The Age of Faith Page 2

III. The Earth and Its Life

  IV. Matter and Energy

  V. The Revival of Medicine

  VI. Albertus Magnus

  VII. Roger Bacon

  VIII. The Encyclopedists

  Chapter XXXVIII. THE AGE OF ROMANCE: 1100–1300

  I. The Latin Revival

  II. Wine, Woman, and Song

  III. The Rebirth of Drama

  IV. Epics and Sagas

  V. The Troubadours

  VI. The Minnesingers

  VII. The Romances

  VIII. The Satirical Reaction

  Chapter XXXIX. DANTE: 1265–1321

  I. The Italian Troubadours

  II. Dante and Beatrice

  III. The Poet in Politics

  IV. The Divine Comedy

  1. The Poem

  2. Hell

  3. Purgatory

  4. Heaven

  EPILOGUE: THE MEDIEVAL LEGACY

  Bibliography

  Notes

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  FIG. 1. Interior of Santa Maria Maggiore

  FIG. 2. Interior of Hagia Sophia

  FIG. 3. Interior of San Vitale

  FIG. 4. Detail of Rock Relief

  FIG. 5. Court of the Great Mosque

  FIG. 6. Dome of the Rock

  FIG. 7. Portion of Stone Relief

  FIG. 8. Court of El Azhar Mosque

  FIG. 9. Wood Minbar in El Agsa Mosque

  FIG. 10. Pavilion on Court of Lions, the Alhambra

  FIG. 11. Interior of Mosque

  FIG. 12. Façade of St. Mark’s

  FIG. 13. Piazza of the Duomo, Showing Baptistry, Cathedral, and Leaning Tower

  FIG. 14. Interior of Capella Palatina

  FIG. 15. Apse of Cathedral, Monreale

  FIG. 16. Cimabue: Madonna with Angels and St. Francis

  FIG. 17. Portrait of a Saint, Book of Kells

  FIG. 18. Glass Painting, 12th Century

  FIG. 19. Rose Window, Strasbourg

  FIG. 20. Notre Dame

  FIG. 21. The Virgin of the Pillar

  FIG. 22. Gargoyle

  FIG. 23. Chartres Cathedral, West View

  FIG. 24. “Modesty”

  FIG. 25. “The Visitation”

  FIG. 26. Rheims Cathedral

  FIG. 27. St. Nicaise Between Two Angels

  FIG. 28. “The Annunciation and Visitation”

  FIG. 29. Wrought Iron Grille

  FIG. 30. Canterbury Cathedral

  FIG. 31. Hôtel de Ville

  FIG. 32. Salisbury Cathedral

  FIG. 33. Cathedral Interior, Durham

  FIG. 34. Cathedral Interior, Winchester

  FIG. 35. Westminster Abbey

  FIG. 36. Strasbourg Cathedral

  FIG. 37. “The Church”

  FIG. 38. “The Synagogue”

  FIG. 39. Saint Elizabeth

  FIG. 40. Mary

  FIG. 41. Ekkehard and His Wife Uta

  FIG. 42. Rose Façade, Orvieto Cathedral

  FIG. 43. Façade, Siena Cathedral

  FIG. 44. Pulpit of Pisano

  FIG. 45. Rear View of Cathedral, Salamanca

  FIG. 46. Cathedral Interior, Santiago di Compostela

  All photographs, with the exception of those otherwise marked, were secured through Bettmann Archive.

  BOOK I

  THE BYZANTINE ZENITH

  325–565

  CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

  Dates of rulers and popes are of their reigns. All dates are A.D.

  226:

  Ardashir founds Sasanian dynasty

  241–72:

  Shapur I of Persia

  251–356:

  St. Anthony of Egypt

  293–373:

  Athanasius

  300–67:

  Hilary of Poitiers

  309–79:

  Shapur II of Persia

  310–400:

  Ausonius, poet

  311–81:

  Ulfilas, apostle to the Goths

  325:

  Council of Nicaea

  325–403:

  Oribasius, physician

  325–91:

  Ammianus Marcellinus, hist’n

  329–79:

  St. Basil

  320–89:

  Gregory Nazianzen

  331:

  B. of Julian the Apostate

  337:

  Death of Constantine

  340–98:

  St. Ambrose

  340–420:

  St. Jerome

  345–407:

  St. John Chrysostom

  345–410:

  Symmachus, senator

  348–410:

  Prudentius, poet

  353–61:

  Constantius sole emperor

  354–430:

  St. Augustine

  359–408:

  Stilicho, patricius

  361–3:

  Julian emperor

  363–4:

  Jovian emperor

  364–7:

  Valentinian I, Western emp.

  364–78:

  Valens Eastern emperor

  365–408:

  Claudian, poet

  366–84:

  Pope Damasus I

  372:

  Huns cross the Volga

  375–83:

  Gratian Western emperor

  378:

  Battle of Hadrianople

  379:

  Theon of Alexandria, math’n

  379–95:

  Theodosius I, emperor

  382–92:

  Affair of Altar of Victory

  383–92:

  Valentinian II, Western emp.

