Morals and Customs of the Christian World (700–1300)

Morals and Customs of the Christian World (700–1300)

I – Principles of Christian Ethics

When man lived in the forest or in the hunting stage, he was inevitably greedy—or, in other words, he pursued food with intense eagerness and devoured with voracity whatever he found—because when the opportunity to eat presented itself, he had no assurance when such an opportunity would come again. Primitive man was necessarily sensitive in sexual relations and mostly lived in sexual chaos, for an increase in the death rate naturally led to an increase in births. Since man considered himself obliged, whenever possible, to impregnate every woman, he was inevitably compelled to keep himself constantly ready for such an act; he had to be a quarrelsome being, always prepared to fight for food or a mate. What today are considered vices were once counted among virtues and necessities for human survival.

But man realized that the best way to survive—not only for individuals but also for species—was social organization. He laid aside the tools of the hunt and drew up principles for a social system. According to these principles, he was forced to bring under control in every twist and turn the instincts that had once been extraordinarily useful in the hunting stage, so that the formation of society might become possible. From the viewpoint of moral standards, every civilization is a balance and conflict between the forest instincts of individuals and the prohibitions of a codified moral system. Instincts without prohibitions destroy civilization, and prohibitions without instincts end life. The fundamental issue in ethics is to what extent prohibitions should be moderated so that civilization may be preserved from decay without weakening the roots of life.

In the matter of mitigating violence, sexual chaos, and human greed, certain instincts that were mostly social in nature gained supremacy and, from a biological viewpoint, laid the foundation for civilization. Parental love, among both animals and humans, created the natural social system of the family, which involved mutual assistance and instructive discipline. Paternal and maternal authority—which was itself half an expression of love and half the pleasure of tyranny—transmitted a salvific collection of social conduct rules to the self-willed child. The organizing force that a tribal chief, a lord, a city, or a government brought together limited or mostly outmaneuvered by cunning the disorganized force of individuals. The love an individual felt for general acceptance subjected the self-willed ego to the will of the people. Custom and imitation occasionally compelled adolescents to follow methods that had been approved by the experience of the tribe. Law terrified instinct with the fear of punishment. Conscience tamed the young with a multitude of prohibitions.

The Church believed that these natural or non-religious sources of morality were insufficient to restrain impulsive urges that preserved human life in the forest but disrupted order in a society. It said these impulses were too powerful for any human governing power to confine them within its decrees, especially since it could not be present in every situation and at every place, watching over individuals’ actions. If a set of moral principles was to be followed that people found harshly incompatible with their inclinations and instincts, it was necessary for everyone to regard these laws as originating from a supernatural source. It was essential that all believe these moral principles had descended from the divine court so that, without any executive guarantee, the human soul would respect them in the most hidden moments and the most secluded corners of life. Even paternal and maternal authority—which is so necessary for social moral order—fails in the struggle against primitive instincts unless it rests on religious beliefs instilled in the child. For a religion to gird itself to serve a society and save that society from destruction, it must resist the powerful instinct that rebels not against human laws but against the uncompromising and absolute commands of God. Moreover (man is so sinful—or, in other words, so savage—that) these divine commandments must not only include praise and honor for those who obey them, and not only rebuke and punishments for those who disobey the instructions, but must also promise the hope of reaching paradise for good deeds without reward and threaten the fear of going to hell for sins without punishment. It was necessary that these commandments issue not from Moses but from the court of God.

Since the basis of the hypothesis of primitive instincts and its connection with the continuation of the species’ life did not correspond with the condition of civilized man in society, it appeared in Christian theology as ideas about the sin of Adam and Eve. This matter, like the belief in karma among the Hindus, was a way to provide rational justifications for explaining all the pains and afflictions that man apparently felt compelled to endure without any justified reason. In other words, man said that if today good is caught in the grip of evil, the cause of this defeat is nothing but the sins of our ancestors. According to the Christian hypothesis, the entire human race was tainted with the sin of Adam and Eve. Gratian, in his book Decretum (Decrees) (c. 1150), referred to matters that the Church unofficially accepted as a pillar of its teachings. He wrote: “Every human being, since he is the product of the union of man and woman, is born with inherent sinfulness, condemned to wickedness and death, and is therefore a child who must pay the penalty for this sin.” Only divine grace and the atonement of Jesus’ death on the cross can save such a being from ruin and eternal damnation (or, in other words, the purpose was that only following a beloved being like the crucified Christ could free man from the bonds of violent acts, greed, and the shackles of lust and save him and his society from the abyss of destruction). The promotion of these ideas, along with the occurrence of natural disasters for which the human mind could find no justified reason except to consider them punishments for sins, gave many medieval Christians a sense of inherent impurity, corruption, and sin that was reflected in most of the literature of European peoples before 1200. From then on, the sense of guilt and fear of afterlife torment gradually declined until the Catholic Reformation, and afterward it rose again with new terror among Protestant reformers.

Gregory the Great, and the theologians after him, counted the deadly sins as seven: pride, greed, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth. In opposition to these seven deadly sins, they also recognized seven good qualities, four of which they considered “natural” virtues or virtues of the pagan age. These four, praised by Pythagoras and Plato, were prudence, courage, justice, and temperance. To these four qualities they added three others that they considered derived from divine sciences: faith, hope, and charity. Although Christianity accepted the virtues of the pagan age, it never absorbed them into its own teachings. Christian religion preferred faith over knowledge, patience over courage, love and mercy over justice, and self-control and purity over moderation. It strove to elevate humility and counted pride (which was one of the prominent qualities of Aristotle’s ideal man) among the greatest deadly sins. Sometimes it spoke of human rights, but its basic emphasis was more on the duties of the individual toward himself and toward his fellow men, toward the Church, and toward God. When the Church, in promoting its ideas, called Jesus “the gentle, mild-tempered, and simple Jesus,” it had no fear that this would make men gentle and delicate beings. On the contrary, the men of the Latin Christian world in the Middle Ages, because of facing greater hardships and difficulties, were far harsher and more manly than their descendants in modern ages. Theology and philosophical ideas, like individuals and governments, naturally take shape and manifest according to the demands of time and place.

II – Observance of Moral Principles Before Marriage

Now the question that arises is to what extent the chastity of medieval people represented or justified the moral hypotheses of that age. First, without attempting to prove any thesis, let us see what the conditions of that society were.

The first moral event in the life of an individual Christian was baptism: that is, the child was introduced into society and made a member of the Christian Church by this sacred rite and with special ceremonies, and in this way the child was vicariously obliged to observe the rules and laws of the Church. Every child, through these rites, received a “Christian name”: in other words, at baptism, the name of one of the saints of the faith was placed upon him. The family name could be taken from various sources and might be connected with a person’s kinship to past generations, or family occupations, or places, or a part of the body, or a quality, or even one of the Church’s rites. Gregory the Great, like Rousseau, encouraged mothers to nurse and raise their own infants. Most poor women did so, but most ladies of the upper class did not. Children were as beloved in this period as in any other, but most of them were disciplined. Although infant and adolescent mortality was very common, their numbers were very large. Children, because of their large numbers, disciplined one another and became civilized through friction. These children in city and village learned various skills from their relatives and playmates, and their knowledge and mischief increased rapidly. Thomas of Celano, a thirteenth-century chronicler, wrote: “As soon as boys open their mouths, they are taught the lesson of wickedness, and the older they grow, the worse they become, until they retain only the name of Christianity.” But it must be kept in mind that moralists are usually not good historians. The age of work for boys began at twelve, and legal maturity began at sixteen.

According to Christian morality, nothing was said to adolescents about sexual matters. Financial maturity, that is, the ability to provide for a family, usually came after natural puberty, that is, the attainment of reproductive power, and since it took time for a young man to gain the means to take a wife, any kind of sexual guidance was likely to add to the hardships of this period of waiting. Moreover, the Church believed that if a young man had no sexual relations with a woman before marriage, this self-restraint would cause the permanence and fidelity of husband and wife toward each other and would help social order and public health. With all this, the medieval youth by the age of sixteen had probably enjoyed sexual pleasures in various ways. With the outbreak of the Crusades, the spread of Eastern ideas, the seclusion of monks and nuns, and sodomy—which had been severely rejected and disapproved in the early days of the spread of Christianity—regained currency. In 1177, Henry, abbot of Clairvaux, wrote about France that “that old habit of sodomy is rising again from the ashes.” Philip the Fair, king of France, accused the Knights Templar of committing such sexual perversions. Treatises published by the Church for determining penances for sins mentioned such criminals, including intercourse with animals. Apparently people coupled with all kinds of animals. Whenever these couplings were discovered, the punishment for the perpetrators, whether human or animal, was death. In documents related to the English Parliament, we encounter numerous cases in which dogs, goats, cattle, pigs, and geese were burned alive along with the perpetrators of such crimes. Cases of incest were very numerous.

Apparently sexual relations before and after marriage were as common as from ancient times until the twentieth century. The flood of man’s lustful nature overflowed the dikes that Church laws had created for the common people, and some women also felt that they could atone for the pleasures of momentary lust with weekly devotions. Despite very severe punishments, rape was common. Knights who had bound themselves to the service of noble ladies or maidens in exchange for a kiss or a touch of the hand might soothe their restless hearts with the union of the lady’s maidservants. Some ladies would not sleep with a peaceful conscience until they had bestowed such affection upon the knight. The knight of La Tour Landry lamented the prevalence of adultery among aristocratic youth. If his words are credible, some men of his class committed adultery in the churchyard and even “on the altar of the church.” William of Malmesbury described the Norman aristocracy as people who “have sacrificed head and soul to gluttony and lechery” and exchange their concubines with one another. The Christian world was full of illegitimate children, and illegitimacy became the main subject of thousands of different tales. The heroes of several medieval sagas, including Cú Chulainn, Arthur, Gawain, Roland, and William the Conqueror, and a number of knights in the chronicle of Froissart, were all illegitimate.

