CHAPTER XXIV
THE NEW DAWN
In every part of the Western world we see the leading nations settling down at the beginning of the sixteenth century within boundaries nearly the same as those which define them at the beginning of the twentieth. And for the most part those boundaries remain, in spite of the upheaval caused by the Great War.
There is, however, one notable exception, namely Italy. The very idea of a united Italy does not seem to have been in men's minds until later. The country which we now know by that name was then, as we have seen, divided between five principal States, Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal State, and Naples with Sicily.
Government in the rich and powerful cities was constantly changing hands. In Rome itself, where the situation was made more difficult and complicated than anywhere else, because of the Pope and his claim to governing power, the changes were bewildering. The power of the aristocracy was much broken in the middle of the fourteenth century when Rienzi, "Last of the Tribunes," led the democracy. Rienzi was the friend of Petrarch, and Bulwer Lytton has made him the hero of an exciting novel. But the Pope returned to Rome from Avignon in 1367, and though there were for a while rival Popes in Avignon and in Rome, yet by the end of the century the republican government of Rome had been overthrown and the Pope had gained supremacy.
He never really lost it. At one moment in the {226} fifteenth century the forces of the King of Naples took and sacked Rome itself. At another the Pope had to flee before his own barons. But he soon came back. One of his successors only saved himself from these same barons, or their descendants, by the aid of Naples. Nevertheless by the end of the century, which is the date of the end of the present story, the power of the nobles had received what really was its death blow. In Florence and in Rome their chiefs were simultaneously massacred. The Papal power was finally established.
Venice, as we have seen, was for a while by far the strongest and the most wealthy of the Italian States. But now the new naval power in the Mediterranean, the power of the Turks, was limiting and diminishing her strength, and shortly before the end of the fifteenth century two Portuguese navigators made a discovery of which the effect was to limit and diminish her wealth. If you will look at the map of the world you will see how far the Continent of Africa extends southwards, and you must understand that at the time about which our story is telling us now, no one knew how far southward this Continent stretched. Hitherto no navigator had come to its southern end. Many had gone sailing, sailing, south, but still that land was always there, on their left hand, on the eastern side, until these Portuguese navigators, Bartolomeo Diaz and Vasco da Gama, sailed yet further than any before them, came to the southern end of the great Continent, and found an open sea over which they might sail eastward. They had rounded what afterwards was named the Cape of Good Hope.
And what difference did that make to Venice? It made this difference--that whereas she had been the gate from the East, the port by which the riches and products of the East came into the Western world, this discovery that man could go sailing eastward, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, meant {227} the opening of a new door through which those rich products could be brought to Western Europe. And it was a more convenient way of bringing them, because it did not require all the old long overland travel, perhaps from India through Asia Minor, and then the putting of the merchandise on shipboard to be carried to Venice, and then again the unshipping at Venice and the overland carriage again. This overland route was one way. Another was by way of ports on the Red Sea and thence across the Isthmus of Suez to the Mediterranean. Instead of all this complicated business, there might now be the one shipping in some port, say of India, and the unshipping, perhaps in Lisbon.
[Sidenote: India and America]
Thus the East was opened to the West, and almost at the same moment a new and further West was opened with the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (after whom that great land is sometimes called Columbia) and by that Vespucci, whose baptismal name was Amerigo, after whom it is more commonly called.
Thus immensely, in two opposite directions, was the scene of the great story extended. And the discoveries to which men's minds were turned were not only those about the geography of the world they lived in, and the way in which its continents and its seas were shaped. Their minds began to turn with a new interest to art, to learning and to the beauty of the world.
All through this great story we have seen how wonderfully Rome, in spite of perpetual changes in her government and continual fighting between the various parties trying to get the upper hand, led the world, at one time dominating all by the organisation of her Empire, at another bending the spirits of men and directing their actions by the influence of the Church.
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All over Italy, for many a century, the like contentions and changes in government were frequent, and it was in the very midst of the turbulence and of the fighting of city against city that Dante, greatest of Italian poets, and among the very greatest of all time, came into fame and wrote his "Divine Comedy." He was chief magistrate of Florence in 1300, born of {229} a family that favoured the Guelphs and married to a lady of a family very strongly disposed to the Ghibellines. So he had his full share in the troubles of the times.
[Illustration: COLUMBUS.]
