mystics and heretics in italy at the end of the middle ages - emile gebhart

7/30/2019 Mystics and Heretics in Italy at the End of the Middle Ages - Emile Gebhart

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MYSTICS AND HERETICSIN ITALY


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NICHOLAS-KMILE GEBHART1S39-19CS


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MYSTICS & HERETICSIN ITALYAT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES

BYEMILE GEBHART

TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION,BYEDWARD MASLIN HULME

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LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTDRUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET W.C. i


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This translationFirst published in ig22

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{All rights reserved)


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TOTHE MEMORY OFMY MOTHER

ANNIE LOUISE HULMETHIS VERSION OF " LITALIE MYSTIQUE"

A BOOK THAT REVEALS THE SPIRIT OF AN AGEIS DEDICATED

Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall.A mother's secret hope outhvcs them all.


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INTRODUCTIONAlthough the French historian and man of letterswho is the subject of this brief sketch lived almostexactly the traditionally allotted term of three scoreyears and ten, the frost of age had failed to chillthe fires of his youth ; his poet's heart still beat highwithin his breast ; his enthusiasms had lost nothingof their old intensity ; his interests were ever widen-ing and deepening ; and his sympathies, more inclusivethan ever with the passing of the years, had butmellowed in the autumnal glow. To have devoted halfa century to the writing and teaching of history (forthough he sat in a chair of literature he emphasizedthe historical aspect of his subject), to have writtenmany exquisite historical sketches, one ambitioushistorical novel impregnated with the authentic spiritof its time, and at least two important historicalworks unsurpassed in insight and synthetic power intheir respective fields, and, in addition, to have createdin the minds of many students an understanding ofthe significance of two great periods in the story ofthe human past, and to have enkindled in their heartsa deep and abiding love for those times, for the noblemen who lived in them, and for the beauty of theart that still gives voice to their ideals, to have doneall this, and without stain in the doing, is surelyan enviable accomplishment and one well worthy ofcommemoration. Yet thus far only one of his bookshas been done into English, and that a minor one ;in no paper published in the English-speaking worlddid his death evoke more than a brief paragraph ;


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8 MYSTIC ITALYand in his own country he seems to be generally under-rated as a writer of mere exquisite miniatures ratherthan esteemed as a scholar of insight and learning aswell as of grace.Nicholas-mile Gebhart was born in 1839 ^t Nancy,the old capital of Lorraine, which at that time wasnot as prosperous and animated as it afterwards cameto be, but which could nevertheless boast a grace nowvanished. The men of Lorraine, so one of their numberhas said, have three ruling passions the army, art,and the forest. Gebhart and his two brothers, althoughof Alsatian parentage, personified these three passions.The eldest was a soldier and rose to the rank ofgeneral ; the youngest became a commissioner offorests ; and the second was the man of letters whoselife we are to narrate and whose work we areto estimate.The sensitive and imaginative boy proved to be anexcellent pupil in the pubhc school at Nancy, andamong the prizes he won was a copy of the Journeyfrom Paris to Jerusalem. No other writer madea deeper impression upon French literature in thenineteenth century than Chateaubriand. His extra-ordinary faculty for the description of nature, hisexquisite sense of style, his impassioned eloquence, therichness of his imagination, the ardour and the violenceof his passions, his sombre fidelite pour les causestombees, and, above all else, the touch of Celtic magicthat distinguishes so many of his pages, enchanted thechild Gebhart and induced him to dream, beneath thepale sky of his northern town, of the olive andthe oleander, of purple seas and purple mountains, ofdistant lands where the temples are fallen and wherethe silence of the long summer days is broken only bythe hum of the insects. The passion he conceived forChateaubriand never left him. And, as was the casewith little Pierre in Le Lys Rouge, from these schooldays dated a taste for sonorous Latin and elegant French


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INTRODUCTION 9which he never lost despite the example, and, indeed,if not even the counsel, of many of his more famouscontemporaries. In due time he continued his studiesat Nancy under the newly-estabUshed Faculty of Letters,of which five of the professors had been members ofthe French School at Athens. When he received thedegree of Bachelor of Letters his father, who washimself a provincial magistrate, sent him to Paris tostudy law. There he became a lawyer, and, althoughit is not recorded that he ever pleaded a case, he longmaintained a nominal connection with the profession.But even while preparing for his degree in law,young Gebhart did not neglect letters. He frequentedthe Sorbonne and was in particular attracted by thelectures of M. Saint-Marc Giradin. One day, inspeaking of La Fontaine, the famous professorvigorously denounced the idle and improvident grass-hopper. The next week he read a letter of protest,received, he explained, since the last lecture, which,pleading the cause of the light-hearted insect, wassigned " A Grasshopper of the Latin Quarter." Sodelighted were the auditors with the cleverness of thereply that they requested the name of the author. Thusdid Gebhart enjoy the intoxication of a first literarytriumph. Strange that a defender of la cigale shouldbe found in a youth w^hose race has always been notedfor its ant-like industry !Gebhart was not yet twenty-one when he sustainedhis two theses for the doctorate of letters. In thefirst one, De varia Ulyssis apiid veteres poetas persona,he reviewed the various characters lent to Ulysses by thepoets of antiquity. The second, Histoire dii sentimentpoetique de le nature dans Vantiquite Greque ei Romaine,based upon his own reading of the classical authorsand upon lectures to which he had listened in theSorbonne and the College de France, was a largertheme. It betrays the immaturity of its author, ofcourse, but scattered throughout its paragraphs are


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10 MYSTIC ITALYquotations from Chateaubriand and Goethe that revealsomething of the intense longing that possessed himfor the classical countries. Fate was kind to him.He was appointed to teach logic in the public schoolat Nice, the gateway to the land of his heart's desire.The thoughts of the new school teacher were notalways confined to his half-empty classroom. Theyoften followed the sails that winged their way overthe blue sea and disappeared in the east. Fortunatelythe new charter of the French School at Athens renderedit no longer necessary that the candidates should bemen distinguished for scholarly research. Gebhartreceived an appointment without opposition. To Athens,by way of Italy, he accordingly went.For the first time he saw Florence, suave and austere,whose soul is revealed in the work of Fra Angelicoand Dante, in that of Donatello and Michelangelo, hersevere grandeur always penetrated with grace, herexalted mysticism never unregardful of the daily andcommon life of man. To Siena he went also, thewinsome city, seated aloft upon her hills, her wallsand towers the colour of the rose, whose beauty ismatched only by the memories that surge within thebrain. " There is a soul in the charming body of theold city ", he wrote a generation later, " a memoryuniversally present that unceasingly carries the thoughtsof the living back to distant times ; an angelic visionever hovers in the pleasant atmosphere of Siena. ThereSaint Catherine will always be queen." He enteredRome by coach and put up at the Villa Medici, fromwhose windows he could see the Eternal City spreadbefore him. He told at a later day with how keen apang he saw the ancient ruins despoiled of their mantleof clematis and the river no longer running betweenreeds and willows but canalized with granite walls. Onhe went through Naples and Pompeii to Palermo, thatcity which, with its plain, the Golden Shell, liesso picturesquely within half-encircling heights and


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INTRODUCTION 11fronts upon a gently curving bay. A place ofthronging memories, indeed ! Phenician, Greek, Roman,Carthaginian, Saracen, Norman, Angevin, and Aragonesehas each contributed to its story. In its cathedral,eloquent with echoes of the past, Gebhart stood beforethe tomb of Frederic II Saint Catherine at Siena andthe Emperor Frederic at Palermo ; the most fragrantflower of mysticism and the pioneer of rationalism ;the sweetest exponent of religious rapture and theforerunner of the Renaissance ! What greater antithesiscould there be? Yet to each was the young studentattracted, and of each was he to write with insight,sympathy, and charm. His imagination had beenstimulated by the Middle Ages. Let him now followUlysses over the violet sea and make his way toGreece, there to " learn the art of tempering theimagination by reason and of wedding sentiment withjudgment ".The great memories of Greece were vividly revivedand the fascination of that marvellous civilization cameover him with increased intensity. Four years (1861-1865) he resided there. The time was not spent inarchaeological research. For such work Gebhart hadlittle capacity and less taste. Something had to bedone, of course, to discharge the debt contracted whenhe entered the School at Athens. So he set to workupon a book having for its subject Praxiteles. Clearlyhe cannot be counted among the few sons of famewho win their kingdom in a single night. The bookis not a scholarly work. The archseologists gave ita harsh reception. Yet in it one catches a glimpse ofthe later writer, who reveals to us the significance ofart as an expression of the spirit of the timethat witnessed its birth, the nation in which it wasborn, and, above all else, of the personality of theartist who created it. And though it has many ofthe faults it has also many of the engaging qualitiesof youth, exuberance, obvious delight in the exercise


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12 MYSTIC ITALYof talent, in a word the fougue de vingt ans..While in Greece he wandered from place to placePeloponnesus, the Ionian Isles, Beyrouth, Jerusalem,Memphis, Constantinople. With Renan he stood beforethe Parthenon. From his window in Athens he oftenlooked upon Hymettus with its violet tones, upon theazure gulf, and upon the Acropolis. At times his eyeswere filled with tears, for nature had bestowed uponthe young humanist the gift of reverie. So the oldenchantment came upon him ; the miracle of Greecewas renewed.Upon leaving the School at Athens a place wasfound for Gebhart in his native town. He was

appointed assistant professor of foreign literature inthe Faculty of Letters at Nancy. There, in the towoithat was the scene of his first successes, that was alwaysdear to him above all others, he taught for fourteenyears. His very first lecture was a general surveyof the Renaissance in Italy. Thenceforth his publiclife was made up of two activities, that of lecturingand that of writing. In 1880 he began his work as aprofessor of foreign literature at the Sorbonne, wherehe continued to lecture until 1906, two years beforehis death. The record of the subjects of his courses inthe first three years, 1 880-1 883, is lost and it seemsimpossible to find it ; but we have that of the remain-ing twenty-three years. The large preponderance ofhis courses was devoted to the literature and thecivilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Occasionallyhe gave courses devoted to the Spanish theatre of theRenaissance period and to Don Quixote and its sources.Only once did he deal with a more recent subject, andthat was in 188 5-1 886, when he gave a course oflectures on the poetry of Leopardi.

