Professor Marsh's Lecture.

Last evening in Sever 10 Professor Marsh gave an interesting lecture on the "Place of the Middle Ages in Studies since the Renaissance."

In preface he admitted the full power of the influences of the Renaissance which still holds us under its spell, but he emphasized the fact that the Renaissance was a late period in modern history and not its beginning, so that we cannot separate ourselves from the effects which the forces of the middle ages have exerted upon our nineteenth century life. Mediaeval history begins in the dark ages, when the feudal system determined certain fixed liberties and duties, and when the organization of the Church had begun to be a wide-felt settling and pacific influence. France was the home of the new culture which began to spring up under these new and favoring conditions to spread rapidly over Europe. This culture did not disappear in the Renaissance but rather appeared in a new form.

The twelfth century ideal was embodied in the fundamental conception of chivalry. The crusades were the great event of the period, but even they did not furnish adaquate material to supply the creative spirit of the time, and with the lack of material the power of the creative spirit failed. Thus Mediaeval types of art became grotesques and Mediaeval ideals of life ended in absurdity. The intense feeling for the rational which a familiarity with Greek and Latin classics gave to the Renaissance magnified the ridiculousness of Mediaeval ideals until Cervantes spoke for his age in Don Quixote.

Dante was the end of the first and beginning of the second period. The trouvere and the troubadour are responsible for the Vita Nouva and Divine Comedy. Love, the motive idea of the middle ages is the theme of all his work. On the other hand the spirit of the Renaissance enriched his mind and gave him a power of originality which distinguished his poems from those Italian songs imitated from Provencal models. Dante with the learning of the ancient world tells for the middle ages that Love is the great mover of the universe.

Petrarch was the first great figure of the Renaissance. He is distinct from Dante not it his Italian poems nor in his love for Laura, but in his being possessed by the passion of the Renaissance. Virgil is not only a guide but a master, a supreme authority, whose style, whose every peculiarity must be absorbed as must the whole spirit of Greek and Roman civilization. Petrarch assumes the Roman point of view and speaks of the barbarians, meaning the French and Germans. These were the nations who had founded great Universities, had developed Gothic architecture and had produced the models of Dante and Brunetto Lotini.

In France and Germany and Spain as well as in Italy the mediaeval impulses had worn themselves out and these countries were not slow to accept the new movement and then the Renaissance became European.

The weakness of the movement was the adjectness of its worship of all things ancient, in which the mediaeval was forgotten. Dante still was studied nationally in Italy, not as a product of the middle ages but genius standing high and above his period, as he is now apt to be regarded.

The craze of the antiquary for old things was the excuse for a collection of French poets of before 1300 and similarly in the search for Roman law the jurists of the 16th century explored the codes of the middle ages.

Since the Renaissance there have been four principal motives for search and study of medeaeval ideals. First the humanist desire to perfect the literary style of the day. Second the patriotic instinct regarding a country's past. Third, the fancifal interest in Chivalry of the Romantic movement, and fourth the desire of jurists to trace the development of law. Beside these dilletantiism led to the revival of the trouvier and troubadours.

Corneille and Racine nationalized the classic forces of the Renaissance in France after Italy had ceased to feel their stimulus. Rousseau was the first to start the new Romantic Movement. Parallel to Rousseau sprang up the new regime in Germany which ever was under stronger bonds with the middle ages than other nations. The result of this movement was the study of everything Mediaeval by Grimm and Uhland with a view to tracing all modern ideals to an orgin in a national folk lore. When the Romantic impulse for these studies died, and the modern idea of science for sciences sake arose Romance and Germanic Philology was already compiled. With such tools the motives of Science and Nationality promise to make continual excursions in the field of Mediaeval study.