Second only to him among the poets of Italy was Petrarch, his disciple. Petrarch is famous as the inventor of the "sonnet" form of verse. He was a student of the ancient classical literature of which the very existence seems to have been almost forgotten since the inroads of the Goths.
Boccaccio, author of the Decameron, a collection of prose stories which may perhaps be regarded as the foundations of the modern novel, was a contemporary and a friend of Petrarch. Our own poet Chaucer, born a quarter of a century later, was indebted to him for some of the stories which he told in verse form. Boccaccio, even more than Petrarch, was a lover of the classical literature of Greece, of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
[Sidenote: The Renaissance]
In this revival of a love for the ancient literature, and in the works in verse and prose which these great artists created, we cannot trace that they were influenced by the troubadours and trouvères of more than a century earlier. They went back further, to the best models of antiquity. Therefore we have to regard these wonderful Italians as the true originators of that new interest in learning and in all the arts which received the name of the Renaissance, or new birth. For its full growth and development it had to wait until the dawn of the sixteenth century. By that time the art of printing had been invented. Learning in all its branches had received a great impetus at all the universities in every country in Europe. The first English printing press was set up by Caxton, who brought it from Flanders in 1476.
Though the new birth of literature was thus delayed, some of the greatest of the Italian painters {230} were hard at work during the fifteenth century. Cimabue, indeed, who may be said to have been the first of the real Italian painters, since all before him had followed the stiff Byzantine style, dates back to the latter half of the thirteenth. Ghirlandajo, his pupil, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, the great Venetian painter, and many more of great fame, were at work before the fifteenth century closed.
Even in a story sketched in its most bare outlines, as is this, and told with as few names and as few dates as possible, it seemed necessary to mention some of these glorious artists and to realise that the end was at hand of those Middle Ages which have also been called Dark Ages, because of the dark ignorance and barbarity in which humanity at that time was plunged. Some of the goldsmith's and silversmith's work of the day was very finely executed, and many of the finest painters and sculptors themselves did not scorn to work at the jeweller's craft. But the real glory which lightens the general darkness of the Middle Ages, is the splendour of the architecture--the cathedrals and churches, the public buildings and the palaces of the great nobles. The richness of the church architecture in our own country we have shortly noticed already, and all over the world beautiful and noble structures were raised in those troubled ages when most of the arts were little studied. Generally the building is in one or other of the successive varieties of the Gothic style. In Spain we see many traces of the Eastern taste of the Moslems for towers and domes and "minarets," as those slender towers with their balconies for prayer are called. Asiatic influence is found, though far less often, in some Italian buildings also.
[Sidenote: The nations in 1500 A.D.]
Now we may do well to take a look round the world, the scene of this greatest of all stories, and see to what condition we have traced its progress at this point of time--say A.D. 1500 or a year or two before or after {231} that central date. We see, regarding it as a whole, that the nations have been engaged, after the break-up that followed the ruin of the Roman Empire, in framing their territories into something like the shape which we may find on the map now. And generally they have followed the same course, have gone through the same struggles and changes, in their way towards assuming that shape. For at first they split up into a number of small independent bodies, each under the rule of a lord. Nominally there was an overlord, but his sovereignty for a while was not very effective. It was but gradually that he made it real. Some of the nations differed from others in their local conditions. Thus Spain, rather cut off by the Pyrenees from the main story, had its own peculiar difficulties with the Moslems. The sovereignty of Italy, with its five principal States, was complicated by the claims of Pope and Emperor, of Guelph and Ghibelline and of the different city States asserting each its independence. But on the whole, what we are able to see is a tendency for the sovereign overlord gradually to make his power good over the lesser lords, and so to produce something like those national unities which we find now.
The position of Spain, to take that outlying part of the big story first, is that she has just succeeded in overthrowing the Moors in their last Spanish stronghold in Granada. She has almost completed national unity by the marriage of Isabella, the Queen of Castile, with Ferdinand, the King of Aragon. Then, with all her long sea-coast and the sea-going habits of its inhabitants, she will become for a while the greatest naval power in the world and play a leading part in the story. Portugal is independent of her and is opening up the trade with the East round the Cape of Good Hope.
Italy, as we have seen, is split into the five principal States, and has far to go yet before she can be one nation.
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France has unified herself, and so has England, but we have to notice this difference between the conditions of the one and of the other, that in France the king has made himself despotic over his nobles and all his people.
