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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:23:45 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:23:45 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4584.txt b/4584.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..594baba --- /dev/null +++ b/4584.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15324 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES *** + + +Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres + +By Henry Adams + +With an introduction by Ralph Adams Cram + + + +Editor's Note + +From the moment when, through the courtesy of my friend Barrett +Wendell, I came first to know Mr. Henry Adams's book, Mont-Saint- +Michel and Chartres, I was profoundly convinced that this privately +printed, jealously guarded volume should be withdrawn from its +hiding-place amongst the bibliographical treasures of collectors and +amateurs and given that wide publicity demanded alike by its +intrinsic nature and the cause it could so admirably serve. + +To say that the book was a revelation is inadequately to express a +fact; at once all the theology, philosophy, and mysticism, the +politics, sociology, and economics, the romance, literature, and art +of that greatest epoch of Christian civilization became fused in the +alembic of an unique insight and precipitated by the dynamic force +of a personal and distinguished style. A judgment that might well +have been biased by personal inclination received the endorsement of +many in two continents, more competent to pass judgment, better able +to speak with authority; and so fortified, I had the honour of +saying to Mr. Adams, in the autumn of 1912, that the American +Institute of Architects asked the distinguished privilege of +arranging for the publication of an edition for general sale, under +its own imprimatur. The result is the volume now made available for +public circulation. + +In justice to Mr. Adams, it should be said that such publication is, +in his opinion, unnecessary and uncalled-for, a conclusion in which +neither the American Institute of Architects, the publishers, nor +the Editor concurs. Furthermore, the form in which the book is +presented is no affair of the author, who, in giving reluctant +consent to publication, expressly stipulated that he should have no +part or parcel in carrying out so mad a venture of faith,--as he +estimated the project of giving his book to the public. + +In this, and for once, his judgment is at fault. Mont-Saint-Michel +and Chartres is one of the most distinguished contributions to +literature and one of the most valuable adjuncts to the study of +mediaevalism America thus far has produced. The rediscovery of this +great epoch of Christian civilization has had issue in many and +valuable works on its religion, its philosophy, its economics, its +politics, and its art, but in nearly every instance, whichever field +has been traversed has been considered almost as an isolated +phenomenon, with insufficient reference to the other aspects of an +era that was singularly united and at one with itself. Hugh of Saint +Victor and Saint Thomas Aquinas are fully comprehensible only in +their relationship to Saint Anselm, Saint Bernard, and the +development of Catholic dogma and life; feudalism, the crusades, the +guilds and communes weave themselves into this same religious +development and into the vicissitudes of crescent nationalities; +Dante, the cathedral builders, the painters, sculptors, and music +masters, all are closely knit into the warp and woof of philosophy, +statecraft, economics, and religious devotion;--indeed, it may be +said that the Middle Ages, more than any other recorded epoch of +history, must be considered en bloc, as a period of consistent unity +as highly emphasized as was its dynamic force. + +It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Adams deals with the art of the +Middle Ages after this fashion: he is not of those who would +determine every element in art from its material antecedents. He +realizes very fully that its essential element, the thing that +differentiates it from the art that preceded and that which +followed, is its spiritual impulse; the manifestation may have been, +and probably was, more or less accidental, but that which makes +Chartres Cathedral and its glass, the sculptures of Rheims, the Dies +Irae, Aucassin and Nicolette, the Song of Roland, the Arthurian +Legends, great art and unique, is neither their technical mastery +nor their fidelity to the enduring laws of all great art,--though +these are singular in their perfection,--but rather the peculiar +spiritual impulse which informed the time, and by its intensity, its +penetrating power, and its dynamic force wrought a rounded and +complete civilization and manifested this through a thousand varied +channels. + +Greater, perhaps, even than his grasp of the singular entirety of +mediaeval civilization, is Mr. Adams's power of merging himself in a +long dead time, of thinking and feeling with the men and women +thereof, and so breathing on the dead bones of antiquity that again +they clothe themselves with flesh and vesture, call back their +severed souls, and live again, not only to the consciousness of the +reader, but before his very eyes. And it is not a thin simulacrum he +raises by some doubtful alchemy: it is no phantasm of the past that +shines dimly before us in these magical pages; it is the very time +itself in which we are merged. We forgather with the Abbot and his +monks, and the crusaders and pilgrims in the Shrine of the +Archangel: we pay our devoirs to the fair French Queens,--Blanche of +Castile, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mary of Champagne,--fighting their +battles for them as liege servants: we dispute with Abelard, Thomas +of Aquino, Duns the Scotsman: we take our parts in the Court of +Love, or sing the sublime and sounding praises of God with the +Canons of Saint Victor: our eyes opened at last, and after many days +we kneel before Our Lady of Pity, asking her intercession for her +lax but loyal devotees. Seven centuries dissolve and vanish away, +being as they were not, and the thirteenth century lives less for us +than we live in it and are a part of its gaiety and light- +heartedness, its youthful ardour and abounding action, its childlike +simplicity and frankness, its normal and healthy and all-embracing +devotion. + +And it is well for us to have this experience. Apart from the +desirable transformation it effects in preconceived and curiously +erroneous superstitions as to one of the greatest eras in all +history, it is vastly heartening and exhilarating. If it gives new +and not always flattering standards for the judgment of contemporary +men and things, so does it establish new ideals, new goals for +attainment. To live for a day in a world that built Chartres +Cathedral, even if it makes the living in a world that creates the +"Black Country" of England or an Iron City of America less a thing +of joy and gladness than before, equally opens up the far prospect +of another thirteenth century in the times that are to come and +urges to ardent action toward its attainment. + +But apart from this, the deepest value of Mont-Saint-Michel and +Chartres, its importance as a revelation of the eternal glory of +mediaeval art and the elements that brought it into being is not +lightly to be expressed. To every artist, whatever his chosen form +of expression, it must appear unique and invaluable, and to none +more than the architect, who, familiar at last with its beauties, +its power, and its teaching force, can only applaud the action of +the American Institute of Architects in making Mr. Adams an Honorary +Member, as one who has rendered distinguished services to the art, +and voice his gratitude that it has brought the book within his +reach and given it publicity before the world. + +Whitehall, Sudbury, Massachusetts, June, 1913. + + + + +CONTENTS + +PREFACE + + I. SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL + II. LA CHANSON DE ROLAND + III. THE MERVEILLE + IV. NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE + V. TOWERS AND PORTALS + VI. THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES + VII. ROSES AND APSES +VIII. THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS + IX. THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS + X. THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN + XI. THE THREE QUEENS + XII. NICOLETTE AND MARION +XIII. LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME + XIV. ABELARD + XV. THE MYSTICS + XVI. SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS + + + + +Preface + +[December, 1904.] + +Some old Elizabethan play or poem contains the lines:-- + + . . . Who reads me, when I am ashes, + Is my son in wishes . . . . . . . . . + +The relationship, between reader and writer, of son and father, may +have existed in Queen Elizabeth's time, but is much too close to be +true for ours. The utmost that any writer could hope of his readers +now is that they should consent to regard themselves as nephews, and +even then he would expect only a more or less civil refusal from +most of them. Indeed, if he had reached a certain age, he would have +observed that nephews, as a social class, no longer read at all, and +that there is only one familiar instance recorded of a nephew who +read his uncle. The exception tends rather to support the rule, +since it needed a Macaulay to produce, and two volumes to record it. +Finally, the metre does not permit it. One may not say: "Who reads +me, when I am ashes, is my nephew in wishes." + +The same objections do not apply to the word "niece." The change +restores the verse, and, to a very great degree, the fact. Nieces +have been known to read in early youth, and in some cases may have +read their uncles. The relationship, too, is convenient and easy, +capable of being anything or nothing, at the will of either party, +like a Mohammedan or Polynesian or American marriage. No valid +objection can be offered to this choice in the verse. Niece let it +be! + +The following lines, then, are written for nieces, or for those who +are willing, for those, to be nieces in wish. For convenience of +travel in France, where hotels, in out-of-the-way places, are +sometimes wanting in space as well as luxury, the nieces shall count +as one only. As many more may come as like, but one niece is enough +for the uncle to talk to, and one niece is much more likely than two +to listen. One niece is also more likely than two to carry a kodak +and take interest in it, since she has nothing else, except her +uncle, to interest her, and instances occur when she takes interest +neither in the uncle nor in the journey. One cannot assume, even in +a niece, too emotional a nature, but one may assume a kodak. + +The party, then, with such variations of detail as may suit its +tastes, has sailed from New York, let us say, early in June for an +entire summer in France. One pleasant June morning it has landed at +Cherbourg or Havre and takes the train across Normandy to Pontorson, +where, with the evening light, the tourists drive along the +chaussee, over the sands or through the tide, till they stop at +Madame Poulard's famous hotel within the Gate of the Mount. + +The uncle talks:-- + + + +CHAPTER I + +SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL + +The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower +that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil +crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched +on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven +and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly +room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the +Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel +stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror +of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. +His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him +here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the +patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to +Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he +stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching +across the tremor of the immense ocean,-immensi tremor oceani,-as +Louis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of +the Order of Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles, +and monarchs went on pilgrimage to his shrine; so the common people +followed, and still follow, like ourselves. + +The church stands high on the summit of this granite rock, and on +its west front is the platform, to which the tourist ought first to +climb. From the edge of this platform, the eye plunges down, two +hundred and thirty-five feet, to the wide sands or the wider ocean, +as the tides recede or advance, under an infinite sky, over a +restless sea, which even we tourists can understand and feel without +books or guides; but when we turn from the western view, and look at +the church door, thirty or forty yards from the parapet where we +stand, one needs to be eight centuries old to know what this mass of +encrusted architecture meant to its builders, and even then one must +still learn to feel it. The man who wanders into the twelfth century +is lost, unless he can grow prematurely young. + +One can do it, as one can play with children. Wordsworth, whose +practical sense equalled his intuitive genius, carefully limited us +to "a season of calm weather," which is certainly best; but granting +a fair frame of mind, one can still "have sight of that immortal +sea" which brought us hither from the twelfth century; one can even +travel thither and see the children sporting on the shore. Our sense +is partially atrophied from disuse, but it is still alive, at least +in old people, who alone, as a class, have the time to be young. + +One needs only to be old enough in order to be as young as one will. +From the top of this Abbey Church one looks across the bay to +Avranches, and towards Coutances and the Cotentin,--the Constantinus +pagus,--whose shore, facing us, recalls the coast of New England. +The relation between the granite of one coast and that of the +other may be fanciful, but the relation between the people who live +on each is as hard and practical a fact as the granite itself. When +one enters the church, one notes first the four great triumphal +piers or columns, at the intersection of the nave and transepts, and +on looking into M. Corroyer's architectural study which is the chief +source of all one's acquaintance with the Mount, one learns that +these piers were constructed in 1058. Four out of five American +tourists will instantly recall the only date of mediaeval history +they ever knew, the date of the Norman Conquest. Eight years after +these piers were built, in 1066, Duke William of Normandy raised an +army of forty thousand men in these parts, and in northern France, +whom he took to England, where they mostly stayed. For a hundred and +fifty years, until 1204, Normandy and England were united; the +Norman peasant went freely to England with his lord, spiritual or +temporal; the Norman woman, a very capable person, followed her +husband or her parents; Normans held nearly all the English fiefs; +filled the English Church; crowded the English Court; created the +English law; and we know that French was still currently spoken in +England as late as 1400, or thereabouts, "After the scole of +Stratford atte bowe." The aristocratic Norman names still survive in +part, and if we look up their origin here we shall generally find +them in villages so remote and insignificant that their place can +hardly be found on any ordinary map; but the common people had no +surnames, and cannot be traced, although for every noble whose name +or blood survived in England or in Normandy, we must reckon hundreds +of peasants. Since the generation which followed William to England +in 1066, we can reckon twenty-eight or thirty from father to son, +and, if you care to figure up the sum, you will find that you had +about two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors living in +the middle of the eleventh century. The whole population of England +and northern France may then have numbered five million, but if it +were fifty it would not much affect the certainty that, if you have +any English blood at all, you have also Norman. If we could go back +and live again in all our two hundred and fifty million arithmetical +ancestors of the eleventh century, we should find ourselves doing +many surprising things, but among the rest we should pretty +certainly be ploughing most of the fields of the Cotentin and +Calvados; going to mass in every parish church in Normandy; +rendering military service to every lord, spiritual or temporal, in +all this region; and helping to build the Abbey Church at Mont- +Saint-Michel. From the roof of the Cathedral of Coutances over +yonder, one may look away over the hills and woods, the farms and +fields of Normandy, and so familiar, so homelike are they, one can +almost take oath that in this, or the other, or in all, one knew +life once and has never so fully known it since. + +Never so fully known it since! For we of the eleventh century, hard- +headed, close-fisted, grasping, shrewd, as we were, and as Normans +are still said to be, stood more fully in the centre of the world's +movement than our English descendants ever did. We were a part, and +a great part, of the Church, of France, and of Europe. The Leos and +Gregories of the tenth and eleventh centuries leaned on us in their +great struggle for reform. Our Duke Richard-Sans-Peur, in 966, +turned the old canons out of the Mount in order to bring here the +highest influence of the time, the Benedictine monks of Monte +Cassino. Richard II, grandfather of William the Conqueror, began +this Abbey Church in 1020, and helped Abbot Hildebert to build it. +When William the Conqueror in 1066 set out to conquer England, Pope +Alexander II stood behind him and blessed his banner. From that +moment our Norman Dukes cast the Kings of France into the shade. Our +activity was not limited to northern Europe, or even confined by +Anjou and Gascony. When we stop at Coutances, we will drive out to +Hauteville to see where Tancred came from, whose sons Robert and +Roger were conquering Naples and Sicily at the time when the Abbey +Church was building on the Mount. Normans were everywhere in 1066, +and everywhere in the lead of their age. We were a serious race. If +you want other proof of it, besides our record in war and in +politics, you have only to look at our art. Religious art is the +measure of human depth and sincerity; any triviality, any weakness, +cries aloud. If this church on the Mount is not proof enough of +Norman character, we will stop at Coutances for a wider view. Then +we will go to Caen and Bayeux. From there, it would almost be worth +our while to leap at once to Palermo. It was in the year 1131 or +thereabouts that Roger began the Cathedral at Cefalu and the Chapel +Royal at Palermo; it was about the year 1174 that his grandson +William began the Cathedral of Monreale. No art--either Greek or +Byzantine, Italian or Arab--has ever created two religious types so +beautiful, so serious, so impressive, and yet so different, as Mont- +Saint-Michel watching over its northern ocean, and Monreale, looking +down over its forests of orange and lemon, on Palermo and the +Sicilian seas. + +Down nearly to the end of the twelfth century the Norman was fairly +master of the world in architecture as in arms, although the +thirteenth century belonged to France, and we must look for its +glories on the Seine and Marne and Loire; but for the present we are +in the eleventh century,--tenants of the Duke or of the Church or of +small feudal lords who take their names from the neighbourhood,-- +Beaumont, Carteret, Greville, Percy, Pierpont,--who, at the Duke's +bidding, will each call out his tenants, perhaps ten men-at-arms +with their attendants, to fight in Brittany, or in the Vexin toward +Paris, or on the great campaign for the conquest of England which is +to come within ten years,--the greatest military effort that has +been made in western Europe since Charlemagne and Roland were +defeated at Roncesvalles three hundred years ago. For the moment, we +are helping to quarry granite for the Abbey Church, and to haul it +to the Mount, or load it on our boat. We never fail to make our +annual pilgrimage to the Mount on the Archangel's Day, October 16. +We expect to be called out for a new campaign which Duke William +threatens against Brittany, and we hear stories that Harold the +Saxon, the powerful Earl of Wessex in England, is a guest, or, as +some say, a prisoner or a hostage, at the Duke's Court, and will go +with us on the campaign. The year is 1058. + +All this time we have been standing on the parvis, looking out over +the sea and sands which are as good eleventh-century landscape as +they ever were; or turning at times towards the church door which is +the pons seclorum, the bridge of ages, between us and our ancestors. +Now that we have made an attempt, such as it is, to get our minds +into a condition to cross the bridge without breaking down in the +effort, we enter the church and stand face to face with eleventh- +century architecture; a ground-plan which dates from 1020; a central +tower, or its piers, dating from 1058; and a church completed in +1135. France can offer few buildings of this importance equally old, +with dates so exact. Perhaps the closest parallel to Mont-Saint- +Michel is Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, above Orleans, which seems to have +been a shrine almost as popular as the Mount, at the same time. +Chartres was also a famous shrine, but of the Virgin, and the west +porch of Chartres, which is to be our peculiar pilgrimage, was a +hundred years later than the ground-plan of Mont-Saint-Michel, +although Chartres porch is the usual starting-point of northern +French art. Queen Matilda's Abbaye-aux-Dames, now the Church of the +Trinity, at Caen, dates from 1066. Saint Sernin at Toulouse, the +porch of the Abbey Church at Moissac, Notre-Dame-du-Port at +Clermont, the Abbey Church at Vezelay, are all said to be twelfth- +century. Even San Marco at Venice was new in 1020. + +Yet in 1020 Norman art was already too ambitious. Certainly nine +hundred years leave their traces on granite as well as on other +material, but the granite of Abbot Hildebert would have stood +securely enough, if the Abbot had not asked too much from it. +Perhaps he asked too much from the Archangel, for the thought of the +Archangel's superiority was clearly the inspiration of his plan. The +apex of the granite rock rose like a sugar-loaf two hundred and +forty feet (73.6 metres) above mean sea-level. Instead of cutting +the summit away to give his church a secure rock foundation, which +would have sacrificed about thirty feet of height, the Abbot took +the apex of the rock for his level, and on all sides built out +foundations of masonry to support the walls of his church. The apex +of the rock is the floor of the croisee, the intersection of nave +and transept. On this solid foundation the Abbot rested the chief +weight of the church, which was the central tower, supported by the +four great piers which still stand; but from the croisee in the +centre westward to the parapet of the platform, the Abbot filled the +whole space with masonry, and his successors built out still +farther, until some two hundred feet of stonework ends now in a +perpendicular wall of eighty feet or more. In this space are several +ranges of chambers, but the structure might perhaps have proved +strong enough to support the light Romanesque front which was usual +in the eleventh century, had not fashions in architecture changed in +the great epoch of building, a hundred and fifty years later, when +Abbot Robert de Torigny thought proper to reconstruct the west +front, and build out two towers on its flanks. The towers were no +doubt beautiful, if one may judge from the towers of Bayeux and +Coutances, but their weight broke down the vaulting beneath, and one +of them fell in 1300. In 1618 the whole facade began to give way, +and in 1776 not only the facade but also three of the seven spans of +the nave were pulled down. Of Abbot Hildebert's nave, only four +arches remain. + +Still, the overmastering strength of the eleventh century is stamped +on a great scale here, not only in the four spans of the nave, and +in the transepts, but chiefly in the triumphal columns of the +croisee. No one is likely to forget what Norman architecture was, +who takes the trouble to pass once through this fragment of its +earliest bloom. The dimensions are not great, though greater than +safe construction warranted. Abbot Hildebert's whole church did not +exceed two hundred and thirty feet in length in the interior, and +the span of the triumphal arch was only about twenty-three feet, if +the books can be trusted. The nave of the Abbaye-aux-Dames appears +to have about the same width, and probably neither of them was meant +to be vaulted. The roof was of timber, and about sixty-three feet +high at its apex. Compared with the great churches of the thirteenth +century, this building is modest, but its size is not what matters +to us. Its style is the starting-point of all our future travels. +Here is your first eleventh-century church! How does it affect you? + +Serious and simple to excess! is it not? Young people rarely enjoy +it. They prefer the Gothic, even as you see it here, looking at us +from the choir, through the great Norman arch. No doubt they are +right, since they are young: but men and women who have lived long +and are tired,--who want rest,--who have done with aspirations and +ambition,--whose life has been a broken arch,--feel this repose and +self-restraint as they feel nothing else. The quiet strength of +these curved lines, the solid support of these heavy columns, the +moderate proportions, even the modified lights, the absence of +display, of effort, of self-consciousness, satisfy them as no other +art does. They come back to it to rest, after a long circle of +pilgrimage,--the cradle of rest from which their ancestors started. +Even here they find the repose none too deep. + +Indeed, when you look longer at it, you begin to doubt whether there +is any repose in it at all,--whether it is not the most unreposeful +thought ever put into architectural form. Perched on the extreme +point of this abrupt rock, the Church Militant with its aspirant +Archangel stands high above the world, and seems to threaten heaven +itself. The idea is the stronger and more restless because the +Church of Saint Michael is surrounded and protected by the world and +the society over which it rises, as Duke William rested on his +barons and their men. Neither the Saint nor the Duke was troubled by +doubts about his mission. Church and State, Soul and Body, God and +Man, are all one at Mont-Saint-Michel, and the business of all is to +fight, each in his own way, or to stand guard for each other. +Neither Church nor State is intellectual, or learned, or even strict +in dogma. Here we do not feel the Trinity at all; the Virgin but +little; Christ hardly more; we feel only the Archangel and the Unity +of God. We have little logic here, and simple faith, but we have +energy. We cannot do many things which are done in the centre of +civilization, at Byzantium, but we can fight, and we can build a +church. No doubt we think first of the church, and next of our +temporal lord; only in the last instance do we think of our private +affairs, and our private affairs sometimes suffer for it; but we +reckon the affairs of Church and State to be ours, too, and we carry +this idea very far. Our church on the Mount is ambitious, restless, +striving for effect; our conquest of England, with which the Duke is +infatuated, is more ambitious still; but all this is a trifle to the +outburst which is coming in the next generation; and Saint Michael +on his Mount expresses it all. + +Taking architecture as an expression of energy, we can some day +compare Mont-Saint-Michel with Beauvais, and draw from the +comparison whatever moral suits our frame of mind; but you should +first note that here, in the eleventh century, the Church, however +simple-minded or unschooled, was not cheap. Its self-respect is +worth noticing, because it was short-lived in its art. Mont-Saint- +Michel, throughout, even up to the delicate and intricate stonework +of its cloisters, is built of granite. The crypts and substructures +are as well constructed as the surfaces most exposed to view. When +we get to Chartres, which is largely a twelfth-century work, you +will see that the cathedral there, too, is superbly built, of the +hardest and heaviest stone within reach, which has nowhere settled +or given way; while, beneath, you will find a crypt that rivals the +church above. The thirteenth century did not build so. The great +cathedrals after 1200 show economy, and sometimes worse. The world +grew cheap, as worlds must. + +You may like it all the better for being less serious, less heroic, +less militant, and more what the French call bourgeois, just as you +may like the style of Louis XV better than that of Louis XIV,-- +Madame du Barry better than Madame de Montespan,--for taste is free, +and all styles are good which amuse; but since we are now beginning +with the earliest, in order to step down gracefully to the stage, +whatever it is, where you prefer to stop, we must try to understand +a little of the kind of energy which Norman art expressed, or would +have expressed if it had thought in our modes. The only word which +describes the Norman style is the French word naif. Littre says that +naif comes from natif, as vulgar comes from vulgus, as though native +traits must be simple, and commonness must be vulgar. Both these +derivative meanings were strange to the eleventh century. Naivete +was simply natural and vulgarity was merely coarse. Norman naivete +was not different in kind from the naivete of Burgundy or Gascony or +Lombardy, but it was slightly different in expression, as you will +see when you travel south. Here at Mont-Saint-Michel we have only a +mutilated trunk of an eleventh-century church to judge by. We have +not even a facade, and shall have to stop at some Norman village--at +Thaon or Ouistreham--to find a west front which might suit the Abbey +here, but wherever we find it we shall find something a little more +serious, more military, and more practical than you will meet in +other Romanesque work, farther south. So, too, the central tower or +lantern--the most striking feature of Norman churches--has fallen +here at Mont-Saint-Michel, and we shall have to replace it from +Cerisy-la-Foret, and Lessay, and Falaise. We shall find much to say +about the value of the lantern on a Norman church, and the singular +power it expresses. We shall have still more to say of the towers +which flank the west front of Norman churches, but these are mostly +twelfth-century, and will lead us far beyond Coutances and Bayeux, +from fleche to fleche, till we come to the fleche of all fleches, at +Chartres. + +We shall have a whole chapter of study, too, over the eleventh- +century apse, but here at Mont-Saint-Michel, Abbot Hildebert's choir +went the way of his nave and tower. He built out even more boldly to +the east than to the west, and although the choir stood for some +four hundred years, which is a sufficient life for most +architecture, the foundations gave way at last, and it fell in 1421, +in the midst of the English wars, and remained a ruin until 1450. +Then it was rebuilt, a monument of the last days of the Gothic, so +that now, standing at the western door, you can look down the +church, and see the two limits of mediaeval architecture married +together,--the earliest Norman and the latest French. Through the +Romanesque arches of 1058, you look into the exuberant choir of +latest Gothic, finished in 1521. Although the two structures are +some five hundred years apart, they live pleasantly together. The +Gothic died gracefully in France. The choir is charming,--far more +charming than the nave, as the beautiful woman is more charming than +the elderly man. One need not quarrel about styles of beauty, as +long as the man and woman are evidently satisfied and love and +admire each other still, with all the solidity of faith to hold them +up; but, at least, one cannot help seeing, as one looks from the +older to the younger style, that whatever the woman's sixteenth- +century charm may be, it is not the man's eleventh-century trait of +naivete;--far from it! The simple, serious, silent dignity and +energy of the eleventh century have gone. Something more complicated +stands in their place; graceful, self-conscious, rhetorical, and +beautiful as perfect rhetoric, with its clearness, light, and line, +and the wealth of tracery that verges on the florid. + +The crypt of the same period, beneath, is almost finer still, and +even in seriousness stands up boldly by the side of the Romanesque; +but we have no time to run off into the sixteenth century: we have +still to learn the alphabet of art in France. One must live deep +into the eleventh century in order to understand the twelfth, and +even after passing years in the twelfth, we shall find the +thirteenth in many ways a world of its own, with a beauty not always +inherited, and sometimes not bequeathed. At the Mount we can go no +farther into the eleventh as far as concerns architecture. We shall +have to follow the Romanesque to Caen and so up the Seine to the Ile +de France, and across to the Loire and the Rhone, far to the South +where its home lay. All the other eleventh-century work has been +destroyed here or built over, except at one point, on the level of +the splendid crypt we just turned from, called the Gros Piliers, +beneath the choir. + +There, according to M. Corroyer, in a corner between great +constructions of the twelfth century and the vast Merveille of the +thirteenth, the old refectory of the eleventh was left as a passage +from one group of buildings to the other. Below it is the kitchen of +Hildebert. Above, on the level of the church, was the dormitory. +These eleventh-century abbatial buildings faced north and west, and +are close to the present parvis, opposite the last arch of the nave. +The lower levels of Hildebert's plan served as supports or +buttresses to the church above, and must therefore be older than the +nave; probably older than the triumphal piers of 1058. + +Hildebert planned them in 1020, and died after carrying his plans +out so far that they could be completed by Abbot Ralph de Beaumont, +who was especially selected by Duke William in 1048, "more for his +high birth than for his merits." Ralph de Beaumont died in 1060, and +was succeeded by Abbot Ranulph, an especial favourite of Duchess +Matilda, and held in high esteem by Duke William. The list of names +shows how much social importance was attributed to the place. The +Abbot's duties included that of entertainment on a great scale. The +Mount was one of the most famous shrines of northern Europe. We are +free to take for granted that all the great people of Normandy slept +at the Mount and, supposing M. Corroyer to be right, that they dined +in this room, between 1050, when the building must have been in use, +down to 1122 when the new abbatial quarters were built. + +How far the monastic rules restricted social habits is a matter for +antiquaries to settle if they can, and how far those rules were +observed in the case of great secular princes; but the eleventh +century was not very strict, and the rule of the Benedictines was +always mild, until the Cistercians and Saint Bernard stiffened its +discipline toward 1120. Even then the Church showed strong leanings +toward secular poetry and popular tastes. The drama belonged to it +almost exclusively, and the Mysteries and Miracle plays which were +acted under its patronage often contained nothing of religion except +the miracle. The greatest poem of the eleventh century was the +"Chanson de Roland," and of that the Church took a sort of +possession. At Chartres we shall find Charlemagne and Roland dear to +the Virgin, and at about the same time, as far away as at Assisi in +the Perugian country, Saint Francis himself--the nearest approach +the Western world ever made to an Oriental incarnation of the divine +essence--loved the French romans, and typified himself in the +"Chanson de Roland." With Mont-Saint-Michel, the "Chanson de Roland" +is almost one. The "Chanson" is in poetry what the Mount is in +architecture. Without the "Chanson," one cannot approach the feeling +which the eleventh century built into the Archangel's church. +Probably there was never a day, certainly never a week, during +several centuries, when portions of the "Chanson" were not sung, or +recited, at the Mount, and if there was one room where it was most +at home, this one, supposing it to be the old refectory, claims to +be the place. + + + +CHAPTER II + +LA CHANSON DE ROLAND + +Molz pelerins qui vunt al Munt + Enquierent molt e grant dreit unt + Comment l'igliese fut fundee + Premierement et estoree. + Cil qui lor dient de l'estoire + Que cil demandent en memoire + Ne l'unt pas bien ainz vunt faillant + En plusors leus e mespernant. + Por faire la apertement + Entendre a cels qui escient + N'unt de clerzie l'a tornee + De latin tote et ordenee + Pars veirs romieus novelement + Molt en segrei por son convent + Uns jovencels moine est del Munt + Deus en son reigne part li dunt. + Guillaume a non de Saint Paier + Cen vei escrit en cest quaier. + El tens Robeirt de Torignie + Fut cil romanz fait e trove. + + +Most pilgrims who come to the Mount + Enquire much and are quite right, + How the church was founded + At first, and established. + Those who tell them the story + That they ask, in memory + Have it not well, but fall in error + In many places, and misapprehension. + In order to make it clearly + Intelligible to those who have + No knowledge of letters, it has been turned + From the Latin, and wholly rendered + In Romanesque verses, newly, + Much in secret, for his convent, + By a youth; a monk he is of the Mount. + God in his kingdom grant him part! + William is his name, of Saint Pair + As is seen written in this book. + In the time of Robert of Torigny + Was this roman made and invented. + + +These verses begin the "Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel," and if the +spelling is corrected, they still read almost as easily as Voltaire; +more easily than Verlaine; and much like a nursery rhyme; but as +tourists cannot stop to clear their path, or smooth away the +pebbles, they must be lifted over the rough spots, even when +roughness is beauty. Translation is an evil, chiefly because every +one who cares for mediaeval architecture cares for mediaeval French, +and ought to care still more for mediaeval English. The language of +this "Roman" was the literary language of England. William of Saint- +Pair was a subject of Henry II, King of England and Normandy; his +verses, like those of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are monuments of +English literature. To this day their ballad measure is better +suited to English than to French; even the words and idioms are more +English than French. Any one who attacks them boldly will find that +the "vers romieus" run along like a ballad, singing their own +meaning, and troubling themselves very little whether the meaning is +exact or not. One's translation is sure to be full of gross +blunders, but the supreme blunder is that of translating at all when +one is trying to catch not a fact but a feeling. If translate one +must, we had best begin by trying to be literal, under protest that +it matters not a straw whether we succeed. Twelfth-century art was +not precise; still less "precieuse," like Moliere's famous +seventeenth-century prudes. + +The verses of the young monk, William, who came from the little +Norman village of Saint-Pair, near Granville, within sight of the +Mount, were verses not meant to be brilliant. Simple human beings +like rhyme better than prose, though both may say the same thing, as +they like a curved line better than a straight one, or a blue better +than a grey; but, apart from the sensual appetite, they chose rhyme +in creating their literature for the practical reason that they +remembered it better than prose. Men had to carry their libraries in +their heads. + +These lines of William, beginning his story, are valuable because +for once they give a name and a date. Abbot Robert of Torigny ruled +at the Mount from 1154 to 1186. We have got to travel again and +again between Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres during these years, but +for the moment we must hurry to get back to William the Conqueror +and the "Chanson de Roland." William of Saint-Pair comes in here, +out of place, only on account of a pretty description he gave of the +annual pilgrimage to the Mount, which is commonly taken to be more +or less like what he saw every year on the Archangel's Day, and what +had existed ever since the Normans became Christian in 912:-- + +Li jorz iert clers e sanz grant vent. + Les meschines e les vallez + Chascuns d'els dist verz ou sonnez. + Neis li viellart revunt chantant + + +De leece funt tuit semblant. + Qui plus ne seit si chante outree + E Dex aie u Asusee. + Cil jugleor la u il vunt + Tuit lor vieles traites unt + Laiz et sonnez vunt vielant. + + +Li tens est beals la joie est grant. + Cil palefrei e cil destrier + E cil roncin e cil sommier + Qui errouent par le chemin + Que menouent cil pelerin + De totes parz henissant vunt + Por la grant joie que il unt. + Neis par les bois chantouent tuit + Li oiselet grant et petit. + + +Li buef les vaches vunt muant + Par les forez e repaissant. + Cors e boisines e fresteals + E fleutes e chalemeals + Sonnoent si que les montaignes + En retintoent et les pleignes. + Que esteit dont les plaiseiz + E des forez e des larriz. + En cels par a tel sonneiz + Com si ce fust cers acolliz. + + +Entor le mont el bois follu + Cil travetier unt tres tendu + Rues unt fait par les chemins. + Plentei i out de divers vins + Pain e pastez fruit e poissons + Oisels obleies veneisons + De totes parz aveit a vendre + Assez en out qui ad que tendre. + + +The day was clear, without much wind. + The maidens and the varlets + Each of them said verse or song; + Even the old people go singing; + + +All have a look of joy. + Who knows no more sings HURRAH, + Or GOD HELP, or UP AND ON! + The minstrels there where they go + Have all brought their viols; + Lays and songs playing as they go. + + +The weather is fine; the joy is great; + The palfreys and the chargers, + And the hackneys and the packhorses + Which wander along the road + That the pilgrims follow, + On all sides neighing go, + For the great joy they feel. + Even in the woods sing all + The little birds, big and small. + + +The oxen and the cows go lowing + Through the forests as they feed. + Horns and trumpets and shepherd's pipes + And flutes and pipes of reed + Sound so that the mountains + Echo to them, and the plains. + How was it then with the glades + And with the forests and the pastures? + In these there was such sound + As though it were a stag at bay. + + +About the Mount, in the leafy wood, + The workmen have tents set up; + Streets have made along the roads. + Plenty there was of divers wines, + Bread and pasties, fruit and fish, + Birds, cakes, venison, + Everywhere there was for sale. + Enough he had who has the means to pay. + + +If you are not satisfied with this translation, any scholar of +French will easily help to make a better, for we are not studying +grammar or archaeology, and would rather be inaccurate in such +matters than not, if, at that price, a freer feeling of the art +could be caught. Better still, you can turn to Chaucer, who wrote +his Canterbury Pilgrimage two hundred years afterwards:-- + +Whanne that April with his shoures sote + The droughte of March hath perced to the rote... + Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages + And palmeres for to seken strange strondes... + And especially, from every shires ende + Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende + The holy blisful martyr for to seke, + That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke. + + +The passion for pilgrimages was universal among our ancestors as far +back as we can trace them. For at least a thousand years it was +their chief delight, and is not yet extinct. To feel the art of +Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again: +but, just now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so much +as the minstrel who sang to amuse him,--the jugleor or jongleur,-- +who was at home in every abbey, castle or cottage, as well as at +every shrine. The jugleor became a jongleur and degenerated into the +street-juggler; the minstrel, or menestrier, became very early a +word of abuse, equivalent to blackguard; and from the beginning the +profession seems to have been socially decried, like that of a +music-hall singer or dancer in later times; but in the eleventh +century, or perhaps earlier still, the jongleur seems to have been a +poet, and to have composed the songs he sang. The immense mass of +poetry known as the "Chansons de Geste" seems to have been composed +as well as sung by the unnamed Homers of France, and of all spots in +the many provinces where the French language in its many dialects +prevailed, Mont-Saint-Michel should have been the favourite with the +jongleur, not only because the swarms of pilgrims assured him food +and an occasional small piece of silver, but also because Saint +Michael was the saint militant of all the warriors whose exploits in +war were the subject of the "Chansons de Geste." William of Saint- +Pair was a priest-poet; he was not a minstrel, and his "Roman" was +not a chanson; it was made to read, not to recite; but the "Chanson +de Roland" was a different affair. + +So it was, too, with William's contemporaries and rivals or +predecessors, the monumental poets of Norman-English literature. +Wace, whose rhymed history of the Norman dukes, which he called the +"Roman de Rou," or "Rollo," is an English classic of the first rank, +was a canon of Bayeux when William of Saint-Pair was writing at +Mont-Saint-Michel. His rival Benoist, who wrote another famous +chronicle on the same subject, was also a historian, and not a +singer. In that day literature meant verse; elegance in French prose +did not yet exist; but the elegancies of poetry in the twelfth +century were as different, in kind, from the grand style of the +eleventh, as Virgil was different from Homer. + +William of Saint-Pair introduces us to the pilgrimage and to the +jongleur, as they had existed at least two hundred years before his +time, and were to exist two hundred years after him. Of all our two +hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors who were going on +pilgrimages in the middle of the eleventh century, the two who would +probably most interest every one, after eight hundred years have +passed, would be William the Norman and Harold the Saxon. Through +William of Saint-Pair and Wace and Benoist, and the most charming +literary monument of all, the Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, we +can build up the story of such a pilgrimage which shall be as +historically exact as the battle of Hastings, and as artistically +true as the Abbey Church. + +According to Wace's "Roman de Rou," when Harold's father, Earl +Godwin, died, April 15, 1053, Harold wished to obtain the release of +certain hostages, a brother and a cousin, whom Godwin had given to +Edward the Confessor as security for his good behaviour, and whom +Edward had sent to Duke William for safe-keeping. Wace took the +story from other and older sources, and its accuracy is much +disputed, but the fact that Harold went to Normandy seems to be +certain, and you will see at Bayeux the picture of Harold asking +permission of King Edward to make the journey, and departing on +horseback, with his hawk and hounds and followers, to take ship at +Bosham, near Chichester and Portsmouth. The date alone is doubtful. +Common sense seems to suggest that the earliest possible date could +not be too early to explain the rash youth of the aspirant to a +throne who put himself in the power of a rival in the eleventh +century. When that rival chanced to be William the Bastard, not even +boyhood could excuse the folly; but Mr. Freeman, the chief authority +on this delicate subject, inclined to think that Harold was forty +years old when he committed his blunder, and that the year was about +1064. Between 1054 and 1064 the historian is free to choose what +year he likes, and the tourist is still freer. To save trouble for +the memory, the year 1058 will serve, since this is the date of the +triumphal arches of the Abbey Church on the Mount. Harold, in +sailing from the neighbourhood of Portsmouth, must have been bound +for Caen or Rouen, but the usual west winds drove him eastward till +he was thrown ashore on the coast of Ponthieu, between Abbeville and +Boulogne, where he fell into the hands of the Count of Ponthieu, +from whom he was rescued or ransomed by Duke William of Normandy and +taken to Rouen. According to Wace and the "Roman de Rou":-- + +Guillaume tint Heraut maint jour + Si com il dut a grant enor. + A maint riche torneiement + Le fist aller mult noblement. + Chevals e armes li dona + Et en Bretaigne le mena + Ne sai de veir treiz faiz ou quatre + Quant as Bretons se dut combattre. + + +William kept Harold many a day, + As was his due in great honour. + To many a rich tournament + Made him go very nobly. + Horses and arms gave him + And into Brittany led him + I know not truly whether three or four times + When he had to make war on the Bretons. + + +Perhaps the allusion to rich tournaments belongs to the time of Wace +rather than to that of Harold a century earlier, before the first +crusade, but certainly Harold did go with William on at least one +raid into Brittany, and the charming tapestry of Bayeux, which +tradition calls by the name of Queen Matilda, shows William's men- +at-arms crossing the sands beneath Mont-Saint-Michel, with the Latin +legend:--"Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis. Hic Harold dux trahebat +eos de arena. Venerunt ad flumen Cononis." They came to Mont-Saint- +Michel, and Harold dragged them out of the quicksands. + +They came to the river Couesnon. Harold must have got great fame by +saving life on the sands, to be remembered and recorded by the +Normans themselves after they had killed him; but this is the affair +of historians. Tourists note only that Harold and William came to +the Mount:--"Venerunt ad Montem." They would never have dared to +pass it, on such an errand, without stopping to ask the help of +Saint Michael. + +If William and Harold came to the Mount, they certainly dined or +supped in the old refectory, which is where we have lain in wait for +them. Where Duke William was, his jongleur--jugleor--was not far, +and Wace knew, as every one in Normandy seemed to know, who this +favourite was,--his name, his character, and his song. To him Wace +owed one of the most famous passages in his story of the assault at +Hastings, where Duke William and his battle began their advance +against the English lines:-- + +Taillefer qui mult bien chantout + Sor un cheval qui tost alout + Devant le duc alout chantant + De Karlemaigne e de Rollant + E d'Oliver e des vassals + Qui morurent en Rencevals. + Quant il orent chevalchie tant + Qu'as Engleis vindrent apreismant: + "Sire," dist Taillefer, "merci! + Io vos ai longuement servi. + Tot mon servise me devez. + Hui se vos plaist le me rendez. + Por tot guerredon vos require + E si vos veil forment preier + Otreiez mei que io ni faille + Le premier colp de la bataille." + Li dus respondi: "Io l'otrei." + + +Taillefer who was famed for song, + Mounted on a charger strong, + Rode on before the Duke, and sang + Of Roland and of Charlemagne, + Oliver and the vassals all + Who fell in fight at Roncesvals. + When they had ridden till they saw + The English battle close before: + "Sire," said Taillefer, "a grace! + I have served you long and well; + All reward you owe me still; + To-day repay me if you please. + For all guerdon I require, + And ask of you in formal prayer, + Grant to me as mine of right + The first blow struck in the fight." + The Duke answered: "I grant." + + +Of course, critics doubt the story, as they very properly doubt +everything. They maintain that the "Chanson de Roland" was not as +old as the battle of Hastings, and certainly Wace gave no sufficient +proof of it. Poetry was not usually written to prove facts. Wace +wrote a hundred years after the battle of Hastings. One is not +morally required to be pedantic to the point of knowing more than +Wace knew, but the feeling of scepticism, before so serious a +monument as Mont-Saint-Michel, is annoying. The "Chanson de Roland" +ought not to be trifled with, at least by tourists in search of art. +One is shocked at the possibility of being deceived about the +starting-point of American genealogy. Taillefer and the song rest on +the same evidence that Duke William and Harold and the battle itself +rest upon, and to doubt the "Chanson" is to call the very roll of +Battle Abbey in question. The whole fabric of society totters; the +British peerage turns pale. + +Wace did not invent all his facts. William of Malmesbury is supposed +to have written his prose chronicle about 1120 when many of the men +who fought at Hastings must have been alive, and William expressly +said: "Tune cantilena Rollandi inchoata ut martium viri exemplum +pugnaturos accenderet, inclamatoque dei auxilio, praelium +consertum." Starting the "Chanson de Roland" to inflame the fighting +temper of the men, battle was joined. This seems enough proof to +satisfy any sceptic, yet critics still suggest that the "cantilena +Rollandi" must have been a Norman "Chanson de Rou," or "Rollo," or +at best an earlier version of the "Chanson de Roland"; but no Norman +chanson would have inflamed the martial spirit of William's army, +which was largely French; and as for the age of the version, it is +quite immaterial for Mont-Saint-Michel; the actual version is old +enough. + +Taillefer himself is more vital to the interest of the dinner in the +refectory, and his name was not mentioned by William of Malmesbury. +If the song was started by the Duke's order, it was certainly +started by the Duke's jongleur, and the name of this jongleur +happens to be known on still better authority than that of William +of Malmesbury. Guy of Amiens went to England in 1068 as almoner of +Queen Matilda, and there wrote a Latin poem on the battle of +Hastings which must have been complete within ten years after the +battle was fought, for Guy died in 1076. Taillefer, he said, led the +Duke's battle:-- + +Incisor-ferri mimus cognomine dictus. + + +"Taillefer, a jongleur known by that name." A mime was a singer, but +Taillefer was also an actor:-- + +Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat. + + +"A jongleur whom a very brave heart ennobled." The jongleur was not +noble by birth, but was ennobled by his bravery. + +Hortatur Gallos verbis et territat Anglos + Alte projiciens ludit et ense suo. + + +Like a drum-major with his staff, he threw his sword high in the air +and caught it, while he chanted his song to the French, and +terrified the English. The rhymed chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimer who +wrote about 1150, and that of Benoist who was Wace's rival, added +the story that Taillefer died in the melee. + +The most unlikely part of the tale was, after all, not the singing +of the "Chanson," but the prayer of Taillefer to the Duke:-- + +"Otreiez mei que io ni faille + Le premier colp de la bataille." + + +Legally translated, Taillefer asked to be ennobled, and offered to +pay for it with his life. The request of a jongleur to lead the +Duke's battle seems incredible. In early French "bataille" meant +battalion,--the column of attack. The Duke's grant: "Io l'otrei!" +seems still more fanciful. Yet Guy of Amiens distinctly confirmed +the story: "Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat"; a stage- +player--a juggler--the Duke's singer--whose bravery ennobled him. +The Duke granted him--octroya--his patent of nobility on the field. + +All this preamble leads only to unite the "Chanson" with the +architecture of the Mount, by means of Duke William and his Breton +campaign of 1058. The poem and the church are akin; they go +together, and explain each other. Their common trait is their +military character, peculiar to the eleventh century. The round arch +is masculine. The "Chanson" is so masculine that, in all its four +thousand lines, the only Christian woman so much as mentioned was +Alda, the sister of Oliver and the betrothed of Roland, to whom one +stanza, exceedingly like a later insertion, was given, toward the +end. Never after the first crusade did any great poem rise to such +heroism as to sustain itself without a heroine. Even Dante attempted +no such feat. + +Duke William's party, then, is to be considered as assembled at +supper in the old refectory, in the year 1058, while the triumphal +piers of the church above are rising. The Abbot, Ralph of Beaumont, +is host; Duke William sits with him on a dais; Harold is by his side +"a grant enor"; the Duke's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with the +other chief vassals, are present; and the Duke's jongleur Taillefer +is at his elbow. The room is crowded with soldiers and monks, but +all are equally anxious to hear Taillefer sing. As soon as dinner is +over, at a nod from the Duke, Taillefer begins:-- + +Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes + Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne + Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne + Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne + Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre. + + +Charles the king, our emperor, the great, + Seven years complete has been in Spain, + Conquered the land as far as the high seas, + Nor is there castle that holds against him, + Nor wall or city left to capture. + + +The "Chanson" opened with these lines, which had such a direct and +personal bearing on every one who heard them as to sound like +prophecy. Within ten years William was to stand in England where +Charlemagne stood in Spain. His mind was full of it, and of the +means to attain it; and Harold was even more absorbed than he by the +anxiety of the position. Harold had been obliged to take oath that +he would support William's claim to the English throne, but he was +still undecided, and William knew men too well to feel much +confidence in an oath. As Taillefer sang on, he reached the part of +Ganelon, the typical traitor, the invariable figure of mediaeval +society. No feudal lord was without a Ganelon. Duke William saw them +all about him. + +He might have felt that Harold would play the part, but if Harold +should choose rather to be Roland, Duke William could have foretold +that his own brother, Bishop Odo, after gorging himself on the +plunder of half England, would turn into a Ganelon so dangerous as +to require a prison for life. When Taillefer reached the battle- +scenes, there was no further need of imagination to realize them. +They were scenes of yesterday and to-morrow. For that matter, +Charlemagne or his successor was still at Aix, and the Moors were +still in Spain. Archbishop Turpin of Rheims had fought with sword +and mace in Spain, while Bishop Odo of Bayeux was to marshal his men +at Hastings, like a modern general, with a staff, but both were +equally at home on the field of battle. Verse by verse, the song was +a literal mirror of the Mount. The battle of Hastings was to be +fought on the Archangel's Day. What happened to Roland at +Roncesvalles was to happen to Harold at Hastings, and Harold, as he +was dying like Roland, was to see his brother Gyrth die like Oliver. +Even Taillefer was to be a part, and a distinguished part, of his +chanson. Sooner or later, all were to die in the large and simple +way of the eleventh century. Duke William himself, twenty years +later, was to meet a violent death at Mantes in the same spirit, and +if Bishop Odo did not die in battle, he died, at least, like an +eleventh-century hero, on the first crusade. First or last, the +whole company died in fight, or in prison, or on crusade, while the +monks shrived them and prayed. + +Then Taillefer certainly sang the great death-scenes. Even to this +day every French school-boy, if he knows no other poetry, knows +these verses by heart. In the eleventh century they wrung the heart +of every man-at-arms in Europe, whose school was the field of battle +and the hand-to-hand fight. No modern singer ever enjoys such power +over an audience as Taillefer exercised over these men who were +actors as well as listeners. In the melee at Roncesvalles, overborne +by innumerable Saracens, Oliver at last calls for help:-- + +Munjoie escriet e haltement e cler. + Rollant apelet sun ami e sun per; + "Sire compainz a mei kar vus justez. + A grant dulur ermes hoi deserveret." Aoi. + + +"Montjoie!" he cries, loud and clear, + Roland he calls, his friend and peer; + "Sir Friend! ride now to help me here! + Parted today, great pity were." + + +Of course the full value of the verse cannot be regained. One knows +neither how it was sung nor even how it was pronounced. The +assonances are beyond recovering; the "laisse" or leash of verses or +assonances with the concluding cry, "Aoi," has long ago vanished +from verse or song. The sense is as simple as the "Ballad of Chevy +Chase," but one must imagine the voice and acting. Doubtless +Taillefer acted each motive; when Oliver called loud and clear, +Taillefer's voice rose; when Roland spoke "doulcement et suef," the +singer must have sung gently and soft; and when the two friends, +with the singular courtesy of knighthood and dignity of soldiers, +bowed to each other in parting and turned to face their deaths, +Taillefer may have indicated the movement as he sang. The verses +gave room for great acting. Hearing Oliver's cry for help, Roland +rode up, and at sight of the desperate field, lost for a moment his +consciousness:-- + +As vus Rollant sur sun cheval pasmet + E Olivier ki est a mort nafrez! + Tant ad sainiet li oil li sunt trublet + Ne luinz ne pres ne poet veeir si cler + Que reconuisset nisun hume mortel. + Sun cumpaignun cum il l'ad encuntret + Sil fiert amunt sur l'elme a or gemmet + Tut li detrenchet d'ici que al nasel + Mais en la teste ne l'ad mie adeset. + A icel colp l'ad Rollanz reguardet + Si li demandet dulcement et suef + "Sire cumpainz, faites le vus de gred? + Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer. + Par nule guise ne m'aviez desfiet," + Dist Oliviers: "Or vus oi jo parler + Io ne vus vei. Veied vus damnedeus! + Ferut vus ai. Kar le me pardunez!" + Rollanz respunt: "Jo n'ai nient de mel. + Jol vus parduins ici e devant deu." + A icel mot l'uns al altre ad clinet. + Par tel amur as les vus desevrez! + + +There Roland sits unconscious on his horse, + And Oliver who wounded is to death, + So much has bled, his eyes grow dark to him, + Nor far nor near can see so clear + As to recognize any mortal man. + His friend, when he has encountered him, + He strikes upon the helmet of gemmed gold, + splits it from the crown to the nose-piece, + But to the head he has not reached at all. + At this blow Roland looks at him, + Asks him gently and softly: + "Sir Friend, do you it in earnest? + You know 't is Roland who has so loved you. + In no way have you sent to me defiance." + Says Oliver: "Indeed I hear you speak, + I do not see you. May God see and save you! + Strike you I did. I pray you pardon me." + Roland replies: "I have no harm at all. + I pardon you here and before God!" + At this word, one to the other bends himself. + With such affection, there they separate. + + +No one should try to render this into English--or, indeed, into +modern French--verse, but any one who will take the trouble to catch +the metre and will remember that each verse in the "leash" ends in +the same sound,--aimer, parler, cler, mortel, damnede, mel, deu, +suef, nasel,--however the terminal syllables may be spelled, can +follow the feeling of the poetry as well as though it were Greek +hexameter. He will feel the simple force of the words and action, as +he feels Homer. It is the grand style,--the eleventh century:-- + +Ferut vus ai! Kar le me pardunez! + + +Not a syllable is lost, and always the strongest syllable is chosen. +Even the sentiment is monosyllabic and curt:-- + +Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer! + + +Taillefer had, in such a libretto, the means of producing dramatic +effects that the French comedy or the grand opera never approached, +and such as made Bayreuth seem thin and feeble. Duke William's +barons must have clung to his voice and action as though they were +in the very melee, striking at the helmets of gemmed gold. They had +all been there, and were to be there again. As the climax +approached, they saw the scene itself; probably they had seen it +every year, more or less, since they could swing a sword. Taillefer +chanted the death of Oliver and of Archbishop Turpin and all the +other barons of the rear guard, except Roland, who was left for dead +by the Saracens when they fled on hearing the horns of Charlemagne's +returning host. Roland came back to consciousness on feeling a +Saracen marauder tugging at his sword Durendal. With a blow of his +ivory horn--oliphant--he killed the pagan; then feeling death near, +he prepared for it. His first thought was for Durendal, his sword, +which he could not leave to infidels. In the singular triple +repetition which gives more of the same solidity and architectural +weight to the verse, he made three attempts to break the sword, with +a lament--a plaint--for each. Three times he struck with all his +force against the rock; each time the sword rebounded without +breaking. The third time-- + +Rollanz ferit en une pierre bise + Plus en abat que jo ne vus sai dire. + L'espee cruist ne fruisset ne ne briset + Cuntre le ciel amunt est resortie. + Quant veit li quens que ne la fraindrat mie + Mult dulcement la plainst a sei meisme. + "E! Durendal cum ies bele e saintisme! + En l'oret punt asez i ad reliques. + La dent saint Pierre e del sanc seint Basilie + E des chevels mun seignur seint Denisie + Del vestment i ad seinte Marie. + Il nen est dreiz que paien te baillisent. + De chrestiens devez estre servie. + Ne vus ait hum ki facet cuardie! + Mult larges terres de vus averai cunquises + Que Carles tient ki la barbe ad flurie. + E li emperere en est e ber e riches." + + +Roland strikes on a grey stone, + More of it cuts off than I can tell you. + The sword grinds, but shatters not nor breaks, + Upward against the sky it rebounds. + When the Count sees that he can never break it, + Very gently he mourns it to himself: + "Ah, Durendal, how fair you are and sacred! + In your golden guard are many relics, + The tooth of Saint Peter and blood of Saint Basil, + And hair of my seigneur Saint-Denis, + Of the garment too of Saint Mary. + It is not right that pagans should own you. + By Christians you should be served, + Nor should man have you who does cowardice. + Many wide lands by you I have conquered + That Charles holds, who has the white beard, + And emperor of them is noble and rich." + + +This "laisse" is even more eleventh-century than the other, but it +appealed no longer to the warriors; it spoke rather to the monks. To +the warriors, the sword itself was the religion, and the relics were +details of ornament or strength. To the priest, the list of relics +was more eloquent than the Regent diamond on the hilt and the +Kohinoor on the scabbard. Even to us it is interesting if it is +understood. Roland had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He had +stopped at Rome and won the friendship of Saint Peter, as the tooth +proved; he had passed through Constantinople and secured the help of +Saint Basil; he had reached Jerusalem and gained the affection of +the Virgin; he had come home to France and secured the support of +his "seigneur" Saint Denis; for Roland, like Hugh Capet, was a +liege-man of Saint Denis and French to the heart. France, to him, +was Saint Denis, and at most the Ile de France, but not Anjou or +even Maine. These were countries he had conquered with Durendal:-- + +Jo l'en cunquis e Anjou e Bretaigne + Si l'en cunquis e Peitou e le Maine + Jo l'en cunquis Normendie la franche + Si l'en cunquis Provence e Equitaigne. + + +He had conquered these for his emperor Charlemagne with the help of +his immediate spiritual lord or seigneur Saint Denis, but the monks +knew that he could never have done these feats without the help of +Saint Peter, Saint Basil, and Saint Mary the Blessed Virgin, whose +relics, in the hilt of his sword, were worth more than any king's +ransom. To this day a tunic of the Virgin is the most precious +property of the cathedral at Chartres. Either one of Roland's relics +would have made the glory of any shrine in Europe, and every monk +knew their enormous value and power better than he knew the value of +Roland's conquests. + +Yet even the religion is martial, as though it were meant for the +fighting Archangel and Odo of Bayeux. The relics serve the sword; +the sword is not in service of the relics. As the death-scene +approaches, the song becomes even more military:-- + +Co sent Rollanz que la mort le tresprent + Devers la teste sur le quer li descent. + Desuz un pin i est alez curanz + Sur l'erbe verte si est culchiez adenz + Desuz lui met s'espee e l'olifant + Turnat sa teste vers la paiene gent. + Pur co l'ad fait que il voelt veirement + Que Carles diet et trestute sa gent + Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz. + + +Then Roland feels that death is taking him; + Down from the head upon the heart it falls. + Beneath a pine he hastens running; + On the green grass he throws himself down; + Beneath him puts his sword and oliphant, + Turns his face toward the pagan army. + For this he does it, that he wishes greatly + That Charles should say and all his men, + The gentle Count has died a conqueror. + + +Thus far, not a thought or a word strays from the field of war. With +a childlike intensity, every syllable bends toward the single idea-- + +Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz. + + +Only then the singer allowed the Church to assert some of its +rights:- + +Co sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus + Devers Espaigne gist en un pui agut + A l'une main si ad sun piz batut. + "Deus meie culpe vers les tues vertuz + De mes pecchiez des granz e des menuz + Que jo ai fait des l'ure que nez fui + Tresqu'a cest jur que ci sui consouz." + Sun destre guant en ad vers deu tendut + Angle del ciel i descendent a lui. Aoi. + + +Then Roland feels that his last hour has come + Facing toward Spain he lies on a steep hill, + While with one hand he beats upon his breast: + "Mea culpa, God! through force of thy miracles + Pardon my sins, the great as well as small, + That I have done from the hour I was born + Down to this day that I have now attained." + His right glove toward God he lifted up. + Angels from heaven descend on him. Aoi. + Li quens Rollanz se jut desuz un pin + Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis + De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist + De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist + De dulce France des humes de sun lign + De Carlemagne sun seignur kil nurrit + Ne poet muer men plurt e ne suspirt + Mais lui meisme ne voelt metre en ubli + Claimet sa culpe si priet deu mercit. + "Veire paterne ki unkes ne mentis + Seint Lazarun de mort resurrexis + E Daniel des liuns guaresis + Guaris de mei l'anme de tuz perils + Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fis." + + +Sun destre guant a deu en puroffrit + E de sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris + Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin + Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. + Deus li tramist sun angle cherubin + E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril + Ensemble od els Seinz Gabriels i vint + L' anme del cunte portent en pareis. + + +Count Roland throws himself beneath a pine + And toward Spain has turned his face away. + Of many things he called the memory back, + Of many lands that he, the brave, had conquered, + Of gentle France, the men of his lineage, + Of Charlemagne his lord, who nurtured him; + He cannot help but weep and sigh for these, + But for himself will not forget to care; + He cries his Culpe, he prays to God for grace. + "O God the Father who has never lied, + Who raised up Saint Lazarus from death, + And Daniel from the lions saved, + Save my soul from all the perils + For the sins that in my life I did!" + + +His right-hand glove to God he proffered; + Saint Gabriel from his hand took it; + Upon his arm he held his head inclined, + Folding his hands he passed to his end. + God sent to him his angel cherubim + And Saint Michael of the Sea in Peril, + Together with them came Saint Gabriel. + The soul of the Count they bear to Paradise. + + +Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye for +colour and line, and its taste for war and worship, wine and women. +Not one man in a hundred thousand could now feel what the eleventh +century felt in these verses of the "Chanson," and there is no +reason for trying to do so, but there is a certain use in trying for +once to understand not so much the feeling as the meaning. The +naivete of the poetry is that of the society. God the Father was the +feudal seigneur, who raised Lazarus--his baron or vassal--from the +grave, and freed Daniel, as an evidence of his power and loyalty; a +seigneur who never lied, or was false to his word. God the Father, +as feudal seigneur, absorbs the Trinity, and, what is more +significant, absorbs or excludes also the Virgin, who is not +mentioned in the prayer. To this seigneur, Roland in dying, +proffered (puroffrit) his right-hand gauntlet. Death was an act of +homage. God sent down his Archangel Gabriel as his representative to +accept the homage and receive the glove. To Duke William and his +barons nothing could seem more natural and correct. God was not +farther away than Charlemagne. + +Correct as the law may have been, the religion even at that time +must have seemed to the monks to need professional advice. Roland's +life was not exemplary. The "Chanson" had taken pains to show that +the disaster at Roncesvalles was due to Roland's headstrong folly +and temper. In dying, Roland had not once thought of these faults, +or repented of his worldly ambitions, or mentioned the name of Alda, +his betrothed. He had clung to the memory of his wars and conquests, +his lineage, his earthly seigneur Charlemagne, and of "douce +France." He had forgotten to give so much as an allusion to Christ. +The poet regarded all these matters as the affair of the Church; all +the warrior cared for was courage, loyalty, and prowess. + +The interest of these details lies not in the scholarship or the +historical truth or even the local colour, so much as in the art. +The naivete of the thought is repeated by the simplicity of the +verse. Word and thought are equally monosyllabic. Nothing ever +matched it. The words bubble like a stream in the woods:-- + +Co sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus. + + +Try and put them into modern French, and see what will happen:-- + +Que jo ai fait des l'ure que nez fui. + + +The words may remain exactly the same, but the poetry will have gone +out of them. Five hundred years later, even the English critics had +so far lost their sense for military poetry that they professed to +be shocked by Milton's monosyllables:-- + +Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked, + Smote him into the midriff with a stone + That beat out life. + + +Milton's language was indeed more or less archaic and Biblical; it +was a Puritan affectation; but the "Chanson" in the refectory +actually reflected, repeated, echoed, the piers and arches of the +Abbey Church just rising above. The verse is built up. The qualities +of the architecture reproduce themselves in the song: the same +directness, simplicity, absence of self-consciousness; the same +intensity of purpose; even the same material; the prayer is +granite:-- + +Guaris de mei l'anme de tuz perils Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie +fisi + + +The action of dying is felt, like the dropping of a keystone into +the vault, and if the Romanesque arches in the church, which are +within hearing, could speak, they would describe what they are doing +in the precise words of the poem:-- + +Desur sun braz teneit Ie chief enclin Juintes ses mains est alez a +sa fin. + +Upon their shoulders have their heads inclined, + Folded their hands, and sunken to their rest. + + +Many thousands of times these verses must have been sung at the +Mount and echoed in every castle and on every battle-field from the +Welsh Marches to the shores of the Dead Sea. No modern opera or play +ever approached the popularity of the "Chanson." None has ever +expressed with anything like the same completeness the society that +produced it. Chanted by every minstrel,--known by heart, from +beginning to end, by every man and woman and child, lay or +clerical,--translated into every tongue,--more intensely felt, if +possible, in Italy and Spain than in Normandy and England,--perhaps +most effective, as a work of art, when sung by the Templars in their +great castles in the Holy Land,--it is now best felt at Mont-Saint- +Michel, and from the first must have been there at home. The proof +is the line, evidently inserted for the sake of its local effect, +which invoked Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea at the climax of +Roland's death, and one needs no original documents or contemporary +authorities to prove that, when Taillefer came to this invocation, +not only Duke William and his barons, but still more Abbot Ranulf +and his monks, broke into a frenzy of sympathy which expressed the +masculine and military passions of the Archangel better than it +accorded with the rules of Saint Benedict. + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE MERVEILLE + +The nineteenth century moved fast and furious, so that one who moved +in it felt sometimes giddy, watching it spin; but the eleventh moved +faster and more furiously still. The Norman conquest of England was +an immense effort, and its consequences were far-reaching, but the +first crusade was altogether the most interesting event in European +history. Never has the Western world shown anything like the energy +and unity with which she then flung herself on the East, and for the +moment made the East recoil. Barring her family quarrels, Europe was +a unity then, in thought, will, and object. Christianity was the +unit. Mont-Saint-Michel and Byzantium were near each other. The +Emperor Constantine and the Emperor Charlemagne were figured as +allies and friends in the popular legend. The East was the common +enemy, always superior in wealth and numbers, frequently in energy, +and sometimes in thought and art. The outburst of the first crusade +was splendid even in a military sense, but it was great beyond +comparison in its reflection in architecture, ornament, poetry, +colour, religion, and philosophy. Its men were astonishing, and its +women were worth all the rest. + +Mont-Saint-Michel, better than any other spot in the world, keeps +the architectural record of that ferment, much as the Sicilian +temples keep the record of the similar outburst of Greek energy, +art, poetry, and thought, fifteen hundred years before. Of the +eleventh century, it is true, nothing but the church remains at the +Mount, and, if studied further, the century has got to be sought +elsewhere, which is not difficult, since it is preserved in any +number of churches in every path of tourist travel. Normandy is full +of it; Bayeux and Caen contain little else. At the Mount, the +eleventh-century work was antiquated before it was finished. In the +year 1112, Abbot Roger II was obliged to plan and construct a new +group in such haste that it is said to have been finished in 1122. +It extends from what we have supposed to be the old refectory to the +parvis, and abuts on the three lost spans of the church, covering +about one hundred and twenty feet. As usual there were three levels; +a crypt or gallery beneath, known as the Aquilon; a cloister or +promenoir above; and on the level of the church a dormitory, now +lost. The group is one of the most interesting in France, another +pons seclorum, an antechamber to the west portal of Chartres, which +bears the same date (i 110-25). It is the famous period of +Transition, the glory of the twelfth century, the object of our +pilgrimage. + +Art is a fairly large field where no one need jostle his neighbour, +and no one need shut himself up in a corner; but, if one insists on +taking a corner of preference, one might offer some excuse for +choosing the Gothic Transition. The quiet, restrained strength of +the Romanesque married to the graceful curves and vaulting +imagination of the Gothic makes a union nearer the ideal than is +often allowed in marriage. The French, in their best days, loved it +with a constancy that has thrown a sort of aureole over their +fickleness since. They never tired of its possibilities. Sometimes +they put the pointed arch within the round, or above it; sometimes +they put the round within the pointed. Sometimes a Roman arch +covered a cluster of pointed windows, as though protecting and +caressing its children; sometimes a huge pointed arch covered a +great rose-window spreading across the whole front of an enormous +cathedral, with an arcade of Romanesque windows beneath. The French +architects felt no discord, and there was none. Even the pure Gothic +was put side by side with the pure Roman. You will see no later +Gothic than the choir of the Abbey Church above (1450-1521), unless +it is the north fleche of Chartres Cathedral (1507-13); and if you +will look down the nave, through the triumphal arches, into the +pointed choir four hundred years more modern, you can judge whether +there is any real discord. For those who feel the art, there is +none; the strength and the grace join hands; the man and woman love +each other still. + +The difference of sex is not imaginary. In 1058, when the triumphal +columns were building, and Taillefer sang to William the Bastard and +Harold the Saxon, Roland still prayed his "mea culpa" to God the +Father and gave not a thought to Alda his betrothed. In the twelfth +century Saint Bernard recited "Ave Stella Marts" in an ecstasy of +miracle before the image of the Virgin, and the armies of France in +battle cried, "Notre-Dame-Saint-Denis-Montjoie." What the Roman +could not express flowered into the Gothic; what the masculine mind +could not idealize in the warrior, it idealized in the woman; no +architecture that ever grew on earth, except the Gothic, gave this +effect of flinging its passion against the sky. + +When men no longer felt the passion, they fell back on themselves, +or lower. The architect returned to the round arch, and even further +to the flatness of the Greek colonnade; but this was not the fault +of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. What they had to say they +said; what they felt they expressed; and if the seventeenth century +forgot it, the twentieth in turn has forgotten the seventeenth. +History is only a catalogue of the forgotten. The eleventh century +is no worse off than its neighbours. The twelfth is, in +architecture, rather better off than the nineteenth. These two +rooms, the Aquilon and promenoir, which mark the beginning of the +Transition, are, on the whole, more modern than Saint-Sulpice, or Il +Gesu at Rome. In the same situation, for the same purposes, any +architect would be proud to repeat them to-day. + +The Aquilon, though a hall or gallery of importance in its day, +seems to be classed among crypts. M. Camille Enlart, in his "Manual +of French Archaeology" (p. 252) gives a list of Romanesque and +Transition crypts, about one hundred and twenty, to serve as +examples for the study. The Aquilon is not one of them, but the +crypt of Saint-Denis and that of Chartres Cathedral would serve to +teach any over-curious tourist all that he should want to know about +such matters. + +Photographs such as those of the Monuments Historiques answer all +the just purposes of underground travel. The Aquilon is one's first +lesson in Transition architecture because it is dated (1112); and +the crypt of Saint-Denis serves almost equally well because the Abbe +Suger must have begun his plans for it about 1122. Both have the +same arcs doubleaux and arcs-formerets, though in opposite +arrangement. Both show the first heavy hint at the broken arch. +There are no nervures--no rib-vaulting,--and hardly a suggestion of +the Gothic as one sees it in the splendid crypt of the Gros Fillers +close at hand, except the elaborately intersecting vaults and the +heavy columns; but the promenoir above is an astonishing leap in +time and art. The promenoir has the same arrangement and columns as +the Aquilon, but the vaults are beautifully arched and pointed, with +ribs rising directly from the square capitals and intersecting the +central spacings, in a spirit which neither you nor I know how to +distinguish from the pure Gothic of the thirteenth century, unless +it is that the arches are hardly pointed enough; they seem to the +eye almost round. The height appears to be about fourteen feet. + +The promenoir of Abbot Roger II has an interest to pilgrims who are +going on to the shrine of the Virgin, because the date of the +promenoir seems to be exactly the same as the date which the Abbe +Bulteau assigns for the western portal of Chartres. Ordinarily a +date is no great matter, but when one has to run forward and back, +with the agility of an electric tram, between two or three fixed +points, it is convenient to fix them once for all. The Transition is +complete here in the promenoir, which was planned as early as 1115. +The subject of vaulting is far too ambitious for summer travel; it +is none too easy for a graduate of the Beaux Arts; and few +architectural fields have been so earnestly discussed and disputed. +We must not touch it. The age of the "Chanson de Roland" itself is +not so dangerous a topic. Our vital needs are met, more or less +sufficiently, by taking the promenoir at the Mount, the crypt at +Saint-Denis, and the western portal at Chartres, as the trinity of +our Transition, and roughly calling their date the years 1115-20, To +overload the memory with dates is the vice of every schoolmaster and +the passion of every second-rate scholar. Tourists want as few dates +as possible; what they want is poetry. Yet a singular coincidence, +with which every classroom is only too familiar, has made of the +years--15 a curiously convenient group, and the year 1115 is as +convenient as any for the beginning of the century of Transition. +That was the year when Saint Bernard laid the foundations of his +Abbey of Clairvaux. Perhaps 1115, or at latest 1117, was the year +when Abelard sang love-songs to Heloise in Canon Fulbert's house in +the Rue des Chantres, beside the cloister of Notre Dame in Paris. +The Abbe Suger, the Abbe Bernard, and the Abbe Abelard are the three +interesting men of the French Transition. + +The promenoir, then, shall pass for the year 1115, and, as such, is +an exceedingly beautiful hall, uniting the splendid calm and +seriousness of the Romanesque with the exquisite lines of the +Gothic. You will hardly see its equal in the twelfth century. At +Angers the great hall of the Bishop's Palace survives to give a +point of comparison, but commonly the halls of that date were not +vaulted; they had timber roofs, and have perished. The promenoir is +about sixty feet long, and divided into two aisles, ten feet wide, +by a row of columns. If it were used on great occasions as a +refectory, eighty or a hundred persons could have been seated at +table, and perhaps this may have been about the scale of the Abbey's +needs, at that time. Whatever effort of fancy was needed to place +Duke William and Harold in the old refectory of 1058, none whatever +is required in order to see his successors in the halls of Roger II. +With one exception they were not interesting persons. The exception +was Henry II of England and Anjou, and his wife Eleanor of Guienne, +who was for a while Regent of Normandy. One of their children was +born at Domfront, just beyond Avranches, and the Abbot was asked to +be godfather. In 1158, just one hundred years after Duke William's +visit, King Henry and his whole suite came to the Abbey, heard mass, +and dined in the refectory. "Rex venit ad Montem Sancti Michaelis, +audita missa ad magis altare, comedit in Refec-torio cum baronibus +suis." Abbot Robert of Torigny was his host, and very possibly +William of Saint-Pair looked on. Perhaps he recited parts of his +"Roman" before the King. One may be quite sure that when Queen +Eleanor came to the Mount she asked the poet to recite his verses, +for Eleanor gave law to poets. + +One might linger over Abbot Robert of Torigny, who was a very great +man in his day, and an especially great architect, but too +ambitious. All his work, including the two towers, crumbled and fell +for want of proper support. What would correspond to the cathedrals +of Noyon and Soissons and the old clocher and fleche of Chartres is +lost. We have no choice but to step down into the next century at +once, and into the full and perfect Gothic of the great age when the +new Chartres was building. + +In the year 1203, Philip Augustus expelled the English from Normandy +and conquered the province; but, in the course of the war the Duke +of Brittany, who was naturally a party to any war that took place +under his eyes, happened to burn the town beneath the Abbey, and in +doing so, set fire unintentionally to the Abbey itself. The +sacrilege shocked Philip Augustus, and the wish to conciliate so +powerful a vassal as Saint Michel, or his abbot, led the King of +France to give a large sum of money for repairing the buildings. The +Abbot Jordan (1191-1212) at once undertook to outdo all his +predecessors, and, with an immense ambition, planned the huge pile +which covers the whole north face of the Mount, and which has always +borne the expressive name of the Merveille. + +The general motive of abbatial building was common to them all. +Abbeys were large households. The church was the centre, and at +Mont-Saint-Michel the summit, for the situation compelled the abbots +there to pile one building on another instead of arranging them on a +level in squares or parallelograms. The dormitory in any case had to +be near a door of the church, because the Rule required constant +services, day and night. The cloister was also hard-by the church +door, and, at the Mount, had to be on the same level in order to be +in open air. Naturally the refectory must be immediately beneath one +or the other of these two principal structures, and the hall, or +place of meeting for business with the outside world, or for +internal administration, or for guests of importance, must be next +the refectory. The kitchen and offices would be placed on the lowest +stage, if for no other reason, because the magazines were two +hundred feet below at the landing-place, and all supplies, including +water, had to be hauled up an inclined plane by windlass. To +administer such a society required the most efficient management. An +abbot on this scale was a very great man, indeed, who enjoyed an +establishment of his own, close by, with officers in no small +number; for the monks alone numbered sixty, and even these were not +enough for the regular church services at seasons of pilgrimage. The +Abbot was obliged to entertain scores and hundreds of guests, and +these, too, of the highest importance, with large suites. Every +ounce of food must be brought from the mainland, or fished from the +sea. All the tenants and their farms, their rents and contributions, +must be looked after. No secular prince had a more serious task of +administration, and none did it so well. Tenants always preferred an +abbot or bishop for landlord. The Abbey was the highest +administrative creation of the Middle Ages, and when one has made +one's pilgrimage to Chartres, one might well devote another summer +to visiting what is left of Clairvaux, Citeaux, Cluny, and the other +famous monasteries, with Viollet-le-Duc to guide, in order to +satisfy one's mind whether, on the whole, such a life may not have +had activity as well as idleness. + +This is a matter of economics, to be settled with the keepers of +more modern hotels, but the art had to suit the conditions, and when +Abbot Jordan decided to plaster this huge structure against the side +of the Mount, the architect had a relatively simple task to handle. +The engineering difficulties alone were very serious; The +architectural plan was plain enough. As the Abbot laid his +requirements before the architect, he seems to have begun by fixing +the scale for a refectory capable of seating two hundred guests at +table. Probably no king in Europe fed more persons at his table than +this. According to M. Corroyer's plan, the length of the new +refectory is one hundred and twenty-three feet (37.5 metres). A row +of columns down the centre divides it into two aisles, measuring +twelve feet clear, from column to column, across the room. If tables +were set the whole length of the two aisles, forty persons could +have been easily seated, in four rows, or one hundred and sixty +persons. Without crowding, the same space would give room for fifty +guests, or two hundred in all. + +Once the scale was fixed, the arrangement was easy. Beginning at the +lowest possible level, one plain, very solidly built, vaulted room +served as foundation for another, loftier and more delicately +vaulted; and this again bore another which stood on the level of the +church, and opened directly into the north transept. This +arrangement was then doubled; and the second set of rooms, at the +west end, contained the cellar on the lower level, another great +room or hall above it, and the cloister at the church door, also +entering into the north transept. Doorways, passages, and stairs +unite them all. The two heavy halls on the lowest level are now +called the almonry and the cellar, which is a distinction between +administrative arrangements that does not concern us. + +Architecturally the rooms might, to our untrained eyes, be of the +same age with the Aquilon. They are earliest Transition, as far as a +tourist can see, or at least they belong to the class of crypts +which has an architecture of its own. The rooms that concern us are +those immediately above: the so-called Salle des Chevaliers at the +west end; and the so-called refectory at the east. Every writer +gives these rooms different names, and assigns them different +purposes, but whatever they were meant for, they are, as halls, the +finest in France; the purest in thirteenth-century perfection. + +The Salle des Chevaliers of the Order of Saint Michael created by +Louis XI in 1469 was, or shall be for tourist purposes, the great +hall that every palace and castle contained, and in which the life +of the chateau centred. Planned at about the same time with the +Cathedral of Chartres (1195-1210), and before the Abbey Church of +Saint-Denis, this hall and its neighbour the refectory, studied +together with the cathedral and the abbey, are an exceedingly +liberal education for anybody, tourist or engineer or architect, and +would make the fortune of an intelligent historian, if such should +happen to exist; but the last thing we ask from them is education or +instruction. We want only their poetry, and shall have to look for +it elsewhere. Here is only the shell--the dead art--and silence. The +hall is about ninety feet long, and sixty feet in its greatest +width. It has three ranges of columns making four vaulted aisles +which seem to rise about twenty-two feet in height. It is warmed by +two huge and heavy cheminees or fireplaces in the outside wall, +between the windows. It is lighted beautifully, but mostly from +above through round windows in the arching of the vaults. The +vaulting is a study for wiser men than we can ever be. More than +twenty strong round columns, free or engaged, with Romanesque +capitals, support heavy ribs, or nervures, and while the two central +aisles are eighteen feet wide, the outside aisle, into which the +windows open, measures only ten feet in width, and has consequently +one of the most sharply pointed vaults we shall ever meet. The whole +design is as beautiful a bit of early Gothic as exists, but what +would take most time to study, if time were to spare, would be the +instinct of the Archangel's presence which has animated his +architecture. The masculine, military energy of Saint Michael lives +still in every stone. The genius that realized this warlike emotion +has stamped his power everywhere, on every centimetre of his work; +in every ray of light; on the mass of every shadow; wherever the eye +falls; still more strongly on all that the eye divines, and in the +shadows that are felt like the lights. The architect intended it +all. Any one who doubts has only to step through the doorway in the +corner into the refectory. There the architect has undertaken to +express the thirteenth-century idea of the Archangel; he has left +the twelfth century behind him. + +The refectory, which has already served for a measure of the Abbot's +scale, is, in feeling, as different as possible from the hall. Six +charming columns run down the centre, dividing the room into two +vaulted aisles, apparently about twenty-seven feet in height. +Wherever the hall was heavy and serious, the refectory was made +light and graceful. Hardly a trace of the Romanesque remains. Only +the slight, round columns are not yet grooved or fluted, and their +round capitals are still slightly severe. Every detail is lightened. +The great fireplaces are removed to each end of the room. The most +interesting change is in the windows. When you reach Chartres, the +great book of architecture will open on the word "Fenestration,"-- +Fenestre,--a word as ugly as the thing was beautiful; and then, with +pain and sorrow, you will have to toil till you see how the +architects of 1200 subordinated every other problem to that of +lighting their spaces. Without feeling their lights, you can never +feel their shadows. These two halls at Mont-Saint-Michel are +antechambers to the nave of Chartres; their fenestration, inside and +out, controls the whole design. The lighting of the refectory is +superb, but one feels its value in art only when it is taken in +relation to the lighting of the hall, and both serve as a simple +preamble to the romance of the Chartres windows. + +The refectory shows what the architect did when, to lighten his +effects, he wanted to use every possible square centimetre of light. +He has made nine windows; six on the north, two on the east, and one +on the south. They are nearly five feet wide, and about twenty feet +high. They flood the room. Probably they were intended for glass, +and M. Corroyer's volume contains wood-cuts of a few fragments of +thirteenth-century glass discovered in his various excavations; but +one may take for granted that with so much light, colour was the +object intended. The floors would be tiled in colour; the walls +would be hung with colour; probably the vaults were painted in +colour; one can see it all in scores of illuminated manuscripts. The +thirteenth century had a passion for colour, and made a colour-world +of its own which we have got to explore. + +The two halls remain almost the only monuments of what must be +called secular architecture of the early and perfect period of +Gothic art (1200-10). Churches enough remain, with Chartres at their +head, but all the great abbeys, palaces and chateaux of that day are +ruins. Arques, Gaillard, Montargis, Coucy, the old Louvre, Chinon, +Angers, as well as Cluny, Clairvaux, Citeaux, Jumieges, Vezelay, +Saint-Denis, Poissy, Fontevrault, and a score of other residences, +royal or semi-royal, have disappeared wholly, or have lost their +residential buildings. When Viollet-le-Duc, under the Second Empire, +was allowed to restore one great chateau, he chose the latest, +Pierrefonds, built by Louis d'Orleans in 1390. Vestiges of Saint +Louis's palace remain at the Conciergerie, but the first great royal +residence to be compared with the Merveille is Amboise, dating from +about 1500, three centuries later. Civilization made almost a clean +sweep of art. Only here, at Mont-Saint-Michel, one may still sit at +ease on the stone benches in; the embrasures of the refectory +windows, looking over the thirteenth-century ocean and watching the +architect as he worked out the details which were to produce or +accent his contrasts or harmonies, heighten his effects, or hide his +show of effort, and all by means so true, simpler and apparently +easy that one seems almost competent to follow him. One learns +better in time. One gets to feel that these things were due in part +to an instinct that the architect himself might not have been able +to explain. The instinct vanishes as time creeps on. The halls at +Rouen or at Blois are more easily understood; the Salle des +Caryatides of Pierre Lescot at the Louvre, charming as it is, is +simpler still; and one feels entirely at home in the Salle des +Glaces which filled the ambition of Louis XIV at Versailles. + +If any lingering doubt remains in regard to the professional +cleverness of the architect and the thoroughness of his study, we +had best return to the great hall, and pass through a low door in +its extreme outer angle, up a few steps into a little room some +thirteen feet square, beautifully vaulted, lighted, warmed by a +large stone fireplace, and in the corner, a spiral staircase leading +up to another square room above opening directly into the cloister. +It is a little library or charter-house. The arrangement is almost +too clever for gravity, as is the case with more than one +arrangement in the Merveille. From the outside one can see that at +this corner the architect had to provide a heavy buttress against a +double strain, and he built up from the rock below a square corner +tower as support, into which he worked a spiral staircase leading +from the cellar up to the cloisters. Just above the level of the +great hall he managed to construct this little room, a gem. The +place was near and far; it was quiet and central; William of Saint- +Pair, had he been still alive, might have written his "Roman" there; +monks might have illuminated missals there. A few steps upward +brought them to the cloisters for meditation; a few more brought +them to the church for prayer. A few steps downward brought them to +the great hall, for business, a few steps more led them into the +refectory, for dinner. To contemplate the goodness of God was a +simple joy when one had such a room to work in; such a spot as the +great hall to walk in, when the storms blew; or the cloisters in +which to meditate, when the sun shone; such a dining-room as the +refectory; and such a view from one's windows over the infinite +ocean and the guiles of Satan's quicksands. From the battlements of +Heaven, William of Saint-Pair looked down on it with envy. + +Of all parts of the Merveille, in summer, the most charming must +always have been the cloisters. Only the Abbey of the Mount was rich +and splendid enough to build a cloister like this, all in granite, +carved in forms as light as though it were wood; with columns +arranged in a peculiar triangular order that excited the admiration +of Viollet-le-Duc. "One of the most curious and complete cloisters +that we have in France," he said; although in France there are many +beautiful and curious cloisters. For another reason it has value. +The architect meant it to reassert, with all the art and grace he +could command, the mastery of love, of thought and poetry, in +religion, over the masculine, military energy of the great hall +below. The thirteenth century rarely let slip a chance to insist on +this moral that love is law. Saint Francis was preaching to the +birds in 1215 at Assisi, and the architect built this cloister in +1226 at Mont-Saint-Michel. Both sermons were saturated with the +feeling of the time, and both are about equally worth noting, if one +aspires to feel the art. + +A conscientious student has yet to climb down the many steps, on the +outside, and look up at the Merveille from below. Few buildings in +France are better worth the trouble. The horizontal line at the roof +measures two hundred and thirty-five feet. The vertical line of the +buttresses measures in round numbers one hundred feet. To make walls +of that height and length stand up at all was no easy matter, as +Robert de Torigny had shown; and so the architect buttressed them +from bottom to top with twelve long buttresses against the thrust of +the interior arches, and three more, bearing against the interior +walls. This gives, on the north front, fifteen strong vertical lines +in a space of two hundred and thirty-five feet. Between these lines +the windows tell their story; the seven long windows of the +refectory on one side; the seven rounded windows of the hall on the +other. Even the corner tower with the charter-house becomes as +simple as the rest. The sum of this impossible wall, and its +exaggerated vertical lines, is strength and intelligence at rest. + +The whole Mount still kept the grand style; it expressed the unity +of Church and State, God and Man, Peace and War, Life and Death, +Good and Bad; it solved the whole problem of the universe. The +priest and the soldier were both at home here, in 1215 as in 1115 or +in 1058; the politician was not outside of it; the sinner was +welcome; the poet was made happy in his own spirit, with a sympathy, +almost an affection, that suggests a habit of verse in the Abbot as +well as in the architect. God reconciles all. The world is an +evident, obvious, sacred harmony. Even the discord of war is a +detail on which the Abbey refuses to insist. Not till two centuries +afterwards did the Mount take on the modern expression of war as a +discord in God's providence. Then, in the early years of the +fifteenth century, Abbot Pierre le Roy plastered the gate of the +chatelet, as you now see it, over the sunny thirteenth-century +entrance called Belle Chaise, which had treated mere military +construction with a sort of quiet contempt. You will know what a +chatelet is when you meet another; it frowns in a spirit quite alien +to the twelfth century; it jars on the religion of the place; it +forebodes wars of religion; dissolution of society; loss of unity; +the end of a world. Nothing is sadder than the catastrophe of Gothic +art, religion, and hope. + +One looks back on it all as a picture; a symbol of unity; an +assertion of God and Man in a bolder, stronger, closer union than +ever was expressed by other art; and when the idea is absorbed, +accepted, and perhaps partially understood, one may move on. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE + +From Mont-Saint-Michel, the architectural road leads across +Normandy, up the Seine to Paris, and not directly through Chartres, +which lies a little to the south. In the empire of architecture, +Normandy was one kingdom, Brittany another; the Ile de France, with +Paris, was a third; Touraine and the valley of the Loire were a +fourth and in the centre, the fighting-ground between them all, lay +the counties of Chartres and Dreux. Before going to Chartres one +should go up the Seine and down the Loire, from Angers to Le Mans, +and so enter Chartres from Brittany after a complete circle; but if +we set out to do our pleasure on that scale, we must start from the +Pyramid of Cheops. We have set out from Mont-Saint-Michel; we will +go next to Paris. + +The architectural highway lies through Coutances, Bayeux, Caen, +Rouen, and Mantes. Every great artistic kingdom solved its +architectural problems in its own way, as it did its religious, +political, and social problems, and no two solutions were ever quite +the same; but among them the Norman was commonly the most practical, +and sometimes the most dignified. We can test this rule by the +standard of the first town we stop at--Coutances. We can test it +equally well at Bayeux or Caen, but Coutances comes first after +Mont-Saint-Michel let us begin with it, and state the problems with +their Norman solution, so that it may be ready at hand to compare +with the French solution, before coming to the solution at Chartres. + +The cathedral at Coutances is said to be about the age of the +Merveille (1200-50), but the exact dates are unknown, and the work +is so Norman as to stand by itself; yet the architect has grappled +with more problems than one need hope to see solved in any single +church in the tie de France. Even at Chartres, although the two +stone fleches are, by exception, completed, they are not of the same +age, as they are here. Neither at Chartres nor at Paris, nor at Laon +or Amiens or Rheims or Bourges, will you see a central tower to +compare with the enormous pile at Coutances. Indeed the architects +of France failed to solve this particular church problem, and we- +shall leave it behind us in leaving Normandy, although it is the +most effective feature of any possible church. "A clocher of that +period (circa 1200), built over the croisee of a cathedral, +following lines so happy, should be a monument of the greatest +beauty; unfortunately we possess not a single one in France. Fire, +and the hand of man more than time, have destroyed them all, and we +find on our greatest religious edifices no more than bases and +fragments of these beautiful constructions. The cathedral of +Coutances alone has preserved its central clocher of the thirteenth +century, and even there it is not complete; its stone fleche is +wanting. As for its style, it belongs to Norman architecture, and +diverges widely from the character of French architecture." So says +Viollet-le-Duc; but although the great churches for the most part +never had central clochers, which, on the scale of Amiens, Bourges, +or Beauvais, would have required an impossible mass, the smaller +churches frequently carry them still, and they are, like the dome, +the most effective features they can carry. They were made to +dominate the whole. + +No doubt the fleche is wanting at Coutances, but you can supply it +in imagination from the two fleches of the western tower, which are +as simple and severe as the spear of a man-at-arms. Supply the +fleche, and the meaning of the tower cannot be mistaken; it is as +military as the "Chanson de Roland"; it is the man-at-arms himself, +mounted and ready for battle, spear in rest. The mere seat of the +central tower astride of the church, so firm, so fixed, so serious, +so defiant, is Norman, like the seat of the Abbey Church on the +Mount; and at Falaise, where William the Bastard was born, we shall +see a central tower on the church which is William himself, in +armour, on horseback, ready to fight for the Church, and perhaps, in +his bad moods, against it. Such militant churches were capable of +forcing Heaven itself; all of them look as though they had fought at +Hastings or stormed Jerusalem. Wherever the Norman central clocher +stands, the Church Militant of the eleventh century survives;--not +the Church of Mary Queen, but of Michael the Archangel;--not the +Church of Christ, but of God the Father--Who never lied! + +Taken together with the fleches of the facade, this clocher of +Coutances forms a group such as one very seldom sees. The two towers +of the facade are something apart, quite by themselves among the +innumerable church-towers of the Gothic time. We have got a happy +summer before us, merely in looking for these church-towers. There +is no livelier amusement for fine weather than in hunting them as +though they were mushrooms, and no study in architecture nearly so +delightful. No work of man has life like the fleche. One sees it for +a greater distance and feels it for a longer time than is possible +with any other human structure, unless it be the dome. There is more +play of light on the octagonal faces of the fleche as the sun moves +around them than can be got out of the square or the cone or any +other combination of surfaces. For some reason, the facets of the +hexagon or octagon are more pleasing than the rounded surfaces of +the cone, and Normandy is said to be peculiarly the home of this +particularly Gothic church ornament; yet clochers and fleches are +scattered all over France until one gets to look for them on the +horizon as though every church in every hamlet were an architectural +monument. Hundreds of them literally are so,--Monuments Historiques, +-protected by the Government; but when you undertake to compare +them, or to decide whether they are more beautiful in Normandy than +in the Ile de France, or in Burgundy, or on the Loire or the +Charente, you are lost, Even the superiority of the octagon is not +evident to every one. Over the little church at Fenioux on the +Charente, not very far from La Rochelle, is a conical steeple that +an infidel might adore; and if you have to decide between provinces, +you must reckon with the decision of architects and amateurs, who +seem to be agreed that the first of all filches is at Chartres, the +second at Vendome, not far from Blois in Touraine, and the third at +Auxerre in Burgundy. The towers of Coutances are not in the list, +nor are those at Bayeux nor those at Caen. France is rich in art. +Yet the towers of Coutances are in some ways as interesting, if not +as beautiful, as the best. + +The two stone fleches here, with their octagon faces, do not +descend, as in other churches, to their resting-place on a square +tower, with the plan of junction more or less disguised; they throw +out nests of smaller fleches, and these cover buttressing corner +towers, with lines that go directly to the ground. Whether the +artist consciously intended it or not, the effect is to broaden the +facade and lift it into the air. The facade itself has a distinctly +military look, as though a fortress had been altered into a church. +A charming arcade at the top has the air of being thrown across in +order to disguise the alteration, and perhaps owes much of its charm +to the contrast it makes with the severity of military lines. Even +the great west window looks like an afterthought; one's instinct +asks for a blank wall. Yet, from the ground up to the cross on the +spire, one feels the Norman nature throughout, animating the whole, +uniting it all, and crowding into it an intelligent variety of +original motives that would build a dozen churches of late Gothic. +Nothing about it is stereotyped or conventional,--not even the +conventionality. + +If you have any doubts about this, you have only to compare the +photograph of Coutances with the photograph of Chartres; and yet, +surely, the facade of Chartres is severe enough to satisfy Saint +Bernard himself. With the later fronts of Rheims and Amiens, there +is no field for comparison; they have next to nothing in common; yet +Coutances is said to be of the same date with Rheims, or nearly so, +and one can believe it when one enters the interior. The Normans, as +they slowly reveal themselves, disclose most unexpected qualities; +one seems to sound subterranean caverns of feeling hidden behind +their iron nasals. No other cathedral in France or in Europe has an +interior more refined--one is tempted to use even the hard-worn +adjective, more tender--or more carefully studied. One test is +crucial here and everywhere. The treatment of the apse and choir is +the architect's severest standard. This is a subject not to be +touched lightly; one to which we shall have to come back in a humble +spirit, prepared for patient study, at Chartres; but the choir of +Coutances is a cousin to that of Chartres, as the facades are +cousins; Coutances like Chartres belongs to Notre Dame and is felt +in the same spirit; the church is built for the choir and apse, +rather than for the nave and transepts; for the Virgin rather than +for the public. In one respect Coutances is even more delicate in +the feminine charm of the Virgin's peculiar grace than Chartres, but +this was an afterthought of the fourteenth century. The system of +chapels radiating about the apse was extended down the nave, in an +arrangement "so beautiful and so rare," according to Viollet-le-Duc, +that one shall seek far before finding its equal. Among the +unexpected revelations of human nature that suddenly astonish +historians, one of the least reasonable was the passionate outbreak +of religious devotion to the ideal of feminine grace, charity, and +love that took place here in Normandy while it was still a part of +the English kingdom, and flamed up into almost fanatical frenzy +among the most hard-hearted and hard-headed race in Europe. + +So in this church, in the centre of this arrangement of apse and +chapels with their quite unusual--perhaps quite singular--grace, the +four huge piers which support the enormous central tower, offer a +tour de force almost as exceptional as the refinement of the +chapels. At Mont-Saint-Michel, among the monks, the union of +strength and grace was striking, but at Coutances it is exaggerated, +like Tristram and Iseult,--a roman of chivalry. The four "enormous" +columns of the croisee, carry, as Viollet-le-Duc says, the "enormous +octagonal tower,"--like Saint Christopher supporting the Christ- +child, before the image of the Virgin, in her honour. Nothing like +this can be seen at Chartres, or at any of the later palaces which +France built for the pleasure of the Queen of Heaven. We are +slipping into the thirteenth century again; the temptation is +terrible to feeble minds and tourist natures; but a great mass of +twelfth and eleventh-century work remains to be seen and felt. To go +back is not so easy as to begin with it; the heavy round arch is +like old cognac compared with the champagne of the pointed and +fretted spire; one must not quit Coutances without making an +excursion to Lessayon the road to Cherbourg, where is a church of +the twelfth century, with a square tower and almost untouched Norman +interior, that closely repeats the Abbey Church at Mont-Saint- +Michel. "One of the most complete models of Romanesque architecture +to be found in Normandy," says M. de Caumont. The central clocher +will begin a photographic collection of square towers, to replace +that which was lost on the Mount; and a second example is near +Bayeux, at a small place called Cerisy-la-Foret, where the church +matches that on the Mount, according to M. Corroyer; for Cerisy-la- +Foret was also an abbey, and the church, built by Richard II, Duke +of Normandy, at the beginning of the eleventh century, was larger +than that on the Mount. It still keeps its central tower. + +All this is intensely Norman, and is going to help very little in +France; it would be more useful in England; but at Bayeux is a +great: cathedral much more to the purpose, with two superb western +towers crowned by stone fleches, cousins of those at Coutances, and +distinctly related to the twelfth-century fleche at Chartres. "The +Normans," says Viollet-le-Duc, "had not that instinct of proportion +which the architects of the Ile de France, Beauvais, and Soissons +possessed to a high degree; yet the boldness of their constructions, +their perfect execution, the elevation of the fleches, had evident +influence on the French school properly called, and that influence +is felt in the old spire of Chartres." The Norman seemed to show +distinction in another respect which the French were less quick to +imitate. What they began, they completed. Not one of the great +French churches has two stone spires complete, of the same age, +while each of the little towns of Coutances, Bayeux, and Caen +contains its twin towers and fleches of stone, as solid and perfect +now as they were seven hundred years ago. Still another Norman +character is worth noting, because this is one part of the influence +felt at Chartres. If you look carefully at the two western towers of +the Bayeux Cathedral, perhaps you will feel what is said to be the +strength of the way they are built up. They rise from their +foundation with a quiet confidence of line and support, which passes +directly up to the weather-cock on the summit of the fleches. At the +plane where the square tower is changed into the octagon spire, you +will see the corner turrets and the long intermediate windows which +effect the change without disguising it. One can hardly call it a +device; it is so simple and evident a piece of construction that it +does not need to be explained; yet you will have to carry a +photograph of this fleche to Chartres, and from there to Vendome, +for there is to be a great battle of fleches about this point of +junction, and the Norman scheme is a sort of standing reproach to +the French. + +Coutances and Bayeux are interesting, but Caen is a Romanesque +Mecca. There William the Conqueror dealt with the same architectural +problems, and put his solution in his Abbaye-aux-Hommes, which bears +the name of Saint Stephen. Queen Matilda put her solution into her +Abbaye-aux-Femmes, the Church of the Trinity. One ought particularly +to look at the beautiful central clocher of the church at Vaucelles +in the suburbs; and one must drive out to Thaon to see its eleventh- +century church, with a charming Romanesque blind arcade on the +outside, and a little clocher, "the more interesting to us," +according to Viollet-le-Duc, "because it bears the stamp of the +traditions of defence of the primitive towers which were built over +the porches." Even "a sort of chemin de ronde" remains around the +clocher, perhaps once provided with a parapet of defence. "C'est la, +du reste, un charmant edifice." A tower with stone fleche, which +actually served for defence in a famous recorded instance, is that +of the church at Secqueville, not far off; this beautiful tower, as +charming as anything in Norman art, is known to have served as a +fortress in 1105, which gives a valuable date. The pretty old +Romanesque front of the little church at Ouistreham, with its portal +that seems to come fresh from Poitiers and Moissac, can be taken in, +while driving past; but we must on no account fail to make a serious +pilgrimage to Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, where the church-tower and +fleche are not only classed among the best in Normandy, but have an +exact date, 1145, and a very close relation with Chartres, as will +appear. Finally, if for no other reason, at least for interest in +Arlette, the tanner's daughter, one must go to Falaise, and look at +the superb clocher of Saint-Gervais, which was finished and +consecrated by 1135. + +Some day, if you like, we can follow this Romanesque style to the +south, and on even to Italy where it may be supposed to have been +born; but France had an architectural life fully a thousand years +old when these twelfth-century churches were built, and was long +since artistically, as she was politically, independent. The Normans +were new in France, but not the Romanesque architecture; they only +took the forms and stamped on them their own character. It is the +stamp we want to distinguish, in order to trace up our lines of +artistic ancestry. The Norman twelfth-century stamp was not easily +effaced. If we have not seen enough of it at Mont-Saint-Michel, +Coutances, Bayeux, and Caen, we can go to Rouen, and drive out to +Boscherville, and visit the ruined Abbey of Jumieges. Wherever there +is a church-tower with a tall fleche, as at Boscherville, +Secqueville, Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, Caen, and Bayeux, Viollet-le- +Duc bids notice how the octagonal steeple is fitted on to the square +tower. Always the passage from the octagon to the square seems to be +quite simply made. The Gothic or Romanesque spire had the advantage +that a wooden fleche was as reasonable a covering for it as a stone +one, and the Normans might have indulged in freaks of form very +easily, if they chose, but they seem never to have thought of it. +The nearest approach to the freedom of wooden roofs is not in the +lofty fleches, but in the covering of the great square central +towers, like Falaise or Vaucelles, a huge four-sided roof which +tries to be a fleche, and is as massive as the heavy structure it +covers. + +The last of the Norman towers that Viollet-le-Duc insists upon is +the so-called Clocher de Saint-Romain, the northern tower on the +west front of the Cathedral of Rouen. Unfortunately it has lost its +primitive octagon fleche if it ever had one, but "the tower remains +entire, and," according to Viollet-le-Duc, "is certainly one of the +most beautiful in this part of France; it offers a mixture of the +two styles of the Ile de France and of Normandy, in which the former +element dominates"; it is of the same date as the old tower of +Chartres (1140-60), and follows the same interior arrangement; "but +here the petty, confused disposition of the Norman towers, with +their division into stories of equal height, has been adopted by the +French master builder, although in submitting to these local customs +he has still thrown over his work the grace and finesse, the study +of detail, the sobriety in projections, the perfect harmony between +the profiles, sculpture, and the general effect of the whole, which +belong to the school he came from. He has managed his voids and +solids with especial cleverness, giving the more importance to the +voids, and enlarging the scale of his details, as the tower rose in +height. These details have great beauty; the construction is +executed in materials of small dimensions with the care that the +twelfth-century architects put into their building; the profiles +project little, and, in spite of their extreme finesse, produce much +effect; the buttresses are skilfully planted and profiled. The +staircase, which, on the east side, deranges the arrangement of the +bays, is a chef-d'oeuvre of architecture." This long panegyric, by +Viollet-le-Duc, on French taste at the expense of Norman temper, +ought to be read, book in hand, before the Cathedral of Rouen, with +photographs of Bayeux to compare. Certain it is that the Normans and +the French never talked quite the same language, but it is equally +certain that the Norman language, to the English ear, expressed +itself quite as clearly as the French, and sometimes seemed to have +more to express. + +The complaint of the French artist against the Norman is the +"mesquin" treatment of dividing his tower into storeys of equal +height. Even in the twelfth century and in religious architecture, +artists already struggled over the best solution of this +particularly American problem of the twentieth century, and when +tourists return to New York, they may look at the twenty-storey +towers which decorate the city, to see whether the Norman or the +French plan has won; but this, at least, will be sure in advance:-- +the Norman will be the practical scheme which states the facts, and +stops; while the French will be the graceful one, which states the +beauties, and more or less fits the facts to suit them. Both styles +are great: both can sometimes be tiresome. + +Here we must take leave of Normandy; a small place, but one which, +like Attica or Tuscany, has said a great deal to the world, and even +goes on saying things--not often in the famous genre ennuyeux--to +this day; for Gustave Flaubert's style is singularly like that of +the Tour Saint-Romain and the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. Going up the Seine +one might read a few pages of his letters, or of "Madame de Bovary," +to see how an old art transmutes itself into a new one, without +changing its methods. Some critics have thought that at times +Flaubert was mesquin like the Norman tower, but these are, as the +French say, the defects of his qualities; we can pass over them, and +let our eyes rest on the simplicity of the Norman fleche which +pierces the line of our horizon. + +The last of Norman art is seen at Mantes, where there is a little +church of Gassicourt that marks the farthest reach of the style. In +arms as in architecture, Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest; +William the Conqueror met his death here in 1087. Geographically +Mantes is in the Ile de France, less than forty miles from Paris. +Architecturally, it is Paris itself; while, forty miles to the +southward, is Chartres, an independent or only feudally dependent +country. No matter how hurried the architectural tourist may be, the +boundary-line of the Ile de France is not to be crossed without +stopping. If he came down from the north or east, he would have +equally to stop,--either at Beauvais, or at Laon, or Noyon, or +Soissons,--because there is an architectural douane to pass, and +one's architectural baggage must be opened. Neither Notre Dame de +Paris nor Notre Dame de Chartres is quite intelligible unless one +has first seen Notre Dame de Mantes, and studied it in the sacred +sources of M. Viollet-le-Duc. + +Notre Dame de Mantes is a sister to the Cathedral of Paris, "built +at the same time, perhaps by the same architect, and reproducing its +general dispositions, its mode of structure, and some of its +details"; but the Cathedral of Paris has been greatly altered, so +that its original arrangement is quite changed, while the church at +Mantes remains practically as it was, when both were new, about the +year 1200. As nearly as the dates can be guessed, the cathedral was +finished, up to its vaulting, in 1170, and was soon afterwards +imitated on a smaller scale at Mantes. The scheme seems to have been +unsatisfactory because of defects in the lighting, for the whole +system of fenestration had been changed at Paris before 1230, +naturally at great cost, since the alterations, according to +Viollet-le-Duc (articles "Cathedral" and "Rose," and allusions +"Triforium"), left little except the ground-plan unchanged. To +understand the Paris design of 1160-70, which was a long advance +from the older plans, one must come to Mantes; and, reflecting that +the great triumph of Chartres was its fenestration, which must have +been designed immediately after 1195, one can understand how, in +this triangle of churches only forty or fifty miles apart, the +architects, watching each other's experiments, were influenced, +almost from day to day, by the failures or successes which they saw +The fenestration which the Paris architect planned in 1160-70, and +repeated at Mantes, 1190-1200, was wholly abandoned, and a new +system introduced, immediately after the success of Chartres in +1210. + +As they now stand, Mantes is the oldest. While conscientiously +trying to keep as far away as we can from technique, about which we +know nothing and should care if possible still less if only +ignorance would help us to feel what we do not understand, still the +conscience is happier if it gains a little conviction, founded on +what it thinks a fact. Even theologians--even the great theologians +of the thirteenth century--even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself--did +not trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God; and what +Saint Thomas found necessary in philosophy may also be a sure source +of consolation in the difficulties of art. The church at Mantes is a +very early fact in Gothic art; indeed, it is one of the earliest; +for our purposes it will serve as the very earliest of pure Gothic +churches, after the Transition, and this we are told to study in its +windows. + +Before one can get near enough fairly to mark the details of the +facade, one sees the great rose window which fills a space nearly +twenty-seven feet in width. Gothic fanatics commonly reckon the +great rose windows of the thirteenth century as the most beautiful +creation of their art, among the details of ornament; and this +particular rose is the direct parent of that at Chartres, which is +classic like the Parthenon, while both of them served as models or +guides for that at Paris which dates from 1220, those in the north +and south transepts at Rheims, about 1230, and so on, from parent to +child, till the rose faded forever. No doubt there were Romanesque +roses before 1200, and we shall see them, but this rose of Mantes is +the first Gothic rose of great dimensions, and that from which the +others grew; in its simplicity, its honesty, its large liberality of +plan, it is also one of the best, if M. Viollet-le-Duc is a true +guide; but you will see a hundred roses, first or last, and can +choose as you would among the flowers. + +More interesting than even the great rose of the portal is the +remark that the same rose-motive is carried round the church +throughout its entire system of fenestration. As one follows it, on +the outside, one sees that all the windows are constructed on the +same rose-scheme; but the most curious arrangement is in the choir +inside the church. You look up to each of the windows through a sort +of tunnel or telescope: an arch enlarging outwards, the roses at the +end resembling "oeil-de-boeufs," "oculi." So curious is this +arrangement that Viollet-le-Duc has shown it, under the head +"Triforium," in drawings and sections which any one can study who +likes; its interest to us is that this arrangement in the choir was +probably the experiment which proved a failure in Notre Dame at +Paris, and led to the tearing-out the old windows and substituting +those which still stand. Perhaps the rose did not give enough light, +although the church at Mantes seems well lighted, and even at Paris +the rose windows remain in the transepts and in one bay of the nave. + +All this is introduction to the windows of Chartres, but these three +churches open another conundrum as one learns, bit by bit, a few of +the questions to be asked of the forgotten Middle Ages. The church +towers at Mantes are very interesting, inside and out; they are +evidently studied with love and labour by their designer; yet they +have no fleches. How happens it that Notre Dame at Paris also has no +fleches, although the towers, according to Viollet-le-Duc, are +finished in full preparation for them? This double omission on the +part of the French architect seems exceedingly strange, because his +rival at Chartres finished his fleche just when the architect of +Paris and Mantes was finishing his towers (1175-1200). The Frenchman +was certainly consumed by jealousy at the triumph never attained on +anything like the same scale by any architect of the Ile de France; +and he was actually engaged at the time on at least two fleches, +close to Paris, one at Saint-Denis, another of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, +which proved the active interest he took in the difficulties +conquered at Chartres, and his perfect competence to deal with them. + +Indeed, one is tempted to say that these twin churches, Paris and +Mantes, are the only French churches of the time (1200) which were +left without a fleche. As we go from Mantes to Paris, we pass, about +half-way, at Poissy, under the towers of a very ancient and +interesting church which has the additional merit of having +witnessed the baptism of Saint Louis in 1215. Parts of the church at +Poissy go back to the seventh and ninth centuries. The square base +of the tower dates back before the time of Hugh Capet, to the +Carolingian age, and belongs, like the square tower of Saint- +Germain-des-Pres at Paris, to the old defensive military +architecture; but it has a later, stone fleche and it has, too, by +exception a central octagonal clocher, with a timber fleche which +dates from near 1100. Paris itself has not much to show, but in the +immediate neighbourhood are a score of early churches with charming +fleches, and at Etampes, about thirty-five miles to the south, is an +extremely interesting church with an exquisite fleche, which may +claim an afternoon to visit. That at Saint-Leu-d'Esserent is a still +easier excursion, for one need only drive over from Chantilly a +couple of miles. The fascinating old Abbey Church of Saint-Leu looks +down over the valley of the Oise, and is a sort of antechamber to +Chartres, as far as concerns architecture. Its fleche, built towards +1160,--when that at Chartres was rising,--is unlike any other, and +shows how much the French architects valued their lovely French +creation. On its octagonal faces, it carries upright batons, or +lances, as a device for relieving the severity of the outlines; a +device both intelligent and amusing, though it was never imitated. A +little farther from Paris, at Senlis, is another fleche, which shows +still more plainly the effort of the French architects to vary and +elaborate the Chartres scheme. As for Laon, which is interesting +throughout, and altogether the most delightful building in the Ile +de France, the fleches are gone, but the towers are there, and you +will have to study them, before studying those at Chartres, with all +the intelligence you have to spare. They were the chef-d'oeuvre of +the mediaeval architect, in his own opinion. + +All this makes the absence of fleches at Paris and Mantes the more +strange. Want of money was certainly not the cause, since the +Parisians had money enough to pull their whole cathedral to pieces +at the very time when fleches were rising in half the towns within +sight of them. Possibly they were too ambitious, and could find no +design that seemed to satisfy their ambition. They took pride in +their cathedral, and they tried hard to make their shrine of Our +Lady rival the great shrine at Chartres. Of course, one must study +their beautiful church, but this can be done at leisure, for, as it +stands, it is later than Chartres and more conventional. Saint- +Germain-des-Pres leads more directly to Chartres; but perhaps the +church most useful to know is no longer a church at all, but a part +of the Museum of Arts et Metiers,--the desecrated Saint-Martin-des- +Champs, a name which shows that it dates from a time when the +present Porte-Saint-Martin was far out among fields. The choir of +Saint-Martin, which is all that needs noting, is said by M. Enlart +to date from about 1150. Hidden in a remnant of old Paris near the +Pont Notre Dame, where the student life of the Middle Ages was to be +most turbulent and the Latin Quarter most renowned, is the little +church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, towards 1170. On the whole, +further search in Paris would not greatly help us. If one is to +pursue the early centuries, one must go farther afield, for the +schools of Normandy and the Ile de France were only two among half a +dozen which flourished in the various provinces that were to be +united in the kingdom of Saint Louis and his successors. We have not +even looked to the south and east, whence the impulse came. The old +Carolingian school, with its centre at Aix-la-Chapelle, is quite +beyond our horizon. The Rhine had a great Romanesque architecture of +its own. One broad architectural tide swept up the Rhone and filled +the Burgundian provinces as far as the watershed of the Seine. +Another lined the Mediterranean, with a centre at Arles. Another +spread up the western rivers, the Charente and the Loire, reaching +to Le Mans and touching Chartres. Two more lay in the centre of +France, spreading from Perigord and Clermont in Auvergne. All these +schools had individual character, and all have charm; but we have +set out to go from Mont-Saint-Michel to Chartres in three centuries, +the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, trying to get, on the way, +not technical knowledge; not accurate information; not correct views +either on history, art, or religion; not anything that can possibly +be useful or instructive; but only a sense of what those centuries +had to say, and a sympathy with their ways of saying it. Let us go +straight to Chartres! + + + +CHAPTER V + +TOWERS AND PORTALS + +For a first visit to Chartres, choose some pleasant morning when the +lights are soft, for one wants to be welcome, and the cathedral has +moods, at times severe. At best, the Beauce is a country none too +gay. + +The first glimpse that is caught, and the first that was meant to be +caught, is that of the two spires. With all the education that +Normandy and the Ile de France can give, one is still ignorant. The +spire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture, +and needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment +almost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at +a glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell, +for it typified the aspirations of man at the moment when man's +aspirations were highest. Yet nine persons out of ten--perhaps +ninety-nine in a hundred--who come within sight of the two spires of +Chartres will think it a jest if they are told that the smaller of +the two, the simpler, the one that impresses them least, is the one +which they are expected to recognize as the most perfect piece of +architecture in the world. Perhaps the French critics might deny +that they make any such absolute claim; in that case you can ask +them what their exact claim is; it will always be high enough to +astonish the tourist. + +Astonished or not, we have got to take this southern spire of the +Chartres Cathedral as the object of serious study, and before taking +it as art, must take it as history. The foundations of this tower-- +always to be known as the "old tower"--are supposed to have been +laid in 1091, before the first crusade. The fleche was probably half +a century later (1145-70). The foundations of the new tower, +opposite, were laid not before 1110, when also the portal which +stands between them, was begun with the three lancet windows above +it, but not the rose. For convenience, this old facade--including +the portal and the two towers, but not the fleches, and the three +lancet windows, but not the rose--may be dated as complete about +1150. + +Originally the whole portal--the three doors and the three lancets-- +stood nearly forty feet back, on the line of the interior +foundation, or rear wall of the towers. This arrangement threw the +towers forward, free on three sides, as at Poitiers, and gave room +for a parvis, before the portal,--a porch, roofed over, to protect +the pilgrims who always stopped there to pray before entering the +church. When the church was rebuilt after the great fire of 1194, +and the architect was required to enlarge the interior, the old +portal and lancets were moved bodily forward, to be flush with the +front walls of the two towers, as you see the facade to-day; and the +facade itself was heightened, to give room for the rose, and to +cover the loftier pignon and vaulting behind. Finally, the wooden +roof, above the stone vault, was masked by the Arcade of Kings and +its railing, completed in the taste of Philip the Hardy, who reigned +from 1270 to 1285. + +These changes have, of course, altered the values of all the parts. +The portal is injured by being thrown into a glare of light, when it +was intended to stand in shadow, as you will see in the north and +south porches over the transept portals. The towers are hurt by +losing relief and shadow; but the old fleche is obliged to suffer +the cruellest wrong of all by having its right shoulder hunched up +by half of a huge rose and the whole of a row of kings, when it was +built to stand free, and to soar above the whole facade from the top +of its second storey. One can easily figure it so and replace the +lost parts of the old facade, more or less at haphazard, from the +front of Noyon. + +What an outrage it was you can see by a single glance at the new +fleche opposite. The architect of 1500 has flatly refused to submit +to such conditions, and has insisted, with very proper self-respect, +on starting from the balustrade of the Arcade of Kings as his level. +Not even content with that, he has carried up his square tower +another lofty storey before he would consent to touch the heart of +his problem, the conversion of the square tower into the octagon +fleche. In doing this, he has sacrificed once more the old fleche; +but his own tower stands free as it should. + +At Vendome, when you go there, you will be in a way to appreciate +still better what happened to the Chartres fleche; for the clocher +at Vendome, which is of the same date,--Viollet-le-Duc says earlier, +and Enlart, "after 1130,"--stood and still stands free, like an +Italian campanile, which gives it a vast advantage. The tower of +Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, also after 1130, stands free, above the second +storey. Indeed, you will hardly find, in the long list of famous +French spires, another which has been treated with so much indignity +as this, the greatest and most famous of all; and perhaps the most +annoying part of it is that you must be grateful to the architect of +1195 for doing no worse. He has, on the contrary, done his best to +show respect for the work of his predecessor, and has done so well +that, handicapped as it is, the old tower still defies rivalry. +Nearly three hundred and fifty feet high, or, to be exact, 106.5 +metres from the church floor, it is built up with an amount of +intelligence and refinement that leaves to unprofessional visitors +no chance to think a criticism--much less to express one. Perhaps-- +when we have seen more--and feel less--who knows?--but certainly not +now! + +"The greatest and surely the most beautiful monument of this kind +that we possess in France," says Viollet-le-Duc; but although an +ignorant spectator must accept the architect's decision on a point +of relative merit, no one is compelled to accept his reasons, as +final. "There is no need to dwell," he continues, "upon the beauty +and the grandeur of composition in which the artist has given proof +of rare sobriety, where all the effects are obtained, not by +ornaments, but by the just and skilful proportion of the different +parts. The transition, so hard to adjust, between the square base +and the octagon of the fleche, is managed and carried out with an +address which has not been surpassed in similar monuments." One +stumbles a little at the word "adresse." One never caught one's self +using the word in Norman churches. Your photographs of Bayeux or +Boscherville or Secqueville will show you at a glance whether the +term "adresse" applies to them. Even Vendome would rather be praised +for "droiture" than for "adresse."--Whether the word "adresse" means +cleverness, dexterity, adroitness, or simple technical skill, the +thing itself is something which the French have always admired more +than the Normans ever did. Viollet-le-Duc himself seems to be a +little uncertain whether to lay most stress on the one or the other +quality: "If one tries to appreciate the conception of this tower," +quotes the Abbe Bulteau (11,84), "one will see that it is as frank +as the execution is simple and skilful. Starting from the bottom, +one reaches the summit of the fleche without marked break; without +anything to interrupt the general form of the building. This +clocher, whose base is broad (pleine), massive, and free from +ornament, transforms itself, as it springs, into a sharp spire with +eight faces, without its being possible to say where the massive +construction ends and the light construction begins." + +Granting, as one must, that this concealment of the transition is a +beauty, one would still like to be quite sure that the Chartres +scheme is the best. The Norman clochers being thrown out, and that +at Vendome being admittedly simple, the Clocher de Saint-Jean on the +Church of Saint-Germain at Auxerre seems to be thought among the +next in importance, although it is only about one hundred and sixty +feet in height (forty-nine metres), and therefore hardly in the same +class with Chartres. Any photograph shows that the Auxerre spire is +also simple; and that at Etampes you have seen already to be of the +Vendome rather than of the Chartres type. The clocher at Senlis is +more "habile"; it shows an effort to be clever, and offers a +standard of comparison; but the mediaeval architects seem to have +thought that none of them bore rivalry with Laon for technical +skill. One of these professional experts, named Villard de +Honnecourt, who lived between 1200 and 1250, left a notebook which +you can see in the vitrines of the Bibliotheque Nationale in the Rue +Richelieu, and which is the source of most that is known about the +practical ideas of mediaeval architects. He came to Chartres, and, +standing here before the doors, where we are standing, he made a +rough drawing, not of the tower, but of the rose, which was then +probably new, since it must have been planned between 1195 and 1200. +Apparently the tower did not impress him strongly, for he made no +note of it; but on the other hand, when he went to Laon, he became +vehement in praise of the cathedral tower there, which must have +been then quite new: "I have been in many countries, as you can find +in this book. In no place have I ever such a tower seen as that of +Laon.