Prostitution adapted itself to the conditions of the time. According to the statements of Bishop Boniface, some women who were on pilgrimage to holy places provided the expenses of their journey in the towns along the way by selling themselves. After every troop of soldiers, another troop followed that was as dangerous as the enemy. Albert of Aix reported that “among the ranks of the Crusaders, a crowd of women moved, dressed in men’s clothing. All these people, without any distinction of sex, traveled together, and probably hoped for a kind of horrible sexual chaos.” In the siege of Acre (1189), Imad al-Din, the Arab historian, writes: “Three hundred beautiful French women … arrived to soothe the hearts of the French soldiers … for these individuals would not step onto the battlefield without the presence of women.” When the Muslim soldiers saw the situation this way, they demanded similar comfort. In the first Crusade of Saint Louis, according to the historian of that king, Joinville, the lords who accompanied the king “spread their brothels around the royal tent.” University students, especially in Paris, found themselves in difficulty to meet their necessary needs or in imitation of others, and for this reason young girls established centers to receive them.

Some cities such as Toulouse, Avignon, Montpellier, and Nuremberg officially permitted prostitution under the supervision of city authorities, because they believed that without the existence of such prostitute women, chaste women would not dare to step into the streets. Saint Augustine had written: “If you remove prostitute women from among us, the world will be convulsed with lust.” Saint Thomas Aquinas agreed with this view. In twelfth-century London, near London Bridge, there was a row of houses of prostitutes that in English were called bordells or stews. At first permission to establish such centers was issued by the bishop of Winchester, and later Parliament agreed with the matter.

The law passed by the English Parliament in 1161 stipulated that none of the keepers of brothels should keep a prostitute suffering from “the dangerous disease of gonorrhea”—as far as we know, this is the oldest law seen in the world for preventing the spread of venereal diseases. In 1254, Louis IX ordered that all prostitutes be expelled from France. This command was put into effect, and it was not long before a chaos similar to what had existed before, but secretly, took place. The bourgeois nobility complained that it was almost impossible for the chastity of their women and daughters to remain safe against the attraction and entreaties of soldiers and students. Finally, criticism of the king’s command became so widespread that they were forced to repeal it (1256). According to a new command, it was stipulated that prostitutes had the right to reside and work in particular quarters and streets of Paris, their clothing and ornaments were specified and declared, and all of them were placed under the supervision of a police chief whom the common people called “the king of revelers, sodomites, and libertines.” Louis IX, on his deathbed, recommended to his son that he renew the command to expel prostitutes. Philip carried out his father’s wish, and the results obtained were the same as had been seen before. The law remained in force but was not enforced. According to Durand the Second, bishop of Mende (1311), there were brothels near the Vatican, and the papal police, in exchange for a sum, did not interfere with the keepers of such centers. The Church adopted a compassionate policy toward prostitutes, established special almshouses for repentant prostitutes, and distributed among the weak the funds that repentant prostitutes donated to the Church.

III – Marriage

In the age of faith, youth was short, and marriage occurred very early. A child of seven could become engaged, and such engagements were made solely to facilitate the transfer or preservation of property. Grace de Sully was married at the age of four to one of the high nobility so that the girl’s extensive properties and estates would be preserved. It was not long before that husband died, and Grace was married at six to another lord, and finally at eleven she took a third husband. Such marriages could be dissolved at any time before the wedding, which apparently took place at twelve for girls and fourteen for boys.

If both parties to the marriage contract were adults, then the Church did not consider the consent of the father, mother, or guardian necessary for a valid marriage. The Church prohibited the marriage of girls under fifteen, but made many exceptions in this regard, because in this matter property was far more important than the caprices of passionate hearts, and marriage was in fact a minor matter that had to be subject to the requirements of wealth. The groom offered a sum or gifts to the bride’s guardians, gave the bride herself a kind of “under the word,” and undertook to allocate a share of his property to the wife. In England this right was usually one-third of the husband’s immovable property, which belonged to her for life. The bride’s family gave a gift to the groom’s family and provided a dowry for the bride, which usually consisted of clothing, a quantity of linen fabrics, vessels, household furniture, and sometimes land. Engagement consisted of an exchange of promises between the parties, and marriage itself was a covenant; and a wife was one who said “yes” in response to the man or, in other words, willingly obliged herself to observe the marital commitment.

Both government and Church, in the same way, after the wedding, accepted as a valid marriage one that was performed with an exchange of verbal commitment between the parties, without any other legal or religious formalities. In this way, the Church wanted to prevent lustful men from using women as temporary pleasure and then abandoning them; for this reason, it preferred such unions to adultery or taking a concubine. But after the twelfth century the Church did not consider marriages performed without the approval of ecclesiastical authorities to be legal and, after the Council of Trent (1563), stipulated that a priest must necessarily be present in such ceremonies. The framers of non-religious laws accepted the ecclesiastical rules concerning marriage with open arms. Bracton, the great English lawgiver (d. 1268), believed that a set of religious customs was necessary for legal marriage. The Church elevated the foundation of marriage and made it one of the sacred rites and turned it into a covenant between man, woman, and God, and gradually expanded the scope of its jurisdiction until it finally included every stage of marriage—from the duties of the parties in the marriage bed to the last will of the dying wife.

Canon law prepared a detailed list of “impediments in the way of marriage.” According to the rules of the Sharia, the parties were obliged at the time of the marriage contract to have no commitments arising from previous marriages and to have taken no oath to abandon the world. Marriage with a person who had not been baptized was prohibited; nevertheless, numerous marriages took place between Christians and Jews. Marriage between slaves, and between servants and free men, between orthodox Christians and heretics, even between believers and excommunicated persons, was recognized as valid and legal. Another rule of the Sharia was that marriage between a man and a woman who had common ancestors up to four generations was not permitted. In this matter the Church rejected Roman law and accepted the theory of exogamy, which was an invention of primitive peoples as a precaution to prevent the gradual corruption of the race. Perhaps another reason for the Church’s opposition to close-kin unions was its dissatisfaction with the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small and limited number. In villages and rural areas, refraining from such marriages between close relatives was difficult, and for this reason, as in many other cases where there was a significant difference between reality and law, the Church was forced to overlook such violations.

After the marriage ceremony, it was the turn of the bride and groom’s procession, which was accompanied by the clamor of music and the prancing of people dressed in all kinds of silk, from the door of the church to the groom’s house. There, from morning until midnight, a session of joy and feasting was arranged. A marriage was not legal unless the wife was deflowered. Any means to prevent pregnancy was prohibited. Aquinas considered it a sin that ranked in severity after murder; nevertheless, various means, from simple devices and drugs to magic, were used to prevent a woman’s pregnancy, and most men relied on coitus interruptus. Itinerant drug sellers offered mixtures for abortion, sterility, impotence, or lust for intercourse to interested parties. In the treatise on penances for sins by Rabanus Maurus, three years’ penance is prescribed for any woman who “mixes her husband’s semen with her food so that his love for her increases in his heart.” Infanticide was rare. Christian charitable institutions from the sixth century onward established hospitals for foundling children in various cities. In the eighth century a council in Rouen asked women who had given birth secretly to place their children at the entrance of the church so that the clergy would attend to them. Such orphan children were raised like serfs and employed on the endowed lands of the Church. A law approved by Charlemagne stipulated that whoever saved foundling children from death and raised them could keep such persons as slaves. Around 1190 a monk from Montpellier founded an order called the “Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit” whose motto was the protection and education of orphan children.

The punishments prescribed for adultery were severe. For example, in Saxon law, the minimum punishment for adulterous women was cutting off the nose and ears, and the husband was given permission, if he saw his wife unfaithful, to kill her. With all this, adultery was very widespread and was seen in abundance among the aristocracy and rarely among the middle classes. According to feudal law, lords who forced their female serfs into unchastity were fined a small sum. The law said that whoever had intercourse with a maiden against her will was obliged to pay a fine equivalent to three shillings to the court. Edward Freeman, the English historian whose views on Norman history are authoritative, called the eleventh century the “age of lechery” and is extremely astonished that William the Conqueror, the son of a man who had no regard for chastity or purity, apparently remained faithful to one woman until the end of his life and did not violate the marriage covenant. Thomas Wright, another learned and wise English historian, writes: “Medieval society was a society exceedingly lewd and lustful.” The Church consented to the separation of husband and wife in cases of adultery, apostasy, or gross cruelty. Usually this separation was called divorce, but the purpose was not divorce in the sense of dissolving the marriage. The decree of divorce or annulment of the contract was issued only in cases where it was proven that the marriage violated one of the rules of the Sharia. The idea that these impediments were deliberately increased so that persons who had every means to pay exorbitant sums and the heavy expenses of annulling the marriage contract would have a pretext for divorce seems very unlikely. The Church applied these impediments with flexible rulings in rare cases, for example when divorce freed a king from a barren queen and, in the event of remarriage, there was a possibility of having an heir, or when divorce in some way served the benefit of a kingdom or aided peace; with the citation of one of these pretexts, the decree of divorce was issued. Germanic laws on adultery sometimes even allowed divorce by mutual consent. Kings preferred the laws of their ancestors to the strict rules of the Church. Sometimes lords and ladies reverted to their ancient laws and divorced each other without obtaining permission from ecclesiastical authorities. From the time when Innocent III refused to grant permission for divorce to Philip Augustus, the powerful king of France, the Church became so strong in terms of influence and conscience that it was able to boldly shape the rulings as it wished.

