Those Very Dark Ages
248 THE COMMONWEAL July 3, I929 THOSE VERY DARK AGES W HEN the Mediaeval Academy of America was established some few years ago, hardly anybody imagined that it could do more than provide an...
...Nor were the early numbers of Speculum very reassuring...
...The annual report of the clerk testified to both progress in enlisting memberships and to successful research...
...The thir- teenth century had a rich and varied culture in which, though new and old engaged in mighty conflict, the new did not banish the old but drew from it, as ever, part of its own strength for progress...
...From a study of extant sculptural remains, Mr...
...Finally the preparation of measured drawings of the cathe- dral of Palma, Majorca, has been nearly completed...
...The Academy, however, is essen- tially humanistic in outlook...
...The mediaeval period is seen as an era when the cen- tral concerns of a cultivated intellect were honored as highly as they have ever been in human history...
...Accordingly one concludes that hand in hand with an enthusiastic appreciation of what has been accomplished at Cambridge, there must go a sturdy resolution to accomplish the task remaining...
...Other interesting projects have been inaugurated...
...Other volumes announced for publication, or in preparation, include Professor Roy Deferrari's translation of Hugo of Saint Victor's De Sacramentis...
...It is believed that the full signifi- cance of Cluny as a model of ecclesiastical architecture will ultimately be revealed, and of course the exca-vated ruins have already acquired the dignity of a monument historique...
...Conant has also been able to establish their date as approximately I Ioo A.D., so that valuable new light is thrown upon the development of French Romanesque art...
...The first book issued under the auspices of the Academy was Professor Lane Cooper's edition of Boethius...
...and Professor Charles Beeson's facsimile edition of an early Cicero manuscript...
...Perhaps the most notable single endeavor has been the excavation of the ruined abbey church of Cluny, in Burgundy...
...Professor Rand did what he could to liven up the paper, but an editor picking his way between hastily written book reviews and un- digested research articles might just as well try to be the captain of a skiff attempting a passage between the proverbial rocks off Sicily...
...We have already reported, in a previous issue, Professor Karl Young's masterly summary of what has been learned regarding mediaeval drama...
...All these are achievements which have, in a measure, been delegated by the Academy to members, students or kindred groups...
...But so rightly directed was the step which had been taken that now, review- ing the evidence of activity presented at the last meet- ing, one believes the Academy to be one of the most virile and original among existing "learned societies...
...They amply deserve, we think, the attention of mediaevalists and art students...
...The eminence of the ancients was brighter, not more obscure, for their use by the creators of a literary art that, as we view it, deserves its own place among the classics of all time...
...It has not busied itself with those philosophical and religious convictions which were the keystones of the middle-ages, and probably will not do so...
...Professor Edward Kennard Rand's Manuscripts of Tours...
...These words, which make their point thoughtfully enough, indicate both the spirit of the Academy and the limitations which it has assigned to its endeavor...
...Professor Kenneth J. Conant, director of the work, has so far been able to uncover both a beautiful narthex portal and sufficient dimen- sional data to make possible a restoration of the facade...
...Mediaevalism, in all its aspects, has made a profound impression upon thinking America...
...The Mediaeval Academy raised a fund to defray the cost, and also secured the good offices of the late Ambassador Herrick in ap- proaching the French government.~ Articles setting forth the progress of the venture are now running in Speculum...
...One list of authors studied is "a little mirror of that Christian humanism which had not ceased to color the mediaeval mind at the time when that mind was preeminently occupied with conquering each last corner on the realm of thought...
...Here one comes upon a dis- tinctly Catholic realm, which must very likely remain closed, in a measure, to all who have not actually entered the Church...
...We turn to it therefore not as to something dark or arid, but to a place where we shall find conserved the true image of manmreasonable, noble, courteous and scholarly...
...Even more notable, possibly, is the increase of the Academy's contribution to the work of the Bollandists--an en-deavor vitally aided by American generosity...
...It may be learned from contem-porary records, he declared, that the vogue of Latin authors and commentators did not diminish during the period...
...Neither Dante nor his readers," concluded Pro- fessor Rand, "conceived that he had put out of com- mission that buon maestro who had inspired his bello stile...
...Professor Rand discussed, in his pleasant and constantly illumi- nating way, the status of the classics in thirteenth- century education...
...Though the fringes of society may well have been fairly barbarous in centuries when the pagan forests still hedged in the "central sea," the labor of conserving the gleam of civilization is only so much the more lustrous...
...The outcome of it all is not that the thirteenth century saw ancient letters engulfed in the passion for dialectics, but that in the various ways above described the influence of the classics grew steadily broader and deeper...
...The annual meeting itself may be described as a collective endeavor...
...Perhaps, indeed, the schools of philosophy, law and medicine were really "graduate schools" which presupposed a train- ing in the liberal arts...
...248 THE COMMONWEAL July 3, I929 THOSE VERY DARK AGES W HEN the Mediaeval Academy of America was established some few years ago, hardly anybody imagined that it could do more than provide an excuse for annual friendly gatherings of people who can read illuminated manuscripts...
...Conant reported the findings of the Cluny expedition, stressing in particular the capitals which seem to form so vital a link in the history of French architectural sculpture...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 9
