The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have seen how the life of the Middle Ages developed in the cities.

We have come to the point where public life takes place mainly in the life of cities. Originally the inducement to settle in the cities was the oppression of the country people and the spread of commerce.

We have seen how those who escaped their oppressors or devoted themselves to trade settled either in a bishop's see or in some other site of medieval power. At first, the part of the population that inhabited the cities was not in a pleasant position; they had to pay dues to their former lord of the manor, supply weapons, clothes and so on. Those who had moved to the cities and devoted themselves to trade, as well as those who were royal, episcopal or other officials, at first formed the actually free privileged classes. But more and more the privileges of the officials and the merchants who formed the patriciate were taken away from the privileged by those who lived depressed. On the Rhine in southern Germany, this equality was won in the 13th and 14th centuries. Kings and emperors reckoned with it.

Earlier the wandering kings had held court soon here soon there, now they settled in the cities. The rulers had to reckon with the cities, they found in them reason to develop their own power. Therefore, certain rights were given to the cities, jurisdiction, right to mint coins and so on. In this way their power grew more and more. A democratic element was now formed in Germany. In the past, the basic nobility, the feudal nobility, had given the time its certain character. Instead, something new has arisen. More and more privileges were eliminated in the cities. Instead of making general observations, let us turn to specific examples. Cologne had long been an important trading city, the seat of a powerful clergy; in the spiritual sphere, too, the cities were becoming a power. There, the subordinate class soon acquired equal rights with the patrician class, a kind of constitution, the oath book, in which was recorded what rights each individual had. The guilds, of which there were twenty-two in Cologne, had joined together, and before the 14th century they had also been dependent on the patricians here. Now, in 1321, these conquered equal rights.

The city council was not only composed of patricians, but the members of the guilds had equal voting rights. In order to make this council as democratic as possible, the members were always to be elected for only half a year, after which they were to be ineligible for three years. With the implementation of the democratic principle, the interest of the individual citizen in the flourishing of the cities also grew. Until the 12th century, such cities were not much other than dirty villages with thatched houses. But we see them growing in quite a striking way in a few years. Every man is now a citizen, and with the participation of the individual grows the prestige and beauty of the city.

What the cities indicated had a determining effect also on the whole high politics. What could interest cities like Hamburg, Lübeck, Cologne politically, as kings and dukes used to do outside? When the cities began to do politics, it was done in the urban way. Wide areas allied to protect their urban interests. Such powerful alliances of cities were first formed in northern Germany, and later the northern Italian cities also formed such alliances. The German cities also gained significant influence abroad; in Bergen, in London they had their powerful guildhall.

As the princes had to decide to grant the cities the right to such politics, so the cities also gradually became the center of a new culture. A material culture, to be sure, but one that led to the settlement of wider areas. New cultural centers were formed, in which a lively trade with the northern countries, especially with Russia, flourished; the legendary Vineta was such a trading center. We see how trade policy developed, powerful trade routes emerged, along the Rhine, through northern and central Germany, with important trading cities such as Magdeburg, Hildesheim, Erfurt, Breslau and so on. From these alliances of cities emerged what is called the Hansa. In the course of time, it became necessary to pursue not only trade but also war policy. In the background lurked enemies, the knights and dukes, who enviously followed the development of the cities. The cities had to surround themselves with walls and defend themselves against their enemies. Thus they became more and more powerful cultural centers, also centers of spiritual life. Whatever spiritual life was felt in those days was drawn together in the cities. Art also blossomed in the medieval cities under the influence of the free bourgeoisie. In Venice, the Hall of Clothiers is painted by Titian.

A new form of warfare also emerged. By the application of the powder, whose use was known already earlier in the Orient, but was found only now for Europe, a new, the democratic form of the fight arises opposite to the single fight of the armored knights. The use of gunpowder continues to develop. First there were crude blunderbusses and mortars, but soon more perfect weapons were invented, especially by Kaspar Zöllner in Vienna.

What developed especially in the cities in connection with the spirit of ecclesiastical life is of special importance for the progress of culture. We have seen how the highest ecstasy of the religious enthusiasm presents itself in the crusades. We have seen how German mysticism blossomed, especially on the Rhine, how the brothers of the common life cultivated a deep piety completely independent of Rome. Two different currents of time now confront us: on the one hand, the bourgeois is concerned with the elevation of material life; on the other hand, we see here a spiritual life directed inwardly. In the early Middle Ages, material and spiritual life were closely intertwined; the prosperity of its fruits, like his religious feeling, the peasant believed to be supported and blessed by the church. Now that personal efficiency came to the fore, these directions split.

The peculiar architectural style of the Middle Ages, mistakenly called Gothic, came from the south of France, originated in areas where lived such pious heretics as the Cathars, the Waldenses, who strove to deepen the inner life and break with the lavish life of the bishops and the clergy. A peculiar spiritual life spreads from there; German mysticism is strongly influenced by it.

What a profound influence this attitude had on the outer form of these churches is evident from the fact that all these Gothic minsters possessed a mystical decoration in the marvelous stained-glass windows. This art, which was completely lost in the 17th century, was not artistic allegory, but the symbols that were painted there really exerted a mystical influence on the crowd when the sunshine shone through them into the dim high churches. This type of construction was closely related to the conditions of the medieval cities; the town hall and the guildhall were also Gothic. The city, which was surrounded by walls, was dependent on expanding within these walls, the Romanesque architectural style was not sufficient for this. This is how the towering Gothic churches came into being, an expression at the same time of the inwardness of the life of the time; the dances of the dead that often adorned them brought to mind the transience of everything earthly.

In caring for the cleanliness and beauty of their city, the citizens find a noble way to keep their name in the memory of their fellow citizens. Especially beautiful fountains are erected everywhere. We see that at that time something comes into being which acquired special importance in the Middle Ages, the public baths, which were not lacking in any town. In the later Middle Ages, these baths gave rise to moral outrages and for this reason were eradicated by Protestantism. But this civic spirit went even further, it intervened in public life by creating charitable institutions that can still be considered models today. And these charitable institutions were also urgently needed, because in the 14th century Europe was afflicted by severe plagues, famines, leprosy, the plague or, as it was called at that time, "the black death". But medieval man knew how to counter this. Infirmaries, hospitals, and priests' houses were built everywhere, and even strangers were cared for in the so-called slum hostels. Misery was then synonymous with stranger and only later acquired a different meaning.

In addition to these bright sides of medieval life, there were, of course, some dark ones. Above all, the harsh treatment of all those who did not belong to a fixed community. They were outcasts, something for which the cities did not pay. All those who did not belong to the guild had to suffer bad treatment. Especially the "traveling people". The name "dishonest people" was created at that time, a terrible name for the traveling people. The dishonest people included all kinds of professions, actors, jugglers, shepherds and so on. They were not allowed to join the guilds, they could not show themselves anywhere without the risk of being tortured. The same happened to the Jews. The prejudice against them is not very old. In the early Middle Ages we find many Jews recognized as scholars. In later times they met the money needs of princes and knights. Due to the peculiar conditions of the Middle Ages, they attained the position of money lenders, which stood between commerce and usury and earned them hatred. However, the kings' need for money always gave them certain rights; this activity earned them the strange name of royal chamberlains. Another dark side was the judicial system, the criminal law that necessarily came up with the Middle Ages. In earlier times, justice was really related to revenge, either a damage should be repaired, or revenge should be taken. The concept of punishment did not exist, it came up only now. Roman legal concepts were becoming established. Judicial power was a valuable prerogative of a city and the citizens were proud not only of their churches and walls, but also of their high court. Often the harshest punishments were imposed for the most trivial of causes.

So the 15th and 16th centuries of medieval life is under the influence of urban life. Another current went alongside it. What we understand today as great politics was related to this other current. This is the movement known as that of the heretics or Cathars. You can gauge the extent to which this took hold if you consider the fact that in Italy in the 13th century there were more heretics than orthodox.

Here also lay the real conflict that led to the Crusades. When at the church meeting in Clermont in 1095 the decision was taken to launch them, it was not only riffraff, no, it was also decent people who set out in disorderly crowds under Peter of Amiens and the knight Walter von Habenichts for the promised land. It was a papal enterprise, it was not merely born of enthusiasm. It was a matter of the papal influence being pressed by the heretics. The pope's endeavor was, what actually took place, to thus create a drain for the heretics.

In the first real crusade, it was largely heretics who set out. This is also evident from the person of the leader. Gottfried von Bouillon was of a decidedly anti-papal disposition, as can be seen from his previous life. For when, at the instigation of Pope Gregory, a counter-king was set up against Henry IV in the person of Duke Rudolf of Swabia, Gottfried of Bouillon fought on the side of Emperor Henry and killed Rudolf of Swabia. It is necessary to see what it was about for him, but which did not come to execution: to found an anti-Rome in Jerusalem. That is why he called himself only "Protector of the Holy Sepulchre" and tried to raise the flag of anti-Roman Christianity in Jerusalem with unpretentious modesty. After the Crusades, the Ghibelline party arose from the representatives of such views; opposite them, on the side of the Pope, stood the Guelfs.

Also when we consider the second crusade, undertaken in 1147 by Emperor Conrad III at the instigation of Bernard of Clairvaux, we see the same phenomena. These crusades had no further significance in themselves, they only showed what spirit was blowing through the world. Barbarossa, who undertook five Roman campaigns against the Pope and the northern Italian cities that sided with him, in order to force them down, was forced to grant them independence in the Peace of Constance after he failed to take their fortress of Alessandria.

The German papal party was composed especially of the princely families who had remained behind from the old nobility. Henry the Proud and his son Henry the Lion fought for the old ducal power against the imperial power. Usually, by marriage with an emperor's daughter, these recalcitrant princes were then bound to the imperial power. By the enfeoffment of relatives of the emperor with finished dukedoms such rearrangements of the power relations were brought about again and again in the consequence.

Emperor Frederick Barbarossa undertook the third crusade, which also led to no real successes, but which became important through the Kyffhäuser saga, which tied itself to it. Those who can read legends know that they are dealing with one of the most important ones. It did not originate from the soul of the people, as it is usually said, because only the individual wrote poems and then what he produced spread among the people, as it also happens with the folk song, of which professors claim that it originates directly from the people and does not come from the heads of individuals. The legend originated from the mind of a man who knew how to use symbols that had a deep meaning, such as the cave in Kyffhäuser, the ravens and so on. It is one of the legends that can be found all over the world, a proof that there is something similar everywhere.

The Barbarossa saga is a very important saga from the point of view of cultural history. - Rome was in the church the advocate of what resulted from the, the Germanic spirit in connection with Christianity imposed external accessory. - In a grotto the emperor was supposed to be hidden. From time immemorial grottoes were secret places of worship. Thus the Mithras service was generally held in grottoes. In this worship, Mithras was depicted on the bull, the symbol of the lower animal nature, which was overcome by Mithras, the predecessor of Christ. In the Kyffhäuser legend, the emperor hidden in the rocky grotto became the advocate of that which turned against Rome and its influence in German spiritual life. How much there is in this legend! A pure Christianity, longed for by many at the time, was to emerge from hiding when the time came.

It was under the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II that the Mongol invasion occurred that devastated Europe. It is not a history of the Hohenstaufens that I wish to give you here, only to hint at what developed from the Crusades: expanded trade relations, a revival of the sciences and arts through contact with the Orient. What the crusaders gained in new experiences and goods, they brought back home.

It was also then that the two great monastic orders came into being that became of particular importance for spiritual life, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The Dominicans represented the spiritual direction known as realism, while the Franciscans leaned toward nominalism. In the Holy Land also happened the foundation of the spiritual orders of knighthood; the Order of St. John was initially founded for the care of the sick.

From a similar mood to that which I have described to you as that of Gottfried von Bouillon, the second order of knights, that of the Templars, emerged. Its real aims were kept secret, but through intimate agitators the order had soon become very powerful. An anti-Roman principle prevailed in it, as was also evident in the Dominicans, who were often in complete opposition to Rome; thus they were in violent opposition to the Pope on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The Templars sought to purify Christianity. Referring to John the Baptist, they advocated an ascetic tendency. Their acts of worship were so hostile to the church out of resistance to the Roman secularization that it is not appropriate to speak about it publicly today. The order had become very inconvenient to the clergy and princes because of its power, it had to suffer severe persecutions and perished after its last Grand Master, Jacob of Molay, had suffered martyrdom with a number of brothers of the order in 1314.

The "German Order of Knights" was also of similar origin. With the Order of the Brothers of the Sword, which joined it, it made it its special task to convert the areas of Europe that still remained pagan, especially in the East, from its headquarters in Marienburg. From the reports of contemporaries, one gets a strange picture of the inhabitants of the areas that today form the provinces of East and West Prussia. Albert von Bremen describes the old Prussians as complete heathens. Among this people, of whom it is not exactly certain whether they were of Germanic or Slavic stock, are found the old pagan customs of eating horse meat and drinking horse blood. The chronicler describes them as pagan cruel people.

Before coming into contact with the German knights, the Brothers of the Sword had especially aspired to worldly violence.

One can only construct the development. Although the cities had formed, a part of the ducal power and the robbery knighthood had remained. It was not enthusiasm for Christianity, but mere egoism that caused the remnants of the feudal nobility to gather in these two German orders of knights. In these areas, no significant influence of the cities was felt. The other two Christian orders were compounds of those who were not connected with Rome. If you study the historical sources, you will often find alliances between them and the cities.

Besides these two currents of urban development and deeper religious life, we see that the imperial power lost all importance. In the years 1254 to 1273 there was no bearer of imperial power in Germany; the imperial dignity was temporarily sold to foreign princes, one of whom, Richard of Cornwall, came to Germany only twice, while the second, Alfonso of Castile, never entered it at all.

When at last one again proceeded to a proper election of emperors, the endeavor was not to establish any central imperial power or to attempt once more to create an imperial power, but the desire was decisive to bring order with regard to the robber baronry.

So they chose Count Rudolf of Habsburg. If one is to ask what he and his successors did for the empire, it would be difficult to say, for they were not active in public affairs. They were busy establishing their domestic power. Thus, after the death of Duke Heinrich Jasomirgott, Rudolf of Habsburg granted Lower Austria to his son and thus established the Habsburg house power. His successors sought to increase this power by conquests and especially by marriage treaties, and no longer cared about anything connected with general interests.