IV – Woman

The theories of the clergy were generally against women; some Church laws added to the subjugation of women, but many principles and customs of Christianity raised the social status of woman. In the view of the priests and theologians of these centuries, woman still held the same position as in the view of John Chrysostom and the patriarch of Constantinople, namely: “a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a deadly attraction, and a colorful harm.” Woman was still the embodied Eve everywhere who deprived man of paradise. She was still a desirable tool in the hand of the devil to seduce men and send them to hell. Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was usually a symbol of kindness but at the same time bound by the limitations peculiar to a monk, placed woman lower than slaves in some respects:

Woman, because of the weakness of her nature, both intellectual and physical, is subject to man … . Man is the beginning and end of woman, just as God is the beginning and end of all beings … . Woman according to the law of nature must be obedient and submissive, whereas a slave is not so … . Children should love their fathers more than their mothers.

Canon law assigned the duty of protecting woman to her husband and obliged woman to obey her husband. It was man who was created in the likeness of God, not woman; the framers of the rules of the Sharia said: “For this reason it is clear that women must be subject to their husbands and almost their handmaids.” These kinds of expressions in reality fulfilled man’s desire to attain his wishes. On the other hand, the Church forced individuals to follow the principle of monogamy, insisted that the same moral standards must be observed for individuals of both sexes, honored woman in the form of the cult of Mary, and defended woman’s right to inherit property.

Civil law showed more opposition to woman than canon law. In both laws the husband was allowed to beat his wife. When in the thirteenth century the “Laws and Customs of Beauvais” obliged a man to beat his wife “only with regard to the standards of justice,” this was in fact considered an enlightened action. Civil law stipulated that the testimony of women in court was not admissible “because of their instability.” In the commission of crimes and the filing of lawsuits in court, the criminal usually paid the woman half the fine that was due for a similar offense to a man. Civil law also deprived even most women of aristocratic families from membership in the English Parliament or the French Estates General as representatives of their own lands and estates. By virtue of marriage, the husband gained full authority to use any property that was in the wife’s possession at the time of the wedding and to enjoy its benefits. No woman had the right to officially practice medicine.

The diversity of woman’s economic life was as great as the economic diversity of man. Woman learned and applied all the wonderful skills that were quietly used in managing household affairs: in other words, she engaged in baking bread, making sweets and cookies and all kinds of pastries, stewing meat, preparing soap and raw candles and cheese, brewing beer, making homemade medicines from herbs, spinning wool, weaving fabric, preparing cloth from linen, sewing clothes, curtains, wall hangings, and bedspreads, decorating and cleaning the house, to the extent that her husbands allowed, and finally raising children. Outside the rural cottage, woman usually participated with strength and patience in performing farm work: that is, she sowed seeds, sheared sheep’s wool, and helped in building repairs, dyeing, and construction. In cities, whether the woman was at home or in the shop, she performed most of the spinning and weaving for the drapers’ guilds. The art of spinning, twisting, and weaving silk fabrics was first popularized in England by a group of “silk-weaving women.” In most English guilds the number of women almost equaled that of men. The reason for this was mostly that craftsmen were allowed to employ their wives and daughters and admit them to guild membership. Several guilds, which were dedicated to women’s goods and commodities, were entirely composed of female members. By the end of the thirteenth century, the number of such guilds in Paris reached fifteen. But in guilds composed of both sexes, women rarely rose to the rank of master craftsman and, for equal work, their wages were less than those of men. Middle-class women, with their luxurious clothes, flaunted their husbands’ wealth before others and participated with great enthusiasm in religious feasts and the social celebrations of cities. Ladies of the feudal aristocracy, by sharing in their husbands’ responsibilities and associating with high-ranking knights and troubadours, attained, with self-restraint and dignity, such a social position and rank as women had never seen before.

As usual, despite theology and laws, the medieval woman found ways to compensate for her shortcomings with her enchantments. The literature of this age is full of documents and evidence about women who made their husbands obedient and submissive. In several respects, the superiority of woman was accepted and acknowledged. While she enjoyed the banquet of literature, art, and perfection among the nobility, her illiterate husband sweated and wielded the sword. The medieval woman, like the accomplished women of the eighteenth century who received the scholars of the age in their “salons,” moved with grandeur and dignity and, like one of the women in the stories of Samuel Richardson, the English novelist of the eighteenth century, showed weakness and, at the same time, in her love for freedom of action and expression, was in no way inferior to men. Just as she heard their indecent stories, she herself told them ribald tales, and most often without any shame she took the lead in flirting with men. She moved with complete freedom among all classes of society and rarely had anyone as a chaperone; she was present in market fairs; she played an important role in festivals; she accompanied pilgrims on journeys to holy places; and in the Crusades she participated not only to soothe the hearts of the fighters but sometimes as a warrior dressed in war clothes. Timid monks tried to convince themselves that woman was a lower being, but knights drew swords to win a woman’s favor, and poets admitted to being slaves in chains to woman. Men verbally considered her a bought slave, but in the world of dreams they worshiped her like goddesses. They raised their hands in prayer to the hem of the Virgin Mary’s garment, but longed for a woman like Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Eleanor of Aquitaine is only one of the many famous women who appeared in medieval history, including Galla Placidia, Theodora, Irene, Anna Comnena, Matilda of Tuscany, Matilda queen of England, Blanche of Navarre, Blanche of Castile, Heloise, and others. … Eleanor’s grandfather, William X of Aquitaine, was both a prince and a poet, and in his court he encouraged troubadours; and he himself was foremost among them. The possessors of the highest tastes, the best wits, the most fairy-like ladies, and the bravest young men of the southwestern regions of France all turned to his court in the city of Bordeaux, and it was in such an environment that Eleanor was raised to become a queen in life and in the world of literature. She absorbed all the culture and characteristics of that free and sunny land into her being; in other words, she became a woman with a strong body, graceful movements, a fiery temperament and lust, a free mind, unbound by any regard for customs, open-tongued, with poetic imaginations and a lively spirit; she had boundless love for love-making, war, and enjoying every blessing, even to the point of death. When Eleanor was fifteen years old (1137), the king of France, eager to annex the duchy of Aquitaine and the great port of Bordeaux to his realm and thereby increase the revenues of his treasury, asked for her hand. Eleanor did not know that Louis VII was a cold and ascetic man, and she was unaware that he spent most of his time managing the affairs of the kingdom. She, cheerful, coquettish, and indifferent to moral restraints, hastened to Louis’s court; but Louis was neither enchanted by Eleanor’s excesses nor paid attention to the poets who followed her to Paris and composed odes and qasidas in her honor in exchange for her favors.

Eleanor, thirsty for the pleasure of romantic adventures, decided to accompany her husband on the Second Crusade (1147). She and her ladies-in-waiting dressed in men’s war clothes; the dukes sent their spinning wheels in contempt to the knights who had remained in the homeland, and they themselves set out in the front ranks of the army, under banners of bright color, with a crowd of troubadours following behind them. Since the king had either neglected his marital duties or had reproached her, Eleanor found several lovesick admirers in Antioch and other places, and rumors about her love constantly circulated. Sometimes it was said that she had fallen in love with her uncle, Raymond of Poitiers; sometimes she was considered enamored of a handsome Arab slave; and sometimes (according to a crowd of ignorant and nonsensical people) in love with the pious man, Saladin. Louis endured Eleanor’s amusements and taunts with complete patience, but Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who was the watchdog of the Christian world, disgraced Eleanor before the world. In 1152, Eleanor, who had sensed that Louis wanted to divorce her, took the initiative and, on the pretext that both of them were related in the sixth degree and had a collateral kinship, demanded a divorce. This excuse caused the Church to ridicule it, but the Church agreed to issue the decree of divorce, and Eleanor returned to Bordeaux again with the title of Duchess of Aquitaine. There her suitors surrounded her like the gem of a ring, and she chose Henry Plantagenet, heir to the throne of England, as her husband. Two years later, Plantagenet was Henry II, king of England, and Eleanor was queen again (1154). It is said of her that she mockingly called herself “queen of England by the wrath of God.”

Eleanor brought with her to England all that taste and refinement peculiar to southern France, and in London she remained the greatest model, patron, and idol of troubadours and trouvères. Now Eleanor had grown so old that she could remain faithful to the marriage covenant; Henry also saw nothing in her that would cause disgrace or scandal.

But the tables had turned. Henry, who was eleven years younger than Eleanor and in terms of fiery temperament and feelings was in no way inferior to her, soon busied himself with playing the game of love with court ladies, and the same queen who once reproached her jealous husband now burned and suffered in the fire of jealousy. When Henry removed her from her position, Eleanor fled from England and took refuge in Aquitaine. But, by Henry’s command, the woman was pursued, captured, and imprisoned. For sixteen years she lived in the corner of seclusion as a prisoner, which never caused any wavering in her will.

The troubadours stirred the feelings of the people of Europe against the king of England. Eleanor’s children, at her command, plotted to depose their father, but Henry fought them until his death (1189). As soon as Richard the Lionheart ascended the throne after his father, he freed his mother from prison and, while he was busy fighting Saladin, made her regent of England. When Richard’s brother, John, became king of England, Eleanor turned to a monastery in France and, because of “sorrow and mental distress,” died there at the age of eighty-two. Eleanor was “a bad wife, a bad mother, and a bad queen”; but who can imagine that this woman belonged to a subjugated and obedient sex.

