No More Learning

But M. Rambaud is no fanatic: he is liberal and concilia-
tory, with an ardent desire for the education of the masses. He is a
disciple of Jules Ferry, who first called him to a leading position in
the direction of public affairs, as private secretary and chef de cabinet
at the ministry of Public Affairs in 1879. After three years at the
École Normale, M. Rambaud was successively professor of history at
Caen and at Nancy. On quitting the ministry he returned to his
duties as professor, and was appointed to the Faculty of Letters in
Paris.
His works are educational and historical. His favorite occupation
is looking over and preparing the great work he has undertaken in
collaboration with his friend and colleague, Ernest Lavisse, the his-
torian dear to French youth; namely, the General History from the
Fourth Century to Our Day. ' The first number of this serial history
appeared in 1892. It is carefully done, clear, and in a widely liberal,
philosophical spirit. M. Rambaud contributes the portion on Russia.
He is an authority on all things Russian, knowing the language and
having traveled in the country.
His speeches form an important part of his "literary luggage,» as
the French say. He speaks well, but not in the florid, ornamental
style common in France. He is journalier ("touch-and-go"), and
must warm to his subject before mastering it. No one knows what
will warm him; the man himself probably less than any one. But
once warmed, his voice never falters in its soft, far-reaching wave of
sound. His gestures are slow and propitiatory; he turns his head
slyly from left to right, and sees very well with those small, dark,
sharp yet merry eyes of his, that are surmounted, not shaded, by the
thin regular arch of eyebrows, like notes of interrogation on his high
narrow forehead. He has a great deal of dry humor, both as speaker
and writer, and doubtless often laughs to himself at his opponents
as he sits comfortably on the ministerial bench of the Chamber of


## p. 12042 (#80) ###########################################

12042
ALFRED RAMBAUD
Deputies. The present looks small to a man who studies the past.
Like most of his countrymen, he mingles the politics of the day with
speeches on literary, artistic, or educational subjects, and spangles
them with quotations from the classics and similes boldly drawn from
practical illustrations. One day at the Franco-English Guild, at a
meeting presided over by the British minister, M. Rambaud in a little
improvisation on the two countries, "who never," said he, "need be
enemies, though their differences were so great," compared them to
"twin piston-rods, impelling with equal beat the onward march of
liberty, order, and peace. " Elsewhere he calls them "the Siamese
twins of political economy. "
M. Rambaud is a linguist, a colonialist, and a Russophil,— uniting
the three fads of the French of to-day. He wrote a preface and
notes to a translation of Seely's 'Expansion of England'; contributed
to a geographical work, La France Coloniale,' and to the articles
on Russia in the General History of Europe'; and has written two
books on Russia, - 'La Russie Épique,' a translation of popular and
heroic song, and a 'History of Russia. ' This last won a prize at the
French Academy. It clear and concise. Every sentence contains
a fact. The description of Nicholas I. (Chapter xxxvi. , page 638) is
striking:"He was a living incarnation of despotism. His giant
stature, his stately manner, his mystic pride in his imperial office, his
unwearied attention to business in its smallest details, his iron will,
his love of military grandeur, uniform, and display, all tended to
strike awe.
When his power was shattered, a nation rose full grown
from its ruins. " The work closes with the following words: - "With
the government of Russia, France has often been in conflict; with her
people, since she has become a nation, France sympathizes and is at
one. »
The most important of his educational works is the 'History of
Civilization in France' from the earliest times to the French Revolu-
tion, with a concluding chapter on general events up to our day.
This chapter has been developed into a volume of seven hundred
and fifty closely packed pages, The History of Contemporary Civ-
ilization in France': an interesting, amusing summing-up of the
progress made since 1789 in all branches of human knowledge. It
contains a declaration of principle, and a theory of the duty of a
citizen. Extracts are given illustrating these points.
M. Rambaud has further written a History of the Greek Empire
in the Tenth Century'; a 'History of the French Revolution, 1789–
1799'; a novel for the young-a story of ancient Gaul, 'L'Anneau de
César'; and 'French Rule in Germany,' in two volumes, - the first
entitled 'The French on the Rhine, 1792-1804,' and the second 'Ger-
many under Napoleon, 1804-1811. ' These last-named volumes are