You see what was really significant for the further development: the events that resulted in the medieval conditions what finally led to the great discoveries and inventions at the end of the Middle Ages. We see the cities with powerfully rising, but secularized culture; in the church we see the divorce, the schism, the separation; out of this current the last act of the medieval drama dawns, we see the twilight of the Middle Ages, the dawn of a new time.

We are progressing more and more in the contemplation of history to the times when the great inventions and discoveries happened in the 15th century.

The new time begins. For a historical consideration this new time has special interest; in characteristic features the transition to the great state formations of Europe takes place. We have seen how from the feudal power the transition to the modern princely power develops. On the one hand it means a reaction of old remnants from earlier times and only in a certain way a renewal. That which remained of the old claims of princes and dukes, what was left, gathers its forces again and determines the map of Europe through its family private relations.

The landed property had been replaced in its domination by the cities, the bourgeoisie flourished and all the real cultural factors emanated from the cities. The emperorship had sunk to a shadow power; after a long interregnum Rudolf of Habsburg was elected, but the emperor had become very unnecessary in the empire; he hardly needed to be seen there. The Habsburg dynasty only endeavored to increase its domestic power through this imperial power, wherever rights remained to it outside the power of the cities. It is a simple process that takes place here, also the rest - princes and dukes - gather what remained to them to strengthen their house power, creating the basis for large political territories.

The Mongol invasion, later the invasions of the Turks, give rise to this. Only larger princes are able to defend their territories; the smaller ones join the more powerful one and thus form the basis for future states. The new emperor meant very little. As mentioned, Rudolf of Habsburg was only anxious to establish a domestic power. After overcoming Ottokar of Bohemia, his son was enfeoffed with his lands, and later the Habsburg house power was strengthened by always marrying new territories to it.

Only the process of all these purely private undertakings can interest us, that it came to the uprising of the Swiss Confederates, who wanted to be free from the claims, which the successor of Rudolf of Habsburg, Emperor Albrecht I, made on them. Through hard struggles they obtained to be dependent only on imperial power - imperial immediacy; they did not want to know anything about princely power.

The endeavor to increase one's own house power continues under the following emperors; thus Adolf of Nassau seizes a large part of Thuringia, which he wrests from the weaker princes. Albrecht of Austria and his successor Henry of Luxembourg also seek to enrich themselves in this way, the latter by marrying his son to a Bohemian princess. This is a typical case of the development of the conditions of the time.

This current continued under new growth of ecclesiastical power, but at the same time there was also a growth of the current that wanted to have nothing to do with the Church. The teachings of the Waldenses or Cathars had a stirring effect, there were tremendous struggles against the reemerging princely power. The situation of the peasants, which had been lifted by the emergence of the cities, now became more and more oppressive because of the feudal and robber baronies, the bishoprics and abbeys, to which they had to be in thrall. The cities had had a time of bloom, at that time the principle had applied: City air makes free. - But in the course of time many cities had become dependent, especially the Hohenstaufen had succeeded in bringing many cities into dependence. Now the cities tried to keep off further influx, they made an end of it and looked for princely protection. As a result, the peasant population became more dependent on their landlords. The mood of the oppressed was stirred up by the Waldensians and heretics, for whom the church was no longer sufficient.

The cry for freedom and the Christian-heretical mood went hand in hand; religious sentiment merged with political movement and this popular mood found its expression in the peasant wars. Whoever wants to grasp this spiritual heretic mood independent of external church and princely power, must realize that especially in the Rhine regions - "the Holy Roman Empire's alley of the priests" - hard battles were waged by the princely power against this current for decades. Popular preachers, especially those from the Dominican Order, resisted, and even fought, because they did not want to submit to the oppression of the people by the papal power. They do not agree with the political expansion of power of the papacy and the expansion of the power of the princes.

The French kings saw in the papacy a support in the struggle with the German princely power. So the pope was led to Avignon and during about seventy years the popes had their seat there. Henry of Luxembourg fought with the Pope, to whom the King of France lent his support. Thus, from Avignon, from France, the pope now dominates Christendom, and as the princes increasingly assert their power over their feudatories, so the popes strive for ever greater extension of their authority. The secular clergy, the power-owning abbeys and bishoprics were dependent on the pope. Meanwhile, the princes arbitrarily shaped the map of Europe. Emperor Charles IV united Brandenburg, Hungary and Bohemia under his household power. The imperial dignity has become a titulature, the emperors are content to administer their private lands, the imperial title is bartered away by the princes.

If we want to understand the real history, we must keep in mind how the great change from the Middle Ages to the new age consisted in the princes using for their private interests that discontented mood; the states that are formed we see spreading their tentacles over a centuries-old popular current, and it is this current for religious liberty that is used first to fight the papacy and to stop its power, and then to creep itself into that position of power.

That current developed at the bottom of the popular soul; it aspired to something quite different from what the Reformation then brought. The secularized clergy had become as much of an oppressor as the secular princes. The urban population, in their egoism, did not feel compelled to side with the oppressed; only when their own freedom was threatened did they endeavor to preserve it. Thus, in the Swabian League of Cities and in the Palatinate, they did not succeed after all, so that new princely power emerged here as well.

Already during the reign of Emperor Sigismund there was an outbreak in Bohemia in a peculiar religious movement. A movement that spread among a man who - one may acknowledge or deny what he represented - nevertheless relied only on his own conviction; a conviction that was based on the purest will, on the fire in his own breast. This man was John Hus of Hussonetz, the preacher and professor at the University of Prague. Based on something that was spreading throughout Europe - for even before that, in England, through Wiclif, the establishment of original Christianity had been urged - but which received special splendor through the fiery eloquence of the outstanding man, Hus found approval everywhere. Everywhere his words found acceptance, because one only had to point out the shameful behavior of the secular clergy, the sale of the bishoprics and so on. They were heartfelt words, because they proclaimed something that went through the whole of Europe as a mood and only emerged where a personality was found to give it expression. Through the popes and the counter-popes, the church had fallen into disarray; the popes themselves had to do something. Thus the Council of Constance was convened. It constituted a turning point in medieval life. A transformation into a pure church was sought. This project set in motion a lively opposition. Political motives played a part, and Emperor Sigismund himself was keenly interested. The worst abuses of the church were to be corrected, for the clergy was completely neglected, and incredible abuses had also broken out in the monasteries. In Italy, Savonarola had begun his powerful agitation against the secularization of the Church. The council also wanted to settle accounts with this. The president of the Council was Gerson, the head of the University of Paris, a second Tauler for the Romance countries. This fact was significant for the outcome of the Council, because with the help of Gerson it had become possible for the emperor to wrest the leadership from the popes and to put an end to Hussitism. Because this current had nothing to do with the development of political power, but arose from the deepest soul of the people, it was so dangerous for the spiritual and especially for the secular rulers. It is not Rome alone, it is the emerging princely power to which Hus fell victim. The Hussites waged their war for a republican Christianity not only against the church, it was waged against the approaching princely power.

But in Protestantism this power allies itself with religious discontent in order to exploit it for its own purposes. The deeds of the successors of Hus were thus condemned to death that the princely power had triumphed. Otherwise, the emperors did not have special power in those times: the emperor Frederick II, for example, was commonly called the "useless emperor."

This gives us a picture of the peculiar development in that time. In the more and more emerging cities a flourishing life, whereas there, where the feudal power asserted itself, continuously increasing oppression; in the field of deeper religious life at the same time, influenced by these two factors, a strong movement, as it emerged in the appearance of a Wiclif, a Hus. Italy offers us a brilliant picture of that urban life in its city republics; in Florence, for example, it was the Medicean merchants who had a fundamental effect on the culture of Italy. All these cities were authoritative cultural factors.

So you will understand that the means by which one otherwise attained power were no longer sufficient. In the Middle Ages, except for the number of clergymen who worked in the monasteries and in civil service positions, no one had been able to read and write. Now this relationship has become different. Reading and writing are spread by the new currents that now flood over the masses. The great writing institutes spread in copies what was formerly forbidden to the people, and these copies were bought as later books: writings of the New Testament, popular science books, books of sagas, legends, heroes and medicines were thrown into the people in the 14th century.

In particular, schools had been established everywhere by the Brothers of the Common Life, as already mentioned. Along the Rhine by name, what had formerly been hidden in monasteries was now brought to light. A formal transcription industry arose in Hagenau in Alsace, whose announcements, such as those of Lamberts, are similar to today's catalogs. A sustained manuscript trade also emanated from Cologne, and the Brothers of Common Life were also called "Brödder von de penne."

Here we have the preparatory stage of the art of book printing. It arose from a deep need, it did not come into being as if shot from a gun, but was prepared by the fact that it had become a need, in that the books produced by copying were too expensive, but also the poorer classes of people demanded books. It was a means then of rousing the people.

The men who led the peasants' cause at that time could only spread these pamphlets among the people by the fact that the conditions were favorable to them. Thus the peasants' alliances, the "Poor Conrad", the "Bundschuh" with the slogan: "We may not recover from priests and nobility" were formed at that time. The need for something new emanated from all sides, and when Gutenberg invented movable type around 1445, the means was given to be able to develop the cultural life of that time. The receptivity was prepared for the expansion of the field of vision. Under the influence of such moods the secularization of arts and sciences developed, and thereby the period of inventions and discoveries. Whereas formerly the church alone had been the bearer of the arts and sciences, now the cities and the bourgeoisie are the bearers of culture; from the former merely ecclesiastical culture it has been brought over and secularized.

We come to the discoveries, which we can only briefly enumerate, which extended the scene of human history over vast unknown territories. In addition, there was the invasion of Greece by the Turks, through which the culture that still existed there gained influence on Europe. A great number of Greek artists and scholars emigrated to the other countries, namely to Italy, and found accommodation in the cities. They fertilized the spirit of the Occident. This reformation is called the Renaissance. Ancient Greece rose again, and only now could people get to know the scriptures on which Christianity was based. The ancient Hebrew Testament was read, thanks to Reuchlin in particular, and through him and Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, the movement we know as humanism was set in motion. From the efforts initiated by these influences came the dawn of the new age. Something else resulted from the spread of Turkish violence. For a long time the Occident had been in contact with the Orient. Through the rule of the Italian cities over the seas, of which Venice was the center, it had been possible to bring the products of the Orient, especially Indian spices, to Europe. When the invasion of the Turks made the possibility of this connection more difficult for the merchants, the need arose to find another way to India around Africa. From Portugal and other southern countries, shipments went out to explore the areas around Africa, and Bartolomeo Diaz succeeded in finding the Cape of Storms, later Cape of Good Hope, and Vasco da Gama the sea route to India in 1498. This marked the beginning of a new era for European economic life, which culminated in the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492. But that belongs to the history of more modern times.

So we have come to know the exit of the Middle Ages and the factors that lead over to a new time. Shaken we see the whole life in its foundations. And if one often thinks that the cuts in the historical view are chosen arbitrarily, this cut is really significant. It happened one of those "jerks", as we have been able to trace in the middle of the Middle Ages with the founding of cities, in the beginning with the migration of peoples.

Now under the aegis of the city culture in connection of all these inventions with the great scientific conquest, which is the deed of Copernicus, a whole new culture is evoked. The secularization of the culture, a strengthening of the princely power is brought about by this current. Smaller areas had not been able to resist the devastating moves of the Turks, they had joined more powerful ones. The expansion of the great states is due to all these factors. In manifold pictures we have seen the conditions change, we have seen how the bourgeoisie arises, how it blossoms and how it is confronted with a dangerous opponent in the princely power.

You know that the present is the result of the past, we shall therefore make history in the right way if we learn from the past for the present and the future in the way that comes to us in the saying of an old Celtic bard who says that it is the most beautiful music to him when he hears the great deeds of the past stirring and thrilling him. As true as it is that human existence is the most important phenomenon, and thus man himself the most worthy study, it is also true that man remains a great mystery to himself. When man realizes that he remains a mystery to himself, he will come to the right study. For only then will man face himself in right appreciation, when he knows that this is his secret: his own existence standing in connection with the all-being. This gives him the right basis for all his doing and acting.

But if he wants to know something about this secret of his own existence, he must turn to science, which tells of his own striving. In world history we see how feelings and thoughts turn into actions. That is why we should learn world history, so that we can inspire our hopes, thoughts and feelings with it. Let us bring over from the past what we need for the future, what we need for life, for action!

ACCOMPANYING NOTE: Friends who heard that there existed notes of a lecture on Shakespeare given by Dr. Steiner in 1902 at the Workmen's School in Berlin, expressed the wish to read these notes. They were taken down by Frl. Johanna Mücke, who did not know shorthand, so that they do not claim to be complete. Their 7 pages of typescript may correspond to about 25 typescript pages of the original text of the lecture. But important points emerge even from these incomplete notes.

—Marie Steiner

According to a remark by the famous writer Georg Brandes, we should include Shakespeare in the German classics. And if we consider the enormous influence Shakespeare has had on Goethe, schiller and the development of German literature in general since he was rediscovered in the middle of the eighteenth century, especially through Lessing, we must agree with that remark – especially in view of the excellent translations of his work by Schlegel and Tieck.

A legend has arisen about Shakespeare and whole libraries have been written about each of his works. Academics have given many interpretations of his plays, and finally a number of writers have decided that an uneducated actor could not have produced all the thoughts which they discovered in Shakespeare's works, and they became addicted to the hypothesis that not William Shakespeare, the actor of the Globe Theatre, could have written the plays which bear his name, but some other highly learned man, for example Lord Francis Bacon of Verulam, who in view of the low estimation of literary activity at that time, borrowed the actor's name. These suppositions are based on the fact that no manuscripts written by Shakespeare's hand have ever been found; they are also based upon a notebook discovered in a London library with single passages in it which are supposed to correspond with certain passages in Shakespeare's plays. But Shakespeare's own works bear witness that he is their author. His plays reveal that they were written by a man who had a thorough knowledge of the theatre and the deepest understanding for theatrical effects.

That Shakespeare himself did not publish his plays was simply in keeping with the general custom at his time. Not one of his plays was printed during his lifetime. They were carefully kept under wraps; people were to come to the theatre and see the plays there, not read them at home. Prints which appeared at that time were pirated editions, based on notes taken during the performances, so that the texts did not completely correspond to the original versions, but were full of errors and mutilations.