In 1895 Gebhart accepted the seat, left vacant bythe death of Constant Martha, in the section of theAcademy of Moral and Pohtical Science that is con-cerned with morals. And in 1904 he was elected to


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INTRODUCTION 18take the place in the French Academy that hadbelonged to Octave Gr6ard.

.What manner of teacher was Gebhart? That is aquestion which can be answered only by those whowere his auditors. Let our first witness be M. HenryBordeaux. " M. Gebhart speaks better than he writes.When he teaches he throws his whole being into hislesson. He explains clearly and his improvizations arealways methodical. He seems ever to be pursuing hissubject at random, and always finds himself travellingon the right road. He has a wonderful faculty ofpausing at the right moment, so that one is temptedto ask, as children do, ' And what happened then? 'Then he unfolds learnedly and slowly the sinuosities ofhis narrative, preferring to the stronger emotions thosethat are tender. He combines a modicum of ironywith the most exalted sentiments ; an irony akin togood nature ; an irony that conceals a taste forcredulity, a taste disciplined by intelligence." We maysummon, too, President Poincar^, likewise a native ofLorraine, who took the seat in the French Academyleft vacant by the death of Gebhart. " He began hislessons in a serious tone, laying stress upon the wordsand emphasising the syllables. But this solemn com-mencement was succeeded very quickly by a freermanner, made up of witty good nature and roguishfamiliarity. At times, when he had taken pains toarrange his subject well and to elaborate its form, heoffered his delighted audience a foretaste of the bestchapters of his coming works ; and sometimes, whenhe gave himself up to his inspiration, he carried theminds of his auditors through a labyrinth of readingsand quotations, varied with ingenious comments."Finally, we may repeat the words of M. Ren6 Doumic." Gebhart's was one of the most complex charactersimaginable ; even for those who came most closelyinto contact with him and lived longest upon familiarterms with him, he never ceased to be in a certain


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14 MYSTIC ITALYundefinable way an enigma. As to the rest, hiscolleagues, his pupils, and men of the world, whogradually, from being strangers to him, became hisfriends, these are the stages they passed through andthe series of discoveries they made, which made theirdelight all the greater when they really knew him.The first sight of him was disconcerting enough : ahead quite round in shape, cheeks and neck fat andpufify ; one would have sworn he was some Rabelaisiancanon or monk. Only the small, lively and mobileeye, that was wont suddenly to light up, betrayed themind that watched beneath this sleepy appearance, amind that was curious, observant and amused with thethings of life. ... It was quite impossible not to con-ceive an affection for him. None of those who havespoken of him since his recent death have been ableto remember him without emotion. In the FrenchAcademy, where he was almost a new-comer, hehad at once made himself loved : the last time heappeared there, bearing upon his face those signs thatcannot be mistaken, every heart was touched withgrief."Gebhart spoke little of himself ; and, with the excep-tion of the quality of his prose, was content alwaysto adopt a tone of careless irony about his ownachievements. His character, despite what has beensaid of the undefinable and enigmatic element in it,was essentially simple, clear-cut, and masculine. Hehad the distinction that comes from personality andintellect rather than from the accidents of a career.Courtesy, like a subtle fragrance, interpenetrated allthat he did or said. His life was not one of incident,but rather one of thought. Outwardly it is lacking invariety. Like most teachers he did not make historyhimself, but he instilled into his students and readersthe spirit that directs the course of history. He livesnot so much by virtue of action as by virtue of thethought, and still more by virtue of the sentiment, he


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INTRODUCTION 15aroused and developed in others. For his thoughtsdwell in the mind as well as in the memory, and hisemotion is contagious and passes into deeds. The wayto understand him, then, is not to attempt a recordof his daily life, but to study his writings ; for inthem we shall find his most vivid experiences, hisdeepest feelings, and his most pregnant thought ; inthem his inward and spiritual life stands revealed.The first of Gebhart's books to attract serious atten-tion was his study of Rabelais, published in 1877, andissued in 1895 ^^ ^ revised form. His five previouspublications may be passed over lightly as souvenirs(Venlance. M. Poincare does not think very highlyof this book. " After the recent progress in Kabelaisianstudies," he says, " one cannot dream of remarking anygreat degree of erudition in Gebhart's work. Let usnot require of the author either new researches in thebiography of Rabelais, or learned dissertations upon theauthenticity of the fifth book. Instead of pursuingtruth along precipitous paths, Gebhart tries to attractit into spacious alleys bordered by beds of roses. Yetthe portrait he presents to us, if not very deeply thoughtout, is exceedingly life-like and placed in a good light.Here is the mediaeval man, recognizable by the turnof his satire and the freshness of his Gallic intellect ;and here is the first French representative of the newage, revealed by his intellectual richness, his criticalsense, his intoxication with life, and his worship ofscience." It is quite true, as M. Poincare observes, thatGebhart was not an authority in the field of Rabelaisianstudies. His book is not a contribution to our know-ledge of the subject. Yet something less than justicehas been done to it in the remarks we have repeated.Gebhart's study of Rabelais is careful and accurate, andit is distinguished by insight (particularly the chapteron Rabelais' religion) and sympathy, by soundjudgment and breadth of view, qualities not possessedby every grubber of facts, and qualities without which


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16 MYSTIC ITALYfacts would be comparatively meaningless. Biographymakes exceptional demands upon sympathy andjudgment, and in these qualities few of Gebhart'scontemporaries excelled him. He displayed but a slightdisposition to participate in the work of delving intodusty archives, and he had never a very sedulous regardfor the " petty decalogue of mode." But there isan ampler air and a broader outlook upon humanityin his books than are to be found in those of many ofhis better known and more highly estimated con-temporaries. And if Bolingbroke was right when hedeclared genius to be " great coolness of judgmentunited to great warmth of imagination," then somethingmore than talent may be claimed for Gebhart uponthe warrant of this his first important book.

In 1879 there came from Gebhart's pen a muchmore important book, The Origins of the Renaissancein Italy, a book crowned by the French Academy. Thisand Mystic Italy are the two books by which he mustbe judged as a historian. It is an attempt to discoverthe remote origins of the Renaissance, to ascertain whythat movement began in Italy and not in France, andthen to analyse, in the early writings and works ofart, the genius of Italy in the period of theRenaissance. It is a masterly work and one of absorb-ing interest. There is, of course, the perennial interestof the Renaissance itself ; but what attracts us mostis the skill and the charm with which the Renaissance,in its beginnings and its early stage, has been revealed.It is not an exaggeration to say that to the study ofthis period, and this people whom he loved, he broughtthe eye of a painter, the touch of a pianist, the heartof a poet, and the mind of a philosopher. All theessential factors that denied to France the high privilegeof becoming the birthplace of the new movement andbestowed it upon Italy are segregated' from theiraccompanying and inconsequential circumstances withunfailing insight and analytical power, and are then


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INTRODUCTION 17grouped into a most illuminating synthesis. His induc-tions are made from a wide range of facts, so thatwhen he begins to subsume the characteristics of theItalian people and the life of the period with whichhe is dealing his conclusions are accepted withconfidence. And this has been done without over-loading the book with details. So many historiansof to-day give the public too much of their material.It is true they sift and arrange, but as the interest oftheir work grows, so also grows in them, apparently,an irresistible desire to permit their readers to sharein the preparation of materials, and to give them, there-fore, not results but processes. To do away with un-necessary and oftentimes tiresome detail, to abstractunessentials for some great end, to leave out for thesake of revealing what was hidden or only dimlydiscernible these are the necessities ahke of great artand of great history, which is so largely an art. Ifthis book proves nothing else it proves that its authorhad the shaping touch. But the book reveals beyondall doubt that its author penetrated into the genius ofItaly and the spirit of the Renaissance as few othershad succeeded in doing, and this is in itself sufiicientto establish Gebhart's claim to the title of historian.For surely it is a deHcate task to comment upon anational psychology and the psychology of an era aliento one's own. On so sHppery a path even the surest-footed may occasionally stumble and fall. The historianof a country or a period not his own, if he be notcontent with a chronicle of external and easilyapprehended facts, is likely to miss an occasional nuanceof vital importance. And it is just this difiicult work ofintellectual and spiritual diagnosis with which our authoris always primarily concerned. It may be added,furthermore, that not the least of the merits of thisbook, and of every other book that Gebhart wrote, isthe delicacy of feehng and the skill which, whileretaining the impression of a comprehensive and2