V – Public Morality

In every age the laws and moral duties of nations have tried to prevent the growth of dishonesty, this ancient habit of man. In the Middle Ages as well, just like other ages in human history, individuals, whether good or bad, lied to children, spouses, listeners, enemies, friends, governments, and God. Medieval man had a special interest in forging documents. He forged Gospels and attributed their originals to the apostles of Jesus, without really intending that anyone should consider these traditions and narrations as anything other than delightful legends. Medieval man, in order to give the clergy a weapon in the struggles between government and religion, forged commands and documents; pious monks forged charters in order to obtain stipends from the royal treasury for their monasteries. Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, according to papal courtiers, forged a charter in order to prove the antiquity of his ecclesiastical domain. Some professors forged documents to prove the antiquity and ancient precedents of certain colleges of the University of Cambridge. A group of hypocritical ascetics introduced all kinds of distortions into religious and sacred texts, and thanks to their forgeries, thousands of miracles were recorded in books. Bribery was common in education, commerce, war, religion, government, and law. Schoolchildren sent cookies to their examiners; politicians gave bribes to obtain public offices and positions, and obtained the necessary funds from their friends; witnesses could be induced with bribes to give any kind of false testimony; litigants gave gifts to members of the jury and judges of the courts. In 1289, Edward I, king of England, was forced to remove most of his judges and ministers from office because of corruption. According to the law, almost everyone was obliged to take an oath for every matter. People swore by the Holy Scripture up to the purest relics of the saints; sometimes they were required to swear that they would respect the oath they were about to take. Nevertheless, false oaths were so common that sometimes the parties to a dispute were forced to accept severe ordeals or duels, so that God might disgrace the one who had told the bigger lie.

Despite thousands of guild and municipal regulations and fines, medieval craftsmen mostly deceived buyers with shoddy goods and false weights and sold them counterfeit items. Some bakers had special hatches installed on their counters, which were used for kneading dough, through which they stole a portion of the customer’s dough in front of his eyes. Drapers secretly exchanged cheap fabric with better cloth that they had promised the customer and for which they had taken money. They offered inferior leather as superior quality to the customer. In sacks of hay or wool, whose price was determined by weighing, they hid pieces of stone. Butchers in Norwich were accused of buying “loathsome and diseased pigs and making stews from their meat that are not suitable for human food.” Berthold of Regensburg (c. 1220) described the various kinds of trickery that existed in different professions and the deceptions that merchants used on simple rural people in market fairs. Writers and preachers considered the accumulation of wealth a reprehensible act, but a Germanic proverb of the Middle Ages said: “Everything is subject to money”; some moralists of this age considered the lust for acquiring wealth a motive stronger than sexual attraction. In the age of feudalism, knightly honor was mostly real; in the thirteenth century, apparently, materialism was as common as in any other age of human history. The cases of individuals’ deceit that we have mentioned are taken from long periods and a very vast territory. Although such dishonesties were numerous, it is not to be imagined that this handful is a representative sample, and nothing more can be inferred from it than that the people of the age of faith were worse than the people of the age of doubt and skepticism, that is, the period of our own life. The truth is that in all ages and eras, law and morality have hardly been able to preserve the social system against the individualistic independence of people whom nature never intended to be law-abiding subjects.

Most governments counted theft among the major crimes, and the Church excommunicated the highwayman. Nevertheless, theft, whether small or large, was common, from pickpockets in streets and alleys to thieving lords who blocked the way of cargo ships on the Rhine. Hungry mercenary soldiers, fugitive criminals, and ruined knights made the roads unsafe; after dark, the streets witnessed brawls of drunkards, theft, rape, and even murder. A glance at the statistics recorded by the “merry” police of thirteenth-century England shows that “the number of murders is disgraceful by modern standards.” The number of murdered individuals was almost twice the number of people who died from accidents, and the guilty were rarely caught. The Church, with patience, made every effort to prevent feudal wars, but the limited success it achieved in this path was due to diverting such individuals and such quarrelsome instincts to the Crusades—wars that themselves were, from one point of view, imperialist wars for the conquest of lands and trade. Christians, during war, compared to fighters of other religions and ages, were neither kinder to the defeated nor more faithful to their covenants and treaties.

Tyranny and ferocity apparently were far more evident in the Middle Ages than in any civilization before us. Barbarian peoples, as soon as they became followers of Christianity, did not immediately abandon their barbarian customs.

Lords and ladies of the nobility beat their servants and one another with fists. Criminal law was extremely cruel; nevertheless, it could not eliminate savagery and crime. The punishment of criminals mostly consisted of the wheel, immersing entrails in cauldrons of boiling oil, burning on a pile of firewood, flaying the skin from the body, and throwing wild animals upon the criminal to tear out his entrails. According to Anglo-Saxon laws, if a female serf was condemned for committing theft, eighty other female serfs were each required to pay a fine and bring three bundles of firewood, and on top of that entire pile of firewood the sinful woman was burned. Salimbene, the Italian monk who recorded the events of the wars of central Italy in the late thirteenth century, that is, his contemporary period, notes that prisoners were treated so savagely that in our youth such a thing would not be believable:

For the heads of some men were bound with a rope and a lever, and the rope was pulled with such force that their eyes came out of their sockets and fell upon their cheeks; some others were bound only by the right or left thumb, and in this way their entire bodies were lifted from the ground. Others were tortured in ways far more horrible and shameful, which I am ashamed to mention in detail; some others were seated, their hands were tied behind their backs, and braziers of glowing coals were placed under their feet … or their hands and feet were tied around a spit and (just as a lamb is taken to the butcher’s block) they were hung in the same way all day, without giving them a sip of water or a morsel of bread; or with a rough piece of wood they scraped their shins so much that the bare bone was visible; even seeing such a sight would rend the heart and disturb the mind.

Medieval man endured pain and suffering with courage; perhaps he was less sensitive to pain than modern people of Western Europe. Individuals of all classes were robust and lustful men and women; their feasts all spoke of spreading a table of feasting, drinking, gambling, dancing, love-making, and physical pleasure.

Their jokes were so shameless that their likes are heard less in our age. They were freer in speech, and their curses and oaths were more severe and more frequent. Joinville writes that there was almost no one in France who, while speaking, did not mention the devil. Medieval man was far thicker-skinned than us, and without batting an eyelid he could endure the greatest taunts that had been made in the style of Rabelais; in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales we see how nuns without any qualms listen to the miller’s ribaldries and coarse words; and the events that Salimbene, that pious monk, has recorded sometimes become so obscene that they are untranslatable. Taverns were numerous, and some of them, in the modern way, offered “wanton women” along with beer to attract customers. The Church tried to close the taverns on Sundays, but it did not achieve much success in this path. Individuals of every class and rank occasionally got drunk. A traveler in Lübeck saw some aristocratic ladies in a tavern who, under their masks, were heavily engaged in drinking. In Cologne there was a group whose members gathered solely to drink wine and had made the Latin phrase bibite cum hilaritate (“drink with cheerfulness”) their motto, but the members of this group, according to strict and severe rules, were obliged to observe moderation in their behavior and chastity in their speech.

The nature of medieval man, like man in every age, was a mixture and blend of lust and inclination toward illusions, humility and self-love, tyranny and compassion, and religiosity and greed. The same men and women who drank and from the bottom of their hearts uttered coarse curses had the power to express delightful affections or could rise to thousands of kinds of charitable works. In that age, like our own time, the dog and cat were domestic animals. Dogs were trained to guide the blind, and knights had special affection for their horses, hawks, and dogs. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the work of charity expanded in an unprecedented way. Members of guilds, governments, and the Church all shared in improving the condition of the wretched. Giving alms was a public matter.

Individuals, in hope of going to paradise, endowed their property for helping the weak or other charitable works. The wealthy gave sums as dowries to poor-class girls and fed dozens of the poor every day and hundreds on important feast days. At the door of many nobles’ mansions, three days a week free food was given to all those who came begging. Almost all aristocratic ladies considered participation in the management of charitable affairs, if not among the necessities of morality, at least among their social duties. In the thirteenth century Roger Bacon suggested that the government establish a special fund for the arrest of the poor and care for the sick and the elderly. But most of such matters were the responsibility of the Church. From one point of view, the Church was an organization for the arrest of the weak and care for the sick and other charitable works that was active in all corners of a large continent. Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, and the like each stipulated that one-fourth of the tithes that the Church collected in each place should be spent on caring for the sick and helping the poor. For some time this practice was followed.

But the seizure of the revenues of ecclesiastical districts in the twelfth century by non-religious authorities and high-ranking clergy disrupted this local administration, and charity imposed increasingly heavy duties on bishops, monks, and popes. Almost all nuns, except a very few who by the fallible nature of man deviated from their path, devoted all their efforts to matters of education, nursing, and helping the weak. This ever-increasing flow of attention to the sick and help to the needy and helpless is one of the brightest and most hopeful features of medieval and modern history. Gifts and alms that people, and funds that ecclesiastical authorities, gave to monasteries were all spent on feeding the poor, caring for the sick, and ransoming prisoners. Thousands of monks engaged in teaching the young, caring for orphans, or serving in hospitals. The great monastery of Cluny, in atonement for the vast wealth it had accumulated, distributed large sums as alms among the weak. The popes strove as much as possible to improve the condition of the poor people of the city of Rome and, for their part, followed the ancient custom of the emperors in distributing regular food among individuals of this class.

Despite all these philanthropic actions, the market for begging flourished. Hospitals and almshouses tried to provide food and shelter for all beggars, and it was not long before in front of the doors of such places a crowd of lame, elderly, crippled, blind, and a bunch of ragged, homeless, and wandering people gathered who went “from door to door to perhaps obtain a loaf of bread and a piece of meat or steal from others.” In the Christian and Islamic worlds of the Middle Ages, begging reached such an extent and persistence that today its like cannot be seen except in the poorest regions of the Far East.

VI – Medieval Clothing

What kind of people were the inhabitants of medieval Europe? In answer to this question, of course, they cannot be divided into different “races”; it can only be said that all were of the “white race,” except for black slaves. But what a bewildering colorful mixture it was of unclassifiable people! The Greeks of the Byzantine Empire and the country of Greece, the half-Greek Italians of southern Italy, the mixed Greek-Moorish-Jewish inhabitants of Sicily, the Romans, Umbrians, Tuscans, Lombards, Genoese, and Venetians of Italy—all were so diverse that each could be distinguished at a glance by clothing, adornment, hair, and manner of speech; the Berbers, Arabs, Jews, and Christians of Spain, the Gascons, Provençals, Burgundians, Parisians, and Normans of France; the Flemings, Walloons, and Dutch of the Low Countries; the Celts, Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Norman tribes inhabiting England; the Celts of the land of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland; the Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes; hundreds of different tribes inhabiting Germany; the Finns, Hungarians, and Bulgarians; and the Slavs of Poland, Bohemia, the Baltic countries, the Balkans, and Russia—all were a strange mixture and blend of bloods and faces and noses and beards and clothes for which no single description is worthy of that multiplicity and diversity of proud forms.