These partial omissions and mistakes led certain researchers to claim that Shakespeare's plays, as they were then available, were not works of art of any special value and that originally they must have existed in quite a different form. One of these researchers is Eugen Reichel, who thinks that the author of Shakespeare's plays was a man with a certain definite worldview. But such opinions are contradicted by the fact that the plays, in the form in which they now exist, exercise such an extraordinary influence. We see this great effect in plays that have undoubtedly been mutilated, for example in Macbeth. The hold of Shakespeare's plays on his audience was proved by a performance of Henry V under the direction of Neuman-Hofer at the inauguration of the Lessing Theatre. It did not fail to produce a powerful impression in spite of an extremely bad translation and poor acting.

Shakespeare's plays are above all character dramas. The great interest which they arouse does not so much lie in the action, as in the wonderful development of the individual characters. The poet conjures up before us a human character and unfolds his thoughts and feelings in the presentation of an individual personality.

This artistic development, which culminated in Shakespeare, was made possible by the preceding phase of cultural development: the Renaissance. Shakespeare's character-dramas could only arise as a result of the higher estimation of the individual during the Renaissance. During the early middle ages we find, even in Dante and in spite of his strong personality, the basic expression of the Christian ideas of that time. The Christian type of his time, not the individual human personality, appeared in the foreground. This was the general conception. The Christian principle had no interest in the individual personality. But little by little a new worldview aroused interest in the Individual human being. Only gradually did a new interest in the individual arise by means of the different viewpoint.

The fact that Shakespeare's fame spread so quickly proves that he found an audience keenly interested in the theatre, that is to say, with a certain understanding for the representation of the personality as offered by Shakespeare. Shakespeare's chief aim was to describe individual characters, and he was far from presenting to his audience an ethical or moral idea. For example, the idea of tragic guilt, as found in Schiller's dramas, who thought that he had to encumber his hero with it in order to justify his downfall, does not exist in Shakespeare's plays. He simply allows the events to take their course consistently, uninfluenced by the idea of guilt and atonement. It would be difficult to find a concept of guilt in this sense in any of his plays.

Shakespeare also did not intend to present a certain idea, not jealousy in Othello or ambition in Macbeth, no, simply the definite characters of Othello, Macbeth, or Hamlet. Just because he did not burden his characters with theories was he able to create such great ones. He was thoroughly acquainted with the stage, and this practical knowledge enabled him to develop his action in such a way as to thrill an audience. In the whole literature of the world there are no plays which are so completely conceived from the standpoint of the actor. This is a clear proof that Shakespeare, the actor, has the merit of having written these plays.

Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564. His father was in fairly good circumstances, so that his son was able to attend the Latin grammar school in his hometown. There are many legends about Shakespeare's youth. Some say that he was a poacher and led an adventurous life. These things have been adduced against his authorship, yet these very experiences could only enrich his dramatic creation. Even the fact that in spite of his good education he was not encumbered with higher academic study, gave him the possibility to face things more freely and in a far more unprejudiced way. The poet's adventurous nature explains to some extent some of the greatest qualities in his plays: the bold flight of his fantasy, his sudden transformations in the action, his passion and daring, all bear witness to a life full of movement and color.

In 1585, when Shakespeare's financial conditions were no longer in a flourishing state, he went to London. There he began his theatrical career in the most menial way, by holding the horses of the visitors while they were enjoying the performance. He then became supervisor of a number of such boys who had to hold the horses' reins, and was at last admitted to the stage. In 1592 he played his first important role.

His fame soon began to spread—both as an actor and as a dramatist—and his conditions improved, so that in 1597 he was able to buy a house in Stratford. After he became part-owner of the Globe Theatre he was a wealthy man.

The plays written during Shakespeare's first period: Love's Labour Lost, As You Like It, etc., do not differ so greatly from the plays of his contemporaries, of Marlowe and others; their expressive power, their purity and naturalness were moreover impaired by a certain artificial note which was the fashion in those days. The great character-plays, which were to establish his fame for all time, followed: Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar.

Some of Shakespeare's biographers and commentators wish to deduce from certain of his later plays troubled experiences which embittered him. But in Shakespeare's case this is difficult to establish, because his identity withdraws behind his characters. They do not voice his thoughts, but they all think and act in accordance with their own disposition and character.

It is consequently useless to ask what Shakespeare's own standpoint may have been on certain difficult questions. For it is not Shakespeare, but Hamlet who broods over the problem of “to be, or not to be”, who recoils from his father's ghost, just as Macbeth recoils from the witches. Whether Shakespeare believed in ghosts and witches, whether he was a churchgoer or a freethinker, is not the point at all: He simply asked himself: how should a ghost or a witch appear on the stage so as to produce a strong effect upon the audience? The fact that this effect is undiminished today proves that Shakespeare was able to answer this question.

We should not forget that the modern stage is not favourable to the effect which Shakespeare's plays can produce. The importance which is now attributed to props, costumes, the frequent changes of scenery, etc. diminish the effect which is to be produced by the characters in the plays—for this remains the chief thing. In Shakespeare's time when a change of scenery was simply indicated by a notice-board, when a table and a chair sufficed for the furniture of a royal palace, the effect produced by the characters must have been much greater than today.

Whereas in the modern theater so much depends on scenery, props, etc., when the playwright usually gives a detailed description of the scenery so that the effect of his plays may be handicapped by bad staging, Shakespeare's plays leave a strong impression, even when performed badly.

And when a times comes in which we again see the essential more than is the case today, will the effect of Shakespeare's art be ever greater: through the power of characterization which remains alive and unequaled through the centuries.

Goethe has said that the best thing about History is the enthusiasm it arouses, leading to encouragement to like deeds. In a certain sense all knowledge and all understanding have their true value only when they emerge into life. In History, it is necessary to look very far back in order to find the causes of later developments. Just as, to understand individual branches of external evolution—for instance, in building of bridges and roads—we must cling to the fact that these are the fruits of achievements in individual sciences, such as Mathematics and Physics, so also we see everywhere in actual History the fruits of earlier happenings. What comes to expression in our lifetime has its origin in far back ages.

We are now going to study a section of time, upon which many do not care to look back, a time which they would prefer to delete from History as “the dark Middle Ages.” And yet in it we are facing an important section of History—barbaric peoples, knowing nothing of Civilisation and Art, appear on the arena. These tribes, pressed back by the Mongols from their dwelling-place in the Russia of to-day, pushed on far towards the west. We will follow the struggles and destinies of these peoples; then our path will lead us on to the discovery of America, to that point of time at which the Middle Ages merge into the modern epoch, to the time of the great discoveries, when that invention took place which probably had the deepest significance of all, the invention of Printing; the time in which Copernicus gave us a new picture of the world. This evolution led mankind from the folk-migrations to the discoveries of the modern age.

It is much more difficult to point out, in History, the relation between cause and effect, than it is in Chemistry or Physics; for cause and effect often lie far apart.

Not until to-day have men regarded mutual tolerance for the various confessions of faith, as a requisite condition of culture. Yet, as early as the 3rd century before Christ, there existed in India a reciprocal respect and tolerance for the most diverse faiths, as a monument of King Asoka proves. The Christian feeling which sprang up later, in the Roman Empire, shed its influence over the whole of the Middle Ages; but its origin lay neither in the Roman Empire nor in Germania, but in a closed order of the little Jewish race the Essenes. Before we can understand what influence the Middle Ages have upon us, we must first grasp what it is that flows to us from them. An eminent Roman writer, Tacitus, has preserved for us in his Germania, a picture of that race which settled in the Germany of to-day. He describes them as separate tribes, similar in speech, and, though regarding themselves as different races, yet appearing very much alike to the outsider. He found out what was common to them all and gave them the general name of Germani.

Now if we examine the folk-soul of these Germanic tribesmen, we are confronted by the difference between them and the Greeks and Romans. In the construction of their soul-qualities, there is an important chronological difference. Greek culture with its incomparable Art, marks a particular point in human evolution. We saw that before the conquest by the invading Hellenes, there was in Greece a very ancient race, something like the later Germani; these were the Pelasgi, who lived in a community of freedom. After the immigration of the Hellenes, we find two strata of population, victors and vanquished, the contrast of free and unfree. From the folk-migrations and the conquests sprang Greek authority. Hence it follows that only a small section of the population had any share in the assets of culture. Another result was the low value set upon work; even artistic work was considered unworthy of the free Greek citizen. It was through this contempt for work that Greece went under. This culture of the Greeks, unrivalled in many points; was a culture only possible among conquerors. The Roman Empire is a history of continual conquests; when it could conquer nothing more, it went to pieces.

The distinguishing Germanic characteristic impressed itself, in all its component parts, before conquest, and did not allow itself to be subjugated by contact with other races. Its evloution stood firm in face of conflict.

Thus we see the development of the folk-spirit completed in the Greeks after, in the Romans during and in the Germanic before, the great historical struggles. If we are to study their characteristics, we must distinguish more accurately these racial groups in Central Europe. Three races come under consideration. In Spain, France, Ireland and Southern Germany, we find, first of all the ancient race of Celts. They were driven from their original dwelling-place by the Germani. Then came the Slavs, from the East, and forced the German tribes farther back. Thus we find in the Germani, hemmed in by the other two races, a strong intermingling of Celts and Slavonic blood. And this mixture of the Celtic and Slavonic element, influenced the whole culture of the Middle Ages.

When we look back into the far past we see a great and remarkable culture of the ancient Celts. Even to this day the Celtic blood shows itself as active, energetic, mentally alert, inclined to revolutionary impulses. To the Celtic race we owe magnificent poems, songs and scientific ideas. It was the Celts who gave the stimulus for the legends elaborated by German poets in the Middle Ages—Roland, Tristan, Parsifal, etc. This remarkable race has almost disappeared, either pressed farther westward, or amalgamated with the Germanic.

The outstanding features of the Germanic character are courage, the roaming spirit, and a strong feeling for Nature. In it are developed the domestic and martial virtues, practical efficiency and activity directed to useful ends. Hunting and cattle-rearing formed the chief occupations of the Germani; they had only a few simple poems, derived from older races. In its fundamental qualities, the Germanic character remained as it was in the age of barbarism. Within the Germanic element rise the driving forces of a contrasted evolution. A noticeable change took place during the Middle Ages. Greece had developed its sublime Art, Rome its life of Rights, and the concept of the state. The simple Germanic conception of law was based on quite different premises. In Rome, judgment was given on a basis of property-relationships, especially with reference to land or realty. The complicated ideas of justice in the Roman State were derived from the endeavor to bring harmony between the free citizen and the land-owner. All the contention between plebians and patricians, the fighting of the Gracchi, even the party-struggles of the later Republic, were struggles for the rights of the free citizen as opposed to those who gained possession of power because they were in possession of land. Nominally, equal rights in the State pertained to every Roman citizen. Yes, even in the later epoch of the Empire, every emperor possessed nominal rights in the State, because he united in his person, the rights of all free citizens, and exercised them in their stead.

Such factitious ideas were alien to the simple Germanic conception of justice. The special value of free citizenship met with no legal recognition. What evolved from these points of view was club-law, the right of the stronger; he was the mightiest who could make his right felt by force. To begin with, it was physical strength which asserted itself; then everyone must submit and adapt himself to the stronger. The fruit, however, of what was prepared in the Germanic age, appeared later as the right of the free personality, conditioned by nothing but self-acquired proficiency. This is clearly marked in the founding of the Cities. This development of the cities, which took place in the 11th century throughout the whole of Western Europe, presents a significant phenomenon. Whence did they arise? They were founded by those who, feeling themselves oppressed by the land-owners, sought a place where they could enjoy, undisturbed, what they owed to their own activity, to their personal activity. The free citizen of ancient Rome relied upon his title; his rights depended upon it. In the Middle Ages, the title of citizen was of no value; only that counted, which a man acquired for himself. The struggles for independence and freedom which the princes and knights carried on, were merely the expression of a struggle for free personality. It was not like this either in ancient Greece or in ancient Rome. It was a significant transition stage.

Why then did people gather together in the Cities? The reason was, in the first place, a material consideration; they wished to be free from oppression, in order to direct their activity to what was useful, to material gain.

And it was from this city-culture—but not from these new foundations—that there arose in Italy, on the scene of an ancient dying civilisation, the mighty poet-personality of the Middle Ages—Dante. In the Germanic cities, the first inventions were practical: the compass, gunpowder, and finally, the fruit-bearing event of the invention of printing. All this, which led to a complete transformation of conditioins, was born out of the practical achievements of man. At first sight, that may seem very far-fetched, but—as already emphasised—cause and effect in History lie far asunder. An example may illustrate this.

In 1846, Franz Palecky, the Czech historian, referred to the reform movement of the Middle Ages, in his work on the Czech race in the 15th century. Long before the so-called Reformation, this movement was tentatively considering a re-organisation of the Church. Dealing with the Hussite movement most sympathetically, Polacky, who had himself taken an active part in the Revolution of 1848, called particular attention to these currents. In a quite original way, he pointed out in them what had been developed in the days of city-culture. It is a common property of the Celtic, Germanic and Slavonic tribes. If we study the sagas and songs of these peoples, we understand it. They are distinguished form the sagas of ancient Greece and Rome in that they depict what the human heart can suffer, and what redeems it.

This is the feeling for tragedy. Among the Greeks and Romans, the hero of the story was he who was externally victorious, not he, who maintained his soul in uprightness. The heart of the people was always with him who was outwardly favoured by fortune. It was different with the Germanic peoples. The heart of the Germanic and Slavonic races beat for the heroes who externally failed, but whose souls stood firm. They lived in the soul, in the spirit. Heroes like Siegfried or Roland, or the king's son Mark, were extolled in the poems of these races. It is not to the external victories of these heroes, but ih their courage in suffering and failure, their unbowed spirit, that homage is paid. Everything gives place to the rectitude of spirit and soul. In the Imperium Romanum we see courage and consciousness of justice flourishing; in Greece we see Art; but with the Germani, it is the life of the soul that confronts us. They had no images of their gods; no splendid statues, such as the Greeks had. Their souls worked out the images of their gods; deep within their hearts they formed their God.