England, no longer hampered by the possession of any territory on the Continent except the single city of Calais, which will be lost to her in the course of the century to follow, is more fortunate than France in that her nobles have won from the king a more liberal constitution, based upon Magna Carta. She will attain a freedom equal to that of France by less terrible means, though not without wars of Royalists and Puritans and the beheading of a king.
Scandinavian countries have for a time, as we have seen, been of the greatest importance in our story, pouring forth swarms of Northmen to make settlement and conquest in all quarters of the known world, but it has not been as nations, but rather in companies of sea-going raiders, that they have so wrought. For the moment those nations are not in the forefront of the world story.
Neither have the German States formed themselves as yet into any formidable nation. The power, always rather vague and ill-defined, of the Emperor has much decreased, and Switzerland and other States have shaken themselves free of it.
The Turk is pressing Austria and Hungary very hard. He holds, for a time, large provinces which had been Austria's, and which will be hers again, and, besides, he has established himself in that territory which is now the Balkan States and Greece, and is in possession of all that he now has of Asia Minor, with Egypt and the northern African coast in addition.
Poland, though she too has felt the Turkish pressure, has become a strong kingdom, and Russia, from her capital of Moscow, is growing in power after {233} combining with those Tartar tribes which at one time threatened to destroy her.
And in all the years of the story with which this volume deals, we see that there has been one force constantly working, through all the time and over all the scene except where the Moslem has prevailed--the force of the Church. It is a divided force, for Eastern Christendom looks to the Patriarch of the Greek Church as its head; but the more important and powerful West looks to the Pope at Rome.
[Sidenote: The new dawn]
We have brought the story through some of the darkest times that mankind has known. Art and culture have nearly been destroyed under the barbarian invasions and the years of fighting. Now the Renaissance, the new birth of learning and of art, is at hand. Already we have seen hints of it and hopes of it, like flowers coming out in early spring, only to be nipped by late frost. There was that wonderful music of the troubadours of the Langue d'oc in the thirteenth century, with the ruder and less accomplished art of the trouvères in Northern France, of the minnesingers in Germany, and of the English minstrels.
But it is in Italy only that we can say that the Renaissance has arrived--in that land where the great painters have been at work, where Dante has sung his divine comedy, where Petrarch has written his sonnets, and where the despots of the cities have employed artists and architects to adorn the little States over which they tyrannised. Moreover, through nearly all Europe, and even in the gloom of the Dark Ages itself, there has been the most wonderful building of churches and cathedrals, of abbeys and ecclesiastical edifices, here and there of kings' palaces and of buildings for public use. Our England, too, has had her poets, of whom the chief is Chaucer rhyming his {234} "Canterbury Tales," his "Romaunt of the Rose," and other beautiful pieces.
[Illustration: A SHIP OF THE TIME OF COLUMBUS. (From _The History of Everyday Things_ (Quennell), by permission of Messrs. B. T. Batsford, Ltd.)]
But except in Italy, these early promises of art and of literature have not been followed up. They are only now, that we leave the story, on the very edge of larger fulfilment. The Dark Ages are dispelled. The dawn comes glimmering out of Italy, northwards. And the scene of the story is being expanded vastly. Columbus has touched America. Da Gama has circled the Cape of Good Hope. The world as known to Western men is about to spread itself to far more than double its former size. We have come to a new world-stage with new plays and new players.