The Germans, as a result of a thousand years of migration and conquest, had gained such dominance in Europe that in the upper classes of all the countries of Western Europe, except central and southern Italy and Spain, supremacy belonged to their race. The fair-haired and blue-eyed race was so undoubtedly favored and accepted by people that Saint Bernard was forced to devote an entire long sermon to reconciling this popular preference with that verse from the Song of Songs that says: “I am black but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem.” The ideal knight was a tall youth with fair hair and a beard. The desired woman in romantic and epic tales was a slender and delicate being with long hair of fair or golden color. Among the upper classes of the ninth century, long hair—which was a characteristic of the Franks—became obsolete, and instead men cut the hair of the head short from behind and left only a forelock on the head. Among the nobility of twelfth-century Europe, growing a beard became obsolete. But members of the peasant class still had long and dirty beards, and their hair was so thick that sometimes they braided it into several strands. In England, individuals of all classes had long hair, and the dandified and curled youth of the thirteenth century colored their hair, curled it with iron pins, and tied it with ribbons. In the same country and in the same century, married women wrapped their hair in gold-woven nets, and ladies of the aristocracy let their hair fall down their backs and sometimes, with feigned modesty, let a curl of it fall from the shoulder onto the breast.

In the Middle Ages, the clothing of the people of Western Europe was so abundant and interesting that its like was never seen before or after this period; moreover, in terms of splendor and color of clothing, men mostly surpassed women. In the fifth century the loose Roman toga and cloak, in contrast to the riding trousers and belt common among the Gauls, gradually declined. The colder climate and military conquests of the north required clothes that were far tighter and thicker than what was necessary for the warmth and comfort of the south. For this reason, with the transfer of power from south of the Alps to the north, a revolution occurred in the way of wearing clothes. Ordinary men wore trousers and a tunic or a tight-fitting jacket, both pieces made of leather or thick fabric. On the belt they usually hung a knife, a money pouch, a key, and sometimes work tools. Over the shoulder they threw a cloak or mantle; they put a hat of fur, wool, or felt on the head; they wore long stockings on the feet, and high-heeled shoes of leather whose tips were turned up to protect the toes from striking the stones of the streets. Near the end of the Middle Ages, stockings became longer, so that they gradually reached the thighs and finally became uncomfortable trousers that modern man has replaced as a permanent atonement for the hair shirt of the Middle Ages. Almost all garments were of wool, except for some clothes of peasants or hunters that were made of skin or leather. Almost all woolen clothes were spun, woven, cut, and sewn in the home itself; but the nobility had tailors who essentially earned their living in this way and were called “scissors men” in England. The use of buttons, which was sometimes common in ancient times, became obsolete before the thirteenth century and then became popular as a useless ornament. For this reason, in the English dictionary the word button is synonymous with padding and useless additions, and even the phrase “not worth a button” entered English proverbs. In the twelfth century, both women and men, over the tight Germanic garment, wore a kind of overcoat that had a belt.

Members of the wealthy class adorned these basic garments in a hundred different ways. Seams and necklines were edged with fur; whenever the weather required, instead of linen or wool, silk, taffeta, or velvet was used; a velvet hat covered the head, and footwear, in the shape of feet, was made of colored fabric. The best kinds of fur were imported from Russia; the finest was ermine, which was made from the skin of the white weasel; among the lords there were some who mortgaged their estates to adorn their wives’ bodies with ermine. The wealthy wore undergarments of white linen; they wore stockings that were mostly of different colors and usually woven from wool, and sometimes from silk; they wore a white linen shirt with eye-catching collar and cuffs; over these they wore a tunic; and when the weather was cold or rainy, they also threw an overcoat or mantle over the tunic that had a hood and could be pulled over the head when necessary. The upper part of some types of hats was flat and square. These famous “mortarboard” hats, which were common among lawyers and physicians in the late Middle Ages, are today only used among professors in colleges and universities of the world. Dandified youths wore gloves in every season of the year, and Orderic Vitalis, the monk chronicler, complained that “they went about sweeping the dusty ground with the long trains of their cloaks and mantles.” Men used jewels not only as ornaments for hands, neck, and head, but also in adorning hats, jackets, and shoes. On some garments several verses from the Holy Scripture, prayers, or ribald words were embroidered with pearls. The edges of some of these clothes were embroidered with gold thread; some of them were gold-woven fabric. Kings were inevitably compelled to distinguish themselves with additional decorations from others. For example, Edward the Confessor wore a jacket of extreme splendor that his learned wife Edith had embroidered with gold; and Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, had a ceremonial jacket adorned with precious stones that was so exquisite that its value was estimated at two hundred thousand ducats (one million and eighty-two thousand dollars). All people, except the poor, wore a ring on the hand, and everyone of every rank and position had a special ring on which, instead of a gem, the seal of the owner’s name was engraved, and this seal was accepted and valid everywhere as the person’s signature.

Clothing was an indicator of social rank or personal wealth. No class liked lower individuals to imitate their style of dress; for this reason, useless laws were passed to limit personal expenses—so that, in the years 1294 and 1306, in France regulations were enacted according to which everyone was obliged to spend a sum on buying clothing appropriate to the income and wealth of his class. Retainers or knights subject to a great lord, on official occasions and assemblies, wore garments that were given to them as gifts and robes from him, and usually these kinds of clothes were made in the color that pleased the heart or was the special color of the family of their master. These kinds of clothes were called “robes,” and the lord delivered such garments to his retainers twice a year. With all this, the good clothes of the Middle Ages were garments that were sewn for a lifetime; some precisely bequeathed such items to their relatives according to their wills.

Noble ladies wore a long linen chemise and over it a long garment that had a border of fur and reached to the feet, and over that they wore a jacket that in private hung from the body and in the presence of strangers was tightly fastened to the body with laces; for all ladies of the upper classes had a strange desire for their figures to be slender. These same ladies also sometimes wore jeweled belts adorned with jewels around the waist, or hung a silk purse from the waist, and wore chamois gloves on the hands. Most of them used flowers as adornment for the hair or wore hairbands of jeweled silk. Some ladies put tall conical hats adorned with animal horns on their heads, which caused the anger of the clergy and undoubtedly the distress of their husbands. These horned hats became so common at one time that if a woman was seen without one, she was severely ridiculed. In the late Middle Ages high-heeled shoes became popular.

Advocates of moral principles complained that women often lifted their clothes one or two finger-widths on some pretext to show their adorned ankles and pretty shoes. With all this, women’s calves were not something to be seen in public or for free. Dante reproached the women of the city of Florence for showing “their breasts and bosoms” with their revealing clothes. Women’s clothing at military festivals was an important subject for the clergy, and cardinals determined the length of ladies’ garments. When the clergy considered the veil and face-covering one of the pillars of Christian morality, at the command of women “they made veils of delicate muslin and gold-woven silk, so that under these veils they appeared ten times more alluring than before and attracted the eyes of the onlooker more to lewdness.” One of the monks of Provence, named Guyot, complained that women painted their faces so much that nothing was left for painting the images in the churches; he warned this crowd that every time they put on wigs and used poultices of soft beans and mare’s milk to improve the color of the complexion, they made their stay in purgatory longer by centuries. Berthold of Regensburg, around 1220, with useless eloquence reproached women:

O women, you are delicate-hearted beings, and more eager than men to go to church … and many of you, if it were not for one defect, would see the face of salvation: … and that defect is that since you desire the praise of men, you devote all your effort to your clothes. … Many of you pay the tailor as much as the price of the fabric itself; you must necessarily put padding on your shoulders, you must necessarily turn in and border the edges of your garments. You are not content with showing off with the flower you have in your bosom; you must send your feet to hell with particular torments. … You occupy yourselves with your veils, you crumple this side, you crumple that side, you gild this corner, you embroider that corner with gold, and you devote all your effort to it. You spend at least six months on a single dry and empty veil, which is a useless and sinful labor, so that men may admire your appearance and say: “Thanks be to God, how beautiful it is! Has there ever existed a garment of such beauty?” (and you say) “Brother Berthold, rest assured that we have done this work only for our husbands so that they may look less fixedly at the faces of other women.” No, believe that if your husband is a good man, he far prefers to listen to your sinless words than to be enchanted by your outward adornment. … You men can put an end to this and bravely rise to fight against it. First with kind words, and if they still show stubbornness, step bravely into the field. … Pull the veil from the woman’s head and tear it, and even if four or ten hairs are also pulled out, throw it into the fire! Do not be content with this action three or four times. It will not be long before the woman practices patience.

Sometimes women listened to such sermons with attentive ears and—even two centuries before a reformer like Savonarola appeared—they threw their veils and ornaments into the fire. Fortunately, such repentances were short and rare.

VII – At Home

In a medieval house there was not much comfort. Windows were few and rarely had glass. Wooden shutters closed in front of the windows and prevented the penetration of intense sunlight or severe cold into the room. The source of internal heat was one or more fireplaces. Airflow and wind penetrated from thousands of holes and cracks, for which reason high-backed chairs were considered a great blessing. In winter, wearing warm hats on the head and furs inside the house was common. Household furniture was very little, but in building it the utmost care and art was devoted. Chairs were few, and usually more resembled stools than modern chairs; sometimes these chairs were carved from wood with extreme delicacy, special signs and symbols were engraved on them, and they were inlaid with precious jewels. The sitting place was usually a kind of doorway built into the wall or made on chests in the bay windows of the room. Before the thirteenth century, carpeting a room was something new. In Italy and Spain, carpets were used; when Eleanor of Castile went to England in 1254 to become the wife of the one who later reigned as Edward I, her servants, according to the customary Spanish custom, carpeted the floors of the lady’s residential palace in Westminster with carpets, and from then on spreading carpets in rooms became common in England. The floors of ordinary rooms were covered with mats or straw, and this very act made some houses so fetid that the local priest was unwilling to visit them at any price.

