Download PDF | (Cambridge Library Collection - History) G. G. Coulton - The Medieval Village-Cambridge University Press (2010).
639 Pages
GENERAL PREFACE
is only too much truth in the frequent complaint i. that history, as compared with the physical sciences, is neglected by the modern public. But historians have the remedy in their own hands; choosing problems of equal importance to those of the scientist, and treating them with equal accuracy, they will command equal attention. Those who insist that the proportion of accurately ascertainable facts is smaller in history, and therefore the room for speculation wider, do not thereby establish any essential distinction between truthseeking in history and truth-seeking in chemistry. The historian, whatever be his subject, is as definitely bound as the chemist "to proclaim certainties as certain, falsehoods as false, and uncertainties as dubious."
Those are the words, not of a modern scientist, but of the seventeenth century monk, Jean Mabillon; they sum up his literary profession of faith. Men will follow us in history as implicitly as they follow the chemist, if only we will form the chemist's habit of marking clearly where our facts end and our inferences begin. Then the public, so far from discouraging our speculations, will most heartily encourage them; for the most positive man of science is always grateful to anyone who, by putting forward a working theory, stimulates further discussion.
The present series, therefore, appeals directly to that craving for clearer facts which has been bred in these times of storm and stress. No care can save us altogether from error; but, for our own sake and the public's, we have elected to adopt a safeguard dictated by ordinary business commonsense. Whatever errors of fact are pointed out by reviewers or correspondents shall be publicly corrected with the least possible delay. After a year of publication, all copies shall be provided with such an erratum-slip without waiting for the chance of a second edition; and each fresh volume in this series shall contain a full list of the errata noted in its immediate predecessor.
After the lapse of a year from the first publication of any volume, and at any time during the ensuing twelve months, any possessor of that volume who will send a stamped and addressed envelope to the Cambridge University Press, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, London, E.C. 4, shall receive, in due course, a free copy of the errata in that volume. Thus, with the help of our critics, we may reasonably hope to put forward these monographs as roughly representing the most accurate information obtainable under present conditions. Our facts being thus secured, the reader will judge our inferences on their own merits; and something will have been done to dissipate that cloud of suspicion which hangs over too many important chapters in the social and religious history of the Middle Ages.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
THE substance of the present volume was delivered as a course of lectures at the invitation of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth; and my first word must be one of grateful recognition for this privilege, and for the generous welcome which I there received. The book itself has grown out of an original plan of three or four introductory chapters for the second volume of Five Centuries of Religion. It is impossible fully to understand St Francis without measuring the extent to which his gospel was a revolt against the capitalism of the older Orders.
And, apart from this, we can never estimate the religion of any age or society without observing its attitude towards the poor. But this observation must be twofold; rich and poor react upon each other; to understand the monk as landlord, we must realize something of peasant life in general; and thus my preliminary sketch has grown to a size which demands separate publication. Yet it remains, in substance, an introductory essay, designed to break ground in this field and to redress an unequal balance in medieval historiography.
Sooner or later, we must outgrow what may almost be called the present monopoly of constitutional theory and social theory; sooner or later, we must struggle to discover not only what men were organized to do six centuries ago, and not only what the academic publicists of that age prescribed for them to do, but what they actually did and suffered; and, by the way, what they themselves actually thought of the civil and ecclesiastical constitutions, or the social theories, under which they had to live.
Not, of course, that there is any hard-and-fast line between constitutional and social history; they overlap and illustrate each other at every turn. Yet there is a real difference; each needs special study in the light of its own special records; neither has dictatorial rights over the other; and for an author to draw easy inferences from one to the other, without continual reference to actual documents, must always be hazardous and is often grossly misleading.
Yet I do feel that the public has often been badly misled in this way, and that the evil is growing rather than abating. For it is the line of least resistance and of showiest results; nothing is easier than to put together a few pages of quotations and summaries from the stock philosophical books, and a few more of gild regulations, and thence to infer that these onesided documents teach us all we need to know about medieval society. We have all learnt, by this time, how absurd it would be to describe ancient Jewish society in the bare light of the Levitical regulations and of the hortatory chapters in Isaiah. We cannot believe that, six centuries hence, any author will be foolish enough to write, or any public to buy, books which describe the University life of this present century from a mere survey of the Statutes and the Student's Handbook, or our military life from the bare Army Regulations.
The one value of history is, that it should deal with realities; and a system which deliberately confines research to one particular fraction of the ascertainable realities—which puts concrete facts, so to speak, upon its Index Expurgatorius—can only lead to disaster in the long run. I am giving my readers, therefore, as many concrete facts as time and space will permit. Let others take account of the evidence here produced, adding to it and correcting it where necessary, and suggesting any working theory not irreconcilable with these facts.
For no theory is put forward in these pages but as a challenge to serious future enquiry; many of the points, it is plain, need much farther special study; I only plead that they should be studied not in vacuo, but in the light of actual documentary evidence, which may be found by all who care to seek. Of one important conclusion, however, I do feel quite certain, since it is the more deeply confirmed by every page that I read in trustworthy books, whether old or new, and whatever be the mental or moral complexions of their authors. What is wrong with the present peasant's position must be laid at the door of all classes of society, not excluding the peasantclass itself; it must be charged to men of all creeds, from the Roman Catholic to the Agnostic.
If any one class or party had consistently acted after the standard which all revile others for neglecting, then the peasant would be in a very different position today. Much of this, I hope, will be brought out, for the English peasant alone, by Mr H. S. Bennett, whose researches in this field are more systematic and detailed than mine can pretend to be. To him, and to Mr G. R. Potter of St John's College, I am deeply indebted for help in revision of proofs and in many other ways; and to my wife for the Index. Canon C. W. Foster, Miss A. E. Levett and Mr H. W. Saunders have generously supplied me with proofs or extracts from unpublished material. Mr C. W. Previte Orton has given me many valuable Italian references, and Mr H. G. Richardson many of equal value for English conditions, while I owe to Mr G. M. Trevelyan some very important modifications of certain seventeenth century comparisons upon which I had ventured. Finally, I must thank Dr F. J. Allen for the photograph of Wrington which he has lent me from his vast collection of English towers and spires.
My debts to previous writers are, I hope, sufficiently indicated in my references. I have found the greatest stimulus of all (in spite of the fact that our periods coincide for so short a space) in Mr Tawney's Agrarian Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, with its remarkable combination of research, sympathy and imagination. A necessary eye-operation has much hampered my final revision of the proofs, especially the Appendixes; but it is to be hoped that the reader may not find much trouble in verifying my quotations and references.
G. G. C. ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
June 1925
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