Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant

[3kings(Trevor)]

"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"

What are our origins? Where are we now? Where are we headed? Share your thoughts with us!

  Volume Five (The Renaissance)

       
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
  
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
        
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
        
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."





This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor
 

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Brian, I too, think she was a woman of that age old profession. -- Trevor

[Brian]

Trevor - - -    Does that make you and I  -  male chauvinist pigs?

Brian

[mabel1015j]

Trevor and Brian - i'd think we'd need more substantial evidence to hang that moniker on you two, one act does not an mcp make......

[Brian]

Mabel - - -    Speaking for myself -  it was not an act,  I believe it.

Do you really think that a "Doll" is a woman struggling to find chastity in a male-driven world?

btw  that's another term that Shakespeare introduced me to.   "She's a real doll"  may not
be the compliment it appears.

Brian

[JoanK]

I have to agree with you two. There are enough hints that she was a prostitute. But that doesn't mean that she wasn't also a woman trying to survive in a mans world. There weren't a whole lot of options open to women who had to support themselves.

[Emily]

Thanks Joan for clarifying my 'survival' comment. I agree with you, and that was what I meant.

Doll Tearsheet, just the name, is a big hint as Trevor comments.

Had I written the play, one of the men would have been named Childe Rapier, and it would be easy to come up with a stable of names for all that entered the Boars Head. I would even change the name of the establishment, see how easy it would be to turn the tables and the tale.

It is still a mans world, but we are lucky that we have gentlemen here and I must say I agree with their statements. They were just being realistic and that is a good thing.

Emily

[Brian]

Shakespeare WAS absolutely brilliant.

He even used "Spoonerisms"  before they were claimed as an invention
by another William -  William Archibald Spooner.

Remember the name of the tavern?

Brian

[JoanK]

Good point, brian. I missed that!

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants'   S  o  C
Vol. VI  The Reformation
pages 115 - 117




                                                    THE  LOLLARDS

Archbishop Arundel, in 1407, reaffirmed the supremacy of canon or ecclesiastical law over all secular legislation, and condemned as a major heresy any rejection of papal decree. Recovering from Wyclif the Church grew stronger in fifteenth century England, and rising wealth overflowed into its coffers. “Chantries” were now a frequent form of contribution: persons expecting death paid for the building of a chapel and for the chanting of Masses to expedite their souls into paradise. As some twenty bishops and twenty-six abbots sat in the House of Lords with only forty-seven laymen, the Church controlled the major chamber of Parliament. To offset this, Henry VII -- and later Henry VIII--  insisted on the right of kings to nominate the bishops and abbots of England from the eligible clergy; and this dependence of the hierarchy on the monarchy eased the clerical surrender to Henry VIII’s assertion of royal supremacy over the English Church.

Meanwhile Wyclif’s Poor Preachers continued to spread their anticlerical ideas. As early as 1382 a monastic chronicler reported, with frightened exaggeration, that “ they multiplied exceedingly, like budding plants, and filled the whole realm... You could scarce meet two men on the road but that one of them was a disciple of Wyclif.” They found their readiest audience among the weavers of Norfolk. In 1395 the Lollards felt strong enough to present to parliament a bold statement of their principles. They opposed clerical celibacy, transubstantiation, image worship, pilgrimages, prayers for the dead, the wealth and endowment  of the Church, the employment of ecclesiastics in state offices, the necessity of the confession to priests, the ceremonies of exorcism, and the worship of the saints. In other pronouncements they recommended that all should read the Bible frequently, and should follow its precepts as superior to the decrees of the Church. They denounced war as unchristian, and luxury as immoral; they called for sumptuary laws that would compel a return to simple foods and dress; they abhorred oaths, and substituted for them such phrases as “I am sure,” or “it is sooth”--i.e., truth; already the Puritan mind view were taking form in Britain. A few preachers mingled socialism with their religion, but most of them refrained from attacking private property, and sought support of knights and gentry as well as of peasants and prolétaires.

Nevertheless the upper classes could not forget their narrow escape from social revolution in 1381, and the Church found in them a new readiness to protect her as a stabilizing force in the community. Richard  II threatened with arrest the representatives of the Lollards in Parliament, and reduced them to silence. In 1397 the English bishops petitioned the king for the execution of impenitent heretics “ as in other realms subject to the Christian religion,” but Richard was loath to go to such lengths. In 1401 however, Henry IV and his parliament issued the famous statute De haeretico comburendo: all persons declared by an ecclesiastical court to be persistent heretics were to be burned, and all heretical books were to be destroyed. In that same year William Sawtrey, a Lollard priest, was burned at the stake. Other Lollards were arrested, recanted, and were treated leniently. In 1406 the Prince of Wales presented to Henry IV with a petition alleging that the propaganda of the Lollards, and their attacks on monastic property, threatened the whole existing fabric of society. The King ordered a more  vigorous prosecution of the heretics, but the absorption of the bishops in the politics of the Papal Schism temporarily deflected their energy from the hunt. In 1410 Badby, a Lollard tailor, was condemned by the Church and was burned in Smithfield Market. Before the faggots were lighted “Prince Hal “ pleaded with Badby to recant, and offered him life and money; Badby refused, and mounted the pyre to his death.