Sometimes tapestries were hung on the walls, which to some extent served as decoration, to some extent prevented the penetration of cold air currents, and from one point of view also divided the large hall of the house into several smaller rooms. Houses in Italy and Provence, which still remembered the luxurious life of the Roman age, were far more comfortable and better hygienically than the houses of the northern regions of Europe. In the houses of the German bourgeoisie of the thirteenth century, water was transferred from the well to the kitchen by means of pipes.

In the Middle Ages cleanliness was still not considered one of the attributes of the saints of God or a means of approaching the divine court. Early Christians considered Roman baths undesirable and such centers as pits for perversions and sexual chaos. Moreover, since in Christian teachings in general there was talk of the condemnation and abandonment of the body, observing hygienic principles could not entail any reward. The new custom of putting a handkerchief in the pocket was completely unprecedented in that age. Almost everyone who was wealthy was clean, and the degree of cleanliness depended on the person’s income.

The feudal lord and the wealthy bourgeoisie almost regularly bathed in large wooden tubs; in the twelfth century, with the spread of wealth, personal cleanliness also became common. Many cities in Germany, France, and England in the thirteenth century had public baths. One scholar believes that Parisians in 1292 went to the bath more than in the twentieth century. One of the fruits of the Crusades was the spread of public steam baths in Europe in imitation of Muslim baths. The Church did not look favorably on public baths, because it considered such centers a prelude to inducing people to commit unchaste acts, and several of these baths also showed that the Church’s fear was not without reason. Some cities built mineral water baths for the public.

Monasteries, feudal castles, and the houses of the wealthy had latrines connected to cesspits, but most houses had a place for this purpose in the courtyard behind the stable, and in many cases one of these latrines was used by ten or twelve houses. The spread of pipes for carrying wastewater out of houses was one of the hygienic reforms that became common in England during the reign of Edward I. In the thirteenth century, Parisians freely emptied their chamber pots from the windows into the streets, and the only security the poor passerby had was the warning of the house owner who loudly said: “Don’t get wet!” Such unexpected incidents became one of the vulgar jokes of comedy that continued even until the time of Molière. The public latrine was still a luxury; in 1255 there were several public latrines in San Gimignano, but there was still no trace of them in Florence. People urinated in courtyards, on staircases, and from the tops of upper floors, even in the Louvre palace. After the outbreak of a plague in 1531, by special command, all owners and householders in Paris were warned to build a latrine for each house, but most people did not comply.

The upper and middle classes washed their hands before and after meals, because most foods were eaten with the hands. There were only two regular daily meals, one at ten in the morning and the second at four in the afternoon, but the consumption of each of these two meals could last several hours. In the houses of lords and nobles, the beginning of the meal was usually announced with several trumpet blasts. The table was a large unplaned board placed on supports, or the tablecloth could be spread on a large, sturdy table made of expensive wood and beautifully carved. Around these tables were placed stools or benches that in French were called bancs, and the word banquet meaning “feast table,” and its derivatives such as “dining room” and others, are derived from this word. In some houses, with the help of machines, a skillfully spread and prepared table that was placed on a table was brought down from the upper floor or up from the lower floor, and as soon as the meal was finished, it was made to disappear from sight in the blink of an eye. After the meal, servants came with basins and ewers before each of the present, and all of them washed their hands and dried them with towels, and then the towels were collected and set aside. In the thirteenth century, during eating there was still no sign of a table napkin, and everyone wiped their greasy hands on the corner of the tablecloth. All the present sat in pairs, that is, one man and one woman, side by side, and usually each pair ate from one plate and used one cup jointly for the drink. Each person was given a spoon; in the thirteenth century they were familiar with forks, but forks were rarely given to anyone for eating. Everyone at the table used his own personal knife. Cups, saucers, and plates were usually made of wood, but the feudal nobility and wealthy “bourgeoisie” used earthenware or bronze plates. Some of the rich had silver vessels and occasionally gold vessels. Crystal plates and a large silver vessel in the shape of a ship might be placed in the middle of the table, containing various spices and the host’s knife and spoon. Instead of one plate, each man and woman at the table was given a large loaf of bread that was flat, round, and thick. Then the vessels containing meat, bread, and other foods were passed around so that each person with his fingers would take a portion of them and put it on that loaf of bread; when the food was finished, this loaf of bread was eaten, or given to the dogs and cats that wandered everywhere, or sent to poor neighbors. A complete meal ended with eating various spices and sweets and another round of drinking.

Food was both abundant, varied, and well prepared, but since there was no means like today to prevent the spoilage of meat, spices that could preserve meat or at least hide the spoilage of meat were very expensive. Some spices were imported from the East, but because this was costly, people began to grow other plants in their gardens such as parsley, mustard, sage, oregano, fennel, garlic, dill, and the like. Cookbooks were numerous and intricate; in the houses of the rich the head cook was considered an important person, because the fame and reputation of the house depended on his competence and skill. Such a person had a large number of small pots, cauldrons, and shining copper vessels at his disposal and his utmost pride was in preparing food that was both pleasing to the eye and enjoyable to the palate.

Chicken, rooster meat, and eggs were cheap, but not so cheap that poor people who were reluctantly vegetarians could afford to buy them. Farmers benefited from eating black bran bread, which they baked in their homes from barley flour, rye, or oats, while city dwellers preferred white bread, which was baked by bakers and was a sign of class distinction. There was still no potato, coffee, or tea, but almost all the meat and vegetables that were consumed in Europe, including eel, snail, and frog, formed the food of medieval man. Until the time of Charlemagne, various kinds of hazelnuts, pistachios, and fruits that had been imported from Asia had adapted to the European climate; nevertheless, oranges in the thirteenth century were still considered a rare fruit for the regions north of the Alps and Pyrenees. The most common types of meat were pork. Pigs ate the garbage of the streets, and people ate the pigs. It was popularly known that eating pork caused leprosy, but this rumor in no way diminished people’s desire to eat pork; eating pork stew and sausages was one of the main pleasures of medieval people.

Hosts of the nobility ordered that a pig or boar be roasted whole and brought to the table so that it would be distributed before the eyes of the guests who opened their mouths in astonishment. This was food as pleasant and enjoyable as eating partridge, quail, bustard, peacock, and crane. Fish was the constant food of the people, and herring was a food that generally all soldiers, sailors, and the poor had access to for satisfying hunger. Dairy products were consumed far less than in these days, but at this time cheese from the Brie region in France had gained fame. Salad in the modern sense did not exist and sweets in the sense that we know were very rare. Sugar in Europe was still imported from abroad and had not yet taken the place of honey for sweetening foods.

Usually dessert after the meal consisted of hazelnuts, almonds, and fruit. Cookies and pastries were prepared in various kinds, and shameless and bold confectioners gave the most interesting shapes imaginable to their cookies and cakes. It is strange that the use of tobacco after the meal was not common. But both men and women drank.

Since unboiled water was rarely a healthy drink, all classes of people drank beer and wine. Drinkwater and Boileau were strange family names given to individuals, because the taste of such men seemed strange to other people. Apple and pear wine were cheap intoxicating drinks that were exclusive to farmers. For women and men, in every class and rank, getting drunk was both a vice and a pleasure of the Middle Ages.

Taverns were numerous and beer was cheap. The constant drink of the poor, even at lunch, was nothing but beer. Almost in all monasteries and hospitals north of the Alps, usually one gallon of beer was given to each person per day. Many monasteries, castles, and houses of the rich made their own beer and had places for this purpose, because in the northern countries of Europe beer after bread was one of the necessities of life. Among the wealthy of all nations, and the rich of all classes and ranks of Latin Europe, drinking wine was preferred. France produced the most famous wines and, in the course of thousands of popular songs, sang of the glory of those drinks. During the grape harvest, farmers worked far harder than in any other season, and the pious old men of the monasteries, out of gratitude, took one of these days as a feast. The monastery of Saint Peter, located in the Black Forest, had special rules for grape harvesting, including these few articles that indicated perfect philanthropy and affection:

When the farmers have emptied the wine, they must bring it into the monastery and give them plenty of drink and meat, they must place a large barrel there and fill it with wine … and each drink a quantity … and if they gradually become drunk from the intoxication of the wine and strike the cellar keeper or the cook, they should not pay a fine for committing such an act, and they must drink so much that two of them cannot in haste race to their cart before the third.

After the table was cleared, usually the host used jugglers, acrobats, actors, musicians, or jesters for the entertainment of his guests. Some rural lords’ houses kept a number of such actors and singers as permanent servants. Some of the rich had jesters whose boldness combined with buffoonery and ribald jokes they offered to their guests without fear and the possibility of rebuke and blame. If the people who had risen from the table wanted to entertain themselves, then they could tell stories to one another and share in playing and listening to musical instruments, dancing, flirting, playing backgammon, chess, or games that took place inside the room. Even barons and baronesses among their guests ran shouting in all directions in the game of “blind man’s buff” or “forfeit game.” Card games were still unknown. French laws of 1256 and 1291 did not allow anyone to make dice games; nevertheless, gambling with dice was very common, and moral instructors constantly spoke of the wealth and souls that were lost at the gambling table. Gambling was not always prohibited by law. The city of Siena had built booths specially for this work in its public square. In Paris, chess was prohibited by the decree of a royal council (year 1213), and also by the command of Louis IX in 1454, but no one paid attention to such commands; and the game of chess was one of the most important means of wasting time among the aristocracy. The popularity and fame of the chess market reached such a point that the name of the public treasury of the government was derived from the word chess, because public revenue was apparently calculated on a table that was checkered or square. In the youth of Dante, a Saracen played three games simultaneously with three of the best chess players of Florence and caused the astonishment of all the people. This player, who had only one chessboard in front of him and looked at it, while continuing this game, kept the course of the other two games in mind. Of these three games, he won two, and in the third he tied with his opponent. A kind of game with twenty-four pieces on a chessboard became popular that in France was called “checkers” and in England “draughts.”