## p. 12043 (#81) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12043
written to refute the accusation of cruelty, tyranny, and perfidy,
made by recent German historians against France. The extracts
given further on show the line of argument.
The General History' has reached Vol. x. , No. 109,- 'The Con-
gress of Verona,' 1822. Chapter vi. of Vol. viii. , entirely from the pen
of M. Rambaud, treats of Russia, Poland, and the East. The late
Greco-Turkish conflict gives interest to the section on Catharine II. 's
attempt at founding a Russo-Greek empire, a passage from which is
given.
M. Rambaud gives his facts in general with little comment, wast-
ing few words in explanation or ornament. The broad lines that
show the important events are straight and clear, without twirl or
flourish. Impartial, philosophical, and at times anecdotal, his style
differs entirely from the French writers we are accustomed to: unlike
Michelet, who was a poet rather than a historian, unlike Thiers, who
was a politician and wrote his books in his leisure hours, this
scholar of a new school loves the quiet of his study better than the
noise of the forum, the depths of historical research better than the
shallow stream of popular favor. Yet he must speak, because speech
in France is the great organ of education. No man who has not
lived in France can understand the power of spoken words over
Frenchmen, whether in private or public life.
His first speech was delivered at Besançon in 1880, where he repre-
sented the minister, Jules Ferry, at the unveiling of a statue of Victor
Hugo. His latest was at the palace of the Trocadero in June last
(1897), where he told his fellow-citizens that peoples who would be
free must depend on individual effort rather than on government
support. Jules Ferry often said the same thing; indeed, M. Ram-
baud never fails to recall with rare and dignified gratitude, on every
occasion, what he owes to his patron: an uncommon thing in these
forgetful, hurried times, and a bold thing some years ago in France,
where the mention of Jules Ferry's name at a public meeting was
shaking a red rag at a bull.
M. Rambaud does speak much and often: he is a minister, and
his duties are migratory. He flits from place to place, presiding, dis-
coursing, distributing rewards, and giving good advice. Indeed, the
Liberal Republicans are everywhere setting the sound good sense of
their teaching against the eloquently worded promises of the reaction-
ary socialist party, who, like all attacking bodies, are very active.
Of late M. Rambaud has become a protectionist; imitating Jules Ferry,
who did so to please his electors in the east of France. The flame
of his eloquence burns low and long; it lights the way without daz-
zling, it guides without exciting.


## p. 12044 (#82) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12044
HALTING STEPS TOWARD DEMOCRACY
From the 'History of Civilization in France>
N
APOLEON, as First Consul and Emperor, modeled his court on
that of former kings, and endeavored to give good man-
ners to his officers and their wives, and to attract the
members of the old noblesse; saying, "They alone know how to
serve. " The revolution of 1848 gave back to the popular classes
their rights and power; but the impatience of the workmen and
the apathy of the peasants let a new Cæsar rise, who treated.
democracy and universal suffrage as children. To-day they are
full-grown men. Among the nations of Europe, France stands
alone as being the sole important State at once democratic, re-
publican, and with universal suffrage.
FRENCH GOVERNMENTAL EXPERIMENTS
From the History of Contemporary Civilization in France>
C
ONTEMPORARY history should not be separated from politics;
nor can politics be, as some seem to think, a matter of
opinion, of prejudice, passion, or excitement. When well
understood they are a science, and even belong to experimental
science; and as such, are of course still uncertain, hypothetical in
conclusions: but must tend, if judged in a truly scientific spirit,
to laws as sure as those of physics, chemistry, or natural history.
. In politics, the heat of passion is always in inverse ratio
to a man's scientific education. Ignorant people are always vio-
lent.
•
In my study of the different forms of government we have
tried, it will be seen that I have denied the merits of none:
neither the generous, humane ideas of the Constituent, nor the
patriotic energy of the Convention, nor the administrative genius.
of Napoleon I. , nor the parliamentary honesty of the two consti-
tutional monarchies, nor the ardent spirit of social justice which
animated the Second Republic [1848], nor the great material
progress accomplished under the Second Empire. At the same
time, these studies show that none of these forms of government
realized the ideal of liberty, equality, and public order, which
every party worthy of the name should have in view.


## p. 12045 (#83) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12045
French royalty had not been strong enough to realize equality:
it was too strong to permit liberty. Timid with regard to the
historical rights of clergy and nobility, it had been tyrannical
towards its people.
.
The population of France was divided into three estates: the
clergy, nobility, and Third Estate. It formed three distinct classes,
each having its own laws. The clergy alone numbered 130,000
priests; the nobility 140,000 persons; the Third Estate twenty-
five million.
The great revolution is not an accident in our history. It
was prepared and brought on by the preceding eight centuries.
Its results may be described in three words,- Unity, Equality,
Liberty. *
*The last paragraph is from the main work, History of Civilization in
France.
RUSSIAN EXPANSION WEST AND SOUTH
From the General History>
THE GREEK PROJECT OF CATHARINE II.
SHE
HE intended, if successful in driving out the Turks, to create
a Greek empire under a Russian Grand-Duke independent
of Russia. She gave a Greek name, Constantine, a Greek
nurse and playmates, to her grandson born in 1779; and invited
the Emperor to visit her in South Russia and settle the European
Turkish question. Her progress through New Russia in 1787
was a triumphal march, where all was not show; for the coloni-
zation of New Russia, lately a desert exposed to the incursions
of Cossacks and Tartars (now peopled with six million human
beings), was commenced. On Catharine's return to her capi-
tal, war was declared (1787). Neither party was well prepared.
French and Prussian officers drilled the Ottoman recruits.
POLAND AND KOSCIUSZKO
POLA
OLAND was waking up from its intestine quarrels. The Jesuits
were dismissed by a bull of Clement XIV. This was no
misfortune: they had taught the Poles intolerance and the
exterior forms of religion; moreover, they had taught Latin to
the exclusion of Polish. On their disappearance there was a