The prince came to the throne in 1413 as Henry V, and gave his full support to the policy of suppression. One of his personal friends was sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, whom some of Shakespeare’s audience later identified with Falstaff  Oldcastle had served the nation well in the field, but he tolerated and protected Lollard preachers on his lands in Herefordshire and Kent. Thrice the bishops summoned him to trial; thrice he refused to come; he yielded, however, to a writ from the King, and appeared before the bishops ( 1413 ) in that chapter house of St. Paul’s where Wyclif had stood trial thirty-six years before. He affirmed his sincere Christianity, but would not reject the Lollard views on confession or the Eucharist. he was condemned as a heretic, and was confined to the Tower of London; forty day’s grace was allowed him in the hope he would recant; instead he escaped. At the news the Lollards around London rose in revolt, and tried to seize the King. (1414) The attempt failed, and some leaders were caught and hanged. Oldcastle hid for three years in the mountains of Herefordshire and Wales; finally he was captured, hanged as a traitor, and then burned as a heretic (1417), state and Church both demanding their due.

As compared with other persecutions, that of Lollardry was almost moderate; the executions for heresy numbered eleven between 1400 and 1485. We hear of several Lollard congregations surviving until 1521; as late as 1518 Thomas Man, who claimed to have converted 700 to Lolllardry, suffered death at the stake; and six more were burned in 1521. When Henry VIII divorced England from Rome, and the nation accepted the change without revolution, the Lollards might have claimed that in some measure they had prepared the way.

In 1450 Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, published a book which he called, in the whimsical fashion of the times, ‘ Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy.’ It was avowedly a refutation of Lollardry, and assumed a vigorous anticlericalism among the people. It proposed to check these ideas not by imprisonment at the stake but solely by an appeal to reason. The enthusiastic bishop reasoned so much that he fell in love with reason and in ganger of heresy; he found himself refuting by reason some Lollard arguments from Scripture. In a ’Treatise on Faith’, he definitely placed reason above the Bible as a test of truth -- a position that Europe would take 200 years to regain For  good measure the irrepressible Repressor added that the fathers of the Church were not always to be trusted; that Aristotle was not an unquestionable authority; that the Apostles had had no hand in the Apostles' Creed; and that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. The English bishops hailed the proud Pecock before the court (1457), and gave him a choice between recanting or burning. He disliked burning, read a public abjuration, was deposed from his see, and was segregated in Thorney Abbey to the end of his days ( 1460).

[Emily]

The Lollards did lead the way to England breaking away from the Roman Catholic church, and the country accepting that fact. Henry V111 had another objective alltogether, divorcing his wife.  He could not have cared one way or the other as long as his desires were met.

I liked the story of Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, who in his arguments for 'reason' got himself in a pickle and died soon after. Only after recanting 'reason' to keep from burning at the stake.

Burning people alive seemed to be a great deterent. While the Arab cultist whispered in the ear of the king that he must keep their cult out of the reach of 'reason'.

Emily

[mabel1015j]

I haven't had a chance to read this yet........i'll be back.........

[Brian]

In 1410 Badby, a Lollard tailor, was condemned by the Church and was burned in Smithfield Market. Before the faggots were lighted “Prince Hal “ pleaded with Badby to recant, and offered him life and money; Badby refused, and mounted the pyre to his death.

Wikipedia gives a different account and places the event in the Midlands and not in London.
Smithfield is a meat market just beside St Bartholomew's Hospital.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Badby

Many's the pint of beer I have had in the pub in Smithfield market,  but that was many years ago.

Brian

[mabel1015j]

An Enlightment man in the 15th century! Love it!

I have frequently been impressed with the courage of a minority group of people who are willing to speak up for reform even in the face death. Of course, i guess there is a fine line between what i consider "reformers" and what others consider extremists and vice versa.

Speaking of "street markets" in the Middle ages, i'm reading Food in History and just last night read a gruesome section about the unsanitary conditions of the markets. Of course i was sublimally aware that a lack of hygiene would be reality, but reading it in black and white made it more real in my mind. I'm not fond of buying street food today, but, oh my, those folks literally took their lives in their hands. Between rancid meats and fleas and Rats and unwashed hands and animal refuse drawing flies......WHEW! Thank goodness i was born in the mid-20th century.......i say that often....

[mabel1015j]

I just noticed that our PBS station is showing Michael Wood/Story of England at 8:00 tonight. The description is: the Seeds of Reform: recalling Kibworth (?) during the Hundred Yrs War; also the town's first school; a rebellion against Henry V; Henry VIII's Protestant Reformation; the English Civil War; and the rise of the middle-class.

Whew! All of that in one hour!?! But it fits our discussion

Jean

[Frybabe]

Gene, The Story of England is a series of four programs. The one you saw was the second in the series. The first one, From Romans to Normans, is available online for viewing. http://www.pbs.org/programs/michael-woods-story-england/

[mabel1015j]

Thanks Frybabe, i'm watching it now and i'll look on line for the first one. It's quite interesting.
They're talking all about Wycliff and the Lollards and the English Reformation. How nice of them to coordinate their broadcast w/ our reading!

[mabel1015j]

Let's add a little history of the women of the period and the beginning of the House if Tudor...

Catherine of Valois was crowned Queen of England at Westminster Abbey in February, 1421. The son of Catherine and Henry, the future Henry VI, was born in December of 1421. Henry V died in August 1422, leaving the crown of England in the hands of a minor. During Henry's youth he was educated and raised by Lancastrians while the Duke of York, Henry's uncle, held power as Protector.

