and Catholic Church—the most potent unifying influence of the Middle Ages.
Still more was the character of mediaeval progress set by the action and effect of these two forces. The Latin culture provided the means and method of elementary education, as well as the material for study; while Latin Christianity, with transforming power, worked itself into the souls of the young mediaeval peoples. The two were assuredly the moulding forces of all mediaeval development; and whatever sprang to life beyond the range of their action was not, properly speaking, mediaeval, even though seeing the light in the twelfth century.[1] Yet one should not think of these two great influences as entities, unchanging and utterly distinct from what must be called for simplicity's sake the native traits of the mediaeval peoples. The antique culture had never ceased to form part of the nature and faculties of Italians, and to some extent still made the inherited equipment of the Latinized or Latin-descended people of Spain and France. In the same lands also, Latin Christianity had attained its form. And even in England and Germany, Christianity and Latin culture would be distinct from the Teuton folk only at the first moment of presentation and acceptance. Thereupon the two would begin to enter into and affect their new disciples, and would themselves change under the process of their own assimilation by these Teutonic natures.
- ↑ The Icelandic Sagas, for example, were then brought into written form. They have a genius of their own; they are realistic and without a trace of symbolism. They are wonderful expressions of the people among whom they were composed. Post, Chapter VIII. But, products of a remote island, they were unaffected by the moulding forces of mediaeval development, nor did they exert any influence in turn. The native traits of the mediaeval peoples were the great complementary factor in mediaeval progress—complementary, that is to say, to Latin Christianity and antique culture. Mediaeval characteristics sprang from the interaction of these elements; they certainly did not spring from any such independent and severed growth of native Teuton quality as is evinced by the Sagas. One will look far, however, for another instance of such spiritual aloofness. For clear as are the different racial or national traits throughout the mediaeval period, they constantly appear in conjunction with other elements. They are discerned working beneath, possibly reacting against, and always affected by, the genius of the Middle Ages, to wit, the genius of the mutual interaction of the whole. Wolfram's very German Parzival, the old French Chanson de Roland, and above them all the Divina Commedia, are mediaeval. In these compositions in the vernacular, racial traits manifest themselves distinctly, and yet are affected by the mediaeval spirit.
