In a high order of ideas, what great facts serve as a foundation to our history and that of the modern world! We have first royalty, which, weak and debased under the Merovingians, rises and establishes itself energetically under Pépin and Charlemagne, to degenerate under Louis le Débonnaire and Charles le Chauve. "What institutions had they? What were their political rights? Can you not place before us their pastimes, their hunting parties, their meals, and all sorts of scenes, sad or gay, which composed their home life? We should like to follow them in public and private occupations, and to know their manner of living hourly, as we know our own." "How did our fathers live?" is a daily question. What is above all sought for in historical works nowadays is the physiognomy, the inmost character of past generations. ![]() We no longer imagine that the history of our institutions has less interest than that of our wars, nor that the annals of the humbler classes are irrelevant to those of the privileged orders. We are, in fact, no longer content with the chronological narration and simple nomenclatures which formerly were considered sufficient for education. This work, devoted to the vivid and faithful description of the Manners and Customs of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, answers fully to the requirements of contemporary times. It is a subject we have chosen to succeed our first book, and which will be followed by a similar study on the various aspects of Religious and Military Life. The history of the human race does not present a subject more vast or more interesting. Under that influence, everything is modified both in private and public life. Ancient art and literature resuscitates because custom insensibly takes that direction. Hardly does modern society, civilised by Christianity, reach the fullness of its power, than it divides itself to follow different paths. She wants to create, so to say, from every side, property, authority, justice, &c., &c., in a word, everything which can establish the basis of public life and this new order of things must be established by means of the elements supplied at once by the barbarian, Roman, and Christian world-a prodigious creation, the working of which occupied the whole of the Middle Ages. What an ardent struggle during that long period! and how full, too, of emotion is its picture! Society tends to reconstitute itself in every aspect. Everywhere the most adverse and opposite tendencies display themselves. We find barbarian, Roman, and Christian customs and character in presence of each other, mixed up in the same society, and very often in the same individuals. In it, too, "we retrace not only one single period, but two periods quite distinct one from the other." In the first, the public and private customs offer a curious mixture of barbarism and civilisation. The Manners and Customs of the Middle Ages:-this subject is of the greatest interest, not only to the man of science, but to the man of the world also. To understand the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it is necessary to go back to the source of its art, and to know the life of our fathers these are two inseparable things, which entwine one another, and become complete one by the other. But it must be acknowledged that art is only the consequence of the ideas which it expresses it is the fruit of civilisation, not its origin. ![]() Art must be the faithful expression of a society, since it represents it by its works as it has created them-undeniable witnesses of its spirit and manners for future generations. They tell us its tastes, its ideas, and its character." We thus spoke in the preface to our first work, and we find nothing to modify in this opinion. "The arts, considered in their generality, are the true expressions of society. In fact, art alone cannot acquaint us entirely with an epoch. That attempt, which was a bold one, succeeded too well not to induce us to push our researches further. ![]() The object of that work was to introduce the reader to a branch of learning to which access had hitherto appeared only permitted to the scientific. The several successive editions of "The Arts of the Middle Ages and Period of the Renaissance" sufficiently testify to its appreciation by the public. ![]() Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages, and During the Renaissance Period.Ĭurator of the Imperial Library of the Arsenal, Paris. The King inclines his sceptre towards the Queen indicating his appreciation of her person and her gifts five ladies attend the Queen and five of the King's courtiers stand on his right hand. Fac-simile of a miniature from the Breviary of the Cardinal Grimani, attributed to Memling.
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