From this tendency of the races sprang, too, the thought of reformation. To be themselves collaborators in what faith was to be—that is what these people desired. A hundred years before Luther, Wycliffe had introduced a reform movement in England. The folk-spirit demanded that men should take the Bible into their own hands. From this spirit the Huss movement also arose. As far back as the early Middle Ages there were already preliminary efforts in this direction. The Emperor Henry II, of Saxon lineage, who was later canonised by the Catholic Church, demanded an ecclesia non romana. Militz, the inadequately appreciated savant, wrote his book on Antichrist, while pining in a prison in Prague. That which came to light in such demands and movements—the emancipation from external coercion, the spiritual deepening—was claimed by Palacky for the Slavs: he sees the thought of human kindness, as expressed by Herder, represented in the Fraternal Fellowship, developed on Bohemian soil. It lies deep in the nature of the Germanic races to regard an untrammelled organisation as the ideal.

It was neither after, nor during, conquest, that the Germanic character was formed; but the quality which marked it before this time, was maintained throughout this stage, and eventually developed to these ideals. The thought of freedom was evolved during the Middle Ages in spite of all the counter-currents which gave this period the name of “the dark Middle Ages.” If to many to-day the Middle Ages appear as a gloomy epoch, yet it was in the Middle Ages that that was developed which later, the poets sought, namely, the consciousness of freedom, a consciousness for which the 18th century fought bitterly, and with which the struggles of the present day are concerned.

We must free ourselves from the state of coercion which many are still bound to-day, though the consciousness that, as regards the feeling of freedom, all men are equal, has spread more and more. Men have grasped that by right no man can be a slave or a bondsman. To-day man feels himself free by right. But another form of unfreedom, material unfreedom, has persisted. In ancient Greece, the oppressed, the vanquished, the slaves, were unfree. Unfree in ancient Rome were those who had no claim to citizenship, no share in the State. In the Middle Ages men were made unfree by physical force. None of these forms could be maintained; economic unfreedom alone persists.

More and more clearly has the striving for complete freedom of personality shown itself. The ancient Greek valued distinction or race; the Roman, distinction of person; modern man attaches value to capitalism, to a show of wealth. Thus evolution points to the fall of more and more of those barriers which shut the personality off from the outside. Then the ground becomes free for the new ideal. History teaches us that the free man acquires a new value from out the spirit. The man who fulfils the ideal will be he who is freed from all these forms of oppression, he who, released from earthly gravity, can direct his gaze upwards. Only then will Hegel's words become wholly true: “History is the progress of humanity to consciousness of freedom.”

The picture of Central Europe has altered fundamentally between, say, the year 1 and the 6th century A.D. This change involves a complete replacement of the peoples who lived on the Weichsel, the Oder and the Elbe, by others; hence it is very difficult for us to picture those races, to learn anything about their customs and way of living. We must find a way of our own to form such a picture. Tacitus, in his Germania, gives descriptions of the country at that time. No other records have been preserved to us of those days, and we must enlist the help of the North Germanic legends to complete the account. What Tacitus says about these races is very significant, in contrast to the Roman conception of the conditions of those days. In the opinion of Tacitus, these peoples were the original inhabitants of that land, for he cannot imagine that any other races would be able to get on in that inhospitable regiion. He mentions the tribes which dwell on the Rhine, the Lippe, the Weser, the Danube and in Brandenburg; these alone are known to him. He tells of characteristic features in them, and on account of their similarity groups them together under the name Germani. They, however, felt themselves to be different tribes, and the struggles with the Romans, they were called may different names, of which only a few, such as the Suevi, Longobards, Frisians, etc. have been preserved to later days

They were descended originally from one, Tuisco, to whom they pay divine homage, expressing it in songs of battle. Tuisco's son was Mannus, after whose three sons they named their chief tribes: the Ingavones, Istavones and Herminones If we compare this information of Tacitus' with the myths of another Aryan race, we find in Sanscrit, the sacred language of the Hindus, the same disignation Manu, for their supreme leader. This indicates a tribal relationship. Indeed, we can follow like deities in all the Indo-Germanic tribes. Thus Tacitus relates that the hero of Greek legend, Hercules, was also honoured by the Germani, bearing among them the name of Irmin. We know that there existed among the southern Indo-Germanic tribes a legend which found artistic elaboration in Greece: The story of Odysseus. Tacitus found, in the neighbourhood of the Rhine, a place of worship dedicated to Odysseus and his farther Laertes. So we see that the culture of the Germani at this epoch was akin to the culture we meet with in Greece in the 8th and 9th centuries B.C. Thus in Greece we see later the development of a culture which in Germany has remained stationary at a lower level.

All this points to an original relationship between these races. The peoples who lived, later in Germany, Greece and Russia, probably had their earlier homeland north of the Black Sea. From there one tribe wandered to Greece, another to Rome, and a third towards the west; the original culture of all these peoples was maintained in this form by the Germani, and further developed by the Celts. Tacitus tells us nothing of the manners and customs of that remarkable race. By the songs and sagas collected later in Iceland, in the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, we must conclude that what that race produced, persisted there. Tacitus tells us further of the customs of the Germans in their tribal assemblies, which, however, we must picture as deliberations of very small communities. To these assemblies came all the warriors of that province; the consultations were carried on to the accompaniment of beer and mead, and we are told that the old Germans made their resolutions when drunk in the evening, but revised them next morning when they were sober, and not until then were the decisions valid. As we learn from the Iliad, the same custom existed among the Persians. So we must conclude that there was an original Aryan stem, and hence a relationship between all these races.

Among the Germanic races in the north, a great similarity is specially evident in the characteristic forms of their religion, which do, indeed, fundamentally resemble those of the south, and yet show a much greater conformity with those of the Persians. According to the northern Germani, there were originally two kingdoms, separated from each other by an abyss: a kingdom of fire, Muspelheim, and a kingdom of ice, Niflheim. The sparks which flew over from Muspelheim, gave rise, in the abyss, to the first race of giants, of whom Ymir was the most outstanding. Then arose the Cow, Audhumbe, which was overlaid by the ice, and brought forth a mighty human form. From this human form sprang the Gods: Woten, Wile and We, whose names mean Reason, Will and Kindness. This second race of Gods was called Asen. Its descent was traced to the first race of giants.

Here too there occurs an important connection between the languages, for Asuras, the name of the Persian gods, suggests the sound Asen, again indicating a relationship connecting all these races. We find another important indication in an ancient Persian formula or poem of exorcism, which has come down to us. It points to changes in the mind of the race, to ancient Gods, deposed and supplanted by others. The service of the Devas was forsworn, the service of the Asuras confirmed. Here appears similarity to the giants, who were overcome by the Asen.

Moreover, the North Germanic legend tells how the three Gods found an ash and an alder on the seashore, and from them created the human race. The Persian myth, too, makes the human race come forth from a tree. We find echoes of these myths among the Jews, in the story of the Tree of Life in Paradise. Thus we see, from Persia to Scandinavia, by way of Palestine, traces of similar mythical ideas.

So we have proved a common fundamental character among certain races. At the same time there are again differences between a southern and a northern branch of the common main stock. To the southern branch belong the Greeks, Latins, and Hindus; to the northern, the Persian and Germaninc tribes. Let us see then what sort of races we have to do with in Germany now. As they confront us, we are bound to believe that they have traits of character which the Greeks and Italians have long cast off, and indeed, the Greeks after, the Romans during the conquest of their empire; whereas these northern peoples developed their essential characteristics and qualities before that conquest. They were the original, unpolished qualities, which these races had preserved. They had not experienced that transition-stage, through which, in the meanwhile, the southern races had passed. Hence we have to do here with the clash of a race which has remained conservative, against one which, although related to it, has attained a greater height of culture.

At the time of the rise of Christianity, which was to acquire so great a significance for them, described by the Greeks in the works of Homer. They had not cooperated in the advance of culture and civilisation which lay between. In the first centuries A.D., Tacitus describes the Germani of the borderlands of the Danube, the Rhine and the Lippe. These races were characterised by the roving instinct, love of liberty, and delight in hunting and war. Domestic matters lay in the hands of women. Here we meet with a civilisation and a form of society which had long disappeared from among the Greeks, and could only be preserved where the several members of a tribe were still bound to one another by blood relationships. Hence teh many tribes. In those who were conscious of their derivation from the same family—for they were regularised families, not hordes—tribal kinship was evolved from the separate families. Thus the wars which they waged were almost always against foreign blood.

Towards the end of the 4th, and during the 5th century, we see all these races compelled to change their places of abode, and to seek new ones.

The epoch of the folk migrations had begun. The Huns broke in and therewith knowledge faded from among the peoples living in the east—the Gepids, etc., and above all, the Goths. This race, divided into the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, had already accepted Christianity. It is a race of special importance for us, just because of the way it apprehended Christianity. Whereas the Franks, who later spread Christianity from west to east, thrust it upon other races with force, the Goths were full of tolerance. The high level of culture which they had already attained is vouched for by the circumstances that we owe to a Gothic bishop, Ulfias or Wulfila, the first translation of the Bible, the so-called Silver Codex, which is preserved in Upsula.

These Goths, whose civilisation came from the east, held a different form of Christianity from those whose conversion issued later from the west. They were not like the Franks who, in the days of Charlemagne, thrust Christianity upon the Saxons by force of arms. (All these eastern Germanic tribes professed the Arian belief, a point of view which, at the Council of Nicea, was declared heretical and persecuted by the supporters of Athanasius).

The Arian Christians maintained that God dwells in the bosom of every man. Hence the Goths believed in the deification of man, as Christ, Who had gone before, showed to men. This viewpoint was allied with a deep cultivation of feeling. The Goths had the greatest possible tolerance for every other form of religion. No compromise was possible between two Christian creeds which were so different from each other. As absolute tolerance was a characteristic of these Goths; it never occurred to them to force a belief on anyone else; thus we are at once confronted with the difference in the way Charlemagne and Clovis, supporters of the Athanasian profession of faith, exploited Christianity for political purposes.

The Arians saw in Christ a man highly developed above all other men, but a man among men. Their Christ belonged to humanity and dwelt in the human breast. The Christ of the Athanasian Christians is God Himself, throned high above men.

Athanasiaus won the victory, and the evolution of culture was essentially influenced by it.

The Germani were hemmed in on all sides by foreign races; in the south and west by the Romans and Gauls (Celto-Germanic tribes); while from the east new encroachments of peoples continually took place. The first Christian Germanic tribes had neer known anything but absolute tolerance; the Christian Franks brought in a compulsory Christianity. This led to a change of temperament. On the evolution of this section of the Germani depended essentially the further evolution of culture. A radical change of legal conditions had gradually come about.

To a certain extent calm and fixity set in with the end of the fifth century. Through continual reinforcements from the east, larger tribal communities had been formed from the above mentioned tribes, who were for ever attacking one another, and of whom even the names (Chatten, Frisians, etc.) have only in a few cases been preserved. Through the loosening of the old blood bonds, another motive for clinging together was created. In place of the blood bond, appeared the bond which allied a man with the ground and soil that he tilled.

The connection together of tribes became equivalent to their connection with places. The village community arose. It was no longer the consciousness of blood relationship, but the connection with the soil that bound several members together. This led to a metamorphosis of the conditions of property.

Originally all property was held in common and private property acquired prominence. Still, everything which could be common property (forest, pasturage, water, etc.) remained so, for the time being. Then an intermediate stage grew up between common and private property, the so-called “hide” of land. The use of this half-private, half-common property served as a basis to determine the so-called free inhabitants of the hide, the community; and in those early days, almost all the dwellers within these bounds were free.

This stands in stark contrast to actual private property: weapons, household utensils, garments, gardens, cattle, etc., everything which the individual has personally acquired. This limitation is expressed in the fact that private property is closely bound up with the personality of the possessor That is why a dead man had his weapons, horses, dogs, etc. buried with him in his grave. It is an echo of this ancient custom when, even today, at the funeral of a prince, his orders, crown, etc. are carried after him, and his horse is led behind.

With the Chinese, too, a race which in many ways shows similarity with the ancient Germani, a dead man has the objects which belonged to him personally, buried with him, a condition carried out today, at any rate with paper models.

Thus we see the transition from the tribal, to the village community, which has developed from certain relationships, from this we understand further metamorphoses. We understand why Tacitus does not speak of the Asen, but of Tuisco and his son Mannus. He speaks of races which have not yet reached to a higher level of culture. Other races came from the north, and brought with them ideas which they developed there. These fitted in to the higher stages of culture which had meantime been reached. How far does a man get with the ideas that confront us in Tuisco or Mannus? He remains with the human being, does not go beyond himself. It would have been useless to introduce the service of Wotan to these tribes. The service of Wotan goes out into the universal; man seeks his origin in the bosom of Nature. It was only in the later stage of civilisation that man could rise to this religious level. When he has settled down, he understands his connection with Nature. Thus we have seen how the primitive culture of the southern Germani was influenced from the north, and how, in the meantime, high civilisations had developed among related races in the south.

We shall see further on, under what conditions the southern culture was spread among the Germani. An interesting survey is presented to us there; the deep-seated kinship of different races. We see the external influences which alter the character. Cause and effect become clear to us.

And so we learn to understand the present from the past. Eternal variability governs not only Nature, but History. How could we face the future with confident courage, if we did not know that the present also changes, that we can shape it to our liking, that here too the poet's words hold good?

The old gives way, Time alters all;
And new life blossoms from the ruins.

It is only necessary to mention one of all the facts which speak to the same purpose, in order to see what far-reaching changes preceded the fifth century. At the end of the fourth century we find the Visigoths east of the Danube; a century later the map shows them in Spain. And just as this race travelled from one end of Europe to the other, so did many more. They penetrated into countries where they met with different civilisations, and adopted other customs. To understand the revolution which a hundred years produced in Central Europe, we must cast a glance back to the previous historical epochs. If we follow the records of the Romans, we find warlike tribes along the Rhine, whose main occupation, apart from fighting, was the chase. Farther east we find agriculture and cattle raising among the Germani; and farther still the Romans speak of the tribes in the northeast as of something nebulous and obscure.

We are told that this race, which dwelt by the sea, worshipped the Sun, believing that it saw the Sun goddess rising from the ocean. Of the Semnones, who lived in the Electorate of Bradenburg, it is told that their divine service was characterised by blood sacrifices. True, with them it was not, as a rule, human beings, but animals, that were offered up to the Gods. Nevertheless their sacrificial services bore a reputation for cruelty, which distinguished them from other tribes. And there would be much besides to relate concerning this epoch.

