on the Mediterranean. Of these, Almeria was the most important. From the extreme East, from the Nubian deserts, from the coast of Guinea, from distant Britain, from the frozen regions of the North, traders crowded her streets and markets. In her harbor were to be encountered the ships of every maritime nation. Her eight hundred silk factories, employing more than eight thousand looms, sent forth gold and silver tissues, carpets, curtains, robes,—whose delicate texture and exquisite designs excelled the finest products of the Orient. The iron and copper utensils made by her artisans enjoyed an extensive reputation for durability and finish. The influx of strangers who contributed to her wealth and shared her hospitality may[623] be conjectured from the fact that nine hundred and seventy caravansaries within her walls were registered to pay the excise on wine.
At Malaga, another great seaport, were situated the largest potteries in Andalusia, where was manufactured the porcelain whose surface of enamelled gold, silver, and copper was due to a process known only to the Arabs of Spain. The clay found in the vicinity was peculiarly adapted to the purposes of the potter, and had centuries before assumed the symmetrical forms of classic elegance under the dexterous hands of the Roman. The efforts of antiquity had, however, been surpassed by the Moors, who in time brought this industry to a perfection heretofore unknown. In other towns, such as Valencia, Murcia, Murviedro, and Calatayud, it was also pursued with great success. The resources of modern ingenuity have been taxed in vain to discover the secret which could give to a porcelain vase the peculiar finish which, while preserving unchanged the colors of the metals, increased far more than any burnishing could effect the lustre of its brilliant surface. In no city in the world, excepting those of China, was the fabrication of porcelain pursued with such skill and profit as at Malaga. Its exportation was one of the most lucrative sources of wealth enjoyed by the kingdom of Granada. With the people, this industrial pursuit was not merely a vulgar trade carried on for mercenary motives, but an occupation which permitted and encouraged the development of the highest scientific and artistic instincts of humanity. The vases of graceful form and exquisite decoration which came from the Malagan potteries were eagerly sought after by the opulent and luxurious of every land. The perfection of this branch of the ceramic art with the secret of the metallic enamel disappeared with the final conquest of the city. This[624] fact is not in itself remarkable, for the advent of the Spanish domination was signalized by the destruction of many forms of useful industry; but it is absolutely unprecedented that a manufacture of such magnitude, whose extent and perfection were established by so many indisputable proofs, should not have left intact to posterity a single specimen of its excellence. There is not positively known to be a genuine piece of the famous metallic pottery of Malaga in existence. Some fragments have been found in that city, whose glassy surface displayed the brilliant lustre which excited the wonder of contemporaneous nations; but no European museum or private collection, it is almost certain, now possesses an article which exhibits this marked peculiarity, or whose origin, with any degree of probability, can be assigned to the greatest centre of the ceramic art in the mediæval world.
Not for the fabrication of silks and pottery alone was Malaga famous. Her glass and paper, her utensils of iron and copper, the complex and elegant labors of her cabinet-makers and joiners, also enjoyed a wide and deserved celebrity.
The use of metals as a means of ornamentation was also frequently applied to leather. This was for the most part made at Cordova, whose products were conceded to be of superior quality, and commanded the highest price in every market. Some of the tanning vats, huge vessels of terra-cotta, in which this material was prepared, are still to be seen in Spain. The leathern hangings produced in the capital were justly ranked among the most important of its numerous manufactures. By some ingenious process the skins were rendered as soft and pliable as the finest cloth, and were then decorated in accordance with the canons of Arabic taste, which, without offending the eye with glaring contrasts, could blend in harmony the richest[625] tints and the sheen of the brightest metals. The gold and silver were applied with stamps; the colors were laid on with the brush; and the gorgeous designs produced an almost magical effect when viewed amidst the varied magnificence of a Moorish palace. This art, like that of the metallic glaze of porcelain, also appears to be irretrievably lost. The torn and faded fragments of ornamented leather which have descended to us prove not only the durability and excellence of the material, but indicate a skill beside which the efforts of the most accomplished modern bookbinders seem clumsy in comparison. It was often impressed with colored figures in relief, which added greatly to its beauty, imparting to it the appearance of brocade. The finer grades were perfumed with amber. The artisans of Cordova also excelled in the carving and engraving of vessels of silver and gold.
The manufacture of silk at Seville gave employment to a hundred and sixty thousand weavers, a number of whom were employed in the fabrication of the stuff called tiraz, whose use was a royal prerogative. Xativa was long the seat of the first paper factory in Europe,—that substance whose invention has contributed so greatly to the dissemination of knowledge and the progress of civilization. For ages known to the Chinese, the Arabs substituted linen, and finally cotton, for the silk which had been employed in the Celestial empire. Its introduction by the Spanish Moors into Europe is indisputable, a manuscript of cotton paper dating from the eleventh century having been discovered in the library of the Escorial. Although used at Mecca in 710, it was practically unknown in Europe until the fifteenth century, and was not manufactured in London before 1690. The extraordinary impulse imparted to letters by the khalifs, the countless volumes contained in the imperial libraries, the transcriptions of rare manuscripts,[626] and the constant publication of new works for whose composition, if possessed of merit, incredible premiums were paid, must have caused an immense consumption of paper. A profession held in such honor, and whose productions were rewarded with such munificence, naturally attracted to its ranks the noble and the learned of every Moslem nation; and especially was this the case in the Peninsula, where the highest literary advantages were enjoyed even by families of humble rank; and where education among all classes was not only a religious duty, but a stigma attached to its neglect. In consequence of this, literary pursuits became not only a fashion but a pleasure; a correct taste was formed; popular emulation was aroused; the manufacture of books was multiplied; and the palaces of the rich, irrespective of their nationality, were filled with collections which would have provoked the astonishment of a learned “clerk” of France or Britain, whose superiority over his parishioners consisted in his ability to write an illegible scrawl and to intone the service—whose meaning he often did not comprehend, and the application of whose teachings was a matter of conjecture—in a barbarous jargon of monkish Latin. Care for the preservation, and facilities for the purchase, of these literary treasures kept pace with their original production. Binding in leather was perfectly understood, and the elaborately decorated cases in which the volumes were often enclosed were deposited upon shelves of aromatic and precious woods, such as cedar, aloe, ebony, and sandal.
The change from the roll of the ancients to the square form of books now used dates from the middle of the fifth century. The art had already reached a high degree of perfection before the establishment of Islamism. Its best efforts were originally, as might be conjectured, confined to works on sacred subjects.[627] Bindings enriched with ivory, gems, cameos, medallions, and clasps of the precious metals were adorned with the utmost skill of the goldsmith and the lapidary. The Arabs, and especially those of Spain,—the seat of the greatest culture of the race,—excelled in this art, as in all others to which they diligently applied their talents and their industry. The superiority of their materials, the beauty of their designs, the brilliancy of their colors, and the profusion of their ornamentation were proverbial. The value of their covers caused the disappearance and mutilation of great numbers of works, now either entirely lost or existing only in a fragmentary condition. At the sack of Cordova, the Berbers used the leather of priceless volumes for sandals. The Castilian invader stripped others of their gold and jewels and contemptuously cast the manuscripts away. The magnificence of those sacrificed to the malignant energy of Ximenes in the destruction of Moslem learning at Granada only intensified the prejudice existing against Arabic literature in the mind of every ignorant and infuriated bigot of the time.
The trade in books held a high rank in the commercial world; its profits corresponded with its mercantile importance; and in the time of Al-Hakem II. the booksellers in Cordova alone numbered more than twenty thousand.
The various kinds of textile fabrics manufactured by the Spanish Arabs embraced every species of stuffs and every style of pattern. In addition to silk, the fine merino wools of Lusitania and the cotton and flax for which Andalusia was long famous furnished to the weaver supplies of raw material unsurpassed in strength and delicacy of fibre. Silk introduced into Spain by the Moors had for centuries been known to the inhabitants of Yemen, who had become familiar with it through their trade with China. Its use was[628] forbidden to men by Mohammed, in whose time it was a mark of effeminacy; but this prohibition was constantly and systematically evaded by the artifice of mingling a few threads of wool or cotton in the web of the fabric. Essentially an article of luxury, the amount consumed in the Peninsula indicated the prosperous condition of a society which could afford to purchase in such quantities a material that in many countries commanded extravagant prices. As an article of export none was more in demand or more profitable. The broad and discerning government of the khalifs, which, in accordance with the true principles of political economy, promoted every important branch of commerce, regarded its culture and manufacture with peculiar favor. It was by an especial provision of the law exempted from taxation. They encouraged by bounties the planting of mulberry-trees. In addition to the incredible numbers of these to be encountered in the valleys of Granada, Valencia, and Almeria, the city of Jaen, whose climate and situation were remarkably propitious to the rearing of silk-worms, was the centre of three thousand hamlets devoted to this lucrative industry. While in Spain silk was a common material for the apparel of the rich, elsewhere in Europe it was one of the rarest of commodities and a commercial curiosity. It formed part of the most precious booty of the Crusaders. Relics were enclosed in its folds as the most costly of fabrics. It was spread upon the altars of noble cathedrals. Monarchs were delighted with the possession of a small piece of a stuff which for generations had filled the shops and furnished the wardrobes of wealthy citizens of Granada, Cordova, and Seville.
By the cultivation of a single branch of manufactures in a particular locality, the subjects of the khalif, profiting by experience, by the transmission of hereditary talent to successive generations, by the improvement[629] in mechanical processes which from time to time spontaneously suggested themselves, attained in many departments of industry to an almost unprecedented degree of dexterity. Water-power was used to drive machinery in all the Andalusian manufacturing centres; in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella looms were still operated by means of it at Cordova. Nearly every city was noted for a specialty in whose fabrication it excelled. The armorers of Seville were famous for their coats of mail and armor inlaid and embossed with gold. The swords of Toledo were considered unapproachable for the elegance of their chasing, the keenness of their edge, and the fineness of their temper. At Almeria were made articles of gilded and decorated glass, the method of whose manufacture, carried by the Moors to Italy, is now possessed in its perfection by the Venetians alone. The superiority of the woollens of Cuenca and the cottons of Beja was undisputed. Bocayrente produced a linen fabric of gossamer lightness, which resembled the meshes of a spider’s web in strength and in delicacy. The carpets of Murcia had no equals except in Persia. The silken gauzes and sumptuous caparisons of Granada were sent as presents to kings. In its Alcaiceria, or Silk Market, were two hundred shops for the exclusive sale of that staple. It is said that in this beautiful city edifices built for the transaction of business resembled palaces in their splendor. Its tapestries and brocades were wonderful specimens of the weaver’s skill, and their designs were subsequently used as models by the artisans of Italy and France. There also were made exquisite enamels and vases of rock-crystal. The Moorish jewellers of Granada were the most celebrated in Europe. Among the specimens of their handiwork is mentioned a necklace containing four hundred pearls, each worth a hundred and fifty dinars. Alicante enjoyed a monopoly[630] in its mats and baskets of esparto, that tough African grass, whose employment dates from the occupation of Iberia by the Carthaginians, and whose manifold uses are so admirably adapted to the requirements of a tropical climate. The mills of Saragossa and Murcia, built upon boats moored over the rapid currents of the Ebro and the Guadalaviar, were renowned for the excellent character of their flour. The drug-market of Lorca was universally resorted to by physicians, aware that their reputation depended on the purity of the medicines they administered and relying upon the official supervision of the government as a sufficient guaranty of their excellence. No such organized and co-operative system for the production of commodities and fabrics had at that time been adopted by any other nation in the world. The founder’s art, particularly exemplified in the casting of ponderous pieces of metal, was practised with a surprising degree of skill. Cordova contained at least one establishment of this description, where were made the figures for the decoration of the fountains at Medina-al-Zahrâ. The usual difficulties attending the even distribution of the molten metal during the operation of casting seem to have been entirely overcome in the examples to be met with in the museums of Europe, and the results appear to have been as complete and satisfactory as in the perfected processes of the present day.