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18 MYSTIC ITALYaccurate study of its subject, have suppressed allparade of learning and sifted and sublimated theresiduum of research in the crucible of a reconstructiveimagination.The third of Gebhart's important historical worksis the one here done into English, Mystic Italy, pub-lished in 1890, which by many is regarded as hismasterpiece. It is a study of the religious history ofItaly from the heart of the Middle Ages to the dawnof the Renaissance. It deals with the transition fromthe age of faith to the age of reason. Stimulating andsuggestive studies of Italian thought and life in thosecenturies had been made by Michelet, Ozanam, Renan,Thodc, Miiller, and Schmidt ; but it remained forGebhart to group the results of the researches of thesemen and his own studies into a revealing synthesis,rendered attractive not only by the interest of its themebut also by his rich and romantic yet always directand lucid style, by his extraordinary sense of thepicturesque, by the unfailing charm that comes fromhis enthusiasm, by his true insight, his poetic sensibilityto emotional experience, and by the fragrant sentimentthat exhales from so many of his pages.The scalpel of Gebhart's analysis was employed withskill. With a delicate hand he has disentangled thethreads of Italian life throughout the twelfth andthirteenth centuries and revealed their strange inter-connections. The springs of action are all exposed.It would seem, as we have already said, that a foreignobserver, and especially one writing at so distant aday, could not perceive every subtle current in thestream of national progress ; but that which mereanalytical skill would have failed to lay bare was dis-closed by Gebhart's unusual power of divination, ofintuitive insight, the faculty that enables those whopossess it to apprehend the subtle essence of an alienpersonality, or period, or nationality.

In Mystic Italy our author leads us upon what the


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INTRODUCTION 19French call a promenade a travers les ages. But heis no mere showman content to point out the externaland obvious things of an historical pageant. What anillustrious roll of diverse personalities it is that he hasgiven us ; no mere harlequinade of marionettes, but fnenwho represent the mingling currents in the religious lifeof Italy and who li\e for us once again after the lapseof many centuries ! Arnold of Brescia, who met so pitifula death on the banks of the Tiber ; the abbot Joachimof Flora, a restless soul who traversed Christendomfor more than three-score years seeking for truth, andwho gave as his final injunction to the world the oldtruth that " the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth hfe " ;Frederic II, whose intellectual initiations constituted ofthemselves a Renaissance pathetically premature ;Francis of Assisi, the Spouse of Poverty, whose braveand kindly eyes pierced the wrappings with which theages had ever more thickly veiled Jesus of Nazarethfrom the sight of men ; John of Parma, successor ofthe Seraphic Father, counsellor of moderation inthe quarrel between the strict and the easy-goingFranciscans, illustrious in his day for learning and forsaintliness, who devoted himself to the memory ofFrancis with the tenderness that John had displayedfor the memory of Jesus ; Fra Salimbene, the itinerant,timid, and egotistic friar, a joyous representative ofthe second generation of the Franciscans, whoseChronicle is so interesting a history of its period ;Jacopone da Todi, the singular poet, the " jongleurof God ", who protested against the secular interestsof Boniface VIII, and who in consequence w^as chainedto the wall in the dark and narrow prison of Palestrina ;Giotto, true son of Francis, whose frescoes still telltheir stories of that gracious and comely spirit on thewalls of the church in Assisi ; and, finally, Dante,whose personal religion flowed from the Franciscanfountain : Idd'lo non vuole religloso di noi se non ilcuore.


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20 MYSTIC ITALYEvery thought of all their thinking sways the world for good

or ill,Every pulse of all their life-blood beats across the ages still.

The power that enabled Gebhart to reveal to us allthese various personalities and to lay bare for us thehidden penetralia of their remote period was not, aswe have already said, a thing of the intellect alone ;for the soul of a single person or of a people cannever be explained by the unaided process of scientificrule. It was created in large part by those qualitiesof insight and imagination that enable a writer to re-think himself into a society other than his own andso to reconstruct a vanished world that it acquires realityfor a later age. These indispensable qualities of thehistorian were Gebhart's in abundant measure.

But it is by its sweeping synthesis, as well as byits power of analysis and insight, that Mystic Italyappeals to aU who would rightly understand the lifeof the peninsula from the rise of the communes to theappearance of Petrarch. Its generalizations arrangeall the facts disclosed by its analysis and reveal to ustheir significance in masterly fashion. In dealing withform, the Aristotelian canon lays its first emphasis notupon finish of detail but upon architectonics. Judgedby this canon of classic art the book is a noteworthyachievement. Without this power of synthesis Gebhart'sexplorations in the dim regions in which thought andemotion are generated by elusive and impalpable causes,his studies of the interior life and its laws, his concernwith the spiritual dynamics of humanity that were hispassion, would all have been left comparatively meaning-less to us. Fortunately our author possessed not onlythe power of seizing upon spiritual significances butalso of arranging and unfolding them in orderly andilluminating form. The gift of wide perspective washis. The events of two hundred years are broughtwithin easy view of the reader ; and the book has that


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INTRODUCTION 21unity that comes only from a logical organon histori-cally defensible, justified by the facts with which itdeals. " The book throughout is a model of composi-tion," says M. Rene Doumic ; " the historian has beencaptivated by his subject : he has tasted that sublimejoy of pursuing an idea in its development throughtime and in its individual expressions."The Origins of the Renaissance in Italy and MysticItaly these, as we have said, are the two books bywhich Gebhart's name as a historian must live or die.There are, however, other works that deserve notice ;the two books that deal respectively with Botticelli andMichelangelo, appreciating the dreamy mysticism of theone and penetrating to the tortured soul of the other ;and then there are the essays and sketches in whichappear a long pageant of historical and fictionalpersonages, which reveal a remarkable facility forexploring old chronicles for their buried riches, forunderstanding and recreating the past. Gebhart wasalways travelling up and down the centuries with amind prepared like a sensitised plate for impressions,ever on the watch for the picturesque. That he wrotemany polished and pregnant essays and so many briefand beautiful sketches is, perhaps, the reason why hecame to be generally regarded as a miniaturist ratherthan as a historian, an artist whose genre was notgreat but who may be thought to have been great inhis genre, a mere purveyor of " dainties that are bredin a book."

This craft of thine, the mart to suit.Is too refined, remote, minute ;These small conceptions can but fail ;'Twere best to work on larger scale.

But several of these essays have notable historic value,and nearly all the sketches are steeped in the spiritof the time and make an undiminished appeal by meansof their picturesque character. This last fact in itself


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22 MYSTIC ITALYspeaks eloquently of their enduring worth ; for fewthings go out of fashion so quickly, so soon becomestale, flat and unprofitable, as the picturesque elementin historical writing when it has been laid on as aveneer, instead of having had its origin in the natureof the subject and in the temperament of the writer,when it is gilt and not gold. Aye, even when it bepure gold, the flight of years often steals frompicturesque history an absolute quality it once possessedand that won for it a meed of popularity at the momentof its publication. The flight of time, then, is anexacting test ; and the fact that, after a generation,Gebhart's picturesque sketches have not been left paleand bloodless is proof not to be passed unnoticed oftheir vitality and staying power. In all these brieferproducts of his pen, as in his larger works, his maininterest is in the currents of intellectual and spiritualchange. The observation, the thought, and the emotion,of these miniatures are entirely his own ; they possessthe quality the French call vecu ; the personal note iseverywhere, though linked, as it must ever be in workthat is to count, with the note of the universal. Andquite as much as his larger books they bear witnessto the perfection and the consecration of his work.

