1500: THE BEGINNING OF A NEW AGE.

Shannon News, 13 June 1924, Page 4

1500: THE BEGINNING OF A NEW AGE.

W.E.A. LECTURE.

(Palmerston Times.) The public lee ure nnrtor the W.E.A. scheme was given i Spooner-r Buildings last evening | Uie lecturer . (Mr Ernest Mander dealing "VUH some of the important deve "cements which were takmg place, about A.D. 1500. when, he said, our modern civilisation was being bom. One of the most important of such developments was introduction of the art of paper-making, together with the invention of printing. .Th ? had occurred.some half century ear licr. and by 1500 a steady streajn of printed books was being poured out .SS Europe. "It is." said the lecturer -almost impossible,to °™ r *«*****? the importance of, this a^f 116 " 1 ; Our modern civilisation could not exist without books—without paper and printing. Without »« formation which is contained in books (and which could not otherwise be preserved at all) we should be unable to carry on any engineering, any ' manufacturing-unable to make aeroplan** or telegraphs or tramcars or railways or motors; unable to build bridges, to carry out hydro-electrjo works, to keep up anypp ot J"?' elaborate material civilisation. This w a matter worth thinking over, worth realising. Sometimes we come across ignorant and "nwteUynt people who are inclined to sneer at Aook knowledge." Jet air exact knowledge which is used m f™**? chemistry and engineering, for ex- : ample—ls essentially book-knowledge Without books all that exact know-, ledge would be lost and our material civilisation would collapse." »

The Fall of 'Constantinople.

Another decisive event, with very important and far-reaching consequences was the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Constantinople, the headquarters of tho Eastern Church, had for centuries been the eastern bulwark of Christendom against the Mohammedans. 1,400 onwards the pressure of tho Turks upon Constantinople had been steadily increasing; and, as a result of this, a stream of scholars had been leaving the threatened city, carrying their Greek learning and traditions with them into other parts of Europe, chiefly to Italy. / This had been going 'on for fifty years and more, while the city was in danger, but before it was actually lost. Then in 1453 the Turks finally captured Constantinople, ~Mch has. of course, remained f Mohammedan city ever since. But the most important result of the fall of the city in the 15th Century was the 'hurried exodus of the rest of the Greek scholars there, and their dispersal all over Europe. This was one of the causes of the re-birth of learning and thinking in Europe m the century that followed. The outstanding names, names of the two men whose work marked the birth of modern science, were Leonardo da Vinci and Copernicus, both of whom were living in A.D. 1500. But, Mr Mander continued, there was something else involved in .this dispersal of Greek scholars —something which most historians seem to miss. The Eastern Church at Constantinople had always been hostile to the claims of , the Western Church at Hrme. So this New Learning—in so far as it was due to tho dispersal of scholars from the Eastern Church at Constantinople—was associated with

a tendency to challenge, to repudiate,

the authority of the Pope. And this must, have' helped very considerably in bringing about the intellectual revolt against Rome This, combined with the moral revolt, -nd with the political and •.-conomJe factors whicn had been discussed In an earlier lecture, produced the Reformation. Soon after 1500, Luther in the German States and Calvin in North France and tho Netherlands, were bringing to a head the revolt of the Teutonic peoples against the Roman Church. Soon after 1500 the Reformation was in full swing. . .England After the Black Death. Tho lecturer then reverted to the matter he had been discussing al the end of his previous lecture —the position in England at the time of the Black Death of 1348. "Last week we saw how, in England, during the century that preceded the Black Death, a gradual change was being made in the condition of the peasantry. Under the old system, the peasants, the villagers, held their land ; (about 30 acres apiece) in return for their part-time labour —so many i days a week working for the squire, j They were in a condition of serfdom, j But gradually anew arrangement was becoming general —an arrangement whereby the villagers, instead of paying Tor their holdings in labour, began to pay a fixed money rent instead. This suited the peasants because it freed (hem from serfdom. • It suited the squire, too, because he could use the rents ho received to hire wage-labour for his own purposes. Then, just as this change was prac- | tically complete in many parts of England, came the Black Death, of J 1345. This appalling disaster really. came very near to entirely wiping out the. human race. As it was,' even in England neaxly half the population was wiped out. v - One of the results of thig Black Death was ,of course, a great scarcity of labour, and wages rose accordingly '