After the death of her husband, Henry V, Catherine of Valois began a secret relationship with Owen Tudor, a Welsh squire. In 1428 Parliament reacted to the rumors about this relationship by forbidding Catherine from marrying without consent of the king and the council. Historians are divided on whether Catherine had already married Owen Tudor before that Act of Parliament, or whether they married secretly in 1429.

In 1436, Owen Tudor was imprisoned and Catherine retired to Bermondsey Abbey, where she died the next year.

Catherine of Valois and Owen Tudor had five children, half-siblings to King Henry VI. One daughter died in infancy and another daughter and three sons survived. The eldest son, Edmund, became Earl of Richmond in 1452. Edmund married Margaret Beaufort. Their son won the crown of England as Henry VII, claiming his right to the throne through conquest, but also through descent through his mother, Margaret Beaufort.

From About.com

[JoanK]

When we read Richard the third here in Seniornet, I briefly understood that lineage. But I can't seem to remember it.

[mabel1015j]

This is rather long, but it can be skimmed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants'   S  o  C
Vol. VI  THE REFORMATION
Pages  120 - 123 


                                        CAXTON and MALORY

The great literary event in fifteenth-century England was the establishment of its first printing press. Born in Kent, William Caxton migrated to Bruges as a merchant. In his leisure he translated a collection of French romances. His friends asked for copies, which he made himself; but his hand, he tells us, became “ weary and not steadfast with much writing,” and his eyes were dimmed with overmuch loking on the whit papae.” On his visit to Cologne, he may have seen the printing press set up there ( 1466) by Ulrich Zell, who had learned the new technique in Mainz. In 1471 Colard Mansion organized a printing shop in Bruges, and Caxton resorted to it as a means of multiplying copies of his translation. In 1476 he returned to England, and a year later he installed at Westminster the fonts -- perhaps the presses--  that he brought from Bruges. He was already fifty-five and only fifteen years were left him; but in that period he printed ninety-eight books, several of them translated by himself from the Latin or the French. His choice of titles, and the quaint and charming style of his prefaces, laid a lasting mark on English literature. When he died (1491) his Alsatian associate, Wynkyn de Worde, carried on the revolution.

In 1485 Caxton edited and published one of the most lovable masterpieces of English prose -- ‘The Noble Histories of King Arthur and of Certain of His Knights.’  Its strange author had died, probably in prison, some sixteen years before. Sir Thomas Malory, in the Hundred Years’ War, served in the retinue of Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and represented Warwick in the Parliament of 1445. Lonesome for the licence of war, he broke into the home of Hugh Smyth, raped Hugh’s wife extorted a hundred shillings from Margaret Kyng and William Hales, broke again into Hugh Smyth’s house, and again raped his wife. He stole seven cows, two calves, and 335 sheep, twice looted the Cistercian Abbey at Coombe, and was twice clapped in jail. It seems incredible that such a man should have written that tender swan song of English chivalry which we now call ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’; but after a century of dispute it is agreed that these delightful romances were the product of Sir Thomas Malory’s incarcerated years.

He took most of the stories from the French forms of the Arthurian legends, arranged in tolerable sequence, and phrased them in the style of wistful, feminine charm. To an aristocracy losing chivalry in the brutalities and treacheries of war, he appealed for a return to the high standards of Arthur’s knights, forgetting their transgressions and his own. Arthur, after outgrowing fornication and incest, settles down with his pretty but venturesome Guinevere, governs England -- indeed, all Europe -- from his capital at Camelot ( Winchester), and requires the 150 knights of his Round Table to pledge themselves

never to do outrage nor murder ... by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh                                                                  mercy... and always to do ... gentlewomen succour, upon pain of death.

Love and war are the mingled themes of a book resounding with the combats of incomparable chevaliers for dames and damosels beyond compare. Tristram and Lancelot cuckold their kings, but are the soul of honour and bravery. What a leap it is from this airy realm, in which no one ever worked for a living, and all women were “gentlewomen”, to the real matter of fact world of the “Paston Letters”, whose living missives that bound a scattered family together in affection and finance in the England of the fifteenth century. Here is John Paston who practices law in London or on circuit, while Margret rears her children and pangs for his property at Norwich; he is all  business, stern, stingy, competent; she is all submission, a humble, able, timid wife, who trembles at the thought that she has offended him; such were the Guineveres of the actual world. And yet here too are delicate sentiments, mutual solicitude, even romance; Margery Brews confesses to Sir John Paston II that she loves him, and mourns that the dowry she can bring him falls far below his state; “but if ye love me, as I trust verily you do, ye will not leave me therefore”; and he, master of the Paston fortune, marries her despite the complaints of his relatives-- and himself dies within two years. There were hearts tender and bruised under the hard surface of that disordered age.

                                                        THE ENGLISH HUMANISTS

We must not wonder that the exuberance of classical scholarship in the Italy of Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici awoke only a timid echo in the England whose merchants cared little for letters, and whose nobles were not ashamed of illiterate wealth. Sir Thomas More, at the outset of the sixteenth century, reckoned that some 40 per cent of the English people could read. The Church and the Universities which she controlled were as yet the sole patrons of scholars. It is to the credit of England that under the circumstances, and amid the waste and violence of war, men like Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer, and Colet were touched by the Italian fire, and brought enough of its heat and light to England to make Erasmus, Europe’s ‘arbiter litterarum‘, feel at home when he came to  the island in 1499. The humanists, devoted to the study of pagan as well as Christian culture, were denounced by a few ingrown “Trojans’” who feared these “Greeks” bringing gifts from Italy; but they were bravely defended and befriended by great churchmen like William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and later, Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, Chancellor of England.