--J'ai este en mult de tieres, si cum vus pores trover en cest +livre. En aucun liu onques tel tor ne vi com est cele de Loon." The +reason for this admiration is the same that Viollet-le-Duc gives for +admiring the tower of Chartres--the "adresse" with which the square +is changed into the octagon. Not only is the tower itself changed +into the fleche without visible junction, under cover of four corner +tourelles, of open work, on slender columns, which start as squares; +but the tourelles also convert themselves into octagons in the very +act of rising, and end in octagon fleches that carry up--or once +carried up--the lines of profile to the central fleche that soared +above them. Clearly this device far surpassed in cleverness the +scheme of Chartres, which was comparatively heavy and structural, +the weights being adjusted for their intended work, while the +transformation at Laon takes place in the air, and challenges +discovery in defiance of one's keenest eyesight. "Regard... how the +tourelles pass from one disposition to another, in rising! Meditate +on it!" + +The fleche of Laon is gone, but the tower and tourelles are still +there to show what the architects of the thirteenth century thought +their most brilliant achievement. One cannot compare Chartres +directly with any of its contemporary rivals, but one can at least +compare the old spire with the new one which stands opposite and +rises above it. Perhaps you will like the new best. Built at a time +which is commonly agreed to have had the highest standard of taste, +it does not encourage tourist or artist to insist on setting up +standards of his own against it. Begun in 1507, it was finished in +1517. The dome of Saint Peter's at Rome, over which Bramante and +Raphael and Michael Angelo toiled, was building at the same time; +Leonardo da Vinci was working at Amboise; Jean Bullant, Pierre +Lescot, and their patron, Francis I, were beginning their +architectural careers. Four hundred years, or thereabouts, separated +the old spire from the new one; and four hundred more separate the +new one from us. If Viollet-le-Duc, who himself built Gothic spires, +had cared to compare his fleches at Clermont-Ferrand with the new +fleche at Chartres, he might perhaps have given us a rule where +"adresse" ceases to have charm, and where detail becomes tiresome; +but in the want of a schoolmaster to lay down a law of taste, you +can admire the new fleche as much as you please. Of course, one sees +that the lines of the new tower are not clean, like those of the +old; the devices that cover the transition from the square to the +octagon are rather too obvious; the proportion of the fleche to the +tower quite alters the values of the parts; a rigid classical taste +might even go so far as to hint that the new tower, in comparison +with the old, showed signs of a certain tendency toward a dim and +distant vulgarity. There can be no harm in admitting that the new +tower is a little wanting in repose for a tower whose business is to +counterpoise the very classic lines of the old one; but no law +compels you to insist on absolute repose in any form of art; if such +a law existed, it would have to deal with Michael Angelo before it +dealt with us. The new tower has many faults, but it has great +beauties, as you can prove by comparing it with other late Gothic +spires, including those of Viollet-le-Duc. Its chief fault is to be +where it is. As a companion to the crusades and to Saint Bernard, it +lacks austerity. As a companion to the Virgin of Chartres, it +recalls Diane de Poitiers. + +In fact, the new tower, which in years is four centuries younger +than its neighbour, is in feeling fully four hundred years older. It +is self-conscious if not vain; its coiffure is elaborately arranged +to cover the effects of age, and its neck and shoulders are covered +with lace and jewels to hide a certain sharpness of skeleton. Yet it +may be beautiful, still; the poets derided the wrinkles of Diane de +Poitiers at the very moment when King Henry II idealized her with +the homage of a Don Quixote; an atmosphere of physical beauty and +decay hangs about the whole Renaissance. + +One cannot push these resemblances too far, even for the twelfth +century and the old tower. Exactly what date the old tower +represents, as a social symbol, is a question that might be as much +disputed as the beauty of Diane de Poitiers, and yet half the +interest of architecture consists in the sincerity of its reflection +of the society that builds. In mere time, by actual date, the old +tower represents the second crusade, and when, in 1150, Saint +Bernard was elected chief of that crusade in this very cathedral,-- +or rather, in the cathedral of 1120, which was burned,--the workmen +were probably setting in mortar the stones of the fleche as we now +see them; yet the fleche does not represent Saint Bernard in +feeling, for Saint Bernard held the whole array of church-towers in +horror as signs merely of display, wealth and pride. The fleche +rather represents Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, Abbot Peter the +Venerable of Cluny, Abbot Abelard of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, and +Queen Eleanor of Guienne, who had married Louis-le-Jeune in 1137; +who had taken the cross from Saint Bernard in 1147; who returned +from the Holy Land in 1149; and who compelled Saint Bernard to +approve her divorce in 1152. Eleanor and Saint Bernard were +centuries apart, yet they lived at the same time and in the same +church. Speaking exactly, the old tower represents neither of them; +the new tower itself is hardly more florid than Eleanor was; perhaps +less so, if one can judge from the fashions of the court-dress of +her time. The old tower is almost Norman, while Eleanor was wholly +Gascon, and Gascony was always florid without being always correct. +The new tower, if it had been built in 1150, like the old one, would +have expressed Eleanor perfectly, even in height and apparent effort +to dwarf its mate, except that Eleanor dwarfed her husband without +an effort, and both in art and in history the result lacked harmony. + +Be the contrast what it may, it does not affect the fact that no +other church in France has two spires that need be discussed in +comparison with these. Indeed, no other cathedral of the same class +has any spires at all, and this superiority of Chartres gave most of +its point to a saying that "with the spires of Chartres, the choir +of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, and the facade of Rheims," one +could make a perfect church--for us tourists. + +The towers have taken much time, though they are the least religious +and least complicated part of church architecture, and in no way +essential to the church; indeed, Saint Bernard thought them an +excrescence due to pride and worldliness, and this is merely Saint +Bernard's way of saying that they were an ornament created to +gratify the artistic sense of beauty. Beautiful as they are, one's +eyes must drop at last down to the church itself. If the spire +symbolizes aspiration, the door symbolizes the way; and the portal +of Chartres is the type of French doors; it stands first in the +history of Gothic art; and, in the opinion of most Gothic artists, +first in the interest of all art, though this is no concern of ours. +Here is the Way to Eternal Life as it was seen by the Church and the +Art of the first crusade! + +The fortune of this monument has been the best attested Miracle de +la Vierge in the long list of the Virgin's miracles, for it comes +down, practically unharmed, through what may with literal accuracy +be called the jaws of destruction and the flames of hell. Built some +time in the first half of the twelfth century, it passed, apparently +unscathed, through the great fire of 1194 which burnt out the church +behind, and even the timber interior of the towers in front of it. +Owing to the enormous mass of timber employed in the structure of +the great churches, these recurrent fires were as destructive as +fire can be made, yet not only the portals with their statuary and +carving, but also the lancet windows with their glass, escaped the +flames; and, what is almost equally strange, escaped also the hand +of the builder afterwards, who, if he had resembled other +architects, would have made a new front of his own, but who, with +piety unexampled, tenderly took the old stones down, one by one, and +replaced them forty feet in advance of their old position. The +English wars and the wars of religion brought new dangers, sieges, +and miseries; the revolution of 1792 brought actual rapine and +waste; boys have flung stones at the saints; architects have wreaked +their taste within and without; fire after fire has calcined the +church vaults; the worst wrecker of all, the restorer of the +nineteenth century, has prowled about it; yet the porch still +stands, mutilated but not restored, burned but not consumed, as +eloquent a witness to the power and perfections of Our Lady as it +was seven hundred years ago, and perhaps more impressive. + +You will see portals and porches more or less of the same period +elsewhere in many different places,--at Paris, Le Mans, Sens, Autun, +Vezelay, Clermont-Ferrand, Moissac, Arles,--a score of them; for the +same piety has protected them more than once; but you will see no +other so complete or so instructive, and you may search far before +you will find another equally good in workmanship. Study of the +Chartres portal covers all the rest. The feeling and motive of all +are nearly the same, or vary only to suit the character of the +patron saint; and the point of all is that this feeling is the +architectural child of the first crusade. At Chartres one can read +the first crusade in the portal, as at Mont-Saint-Michel in the +Aquilon and the promenoir. + +The Abbe Bulteau gives reason for assuming the year 1117 as the +approximate date of the sculpture about the west portal, and you saw +at Mont-Saint-Michel, in the promenoir of Abbot Roger II, an +accurately dated work of the same decade; but whatever the date of +the plan, the actual work and its spirit belong to 1145 or +thereabouts, Some fifty years had passed since the crusaders +streamed through Constantinople to Antioch and Jerusalem, and they +were daily going and returning. You can see the ideas they brought +back with the relics and missals and enamels they bought in +Byzantium. Over the central door is the Christ, which might be +sculptured after a Byzantine enamel, with its long nimbus or aureole +or glory enclosing the whole figure. Over the left door is an +Ascension, bearing the same stamp; and over the right door, the +seated Virgin, with her crown and her two attendant archangels, is +an empress. Here is the Church, the Way, and the Life of the twelfth +century that we have undertaken to feel, if not to understand! + +First comes the central doorway, and above it is the glory of +Christ, as the church at Chartres understood Christ in the year +1150; for the glories of Christ were many, and the Chartres Christ +is one. Whatever Christ may have been in other churches, here, on +this portal, he offers himself to his flock as the herald of +salvation alone. Among all the imagery of these three doorways, +there is no hint of fear, punishment, or damnation, and this is the +note of the whole time. Before 1200, the Church seems not to have +felt the need of appealing habitually to terror; the promise of hope +and happiness was enough; even the portal at Autun, which displays a +Last Judgment, belonged to Saint Lazarus the proof and symbol of +resurrection. A hundred years later, every church portal showed +Christ not as Saviour but as Judge, and He presided over a Last +Judgment at Bourges and Amiens, and here on the south portal, where +the despair of the damned is the evident joy of the artist, if it is +not even sometimes a little his jest, which is worse. At Chartres +Christ is identified with His Mother, the spirit of love and grace, +and His Church is the Church Triumphant. + +Not only is fear absent; there is not even a suggestion of pain; +there is not a martyr with the symbol of his martyrdom; and what is +still more striking, in the sculptured life of Christ, from the +Nativity to the Ascension, which adorns the capitals of the columns, +the single scene that has been omitted is the Crucifixion. There, as +everywhere in this portal, the artists seem actually to have gone +out of their way in order to avoid a suggestion of suffering. They +have pictured Christ and His Mother in all the other events of their +lives; they have represented evangelists; apostles; the twenty-four +old men of the Apocalypse; saints, prophets, kings, queens, and +princes, by the score; the signs of the zodiac, and even the seven +liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, +astronomy, and music; everything is there except misery. + +Perhaps Our Lady of Chartres was known to be peculiarly gracious and +gentle, and this may partially account also for the extreme +popularity of her shrine; but whatever the reason, her church was +clearly intended to show only this side of her nature, and to +impress it on her Son. You can see it in the grave and gracious face +and attitude of the Christ, raising His hand to bless you as you +enter His kingdom; in the array of long figures which line the +entrance to greet you as you pass; in the expression of majesty and +mercy of the Virgin herself on her throne above the southern +doorway; never once are you regarded as a possible rebel, or +traitor, or a stranger to be treated with suspicion, or as a child +to be impressed by fear. Equally distinct, perhaps even more +emphatic, is the sculptor's earnestness to make you feel, without +direct insistence, that you are entering the Court of the Queen of +Heaven who is one with her Son and His Church. The central door +always bore the name of the "Royal Door," because it belonged to the +celestial majesty of Christ, and naturally bears the stamp of +royalty; but the south door belongs to the Virgin and to us. Stop a +moment to see how she receives us, remembering, or trying to +remember, that to the priests and artists who designed the portal, +and to the generations that went on the first and second crusades, +the Virgin in her shrine was at least as living, as real, as +personal an empress as the Basilissa at Constantinople! + +On the lintel immediately above the doorway is a succession of small +groups: first, the Annunciation; Mary stands to receive the +Archangel Gabriel, who comes to announce to her that she is chosen +to be the Mother of God. The second is the Visitation, and in this +scene also Mary stands, but she already wears a crown; at least, the +Abbe Bulteau says so, although time has dealt harshly with it. Then, +in the centre, follows the Nativity; Mary lies on a low bed, +beneath, or before, a sort of table or cradle on which lies the +Infant, while Saint Joseph stands at the bed's head. Then the angel +appears, directing three shepherds to the spot, filling the rest of +the space. + +In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, +for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at +Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress- +mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her +people to share. The Virgin of Chartres was the greatest of all +queens, but the most womanly of women, as we shall see; and her +double character is sustained throughout her palace. She was also +intellectually gifted in the highest degree. In the upper zone you +see her again, at the Presentation in the Temple, supporting the +Child Jesus on the altar, while Simeon aids. Other figures bring +offerings. The voussures of the arch above contain six archangels, +with curious wings, offering worship to the Infant and His Imperial +Mother. Below are the signs of the zodiac; the Fishes and the Twins. +The rest of the arch is filled by the seven liberal arts, with +Pythagoras, Aristotle, Cicero, Euclid, Nicomachus, Ptolemy, and +Priscian as their representatives, testifying to the Queen's +intellectual superiority. + +In the centre sits Mary, with her crown on her head and her Son in +her lap, enthroned, receiving the homage of heaven and earth; of all +time, ancient and modern; of all thought, Christian and Pagan; of +all men, and all women; including, if you please, your homage and +mine, which she receives without question, as her due; which she +cannot be said to claim, because she is above making claims; she is +empress. Her left hand bore a sceptre; her right supported the +Child, Who looks directly forward, repeating the Mother's attitude, +and raises His right hand to bless, while His left rests on the orb +of empire. She and her Child are one. + +All this was noble beyond the nobility of man, but its earthly form +was inspired by the Empire rather than by the petty royalty of +Louis-le-Gros or his pious queen Alix of Savoy. One mark of the +period is the long, oval nimbus; another is the imperial character +of the Virgin; a third is her unity with the Christ which is the +Church. To us, the mark that will distinguish the Virgin of +Chartres, or, if you prefer, the Virgin of the Crusades, is her +crown and robes and throne. According to M. Rohault de Fleury's +"Iconographie de la Sainte Vierge" (11, 62), the Virgin's headdress +and ornaments had been for long ages borrowed from the costume of +the Empresses of the East in honour of the Queen of Heaven. No doubt +the Virgin of Chartres was the Virgin recognized by the Empress +Helena, mother of Constantine, and was at least as old as Helena's +pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326. She was not a Western, feudal queen, +nor was her Son a feudal king; she typified an authority which the +people wanted, and the fiefs feared; the Pax Romana; the omnipotence +of God in government. In all Europe, at that time, there was no +power able to enforce justice or to maintain order, and no symbol of +such a power except Christ and His Mother and the Imperial Crown. + +This idea is very different from that which was the object of our +pilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel; but since all Chartres is to be one +long comment upon it, you can lay the history of the matter on the +shelf for study at your leisure, if you ever care to study into the +weary details of human illusions and disappointments, while here we +pray to the Virgin, and absorb ourselves in the art, which is your +pleasure and which shall not teach either a moral or a useful +lesson. The Empress Mary is receiving you at her portal, and whether +you are an impertinent child, or a foolish old peasant-woman, or an +insolent prince, or a more insolent tourist, she receives you with +the same dignity; in fact, she probably sees very little difference +between you. An empress of Russia to-day would probably feel little +difference in the relative rank of her subjects, and the Virgin was +empress over emperors, patriarchs, and popes. Any one, however +ignorant, can feel the sustained dignity of the sculptor's work, +which is asserted with all the emphasis he could put into it. Not +one of these long figures which line the three doorways but is an +officer or official in attendance on the Empress or her Son, and +bears the stamp of the Imperial Court. They are mutilated, but, if +they have been treated with indignity, so were often their temporal +rivals, torn to pieces, trampled on, to say nothing of being merely +beheaded or poisoned, in the Sacred Palace and the Hippodrome, +without losing that peculiar Oriental dignity of style which seems +to drape the least dignified attitudes. The grand air of the twelfth +century is something like that of a Greek temple; you can, if you +like, hammer every separate stone to pieces, but you cannot hammer +out the Greek style. There were originally twenty-four of these +statues, and nineteen remain. Beginning at the north end, and +passing over the first figure, which carries a head that does not +belong to it, notice the second, a king with a long sceptre of +empire, a book of law, and robes of Byzantine official splendour. +Beneath his feet is a curious woman's head with heavy braids of +hair, and a crown. The third figure is a queen, charming as a woman, +but particularly well-dressed, and with details of ornament and +person elaborately wrought; worth drawing, if one could only draw; +worth photographing with utmost care to include the strange support +on which she stands: a monkey, two dragons, a dog, a basilisk with a +dog's head. Two prophets follow--not so interesting;--prophets +rarely interest. Then comes the central bay: two queens who claim +particular attention, then a prophet, then a saint next the doorway; +then on the southern jamb-shafts, another saint, a king, a queen, +and another king. Last comes the southern bay, the Virgin's own, and +there stands first a figure said to be a youthful king; then a +strongly sculptured saint; next the door a figure called also a +king, but so charmingly delicate in expression that the robes alone +betray his sex; and who this exquisite young aureoled king may have +been who stands so close to the Virgin, at her right hand, no one +can now reveal. Opposite him is a saint who may be, or should be, +the Prince of the Apostles; then a bearded king with a broken +sceptre, standing on two dragons; and, at last, a badly mutilated +queen. + +These statues are the Eginetan marbles of French art; from them all +modern French sculpture dates, or ought to date. They are singularly +interesting; as naif as the smile on the faces of the Greek +warriors, but no more grotesque than they. You will see Gothic +grotesques in plenty, and you cannot mistake the two intentions; the +twelfth century would sooner have tempted the tortures of every +feudal dungeon in Europe than have put before the Virgin's eyes any +figure that could be conceived as displeasing to her. These figures +are full of feeling, and saturated with worship; but what is most to +our purpose is the feminine side which they proclaim and insist +upon. Not only the number of the female figures, and their beauty, +but also the singularly youthful beauty of several of the males; the +superb robes they wear; the expression of their faces and their +figures; the details of hair, stuffs, ornaments, jewels; the +refinement and feminine taste of the whole, are enough to startle +our interest if we recognize what meaning they had to the twelfth +century. + +These figures looked stiff and long and thin and ridiculous to +enlightened citizens of the eighteenth century, but they were made +to fit the architecture; if you want to know what an enthusiast +thinks of them, listen to M. Huysmans's "Cathedral." "Beyond a +doubt, the most beautiful sculpture in the world is in this place." +He can hardly find words to express his admiration for the queens, +and particularly for the one on the right of the central doorway. +"Never in any period has a more expressive figure been thus wrought +by the genius of man; it is the chef-d'oeuvre of infantile grace and +holy candour .... She is the elder sister of the Prodigal Son, the +one of whom Saint Luke does not speak, but who, if she existed, +would have pleaded the cause of the absent, and insisted, with the +father, that he should kill the fatted calf at his son's return." +The idea is charming if you are the returning son, as many twelfth- +century pilgrims must have thought themselves; but, in truth, the +figure is that of a queen; an Eleanor of Guienne; her position there +is due to her majesty, which bears witness to the celestial majesty +of the Court in which she is only a lady-in-waiting: and she is +hardly more humanly fascinating than her brother, the youthful king +at the Virgin's right hand, who has nothing of the Prodigal Son, but +who certainly has much of Lohengrin, or even--almost--Tristan. + +The Abbe Bulteau has done his best to name these statues, but the +names would be only in your way. That the sculptor meant them for a +Queen of Sheba or a King of Israel has little to do with their +meaning in the twelfth century, when the people were much more +likely to have named them after the queens and kings they knew. The +whole charm lies for us in the twelfth-century humanity of Mary and +her Court; not in the scriptural names under which it was made +orthodox. Here, in this western portal, it stands as the crusaders +of 1100-50 imagined it; but by walking round the church to the porch +over the entrance to the north transept, you shall see it again as +Blanche of Castile and Saint Louis imagined it, a hundred years +later, so that you will know better whether the earthly attributes +are exaggerated or untrue. + +Porches, like steeples, were rather a peculiarity of French +churches, and were studied, varied, one might even say petted, by +French architects to an extent hardly attempted elsewhere; but among +all the French porches, those of Chartres are the most famous. There +are two: one on the north side, devoted to the Virgin; the other, on +the south, devoted to the Son, "The mass of intelligence, knowledge, +acquaintance with effects, practical experience, expended on these +two porches of Chartres," says Viollet-le-Duc, "would be enough to +establish the glory of a whole generation of artists." We begin with +the north porch because it belonged to the Virgin; and it belonged +to the Virgin because the north was cold, bleak, sunless, windy, and +needed warmth, peace, affection, and power to protect against the +assaults of Satan and his swarming devils. There the all-suffering +but the all-powerful Mother received other mothers who suffered like +her, but who, as a rule, were not powerful. Traditionally in the +primitive church, the northern porch belonged to the women. When +they needed help, they came here, because it was the only place in +this world or in any other where they had much hope of finding even +a reception. See how Mary received them! + +The porch extends the whole width of the transept, about one hundred +and twenty feet (37.65 metres), divided into three bays some twenty +feet deep, and covered with a stone vaulted roof supported on piers +outside. Begun toward 1215 under Philip Augustus, the architectural +part was finished toward 1225 under Louis VIII; and after his death +in 1226, the decorative work and statuary were carried on under the +regency of his widow, Blanche of Castile, and through the reign of +her son, Saint Louis (1235-70), until about 1275, when the work was +completed by Philip the Hardy. A gift of the royal family of France, +all the members of the family seem to have had a share in building +it, and several of their statues have been supposed to adorn it. The +walls are lined--the porch, in a religious sense, is inhabited--by +more than seven hundred figures, great and small, all, in one way or +another, devoted to the glory of the Queen of Heaven. You will see +that a hundred years have converted the Byzantine Empress into a +French Queen, as the same years had converted Alix of Savoy into +Blanche of Castile; but the note of majesty is the same, and the +assertion of power is, if possible, more emphatic. + +The highest note is struck at once, in the central bay, over the +door, where you see the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven, a +favourite subject in art from very early times, and the dominant +idea of Mary's church. You see Mary on the left, seated on her +throne; on the right, seated on a precisely similar throne, is +Christ, Who holds up His right hand apparently to bless, since Mary +already bears the crown. Mary bends forward, with her hands raised +toward her Son, as though in gratitude or adoration or prayer, but +certainly not in an attitude of feudal homage. On either side, an +archangel swings a censer. + +On the lintel below, on the left, is represented the death of Mary; +on the right, Christ carries, in the folds of His mantle, the soul +of Mary in the form of a little child, and at the same time blesses +the body which is carried away by angels--The Resurrection of Mary. + +Below the lintel, supporting it, and dividing the doorway in halves, +is the trumeau,--the central pier,--a new part of the portal which +was unknown to the western door. Usually in the Virgin's churches, +as at Rheims, or Amiens or Paris, the Virgin herself, with her Son +in her arms, stands against this pier, trampling on the dragon with +the woman's head. Here, not the Virgin with the Christ, but her +mother Saint Anne stands, with the infant Virgin in her arms; while +beneath is, or was, Saint Joachim, her husband, among his flocks, +receiving from the Archangel Gabriel the annunciation. + +So at the entrance the Virgin declares herself divinely Queen in her +own right; divinely born; divinely resurrected from death, on the +third day; seated by divine right on the throne of Heaven, at the +right hand of God, the Son, with Whom she is one. + +Unless we feel this assertion of divine right in the Queen of +Heaven, apart from the Trinity, yet one with It, Chartres is +unintelligible. The extreme emphasis laid upon it at the church door +shows what the church means within. Of course, the assertion was not +strictly orthodox; perhaps, since we are not members of the Church, +we might be unnoticed and unrebuked if we start by suspecting that +the worship of the Virgin never was strictly orthodox; but Chartres +was hers before it ever belonged to the Church, and, like Lourdes in +our own time, was a shrine peculiarly favoured by her presence. The +mere fact that it was a bishopric had little share in its sanctity. +The bishop was much more afraid of Mary than he was of any Church +Council ever held. + +Critics are doing their best to destroy the peculiar personal +interest of this porch, but tourists and pilgrims may be excused for +insisting on their traditional rights here, since the porch is +singular, even in the thirteenth century, for belonging entirely to +them and the royal family of France, subject only to the Virgin. +True artists, turned critics, think also less of rules than of +values, and no ignorant public can be trusted to join the critics in +losing temper judiciously over the date or correctness of a portrait +until they knew something of its motives and merits. The public has +always felt certain that some of the statues which stand against the +outer piers of this porch are portraits, and they see no force in +the objection that such decoration was not customary in the Church. +Many things at Chartres were not customary in the Church, although +the Church now prefers not to dwell on them. Therefore the student +returns to Viollet-le-Duc with his usual delight at finding at least +one critic whose sense of values is stronger than his sense of rule: +"Each statue," he says in his "Dictionary" (111, 166), "possesses +its personal character which remains graven on the memory like the +recollection of a living being whom one has known .... A large part +of the statues in the porches of Notre Dame de Chartres, as well as +of the portals of the Cathedrals of Amiens and Rheims, possess these +individual qualities, and this it is which explains why these +statues produce on the crowd so vivid an impression that it names +them, knows them, and attaches to each of them an idea, often a +legend." + +Probably the crowd did so from the first moment they saw the +statues, and with good reason. At all events, they have attached to +two of the most individual figures on the north porch, two names, +perhaps the best known in France in the year 1226, but which since +the year 1300 can have conveyed only the most shadowy meaning to any +but pure antiquarians. The group is so beautiful as to be given a +plate to itself in the "Monographie" (number 26), as representing +Philip Hurepel and his wife Mahaut de Boulogne. So little could any +crowd, or even any antiquarian, at any time within six hundred years +have been likely to pitch on just these persons to associate with +Blanche of Castile in any kind of family unity, that the mere +suggestion seems wild; yet Blanche outlived Pierre by nearly twenty +years, and her power over this transept and porch ended only with +her death as regent in 1252. + +Philippe, nicknamed Hurepel,--Boarskin,--was a "fils deFrance," +whose father, Philip Augustus, had serious, not to say fatal, +difficulties with the Church about the legality of his marriage, +and was forced to abandon his wife, who died in 1201, after giving +birth to Hurepel in 1200. The child was recognized as legitimate, +and stood next to the throne, after his half-brother Louis, who was +thirteen years older. Almost at his birth he was affianced to +Mahaut, Countess of Boulogne, and the marriage was celebrated in +1216. Rich and strongly connected, Hurepel naturally thought +himself--and was--head of the royal family next to the King, and +when his half-brother, Louis VIII, died in 1226, leaving only a son, +afterwards Saint Louis, a ten-year-old boy, to succeed, Hurepel very +properly claimed the guardianship of his infant nephew, and deeply +resented being excluded by Queen Blanche from what he regarded-- +perhaps with justice--as his right. Nearly all the great lords and +the members of the royal family sided with him, and entered into a +civil war against Blanche, at the moment when these two porches of +Chartres were building, between 1228 and 1230. The two greatest +leaders of the conspiracy were Hurepel, whom we are expected to +recognize on the pier of this porch, and Pierre Mauclerc, of +Brittany and Dreux, whom we have no choice but to admit on the +trumeau of the other. In those days every great feudal lord was more +or less related by blood to the Crown, and although Blanche of +Castile was also a cousin as well as queen-mother, they hated her as +a Spanish intruder with such hatred as men felt in an age when +passions were real. + +That these two men should be found here, associated with Blanche in +the same work, at the same time, under the same roof, is a fantastic +idea, and students can feel in this political difficulty a much +stronger objection to admitting Hurepel to Queen Blanche's porch +than any supposed rule of Church custom; yet the first privilege of +tourist ignorance is the right to see, or try to see, their +thirteenth century with thirteenth-century eyes. Passing by the +statues of Philip and Mahaut, and stepping inside the church door, +almost the first figure that the visitor sees on lifting his eyes to +the upper windows of the transept is another figure of Philippe +Hurepel, in glass, on his knees, with clasped hands, before an +altar; and to prevent possibility of mistake his blazoned coat bears +the words: "Phi: Conte de Bolone." Apparently he is the donor, for, +in the rose above, he sits in arms on a white horse with a shield +bearing the blazon of France. Obliged to make his peace with the +Queen in 1230, Hurepel died in 1233 or 1234, while Blanche was still +regent, and instantly took his place as of right side by side with +Blanche's castles of Castile among the great benefactors of the +church. + +Beneath the next rose is Mahaut herself, as donor, bearing her +husband's arms of France, suggesting that the windows must have been +given together, probably before Philip's death in 1233, since Mahaut +was married again in 1238, this time to Alfonso of Portugal, who +repudiated her in 1249, and left her to die in her own town of +Boulogne in 1258. Lastly, in the third window of the series, is her +daughter Jeanne,--"Iehenne,"--who was probably born before 1220, and +who was married in 1236 to Gaucher de Chatillon, one of the greatest +warriors of his time. Jeanne also--according to the Abbe Bulteau +(111, 225)--bears the arms of her father and mother; which seems to +suggest that she gave this window before her marriage. These three +windows, therefore, have the air of dating at least as early as 1233 +when Philip Hurepel died, while next them follow two more roses, and +the great rose of France, presumably of the same date, all scattered +over with the castles of Queen Blanche. The motive of the porch +outside is repeated in the glass, as it should be, and as the Saint +Anne of the Rose of France, within, repeats the Saint Anne on the +trumeau of the portal. The personal stamp of the royal family is +intense, but the stamp of the Virgin's personality is intenser +still. In the presence of Mary, not only did princes hide their +quarrels, but they also put on their most courteous manners and the +most refined and even austere address. The Byzantine display of +luxury and adornment had vanished. All the figures suggest the +sanctity of the King and his sister Isabel; the court has the air of +a convent; but the idea of Mary's majesty is asserted through it +all. The artists and donors and priests forgot nothing which, in +their judgment, could set off the authority, elegance, and +refinement of the Queen of Heaven; even the young ladies-in-waiting +are there, figured by the twelve Virtues and the fourteen +Beatitudes; and, indeed, though men are plenty and some of them are +handsome, women give the tone, the charm, and mostly the +intelligence. The Court of Mary is feminine, and its charms are +Grace and Love; perhaps even more grace than love, in a social +sense, if you look at Beauty and Friendship among Beatitudes. + +M. Huysmans insists that this sculpture is poor in comparison with +his twelfth-century Prodigal Daughter, and I hope you can enter into +the spirit of his enthusiasm; but other people prefer the +thirteenth-century work, and think it equals the best Greek. +Approaching, or surpassing this,--as you like,--is the sculpture you +will see at Rheims, of the same period, and perhaps the same hands; +but, for our purpose, the Queen of Sheba, here in the right-hand +bay, is enough, because you can compare it on the spot with M. +Huysmans's figure on the western portal, which may also be a Queen +of Sheba, who, as spouse of Solomon, typified the Church, and +therefore prefigured Mary herself. Both are types of Court beauty +and grace, one from the twelfth century, the other from the +thirteenth, and you can prefer which you please; but you want to +bear in mind that each, in her time, pleased the Virgin. You can +even take for a settled fact that these were the types of feminine +beauty and grace which pleased the Virgin beyond all others. + +The purity of taste, feeling, and manners which stamps the art of +these centuries, as it did the Court of Saint Louis and his mother, +is something you will not wholly appreciate till you reach the +depravity of the Valois; but still you can see how exquisite the +Virgin's taste was, and how pure. You can also see how she shrank +from the sight of pain. Here, in the central bay, next to King +David, who stands at her right hand, is the great figure of Abraham +about to sacrifice Isaac. If there is one subject more revolting +than another to a woman who typifies the Mother, it is this subject +of Abraham and Isaac, with its compound horror of masculine +stupidity and brutality. The sculptor has tried to make even this +motive a pleasing one. He has placed Abraham against the column in +the correct harshness of attitude, with his face turned aside and +up, listening for his orders; but the little Isaac, with hands and +feet tied, leans like a bundle of sticks against his father's knee +with an expression of perfect faith and confidence, while Abraham's +left hand quiets him and caresses the boy's face, with a movement +that must have gone straight to Mary's heart, for Isaac always +prefigured Christ. + +The glory of Mary was not one of terror, and her porch contains no +appeal to any emotion but those of her perfect grace. If we were to +stay here for weeks, we should find only this idea worked into every +detail. The Virgin of the thirteenth century is no longer an +Empress; she is Queen Mother,--an idealized Blanche of Castile;--too +high to want, or suffer, or to revenge, or to aspire, but not too +high to pity, to punish, or to pardon. The women went to her porch +for help as naturally as babies to their mother; and the men, in her +presence, fell on their knees because they feared her intelligence +and her anger. + +Not that all the men showed equal docility! We must go next, round +the church, to the south porch, which was the gift of Pierre +Mauclerc, Comte de Dreux, another member of the royal family, great- +grandson of Louis VI, and therefore second cousin to Louis VIII and +Philip Hurepel. Philip Augustus, his father's first cousin, married +the young man, in 1212, to Alix, heiress of the Duchy of Brittany, +and this marriage made him one of the most powerful vassals of the +Crown. He joined Philip Hurepel in resisting the regency of Queen +Blanche in 1227, and Blanche, after a long struggle, caused him to +be deposed in 1230. Pierre was obliged to submit, and was pardoned. +Until 1236, he remained in control of the Duchy of Brittany, but +then was obliged to surrender his power to his son, and turned his +turbulent activity against the infidels in Syria and Egypt, dying in +1250, on his return from Saint Louis's disastrous crusade. Pierre de +Dreux was a masculine character,--a bad cleric, as his nickname +Mauclerc testified, but a gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, and, +what is more to our purpose, a man of taste. He built the south +porch at Chartres, apparently as a memorial of his marriage with +Alix in 1212, and the statuary is of the same date with that of the +north porch, but, like that, it was not finished when Pierre died in +1250. + +One would like to know whether Pierre preferred to take the southern +entrance, or whether he was driven there by the royal claim to the +Virgin's favour. The southern porch belongs to the Son, as the +northern belongs to the Mother. Pierre never showed much deference +to women, and probably felt more at his ease under the protection of +the Son than of Mary; but in any case he showed as clearly as +possible what he thought on this question of persons. To Pierre, +Christ was first, and he asserted his opinion as emphatically as +Blanche asserted hers. + +Which porch is the more beautiful is a question for artists to +discuss and decide, if they can. Either is good enough for us, whose +pose is ignorance, and whose pose is strictly correct; but apart +from its beauty or its art, there is also the question of feeling, +of motive, which puts the Porche de Dreux in contrast with the +Porche de France, and this is wholly within our competence. At the +outset, the central bay displays, above the doorway, Christ, on a +throne, raising His hands to show the stigmata, the wounds which +were the proof of man's salvation. At His right hand sits the +Mother,--without her crown; on His left, in equal rank with the +Mother, sits Saint John the Evangelist. Both are in the same +attitude of supplication as intercessors; there is no distinction in +rank or power between Mary and John, since neither has any power +except what Christ gives them. Pierre did not, indeed, put the +Mother on her knees before the Son, as you can see her at Amiens and +in later churches,--certainly bad taste in Mary's own palace; but he +allowed her no distinction which is not her strict right. The angels +above and around bear the symbols of the Passion; they are +unconscious of Mary's presence; they are absorbed in the perfections +of the Son. On the lintel just below is the Last Judgment, where +Saint Michael reappears, weighing the souls of the dead which Mary +and John above are trying to save from the strict justice of Christ. +The whole melodrama of Church terrors appears after the manner of +the thirteenth century, on this church door, without regard to +Mary's feelings; and below, against the trumeau, stands the great +figure of Christ,--the whole Church,--trampling on the lion and +dragon. On either side of the doorway stand six great figures of the +Apostles asserting themselves as the columns of the Church, and +looking down at us with an expression no longer calculated to calm +our fears or encourage extravagant hopes. No figure on this porch +suggests a portrait or recalls a memory. + +Very grand, indeed, is this doorway; dignified, impressive, and +masculine to a degree seldom if ever equalled in art; and the left +bay rivals it. There, in the tympanum, Christ appears again; +standing; bearing on His head the crown royal; alone, except for the +two angels who adore, and surrounded only by the martyrs, His +witnesses. The right bay is devoted to Saint Nicholas and the Saints +Confessors who bear witness to the authority of Christ in faith. Of +the twenty-eight great figures, the officers of the royal court, who +make thus the strength of the Church beneath Christ, not one is a +woman. The masculine orthodoxy of Pierre Mauclerc has spared neither +sex nor youth; all are of a maturity which chills the blood, +excepting two, whose youthful beauty is heightened by the severity +of their surroundings, so that the Abbe Bulteau makes bold even to +say that "the two statues of Saint George and of Saint Theodore may +be regarded as the most beautiful of our cathedral, perhaps even as +the two masterpieces of statuary at the end of the thirteenth +century." On that point, let every one follow his taste; but one +reflection at least seems to force itself on the mind in comparing +these twenty-eight figures. Certainly the sword, however it may +compare with the pen in other directions, is in art more powerful +than all the pens, or volumes, or crosiers ever made. Your "Golden +Legend" and Roman Breviary are here the only guide-books worth +consulting, and the stories of young George and Theodore stand there +recorded; as their miracle under the walls of Antioch, during the +first crusade, is matter of history; but among these magnificent +figures one detects at a glance that it is not the religion or +sacred purity of the subject, or even the miracles or the +sufferings, which inspire passion for Saint George and Saint +Theodore, under the Abbe's robe; it is with him, as with the plain +boy and girl, simply youth, with lance and sword and shield. + +These two figures stand in the outer embrasures of the left bay, +where they can be best admired, and perhaps this arrangement shows +what Perron de Dreux, as he was commonly called, loved most, in his +heart of hearts; but elsewhere, even in this porch, he relaxed his +severity, and became at times almost gracious to women. Good judges +have, indeed, preferred this porch to the northern one; but, be that +as you please, it contains seven hundred and eighty-three figures, +large and small, to serve for comparison. Among these, the female +element has its share, though not a conspicuous one; and even the +Virgin gets her rights, though not beside her Son. To see her, you +must stand outside in the square and, with a glass, look at the +central pignon, or gable, of the porch. There, just above the point +of the arch, you will see Mary on her throne, crowned, wearing her +royal robes, and holding the Child on her knees, with the two +archangels on either side offering incense. Pierre de Dreux, or some +one else, admitted at last that she was Queen Regent, although +evidently not eager to do so; and if you turn your glass up to the +gable of the transept itself, above the great rose and the colonnade +over it, you can see another and a colossal statue of the Virgin, +but standing, with the Child on her left arm. She seems to be +crowned, and to hold the globe in her right hand; but the Abbe +Bulteau says it is a flower. The two archangels are still there. +This figure is thought to have been a part of the finishing +decoration added by Philip the Fair in 1304. + +In theology, Pierre de Dreux seems to show himself a more learned +clerk than his cousins of France, and, as an expression of the +meaning the church of Mary should externally display, the Porche de +Dreux, if not as personal, is as energetic as the Porche de France, +or the western portal. As we pass into the Cathedral, under the +great Christ, on the trumeau, you must stop to look at Pierre +himself. A bridegroom, crowned with flowers on his wedding-day, he +kneels in prayer, while two servants distribute bread to the poor. +Below, you see him again, seated with his wife Alix before a table +with one loaf, assisting at the meal they give to the poor. Pierre +kneels to God; he and his wife bow before the Virgin and the poor;-- +but not to Queen Blanche! + +Now let us enter!-- + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES + +We must take ten minutes to accustom our eyes to the light, and we +had better use them to seek the reason why we come to Chartres +rather than to Rheims or Amiens or Bourges, for the cathedral that +fills our ideal. The truth is, there are several reasons; there +generally are, for doing the things we like; and after you have +studied Chartres to the ground, and got your reasons settled, you +will never find an antiquarian to agree with you; the architects +will probably listen to you with contempt; and even these excellent +priests, whose kindness is great, whose patience is heavenly, and +whose good opinion you would so gladly gain, will turn from you with +pain, if not with horror. The Gothic is singular in this; one seems +easily at home in the Renaissance; one is not too strange in the +Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk +blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all +these styles seem modern, when we come close to them; but the Gothic +gets away. No two men think alike about it, and no woman agrees with +either man. The Church itself never agreed about it, and the +architects agree even less than the priests. To most minds it casts +too many shadows; it wraps itself in mystery; and when people talk +of mystery, they commonly mean fear. To others, the Gothic seems +hoary with age and decrepitude, and its shadows mean death. What is +curious to watch is the fanatical conviction of the Gothic +enthusiast, to whom the twelfth century means exuberant youth, the +eternal child of Wordsworth, over whom its immortality broods like +the day; it is so simple and yet so complicated; it sees so much and +so little; it loves so many toys and cares for so few necessities; +its youth is so young, its age so old, and its youthful yearning for +old thought is so disconcerting, like the mysterious senility of the +baby that-- + + Deaf and silent, reads the eternal deep, + Haunted forever by the eternal mind. + + +One need not take it more seriously than one takes the baby itself. +Our amusement is to play with it, and to catch its meaning in its +smile; and whatever Chartres maybe now, when young it was a smile. +To the Church, no doubt, its cathedral here has a fixed and +administrative meaning, which is the same as that of every other +bishop's seat and with which we have nothing whatever to do. To us, +it is a child's fancy; a toy-house to please the Queen of Heaven,-- +to please her so much that she would be happy in it,--to charm her +till she smiled. + +The Queen Mother was as majestic as you like; she was absolute; she +could be stern; she was not above being angry; but she was still a +woman, who loved grace, beauty, ornament,--her toilette, robes, +jewels;--who considered the arrangements of her palace with +attention, and liked both light and colour; who kept a keen eye on +her Court, and exacted prompt and willing obedience from king and +archbishops as well as from beggars and drunken priests. She +protected her friends and punished her enemies. She required space, +beyond what was known in the Courts of kings, because she was liable +at all times to have ten thousand people begging her for favours-- +mostly inconsistent with law--and deaf to refusal. She was extremely +sensitive to neglect, to disagreeable impressions, to want of +intelligence in her surroundings. She was the greatest artist, as +she was the greatest philosopher and musician and theologist, that +ever lived on earth, except her Son, Who, at Chartres, is still an +Infant under her guardianship. Her taste was infallible; her +sentence eternally final. This church was built for her in this +spirit of simple-minded, practical, utilitarian faith,--in this +singleness of thought, exactly as a little girl sets up a doll-house +for her favourite blonde doll. Unless you can go back to your dolls, +you are out of place here. If you can go back to them, and get rid +for one small hour of the weight of custom, you shall see Chartres +in glory. + +The palaces of earthly queens were hovels compared with these +palaces of the Queen of Heaven at Chartres, Paris, Laon, Noyon, +Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Bayeux, Coutances,--a list that might be +stretched into a volume. The nearest approach we have made to a +palace was the Merveille at Mont-Saint-Michel, but no Queen had a +palace equal to that. The Merveille was built, or designed, about +the year 1200; toward the year 1500, Louis XI built a great castle +at Loches in Touraine, and there Queen Anne de Bretagne had +apartments which still exist, and which we will visit. At Blois you +shall see the residence which served for Catherine de Medicis till +her death in 1589. Anne de Bretagne was trebly queen, and Catherine +de Medicis took her standard of comfort from the luxury of Florence. +At Versailles you can see the apartments which the queens of the +Bourbon line occupied through their century of magnificence. All put +together, and then trebled in importance, could not rival the +splendour of any single cathedral dedicated to Queen Mary in the +thirteenth century; and of them all, Chartres was built to be +peculiarly and exceptionally her delight. + +One has grown so used to this sort of loose comparison, this +reckless waste of words, that one no longer adopts an idea unless it +is driven in with hammers of statistics and columns of figures. With +the irritating demand for literal exactness and perfectly straight +lines which lights up every truly American eye, you will certainly +ask when this exaltation of Mary began, and unless you get the +dates, you will doubt the facts. It is your own fault if they are +tiresome; you might easily read them all in the "Iconographie de la +Sainte Vierge," by M. Rohault de Fleury, published in 1878. You can +start at Byzantium with the Empress Helena in 326, or with the +Council of Ephesus in 431. You will find the Virgin acting as the +patron saint of Constantinople and of the Imperial residence, under +as many names as Artemis or Aphrodite had borne. As Godmother [word +in Greek] Deipara [word in Greek], Pathfinder [word in Greek], +afterwards gave to Murillo the subject of a famous painting, told +that once, when he was reciting before her statue the "Ave Maris +Stella," and came to the words, "Monstra te esse Matrem," the image, +pressing its breast, dropped on the lips of her servant three drops +of the milk which had nourished the Saviour. The same miracle, in +various forms, was told of many other persons, both saints and +sinners; but it made so much impression on the mind of the age that, +in the fourteenth century, Dante, seeking in Paradise for some +official introduction to the foot of the Throne, found no +intercessor with the Queen of Heaven more potent than Saint Bernard. +You can still read Bernard's hymns to the Virgin, and even his +sermons, if you like. To him she was the great mediator. In the eyes +of a culpable humanity, Christ was too sublime, too terrible, too +just, but not even the weakest human frailty could fear to approach +his Mother. Her attribute was humility; her love and pity were +infinite. "Let him deny your mercy who can say that he has ever +asked it in vain." + +Saint Bernard was emotional and to a certain degree mystical, like +Adam de Saint-Victor, whose hymns were equally famous, but the +emotional saints and mystical poets were not by any means allowed to +establish exclusive rights to the Virgin's favour. Abelard was as +devoted as they were, and wrote hymns as well. Philosophy claimed +her, and Albert the Great, the head of scholasticism, the teacher of +Thomas Aquinas, decided in her favour the question: "Whether the +Blessed Virgin possessed perfectly the seven liberal arts." The +Church at Chartres had decided it a hundred years before by putting +the seven liberal arts next her throne, with Aristotle himself to +witness; but Albertus gave the reason: "I hold that she did, for it +is written, 'Wisdom has built herself a house, and has sculptured +seven columns.' That house is the blessed Virgin; the seven columns +are the seven liberal arts. Mary, therefore, had perfect mastery of +science." Naturally she had also perfect mastery of economics, and +most of her great churches were built in economic centres. The +guilds were, if possible, more devoted to her than the monks; the +bourgeoisie of Paris, Rouen, Amiens, Laon, spend money by millions +to gain her favour. Most surprising of all, the great military class +was perhaps the most vociferous. Of all inappropriate haunts for the +gentle, courteous, pitying Mary, a field of battle seems to be the +worst, if not distinctly blasphemous; yet the greatest French +warriors insisted on her leading them into battle, and in the actual +melee when men were killing each other, on every battle-field in +Europe, for at least five hundred years, Mary was present, leading +both sides. The battle-cry of the famous Constable du Guesclin was +"Notre-Dame-Guesclin"; "Notre-Dame-Coucy" was the cry of the great +Sires de Coucy; "Notre-Dame-Auxerre"; "Notre-Dame-Sancerre"; "Notre- +Dame-Hainault"; "Notre-Dame-Gueldres"; "Notre-Dame-Bourbon"; "Notre- +Dame-Bearn";--all well-known battle-cries. The King's own battle at +one time cried, "Notre-Dame-Saint-Denis-Montjoie"; the Dukes of +Burgundy cried, "Notre-Dame-Bourgogne"; and even the soldiers of the +Pope were said to cry, "Notre-Dame-Saint-Pierre." + +The measure of this devotion, which proves to any religious American +mind, beyond possible cavil, its serious and practical reality, is +the money it cost. According to statistics, in the single century +between 1170 and 1270, the French built eighty cathedrals and nearly +five hundred churches of the cathedral class, which would have cost, +according to an estimate made in 1840, more than five thousand +millions to replace. Five thousand million francs is a thousand +million dollars, and this covered only the great churches of a +single century. The same scale of expenditure had been going on +since the year 1000, and almost every parish in France had rebuilt +its church in stone; to this day France is strewn with the ruins of +this architecture, and yet the still preserved churches of the +eleventh and twelfth centuries, among the churches that belong to +the Romanesque and Transition period, are numbered by hundreds until +they reach well into the thousands. The share of this capital which +was--if one may use a commercial figure--invested in the Virgin +cannot be fixed, any more than the total sum given to religious +objects between 1000 and 1300; but in a spiritual and artistic +sense, it was almost the whole, and expressed an intensity of +conviction never again reached by any passion, whether of religion, +of loyalty, of patriotism, or of wealth; perhaps never even +parallelled by any single economic effort, except in war. Nearly +every great church of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries belonged +to Mary, until in France one asks for the church of Notre Dame as +though it meant cathedral; but, not satisfied with this, she +contracted the habit of requiring in all churches a chapel of her +own, called in English the "Lady Chapel," which was apt to be as +large as the church but was always meant to be handsomer; and there, +behind the high altar, in her own private apartment, Mary sat, +receiving her innumerable suppliants, and ready at any moment to +step up upon the high altar itself to support the tottering +authority of the local saint. + +Expenditure like this rests invariably on an economic idea. Just as +the French of the nineteenth century invested their surplus capital +in a railway system in the belief that they would make money by it +in this life, in the thirteenth they trusted their money to the +Queen of Heaven because of their belief in her power to repay it +with interest in the life to come. The investment was based on the +power of Mary as Queen rather than on any orthodox Church conception +of the Virgin's legitimate station. Papal Rome never greatly loved +Byzantine empresses or French queens. The Virgin of Chartres was +never wholly sympathetic to the Roman Curia. To this day the Church +writers--like the Abbe Bulteau or M. Rohault de Fleury--are +singularly shy of the true Virgin of majesty, whether at Chartres or +at Byzantium or wherever she is seen. The fathers Martin and Cahier +at Bourges alone left her true value. Had the Church controlled her, +the Virgin would perhaps have remained prostrate at the foot of the +Cross. Dragged by a Byzantine Court, backed by popular insistence +and impelled by overpowering self-interest, the Church accepted the +Virgin throned and crowned, seated by Christ, the Judge throned and +crowned; but even this did not wholly satisfy the French of the +thirteenth century who seemed bent on absorbing Christ in His +Mother, and making the Mother the Church, and Christ the Symbol. + +The Church had crowned and enthroned her almost from the beginning, +and could not have dethroned her if it would. In all Christian art-- +sculpture or mosaic, painting or poetry--the Virgin's rank was +expressly asserted. Saint Bernard, like John Comnenus, and probably +at the same time (1120-40), chanted hymns to the Virgin as Queen:-- + +O salutaris Virgo Stella Maris + Generans prolem, Aequitatis solem, + Lucis auctorem, Retinens pudorem, + Suscipe laudem! + + +Celi Regina Per quam medicina + Datur aegretis, Gratia devotis, + Gaudium moestis, Mundo lux coelestis, + Spesque salutis; + + +Aula regalis, Virgo specialis, + Posce medelam Nobis et tutelam, + Suscipe vota, Precibusque cuncta + Pelle molesta! + + +O Saviour Virgin, Star of Sea, + Who bore for child the Son of Justice, + The source of Light, Virgin always + Hear our praise! + + +Queen of Heaven who have given + Medicine to the sick, Grace to the devout, + Joy to the sad, Heaven's light to the world + And hope of salvation; + + +Court royal, Virgin typical, + Grant us cure and guard, + Accept our vows, and by prayers + Drive all griefs away! + + +As the lyrical poet of the twelfth century, Adam de Saint-Victor +seems to have held rank higher if possible than that of Saint +Bernard, and his hymns on the Virgin are certainly quite as emphatic +an assertion of her majesty:-- + +Imperatrix supernorum! + Superatrix infernorum! + Eligenda via coeli, + Retinenda spe fideli, + Separatos a te longe + Revocatos ad te junge + Tuorum collegio! + + +Empress of the highest, + Mistress over the lowest, + Chosen path of Heaven, + Held fast by faithful hope, + Those separated from you far, + Recalled to you, unite + In your fold! + + +To delight in the childish jingle of the mediaeval Latin is a sign +of a futile mind, no doubt, and I beg pardon of you and of the +Church for wasting your precious summer day on poetry which was +regarded as mystical in its age and which now sounds like a nursery +rhyme; but a verse or two of Adam's hymn on the Assumption of the +Virgin completes the record of her rank, and goes to complete also +the documentary proof of her majesty at Chartres:-- + +Salve, Mater Salvatoris! + Vas electum! Vas honoris! + Vas coelestis Gratiae! + Ab aeterno Vas provisum! + Vas insigne! Vas excisum + Manu sapientiae! + + +Salve, Mater pietatis, + Et totius Trinitatis + Nobile Triclinium! + Verbi tamen incarnati + Speciale majestati + Praeparans hospitium! + + +O Maria! Stella maris! + Dignitate singularis, + Super omnes ordinaries + Ordines coelestium! + In supremo sita poli + Nos commenda tuae proli, + Ne terrores sive doli + Nos supplantent hostium! + + +Mother of our Saviour, hail! + Chosen vessel! Sacred Grail! + Font of celestial grace! + From eternity forethought! + By the hand of Wisdom wrought! + Precious, faultless Vase! + + +Hail, Mother of Divinity! + Hail, Temple of the Trinity! + Home of the Triune God! + In whom the Incarnate Word had birth, + The King! to whom you gave on earth + Imperial abode. + + +Oh, Maria! Constellation! + Inspiration! Elevation! + Rule and Law and Ordination + Of the angels' host! + Highest height of God's Creation, + Pray your Son's commiseration, + Lest, by fear or fraud, salvation + For our souls be lost! + + +Constantly--one might better say at once, officially, she was +addressed in these terms of supreme majesty: "Imperatrix +supernorum!" "Coeli Regina!" "Aula regalis!" but the twelfth century +seemed determined to carry the idea out to its logical conclusion +in defiance of dogma. Not only was the Son absorbed in the Mother, or +represented as under her guardianship, but the Father fared no +better, and the Holy Ghost followed. The poets regarded the Virgin +as the "Templum Trinitatis"; "totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium." +She was the refectory of the Trinity--the "Triclinium"--because the +refectory was the largest room and contained the whole of the +members, and was divided in three parts by two rows of columns. She +was the "Templum Trinitatis," the Church itself, with its triple +aisle. The Trinity was absorbed in her. + +This is a delicate subject in the Church, and you must feel it with +delicacy, without brutally insisting on its necessary +contradictions. All theology and all philosophy are full of +contradictions quite as flagrant and far less sympathetic. This +particular variety of religious faith is simply human, and has made +its appearance in one form or another in nearly all religions; but +though the twelfth century carried it to an extreme, and at Chartres +you see it in its most charming expression, we have got always to +make allowances for what was going on beneath the surface in men's +minds, consciously or unconsciously, and for the latent scepticism +which lurks behind all faith. The Church itself never quite accepted +the full claims of what was called Mariolatry. One may be sure, too, +that the bourgeois capitalist and the student of the schools, each +from his own point of view, watched the Virgin with anxious +interest. The bourgeois had put an enormous share of, his capital +into what was in fact an economical speculation, not unlike the +South Sea Scheme, or the railway system of our own time; except that +in one case the energy was devoted to shortening the road to Heaven; +in the other, to shortening the road to Paris; but no serious +schoolman could have felt entirely convinced that God would enter +into a business partnership with man, to establish a sort of joint- +stock society for altering the operation of divine and universal +laws. The bourgeois cared little for the philosophical doubt if the +economical result proved to be good, but he watched this result with +his usual practical sagacity, and required an experience of only +about three generations (1200-1300) to satisfy himself that relics +were not certain in their effects; that the Saints were not always +able or willing to help; that Mary herself could not certainly be +bought or bribed; that prayer without money seemed to be quite as +efficacious as prayer with money; and that neither the road to +Heaven nor Heaven itself had been made surer or brought nearer by an +investment of capital which amounted to the best part of the wealth +of France. Economically speaking, he became satisfied that his +enormous money-investment had proved to be an almost total loss, and +the reaction on his mind was as violent as the emotion. For three +hundred years it prostrated France. The efforts of the bourgeoisie +and the peasantry to recover their property, so far as it was +recoverable, have lasted to the present day and we had best take +care not to get mixed in those passions. + +If you are to get the full enjoyment of Chartres, you must, for the +time, believe in Mary as Bernard and Adam did, and feel her presence +as the architects did, in every stone they placed, and every touch +they chiselled. You must try first to rid your mind of the +traditional idea that the Gothic is an intentional expression of +religious gloom. The necessity for light was the motive of the +Gothic architects. They needed light and always more light, until +they sacrificed safety and common sense in trying to get it. They +converted their walls into windows, raised their vaults, diminished +their piers, until their churches could no longer stand. You will +see the limits at Beauvais; at Chartres we have not got so far, but +even here, in places where the Virgin wanted it,--as above the high +altar,--the architect has taken all the light there was to take. For +the same reason, fenestration became the most important part of the +Gothic architect's work, and at Chartres was uncommonly interesting +because the architect was obliged to design a new system, which +should at the same time satisfy the laws of construction and the +taste and imagination of Mary. No doubt the first command of the +Queen of Heaven was for light, but the second, at least equally +imperative, was for colour. Any earthly queen, even though she were +not Byzantine in taste, loved colour; and the truest of queens--the +only true Queen of Queens--had richer and finer taste in colour than +the queens of fifty earthly kingdoms, as you will see when we come +to the immense effort to gratify her in the glass of her windows. +Illusion for illusion,--granting for the moment that Mary was an +illusion,--the Virgin Mother in this instance repaid to her +worshippers a larger return for their money than the capitalist has +ever been able to get, at least in this world, from any other +illusion of wealth which he has tried to make a source of pleasure +and profit. + +The next point on which Mary evidently insisted was the arrangement +for her private apartments, the apse, as distinguished from her +throne-room, the choir; both being quite distinct from the hall, or +reception-room of the public, which was the nave with its +enlargements in the transepts. This arrangement marks the +distinction between churches built as shrines for the deity and +churches built as halls of worship for the public. The difference is +chiefly in the apse, and the apse of Chartres is the most +interesting of all apses from this point of view. + +The Virgin required chiefly these three things, or, if you like, +these four: space, light, convenience; and colour decoration to +unite and harmonize the whole. This concerns the interior; on the +exterior she required statuary, and the only complete system of +decorative sculpture that existed seems to belong to her churches:-- +Paris, Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres. Mary required all this +magnificence at Chartres for herself alone, not for the public. As +far as one can see into the spirit of the builders, Chartres was +exclusively intended for the Virgin, as the Temple of Abydos was +intended for Osiris. The wants of man, beyond a mere roof-cover, and +perhaps space to some degree, enter to no very great extent into the +problem of Chartres. Man came to render homage or to ask favours. +The Queen received him in her palace, where she alone was at home, +and alone gave commands. + +The artist's second thought was to exclude from his work everything +that could displease Mary; and since Mary differed from living +queens only in infinitely greater majesty and refinement, the artist +could admit only what pleased the actual taste of the great ladies +who dictated taste at the Courts of France and England, which +surrounded the little Court of the Counts of Chartres. What they +were--these women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--we shall +have to see or seek in other directions; but Chartres is perhaps the +most magnificent and permanent monument they left of their taste, +and we can begin here with learning certain things which they were +not. + +In the first place, they were not in the least vague, dreamy, or +mystical in a modern sense;--far from it! They seemed anxious only +to throw the mysteries into a blaze of light; not so much physical, +perhaps,--since they, like all women, liked moderate shadow for +their toilettes,--but luminous in the sense of faith. There is +nothing about Chartres that you would think mystical, who know your +Lohengrin, Siegfried, and Parsifal. If you care to make a study of +the whole literature of the subject, read M. Male's "Art Religieux +du XIIIe Siecle en France," and use it for a guide-book. Here you +need only note how symbolic and how simple the sculpture is, on the +portals and porches. Even what seems a grotesque or an abstract idea +is no more than the simplest child's personification. On the walls +you may have noticed the Ane qui vielle,--the ass playing the lyre; +and on all the old churches you can see "bestiaries," as they were +called, of fabulous animals, symbolic or not; but the symbolism is +as simple as the realism of the oxen at Laon. It gave play to the +artist in his effort for variety of decoration, and it amused the +people,--probably the Virgin also was not above being amused;--now +and then it seems about to suggest what you would call an esoteric +meaning, that is to say, a meaning which each one of us can consider +private property reserved for our own amusement, and from which the +public is excluded; yet, in truth, in the Virgin's churches the +public is never excluded, but invited. The Virgin even had the +additional charm to the public that she was popularly supposed to +have no very marked fancy for priests as such; she was a queen, a +woman, and a mother, functions, all, which priests could not +perform. Accordingly, she seems to have had little taste for +mysteries of any sort, and even the symbols that seem most +mysterious were clear to every old peasant-woman in her church. The +most pleasing and promising of them all is the woman's figure you +saw on the front of the cathedral in Paris; her eyes bandaged; her +head bent down; her crown falling; without cloak or royal robe; +holding in her hand a guidon or banner with its staff broken in more +than one place. On the opposite pier stands another woman, with +royal mantle, erect and commanding. The symbol is so graceful that +one is quite eager to know its meaning; but every child in the +Middle Ages would have instantly told you that the woman with the +falling crown meant only the Jewish Synagogue, as the one with the +royal robe meant the Church of Christ. + +Another matter for which the female taste seemed not much to care +was theology in the metaphysical sense. Mary troubled herself little +about theology except when she retired into the south transept with +Pierre de Dreux. Even there one finds little said about the Trinity, +always the most metaphysical subtlety of the Church. Indeed, you +might find much amusement here in searching the cathedral for any +distinct expression at all of the Trinity as a dogma recognized by +Mary. + +One cannot take seriously the idea that the three doors, the three +portals, and the three aisles express the Trinity, because, in the +first place, there was no rule about it; churches might have what +portals and aisles they pleased; both Paris and Bourges have five; +the doors themselves are not allotted to the three members of the +Trinity, nor are the portals; while another more serious objection +is that the side doors and aisles are not of equal importance with +the central, but mere adjuncts and dependencies, so that the +architect who had misled the ignorant public into accepting so black +a heresy would have deserved the stake, and would probably have gone +to it. Even this suggestion of trinity is wanting in the transepts, +which have only one aisle, and in the choir, which has five, as well +as five or seven chapels, and, as far as an ignorant mind can +penetrate, no triplets whatever. Occasionally, no doubt, you will +discover in some sculpture or window, a symbol of the Trinity, but +this discovery itself amounts to an admission of its absence as a +controlling idea, for the ordinary worshipper must have been at +least as blind as we are, and to him, as to us, it would have seemed +a wholly subordinate detail. Even if the Trinity, too, is anywhere +expressed, you will hardly find here an attempt to explain its +metaphysical meaning--not even a mystic triangle. + +The church is wholly given up to the Mother and the Son. The Father +seldom appears; the Holy Ghost still more rarely. At least, this is +the impression made on an ordinary visitor who has no motive to be +orthodox; and it must have been the same with the thirteenth-century +worshipper who came here with his mind absorbed in the perfections +of Mary. Chartres represents, not the Trinity, but the identity of +the Mother and Son. The Son represents the Trinity, which is thus +absorbed in the Mother. The idea is not orthodox, but this is no +affair of ours. The Church watches over its own. + +The Virgin's wants and tastes, positive and negative, ought now to +be clear enough to enable you to feel the artist's sincerity in +trying to satisfy them; but first you have still to convince +yourselves of the people's sincerity in employing the artists. This +point is the easiest of all, for the evidence is express. In the +year 1145 when the old fleche was begun,--the year before Saint +Bernard preached the second crusade at Vezelay,--Abbot Haimon, of +Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives in Normandy, wrote to the monks of Tutbury +Abbey in England a famous letter to tell of the great work which the +Virgin was doing in France and which began at the Church of +Chartres. "Hujus sacrae institutionis ritus apud Carnotensem +ecclesiam est inchoatus." From Chartres it had spread through +Normandy, where it produced among other things the beautiful spire +which we saw at Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives. "Postremo per totam fere +Normanniam longe lateque convaluit ac loca per singula Matri +misericordiae dicata praecipue occupavit." The movement affected +especially the places devoted to Mary, but ran through all Normandy, +far and wide. Of all Mary's miracles, the best attested, next to the +preservation of her church, is the building of it; not so much +because it surprises us as because it surprised even more the people +of the time and the men who were its instruments. Such deep popular +movements are always surprising, and at Chartres the miracle seems +to have occurred three times, coinciding more or less with the dates +of the crusades, and taking the organization of a crusade, as +Archbishop Hugo of Rouen described it in a letter to Bishop Thierry +of Amiens. The most interesting part of this letter is the evident +astonishment of the writer, who might be talking to us to-day, so +modern is he:-- + +The inhabitants of Chartres have combined to aid in the construction +of their church by transporting the materials; our Lord has rewarded +their humble zeal by miracles which have roused the Normans to +imitate the piety of their neighbours ... Since then the faithful of +our diocese and of other neighbouring regions have formed +associations for the same object; they admit no one into their +company unless he has been to confession, has renounced enmities and +revenges, and has reconciled himself with his enemies. That done, +they elect a chief, under whose direction they conduct their waggons +in silence and with humility. + +The quarries at Bercheres-l'Eveque are about five miles from +Chartres. The stone is excessively hard, and was cut in blocks of +considerable size, as you can see for yourselves; blocks which +required great effort to transport and lay in place. The work was +done with feverish rapidity, as it still shows, but it is the +solidest building of the age, and without a sign of weakness yet. +The Abbot told, with more surprise than pride, of the spirit which +was built into the cathedral with the stone:--Who has ever seen!-- +Who has ever heard tell, in times past, that powerful princes of the +world, that men brought up in honour and in wealth, that nobles, men +and women, have bent their proud and haughty necks to the harness of +carts, and that, like beasts of burden, they have dragged to the +abode of Christ these waggons, loaded with wines, grains, oil, +stone, wood, and all that is necessary for the wants of life, or for +the construction of the church? But while they draw these burdens, +there is one thing admirable to observe; it is that often when a +thousand persons and more are attached to the chariots,--so great is +the difficulty,--yet they march in such silence that not a murmur is +heard, and truly if one did not see the thing with one's eyes, one +might believe that among such a multitude there was hardly a person +present. When they halt on the road, nothing is heard but the +confession of sins, and pure and suppliant prayer to God to obtain +pardon. At the voice of the priests who exhort their hearts to +peace, they forget all hatred, discord is thrown far aside, debts +are remitted, the unity of hearts is established. + +But if any one is so far advanced in evil as to be unwilling to +pardon an offender, or if he rejects the counsel of the priest who +has piously advised him, his offering is instantly thrown from the +wagon as impure, and he himself ignominiously and shamefully +excluded from the society of the holy. There one sees the priests +who preside over each chariot exhort every one to penitence, to +confession of faults, to the resolution of better life! There one +sees old people, young people, little children, calling on the Lord +with a suppliant voice, and uttering to Him, from the depth of the +heart, sobs and sighs with words of glory and praise! After the +people, warned by the sound of trumpets and the sight of banners, +have resumed their road, the march is made with such ease that no +obstacle can retard it ... When they have reached the church they +arrange the wagons about it like a spiritual camp, and during the +whole night they celebrate the watch by hymns and canticles. On each +waggon they light tapers and lamps; they place there the infirm and +sick, and bring them the precious relics of the Saints for their +relief. Afterwards the priests and clerics close the ceremony by +processions which the people follow with devout heart, imploring the +clemency of the Lord and of his Blessed Mother for the recovery of +the sick. + +Of course, the Virgin was actually and constantly present during all +this labour, and gave her assistance to it, but you would get no +light on the architecture from listening to an account of her +miracles, nor do they heighten the effect of popular faith. Without +the conviction of her personal presence, men would not have been +inspired; but, to us, it is rather the inspiration of the art which +proves the Virgin's presence, and we can better see the conviction +of it in the work than in the words. Every day, as the work went on, +the Virgin was present, directing the architects, and it is this +direction that we are going to study, if you have now got a +realizing sense of what it meant. Without this sense, the church is +dead. Most persons of a deeply religious nature would tell you +emphatically that nine churches out of ten actually were dead-born, +after the thirteenth century, and that church architecture became a +pure matter of mechanism and mathematics; but that is a question for +you to decide when you come to it; and the pleasure consists not in +seeing the death, but in feeling the life. + +Now let us look about! + + + +CHAPTER VII + +ROSES AND APSES + +Like all great churches, that are not mere storehouses of theology, +Chartres expressed, besides whatever else it meant, an emotion, the +deepest man ever felt,--the struggle of his own littleness to grasp +the infinite. You may, if you like, figure in it a mathematic +formula of infinity,--the broken arch, our finite idea of space; the +spire, pointing, with its converging lines, to unity beyond space; +the sleepless, restless thrust of the vaults, telling the +unsatisfied, incomplete, overstrained effort of man to rival the +energy, intelligence, and purpose of God. Thomas Aquinas and the +schoolmen tried to put it in words, but their Church is another +chapter. In act, all man's work ends there;--mathematics, physics, +chemistry, dynamics, optics, every sort of machinery science may +invent,--to this favour come at last, as religion and philosophy did +before science was born. All that the centuries can do is to express +the idea differently:--a miracle or a dynamo; a dome or a coal-pit; +a cathedral or a world's fair; and sometimes to confuse the two +expressions together. The world's fair tends more and more +vigorously to express the thought of infinite energy; the great +cathedrals of the Middle Ages always reflected the industries and +interests of a world's fair. Chartres showed it less than Laon or +Paris, for Chartres was never a manufacturing town, but a shrine, +such as Lourdes, where the Virgin was known to have done miracles, +and had been seen in person; but still the shrine turned itself into +a market and created valuable industries. Indeed, this was the chief +objection which Saint Paul made to Ephesus and Saint Bernard to the +cathedrals. They were in some ways more industrial than religious. +The mere masonry and structure made a vast market for labour; the +fixed metalwork and woodwork were another; but the decoration was by +far the greatest. The wood-carving, the glass windows, the +sculpture, inside and out, were done mostly in workshops on the +spot, but besides these fixed objects, precious works of the highest +perfection filled the church treasuries. Their money value was great +then; it is greater now. No world's fair is likely to do better to- +day. After five hundred years of spoliation, these objects fill +museums still, and are bought with avidity at every auction, at +prices continually rising and quality steadily falling, until a bit +of twelfth-century glass would be a trouvaille like an emerald; a +tapestry earlier than 1600 is not for mere tourists to hope; an +enamel, a missal, a crystal, a cup, an embroidery of the Middle Ages +belongs only to our betters, and almost invariably, if not to the +State, to the rich Jews, whose instinctive taste has seized the +whole field of art which rested on their degradation. Royalty and +feudality spent their money rather on arms and clothes. The Church +alone was universal patron, and the Virgin was the dictator of +taste. + +With the Virgin's taste, during her regency, critics never find +fault. One cannot know its whole magnificence, but one can accept it +as a matter of faith and trust, as one accepts all her other +miracles without cavilling over small details of fact. The period of +eighteenth-century scepticism about such matters and the bourgeois +taste of Voltaire and Diderot have long since passed, with the +advent of a scientific taste still more miraculous; the whole world +of the Virgin's art, catalogued in the "Dictionnaire du Mobilier +Francais" in six volumes by Viollet-le-Duc; narrated as history by +M. Labarte, M. Molinier, M. Paul Lacroix; catalogued in museums by +M. du Sommerard and a score of others, in works almost as costly as +the subjects,--all the vast variety of bric-a-brac, useful or +ornamental, belonging to the Church, increased enormously by the +insatiable, universal, private demands for imagery, in ivory, wood, +metal, stone, for every room in every house, or hung about every +neck, or stuck on every hat, made a market such as artists never +knew before or since, and such as instantly explains to the +practical American not only the reason for the Church's tenacity of +life, but also the inducements for its plunder. The Virgin +especially required all the resources of art, and the highest. Notre +Dame of Chartres would have laughed at Notre Dame of Paris if she +had detected an economy in her robes; Notre Dame of Rheims or Rouen +would have derided Notre Dame of Amiens if she had shown a feminine, +domestic, maternal turn toward cheapness. The Virgin was never +cheap. Her great ceremonies were as splendid as her rank of Queen in +Heaven and on Earth required; and as her procession wound its way +along the aisles, through the crowd of her subjects, up to the high +altar, it was impossible then, and not altogether easy now, to +resist the rapture of her radiant presence. Many a young person, and +now and then one who is not in first youth, witnessing the sight in +the religious atmosphere of such a church as this, without a +suspicion of susceptibility, has suddenly seen what Paul saw on the +road to Damascus, and has fallen on his face with the crowd, +grovelling at the foot of the Cross, which, for the first time in +his life, he feels. + +If you want to know what churches were made for, come down here on +some great festival of the Virgin, and give yourself up to it; but +come alone! That kind of knowledge cannot be taught and can seldom +be shared. We are not now seeking religion; indeed, true religion +generally comes unsought. We are trying only to feel Gothic art. For +us, the world is not a schoolroom or a pulpit, but a stage, and the +stage is the highest yet seen on earth. In this church the old +Romanesque leaps into the Gothic under our eyes; of a sudden, +between the portal and the shrine, the infinite rises into a new +expression, always a rare and excellent miracle in thought. The two +expressions are nowhere far apart; not further than the Mother from +the Son. The new artist drops unwillingly the hand of his father or +his grandfather; he looks back, from every corner of his own work, +to see whether it goes with the old. He will not part with the +western portal or the lancet windows; he holds close to the round +columns of the choir; he would have kept the round arch if he could, +but the round arch was unable to do the work; it could not rise; so +he broke it, lifted the vaulting, threw out flying buttresses, and +satisfied the Virgin's wish. + +The matter of Gothic vaulting, with its two weak points, the flying +buttress and the false, wooden shelter-roof, is the bete noire of +the Beaux Arts. The duty of defence does not lie on tourists, who +are at best hardly able to understand what it matters whether a wall +is buttressed without or within, and whether a roof is single or +double. No one objects to the dome of Saint Peter's. No one finds +fault with the Pont Neuf. Yet it is true that the Gothic architect +showed contempt for facts. Since he could not support a heavy stone +vault on his light columns, he built the lightest possible stone +vault and protected it with a wooden shelter-roof which constantly +burned. The lightened vaults were still too heavy for the walls and +columns, so the architect threw out buttress beyond buttress resting +on separate foundations, exposed to extreme inequalities of weather, +and liable to multiplied chances of accident. The results were +certainly disastrous. The roofs burned; the walls yielded. + +Flying buttresses were not a necessity. The Merveille had none; the +Angevin school rather affected to do without them; Albi had none; +Assisi stands up independent; but they did give support wherever the +architect wanted it and nowhere else; they were probably cheap; and +they were graceful. Whatever expression they gave to a church, at +least it was not that of a fortress. Amiens and Albi are different +religions. The expression concerns us; the construction concerns the +Beaux Arts. The problem of permanent equilibrium which distresses +the builder of arches is a technical matter which does not worry, +but only amuses, us who sit in the audience and look with delight at +the theatrical stage-decoration of the Gothic vault; the astonishing +feat of building up a skeleton of stone ribs and vertebrae, on which +every pound of weight is adjusted, divided, and carried down from +level to level till it touches ground at a distance as a bird would +alight. If any stone in any part, from apex to foundation, weathers +or gives way, the whole must yield, and the charge for repairs is +probably great, but, on the best building the Ecole des Beaux Arts +can build, the charge for repairs is not to be wholly ignored, and +at least the Cathedral of Chartres, in spite of terribly hard usage, +is as solid to-day as when it was built, and as plumb, without crack +or crevice. Even the towering fragment at Beauvais, poorly built +from the first, which has broken down oftener than most Gothic +structures, and seems ready to crumble again whenever the wind blows +over its windy plains, has managed to survive, after a fashion, six +or seven hundred years, which is all that our generation had a right +to ask. + +The vault of Beauvais is nearly one hundred and sixty feet high (48 +metres), and was cheaply built. The vault of Saint Peter's at Rome +is nearly one hundred and fifty feet (45 metres). That of Amiens is +one hundred and forty-four feet (44 metres). Rheims, Bourges, and +Chartres are nearly the same height; at the entrance, one hundred +and twenty-two feet. Paris is one hundred and ten feet. The Abbe +Bulteau is responsible for these measurements; but at Chartres, as +in several very old churches, the nave slopes down to the entrance, +because--as is said--pilgrims came in such swarms that they were +obliged to sleep in the church, and the nave had to be sluiced with +water to clean it. The true height of Chartres, at the croisee of +nave and transept, is as near as possible one hundred and twenty +feet (36.55 metres). + +The measured height is the least interest of a church. The +architect's business is to make a small building look large, and his +failures are in large buildings which he makes to look small. One +chief beauty of the Gothic is to exaggerate height, and one of its +most curious qualities is its success in imposing an illusion of +size. Without leaving the heart of Paris any one can study this +illusion in the two great churches of Notre Dame and Saint-Sulpice; +for Saint-Sulpice is as lofty as Notre Dame in vaulting, and larger +in its other dimensions, besides being, in its style, a fine +building; yet its Roman arches show, as if they were of the eleventh +century, why the long, clean, unbroken, refined lines of the Gothic, +curving to points, and leading the eye with a sort of compulsion to +the culminating point above, should have made an architectural +triumph that carried all Europe off its feet with delight. The world +had seen nothing to approach it except, perhaps, in the dome of +Sancta Sophia in Constantinople; and the discovery came at a moment +when Europe was making its most united and desperate struggle to +attain the kingdom of Heaven. + +According to Viollet-le-Duc, Chartres was the final triumph of the +experiment on a very great scale, for Chartres has never been +altered and never needed to be strengthened. The flying buttresses +of Chartres answered their purpose, and if it were not a matter of +pure construction it would be worth while to read what Viollet-le- +Duc says about them (article, "Arcs-boutants"). The vaulting above +is heavy, about fifteen inches thick; the buttressing had also to be +heavy; and to lighten it, the architect devised an amusing sort of +arcades, applied on his outside buttresses. Throughout the church, +everything was solid beyond all later custom, so that architects +would have to begin by a study of the crypt which came down from the +eleventh century so strongly built that it still carries the church +without a crack in its walls; but if we went down into it, we should +understand nothing; so we will begin, as we did outside, at the +front. + +A single glance shows what trouble the architect had with the old +facade and towers, and what temptation to pull them all down. One +cannot quite say that he has spoiled his own church in trying to +save what he could of the old, but if he did not quite spoil it, he +saved it only by the exercise of an amount of intelligence that we +shall never learn enough to feel our incapacity to understand. True +ignorance approaches the infinite more nearly than any amount of +knowledge can do, and, in our case, ignorance is fortified by a +certain element of nineteenth-century indifference which refuses to +be interested in what it cannot understand; a violent reaction from +the thirteenth century which cared little to comprehend anything +except the incomprehensible. The architect at Chartres was required +by the Virgin to provide more space for her worshippers within the +church, without destroying the old portal and fleche which she +loved. That this order came directly from the Virgin, may be taken +for granted. At Chartres, one sees everywhere the Virgin, and +nowhere any rival authority; one sees her give orders, and +architects obey them; but very rarely a hesitation as though the +architect were deciding for himself. In his western front, the +architect has obeyed orders so literally that he has not even taken +the trouble to apologize for leaving unfinished the details which, +if he had been responsible for them, would have been his anxious +care. He has gone to the trouble of moving the heavy doorways +forward, so that the chapels in the towers, which were meant to open +on a porch, now open into the nave, and the nave itself has, in +appearance, two more spans than in the old church; but the work +shows blind obedience, as though he were doing his best to please +the Virgin without trying to please himself. Probably he could in no +case have done much to help the side aisles in their abrupt +collision with the solid walls of the two towers, but he might at +least have brought the vaulting of his two new bays, in the nave, +down to the ground, and finished it. The vaulting is awkward in +these two bays, and yet he has taken great trouble to effect what +seems at first a small matter. Whether the great rose window was an +afterthought or not can never be known, but any one can see with a +glass, and better on the architectural plan, that the vaulting of +the main church was not high enough to admit the great rose, and +that the architect has had to slope his two tower-spans upward. So +great is the height that you cannot see this difference of level +very plainly even with a glass, but on the plans it seems to amount +to several feet; perhaps a metre. The architect has managed to +deceive our eyes, in order to enlarge the rose; but you can see as +plainly as though he were here to tell you, that, like a great +general, he has concentrated his whole energy on the rose, because +the Virgin has told him that the rose symbolized herself, and that +the light and splendour of her appearance in the west were to redeem +all his awkwardnesses. + +Of course this idea of the Virgin's interference sounds to you a +mere bit of fancy, and that is an account which may be settled +between the Virgin and you; but even twentieth-century eyes can see +that the rose redeems everything, dominates everything, and gives +character to the whole church. + +In view of the difficulties which faced the artist, the rose is +inspired genius,--the kind of genius which Shakespeare showed when +he took some other man's play, and adapted it. Thus far, it shows +its power chiefly by the way it comes forward and takes possession +of the west front, but if you want a foot-rule to measure by, you +may mark that the old, twelfth-century lancet-windows below it are +not exactly in its axis. At the outset, in the original plan of +1090, or thereabouts, the old tower--the southern tower--was given +greater width than the northern. Such inequalities were common in +the early churches, and so is a great deal of dispute in modern +books whether they were accidental or intentional, while no one +denies that they are amusing. In these towers the difference is not +great,--perhaps fourteen or fifteen inches,--but it caused the +architect to correct it, in order to fit his front to the axis of +the church, by throwing his entrance six or seven inches to the +south, and narrowing to that extent the south door and south lancet. +The effect was bad, even then, and went far to ruin the south +window; but when, after the fire of 1194, the architect inserted his +great rose, filling every inch of possible space between the lancet +and the arch of the vault, he made another correction which threw +his rose six or seven inches out of axis with the lancets. Not one +person in a hundred thousand would notice it, here in the interior, +so completely are we under the control of the artist and the Virgin; +but it is a measure of the power of the rose. + +Looking farther, one sees that the rose-motive, which so dominates +the west front, is carried round the church, and comes to another +outburst of splendour in the transepts. This leads back to +fenestration on a great scale, which is a terribly ambitious flight +for tourists; all the more, because here the tourist gets little +help from the architect, who, in modern times, has seldom the +opportunity to study the subject at all, and accepts as solved the +problems of early Gothic fenestration. One becomes pedantic and +pretentious at the very sound of the word, which is an intolerable +piece of pedantry in itself; but Chartres is all windows, and its +windows were as triumphant as its Virgin, and were one of her +miracles. One can no more overlook the windows of Chartres than the +glass which is in them. We have already looked at the windows of +Mantes; we have seen what happened to the windows at Paris. Paris +had at one leap risen twenty-five feet higher than Noyon, and even +at Noyon, the architect, about 1150, had been obliged to invent new +fenestration. Paris and Mantes, twenty years later, made another +effort, which proved a failure. Then the architect of Chartres, in +1195, added ten feet more to his vault, and undertook, once for all, +to show how a great cathedral should be lighted. As an architectural +problem, it passes far beyond our powers of understanding, even when +solved; but we can always turn to see what the inevitable Viollet- +le-Duc says about its solution at Chartres:-- + +Toward the beginning of the thirteenth century, the architect of the +Cathedral of Chartres sought out entirely new window combinations to +light the nave from above. Below, in the side aisles he kept to the +customs of the times; that is, he opened pointed windows which did +not wholly fill the spaces between the piers; he wanted, or was +willing to leave here below, the effect of a wall. But in the upper +part of his building we see that he changed the system; he throws a +round arch directly across from one pier to the next; then, in the +enormous space which remains within each span, he inserts two large +pointed windows surmounted by a great rose ... We recognize in this +construction of Notre Dame de Chartres a boldness, a force, which +contrast with the fumbling of the architects in the Ile de France +and Champagne. For the first time one sees at Chartres the builder +deal frankly with the clerestory, or upper fenestration, occupying +the whole width of the arches, and taking the arch of the vault as +the arch of the window. Simplicity of construction, beauty in form, +strong workmanship, structure true and solid, judicious choice of +material, all the characteristics of good work, unite in this +magnificent specimen of architecture at the beginning of the +thirteenth century. + +Viollet-le-Duc does not call attention to a score of other matters +which the architect must have had in his mind, such as the +distribution of light, and the relations of one arrangement with +another: the nave with the aisles, and both with the transepts, and +all with the choir. Following him, we must take the choir +separately, and the aisles and chapels of the apse also. One cannot +hope to understand all the experiments and refinements of the +artist, either in their successes or their failures, but, with +diffidence, one may ask one's self whether the beauty of the +arrangement, as compared with the original arrangement in Paris, did +not consist in retaining the rose-motive throughout, while throwing +the whole upper wall into window. Triumphant as the clerestory +windows are, they owe their charm largely to their roses, as you see +by looking at the same scheme applied on a larger scale on the +transept fronts; and then, by taking stand under the croisee, and +looking at all in succession as a whole. + +The rose window was not Gothic but Romanesque, and needed a great +deal of coaxing to feel at home within the pointed arch. At first, +the architects felt the awkwardness so strongly that they avoided it +wherever they could. In the beautiful facade of Laon, one of the +chief beauties is the setting of the rose under a deep round arch. +The western roses of Mantes and Paris are treated in the same way, +although a captious critic might complain that their treatment is +not so effective or so logical. Rheims boldly imprisoned the roses +within the pointed arch; but Amiens, toward 1240, took refuge in the +same square exterior setting that was preferred, in 1200, here at +Chartres; and in the interior of Amiens the round arch of the rose +is the last vault of the nave, seen through a vista of pointed +vaults, as it is here. All these are supposed to be among the chief +beauties of the Gothic facade, although the Gothic architect, if he +had been a man of logic, would have clung to his lines, and put a +pointed window in his front, as in fact he did at Coutances. He felt +the value of the rose in art, and perhaps still more in religion, +for the rose was Mary's emblem. One is fairly sure that the great +Chartres rose of the west front was put there to please her, since +it was to be always before her eyes, the most conspicuous object she +would see from the high altar, and therefore the most carefully +considered ornament in the whole church, outside the choir. The mere +size proves the importance she gave it. The exterior diameter is +nearly forty-four feet (13.36 metres). The nave of Chartres is, next +perhaps to the nave of Angers, the widest of all Gothic naves; about +fifty-three feet (16.31 metres); and the rose takes every inch it +can get of this enormous span. The value of the rose, among +architects of the time, was great, since it was the only part of the +church that Villard de Honnecourt sketched; and since his time, it +has been drawn and redrawn, described and commented by generations +of architects till it has become as classic as the Parthenon. + +Yet this Chartres rose is solid, serious, sedate, to a degree +unusual in its own age; it is even more Romanesque than the pure +Romanesque roses. At Beauvais you must stop a moment to look at a +Romanesque rose on the transept of the Church of Saint-Etienne; +Viollet-le-Duc mentions it, with a drawing (article, "Pignon"), as +not earlier than the year 1100, therefore about a century earlier +than the rose of Chartres; it is not properly a rose, but a wheel of +fortune, with figures climbing up and falling over. Another supposed +twelfth-century rose is at Etampes, which goes with that of Laon and +Saint-Leu-d'Esserent and Mantes. The rose of Chartres is so much the +most serious of them all that Viollet-le-Duc has explained it by its +material,--the heavy stone of Bercheres;--but the material was not +allowed to affect the great transept roses, and the architect made +his material yield to his object wherever he thought it worth while. +Standing under the central croisee, you can see all three roses by +simply turning your head. That on the north, the Rose de France, was +built, or planned, between 1200 and 1210, in the reign of Philip +Augustus, since the porch outside, which would be a later +construction, was begun by 1212. The Rose de France is the same in +diameter as the western rose, but lighter, and built of lighter +stone. Opposite the Rose de France stands, on the south front, +Pierre Mauclerc's Rose de Dreux, of the same date, with the same +motive, but even lighter; more like a rose and less like a wheel. +All three roses must have been planned at about the same time, +perhaps by the same architect, within the same workshop; yet the +western rose stands quite apart, as though it had been especially +designed to suit the twelfth-century facade and portal which it +rules. Whether this was really the artist's idea is a question that +needs the artist to answer; but that this is the effect, needs no +expert to prove; it stares one in the face. Within and without, one +feels that the twelfth-century spirit is respected and preserved +with the same religious feeling which obliged the architect to +injure his own work by sparing that of his grandfathers. + +Conspicuous, then, in the west front are two feelings:--respect for +the twelfth-century work, and passion for the rose fenestration; +both subordinated to the demand for light. If it worries you to have +to believe that these three things are in fact one; that the +architect is listening, like the stone Abraham, for orders from the +Virgin, while he caresses and sacrifices his child; that Mary and +not her architects built this facade; if the divine intention seems +to you a needless impertinence, you can soon get free from it by +going to any of the later churches, where you will not be forced to +see any work but that of the architect's compasses. According to +Viollet-le-Duc, the inspiration ceased about 1250, or, as the Virgin +would have dated it, on the death of Blanche of Castile in 1252. The +work of Chartres, where her own hand is plainly shown, belongs in +feeling, if not in execution, to the last years of the twelfth +century (1195-1200). The great western rose which gives the motive +for the whole decoration and is repeated in the great roses of the +transepts, marks the Virgin's will,--the taste and knowledge of +"cele qui la rose est des roses," or, if you prefer the Latin of +Adam de Saint-Victor, the hand of her who is "Super rosam rosida." + +All this is easy; but if you really cannot see the hand of Mary +herself in these broad and public courts, which were intended, not +for her personal presence, but for the use of her common people, you +had better stop here, and not venture into the choir. Great halls +seem to have been easy architecture. Naves and transepts were not +often failures; facades and even towers and fleches are invariably +more or less successful because they are more or less balanced, +mathematical, calculable products of reason and thought. The most +serious difficulties began only with the choir, and even then did +not become desperate until the architect reached the curve of the +apse, with its impossible vaultings, its complicated lines, its +cross-thrusts, its double problems, internal and external, its +defective roofing and unequal lighting. A perfect Gothic apse was +impossible; an apse that satisfied perfectly its principal objects +was rare; the simplest and cheapest solution was to have no apse at +all, and that was the English scheme, which was tried also at Laon; +a square, flat wall and window. If the hunt for Norman towers +offered a summer's amusement, a hunt for apses would offer an +education, but it would lead far out of France. Indeed, it would be +simpler to begin at once with Sancta Sophia at Constantinople, San +Vitale at Ravenna and Monreale at Palermo, and the churches at +Torcello and Murano, and San Marco at Venice; and admit that no +device has ever equalled the startling and mystical majesty of the +Byzantine half-dome, with its marvellous mosaic Madonna dominating +the church, from the entrance, with her imperial and divine +presence. Unfortunately, the northern churches needed light, and the +northern architects turned their minds to a desperate effort for a +new apse. + +The scheme of the cathedral at Laon seems to have been rejected +unanimously; the bare, flat wall at the end of the choir was an +eyesore; it was quite bad enough at the end of the nave, and became +annoying at the end of the transepts, so that at Noyon and Soissons +the architect, with a keen sense of interior form, had rounded the +transept ends; but, though external needs might require a square +transept, the unintelligence of the flat wall became insufferable at +the east end. Neither did the square choir suit the church +ceremonies and processions, or offer the same advantages of +arrangement, as the French understood them. With one voice, the +French architects seem to have rejected the Laon experiment, and +turned back to a solution taken directly from the Romanesque. + +[Illustration with caption: SAINT-MARTIN-DES-CHAMPS] + +Quite early--in the eleventh century--a whole group of churches had +been built in Auvergne,--at Clermont and Issoire, for example,-- +possibly by one architect, with a circular apse, breaking out into +five apsidal chapels. Tourists who get down as far south as Toulouse +see another example of this Romanesque apse in the famous Church of +Saint Sernin, of the twelfth century; and few critics take offence +at one's liking it. Indeed, as far as concerns the exterior, one +might even risk thinking it more charming than the exterior of any +Gothic apse ever built. Many of these Romanesque apses of the +eleventh and twelfth centuries still remain in France, showing +themselves in unsuspected parish churches, here and there, but +always a surprise for their quiet, unobtrusive grace, making a +harmony with the Romanesque tower, if there is one, into which they +rise, as at Saint Sernin; but all these churches had only one aisle, +and, in the interior, there came invariable trouble when the vaults +rose in height. The architect of Chartres, in 1200, could get no +direct help from these, or even from Paris which was a beautifully +perfect apse, but had no apsidal chapels. The earliest apse that +could have served as a suggestion for Chartres--or, at least, as a +point of observation for us--was that of the Abbey Church of Saint- +Martin-des-Champs, which we went to see in Paris, and which is said +to date from about 1150. + +Here is a circular choir, surrounded by two rows of columns, +irregularly spaced, with circular chapels outside, which seems to +have been more or less what the architect of Chartres, for the +Virgin's purposes, had set his heart on obtaining. Closely following +the scheme of Saint-Martin-des-Champs came the scheme of the Abbey +Church at Vezelay, built about 1160-80. Here the vaulting sprang +directly from the last arch of the choir, as is shown on the plan, +and bearing first on the light columns of the choir, which were +evenly spaced, then fell on a row of heavier columns outside, which +were also evenly spaced, and came to rest at last on massive piers, +between which were five circular chapels. The plan shows at a glance +that this arrangement stretched the second row of columns far apart, +and that a church much larger than Vezelay would need to space them +so much farther apart that the arch uniting them would have to rise +indefinitely; while, if beyond this, another aisle were added +outside, the piers finally would require impossible vaulting. + +[Illustration with caption: VEZELAY] + +The problem stood thus when the great cathedrals were undertaken, +and the architect of Paris boldly grappled with the double aisle on +a scale requiring a new scheme. Here, in spite of the most virtuous +resolutions not to be technical, we must attempt a technicality, +because without it, one of the most interesting eccentricities of +Chartres would be lost. Once more, Viollet-le-Duc:-- + +As the architect did not want to give the interior bays of the apse +spaces between the columns (AA) less than that of the parallel bays +(BB), it followed that the first radiating bay gave a first space +(LMGH) which was difficult to vault, and a second space (HGEF) which +was impossible; for how establish an arch from F to E? Even if +round, its key would have risen much higher than the key of the +pointed archivolt LM. As the second radiating bay opened out still +wider, the difficulty was increased. The builder therefore inserted +the two intermediate pillars O and P between the columns of the +second aisle (H, G, and I); which he supported, in the outside wall +of the church, by one corresponding pier (Q) in the first bay of the +apse, and by two similar piers (R and S) in the second bay. + +[Illustration with caption: NOTRE DAME DE PARIS] + +"There is no need to point out," continued Viollet-le-Duc, as though +he much suspected that there might be need of pointing out, "what +skill this system showed and how much the art of architecture had +already been developed in the Ile de France toward the end of the +twelfth century; to what an extent the unity of arrangement and +style preoccupied the artists of that province." + +In fact, the arrangement seems mathematically and technically +perfect. At all events, we know too little to criticize it. Yet one +would much like to be told why it was not repeated by any other +architect or in any other church. Apparently the Parisians +themselves were not quite satisfied with it, since they altered it a +hundred years later, in 1296, in order to build out chapels between +the piers. As the architects of each new cathedral had, in the +interval, insisted on apsidal chapels, one may venture to guess that +the Paris scheme hampered the services. + +At Chartres the church services are Mary's own tastes; the church is +Mary; and the chapels are her private rooms. She was not pleased +with the arrangements made for her in her palace at Paris; they were +too architectural; too regular and mathematical; too popular; too +impersonal; and she rather abruptly ordered her architect at +Chartres to go back to the old arrangement. The apse at Paris was +hardly covered with its leading before the architect of Chartres +adopted a totally new plan, which, according to Viollet-le-Duc, does +him little credit, but which was plainly imposed on him, like the +twelfth-century portal. Not only had it nothing of the mathematical +correctness and precision of the Paris scheme, easy to understand +and imitate, but it carried even a sort of violence--a wrench--in +its system, as though the Virgin had said, with her grand Byzantine +air:--I will it! + +[Illustration with caption: CHARTRES] + +"At Chartres," said Viollet-le-Duc, "the choir of the Cathedral +presents a plan which does no great honour to its architect. There +is want of accord between the circular apse and the parallel sides +of the sanctuary; the spacings of the columns of the second +collateral are loose (laches); the vaults quite poorly combined; and +in spite of the great width of the spaces between the columns of the +second aisle, the architect had still to narrow those between the +interior columns." + +The plan shows that, from the first, the architect must have +deliberately rejected the Paris scheme; he must have begun by +narrowing the spaces between his inner columns; then, with a sort of +violence, he fitted on his second row of columns; and, finally, he +showed his motive by constructing an outer wall of an original or +unusual shape. Any woman would see at once the secret of all this +ingenuity and effort. The Chartres apse, enormous in size and width, +is exquisitely lighted. Here, as everywhere throughout the church, +the windows give the law, but here they actually take place of law. +The Virgin herself saw to the lighting of her own boudoir. According +to Viollet-le-Duc, Chartres differs from all the other great +cathedrals by being built not for its nave or even for its choir, +but for its apse; it was planned not for the people or the court, +but for the Queen; not a church but a shrine; and the shrine is the +apse where the Queen arranged her light to please herself and not +her architect, who had already been sacrificed at the western portal +and who had a free hand only in the nave and transepts where the +Queen never went, and which, from her own apartment, she did not +even see. + +[Illustration with caption: LAON] + +This is, in effect, what Viollet-le-Duc says in his professional +language, which is perhaps--or sounds--more reasonable to tourists, +whose imaginations are hardly equal to the effort of fancying a real +deity. Perhaps, indeed, one might get so high as to imagine a real +Bishop of Laon, who should have ordered his architect to build an +enormous hall of religion, to rival the immense abbeys of the day, +and to attract the people, as though it were a clubroom. There they +were to see all the great sights; church ceremonies; theatricals; +political functions; there they were to do business, and frequent +society. They were to feel at home in their church because it was +theirs, and did not belong to a priesthood or to Rome. Jealousy of +Rome was a leading motive of Gothic architecture, and Rome repaid it +in full. The Bishop of Laon conceded at least a transept to custom +or tradition, but the Archbishop of Bourges abolished even the +transept, and the great hall had no special religious expression +except in the circular apse with its chapels which Laon had +abandoned. One can hardly decide whether Laon or Bourges is the more +popular, industrial, political, or, in other words, the less +religious; but the Parisians, as the plan of Viollet-le-Duc has +shown, were quite as advanced as either, and only later altered +their scheme into one that provided chapels for religious service. + +[Illustration with caption: BOURGES] + +[Illustration with caption: AMIENS] + +Amiens and Beauvais have each seven chapels, but only one aisle, so +that they do not belong in the same class with the apses of Paris, +Bourges, and Chartres, though the plans are worth studying for +comparison, since they show how many-sided the problem was, and how +far from satisfied the architects were with their own schemes. The +most interesting of all, for comparison with Chartres, is Le Mans, +where the apsidal chapels are carried to fanaticism, while the +vaulting seems to be reasonable enough, and the double aisle +successfully managed, if Viollet-le-Duc permits ignorant people to +form an opinion on architectural dogma. For our purposes, the +architectural dogma may stand, and the Paris scheme may be taken for +granted, as alone correct and orthodox; all that Viollet-le-Duc +teaches is that the Chartres scheme is unorthodox, not to say +heretical; and this is the point on which his words are most +interesting. + +[Illustration with caption: BEAUVAIS] + +The church at Chartres belonged not to the people, not to the +priesthood, and not even to Rome; it belonged to the Virgin. "Here +the religious influence appears wholly; three large chapels in the +apse; four others less pronounced; double aisles of great width +round the choir; vast transepts! Here the church ceremonial could +display all its pomp; the choir, more than at Paris, more than at +Bourges, more than at Soissons, and especially more than at Laon, is +the principal object; for it, the church is built." + +[Illustration with caption: LE MANS] + +One who is painfully conscious of ignorance, and who never would +dream of suggesting a correction to anybody, may not venture to +suggest an idea of any sort to an architect; but if it were allowed +to paraphrase Viollet-le-Duc's words into a more or less emotional +or twelfth-century form, one might say, after him, that, compared +with Paris or Laon, the Chartres apse shows the same genius that is +shown in the Chartres rose; the same large mind that overrules,--the +same strong will that defies difficulties. The Chartres apse is as +entertaining as all the other Gothic apses together, because it +overrides the architect. You may, if you really have no imagination +whatever, reject the idea that the Virgin herself made the plan; the +feebleness of our fancy is now congenital, organic, beyond stimulant +or strychnine, and we shrink like sensitive-plants from the touch of +a vision or spirit; but at least one can still sometimes feel a +woman's taste, and in the apse of Chartres one feels nothing else. + +[Illustration with caption: CHARTRES] + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS + +At last we are face to face with the crowning glory of Chartres. +Other churches have glass,--quantities of it, and very fine,--but we +have been trying to catch a glimpse of the glory which stands behind +the glass of Chartres, and gives it quality and feeling of its own. +For once the architect is useless and his explanations are pitiable; +the painter helps still less; and the decorator, unless he works in +glass, is the poorest guide of all, while, if he works in glass, he +is sure to lead wrong; and all of them may toil until Pierre +Mauclerc's stone Christ comes to life, and condemns them among the +unpardonable sinners on the southern portal, but neither they nor +any other artist will ever create another Chartres. You had better +stop here, once for all, unless you are willing to feel that +Chartres was made what it is, not by artist, but by the Virgin. + +If this imperial presence is stamped on the architecture and the +sculpture with an energy not to be mistaken, it radiates through the +glass with a light and colour that actually blind the true servant +of Mary. One becomes, sometimes, a little incoherent in talking +about it; one is ashamed to be as extravagant as one wants to be; +one has no business to labour painfully to explain and prove to +one's self what is as clear as the sun in the sky; one loses temper +in reasoning about what can only be felt, and what ought to be felt +instantly, as it was in the twelfth century, even by the truie qui +file and the ane qui vielle. Any one should feel it that wishes; any +one who does not wish to feel it can let it alone. Still, it may be +that not one tourist in a hundred--perhaps not one in a thousand of +the English-speaking race--does feel it, or can feel it even when +explained to him, for we have lost many senses. + +Therefore, let us plod on, laboriously proving God, although, even +to Saint Bernard and Pascal, God was incapable of proof; and using +such material as the books furnish for help. It is not much. The +French have been shockingly negligent of their greatest artistic +glory. One knows not even where to seek. One must go to the National +Library and beg as a special favour permission to look at the +monumental work of M. Lasteyrie, if one wishes to make even a +beginning of the study of French glass. Fortunately there exists a +fragment of a great work which the Government began, but never +completed, upon Chartres; and another, quite indispensable, but not +official, upon Bourges; while Viollet-le-Duc's article "Vitrail" +serves as guide to the whole. Ottin's book "Le Vitrail" is +convenient. Male's volume "L'Art Religieux" is essential. In +English, Westlake's "History of Design" is helpful. Perhaps, after +reading all that is readable, the best hope will be to provide the +best glasses with the largest possible field; and, choosing an hour +when the church is empty, take seat about halfway up the nave, +facing toward the western entrance with a morning light, so that the +glass of the western windows shall not stand in direct sun. + +The glass of the three lancets is the oldest in the cathedral. If +the portal beneath it, with the sculpture, was built in the twenty +or thirty years before 1150, the glass could not be much later. It +goes with the Abbe Suger's glass at Saint-Denis, which was surely +made as early as 1140-50, since the Abbe was a long time at work on +it, before he died in 1152. Their perfection proves, what his +biographer asserted, that the Abbe Suger spent many years as well as +much money on his windows at Saint-Denis, and the specialists affirm +that the three lancets at Chartres are quite as good as what remains +of Suger's work. Viollet-le-Duc and M. Paul Durand, the Government +expert, are positive that this glass is the finest ever made, as far +as record exists; and that the northern lancet representing the Tree +of Jesse stands at the head of all glasswork whatever. The windows +claim, therefore, to be the most splendid colour decoration the +world ever saw, since no other material, neither silk nor gold, and +no opaque colour laid on with a brush, can compare with translucent +glass, and even the Ravenna mosaics or Chinese porcelains are +darkness beside them. + +The claim may not be modest, but it is none of ours. Viollet-le-Duc +must answer for his own sins, and he chose the lancet window of the +Tree of Jesse for the subject of his lecture on glass in general, as +the most complete and perfect example of this greatest decorative +art. Once more, in following him, one is dragged, in spite of one's +self, into technique, and, what is worse, into a colour world whose +technique was forgotten five hundred years ago. Viollet-le-Duc tried +to recover it. "After studying our best French windows," he +cautiously suggests that "one might maintain," as their secret of +harmony, that "the first condition for an artist in glass is to know +how to manage blue. The blue is the light in windows, and light has +value only by opposition." The radiating power of blue is, +therefore, the starting-point, and on this matter Viollet-le-Duc has +much to say which a student would need to master; but a tourist +never should study, or he ceases to be a tourist; and it is enough +for us if we know that, to get the value they wanted, the artists +hatched their blues with lines, covered their surface with figures +as though with screens, and tied their blue within its own field +with narrow circlets of white or yellow, which, in their turn, were +beaded to fasten the blue still more firmly in its place. We have +chiefly to remember the law that blue is light:-- + +But also it is that luminous colour which gives value to all others. +If you compose a window in which there shall be no blue, you will +get a dirty or dull (blafard) or crude surface which the eye will +instantly avoid; but if you put a few touches of blue among all +these tones, you will immediately get striking effects if not +skilfully conceived harmony. So the composition of blue glass +singularly preoccupied the glassworkers of the twelfth and +thirteenth centuries. If there is only one red, two yellows, two or +three purples, and two or three greens at the most, there are +infinite shades of blue, ... and these blues are placed with a very +delicate observation of the effects they should produce on other +tones, and other tones on them. + +Viollet-le-Duc took the window of the Tree of Jesse as his first +illustration of the rule, for the reason that its blue ground is one +continuous strip from top to bottom, with the subordinate red on +either side, and a border uniting the whole so plainly that no one +can fail to see its object or its method. + +The blue tone of the principal subject [that is to say, the ground +of the Tree of Jesse] has commanded the tonality of all the rest. +This medium was necessary to enable the luminous splendour to +display its energy. This primary condition had dictated the red +ground for the prophets, and the return to the blue on reaching the +outside semicircular band. To give full value both to the vigour of +the red, and to the radiating transparency of the blue, the ground +of the corners is put in emerald green; but then, in the corners +themselves, the blue is recalled and is given an additional solidity +of value by the delicate ornamentation of the squares. + +This translation is very free, but one who wants to know these +windows must read the whole article, and read it here in the church, +the Dictionary in one hand, and binocle in the other, for the +binocle is more important than the Dictionary when it reaches the +complicated border which repeats in detail the colour-scheme of the +centre:-- + +The border repeats all the tones allotted to the principal subjects, +but by small fragments, so that this border, with an effect both +solid and powerful, shall not enter into rivalry with the large +arrangements of the central parts. + +One would think this simple enough; easily tested on any illuminated +manuscript, Arab, Persian, or Byzantine; verified by any Oriental +rug, old or new; freely illustrated by any Chinese pattern on a Ming +jar, or cloisonne vase; and offering a kind of alphabet for the +shop-window of a Paris modiste. A strong red; a strong and a weak +yellow; a strong and a weak purple; a strong and a weak green, are +all to be tied together, given their values, and held in their +places by blue. The thing seems simpler still when it appears that +perspective is forbidden, and that these glass windows of the +twelfth and thirteenth centuries, like Oriental rugs, imply a flat +surface, a wall which must not be treated as open. The twelfth- +century glassworker would sooner have worn a landscape on his back +than have costumed his church with it; he would as soon have +decorated his floors with painted holes as his walls. He wanted to +keep the coloured window flat, like a rug hung on the wall. + +The radiation of translucent colours in windows cannot be modified +by the artist; all his talent consists in profiting by it, according +to a given harmonic scheme on a single plane, like a rug, but not +according to an effect of aerial perspective. Do what you like, a +glass window never does and never can represent anything but a plane +surface; its real virtues even exist only on that condition. Every +attempt to present several planes to the eye is fatal to the harmony +of colour, without producing any illusion in the spectator ... +Translucid painting can propose as its object only a design +supporting as energetically as possible a harmony of colours. + +Whether this law is absolute you can tell best by looking at modern +glass which is mostly perspective; but, whether you like it or not, +the matter of perspective does not enter into a twelfth-century +window more than into a Japanese picture, and may be ignored. The +decoration of the twelfth century, as far as concerns us, was +intended only for one plane, and a window was another form of rug or +embroidery or mosaic, hung on the wall for colour,--simple +decoration to be seen as a whole. If the Tree of Jesse teaches +anything at all, it is that the artist thought first of controlling +his light, but he wanted to do it not in order to dim the colours; +on the contrary, he toiled, like a jeweller setting diamonds and +rubies, to increase their splendour. If his use of blue teaches this +lesson, his use of green proves it. The outside border of the Tree +of Jesse is a sort of sample which our schoolmaster Viollet-le-Duc +sets, from which he requires us to study out the scheme, beginning +with the treatment of light, and ending with the value of the +emerald green ground in the corners. + +Complicated as the border of the Tree of Jesse is, it has its mates +in the borders of the two other twelfth-century windows, and a few +of the thirteenth-century in the side aisles; but the southern of +the three lancets shows how the artists dealt with a difficulty that +upset their rule. The border of the southern window does not count +as it should; something is wrong with it and a little study shows +that the builder, and not the glassworker, was to blame. Owing to +his miscalculation--if it was really a miscalculation--in the width +of the southern tower, the builder economized six or eight inches in +the southern door and lancet, which was enough to destroy the +balance between the colour-values, as masses, of the south and north +windows. The artist was obliged to choose whether he would sacrifice +the centre or the border of his southern window, and decided that +the windows could not be made to balance if he narrowed the centre, +but that he must balance them by enriching the centre, and +sacrificing the border. He has filled the centre with medallions as +rich as he could make them, and these he has surrounded with +borders, which are also enriched to the utmost; but these medallions +with their borders spread across the whole window, and when you +search with the binocle for the outside border, you see its pattern +clearly only at the top and bottom. On the sides, at intervals of +about two feet, the medallions cover and interrupt it; but this is +partly corrected by making the border, where it is seen, so rich as +to surpass any other in the cathedral, even that of the Tree of +Jesse. Whether the artist has succeeded or not is a question for +other artists--or for you, if you please--to decide; but apparently +he did succeed, since no one has ever noticed the difficulty or the +device. + +The southern lancet represents the Passion of Christ. Granting to +Viollet-le-Duc that the unbroken vertical colour-scheme of the Tree +of Jesse made the more effective window, one might still ask whether +the medallion-scheme is not the more interesting. Once past the +workshop, there can be no question about it; the Tree of Jesse has +the least interest of all the three windows. A genealogical tree has +little value, artistic or other, except to those who belong in its +branches, and the Tree of Jesse was put there, not to please us, but +to please the Virgin. The Passion window was also put there to +please her, but it tells a story, and does it in a way that has more +novelty than the subject. The draughtsman who chalked out the design +on the whitened table that served for his sketch-board was either a +Greek, or had before him a Byzantine missal, or enamel or ivory. The +first medallion on these legendary windows is the lower left-hand +one, which begins the story or legend; here it represents Christ +after the manner of the Greek Church. In the next medallion is the +Last Supper; the fish on the dish is Greek. In the middle of the +window, with the help of the binocle, you will see a Crucifixion, or +even two, for on the left is Christ on the Cross, and on the right a +Descent from the Cross; in this is the figure of man pulling out +with pincers the nails which fasten Christ's feet; a figure unknown +to Western religious art. The Noli Me Tangere, on the right, near +the top, has a sort of Greek character. All the critics, especially +M. Paul Durand, have noticed this Byzantine look, which is even more +marked in the Suger window at Saint-Denis, so as to suggest that +both are by the same hand, and that the hand of a Greek. If the +artist was really a Greek, he has done work more beautiful than any +left at Byzantium, and very far finer than anything in the beautiful +work at Cairo, but although the figures and subjects are more or +less Greek, like the sculptures on the portal, the art seems to be +French. + +Look at the central window! Naturally, there sits the Virgin, with +her genealogical tree on her left, and her Son's testimony on her +right to prove her double divinity. She is seated in the long halo; +as, on the western portal, directly beneath her, her Son is +represented in stone, Her crown and head, as well as that of the +Child, are fourteenth-century restorations more or less like the +original; but her cushioned throne and her robes of imperial state, +as well as the flowered sceptre in either hand, are as old as the +sculpture of the portal, and redolent of the first crusade. On +either side of her, the Sun and the Moon offer praise; her two +Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, with resplendent wings, offer not +incense as in later times, but the two sceptres of spiritual and +temporal power; while the Child in her lap repeats His Mother's +action and even her features and expression. At first sight, one +would take for granted that all this was pure Byzantium, and perhaps +it is; but it has rather the look of Byzantium gallicized, and +carried up to a poetic French ideal. At Saint-Denis the little +figure of the Abbe Suger at the feet of the Virgin has a very +Oriental look, and in the twin medallion the Virgin resembles +greatly the Virgin of Chartres, yet, for us, until some specialist +shows us the Byzantine original, the work is as thoroughly French as +the fleches of the churches. + +Byzantine art is altogether another chapter, and, if we could but +take a season to study it in Byzantium, we might get great +amusement; but the art of Chartres, even in 1100, was French and +perfectly French, as the architecture shows, and the glass is even +more French than the architecture, as you can detect in many other +ways. Perhaps the surest evidence is the glass itself. The men who +made it were not professionals but amateurs, who may have had some +knowledge of enamelling, but who worked like jewellers, unused to +glass, and with the refinement that a reliquary or a crozier +required. The cost of these windows must have been extravagant; one +is almost surprised that they are not set in gold rather than in +lead. The Abbe Suger shirked neither trouble nor expense, and the +only serious piece of evidence that this artist was a Greek is given +by his biographer who unconsciously shows that the artist cheated +him: "He sought carefully for makers of windows and workmen in glass +of exquisite quality, especially in that made of sapphires in great +abundance that were pulverized and melted up in the glass to give it +the blue colour which he delighted to admire." The "materia +saphirorum" was evidently something precious,--as precious as crude +sapphires would have been,--and the words imply beyond question that +the artist asked for sapphires and that Suger paid for them; yet all +specialists agree that the stone known as sapphire, if ground, could +not produce translucent colour at all. The blue which Suger loved, +and which is probably the same as that of these Chartres windows, +cannot be made out of sapphires. Probably the "materia saphirorum" +means cobalt only, but whatever it was, the glassmakers seem to +agree that this glass of 1140-50 is the best ever made. M. Paul +Durand in his official report of 1881 said that these windows, both +artistically and mechanically, were of the highest class: "I will +also call attention to the fact that the glass and the execution of +the painting are, materially speaking, of a quality much superior to +windows of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Having passed +several months in contact with these precious works when I copied +them, I was able to convince myself of their superiority in every +particular, especially in the upper parts of the three windows." He +said that they were perfect and irreproachable. The true enthusiast +in glass would in the depths of his heart like to say outright that +these three windows are worth more than all that the French have +since done in colour, from that day to this; but the matter concerns +us chiefly because it shows how French the experiment was, and how +Suger's taste and wealth made it possible. + +Certain it is, too, that the southern window--the Passion--was made +on the spot, or near by, and fitted for the particular space with +care proportionate to its cost. All are marked by the hand of the +Chartres Virgin. They are executed not merely for her, but by her. +At Saint-Denis the Abbe Suger appeared,--it is true that he was +prostrate at her feet, but still he appeared. At Chartres no one--no +suggestion of a human agency--was allowed to appear; the Virgin +permitted no one to approach her, even to adore. She is enthroned +above, as Queen and Empress and Mother, with the symbols of +exclusive and universal power. Below her, she permitted the world to +see the glories of her earthly life;--the Annunciation, Visitation, +and Nativity; the Magi; King Herod; the Journey to Egypt; and the +single medallion, which shows the gods of Egypt falling from their +pedestals at her coming, is more entertaining than a whole picture- +gallery of oil paintings. + +In all France there exist barely a dozen good specimens of twelfth- +century glass. Besides these windows at Chartres and the fragments +at Saint-Denis, there are windows at Le Mans and Angers and bits at +Vendome, Chalons, Poitiers, Rheims, and Bourges; here and there one +happens on other pieces, but the earliest is the best, because the +glass-makers were new at the work and spent on it an infinite amount +of trouble and money which they found to be unnecessary as they +gained experience. Even in 1200 the value of these windows was so +well understood, relatively to new ones, that they were preserved +with the greatest care. The effort to make such windows was never +repeated. Their jewelled perfection did not suit the scale of the +vast churches of the thirteenth century. By turning your head toward +the windows of the side aisles, you can see the criticism which the +later artists passed on the old work. They found it too refined, too +brilliant, too jewel-like for the size of the new cathedral; the +play of light and colour allowed the eye too little repose; indeed, +the eye could not see their whole beauty, and half their value was +thrown away in this huge stone setting. At best they must have +seemed astray on the bleak, cold, windy plain of Beauce,--homesick +for Palestine or Cairo,--yearning for Monreale or Venice,--but this +is not our affair, and, under the protection of the Empress Virgin, +Saint Bernard himself could have afforded to sin even to drunkenness +of colour. With trifling expense of imagination one can still catch +a glimpse of the crusades in the glory of the glass. The longer one +looks into it, the more overpowering it becomes, until one begins +almost to feel an echo of what our two hundred and fifty million +arithmetical ancestors, drunk with the passion of youth and the +splendour of the Virgin, have been calling to us from Mont-Saint- +Michel and Chartres. No words and no wine could revive their +emotions so vividly as they glow in the purity of the colours; the +limpidity of the blues; the depth of the red; the intensity of the +green; the complicated harmonies; the sparkle and splendour of the +light; and the quiet and certain strength of the mass. + +With too strong direct sun the windows are said to suffer, and +become a cluster of jewels--a delirium of coloured light. The lines, +too, have different degrees of merit. These criticisms seldom strike +a chance traveller, but he invariably makes the discovery that the +designs within the medallions are childish. He may easily correct +them, if he likes, and see what would happen to the window; but +although this is the alphabet of art, and we are past spelling words +of one syllable, the criticism teaches at least one lesson. +Primitive man seems to have had a natural colour-sense, instinctive +like the scent of a dog. Society has no right to feel it as a moral +reproach to be told that it has reached an age when it can no longer +depend, as in childhood, on its taste, or smell, or sight, or +hearing, or memory; the fact seems likely enough, and in no way +sinful; yet society always denies it, and is invariably angry about +it; and, therefore, one had better not say it. On the other hand, we +can leave Delacroix and his school to fight out the battle they +began against Ingres and his school, in French art, nearly a hundred +years ago, which turned in substance on the same point. Ingres held +that the first motive in colour-decoration was line, and that a +picture which was well drawn was well enough coloured. Society +seemed, on the whole, to agree with him. Society in the twelfth +century agreed with Delacroix. The French held then that the first +point in colour-decoration was colour, and they never hesitated to +put their colour where they wanted it, or cared whether a green +camel or a pink lion looked like a dog or a donkey provided they got +their harmony or value. Everything except colour was sacrificed to +line in the large sense, but details of drawing were conventional +and subordinate. So we laugh to see a knight with a blue face, on a +green horse, that looks as though drawn by a four-year-old child, +and probably the artist laughed, too; but he was a colourist, and +never sacrificed his colour for a laugh. + +We tourists assume commonly that he knew no better. In our simple +faith in ourselves, great hope abides, for it shows an earnestness +hardly less than that of the crusaders; but in the matter of colour +one is perhaps less convinced, or more open to curiosity. No school +of colour exists in our world to-day, while the Middle Ages had a +dozen; but it is certainly true that these twelfth-century windows +break the French tradition. They had no antecedent, and no fit +succession. All the authorities dwell on their exceptional +character. One is sorely tempted to suspect that they were in some +way an accident; that such an art could not have sprung, in such +perfection, out of nothing, had it been really French; that it must +have had its home elsewhere--on the Rhine--in Italy--in Byzantium-- +or in Bagdad. + +The same controversy has raged for near two hundred years over the +Gothic arch, and everything else mediaeval, down to the philosophy +of the schools. The generation that lived during the first and +second crusades tried a number of original experiments, besides +capturing Jerusalem. Among other things, it produced the western +portal of Chartres, with its statuary, its glass, and its fleche, as +a by-play; as it produced Abelard, Saint Bernard, and Christian of +Troyes, whose acquaintance we have still to make. It took ideas +wherever it found them;--from Germany, Italy, Spain, Constantinople, +Palestine, or from the source which has always attracted the French +mind like a magnet--from ancient Greece. That it actually did take +the ideas, no one disputes, except perhaps patriots who hold that +even the ideas were original; but to most students the ideas need to +be accounted for less than the taste with which they were handled, +and the quickness with which they were developed. That the taste was +French, you can see in the architecture, or you will see if ever you +meet the Gothic elsewhere; that it seized and developed an idea +quickly, you have seen in the arch, the fleche, the porch, and the +windows, as well as in the glass; but what we do not comprehend, and +never shall, is the appetite behind all this; the greed for novelty: +the fun of life. Every one who has lived since the sixteenth century +has felt deep distrust of every one who lived before it, and of +every one who believed in the Middle Ages. True it is that the last +thirteenth-century artist died a long time before our planet began +its present rate of revolution; it had to come to rest, and begin +again; but this does not prevent astonishment that the twelfth- +century planet revolved so fast. The pointed arch not only came as +an idea into France, but it was developed into a system of +architecture and covered the country with buildings on a scale of +height never before attempted except by the dome, with an +expenditure of wealth that would make a railway system look cheap, +all in a space of about fifty years; the glass came with it, and +went with it, at least as far as concerns us; but, if you need other +evidence, you can consult Renan, who is the highest authority: "One +of the most singular phenomena of the literary history of the Middle +Ages," says Renan of Averroes, "is the activity of the intellectual +commerce, and the rapidity with which books were spread from one end +of Europe to the other. The philosophy of Abelard during his +lifetime (1100-42) had penetrated to the ends of Italy. The French +poetry of the trouveres counted within less than a century +translations into German, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Flemish, +Dutch, Bohemian, Italian, Spanish"; and he might have added that +England needed no translation, but helped to compose the poetry, not +being at that time so insular as she afterwards became. "Such or +such a work, composed in Morocco or in Cairo, was known at Paris and +at Cologne in less time than it would need in our days for a German +book of capital importance to pass the Rhine"; and Renan wrote this +in 1852 when German books of capital importance were revolutionizing +the literary world. + +One is apt to forget the smallness of Europe, and how quickly it +could always be crossed. In summer weather, with fair winds, one can +sail from Alexandria or from Syria, to Sicily, or even to Spain and +France, in perfect safety and with ample room for freight, as easily +now as one could do it then, without the aid of steam; but one does +not now carry freight of philosophy, poetry, or art. The world still +struggles for unity, but by different methods, weapons, and thought. +The mercantile exchanges which surprised Renan, and which have +puzzled historians, were in ideas. The twelfth century was as greedy +for them in one shape as the nineteenth century in another. France +paid for them dearly, and repented for centuries; but what creates +surprise to the point of incredulity is her hunger for them, the +youthful gluttony with which she devoured them, the infallible taste +with which she dressed them out. The restless appetite that snatched +at the pointed arch, the stone fleche, the coloured glass, the +illuminated missal, the chanson and roman and pastorelle, the +fragments of Aristotle, the glosses of Avicenne, was nothing +compared with the genius which instantly gave form and flower to +them all. + +This episode merely means that the French twelfth-century artist may +be supposed to have known his business, and if he produced a +grotesque, or a green-faced Saint, or a blue castle, or a syllogism, +or a song, that he did it with a notion of the effect he had in +mind. The glass window was to him a whole,--a mass,--and its details +were his amusement; for the twelfth-century Frenchman enjoyed his +fun, though it was sometimes rather heavy for modern French taste, +and less refined than the Church liked. These three twelfth-century +windows, like their contemporary portal outside, and the fleche that +goes with them, are the ideals of enthusiasts of mediaeval art; they +are above the level of all known art, in religious form; they are +inspired; they are divine! This is the claim of Chartres and its +Virgin. Actually, the French artist, whether architect, sculptor, or +painter in glass, did rise here above his usual level. He knew it +when he did it, and probably he attributed it, as we do, to the +Virgin; for these works of his were hardly fifty years old when the +rest of the old church was burned; and already the artist felt the +virtue gone out of him. He could not do so well in 1200 as he did in +1150; and the Virgin was not so near. + +The proof of it--or, if you prefer to think so, the proof against +it--is before our eyes on the wall above the lancet windows. When +Villard de Honnecourt came to Chartres, he seized at once on the +western rose as his study, although the two other roses were +probably there, in all their beauty and lightness. He saw in the +western rose some quality of construction which interested him; and, +in fact, the western rose is one of the flowers of architecture +which reveals its beauties slowly without end; but its chief beauty +is the feeling which unites it with the portal, the lancets, and the +fleche. The glassworker here in the interior had the same task to +perform. The glass of the lancets was fifty years old when the glass +for the rose was planned; perhaps it was seventy, for the exact +dates are unknown, but it does not matter, for the greater the +interval, the more interesting is the treatment. Whatever the date, +the glass of the western rose cannot be much earlier or much later +than that of the other roses, or that of the choir, and yet you see +at a glance that it is quite differently treated. On such matters +one must, of course, submit to the opinion of artists, which one +does the more readily because they always disagree; but until the +artists tell us better, we may please ourselves by fancying that the +glass of the rose was intended to harmonize with that of the +lancets, and unite it with the thirteenth-century glass of the nave +and transepts. Among all the thirteenth-century windows the western +rose alone seems to affect a rivalry in brilliancy with the lancets, +and carries it so far that the separate medallions and pictures are +quite lost,--especially in direct sunshine,--blending in a confused +effect of opals, in a delirium of colour and light, with a result +like a cluster of stones in jewelry. Assuming as one must, in want +of the artist's instruction, that he knew what he wanted to do, and +did it, one must take for granted that he treated the rose as a +whole, and aimed at giving it harmony with the three precious +windows beneath. The effect is that of a single large ornament; a +round breastpin, or what is now called a sunburst, of jewels, with +three large pendants beneath. + +We are ignorant tourists, liable to much error in trying to seek +motives in artists who worked seven hundred years ago for a society +which thought and felt in forms quite unlike ours, but the medieval +pilgrim was more ignorant than we, and much simpler in mind; if the +idea of an ornament occurs to us, it certainly occurred to him, and +still more to the glassworker whose business was to excite his +illusions. An artist, if good for anything, foresees what his public +will see; and what his public will see is what he ought to have +intended--the measure of his genius. If the public sees more than he +himself did, this is his credit; if less, this is his fault. No +matter how simple or ignorant we are, we ought to feel a discord or +a harmony where the artist meant us to feel it, and when we see a +motive, we conclude that other people have seen it before us, and +that it must, therefore, have been intended. Neither of the transept +roses is treated like this one; neither has the effect of a personal +ornament; neither is treated as a jewel. No one knew so well as the +artist that such treatment must give the effect of a jewel. The +Roses of France and of Dreux bear indelibly and flagrantly the +character of France and Dreux; on the western rose is stamped with +greater refinement but equal decision the character of a much +greater power than either of them. + +No artist would have ventured to put up, before the eyes of Mary in +Majesty, above the windows so dear to her, any object that she had +not herself commanded. Whether a miracle was necessary, or whether +genius was enough, is a point of casuistry which you can settle with +Albertus Magnus or Saint Bernard, and which you will understand as +little when settled as before; but for us, beyond the futilities of +unnecessary doubt, the Virgin designed this rose; not perhaps in +quite the same perfect spirit in which she designed the lancets, but +still wholly for her own pleasure and as her own idea. She placed +upon the breast of her Church--which symbolized herself--a jewel so +gorgeous that no earthly majesty could bear comparison with it, and +which no other heavenly majesty has rivalled. As one watches the +light play on it, one is still overcome by the glories of the +jewelled rose and its three gemmed pendants; one feels a little of +the effect she meant it to produce even on infidels, Moors, and +heretics, but infinitely more on the men who feared and the women +who adored her;--not to dwell too long upon it, one admits that hers +is the only Church. One would admit anything that she should +require. If you had only the soul of a shrimp, you would crawl, like +the Abbe Suger, to kiss her feet. + +Unfortunately she is gone, or comes here now so very rarely that we +never shall see her; but her genius remains as individual here as +the genius of Blanche of Castile and Pierre de Dreux in the +transepts. That the three lancets were her own taste, as distinctly +as the Trianon was the taste of Louis XIV, is self-evident. They +represent all that was dearest to her; her Son's glory on her right; +her own beautiful life in the middle; her royal ancestry on her +left: the story of her divine right, thrice-told. The pictures are +all personal, like family portraits. Above them the man who worked +in 1200 to carry out the harmony, and to satisfy the Virgin's +wishes, has filled his rose with a dozen or two little compositions +in glass, which reveal their subjects only to the best powers of a +binocle. Looking carefully, one discovers at last that this gorgeous +combination of all the hues of Paradise contains or hides a Last +Judgment--the one subject carefully excluded from the old work, and +probably not existing on the south portal for another twenty years. +If the scheme of the western rose dates from 1200, as is reasonable +to suppose, this Last Judgment is the oldest in the church, and +makes a link between the theology of the first crusade, beneath, and +the theology of Pierre Mauclerc in the south porch. The churchman is +the only true and final judge on his own doctrine, and we neither +know nor care to know the facts; but we are as good judges as he of +the feeling, and we are at full liberty to feel that such a Last +Judgment as this was never seen before or since by churchman or +heretic, unless by virtue of the heresy which held that the true +Christian must be happy in being damned since such is the will of +God. That this blaze of heavenly light was intended, either by the +Virgin or by her workmen, to convey ideas of terror or pain, is a +notion which the Church might possibly preach, but which we sinners +knew to be false in the thirteenth century as well as we know it +now. Never in all these seven hundred years has one of us looked up +at this rose without feeling it to be Our Lady's promise of +Paradise. + +Here as everywhere else throughout the church, one feels the +Virgin's presence, with no other thought than her majesty and grace. +To the Virgin and to her suppliants, as to us, who though outcasts +in other churches can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was not +a symbol of God's justice or man's corruption, but of her own +infinite mercy. The Trinity judged, through Christ;--Christ loved +and pardoned, through her. She wielded the last and highest power on +earth and in hell. In the glow and beauty of her nature, the light +of her Son's infinite love shone as the sunlight through the glass, +turning the Last Judgment itself into the highest proof of her +divine and supreme authority. The rudest ruffian of the Middle Ages, +when he looked at this Last Judgment, laughed; for what was the Last +Judgment to her! An ornament, a plaything, a pleasure! a jewelled +decoration which she wore on her breast! Her chief joy was to +pardon; her eternal instinct was to love; her deepest passion was +pity! On her imperial heart the flames of hell showed only the +opaline colours of heaven. Christ the Trinity might judge as much as +He pleased, but Christ the Mother would rescue; and her servants +could look boldly into the flames. + +If you, or even our friends the priests who still serve Mary's +shrine, suspect that there is some exaggeration in this language, it +will only oblige you to admit presently that there is none; but for +the moment we are busy with glass rather than with faith, and there +is a world of glass here still to study. Technically, we are done +with it. The technique of the thirteenth century comes naturally and +only too easily out of that of the twelfth. Artistically, the motive +remains the same, since it is always the Virgin; but although the +Virgin of Chartres is always the Virgin of Majesty, there are +degrees in the assertion of her majesty even here, which affect the +art, and qualify its feeling. Before stepping down to the thirteenth +century, one should look at these changes of the Virgin's royal +presence. + +First and most important as record is the stone Virgin on the south +door of the western portal, which we studied, with her Byzantine +Court; and the second, also in stone, is of the same period, on one +of the carved capitals of the portal, representing the Adoration of +the Magi. The third is the glass Virgin at the top of the central +lancet. All three are undoubted twelfth-century work; and you can +see another at Paris, on the same door of Notre Dame, and still more +on Abbe Suger's window at Saint-Denis, and, later, within a +beautiful grisaille at Auxerre; but all represent the same figure; a +Queen, enthroned, crowned, with the symbols of royal power, holding +in her lap the infant King whose guardian she is. Without pretending +to know what special crown she bears, we can assume, till corrected, +that it is the Carlovingian imperial, not the Byzantine. The Trinity +nowhere appears except as implied in the Christ. At the utmost, a +mystic hand may symbolize the Father. The Virgin as represented by +the artists of the twelfth century in the Ile de France and at +Chartres seems to be wholly French in spite of the Greek atmosphere +of her workmanship. One might almost insist that she is blonde, full +in face, large in figure, dazzlingly beautiful, and not more than +thirty years of age. The Child never seems to be more than five. + +You are equally free to see a Southern or Eastern type in her face, +and perhaps the glass suggests a dark type, but the face of the +Virgin on the central lancet is a fourteenth-century restoration +which may or may not reproduce the original, while all the other +Virgins represented in glass, except one, belong to the thirteenth +century. The possible exception is a well-known figure called Notre- +Dame-de-la-Belle-Verriere in the choir next the south transept. A +strange, almost uncanny feeling seems to haunt this window, +heightened by the veneration in which it was long held as a shrine, +though it is now deserted for Notre-Dame-du-Pilier on the opposite +side of the choir. The charm is partly due to the beauty of the +scheme of the angels, supporting, saluting, and incensing the Virgin +and Child with singular grace and exquisite feeling, but rather that +of the thirteenth than of the twelfth century. Here, too, the face +of the Virgin is not ancient. Apparently the original glass was +injured by time or accident, and the colours were covered or renewed +by a simple drawing in oil. Elsewhere the colour is thought to be +particularly good, and the window is a favourite mine of motives for +artists to exploit, but to us its chief interest is its singular +depth of feeling. The Empress Mother sits full-face, on a rich +throne and dais, with the Child on her lap, repeating her attitude +except that her hands support His shoulders. She wears her crown; +her feet rest on a stool, and both stool, rug, robe, and throne are +as rich as colour and decoration can make them. At last a dove +appears, with the rays of the Holy Ghost. Imperial as the Virgin is, +it is no longer quite the unlimited empire of the western lancet. +The aureole encircles her head only; she holds no sceptre; the Holy +Ghost seems to give her support which she did not need before, while +Saint Gabriel and Saint Michael, her archangels, with their symbols +of power, have disappeared. Exquisite as the angels are who surround +and bear up her throne, they assert no authority. The window itself +is not a single composition; the panels below seem inserted later +merely to fill up the space; six represent the Marriage of Cana, and +the three at the bottom show a grotesque little demon tempting +Christ in the Desert. The effect of the whole, in this angle which +is almost always dark or filled with shadow, is deep and sad, as +though the Empress felt her authority fail, and had come down from +the western portal to reproach us for neglect. The face is haunting. +Perhaps its force may be due to nearness, for this is the only +instance in glass of her descending so low that we can almost touch +her, and see what the twelfth century instinctively felt in the +features which, even in their beatitude, were serious and almost sad +under the austere responsibilities of infinite pity and power. + +No doubt the window is very old, or perhaps an imitation or +reproduction of one which was much older, but to the pilgrim its +interest lies mostly in its personality, and there it stands alone. +Although the Virgin reappears again and again in the lower windows,- +-as in those on either side of the Belle-Verriere; in the remnant of +window representing her miracles at Chartres, in the south aisle +next the transept; in the fifteenth-century window of the chapel of +Vendome which follows; and in the third window which follows that of +Vendome and represents her coronation,--she does not show herself +again in all her majesty till we look up to the high windows above. +There we shall find her in her splendour on her throne, above the +high altar, and still more conspicuously in the Rose of France in +the north transept. Still again she is enthroned in the first window +of the choir next the north transept. Elsewhere we can see her +standing, but never does she come down to us in the full splendour +of her presence. Yet wherever we find her at Chartres, and of +whatever period, she is always Queen. Her expression and attitude +are always calm and commanding. She never calls for sympathy by +hysterical appeals to our feelings; she does not even altogether +command, but rather accepts the voluntary, unquestioning, +unhesitating, instinctive faith, love, and devotion of mankind. She +will accept ours, and we have not the heart to refuse it; we have +not even the right, for we are her guests. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS + +One's first visit to a great cathedral is like one's first visit to +the British Museum; the only intelligent idea is to follow the order +of time, but the museum is a chaos in time, and the cathedral is +generally all of one and the same time. At Chartres, after finishing +with the twelfth century, everything is of the thirteenth. To catch +even an order in time, one must first know what part of the +thirteenth-century church was oldest. The books say it was the +choir. After the fire of 1194, the pilgrims used the great crypt as +a church where services were maintained; but the builders must have +begun with the central piers and the choir, because the choir was +the only essential part of the church. Nave and transepts might be +suppressed, but without a choir the church was useless, and in a +shrine, such as Chartres, the choir was the whole church. Toward the +choir, then, the priest or artist looks first; and, since dates are +useful, the choir must be dated. The same popular enthusiasm, which +had broken out in 1145, revived in 1195 to help the rebuilding; and +the work was pressed forward with the same feverish haste, so that +ten years should have been ample to provide for the choir, if for +nothing more; and services may have been resumed there as early as +the year 1206; certainly in 1210. Probably the windows were designed +and put in hand as soon as the architect gave the measurements, and +any one who intended to give a window would have been apt to choose +one of the spaces in the apse, in Mary's own presence, next the +sanctuary. + +The first of the choir windows to demand a date is the Belle- +Verriere, which is commonly classed as early thirteenth-century, and +may go with the two windows next it, one of which--the so-called +Zodiac window--bears a singularly interesting inscription: "COMES +TEOBALDUS DAT...AD PRECES COMIXIS PTICENSIS." If Shakespeare could +write the tragedy of "King John," we cannot admit ourselves not to +have read it, and this inscription might be a part of the play. The +"pagus perticensis" lies a short drive to the west, some fifteen or +twenty miles on the road to Le Mans, and in history is known as the +Comte du Perche, although its memory is now preserved chiefly by its +famous breed of Percheron horses. Probably the horse also dates from +the crusades, and may have carried Richard Coeur-de-Lion, but in any +case the count of that day was a vassal of Richard, and one of his +intimate friends, whose memory is preserved forever by a single line +in Richard's prison-song:-- + + Mes compaignons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim, + Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain. + + +In 1194, when Richard Coeur-de-Lion wrote these verses, the Comte du +Perche was Geoffrey III, who had been a companion of Richard on his +crusade in 1192, where, according to the Chronicle, "he shewed +himself but a timid man"; which seems scarcely likely in a companion +of Richard; but it is not of him that the Chartres window speaks, +except as the son of Mahaut or Matilda of Champagne who was a sister +of Alix of Champagne, Queen of France. The Table shows, therefore, +that Geoffroi's son and successor as the Comte du Perche--Thomas-- +was second cousin of Louis the Lion, known as King Louis VIII of +France. They were probably of much the same age. + +If this were all, one might carry it in one's head for a while, but +the relationship which dominates the history of this period was that +of all these great ruling families with Richard Coeur-de-Lion and +his brother John, nicknamed Lackland, both of whom in succession +were the most powerful Frenchmen in France. The Table shows that +their mother Eleanor of Guienne, the first Queen of Louis VII, bore +him two daughters, one of whom, Alix, married, about 1164, the Count +Thibaut of Chartres and Blois, while the other, Mary, married the +great Count of Champagne. Both of them being half-sisters of Coeur- +de-Lion and John, their children were nephews or half-nephews, +indiscriminately, of all the reigning monarchs, and Coeur-de-Lion +immortalized one of them by a line in his prison-song, as he +immortalized Le Perche:-- + + Je nel di pas de celi de Chartain, + La mere Loeis. + + +"Loeis," therefore, or Count Louis of Chatres, was not only nephew +of Coeur-de-Lion and John Lackland, but was also, like Count Thomas +of Le Perche, a second cousin of Louis VIII. Feudally and personally +he was directly attached to Coeur-de-Lion rather than to Philip +Augustus. + +If society in the twelfth century could follow the effects of these +relationships, personal and feudal, it was cleverer than society in +the twentieth; but so much is simple: Louis of France, Thibaut of +Chartres, and Thomas of Le Perche, were cousins and close friends in +the year 1215, and all were devoted to the Virgin of Chartres. +Judging from the character of Louis's future queen, Blanche of +Castile, their wives were, if possible, more devoted still; and in +that year Blanche gave birth to Saint Louis, who seems to have been +the most devoted of all. + +Meanwhile their favourite uncle, Coeur-de-Lion, had died in the year +1199. Thibaut's great-grandmother, Eleanor of Guienne, died in 1202. +King John, left to himself, rapidly accumulated enemies innumerable, +abroad and at home. In 1203, Philip Augustus confiscated all the +fiefs he held from the French Crown, and in 1204 seized Normandy. +John sank rapidly from worse to worst, until at last the English +barons rose and forced him to grant their Magna Carta at Runnimede +in 1215. + +The year 1215 was, therefore, a year to be remembered at Chartres, +as at Mont-Saint-Michel; one of the most convenient dates in +history. Every one is supposed, even now, to know what happened +then, to give another violent wrench to society, like the Norman +Conquest in 1066. John turned on the barons and broke them down; +they sent to + +[Genealogical chart showing the relationships among England, +Champagne and Chartres and France and La Perche.] + +France for help, and offered the crown of England to young Louis, +whose father, Philip Augustus, called a council which pledged +support to Louis. Naturally the Comte du Perche and the Comte de +Chartres must have pledged their support, among the foremost, to go +with Louis to England. He was then twenty-nine years old; they were +probably somewhat younger. + +The Zodiac window, with its inscription, was the immediate result. +The usual authority that figures in the histories is Roger of +Wendover, but much the more amusing for our purpose is a garrulous +Frenchman known as the Menestrel de Rheims who wrote some fifty +years later. After telling in his delightful thirteenth-century +French, how the English barons sent hostages to Louis, "et mes sires +Loueys les fit bien gardeir et honourablement," the Menestrel +continued:-- + +Et assembla granz genz par amours, et par deniers, et par lignage. +Et fu avec lui li cuens dou Perche, et li cuens de Montfort, et li +cuens de Chartres, et li cuens de Monbleart, et mes sires Enjorrans +de Couci, et mout d'autre grant seigneur dont je ne parole mie. + +The Comte de Chartres, therefore, may be supposed to have gone with +the Comte du Perche, and to have witnessed the disaster at Lincoln +which took place May 20, 1217, after King John's death:-- + +Et li cuens dou Perche faisait l'avantgarde, et courut tout leiz des +portes; et la garnisons de laienz issi hors et leur coururent sus; +et i ot asseiz trait et lancie; et chevaus morz et chevaliers +abatuz, et gent a pie morz et navreiz. Et li cuens dou Perche i fu +morz par un ribaut qui li leva le pan dou hauberc, et l'ocist d'un +coutel; et fu desconfite l'avantgarde par la mort le conte. Et quant +mes sires Loueys le sot, si ot graigneur duel qu'il eust onques, car +il estoit ses prochains ami de char. + +Such language would be spoiled by translation. For us it is enough +to know that the "ribaut" who lifted the "pan," or skirt, of the +Count's "hauberc" or coat-of-mail, as he sat on his horse refusing +to surrender to English traitors, and stabbed him from below with a +knife, may have been an invention of the Menestrel; or the knight +who pierced with his lance through the visor to the brain, may have +been an invention of Roger of Wendover; but in either case, Count +Thomas du Perche lost his life at Lincoln, May 20, 1217, to the +deepest regret of his cousin Louis the Lion as well as of the Count +Thibaut of Chartres, whom he charged to put up a window for him in +honour of the Virgin. + +The window must have been ordered at once, because Count Thibaut, +"le Jeune ou le Lepreux," died himself within a year, April 22, +1218, thus giving an exact date for one of the choir windows. +Probably it was one of the latest, because the earliest to be +provided would have been certainly those of the central apsidal +chapel. According to the rule laid down by Viollet-le-Duc, the +windows in which blue strongly predominates, like the Saint +Sylvester, are likely to be earlier than those with a prevailing +tone of red. We must take for granted that some of these great +legendary windows were in place as early as 1210, because, in +October of that year, Philip Augustus attended mass here. There are +some two dozen of these windows in the choir alone, each of which +may well have represented a year's work in the slow processes of +that day, and we can hardly suppose that the workshops of 1200 were +on a scale such as to allow of more than two to have been in hand at +once. Thirty or forty years later, when the Sainte Chapelle was +built, the workshops must have been vastly enlarged, but with the +enlargement, the glass deteriorated. Therefore, if the architecture +were so far advanced in the year 1200 as to allow of beginning work +on the glass, in the apse, the year 1225 is none too late to allow +for its completion in the choir. + +Dates are stupidly annoying;--what we want is not dates but taste;-- +yet we are uncomfortable without them. Except the Perche window, +none of the lower ones in the choir helps at all; but the clere- +story is more useful. There they run in pairs, each pair surmounted +by a rose. The first pair (numbers 27 and 28) next the north +transept, shows the Virgin of France, supported, according to the +Abbes Bulteau and Clerval, by the arms of Bishop Reynault de Moucon, +who was Bishop of Chartres at the time of the great fire in 1194 and +died in 1217. The window number 28 shows two groups of peasants on +pilgrimage; below, on his knees, Robert of Berou, as donor: +"ROBERTUS DE BEROU: CARN. CANCELLARIUS." The Cartulary of the +Cathedral contains an entry (Bulteau, i, 123): "The 26th February, +1216, died Robert de Berou, Chancellor, who has given us a window." +The Cartulary mentions several previous gifts of windows by canons +or other dignitaries of the Church in the year 1215. + +Next follow, or once followed, a pair of windows (numbers 29 and 30) +which were removed by the sculptor Bridan, in 1788, in order to +obtain light for his statuary below. The donor was "DOMINA JOHANNES +BAPTISTA," who, we are told, was Jeanne de Dammartin; and the window +was given in memory, or in honour, of her marriage to Ferdinand of +Castile in 1237. Jeanne was a very great lady, daughter of the Comte +d'Aumale and Marie de Ponthieu. Her father affianced her in 1235 to +the King of England, Henry III, and even caused the marriage to be +celebrated by proxy, but Queen Blanche broke it off, as she had +forbidden, in 1231, that of Yolande of Britanny. She relented so far +as to allow Jeanne in 1237 to marry Ferdinand of Castile, who still +sits on horseback in the next rose: "REX CASTILLAE." He won the +crown of Castile in 1217 and died in 1252, when Queen Jeanne +returned to Abbeville and then, at latest, put up this window at +Chartres in memory of her husband. + +The windows numbers 31 and 32 are the subject of much dispute, but +whether the donors were Jean de Chatillon or the three children of +Thibaut le Grand of Champagne, they must equally belong to the later +series of 1260-70, rather than to the earlier of 1210-20. The same +thing is or was true of the next pair, numbers 33 and 34, which were +removed in 1773, but the record says that at the bottom of number 34 +was the figure of Saint Louis's son, Louis of France, who died in +1260, before his father, who still rides in the rose above. + +Thus the north side of the choir shows a series of windows that +precisely cover the lifetime of Saint Louis (1215-70). The south +side begins, next the apse, with windows numbers 35 and 36, which +belong, according to the Comte d'Armancourt, to the family of +Montfort, whose ruined castle crowns the hill of Montfort l'Amaury, +on the road to Paris, some forty kilometres northeast of Chartres. +Every one is supposed to know the story of Simon de Montfort who was +killed before Toulouse in 1218. Simon left two sons, Amaury and +Simon. The sculptor Bridan put an end also to the window of Amaury, +but in the rose, Amaury, according to the Abbes, still rides on a +white horse. Amaury's history is well known. He was made Constable +of France by Queen Blanche in 1231; went on crusade in 1239; was +captured by the infidels, taken to Babylon, ransomed, and in +returning to France, died at Otranto in 1241. For that age Amaury +was but a commonplace person, totally overshadowed by his brother +Simon, who went to England, married King John's daughter Eleanor, +and became almost king himself as Earl of Leicester. At your leisure +you can read Matthew Paris's dramatic account of him and of his +death at the battle of Evesham, August 5, 1265. He was perhaps the +last of the very great men of the thirteenth century, excepting +Saint Louis himself, who lived a few years longer. M. d'Armancourt +insists that it is the great Earl of Leicester who rides with his +visor up, in full armour, on a brown horse, in the rose above the +windows numbers 37 and 38. In any case, the windows would be later +than 1240. + +The next pair of windows, numbers 39 and 40, also removed in 1788, +still offer, in their rose, the figure of a member of the Courtenay +family. Gibbon was so much attracted by the romance of the +Courtenays as to make an amusing digression on the subject which +does not concern us or the cathedral except so far as it tells us +that the Courtenays, like so many other benefactors of Chartres +Cathedral, belonged to the royal blood. Louis-le-Gros, who died in +1137, besides his son Louis-le-Jeune, who married Eleanor of Guienne +in that year, had a younger son, Pierre, whom he married to Isabel +de Courtenay, and who, like Philip Hurepel, took the title of his +wife. Pierre had a son, Pierre II, who was a cousin of Philip +Augustus, and became the hero of the most lurid tragedy of the time. +Chosen Emperor of Constantinople in 1216, to succeed his brothers- +in-law Henry and Baldwin, he tried to march across Illyria and +Macedonia, from Durazzo opposite Brindisi, with a little army of +five thousand men, and instantly disappeared forever. The Epirotes +captured him in the summer of 1217, and from that moment nothing is +known of his fate. + +On the whole, this catastrophe was perhaps the grimmest of all the +Shakespearean tragedies of the thirteenth century; and one would +like to think that the Chartres window was a memorial of this +Pierre, who was a cousin of France and an emperor without empire; +but M. d'Armancourt insists that the window was given in memory not +of this Pierre, but of his nephew, another Pierre de Courtenay, +Seigneur de Conches, who went on crusade with Saint Louis in 1249 to +Egypt, and died shortly before the defeat and captivity of the King, +on February 8, 1250. His brother Raoul, Seigneur d'Illiers, who died +in 1271, is said to be donor of the next window, number 40. The date +of the Courtenay windows should therefore be no earlier than the +death of Saint Louis in 1270; yet one would like to know what has +become of another Courtenay window left by the first Pierre's son- +in-law, Gaucher or Gaultier of Bar-sur-Seine, who seems to have been +Vicomte de Chartres, and who, dying before Damietta in 1218, made a +will leaving to Notre Dame de Chartres thirty silver marks, "de +quibus fieri debet miles montatus super equum suum." Not only would +this mounted knight on horseback supply an early date for these +interesting figures, but would fix also the cost, for a mark +contained eight ounces of silver, and was worth ten sous, or half a +livre. We shall presently see that Aucassins gave twenty sous, or a +livre, for a strong ox, so that the "miles montatus super equum +suum" in glass was equivalent to fifteen oxen if it were money of +Paris, which is far from certain. + +This is an economical problem which belongs to experts, but the +historical value of these early evidences is still something,-- +perhaps still as much as ten sous. All the windows tend to the same +conclusion. Even the last pair, numbers 41 and 42, offer three +personal clues which lead to the same result:--the arms of Bouchard +de Marly who died in 1226, almost at the same time as Louis VIII; a +certain Colinus or Colin, "de camera Regis," who was alive in 1225; +and Robert of Beaumont in the rose, who seems to be a Beaumont of Le +Perche, of whom little or nothing is as yet certainly known. As a +general rule, there are two series of windows, one figuring the +companions or followers of Louis VIII (1215-26); the other, friends +or companions of Saint Louis (1226-70), Queen Blanche uniting both. +What helps to hold the sequences in a certain order, is that the +choir was complete, and services regularly resumed there, in 1210, +while in 1220 the transept and nave were finished and vaulted. For +the apside windows, therefore, we will assume, subject to +correction, a date from 1200 to 1225 for their design and +workmanship; for the transept, 1220 to 1236; and for the nave a +general tendency to the actual reign of Saint Louis from 1236 to +1270. Since there is a deal of later glass scattered everywhere +among the earlier, the margin of error is great; but by keeping the +reign of Louis VIII and its personages distinct from that of Louis +IX and his generation, we can be fairly sure of our main facts. +Meanwhile the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, wholly built and completed +between 1240 and 1248, offers a standard of comparison for the +legendary windows. + +The choir of Chartres is as long as the nave, and much broader, +besides that the apse was planned with seven circular projections +which greatly increased the window space, so that the guidebook +reckons thirty-seven windows. A number of these are grisailles, and +the true amateur of glass considers the grisailles to be as well +worth study as the legendary windows. They are a decoration which +has no particular concern with churches, and no distinct religious +meaning, but, it seems, a religious value which Viollet-le-Duc is at +some trouble to explain; and, since his explanation is not very +technical, we can look at it, before looking at the legends:-- + +The colouration of the windows had the advantage of throwing on the +opaque walls a veil, or coloured glazing, of extreme delicacy, +always assuming that the coloured windows themselves were +harmoniously toned. Whether their resources did not permit the +artists to adopt a complete system of coloured glass, or whether +they wanted to get daylight in purer quality into their interiors,-- +whatever may have been their reasons,--they resorted to this +beautiful grisaille decoration which is also a colouring harmony +obtained by the aid of a long experience in the effects of light on +translucent surfaces. Many of our churches retain grisaille windows +filling either all, or only a part, of their bays. In the latter +case, the grisailles are reserved for the side windows which are +meant to be seen obliquely, and in that case the coloured glass +fills the bays of the fond, the apsidal openings which are meant to +be seen in face from a distance. These lateral grisailles are still +opaque enough to prevent the solar rays which pass through them from +lighting the coloured windows on the reverse side; yet, at certain +hours of the day, these solar rays throw a pearly light on the +coloured windows which gives them indescribable transparence and +refinement of tones. The lateral windows in the choir of the Auxerre +Cathedral, half-grisaille, half-coloured, throw on the wholly +coloured apsidal window, by this means, a glazing the softness of +which one can hardly conceive. The opaline light which comes through +these lateral bays, and makes a sort of veil, transparent in the +extreme, under the lofty vaulting, is crossed by the brilliant tones +of the windows behind, which give the play of precious stones. The +solid outlines then seem to waver like objects seen through a sheet +of clear water. Distances change their values, and take depths in +which the eye gets lost. With every hour of the day these effects +are altered, and always with new harmonies which one never tires of +trying to understand; but the deeper one's study goes, the more +astounded one becomes before the experience acquired by these +artists, whose theories on the effects of colour, assuming that they +had any, are unknown to us and whom the most kindly-disposed among +us treat as simple children. + +You can read the rest for yourselves. Grisaille is a separate branch +of colour-decoration which belongs with the whole system of lighting +and fenetrage, and will have to remain a closed book because the +feeling and experience which explained it once are lost, and we +cannot recover either. Such things must have been always felt rather +than reasoned, like the irregularities in plan of the builders; the +best work of the best times shows the same subtlety of sense as the +dog shows in retrieving, or the bee in flying, but which tourists +have lost. All we can do is to note that the grisailles were +intended to have values. They were among the refinements of light +and colour with which the apse of Chartres is so crowded that one +must be content to feel what one can, and let the rest go. + +Understand, we cannot! nothing proves that the greatest artists who +ever lived have, in a logical sense, understood! or that omnipotence +has ever understood! or that the utmost power of expression has ever +been capable of expressing more than the reaction of one energy on +another, but not of two on two; and when one sits here, in the +central axis of this complicated apse, one sees, in mere light +alone, the reaction of hundreds of energies, although time has left +only a wreck of what the artist put here. One of the best window +spaces is wholly filled up by the fourteenth-century doorway to the +chapel of Saint Piat, and only by looking at the two windows which +correspond on the north does a curious inquirer get a notion of the +probable loss. The same chapel more or less blocks the light of +three other principal windows. The sun, the dust, the acids of +dripping water, and the other works of time, have in seven hundred +years corroded or worn away or altered the glass, especially on the +south side. Windows have been darkened by time and mutilated by +wilful injury. Scores of the panels are wholly restored, modern +reproductions or imitations. Even after all this loss, the glass is +probably the best-preserved, or perhaps the only preserved part of +the decoration in colour, for we never shall know the colour- +decoration of the vaults, the walls, the columns, or the floors. +Only one point is fairly sure;--that on festivals, if not at other +times, every foot of space was covered in some way or another, +throughout the apse, with colour; either paint or tapestry or +embroidery or Byzantine brocades and Oriental stuffs or rugs, lining +the walls, covering the altars, and hiding the floor. Occasionally +you happen upon illuminated manuscripts showing the interiors of +chapels with their colour-decoration; but everything has perished +here except the glass. + +If one may judge from the glass of later centuries, the first +impression from the thirteenth-century windows ought to be +disappointment. You should find them too effeminate, too soft, too +small, and above all not particularly religious. Indeed, except for +the nominal subjects of the legends, one sees nothing religious +about them; the medallions, when studied with the binocle, turn out +to be less religious than decorative. Saint Michael would not have +felt at home here, and Saint Bernard would have turned from them +with disapproval; but when they were put up, Saint Bernard was long +dead, and Saint Michael had yielded his place to the Virgin. This +apse is all for her. At its entrance she sat, on either side, in the +Belle-Verriere or as Our Lady of the Pillar, to receive the secrets +and the prayers of suppliants who wished to address her directly in +person; there she bent down to our level, resumed her humanity, and +felt our griefs and passions. Within, where the cross-lights fell +through the wide columned space behind the high altar, was her +withdrawing room, where the decorator and builder thought only of +pleasing her. The very faults of the architecture and effeminacy of +taste witness the artists' object. If the glassworkers had thought +of themselves or of the public or even of the priests, they would +have strained for effects, strong masses of colour, and striking +subjects to impress the imagination. Nothing of the sort is even +suggested. The great, awe-inspiring mosaic figure of the Byzantine +half-dome was a splendid religious effect, but this artist had in +his mind an altogether different thought. He was in the Virgin's +employ; he was decorating her own chamber in her own palace; he +wanted to please her; and he knew her tastes, even when she did not +give him her personal orders. To him, a dream would have been an +order. The salary of the twelfth-century artist was out of all +relation with the percentage of a twentieth-century decorator. The +artist of 1200 was probably the last who cared little for the baron, +not very much for the priest, and nothing for the public, unless he +happened to be paid by the guild, and then he cared just to the +extent of his hire, or, if he was himself a priest, not even for +that. His pay was mostly of a different kind, and was the same as +that of the peasants who were hauling the stone from the quarry at +Bercheres while he was firing his ovens. His reward was to come when +he should be promoted to decorate the Queen of Heaven's palace in +the New Jerusalem, and he served a mistress who knew better than he +did what work was good and what was bad, and how to give him his +right place. Mary's taste was infallible; her knowledge like her +power had no limits; she knew men's thoughts as well as acts, and +could not be deceived. Probably, even in our own time, an artist +might find his imagination considerably stimulated and his work +powerfully improved if he knew that anything short of his best would +bring him to the gallows, with or without trial by jury; but in the +twelfth century the gallows was a trifle; the Queen hardly +considered it a punishment for an offence to her dignity. The artist +was vividly aware that Mary disposed of hell. + +All this is written in full, on every stone and window of this apse, +as legible as the legends to any one who cares to read. The artists +were doing their best, not to please a swarm of flat-eared peasants +or slow-witted barons, but to satisfy Mary, the Queen of Heaven, to +whom the Kings and Queens of France were coming constantly for help, +and whose absolute power was almost the only restraint recognized by +Emperor, Pope, and clown. The colour-decoration is hers, and hers +alone. For her the lights are subdued, the tones softened, the +subjects selected, the feminine taste preserved. That other great +ladies interested themselves in the matter, even down to its +technical refinements, is more than likely; indeed, in the central +apside chapel, suggesting the Auxerre grisaille that Viollet-le-Duc +mentioned, is a grisaille which bears the arms of Castile and Queen +Blanche; further on, three other grisailles bear also the famous +castles, but this is by no means the strongest proof of feminine +taste. The difficulty would be rather to find a touch of certainly +masculine taste in the whole apse. + +Since the central apside chapel is the most important, we can begin +with the windows there, bearing in mind that the subject of the +central window was the Life of Christ, dictated by rule or custom. +On Christ's left hand is the window of Saint Peter; next him is +Saint Paul. All are much restored; thirty-three of the medallions +are wholly new. Opposite Saint Peter, at Christ's right hand, is the +window of Saint Simon and Saint Jude; and next is the grisaille with +the arms of Castile. If these windows were ordered between 1205 and +1210, Blanche, who was born in 1187, and married in 1200, would have +been a young princess of twenty or twenty-five when she gave this +window in grisaille to regulate and harmonize and soften the +lighting of the Virgin's boudoir. The central chapel must be taken +to be the most serious, the most studied, and the oldest of the +chapels in the church, above the crypt. The windows here should rank +in importance next to the lancets of the west front which are only +about sixty years earlier. They show fully that difference. + +Here one must see for one's self. Few artists know much about it, +and still fewer care for an art which has been quite dead these four +hundred years. The ruins of Nippur would hardly be more intelligible +to the ordinary architect of English tradition than these twelfth- +century efforts of the builders of Chartres. Even the learning of +Viollet-le-Duc was at fault in dealing with a building so personal +as this, the history of which is almost wholly lost. This central +chapel must have been meant to give tone to the apse, and it shows +with the colour-decoration of a queen's salon, a subject-decoration +too serious for the amusement of heretics. One sees at a glance that +the subject-decoration was inspired by church-custom, while colour +was an experiment and the decorators of this enormous window space +were at liberty as colourists to please the Countess of Chartres and +the Princess Blanche and the Duchess of Brittany, without much +regarding the opinions of the late Bernard of Clairvaux or even +Augustine of Hippo, since the great ladies of the Court knew better +than the Saints what would suit the Virgin. + +The subject of the central window was prescribed by tradition. +Christ is the Church, and in this church he and his Mother are one; +therefore the life of Christ is the subject of the central window, +but the treatment is the Virgin's, as the colours show, and as the +absence of every influence but hers, including the Crucifixion, +proves officially. Saint Peter and Saint Paul are in their proper +place as the two great ministers of the throne who represent the two +great parties in western religion, the Jewish and the Gentile. +Opposite them, balancing by their family influence the weight of +delegated power, are two of Mary's nephews, Simon and Jude; but this +subject branches off again into matters so personal to Mary that +Simon and Jude require closer acquaintance. One must study a new +guidebook--the "Golden Legend," by the blessed James, Bishop of +Genoa and member of the order of Dominic, who was born at Varazze or +Voragio in almost the same year that Thomas was born at Aquino, and +whose "Legenda Aurea," written about the middle of the thirteenth +century, was more popular history than the Bible itself, and more +generally consulted as authority. The decorators of the thirteenth +century got their motives quite outside the Bible, in sources that +James of Genoa compiled into a volume almost as fascinating as the +"Fioretti of Saint Francis." + +According to the "Golden Legend" and the tradition accepted in +Jerusalem by pilgrims and crusaders, Mary's family connection was +large. It appears that her mother Anne was three times married, and +by each husband had a daughter Mary, so that there were three Marys, +half-sisters. + +Joachim-Anne- Cleophas- -Salome + +Joseph-Mary Alpheus-Mary Mary-Zebedee + +Christ James Joseph Simon Jude James John +the Minor the the Major the Evangelist +Apostle Just St. Iago of Compostella + +Simon and Jude were, therefore, nephews of Mary and cousins of +Christ, whose lives were evidence of the truth not merely of +Scripture, but specially of the private and family distinction of +their aunt, the Virgin Mother of Christ. They were selected, rather +than their brothers, or cousins James and John, for the conspicuous +honour of standing opposite Peter and Paul, doubtless by reason of +some merit of their own, but perhaps also because in art the two +counted as one, and therefore the one window offered two witnesses, +which allowed the artist to insert a grisaille in place of another +legendary window to complete the chapel on their right. According to +Viollet-le-Duc, the grisaille in this position regulates the light +and so completes the effect. + +If custom prescribed a general rule for the central chapel, it seems +to have left great freedom in the windows near by. At Chartres the +curved projection that contains the next two windows was not a +chapel, but only a window-bay, for the sake of the windows, and, if +the artists aimed at pleasing the Virgin, they would put their best +work there. At Bourges in the same relative place are three of the +best windows in the building:--the Prodigal Son, the New Alliance +and the Good Samaritan; all of them full of life, story, and colour, +with little reference to a worship or a saint. At Chartres the +choice is still more striking, and the windows are also the best in +the building, after the twelfth-century glass of the west front. The +first, which comes next to Blanche's grisaille in the central +chapel, is given to another nephew of Mary and apostle of Christ, +Saint James the Major, whose life is recorded in the proper Bible +Dictionaries, with a terminal remark as follows:-- + +For legends respecting his death and his connections with Spain, see +the Roman Breviary, in which the healing of a paralytic and the +conversion of Hermogenes are attributed to him, and where it is +asserted that he preached the Gospel in Spain, and that his remains +were translated to Compostella ... As there is no shadow of +foundation for any of the legends here referred to, we pass them by +without further notice. Even Baronius shows himself ashamed of +them.... + +If the learned Baronius thought himself required to show shame for +all the legends that pass as history, he must have suffered cruelly +during his laborious life, and his sufferings would not have been +confined to the annals of the Church; but the historical accuracy of +the glass windows is not our affair, nor are historians especially +concerned in the events of the Virgin's life, whether recorded or +legendary. Religion is, or ought to be, a feeling, and the +thirteenth-century windows are original documents, much more +historical than any recorded in the Bible, since their inspiration +is a different thing from their authority. The true life of Saint +James or Saint Jude or any other of the apostles, did not, in the +opinion of the ladies in the Court of France, furnish subjects +agreeable enough to decorate the palace of the Queen of Heaven; and +that they were right, any one must feel, who compares these two +windows with subjects of dogma. Saint James, better known as +Santiago of Compostella, was a compliment to the young Dauphine-- +before Dauphines existed--the Princess Blanche of Castile, whose +arms, or castles, are on the grisaille window next to it. Perhaps +she chose him to stand there. Certainly her hand is seen plainly +enough throughout the church to warrant suspecting it here. As a +nephew, Saint James was dear to the Virgin, but, as a friend to +Spain, still more dear to Blanche, and it is not likely that pure +accident caused three adjacent windows to take a Spanish tone. + +The Saint James in whom the thirteenth century delighted, and whose +windows one sees at Bourges, Tours, and wherever the scallop-shell +tells of the pilgrim, belongs not to the Bible but to the "Golden +Legend." This window was given by the Merchant Tailors whose +signature appears at the bottom, in the corners, in two pictures +that paint the tailor's shop of Chartres in the first quarter of the +thirteenth century. The shop-boy takes cloth from chests for his +master to show to customers, and to measure off by his ell. The +story of Saint James begins in the lower panel, where he receives +his mission from Christ, Above, on the right, he seems to be +preaching. On the left appears a figure which tells the reason for +the popularity of the story. It is Almogenes, or in the Latin, +Hermogenes, a famous magician in great credit among the Pharisees, +who has the command of demons, as you see, for behind his shoulder, +standing, a little demon is perched, while he orders his pupil +Filetus to convert James. Next, James is shown in discussion with a +group of listeners. Filetus gives him a volume of false doctrine. +Almogenes then further instructs Filetus. James is led away by a +rope, curing a paralytic as he goes. He sends his cloak to Filetus +to drive away the demon. Filetus receives the cloak, and the droll +little demon departs in tears. Almogenes, losing his temper, sends +two demons, with horns on their heads and clubs in their hands, to +reason with James; who sends them back to remonstrate with +Almogenes. The demons then bind Almogenes and bring him before +James, who discusses differences with him until Almogenes burns his +books of magic and prostrates himself before the Saint. Both are +then brought before Herod, and Almogenes breaks a pretty heathen +idol, while James goes to prison. A panel comes in here, out of +place, showing Almogenes enchanting Filetus, and the demon entering +into possession of him. Then Almogenes is seen being very roughly +handled by a young Jew, while the bystanders seem to approve. James +next makes Almogenes throw his books of magic into the sea; both are +led away to execution, curing the infirm on their way; their heads +are cut off; and, at the top, God blesses the orb of the world. + +That this window was intended to amuse the Virgin seems quite as +reasonable an idea as that it should have been made to instruct the +people, or us. Its humour was as humorous then as now, for the +French of the thirteenth century loved humour even in churches, as +their grotesques proclaim. The Saint James window is a tale of +magic, told with the vivacity of a fabliau; but if its motive of +amusement seems still a forced idea, we can pass on, at once, to the +companion window which holds the best position in the church, where, +in the usual cathedral, one expects to find Saint John or some other +apostle; or Saint Joseph; or a doctrinal lesson such as that called +the New Alliance where the Old and New Testaments are united. The +window which the artists have set up here is regarded as the best of +the thirteenth-century windows, and is the least religious. + +The subject is nothing less than the "Chanson de Roland" in pictures +of coloured glass, set in a border worth comparing at leisure with +the twelfth-century borders of the western lancets. Even at +Chartres, the artists could not risk displeasing the Virgin and the +Church by following a wholly profane work like the "Chanson" itself, +and Roland had no place in religion. He could be introduced only +through Charlemagne, who had almost as little right there as he. The +twelfth century had made persistent efforts to get Charlemagne into +the Church, and the Church had made very little effort to keep him +out; yet by the year 1200, Charlemagne had not been sainted except +by the anti-Pope Pascal III in 1165, although there was a popular +belief, supported in Spain by the necessary documents, that Pope +Calixtus II in 1122 had declared the so-called Chronicle of +Archbishop Turpin to be authentic. The Bishop of Chartres in 1200 +was very much too enlightened a prelate to accept the Chronicle or +Turpin or Charlemagne himself, still less Roland and Thierry, as +authentic in sanctity; but if the young and beautiful Dauphine of +France, and her cousins of Chartres, and their artists, warmly +believed that the Virgin would be pleased by the story of +Charlemagne and Roland, the Bishop might have let them have their +way in spite of the irregularity. That the window was an +irregularity, is plain; that it has always been immensely admired, +is certain; and that Bishop Renaud must have given his assent to it, +is not to be denied. + +The most elaborate account of this window can be found in Male's +"Art Religieux" (pp. 444-50). Its feeling or motive is quite another +matter, as it is with the statuary on the north porch. The Furriers +or Fur Merchants paid for the Charlemagne window, and their +signature stands at the bottom, where a merchant shows a fur-lined +cloak to his customer. That Mary was personally interested in furs, +no authority seems to affirm, but that Blanche and Isabel and every +lady of the Court, as well as every king and every count, in that +day, took keen interest in the subject, is proved by the prices they +paid, and the quantities they wore. Not even the Merchant Tailors +had a better standing at Court than the Furriers, which may account +for their standing so near the Virgin. Whatever the cause, the +Furriers were allowed to put their signature here, side by side with +the Tailors, and next to the Princess Blanche. Their gift warranted +it. Above the signature, in the first panel, the Emperor Constantine +is seen, asleep, in Constantinople, on an elaborate bed, while an +angel is giving him the order to seek aid from Charlemagne against +the Saracens. Charlemagne appears, in full armour of the year 1200, +on horseback. Then Charlemagne, sainted, wearing his halo, converses +with two bishops on the subject of a crusade for the rescue of +Constantine. In the next scene, he arrives at the gates of +Constantinople where Constantine receives him. The fifth picture is +most interesting; Charlemagne has advanced with his knights and +attacks the Saracens; the Franks wear coats-of-mail, and carry long, +pointed shields; the infidels carry round shields; Charlemagne, +wearing a crown, strikes off with one blow of his sword the head of +a Saracen emir; but the battle is desperate; the chargers are at +full gallop, and a Saracen is striking at Charlemagne with his +battle-axe. After the victory has been won, the Emperor Constantine +rewards Charlemagne by the priceless gift of three chasses or +reliquaries, containing a piece of the true Cross; the Suaire or +grave-cloth of the Saviour; and a tunic of the Virgin. Charlemagne +then returns to France, and in the next medallion presents the three +chasses and the crown of the Saracen king to the church at Aix, +which to a French audience meant the Abbey of Saint-Denis. This +scene closes the first volume of the story. + +The second part opens on Charlemagne, seated between two persons, +looking up to heaven at the Milky Way, called then the Way of Saint +James, which directs him to the grave of Saint James in Spain. Saint +James himself appears to Charlemagne in a dream, and orders him to +redeem the tomb from the infidels. Then Charlemagne sets out, with +Archbishop Turpin of Rheims and knights. In presence of his army he +dismounts and implores the aid of God. Then he arrives before +Pampeluna and transfixes with his lance the Saracen chief as he +flies into the city. Mounted, he directs workmen to construct a +church in honour of Saint James; a little cloud figures the hand of +God. Next is shown the miracle of the lances; stuck in the ground at +night, they are found in the morning to have burst into foliage, +prefiguring martyrdom. Two thousand people perish in battle. Then +begins the story of Roland which the artists and donors are so eager +to tell, knowing, as they do, that what has so deeply interested men +and women on earth, must interest Mary who loves them. You see +Archbishop Turpin celebrating mass when an angel appears, to warn +him of Roland's fate. Then Roland himself, also wearing a halo, is +introduced, in the act of killing the giant Ferragus. The combat of +Roland and Ferragus is at the top, out of sequence, as often happens +in the legendary windows. Charlemagne and his army are seen marching +homeward through the Pyrenees, while Roland winds his horn and +splits the rock without being able to break Durendal. Thierry, +likewise sainted, brings water to Roland in a helmet. At last +Thierry announces Roland's death. At the top, on either side of +Roland and Ferragus, is an angel with incense. + +The execution of this window is said to be superb. Of the colour, +and its relations with that of the Saint James, one needs time and +long acquaintance to learn the value. In the feeling, compared with +that of the twelfth century, one needs no time in order to see a +change. These two windows are as French and as modern as a picture +of Lancret; they are pure art, as simply decorative as the +decorations of the Grand Opera. The thirteenth century knew more +about religion and decoration than the twentieth century will ever +learn. The windows were neither symbolic nor mystical, nor more +religious than they pretended to be. That they are more intelligent +or more costly or more effective is nothing to the purpose, so long +as one grants that the combat of Roland and Ferragus, or Roland +winding his olifant, or Charlemagne cutting off heads and +transfixing Moors, were subjects never intended to teach religion or +instruct the ignorant, but to please the Queen of Heaven as they +pleased the queens of earth with a roman, not in verse but in +colour, as near as possible to decorative perfection. Instinctively +one looks to the corresponding bay, opposite, to see what the +artists could have done to balance these two great efforts of their +art; but the bay opposite is now occupied by the entrance to Saint +Piat's chapel and one does not know what changes may have been made +in the fourteenth century to rearrange the glass; yet, even as it +now stands, the Sylvester window which corresponds to the +Charlemagne is, as glass, the strongest in the whole cathedral. In +the next chapel, on our left, come the martyrs, with Saint Stephen, +the first martyr, in the middle window. Naturally the subject is +more serious, but the colour is not differently treated. A step +further, and you see the artists returning to their lighter +subjects. The stories of Saint Julian and Saint Thomas are more +amusing than the plots of half the thirteenth-century romances, and +not very much more religious. The subject of Saint Thomas is a +pendant to that of Saint James, for Saint Thomas was a great +traveller and an architect, who carried Mary's worship to India as +Saint James carried it to Spain. Here is the amusement of many days +in studying the stories, the colour and the execution of these +windows, with the help of the "Monographs" of Chartres and Bourges +or the "Golden Legend" and occasional visits to Le Mans, Tours, +Clermont Ferrand, and other cathedrals; but, in passing, one has to +note that the window of Saint Thomas was given by France, and bears +the royal arms, perhaps for Philip Augustus the King; while the +window of Saint Julian was given by the Carpenters and Coopers. One +feels no need to explain how it happens that the taste of the royal +family, and of their tailors, furriers, carpenters, and coopers, +should fit so marvellously, one with another, and with that of the +Virgin; but one can compare with theirs the taste of the Stone- +workers opposite, in the window of Saint Sylvester and Saint +Melchiades, whose blues almost kill the Charlemagne itself, and of +the Tanners in that of Saint Thomas of Canterbury; or, in the last +chapel on the south side, with that of the Shoemakers in the window +to Saint Martin, attributed for some reason to a certain Clemens +vitrearius Carnutensis, whose name is on a window in the cathedral +of Rouen. The name tells nothing, even if the identity could be +proved. Clement the glassmaker may have worked on his own account, +or for others; the glass differs only in refinements of taste or +perhaps of cost. Nicolas Lescine, the canon, or Geoffroi Chardonnel, +may have been less rich than the Bakers, and even the Furriers may +have not had the revenues of the King; but some controlling hand has +given more or less identical taste to all. + +What one can least explain is the reason why some windows, that +should be here, are elsewhere. In most churches, one finds in the +choir a window of doctrine, such as the so-called New Alliance, but +here the New Alliance is banished to the nave. Besides the costly +Charlemagne and Saint James windows in the apse, the Furriers and +Drapers gave several others, and one of these seems particularly +suited to serve as companion to Saint Thomas, Saint James, and Saint +Julian, so that it is best taken with these while comparing them. It +is in the nave, the third window from the new tower, in the north +aisle,--the window of Saint Eustace. The story and treatment and +beauty of the work would have warranted making it a pendant to +Almogenes, in the bay now serving as the door to Saint Piat's +chapel, which should have been the most effective of all the +positions in the church for a legendary story. Saint Eustace, whose +name was Placidas, commanded the guards of the Emperor Trajan. One +day he went out hunting with huntsmen and hounds, as the legend in +the lower panel of the window begins; a pretty picture of a stag +hunt about the year 1200; followed by one still prettier, where the +stag, after leaping upon a rock, has turned, and shows a crucifix +between his horns, the stag on one side balancing the horse on the +other, while Placidas on his knees yields to the miracle of Christ. +Then Placidas is baptized as Eustace; and in the centre, you see him +with his wife and two children--another charming composition-- +leaving the city. Four small panels in the corners are said to +contain the signatures of the Drapers and Furriers. Above, the story +of adventure goes on, showing Eustace bargaining with a shipmaster +for his passage; his embarcation with wife and children, and their +arrival at some shore, where the two children have landed, and the +master drives Eustace after them while he detains the wife. Four +small panels here have not been identified, but the legend was no +doubt familiar to the Middle Ages, and they knew how Eustace and the +children came to a river, where you can see a pink lion carrying off +one child, while a wolf, which has seized the other, is attacked by +shepherds and dogs. The children are rescued, and the wife +reappears, on her knees before her lord, telling of her escape from +the shipmaster, while the children stand behind; and then the +reunited family, restored to the Emperor's favour, is seen feasting +and happy. At last Eustace refuses to offer a sacrifice to a +graceful antique idol, and is then shut up, with all his family, in +a brazen bull; a fire is kindled beneath it; and, from above, a hand +confers the crown of martyrdom. + +Another subject, which should have been placed in the apse, stands +in a singular isolation which has struck many of the students in +this branch of church learning. At Sens, Saint Eustace is in the +choir, and by his side is the Prodigal Son. At Bourges also the +Prodigal Son is in the choir. At Chartres, he is banished to the +north transept, where you will find him in the window next the nave, +almost as though he were in disgrace; yet the glass is said to be +very fine, among the best in the church, while the story is told +with rather more vivacity than usual; and as far as colour and +execution go, the window has an air of age and quality higher than +the average. At the bottom you see the signature of the corporation +of Butchers. The window at Bourges was given by the Tanners. The +story begins with the picture showing the younger son asking the +father for his share of the inheritance, which he receives in the +next panel, and proceeds, on horseback, to spend, as one cannot help +suspecting, at Paris, in the Latin Quarter, where he is seen +arriving, welcomed by two ladies. No one has offered to explain why +Chartres should consider two ladies theologically more correct than +one; or why Sens should fix on three, or why Bourges should require +six. Perhaps this was left to the artist's fancy; but, before +quitting the twelfth century, we shall see that the usual young man +who took his share of patrimony and went up to study in the Latin +Quarter, found two schools of scholastic teaching, one called +Realism, the other Nominalism, each of which in turn the Church had +been obliged to condemn. Meanwhile the Prodigal Son is seen feasting +with them, and is crowned with flowers, like a new Abelard, singing +his songs to Heloise, until his religious capital is exhausted, and +he is dragged out of bed, to be driven naked from the house with +sticks, in this also I resembling Abelard. At Bourges he is gently +turned out; at Sens he is dragged away by three devils. Then he +seeks service, and is seen knocking acorns from boughs, to feed his +employer's swine; but, among the thousands of young men who must +have come here directly from the schools, nine in every ten said +that he was teaching letters to his employer's children or lecturing +to the students of the Latin Quarter. At last he decides to return +to his father,--possibly the Archbishop of Paris or the Abbot of +Saint-Denis,--who receives him with open arms, and gives him a new +robe, which to the ribald student would mean a church living--an +abbey, perhaps Saint Gildas-de-Rhuys in Brittany, or elsewhere. The +fatted calf is killed, the feast is begun, and the elder son, whom +the malicious student would name Bernard, appears in order to make +protest. Above, God, on His throne, blesses the globe of the world. + +The original symbol of the Prodigal Son was a rather different form +of prodigality. According to the Church interpretation, the Father +had two sons; the older was the people of the Jews; the younger, the +Gentiles. The Father divided his substance between them, giving to +the older the divine law, to the younger, the law of nature. The +younger went off and dissipated his substance, as one must believe, +on Aristotle; but repented and returned when the Father sacrificed +the victim--Christ--as the symbol of reunion. That the Synagogue +also accepts the sacrifice is not so clear; but the Church clung to +the idea of converting the Synagogue as a necessary proof of +Christ's divine character. Not until about the time when this window +may have been made, did the new Church, under the influence of Saint +Dominic, abandon the Jews and turn in despair to the Gentiles alone. + +The old symbolism belonged to the fourth and fifth centuries, and, +as told by the Jesuit fathers Martin and Cahier in their "Monograph" +of Bourges, it should have pleased the Virgin who was particularly +loved by the young, and habitually showed her attachment to them. At +Bourges the window stands next the central chapel of the apse, where +at Chartres is the entrance to Saint Piat's chapel; but Bourges did +not belong to Notre Dame, nor did Sens. The story of the prodigal +sons of these years from 1200 to 1230 lends the window a little +personal interest that the Prodigal Son of Saint Luke's Gospel could +hardly have had even to thirteenth-century penitents. Neither the +Church nor the Crown loved prodigal sons. So far from killing fatted +calves for them, the bishops in 1209 burned no less than ten in +Paris for too great intimacy with Arab and Jew disciples of +Aristotle. The position of the Bishop of Chartres between the +schools had been always awkward. As for Blanche of Castile, her +first son, afterwards Saint Louis, was born in 1215; and after that +time no Prodigal Son was likely to be welcomed in any society which +she frequented. For her, above all other women on earth or in +heaven, prodigal sons felt most antipathy, until, in 1229, the +quarrel became so violent that she turned her police on them and +beat a number to death in the streets. They retaliated without +regard for loyalty or decency, being far from model youth and prone +to relapses from virtue, even when forgiven and beneficed. + +The Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, showed no prejudice against +prodigal sons, or even prodigal daughters. She would hardly, of her +own accord, have ordered such persons out of her apse, when Saint +Stephen at Bourges and Sens showed no such puritanism; yet the +Chartres window is put away in the north transept. Even there it +still stands opposite the Virgin of the Pillar, on the women's and +Queen Blanche's side of the church, and in an excellent position, +better seen from the choir than some of the windows in the choir +itself, because the late summer sun shines full upon it, and carries +its colours far into the apse. This may have been one of the many +instances of tastes in the Virgin which were almost too imperial for +her official court. Omniscient as Mary was, she knew no difference +between the Blanches of Castile and the students of the Latin +Quarter. She was rather fond of prodigals, and gentle toward the +ladies who consumed the prodigal's substance. She admitted Mary +Magdalen and Mary the Gipsy to her society. She fretted little about +Aristotle so long as the prodigal adored her, and naturally the +prodigal adored her almost to the exclusion of the Trinity. She +always cared less for her dignity than was to be wished. Especially +in the nave and on the porch, among the peasants, she liked to +appear as one of themselves; she insisted on lying in bed, in a +stable, with the cows and asses about her, and her baby in a cradle +by the bedside, as though she had suffered like other women, though +the Church insisted she had not. Her husband, Saint Joseph, was +notoriously uncomfortable in her Court, and always preferred to get +as near to the door as he could. The choir at Chartres, on the +contrary, was aristocratic; every window there had a court quality, +even down to the contemporary Thomas a'Becket, the fashionable +martyr of good society. Theology was put into the transepts or still +further away in the nave where the window of the New Alliance elbows +the Prodigal Son. Even to Blanche of Castile, Mary was neither a +philanthropist nor theologist nor merely a mother,--she was an +absolute Empress, and whatever she said was obeyed, but sometimes +she seems to have willed an order that worried some of her most +powerful servants. + +Mary chose to put her Prodigal into the transept, and one would like +to know the reason. Was it a concession to the Bishop or the Queen? +Or was it to please the common people that these familiar picture- +books, with their popular interest, like the Good Samaritan and the +Prodigal Son, were put on the walls of the great public hall? This +can hardly be, since the people would surely have preferred the +Charlemagne and Saint James to any other. We shall never know; but +sitting here in the subdued afternoon light of the apse, one goes on +for hours reading the open volumes of colour, and listening to the +steady discussion by the architects, artists, priests, princes, and +princesses of the thirteenth century about the arrangements of this +apse. However strong-willed they might be, each in turn whether +priest, or noble, or glassworker, would have certainly appealed to +the Virgin and one can imagine the architect still beside us, in the +growing dusk of evening, mentally praying, as he looked at the work +of a finished day: "Lady Virgin, show me what you like best! The +central chapel is correct, I know. The Lady Blanche's grisaille +veils the rather strong blue tone nicely, and I am confident it will +suit you. The Charlemagne window seems to me very successful, but +the Bishop feels not at all easy about it, and I should never have +dared put it here if the Lady Blanche had not insisted on a Spanish +bay. To balance at once both the subjects and the colour, we have +tried the Stephen window in the next chapel, with more red; but if +Saint Stephen is not good enough to satisfy you, we have tried again +with Saint Julian, whose story is really worth telling you as we +tell it; and with him we have put Saint Thomas because you loved him +and gave him your girdle. I do not myself care so very much for +Saint Thomas of Canterbury opposite, though the Count is wild about +it, and the Bishop wants it; but the Sylvester is stupendous in the +morning sun. What troubles me most is the first right-hand bay. The +princesses would not have let me put the Prodigal Son there, even if +it were made for the place. I've nothing else good enough to balance +the Charlemagne unless it be the Eustace. Gracious Lady, what ought +I to do? Forgive me my blunders, my stupidity, my wretched want of +taste and feeling! I love and adore you! All that I am, I am for +you! If I cannot please you, I care not for Heaven! but without your +help, I am lost!" + +Upon my word, you may sit here forever imagining such appeals, and +the endless discussions and criticisms that were heard every day, +under these vaults, seven hundred years ago. That the Virgin +answered the questions is my firm belief, just as it is my +conviction that she did not answer them elsewhere. One sees her +personal presence on every side. Any one can feel it who will only +consent to feel like a child. Sitting here any Sunday afternoon, +while the voices of the children of the maitrise are chanting in the +choir,--your mind held in the grasp of the strong lines and shadows +of the architecture; your eyes flooded with the autumn tones of the +glass; your ears drowned with the purity of the voices; one sense +reacting upon another until sensation reaches the limit of its +range,--you, or any other lost soul, could, if you cared to look and +listen, feel a sense beyond the human ready to reveal a sense divine +that would make that world once more intelligible, and would bring +the Virgin to life again, in all the depths of feeling which she +shows here,--in lines, vaults, chapels, colours, legends, chants,-- +more eloquent than the prayer-book, and more beautiful than the +autumn sunlight; and any one willing to try could feel it like the +child, reading new thought without end into the art he has studied a +hundred times; but what is still more convincing, he could, at will, +in an instant, shatter the whole art by calling into it a single +motive of his own. + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN + +All artists love the sanctuary of the Christian Church, and all +tourists love the rest. The reason becomes clear as one leaves the +choir, and goes back to the broad, open hall of the nave. The choir +was made not for the pilgrim but for the deity, and is as old as +Adam, or perhaps older; at all events old enough to have existed in +complete artistic and theological form, with the whole mystery of +the Trinity, the Mother and Child, and even the Cross, thousands of +years before Christ was born; but the Christian Church not only took +the sanctuary in hand, and gave it a new form, more beautiful and +much more refined than the Romans or Greeks or Egyptians had ever +imagined, but it also added the idea of the nave and transepts, and +developed it into imperial splendour. The pilgrim-tourist feels at +home in the nave because it was built for him; the artist loves the +sanctuary because he built it for God. + +Chartres was intended to hold ten thousand people easily, or fifteen +thousand when crowded, and the decoration of this great space, +though not a wholly new problem, had to be treated in a new way. +Sancta Sofia was built by the Emperor Justinian, with all the +resources of the Empire, in a single violent effort, in six years, +and was decorated throughout with mosaics on a general scheme, with +the unity that Empire and Church could give, when they acted +together. The Norman Kings of Sicily, the richest princes of the +twelfth century, were able to carry out a complete work of the most +costly kind, in a single sustained effort from beginning to end, +according to a given plan. Chartres was a local shrine, in an +agricultural province, not even a part of the royal domain, and its +cathedral was the work of society, without much more tie than the +Virgin gave it. Socially Chartres, as far as its stone-work goes, +seems to have been mostly rural; its decoration, in the porches and +transepts, is royal and feudal; in the nave and choir it is chiefly +bourgeois. The want of unity is much less surprising than the unity, +but it is still evident, especially in the glass. The mosaics of +Monreale begin and end; they are a series; their connection is +artistic and theological at once; they have unity. The windows of +Chartres have no sequence, and their charm is in variety, in +individuality, and sometimes even in downright hostility to each +other, reflecting the picturesque society that gave them. They have, +too, the charm that the world has made no attempt to popularize them +for its modern uses, so that, except for the useful little guide- +book of the Abbe Clerval, one can see no clue to the legendary +chaos; one has it to one's self, without much fear of being trampled +upon by critics or Jew dealers in works of art; any Chartres beggar- +woman can still pass a summer's day here, and never once be +mortified by ignorance of things that every dealer in bric-a-brac is +supposed to know. + +Yet the artists seem to have begun even here with some idea of +sequence, for the first window in the north aisle, next the new +tower, tells the story of Noah; but the next plunges into the local +history of Chartres, and is devoted to Saint Lubin, a bishop of this +diocese who died in or about the year 556, and was, for some reason, +selected by the Wine-Merchants to represent them, as their +interesting medallions show. Then follow three amusing subjects, +charmingly treated: Saint Eustace, whose story has been told; Joseph +and his brethren; and Saint Nicholas, the most popular saint of the +thirteenth century, both in the Greek and in the Roman Churches. The +sixth and last window on the north aisle of the nave is the New +Alliance. + +Opposite these, in the south aisle, the series begins next the tower +with John the Evangelist, followed by Saint Mary Magdalen, given by +the Water-Carriers. The third, the Good Samaritan, given by the +Shoemakers, has a rival at Sens which critics think even better. The +fourth is the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin. Then +comes the fifteenth-century Chapel of Vendome, to compare the early +and later glass. The sixth is, or was, devoted to the Virgin's +Miracles at Chartres; but only one complete subject remains. + +These windows light the two aisles of the nave and decorate the +lower walls of the church with a mass of colour and variety of line +still practically intact in spite of much injury; but the windows of +the transepts on the same level have almost disappeared, except the +Prodigal Son and a border to what was once a Saint Lawrence, on the +north; and, on the south, part of a window to Saint Apollinaris of +Ravenna, with an interesting hierarchy of angels above:--seraphim +and cherubim with six wings, red and blue; Dominations; Powers; +Principalities; all, except Thrones. + +All this seems to be simple enough, at least to the people for whom +the nave was built, and to whom the windows were meant to speak. +There is nothing esoteric here; nothing but what might have suited +the great hall of a great palace. There is no difference in taste +between the Virgin in the choir, and the Water-Carriers by the +doorway. Blanche, the young Queen, liked the same colours, legends, +and lines that her Grocers and Bakers liked. All equally loved the +Virgin. There was not even a social difference. In the choir, +Thibaut, the Count of Chartres, immediate lord of the province, let +himself be put in a dark corner next the Belle Verriere, and left +the Bakers to display their wealth in the most serious spot in the +church, the central window of the central chapel, while in the nave +and transepts all the lower windows that bear signatures were given +by trades, as though that part of the church were abandoned to the +commons. One might suppose that the feudal aristocracy would have +fortified itself in the clerestory and upper windows, but even there +the bourgeoisie invaded them, and you can see, with a glass, the +Pastrycooks and Turners looking across at the Weavers and Curriers +and Money-Changers, and the "Men of Tours." Beneath the throne of +the Mother of God, there was no distinction of gifts; and above it +the distinction favoured the commonalty. + +Of the seven immense windows above and around the high altar, which +are designed as one composition, none was given by a prince or a +noble. The Drapers, the Butchers, the Bakers, the Bankers are +charged with the highest duties attached to the Virgin's service. +Apparently neither Saint Louis, nor his father Louis VIII, nor his +mother Blanche, nor his uncle Philippe Hurepel, nor his cousin Saint +Ferdinand of Castile, nor his other cousin Pierre de Dreux, nor the +Duchess Alix of Brittany, cared whether their portraits or armorial +shields were thrust out of sight into corners by Pastrycooks and +Teamsters, or took a whole wall of the church to themselves. The +only relation that connects them is their common relation to the +Virgin, but that is emphatic, and dominates the whole. + +It dominates us, too, if we reflect on it, even after seven hundred +years that its meaning has faded. When one looks up to this display +of splendour in the clerestory, and asks what was in the minds of +the people who joined to produce, with such immense effort and at +such self-sacrifice, this astonishing effect, the question seems to +answer itself like an echo. With only half of an atrophied +imagination, in a happy mood we could still see the nave and +transepts filled with ten thousand people on their knees, and the +Virgin, crowned and robed, seating herself on the embroidered +cushion that covered her imperial throne; sparkling with gems; +bearing in her right hand the sceptre, and in her lap the infant +King; but, in the act of seating herself, we should see her pause a +moment to look down with love and sympathy on us,--her people,--who +pack the enormous hall, and throng far out beyond the open portals; +while, an instant later, she glances up to see that her great lords, +spiritual and temporal, the advisers of her judgment, the supports +of her authority, the agents of her will, shall be in place; robed, +mitred, armed; bearing the symbols of her authority and their +office; on horseback, lance in hand; all of them ready at a sign to +carry out a sentence of judgment or an errand of mercy; to touch +with the sceptre or to strike with the sword; and never err. + +There they still stand! unchanged, unfaded, as alive and complete as +when they represented the real world, and the people below were the +unreal and ephemeral pageant! Then the reality was the Queen of +Heaven on her throne in the sanctuary, and her court in the glass; +not the queens or princes who were prostrating themselves, with the +crowd, at her feet. These people knew the Virgin as well as they +knew their own mothers; every jewel in her crown, every stitch of +gold-embroidery in her many robes; every colour; every fold; every +expression on the perfectly familiar features of her grave, imperial +face; every care that lurked in the silent sadness of her power; +repeated over and over again, in stone, glass, ivory, enamel, wood; +in every room, at the head of every bed, hanging on every neck, +standing at every street-corner, the Virgin was as familiar to every +one of them as the sun or the seasons; far more familiar than their +own earthly queen or countess, although these were no strangers in +their daily life; familiar from the earliest childhood to the last +agony; in every joy and every sorrow and every danger; in every act +and almost in every thought of life, the Virgin was present with a +reality that never belonged to her Son or to the Trinity, and hardly +to any earthly being, prelate, king, or kaiser; her daily life was +as real to them as their own loyalty which brought to her the best +they had to offer as the return for her boundless sympathy; but +while they knew the Virgin as though she were one of themselves, and +because she had been one of themselves, they were not so familiar +with all the officers of her court at Chartres; and pilgrims from +abroad, like us, must always have looked with curious interest at +the pageant. + +Far down the nave, next the western towers, the rank began with +saints, prophets, and martyrs, of all ages and countries; local, +like Saint Lubin; national, like Saint Martin of Tours and Saint +Hilary of Poitiers; popular like Saint Nicholas; militant like Saint +George; without order; symbols like Abraham and Isaac; the Virgin +herself, holding on her lap the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost; +Christ with the Alpha and Omega; Moses and Saint Augustine; Saint +Peter; Saint Mary the Egyptian; Saint Jerome; a whole throne-room of +heavenly powers, repeating, within, the pageant carved on the +porches and on the portals without. From the croisee in the centre, +where the crowd is most dense, one sees the whole almost better than +Mary sees it from her high altar, for there all the great rose +windows flash in turn, and the three twelfth-century lancets glow on +the western sun. When the eyes of the throng are directed to the +north, the Rose of France strikes them almost with a physical shock +of colour, and, from the south, the Rose of Dreux challenges the +Rose of France. + +Every one knows that there is war between the two! The thirteenth +century has few secrets. There are no outsiders. We are one family +as we are one Church. Every man and woman here, from Mary on her +throne to the beggar on the porch, knows that Pierre de Dreux +detests Blanche of Castile, and that their two windows carry on war +across the very heart of the cathedral. Both unite only in asking +help from Mary; but Blanche is a woman, alone in the world with +young children to protect, and most women incline strongly to +suspect that Mary will never desert her. Pierre, with all his +masculine strength, is no courtier. He wants to rule by force. He +carries the assertion of his sex into the very presence of the Queen +of Heaven. + +The year happens to be 1230, when the roses may be supposed just +finished and showing their whole splendour for the first time. Queen +Blanche is forty-three years old, and her son Louis is fifteen. +Blanche is a widow these four years, and Pierre a widower since +1221. Both are regents and guardians for their heirs. They have +necessarily carried their disputes before Mary. Queen Blanche claims +for her son, who is to be Saint Louis, the place of honour at Mary's +right hand; she has taken possession of the north porch outside, and +of the north transept within, and has filled the windows with glass, +as she is filling the porch with statuary. Above is the huge rose; +below are five long windows; and all proclaim the homage that France +renders to the Queen of Heaven. + +The Rose of France shows in its centre the Virgin in her majesty, +seated, crowned, holding the sceptre with her right hand, while her +left supports the infant Christ-King on her knees; which shows that +she, too, is acting as regent for her Son. Round her, in a circle, +are twelve medallions; four containing doves; four six-winged angels +or Thrones; four angels of a lower order, but all symbolizing the +gifts and endowments of the Queen of Heaven. Outside these are +twelve more medallions with the Kings of Judah, and a third circle +contains the twelve lesser prophets. So Mary sits, hedged in by all +the divinity that graces earthly or heavenly kings; while between +the two outer circles are twelve quatrefoils bearing on a blue +ground the golden lilies of France; and in each angle below the rose +are four openings, showing alternately the lilies of Louis and the +castles of Blanche. We who are below, the common people, understand +that France claims to protect and defend the Virgin of Chartres, as +her chief vassal, and that this ostentatious profusion of lilies and +castles is intended not in honour of France, but as a demonstration +of loyalty to Notre Dame, and an assertion of her rights as Queen +Regent of Heaven against all comers, but particularly against +Pierre, the rebel, who has the audacity to assert rival rights in +the opposite transept. + +Beneath the rose are five long windows, very unlike the twelfth- +century pendants to the western rose. These five windows blaze with +red, and their splendour throws the Virgin above quite into the +background. The artists, who felt that the twelfth-century glass was +too fine and too delicate for the new scale of the church, have not +only enlarged their scale and coarsened their design, but have +coarsened their colour-scheme also, discarding blue in order to +crush us under the earthly majesty of red. These windows, too, bear +the stamp and seal of Blanche's Spanish temper as energetically as +though they bore her portrait. The great central figure, the tallest +and most commanding in the whole church, is not the Virgin, but her +mother Saint Anne, standing erect as on the trumeau of the door +beneath, and holding the infant Mary on her left arm. She wears no +royal crown, but bears a flowered sceptre. The only other difference +between Mary and her mother, that seems intended to strike +attention, is that Mary sits, while her mother stands; but as though +to proclaim still more distinctly that France supports the royal and +divine pretensions of Saint Anne, Queen Blanche has put beneath the +figure a great shield blazoned with the golden lilies on an azure +ground. + +With singular insistence on this motive, Saint Anne has at either +hand a royal court of her own, marked as her own by containing only +figures from the Old Testament. Standing next on her right is +Solomon, her Prime Minister, bringing wisdom in worldly counsel, and +trampling on human folly. Beyond Wisdom stands Law, figured by Aaron +with the Book, trampling on the lawless Pharaoh. Opposite them, on +Saint Anne's left, is David, the energy of State, trampling on a +Saul suggesting suspicions of a Saul de Dreux; while last, +Melchisedec who is Faith, tramples on a disobedient Nebuchadnezzar +Mauclerc. + +How can we, the common people, help seeing all this, and much more, +when we know that Pierre de Dreux has been for years in constant +strife with the Crown and the Church? He is very valiant and lion- +hearted;--so say the chroniclers, priests though they are;--very +skilful and experienced in war whether by land or sea; very adroit, +with more sense than any other great lord in France; but restless, +factious, and regardless of his word. Brave and bold as the day; +full of courtesy and "largesse"; but very hard on the clergy; a good +Christian but a bad churchman! Certainly the first man of his time, +says Michelet! "I have never found any that sought to do me more ill +than he," says Blanche, and Joinville gives her very words; indeed, +this year, 1230, she has summoned our own Bishop of Chartres among +others to Paris in a court of peers, where Pierre has been found +guilty of treason and deposed. War still continues, but Pierre must +make submission. Blanche has beaten him in politics and in the +field! Let us look round and see how he fares in theology and art! + +There is his rose--so beautiful that Blanche may well think it seeks +to do hers ill! As colour, judge for yourselves whether it holds its +own against the flaming self-assertion of the opposite wall! As +subject, it asserts flat defiance of the monarchy of Queen Blanche. +In the central circle, Christ as King is seated on a royal throne, +both arms raised, one holding the golden cup of eternal priesthood, +the other, blessing the world. Two great flambeaux burn beside Him. +The four Apocalyptic figures surround and worship Him; and in the +concentric circles round the central medallion are the angels and +the kings in a blaze of colour, symbolizing the New Jerusalem. + +All the force of the Apocalypse is there, and so is some of the +weakness of theology, for, in the five great windows below, Pierre +shows his training in the schools. Four of these windows represent +what is called, for want of a better name, the New Alliance; the +dependence of the New Testament on the Old; but Pierre's choice in +symbols was as masculine as that of Blanche was feminine. In each of +the four windows, a gigantic Evangelist strides the shoulders of a +colossal Prophet. Saint John rides on Ezekiel; Saint Mark bestrides +Daniel; Saint Matthew is on the shoulders of Isaiah; Saint Luke is +carried by Jeremiah. The effect verges on the grotesque. The balance +of Christ's Church seems uncertain. The Evangelists clutch the +Prophets by the hair, and while the synagogue stands firm, the +Church looks small, feeble, and vacillating. The new dispensation +has not the air of mastery either physical or intellectual; the old +gives it all the support it has, and, in the absence of Saint Paul, +both old and new seem little concerned with the sympathies of +Frenchmen. The synagogue is stronger than the Church, but even the +Church is Jew. + +That Pierre could ever have meant this is not to be dreamed; but +when the true scholar gets thoroughly to work, his logic is +remorseless, his art is implacable, and his sense of humour is +blighted. In the rose above, Pierre had asserted the exclusive +authority of Christ in the New Jerusalem, and his scheme required +him to show how the Church rested on the Evangelists below, who in +their turn had no visible support except what the Prophets gave +them. Yet the artist may have had a reason for weakening the +Evangelists, because there remained the Virgin! One dares no more +than hint at a motive so disrespectful to the Evangelists; but it is +certainly true that, in the central window, immediately beneath the +Christ, and His chief support, with the four staggering Evangelists +and Prophets on either hand, the Virgin stands, and betrays no sign +of weakness. + +The compliment is singularly masculine; a kind of twelfth-century +flattery that might have softened the anger of Blanche herself, if +the Virgin had been her own; but the Virgin of Dreux is not the +Virgin of France. No doubt she still wears her royal crown, and her +head is circled with the halo; her right hand still holds the +flowered sceptre, and her left the infant Christ, but she stands, +and Christ is King. Note, too, that she stands directly opposite to +her mother Saint Anne in the Rose of France, so as to place her one +stage lower than the Virgin of France in the hierarchy. She is the +Saint Anne of France, and shows it. "She is no longer," says the +official Monograph, "that majestic queen who was seated on a throne, +with her feet on the stool of honour; the personages have become +less imposing and the heads show the decadence." She is the Virgin +of Theology; she has her rights, and no more; but she is not the +Virgin of Chartres. + +She, too, stands on an altar or pedestal, on which hangs a shield +bearing the ermines, an exact counterpart of the royal shield +beneath Saint Anne. In this excessive display of armorial bearings-- +for the two roses above are crowded with them--one likes to think +that these great princes had in their minds not so much the thought +of their own importance--which is a modern sort of religion--as the +thought of their devotion to Mary. The assertion of power and +attachment by one is met by the assertion of equal devotion by the +other, and while both loudly proclaim their homage to the Virgin, +each glares defiance across the church. Pierre meant the Queen of +Heaven to know that, in case of need, her left hand was as good as +her right, and truer; that the ermines were as well able to defend +her as the lilies, and that Brittany would fight her battles as +bravely as France. Whether his meaning carried with it more devotion +to the Virgin or more defiance to France depends a little on the +date of the windows, but, as a mere point of history, every one must +allow that Pierre's promise of allegiance was kept more faithfully +by Brittany than that of Blanche and Saint Louis has been kept by +France. + +The date seems to be fixed by the windows themselves. Beneath the +Prophets kneel Pierre and his wife Alix, while their two children, +Yolande and Jean, stand. Alix died in 1221. Jean was born in 1217. +Yolande was affianced in marriage in 1227, while a child, and given +to Queen Blanche to be brought up as the future wife of her younger +son John, then in his eighth year. When John died, Yolande was +contracted to Thibaut of Champagne in 1231, and Blanche is said to +have written to Thibaut in consequence: "Sire Thibauld of Champagne, +I have heard that you have covenanted and promised to take to wife +the daughter of Count Perron of Brittany. Wherefore I charge you, if +you do not wish to lose whatever you possess in the kingdom of +France, not to do it. If you hold dear or love aught in the said +kingdom, do it not." Whether Blanche wrote in these words or not, +she certainly prevented the marriage, and Yolande remained single +until 1238 when she married the Comte de la Marche, who was, by the +way, almost as bitter an enemy of Blanche as Pierre had been; but by +that time both Blanche and Pierre had ceased to be regents. +Yolande's figure in the window is that of a girl, perhaps twelve or +fourteen years old; Jean is younger, certainly not more than eight +or ten years of age; and the appearance of the two children shows +that the window itself should date between 1225 and 1230, the year +when Pierre de Dreux was condemned because he had renounced his +homage to King Louis, declared war on him, and invited the King of +England into France. As already told, Philippe Hurepel de Boulogne, +the Comte de la Marche, Enguerrand de Couci,--nearly all the great +nobles,--had been leagued with Pierre de Dreux since Blanche's +regency began in 1226. + +That these transept windows harmonize at all, is due to the Virgin, +not to the donors. At the time they were designed, supposing it to +be during Blanche's regency (1226-36), the passions of these donors +brought France to momentary ruin, and the Virgin in Blanche's Rose +de France, as she looked across the church, could not see a single +friend of Blanche. What is more curious, she saw enemies in plenty, +and in full readiness for battle. We have seen in the centre of the +small rose in the north transept, Philippe Hurepel still waiting her +orders; across the nave, in another small rose of the south +transept, sits Pierre de Dreux on his horse. The upper windows on +the side walls of the choir are very interesting but impossible to +see, even with the best glasses, from the floor of the church. Their +sequence and dates have already been discussed; but their feeling is +shown by the character of the Virgin, who in French territory, next +the north transept, is still the Virgin of France, but in Pierre's +territory, next the Rose de Dreux, becomes again the Virgin of +Dreux, who is absorbed in the Child,--not the Child absorbed in +her,--and accordingly the window shows the chequers and ermines. + +The figures, like the stone figures outside, are the earliest of +French art, before any school of painting fairly existed. Among +them, one can see no friend of Blanche. Indeed, outside of her own +immediate family and the Church, Blanche had no friend of much +importance except the famous Thibaut of Champagne, the single member +of the royal family who took her side and suffered for her sake, and +who, as far as books tell, has no window or memorial here. One might +suppose that Thibaut, who loved both Blanche and the Virgin, would +have claimed a place, and perhaps he did; but one seeks him in vain. +If Blanche had friends here, they are gone. Pierre de Dreux, lance +in hand, openly defies her, and it was not on her brother-in-law +Philippe Hurepel that she could depend for defence. + +This is the court pageant of the Virgin that shows itself to the +people who are kneeling at high mass. We, the public, whoever we +are,--Chartrain, Breton, Norman, Angevin, Frenchman, Percherain, or +what not,--know our local politics as intimately as our lords do, or +even better, for our imaginations are active, and we do not love +Blanche of Castile. We know how to read the passions that fill the +church. From the north transept Blanche flames out on us in splendid +reds and flings her Spanish castles in our face. From the south +transept Pierre retorts with a brutal energy which shows itself in +the Prophets who serve as battle-chargers and in the Evangelists who +serve as knights,--mounted warriors of faith,--whose great eyes +follow us across the church and defy Saint Anne and her French +shield opposite. Pierre was not effeminate; Blanche was fairly +masculine. Between them, as a matter of sex, we can see little to +choose; and, in any case, it is a family quarrel; they are all +cousins; they are all equals on earth, and none means to submit to +any superior except the Virgin and her Son in heaven. The Virgin is +not afraid. She has seen many troubles worse than this; she knows +how to manage perverse children, and if necessary she will shut them +up in a darker room than ever their mothers kept open for them in +this world. One has only to look at the Virgin to see! + +There she is, of course, looking down on us from the great window +above the high altar, where we never forget her presence! Is there a +thought of disturbance there? Around the curve of the choir are +seven great windows, without roses, filling the whole semicircle and +the whole vault, forty-seven feet high, and meant to dominate the +nave as far as the western portal, so that we may never forget how +Mary fills her church without being disturbed by quarrels, and may +understand why Saint Ferdinand and Saint Louis creep out of our +sight, close by the Virgin's side, far up above brawls; and why +France and Brittany hide their ugly or their splendid passions at +the ends of the transepts, out of sight of the high altar where Mary +is to sit in state as Queen with the young King on her lap. In an +instant she will come, but we have a moment still to look about at +the last great decoration of her palace, and see how the artists +have arranged it. + +Since the building of Sancta Sofia, no artist has had such a chance. +No doubt, Rheims and Amiens and Bourges and Beauvais, which are now +building, may be even finer, but none of them is yet finished, and +all must take their ideas from here. One would like, before looking +at it, to think over the problem, as though it were new, and so +choose the scheme that would suit us best if the decoration were to +be done for the first time. The architecture is fixed; we have to do +only with the colour of this mass of seven huge windows, forty-seven +feet high, in the clerestory, round the curve of the choir, which +close the vista of the church as viewed from the entrance. This +vista is about three hundred and thirty feet long. The windows rise +above a hundred feet. How ought this vast space to be filled? Should +the perpendicular upward leap of the architecture be followed and +accented by a perpendicular leap of colour? The decorators of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries seem to have thought so, and made +perpendicular architectural drawings in yellow that simulated gold, +and lines that ran with the general lines of the building. Many +fifteenth-century windows seem to be made up of florid Gothic +details rising in stages to the vault. No doubt critics complained, +and still complain, that the monotony of this scheme, and its +cheapness of intelligence, were objections; but at least the effect +was light, decorative, and safe. The artist could not go far wrong +and was still at liberty to do beautiful work, as can be seen in any +number of churches scattered broadcast over Europe and swarming in +Paris and France. On the other hand, might not the artist disregard +the architecture and fill the space with a climax of colour? Could +he not unite the Roses of France and Dreux above the high altar in +an overpowering outburst of purples and reds? The seventeenth +century might have preferred to mass clouds and colours, and Michael +Angelo, in the sixteenth, might have known how to do it. What we +want is not the feeling of the artist so much as the feeling of +Chartres. What shall it be--the jewelled brilliancy of the western +windows, or the fierce self-assertion of Pierre Mauclerc, or the +royal splendour of Queen Blanche, or the feminine grace and +decorative refinement of the Charlemagne and Santiago windows in the +apse? + +Never again in art was so splendid a problem offered, either before +or since, for the artist of Chartres solved it, as he did the whole +matter of fenestration, and later artists could only offer +variations on his work. You will see them at Bourges and Tours and +in scores of thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth +century churches and windows, and perhaps in some of the twentieth +century,--all of them interesting and some of them beautiful,--and +far be it from us, mean and ignorant pilgrims of art, to condemn any +intelligent effort to vary or improve the effect; but we have set +out to seek the feeling, and while we think of art in relation to +ourselves, the sermon of Chartres, from beginning to end, teaches +and preaches and insists and reiterates and hammers into our torpid +minds the moral that the art of the Virgin was not that of her +artists but her own. We inevitably think of our tastes; they thought +instinctively of hers. + +In the transepts, Queen Blanche and Duke Perron, in legal possession +of their territory, showed that they were thinking of each other as +well as of the Virgin, and claimed loudly that they ought each to be +first in the Virgin's favour; and they stand there in place, as the +thirteenth century felt them. Subject to their fealty to Mary, the +transepts belonged to them, and if Blanche did not, like Pierre, +assert Herself and her son on the Virgin's window, perhaps she +thought the Virgin would resent Pierre's boldness the more by +contrast with her own good taste. So far as is known, nowhere does +Blanche appear in person at Chartres; she felt herself too near the +Virgin to obtrude a useless image, or she was too deeply religious +to ask anything for herself. A queen who was to have two children +sainted, to intercede for her at Mary's throne, stood in a solitude +almost as unique as that of Mary, and might ignore the raw +brutalities of a man-at-arms; but neither she nor Pierre has carried +the quarrel into Mary's presence, nor has the Virgin condescended +even to seem conscious of their temper. This is the theme of the +artist--the purity, the beauty, the grace, and the infinite +loftiness of Mary's nature, among the things of earth, and above the +clamour of kings. + +Therefore, when we, and the crushed crowd of kneeling worshippers +around us, lift our eyes at last after the miracle of the mass, we +see, far above the high altar, high over all the agitation of +prayer, the passion of politics, the anguish of suffering, the +terrors of sin, only the figure of the Virgin in majesty, looking +down on her people, crowned, throned, glorified, with the infant +Christ on her knees. She does not assert herself; probably she +intends to be felt rather than feared. Compared with the Greek +Virgin, as you see her, for example, at Torcello, the Chartres +Virgin is retiring and hardly important enough for the place. She is +not exaggerated either in scale, drawing, or colour. She shows not a +sign of self-consciousness, not an effort for brilliancy, not a +trace of stage effect--hardly even a thought of herself, except that +she is at home, among her own people, where she is loved and known +as well as she knows them. The seven great windows are one +composition; and it is plain that the artist, had he been ordered to +make an exhibition of power, could have overwhelmed us with a storm +of purple, red, yellows, or given us a Virgin of Passion who would +have torn the vault asunder; his ability is never in doubt, and if +he has kept true to the spirit of the western portal and the +twelfth-century, it is because the Virgin of Chartres was the Virgin +of Grace, and ordered him to paint her so. One shudders to think how +a single false note--a suggestion of meanness, in this climax of +line and colour--would bring the whole fabric down in ruins on the +eighteenth-century meanness of the choir below; and one notes, +almost bashfully, the expedients of the artists to quiet their +effects. So the lines of the seven windows are built up, to avoid +the horizontal, and yet not exaggerate the vertical. + +The architect counts here for more than the colourist; but the +colour, when you study it, suggests the same restraint. Three great +windows on the Virgin's right, balanced by three more on her left, +show the prophets and precursors of her Son; all architecturally +support and exalt the Virgin, in her celestial atmosphere of blue, +shot with red, calm in the certainty of heaven. Any one who is +prematurely curious to see the difference in treatment between +different centuries should go down to the church of Saint Pierre in +the lower town, and study there the methods of the Renaissance. Then +we can come back to study again the ways of the thirteenth century. +The Virgin will wait; she will not be angry; she knows her power; we +all come back to her in the end. + +Or the Renaissance, if one prefers, can wait equally well, while one +kneels with the thirteenth century, and feels the little one still +can feel of what it felt. Technically these apsidal windows have not +received much notice; the books rarely speak of them; travellers +seldom look at them; and their height is such that even with the +best glass, the quality of the work is beyond our power to judge. We +see, and the artists meant that we should see, only the great lines, +the colour, and the Virgin. The mass of suppliants before the choir +look up to the light, clear blues and reds of this great space, and +feel there the celestial peace and beauty of Mary's nature and +abode. There is heaven! and Mary looks down from it, into her +church, where she sees us on our knees, and knows each one of us by +name. There she actually is--not in symbol or in fancy, but in +person, descending on her errands of mercy and listening to each one +of us, as her miracles prove, or satisfying our prayers merely by +her presence which calms our excitement as that of a mother calms +her child. She is there as Queen, not merely as intercessor, and her +power is such that to her the difference between us earthly beings +is nothing. Her quiet, masculine strength enchants us most. Pierre +Mauclerc and Philippe Hurepel and their men-at-arms are afraid of +her, and the Bishop himself is never quite at his ease in her +presence; but to peasants, and beggars, and people in trouble, this +sense of her power and calm is better than active sympathy. People +who suffer beyond the formulas of expression--who are crushed into +silence, and beyond pain--want no display of emotion--no bleeding +heart--no weeping at the foot of the Cross--no hysterics--no +phrases! They want to see God, and to know that He is watching over +His own. How many women are there, in this mass of thirteenth +century suppliants, who have lost children? Probably nearly all, for +the death rate is very high in the conditions of medieval life. +There are thousands of such women here, for it is precisely this +class who come most; and probably every one of them has looked up to +Mary in her great window, and has felt actual certainty, as though +she saw with her own eyes--there, in heaven, while she looked--her +own lost baby playing with the Christ-Child at the Virgin's knee, as +much at home as the saints, and much more at home than the kings. +Before rising from her knees, every one of these women will have +bent down and kissed the stone pavement in gratitude for Mary's +mercy. The earth, she says, is a sorry place, and the best of it is +bad enough, no doubt, even for Queen Blanche and the Duchess Alix +who has had to leave her children here alone; but there above is +Mary in heaven who sees and hears me as I see her, and who keeps my +little boy till I come; so I can wait with patience, more or less! +Saints and prophets and martyrs are all very well, and Christ is +very sublime and just, but Mary knows! + +It was very childlike, very foolish, very beautiful, and very true,- +-as art, at least:--so true that everything else shades off into +vulgarity, as you see the Persephone of a Syracusan coin shade off +into the vulgarity of a Roman emperor; as though the heaven that +lies about us in our infancy too quickly takes colours that are not +so much sober as sordid, and would be welcome if no worse than that. +Vulgarity, too, has feeling, and its expression in art has truth and +even pathos, but we shall have time enough in our lives for that, +and all the more because, when we rise from our knees now, we have +finished our pilgrimage. We have done with Chartres. For seven +hundred years Chartres has seen pilgrims, coming and going more or +less like us, and will perhaps see them for another seven hundred +years; but we shall see it no more, and can safely leave the Virgin +in her majesty, with her three great prophets on either hand, as +calm and confident in their own strength and in God's providence as +they were when Saint Louis was born, but looking down from a +deserted heaven, into an empty church, on a dead faith. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE THREE QUEENS + +After worshipping at the shrines of Saint Michael on his Mount and +of the Virgin at Chartres, one may wander far and wide over France, +and seldom feel lost; all later Gothic art comes naturally, and no +new thought disturbs the perfected form. Yet tourists of English +blood and American training are seldom or never quite at home there. +Commonly they feel it only as a stage-decoration. The twelfth and +thirteenth centuries, studied in the pure light of political +economy, are insane. The scientific mind is atrophied, and suffers +under inherited cerebral weakness, when it comes in contact with the +eternal woman--Astarte, Isis, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the last and +greatest deity of all, the Virgin. Very rarely one lingers, with a +mild sympathy, such as suits the patient student of human error, +willing to be interested in what he cannot understand. Still more +rarely, owing to some revival of archaic instincts, he rediscovers +the woman. This is perhaps the mark of the artist alone, and his +solitary privilege. The rest of us cannot feel; we can only study. +The proper study of mankind is woman and, by common agreement since +the time of Adam, it is the most complex and arduous. The study of +Our Lady, as shown by the art of Chartres, leads directly back to +Eve, and lays bare the whole subject of sex. + +If it were worth while to argue a paradox, one might maintain that +Nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the +superfluity of her world. Perhaps the best starting-point for study +of the Virgin would be a practical acquaintance with bees, and +especially with queen bees. Precisely where the French man may come +in, on the genealogical tree of parthenogenesis, one hesitates to +say; but certain it is that the French woman, from very early times, +has shown qualities peculiar to herself, and that the French woman +of the Middle Ages was a masculine character. Almost any book which +deals with the social side of the twelfth century has something to +say on this subject, like the following page from M. Garreau's +volume published in 1899, on the "Social State of France during the +Crusades":-- + +A trait peculiar to this epoch is the close resemblance between the +manners of men and women. The rule that such and such feelings or +acts are permitted to one sex and forbidden to the other was not +fairly settled. Men had the right to dissolve in tears, and women +that of talking without prudery .... If we look at their +intellectual level, the women appear distinctly superior. They are +more serious; more subtle. With them we do not seem dealing with the +rude state of civilization that their husbands belong to .... As a +rule, the women seem to have the habit of weighing their acts; of +not yielding to momentary impressions. While the sense of +Christianity is more developed in them than in their husbands, on +the other hand they show more perfidy and art in crime .... One +might doubtless prove by a series of examples that the maternal +influence when it predominated in the education of a son gave him a +marked superiority over his contemporaries. Richard Coeur-de-Lion +the crowned poet, artist, the king whose noble manners and refined +mind in spite of his cruelty exercised so strong an impression on +his age, was formed by that brilliant Eleanor of Guienne who, in her +struggle with her husband, retained her sons as much as possible +within her sphere of influence in order to make party chiefs of +them. Our great Saint Louis, as all know, was brought up exclusively +by Blanche of Castile; and Joinville, the charming writer so worthy +of Saint Louis's friendship, and apparently so superior to his +surroundings, was also the pupil of a widowed and regent mother. + +The superiority of the woman was not a fancy, but a fact. Man's +business was to fight or hunt or feast or make love. The man was +also the travelling partner in commerce, commonly absent from home +for months together, while the woman carried on the business. The +woman ruled the household and the workshop; cared for the economy; +supplied the intelligence, and dictated the taste. Her ascendancy +was secured by her alliance with the Church, into which she sent her +most intelligent children; and a priest or clerk, for the most part, +counted socially as a woman. Both physically and mentally the woman +was robust, as the men often complained, and she did not greatly +resent being treated as a man. Sometimes the husband beat her, +dragged her about by the hair, locked her up in the house; but he +was quite conscious that she always got even with him in the end. As +a matter of fact, probably she got more than even. On this point, +history, legend, poetry, romance, and especially the popular +fabliaux--invented to amuse the gross tastes of the coarser class-- +are all agreed, and one could give scores of volumes illustrating +it. The greatest men illustrate it best, as one might show almost at +hazard. The greatest men of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth +centuries were William the Norman; his great grandson Henry II +Plantagenet; Saint Louis of France; and, if a fourth be needed, +Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Notoriously all these men had as much +difficulty as Louis XIV himself with the women of their family. +Tradition exaggerates everything it touches, but shows, at the same +time, what is passing in the minds of the society which tradites. In +Normandy, the people of Caen have kept a tradition, told elsewhere +in other forms, that one day, Duke William,--the Conqueror,-- +exasperated by having his bastardy constantly thrown in his face by +the Duchess Matilda, dragged her by the hair, tied to his horse's +tail, as far as the suburb of Vaucelles; and this legend accounts +for the splendour of the Abbaye-aux-Dames, because William, the +common people believed, afterwards regretted the impropriety, and +atoned for it by giving her money to build the abbey. The story +betrays the man's weakness. The Abbaye-aux-Dames stands in the same +relation to the Abbaye-aux-Hommes that Matilda took towards William. +Inferiority there was none; on the contrary, the woman was socially +the superior, and William was probably more afraid of her than she +of him, if Mr. Freeman is right in insisting that he married her in +spite of her having a husband living, and certainly two children. If +William was the strongest man in the eleventh century, his great- +grandson, Henry II of England, was the strongest man of the twelfth; +but the history of the time resounds with the noise of his battles +with Queen Eleanor whom he, at last, held in prison for fourteen +years. Prisoner as she was, she broke him down in the end. One is +tempted to suspect that, had her husband and children been guided by +her, and by her policy as peacemaker for the good of Guienne, most +of the disasters of England and France might have been postponed for +the time; but we can never know the truth, for monks and historians +abhor emancipated women,--with good reason, since such women are apt +to abhor them,--and the quarrel can never be pacified. Historians +have commonly shown fear of women without admitting it, but the man +of the Middle Ages knew at least why he feared the woman, and told +it openly, not to say brutally. Long after Eleanor and Blanche were +dead, Chaucer brought the Wife of Bath on his Shakespearean stage, +to explain the woman, and as usual he touched masculine frailty with +caustic, while seeming to laugh at woman and man alike:-- + +"My liege lady! generally," quoth he, + "Women desiren to have soverainetee." + + +The point was that the Wife of Bath, like Queen Blanche and Queen +Eleanor, not only wanted sovereignty, but won and held it. + +That Saint Louis, even when a grown man and king, stood in awe of +his mother, Blanche of Castile, was not only notorious but seemed to +be thought natural. Joinville recorded it not so much to mark the +King's weakness, as the woman's strength; for his Queen, Margaret of +Provence, showed the courage which the King had not. Blanche and +Margaret were exceedingly jealous of each other. "One day," said +Joinville, "Queen Blanche went to the Queen's [Margaret] chamber +where her son [Louis IX] had gone before to comfort her, for she was +in great danger of death from a bad delivery; and he hid himself +behind the Queen [Margaret] to avoid being seen; but his mother +perceived him, and taking him by the hand said: 'Come along! you +will do no good here!' and put him out of the chamber. Queen +Margaret, observing this, and that she was to be separated from her +husband, cried aloud: 'Alas! will you not allow me to see my lord +either living or dying?'" According to Joinville, King Louis always +hid himself when, in his wife's chamber, he heard his mother coming. + +The great period of Gothic architecture begins with the coming of +Eleanor (1137) and ends with the passing of Blanche (1252). +Eleanor's long life was full of energy and passion of which next to +nothing is known; the woman was always too slippery for monks or +soldiers to grasp. + +Eleanor came to Paris, a Queen of fifteen years old, in 1137, +bringing Poitiers and Guienne as the greatest dowry ever offered to +the French Crown. She brought also the tastes and manners of the +South, little in harmony with the tastes and manners of Saint +Bernard whose authority at court rivalled her own. The Abbe Suger +supported her, but the King leaned toward the Abbe Bernard. What +this puritan reaction meant is a matter to be studied by itself, if +one can find a cloister to study in; but it bore the mark of most +puritan reactions in its hostility to women. As long as the woman +remained docile, she ruled, through the Church; but the man feared +her and was jealous of her, and she of him. Bernard specially adored +the Virgin because she was an example of docile obedience to the +Trinity who atoned for the indocility of Eve, but Eve herself +remained the instrument of Satan, and French society as a whole +showed a taste for Eves. + +[Genealogical chart showing the relationships among the three +queens.] + +Eleanor could hardly be called docile. Whatever else she loved, she +certainly loved rule. She shared this passion to the full with her +only great successor and rival on the English throne, Queen +Elizabeth, and she happened to become Queen of France at the moment +when society was turning from worship of its military ideal, Saint +Michael, to worship of its social ideal, the Virgin. According to +the monk Orderic, men had begun to throw aside their old military +dress and manners even before the first crusade, in the days of +William Rufus (1087-1100), and to affect feminine fashions. In all +ages, priests and monks have denounced the growing vices of society, +with more or less reason; but there seems to have been a real +outbreak of display at about the time of the first crusade, which +set a deep mark on every sort of social expression, even down to the +shoes of the statues on the western portal of Chartres:-- + +A debauched fellow named Robert [said Orderic] was the first, about +the time of William Rufus, who introduced the practice of filling +the long points of the shoes with tow, and of turning them up like a +ram's horn. Hence he got the surname of Cornard; and this absurd +fashion was speedily adopted by great numbers of the nobility as a +proud distinction and sign of merit. At this time effeminacy was the +prevailing vice throughout the world ... They parted their hair from +the crown of the head on each side of the forehead, and their locks +grew long like women, and wore long shirts and tunics, closely tied +with points ... In our days, ancient customs are almost all changed +for new fashions. Our wanton youths are sunk in effeminacy ... They +insert their toes in things like serpents' tails which present to +view the shape of scorpions. Sweeping the dusty ground with the +prodigious trains of their robes and mantles, they cover their hands +with gloves ... + +If you are curious to follow these monkish criticisms on your +ancestors' habits, you can read Orderic at your leisure; but you +want only to carry in mind the fact that the generation of warriors +who fought at Hastings and captured Jerusalem were regarded by +themselves as effeminate, and plunged in luxury. "Their locks are +curled with hot irons, and instead of wearing caps, they bind their +heads with fillets. A knight seldom appears in public with his head +uncovered and properly shaved according to the apostolic precept." +The effeminacy of the first crusade took artistic shape in the west +portal of Chartres and the glass of Saint-Denis, and led instantly +to the puritan reaction of Saint Bernard, followed by the gentle +asceticism of Queen Blanche and Saint Louis. Whether the pilgrimages +to Jerusalem and contact with the East were the cause or only a +consequence of this revolution, or whether it was all one,--a result +of converting the Northern pagans to peaceful habits and the +consequent enrichment of northern Europe,--is indifferent; the fact +and the date are enough. The art is French, but the ideas may have +come from anywhere, like the game of chess which the pilgrims or +crusaders brought home from Syria. In the Oriental game, the King +was followed step by step by a Minister whose functions were +personal. The crusaders freed the piece from control; gave it +liberty to move up or down or diagonally, forwards and backwards; +made it the most arbitrary and formidable champion on the board, +while the King and the Knight were the most restricted in movement; +and this piece they named Queen, and called the Virgin:-- + + Li Baudrains traist sa fierge por son paon sauver, + E cele son aufin qui cuida conquester + La firge ou le paon, ou faire reculer. + + +The aufin or dauphin became the Fou of the French game, and the +bishop of the English. Baldwin played his Virgin to save his pawn; +his opponent played the bishop to threaten either the Virgin or the +pawn. + +For a hundred and fifty years, the Virgin and Queens ruled French +taste and thought so successfully that the French man has never yet +quite decided whether to be more proud or ashamed of it. Life has +ever since seemed a little flat to him, and art a little cheap. He +saw that the woman, in elevating herself, had made him appear +ridiculous, and he tried to retaliate with a wit not always +sparkling, and too often at his own expense. Sometimes in museums or +collections of bric-a-brac, you will see, in an illuminated +manuscript, or carved on stone, or cast in bronze, the figure of a +man on his hands and knees, bestridden by another figure holding a +bridle and a whip; it is Aristotle, symbol of masculine wisdom, +bridled and driven by woman. Six hundred years afterwards, Tennyson +revived the same motive in Merlin, enslaved not for a time but +forever. In both cases the satire justly punished the man. Another +version of the same story--perhaps the original--was the Mystery of +Adam, one of the earliest Church plays. Gaston Paris says "it was +written in England in the twelfth century, and its author had real +poetic talent; the scene of the seduction of Eve by the serpent is +one of the best pieces of Christian dramaturgy ... This remarkable +work seems to have been played no longer inside the church, but +under the porch":-- + +Diabolus. Jo vi Adam mais trop est fols. + + +Eva. Un poi est durs. + + +Diabolus. Il serra mols. + Il est plus durs qui n'est enfers. + + +Eva. Il est mult francs. + + +Diabolus. Ainz est mult sers. + Cure ne volt prendre de sei + Car la prenge sevals de tei. + Tu es fieblette et tendre chose + E es plus fresche que n'est rose. + Tu es plus blanche que crystal + Que neif que chiet sor glace en val. + Mal cuple en fist li Criatur. + Tu es trop tendre e il trop dur. + Mais neporquant tu es plus sage + En grant sens as mis tun corrage + For co fait bon traire a tei. + Parler te voil. + + +Eva. Ore ja fai. + + +Devil. Adam I've seen, but he's too rough. + + +Eve. A little hard! + + +Devil. He'll soon be soft enough! + Harder than hell he is till now. + + +Eve. He's very frank! + + +Devil. Say very low! + To help himself he does not care; + The helping you shall be my share; + For you are tender, gentle, true, + The rose is not so fresh as you; + Whiter than crystal, or than snow + That falls from heaven on ice below. + A sorry mixture God has brewed, + You too tender, he too rude. + But you have much the greater sense, + Your will is all intelligence. + Therefore it is I turn to you. + I want to tell you-- + + +Eve. Do it now! + + +The woman's greater intelligence was to blame for Adam's fall. Eve +was justly punished because she should have known better, while +Adam, as the Devil truly said, was a dull animal, hardly worth the +trouble of deceiving. Adam was disloyal, too, untrue to his wife +after being untrue to his Creator:-- + +La femme que tu me donas + Ele fist prime icest trespass + Donat le mei e jo mangai. + Or mest vis tornez est a gwai + Mal acontai icest manger. + Jo ai mesfait par ma moiller. + + +The woman that you made me take + First led me into this mistake. + She gave the apple that I ate + And brought me to this evil state. + Badly for me it turned, I own, + But all the fault is hers alone. + + +The audience accepted this as natural and proper. They recognized +the man as, of course, stupid, cowardly, and traitorous. The men of +the baser sort revenged themselves by boorishness that passed with +them for wit in the taverns of Arras, but the poets of the higher +class commonly took sides with the women. Even Chaucer, who lived +after the glamour had faded, and who satirized women to satiety, +told their tale in his "Legend of Good Women," with evident +sympathy. To him, also, the ordinary man was inferior,--stupid, +brutal, and untrue. "Full brittle is the truest," he said:-- + +For well I wote that Christ himself telleth + That in Israel, as wide as is the lond, + That so great faith in all the loud he ne fond + As in a woman, and this is no lie; + And as for men, look ye, such tyrannie + They doen all day, assay hem who so list, + The truest is full brotell for to trist. + + +Neither brutality nor wit helped the man much. Even Bluebeard in the +end fell a victim to the superior qualities of his last wife, and +Scheherazade's wit alone has preserved the memory of her royal +husband. The tradition of thirteenth-century society still rules the +French stage. The struggle between two strong-willed women to control +one weak-willed man is the usual motive of the French drama in the +nineteenth century, as it was the whole motive of Partenopeus of +Blois, one of the best twelfth-century romans; and Joinville +described it, in the middle of the thirteenth, as the leading motive +in the court of Saint Louis, with Queen Blanche and Queen Margaret +for players, and Saint Louis himself for pawn. + +One has only to look at the common, so-called Elzevirian, volume of +thirteenth-century nouvelles to see the Frenchman as he saw himself. +The story of "La Comtesse de Ponthieu" is the more Shakespearean, +but "La Belle Jehanne" is the more natural and lifelike. The plot is +the common masculine intrigue against the woman, which was used over +and over again before Shakespeare appropriated it in "Much Ado"; but +its French development is rather in the line of "All's Well." The +fair Jeanne, married to a penniless knight, not at all by her +choice, but only because he was a favourite of her father's, was a +woman of the true twelfth-century type. She broke the head of the +traitor, and when he, with his masculine falseness, caused her +husband to desert her, she disguised herself as a squire and +followed Sir Robert to Marseilles in search of service in war, for +the poor knight could get no other means of livelihood. Robert was +the husband, and the wife, in entering his service as squire without +pay, called herself John:-- + +Molt fu mesire Robiers dolans cant il vint a Marselle de cou k'il +n'oi parler de nulle chose ki fust ou pais; si dist a Jehan: + +--Ke ferons nous? Vous m'aves preste de vos deniers la vostre +mierchi, si les vos renderai car je venderai mon palefroi et +m'acuiterai a vous. + +--Sire, dist Jehans, crees moi se il vous plaist je vous dirai ke +nous ferons; jou ai bien enchore c sous de tournois, s'll vous +plaist je venderai nos ii chevaus et en ferai deniers; et je suis li +miousdres boulengiers ke vous sacies, si ferai pain francois et je +ne douc mie ke je ne gaagne bien et largement mon depens. + +--Jehans, dist mesire Robiers, je m'otroi del tout a faire votre +volente + +Et lendemam vendi Jehans ses .ii. chevaux X livres de tornois, et +achata son ble et le fist muire, et achata des corbelles et +coumencha a faire pain francois si bon et si bien fait k'il en +vendoit plus ke li doi melleur boulengier de la ville, et fist tant +dedens les ii ans k'il ot bien c livres de katel. Lors dist Jehans a +son segnour: + +--Je lo bien que nous louons une tres grant mason et jou akaterai +del vin et hierbegerai la bonne gent + +--Jehan, dist mesire Robiers, faites a vo volente kar je l'otroi et +si me loc molt de vous. + +Jehans loua une mason grant et bielle, et si hierbrega la bonne gent +et gaegnoit ases a plente, et viestoit son segnour biellement et +richement, et avoit mesire Robiers son palefroi et aloit boire et +mengier aveukes les plus vallans de la ville, et Jehans li envoioit +vins et viandes ke tout cil ki o lui conpagnoient s'en +esmervelloient. Si gaegna tant ke dedens .iiii ans il gaegna plus de +ccc livres de meuble sains son harnois qui valoit bien .L. livres. + +Much was Sir Robert grieved when he came to Marseilles and found +that there was no talk of anything doing in the country, and he said +to John: "What shall we do? You have lent me your money, I thank +you, and will repay you, for I will sell my palfrey and discharge +the debt to you." + +"Sir," said John, "trust to me, if you please, I will tell you what +we will do, I have still a hundred sous, if you please I will sell +our two horses and turn them into money, and I am the best baker you +ever knew, I will make French bread, and I've no doubt I shall pay +my expenses well and make money" + +"John," said Sir Robert, "I agree wholly to do whatever you like" + +And the next day John sold their two horse for ten pounds, and +bought his wheat and had it ground, and bought baskets, and began to +make French bread so good and so well made that he sold more of it +than the two best bakers in the city, and made so much within two +years that he had a good hundred pound property Then he said to his +lord "I advise our hiring a very large house, and I will buy wine +and will keep lodgings for good society + +"John," said Sir Robert, "do what you please, for I grant it, and am +greatly pleased with you." + +John hired a large and fine house and lodged the best people and +gained a great plenty, and dressed his master handsomely and richly, +and Sir Robert kept his palfrey and went out to eat and drink with +the best people of the city, and John sent them such wines and food +that all his companions marvelled at it. He made so much that within +four years he gained more than three hundred pounds in money besides +clothes, etc, well worth fifty. + +The docile obedience of the man to the woman seemed as reasonable to +the thirteenth century as the devotion of the woman to the man, not +because she loved him, for there was no question of love, but +because he was HER man, and she owned him as though he were child. +The tale went on to develop her character always in the same sense. +When she was ready, Jeanne broke up the establishment at Marseilles, +brought her husband back to Hainault, and made him, without knowing +her object, kill the traitor and redress her wrongs. Then after +seven years' patient waiting, she revealed herself and resumed her +place. + +If you care to see the same type developed to its highest capacity, +go to the theatre the first time some ambitious actress attempts the +part of Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare realized the thirteenth-century +woman more vividly than the thirteenth-century poets ever did; but +that is no new thing to say of Shakespeare. The author of "La +Comtesse de Ponthieu" made no bad sketch of the character. These are +fictions, but the Chronicles contain the names of women by scores +who were the originals of the sketch. The society which Orderic +described in Normandy--the generation of the first crusade--produced +a great variety of Lady Macbeths. In the country of Evreux, about +1100, Orderic says that "a worse than civil war was waged between +two powerful brothers, and the mischief was fomented by the spiteful +jealousy of their haughty wives. The Countess Havise of Evreux took +offence at some taunts uttered by Isabel de Conches,--wife of Ralph, +the Seigneur of Conches, some ten miles from Evreux,--and used all +her influence with her husband, Count William, and his barons, to +make trouble ... Both the ladies who stirred up these fierce +enmities were great talkers and spirited as well as handsome; they +ruled their husbands, oppressed their vassals, and inspired terror +in various ways. But still their characters were very different. +Havise had wit and eloquence, but she was cruel and avaricious. +Isabel was generous, enterprising, and gay, so that she was beloved +and esteemed by those about her. She