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INDEX
Adrian, English Pope, 152
Adrianople, battles at, 28, 220
Africa, Count of, 34 _et seq._
Agincourt, battle at, 199
Albigenses, the, 161, 172 _et seq._
Alfred the Great, 118 _et seq._
Alphonso VII., 179
Amerigo, 227
Angevins, the, 150
Angli, 38
Anglo-Saxons, the, 39 _et passim_
Angora, 218
Aragon, 179
Architecture, in Dark Ages, 230
Armour, changes in, 187
Attila at Chalons, 36
Augusti, the two, 24
Augustine, St., 61
Austria, 144, 214 _et seq._
Avars, 143
Avebury, 98
Bagdad, Caliphs at, 74, 75
Baldwin, Eastern Emperor, 167
Bannockburn, battle at, 184
Barbarians, the, 8, 17 _et seq._
Basques, the, 38
Belisarius, 44, 47, 49, 53
Berbers, 68, 73
Birmingham, 114
Black Death, the, 185
Boadicea, 38
Boccaccio, 192, 229
Bosworth Field, battle at, 202
Britain, 2 _et passim_
Bruce, Robert, 184
Brythons, 3
Burgundi, 49, 53
Burgundy, boundaries of, 160
Burgundy, Duke of, 160; murdered, 200
Byzantium, 2 _et passim_
Cade, Jack, 201
Cærleon, 11
Cæsar, Julius, 2
Cæsars, the two, 24
Caliphs, the, 71
Canterbury, a great city, 112
Canute, 121
Cape of Good Hope, 226
Capets, the, 128
Carthage, 35
Castile, kingdom of, 177
Caxton, 229
Chapmen, the, 111
Charlemagne, 52, 64, 77, 90 _et passim_
Charles Martel, 87
Charles the Bold, 204
Chaucer, 192, 229
Chester, 11
Church, the, its power, 129 _et passim_; its growing wealth, 130, 131; its favour to Crusades, 131; its increasing strength, 169; evils in the, 172
Celts, the, 3 _et passim_
Ceorls, 20, 107 _et seq._
Cid Campeador, the, 133
Cimabue, 230
Claudius, 3
Clientes, 82
Clovis, 49, 80
Colchester, 5
College of Cardinals, 153
Colonna, the, 166
Columbus, 180, 227
Comitatus, 82
Common land, 107
Constantine, the Great, 25; donation of, 65, 152
Constantinople, 25 _et passim_; taken by Crusaders, 167; taken by Turks, 221.
Cordova, Moorish capital, 177; taken by Ferdinand III., 177
Counts, the, 81
Cracow, capital of Poland, 213
Crécy, battle at, 185
Crusades, 131 _et seq._
Curia, the, 89
Dacia, 8, 28
Dante, 192, 228
Danegeld, the, 120 _et seq._
Danes, the, 64, 111, 118 _et seq._
Days of the week, 41
Decius, 15, 28
Diocletian, 24
Domesday Book, 96
Druids, their religion, 41
Dukes of duchies, 88
Earls of the shires, 117
Edward IV., 203, 204
Edward the Black Prince, 180
Egbert, 94, 112
Empire, the divided, 22 _et seq._
England, 39 _et passim_
English, the, 3, 17
Eorls, 20, 108 _et seq._
Ethelred, 121
Everlasting League, the, 215
Excommunication, its effect, 168
Farmers in England, 186
Ferdinand and Isabella, 180
Feudal System, the, 82 _et seq._
France, kingdom of, 126
Frankish clergy, their value, 78
Franks, the, 14, 33, 37 _et passim_; the Ripuarian, 80; the Salian, 80
Frederick II., 168
Frisians, the, 63
Gallic Empire, the, 15
Game laws of Canute, 147
Gaul, 2, 3, 14
Gauls, 8
Genoa, 166
Germans, 26 _et passim_
Germany, kingdom of, 126
Ghibelline, 165
Ghirlandajo, 230
Goidels, the, 4
Gothic arch, 100, 190; architecture, 191; furniture, 102; house, how built, 100
Goths, 15 _et passim_
Granada, Moorish kingdom, 179
Guelph, 165
Gunpowder, 203
Habsburgs, the, 214 _et seq._
Hadrian, 6, 10
Harold, 122 _et seq._
Henry II., 149
Henry III., 182
Henry IV., 197
Henry V., 197, 199
Henry VII., 202
Heptarchy, the, 92
Holy Island, 42, 62
Homage, 135
Hundred Court, the, 93
Hundred Years' War, the, 184
Hungary, 143, 144 _et passim_
Huns, 26 _et passim_
Huss, 195, 217
Iberians, the, 8
Immunities, 81, 85
Indo-Europeans, the, 22
Indulgences, 172
Inquisition, the, 173
Investitures, 152
Iona, 42, 62
Ireland, conquest of, 151; gold in, 99
