THE MEDIAEVAL MIND
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
THE
MEDIAEVAL MIND
A HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT
OF THOUGHT AND EMOTION
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
BY
HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1911
TO
J. I. T.
PREFACE
The Middle Ages! They seem so far away; intellectually so preposterous,spiritually so strange. Bits of them may touch our sympathy, please ourtaste; their window-glass, their sculpture, certain of their stories,their romances,—as if those straitened ages really were the time ofromance, which they were not, God knows, in the sense commonly taken. Yetperhaps they were such intellectually, or at least spiritually. Theirterra—not for them incognita, though full of mystery and pall andvaguer glory—was not the earth. It was the land of metaphysicalconstruction and the land of spiritual passion. There lay their romance,thither pointed their veriest thinking, thither drew their utter yearning.
Is it possible that the Middle Ages should speak to us, as through acommon humanity? Their mask is by no means dumb: in full voice speaks thenoble beauty of Chartres Cathedral. Such mediaeval product, we hope, is ofthe universal human, and therefore of us as well as of the bygonecraftsmen. Why it moves us, we are not certain, being ignorant, perhaps,of the building’s formative and earnestly intended meaning. Do we care toget at that? There is no way save by entering the mediaeval depths,penetrating to the rationale of the Middle Ages, learning thedoctrinale, or emotionale, of the modes in which they still presentthemselves so persuasively.
But if the pageant of those centuries charm our eyes with forms that seemso full of meaning, why should we[Pg viii] stand indifferent to the harnessedprocesses of mediaeval thinking and the passion surging through thethought? Thought marshalled the great mediaeval procession, which moved tomeasures of pulsating and glorifying emotion. Shall we not press on,through knowledge, and search out its efficient causes, so that we too mayfeel the reality of the mediaeval argumentation, with the possiblevalidity of mediaeval conclusions, and tread those channels of mediaevalpassion which were cleared and deepened by the thought? This would be toreach human comradeship with mediaeval motives, no longer found too remotefor our sympathy, or too fantastic or shallow for our understanding.
But where is the path through these footless mazes? Obviously, if we wouldattain, perhaps, no unified, but at least an orderly presentation ofmediaeval intellectual and emotional development, we must avoidentanglements with manifold and not alway