## p. 12046 (#84) ###########################################

12046
ALFRED RAMBAUD
national awakening; at least in the hearts of the middle classes,
who were educated better than the nobles, less apart from Euro-
pean civilization, already imbued with French ideas, and who
were deeply saddened by the misfortunes of their country, which
they compared to the wonderful success of the French Revolu-
tion against the allied kings. Some nobles were animated with
the same sentiments.
Such was Thadeus Kosciuszko. Born in 1757, in the district
of Novogrodek (Lithuania), he had entered in 1764 the cadet
school founded by Czartoryski. This son of a country gentleman
received, one after another, two cruel lessons of social equality:
his father was assassinated by some exasperated peasants; while
he himself, having fallen in love with the daughter of a noble-
man of high rank, found himself scornfully refused.
In America, where Washington appointed him colonel, and
where he distinguished himself at Saratoga, Kosciuszko learned
what real liberty was, and completed the knowledge he had first
sought in our philosophers. During the last war, he was the
only Polish general who had been victorious. After the second
partition of Poland he became a Russian subject, but refused to
serve in the Russian army. He passed into Saxony, and thence
to Paris on a mission. Already the Legislative Assembly had
named him a French citizen.
BENEFITS TO GERMANY FROM FRENCH INVASIONS
From Germany under Napoleon, 1804-1811)
THE
HE Germans complain of the harm we have done them in the
wars, almost always defensive, which our kings carried on
against the ambition of Austria. Who could calculate the
harm done to us by their princes, when in 1791 they turned
France from her task of reorganization; when they stirred up
hatred between our working classes and our nobility, between
the Assembly and Royalty; when they caused the Revolution to
end in the Terror? Afterwards, even if the Emperor, the King
of Prussia, and the Ecclesiastic Electors did declare war, the
people called and welcomed us. After a glorious defensive war,
we were able to wage the most humane, the most beneficial of
propagating wars.
Even under Napoleon I. , French


## p. 12047 (#85) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12047
intervention in Germany was essentially different from German
invasion of France: the former brought with it the elements of
progress. Thus it may be said that in all times, and under
every form of government, we have done more good than harm
to the Germans; and a Prussian empire, founded on a so-called
right of revenge of Germany against us, is based on injustice and
falsehood.
It is strange that Germany should accept from Prussia, along
with new laws, its opinions ready-made.
What magic
spell has its new masters used to make Germany forget history?
Before the Revolution there was no trace of hatred
between France and Germany; and that is why the wars of
the Revolution were none of them a war of races. All western
Germany accepted French influence willingly. Our language was
written and spoken there, our literary traditions and our fashions
were followed with even too much docility. Frenchmen were
enticed to dwell there; but not always chosen with sufficient dis-
cernment, so that adventurers by whom the Germans were duped
gave a sorry idea of our nation. On the other hand, the feeling
of hostility against England dates very far back. It is that
nation which, from the first, made us understand what a foreigner
was, and by trampling on France revealed her to herself.
Large German States owe their prosperity to French polit-
ical and religious refugees. Nor was the influx less from Ger-
many into France. Princes came as pilgrims to the shrine of
Versailles to admire and worship the kingliest King; to Paris,
where they found the greatest number of men of genius and of
sharpers, the wittiest ladies, and the lightest women. There
came those who wished to serve in the army; like Maurice
of Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, and the Count of Löwendal,
the victor of Berg-op-Zoom. The Rhenish provinces were but a
continuation of France beyond the frontier; their sons fought
under French colors: war and hate were not between the peo-
ples, they were the business of the governments. Men were cos-
mopolitan, citizens of the world, rather than French, German, or
Prussian.
The Revolution of 1803 in Germany was relatively as radi-
cal as the French Revolution. The German people looked on it
with indifference, neither rejoicing nor grieving at the fall of
its past; because there was a great difference between the two
revolutions. The sacrifices exacted from the privileged classes


## p. 12048 (#86) ###########################################

12048
ALFRED RAMBAUD
of France had served to found the unity of a great people, had
brought liberty into the State and equality among the citizens.
In Germany no such advantages had been obtained. The French
had despoiled themselves for the grandeur of their country; in
Germany for some great or petty sovereign, often more a prince-
ling than a prince.
It was not as an enemy but as an Emperor that Napoleon
was received. Princes and people crowded to see the small lank-
haired man, so unlike the legendary Charlemagne, whose sallow
complexion, sinister unfathomable glance, and Roman features,
reminded them of the pagan Cæsar who had first crossed the
mighty river.
CIVIL LIFE IN FRANCE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES
From the History of French Civilization>
F JUSTICE was cruel, the police of Paris were feeble. The mul-
tiplicity of jurisdictions among which Paris was divided, and
the right of sanctuary allowed to nearly all the churches and
abbeys, permitted criminals to elude pursuit.
Paris, although Philip Augustus had paved some streets and
filled up the filthy holes which infected his palace, was still hor-
ribly dirty.
The narrow streets, with the houses overhanging in success-
ive corbelings so that the upper stories touched, were incumbered.
with stalls, sign-boards, and goods exposed for sale. Swine,
geese, and cattle wandered through them. There the butchers
slaughtered their beasts at night; there was no light except that
of the moon when it shone. The police were not responsible for
anything after sunset. When once the curfew had rung, the
honest bourgeois went to his home and shut himself in securely.
The watch-that is, the prevost's archers — were too few to
control the dangerous classes. To thrash the watch was a stu-
dent's sport: naturally, ill-doers feared it little.
Sometimes a watchman like Gautier Rallard found an in-
genious means of never entering into a fight with the robbers:
he made his rounds preceded by music. The night watchman
who went through the streets in a coat embellished with tears
and death's-heads, -armed with a lantern and a bell, announcing