rode in knight's armour when +her vassals were called to war, and showed as much daring among men- +at-arms and mounted knights as Camilla ..." More than three hundred +years afterwards, far off in the Vosges, from a village never heard +of, appeared a common peasant of seventeen years old, a girl without +birth, education, wealth, or claim of any sort to consideration, who +made her way to Chinon and claimed from Charles VII a commission to +lead his army against the English. Neither the king nor the court +had faith in her, and yet the commission was given, and the rank- +and-file showed again that the true Frenchman had more confidence in +the woman than in the man, no matter what the gossips might say. No +one was surprised when Jeanne did what she promised, or when the men +burned her for doing it. There were Jeannes in every village. +Ridicule was powerless against them. Even Voltaire became what the +French call frankly "bete," in trying it. + +Eleanor of Guienne was the greatest of all Frenchwomen. Her decision +was law, whether in Bordeaux or Poitiers, in Paris or in Palestine, +in London or in Normandy; in the court of Louis VII, or in that of +Henry II, or in her own Court of Love. For fifteen years she was +Queen of France; for fifty she was Queen in England; for eighty or +thereabouts she was equivalent to Queen over Guienne. No other +Frenchwoman ever had such rule. Unfortunately, as Queen of France, +she struck against an authority greater than her own, that of Saint +Bernard, and after combating it, with Suger's help, from 1137 until +1152, the monk at last gained such mastery that Eleanor quitted the +country and Suger died. She was not a person to accept defeat. She +royally divorced her husband and went back to her own kingdom of +Guienne. Neither Louis nor Bernard dared to stop her, or to hold her +territories from her, but they put the best face they could on their +defeat by proclaiming her as a person of irregular conduct. The +irregularity would not have stood in their way, if they had dared to +stand in hers, but Louis was much the weaker, and made himself +weaker still by allowing her to leave him for the sake of Henry of +Anjou, a story of a sort that rarely raised the respect in which +French kings were held by French society. Probably politics had more +to do with the matter than personal attachments, for Eleanor was a +great ruler, the equal of any ordinary king, and more powerful than +most kings living in 1152. If she deserted France in order to join +the enemies of France, she had serious reasons besides love for +young Henry of Anjou; but in any case she did, as usual, what +pleased her, and forced Louis to pronounce the divorce at a council +held at Beaugency, March 18, 1152, on the usual pretext of +relationship. The humours of the twelfth century were Shakespearean. +Eleanor, having obtained her divorce at Beaugency, to the deep +regret of all Frenchmen, started at once for Poitiers, knowing how +unsafe she was in any territory but her own. Beaugency is on the +Loire, between Orleans and Blois, and Eleanor's first night was at +Blois, or should have been; but she was told, on arriving, that +Count Thibaut of Blois, undeterred by King Louis's experience, was +making plans to detain her, with perfectly honourable views of +marriage; and, as she seems at least not to have been in love with +Thibaut, she was obliged to depart at once, in the night, to Tours. +A night journey on horseback from Blois to Tours in the middle of +March can have been no pleasure-trip, even in 1152; but, on arriving +at Tours in the morning, Eleanor found that her lovers were still so +dangerously near that she set forward at once on the road to +Poitiers. As she approached her own territory she learned that +Geoffrey of Anjou, the younger brother of her intended husband, was +waiting for her at the border, with views of marriage as strictly +honourable as those of all the others. She was driven to take +another road, and at last got safe to Poitiers. + +About no figure in the Middle Ages, man or woman, did so many +legends grow, and with such freedom, as about Eleanor, whose +strength appealed to French sympathies and whose adventures appealed +to their imagination. They never forgave Louis for letting her go. +They delighted to be told that in Palestine she had carried on +relations of the most improper character, now with a Saracen slave +of great beauty; now with Raymond of Poitiers, her uncle, the +handsomest man of his time; now with Saladin himself; and, as all +this occurred at Antioch in 1147 or 1148, they could not explain why +her husband should have waited until 1152 in order to express his +unwilling disapproval; but they quoted with evident sympathy a +remark attributed to her that she thought she had married a king, +and found she had married a monk. To the Frenchman, Eleanor remained +always sympathetic, which is the more significant because, in +English tradition, her character suffered a violent and incredible +change. Although English history has lavished on Eleanor somewhat +more than her due share of conventional moral reproof, considering +that, from the moment she married Henry of Anjou, May 18, 1152, she +was never charged with a breath of scandal, it atoned for her want +of wickedness by French standards, in the usual manner of +historians, by inventing traits which reflected the moral standards +of England. Tradition converted her into the fairy-book type of +feminine jealousy and invented for her the legend of the Fair +Rosamund and the poison of toads. + +For us, both legends are true. They reflected, not perhaps the +character of Eleanor, but what the society liked to see acted on its +theatre of life. Eleanor's real nature in no way concerns us. The +single fact worth remembering was that she had two daughters by +Louis VII, as shown in the table; who, in due time, married--Mary, +in 1164, married Henry, the great Count of Champagne; Alix, at the +same time, became Countess of Chartres by marriage with Thibaut, who +had driven her mother from Blois in 1152 by his marital intentions. +Henry and Thibaut were brothers whose sister Alix had married Louis +VII in 1160, eight years after the divorce. The relations thus +created were fantastic, especially for Queen Eleanor, who, besides +her two French daughters, had eight children as Queen of England. +Her second son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, born in 1157, was affianced +in 1174 to a daughter of Louis VII and Alix, a child only six years +old, who was sent to England to be brought up as future queen. This +was certainly Eleanor's doing, and equally certain was it that the +child came to no good in the English court. The historians, by +exception, have not charged this crime to Queen Eleanor; they +charged it to Eleanor's husband, who passed most of his life in +crossing his wife's political plans; but with politics we want as +little as possible to do. We are concerned with the artistic and +social side of life, and have only to notice the coincidence that +while the Virgin was miraculously using the power of spiritual love +to elevate and purify the people, Eleanor and her daughters were +using the power of earthly love to discipline and refine the courts. +Side by side with the crude realities about them, they insisted on +teaching and enforcing an ideal that contradicted the realities, and +had no value for them or for us except in the contradiction. + +The ideals of Eleanor and her daughter Mary of Champagne were a form +of religion, and if you care to see its evangels, you had best go +directly to Dante and Petrarch, or, if you like it better, to Don +Quixote de la Mancha. The religion is dead as Demeter, and its art +alone survives as, on the whole, the highest expression of man's +thought or emotion; but in its day it was almost as practical as it +now is fanciful. Eleanor and her daughter Mary and her granddaughter +Blanche knew as well as Saint Bernard did, or Saint Francis, what a +brute the emancipated man could be; and as though they foresaw the +society of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, they used every +terror they could invent, as well as every tenderness they could +invoke, to tame the beasts around them. Their charge was of manners, +and, to teach manners, they made a school which they called their +Court of Love, with a code of law to which they gave the name of +"courteous love." The decisions of this court were recorded, like +the decisions of a modern bench, under the names of the great ladies +who made them, and were enforced by the ladies of good society for +whose guidance they were made. They are worth reading, and any one +who likes may read them to this day, with considerable scepticism +about their genuineness. The doubt is only ignorance. We do not, and +never can, know the twelfth-century woman, or, for that matter, any +other woman, but we do know the literature she created; we know the +art she lived in, and the religion she professed. We can collect +from them some idea why the Virgin Mary ruled, and what she was +taken to be, by the world which worshipped her. + +Mary of Champagne created the literature of courteous love. She must +have been about twenty years old when she married Count Henry and +went to live at Troyes, not actually a queen in title, but certainly +a queen in social influence. In 1164, Champagne was a powerful +country, and Troyes a centre of taste. In Normandy, at the same +date, William of Saint Pair and Wace were writing the poetry we +know. In Champagne the court poet was Christian of Troyes, whose +poems were new when the churches of Noyon and Senlis and Saint Leu +d'Esserent, and the fleche of Chartres, and the Leaning Tower of +Pisa, were building, at the same time with the Abbey of Vezelay, and +before the church at Mantes. Christian died not long after 1175, +leaving a great mass of verse, much of which has survived, and which +you can read more easily than you can read Dante or Petrarch, +although both are almost modern compared with Christian. The quality +of this verse is something like the quality of the glass windows-- +conventional decoration; colours in conventional harmonies; +refinement, restraint, and feminine delicacy of taste. Christian has +not the grand manner of the eleventh century, and never recalls the +masculine strength of the "Chanson de Roland" or "Raoul de Cambrai." +Even his most charming story, "Erec et Enide," carries chiefly a +moral of courtesy. His is poet-laureate's work, says M. Gaston +Paris; the flower of a twelfth-century court and of twelfth-century +French; the best example of an admirable language; but not lyric; +neither strong, nor deep, nor deeply felt. What we call tragedy is +unknown to it. Christian's world is sky-blue and rose, with only +enough red to give it warmth, and so flooded with light that even +its mysteries count only by the clearness with which they are shown. + +Among other great works, before Mary of France came to Troyes +Christian had, toward 1160, written a "Tristan," which is lost. Mary +herself, he says, gave him the subject of "Lancelot," with the +request or order to make it a lesson of "courteous love," which he +obeyed. Courtesy has lost its meaning as well as its charm, and you +might find the "Chevalier de la Charette" even more unintelligible +than tiresome; but its influence was great in its day, and the +lesson of courteous love, under the authority of Mary of Champagne, +lasted for centuries as the standard of taste. "Lancelot" was never +finished, but later, not long after 1174, Christian wrote a +"Perceval," or "Conte du Graal," which must also have been intended +to please Mary, and which is interesting because, while the +"Lancelot" gave the twelfth-century idea of courteous love, the +"Perceval" gave the twelfth-century idea of religious mystery. Mary +was certainly concerned with both. "It is for this same Mary," says +Gaston Paris, "that Walter of Arras undertook his poem of 'Eracle'; +she was the object of the songs of the troubadours as well as of +their French imitators; for her use also she caused the translations +of books of piety like Genesis, or the paraphrase at great length, +in verse, of the psalm 'Eructavit.'" + +With her theories of courteous love, every one is more or less +familiar if only from the ridicule of Cervantes and the follies of +Quixote, who, though four hundred years younger, was Lancelot's +child; but we never can know how far she took herself and her laws +of love seriously, and to speculate on so deep a subject as her +seriousness is worse than useless, since she would herself have been +as uncertain as her lovers were. Visionary as the courtesy was, the +Holy Grail was as practical as any bric-a-brac that has survived of +the time. The mystery of Perceval is like that of the Gothic +cathedral, illuminated by floods of light, and enlivened by rivers +of colour. Unfortunately Christian never told what he meant by the +fragment, itself a mystery, in which he narrated the story of the +knight who saw the Holy Grail, because the knight, who was warned, +as usual, to ask no questions, for once, unlike most knights, obeyed +the warning when he should have disregarded it. As knights-errant +necessarily did the wrong thing in order to make their adventures +possible, Perceval's error cannot be in itself mysterious, nor was +the castle in any way mysterious where the miracle occurred, It +appeared to him to be the usual castle, and he saw nothing unusual +in the manner of his reception by the usual old lord, or in the fact +that both seated themselves quite simply before the hall-fire with +the usual household. Then, as though it were an everyday habit, the +Holy Grail was brought in (Bartsch, "Chrestomathie," 183-85, ed. +1895):-- + +Et leans avail luminaire + Si grant con l'an le porrait faire + De chandoiles a un ostel. + Que qu'il parloient d'un et d'el, + Uns vallez d'une chambre vint + Qui une blanche lance tint + Ampoigniee par le mi lieu. + Si passa par endroit le feu + Et cil qui al feu se seoient, + Et tuit cil de leans veoient + La lance blanche et le fer blanc. + S'issoit une gote de sang + Del fer de la lance au sommet, + Et jusqu'a la main au vaslet + Coroit cele gote vermoille.... + A tant dui autre vaslet vindrent + Qui chandeliers an lors mains tindrent + De fin or ovrez a neel. + Li vaslet estoient moult bel + Qui les chandeliers aportoient. + An chacun chandelier ardoient + Dous chandoiles a tot le mains. + Un graal antre ses dous mains + Une demoiselle tenoit, + Qui avec les vaslets venoit, + Bele et gente et bien acesmee. + Quant cle fu leans antree + Atot le graal qu'ele tint + Une si granz clartez i vint + Qu'ausi perdirent les chandoiles + Lor clarte come les estoiles + Qant li solauz luist et la lune. + Apres celi an revint une + Qui tint un tailleor d'argent. + + +Le graal qui aloit devant + De fin or esmere estoit, + Pierres precieuses avoit + El graal de maintes menieres + Des plus riches et des plus chieres + Qui en mer ne en terre soient. + Totes autres pierres passoient + Celes del graal sanz dotance. + + +Tot ainsi con passa la lance + Par devant le lit trespasserent + Et d'une chambre a l'autre alerent. + Et li vaslet les vit passer, + Ni n'osa mire demander + Del graal cui l'an an servoit. + + +And, within, the hall was bright + As any hall could be with light + Of candles in a house at night. + So, while of this and that they talked, + A squire from a chamber walked, + Bearing a white lance in his hand, + Grasped by the middle, like a wand; + And, as he passed the chimney wide, + Those seated by the fireside, + And all the others, caught a glance + Of the white steel and the white lance. + As they looked, a drop of blood + Down the lance's handle flowed; + Down to where the youth's hand stood. + From the lance-head at the top + They saw run that crimson drop.... + Presently came two more squires, + In their hands two chandeliers, + Of fine gold in enamel wrought. + Each squire that the candle brought + Was a handsome chevalier. + There burned in every chandelier + Two lighted candles at the least. + A damsel, graceful and well dressed, + Behind the squires followed fast + Who carried in her hands a graal; + And as she came within the hall + With the graal there came a light So brilliant that the candles all + Lost clearness, as the stars at night + When moon shines, or in day the sun. + After her there followed one + Who a dish of silver bore. + + +The graal, which had gone before, + Of gold the finest had been made, + With precious stones had been inlaid, + Richest and rarest of each kind + That man in sea or earth could find. + All other jewels far surpassed + Those which the holy graal enchased. + + +Just as before had passed the lance + They all before the bed advance, + Passing straightway through the hall, + And the knight who saw them pass + Never ventured once to ask + For the meaning of the graal. + + +The simplicity of this narration gives a certain dramatic effect to +the mystery, like seeing a ghost in full daylight, but Christian +carried simplicity further still. He seemed either to feel, or to +want others to feel, the reality of the adventure and the miracle, +and he followed up the appearance of the graal by a solid meal in +the style of the twelfth century, such as one expects to find in +"Ivanhoe" or the "Talisman." The knight sat down with his host to +the best dinner that the county of Champagne afforded, and they ate +their haunch of venison with the graal in full view. They drank +their Champagne wine of various sorts, out of gold cups:-- + + Vins clers ne raspez ne lor faut + A copes dorees a boivre; + + +they sat before the fire and talked till bedtime, when the squires +made up the beds in the hall, and brought in supper--dates, figs, +nutmegs, spices, pomegranates, and at last lectuaries, suspiciously +like what we call jams; and "alexandrine gingerbread"; after which +they drank various drinks, with or without spice or honey or pepper; +and old moret, which is thought to be mulberry wine, but which +generally went with clairet, a colourless grape-juice, or piment. At +least, here are the lines, and one may translate them to suit one's +self:-- + +Et li vaslet aparellierent + Les lis et le fruit au colchier + Que il en i ot de moult chier, + Dates, figues, et nois mugates, + Girofles et pomes de grenates, + Et leituaires an la fin, + Et gingenbret alixandrin. + Apres ce burent de maint boivre, + Piment ou n'ot ne miel ne poivre + Et viez more et cler sirop. + + +The twelfth century had the child's love of sweets and spices and +preserved fruits, and drinks sweetened or spiced, whether they were +taken for supper or for poetry; the true knight's palate was fresh +and his appetite excellent either for sweets or verses or love; the +world was young then; Robin Hoods lived in every forest, and Richard +Coeur-de-Lion was not yet twenty years old. The pleasant adventures +of Robin Hood were real, as you can read in the stories of a dozen +outlaws, and men troubled themselves about pain and death much as +healthy bears did, in the mountains. Life had miseries enough, but +few shadows deeper than those of the imaginative lover, or the +terrors of ghosts at night. Men's imaginations ran riot, but did not +keep them awake; at least, neither the preserved fruits nor the +mulberry wine nor the clear syrup nor the gingerbread nor the Holy +Graal kept Perceval awake, but he slept the sound and healthy sleep +of youth, and when he woke the next morning, he felt only a mild +surprise to find that his host and household had disappeared, +leaving him to ride away without farewell, breakfast, or Graal. + +Christian wrote about Perceval in 1174 in the same spirit in which +the workmen in glass, thirty years later, told the story of +Charlemagne. One artist worked for Mary of Champagne; the others for +Mary of Chartres, commonly known as the Virgin; but all did their +work in good faith, with the first, fresh, easy instinct of colour, +light, and line. Neither of the two Maries was mystical, in a modern +sense; none of the artists was oppressed by the burden of doubt; +their scepticism was as childlike as faith. If one has to make an +exception, perhaps the passion of love was more serious than that of +religion, and gave to religion the deepest emotion, and the most +complicated one, which society knew. Love was certainly a passion; +and even more certainly it was, as seen in poets like Dante and +Petrarch,--in romans like "Lancelot" and "Aucassin,"--in ideals like +the Virgin,--complicated beyond modern conception. For this reason +the loss of Christian's "Tristan" makes a terrible gap in art, for +Christian's poem would have given the first and best idea of what +led to courteous love. The "Tristan" was written before 1160, and +belonged to the cycle of Queen Eleanor of England rather than to +that of her daughter Mary of Troyes; but the subject was one neither +of courtesy nor of France; it belonged to an age far behind the +eleventh century, or even the tenth, or indeed any century within +the range of French history; and it was as little fitted for +Christian's way of treatment as for any avowed burlesque. The +original Tristan--critics say--was not French, and neither Tristan +nor Isolde had ever a drop of French blood in their veins. In their +form as Christian received it, they were Celts or Scots; they came +from Brittany, Wales, Ireland, the northern ocean, or farther still. +Behind the Welsh Tristan, which passed probably through England to +Normandy and thence to France and Champagne, critics detect a far +more ancient figure living in a form of society that France could +not remember ever to have known. King Marc was a tribal chief of the +Stone Age whose subjects loved the forest and lived on the sea or in +caves; King Marc's royal hall was a common shelter on the banks of a +stream, where every one was at home, and king, queen, knights, +attendants, and dwarf slept on the floor, on beds laid down where +they pleased; Tristan's weapons were the bow and stone knife; he +never saw a horse or a spear; his ideas of loyalty and Isolde's +ideas of marriage were as vague as Marc's royal authority; and all +were alike unconscious of law, chivalry, or church. The note they +sang was more unlike the note of Christian, if possible, than that +of Richard Wagner; it was the simplest expression of rude and +primitive love, as one could perhaps find it among North American +Indians, though hardly so defiant even there, and certainly in the +Icelandic Sagas hardly so lawless; but it was a note of real +passion, and touched the deepest chords of sympathy in the +artificial society of the twelfth century, as it did in that of the +nineteenth. The task of the French poet was to tone it down and give +it the fashionable dress, the pointed shoes and long sleeves, of the +time. "The Frenchman," says Gaston Paris, "is specially interested +in making his story entertaining for the society it is meant for; he +is 'social'; that is, of the world; he smiles at the adventures he +tells, and delicately lets you see that he is not their dupe; he +exerts himself to give to his style a constant elegance, a uniform +polish, in which a few neatly turned, clever phrases sparkle here +and there; above all, he wants to please, and thinks of his audience +more than of his subject." + +In the twelfth century he wanted chiefly to please women, as Orderic +complained; Isolde came out of Brittany to meet Eleanor coming up +from Guienne, and the Virgin from the east; and all united in giving +law to society. In each case it was the woman, not the man, who gave +the law;--it was Mary, not the Trinity; Eleanor, not Louis VII; +Isolde, not Tristan. No doubt, the original Tristan had given the +law like Roland or Achilles, but the twelfth-century Tristan was a +comparatively poor creature. He was in his way a secondary figure in +the romance, as Louis VII was to Eleanor and Abelard to Heloise. +Every one knows how, about twenty years before Eleanor came to +Paris, the poet-professor Abelard, the hero of the Latin Quarter, +had sung to Heloise those songs which--he tells us--resounded +through Europe as widely as his scholastic fame, and probably to +more effect for his renown. In popular notions Heloise was Isolde, +and would in a moment have done what Isolde did (Bartsch, 107-08):-- + +Quaint reis Marcs nus out conjeies + E de sa curt nus out chascez, + As mains ensemble nus preismes + E hors de la sale en eissimes, + A la forest puis en alasmes + + +E un mult bel liu i trouvames + E une roche, fu cavee, + Devant ert estraite la entree, + Dedans fu voesse ben faite, + Tante bel cum se fust portraite. + + +When King Marc had banned us both, + And from his court had chased us forth, + Hand in hand each clasping fast + Straight from out the hall we passed; + To the forest turned our face; + + +Found in it a perfect place, + Where the rock that made a cave + Hardly more than passage gave; + Spacious within and fit for use, + As though it had been planned for us. + + +At any time of her life, Heloise would have defied society or +church, and would--at least in the public's fancy--have taken +Abelard by the hand and gone off to the forest much more readily +than she went to the cloister; but Abelard would have made a poor +figure as Tristan. Abelard and Christian of Troyes were as remote as +we are from the legendary Tristan; but Isolde and Heloise, Eleanor +and Mary were the immortal and eternal woman. The legend of Isolde, +both in the earlier and the later version, seems to have served as a +sacred book to the women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, +and Christian's Isolde surely helped Mary in giving law to the Court +of Troyes and decisions in the Court of Love. + +Countess Mary's authority lasted from 1164 to 1198, thirty-four +years, during which, at uncertain intervals, glimpses of her +influence flash out in poetry rather than in prose. Christian began +his "Roman de la Charette" by invoking her:-- + +Puisque ma dame de Chanpaigne + Vialt que romans a faire anpraigne + + +Si deist et jel tesmoignasse + Que ce est la dame qui passe + Totes celes qui sont vivanz + Si con li funs passe les vanz + Qui vante en Mai ou en Avril + + +Dirai je: tant com une jame + Vaut de pailes et de sardines + Vaut la contesse de reines? + + +Christian chose curious similes. His dame surpassed all living +rivals as smoke passes the winds that blow in May; or as much as a +gem would buy of straws and sardines is the Countess worth in +queens. Louis XIV would have thought that Christian might be +laughing at him, but court styles changed with their masters. Louis +XIV would scarcely have written a prison-song to his sister such as +Richard Coeur-de-Lion wrote to Mary of Champagne:-- + +Ja nus bons pris ne dirat sa raison + Adroitement s'ansi com dolans non; + Mais par confort puet il faire chanson. + Moult ai d'amins, mais povre sont li don; + Honte en avront se por ma reancon + Suix ces deus yvers pris. + +Ceu sevent bien mi home et mi baron, + Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon, + Ke je n'avoie si povre compaingnon + Cui je laissasse por avoir au prixon. + Je nel di pas por nulle retraison, + Mais ancor suix je pris. + + +Or sai ge bien de voir certainement + Ke mors ne pris n'ait amin ne parent, + Cant on me lait por or ne por argent. + Moult m'est de moi, mais plus m'est de ma gent + C'apres ma mort avront reprochier grant + Se longement suix pris. + + +N'est pas mervelle se j'ai lo cuer dolent + Cant li miens sires tient ma terre en torment. + S'or li menbroit de nostre sairement + Ke nos feismes andui communament, + Bien sai de voir ke ceans longement + Ne seroie pas pris. + + +Ce sevent bien Angevin et Torain, + Cil bacheler ki or sont fort et sain, + C'ancombreis suix long d'aus en autrui main. + Forment m'amoient, mais or ne m'aimment grain. + De belles armes sont ores veut cil plain, + Por tant ke je suix pris. + + +Mes compaingnons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim, + Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain, + Me di, chanson, kil ne sont pas certain, + + +C'onques vers aus n'en oi cuer faus ne vain. + S'il me guerroient, il font moult que villain + Tant com je serai pris. + + +Comtesse suer, vostre pris soverain + Vos saut et gart cil a cui je me claim + Et par cui je suix pris. + Je n'ou di pas de celi de Chartain + La meire Loweis. + + +No prisoner can tell his honest thought + Unless he speaks as one who suffers wrong; + But for his comfort he may make a song. + My friends are many, but their gifts are naught. + Shame will be theirs, if, for my ransom, here + I lie another year. + + +They know this well, my barons and my men, + Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou, + That I had never follower so low + Whom I would leave in prison to my gain. + I say it not for a reproach to them, + But prisoner I am! + + +The ancient proverb now I know for sure: + Death and a prison know nor kin nor tie, + Since for mere lack of gold they let me lie. + Much for myself I grieve; for them still more. + After my death they will have grievous wrong + If I am prisoner long. + + +What marvel that my heart is sad and sore + When my own lord torments my helpless lands! + Well do I know that, if he held his hands, + Remembering the common oath we swore, + I should not here imprisoned with my song, + Remain a prisoner long. + + +They know this well who now are rich and strong + Young gentlemen of Anjou and Touraine, + That far from them, on hostile bonds I strain. + They loved me much, but have not loved me long. + Their plains will see no more fair lists arrayed, + While I lie here betrayed. + + +Companions, whom I loved, and still do love, + Geoffroi du Perche and Ansel de Caleux, + Tell them, my song, that they are friends untrue. + + +Never to them did I false-hearted prove; + But they do villainy if they war on me, + While I lie here, unfree. + + +Countess sister! your sovereign fame + May he preserve whose help I claim, + Victim for whom am I! + I say not this of Chartres' dame, + Mother of Louis! + + +Richard's prison-song, one of the chief monuments of English +literature, sounds to every ear, accustomed to twelfth-century +verse, as charming as when it was household rhyme to + + mi ome et mi baron + Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon. + + +Not only was Richard a far greater king than any Louis ever was, but +he also composed better poetry than any other king who is known to +tourists, and, when he spoke to his sister in this cry of the heart +altogether singular among monarchs, he made law and style, above +discussion. Whether he meant to reproach his other sister, Alix of +Chartres, historians may tell, if they know. If he did, the reproach +answered its purpose, for the song was written in 1193; Richard was +ransomed and released in 1194; and in 1198 the young Count "Loweis" +of Chartres and Blois leagued with the Counts of Flanders, Le +Perche, Guines, and Toulouse, against Philip Augustus, in favor of +Coeur-de-Lion to whom they rendered homage. In any case, neither +Mary nor Alice in 1193 was reigning Countess. Mary was a widow since +1181, and her son Henry was Count in Champagne, apparently a great +favourite with his uncle Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The life of this +Henry of Champagne was another twelfth-century romance, but can +serve no purpose here except to recall the story that his mother, +the great Countess Mary, died in 1198 of sorrow for the death of +this son, who was then King of Jerusalem, and was killed, in 1197, +by a fall from the window of his palace at Acre. Coeur-de-Lion died +in 1199. In 1201, Mary's other son, who succeeded Henry,--Count +Thibaut III,--died, leaving a posthumous heir, famous in the +thirteenth century as Thibaut-le-Grand--the Thibaut of Queen +Blanche. + +They were all astonishing--men and women--and filled the world, for +two hundred years, with their extraordinary energy and genius; but +the greatest of all was old Queen Eleanor, who survived her son +Coeur-de-Lion, as well as her two husbands,--Louis-le-Jeune and +Henry II Plantagenet,--and was left in 1200 still struggling to +repair the evils and fend off the dangers they caused. "Queen by the +wrath of God," she called herself, and she knew what just claim she +had to the rank. Of her two husbands and ten children, little +remained except her son John, who, by the unanimous voice of his +family, his friends, his enemies, and even his admirers, achieved a +reputation for excelling in every form of twelfth-century crime. He +was a liar and a traitor, as was not uncommon, but he was thought to +be also a coward, which, in that family, was singular. Some +redeeming quality he must have had, but none is recorded. His mother +saw him running, in his masculine, twelfth-century recklessness, to +destruction, and she made a last and a characteristic effort to save +him and Guienne by a treaty of amity with the French king, to be +secured by the marriage of the heir of France, Louis, to Eleanor's +granddaughter, John's niece, Blanche of Castile, then twelve or +thirteen years old. Eleanor herself was eighty, and yet she made the +journey to Spain, brought back the child to Bordeaux, affianced her +to Louis VIII as she had herself been affianced in 1137 to Louis +VII, and in May, 1200, saw her married. The French had then given up +their conventional trick of attributing Eleanor's acts to her want +of morals; and France gave her--as to most women after sixty years +old--the benefit of the convention which made women respectable +after they had lost the opportunity to be vicious. In French eyes, +Eleanor played out the drama according to the rules. She could not +save John, but she died in 1202, before his ruin, and you can still +see her lying with her husband and her son Richard at Fontevrault in +her twelfth-century tomb. + +In 1223, Blanche became Queen of France. She was thirty-six years +old. Her husband, Louis VIII, was ambitious to rival his father, +Philip Augustus, who had seized Normandy in 1203. Louis undertook to +seize Toulouse and Avignon. In 1225, he set out with a large army in +which, among the chief vassals, his cousin Thibaut of Champagne led +a contingent. Thibaut was five-and-twenty years old, and, like +Pierre de Dreux, then Duke of Brittany, was one of the most +brilliant and versatile men of his time, and one of the greatest +rulers. As royal vassal Thibaut owed forty days' service in the +field; but his interests were at variance with the King's, and at +the end of the term he marched home with his men, leaving the King +to fall ill and die in Auvergne, November 8, 1226, and a child of +ten years old to carry on the government as Louis IX. + +Chartres Cathedral has already told the story twice, in stone and +glass; but Thibaut does not appear there, although he saved the +Queen. Some member of the royal family must be regent. Queen Blanche +took the place, and of course the princes of the blood, who thought +it was their right, united against her. At first, Blanche turned +violently on Thibaut and forbade him to appear at the coronation at +Rheims in his own territory, on November 29, as though she held him +guilty of treason; but when the league of great vassals united to +deprive her of the regency, she had no choice but to detach at any +cost any member of the league, and Thibaut alone offered help. What +price she paid him was best known to her; but what price she would +be believed to have paid him was as well known to her as what had +been said of her grandmother Eleanor when she changed her allegiance +in 1152. If the scandal had concerned Thibaut alone, she might have +been well content, but Blanche was obliged also to pay desperate +court to the papal legate. Every member of her husband's family +united against her and libelled her character with the freedom which +enlivened and envenomed royal tongues. + + Maintes paroles en dit en + Comme d'Iseult et de Tristan. + + +Had this been all, she would have cared no more than Eleanor or any +other queen had cared, for in French drama, real or imaginary, such +charges were not very serious and hardly uncomplimentary; but Iseult +had never been accused, over and above her arbitrary views on the +marriage-contract, of acting as an accomplice with Tristan in +poisoning King Marc. French convention required that Thibaut should +have poisoned Louis VIII for love of the Queen, and that this secret +reciprocal love should control their lives. Fortunately for Blanche +she was a devout ally of the Church, and the Church believed evil +only of enemies. The legate and the prelates rallied to her support +and after eight years of desperate struggle they crushed Pierre +Mauclerc and saved Thibaut and Blanche. + +For us the poetry is history, and the facts are false. French art +starts not from facts, but from certain assumptions as conventional +as a legendary window, and the commonest convention is the Woman. +The fact, then as now, was Power, or its equivalent in exchange, but +Frenchmen, while struggling for the Power, expressed it in terms of +Art. They looked on life as a drama,--and on drama as a phase of +life--in which the bystanders were bound to assume and accept the +regular stage-plot. That the plot might be altogether untrue to real +life affected in no way its interest. To them Thibaut and Blanche +were bound to act Tristan and Isolde. Whatever they were when off +the stage, they were lovers on it. Their loves were as real and as +reasonable as the worship of the Virgin. Courteous love was avowedly +a form of drama, but not the less a force of society. Illusion for +illusion, courteous love, in Thibaut's hands, or in the hands of +Dante and Petrarch, was as substantial as any other convention;--the +balance of trade, the rights of man, or the Athanasian Creed. In +that sense the illusions alone were real; if the Middle Ages had +reflected only what was practical, nothing would have survived for +us. + +Thibaut was Tristan, and is said to have painted his verses on the +walls of his chateau. If he did, he painted there, in the opinion of +M. Gaston Paris, better poetry than any that was written on paper or +parchment, for Thibaut was a great prince and great poet who did in +both characters whatever he pleased. In modern equivalents, one +would give much to see the chateau again with the poetry on its +walls. Provins has lost the verses, but Troyes still keeps some +churches and glass of Thibaut's time which hold their own with the +best. Even of Thibaut himself, something survives, and though it +were only the memories of his seneschal, the famous Sire de +Joinville, history and France would be poor without him. With +Joinville in hand, you may still pass an hour in the company of +these astonishing thirteenth-century men and women:--crusaders who +fight, hunt, make love, build churches, put up glass windows to the +Virgin, buy missals, talk scholastic philosophy, compose poetry: +Blanche, Thibaut, Perron, Joinville, Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, +Saint Dominic, Saint Francis--you may know them as intimately as you +can ever know a world that is lost; and in the case of Thibaut you +may know more, for he is still alive in his poems; he even vibrates +with life. One might try a few verses, to see what he meant by +courtesy. Perhaps he wrote them for Queen Blanche, but, to whomever +he sent them, the French were right in thinking that she ought to +have returned his love (edition of 1742):-- + +Nus hom ne puet ami reconforter + Se cele non ou il a son cuer mis. + Pour ce m'estuet sovent plaindre et plourer + Que mis confors ne me vient, ce m'est vis, + De la ou j'ai tote ma remembrance. + Pour bien amer ai sovent esmaiance + A dire voir. + Dame, merci! donez moi esperance + De joie avoir. + + +Jene puis pas sovent a li parler + Ne remirer les biaus iex de son vis. + Ce pois moi que je n'i puis aler + Car ades est mes cuers ententis. + + +Ho! bele riens, douce sans conoissance, + Car me mettez en millor attendance + De bon espoir! + Dame, merci! donez moi esperance + De joie avoir. + + +Aucuns si sont qui me vuelent blamer + Quant je ne di a qui je suis amis; + Mais ja, dame, ne saura mon penser + Nus qui soit nes fors vous cui je le dis + Couardement a pavours a doutance + Dont puestes vous lors bien a ma semblance + Mon cuer savoir. + Dame, merci! donez moi esperance + De joie avoir. + + +There is no comfort to be found for pain + Save only where the heart has made its home. + Therefore I can but murmur and complain + Because no comfort to my pain has come + From where I garnered all my happiness. + From true love have I only earned distress + The truth to say. + Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess + A hope, one day. + + +Seldom the music of her voice I hear + Or wonder at the beauty of her eyes. + It grieves me that I may not follow there + Where at her feet my heart attentive lies. + + +Oh, gentle Beauty without consciousness, + Let me once feel a moment's hopefulness, + If but one ray! + Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess + A hope, one day. + + +Certain there are who blame upon me throw + Because I will not tell whose love I seek; + But truly, lady, none my thought shall know, + None that is born, save you to whom I speak + In cowardice and awe and doubtfulness, + That you may happily with fearlessness + My heart essay. + Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess + A hope, one day. + + +Does Thibaut's verse sound simple? It is the simplicity of the +thirteenth-century glass--so refined and complicated that sensible +people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any +blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these +three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned +there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as +perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These +stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how +Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing the Queen +of Heaven! + +De grant travail et de petit esploit + Voi ce siegle cargie et encombre + Que tant somes plain de maleurte + Ke nus ne pens a faire ce qu'il doit, + Ains avons si le Deauble trouve + Qu'a lui servir chascuns paine et essaie + Et Diex ki ot pour nos ja cruel plaie + Metons arrier et sa grant dignite; + Molt est hardis qui pour mort ne s'esmaie. + + +Diex que tout set et tout puet et tout voit + Nous auroit tost en entre-deus giete + Se la Dame plaine de grant bonte + Pardelez lui pour nos ne li prioit + + + Si tres douc mot plaisant et savoure + Le grant courous dou grant Signour apaie; + Molt par est fox ki autre amor essai + K'en cestui n'a barat ne fausete + Ne es autres n'a ne merti ne manaie. + + +La souris quiert pour son cors garandir + Contre l'yver la noif et le forment + Et nous chaitif nous n'alons rien querant + Quant nous morrons ou nous puissions garir. + Nous ne cherchons fors k'infer le puant; + Or esgardes come beste sauvage + Pourvoit de loin encontre son domage + Et nous n'avons ne sens ne hardement; + Il est avis que plain somes de rage. + + +Li Deable a getey por nos ravir + Quatre amecons aescbies de torment; + Covoitise lance premierement + Et puis Orguel por sa grant rois emplir + Et Luxure va le batel trainant + Felonie les governe et les nage. + Ensi peschant s'en viegnent au rivage + Dont Diex nous gart par son commandement + En qui sains fons nous feismes homage. + + +A la Dame qui tous les bien avance + T'en va, chancon s'el te vielt escouter + Onques ne fu nus di millor chaunce. + + +With travail great, and little cargo fraught, + See how our world is labouring in pain; + So filled we are with love of evil gain + That no one thinks of doing what he ought, + But we all hustle in the Devil's train, + And only in his service toil and pray; + And God, who suffered for us agony, + We set behind, and treat him with disdain; + Hardy is he whom death does not dismay. + + +God who rules all, from whom we can hide nought, + Had quickly flung us back to nought again + But that our gentle, gracious, Lady Queen + Begged him to spare us, and our pardon wrought; + + + Striving with words of sweetness to restrain + Our angry Lord, and his great wrath allay. + Felon is he who shall her love betray + Which is pure truth, and falsehood cannot feign, + While all the rest is lie and cheating play. + + +The feeble mouse, against the winter's cold, + Garners the nuts and grain within his cell, + While man goes groping, without sense to tell + Where to seek refuge against growing old. + We seek it in the smoking mouth of Hell. + With the poor beast our impotence compare! + See him protect his life with utmost care, + While us nor wit nor courage can compel + To save our souls, so foolish mad we are. + The Devil doth in snares our life enfold; + Four hooks has he with torments baited well; + And first with Greed he casts a mighty spell, + And then, to fill his nets, has Pride enrolled, + And Luxury steers the boat, and fills the sail, + And Perfidy controls and sets the snare; + Thus the poor fish are brought to land, and there + May God preserve us and the foe repel! + Homage to him who saves us from despair! + + +To Mary Queen, who passes all compare, + Go, little song! to her your sorrows tell! + Nor Heaven nor Earth holds happiness so rare. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +NICOLETTE AND MARION + +C'est d'Aucassins et de Nicolete. + + +Qui vauroit bons vers oir + Del deport du viel caitiff + De deus biax enfans petis + Nicolete et Aucassins; + Des grans paines qu'il soufri + Et des proueces qu'il fist + For s'amie o le cler vis. + Dox est li cans biax est li dis + Et cortois et bien asis. + Nus hom n'est si esbahis + Tant dolans ni entrepris + De grant mal amaladis + Se il l'oit ne soit garis + Et de joie resbaudis + Tant par est dou-ce. + + +This is of Aucassins and Nicolette. + + +Whom would a good ballad please + By the captive from o'er-seas, + A sweet song in children's praise, + Nicolette and Aucassins; + What he bore for her caress, + What he proved of his prowess + For his friend with the bright face? + The song has charm, the tale has grace, + And courtesy and good address. + No man is in such distress, + Such suffering or weariness, + Sick with ever such sickness, + But he shall, if he hear this, + Recover all his happiness, + So sweet it is! + + +This little thirteenth-century gem is called a "chante-fable," a +story partly in prose, partly in verse, to be sung according to +musical notation accompanying the words in the single manuscript +known, and published in facsimile by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon at Oxford +in 1896. Indeed, few poems, old or new, have in the last few years +been more reprinted, translated, and discussed, than "Aucassins," +yet the discussion lacks interest to the idle tourist, and tells him +little. Nothing is known of the author or his date. The second line +alone offers a hint, but nothing more. "Caitif" means in the first +place a captive, and secondly any unfortunate or wretched man. +Critics have liked to think that the word means here a captive to +the Saracens, and that the poet, like Cervantes three or four +hundred years later, may have been a prisoner to the infidels. What +the critics can do, we can do. If liberties can be taken with +impunity by scholars, we can take the liberty of supposing that the +poet was a prisoner in the crusade of Coeur-de-Lion and Philippe- +Auguste; that he had recovered his liberty, with his master, in +1194; and that he passed the rest of his life singing to the old +Queen Eleanor or to Richard, at Chinon, and to the lords of all the +chateaux in Guienne, Poitiers, Anjou, and Normandy, not to mention +England. The living was a pleasant one, as the sunny atmosphere of +the Southern poetry proves. + + Dox est li cans; biax est li dis, + Et cortois et bien asis. + + +The poet-troubadour who composed and recited "Aucassins" could not +have been unhappy, but this is the affair of his private life, and +not of ours. What rather interests us is his poetic motive, +"courteous love," which gives the tale a place in the direct line +between Christian of Troyes, Thibaut-le-Grand, and William of +Lorris. Christian of Troyes died in 1175; at least he wrote nothing +of a later date, so far as is certainly known. Richard Coeur-de-Lion +died in 1199, very soon after the death of his half-sister Mary of +Champagne. Thibaut-le-Grand was born in 1201. William of Lorris, who +concluded the line of great "courteous" poets, died in 1260 or +thereabouts. For our purposes, "Aucassins" comes between Christian +of Troyes and William of Lorris; the trouvere or jogleor, who sang, +was a "viel caitif" when the Chartres glass was set up, and the +Charlemagne window designed, about 1210, or perhaps a little later. +When one is not a professor, one has not the right to make inept +guesses, and, when one is not a critic, one should not risk +confusing a difficult question by baseless assumptions; but even a +summer tourist may without offence visit his churches in the order +that suits him best; and, for our tour, "Aucassins" follows +Christian and goes hand in hand with Blondel and the chatelain de +Coucy, as the most exquisite expression of "courteous love." As one +of "Aucassins'" German editors says in his introduction: "Love is +the medium through which alone the hero surveys the world around +him, and for which he contemns everything that the age prized: +knightly honour; deeds of arms; father and mother; hell, and even +heaven; but the mere promise by his father of a kiss from Nicolette +inspires him to superhuman heroism; while the old poet sings and +smiles aside to his audience as though he wished them to understand +that Aucassins, a foolish boy, must not be judged quite seriously, +but that, old as he was himself, he was just as foolish about +Nicolette." + +Aucassins was the son of the Count of Beaucaire. Nicolette was a +young girl whom the Viscount of Beaucaire had redeemed as a captive +of the Saracens, and had brought up as a god-daughter in his family. +Aucassins fell in love with Nicolette, and wanted to marry her. The +action turned on marriage, for, to the Counts of Beaucaire, as to +other counts, not to speak of kings, high alliance was not a matter +of choice but of necessity, without which they could not defend +their lives, let alone their counties; and, to make Aucassins' +conduct absolutely treasonable, Beaucaire was at that time +surrounded and besieged, and the Count, Aucassins' father, stood in +dire need of his son's help. Aucassins refused to stir unless he +could have Nicolette. What were honours to him if Nicolette were not +to share them. "S'ele estait empereris de Colstentinoble u +d'Alemaigne u roine de France u d'Engletere, si aroit il asses peu +en li, tant est france et cortoise et de bon aire et entecie de +toutes bones teces." To be empress of "Colstentinoble" would be none +too good for her, so stamped is she with nobility and courtesy and +high-breeding and all good qualities. + +So the Count, after a long struggle, sent for his Viscount and +threatened to have Nicolette burned alive, and the Viscount himself +treated no better, if he did not put a stop to the affair; and the +Viscount shut up Nicolette, and remonstrated with Aucassins: "Marry +a king's daughter, or a count's! leave Nicolette alone, or you will +never see Paradise!" This at once gave Aucassins the excuse for a +charming tirade against Paradise, for which, a century or two later, +he would properly have been burned together with Nicolette:-- + +En paradis qu'ai je a faire? Je n'i quier entrer mais que j'aie +Nicolete, ma tres douce amie, que j'aim tant. C'en paradis ne vont +fors tex gens con je vous dirai. Il i vont ci viel prestre et cil +vieil clop et cil manke, qui tote jour et tote nuit cropent devant +ces autex et en ces vies cruutes, et ci a ces vies capes ereses et a +ces vies tatereles vestues, qui sont nu et decauc et estrumele, qui +moeurent de faim et d'esci et de froid et de mesaises. Icil vont en +paradis; aveuc ciax n'ai jou que faire; mais en infer voil jou aler. +Car en infer vont li bel clerc et li bel cevalier qui sont mort as +tornois et as rices gueres, et li bien sergant et li franc home. +Aveuc ciax voil jou aler. Et si vont les beles dames cortoises que +eles ont ii amis ou iii avec leurs barons. Et si va li ors et li +agens et li vairs et li gris; et si i vont herpeor et jogleor et li +roi del siecle. Avec ciax voil jou aler mais que j'aie Nicolete, ma +tres douce amie, aveuc moi. + +In Paradise what have I to do? I do not care to go there unless I +may have Nicolette, my very sweet friend, whom I love so much. For +to Paradise goes no one but such people as I will tell you of. There +go old priests and old cripples and the maimed, who all day and all +night crouch before altars and in old crypts, and are clothed with +old worn-out capes and old tattered rags; who are naked and footbare +and sore; who die of hunger and want and misery. These go to +Paradise; with them I have nothing to do; but to Hell I am willing +to go. For, to Hell go the fine scholars and the fair knights who +die in tournies and in glorious wars; and the good men-at-arms and +the well-born. With them I will gladly go. And there go the fair +courteous ladies whether they have two or three friends besides +their lords. And the gold and silver go there, and the ermines and +sables; and there go the harpers and jongleurs, and the kings of the +world. With these will I go, if only I may have Nicolette, my very +sweet friend, with me. + +Three times, in these short extracts, the word "courteous" has +already appeared. The story itself is promised as "courteous"; +Nicolette is "courteous"; and the ladies who are not to go to heaven +are "courteous." Aucassins is in the full tide of courtesy, and +evidently a professional, or he never would have claimed a place for +harpers and jongleurs with kings and chevaliers in the next world. +The poets of "courteous love" showed as little interest in religion +as the poets of the eleventh century had shown for it in their poems +of war. Aucassins resembled Christian of Troyes in this, and both of +them resembled Thibaut, while William of Lorris went beyond them +all. The literature of the "siecle" was always unreligious, from the +"Chanson de Roland" to the "Tragedy of Hamlet"; to be "papelard" was +unworthy of a chevalier; the true knight of courtesy made nothing of +defying the torments of hell, as he defied the lance of a rival, the +frowns of society, the threats of parents or the terrors of magic; +the perfect, gentle, courteous lover thought of nothing but his +love. Whether the object of his love were Nicolette of Beaucaire or +Blanche of Castile, Mary of Champagne or Mary of Chartres, was a +detail which did not affect the devotion of his worship. + +So Nicolette, shut up in a vaulted chamber, leaned out at the marble +window and sang, while Aucassins, when his father promised that he +should have a kiss from Nicolette, went out to make fabulous +slaughter of the enemy; and when his father broke the promise, shut +himself up in his chamber, and also sang; and the action went on by +scenes and interludes, until, one night, Nicolette let herself down +from the window, by the help of sheets and towels, into the garden, +and, with a natural dislike of wetting her skirts which has +delighted every hearer or reader from that day to this, "prist se +vesture a l'une main devant et a l'autre deriere si s'escorca por le +rousee qu'ele vit grande sor l'erbe si s'en ala aval le gardin"; she +raised her skirts with one hand in front and the other behind, for +the dew which she saw heavy on the grass, and went off down the +garden, to the tower where Aucassins was locked up, and sang to him +through a crack in the masonry, and gave him a lock of her hair, and +they talked till the friendly night-watch came by and warned her by +a sweetly-sung chant, that she had better escape. So she bade +farewell to Aucassins, and went on to a breach in the city wall, and +she looked through it down into the fosse which was very deep and +very steep. So she sang to herself-- + +Peres rois de maeste + Or ne sai quel part aler. + Se je vois u gaut rame + Ja me mengeront li le + Li lions et li sengler + Dont il i a a plente. + + +Father, King of Majesty! + Now I know not where to flee. + If I seek the forest free, + Then the lions will eat me, + Wolves and wild boars terribly, + Of which plenty there there be. + + +The lions were a touch of poetic licence, even for Beaucaire, but +the wolves and wild boars were real enough; yet Nicolette feared +even them less than she feared the Count, so she slid down what her +audience well knew to be a most dangerous and difficult descent, and +reached the bottom with many wounds in her hands and feet, "et san +en sali bien en xii lius"; so that blood was drawn in a dozen +places, and then she climbed up the other side, and went off bravely +into the depths of the forest; an uncanny thing to do by night, as +you can still see. + +Then followed a pastoral, which might be taken from the works of +another poet of the same period, whose acquaintance no one can +neglect to make--Adam de la Halle, a Picard, of Arras. Adam lived, +it is true, fifty years later than the date imagined for Aucassins, +but his shepherds and shepherdesses are not so much like, as +identical with, those of the Southern poet, and all have so singular +an air of life that the conventional courteous knight fades out +beside them. The poet, whether bourgeois, professional, noble, or +clerical, never much loved the peasant, and the peasant never much +loved him, or any one else. The peasant was a class by himself, and +his trait, as a class, was suspicion of everybody and all things, +whether material, social, or divine. Naturally he detested his lord, +whether temporal or spiritual, because the seigneur and the priest +took his earnings, but he was never servile, though a serf; he was +far from civil; he was commonly gross. He was cruel, but not more so +than his betters; and his morals were no worse. The object of +oppression on all sides,--the invariable victim, whoever else might +escape,--the French peasant, as a class, held his own--and more. In +fact, he succeeded in plundering Church, Crown, nobility, and +bourgeoisie, and was the only class in French history that rose +steadily in power and well-being, from the time of the crusades to +the present day, whatever his occasional suffering may have been; +and, in the thirteenth century, he was suffering. When Nicolette, on +the morning after her escape, came upon a group of peasants in the +forest, tending the Count's cattle, she had reason to be afraid of +them, but instead they were afraid of her. They thought at first +that she was a fairy. When they guessed the riddle, they kept the +secret, though they risked punishment and lost the chance of reward +by protecting her. Worse than this, they agreed, for a small +present, to give a message to Aucassins if he should ride that way. + +Aucassins was not very bright, but when he got out of prison after +Nicolette's escape, he did ride out, at his friends' suggestion, and +tried to learn what had become of her. Passing through the woods he +came upon the same group of shepherds and shepherdesses:-- + + Esmeres et Martinet, Fruelins et Johannes, Robecons et +Aubries,-- + +who might have been living in the Forest of Arden, so like were they +to the clowns of Shakespeare. They were singing of Nicolette and her +present, and the cakes and knives and flute they would buy with it. +Aucassins jumped to the bait they offered him; and they instantly +began to play him as though he were a trout:-- + +"Bel enfant, dix vos i ait!" + +"Dix vos benie!" fait cil qui fu plus enparles des autres. + +"Bel enfant," fait il, "redites le cancon que vos disiez ore!" + +"Nous n'i dirons," fait cil qui plus fu enparles des autres. "Dehait +ore qui por vos i cantera, biax sire!" + +"Bel enfant!" fait Aucassins, "enne me connissies vos?" + +"Oil! nos savions bien que vos estes Aucassins, nos damoisiax, mais +nos ne somes mie a vos, ains somes au conte." + +"Bel enfant, si feres, je vos en pri!" + +"Os, por le cuer be!" fait cil. "Por quoi canteroie je por vos, s'il +ne me seoit! Quant il n'a si rice home en cest pais sans le cors le +conte Garin s'il trovait mes bues ne mes vaces ne mes brebis en ses +pres n'en sen forment qu'il fust mie tant hardis por les es a crever +qu'il les en ossast cacier. Et por quoi canteroie je por vos s'il ne +me seoit?" + +"Se dix vos ait, bel enfant, si feres! et tenes x sous que j'ai ci +en une borse!" + +"God bless you, fair child!" said Aucassins. + +"God be with you!" replied the one who talked best. + +"Fair child!" said he, "repeat the song you were just singing." + +"We won't!" replied he who talked best among them. "Bad luck to him +who shall sing for you, good sir!" + +"Fair child," said Aucassins, "do you know me?" + +"Yes! we know very well that you are Aucassins, our young lord; but +we are none of yours; we belong to the Count." + +"Fair child, indeed you'll do it, I pray you!" + +"Listen, for love of God!" said he. "Why should I sing for you if it +does not suit me? when there is no man so powerful in this country, +except Count Garin, if he found my oxen or my cows or my sheep in +his pasture or his close, would not rather risk losing his eyes than +dare to turn them out! and why should I sing for you, if it does not +suit me!" + +"So God help you, good child, indeed you will do it! and take these +ten sous that I have here in my purse." + +"Sire les deniers prenderons nos, mais je ne vos canterai mie, car +j'en ai jure. Mais je le vos conterai se vos voles." + +"De par diu!" faits Aucassins. "Encore aim je mix center que nient." + +"Sire, the money we will take, but I'll not sing to you, for I've +sworn it. But I will tell it you, if you like." + +"For God's sake!" said Aucassins; "better telling than nothing!" + +Ten sous was no small gift! twenty sous was the value of a strong +ox. The poet put a high money-value on the force of love, but he set +a higher value on it in courtesy. These boors were openly insolent +to their young lord, trying to extort money from him, and +threatening him with telling his father; but they were in their +right, and Nicolette was in their power. At heart they meant +Aucassins well, but they were rude and grasping, and the poet used +them in order to show how love made the true lover courteous even to +clowns. Aucassins' gentle courtesy is brought out by the boors' +greed, as the colours in the window were brought out and given their +value by a bit of blue or green. The poet, having got his little +touch of colour rightly placed, let the peasants go. "Cil qui fu +plus enparles des autres," having been given his way and his money, +told Aucassins what he knew of Nicolette and her message; so +Aucassins put spurs to his horse and cantered into the forest, +singing:-- + +Se diu plaist le pere fort + Je vos reverai encore + Suer, douce a-mie! + + +So please God, great and strong, + I will find you now ere long, + Sister, sweet friend! + + +But the peasant had singular attraction for the poet. Whether the +character gave him a chance for some clever mimicry, which was one +of his strong points as a story-teller: or whether he wanted to +treat his subjects, like the legendary windows, in pairs; or whether +he felt that the forest-scene specially amused his audience, he +immediately introduced a peasant of another class, much more +strongly coloured, or deeply shadowed. Every one in the audience +was--and, for that matter, still would be--familiar with the great +forests, the home of half the fairy and nursery tales of Europe, +still wild enough and extensive enough to hide in, although they +have now comparatively few lions, and not many wolves or wild boars +or serpents such as Nicolette feared. Every one saw, without an +effort, the young damoiseau riding out with his hound or hawk, +looking for game; the lanes under the trees, through the wood, or +the thick underbrush before lanes were made; the herdsmen watching +their herds, and keeping a sharp look-out for wolves; the peasant +seeking lost cattle; the black kiln-men burning charcoal; and in the +depths of the rocks or swamps or thickets--the outlaw. Even now, +forests like Rambouillet, or Fontainebleau or Compiegne are enormous +and wild; one can see Aucassins breaking his way through thorns and +branches in search of Nicolette, tearing his clothes and wounding +himself "en xl lius u en xxx," until evening approached, and he +began to weep for disappointment:-- + +Il esgarda devant lui enmi la voie si vit un vallet tei que je vos +dirai. Grans estoit et mervellex et lais et hidex. Il avoit une +grande hure plus noire qu'une carbouclee, et avoit plus de planne +paume entre ii ex, et avoit unes grandes joes et un grandisme nez +plat, et une grans narines lees et unes grosses levres plus rouges +d'unes carbounees, et uns grans dens gaunes et lais et estoit +caucies d'uns housiax et d'uns sollers de buef fretes de tille +dusque deseure le genol et estoit afules d'une cape a ii envers si +estoit apoiies sor une grande macue. Aucassins s'enbati sor lui +s'eut grand paor quant il le sorvit... + +"Baix frere, dix ti ait!" + +"Dix vos benie!" fait cil. "Se dix t'ait, que fais tu ilec?" + +"A vos que monte?" fait cil. + +"Nient!" fait Aucassins; "je nel vos demant se por bien non." + +"Mais pour quoi ploures vos?" fait cil, "et faites si fait doel? +Certes se j'estoie ausi rices hom que vos estes, tos li mons ne me +feroit mie plorer." + +"Ba! me conissies vos!" fait Aucassins. + +"Oie! je sai bien que vos estes Aucassins li fix le conte, et se vos +me dites por quoi vos plores je vos dirai que je fac ici." + +As he looked before him along the way he saw a man such as I will +tell you. Tall he was, and menacing, and ugly, and hideous. He had +a great mane blacker than charcoal and had more than a full palm- +width between his two eyes, and had big cheeks, and a huge flat nose +and great broad nostrils, and thick lips redder than raw beef, and +large ugly yellow teeth, and was shod with hose and leggings of raw +hide laced with bark cord to above the knee, and was muffled in a +cloak without lining, and was leaning on a great club. Aucassins +came upon him suddenly and had great fear when he saw him. + +"Fair brother, good day!" said he. + +"God bless you!" said the other. + +"As God help you, what do you here?" + +"What is that to you?" said the other. + +"Nothing!" said Aucassins; "I ask only from good-will." + +"But why are you crying!" said the other, "and mounring so loud? +Sure, if I were as great a man as you are, nothing on earth would +make me cry." + +"Bah! you know me?" said Aucassins. + +"Yes, I know very well that you are Aucassins, the count's son; and +if you will tell me what you are crying for, I will tell you what I +am doing here." + +Aucassins seemed to think this an equal bargain. All damoiseaux were +not as courteous as Aucassins, nor all "varlets" as rude as his +peasants; we shall see how the young gentlemen of Picardy treated +the peasantry for no offence at all; but Aucassins carried a softer, +Southern temper in a happier climate, and, with his invariable +gentle courtesy, took no offence at the familiarity with which the +ploughman treated him. Yet he dared not tell the truth, so he +invented, on the spur of the moment, an excuse;--he has lost, he +said, a beautiful white hound. The peasant hooted-- + +"Os!" fait cil; "por le cuer que cil sires eut en sen ventre! que +vos plorastes por un cien puant! Mal dehait ait qui ja mais vos +prisera quant il n'a si rice home en ceste tere se vos peres len +mandoit x u xv u xx qu'il ne les envoyast trop volontiers et s'en +esteroit trop lies. Mais je dois plorer et dol faire?" + +"Et tu de quoi frere?" + +"Sire je lo vos dirai. J'estoie liues a un rice vilain si cacoie se +carue. iiii bues i avoit. Or a iii jors qu il m'avint une grande +malaventure que je perdi le mellor de mes bues Roget le mellor de me +carue. Si le vois querant. Si ne mengai ne ne bue iii jors a passes. +Si n'os aler a le vile c'on me metroit en prison que je ne l'ai de +quoi saure. De tot l'avoir du monde n'ai je plus vaillant que vos +vees sor le cors de mi. Une lasse mere avoie, si n'avoit plus +vaillant que une keutisele, si h a on sacie de desous le dos si gist +a pur l'estrain, si m'en poise asses plus que denu. Car avoirs va et +viaent; se j'ai or perdu je gaaignerai une autre fois si sorrai mon +buef quant je porrai, ne ja por cien n'en plorerai. Et vos plorastes +por un cien de longaigne! Mal dehait ait qui mais vos prisera!" + +"Certes tu es de bon confort, biax frere! que benois sois tu! Et que +valoit tes bues!" + +"Sire xx sous m'en demande on, je n'en puis mie abatre une seule +maille." + +"Or, tien" fait Aucassins, "xx que j'ai ci en me borse, si sol ten +buef!" + +"Listen!" said he, "By the heart God had in his body, that you +should cry for a stinking dog! Bad luck to him who ever prizes you! +When there is no man in this land so great, if your father sent to +him for ten or fifteen or twenty but would fetch them very gladly, +and be only too pleased. But I ought to cry and mourn." + +"And--why you, brother?" + +"Sir, I will tell you. I was hired out to a rich farmer to drive his +plough. There were four oxen. Now three days ago I had a great +misfortune, for I lost the best of my oxen, Roget, the best of my +team. I am looking to find him. I've not eaten or drunk these three +days past. I dare n't go to the town, for they would put me in +prison as I've nothing to pay with. In all the world I've not the +worth of anything but what you see on my body I've a poor old mother +who owned nothing but a feather mattress, and they've dragged it +from under her back so she lies on the bare straw, and she troubles +me more than myself. For riches come and go if I lose to day, I gain +to-morrow; I will pay for my ox when I can, and will not cry for +that. And you cry for a filthy dog! Bad luck to him who ever thinks +well of you!" + +"Truly, you counsel well, good brother! God bless you! And what was +your ox worth?" + +"Sir, they ask me twenty sous for it. I cannot beat them down a +single centime." + +"Here are twenty," said Aucassins, "that I have in my purse! Pay for +your ox!" + +"Sire!" fait il, "grans mercies! et dix vos laist trover ce que vox +queres!" + +"Sir!" said he; "many thanks! and Go! grant you find what you seek!" + +The little episode was thrown in without rhyme or reason to the +rapid emotion of the love-story, as though the jongleur were showing +his own cleverness and humour, at the expense of his hero, as +jongleurs had a way of doing; but he took no such liberties with his +heroine. While Aucassins tore through the thickets on horseback, +crying aloud, Nicolette had built herself a little hut in the depths +of the forest:-- + +Ele prist des flors de lis + Et de l'erbe du garris + Et de le foille autresi; + Une belle loge en fist, + Ainques tant gente ne vi. + Jure diu qui ne menti + Se par la vient Aucassins + Et il por l'amor de li + Ne si repose un petit + Ja ne sera ses amis + N'ele s'a-mie. + + +So she twined the lilies' flower, + Roofed with leafy branches o'er, + Made of it a lovely bower, + With the freshest grass for floor + Such as never mortal saw. + By God's Verity, she swore, + Should Aucassins pass her door, + And not stop for love of her, + To repose a moment there, + He should be her love no more, + Nor she his dear! + + +So night came on, and Nicolette went to sleep, a little distance +away from her hut. Aucassins at last came by, and dismounted, +spraining his shoulder in doing it. Then he crept into the little +hut, and lying on his back, looked up through the leaves to the +moon, and sang:-- + +Estoilete, je te voi, + Que la lune trait a soi. + Nicolete est aveuc toi, + M'amiete o le blond poil. + Je quid que dix le veut avoir + Por la lumiere de soir + Que par li plus clere soit. + Vien, amie, je te proie! + Ou monter vauroie droit, + Que que fust du recaoir. + Que fuisse lassus o toi + Ja te baiseroi estroit. + Se j'estoie fix a roi + S'afferies vos bien a moi + Suer douce amie! + + +I can see you, little star, + That the moon draws through the air. + Nicolette is where you are, + My own love with the blonde hair. + I think God must want her near + To shine down upon us here + That the evening be more clear. + Come down, dearest, to my prayer, + Or I climb up where you are! + Though I fell, I would not care. + If I once were with you there + I would kiss you closely, dear! + If a monarch's son I were + You should all my kingdom share, + Sweet friend, sister! + + +How Nicolette heard him sing, and came to him and rubbed his +shoulder and dressed his wounds as though he were a child; and how +in the morning they rode away together, like Tennyson's "Sleeping +Beauty,"-- + + O'er the hills and far away + Beyond their utmost purple rim, + Beyond the night, beyond the day, + + +singing as they rode, the story goes on to tell or to sing in verse-- + +Aucassins, li biax, li blons, + Li gentix, It amorous, + Est issous del gaut parfont, + Entre ses bras ses amors + Devant lui sor son arcon. + Les ex li baise et le front, + Et le bouce et le menton. + Elle l'a mis a raison. + "Aucassins, biax amis dox, + "En quel tere en irons nous?" + "Douce amie, que sai jou? + "Moi ne caut u nous aillons, + "En forest u en destor + "Mais que je soie aveuc vous." + Passent les vaus et les mons, + Et les viles et les bors + A la mer vinrent au jor, + Si descendent u sablon + Les le rivage. + + +Aucassins, the brave, the fair, + Courteous knight and gentle lover, + From the forest dense came forth; + In his arms his love he bore + On his saddle-bow before; + Her eyes he kisses and her mouth, + And her forehead and her chin. + She brings him back to earth again: + "Aucassins, my love, my own, + "To what country shall we turn?" + "Dearest angel, what say you? + "I care nothing where we go, + "In the forest or outside, + "While you on my saddle ride." + So they pass by hill and dale, + And the city, and the town, + Till they reach the morning pale, + And on sea-sands set them down, + Hard by the shore. + + +There we will leave them, for their further adventures have not much +to do with our matter. Like all the romans, or nearly all, +"Aucassins" is singularly pure and refined. Apparently the ladies of +courteous love frowned on coarseness and allowed no licence. Their +power must have been great, for the best romans are as free from +grossness as the "Chanson de Roland" itself, or the church glass, or +the illuminations in the manuscripts; and as long as the power of +the Church ruled good society, this decency continued. As far as +women were concerned, they seem always to have been more clean than +the men, except when men painted them in colours which men liked +best. + +Perhaps society was actually cleaner in the thirteenth century than +in the sixteenth, as Saint Louis was more decent than Francis I, and +as the bath was habitual in the twelfth century and exceptional at +the Renaissance. The rule held good for the bourgeoisie as well as +among the dames cortoises. Christian and Thibaut, "Aucassins" and +the "Roman de la Rose," may have expressed only the tastes of high- +born ladies, but other poems were avowedly bourgeois, and among the +bourgeois poets none was better than Adam de la Halle. Adam wrote +also for the court, or at least for Robert of Artois, Saint Louis's +nephew, whom he followed to Naples in 1284, but his poetry was as +little aristocratic as poetry could well be, and most of it was +cynically--almost defiantly--middle-class, as though the weavers of +Arras were his only audience, and recognized him and the objects of +his satire in every verse. The bitter personalities do not concern +us, but, at Naples, to amuse Robert of Artois and his court, Adam +composed the first of French comic operas, which had an immense +success, and, as a pastoral poem, has it still. The Idyll of Arras +was a singular contrast to the Idyll of Beaucaire, but the social +value was the same in both; Robin and Marion were a pendant to +Aucassins and Nicolette; Robin was almost a burlesque on Aucassins, +while Marion was a Northern, energetic, intelligent, pastoral +Nicolette. + +"Li Gieus de Robin et de Marion" had little or no plot. Adam strung +together, on a thread of dialogue and by a group of suitable +figures, a number of the favourite songs of his time, followed by +the favourite games, and ending with a favourite dance, the +"tresca." The songs, the games, and the dances do not concern us, +but the dialogue runs along prettily, with an air of Flemish +realism, like a picture of Teniers, as unlike that of "courtoisie" +as Teniers was to Guido Reni. Underneath it all a tone of satire +made itself felt, good-natured enough, but directed wholly against +the men. + +The scene opens on Marion tending her sheep, and singing the pretty +air: "Robin m'aime, Robin ma'a," after which enters a chevalier or +esquire, on horseback, and sings: "Je me repairoie du tournoiement." +Then follows a dialogue between the chevalier and Marion, with no +other object than to show off the charm of Marion against the +masculine defects of the knight. Being, like most squires, somewhat +slow of ideas in conversation with young women, the gentleman began +by asking for sport for his falcon. Has she seen any duck down by +the river? + + Mais veis tu par chi devant + Vers ceste riviere nul ane? + + +"Ane," it seems, was the usual word for wild duck, the falcon's +prey, and Marion knew it as well as he, but she chose to +misunderstand him:-- + +C'est une bete qui recane; + J'en vis ier iii sur che quemin, + Tous quarchies aler au moulin. + Est che chou que vous demandes? + + +"It is a beast that brays; I saw three yesterday on the road, all +with loads going to the mill. Is that what you ask?" That is not +what the squire has asked, and he is conscious that Marion knows it, +but he tries again. If she has not seen a duck, perhaps she has seen +a heron:-- + + Hairons, sire? par me foi, non! + Je n'en vi nesun puis quareme + Que j'en vi mengier chies dame Eme + Me taiien qui sorit ches brebis. + + +"Heron, sir! by my faith, no! I've not seen one since Lent when I +saw some eaten at my grandmother's--Dame Emma who owns these sheep." +"Hairons," it seems, meant also herring, and this wilful +misunderstanding struck the chevalier as carrying jest too far:-- + + Par foi! or suis j'ou esbaubis! + N'ainc mais je ne fui si gabes! + + +"On my word, I am silenced! never in my life was I so chaffed!" +Marion herself seems to think her joke a little too evident, for she +takes up the conversation in her turn, only to conclude that she +likes Robin better than she does the knight; he is gayer, and when +he plays his musette he starts the whole village dancing. At this, +the squire makes a declaration of love with such energy as to spur +his horse almost over her:-- + + Aimi, sirel ostez vo cheval! + A poi que il ne m'a blechie. + Li Robin ne regiete mie + Quand je voie apres se karue. + + +"Aimi!" is an exclamation of alarm, real or affected: "Dear me, sir! +take your horse away! he almost hurt me! Robin's horse never rears +when I go behind his plough!" Still the knight persists, and though +Marion still tells him to go away, she asks his name, which he says +is Aubert, and so gives her the catchword for another song:--"Vos +perdes vo paine, sire Aubert!"--which ends the scene with a duo. The +second scene begins with a duo of Marion and Robin, followed by her +giving a softened account of the chevalier's behaviour, and then +they lunch on bread and cheese and apples, and more songs follow, +till she sends him to get Baldwin and Walter and Peronette and the +pipers, for a dance. In his absence the chevalier returns and +becomes very pressing in his attentions, which gives her occasion to +sing:- + + J'oi Robin flagoler + Au flagol d'argent. + + +When Robin enters, the knight picks a quarrel with him for not +handling properly the falcon which he has caught in the hedge; and +Robin gets a severe beating. The scene ends by the horseman carrying +off Marion by force; but he soon gets tired of carrying her against +her will, and drops her, and disappears once for all. + + Certes voirement sui je beste + Quant a ceste beste m'areste. + Adieu, bergiere! + + +Bete the knight certainly was, and was meant to be, in order to give +the necessary colour to Marion's charms. Chevaliers were seldom +intellectually brilliant in the mediaeval romans, and even the +"Chansons de Geste" liked better to talk of their prowess than of +their wit; but Adam de la Halle, who felt no great love for +chevaliers, was not satisfied with ridiculing them in order to exalt +Marion; his second act was devoted to exalting Marion at the expense +of her own boors. + +The first act was given up to song; the second, to games and dances. +The games prove not to be wholly a success; Marion is bored by them, +and wants to dance. The dialogue shows Marion trying constantly to +control her clowns and make them decent, as Blanche of Castile had +been all her life trying to control her princes, and Mary of +Chartres her kings. Robin is a rustic counterpart to Thibaut. He is +tamed by his love of Marion, but he has just enough intelligence to +think well of himself, and to get himself into trouble without +knowing how to get out of it. Marion loves him much as she would her +child; she makes only a little fun of him; defends him from the +others; laughs at his jealousy; scolds him on occasion; flatters his +dancing; sends him on errands, to bring the pipers or drive away the +wolf; and what is most to our purpose, uses him to make the other +peasants decent. Walter and Baldwin and Hugh are coarse, and their +idea of wit is to shock the women or make Robin jealous. Love makes +gentlemen even of boors, whether noble or villain, is the constant +moral of mediaeval story, and love turns Robin into a champion of +decency. When, at last, Walter, playing the jongleur, begins to +repeat a particularly coarse fabliau, or story in verse, Robin stops +him short-- + +Ho, Gautier, je n'en voeil plus! fi! + Dites, seres vous tous jours teus! + Vous estes un ors menestreus! + + +"Ho, Walter! I want no more of that: Shame! Say! are you going to be +always like that? You're a dirty beggar!" A fight seems inevitable, +but Marion turns it into a dance, and the whole party, led by the +pipers, with Robin and Marion at the head of the band, leave the +stage in the dance which is said to be still known in Italy as the +"tresca." Marion is in her way as charming as Nicolette, but we are +less interested in her charm than in her power. Always the woman +appears as the practical guide; the one who keeps her head, even in +love:-- + + Elle l'a mis a raison: + "Aucassins, biax amis dox, + En quele tere en irons nous?" + "Douce amie, que sai jou? + Moi ne caut ou nous aillons." + + +The man never cared; he was always getting himself into crusades, or +feuds, or love, or debt, and depended on the woman to get him out. +The story was always of Charles VII and Jeanne d'Arc, or Agnes +Sorel. The woman might be the good or the evil spirit, but she was +always the stronger force. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were +a period when men were at their strongest; never before or since +have they shown equal energy in such varied directions, or such +intelligence in the direction of their energy; yet these marvels of +history,--these Plantagenets; these scholastic philosophers; these +architects of Rheims and Amiens; these Innocents, and Robin Hoods +and Marco Polos; these crusaders, who planted their enormous +fortresses all over the Levant; these monks who made the wastes and +barrens yield harvests;--all, without apparent exception, bowed down +before the woman. + +Explain it who will! We are not particularly interested in the +explanation; it is the art we have chased through this French +forest, like Aucassins hunting for Nicolette; and the art leads +always to the woman. Poetry, like the architecture and the +decoration, harks back to the same standard of taste. The specimens +of Christian of Troyes, Thibaut, Tristan, Aucassins, and Adam de la +Halle were mild admissions of feminine superiority compared with +some that were more in vogue, If Thibaut painted his love-verses on +the walls of his castle, he put there only what a more famous poet, +who may have been his friend, set on the walls of his Chateau of +Courteous Love, which, not being made with hands or with stone, but +merely with verse, has not wholly perished. The "Roman de la Rose" +is the end of true mediaeval poetry and goes with the Sainte- +Chapelle in architecture, and three hundred years of more or less +graceful imitation or variation on the same themes which followed. +Our age calls it false taste, and no doubt our age is right;--every +age is right by its own standards as long as its standards amuse +it;--but after all, the "Roman de la Rose" charmed Chaucer,--it may +well charm you. The charm may not be that of Mont-Saint-Michel or of +Roland; it has not the grand manner of the eleventh century, or the +jewelled brilliancy of the Chartres lancets, or the splendid self- +assertion of the roses: but even to this day it gives out a faint +odour of Champagne and Touraine, of Provence and Cyprus. One hears +Thibaut and sees Queen Blanche. + +Of course, this odour of true sanctity belongs only to the "Roman" +of William of Lorris, which dates from the death of Queen Blanche +and of all good things, about 1250; a short allegory of courteous +love in forty-six hundred and seventy lines. To modern taste, an +allegory of forty-six hundred and seventy lines seems to be not so +short as it might be; but the fourteenth century found five thousand +verses totally inadequate to the subject, and, about 1300, Jean de +Meung added eighteen thousand lines, the favourite reading of +society for one or two hundred years, but beyond our horizon. The +"Roman" of William of Lorris was complete in itself; it had shape; +beginning, middle, and end; even a certain realism, action,--almost +life! + +The Rose is any feminine ideal of beauty, intelligence, purity, or +grace,--always culminating in the Virgin,--but the scene is the +Court of Love, and the action is avowedly in a dream, without time +or place. The poet's tone is very pure; a little subdued; at times +sad; and the poem ends sadly; but all the figures that were +positively hideous were shut out of the court, and painted on the +outside walls:--Hatred; Felony; Covetousness; Envy; Poverty; +Melancholy, and Old Age. Death did not appear. The passion for +representing death in its horrors did not belong to the sunny +atmosphere of the thirteenth century, and indeed jarred on French +taste always, though the Church came to insist on it; but Old Age +gave the poet a motive more artistic, foreshadowing Death, and quite +sad enough to supply the necessary contrast. The poet who approached +the walls of the chateau and saw, outside, all the unpleasant facts +of life conspicuously posted up, as though to shut them out of +doors, hastened to ask for entrance, and, when once admitted, found +a court of ideals. Their names matter little. In the mind of William +of Lorris, every one would people his ideal world with whatever +ideal figures pleased him, and the only personal value of William's +figures is that they represent what he thought the thirteenth- +century ideals of a perfect society. Here is Courtesy, with a +translation long thought to be by Chaucer:- + +Apres se tenoit Cortoisie + Qui moult estoit de tous prisie. + Si n'ere orgueilleuse ne fole. + C'est cele qui a la karole, + La soe merci, m'apela, + Ains que nule, quand je vins la. + Et ne fut ne nice n'umbrage, + Mais sages auques, sans outrage, + De biaus respons et de biaus dis, + Onc nus ne fu par li laidis, + Ne ne porta nului rancune, + Et fu clere comme la lune + Est avers les autres estoiles + Qui ne resemblent que chandoiles. + Faitisse estoit et avenant; + Je ne sai fame plus plaisant. + Ele ert en toutes cors bien digne + D'estre empereris ou roine. + + +And next that daunced Courtesye, + That preised was of lowe and hye, + For neither proude ne foole was she; + She for to daunce called me, + I pray God yeve hir right good grace, + When I come first into the place. + She was not nyce ne outrageous, + But wys and ware and vertuous; + Of faire speche and of faire answere; + Was never wight mysseid of her, + Ne she bar rancour to no wight. + Clere browne she was, and thereto bright + + +Of face, of body avenaunt. + I wot no lady so pleasaunt. + She were worthy forto bene + An empresse or crowned quene. + + +You can read for yourselves the characters, and can follow the +simple action which owes its slight interest only to the constant +effort of the dreamer to attain his ideal,--the Rose,--and owes its +charm chiefly to the constant disappointment and final defeat. An +undertone of sadness runs through it, felt already in the picture of +Time which foreshadows the end of Love--the Rose--and her court, and +with it the end of hope:-- + +Li tens qui s'en va nuit et jor, + Sans repos prendre et sans sejor, + Et qui de nous se part et emble + Si celeement qu'il nous semble + Qu'il s'arreste ades en un point, + Et il ne s'i arreste point, + Ains ne fine de trespasser, + Que nus ne puet neis penser + Quex tens ce est qui est presens; + S'el demandes as clers lisans, + Aincois que l'en l'eust pense + Seroit il ja trois tens passe; + Li tens qui ne puet sejourner, + Ains vait tous jors sans retorner, + Com l'iaue qui s'avale toute, + N'il n'en retourne arriere goute; + Li tens vers qui noient ne dure, + Ne fer ne chose tant soit dure, + Car il gaste tout et menjue; + Li tens qui tote chose mue, + Qui tout fait croistre et tout norist, + Et qui tout use et tout porrist. + + +The tyme that passeth nyght and daye. + And restelesse travayleth aye, + And steleth from us so prively, + That to us semeth so sykerly + That it in one poynt dwelleth never, + But gothe so fast, and passeth aye + + +That there nys man that thynke may + What tyme that now present is; + Asketh at these clerkes this, + For or men thynke it readily + Thre tymes ben ypassed by. + The tyme that may not sojourne + But goth, and may never returne, + As water that down renneth ay, + But never drope retourne may. + There may no thing as time endure, + Metall nor earthly creature: + For alle thing it frette and shall. + The tyme eke that chaungith all, + And all doth waxe and fostered be, + And alle thing distroieth he. + + +The note of sadness has begun, which the poets were to find so much +more to their taste than the note of gladness. From the "Roman de la +Rose" to the "Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis" was a short step for +the Middle-Age giant Time,--a poor two hundred years. Then Villon +woke up to ask what had become of the Roses:--Ou est la tres sage +Helois + Pour qui fut chastie puis moyne, + Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis? + Pour son amour ot cest essoyne. + + +Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine + Qu' Englois brulerent a Rouan; + Ou sont elles, Vierge Souvraine? + Mais ou sont les neiges dantan? + + +Where is the virtuous Heloise, + For whom suffered, then turned monk, + Pierre Abelard at Saint-Denis? + For his love he bore that pain. + + +And Jeanne d'Arc, the good Lorraine, + Whom the English burned at Rouen! + Where are they, Virgin Queen? + But where are the snows of spring? + + +Between the death of William of Lorris and the advent of John of +Meung, a short half-century (1250-1300), the Woman and the Rose +became bankrupt. Satire took the place of worship. Man, with his +usual monkey-like malice, took pleasure in pulling down what he had +built up. The Frenchman had made what he called "fausse route." +William of Lorris was first to see it, and say it, with more sadness +and less bitterness than Villon showed; he won immortality by +telling how he, and the thirteenth century in him, had lost himself +in pursuing his Rose, and how he had lost the Rose, too, waking up +at last to the dull memory of pain and sorrow and death, that "tout +porrist." The world had still a long march to make from the Rose of +Queen Blanche to the guillotine of Madame du Barry; but the "Roman +de la Rose" made epoch. For the first time since Constantine +proclaimed the reign of Christ, a thousand years, or so, before +Philip the Fair dethroned Him, the deepest expression of social +feeling ended with the word: Despair. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME + +Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio, + Umile ed alta piu che creatura, + Termine fisso d'eterno consiglio, + Tu sei colei che l'umana natura + Nobilitasti si, che il suo fattore + Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura.... + La tua benignita non pur soccorre + A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate + Liberamente al dimandar precorre. + In te misericordia, in te pietate, + In te magnificenza, in te s'aduna + Quantunque in creatura e di bontate. + + +Vergine bella, che di sol vestita, + Coronata di stelle, al sommo sole + Piacesti si che'n te sua luce ascose; + Amor mi spinge a dir di te parole; + Ma non so 'ncominciar senza tu aita, + E di colui ch'amando in te si pose. + Invoco lei che ben sempre rispose + Chi la chiamo con fede. + Vergine, s'a mercede + Miseria estrema dell' umane cose + Giammai ti volse, al mio prego t'inchina! + Soccorri alia mia guerra, + Bench'i sia terra, e tu del del regina! + + +Dante composed one of these prayers; Petrarch the other. Chaucer +translated Dante's prayer in the "Second Nonnes Tale." He who will +may undertake to translate either;--not I! The Virgin, in whom is +united whatever goodness is in created being, might possibly, in her +infinite grace, forgive the sacrilege; but her power has limits, if +not her grace; and the whole Trinity, with the Virgin to aid, had +not the power to pardon him who should translate Dante and Petrarch. +The prayers come in here, not merely for their beauty,--although the +Virgin knows how beautiful they are, whether man knows it or not; +but chiefly to show the good faith, the depth of feeling, the +intensity of conviction, with which society adored its ideal of +human perfection. + +The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the +time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to +her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of +the illusion which men thought they thought their existence. The +twelfth and thirteenth centuries believed in the supernatural, and +might almost be said to have contracted a miracle-habit, as morbid +as any other form of artificial stimulant; they stood, like +children, in an attitude of gaping wonder before the miracle of +miracles which they felt in their own consciousness; but one can see +in this emotion, which is, after all, not exclusively infantile, no +special reason why they should have so passionately flung themselves +at the feet of the Woman rather than of the Man. Dante wrote in +1300, after the height of this emotion had passed; and Petrarch +wrote half a century later still; but so slowly did the vision fade, +and so often did it revive, that, to this day, it remains the +strongest symbol with which the Church can conjure. + +Men were, after all, not wholly inconsequent; their attachment to +Mary rested on an instinct of self-preservation. They knew their own +peril. If there was to be a future life, Mary was their only hope. +She alone represented Love. The Trinity were, or was, One, and +could, by the nature of its essence, administer justice alone. Only +childlike illusion could expect a personal favour from Christ. Turn +the dogma as one would, to this it must logically come. Call the +three Godheads by what names one liked, still they must remain One; +must administer one justice; must admit only one law. In that law, +no human weakness or error could exist; by its essence it was +infinite, eternal, immutable. There was no crack and no cranny in +the system, through which human frailty could hope for escape. One +was forced from corner to corner by a remorseless logic until one +fell helpless at Mary's feet. + +Without Mary, man had no hope except in atheism, and for atheism the +world was not ready. Hemmed back on that side, men rushed like sheep +to escape the butcher, and were driven to Mary; only too happy in +finding protection and hope in a being who could understand the +language they talked, and the excuses they had to offer. How +passionately they worshipped Mary, the Cathedral of Chartres shows; +and how this worship elevated the whole sex, all the literature and +history of the time proclaim. If you need more proof, you can read +more Petrarch; but still one cannot realize how actual Mary was, to +the men and women of the Middle Ages, and how she was present, as a +matter of course, whether by way of miracle or as a habit of life, +throughout their daily existence. The surest measure of her reality +is the enormous money value they put on her assistance, and the art +that was lavished on her gratification, but an almost equally +certain sign is the casual allusion, the chance reference to her, +which assumes her presence. + +The earliest prose writer in the French language, who gave a picture +of actual French life, was Joinville; and although he wrote after +the death of Saint Louis and of William of Lorris and Adam de la +Halle, in the full decadence of Philip the Fair, toward 1300, he had +been a vassal of Thibaut and an intimate friend of Louis, and his +memories went back to the France of Blanche's regency. Born in 1224, +he must have seen in his youth the struggles of Thibaut against the +enemies of Blanche, and in fact his memoirs contain Blanche's +emphatic letter forbidding Thibaut to marry Yolande of Brittany. He +knew Pierre de Dreux well, and when they were captured by the +Saracens at Damietta, and thrown into the hold of a galley, "I had +my feet right on the face of the Count Pierre de Bretagne, whose +feet, in turn, were by my face." Joinville is almost twelfth-century +in feeling. He was neither feminine nor sceptical, but simple. He +showed no concern for poetry, but he put up a glass window to the +Virgin. His religion belonged to the "Chanson de Roland." When Saint +Louis, who had a pleasant sense of humour put to him his favourite +religious conundrums, Joinville affected not the least hypocrisy. +"Would you rather be a leper or commit a mortal sin?" asked the +King. "I would rather commit thirty mortal sins than be a leper," +answered Joinville. "Do you wash the feet of the poor on Holy +Thursday?" asked the King. "God forbid!" replied Joinville; "never +will I wash the feet of such creatures!" Saint Louis mildly +corrected his, or rather Thibaut's, seneschal, for these impieties, +but he was no doubt used to them, for the soldier was never a +churchman. If one asks Joinville what he thinks of the Virgin, he +answers with the same frankness:-- + +Ung jour moi estant devant le roi lui demanday congie d'aller en +pelerinage a nostre Dame de Tourtouze [Tortosa in Syria] qui estoit +ung veage tres fort requis. Et y avoit grant quantite de pelerins +par chacun jour pour ce que c'est le premier autel qui onques fust +fait en l'onneur de la Mere de Dieu ainsi qu'on disoit lors. Et y +faisoit nostre Dame de grans miracles a merveilles. Entre lesquelz +elle en fist ung d'un pouvre homme qui estoit hors de son sens et +demoniacle. Car il avoit le maling esperit dedans le corps. Et +advint par ung jour qu'il fut amene a icelui autel de nostre Dame de +Tourtouze. Et ainsi que ses amys qui l'avoient la amene prioient a +nostre Dame qu'elle lui voulsist recouvrer sante et guerison le +diable que la pouvre creature avoit ou corps respondit: "Nostre Dame +n'est pas ici; elle est en Egipte pour aider au Roi de France et aux +Chrestiens qui aujourdhui arrivent en la Terre sainte centre toute +paiennie qui sont a cheval." Et fut mis en escript le jour que le +deable profera ces motz et fut apporte au legat qui estoit avecques +le roi de France; lequel me dist depuis que a celui jour nous estion +arrivez en la terre d'Egipte. Et suis bien certain que la bonne Dame +Marie nous y eut bien besoin. + +This happened in Syria, after the total failure of the crusade in +Egypt. The ordinary man, even if he were a priest or a soldier, +needed a miraculous faith to persuade him that Our Lady or any other +divine power, had helped the crusades of Saint Louis. Few of the +usual fictions on which society rested had ever required such +defiance of facts; but, at least for a time, society held firm. The +thirteenth century could not afford to admit a doubt. Society had +staked its existence, in this world and the next, on the reality and +power of the Virgin; it had invested in her care nearly its whole +capital, spiritual, artistic, intellectual, and economical, even to +the bulk of its real and personal estate; and her overthrow would +have been the most appalling disaster the Western world had ever +known. Without her, the Trinity itself could not stand; the Church +must fall; the future world must dissolve. Not even the collapse of +the Roman Empire compared with a calamity so serious; for that had +created, not destroyed, a faith. + +If sceptics there were, they kept silence. Men disputed and doubted +about the Trinity, but about the Virgin the satirists Rutebeuf and +Adam de la Halle wrote in the same spirit as Saint Bernard and +Abelard, Adam de Saint-Victor and the pious monk Gaultier de Coincy. +In the midst of violent disputes on other points of doctrine, the +disputants united in devotion to Mary; and it was the single +redeeming quality about them. The monarchs believed almost more +implicitly than their subjects, and maintained the belief to the +last. Doubtless the death of Queen Blanche marked the flood-tide at +its height; but an authority so established as that of the Virgin, +founded on instincts so deep, logic so rigorous, and, above all, on +wealth so vast, declined slowly. Saint Louis died in 1270. Two +hundred long and dismal years followed, in the midst of wars, +decline of faith, dissolution of the old ties and interests, until, +toward 1470, Louis XI succeeded in restoring some semblance of +solidity to the State; and Louis XI divided his time and his money +impartially between the Virgin of Chartres and the Virgin of Paris. +In that respect, one can see no difference between him and Saint +Louis, nor much between Philippe de Commines and Joinville. After +Louis XI, another fantastic century passed, filled with the foulest +horrors of history--religious wars; assassinations; Saint +Bartholomews; sieges of Chartres; Huguenot leagues and sweeping +destruction of religious monuments; Catholic leagues and fanatical +reprisals on friends and foes,--the actual dissolution of society in +a mass of horrors compared with which even the Albigensian crusade +was a local accident, all ending in the reign of the last Valois, +Henry III, the weirdest, most fascinating, most repulsive, most +pathetic and most pitiable of the whole picturesque series of French +kings. If you look into the Journal of Pierre de l'Estoile, under +date of January 26,1582, you can read the entry:-- + +The King and the Queen [Louise de Lorraine], separately, and each +accompanied by a good troop [of companions] went on foot from Paris +to Chartres on a pilgrimage [voyage] to Notre-Dame-de-dessous-Terre +[Our Lady of the Crypt], where a neuvaine was celebrated at the last +mass at which the King and Queen assisted, and offered a silver-gilt +statue of Notre Dame which weighed a hundred marks [eight hundred +ounces], with the object of having lineage which might succeed to +the throne. + +In the dead of winter, in robes of penitents, over the roughest +roads, on foot, the King and Queen, then seven years married, walked +fifty miles to Chartres to supplicate the Virgin for children, and +back again; and this they did year after year until Jacques Clement +put an end to it with his dagger, in 1589, although the Virgin never +chose to perform that miracle; but, instead, allowed the House of +Valois to die out and sat on her throne in patience while the House +of Bourbon was anointed in their place. The only French King ever +crowned in the presence of Our Lady of Chartres was Henry IV--a +heretic. + +The year 1589, which was so decisive for Henry IV in France, marked +in England the rise of Shakespeare as a sort of stage-monarch. While +in France the Virgin still held such power that kings and queens +asked her for favours, almost as instinctively as they had done five +hundred years before, in England Shakespeare set all human nature +and all human history on the stage, with hardly an allusion to the +Virgin's name, unless as an oath. The exceptions are worth noting as +a matter of curious Shakespearean criticism, for they are but two, +and both are lines in the "First Part of Henry VI," spoken by the +Maid of Orleans:-- + +Christ's mother helps me, else I were too weak! + +Whether the "First Part of Henry VI" was written by Shakespeare at +all has been a doubt much discussed, and too deep for tourists; but +that this line was written by a Roman Catholic is the more likely +because no such religious thought recurs in all the rest of +Shakespeare's works, dramatic or lyric, unless it is implied in +Gaunt's allusion to "the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son." Thus, +while three hundred years caused in England the disappearance of the +great divinity on whom the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had +lavished all their hopes, and during these three centuries every +earthly throne had been repeatedly shaken or shattered, the Church +had been broken in halves, faith had been lost, and philosophies +overthrown, the Virgin still remained and remains the most intensely +and the most widely and the most personally felt, of all characters, +divine or human or imaginary, that ever existed among men. Nothing +has even remotely taken her place. The only possible exception is +the Buddha, Sakya Muni; but to the Western mind, a figure like the +Buddha stood much farther away than the Virgin. That of the Christ +even to Saint Bernard stood not so near as that of his mother. +Abelard expressed the fact in its logical necessity even more +strongly than Saint Bernard did:-- + +Te requirunt vota fidelium, + Ad te corda suspirant omnium, + Tu spes nostra post Deum unica, + Advocata nobis es posita. + Ad judicis matrem confugiunt, + Qui judicis iram effugiunt, + Quae praecari pro eis cogitur, + Quae pro reis mater efficitur. + + +"After the Trinity, you are our ONLY hope"; spes nostra unica; "you +are placed there as our advocate; all of us who fear the wrath of +the Judge, fly to the Judge's mother, who is logically compelled to +sue for us, and stands in the place of a mother to the guilty." +Abelard's logic was always ruthless, and the "cogitur" is a stronger +word than one would like to use now, with a priest in hearing. We +need not insist on it; but what one must insist on, is the good +faith of the whole people,--kings, queens, princes of all sorts, +philosophers, poets, soldiers, artists, as well as of the commoners +like ourselves, and the poor,--for the good faith of the priests is +not important to the understanding, since any class which is +sufficiently interested in believing will always believe. In order +to feel Gothic architecture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, +one must feel first and last, around and above and beneath it, the +good faith of the public, excepting only Jews and atheists, +permeating every portion of it with the conviction of an immediate +alternative between heaven and hell, with Mary as the ONLY court in +equity capable of overruling strict law. + +The Virgin was a real person, whose tastes, wishes, instincts, +passions, were intimately known. Enough of the Virgin's literature +survives to show her character, and the course of her daily life. We +know more about her habits and thoughts than about those of earthly +queens. The "Miracles de la Vierge" make a large part, and not the +poorest part, of the enormous literature of these two centuries, +although the works of Albertus Magnus fill twenty-one folio volumes +and those of Thomas Aquinas fill more, while the "Chansons de Geste" +and the "Romans," published or unpublished, are a special branch of +literature with libraries to themselves. The collection of the +Virgin's miracles put in verse by Gaultier de Coincy, monk, prior, +and poet, between 1214 and 1233--the precise moment of the Chartres +sculpture and glass--contains thirty thousand lines. Another great +collection, narrating especially the miracles of the Virgin of +Chartres, was made by a priest of Chartres Cathedral about 1240. +Separate series, or single tales, have appeared and are appearing +constantly, but no general collection has ever been made, although +the whole poetic literature of the Virgin could be printed in the +space of two or three volumes of scholastic philosophy, and if the +Church had cared half as truly for the Virgin as it has for Thomas +Aquinas, every miracle might have been collected and published a +score of times. The miracles themselves, indeed, are not very +numerous. In Gaultier de Coincy's collection they number only about +fifty. The Chartres collection relates chiefly to the horrible +outbreak of what was called leprosy--the "mal ardent,"--which +ravaged the north of France during the crusades, and added intensity +to the feelings which brought all society to the Virgin's feet. +Recent scholars are cataloguing and classifying the miracles, as far +as they survive, and have reduced the number within very moderate +limits. As poetry, Gaultier de Coincy's are the best. + +Of Gaultier de Coincy and his poetry, Gaston Paris has something to +say which is worth quoting:-- + +It is the most curious, and often the most singular monument of the +infantile piety of the Middle Ages. Devotion to Mary is presented in +it as a kind of infallible guarantee not only against every sort of +evil, but also against the most legitimate consequences of sin and +even of crime. In these stories which have revolted the most +rational piety, as well as the philosophy of modern times, one must +still admit a gentle and penetrating charm; a naivete; a tenderness +and a simplicity of heart, which touch, while they raise a smile. +There, for instance, one sees a sick monk cured by the milk that Our +Lady herself comes to invite him to draw from her "douce mamelle"; a +robber who is in the habit of recommending himself to the Virgin +whenever he is going to "embler," is held up by her white hands for +three days on the gibbet where he is hung, until the miracle becomes +evident, and procures his pardon; an ignorant monk who knows only +his Ave Maria, and is despised on that account, when dead reveals +his sanctity by five roses which come out of his mouth in honour of +the five letters of the name Maria; a nun, who has quitted her +convent to lead a life of sin, returns after long years, and finds +that the Holy Virgin, to whom, in spite of all, she has never ceased +to offer every day her prayer, has, during all this time, filled her +place as sacristine, so that no one has perceived her absence. + +Gaston Paris inclined to apologize to his "bons bourgeois de Paris" +for reintroducing to them a character so doubtful as the Virgin +Mary, but, for our studies, the professor's elementary morality is +eloquent. Clearly, M. Paris, the highest academic authority in the +world, thought that the Virgin could hardly, in his time, say the +year 1900, be received into good society in the Latin Quarter. Our +own English ancestors, known as Puritans, held the same opinion, and +excluded her from their society some four hundred years earlier, for +the same reasons which affected M. Gaston Paris. These reasons were +just, and showed the respectability of the citizens who held them. +In no well-regulated community, under a proper system of police, +could the Virgin feel at home, and the same thing may be said of +most other saints as well as sinners. Her conduct was at times +undignified, as M. Paris complained, She condescended to do domestic +service, in order to help her friends, and she would use her needle, +if she were in the mood, for the same object. The "Golden Legend" +relates that:-- + +A certain priest, who celebrated every day a mass in honour of the +Holy Virgin, was brought up before Saint Thomas of Canterbury who +suspended him from his charge, judging him to be short-witted and +irresponsible. Now Saint Thomas had occasion to mend his hair-cloth +shirt, and while waiting for an opportunity to do so, had hidden it +under his bed; so the Virgin appeared to the priest and said to him: +"Go find the archbishop and tell him that she, for love of whom you +celebrated masses, has herself mended his shirt for him which is +under his bed; and tell him that she sends you to him that he may +take off the interdict he has imposed on you." And Saint Thomas +found that his shirt had in fact been mended. He relieved the +priest, begging him to keep the secret of his wearing a hair-shirt. + +Mary did some exceedingly unconventional things, and among them the +darning Thomas A'Becket's hair-shirt, and the supporting a robber on +the gibbet, were not the most singular, yet they seem not to have +shocked Queen Blanche or Saint Francis or Saint Thomas Aquinas so +much as they shocked M. Gaston Paris and M. Prudhomme. You have +still to visit the cathedral at Le Mans for the sake of its twelfth- +century glass, and there, in the lower panel of the beautiful, and +very early, window of Saint Protais, you will see the full-length +figure of a man, lying in bed, under a handsome blanket, watching, +with staring eyes, the Virgin, in a green tunic, wearing her royal +crown, who is striking him on the head with a heavy hammer and with +both hands. The miracle belongs to local history, and is amusing +only to show how little the Virgin cared for criticism of her +manners or acts. She was above criticism. She made manners. Her acts +were laws. No one thought of criticizing, in the style of a normal +school, the will of such a queen; but one might treat her with a +degree of familiarity, under great provocation, which would startle +easier critics than the French, Here is an instance:-- + +A widow had an only child whom she tenderly loved. On hearing that +this son had been taken by the enemy, chained, and put in prison, +she burst into tears, and addressing herself to the Virgin, to whom +she was especially devoted, she asked her with obstinacy for the +release of her son; but when she saw at last that her prayers +remained unanswered, she went to the church where there was a +sculptured image of Mary, and there, before the image, she said: +"Holy Virgin, I have begged you to deliver my son, and you have not +been willing to help an unhappy mother! I've implored your patronage +for my son, and you have refused it! Very good! just as my son has +been taken away from me, so I am going to take away yours, and keep +him as a hostage!" Saying this, she approached, took the statue +child on the Virgin's breast, carried it home, wrapped it in +spotless linen, and locked it up in a box, happy to have such a +hostage for her son's return. Now, the following night, the Virgin +appeared to the young man, opened his prison doors, and said: "Tell +your mother, my child, to return me my Son now that I have returned +hers!" The young man came home to his mother and told her of his +miraculous deliverance; and she, overjoyed, hastened to go with the +little Jesus to the Virgin, saying to her: "I thank you, heavenly +lady, for restoring me my child, and in return I restore yours!" + +For the exactness of this story in all its details, Bishop James of +Voragio could not have vouched, nor did it greatly matter. What he +could vouch for was the relation of intimacy and confidence between +his people and the Queen of Heaven. The fact, conspicuous above all +other historical certainties about religion, that the Virgin was by +essence illogical, unreasonable and feminine, is the only fact of +any ultimate value worth studying, and starts a number of questions +that history has shown itself clearly afraid to touch. Protestant +and Catholic differ little in that respect. No one has ventured to +explain why the Virgin wielded exclusive power over poor and rich, +sinners and saints, alike. Why were all the Protestant churches cold +failures without her help? Why could not the Holy Ghost--the spirit +of Love and Grace--equally answer their prayers? Why was the Son +powerless? Why was Chartres Cathedral in the thirteenth century-- +like Lourdes to-day--the expression of what is in substance a +separate religion? Why did the gentle and gracious Virgin Mother so +exasperate the Pilgrim Father? Why was the Woman struck out of the +Church and ignored in the State? These questions are not antiquarian +or trifling in historical value; they tug at the very heart-strings +of all that makes whatever order is in the cosmos. If a Unity +exists, in which and toward which all energies centre, it must +explain and include Duality, Diversity, Infinity--Sex! + +Although certain to be contradicted by every pious churchman, a +heretic must insist on thinking that the Mater Dolorosa was the +logical Virgin of the Church, and that the Trinity would never have +raised her from the foot of the Cross, had not the Virgin of Majesty +been imposed, by necessity and public unanimity, on a creed which +was meant to be complete without her. The true feeling of the Church +was best expressed by the Virgin herself in one of her attested +miracles: "A clerk, trusting more in the Mother than in the Son, +never stopped repeating the angelic salutation for his only prayer. +Once as he said again the 'Ave Maria,' the Lord appeared to him, and +said to him: 'My Mother thanks you much for all the Salutations that +you make her; but still you should not forget to salute me also: +tamen et me salutare memento.'" The Trinity feared absorption in +her, but was compelled to accept, and even to invite her aid, +because the Trinity was a court of strict law, and, as in the old +customary law, no process of equity could be introduced except by +direct appeal to a higher power. She was imposed unanimously by all +classes, because what man wanted most in the Middle Ages was not +merely law or equity, but also and particularly favour. Strict +justice, either on earth or in heaven, was the last thing that +society cared to face. All men were sinners, and had, at least, the +merit of feeling that, if they got their deserts, not one would +escape worse than whipping. The instinct of individuality went down +through all classes, from the count at the top, to the jugleors and +menestreus at the bottom. The individual rebelled against restraint; +society wanted to do what it pleased; all disliked the laws which +Church and State were trying to fasten on them. They longed for a +power above law,--or above the contorted mass of ignorance and +absurdity bearing the name of law; but the power which they longed +for was not human, for humanity they knew to be corrupt and +incompetent from the day of Adam's creation to the day of the Last +Judgment. They were all criminals; if not, they would have had no +use for the Church and very little for the State; but they had at +least the merit of their faults; they knew what they were, and, like +children, they yearned for protection, pardon, and love. This was +what the Trinity, though omnipotent, could not give. Whatever the +heretic or mystic might try to persuade himself, God could not be +Love. God was Justice, Order, Unity, Perfection; He could not be +human and imperfect, nor could the Son or the Holy Ghost be other +than the Father. The Mother alone was human, imperfect, and could +love; she alone was Favour, Duality, Diversity. Under any +conceivable form of religion, this duality must find embodiment +somewhere, and the Middle Ages logically insisted that, as it could +not be in the Trinity, either separately or together, it must be in +the Mother. If the Trinity was in its essence Unity, the Mother +alone could represent whatever was not Unity; whatever was +irregular, exceptional, outlawed; and this was the whole human race. +The saints alone were safe, after they were sainted. Every one else +was criminal, and men differed so little in degree of sin that, in +Mary's eyes, all were subjects for her pity and help. + +This general rule of favour, apart from law, or the reverse of law, +was the mark of Mary's activity in human affairs. Take, for an +example, an entire class of her miracles, applying to the discipline +of the Church! A bishop ejected an ignorant and corrupt priest from +his living, as all bishops constantly had to do. The priest had +taken the precaution to make himself Mary's MAN; he had devoted +himself to her service and her worship. Mary instantly interfered,-- +just as Queen Eleanor or Queen Blanche would have done,--most +unreasonably, and never was a poor bishop more roughly scolded by an +orthodox queen! "Moult airieement," very airily or angrily, she said +to him (Bartsch, 1887, p. 363):-- + +Ce saches tu certainement + Se tu li matinet bien main + Ne rapeles mon chapelain + A son servise et a s'enor, + L'ame de toi a desenor + Ains trente jors departira + Et es dolors d'infer ira. + + +Now know you this for sure and true, + Unless to-morrow this you do, +--And do it very early too,-- + Restore my chaplain to his due, + A much worse fate remains for you! + Within a month your soul shall go + To suffer in the flames below. + + +The story-teller--himself a priest and prior--caught the lofty trick +of manner which belonged to the great ladies of the court, and was +inherited by them, even in England, down to the time of Queen +Elizabeth, who treated her bishops also like domestic servants;-- +"matinet bien main!" To the public, as to us, the justice of the +rebuke was nothing to the point; but that a friend should exist on +earth or in heaven, who dared to browbeat a bishop, caused the +keenest personal delight. The legends are clearer on this point than +on any other. The people loved Mary because she trampled on +conventions; not merely because she could do it, but because she +liked to do what shocked every well-regulated authority. Her pity +had no limit. + +One of the Chartres miracles expresses the same motive in language +almost plainer still. A good-for-nothing clerk, vicious, proud, +vain, rude, and altogether worthless, but devoted to the Virgin, +died, and with general approval his body was thrown into a ditch +(Bartsch, 1887, p. 369):-- + +Mais cele ou sort tote pities + Tote douceurs tote amisties + Et qui les siens onques n'oublie + SON PECHEOR n'oblia mie. + + +"HER sinner!" Mary would not have been a true queen unless she had +protected her own. The whole morality of the Middle Ages stood in +the obligation of every master to protect his dependent. The +herdsmen of Count Garin of Beaucaire were the superiors of their +damoiseau Aucassins, while they felt sure of the Count. Mary was the +highest of all the feudal ladies, and was the example for all in +loyalty to her own, when she had to humiliate her own Bishop of +Chartres for the sake of a worthless brute. "Do you suppose it +doesn't annoy me," she said, "to see my friend buried in a common +ditch? Take him out at once! I command! tell the clergy it is my +order, and that I will never forgive them unless to-morrow morning +without delay, they bury my friend in the best place in the +cemetery!":-- + +Cuidies vos donc qu'il ne m'enuit + Quant vos l'aves si adosse + Que mis l'aves en un fosse? + Metes Ten fors je le comant! + Di le clergie que je li mant! + Ne me puet mi repaier + Se le matin sans delayer + A grant heneur n'est mis amis + Ou plus beau leu de l'aitre mis. + + +Naturally, her order was instantly obeyed. In the feudal regime, +disobedience to an order was treason--or even hesitation to obey-- +when the order was serious; very much as in a modern army, +disobedience is not regarded as conceivable. Mary's wish was +absolute law, on earth as in heaven. For her, other laws were not +made. Intensely human, but always Queen, she upset, at her pleasure, +the decisions of every court and the orders of every authority, +human or divine; interfered directly in the ordeal; altered the +processes of nature; abolished space; annihilated time. Like other +queens, she had many of the failings and prejudices of her humanity. +In spite of her own origin, she disliked Jews, and rarely neglected +a chance to maltreat them. She was not in the least a prude. To her, +sin was simply humanity, and she seemed often on the point of +defending her arbitrary acts of mercy, by frankly telling the +Trinity that if the Creator meant to punish man, He should not have +made him. The people, who always in their hearts protested against +bearing the responsibility for the Creator's arbitrary creations, +delighted to see her upset the law, and reverse the rulings of the +Trinity. They idolized her for being strong, physically and in will, +so that she feared nothing, and was as helpful to the knight in the +melee of battle as to the young mother in child-bed. The only +character in which they seemed slow to recognize Mary was that of +bourgeoise. The bourgeoisie courted her favour at great expense, but +she seemed to be at home on the farm, rather than in the shop. She +had very rudimentary knowledge, indeed, of the principles of +political economy as we understand them, and her views on the +subject of money-lending or banking were so feminine as to rouse in +that powerful class a vindictive enmity which helped to overthrow +her throne. On the other hand, she showed a marked weakness for +chivalry, and one of her prettiest and most twelfth-century miracles +is that of the knight who heard mass while Mary took his place in +the lists. It is much too charming to lose (Bartsch, 1895, p. 311):-- + +Un chevalier courtois et sages, + Hardis et de grant vasselages, + Nus mieudres en chevalerie, + Moult amoit la vierge Marie. + Pour son barnage demener + Et son franc cors d'armes pener, + Aloit a son tournoiement + Garnis de son contentement. + Au dieu plaisir ainsi avint + Que quant le jour du tournoi vint + Il se hastoit de chevauchier, + Bien vousist estre en champ premier. + D'une eglise qui pres estoit + Oi les sains que l'on sonnoit + Pour la sainte messe chanter. + Le chevalier sans arrester + S'en est ale droit a l'eglise + Pour escouter le dieu servise. + L'en chantoit tantost hautement + Une messe devotement + De la sainte Vierge Marie; + Puis a on autre comencie. + Le chevalier vien l'escouta, + De bon cuer la dame pria, + Et quant la messe fut finee + La tierce fu recomenciee + Tantost en ce meisme lieu. + "Sire, pour la sainte char dieu!" + Ce li a dit son escuier, + "L'heure passe de tournoier, + Et vous que demourez ici? + Venez vous en, je vous en pri! + Volez vous devenir hermite + Ou papelart ou ypocrite? + Alons en a nostre mestier!" + + +A knight both courteous and wise + And brave and bold in enterprise. + No better knight was ever seen, + Greatly loved the Virgin Queen. + Once, to contest the tourney's prize + And keep his strength in exercise, + He rode out to the listed field + Armed at all points with lance and shield; + But it pleased God that when the day + Of tourney came, and on his way + He pressed his charger's speed apace + To reach, before his friends, the place, + He saw a church hard by the road + And heard the church-bells sounding loud + To celebrate the holy mass. + Without a thought the church to pass + The knight drew rein, and entered there + To seek the aid of God in prayer. + + +High and dear they chanted then + A solemn mass to Mary Queen; + Then afresh began again. + Lost in his prayers the good knight stayed; + With all his heart to Mary prayed; + And, when the second one was done, + Straightway the third mass was begun, + Right there upon the self-same place. + "Sire, for mercy of God's grace!" + Whispered his squire in his ear; + "The hour of tournament is near; + Why do you want to linger here? + Is it a hermit to become, + Or hypocrite, or priest of Rome? + Come on, at once! despatch your prayer! + Let us be off to our affair!" + + +The accent of truth still lingers in this remonstrance of the +squire, who must, from all time, have lost his temper on finding his +chevalier addicted to "papelardie" when he should have been +fighting; but the priest had the advantage of telling the story and +pointing the moral. This advantage the priest neglected rarely, but +in this case he used it with such refinement and so much literary +skill that even the squire might have been patient. With the +invariable gentle courtesy of the true knight, the chevalier replied +only by soft words:-- + + "Amis!" ce dist li chevalier, + "Cil tournoie moult noblement + Qui le servise dieu entent." + + +In one of Milton's sonnets is a famous line which is commonly +classed among the noblest verses of the English language:-- + + "They also serve, who only stand and wait." + + +Fine as it is, with the simplicity of the grand style, like the +"Chanson de Roland" the verse of Milton does not quite destroy the +charm of thirteenth-century diction:-- + + "Friend!" said to him the chevalier, + "He tourneys very nobly too, + Who only hears God's service through!" + + +No doubt the verses lack the singular power of the eleventh century; +it is not worth while to pretend that any verse written in the +thirteenth century wholly holds its own against "Roland":-- + + "Sire cumpain! faites le vus de gred? + Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vos soelt amer!" + + +The courtesy of Roland has the serious solidity of the Romanesque +arch, and that of Lancelot and Aucassins has the grace of a +legendary window; but one may love it, all the same; and one may +even love the knight,--papelard though he were,--as he turned back +to the altar and remained in prayer until the last mass was ended. + +Then they mounted and rode on toward the field, and of course you +foresee what had happened. In itself the story is bald enough, but +it is told with such skill that one never tires of it. As the +chevalier and the squire approached the lists, they met the other +knights returning, for the jousts were over; but, to the +astonishment of the chevalier, he was greeted by all who passed him +with shouts of applause for his marvellous triumph in the lists, +where he had taken all the prizes and all the prisoners:-- + +Les chevaliers ont encontrez, + Qui du tournois sont retournes, + Qui du tout en tout est feru. + S'en avoit tout le pris eu + Le chevalier qui reperoit + Des messes qu' oies avoit. + Les autres qui s'en reperoient + Le saluent et le conjoient + Et distrent bien que onques mes + Nul chevalier ne prist tel fes + D'armes com il ot fet ce jour; + A tousjours en avroit l'onnour. + Moult en i ot qui se rendoient + A lui prisonier, et disoient + "Nous somes vostre prisonier, + Ne nous ne pourrions nier, + Ne nous aiez par armes pris." + Lors ne fu plus cil esbahis, + Car il a entendu tantost + Que cele fu pour lui en l'ost + Pour qui il fu en la chapelle. + + +His friends, returning from the fight, + On the way there met the knight, + For the jousts were wholly run, + And all the prizes had been won + By the knight who had not stirred + From the masses he had heard. + All the knights, as they came by, + Saluted him and gave him joy, + And frankly said that never yet + Had any knight performed such feat, + Nor ever honour won so great + As he had done in arms that day; + While many of them stopped to say + That they all his prisoners were: + "In truth, your prisoners we are: + We cannot but admit it true: + Taken we were in arms by you!" + Then the truth dawned on him there, + And all at once he saw the light, + That She, by whom he stood in prayer, +--The Virgin,--stood by him in fight! + + +The moral of the tale belongs to the best feudal times. The knight +at once recognized that he had become the liege-man of the Queen, +and henceforth must render his service entirely to her. So he called +his "barons," or tenants, together, and after telling them what had +happened, took leave of them and the "siecle":-- + +"Moult est ciest tournoiement beaux + Ou ele a pour moi tournoie; + Mes trop l'avroit mal emploie + Se pour lui je ne tournoioie! + Fox seroie se retournoie + A la mondaine vanite. + A dieu promet en verite + Que james ne tournoierai + Fors devant le juge verai + Qui conoit le bon chevalier + Et selonc le fet set jutgier." + Lors prent congie piteusement, + Et maint en plorent tenrement. + D'euls se part, en une abaie + Servi puis la vierge Marie. + + +"Glorious has the tourney been + Where for me has fought the Queen; + But a disgrace for me it were + If I tourneyed not for her. + Traitor to her should I be, + Returned to worldly vanity. + I promise truly, by God's grace, + Never again the lists to see, + Except before that Judge's face, + Who knows the true knight from the base, + And gives to each his final place." + Then piteously he takes his leave + While in tears his barons grieve. + So he parts, and in an abbey + Serves henceforth the Virgin Mary. + + +Observe that in this case Mary exacted no service! Usually the +legends are told, as in this instance, by priests, though they were +told in the same spirit by laymen, as you can see in the poems of +Rutebeuf, and they would not have been told very differently by +soldiers, if one may judge from Joinville; but commonly the Virgin +herself prescribed the kind of service she wished. Especially to the +young knight who had, of his own accord, chosen her for his liege, +she showed herself as exacting as other great ladies showed +themselves toward their Lancelots and Tristans. When she chose, she +could even indulge in more or less coquetry, else she could never +have appealed to the sympathies of the thirteenth-century knight- +errant. One of her miracles told how she disciplined the young men +who were too much in the habit of assuming her service in order to +obtain selfish objects. A youthful chevalier, much given to +tournaments and the other worldly diversions of the siecle, fell in +love, after the rigorous obligation of his class, as you know from +your Dulcinea del Toboso, with a lady who, as was also prescribed by +the rules of courteous love, declined to listen to him. An abbot of +his acquaintance, sympathizing with his distress, suggested to him +the happy idea of appealing for help to the Queen of Heaven. He +followed the advice, and for an entire year shut himself up, and +prayed to Mary, in her chapel, that she would soften the heart of +his beloved, and bring her to listen to his prayer. At the end of +the twelvemonth, fixed as a natural and sufficient proof of his +earnestness in devotion, he felt himself entitled to indulge again +in innocent worldly pleasures, and on the first morning after his +release, he started out on horseback for a day's hunting. Probably +thousands of young knights and squires were always doing more or +less the same thing, and it was quite usual that, as they rode +through the fields or forests, they should happen on a solitary +chapel or shrine, as this knight did. He stopped long enough to +kneel in it and renew his prayer to the Queen:-- + +La mere dieu qui maint chetif + A retrait de chetivete + Par sa grant debonnairte + Par sa courtoise courtoisie + Au las qui tant l'apele et prie + Ignelement s'est demonstree, + D'une coronne corronnee + Plaine de pierres precieuses + Si flamboianz si precieuses + Pour pou li euil ne li esluisent. + Si netement ainsi reluisent + Et resplendissent com la raie + Qui en este au matin raie. + Tant par a bel et cler le vis + Que buer fu mez, ce li est vis, + Qui s'i puest assez mirer. + "Cele qui te fait soupirer + Et en si grant erreur t'a mis," + Fait nostre dame, "biau douz amis, + Est ele plus bele que moi?" + Li chevaliers a tel effroi + De la clarte, ne sai que face; + Ses mains giete devant sa face; + Tel hide a et tel freeur + Chaoir se laisse de freeur; + Mais cele en qui pitie est toute + Li dist: "Amis, or n'aies doute! + Je suis cele, n'en doute mie, + Qui te doi faire avoir t'amie. + Or prens garde que tu feras. + Cele que tu miex ameras + De nous ii auras a amie." + + +God's Mother who to many a wretch + Has brought relief from wretchedness. + By her infinite goodness, + By her courteous courteousness, + To her suppliant in distress + Came from heaven quickly down; + On her head she bore the crown, + Full of precious stones and gems + Darting splendour, flashing flames, + Till the eye near lost its sight + In the keenness of the light, + As the summer morning's sun + Blinds the eyes it shines upon. + So beautiful and bright her face, + Only to look on her is grace. + + +"She who has caused you thus to sigh, + And has brought you to this end,"-- + Said Our Lady,--"Tell me, friend, + Is she handsomer than I?" + Scared by her brilliancy, the knight + Knows not what to do for fright; + He clasps his hands before his face, + And in his shame and his disgrace + Falls prostrate on the ground with fear; + But she with pity ever near + Tells him:--"Friend, be not afraid! + Doubt not that I am she whose aid + Shall surely bring your love to you; + But take good care what you shall do! + She you shall love most faithfully + Of us two, shall your mistress be." + + +One is at a loss to imagine what a young gentleman could do, in such +a situation, except to obey, with the fewest words possible, the +suggestion so gracefully intended. Queen's favours might be fatal +gifts, but they were much more fatal to reject than to accept. +Whatever might be the preferences of the knight, he had invited his +own fate, and in consequence was fortunate to be allowed the option +of dying and going to heaven, or dying without going to heaven. Mary +was not always so gentle with young men who deserted or neglected +her for an earthly rival;--the offence which irritated her most, and +occasionally caused her to use language which hardly bears +translation into modern English. Without meaning to assert that the +Queen of Heaven was jealous as Queen Blanche herself, one must still +admit that she was very severe on lovers who showed willingness to +leave her service, and take service with any other lady. One of her +admirers, educated for the priesthood but not yet in full orders, +was obliged by reasons of family interest to quit his career in +order to marry. An insult like this was more than Mary could endure, +and she gave the young man a lesson he never forgot:-- + +Ireement li prent a dire + La mere au roi de paradis: + "Di moi, di moi, tu que jadis + M'amoies tant de tout ton coeur. + Pourquoi m'as tu jete puer? + Di moi, di moi, ou est donc cele + Qui plus de moi bone est et bele?... + Pourquoi, pourquoi, las durfeus, + Las engignez, las deceuz, + Me lais pour une lasse fame, + Qui suis du del Royne et Dame? + Enne fais tu trop mauvais change + Qui tu por une fame estrange + Me laisses qui par amors t'amoie + Et ja ou ciel t'apareilloie + En mes chambres un riche lit + Por couchier t'ame a grand delit? + Trop par as faites grant merveilles + S'autrement tost ne te conseilles + Ou ciel serra tes lits deffais + Et en la flamme d'enfer faiz!" + + +With anger flashing in her eyes + Answers the Queen of Paradise: + "Tell me, tell me! you of old + Loved me once with love untold; + Why now throw me aside? + Tell me, tell me! where a bride + Kinder or fairer have you won?... + Wherefore, wherefore, wretched one, + Deceived, betrayed, misled, undone, + Leave me for a creature mean, + Me, who am of Heaven the Queen? + Can you make a worse exchange, + You that for a woman strange, + Leave me who, with perfect love, + Waiting you in heaven above, + Had in my chamber richly dressed + A bed of bliss your soul to rest? + Terrible is your mistake! + Unless you better council take, + In heaven your bed shall be unmade, + And in the flames of hell be spread." + + +A mistress who loved in this manner was not to be gainsaid. No +earthly love had a chance of holding its own against this unfair +combination of heaven and hell, and Mary was as unscrupulous as any +other great lady in abusing all her advantages in order to save HER +souls. Frenchmen never found fault with abuses of power for what +they thought a serious object. The more tyrannical Mary was, the +more her adorers adored, and they wholly approved, both in love and +in law, the rule that any man who changed his allegiance without +permission, did so at his own peril. His life and property were +forfeit. Mary showed him too much grace in giving him an option. + +Even in anger Mary always remained a great lady, and in the ordinary +relations of society her manners were exquisite, as they were, +according to Joinville, in the court of Saint Louis, when tempers +were not overwrought. The very brutality of the brutal compelled the +courteous to exaggerate courtesy, and some of the royal family were +as coarse as the king was delicate in manners. In heaven the manners +were perfect, and almost as stately as those of Roland and Oliver. +On one occasion Saint Peter found himself embarrassed by an affair +which the public opinion of the Court of Heaven, although not by any +means puritanic, thought more objectionable--in fact, more frankly +discreditable--than an honest corrupt job ought to be; and even his +influence, though certainly considerable, wholly failed to carry it +through the law-court. The case, as reported by Gaultier de Coincy, +was this: A very worthless creature of Saint Peter's--a monk of +Cologne--who had led a scandalous life, and "ne cremoit dieu, ordre +ne roule," died, and in due course of law was tried, convicted, and +dragged off by the devils to undergo his term of punishment. Saint +Peter could not desert his sinner, though much ashamed of him, and +accordingly made formal application to the Trinity for a pardon. The +Trinity, somewhat severely, refused. Finding his own interest +insufficient, Saint Peter tried to strengthen it by asking the +archangels to help him; but the case was too much for them also, and +they declined. The brother apostles were appealed to, with the same +result; and finally even the saints, though they had so obvious +interest in keeping friendly relations with Peter, found public +opinion too strong to defy. The case was desperate. The Trinity +were--or was--emphatic, and--what was rare in the Middle Ages--every +member of the feudal hierarchy sustained its decision. Nothing more +could be done in the regular way. Saint Peter was obliged to divest +himself of authority, and place himself and his dignity in the hands +of the Virgin. Accordingly he asked for an audience, and stated the +case to Our Lady. With the utmost grace, she instantly responded:-- + +"Pierre, Pierre," dit Nostre Dame, + "En moult grand poine et por ceste ame + De mon douz filz me fierai + Tant que pour toi l'en prierai." + La Mere Dieu lors s'est levee, + Devant son filz s'en est alee + Et ses virges toutes apres. + De lui si tint Pierre pres, + Quar sanz doutance bien savoit + Que sa besoigne faite avoit + Puisque cele l'avoit en prise + Ou forme humaine avoit prise. + + +Quant sa Mere vit li douz Sire + Qui de son doit daigna escrire + Qu'en honourant et pere et mere + En contre lui a chere clere + Se leva moult festivement + Et si li dist moult doucement; + "Bien veigniez vous, ma douce mere," + Comme douz filz, comme douz pere. + Doucement l'a par la main prise + Et doucement lez lui assise; + Lors li a dit:--"A douce chiere, + Que veus ma douce mere chiere, + Mes amies et mes sereurs?" + + +"Pierre, Pierre," our Lady said, + "With all my heart I'll give you aid, + And to my gentle Son I'll sue + Until I beg that soul for you." + God's Mother then arose straightway, + And sought her Son without delay; + All her virgins followed her, + And Saint Peter kept him near, + For he knew his task was done + And his prize already won, + Since it was hers, in whom began + The life of God in form of Man. + + +When our dear Lord, who deigned to write + With his own hand that in his sight + Those in his kingdom held most dear + Father and mother honoured here,-- + When He saw His Mother's face + He rose and said with gentle grace: + "Well are you come, my heart's desire!" + Like loving son, like gracious sire; + Took her hand gently in His own; + Gently placed her on His throne, + Wishing her graciously good cheer:-- + "What brings my gentle Mother here, + My sister, and my dearest friend?" + + +One can see Queen Blanche going to beg--or command--a favour of her +son, King Louis, and the stately dignity of their address, while +Saint Peter and the virgins remain in the antechamber; but, as for +Saint Peter's lost soul, the request was a mere form, and the doors +of paradise were instantly opened to it, after such brief +formalities as should tend to preserve the technical record of the +law-court. We tread here on very delicate ground. Gaultier de +Coincy, being a priest and a prior, could take liberties which we +cannot or ought not to take. The doctrines of the Church are too +serious and too ancient to be wilfully misstated, and the doctrines +of what is called Mariolatry were never even doctrines of the +Church. Yet it is true that, in the hearts of Mary's servants, the +Church and its doctrines were at the mercy of Mary's will. Gaultier +de Coincy claimed that Mary exasperated the devils by exercising a +wholly arbitrary and illegitimate power. Gaultier not merely +admitted, but frankly asserted, that this was the fact:-- + +Font li deables:--"de cest plait, + Mal por mal, assez miex nous plest + Que nous aillons au jugement + Li haut jugeur qui ne ment. + C'au plait n'au jugement sa mere + De droit jugier est trop avere; + Mais dieu nous juge si adroit, + Plainement nous lest notre droit. + Sa mere juge en tel maniere + Qu'elle nous met touz jors arriere + Quant nous cuidons estre devant. + . . . . . . . + En ciel et en terre est plus Dame + Par un petit que Diex ne soit. + Il l'aimme tant et tant la croit, + N'est riens qu'elle face ne die + Qu'il desveile ne contredie. + Quant qu'elle veut li fait acroire, + S'elle disoit la pie est noire + Et l'eue trouble est toute clere: + Si diroit il voir dit ma mere!" + + +"In this law-suit," say the devils, + "Since it is a choice of evils, + We had best appeal on high + To the Judge Who does not lie. + What is law to any other, + 'T is no use pleading with His Mother; + But God judges us so true + That He leaves us all our due. + His Mother judges us so short + That she throws us out of court + When we ought to win our cause. + . . . . . . . . + In heaven and earth she makes more laws + By far, than God Himself can do, + He loves her so, and trusts her so, + There's nothing she can do or say + That He'll refuse, or say her nay. + Whatever she may want is right, + Though she say that black is white, + And dirty water clear as snow:-- + My Mother says it, and it's so!" + + +If the Virgin took the feelings of the Trinity into consideration, +or recognized its existence except as her Son, the case has not been +reported, or, at all events, has been somewhat carefully kept out of +sight by the Virgin's poets. The devils were emphatic in denouncing +Mary for absorbing the whole Trinity. In one sharply disputed case +in regard to a villain, or labourer, whose soul the Virgin claimed +because he had learned the "Ave Maria," the devils became very +angry, indeed, and protested vehemently:-- + + +Li lait maufe, li rechinie + Adonc ont ris et eschinie. + C'en font il:--"Merveillans merveille! + Por ce vilain plate oreille + Aprent vo Dame a saluer, + Se nous vorro trestous tuer + Se regarder osons vers s'ame. + De tout le monde vieut estre Dame! + Ains nule dame ne fu tiez. + II est avis qu'ele soit Diex + Ou qu'ele ait Diex en main bornie. + Nul besoigne n'est fournie, + Ne terrienne ne celestre, + Que toute Dame ne veille estre. + Il est avis que tout soit suen; + Dieu ne deable n'i ont rien." + + +The ugly demons laugh outright + And grind their teeth with envious spite; + Crying:--"Marvel marvellous! + Because that flat-eared ploughman there + Learned to make your Dame a prayer, + She would like to kill us all + Just for looking toward his soul. + All the world she wants to rule! + No such Dame was ever seen! + She thinks that she is God, I ween, + Or holds Him in her hollow hand. + Not a judgment or command + Or an order can be given + Here on earth or there in heaven, + That she does not want control. + She thinks that she ordains the whole, + And keeps it all for her own profit. + God nor Devil share not of it." + + +As regards Mary of Chartres, these charges seem to have been +literally true, except so far as concerned the "laid maufe" Pierre +de Dreux. Gaultier de Coincy saw no