[Frybabe]

My sole knowledge of Caxton is the type face named after him. Now I know who he was.

[JoanK]

" Sir Thomas More, at the outset of the sixteenth century, reckoned that some 40 per cent of the English people could read."

That's amazing! Can it possibly be true?

[3kings(Trevor)]

The DURANTS'  S  o  C
Vol. VI  The REFORMATION
Pgs 123-125


                                          THE ENGLISH HUMANISTS

From the time when Manuel Chrysoloras visited England (1408) some young English scholars caught a fever whose only cure, they felt, was study or lechery in Italy. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, came back from Italy with a passion for manuscripts, and collected a library that afterward enriched the Bodleian. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, studied under Guarino da Verona at Ferrara and John Argyropoulos at Florence, and returned to England with more books than morals. In 1464-1467 the monk William Tilley of Selling studied at Padua, Bologna, and Rome, brought back many pagan classics, and taught Greek at Canterbury.

One of his fervent pupils there was Thomas Linacre. When Tilley went again to Italy ( 1487 ), Linacre accompanied him, and remained twelve years. He studied under Politian and Chalcondyles in Florence, edited Greek works for Aldus Manutius in Venice, and returned to England so accomplished in diverse fields of learning that Henry VII summoned him to tutor Arthur, Prince of Wales. At Oxford he and Grocyn and Latimer constituted almost an Oxford Movement towards the classic languages and literatures; their lectures inspired John Colet and Thomas More, and attracted Erasmus himself. Linacre was the most universal of the English humanists, at home in Greek and Latin, translating Galen, promoting scientific medicine, founding the Royal College of Physicians and leaving his fortune to endow chairs of medicine at Oxford and Cambridge. Through him, said Erasmus, the new learning was so established in Britain that no Englishman need any longer go to study in Italy.

William Grocyn was already forty when he joined Linacre in Florence. Returning to England in 1492, he hired rooms in Exeter College, Oxford, and lectured daily in Greek, over the protests of conservatives who trembled lest the original text of the New Testament should upset the thousand year-old authority of Jerome’s Vulgate Latin translation. But Grocyn was reassuringly orthodox in doctrine and rigidly upright in his moral life. English humanists never developed, as in some scholars of the Italian Renaissance , even a concealed hostility to Christianity; it treasured the Christian heritage above all intellectual refinements, and its most famous disciple found no embarrassment in being dean of St. Paul’s.

John Colet was the eldest son of Sir Henry Colet, a rich merchant who begot twenty-two children and served two terms as mayor of London. At Oxford the youth caught the humanist fervour from Linacre and Grocyn, and eagerly devoured Plato, Plotinus and Cicero. In 1493 he travelled in France and Italy, met Erasmus and Budé in Paris, was strongly moved by Savonarola in Florence, and was shocked by the levity and license of cardinals and Alexander VI in Rome. On his return to England, having inherited his father’s wealth he might have risen to high places in business  or politics, but he preferred scholastic life in Oxford. Ignoring the tradition that only a priest might teach theology, he lectured on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans; he replaced Scholastic dialectic with criticism and elucidation of the Vulgate text; and his large audiences felt refreshed by the novelty of his method, and by his stress on the good life as the best theology. Erasmus, who saw him at Oxford in 1499, described him as a saint perpetually tempted to lust and luxury, but “keeping the flower of his virginity till his death,” scorned the easygoing monks of his time, and dedicating his fortune to pious uses and charity.

He was a loyal opposition in the Church, loving her despite her faults. He questioned the literal truth of Genesis but accepted the divine inspiration of the Bible. He foreshadowed the Reformers in stressing the authority of the Scriptures as against ecclesiastical traditions and forms, in rejecting the Scholastic philosophy as an intellectual dilution of simple Christianity, in doubting the confessional powers of priests and the Real presence of Christ in the consecrated bread, and in denouncing the worldliness of the clergy

In 1504 Colet was appointed dean of St. Paul’s. from that high pulpit he preached against the sale of bishoprics, and the evil of plural benefices held by one man. He aroused an angry opposition, but Archbishop Warham protected him. Linacre, Grocyn, and More were now established in London, free from the conservatism and Scholasticism of Oxford, stimulated by the visits of Erasmus, and soon to enjoy the support of the young Henry VIII. Everything seemed prepared for an English Renaissance that would move hand in hand with a peaceful Reformation.  

[JoanK]

"Everything seemed prepared for an English Renaissance that would move hand in hand with a peaceful Reformation."

Durant knows how to shake me up. Why didn't it happen that way? Why all those martyrs on both sides? It could have been avoided? Was it all Henry's lust? Tune in next time!

[3kings(Trevor)]

 Durant now leaves the English Humanists, in 1509, and begins treating other states and their development in the years 1300 to  1515. Would readers prefer me to leave out these pages treating Middle Europe, the Ottomans,  Spain, Germany, and Conquest of the Sea, Science, Erasmus, the Inquisition and developments during 1300-1515 , and move on to the Reformation after 1515 ?

There is a lot of material to cover, and if readers would like me to skip over it and get on with the Reformation events following 1515, I would do so. I see no point in boring folk with events  that are not of interest. What say you all? --- Trevor.
 

[Brian]

The book we are reading is called "The History of Civilization"
and civilization was not confined to Britain.

Speaking for myself I would like to continue reading the book
as written,  but if out-voted I will be content to move directly
to the Reformation.