In every department of scientific labor, in every practical operation of life demanding a high degree of mechanical skill, the Spanish Moor exhibited on all occasions a precocious and remarkable ingenuity. There was no field too extensive, no detail too insignificant, to be investigated by his enterprising genius. The marvellous scope of his powers was the greatest factor of his success. Like the famous English philosopher, he seemed to have “taken all knowledge to[631] be his province.” His intellectual faculties grasped and utilized in an instant conceptions that individuals of other nations would have, and, in fact, often did, cast aside with contempt. The pioneer of modern progress, the permanent traces he has left upon civilization, and his salutary customs, adopted by posterity in defiance of popular odium and traditional prejudice, are unwilling tributes of national and ecclesiastical hostility to the talents and greatness of an accomplished people to whom history is indebted for the sole bright spot on the dark map of mediæval Europe.
For the commodities of European convenience and Oriental luxury were bartered innumerable products of Moorish agriculture, mining enterprise, and manufacturing skill,—the oils, the fruits, the sugar, the rice, the cotton, of Andalusia and Valencia; cochineal, which abounded in many parts of the Peninsula; the antimony and quicksilver of Estremadura; the rubies, amethysts, and pearls of Alicante and Carthagena; the linens of Salamanca; the woollens of Segovia; the silks of Granada; the damasks of Almeria; the blades and armor of Seville and Toledo. The product of the paper-mills of Xativa, famous throughout the East, was annually exported in large quantities. Malaga disposed of the most of its exquisite ceramic manufactures in Syria and Constantinople. From Cordova came the enamelled leather, long famous from the name of the Ommeyade capital. The horses of the Hispano-Arab breed were transported in great numbers even as far as Persia. In the kingdom of Granada a hundred thousand were regularly maintained for the use of the crown. Andalusia enjoyed an infamous celebrity as the principal market for eunuchs in the world. The supply came from France, Galicia, and Barbary, through the medium of Christian and Hebrew dealers, by whose instrumentality, also, these unfortunates were prepared[632] for the humiliating service of the seraglio. Vast multitudes of other slaves, the produce of foray and conquest, were also disposed of from time to time; a single expedition of Al-Mansur conveyed to Cordova nine thousand Christian captives. Thus, exclusive of other booty, prisoners of war were a source of constant and enormous revenue to the state.
The natural resources of Sicily and its fortunate position, as the entrepôt of the Eastern and Western Mediterranean, were the means of enriching its people beyond that of any territory of equal area known in any age. The harbors of Palermo and Syracuse were constantly crowded with shipping. Sicilian merchantmen were to be encountered in every European port; they brought cargoes of slaves, ivory, and gold-dust from the coast of Guinea; they traversed the canal of Suez,—reopened by the Egyptian khalifs,—and, braving the tempests of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, penetrated to the Spice Islands of the far distant East. The intimate relations of the Moorish princes of Sicily with the khalifs of Cordova and the Byzantine emperors placed within reach of their merchants every article of popular research and commercial value. In exchange for these, they exported the vegetable and mineral productions of the island,—cotton, hemp, grapes, oranges, sugar, wine, and oil; copper, lead, iron, and mercury; rock-salt, sal-ammoniac, and vitriol; cattle and horses; and the shell-fish from which was extracted the Tyrian purple. The profits of this extensive commerce were naturally productive of enormous wealth; the warehouses of the Sicilian cities were crowded with valuable merchandise of every conceivable description; the houses of the Palermitan merchants rivalled the palaces of sovereigns; and the people in effeminacy and voluptuousness, in no respect surpassed by the inhabitants of ancient[633] Sybaris, were proverbial for their opulence, their refinement, their extravagance, and their luxury.
It will appear from the foregoing observations that the energy manifested by the European Moslems in mercantile pursuits was fully equal to their industrial and literary activity. In neither the ancient nor the mediæval world did any nation—excepting the Phœnicians—approach the Spanish and the Sicilian Arabs in craft, in foresight, in enterprise, in accuracy of judgment, in that singleness of purpose which is indispensable to success. Their Midas touch turned everything to gold. They were familiar with Oriental countries at a period when the very existence of the latter was unknown to Europe or was considered fabulous. The number of shops for the sale of merchandise which existed in the great cities indicated the immensity of the traffic of which they were the centres; of these Cordova contained more than eighty thousand. The rules which governed the transactions of commercial intercourse in the markets of the Peninsula were so simple, convenient, and equitable that they were subsequently adopted by many other nations. The learned French writer, Sédillot, is authority for the statement that Europe has borrowed from the Arabs some of its most important principles of finance as well as its present code of maritime law.
To the Moslems we owe the adaptation of the magnetic needle to the purposes of navigation, an invention long erroneously attributed to the sailors of Amalfi. Its peculiar properties, familiar for ages to the Chinese, were probably communicated by them to the Arabs. Originally inserted in a cork and permitted to float on the surface of water, the Moors were the first to mount it on a pivot, thereby vastly increasing its utility and accuracy. They were evidently acquainted with it before the twelfth century, as Arab[634] writers of that epoch allude without comment to the compass as an instrument perfectly familiar to the seamen of the Mediterranean. To the Mussulman the magnet possessed a threefold significance and value. It guided his vessel across the trackless waters independently of the appearance of the stars. It indicated unerringly the course of the caravan in the Desert, constantly menaced by the perils of thirst and of the simoom. And it enabled the pious worshipper, however distant from the Mosque of Mecca, to ascertain in an instant the point to which he should direct his face during the hours of prayer.
The laborious and exhaustive investigations of Reinand, Favé, Le Bon, and Viardot have demonstrated beyond dispute that the Arabs were the inventors of gunpowder and artillery. While it was admitted that these destructive agents were introduced into Europe by the Moors of Spain, their discovery was long universally ascribed to the Chinese. As a matter of fact, they were first made use of in Syria and Egypt, probably as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century. The primitive lombards of the Sultan of Egypt, which cast great balls of stone, terrified the army of St. Louis in 1249. Artillery was employed by the Moors, besieged in Niebla by Alfonso X., in 1257. According to Ibn-Khaldun, it was used by Abu-Yusuf, Emir of Morocco, at the siege of Sidjilmesa, in 1273. Ibn-al-Khatib says that cannon were made in Granada before 1300, and mentions Ibn-al-Hadj as famous for his skill in their manufacture. After that time they are frequently mentioned by the Spanish historians of the Reconquest. Their first appearance in the wars of France was in 1338. The Earls of Salisbury and Derby, who served in the army of Alfonso XI., before Algeziras, in 1342, carried the knowledge of the invention to England four years before the battle of Crecy, an epoch[635] which marks its general adoption in Europe. Considering the immense military superiority which we should naturally attribute to a people exclusively acquainted with the formula for the manufacture of gunpowder and experienced in its application to fire-arms, it is remarkable that this enormous power was not more profitably utilized by the Spanish Arabs, who possessed it a century before the portentous secret became known to the nations of Christendom.
Among the Moslems, the operations of war were rarely carried on according to a definite plan. Military service was not merely a matter of patriotism or loyalty, it was a religious duty imposed by his faith upon every Mussulman, and from which only the infirm and the aged were exempt. As of old in the Desert, each clan marched under its hereditary commander. In important campaigns the army was marshalled in five grand divisions, symbolical of the five cardinal precepts of Islam, an arrangement by which the valor of the warrior was strengthened by the stimulus of fanatical zeal. The Koran was always in sight, either borne like a standard on the point of a lance or held in the hand of the general, as he directed the manœuvres of the field. There was no regular attempt at organization. The troops depended largely on the enemy for subsistence. The cavalry were generally clad in mail; the infantry were, as a rule, little better than a half-armed rabble. If repulsed at the first onset, it was almost impossible to rally a Moslem army.
Among the most remarkable institutions of the Arabs of Spain was the Ribat, or station on the frontier of the enemy, which formed the model of the orders of military monks of the Middle Ages. These establishments were strongly fortified castles, garrisoned by devout soldiers, who expected the recompense promised by the Koran for constant service against the infidel. The leisure time of their occupants was[636] spent in religious exercises. Many pious volunteers sought glory and holiness in the dangerous life which the exposed position of these outposts afforded. The latter guarded the passes of every hostile country; they were found on the borders of Italy, Languedoc, Castile, Aragon, Portugal. Their rules of discipline, their vows, and their penances presented a striking analogy to those of the orders of Santiago, Alcantara, and Calatrava, whose organization they evidently suggested. Their foundation preceded those of the Hospital and the Temple by more than two hundred and fifty years.
The coinage of the Ommeyades of Spain was the purest, the most artistic in design, the most elegant in execution, which had to that time been known in Europe. It was composed of the dinar, of gold, equal to two dollars; the dirhem, of silver, equal to twelve cents; and various small pieces of copper of fluctuating value.
The balance, whose value to the merchant would not be fully apparent unless he were deprived of it, is also an invention of the Arabs. The Moorish unit of linear measure was represented by a horsehair. Six of these placed together were equal to a grain of barley; six grains of barley made a finger-breadth; four fingers a palm; six palms a cubit. Of modern weights in ordinary use, the grain, represented by a barley-corn, and the carat, adapted from the seed of the pea, have descended without alteration from the Arabs to our goldsmiths and jewellers.
The political, religious, and domestic institutions of the Arabs, which account in a measure for the amazing rapidity of their progress in Europe as elsewhere, were also largely responsible for the downfall of their power. Their government, derived from the patriarchal organization of the Desert and confirmed by the revered precepts of Islam, placed absolutely unlimited[637] authority in the hands of the sovereign. The khalif, as the word implies, was the Successor of the Prophet. Fortune was long eminently propitious to the Ommeyade dynasty in providing it with a line of kings even more distinguished in the arts of peace than in the arduous and uncertain achievements of conquest. But these talents for administration and war, it is obvious, could not be indefinitely transmitted. With the first appearance of royal incapacity, the sceptre passed into the hands of ambitious statesmen, ready to sacrifice the claims of religion and hereditary descent to considerations of private emolument and distinction. The epoch included in the reign of Hischem II. is the most glorious in Moslem annals. But that renown was achieved not by the Khalif in person, nor even under his direction, but by Al-Mansur, his Prime Minister, who, although of obscure birth, guided, as did the Frankish Mayors of the Palace, by his transcendent and unaided genius the destinies of the empire. The example of his success and the attempt to bequeath to his son the power which he alone was able to wield were fatal to the Moslem domination, and contributed with other causes of equal gravity to its ultimate overthrow.
