nd avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of noble and
burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and
paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic
use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and
simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity
different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If
painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an artist: so
was a shoemaker. Astronomy and grammar were arts: so was spinning.
Apothecaries and lawyers were artists: so was a tailor. Dante[62] uses
the word _artista_ as denoting a workman or craftsman, and when he
wishes to emphasise the degeneracy of the citizens of his time as
compared with those of the old Florentine race, he does so by saying
that in those days their blood ran pure even _nell' ultimo artista_
(in the commonest workman). Let us be careful how we speak of these
ages as "dark"; at least there were "retrievements out of the night."
Already before the tenth century the basilica of St. Germain des Pres
was known as St. Germain _le dore_ (the golden), from its glowing
refulgence, and St. Bernard as we have seen, declaimed against the
resplendent colour and gold in the churches of his time. Never since
the age of Pericles has so great an effusion of beauty descended on
the earth as during the wondrous thirteenth century in the Isle de
France and especially in Paris.[63]

[Footnote 61: Brunetto Latini, in the thirteenth century contrasted
the high towers and grim stone walls of the fortress-palaces of the
Italian nobles with the large, spacious and painted houses of the
French, their rooms adorned _pour avoir joie et delit_ and surrounded
with orchards and gardens.]

[Footnote 62: Par. XVI. 51.]

[Footnote 63: Another delusion of moderns is that there was an absence
of personal cleanliness in those ages. In the census of the
inhabitants of Paris, who in 1292 were subject to the Taille, there
are inscribed the names of no less than twenty-six proprietors of
public hot baths, a larger proportion to population than exists
to-day, and Dr. Gasquet has described in his _English Monastic Life_
the admirable provisions for personal cleanliness made in mediaeval
monasteries.]

We pass from the enthusiasm of art to that of learning. From earliest
times, schools, free to the poor, had been attached to every great
abbey and cathedral in France. At the end of