## p. 12049 (#87) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12049
the hours, and calling the sleepers to "pray for the dead,”—
scarcely interfered with the cutpurses and the pillagers of shops.
The robbers, assassins, beggars, vagabonds, were organized in
corporations just like the honest folk. They had their regular
chiefs, their rules of apprenticeship, their trials for the mastery,
their places of reunion. In Paris they formed a State apart,—
the Kingdom of Argot,-where was spoken the "langue vert,"
and across the boundaries of which the archers of the watch
did not venture. Their elected chief was the great Coësre or
King of Thune, who was drawn in a cart by dogs. He held his
court - his Court of Miracles—sometimes in the cul-de-sac Saint
Sauveur, sometimes in the rue des Frams-Bourgeois, or near
the Convent of the Filles-Dieu, or in the streets of Grande and
Petite Truanderie. He had in each province, like the king, his
bailiff,-called the cagou. Sometimes he summoned a sort of
States-General in the Pré aux Gueux (Beggars' Field) near Notre
Dame d'Auray. His immense people, including all the beggars,
blacklegs, and vagabonds of France, were divided into numerous
classes. All paid a tribute to the King of Thune, and rendered
him homage.
Another powerful monarch was the King of Egypt, sovereign
of the Gipsies. In 1427 the advance guard of these mysterious
Asiatics had appeared in Paris; a duke, a count, ten knights,
followed by a hundred men, women, and children. These people,
known as Bohemians, Saracens, Egyptians, Tsiganes, were soon
swarming on the roads and at the gates of the towns, as show-
men of bears and apes, as tinkers, counterfeiters, fortune-tellers,
From these swarming crowds the army of crime was recruited.
From time to time justice cast in her net, and exposed her capt-
ure in the pillory of the Halles or on the gibbet of Montfauçon;
but the mass was not thereby diminished. If the prevost hung
some scamp in broad day, the King of Thune in turn hung in
broad night some rash bourgeois or too inquisitive sergeant.
As in India there were pariahs, despised even by the slave,
and whose contact was pollution, so in France there were outcast
races. These were called marrons in Auvergne; cagots or cagoux
in the Pyrenees; gaffots, caffots, capots, in Béarn and Navarre;
cagueux, cacuas, cacoux, in Bretagne; gahets, gaffets, in Guyenne.
Whence came they, and who were they? Were they, as was said,
descendants of the Mussulmans left in France by Abderrahman,
or of the Spaniards who were driven from their homes by the
XXI-754


## p. 12050 (#88) ###########################################

12050
ALFRED RAMBAUD
Arabs, or of converted heretics, or of ancient lepers? No one
knew, not even those who persecuted them. The only sure thing
is, that they were treated like veritable lepers, forbidden to fre-
quent churches, taverns, public festivals; forced in Bretagne and
Béarn to wear a red costume, and not permitted to go barefoot
on the roads or to carry arms. Marriage or any contact with
them was refused. They lived in isolated villages hidden in the
country, or in obscure valleys; intermarrying, hated by all and
hating all the world.
Although ancient slavery had disappeared from our soil
through transformation into serfdom, there was a tendency to
reconstitute it in Europe at the expense of the infidels taken in
war. The Italian republics trafficked in their captives. In the
twelfth century they were sold at fairs in Champagne, and Sara-
cen slaves were bequeathed in a will to the bishop of Béziers.
In the thirteenth century, slaves were traded in Provence. The
new slavery was then in force in Roussillon,-which was not
French territory,- but royal France spurned it. Then was estab-
lished the maxim by virtue of which every slave who touched
French soil became free. In 1402 and in 1406 the municipality
of Toulouse applied this to the profit of fugitive slaves from
Perpignan.
In the Middle Ages, the duty of charity toward the poor was
generally discharged. The pouch full of money which hung at
the belts of nobles and bourgeois, men and women, was called
an alms-purse; a chaplain was an almoner. Kings, nobles, and
ladies were often surrounded, as they walked, by the poor whom
they maintained. King Robert allowed them to enter so freely
into his palace, to go under his table, to sit on the floor beside
him, almost between his legs, that on a certain day one of them
cut a gold acorn from his clothing.
Not only did alms-givers
aid the poor with money, food, and clothing; but seeing in them
the image of suffering Christ, they gloried in sometimes serving
them at table, and in washing their feet upon Holy Thursday.
The religious orders, founded for the relief of the poor, con-
secrated to them at least a part of their revenues. In certain
convents there were cells reserved for the poor; in nearly all,
distributions of soup and bread were made at the door of the
monastery.
Nevertheless, this charity of the Middle Ages was unintelligent
enough. The kings would have done better to aid their people
1