There remains Gebhart's one historical novel, pub-lished in 1893, Around a Tiara. To write a success-ful historical novel is no easy task. It requires for itssubject-matter a wealth of learning, for its movementa well-devised plot ; and then, in order to make itlive, it must have insight, imagination, and the dramaticsense. Mere erudition amassed from books will notsuffice. Learning that has not been assimilated willbe found, indeed, to weigh upon the wings of fancy,to check the flight of imagination. Not in the seclusionof a library shall one prepare himself fully to realizeand adequately to represent a vanished age. Thesethings require a knowledge not only of books but ofmen ; and lacking this knowledge a writer shall give


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INTRODUCTION 23us not men but the phantoms of men, incapable ofmoving us either to love or to hate. For the springsof action to-day are much the same as they wereyesterday. " The eternal life of man," says RobertLouis Stevenson, " spent under sun and rain, and inrude physical effort, lies upon one side scarce changedsince the beginning." Autour d'line Tiare follows theplan approved by the best masters of historical romancein that the leading roles are assigned to imaginarycharacters, whereas the real historical characters, thoughexercising a profound influence upon the fortunes ofthe principal dramatis personcB, are relegated to therank of minor figures and are permitted to cross andrecross the stage only at intervals. Thus a constantdemand is made upon the imagination, and only occa-sionally is there a dependence upon the mere recitalof historic fact. It deals with Italy in the late yearsof the eleventh century and interweaves a somewhatidyllic love story with the austere and tragic historyof the pope of Canossa. The great defect of the novelis that it is not an organic whole. Various scenes, theincantation at the beginning, for example, and the inter-view at Canossa, stand out by themselves more or lessdetached from the current of the story and give tothe book its fragmentary character. And it is not onlyentire scenes that give the impression of lacking organicrelation to the whole ; many a sentence proudly isolatesitself from its neighbours. Then, too, most of thecharacters are mere types, not quivering figures withthe blood in them, and often the only motive for theirentrances and exits is the medium they oft'er to theauthor of completing his picture of Italian society underthe great pope. Gebhart did not see his fictitiouscharacters with such clearness that they pressed uponupdH him for representation ; and, in a work of thiskind, no truth to history will atone for the absenceof the vital spirit. Yet if the book fails, on the whole,as an historical romance, it succeeds as a history ; for


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24 MYSTIC ITALYit gives us a faithful picture of Rome in the eleventh"century, an admirable portrait of Gregory, and a vivididea of the character of the Papacy at the time ofits great struggle with the Empire.

Such, briefly, is the story of Gebhart's work as ateacher and writer of history. The present writercannot hope to have succeeded in conveying to hisreaders anything more than a suggestion of Gebhart'scharm and ability as a lecturer, and scarcely more thana suggestion of his grace and power as a writer. Henever heard Gebhart's voice ; and he realizes keenlyhis limitations as a translator. It is not the easiesttask in the world to translate one of Gebhart's books.It was Shelley who said that " It were as wise tocast a violet into a crucible in order to discover theformal principle of its colour and odour as seek totransfer from one language into another the creationsof a poet.''' And that Gebhart was a poet, yet a poetin whom the historian was not lost, is beyond denial.There is no English for Ronsard's Mignonne, allonsvoir si la rose ; nor for his Quand vous serez bienvielle, an soir, a la chandelle ; and there does notseem to be an equivalent in English for many, passagesin Gebhart's subtle and musical prose, every line ofwhich has been as delicately pondered as though itwere poetry. But this brief estimate of his life andwork, and still more the translated book to which itis prefixed, may serve to indicate that Gebhart has agenuine claim to be considered as one of the notablehistorians of our time. I do not mean to place hisaccomplishment upon a level with that of Von Rankeor even of Taine. He would not gain by any suchappreciation as that ; and I feel sure he would havebeen the first to have disliked and disclaimed it. Noone knew his limitations better than did he himself.But his claim to be considered as a noteworthy historianis justified by the catholicity of his distinguished anddelicate mind, by the fairness of his judgment, by the


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INTRODUCTION 25logic of his exposition, by the swiftness cond the sure-ness of his intuition, and by the indefinable quality ofcharm with which all that he has written is inter-penetrated. It is quite easy to name historians whopossessed a greater range of knowledge, and otherswho have done more creative work with the originalsources of history, but it would be difficult to nameone whose knowledge was more subtle and moreidiomatic. " The original merit of the man and writer,"says M. Rene Doumic, " is that he succeeded in com-bining in so happy a harmony those qualities whichin others are too often mutually exclusive : imagina-tion with knowledge, irony with good sense, andattachment to tradition with complete liberty."


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FOREWORDI HAVE attempted to study the religious history ofItaly during the Middle Ages. Religion was at thattime the chief product of the Italian genius. Poetry,art and politics, which from the thirteenth centuryonwards made Italy the principal centre of westerncivilization, received a constant and very noble in-spiration from the religious sentiment. The particularmanner in which Italy early conceived the idea of thekingdom of God and the way that leads to it ; theastonishing freedom of thought with which she treateddogma and discipline ; the serenity which she succeededin preserving in face of the great mystery of life anddeath ; the art wherewith she reconciled faith andrationalism ; her slender aptitude for formal heresyand the boldness of her mystic imagination ; the impetusof love which often carried her to the loftiest Christianideal ; finally the anguish she felt at times in herrelations with the Church of Rome, and the right sheallowed herself of denouncing its weaknesses withoutpity, of stigmatizing its deeds of violence, and ofthwarting its ambitions such was the original religionof Italy, the religion of Pietro Damiano, Arnold ofBrescia, Joachim of Flora, Francis of Assisi, John ofParma, Fra Salimbene, Catherine of Siena, Savonarola,and Contarini. It was also the religion of Dante andPetrarch, of Giotto, Fra Angelico and Raphael, and ofOlimpia Morata, Vittoria Colonna, and Michelangelo.Of the two dates which mark the beginning and theend of this form of Christianity, the first is very un-decided, by reason of the scarcity of documents andthe harshness of the times, but undoubtedly Gregorythe Great (590-604) nursed it in his heart, and27


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28 MYSTIC ITALYGregory VII (1073-1085) would have eagerly embracedit if the fatality of the temporal and feudal interests intowhich the Empire and the Holy See were plunged hadnot carried him away from it and kept him on thatbattle-field where he struggled for liberty, and on whichhe died doubting the existence of justice in the world.Down to the thirteenth century Italian Christianity hadharbingers, prophets and martyrs ; it did not attainto the full consciousness of its genius until the timewhen the glad tidings of Assisi were proclaimed inthe valleys of Umbria. From the time of Francisonwards it illumined every great soul and penetratedto the inmost recesses of the Italian character. Butthe date of its end is weU known. The Council ofTrent, aided by the Inquisition, imposed upon Christen-dom a moral rule, a devotion and a religious methodof an absolute uniformity, at the same time that, re-pairing the breaches made in the pontifical power bythe councils of the fifteenth century, it assigned tothe Church of Rome an uncontrolled and unlimiteddisciplinary authority over the episcopate, the monasticorders, the secular clergy, and the simple believer. Onthat day was fulfilled the saying of the Gospel, " Thereshall be one fold and one shepherd." Roman Catholic-ism was in fact instituted and almost immediatelystrengthened by the religious police of the Society ofJesus and the political sympathies of the old Europeansystem. It was a great creation, which long charmedthe world by the pomp of its worship, the heroism ofits missionaries, the virtues of its preachers and theelegance of its literary education. But this magnificentedifice gives a similar impression to that produced bySt. Peter's at Rome There the implacable regularityof the plan, the unvarying flood of light which descendsfrom the dome, the sumptuous adornments, arrest thesoaring flight of personal piety ; in that inflexible orderof all the lines there is no room left for that freedomof fancy whereby in former days men conjured up


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FOREWORD 29at will the vision of things divine. Where are thechurches of olden days, which the humble enteredfamiliarly as the Father's house, and whose walls coveredwith paintings presented to them in so simple and artlessa fashion a free interpretation of liturgical texts?There, seated in the shadow of the little chapels, the . 'Christian was wont lovingly to meditate upon Paradise :he listened far less to the distant psalmody of the priestthan to the joyous song of his own heart. Here, shouldthe soul, weary of the splendours of the great templeand its worship, essay to take its flight heavenward,it beats its wings against the immense shining cupola ;the sacred bird will fall back again on the marbleslabs of the altar.The reforming work of the Council of Trent, the

effects of which were long attenuated in France bythe political tradition and by Jansenism, was not slowin producing an extraordinary result in Italy. Thereligious sentiment had owed its life so far in thatland to freedom, individual faith, and love. On theday when, contrary to the prophecies of the abbotJoachim and the expectation of John of Parma, theage of servitude returned once more and put an endto the age of filial obedience, when the age of thornsdelayed the coming of the age of lilies, men's con-sciences fell into a state of indifference, powerless toreceive a new form' of Christianity or to welcome itwith fervour. They accepted its outward practices,sought no spiritual nourishment in it, and quietly closedtheir minds alike to enthusiasm and fanaticism. Theless cultured transformed the ardour of the old faithinto superstitions of an entirely pagan sort ; the morelettered took their religion as a ceremonial incumbentupon well-educated persons and prudent citizens. It iseasy to perceive the cause of this religious sterility.If Italy, unlike Spain, refused to hand herself overto the Council of Trent and to enclose the whole ofher moral life in a narrow and austere Catholicism,


