Medieval Life for Joan of Arc
A description of medieval life and what it was like for Joan of Arc and her contemporaries who lived during the Middle Ages from the book The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon.
Dates are a very useful invention. We could not do without
them but unless we are very careful, they will play tricks
with us. They are apt to make history too precise. For example,
when I talk of the point-of-view of medieval man, I
do not mean that on the 31st of December of the year 476,
suddenly all the people of Europe said, “Ah, now the Roman
Empire has come to an end and we are living in the Middle
Ages. How interesting!”
You could have found men at the Frankish court of Charlemagne
who were Romans in their habits, in their manners, in
their out-look upon life. On the other hand, when you grow
up you will discover that some of the people in this world have
never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man. All times
and all ages overlap, and the ideas of succeeding generations
play tag with each other. But it is possible to study the minds
of a good many true representatives of the Middle Ages and
then give you an idea of the average man’s attitude toward
life and the many difficult problems of living.
First of all, remember that the people of the Middle Ages
never thought of themselves as free-born citizens, who could
come and go at will and shape their fate according to their
ability or energy or luck. On the contrary, they all considered
themselves part of the general scheme of things, which included
emperors and serfs, popes and heretics, heroes and swashbucklers,
rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves. They accepted
this divine ordinance and asked no questions. In this,
of course, they differed radically from modern people who accept
nothing and who are forever trying to improve their own
financial and political situation.
To the man and woman of the thirteenth century, the world
hereafter–a Heaven of wonderful delights and a Hell of brimstone
and suffering–meant something more than empty words
or vague theological phrases. It was an actual fact and the
medieval burghers and knights spent the greater part of their
time preparing for it. We modern people regard a noble
death after a well-spent life with the quiet calm of the ancient
Greeks and Romans. After three score years of work and effort,
we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well.
But during the Middle Ages, the King of Terrors with
his grinning skull and his rattling bones was man’s steady
companion. He woke his victims up with terrible tunes on his
scratchy fiddle he sat down with them at dinner–he smiled
at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took a girl
out for a walk. If you had heard nothing but hair-raising
yarns about cemeteries and coffins and fearful diseases when
you were very young, instead of listening to the fairy stories
of Anderson and Grimm, you, too, would have lived all your
days in a dread of the final hour and the gruesome day of
Judgment. That is exactly what happened to the children of
the Middle Ages. They moved in a world of devils and spooks
and only a few occasional angels. Sometimes, their fear of
the future filled their souls with humility and piety, but often
it influenced them the other way and made them cruel and
sentimental. They would first of all murder all the women
and children of a captured city and then they would devoutly
march to a holy spot and with their hands gory with the blood
of innocent victims, they would pray that a merciful heaven forgive
them their sins. Yea, they would do more than pray, they
would weep bitter tears and would confess themselves the most
wicked of sinners. But the next day, they would once more
butcher a camp of Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy
in their hearts.
Of course, the Crusaders were Knights and obeyed a somewhat
different code of manners from the common men. But in
such respects the common man was just the same as his master.
He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily frightened by a
shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent and faithful
service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when
his feverish imagination saw a ghost.
In judging these good people, however, it is wise to remember
the terrible disadvantages under which they lived.
They were really barbarians who posed as civilised people.
Charlemagne and Otto the Great were called “Roman Emperors,"
but they had as little resemblance to a real Roman Emperor
(say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as “King” Wumba
Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers
of Sweden or Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst
glorious ruins but who did not share the benefits of the
civilisation which their fathers and grandfathers had destroyed.
They knew nothing. They were ignorant of almost every fact
which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged to go
to one single book for all their information. That was the
Bible. But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the
history of the human race for the better are those chapters of
the New Testament which teach us the great moral lessons of
love, charity and forgiveness. As a handbook of astronomy,
zoology, botany, geometry and all the other sciences, the venerable
book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth century, a
second book was added to the medieval library, the great
encyclopaedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the
Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why
the Christian church should have been willing to accord such
high honors to the teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas
they condemned all other Greek philosophers on account of
their heathenish doctrines, I really do not know. But next to
the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only reliable teacher
whose works could be safely placed into the hands of true
Christians.
His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout
way. They had gone from Greece to Alexandria. They had
then been translated from the Greek into the Arabic language
by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the seventh
century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and
the philosophy of the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of
Stagira in Macedonia) was taught in the Moorish universities
of Cordova. The Arabic text was then translated into Latin
by the Christian students who had crossed the Pyrenees to get
a liberal education and this much travelled version of the famous
books was at last taught at the different schools of northwestern
Europe. It was not very clear, but that made it all
the more interesting.
With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant
men of the Middle Ages now set to work to explain all things
between Heaven and Earth in their relation to the expressed
will of God. These brilliant men, the so-called Scholasts or
Schoolmen, were really very intelligent, but they had obtained
their information exclusively from books, and never from actual
observation. If they wanted to lecture on the sturgeon
or on caterpillars, they read the Old and New Testaments and
Aristotle, and told their students everything these good books
had to say upon the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons.
They did not go out to the nearest river to catch a sturgeon.