## p. 12051 (#89) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12051
instead of surrounding themselves with a few tatterdemalions;
the monasteries, while distributing their charity, became by seiz-
ing upon the land a cause of impoverishment for a vast radius.
around them. They relieved a few poor people; but these were
infinitely less to be pitied than thousands of peasants crushed
under feudal laws, the ecclesiastical tenth, or the laws of the
royal treasury. The problem of how to aid the poor without
increasing pauperism and without offering a reward to idleness,
so difficult even to modern France, was not one which the Mid-
dle Ages could solve. Moreover, the French of the thirteenth
century, thoroughly imbued with religious ideas, were charitable
not from philanthropy, but from piety; to secure salvation. The
"virtuous poor," with knees worn callous by many prostrations,
with mouth's full of prayers, well trained and indoctrinated by
the Church, always present on the skirts of the sanctuary, always
ready to reap the benefit of a pious thought, were very conven-
ient to whoever wished to acquit himself of the Christian duty
of charity. Poverty was too wide-spread to be possibly dimin-
ished; at least one did what one was called upon to do, leaving
the rest to God.
The sick formed a more limited category of the distressed,
and charity toward them was more efficacious. From the Mero-
vingian epoch, St. Clotilde and St. Aboflède, the wife and sister
of Clovis; St. Radegonde, the wife of Clotaire; St. Bathilde, the
wife of Clovis II. ,- are cited as founders of hospitals. The
hospitals were usually annexed to a monastery, as was that of
Bathilde to the royal abbey of Chelles. At the time of the Cru-
sades, the valiant Knights of St. John prided themselves above
all upon being Hospitallers. The diffusion of leprosy in the
twelfth century brought about the creation of special hospitals
- leper-houses. In the thirteenth century there were nearly two
thousand of these in France. They were usually managed by
Knights of St. Lazarus, another military order. Louis VII. estab-
lished them at the end of the Faubourg St. Denis; their mother-
house was the domain of Boigny. He also created at Saussaie
near Villejuif a convent of women to care for lepers. The kings
made large benefactions to these houses: when they died, their
personal linen and all their horses, mules, etc. , belonged to the
leper-house of La Saussaie. When Jean II. died in England, so
that the house was deprived of his horses, his son paid it an
indemnity. Later, Charles VI. bought back from this convent for


## p. 12052 (#90) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12052
twenty-five hundred francs the horses of his father Charles V.
The knights showed themselves deserving of these favors by
caring not only for the lepers, but for all kinds of invalids.
St. Louis was a Grand-Hospitaller. It was he who enlarged
and endowed the Maison-Dieu (Hotel-Dieu) of Paris, who founded
the Hospital of the Quinze-Vingts for three hundred blind men,
who instituted the hostelleries des postes in the principal towns of
the kingdom. Devout nobles followed his example; and in the
thirteenth century Elzéar de Sabran and his wife are cited as
having given everything-life and fortune-to the service of the
sick.
The Church did not content itself with offering prayers for
travelers. In the most difficult passes of the mountains, in the
snows of the Alps, rose pious hostelries: those of St. Bernard, of
St. Gothard, of the Simplon, of Mont Cenis, are of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.
The wars with the Saracens, the Mussulman piracy on the
Mediterranean, peopled the markets and prisons of the Orient
and Africa with Christian captives. Religious orders, - the Ma-
thurins, founded in 1198, and the Fathers of Mercy, founded in
1223, went with money to ransom Christian prisoners.
-
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
FRENCH MEDICAL SCIENCE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES
From the History of French Civilization >
Τ'
HE most celebrated physicians of antiquity were among the
Greeks, Hippocrates of Cos, Galen of Pergamus, Herophi-
lus, Erasistratus; among the Romans, Celsus and Cœlius
Aurelianus. Their knowledge of anatomy was still imperfect;
their physiology amounted to nothing, since they were not ac-
quainted either with the circulation of the blood or the func-
tions of the nervous system; their remedies were few, and often
purely imaginary. The downfall of Roman civilization arrested
the progress of this science. The Arabs succeeded. In a com-
pilation of a certain Aaron Christian, priest of Alexandria, known
under the name of "Pandects of Medicine," they rediscovered ex-
tracts from ancient writings. They seized upon these and made
some progress. The most celebrated Arabian physicians were