Islam, 70
Italian cities, independence of, 163 _et seq._
Janissaries, the, 219
Jerusalem, kingdom of, 136; regained by Saracens, 138
Jews in Spain, 176
Joan of Arc, 200
Joglars, 157
John, King of England, 150, 159
John of Gaunt, 179, 180
Julian the Apostate, 57
Jutes, 3, 17, 38
Jutland, 3
Knights-errant, 155
Knights of the sword, 141, 212
Kossovo, battle at, 220
Leonardo da Vinci, 230
Lewes, battle at, 183
Lisbon taken from Moors, 137
Lithuanians, the, 211 _et seq._
Lollards, the, 195, 217
Lombard League, the, 164
Lombard Street, 66
Lombards, the, 50, 52
London, 113, 114
Louis XI., 204
Luther, 195, 217
Magna Carta, 150
Magyars, 143
Mahomet, 67 _et seq._
Manchester, 114
Matilda, her claim to crown, 149
Maximilian I., 214
Mayor of Palace, 86
Memoria technica, 50, 51
Mercia, 40
Merovingian kings, 80
Michael Angelo, 230
Minnesingers, 154
Minstrels, 103
Moorish "Conquest" of Spain, 175 _et seq._
Moors, 68 _et seq._
Morgarten, battle of, 216
Moscow, 208
Mote Hill, the, 20
Navarre, 179
Nicopolis, battle at, 220
Nordic, the race, 120
Normandy, its origin, 127
Northmen in Sicily, etc., 134 _et passim_
Northumbria, 40
Novgorod, 210
Odoacer, 46, 47
Orsini, 166
Ostrogoths, 29, 37, 47 _et seq._
Oswi, 42, 62, 63
Ottoman Turks, 218 _et seq._
Paladins, the, 90
Palmyra, Prince of, 15
Papacy, its possessions, 88
Papal State, the, 170
Parliament, beginnings of, 182
Patriarchs, the, 57
Patrocinium, 92
Paul, St., 54, 55
Penda, 42, 61, 62
Pepin, first Carolingian, 87
Persians, the, 22 _et passim_
Peter, St., 54, 55
Peter the Hermit, 134
Petrarch, 192, 229
Petrograd, 210
Philip of France, 159 _et seq._
Picts, 6, 38
Pikemen, the Scottish, 188
Plantagenets, the, 159
Poitiers, battle at, 185
Poles, 211 _et seq._
Pope, the, 54 _et passim_
Pope, two at once, 170
Portugal, kingdom of, 137
Precarium, 83, 92
Ravenna, 52
Renaissance, the, 229
Rent, its origin, 108
Richard, Cœur de Lion, 158
Richard II., his French treaty, 196
Rienzi, 225
Roman citizenship, 9
Roman Empire, 1 _et passim_: boundaries of the, 7; walls of the, 6
Roman legions, 9 _et seq._
Roman posts, 2
Roman roads, 1
Rome, 1 _et passim_
Roncesvalles, battle at, 90
Rudolph, of Habsburgh, 214
Russia, 142 _et passim_
Salian Franks, 48 _et seq._, 79 _et seq._
Sapienza, battle at, 224
Saracens, 58, 67 _et seq._
Saxons, 3 _et passim_
Scotland, a fief of England, 151
Seljuk Turks, 218
Sempach, battle of, 216
Seville regained by Christians, 179
Sleswig, 3, 17, 38
Statute of Mortmain, 194
Stephen, his claim to Crown, 149
Switzerland, its rise, 215
Tacitus, 17
Tapestry, 101
Tartars, 211, 220
Tenterhooks, 102
Tertry, battle at, 86
Teutonic Order, the, 142, 212
Thane, the, 116
Theodoric, 47
Theodosius the Great, 28
Timur, 220
Tithes, their origin, 110
Titian, 230
Toulouse, kingdom of, 33
Tours, battle at, 87
Towton, battle at, 202
Troubadours, 153, 156
Trouvères, 153, 156
Tsar, the, of Moscow, 211
Tudors, the, 203
Turks, the, 132 _et passim_
Valens, 26
Valentinian, 26
Vandals, 31, 32 _et seq._
Vasco da Gama, 226
Vassals, their duties, 84
Venice, its power, 166 _et seq._; defeats Genoa, 223
Visigoths, 29, 31 _et seq._
Wales, Prince of, 183
Wallace, William, 184
Wars of the Roses, 201
Wat Tyler, his rebellion, 195
Watling Street, 99, 119
Wends, Holy War against, 137, 140 _et seq._, 212
Wessex, 40
Westminster Abbey, 191
Westminster, ford at, 97
Whitby, Synod at, 63
William I., his claim to the Crown, 122
William Rufus, 146
Winchester, a great city, 113
Wool, its importance, 110; shipped to Flanders, 188
Wycliffe, 194, 217
York, 11
Zenobia, 15, 16
THE END