Dancing was something that preachers disapproved of, but almost all people, except those who were rigidly holy in religious matters, engaged in it. Saint Thomas Aquinas, with the same moderation that was one of his special qualities, allowed that dance could be performed in wedding assemblies, or when a friend returned from a journey, or on the occasion of national victory celebrations. This same witty saint even admitted that dance, if not mixed with improper acts, is a very health-promoting exercise. Albertus Magnus also held a high view in this regard, like Thomas, but medieval moral instructors generally rejected dance as the snare of the devil and a satanic temptation. The Church did not look favorably on dance, because it considered dancing a motive for committing unchaste acts; and the youth of the Middle Ages in the best way tried to prove the validity of the Church’s suspicions. The French and Germans especially had a great eagerness for dance, for which reason they created numerous local dances for the important agricultural feasts, and for celebrating their victories, or to strengthen the morale of the people in times of plague or drought and other calamities. In one of the songs of a collection known as Carmina Burana or “Poems of the Monastery of Beuern” [located in Switzerland] the dance of maidens in the fields is described as one of the sweetest pleasures of spring.

When a person attained the rank of knighthood, all the knights of the region, fully armored and armed, on horseback or on foot, paraded, and at the same time the people also, accompanied by military music, engaged in dancing and foot-stomping around them. Dance sometimes could take the form of a contagious disease, so that in 1237 a group of German children danced from Erfurt to Arnstadt, many of them perished on the way, and some who survived were afflicted with dancing mania or other mental disorders until the end of their lives.

Dance mostly took place during the day and in the open air. At night inside the houses there was not much light, because the means of lighting consisted of standing lamps, or lamps that hung from the ceiling and burned with the help of oil and wick, or tallow torches. Since tallow and lamp oil were expensive, reading and working after sunset was not very possible. Shortly after darkness, the guests dispersed and the people of the house went to bed. Bedrooms rarely sufficed for the guests, and seeing an extra bed in the hallway or in the reception room was considered ordinary. The poor slept comfortably on mattresses of straw, while the rich had no comfortable sleep on perfumed pillows and feather mattresses. The beds of lords and nobles were equipped with canopies or mosquito nets and were placed somewhat higher from the ground, so that a step was placed under the foot to climb up.

It was possible for several people to sleep in one room without regard to gender and age. In England and France, individuals of all classes slept naked.

VIII – Society and Sports

The general violence of medieval customs and habits was moderated by the particular grace and charm of feudal ceremonies and courtesies. Men, when meeting one another, shook hands, and shaking hands was a covenant of peace and a sign that neither would draw a sword against the other. There were countless titles, each indicating a particular rank and position; by the rule of a pleasant custom, when addressing any of the nobles, the title was first mentioned and then the first name or the name of his estate. For every kind of condition in society a set of customs bound by etiquette came into existence that included the home, dance, passing in the streets, presence at military festivals, and courtly rites. Ladies were obliged to learn the manner of walking, curtsying, mounting a horse, playing, and carrying a hawk on the forearm with dignity and delicacy. All these customs, and their male counterparts, formed the set of rules and courtly etiquette. During the thirteenth century many instruction manuals and guides for social manners were published.

During travel, a person expected kindness, companionship, and hospitality from individuals of his own class. Usually everywhere along the way, monasteries or nunneries gave shelter to poor travelers out of charity, and to the rich in exchange for a fee or a gift. Even from the eighth century onward, monks had created hostels among the passes and defiles of the Alps. Some monasteries had inns where they were able to accommodate three hundred travelers and their horses. But most travelers took up residence in roadside caravanserais; the rent taken from travelers in such centers was cheap, and if a person hid his purse of gold from the eyes of strangers, it was likely that he could also obtain a maidservant at a fair price. It was in the hope of attaining such comforts that many people, including merchants, bankers, priests, politicians, pilgrims, students of sciences, monks, travelers, and homeless individuals, endured the hardship of travel.

The highways of medieval Europe, however full of hardships they were, had excitement and movement for curious and hopeful people who thought they would be happier by moving from one place to another.

The difference between the weak and the rich was as evident in travel as it was in recreation and pastime. Sometimes the strong and the weak mingled, for example when the king gave a public audience to his vassals and distributed food among the crowd, or when the aristocratic cavalry performed military maneuvers, or when a prince or princess or king or queen entered the city with special pomp and ceremony and the masses lined up on both sides of his path to enjoy the splendor and glory of the royal procession, or when military festivals or assemblies were held for adjudication through combat or a public fight. The arrangement of parades, the collective movement of people, and similar activities that took place according to a specific plan were all a very important part of medieval life; the movement of religious groups, political parades, and guild celebrations filled the streets with banners, decorated and adorned carriages, wax figures of saints, stout merchants, haughty knights on horseback, and military musicians. Itinerant actors, who with gestures and signs offered performances to interested people, spread their mats in the public square of the city or village; minstrels with pleasant tones and strumming of instruments sang romantic stories; acrobats engaged in jumping and juggling; women and men tightrope walkers, over dangerous precipices, entertained people with astonishing operations on the rope; or two blindfolded men attacked each other with clubs; or a circus might come to the city and show strange animals and even stranger people to the crowd; or two animals were set upon each other to see which one would kill the other.

Among the nobility, hunting as a royal recreation was on a par with jousting. Hunting laws limited the hunting season to certain days and short periods, and the regulations that had been enacted to prevent the theft of animals and birds dedicated the use of hunting grounds to the nobility. The forests of Europe were still the lairs of animals that had not acknowledged the victory of the two-legged race in the war with nature; for example, in the Middle Ages Paris was attacked several times by hungry wolves. From one point of view, the hunter sought to preserve the shaky supremacy of man over animals; from another point of view, hunting was a means to increase necessary food supplies; and finally, for another reason that was no less important than these two, individuals, by confronting danger, by warring with animals and shedding their blood, strengthened their bodies and souls for the inevitable battle with their fellow men. Meanwhile, man also endowed this recreational sport with pomp and ceremony. By blowing into ivory horns that were sometimes inlaid with gold, ladies, gentlemen, and greyhounds were summoned to gather at the meeting place. And there a gathering was formed of ladies who with a delightful manner placed a saddle on the back of a spirited and restless horse; men dressed in colorful clothes and armed with various weapons such as bows and arrows, small axes, spears, and knives; and finally a huge crowd of all kinds of greyhounds that pulled on their leashes. If the animal being pursued crossed through a peasant’s field, the lord, his vassals, and his guests were free, without the slightest attention to the peasant’s cultivation and crops, to pursue it, and in such conditions only desperate and reckless farmers dared to complain. French nobles gave a specific method and rule to hunting and established intricate customs and ceremonies for it.

Ladies with particular ostentation participated in the most aristocratic recreations, namely falconry or hawking. Almost in all large estates areas were dedicated to keeping various kinds of birds, the most important of which was the falcon. This bird was taught that whenever its lord or lady wished, it would perch on his or her forearm. Some well-dressed ladies, during the entire time they were listening to Mass, held a falcon on their forearm. Emperor Frederick II composed an unparalleled book on the falcon that consisted of 589 pages; it was he who, in imitation of the Muslims, first showed Europeans that by covering the falcon’s head with a leather hood, the nerves and curiosity of that bird could be brought under control. Various kinds of falcons were taught to fly, attack various birds, wound or kill them, return again to the hunter’s forearm, receive a piece of meat as a reward, and put their foot in the jess so that another prey would appear. A falcon that had learned the necessary lessons was the finest gift that could be presented to an aristocrat or a king. The duke of Burgundy, whose son was captive in the hands of Bayezid, sent twelve falcons to that emir’s court as ransom. The position of chief falconer of France was considered one of the highest and most lucrative offices in that country.

There were also other recreational sports that entertained people in the scorching heat of summer and the biting cold of winter and directed the fiery feelings and strength of young men’s arms to necessary skill demonstrations. Almost every youth learned the skill of swimming; in the northern regions of Europe, everyone learned the way of sliding. Horse racing was especially popular in Italy. All classes practiced with bow and arrow, but only the working classes had the necessary leisure for fishing. Various games such as rolling iron balls on the grass, hockey, throwing hoops, wrestling, boxing, tennis, and football were common. Apparently tennis originated in France, and probably before this date it was popular among the Muslims. Some believe that the name of this game is derived from the French word tenez meaning “take it,” and presumably this word was uttered by someone who wanted to start the “serve.” The game of tennis became so popular that in France and England it was sometimes performed in theaters or in the open air in front of huge crowds of people. Hockey was even common among the Irish in the second century AD. One Byzantine historian of the twelfth century describes in precise detail a polo match in which, like the game of lacrosse, rackets were used that were made from twisted thread. Football in the view of one horrified medieval chronicler was “an unseemly game in which youths moved a large ball not by throwing it into the air, but by hitting and spinning it on the ground, and not with the hands, but with their feet.” Apparently this game came from China to Italy and from there to England, and in thirteenth-century England it gained such popularity; in this period, this game was accompanied by so much violence that Edward II prohibited it as an act that led to disruption of public order. (1314) Life in that age was more social than in later centuries. Collective activities motivated monasteries, nunneries, universities, villages, and guilds. Life was especially filled with joy and happiness on Sundays and blessed days. In such cases, the lord, the merchant, and the peasants all wore their finest clothes, prayed more than at any other time, and drank more than at other times. On the first day of May the people of England in their villages erected a tall pole known as the “Maypole” in the meadow or village square, gathered piles of firewood and set them on fire, and with half-conscious awareness, in memory of the fertility festivals of nature that were customary in pagan eras, danced around those poles and fires. At Christmas, many cities and castles appointed a person to prepare and supervise the entertainments and program of joy and celebration for the people. Actors who put on masks and artificial beards and wore ridiculous clothes moved and entertained people in public with performances or buffoonery or singing Christmas carols; everywhere, houses and churches were decorated with holly leaves and ivy plants or “whatever was green according to the season of the year.” For agricultural seasons, national or local victories, anniversaries of the birth or death of saints, and for guilds, special festivals were held, and it rarely happened that someone did not fill his stomach with drink on such occasions. In England the merry man of that age had a feast called scot-ale (beer tax) that was held everywhere, and it was customary for the inhabitants of every estate or settlement or village to participate in it and pay a fee to the lord or sheriff or headman in exchange for drinking beer.

