Morris Bishop > Quotes

“The culture of a given time and place is a product of inherited tradition, of the recovery of lost or obscured forms of thought, of innovation. Such seeds, fertilized by prosperity, tended by leisure, and warmed by the sun of peace, may produce an abundant bloom.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“(Virginity was regarded with superstitious awe, perhaps because there was so little of it.)”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Only in the eleventh century was the staff of parallel horizontal lines invented to indicate pitch. At the same time the notes were named ut, re, mi, fa, so, la, from the opening syllables of the successive lines of a familiar hymn: Ut queant laxis / Resonare fibris. . .”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The lance or spear was the traditional weapon of the horseman, and it lingers to our own times as a symbol of the mounted knight. In 1939, the Polish cavalry, with ridiculous gallantry, carried lances into battle against German tanks.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“There was never a greater crime against humanity than the fourth crusade,” says Stephen Runciman. It destroyed the treasures of the past and broke down the most advanced culture of Europe. Far from uniting Eastern and Western Christendom, it implanted in the Greeks a hostility toward the West that has never entirely disappeared, and it weakened the Byzantine defenses against the rising power of the Ottoman Turks, to whom they eventually succumbed.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Saint Bernard’s death and the century after, one looks upon two different worlds, though we call both medieval. The aspect of the countryside had changed from half-wild to a cultivation not unlike that of today. Castles guarded the fields. Town and villages emerged under exalted Gothic spires. Commerce was controlled by bankers and regulated by guilds. Universities flourished; scholars wrote their profundities; poets and novelists, their imaginations. The High Middle Ages had created that European civilization that was to become our own.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“A young gentleman, inspired for whatever motive to take the cross, had first to raise his passage money, often by mortgaging his land or by ceding some feudal rights. He heard a farewell sermon in his village church and kissed his friends and kinsmen good-by, very likely for ever. Since the road across Asia Minor had become increasingly unsafe, he rode to Marseilles or Genoa and took passage with a shipmaster. He was assigned a space fixed at two feet by five in the ‘tween decks; his head was to lie between the feet of another pilgrim. He bargained for some of his food with the cargador, or chief steward, but he was advised to carry provisions of his own - salt meat, cheese, biscuit, dried fruits, and syrup of roses to check diarrhea.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“At Bologna, the students held control of their university, hired and fired professors, fined them for unexcused absences or lateness, for wandering from their subject, and for dodging difficult questions.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“it is said that the prostitutes’ guild of Paris offered a window or a chalice for Notre Dame. It was decided that the gift could be accepted, but would receive no publicity.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“A few of the Germans managed to reach Palestine, where they disappeared. The French party fell into the hands not of angels but of two of the worst scoundrels in history, Hugh the Iron and William of Posquères, Marseilles shipowners, who offered the young crusaders free transport to the Holy Land, but carried them instead to Bougie in North Africa and sold them as slaves to Arab dealers.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The home and school of courtly love was at Poitiers, in the court of the renowned Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of Henry II of England. Toward the end of the twelfth century, Eleanor presided over an actual Court of Love, wherein ladies and gentlemen judged questions of behavior, issued decisions, and composed a casuistic code for the guidance of others. Her daughter’s chaplain, Andreas Capellanus, set down the results of their meetings in a treatise, De Arte Honeste Amandi (The Art of Courtly Love). True love, he says, must be free; it must be mutual; it must be noble, for a commoner could not experience it; it must be secret. If the lover meets his lady in public, he must treat her almost as a stranger and communicate with her only by furtive signs. But when he catches sight of her, his heart palpitates, and he turns pale, and thus risks betraying his dear secret. He eats and sleeps very little. Clearly this true love is incompatible with marriage; “everybody knows that love can have no place between husband and wife.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The first datable stone donjon, or keep, was built in France at Langeais, overlooking the Loire, in 994.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“There was evidently a party of outright pacifists in the church. In 1054, another council declared: “A Christian who slays another Christian sheds the blood of Christ.” But pacifism presented too many problems in a wicked world. Gregory VII often quoted with approval Jeremiah: “Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.” Before long, the church itself was the instigator of political wars, and its enemies were those who cried for peace.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“then transferred all Italy to be the property of the pope and removed to his city of Constantinople, leaving the manuscript recording his donation on the embalmed body of Saint Peter. “Alas, Constantine, how much evil didst thou mother!” exclaimed Dante. This is unfair to Constantine; the evil was mothered by some ingenious clerical zealot, who contrived probably the most momentous forgery in history.