UNSUSPECTED TESTIMONY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 189, 10 November 1876, Page 10

UNSUSPECTED TESTIMONY.

The middle ages are variously distinguished in writing or conversation ; some characterising them as the dark ages, while to others they are known as the ages of faith. ScHXEaEL, an eminent German writer, declares that the manner in wkic'i the centuries we speak of are regarded by numerous persons is flagrantly unjust. "We often think of," he says, " and represent to ourselves, the middle ages as a blank in the history of the human mmd — an empty space between the refinement of antiquity and the illumination of modern times. We are willing to believe that art and science had entirely perished, that their resurrection, after a thousand years sleep, may appear something more wonderful and sublime. Here, as in many others of our customary opinions, we are at once false, narrow-sighted, and unjust ; we give up substance for gaudiness, and sacrifice truth to effect. The fact is, that the substantial part of the knowledge and civilisation of antiquity never was forgotten, and that for many of the best and noblest I productions of modern genius, we are entirely indebted to the inventive spirit of the middle ages." •

There is, indeed, a vast array of hostile authors to fee confuted before the light of truth regarding this matter can dawn upon the non-Catholic mind, for a great barrier has been set up between these two by many writers, and there is no disposition to have it removed on the part of those who are blinded by it. There are three motives, by which we find that historians and others, who take it upon them to put forward ideas regarding the times we speak of, are influenced; they are ignorauce, prejudice, and incredible dishonesty; for, that the latter has been called into requisition in a'manner altogether scandalous, is amply proved by Dr. Newman in his work entitled, "The Present Position of Catholics in England." It would be easy to show directly from the writings of Catholic

authors and historians, that the estimate made by the opponents of the Church concerning the ages of faith is totally an unfuir one ; but, since we must necessarily confine ourselves within certain limits, if, taking up the question of the morality of the centuries we allude to — and which has likewise been loudly condemned — we can make it clear, on the testimony of a famous Protestant author, that this morality was, notwithstanding, undoubtedly of a high order, we feel that we shall liave performed a useful task.

" Dante," says Carlyle, " is the spokesman of the middle ages ; the Thought they lived by stands here in everlasting music." The great Florentine poet is then to be taken as the •exponent of the mind of the middle ages, "the voice of ten silent centuries," as the writer named above again declares him to be; and if he shows hostility to immorality, if he proves to be the soul of- truth, and honesty, and scrupulous uprightness, the centuries he represents must be viewed in like manner, on the unquestioned authority of one who i? •looked upon as the " thinker " par excellence of the period.

In the progress then which he describes himself as making through the infernal regions, Dante does not only represent severely punished in the other world the grosser crimes. Those, indeed, who have committed such are there, and rigid justice is meted out to them with the utmost impartiality ; the manner of their death, however cruel it may have been, detracts nothing from their punishment ; if they have died in sin they must bear its penalties. Paolo and Francesca are there, though Gianciotto, their murderer, is to share the everlasting fate of fratricides. Ugolino is no less severely afflicted than is he who confined him in the tower, where, ■with his sons, he perished so terribly.

But it is not with crimes of violence that we have got to do. This would not show us by the mouth of their spokesman how exact on points of morality were the middle ages. Their voice, that according to Carlyle is uttered by Dante, inveighs vehemently against all manner of dealings that are not upright, as well as against those that we are accustomed to hear condemned as the most foul. No species or degree of vice is admitted to escape free of penalty ; but the poet tells us that — lightly though they may be regarded by our presumably more enlightened era — the fraudulent stand lowest of all, and are worthy of the heaviest stripes ; and in his description of the wretched crowd he sees in perdition, he goes throughout upon this principle. Thus Ulysses and Diomed, though they ran together ''unto wrath," are not visited with the penalties of their ferocious deeds, but it is for their craft and dishonesty they are punished ; Cacus too is not swarmed over by multitudes of serpents and the spread-winged dragon, because of " a lake of blood" often times shed by him, but in recompence of the theft he committed ; and it is for her flattery that Thais suffers a fate too horrible to contemplate. The flatterer, the falsifier, the hypocrite, the betrayer, all these are dealt severely with by Dante, and not only from his plainly spoken words, but as well from the nature of the punishment he devises for such offenders is it made evident that falsehood of all kinds was to him an abomination ; and if to him, to the centuries he spoke for according to so great an authority quoted.

We Lave then this accidental and most valuable testimony to the morality of the middle ages, and we cannot but perceive it to have been far higher than that of the much vented century that is now running its course.