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80 MYSTIC ITALYanalogous to the religion of the Spaniards, it wasbecause a long rationalistic education, carried at timesto the limits of scepticism, had accustomed her to afree intellectual life. Classical culture, which was neverentirely destroyed even in the darkest ages, continualintercourse with certain of the ancient moralists, anda very lively sense of reality, had saved the Italiansfrom the excesses of scholasticism. Their neighbour-hood to dissident religions, the Greeks and the Arabs,had preserved them from religious egotism. Toleranceled them to adopt a very liberal interpretation oforthodoxy : the story of The Three Rings was in theNovellino long before the time of Boccaccio. Theyearly learnt to reason without syllogisms upon the soul,its destiny and its duties ; to see this it is onlynecessary to recall the writings of Brunetto Latini,Dante's Convito, and the letters of Petrarch. TheItalians were, in fact, the first men in Christendom tolook nature in the face and to study her methodically.The decisive moment of this intellectual developmentwas the reign of Frederic II (i 212-1250), histroubadours, physicians, inams, and alchemists. But thefirst essays in free thought and reasoned doubt goback further still. The wandering- students of theCarmina Burana, and the so-called heretics whosememory disturbed Villani, belong to the twelfth century.Observe that there was never any serious conflictbetween the religion of the Italians and their rational-istic thought. The thirteenth century was able, with-out any historical scandal, to couple Francis of Assisiwith Frederic II. Where the spirit alone gives lifeto souls and the letter counts for little the faithful isable to ascribe to the supernatural whatever part hepleases, and he always does so. He believes that Godis not a very severe creditor and that He lavishes Hisblessings on men of goodwill. But where the letterhas killed what the sixteenth century called " profoundfaith," the Christian can choose only between an un;-


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FOREWORD 81reserved abdication of his reason and the discreetincredulity of devout politicians, between the painfulpiety of the simple, who submerge their whole life inthe supernatural, and amiable piety of men of theworld who make the supernatural subservient to thefair fame and elegance of their life. Italy had passedthrough too long a period of rational culture to belulled to sleep in a kind of religious infancy.Deprived of freedom to believe, she unconsciouslyretained of her freedom of thought that measureof scepticism which, while permitting the externalobservance of religious rites, preserves men frommystic passion. But that form of Christianity whichis no longer sustained by poUtical interest, and whosemysteries and discipline have no more meaning for thecrowd, slowly dies out, like a lamp lost in the depthsof the sanctuary.Thus, in this history of Italian religion, we can

distinguish three chief elements, or, if you prefer it,three leading actors in the drama: (i) the Churchof Rome ; (2) the Christian conscience ; and(3) rationalism, ironic unbelief or free investigation,the spirit of secular independence, lay resistance, orscientific indifference. I purpose in this book todescribe the heroic period of that history. The firstattempts at heresy or schism, Arnold of Brescia,Joachim of Flora, Francis of Assisi and his religiouscreation. Frederic II and the civilization of southernItaly, the revival of Joachimism in the institutions ofAssisi, the militant work of the Holy See between thetimes of Innocent III (11 98-1 2 16) and Boniface VIII(i 294-1 303), will occupy our attentpn one afteranother. At the same time I shall indicate what partItalian faith played in the renovation of the arts andpoetry, and what beam, sent forth by the "-reatChristians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, restedon the cradle of Nicholas and John of Pisa, GiottoJacopone of Todi, and Dante.


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CONTENTSPACE

INTRODUCTION . . . . . ,7FOREWORD . . . . . -27

CHAPTERI. THE RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITION OF ITALY

BEFORE THE TIME OF JOACHIM OF FLORA . 35II. JOACHIM OF FLORA . , . . '70

III. FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND THE FRANCISCAN APOSTOLATE . 94IV. THE EMPEROR FREDERIC II AND THE RATIONALISTIC

SPIRIT IN SOUTHERN ITALY . . -133V. EXALTATION OF THE FRANCISCAN MYSTICISM. THE

ETERNAL GOSPEL. JOHN OF PARMA. FRA SALIMBENE 165VI. THE HOLY SEE AND THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS.

POPULAR ART AND POETRY . . . 202YII. THE MYSTICISM, THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE

FAITH OF DANTE ..... 242NOTES . . . . . . .271LIST OF WORKS BY GEBHART . . . -279INDEX ....... 281

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MYSTICS AND HERETICSIN ITALYCHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITION OFITALY BEFORE THE TIME OF JOACHIMOF FLORA

I

The words of Jesus ";My kingdom is not of thisworld ", the promise of an entirely ideal religion, hadbeen impossible of fulfilment in the catastrophe of thebarbarian inundation. Life was then so hard that theChurch was compelled to take part in worldly things.Until the time of the Carolingians it was the lastremaining organized society and the last tradition ofgovernment ; and so it opened its gates, as a refugeof peace, not only to souls possessed by the desire ofeternal salvation, but to the nations terrified by theviolent results of conquest. The more utter the ruinof all civilization, the more necessary and the moreimportant appeared the temporal role played by theChurch. In Italy and at Rome the political work ofthe bishop and pontiff was really, in its origin, a workof charity. Beneath the shelter of the Holy See,enveloped by barbarism, Christianity restored to civil

35


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36 MYSTIC ITALYsociety the springs of life that had been lost since thefall of the Roman Empire.Gregory the Great was the incarnation of that

apostolic period of the Church and the Papacy. Hecame upon the scene at the bitterest moment of theinvasions. Alaric and Attila had passed like a hurricaneover Italy. The Ostrogoths had very quickly assimi-lated the Roman civilization. But when the Lombardsarrived it was believed the end of all things was athand. The terror of the Lombard barbarism is stillvisible in Paul the Deacon, who lived in the eighthcentury, and who belonged to their race. These rudeheathens, with their green-tinted hair, erected their tentseverywhere, as far as the Straits of Messina, leavinghere and there a few wrecks of old Italy still floating,Ravenna, more Byzantine than Italian, Naples, soonto enter into alliance with the Saracens, and lastlyRome, where a monk buried in his cell on the CselianMount was the last hope of Latin Christendom. TheBenedictines of Monte Cassino fled to Rome. AU Italyturned to Gregory, asking him to save her, and he didso. He was a man of letters, of patrician family,very gentle and pure ; by the culture of his mind andthe nobility of his race he represented all the memoriesof a vanished world, and by his monastic austerity allthe promises of the future. He was, above all things,an apostle. While treating with the Byzantines, theFranks, and the Goths of Spain, he was at the sametime converting the Anglo-Saxons and evangelizing theLombards. He saw them bow beneath his pastoralstaff. A great peril was thus averted, and Italy hence-forth sheltered from pagan or Arian contagion. Never-theless, Gregory pined away in melancholy. He hadaccepted with terror the charge of the pontificate. Hehad a presentiment that the Church, once launchedupon the seas of worldly things, would soon departfrom its primitive mission. He died in affliction at thethought of the tragic times that awaited his successors.


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RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITIONS 37The Christian repubHc had been set up with pope

Gregory as its centre. At Rome he had been thesupreme bishop, but not the chief of a state. Theapostolic age of the Holy See, however, was aboutto close. The Carolingian donation made of the popean Italian seigneur, and the feudal system made thebishops counts and barons. The Church thus becamea secular power, superior to all the rest by the actionit exercised upon men's consciences, weaker than therest because the hereditary system never perpetuatedthe power in a single family. The irony of historyobliged the vicars of God to enter upon a political andmilitary existence, while refusing them the vital principlesof every government, blood succession, the authorityof ancestral tradition, security for the morrow, theright to undivided command over a w^hole hierarchy,and the uncontested possession of a territory. Fromthe eleventh to the thirteenth century the Churchstruggled against the absurd reality of its temporalconditions. The quiet theorists who, from John ofSalisbury and St. Thomas to Dante, Marsilio of Paduaand William of Ockam, reasoned upon the pre-eminenceof emperor or pope, upon the two luminaries and thetwo swords, did not keep sufficiently in view thosesurprising conditions that were too strong for a saintand man of genius like Gregory VII. They did notunderstand that, in the feudal state of the world,secular greatness was the Church's guarantee of religiousintegrity. Outside Rome the Church found the Empireovershadowing all Christendom ; the emperor, king ofthe Romans or patrician, with his juridical claims uponthe Eternal City ; the feudal system that, embracingthe episcopate and the monastic orders, compelled thebishops and abbots to fidelity towards the secularsuzerains and the empire as the foundation of theEuropean compact. Thus the feudal law put theepiscopate into the emperor's hands and in part removedit from the pope's authority. In Italy the Church had