Also in England during this period, gatherings similar to market fairs were occasionally held, the most important activity of which was drinking beer and collecting funds. The Church at first disapproved of such festivals and merry assemblies, but in the fifteenth century it officially accepted them and gave them a semi-religious character. People in performing some festivals adopted ecclesiastical ceremonies and turned them into noisy imitations that began with guileless jokes and reached ribald satires. Beauvais, Sens, and other cities of France for several years regularly celebrated January 14 as the “Feast of the Ass.” The course of the ceremonies of this festival was as follows: first a beautiful maiden, who apparently represented the Virgin Mary in the flight to Egypt, was seated on a donkey; the donkey was led into a church and made to bray there; it was placed beside the altar; then Mass and hymns in its praise were listened to; and at the end, both the priest and the believers present in the church brayed three times in honor of the animal that had saved the mother of God from the clutches of King Herod and had carried Jesus on its back to Jerusalem. Ten or twelve cities of France every year usually held a festival on the day of the circumcision of the Lord called the “Feast of Fools.” On that day lower-ranking priests were allowed to take over the church and the performance of the feast’s rites, and in this way take revenge for all the obedience of one year from the higher-ranking priests and the bishop. The lower-ranking priests put on women’s clothes or turned the clerical garments backward, chose one from among themselves as the “bishop of fools,” sang lewd hymns, ate meat on the altar of the church, poured basins at its foot, burned old shoes in the censer, and delivered joyful sermons from the pulpit.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, many cities in England, Germany, and France, in jest, chose boys as “boy bishops” to be the masters of the people in performing false rites in such festivals. Local priests smiled at seeing such popular buffooneries; the Church for a long time paid no attention to these mockeries, but as soon as people’s inclination toward irreverence and shamelessness reached the point of excess, it was forced to disapprove of them. And finally in the sixteenth century such jokes became obsolete.

In general the Church tolerated the humor of the lustful people of the age of faith, because it knew that sometimes individuals must suddenly abandon the pursuit of moral principles and suspend the unnatural moral restraints, which are naturally necessary for a civilized society, for a few days. Some extremist clergy might, like Saint John Chrysostom, rebuke people saying: (They have crucified Jesus, and you laugh!) But everywhere, as was customary, wine and sweets delighted the taste of the people of the age. Saint Bernard was suspicious of joy and beauty; but most clergy of the thirteenth century were robust people fond of life who, without any qualms, enjoyed eating meat and drinking wine and did not frown at the sight of a delicate ankle or hearing a graceful joke. So you see that the age of faith, despite what has been said, was not so serious and dignified, but was an age full of liveliness, full-fledged cheerfulness, tender feelings, and guileless joy in enjoying the blessings of the world. On the back of a medieval manuscript, one eager student wrote a few lines of his wishes in this way, as if it were our own words:

And would that it were always April and May, and every month that came brought all the fruits with it, and every day wherever a person turned he saw lilies and carnations and violets and roses, and the groves were full of leaves and the meadows emerald, and every lover had his beloved by his side, and every lover and beloved loved each other with a confident and pure heart, and everyone attained the desire of his heart and had a joyful heart.

IX – Moral Principles and Religion

In general, does what we infer from the social situation of medieval Europe support the idea that religion helps promote and elevate moral principles?

A general view of the conditions of these centuries convinces a person that the difference between moral hypotheses and adherence to those principles in the Middle Ages was far greater than in other periods of history. Apparently the Christian world of the Middle Ages was as full and rich in terms of lusts, violence, drunkenness, tyranny, rudeness, blasphemy, greed, theft, dishonesty, and deceit as our own irreligious age. That age, apparently, in terms of enslaving individuals had bound our age’s hands behind its back, but in terms of the economic exploitation of colonial territories or conquered states it did not reach our age. It is certain that in terms of subjugating women it surpassed us, but in terms of shamelessness, debauchery, adultery, or in terms of the grandeur and criminality of war it was never equal to our age. The Christian world of the Middle Ages, in comparison with the Roman Empire from Nerva to Aurelius, was like a moral failure or decline, but it must be kept in mind that most of the Roman Empire in the time of Nerva had enjoyed several centuries of civilization, while most of the medieval period was the story of a struggle between Christian moral principles and a powerful barbarism that had accepted Christian theology with indifference and mostly trampled its ethics underfoot. The barbarian peoples certainly considered some of their vices as virtues that were necessary for their own age and time, meaning that they might count their violence as the counterpart of courage, and their physical pleasure as animal health. Their blunt and harsh words and shameless speeches about natural things were no worse than the inwardly concerned chastity of our youth.

It is easy to cite the sayings of the instructors and teachers of moral principles of the medieval Christian world and to give a description of them in condemning this age. Saint Francis in the thirteenth century complained about his age and lamented the “increasing wickedness and corruption of this age.” Innocent III, Saint Bonaventure, Vincent of Beauvais, and Dante each considered the morals of that “wonderful century” to be unbearably uncivilized and unseemly in a despairing way, and Bishop Grosseteste, one of the wisest clergy of the age, told the pope: “The Catholic masses are all partners with the devil.” Roger Bacon also, with the exaggeration that was characteristic of him, said about his age:

Never has ignorance been so great … in this time sins have become so dominant that in none of the past ages has their like been seen. Corruption … debauchery … and gluttony have no end … at the same time, we enjoy the baptism and revelation of Jesus … which people really can neither believe nor respect, otherwise they would never allow themselves to become so corrupt. … Therefore many wise men are of the opinion that soon the Antichrist will appear and the world will come to an end.

These kinds of expressions are, of course, exaggerations that are necessary for the execution of the wishes of reformers, and their likes can be witnessed from every age and time.

Apparently fear of public opinion or the law, in that age—just like our age—was more effective in raising the level of morality than fear of going to hell; but public opinion and to some extent the law had been created by Christianity.

Probably the moral chaos, which resulted from five hundred years of invasions, war, and destruction, without the moderating effect of Christian moral principles would have been far worse. The particular cases that we mentioned in this chapter are perhaps, without our wanting to, gathered with bias and prejudice; these matters are at most incomplete; the necessary statistics to prove the claim either do not exist or are not reliable; and history never says anything about the ordinary person. In the medieval Christian world there certainly existed thousands of guileless and virtuous people, people like the mother of that chronicler monk, Salimbene, who according to his own words was a woman: “humble and pious who fasted much, and willingly gave to the poor” but the biography of a few such women has been recorded. Christianity brought with it some moral decline and ethical progress. In the age of faith, intellectual virtues naturally declined. The passion for holiness and religious sanctity, and sometimes a kind of asceticism combined with licentiousness, replaced rational conscience (that is, fairness and honesty regarding observable truths) and effort toward attaining truth. The distortion or forgery of sacred texts by pious people was among the venial sins worthy of pardon. Urban amenities suffered because of the concentration of individuals’ attention on the afterlife, and especially as a result of the fragmentation of government; nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the men and women who founded all these cathedrals and some of the reception halls of city halls, however local their interests were, certainly were not lacking in a sense of patriotism. Perhaps hypocrisy, which is one of the necessities of civilization, in the Middle Ages, in comparison with the open and overt worldliness of ancient times and the organized and shameless ferocity of our age, increased.

In contrast to these points and other shortcomings of the Middle Ages, virtues can also be enumerated. Christianity with courageous steadfastness rose to fight against a flood of barbarism. It made the utmost effort to eliminate war and enmity and adjudication through single combat or ordeal; it made the periods of peace and truce longer, and somewhat elevated the violence and bellicosity of the feudal age into loyalty and chivalry. It trampled underfoot the gladiatorial spectacles of ancient Rome; it disapproved of enslaving prisoners; it prevented the enslavement of Christians; it freed numerous prisoners by paying ransom, and encouraged the freedom of the serf class far more than it showed in practice. Christianity taught people to hold a new respect for human work and life. It abolished the custom of infanticide, reduced the rate of abortion, and mitigated the punishments that Roman and barbarian law had prescribed. With steadfastness, it rejected double standards in sexual ethics. It enormously expanded the scope and extent of charity. It gave individuals peace in the face of the bewildering mysteries of the universe, even though this act was detrimental to science and philosophy. And finally, it taught individuals that if there is no loyalty to a higher authority to stand in the way of man, then patriotism becomes a tool for the corruption and greed of the masses. Christianity established a single moral law for all rival cities and small countries of Europe and obliged all to follow it. Europe, under the guidance of that religion, and by sacrificing part of its freedom out of necessity, attained for one century those international moral principles that today it has raised its hands in prayer and girded its loins with effort to attain: that is, it desires the coming of a law that will bring the nations of the world out of the framework of jungle systems and free the forces of individuals for the battles and victories of peace.