Europe: A History (72 page)
EL CID
T
HE
knight Rodrigo Díaz died in Valencia in 1099. In history he had spent a lifetime fighting both for the Moors and against them. But in legend he was elevated by the Arabic epithet of
al-sayyid
or
El Cid
, ‘the Master’; and he was turned into the spotless champion of the Christian cause, the national hero of Castile. The legend was already flourishing a century later, in the epic romance of
El Canto del mío Cid.
1
(See Appendix III, p. 1241.)
The transformation of historical figures into the special status of national heroes is a much more complicated process than the mere glorification of famous men or women. It is part of the search for a collective identity that can only be defined in distinction to hostile neighbours or oppressors. In England, whose history is peculiarly lacking in external invaders, the only possible candidate was Robin Hood, the shadowy outlaw who defended the common people against the Anglo-Norman barons.
2
Among England’s neighbours the national heroes, whether Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, William Wallace the ‘Braveheart’, Hugh O’Neill, or Joan of Arc, could only be figures who fought the English. In later British history, British national heroes could only be military figures who, like Admiral Nelson or the Duke of Wellington, saved the empire from its foreign foes. In Albania, George Castriota (known as ‘Skanderbeg’, 1403–67) was seen, like El Cid, as the symbol of resistance to the Ottomans, although he too had both joined and deserted the Ottoman and the Muslim cause.
The cult of national heroes became obligatory when Romanticism collided with Nationalism in the nineteenth century (see p. 815). Nations who lacked an established ancient champion adopted more recent ones: Koáciuszko, Kossuth, and Shamil fought against the Russians; Andreas Hofer in Tyrol against the French; Janosik, the ‘Robin Hood of the Tatras’, against the Austrians. On the northern side of the Tatras, Janosik is the hero of the Polish highlanders: on the southern side, the national hero of Slovakia.
3
It is fair comment on the state of European identity to recall that, as yet, there is no national hero or heroine of Europe.
All these innovations contributed to what scholars have called the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’—the moment when, in the setting of enhanced confidence and prosperity, Western Christendom consciously sought to put its ideals into practice. Events such as the Investiture Contest or the Crusades were not just evidence of new energies; they were ‘ideological’. A thirst for knowledge was
inherent in the new mentality. A marked increase in the production of books and the collection of libraries took place in recognized intellectual centres. The Latin classics were lionized; the Latin language was pruned and refined; Latin poetry came into fashion, high and low:
Meum est propositum in taberna mori,
Ut sint vina próxima morientis ori.
Tune cantabunt letius angelorum chori:
‘Sit Deus propitius huic potatori.’
(My resolution is to die in the tavern. May wine be near my dying lips. Then the angelic choirs will gaily sing: ‘May God show mercy on this boozer.’)
26
All manner of history-writing was undertaken, from simple annals and lives of the saints to sophisticated treatises such as Guibert de Nogent’s’
De pignoribus sanctorum
(c.1119), William of Malmesbury’s
Gesta regum
(1120), or Otto von Freising’s
Gesta
(c.1156) relating the exploits of Emperor Frederick I. In his fantastic
Historia Regnum Britanniae
(c.1136), Geoffrey of Monmouth assembled an imaginative collection of stories and legends from the Celtic past, which would be quarried and embellished by numerous poets and troubadours. The systematization of Canon Law, notably in the
Decretum
(1141) of Gratian of Bologna, accompanied the study of Roman law by a long line of glossators starting with Irnerius
(fl
. c.1130). Latin translations from Arabic and ancient Greek proliferated, by such scholars as Adelard of Bath or Burgundio di Pisa. Schools of law, medicine, and general learning flourished at Salerno, Montpellier, and, above all, at Bologna. North of the Alps, cathedral schools, as at Chartres or Paris, competed with the earlier monastic centres, where St Anselm of Aosta (1033–1109), sometime Abbot of Bec and Archbishop of Canterbury, had been a seminal figure. At Palermo in Sicily and Toledo in Spain the wisdom of the ancients, preserved by Arab scholars, was finally transmitted to Christendom. The commentaries of Averroes of Cordoba (Ibn Rushd, 1126–98) turned Aristotle into
the
philosopher of the Middle Ages. Muslim Spain gave Europe decimal numbers and mathematical expertise,
[XATIVAH]
Courtly literature was composed in reaction against the boorish lifestyle of the barons and the stifling ethics of the Church. Initially, there were two main centres—at the northern French courts, which popularized the
chansons de geste
celebrating the exploits of Frankish and Arthurian chivalry, and at the court of Aquitaine at Poitiers, which specialized in the
chansons d’amor
, the songs of ‘courtly love’. The former, which was most productive in the decades after 1120, depended heavily on the cult of Charlemagne, especially in epics such as
La
Chanson de Roland
and its derivatives—the
Pélérinage de Charlemagne
or
La Prise
d’Orange
. The latter, which came into prominence after 1170, elaborated a stylized code of behaviour recorded in the thirty-one articles of
De Arte Honeste AmanaX
‘the Art of Honest Love’, drawn up by one Andreas Capellanus. These rules, which gave the lead to the
dompna
or ‘mistress’ of the knight’s affections, reversed the accepted gender roles of the day and flouted matrimonial conventions. ‘Marriage’, said Andreas, ‘is no barrier to Love.’ The genre may well have had its
origins in Muslim Spain; but it was taken up by troubadours across the south, whence it spread to the trouvères of the north and the Minnesingers of Germany. ‘Love’, wrote one of the authors of
Tristan
, ‘is stronger than laws.’ The acknowledged master of courtly romance, however, was Chretien de Troyes (c.1135–90), a native of Champagne, author of the Arthurian trilogy—
Yvain, ou le Chevalier au
Lion, Lancelot, ou le Chevalier à la Charrette
, and
Perceval, ou le Conte du Graal
.