In the civil and military organization of the government the patriarchal traditions of the Bedouin were preserved, under circumstances little suggestive of his origin and highly incongruous and inexpedient, amidst the results of an advanced civilization. The authority and office of the sheik were reproduced under other names, which, even to the ignorant foreigner, did not serve to disguise their identity. Founded equally upon the legislation of the Koran, the administrations of the Sultans of Bagdad and the Khalifs of Cordova differed only in the most trifling details. Under both, the prince was daily accessible to the complaints, and redressed in person the grievances of his[638] subjects. Under both, the kadi, whose office was invested with a certain degree of sanctity as well as of secular power, dispensed justice at the portals of the mosque. His position was rather sacerdotal than judicial. He was one of the interpreters of the Koran, the original source of all Moslem jurisprudence. In his appointment the greatest care was exercised. Only individuals conspicuous for learning, experience, and integrity were considered eligible to such a responsible employment. Even the Khalif obeyed his summons. The Chief Kadi, who had supervision over all the others, was the most powerful dignitary of the empire.
The Arabs left no extensive code of laws like that of the Visigoths, wherein the rights of persons and the penalties of crimes are systematically enumerated and defined. As their government was presumed to be theocratic, its principles were necessarily unalterable. Of legislation, in the modern understanding of the term, they knew nothing. The decrees of the khalifs, based upon the construction of the Koran and the traditionary opinions of the Prophet embodied in the Sunnah, formed the entire body of legal principles and precedents available for the instruction and guidance of magistrates.
Among the other officials of the administration were the Hajib, or Prime Minister; the Viziers, who composed the Divan or Council; and the Katibs, or Secretaries. All of them were mere advisers of the sovereign, and their authority was, except under extraordinary circumstances, only nominal.
The most important subordinate office was that of the Mohtesib, or Supervisor of Markets, who held court at the gate of the mosque. His emissaries paid frequent visits to all provision merchants and druggists, prevented the use of false weights and measures, the sale of damaged food and adulterated medicines,[639] the overcharging and cheating of purchasers. Their duties also extended to the protection of beasts of burden from the inhumanity of their drivers, and of children from cruel punishment by parents and school-masters. They dispersed street crowds. They prescribed sanitary regulations. The authority of the Mohtesib was enforced by fines and scourging, and, like most Arab judicial functionaries, from his decision there was no appeal.
In the demeanor of the Spanish khalifs there was little of that haughty reserve which we are accustomed to associate with the exercise of the imperial dignity. For generations no atmosphere of exclusion surrounded the monarch. As a rule, he was easy of access to the meanest of his subjects. With the patriarchal condescension of his forefathers, he frequently sat in judgment at the gate of his palace. He delighted in assuming disguises and in visiting by night the most humble precincts of his capital. He superintended in person the construction of great public works; in the erection of religious edifices, it was not unusual for him to labor, for a certain time each day, with his own hands. His charity, a duty enjoined by the faith of which he was the national representative, was boundless, and was greatly abused. In the execution of the laws, his sentence was often cruel even to ferocity; but an apt quotation or a well-turned couplet often turned aside the axe of the executioner. A fortunate event—the birth of an heir, a recovery from illness, the tidings of an important victory—afforded an occasion for a noble exhibition of gratitude and mercy, the pardon of criminals, the liberation of Christian captives, the lavish distribution of alms. The high and generous qualities which distinguished the princes of the Ommeyade line—qualities confirmed and developed by a learned education—-prevented the exercise of those acts of tyranny which[640] often spring from the possession of unlimited and irresponsible power. But with all their greatness, their clemency, their generosity, the khalifs were universally hated. The obsequious submission exacted by their office was highly repugnant to the native independence of the Arab, whose cherished traditions required obedience only to the chieftain of his tribe. The doctors of the law, who regarded all learning inconsistent with the Koran as heretical or suspicious, had no admiration for a sovereign who collected great libraries, translated the infidel works of antiquity, and patronized studies whose results savored of magic and sorcery. Among the aristocracy the spirit of insubordination, always strong, was intensified by the vigilance and severity with which it was suppressed, by the memory of past renown, and by the hope of future revolution that might open an avenue to the throne. The incongruous elements composing the masses, held together solely by fear, incapable of fusion, detesting each other with unquenchable hatred, yet joining in the universal execration of their rulers, were ready for any emergency which might afford an opportunity for bloodshed and rapine. It was the intolerant faquis who were responsible for the deluge of African barbarians that overwhelmed the empire. It was the populace which renounced its allegiance to the government in the hour of national peril. The ambition of rival nobles established the score of petty kingdoms whose dissensions and weakness made possible the success of the common enemy.
Nor were the characters of the khalifs always such as inspire respect. Considerations of political expediency, if not of unquestioning religious belief, enforced their strict observance of the ceremonies of public worship. But with this concession to popular prejudice, the apparent devotional obligations of the Successors of the Prophet not infrequently terminated.[641] Some, indeed, were men of eminent piety and zeal. Others, however, were considered of suspicious orthodoxy. The preferment of Jews and infidels to posts of high responsibility was looked upon as inconsistent with the professions of a devout Mussulman. The pursuit of philosophy, the mysterious studies of the laboratory, the toleration of pantheistic doctrines, were regarded with equal distrust and disfavor. It was known that thousands of works in the libraries of the empire treated of prohibited subjects. It was more than suspected that certain Commanders of the Faithful were addicted to the habitual use of wine, and sometimes surpassed the limits of moderation in its indulgence. There were other Koranic admonitions of even graver importance flagrantly defied. It is evident, from the unmistakable allusions of Arab historians, that many of the wisest and most distinguished princes of Mohammedan Spain were given to the practice of unspeakable vices of Oriental origin, and that these crimes against decency were of such frequent occurrence as scarcely to elicit a passing notice. The greatest tyrants among them were slaves to the foolish vagaries of women. A single instance will suffice to show this fond subserviency to feminine caprice. Romequia, wife of Motamid, Prince of Seville, who was famed for his learning and wisdom, having one day from her windows seen some children wading in the mud, expressed a desire to divert herself in the same manner. Thereupon Motamid caused the floor of the principal court of the palace to be thickly covered with a paste of musk, camphor, ambergris, and spices, mixed with rose-water; and the favorite with her attendants disported themselves for a few hours in this precious mud, at an expense of tens of thousands of pieces of gold.
Guarded in his public utterances, sentiments expressed by the khalif in the privacy of the palace, and[642] which conveyed no exalted idea of his sincerity as the venerated head of a great religious system, often reached the outside world. Music, reprobated by the Koran as an incentive to idleness and vice, was one of the most popular amusements of the imperial court. The licentious dances of the East, which had rendered Spain infamous from the days of the Phœnicians, were daily performed in the presence of aristocratic assemblies. The palace swarmed with catamites and buffoons. Astrology and divination, especially condemned by Mohammed as reminiscences of Paganism and offensive to God, were practised everywhere, almost without concealment. While these violations of Moslem law by its representative horrified the devout, it afforded a pernicious example to the people, ever ready to profit by the foibles of their superiors. Under the later khalifs, Moorish society in the Peninsula became frightfully corrupt. The secret contempt for religion was only accentuated by the apparent regard manifested for its outward observances. Infidelity was rife among all classes. The people, from the noble to the beggar, indulged in brutalizing sensuality. In their excesses they once more demonstrated the truth of the principle that the highest civilization as well as the most degraded ignorance are equally unfavorable to the development of principles of morality; that the hardships endured by races the least removed from the brute creation and the profligacy engendered by the splendors of the most polished societies are alike destructive of the noblest instincts of mankind; or, in the language of the great Dutch historian, “that a singular analogy exists between the vices of decadence and the vices of barbarism.” The heartless, cynical, and debauched atmosphere which enveloped the court of Hischem II., and whose evil effects upon the nation the great abilities of Al-Mansur were not sufficient to redeem, offered no suggestion[643] of the pious spirit under whose influence the khalifate was founded. The enormous wealth of the country permitted a display of license and luxury of which the annals of degenerate Rome alone can furnish a parallel. The markets were crowded with female slaves collected from such distant regions as Finland, Ethiopia, Hindustan, and the Caucasus. Of these the harem of the Khalif absorbed a large proportion; that of Al-Nassir contained nearly seven thousand. In an age when intellectual accomplishments were valued almost as highly as the charms of person and manner, it was no unusual circumstance for an educated slave to bring four thousand pieces of gold. The dress of even the ordinary female servitors of the harem exceeded in richness the attire of wealthy ladies of to-day; that of the favorites of the prince displayed the prodigal magnificence of the most opulent and powerful of empires.
In the celebration of public festivals the pomp of the nobles and merchants—the gorgeous appointments of their households, their imposing array of slaves and eunuchs, the beauties of their seraglio, the glittering damascened armor, the silks embroidered with gold, the sheen of priceless gems—awakened the astonishment of the stranger and provoked the sullen and impotent anger of the populace. In the homes of the wealthy, the rarest perfumes—essences of rose, jasmine, and orange, the incense of musk and ambergris—diffused through the palatial apartments the odors so grateful to the senses of the voluptuous Arab. The bath, at once a religious necessity, a hygienic institution, and an instrument of luxurious pleasure, vied in the splendor of its equipment and furniture with the most sumptuous establishments of imperial Rome. The public baths were used—as they still are in all Moslem countries—not alone for the purposes of rest and ablution, but for gossip, entertainment, and intrigue.[644] It was usual for women to pass many hours within their precincts attended by their slaves, to be regaled with delicate confections, and to be soothed by the music of itinerant musicians. The pernicious effects of the presence of evil genii, who, according to an ancient superstition, were believed to haunt these localities, were averted by the repetition of pious texts and by the wearing of amulets. Mohammedan prejudice, not without cause, regarded the public bath with suspicion as a convenient means of moral corruption; and those whose circumstances permitted it, surrounded this institution of personal enjoyment and religious necessity with the privacy of domestic life. In the abodes of the rich it was invested with all the splendor which the command of unlimited means could provide. The tessellated floor was composed of the rarest marbles. The walls were encrusted with mosaic. Through curiously wrought windows of colored glass the tempered light broke into a thousand variegated hues. The pipes were of massy silver, the vessels not infrequently of gold. In the outer apartments the floors were covered with silken carpets, and tapers, from which emanated the most exquisite and costly perfumes, burned slowly in glittering lustres of rock-crystal and alabaster. The luxury of the Moslem culminated in the bath. The latter, borrowed from the Romans, was invested with a magnificence unknown even to the sumptuous thermæ of the Cæsars. The ancients, with all their civilization, were unacquainted with soap, which is an invention of the Arabs. An indispensable appendage to the worship of Islam, the first building erected in a city occupied by the Mussulman arms, was one designed for purposes of public ablution. In some respects it even took precedence of the mosque, for a Christian church could be purified and consecrated to religious service, but no corresponding substitution of the bath was[645] possible among infidels, who regarded evidences of filthy habits as an infallible criterion of orthodoxy; and without complete lustration on Fridays no Mohammedan was fit to enter the temple of God. So important was this duty considered, that it was not unusual for persons in the humblest walks of life to sacrifice even their physical wants for the sake of cleanliness and to spend their last dirhem for soap, preferring rather to endure the pangs of hunger than to incur the reproach incident to personal neglect.