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The manorial system, widespread in the West from Charlemagne’s time onward, was not at first favorable to the development of agriculture and commerce. Manors tended to be self-sufficient; the economy was closed. Men lived in their small world, in constant fear of the strange world beyond, from which came only evil. The best they could hope for was to endure, and they endured.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Some of the feudal services were peculiar. A Kentishman was required to “hold the king’s head in the boat” when he should cross the Channel. Even more peculiar was the case of a certain vassal obliged every Christmas to make before his lord unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum (“a leap, whistle, and an audible gaseous expulsion”).”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The building of a suitable house for God stretched men’s imaginations and abilities to the utmost. First came the idea, the inspiration, which hardened into purpose, which sought and found the means to bring the great achievement into being.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Frederick encouraged all branches of learning. He founded the University of Naples in 1224 to train lawyers, accountants, and civil servants. This was the first university founded and run by laymen.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The nobles were fighting men, the descendants of fighting men. They were proud of their vassalage, a word we have tinged with derogation. But today most of us are, have been, or will be employees; no employee has the right to look down on a vassal.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Antioch was finally taken in June 1098. The Christian army then moved cautiously toward Jerusalem. By any modern standards, it was a tiny force, numbering by then perhaps 12,000, including 1,200 or 1,300 cavalry. The invaders were shocked to find Canaan a stony, barren land. There is an old Eastern story that at the Creation the angels were transporting the entire world’s supply of stones in a sack, which burst as they flew over Palestine. No milk and honey flowed in the gray gullies, not even water.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The High Middle Ages resounded with conflicts between the popes and the emperors and other temporal rulers.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The Picts poured over Hadrian’s Wall in the north; Scottish tribes harried the coasts from their homes in Northern Ireland. The Saxons, or Anglo-Saxons, came from the coast of Denmark and Germany to ravage England’s eastern shores, and finding the land good, established permanent settlements.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Pirenne describes the craft guild system as “industrial Malthusianism.” It guaranteed full employment for its members but left too many workers outside. It tended to exploit consumers for the benefit of the guildsmen; it was unsuited to the rising industrial capitalism of the towns, especially in Italy and Flanders. It limited production and working hours, demanded extra pay for overtime work, forbade innovation and the invention of new labor-saving tools. (The modern parallels are obvious.)”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The Byzantines mounted catapults on their ships; they also introduced the West to Greek Fire, apparently a mixture of petroleum, quicklime, and sulphur. The quicklime in contact with water ignited the bomb, a primitive napalm.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Man’s exile is ignorance; his home is knowledge,” said the twelfth-century Bishop Honorius of Autun. And Saint Anselm of Canterbury: “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“The great weapon of infantry - and of Mongol and Turkish cavalry - was the bow and arrow. The short bow is very ancient, the property of most primitive peoples the world over. As we see in the Bayeux tapestry, it was drawn to the breast, not the ear; at short range it could be lethal. The six-foot longbow, shooting a three-foot “clothyard” shaft, was apparently a Welsh invention of the twelfth century; it became the favorite weapon of the English.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Laymen, as well as clerics, were allured by the joys of authorship. The professional writer, the homme de lettres, appeared. A few, such as Dante and Petrarch, had university training; most had their education from life. They made no direct profit from their works, though Boccaccio, who was always broke, rented his manuscripts to copyists. The writers’ reward came from their celebrity and intellectual distinction, which brought them church livings or free lodging and gifts from princes or nobles. Thus, the first female professional writer, Christine de Pisan, supported herself and her children at the French court in the early fifteenth century.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“When Charlemagne’s driving impulse passed, his Renaissance faded. For 200 years after his death, there is not much to record in Western Europe in the way of creative thought.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Feudalism is a total organization of society. It specifies the status of the individual and his relations with his superiors and inferiors. It includes an economic system based on land; in general a man’s rights to land correspond with his social rights. It is a scheme of political organization, legally based, overlapping the social and economic organization. In medieval feudalism the overlord was, in theory, socially, economically, and politically supreme. He granted some part of his rights to his vassals, noble companions and servants. The granted rights took the form of rule over a unit of land, a fief. An implicit bargain was struck: The lord offered maintenance and protection; the vassal promised military aid to his lord. Feudalism was, then, a military, political, social, economic, and legal system emerging from the breakup of Carolingian society.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages

“Charlemagne’s educational and cultural campaign was momentous for its preservation of the classical past and for its effects on medieval society. The level of literacy never again sank as low as it had in pre-Carolingian times.”
― Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages