THE MUDDLE AGES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 66, 13 March 1912, Page 2

THE MUDDLE AGES.

Mr Theodore Roosevelt, reviewing in the Ohtlcok H. 0. Taylor’s new book on “The Mediaeval Mind,” says:—

“The greatest mediaeval .effect upon ' tlie” ' thought of, after time .was produced’, not by the. schoolmen, but by works which they would hardly have treated as serious at all—by the Roland Song, the ‘Nibelungenlied,’ the Norse and Irish sagas, the Arthurian Cycle," "ihcluding ‘Parsifal’ ; and modern literature, on its historical side, may be said to have begun with Villehardouin and' Joinville. None of tlie leaders of tile" Schools are to-day living forces in the sense that is true of the nameless writers who built up the stories of the immortal death fights in the Pyrenean pass, or of the search for the Holy Grail i “There arc keen intellects still influenced by Thomas Aquinas; but all the writings of all the most lannH.s doctors of the schools taken together had no such influence on the religious thought of mankind as two books produced long afterwards, with no conception of their far-reaching importance, by the obscure and humble authors of the ‘lmitation of Christ’ and the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ In the 13t:h century the spiritual life in action, as apart from dogma, and as lived with the earnest desire to follow in the footsteps of the Christ, reached, in the person of St. Francis of Assisi, as lofty a pinnacle of realised idealism as humanity has ever attained. . “Idle minute that a man in the Middle Ages began to bo free in any real sense he tended to become an outlaw; and, moreover, the men who were most intolerant of restraint in mat tors physical and material made no dmarids whatever for intellectual or spiritual freedom. The ordinary knight or nobleman, the typical ‘man of action’ of the period, promptly resented any attempt to interfere with his .•brutal passions or coarse appetites; but, as he had neither special interest nor deep conviction in merely intellectual, .matters, he was entirely willing to submit to guidance concerning them. King Louis one day propounded to Joinville, in the interests of the higher morality, whether Joinville would rather have leprosy or commit a mortal sin; to which Joinville responded with cordial frankness that he would rather commit thirty mortal sins than have leprosy. “Now, in addition to being a most delightful chronicler, Joinville was an exceptionally well-behaved and religious baton, standing far above the average, and he was very careful to perform every obligation laid upon him by those whom he regarded as his spiritual advisors. The fact simply was that he had no idea of the need lor spiritual or intellectual independence in the sense that a modern man has need for such independence.”