The two International Literatures, French and Latin-Historians and Chroniclers: THE TWO INTERNATIONAL LITERATURES Both Latin and French literature were international during the Middle Ages. Latin, as the official language of the Church and the accepted medium of scholarship, was cosmopolitan. French, we have seen, became the regular currency of social intercourse in England after the Conquest. The French romantic literature circulated afar over the Continent, and was carried even into Iceland. No one of any standing thought of writing in English now. The continuous effort that had been going on before the Conquest to turn Latin works of a religious or moral or of a merely instructive kind into the vernacular came to an end. The new ecclesiastical authorities, who were also the custodians of letters, cared little for popular education. But among their own class there was no lack of intellectual culture. Clerical and Monkish Writers.-The immense wealth and power of the Church in Norman times are still attested by the massive architecture of the abbeys and cathedrals. Few examples remain of the modest Romanesque which succeeded the timber churches of the Saxons, before they began to copy their neighbours and future conquerors. The Normans founded great monastic establishments as well as mighty churches, and the Norman kings sought to retain control of the Church by keeping in their own hands the right of appointing bishops and abbots. The first two Norman archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm, were learned Italians from the abbey of Bec, in Normandy. Both left writings, principally theological, those of Anselm important dialectical and controversial works; but they founded no school of theological or philosophical thought in England. The literary activity that was going on at this time in the cloister was turned in another direction, historiography. But the writers were not all churchmen. Several of the most eminent were laymen, or if not laymen were men of letters first and ecclesiastics in the second place, being rewarded, like Geoffrey of Monmouth or that versatile man of letters Walter Map, with clerical preferment for their services in literature or in public business. Historians and Chroniclers. The Anglo-Latin literature was at its most industrious and most able stage in the 12th and 13th centuries, when the Anglo-Norman people had become conscious of itself as a nation, and its position as a great power, due to the extent of Henry of Anjou's insular and Continental inheritance, fed patriotic pride. This sought expression in the writing of history, both of the past and of the present. Some of the Latin writers were humble chroniclers and annalists, of the stamp of Florence of Worcester; but those who gave the period real distinction had a higher conception of history. On the one hand there was the monkish compiler, setting down facts without sifting the important from the insignificant, and accepting fable and legend without scrutiny; and on the other the critical historian, with a sense of historical perspective, or the experienced man of affairs, having an instinctive perception of the relative importance of events and a gift for portraying the life and movement of the time in which he had borne an active part. There is no need to dwell on the former class; the work of some of the more enlightened writers may be briefly described. Northern and Southern Historians.-In Northern England several monastic annalists followed patiently in the footsteps of Bede. Simeon of Durham ranks a little higher than Florence of Worcester, as a conscientious recorder of mainly local matters. Richard of Hexham and his son John set down the facts that came within their knowledge in the times of Stephen and after. Then, towards the end of the 12th century, two writers of a more scholarly and critical character, Roger of Hoveden and William of Newburgh, undertook histories of a more comprehensive kind which are of some importance in regard to contemporary events. In the south, contemporary with Simeon of Durham and Florence of Worcester, two writers, Eadmer and the Anglo-Norman Ordericus Vitalis, showed more literary ability and may claim some authority on ecclesiastical history. With them may be placed Henry of Huntingdon, the author of a Historia Anglorum somewhat better than the average work of the compilers. But the first name of real distinction we come to is that of William, the librarian and precentor of the Benedictine abbey at Malmesbury. WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY (c. 1142) was master of a vivid and graceful style, and took pains to make his narrative interesting by dint of lively anecdote and pictorial description. But his particular merit was to abandon the laborious plodding after events in strict chronological order, and to tell his story, with many a pleasing digression, so as to bring out the meaning and nexus of incidents as he conceived them. He wrote a De Gestis Regum Anglorum (A.D. 449-1127), with a sequel, Historia Novella, coming down to 1142, some lives of English bishops and of St. Wulfstan, and a history of