Then followed a comparatively quiet time.

Gradually the frontiers of the Roman Empire were crossed by various tribes. To begin with, in the third century the Burgundians advanced against the Roman Empire in the southwest, and farther north the Franks, who invaded Gaul. Farther east, too, on the Danube, other tribes moved against the Roman Empire. Thus the Romans, with their highly developed culture, had to defend themselves againse those peoples. We find here a great difference in levels of culture. Among the Germani everywhere, a system of barter still prevailed, among the Romans money transactions had been developed. Trade among the Germani was a matter of exchange; trading with money was still unknown to them. We see the clash of highly developed culture with barbaric tribes.

Then the Huns broke in. In the year 375 occurred the first clash with the Herulern and the Ostrogoths, whose dwelling place was on the Black Sea. They were forced westwards, and consequently the Visigoths were also obliged to break up their settlements. Where were they to go but into the Roman Empire, which they inundated as far as the Danube. Already the Roman Empire was split into an East and West Empire, the former with Byzantium, the latter with Rome, as its capital. The East Roman ruler assigned dwelling places to the Visigoths; but they nevertheless first had to fight for them at the battle of Adrianople. There, in that neighbourhood, Ulfils wrote his translation of the Bible. Soon, however, the Visigoths were obliged to resume their wanderings. Slavonic tribes followed in their footsteps, pressing them farther westward. Under their king Alarich, they conquered Rome, and, in the fifth century, founded the Visigothic Empire in Spain.

The Ostrogoths followed them, and likewise sought to establish a dwelling place in the domain of the Roman Empire. The Germanic tribe of Vandals conquered Spain, then sailed over to Africa, and, in the region where Carthage once stood, founded a Vandal Empire, and thence harassed Rome with incursions. Thus the whole character of these races is such, that into every part of the new configuration of Christian Rome, the Germanic races pressed. From this type of conquest new configurations of quite a special character arose.

In the domain of the former Gauls, rose a mighty empire—the empire of the Franks—which, for a whole century, imprinted its stamp on Central Europe. Within it, above all grew up what is commonly called Roman Christianity. Those other races—Goths, Vandals—who, in rapid triumphal marches, had subdued for themselves parts of the Roman Empire, soon disappeared again, completely, out of History. With the Franks we see a mighty empire extending over Europe. What is the reason for this?

To find that out, we must cast a glance at the way in which these tribes extended their empire. It was done in this way: a third, or two-thirds, of the region which they had invaded, was divided among the conquerors. Thus the leaders received great tracts of land, which they cultivated for themselves. For this work the conquered inhabitants were employed; a part of the population became slaves, or unfree. This was the policy of the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths in Italy. You may suppose that, under the existing circumstances where the population lived at a high level of culture, this mode of procedure caused great hardship and could not be permanently maintained.

It was different in Gaul.

There, there were great forests and uninhabited tracts of land. There, too, the conquered regions were divided, and large portions fell to the leaders, so that the leaders became great landowners, and rulers over the vanquished tribes. Here, however, they were not trammelled by already existing circumstances; there was room for expansion. And, although the leaders became rulers, circumstances made it possible for this to happen without great oppression. In the days before folk migrations, members of one tribe had, in essentials, resembled one another. Freedom was a common Germanic possession; in a certain sense, every man was his own master, responsible to no one, on his own land and soil. The independence and power of the leaders increased, because so many had become dependent on them.

Hence, they were in a position to protect themselves better; and small proprietors placed themselves under the protection of greater. Thus arose a protective relationship of the powerful towards the less powerful. Many small feuds were carried on by many small landowners who could not adequately protect themselves, in dependence upon more powerful protectors. Some swore fealty in case of war; others relinquished parts of their property, or paid tribute to their protectors. Such dependents were called vassals. Others held land under feudal tenure from the big proprietors, as payment for their service in case of war; this was the fief. The powerful warriors were feudal lords, the others were vassals. Thus, in the most natural way in the world, proprietary relationships grew up.

The invasions of the Goths had no lasting effect. Those peoples who had forced their way into civilised lands, came to nothing; their power was soon broken.

It was different in Gaul. Here, where extensive tracts had still to be cleared, the immigration of new tribal masses could only be welcomed, in the interest of culture. The great men in the Empire of the Franks were unimpeded in the cultivation of their racial character.

The Goths and Vandals were wiped out, they and all the Germanic tribes who came into the regions where industry was already developed. We see the Franks as independent of an industrial foundation; and the Franks gave their impress to the character of the ensuing age, especially because they provided a base upon which evolving Christianity was able to expand. Although the Visigoths were originally Aryan Christians, other ideas were engrafted into their belief; among the industrial assumptions which were foreign to their nature, that was developed which may be regarded as the stamp of materialistic conditions. It was not so among the Frankish tribes, where the Church was the great landowner. Undaunted by material considerations, these abbots, bishops, priests and theologians devoted themselves to the service of religion. Unalloyed, as it emanated from the nature of these men, the characteristic culture of this form of Christianity was developed. The spiritual strivings of the free ranks were encouraged by the influx of the Celtic element. The Celts, whose fiery blood again manifested itself, became the teachers and leaders of the spiritually less active Franks. From Scotland and Ireland came Celtic monks and priests in great numbers, to spread their faith among the Franks.

All this made it possible for Christianity to be, at that time, not a mirror of external conditions, but to develop freely, unconstrained by material considerations. The conditions of Central Europe were determined by Christianity. All the knowledge of antiquity was thus preserved by Christianity for the Germanic tribes. Aristotle gave the spiritual kernel, which Christianity sought to grasp. At that time there was no dependence on Rome. The Christian life could develop freely in the Empire of the Franks. Plato's world of ideas found entrance too into this spiritual life. This was brought about especially through the influence of Scottish monks, above all through Scotus Erigene in his work De Divisioni Naturae, a work which is well-known as indicating a high level of spiritual life. Thus we see how spiritual life was being formed, unhindered by external conditions. Spiritual currents received their characteristic independently of industrial conditions. Later when the material pressure increased they accepted, retrospectively, the character of these conditions; then, however, when they themselves joined them, they exercised influence on them in their turn.

Several small kingdoms formed what we know as the Merovingian Empire, which later came under the power of one ruler.

From the foregoing description you will see that southern Christianity was bound to be different from that with which it was later amalgamated. The Christianity of the Franks was comparatively independent, and could make use of political relationships, to its own advantage. The farther the Roman rule was pressed back, the more clerics came from among the Franks. Their education lagged far behind that of the other clergy; the learned priests and monks were all Celts.

In these centuries, therefore, the most divine tribes were gradually shaken up together; the invasion of the Huns gave rise to these changes While that which has been described was taking shape within the actual currents of civilisation, great struggles had been going on outside. But what we call the evolution of civilisation was not essentially affected by these external struggles.

The Huns had penetrated far to the west; if we are not blind to what the old legends relate, we know that they pushed as far as the south of France.

In the old heroic poem of Walther on der Vogelweide, handed down to us in a Latin translation, we are told how the princes of the Germanic tribes, the Burgundians and Franks, had to scourge the Huns, among them that Walther, son of the prince of a Germanic tribe, who ruled in Aquitania. This heroic song narrates the feats of Walther, Hagen and Gunther. In continuous succession followed incursions of the Huns, harassing the Germanic races far into the west, until eventually the Franks, the Goths and what was left of the Roman race, formed the force which opposed the Huns in battle on the Catalaunian Plain in the year 451. This is the first defeat that the Huns suffered. Their rule, however, which had weighed heavily upon the peoples, left no lasting impression.

In manners and customs the Huns were so alien to the people of Europe, that their whole type and form is described as something quite peculiar. An important point was that this race formed a compact unity; a submissiveness, amounting to idolatry, under their king, Attila, made them an irresistible terror to other races. After their defeat on the Catalaunian Plain, this army received its last decisive defeat through Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, who withstood Attila, and induced him to retreat. Leo knew the power which Attila exercised over his people. But with all his power Attila did not know what was opposing him, namely, Christianity; therefore he bowed before it.

The rule of the Huns remained merely an episode; what came from the west made a much more lasting influence. After Attila's death in 453, his army soon collapsed. Neither was the rule of the Goths, Gepidae, or Vandals, of lasting duration; they found themselves hemmed in by conditions already settled, and were not able to maintain their own character. Things happened differently in France: the culture there proved faithful to the character of the Frankish tribe, and it may be seen how powerfully this race evolved. Later, however, we see too how this tribe forced other to accept Christianity. We see further that there existed nothing better calculated to develop material culture than Christianity; all sorts of culture forms received their stamp from external Christianity. And because they were able to maintain their free character, they provided a framework for mobile forms in which spiritual life could develop, and in this way the spiritual, industrial communities—monasteries, etc.—grew up. In process of time, however, spiritual and industrial culture were separated. Although the empire of Charlemagne considered itself a Christian empire, in spreading Christianity by force, it set itself in opposition to the spirit of Christianity. Hence Christianity was soon no longer suited to industrial life. The conditions of industrial life were felt to be oppressive—and thus the “free cities” originated.

This, in outline, is the evolution of spiritual and material evolution. You see that it was only when the spiritual currents no longer coincided with the material conditions, that this disparity found expression in a purely material culture, the city-culture. From these industrial formations grew out of material interests. The population which could not be supported on the land, pressed into the towns to find protection and security. Thus we see empires rising and falling, and new creations taking the place of old. We can, however, only understand their organisation, if we realise how the first model realm, the empire of the Franks, was formed. Not having pressed into already existing conditions, but going where space was offered for free expansion, this tribe had evolved its character and was able to develop its rule.

The tribes driven from their homes during the great folk migrations, were not only thoroughly mingled together, they were also newly constructed. Some had disappeared from History altogether, others had taken their place. This great metamorphosis was accomplished, not merely from outside, but still more in the deepest depth of their character. At the beginning of the epoch of the folk migrations, we see the various Germanic tribes asking a question of destiny. For the Goths, who had chosen for themselves a tolerant Christianity, this question signified extermination. For the Franks, confrontation with it under other freer, more favourable circumstances, it meant increase of power throughout the centuries. Whether or not for the good of all, we shall see in what follows.

A common prejudice is expressed in the maxim: Human evolution moves forward in regular succession, the unfolding of historical events makes no leaps. This is connected with another prejudice; for we are also told that Nature makes no leaps. This is repeated over and over again; but it is untrue both for Nature and for History. We never see Nature making mighty progress without leaps. Her progress is not gradual; on the contrary, small processes are followed by important results, and the most important of all result from leaps. Many cases could be enumerated in which Nature advances in such a way, that we can observe a transition of forms into their exact opposite.

In History this is particularly important, because there we have two significant occurences, which gradually prepared, but then ebbed away, only to make their eventual advance in a forward leap:

1. The founding of the free cities at the beginning of the Middle Ages.
2. The great inventions and discoveries at the end of the Middle Ages.

History moves very quickly forward at the change from the 11th to the 12th century. New forms of society evolve from old ones. From the fact that many men left their homes, to settle in the cities, sprang up—throughout Germany, France, England, Scotland, and as far as Russia and Italy—cities with new conditions of life, new organisations, laws and constitutions. At the end of the Middle Ages we find the great discoveries, the voyages to India, America, etc., and the world-wide invention of printing. All this shows us what a radical change has been affected through the birth of the new spirit of Science—through Copernicus.

Two incisions were made by this; and if we are to study the Middle Ages thoughtfully, these two occurances must be place in the right light. They appear as leaps, but such an event is gradually prepared, until with the force of an avalanche it breaks forth, and rushes forward in a flood. If we pursue them step by step, it will become clear that these two events had been prepared in the life of the Germani. We shall see through what circumstances it was that such great power was given to the Franks, such influence over the configuration of European relationships. For this purpose we must understand the character of that race, the necessary metamorphosis of industrial relationships, and the powerful penetration of Christianity in the 4th century. These two things indicate the alteration in the life of the Germani. They condition the evolution of the Middle Ages. It would be useless to follow all the wanderings of the Germani, to see how Odoacer dethroned the last West Roman Emperor, how the Goths were driven out of Italy by the Emperor Justinian, how the Longobards seized possession of Northern Italy—we see the same circumstances enacted over and over again.

In the southern regions, where the Gemani found political and industrial conditions already firmly established, the idiosyncrasies of their own tribes disappeared; they lost all significance. We hear nothing more of the Goths, Gepidae, etc., they have vanished, even to their names. In contrast to this, the Franks had arrived at free, not yet fixed, condition, where serious appropriation was as yet non-existent, and through this political configuration, the Franks became the ruling race.

Now we must see how these developed in the empire of the Franks, that which we call the Merovingian kingdom. It was actually nothing but many small kingdoms, formed in the most natural way. The Merovingians remained as victors, after they had overcome the others who were originally their equals. All these kingdoms had been formed in the following way: some little tribe wandered in, subjugated the inhabitants and divided the land in such a way that all the members received small or large properties. Thus all dominion was based on land ownership. The most powerful received the largest domain. For the tilling of these properties, a great number of people were employed, some taken from the inhabitants, but part were prisoners of war, made into workers. Simply through this difference between the ownership of less of more land, were power relationships developed. The largest landowner was the king. His power was based on his property—that is the characteristic trait. Out of these powerful relationships, the relationships of rights were formed, and it is interesting to observe how this came about. Certainly we find among the Germanic tribes, laws founded on customs evolved in ancient times, before we have any knowledge of them. Among the smaller tribes all the people assembled to administer justice; later, the members of the tribe only came together on March 1st, to take counsel about their concerns. But now the great landowner was not responsible to the others for what he did on his own property. True, we find a conservative clinging to the old prescriptive laws among the different tribes. We find them preserved for long periods among the Saxons, Thuringians and Frisians, also among the Cheruscans, whose tribe kept them longer than has been generally believed. It was different where large landowning had developed, because the proprietor, absolute in his own domain, became also irresponsible. This irresponsibility gave rise to a new legal position, in which the jurisdiction of power, the authority of the police, was exercised. If another man committed an offence, he was called to account for it; if the irresponsible one did it, the same offence was looked upon as lawful. What was illegal among those without power, was legal among the powerful. They were able to change might into right.