## p. 12053 (#91) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12053
Rhazès (850-923), and Avicenna (980-1037), both born in the cali-
phate of Bagdad; Avenzoar (1072–1162), and Averroës (1120–1198),
both Spanish Arabs. Maimonides (1135-1204) was a Jewish rabbi
of Spain. The Canon' of Avicenna, translated into Latin, was
the medical work most extensively known throughout Europe.
Thus Europeans seldom knew the physicians of antiquity except
through a triple series of translations from Greek into Syriac,
from Syriac into Arabic, and from Arabic into Latin.
(
For a long time the Christians abandoned the study of med-
icine to the Arabs and Jews. It was to these infidel masters
that later the most daring went to learn the elements of the sci-
ence.
Charlemagne in 805 had prescribed the study of medicine in
the monasteries. About the ninth century, the school of Salerno
in Italy began to be famous throughout Christendom. In the
tenth century some Jews founded the school of Montpellier,
which in the thirteenth became a faculty. In 1200 the Univer-
sity of Paris was founded, which was not until later anything
more than a faculty of medicine; but already in 1213 there was
question of professors of medicine. The Church showed little.
favor to this science, which seemed an evidence of distrust toward
Providence. "The precepts of medicine are contrary to Divine
knowledge," wrote St. Ambrose: "they condemn prayers and
vigils. " The councils of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for-
bade the study of this art to prelates and archdeacons, and only
permitted it to the lower clergy. No clergyman could practice
surgery, because it sheds blood. Boniface VIII. menaced with
excommunication whoever should dissect a dead body.
Anatomy being proscribed; the natural sciences, such as bot-
any, mineralogy, and chemistry, being in their infancy,—one can
imagine our medical science of the Middle Ages. It consisted of
prescriptions often childish and incomplete; observations borrowed
from antiquity or from the Arabs. The prejudices and supersti-
tions of the time played an important part in it. The doctors,
also called physicians or mires, were also alchemists and astrolo-
gers. They taught that the brain increases and decreases accord-
ing to the phases of the moon; that it has, like the sea, its ebb
and flow twice a day. The purpose of the lungs was to air the
heart, the liver was the seat of love, the spleen that of laughter.
They made use of formulas and cabalistic words; they ordered
strange remedies, such as the liver of a toad, the blood of a


## p. 12054 (#92) ###########################################

12054
ALFRED RAMBAUD
frog, a rat, or a goat; they sought universal remedies or pana
ceas; they bled people only upon certain days, and after having
observed the position of the stars and the phases of the moon.
Such-and-such a remedy was good for the noble but bad for the
serf; the noble must purge himself with hyssop, the peasant
with myrobolan. The one cured a fracture with an earth bolus;
the other with the dung of his cattle.
Surgery was considered an inferior art. As the clergy was
forbidden to exercise it, it was separated from medicine. It was
abandoned to the practitioners who had not received degrees, and
who were also barbers and even bath-keepers. Even in the
seventeenth century, in 1613, there were corporations of surgeon-
barbers. They shaved people, bled them, and bandaged their
wounds. The surgeons traced their organization into a corpora-
tion back to St. Louis, but their Collège de Saint-Côme does not
seem to date farther back than the fourteenth century. They
were placed under the authority of the "king's, barber," who had
his delegates in all the towns of the kingdom.
Further, the doctors and surgeon-barbers served only the
nobles and the rich. The people had their own therapeutics; in
medicine, the remedies of wise women and sorcerers; in surgery,
the bone-setters, who had charms and secrets for restoring broken
limbs with ointments of their own composition, sighs of the cross,
and formulas. The bone-setter above all others was the execu-
tioner: since he understood so well how to break limbs, he ought
to understand how to mend them. It was he who furnished a
precious panacea,- the fat of the hanged.
They believed, too, that a donkey's breath expelled all poison.
Aching teeth they cured by touching them with a dead man's
tooth. To arrest hemorrhage or nose-bleed they dropped a key
down the back. By spitting in the mouth of a living frog they
stopped a cough.
Rather than apply to the doctor they had recourse to the
apothecary, who, in spite of the prohibitions of the faculty, took
a part in healing. Charlatans swarmed.
Religion too had its medicine, in which Christian beliefs were
amalgamated with old pagan superstitions. Epilepsy was then
called the sacred evil, the Divine evil. The epileptic was be-
lieved to be possessed by a demon; the only consideration was
to drive out the evil spirit from him. Therefore the priest sprin-
kled him with holy water; and while the sufferer was rolling in


## p. 12055 (#93) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12055
convulsions, read the formula of exorcism. It is known that
nervous maladies are easily communicated to persons with sensi-
tive nerves; thus the demon driven from one body often gave
himself the pleasure of entering into the body of a spectator,
who writhed in his turn. Sometimes in revenge he entered into
the exorciser. The possessed were also cured by a pilgrimage
to Saint-Maur near Paris, by a novena at the church of Bon-
Secours near Nancy, or by touching the holy cerement at Be-
sançon.
Heaven was peopled with healing saints. If one had sore
throat he addressed himself to Saint Christopher; if dropsy, to
Saint Eutropius; if fever, to Saint Pernella; if insanity, to Saint
Mathurin; if the plague, to Saint Roque; if hydrophobia, to
Saint Hubert, the patron of the chase and of dogs. At the mon-
astery of Saint Hubert, near Liege, a monk touched the patient
with the saint's stole, and cauterized him with "the key of Saint
Hubert. "
Often the choice of the saint was determined by a kind of
pun. For scurf (teigne) they addressed to Saint Aignan (pro-
nounced "Saint Teignan"); for trouble with the eyes, to Saint
Claire; for gout, to Saint Genou (genou, knee); for cramps, to
Saint Crampan.
Certain maladies were even designated only by the name of
the saint who cured them: thus Saint Vitus's dance, a nervous
disease which we now call chorea; Saint John's ill, which was
epilepsy; Saint Anthony's evil, which was canker; Saint Eloy's
evil, which was scurvy; Saint Firmin's evil, which was erysipelas;
Saint Lazarus's evil, which was leprosy; Saint Quentin's evil,
which was dropsy; Saint Sylvan's evil, which seems to have been
a kind of eruptive fever.
The monks who practiced this medicine sometimes drew illicit
profits from it. In the thirteenth century, those of Saint Anthony
were accused of receiving into their hospitals only healthy peo-
ple, upon whose bodies they painted apparent sores, and then
sent them to solicit the charity of the faithful. Those of Saint
Sylvan retained as serfs those who had recovered their health
under the porch of their church. In order to increase the num-
ber of supplicants they forbade all competition. In 1263 they
prohibited women from attempting "to heal those afflicted with
Saint Sylvan's evil, with the exception of the lord and any of his
family"; for these could not be reduced to serfdom.