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38 MYSTIC ITALYto do with' the advocates of national independence whoforced it to choose between the Empire and therestoration of the Italian kingdom ; it came into conflictwith the Lombard or Tuscan episcopate, closely relatedby feudal ties to the Germanic Caesar ; with the Greeks,attached to Byzantium by the bond of schism ; withthe Normans, who made mock of the Holy Father andhumihated him with their protection. At Rome, lastly,the Church was in the den of lions, betrayed by thecardinals of the factions opposed to the reigning pope,done violence to by the counts of Tusculum who soldthe Holy See by auction, pillaged by the barons of theCampagna, enslaved by the patrician families, againand again dispossessed by the senate of the Capitol,outraged by the people who drove the popes fromthe city with showers of stones, threatened by therepublican tribunes who wished to despoil it of itsfeudal rights. Add to all these the Saracens, whocame up the Tiber, burnt St. Peter's, and laid wastethe patrimony ; the Germans, who at each imperialcoronation made the streets run with blood ; the feudalbandits, who carried off Gregory VII one Christmasnight from the altar of Santa JMaria Maggiore andabducted Gelasius II (1118-11 19) when sitting in fullconclave ; and, finally, the robbers, disguised as priestsand monks, who roamed in troops round the church ofSt. John Lateran and seized the apostolic treasure.Ascend this scale of miseries in the contrary direction.From the populace of the monti, the patricians whoencamped in the theatre of Marcellus or the Coliseum,and the savage barons of Latium to the emperorhimself, through the whole of feudal society runs thethread of the Church's temporal necessities and anguish.If the pope were not master in his own house andhis basilicas, if the Roman commune rose against him',if the patrimony was taken from him and the baronsdenied him as their suzerain, he lost rank in theItalian feudal system, in the political and social order


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RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITIONS 39of the world ; he was a bishop deprived of his see,and nothing more. Ten times in the course of a centuryhe was obliged to hide himself in the castle of St.Angelo and to appeal to the emperor for succour, orto flee with some faithful clerics to the Alps and waitfor the emperor's coming. It was always the greatlay suzerain of the West who said the last word in theecclesiastical crisis that began in some brawl at a streetcorner in Rome.But in all this it was not merely a question of temporal

interests. Undoubtedly in the unity of a Holy Empiresimilar to that of Rome under Trajan, under a wisemaster of the civilized world, the Church and the popewould have enjoyed religious liberty ; they would havebeen able to abdicate all secular ambition, remain purefrom all contact with earthly things, and think onlyof the governance of souls ; that, in his De Monarchla,was the dream of Dante. But in the feudal conditionof Italy and Europe, and in the communal state ofRome during the Middle Ages, every temporal failureof the Church and the Holy See was necessarily areligious failure. Every time the pope was lesspowerful than the commune, the nobles, or the people,the rebellious cardinals or the emperor opposed anantipope to him. Once there was seen on the sameday one pontift" at the Vatican, another at Santa MariaMaggiore, and a third at St. John Lateran. Gregory VIIhad an antipope at Tivoli, facing his metropolisClement 111 (1187-1191), who survived him. Inthe twelfth century Anacletus II (1130-1138) andInnocent II (1130-1143) were elected in twoneighbouring conclaves at the same hour by two rivalfactions of the Sacred College ; Bernard of Clairvauxhad to decide for Christendom which was its real pastor.If the antipope did not arise from a popular upheavalor a feudal intrigue, the Empire and the Germanicchurch took it upon themselves to proclaim him. Inreality the most dangerous usurpations of the spiritual


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40 MYSTIC ITALYpower came from the emperor. If he opposed theGermanic church to the ItaHan, the imperial councilto the pontifical ; if he addressed, as Charles the Greatdid, encychcals to the bishops, abbots, clergy andfaithful ; if a mystic dreamer. Otto III, " Serv^ant ofthe servants of God," or politicians, such as Henry IIIand Henry V, appointed or deposed popes, and, strongin the holy unction that had touched their foreheads,spoke and acted as the visible vicar of Christ, didnot the emperor thereby assume to himself the supremereligious power? In the troublous times of Christendomdid he not appear between the Byzantine emperor, chiefof a schismatic church, and the Roman pontiff, everfollowed by the shadow of an antipope, as the lawfulruler of men's souls and their universal pastor? i

II

Thus condemned to keep its rank in the temporalhierarchy and to reign in order to avoid destruction,the Church passionately clung to a strip of territory ;it made the prestige given to it by the faith of thebygone centuries subservient to its secular domination ;it employed an unscrupulous diplomacy and pitilessmercenaries, and was all the more haughty in proportionas it felt its weakness ; it was passionately fond ofriches and set up a usurer's office hard by the altarof the living God. Simony was at that time the mostefficacious means of government at Rome, just as wasnepotism at a later date when the Church was facedby princely Italy. Everything was sold in the pontificalmarket : red hats and mitres, forgiveness of sins, theremoval of excommunications, suzerainties, the right ofconquest by land and sea, relics of saints, the imperialcrown, the Roman tiara, and the gate of Paradise.So irresistible was the current that carried the Churchtowards the good things of the world that Gregory VII,


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RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITIONS 41who had once entered Rome with bare feet and head,was tormented more ardently than any other by secularambitions ; he attempted to assign to the Holy See,by Matilda's donation, not only the allodia of hisfriend between the Po and the Liris, but all the greatimperial fiefs of Tuscany, and then Spoleto, Camerino,Mantua, Modena, Brescia, and Parma. The ambitionof Alexander VI (1492- 1503) was to be moremodest.We meet here not only the abandonment of the loleof the apostolic Papacy, but also a serious corruption

of doctrine and discipline. All the virtues that Jesushad exalted were disdained ; the poor, the peaceableand the simple, were no longer the elect of the Church ;all that Jesus had disdained and stigmatized, the loveof gain, harshness towards the humble, the unbridledpursuit of the goods of this world, the possession ofland and power, were raised to the rank of beatitudesand took the place of the charity and renunciation ofthe first Christian community. It seems as though theMiddle Ages had closed the Gospel for ever. PrimitiveChristianity, which was derived from Paul and restedupon justification by faith, had no meaning from thistime forward ; ideahsm retired from the sanctuary ;narrow religion, the religion of works, w^as set up inits place. Between God and the faithful was set theChurch, which hides God from the faithful. Feudalpractices invaded the refigious life. The Church inthose days needed devoted servants, vigorous arms,generous friends ; legions of mystics were not worthin its eyes a single well-armed vassal or a goodoondottiere ; the treasure of St. Peter was somethingmore precious in its eyes than the purity of men'ssouls. In that rude combat it carried on against Romeand Italy and Europe, the passive discipline of Christen-dom was its strongest defence. It exacted obedienceby terror ; it curbed men's wills by the observance andrigours of devotion. It struck at the impious emperor


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42 IMYSTIC ITALYand at intractable kingdoms and cities with the anathemaand interdict, thus rendering the conscience of peoplesuneasy, and shaking the loyalty of subjects. To themiddle classes, the serfs, and all the humble folkwho are consoled by the divine promises for the miseriesof life, it gave the priest, ever at hand and everneeded, because of the sacraments, alms -giving, prayer,pilgrimages, fasting, the fear of judgment and theapprehension of purgatory. Thus it had a hold uponall Christians and summoned them in long processionsto Rome to kneel at the tomb of the apostles, and toJerusalem, to kneel at the sepulchre of Christ. Andfor three days of victory, which compensated for tencenturies of humihation, the pontiff of this Church hadthe joy of seeing at his feet the emperor, that is tosay, the feudal world, kneeling before him in the snow,a suppliant, smitten to the ground under the ban ofexcommunication. But he had forgotten the words ofthe scriptural saying, Beati misericordes, quoniam ipsimisericordiam conseqaentiir.The Church of Rome was henceforth obliged to provethat it was right and the Gospel wrong and to justifyits policy by the excellence of its morality. In orderto reassure Christians and confirm the sacerdotal systemof Christianity, it would have needed a pure clergyand impeccable pontiffs. But at that time the pastorswere the scandal of the flock. Read the decisions often councils against the married clergy and the LiberGomorrhianus of Pietro Damiano. The story of thepopes, from the ninth to the thirteenth century, staggersbelief. The follies of Caligula, the ferocity of Nero,the lust of Heliogabalus, appear in the world oncemore. In the tenth century the counts of Tusculumabandoned the Holy See to courtesans and rufhans.John XII (955-964), pope at seventeen years of age,installed his harem in the Lateran and ordained adeacon in a stable. Boniface VII (984-985), over-thrown after being pontiff for forty-two days, fled to