With the frequent use of the bath was also introduced the practice of wearing underclothing, which, often changed, is so conducive to physical purity. The domestication of the cotton plant in the Peninsula, which cheapened the soft and delicate fabrics woven from its fibre, promoted the adoption of this custom even among Christians; and the name of the now indispensable undergarment worn next the skin by both sexes in every civilized country has passed almost unaltered into the principal languages of Europe. In most of its details the dress of the Spanish Arabs was borrowed from the Orient. Their flowing robes were generally white, the peculiar color of the reigning family, as well as that best adapted to the temperature of a southern climate. The turban was considered the appropriate badge of the learned professions, whose members would have regarded its assumption by persons of another calling as an unpardonable breach of privilege. Individuals of the middle class wore caps of green or red; in later times the Jews, as a distinguishing mark of their race, were restricted to yellow. The common people went bareheaded or bound a silken scarf about their temples, as is still to be seen in many parts of Andalusia. All who could afford it displayed a profusion of rings, many of them talismans; there were few, however poor, without a signet of some description.
[646]
The maxims of philosophy, the enjoyment of unequalled educational privileges, the enlargement of the mental faculties obtained by travel, were alike unable to divest the Spanish Arabs of puerile superstitions. The tenacity with which human nature clings to these legacies of ignorance was well understood by Mohammed, who incorporated many of them into his religion. The ordinary Moor of the epoch of Al-Hakem II. was as sincere a believer in the importance of dreams, in the significance of omens, in the occult virtues of amulets, as the Bedouin who roamed over the Desert five hundred years before the Hegira. Even the most wise and philosophical of the khalifs entertained diviners and astrologers. It will require but an instant’s reflection to recall to the mind of the reader events in his own experience which demonstrate the ineradicable character of similar superstitions, a weakness incident to humanity from which no race, age, or civilization seems to be entirely free. There were many kinds of magic and enchantment for the counteraction of whose effects various ceremonies were prescribed. The most dreaded of these was the evil-eye, a belief in whose influence, for centuries prevalent among Orientals, was recognized by Mohammed himself. Of sovereign efficacy in averting its consequences were the ejaculation of well-known texts and the possession of certain talismans. The hand, which represented symbolically the five cardinal principles of Islam, was one of the most popular forms of the latter. Long before the invasion of Tarik, it had been the most generally adopted emblem for protection against malign influence used in the Moslem world. It was probably of Pagan origin, like many of the ancient symbols of Islam. The Romans may have received it from the Arabs, for it appears in the centre of a laurel wreath on an imperial standard upon the column of Trajan. Kings sculptured it on the keystones[647] of their palaces. Peasants painted it over the doorways of their hovels. It was one of the devices of the khalifs. Carved in jet, carnelian, or agate, it was prized by women more highly than the costliest gem. At the time of the Conquest of Granada it was so frequently worn that the suppression of its use claimed the attention of the ecclesiastical authorities, and severe penalties were denounced against all in whose possession it was found. In defiance of these obstacles, however, the custom survived, and the talismanic hand—along with the crucifix, the Agnus Dei, the rosary, and other accessories of Christian superstition—is still to be met with among the mountain peasantry of Spain.
The fertile mind of the Arab, whose early existence had been passed amidst the impressive solitude of the Desert, delighted to people with imaginary beings the limitless domain of the invisible world. The learned society of Cordova was far from renouncing a belief sanctioned by the religion of the state and entertained for centuries by the aristocracy of Arabia. The mysteries of demonology exerted an uncontrollable fascination over the multitude. An infinite gradation of power and malignity characterized the vast array of spirits, from the hideous ghoul that haunted the charnel-house and the cemetery to the majestic genii that stood in the presence of the celestial throne, whose armor blazing with light and jewels recalls the panoply of Milton’s angels; whose gigantic forms assumed at will the shapes of seraphs or pillars of vapor; and whose martial hosts, invested with a strange reality, appeared to the excitable Arab an army of sentient beings rather than the gorgeous phantoms of an enchanted vision.
The civil organization of the Spanish Khalifate was one of the prodigies of the age. Order was enforced by regulations whose effects were experienced[648] equally in the capital and in the extreme frontier outpost of the empire. Justice was administered quickly, wisely, impartially. Taxes were regularly apportioned, and the laborer was always sure of the enjoyment of the product of his toil. By means of watch-towers and beacons, information could be transmitted over great distances in a short time. In a few hours the approach of an enemy was known throughout all Andalusia. As early as the reign of Abd-al-Rahman II. an extensive system of posts was established. The stations, where relays of swift horses were kept for the service of the government, were each under charge of an officer whose duty it was to correspond directly with the khalif, and to inform him of all that transpired in the vicinity which might come to his knowledge. Where more rapid communication was necessary, carrier-pigeons were employed for the transmission of important despatches, a custom introduced from Sicily. Six hundred years after this there was no postal system in any country of Europe. The highways were protected by barracks, from which patrols were regularly detailed to watch over the safety of travellers and to keep order in the surrounding country. All officials, without exception, were directly responsible to the sovereign, and held their places during his pleasure. An army of spies in every foreign court and in the council and household of every provincial governor kept the court informed not only of matters which affected the policy of great kingdoms, but of the most trivial circumstances growing out of the intercourse of daily life. When a new province was conquered, it was the first duty of the imperial secretaries to prepare schedules of its agricultural and mineral resources, its commerce, its wealth, and its population.
The character of the Mussulmans of Spain was defiled by all the vices which follow in the train of[649] prodigal luxury and boundless wealth. Among these drunkenness was one of the most common. Personages of the highest rank were not ashamed to appear in public while intoxicated. Wine was often served at the royal table. Al-Mansur indulged in its use habitually. His son, Abd-al-Rahman, was a confirmed drunkard. Once when the muezzin announced the hour of prayer, this young reprobate exclaimed, “Were he to say ‘Come to drink!’ it would sound much better.” Many of the rulers of the Moorish principalities were notorious for their excesses. Some Moslems drank white wine, as they declared that the prohibition of the Prophet only applied to red. Hypocrites used vessels of metal for their libations, so that their shortcomings might not be detected by their neighbors.
In Arabian Spain, which inherited many of the diabolical arts of Asia, poisoning was a most popular mode of revenge. Deadly substances were conveyed or administered to the victim by methods against which no precautions could avail,—in robes of honor, in golden caskets, in suits of armor, in perfumed gloves, in flowers, in delicious sweetmeats. They were often enclosed under the jewels of rings for use in sudden emergency. The barbarous practice of using poisoned weapons long prevailed. The mountaineers of Granada during the Conquest dipped their arrow-heads in aconite and hellebore, and the wounds which they inflicted generally ended in torture the life of the stricken enemy.
The people of the different cities of Andalusia had each their peculiarities, few of which elicited complimentary notices from strangers. The inhabitants of Cordova were famous for their lawlessness and their hypocrisy, their pomp and their epicureanism; in those of Seville voluptuousness, indolence, and frivolity were predominant traits; those of Granada were proverbial[650] for vindictiveness and turbulence; those of Xeres for politeness and elegance of manners. National degeneracy early indicated the approaching and inevitable dissolution of the empire. The posterity of the conquerors, who in three years had marched from Gibraltar to the centre of France, became in the course of a few generations cowardly, effeminate, corrupt. The geographer Ibn-Haukal, who visited Spain in the tenth century, described the people of the Peninsula as feeble in body and light and vacillating in character. Ibn-Said, who wrote in the eleventh, expresses surprise that the Castilians had not long before expelled them from the land. Even in an age of decadence, however, the influence of former traditions was not easily obliterated. Despite revolution, conflagration, and African barbarity, Cordova in the twelfth century was still the intellectual centre of Spain. The difference between the two great cities of Andalusia was from the beginning indicated by the fact that when a scholar died his books were sent to Cordova to be sold; but the instruments of a musician were always disposed of to the best advantage at Seville.
With the Spanish Moors a plurality of names was considered an indication of social importance, an opinion which has been transmitted to the Spaniards. The beard, also, from remote antiquity regarded as a sign of dignity and wisdom among Orientals and often reaching to the girdle, was, according to universal custom among learned Moslems of the Peninsula, restricted in length to a palm. Only the faquis and the doctors of the law wore long hair. No one except slaves was shaven. To seize a person by the beard was an unpardonable outrage, and even to touch a woman’s hair was an insult which might have cost the offender his life at the hands of the mob. The khalifs and all personages of rank dyed their beards[651] red with henna to distinguish themselves from the Christians and the Jews, who were never permitted to use it.
No characteristic of the Arabs of Spain was more marked than their passionate love of jewels and perfumes. According to their belief and traditions every precious stone had its peculiar virtue. The emerald banished evil spirits; the ruby possessed the property of magnifying objects; the turquoise afforded immunity from misfortune. The cat’s-eye was supposed to render the wearer invisible. Mohammed had declared that the carnelian conferred happiness upon its possessor. The sapphire banished melancholy. The diamond was beneficial in insanity; the opal cured sore eyes; the red-bezoar was a safeguard against poison. The talismanic qualities presumed to be inherent in many gems were partly attributed to the astral influence supposed to affect inanimate objects as well as living organisms, and partly ascribed to the Divine Essence believed to pervade all matter. To be efficacious, it was indispensable that the cutting or engraving of a stone should be done while certain constellations were in the ascendant. The Moorish lapidaries were experts in their art. With the aid of the bow, copper wheels, and emery, they produced work little inferior to that of the most skilful diamond-cutter of to-day. Even in the seal, an indispensable mark of consequence with the Moslem, the shape had ordinarily an important significance. Those of the khalifs were usually round or polygonal; those of diplomatists square; those of financiers oval.
Love of flowers was a veritable passion among the Spanish Moslems. As they were the greatest botanists in the world, so no other nation approached them in the perfection of their floriculture and the ardor with which they pursued it. The profusion and variety of blossoms of every description were marvellous[652] and enchanting; each had a meaning, by whose aid tender sentiments could be conveyed without the instrumentality of speech; they were associated with every public ceremony and with the most prosaic occurrences of domestic life; they dispensed their fragrance from the priceless vase of the palace; they covered the cottage of the laborer; they formed the daily decoration of the luxuriant tresses of the princess and the peasant; their garlands were the common playthings of the infant; on the marble column which marked the sepulchre of a virgin was sculptured a single rose.
The social life of the Moors of Spain and Sicily presents us with a picture at once lively, sensual, intellectual,—where the highest physical enjoyment, divested of every feature of coarseness, was varied by the constant exhibition of wit and learning. To a considerable extent,—yet far less than at the present day in Mohammedan lands,—it was, as a necessary result of their domestic regulations, bounded by the walls of the harem. A feverish activity, such as pervades the atmosphere of our modern cities and which shows no abatement after sunset, was unknown to the Moslem residents of Cordova and Palermo. The streets of those great capitals, almost impassable by day, were at night deserted save by the guardians of the peace. In the court-yards of private mansions, on the other hand, all was mirth and gayety. Lamps of colored glass were suspended from the balconies. The air was laden with the grateful odors of countless blossoms. From the terrace which crowned every Moorish dwelling could be traced the silvery Guadalquivir, as it wound its tortuous way through endless olive and pomegranate plantations, and the glimmering rows of lights belonging to the suburban villas which extended to the distant slopes of the Sierra Morena. From the deep shadows of the palm- and[653] orange-trees came the harmonious strains of lute and mandolin mingled with the gentle murmur of the fountains. In one gallery of the arcade women of exquisite grace and beauty executed the voluptuous dances which had charmed the people of Tyre and Carthage fifteen centuries before; in another, the professional story-teller recounted tales of wonder with their fascinating accessories of astrologers, genii, magicians, fairies, and enchanters. During the holy festival of Ramadhan, when the Moslem indemnified himself at night for the abstinence and privations of the day, Andalusian life in the gay capital of the khalifate was seen to its highest advantage. The city was illuminated. The mosques were never closed. The baths were crowded. In the seclusion of domestic privacy there were feasting, dissipation, often unseemly orgies, until dawn. Buffoons and jugglers entertained with indelicate jests and antics the groups of hilarious loungers in the parks and on the corners. Itinerant minstrels, progenitors of the troubadour, chanted in monotonous accents romantic ballads of love and chivalry. Gilded litters, guarded by eunuchs with drawn scimetars, traversed the streets. On the Guadalquivir, lighted by the brilliant radiance of the moon and perfumed with the odors of a thousand gardens, floated innumerable boats hung with many-colored lanterns and garlanded with flowers. Among the graver part of the population, the gratification of the senses was discarded for the more profitable diversions of the intellect,—for philosophical experiments, learned discussions, literary contests. In the library, the scholar collated the historians of Greece and Egypt. In the caravansary, the man of leisure played chess and backgammon or watched the swaying movements of the half-nude dancing-girls. On all sides resounded the clapping of hands,—the Oriental call for servants,—still heard to-day in every public place[654] in Southern Spain. The women donned their richest apparel. Their forms were enveloped in chemises of the finest linen; their trousers, which reached to the knee, were blue, green, yellow, or scarlet; their tunic, of two colors, was richly embroidered with gold. Leggings in many folds imparted to their lower limbs a singularly clumsy and awkward appearance. Their feet were enclosed in slippers. An ample garment which could be used for both a cloak and a veil effectually concealed the identity of the owner in the moving crowds. To a comb placed at the back of the head was attached a scarf of elegant material and gauzy texture, the prototype of the Spanish mantilla. The material of the costume common to every class was ordinarily of silk. For ornaments, the rich displayed a profusion of dazzling gems; the poor were forced to be content with jingling coins and amulets. All, without exception, like the Moslem females of to-day, heightened the lustre of their eyes with antimony and stained their finger-tips with henna. Their nomenclature was suggestive of the romantic character which invested their beautiful country. Such names as Saida, “Happy;” Sobeiha, “Aurora;” Safia, “Pure;” Romman, “Pomegranate;” Lonilion, “Pearl;” Zahrâ, “Flower,” were common among the Saracens of Spain.
Under the Spanish Arabs, women enjoyed privileges from which they were rigidly excluded in other Mohammedan countries. They appeared everywhere unveiled. As mentioned in a previous chapter, public opinion not only permitted, but openly encouraged, their participation in the national and provincial contests for the palm of literary excellence. The rare educational facilities of the khalifate were at their disposal. Many—proficient in poetry, philosophy, grammar, and rhetoric—excited universal admiration by the scope and variety of their mental accomplishments.[655] Some even became the political advisers of great sovereigns. These circumstances, so favorable to the development and exaltation of the female character, eventually procured for the sex a consideration elsewhere denied. As Mohammedanism was the first of creeds to spontaneously recognize the right of woman to an amelioration of her social condition, so in the Peninsula the Hispano-Arab invested her personality with a dignity and an importance heretofore not conceded to her merits by members of any race or religion. From such novel doctrines were evolved those chivalrous sentiments which, imparted to Europe, effected such a salutary reformation in the intercourse and social usages of mediæval society. Mohammedan Spain presents the only instance, in ancient or modern history, of a country under whose laws and customs woman did not exist in a state of tutelage. The quality of infant or chattel has, to a greater or less extent, always seemed inseparable from her condition. Among races highest in the scale of civilization, her inferiority appeared the more striking, partly from actual legal disabilities, partly from contrast. It is true that among the Greeks, when Athens was at the summit of her renown, there were females of polished education, of extensive knowledge, gifted with talents of the highest order, able to cope in every intellectual exercise with the most distinguished scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. But these were few in number, and belonged to a class which modern prejudice has branded as infamous; the Athenian wife of the time of Pericles was little better than a slave. Charlemagne is generally conceded to have been the most enlightened Christian sovereign of his epoch. The civilization of his dominions offers a vivid contrast to the darkness which enveloped contemporaneous states and kingdoms. He professed at least a nominal respect for the precepts of Christianity. He[656] publicly avowed himself the champion of the Holy See. To the policy inherited by his successors is largely due the subsequent increase of authority which rescued the Papacy from contempt and made the Bishop of Rome for centuries the dictator of Europe. The learning of his court, modified and in a measure directed by Arabic influence, was far from mediocre. And yet the old chronicles inform us that this great prince in the presence of his courtiers engaged with his sister in a personal encounter, whose result was doubtful until the vigorous use of his steel gauntlet, which knocked out several teeth of his amazonian adversary, gave him the advantage. If such was the treatment accorded to ladies of the highest rank in the Middle Ages, the degradation of women belonging to the remaining orders of society can scarcely be conceived. Nor were these conditions materially improved for centuries. Even so late as 1750, the laws of England permitted women to be treated with a severity almost barbarous; nor have the humiliating restrictions born of masculine superiority been in our age entirely removed. During the reign of Charles II. illiteracy was almost universal; learning in the sex was decried as pedantry or worse; it was rarely that a housewife could write her name; and even the princesses of the royal blood were unable to speak or spell grammatically. This condition, born of ecclesiastical precept derived from the customs of a remote and barbarous age and confirmed by national depravity whose tendency was to depreciate and ridicule female virtue, is an unfailing sign of moral perversity and intellectual decadence. Eight hundred years before, women of Cordova had established an enviable reputation for their proficiency in all the arts which contribute to the culture of nations; for the skill which they exhibited in every department of scientific research; for their profound acquaintance with the[657] models of classic antiquity; for their originality in poetical composition; for the signal success they achieved in the literary congresses, wherein they were forced to compete with the assembled genius and learning of the empire. They were treated with the dignified respect and courtesy which were due to high mental attainments, as well as dictated by the regulations of chivalry which governed the conduct of every Moorish cavalier. These demonstrations of gallantry never degenerated, however, into the fulsome adulation and the worship, half mystical, half sensual, and expressed in terms of florid hyperbole, that prevailed in the social life of the Limousin and Provençal courts, whose development marked an age unique for its extravagance, its epicureanism, its licentiousness; an age of ostentatious asceticism and secret indulgence; an age when ballad-singers moralized and bishops abandoned the crosier for the lute; an age of arduous pilgrimage and romantic exploit; the age of Jongleur, Knight-errant, Crusader, and Troubadour.
In spite of the distinguished consideration they evinced for woman, the Moslems of Spain were unable to divest themselves of the prejudice regarding the fickleness of the sex, which, from immemorial antiquity, had been accepted as one of its prominent characteristics. The position she occupied in the social polity was anomalous. Her features were exposed to the public gaze; she was permitted to attend the lectures of the University; she participated in academical exhibitions. But the liberty she enjoyed was only apparent. Her steps were constantly guarded by eunuchs. Her lord was not less suspicious than his Oriental brethren, and she, if the literature of the time is to be credited, probably for fear of disappointing him, not infrequently gave abundant cause for jealousy. Nothing discloses the general sentiment of a people upon any given subject so comprehensively[658] as its proverbs and epigrams. The estimation in which the Spanish Arabs held the feminine character is indicated by the following saying, often quoted by them, and which is as old as the Pharaohs, “Never trust in women, nor rely upon their vows, for their pleasure and displeasure depend upon their passions. They offer a false affection, while perfidy lurks within their garments. By the tale of Joseph be admonished, and guard against their stratagems.”
The question of polygamy is one which is almost universally viewed through a false medium. Its existence in the torrid climates of the East from a period of unknown antiquity would seem to demonstrate at least the practical usefulness, if not the supreme physiological necessity, of a system which has endured for so many ages. It is eminently unfair for us to condemn a practice sanctioned by Holy Writ and recognized by the patriarchs, without an accurate knowledge of the ethnological conditions under which it is perpetuated. What public opinion, custom, and long experience have found to be beneficial and have pronounced not inconsistent with morality, is very often not a question of ethics, but merely a matter of expediency. Institutions which nations inhabiting the tropics defend as necessary could not be adopted without injury by the sluggish races of the North; and of their propriety, we at a distance of eight thousand miles are incompetent, not to say prejudiced, judges. The women who rose to such distinction under the khalifate were, without exception, members of polygamous households, a circumstance which would seem to effectually contradict the prevalent idea that the system of the harem inevitably tends to intellectual debasement. The standard of morals under the Hispano-Arab domination was probably much superior to that which now obtains in the great capitals of Europe. The deplorable condition of modern society,[659] even among the highly cultivated, where monogamy nominally exists, is disclosed by the frequency of divorce cases and the significant revelations of criminal statistics. It demonstrates that the primitive impulse which among barbarians leads to communal marriage—the original social state of man—is not only not extinct, but even generally prevails, although decorously concealed, and, however repugnant to every principle of morality, must be recognized as a powerful and retarding element of our boasted civilization.
The chivalrous courtesy born of intellectual culture and refined surroundings which distinguished the Spanish Moslems in all the phases of their social life was, as above stated, eminently conspicuous in their treatment of females. The latter were, for the most part, highly educated. Even to-day, in the harems of Constantinople, it is not unusual to see women fine musicians, excellent conversationalists, familiar with the principles of art, able to express themselves fluently in three or four languages. Such accomplishments are still sufficiently rare to confer distinction upon their possessors in London, Paris, and New York. Under the khalifs of the House of Ommeyah, the mental faculties of the sex were cultivated to a marked degree; no field of literature was closed to those who aspired to eminence. They were everywhere received with great respect. They were never insulted in public. They traversed districts in revolt without molestation. The laws protected them against the excesses of marital jealousy. If divorced, the wife was certain of maintenance. It was she who, at marriage, received the dowry. Public opinion denounced as infamous the husband who permitted his spouse to labor in order that he might profit by her earnings. In case of his death she was entitled to a share of his estate. All things considered, the legal[660] status of woman under the khalifate appears to advantage when compared with that to which she is restricted by modern legislation. If polygamy entailed the unhappiness which foreign prejudice is accustomed to attribute to it, the practice would long since have been abolished. It is but a natural result of climatic and physiological conditions, an apparently indispensable factor in the maintenance of Oriental life.
Slavery in Europe under the Moslems brought with it the numerous privileges and indulgent treatment enjoined by the Prophet. The Mohammedan slave was rarely abused or persecuted. His acceptance of the faith of Islam rendered his manumission easy. No stigma attached to his condition. He could aspire to the most noble matrimonial alliance. He was eligible to the most important political employments. While his master was entitled to exercise despotic authority over him, the patriarchal customs of the Orient discouraged all exhibitions of unmerited severity, and designated the slave rather as a companion than a dependent in the household. It was contrary to law to put him in chains. His personality was never sacrificed to the convenience of trade; his classification as a chattel would have been abhorrent to all Mussulman ideas of justice and humanity; and in this respect the laws of the Koran are immeasurably superior to the provisions of Roman and Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. An obligation, whose force the lapse of time could never diminish, was imposed upon the descendants of a freedman to assist and protect at the risk of their lives all members of the family which had liberated their ancestor from bondage. The dignity of human nature was never outraged by the infliction of torture upon those whom fate had condemned to a state of helpless subjection; on the contrary, the slave was usually educated by his[661] master; he became his secretary, his agent, his counsellor; he superintended the affairs of his family; he executed with diligence and fidelity important commissions in distant lands.