Now, in this way the Franks could farther extend their power, and, especially in the northeast, could conquer great territories. At a time when war followed war, the less powerful were dependent on the protection of the mightier. Thus arose the fief and vassal system, which called forth a selection of powerful men. Then an arrangement for transferring certain rights by means of contracts sprang up.

The great landed property, the king's estate, required special legal conditions, which could be transferred to others by the king or the owner. Together with the land, the jurisdiction and the police authority would be transferred. King's law and the law of the small vassal came into being. As the result of this innovation we see the development of a powerful official class, not on a basis of stipend, but of land owning. Such justiciaries were the highest judges. In the beginning, when they still had to take into consideration the rights of powerful tribes, they were bound to respect ancient laws. Gradually, however, their position became that of an absolute judicature, so that, in course of time, side by side with the kingdom, there was formed in France a kind of official aristocracy which grew to be a rival of the kingship.

Thus in the 6th century, a rivalry developed between the sovereign and the new nobility, and this attained the greatest significance.

The original governing race, which sprang from the Merovingians, the large land owners, was succeeded by the Carlovingians who had originally belonged to the official aristocracy. They had been mayors of the palace to the ruling race, which had been overthrown by the rivalry of the aristocratic officials. Essentially, therefore, it was the possession of large property that was the basis of power relations; and the strongest moral current of the church, had to initiate its rule in this roundabout way through the large land owner.

It was the characteristic feature of the Frankish Church that, to begin with, it represented nothing but a number of large land owners; we see the rise of bishoprics and abbacies, and of vassals who placed themselves under the protection of the Church, in order to receive fiefs from it. Thus, side by side with the large, worldly land owners, clerical proprietors also arose. This is the reason why we see so little depth, and why the spiritual element which we find in Christianity is essentially due to foreign influence. It was not the Frankish race, but men of the British Isles who succeeded in creating those mighty currents which then flowed out eastwards. In the British Isles, many learned men and pious monks were deeply engaged in work. Real work was being done, as we may see, in particular, by the resumption of Platonism and its alliance with Christianity. We see mysticism, dogmatism, but also enthusiasm and pathos, issuing from here. From here come the first missionaries: Columba, Gallus and Winfried-Boniface, the converter of the Germans. And because these first missionaries had nothing in their mind but the spiritual side of Christianity they were not inclined to conform to the conditions of the Frankish tribes. Theirs was the healing virtue, and they found, especially through Boniface, their chief influence exercised among the East Germani. For this reason, Rome acquired an increasing influence at this time in the empire of the Franks. Two heterogenous elements combined together: the rugged force of the Germani and the spiritual strength of Christianity. They fitted in to each other in such a way that it seems wonderful how these tribes submitted to Christianity, and how Christianity itself modified its nature, to adapt itself to the Germani. These missionaries worked differently from the Frankish kings, who spread Christianity by force of arms. It was not forced into their souls as something alien; their places of worship and sacred customs were preserved; their practices and personalities so respected that old institutions were made use of to diffuse the new content. It is interesting to notice how what is old becomes the garment, what is new becomes the soul. From the Saxon tribe we possess an account of the Life of Jesus: all the details concerning the figure of Jesus were clothed in Germanic dress. Jesus appears as a German duke; his intercourse with the disciples resembles a tribal assembly. This is how the life of Jesus is presented in Heiland.

Ancient heroes were transformed into saints; ancient festivals and ritual customs became Christian. Much of what appears today as exclusively Christian was transferred at that time from heathen customs. In the Frankish empire, on the contrary, we see in ecclesiastical Christianity a means of consolidating power; a Frankish code of law begins with an invocation to “Christ, Who loves the Franks above all other peoples.” In the days when the British missionaries represented the moral influence of Christianity, the influence of the Roman Church also increased considerably. The Frankish kings sought alliance with the papacy. The Longobards had seized possession of Italy, and harassed the bishop of Rome, in particular. They were Aryan Christians. That was why the Roman bishop turned first to the Franks for help, at the same time tendering his influence to the Franks. So the Frankish king became the protector of the pope; and the pope anointed the king. Hence the Frankish kings derived their exalted position, their dignity, from this consecration by the pope. It was an enhancement of what the Franks saw in Christianity. All this took place in the west, in the 7th centure. This alliance between the papacy and the Frankish authority, formed a gradual preparation for the subsequent rule of Charlemagne. Thus we see the accomplishment of important spiritual and social changes. This alone, however, would not have led to an event which proved to be of the greatest importance, a material revolution: the founding of cities. For something was lacking in the Frankish Christian culture, although it had efficiency, intellect and depth.

That which we call Science, purely external Science, did not exist for them. We have followed a merely material and moral movement. What Science there was among them had remained at the same level as at their first contact with Christianity. And just as the Frankish tribes took no interest in the improvement of their simple agriculture, and never thought of developing it economically, similarly the Church only sought to build up its moral influence. Primitive tillage offered no special difficulties, such as, in Egypt, have led to the evolution of physics, geometry and technical science. Everything here was simpler, more primitive; thus the financial trading, which was already in use, gave place again to barter.

So European culture needed a new stimulus, and cannot be understood without taking this stimulus into account. Out of Asia, form the far East, whence Christianity once came, came now this new culture, from the Arabs. The religion founded there by Mahomet is, in its content, simpler than Christianity. The spiritual content of Mohammedanism is, essentially, based on simple monotheistic ideas confined to a divine fundamental Being, whose nature and form is not closely investigated, but to whose will men surrender, because they have faith. Hence this religion produces proud confidence in this will, a confidence which leads to fatalism, to a complete self-surrender. This is how it became possible for these tribes to extend Arabian rule, in a few generations, over Syria, Mesopotamia and North Africa, as far as to the realm of the Visigoths in Spain, so that, as early as the turn of the 7th to the 8th century, Moorish rulers were established there, and implanted their own culture in place of that of the Visigoths.

Thus something quite new, of an entirely different nature, flowed into European culture. The spirit of Arabism culture was not filled with dogma concerning angels and demons, etc., but precisely with that which was lacking in the Christian Germanic tribes namely, with external science. Here we find all such sciences—medicine, chemistry, mathematical thinking—well developed. The practical spirit brought over from Asia to Spain found employment now in seafaring, etc. It was brought over at a moment when an unscientific spirit had established its kingdom there The Moorish cities became centers of serious scientific work; we see here a culture which cannot fail to be admired by all who know it. Humboldt says of it: “This depth, this intensity, this exactitude of knowledge is unexampled in the history of culture.” The Moorish intellectuals had width of outlook and depth of thought; and not only did they, like the Germani, embrace Greek science, they developed it farther. Aristotle also contiuned to live among them, but with the Arabs, it was the true Aristotle who was honoured, with a wide outlook, as the father of Science. It is interesting to see how the Alexandrine culture, started in Greece, continued its existence here, and with this we tough upon one of the most remarkable currents in the human mind. The Arabs laid the foundations of Objective Science. From them, this flowed, in the first place, into the Anglo-Saxon monasteries in England and Ireland, where the old energetic Celtic blood now dwelt. It is strange to see what active intercourse had been introduced between them and Spain, and how, where profundity of mind and capacity to think were present, Science revived through the medium of the Arabs.

And it is a remarkable phenomenon that the Arabs who, to begin with, took possession of the whole of Spain, were soon outwardly conquered by the Franks under Charles Martel a the Battle of Poiters in 732. By this victory the physical strength of the Franks overcame the physical strength of the Moors. But the spiritual strength of the Arabs remained invincible; and just as, once, Greek culture rose triumphant in Rome, so Arab culture conquered the West, in opposition to the victorious Germani. Now, when the science which was needed to extend the horizon of trade and world intercourse, when city culture, arose, we see that it was Arab influence which made themselves felt here. Quite new elements flowing in sought to adapt themselves to the old.

We see expressed by Walther von der Vogelweide the perplexity which may assail anyone who follows, with an open mind, the conflicting currents of the Middle Ages. The poet saw how the Germanic tribes were striving for power, and how an opposing current was flowing from Christianity. That which flowed through the Middle Ages was transmuted by Walther von der Vogelweide into feeling, in the following sorrowful description:

No answer came into my mind
How men might come by these three things,
So that no man need to perish.
Two are honour and worldly goods;
These often do each other harm
The third, the chiefest of them all,
Is simply pleasing God. I longed to have them in one shrine
Alas, that that can never be!
For worldly goods and honour
Dwell not, within one human heart,
Together with the grace of God.
Hindrances are everywhere,
Faithlessness sets endless snares,
Haughty force lays all men low.
Thus Peace and Right are done to death.
Never will the Three find refuge
Till these two are healed and well.

We shall see shortly how difficult it was for the man of the Middle Ages to combine these three things in their heart, and how these three gave rise to the great struggles which rent that age asunder

If you take up one of the ordinary school books, or any other of the usual presentations of the Middle Ages, dealing with the period of which we are now going to speak—the 8th or 9th century—you will find that the personality of Charlemagne (768–814) occupies an inordinate space in it. Following the feats and triumphal marches of Charlemagne in this way, you will hardly understand what it was that actually made the significance of this epoch. All this was only an external expression of much deeper events in the Middle Ages, events which will appear as the converging of many significant factors. In order to study these factors, we must mention certain things which we have already touched upon, and which will throw light on this subject.

If you remember the description of European conditions after the folk migrations, when, after these occurrences, the Germanic tribes came to rest in different places, you will think of the way these races brought their ancient institutions, their manners and customs, with them into their new homes, and developed them there. And we see that they preserved their own peculiar character, a kind of social order, consisting in the distribution of private and common property. There were little social assemblies, which formed their original organisation: village communities, then, later, hundreds and cantons; and in all these, what could be common property was so: forest, meadow, water, etc. And only what a single individual could cultivate was assigned to the private family and became hereditary; all the rest remained common property.

Now we have seen that the leaders of such tribes received much larger territories at the conquest, and that on this account certain positions of mastery sprang up, especially in Gaul, where much land was still to be reclaimed. For the working of these domains, it was partly members of the former population, partly the Roman colonists or prisoners of war, who were taken. In this way, certain legal conditions grew up. The large landowner was not responsible to others for what he did on his own property; he could not be brought to book for any orders that he gave. Hence he could rescind for his own estate, any legal prescription or police regulation. So, in the Frankish Empire, we meet with no united monarchy; what was called the Empire of the Merovingians was nothing more than such a large landed estate. The Merovingians were one of the families which possessed much land; according to civil law—through the struggle for existence—their rule extended farther and farther. New territories were constantly added to it. The large landowner was not such a king as we have been accustomed to in the 13th, 14th, yes, even in the 16th century; but private government gradually became legal rule.

He transferred certain parts of his domain, and with them his rights; to others with less land; that was called being “under exemption"; this judicial authority had grown out of the irresponsible position in such circumstances. In return, this type of landowner must pay tribute, and do military service for the king in time of war. In the expansion of such proprietary relationships, the Merovingian stock as conquerors took precedence of all others, so that we must retain the formula: the ancient Frankish Empire progressed through purely private legal conditions.

Again the transition from the Merovingian to the Carlovingian stock, from which Charles Martel descended, took place in the same way, out of the same conditions. The Carlovingians were originally stewards of the domains of the Merovingians; but they gradually became so influential that Pepin the Short succeeded in putting the imbecile Childeric into a monastery, and, with the help of the pope, in deposing him. From him was descended his successor, Charlemagne. In a cursory survey we can only touch upon the external events; for, indeed, they have no further significance. Charlemagne made war on the neighbouring German tribes and extended his control in certain directions. Even this empire, however, cannot be called a State. He waged lengthy wars against the Saxons, who clung to the ancient village organisation, the old manners and customs, the old Germanic faith, with great tenacity. Victory was won after wearisome wars, fought with extraordinary ferocity on both sides.

Among such tribes as the Saxons, one personality in particular would stand out, and would then become a leader. One of these was Widukind, a duke with great possessions and a strong military retinue, whose courage withstood the most violent opposition. He had to be subdued with the greatest cruelty, and then submitted to the rule of Charlemagne. What did the rule amount to? It amounted to this: if the authority of Charlemagne had been withdrawn, nothing special would have happened. Those tribesmen who in their thousands had been obliged to submit to baptism, would have gone on living in the same way as before.

It was the form Charlemagne had given the Church which established his powerful position. Through the power of the Church these territories were subdued. Bishoprics and monasteries were founded, the large properties formerly possessed by the Saxons were distributed. The cultivation of these was in the hands of the bishops and abbots; thus the Church undertook what had formerly been done by secular landholders protected by “exemption,” namely, judiciary authority. If the Saxons did not acquiesce, they were coerced by fresh inroads of Charlemagne. Thus the same things went on as in western France: the smaller landowners could not carry on alone, hence they gave what they had to the monasteries and bishoprics, to receive it again under feudal tenure.

The one condition was, then, that the large properties should belong to the Church, as in the newly established bishoprics of Paderborn, Merseburg and Erfurt, which were cultivated for the bishop by the conquered tribes. But even those who still had their own possessions held them as fiefs and had to pay ever-increasing taxes to the bishoprics and abbeys. This was how the rule of Charlemagne was established: with the help of the great influence obtained by the Church whose suzerain he was, his position of authority was achieved.

Charles extended his authority in other regions, just as he was extending it here. In Bavaria he succeeded in breaking the power of Duke Tassilo and sending him to a monastery, so that he might bring Bavaria under his own dominion. The Bavarians had allied themselves with the Avars, a people who may be called the successors of the Huns. Charles was victorious in this struggle and fortified a strip of land as a boundary against the Avars, the original Avarian limit of the land which to-day is Austria. In the same way he had protected himself also against the Danes.

Like Pepin he fought in Italy against the Longobards, who were harassing the pope; again he was victorious, and established his authority there. He experienced too against the Moors in Spain, and almost everywhere he was the victor. We see Frankish rule established over the whole of the European world of those days; it merely contained the germ of the future State.

In these newly won regions, Counts were inaugurated, who exercised justiciary authority. In the places where Charlemagne alternatively held his court—fortified places called Palatinates—were the Counts Palatine, mostly large landowners, who received certain tribute from the surrounding districts. It was not only tribute from the land and soil, however, which fell to their share; they also received revenues from the administration of justice. If a murder were committed, the public tribunal was convened by the Count Palatine. A relative, or someone who was closely connected with the victim, brought the indictment. At that time certain compensation could be paid for murder, a recognised sum, differing in value for a free man and an unfree, paid partly to the family of the murdered man, partly to the justiciary of the canton, and partly to the king's central fund. Those who looked after communal concerns—actually only such as concerned taxes and defense—were the land-graves, who travelled from one district to another, ambassadors with no special function.