impropriety in accepting, as +sufficiently exact, the allegations of the devils against the +Virgin's abuse of power. Down to the death of Queen Blanche, which +is all that concerns us, the public saw no more impropriety in it +than Gaultier did. The ugly, envious devils, notorious as students +of the Latin Quarter, were perpetually making the same charges +against Queen Blanche and her son, without disturbing her authority. +No one could conceive that the Virgin held less influence in heaven +than the queen mother on earth. Nevertheless there were points in +the royal policy and conduct of Mary which thoughtful men even then +hesitated to approve. The Church itself never liked to be dragged +too far under feminine influence, although the moment it discarded +feminine influence it lost nearly everything of any value to it or +to the world, except its philosophy. Mary's tastes were too popular; +some of the uglier devils said they were too low; many ladies and +gentlemen of the "siecle" thought them disreputable, though they +dared not say so, or dared say so only by proxy, as in "Aucassins." +As usual, one must go to the devils for the exact truth, and in +spite of their outcry, the devils admitted that they had no reason +to complain of Mary's administration:-- + +"Les beles dames de grant pris + Qui traynant vont ver et gris, + Roys, roynes, dus et contesses, En enfer vienent a granz presses; + Mais ou ciel vont pres tout a fait + Tort et bocu et contrefait. + Ou ciel va toute la ringaille; + Le grain avons et diex la paille." + + +"All the great dames and ladies fair + Who costly robes and ermine wear, + Kings, queens, and countesses and lords + Come down to hell in endless hordes; + While up to heaven go the lamed, + The dwarfs, the humpbacks, and the maimed; + To heaven goes the whole riff-raff; + We get the grain and God the chaff." + + +True it was, although one should not say it jestingly, that the +Virgin embarrassed the Trinity; and perhaps this was the reason, +behind all the other excellent reasons, why men loved and adored her +with a passion such as no other deity has ever inspired: and why we, +although utter strangers to her, are not far from getting down on +our knees and praying to her still. Mary concentrated in herself the +whole rebellion of man against fate; the whole protest against +divine law; the whole contempt for human law as its outcome; the +whole unutterable fury of human nature beating itself against the +walls of its prison-house, and suddenly seized by a hope that in the +Virgin man had found a door of escape. She was above law; she took +feminine pleasure in turning hell into an ornament; she delighted in +trampling on every social distinction in this world and the next. +She knew that the universe was as unintelligible to her, on any +theory of morals, as it was to her worshippers, and she felt, like +them, no sure conviction that it was any more intelligible to the +Creator of it. To her, every suppliant was a universe in itself, to +be judged apart, on his own merits, by his love for her,--by no +means on his orthodoxy, or his conventional standing in the Church, +or according to his correctness in defining the nature of the +Trinity. The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over +human imagination--as you can see at Lourdes--was due much less to +her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people +who suffered under law,--divine or human,--justly or unjustly, by +accident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil. She cared +not a straw for conventional morality, and she had no notion of +letting her friends be punished, to the tenth or any other +generation, for the sins of their ancestors or the peccadilloes of +Eve. + +So Mary filled heaven with a sort of persons little to the taste of +any respectable middle-class society, which has trouble enough in +making this world decent and pay its bills, without having to +continue the effort in another. Mary stood in a Church of her own, +so independent that the Trinity might have perished without much +affecting her position; but, on the other hand, the Trinity could +look on and see her dethroned with almost a breath of relief. +Aucassins and the devils of Gaultier de Coincy foresaw her danger. +Mary's treatment of respectable and law-abiding people who had no +favours to ask, and were reasonably confident of getting to heaven +by the regular judgment, without expense, rankled so deeply that +three hundred years later the Puritan reformers were not satisfied +with abolishing her, but sought to abolish the woman altogether as +the cause of all evil in heaven and on earth. The Puritans abandoned +the New Testament and the Virgin in order to go back to the +beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve. This is the Church's +affair, not ours, and the women are competent to settle it with +Church or State, without help from outside; but honest tourists are +seriously interested in putting the feeling back into the dead +architecture where it belongs. + +Mary was rarely harsh to any suppliant or servant, and she took no +special interest in humiliating the rich or the learned or the wise. +For them, law was made; by them, law was administered; and with +their doings Mary never arbitrarily interfered; but occasionally she +could not resist the temptation to intimate her opinion of the +manner in which the Trinity allowed their--the regular--Church to be +administered. She was a queen, and never for an instant forgot it, +but she took little thought about her divine rights, if she had +any,--and in fact Saint Bernard preferred her without them,--while +she was scandalized at the greed of officials in her Son's Court. +One day a rich usurer and a very poor old woman happened to be dying +in the same town. Gaultier de Coincy did not say, as an accurate +historian should, that he was present, nor did he mention names or +dates, although it was one of his longest and best stories. Mary +never loved bankers, and had no reason for taking interest in this +one, or for doing him injury; but it happened that the parish priest +was summoned to both death-beds at the same time, and neglected the +old pauper in the hope of securing a bequest for his church from the +banker. This was the sort of fault that most annoyed Mary in the +Church of the Trinity, which, in her opinion, was not cared for as +it should be, and she felt it her duty to intimate as much. + +Although the priest refused to come at the old woman's summons, his +young clerk, who seems to have acted as vicar though not in orders, +took pity on her, and went alone with the sacrament to her hut, +which was the poorest of poor hovels even for that age:-- + +Close de piex et de serciaus + Comme une viez souz a porciaus. + + +Roof of hoops, and wall of logs, + Like a wretched stye for hogs. + + +There the beggar lay, already insensible or at the last gasp, on +coarse thatch, on the ground, covered by an old hempen sack. The +picture represented the extremest poverty of the thirteenth century; +a hovel without even a feather bed or bedstead, as Aucassins' +ploughman described his mother's want; and the old woman alone, +dying, as the clerk appeared at the opening:-- + +Li clers qui fu moult bien apris + Le cors Nostre Seigneur a pris + A l'ostel a la povre fame + S'en vient touz seus mes n'i treuve ame. + Si grant clarte y a veue + Que grant peeur en a eue. + Ou povre lit a la vieillete + Qui couvers iert d'une nateite + + +Assises voit XII puceles + Si avenans et si tres beles + N'est nus tant penser i seust + Qui raconter le vout peust. + A coutee voist Nostre Dame + Sus le chevez la povre fame + Qui por la mort sue et travaille. + La Mere Dieu d'une tovaille + Qui blanche est plus que fleur de lis + La grant sueur d'entor le vis + A ses blanches mains li essuie. + + +The clerk, well in these duties taught, + The body of our Saviour brought + Where she lay upon her bed + Without a soul to give her aid. + But such brightness there he saw + As filled his mind with fear and awe. + Covered with a mat of straw + The woman lay; but round and near + + +A dozen maidens sat, so fair + No mortal man could dream such light, + No mortal tongue describe the sight. + Then he saw that next the bed, + By the poor old woman's head, + As she gasped and strained for breath + In the agony of death, + Sat Our Lady,--bending low,-- + While, with napkin white as snow, + She dried the death-sweat on the brow. + + +The clerk, in terror, hesitated whether to turn and run away, but +Our Lady beckoned him to the bed, while all rose and kneeled +devoutly to the sacrament. Then she said to the trembling clerk:-- + +"Friend, be not afraid! + But seat yourself, to give us aid, + Beside these maidens, on the bed." + + +And when the clerk had obeyed, she continued-- + + +"Or tost, amis!" fait Nostre Dame, + "Confessies ceste bone fame + Et puis apres tout sans freeur + Recevra tost son sauveeur + Qui char et sanc vout en moi prendre." + + +"Come quickly, friend!" Our Lady says, + "This good old woman now confess + And afterwards without distress + She will at once receive her God + Who deigned in me take flesh and blood." + + +After the sacrament came a touch of realism that recalls the simple +death-scenes that Walter Scott described in his grand twelfth- +century manner. The old woman lingered pitiably in her agony:-- + +Lors dit une des demoiselles + A madame sainte Marie: + "Encore, dame, n'istra mie + Si com moi semble du cors l'ame." + "Bele fille," fait Nostre Dame, + "Traveiller lais un peu le cors, + Aincois que l'ame en isse hors, + Si que puree soil et nete + Aincois qu'en Paradis la mete. + N'est or mestier qui soions plus, + Ralon nous en ou ciel lassus, + Quant tens en iert bien reviendrons + En paradis l'ame emmerrons." + + +A maiden said to Saint Marie, + "My lady, still it seems to me + The soul will not the body fly." + "Fair child!" Our Lady made reply, + "Still let awhile the body fight + Before the soul shall leave it quite. + So that it pure may be, and cleansed + When it to Paradise ascends. + No longer need we here remain; + We can go back to heaven again; + We will return before she dies, + And take the soul to paradise." + + +The rest of the story concerned the usurer, whose death-bed was of a +different character, but Mary's interest in death-beds of that kind +was small. The fate of the usurer mattered the less because she knew +too well how easily the banker, in good credit, could arrange with +the officials of the Trinity to open the doors of paradise for him. +The administration of heaven was very like the administration of +France; the Queen Mother saw many things of which she could not +wholly approve; but her nature was pity, not justice, and she shut +her eyes to much that she could not change. Her miracles, therefore, +were for the most part mere evidence of her pity for those who +needed it most, and these were rarely the well-to-do people of the +siecle, but more commonly the helpless. Every saint performed +miracles, and these are standard, not peculiar to any one +intermediator; and every saint protected his own friends; but beyond +these exhibitions of power, which are more or less common to the +whole hierarchy below the Trinity, Mary was the mother of pity and +the only hope of despair. One might go on for a volume, studying the +character of Mary and the changes that time made in it, from the +earliest Byzantine legends down to the daily recorded miracles at +Lourdes; no character in history has had so long or varied a +development, and none so sympathetic; but the greatest poets long +ago plundered that mine of rich motives, and have stolen what was +most dramatic for popular use. The Virgin's most famous early +miracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which was +what one might call her salvation of Faust. Another Byzantine +miracle was an original version of Shylock. Shakespeare and his +fellow dramatists plundered the Church legends as freely as their +masters plundered the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramatic +material untouched. Let us pray the Virgin that it may remain +untouched, for, although a good miracle was in its day worth much +money--so much that the rival shrines stole each other's miracles +without decency--one does not care to see one's Virgin put to money- +making for Jew theatre-managers. One's two-hundred and fifty million +arithmetical ancestors shrink. + +For mere amusement, too, the miracle is worth reading of the little +Jew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and was +thrown into a furnace by his father in consequence; but when the +furnace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of the +flames, with the little child unharmed in her lap. Better is that +called the "Tombeor de Notre Dame," only recently printed; told by +some unknown poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as any +of Gaultier de Coincy's. Indeed the "Tombeor de Notre Dame" has had +more success in our time than it ever had in its own, as far as one +knows, for it appeals to a quiet sense of humour that pleases modern +French taste as much as it pleased the Virgin. One fears only to +spoil it by translation, but if a translation be merely used as a +glossary or footnote, it need not do fatal harm. + +The story is that of a tumbler--tombeor, street-acrobat--who was +disgusted with the world, as his class has had a reputation for +becoming, and who was fortunate enough to obtain admission into the +famous monastery of Clairvaux, where Saint Bernard may have formerly +been blessed by the Virgin's presence. Ignorant at best, and +especially ignorant of letters, music, and the offices of a +religious society, he found himself unable to join in the services:-- + +Car n'ot vescu fors de tumer + Et d'espringier et de baler. + Treper, saillir, ice savoit; + Ne d'autre rien il ne savoit; + Car ne savoit autre lecon + Ne "pater noster" ne chancon + Ne le "credo" ne le salu + Ne rien qui fust a son salu. + + +For he had learned no other thing + Than to tumble, dance and spring: + Leaping and vaulting, that he knew, + But nothing better could he do. + He could not say his prayers by rote; + Not "Pater noster", not a note, + Not "Ave Mary," nor the creed; + Nothing to help his soul in need. + + +Tormented by the sense of his uselessness to the society whose bread +he ate without giving a return in service, and afraid of being +expelled as a useless member, one day while the bells were calling +to mass he hid in the crypt, and in despair began to soliloquize +before the Virgin's altar, at the same spot, one hopes, where the +Virgin had shown herself, or might have shown herself, in her +infinite bounty, to Saint Bernard, a hundred years before:-- + +"Hai," fait il, "con suis trais! + Or dira ja cascuns sa laisse + Et jo suis ci i hues en laisse + Qui ne fas ci fors que broster + Et viandes por nient gaster. + Si ne dirai ne ne ferai? + Par la mere deu, si ferai! + Ja n'en serai ore repris; + Jo ferai ce que j'ai apris; + Si servirai de men mestier + La mere deu en son mostier; + Li autre servent de canter + Et jo servirai de tumer." + Sa cape oste, si se despoille, + Deles l'autel met sa despoille, + Mais por sa char que ne soit nue + Une cotele a retenue + Qui moult estait tenre et alise, + Petit vaut miex d'une chemise, + Si est en pur le cors remes. + Il s'est bien chains et acesmes, + Sa cote caint et bien s'atorne, + Devers l'ymage se retorne + Mout humblement et si l'esgarde: + "Dame," fait il, "en vostre garde + Comant jo et mon cors et m'ame. + Douce reine, douce dame, + Ne despisies ce que jo sai + Car jo me voil metre a l'asai + De vos servir en bone foi + Se dex m'ait sans nul desroi. + Jo ne sai canter ne lire + Mais certes jo vos voil eslire + Tos mes biax gieus a eslicon. + Or soie al fuer de taurecon + Qui trepe et saut devant sa mere. + Dame, qui n'estes mie amere + A cels qui vos servent a droit, + Quelsque jo soie, por vos soit!" + + +Lors li commence a faire saus + Bas et petits et grans et haus + + +Primes deseur et puis desos, + Puis se remet sor ses genols, + Devers l'ymage, et si l'encline: + "He!" fait il, "tres douce reine + Par vo pitie, par vo francise, + Ne despisies pas mon servise!" + + +"Ha!" said he, "how I am ashamed! + To sing his part goes now each priest, + And I stand here, a tethered beast, + Who nothing do but browse and feed + And waste the food that others need. + Shall I say nothing, and stand still? + No! by God's mother, but I will! + She shall not think me here for naught; + At least I'll do what I've been taught! + At least I'll serve in my own way + God's mother in her church to-day. + The others serve to pray and sing; + I will serve to leap and spring." + Then he strips him of his gown, + Lays it on the altar down; + But for himself he takes good care + Not to show his body bare, + But keeps a jacket, soft and thin, + Almost a shirt, to tumble in. + Clothed in this supple woof of maille + His strength and health and form showed well. + And when his belt is buckled fast, + Toward the Virgin turns at last: + Very humbly makes his prayer; + "Lady!" says he, "to your care + I commit my soul and frame. + Gentle Virgin, gentle dame, + Do not despise what I shall do, + For I ask only to please you, + To serve you like an honest man, + So help me God, the best I can. + I cannot chant, nor can I read, + But I can show you here instead, + All my best tricks to make you laugh, + And so shall be as though a calf + Should leap and jump before its dam. + Lady, who never yet could blame + Those who serve you well and true, + All that I am, I am for you." + + +Then he begins to jump about, + High and low, and in and out, + + +Straining hard with might and main; + Then, falling on his knees again, + Before the image bows his face: + "By your pity! by your grace!" + Says he, "Ha! my gentle queen, + Do not despise my offering!" + + +In his earnestness he exerted himself until, at the end of his +strength, he lay exhausted and unconscious on the altar steps. +Pleased with his own exhibition, and satisfied that the Virgin was +equally pleased, he continued these devotions every day, until at +last his constant and singular absence from the regular services +attracted the curiosity of a monk, who kept watch on him and +reported his eccentric exercise to the Abbot. + +The mediaeval monasteries seem to have been gently administered. +Indeed, this has been made the chief reproach on them, and the +excuse for robbing them for the benefit of a more energetic crown +and nobility who tolerated no beggars or idleness but their own; at +least, it is safe to say that few well-regulated and economically +administered modern charities would have the patience of the Abbot +of Clairvaux, who, instead of calling up the weak-minded tombeor and +sending him back to the world to earn a living by his profession, +went with his informant to the crypt, to see for himself what the +strange report meant. We have seen at Chartres what a crypt may be, +and how easily one might hide in its shadows while mass is said at +the altars. The Abbot and his informant hid themselves behind a +column in the shadow, and watched the whole performance to its end +when the exhausted tumbler dropped unconscious and drenched with +perspiration on the steps of the altar, with the words:-- + +"Dame!" fait il, "ne puis plus ore; + Mais voire je reviendrai encore." + + +"Lady!" says he, "no more I can, + But truly I'll come back again!" + + +You can imagine the dim crypt; the tumbler lying unconscious beneath +the image of the Virgin; the Abbot peering out from the shadow of +the column, and wondering what sort of discipline he could inflict +for this unforeseen infraction of rule; when suddenly, before he +could decide what next to do, the vault above the altar, of its own +accord, opened:-- + +L'abes esgarde sans atendre + Et vit de la volte descendre + Une dame si gloriouse + Ains nus ne vit si preciouse + Ni si ricement conreee, + N'onques tant bele ne fu nee. + Ses vesteures sont bien chieres + D'or et de precieuses pieres. + + +Avec li estoient li angle + Del ciel amont, et li arcangle, + Qui entor le menestrel vienent, + Si le solacent et sostienent. + Quant entor lui sont arengie + S'ot tot son cuer asoagie. + Dont s'aprestent de lui servir + Por ce qu'ils volrent deservir + La servise que fait la dame + Qui tant est precieuse geme. + Et la douce reine france + Tenoit une touaille blance, + S'en avente son menestrel + Mout doucement devant l'autel. + La franc dame debonnaire + Le col, le cors, et le viaire + Li avente por refroidier; + Bien s'entremet de lui aidier; + La dame bien s'i abandone; + Li bons hom garde ne s'en done, + Car il ne voit, si ne set mie + Qu'il ait si bele compaignie. + + +The Abbot strains his eyes to see, + And, from the vaulting, suddenly, + A lady steps,--so glorious,-- + Beyond all thought so precious,-- + Her robes so rich, so nobly worn,-- + So rare the gems the robes adorn,-- + As never yet so fair was born. + + +Along with her the angels were, + Archangels stood beside her there; + Round about the tumbler group + To give him solace, bring him hope; + And when round him in ranks they stood, + His whole heart felt its strength renewed. + So they haste to give him aid + Because their wills are only made + To serve the service of their Queen, + Most precious gem the earth has seen. + And the lady, gentle, true, + Holds in her hand a towel new; + Fans him with her hand divine + Where he lies before the shrine. + The kind lady, full of grace, + Fans his neck, his breast, his face! + Fans him herself to give him air! + Labours, herself, to help him there! + The lady gives herself to it; + The poor man takes no heed of it; + For he knows not and cannot see + That he has such fair company. + + +Beyond this we need not care to go. If you cannot feel the colour +and quality--the union of naivete and art, the refinement, the +infinite delicacy and tenderness--of this little poem, then nothing +will matter much to you; and if you can feel it, you can feel, +without more assistance, the majesty of Chartres. + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +ABELARD + +Super cuncta, subter cuncta, + Extra cuncta, intra cuncta, + Intra cuncta nec inclusus, + Extra cuncta nec exclusus, + Super cuncta nec elatus, + Subter cuncta nec substratus, + Super totus, praesidendo, + Subter totus, sustinendo, + Extra totus, complectendo, + Intra totus est, implendo. + + +According to Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans and Archbishop of Tours, +these verses describe God. Hildebert was the first poet of his time; +no small merit, since he was contemporary with the "Chanson de +Roland" and the first crusade; he was also a strong man, since he +was able, as Bishop of Le Mans, to gain great credit by maintaining +himself against William the Norman and Fulk of Anjou; and finally he +was a prelate of high authority. He lived between 1055 and 1133. +Supposing his verses to have been written in middle life, toward the +year 1100, they may be taken to represent the accepted doctrine of +the Church at the time of the first crusade. They were little more +than a versified form of the Latin of Saint Gregory the Great who +wrote five-hundred years before: "Ipse manet intra omnia, ipse extra +omnia, ipse supra omnia, ipse infra omnia; et superior est per +potentiam et inferior per sustentationem; exterior per magnitudinem +et interior per subtilitatem; sursum regens, deorsum continens, +extra circumdans, interius penetrans; nec alia parte superior, alia +inferior, aut alia ex parte exterior atque ex alia manet interior, +sed unus idemque totus ubique." According to Saint Gregory, in the +sixth century, God was "one and the same and wholly everywhere"; +"immanent within everything, without everything, above everything, +below everything, sursum regens, dear sum continens"; while +according to Archbishop Hildebert in the eleventh century: "God is +overall things, under all things; outside all, inside all; within +but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up; +below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, +sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling." +Finally, according to Benedict Spinoza, another five hundred years +later still: "God is a being, absolutely infinite; that is to say, a +substance made up of an infinity of attributes, each one of which +expresses an eternal and infinite essence." + +Spinoza was the great pantheist, whose name is still a terror to the +orthodox, and whose philosophy is--very properly--a horror to the +Church--and yet Spinoza never wrote a line that, to the unguided +student, sounds more Spinozist than the words of Saint Gregory and +Archbishop Hildebert. If God is everywhere; wholly; presiding, +sustaining, embracing and filling, "sursum regens, deorsum +continens," He is the only possible energy, and leaves no place for +human will to act. A force which is "one and the same and wholly +everywhere" is more Spinozist than Spinoza, and is likely to be +mistaken for frank pantheism by the large majority of religious +minds who must try to understand it without a theological course in +a Jesuit college. In the year 1100 Jesuit colleges did not exist, +and even the great Dominican and Franciscan schools were far from +sight in the future; but the School of Notre Dame at Paris existed, +and taught the existence of God much as Archbishop Hildebert +described it. The most successful lecturer was William of Champeaux, +and to any one who ever heard of William at all, the name instantly +calls up the figure of Abelard, in flesh and blood, as he sang to +Heloise the songs which he says resounded through Europe. The +twelfth century, with all its sparkle, would be dull without Abelard +and Heloise. With infinite regret, Heloise must be left out of the +story, because she was not a philosopher or a poet or an artist, but +only a Frenchwoman to the last millimetre of her shadow. Even though +one may suspect that her famous letters to Abelard are, for the most +part, by no means above scepticism, she was, by French standards, +worth at least a dozen Abelards, if only because she called Saint +Bernard a false apostle. + +Unfortunately, French standards, by which she must be judged in our +ignorance, take for granted that she philosophized only for the sake +of Abelard, while Abelard taught philosophy to her not so much +because he believed in philosophy or in her as because he believed +in himself. To this day, Abelard remains a problem as perplexing as +he must have been to Heloise, and almost as fascinating. As the west +portal of Chartres is the door through which one must of necessity +enter the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century, so Abelard +is the portal of approach to the Gothic thought and philosophy +within. Neither art nor thought has a modern equivalent; only +Heloise, like Isolde, unites the ages. + +The first crusade seems, in perspective, to have rilled the whole +field of vision in France at the time; but, in fact, France seethed +with other emotions, and while the crusaders set out to scale heaven +by force at Jerusalem, the monks, who remained at home, undertook to +scale heaven by prayer and by absorption of body and soul in God; +the Cistercian Order was founded in 1098, and was joined in 1112 by +young Bernard, born in 1090 at Fontaines-les-Dijon, drawing with him +or after him so many thousands of young men into the self-immolation +of the monastery as carried dismay into the hearts of half the women +of France. At the same time--that is, about 1098 or 1100--Abelard +came up to Paris from Brittany, with as much faith in logic as +Bernard had in prayer or Godfrey of Bouillon in arms, and led an +equal or even a greater number of combatants to the conquest of +heaven by force of pure reason. None showed doubt. Hundreds of +thousands of young men wandered from their provinces, mostly to +Palestine, largely to cloisters, but also in great numbers to Paris +and the schools, while few ever returned. + +Abelard had the advantage of being well-born; not so highly +descended as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas who were to complete +his work in the thirteenth century, but, like Bernard, a gentleman +born and bred. He was the eldest son of Berenger, Sieur du Pallet, a +chateau in Brittany, south of the Loire, on the edge of Poitou. His +name was Pierre du Pallet, although, for some unknown reason, he +called himself Pierre Abailard, or Abeillard, or Esbaillart, or +Beylard; for the spelling was never fixed. He was born in 1079, and +when, in 1096, the young men of his rank were rushing off to the +first crusade, Pierre, a boy of seventeen, threw himself with equal +zeal into the study of science, and, giving up his inheritance or +birthright, at last came to Paris to seize a position in the +schools. The year is supposed to have been 1100. + +The Paris of Abelard's time was astonishingly old; so old that +hardly a stone of it can be now pointed out. Even the oldest of the +buildings still standing in that quarter--Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, +Saint-Severin, and the tower of the Lycee Henri IV--are more modern; +only the old Roman Thermae, now part of the Musee de Cluny, within +the walls, and the Abbey Tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, outside, +in the fields, were standing in the year 1100. Politically, Paris +was a small provincial town before the reign of Louis-le-Gros (1108- +37), who cleared its gates of its nearest enemies; but as a school, +Paris was even then easily first. Students crowded into it by +thousands, till the town is said to have contained more students +than citizens, Modern Paris seems to have begun as a university town +before it had a university. Students flocked to it from great +distances, encouraged and supported by charity, and stimulated by +privileges, until they took entire possession of what is still +called the Latin Quarter from the barbarous Latin they chattered; +and a town more riotous, drunken, and vicious than it became, in the +course of time, hardly existed even in the Middle Ages. In 1100, +when enthusiasm was fresh and faith in science was strong, the great +mass of students came there to study, and, having no regular +university organization or buildings, they thronged the cloister of +Notre Dame--not our Notre Dame, which dates only from 1163, but the +old Romanesque cathedral which stood on the same spot--and there +they listened, and retained what they could remember, for they were +not encouraged to take notes even if they were rich enough to buy +notebooks, while manuscripts were far beyond their means. One +valuable right the students seem to have had--that of asking +questions and even of disputing with the lecturer provided they +followed the correct form of dialectics. The lecturer himself was +licensed by the Bishop. + +Five thousand students are supposed to have swarmed about the +cloister of Notre Dame, across the Petit Pont, and up the hill of +Sainte-Genevieve; three thousand are said to have paid fees to +Abelard in the days of his great vogue and they seem to have +attached themselves to their favourite master as a champion to be +upheld against the world. Jealousies ran high, and neither scholars +nor masters shunned dispute. Indeed, the only science they taught or +knew was the art of dispute--dialectics. Rhetoric, grammar, and +dialectics were the regular branches of science, and bold students, +who were not afraid of dabbling in forbidden fields, extended their +studies to mathematics--"exercitium nefarium," according to Abelard, +which he professed to know nothing about but which he studied +nevertheless. Abelard, whether pupil or master, never held his +tongue if he could help it, for his fortune depended on using it +well; but he never used it so well in dialectics or theology as he +did, toward the end of his life, in writing a bit of autobiography, +so admirably told, so vivid, so vibrating with the curious intensity +of his generation, that it needed only to have been written in +"Romieu" to be the chief monument of early French prose, as the +western portal of Chartres is the chief monument of early French +sculpture, and of about the same date. Unfortunately Abelard was a +noble scholar, who necessarily wrote and talked Latin, even with +Heloise, and, although the Latin was mediaeval, it is not much the +better on that account, because, in spite of its quaintness, the +naivetes of a young language--the egotism, jealousies, suspicions, +boastings, and lamentations of a childlike time--take a false air of +outworn Rome and Byzantium, although, underneath, the spirit lives:-- + +I arrived at last in Paris where for a long time dialectics had +specially flourished under William of Champeaux, rightly reckoned +the first of my masters in that branch of study. I stayed some time +in his school, but, though well received at first, I soon got to be +an annoyance to him because I persisted in refuting certain ideas of +his, and because, not being afraid to enter into argument against +him, I sometimes got the better. This boldness, too, roused the +wrath of those fellow students who were classed higher, because I was +the youngest and the last comer. This was the beginning of my series +of misfortunes which still last; my renown every day increasing, +envy was kindled against me in every direction. + +This picture of the boy of twenty, harassing the professor, day +after day, in his own lecture-room before hundreds of older +students, paints Abelard to the life; but one may safely add a few +touches that heighten the effect; as that William of Champeaux +himself was barely thirty, and that Abelard throughout his career, +made use of every social and personal advantage to gain a point, +with little scruple either in manner or in sophistry. One may easily +imagine the scene. Teachers are always much the same. Pupils and +students differ only in degrees of docility. In 1100, both classes +began by accepting the foundations of society, as they have to do +still; only they then accepted laws of the Church and Aristotle, +while now they accept laws of the legislature and of energy. In +1100, the students took for granted that, with the help of Aristotle +and syllogisms, they could build out the Church intellectually, as +the architects, with the help of the pointed arch, were soon to +enlarge it architecturally. They never doubted the certainty of +their method. To them words had fixed values, like numbers, and +syllogisms were hewn stones that needed only to be set in place, in +order to reach any height or support any weight. Every sentence was +made to take the form of a syllogism. One must have been educated in +a Jesuit or Dominican school in order to frame these syllogisms +correctly, but merely by way of illustration one may timidly suggest +how the phrases sounded in their simplest form. For example, Plato +or other equally good authority deemed substance as that which +stands underneath phenomena; the most universal of universals, the +ultimate, the highest in order of generalization. The ultimate +essence or substance is indivisible; God is substance; God is +indivisible. The divine substance is incapable of alteration or +accident; all other substance is liable to alteration or accident; +therefore, the divine substance differs from all other substance. A +substance is a universal; as for example, Humanity, or the Human, is +a universal and indivisible; the Man Socrates, for instance, is not +a universal, but an individual; therefore, the substance Humanity, +being indivisible, must exist entire and undivided in Socrates. + +The form of logic most fascinating to youthful minds, as well as to +some minds that are only too acute, is the reductio ad absurdum; the +forcing an opponent into an absurd alternative or admission; and the +syllogism lent itself happily to this use. Socrates abused the +weapon and Abelard was the first French master of the art; but +neither State nor Church likes to be reduced to an absurdity, and, +on the whole, both Socrates and Abelard fared ill in the result. +Even now, one had best be civil toward the idols of the forum. +Abelard would find most of his old problems sensitive to his touch +to-day. Time has settled few or none of the essential points of +dispute. Science hesitates, more visibly than the Church ever did, +to decide once for all whether unity or diversity is ultimate law; +whether order or chaos is the governing rule of the universe, if +universe there is; whether anything, except phenomena, exists. Even +in matters more vital to society, one dares not speak too loud. Why, +and for what, and to whom, is man a responsible agent? Every jury +and judge, every lawyer and doctor, every legislator and clergyman +has his own views, and the law constantly varies. Every nation may +have a different system. One court may hang and another may acquit +for the same crime, on the same day; and science only repeats what +the Church said to Abelard, that where we know so little, we had +better hold our tongues. + +According to the latest authorities, the doctrine of universals +which convulsed the schools of the twelfth century has never +received an adequate answer. What is a species? what is a genus or a +family or an order? More or less convenient terms of classification, +about which the twelfth century cared very little, while it cared +deeply about the essence of classes! Science has become too complex +to affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives for +nothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits, +almost as earnestly as in the twelfth century, when the whole field +of human and superhuman activity was shut between these barriers of +substance, universals, and particulars. Little has changed except +the vocabulary and the method. The schools knew that their society +hung for life on the demonstration that God, the ultimate universal, +was a reality, out of which all other universal truths or realities +sprang. Truth was a real thing, outside of human experience. The +schools of Paris talked and thought of nothing else. John of +Salisbury, who attended Abelard's lectures about 1136, and became +Bishop of Chartres in 1176, seems to have been more surprised than +we need be at the intensity of the emotion. "One never gets away +from this question," he said. "From whatever point a discussion +starts, it is always led back and attached to that. It is the +madness of Rufus about Naevia; 'He thinks of nothing else; talks of +nothing else, and if Naevia did not exist, Rufus would be dumb.'" + +Abelard began it. After his first visit to Paris in 1100, he seems +to have passed several years elsewhere, while Guillaume de Champeaux +in 1108, retired from the school in the cloister of Notre Dame, and, +taking orders, established a class in a chapel near by, afterwards +famous as the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The Jardin des Plantes and the +Gare d'Orleans now cover the ground where the Abbey stood, on the +banks of the Seine outside the Latin Quarter, and not a trace is +left of its site; but there William continued his course in +dialectics, until suddenly Abelard reappeared among his scholars, +and resumed his old attacks. This time Abelard could hardly call +himself a student. He was thirty years old, and long since had been +himself a teacher; he had attended William's course on dialectics +nearly ten years before, and was past master in the art; he had +nothing to learn from William in theology, for neither William nor +he was yet a theologist by profession. If Abelard went back to +school, it was certainly not to learn; but indeed, he himself made +little or no pretence of it, and told with childlike candour not +only why he went, but also how brilliantly he succeeded in his +object:-- + +I returned to study rhetoric in his school. Among other +controversial battles, I succeeded, by the most irrefutable +argument, in making him change, or rather ruin his doctrine of +universals. His doctrine consisted in affirming the perfect identity +of the essence in every individual of the same species, so that +according to him there was no difference in the essence but only in +the infinite variety of accidents. He then came to amend his +doctrine so as to affirm, not the identity any longer, but the +absence of distinction--the want of difference--in the essence. And +as this question of universals had always been one of the most +important questions of dialectics--so important that Porphyry, +touching on it in his Preliminaries, did not dare to take the +responsibility of cutting the knot, but said, "It is a very grave +point,"--Champeaux, who was obliged to modify his idea and then +renounce it, saw his course fall into such discredit that they +hardly let him make his dialectical lectures, as though dialectics +consisted entirely in the question of universals. + +Why was this point so "very grave"? Not because it was mere +dialectics! The only part of the story that seems grave today is the +part that Abelard left out; the part which Saint Bernard, thirty +years later put in, on behalf of William. We should be more +credulous than twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard's +word in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most +accomplished dialectician of the age by an objection so familiar +that no other dialectician was ever silenced by it--whatever may +have been the case with theologians--and so obvious that it could +not have troubled a scholar of fifteen. William stated a settled +doctrine as old as Plato; Abelard interposed an objection as old as +Aristotle. Probably Plato and Aristotle had received the question +and answer from philosophers ten-thousand years older than +themselves. Certainly the whole of philosophy has always been +involved in the dispute. + +The subject is as amusing as a comedy; so amusing that ten minutes +may be well given to playing the scene between William and Abelard, +not as it happened, but in a form nearer our ignorance, with liberty +to invent arguments for William, and analogies--which are figures +intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent +toys if they fail--such as he never imagined; while Abelard can +respond with his true rejoinder, fatal in a different sense. For the +chief analogy, the notes of music would serve, or the colours of the +solar spectrum, or an energy, such as gravity--but the best is +geometrical, because Euclid was as scholastic as William of +Champeaux himself, and his axioms are even more familiar to the +schoolboy of the twentieth, than to the schoolman of the twelfth +century. + +In these scholastic tournaments the two champions started from +opposite points--one, from the ultimate substance, God--the +universal, the ideal, the type--the other from the individual, +Socrates, the concrete, the observed fact of experience, the object +of sensual perception. The first champion--William in this instance-- +assumed that the universal was a real thing; and for that reason he +was called a realist. His opponent--Abelard--held that the universal +was only nominally real; and on that account he was called a +nominalist. Truth, virtue, humanity, exist as units and realities, +said William. Truth, replied Abelard, is only the sum of all +possible facts that are true, as humanity is the sum of all actual +human beings. The ideal bed is a form, made by God, said Plato. The +ideal bed is a name, imagined by ourselves, said Aristotle. "I start +from the universe," said William. "I start from the atom," said +Abelard; and, once having started, they necessarily came into +collision at some point between the two. + +William of Champeaux, lecturing on dialectics or logic, comes to the +question of universals, which he says, are substances. Starting from +the highest substance, God, all being descends through created +substances by stages, until it reaches the substance animality, from +which it descends to the substance humanity: and humanity being, +like other essences or substances, indivisible, passes wholly into +each individual, becoming Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, much as +the divine substance exists wholly and undivided in each member of +the Trinity. + +Here Abelard interrupts. The divine substance, he says, operates by +laws of its own, and cannot be used for comparison. In treating of +human substance, one is bound by human limitations. If the whole of +humanity is in Socrates, it is wholly absorbed by Socrates, and +cannot be at the same time in Plato, or elsewhere. Following his +favourite reductio ad absurdum, Abelard turns the idea round, and +infers from it that, since Socrates carries all humanity in him, he +carries Plato, too; and both must be in the same place, though +Socrates is at Athens and Plato in Rome. + +The objection is familiar to William, who replies by another +commonplace:-- + +"Mr. Abelard, might I, without offence, ask you a simple matter? Can +you give me Euclid's definition of a point?" + +"If I remember right it is, 'illud cujus nulla pars est'; that which +has no parts." + +"Has it existence?" + +"Only in our minds." + +"Not, then, in God?" + +"All necessary truths exist first in God. If the point is a +necessary truth, it exists first there." + +"Then might I ask you for Euclid's definition of the line?" + +"The line is that which has only extension; 'Linea vocatur illa quae +solam longitudinem habet.'" "Can you conceive an infinite straight +line?" + +"Only as a line which has no end, like the point extended." + +"Supposing we imagine a straight line, like opposite rays of the +sun, proceeding in opposite directions to infinity--is it real?" + +"It has no reality except in the mind that conceives it." + +"Supposing we divide that line which has no reality into two parts +at its origin in the sun or star, shall we get two infinities?--or +shall we say, two halves of the infinite?" + +"We conceive of each as partaking the quality of infinity." + +"Now, let us cut out the diameter of the sun; or rather--since this +is what our successors in the school will do,--let us take a line of +our earth's longitude which is equally unreal, and measure a degree +of this thing which does not exist, and then divide it into equal +parts which we will use as a measure or metre. This metre, which is +still nothing, as I understand you, is infinitely divisible into +points? and the point itself is infinitely small? Therefore we have +the finite partaking the nature of the infinite?" + +"Undoubtedly!" + +"One step more, Mr. Abelard, if I do not weary you! Let me take +three of these metres which do not exist, and place them so that the +ends of one shall touch the ends of the others. May I ask what is +that figure?" + +"I presume you mean it to be a triangle." + +"Precisely! and what sort of a triangle?" + +"An equilateral triangle, the sides of which measure one metre +each." + +"Now let me take three more of these metres which do not exist, and +construct another triangle which does not exist;--are these two +triangles or one triangle?" + +"They are most certainly one--a single concept of the only possible +equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each face." + +"You told us a moment ago that a universal could not exist wholly +and exclusively in two individuals at once. Does not the universal +by definition--THE equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each +face--does it not exist wholly, in its integrity of essence, in each +of the two triangles we have conceived?" + +"It does--as a conception." + +"I thank you! Now, although I fear wearying you, perhaps you will +consent to let me add matter to mind. I have here on my desk an +object not uncommon in nature, which I will ask you to describe." + +"It appears to be a crystal." + +"May I ask its shape?" + +"I should call it a regular octahedron." + +"That is, two pyramids, set base to base? making eight plane +surfaces, each a perfect equilateral triangle?" + +"Concedo triangula (I grant the triangles)." + +"Do you know, perchance, what is this material which seems to give +substantial existence to these eight triangles?" + +"I do not." + +"Nor I! nor does it matter, unless you conceive it to be the work of +man?" + +"I do not claim it as man's work." + +"Whose, then?" + +"We believe all actual creation of matter, united with form, to be +the work of God." + +"Surely not the substance of God himself? Perhaps you mean that this +form--this octahedron--is a divine concept." + +"I understand such to be the doctrine of the Church." + +"Then it seems that God uses this concept habitually to create this +very common crystal. One question more, and only one, if you will +permit me to come to the point. Does the matter--the material--of +which this crystal is made affect in any way the form--the nature, +the soul--of the universal equilateral triangle as you see it +bounding these eight plane surfaces?" + +"That I do not know, and do not think essential to decide. As far as +these triangles are individual, they are made so by the will of God, +and not by the substance you call triangle. The universal--the +abstract right angle, or any other abstract form--is only an idea, a +concept, to which reality, individuality, or what we might call +energy is wanting. The only true energy, except man's free will, is +God." + +"Very good, Mr. Abelard! we can now reach our issue. You affirm +that, just as the line does not exist in space, although the eye +sees little else in space, so the triangle does not exist in this +crystal, although the crystal shows eight of them, each perfect. You +are aware that on this line which does not exist, and its +combination in this triangle which does not exist, rests the whole +fabric of mathematics with all its necessary truths. In other words, +you know that in this line, though it does not exist, is bound up +the truth of the only branch of human knowledge which claims +absolute certainty for human processes. You admit that this line and +triangle, which are mere figments of our human imagination, not only +exist independent of us in the crystal, but are, as we suppose, +habitually and invariably used by God Himself to give form to the +matter contained within the planes of the crystal. Yet to this line +and triangle you deny reality. To mathematical truth, you deny +compulsive force. You hold that an equilateral triangle may, to you +and all other human individuals, be a right-angled triangle if you +choose to imagine it so. Allow me to say, without assuming any claim +to superior knowledge, that to me your logic results in a different +conclusion. If you are compelled, at one point or another of the +chain of being, to deny existence to a substance, surely it should +be to the last and feeblest. I see nothing to hinder you from +denying your own existence, which is, in fact, impossible to +demonstrate. Certainly you are free, in logic, to argue that +Socrates and Plato are mere names--that men and matter are phantoms +and dreams. No one ever has proved or ever can prove the contrary, +Infallibly, a great philosophical school will some day be founded on +that assumption. I venture even to recommend it to your acute and +sceptical mind; but I cannot conceive how, by any process of +reasoning, sensual or supersensual, you can reach the conclusion +that the single form of truth which instantly and inexorably compels +our submission to its laws--is nothing." + +Thus far, all was familiar ground; certainly at least as familiar as +the Pons Asinorum; and neither of the two champions had need to feel +ruffled in temper by the discussion. The real struggle began only at +this point; for until this point was reached, both positions were +about equally tenable. Abelard had hitherto rested quietly on the +defensive, but William's last thrust obliged him to strike in his +turn, and he drew himself up for what, five hundred years later, was +called the "Coup de Jarnac":-- + +"I do not deny," he begins; "on the contrary, I affirm that the +universal, whether we call it humanity, or equilateral triangle, has +a sort of reality as a concept; that it is something; even a +substance, if you insist upon it. Undoubtedly the sum of all +individual men results in the concept of humanity. What I deny is +that the concept results in the individual. You have correctly +stated the essence of the point and the line as sources of our +concept of the infinite; what I deny is that they are divisions of +the infinite. Universals cannot be divided; what is capable of +division cannot be a universal. I admit the force of your analogy in +the case of the crystal; but I am obliged to point out to you that, +if you insist on this analogy, you will bring yourself and me into +flagrant contradiction with the fixed foundations of the Church. If +the energy of the triangle gives form to the crystal, and the energy +of the line gives reality to the triangle, and the energy of the +infinite gives substance to the line, all energy at last becomes +identical with the ultimate substance, God Himself. Socrates becomes +God in small; Judas is identical with both; humanity is of the +divine essence, and exists, wholly and undivided, in each of us. The +equilateral triangle we call humanity exists, therefore, entire, +identical, in you and me, as a subdivision of the infinite line, +space, energy, or substance, which is God. I need not remind you +that this is pantheism, and that if God is the only energy, human +free will merges in God's free will; the Church ceases to have a +reason for existence; man cannot be held responsible for his own +acts, either to the Church or to the State; and finally, though very +unwillingly, I must, in regard for my own safety, bring the subject +to the attention of the Archbishop, which, as you know better than +I, will lead to your seclusion, or worse." + +Whether Abelard used these precise words is nothing to the point. +The words he left on record were equivalent to these. As translated +by M. de Remusat from a manuscript entitled: "Glossulae magistri +Petri Baelardi super Porphyrium," the phrase runs: "A grave heresy +is at the end of this doctrine; for, according to it, the divine +substance which is recognized as admitting of no form, is +necessarily identical with every substance in particular and with +all substance in general." Even had he not stated the heresy so +bluntly, his objection necessarily pushed William in face of it. +Realism, when pressed, always led to pantheism. William of Champeaux +and Bishop or Archbishop Hildebert were personal friends, and +Hildebert's divine substance left no more room for human free will +than Abelard saw in the geometric analogy imagined for William. +Throughout the history of the Church for fifteen hundred years, +whenever this theological point has been pressed against churchmen +it has reduced them to evasion or to apology. Admittedly, the weak +point of realism was its fatally pantheistic term. + +Of course, William consulted his friends in the Church, probably +Archbishop Hildebert among the rest, before deciding whether to +maintain or to abandon his ground, and the result showed that he was +guided by their advice. Realism was the Roman arch--the only +possible foundation for any Church; because it assumed unity, and +any other scheme was compelled to prove it, for a starting-point. +Let us see, for a moment, what became of the dialogue, when pushed +into theology, in order to reach some of the reasons which reduced +William to tacit abandonment of a doctrine he could never have +surrendered unless under compulsion. That he was angry is sure, for +Abelard, by thus thrusting theology into dialectics, had struck him +a full blow; and William knew Abelard well:-- + +"Ah!" he would have rejoined; "you are quick, M. du Pallet, to turn +what I offered as an analogy, into an argument of heresy against my +person. You are at liberty to take that course if you choose, though +I give you fair warning that it will lead you far. But now I must +ask you still another question. This concept that you talk about-- +this image in the mind of man, of God, of matter; for I know not +where to seek it--whether is it a reality or not?" + +"I hold it as, in a manner, real." + +"I want a categorical answer--Yes or No!" + +"Distinguo! (I must qualify.)" + +"I will have no qualifications. A substance either is, or not. +Choose!" + +To this challenge Abelard had the choice of answering Yes, or of +answering no, or of refusing to answer at all. He seems to have done +the last; but we suppose him to have accepted the wager of battle, +and to answer:-- + +"Yes, then!" + +"Good!" William rejoins; "now let us see how your pantheism differs +from mine. My triangle exists as a reality, or what science will +call an energy, outside my mind, in God, and is impressed on my mind +as it is on a mirror, like the triangle on the crystal, its energy +giving form. Your triangle you say is also an energy, but an essence +of my mind itself; you thrust it into the mind as an integral part +of the mirror; identically the same concept, energy, or necessary +truth which is inherent in God. Whatever subterfuge you may resort +to, sooner or later you have got to agree that your mind is +identical with God's nature as far as that concept is concerned. +Your pantheism goes further than mine. As a doctrine of the Real +Presence peculiar to yourself, I can commend it to the Archbishop +together with your delation of me." + +Supposing that Abelard took the opposite course, and answered:-- + +"No! my concept is a mere sign." + +"A sign of what, in God's name!" + +"A sound! a word! a symbol! an echo only of my ignorance." + +"Nothing, then! So truth and virtue and charity do not exist at all. +You suppose yourself to exist, but you have no means of knowing God; +therefore, to you God does not exist except as an echo of your +ignorance; and, what concerns you most, the Church does not exist +except as your concept of certain individuals, whom you cannot +regard as a unity, and who suppose themselves to believe in a +Trinity which exists only as a sound, or a symbol. I will not repeat +your words, M. du Pallet, outside this cloister, because the +consequences to you would certainly be fatal; but it is only too +clear that you are a materialist, and as such your fate must be +decided by a Church Council, unless you prefer the stake by judgment +of a secular court." + +In truth, pure nominalism--if, indeed, any one ever maintained it-- +afforded no cover whatever. Nor did Abelard's concept help the +matter, although for want of a better refuge, the Church was often +driven into it. Conceptualism was a device, like the false wooden +roof, to cover and conceal an inherent weakness of construction. +Unity either is, or is not. If soldiers, no matter in what number, +can never make an army, and worshippers, though in millions, do not +make a Church, and all humanity united would not necessarily +constitute a State, equally little can their concepts, individual or +united, constitute the one or the other. Army, Church, and State, +each is an organic whole, complex beyond all possible addition of +units, and not a concept at all, but rather an animal that thinks, +creates, devours, and destroys. The attempt to bridge the chasm +between multiplicity and unity is the oldest problem of philosophy, +religion, and science, but the flimsiest bridge of all is the human +concept, unless somewhere, within or beyond it, an energy not +individual is hidden; and in that case the old question instantly +reappears: What is that energy? + +Abelard would have done well to leave William alone, but Abelard was +an adventurer, and William was a churchman. To win a victory over a +churchman is not very difficult for an adventurer, and is always a +tempting amusement, because the ambition of churchmen to shine in +worldly contests is disciplined and checked by the broader interests +of the Church: but the victory is usually sterile, and rarely harms +the churchman. The Church cares for its own. Probably the bishops +advised William not to insist on his doctrine, although every bishop +may have held the same view. William allowed himself to be silenced +without a judgment, and in that respect stands almost if not quite +alone among schoolmen. The students divined that he had sold himself +to the Church, and consequently deserted him. Very soon he received +his reward in the shape of the highest dignity open to private +ambition--a bishopric. As Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne he made for +himself a great reputation, which does not concern us, although it +deeply concerned the unfortunate Abelard, for it happened, either by +chance or design, that within a year or two after William +established himself at Chalons, young Bernard of Citeaux chose a +neighbouring diocese in which to establish a branch of the +Cistercian Order, and Bishop William took so keen an interest in the +success of Bernard as almost to claim equal credit for it. Clairvaux +was, in a manner, William's creation, although not in his diocese, +and yet, if there was a priest in all France who fervently despised +the schools, it was young Bernard. William of Champeaux, the chief +of schoolmen, could never have gained Bernard's affections. Bishop +William of Chalons must have drifted far from dialectics into +mysticism in order to win the support of Clairvaux, and train up a +new army of allies who were to mark Abelard for an easy prey. + +Meanwhile Abelard pursued his course of triumph in the schools, and +in due time turned from dialectics to theology, as every ambitious +teacher could hardly fail to do. His affair with Heloise and their +marriage seem to have occupied his time in 1117 or 1118, for they +both retired into religious orders in 1119, and he resumed his +lectures in 1120. With his passion for rule, he was fatally certain +to attempt ruling the Church as he ruled the schools; and, as it was +always enough for him that any point should be tender in order that +he should press upon it, he instantly and instinctively seized on +the most sensitive nerve of the Church system to wrench it into his +service. He became a sort of apostle of the Holy Ghost. + +That the Trinity is a mystery was a law of theology so absolute as +in a degree to hide the law of philosophy that the Trinity was meant +as a solution of a greater mystery still. In truth, as a matter of +philosophy, the Trinity was intended to explain the eternal and +primary problem of the process by which unity could produce +diversity. Starting from unity alone, philosophers found themselves +unable to stir hand or foot until they could account for duality. To +the common, ignorant peasant, no such trouble occurred, for he knew +the Trinity in its simpler form as the first condition of life, like +time and space and force. No human being was so stupid as not to +understand that the father, mother, and child made a trinity, +returning into each other, and although every father, every mother, +and every child, from the dawn of man's intelligence, had asked why, +and had never received an answer more intelligible to them than to +philosophers, they never showed difficulty in accepting that trinity +as a fact. They might even, in their beneficent blindness, ask the +Church why that trinity, which had satisfied the Egyptians for five +or ten-thousand years, was not good enough for churchmen. They +themselves were doing their utmost, though unconsciously, to +identify the Holy Ghost with the Mother, while philosophy insisted +on excluding the human symbol precisely because it was human and led +back to an infinite series. Philosophy required three units to start +from; it posed the equilateral triangle, not the straight line, as +the foundation of its deometry. The first straight line, infinite in +extension, must be assumed, and its reflection engendered the +second, but whence came the third? Under protest, philosophy was +compelled to accept the symbol of Father and Son as a matter of +faith, but, if the relation of Father and Son were accepted for the +two units which reflected each other, what relation expressed the +Holy Ghost? In philosophy, the product of two units was not a third +unit, but diversity, multiplicity, infinity. The subject was, for +that reason, better handled by the Arabs, whose reasoning worked +back on the Christian theologists and made the point more delicate +still. Common people, like women and children and ourselves, could +never understand the Trinity; naturally, intelligent people +understood it still less, but for them it did not matter; they did +not need to understand it provided their neighbours would leave it +alone. + +The mass of mankind wanted something nearer to them than either the +Father or the Son; they wanted the Mother, and the Church tried, in +what seems to women and children and ourselves rather a feeble way, +to give the Holy Ghost, as far as possible, the Mother's attributes +--Love, Charity, Grace; but in spite of conscientious effort and +unswerving faith, the Holy Ghost remained to the mass of Frenchmen +somewhat apart, feared rather than loved. The sin against the Holy +Ghost was a haunting spectre, for no one knew what else it was. + +Naturally the Church, and especially its official theologists, took +an instinctive attitude of defence whenever a question on this +subject was asked, and were thrown into a flutter of irritation +whenever an answer was suggested. No man likes to have his +intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts +about it himself. The distinguishing essence of the Holy Ghost, as a +theological substance, was its mystery. That this mystery should be +touched at all was annoying to every one who knew the dangers that +lurked behind the veil, but that it should be freely handled before +audiences of laymen by persons of doubtful character was impossible. +Such license must end in discrediting the whole Trinity under +pretence of making it intelligible. + +Precisely this license was what Abelard took, and on it he chose to +insist. He said nothing heretical; he treated the Holy Ghost with +almost exaggerated respect, as though other churchmen did not quite +appreciate its merits; but he would not let it alone, and the Church +dreaded every moment lest, with his enormous influence in the +schools, he should raise a new storm by his notorious indiscretion. +Yet so long as he merely lectured, he was not molested; only when he +began to publish his theology did the Church interfere. Then a +council held at Soissons in 1121 abruptly condemned his book in +block, without reading it, without specifying its errors, and +without hearing his defence; obliged him to throw the manuscript +into the fire with his own hands, and finally shut him up in a +monastery. + +He had invited the jurisdiction by taking orders, but even the +Church was shocked by the summary nature of the judgment, which +seems to have been quite irregular. In fact, the Church has never +known what it was that the council condemned. The latest great work +on the Trinity, by the Jesuit Father de Regnon, suggests that +Abelard's fault was in applying to the Trinity his theory of +concepts. + +"Yes!" he says; "the mystery is explained; the key of conceptualism +has opened the tabernacle, and Saint Bernard was right in saying +that, thanks to Abelard, every one can penetrate it and contemplate +it at his ease; 'even the graceless, even the uncircumcised.' Yes! +the Trinity is explained, but after the manner of the Sabellians. +For to identify the Persons in the terms of human concepts is, in +the same stroke, to destroy their 'subsistances propres.'" + +Although the Saviour seems to have felt no compunctions about +identifying the persons of the Trinity in the terms of human +concepts, it is clear that tourists and heretics had best leave the +Church to deal with its "subsistances propres," and with its own +members, in its own way. In sum, the Church preferred to stand firm +on the Roman arch, and the architects seem now inclined to think it +was right; that scholastic science and the pointed arch proved to be +failures. In the twelfth century the world may have been rough, but +it was not stupid. The Council of Soissons was held while the +architects and sculptors were building the west porch of Chartres +and the Aquilon at Mont-Saint-Michel. Averroes was born at Cordova +in 1126; Omar Khayyam died at Naishapur in 1123. Poetry and +metaphysics owned the world, and their quarrel with theology was a +private, family dispute. Very soon the tide turned decisively in +Abelard's favour. Suger, a political prelate, became minister of the +King, and in March, 1122, Abbot of Saint-Denis. In both capacities +he took the part of Abelard, released him from restraint, and even +restored to him liberty of instruction, at least beyond the +jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Abelard then took a line of +conduct singularly parallel with that of Bernard. Quitting civilized +life he turned wholly to religion. "When the agreement," he said, +"had been executed by both parties to it, in presence of the King +and his ministers, I next retired within the territory of Troyes, +upon a desert spot which I knew, and on a piece of ground given me +by certain persons, I built, with the consent of the bishop of the +diocese, a sort of oratory of reeds and thatch, which I placed under +the invocation of the Holy Trinity ... Founded at first in the name +of the Holy Trinity, then placed under its invocation, it was called +'Paraclete' in memory of my having come there as a fugitive and in +my despair having found some repose in the consolations of divine +grace. This denomination was received by many with great +astonishment, and some attacked it with violence under pretext that +it was not permitted to consecrate a church specially to the Holy +Ghost any more than to God the Father, but that, according to +ancient usage, it must be dedicated either to the Son alone or to +the Trinity." + +The spot is still called Paraclete, near Nogent-sur-Seine, in the +parish of Quincey about halfway between Fontainebleau and Troyes. +The name Paraclete as applied to the Holy Ghost meant the Consoler, +the Comforter, the Spirit of Love and Grace; as applied to the +oratory by Abelard it meant a renewal of his challenge to +theologists, a separation of the Persons in the Trinity, a +vulgarization of the mystery; and, as his story frankly says, it was +so received by many. The spot was not so remote but that his +scholars could follow him, and he invited them to do so. They came +in great numbers, and he lectured to them. "In body I was hidden in +this spot; but my renown overran the whole world and filled it with +my word." Undoubtedly Abelard taught theology, and, in defiance of +the council that had condemned him, attempted to define the persons +of the Trinity. For this purpose he had fallen on a spot only fifty +or sixty miles from Clairvaux where Bernard was inspiring a contrary +spirit of religion; he placed himself on the direct line between +Clairvaux and its source at Citeaux near Dijon; indeed, if he had +sought for a spot as central as possible to the active movement of +the Church and the time, he could have hit on none more convenient +and conspicuous unless it were the city of Troyes itself, the +capital of Champagne, some thirty miles away. The proof that he +meant to be aggressive is furnished by his own account of the +consequences. Two rivals, he says, one of whom seems to have been +Bernard of Clairvaux, took the field against him, "and succeeded in +exciting the hostility of certain ecclesiastical and secular +authorities, by charging monstrous things, not only against my +faith, but also against my manner of life, to such a point as to +detach from me some of my principal friends; even those who +preserved some affection for me dared no longer display it, for +fear. God is my witness that I never heard of the union of an +ecclesiastical assembly without thinking that its object was my +condemnation." The Church had good reason, for Abelard's conduct +defied discipline; but far from showing harshness, the Church this +time showed a true spirit of conciliation most creditable to +Bernard. Deeply as the Cistercians disliked and distrusted Abelard, +they did not violently suppress him, but tacitly consented to let +the authorities buy his silence with Church patronage. + +The transaction passed through Suger's hands, and offered an +ordinary example of political customs as old as history. An abbey in +Brittany became vacant; at a hint from the Duke Conan, which may +well be supposed to have been suggested from Paris, the monks chose +Abelard as their new abbot, and sent some of their number to Suger +to request permission for Abelard, who was a monk of Saint-Denis, to +become Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, near Vannes, in Brittany. +Suger probably intimated to Abelard, with a certain degree of +authority, that he had better accept. Abelard, "struck with terror, +and as it were under the menace of a thunderbolt," accepted. Of +course the dignity was in effect banishment and worse, and was so +understood on all sides. The Abbaye-de-Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, though +less isolated than Mont-Saint-Michel, was not an agreeable winter +residence. Though situated in Abelard's native province of Brittany, +only sixty or eighty miles from his birthplace, it was for him a +prison with the ocean around it and a singularly wild people to deal +with; but he could have endured his lot with contentment, had not +discipline or fear or pledge compelled him to hold his tongue. From +1125, when he was sent to Brittany until 1135 when he reappeared in +Paris, he never opened his mouth to lecture. "Never, as God is my +witness,--never would I have acquiesced in such an offer, had it not +been to escape, no matter how, from the vexations with which I was +incessantly overwhelmed." + +A great career in the Church was thus opened for him against his +will, and if he did not die an archbishop it was not wholly the +fault of the Church. Already he was a great prelate, the equal in +rank of the Abbe Suger, himself, of Saint-Denis; of Peter the +Venerable of Cluny; of Bernard of Clairvaux. He was in a manner a +peer of the realm. Almost immediately he felt the advantages of the +change. Barely two years passed when, in 1127, the Abbe Suger, in +reforming his subordinate Abbey of Argenteuil, was obliged to +disturb Heloise, then a sister in that congregation. Abelard was +warned of the necessity that his wife should be protected, and with +the assistance of everyone concerned, he was allowed to establish +his wife at the Paraclete as head of a religious sisterhood. "I +returned there; I invited Heloise to come there with the nuns of her +community; and when they arrived, I made them the entire donation of +the oratory and its dependencies ... The bishops cherished her as +their daughter; the abbots as their sister; the laymen as their +mother." This was merely the beginning of her favour and of his. For +ten years they were both of them petted children of the Church. + +The formal establishment of Heloise at the Paraclete took place in +1129. In February, 1130, on the death of the Pope at Rome, a schism +broke out, and the cardinals elected two popes, one of whom took the +name of Innocent II, and appealed for support to France. Suger saw a +great political opportunity and used it. The heads of the French +Church agreed in supporting Innocent, and the King summoned a Church +council at Etampes to declare its adhesion. The council met in the +late summer; Bernard of Clairvaux took the lead; Peter the +Venerable, Suger of Saint-Denis, and the Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de- +Rhuys supported him; Innocent himself took refuge at Cluny in +October, and on January 20, 1131, he stopped at the Benedictine +Abbey of Morigny. The Chronicle of the monastery, recording the +abbots present on this occasion,--the Abbot of Morigny itself, of +Feversham; of Saint-Lucien of Beauvais, and so forth,--added +especially: "Bernard of Clairvaux, who was then the most famous +pulpit orator in France; and Peter Abelard, Abbot of Saint-Gildas, +also a monk and the most eminent master of the schools to which the +scholars of almost all the Latin races flowed." + +Innocent needed popular support; Bernard and Abelard were the two +leaders of popular opinion in France. To attach them, Innocent could +refuse nothing. Probably Abelard remained with Innocent, but in any +case Innocent gave him, at Auxerre, in the following November, a +diploma, granting to Heloise, prioress of the Oratory of the Holy +Trinity, all rights of property over whatever she might possess, +against all assailants; which proves Abelard's favour. At this time +he seems to have taken great interest in the new sisterhood. "I made +them more frequent visits," he said, "in order to work for their +benefit." He worked so earnestly for their benefit that he +scandalized the neighbourhood and had to argue at unnecessary length +his innocence of evil. He went so far as to express a wish to take +refuge among them and to abandon his abbey in Brittany. He professed +to stand in terror of his monks; he excommunicated them; they paid +no attention to him; he appealed to the Pope, his friend, and +Innocent sent a special legate to enforce their submission "in +presence of the Count and the Bishops." + +Even since that, they would not keep quiet. And quite recently, +since the expulsion of those of whom I have spoken, when I returned +to the abbey, abandoning myself to the rest of the brothers who +inspired me with less distrust, I found them even worse than the +others. It was no longer a question of poison; it was the dagger +that they now sharpened against my breast. I had great difficulty in +escaping from them under the guidance of one of the neighbouring +lords. Similar perils menace me still and every day I see the sword +raised over my head. Even at table I can hardly breathe ... This is +the torture that I endure every moment of the day; I, a poor monk, +raised to the prelacy, becoming more miserable in becoming more +great, that by my example the ambitious may learn to curb their +greed. + +With this, the "Story of Calamity" ends. The allusions to Innocent +II seem to prove that it was written not earlier than 1132; the +confession of constant and abject personal fear suggests that it was +written under the shock caused by the atrocious murder of the Prior +of Saint-Victor by the nephews of the Archdeacon of Paris, who had +also been subjected to reforms. This murder was committed a few +miles outside of the walls of Paris, on August 20, 1133. The "Story +of Calamity" is evidently a long plea for release from the +restraints imposed on its author by his position in the prelacy and +the tacit, or possibly the express, contract he had made, or to +which he had submitted, in 1125. This plea was obviously written in +order to serve one of two purposes:--either to be placed before the +authorities whose consent alone could relieve Abelard from his +restraints; or to justify him in throwing off the load of the +Church, and resuming the profession of schoolman. Supposing the +second explanation, the date of the paper would be more or less +closely fixed by John of Salisbury, who coming to Paris as a +student, in 1136, found Abelard lecturing on the Mont-Sainte- +Genevieve; that is to say, not under the license of the Bishop of +Paris or his Chancellor, but independently, in a private school of +his own, outside the walls. "I attached myself to the Palatine +Peripatician who then presided on the hill of Sainte-Genevieve, the +doctor illustrious, admired by all. There, at his feet, I received +the first elements of the dialectic art, and according to the +measure of my poor understanding I received with all the avidity of +my soul everything that came from his mouth." + +This explanation is hardly reasonable, for no prelate who was not +also a temporal lord would have dared throw off his official duties +without permission from his superiors. In Abelard's case the only +superior to whom he could apply, as Abbot of Saint-Gildas in +Brittany, was probably the Pope himself. In the year 1135 the moment +was exceedingly favourable for asking privileges. Innocent, driven +from Rome a second time, had summoned a council at Pisa for May 30 +to help him. Louis-le-Gros and his minister Suger gave at first no +support to this council, and were overruled by Bernard of Clairvaux +who in a manner drove them into giving the French clergy permission +to attend. The principal archbishops, a number of bishops, and +sixteen abbots went to Pisa in May, 1135, and some one of them +certainly asked Innocent for favours on behalf of Abelard, which the +Pope granted. + +The proof is a papal bull, dated in 1136, in favour of Heloise, +giving her the rank and title of Abbess, accompanied by another +giving to the Oratory of the Holy Trinity the rank and name of +Monastery of the Paraclete, a novelty in Church tradition so +extraordinary or so shocking that it still astounds churchmen. With +this excessive mark of favour Innocent could have felt little +difficulty in giving Abelard the permission to absent himself from +his abbey, and with this permission in his hands Abelard might have +lectured on dialectics to John of Salisbury in the summer or autumn +of 1136. He did not, as far as known, resume lectures on theology. + +Such success might have turned heads much better balanced than that +of Abelard. With the support of the Pope and at least one of the +most prominent cardinals, and with relations at court with the +ministers of Louis-le-Gros, Abelard seemed to himself as strong as +Bernard of Clairvaux, and a more popular champion of reform. The +year 1137, which has marked a date for so many great points in our +travels, marked also the moment of Abelard's greatest vogue. The +victory of Aristotle and the pointed arch seemed assured when Suger +effected the marriage of the young Prince Louis to the heiress +Eleanor of Guienne. The exact moment was stamped on the facade of +his exquisite creation, the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, finished in +1140 and still in part erect. From Saint-Denis to Saint-Sulpice was +but a step. Louis-le-Grand seems to stand close in succession to +Louis-le-Gros. + +Fortunately for tourists, the world, restless though it might be, +could not hurry, and Abelard was to know of the pointed arch very +little except its restlessness. Just at the apex of his triumph, +August 1, 1137, Louis-le-Gros died. Six months afterwards the anti- +pope also died, the schism ended, and Innocent II needed Abelard's +help no more. Bernard of Clairvaux became Pope and King at once. +Both Innocent and Louis-le-Jeune were in a manner his personal +creations. The King's brother Henry, next in succession, actually +became a monk at Clairvaux not long afterwards. Even the +architecture told the same story, for at Saint-Denis, though the +arch might simulate a point, the old Romanesque lines still assert +as firmly as ever their spiritual control. The fleche that gave the +facade a new spirit was not added until 1215, which marks Abelard's +error in terms of time. + +Once arrived at power, Bernard made short work of all that tried to +resist him. During 1139 he seems to have been too busy or too ill to +take up the affair of Abelard, but in March, 1140, the attack was +opened in a formal letter from William of Saint-Thierry, who was +Bernard's closest friend, bringing charges against Abelard before +Bernard and the Bishop of Chartres. The charges were simple enough:-- + +Pierre Abelard seized the moment, when all the masters of +ecclesiastical doctrine have disappeared from the scene of the +world, to conquer a place apart, for himself, in the schools, and to +create there an exclusive domination. He treats Holy Scripture as +though it were dialectics. It is a matter with him of personal +invention and annual novelties. He is the censor and not the +disciple of the faith; the corrector and not the imitator of the +authorized masters. + +In substance, this is all. The need of action was even simpler. +Abelard's novelties were becoming a danger; they affected not only +the schools, but also even the Curia at Rome. Bernard must act +because there was no one else to act: "This man fears you; he dreads +you! if you shut your eyes, whom will he fear? ... The evil has +become too public to allow a correction limited to amicable +discipline and secret warning." In fact, Abelard's works were flying +about Europe in every direction, and every year produced a novelty. +One can still read them in M. Cousin's collected edition; among +others, a volume on ethics: "Ethica, seu Scito teipsum"; on theology +in general, an epitome; a "Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum et +Christianum"; and, what was perhaps the most alarming of all, an +abstract of quotations from standard authorities, on the principle +of the parallel column, showing the fatal contradictions of the +authorized masters, and entitled "Sic et Non"! Not one of these +works but dealt with sacred matters in a spirit implying that the +Essence of God was better understood by Pierre du Pallet than by the +whole array of bishops and prelates in Europe! Had Bernard been +fortunate enough to light upon the "Story of Calamity," which must +also have been in existence, he would have found there Abelard's own +childlike avowal that he taught theology because his scholars "said +that they did not want mere words; that one can believe only what +one understands; and that it is ridiculous to preach to others what +one understands no better than they do." Bernard himself never +charged Abelard with any presumption equal to this. Bernard said +only that "he sees nothing as an enigma, nothing as in a mirror, but +looks on everything face to face." If this had been all, even +Bernard could scarcely have complained. For several thousand years +mankind has stared Infinity in the face without pretending to be the +wiser; the pretension of Abelard was that, by his dialectic method, +he could explain the Infinite, while all other theologists talked +mere words; and by way of proving that he had got to the bottom of +the matter, he laid down the ultimate law of the universe as his +starting-point: "All that God does," he said, "He wills necessarily +and does it necessarily; for His goodness is such that it pushes Him +necessarily to do all the good He can, and the best He can, and the +quickest He can ... Therefore it is of necessity that God willed and +made the world." Pure logic admitted no contingency; it was bound to +be necessitarian or ceased to be logical; but the result, as Bernard +understood it, was that Abelard's world, being the best and only +possible, need trouble itself no more about God, or Church, or man. + +Strange as the paradox seems, Saint Bernard and Lord Bacon, though +looking at the world from opposite standpoints, agreed in this: that +the scholastic method was false and mischievous, and that the longer +it was followed, the greater was its mischief. Bernard thought that +because dialectics led wrong, therefore faith led right. He saw no +alternative, and perhaps in fact there was none. If he had lived a +century later, he would have said to Thomas Aquinas what he said to +a schoolman of his own day: "If you had once tasted true food,"--if +you knew what true religion is,--"how quick you would leave those +Jew makers of books (literatoribus judaeis) to gnaw their crusts by +themselves!" Locke or Hume might perhaps still have resented a +little the "literator judaeus," but Faraday or Clerk-Maxwell would +have expressed the same opinion with only the change of a word: "If +the twelfth century had once tasted true science, how quick they +would have dropped Avicenna and Averroes!" Science admits that +Bernard's disbelief in scholasticism was well founded, whatever it +may think of his reasons. The only point that remains is personal: +Which is the more sympathetic, Bernard or Abelard? + +The Church feels no doubt, but is a bad witness. Bernard is not a +character to be taken or rejected in a lump. He was many-sided, and +even toward Abelard he showed more than one surface. He wanted no +unnecessary scandals in the Church; he had too many that were not of +his seeking. He seems to have gone through the forms of friendly +negotiation with Abelard although he could have required nothing +less than Abelard's submission and return to Brittany, and silence; +terms which Abelard thought worse than death. On Abelard's refusal, +Bernard began his attack. We know, from the "Story of Calamity," +what Bernard's party could not have certainly known then,--the +abject terror into which the very thought of a council had for +twenty years thrown Abelard whenever he was threatened with it; and +in 1140 he saw it to be inevitable. He preferred to face it with +dignity, and requested to be heard at a council to meet at Sens in +June. One cannot admit that he felt the shadow of a hope to escape. +At the utmost he could have dreamed of nothing more than a hearing. +Bernard's friends, who had a lively fear of his dialectics, took +care to shut the door on even this hope. The council was carefully +packed and overawed. The King was present; archbishops, bishops, +abbots, and other prelates by the score; Bernard acted in person as +the prosecuting attorney; the public outside were stimulated to +threaten violence. Abelard had less chance of a judicial hearing +than he had had at Soissons twenty years before. He acted with a +proper sense of their dignity and his own by simply appearing and +entering an appeal to Rome. The council paid no attention to the +appeal, but passed to an immediate condemnation. His friends said +that it was done after dinner; that when the volume of Abelard's +"Theology" was produced and the clerk began to read it aloud, after +the first few sentences the bishops ceased attention, talked, joked, +laughed, stamped their feet, got angry, and at last went to sleep. +They were waked only to growl "Damnamus--namus," and so made an end. +The story may be true, for all prelates, even in the twelfth +century, were not Bernards of Clairvaux or Peters of Cluny; all +drank wine, and all were probably sleepy after dinner; while +Abelard's writings are, for the most part, exceedingly hard reading. +The clergy knew quite well what they were doing; the judgment was +certain long in advance, and the council was called only to register +it. Political trials were usually mere forms. + +The appeal to Rome seems to have been taken seriously by Bernard, +which is surprising unless the character of Innocent II inspired his +friends with doubts unknown to us. Innocent owed everything to +Bernard, while Abelard owed everything to Innocent. The Pope was not +in a position to alienate the French Church or the French King. To +any one who knows only what is now to be known, Bernard seems to +have been sure of the Curia, yet he wrote in a tone of excitement as +though he feared Abelard's influence there even more than at home. +He became abusive; Abelard was a crawling viper (coluber tortuosus) +who had come out of his hole (egressus est de caverna sua), and +after the manner of a hydra (in similitudinem hydrae), after having +one head cut off at Soissons, had thrown out seven more. He was a +monk without rule; a prelate without responsibility; an abbot +without discipline; "disputing with boys; conversing with women." +The charges in themselves seem to be literally true, and would not +in some later centuries have been thought very serious; neither +faith nor morals were impugned. On the other hand, Abelard never +affected or aspired to be a saint, while Bernard always affected to +judge the acts and motives of his fellow-creatures from a standpoint +of more than worldly charity. Bernard had no right to Abelard's +vices; he claimed to be judged by a higher standard; but his temper +was none of the best, and his pride was something of the worst; +which gave to Peter the Venerable occasion for turning on him +sharply with a rebuke that cut to the bone. "You perform all the +difficult religious duties," wrote Peter to the saint who wrought +miracles; "you fast; you watch; you suffer; but you will not endure +the easy ones--you do not love (non vis levia ferre, ut diligas)." + +This was the end of Abelard. Of course the Pope confirmed the +judgment, and even hurried to do so in order that he might not be +obliged to give Abelard a hearing. The judgment was not severe, as +judgments went; indeed, it amounted to little more than an order to +keep silence, and, as it happened, was never carried into effect. +Abelard, at best a nervous invalid, started for Rome, but stopped at +Cluny, perhaps the most agreeable stopping-place in Europe. +Personally he seems to have been a favourite of Abbot Peter the +Venerable, whose love for Bernard was not much stronger than +Abelard's or Suger's. Bernard was an excessively sharp critic, and +spared worldliness, or what he thought lack of spirituality, in no +prelate whatever; Clairvaux existed for nothing else, politically, +than as a rebuke to them all, and Bernard's enmity was their bond of +union. Under the protection of Peter the Venerable, the most amiable +figure of the twelfth century, and in the most agreeable residence +in Europe, Abelard remained unmolested at Cluny, occupied, as is +believed, in writing or revising his treatises, in defiance of the +council. He died there two years later, April 21, 1142, in full +communion, still nominal Abbot of Saint-Gildas, and so distinguished +a prelate that Peter the Venerable thought himself obliged to write +a charming letter to Heloise at the Paraclete not far away, +condoling with her on the loss of a husband who was the Socrates, +the Aristotle, the Plato, of France and the West; who, if among +logicians he had rivals, had no master; who was the prince of study, +learned, eloquent, subtle, penetrating; who overcame everything by +the force of reason, and was never so great as when he passed to +true philosophy, that of Christ. + +All this was in Latin verses, and seems sufficiently strong, +considering that Abelard's philosophy had been so recently and so +emphatically condemned by the entire Church, including Peter the +Venerable himself. The twelfth century had this singular charm of +liberty in practice, just as its architecture knew no mathematical +formula of precision; but Peter's letter to Heloise went further +still, and rang with absolute passion:-- + +Thus, dear and venerable sister in God, he to whom you are united, +after your tie in the flesh, by the better and stronger bond of the +divine love; he, with whom, and under whom, you have served the +Lord, the Lord now takes, in your place, like another you, and warms +in His bosom; and, for the day of His coming, when shall sound the +voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God descending from +heaven, He keeps him to restore him to you by His grace. + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE MYSTICS + +The schoolmen of the twelfth century thought they could reach God by +reason; the Council of Sens, guided by Saint Bernard, replied that +the effort was futile and likely to be mischievous. The council made +little pretence of knowing or caring what method Abelard followed; +they condemned any effort at all on that line; and no sooner had +Bernard silenced the Abbot of Saint-Gildas for innovation than he +turned about and silenced the Bishop of Poitiers for conservatism. +Neither in the twelfth nor in any other century could three men have +understood alike the meaning of Gilbert de la Poree, who seems to +one high authority unworthy of notice and to another, worthy of an +elaborate but quite unintelligible commentary. When M. Rousselet and +M. Haureau judge so differently of a voluminous writer, the Council +at Rheims which censured Bishop Gilbert in 1148 can hardly have been +clear in mind. One dare hazard no more than a guess at Gilbert's +offence, but the guess is tolerably safe that he, like Abelard, +insisted on discussing and analyzing the Trinity. Gilbert seems to +have been a rigid realist, and he reduced to a correct syllogism the +idea of the ultimate substance--God. To make theology a system +capable of scholastic definition he had to suppose, behind the +active deity, a passive abstraction, or absolute substance without +attributes; and then the attributes--justice, mercy, and the rest-- +fell into rank as secondary substances. "Formam dei divinitatem +appellant." Bernard answered him by insisting with his usual fiery +conviction that the Church should lay down the law, once for all, +and inscribe it with iron and diamond, that Divinity--Divine Wisdom +--is God. In philosophy and science the question seems to be still +open. Whether anything ultimate exists--whether substance is more +than a complex of elements--whether the "thing in itself" is a +reality or a name--is a question that Faraday and Clerk-Maxwell seem +to answer as Bernard did, while Haeckel answers it as Gilbert did; +but in theology even a heretic wonders how a doubt was possible. The +absolute substance behind the attributes seems to be pure Spinoza. + +This supposes that the heretic understands what Gilbert or Haeckel +meant, which is certainly a mistake; but it is possible that he may +see in part what Bernard meant and this is enough if it is all. +Abelard's necessitarianism and Gilbert's Spinozism, if Bernard +understood them right, were equally impossible theology, and the +Church could by no evasion escape the necessity of condemning both. +Unfortunately, Bernard could not put his foot down so roughly on the +schools without putting it on Aristotle as well; and, for at least +sixty years after the Council of Rheims, Aristotle was either +tacitly or expressly prohibited. + +One cannot stop to explain why Aristotle himself would have been +first to forbid the teaching of what was called by his name in the +Middle Ages; but you are bound to remember that this period between +1140 and 1200 was that of Transition architecture and art. One must +go to Noyon, Soissons, and Laon to study the Church that trampled on +the schools; one must recall how the peasants of Normandy and the +Chartrain were crusading for the Virgin in 1145, and building her +fleches at Chartres and Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives while Bernard was +condemning Gilbert at Rheims in 1148; we must go to the poets to see +what they all meant by it; but the sum is an emotion--clear and +strong as love and much clearer than logic--whose charm lies in its +unstable balance. The Transition is the equilibrium between the love +of God--which is faith--and the logic of God--which is reason; +between the round arch and the pointed. One may not be sure which +pleases most, but one need not be harsh toward people who think that +the moment of balance is exquisite. The last and highest moment is +seen at Chartres, where, in 1200, the charm depends on the constant +doubt whether emotion or science is uppermost. At Amiens, doubt +ceases; emotion is trained in school; Thomas Aquinas reigns. + +Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of Aquino were both artists,--very +great artists, if the Church pleases,--and one need not decide which +was the greater; but between them is a region of pure emotion--of +poetry and art--which is more interesting than either. In every age +man has been apt to dream uneasily, rolling from side to side, +beating against imaginary bars, unless, tired out, he has sunk into +indifference or scepticism. Religious minds prefer scepticism. The +true saint is a profound sceptic; a total disbeliever in human +reason, who has more than once joined hands on this ground with some +who were at best sinners. Bernard was a total disbeliever in +scholasticism; so was Voltaire. Bernard brought the society of his +time to share his scepticism, but could give the society no other +intellectual amusement to relieve its restlessness. His crusade +failed; his ascetic enthusiasm faded; God came no nearer. If there +was in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typical Englishman +of the future Church of England type than John of Salisbury, he has +left no trace; and John wrote a description of his time which makes +a picturesque contrast with the picture painted by Abelard, his old +master, of the century at its beginning. John weighed Abelard and +the schools against Bernard and the cloister, and coolly concluded +that the way to truth led rather through Citeaux, which brought him +to Chartres as Bishop in 1176, and to a mild scepticism in faith. "I +prefer to doubt," he said, "rather than rashly define what is +hidden." The battle with the schools had then resulted only in +creating three kinds of sceptics:--the disbelievers in human reason; +the passive agnostics; and the sceptics proper, who would have been +atheists had they dared. The first class was represented by the +School of Saint-Victor; the second by John of Salisbury himself; the +third, by a class of schoolmen whom he called Cornificii, as though +they made a practice of inventing horns of dilemma on which to fix +their opponents; as, for example, they asked whether a pig which was +led to market was led by the man or the cord. One asks instantly: +What cord?--whether Grace, for instance, or Free Will? + +Bishop John used the science he had learned in the school only to +reach the conclusion that, if philosophy were a science at all, its +best practical use was to teach charity--love. Even the early, +superficial debates of the schools, in 1100-50, had so exhausted the +subject that the most intelligent men saw how little was to be +gained by pursuing further those lines of thought. The twelfth +century had already reached the point where the seventeenth century +stood when Descartes renewed the attempt to give a solid, +philosophical basis for deism by his celebrated "Cogito, ergo sum." +Although that ultimate fact seemed new to Europe when Descartes +revived it as the starting-point of his demonstration, it was as old +and familiar as Saint Augustine to the twelfth century, and as +little conclusive as any other assumption of the Ego or the Non-Ego. +The schools argued, according to their tastes, from unity to +multiplicity, or from multiplicity to unity; but what they wanted +was to connect the two. They tried realism and found that it led to +pantheism. They tried nominalism and found that it ended in +materialism. They attempted a compromise in conceptualism which +begged the whole question. Then they lay down, exhausted. In the +seventeenth century the same violent struggle broke out again, and +wrung from Pascal the famous outcry of despair in which the French +language rose, perhaps for the last time, to the grand style of the +twelfth century. To the twelfth century it belongs; to the century +of faith and simplicity; not to the mathematical certainties of +Descartes and Leibnitz and Newton, or to the mathematical +abstractions of Spinoza. Descartes had proclaimed his famous +conceptual proof of God: "I am conscious of myself, and must exist; +I am conscious of God and He must exist." Pascal wearily replied +that it was not God he doubted, but logic. He was tortured by the +impossibility of rejecting man's reason by reason; unconsciously +sceptical, he forced himself to disbelieve in himself rather than +admit a doubt of God. Man had tried to prove God, and had failed: +"The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote (eloignees) from the +reasoning of men, and so contradictory (impliquees, far-fetched) +that they make little impression; and even if they served to +convince some people, it would only be during the instant that they +see the demonstration; an hour afterwards they fear to have deceived +themselves." Moreover, this kind of proof could lead only to a +speculative knowledge, and to know God only in that way was not to +know Him at all. The only way to reach God was to deny the value of +reason, and to deny reason was scepticism:-- + +En voyant l'aveuglement et la misere de l'homme et ces contrarietes +etonnantes qui se decouvrent dans sa nature, et regardant tout +l'univers muet, et l'homme sans lumiere, abandonne a lui-meme et +comme egare dans ce recoin de l'umvers, sans savoir qui l'y a mis, +ce qu'il y est venu faire, ce qu'il deviendra en mourant, j'entre en +effroi comme un homme qu'on aurait porte endormi dans une ile +deserte et effroyable, et qui s'eveillerait sans connaitre ou il est +et sans avoir aucun moyen d'en sortir. Et sur cela j'admire comment +on n'entre pas en desespoir d'un si miserable etat. Je vois d'autres +personnes aupres de moi de semblable nature, et je leur demande +s'ils sont mieux instruits que moi, et ils me disent que non Et sur +cela, ces miserables egares, ayant regarde autour d'eux, et ayant vu +quelques objets plaisants, s'y sont donnes et s'y sont attaches Pour +moi je n'ai pu m'y arreter ni me reposer dans la societe de ces +personnes, en tout semblables a moi, miserables comme moi, +impuissants comme moi. Je vois qu'ils ne m'aideraient pas a mourir, +je mourrai seul, il faut donc faire comme si j'etais seul or, si +j'etais seul, je ne batirais pas des maisons, je ne m'embarrasserais +point dans des occupations tumultuaires, je ne chercherais l'estime +de personne, mais je tacherais settlement a decouvrir la verite. + +Ainsi, considerant combien il y a d'apparence qu'il y a autre chose +que ce que je vois, j'ai recherche si ce Dieu dont tout le monde +parle n'aurait pas laisse quelques marques de lui. Je regarde de +toutes parts et ne vois partout qu' obscuritd. La nature ne m'offre +rien que ne soit matiere de doute et d'inquietude. Si je n'y voyais +rien qui marquat une divinite, je me determinerais a n'en rien +croire. Si je voyais partout les marques d'un Createur, je me +reposerais en paix dans la foi. Mais voyant trop pour nier, et trop +peu pour m'assurer, je suis dans un etat a plaindre, et ou j'ai +souhaite cent fois que si un Dieu soutient la nature, elle le +marquat sans Equivoque; et que, si les marques qu'elle en donne sont +trompeuses, elle les supprimat tout a fait; qu'elle dit tout ou +rien, afin que je visse quel parti je dois suivre. + +When I see the blindness and misery of man and the astonishing +contradictions revealed in his nature, and observe the whole +universe mute, and man without light, abandoned to himself, as +though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put +him here, or what he has come here to do, or what will become of him +in dying, I feel fear like a man who has been carried when asleep +into a desert and fearful island, and has waked without knowing +where he is and without having means of rescue. And thereupon I +wonder how man escapes despair at so miserable an estate. I see +others about me, like myself, and I ask them if they are better +informed than I, and they tell me no. And then these wretched +wanderers, after looking about them and seeing some pleasant object, +have given themselves up and attached themselves to it. As for me I +cannot stop there, or rest in the company of these persons, wholly +like myself, miserable like me, impotent like me. I see that they +would not help me to die, I shall die alone, I must then act as +though alone, but if I were alone I should not build houses, I +should not fret myself with bustling occupations, I should seek the +esteem of no one, but I should try only to discover the truth. + +So, considering how much appearance there is that something exists +other than what I see I have sought whether this God of Whom every +one talks may not have left some marks of Himself. I search +everywhere, and see only obscurity everywhere. Nature offers me +nothing but matter of possible doubt and disquiet. If I saw there +nothing to mark a divinity, I should make up my mind to believe +nothing of it. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I should +rest in peace in faith. But seeing too much to deny, and too little +to affirm, I am in a pitiable state, where I have an hundred times +wishes that, if a God supports nature, she would show it without +equivocation; and that, if the marks she gives are deceptive, she +would suppress them wholly; that she say all of nothing, that I may +see my path. + +This is the true Prometheus lyric, but when put back in its place it +refuses to rest at Port-Royal which has a right to nothing but +precision; it has but one real home--the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The +mind that recoils from itself can only commit a sort of ecstatic +suicide; it must absorb itself in God; and in the bankruptcy of +twelfth-century science the Western Christian seemed actually on the +point of attainment; he, like Pascal, touched God behind the veil of +scepticism. + +The schools had already proved one or two points which need never +have been discussed again. In essence, religion was love; in no case +was it logic. Reason can reach nothing except through the senses; +God, by essence, cannot be reached through the senses; if He is to +be known at all, He must be known by contact of spirit with spirit, +essence with essence; directly; by emotion; by ecstasy; by +absorption of our existence in His; by substitution of his spirit +for ours. The world had no need to wait five hundred years longer in +order to hear this same result reaffirmed by Pascal. Saint Francis +of Assisi had affirmed it loudly enough, even if the voice of Saint +Bernard had been less powerful than it was. The Virgin had asserted +it in tones more gentle, but any one may still see how convincing, +who stops a moment to feel the emotion that lifted her wonderful +Chartres spire up to God. + +The Virgin, indeed, made all easy, for it was little enough she +cared for reason or logic. She cared for her baby, a simple matter, +which any woman could do and understand. That, and the grace of God, +had made her Queen of Heaven. The Trinity had its source in her,-- +totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium,--and she was maternity. She was +also poetry and art. In the bankruptcy of reason, she alone was +real. + +So Guillaume de Champeaux, half a century dead, came to life again +in another of his creations. His own Abbey of Saint-Victor, where +Abelard had carried on imaginary disputes with him, became the +dominant school. As far as concerns its logic, we had best pass it +by. The Victorians needed logic only to drive away logicians, which +was hardly necessary after Bernard had shut up the schools. As for +its mysticism, all training is much alike in idea, whether one +follows the six degrees of contemplation taught by Richard of Saint- +Victor, or the eightfold noble way taught by Gautama Buddha. The +theology of the school was still less important, for the Victorians +contented themselves with orthodoxy only in the sense of caring as +little for dogma as for dialectics; their thoughts were fixed on +higher emotions. Not Richard the teacher, but Adam the poet, +represents the school to us, and when Adam dealt with dogma he +frankly admitted his ignorance and hinted his indifference; he was, +as always, conscientious; but he was not always, or often, as cold. +His statement of the Trinity is a marvel; but two verses of it are +enough:-- + +Digne loqui de personis + Vim transcendit rationis, + Excedit ingenia. + Quid sit gigni, quid processus, + Me nescire sum professus, + Sed fide non dubia. + + +Qui sic credit, non festinet, + Et a via non declinet + Insolenter regia. + Servet fidem, formet mores, + Nec attendat ad errors + Quos damnat Ecclesia. + + +Of the Trinity to reason + Leads to license or to treason + Punishment deserving. + What is birth and what procession + Is not mine to make profession, + Save with faith unswerving. + + +Thus professing, thus believing, + Never insolently leaving + The highway of our faith, + Duty weighing, law obeying, + Never shall we wander straying + Where heresy is death. + + +Such a school took natural refuge in the Holy Ghost and the Virgin, +--Grace and Love,--but the Holy Ghost, as usual, profited by it much +less than the Virgin. Comparatively little of Adam's poetry is +expressly given to the Saint Esprit, and too large a part of this +has a certain flavour of dogma:-- + +Qui procedis ab utroque + Genitore Genitoque + Pariter, Paraclite! + . . . . . . . . . Amor Patris, Filiique + Par amborum et utrique + Compar et consimilis! + + +The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the + Son; neither made nor created nor begotten, + but proceeding. + + +The whole three Persons are coeternal + together; and coequal. + + +This sounds like a mere versification of the Creed, yet when Adam +ceased to be dogmatic and broke into true prayer, his verse added a +lofty beauty even to the Holy Ghost; a beauty too serious for modern +rhyme:-- + +Oh, juvamen oppressorum, + Oh, solamen miserorum, + Pauperum refugium, + Da contemptum terrenorum! + Ad amorem supernorum + Trahe desiderium! + + +Consolator et fundator, + Habitator et amator, + Cordium humilium, + Pelle mala, terge sordes, + Et discordes fac Concordes, + Et affer praesidium! + + +Oh, helper of the heavy-laden, + Oh, solace of the miserable, + Of the poor, the refuge, + Give contempt of earthly pleasures! + To the love of heavenly treasures + Lift our hearts' desire! + + +Consolation and foundation, + Dearest friend and habitation + Of the lowly-hearted, + Dispel our evil, cleanse our foulness, + And our discords turn to concord, + And bring us succour! + + +Adam's scholasticism was the most sympathetic form of mediaeval +philosophy. Even in prose, the greatest writers have not often +succeeded in stating simply and clearly the fact that infinity can +make itself finite, or that space can make itself bounds, or that +eternity can generate time. In verse, Adam did it as easily as +though he were writing any other miracle,--as Gaultier de Coincy +told the Virgin's,--and any one who thinks that the task was as easy +as it seems, has only to try it and see whether he can render into a +modern tongue any single word which shall retain the whole value of +the word which Adam has chosen:-- + +Ne periret homo reus + Redemptorem misit Deus, + Pater unigenitum; + Visitavit quos amavit + Nosque vitae revocavit + Gratia non meritum. + + +Infinitus et Immensus, + Quem non capit ullus sensus + Nec locorum spatia, + Ex eterno temporalis, + Ex immenso fit localis, + Ut restauret omnia. + + +To death condemned by awful sentence, + God recalled us to repentance, + Sending His only Son; + Whom He loved He came to cherish; + Whom His justice doomed to perish, + By grace to life he won. + + +Infinity, Immensity, + Whom no human eye can see + Or human thought contain, + Made of infinity a space, + Made of Immensity a place, + To win us Life again. + + +The English verses, compared with the Latin, are poor enough, with +the canting jingle of a cheap religion and a thin philosophy, but by +contrast and comparison they give higher value to the Latin. One +feels the dignity and religious quality of Adam's chants the better +for trying to give them an equivalent. One would not care to hazard +such experiments on poetry of the highest class like that of Dante +and Petrarch, but Adam was conventional both in verse and thought, +and aimed at obtaining his effects from the skilful use of the Latin +sonorities for the purposes of the chant. With dogma and metaphysics +he dealt boldly and even baldly as he was required to do, and +successfully as far as concerned the ear or the voice; but poetry +was hardly made for dogma; even the Trinity was better expressed +mathematically than by rhythm. With the stronger emotions, such as +terror, Adam was still conventional, and showed that he thought of +the chant more than of the feeling and exaggerated the sound beyond +the value of the sense. He could never have written the "Dies Irae." +He described the shipwreck of the soul in magnificent sounds without +rousing an emotion of fear; the raging waves and winds that swept +his bark past the abysses and up to the sky were as conventional as +the sirens, the dragons, the dogs, and the pirates that lay in wait. +The mast nodded as usual; the sails were rent; the sailors ceased +work; all the machinery was classical; only the prayer to the Virgin +saved the poetry from sinking like the ship; and yet, when chanted, +the effect was much too fine to bear translation:-- + +Ave, Virgo singularis, + Mater nostri Salutaris, + Quae vocaris Stella Maris, + Stella non erratica; + Nos in hujus vitae mari + Non permitte naufragari, + Sed pro nobis Salutari + Tuo semper supplica! + + +Saevit mare, fremunt venti, + Fluctus surgunt turbulenti; + Navis currit, sed currenti + Tot occurrunt obvia! + Hic sirenes voluptatis, + Draco, canes cum piratis, + Mortem pene desperatis + Haec intentant omnia. + + +Post abyssos, nunc ad coelum + Furens unda fert phaselum; + Nutat malus, fluit velum, + Nautae cessat opera; + Contabescit in his malis + Homo noster animalis; + Tu nos, Mater spiritalis, + Pereuntes liberal! + + +Finer still is the famous stanza sung at Easter, in which Christ +rises, the Lion of Judah, in the crash of the burst gates of death, +at the roar of the Father Lion:-- + +Sic de Juda, leo fortis, + Fractis portis dirae mortis, + Die surgens tertia, + Rugiente voce patris + Ad supernae sinum matris + Tot revexit spolia. + + +For terror or ferocity or images of pain, the art of the twelfth +century had no use except to give a higher value to their images of +love. The figures on the west portal of Chartres are alive with the +spirit of Adam's poetry, but it is the spirit of the Virgin. Like +Saint Bernard, Adam lavished his affections on Mary, and even more +than Saint Bernard he could claim to be her poet-laureate. Bernard +was not himself author of the hymn "Stella Maris" which brought him +the honour of the Virgin's personal recognition, but Adam was author +of a dozen hymns in which her perfections were told with equal +fervour, and which were sung at her festivals. Among these was the +famous + +Salve, Mater Pietatis, + Et totius Trinitatis + Nobile Triclinium! + + +a compliment so refined and yet so excessive that the Venerable +Thomas Cantimpratensis who died a century later, about 1280, related +in his "Apiarium" that when "venerabilis Adam" wrote down these +lines, Mary herself appeared to him and bent her head in +recognition. Although the manuscripts do not expressly mention this +miracle, they do contain, at that stanza, a curious note expressing +an opinion, apparently authorized by the prior, that, if the Virgin +had seen fit to recognize the salutation of the Venerable Adam in +this manner, she would have done only what he merited: "ab ea +resalutari et regratiari meruit." + +Adam's poems are still on the shelves of most Parisian bookshops, as +common as "Aucassins" and better known than much poetry of our own +time; for the mediaeval Latin rhymes have a delightful sonority and +simplicity that keep them popular because they were not made to be +read but to be sung. One does not forget their swing:-- + +Infinitus et Immensus; + + +or-- + +Oh, juvamen oppressorum; + + +or-- + +Consolatrix miserorum + Suscitatrix mortuorum. + + +The organ rolls through them as solemnly as ever it did in the Abbey +Church; but in mediaeval art so much more depends on the mass than +on the measure--on the dignity than on the detail--that equivalents +are impossible. Even Walter Scott was content to translate only +three verses of the "Dies Irae." At best, Viollet-le-Duc could +reproduce only a sort of modern Gothic; a more or less effaced or +affected echo of a lost emotion which the world never felt but once +and never could feel again. Adam composed a number of hymns to the +Virgin, and, in them all, the feeling counts for more, by far, than +the sense. Supposing we choose the simplest and try to give it a +modern version, aiming to show, by comparison, the difference of +sound; one can perhaps manage to recover a little of the simplicity, +but give it the grand style one cannot; or, at least, if any one has +ever done both, it is Walter Scott, and merely by placing side by +side the "Dies Irae" and his translation of it, one can see at a +glance where he was obliged to sacrifice simplicity only to obtain +sound:-- + +Dies irae, dies illa, + Solvet seclum in favilla, + Teste David cum Sibylla. + + +Quantus tremor est futurus, + Quando judex est venturus, + Cuncta stride discussurus! + + +Tuba mirum spargens sonum + Per sepulchra regionum, + Coget omnes ante thronum. + + +That day of wrath, that dreadful day, + When heaven and earth shall pass away, + What power shall be the sinner's stay? + How shall he meet that dreadful day? + + +When shrivelling like a parched scroll + The flaming heavens together roll; + When louder yet and yet more dread + Swells the high trump that wakes the dead. + + +As translation the last line is artificial. + +The "Dies Irae" does not belong, in spirit, to the twelfth century; +it is sombre and gloomy like the Last Judgments on the thirteenth- +century portals; it does not love. Adam loved. His verses express +the Virgin; they are graceful, tender, fervent, and they hold the +same dignity which cannot be translated:-- + +In hac valle lacrimarum + Nihil dulce, nihil carum, + Suspecta sunt omnia; + Quid hic nobis erit tutum, + Cum nec ipsa vel virtutum + Tuta sit victoria! + + +Caro nobis adversatur, + Mundus cami suffragatur + In nostram perniciem; + Hostis instat, nos infestans, + Nunc se palam manifestans, + Nunc occultans rabiem. + + +Et peccamus et punimur, + Et diversis irretimur + Laqueis venantium. + O Maria, mater Dei, + Tu, post Deum, summa spei, + Tu dulce refugium; + + +Tot et tantis irretiti, + Non valemus his reniti + Ne vi nec industria; + Consolatrix miserorum, + Suscitatrix mortuorum, + Mortis rompe retia! + + +In this valley full of tears, + Nothing softens, nothing cheers, + All is suspected lure; + What safety can we hope for, here, + When even virtue faints for fear + Her victory be not sure! + +Within, the flesh a traitor is, + Without, the world encompasses, + A deadly wound to bring. + The foe is greedy for our spoils, + Now clasping us within his coils, + Or hiding now his sting. + + +We sin, and penalty must pay, + And we are caught, like beasts of prey, + Within the hunter's snares. + Nearest to God! oh Mary Mother! + Hope can reach us from none other, + Sweet refuge from our cares; + + +We have no strength to struggle longer, + For our bonds are more and stronger + Than our hearts can bear! + You who rest the heavy-laden, + You who lead lost souls to Heaven, + Burst the hunter's snare! + + +The art of this poetry of love and hope, which marked the mystics, +lay of course in the background of shadows which marked the +cloister. "Inter vania nihil vanius est homine." Man is an +imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God. If ever +modern science achieves a definition of energy, possibly it may +borrow the figure: Energy is the inherent effort of every +multiplicity to become unity. Adam's poetry was an expression of the +effort to reach absorption through love, not through fear; but to do +this thoroughly he had to make real to himself his own nothingness; +most of all, to annihilate pride; for the loftiest soul can +comprehend that an atom,--say, of hydrogen,--which is proud of its +personality, will never merge in a molecule of water. The familiar +verse: "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" echoes Adam's +epitaph to this day:-- + +Haeres peccati, natura filius irae, + Exiliique reus nascitur omnis homo. + Unde superbit homo, cujus conceptio culpa, + Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori? + + +Heir of sin, by nature son of wrath, + Condemned to exile, every man is born. + Whence is man's pride, whose conception fault, + Birth pain, life labour, and whose death is sure? + + +Four concluding lines, not by him, express him even better:-- + +Hic ego qui jaceo, miser et miserabilis Adam, + Unam pro summo munere posco precem. + Peccavi, fateor; veniam peto; parce fatenti; + Parce, pater: fratres, parcite; parce, Deus! + + +One does not conceive that Adam insisted so passionately on his sins +because he thought them--or himself--important before the Infinite. +Chemistry does not consider an atom of oxygen as in itself +important, yet if it wishes to get a volume of pure gas, it must +separate the elements. The human soul was an atom that could unite +with God only as a simple element. The French mystics showed in +their mysticism the same French reasonableness; the sense of +measure, of logic, of science; the allegiance to form; the +transparency of thought, which the French mind has always shown on +its surface like a shell of nacre. The mystics were in substance +rather more logical than the schoolmen and much more artistic in +their correctness of line and scale. At bottom, French saints were +not extravagant. One can imagine a Byzantine asserting that no +French saint was ever quite saintly. Their aims and ideals were very +high, but not beyond reaching and not unreasonable. Drag the French +mind as far from line and logic as space permits, the instant it is +freed it springs back to the classic and tries to look consequent. + +This paradox, that the French mystics were never mystical, runs +through all our travels, so obstinately recurring in architecture, +sculpture, legend, philosophy, religion, and poetry, that it becomes +tiresome; and yet it is an idea that, in spite of Matthew Arnold and +many other great critics, never has got lodgment in the English or +German mind, and probably never will. Every one who loves travel +will hope that it never may. If you are driven to notice it as the +most distinctive mark of French art, it is not at all for the +purpose of arguing a doubtful law, but only in order to widen the +amusement of travel. We set out to travel from Mont-Saint-Michel to +Chartres, and no farther; there we stop; but we may still look +across the boundary to Assisi for a specimen of Italian Gothic +architecture, a scheme of colour decoration, or still better for a +mystic to compare with the Bernadines and Victorians. Every one who +knows anything of religion knows that the ideal mystic saint of +western Europe was Francis of Assisi, and that Francis, though he +loved France, was as far as possible from being French; though not +in the least French, he was still the finest flower from the French +mediaeval garden; and though the French mystics could never have +understood him, he was what the French mystics would have liked to +be or would have thought they liked to be as long as they knew him +to be not one of themselves. As an Italian or as a Spaniard, Francis +was in harmony with his world; as a Frenchman, he would have been +out of place even at Clairvaux, and still more among his own +Cordeliers at the doors of the Sorbonne. + +Francis was born in 1186, at the instant when French art was +culminating, or about to culminate, in the new cathedrals of Laon +and Chartres, on the ruins of scholastic religion and in the full +summer of the Courts of Love. He died in 1226, just as Queen Blanche +became Regent of France and when the Cathedral of Beauvais was +planned. His life precisely covered the most perfect moment of art +and feeling in the thousand years of pure and confident +Christianity. To an emotional nature like his, life was still a +phantasm or "concept" of crusade against real or imaginary enemies +of God, with the "Chanson de Roland" for a sort of evangel, and a +feminine ideal for a passion. He chose for his mistress "domina +nostra paupertas," and the rules of his order of knighthood were as +visionary as those of Saint Bernard were practical. "Isti sunt +fratres mei milites tabulae rotundae, qui latitant in desertis"; his +Knights of the Round Table hid themselves for their training in +deserts of poverty, simplicity, humility, innocence of self, +absorption in nature, in the silence of God, and, above all, in love +and joy incarnate, whose only influence was example. Poverty of body +in itself mattered nothing; what Francis wanted was poverty of +pride, and the external robe or the bare feet were outward and +necessary forms of protection against its outward display. Against +riches or against all external and visible vanity, rules and laws +could be easily enforced if it were worth while, although the purest +humility would be reached only by those who were indifferent and +unconscious of their external dress; but against spiritual pride the +soul is defenceless, and of all its forms the subtlest and the +meanest is pride of intellect. If "nostra domina paupertas" had a +mortal enemy, it was not the pride beneath a scarlet robe, but that +in a schoolmaster's ferule, and of all schoolmasters the vainest and +most pretentious was the scholastic philosopher. Satan was logic. +Lord Bacon held much the same opinion. "I reject the syllogism," was +the starting-point of his teaching as it was the essence of Saint +Francis's, and the reasons of both men were the same though their +action was opposite. "Let men please themselves as they will in +admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain:--that, +as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its +own figure and section, so the mind ... cannot be trusted ..." +Bacon's first object was the same as that of Francis, to humiliate +and if possible destroy the pride of human reason; both of them knew +that this was their most difficult task, and Francis, who was +charity incarnate, lost his self-control whenever he spoke of the +schools, and became almost bitter, as though in constant terror of a +poison or a cancer. "Praeodorabat etiam tempora non longe ventura in +quibus jam praesciebat scientiam inflativam debere esse occasionem +ruinae." He foresaw the time not far off when puffed-up science +would be the ruin of his "domina paupertas." His struggle with this +form of human pride was desperate and tragical in its instant +failure. He could not make even his novices understand what he +meant. The most impossible task of the mind is to reject in practice +the reflex action of itself, as Bacon pointed out, and only the +highest training has sometimes partially succeeded in doing it. The +schools--ancient, mediaeval, or modern--have almost equally failed, +but even the simple rustics who tried to follow Francis could not +see why the rule of poverty should extend to the use of a psalter. +Over and over again he explained vehemently and dramatically as only +an Italian or a Spaniard could, and still they failed to catch a +notion of what he meant. + + Quum ergo venisset beatus Franciscus ad locum ubi erat ille +novitius, dixit ille novitius: "Pater, mihi esset magna consolatio +habere psalterium, sed licet generalis illud mihi concesserit, tamen +vellem ipsum habere, pater, de conscientia tua." Cui beatus +Franciscus respondit: "Carolus imperator, Rolandus et Oliverus et +omnes palatini et robusti viri qui potentes fuerunt in proelio, +prosequendo infideles cum multa sudore et labore usque ad mortem, +habuerunt de illis victoriara memorialiter, et ad ultimum ipsi +sancti martyres sunt mortui pro fide Christi in certamine. Nunc +autem multi sunt qui sola narratione eorum quae illi fecerunt volunt +recipere honorem et humanam laudem. Ita et inter nos sunt multi qui +solum recitando et praedicando opera quae sancti fecerunt volunt +recipere honorem et laudem; ... postquam habueris psalterium, +concupisces et volueris habere breviarium; et postquam habueris +breviarium, sedebis in cathedra tanquam magnus prelatus et dices +fratri tuo:--Apporta mihi breviarium!" + +Haec autem dicens beatus Franciscus cum magno fervore spiritus +accepit de cinere et posuit super caput suum, et ducendo manum super +caput suum in circuitu sicut ille qui lavat caput, dicebat: "Ego +breviarium! ego breviarium!" et sic reiteravit multoties ducendo +manum per caput. Et stupefactus et verecundatus est frater ille ... +Elapsis autem pluribus mensibus quum esset beatus Franciscus apud +locum sanctae Mariae de Portiuncula, juxta cellam post domum in via, +praedictus frater iterum locutus est ei de psalterio. Cui beatus +Franciscus dixit: "Vade et facias de hoc sicut dicet tibi minister +tuus!" Quo audito, frater ille coepit redire per viam unde venerat. +Beatus autem Franciscus remanens in via coepit considerare illud +quod dixerat illi fratri, et statim clamavit post cum, dicens: +"Expecta me, frater! expecta!" Et ivit usque ad eum et ait illi: +"Revertere mecum, frater, et ostende mihi locum ubi dixi tibi quod +faceres de psalterio sicut diceret minister tuus." Quum ergo +pervenissent ad locum, beatus Franciscus genuflexit coram fratre +illo, et dixit: "Mea culpa, frater! mea culpa! quia quicunque vult +esse frater Minor non debet habere nisi tunicam, sicut regula sibi +concedit, et cordam et femoralia et qui manifesta necessitate +coguntur calciamenta." + +So when Saint Francis happened to come to the place where the novice +was, the novice said: "Father, it would be a great comfort to me to +have a psalter, but though my general should grant it, still I would +rather have it, father, with your knowledge too." Saint Francis +answered: "The Emperor Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver, and all the +palatines and strong men who were potent in battle, pursuing the +infidels with much toil and sweat even to death, triumphed over them +memorably [without writing it?], and at last these holy martyrs died +in the contest for the faith of Christ. But now there are many who, +merely by telling of what those men did, want to receive honour and +human praise. So, too, among us are many who, merely by reciting and +preaching the works which the saints have done, want to receive +honour and praise; ... After you have got the psalter, you will +covet and want a breviary; and after getting the breviary, you will +sit on your throne like a bishop, and will say to your brother: +'Bring me the breviary!'" + +While saying this, Saint Francis with great vehemence took up a +handful of ashes and spread it over his bead; and moving his hand +about his head in a circle as though washing it, said: "I, breviary! +I, breviary!" and so kept on, repeatedly moving his hand about his +head; and stupefied and ashamed was that novice. ... But several +months afterwards when Saint Francis happened to be near Sta Maria +de Portiuncula, by the cell behind the house on the road, the same +brother again spoke to him about the psalter. Saint Francis replied: +"Go and do about it as your director says." On this the brother +turned back, but Saint Francis, standing in the road, began to +reflect on what he had said, and suddenly called after him: "Wait +for me, brother! wait!" and going after him, said: "Return with me, +brother, and show me the place where I told you to do as your +director should say, about the psalter." When they had come back to +it, Saint Francis bent before the brother, and said: "Mea culpa, +brother, mea culpa! because whoever wishes to be a Minorite must +have nothing but a tunic, as the rule permits, and the cord, and the +loincloth, and what covering is manifestly necessary for the limbs." + +So vivid a picture of an actual mediaeval saint stands out upon this +simple background as is hardly to be found elsewhere in all the +records of centuries, but if the brother himself did not understand +it and was so shamed and stupefied by Francis's vehemence, the world +could understand it no better; the Order itself was ashamed of Saint +Francis because they understood him too well. They hastened to +suppress this teaching against science, although it was the life of +Francis's doctrine. He taught that the science of the schools led to +perdition because it was puffed up with emptiness and pride. +Humility, simplicity, poverty were alone true science. They alone +led to heaven. Before the tribunal of Christ, the schoolmen would be +condemned, "and, with their dark logic (opinionibus tenebrosis) +shall be plunged into outer darkness with the spirits of the +darkness." They were devilish, and would perish with the devils. + +One sees instantly that neither Francis of Assisi nor Bacon of +Verulam could have hoped for peace with the schools; twelfth-century +ecstasy felt the futility of mere rhetoric quite as keenly as +seventeenth-century scepticism was to feel it; and yet when Francis +died in 1226 at Assisi, Thomas was just being born at Aquino some +two hundred kilometres to the southward. True scholasticism had not +begun. Four hundred years seem long for the human mind to stand +still--or go backward; the more because the human mind was never +better satisfied with itself than when thus absorbed in its mirror; +but with that chapter we have nothing to do. The pleasantest way to +treat it was that of Saint Francis; half-serious, half-jesting; as +though, after all, in the thought of infinity, four hundred years +were at most only a serio-comic interlude. At Assisi, once, when a +theologian attacked Fra Egidio by the usual formal arraignment in +syllogisms, the brother waited until the conclusions were laid down, +and then, taking out a flute from the folds of his robe, he played +his answer in rustic melodies. The soul of Saint Francis was a +rustic melody and the simplest that ever reached so high an +expression. Compared with it, Theocritus and Virgil are as modern as +Tennyson and ourselves. + +All this shows only what Saint Francis was not; to understand what +he was and how he goes with Saint Bernard and Saint Victor through +the religious idyll of Transition architecture, one must wander +about Assisi with the "Floretum" or "Fioretti" in one's hand;--the +legends which are the gospel of Francis as the evangels are the +gospel of Christ, who was reincarnated in Assisi. We have given a +deal of time to showing our own sceptical natures how simple the +architects and decorators of Chartres were in their notions of the +Virgin and her wants; but French simple-mindedness was already +complex compared with Italian. The Virgin was human; Francis was +elementary nature itself, like sun and air; he was Greek in his joy +of life:-- + + ... Recessit inde et venit inter Cannarium + et Mevanium. Et respexit quasdam arbores + juxta viam in quibus residebat tanta multitudo + avium diversarum quod nunquam in + partibus illis visa similis multitudo. In campo + insuper juxta praedictas arbores etiam multitudo + maxima residebat. Quam multitudinem + sanctus Franciscus respiciens et admirans, + facto super eum Spiritu Dei, dixit sociis: "Vobis + hic me in via exspectantibus, ibo et praedicabo + sororibus nostris aviculis." Et intravit + in campum ad aves quae residebant in terra. + Et statim quum praedicare incepit omnes aves + in arboribus residentes descenderunt ad eum + et simul cum aliis de campo immobiles perman + serunt, quum tamen ipse inter eas iret plurimas + tunica contingendo. Et nulla earum penitus + movebatur, sicut recitavit frater Jacobus de + Massa, sanctus homo, qui omnia supradicta + habuit ab ore fratris Massei, qui fuit unus de + iis qui tune erant socii sancti patris. + + +Quibus avibus sanctus Franciscus ait: + "Multum tenemini Deo, sorores meas aves, + et debetis eum semper et ubique laudare propter + liberum quem ubique habetis volatum, + propter vestitum duplicatum et triplicatum, + propter habitum pictum et ornatum, propter + victum sine vestro labore paratum, propter + cantum a Creatore vobis intimatum, propter + numerum ex Dei benedictione multiplicatum, + propter semen vestrum a Deo in area reservatum, + propter elementum aeris vobis deputatum. + Vos non seminatis neque metitis, et Deus + vos pascit; et dedit vobis flumina et fontes ad + potandum, montes et colles, saxa et ibices ad + refugium, et arbores altes ad nidificandum; + et quum nec filare nec texere sciatis, praebet + tam vobis quam vestris filiis necessarium indumentum. + Unde multum diligit vos Creator + qui tot beneficia contulit. Quapropter cavete, + sorores mes aviculae, ni sitis ingratae sed + semper laudare Deum studete." + + +... He departed thence and came between + Cannara and Bevagna; and near the road he + saw some trees on which perched so great a + number of birds as never in those parts had + been seen the like. Also in the field beyond, + near these same trees, a very great multitude + rested on the ground. This multitude, Saint + Francis seeing with wonder, the spirit of God + descending on him he said to his companions: + "Wait for me on the road, while I go and + preach to our sisters the little birds." And he + went into the field where the birds were on + the ground. And as soon as he began to preach, + all the birds in the trees came down to him and + with those in the field stood quite still, even + when he went among them touching many + with his robe. Not one of them moved, + as Brother James of Massa related, a saintly + man who had the whole story from the mouth + of Brother Masseo who was one of those then + with the sainted father. + + +To these birds, Saint Francis said: "Much + are you bound to God, birds, my sisters, and + everywhere and always must you praise him for + the free flight you everywhere have; for the + double and triple covering; for the painted and + decorated robe; for the food prepared without + your labour; for the song taught you by the + Creator; for your number multiplied by God's + blessing; for your seed preserved by God in + the ark; for the element of air allotted to you. + You neither sow nor reap, and God feeds + you; and has given you rivers and springs + to drink at, mountains and hills, rocks and + wild goats for refuge, and high trees for nesting; + and though you know neither how to spin nor + to weave, He gives both you and your children + all the garments you need. Whence much must + the Creator love you, Who confers so many + blessings. Therefore take care, my small bird + sisters, never to be ungrateful, but always strive + to praise God." + + +Fra Ugolino, or whoever wrote from the dictation of Brother James of +Massa, after the tradition of Brother Masseo of Marignano reported +Saint Francis's sermon in absolute good faith as Saint Francis +probably made it and as the birds possibly received it. All were +God's creatures, brothers and sisters, and God alone knew or knows +whether or how far they understand each other; but Saint Francis, in +any case, understood them and believed that they were in sympathy +with him. As far as the birds or wolves were concerned, it was no +great matter, but Francis did not stop with vertebrates or even with +organic forms. "Nor was it surprising," said the "Speculum," "if +fire and other creatures sometimes revered and obeyed him; for, as +we who were with him very frequently saw, he held them in such +affection and so much delighted in them, and his soul was moved by +such pity and compassion for them, that he would not see them +roughly handled, and talked with them with such evident delight as +if they were rational beings":-- + +Nam quadam vice, quum sederet juxta ignem, ipso nesciente, ignis +invasit pannos ejus de lino, sive brachas, juxta genu, quumque +sentiret calorem ejus nolebat ipsum extinguere. Socius autem ejus +videns comburi pannos ejus cucurrit ad eum volens extinguere ignem; +ipse vero prohibuit ei, dicens: "Noli, frater, carissime, noli male +facere igni!" Et sic nullo modo voluit quod extingueret ipsum. Ille +vero festinanter ivit ad fratrem qui erat guardianus ipsius, et +duxit eum ad beatum Franciscum, et statim contra voluntatem beati +Francisci, extinxit ignem. Unde quacunque necessitate urgente +nunquam voluit extinguere ignem vel lampadem vel candelam, tantum +pietate movebatur ad ipsum. Nolebat etiam quod frater projiceret +ignem vel lignum fumigantem de loco ad locum sicut solet fieri, sed +volebat ut plane poneret ipsum in terra ob reverentiam illius cujus +est creatura. + +For once when he was sitting by the fire, a spark, without his +knowing it, caught his linen drawers and set them burning near the +knee, and when he felt the heat he would not extinguish it; but his +companion, seeing his clothes on fire, ran to put it out, and he +forbade it, saying: "Don't, my dearest brother, don't hurt the +fire!" So he utterly refused to let him put it out, and the brother +hurried off to get his guardian, and brought him to Saint Francis, +and together they put out the fire at once against Saint Francis's +will. So, no matter what the necessity, he would never put out fire +Or a lamp or candle, so strong was his feeling for it; he would not +even let a brother throw fire or a smoking log from place to place, +as is usual, but wanted it placed gently (piano) on the ground, out +of respect for Him Whose creature it is. + +The modern tourist, having with difficulty satisfied himself that +Saint Francis acted thus in good faith, immediately exclaims that he +was a heretic and should have been burned; but, in truth, the +immense popular charm of Saint Francis, as of the Virgin, was +precisely his heresies. Both were illogical and heretical by +essence;--in strict discipline, in the days of the Holy Office, a +hundred years later, both would have been burned by the Church, as +Jeanne d'Arc was, with infinitely less reason, in 1431. The charm of +the twelfth-century Church was that it knew how to be illogical--no +great moral authority ever knew it better--when God Himself became +illogical. It cared no more than Saint Francis, or Lord Bacon, for +the syllogism. Nothing in twelfth-century art is so fine as the air +and gesture of sympathetic majesty with which the Church drew aside +to let the Virgin and Saint Francis pass and take the lead--for a +time. Both were human ideals too intensely realized to be resisted +merely because they were illogical. The Church bowed and was silent. + +This does not concern us. What the Church thought or thinks is its +own affair, and what it chooses to call orthodox is orthodox. We +have been trying only to understand what the Virgin and Saint +Francis thought, which is matter of fact, not of faith. Saint +Francis was even more outspoken than the Virgin. She calmly set +herself above dogma, and, with feminine indifference to authority, +overruled it. He, having asserted in the strongest terms the +principle of obedience, paid no further attention to dogma, but, +without the least reticence, insisted on practices and ideas that no +Church could possibly permit or avow. Toward the end of his life, +his physician cauterized his face for some neuralgic pain:-- + +Et posito ferro in igne pro coctura fienda, beatus Franciscus volens +confortare spiritum suum ne pavesceret, sic locutus est ad ignem: +"Frater mi, ignis, nobilis et utilis inter alias creaturas, esto +mihi curialis in hac hora quia olim te dilexi et diligam amore +illius qui creavit te. Deprecor etiam creatorem nostrum qui nos +creavit ut ita tuum calorem temperct ut ipsum sustinere valeam." Et +oratione finita signavit ignem signo crucis. + +When the iron was put on the fire for making the cotterie, Saint +Francis, wishing to encourage himself against fear, spoke thus to +the fire: "My brother, fire, noblest and usefullest of creatures, be +gentle to me now, because I have loved and will love you with the +love of Him who created you. Our Creator, too, Who created us both, +I implore so to temper your heat that I may have strength to bear +it." And having spoken, he signed the fire with the cross. + +With him, this was not merely a symbol. Children and saints can +believe two contrary things at the same time, but Saint Francis had +also a complete faith of his own which satisfied him wholly. All +nature was God's creature. The sun and fire, air and water, were +neither more nor less brothers and sisters than sparrows, wolves, +and bandits. Even "daemones sunt castalli Domini nostri"; the devils +are wardens of our Lord. If Saint Francis made any exception from +his univeral law of brotherhood it was that of the schoolmen, but it +was never expressed. Even in his passionate outbreak, in the +presence of Saint Dominic, at the great Chapter of his Order at +Sancta Maria de Portiuncula in 1218, he did not go quite to the +length of denying the brotherhood of schoolmen, although he placed +them far below the devils, and yet every word of this address seems +to sob with the anguish of his despair at the power of the school +anti-Christ:-- + +Quum beatus Franciscus esset in capitulo generali apud Sanctam +Mariam de Portiuncula ... et fuerunt ibi quinque millia fratres, +quamplures fratres sapientes et scientiati iverunt ad dominum +Ostiensem qui erat ibidem, et dixerunt ei: "Domine, volumus ut +suadetis fratri Francisco quod sequatur consilium fratrum sapientium +et permittat se interdum duci ab eis." Et allegabant regulam sancti +Benedicti, Augustini et Bernardi qui docent sic et sic vivere +ordinate. Quae omnia quum retulisset cardinalis beato Francisco per +modum admoni admonitionis, beatus Franciscus, nihil