The cheapness of slaves indicates their abundance; their price was within reach of the humblest laborer. After the battle of Zallaca, an ordinary captive could be obtained for a dirhem. Many inmates of the harems came from the East. Circassian and Georgian girls, purchased in the markets of Constantinople, were imported into Spain as early as the ninth century. In Mussulman law a distinction existed between slaves bought for service and prisoners taken in battle. The latter shared few of the privileges of the ordinary bondman, and, strictly speaking, could never be liberated or ransomed.
The amusements of the Spanish Arabs were derived from the East. There was nothing in Roman tradition or Visigothic inheritance which appealed to their imagination like the diversions of the idle and sensuous races that inhabited the tropics, and which, with other congenial customs, they had appropriated. They felt but a languid interest in the chase of ferocious beasts. They shrank with horror from the gladiatorial contests of the arena and their scenes of blood and butchery. Exhibitions of strength, where muscular superiority carried off the palm, were scarcely less distasteful to a people accustomed to rely for success on fertility of resource and personal agility. While active exercise was not neglected, those pastimes were in highest favor which required the least physical exertion. Among these, the principal one was the game of chess. Of unknown but high antiquity, it had been brought by Arabic merchants from India. In that country it had long been used as an instrument of divination, and, in time of war, the movements of its pieces frequently directed the evolutions[662] of armies on the march and in battle. A part of the sacred furniture of every Hindu temple, the board had also a cabalistic and astrological significance. Long before the appearance of Mohammed, this game was the solace of the vagrant sheiks of the Desert and the delight of the wealthy traders of Yemen. It followed everywhere in the train of the Moslem armies. In Spain it was universally popular. The chessmen of the khalifs were not inferior in richness to the other accessories of royal luxury,—the arms, the plate, the furniture of the palace. Some were made of the precious metals; others were curiously carved of ivory; most of them were incrusted with gems. The boards were of ebony and sandalwood inlaid with gold. In this instance, also, as in many others, the prohibition of the Koran relating to the representation of animal forms was disregarded. The Spanish Moslems were passionately fond of chess. It became one of the favorite diversions of the court; and it was no unusual occurrence for players to pass the entire day engrossed by its fascinations and entirely oblivious of their surroundings. The story, already related, of the prince who pleaded for time to finish his game after his death-warrant had been read to him, is an example of the absorbing interest excited by this scientific pastime in the mind of the Moor. Cards were known to the Arabs long before the Hegira. Naipe, the Spanish name for them, is from the Arabic word naib, “viceroy,” whence comes the English “nabob.” Introduced into Italy by the Saracens, they were at first called The Game of the Kings. They were not generally used in Europe until the latter part of the fourteenth century. Backgammon and draughts were also familiar to the Moors of Spain. The genius of Mohammed recognized the hidden danger which beset his followers when he forbade indulgence in all games of chance.[663] To such a temptation the ardent and romantic nature of the Oriental is peculiarly susceptible. No information, in this respect, is now obtainable concerning the Mohammedan population of the Peninsula, but the copious accounts of the prevalence of other vices under the domination of the emirs and the khalifs would seem to indicate, from the general silence on this point, that gaming was not commonly practised.
The feats of jugglers were a source of popular amusement in mediæval Cordova. These mountebanks were intimately associated with itinerant minstrels and extemporaneous rhymers, whose coarse effusions, while they could scarcely be dignified by the name of poetry, yet often contributed to the diversion of the court, and whose calling and example produced the troubadour, such an important agent in the civilization of Europe. The lascivious contortions of the dancers of ancient Gades, immortalized in the epigrams of Martial, and which have been transmitted with probably trifling changes through the Phœnician, Carthaginian, Roman, Gothic, and Mussulman dominations to the Spanish gypsies of our day, were constantly exhibited, in all their suggestive indecency, before the appreciative audiences of Moorish Spain. Nothing can indicate more positively the general relaxation of manners than the popularity of such an amusement. Even the indulgent and profligate spirit of Roman society eyed it with marked disfavor. The poets lampooned those who patronized or encouraged it. Moralists and legislators condemned it as a prolific source of corruption. Mohammed forbade it to his followers as a relic of Paganism and an incentive to immorality. Under no circumstances did men participate in it, or, indeed, in any of the terpsichorean exercises practised by Orientals. The dance, as we understand it, was unknown to the Moslems. Among them the practice was abandoned to female[664] professionals, who constituted a caste, who were distinguished by a peculiar costume, and whose calling was infamous. This prejudice, descended from a remote antiquity, exists in full force in all Eastern countries to-day. The degradation of Herodias was far more reprobated by the Hebrews than her inhumanity. The character of the bayadere of India, of the ghawazee of Egypt, of the Jewess of Tunis, of the gypsy of Spain, inheritors of the lewd Phœnician positions and gestures, is familiar to all travellers.
In the dances of Mohammedan Spain, as in those still practised at Cairo, the lower limbs were stationary, and all movements were performed with the body and the arms. Their impropriety generally consisted rather in their suggestiveness than in any flagrant personal exposure. Rarely were they performed in a condition of nudity; as a rule, the form was completely enveloped in graceful folds of silk and linen. The dancers kept time with castanets, which were originally small copper cymbals, and every motion was made in perfect cadence with the music. The extraordinary effect of these exhibitions upon the imagination, even when represented by women not adepts in the art, can be understood only by those who have witnessed them.
The taste for improvisation pervaded the music of the Hispano-Arabs as it did their poetry. Although to foreign ears it might appear wholly destitute of measure and harmony, the monotonous execution of the performer impressed the feelings of his audience to an extent incomprehensible to nations of northern blood. The profoundly emotional nature of the Moor, readily susceptible to every kind of mental excitement and passionately devoted to rhyme, at one time roused him to frenzy, at another deprived him of consciousness. No race has ever enjoyed to an equal degree with the Arabs the faculty of investing[665] fiction with the semblance of truth, of transforming images created by an inexhaustible fancy into the realities of life, of giving
The music of the khalifate was largely derived from Greek and Roman sources. Its peculiarities, inherited by the Spaniards, have imparted a national character to their minstrelsy, as well as measures unknown to the other nations of Europe. It had nothing in common with our ideas of harmony. It consisted principally of monotonous chants, whose time was marked by rude instruments of percussion; whose melody was partly classic, partly barbaric; and which disclosed none of that novelty and variety which constitute the greatest charm of modern music. The Spanish Arabs had no theory, used no notes, and possessed no means of preserving musical compositions except by memory and oral tradition. Under these disadvantages, improvement in one of the most pleasing of sciences was impossible, and most pieces rarely survived their composers. The musical instruments of the Spanish Moslems were of many kinds; there were thirteen different varieties—among them viols, lutes, dulcimers, harps—made in Seville, which was the most celebrated seat of their manufacture in the world. The great Ziryab, who lived at the court of Abd-al-Rahman II., added a fifth string to the lute, to which, as to the others, the Moors attached a symbolic significance. The remaining strings, which were of different colors, represented the supposed four humors of the human body; that of Ziryab was presumed to represent the soul. The school of music which he founded at Cordova endured until the last days of the khalifate, to which is no doubt due the fact[666] that the writers of Spain on this subject are the most numerous and prolific of any age.
The antipathy with which this science was regarded by theologians did not prevent it from being the delight of the prince and an indispensable diversion of the people. Its power was so great that it early invaded the shrines of the religion that condemned it, and for centuries the verses of the Koran have been intoned in the mosques. The story-teller recited his tales to music; the itinerant buffoon interspersed his coarse but expressive pantomime with rhyming jests and ribald songs. The Arab notes are harsh, nasal, and guttural, unpleasant beyond measure to European ears. Their scale includes seventeen intervals in the octave, and it is said by learned authority on the subject that the Italian, from which ours is derived, was originally copied, without alteration, from that of the Arabs of Sicily and Spain.
The Moors thoroughly understood the almost magical effects which follow the judicious employment of music. Not only was it indispensable on all festive occasions, but its notes brought consolation and comfort to the house of bereavement. It was considered an important remedial agent in disease. It was used to correct the distressing condition of insomnia. In the hospitals of great cities bands were constantly entertained, because it was well known that harmony of sound promoted convalescence. Its aphrodisiacal qualities were appreciated and utilized to fully as great an extent as those of perfumes,—the delight of the Oriental. It was a favorite maxim of the Mussulman doctors that “to hear music is to sin against the law; to make music is to sin against religion; to take pleasure in it is to be guilty of infidelity.” Notwithstanding this, and the fact that it was anathematized by Mohammed, no people were more fond of it than the Arabs; and the professional musician, whose[667] talents had raised him above mediocrity, was sure of distinguished attention at the court of the khalifs; and, once become famous, he was the recipient of honors elsewhere reserved for the descendants and the representatives of royalty. It was not unusual for a master of his art to receive ten thousand pieces of gold for a single performance. Instruments of percussion, and especially drums and tambourines, were most employed by the Spanish Moslems, but their constructive genius produced radical changes in others; they improved the guitar, the flute, and the clarionet; they were the inventors of the mandolin and the organ.
In equestrian sports, which required the highest degree of adroitness and agility, the Moors of Spain had no superiors. First among their pastimes of this description was the bull-fight, which had little in common with the modern spectacle, whose revolting characteristics are the result of long-continued sanguinary and brutalizing influences. The performers were all of noble birth; they were splendidly mounted; their equipments were of the most sumptuous description. No weapon was allowed them but a short, heavy javelin, whose point was partly encased in leather. The rules of the sport required that the animal be killed by a thrust along the spine in front of the shoulder, to deliver which properly demanded great skill and almost superhuman strength. If a blow was landed elsewhere, the knight was compelled to retire from the arena; if his weapon was broken or lost, he was adjudged to have sustained an irretrievable disgrace. The intelligence and training of the horse and the dexterity of the rider were ordinarily sufficient guarantees against disaster; but the occasional sacrifice of a cavalier reminded the survivors of the fearful dangers of the encounter. Trained from early childhood to the use of the horse and the javelin, accustomed[668] to every manly exercise, adepts in the arts of the tourney and the chase, the Spanish Moslems found in the bull-fight the climax of enjoyment, second only to the martial pleasures and excitements of war. With such an education, it is not strange that they were recognized as the finest light cavalry in Europe.