  386–404:

  Jerome’s transl, of Bible

  387:

  Baptism of Augustine

  389–461:

  St. Patrick

  390:

  Penance of Theodosius

  392–4:

  Eugenius Western emperor

  394:

  End of the Olympian Games

  394–423:

  Honorius Western emp.

  395–408:

  Arcadius Eastern emp.

  395–410:

  Alaric I King of Visigoths

  397:

  Confessions of St. Augustine

  c. 400:

  Saturnalia of Macrobius

  402:

  Alaric defeated at Pollentia

  403:

  Ravenna becomes Western capital

  404:

  End of gladiatorial games

  407:

  Roman legions leave Britain

  408–50:

  Theodosius II Eastern emp.

  409:

  Pelagius, theologian

  410:

  Alaric sacks Rome

  410–85:

  Proclus, mathematician

  413:

  Orosius, historian

  413–26:

  Augustine’s City of God

  415:

  Murder of Hypatia

  425:

  University of Constantinople

  425–55:

  Valentinian III Western emp.

  428–31:

  Nestorius patriarch at C’ple

  429:

  Vandals conquer Africa

  431:

  Council of Ephesus

  432–82:

  Sidonius Apollinaris

  432–61:

  St. Patrick in Ireland

  433–54:

  Aëtius patricius

  438:

  Theodosian Code

  439:

  Gaiseric takes Carthage

  440–61:

  Pope Leo I

  440:

  Moses of Chorene, hist’n

  449:

  Anglo-Saxons invade Britain

  450–67:

  Marcian Eastern emp.

  450–550:

  Great age of architecture and mosaic at Ravenna

  451:

 
; Attila defeated at Troyes

  452:

  Leo I turns Attila from Rome

  453:

  D. of Attila

  454:

  Valentinian III slays Aëtius

  455:

  Gaiseric sacks Rome

  456:

  Ricimer rules the West

  457–61:

  Majorian Western emp.

  466–83:

  Visigoths conquer Spain

  474–91:

  Zeno Eastern emp.

  475–6:

  Romulus Augustulus

  475–526:

  Theodoric King of Ostrogoths

  475–524:

  Boethius, philosopher

  476:

  End of Western Roman Empire

  480–573:

  Cassiodorus, historian

  481:

  Clovis and the Franks begin conquest of Gaul

  483–531:

  Kavadh I; Mazdakite communism

  490–570:

  Procopius, historian

  491–518:

  Anastasius I Eastern emp.

  493–526:

  Theodoric rules Italy

  525–605:

  Alexander of Tralles, physician

  527–65:

  Justinian I Eastern emp.

  529:

  Justinian closes schools of Athens; St. Benedict founds Monte Cassino

  530–610:

  Fortunatus, poet

  531–79:

  Khosru I of Persia

  532–7:

  Cathedral of St. Sophia

  533:

  Belisarius regains Africa

  535–53:

  The “Gothic War” in Italy

  538–94:

  Gregory of Tours, hist’n

  546–53:

  Totila rules Italy

  552:

  Silk culture introduced into Europe

  570–636:

  Isidore of Seville, encyclopedist

  577:

  Anglo-Saxon victory at Deorham

  589–628:

  Khosru II of Persia

  616:

  Persians conquer Egypt

  637–42:

  Arabs conquer Persia

  641:

  End of Sasanian dynasty

  CHAPTER I

  Julian the Apostate

  332–63

  I. THE LEGACY OF CONSTANTINE

  IN the year 335 the Emperor Constantine, feeling the nearness of death, called his sons and nephews to his side, and divided among them, with the folly of fondness, the government of the immense Empire that he had won. To his eldest son, Constantine II, he assigned the West—Britain, Gaul, and Spain; to his son Constantius, the East—Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt; to his youngest son, Constans, North Africa, Italy, Illyricum, and Thrace, including the new and old capitals—Constantinople and Rome; and to two nephews Armenia, Macedonia, and Greece. The first Christian Emperor had spent his life, and many another, in restoring the monarchy, and unifying the faith, of the Roman Empire; his death (337) risked all. He had a hard choice: his rule had not acquired the sanctity of time, and could not ensure the peaceable succession of a sole heir; divided government seemed a lesser evil than civil war.

  Civil war came none the less, and assassination simplified the scene. The army rejected the authority of any but Constantine’s sons; all other male relatives of the dead Emperor were murdered, except his nephews Gallus and Julian; Gallus was ill, and gave promise of an early death; Julian was five, and perhaps the charm of his age softened the heart of Constantius, whom tradition and Ammianus credited with these crimes.1 Constantius renewed with Persia that ancient war between East and West which had never really ceased since Marathon, and allowed his brothers to eliminate one another in fraternal strife. Left sole Emperor (353), he returned to Constantinople, and governed the reunified realm with dour integrity and devoted incompetence, too suspicious to be happy, too cruel to be loved, too vain to be great.