They did not leave their libraries and repair to the backyard
to catch a few caterpillars and look at these animals and study
them in their native haunts. Even such famous scholars as
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether
the sturgeons in the land of Palestine and the caterpillars of
Macedonia might not have been different from the sturgeons
and the caterpillars of western Europe.
When occasionally an exceptionally curious person like
Roger Bacon appeared in the council of the learned and began
to experiment with magnifying glasses and funny little telescopes
and actually dragged the sturgen and the caterpillar
into the lecturing room and proved that they were different
from the creatures described by the Old Testament and by
Aristotle, the Schoolmen shook their dignified heads. Bacon
was going too far. When he dared to suggest that an hour
of actual observation was worth more than ten years with
Aristotle and that the works of that famous Greek might as
well have remained untranslated for all the good they had ever
done, the scholasts went to the police and said, “This man is
a danger to the safety of the state. He wants us to study
Greek that we may read Aristotle in the original. Why should
he not be contented with our Latin-Arabic translation which
has satisfied our faithful people for so many hundred years?
Why is he so curious about the insides of fishes and the insides
of insects? He is probably a wicked magician trying to upset
the established order of things by his Black Magic.” And so
well did they plead their cause that the frightened guardians
of the peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for more
than ten years. When he resumed his studies he had learned
a lesson. He wrote his books in a queer cipher which made it
impossible for his contemporaries to read them, a trick which
became common as the Church became more desperate in its
attempts to prevent people from asking questions which would
lead to doubts and infidelity.
This, however, was not done out of any wicked desire to
keep people ignorant. The feeling which prompted the heretic
hunters of that day was really a very kindly one. They firmly
believed–nay, they knew–that this life was but the preparation
for our real existence in the next world. They felt convinced
that too much knowledge made people uncomfortable,
filled their minds with dangerous opinions and led to doubt
and hence to perdition. A medieval Schoolman who saw one
of his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the
Bible and Aristotle, that he might study things for himself, felt
as uncomfortable as a loving mother who sees her young child
approach a hot stove. She knows that he will burn his little
fingers if he is allowed to touch it and she tries to keep him
back, if necessary she will use force. But she really loves
the child and if he will only obey her, she will be as good to him
as she possibly can be. In the same way the medieval guardians
of people’s souls, while they were strict in all matters
pertaining to the Faith, slaved day and night to render the
greatest possible service to the members of their flock. They
held out a helping hand whenever they could and the society
of that day shows the influence of thousands of good men and
pious women who tried to make the fate of the average mortal
as bearable as possible.
A serf was a serf and his position would never change. But
the Good Lord of the Middle Ages who allowed the serf to
remain a slave all his life had bestowed an immortal soul upon
this humble creature and therefore he must be protected in his
rights, that he might live and die as a good Christian. When
he grew too old or too weak to work he must be taken care
of by the feudal master for whom he had worked. The serf,
therefore, who led a monotonous and dreary life, was never
haunted by fear of to-morrow. He knew that he was “safe"–
that he could not be thrown out of employment, that he would
always have a roof over his head (a leaky roof, perhaps, but
roof all the same), and that he would always have something
to eat.
This feeling of “stability” and of “safety” was found in all
classes of society. In the towns the merchants and the artisans
established guilds which assured every member of a steady income.
It did not encourage the ambitious to do better than
their neighbours. Too often the guilds gave protection to
the “slacker” who managed to “get by.” But they established
a general feeling of content and assurance among the
labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of general
competition. The Middle Ages were familiar with the dangers
of what we modern people call “corners,” when a single rich
man gets hold of all the available grain or soap or pickled
herring, and then forces the world to buy from him at his own
price. The authorities, therefore, discouraged wholesale trading
and regulated the price at which merchants were allowed
to sell their goods.
The Middle Ages disliked competition. Why compete and
fill the world with hurry and rivalry and a multitude of pushing
men, when the Day of Judgement was near at hand, when
riches would count for nothing and when the good serf would
enter the golden gates of Heaven while the bad knight was
sent to do penance in the deepest pit of Inferno?
In short, the people of the Middle Ages were asked to surrender
part of their liberty of thought and action, that they
might enjoy greater safety from poverty of the body and poverty
of the soul.
And with a very few exceptions, they did not object. They
firmly believed that they were mere visitors upon this planet–
that they were here to be prepared for a greater and more
important life. Deliberately they turned their backs upon a
world which was filled with suffering and wickedness and
injustice. They pulled down the blinds that the rays of the
sun might not distract their attention from that chapter in the
Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was
to illumine their happiness in all eternity. They tried to close
their eyes to most of the joys of the world in which they lived
that they might enjoy those which awaited them in the near
future. They accepted life as a necessary evil and welcomed
death as the beginning of a glorious day.
The Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the
future but had tried to establish their Paradise right here upon
this earth. They had succeeded in making life extremely pleasant
for those of their fellow men who did not happen to be
slaves. Then came the other extreme of the Middle Ages,
when man built himself a Paradise beyond the highest clouds
and turned this world into a vale of tears for high and low,
for rich and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb. It was
time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction, as
I shall tell you in my next chapter.
|
