Читать книгу The History of Education - Ellwood Patterson Cubberley - Страница 76

THE CRUSADES. Perhaps the most romantic happenings during the Middle Ages were that series of adventurous expeditions to the then Far East, undertaken by the kings and knights of western Europe in an attempt to reclaim the Holy Land from the infidel Turks, who in the eleventh century had pushed in and were persecuting Christian pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem. For centuries single pilgrims, small bands of pilgrims, and sometimes large numbers led by priest or noble, had journeyed to distant shrines, to Rome, and to the birthplace of the Saviour, [24] impelled by pure religious devotion, a desire to do penance for sin, or seeking a cure from some disease by prayer and penance. It was the spirit of the age. Says Adams: [25]

A pilgrimage was … in itself a religious act securing merit and reward for the one who performed it, balancing a certain number for his sins, and making his escape from the world of torment hereafter more certain. The more distant and more difficult the pilgrimage, the more meritorious, especially if it led to such supremely holy places as those which had been sanctified by the presence of Christ himself. For the man of the world, for the man who could not, or would not, go into monasticism, the pilgrimage was the one conspicuous act by which he could satisfy the ascetic need, and gain its rewards. A crusade was a stupendous pilgrimage, under especially favorable and meritorious conditions.

[Illustration: FIG. 57. A PILGRIM OF THE MIDDLE AGES

(From an old manuscript in the British Museum)]

The Mohammedan Arabs who took possession of the Holy Land in the seventh century had treated the pilgrims considerately, but the Turks were of a different stamp. In 1071 they had defeated the Eastern Emperor, captured all Asia Minor, and had taken possession of the fortress of Nicaea (Map, p. 183), near Constantinople. The Eastern Emperor now appealed to Rome for help. In 1077 the Turks captured Jerusalem, and returning pilgrims soon began to report having experienced great hardships. In 1095 Pope Urban, in a stirring address to the Council of Clermont (France), issued a call to the lords, knights, and foot soldiers of western Christendom to cease destroying their fellow Christians in private warfare, and to turn their strength of arms against the infidel and rescue the Holy Land. The journey was to take the place of penance for sin, many special privileges were extended to those who went, and those who died on the journey or in battle with the infidels were promised entrance into heaven. [26] nobles and peasants, filled with a desire for adventure and a sense of personal sin, no surer way of satisfying either was to be found than the long pilgrimage to the Saviour's tomb. In France and England the call met with instant response. Unfortunately for the future of civilization, the call met with but small response from the nobles of German lands.

The First Crusade set out in 1096. A second went in 1144, and a third in 1187. These were the great Crusades, though five others were undertaken during the thirteenth century. Jerusalem was taken and lost. The Christians quarreled with one another and with the Greeks, though with the Saracens they established somewhat friendly relations, and a mutual respect arose. The armies which went were composed of all kinds of people—lords, knights, merchants, adventurers, peasants, outlaws—and a spirit of adventure and a desire for personal gain, as well as a spirit of religious devotion, actuated many who went. In 1204 the Venetians diverted the fourth crusade to the capture of Constantinople, and established there an outpost of their great commercial empire. The history of the crusades we do not need to trace. The important matter for our purpose was the results of the movement on the intellectual development of western Europe.

RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES ON WESTERN EUROPE. In a sense the Crusades were an outward manifestation of the great change in thinking and ideals which had begun sometime before in western Europe. They were at once both a sign and a cause of further change. The old isolation was at last about to end, and intercommunication and some common ideas and common feelings were being brought about. Both those who went and those who remained at home were deeply stirred by the movement. Christendom as a great international community, in which all alike were interested in a common ideal and in a common fight against the infidel, was a new idea now dawning upon the mass of the people, whereas before it had been but little understood.

The travel to distant lands, the sight of cities of wealth and power, and the contact with peoples decidedly superior to themselves in civilization, not only excited the imagination and led to a broadening of the minds of those who returned, but served as well to raise the general level of intelligence in western Europe. Some new knowledge also was brought back, but that was not at the time of great importance. The principal gain came in the elimination forever of thousands of quarreling, fighting noblemen, [27] thus giving the kingly power a chance to consolidate holdings and begin the evolution of modern States; in the marked change of attitude toward the old problems; in the awakening of a new interest in the present world; in the creation of new interests and new desires among the common people; in the awakening of a spirit of religious unity and of national consciousness; and especially in the awakening of a new intellectual life, which soon found expression in the organization of universities for study and in more extensive travel and geographical exploration than the world had known since the days of ancient Rome. The greatest of all the results, however, came through the revival of trade, commerce, manufacturing, and industry in the rising cities of western Europe, with the consequent evolution of a new and important class of merchants, bankers, and craftsmen, who formed a new city class and in time developed a new system of training for themselves and their children.