Under these conditions, the divergence between the new nobility of landowners and the serfs became more and more marked, and also between the landowners and those freemen who were indeed personally still free, but had fallen into a condition of servile dependence, because they had to pay heavy tribute and to render compulsory military service. These conditions grew more and more critical; secular and ecclesiastical property became increasingly extensive; and soon we see the populace in bitter dependence, and already we meet with small conspiracies—revolts—foreshadowing what we know as the Peasant Wars. We can understand that, in the meantime, material culture developed more and more productively. Many Germanic tribes had had no concern with agriculture before the folk migrations, but had earned their living by cattle raising; now they were developing agriculture more and more; especially were they cultivating oats and barley, but also wheat, leeks, etc. These were the essential things which were important in that older civilisation. There was, as yet, no actual handicraft; it was only evolving under the surface; weaving, dyeing, etc. were mostly carried on by the women at home. The arts of the goldsmith and the smith were the first crafts to be cultivated. Still less important was trade.

Actual cities were developed from the 10th century onwards, and therewith a historical event began to take shape. But what sprang up with these cities, namely trade, had at that time no importance; at its best it was only a trade in valuables from the East, carried on by Israelite merchants. Trade usages hardly existed, although Charlemagne had already had coins minted. Nearly everything was barter, in which cattle, weapons, and such things were exchanged.

This is how we must picture the material culture of these regions; and now we shall understand why the spiritual culture also was bound to assume a certain definite form. Nothing of what we picture as spiritual culture existed in these regions, either among the freemen or the serfs. Hunting, war, agriculture, were the occupations of the landowners; princes, dukes, kings, even poets, unless they were ecclesiastics, could seldom read and write. Wolfram von Eschenbach had to dictate his poems to a clergyman and let him read them aloud to him; Hartmann von der Aue boasts, as a special attribute, that he can read books. In all that secular culture catered for, there was no question of reading and writing. Only in enclosed monasteries were Art and Science studied. All other students were directed to what was offered them in the teaching and preaching of the clergy. And that brought about their dependence on the clergy and the monks; it gave the Church its authority.

When we read descriptions today of what is called “the dark Middle Ages”—persecution of heretics, trials of witches, and so on—we must be clear that these conditions only began with the 13th century. In the older times nothing of this kind existed. The Church had no more authority than the secular large landowners. Either the Church went hand-in-hand with the secular authority, and was only a branch of it, or it was endeavouring to cultivate theology and the science of Christianity.

Until the current of spiritual influence came from the Arabs, all spiritual concerns were fostered only in the monasteries; the activities of the monks were completely unknown to the world outside. All that was known outside the monasteries was the preaching, and a kind of spiritual instruction given in the primitive schools.

The authority of the Church was enhanced by the fact that it was the clergy themselves who carried out all the arrangements for promoting knowledge. The monks were the architects; it was they who adorned the churches with statues, they who copied the works of classical, too, the emperor's chancellors, were, for the most part, monks.

One form of culture which was fostered in the monasteries was Scholasticism. A later was Mysticism. This scholasticism, which flourished until the middle of the 14th century, endeavoured—at least at one juncture—to inculcate a severely disciplined way of thinking. There were severe examinations to undergo; nobody could make progress in absolutely logical discipline of thinking without hard tests; only those who could really think logically, were able to take part in the spiritual life. Today that is not considered. But actually it was because of this training in consistent logic that when the Moorish-Arabian culture came to Europe, this science found disciplined thinking there already. The forms of thought with which Science works today were already there; there are very few arrangements of ideas, which are not derived from thence.

The concepts with which the Science—still operate today, such as subject and object, were established at that time. A training of thought, such as does not appear elsewhere in world history, was developed. The keen thinker of today owes that which flows in the veins of his intellect to the training fostered between the 5th and 14th centuries. Now some may feel it to be unjust that the masses at that time had nothing of all this; but the course of world history is not directed by justice of injustice, it follows the universal law of cause and effect. Thus we see here two definite currents flowing side by side: 1. Outside, material culture, absolutely without science; 2. A finely chiseled culture, confined to a few within the Church. Yet the culture of the cities was based on this strict scholastic way of thinking. The men who carried through the great revolution were ecclesiastics: Copernicus was a prebendary, Giordano Bruno was a Dominican friar. Their education and that of many others, their formal schooling, was rooted in this spirit of the Church. They were not powerful men, but simple monks, who, indeed, often suffered under the oppression of those in power.

Nor was it bishops and rich abbots, but on the contrary, poor monks, living in obscurity, who propagated the spread of Science. The Church, having allied itself with external powers, was obliged to materialise itself; it had to secularise its teachings and its whole character. Very long ago, up to the 12th century, nothing was held more solemn, more sublime, by the Christians, than the Lord's Supper. It was regarded as a sacrifice of grateful remembrance, a symbol of the intensifying of Christianity. Then came the secularisation, the lack of understanding for such exalted spiritual facts, especially as regards the festivals.

In the 9th century there lived in the land of the Franks, at the court of Charles the Bald, Scotus Erigena, a very distinguished Irish monk, in whose book De Divisioni Naturae we find a rich store of profound intellectual thought—though, indeed, not what the 20th century understands as Science. Erigena had to fight against hostile criticism in the Church. He defended the old doctrine that the Lord's Supper represented the symbolism of the highest Sacrifice. Another, materialistic, interpretation existed, and was supported in Rome, namely, that the bread and wine was actually transformed into flesh and blood. This dogma of the Lord's Supper originated under the influence of this continuous materialisation, but it only became official in the 13th century.

Scotus Erigena had to take refuge in England, and at the instigation of the pope, was murdered in his own monastary by the fraternity of monks. These struggles took place, not within the Church, but through the interpenetration of secular influence. You see that spiritual life was confined to a few, and was closed to the masses, upon whom lay an ever-increasing pressure, both from the secular and the spiritual side. In this way discontent continued to grow. It could not be otherwise than that dissatisfaction should increase among these people of divided loyalties. In country, on the farms, new causes of discontent kept cropping up. No wonder that the small towns, such as those already established on the Rhine and the Danube, should continually grow larger and form themselves anew from the influx of those who could no longer get on in the country. The fundamental cause of this reorganisation of conditions was the people's thirst for freedom.

It was a purely natural motive which gave rise to the culture of the cities. Spiritual culture remained undisturbed for the time being; many cities developed round the bishoprics and monasteries. From the city-culture rose all that constituted trade and industry in the Middle Ages, and afterwards brought about quite different relationships.

The need to develop the full life of the human personality, was the cause of the founding of the cities. It was a long step on the path of freedom; as, indeed, according to the words of Hegel, history signifies the education of the human race towards freedom.

And if we follow the history of the Middle Ages farther, we shall see that this founding of the city-culture represented, not an insignificant, but a very important step on the path of freedom.

The history of the Middle Ages is specially important for human study, because it deals with an epoch which we are able to investigate from its simple origin up to the rise of what we call “States.” And, moreover, we have here an interweaving of many factors. In simple circumstances, a complete form of culture, such as Christianity is, was living a full life. Out of a condition of barbarism, we see developing more and more the blossom of medieval culture—what we know as “discoveries.”

To those races, thrown confusedly together on the path of folk migrations, we see arriving by a complicated, roundabout way that which today we term “Science.” The Middle Ages had come into a great heritage. Yet, of what we have learnt to know of Greek culture, nothing has remained but a few traditions, seen through the spectacles of Christian conceptions. On the other hand, a very great inheritance has remained from the days of the Roman Empire, with its government and administration of justice, showing a serried unity such as had never before appeared in world history, nor is to be found elsewhere in the Middle Ages. It is only in the new age, otherwise so proud of its freedom, that we meet with such an expansion of the authority of the State. This, allied with that other idealistic culture movement by which the Roman Empire had gradually been penetrated and absorbed, came to people who know nothing of any such education and who, moreover, had been uprooted by the folk migrations. All these tribes—Goths, Heruleans, Longobards, Franks, Saxons, etc.—were in quite a different position from the Romans; they had remained completely at the stage of childhood.

They led a kind of Nature-life, confined to hunting and waging war, without settled law or justice. A great transition now took place in the relationship and conceptions of these tribes, who lived together in small groups.

What held these separate tribes together? The memory of some ancestor, who had given the tribe its name—the memory of mighty generations which had distinguished themselves in ancient wars or at the conquest of new land, handing down to the tribe the titles of count, prince and duke.

The transition was expressed in a liking for communal ground. Men began to attach more value to community of land ownership than to blood relationship.

Instead of tribal membership, appeared what we call the village community. The whole of material life was based on land and soil. There was still neither trade nor industry; all that was necessary in that line was looked after by the women, young people and slaves. The majority of the population knew nothing beyond agriculture and frequent military expeditions. They had no notion of what we call culture today, no idea of what we look upon as the first essentials: reading and writing. It is reckoned as a special merit of Charlemagne's that in his old age he took the trouble to learn to read and write. All the education there was in the conquered districts lay in the hands of the Roman population. From it sprang the civil service; hence the influence of the Roman conception of justice. Thus it was in the western regions; it was different in the east. There, in the districts which form the Germany of today, the original Germanic character had kept itself free from these influences. The unbroken strength of the Thuringian and Saxon tribes was something with which everyone had to reckon on, in the Middle Ages.

The only thing which brought education to them was Christianity. Yet the actual Sciences—such as Mathematics, Natural Science, etc.—were not included in it. To have added moral, ethical concepts was the merit of Christianity. Especially among the Frankish tribes, the influence of the clergy, particularly of the immigrant Celtic monks, was very strong. Among these tribes, which had been led by favourable circumstances into a free land, where, in regions still to a large extent uncultivated, they could develop their own particular character—we can best see how this metamorphosis was accomplished. The metamorphosis of small communities to larger ones came about here. Counts and princes conquered more and more territories and enfeoffed to small proprietors, parts of their property. By this means, the power of the large landowner extended farther and farther. A kind of jurisdiction and constitution arose out of this transfer of relationships belonging originally to purely civil law. What the Irish and Scottish monks originally instigated was a religious zeal, a holy inspiration, to work for the salvation of mankind. All that was changed. The Franks could only think of Christianity as a means to obtaining power. Charlemagne, in particular, made use of the Church to increase his dominion. Any bishop instituted by him was generally chosen as a tool for his government. In the beginning the Church was led only by those who were zealous for the faith, those who were genuinely convinced; later, under the influence of external authority, the Church itself sought to obtain power relationships. Thus the bishop was first a ministering member of the Church, later himself a ruler and landowner. It is thus we see the Middle Ages at about the time of Charlemagne. But we cannot speak of an empire of Charlemagne, as we speak of empires today. The ownership of large territories made it possible to transfer landed property. New territory was conquered and produced new transfers. Thus, the justiciaries of the court came into existence. Instead of the old canton tribunals, court tribunals arose, with the imperial counts, or—if they were appointed by bishops—provosts.

In the meantime, there were still always independent tribes, who clung to their old dukes, their self-chosen justiciaries.

So was it still at the death of Charlemagne, and so it remained under his son, Louis the Pious. This we see from his relations with his three sons, Lothair, Pepin and Louis. He divided his empire among the three, as if it were a private property, and when he had another son, by a second marriage, and was about to alter the division, his elder sons rose against him, conquered him at the battle of Lügenfeld and compelled him to abdicate, so that their property should not be reduced. This gives us clear insight into what mattered most in such a State. We see, too, what a false picture is given in the histories dealing with this period. The fighting which took place was for purely private rights, and though the actual populace was, of course, disturbed and harassed by the military expeditions and massing of troops, yet, for the progress of mankind, all these struggles in the post-Carlovingian epoch, were really of no significance.

That, however, which had real significance was the opposition that had developed between the empire of the Franks and the empire which comprised Germany and Austria. In the Western Empire a struggle had gradually arisen between the secular nobility and the ruling ecclesiastical power. The educated clergy supplied what had formerly been provided by those who were left from the Roman population: the higher court officials, the clerks of the law courts, etc. These all possessed a quite uniform education, issuing from the monasteries. Side by side with the educated clergy were the uneducated masses, who were entirely dependent on these cultured ecclesiastics. The whole education of those days proceeded from what was taught in the monastery schools. Christian theology embraced a septuple of sciences, three lower and four higher.

Thus we see, outside, on the land, a race entirely engaged in war and agriculture; whereas in churches, schools and offices, that which sprang from the monastery schools, the sciences were taught. The three lower ones were: Grammar, Logic and Dialectics. Grammar was the science of speech, Logic of thinking—and they have persisted in the same form, since they were taught, from Greece, in the monasteries of the Middle Ages up to the 19th century; whereas now they are considered superfluous. Next to Logic came Dialectics, which has completely disappeared from the scientific curriculum of today. Medieval education was based on Dialectics, which everyone who hoped to achieve anything in intellectual life had to learn and master. Dialectics is the art of defending a truth against an attack, according to the correct rules. In order to do this, the laws of reason had to be known. Sophism could not be emplolyed when it was a question of permanently defending a truth; it was not the age of newspapers, where reasons which were valid today, are not accepted tomorrow.

From Dialectics springs what we may call the scientific and scholarly conscience; and that everyone should have, who wishes to join in scientific work. Not everything can be defended in a rational way; hence the great importance of this training, to be able to make conscientious distinctions. Later, however, this teaching degenerated, so that, towards the end of the Middle Ages, it might happen that someone might volunteer to defend any truth, for 24 hours long, against the attacks of assembled professors, students and layman from Paris.

Those who aspired to the vocation of judge were trained by Dialectics—not so much the presidents of the law courts as those who drew up the verdicts.

When, at the beginning of Faust, Goethe makes him say:

“True, I've more with than all your solemn fools,
Priests, doctors, scribes, magisters of the schools. ”

he is characterising the dignities and offices to which, in these days, a man might attain through a scientific education. A “Doctor” was one who could make independent use of his knowledge. A “Master” had the right to teach in the universities. “Clerks” were all those who were engaged in civil service, whether in a high or low position. “Parsons” were all clergymen. The word Pfaffe (parson) was not in those days a term of contempt, but an honorary title. Thus, as late as the 14th century, Meister Eckhardt calls Plato the great Greek “Pfaffe.”