Brian

[JoanK]

TREVOR: why don't you pick and choose a bit. The inquisition will not be fun to read about, but should we skip it entirely? And our Euro-centered histories always shortchange what was happening in the East. could we get some of that? Without a copy of the book, I can't tell what else is skippable. Was there signifigent science and exploration before 1515? (We Yanks all know the story of Columbus in 1492).

[mabel1015j]

I prefer to continue thru the book and agree w/ Joan to have Trevor pick and choose.

[3kings(Trevor)]

DURANTS'  S  o  C
Vol VI  The REFORMATION
Pgs. 126 - 129






                                      Episode in Burgundy 1363-1515.
By its position on the eastern flank of France around Dijon, and by the subtle statesmanship of its Dukes, Burgundy emerged with little harm from the Hundred Year’s War and became for half a century the brightest spot in transalpine Christendom. When the Burgundian ducal family of the Capetian line became extinct, and the duchy reverted to the French Crown, John II gave it to his fourth son Philip (1363) as a reward for valour at Poitiers. During his forty-one years as Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold ( Philippe le Hardi) managed so well, and married so diplomatically, that Flanders and several other areas came under his rule; and the duchy of Burgundy, technically a province of France, became in effect an independent state, enriched by Flemish commerce and industry, and graced by the patronage of art.

In 1419 Philip the Good, renounced all Feudal allegiance to France, allied Burgundy with England, and annexed Tournai, Namur, Brabant, Holland, Zeeland, Limburg, and Louvain. When he made his peace with France (1435) he exacted the recognition of his duchy’s practical sovereignty, and the cession of Luxembourg, Liége, Cambrai, and Utrecht. Burgundy was now at its zenith, rivalling in wealth and power any kingdom in the West. Burgundian society at Bruges, Ghent, Liége, Louvain, Brussels, and Dijon was now (1420-60) the most polished and amorous in Europe, not excepting the contemporary Florence of Cosimo de’ Medici. The dukes preserved all the forms of chivalry; it was Philip the Good who founded the Order of the Golden Fleece( 1429); and it was in part from her Burgundian allies that England took the chivalric pomp and glamour that brightened the rough surface of English manners, glorified the campaigns of Henry V, and shone in the pages of Froissart and Malory. The Burgundian nobles, shorn of independent power, lived chiefly as courtiers, and developed all the graces of dress and bearing that could adorn parisitism and adultery. Merchants and manufacturers robed themselves like royalty, and fed and gowned their wives as if preparing the scene for Rubens. Under so loving a Duke, monogamy would have been ‘Lèse-majesté.’ John of Heinsberg the Jolly Bishop of Liége, spawned a dozen bastards; John of  Burgundy, Bishop of Cambrai, had thirty-six children and grandchildren begotten out of wedlock; many of the elite, in this eugenic age , were so born. Prostitutes could be found at almost any time and price at the public baths. Festivals were many and extravagant;  famous artists were engaged to design the pageants and decorate the floats; and people came over frontiers and seas to view gorgeous spectacles in which nude women played the part of ancient goddesses and nymphs.

In sombre contrast with the effervescent society were the saints and mystics who, under the dukes, gave Holland a high place in religious history. Jan van Ruysbroeck, a Brussels priest, retired at fifty ( 1343) to an Augustinian Monastery at Groenendael, near Waterloo, where he devoted himself to mystical contemplation and compositions. He professed that the Holy Spirit guided his pen; neverthe less his pantheism verged upon a denial of individual immortality:

   “When, beyond all names given to God or to creatures, we come to expire, and pass over in eternal namelessness, we lose ourselves ... and contemplate all these blessed spirits which are essentially sunken away, merged and lost in their superessence, in an unknown darkness without mode.”

The Netherlands and Rhenish Germany saw in this period the profusion of lay groups -- Beghards, Beguines, Brethren of the free Spirit-- whose mystic raptures led often to piety, social service, quietism, and pacifism, sometimes a rejection of the sacraments as unnecessary, and occasionally to a cheerful acceptance of sin as quite swallowed up in union with God. Gerrit Groote of Deventer, after receiving a good education at Cologne, Paris, and Prague, spent many days with Ruysbroeck at Groenendael, and was moved to make the love of God the pervading motive of his life. Having  received deacon orders (1379), he began to preach in the towns of Holland, in the vernacular, to audiences so large that the local churches could not hold them, people left their shops and meals to hear him. Scrupulously orthodox in doctrine, and himself a “hammer of heretics”, he nevertheless attacked the moral laxity of priests as well as of laymen, and demanded that Christians should live strictly in accord with the ethics of Christ. He was denounced as a heretic and the Bishop of Utrecht withdrew from all deacons the right to preach. Groote died at forty-four ( 1384) of a pestilence contracted while nursing a friend, but his Brotherhood spread its influence through 200 ‘Fraterhuizen’ in Holland and Germany. The schools of the Brotherhood gave the pagan classics a prominent place in their curriculum, preparing the way for the Jesuit schools that took over their work in the Counter Reformation. The Brethren welcomed printing soon after its appearance, and used it to disseminate their ‘moderna devotio’. Alexander Hegius at  Deventer ( 1475-98) was a memorable example of the type  that fortunate students have known-- the saintly teacher who lives only for instruction and moral guidance of his pupils. He improved the curriculum, centred it around the classics, and won the praise of Erasmus for the purity of his Latin style. When he died he left nothing but his clothes and his books; everything else he secretly gave to the poor. Among the famous pupils of Deventer were Nicholas of Cusa, Erasmus, Rudolf Agricola, Jean de Gerson, and the author of the ‘IMITATION of CHRIST.’

