The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

their horses like pillars

of iron, with nothing to be seen but their flaming eyes. The

trumpets flourished: “Laissez aller!,” cried a voice; and the

knights, with their long spears in rest, dashed furiously

against each other, and then plied battle-axe and sword, to the

great delight and contentment of the populace.

 

In times of war the castle was also the refuge of the poor, and

the villagers fled behind its walls when the enemy drew near.

They did not then reflect that it was the castle which had

provoked the war; they viewed it only as a hospitable fortress

which had saved their lives. It was therefore, in many cases,

regarded by the people not only with awe and veneration, but

also with a sentiment of filial love. It was associated with

their pleasures and their security. But in course of time a

rival arose to alienate the affections, or to strengthen the

resentment of the castle serfs. It was the Town.

 

In the days of the Republic and in the first days of the

Empire, all kinds of skilled labour were in the hands of

slaves: in every palace, whatever was required for the

household was manufactured on the premises. But before the

occupation of the Germans, a free class of artisans had sprung

up, in what manner is not precisely known; they were probably

the descendants of emancipated slaves. This class, divided into

guilds and corporations, continued to inhabit the towns: they

manufactured armour and clothes they travelled as pedlars about

the country, and thus acquired wealth, which they cautiously

concealed, for they were in complete subservience to the castle

lord. They could not leave their property by will, dispose of

their daughters in marriage, or perform a single business

transaction without the permission of their liege. But little

by little their power increased. When war was being waged, it

became needful to fortify the town; for the town was the

baron’s estate, and he did not wish his property to be

destroyed. When once the burghers were armed and their town

walled they were able to defy their lord. They obtained

charters, sometimes by revolt, sometimes by purchase, which

gave them the town to do with it as they pleased; to elect

their own magistrates, to make their own laws, and to pay their

liege-lord a fixed rent by the year instead of being subjected

to loans and benevolences, and loving contributions. The Roman

Law, which had never quite died out, was now revived; the old

municipal institutions of the Empire were restored. Unhappily

the citizens often fought among themselves, and towns joined

barons in destroying towns. Yet their influence rapidly

increased, and the power of the castle was diminished. Whenever

a town received privileges from its lord, other towns demanded

that the same rights should be embodied in their charters, and

rebelled if their request was refused. Trade and industry

expanded; the products of burgher enterprise and skill were

offered in the castle halls for sale. The lady was tempted with

silk and velvet; the lord, with chains of gold, and Damascus

blades, and suits of Milan steel; the children clamoured for

the sweet white powder which was brought from the countries of

the East. These new tastes and fancies impoverished the nobles.

They reduced their establishments; and the discarded retainers,

in no sweet temper, went over to the Town.

 

And there were others who went to the Town as well. In

classical times the slaves were unable to rebel with any

prospect of success. In the cities of Greece every citizen was

a soldier: in Rome an enormous army served as the slave police.

But in the scattered castle states of Europe, the serfs could

rise against their lords, and often did so with effect. And

then the Town was always a place of refuge: the runaway slave

was there welcomed; his pursuers were duped or defied; the file

was applied to his collar; his blue blouse was taken off; his

hair was suffered to grow; he was made a burgher and a free

man. Thus the serfs had often the power to rebel, and always

the power to escape; in consequence of which they ceased to be

serfs and became tenants. In our own times we have seen

emancipation presented to slaves by a victorious party in the

House of Commons, and by a victorious army in the United

States. It has, therefore, been inferred that slavery in Europe

was abolished in the same manner, and the honour of the

movement has been bestowed upon the Church. But this is reading

history upside down. The extinction of villeinage was not a

donation but a conquest: it did not descend from the court and

the castle; it ascended from the village and the town. The

Church, however, may claim the merit of having mitigated

slavery in its worst days, when its horrors were increased by

the pride of conquest and the hostility of race. The clergy

belonged to the conquered people, whom they protected from

harsh usage to the best of their ability. They taught as the

Moslem doctors also teach, and as even the pagan Africans

believe, that it is a pious action to emancipate a slave. But

there is no reason to suppose that they ever thought of

abolishing slavery, and they could not have done so had they

wished. Negro slavery was established by subjects of the Church

in defiance of the Church. Religion has little power when it

works against the stream, but it can give to streams a power

which they otherwise would not possess, and it can unite their

scattered waters into one majestic flood.

 

Rome was taken and sacked but never occupied by the barbarians.