Of equal interest, and of even greater magnificence, was the spectacle presented by the tilt of reeds. In its exhibition and accessories were displayed the inexhaustible profusion and opulence of Moorish luxury. The scene was laid in one of the many squares of the vast Moslem capital. A series of arcades and galleries, supported by columns of colored marble, brilliant with mosaics and gilded stuccoes, were crowded with an enthusiastic audience representing the noblest families of the court and the wealth and fashion of the principal city of the empire. The Khalif was there, surrounded by his body-guard, gigantic blacks from the Atlas and the Soudan, with gem-studded weapons and armor damascened with gold. The balustrades of the galleries were hung with scarlet, emerald, and sky-blue velvet. The inmates of the harems, models of the voluptuous type of Andalusian beauty, unveiled, revealed their smiling features to the public gaze,—a sight to be witnessed in no other quarter of the Mohammedan world. Their silken cloaks striped with every color of the rainbow; their strings of superb jewels, whose collection was an absorbing passion with every Moorish woman of rank; the golden belts and bracelets gleaming in the sunlight; the personal charms of their owners, enhanced to the utmost by every resource of attire and adornment, presented a splendid and enchanting picture unsurpassed in either classic or mediæval times. In the audience, sometimes by courtesy among the cavaliers in the arena were to be seen Castilian knights exiled for political reasons, or competitors for distinction in the national sports[669] of their hereditary foes. The parapets and terraces which commanded the amphitheatre, the arches of the aqueducts, the minarets, the trees, even the spurs of the distant sierra, were white with the robes and turbans of the populace, attracted by the novelty and magnificence of the scene. The performers, in whom all interest centred, were worthy of the attention they excited. Twenty-four in number, they included the flower of the Moorish warriors selected from two of the principal tribes composing the aristocracy of the Peninsula. All were clad in flexible coats of mail covered with tunics of blue or crimson velvet sowed with stars of gold. Their heads were protected by silken turbans; their waists were encircled by sashes of the same material; upon the small buckles worn by each horseman were emblazoned his motto and family crest, from which custom Christian chivalry borrowed its heraldic devices and its coats of arms. The horses of one division were white, those of the other black; they were almost concealed by embroidered housings; the bridles were enriched with jewels, the bits were of massy gold. A short lance, whose point was blunted, was the sole arm upon which the cavalier was permitted to rely for attack or protection; to it were attached the colors of his mistress,—sometimes represented by a knot of ribbons, but more frequently by a scarf of silken tissue, upon which she had traced in golden embroidery the characters of some amorous legend. In the fantastic devices of Oriental imagery, which originated in the voluptuous regions where love is an art, each color, each gesture, even the most prosaic of objects, is invested with more than a passing significance.
These equestrian diversions of the Spanish Moslems, unlike the tournaments of the Middle Ages, which were derived from them, were never polluted by the wanton shedding of blood. They represented[670] all the exciting phases of battle,—the attack, the mêlée, the retreat. In the confusing movements of each encounter every facility was afforded for the exhibition of the highest degree of strength, activity, and skill. Their object was not the disabling of an antagonist, but the seizure and retention of the decorations which adorned both horse and rider; and in the evolutions performed for the accomplishment of these ends the most daring feats of horsemanship were exhibited. The course of the rings terminated the brilliant festival. Among the branches of a tree, planted at one extremity of the arena, were suspended a number of rings of gold. One after another the competitors for knightly honors, moving at the greatest speed, endeavored to bear away these trophies of adroitness upon the point of the slender reed which served the purpose of a lance. A magnificent prize, usually a golden vase enriched with jewels, was awarded the victor, who in turn was expected to present it to the lady whose colors he had worn in the contest. The talents of the most famous poets of the khalifate were exercised in the celebration of these splendid spectacles, wonderful exhibitions of human dexterity, whose attractiveness was not marred by suffering, and which revealed to the greatest advantage the chivalrous sentiments and martial ardor of a refined and polished race.
Nor were these the only sports which occupied the leisure of the elegant society of the Moslem court. Its members rarely participated in the chase. Hawking, introduced by Abd-al-Rahman I., was, however, a favorite diversion with them; their hawks were the finest and best trained in Europe, and they constituted an important article of commerce, especially with Italy, France, and England. In the extensive gardens of Granada and Palermo were artificial lakes, where naval spectacles were frequently given upon[671] a much larger scale than in the amphitheatre of Titus during the palmy days of Imperial Rome.
Under a government whose beneficent policy provided work for the industrious and shelter for the helpless, it may well be supposed that mendicancy was neither an honorable nor a lucrative profession. The horrible exhibitions of real or simulated deformity which in Southern Europe now shock the eyes of the traveller were not tolerated under the Moslem domination. While the bestowal of alms is a cardinal principle of the Mohammedan religion, its objects, when worthy, were not permitted to openly solicit the aid of the generous and sympathetic passer-by. The suffering and the crippled were carried to hospitals, where every means was applied to effect their restoration to health; while the impostor, seized by the police, expiated in prison or under the scourge the penalty of his idleness and fraud. Conducted on a plan of boundless charity, no factitious impediments of race or religion interposed to exclude from the public institutions those unfortunates whose physical afflictions claimed the indulgence or the generous solicitude of mankind. Hospitals were open to the worthy applicant, and the Jew, the Christian, even the idolater, received within their walls the same assiduous care bestowed upon the most orthodox Moslem.
In all its tendencies the spirit of Moorish civilization was eminently practical. Even its speculative labors were rather serious than sportive,—the occasional relaxations of arduous and prolonged mental effort. Its grand aims were the security of the individual, the dispensation of impartial justice, the systematic development of the noblest faculties of the human intellect, the amalgamation of the heterogeneous constituents of a proud and turbulent society, the progressive improvement and durable prosperity of a vast and populous, but constantly disintegrating, empire.[672] In the accomplishment of these ends, war, while presumed to be an object, was in reality but an instrument. Public policy required the occupation of the streams of restless barbarians and needy adventurers incessantly pouring into the Peninsula. For their employment in foreign campaigns, the Koranic injunction of perpetual hostility offered a plausible and convenient excuse. This practice, while appealing at once to the religious enthusiasm of the fanatic and the cupidity of the warrior, insured the succession of the dynasty and the permanence of the throne. Without its aid even the administration of Al-Mansur, directed by the consummate ability of that leader, must speedily have fallen. It required semi-annual campaigns, followed by an unbroken succession of victories, to restrain the native insubordination of the African immigrants, whose multitudes, constantly recruited from the innumerable tribes of Mauritania, constituted not only the bulk of the army, but the predominant element of the population.
This mingling of races and the resultant prevalence of crosses, combined with the influence of climate and the stimulants of military and commercial activity, will readily account for the versatility of the Hispano-Arab mind, which was among its most prominent characteristics. No greater contrast in comparative ethnology can be drawn than that presented by the precarious and barbaric existence of the Desert and the polished and highly cultivated life of the Western Khalifate in its most glorious days. And yet but a comparatively insignificant period of time separates the vagrant Bedouin, whose favorite occupation was the plunder of his neighbors and who resented the interference of even his acknowledged chieftain as an infringement of his liberties, and the Spanish Arab, whose despotic government insured the enjoyment of personal freedom and public tranquillity, where intelligence,[673] order, prosperity, took the place of insubordination and discord, and the prestige of foreign conquest and the blessings of civilization travelled in parallel lines and side by side. To the development of that civilization every people became tributary, coincident with its subjection to the Moslem arms. In the character of the conqueror was revealed a spirit of acquisition in no wise inferior to its inventive faculty, and which at once appropriated, and often improved, all that was useful in the systems of others while forming and developing new ideas of its own.
It is with mingled sentiments of admiration and regret that we contemplate the phenomenal rise, the dazzling splendor, the rapid fall, of the Moslem empire in Spain. The material relics which remain to tell the story of its architectural grandeur, of the munificence of its sovereigns, of the acquirements of its scholars, of the skill of its artisans, are few and widely scattered. The destruction has been most complete. The supremacy of Christian ideas and Castilian customs, enforced by diligent persecution, was in all instances necessary before the intellectual aspirations fostered during nine generations of august and learned princes could be subordinated to the sacerdotal ignorance and military ferocity of the age. Some edifices defaced by malice or neglect, their apartments so altered by barbarous innovators that their original plans and the purposes of their construction can often no longer be traced or even conjectured; their delicate ornamentation concealed by many successive layers of lime and plaster; their precincts abandoned to the vilest uses; a meagre collection of manuscripts, whose characters are half obliterated by moisture and rough usage; an occasional trophy rusting in the solitude of the museum, are all the tangible evidences extant of a monarchy once the marvel of Europe. It is elsewhere that we[674] must look for the proofs of its greatness and the trophies of its glory. Its salutary influence in modifying the debased instincts and savage manners of mediæval society is no longer questioned. The enduring impulse it imparted to philosophical investigation, its prosecution of the exact sciences, the consideration in which it held intellectual ability, the honors with which it rewarded proficiency in literature, transmitted through many generations, have placed their seal upon the civilization of the twentieth century. The obligations we are under to the Spanish Arabs cannot be too frequently nor too generally acknowledged; and in ascribing the origin of our progress to the nation whose genius was its inspiring spirit, we are only offering a just and well deserved tribute of gratitude.
It was said by Seneca, “Wherever the Roman conquers, he inhabits.” It might, with almost equal truth, be asserted of the Arab that, wherever his religion and his language are once established, there they will forever prevail. The countries originally subdued by the lieutenants of the Prophet are still Mohammedan. The idiom of Mecca is still spoken from the eastern shore of the Atlantic to the China Sea. Nor does Islam seem to have lost its power of expansion. Its progress has never been arrested. It has penetrated to Central Russia,—in that empire its votaries number eleven millions. It is the faith of hundreds of thousands of Negroes at the equator. In Europe there are seven million Mussulmans, in India fifty-three million, in China twenty-two million. The people of Sicily and Spain alone of the great colonies founded by the Moslem—the seat of his most highly developed civilization, the home of races equally accomplished in learning, advanced in arts, illustrious in arms—were compelled to go into exile or renounce their faith and abandon their language. In neither[675] of these countries have the discoveries, the inventions, and the experience of six centuries, which have long been the common property of all nations, exerted any appreciable effect in repairing the awful damage consequent on Moorish expulsion.
The propagators of a form of religion which relies for its success upon the extermination of all who refuse assent to its dogmas have certainly little faith in the truth or the celestial inspiration of the maxims which they deem it necessary to resort to force to inculcate. During the ascendency of the papal power no one within its reach could publicly profess heretical doctrines and live. Under the Ommeyades and the Aghlabites both the misbeliever and the infidel were safe on the payment of tribute. The occasional outbursts of Moslem fanaticism were directed against literature; the spirit of Christian persecution—a spirit sadly at variance with that evinced by the gentleness and meekness of its Divine Founder—raged fiercely against both literature and humanity. Amru and Al-Mansur burned books. Innocent III. and Calvin tortured men.
The Assyrian, Carthaginian, Roman, and Hispano-Arab empires lasted each about eight hundred years. Of two of these the memory alone survives. A number of defaced monuments, a fragmentary literature, preserve the traditions of the third. The genius of the Moslem, superior to those of all his predecessors, has perpetuated itself in the scientific inspiration and progressive energy of every succeeding age. Remarkable for its unparalleled success, while hampered by tremendous obstacles,—war, sedition, disorder, barbarian supremacy,—it is instructive to reflect what it might have accomplished under the most favorable auspices, when at the height of their prosperity the Moors of Europe controlled the Mediterranean. The latter occupied and colonized in turn the important[676] posts of Sardinia, Corsica, Cyprus, Malta. Their revenues were tenfold greater than those of any contemporaneous state. The inexhaustible population of Africa could be constantly drawn on for hundreds of thousands of soldiers, whose abstemious lives, blind fanaticism, and reckless bravery made them most formidable adversaries. The fleets of the Sicilian emirs threatened the coast of Asia Minor. The Arab governors of Spain established permanent outposts as far as Lyons. The pirates of Fraxinet fortified and held for many years the passes of the Alps. The tracks of the Saracen armies marching northward from Calabria and southward from Provence and Switzerland overlapped on the plains of Lombardy. Such opportunities for conquest have rarely been enjoyed or neglected by any military power. Civil discord and tribal jealousy were all that prevented Europe from being Mohammedanized. In the polity of the Arabs, wherever domiciled, the traditions of the Desert invariably prevailed. The organization of the state was modelled after those of the family and the tribe. No allowance was made for the changed conditions resulting from the extension of dominion and the increase of knowledge. Under such circumstances there could be no cohesion among the parts of the constantly tottering fabric of Moslem power, which, in fact, was undermined from the very beginning. From this instability, the Western Khalifate has been, with some truth, compared to a Bedouin encampment. The defects of an anomalous constitution were aggravated by intestine conflict. Factional hostility in Arabian Spain was always more pronounced and bitter than hatred of the Christian foe.