   “ Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, except to love God, and Him only to serve. This is the highest wisdom, by contempt of the world to tend toward the Kingdom of Heaven... Yet learning is not to be blamed.. for that is good in itself and ordained by God, but a good conscience and a virtuous life is always to be preferred.
Fly the tumult of men as much as thou canst, for the treating of worldly affairs is a great hindrance. . . . Truly it is misery to live on the earth . . . It is a great matter to live in obedience, to be under a superior, and not to be at our own disposing. . . It is much safer to obey than to govern.. The cell, constantly dwelt in, groweth sweet.”

There is a gentle eloquence in the ‘Imitation’ that echoes the profound simplicity of Christ’s sermons and Parables. It is an ever needed check on the intellectual pride of frail reason and shallow sophistication. When we are weary of facing our responsibilities in life we shall find no better refuge than Thomas a Kempis’ Fifth Gospel. But who shall teach us how to be Christians in the stream and storm of the world?

[JoanK]

"Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity" In the Bible, the hebrew word used is "Chaval", a waste, a pity. This is the same as the Hebrew name we translate as Abel of Cain and Abel. 

[Emily]

Having a map always help me when reading about changing boundaries, and in France they changed frequently. Here is one dated 1435 to 1493 of Burgundian lands. Scroll down to get map. The duchy of Burgundy and the County of Burgundy are outlined.

http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/burgundian_lands_1361_1543.htm

Emily

[Emily]

Imitation of Christ...........

Truly it is misery to live on the earth . . . It is a great matter to live in obedience, to be under a superior, and not to be at our own disposing. . . It is much safer to obey than to govern.. The cell, constantly dwelt in, groweth sweet.”

I never read 'Imitation of Christ' and for that I am grateful and happy and will be about my own disposing without a superior. Who in their right mind would want to live in a cell? Sounds like he could use a room in the psych ward.

Emily

[JoanK]

Love the map. I remember when we read "Rembrandt's Eyes" by Simon Shama. I could have given anything for a decent map. He was making points about the differences between catholic and Protestant Holland, but kept throwing place names around, assuming you would know which part it fell in. I was horribly confused.

[3kings(Trevor)]

Interesting maps.  I found that in the time of Attila, ( 450ad) the Burgundians were in occupation of what is now Poland. Wonder how they came to be in Northern France ?--  Trevor

[Frybabe]

Ah, Trevor, you are asking about the stuff of legend. Tradition says that the Burgundians originally came from Scandinavia. They migrated into Poland, and what with various wars and such found some of them migrating into Germany along the Rhine Valley. Those that stayed in Poland came under the influence of the Huns. The eventual conflict with the Huns and the Burgundians at Worms nearly destroyed the Burgundians. The remaining Burgundians pulled up stakes again and ended up in France. The epic tale of their defeat at the hands of the Huns is told in The Nibelungenlied which inspired Wagner's Ring Cycle. If I remember my reading correctly, The Nibelungenlied isn't the only version of epic tale, but it is the best known. It is a fascinating tale.

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants'  S  o  C
Vol. VI  The REFORMATION
Pgs. 130 - 132



The provinces under Burgundian rule indulged in considerable intellectual activity. The dukes themslves -- Philip the Good above the rest  -- collected libraries and encouraged literature and art. Schools multiplied, and the university of Louvain, founded in 1426, was soon among the leading educational centers of Europe. Georges Castellain’s  ‘Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne ‘ recordered the history of the duchy with rhetorical effulgence and a minimum of philosophy, but in a vigorous French that shared with Froissart and Comines in forming the favourite medium of clear and graceful prose. The two languages of the realm -- the French or Romance of the Walloons in the south and the German dialects of the Flemings and Dutch in the north -- rivalled each other in producing poets who repose in the peace of oblivion.

The supreme expression of the duchy was in art. Antwerp began in 1352 its vast , many-aisled cathedral, and finished it in 1518; Louvain raised the beautifully proportioned St. Pierre -- another casualty of the second World War. Men and cities were so rich that they could afford mansions or town halls almost as magnificent as the churches that they conceded to God. The bishops who governed Liége housed themselves and their staff in the largest and most elegant palace in the Lowlands. Bruges added its ‘hotel de ville’ in 1377-1421, and crowned it with a world famous belfry (1393-96) that served as a landmark to mariners far out to sea. While these noble gothic structures expressed the pride of cities and merchants, the dukes and aristocracy of Burgundy financed for their palaces and tombs a brilliant outburst of sculpture, painting, and manuscript illumination. Flemish artists, frightened from France by war, flocked back to their own cities. Philip the Bold gathered a veritable pleiad of geniuses to adorn his summer residence at the Chartreuse de Champmol -- a Carthusian monastery in the ‘gentle field’ adjoining Dijon.

