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

eyes, who took the Holy City by assault,

drove the Arabs out of Syria, killed many pilgrims, stripped

them of all their money, and if they found none outside their

bodies, probed them with daggers, or administered emetics in

the hope of finding some within. When the pilgrims returned,

they related their sufferings, and showed their scars. The

anger of Christendom was aroused. A crusade was preached, and

the enthusiasm which everywhere prevailed enabled the Church to

exercise unusual powers. The Pope decreed that the men of the

cross should be hindered by none. Creditor might not arrest;

master might not detain. To those who joined the army of the

Church, absolution was given; and paradise was promised in the

Moslem style to those who died in the campaign. The tidings

flew from castle to castle, and from town to town; there was

not a land, however remote, which escaped the infection of the

time. In the homely language of the monk of Malmesbury, “the

Welshman left his hunting, the Scotch his fellowship with

vermin, the Dane his drinking party, the Norwegian his raw

fish.” Europe was torn up from its foundations and hurled upon

Asia. Society was dissolved. Monks, not waiting for the

permission of their superiors, cast off their black gowns and

put on the buff jerkin, the boots and the sword. The serf left

his plough in the furrow, the shepherd left his flock in the

field. Men servants and maid servants ran from the castle.

Wives insisted upon going with their husbands, and if their

husbands refused to take them, went with some one else.

Murderers, robbers, and pirates declared that they would wash

out their sins in pagan blood. In some cases, the poor rustic

shod his oxen like horses, and placed his whole family in a

cart, and whenever he came to a castle or a town, inquired

whether that was Jerusalem. The barons sold or mortgaged their

estates, indifferent about the future, hoping to win the wealth

of Eastern princes with the sword. During two hundred years,

the natives of Europe appeared to have no other object than to

conquer or to keep possession of the Holy Land.

 

The Christian knights were at length driven out of Asia; in the

meantime, Europe was transformed. The kings had taken no part

in the first crusades; the estates of the barons had been

purchased partly by them, and partly by the burghers. An

alliance was made between Crown and Town. The sovereignty of

the castle was destroyed. Judges appointed by the king

travelled on circuit through the land; the Roman law, from being

municipal became national; the barons became a nobility

residing chiefly at the court; the middle class came into life.

The burghers acknowledged no sovereign but the king: they

officered their own trainbands; they collected their own taxes;

they were represented in a national assembly at the capital.

New tastes came into vogue; both mind and body were indulged

with dainty foods. The man of talent, whatever his station,

might hope to be ennobled; the honour of knighthood was

reserved by the king, and bestowed upon civilians. The spices

of the East, the sugar of Egypt and Spain, the silk of Greece

and the islands were no longer occasional luxuries, but

requirements of daily life. And since it was considered

unworthy of a gentleman to trade, the profits of commerce were

monopolised by the third estate. Education was required for

mercantile pursuits; it was at first given by the priests who

had previously taught laymen only to repeat the paternoster

and the credo, and to pay tithes. Schools were opened in the

towns, and universities became secular. The rich merchants took

a pride in giving their sons the best education that money

could obtain, and these young men were not always disposed to

follow commercial pursuits. They adopted the study of the law,

cultivated the fine arts, made experiments in natural

philosophy, and were often sent by their parents to study in

the land beyond the Alps, where they saw something which was in

itself an education for the burgher mind — merchants dwelling

in palaces, seated upon thrones, governing great cities,

commanding fleets and armies, negotiating on equal terms with

the proudest and most powerful monarchs of the North.

 

Italy, protected by its mountain barrier, had not been so

frequently flooded by barbarians as the provinces of Gaul and

Spain. The feudal system was there established in a milder

form, and the cities retained more strength. Soon they were

able to attack the castle lords, to make them pull down their

towers, and to live like peaceable citizens within the walls.

The Emperor had little power; Florence, Genoa, and Pisa grew

into powerful city states resembling those of Italy before the

rise of ancient Rome, but possessing manufactures which, in the

time of ancient Italy, had been confined to Egypt, China, and

Hindustan.

 

The origin of Venice was different from that of its sister

states. In the darkest days of Italy, when a horde of savage

Huns, with scalps dangling from the trappings of their horses,

poured over the land, some citizens of Padua and other

adjoining towns took refuge in a cluster of islands in the

lagoons which were formed at the mouths of the Adige and the

Po. From Rialto, the chief of these islands, it was three miles

to the mainland; a mile and a half to the sandy breakwater

which divided the lagoons from the Adriatic. At high water the

islands appeared to be at sea; but when the tide declined, they

rose up from the midst of a dark green plain in which blue

gashes were opened by the oar. But even at high water the

lagoons were too shallow to be entered by ships — except

through certain tortuous and secret channels; and even at low

water they were too deep to be passed on foot. Here, then, the

Venetians were secure from their foes, like the lake-dwellers

of ancient times.