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RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITIONS 43Constantinople with the treasure of the Church. Hereturned on the death of Otto II, starved his successorJohn XIV (983-984), to death in the wells ofSt. Angelo, and put out the eyes of his cardinals,Benedict IX (1033-105 6), pope when only twelveyears old, led a life so horrible that the captains ofRome tried to strangle him at the altar. He escaped,sold the tiara, asked a girl in marriage, returned toRome, which was occupied by two antipopes, wasagain driven out, had the German pope, Clement II(104 6- 1 04 7), poisoned, mounted for a third time thechair of St. Peter, and then disappeared for ever andshut himself up like a wild beast in the forests ofTusculum.Astounding tragedies were enacted again and again

before the eyes of the faithful. Pope Formosus(891-896), taken from his tomb and clad once morein cope and mitre, was duly tried and condemned forheresy ; the fingers that had given the papal blessingwere cut off, and his body was dragged through thecity and thrown into the Tiber. Some days later hereturned in triumph to the mortuary crypt of the popes,and the statues of the saints were believed to havebowed their heads as he passed. The bloody corpse ofBoniface VII was kicked by the people from street tostreet as far as the statue of Marcus Aurelius. Onevery road in Italy for two centuries processions ofexiled popes passed and repassed, Gregory VII, sur-rounded by the Norman chivalry, Pascal II (1099-II 18), prisoner of Henry V. Gelasius II and theSacred College fled by way of the Tiber on twogalleys pursued by the German archers along the banksof the river. A storm prevented the ships from puttingout to sea. The cardinal of Altri lifted the pope onhis shoulders and carried him through the fields by_ nightto a castle in the neighbourhood ; at break of dayGelasius embarked again and escaped to Gaeta ; hereturned to Rome on foot, begging the hospitality of


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44 MYSTIC ITALYthe barons, and one evening knocked at the door ofone of his partisans in the city. But the Gennanantipope was on the alert. On the day of St. Praxidesthe pope was officiating in the church of that name ;the Frangipani burst in, hurling stones and shootingarrows towards the choir. Gelasius escaped by wayof the sacristy, hastened across Rome with his stoleon, followed by a cleric bearing the cross, took refugein the Campagna, and in the evening we find him alone,seated on the ground, near the church of St. Pauloutside the walls. He was weeping like a child, andwomen were weeping around him. O vos omnes, quitransltls per hanc vlam, attendiie et considerate si estdolor sicai dolor tneas!

This Papacy, either demoniacal or profoundly miser-able, this Church, soiled by all manner of crimes andoverwhelmed by the brutality of the age, became thehorror and torment of Christendom. Some of theprotests made against it have com.e down to us ; asthe year looo approached there was a cry of painfrom a monk of Mount Soracte, and a cry of angeruttered at the synod of Rheims by a bishop of Orleans.Glaber thus concludes his chronicle of the pontificateof Benedict IX : Horrori est quippe referre turpitudoillius conversationis et vitce. In the eleventh centuryPietro Damiano, in a letter to the bishop of Fermo,deplores the fact that the Church has the temporalsword at its disposal ; he regrets the times whenAmbrose and Gregory appeased the pagans and bar-barians by gentleness. The popular conscience, whichsaw the hand of God in all the crises of history aswell as in all the disturbing phenomena of nature,silently condemned the Church of Rome. If Godpermitted such catastrophes, it was because he hadabandoned the shepherds of Christendom to the maliceof Satan. The terror of the antichrist from that timeforward seized upon the imagination of the Italians.A bishop of Florence, Raineri, announced from the


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RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITIONS 45pulpit that he had already been born and would soonappear. From century to century, till the time ofSavonarola, this anxiety constantly reappeared and evenmanifested itself in works of art. The sick souls ofmen sought eagerly on every side to recover the trueway of salvation, (i)

III

Some of them, the noblest, took refuge in themonastic life. Thus, while escaping from the worldin which the secular Church had lost itself, they thoughtthey remained faithful to Christianity. Monasticism,in the century of horrible disorders which Benedict ofNursia witnessed, had been a port of refuge ; but itcould receive only a very insignificant part ofChristendom. It rested, in fact, upon the idea that thecivil life is pernicious and that the isolation of thefaithful in the solitude of a cell is the best preparationfor the death of saints. Bruno, in the eleventh century,founded the Chartreuse upon the same idea. O beatasolitudo ! O sola beatitiido I The cloisters, buried inthe shadows of the forests or lost on the mountain tops,never seemed to be far enough removed from the townsand the commerce of men. In order to conform tothe word of God, and to taste in its fulness the sweet-ness of God, it was necessary first of all to purifyoneself from all pride, all love, and all earthly memories.Absolute detachment from all that is not Jesus is themost frequent precept of that book of the Imitationwhich, towards the end of the Middle Ages, summedup, as in a melancholy testament, the discouragementand sadness of these friends of solitude. " Claude superte ostium tuum. Shut thy door behind thee and callto thee Jesus, thy well-beloved ; live with Him in thycell, for nowhere else wilt thou find peace so pro-found." So the monk said good-bye to the world, or,


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46 MYSTIC ITALYrather, he despised and feared it. Even on thethreshold of the convent he put a trembling foot inthe diabolic region, full of snares and mortal seduc-tions. The monk of Novalese, on Mount Cenis, waspersuaded that the demon roamed unceasingly over themountain, in the form of serpents or buffoons. (2) Hereturned in haste to his brethren, and in the night allsorts of childish or terrible visions disturbed hisslumber. The Benedictine rule, a fairly mild monasticrule, had reserved its severest prescriptions for therelations of the monks with the outside world. Fear ofthe world was so decidedly the principle of all wisdomthat the Sicilian abbots at an early date had translatedinto the vulgar tongue, as a breviary useful to theless cultured of their brethren, the Mirror of Monks,written in the eleventh century by Arnoulf of Beauvais,a regular manual of monastic discipline. The monk,it is there written, ought not to concern himself withpolitical events, or wars, or factions, or the joys andvanities of the earth, or strangers, or even his ownrelatives. His countenance should be neither sad norsmiling ; he should merely preserve the cold serenityof a man who has already half laid himself down inthe peace of his tomb. " Let the monk," says theauthor of the Mirror, in conclusion,

"be likeMelchisedech, without father, without mother, without

any relatives. Let him call no one father or motheron earth. Let him look upon himself as alone andupon God as his Father. Amen. Praise to JesusChrist. Amen." (3)

Undoubtedly in that lively Italian society that wassoon, by means of the communal revolution, to shakeoff the triple feudal, pontifical, and imperial yoke,monasticism had nothing to say, nothing to offer. Theserf, the artizan, the citizen, the petty country noble-man, saw in these pious solitaries bent over their missalneither allies against Rome, consolers for evil days,nor charitable messengers of the divine word. If the


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RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITIONS 47monks had found God for themselves they either couldnot or dared not bring Him to the crowds and stretchout a helping hand to their brothers of the outsideworld in order to lead them back to the Heavenly-Father. They kept themselves too far from humanity.Their voices were uplifted in nocturnal psalmody beneaththe Romanic arches of their churches, but no longerdescended to the ears of the living.And again the ideal conception of the first Benedictinemonasticism was every day being contradicted by reality^in the strangest way. The monks had necessarilyentered, like the secular church, into the feudal system.The abbots became counts on the same ground as didthe bishops. The Italian abbeys were moreover con-strained, more than any other in Europe, to adopt themilitary life. After the Hungarians and Arabs, thebishops and the barons and the emperors pillaged themand burnt them without mercy. Subiaco, the first refugeof Benedict, had to defend itself several times againstthe bishops of Tivoli and the counts of Sabinum orthe district of Preneste. Monte Cassino and the Caveof Salerno were Benedictine strongholds that kept alook-out from the summit of their rocks by turns forthe Saracens, the Roman barons, the Norman adven-turers, and the Suabian princes. In 1192 MonteCassino took the part of Henry VI against the pope,and all its monks found themselves excommunicated.The possession of power very soon spoilt the monks,and riches corrupted them more shockingly than theyhad corrupted the lay seigneurs. At the very timeof the Cluny reform, that arrested the ruin of Benedict'sorder, the monks of Farfa in Sabinum, one of the mostopulent feudal monasteries in Italy, poisoned their abbot,sacked the convent and lived the joyous life of bandits.Later on they welcomed Henry IV and supported him,in spite of the anathema of Gregory VII. All tlie effortsof popes and abbots to restore the rule in its primitivepurity, to bring back the monks to perpetual prayer.


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48 MYSTIC ITALYmanual labour and abstinence, failed owing to thetemporal conditions of monasticism.

It was then that delicate souls, enamoured of silence,sought better retreats for the life contemplative out-side the monastic institution. In the tenth' and eleventhcenturies the piiieta of Ravenna, the solitudes ofGubbio, Vallombrosa, the Sila Mountains of Calabria,and Monte Gargano, the Athos of the west, werepeopled with hermits. They were still there at theend of the thirteenth century. True fathers of thedesert, they sang psalms, fasted, and disciplined theirbodies. Several, such as Romuald, the founder of theCamaldules, and Nil, the Greek hegoumenos of Calabriaand first abbot of Grotta-Ferrata (1002), enjoyed greatrenown throughout the whole world. (4) Some, such asPietro Damiano, Dominico of Sora, and Bruno of Segni,returned at times to the secular Church to purify anddirect it. Christendom admired them for their extra-ordinary acts of penance, their renunciation of allearthly consolation, and the long ecstasies during whichthe secrets of God were revealed to them ; the mastersof feudal society, the pope and emperor, venerated them,while they feared them at the same time for the verygrandeur of their sanctity and the gift of prophecythat was attributed to them. Otto said to his baronsas they came dowm' from Nil's hermitage in themountains of Calabria : " These men are truly citizensof heaven they live in tents as strangers upon earth."They had, in fact, set themselves free, as far as thepresent life is concerned, from the human community.Their social activity was even more insignificant thanthat of the monks. Neither the hermits nor the monkscould therefore regenerate Christendom. They werepowerless to reform, even for a few days, ecclesiasticalsociety. Should a monk of Cluny, Gregory VII(1073-1085), or an abbot of Monte Cassino, Victor III(108 6- 1 08 7), mount the papal throne and require ofthe clergy the austerity^ and obedience of the cloister.