In 1386 Philip commissioned Jean de Marville to design for him an elaborate mausoleum in  Chartreuse. When Marville died (1389) Claus Sluter of Holland continued the work; when Sluter died (1406) his pupil Claus de Werve carried on; at last (1411) the tomb was completed, and received the bones of the Duke, now seven years dead. In 1793 a revolutionary assembly at Dijon ordered the dismantling of the great sepulchre, and its components were scattered and destroyed. In 1827 the communal fathers, breathing a reverse political breeze, collected the remaining pieces and housed them in the Dijon museum. The Duke and his Duchess, Marguerite of Flanders, lie in handsome alabaster on a massive marble slab; and below them forty pleurant figures -- sole survivors of the ninety carved -- mourn the ducal death in silent and graceful grief. For the portal of the chapel at the Chartreuse, Sluter and his pupils ( 1391-94) chiselled out five superb figures: the Virgin receiving the homage of Philip and Marguerite, presented to her by John the Baptist and St. Catherine of Alexandria. In the courtyard Sluter set up his master work, the ‘Puits de Moïse,’ the ‘Well of Moses’; a pedestal bearing statues of Moses, David, Jeremiah, Zachariah, Isaiah, and Daniel, originally surmounted by a “calvary” or  crucifixion scene, of which nothing remains but a sombre, noble head of Christ crowned with thorns. No sculpture of such masculine power and unique audacity had been seen in Europe since the best days of Roman art.

The painters formed as remarkable a dynasty as the sculptors. Count William of Hainaut paid well for the illumination of ‘Les tres heures de Notre Dame’ ( 1414) and the unknown genius (perhaps Hubert van Eyck) set a model and pace for a thousand Lowland landscape artists by depicting with microscopic zeal a port with ships beached or in full sail, passengers disembarking, sailors and longshoremen at their diverse tasks, waves breaking on crescent shore, white clouds moving stealthily across the sky -- all in the space of a picture card. In 1392 Melchior Broederlam of Ypres brightened the Chartreuse de Champmol with the oldest significant panel extant outside of Italy. But Broederlam and the artists who painted the walls and statuary of the monastery used traditional tempera -- mixing their colours with some gelatinous material. Nuances of shading and tint, translucency of tone, were hardly attainable by these means, and moisture could ruin the finished work. As early as 1329  Jacques Compere of Ghent had experimented with colours mixed in oil. Through a hundred years of trial and error the Flemings developed the new technique; and in the first quarter of the fifteenth century it revolutionized pictorial art. When Hubert van Eyck and his younger brother Jan painted ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ for the Cathedral of St. Bavon at Ghent, they not only established the superiority of oil as a vehicle of colour; they produced some of the  supreme masterpieces in the history of painting, for whose sake St. Bevon has been a goal of pilgrimage ever since.

The reverse of the polyptych declines from the exalted type of the inner panels. In the middle row an angel at the left and Mary at the right separated by a room, picture the Annunciation-- the faces stereotyped, the hands remarkably fine, the draperies as lovely as any in Flemish painting.  At the bottom is a Latin poem of four lines; some words have been worn out by the centuries; the rest reads, “ Hubertus van Eyck, great and skilled beyond any other, began the heavy task, and Johannes, second in art. . . encouraged by the bequest of Jodocus Vyd. This work on the sixth of May calls you to behold the finished work”; and in the final line certain letters add  in their numerical value  to 1432, the year  of completion. Vyd and his wife were the donors. How much of the picture was painted by Hubert, how much by Jan, is a problem happily insoluble, so that dissertations thereon may be written till all trace of the painting disappears.**
Perhaps there is in this epochal picture an undue profusion of figures and minutiae: every man, woman, angel, flower, branch, blossom, beast, stone, and gem is reproduced with heroic patience and fidelity -- to the amusement of Michelangelo, who saw in Flemish a sacrifice of central significance to incidental and irrelevant  detail. But nothing in contemporary Italy rivalled the painting in scope, conception, or effect; and in later pictorial art only the Sistine Chapel ceiling of Michelangelo surpasses it, and the Vatican frescoes of Raphael and probably Leonardo’s Last Supper before it began its long decay. Even in its own day all literate Europe talked of the ‘Adoration‘.  Alfonso the Magnanimous pleaded with Jan van Eyck to come to Naples and paint for him such men and women, with golden hair, as sang in this picture but were so rare in southern Italy.


** THE ADORATION OF THE LAMB has survived many restorations and vicissitudes. It was retouched in 1550, 1663,1825, 1829, 1859, 1936, 1951. The major portions were removed by the French Revolutionary Army to Paris in 1794, and were returned in 1816.  The wings ( without Adam and Eve ) were sold to an art dealer (1816), were bought by the Berlin Museum ( 1821), and restored to Ghent by the treaty of Versailles (1919). In the second World War the polyptych was removed to France for protection; in 1942 it was taken by the Germans; in 1944 it was hidden in Austrian salt mines; in 1946 it was restored to its Chapel in the church of St. Bavon by the Army of the United States.

[Emily]

The adoration of the lamb by van Eyck in the link below. Scroll down to see a close up of the several panels that make up the work.

http://www.themasterpiececards.com/famous-paintings-reviewed/bid/29887/Famous-Artwork-The-Adoration-of-the-Lamb

Emily

[mabel1015j]

Durant's interesting use of language and dry wit surfaces again..."parasitism"??

"The Burgundian nobles, shorn of independent power, lived chiefly as courtiers, and developed all the graces of dress and bearing that could adorn parisitism and adultery. Merchants and manufacturers robed themselves like royalty, and fed and gowned their wives as if preparing the scene for Rubens. Under so loving a Duke, monogamy would have been ‘Lèse-majesté.’ John of Heinsberg the Jolly Bishop of Liége, spawned a dozen bastards; John of  Burgundy, Bishop of Cambrai, had thirty-six children and grandchildren begotten out of wedlock;"

And Groote "demanded that Christians should live strictly in accord with the ethics of Christ. He was denounced as a heretic and the Bishop of Utrecht withdrew from all deacons the right to preach. "

Sometimes he just makes the statement and lets it hang out there...