Glastonbury. GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS, or GERALD OF WALES (c. 1147-c. 1223), was a Welshman, like his contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, who will be treated more fittingly among the romancers. Gerald also was a romanticist in disposition and style, but he plumed himself on his scholarship and the strict reliability of his topographical and biographical works. Always in the forefront of affairs, he found an apt and truly historical subject in his own career, though he died a disappointed man, his zeal for Welsh independence and for Church reform proving as barren. of results as his long-cherished ambition to obtain the see of St. Davids. Fine classical scholar though he was, Gerald threw pedantry to the winds, and made his style as light and daring and picturesque as his own brilliant conversation. He wrote two works on Ireland, a Topography and a History of the Conquest, both the results of first-hand experience and keen observation. For his native country he wrote an Itinerary and a Description of Wales, full of curious learning and entertainment, but inferior in either respect to his favourite work, the Gemma Ecclesiastica, a vigorous indictment of the ignorance of the Welsh clergy. Gerald was a character, and it is his strong individuality that gives character to his books; but they have also an historical value of their own. Other Historians.-The humble, realistic Chronica of Jocelyn de Brakelond (11731203) has been immortalized by Carlyle in Past and Present. It is an incomparable picture of the daily life of the cloister. Ralph de Diceto, with the self-confidence of his kind, started his Imagines or outlines of histories at the Creation; yet he is of some importance on the period 1148-1202. But the most authoritative contemporary account of the reign of Henry II. is that ascribed to a certain Benedict of Peterborough. Whoever the author may have been, he was familiar with matters of state, and made good use of public documents. Roger of Wendover was another of the chroniclers who began with the Creation; his Flores Historiarum is not worthless, however, in its later pages. It was continued by MATTHEW PARIS (c. 12001259), who succeeded Roger as historiographer of St. Albans (1236). Paris, in the famous Chronica Majora, revised and carried on the work of Roger to 1259, producing the most orderly, well-informed, and amply documented of all the histories dating from that era. This monk of St. Albans was acquainted with Continental affairs as well as English. He had been on a mission for the Pope to Norway. He was intimate with Henry III., and lived in close touch with the court. No one could be better equipped by practical experience and personal capacity for writing the history of his own time; and he produced an orderly, critical, and absorbing chronicle of the affairs of England and Europe, which later historiographers, such as Rishanger and Thomas of Walsingham, were proud to continue. A minor historian of the next century, Ranulph Higden, author of the Polychronicon, a popular compendium of universal history, acquired fame beyond his actual merits through the fact that John of Trevisa's English translation, the first real historical work in the vernacular since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, always commanded an enormous number of readers, and was among the books printed by Caxton. Humanism and Belles-Lettres. In the time of Charlemagne, England was a source of learning to the Continent, and sent forth Alcuin to inspire and reorganize Continental schools. At the time we are now dealing with the position was reversed, and Paris had become the great centre of European scholarship. Hither flocked multitudes of students from many countries to hear the brilliant lectures of Abelard (d. 1142); and early in the 13th century the University of Paris came into existence, organized into four Nations, among which the English and other Northerners counted not the least. The most prominent English apostle of culture was John of Salisbury, who had been one of Abelard's pupils, and in late middle age returned to Paris as a teacher, dying Bishop of Chartres (1180). This great classical scholar was an active man of affairs. As secretary to Archbishop Theobald he officiated on various important missions; and later, as right-hand man to Theobald's successor, Becket, with whom he was at the time of the murder, he came into conflict with Henry II., and found it advisable to leave the country. His chief works were the Latin treatises Polycraticus and Metalogicus, and a large collection of letters, of high literary and historical value. Foundation of the Universities.