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RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITIONS 49this attempt at religious renovation lasted but thetime of a single pontificate. In no part of the westwas this eclipse of the apostolic work more obviousthan in Italy. It was among the Italians that thepreaching of the Crusades awoke fewest echoes.Whilst Europe was rising at the call of popes andmonks, the great maritime cities, Venice, Genoa, Pisa,and Amalfi, while exacting a high price for the helpof their fleets, indifferent to the fate of the HolySepulchre, sought in the east nothing but the interestsof their poHtics and their trade, and sometimes alsorelics that might be useful to those politics. (5) Thus,at the very moment when the communal revolutionbegan, the spiritual role of the Church seemed to beended in the peninsula, and Christianity was retiringfrom the social crisis in which the destiny of the weakand oppressed was at stake.

IV ^Between the appearance of the commune of Brescia,

at the end of the tenth century, and the completionof that of Plorence, at the end of the twelfth, thetowns pulled down the strongholds of their counts andbishops and took possession once more of theircivil franchises. They gave back to the childrenthe little fatherland that encircled the municipal cam-panile ; at the time of the great Italian leaguesthey were to succeed in waking the memory of thegreater fatherland that had embraced all Italy. Butthey were unable to found social peace upon alasting basis.The Italian city in fact was a work of liberty andequality in appearance only. The community watchedover and fettered the individual, for the franchises ofrepublican association had as their guarantee theabdication of all personal will. The citizen was4


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50 MYSTIC ITALYattached to his city as rigorously as the cultivator tothe soil. The anonymous power upon which he wasdependent was a narrower constraint than the oldfeudal pact. The contract that bound the man to hislord rested upon a permanent and reciprocal interest,whilst the arbitrary lordship of the commune, at onceirresponsible and changing, modified, twenty times ina century, according to the needs or dangers of themoment, the social agreement and rendered the lot ofthe individual the more difficult in that it was moreuncertain. Here the man was enclosed in some oneof the groups whose sum total constituted the communalstate ; he belonged for his entire life to a determinedclass, to a trade, a corporation, a parish, a quarter.His consuls and councils not only assigned him hisshare of political liberty, but regulated by decree theacts of his private life, prescribing the number of figand almond trees he might plant in his field, thenumber of priests and tapers that should attend hisfuneral, forbade him to enter into taverns reserved forforeigners, to give presents to newly-married couples,to wear jewels or precious stuffs beyond a certain value ;if he was a barber, to shave for more than a penny ;if a ropemaker, to work on wet days ; if a huntsman,to catch quails otherwise than in a snare ; if a fisher-man, to sell his fish outside the city ; and if he werea farmer he was commanded to bring to the communethe corn he did not himself consume. Air and sun-shine alone seems to have escaped this regulation ofindividual rights. Exile, either voluntary or com-pulsory, could alone restore a shadow of independenceto the Italian, the lamentable exile of the fuoruscito,whom the neighbouring communes could receive onlyas a vagabond or a suspect, who had no other resourcethan to enroll himself among the mercenaries of abaron of the highways, the enemy of all communes,and had no other chance of seeing his birthplace againthan the hazards of civil war.


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RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITIONS 51Down to the end of the twelfth century the Italiancommune was entirely permeated with the aristocratic

spirit. Later on it was disturbed almost everywhereby the imperious claims of the democracy and withterror saw passing through its streets and squares thesupreme power, from which there was no appeal, thathad gradually invaded the communal constitutions, thedemagogic parlamenio set in motion by the tocsin ofthe public palace. But then, as the thirteenth centurywaned, the communes, corrupted in their vital principle,degenerated into tyranny. At the time with which weare dealing, however, when the municipal form ofgovernment was coming into being, this principle wasin its full vigour. The Italian Middle Ages were stilltoo powerfully possessed by the sentiment of the humanhierarchy to pass at a leap from the feudal system topure equality. The communes were set up for thebenefit of a nobility of the second rank, which at thebeginning of the new order even allowed itself for sometime to be ruled by the captains or vicars of the oldcounts. It was the middle class that formed the Italiancity for its own great advantage. At Florence it evensucceeded in establishing in its midst the hierarchy ofthe major and minor arts, of the " fat " and " lean "people. But in all the towns there was set up in amanner more or less rigorous a social system thatplaced one according to the value of the industry orcommerce in which he was engaged and that con-sequently depended upon wealth. At the top were thenotaries, money-changers, physicians, judges, weaversof silk or of velvet or cloth ; beneath them were thepeople of cruder manual occupations, wool-carders andbutchers ; and lower still came the minato popolo, thathad no corporation of its own and was attached toone or other of the major or minor arts, the obscurecrowd of the Ciompl who wdnt barefoot, the popolani,whom Dino Compagni shows us as incessantly insultedand trampled upon by the " great and proud citizens ",


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52 MYSTIC ITALYthe plebians of Milan whom a noble could kill at thecost of a few cro\\Tis. (6)As we see, the Italian hive, so ingenious and lively,was by no means equally kind to all the bees. When,in the days of Boniface Vlll (i 294-1 303), the factionsof Guelfs and Ghibelins, making use, as engines ofwar, at once of the hates of families and quarters andthe deadly rancour of the wretched against the middleclass, had set fire to central Italy, poets and historianshad no difficulty in discovering in the social state oftheir country those two irreconcilable elements, hard-ness of heart in the great and envy in the humble." Thy city," says one of tlie damned to Dante, " jsso full of envy that the sack is overflowing." Andit is Campagni who tells us that " the weak were toomuch oppressed by the strong." Later on GiovanniVillani (1275 ?-i348), in his Chronicle of the historyof Italy, was even to say with regard to the fires thatravaged Florence at the close of the twelfth century :" Our middle class citizens were too fat and lived inrepose and pride." Florence was the first city thatwas able to begin an actual class war, for she wasalways in advance of the other towns as much in herrevolutionary logic as in her civilization. But every-where else, in the first centuries of the communes, if,to make use of a tragic expression of Dante's, " itcame to bloodshed," it was as yet by no means a simplesocial struggle. The discontent of the nobles and theupper middle class, whose personal liberty was stifledby the municipal government, and the wrath of thepopolanl, for whom the ranks of the privileged classeswere closed, were rather manifested in religious un-easiness. Anxiety about divine matters was too strongat that time for men not to expect from God a remedyfor the ills that distressed men's souls, and for themnot to ask from religion consolation in their earthly,life. And as, in this period of social renovation, theChurch always continued to be, between the feudal lords


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RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITIONS 53whose power was declining and the communes whosepower was increasing, an august symbol of immovableauthority, it was to the Church that men's conscienceslong turned, and for a century and a half Italy soughtin a freer faith and a more tender charity the libertyand pity refused her by political institutions.

VDeprived of all doctrinal method, and greatly troubledin mind, Italy tried during this same period, and

without ever attaining satisfaction, several religiouscreations. Indifference or negation certainly had theiradepts soon enough, especially in Lombardy and atFlorence. Among the heretics of whom Villani speaksunder the dates of 1115 ^''^d 11 17 we find "anepicurean sect," that is to say, according to the defini-tion of Benvenuto of Imola, referring to the unbeliev-ing Ghibelins of Dante's epoch, men " who assert thatthe soul perishes with the body." (7) On the otherhand we know that Lombardy gave birth to a greatnumber of those clerici vagantes, joyous fellows who /were to be met with nearly everywhere in Europe atthat time. These men's infidelity was of a very originalkind, mingled with irony, sensuality, and a real instinctof paganism. They made mock of the Church,parodying the text of the Gospel and singing the massof the god Bacchus : Introibo ad altare Bacchic udDeum qui Icetificat cor hominis. They were men ofletters, precursors of the free-thinkers, who gaily brokeaway from the scholastic pedantry and the Christiangravity. They disconcerted the Middle Ages, which,although they by no means spared either the secularor the regular clergy, did not approve the mockeryof holy things. They were accused of believing " inJuvenal rather than in the prophets,"

Et pro Marco legunt Flacciivi,Pro Paulo Virgilium.


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54 MYSTIC ITALYBut these first Tuscan or Lombard sceptics formedonly a small group lost in Italian Christendom. Itis not possible exactly to measure the scope of theirreligious indifference. The contagion of it at any ratecaused no concern to the faithful at that time. Forthe negation of the lettered to penetrate to the massesof the people a century had first to see the triumphof a great heresy, or the

mystics and heretics in italy at the end of the middle ages - emile gebhart

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