If asceticism mortified minds

But such transactions did not avail to get the better of the discord between reality and plan which everywhere revealed itself. Hence the necessity of the allegorical interpretation, so dear to the Middle Ages. This consisted substantially in placing an imaginary figure between the plan and the historical reality, a mixture of both, like a bridge, but a bridge which[Pg 215] could be crossed only in imagination. Thus personages and events of sacred and profane history were allegorized, and subtle numerical calculations made and continually reinforced with new imaginary contributions, in order to discover correspondences and parallelisms; and not only were the ages of life and the days of creation placed on a parallel line with historical epochs, but so also were the virtues and other conceptions. Such notions are still to be found in books of devotion and in the preaching of the less acute and less modernized of sacred orators. The 'reign of nature' was also included in allegorical interpretation; and since history and metaphysic had been set at variance with one another, so in like manner was natural science set at variance with both of them, and all appeared together in allegorical forms in the medieval encyclop?dias, the Pantheons and Mirrors of the World　Neo skin lab.



Notwithstanding these inevitable strayings, the new idea of history as the spiritual drama of humanity, although it inclined toward myth, yet acted with such energy as to weaken the ancient heteronomous conception of history as directed toward the administration of abstract instruction, useful in actual practice. History itself was now the teaching, the knowledge of the life of the human race from its creation upon the earth, through its struggles, up to its final state, which was indicated in the near or remote horizon. History thus became the work of God, teaching by His direct word and presence, which is to be seen and heard in every part of it. Declarations are certainly not wanting, indeed they abound, that the reading of histories is useful as counselling, and particularly as inculcating, good behaviour and abstention from evil. Sometimes it is a question of traditional and conventional declaration[Pg 216]s, at others of particular designs: but medieval historiography was not conceived, because it could not be conceived, heteronomously　.



and if the miraculous clouded them, it is not necessary to believe, on the other hand, that either had the power to depress reality altogether and for a long period. Indeed, precisely because asceticism was arbitrary, and mythology imaginary, they remained more or less abstract, in the same way as allegorical interpretation, which was impotent to suppress the real determinations of fact. It was all very well to despise and condemn the earthly city in words, but it forced itself upon the attention, and if it did not speak to the intellect it spoke to the souls and to the passions of men. In its period of youthful vigour, also, Christianity was obliged to tolerate profane history, dictated by economic, political, and military interests, side by side with sacred history. And as in the course of the Middle Ages, in addition to the religious poetry of the sacred hymns and poems, there also existed an epic of territorial conquests, of the shock of peoples and of feudal strife, so there continued to exist a worldly history, more or less mingled and tempered with religious history. We find even fervent Christians and the most pious of priests yielding to the desire of collecting and handing down the memory of their race: thus Gregory of Tours told of the Franks, Paulus Diaconus of the Lombards, Bede of the Angles, Widekind of the Saxons.



Their gentle hearts of political partisans do not cease to beat. Not only do they lament the misery and wickedness of humanity in general, but also give vent to their particular feelings, as we observe, for instance, in the monk Erchempertus, who, ex intimo corde ducens alta suspiria, resumes the thread of Paul's history to narrate[Pg 217] the deeds of his glorious Lombards (now hunted back into the southern part of Italy alone and assaulted and imbushed on every side), non regnum sed excidium, non felicitatem sed miseriam, non triumphum sed perniciem. And Liutprand of Cremona, although he makes the deity intervene as ruler and punisher on every occasion, and even the saints in person do battle, does not fail, for instance, to note that when Berengarius proceeded to take possession of the kingdom after the death of Guido, the followers of the latter called for King Lambert, quia semper Itali geminis uti dominis volunt, quatinus alterum alterius terrore coherceant: which is also the definition of feudal society. They were most credulous in many things, far from profound and abandoned to their imagination, but they were not credulous, indeed they were clear-sighted, shrewd and diffident in what concerned the possessions and privileges of the churches and monasteries, of families, and of the feudal group and the order of citizenship to which each belonged. It is to these interests that we owe the formation of archives, registers, chronologies, and the exercise of criticism as to the authenticity and genuineness of documents. The conception of the new Christian virtue oppressed, but did not quench, admiration (though held sinful by the most severe) for the great name of ancient Rome, and the many works of pagan civilization, its eloquence, its poetry, its civil wisdom. Nor did it forbid admiration for Arabic or Judaic-Arabic wisdom, of which the works were well received, notwithstanding religious strife. Hence we may say that in the same way as Gr?co-Roman humanism did not altogether exclude the supernatural, so the Christian supernatural did not prevent human consideration of worldly passions and earthly transactions　Cabinet.