It still belonged to the Romans: it still preserved the

traditions and the genius of empire. Whatever may have been the

origin of British or Celtic Christianity, it is certain that

the English were converted by the Papists; the first Archbishop

of Canterbury was an Italian; his converts became missionaries,

entered the vast forests of pagan Germany, and brought nations

to the feet of Rome. The alliance of Pepin and the Roman See

placed also the French clergy under the dominion of the Pope,

who was acknowledged by Alcuin, the adherent of Charlemagne, to

be the “Pontiff of God, vicar of the apostles, heir of the

fathers, prince of the Church, guardian of the only dove

without stain.”

 

The ordinance of clerical celibacy increased the efficacy of

the priesthood and the power of the Pope. The ranks of the

clergy were recruited, generation after generation, from the

most intelligent of the lay men in the lower classes, and from

those among the upper classes who were more inclined to

intellectual pursuits than to military life. These men, divided

as they were from family connections, ceased to be Germans,

Englishmen, or Frenchmen, and became catholic or universal

hearted men, patriots of religion, children of the Church. And

those enthusiastic laymen who had adopted an ascetic isolated

life, or had gathered together in voluntary associations; those

hermits and monks, who might have been so dangerous to the

Established Church, were welcomed as allies. No mean jealousy

in the Roman Church divided the priest and the prophet, as

among the ancient Jews; the mullah and the dervish, as in the

East at the present time. The monks were allowed to preach, and

to elect their own monastery priests; they were gradually

formed into regular orders, and brought within the discipline

of ecclesiastic law. The monks of the East, who could live on a

handful of beans, passed their lives in weaving baskets, in

prayer and meditation. But the monks of the West, who lived in

a colder climate, required a different kind of food; and as at

first they had no money, they could obtain it only by means of

work. They laboured in the fields in order to live and that

which had arisen from necessity was continued as a part of the

monastic discipline. There were also begging friars, who

journeyed from land to land. These were the first travellers in

Europe. Their sacred character preserved their lives from all

robbers, whether noble or plebeian, and the same exemption was

accorded to those who put on the pilgrim’s garb. The smaller

pilgrimage was that to Rome the greater that to the Holy Land,

by which the palmers obtained remission of their sins, and also

were shown by the monks of Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine, many

interesting relics and vestiges of supernatural events. They

were shown the barns which Joseph had built, vulgarly called

the Pyramids; the bush which had burnt before Moses and was not

consumed, and the cleft out of which he peeped at the “back

parts” of Jehovah; the pillar of salt which was once Lot’s

wife, and which, though the sheep continually licked it out of

shape, was continually restored to its pristine form; the ruins

of the temple which Samson overthrew; the well where Jesus used

to draw water for his mother when he was a little boy, and

where she used to wash his clothes; the manger in which he was

born, and the table on which he was circumcised; the caves in

which his disciples concealed themselves during the

crucifixion, and the cracks in the ground produced by the

earthquake, which followed that event; the tree on which Judas

hanged himself, and the house in which he resided, which was

surrounded by the Jews with a wall that it might not be injured

by the Christians.

 

It was not only the rich who undertook this pilgrimage; many a

poor man begged his way to the Holy Land. When such a person

was ready to depart, the village pastor clad him in a cloak of

coarse black serge, with a broad hat upon his head, put a long

staff in his hand, and hung round him a scarf and script. He was

conducted to the borders of the parish in solemn procession,

with cross and holy water the neighbours parted from him there

with tears and benedictions. He returned with cockle-shells

stitched in his hat, as a sign that he had been across the

seas, and with a branch of palm tied on to his staff, as a sign

that he had been to Jerusalem itself. He often brought also

relics and beads; a bag of dust to hang at the bedside of the

sick; a phial of oil from the lamp which hung over the Holy

Sepulchre, and perhaps a splinter of the true cross.

 

When the Saracens conquered Palestine and Egypt, they did not

destroy the memorials of Jesus, for they reverenced him as a

prophet. Pious Moslems made also the pilgrimage to Jerusalem;

and the Christians were surprised and edified to see the

turbaned infidels removing their sandals like Moses on Mount

Sinai, and prostrating themselves upon the pavement before the

tomb. The caliphs were sufficiently enlightened to encourage

and protect the foreign enthusiasts who filled the land with

gold; and although the palmers were exempt from “passage” and

“pontage” and other kinds of blackmail levied by the barons on

lay travellers, they found it more easy and more safe to travel

in Asia than in Europe. The passion for the pilgrimage to

Palestine, which had gradually increased since the days of

Helena and Jerome, burst forth as an epidemic at the close of

the tenth century. The thousand years assigned in Revelation as

the lifetime of the earth were about to expire. It was believed

that Jesus would appear in Jerusalem, and there hold a grand

assize: thousands bestowed their property upon the Church, and

crowded to the Holy Land.

 

While they thus lived at Jerusalem and waited for the second

coming, continually looking up at the sky and expecting it to

open, there came instead a host of men with yellow faces and

oblique slit-shaped