 

At first they were merely salt-boilers and fishermen, and were

dependent on the mainland for the materials of life. There was

no seaport in the neighbourhood to send its vessels for the

salt which they prepared: they were forced to fetch everything

that they required for themselves. They became seamen by

necessity: they almost lived upon the water. As their means

improved, and as their wants expanded, they bought fields and

pastures on the mainland; they extended their commerce, and made

long voyages. They learnt in the dockyards of Constantinople

the art of building tall ships; they conquered the pirates of

the Adriatic Sea. The princes of Syria, Egypt, Barbary, and

Spain were all of them merchants, for commerce is an

aristocratic occupation in the East. With them the Venetians

opened up a trade. At first they had only timber and slaves to

offer in exchange for the wondrous fabrics and rare spices of

the East. In raw produce Europe is no match for Asia. The

Venetians, therefore, were driven to invent; they manufactured

furniture and woollen cloth, armour, and glass. It is evident,

from the old names of the streets, that Venice formerly was one

great workshop; it was also a great market city. The crowds of

pilgrims resorting to Rome to visit the tombs of the martyrs,

and to kiss the Pope’s toe, had suggested to the Government the

idea of Fairs which were held within the city at stated times.

The Venetians established a rival fair in honour of St. Mark,

whose remains, revered even by the Moslems, had been smuggled

out of Alexandria in a basket of pork. They took their

materials, like Molière, wherever they could find them—stole

the corpse of a patriarch from Constantinople, and the bones of

a saint from Milan. They made religion subservient to commerce:

they declined to make commerce subservient to religion. The

Pope forbade them to trade with infidels: but the infidel,

trade was their life. Siamo Veneziani poi Cristiani, they

replied. The Papal nuncios arrived in Venice, and

excommunicated two hundred of the leading men. In return they

were ordered to leave the town. The fleets of the Venetians,

like the Phoenicians of old, sailed in all the European waters,

from the wheat fields of the Crimea to the ice-creeks of the

Baltic. In that sea the pirates were at length extinct; a

number of cities along its shores were united in a league.

Bruges in Flanders was the emporium of the Northern trade, and

was supplied by Venetian vessels with the commodities of the

South. The Venetians also travelled over Europe, and

established their financial colonies in all great towns. The

cash of Europe was in their hands; and the sign of three golden

balls declared that Lombards lent money within.

 

During the period of the Crusades, their trade with the East

was interrupted but it was exchanged for a commerce more

profitable still. The Venetians in their galleys conveyed the

armies to the Holy Land, and also supplied them with

provisions. Besides the heavy sums which they exacted for such

services, they made other stipulations. Whenever a town was

taken by the Crusaders, a suburb or street was assigned to the

Venetians; and when the Christians were expelled, the Moslems

consented to continue the arrangement. In all the great Eastern

cities, there was a Venetian quarter containing a chapel, a

bath-house, and a factory ruled over by a magistrate or consul.

 

Constantinople, during the Crusades, had been taken by the

Latins, with the assistance of the Venetians, and had been

recovered by the Greeks, with the assistance of the Genoese.

The Venetians were expelled from the Black Sea, but obtained

the Alexandria trade. In the fifteenth century the Black Sea

was ruined, for its caravan routes were stopped by the Turkish

wars. Egypt, which was supplied by sea, monopolised the

India trade, and the Venetians monopolised the trade of Egypt.

Venice became the nutmeg and pepper shop of Europe: not a

single dish could be seasoned, not a tankard of ale could be

spiced, without adding to its gains. The wealth of that city

soon became enormous; its power, south of the Alps, supreme.

 

Times had changed since those poor fugitives first crept in

darkness and sorrow on the islands of the wild lagoon, and

drove stakes into the sand, and spread the reeds of the ocean

for their bed. Around them the dark lone waters, sighing,

soughing, and the sea-bird’s melancholy cry. Around them the

dismal field of slime, the salt and sombre plain. On that

cluster of islands had arisen a city of surpassing loveliness

and splendour. Great ships lay at anchor in its marble streets;

their yards brushed sculptured balconies, and the walls of

palaces as they swept along. Branching off from the great

thoroughfares, bustling with commerce, magnificent with pomp,

were sweet and silent lanes of water, lined with summer palaces

and with myrtle gardens, sloping downwards to the shore. In the

fashionable quarter was a lake-like space — the Park of Venice

— which every evening was covered with gondolas; and the

gondoliers in those days were slaves from the East, Saracens or

Negroes, who sang sadly as they rowed, the music of their homes

— the camel-song of the Sahara, or the soft minor airs of the

Sudan.

 

The government of Venice was a rigid aristocracy. Venice

therefore has no Santa Croce; it can boast of few illustrious

names. However, its Aldine Press and its poems in colour were

not unworthy contributions to the revival of ancient learning

and the creation of modern art. The famous wanderings of Marco

Polo had also excited among learned Venetians a peculiar taste

for the science of exploration. All over Europe they

corresponded with scholars of congenial tastes, and urged those

princes who had ships at their disposal to undertake voyages of

enterprise and discovery. Among their correspondents there was

one