The four higher sciences were: Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy and Music.

Geometry is the science of space. Arithmetic is a higher form of counting. Astronomy, too, represented more of less what we understand by it today. Music was not the same as that which we call music today.

Music was the science of harmony of the spheres. It was believed that the whole universe stood in harmonious relationship to its individual constituents. All these relationships, expressed in figures, men sought to discover. As also, indeed, colours, notes, etc. are based on certain numbers. In music they sought clarity concerning the laws of harmony, of rhythmic relationships; the concord of cosmic laws was taught.

Thus I have tried to give you an idea of the activities of the class which ruled on account of its education. More and more did this education gain the upper hand in the western realm which we now call France. It was different in Germany. There the tribes had remained independent; they had retained their simple customs, had preserved their freedom to a large extent. The seamy side of these primitive relationships, however, was that here the clergy were uneducated, and allowed themselves to be used as a means to power in the hands of the dukes and emperors.

The dominion of the western empire remained with the Carlovingians. Yet the rulers of this house were never of much value. Eventually the inefficiency of these Carlovingian rulers became especially clear when the Normans—the warlike pirates from the north—harassed the land. These Normans forced their way into the country from the mouths of the rivers Elbe and Weser, plundering the coasts everywhere, especially in France, where they took possession of the northern regions, and pressed forward as far as Paris. At that time Charles III was reigning; he himself proved utterly incapable of undertaking anything against the Normans. Hence it was easy for an unknown Austrian duke, Arnulf of Cairinthia, to put an end to the Carlovingian rule and to usurp the government himself. At first he enjoyed great respect, since he had succeeded in conquering the Normans. But the jealousy among the princes was so great that Arnulf was obliged to appeal to the Church and to conclude an alliance with it. He had to make an expedition into Italy, and in general to submit to ecclesiastical authority at many points. The consequence was that, after his death, the Church, as we shall see, made use of its power. It was not a secular prince or count, but the Archbishop of Mainz, who became the guardian of his son, Louis the Child. In this way the Archbishop assumed all the privliges of government, and henceforth we see the foundations laid for the rule of the Church, which was no longer merely exploited by the secular rulers, but was more and more united in the exercise of secular government and secular jurisdiction. The result of this was that the struggle between secular and ecclesiastical power relaxed, and this introduced that important period of history—the struggle between the Emperor and the Pope. Conventional historical descriptions, which picture these two powers as quite distinct from each other are incorrect. They were only rivals in the fight for external authority, but they were equal powers working in the same direction. We are only dealing with a quarrel between a Church grown secular, and a secular power. We see power expanding in two directions; and as a third, we see the rise of the “free cities,” spreading over the whole of Europe.

A week ago, we studied the contrast between what is today France, on the one hand, and Austria and Germany on the other, as it had developed in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries.

We saw that the Western Empire was distinguished by the traces left of the old Roman culture; and that the Church had soon acquired authority by itself becoming the owner of large tracts of land. So it came to a struggle between the secular nobility and the ambitious Church. The Church had been endowed, especially by Charlemagne, with immense stretches of landed property, so that it became the confederate of the secular rulers, because it was brought into feudal relationships both with those beneath and those above it.

Those who were defeated had come into feudal relationship with the conquerors; the nobles developed into vassals of the king, and thus the kingdom grew stronger and stronger. The Western Empire was continually concerned with the opposition between the vassals and the Church. It was different in the Eastern Empire. Here the old feelings of independence, the sentiment of freedom still persisted, so that the tribal dukes would not consent to enter into a situation of dependence. Thus the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries were filled with continual efforts of the so-called kings—who were indeed elected, but actually were only kings to their own tribes—to bring the dukes of the other tribes into dependence on themselves.

History tells of many struggles of this kind. The Carlovingians were succeeded, after the Frankish Conrad, by a Saxon dynasty, and much is told of the deeds of Henry I, Otto I, II & III and Henry II, as well as of the subsequent Frankish kings, Conrad II and Henry III, IV &V. These kings who, in the Eastern Empire, were elected, had, nevertheless, no say in the constitution or legislation of the tribes. Thus, it is much more important to know what the empire actually signified at that time, than to form an accurate picture of the individual battles.

There were very large dukedoms, which had arisen in the way described. During the original migrations into these regions, some individuals had acquired large properties, and had become more and more powerful; smaller owners became dependent on them, and were obliged to surrender their property as fiefs, and then to pay tribute.

Thus, the tribal dukes gradually absorbed the small properties, and by giving others some part of their large property on feudal tenure, secured for themselves the right to have a recognised number of fighting men at their disposal, and to paid a definite sum.

Thus, through the absorption of the smaller properties by the greater, the Saxon, Frankish, Swabian, Bavarian and other dukedoms came into existence. Gradually, too, the jurisdiction of the cantonal law court was transferred to the so-called high court of justice, which had been thrust upon the vassals and peasants by the dukes. The Church, according to its regulations, must exercise its jurisdiction through provosts. Even the king was nothing but a large landowner. He had vassals, fighting men whom he had forced into his service; moreover he had acquired demesnes, and with them he had established his authority in various places. The relationship of the duke to the king was also only that of a vassal, because he paid a fixed tribute to the court. Jurisdiction was a ducal concern. Only in the frontier region against the Magyars, Wends and Danes, was jurisdiction exercised by the margraves and counts-palatine. There were no large States with central administration and uniform armies. Hence arose the eternal wars of kings against rebellious dukes who did not wish to furnish tribute. Then it gradually became necessary for the Church to make a move.

It was consistent with piety to insist upon the Church paying its dues to the king. It was Otto I, in particular who in all piety, in all ecclesiastical orthodoxy, obliged the Church to render this tribute. The bishops were compelled to do as other vassals did. Church property was divided into two parts, of which one was tilled by the serfs for the bishops, on whom they became completely dependent. Another district remained in less definite relationship; there the peasants had to attend to the fields for the king, in the name of the bishop.

Because of new enemies, the emperors saw themselves forced into a closer relationship with the Church. Powerful enemies threatened Central Europe. The Normans gave up their incursions, after having again and again harassed the tribes, and eventually been conquered by Arnulf of Carinthia at the battle of Tours. They had acquired Brittany for themselves.

Then, from the east, Finnish-Ugrian tribes made inroads, and the invasions of these Magyars caused indescribable terror. Old accounts tell of the horrible brutality of their victorious campaign. The merit of having driven them back is generally ascribed to Henry I and Otto I. To a certain extent this is correct. But the incursions of the Magyars were not to be compared with the declaration and conduct of later wars.

The Magyars invaded at a moment when the dukes were specially rebellious, and Henry I had to begin by asking for a truce in order to create for himself at least some kind of united army. This closing of the ranks was only affected in the department of military affairs, by urgent need.

We have seen how jurisdiction gradually passed over to the land owners, the dukes and kings. Increasingly undignified relationships were formed. A number of people, who had formerly been free peasants had to surrender all they possessed, to come under the sway of the large landowners. Then they were employed not only in agriculture, but as messengers, craftsmen, and on military service. A kind of trade was growing up, especially as a result of the enhanced productivity of the soil, which was constantly increasing, thanks to the employment of so many workmen. At the same time, a definite class of artisans was developing. Hitherto there had been nothing of the kind. As already mentioned, the necessary work in the house was attended to by slaves and women. The only handicrafts had been those of the smith and the goldsmith. But now, through these developments, a new class of artisans and tradesmen was being formed. In places where there were suitable markets, fortified settlements were established all over Europe. Hither came the discontented among those who were unfairly treated, so that the congestion became greater and greater. This trait of the time forced the king to rely on the cities for support.

Calvary was needed against the Magyar horsemen. This cavalry formed the basis of the class of knights which arose during this period. All these must be combined together to obtain a true picture of the course things were taking at that time. This is more important than a detailed appreciation of those battles.

In the fighting on the marshes in 933, among the copper mines in 955, the Magyars were defeated, and suffered such terrible discomfiture that their appetite for more invasions really failed. They founded an empire for themselves in the vicinity of the Danube, in what is today Hungary. At that time the emperors were obliged to rely on the Church; Christianity was politically exploited. The Magyars were converted to Christianity especially by the bishopric of Passau. TO understand what was passing in the souls of men in those days, we must not reckon with later conceptions. There dwelt in the hearts of the people an intensive faith, religious feeling enhanced to sentimental enthusiasm. They listened to the clergy in all matters and were content to be led by them in all their concerns. The dukes and kings favoured this kind of servility. From Charlemagne onward, they had depended on this lordship over souls.

Thus, the clergy became the best and strongest counsellors, and crept into the hearts and souls of the people.

Moreover, it happened that at that time a very strong influence was exercised through the Arabs, not only, as described above, from scientific sources, there were also literary influences, which gave the soul of the Middle Ages a new character. A great accumulation of sagas, fairy tales, legends, sentiments and pictures were implanted in the folk-soul; and this soul-influence transmitted from the East to Europe, was so intensive that we see the originally rough soul of the Germanic peoples assuming milder manners. Moreover their piety became permeated by an element of great importance, namely, the cult of the Virgin Mary, and the altered position of women which arose from it. He who does not appreciate this, knows nothing of the history of the Middle Ages. He shuts his eyes to such facts as that the great mass of the people were often seized with epidemic fear. Fear of this king seized the people about the year 1000 (during the reign of the Emperor Otto III. 983–1002), which was to bring about the end of the world. This great event, to be prepared for by penitential exercises and pilgrimages, stirred the whole of Germany. The Emperor Otto III himself undertook a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Adelbert of Prussia. All this resulted from the folk-soul of the time. He who does not understand this, fails also to understand the rise of the later Crusades. Here also material causes have been sought for the movement, but he who sees it in that light only, is talking beside the point.

The secularism of the bishops and abbots could not remain without reaction, without opposition, and so we can understand the strong movement towards reform which emanated from Cluny. The influence of the Cluniacs was immensely powerful; that it was possible to enforce the “Truce of God” was proof of this.

At a time when there was nowhere a uniformly governed empire, we can estimate what it meant for the endeavours of the Cluny monks to succeed in so limiting the law of might for some days of the week—from Friday to Monday—that during this interval no feuds were fought out. It must be remembered that, at that time, there was still no proper administration of justice; the law of might had full sway. The harsh struggle between the German emperors and the popes was carried out, not merely from selfish interests, but also, on the part of the Church, from fanaticism. The pope felt himself to be the representative of Christ, as well as lord of the secular domain—as if the empire of Christ gave him also secular authority.

Pope Gregory VII, who forced the Emperor Henry IV to the Canoses submission, was originally a Cluny monk, and had acquired his fanaticism there. It was a tendency of the papacy to declare: Just as there are two rulers in the solar system—the Sun and the Moon—so also in human life; the Pope is the Sun, the King is the Moon, receiving his light only from the Church. This opinion found acceptance and was recognised as legitimate even by the great poet Dante, who, in connection with the allocation of authority, characterised the supremacy of the clerical over the secular powers as right and proper. Now, this contest between emperor and pope had reached such dimensions, because in the meanwhile a certain unifying process had been going on. The different dukedoms had been soldered together by external authority. The dukes now saw themselves obliged to render military service and definite tribute to the emperor. All the following countries: Italy, Burgundy, Lorraine, France, Austria and Hungary, Saxony and Poland stood, for a time, in feudal relationship to the German crown.

Thus in the 11th century a certain unity had been established. This increased the power of the Church. At the death of Henty III, it was not secular princes who were appointed guardians of the young king, but the Archbishops, Hanno of Cologne, and later, Adalbert of Bremen.

The permeation of the folk-soul with religious sentiment had led to a blind belief in authority. Now Rome's chance had come. A clever policy was introduced from Rome. The clergy must be detached from all secular interests, so as to have only the one thing before their eyes: preaching and the control of the people. For this purpose, the clergymen must be made completely independent. Thus in the 11th century, celibacy of the clergy became involved with the world through self-chosen blood-ties, would lose his independence and be unable to give such untrammeled service.

This gave the clergy and the popes a tendency towards the development of an inflexible will: only one thing before their eyes—the authority of the Church. So it came about that, with the possession of the bishoprics, the Church could demand a say in the government. Formerly, secular princes had possession of every bishopric which was vacant. Now the decision was to depend on spiritual interests alone; and authority was enhanced, because all appointments were in the hands of the Church. From this arose the quarrel about Investiture, to which Henry IV would not consent, and which led to his submission at Canossa.

All this was comprised in the contest between secular and spiritual power. We saw, in the case of Clovis, that the God of the Christians was his God, because he led the armies to victory; and now we see how the Church itself is acquiring authority. This must be understood, if we are to grasp the new conditions which brought about the Crusades.

We have seen, in connection with the Franks, what had become of the tribes that had been forced from their dwellings by the folk migrations. We saw how Christianity had become authoritative in all circumstances of life, how monasteries and bishoprics had become the central point of the new settlements, and that it was not in spiritual matters alone that the monks were the leaders of the people; they instructed them also in the cultivation of various fruits, were themselves the builders of the churches, and so on.

The cities were content to establish themselves around the bishoprics, and everywhere we see powerful influence of the Church.

We see the influence of the Moors entering into Science and Literature. Through the Crusades, we shall learn to know another influence of very great importance; it likewise came from the East. It was through these influences that the great inventions and discoveries were made. For over there in China and the East, many things were well-known of which the West had no idea: the manufacture of paper, silk-weaving, the use of gunpowder, etc. Thus, on these lines the first impulse was given to the great inventions.

So from two sides we have seen mighty impulses exercising their influence on mediaeval humanity. Keep this in mind together with the founding of the cities, and you will feel that a century was dawning which would give a powerful impetus to evolution. To follow this in the right way, it is not enough merely to absorb it into you understanding. No one really understands the events who tries to grasp them with his understanding only, and not with feeling, who cannot enter into the subtleties of the fold-soul and grasp what is carried on and accomplished within it. To him, the words of Faust apply:

"And what the spirit of the times men call,
Is merely their own spirit after all
Wherein, distorted oft, the times are glass's."

(Ana Swanwick's translation.)