[TRISTAN]
XATIVAH
T
HE
art and craft of paper-making was first recorded in Europe in 1144 in the small Moorish town of Xativah, now San Felipe, near Valencia. It had taken 1,000 years to cross Eurasia from China, via Samarkand and Cairo. Important technical developments, including dipping moulds and watermarks, were pioneered a century later in Italy, most probably at Fabriano near Ancona. The first known watermark was a large
F
(for Fabriano).
From there paper spread far and wide, gradually replacing the older writing materials of papyrus, parchment, and pergamon. Early paper-mills were built at Ambert in Auvergne (1326), Troyes (1338), Nurnberg (1390), Leira in Portugal (1411), Hertford in England (mid-fourteenth-century), Constantinople (1453), Cracow (1491), and Moscow (1565). The demand for paper was greatly increased by the arrival of printing,
[PRESS]
Standard paper sizes were introduced in Bologna in 1389: Imperial (22 x 30 inches), Royal, Medium, and Chancery. Book pages were made by folding sheets double
(folio)
, twice
(quarto)
, or three times
(octavo)
. In 1783 the Montgolfier brothers, who owned a paper-works at Annonay, constructed their hot-air balloon from paper. But paper’s supreme contribution lay in the dissemination of knowledge. ‘Hail to the inventor of paper,’ wrote Herder, ‘who did more for literature than all the monarchs on earth.’
Handcrafted paper still has its enthusiasts today. There is an International Association of Paper Historians, with their journal based in Germany, and a score of paper museums. Antique paper-mills still function at Fabriano, at Moulin Ricard-en-Bas in France, at Koog aan de Zaan in the Netherlands, at Niederzwonitz in Germany, at St Alban in Basle, Switzerland, and at Duszniki Zdrój in Silesia.
1
The German Empire’s struggle with the Papacy had always been complicated by Italian politics. But in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the problems became hopelessly entangled, and all parties to the conflict were seriously weakened. Apart from the Hildebrandine ideology of the Popes, the German emperors had to contend with the centrifugal tendencies of the tribal duchies, especially Saxony;
with the dynastic rivalries within Germany, especially that of the Guelphs and the Hohenstaufen; with the sturdy independence of the Lombard cities; with the wayward city of Rome; and with the distant kingdom of the Sicilies. The road to imperial power, therefore, was strewn with hurdles. Contenders had first to win the support of the German nobles and bishops, and to win election as king in Germany. After that, there was a similar challenge to win the crown of Italy. Only then could they move into the end-game and seek imperial coronation by the Pope. For over a century this obstacle course consumed the energies of three forceful generations from the House of Hohenstaufen von Weiblingen— Frederick I Barbarossa, Henry VI, and the inimitable Frederick II.
