These diverse traits, emotional and intellectual, were natural to a period of transition, when society was passing from an age in which the chief interests were emotional to one in which the chief interests were intellectual; and it is interesting to notice that at the same time social life was passing from a stage of extreme simplicity to one of comparative luxury. The accumulation of wealth had its effect in every department of life; it gave people time and opportunity for intellectual interests, and also for luxury and more delicate needs. The advance in wealth was very rapid. By the year 1300 men had already begun to blame the luxurious habits of their time, and to look back to the simplicity of their grandfathers as to an age of primitive innocence. Dante gives full expression to these sentiments through the mouth of his ancestor, Cacciaguida, in the "Paradiso." Others speak in the same way. One of them, referring to the time of Frederick II, says: "In those times the manners of the Italians were rude. A man and his wife ate off the same plate. There were no wooden-handled knives, nor more than one or two drinking-cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather unlined; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress. The common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did not drink wine in summer. A small stock of corn seemed riches. The portions of women were small; their dress, even after marriage, was simple. The pride of men was to be well provided with arms and horses; that of the nobility to have lofty towers, of which all the cities in Italy were full. But now frugality has been changed for sumptuousness; everything exquisite is sought after in dress,--gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs. Foreign wines and rich meats are required. Hence usury, rapine, fraud, tyranny," etc.[14] To us to-day this period of transition, with its mediaeval mixture of commerce, religion, and war, of emotion and logic, of admiration for St. Augustine and belief in the infallibility of Aristotle, looks extremely odd. We forget that our generation may be in danger of similar criticism. Odd or not, this was the state of Italy in the period preceding that great burst of the arts and intellectual life known as the Renaissance. FOOTNOTES: [13] _Storia degli Italiani_, Cesare Cantu, vol. ii, p. 851 (19). [14] _Europe in the Middle Ages_, Hallam, p. 630. CHAPTER XIX THE INTELLECTUAL DAWN AFTER THE MIDDLE AGES (1260-1336)