—in fact, •on average, they doubled. So the squire found he had made a bad bargain after all. His rents were no longer sufficient to enable him to hire the labour he needed, now that wages had risen. Attempts were there, fore made by Parliament to force ■wages back to their old pre-plague level. But these attempts failed, of course, and wages remained high as long as labour remained scarce. The Peasants' Revolt. Tfc'cfn the squires tried another plan. Tltey trtefl to cancel the arrangement

whereby the villagers paid, rent, ana to re-introduce the old conditions of serfdom, under, which, obtained forced labour from the peasants. ' •■; . •»,..,„ The upshot of all this'was the Peasants' Revolt* headed in England ' by.Wat Tyler —a movement in which all our sympathies- must lie with the exasperated peasants.., Of course, as alwavs happens in such cases, the ••hooligan element" associated itself with the revolt, arid also all sorts of people with all sorts of other grievances. But essentially it was a revolt of the villagers against the attempt of the squires to force them back into serfdom. The revolt was crushed.. But, despite this, the peasants were not forced back into, serfdom. A new development saved them. There was a great turn-over to sheep-farming. This was the salvation of the country squires (lords of the manors), for much less labour was required, and also the returns were higher. By 1500 sheep farming had become an important fact in the economic life of England, and Englißh wool had become a staple export. * The Growth of Cltie*.

Mr Mander then dealt at some length with the general conditions of life during the Later Middle Ages, showing how low the standard ol living in the country wa*. The peasants'of Britain and Europe were living like animals—without any of the comforts, with hardly any of the, decencies of life.

Civilsation began to develop again when towns and cities began to grow up once more. For, said the lecturer: "It seems clear that you cannot have civilisation without cities. I don't say that you cannot be a civilised person if you happen to live in the country—or even in the backblocke. But, even so, if you think about it you will realise that you depend upon the city for everything that makes your life civilised. [ The growth of cities in Europe after the Dark Ages can be dated roughly from A.D. 1066. These cities were the centres in which, during the centuries that followed, the next civilisation, our civilisation, was being born. • Mr Mander then gave a description of the medieval city and of conditions of life there. The city was small, smelly, overcrowded. The streets were narrow, so narrow that tho tall, overhanging houses almoet met overhead across the street, making it dark and gloomy. The houses were packed closely together. The streets were full of holes, roughly cobbled, and littered with rubbish and garbage. The onjy sewers in the town were the open gutters; and the refuse from the houses was thrown out of the windows into the streets below. The people lived licrded together in tall, many-storeyed houses —gloomy, rickety, insanitary. The only water supply was the pump in th,e street; so that all, the water used for domestic purposes—though that was not very much—had to be carried in pails through the streets and up long flights of dark, narrow, winding stairs. At night the streets were dark as t.We grave; and it would be unsafe for any decent citizen to go out of doors after, nightfall, because of the prowling cut-throats who would be waiting to murder and rob him. The Fair. The Fair played an important part in life of the Middle Ages. Every town had its Annual Fair, to which travelling merchants would come, bringing their wares on pack-horses, from near and far. This would-be the only chance in the year for the people to buy anything except such things as were grown or made locally. The Fairs in the larger cities would be attended by merchants from half the other cities in Europe. To Shrewsbury or Winchester, for instance, there would come merchants from Venice and Genoa, from Cologne and Munich, from Paris and Bordeaux and Lisbon. Strings of pack-horses were continually making their way backwards and forwards through Europe, setting out from Venice or Genoa, or London or Bruges to reach whatever other city they were making for in time for its Annual Fair. Sometimes these "trains" would be attacked by brigands; but generally, by avoiding districts known to be unsettled and dangerous, and by making a detour to avoid any little Avar that happened to be on, the merchants would manage to get their "trains" throujrh without mishap. -Discovery of the New World.

Mr Mander devoted the remainder of his lecture to a discussion of the conditions under which an .attempt was made —after the Ottoman Turks I had blocked the. old way to the East — to discover a new way of getting to India by sailing around the world in a westward direction. The Arabs had known that the earth was spherical, not flat; and despite the opposition of the church, many scholars still held that belief. Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sea captain, had picked up this idea; and he spent several years in trying to persuade various kings and merchant princes to finance an expedition. At length he obtained the backing of a wealthy Spanish family and, with three small ships, set sail from Palos to cross the Atlantic. The lecturer described the difficulties and dangers of this voyage and the fears of the sailors. Then, on October 12. 1492, the West Indies were sighted. To the day of his death Columbus himself believed that he had reached the coast of Asia. The shape of the world was as he supposed; but the size of it had been badly under-estim-ated. About the same time a Portuguese sailor, Vasco de Gama did discover a new way to India, by sailing around the African Continent. j During the following years many other adventurous men were groping their way about the unknown seas. This was a turning-point in historythe opening up of a new world—and Mr Mander closed by showing some of the ways in which this changed the whole course of developments in Europe, and altered the apparent deitiny of the human vaco.