sibi respondens, +cepit ipsum per manum et duxit eum ad fratres congregatos in +capitulo, et sic locutus est fratribus in fervore et virtute Spirit +us sancti:-- + +"Fratres mei, fratres mei, Dominus vocavit me per viam simplicitatis +et humilitatis, et bane viam ostendit mini in veritate pro me et pro +illis qui volunt mini credere et imitari. Et ideo volo quod non +nominetis mihi aliquam regulam neque sancti Benedicti neque sancti +Augustini neque sancti Bernardi, neque aliquam viam et formam +vivendi praeter illam quae mihi a Domino est ostensa misericorditer +et donata. Et dixit mihi Dominus quod volebat me esse unum pauperem +et stultum idiotam [magnum fatuum] in hoc mundo et noluit nos ducere +per viam aliam quam per istam scientiam. Sed per vestram scientiam +et sapientiam Deus vos confundet et ego confido in castallis Domini +[idest dasmonibus] quod per ipsos puniet vos Deus et adhuc redibitis +ad vestrum statum cum vituperio vestro velitis nolitis." + +When Saint Francis was at the General Chapter held at Sancta maris +de Portiuncula ... and five thousand brothers were present, A number +of them who were schoolmen went to Cardinal Hugolino who was there, +and said to him: "My lord, we want you to persuade Brother Francis +to follow the council of the learned brothers, and sometimes let +himself be guided by them." And they suggested the rule of Saint +Benedict or Augustine or Bernard who require their congregations to +live so and so, by regulation. When the cardinal had repeated all +this to Saint Francis by way of counsel, Saint Francis, making no +answer, took him by the hand and led him to the brothers assembled +in Chapter, and in the fervour and virtue of the Holy Ghost, spoke +thus to the brothers: + +"My brothers, my brothers, God has called me by way of simplicity +and humility, and has shown me in verity this path for me and +those who want to believe and follow me; so I want you to talk of no +Rule to me, neither Saint Benedict nor Saint Augustine nor Saint +Bernard, nor any way or form of Life whatever except that which God +has mercifully pointed out and granted to me. And God said that he +wanted me to be a pauper [poverello] and an idiot--a great fool--in +this world, and would not lead us by any other path of science than +this. But by your science and syllogisms God will confound you, and +I trust in God's warders, the devils, that through them God shall +punish you, and you will yet come back to your proper station with +shame, whether you will or no." + +The narration continues: "Tunc cardinalis obstupuit valde et nihil +respondit. Et omnes fratres plurimum timuerunt." + +One feels that the reporter has not exaggerated a word; on the +contrary, he softened the scandal, because in his time the Cardinal +had gained his point, and Francis was dead. One can hear Francis +beginning with some restraint, and gradually carried away by passion +till he lost control of himself and his language: "'God told me, +with his own words, that he meant me to be a beggar and a great +fool, and would not have us on any other terms; and as for your +science, I trust in God's devils who will beat you out of it, as you +deserve.' And the Cardinal was utterly dumbfounded and answered +nothing; and all the brothers were scared to death." The Cardinal +Hugolino was a great schoolman, and Dominic was then founding the +famous order in which the greatest of all doctors, Albertus Magnus, +was about to begin his studies. One can imagine that the Cardinal +"obstupuit valde," and that Dominic felt shaken in his scheme of +school instruction. For a single instant, in the flash of Francis's +passion, the whole mass of five thousand monks in a state of semi- +ecstasy recoiled before the impassable gulf that opened between them +and the Church. + +No one was to blame--no one ever is to blame--because God wanted +contradictory things, and man tried to carry out, as he saw them, +God's trusts. The schoolmen saw their duty in one direction; Francis +saw his in another; and, apparently, when both lines had been +carried, after such fashion as might be, to their utmost results, +and five hundred years had been devoted to the effort, society +declared both to be failures. Perhaps both may some day be revived, +for the two paths seem to be the only roads that can exist, if man +starts by taking for granted that there is an object to be reached +at the end of his journey. The Church, embracing all mankind, had no +choice but to march with caution, seeking God by every possible +means of intellect and study. Francis, acting only for himself, +could throw caution aside and trust implicitly in God, like the +children who went on crusade. The two poles of social and political +philosophy seem necessarily to be organization or anarchy; man's +intellect or the forces of nature. Francis saw God in nature, if he +did not see nature in God; as the builders of Chartres saw the +Virgin in their apse. Francis held the simplest and most childlike +form of pantheism. He carried to its last point the mystical union +with God, and its necessary consequence of contempt and hatred for +human intellectual processes. Even Saint Bernard would have thought +his ideas wanting in that "mesure" which the French mind so much +prizes. At the same time we had best try, as innocently as may be, +to realize that no final judgment has yet been pronounced, either by +the Church or by society or by science, on either or any of these +points; and until mankind finally settles to a certainty where it +means to go, or whether it means to go anywhere,--what its object +is, or whether it has an object,--Saint Francis may still prove to +have been its ultimate expression. In that case, his famous chant-- +the "Cantico del Sole"--will be the last word of religion, as it was +probably its first. Here it is--too sincere for translation:-- + +CANTICO DEL SOLE + +... Laudato sie, misignore, con tucte le tue creature + spetialmente messor lo frate sole + lo quale iorno et allumini noi per loi + et ellu e bellu e radiante cum grande splendore + de te, altissimo, porta significatione. + + +Laudato si, misignore, per sora luna e le stelle + in celu lai formate clarite et pretiose et belle. + + +Laudato si, misignore, per frate vento + et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo + per lo quale a le tue creature dai sustentamento. + + + Laudato si, misignore, per sor aqua + la quale e multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta. + Laudato si, misignore, per frate focu + per lo quale enallumini la nocte + ed ello e bello et jocondo et robustoso et forte. + + + Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra matre terra + la quale ne sustenta et governa + et produce diversi fructi con coloriti flori et herba. + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra morte corporale + de la quale nullu homo vivente po skappare + guai acquelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali.... + + +The verses, if verses they are, have little or nothing in common +with the art of Saint Bernard or Adam of Saint-Victor. Whatever art +they have, granting that they have any, seems to go back to the +cave-dwellers and the age of stone. Compared with the naivete of the +"Cantico del Sole," the "Chanson de Roland" or the "Iliad" is a +triumph of perfect technique. The value is not in the verse. The +"Chant of the Sun" is another "Pons Seclorum"--or perhaps rather a +"Pons Sanctorum"--over which only children and saints can pass. It +is almost a paraphrase of the sermon to the birds. "Thank you, mi +signore, for messor brother sun, in especial, who is your symbol; +and for sister moon and the stars; and for brother wind and air and +sky; and for sister water; and for brother fire; and for mother +earth! We are all yours, mi signore! We are your children; your +household; your feudal family! but we never heard of a Church. We +are all varying forms of the same ultimate energy; shifting symbols +of the same absolute unity; but our only unity, beneath you, is +nature, not law! We thank you for no human institutions, even for +those established in your name; but, with all our hearts we thank +you for sister our mother Earth and its fruits and coloured +flowers!" + +Francis loved them all--the brothers and sisters--as intensely as a +child loves the taste and smell of a peach, and as simply; but +behind them remained one sister whom no one loved, and for whom, in +his first verses, Francis had rendered no thanks. Only on his death- +bed he added the lines of gratitude for "our sister death," the +long-sought, never-found sister of the schoolmen, who solved all +philosophy and merged multiplicity in unity. The solution was at +least simple; one must decide for one's self, according to one's +personal standards, whether or not it is more sympathetic than that +with which we have got lastly to grapple in the works of Saint +Thomas Aquinas. + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS + +Long before Saint Francis's death, in 1226, the French mystics had +exhausted their energies and the siecle had taken new heart. Society +could not remain forever balancing between thought and act. A few +gifted natures could absorb themselves in the absolute, but the rest +lived for the day, and needed shelter and safety. So the Church bent +again to its task, and bade the Spaniard Dominic arm new levies with +the best weapons of science, and flaunt the name of Aristotle on the +Church banners along with that of Saint Augustine. The year 1215, +which happened to be the date of Magna Charta and other easily fixed +events, like the birth of Saint Louis, may serve to mark the triumph +of the schools. The pointed arch revelled at Rheims and the Gothic +architects reached perfection at Amiens just as Francis died at +Assisi and Thomas was born at Aquino. The Franciscan Order itself +was swept with the stream that Francis tried to dam, and the great +Franciscan schoolman, Alexander Hales, in 1222, four years before +the death of Francis, joined the order and began lecturing as though +Francis himself had lived only to teach scholastic philosophy. + +The rival Dominican champion, Albertus Magnus, began his career a +little later, in 1228. Born of the noble Swabian family of +Bollstadt, in 1193, he drifted, like other schoolmen, to Paris, and +the Rue Maitre Albert, opposite Notre Dame, still records his fame +as a teacher there. Thence he passed to a school established by the +order at Cologne, where he was lecturing with great authority in +1243 when the general superior of the order brought up from Italy a +young man of the highest promise to be trained as his assistant. + +Thomas, the new pupil, was born under the shadow of Monte Cassino in +1226 or 1227. His father, the Count of Aquino, claimed descent from +the imperial line of Swabia; his mother, from the Norman princes of +Sicily; so that in him the two most energetic strains in Europe met. +His social rank was royal, and the order set the highest value on +it. He took the vows in 1243, and went north at once to help +Albertus at Cologne. In 1245, the order sent Albertus back to Paris, +and Thomas with him. There he remained till 1248 when he was ordered +to Cologne as assistant lecturer, and only four years afterwards, at +twenty-five years old, he was made full professor at Paris. His +industry and activity never rested till his death in 1274, not yet +fifty years old, when he bequeathed to the Church a mass of +manuscript that tourists will never know enough to estimate except +by weight. His complete works, repeatedly printed, fill between +twenty and thirty quarto volumes. For so famous a doctor, this is +almost meagre. Unfortunately his greatest work, the "Summa +Theologiae," is unfinished--like Beauvais Cathedral. + +Perhaps Thomas's success was partly due to his memory which is said +to have been phenomenal; for, in an age when cyclopaedias were +unknown, a cyclopaedic memory must have counted for half the battle +in these scholastic disputes where authority could be met only by +authority; but in this case, memory was supported by mind. Outwardly +Thomas was heavy and slow in manner, if it is true that his +companions called him "the big dumb ox of Sicily"; and in +fashionable or court circles he did not enjoy reputation for acute +sense of humour. Saint Louis's household offers a picture not wholly +clerical, least of all among the King's brothers and sons; and +perhaps the dinner-table was not much more used then than now to +abrupt interjections of theology into the talk about hunting and +hounds; but however it happened, Thomas one day surprised the +company by solemnly announcing--"I have a decisive argument against +the Manicheans!" No wit or humour could be more to the point-- +between two saints that were to be--than a decisive argument against +enemies of Christ, and one greatly regrets that the rest of the +conversation was not reported, unless, indeed, it is somewhere in +the twenty-eight quarto volumes; but it probably lacked humour for +courtiers. + +The twenty-eight quarto volumes must be closed books for us. None +but Dominicans have a right to interpret them. No Franciscan--or +even Jesuit--understands Saint Thomas exactly or explains him with +authority. For summer tourists to handle these intricate problems in +a theological spirit would be altogether absurd; but, for us, these +great theologians were also architects who undertook to build a +Church Intellectual, corresponding bit by bit to the Church +Administrative, both expressing--and expressed by--the Church +Architectural. Alexander Hales, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, +Duns Scotus, and the rest, were artists; and if Saint Thomas happens +to stand at their head as type, it is not because we choose him or +understand him better than his rivals, but because his order chose +him rather than his master Albert, to impose as authority on the +Church; and because Pope John XXII canonized him on the ground that +his decisions were miracles; and because the Council of Trent placed +his "Summa" among the sacred books on their table; and because +Innocent VI said that his doctrine alone was sure; and finally, +because Leo XIII very lately made a point of declaring that, on the +wings of Saint Thomas's genius, human reason has reached the most +sublime height it can probably ever attain. + +Although the Franciscans, and, later, the Jesuits, have not always +shown as much admiration as the Dominicans for the genius of Saint +Thomas, and the mystics have never shown any admiration whatever for +the philosophy of the schools, the authority of Leo XIII is final, +at least on one point and the only one that concerns us. Saint +Thomas is still alive and overshadows as many schools as he ever +did; at all events, as many as the Church maintains. He has outlived +Descartes and Leibnitz and a dozen other schools of philosophy more +or less serious in their day. He has mostly outlived Hume, Voltaire, +and the militant sceptics. His method is typical and classic; his +sentences, when interpreted by the Church, seem, even to an +untrained mind, intelligible and consistent; his Church Intellectual +remains practically unchanged, and, like the Cathedral of Beauvais, +erect, although the storms of six or seven centuries have +prostrated, over and over again, every other social or political or +juristic shelter. Compared with it, all modern systems are complex +and chaotic, crowded with self-contradictions, anomalies, +impracticable functions and outworn inheritances; but beyond all +their practical shortcomings is their fragmentary character. An +economic civilization troubles itself about the universe much as a +hive of honey-bees troubles about the ocean, only as a region to be +avoided. The hive of Saint Thomas sheltered God and man, mind and +matter, the universe and the atom, the one and the multiple, within +the walls of an harmonious home. + +Theologians, like architects, were supposed to receive their Church +complete in all its lines; they were modern judges who interpreted +the laws but never invented it. Saint Thomas merely selected between +disputed opinions, but he allowed himself to wander very far afield, +indeed, in search of opinions to dispute. The field embraced all +that existed, or might have existed, or could never exist. The +immense structure rested on Aristotle and Saint Augustine at the +last, but as a work of art it stood alone, like Rheims or Amiens +Cathedral, as though it had no antecedents. Then, although, like +Rheims, its style was never meant to suit modern housekeeping and is +ill-seen by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, it reveals itself in its great +mass and intelligence as a work of extraordinary genius; a system as +admirably proportioned as any cathedral and as complete; a success +not universal either in art or science. + +Saint Thomas's architecture, like any other work of art, is best +studied by itself as though he created it outright; otherwise a +tourist would never get beyond its threshold. Beginning with the +foundation which is God and God's active presence in His Church, +Thomas next built God into the walls and towers of His Church, in +the Trinity and its creation of mind and matter in time and space; +then finally he filled the Church by uniting mind and matter in man, +or man's soul, giving to humanity a free will that rose, like the +fleche, to heaven. The foundation--the structure--the congregation-- +are enough for students of art; his ideas of law, ethics, and +politics; his vocabulary, his syllogisms, his arrangement are, like +the drawings of Villard de Honnecourt's sketch-book, curious but not +vital. After the eleventh-century Romanesque Church of Saint Michael +came the twelfth-century Transition Church of the Virgin, and all +merged and ended at last in the thirteenth-century Gothic Cathedral +of the Trinity. One wants to see the end. + +The foundation of the Christian Church should be--as the simple +deist might suppose--always the same, but Saint Thomas knew better. +His foundation was Norman, not French; it spoke the practical +architect who knew the mathematics of his art, and who saw that the +foundation laid by Saint Bernard, Saint Victor, Saint Francis, the +whole mystical, semi-mystical, Cartesian, Spinozan foundation, past +or future, could not bear the weight of the structure to be put on +it. Thomas began by sweeping the ground clear of them. God must be a +concrete thing, not a human thought. God must be proved by the +senses like any other concrete thing; "nihil est in intellectu quin +prius fuerit in sensu"; even if Aristotle had not affirmed the law, +Thomas would have discovered it. He admitted at once that God could +not be taken for granted. + +The admission, as every boy-student of the Latin Quarter knew, was +exceedingly bold and dangerous. The greatest logicians commonly +shrank from proving unity by multiplicity. Thomas was one of the +greatest logicians that ever lived; the question had always been at +the bottom of theology; he deliberately challenged what every one +knew to be an extreme peril. If his foundation failed, his Church +fell. Many critics have thought that he saw dangers four hundred +years ahead. The time came, about 1650-1700, when Descartes, +deserting Saint Thomas, started afresh with the idea of God as a +concept, and at once found himself charged with a deity that +contained the universe; nor did the Cartesians--until Spinoza made +it clear--seem able or willing to see that the Church could not +accept this deity because the Church required a God who caused the +universe. The two deities destroyed each other. One was passive; the +other active. Thomas warned Descartes of a logical quicksand which +must necessarily swallow up any Church, and which Spinoza explored +to the bottom. Thomas said truly that every true cause must be +proved as a cause, not merely as a sequence; otherwise they must end +in a universal energy or substance without causality--a source. + +Whatever God might be to others, to His Church he could not be a +sequence or a source. That point had been admitted by William of +Champeaux, and made the division between Christians and infidels. On +the other hand, if God must be proved as a true cause in order to +warrant the Church or the State in requiring men to worship Him as +Creator, the student became the more curious--if a churchman, the +more anxious--to be assured that Thomas succeeded in his proof, +especially since he did not satisfy Descartes and still less Pascal. +That the mystics should be dissatisfied was natural enough, since +they were committed to the contrary view, but that Descartes should +desert was a serious blow which threw the French Church into +consternation from which it never quite recovered. + +"I see motion," said Thomas: "I infer a motor!" This reasoning, +which may be fifty thousand years old, is as strong as ever it was; +stronger than some more modern inferences of science; but the +average mechanic stated it differently. "I see motion," he admitted: +"I infer energy. I see motion everywhere; I infer energy +everywhere." Saint Thomas barred this door to materialism by adding: +"I see motion; I cannot infer an infinite series of motors: I can +only infer, somewhere at the end of the series, an intelligent, +fixed motor." The average modern mechanic might not dissent but +would certainly hesitate. "No doubt!" he might say; "we can conduct +our works as well on that as on any other theory, or as we could on +no theory at all; but, if you offer it as proof, we can only say +that we have not yet reduced all motion to one source or all +energies to one law, much less to one act of creation, although we +have tried our best." The result of some centuries of experiment +tended to raise rather than silence doubt, although, even in his own +day, Thomas would have been scandalized beyond the resources of his +Latin had Saint Bonaventure met him at Saint Louis's dinner-table +and complimented him, in the King's hearing, on having proved, +beyond all Franciscan cavils, that the Church Intellectual had +necessarily but one first cause and creator--himself. + +The Church Intellectual, like the Church Architectural, implied not +one architect, but myriads, and not one fixed, intelligent architect +at the end of the series, but a vanishing vista without a beginning +at any definite moment; and if Thomas pressed his argument, the +twentieth-century mechanic who should attend his conferences at the +Sorbonne would be apt to say so. "What is the use of trying to argue +me into it? Your inference may be sound logic, but is not proof. +Actually we know less about it than you did. All we know is the +thing we handle, and we cannot handle your fixed, intelligent prime +motor. To your old ideas of form we have added what we call force, +and we are rather further than ever from reducing the complex to +unity. In fact, if you are aiming to convince me, I will tell you +flatly that I know only the multiple, and have no use for unity at +all." + +In the thirteenth century men did not depend so much as now on +actual experiment, but the nominalist said in effect the same thing. +Unity to him was a pure concept, and any one who thought it real +would believe that a triangle was alive and could walk on its legs. +Without proving unity, philosophers saw no way to prove God. They +could only fall back on an attempt to prove that the concept of +unity proved itself, and this phantasm drove the Cartesians to drop +Thomas's argument and assert that "the mere fact of having within us +the idea of a thing more perfect than ourselves, proves the real +existence of that thing." Four hundred years earlier Saint Thomas +had replied in advance that Descartes wanted to prove altogether too +much, and Spinoza showed mathematically that Saint Thomas had been +in the right. The finest religious mind of the time--Pascal-- +admitted it and gave up the struggle, like the mystics of Saint- +Victor. + +Thus some of the greatest priests and professors of the Church, +including Duns Scotus himself, seemed not wholly satisfied that +Thomas's proof was complete, but most of them admitted that it was +the safest among possible foundations, and that it showed, as +architecture, the Norman temper of courage and caution. The Norman +was ready to run great risks, but he would rather grasp too little +than too much; he narrowed the spacing of his piers rather than +spread them too wide for safe vaulting. Between Norman blood and +Breton blood was a singular gap, as Renan and every other Breton has +delighted to point out. Both Abelard and Descartes were Breton. The +Breton seized more than he could hold; the Norman took less than he +would have liked. + +God, then, is proved. What the schools called form, what science +calls energy, and what the intermediate period called the evidence +of design, made the foundation of Saint Thomas's cathedral. God is +an intelligent, fixed prime motor--not a concept, or proved by +concepts;--a concrete fact, proved by the senses of sight and touch. +On that foundation Thomas built. The walls and vaults of his Church +were more complex than the foundation; especially the towers were +troublesome. Dogma, the vital purpose of the Church, required +support. The most weighty dogma, the central tower of the Norman +cathedral, was the Trinity, and between the Breton solution which +was too heavy, and the French solution which was too light, the +Norman Thomas found a way. Remembering how vehemently the French +Church, under Saint Bernard, had protected the Trinity from all +interference whatever, one turns anxiously to see what Thomas said +about it; and unless one misunderstands him,--as is very likely, +indeed, to be the case, since no one may even profess to understand +the Trinity,--Thomas treated it as simply as he could. "God, being +conscious of Himself, thinks Himself; his thought is Himself, his +own reflection in the Verb--the so-called Son." "Est in Deo +intelligente seipsum Verbum Dei quasi Deus intellectus." The idea +was not new, and as ideas went it was hardly a mystery; but the next +step was naif:--God, as a double consciousness, loves Himself, and +realizes Himself in the Holy Ghost. The third side of the triangle +is love or grace. + +Many theologians have found fault with this treatment of the +subject, which seemed open to every objection that had been made to +Abelard, Gilbert de la Poree, or a thousand other logicians. They +commonly asked why Thomas stopped the Deity's self-realizations at +love, or inside the triangle, since these realizations were real, +not symbolic, and the square was at least as real as any other +combination of line. Thomas replied that knowledge and will--the +Verb and the Holy Ghost--were alone essential. The reply did not +suit every one, even among doctors, but since Saint Thomas rested on +this simple assertion, it is no concern of ours to argue the +theology. Only as art, one can afford to say that the form is more +architectural than religious; it would surely have been suspicious +to Saint Bernard. Mystery there was none, and logic little. The +concept of the Holy Ghost was childlike; for a pupil of Aristotle it +was inadmissible, since it led to nothing and helped no step toward +the universe. + +Admitting, if necessary, the criticism, Thomas need not admit the +blame, if blame there were. Every theologian was obliged to stop the +pursuit of logic by force, before it dragged him into paganism and +pantheism. Theology begins with the universal,--God,--who must be a +reality, not a symbol; but it is forced to limit the process of +God's realizations somewhere, or the priest soon becomes a +worshipper of God in sticks and stones. Theologists had commonly +chosen, from time immemorial, to stop at the Trinity; within the +triangle they were wholly realist; but they could not admit that God +went on to realize Himself in the square and circle, or that the +third member of the Trinity contained multiplicity, because the +Trinity was a restless weight on the Church piers, which, like the +central tower, constantly tended to fall, and needed to be +lightened. Thomas gave it the lightest form possible, and there +fixed it. + +Then came his great tour-de-force, the vaulting of his broad nave; +and, if ignorance is allowed an opinion, even a lost soul may admire +the grand simplicity of Thomas's scheme. He swept away the +horizontal lines altogether, leaving them barely as a part of +decoration. The whole weight of his arches fell, as in the latest +Gothic, where the eye sees nothing to break the sheer spring of the +nervures, from the rosette on the keystone a hundred feet above down +to the church floor. In Thomas's creation nothing intervened between +God and his world; secondary causes become ornaments; only two +forces, God and man, stood in the Church. + +The chapter of Creation is so serious, and Thomas's creation, like +every other, is open to so much debate, that no student can allow +another to explain it; and certainly no man whatever, either saint +or sceptic, can ever yet have understood Creation aright unless +divinely inspired; but whatever Thomas's theory was as he meant it, +he seems to be understood as holding that every created individual-- +animal, vegetable, or mineral--was a special, divine act. Whatever +has form is created, and whatever is created takes form directly +from the will of God, which is also his act. The intermediate +universals--the secondary causes--vanish as causes; they are, at +most, sequences or relations; all merge in one universal act of +will; instantaneous, infinite, eternal. + +Saint Thomas saw God, much as Milton saw him, resplendent in + + That glorious form, that light unsufferable, + And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty, + Wherewith he wont, at Heaven's high council-table, + To sit the midst of Trinal Unity; + + +except that, in Thomas's thought, the council-table was a work- +table, because God did not take counsel; He was an act. The Trinity +was an infinite possibility of will; nothing within but + + The baby image of the giant mass + Of things to come at large. + + +Neither time nor space, neither matter nor mind, not even force +existed, nor could any intelligence conceive how, even though they +should exist, they could be united in the lowest association. A +crystal was as miraculous as Socrates. Only abstract force, or what +the schoolmen called form, existed undeveloped from eternity, like +the abstract line in mathematics. + +Fifty or a hundred years before Saint Thomas settled the Church +dogma, a monk of Citeaux or some other abbey, a certain Alain of +Lille, had written a Latin poem, as abstruse an allegory as the +best, which had the merit of painting the scene of man's creation as +far as concerned the mechanical process much as Thomas seems to have +seen it. M. Haureau has printed an extract (vol. I, p. 352). Alain +conceded to the weakness of human thought, that God was working in +time and space, or rather on His throne in heaven, when nature, +proposing to create a new and improved man, sent Reason and Prudence +up to ask Him for a soul to fit the new body. Having passed through +various adventures and much scholastic instruction, the messenger +Prudence arrived, after having dropped her dangerous friend Reason +by the way. The request was respectfully presented to God, and +favourably received. God promised the soul, and at once sent His +servant Noys--Thought--to the storehouse of ideas, to choose it:-- + +Ipse Deus rem prosequitur, producit in actum + Quod pepigit. Vocat ergo Noym quae praepaert illi + Numinis exemplar, humanae mentis Idaeam, + Ad cujus formam formetur spiritus omni + Munere virtutum dives, qui, nube caducae + Carnis odumbratus veletur corporis umbra. + Tunc Noys ad regis praeceptum singula rerum + + +Vestigans exempla, novam perquirit Idaeam. + Inter tot species, speciem vix invenit illam + Quam petit; offertur tandem quaesita petenti +. Hanc formam Noys ipsa Deo praesentat ut ejus + Formet ad exemplar animam. Tunc ille sigillum + Sumit, ad ipsius formae vestigia formam + Dans animae, vultum qualem deposcit Idaea + Imprimit exemplo; totas usurpat imago + Exemplaris opes, loquiturque figura sigillum. + + +God Himself pursues the task, and sets in act + What He promised. So He calls Noys to seek + A copy of His will, Idea of the human mind, + To whose form the spirit should be shaped, + Rich in every virtue, which, veiled in garb + Of frail flesh, is to be hidden in a shade of body, + Then Noys, at the King's order, turning one by one + + +Each sample, seeks the new Idea. + Among so many images she hardly finds that + Which she seeks; at last the sought one appears. + This form Noys herself brings to God for Him + To form a soul to its pattern. He takes the seal, + And gives form to the soul after the model + Of the form itself, stamping on the sample + The figure such as the Idea requires. The seal + Covers the whole field, and the impression expresses the stamp. + + +The translation is probably full of mistakes; indeed, one is +permitted to doubt whether Alain himself accurately understood the +process; but in substance he meant that God contained a storehouse +of ideas, and stamped each creation with one of these forms. The +poets used a variety of figures to help out their logic, but that of +the potter and his pot was one of the most common. Omar Khayyam was +using it at the same time with Alain of Lille, but with a +difference: for his pot seems to have been matter alone, and his +soul was the wine it received from God; while Alain's soul seems to +have been the form and not the contents of the pot. + +The figure matters little. In any case God's act was the union of +mind with matter by the same act or will which created both. No +intermediate cause or condition intervened; no secondary influence +had anything whatever to do with the result. Time had nothing to do +with it. Every individual that has existed or shall exist was +created by the same instantaneous act, for all time. "When the +question regards the universal agent who produces beings and time, +we cannot consider him as acting now and before, according to the +succession of time." God emanated time, force, matter, mind, as He +might emanate gravitation, not as a part of His substance but as an +energy of His will, and maintains them in their activity by the same +act, not by a new one. Every individual is a part of the direct act; +not a secondary outcome. The soul has no father or mother. Of all +errors one of the most serious is to suppose that the soul descends +by generation. "Having life and action of its own, it subsists +without the body; ... it must therefore be produced directly, and +since it is not a material substance, it cannot be produced by way +of generation; it must necessarily be created by God. Consequently +to suppose that the intelligence [or intelligent soul] is the effect +of generation is to suppose that it is not a pure and simple +substance, but corruptible like the body. It is therefore heresy to +say that this soul is transmitted by generation." What is true of +the soul should be true of all other form, since no form is a +material substance. The utmost possible relation between any two +individuals is that God may have used the same stamp or mould for a +series of creations, and especially for the less spiritual: "God is +the first model for all things. One may also say that, among His +creatures some serve as types or models for others because there are +some which are made in the image of others"; but generation means +sequence, not cause. The only true cause is God. Creation is His +sole act, in which no second cause can share." Creation is more +perfect and loftier than generation, because it aims at producing +the whole substance of the being, though it starts from absolute +nothing." + +Thomas Aquinas, when he pleased, was singularly lucid, and on this +point he was particularly positive. The architect insisted on the +controlling idea of his structure. The Church was God, and its lines +excluded interference. God and the Church embraced all the +converging lines of the universe, and the universe showed none but +lines that converged. Between God and man, nothing whatever +intervened. The individual was a compound of form, or soul, and +matter; but both were always created together, by the same act, out +of nothing. "Simpliciter fatendum est animas simul cum corporibus +creari et infundi." It must be distinctly understood that souls were +not created before bodies, but that they were created at the same +time as the bodies they animate. Nothing whatever preceded this +union of two substances which did not exist: "Creatio est productio +alicujus rei secundum suam totam substantiam, nullo praesupposito, +quod sit vel increatum vel ab aliquo creatum." Language can go no +further in exclusion of every possible preceding, secondary, or +subsequent cause, "Productio universalis entis a Deo non est motus +nec mutatio, sed est quaedam simplex emanatio." The whole universe +is, so to speak, a simple emanation from God. + +The famous junction, then, is made!--that celebrated fusion of the +universal with the individual, of unity with multiplicity, of God +and nature, which had broken the neck of every philosophy ever +invented; which had ruined William of Champeaux and was to ruin +Descartes; this evolution of the finite from the infinite was +accomplished. The supreme triumph was as easily effected by Thomas +Aquinas as it was to be again effected, four hundred years later, by +Spinoza. He had merely to assert the fact: "It is so! it cannot be +otherwise!" "For the thousandth and hundred-thousandth time;--what +is the use of discussing this prime motor, this Spinozan substance, +any longer? We know it is there!" that--as Professor Haeckel very +justly repeats for the millionth time--is enough. + +One point, however, remained undetermined. The Prime Motor and His +action stood fixed, and no one wished to disturb Him; but this was +not the point that had disturbed William of Champeaux. Abelard's +question still remained to be answered. How did Socrates differ from +Plato--Judas from John--Thomas Aquinas from Professor Haeckel? Were +they, in fact, two, or one? What made an individual? What was God's +centimetre measure? The abstract form or soul which existed as a +possibility in God, from all time,--was it one or many? To the +Church, this issue overshadowed all else, for, if humanity was one +and not multiple, the Church, which dealt only with individuals, was +lost. To the schools, also, the issue was vital, for, if the soul or +form was already multiple from the first, unity was lost; the +ultimate substance and prime motor itself became multiple; the whole +issue was reopened. + +To the consternation of the Church, and even of his own order, +Thomas, following closely his masters, Albert and Aristotle, +asserted that the soul was measured by matter. "Division occurs in +substances in ratio of quantity, as Aristotle says in his 'Physics.' +And so dimensional quantity is a principle of individuation." The +soul is a fluid absorbed by matter in proportion to the absorptive +power of the matter. The soul is an energy existing in matter +proportionately to the dimensional quantity of the matter. The soul +is a wine, greater or less in quantity according to the size of the +cup. In our report of the great debate of 1110, between Champeaux +and Abelard, we have seen William persistently tempting Abelard to +fall into this admission that matter made the man;--that the +universal equilateral triangle became an individual if it were +shaped in metal, the matter giving it reality which mere form could +not give; and Abelard evading the issue as though his life depended +on it. In fact, had Abelard dared to follow Aristotle into what +looked like an admission that Socrates and Plato were identical as +form and differed only in weight, his life might have been the +forfeit. How Saint Thomas escaped is a question closely connected +with the same inquiry about Saint Francis of Assisi. A Church which +embraced, with equal sympathy, and within a hundred years, the +Virgin, Saint Bernard, William of Champeaux and the School of Saint- +Victor, Peter the Venerable, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, +Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure, was more liberal than +any modern State can afford to be. Radical contradictions the State +may perhaps tolerate, though hardly, but never embrace or profess. +Such elasticity long ago vanished from human thought. + +Yet only Dominicans believe that the Church adopted this law of +individualization, or even assented to it. If M. Jourdain is right, +Thomas was quickly obliged to give it another form:--that, though +all souls belonged to the same species, they differed in their +aptitudes for uniting with particular bodies. "This soul is +commensurate with this body, and not with that other one." The idea +is double; for either the souls individualized themselves, and +Thomas abandoned his doctrine of their instantaneous creation, with +the bodies, out of nothing; or God individualized them in the act of +creation, and matter had nothing to do with it. The difficulty is no +concern of ours, but the great scholars who took upon themselves to +explain it made it worse, until at last one gathers only that Saint +Thomas held one of three views: either the soul of humanity was +individualized by God, or it individualized itself, or it was +divided by ratio of quantity, that is, by matter. This amounts to +saying that one knows nothing about it, which we knew before and may +admit with calmness; but Thomas Aquinas was not so happily placed, +between the Church and the schools. Humanity had a form common to +itself, which made it what it was. By some means this form was +associated with matter; in fact, matter was only known as associated +with form. If, then, God, by an instantaneous act, created matter +and gave it form according to the dimensions of the matter, innocent +ignorance might infer that there was, in the act of God, one world- +soul and one world-matter, which He united in different proportions +to make men and things. Such a doctrine was fatal to the Church. No +greater heresy could be charged against the worst Arab or Jew, and +Thomas was so well aware of his danger that he recoiled from it with +a vehemence not at all in keeping with his supposed phlegm. With +feverish eagerness to get clear of such companions, he denied and +denounced, in all companies, in season and out of season, the idea +that intellect was one and the same for all men, differing only with +the quantity of matter it accompanied. He challenged the adherent of +such a doctrine to battle; "let him take the pen if he dares!" No +one dared, seeing that even Jews enjoyed a share of common sense and +had seen some of their friends burn at the stake not very long +before for such opinions, not even openly maintained; while +uneducated people, who are perhaps incapable of receiving intellect +at all, but for whose instruction and salvation the great work of +Saint Thomas and his scholars must chiefly exist, cannot do battle +because they cannot understand Thomas's doctrine of matter and form +which to them seems frank pantheism. + +So it appeared to Duns Scotus also, if one may assert in the Doctor +Subtilis any opinion without qualification. Duns began his career +only about 1300, after Thomas's death, and stands, therefore, beyond +our horizon; but he is still the pride of the Franciscan Order and +stands second in authority to the great Dominican alone. In denying +Thomas's doctrine that matter individualizes mind, Duns laid himself +open to the worse charge of investing matter with a certain +embryonic, independent, shadowy soul of its own. Scot's system, +compared with that of Thomas, tended toward liberty. Scot held that +the excess of power in Thomas's prime motor neutralized the power of +his secondary causes, so that these appeared altogether superfluous. +This is a point that ought to be left to the Church to decide, but +there can be no harm in quoting, on the other hand, the authority of +some of Scot's critics within the Church, who have thought that his +doctrine tended to deify matter and to keep open the road to +Spinoza. Narrow and dangerous was the border-line always between +pantheism and materialism, and the chief interest of the schools was +in finding fault with each other's paths. + +The opinions in themselves need not disturb us, although the +question is as open to dispute as ever it was and perhaps as much +disputed; but the turn of Thomas's mind is worth study. A century or +two later, his passion to be reasonable, scientific, architectural +would have brought him within range of the Inquisition. Francis of +Assisi was not more archaic and cave-dweller than Thomas of Aquino +was modern and scientific. In his effort to be logical he forced his +Deity to be as logical as himself, which hardly suited Omnipotence. +He hewed the Church dogmas into shape as though they were rough +stones. About no dogma could mankind feel interest more acute than +about that of immortality, which seemed to be the single point +vitally necessary for any Church to prove and define as clearly as +light itself. Thomas trimmed down the soul to half its legitimate +claims as an immortal being by insisting that God created it from +nothing in the same act or will by which He created the body and +united the two in time and space. The soul existed as form for the +body, and had no previous existence. Logic seemed to require that +when the body died and dissolved, after the union which had lasted, +at most, only an instant or two of eternity, the soul, which fitted +that body and no other, should dissolve with it. In that case the +Church dissolved, too, since it had no reason for existence except +the soul. Thomas met the difficulty by suggesting that the body's +form might take permanence from the matter to which it gave form. +That matter should individualize mind was itself a violent wrench of +logic, but that it should also give permanence--the one quality it +did not possess--to this individual mind seemed to many learned +doctors a scandal. Perhaps Thomas meant to leave the responsibility +on the Church, where it belonged as a matter not of logic but of +revealed truth. At all events, this treatment of mind and matter +brought him into trouble which few modern logicians would suspect. + +The human soul having become a person by contact with matter, and +having gained eternal personality by the momentary union, was +finished, and remains to this day for practical purposes unchanged; +but the angels and devils, a world of realities then more real than +man, were never united with matter, and therefore could not be +persons. Thomas admitted and insisted that the angels, being +immaterial,--neither clothed in matter, nor stamped on it, nor mixed +with it,--were universals; that is, each was a species in himself, a +class, or perhaps what would be now called an energy, with no other +individuality than he gave himself. + +The idea seems to modern science reasonable enough. Science has to +deal, for example, with scores of chemical energies which it knows +little about except that they always seem to be constant to the same +conditions; but every one knows that in the particular relation of +mind to matter the battle is as furious as ever. The soul has always +refused to live in peace with the body. The angels, too, were always +in rebellion. They insisted on personality, and the devils even more +obstinately than the angels. The dispute was--and is--far from +trifling. Mind would rather ignore matter altogether. In the +thirteenth century mind did, indeed, admit that matter was +something,--which it quite refuses to admit in the twentieth,--but +treated it as a nuisance to be abated. To the pure in spirit one +argued in vain that spirit must compromise; that nature compromised; +that God compromised; that man himself was nothing but a somewhat +clumsy compromise. No argument served. Mind insisted on absolute +despotism. Schoolmen as well as mystics would not believe that +matter was what it seemed,--if, indeed, it existed;--unsubstantial, +shifty, shadowy; changing with incredible swiftness into dust, gas, +flame; vanishing in mysterious lines of force into space beyond hope +of recovery; whirled about in eternity and infinity by that mind, +form, energy, or thought which guides and rules and tyrannizes and +is the universe. The Church wanted to be pure spirit; she regarded +matter with antipathy as something foul, to be held at arms' length +lest it should stain and corrupt the soul; the most she would +willingly admit was that mind and matter might travel side by side, +like a doubleheaded comet, on parallel lines that never met, with a +preestablished harmony that existed only in the prime motor. + +Thomas and his master Albert were almost alone in imposing on the +Church the compromise so necessary for its equilibrium. The balance +of matter against mind was the same necessity in the Church +Intellectual as the balance of thrusts in the arch of the Gothic +cathedral. Nowhere did Thomas show his architectural obstinacy quite +so plainly as in thus taking matter under his protection. Nothing +would induce him to compromise with the angels. He insisted on +keeping man wholly apart, as a complex of energies in which matter +shared equally with mind. The Church must rest firmly on both. The +angels differed from other beings below them' precisely because they +were immaterial and impersonal. Such rigid logic outraged the +spiritual Church. + +Perhaps Thomas's sudden death in 1274 alone saved him from the fate +of Abelard, but it did not save his doctrine. Two years afterwards, +in 1276, the French and English churches combined to condemn it. +Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, presided over the French Synod; +Robert Kilwardeby, of the Dominican Order, Archbishop of Canterbury, +presided over the Council at Oxford. The synods were composed of +schoolmen as well as churchmen, and seem to have been the result of +a serious struggle for power between the Dominican and Franciscan +Orders. Apparently the Church compromised between them by condemning +the errors of both. Some of these errors, springing from Alexander +Hales and his Franciscan schools, were in effect the foundation of +another Church. Some were expressly charged against Brother Thomas. +"Contra fratrem Thomam" the councils forbade teaching that--"quia +intelligentiae non habent materiam, Deus non potest plures ejusdem +speciei facere; et quod materia non est in angelis"; further, the +councils struck at the vital centre of Thomas's system--"quod Deus +non potest individua multiplicare sub una specie sine materia"; and +again in its broadest form,--"quod formae non accipiunt divisionem +nisi secundam materiam." These condemnations made a great stir. Old +Albertus Magnus, who was the real victim of attack, fought for +himself and for Thomas. After a long and earnest effort, the +Thomists rooted out opposition in the order, and carried their +campaign to Rome. After fifty years of struggle, by use of every +method known in Church politics, the Dominican Order, in 1323, +caused John XXII to canonize Thomas and in effect affirm his +doctrine. + +The story shows how modern, how heterodox, how material, how +altogether new and revolutionary the system of Saint Thomas seemed +at first even in the schools; but that was the affair of the Church +and a matter of pure theology. We study only his art. Step by step, +stone by stone, we see him build his church-building like a +stonemason, "with the care that the twelfth-century architects put +into" their work, as Viollet-le-Duc saw some similar architect at +Rouen, building the tower of Saint-Romain: "He has thrown over his +work the grace and finesse, the study of detail, the sobriety in +projections, the perfect harmony," which belongs to his school, and +yet he was rigidly structural and Norman. The foundation showed it; +the elevation, which is God, developed it; the vaulting, with its +balance of thrusts in mind and matter, proved it; but he had still +the hardest task in art, to model man. + +The cathedral, then, is built, and God is built into it, but, thus +far, God is there alone, filling it all, and maintains the +equilibrium by balancing created matter separately against created +mind. The proportions of the building are superb; nothing so lofty, +so large in treatment, so true in scale, so eloquent of multiplicity +in unity, has ever been conceived elsewhere; but it was the virtue +or the fault of superb structures like Bourges and Amiens and the +Church universal that they seemed to need man more than man needed +them; they were made for crowds, for thousands and tens of thousands +of human beings; for the whole human race, on its knees, hungry for +pardon and love. Chartres needed no crowd, for it was meant as a +palace of the Virgin, and the Virgin filled it wholly; but the +Trinity made their church for no other purpose than to accommodate +man, and made man for no other purpose than to fill their church; if +man failed to fill it, the church and the Trinity seemed equally +failures. Empty, Bourges and Beauvais are cold; hardly as religious +as a wayside cross; and yet, even empty, they are perhaps more +religious than when filled with cattle and machines. Saint Thomas +needed to fill his Church with real men, and although he had created +his own God for that special purpose, the task was, as every boy +knew by heart, the most difficult that Omnipotence had dealt with. + +God, as Descartes justly said, we know! but what is man? The schools +answered: Man is a rational animal! So was apparently a dog, or a +bee, or a beaver, none of which seemed to need churches. Modern +science, with infinite effort, has discovered and announced that man +is a bewildering complex of energies, which helps little to explain +his relations with the ultimate substance or energy or prime motor +whose existence both science and schoolmen admit; which science +studies in laboratories and religion worships in churches. The man +whom God created to fill his Church, must be an energy independent +of God; otherwise God filled his own Church with his own energy. +Thus far, the God of Saint Thomas was alone in His Church. The +beings He had created out of nothing--Omar's pipkins of clay and +shape--stood against the walls, waiting to receive the wine of life, +a life of their own. + +Of that life, energy, will, or wine,--whatever the poets or +professors called it,--God was the only cause, as He was also the +immediate cause, and support. Thomas was emphatic on that point. God +is the cause of energy as the sun is the cause of colour: "prout sol +dicitur causa manifestationis coloris." He not only gives forms to +his pipkins, or energies to his agents, but He also maintains those +forms in being: "dat formas creaturis agentibus et eas tenet in +esse." He acts directly, not through secondary causes, on everything +and every one: "Deus in omnibus intime operatur." If, for an +instant, God's action, which is also His will, were to stop, the +universe would not merely fall to pieces, but would vanish, and must +then be created anew from nothing: "Quia non habet radicem in aere, +statim cessat lumen, cessante actione solis. Sic autem se habet +omnis creatura ad Deum sicut aer ad solem illuminantem." God +radiates energy as the sun radiates light, and "the whole fabric of +nature would return to nothing" if that radiation ceased even for an +instant. Everything is created by one instantaneous, eternal, +universal act of will, and by the same act is maintained in being. + +Where, then,--in what mysterious cave outside of creation,--could +man, and his free will, and his private world of responsibilities +and duties, lie hidden? Unless man was a free agent in a world of +his own beyond constraint, the Church was a fraud, and it helped +little to add that the State was another. If God was the sole and +immediate cause and support of everything in His creation, God was +also the cause of its defects, and could not--being Justice and +Goodness in essence--hold man responsible for His own omissions. +Still less could the State or Church do it in His name. + +Whatever truth lies in the charge that the schools discussed futile +questions by faulty methods, one cannot decently deny that in this +case the question was practical and the method vital. Theist or +atheist, monist or anarchist must all admit that society and science +are equally interested with theology in deciding whether the +universe is one or many, a harmony or a discord. The Church and +State asserted that it was a harmony, and that they were its +representatives. They say so still. Their claim led to singular but +unavoidable conclusions, with which society has struggled for seven +hundred years, and is still struggling. + +Freedom could not exist in nature, or even in God, after the single, +unalterable act or will which created. The only possible free will +was that of God before the act. Abelard with his rigid logic averred +that God had no freedom; being Himself whatever is most perfect, He +produced necessarily the most perfect possible world. Nothing seemed +more logical, but if God acted necessarily, His world must also be +of necessity the only possible product of His act, and the Church +became an impertinence, since man proved only fatuity by attempting +to interfere. Thomas dared not disturb the foundations of the +Church, and therefore began by laying down the law that God-- +previous to His act--could choose, and had chosen, whatever scheme +of creation He pleased, and that the harmony of the actual scheme +proved His perfections. Thus he saved God's free will. + +This philosophical apse would have closed the lines and finished the +plan of his church-choir had the universe not shown some +divergencies or discords needing to be explained. The student of the +Latin Quarter was then harder to convince than now that God was +Infinite Love and His world a perfect harmony, when perfect love and +harmony showed them, even in the Latin Quarter, and still more in +revealed truth, a picture of suffering, sorrow, and death; plague, +pestilence, and famine; inundations, droughts, and frosts; +catastrophes world-wide and accidents in corners; cruelty, +perversity, stupidity, uncertainty, insanity; virtue begetting vice; +vice working for good; happiness without sense, selfishness without +gain, misery without cause, and horrors undefined. The students in +public dared not ask, as Voltaire did, "avec son hideux sourire," +whether the Lisbon earthquake was the final proof of God's infinite +goodness, but in private they used the argumentum ad personam +divinam freely enough, and when the Church told them that evil did +not exist, the ribalds laughed. + +Saint Augustine certainly tempted Satan when he fastened the Church +to this doctrine that evil is only the privation of good, an amissio +boni; and that good alone exists. The point was infinitely +troublesome. Good was order, law, unity. Evil was disorder, anarchy, +multiplicity. Which was truth? The Church had committed itself to +the dogma that order and unity were the ultimate truth, and that the +anarchist should be burned. She could do nothing else, and society +supported her--still supports her; yet the Church, who was wiser +than the State, had always seen that Saint Augustine dealt with only +half the question. She knew that evil might be an excess of good as +well as absence of it; that good leads to evil, evil to good; and +that, as Pascal says, "three degrees of polar elevation upset all +jurisprudence; a meridian decides truth; fundamental laws change; +rights have epochs. Pleasing Justice! bounded by a river or a +mountain! truths on this side the Pyrenees! errors beyond!" Thomas +conceded that God Himself, with the best intentions, might be the +source of evil, and pleaded only that his action might in the end +work benefits. He could offer no proof of it, but he could assume as +probable a plan of good which became the more perfect for the very +reason that it allowed great liberty in detail. + +One hardly feels Saint Thomas here in all his force. He offers +suggestion rather than proof;--apology--the weaker because of +obvious effort to apologize--rather than defence, for Infinite +Goodness, Justice, and Power; scoffers might add that he invented a +new proof ab defectu, or argument for proving the perfection of a +machine by the number of its imperfections; but at all events, +society has never done better by way of proving its right to enforce +morals or unity of opinion. Unless it asserts law, it can only +assert force. Rigid theology went much further. In God's providence, +man was as nothing. With a proper sense of duty, every solar system +should be content to suffer, if thereby the efficiency of the Milky +Way were improved. Such theology shocked Saint Thomas, who never +wholly abandoned man in order to exalt God. He persistently brought +God and man together, and if he erred, the Church rightly pardons +him because he erred on the human side. Whenever the path lay +through the valley of despair he called God to his aid, as though he +felt the moral obligation of the Creator to help His creation. + +At best the vision of God, sitting forever at His work-table, +willing the existence of mankind exactly as it is, while conscious +that, among these myriad arbitrary creations of His will, hardly one +in a million could escape temporary misery or eternal damnation, was +not the best possible background for a Church, as the Virgin and the +Saviour frankly admitted by taking the foreground; but the Church +was not responsible for it. Mankind could not admit an anarchical--a +dual or a multiple--universe. The world was there, staring them in +the face, with all its chaotic conditions, and society insisted on +its unity in self-defence. Society still insists on treating it as +unity, though no longer affecting logic. Society insists on its free +will, although free will has never been explained to the +satisfaction of any but those who much wish to be satisfied, and +although the words in any common sense implied not unity but duality +in creation. The Church had nothing to do with inventing this +riddle--the oldest that fretted mankind. + +Apart from all theological interferences,--fall of Adam or fault of +Eve, Atonement, Justification, or Redemption,--either the universe +was one, or it was two, or it was many; either energy was one, seen +only in powers of itself, or it was several; either God was harmony, +or He was discord. With practical unanimity, mankind rejected the +dual or multiple scheme; it insisted on unity. Thomas took the +question as it was given him. The unity was full of defects; he did +not deny them; but he claimed that they might be incidents, and that +the admitted unity might even prove their beneficence. Granting this +enormous concession, he still needed a means of bringing into the +system one element which vehemently refused to be brought:--that is, +man himself, who insisted that the universe was a unit, but that he +was a universe; that energy was one, but that he was another energy; +that God was omnipotent, but that man was free. The contradiction +had always existed, exists still, and always must exist, unless man +either admits that he is a machine, or agrees that anarchy and chaos +are the habit of nature, and law and order its accident. The +agreement may become possible, but it was not possible in the +thirteenth century nor is it now. Saint Thomas's settlement could +not be a simple one or final, except for practical use, but it +served, and it holds good still. + +No one ever seriously affirmed the literal freedom of will. Absolute +liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; +therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible only to +himself. This principle is the philosophical foundation of +anarchism, and, for anything that science has yet proved, may be the +philosophical foundation of the universe; but it is fatal to all +society and is especially hostile to the State. Perhaps the Church +of the thirteenth century might have found a way to use even this +principle for a good purpose; certainly, the influence of Saint +Bernard was sufficiently unsocial and that of Saint Francis was +sufficiently unselfish to conciliate even anarchists of the militant +class; but Saint Thomas was working for the Church and the + +State, not for the salvation of souls, and his chief object was to +repress anarchy. The theory of absolute free will never entered his +mind, more than the theory of material free will would enter the +mind of an architect. The Church gave him no warrant for discussing +the subject in such a sense. In fact, the Church never admitted free +will, or used the word when it could be avoided. In Latin, the term +used was "liberum arbitrium,"--free choice,--and in French to this +day it remains in strictness "libre arbitre" still. From Saint +Augustine downwards the Church was never so unscientific as to admit +of liberty beyond the faculty of choosing between paths, some +leading through the Church and some not, but all leading to the next +world; as a criminal might be allowed the liberty of choosing +between the guillotine and the gallows, without infringing on the +supremacy of the judge. + +Thomas started from that point, already far from theoretic freedom. +"We are masters of our acts," he began, "in the sense that we can +choose such and such a thing; now, we have not to choose our end, +but the means that relate to it, as Aristotle says." Unfortunately, +even this trenchant amputation of man's free energies would not +accord with fact or with logic. Experience proved that man's power +of choice in action was very far from absolute, and logic seemed to +require that every choice should have some predetermining cause +which decided the will to act. Science affirmed that choice was not +free,--could not be free,--without abandoning the unity of force and +the foundation of law. Society insisted that its choice must be left +free, whatever became of science or unity. Saint Thomas was required +to illustrate the theory of "liberum arbitrium" by choosing a path +through these difficulties, where path there was obviously none. + +Thomas's method of treating this problem was sure to be as +scientific as the vaulting of a Gothic arch. Indeed, one follows it +most easily by translating his school-vocabulary into modern +technical terms. With very slight straining of equivalents, Thomas +might now be written thus:-- + +By the term God, is meant a prime motor which supplies all energy to +the universe, and acts directly on man as well as on all other +creatures, moving him as a mechanical motor might do; but man, being +specially provided with an organism more complex than the organisms +of other creatures, enjoys an exceptional capacity for reflex +action,--a power of reflection,--which enables him within certain +limits to choose between paths; and this singular capacity is called +free choice or free will. Of course, the reflection is not choice, +and though a man's mind reflected as perfectly as the facets of a +lighthouse lantern, it would never reach a choice without an energy +which impels it to act. + +Now let us read Saint Thomas:-- + +Some kind of an agent is required to determine one's choice; that +agent is reflection. Man reflects, then, in order to learn what +choice to make between the two acts which offer themselves. But +reflection is, in its turn, a faculty of doing opposite things, for +we can reflect or not reflect; and we are no further forward than +before. One cannot carry back this process infinitely, for in that +case one would never decide. The fixed point is not in man, since we +meet in him, as a being apart by himself, only the alternative +faculties; we must, therefore, recur to the intervention of an +exterior agent who shall impress on our will a movement capable of +putting an end to its hesitations:--That exterior agent is nothing +else than God! + +The scheme seems to differ little, and unwillingly, from a system of +dynamics as modern as the dynamo. Even in the prime motor, from the +moment of action, freedom of will vanished. Creation was not +successive; it was one instantaneous thought and act, identical with +the will, and was complete and unchangeable from end to end, +including time as one of its functions. Thomas was as clear as +possible on that point:--"Supposing God wills anything in effect; He +cannot will not to will it, because His will cannot change." He +wills that some things shall be contingent and others necessary, but +He wills in the same act that the contingency shall be necessary. +"They are contingent because God has willed them to be so, and with +this object has subjected them to causes which are so." In the same +way He wills that His creation shall develop itself in time and +space and sequence, but He creates these conditions as well as the +events. He creates the whole, in one act, complete, unchangeable, +and it is then unfolded like a rolling panorama, with its +predetermined contingencies. + +Man's free choice--liberum arbitrium--falls easily into place as a +predetermined contingency. God is the first cause, and acts in all +secondary causes directly; but while He acts mechanically on the +rest of creation,--as far as is known,--He acts freely at one point, +and this free action remains free as far as it extends on that line. +Man's freedom derives from this source, but it is simply apparent, +as far as he is a cause; it is a reflex action determined by a new +agency of the first cause. + +However abstruse these ideas may once have sounded, they are far +from seeming difficult in comparison with modern theories of energy. +Indeed, measured by that standard, the only striking feature of +Saint Thomas's motor is its simplicity. Thomas's prime motor was +very powerful, and its lines of energy were infinite. Among these +infinite lines, a certain group ran to the human race, and, as long +as the conduction was perfect, each man acted mechanically. In cases +where the current, for any reason, was for a moment checked,--that +is to say, produced the effect of hesitation or reflection in the +mind,--the current accumulated until it acquired power to leap the +obstacle. As Saint Thomas expressed it, the Prime Motor, Who was +nothing else than God, intervened to decide the channel of the +current. The only difference between man and a vegetable was the +reflex action of the complicated mirror which was called mind, and +the mark of mind was reflective absorption or choice. The apparent +freedom was an illusion arising from the extreme delicacy of the +machine, but the motive power was in fact the same--that of God. + +This exclusion of what men commonly called freedom was carried still +further in the process of explaining dogma. Supposing the +conduction to be insufficient for a given purpose; a purpose which +shall require perfect conduction? Under ordinary circumstances, in +ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the conductor will be burned +out, so to speak; condemned, and thrown away. This is the case with +most human beings. Yet there are cases where the conductor is +capable of receiving an increase of energy from the prime motor, +which enables it to attain the object aimed at. In dogma, this store +of reserved energy is technically called Grace. In the strict, +theological sense of the word, as it is used by Saint Thomas, the +exact, literal meaning of Grace is "a motion which the Prime Motor, +as a supernatural cause, produces in the soul, perfecting free +will." It is a reserved energy, which comes to aid and reinforce the +normal energy of the battery. + +To religious minds this scientific inversion of solemn truths seems, +and is, sacrilege; but Thomas's numerous critics in the Church have +always brought precisely this charge against his doctrine, and are +doing so still. They insist that he has reduced God to a mechanism +and man to a passive conductor of force. He has left, they say, +nothing but God in the universe. The terrible word which annihilates +all other philosophical systems against which it is hurled, has been +hurled freely against his for six hundred years and more, without +visibly affecting the Church; and yet its propriety seems, to the +vulgar, beyond reasonable cavil. To Father de Regnon, of the +extremely learned and intelligent Society of Jesus, the difference +between pantheism and Thomism reduces itself to this: "Pantheism, +starting from the notion of an infinite substance which is the +plenitude of being, concludes that there can exist no other beings +than THE being; no other realities than the absolute reality. +Thomism, starting from the efficacy of the first cause, tends to +reduce more and more the efficacy of second causes, and to replace +it by a passivity which receives without producing, which is +determined without determining." To students of architecture, who +know equally little about pantheism and about Thomism,--or, indeed, +for that matter, about architecture, too,--the quality that rouses +most surprise in Thomism is its astonishingly scientific method. The +Franciscans and the Jesuits call it pantheism, but science, too, is +pantheism, or has till very recently been wholly pantheistic. +Avowedly science has aimed at nothing but the reduction of +multiplicity to unity, and has excommunicated, as though it were +itself a Church, any one who doubted or disputed its object, its +method, or its results. The effort is as evident and quite as +laborious in modern science, starting as it does from multiplicity, +as in Thomas Aquinas, who started from unity; and it is necessarily +less successful, for its true aims, as far as it is science and not +disguised religion, were equally attained by reaching infinite +complexity; but the assertion or assumption of ultimate unity has +characterized the Law of Energy as emphatically as it has +characterized the definition of God in theology. If it is a reproach +to Saint Thomas, it is equally a reproach to Clerk-Maxwell. In +truth, it is what men most admire in both--the power of broad and +lofty generalization. + +Under any conceivable system the process of getting God and man +under the same roof--of bringing two independent energies under the +same control--required a painful effort, as science has much cause +to know. No doubt, many good Christians and some heretics have been +shocked at the tour de force by which they felt themselves suddenly +seized, bound hand and foot, attached to each other, and dragged +into the Church, without consent or consultation. To religious +mystics, whose scepticism concerned chiefly themselves and their own +existence, Saint Thomas's man seemed hardly worth herding, at so +much expense and trouble, into a Church where he was not eager to +go. True religion felt the nearness of God without caring to see the +mechanism. Mystics like Saint Bernard, Saint Francis, Saint +Bonaventure, or Pascal had a right to make this objection, since +they got into the Church, so to speak, by breaking through the +windows; but society at large accepted and retains Saint Thomas's +man much as Saint Thomas delivered him to the Government; a two- +sided being, free or unfree, responsible or irresponsible, an energy +or a victim of energy, moved by choice or moved by compulsion, as +the interests of society seemed for the moment to need. Certainly +Saint Thomas lavished no excess of liberty on the man he created, +but still he was more generous than the State has ever been. Saint +Thomas asked little from man, and gave much; even as much freedom of +will as the State gave or now gives; he added immortality hereafter +and eternal happiness under reasonable restraints; his God watched +over man's temporal welfare far more anxiously than the State has +ever done, and assigned him space in the Church which he never can +have in the galleries of Parliament or Congress; more than all this, +Saint Thomas and his God placed man in the centre of the universe, +and made the sun and the stars for his uses. No statute law ever did +as much for man, and no social reform ever will try to do it; yet +man bitterly complained that he had not his rights, and even in the +Church is still complaining, because Saint Thomas set a limit, more +or less vague, to what the man was obstinate in calling his freedom +of will. + +Thus Saint Thomas completed his work, keeping his converging lines +clear and pure throughout, and bringing them together, unbroken, in +the curves that gave unity to his plan. His sense of scale and +proportion was that of the great architects of his age. One might go +on studying it for a lifetime. He showed no more hesitation in +keeping his Deity in scale than in adjusting man to it. Strange as +it sounds, although man thought himself hardly treated in respect to +freedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, man was in action much +the superior of God, Whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, +under restraints that man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas +did not allow God even an undetermined will; He was pure Act, and as +such He could not change. Man alone was allowed, in act, to change +direction. What was more curious still, man might absolutely prove +his freedom by refusing to move at all; if he did not like his life +he could stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its being +done for him; while God could not commit suicide or even cease for a +single instant His continuous action. If man had the singular fancy +of making himself absurd,--a taste confined to himself but attested +by evidence exceedingly strong,--he could be as absurd as he liked; +but God could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity +the right to contradict Himself, which is one of man's chief +pleasures. While man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, an +unlimited freedom to be wicked,--a privilege which, as both Church +and State bitterly complained and still complain, he has +outrageously abused,--God was Goodness, and could be nothing else. +While man moved about his relatively spacious prison with a certain +degree of ease, God, being everywhere, could not move. In one +respect, at least, man's freedom seemed to be not relative but +absolute, for his thought was an energy paying no regard to space or +time or order or object or sense; but God's thought was His act and +will at once; speaking correctly, God could not think; He is. Saint +Thomas would not, or could not, admit that God was Necessity, as +Abelard seems to have held, but he refused to tolerate the idea of a +divine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself. The atmosphere +of Saint Louis surrounds the God of Saint Thomas, and its pure ether +shuts out the corruption and pollution to come,--the Valois and +Bourbons, the Occams and Hobbes's, the Tudors and the Medicis, of an +enlightened Europe. + +The theology turns always into art at the last, and ends in +aspiration. The spire justifies the church. In Saint Thomas's +Church, man's free will was the aspiration to God, and he treated it +as the architects of Chartres and Laon had treated their famous +fleches. The square foundation-tower, the expression of God's power +in act,--His Creation,--rose to the level of the Church facade as a +part of the normal unity of God's energy; and then, suddenly, +without show of effort, without break, without logical violence, +became a many-sided, voluntary, vanishing human soul, and neither +Villard de Honnecourt nor Duns Scotus could distinguish where God's +power ends and man's free will begins. All they saw was the soul +vanishing into the skies. How it was done, one does not care to ask; +in a result so exquisite, one has not the heart to find fault with +"adresse." + +About Saint Thomas's theology we need not greatly disturb ourselves; +it can matter now not much, whether he put more pantheism than the +law allowed or more materialism than Duns Scotus approved--or less +of either--into his universe, since the Church is still on the spot, +responsible for its own doctrines; but his architecture is another +matter. So scientific and structural a method was never an accident +or the property of a single mind even with Aristotle to prompt it. +Neither his Church nor the architect's church was a sketch, but a +completely studied structure. Every relation of parts, every +disturbance of equilibrium, every detail of construction was treated +with infinite labour, as the result of two hundred years of +experiment and discussion among thousands of men whose minds and +whose instincts were acute, and who discussed little else. Science +and art were one. Thomas Aquinas would probably have built a better +cathedral at Beauvais than the actual architect who planned it; but +it is quite likely that the architect might have saved Thomas some +of his errors, as pointed out by the Councils of 1276. Both were +great artists; perhaps in their professions, the greatest that ever +lived; and both must have been great students beyond their practice. +Both were subject to constant criticism from men and bodies of men +whose minds were as acute and whose learning was as great as their +own. If the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Paris +condemned Thomas, the Bernardines had, for near two hundred years, +condemned Beauvais in advance. Both the "Summa Theologiae" and +Beauvais Cathedral were excessively modern, scientific, and +technical, marking the extreme points reached by Europe on the lines +of scholastic science. This is all we need to know. If we like, we +can go on to study, inch by inch, the slow decline of the art. The +essence of it--the despotic central idea--was that of organic unity +both in the thought and the building. From that time, the universe +has steadily become more complex and less reducible to a central +control. With as much obstinacy as though it were human, it has +insisted on expanding its parts; with as much elusiveness as though +it were feminine, it has evaded the attempt to impose on it a single +will. Modern science, like modern art, tends, in practice, to drop +the dogma of organic unity. Some of the mediaeval habit of mind +survives, but even that is said to be yielding before the daily +evidence of increasing and extending complexity. The fault, then, +was not in man, if he no longer looked at science or art as an +organic whole or as the expression of unity. Unity turned itself +into complexity, multiplicity, variety, and even contradiction. All +experience, human and divine, assured man in the thirteenth century +that the lines of the universe converged. How was he to know that +these lines ran in every conceivable and inconceivable direction, +and that at least half of them seemed to diverge from any imaginable +centre of unity! Dimly conscious that his Trinity required in logic +a fourth dimension, how was the schoolman to supply it, when even +the mathematician of to-day can only infer its necessity? Naturally +man tended to lose his sense of scale and relation. A straight line, +or a combination of straight lines, may have still a sort of +artistic unity, but what can be done in art with a series of +negative symbols? Even if the negative were continuous, the artist +might express at least a negation; but supposing that Omar's kinetic +analogy of the ball and the players turned out to be a scientific +formula!--supposing that the highest scientific authority, in order +to obtain any unity at all, had to resort to the Middle Ages for an +imaginary demon to sort his atoms!--how could art deal with such +problems, and what wonder that art lost unity with philosophy and +science! Art had to be confused in order to express confusion; but +perhaps it was truest, so. + +Some future summer, when you are older, and when I have left, like +Omar, only the empty glass of my scholasticism for you to turn down, +you can amuse yourselves by going on with the story after the death +of Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, and William of Lorris, and after the +failure of Beauvais. The pathetic interest of the drama deepens with +every new expression, but at least you can learn from it that your +parents in the nineteenth century were not to blame for losing the +sense of unity in art. As early as the fourteenth century, signs of +unsteadiness appeared, and, before the eighteenth century, unity +became only a reminiscence. The old habit of centralizing a strain +at one point, and then dividing and subdividing it, and distributing +it on visible lines of support to a visible foundation, disappeared +in architecture soon after 1500, but lingered in theology two +centuries longer, and even, in very old-fashioned communities, far +down to our own time; but its values were forgotten, and it survived +chiefly as a stock jest against the clergy. The passage between the +two epochs is as beautiful as the Slave of Michael Angelo; but, to +feel its beauty, you should see it from above, as it came from its +radiant source. Truth, indeed, may not exist; science avers it to be +only a relation; but what men took for truth stares one everywhere +in the eye and begs for sympathy. The architects of the twelfth and +thirteenth centuries took the Church and the universe for truths, +and tried to express them in a structure which should be final. +Knowing by an enormous experience precisely where the strains were +to come, they enlarged their scale to the utmost point of material +endurance, lightening the load and distributing the burden until the +gutters and gargoyles that seem mere ornament, and the grotesques +that seem rude absurdities, all do work either for the arch or for +the eye; and every inch of material, up and down, from crypt to +vault, from man to God, from the universe to the atom, had its task, +giving support where support was needed, or weight where +concentration was felt, but always with the condition of showing +conspicuously to the eye the great lines which led to unity and the +curves which controlled divergence; so that, from the cross on the +fleche and the keystone of the vault, down through the ribbed +nervures, the columns, the windows, to the foundation of the flying +buttresses far beyond the walls, one idea controlled every line; and +this is true of Saint Thomas's Church as it is of Amiens Cathedral. +The method was the same for both, and the result was an art marked +by singular unity, which endured and served its purpose until man +changed his attitude toward the universe. The trouble was not in the +art or the method or the structure, but in the universe itself which +presented different aspects as man moved. Granted a Church, Saint +Thomas's Church was the most expressive that man has made, and the +great Gothic cathedrals were its most complete expression. + +Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of all +the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the Gothic +cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender +nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards +of the flying buttress,--the visible effort to throw off a visible +strain,--never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, +if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. The equilibrium is visibly delicate +beyond the line of safety; danger lurks in every stone. The peril of +the heavy tower, of the restless vault, of the vagrant buttress; the +uncertainty of logic, the inequalities of the syllogism, the +irregularities of the mental mirror,--all these haunting nightmares +of the Church are expressed as strongly by the Gothic cathedral as +though it had been the cry of human suffering, and as no emotion had +ever been expressed before or is likely to find expression again. +The delight of its aspirations is flung up to the sky. The pathos of +its self-distrust and anguish of doubt is buried in the earth as its +last secret. You can read out of it whatever else pleases your youth +and confidence; to me, this is all. + +THE END + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +The "legal small print" and other information about this book +may now be found at the end of this file. Please read this +important information, as it gives you specific rights and +tells you about restrictions in how the file may be used. + +*** +Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres + +By Henry Adams + +With an introduction by Ralph Adams Cram + + + +Editor's Note + +From the moment when, through the courtesy of my friend Barrett +Wendell, I came first to know Mr. Henry Adams's book, Mont-Saint- +Michel and Chartres, I was profoundly convinced that this privately +printed, jealously guarded volume should be withdrawn from its +hiding-place amongst the bibliographical treasures of collectors and +amateurs and given that wide publicity demanded alike by its +intrinsic nature and the cause it could so admirably serve. + +To say that the book was a revelation is inadequately to express a +fact; at once all the theology, philosophy, and mysticism, the +politics, sociology, and economics, the romance, literature, and art +of that greatest epoch of Christian civilization became fused in the +alembic of an unique insight and precipitated by the dynamic force +of a personal and distinguished style. A judgment that might well +have been biased by personal inclination received the endorsement of +many in two continents, more competent to pass judgment, better able +to speak with authority; and so fortified, I had the honour of +saying to Mr. Adams, in the autumn of 1912, that the American +Institute of Architects asked the distinguished privilege of +arranging for the publication of an edition for general sale, under +its own imprimatur. The result is the volume now made available for +public circulation. + +In justice to Mr. Adams, it should be said that such publication is, +in his opinion, unnecessary and uncalled-for, a conclusion in which +neither the American Institute of Architects, the publishers, nor +the Editor concurs. Furthermore, the form in which the book is +presented is no affair of the author, who, in giving reluctant +consent to publication, expressly stipulated that he should have no +part or parcel in carrying out so mad a venture of faith,--as he +estimated the project of giving his book to the public. + +In this, and for once, his judgment is at fault. Mont-Saint-Michel +and Chartres is one of the most distinguished contributions to +literature and one of the most valuable adjuncts to the study of +mediaevalism America thus far has produced. The rediscovery of this +great epoch of Christian civilization has had issue in many and +valuable works on its religion, its philosophy, its economics, its +politics, and its art, but in nearly every instance, whichever field +has been traversed has been considered almost as an isolated +phenomenon, with insufficient reference to the other aspects of an +era that was singularly united and at one with itself. Hugh of Saint +Victor and Saint Thomas Aquinas are fully comprehensible only in +their relationship to Saint Anselm, Saint Bernard, and the +development of Catholic dogma and life; feudalism, the crusades, the +guilds and communes weave themselves into this same religious +development and into the vicissitudes of crescent nationalities; +Dante, the cathedral builders, the painters, sculptors, and music +masters, all are closely knit into the warp and woof of philosophy, +statecraft, economics, and religious devotion;--indeed, it may be +said that the Middle Ages, more than any other recorded epoch of +history, must be considered en bloc, as a period of consistent unity +as highly emphasized as was its dynamic force. + +It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Adams deals with the art of the +Middle Ages after this fashion: he is not of those who would +determine every element in art from its material antecedents. He +realizes very fully that its essential element, the thing that +differentiates it from the art that preceded and that which +followed, is its spiritual impulse; the manifestation may have been, +and probably was, more or less accidental, but that which makes +Chartres Cathedral and its glass, the sculptures of Rheims, the Dies +Irae, Aucassin and Nicolette, the Song of Roland, the Arthurian +Legends, great art and unique, is neither their technical mastery +nor their fidelity to the enduring laws of all great art,--though +these are singular in their perfection,--but rather the peculiar +spiritual impulse which informed the time, and by its intensity, its +penetrating power, and its dynamic force wrought a rounded and +complete civilization and manifested this through a thousand varied +channels. + +Greater, perhaps, even than his grasp of the singular entirety of +mediaeval civilization, is Mr. Adams's power of merging himself in a +long dead time, of thinking and feeling with the men and women +thereof, and so breathing on the dead bones of antiquity that again +they clothe themselves with flesh and vesture, call back their +severed souls, and live again, not only to the consciousness of the +reader, but before his very eyes. And it is not a thin simulacrum he +raises by some doubtful alchemy: it is no phantasm of the past that +shines dimly before us in these magical pages; it is the very time +itself in which we are merged. We forgather with the Abbot and his +monks, and the crusaders and pilgrims in the Shrine of the +Archangel: we pay our devoirs to the fair French Queens,--Blanche of +Castile, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mary of Champagne,--fighting their +battles for them as liege servants: we dispute with Abelard, Thomas +of Aquino, Duns the Scotsman: we take our parts in the Court of +Love, or sing the sublime and sounding praises of God with the +Canons of Saint Victor: our eyes opened at last, and after many days +we kneel before Our Lady of Pity, asking her intercession for her +lax but loyal devotees. Seven centuries dissolve and vanish away, +being as they were not, and the thirteenth century lives less for us +than we live in it and are a part of its gaiety and light- +heartedness, its youthful ardour and abounding action, its childlike +simplicity and frankness, its normal and healthy and all-embracing +devotion. + +And it is well for us to have this experience. Apart from the +desirable transformation it effects in preconceived and curiously +erroneous superstitions as to one of the greatest eras in all +history, it is vastly heartening and exhilarating. If it gives new +and not always flattering standards for the judgment of contemporary +men and things, so does it establish new ideals, new goals for +attainment. To live for a day in a world that built Chartres +Cathedral, even if it makes the living in a world that creates the +"Black Country" of England or an Iron City of America less a thing +of joy and gladness than before, equally opens up the far prospect +of another thirteenth century in the times that are to come and +urges to ardent action toward its attainment. + +But apart from this, the deepest value of Mont-Saint-Michel and +Chartres, its importance as a revelation of the eternal glory of +mediaeval art and the elements that brought it into being is not +lightly to be expressed. To every artist, whatever his chosen form +of expression, it must appear unique and invaluable, and to none +more than the architect, who, familiar at last with its beauties, +its power, and its teaching force, can only applaud the action of +the American Institute of Architects in making Mr. Adams an Honorary +Member, as one who has rendered distinguished services to the art, +and voice his gratitude that it has brought the book within his +reach and given it publicity before the world. + +Whitehall, Sudbury, Massachusetts, June, 1913. + + + + +CONTENTS + +PREFACE + + I. SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL + II. LA CHANSON DE ROLAND + III. THE MERVEILLE + IV. NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE + V. TOWERS AND PORTALS + VI. THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES + VII. ROSES AND APSES +VIII. THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS + IX. THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS + X. THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN + XI. THE THREE QUEENS + XII. NICOLETTE AND MARION +XIII. LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME + XIV. ABELARD + XV. THE MYSTICS + XVI. SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS + + + + +Preface + +[December, 1904.] + +Some old Elizabethan play or poem contains the lines:-- + + . . . Who reads me, when I am ashes, + Is my son in wishes . . . . . . . . . + +The relationship, between reader and writer, of son and father, may +have existed in Queen Elizabeth's time, but is much too close to be +true for ours. The utmost that any writer could hope of his readers +now is that they should consent to regard themselves as nephews, and +even then he would expect only a more or less civil refusal from +most of them. Indeed, if he had reached a certain age, he would have +observed that nephews, as a social class, no longer read at all, and +that there is only one familiar instance recorded of a nephew who +read his uncle. The exception tends rather to support the rule, +since it needed a Macaulay to produce, and two volumes to record it. +Finally, the metre does not permit it. One may not say: "Who reads +me, when I am ashes, is my nephew in wishes." + +The same objections do not apply to the word "niece." The change +restores the verse, and, to a very great degree, the fact. Nieces +have been known to read in early youth, and in some cases may have +read their uncles. The relationship, too, is convenient and easy, +capable of being anything or nothing, at the will of either party, +like a Mohammedan or Polynesian or American marriage. No valid +objection can be offered to this choice in the verse. Niece let it +be! + +The following lines, then, are written for nieces, or for those who +are willing, for those, to be nieces in wish. For convenience of +travel in France, where hotels, in out-of-the-way places, are +sometimes wanting in space as well as luxury, the nieces shall count +as one only. As many more may come as like, but one niece is enough +for the uncle to talk to, and one niece is much more likely than two +to listen. One niece is also more likely than two to carry a kodak +and take interest in it, since she has nothing else, except her +uncle, to interest her, and instances occur when she takes interest +neither in the uncle nor in the journey. One cannot assume, even in +a niece, too emotional a nature, but one may assume a kodak. + +The party, then, with such variations of detail as may suit its +tastes, has sailed from New York, let us say, early in June for an +entire summer in France. One pleasant June morning it has landed at +Cherbourg or Havre and takes the train across Normandy to Pontorson, +where, with the evening light, the tourists drive along the +chaussee, over the sands or through the tide, till they stop at +Madame Poulard's famous hotel within the Gate of the Mount. + +The uncle talks:-- + + + +CHAPTER I + +SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL + +The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower +that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil +crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched +on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven +and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly +room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the +Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel +stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror +of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. +His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him +here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the +patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to +Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he +stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching +across the tremor of the immense ocean,-immensi tremor oceani,-as +Louis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of +the Order of Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles, +and monarchs went on pilgrimage to his shrine; so the common people +followed, and still follow, like ourselves. + +The church stands high on the summit of this granite rock, and on +its west front is the platform, to which the tourist ought first to +climb. From the edge of this platform, the eye plunges down, two +hundred and thirty-five feet, to the wide sands or the wider ocean, +as the tides recede or advance, under an infinite sky, over a +restless sea, which even we tourists can understand and feel without +books or guides; but when we turn from the western view, and look at +the church door, thirty or forty yards from the parapet where we +stand, one needs to be eight centuries old to know what this mass of +encrusted architecture meant to its builders, and even then one must +still learn to feel it. The man who wanders into the twelfth century +is lost, unless he can grow prematurely young. + +One can do it, as one can play with children. Wordsworth, whose +practical sense equalled his intuitive genius, carefully limited us +to "a season of calm weather," which is certainly best; but granting +a fair frame of mind, one can still "have sight of that immortal +sea" which brought us hither from the twelfth century; one can even +travel thither and see the children sporting on the shore. Our sense +is partially atrophied from disuse, but it is still alive, at least +in old people, who alone, as a class, have the time to be young. + +One needs only to be old enough in order to be as young as one will. +From the top of this Abbey Church one looks across the bay to +Avranches, and towards Coutances and the Cotentin,--the Constantinus +pagus,--whose shore, facing us, recalls the coast of New England. +The relation between the granite of one coast and that of the +other may be fanciful, but the relation between the people who live +on each is as hard and practical a fact as the granite itself. When +one enters the church, one notes first the four great triumphal +piers or columns, at the intersection of the nave and transepts, and +on looking into M. Corroyer's architectural study which is the chief +source of all one's acquaintance with the Mount, one learns that +these piers were constructed in 1058. Four out of five American +tourists will instantly recall the only date of mediaeval history +they ever knew, the date of the Norman Conquest. Eight years after +these piers were built, in 1066, Duke William of Normandy raised an +army of forty thousand men in these parts, and in northern France, +whom he took to England, where they mostly stayed. For a hundred and +fifty years, until 1204, Normandy and England were united; the +Norman peasant went freely to England with his lord, spiritual or +temporal; the Norman woman, a very capable person, followed her +husband or her parents; Normans held nearly all the English fiefs; +filled the English Church; crowded the English Court; created the +English law; and we know that French was still currently spoken in +England as late as 1400, or thereabouts, "After the scole of +Stratford atte bowe." The aristocratic Norman names still survive in +part, and if we look up their origin here we shall generally find +them in villages so remote and insignificant that their place can +hardly be found on any ordinary map; but the common people had no +surnames, and cannot be traced, although for every noble whose name +or blood survived in England or in Normandy, we must reckon hundreds +of peasants. Since the generation which followed William to England +in 1066, we can reckon twenty-eight or thirty from father to son, +and, if you care to figure up the sum, you will find that you had +about two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors living in +the middle of the eleventh century. The whole population of England +and northern France may then have numbered five million, but if it +were fifty it would not much affect the certainty that, if you have +any English blood at all, you have also Norman. If we could go back +and live again in all our two hundred and fifty million arithmetical +ancestors of the eleventh century, we should find ourselves doing +many surprising things, but among the rest we should pretty +certainly be ploughing most of the fields of the Cotentin and +Calvados; going to mass in every parish church in Normandy; +rendering military service to every lord, spiritual or temporal, in +all this region; and helping to build the Abbey Church at Mont- +Saint-Michel. From the roof of the Cathedral of Coutances over +yonder, one may look away over the hills and woods, the farms and +fields of Normandy, and so familiar, so homelike are they, one can +almost take oath that in this, or the other, or in all, one knew +life once and has never so fully known it since. + +Never so fully known it since! For we of the eleventh century, hard- +headed, close-fisted, grasping, shrewd, as we were, and as Normans +are still said to be, stood more fully in the centre of the world's +movement than our English descendants ever did. We were a part, and +a great part, of the Church, of France, and of Europe. The Leos and +Gregories of the tenth and eleventh centuries leaned on us in their +great struggle for reform. Our Duke Richard-Sans-Peur, in 966, +turned the old canons out of the Mount in order to bring here the +highest influence of the time, the Benedictine monks of Monte +Cassino. Richard II, grandfather of William the Conqueror, began +this Abbey Church in 1020, and helped Abbot Hildebert to build it. +When William the Conqueror in 1066 set out to conquer England, Pope +Alexander II stood behind him and blessed his banner. From that +moment our Norman Dukes cast the Kings of France into the shade. Our +activity was not limited to northern Europe, or even confined by +Anjou and Gascony. When we stop at Coutances, we will drive out to +Hauteville to see where Tancred came from, whose sons Robert and +Roger were conquering Naples and Sicily at the time when the Abbey +Church was building on the Mount. Normans were everywhere in 1066, +and everywhere in the lead of their age. We were a serious race. If +you want other proof of it, besides our record in war and in +politics, you have only to look at our art. Religious art is the +measure of human depth and sincerity; any triviality, any weakness, +cries aloud. If this church on the Mount is not proof enough of +Norman character, we will stop at Coutances for a wider view. Then +we will go to Caen and Bayeux. From there, it would almost be worth +our while to leap at once to Palermo. It was in the year 1131 or +thereabouts that Roger began the Cathedral at Cefalu and the Chapel +Royal at Palermo; it was about the year 1174 that his grandson +William began the Cathedral of Monreale. No art--either Greek or +Byzantine, Italian or Arab--has ever created two religious types so +beautiful, so serious, so impressive, and yet so different, as Mont- +Saint-Michel watching over its northern ocean, and Monreale, looking +down over its forests of orange and lemon, on Palermo and the +Sicilian seas. + +Down nearly to the end of the twelfth century the Norman was fairly +master of the world in architecture as in arms, although the +thirteenth century belonged to France, and we must look for its +glories on the Seine and Marne and Loire; but for the present we are +in the eleventh century,--tenants of the Duke or of the Church or of +small feudal lords who take their names from the neighbourhood,-- +Beaumont, Carteret, Greville, Percy, Pierpont,--who, at the Duke's +bidding, will each call out his tenants, perhaps ten men-at-arms +with their attendants, to fight in Brittany, or in the Vexin toward +Paris, or on the great campaign for the conquest of England which is +to come within ten years,--the greatest military effort that has +been made in western Europe since Charlemagne and Roland were +defeated at Roncesvalles three hundred years ago. For the moment, we +are helping to quarry granite for the Abbey Church, and to haul it +to the Mount, or load it on our boat. We never fail to make our +annual pilgrimage to the Mount on the Archangel's Day, October 16. +We expect to be called out for a new campaign which Duke William +threatens against Brittany, and we hear stories that Harold the +Saxon, the powerful Earl of Wessex in England, is a guest, or, as +some say, a prisoner or a hostage, at the Duke's Court, and will go +with us on the campaign. The year is 1058. + +All this time we have been standing on the parvis, looking out over +the sea and sands which are as good eleventh-century landscape as +they ever were; or turning at times towards the church door which is +the pons seclorum, the bridge of ages, between us and our ancestors. +Now that we have made an attempt, such as it is, to get our minds +into a condition to cross the bridge without breaking down in the +effort, we enter the church and stand face to face with eleventh- +century architecture; a ground-plan which dates from 1020; a central +tower, or its piers, dating from 1058; and a church completed in +1135. France can offer few buildings of this importance equally old, +with dates so exact. Perhaps the closest parallel to Mont-Saint- +Michel is Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, above Orleans, which seems to have +been a shrine almost as popular as the Mount, at the same time. +Chartres was also a famous shrine, but of the Virgin, and the west +porch of Chartres, which is to be our peculiar pilgrimage, was a +hundred years later than the ground-plan of Mont-Saint-Michel, +although Chartres porch is the usual starting-point of northern +French art. Queen Matilda's Abbaye-aux-Dames, now the Church of the +Trinity, at Caen, dates from 1066. Saint Sernin at Toulouse, the +porch of the Abbey Church at Moissac, Notre-Dame-du-Port at +Clermont, the Abbey Church at Vezelay, are all said to be twelfth- +century. Even San Marco at Venice was new in 1020. + +Yet in 1020 Norman art was already too ambitious. Certainly nine +hundred years leave their traces on granite as well as on other +material, but the granite of Abbot Hildebert would have stood +securely enough, if the Abbot had not asked too much from it. +Perhaps he asked too much from the Archangel, for the thought of the +Archangel's superiority was clearly the inspiration of his plan. The +apex of the granite rock rose like a sugar-loaf two hundred and +forty feet (73.6 metres) above mean sea-level. Instead of cutting +the summit away to give his church a secure rock foundation, which +would have sacrificed about thirty feet of height, the Abbot took +the apex of the rock for his level, and on all sides built out +foundations of masonry to support the walls of his church. The apex +of the rock is the floor of the croisee, the intersection of nave +and transept. On this solid foundation the Abbot rested the chief +weight of the church, which was the central tower, supported by the +four great piers which still stand; but from the croisee in the +centre westward to the parapet of the platform, the Abbot filled the +whole space with masonry, and his successors built out still +farther, until some two hundred feet of stonework ends now in a +perpendicular wall of eighty feet or more. In this space are several +ranges of chambers, but the structure might perhaps have proved +strong enough to support the light Romanesque front which was usual +in the eleventh century, had not fashions in architecture changed in +the great epoch of building, a hundred and fifty years later, when +Abbot Robert de Torigny thought proper to reconstruct the west +front, and build out two towers on its flanks. The towers were no +doubt beautiful, if one may judge from the towers of Bayeux and +Coutances, but their weight broke down the vaulting beneath, and one +of them fell in 1300. In 1618 the whole facade began to give way, +and in 1776 not only the facade but also three of the seven spans of +the nave were pulled down. Of Abbot Hildebert's nave, only four +arches remain. + +Still, the overmastering strength of the eleventh century is stamped +on a great scale here, not only in the four spans of the nave, and +in the transepts, but chiefly in the triumphal columns of the +croisee. No one is likely to forget what Norman architecture was, +who takes the trouble to pass once through this fragment of its +earliest bloom. The dimensions are not great, though greater than +safe construction warranted. Abbot Hildebert's whole church did not +exceed two hundred and thirty feet in length in the interior, and +the span of the triumphal arch was only about twenty-three feet, if +the books can be trusted. The nave of the Abbaye-aux-Dames appears +to have about the same width, and probably neither of them was meant +to be vaulted. The roof was of timber, and about sixty-three feet +high at its apex. Compared with the great churches of the thirteenth +century, this building is modest, but its size is not what matters +to us. Its style is the starting-point of all our future travels. +Here is your first eleventh-century church! How does it affect you? + +Serious and simple to excess! is it not? Young people rarely enjoy +it. They prefer the Gothic, even as you see it here, looking at us +from the choir, through the great Norman arch. No doubt they are +right, since they are young: but men and women who have lived long +and are tired,--who want rest,--who have done with aspirations and +ambition,--whose life has been a broken arch,--feel this repose and +self-restraint as they feel nothing else. The quiet strength of +these curved lines, the solid support of these heavy columns, the +moderate proportions, even the modified lights, the absence of +display, of effort, of self-consciousness, satisfy them as no other +art does. They come back to it to rest, after a long circle of +pilgrimage,--the cradle of rest from which their ancestors started. +Even here they find the repose none too deep. + +Indeed, when you look longer at it, you begin to doubt whether there +is any repose in it at all,--whether it is not the most unreposeful +thought ever put into architectural form. Perched on the extreme +point of this abrupt rock, the Church Militant with its aspirant +Archangel stands high above the world, and seems to threaten heaven +itself. The idea is the stronger and more restless because the +Church of Saint Michael is surrounded and protected by the world and +the society over which it rises, as Duke William rested on his +barons and their men. Neither the Saint nor the Duke was troubled by +doubts about his mission. Church and State, Soul and Body, God and +Man, are all one at Mont-Saint-Michel, and the business of all is to +fight, each in his own way, or to stand guard for each other. +Neither Church nor State is intellectual, or learned, or even strict +in dogma. Here we do not feel the Trinity at all; the Virgin but +little; Christ hardly more; we feel only the Archangel and the Unity +of God. We have little logic here, and simple faith, but we have +energy. We cannot do many things which are done in the centre of +civilization, at Byzantium, but we can fight, and we can build a +church. No doubt we think first of the church, and next of our +temporal lord; only in the last instance do we think of our private +affairs, and our private affairs sometimes suffer for it; but we +reckon the affairs of Church and State to be ours, too, and we carry +this idea very far. Our church on the Mount is ambitious, restless, +striving for effect; our conquest of England, with which the Duke is +infatuated, is more ambitious still; but all this is a trifle to the +outburst which is coming in the next generation; and Saint Michael +on his Mount expresses it all. + +Taking architecture as an expression of energy, we can some day +compare Mont-Saint-Michel with Beauvais, and draw from the +comparison whatever moral suits our frame of mind; but you should +first note that here, in the eleventh century, the Church, however +simple-minded or unschooled, was not cheap. Its self-respect is +worth noticing, because it was short-lived in its art. Mont-Saint- +Michel, throughout, even up to the delicate and intricate stonework +of its cloisters, is built of granite. The crypts and substructures +are as well constructed as the surfaces most exposed to view. When +we get to Chartres, which is largely a twelfth-century work, you +will see that the cathedral there, too, is superbly built, of the +hardest and heaviest stone within reach, which has nowhere settled +or given way; while, beneath, you will find a crypt that rivals the +church above. The thirteenth century did not build so. The great +cathedrals after 1200 show economy, and sometimes worse. The world +grew cheap, as worlds must. + +You may like it all the better for being less serious, less heroic, +less militant, and more what the French call bourgeois, just as you +may like the style of Louis XV better than that of Louis XIV,-- +Madame du Barry better than Madame de Montespan,--for taste is free, +and all styles are good which amuse; but since we are now beginning +with the earliest, in order to step down gracefully to the stage, +whatever it is, where you prefer to stop, we must try to understand +a little of the kind of energy which Norman art expressed, or would +have expressed if it had thought in our modes. The only word which +describes the Norman style is the French word naif. Littre says that +naif comes from natif, as vulgar comes from vulgus, as though native +traits must be simple, and commonness must be vulgar. Both these +derivative meanings were strange to the eleventh century. Naivete +was simply natural and vulgarity was merely coarse. Norman naivete +was not different in kind from the naivete of Burgundy or Gascony or +Lombardy, but it was slightly different in expression, as you will +see when you travel south. Here at Mont-Saint-Michel we have only a +mutilated trunk of an eleventh-century church to judge by. We have +not even a facade, and shall have to stop at some Norman village--at +Thaon or Ouistreham--to find a west front which might suit the Abbey +here, but wherever we find it we shall find something a little more +serious, more military, and more practical than you will meet in +other Romanesque work, farther south. So, too, the central tower or +lantern--the most striking feature of Norman churches--has fallen +here at Mont-Saint-Michel, and we shall have to replace it from +Cerisy-la-Foret, and Lessay, and Falaise. We shall find much to say +about the value of the lantern on a Norman church, and the singular +power it expresses. We shall have still more to say of the towers +which flank the west front of Norman churches, but these are mostly +twelfth-century, and will lead us far beyond Coutances and Bayeux, +from fleche to fleche, till we come to the fleche of all fleches, at +Chartres. + +We shall have a whole chapter of study, too, over the eleventh- +century apse, but here at Mont-Saint-Michel, Abbot Hildebert's choir +went the way of his nave and tower. He built out even more boldly to +the east than to the west, and although the choir stood for some +four hundred years, which is a sufficient life for most +architecture, the foundations gave way at last, and it fell in 1421, +in the midst of the English wars, and remained a ruin until 1450. +Then it was rebuilt, a monument of the last days of the Gothic, so +that now, standing at the western door, you can look down the +church, and see the two limits of mediaeval architecture married +together,--the earliest Norman and the latest French. Through the +Romanesque arches of 1058, you look into the exuberant choir of +latest Gothic, finished in 1521. Although the two structures are +some five hundred years apart, they live pleasantly together. The +Gothic died gracefully in France. The choir is charming,--far more +charming than the nave, as the beautiful woman is more charming than +the elderly man. One need not quarrel about styles of beauty, as +long as the man and woman are evidently satisfied and love and +admire each other still, with all the solidity of faith to hold them +up; but, at least, one cannot help seeing, as one looks from the +older to the younger style, that whatever the woman's sixteenth- +century charm may be, it is not the man's eleventh-century trait of +naivete;--far from it! The simple, serious, silent dignity and +energy of the eleventh century have gone. Something more complicated +stands in their place; graceful, self-conscious, rhetorical, and +beautiful as perfect rhetoric, with its clearness, light, and line, +and the wealth of tracery that verges on the florid. + +The crypt of the same period, beneath, is almost finer still, and +even in seriousness stands up boldly by the side of the Romanesque; +but we have no time to run off into the sixteenth century: we have +still to learn the alphabet of art in France. One must live deep +into the eleventh century in order to understand the twelfth, and +even after passing years in the twelfth, we shall find the +thirteenth in many ways a world of its own, with a beauty not always +inherited, and sometimes not bequeathed. At the Mount we can go no +farther into the eleventh as far as concerns architecture. We shall +have to follow the Romanesque to Caen and so up the Seine to the Ile +de France, and across to the Loire and the Rhone, far to the South +where its home lay. All the other eleventh-century work has been +destroyed here or built over, except at one point, on the level of +the splendid crypt we just turned from, called the Gros Piliers, +beneath the choir. + +There, according to M. Corroyer, in a corner between great +constructions of the twelfth century and the vast Merveille of the +thirteenth, the old refectory of the eleventh was left as a passage +from one group of buildings to the other. Below it is the kitchen of +Hildebert. Above, on the level of the church, was the dormitory. +These eleventh-century abbatial buildings faced north and west, and +are close to the present parvis, opposite the last arch of the nave. +The lower levels of Hildebert's plan served as supports or +buttresses to the church above, and must therefore be older than the +nave; probably older than the triumphal piers of 1058. + +Hildebert planned them in 1020, and died after carrying his plans +out so far that they could be completed by Abbot Ralph de Beaumont, +who was especially selected by Duke William in 1048, "more for his +high birth than for his merits." Ralph de Beaumont died in 1060, and +was succeeded by Abbot Ranulph, an especial favourite of Duchess +Matilda, and held in high esteem by Duke William. The list of names +shows how much social importance was attributed to the place. The +Abbot's duties included that of entertainment on a great scale. The +Mount was one of the most famous shrines of northern Europe. We are +free to take for granted that all the great people of Normandy slept +at the Mount and, supposing M. Corroyer to be right, that they dined +in this room, between 1050, when the building must have been in use, +down to 1122 when the new abbatial quarters were built. + +How far the monastic rules restricted social habits is a matter for +antiquaries to settle if they can, and how far those rules were +observed in the case of great secular princes; but the eleventh +century was not very strict, and the rule of the Benedictines was +always mild, until the Cistercians and Saint Bernard stiffened its +discipline toward 1120. Even then the Church showed strong leanings +toward secular poetry and popular tastes. The drama belonged to it +almost exclusively, and the Mysteries and Miracle plays which were +acted under its patronage often contained nothing of religion except +the miracle. The greatest poem of the eleventh century was the +"Chanson de Roland," and of that the Church took a sort of +possession. At Chartres we shall find Charlemagne and Roland dear to +the Virgin, and at about the same time, as far away as at Assisi in +the Perugian country, Saint Francis himself--the nearest approach +the Western world ever made to an Oriental incarnation of the divine +essence--loved the French romans, and typified himself in the +"Chanson de Roland." With Mont-Saint-Michel, the "Chanson de Roland" +is almost one. The "Chanson" is in poetry what the Mount is in +architecture. Without the "Chanson," one cannot approach the feeling +which the eleventh century built into the Archangel's church. +Probably there was never a day, certainly never a week, during +several centuries, when portions of the "Chanson" were not sung, or +recited, at the Mount, and if there was one room where it was most +at home, this one, supposing it to be the old refectory, claims to +be the place. + + + +CHAPTER II + +LA CHANSON DE ROLAND + +Molz pelerins qui vunt al Munt + Enquierent molt e grant dreit unt + Comment l'igliese fut fundee + Premierement et estoree. + Cil qui lor dient de l'estoire + Que cil demandent en memoire + Ne l'unt pas bien ainz vunt faillant + En plusors leus e mespernant. + Por faire la apertement + Entendre a cels qui escient + N'unt de clerzie l'a tornee + De latin tote et ordenee + Pars veirs romieus novelement + Molt en segrei por son convent + Uns jovencels moine est del Munt + Deus en son reigne part li dunt. + Guillaume a non de Saint Paier + Cen vei escrit en cest quaier. + El tens Robeirt de Torignie + Fut cil romanz fait e trove. + + +Most pilgrims who come to the Mount + Enquire much and are quite right, + How the church was founded + At first, and established. + Those who tell them the story + That they ask, in memory + Have it not well, but fall in error + In many places, and misapprehension. + In order to make it clearly + Intelligible to those who have + No knowledge of letters, it has been turned + From the Latin, and wholly rendered + In Romanesque verses, newly, + Much in secret, for his convent, + By a youth; a monk he is of the Mount. + God in his kingdom grant him part! + William is his name, of Saint Pair + As is seen written in this book. + In the time of Robert of Torigny + Was this roman made and invented. + + +These verses begin the "Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel," and if the +spelling is corrected, they still read almost as easily as Voltaire; +more easily than Verlaine; and much like a nursery rhyme; but as +tourists cannot stop to clear their path, or smooth away the +pebbles, they must be lifted over the rough spots, even when +roughness is beauty. Translation is an evil, chiefly because every +one who cares for mediaeval architecture cares for mediaeval French, +and ought to care still more for mediaeval English. The language of +this "Roman" was the literary language of England. William of Saint- +Pair was a subject of Henry II, King of England and Normandy; his +verses, like those of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are monuments of +English literature. To this day their ballad measure is better +suited to English than to French; even the words and idioms are more +English than French. Any one who attacks them boldly will find that +the "vers romieus" run along like a ballad, singing their own +meaning, and troubling themselves very little whether the meaning is +exact or not. One's translation is sure to be full of gross +blunders, but the supreme blunder is that of translating at all when +one is trying to catch not a fact but a feeling. If translate one +must, we had best begin by trying to be literal, under protest that +it matters not a straw whether we succeed. Twelfth-century art was +not precise; still less "precieuse," like Moliere's famous +seventeenth-century prudes. + +The verses of the young monk, William, who came from the little +Norman village of Saint-Pair, near Granville, within sight of the +Mount, were verses not meant to be brilliant. Simple human beings +like rhyme better than prose, though both may say the same thing, as +they like a curved line better than a straight one, or a blue better +than a grey; but, apart from the sensual appetite, they chose rhyme +in creating their literature for the practical reason that they +remembered it better than prose. Men had to carry their libraries in +their heads. + +These lines of William, beginning his story, are valuable because +for once they give a name and a date. Abbot Robert of Torigny ruled +at the Mount from 1154 to 1186. We have got to travel again and +again between Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres during these years, but +for the moment we must hurry to get back to William the Conqueror +and the "Chanson de Roland." William of Saint-Pair comes in here, +out of place, only on account of a pretty description he gave of the +annual pilgrimage to the Mount, which is commonly taken to be more +or less like what he saw every year on the Archangel's Day, and what +had existed ever since the Normans became Christian in 912:-- + +Li jorz iert clers e sanz grant vent. + Les meschines e les vallez + Chascuns d'els dist verz ou sonnez. + Neis li viellart revunt chantant + + +De leece funt tuit semblant. + Qui plus ne seit si chante outree + E Dex aie u Asusee. + Cil jugleor la u il vunt + Tuit lor vieles traites unt + Laiz et sonnez vunt vielant. + + +Li tens est beals la joie est grant. + Cil palefrei e cil destrier + E cil roncin e cil sommier + Qui errouent par le chemin + Que menouent cil pelerin + De totes parz henissant vunt + Por la grant joie que il unt. + Neis par les bois chantouent tuit + Li oiselet grant et petit. + + +Li buef les vaches vunt muant + Par les forez e repaissant. + Cors e boisines e fresteals + E fleutes e chalemeals + Sonnoent si que les montaignes + En retintoent et les pleignes. + Que esteit dont les plaiseiz + E des forez e des larriz. + En cels par a tel sonneiz + Com si ce fust cers acolliz. + + +Entor le mont el bois follu + Cil travetier unt tres tendu + Rues unt fait par les chemins. + Plentei i out de divers vins + Pain e pastez fruit e poissons + Oisels obleies veneisons + De totes parz aveit a vendre + Assez en out qui ad que tendre. + + +The day was clear, without much wind. + The maidens and the varlets + Each of them said verse or song; + Even the old people go singing; + + +All have a look of joy. + Who knows no more sings HURRAH, + Or GOD HELP, or UP AND ON! + The minstrels there where they go + Have all brought their viols; + Lays and songs playing as they go. + + +The weather is fine; the joy is great; + The palfreys and the chargers, + And the hackneys and the packhorses + Which wander along the road + That the pilgrims follow, + On all sides neighing go, + For the great joy they feel. + Even in the woods sing all + The little birds, big and small. + + +The oxen and the cows go lowing + Through the forests as they feed. + Horns and trumpets and shepherd's pipes + And flutes and pipes of reed + Sound so that the mountains + Echo to them, and the plains. + How was it then with the glades + And with the forests and the pastures? + In these there was such sound + As though it were a stag at bay. + + +About the Mount, in the leafy wood, + The workmen have tents set up; + Streets have made along the roads. + Plenty there was of divers wines, + Bread and pasties, fruit and fish, + Birds, cakes, venison, + Everywhere there was for sale. + Enough he had who has the means to pay. + + +If you are not satisfied with this translation, any scholar of +French will easily help to make a better, for we are not studying +grammar or archaeology, and would rather be inaccurate in such +matters than not, if, at that price, a freer feeling of the art +could be caught. Better still, you can turn to Chaucer, who wrote +his Canterbury Pilgrimage two hundred years afterwards:-- + +Whanne that April with his shoures sote + The droughte of March hath perced to the rote... + Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages + And palmeres for to seken strange strondes... + And especially, from every shires ende + Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende + The holy blisful martyr for to seke, + That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke. + + +The passion for pilgrimages was universal among our ancestors as far +back as we can trace them. For at least a thousand years it was +their chief delight, and is not yet extinct. To feel the art of +Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again: +but, just now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so much +as the minstrel who sang to amuse him,--the jugleor or jongleur,-- +who was at home in every abbey, castle or cottage, as well as at +every shrine. The jugleor became a jongleur and degenerated into the +street-juggler; the minstrel, or menestrier, became very early a +word of abuse, equivalent to blackguard; and from the beginning the +profession seems to have been socially decried, like that of a +music-hall singer or dancer in later times; but in the eleventh +century, or perhaps earlier still, the jongleur seems to have been a +poet, and to have composed the songs he sang. The immense mass of +poetry known as the "Chansons de Geste" seems to have been composed +as well as sung by the unnamed Homers of France, and of all spots in +the many provinces where the French language in its many dialects +prevailed, Mont-Saint-Michel should have been the favourite with the +jongleur, not only because the swarms of pilgrims assured him food +and an occasional small piece of silver, but also because Saint +Michael was the saint militant of all the warriors whose exploits in +war were the subject of the "Chansons de Geste." William of Saint- +Pair was a priest-poet; he was not a minstrel, and his "Roman" was +not a chanson; it was made to read, not to recite; but the "Chanson +de Roland" was a different affair. + +So it was, too, with William's contemporaries and rivals or +predecessors, the monumental poets of Norman-English literature. +Wace, whose rhymed history of the Norman dukes, which he called the +"Roman de Rou," or "Rollo," is an English classic of the first rank, +was a canon of Bayeux when William of Saint-Pair was writing at +Mont-Saint-Michel. His rival Benoist, who wrote another famous +chronicle on the same subject, was also a historian, and not a +singer. In that day literature meant verse; elegance in French prose +did not yet exist; but the elegancies of poetry in the twelfth +century were as different, in kind, from the grand style of the +eleventh, as Virgil was different from Homer. + +William of Saint-Pair introduces us to the pilgrimage and to the +jongleur, as they had existed at least two hundred years before his +time, and were to exist two hundred years after him. Of all our two +hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors who were going on +pilgrimages in the middle of the eleventh century, the two who would +probably most interest every one, after eight hundred years have +passed, would be William the Norman and Harold the Saxon. Through +William of Saint-Pair and Wace and Benoist, and the most charming +literary monument of all, the Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, we +can build up the story of such a pilgrimage which shall be as +historically exact as the battle of Hastings, and as artistically +true as the Abbey Church. + +According to Wace's "Roman de Rou," when Harold's father, Earl +Godwin, died, April 15, 1053, Harold wished to obtain the release of +certain hostages, a brother and a cousin, whom Godwin had given to +Edward the Confessor as security for his good behaviour, and whom +Edward had sent to Duke William for safe-keeping. Wace took the +story from other and older sources, and its accuracy is much +disputed, but the fact that Harold went to Normandy seems to be +certain, and you will see at Bayeux the picture of Harold asking +permission of King Edward to make the journey, and departing on +horseback, with his hawk and hounds and followers, to take ship at +Bosham, near Chichester and Portsmouth. The date alone is doubtful. +Common sense seems to suggest that the earliest possible date could +not be too early to explain the rash youth of the aspirant to a +throne who put himself in the power of a rival in the eleventh +century. When that rival chanced to be William the Bastard, not even +boyhood could excuse the folly; but Mr. Freeman, the chief authority +on this delicate subject, inclined to think that Harold was forty +years old when he committed his blunder, and that the year was about +1064. Between 1054 and 1064 the historian is free to choose what +year he likes, and the tourist is still freer. To save trouble for +the memory, the year 1058 will serve, since this is the date of the +triumphal arches of the Abbey Church on the Mount. Harold, in +sailing from the neighbourhood of Portsmouth, must have been bound +for Caen or Rouen, but the usual west winds drove him eastward till +he was thrown ashore on the coast of Ponthieu, between Abbeville and +Boulogne, where he fell into the hands of the Count of Ponthieu, +from whom he was rescued or ransomed by Duke William of Normandy and +taken to Rouen. According to Wace and the "Roman de Rou":-- + +Guillaume tint Heraut maint jour + Si com il dut a grant enor. + A maint riche torneiement + Le fist aller mult noblement. + Chevals e armes li dona + Et en Bretaigne le mena + Ne sai de veir treiz faiz ou quatre + Quant as Bretons se dut combattre. + + +William kept Harold many a day, + As was his due in great honour. + To many a rich tournament + Made him go very nobly. + Horses and arms gave him + And into Brittany led him + I know not truly whether three or four times + When he had to make war on the Bretons. + + +Perhaps the allusion to rich tournaments belongs to the time of Wace +rather than to that of Harold a century earlier, before the first +crusade, but certainly Harold did go with William on at least one +raid into Brittany, and the charming tapestry of Bayeux, which +tradition calls by the name of Queen Matilda, shows William's men- +at-arms crossing the sands beneath Mont-Saint-Michel, with the Latin +legend:--"Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis. Hic Harold dux trahebat +eos de arena. Venerunt ad flumen Cononis." They came to Mont-Saint- +Michel, and Harold dragged them out of the quicksands. + +They came to the river Couesnon. Harold must have got great fame by +saving life on the sands, to be remembered and recorded by the +Normans themselves after they had killed him; but this is the affair +of historians. Tourists note only that Harold and William came to +the Mount:--"Venerunt ad Montem." They would never have dared to +pass it, on such an errand, without stopping to ask the help of +Saint Michael. + +If William and Harold came to the Mount, they certainly dined or +supped in the old refectory, which is where we have lain in wait for +them. Where Duke William was, his jongleur--jugleor--was not far, +and Wace knew, as every one in Normandy seemed to know, who this +favourite was,--his name, his character, and his song. To him Wace +owed one of the most famous passages in his story of the assault at +Hastings, where Duke William and his battle began their advance +against the English lines:-- + +Taillefer qui mult bien chantout + Sor un cheval qui tost alout + Devant le duc alout chantant + De Karlemaigne e de Rollant + E d'Oliver e des vassals + Qui morurent en Rencevals. + Quant il orent chevalchie tant + Qu'as Engleis vindrent apreismant: + "Sire," dist Taillefer, "merci! + Io vos ai longuement servi. + Tot mon servise me devez. + Hui se vos plaist le me rendez. + Por tot guerredon vos require + E si vos veil forment preier + Otreiez mei que io ni faille + Le premier colp de la bataille." + Li dus respondi: "Io l'otrei." + + +Taillefer who was famed for song, + Mounted on a charger strong, + Rode on before the Duke, and sang + Of Roland and of Charlemagne, + Oliver and the vassals all + Who fell in fight at Roncesvals. + When they had ridden till they saw + The English battle close before: + "Sire," said Taillefer, "a grace! + I have served you long and well; + All reward you owe me still; + To-day repay me if you please. + For all guerdon I require, + And ask of you in formal prayer, + Grant to me as mine of right + The first blow struck in the fight." + The Duke answered: "I grant." + + +Of course, critics doubt the story, as they very properly doubt +everything. They maintain that the "Chanson de Roland" was not as +old as the battle of Hastings, and certainly Wace gave no sufficient +proof of it. Poetry was not usually written to prove facts. Wace +wrote a hundred years after the battle of Hastings. One is not +morally required to be pedantic to the point of knowing more than +Wace knew, but the feeling of scepticism, before so serious a +monument as Mont-Saint-Michel, is annoying. The "Chanson de Roland" +ought not to be trifled with, at least by tourists in search of art. +One is shocked at the possibility of being deceived about the +starting-point of American genealogy. Taillefer and the song rest on +the same evidence that Duke William and Harold and the battle itself +rest upon, and to doubt the "Chanson" is to call the very roll of +Battle Abbey in question. The whole fabric of society totters; the +British peerage turns pale. + +Wace did not invent all his facts. William of Malmesbury is supposed +to have written his prose chronicle about 1120 when many of the men +who fought at Hastings must have been alive, and William expressly +said: "Tune cantilena Rollandi inchoata ut martium viri exemplum +pugnaturos accenderet, inclamatoque dei auxilio, praelium +consertum." Starting the "Chanson de Roland" to inflame the fighting +temper of the men, battle was joined. This seems enough proof to +satisfy any sceptic, yet critics still suggest that the "cantilena +Rollandi" must have been a Norman "Chanson de Rou," or "Rollo," or +at best an earlier version of the "Chanson de Roland"; but no Norman +chanson would have inflamed the martial spirit of William's army, +which was largely French; and as for the age of the version, it is +quite immaterial for Mont-Saint-Michel; the actual version is old +enough. + +Taillefer himself is more vital to the interest of the dinner in the +refectory, and his name was not mentioned by William of Malmesbury. +If the song was started by the Duke's order, it was certainly +started by the Duke's jongleur, and the name of this jongleur +happens to be known on still better authority than that of William +of Malmesbury. Guy of Amiens went to England in 1068 as almoner of +Queen Matilda, and there wrote a Latin poem on the battle of +Hastings which must have been complete within ten years after the +battle was fought, for Guy died in 1076. Taillefer, he said, led the +Duke's battle:-- + +Incisor-ferri mimus cognomine dictus. + + +"Taillefer, a jongleur known by that name." A mime was a singer, but +Taillefer was also an actor:-- + +Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat. + + +"A jongleur whom a very brave heart ennobled." The jongleur was not +noble by birth, but was ennobled by his bravery. + +Hortatur Gallos verbis et territat Anglos + Alte projiciens ludit et ense suo. + + +Like a drum-major with his staff, he threw his sword high in the air +and caught it, while he chanted his song to the French, and +terrified the English. The rhymed chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimer who +wrote about 1150, and that of Benoist who was Wace's rival, added +the story that Taillefer died in the melee. + +The most unlikely part of the tale was, after all, not the singing +of the "Chanson," but the prayer of Taillefer to the Duke:-- + +"Otreiez mei que io ni faille + Le premier colp de la bataille." + + +Legally translated, Taillefer asked to be ennobled, and offered to +pay for it with his life. The request of a jongleur to lead the +Duke's battle seems incredible. In early French "bataille" meant +battalion,--the column of attack. The Duke's grant: "Io l'otrei!" +seems still more fanciful. Yet Guy of Amiens distinctly confirmed +the story: "Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat"; a stage- +player--a juggler--the Duke's singer--whose bravery ennobled him. +The Duke granted him--octroya--his patent of nobility on the field. + +All this preamble leads only to unite the "Chanson" with the +architecture of the Mount, by means of Duke William and his Breton +campaign of 1058. The poem and the church are akin; they go +together, and explain each other. Their common trait is their +military character, peculiar to the eleventh century. The round arch +is masculine. The "Chanson" is so masculine that, in all its four +thousand lines, the only Christian woman so much as mentioned was +Alda, the sister of Oliver and the betrothed of Roland, to whom one +stanza, exceedingly like a later insertion, was given, toward the +end. Never after the first crusade did any great poem rise to such +heroism as to sustain itself without a heroine. Even Dante attempted +no such feat. + +Duke William's party, then, is to be considered as assembled at +supper in the old refectory, in the year 1058, while the triumphal +piers of the church above are rising. The Abbot, Ralph of Beaumont, +is host; Duke William sits with him on a dais; Harold is by his side +"a grant enor"; the Duke's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with the +other chief vassals, are present; and the Duke's jongleur Taillefer +is at his elbow. The room is crowded with soldiers and monks, but +all are equally anxious to hear Taillefer sing. As soon as dinner is +over, at a nod from the Duke, Taillefer begins:-- + +Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes + Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne + Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne + Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne + Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre. + + +Charles the king, our emperor, the great, + Seven years complete has been in Spain, + Conquered the land as far as the high seas, + Nor is there castle that holds against him, + Nor wall or city left to capture. + + +The "Chanson" opened with these lines, which had such a direct and +personal bearing on every one who heard them as to sound like +prophecy. Within ten years William was to stand in England where +Charlemagne stood in Spain. His mind was full of it, and of the +means to attain it; and Harold was even more absorbed than he by the +anxiety of the position. Harold had been obliged to take oath that +he would support William's claim to the English throne, but he was +still undecided, and William knew men too well to feel much +confidence in an oath. As Taillefer sang on, he reached the part of +Ganelon, the typical traitor, the invariable figure of mediaeval +society. No feudal lord was without a Ganelon. Duke William saw them +all about him. + +He might have felt that Harold would play the part, but if Harold +should choose rather to be Roland, Duke William could have foretold +that his own brother, Bishop Odo, after gorging himself on the +plunder of half England, would turn into a Ganelon so dangerous as +to require a prison for life. When Taillefer reached the battle- +scenes, there was no further need of imagination to realize them. +They were scenes of yesterday and to-morrow. For that matter, +Charlemagne or his successor was still at Aix, and the Moors were +still in Spain. Archbishop Turpin of Rheims had fought with sword +and mace in Spain, while Bishop Odo of Bayeux was to marshal his men +at Hastings, like a modern general, with a staff, but both were +equally at home on the field of battle. Verse by verse, the song was +a literal mirror of the Mount. The battle of Hastings was to be +fought on the Archangel's Day. What happened to Roland at +Roncesvalles was to happen to Harold at Hastings, and Harold, as he +was dying like Roland, was to see his brother Gyrth die like Oliver. +Even Taillefer was to be a part, and a distinguished part, of his +chanson. Sooner or later, all were to die in the large and simple +way of the eleventh century. Duke William himself, twenty years +later, was to meet a violent death at Mantes in the same spirit, and +if Bishop Odo did not die in battle, he died, at least, like an +eleventh-century hero, on the first crusade. First or last, the +whole company died in fight, or in prison, or on crusade, while the +monks shrived them and prayed. + +Then Taillefer certainly sang the great death-scenes. Even to this +day every French school-boy, if he knows no other poetry, knows +these verses by heart. In the eleventh century they wrung the heart +of every man-at-arms in Europe, whose school was the field of battle +and