## p. 12056 (#94) ###########################################

12056
ALFRED RAMBAUD
Kings too cured by touching: the King of England cured
epilepsy; the King of France scrofula. The King of England,
when he had added to his title that too of King of France, also
cured scrofula. The heads of certain noble families, like that
of the house of Aumont in Bourgogne, had the same gift. The
progress of royal power put an end to these feudal healings.
Yet never would a truly serious medical science have been
more useful than at certain epochs of the Middle Ages, when dis-
eases raged which have since disappeared, and when those which
still exist attained an unequaled violence. Then they ignored or
neglected the most elementary principles of hygiene. The peas-
ant lived on his refuse heap, huddled in with his beasts, like
the wretched Irish peasant of to-day; the townsman lived in the
stench of narrow streets. The clergy, by preaching contempt of
the body, indirectly encouraged neglect of the most necessary
care of it.
Until toward the middle of the fourteenth century
hemp and linen cloth was little used, even by the upper classes;
and woolen fabrics in direct contact with the skin must have
irritated it. The peasant was poorly nourished, and by way of
meat had scarcely anything but salt provisions.
Such a regimen naturally favored skin diseases. In the tenth
and eleventh centuries a scrofula or gangrene raged, which
loosed the members of the body joint by joint. Ulcers, tetter,
scurf, the itch were frequent. The poverty of the blood increased
the number of the scrofulous. Leprosy, which began with the
first Crusades, and later developed enormously, lasted throughout
the Middle Ages. In 1250 the army of Saint Louis in Egypt
was decimated by dysentery and scrofula.
Nervous diseases multiplied, incited by terror of the wars,
by the spectacle of tortures, by fear of the devil and of hell, by
the isolation and monotony of life in castle and cloister. There
were epidemics of Saint Vitus's dance, which seized upon entire
populations and drew them into a mad round; frequent cases of
epilepsy, the victims of which were thought to be possessed by
devils; melancholia, or black sadness; lycanthropy, or mania of
those who believed themselves changed into wolves, and who
were called were-wolves; demonomania, which made thousands of
unfortunates believe themselves in commerce with the infernal
spirit; the mania of scourging; hallucinations taken for visions.
Small-pox first appeared in Gaul in the sixth century: from
this disease, described by Gregory of Tours, died the children of


## p. 12057 (#95) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12057
Frédégonde. The Oriental plague or bubonic pest began to show
itself about 540.
The black pest, also a bubonic pest, ran over all Europe in
the fourteenth century, and destroyed a large part of the popula-
tion.
In the fifteenth century the whooping-cough appeared, which
in 1414 killed many old people; and the English sweating-
sickness, which made many ravages down to the sixteenth cen-
tury, but which then became limited to England, and to Calais
which was occupied by the English.
Medical science remained powerless before these scourges:
often it let rule a superstition which it shared. Those believed
to be possessed of evil spirits were exorcised; those who were
asserted to be sorcerers were burned. The lepers recommended.
to Saint Lazarus were confined,- sometimes in isolated huts,
sometimes in leper-houses, but always away from other people.
They made them wear a striking costume,-a red blouse; they
covered their hands with gloves; they supplied them with a rattle
to warn those who passed. The priest, when lepers were brought
to him, forbade them to go barefoot, or to go elsewhere than on
the broad thoroughfares, lest they should brush against travelers;
to enter churches, or to bathe in streams. He consoled them,
however, by recalling to them that their spiritual communion.
with Christians still subsisted. Then he pronounced prayers,
turned a shovelful of earth upon their heads as a sign that they
were cut off from the living, and offered them the sole of his
shoe to kiss. Lepers could associate only with lepers, and marry
only with lepers; and when they died, their huts were burned.
In the fifteenth century there seems to have been a reawaken-
ing of medical science. At Montpellier, under Charles VI. , the
body of a criminal was dissected for the first time in France.
In 1484, an ordinance of Charles VIII. fixed at four years the
duration of apprenticeship in the corporation of the grocers and
apothecaries of Paris; for pharmacists or apothecaries formed a
single corporation with the grocers, which had obtained second
rank among the trades of Paris. An ordinance of Louis XII.
distinctly separates the two professions. These are the origins of
French pharmacy.
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke


## p. 12058 (#96) ###########################################

12058
ALFRED RAMBAUD
THE MIDDLE AGES
CHARACTER OF THEIR CIVILIZATION
From the History of French Civilization'
THE
HE Middle Ages were only considered by the historians of the
eighteenth century as a period of ignorance and barbarism,
unproductive and void. They are considered to-day in an
entirely different light.
It was during the Middle Ages that new nations and new
languages originated in Europe; among these the French nation.
and the French language. Institutions which would have aston-
ished the Greeks and Romans were developed during this period.
The ancients knew no other political life than the municipal life;
they had only the idea of a city, not at all that of a nation; they
did not believe liberty possible except within the walls of a town.
As soon as the Romans had to govern not only towns but an
empire, they believed that they could only govern by the most
absolute despotism. On the contrary, the new nations found the
means, in dominating vast regions, to harmonize the principle
of authority with that of the liberty of the subjects. They out-
lined the system of representation, from which have proceeded
the modern constitutions; they established the jury,- that is, the
judgment of the accused by his peers.
Great steps were accomplished in social progress. Slavery,
that curse of the ancient world, disappeared. The laborer in the
field began to enfranchise himself from the servitude of the globe,
which Roman law had consecrated. The sphere of woman was
enlarged in the family and in society, not only by effect of law
but by custom; and this feature alone was sufficient to distin-
guish in the strongest manner the Middle Ages from the ancient
civilization.
In literature we remained in the Middle Ages far behind the
classic perfection, but we created original methods and styles-
epic poems, the "mysteries," and the lyric poetry of the south.
In the sciences, it is to the Middle Ages that we owe the
modern system of numeration, algebra, the compass, the magni-
fying glass, gunpowder, the process of distillation, the discovery
of gas, the most important acids, the first fulminating elements,
and numberless chemical combinations.
I


## p. 12059 (#97) ###########################################

ALFRED RAMBAUD
12059
In the arts, the Middle Ages were glorified by two grand crea-
tions: French architecture (Roman and ogival) and musical har-
mony. A more rational notation of music was adopted. Engraving
was begun, and painting in oils made its début. If modern paint-
ing and sculpture owe to ancient art the perfection of form, the
artists of the Middle Ages have preceded us in the choice of
expression.
Besides the invention of printing, it may be noted that dur-
ing that time were manufactured for the first time in Europe,
sugar, silk tissues, plate mirrors, clocks, and watches. New con-
ditions of life, comforts unknown to the ancients, such as body
linen and chimneys, characterized the private life of the Middle
Ages.
The world itself was enlarged. No Roman navigator had, like
the Scandinavians, or perhaps the Basques, brought the ancient
world in contact with America; no Roman explorer had, like
Marco Polo and his emulators, revealed to his compatriots central
Asia and the extreme Orient.
The majority of the weak points in the civilization of the
Middle Ages are identical with those of the Roman civilization;
for example, the barbarism of criminal procedure, the cruelty of
torture, and the grosser superstitions.
Our old French civilization on only three points of view-
the glory and the perfection of the arts, the liberty of thought,
and the power of the scientific spirit—is perhaps inferior to the
civilization of the Greeks, which was the mother of all the others,
and which has remained incomparable as the initiative, original,
and prolific. But assuredly our own old civilization is not inferior
to the Roman civilization. Between that of the Romans and
that of our ancestors there is a difference, not of degree, but of
nature. A colder climate, instincts and needs peculiar to the
Gallic and Germanic races, and the great influence of the reli-
gious sentiment, have contributed to this result. It is the civil-
ization of the north contrasted with the civilization of the south.
One cannot say that the France of the thirteenth century was
barbaric in comparison with the Rome of the emperors; for amid
the ruins of the Empire it regained all that it was possible to
possess of political culture.
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## p. 12060 (#98) ###########################################

12060
ALFRED RAMBAUD
THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The close of the medieval period is marked by the following
stages:
In the political order: The taking of Constantinople, and the
establishment of the Turks in Oriental Europe upon the débris
of the Greek empire; the fall of the papacy as the directing.
power of Europe; the succeeding of national wars to holy wars;
the birth of the patriotic sentiment; the progress of the royal
power; the new form taken by the power of the third estate,
which is not the form of local communes, but the national form
of general States.
In the social order: The emancipation of the rural classes; the
enrichment of the middle classes, and their increasing influence.
In the religious order: The appearance of new heresies, nota-
bly that of John Huss in Bohemia, which appears to have pre-
pared the way for the advent of Protestantism.
In the literary order: The end of chivalric poetry; the appear-
ance of philosophy in history (under Comines); the decadence
of the ancient theatre, the "mysteries" and the "moralities ";
the first steps in the progress of printing; and the introduction
in the Occident, after the fall of Constantinople, of new Greek
and Latin manuscripts.
In the scientific order: The tendency of the sciences to free
themselves from the yoke of scholasticism and theology through
the resumption of the theory of the world according to Nicholas
de Cusa; and by the revival of medicine in the times of Louis
XI.