-The University of Oxford probably had its origin in a considerable migration of English students from Paris, owing to an order of Henry II., who suspected them of being partisans of Becket. Oxford was recognized about 1167 as a studium generale, or centre for the resort of students, and the colleges were founded as places of residence on the model of the Paris Nations— Merton in 1264 and Balliol in 1282. Cambridge University came into existence as the result of a migration from Oxford (1209). The teaching was organized on the lines of the trivium and quadrivium—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, and arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. There were also lectures on divinity, law, and medicine, and schools of philosophy, which were the battle-ground of the Realists" and "Nominalists." In the growth of the universities we see the development of secular learning; scholarship ceases to be a monopoly of the Church and the monastery. " Franciscan Scholars.-Soon after their arrival in England, the Franciscan friars established themselves at Oxford and Cambridge, and opened schools, the first rector of the Oxford seminary being ROBERT GROSSETESTE (1224), who had been educated there and probably at Paris. He was subsequently made Bishop of Lincoln (1235). Grosseteste was a giant of learning and a miscellaneous and fertile author. His friend and fellow-Franciscan Adam Marsh rivalled him in learning and ability as a teacher, but his only extant monument is his letters, which reveal an estimable character but have not the literary style of Grosseteste. ROGER BACON (c. 1214-94) was the most illustrious of the Oxford Franciscans. Bacon was a man of universal learning, in an age when this was still possible. The “ father of experimental science" was conversant with Hebrew and Arabic, as well as the classical tongues, and wrote on all the subjects of contemporary study. A fearless critic of the speculative philosophy of the Schoolmen, he met with harsh treatment from the superiors of his order for the freedom of his thought and the boldness of his scientific researches, which caused him to incur with the ignorant the odium of a magician. Like the poet Virgil, Merlin the enchanter, Faust and Paracelsus, he appears in mediæval and Renaissance legend as a supernatural or semi-supernatural figure. His Opus Majus and Opus Minus are a comprehensive treatise and a summary of this new learning; to these he provided an introduction in the Opus Tertium. The Realist Duns Scotus and the "Nominalist " William of Ockham were also Franciscans and alumni of Oxford. Alexander of Hales was called the "Irrefragable Doctor," Marsh the "Illustrious," Roger Bacon the "Marvellous," Duns Scotus the "Subtle," and William of Ockham the "Invincible." Among the learned of a more specialist character must be mentioned the writer on law, Richard FitzNeal, author of a work on the Exchequer, Dialogus de Scaccario (1178-9); the great justiciar and jurist Ranulph de Glanville (d. 1190), reputed author of the treatise De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Angliæ; and the ecclesiastic Henry de Bracton, who held high judicial office under Henry II., and devoted the leisure hours of a busy life to the more comprehensive and laboriously annotated treatise that goes under the same title. WALTER MAP (c. 1137-c. 1209).-Doubt and conjecture surround the name of Walter Map, a native of the Welsh marches and a friend of Gerald of Wales. He is credited with a record of literary work more varied than that ascribed to the later Huchown of the Awle Ryale, and perhaps his claims are still more flimsy. He was one of the scholars who had studied at Paris, and held a position in the household of Henry II., serving as one of the king's itinerant judges before he received ecclesiastical preferment, finally that of Archdeacon of Oxford (1197). Map appears in the guise of an earlier Erasmus in his witty miscellany of anecdote and commentary, De Nugis Curialium (c. 1180-93), which satirizes the monks as well as the courtiers. He wrote a popular treatise against marriage, and was the alleged progenitor of the ribald (Goliardic) verses which delighted profane students in England and abroad down to the Renaissance and beyond. There is more inherent improbability in the legend that Map was the author of the romance of Lancelot. Yet so strange is the story of the growth of the Arthurian cycle, that it would not be surprising if proof came to light some day that the witty courtier did, perhaps out of some real drama in his own surroundings, concoct a history, romantic or sardonic, which was the germ of this great addition to the Arthuriad. Whether all he is credited with by report be genuine or largely mythical, Map remains the most representative among the Latinists of what later times called "belles-lettres." There were, of course, many others. Among satirists, there were Nigel Wireker, author of the Speculum Stultorum, and Jean de Hauteville, author of the Architrenius; among fabulists, Alexander Neckham; and among epigrammatists, Godfrey of Cambrai, prior of St. Swithin's, Winchester, who left Proverbia in the style of Martial. Hilarius, author of three sacred plays, also wrote graceful Latin lyrics; and the composers of elegiacs, epitaphs, and miscellaneous trifles were numerous. This section may fitly end with the honoured name of Richard of Bury, or Richard Aungerville (1287-1345), author of the Philobiblon, diplomat, statesman, Bishop of Durham, but above all bibliophile. His is one of the few Latin books from this epoch that are still read for pleasure and inspiration. His precious library was |