  The city that Constantine had called Nova Roma, but which even in his lifetime had taken his name, had been founded on the Bosporus by Greek colonists about 657 B.C. For almost a thousand years it had been known as Byzantium; and Byzantine would persist as a label for its civilization and its art. No site on earth could have surpassed it for a capital; at Tilsit, in 1807, Napoleon would call it the empire of the world, and would refuse to yield it to a Russia fated by the direction of her rivers to long for its control. Here at any moment the ruling power could close a main door between East and West; here the commerce of continents would congregate, and deposit the products of a hundred states; here an army might stand poised to drive back the gentlemen of Persia, the Huns of the East, the Slavs of the North, and the barbarians of the West. The rushing waters provided defense on every side but one, which could be strongly walled; and in the Golden Horn—a quiet inlet of the Bosporus—war fleets and merchantmen might find a haven from attack or storm. The Greeks called the inlet Keras, horn, possibly from its shape; golden was later added to suggest the wealth brought to this port in fish and grain and trade. Here, amid a population predominantly Christian, and long inured to Oriental monarchy and pomp, the Christian emperor might enjoy the public support withheld by Rome’s proud Senate and pagan populace. For a thousand years the Roman Empire would here survive the barbarian floods that were to inundate Rome; Goths, Huns, Vandals, Avars, Persians, Arabs, Bulgarians, Russians would threaten the new capital in turn and fail; only once in that millennium would Constantinople be captured—by Christian Crusaders loving gold a little better than the cross. For eight centuries after Mohammed it would hold back the Moslem tide that would sweep over Asia, Africa, and Spain. Here beyond all expectation Greek civilization would display a saving continuity, tenaciously preserve its ancient treasures, and transmit them at last to Renaissance Italy and the Western world.

  In November 324 Constantine the Great led his aides, engineers, and priests from the harbor of Byzantium across the surrounding hills to trace the boundaries of his contemplated capital. Some marveled that he took in so much, but “I shall advance,” he said, “till He, the invisible God who marches before me, thinks proper to stop.”2 He left no deed undone, no word unsaid, that could give to his plan, as to his state, a deep support in the religious sentiments of the people and in the loyalty of the Christian Church.

  “In obedience to the command of God,”3 he brought in thousands of workmen and artists to raise city walls, fortifications, administrative buildings, palaces, and homes; he adorned the squares and streets with fountains and porticoes, and with famous sculptures conscripted impartially from a hundred cities in his realm; and to divert the turbulence of the populace he provided an ornate and spacious hippodrome where the public passion for games and gambling might vent itself on a scale paralleled only in degenerating Rome. The New Rome was dedicated as capital of the Eastern Empire on May 11, 330—a day that was thereafter annually celebrated with imposing ceremony. Paganism was officially ended; the Middle Ages of triumphant faith were, so to speak, officially begun. The East had won its spiritual battle against the physically victorious West, and would rule the Western soul for a thousand years.

  Within two centuries of its establishment as a capital, Constantinople became, and for ten centuries remained, the richest, most beautiful, and most civilized City in the world. In 337 it contained some 50,000 people; in 400 some 100,000; in 500 almost a million.4 An official document (c. 450) lists five imperial palaces, six palaces for the ladies of the court, three for high dignitaries, 4388 mansions, 322 streets, 52 porticoes; add to these a thousand shops, a hundred places of amusement, sumptuous baths, brilliantly ornamented churches, and magnificent squares that were veritable museums of the art of the classic world.5 On the second of the hills that lifted the city above its encompassing waters lay the Forum of Constantine, an elliptical space entered under a triumphal arch at either end; porticoes and statuary formed its circumference; on the north side stood a stately se
nate house; at the center rose a famous porphyry pillar, 120 feet high, crowned with the figure of Apollo, and ascribed to Pheidias himself.*

  From the Forum a broad Mese or Middle Way, lined with palaces and shops, and shaded with colonnades, led westward through the city to the Augusteum, a plaza a thousand by three hundred feet, named after Constantine’s mother Helena as Augusta. At the north end of this square rose the first form of St. Sophia—Church of the Holy Wisdom; on the east side was a second senate chamber; on the south stood the main palace of the emperor, and the gigantic public Baths of Zeuxippus, containing hundreds of statues in marble or bronze; at the west end a vaulted monument—the Milion or Milestone—marked the point from which radiated the many magnificent roads (some still functioning) that bound the provinces to the capital. Here, too, on the west of the Augusteum, lay the great Hippodrome. Between this and St. Sophia the imperial or Sacred Palace spread, a complex structure of marble surrounded by 150 acres of gardens and porticoes. Here and there and in the suburbs were the mansions of the aristocracy. In the narrow, crooked, congested side streets were the shops of the tradesmen, and the homes or tenements of the populace. At its western terminus the Middle Way opened through the “Golden Gate”—in the Wall of Constantine—upon the Sea of Marmora. Palaces lined the three shores, and trembled with reflected glory in the waves.