Images of Antwerp Cathedral

http://www.google.com/search?q=antwerp+cathedral&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=VewbUPW8OqjZ0QHIrIDoAg&ved=0CHkQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=644

Do i remember correctly that Durant was raised as a Catholic and was schooled by the Jesuits? If so, some of that "appears" from time to time.

[JoanK]

This is out of our time period, but I'm now reading a book "The Archimedes Codex". Before printing was invented, books were handwritten on parchment (animal skin, specially treated). Preparing parchment was expensive and time consuming (it took 24 sheep tp make a book) so medieval scribes, who didn't care anything for "pagan" writing, would scrape the letters off of old Greek and Roman manuscipts and write over them. recently, a manuscript of the greek mathematician Archimedes was discovered under a 10th century prayer book. The book i'm reading is by two authors, one telling how the book (codex) was obtained and restored, the other a translator of Aerchimedes, talking about the content and what it adds to our knowledge of mathematics.

the math nerd in me is fascinated by the latters description of the difference in how the greeks "saw" mathematics, and how we see it. Reading it, I now understand something about my late husband (a mathematician) that I could never grasp. he "saw" mathematics the same way Archimedes did: when he would try to show me, I could never see it, looking at it a very different way. But his way helped him to see thing in the fourth (or higher) dimension, something I could never do.

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durant's   S  o  c
V ol. VI  The REFORMATION.
Pgs. 136-14



                                  ART in the LOWLANDS:  1465-1515

Southern Flanders declined for a time after Philip the Good. {Political disturbances drove many weavers to England; the growth of the British clothing industry took trade and raw materials from the Flemish cities; by 1520 English cloth crowded the markets of Flanders itself. Brussels, Mechlin, and Valenciennes  survived through superior lace, carpets, tapestries, and jewellery, Namur by its leather, Louvain through its university and its beer. About 1480 the canal that brought the sea to Bruges began to silt its bed; heroic efforts were made to clear it; wind and sand won; after 1494 seagoing vessels could no longer reach Bruges. Soon its merchants , then its workers, left Bruges for Antwerp, which deep-draught ships could enter by the estuaries of Scheldt. Antwerp signed agreements with English exporters, and shared with Calais the British trade with the continent.

Life in Holland existed by grace of the dykes, which had to be repeatedly rebuilt, and might at any time collapse; some gave way in 1470 and drowned 20,000 of the population. the only major industry was the capture and cure of herring. Holland produced many of the famous painters of this period, but was too poor to hold them; all but Geertgen tot Sint Jans migrated to Flanders.

There even in cities that suffered decline, rich burghers dressed gorgeously, dwelt in sturdy brick houses luxuriously furnished -- hung with the tapestries of Arras or Brussels, and gleaming with the brass vessels of Dinant. They built lovely churches like Notre Dame dui Sablon at Brussels and St. Jacques at Antwerp, raised stone by stone the towering facade of Antwerp Cathedral, and began the proud hall of Ghent. They financed the painters, sat for portraits, bribed heaven with votive art, and allowed their women to read books. Perhaps it was their  earthy mood that led Flemish painting, in its second flowering, to stress realism and landscape even in religious pictures, and to seek new subjects in homes and fields.

Dirk Bouts inaugurated realism with the exaggerations natural to innovators. He came from his native Haarlem to Brussels, studied there under Rogier van der Weyden, settled in Louvain, and painted for its church of St. Pierre a polyptych, ‘the Last Supper’, with an interesting panel -- ’Passover in a Jewish Family’ -- which seemed to suggest that the Last Supper was a celebration of an orthodox Hebrew rite by Jews still faithful to Judaism. For a chapel in the same church Bouts painted the ’Martyrdom of St. Erasmus’ with a shocking literalness: two executioners turn a windlass that slowly draws the intestines from the naked saint. In the ‘Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus’ four horses, driven in four directions, pull out the arms and legs of the holy victim. There are vivid colours in these paintings, now and then a good landscape or perspective; but their mediocre drawing, rigid figures, and lifeless faces suggest that time does not always winnow wisely.**

Charles the Bold left no son, but he had betrothed his daughter Mary to Maximilian of Austria in the hope that the Hapsburgs would protect Burgundy from France. When Louis XI nevertheless appropriated the duchy, Mary fled to Ghent. There, as the price of being accepted as their constitutional sovereign by Flanders, Brabant, Hainaut, and Holland, she signed the ’Groote Privilgie’ ( February 1477 ), which pledged her to enter into no marriage, levy no taxes, declare no war, without the consent of “Estates” or assemblies of the signatory provinces. By this and other charters, including the ’Joyeuse Entrie’, as Brabant termed its own grant of local liberty, the Netherlands began a century-long struggle for independence. But Mary's marriage to Maximilian ( August 1477) brought the powerful Hapsburgs into the Lowlands. When Mary died (1482) Maximilian became regent. When Maximilian was elected Emperor (1494) he transmitted the regency to his son Philip. When Philip died (1506) his sister, Margaret of Austria, was appointed governor-general by the Emperor. When Philip’s son , the future Charles V, then fifteen was declared of age (1515), the Netherlands became part of a vast Hapsburg empire under one of the craftiest and most ambitious rulers in History. Thereby would hang a tale.