THE REVIVAL OF CITY LIFE. The old cities of central and northern Italy, as was stated above, continued through the early Middle Ages as places of some little local importance. In the eleventh century they overthrew in large part the rule of their Prince-Bishops, and became little City- Republics, much after the old Greek model. Outside of Italy almost the only cities not destroyed during the period of the barbarian invasions were the episcopal cities, that is cities which were the residences of bishops.

Outside of Italy the present cities of western Europe either rose on the ruins of former Roman provincial cities, or originated about some monastery or castle, on or adjacent to land at one time owned by monks or feudal lord. An ever-increasing company of peasants, themselves little more than serfs in the beginning, huddled together in such places for the protection afforded, and a walled feudal town eventually resulted (R. 94 a). This later, in one way or another, secured its freedom from monastic control or feudal lord, and evolved into the free city we know to-day. Originally each little city was a self-sustaining community. The farming and grazing lands lay outside, while the people were crowded compactly together within the protecting town walls. The need for walls that could be manned for defense, gates that could shut out the marauder, the narrow, dirty streets, and the lack of any sanitary ideas, all alike tended to keep the towns small. [28] The insecurity of life, the constant warfare, the repeated failures or destruction of crops without and want within, and the high death-rate from disease, all kept down the population. A town of a thousand people in the early Middle Ages was a place of some importance, while probably no city outside of Italy, excepting Paris and London, had ten thousand inhabitants before the year 1200. In all England there were but 2,150,000 people, according to the Domesday Survey (1086), while to- day the city of London alone contains nearly three times that number.

[Illustration: FIG. 58. A TYPICAL MEDIAEVAL TOWN (PRUSSIAN) All the elements of a typical mediaeval town are seen here—the walls for defense, the watch-towers, the churches, the tall cathedral, the castle, and the high houses huddled together.]

After about the year 1000 a revival of something like city life begins to be noticeable here and there in the records of the time (R. 94 a), and by 1100 these signs begin to manifest themselves in many places and lands. By 1200 the cities of Europe were numerous, though small, and their importance in the life of the times [29] was rapidly increasing (R. 94 b).

THE RISE OF A CITY CLASS. As the mediaeval towns increased in size and importance the inhabitants, being human, demanded rights. Between 1100 and 1200 there were frequent revolts of the people of the mediaeval towns against their feudal overlord, and frequent demands were made for charters granting privileges to the towns. Sometimes these insurrections were put down with a bloody hand. Sometimes, on the contrary, the overlord granted a charter of rights, willingly or unwillingly, and freed the people from obligation to labor on the lands in return for a fixed money payment. Sometimes the king himself granted the inhabitants a charter by way of curbing the power of the local feudal lord or bishop. The towns became exceedingly skillful in playing off lord against bishop, and the king against both. In England, Flanders, France, and Germany some of the towns had become wealthy enough to purchase their freedom and a charter at some time when their feudal overlord was particularly in need of money. These charters, or birth certificates for the towns, were carefully drawn and officially sealed documents of great value, and were highly prized as evidences of local liberty. The document created a "free town," and gave to the inhabitants certain specified rights as to self-government, the election of magistrates—aldermen, mayor, burgomaster—the levying and payment of taxes, and the military service to be rendered. Before the evolution of strong national governments these charters created hundreds of what were virtually little City-States throughout Europe (R. 95).

In these towns a new estate or class of people was now created (R. 96), in between the ruling bishops and lords on the one hand and the peasants tilling the land on the other. These were the citizens—freemen, bourgeoisie, burghers. Out of this new class of city dwellers new social orders—merchants, bankers, tradesmen, artisans, and craftsmen—in time arose, and these new orders soon demanded rights and obtained some form of education for their children. The guild or apprenticeship education which early developed in the cities to meet the needs of artisans and craftsmen (R. 99), and the burgh or city schools of Europe, which began to develop in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were the educational results of the rise of cities and the evolution of these new social classes. The time would soon be ripe for the mysteries of learning to be passed somewhat farther down the educational pyramid, and new classes in society would begin the mastery of its symbols.