Barbarossa (r. 1155–90), son of the Hohenstaufen Duke of Swabia and of a Guelph princess from Bavaria, was married to the heiress of the Franche-Comté and Aries, where he was crowned King. Hence, whilst enjoying an extensive power-base of his own, he was able to reconcile the warring German dukes. His chief Guelph rival, Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, was eventually ruined by a trial before the imperial court which stripped him of his main possessions. But a clash at the Diet of Besançon in 1157, where the papal legate described the imperial crown as an ecclesiastical ‘benefice’, revived the Investiture Contest. And a second clash at the Diet of Roncaglia in 1158, where the imperial party stressed the seniority of the
podestà
or ‘imperial governor’ over all other officials in the cities of the Empire, fuelled the endless wars of the Lombard leagues. Barbarossa re-enacted all the travails of his predecessors—excommunication by the Pope, the election of an antipope, feudal revolts in Germany, conflict in Rome, and six wearying Italian expeditions. On 24 July 1177, in the porch of St Mark’s, Venice, and on the centenary of Canossa, he fell on his knees before Pope Alexander III and obtained absolution. But, like Canossa, it was just a gesture. His master-stroke was to marry his son and heir, Henry (r. 1190–97), to the Norman heiress of Sicily, Constanza di Apulia. In 1186 he saw the young pair wed in Milan, which he had once reduced in a terrible siege eighteen years before. Confident of splitting the Papacy from its Sicilian allies, he departed with the Third Crusade, and never returned,
[CONSPIRO]
Barbarossa’s grandson, Frederick II (r. 1211–50), was the offspring of the Sicilian connection. He inherited the personal union of Sicily with the Empire as established by his parents, and so cherished his Sicilian kingdom that he would be accused of neglecting the rest of his realms. Crusader, linguist, philosopher, ornithologist, patron of the arts, protector of Jews, and master of a harem, Frederick II was twice excommunicated by the Pope for disobedience and officially condemned by a General Council as a heretic. He ruled in the south as a despot, imposing an efficient, centralized administration on Church and State alike. He even encouraged an imperial cult of his own person. He presided over a brilliant, cultured court at Palermo—a magnificent blend of Latin, German, Jewish, Greek, and Saracen elements. To his contemporaries he was quite simply the
stupor mundi
, the ‘wonder of the age’.
However, to rule the whole of a disparate feudal empire by autocratic means
was impossible, and beyond Naples and Sicily Frederick II was repeatedly obliged to make concessions to keep the imperial party intact. In Germany, after granting a charter of liberties to the Church (1220), he relinquished direct control of ecclesiastical lands in the hope of ruling through prelates such as Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne. As a result, he did succeed in having his son, Henry VII, elected King of the Romans. At the Diet of Worms in 1231 he ordered Henry to promulgate a
Statutum in favorem principum
, whereby the secular princes were granted the same far-reaching liberties as the bishops. In the East, he granted unlimited rights to his old crusading companion, Hermann von Salza, the first Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, who repeatedly tried to mediate on his behalf in Rome. In northern Italy his attempts to consolidate a dominant Ghibelline party were constantly thwarted by the spoiling tactics of the popes, especially Gregory IX (1227–41), and the league of Lombard cities.
CONSPIRO
T
HE
League of the Holy Court, or
Heilige Fehme
, has the distinction of being Europe’s senior secret society—except for those which remained secret. It came into prominence in Germany, during the disorders which followed the imperial ban placed on Henry the Lion, chief of the Guelph party, in the late twelfth century. Its aim was to administer justice wherever imperial authority had collapsed and, by means of forest tribunals, administered by
Freischöffen
or
francs-juges
, to hold the populace in fear. The League had an élite caste of initiates, the
Wissenden
or ‘sages’, an elaborate system of oaths, signs, and rituals, and a hierarchical structure headed by the
Oberststuhlherr
—originally the Archbishop of Cologne. By the fourteenth century, it possessed 100,000 members. Its activities in Westphalia were officially recognized. In the fifteenth century, having recruited the Emperor Sigismund himself, its influence did not wane until the legal reforms of the 1490s. Its last meeting was held in 1568.
The
Femgerichte
(forest courts) followed exact procedures, hearing witnesses for prosecution and defence. But death was their only sentence. The condemned person was left hanging from a tree into which was stuck a knife bearing the mystical letters SSGG (standing for
Stein, Strick, Gras, Grün
—‘Stone’, ‘Rope’, ‘Grass’, ‘Green’).
Secret societies can be classified as political, religious, social, and criminal, though the categories have often overlapped. In the early seventeenth century, the mystical Brotherhood of the Rosicrucians chose to reveal its existence. Its occult theosophy was systematized by the Englishman Robert Fludd (1574–1637). It attracted considerable interest all over northern Europe, from Bacon and Descartes among others, and exercised an important influence on the early stages of Freemasonry
[MASON]
.
Between 1776–85 the short-lived Order of Luminaries of Adam Weishaupt professed very advanced projects of social reform in Bavaria. Its members had close connections both with Freemasons and even with the Jacobins. The early nineteenth century saw the rise of the Carbonari (see p. 823), the Mafia, and the secret societies of Ireland. Some are still in existence.
1
[ORANGE]
Conspiracy theories of history are not fashionable. But European history has never known a shortage of conspiratorial societies, conspiracies, or conspirators.