A great victory and a few unimportant skirmishes gained for the Moslems in less than two years control of the richest kingdom in Europe. To reconquer it required eight centuries and more than five thousand[677] battles. The followers of Pelayus, when the long struggle for Christian supremacy began, were but thirty in number. The host mustered by Ferdinand and Isabella before Granada amounted to nearly a hundred thousand men. The religious character which invested the Reconquest, and from which its prosecution eventually became inseparable, has stamped itself indelibly and ruinously upon the Spanish people. The cost of the triumph was incalculable. It impoverished forever great provinces. It drenched the soil of the entire Peninsula with blood. A single campaign often destroyed an army. The casualties of a single siege sometimes swept away numbers equal to the inhabitants of a populous city. At Baza alone, in the short space of seven months, twenty-one thousand Castilians perished.
The almost universal disbelief in Moorish civilization is hardly less remarkable than its creation and progress. Sectarian prejudice, ignorance of Arabic, and a fixed determination to acknowledge no obligation to infidels have concurred to establish and confirm the popular opinion. To this end the Church has always lent its powerful, often omnipotent, aid. Yet, in spite of systematic suppression of facts and long-continued misrepresentations, it cannot now be denied that no race effected so much for all that concerns the practical welfare of mankind as the Spanish Mohammedans; that no race of kings has deserved so large a measure of fame as that which traced its lineage to Abd-al-Rahman I.
Such was the civilization which the Spanish and Sicilian Arabs bequeathed to Europe. Their conquests and their influence, their progress in the arts of peace, their industrial and economical inventions, the precocity of their mental development, the perpetuation of their advanced ideas under the most discouraging conditions which can be conceived, present[678] an example without parallel in the history of nations. Their origin had nothing in common with that of any European people. Their religion was avowedly inimical to the one which was professed from the Mediterranean coast to the verge of the Arctic Circle. Their political and domestic institutions were abhorrent to the feelings of their neighbors, their allies, their enemies. From the hour when Tarik landed at Gibraltar to that when Boabdil surrendered the keys of the Alhambra was a period of constant and relentless hostility. Such circumstances as these are not ordinarily propitious to the material or intellectual advancement of mankind.
In the face of such formidable obstacles a mighty empire was founded. The very causes which seemed liable to seriously affect its integrity and permanence in reality increased its strength. Its military power became a standing menace to every state of Christendom. Its fleets of armed galleys dominated the seas. The Saracens of Sicily sacked the suburbs of Rome and insulted the sacred majesty of the Holy Father in the Vatican. In every trade-centre of the East and West, in the streets of Canton and Delhi, in the bazaars of Damascus, along the crowded quays of Alexandria, beside the scattered wells of the Sahara, at the great fairs of Sweden, Germany, and Russia, in the splendid markets of Constantinople, the Moorish merchants and Hebrew brokers of Spain outstripped all commercial competitors in the amounts of their purchases and the shrewdness of their bargains. The wealth which resulted from this vast system of trade was almost inconceivable. In addition, the agricultural and mineral resources of the country, great in themselves, were developed beyond all precedent. The treasures thus amassed were expended in public works, whose neglected ruins amaze the traveller; in the promotion of educational advantages that modern experience[679] and energy have never been able to surpass; in the collection of immense libraries; in the maintenance of a court with whose magnificence the traditional luxury of the Byzantine princes was not worthy of comparison; in the celebration of a worship whose furniture and appointments transcended, in richness and beauty, the vaunted pomp and semi-barbaric ceremonial of pontifical Rome.
It is both popular and fashionable to ascribe to the influence of the Crusades the awakening of the spirit of progress which ultimately led to the revival of letters and to the political and social regeneration of Europe. But the Crusades were only, in an indirect and secondary manner, a factor of civilization. On the other hand, their general tendency was signally destructive. Their track has been compared to that left by a swarm of locusts. Many works of classic genius perished in the sack of Constantinople. The Moslem library of Tripoli, which contained two hundred thousand volumes, was burned when that city was taken by the soldiers of the Cross. It is a well-established fact that few of the latter were actuated by religious motives. Their crimes cast discredit upon their cause and secured the eternal contempt of the Oriental; for even the name of Christianity was unworthily degraded by such vile associations. The results produced upon Europe by these expeditions, instead of being humanizing, were most disastrous. Whole districts were depopulated. The hereditary estates of the nobility were transferred to the Church, whose ministers alone possessed the means of purchase, and who, through promoting the insane spirit of fanaticism by which they subsequently profited, secured a double measure of consequence and power. The Papacy soon controlled the wealth of Christendom, and its irresponsible authority increased in proportion to its influence. With despotism came[680] tyranny, with tyranny persecution. The principle of forcing the acceptance of religious dogmas upon armed enemies was extended to the conviction of recalcitrant sectaries by torture. The atrocities of religious conflict, the war of the Albigenses, the unspeakable horrors of the Inquisition, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, are largely attributable to the sanguinary tastes engendered by the Crusades. In other respects, as well, their influence was highly detrimental to humanity. They introduced vices hitherto confined to the East, and which are to this day blots upon the society of the great European capitals. They filled Europe with leprosy or with an affection similar to it, from which eminent medical authorities have deduced the origin of the most obstinate and loathsome of contagious diseases. They introduced the plague, one visitation of which swept away thirteen million persons. The rupture of family ties occasioned by the absence of such multitudes fostered every form of licentiousness. In some provinces vast tracts of fertile soil, soon overgrown with brushwood, relapsed into primeval wildness. In others, deprived of the means of preserving order, the country became a prey to outlaws. While tens of thousands of armed fanatics were fighting for the Christian cause in Syria, the barbarians of Northern Europe were worshipping idols and serpents and offering human sacrifices.
The Crusades, however, were not wholly an unmixed evil. They increased the power of the clergy, but they exterminated a large part of the most worthless elements of society. It has been estimated that six million persons perished in these expeditions. They made the Papacy autocratic; but, by destroying feudalism through the alienation of the estates of the barons, they greatly improved the condition of the serf. The necessity for treating victims of the horrible maladies contracted in Palestine led to the foundation[681] of the first hospitals in Christendom. They directed the attention of scholars to the study of works in Arabic, a language hitherto unknown outside of Mussulman countries. It was in 1142 that Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, went to Toledo and made a translation of the Koran into Latin, in order that he might demonstrate the falsity of the doctrines of Islamism. Had these successive deluges of fanatics been poured upon the Spanish Peninsula instead of upon the Holy Land, not the slightest trace of Moslem learning and civilization could have survived their attack.
The benefits arising from the Crusades were far from sufficient to counterbalance their injurious effects. They gave, however, a great impetus to commerce, especially through the enterprise of the Italian republics. They awakened a taste for luxuries which had been hitherto unknown, even to royalty. They stimulated manufactures, particularly those connected with the ornamental arts of glass, wood, ivory, and metals. In one respect, their influence promoted immensely the cause of civilization. Familiarity with Moslem valor, politeness, and culture removed the prejudices maintained through centuries of priestcraft and ignorance by the benighted nations of Europe. Returning pilgrims and adventurers brought back from the Holy Land tales of magnificent cities, of incredible treasures, of deeds of heroism and chivalry, which had no counterparts in any state of Christendom. Accounts of these marvels awakened not only a desire to imitate them, but aroused an involuntary admiration for the superiority of their authors. At the time of the first Crusade, in the closing years of the eleventh century, Moorish civilization in the Peninsula had attained its highest perfection. While its influence had long been imperceptibly exerted upon the populations of France and Italy, deep-seated[682] hatred of the followers of Mohammed had retarded the general diffusion of its benefits. In consequence of the repeated expeditions to Palestine, an increased demand for the manufactures and the agricultural products of Moorish Spain was created. Its language, its improvisations, its literature, soon became familiar to Europe. Even its sports were borrowed, and the graceful courses of the arena, adapted to the rude and ferocious tastes of baronial society, became the most popular of mediæval diversions. The chivalric sentiments inseparable from knightly exercises contributed to social refinement and to the exaltation of woman. The troubadour carried everywhere the amatory songs which had long enchanted the polished society of Andalusia. The coarseness and asperity of feudal manners were softened, and a marked improvement characterized every form of official and domestic intercourse. It is beyond the Pyrenees, and not to the Orient, that the historian must look for the origin of modern civilization.
In rapidity of conquest, in extent of dominion, in successful propagation of religious belief, in ability to profit by the resources of Nature, in profundity of knowledge and versatility of intellect, no people have ever approached the Arabs. Their conquests were secured, and their government made permanent, by that peculiar provision of their civil polity which, appealing to the strongest of human passions and sanctioned by the injunctions of their Prophet, permitted the appropriation of the women of vanquished nations. Their commerce, to which in a land destitute of agricultural resources they were impelled by necessity, developed their trading propensities, and by association from a remote age with their enterprising neighbors, the Phœnicians, familiarized them with the men of all races and the products of all countries;[683] enlarged their faculties; sharpened their intellects; and made them capable of becoming, in after times, the conquerors and the lawgivers of the world. Prodigious energy and aggressiveness were their leading characteristics. These traits were intensified by various, sometimes by unworthy, motives,—by the love of pleasure, the thirst of avarice, the fire of ambition,—as well as by the precepts and promises of a religion congenial to their tastes, their habits, and their excessively romantic and adventurous nature. Of all the dynasties established by the Successors of the Prophet, that of the Ommeyades of Spain is indisputably entitled to the most exalted rank.
The foundation of that dynasty marks a great epoch in the history of Europe. Of its noble deeds, in both war and peace, every individual of Moslem faith or Arab lineage may well be proud; proud of its long line of illustrious princes; proud of its conquests; proud of its civilization, which surpassed the splendors of Imperial Rome, and whose arts modern science has found it impossible to successfully imitate; proud of its unequalled agricultural prosperity; proud of the exquisite beauty of its edifices, still pre-eminently attractive even in their decay; proud of its mighty capital; proud of its academical system, with its perfect organization, its colleges, its lyceums, its libraries; proud of the vast attainments of its scholars, its surgeons, its chemists, its botanists, its astronomers, its mathematicians; proud of the theories of its philosophers, which for a thousand years, amidst the incessant fluctuations of human opinion and the infinite variations of religious belief, have retained their original form, and are accepted as correct by the most enlightened thinkers of the present age. The destruction of this wonderful empire was an event of more than national significance; it was a misfortune to be deplored by every lover of learning for all[684] coming time. For evil was the day for human progress when from his battlemented walls the Moor looked down upon the signing of a truce craftily devised for the betrayal of his kindred; evil was the day when upon the red towers of the Alhambra, decorated by the emirs with profuse and unexampled magnificence, and which for seven centuries had been the stronghold of Moslem power, the home of Moslem art, were raised the victorious banners of the Spanish monarchy, suggestive, it is true, of incredible achievement, of undaunted valor, of heroic self-sacrifice, of imperishable renown, yet at the same time harbingers of an endless train of national calamities which, like avenging and relentless furies, stalked unseen in the wake of the exultant conqueror.
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END OF VOLUME III.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original.
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.