the hand-to-hand fight. No modern singer ever enjoys such power +over an audience as Taillefer exercised over these men who were +actors as well as listeners. In the melee at Roncesvalles, overborne +by innumerable Saracens, Oliver at last calls for help:-- + +Munjoie escriet e haltement e cler. + Rollant apelet sun ami e sun per; + "Sire compainz a mei kar vus justez. + A grant dulur ermes hoi deserveret." Aoi. + + +"Montjoie!" he cries, loud and clear, + Roland he calls, his friend and peer; + "Sir Friend! ride now to help me here! + Parted today, great pity were." + + +Of course the full value of the verse cannot be regained. One knows +neither how it was sung nor even how it was pronounced. The +assonances are beyond recovering; the "laisse" or leash of verses or +assonances with the concluding cry, "Aoi," has long ago vanished +from verse or song. The sense is as simple as the "Ballad of Chevy +Chase," but one must imagine the voice and acting. Doubtless +Taillefer acted each motive; when Oliver called loud and clear, +Taillefer's voice rose; when Roland spoke "doulcement et suef," the +singer must have sung gently and soft; and when the two friends, +with the singular courtesy of knighthood and dignity of soldiers, +bowed to each other in parting and turned to face their deaths, +Taillefer may have indicated the movement as he sang. The verses +gave room for great acting. Hearing Oliver's cry for help, Roland +rode up, and at sight of the desperate field, lost for a moment his +consciousness:-- + +As vus Rollant sur sun cheval pasmet + E Olivier ki est a mort nafrez! + Tant ad sainiet li oil li sunt trublet + Ne luinz ne pres ne poet veeir si cler + Que reconuisset nisun hume mortel. + Sun cumpaignun cum il l'ad encuntret + Sil fiert amunt sur l'elme a or gemmet + Tut li detrenchet d'ici que al nasel + Mais en la teste ne l'ad mie adeset. + A icel colp l'ad Rollanz reguardet + Si li demandet dulcement et suef + "Sire cumpainz, faites le vus de gred? + Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer. + Par nule guise ne m'aviez desfiet," + Dist Oliviers: "Or vus oi jo parler + Io ne vus vei. Veied vus damnedeus! + Ferut vus ai. Kar le me pardunez!" + Rollanz respunt: "Jo n'ai nient de mel. + Jol vus parduins ici e devant deu." + A icel mot l'uns al altre ad clinet. + Par tel amur as les vus desevrez! + + +There Roland sits unconscious on his horse, + And Oliver who wounded is to death, + So much has bled, his eyes grow dark to him, + Nor far nor near can see so clear + As to recognize any mortal man. + His friend, when he has encountered him, + He strikes upon the helmet of gemmed gold, + splits it from the crown to the nose-piece, + But to the head he has not reached at all. + At this blow Roland looks at him, + Asks him gently and softly: + "Sir Friend, do you it in earnest? + You know 't is Roland who has so loved you. + In no way have you sent to me defiance." + Says Oliver: "Indeed I hear you speak, + I do not see you. May God see and save you! + Strike you I did. I pray you pardon me." + Roland replies: "I have no harm at all. + I pardon you here and before God!" + At this word, one to the other bends himself. + With such affection, there they separate. + + +No one should try to render this into English--or, indeed, into +modern French--verse, but any one who will take the trouble to catch +the metre and will remember that each verse in the "leash" ends in +the same sound,--aimer, parler, cler, mortel, damnede, mel, deu, +suef, nasel,--however the terminal syllables may be spelled, can +follow the feeling of the poetry as well as though it were Greek +hexameter. He will feel the simple force of the words and action, as +he feels Homer. It is the grand style,--the eleventh century:-- + +Ferut vus ai! Kar le me pardunez! + + +Not a syllable is lost, and always the strongest syllable is chosen. +Even the sentiment is monosyllabic and curt:-- + +Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer! + + +Taillefer had, in such a libretto, the means of producing dramatic +effects that the French comedy or the grand opera never approached, +and such as made Bayreuth seem thin and feeble. Duke William's +barons must have clung to his voice and action as though they were +in the very melee, striking at the helmets of gemmed gold. They had +all been there, and were to be there again. As the climax +approached, they saw the scene itself; probably they had seen it +every year, more or less, since they could swing a sword. Taillefer +chanted the death of Oliver and of Archbishop Turpin and all the +other barons of the rear guard, except Roland, who was left for dead +by the Saracens when they fled on hearing the horns of Charlemagne's +returning host. Roland came back to consciousness on feeling a +Saracen marauder tugging at his sword Durendal. With a blow of his +ivory horn--oliphant--he killed the pagan; then feeling death near, +he prepared for it. His first thought was for Durendal, his sword, +which he could not leave to infidels. In the singular triple +repetition which gives more of the same solidity and architectural +weight to the verse, he made three attempts to break the sword, with +a lament--a plaint--for each. Three times he struck with all his +force against the rock; each time the sword rebounded without +breaking. The third time-- + +Rollanz ferit en une pierre bise + Plus en abat que jo ne vus sai dire. + L'espee cruist ne fruisset ne ne briset + Cuntre le ciel amunt est resortie. + Quant veit li quens que ne la fraindrat mie + Mult dulcement la plainst a sei meisme. + "E! Durendal cum ies bele e saintisme! + En l'oret punt asez i ad reliques. + La dent saint Pierre e del sanc seint Basilie + E des chevels mun seignur seint Denisie + Del vestment i ad seinte Marie. + Il nen est dreiz que paien te baillisent. + De chrestiens devez estre servie. + Ne vus ait hum ki facet cuardie! + Mult larges terres de vus averai cunquises + Que Carles tient ki la barbe ad flurie. + E li emperere en est e ber e riches." + + +Roland strikes on a grey stone, + More of it cuts off than I can tell you. + The sword grinds, but shatters not nor breaks, + Upward against the sky it rebounds. + When the Count sees that he can never break it, + Very gently he mourns it to himself: + "Ah, Durendal, how fair you are and sacred! + In your golden guard are many relics, + The tooth of Saint Peter and blood of Saint Basil, + And hair of my seigneur Saint-Denis, + Of the garment too of Saint Mary. + It is not right that pagans should own you. + By Christians you should be served, + Nor should man have you who does cowardice. + Many wide lands by you I have conquered + That Charles holds, who has the white beard, + And emperor of them is noble and rich." + + +This "laisse" is even more eleventh-century than the other, but it +appealed no longer to the warriors; it spoke rather to the monks. To +the warriors, the sword itself was the religion, and the relics were +details of ornament or strength. To the priest, the list of relics +was more eloquent than the Regent diamond on the hilt and the +Kohinoor on the scabbard. Even to us it is interesting if it is +understood. Roland had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He had +stopped at Rome and won the friendship of Saint Peter, as the tooth +proved; he had passed through Constantinople and secured the help of +Saint Basil; he had reached Jerusalem and gained the affection of +the Virgin; he had come home to France and secured the support of +his "seigneur" Saint Denis; for Roland, like Hugh Capet, was a +liege-man of Saint Denis and French to the heart. France, to him, +was Saint Denis, and at most the Ile de France, but not Anjou or +even Maine. These were countries he had conquered with Durendal:-- + +Jo l'en cunquis e Anjou e Bretaigne + Si l'en cunquis e Peitou e le Maine + Jo l'en cunquis Normendie la franche + Si l'en cunquis Provence e Equitaigne. + + +He had conquered these for his emperor Charlemagne with the help of +his immediate spiritual lord or seigneur Saint Denis, but the monks +knew that he could never have done these feats without the help of +Saint Peter, Saint Basil, and Saint Mary the Blessed Virgin, whose +relics, in the hilt of his sword, were worth more than any king's +ransom. To this day a tunic of the Virgin is the most precious +property of the cathedral at Chartres. Either one of Roland's relics +would have made the glory of any shrine in Europe, and every monk +knew their enormous value and power better than he knew the value of +Roland's conquests. + +Yet even the religion is martial, as though it were meant for the +fighting Archangel and Odo of Bayeux. The relics serve the sword; +the sword is not in service of the relics. As the death-scene +approaches, the song becomes even more military:-- + +Co sent Rollanz que la mort le tresprent + Devers la teste sur le quer li descent. + Desuz un pin i est alez curanz + Sur l'erbe verte si est culchiez adenz + Desuz lui met s'espee e l'olifant + Turnat sa teste vers la paiene gent. + Pur co l'ad fait que il voelt veirement + Que Carles diet et trestute sa gent + Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz. + + +Then Roland feels that death is taking him; + Down from the head upon the heart it falls. + Beneath a pine he hastens running; + On the green grass he throws himself down; + Beneath him puts his sword and oliphant, + Turns his face toward the pagan army. + For this he does it, that he wishes greatly + That Charles should say and all his men, + The gentle Count has died a conqueror. + + +Thus far, not a thought or a word strays from the field of war. With +a childlike intensity, every syllable bends toward the single idea-- + +Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz. + + +Only then the singer allowed the Church to assert some of its +rights:- + +Co sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus + Devers Espaigne gist en un pui agut + A l'une main si ad sun piz batut. + "Deus meie culpe vers les tues vertuz + De mes pecchiez des granz e des menuz + Que jo ai fait des l'ure que nez fui + Tresqu'a cest jur que ci sui consouz." + Sun destre guant en ad vers deu tendut + Angle del ciel i descendent a lui. Aoi. + + +Then Roland feels that his last hour has come + Facing toward Spain he lies on a steep hill, + While with one hand he beats upon his breast: + "Mea culpa, God! through force of thy miracles + Pardon my sins, the great as well as small, + That I have done from the hour I was born + Down to this day that I have now attained." + His right glove toward God he lifted up. + Angels from heaven descend on him. Aoi. + Li quens Rollanz se jut desuz un pin + Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis + De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist + De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist + De dulce France des humes de sun lign + De Carlemagne sun seignur kil nurrit + Ne poet muer men plurt e ne suspirt + Mais lui meisme ne voelt metre en ubli + Claimet sa culpe si priet deu mercit. + "Veire paterne ki unkes ne mentis + Seint Lazarun de mort resurrexis + E Daniel des liuns guaresis + Guaris de mei l'anme de tuz perils + Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fis." + + +Sun destre guant a deu en puroffrit + E de sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris + Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin + Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. + Deus li tramist sun angle cherubin + E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril + Ensemble od els Seinz Gabriels i vint + L' anme del cunte portent en pareis. + + +Count Roland throws himself beneath a pine + And toward Spain has turned his face away. + Of many things he called the memory back, + Of many lands that he, the brave, had conquered, + Of gentle France, the men of his lineage, + Of Charlemagne his lord, who nurtured him; + He cannot help but weep and sigh for these, + But for himself will not forget to care; + He cries his Culpe, he prays to God for grace. + "O God the Father who has never lied, + Who raised up Saint Lazarus from death, + And Daniel from the lions saved, + Save my soul from all the perils + For the sins that in my life I did!" + + +His right-hand glove to God he proffered; + Saint Gabriel from his hand took it; + Upon his arm he held his head inclined, + Folding his hands he passed to his end. + God sent to him his angel cherubim + And Saint Michael of the Sea in Peril, + Together with them came Saint Gabriel. + The soul of the Count they bear to Paradise. + + +Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye for +colour and line, and its taste for war and worship, wine and women. +Not one man in a hundred thousand could now feel what the eleventh +century felt in these verses of the "Chanson," and there is no +reason for trying to do so, but there is a certain use in trying for +once to understand not so much the feeling as the meaning. The +naivete of the poetry is that of the society. God the Father was the +feudal seigneur, who raised Lazarus--his baron or vassal--from the +grave, and freed Daniel, as an evidence of his power and loyalty; a +seigneur who never lied, or was false to his word. God the Father, +as feudal seigneur, absorbs the Trinity, and, what is more +significant, absorbs or excludes also the Virgin, who is not +mentioned in the prayer. To this seigneur, Roland in dying, +proffered (puroffrit) his right-hand gauntlet. Death was an act of +homage. God sent down his Archangel Gabriel as his representative to +accept the homage and receive the glove. To Duke William and his +barons nothing could seem more natural and correct. God was not +farther away than Charlemagne. + +Correct as the law may have been, the religion even at that time +must have seemed to the monks to need professional advice. Roland's +life was not exemplary. The "Chanson" had taken pains to show that +the disaster at Roncesvalles was due to Roland's headstrong folly +and temper. In dying, Roland had not once thought of these faults, +or repented of his worldly ambitions, or mentioned the name of Alda, +his betrothed. He had clung to the memory of his wars and conquests, +his lineage, his earthly seigneur Charlemagne, and of "douce +France." He had forgotten to give so much as an allusion to Christ. +The poet regarded all these matters as the affair of the Church; all +the warrior cared for was courage, loyalty, and prowess. + +The interest of these details lies not in the scholarship or the +historical truth or even the local colour, so much as in the art. +The naivete of the thought is repeated by the simplicity of the +verse. Word and thought are equally monosyllabic. Nothing ever +matched it. The words bubble like a stream in the woods:-- + +Co sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus. + + +Try and put them into modern French, and see what will happen:-- + +Que jo ai fait des l'ure que nez fui. + + +The words may remain exactly the same, but the poetry will have gone +out of them. Five hundred years later, even the English critics had +so far lost their sense for military poetry that they professed to +be shocked by Milton's monosyllables:-- + +Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked, + Smote him into the midriff with a stone + That beat out life. + + +Milton's language was indeed more or less archaic and Biblical; it +was a Puritan affectation; but the "Chanson" in the refectory +actually reflected, repeated, echoed, the piers and arches of the +Abbey Church just rising above. The verse is built up. The qualities +of the architecture reproduce themselves in the song: the same +directness, simplicity, absence of self-consciousness; the same +intensity of purpose; even the same material; the prayer is +granite:-- + +Guaris de mei l'anme de tuz perils Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie +fisi + + +The action of dying is felt, like the dropping of a keystone into +the vault, and if the Romanesque arches in the church, which are +within hearing, could speak, they would describe what they are doing +in the precise words of the poem:-- + +Desur sun braz teneit Ie chief enclin Juintes ses mains est alez a +sa fin. + +Upon their shoulders have their heads inclined, + Folded their hands, and sunken to their rest. + + +Many thousands of times these verses must have been sung at the +Mount and echoed in every castle and on every battle-field from the +Welsh Marches to the shores of the Dead Sea. No modern opera or play +ever approached the popularity of the "Chanson." None has ever +expressed with anything like the same completeness the society that +produced it. Chanted by every minstrel,--known by heart, from +beginning to end, by every man and woman and child, lay or +clerical,--translated into every tongue,--more intensely felt, if +possible, in Italy and Spain than in Normandy and England,--perhaps +most effective, as a work of art, when sung by the Templars in their +great castles in the Holy Land,--it is now best felt at Mont-Saint- +Michel, and from the first must have been there at home. The proof +is the line, evidently inserted for the sake of its local effect, +which invoked Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea at the climax of +Roland's death, and one needs no original documents or contemporary +authorities to prove that, when Taillefer came to this invocation, +not only Duke William and his barons, but still more Abbot Ranulf +and his monks, broke into a frenzy of sympathy which expressed the +masculine and military passions of the Archangel better than it +accorded with the rules of Saint Benedict. + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE MERVEILLE + +The nineteenth century moved fast and furious, so that one who moved +in it felt sometimes giddy, watching it spin; but the eleventh moved +faster and more furiously still. The Norman conquest of England was +an immense effort, and its consequences were far-reaching, but the +first crusade was altogether the most interesting event in European +history. Never has the Western world shown anything like the energy +and unity with which she then flung herself on the East, and for the +moment made the East recoil. Barring her family quarrels, Europe was +a unity then, in thought, will, and object. Christianity was the +unit. Mont-Saint-Michel and Byzantium were near each other. The +Emperor Constantine and the Emperor Charlemagne were figured as +allies and friends in the popular legend. The East was the common +enemy, always superior in wealth and numbers, frequently in energy, +and sometimes in thought and art. The outburst of the first crusade +was splendid even in a military sense, but it was great beyond +comparison in its reflection in architecture, ornament, poetry, +colour, religion, and philosophy. Its men were astonishing, and its +women were worth all the rest. + +Mont-Saint-Michel, better than any other spot in the world, keeps +the architectural record of that ferment, much as the Sicilian +temples keep the record of the similar outburst of Greek energy, +art, poetry, and thought, fifteen hundred years before. Of the +eleventh century, it is true, nothing but the church remains at the +Mount, and, if studied further, the century has got to be sought +elsewhere, which is not difficult, since it is preserved in any +number of churches in every path of tourist travel. Normandy is full +of it; Bayeux and Caen contain little else. At the Mount, the +eleventh-century work was antiquated before it was finished. In the +year 1112, Abbot Roger II was obliged to plan and construct a new +group in such haste that it is said to have been finished in 1122. +It extends from what we have supposed to be the old refectory to the +parvis, and abuts on the three lost spans of the church, covering +about one hundred and twenty feet. As usual there were three levels; +a crypt or gallery beneath, known as the Aquilon; a cloister or +promenoir above; and on the level of the church a dormitory, now +lost. The group is one of the most interesting in France, another +pons seclorum, an antechamber to the west portal of Chartres, which +bears the same date (i 110-25). It is the famous period of +Transition, the glory of the twelfth century, the object of our +pilgrimage. + +Art is a fairly large field where no one need jostle his neighbour, +and no one need shut himself up in a corner; but, if one insists on +taking a corner of preference, one might offer some excuse for +choosing the Gothic Transition. The quiet, restrained strength of +the Romanesque married to the graceful curves and vaulting +imagination of the Gothic makes a union nearer the ideal than is +often allowed in marriage. The French, in their best days, loved it +with a constancy that has thrown a sort of aureole over their +fickleness since. They never tired of its possibilities. Sometimes +they put the pointed arch within the round, or above it; sometimes +they put the round within the pointed. Sometimes a Roman arch +covered a cluster of pointed windows, as though protecting and +caressing its children; sometimes a huge pointed arch covered a +great rose-window spreading across the whole front of an enormous +cathedral, with an arcade of Romanesque windows beneath. The French +architects felt no discord, and there was none. Even the pure Gothic +was put side by side with the pure Roman. You will see no later +Gothic than the choir of the Abbey Church above (1450-1521), unless +it is the north fleche of Chartres Cathedral (1507-13); and if you +will look down the nave, through the triumphal arches, into the +pointed choir four hundred years more modern, you can judge whether +there is any real discord. For those who feel the art, there is +none; the strength and the grace join hands; the man and woman love +each other still. + +The difference of sex is not imaginary. In 1058, when the triumphal +columns were building, and Taillefer sang to William the Bastard and +Harold the Saxon, Roland still prayed his "mea culpa" to God the +Father and gave not a thought to Alda his betrothed. In the twelfth +century Saint Bernard recited "Ave Stella Marts" in an ecstasy of +miracle before the image of the Virgin, and the armies of France in +battle cried, "Notre-Dame-Saint-Denis-Montjoie." What the Roman +could not express flowered into the Gothic; what the masculine mind +could not idealize in the warrior, it idealized in the woman; no +architecture that ever grew on earth, except the Gothic, gave this +effect of flinging its passion against the sky. + +When men no longer felt the passion, they fell back on themselves, +or lower. The architect returned to the round arch, and even further +to the flatness of the Greek colonnade; but this was not the fault +of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. What they had to say they +said; what they felt they expressed; and if the seventeenth century +forgot it, the twentieth in turn has forgotten the seventeenth. +History is only a catalogue of the forgotten. The eleventh century +is no worse off than its neighbours. The twelfth is, in +architecture, rather better off than the nineteenth. These two +rooms, the Aquilon and promenoir, which mark the beginning of the +Transition, are, on the whole, more modern than Saint-Sulpice, or Il +Gesu at Rome. In the same situation, for the same purposes, any +architect would be proud to repeat them to-day. + +The Aquilon, though a hall or gallery of importance in its day, +seems to be classed among crypts. M. Camille Enlart, in his "Manual +of French Archaeology" (p. 252) gives a list of Romanesque and +Transition crypts, about one hundred and twenty, to serve as +examples for the study. The Aquilon is not one of them, but the +crypt of Saint-Denis and that of Chartres Cathedral would serve to +teach any over-curious tourist all that he should want to know about +such matters. + +Photographs such as those of the Monuments Historiques answer all +the just purposes of underground travel. The Aquilon is one's first +lesson in Transition architecture because it is dated (1112); and +the crypt of Saint-Denis serves almost equally well because the Abbe +Suger must have begun his plans for it about 1122. Both have the +same arcs doubleaux and arcs-formerets, though in opposite +arrangement. Both show the first heavy hint at the broken arch. +There are no nervures--no rib-vaulting,--and hardly a suggestion of +the Gothic as one sees it in the splendid crypt of the Gros Fillers +close at hand, except the elaborately intersecting vaults and the +heavy columns; but the promenoir above is an astonishing leap in +time and art. The promenoir has the same arrangement and columns as +the Aquilon, but the vaults are beautifully arched and pointed, with +ribs rising directly from the square capitals and intersecting the +central spacings, in a spirit which neither you nor I know how to +distinguish from the pure Gothic of the thirteenth century, unless +it is that the arches are hardly pointed enough; they seem to the +eye almost round. The height appears to be about fourteen feet. + +The promenoir of Abbot Roger II has an interest to pilgrims who are +going on to the shrine of the Virgin, because the date of the +promenoir seems to be exactly the same as the date which the Abbe +Bulteau assigns for the western portal of Chartres. Ordinarily a +date is no great matter, but when one has to run forward and back, +with the agility of an electric tram, between two or three fixed +points, it is convenient to fix them once for all. The Transition is +complete here in the promenoir, which was planned as early as 1115. +The subject of vaulting is far too ambitious for summer travel; it +is none too easy for a graduate of the Beaux Arts; and few +architectural fields have been so earnestly discussed and disputed. +We must not touch it. The age of the "Chanson de Roland" itself is +not so dangerous a topic. Our vital needs are met, more or less +sufficiently, by taking the promenoir at the Mount, the crypt at +Saint-Denis, and the western portal at Chartres, as the trinity of +our Transition, and roughly calling their date the years 1115-20, To +overload the memory with dates is the vice of every schoolmaster and +the passion of every second-rate scholar. Tourists want as few dates +as possible; what they want is poetry. Yet a singular coincidence, +with which every classroom is only too familiar, has made of the +years--15 a curiously convenient group, and the year 1115 is as +convenient as any for the beginning of the century of Transition. +That was the year when Saint Bernard laid the foundations of his +Abbey of Clairvaux. Perhaps 1115, or at latest 1117, was the year +when Abelard sang love-songs to Heloise in Canon Fulbert's house in +the Rue des Chantres, beside the cloister of Notre Dame in Paris. +The Abbe Suger, the Abbe Bernard, and the Abbe Abelard are the three +interesting men of the French Transition. + +The promenoir, then, shall pass for the year 1115, and, as such, is +an exceedingly beautiful hall, uniting the splendid calm and +seriousness of the Romanesque with the exquisite lines of the +Gothic. You will hardly see its equal in the twelfth century. At +Angers the great hall of the Bishop's Palace survives to give a +point of comparison, but commonly the halls of that date were not +vaulted; they had timber roofs, and have perished. The promenoir is +about sixty feet long, and divided into two aisles, ten feet wide, +by a row of columns. If it were used on great occasions as a +refectory, eighty or a hundred persons could have been seated at +table, and perhaps this may have been about the scale of the Abbey's +needs, at that time. Whatever effort of fancy was needed to place +Duke William and Harold in the old refectory of 1058, none whatever +is required in order to see his successors in the halls of Roger II. +With one exception they were not interesting persons. The exception +was Henry II of England and Anjou, and his wife Eleanor of Guienne, +who was for a while Regent of Normandy. One of their children was +born at Domfront, just beyond Avranches, and the Abbot was asked to +be godfather. In 1158, just one hundred years after Duke William's +visit, King Henry and his whole suite came to the Abbey, heard mass, +and dined in the refectory. "Rex venit ad Montem Sancti Michaelis, +audita missa ad magis altare, comedit in Refec-torio cum baronibus +suis." Abbot Robert of Torigny was his host, and very possibly +William of Saint-Pair looked on. Perhaps he recited parts of his +"Roman" before the King. One may be quite sure that when Queen +Eleanor came to the Mount she asked the poet to recite his verses, +for Eleanor gave law to poets. + +One might linger over Abbot Robert of Torigny, who was a very great +man in his day, and an especially great architect, but too +ambitious. All his work, including the two towers, crumbled and fell +for want of proper support. What would correspond to the cathedrals +of Noyon and Soissons and the old clocher and fleche of Chartres is +lost. We have no choice but to step down into the next century at +once, and into the full and perfect Gothic of the great age when the +new Chartres was building. + +In the year 1203, Philip Augustus expelled the English from Normandy +and conquered the province; but, in the course of the war the Duke +of Brittany, who was naturally a party to any war that took place +under his eyes, happened to burn the town beneath the Abbey, and in +doing so, set fire unintentionally to the Abbey itself. The +sacrilege shocked Philip Augustus, and the wish to conciliate so +powerful a vassal as Saint Michel, or his abbot, led the King of +France to give a large sum of money for repairing the buildings. The +Abbot Jordan (1191-1212) at once undertook to outdo all his +predecessors, and, with an immense ambition, planned the huge pile +which covers the whole north face of the Mount, and which has always +borne the expressive name of the Merveille. + +The general motive of abbatial building was common to them all. +Abbeys were large households. The church was the centre, and at +Mont-Saint-Michel the summit, for the situation compelled the abbots +there to pile one building on another instead of arranging them on a +level in squares or parallelograms. The dormitory in any case had to +be near a door of the church, because the Rule required constant +services, day and night. The cloister was also hard-by the church +door, and, at the Mount, had to be on the same level in order to be +in open air. Naturally the refectory must be immediately beneath one +or the other of these two principal structures, and the hall, or +place of meeting for business with the outside world, or for +internal administration, or for guests of importance, must be next +the refectory. The kitchen and offices would be placed on the lowest +stage, if for no other reason, because the magazines were two +hundred feet below at the landing-place, and all supplies, including +water, had to be hauled up an inclined plane by windlass. To +administer such a society required the most efficient management. An +abbot on this scale was a very great man, indeed, who enjoyed an +establishment of his own, close by, with officers in no small +number; for the monks alone numbered sixty, and even these were not +enough for the regular church services at seasons of pilgrimage. The +Abbot was obliged to entertain scores and hundreds of guests, and +these, too, of the highest importance, with large suites. Every +ounce of food must be brought from the mainland, or fished from the +sea. All the tenants and their farms, their rents and contributions, +must be looked after. No secular prince had a more serious task of +administration, and none did it so well. Tenants always preferred an +abbot or bishop for landlord. The Abbey was the highest +administrative creation of the Middle Ages, and when one has made +one's pilgrimage to Chartres, one might well devote another summer +to visiting what is left of Clairvaux, Citeaux, Cluny, and the other +famous monasteries, with Viollet-le-Duc to guide, in order to +satisfy one's mind whether, on the whole, such a life may not have +had activity as well as idleness. + +This is a matter of economics, to be settled with the keepers of +more modern hotels, but the art had to suit the conditions, and when +Abbot Jordan decided to plaster this huge structure against the side +of the Mount, the architect had a relatively simple task to handle. +The engineering difficulties alone were very serious; The +architectural plan was plain enough. As the Abbot laid his +requirements before the architect, he seems to have begun by fixing +the scale for a refectory capable of seating two hundred guests at +table. Probably no king in Europe fed more persons at his table than +this. According to M. Corroyer's plan, the length of the new +refectory is one hundred and twenty-three feet (37.5 metres). A row +of columns down the centre divides it into two aisles, measuring +twelve feet clear, from column to column, across the room. If tables +were set the whole length of the two aisles, forty persons could +have been easily seated, in four rows, or one hundred and sixty +persons. Without crowding, the same space would give room for fifty +guests, or two hundred in all. + +Once the scale was fixed, the arrangement was easy. Beginning at the +lowest possible level, one plain, very solidly built, vaulted room +served as foundation for another, loftier and more delicately +vaulted; and this again bore another which stood on the level of the +church, and opened directly into the north transept. This +arrangement was then doubled; and the second set of rooms, at the +west end, contained the cellar on the lower level, another great +room or hall above it, and the cloister at the church door, also +entering into the north transept. Doorways, passages, and stairs +unite them all. The two heavy halls on the lowest level are now +called the almonry and the cellar, which is a distinction between +administrative arrangements that does not concern us. + +Architecturally the rooms might, to our untrained eyes, be of the +same age with the Aquilon. They are earliest Transition, as far as a +tourist can see, or at least they belong to the class of crypts +which has an architecture of its own. The rooms that concern us are +those immediately above: the so-called Salle des Chevaliers at the +west end; and the so-called refectory at the east. Every writer +gives these rooms different names, and assigns them different +purposes, but whatever they were meant for, they are, as halls, the +finest in France; the purest in thirteenth-century perfection. + +The Salle des Chevaliers of the Order of Saint Michael created by +Louis XI in 1469 was, or shall be for tourist purposes, the great +hall that every palace and castle contained, and in which the life +of the chateau centred. Planned at about the same time with the +Cathedral of Chartres (1195-1210), and before the Abbey Church of +Saint-Denis, this hall and its neighbour the refectory, studied +together with the cathedral and the abbey, are an exceedingly +liberal education for anybody, tourist or engineer or architect, and +would make the fortune of an intelligent historian, if such should +happen to exist; but the last thing we ask from them is education or +instruction. We want only their poetry, and shall have to look for +it elsewhere. Here is only the shell--the dead art--and silence. The +hall is about ninety feet long, and sixty feet in its greatest +width. It has three ranges of columns making four vaulted aisles +which seem to rise about twenty-two feet in height. It is warmed by +two huge and heavy cheminees or fireplaces in the outside wall, +between the windows. It is lighted beautifully, but mostly from +above through round windows in the arching of the vaults. The +vaulting is a study for wiser men than we can ever be. More than +twenty strong round columns, free or engaged, with Romanesque +capitals, support heavy ribs, or nervures, and while the two central +aisles are eighteen feet wide, the outside aisle, into which the +windows open, measures only ten feet in width, and has consequently +one of the most sharply pointed vaults we shall ever meet. The whole +design is as beautiful a bit of early Gothic as exists, but what +would take most time to study, if time were to spare, would be the +instinct of the Archangel's presence which has animated his +architecture. The masculine, military energy of Saint Michael lives +still in every stone. The genius that realized this warlike emotion +has stamped his power everywhere, on every centimetre of his work; +in every ray of light; on the mass of every shadow; wherever the eye +falls; still more strongly on all that the eye divines, and in the +shadows that are felt like the lights. The architect intended it +all. Any one who doubts has only to step through the doorway in the +corner into the refectory. There the architect has undertaken to +express the thirteenth-century idea of the Archangel; he has left +the twelfth century behind him. + +The refectory, which has already served for a measure of the Abbot's +scale, is, in feeling, as different as possible from the hall. Six +charming columns run down the centre, dividing the room into two +vaulted aisles, apparently about twenty-seven feet in height. +Wherever the hall was heavy and serious, the refectory was made +light and graceful. Hardly a trace of the Romanesque remains. Only +the slight, round columns are not yet grooved or fluted, and their +round capitals are still slightly severe. Every detail is lightened. +The great fireplaces are removed to each end of the room. The most +interesting change is in the windows. When you reach Chartres, the +great book of architecture will open on the word "Fenestration,"-- +Fenestre,--a word as ugly as the thing was beautiful; and then, with +pain and sorrow, you will have to toil till you see how the +architects of 1200 subordinated every other problem to that of +lighting their spaces. Without feeling their lights, you can never +feel their shadows. These two halls at Mont-Saint-Michel are +antechambers to the nave of Chartres; their fenestration, inside and +out, controls the whole design. The lighting of the refectory is +superb, but one feels its value in art only when it is taken in +relation to the lighting of the hall, and both serve as a simple +preamble to the romance of the Chartres windows. + +The refectory shows what the architect did when, to lighten his +effects, he wanted to use every possible square centimetre of light. +He has made nine windows; six on the north, two on the east, and one +on the south. They are nearly five feet wide, and about twenty feet +high. They flood the room. Probably they were intended for glass, +and M. Corroyer's volume contains wood-cuts of a few fragments of +thirteenth-century glass discovered in his various excavations; but +one may take for granted that with so much light, colour was the +object intended. The floors would be tiled in colour; the walls +would be hung with colour; probably the vaults were painted in +colour; one can see it all in scores of illuminated manuscripts. The +thirteenth century had a passion for colour, and made a colour-world +of its own which we have got to explore. + +The two halls remain almost the only monuments of what must be +called secular architecture of the early and perfect period of +Gothic art (1200-10). Churches enough remain, with Chartres at their +head, but all the great abbeys, palaces and chateaux of that day are +ruins. Arques, Gaillard, Montargis, Coucy, the old Louvre, Chinon, +Angers, as well as Cluny, Clairvaux, Citeaux, Jumieges, Vezelay, +Saint-Denis, Poissy, Fontevrault, and a score of other residences, +royal or semi-royal, have disappeared wholly, or have lost their +residential buildings. When Viollet-le-Duc, under the Second Empire, +was allowed to restore one great chateau, he chose the latest, +Pierrefonds, built by Louis d'Orleans in 1390. Vestiges of Saint +Louis's palace remain at the Conciergerie, but the first great royal +residence to be compared with the Merveille is Amboise, dating from +about 1500, three centuries later. Civilization made almost a clean +sweep of art. Only here, at Mont-Saint-Michel, one may still sit at +ease on the stone benches in; the embrasures of the refectory +windows, looking over the thirteenth-century ocean and watching the +architect as he worked out the details which were to produce or +accent his contrasts or harmonies, heighten his effects, or hide his +show of effort, and all by means so true, simpler and apparently +easy that one seems almost competent to follow him. One learns +better in time. One gets to feel that these things were due in part +to an instinct that the architect himself might not have been able +to explain. The instinct vanishes as time creeps on. The halls at +Rouen or at Blois are more easily understood; the Salle des +Caryatides of Pierre Lescot at the Louvre, charming as it is, is +simpler still; and one feels entirely at home in the Salle des +Glaces which filled the ambition of Louis XIV at Versailles. + +If any lingering doubt remains in regard to the professional +cleverness of the architect and the thoroughness of his study, we +had best return to the great hall, and pass through a low door in +its extreme outer angle, up a few steps into a little room some +thirteen feet square, beautifully vaulted, lighted, warmed by a +large stone fireplace, and in the corner, a spiral staircase leading +up to another square room above opening directly into the cloister. +It is a little library or charter-house. The arrangement is almost +too clever for gravity, as is the case with more than one +arrangement in the Merveille. From the outside one can see that at +this corner the architect had to provide a heavy buttress against a +double strain, and he built up from the rock below a square corner +tower as support, into which he worked a spiral staircase leading +from the cellar up to the cloisters. Just above the level of the +great hall he managed to construct this little room, a gem. The +place was near and far; it was quiet and central; William of Saint- +Pair, had he been still alive, might have written his "Roman" there; +monks might have illuminated missals there. A few steps upward +brought them to the cloisters for meditation; a few more brought +them to the church for prayer. A few steps downward brought them to +the great hall, for business, a few steps more led them into the +refectory, for dinner. To contemplate the goodness of God was a +simple joy when one had such a room to work in; such a spot as the +great hall to walk in, when the storms blew; or the cloisters in +which to meditate, when the sun shone; such a dining-room as the +refectory; and such a view from one's windows over the infinite +ocean and the guiles of Satan's quicksands. From the battlements of +Heaven, William of Saint-Pair looked down on it with envy. + +Of all parts of the Merveille, in summer, the most charming must +always have been the cloisters. Only the Abbey of the Mount was rich +and splendid enough to build a cloister like this, all in granite, +carved in forms as light as though it were wood; with columns +arranged in a peculiar triangular order that excited the admiration +of Viollet-le-Duc. "One of the most curious and complete cloisters +that we have in France," he said; although in France there are many +beautiful and curious cloisters. For another reason it has value. +The architect meant it to reassert, with all the art and grace he +could command, the mastery of love, of thought and poetry, in +religion, over the masculine, military energy of the great hall +below. The thirteenth century rarely let slip a chance to insist on +this moral that love is law. Saint Francis was preaching to the +birds in 1215 at Assisi, and the architect built this cloister in +1226 at Mont-Saint-Michel. Both sermons were saturated with the +feeling of the time, and both are about equally worth noting, if one +aspires to feel the art. + +A conscientious student has yet to climb down the many steps, on the +outside, and look up at the Merveille from below. Few buildings in +France are better worth the trouble. The horizontal line at the roof +measures two hundred and thirty-five feet. The vertical line of the +buttresses measures in round numbers one hundred feet. To make walls +of that height and length stand up at all was no easy matter, as +Robert de Torigny had shown; and so the architect buttressed them +from bottom to top with twelve long buttresses against the thrust of +the interior arches, and three more, bearing against the interior +walls. This gives, on the north front, fifteen strong vertical lines +in a space of two hundred and thirty-five feet. Between these lines +the windows tell their story; the seven long windows of the +refectory on one side; the seven rounded windows of the hall on the +other. Even the corner tower with the charter-house becomes as +simple as the rest. The sum of this impossible wall, and its +exaggerated vertical lines, is strength and intelligence at rest. + +The whole Mount still kept the grand style; it expressed the unity +of Church and State, God and Man, Peace and War, Life and Death, +Good and Bad; it solved the whole problem of the universe. The +priest and the soldier were both at home here, in 1215 as in 1115 or +in 1058; the politician was not outside of it; the sinner was +welcome; the poet was made happy in his own spirit, with a sympathy, +almost an affection, that suggests a habit of verse in the Abbot as +well as in the architect. God reconciles all. The world is an +evident, obvious, sacred harmony. Even the discord of war is a +detail on which the Abbey refuses to insist. Not till two centuries +afterwards did the Mount take on the modern expression of war as a +discord in God's providence. Then, in the early years of the +fifteenth century, Abbot Pierre le Roy plastered the gate of the +chatelet, as you now see it, over the sunny thirteenth-century +entrance called Belle Chaise, which had treated mere military +construction with a sort of quiet contempt. You will know what a +chatelet is when you meet another; it frowns in a spirit quite alien +to the twelfth century; it jars on the religion of the place; it +forebodes wars of religion; dissolution of society; loss of unity; +the end of a world. Nothing is sadder than the catastrophe of Gothic +art, religion, and hope. + +One looks back on it all as a picture; a symbol of unity; an +assertion of God and Man in a bolder, stronger, closer union than +ever was expressed by other art; and when the idea is absorbed, +accepted, and perhaps partially understood, one may move on. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE + +From Mont-Saint-Michel, the architectural road leads across +Normandy, up the Seine to Paris, and not directly through Chartres, +which lies a little to the south. In the empire of architecture, +Normandy was one kingdom, Brittany another; the Ile de France, with +Paris, was a third; Touraine and the valley of the Loire were a +fourth and in the centre, the fighting-ground between them all, lay +the counties of Chartres and Dreux. Before going to Chartres one +should go up the Seine and down the Loire, from Angers to Le Mans, +and so enter Chartres from Brittany after a complete circle; but if +we set out to do our pleasure on that scale, we must start from the +Pyramid of Cheops. We have set out from Mont-Saint-Michel; we will +go next to Paris. + +The architectural highway lies through Coutances, Bayeux, Caen, +Rouen, and Mantes. Every great artistic kingdom solved its +architectural problems in its own way, as it did its religious, +political, and social problems, and no two solutions were ever quite +the same; but among them the Norman was commonly the most practical, +and sometimes the most dignified. We can test this rule by the +standard of the first town we stop at--Coutances. We can test it +equally well at Bayeux or Caen, but Coutances comes first after +Mont-Saint-Michel let us begin with it, and state the problems with +their Norman solution, so that it may be ready at hand to compare +with the French solution, before coming to the solution at Chartres. + +The cathedral at Coutances is said to be about the age of the +Merveille (1200-50), but the exact dates are unknown, and the work +is so Norman as to stand by itself; yet the architect has grappled +with more problems than one need hope to see solved in any single +church in the tie de France. Even at Chartres, although the two +stone fleches are, by exception, completed, they are not of the same +age, as they are here. Neither at Chartres nor at Paris, nor at Laon +or Amiens or Rheims or Bourges, will you see a central tower to +compare with the enormous pile at Coutances. Indeed the architects +of France failed to solve this particular church problem, and we- +shall leave it behind us in leaving Normandy, although it is the +most effective feature of any possible church. "A clocher of that +period (circa 1200), built over the croisee of a cathedral, +following lines so happy, should be a monument of the greatest +beauty; unfortunately we possess not a single one in France. Fire, +and the hand of man more than time, have destroyed them all, and we +find on our greatest religious edifices no more than bases and +fragments of these beautiful constructions. The cathedral of +Coutances alone has preserved its central clocher of the thirteenth +century, and even there it is not complete; its stone fleche is +wanting. As for its style, it belongs to Norman architecture, and +diverges widely from the character of French architecture." So says +Viollet-le-Duc; but although the great churches for the most part +never had central clochers, which, on the scale of Amiens, Bourges, +or Beauvais, would have required an impossible mass, the smaller +churches frequently carry them still, and they are, like the dome, +the most effective features they can carry. They were made to +dominate the whole. + +No doubt the fleche is wanting at Coutances, but you can supply it +in imagination from the two fleches of the western tower, which are +as simple and severe as the spear of a man-at-arms. Supply the +fleche, and the meaning of the tower cannot be mistaken; it is as +military as the "Chanson de Roland"; it is the man-at-arms himself, +mounted and ready for battle, spear in rest. The mere seat of the +central tower astride of the church, so firm, so fixed, so serious, +so defiant, is Norman, like the seat of the Abbey Church on the +Mount; and at Falaise, where William the Bastard was born, we shall +see a central tower on the church which is William himself, in +armour, on horseback, ready to fight for the Church, and perhaps, in +his bad moods, against it. Such militant churches were capable of +forcing Heaven itself; all of them look as though they had fought at +Hastings or stormed Jerusalem. Wherever the Norman central clocher +stands, the Church Militant of the eleventh century survives;--not +the Church of Mary Queen, but of Michael the Archangel;--not the +Church of Christ, but of God the Father--Who never lied! + +Taken together with the fleches of the facade, this clocher of +Coutances forms a group such as one very seldom sees. The two towers +of the facade are something apart, quite by themselves among the +innumerable church-towers of the Gothic time. We have got a happy +summer before us, merely in looking for these church-towers. There +is no livelier amusement for fine weather than in hunting them as +though they were mushrooms, and no study in architecture nearly so +delightful. No work of man has life like the fleche. One sees it for +a greater distance and feels it for a longer time than is possible +with any other human structure, unless it be the dome. There is more +play of light on the octagonal faces of the fleche as the sun moves +around them than can be got out of the square or the cone or any +other combination of surfaces. For some reason, the facets of the +hexagon or octagon are more pleasing than the rounded surfaces of +the cone, and Normandy is said to be peculiarly the home of this +particularly Gothic church ornament; yet clochers and fleches are +scattered all over France until one gets to look for them on the +horizon as though every church in every hamlet were an architectural +monument. Hundreds of them literally are so,--Monuments Historiques, +-protected by the Government; but when you undertake to compare +them, or to decide whether they are more beautiful in Normandy than +in the Ile de France, or in Burgundy, or on the Loire or the +Charente, you are lost, Even the superiority of the octagon is not +evident to every one. Over the little church at Fenioux on the +Charente, not very far from La Rochelle, is a conical steeple that +an infidel might adore; and if you have to decide between provinces, +you must reckon with the decision of architects and amateurs, who +seem to be agreed that the first of all filches is at Chartres, the +second at Vendome, not far from Blois in Touraine, and the third at +Auxerre in Burgundy. The towers of Coutances are not in the list, +nor are those at Bayeux nor those at Caen. France is rich in art. +Yet the towers of Coutances are in some ways as interesting, if not +as beautiful, as the best. + +The two stone fleches here, with their octagon faces, do not +descend, as in other churches, to their resting-place on a square +tower, with the plan of junction more or less disguised; they throw +out nests of smaller fleches, and these cover buttressing corner +towers, with lines that go directly to the ground. Whether the +artist consciously intended it or not, the effect is to broaden the +facade and lift it into the air. The facade itself has a distinctly +military look, as though a fortress had been altered into a church. +A charming arcade at the top has the air of being thrown across in +order to disguise the alteration, and perhaps owes much of its charm +to the contrast it makes with the severity of military lines. Even +the great west window looks like an afterthought; one's instinct +asks for a blank wall. Yet, from the ground up to the cross on the +spire, one feels the Norman nature throughout, animating the whole, +uniting it all, and crowding into it an intelligent variety of +original motives that would build a dozen churches of late Gothic. +Nothing about it is stereotyped or conventional,--not even the +conventionality. + +If you have any doubts about this, you have only to compare the +photograph of Coutances with the photograph of Chartres; and yet, +surely, the facade of Chartres is severe enough to satisfy Saint +Bernard himself. With the later fronts of Rheims and Amiens, there +is no field for comparison; they have next to nothing in common; yet +Coutances is said to be of the same date with Rheims, or nearly so, +and one can believe it when one enters the interior. The Normans, as +they slowly reveal themselves, disclose most unexpected qualities; +one seems to sound subterranean caverns of feeling hidden behind +their iron nasals. No other cathedral in France or in Europe has an +interior more refined--one is tempted to use even the hard-worn +adjective, more tender--or more carefully studied. One test is +crucial here and everywhere. The treatment of the apse and choir is +the architect's severest standard. This is a subject not to be +touched lightly; one to which we shall have to come back in a humble +spirit, prepared for patient study, at Chartres; but the choir of +Coutances is a cousin to that of Chartres, as the facades are +cousins; Coutances like Chartres belongs to Notre Dame and is felt +in the same spirit; the church is built for the choir and apse, +rather than for the nave and transepts; for the Virgin rather than +for the public. In one respect Coutances is even more delicate in +the feminine charm of the Virgin's peculiar grace than Chartres, but +this was an afterthought of the fourteenth century. The system of +chapels radiating about the apse was extended down the nave, in an +arrangement "so beautiful and so rare," according to Viollet-le-Duc, +that one shall seek far before finding its equal. Among the +unexpected revelations of human nature that suddenly astonish +historians, one of the least reasonable was the passionate outbreak +of religious devotion to the ideal of feminine grace, charity, and +love that took place here in Normandy while it was still a part of +the English kingdom, and flamed up into almost fanatical frenzy +among the most hard-hearted and hard-headed race in Europe. + +So in this church, in the centre of this arrangement of apse and +chapels with their quite unusual--perhaps quite singular--grace, the +four huge piers which support the enormous central tower, offer a +tour de force almost as exceptional as the refinement of the +chapels. At Mont-Saint-Michel, among the monks, the union of +strength and grace was striking, but at Coutances it is exaggerated, +like Tristram and Iseult,--a roman of chivalry. The four "enormous" +columns of the croisee, carry, as Viollet-le-Duc says, the "enormous +octagonal tower,"--like Saint Christopher supporting the Christ- +child, before the image of the Virgin, in her honour. Nothing like +this can be seen at Chartres, or at any of the later palaces which +France built for the pleasure of the Queen of Heaven. We are +slipping into the thirteenth century again; the temptation is +terrible to feeble minds and tourist natures; but a great mass of +twelfth and eleventh-century work remains to be seen and felt. To go +back is not so easy as to begin with it; the heavy round arch is +like old cognac compared with the champagne of the pointed and +fretted spire; one must not quit Coutances without making an +excursion to Lessayon the road to Cherbourg, where is a church of +the twelfth century, with a square tower and almost untouched Norman +interior, that closely repeats the Abbey Church at Mont-Saint- +Michel. "One of the most complete models of Romanesque architecture +to be found in Normandy," says M. de Caumont. The central clocher +will begin a photographic collection of square towers, to replace +that which was lost on the Mount; and a second example is near +Bayeux, at a small place called Cerisy-la-Foret, where the church +matches that on the Mount, according to M. Corroyer; for Cerisy-la- +Foret was also an abbey, and the church, built by Richard II, Duke +of Normandy, at the beginning of the eleventh century, was larger +than that on the Mount. It still keeps its central tower. + +All this is intensely Norman, and is going to help very little in +France; it would be more useful in England; but at Bayeux is a +great: cathedral much more to the purpose, with two superb western +towers crowned by stone fleches, cousins of those at Coutances, and +distinctly related to the twelfth-century fleche at Chartres. "The +Normans," says Viollet-le-Duc, "had not that instinct of proportion +which the architects of the Ile de France, Beauvais, and Soissons +possessed to a high degree; yet the boldness of their constructions, +their perfect execution, the elevation of the fleches, had evident +influence on the French school properly called, and that influence +is felt in the old spire of Chartres." The Norman seemed to show +distinction in another respect which the French were less quick to +imitate. What they began, they completed. Not one of the great +French churches has two stone spires complete, of the same age, +while each of the little towns of Coutances, Bayeux, and Caen +contains its twin towers and fleches of stone, as solid and perfect +now as they were seven hundred years ago. Still another Norman +character is worth noting, because this is one part of the influence +felt at Chartres. If you look carefully at the two western towers of +the Bayeux Cathedral, perhaps you will feel what is said to be the +strength of the way they are built up. They rise from their +foundation with a quiet confidence of line and support, which passes +directly up to the weather-cock on the summit of the fleches. At the +plane where the square tower is changed into the octagon spire, you +will see the corner turrets and the long intermediate windows which +effect the change without disguising it. One can hardly call it a +device; it is so simple and evident a piece of construction that it +does not need to be explained; yet you will have to carry a +photograph of this fleche to Chartres, and from there to Vendome, +for there is to be a great battle of fleches about this point of +junction, and the Norman scheme is a sort of standing reproach to +the French. + +Coutances and Bayeux are interesting, but Caen is a Romanesque +Mecca. There William the Conqueror dealt with the same architectural +problems, and put his solution in his Abbaye-aux-Hommes, which bears +the name of Saint Stephen. Queen Matilda put her solution into her +Abbaye-aux-Femmes, the Church of the Trinity. One ought particularly +to look at the beautiful central clocher of the church at Vaucelles +in the suburbs; and one must drive out to Thaon to see its eleventh- +century church, with a charming Romanesque blind arcade on the +outside, and a little clocher, "the more interesting to us," +according to Viollet-le-Duc, "because it bears the stamp of the +traditions of defence of the primitive towers which were built over +the porches." Even "a sort of chemin de ronde" remains around the +clocher, perhaps once provided with a parapet of defence. "C'est la, +du reste, un charmant edifice." A tower with stone fleche, which +actually served for defence in a famous recorded instance, is that +of the church at Secqueville, not far off; this beautiful tower, as +charming as anything in Norman art, is known to have served as a +fortress in 1105, which gives a valuable date. The pretty old +Romanesque front of the little church at Ouistreham, with its portal +that seems to come fresh from Poitiers and Moissac, can be taken in, +while driving past; but we must on no account fail to make a serious +pilgrimage to Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, where the church-tower and +fleche are not only classed among the best in Normandy, but have an +exact date, 1145, and a very close relation with Chartres, as will +appear. Finally, if for no other reason, at least for interest in +Arlette, the tanner's daughter, one must go to Falaise, and look at +the superb clocher of Saint-Gervais, which was finished and +consecrated by 1135. + +Some day, if you like, we can follow this Romanesque style to the +south, and on even to Italy where it may be supposed to have been +born; but France had an architectural life fully a thousand years +old when these twelfth-century churches were built, and was long +since artistically, as she was politically, independent. The Normans +were new in France, but not the Romanesque architecture; they only +took the forms and stamped on them their own character. It is the +stamp we want to distinguish, in order to trace up our lines of +artistic ancestry. The Norman twelfth-century stamp was not easily +effaced. If we have not seen enough of it at Mont-Saint-Michel, +Coutances, Bayeux, and Caen, we can go to Rouen, and drive out to +Boscherville, and visit the ruined Abbey of Jumieges. Wherever there +is a church-tower with a tall fleche, as at Boscherville, +Secqueville, Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, Caen, and Bayeux, Viollet-le- +Duc bids notice how the octagonal steeple is fitted on to the square +tower. Always the passage from the octagon to the square seems to be +quite simply made. The Gothic or Romanesque spire had the advantage +that a wooden fleche was as reasonable a covering for it as a stone +one, and the Normans might have indulged in freaks of form very +easily, if they chose, but they seem never to have thought of it. +The nearest approach to the freedom of wooden roofs is not in the +lofty fleches, but in the covering of the great square central +towers, like Falaise or Vaucelles, a huge four-sided roof which +tries to be a fleche, and is as massive as the heavy structure it +covers. + +The last of the Norman towers that Viollet-le-Duc insists upon is +the so-called Clocher de Saint-Romain, the northern tower on the +west front of the Cathedral of Rouen. Unfortunately it has lost its +primitive octagon fleche if it ever had one, but "the tower remains +entire, and," according to Viollet-le-Duc, "is certainly one of the +most beautiful in this part of France; it offers a mixture of the +two styles of the Ile de France and of Normandy, in which the former +element dominates"; it is of the same date as the old tower of +Chartres (1140-60), and follows the same interior arrangement; "but +here the petty, confused disposition of the Norman towers, with +their division into stories of equal height, has been adopted by the +French master builder, although in submitting to these local customs +he has still thrown over his work the grace and finesse, the study +of detail, the sobriety in projections, the perfect harmony between +the profiles, sculpture, and the general effect of the whole, which +belong to the school he came from. He has managed his voids and +solids with especial cleverness, giving the more importance to the +voids, and enlarging the scale of his details, as the tower rose in +height. These details have great beauty; the construction is +executed in materials of small dimensions with the care that the +twelfth-century architects put into their building; the profiles +project little, and, in spite of their extreme finesse, produce much +effect; the buttresses are skilfully planted and profiled. The +staircase, which, on the east side, deranges the arrangement of the +bays, is a chef-d'oeuvre of architecture." This long panegyric, by +Viollet-le-Duc, on French taste at the expense of Norman temper, +ought to be read, book in hand, before the Cathedral of Rouen, with +photographs of Bayeux to compare. Certain it is that the Normans and +the French never talked quite the same language, but it is equally +certain that the Norman language, to the English ear, expressed +itself quite as clearly as the French, and sometimes seemed to have +more to express. + +The complaint of the French artist against the Norman is the +"mesquin" treatment of dividing his tower into storeys of equal +height. Even in the twelfth century and in religious architecture, +artists already struggled over the best solution of this +particularly American problem of the twentieth century, and when +tourists return to New York, they may look at the twenty-storey +towers which decorate the city, to see whether the Norman or the +French plan has won; but this, at least, will be sure in advance:-- +the Norman will be the practical scheme which states the facts, and +stops; while the French will be the graceful one, which states the +beauties, and more or less fits the facts to suit them. Both styles +are great: both can sometimes be tiresome. + +Here we must take leave of Normandy; a small place, but one which, +like Attica or Tuscany, has said a great deal to the world, and even +goes on saying things--not often in the famous genre ennuyeux--to +this day; for Gustave Flaubert's style is singularly like that of +the Tour Saint-Romain and the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. Going up the Seine +one might read a few pages of his letters, or of "Madame de Bovary," +to see how an old art transmutes itself into a new one, without +changing its methods. Some critics have thought that at times +Flaubert was mesquin like the Norman tower, but these are, as the +French say, the defects of his qualities; we can pass over them, and +let our eyes rest on the simplicity of the Norman fleche which +pierces the line of our horizon. + +The last of Norman art is seen at Mantes, where there is a little +church of Gassicourt that marks the farthest reach of the style. In +arms as in architecture, Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest; +William the Conqueror met his death here in 1087. Geographically +Mantes is in the Ile de France, less than forty miles from Paris. +Architecturally, it is Paris itself; while, forty miles to the +southward, is Chartres, an independent or only feudally dependent +country. No matter how hurried the architectural tourist may be, the +boundary-line of the Ile de France is not to be crossed without +stopping. If he came down from the north or east, he would have +equally to stop,--either at Beauvais, or at Laon, or Noyon, or +Soissons,--because there is an architectural douane to pass, and +one's architectural baggage must be opened. Neither Notre Dame de +Paris nor Notre Dame de Chartres is quite intelligible unless one +has first seen Notre Dame de Mantes, and studied it in the sacred +sources of M. Viollet-le-Duc. + +Notre Dame de Mantes is a sister to the Cathedral of Paris, "built +at the same time, perhaps by the same architect, and reproducing its +general dispositions, its mode of structure, and some of its +details"; but the Cathedral of Paris has been greatly altered, so +that its original arrangement is quite changed, while the church at +Mantes remains practically as it was, when both were new, about the +year 1200. As nearly as the dates can be guessed, the cathedral was +finished, up to its vaulting, in 1170, and was soon afterwards +imitated on a smaller scale at Mantes. The scheme seems to have been +unsatisfactory because of defects in the lighting, for the whole +system of fenestration had been changed at Paris before 1230, +naturally at great cost, since the alterations, according to +Viollet-le-Duc (articles "Cathedral" and "Rose," and allusions +"Triforium"), left little except the ground-plan unchanged. To +understand the Paris design of 1160-70, which was a long advance +from the older plans, one must come to Mantes; and, reflecting that +the great triumph of Chartres was its fenestration, which must have +been designed immediately after 1195, one can understand how, in +this triangle of churches only forty or fifty miles apart, the +architects, watching each other's experiments, were influenced, +almost from day to day, by the failures or successes which they saw +The fenestration which the Paris architect planned in 1160-70, and +repeated at Mantes, 1190-1200, was wholly abandoned, and a new +system introduced, immediately after the success of Chartres in +1210. + +As they now stand, Mantes is the oldest. While conscientiously +trying to keep as far away as we can from technique, about which we +know nothing and should care if possible still less if only +ignorance would help us to feel what we do not understand, still the +conscience is happier if it gains a little conviction, founded on +what it thinks a fact. Even theologians--even the great theologians +of the thirteenth century--even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself--did +not trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God; and what +Saint Thomas found necessary in philosophy may also be a sure source +of consolation in the difficulties of art. The church at Mantes is a +very early fact in Gothic art; indeed, it is one of the earliest; +for our purposes it will serve as the very earliest of pure Gothic +churches, after the Transition, and this we are told to study in its +windows. + +Before one can get near enough fairly to mark the details of the +facade, one sees the great rose window which fills a space nearly +twenty-seven feet in width. Gothic fanatics commonly reckon the +great rose windows of the thirteenth century as the most beautiful +creation of their art, among the details of ornament; and this +particular rose is the direct parent of that at Chartres, which is +classic like the Parthenon, while both of them served as models or +guides for that at Paris which dates from 1220, those in the north +and south transepts at Rheims, about 1230, and so on, from parent to +child, till the rose faded forever. No doubt there were Romanesque +roses before 1200, and we shall see them, but this rose of Mantes is +the first Gothic rose of great dimensions, and that from which the +others grew; in its simplicity, its honesty, its large liberality of +plan, it is also one of the best, if M. Viollet-le-Duc is a true +guide; but you will see a hundred roses, first or last, and can +choose as you would among the flowers. + +More interesting than even the great rose of the portal is the +remark that the same rose-motive is carried round the church +throughout its entire system of fenestration. As one follows it, on +the outside, one sees that all the windows are constructed on the +same rose-scheme; but the most curious arrangement is in the choir +inside the church. You look up to each of the windows through a sort +of tunnel or telescope: an arch enlarging outwards, the roses at the +end resembling "oeil-de-boeufs," "oculi." So curious is this +arrangement that Viollet-le-Duc has shown it, under the head +"Triforium," in drawings and sections which any one can study who +likes; its interest to us is that this arrangement in the choir was +probably the experiment which proved a failure in Notre Dame at +Paris, and led to the tearing-out the old windows and substituting +those which still stand. Perhaps the rose did not give enough light, +although the church at Mantes seems well lighted, and even at Paris +the rose windows remain in the transepts and in one bay of the nave. + +All this is introduction to the windows of Chartres, but these three +churches open another conundrum as one learns, bit by bit, a few of +the questions to be asked of the forgotten Middle Ages. The church +towers at Mantes are very interesting, inside and out; they are +evidently studied with love and labour by their designer; yet they +have no fleches. How happens it that Notre Dame at Paris also has no +fleches, although the towers, according to Viollet-le-Duc, are +finished in full preparation for them? This double omission on the +part of the French architect seems exceedingly strange, because his +rival at Chartres finished his fleche just when the architect of +Paris and Mantes was finishing his towers (1175-1200). The Frenchman +was certainly consumed by jealousy at the triumph never attained on +anything like the same scale by any architect of the Ile de France; +and he was actually engaged at the time on at least two fleches, +close to Paris, one at Saint-Denis, another of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, +which proved the active interest he took in the difficulties +conquered at Chartres, and his perfect competence to deal with them. + +Indeed, one is tempted to say that these twin churches, Paris and +Mantes, are the only French churches of the time (1200) which were +left without a fleche. As we go from Mantes to Paris, we pass, about +half-way, at Poissy, under the towers of a very ancient and +interesting church which has the additional merit of having +witnessed the baptism of Saint Louis in 1215. Parts of the church at +Poissy go back to the seventh and ninth centuries. The square base +of the tower dates back before the time of Hugh Capet, to the +Carolingian age, and belongs, like the square tower of Saint- +Germain-des-Pres at Paris, to the old defensive military +architecture; but it has a later, stone fleche and it has, too, by +exception a central octagonal clocher, with a timber fleche which +dates from near 1100. Paris itself has not much to show, but in the +immediate neighbourhood are a score of early churches with charming +fleches, and at Etampes, about thirty-five miles to the south, is an +extremely interesting church with an exquisite fleche, which may +claim an afternoon to visit. That at Saint-Leu-d'Esserent is a still +easier excursion, for one need only drive over from Chantilly a +couple of miles. The fascinating old Abbey Church of Saint-Leu looks +down over the valley of the Oise, and is a sort of antechamber to +Chartres, as far as concerns architecture. Its fleche, built towards +1160,--when that at Chartres was rising,--is unlike any other, and +shows how much the French architects valued their lovely French +creation. On its octagonal faces, it carries upright batons, or +lances, as a device for relieving the severity of the outlines; a +device both intelligent and amusing, though it was never imitated. A +little farther from Paris, at Senlis, is another fleche, which shows +still more plainly the effort of the French architects to vary and +elaborate the Chartres scheme. As for Laon, which is interesting +throughout, and altogether the most delightful building in the Ile +de France, the fleches are gone, but the towers are there, and you +will have to study them, before studying those at Chartres, with all +the intelligence you have to spare. They were the chef-d'oeuvre of +the mediaeval architect, in his own opinion. + +All this makes the absence of fleches at Paris and Mantes the more +strange. Want of money was certainly not the cause, since the +Parisians had money enough to pull their whole cathedral to pieces +at the very time when fleches were rising in half the towns within +sight of them. Possibly they were too ambitious, and could find no +design that seemed to satisfy their ambition. They took pride in +their cathedral, and they tried hard to make their shrine of Our +Lady rival the great shrine at Chartres. Of course, one must study +their beautiful church, but this can be done at leisure, for, as it +stands, it is later than Chartres and more conventional. Saint- +Germain-des-Pres leads more directly to Chartres; but perhaps the +church most useful to know is no longer a church at all, but a part +of the Museum of Arts et Metiers,--the desecrated Saint-Martin-des- +Champs, a name which shows that it dates from a time when the +present Porte-Saint-Martin was far out among fields. The choir of +Saint-Martin, which is all that needs noting, is said by M. Enlart +to date from about 1150. Hidden in a remnant of old Paris near the +Pont Notre Dame, where the student life of the Middle Ages was to be +most turbulent and the Latin Quarter most renowned, is the little +church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, towards 1170. On the whole, +further search in Paris would not greatly help us. If one is to +pursue the early centuries, one must go farther afield, for the +schools of Normandy and the Ile de France were only two among half a +dozen which flourished in the various provinces that were to be +united in the kingdom of Saint Louis and his successors. We have not +even looked to the south and east, whence the impulse came. The old +Carolingian school, with its centre at Aix-la-Chapelle, is quite +beyond our horizon. The Rhine had a great Romanesque architecture of +its own. One broad architectural tide swept up the Rhone and filled +the Burgundian provinces as far as the watershed of the Seine. +Another lined the Mediterranean, with a centre at Arles. Another +spread up the western rivers, the Charente and the Loire, reaching +to Le Mans and touching Chartres. Two more lay in the centre of +France, spreading from Perigord and Clermont in Auvergne. All these +schools had individual character, and all have charm; but we have +set out to go from Mont-Saint-Michel to Chartres in three centuries, +the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, trying to get, on the way, +not technical knowledge; not accurate information; not correct views +either on history, art, or religion; not anything that can possibly +be useful or instructive; but only a sense of what those centuries +had to say, and a sympathy with their ways of saying it. Let us go +straight to Chartres! + + + +CHAPTER V + +TOWERS AND PORTALS + +For a first visit to Chartres, choose some pleasant morning when the +lights are soft, for one wants to be welcome, and the cathedral has +moods, at times severe. At best, the Beauce is a country none too +gay. + +The first glimpse that is caught, and the first that was meant to be +caught, is that of the two spires. With all the education that +Normandy and the Ile de France can give, one is still ignorant. The +spire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture, +and needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment +almost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at +a glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell, +for it typified the aspirations of man at the moment when man's +aspirations were highest. Yet nine persons out of ten--perhaps +ninety-nine in a hundred--who come within sight of the two spires of +Chartres will think it a jest if they are told that the smaller of +the two, the simpler, the one that impresses them least, is the one +which they are expected to recognize as the most perfect piece of +architecture in the world. Perhaps the French critics might deny +that they make any such absolute claim; in that case you can ask +them what their exact claim is; it will always be high enough to +astonish the tourist. + +Astonished or not, we have got to take this southern spire of the +Chartres Cathedral as the object of serious study, and before taking +it as art, must take it as history. The foundations of this tower-- +always to be known as the "old tower"--are supposed to have been +laid in 1091, before the first crusade. The fleche was probably half +a century later (1145-70). The foundations of the new tower, +opposite, were laid not before 1110, when also the portal which +stands between them, was begun with the three lancet windows above +it, but not the rose. For convenience, this old facade--including +the portal and the two towers, but not the fleches, and the three +lancet windows, but not the rose--may be dated as complete about +1150. + +Originally the whole portal--the three doors and the three lancets-- +stood nearly forty feet back, on the line of the interior +foundation, or rear wall of the towers. This arrangement threw the +towers forward, free on three sides, as at Poitiers, and gave room +for a parvis, before the portal,--a porch, roofed over, to protect +the pilgrims who always stopped there to pray before entering the +church. When the church was rebuilt after the great fire of 1194, +and the architect was required to enlarge the interior, the old +portal and lancets were moved bodily forward, to be flush with the +front walls of the two towers, as you see the facade to-day; and the +facade itself was heightened, to give room for the rose, and to +cover the loftier pignon and vaulting behind. Finally, the wooden +roof, above the stone vault, was masked by the Arcade of Kings and +its railing, completed in the taste of Philip the Hardy, who reigned +from 1270 to 1285. + +These changes have, of course, altered the values of all the parts. +The portal is injured by being thrown into a glare of light, when it +was intended to stand in shadow, as you will see in the north and +south porches over the transept portals. The towers are hurt by +losing relief and shadow; but the old fleche is obliged to suffer +the cruellest wrong of all by having its right shoulder hunched up +by half of a huge rose and the whole of a row of kings, when it was +built to stand free, and to soar above the whole facade from the top +of its second storey. One can easily figure it so and replace the +lost parts of the old facade, more or less at haphazard, from the +front of Noyon. + +What an outrage it was you can see by a single glance at the new +fleche opposite. The architect of 1500 has flatly refused to submit +to such conditions, and has insisted, with very proper self-respect, +on starting from the balustrade of the Arcade of Kings as his level. +Not even content with that, he has carried up his square tower +another lofty storey before he would consent to touch the heart of +his problem, the conversion of the square tower into the octagon +fleche. In doing this, he has sacrificed once more the old fleche; +but his own tower stands free as it should. + +At Vendome, when you go there, you will be in a way to appreciate +still better what happened to the Chartres fleche; for the clocher +at Vendome, which is of the same date,--Viollet-le-Duc says earlier, +and Enlart, "after 1130,"--stood and still stands free, like an +Italian campanile, which gives it a vast advantage. The tower of +Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, also after 1130, stands free, above the second +storey. Indeed, you will hardly find, in the long list of famous +French spires, another which has been treated with so much indignity +as this, the greatest and most famous of all; and perhaps the most +annoying part of it is that you must be grateful to the architect of +1195 for doing no worse. He has, on the contrary, done his best to +show respect for the work of his predecessor, and has done so well +that, handicapped as it is, the old tower still defies rivalry. +Nearly three hundred and fifty feet high, or, to be exact, 106.5 +metres from the church floor, it is built up with an amount of +intelligence and refinement that leaves to unprofessional visitors +no chance to think a criticism--much less to express one. Perhaps-- +when we have seen more--and feel less--who knows?--but certainly not +now! + +"The greatest and surely the most beautiful monument of this kind +that we possess in France," says Viollet-le-Duc; but although an +ignorant spectator must accept the architect's decision on a point +of relative merit, no one is compelled to accept his reasons, as +final. "There is no need to dwell," he continues, "upon the beauty +and the grandeur of composition in which the artist has given proof +of rare sobriety, where all the effects are obtained, not by +ornaments, but by the just and skilful proportion of the different +parts. The transition, so hard to adjust, between the square base +and the octagon of the fleche, is managed and carried out with an +address which has not been surpassed in similar monuments." One +stumbles a little at the word "adresse." One never caught one's self +using the word in Norman churches. Your photographs of Bayeux or +Boscherville or Secqueville will show you at a glance whether the +term "adresse" applies to them. Even Vendome would rather be praised +for "droiture" than for "adresse."--Whether the word "adresse" means +cleverness, dexterity, adroitness, or simple technical skill, the +thing itself is something which the French have always admired more +than the Normans ever did. Viollet-le-Duc himself seems to be a +little uncertain whether to lay most stress on the one or the other +quality: "If one tries to appreciate the conception of this tower," +quotes the Abbe Bulteau (11,84), "one will see that it is as frank +as the execution is simple and skilful. Starting from the bottom, +one reaches the summit of the fleche without marked break; without +anything to interrupt the general form of the building. This +clocher, whose base is broad (pleine), massive, and free from +ornament, transforms itself, as it springs, into a sharp spire with +eight faces, without its being possible to say where the massive +construction ends and the light construction begins." + +Granting, as one must, that this concealment of the transition is a +beauty, one would still like to be quite sure that the Chartres +scheme is the best. The Norman clochers being thrown out, and that +at Vendome being admittedly simple, the Clocher de Saint-Jean on the +Church of Saint-Germain at Auxerre seems to be thought among the +next in importance, although it is only about one hundred and sixty +feet in height (forty-nine metres), and therefore hardly in the same +class with Chartres. Any photograph shows that the Auxerre spire is +also simple; and that at Etampes you have seen already to be of the +Vendome rather than of the Chartres type. The clocher at Senlis is +more "habile"; it shows an effort to be clever, and offers a +standard of comparison; but the mediaeval architects seem to have +thought that none of them bore rivalry with Laon for technical +skill. One of these professional experts, named Villard de +Honnecourt, who lived between 1200 and 1250, left a notebook which +you can see in the vitrines of the Bibliotheque Nationale in the Rue +Richelieu, and which is the source of most that is known about the +practical ideas of mediaeval architects. He came to Chartres, and, +standing here before the doors, where we are standing, he made a +rough drawing, not of the tower, but of the rose, which was then +probably new, since it must have been planned between 1195 and 1200. +Apparently the tower did not impress him strongly, for he made no +note of it; but on the other hand, when he went to Laon, he became +vehement in praise of the cathedral tower there, which must have +been then quite new: "I have been in many countries, as you can find +in this book. In no place have I ever such a tower seen as that of +Laon.--J'ai este en mult de tieres, si cum vus pores trover en cest +livre. En aucun liu onques tel tor ne vi com est cele de Loon." The +reason for this admiration is the same that Viollet-le-Duc gives for +admiring the tower of Chartres--the "adresse" with which the square +is changed into the octagon. Not only is the tower itself changed +into the fleche without visible junction, under cover of four corner +tourelles, of open work, on slender columns, which start as squares; +but the tourelles also convert themselves into octagons in the very +act of rising, and end in octagon fleches that carry up--or once +carried up--the lines of profile to the central fleche that soared +above them. Clearly this device far surpassed in cleverness the +scheme of Chartres, which was comparatively heavy and structural, +the weights being adjusted for their intended work, while the +transformation at Laon takes place in the air, and challenges +discovery in defiance of one's keenest eyesight. "Regard... how the +tourelles pass from one disposition to another, in rising! Meditate +on it!" + +The fleche of Laon is gone, but the tower and tourelles are still +there to show what the architects of the thirteenth century thought +their most brilliant achievement. One cannot compare Chartres +directly with any of its contemporary rivals, but one can at least +compare the old spire with the new one which stands opposite and +rises above it. Perhaps you will like the new best. Built at a time +which is commonly agreed to have had the highest standard of taste, +it does not encourage tourist or artist to insist on setting up +standards of his own against it. Begun in 1507, it was finished in +1517. The dome of Saint Peter's at Rome, over which Bramante and +Raphael and Michael Angelo toiled, was building at the same time; +Leonardo da Vinci was working at Amboise; Jean Bullant, Pierre +Lescot, and their patron, Francis I, were beginning their +architectural careers. Four hundred years, or thereabouts, separated +the old spire from the new one; and four hundred more separate the +new one from us. If Viollet-le-Duc, who himself built Gothic spires, +had cared to compare his fleches at Clermont-Ferrand with the new +fleche at Chartres, he might perhaps have given us a rule where +"adresse" ceases to have charm, and where detail becomes tiresome; +but in the want of a schoolmaster to lay down a law of taste, you +can admire the new fleche as much as you please. Of course, one sees +that the lines of the new tower are not clean, like those of the +old; the devices that cover the transition from the square to the +octagon are rather too obvious; the proportion of the fleche to the +tower quite alters the values of the parts; a rigid classical taste +might even go so far as to hint that the new tower, in comparison +with the old, showed signs of a certain tendency toward a dim and +distant vulgarity. There can be no harm in admitting that the new +tower is a little wanting in repose for a tower whose business is to +counterpoise the very classic lines of the old one; but no law +compels you to insist on absolute repose in any form of art; if such +a law existed, it would have to deal with Michael Angelo before it +dealt with us. The new tower has many faults, but it has great +beauties, as you can prove by comparing it with other late Gothic +spires, including those of Viollet-le-Duc. Its chief fault is to be +where it is. As a companion to the crusades and to Saint Bernard, it +lacks austerity. As a companion to the Virgin of Chartres, it +recalls Diane de Poitiers. + +In fact, the new tower, which in years is four centuries younger +than its neighbour, is in feeling fully four hundred years older. It +is self-conscious if not vain; its coiffure is elaborately arranged +to cover the effects of age, and its neck and shoulders are covered +with lace and jewels to hide a certain sharpness of skeleton. Yet it +may be beautiful, still; the poets derided the wrinkles of Diane de +Poitiers at the very moment when King Henry II idealized her with +the homage of a Don Quixote; an atmosphere of physical beauty and +decay hangs about the whole Renaissance. + +One cannot push these resemblances too far, even for the twelfth +century and the old tower. Exactly what date the old tower +represents, as a social symbol, is a question that might be as much +disputed as the beauty of Diane de Poitiers, and yet half the +interest of architecture consists in the sincerity of its reflection +of the society that builds. In mere time, by actual date, the old +tower represents the second crusade, and when, in 1150, Saint +Bernard was elected chief of that crusade in this very cathedral,-- +or rather, in the cathedral of 1120, which was burned,--the workmen +were probably setting in mortar the stones of the fleche as we now +see them; yet the fleche does not represent Saint Bernard in +feeling, for Saint Bernard held the whole array of church-towers in +horror as signs merely of display, wealth and pride. The fleche +rather represents Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, Abbot Peter the +Venerable of Cluny, Abbot Abelard of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, and +Queen Eleanor of Guienne, who had married Louis-le-Jeune in 1137; +who had taken the cross from Saint Bernard in 1147; who returned +from the Holy Land in 1149; and who compelled Saint Bernard to +approve her divorce in 1152. Eleanor and Saint Bernard were +centuries apart, yet they lived at the same time and in the same +church. Speaking exactly, the old tower represents neither of them; +the new tower itself is hardly more florid than Eleanor was; perhaps +less so, if one can judge from the fashions of the court-dress of +her time. The old tower is almost Norman, while Eleanor was wholly +Gascon, and Gascony was always florid without being always correct. +The new tower, if it had been built in 1150, like the old one, would +have expressed Eleanor perfectly, even in height and apparent effort +to dwarf its mate, except that Eleanor dwarfed her husband without +an effort, and both in art and in history the result lacked harmony. + +Be the contrast what it may, it does not affect the fact that no +other church in France has two spires that need be discussed in +comparison with these. Indeed, no other cathedral of the same class +has any spires at all, and this superiority of Chartres gave most of +its point to a saying that "with the spires of Chartres, the choir +of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, and the facade of Rheims," one +could make a perfect church--for us tourists. + +The towers have taken much time, though they are the least religious +and least complicated part of church architecture, and in no way +essential to the church; indeed, Saint Bernard thought them an +excrescence due to pride and worldliness, and this is merely Saint +Bernard's way of saying that they were an ornament created to +gratify the artistic sense of beauty. Beautiful as they are, one's +eyes must drop at last down to the church itself. If the spire +symbolizes aspiration, the door symbolizes the way; and the portal +of Chartres is the type of French doors; it stands first in the +history of Gothic art; and, in the opinion of most Gothic artists, +first in the interest of all art, though this is no concern of ours. +Here is the Way to Eternal Life as it was seen by the Church and the +Art of the first crusade! + +The fortune of this monument has been the best attested Miracle de +la Vierge in the long list of the Virgin's miracles, for it comes +down, practically unharmed, through what may with literal accuracy +be called the jaws of destruction and the flames of hell. Built some +time in the first half of the twelfth century, it passed, apparently +unscathed, through the great fire of 1194 which burnt out the church +behind, and even the timber interior of the towers in front of it. +Owing to the enormous mass of timber employed in the structure of +the great churches, these recurrent fires were as destructive as +fire can be made, yet not only the portals with their statuary and +carving, but also the lancet windows with their glass, escaped the +flames; and, what is almost equally strange, escaped also the hand +of the builder afterwards, who, if he had resembled other +architects, would have made a new front of his own, but who, with +piety unexampled, tenderly took the old stones down, one by one, and +replaced them forty feet in advance of their old position. The +English wars and the wars of religion brought new dangers, sieges, +and miseries; the revolution of 1792 brought actual rapine and +waste; boys have flung stones at the saints; architects have wreaked +their taste within and without; fire after fire has calcined the +church vaults; the worst wrecker of all, the restorer of the +nineteenth century, has prowled about it; yet the porch still +stands, mutilated but not restored, burned but not consumed, as +eloquent a witness to the power and perfections of Our Lady as it +was seven hundred years ago, and perhaps more impressive. + +You will see portals and porches more or less of the same period +elsewhere in many different places,--at Paris, Le Mans, Sens, Autun, +Vezelay, Clermont-Ferrand, Moissac, Arles,--a score of them; for the +same piety has protected them more than once; but you will see no +other so complete or so instructive, and you may search far before +you will find another equally good in workmanship. Study of the +Chartres portal covers all the rest. The feeling and motive of all +are nearly the same, or vary only to suit the character of the +patron saint; and the point of all is that this feeling is the +architectural child of the first crusade. At Chartres one can read +the first crusade in the portal, as at Mont-Saint-Michel in the +Aquilon and the promenoir. + +The Abbe Bulteau gives reason for assuming the year 1117 as the +approximate date of the sculpture about the west portal, and you saw +at Mont-Saint-Michel, in the promenoir of Abbot Roger II, an +accurately dated work of the same decade; but whatever the date of +the plan, the actual work and its spirit belong to 1145 or +thereabouts, Some fifty years had passed since the crusaders +streamed through Constantinople to Antioch and Jerusalem, and they +were daily going and returning. You can see the ideas they brought +back with the relics and missals and enamels they bought in +Byzantium. Over the central door is the Christ, which might be +sculptured after a Byzantine enamel, with its long nimbus or aureole +or glory enclosing the whole figure. Over the left door is an +Ascension, bearing the same stamp; and over the right door, the +seated Virgin, with her crown and her two attendant archangels, is +an empress. Here is the Church, the Way, and the Life of the twelfth +century that we have undertaken to feel, if not to understand! + +First comes the central doorway, and above it is the glory of +Christ, as the church at Chartres understood Christ in the year +1150; for the glories of Christ were many, and the Chartres Christ +is one. Whatever Christ may have been in other churches, here, on +this portal, he offers himself to his flock as the herald of +salvation alone. Among all the imagery of these three doorways, +there is no hint of fear, punishment, or damnation, and this is the +note of the whole time. Before 1200, the Church seems not to have +felt the need of appealing habitually to terror; the promise of hope +and happiness was enough; even the portal at Autun, which displays a +Last Judgment, belonged to Saint Lazarus the proof and symbol of +resurrection. A hundred years later, every church portal showed +Christ not as Saviour but as Judge, and He presided over a Last +Judgment at Bourges and Amiens, and here on the south portal, where +the despair of the damned is the evident joy of the artist, if it is +not even sometimes a little his jest, which is worse. At Chartres +Christ is identified with His Mother, the spirit of love and grace, +and His Church is the Church Triumphant. + +Not only is fear absent; there is not even a suggestion of pain; +there is not a martyr with the symbol of his martyrdom; and what is +still more striking, in the sculptured life of Christ, from the +Nativity to the Ascension, which adorns the capitals of the columns, +the single scene that has been omitted is the Crucifixion. There, as +everywhere in this portal, the artists seem actually to have gone +out of their way in order to avoid a suggestion of suffering. They +have pictured Christ and His Mother in all the other events of their +lives; they have represented evangelists; apostles; the twenty-four +old men of the Apocalypse; saints, prophets, kings, queens, and +princes, by the score; the signs of the zodiac, and even the seven +liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, +astronomy, and music; everything is there except misery. + +Perhaps Our Lady of Chartres was known to be peculiarly gracious and +gentle, and this may partially account also for the extreme +popularity of her shrine; but whatever the reason, her church was +clearly intended to show only this side of her nature, and to +impress it on her Son. You can see it in the grave and gracious face +and attitude of the Christ, raising His hand to bless you as you +enter His kingdom; in the array of long figures which line the +entrance to greet you as you pass; in the expression of majesty and +mercy of the Virgin herself on her throne above the southern +doorway; never once are you regarded as a possible rebel, or +traitor, or a stranger to be treated with suspicion, or as a child +to be impressed by fear. Equally distinct, perhaps even more +emphatic, is the sculptor's earnestness to make you feel, without +direct insistence, that you are entering the Court of the Queen of +Heaven who is one with her Son and His Church. The central door +always bore the name of the "Royal Door," because it belonged to the +celestial majesty of Christ, and naturally bears the stamp of +royalty; but the south door belongs to the Virgin and to us. Stop a +moment to see how she receives us, remembering, or trying to +remember, that to the priests and artists who designed the portal, +and to the generations that went on the first and second crusades, +the Virgin in her shrine was at least as living, as real, as +personal an empress as the Basilissa at Constantinople! + +On the lintel immediately above the doorway is a succession of small +groups: first, the Annunciation; Mary stands to receive the +Archangel Gabriel, who comes to announce to her that she is chosen +to be the Mother of God. The second is the Visitation, and in this +scene also Mary stands, but she already wears a crown; at least, the +Abbe Bulteau says so, although time has dealt harshly with it. Then, +in the centre, follows the Nativity; Mary lies on a low bed, +beneath, or before, a sort of table or cradle on which lies the +Infant, while Saint Joseph stands at the bed's head. Then the angel +appears, directing three shepherds to the spot, filling the rest of +the space. + +In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, +for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at +Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress- +mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her +people to share. The Virgin of Chartres was the greatest of all +queens, but the most womanly of women, as we shall see; and her +double character is sustained throughout her palace. She was also +intellectually gifted in the highest degree. In the upper zone you +see her again, at the Presentation in the Temple, supporting the +Child Jesus on the altar, while Simeon aids. Other figures bring +offerings. The voussures of the arch above contain six archangels, +with curious wings, offering worship to the Infant and His Imperial +Mother. Below are the signs of the zodiac; the Fishes and the Twins. +The rest of the arch is filled by the seven liberal arts, with +Pythagoras, Aristotle, Cicero, Euclid, Nicomachus, Ptolemy, and +Priscian as their representatives, testifying to the Queen's +intellectual superiority. + +In the centre sits Mary, with her crown on her head and her Son in +her lap, enthroned, receiving the homage of heaven and earth; of all +time, ancient and modern; of all thought, Christian and Pagan; of +all men, and all women; including, if you please, your homage and +mine, which she receives without question, as her due; which she +cannot be said to claim, because she is above making claims; she is +empress. Her left hand bore a sceptre; her right supported the +Child, Who looks directly forward, repeating the Mother's attitude, +and raises His right hand to bless, while His left rests on the orb +of empire. She and her Child are one. + +All this was noble beyond the nobility of man, but its earthly form +was inspired by the Empire rather than by the petty royalty of +Louis-le-Gros or his pious queen Alix of Savoy. One mark of the +period is the long, oval nimbus; another is the imperial character +of the Virgin; a third is her unity with the Christ which is the +Church. To us, the mark that will distinguish the Virgin of +Chartres, or, if you prefer, the Virgin of the Crusades, is her +crown and robes and throne. According to M. Rohault de Fleury's +"Iconographie de la Sainte Vierge" (11, 62), the Virgin's headdress +and ornaments had been for long ages borrowed from the costume of +the Empresses of the East in honour of the Queen of Heaven. No doubt +the Virgin of Chartres was the Virgin recognized by the Empress +Helena, mother of Constantine, and was at least as old as Helena's +pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326. She was not a Western, feudal queen, +nor was her Son a feudal king; she typified an authority which the +people wanted, and the fiefs feared; the Pax Romana; the omnipotence +of God in government. In all Europe, at that time, there was no +power able to enforce justice or to maintain order, and no symbol of +such a power except Christ and His Mother and the Imperial Crown. + +This idea is very different from that which was the object of our +pilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel; but since all Chartres is to be one +long comment upon it, you can lay the history of the matter on the +shelf for study at your leisure, if you ever care to study into the +weary details of human illusions and disappointments, while here we +pray to the Virgin, and absorb ourselves in the art, which is your +pleasure and which shall not teach either a moral or a useful +lesson. The Empress Mary is receiving you at her portal, and whether +you are an impertinent child, or a foolish old peasant-woman, or an +insolent prince, or a more insolent tourist, she receives you with +the same dignity; in fact, she probably sees very little difference +between you. An empress of Russia to-day would probably feel little +difference in the relative rank of her subjects, and the Virgin was +empress over emperors, patriarchs, and popes. Any one, however +ignorant, can feel the sustained dignity of the sculptor's work, +which is asserted with all the emphasis he could put into it. Not +one of these long figures which line the three doorways but is an +officer or official in attendance on the Empress or her Son, and +bears the stamp of the Imperial Court. They are mutilated, but, if +they have been treated with indignity, so were often their temporal +rivals, torn to pieces, trampled on, to say nothing of being merely +beheaded or poisoned, in the Sacred Palace and the Hippodrome, +without losing that peculiar Oriental dignity of style which seems +to drape the least dignified attitudes. The grand air of the twelfth +century is something like that of a Greek temple; you can, if you +like, hammer every separate stone to pieces, but you cannot hammer +out the Greek style. There were originally twenty-four of these +statues, and nineteen remain. Beginning at the north end, and +passing over the first figure, which carries a head that does not +belong to it, notice the second, a king with a long sceptre of +empire, a book of law, and robes of Byzantine official splendour. +Beneath his feet is a curious woman's head with heavy braids of +hair, and a crown. The third figure is a queen, charming as a woman, +but particularly well-dressed, and with details of ornament and +person elaborately wrought; worth drawing, if one could only draw; +worth photographing with utmost care to include the strange support +on which she stands: a monkey, two dragons, a dog, a basilisk with a +dog's head. Two prophets follow--not so interesting;--prophets +rarely interest. Then comes the central bay: two queens who claim +particular attention, then a prophet, then a saint next the doorway; +then on the southern jamb-shafts, another saint, a king, a queen, +and another king. Last comes the southern bay, the Virgin's own, and +there stands first a figure said to be a youthful king; then a +strongly sculptured saint; next the door a figure called also a +king, but so charmingly delicate in expression that the robes alone +betray his sex; and who this exquisite young aureoled king may have +been who stands so close to the Virgin, at her right hand, no one +can now reveal. Opposite him is a saint who may be, or should be, +the Prince of the Apostles; then a bearded king with a broken +sceptre, standing on two dragons; and, at last, a badly mutilated +queen. + +These statues are the Eginetan marbles of French art; from them all +modern French sculpture dates, or ought to date. They are singularly +interesting; as naif as the smile on the faces of the Greek +warriors, but no more grotesque than they. You will see Gothic +grotesques in plenty, and you cannot mistake the two intentions; the +twelfth century would sooner have tempted the tortures of every +feudal dungeon in Europe than have put before the Virgin's eyes any +figure that could be conceived as displeasing to her. These figures +are full of feeling, and saturated with worship; but what is most to +our purpose is the feminine side which they proclaim and insist +upon. Not only the number of the female figures, and their beauty, +but also the singularly youthful beauty of several of the males; the +superb robes they wear; the expression of their faces and their +figures; the details of hair, stuffs, ornaments, jewels; the +refinement and feminine taste of the whole, are enough to startle +our interest if we recognize what meaning they had to the twelfth +century. + +These figures looked stiff and long and thin and ridiculous to +enlightened citizens of the eighteenth century, but they were made +to fit the architecture; if you want to know what an enthusiast +thinks of them, listen to M. Huysmans's "Cathedral." "Beyond a +doubt, the most beautiful sculpture in the world is in this place." +He can hardly find words to express his admiration for the queens, +and particularly for the one on the right of the central doorway. +"Never in any period has a more expressive figure been thus wrought +by the genius of man; it is the chef-d'oeuvre of infantile grace and +holy candour .... She is the elder sister of the Prodigal Son, the +one of whom Saint Luke does not speak, but who, if she existed, +would have pleaded the cause of the absent, and insisted, with the +father, that he should kill the fatted calf at his son's return." +The idea is charming if you are the returning son, as many twelfth- +century pilgrims must have thought themselves; but, in truth, the +figure is that of a queen; an Eleanor of Guienne; her position there +is due to her majesty, which bears witness to the celestial majesty +of the Court in which she is only a lady-in-waiting: and she is +hardly more humanly fascinating than her brother, the youthful king +at the Virgin's right hand, who has nothing of the Prodigal Son, but +who certainly has much of Lohengrin, or even--almost--Tristan. + +The Abbe Bulteau has done his best to name these statues, but the +names would be only in your way. That the sculptor meant them for a +Queen of Sheba or a King of Israel has little to do with their +meaning in the twelfth century, when the people were much more +likely to have named them after the queens and kings they knew. The +whole charm lies for us in the twelfth-century humanity of Mary and +her Court; not in the scriptural names under which it was made +orthodox. Here, in this western portal, it stands as the crusaders +of 1100-50 imagined it; but by walking round the church to the porch +over the entrance to the north transept, you shall see it again as +Blanche of Castile and Saint Louis imagined it, a hundred years +later, so that you will know better whether the earthly attributes +are exaggerated or untrue. + +Porches, like steeples, were rather a peculiarity of French +churches, and were studied, varied, one might even say petted, by +French architects to an extent hardly attempted elsewhere; but among +all the French porches, those of Chartres are the most famous. There +are two: one on the north side, devoted to the Virgin; the other, on +the south, devoted to the Son, "The mass of intelligence, knowledge, +acquaintance with effects, practical experience, expended on these +two porches of Chartres," says Viollet-le-Duc, "would be enough to +establish the glory of a whole generation of artists." We begin with +the north porch because it belonged to the Virgin; and it belonged +to the Virgin because the north was cold, bleak, sunless, windy, and +needed warmth, peace, affection, and power to protect against the +assaults of Satan and his swarming devils. There the all-suffering +but the all-powerful Mother received other mothers who suffered like +her, but who, as a rule, were not powerful. Traditionally in the +primitive church, the northern porch belonged to the women. When +they needed help, they came here, because it was the only place in +this world or in any other where they had much hope of finding even +a reception. See how Mary received them! + +The porch extends the whole width of the transept, about one hundred +and twenty feet (37.65 metres), divided into three bays some twenty +feet deep, and covered with a stone vaulted roof supported on piers +outside. Begun toward 1215 under Philip Augustus, the architectural +part was finished toward 1225 under Louis VIII; and after his death +in 1226, the decorative work and statuary were carried on under the +regency of his widow, Blanche of Castile, and through the reign of +her son, Saint Louis (1235-70), until about 1275, when the work was +completed by Philip the Hardy. A gift of the royal family of France, +all the members of the family seem to have had a share in building +it, and several of their statues have been supposed to adorn it. The +walls are lined--the porch, in a religious sense, is inhabited--by +more than seven hundred figures, great and small, all, in one way or +another, devoted to the glory of the Queen of Heaven. You will see +that a hundred years have converted the Byzantine Empress into a +French Queen, as the same years had converted Alix of Savoy into +Blanche of Castile; but the note of majesty is the same, and the +assertion of power is, if possible, more emphatic. + +The highest note is struck at once, in the central bay, over the +door, where you see the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven, a +favourite subject in art from very early times, and the dominant +idea of Mary's church. You see Mary on the left, seated on her +throne; on the right, seated on a precisely similar throne, is +Christ, Who holds up His right hand apparently to bless, since Mary +already bears the crown. Mary bends forward, with her hands raised +toward her Son, as though in gratitude or adoration or prayer, but +certainly not in an attitude of feudal homage. On either side, an +archangel swings a censer. + +On the lintel below, on the left, is represented the death of Mary; +on the right, Christ carries, in the folds of His mantle, the soul +of Mary in the form of a little child, and at the same time blesses +the body which is carried away by angels--The Resurrection of Mary. + +Below the lintel, supporting it, and dividing the doorway in halves, +is the trumeau,--the central pier,--a new part of the portal which +was unknown to the western door. Usually in the Virgin's churches, +as at Rheims, or Amiens or Paris, the Virgin herself, with her Son +in her arms, stands against this pier, trampling on the dragon with +the woman's head. Here, not the Virgin with the Christ, but her +mother Saint Anne stands, with the infant Virgin in her arms; while +beneath is, or was, Saint Joachim, her husband, among his flocks, +receiving from the Archangel Gabriel the annunciation. + +So at the entrance the Virgin declares herself divinely Queen in her +own right; divinely born; divinely resurrected from death, on the +third day; seated by divine right on the throne of Heaven, at the +right hand of God, the Son, with Whom she is one. + +Unless we feel this assertion of divine right in the Queen of +Heaven, apart from the Trinity, yet one with It, Chartres is +unintelligible. The extreme emphasis laid upon it at the church door +shows what the church means within. Of course, the assertion was not +strictly orthodox; perhaps, since we are not members of the Church, +we might be unnoticed and unrebuked if we start by suspecting that +the worship of the Virgin never was strictly orthodox; but Chartres +was hers before it ever belonged to the Church, and, like Lourdes in +our own time, was a shrine peculiarly favoured by her presence. The +mere fact that it was a bishopric had little share in its sanctity. +The bishop was much more afraid of Mary than he was of any Church +Council ever held. + +Critics are doing their best to destroy the peculiar personal +interest of this porch, but tourists and pilgrims may be excused for +insisting on their traditional rights here, since the porch is +singular, even in the thirteenth century, for belonging entirely to +them and the royal family of France, subject only to the Virgin. +True artists, turned critics, think also less of rules than of +values, and no ignorant public can be trusted to join the critics in +losing temper judiciously over the date or correctness of a portrait +until they knew something of its motives and merits. The public has +always felt certain that some of the statues which stand against the +outer piers of this porch are portraits, and they see no force in +the objection that such decoration was not customary in the Church. +Many things at Chartres were not customary in the Church, although +the Church now prefers not to dwell on them. Therefore the student +returns to Viollet-le-Duc with his usual delight at finding at least +one critic whose sense of values is stronger than his sense of rule: +"Each statue," he says in his "Dictionary" (111, 166), "possesses +its personal character which remains graven on the memory like the +recollection of a living being whom one has known .... A large part +of the statues in the porches of Notre Dame de Chartres, as well as +of the portals of the Cathedrals of Amiens and Rheims, possess these +individual qualities, and this it is which explains why these +statues produce on the crowd so vivid an impression that it names +them, knows them, and attaches to each of them an idea, often a +legend." + +Probably the crowd did so from the first moment they saw the +statues, and with good reason. At all events, they have attached to +two of the most individual figures on the north porch, two names, +perhaps the best known in France in the year 1226, but which since +the year 1300 can have conveyed only the most shadowy meaning to any +but pure antiquarians. The group is so beautiful as to be given a +plate to itself in the "Monographie" (number 26), as representing +Philip Hurepel and his wife Mahaut de Boulogne. So little could any +crowd, or even any antiquarian, at any time within six hundred years +have been likely to pitch on just these persons to associate with +Blanche of Castile in any kind of family unity, that the mere +suggestion seems wild; yet Blanche outlived Pierre by nearly twenty +years, and her power over this transept and porch ended only with +her death as regent in 1252. + +Philippe, nicknamed Hurepel,--Boarskin,--was a "fils deFrance," +whose father, Philip Augustus, had serious, not to say fatal, +difficulties with the Church about the legality of his marriage, +and was forced to abandon his wife, who died in 1201, after giving +birth to Hurepel in 1200. The child was recognized as legitimate, +and stood next to the throne, after his half-brother Louis, who was +thirteen years older. Almost at his birth he was affianced to +Mahaut, Countess of Boulogne, and the marriage was celebrated in +1216. Rich and strongly connected, Hurepel naturally thought +himself--and was--head of the royal family next to the King, and +when his half-brother, Louis VIII, died in 1226, leaving only a son, +afterwards Saint Louis, a ten-year-old boy, to succeed, Hurepel very +properly claimed the guardianship of his infant nephew, and deeply +resented being excluded by Queen Blanche from what he regarded-- +perhaps with justice--as his right. Nearly all the great lords and +the members of the royal family sided with him, and entered into a +civil war against Blanche, at the moment when these two porches of +Chartres were building, between 1228 and 1230. The two greatest +leaders of the conspiracy were Hurepel, whom we are expected to +recognize on the pier of this porch, and Pierre Mauclerc, of +Brittany and Dreux, whom we have no choice but to admit on the +trumeau of the other. In those days every great feudal lord was more +or less related by blood to the Crown, and although Blanche of +Castile was also a cousin as well as queen-mother, they hated her as +a Spanish intruder with such hatred as men felt in an age when +passions were real. + +That these two men should be found here, associated with Blanche in +the same work, at the same time, under the same roof, is a fantastic +idea, and students can feel in this political difficulty a much +stronger objection to admitting Hurepel to Queen Blanche's porch +than any supposed rule of Church custom; yet the first privilege of +tourist ignorance is the right to see, or try to see, their +thirteenth century with thirteenth-century eyes. Passing by the +statues of Philip and Mahaut, and stepping inside the church door, +almost the first figure that the visitor sees on lifting his eyes to +the upper windows of the transept is another figure of Philippe +Hurepel, in glass, on his knees, with clasped hands, before an +altar; and to prevent possibility of mistake his blazoned coat bears +the words: "Phi: Conte de Bolone." Apparently he is the donor, for, +in the rose above, he sits in arms on a white horse with a shield +bearing the blazon of France. Obliged to make his peace with the +Queen in 1230, Hurepel died in 1233 or 1234, while Blanche was still +regent, and instantly took his place as of right side by side with +Blanche's castles of Castile among the great benefactors of the +church. + +Beneath the next rose is Mahaut herself, as donor, bearing her +husband's arms of France, suggesting that the windows must have been +given together, probably before Philip's death in 1233, since Mahaut +was married again in 1238, this time to Alfonso of Portugal, who +repudiated her in 1249, and left her to die in her own town of +Boulogne in 1258. Lastly, in the third window of the series, is her +daughter Jeanne,--"Iehenne,"--who was probably born before 1220, and +who was married in 1236 to Gaucher de Chatillon, one of the greatest +warriors of his time. Jeanne also--according to the Abbe Bulteau +(111, 225)--bears the arms of her father and mother; which seems to +suggest that she gave this window before her marriage. These three +windows, therefore, have the air of dating at least as early as 1233 +when Philip Hurepel died, while next them follow two more roses, and +the great rose of France, presumably of the same date, all scattered +over with the castles of Queen Blanche. The motive of the porch +outside is repeated in the glass, as it should be, and as the Saint +Anne of the Rose of France, within, repeats the Saint Anne on the +trumeau of the portal. The personal stamp of the royal family is +intense, but the stamp of the Virgin's personality is intenser +still. In the presence of Mary, not only did princes hide their +quarrels, but they also put on their most courteous manners and the +most refined and even austere address. The Byzantine display of +luxury and adornment had vanished. All the figures suggest the +sanctity of the King and his sister Isabel; the court has the air of +a convent; but the idea of Mary's majesty is asserted through it +all. The artists and donors and priests forgot nothing which, in +their judgment, could set off the authority, elegance, and +refinement of the Queen of Heaven; even the young ladies-in-waiting +are there, figured by the twelve Virtues and the fourteen +Beatitudes; and, indeed, though men are plenty and some of them are +handsome, women give the tone, the charm, and mostly the +intelligence. The Court of Mary is feminine, and its charms are +Grace and Love; perhaps even more grace than love, in a social +sense, if you look at Beauty and Friendship among Beatitudes. + +M. Huysmans insists that this sculpture is poor in comparison with +his twelfth-century Prodigal Daughter, and I hope you can enter into +the spirit of his enthusiasm; but other people prefer the +thirteenth-century work, and think it equals the best Greek. +Approaching, or surpassing this,--as you like,--is the sculpture you +will see at Rheims, of the same period, and perhaps the same hands; +but, for our purpose, the Queen of Sheba, here in the right-hand +bay, is enough, because you can compare it on the spot with M. +Huysmans's figure on the western portal, which may also be a Queen +of Sheba, who, as spouse of Solomon, typified the Church, and +therefore prefigured Mary herself. Both are types of Court beauty +and grace, one from the twelfth century, the other from the +thirteenth, and you can prefer which you please; but you want to +bear in mind that each, in her time, pleased the Virgin. You can +even take for a settled fact that these were the types of feminine +beauty and grace which pleased the Virgin beyond all others. + +The purity of taste, feeling, and manners which stamps the art of +these centuries, as it did the Court of Saint Louis and his mother, +is something you will not wholly appreciate till you reach the +depravity of the Valois; but still you can see how exquisite the +Virgin's taste was, and how pure. You can also see how she shrank +from the sight of pain. Here, in the central bay, next to King +David, who stands at her right hand, is the great figure of Abraham +about to sacrifice Isaac. If there is one subject more revolting +than another to a woman who typifies the Mother, it is this subject +of Abraham and Isaac, with its compound horror of masculine +stupidity and brutality. The sculptor has tried to make even this +motive a pleasing one. He has placed Abraham against the column in +the correct harshness of attitude, with his face turned aside and +up, listening for his orders; but the little Isaac, with hands and +feet tied, leans like a bundle of sticks against his father's knee +with an expression of perfect faith and confidence, while Abraham's +left hand quiets him and caresses the boy's face, with a movement +that must have gone straight to Mary's heart, for Isaac always +prefigured Christ. + +The glory of Mary was not one of terror, and her porch contains no +appeal to any emotion but those of her perfect grace. If we were to +stay here for weeks, we should find only this idea worked into every +detail. The Virgin of the thirteenth century is no longer an +Empress; she is Queen Mother,--an idealized Blanche of Castile;--too +high to want, or suffer, or to revenge, or to aspire, but not too +high to pity, to punish, or to pardon. The women went to her porch +for help as naturally as babies to their mother; and the men, in her +presence, fell on their knees because they feared her intelligence +and her anger. + +Not that all the men showed equal docility! We must go next, round +the church, to the south porch, which was the gift of Pierre +Mauclerc, Comte de Dreux, another member of the royal family, great- +grandson of Louis VI, and therefore second cousin to Louis VIII and +Philip Hurepel. Philip Augustus, his father's first cousin, married +the young man, in 1212, to Alix, heiress of the Duchy of Brittany, +and this marriage made him one of the most powerful vassals of the +Crown. He joined Philip Hurepel in resisting the regency of Queen +Blanche in 1227, and Blanche, after a long struggle, caused him to +be deposed in 1230. Pierre was obliged to submit, and was pardoned. +Until 1236, he remained in control of the Duchy of Brittany, but +then was obliged to surrender his power to his son, and turned his +turbulent activity against the infidels in Syria and Egypt, dying in +1250, on his return from Saint Louis's disastrous crusade. Pierre de +Dreux was a masculine character,--a bad cleric, as his nickname +Mauclerc testified, but a gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, and, +what is more to our purpose, a man of taste. He built the south +porch at Chartres, apparently as a memorial of his marriage with +Alix in 1212, and the statuary is of the same date with that of the +north porch, but, like that, it was not finished when Pierre died in +1250. + +One would like to know whether Pierre preferred to take the southern +entrance, or whether he was driven there by the royal claim to the +Virgin's favour. The southern porch belongs to the Son, as the +northern belongs to the Mother. Pierre never showed much deference +to women, and probably felt more at his ease under the protection of +the Son than of Mary; but in any case he showed as clearly as +possible what he thought on this question of persons. To Pierre, +Christ was first, and he asserted his opinion as emphatically as +Blanche asserted hers. + +Which porch is the more beautiful is a question for artists to +discuss and decide, if they can. Either is good enough for us, whose +pose is ignorance, and whose pose is strictly correct; but apart +from its beauty or its art, there is also the question of feeling, +of motive, which puts the Porche de Dreux in contrast with the +Porche de France, and this is wholly within our competence. At the +outset, the central bay displays, above the doorway, Christ, on a +throne, raising His hands to show the stigmata, the wounds which +were the proof of man's salvation. At His right hand sits the +Mother,--without her crown; on His left, in equal rank with the +Mother, sits Saint John the Evangelist. Both are in the same +attitude of supplication as intercessors; there is no distinction in +rank or power between Mary and John, since neither has any power +except what Christ gives them. Pierre did not, indeed, put the +Mother on her knees before the Son, as you can see her at Amiens and +in later churches,--certainly bad taste in Mary's own palace; but he +allowed her no distinction which is not her strict right. The angels +above and around bear the symbols of the Passion; they are +unconscious of Mary's presence; they are absorbed in the perfections +of the Son. On the lintel just below is the Last Judgment, where +Saint Michael reappears, weighing the souls of the dead which Mary +and John above are trying to save from the strict justice of Christ. +The whole melodrama of Church terrors appears after the manner of +the thirteenth century, on this church door, without regard to +Mary's feelings; and below, against the trumeau, stands the great +figure of Christ,--the whole Church,--trampling on the lion and +dragon. On either side of the doorway stand six great figures of the +Apostles asserting themselves as the columns of the Church, and +looking down at us with an expression no longer calculated to calm +our fears or encourage extravagant hopes. No figure on this porch +suggests a portrait or recalls a memory. + +Very grand, indeed, is this doorway; dignified, impressive, and +masculine to a degree seldom if ever equalled in art; and the left +bay rivals it. There, in the tympanum, Christ appears again; +standing; bearing on His head the crown royal; alone, except for the +two angels who adore, and surrounded only by the martyrs, His +witnesses. The right bay is devoted to Saint Nicholas and the Saints +Confessors who bear witness to the authority of Christ in faith. Of +the twenty-eight great figures, the officers of the royal court, who +make thus the strength of the Church beneath Christ, not one is a +woman. The masculine orthodoxy of Pierre Mauclerc has spared neither +sex nor youth; all are of a maturity which chills the blood, +excepting two, whose youthful beauty is heightened by the severity +of their surroundings, so that the Abbe Bulteau makes bold even to +say that "the two statues of Saint George and of Saint Theodore may +be regarded as the most beautiful of our cathedral, perhaps even as +the two masterpieces of statuary at the end of the thirteenth +century." On that point, let every one follow his taste; but one +reflection at least seems to force itself on the mind in comparing +these twenty-eight figures. Certainly the sword, however it may +compare with the pen in other directions, is in art more powerful +than all the pens, or volumes, or crosiers ever made. Your "Golden +Legend" and Roman Breviary are here the only guide-books worth +consulting, and the stories of young George and Theodore stand there +recorded; as their miracle under the walls of Antioch, during the +first crusade, is matter of history; but among these magnificent +figures one detects at a glance that it is not the religion or +sacred purity of the subject, or even the miracles or the +sufferings, which inspire passion for Saint George and Saint +Theodore, under the Abbe's robe; it is with him, as with the plain +boy and girl, simply youth, with lance and sword and shield. + +These two figures stand in the outer embrasures of the left bay, +where they can be best admired, and perhaps this arrangement shows +what Perron de Dreux, as he was commonly called, loved most, in his +heart of hearts; but elsewhere, even in this porch, he relaxed his +severity, and became at times almost gracious to women. Good judges +have, indeed, preferred this porch to the northern one; but, be that +as you please, it contains seven hundred and eighty-three figures, +large and small, to serve for comparison. Among these, the female +element has its share, though not a conspicuous one; and even the +Virgin gets her rights, though not beside her Son. To see her, you +must stand outside in the square and, with a glass, look at the +central pignon, or gable, of the porch. There, just above the point +of the arch, you will see Mary on her throne, crowned, wearing her +royal robes, and holding the Child on her knees, with the two +archangels on either side offering incense. Pierre de Dreux, or some +one else, admitted at last that she was Queen Regent, although +evidently not eager to do so; and if you turn your glass up to the +gable of the transept itself, above the great rose and the colonnade +over it, you can see another and a colossal statue of the Virgin, +but standing, with the Child on her left arm. She seems to be +crowned, and to hold the globe in her right hand; but the Abbe +Bulteau says it is a flower. The two archangels are still there. +This figure is thought to have been a part of the finishing +decoration added by Philip the Fair in 1304. + +In theology, Pierre de Dreux seems to show himself a more learned +clerk than his cousins of France, and, as an expression of the +meaning the church of Mary should externally display, the Porche de +Dreux, if not as personal, is as energetic as the Porche de France, +or the western portal. As we pass into the Cathedral, under the +great Christ, on the trumeau, you must stop to look at Pierre +himself. A bridegroom, crowned with flowers on his wedding-day, he +kneels in prayer, while two servants distribute bread to the poor. +Below, you see him again, seated with his wife Alix before a table +with one loaf, assisting at the meal they give to the poor. Pierre +kneels to God; he and his wife bow before the Virgin and the poor;-- +but not to Queen Blanche! + +Now let us enter!-- + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES + +We must take ten minutes to accustom our eyes to the light, and we +had better use them to seek the reason why we come to Chartres +rather than to Rheims or Amiens or Bourges, for the cathedral that +fills our ideal. The truth is, there are several reasons; there +generally are, for doing the things we like; and after you have +studied Chartres to the ground, and got your reasons settled, you +will never find an antiquarian to agree with you; the architects +will probably listen to you with contempt; and even these excellent +priests, whose kindness is great, whose patience is heavenly, and +whose good opinion you would so gladly gain, will turn from you with +pain, if not with horror. The Gothic is singular in this; one seems +easily at home in the Renaissance; one is not too strange in the +Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk +blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all +these styles seem modern, when we come close to them; but the Gothic +gets away. No two men think alike about it, and no woman agrees with +either man. The Church itself never agreed about it, and the +architects agree even less than the priests. To most minds it casts +too many shadows; it wraps itself in mystery; and when people talk +of mystery, they commonly mean fear. To others, the Gothic seems +hoary with age and decrepitude, and its shadows mean death. What is +curious to watch is the fanatical conviction of the Gothic +enthusiast, to whom the twelfth century means exuberant youth, the +eternal child of Wordsworth, over whom its immortality broods like +the day; it is so simple and yet so complicated; it sees so much and +so little; it loves so many toys and cares for so few necessities; +its youth is so young, its age so old, and its youthful yearning for +old thought is so disconcerting, like the mysterious senility of the +baby that-- + + Deaf and silent, reads the eternal deep, + Haunted forever by the eternal mind. + + +One need not take it more seriously than one takes the baby itself. +Our amusement is to play with it, and to catch its meaning in its +smile; and whatever Chartres maybe now, when young it was a smile. +To the Church, no doubt, its cathedral here has a fixed and +administrative meaning, which is the same as that of every other +bishop's seat and with which we have nothing whatever to do. To us, +it is a child's fancy; a toy-house to please the Queen of Heaven,-- +to please her so much that she would be happy in it,--to charm her +till she smiled. + +The Queen Mother was as majestic as you like; she was absolute; she +could be stern; she was not above being angry; but she was still a +woman, who loved grace, beauty, ornament,--her toilette, robes, +jewels;--who considered the arrangements of her palace with +attention, and liked both light and colour; who kept a keen eye on +her Court, and exacted prompt and willing obedience from king and +archbishops as well as from beggars and drunken priests. She +protected her friends and punished her enemies. She required space, +beyond what was known in the Courts of kings, because she was liable +at all times to have ten thousand people begging her for favours-- +mostly inconsistent with law--and deaf to refusal. She was extremely +sensitive to neglect, to disagreeable impressions, to want of +intelligence in her surroundings. She was the greatest artist, as +she was the greatest philosopher and musician and theologist, that +ever lived on earth, except her Son, Who, at Chartres, is still an +Infant under her guardianship. Her taste was infallible; her +sentence eternally final. This church was built for her in this +spirit of simple-minded, practical, utilitarian faith,--in this +singleness of thought, exactly as a little girl sets up a doll-house +for her favourite blonde doll. Unless you can go back to your dolls, +you are out of place here. If you can go back to them, and get rid +for one small hour of the weight of custom, you shall see Chartres +in glory. + +The palaces of earthly queens were hovels compared with these +palaces of the Queen of Heaven at Chartres, Paris, Laon, Noyon, +Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Bayeux, Coutances,--a list that might be +stretched into a volume. The nearest approach we have made to a +palace was the Merveille at Mont-Saint-Michel, but no Queen had a +palace equal to that. The Merveille was built, or designed, about +the year 1200; toward the year 1500, Louis XI built a great castle +at Loches in Touraine, and there Queen Anne de Bretagne had +apartments which still exist, and which we will visit. At Blois you +shall see the residence which served for Catherine de Medicis till +her death in 1589. Anne de Bretagne was trebly queen, and Catherine +de Medicis took her standard of comfort from the luxury of Florence. +At Versailles you can see the apartments which the queens of the +Bourbon line occupied through their century of magnificence. All put +together, and then trebled in importance, could not rival the +splendour of any single cathedral dedicated to Queen Mary in the +thirteenth century; and of them all, Chartres was built to be +peculiarly and exceptionally her delight. + +One has grown so used to this sort of loose comparison, this +reckless waste of words, that one no longer adopts an idea unless it +is driven in with hammers of statistics and columns of figures. With +the irritating demand for literal exactness and perfectly straight +lines which lights up every truly American eye, you will certainly +ask when this exaltation of Mary began, and unless you get the +dates, you will doubt the facts. It is your own fault if they are +tiresome; you might easily read them all in the "Iconographie de la +Sainte Vierge," by M. Rohault de Fleury, published in 1878. You can +start at Byzantium with the Empress Helena in 326, or with the +Council of Ephesus in 431. You will find the Virgin acting as the +patron saint of Constantinople and of the Imperial residence, under +as many names as Artemis or Aphrodite had borne. As Godmother [word +in Greek] Deipara [word in Greek], Pathfinder [word in Greek], +afterwards gave to Murillo the subject of a famous painting, told +that once, when he was reciting before her statue the "Ave Maris +Stella," and came to the words, "Monstra te esse Matrem," the image, +pressing its breast, dropped on the lips of her servant three drops +of the milk which had nourished the Saviour. The same miracle, in +various forms, was told of many other persons, both saints and +sinners; but it made so much impression on the mind of the age that, +in the fourteenth century, Dante, seeking in Paradise for some +official introduction to the foot of the Throne, found no +intercessor with the Queen of Heaven more potent than Saint Bernard. +You can still read Bernard's hymns to the Virgin, and even his +sermons, if you like. To him she was the great mediator. In the eyes +of a culpable humanity, Christ was too sublime, too terrible, too +just, but not even the weakest human frailty could fear to approach +his Mother. Her attribute was humility; her love and pity were +infinite. "Let him deny your mercy who can say that he has ever +asked it in vain." + +Saint Bernard was emotional and to a certain degree mystical, like +Adam de Saint-Victor, whose hymns were equally famous, but the +emotional saints and mystical poets were not by any means allowed to +establish exclusive rights to the Virgin's favour. Abelard was as +devoted as they were, and wrote hymns as well. Philosophy claimed +her, and Albert the Great, the head of scholasticism, the teacher of +Thomas Aquinas, decided in her favour the question: "Whether the +Blessed Virgin possessed perfectly the seven liberal arts." The +Church at Chartres had decided it a hundred years before by putting +the seven liberal arts next her throne, with Aristotle himself to +witness; but Albertus gave the reason: "I hold that she did, for it +is written, 'Wisdom has built herself a house, and has sculptured +seven columns.' That house is the blessed Virgin; the seven columns +are the seven liberal arts. Mary, therefore, had perfect mastery of +science." Naturally she had also perfect mastery of economics, and +most of her great churches were built in economic centres. The +guilds were, if possible, more devoted to her than the monks; the +bourgeoisie of Paris, Rouen, Amiens, Laon, spend money by millions +to gain her favour. Most surprising of all, the great military class +was perhaps the most vociferous. Of all inappropriate haunts for the +gentle, courteous, pitying Mary, a field of battle seems to be the +worst, if not distinctly blasphemous; yet the greatest French +warriors insisted on her leading them into battle, and in the actual +melee when men were killing each other, on every battle-field in +Europe, for at least five hundred years, Mary was present, leading +both sides. The battle-cry of the famous Constable du Guesclin was +"Notre-Dame-Guesclin"; "Notre-Dame-Coucy" was the cry of the great +Sires de Coucy; "Notre-Dame-Auxerre"; "Notre-Dame-Sancerre"; "Notre- +Dame-Hainault"; "Notre-Dame-Gueldres"; "Notre-Dame-Bourbon"; "Notre- +Dame-Bearn";--all well-known battle-cries. The King's own battle at +one time cried, "Notre-Dame-Saint-Denis-Montjoie"; the Dukes of +Burgundy cried, "Notre-Dame-Bourgogne"; and even the soldiers of the +Pope were said to cry, "Notre-Dame-Saint-Pierre." + +The measure of this devotion, which proves to any religious American +mind, beyond possible cavil, its serious and practical reality, is +the money it cost. According to statistics, in the single century +between 1170 and 1270, the French built eighty cathedrals and nearly +five hundred churches of the cathedral class, which would have cost, +according to an estimate made in 1840, more than five thousand +millions to replace. Five thousand million francs is a thousand +million dollars, and this covered only the great churches of a +single century. The same scale of expenditure had been going on +since the year 1000, and almost every parish in France had rebuilt +its church in stone; to this day France is strewn with the ruins of +this architecture, and yet the still preserved churches of the +eleventh and twelfth centuries, among the churches that belong to +the Romanesque and Transition period, are numbered by hundreds until +they reach well into the thousands. The share of this capital which +was--if one may use a commercial figure--invested in the Virgin +cannot be fixed, any more than the total sum given to religious +objects between 1000 and 1300; but in a spiritual and artistic +sense, it was almost the whole, and expressed an intensity of +conviction never again reached by any passion, whether of religion, +of loyalty, of patriotism, or of wealth; perhaps never even +parallelled by any single economic effort, except in war. Nearly +every great church of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries belonged +to Mary, until in France one asks for the church of Notre Dame as +though it meant cathedral; but, not satisfied with this, she +contracted the habit of requiring in all churches a chapel of her +own, called in English the "Lady Chapel," which was apt to be as +large as the church but was always meant to be handsomer; and there, +behind the high altar, in her own private apartment, Mary sat, +receiving her innumerable suppliants, and ready at any moment to +step up upon the high altar itself to support the tottering +authority of the local saint. + +Expenditure like this rests invariably on an economic idea. Just as +the French of the nineteenth century invested their surplus capital +in a railway system in the belief that they would make money by it +in this life, in the thirteenth they trusted their money to the +Queen of Heaven because of their belief in her power to repay it +with interest in the life to come. The investment was based on the +power of Mary as Queen rather than on any orthodox Church conception +of the Virgin's legitimate station. Papal Rome never greatly loved +Byzantine empresses or French queens. The Virgin of Chartres was +never wholly sympathetic to the Roman Curia. To this day the Church +writers--like the Abbe Bulteau or M. Rohault de Fleury--are +singularly shy of the true Virgin of majesty, whether at Chartres or +at Byzantium or wherever she is seen. The fathers Martin and Cahier +at Bourges alone left her true value. Had the Church controlled her, +the Virgin would perhaps have remained prostrate at the foot of the +Cross. Dragged by a Byzantine Court, backed by popular insistence +and impelled by overpowering self-interest, the Church accepted the +Virgin throned and crowned, seated by Christ, the Judge throned and +crowned; but even this did not wholly satisfy the French of the +thirteenth century who seemed bent on absorbing Christ in His +Mother, and making the Mother the Church, and Christ the Symbol. + +The Church had crowned and enthroned her almost from the beginning, +and could not have dethroned her if it would. In all Christian art-- +sculpture or mosaic, painting or poetry--the Virgin's rank was +expressly asserted. Saint Bernard, like John Comnenus, and probably +at the same time (1120-40), chanted hymns to the Virgin as Queen:-- + +O salutaris Virgo Stella Maris + Generans prolem, Aequitatis solem, + Lucis auctorem, Retinens pudorem, + Suscipe laudem! + + +Celi Regina Per quam medicina + Datur aegretis, Gratia devotis, + Gaudium moestis, Mundo lux coelestis, + Spesque salutis; + + +Aula regalis, Virgo specialis, + Posce medelam Nobis et tutelam, + Suscipe vota, Precibusque cuncta + Pelle molesta! + + +O Saviour Virgin, Star of Sea, + Who bore for child the Son of Justice, + The source of Light, Virgin always + Hear our praise! + + +Queen of Heaven who have given + Medicine to the sick, Grace to the devout, + Joy to the sad, Heaven's light to the world + And hope of salvation; + + +Court royal, Virgin typical, + Grant us cure and guard, + Accept our vows, and by prayers + Drive all griefs away! + + +As the lyrical poet of the twelfth century, Adam de Saint-Victor +seems to have held rank higher if possible than that of Saint +Bernard, and his hymns on the Virgin are certainly quite as emphatic +an assertion of her majesty:-- + +Imperatrix supernorum! + Superatrix infernorum! + Eligenda via coeli, + Retinenda spe fideli, + Separatos a te longe + Revocatos ad te junge + Tuorum collegio! + + +Empress of the highest, + Mistress over the lowest, + Chosen path of Heaven, + Held fast by faithful hope, + Those separated from you far, + Recalled to you, unite + In your fold! + + +To delight in the childish jingle of the mediaeval Latin is a sign +of a futile mind, no doubt, and I beg pardon of you and of the +Church for wasting your precious summer day on poetry which was +regarded as mystical in its age and which now sounds like a nursery +rhyme; but a verse or two of Adam's hymn on the Assumption of the +Virgin completes the record of her rank, and goes to complete also +the documentary proof of her majesty at Chartres:-- + +Salve, Mater Salvatoris! + Vas electum! Vas honoris! + Vas coelestis Gratiae! + Ab aeterno Vas provisum! + Vas insigne! Vas excisum + Manu sapientiae! + + +Salve, Mater pietatis, + Et totius Trinitatis + Nobile Triclinium! + Verbi tamen incarnati + Speciale majestati + Praeparans hospitium! + + +O Maria! Stella maris! + Dignitate singularis, + Super omnes ordinaries + Ordines coelestium! + In supremo sita poli + Nos commenda tuae proli, + Ne terrores sive doli + Nos supplantent hostium! + + +Mother of our Saviour, hail! + Chosen vessel! Sacred Grail! + Font of celestial grace! + From eternity forethought! + By the hand of Wisdom wrought! + Precious, faultless Vase! + + +Hail, Mother of Divinity! + Hail, Temple of the Trinity! + Home of the Triune God! + In whom the Incarnate Word had birth, + The King! to whom you gave on earth + Imperial abode. + + +Oh, Maria! Constellation! + Inspiration! Elevation! + Rule and Law and Ordination + Of the angels' host! + Highest height of God's Creation, + Pray your Son's commiseration, + Lest, by fear or fraud, salvation + For our souls be lost! + + +Constantly--one might better say at once, officially, she was +addressed in these terms of supreme majesty: "Imperatrix +supernorum!" "Coeli Regina!" "Aula regalis!" but the twelfth century +seemed determined to carry the idea out to its logical conclusion +in defiance of dogma. Not only was the Son absorbed in the Mother, or +represented as under her guardianship, but the Father fared no +better, and the Holy Ghost followed. The poets regarded the Virgin +as the "Templum Trinitatis"; "totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium." +She was the refectory of the Trinity--the "Triclinium"--because the +refectory was the largest room and contained the whole of the +members, and was divided in three parts by two rows of columns. She +was the "Templum Trinitatis," the Church itself, with its triple +aisle. The Trinity was absorbed in her. + +This is a delicate subject in the Church, and you must feel it with +delicacy, without brutally insisting on its necessary +contradictions. All theology and all philosophy are full of +contradictions quite as flagrant and far less sympathetic. This +particular variety of religious faith is simply human, and has made +its appearance in one form or another in nearly all religions; but +though the twelfth century carried it to an extreme, and at Chartres +you see it in its most charming expression, we have got always to +make allowances for what was going on beneath the surface in men's +minds, consciously or unconsciously, and for the latent scepticism +which lurks behind all faith. The Church itself never quite accepted +the full claims of what was called Mariolatry. One may be sure, too, +that the bourgeois capitalist and the student of the schools, each +from his own point of view, watched the Virgin with anxious +interest. The bourgeois had put an enormous share of, his capital +into what was in fact an economical speculation, not unlike the +South Sea Scheme, or the railway system of our own time; except that +in one case the energy was devoted to shortening the road to Heaven; +in the other, to shortening the road to Paris; but no serious +schoolman could have felt entirely convinced that God would enter +into a business partnership with man, to establish a sort of joint- +stock society for altering the operation of divine and universal +laws. The bourgeois cared little for the philosophical doubt if the +economical result proved to be good, but he watched this result with +his usual practical sagacity, and required an experience of only +about three generations (1200-1300) to satisfy himself that relics +were not certain in their effects; that the Saints were not always +able or willing to help; that Mary herself could not certainly be +bought or bribed; that prayer without money seemed to be quite as +efficacious as prayer with money; and that neither the road to +Heaven nor Heaven itself had been made surer or brought nearer by an +investment of capital which amounted to the best part of the wealth +of France. Economically speaking, he became satisfied that his +enormous money-investment had proved to be an almost total loss, and +the reaction on his mind was as violent as the emotion. For three +hundred years it prostrated France. The efforts of the bourgeoisie +and the peasantry to recover their property, so far as it was +recoverable, have lasted to the present day and we had best take +care not to get mixed in those passions. + +If you are to get the full enjoyment of Chartres, you must, for the +time, believe in Mary as Bernard and Adam did, and feel her presence +as the architects did, in every stone they placed, and every touch +they chiselled. You must try first to rid your mind of the +traditional idea that the Gothic is an intentional expression of +religious gloom. The necessity for light was the motive of the +Gothic architects. They needed light and always more light, until +they sacrificed safety and common sense in trying to get it. They +converted their walls into windows, raised their vaults, diminished +their piers, until their churches could no longer stand. You will +see the limits at Beauvais; at Chartres we have not got so far, but +even here, in places where the Virgin wanted it,--as above the high +altar,--the architect has taken all the light there was to take. For +the same reason, fenestration became the most important part of the +Gothic architect's work, and at Chartres was uncommonly interesting +because the architect was obliged to design a new system, which +should at the same time satisfy the laws of construction and the +taste and imagination of Mary. No doubt the first command of the +Queen of Heaven was for light, but the second, at least equally +imperative, was for colour. Any earthly queen, even though she were +not Byzantine in taste, loved colour; and the truest of queens--the +only true Queen of Queens--had richer and finer taste in colour than +the queens of fifty earthly kingdoms, as you will see when we come +to the immense effort to gratify her in the glass of her windows. +Illusion for illusion,--granting for the moment that Mary was an +illusion,--the Virgin Mother in this instance repaid to her +worshippers a larger return for their money than the capitalist has +ever been able to get, at least in this world, from any other +illusion of wealth which he has tried to make a source of pleasure +and profit. + +The next point on which Mary evidently insisted was the arrangement +for her private apartments, the apse, as distinguished from her +throne-room, the choir; both being quite distinct from the hall, or +reception-room of the public, which was the nave with its +enlargements in the transepts. This arrangement marks the +distinction between churches built as shrines for the deity and +churches built as halls of worship for the public. The difference is +chiefly in the apse, and the apse of Chartres is the most +interesting of all apses from this point of view. + +The Virgin required chiefly these three things, or, if you like, +these four: space, light, convenience; and colour decoration to +unite and harmonize the whole. This concerns the interior; on the +exterior she required statuary, and the only complete system of +decorative sculpture that existed seems to belong to her churches:-- +Paris, Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres. Mary required all this +magnificence at Chartres for herself alone, not for the public. As +far as one can see into the spirit of the builders, Chartres was +exclusively intended for the Virgin, as the Temple of Abydos was +intended for Osiris. The wants of man, beyond a mere roof-cover, and +perhaps space to some degree, enter to no very great extent into the +problem of Chartres. Man came to render homage or to ask favours. +The Queen received him in her palace, where she alone was at home, +and alone gave commands. + +The artist's second thought was to exclude from his work everything +that could displease Mary; and since Mary differed from living +queens only in infinitely greater majesty and refinement, the artist +could admit only what pleased the actual taste of the great ladies +who dictated taste at the Courts of France and England, which +surrounded the little Court of the Counts of Chartres. What they +were--these women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--we shall +have to see or seek in other directions; but Chartres is perhaps the +most magnificent and permanent monument they left of their taste, +and we can begin here with learning certain things which they were +not. + +In the first place, they were not in the least vague, dreamy, or +mystical in a modern sense;--far from it! They seemed anxious only +to throw the mysteries into a blaze of light; not so much physical, +perhaps,--since they, like all women, liked moderate shadow for +their toilettes,--but luminous in the sense of faith. There is +nothing about Chartres that you would think mystical, who know your +Lohengrin, Siegfried, and Parsifal. If you care to make a study of +the whole literature of the subject, read M. Male's "Art Religieux +du XIIIe Siecle en France," and use it for a guide-book. Here you +need only note how symbolic and how simple the sculpture is, on the +portals and porches. Even what seems a grotesque or an abstract idea +is no more than the simplest child's personification. On the walls +you may have noticed the Ane qui vielle,--the ass playing the lyre; +and on all the old churches you can see "bestiaries," as they were +called, of fabulous animals, symbolic or not; but the symbolism is +as simple as the realism of the oxen at Laon. It gave play to the +artist in his effort for variety of decoration, and it amused the +people,--probably the Virgin also was not above being amused;--now +and then it seems about to suggest what you would call an esoteric +meaning, that is to say, a meaning which each one of us can consider +private property reserved for our own amusement, and from which the +public is excluded; yet, in truth, in the Virgin's churches the +public is never excluded, but invited. The Virgin even had the +additional charm to the public that she was popularly supposed to +have no very marked fancy for priests as such; she was a queen, a +woman, and a mother, functions, all, which priests could not +perform. Accordingly, she seems to have had little taste for +mysteries of any sort, and even the symbols that seem most +mysterious were clear to every old peasant-woman in her church. The +most pleasing and promising of them all is the woman's figure you +saw on the front of the cathedral in Paris; her eyes bandaged; her +head bent down; her crown falling; without cloak or royal robe; +holding in her hand a guidon or banner with its staff broken in more +than one place. On the opposite pier stands another woman, with +royal mantle, erect and commanding. The symbol is so graceful that +one is quite eager to know its meaning; but every child in the +Middle Ages would have instantly told you that the woman with the +falling crown meant only the Jewish Synagogue, as the one with the +royal robe meant the Church of Christ. + +Another matter for which the female taste seemed not much to care +was theology in the metaphysical sense. Mary troubled herself little +about theology except when she retired into the south transept with +Pierre de Dreux. Even there one finds little said about the Trinity, +always the most metaphysical subtlety of the Church. Indeed, you +might find much amusement here in searching the cathedral for any +distinct expression at all of the Trinity as a dogma recognized by +Mary. + +One cannot take seriously the idea that the three doors, the three +portals, and the three aisles express the Trinity, because, in the +first place, there was no rule about it; churches might have what +portals and aisles they pleased; both Paris and Bourges have five; +the doors themselves are not allotted to the three members of the +Trinity, nor are the portals; while another more serious objection +is that the side doors and aisles are not of equal importance with +the central, but mere adjuncts and dependencies, so that the +architect who had misled the ignorant public into accepting so black +a heresy would have deserved the stake, and would probably have gone +to it. Even this suggestion of trinity is wanting in the transepts, +which have only one aisle, and in the choir, which has five, as well +as five or seven chapels, and, as far as an ignorant mind can +penetrate, no triplets whatever. Occasionally, no doubt, you will +discover in some sculpture or window, a symbol of the Trinity, but +this discovery itself amounts to an admission of its absence as a +controlling idea, for the ordinary worshipper must have been at +least as blind as we are, and to him, as to us, it would have seemed +a wholly subordinate detail. Even if the Trinity, too, is anywhere +expressed, you will hardly find here an attempt to explain its +metaphysical meaning--not even a mystic triangle. + +The church is wholly given up to the Mother and the Son. The Father +seldom appears; the Holy Ghost still more rarely. At least, this is +the impression made on an ordinary visitor who has no motive to be +orthodox; and it must have been the same with the thirteenth-century +worshipper who came here with his mind absorbed in the perfections +of Mary. Chartres represents, not the Trinity, but the identity of +the Mother and Son. The Son represents the Trinity, which is thus +absorbed in the Mother. The idea is not orthodox, but this is no +affair of ours. The Church watches over its own. + +The Virgin's wants and tastes, positive and negative, ought now to +be clear enough to enable you to feel the artist's sincerity in +trying to satisfy them; but first you have still to convince +yourselves of the people's sincerity in employing the artists. This +point is the easiest of all, for the evidence is express. In the +year 1145 when the old fleche was begun,--the year before Saint +Bernard preached the second crusade at Vezelay,--Abbot Haimon, of +Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives in Normandy, wrote to the monks of Tutbury +Abbey in England a famous letter to tell of the great work which the +Virgin was doing in France and which began at the Church of +Chartres. "Hujus sacrae institutionis ritus apud Carnotensem +ecclesiam est inchoatus." From Chartres it had spread through +Normandy, where it produced among other things the beautiful spire +which we saw at Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives. "Postremo per totam fere +Normanniam longe lateque convaluit ac loca per singula Matri +misericordiae dicata praecipue occupavit." The movement affected +especially the places devoted to Mary, but ran through all Normandy, +far and wide. Of all Mary's miracles, the best attested, next to the +preservation of her church, is the building of it; not so much +because it surprises us as because it surprised even more the people +of the time and the men who were its instruments. Such deep popular +movements are always surprising, and at Chartres the miracle seems +to have occurred three times, coinciding more or less with the dates +of the crusades, and taking the organization of a crusade, as +Archbishop Hugo of Rouen described it in a letter to Bishop Thierry +of Amiens. The most interesting part of this letter is the evident +astonishment of the writer, who might be talking to us to-day, so +modern is he:-- + +The inhabitants of Chartres have combined to aid in the construction +of their church by transporting the materials; our Lord has rewarded +their humble zeal by miracles which have roused the Normans to +imitate the piety of their neighbours ... Since then the faithful of +our diocese and of other neighbouring regions have formed +associations for the same object; they admit no one into their +company unless he has been to confession, has renounced enmities and +revenges, and has reconciled himself with his enemies. That done, +they elect a chief, under whose direction they conduct their waggons +in silence and with humility. + +The quarries at Bercheres-l'Eveque are about five miles from +Chartres. The stone is excessively hard, and was cut in blocks of +considerable size, as you can see for yourselves; blocks which +required great effort to transport and lay in place. The work was +done with feverish rapidity, as it still shows, but it is the +solidest building of the age, and without a sign of weakness yet. +The Abbot told, with more surprise than pride, of the spirit which +was built into the cathedral with the stone:--Who has ever seen!-- +Who has ever heard tell, in times past, that powerful princes of the +world, that men brought up in honour and in wealth, that nobles, men +and women, have bent their proud and haughty necks to the harness of +carts, and that, like beasts of burden, they have dragged to the +abode of Christ these waggons, loaded with wines, grains, oil, +stone, wood, and all that is necessary for the wants of life, or for +the construction of the church? But while they draw these burdens, +there is one thing admirable to observe; it is that often when a +thousand persons and more are attached to the chariots,--so great is +the difficulty,--yet they march in such silence that not a murmur is +heard, and truly if one did not see the thing with one's eyes, one +might believe that among such a multitude there was hardly a person +present. When they halt on the road, nothing is heard but the +confession of sins, and pure and suppliant prayer to God to obtain +pardon. At the voice of the priests who exhort their hearts to +peace, they forget all hatred, discord is thrown far aside, debts +are remitted, the unity of hearts is established. + +But if any one is so far advanced in evil as to be unwilling to +pardon an offender, or if he rejects the counsel of the priest who +has piously advised him, his offering is instantly thrown from the +wagon as impure, and he himself ignominiously and shamefully +excluded from the society of the holy. There one sees the priests +who preside over each chariot exhort every one to penitence, to +confession of faults, to the resolution of better life! There one +sees old people, young people, little children, calling on the Lord +with a suppliant voice, and uttering to Him, from the depth of the +heart, sobs and sighs with words of glory and praise! After the +people, warned by the sound of trumpets and the sight of banners, +have resumed their road, the march is made with such ease that no +obstacle can retard it ... When they have reached the church they +arrange the wagons about it like a spiritual camp, and during the +whole night they celebrate the watch by hymns and canticles. On each +waggon they light tapers and lamps; they place there the infirm and +sick, and bring them the precious relics of the Saints for their +relief. Afterwards the priests and clerics close the ceremony by +processions which the people follow with devout heart, imploring the +clemency of the Lord and of his Blessed Mother for the recovery of +the sick. + +Of course, the Virgin was actually and constantly present during all +this labour, and gave her assistance to it, but you would get no +light on the architecture from listening to an account of her +miracles, nor do they heighten the effect of popular faith. Without +the conviction of her personal presence, men would not have been +inspired; but, to us, it is rather the inspiration of the art which +proves the Virgin's presence, and we can better see the conviction +of it in the work than in the words. Every day, as the work went on, +the Virgin was present, directing the architects, and it is this +direction that we are going to study, if you have now got a +realizing sense of what it meant. Without this sense, the church is +dead. Most persons of a deeply religious nature would tell you +emphatically that nine churches out of ten actually were dead-born, +after the thirteenth century, and that church architecture became a +pure matter of mechanism and mathematics; but that is a question for +you to decide when you come to it; and the pleasure consists not in +seeing the death, but in feeling the life. + +Now let us look about! + + + +CHAPTER VII + +ROSES AND APSES + +Like all great churches, that are not mere storehouses of theology, +Chartres expressed, besides whatever else it meant, an emotion, the +deepest man ever felt,--the struggle of his own littleness to grasp +the infinite. You may, if you like, figure in it a mathematic +formula of infinity,--the broken arch, our finite idea of space; the +spire, pointing, with its converging lines, to unity beyond space; +the sleepless, restless thrust of the vaults, telling the +unsatisfied, incomplete, overstrained effort of man to rival the +energy, intelligence, and purpose of God. Thomas Aquinas and the +schoolmen tried to put it in words, but their Church is another +chapter. In act, all man's work ends there;--mathematics, physics, +chemistry, dynamics, optics, every sort of machinery science may +invent,--to this favour come at last, as religion and philosophy did +before science was born. All that the centuries can do is to express +the idea differently:--a miracle or a dynamo; a dome or a coal-pit; +a cathedral or a world's fair; and sometimes to confuse the two +expressions together. The world's fair tends more and more +vigorously to express the thought of infinite energy; the great +cathedrals of the Middle Ages always reflected the industries and +interests of a world's fair. Chartres showed it less than Laon or +Paris, for Chartres was never a manufacturing town, but a shrine, +such as Lourdes, where the Virgin was known to have done miracles, +and had been seen in person; but still the shrine turned itself into +a market and created valuable industries. Indeed, this was the chief +objection which Saint Paul made to Ephesus and Saint Bernard to the +cathedrals. They were in some ways more industrial than religious. +The mere masonry and structure made a vast market for labour; the +fixed metalwork and woodwork were another; but the decoration was by +far the greatest. The wood-carving, the glass windows, the +sculpture, inside and out, were done mostly in workshops on the +spot, but besides these fixed objects, precious works of the highest +perfection filled the church treasuries. Their money value was great +then; it is greater now. No world's fair is likely to do better to- +day. After five hundred years of spoliation, these objects fill +museums still, and are bought with avidity at every auction, at +prices continually rising and quality steadily falling, until a bit +of twelfth-century glass would be a trouvaille like an emerald; a +tapestry earlier than 1600 is not for mere tourists to hope; an +enamel, a missal, a crystal, a cup, an embroidery of the Middle Ages +belongs only to our betters, and almost invariably, if not to the +State, to the rich Jews, whose instinctive taste has seized the +whole field of art which rested on their degradation. Royalty and +feudality spent their money rather on arms and clothes. The Church +alone was universal patron, and the Virgin was the dictator of +taste. + +With the Virgin's taste, during her regency, critics never find +fault. One cannot know its whole magnificence, but one can accept it +as a matter of faith and trust, as one accepts all her other +miracles without cavilling over small details of fact. The period of +eighteenth-century scepticism about such matters and the bourgeois +taste of Voltaire and Diderot have long since passed, with the +advent of a scientific taste still more miraculous; the whole world +of the Virgin's art, catalogued in the "Dictionnaire du Mobilier +Francais" in six volumes by Viollet-le-Duc; narrated as history by +M. Labarte, M. Molinier, M. Paul Lacroix; catalogued in museums by +M. du Sommerard and a score of others, in works almost as costly as +the subjects,--all the vast variety of bric-a-brac, useful or +ornamental, belonging to the Church, increased enormously by the +insatiable, universal, private demands for imagery, in ivory, wood, +metal, stone, for every room in every house, or hung about every +neck, or stuck on every hat, made a market such as artists never +knew before or since, and such as instantly explains to the +practical American not only the reason for the Church's tenacity of +life, but also the inducements for its plunder. The Virgin +especially required all the resources of art, and the highest. Notre +Dame of Chartres would have laughed at Notre Dame of Paris if she +had detected an economy in her robes; Notre Dame of Rheims or Rouen +would have derided Notre Dame of Amiens if she had shown a feminine, +domestic, maternal turn toward cheapness. The Virgin was never +cheap. Her great ceremonies were as splendid as her rank of Queen in +Heaven and on Earth required; and as her procession wound its way +along the aisles, through the crowd of her subjects, up to the high +altar, it was impossible then, and not altogether easy now, to +resist the rapture of her radiant presence. Many a young person, and +now and then one who is not in first youth, witnessing the sight in +the religious atmosphere of such a church as this, without a +suspicion of susceptibility, has suddenly seen what Paul saw on the +road to Damascus, and has fallen on his face with the crowd, +grovelling at the foot of the Cross, which, for the first time in +his life, he feels. + +If you want to know what churches were made for, come down here on +some great festival of the Virgin, and give yourself up to it; but +come alone! That kind of knowledge cannot be taught and can seldom +be shared. We are not now seeking religion; indeed, true religion +generally comes unsought. We are trying only to feel Gothic art. For +us, the world is not a schoolroom or a pulpit, but a stage, and the +stage is the highest yet seen on earth. In this church the old +Romanesque leaps into the Gothic under our eyes; of a sudden, +between the portal and the shrine, the infinite rises into a new +expression, always a rare and excellent miracle in thought. The two +expressions are nowhere far apart; not further than the Mother from +the Son. The new artist drops unwillingly the hand of his father or +his grandfather; he looks back, from every corner of his own work, +to see whether it goes with the old. He will not part with the +western portal or the lancet windows; he holds close to the round +columns of the choir; he would have kept the round arch if he could, +but the round arch was unable to do the work; it could not rise; so +he broke it, lifted the vaulting, threw out flying buttresses, and +satisfied the Virgin's wish. + +The matter of Gothic vaulting, with its two weak points, the flying +buttress and the false, wooden shelter-roof, is the bete noire of +the Beaux Arts. The duty of defence does not lie on tourists, who +are at best hardly able to understand what it matters whether a wall +is buttressed without or within, and whether a roof is single or +double. No one objects to the dome of Saint Peter's. No one finds +fault with the Pont Neuf. Yet it is true that the Gothic architect +showed contempt for facts. Since he could not support a heavy stone +vault on his light columns, he built the lightest possible stone +vault and protected it with a wooden shelter-roof which constantly +burned. The lightened vaults were still too heavy for the walls and +columns, so the architect threw out buttress beyond buttress resting +on separate foundations, exposed to extreme inequalities of weather, +and liable to multiplied chances of accident. The results were +certainly disastrous. The roofs burned; the walls yielded. + +Flying buttresses were not a necessity. The Merveille had none; the +Angevin school rather affected to do without them; Albi had none; +Assisi stands up independent; but they did give support wherever the +architect wanted it and nowhere else; they were probably cheap; and +they were graceful. Whatever expression they gave to a church, at +least it was not that of a fortress. Amiens and Albi are different +religions. The expression concerns us; the construction concerns the +Beaux Arts. The problem of permanent equilibrium which distresses +the builder of arches is a technical matter which does not worry, +but only amuses, us who sit in the audience and look with delight at +the theatrical stage-decoration of the Gothic vault; the astonishing +feat of building up a skeleton of stone ribs and vertebrae, on which +every pound of weight is adjusted, divided, and carried down from +level to level till it touches ground at a distance as a bird would +alight. If any stone in any part, from apex to foundation, weathers +or gives way, the whole must yield, and the charge for repairs is +probably great, but, on the best building the Ecole des Beaux Arts +can build, the charge for repairs is not to be wholly ignored, and +at least the Cathedral of Chartres, in spite of terribly hard usage, +is as solid to-day as when it was built, and as plumb, without crack +or crevice. Even the towering fragment at Beauvais, poorly built +from the first, which has broken down oftener than most Gothic +structures, and seems ready to crumble again whenever the wind blows +over its windy plains, has managed to survive, after a fashion, six +or seven hundred years, which is all that our generation had a right +to ask. + +The vault of Beauvais is nearly one hundred and sixty feet high (48 +metres), and was cheaply built. The vault of Saint Peter's at Rome +is nearly one hundred and fifty feet (45 metres). That of Amiens is +one hundred and forty-four feet (44 metres). Rheims, Bourges, and +Chartres are nearly the same height; at the entrance, one hundred +and twenty-two feet. Paris is one hundred and ten feet. The Abbe +Bulteau is responsible for these measurements; but at Chartres, as +in several very old churches, the nave slopes down to the entrance, +because--as is said--pilgrims came in such swarms that they were +obliged to sleep in the church, and the nave had to be sluiced with +water to clean it. The true height of Chartres, at the croisee of +nave and transept, is as near as possible one hundred and twenty +feet (36.55 metres). + +The measured height is the least interest of a church. The +architect's business is to make a small building look large, and his +failures are in large buildings which he makes to look small. One +chief beauty of the Gothic is to exaggerate height, and one of its +most curious qualities is its success in imposing an illusion of +size. Without leaving the heart of Paris any one can study this +illusion in the two great churches of Notre Dame and Saint-Sulpice; +for Saint-Sulpice is as lofty as Notre Dame in vaulting, and larger +in its other dimensions, besides being, in its style, a fine +building; yet its Roman arches show, as if they were of the eleventh +century, why the long, clean, unbroken, refined lines of the Gothic, +curving to points, and leading the eye with a sort of compulsion to +the culminating point above, should have made an architectural +triumph that carried all Europe off its feet with delight. The world +had seen nothing to approach it except, perhaps, in the dome of +Sancta Sophia in Constantinople; and the discovery came at a moment +when Europe was making its most united and desperate struggle to +attain the kingdom of Heaven. + +According to Viollet-le-Duc, Chartres was the final triumph of the +experiment on a very great scale, for Chartres has never been +altered and never needed to be strengthened. The flying buttresses +of Chartres answered their purpose, and if it were not a matter of +pure construction it would be worth while to read what Viollet-le- +Duc says about them (article, "Arcs-boutants"). The vaulting above +is heavy, about fifteen inches thick; the buttressing had also to be +heavy; and to lighten it, the architect devised an amusing sort of +arcades, applied on his outside buttresses. Throughout the church, +everything was solid beyond all later custom, so that architects +would have to begin by a study of the crypt which came down from the +eleventh century so strongly built that it still carries the church +without a crack in its walls; but if we went down into it, we should +understand nothing; so we will begin, as we did outside, at the +front. + +A single glance shows what trouble the architect had with the old +facade and towers, and what temptation to pull them all down. One +cannot quite say that he has spoiled his own church in trying to +save what he could of the old, but if he did not quite spoil it, he +saved it only by the exercise of an amount of intelligence that we +shall never learn enough to feel our incapacity to understand. True +ignorance approaches the infinite more nearly than any amount of +knowledge can do, and, in our case, ignorance is fortified by a +certain element of nineteenth-century indifference which refuses to +be interested in what it cannot understand; a violent reaction from +the thirteenth century which cared little to comprehend anything +except the incomprehensible. The architect at Chartres was required +by the Virgin to provide more space for her worshippers within the +church, without destroying the old portal and fleche which she +loved. That this order came directly from the Virgin, may be taken +for granted. At Chartres, one sees everywhere the Virgin, and +nowhere any rival authority; one sees her give orders, and +architects obey them; but very rarely a hesitation as though the +architect were deciding for himself. In his western front, the +architect has obeyed orders so literally that he has not even taken +the trouble to apologize for leaving unfinished the details which, +if he had been responsible for them, would have been his anxious +care. He has gone to the trouble of moving the heavy doorways +forward, so that the chapels in the towers, which were meant to open +on a porch, now open into the nave, and the nave itself has, in +appearance, two more spans than in the old church; but the work +shows blind obedience, as though he were doing his best to please +the Virgin without trying to please himself. Probably he could in no +case have done much to help the side aisles in their abrupt +collision with the solid walls of the two towers, but he might at +least have brought the vaulting of his two new bays, in the nave, +down to the ground, and finished it. The vaulting is awkward in +these two bays, and yet he has taken great trouble to effect what +seems at first a small matter. Whether the great rose window was an +afterthought or not can never be known, but any one can see with a +glass, and better on the architectural plan, that the vaulting of +the main church was not high enough to admit the great rose, and +that the architect has had to slope his two tower-spans upward. So +great is the height that you cannot see this difference of level +very plainly even with a glass, but on the plans it seems to amount +to several feet; perhaps a metre. The architect has managed to +deceive our eyes, in order to enlarge the rose; but you can see as +plainly as though he were here to tell you, that, like a great +general, he has concentrated his whole energy on the rose, because +the Virgin has told him that the rose symbolized herself, and that +the light and splendour of her appearance in the west were to redeem +all his awkwardnesses. + +Of course this idea of the Virgin's interference sounds to you a +mere bit of fancy, and that is an account which may be settled +between the Virgin and you; but even twentieth-century eyes can see +that the rose redeems everything, dominates everything, and gives +character to the whole church. + +In view of the difficulties which faced the artist, the rose is +inspired genius,--the kind of genius which Shakespeare showed when +he took some other man's play, and adapted it. Thus far, it shows +its power chiefly by the way it comes forward and takes possession +of the west front, but if you want a foot-rule to measure by, you +may mark that the old, twelfth-century lancet-windows below it are +not exactly in its axis. At the outset, in the original plan of +1090, or thereabouts, the old tower--the southern tower--was given +greater width than the northern. Such inequalities were common in +the early churches, and so is a great deal of dispute in modern +books whether they were accidental or intentional, while no one +denies that they are amusing. In these towers the difference is not +great,--perhaps fourteen or fifteen inches,--but it caused the +architect to correct it, in order to fit his front to the axis of +the church, by throwing his entrance six or seven inches to the +south, and narrowing to that extent the south door and south lancet. +The effect was bad, even then, and went far to ruin the south +window; but when, after the fire of 1194, the architect inserted his +great rose, filling every inch of possible space between the lancet +and the arch of the vault, he made another correction which threw +his rose six or seven inches out of axis with the lancets. Not one +person in a hundred thousand would notice it, here in the interior, +so completely are we under the control of the artist and the Virgin; +but it is a measure of the power of the rose. + +Looking farther, one sees that the rose-motive, which so dominates +the west front, is carried round the church, and comes to another +outburst of splendour in the transepts. This leads back to +fenestration on a great scale, which is a terribly ambitious flight +for tourists; all the more, because here the tourist gets little +help from the architect, who, in modern times, has seldom the +opportunity to study the subject at all, and accepts as solved the +problems of early Gothic fenestration. One becomes pedantic and +pretentious at the very sound of the word, which is an intolerable +piece of pedantry in itself; but Chartres is all windows, and its +windows were as triumphant as its Virgin, and were one of her +miracles. One can no more overlook the windows of Chartres than the +glass which is in them. We have already looked at the windows of +Mantes; we have seen what happened to the windows at Paris. Paris +had at one leap risen twenty-five feet higher than Noyon, and even +at Noyon, the architect, about 1150, had been obliged to invent new +fenestration. Paris and Mantes, twenty years later, made another +effort, which proved a failure. Then the architect of Chartres, in +1195, added ten feet more to his vault, and undertook, once for all, +to show how a great cathedral should be lighted. As an architectural +problem, it passes far beyond our powers of understanding, even when +solved; but we can always turn to see what the inevitable Viollet- +le-Duc says about its solution at Chartres:-- + +Toward the beginning of the thirteenth century, the architect of the +Cathedral of Chartres sought out entirely new window combinations to +light the nave from above. Below, in the side aisles he kept to the +customs of the times; that is, he opened pointed windows which did +not wholly fill the spaces between the piers; he wanted, or was +willing to leave here below, the effect of a wall. But in the upper +part of his building we see that he changed the system; he throws a +round arch directly across from one pier to the next; then, in the +enormous space which remains within each span, he inserts two large +pointed windows surmounted by a great rose ... We recognize in this +construction of Notre Dame de Chartres a boldness, a force, which +contrast with the fumbling of the architects in the Ile de France +and Champagne. For the first time one sees at Chartres the builder +deal frankly with the clerestory, or upper fenestration, occupying +the whole width of the arches, and taking the arch of the vault as +the arch of the window. Simplicity of construction, beauty in form, +strong workmanship, structure true and solid, judicious choice of +material, all the characteristics of good work, unite in this +magnificent specimen of architecture at the beginning of the +thirteenth century. + +Viollet-le-Duc does not call attention to a score of other matters +which the architect must have had in his mind, such as the +distribution of light, and the relations of one arrangement with +another: the nave with the aisles, and both with the transepts, and +all with the choir. Following him, we must take the choir +separately, and the aisles and chapels of the apse also. One cannot +hope to understand all the experiments and refinements of the +artist, either in their successes or their failures, but, with +diffidence, one may ask one's self whether the beauty of the +arrangement, as compared with the original arrangement in Paris, did +not consist in retaining the rose-motive throughout, while throwing +the whole upper wall into window. Triumphant as the clerestory +windows are, they owe their charm largely to their roses, as you see +by looking at the same scheme applied on a larger scale on the +transept fronts; and then, by taking stand under the croisee, and +looking at all in succession as a whole. + +The rose window was not Gothic but Romanesque, and needed a great +deal of coaxing to feel at home within the pointed arch. At first, +the architects felt the awkwardness so strongly that they avoided it +wherever they could. In the beautiful facade of Laon, one of the +chief beauties is the setting of the rose under a deep round arch. +The western roses of Mantes and Paris are treated in the same way, +although a captious critic might complain that their treatment is +not so effective or so logical. Rheims boldly imprisoned the roses +within the pointed arch; but Amiens, toward 1240, took refuge in the +same square exterior setting that was preferred, in 1200, here at +Chartres; and in the interior of Amiens the round arch of the rose +is the last vault of the nave, seen through a vista of pointed +vaults, as it is here. All these are supposed to be among the chief +beauties of the Gothic facade, although the Gothic architect, if he +had been a man of logic, would have clung to his lines, and put a +pointed window in his front, as in fact he did at Coutances. He felt +the value of the rose in art, and perhaps still more in religion, +for the rose was Mary's emblem. One is fairly sure that the great +Chartres rose of the west front was put there to please her, since +it was to be always before her eyes, the most conspicuous object she +would see from the high altar, and therefore the most carefully +considered ornament in the whole church, outside the choir. The mere +size proves the importance she gave it. The exterior diameter is +nearly forty-four feet (13.36 metres). The nave of Chartres is, next +perhaps to the nave of Angers, the widest of all Gothic naves; about +fifty-three feet (16.31 metres); and the rose takes every inch it +can get of this enormous span. The value of the rose, among +architects of the time, was great, since it was the only part of the +church that Villard de Honnecourt sketched; and since his time, it +has been drawn and redrawn, described and commented by generations +of architects till it has become as classic as the Parthenon. + +Yet this Chartres rose is solid, serious, sedate, to a degree +unusual in its own age; it is even more Romanesque than the pure +Romanesque roses. At Beauvais you must stop a moment to look at a +Romanesque rose on the transept of the Church of Saint-Etienne; +Viollet-le-Duc mentions it, with a drawing (article, "Pignon"), as +not earlier than the year 1100, therefore about a century earlier +than the rose of Chartres; it is not properly a rose, but a wheel of +fortune, with figures climbing up and falling over. Another supposed +twelfth-century rose is at Etampes, which goes with that of Laon and +Saint-Leu-d'Esserent and Mantes. The rose of Chartres is so much the +most serious of them all that Viollet-le-Duc has explained it by its +material,--the heavy stone of Bercheres;--but the material was not +allowed to affect the great transept roses, and the architect made +his material yield to his object wherever he thought it worth while. +Standing under the central croisee, you can see all three roses by +simply turning your head. That on the north, the Rose de France, was +built, or planned, between 1200 and 1210, in the reign of Philip +Augustus, since the porch outside, which would be a later +construction, was begun by 1212. The Rose de France is the same in +diameter as the western rose, but lighter, and built of lighter +stone. Opposite the Rose de France stands, on the south front, +Pierre Mauclerc's Rose de Dreux, of the same date, with the same +motive, but even lighter; more like a rose and less like a wheel. +All three roses must have been planned at about the same time, +perhaps by the same architect, within the same workshop; yet the +western rose stands quite apart, as though it had been especially +designed to suit the twelfth-century facade and portal which it +rules. Whether this was really the artist's idea is a question that +needs the artist to answer; but that this is the effect, needs no +expert to prove; it stares one in the face. Within and without, one +feels that the twelfth-century spirit is respected and preserved +with the same religious feeling which obliged the architect to +injure his own work by sparing that of his grandfathers. + +Conspicuous, then, in the west front are two feelings:--respect for +the twelfth-century work, and passion for the rose fenestration; +both subordinated to the demand for light. If it worries you to have +to believe that these three things are in fact one; that the +architect is listening, like the stone Abraham, for orders from the +Virgin, while he caresses and sacrifices his child; that Mary and +not her architects built this facade; if the divine intention seems +to you a needless impertinence, you can soon get free from it by +going to any of the later churches, where you will not be forced to +see any work but that of the architect's compasses. According to +Viollet-le-Duc, the inspiration ceased about 1250, or, as the Virgin +would have dated it, on the death of Blanche of Castile in 1252. The +work of Chartres, where her own hand is plainly shown, belongs in +feeling, if not in execution, to the last years of the twelfth +century (1195-1200). The great western rose which gives the motive +for the whole decoration and is repeated in the great roses of the +transepts, marks the Virgin's will,--the taste and knowledge of +"cele qui la rose est des roses," or, if you prefer the Latin of +Adam de Saint-Victor, the hand of her who is "Super rosam rosida." + +All this is easy; but if you really cannot see the hand of Mary +herself in these broad and public courts, which were intended, not +for her personal presence, but for the use of her common people, you +had better stop here, and not venture into the choir. Great halls +seem to have been easy architecture. Naves and transepts were not +often failures; facades and even towers and fleches are invariably +more or less successful because they are more or less balanced, +mathematical, calculable products of reason and thought. The most +serious difficulties began only with the choir, and even then did +not become desperate until the architect reached the curve of the +apse, with its impossible vaultings, its complicated lines, its +cross-thrusts, its double problems, internal and external, its +defective roofing and unequal lighting. A perfect Gothic apse was +impossible; an apse that satisfied perfectly its principal objects +was rare; the simplest and cheapest solution was to have no apse at +all, and that was the English scheme, which was tried also at Laon; +a square, flat wall and window. If the hunt for Norman towers +offered a summer's amusement, a hunt for apses would offer an +education, but it would lead far out of France. Indeed, it would be +simpler to begin at once with Sancta Sophia at Constantinople, San +Vitale at Ravenna and Monreale at Palermo, and the churches at +Torcello and Murano, and San Marco at Venice; and admit that no +device has ever equalled the startling and mystical majesty of the +Byzantine half-dome, with its marvellous mosaic Madonna dominating +the church, from the entrance, with her imperial and divine +presence. Unfortunately, the northern churches needed light, and the +northern architects turned their minds to a desperate effort for a +new apse. + +The scheme of the cathedral at Laon seems to have been rejected +unanimously; the bare, flat wall at the end of the choir was an +eyesore; it was quite bad enough at the end of the nave, and became +annoying at the end of the transepts, so that at Noyon and Soissons +the architect, with a keen sense of interior form, had rounded the +transept ends; but, though external needs might require a square +transept, the unintelligence of the flat wall became insufferable at +the east end. Neither did the square choir suit the church +ceremonies and processions, or offer the same advantages of +arrangement, as the French understood them. With one voice, the +French architects seem to have rejected the Laon experiment, and +turned back to a solution taken directly from the Romanesque. + +[Illustration with caption: SAINT-MARTIN-DES-CHAMPS] + +Quite early--in the eleventh century--a whole group of churches had +been built in Auvergne,--at Clermont and Issoire, for example,-- +possibly by one architect, with a circular apse, breaking out into +five apsidal chapels. Tourists who get down as far south as Toulouse +see another example of this Romanesque apse in the famous Church of +Saint Sernin, of the twelfth century; and few critics take offence +at one's liking it. Indeed, as far as concerns the exterior, one +might even risk thinking it more charming than the exterior of any +Gothic apse ever built. Many of these Romanesque apses of the +eleventh and twelfth centuries still remain in France, showing +themselves in unsuspected parish churches, here and there, but +always a surprise for their quiet, unobtrusive grace, making a +harmony with the Romanesque tower, if there is one, into which they +rise, as at Saint Sernin; but all these churches had only one aisle, +and, in the interior, there came invariable trouble when the vaults +rose in height. The architect of Chartres, in 1200, could get no +direct help from these, or even from Paris which was a beautifully +perfect apse, but had no apsidal chapels. The earliest apse that +could have served as a suggestion for Chartres--or, at least, as a +point of observation for us--was that of the Abbey Church of Saint- +Martin-des-Champs, which we went to see in Paris, and which is said +to date from about 1150. + +Here is a circular choir, surrounded by two rows of columns, +irregularly spaced, with circular chapels outside, which seems to +have been more or less what the architect of Chartres, for the +Virgin's purposes, had set his heart on obtaining. Closely following +the scheme of Saint-Martin-des-Champs came the scheme of the Abbey +Church at Vezelay, built about 1160-80. Here the vaulting sprang +directly from the last arch of the choir, as is shown on the plan, +and bearing first on the light columns of the choir, which were +evenly spaced, then fell on a row of heavier columns outside, which +were also evenly spaced, and came to rest at last on massive piers, +between which were five circular chapels. The plan shows at a glance +that this arrangement stretched the second row of columns far apart, +and that a church much larger than Vezelay would need to space them +so much farther apart that the arch uniting them would have to rise +indefinitely; while, if beyond this, another aisle were added +outside, the piers finally would require impossible vaulting. + +[Illustration with caption: VEZELAY] + +The problem stood thus when the great cathedrals were undertaken, +and the architect of Paris boldly grappled with the double aisle on +a scale requiring a new scheme. Here, in spite of the most virtuous +resolutions not to be technical, we must attempt a technicality, +because without it, one of the most interesting eccentricities of +Chartres would be lost. Once more, Viollet-le-Duc:-- + +As the architect did not want to give the interior bays of the apse +spaces between the columns (AA) less than that of the parallel bays +(BB), it followed that the first radiating bay gave a first space +(LMGH) which was difficult to vault, and a second space (HGEF) which +was impossible; for how establish an arch from F to E? Even if +round, its key would have risen much higher than the key of the +pointed archivolt LM. As the second radiating bay opened out still +wider, the difficulty was increased. The builder therefore inserted +the two intermediate pillars O and P between the columns of the +second aisle (H, G, and I); which he supported, in the outside wall +of the church, by one corresponding pier (Q) in the first bay of the +apse, and by two similar piers (R and S) in the second bay. + +[Illustration with caption: NOTRE DAME DE PARIS] + +"There is no need to point out," continued Viollet-le-Duc, as though +he much suspected that there might be need of pointing out, "what +skill this system showed and how much the art of architecture had +already been developed in the Ile de France toward the end of the +twelfth century; to what an extent the unity of arrangement and +style preoccupied the artists of that province." + +In fact, the arrangement seems mathematically and technically +perfect. At all events, we know too little to criticize it. Yet one +would much like to be told why it was not repeated by any other +architect or in any other church. Apparently the Parisians +themselves were not quite satisfied with it, since they altered it a +hundred years later, in 1296, in order to build out chapels between +the piers. As the architects of each new cathedral had, in the +interval, insisted on apsidal chapels, one may venture to guess that +the Paris scheme hampered the services. + +At Chartres the church services are Mary's own tastes; the church is +Mary; and the chapels are her private rooms. She was not pleased +with the arrangements made for her in her palace at Paris; they were +too architectural; too regular and mathematical; too popular; too +impersonal; and she rather abruptly ordered her architect at +Chartres to go back to the old arrangement. The apse at Paris was +hardly covered with its leading before the architect of Chartres +adopted a totally new plan, which, according to Viollet-le-Duc, does +him little credit, but which was plainly imposed on him, like the +twelfth-century portal. Not only had it nothing of the mathematical +correctness and precision of the Paris scheme, easy to understand +and imitate, but it carried even a sort of violence--a wrench--in +its system, as though the Virgin had said, with her grand Byzantine +air:--I will it! + +[Illustration with caption: CHARTRES] + +"At Chartres," said Viollet-le-Duc, "the choir of the Cathedral +presents a plan which does no great honour to its architect. There +is want of accord between the circular apse and the parallel sides +of the sanctuary; the spacings of the columns of the second +collateral are loose (laches); the vaults quite poorly combined; and +in spite of the great width of the spaces between the columns of the +second aisle, the architect had still to narrow those between the +interior columns." + +The plan shows that, from the first, the architect must have +deliberately rejected the Paris scheme; he must have begun by +narrowing the spaces between his inner columns; then, with a sort of +violence, he fitted on his second row of columns; and, finally, he +showed his motive by constructing an outer wall of an original or +unusual shape. Any woman would see at once the secret of all this +ingenuity and effort. The Chartres apse, enormous in size and width, +is exquisitely lighted. Here, as everywhere throughout the church, +the windows give the law, but here they actually take place of law. +The Virgin herself saw to the lighting of her own boudoir. According +to Viollet-le-Duc, Chartres differs from all the other great +cathedrals by being built not for its nave or even for its choir, +but for its apse; it was planned not for the people or the court, +but for the Queen; not a church but a shrine; and the shrine is the +apse where the Queen arranged her light to please herself and not +her architect, who had already been sacrificed at the western portal +and who had a free hand only in the nave and transepts where the +Queen never went, and which, from her own apartment, she did not +even see. + +[Illustration with caption: LAON] + +This is, in effect, what Viollet-le-Duc says in his professional +language, which is perhaps--or sounds--more reasonable to tourists, +whose imaginations are hardly equal to the effort of fancying a real +deity. Perhaps, indeed, one might get so high as to imagine a real +Bishop of Laon, who should have ordered his architect to build an +enormous hall of religion, to rival the immense abbeys of the day, +and to attract the people, as though it were a clubroom. There they +were to see all the great sights; church ceremonies; theatricals; +political functions; there they were to do business, and frequent +society. They were to feel at home in their church because it was +theirs, and did not belong to a priesthood or to Rome. Jealousy of +Rome was a leading motive of Gothic architecture, and Rome repaid it +in full. The Bishop of Laon conceded at least a transept to custom +or tradition, but the Archbishop of Bourges abolished even the +transept, and the great hall had no special religious expression +except in the circular apse with its chapels which Laon had +abandoned. One can hardly decide whether Laon or Bourges is the more +popular, industrial, political, or, in other words, the less +religious; but the Parisians, as the plan of Viollet-le-Duc has +shown, were quite as advanced as either, and only later altered +their scheme into one that provided chapels for religious service. + +[Illustration with caption: BOURGES] + +[Illustration with caption: AMIENS] + +Amiens and Beauvais have each seven chapels, but only one aisle, so +that they do not belong in the same class with the apses of Paris, +Bourges, and Chartres, though the plans are worth studying for +comparison, since they show how many-sided the problem was, and how +far from satisfied the architects were with their own schemes. The +most interesting of all, for comparison with Chartres, is Le Mans, +where the apsidal chapels are carried to fanaticism, while the +vaulting seems to be reasonable enough, and the double aisle +successfully managed, if Viollet-le-Duc permits ignorant people to +form an opinion on architectural dogma. For our purposes, the +architectural dogma may stand, and the Paris scheme may be taken for +granted, as alone correct and orthodox; all that Viollet-le-Duc +teaches is that the Chartres scheme is unorthodox, not to say +heretical; and this is the point on which his words are most +interesting. + +[Illustration with caption: BEAUVAIS] + +The church at Chartres belonged not to the people, not to the +priesthood, and not even to Rome; it belonged to the Virgin. "Here +the religious influence appears wholly; three large chapels in the +apse; four others less pronounced; double aisles of great width +round the choir; vast transepts! Here the church ceremonial could +display all its pomp; the choir, more than at Paris, more than at +Bourges, more than at Soissons, and especially more than at Laon, is +the principal object; for it, the church is built." + +[Illustration with caption: LE MANS] + +One who is painfully conscious of ignorance, and who never would +dream of suggesting a correction to anybody, may not venture to +suggest an idea of any sort to an architect; but if it were allowed +to paraphrase Viollet-le-Duc's words into a more or less emotional +or twelfth-century form, one might say, after him, that, compared +with Paris or Laon, the Chartres apse shows the same genius that is +shown in the Chartres rose; the same large mind that overrules,--the +same strong will that defies difficulties. The Chartres apse is as +entertaining as all the other Gothic apses together, because it +overrides the architect. You may, if you really have no imagination +whatever, reject the idea that the Virgin herself made the plan; the +feebleness of our fancy is now congenital, organic, beyond stimulant +or strychnine, and we shrink like sensitive-plants from the touch of +a vision or spirit; but at least one can still sometimes feel a +woman's taste, and in the apse of Chartres one feels nothing else. + +[Illustration with caption: CHARTRES] + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS + +At last we are face to face with the crowning glory of Chartres. +Other churches have glass,--quantities of it, and very fine,--but we +have been trying to catch a glimpse of the glory which stands behind +the glass of Chartres, and gives it quality and feeling of its own. +For once the architect is useless and his explanations are pitiable; +the painter helps still less; and the decorator, unless he works in +glass, is the poorest guide of all, while, if he works in glass, he +is sure to lead wrong; and all of them may toil until Pierre +Mauclerc's stone Christ comes to life, and condemns them among the +unpardonable sinners on the southern portal, but neither they nor +any other artist will ever create another Chartres. You had better +stop here, once for all, unless you are willing to feel that +Chartres was made what it is, not by artist, but by the Virgin. + +If this imperial presence is stamped on the architecture and the +sculpture with an energy not to be mistaken, it radiates through the +glass with a light and colour that actually blind the true servant +of Mary. One becomes, sometimes, a little incoherent in talking +about it; one is ashamed to be as extravagant as one wants to be; +one has no business to labour painfully to explain and prove to +one's self what is as clear as the sun in the sky; one loses temper +in reasoning about what can only be felt, and what ought to be felt +instantly, as it was in the twelfth century, even by the truie qui +file and the ane qui vielle. Any one should feel it that wishes; any +one who does not wish to feel it can let it alone. Still, it may be +that not one tourist in a hundred--perhaps not one in a thousand of +the English-speaking race--does feel it, or can feel it even when +explained to him, for we have lost many senses. + +Therefore, let us plod on, laboriously proving God, although, even +to Saint Bernard and Pascal, God was incapable of proof; and using +such material as the books furnish for help. It is not much. The +French have been shockingly negligent of their greatest artistic +glory. One knows not even where to seek. One must go to the National +Library and beg as a special favour permission to look at the +monumental work of M. Lasteyrie, if one wishes to make even a +beginning of the study of French glass. Fortunately there exists a +fragment of a great work which the Government began, but never +completed, upon Chartres; and another, quite indispensable, but not +official, upon Bourges; while Viollet-le-Duc's article "Vitrail" +serves as guide to the whole. Ottin's book "Le Vitrail" is +convenient. Male's volume "L'Art Religieux" is essential. In +English, Westlake's "History of Design" is helpful. Perhaps, after +reading all that is readable, the best hope will be to provide the +best glasses with the largest possible field; and, choosing an hour +when the church is empty, take seat about halfway up the nave, +facing toward the western entrance with a morning light, so that the +glass of the western windows shall not stand in direct sun. + +The glass of the three lancets is the oldest in the cathedral. If +the portal beneath it, with the sculpture, was built in the twenty +or thirty years before 1150, the glass could not be much later. It +goes with the Abbe Suger's glass at Saint-Denis, which was surely +made as early as 1140-50, since the Abbe was a long time at work on +it, before he died in 1152. Their perfection proves, what his +biographer asserted, that the Abbe Suger spent many years as well as +much money on his windows at Saint-Denis, and the specialists affirm +that the three lancets at Chartres are quite as good as what remains +of Suger's work. Viollet-le-Duc and M. Paul Durand, the Government +expert, are positive that this glass is the finest ever made, as far +as record exists; and that the northern lancet representing the Tree +of Jesse stands at the head of all glasswork whatever. The windows +claim, therefore, to be the most splendid colour decoration the +world ever saw, since no other material, neither silk nor gold, and +no opaque colour laid on with a brush, can compare with translucent +glass, and even the Ravenna mosaics or Chinese porcelains are +darkness beside them. + +The claim may not be modest, but it is none of ours. Viollet-le-Duc +must answer for his own sins, and he chose the lancet window of the +Tree of Jesse for the subject of his lecture on glass in general, as +the most complete and perfect example of this greatest decorative +art. Once more, in following him, one is dragged, in spite of one's +self, into technique, and, what is worse, into a colour world whose +technique was forgotten five hundred years ago. Viollet-le-Duc tried +to recover it. "After studying our best French windows," he +cautiously suggests that "one might maintain," as their secret of +harmony, that "the first condition for an artist in glass is to know +how to manage blue. The blue is the light in windows, and light has +value only by opposition." The radiating power of blue is, +therefore, the starting-point, and on this matter Viollet-le-Duc has +much to say which a student would need to master; but a tourist +never should study, or he ceases to be a tourist; and it is enough +for us if we know that, to get the value they wanted, the artists +hatched their blues with lines, covered their surface with figures +as though with screens, and tied their blue within its own field +with narrow circlets of white or yellow, which, in their turn, were +beaded to fasten the blue still more firmly in its place. We have +chiefly to remember the law that blue is light:-- + +But also it is that luminous colour which gives value to all others. +If you compose a window in which there shall be no blue, you will +get a dirty or dull (blafard) or crude surface which the eye will +instantly avoid; but if you put a few touches of blue among all +these tones, you will immediately get striking effects if not +skilfully conceived harmony. So the composition of blue glass +singularly preoccupied the glassworkers of the twelfth and +thirteenth centuries. If there is only one red, two yellows, two or +three purples, and two or three greens at the most, there are +infinite shades of blue, ... and these blues are placed with a very +delicate observation of the effects they should produce on other +tones, and other tones on them. + +Viollet-le-Duc took the window of the Tree of Jesse as his first +illustration of the rule, for the reason that its blue ground is one +continuous strip from top to bottom, with the subordinate red on +either side, and a border uniting the whole so plainly that no one +can fail to see its object or its method. + +The blue tone of the principal subject [that is to say, the ground +of the Tree of Jesse] has commanded the tonality of all the rest. +This medium was necessary to enable the luminous splendour to +display its energy. This primary condition had dictated the red +ground for the prophets, and the return to the blue on reaching the +outside semicircular band. To give full value both to the vigour of +the red, and to the radiating transparency of the blue, the ground +of the corners is put in emerald green; but then, in the corners +themselves, the blue is recalled and is given an additional solidity +of value by the delicate ornamentation of the squares. + +This translation is very free, but one who wants to know these +windows must read the whole article, and read it here in the church, +the Dictionary in one hand, and binocle in the other, for the +binocle is more important than the Dictionary when it reaches the +complicated border which repeats in detail the colour-scheme of the +centre:-- + +The border repeats all the tones allotted to the principal subjects, +but by small fragments, so that this border, with an effect both +solid and powerful, shall not enter into rivalry with the large +arrangements of the central parts. + +One would think this simple enough; easily tested on any illuminated +manuscript, Arab, Persian, or Byzantine; verified by any Oriental +rug, old or new; freely illustrated by any Chinese pattern on a Ming +jar, or cloisonne vase; and offering a kind of alphabet for the +shop-window of a Paris modiste. A strong red; a strong and a weak +yellow; a strong and a weak purple; a strong and a weak green, are +all to be tied together, given their values, and held in their +places by blue. The thing seems simpler still when it appears that +perspective is forbidden, and that these glass windows of the +twelfth and thirteenth centuries, like Oriental rugs, imply a flat +surface, a wall which must not be treated as open. The twelfth- +century glassworker would sooner have worn a landscape on his back +than have costumed his church with it; he would as soon have +decorated his floors with painted holes as his walls. He wanted to +keep the coloured window flat, like a rug hung on the wall. + +The radiation of translucent colours in windows cannot be modified +by the artist; all his talent consists in profiting by it, according +to a given harmonic scheme on a single plane, like a rug, but not +according to an effect of aerial perspective. Do what you like, a +glass window never does and never can represent anything but a plane +surface; its real virtues even exist only on that condition. Every +attempt to present several planes to the eye is fatal to the harmony +of colour, without producing any illusion in the spectator ... +Translucid painting can propose as its object only a design +supporting as energetically as possible a harmony of colours. + +Whether this law is absolute you can tell best by looking at modern +glass which is mostly perspective; but, whether you like it or not, +the matter of perspective does not enter into a twelfth-century +window more than into a Japanese picture, and may be ignored. The +decoration of the twelfth century, as far as concerns us, was +intended only for one plane, and a window was another form of rug or +embroidery or mosaic, hung on the wall for colour,--simple +decoration to be seen as a whole. If the Tree of Jesse teaches +anything at all, it is that the artist thought first of controlling +his light, but he wanted to do it not in order to dim the colours; +on the contrary, he toiled, like a jeweller setting diamonds and +rubies, to increase their splendour. If his use of blue teaches this +lesson, his use of green proves it. The outside border of the Tree +of Jesse is a sort of sample which our schoolmaster Viollet-le-Duc +sets, from which he requires us to study out the scheme, beginning +with the treatment of light, and ending with the value of the +emerald green ground in the corners. + +Complicated as the border of the Tree of Jesse is, it has its mates +in the borders of the two other twelfth-century windows, and a few +of the thirteenth-century in the side aisles; but the southern of +the three lancets shows how the artists dealt with a difficulty that +upset their rule. The border of the southern window does not count +as it should; something is wrong with it and a little study shows +that the builder, and not the glassworker, was to blame. Owing to +his miscalculation--if it was really a miscalculation--in the width +of the southern tower, the builder economized six or eight inches in +the southern door and lancet, which was enough to destroy the +balance between the colour-values, as masses, of the south and north +windows. The artist was obliged to choose whether he would sacrifice +the centre or the border of his southern window, and decided that +the windows could not be made to balance if he narrowed the centre, +but that he must balance them by enriching the centre, and +sacrificing the border. He has filled the centre with medallions as +rich as he could make them, and these he has surrounded with +borders, which are also enriched to the utmost; but these medallions +with their borders spread across the whole window, and when you +search with the binocle for the outside border, you see its pattern +clearly only at the top and bottom. On the sides, at intervals of +about two feet, the medallions cover and interrupt it; but this is +partly corrected by making the border, where it is seen, so rich as +to surpass any other in the cathedral, even that of the Tree of +Jesse. Whether the artist has succeeded or not is a question for +other artists--or for you, if you please--to decide; but apparently +he did succeed, since no one has ever noticed the difficulty or the +device. + +The southern lancet represents the Passion of Christ. Granting to +Viollet-le-Duc that the unbroken vertical colour-scheme of the Tree +of Jesse made the more effective window, one might still ask whether +the medallion-scheme is not the more interesting. Once past the +workshop, there can be no question about it; the Tree of Jesse has +the least interest of all the three windows. A genealogical tree has +little value, artistic or other, except to those who belong in its +branches, and the Tree of Jesse was put there, not to please us, but +to please the Virgin. The Passion window was also put there to +please her, but it tells a story, and does it in a way that has more +novelty than the subject. The draughtsman who chalked out the design +on the whitened table that served for his sketch-board was either a +Greek, or had before him a Byzantine missal, or enamel or ivory. The +first medallion on these legendary windows is the lower left-hand +one, which begins the story or legend; here it represents Christ +after the manner of the Greek Church. In the next medallion is the +Last Supper; the fish on the dish is Greek. In the middle of the +window, with the help of the binocle, you will see a Crucifixion, or +even two, for on the left is Christ on the Cross, and on the right a +Descent from the Cross; in this is the figure of man pulling out +with pincers the nails which fasten Christ's feet; a figure unknown +to Western religious art. The Noli Me Tangere, on the right, near +the top, has a sort of Greek character. All the critics, especially +M. Paul Durand, have noticed this Byzantine look, which is even more +marked in the Suger window at Saint-Denis, so as to suggest that +both are by the same hand, and that the hand of a Greek. If the +artist was really a Greek, he has done work more beautiful than any +left at Byzantium, and very far finer than anything in the beautiful +work at Cairo, but although the figures and subjects are more or +less Greek, like the sculptures on the portal, the art seems to be +French. + +Look at the central window! Naturally, there sits the Virgin, with +her genealogical tree on her left, and her Son's testimony on her +right to prove her double divinity. She is seated in the long halo; +as, on the western portal, directly beneath her, her Son is +represented in stone, Her crown and head, as well as that of the +Child, are fourteenth-century restorations more or less like the +original; but her cushioned throne and her robes of imperial state, +as well as the flowered sceptre in either hand, are as old as the +sculpture of the portal, and redolent of the first crusade. On +either side of her, the Sun and the Moon offer praise; her two +Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, with resplendent wings, offer not +incense as in later times, but the two sceptres of spiritual and +temporal power; while the Child in her lap repeats His Mother's +action and even her features and expression. At first sight, one +would take for granted that all this was pure Byzantium, and perhaps +it is; but it has rather the look of Byzantium gallicized, and +carried up to a poetic French ideal. At Saint-Denis the little +figure of the Abbe Suger at the feet of the Virgin has a very +Oriental look, and in the twin medallion the Virgin resembles +greatly the Virgin of Chartres, yet, for us, until some specialist +shows us the Byzantine original, the work is as thoroughly French as +the fleches of the churches. + +Byzantine art is altogether another chapter, and, if we could but +take a season to study it in Byzantium, we might get great +amusement; but the art of Chartres, even in 1100, was French and +perfectly French, as the architecture shows, and the glass is even +more French than the architecture, as you can detect in many other +ways. Perhaps the surest evidence is the glass itself. The men who +made it were not professionals but amateurs, who may have had some +knowledge of enamelling, but who worked like jewellers, unused to +glass, and with the refinement that a reliquary or a crozier +required. The cost of these windows must have been extravagant; one +is almost surprised that they are not set in gold rather than in +lead. The Abbe Suger shirked neither trouble nor expense, and the +only serious piece of evidence that this artist was a Greek is given +by his biographer who unconsciously shows that the artist cheated +him: "He sought carefully for makers of windows and workmen in glass +of exquisite quality, especially in that made of sapphires in great +abundance that were pulverized and melted up in the glass to give it +the blue colour which he delighted to admire." The "materia +saphirorum" was evidently something precious,--as precious as crude +sapphires would have been,--and the words imply beyond question that +the artist asked for sapphires and that Suger paid for them; yet all +specialists agree that the stone known as sapphire, if ground, could +not produce translucent colour at all. The blue which Suger loved, +and which is probably the same as that of these Chartres windows, +cannot be made out of sapphires. Probably the "materia saphirorum" +means cobalt only, but whatever it was, the glassmakers seem to +agree that this glass of 1140-50 is the best ever made. M. Paul +Durand in his official report of 1881 said that these windows, both +artistically and mechanically, were of the highest class: "I will +also call attention to the fact that the glass and the execution of +the painting are, materially speaking, of a quality much superior to +windows of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Having passed +several months in contact with these precious works when I copied +them, I was able to convince myself of their superiority in every +particular, especially in the upper parts of the three windows." He +said that they were perfect and irreproachable. The true enthusiast +in glass would in the depths of his heart like to say outright that +these three windows are worth more than all that the French have +since done in colour, from that day to this; but the matter concerns +us chiefly because it shows how French the experiment was, and how +Suger's taste and wealth made it possible. + +Certain it is, too, that the southern window--the Passion--was made +on the spot, or near by, and fitted for the particular space with +care proportionate to its cost. All are marked by the hand of the +Chartres Virgin. They are executed not merely for her, but by her. +At Saint-Denis the Abbe Suger appeared,--it is true that he was +prostrate at her feet, but still he appeared. At Chartres no one--no +suggestion of a human agency--was allowed to appear; the Virgin +permitted no one to approach her, even to adore. She is enthroned +above, as Queen and Empress and Mother, with the symbols of +exclusive and universal power. Below her, she permitted the world to +see the glories of her earthly life;--the Annunciation, Visitation, +and Nativity; the Magi; King Herod; the Journey to Egypt; and the +single medallion, which shows the gods of Egypt falling from their +pedestals at her coming, is more entertaining than a whole picture- +gallery of oil paintings. + +In all France there exist barely a dozen good specimens of twelfth- +century glass. Besides these windows at Chartres and the fragments +at Saint-Denis, there are windows at Le Mans and Angers and bits at +Vendome, Chalons, Poitiers, Rheims, and Bourges; here and there one +happens on other pieces, but the earliest is the best, because the +glass-makers were new at the work and spent on it an infinite amount +of trouble and money which they found to be unnecessary as they +gained experience. Even in 1200 the value of these windows was so +well understood, relatively to new ones, that they were preserved +with the greatest care. The effort to make such windows was never +repeated. Their jewelled perfection did not suit the scale of the +vast churches of the thirteenth century. By turning your head toward +the windows of the side aisles, you can see the criticism which the +later artists passed on the old work. They found it too refined, too +brilliant, too jewel-like for the size of the new cathedral; the +play of light and colour allowed the eye too little repose; indeed, +the eye could not see their whole beauty, and half their value was +thrown away in this huge stone setting. At best they must have +seemed astray on the bleak, cold, windy plain of Beauce,--homesick +for Palestine or Cairo,--yearning for Monreale or Venice,--but this +is not our affair, and, under the protection of the Empress Virgin, +Saint Bernard himself could have afforded to sin even to drunkenness +of colour. With trifling expense of imagination one can still catch +a glimpse of the crusades in the glory of the glass. The longer one +looks into it, the more overpowering it becomes, until one begins +almost to feel an echo of what our two hundred and fifty million +arithmetical ancestors, drunk with the passion of youth and the +splendour of the Virgin, have been calling to us from Mont-Saint- +Michel and Chartres. No words and no wine could revive their +emotions so vividly as they glow in the purity of the colours; the +limpidity of the blues; the depth of the red; the intensity of the +green; the complicated harmonies; the sparkle and splendour of the +light; and the quiet and certain strength of the mass. + +With too strong direct sun the windows are said to suffer, and +become a cluster of jewels--a delirium of coloured light. The lines, +too, have different degrees of merit. These criticisms seldom strike +a chance traveller, but he invariably makes the discovery that the +designs within the medallions are childish. He may easily correct +them, if he likes, and see what would happen to the window; but +although this is the alphabet of art, and we are past spelling words +of one syllable, the criticism teaches at least one lesson. +Primitive man seems to have had a natural colour-sense, instinctive +like the scent of a dog. Society has no right to feel it as a moral +reproach to be told that it has reached an age when it can no longer +depend, as in childhood, on its taste, or smell, or sight, or +hearing, or memory; the fact seems likely enough, and in no way +sinful; yet society always denies it, and is invariably angry about +it; and, therefore, one had better not say it. On the other hand, we +can leave Delacroix and his school to fight out the battle they +began against Ingres and his school, in French art, nearly a hundred +years ago, which turned in substance on the same point. Ingres held +that the first motive in colour-decoration was line, and that a +picture which was well drawn was well enough coloured. Society +seemed, on the whole, to agree with him. Society in the twelfth +century agreed with Delacroix. The French held then that the first +point in colour-decoration was colour, and they never hesitated to +put their colour where they wanted it, or cared whether a green +camel or a pink lion looked like a dog or a donkey provided they got +their harmony or value. Everything except colour was sacrificed to +line in the large sense, but details of drawing were conventional +and subordinate. So we laugh to see a knight with a blue face, on a +green horse, that looks as though drawn by a four-year-old child, +and probably the artist laughed, too; but he was a colourist, and +never sacrificed his colour for a laugh. + +We tourists assume commonly that he knew no better. In our simple +faith in ourselves, great hope abides, for it shows an earnestness +hardly less than that of the crusaders; but in the matter of colour +one is perhaps less convinced, or more open to curiosity. No school +of colour exists in our world to-day, while the Middle Ages had a +dozen; but it is certainly true that these twelfth-century windows +break the French tradition. They had no antecedent, and no fit +succession. All the authorities dwell on their exceptional +character. One is sorely tempted to suspect that they were in some +way an accident; that such an art could not have sprung, in such +perfection, out of nothing, had it been really French; that it must +have had its home elsewhere--on the Rhine--in Italy--in Byzantium-- +or in Bagdad. + +The same controversy has raged for near two hundred years over the +Gothic arch, and everything else mediaeval, down to the philosophy +of the schools. The generation that lived during the first and +second crusades tried a number of original experiments, besides +capturing Jerusalem. Among other things, it produced the western +portal of Chartres, with its statuary, its glass, and its fleche, as +a by-play; as it produced Abelard, Saint Bernard, and Christian of +Troyes, whose acquaintance we have still to make. It took ideas +wherever it found them;--from Germany, Italy, Spain, Constantinople, +Palestine, or from the source which has always attracted the French +mind like a magnet--from ancient Greece. That it actually did take +the ideas, no one disputes, except perhaps patriots who hold that +even the ideas were original; but to most students the ideas need to +be accounted for less than the taste with which they were handled, +and the quickness with which they were developed. That the taste was +French, you can see in the architecture, or you will see if ever you +meet the Gothic elsewhere; that it seized and developed an idea +quickly, you have seen in the arch, the fleche, the porch, and the +windows, as well as in the glass; but what we do not comprehend, and +never shall, is the appetite behind all this; the greed for novelty: +the fun of life. Every one who has lived since the sixteenth century +has felt deep distrust of every one who lived before it, and of +every one who believed in the Middle Ages. True it is that the last +thirteenth-century artist died a long time before our planet began +its present rate of revolution; it had to come to rest, and begin +again; but this does not prevent astonishment that the twelfth- +century planet revolved so fast. The pointed arch not only came as +an idea into France, but it was developed into a system of +architecture and covered the country with buildings on a scale of +height never before attempted except by the dome, with an +expenditure of wealth that would make a railway system look cheap, +all in a space of about fifty years; the glass came with it, and +went with it, at least as far as concerns us; but, if you need other +evidence, you can consult Renan, who is the highest authority: "One +of the most singular phenomena of the literary history of the Middle +Ages," says Renan of Averroes, "is the activity of the intellectual +commerce, and the rapidity with which books were spread from one end +of Europe to the other. The philosophy of Abelard during his +lifetime (1100-42) had penetrated to the ends of Italy. The French +poetry of the trouveres counted within less than a century +translations into German, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Flemish, +Dutch, Bohemian, Italian, Spanish"; and he might have added that +England needed no translation, but helped to compose the poetry, not +being at that time so insular as she afterwards became. "Such or +such a work, composed in Morocco or in Cairo, was known at Paris and +at Cologne in less time than it would need in our days for a German +book of capital importance to pass the Rhine"; and Renan wrote this +in 1852 when German books of capital importance were revolutionizing +the literary world. + +One is apt to forget the smallness of Europe, and how quickly it +could always be crossed. In summer weather, with fair winds, one can +sail from Alexandria or from Syria, to Sicily, or even to Spain and +France, in perfect safety and with ample room for freight, as easily +now as one could do it then, without the aid of steam; but one does +not now carry freight of philosophy, poetry, or art. The world still +struggles for unity, but by different methods, weapons, and thought. +The mercantile exchanges which surprised Renan, and which have +puzzled historians, were in ideas. The twelfth century was as greedy +for them in one shape as the nineteenth century in another. France +paid for them dearly, and repented for centuries; but what creates +surprise to the point of incredulity is her hunger for them, the +youthful gluttony with which she devoured them, the infallible taste +with which she dressed them out. The restless appetite that snatched +at the pointed arch, the stone fleche, the coloured glass, the +illuminated missal, the chanson and roman and pastorelle, the +fragments of Aristotle, the glosses of Avicenne, was nothing +compared with the genius which instantly gave form and flower to +them all. + +This episode merely means that the French twelfth-century artist may +be supposed to have known his business, and if he produced a +grotesque, or a green-faced Saint, or a blue castle, or a syllogism, +or a song, that he did it with a notion of the effect he had in +mind. The glass window was to him a whole,--a mass,--and its details +were his amusement; for the twelfth-century Frenchman enjoyed his +fun, though it was sometimes rather heavy for modern French taste, +and less refined than the Church liked. These three twelfth-century +windows, like their contemporary portal outside, and the fleche that +goes with them, are the ideals of enthusiasts of mediaeval art; they +are above the level of all known art, in religious form; they are +inspired; they are divine! This is the claim of Chartres and its +Virgin. Actually, the French artist, whether architect, sculptor, or +painter in glass, did rise here above his usual level. He knew it +when he did it, and probably he attributed it, as we do, to the +Virgin; for these works of his were hardly fifty years old when the +rest of the old church was burned; and already the artist felt the +virtue gone out of him. He could not do so well in 1200 as he did in +1150; and the Virgin was not so near. + +The proof of it--or, if you prefer to think so, the proof against +it--is before our eyes on the wall above the lancet windows. When +Villard de Honnecourt came to Chartres, he seized at once on the +western rose as his study, although the two other roses were +probably there, in all their beauty and lightness. He saw in the +western rose some quality of construction which interested him; and, +in fact, the western rose is one of the flowers of architecture +which reveals its beauties slowly without end; but its chief beauty +is the feeling which unites it with the portal, the lancets, and the +fleche. The glassworker here in the interior had the same task to +perform. The glass of the lancets was fifty years old when the glass +for the rose was planned; perhaps it was seventy, for the exact +dates are unknown, but it does not matter, for the greater the +interval, the more interesting is the treatment. Whatever the date, +the glass of the western rose cannot be much earlier or much later +than that of the other roses, or that of the choir, and yet you see +at a glance that it is quite differently treated. On such matters +one must, of course, submit to the opinion of artists, which one +does the more readily because they always disagree; but until the +artists tell us better, we may please ourselves by fancying that the +glass of the rose was intended to harmonize with that of the +lancets, and unite it with the thirteenth-century glass of the nave +and transepts. Among all the thirteenth-century windows the western +rose alone seems to affect a rivalry in brilliancy with the lancets, +and carries it so far that the separate medallions and pictures are +quite lost,--especially in direct sunshine,--blending in a confused +effect of opals, in a delirium of colour and light, with a result +like a cluster of stones in jewelry. Assuming as one must, in want +of the artist's instruction, that he knew what he wanted to do, and +did it, one must take for granted that he treated the rose as a +whole, and aimed at giving it harmony with the three precious +windows beneath. The effect is that of a single large ornament; a +round breastpin, or what is now called a sunburst, of jewels, with +three large pendants beneath. + +We are ignorant tourists, liable to much error in trying to seek +motives in artists who worked seven hundred years ago for a society +which thought and felt in forms quite unlike ours, but the medieval +pilgrim was more ignorant than we, and much simpler in mind; if the +idea of an ornament occurs to us, it certainly occurred to him, and +still more to the glassworker whose business was to excite his +illusions. An artist, if good for anything, foresees what his public +will see; and what his public will see is what he ought to have +intended--the measure of his genius. If the public sees more than he +himself did, this is his credit; if less, this is his fault. No +matter how simple or ignorant we are, we ought to feel a discord or +a harmony where the artist meant us to feel it, and when we see a +motive, we conclude that other people have seen it before us, and +that it must, therefore, have been intended. Neither of the transept +roses is treated like this one; neither has the effect of a personal +ornament; neither is treated as a jewel. No one knew so well as the +artist that such treatment must give the effect of a jewel. The +Roses of France and of Dreux bear indelibly and flagrantly the +character of France and Dreux; on the western rose is stamped with +greater refinement but equal decision the character of a much +greater power than either of them. + +No artist would have ventured to put up, before the eyes of Mary in +Majesty, above the windows so dear to her, any object that she had +not herself commanded. Whether a miracle was necessary, or whether +genius was enough, is a point of casuistry which you can settle with +Albertus Magnus or Saint Bernard, and which you will understand as +little when settled as before; but for us, beyond the futilities of +unnecessary doubt, the Virgin designed this rose; not perhaps in +quite the same perfect spirit in which she designed the lancets, but +still wholly for her own pleasure and as her own idea. She placed +upon the breast of her Church--which symbolized herself--a jewel so +gorgeous that no earthly majesty could bear comparison with it, and +which no other heavenly majesty has rivalled. As one watches the +light play on it, one is still overcome by the glories of the +jewelled rose and its three gemmed pendants; one feels a little of +the effect she meant it to produce even on infidels, Moors, and +heretics, but infinitely more on the men who feared and the women +who adored her;--not to dwell too long upon it, one admits that hers +is the only Church. One would admit anything that she should +require. If you had only the soul of a shrimp, you would crawl, like +the Abbe Suger, to kiss her feet. + +Unfortunately she is gone, or comes here now so very rarely that we +never shall see her; but her genius remains as individual here as +the genius of Blanche of Castile and Pierre de Dreux in the +transepts. That the three lancets were her own taste, as distinctly +as the Trianon was the taste of Louis XIV, is self-evident. They +represent all that was dearest to her; her Son's glory on her right; +her own beautiful life in the middle; her royal ancestry on her +left: the story of her divine right, thrice-told. The pictures are +all personal, like family portraits. Above them the man who worked +in 1200 to carry out the harmony, and to satisfy the Virgin's +wishes, has filled his rose with a dozen or two little compositions +in glass, which reveal their subjects only to the best powers of a +binocle. Looking carefully, one discovers at last that this gorgeous +combination of all the hues of Paradise contains or hides a Last +Judgment--the one subject carefully excluded from the old work, and +probably not existing on the south portal for another twenty years. +If the scheme of the western rose dates from 1200, as is reasonable +to suppose, this Last Judgment is the oldest in the church, and +makes a link between the theology of the first crusade, beneath, and +the theology of Pierre Mauclerc in the south porch. The churchman is +the only true and final judge on his own doctrine, and we neither +know nor care to know the facts; but we are as good judges as he of +the feeling, and we are at full liberty to feel that such a Last +Judgment as this was never seen before or since by churchman or +heretic, unless by virtue of the heresy which held that the true +Christian must be happy in being damned since such is the will of +God. That this blaze of heavenly light was intended, either by the +Virgin or by her workmen, to convey ideas of terror or pain, is a +notion which the Church might possibly preach, but which we sinners +knew to be false in the thirteenth century as well as we know it +now. Never in all these seven hundred years has one of us looked up +at this rose without feeling it to be Our Lady's promise of +Paradise. + +Here as everywhere else throughout the church, one feels the +Virgin's presence, with no other thought than her majesty and grace. +To the Virgin and to her suppliants, as to us, who though outcasts +in other churches can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was not +a symbol of God's justice or man's corruption, but of her own +infinite mercy. The Trinity judged, through Christ;--Christ loved +and pardoned, through her. She wielded the last and highest power on +earth and in hell. In the glow and beauty of her nature, the light +of her Son's infinite love shone as the sunlight through the glass, +turning the Last Judgment itself into the highest proof of her +divine and supreme authority. The rudest ruffian of the Middle Ages, +when he looked at this Last Judgment, laughed; for what was the Last +Judgment to her! An ornament, a plaything, a pleasure! a jewelled +decoration which she wore on her breast! Her chief joy was to +pardon; her eternal instinct was to love; her deepest passion was +pity! On her imperial heart the flames of hell showed only the +opaline colours of heaven. Christ the Trinity might judge as much as +He pleased, but Christ the Mother would rescue; and her servants +could look boldly into the flames. + +If you, or even our friends the priests who still serve Mary's +shrine, suspect that there is some exaggeration in this language, it +will only oblige you to admit presently that there is none; but for +the moment we are busy with glass rather than with faith, and there +is a world of glass here still to study. Technically, we are done +with it. The technique of the thirteenth century comes naturally and +only too easily out of that of the twelfth. Artistically, the motive +remains the same, since it is always the Virgin; but although the +Virgin of Chartres is always the Virgin of Majesty, there are +degrees in the assertion of her majesty even here, which affect the +art, and qualify its feeling. Before stepping down to the thirteenth +century, one should look at these changes of the Virgin's royal +presence. + +First and most important as record is the stone Virgin on the south +door of the western portal, which we studied, with her Byzantine +Court; and the second, also in stone, is of the same period, on one +of the carved capitals of the portal, representing the Adoration of +the Magi. The third is the glass Virgin at the top of the central +lancet. All three are undoubted twelfth-century work; and you can +see another at Paris, on the same door of Notre Dame, and still more +on Abbe Suger's window at Saint-Denis, and, later, within a +beautiful grisaille at Auxerre; but all represent the same figure; a +Queen, enthroned, crowned, with the symbols of royal power, holding +in her lap the infant King whose guardian she is. Without pretending +to know what special crown she bears, we can assume, till corrected, +that it is the Carlovingian imperial, not the Byzantine. The Trinity +nowhere appears except as implied in the Christ. At the utmost, a +mystic hand may symbolize the Father. The Virgin as represented by +the artists of the twelfth century in the Ile de France and at +Chartres seems to be wholly French in spite of the Greek atmosphere +of her workmanship. One might almost insist that she is blonde, full +in face, large in figure, dazzlingly beautiful, and not more than +thirty years of age. The Child never seems to be more than five. + +You are equally free to see a Southern or Eastern type in her face, +and perhaps the glass suggests a dark type, but the face of the +Virgin on the central lancet is a fourteenth-century restoration +which may or may not reproduce the original, while all the other +Virgins represented in glass, except one, belong to the thirteenth +century. The possible exception is a well-known figure called Notre- +Dame-de-la-Belle-Verriere in the choir next the south transept. A +strange, almost uncanny feeling seems to haunt this window, +heightened by the veneration in which it was long held as a shrine, +though it is now deserted for Notre-Dame-du-Pilier on the opposite +side of the choir. The charm is partly due to the beauty of the +scheme of the angels, supporting, saluting, and incensing the Virgin +and Child with singular grace and exquisite feeling, but rather that +of the thirteenth than of the twelfth century. Here, too, the face +of the Virgin is not ancient. Apparently the original glass was +injured by time or accident, and the colours were covered or renewed +by a simple drawing in oil. Elsewhere the colour is thought to be +particularly good, and the window is a favourite mine of motives for +artists to exploit, but to us its chief interest is its singular +depth of feeling. The Empress Mother sits full-face, on a rich +throne and dais, with the Child on her lap, repeating her attitude +except that her hands support His shoulders. She wears her crown; +her feet rest on a stool, and both stool, rug, robe, and throne are +as rich as colour and decoration can make them. At last a dove +appears, with the rays of the Holy Ghost. Imperial as the Virgin is, +it is no longer quite the unlimited empire of the western lancet. +The aureole encircles her head only; she holds no sceptre; the Holy +Ghost seems to give her support which she did not need before, while +Saint Gabriel and Saint Michael, her archangels, with their symbols +of power, have disappeared. Exquisite as the angels are who surround +and bear up her throne, they assert no authority. The window itself +is not a single composition; the panels below seem inserted later +merely to fill up the space; six represent the Marriage of Cana, and +the three at the bottom show a grotesque little demon tempting +Christ in the Desert. The effect of the whole, in this angle which +is almost always dark or filled with shadow, is deep and sad, as +though the Empress felt her authority fail, and had come down from +the western portal to reproach us for neglect. The face is haunting. +Perhaps its force may be due to nearness, for this is the only +instance in glass of her descending so low that we can almost touch +her, and see what the twelfth century instinctively felt in the +features which, even in their beatitude, were serious and almost sad +under the austere responsibilities of infinite pity and power. + +No doubt the window is very old, or perhaps an imitation or +reproduction of one which was much older, but to the pilgrim its +interest lies mostly in its personality, and there it stands alone. +Although the Virgin reappears again and again in the lower windows,- +-as in those on either side of the Belle-Verriere; in the remnant of +window representing her miracles at Chartres, in the south aisle +next the transept; in the fifteenth-century window of the chapel of +Vendome which follows; and in the third window which follows that of +Vendome and represents her coronation,--she does not show herself +again in all her majesty till we look up to the high windows above. +There we shall find her in her splendour on her throne, above the +high altar, and still more conspicuously in the Rose of France in +the north transept. Still again she is enthroned in the first window +of the choir next the north transept. Elsewhere we can see her +standing, but never does she come down to us in the full splendour +of her presence. Yet wherever we find her at Chartres, and of +whatever period, she is always Queen. Her expression and attitude +are always calm and commanding. She never calls for sympathy by +hysterical appeals to our feelings; she does not even altogether +command, but rather accepts the voluntary, unquestioning, +unhesitating, instinctive faith, love, and devotion of mankind. She +will accept ours, and we have not the heart to refuse it; we have +not even the right, for we are her guests. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS + +One's first visit to a great cathedral is like one's first visit to +the British Museum; the only intelligent idea is to follow the order +of time, but the museum is a chaos in time, and the cathedral is +generally all of one and the same time. At Chartres, after finishing +with the twelfth century, everything is of the thirteenth. To catch +even an order in time, one must first know what part of the +thirteenth-century church was oldest. The books say it was the +choir. After the fire of 1194, the pilgrims used the great crypt as +a church where services were maintained; but the builders must have +begun with the central piers and the choir, because the choir was +the only essential part of the church. Nave and transepts might be +suppressed, but without a choir the church was useless, and in a +shrine, such as Chartres, the choir was the whole church. Toward the +choir, then, the priest or artist looks first; and, since dates are +useful, the choir must be dated. The same popular enthusiasm, which +had broken out in 1145, revived in 1195 to help the rebuilding; and +the work was pressed forward with the same feverish haste, so that +ten years should have been ample to provide for the choir, if for +nothing more; and services may have been resumed there as early as +the year 1206; certainly in 1210. Probably the windows were designed +and put in hand as soon as the architect gave the measurements, and +any one who intended to give a window would have been apt to choose +one of the spaces in the apse, in Mary's own presence, next the +sanctuary. + +The first of the choir windows to demand a date is the Belle- +Verriere, which is commonly classed as early thirteenth-century, and +may go with the two windows next it, one of which--the so-called +Zodiac window--bears a singularly interesting inscription: "COMES +TEOBALDUS DAT...AD PRECES COMIXIS PTICENSIS." If Shakespeare could +write the tragedy of "King John," we cannot admit ourselves not to +have read it, and this inscription might be a part of the play. The +"pagus perticensis" lies a short drive to the west, some fifteen or +twenty miles on the road to Le Mans, and in history is known as the +Comte du Perche, although its memory is now preserved chiefly by its +famous breed of Percheron horses. Probably the horse also dates from +the crusades, and may have carried Richard Coeur-de-Lion, but in any +case the count of that day was a vassal of Richard, and one of his +intimate friends, whose memory is preserved forever by a single line +in Richard's prison-song:-- + + Mes compaignons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim, + Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain. + + +In 1194, when Richard Coeur-de-Lion wrote these verses, the Comte du +Perche was Geoffrey III, who had been a companion of Richard on his +crusade in 1192, where, according to the Chronicle, "he shewed +himself but a timid man"; which seems scarcely likely in a companion +of Richard; but it is not of him that the Chartres window speaks, +except as the son of Mahaut or Matilda of Champagne who was a sister +of Alix of Champagne, Queen of France. The Table shows, therefore, +that Geoffroi's son and successor as the Comte du Perche--Thomas-- +was second cousin of Louis the Lion, known as King Louis VIII of +France. They were probably of much the same age. + +If this were all, one might carry it in one's head for a while, but +the relationship which dominates the history of this period was that +of all these great ruling families with Richard Coeur-de-Lion and +his brother John, nicknamed Lackland, both of whom in succession +were the most powerful Frenchmen in France. The Table shows that +their mother Eleanor of Guienne, the first Queen of Louis VII, bore +him two daughters, one of whom, Alix, married, about 1164, the Count +Thibaut of Chartres and Blois, while the other, Mary, married the +great Count of Champagne. Both of them being half-sisters of Coeur- +de-Lion and John, their children were nephews or half-nephews, +indiscriminately, of all the reigning monarchs, and Coeur-de-Lion +immortalized one of them by a line in his prison-song, as he +immortalized Le Perche:-- + + Je nel di pas de celi de Chartain, + La mere Loeis. + + +"Loeis," therefore, or Count Louis of Chatres, was not only nephew +of Coeur-de-Lion and John Lackland, but was also, like Count Thomas +of Le Perche, a second cousin of Louis VIII. Feudally and personally +he was directly attached to Coeur-de-Lion rather than to Philip +Augustus. + +If society in the twelfth century could follow the effects of these +relationships, personal and feudal, it was cleverer than society in +the twentieth; but so much is simple: Louis of France, Thibaut of +Chartres, and Thomas of Le Perche, were cousins and close friends in +the year 1215, and all were devoted to the Virgin of Chartres. +Judging from the character of Louis's future queen, Blanche of +Castile, their wives were, if possible, more devoted still; and in +that year Blanche gave birth to Saint Louis, who seems to have been +the most devoted of all. + +Meanwhile their favourite uncle, Coeur-de-Lion, had died in the year +1199. Thibaut's great-grandmother, Eleanor of Guienne, died in 1202. +King John, left to himself, rapidly accumulated enemies innumerable, +abroad and at home. In 1203, Philip Augustus confiscated all the +fiefs he held from the French Crown, and in 1204 seized Normandy. +John sank rapidly from worse to worst, until at last the English +barons rose and forced him to grant their Magna Carta at Runnimede +in 1215. + +The year 1215 was, therefore, a year to be remembered at Chartres, +as at Mont-Saint-Michel; one of the most convenient dates in +history. Every one is supposed, even now, to know what happened +then, to give another violent wrench to society, like the Norman +Conquest in 1066. John turned on the barons and broke them down; +they sent to + +[Genealogical chart showing the relationships among England, +Champagne and Chartres and France and La Perche.] + +France for help, and offered the crown of England to young Louis, +whose father, Philip Augustus, called a council which pledged +support to Louis. Naturally the Comte du Perche and the Comte de +Chartres must have pledged their support, among the foremost, to go +with Louis to England. He was then twenty-nine years old; they were +probably somewhat younger. + +The Zodiac window, with its inscription, was the immediate result. +The usual authority that figures in the histories is Roger of +Wendover, but much the more amusing for our purpose is a garrulous +Frenchman known as the Menestrel de Rheims who wrote some fifty +years later. After telling in his delightful thirteenth-century +French, how the English barons sent hostages to Louis, "et mes sires +Loueys les fit bien gardeir et honourablement," the Menestrel +continued:-- + +Et assembla granz genz par amours, et par deniers, et par lignage. +Et fu avec lui li cuens dou Perche, et li cuens de Montfort, et li +cuens de Chartres, et li cuens de Monbleart, et mes sires Enjorrans +de Couci, et mout d'autre grant seigneur dont je ne parole mie. + +The Comte de Chartres, therefore, may be supposed to have gone with +the Comte du Perche, and to have witnessed the disaster at Lincoln +which took place May 20, 1217, after King John's death:-- + +Et li cuens dou Perche faisait l'avantgarde, et courut tout leiz des +portes; et la garnisons de laienz issi hors et leur coururent sus; +et i ot asseiz trait et lancie; et chevaus morz et chevaliers +abatuz, et gent a pie morz et navreiz. Et li cuens dou Perche i fu +morz par un ribaut qui li leva le pan dou hauberc, et l'ocist d'un +coutel; et fu desconfite l'avantgarde par la mort le conte. Et quant +mes sires Loueys le sot, si ot graigneur duel qu'il eust onques, car +il estoit ses prochains ami de char. + +Such language would be spoiled by translation. For us it is enough +to know that the "ribaut" who lifted the "pan," or skirt, of the +Count's "hauberc" or coat-of-mail, as he sat on his horse refusing +to surrender to English traitors, and stabbed him from below with a +knife, may have been an invention of the Menestrel; or the knight +who pierced with his lance through the visor to the brain, may have +been an invention of Roger of Wendover; but in either case, Count +Thomas du Perche lost his life at Lincoln, May 20, 1217, to the +deepest regret of his cousin Louis the Lion as well as of the Count +Thibaut of Chartres, whom he charged to put up a window for him in +honour of the Virgin. + +The window must have been ordered at once, because Count Thibaut, +"le Jeune ou le Lepreux," died himself within a year, April 22, +1218, thus giving an exact date for one of the choir windows. +Probably it was one of the latest, because the earliest to be +provided would have been certainly those of the central apsidal +chapel. According to the rule laid down by Viollet-le-Duc, the +windows in which blue strongly predominates, like the Saint +Sylvester, are likely to be earlier than those with a prevailing +tone of red. We must take for granted that some of these great +legendary windows were in place as early as 1210, because, in +October of that year, Philip Augustus attended mass here. There are +some two dozen of these windows in the choir alone, each of which +may well have represented a year's work in the slow processes of +that day, and we can hardly suppose that the workshops of 1200 were +on a scale such as to allow of more than two to have been in hand at +once. Thirty or forty years later, when the Sainte Chapelle was +built, the workshops must have been vastly enlarged, but with the +enlargement, the glass deteriorated. Therefore, if the architecture +were so far advanced in the year 1200 as to allow of beginning work +on the glass, in the apse, the year 1225 is none too late to allow +for its completion in the choir. + +Dates are stupidly annoying;--what we want is not dates but taste;-- +yet we are uncomfortable without them. Except the Perche window, +none of the lower ones in the choir helps at all; but the clere- +story is more useful. There they run in pairs, each pair surmounted +by a rose. The first pair (numbers 27 and 28) next the north +transept, shows the Virgin of France, supported, according to the +Abbes Bulteau and Clerval, by the arms of Bishop Reynault de Moucon, +who was Bishop of Chartres at the time of the great fire in 1194 and +died in 1217. The window number 28 shows two groups of peasants on +pilgrimage; below, on his knees, Robert of Berou, as donor: +"ROBERTUS DE BEROU: CARN. CANCELLARIUS." The Cartulary of the +Cathedral contains an entry (Bulteau, i, 123): "The 26th February, +1216, died Robert de Berou, Chancellor, who has given us a window." +The Cartulary mentions several previous gifts of windows by canons +or other dignitaries of the Church in the year 1215. + +Next follow, or once followed, a pair of windows (numbers 29 and 30) +which were removed by the sculptor Bridan, in 1788, in order to +obtain light for his statuary below. The donor was "DOMINA JOHANNES +BAPTISTA," who, we are told, was Jeanne de Dammartin; and the window +was given in memory, or in honour, of her marriage to Ferdinand of +Castile in 1237. Jeanne was a very great lady, daughter of the Comte +d'Aumale and Marie de Ponthieu. Her father affianced her in 1235 to +the King of England, Henry III, and even caused the marriage to be +celebrated by proxy, but Queen Blanche broke it off, as she had +forbidden, in 1231, that of Yolande of Britanny. She relented so far +as to allow Jeanne in 1237 to marry Ferdinand of Castile, who still +sits on horseback in the next rose: "REX CASTILLAE." He won the +crown of Castile in 1217 and died in 1252, when Queen Jeanne +returned to Abbeville and then, at latest, put up this window at +Chartres in memory of her husband. + +The windows numbers 31 and 32 are the subject of much dispute, but +whether the donors were Jean de Chatillon or the three children of +Thibaut le Grand of Champagne, they must equally belong to the later +series of 1260-70, rather than to the earlier of 1210-20. The same +thing is or was true of the next pair, numbers 33 and 34, which were +removed in 1773, but the record says that at the bottom of number 34 +was the figure of Saint Louis's son, Louis of France, who died in +1260, before his father, who still rides in the rose above. + +Thus the north side of the choir shows a series of windows that +precisely cover the lifetime of Saint Louis (1215-70). The south +side begins, next the apse, with windows numbers 35 and 36, which +belong, according to the Comte d'Armancourt, to the family of +Montfort, whose ruined castle crowns the hill of Montfort l'Amaury, +on the road to Paris, some forty kilometres northeast of Chartres. +Every one is supposed to know the story of Simon de Montfort who was +killed before Toulouse in 1218. Simon left two sons, Amaury and +Simon. The sculptor Bridan put an end also to the window of Amaury, +but in the rose, Amaury, according to the Abbes, still rides on a +white horse. Amaury's history is well known. He was made Constable +of France by Queen Blanche in 1231; went on crusade in 1239; was +captured by the infidels, taken to Babylon, ransomed, and in +returning to France, died at Otranto in 1241. For that age Amaury +was but a commonplace person, totally overshadowed by his brother +Simon, who went to England, married King John's daughter Eleanor, +and became almost king himself as Earl of Leicester. At your leisure +you can read Matthew Paris's dramatic account of him and of his +death at the battle of Evesham, August 5, 1265. He was perhaps the +last of the very great men of the thirteenth century, excepting +Saint Louis himself, who lived a few years longer. M. d'Armancourt +insists that it is the great Earl of Leicester who rides with his +visor up, in full armour, on a brown horse, in the rose above the +windows numbers 37 and 38. In any case, the windows would be later +than 1240. + +The next pair of windows, numbers 39 and 40, also removed in 1788, +still offer, in their rose, the figure of a member of the Courtenay +family. Gibbon was so much attracted by the romance of the +Courtenays as to make an amusing digression on the subject which +does not concern us or the cathedral except so far as it tells us +that the Courtenays, like so many other benefactors of Chartres +Cathedral, belonged to the royal blood. Louis-le-Gros, who died in +1137, besides his son Louis-le-Jeune, who married Eleanor of Guienne +in that year, had a younger son, Pierre, whom he married to Isabel +de Courtenay, and who, like Philip Hurepel, took the title of his +wife. Pierre had a son, Pierre II, who was a cousin of Philip +Augustus, and became the hero of the most lurid tragedy of the time. +Chosen Emperor of Constantinople in 1216, to succeed his brothers- +in-law Henry and Baldwin, he tried to march across Illyria and +Macedonia, from Durazzo opposite Brindisi, with a little army of +five thousand men, and instantly disappeared forever. The Epirotes +captured him in the summer of 1217, and from that moment nothing is +known of his fate. + +On the whole, this catastrophe was perhaps the grimmest of all the +Shakespearean tragedies of the thirteenth century; and one would +like to think that the Chartres window was a memorial of this +Pierre, who was a cousin of France and an emperor without empire; +but M. d'Armancourt insists that the window was given in memory not +of this Pierre, but of his nephew, another Pierre de Courtenay, +Seigneur de Conches, who went on crusade with Saint Louis in 1249 to +Egypt, and died shortly before the defeat and captivity of the King, +on February 8, 1250. His brother Raoul, Seigneur d'Illiers, who died +in 1271, is said to be donor of the next window, number 40. The date +of the Courtenay windows should therefore be no earlier than the +death of Saint Louis in 1270; yet one would like to know what has +become of another Courtenay window left by the first Pierre's son- +in-law, Gaucher or Gaultier of Bar-sur-Seine, who seems to have been +Vicomte de Chartres, and who, dying before Damietta in 1218, made a +will leaving to Notre Dame de Chartres thirty silver marks, "de +quibus fieri debet miles montatus super equum suum." Not only would +this mounted knight on horseback supply an early date for these +interesting figures, but would fix also the cost, for a mark +contained eight ounces of silver, and was worth ten sous, or half a +livre. We shall presently see that Aucassins gave twenty sous, or a +livre, for a strong ox, so that the "miles montatus super equum +suum" in glass was equivalent to fifteen oxen if it were money of +Paris, which is far from certain. + +This is an economical problem which belongs to experts, but the +historical value of these early evidences is still something,-- +perhaps still as much as ten sous. All the windows tend to the same +conclusion. Even the last pair, numbers 41 and 42, offer three +personal clues which lead to the same result:--the arms of Bouchard +de Marly who died in 1226, almost at the same time as Louis VIII; a +certain Colinus or Colin, "de camera Regis," who was alive in 1225; +and Robert of Beaumont in the rose, who seems to be a Beaumont of Le +Perche, of whom little or nothing is as yet certainly known. As a +general rule, there are two series of windows, one figuring the +companions or followers of Louis VIII (1215-26); the other, friends +or companions of Saint Louis (1226-70), Queen Blanche uniting both. +What helps to hold the sequences in a certain order, is that the +choir was complete, and services regularly resumed there, in 1210, +while in 1220 the transept and nave were finished and vaulted. For +the apside windows, therefore, we will assume, subject to +correction, a date from 1200 to 1225 for their design and +workmanship; for the transept, 1220 to 1236; and for the nave a +general tendency to the actual reign of Saint Louis from 1236 to +1270. Since there is a deal of later glass scattered everywhere +among the earlier, the margin of error is great; but by keeping the +reign of Louis VIII and its personages distinct from that of Louis +IX and his generation, we can be fairly sure of our main facts. +Meanwhile the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, wholly built and completed +between 1240 and 1248, offers a standard of comparison for the +legendary windows. + +The choir of Chartres is as long as the nave, and much broader, +besides that the apse was planned with seven circular projections +which greatly increased the window space, so that the guidebook +reckons thirty-seven windows. A number of these are grisailles, and +the true amateur of glass considers the grisailles to be as well +worth study as the legendary windows. They are a decoration which +has no particular concern with churches, and no distinct religious +meaning, but, it seems, a religious value which Viollet-le-Duc is at +some trouble to explain; and, since his explanation is not very +technical, we can look at it, before looking at the legends:-- + +The colouration of the windows had the advantage of throwing on the +opaque walls a veil, or coloured glazing, of extreme delicacy, +always assuming that the coloured windows themselves were +harmoniously toned. Whether their resources did not permit the +artists to adopt a complete system of coloured glass, or whether +they wanted to get daylight in purer quality into their interiors,-- +whatever may have been their reasons,--they resorted to this +beautiful grisaille decoration which is also a colouring harmony +obtained by the aid of a long experience in the effects of light on +translucent surfaces. Many of our churches retain grisaille windows +filling either all, or only a part, of their bays. In the latter +case, the grisailles are reserved for the side windows which are +meant to be seen obliquely, and in that case the coloured glass +fills the bays of the fond, the apsidal openings which are meant to +be seen in face from a distance. These lateral grisailles are still +opaque enough to prevent the solar rays which pass through them from +lighting the coloured windows on the reverse side; yet, at certain +hours of the day, these solar rays throw a pearly light on the +coloured windows which gives them indescribable transparence and +refinement of tones. The lateral windows in the choir of the Auxerre +Cathedral, half-grisaille, half-coloured, throw on the wholly +coloured apsidal window, by this means, a glazing the softness of +which one can hardly conceive. The opaline light which comes through +these lateral bays, and makes a sort of veil, transparent in the +extreme, under the lofty vaulting, is crossed by the brilliant tones +of the windows behind, which give the play of precious stones. The +solid outlines then seem to waver like objects seen through a sheet +of clear water. Distances change their values, and take depths in +which the eye gets lost. With every hour of the day these effects +are altered, and always with new harmonies which one never tires of +trying to understand; but the deeper one's study goes, the more +astounded one becomes before the experience acquired by these +artists, whose theories on the effects of colour, assuming that they +had any, are unknown to us and whom the most kindly-disposed among +us treat as simple children. + +You can read the rest for yourselves. Grisaille is a separate branch +of colour-decoration which belongs with the whole system of lighting +and fenetrage, and will have to remain a closed book because the +feeling and experience which explained it once are lost, and we +cannot recover either. Such things must have been always felt rather +than reasoned, like the irregularities in plan of the builders; the +best work of the best times shows the same subtlety of sense as the +dog shows in retrieving, or the bee in flying, but which tourists +have lost. All we can do is to note that the grisailles were +intended to have values. They were among the refinements of light +and colour with which the apse of Chartres is so crowded that one +must be content to feel what one can, and let the rest go. + +Understand, we cannot! nothing proves that the greatest artists who +ever lived have, in a logical sense, understood! or that omnipotence +has ever understood! or that the utmost power of expression has ever +been capable of expressing more than the reaction of one energy on +another, but not of two on two; and when one sits here, in the +central axis of this complicated apse, one sees, in mere light +alone, the reaction of hundreds of energies, although time has left +only a wreck of what the artist put here. One of the best window +spaces is wholly filled up by the fourteenth-century doorway to the +chapel of Saint Piat, and only by looking at the two windows which +correspond on the north does a curious inquirer get a notion of the +probable loss. The same chapel more or less blocks the light of +three other principal windows. The sun, the dust, the acids of +dripping water, and the other works of time, have in seven hundred +years corroded or worn away or altered the glass, especially on the +south side. Windows have been darkened by time and mutilated by +wilful injury. Scores of the panels are wholly restored, modern +reproductions or imitations. Even after all this loss, the glass is +probably the best-preserved, or perhaps the only preserved part of +the decoration in colour, for we never shall know the colour- +decoration of the vaults, the walls, the columns, or the floors. +Only one point is fairly sure;--that on festivals, if not at other +times, every foot of space was covered in some way or another, +throughout the apse, with colour; either paint or tapestry or +embroidery or Byzantine brocades and Oriental stuffs or rugs, lining +the walls, covering the altars, and hiding the floor. Occasionally +you happen upon illuminated manuscripts showing the interiors of +chapels with their colour-decoration; but everything has perished +here except the glass. + +If one may judge from the glass of later centuries, the first +impression from the thirteenth-century windows ought to be +disappointment. You should find them too effeminate, too soft, too +small, and above all not particularly religious. Indeed, except for +the nominal subjects of the legends, one sees nothing religious +about them; the medallions, when studied with the binocle, turn out +to be less religious than decorative. Saint Michael would not have +felt at home here, and Saint Bernard would have turned from them +with disapproval; but when they were put up, Saint Bernard was long +dead, and Saint Michael had yielded his place to the Virgin. This +apse is all for her. At its entrance she sat, on either side, in the +Belle-Verriere or as Our Lady of the Pillar, to receive the secrets +and the prayers of suppliants who wished to address her directly in +person; there she bent down to our level, resumed her humanity, and +felt our griefs and passions. Within, where the cross-lights fell +through the wide columned space behind the high altar, was her +withdrawing room, where the decorator and builder thought only of +pleasing her. The very faults of the architecture and effeminacy of +taste witness the artists' object. If the glassworkers had thought +of themselves or of the public or even of the priests, they would +have strained for effects, strong masses of colour, and striking +subjects to impress the imagination. Nothing of the sort is even +suggested. The great, awe-inspiring mosaic figure of the Byzantine +half-dome was a splendid religious effect, but this artist had in +his mind an altogether different thought. He was in the Virgin's +employ; he was decorating her own chamber in her own palace; he +wanted to please her; and he knew her tastes, even when she did not +give him her personal orders. To him, a dream would have been an +order. The salary of the twelfth-century artist was out of all +relation with the percentage of a twentieth-century decorator. The +artist of 1200 was probably the last who cared little for the baron, +not very much for the priest, and nothing for the public, unless he +happened to be paid by the guild, and then he cared just to the +extent of his hire, or, if he was himself a priest, not even for +that. His pay was mostly of a different kind, and was the same as +that of the peasants who were hauling the stone from the quarry at +Bercheres while he was firing his ovens. His reward was to come when +he should be promoted to decorate the Queen of Heaven's palace in +the New Jerusalem, and he served a mistress who knew better than he +did what work was good and what was bad, and how to give him his +right place. Mary's taste was infallible; her knowledge like her +power had no limits; she knew men's thoughts as well as acts, and +could not be deceived. Probably, even in our own time, an artist +might find his imagination considerably stimulated and his work +powerfully improved if he knew that anything short of his best would +bring him to the gallows, with or without trial by jury; but in the +twelfth century the gallows was a trifle; the Queen hardly +considered it a punishment for an offence to her dignity. The artist +was vividly aware that Mary disposed of hell. + +All this is written in full, on every stone and window of this apse, +as legible as the legends to any one who cares to read. The artists +were doing their best, not to please a swarm of flat-eared peasants +or slow-witted barons, but to satisfy Mary, the Queen of Heaven, to +whom the Kings and Queens of France were coming constantly for help, +and whose absolute power was almost the only restraint recognized by +Emperor, Pope, and clown. The colour-decoration is hers, and hers +alone. For her the lights are subdued, the tones softened, the +subjects selected, the feminine taste preserved. That other great +ladies interested themselves in the matter, even down to its +technical refinements, is more than likely; indeed, in the central +apside chapel, suggesting the Auxerre grisaille that Viollet-le-Duc +mentioned, is a grisaille which bears the arms of Castile and Queen +Blanche; further on, three other grisailles bear also the famous +castles, but this is by no means the strongest proof of feminine +taste. The difficulty would be rather to find a touch of certainly +masculine taste in the whole apse. + +Since the central apside chapel is the most important, we can begin +with the windows there, bearing in mind that the subject of the +central window was the Life of Christ, dictated by rule or custom. +On Christ's left hand is the window of Saint Peter; next him is +Saint Paul. All are much restored; thirty-three of the medallions +are wholly new. Opposite Saint Peter, at Christ's right hand, is the +window of Saint Simon and Saint Jude; and next is the grisaille with +the arms of Castile. If these windows were ordered between 1205 and +1210, Blanche, who was born in 1187, and married in 1200, would have +been a young princess of twenty or twenty-five when she gave this +window in grisaille to regulate and harmonize and soften the +lighting of the Virgin's boudoir. The central chapel must be taken +to be the most serious, the most studied, and the oldest of the +chapels in the church, above the crypt. The windows here should rank +in importance next to the lancets of the west front which are only +about sixty years earlier. They show fully that difference. + +Here one must see for one's self. Few artists know much about it, +and still fewer care for an art which has been quite dead these four +hundred years. The ruins of Nippur would hardly be more intelligible +to the ordinary architect of English tradition than these twelfth- +century efforts of the builders of Chartres. Even the learning of +Viollet-le-Duc was at fault in dealing with a building so personal +as this, the history of which is almost wholly lost. This central +chapel must have been meant to give tone to the apse, and it shows +with the colour-decoration of a queen's salon, a subject-decoration +too serious for the amusement of heretics. One sees at a glance that +the subject-decoration was inspired by church-custom, while colour +was an experiment and the decorators of this enormous window space +were at liberty as colourists to please the Countess of Chartres and +the Princess Blanche and the Duchess of Brittany, without much +regarding the opinions of the late Bernard of Clairvaux or even +Augustine of Hippo, since the great ladies of the Court knew better +than the Saints what would suit the Virgin. + +The subject of the central window was prescribed by tradition. +Christ is the Church, and in this church he and his Mother are one; +therefore the life of Christ is the subject of the central window, +but the treatment is the Virgin's, as the colours show, and as the +absence of every influence but hers, including the Crucifixion, +proves officially. Saint Peter and Saint Paul are in their proper +place as the two great ministers of the throne who represent the two +great parties in western religion, the Jewish and the Gentile. +Opposite them, balancing by their family influence the weight of +delegated power, are two of Mary's nephews, Simon and Jude; but this +subject branches off again into matters so personal to Mary that +Simon and Jude require closer acquaintance. One must study a new +guidebook--the "Golden Legend," by the blessed James, Bishop of +Genoa and member of the order of Dominic, who was born at Varazze or +Voragio in almost the same year that Thomas was born at Aquino, and +whose "Legenda Aurea," written about the middle of the thirteenth +century, was more popular history than the Bible itself, and more +generally consulted as authority. The decorators of the thirteenth +century got their motives quite outside the Bible, in sources that +James of Genoa compiled into a volume almost as fascinating as the +"Fioretti of Saint Francis." + +According to the "Golden Legend" and the tradition accepted in +Jerusalem by pilgrims and crusaders, Mary's family connection was +large. It appears that her mother Anne was three times married, and +by each husband had a daughter Mary, so that there were three Marys, +half-sisters. + +Joachim-Anne- Cleophas- -Salome + +Joseph-Mary Alpheus-Mary Mary-Zebedee + +Christ James Joseph Simon Jude James John +the Minor the the Major the Evangelist +Apostle Just St. Iago of Compostella + +Simon and Jude were, therefore, nephews of Mary and cousins of +Christ, whose lives were evidence of the truth not merely of +Scripture, but specially of the private and family distinction of +their aunt, the Virgin Mother of Christ. They were selected, rather +than their brothers, or cousins James and John, for the conspicuous +honour of standing opposite Peter and Paul, doubtless by reason of +some merit of their own, but perhaps also because in art the two +counted as one, and therefore the one window offered two witnesses, +which allowed the artist to insert a grisaille in place of another +legendary window to complete the chapel on their right. According to +Viollet-le-Duc, the grisaille in this position regulates the light +and so completes the effect. + +If custom prescribed a general rule for the central chapel, it seems +to have left great freedom in the windows near by. At Chartres the +curved projection that contains the next two windows was not a +chapel, but only a window-bay, for the sake of the windows, and, if +the artists aimed at pleasing the Virgin, they would put their best +work there. At Bourges in the same relative place are three of the +best windows in the building:--the Prodigal Son, the New Alliance +and the Good Samaritan; all of them full of life, story, and colour, +with little reference to a worship or a saint. At Chartres the +choice is still more striking, and the windows are also the best in +the building, after the twelfth-century glass of the west front. The +first, which comes next to Blanche's grisaille in the central +chapel, is given to another nephew of Mary and apostle of Christ, +Saint James the Major, whose life is recorded in the proper Bible +Dictionaries, with a terminal remark as follows:-- + +For legends respecting his death and his connections with Spain, see +the Roman Breviary, in which the healing of a paralytic and the +conversion of Hermogenes are attributed to him, and where it is +asserted that he preached the Gospel in Spain, and that his remains +were translated to Compostella ... As there is no shadow of +foundation for any of the legends here referred to, we pass them by +without further notice. Even Baronius shows himself ashamed of +them.... + +If the learned Baronius thought himself required to show shame for +all the legends that pass as history, he must have suffered cruelly +during his laborious life, and his sufferings would not have been +confined to the annals of the Church; but the historical accuracy of +the glass windows is not our affair, nor are historians especially +concerned in the events of the Virgin's life, whether recorded or +legendary. Religion is, or ought to be, a feeling, and the +thirteenth-century windows are original documents, much more +historical than any recorded in the Bible, since their inspiration +is a different thing from their authority. The true life of Saint +James or Saint Jude or any other of the apostles, did not, in the +opinion of the ladies in the Court of France, furnish subjects +agreeable enough to decorate the palace of the Queen of Heaven; and +that they were right, any one must feel, who compares these two +windows with subjects of dogma. Saint James, better known as +Santiago of Compostella, was a compliment to the young Dauphine-- +before Dauphines existed--the Princess Blanche of Castile, whose +arms, or castles, are on the grisaille window next to it. Perhaps +she chose him to stand there. Certainly her hand is seen plainly +enough throughout the church to warrant suspecting it here. As a +nephew, Saint James was dear to the Virgin, but, as a friend to +Spain, still more dear to Blanche, and it is not likely that pure +accident caused three adjacent windows to take a Spanish tone. + +The Saint James in whom the thirteenth century delighted, and whose +windows one sees at Bourges, Tours, and wherever the scallop-shell +tells of the pilgrim, belongs not to the Bible but to the "Golden +Legend." This window was given by the Merchant Tailors whose +signature appears at the bottom, in the corners, in two pictures +that paint the tailor's shop of Chartres in the first quarter of the +thirteenth century. The shop-boy takes cloth from chests for his +master to show to customers, and to measure off by his ell. The +story of Saint James begins in the lower panel, where he receives +his mission from Christ, Above, on the right, he seems to be +preaching. On the left appears a figure which tells the reason for +the popularity of the story. It is Almogenes, or in the Latin, +Hermogenes, a famous magician in great credit among the Pharisees, +who has the command of demons, as you see, for behind his shoulder, +standing, a little demon is perched, while he orders his pupil +Filetus to convert James. Next, James is shown in discussion with a +group of listeners. Filetus gives him a volume of false doctrine. +Almogenes then further instructs Filetus. James is led away by a +rope, curing a paralytic as he goes. He sends his cloak to Filetus +to drive away the demon. Filetus receives the cloak, and the droll +little demon departs in tears. Almogenes, losing his temper, sends +two demons, with horns on their heads and clubs in their hands, to +reason with James; who sends them back to remonstrate with +Almogenes. The demons then bind Almogenes and bring him before +James, who discusses differences with him until Almogenes burns his +books of magic and prostrates himself before the Saint. Both are +then brought before Herod, and Almogenes breaks a pretty heathen +idol, while James goes to prison. A panel comes in here, out of +place, showing Almogenes enchanting Filetus, and the demon entering +into possession of him. Then Almogenes is seen being very roughly +handled by a young Jew, while the bystanders seem to approve. James +next makes Almogenes throw his books of magic into the sea; both are +led away to execution, curing the infirm on their way; their heads +are cut off; and, at the top, God blesses the orb of the world. + +That this window was intended to amuse the Virgin seems quite as +reasonable an idea as that it should have been made to instruct the +people, or us. Its humour was as humorous then as now, for the +French of the thirteenth century loved humour even in churches, as +their grotesques proclaim. The Saint James window is a tale of +magic, told with the vivacity of a fabliau; but if its motive of +amusement seems still a forced idea, we can pass on, at once, to the +companion window which holds the best position in the church, where, +in the usual cathedral, one expects to find Saint John or some other +apostle; or Saint Joseph; or a doctrinal lesson such as that called +the New Alliance where the Old and New Testaments are united. The +window which the artists have set up here is regarded as the best of +the thirteenth-century windows, and is the least religious. + +The subject is nothing less than the "Chanson de Roland" in pictures +of coloured glass, set in a border worth comparing at leisure with +the twelfth-century borders of the western lancets. Even at +Chartres, the artists could not risk displeasing the Virgin and the +Church by following a wholly profane work like the "Chanson" itself, +and Roland had no place in religion. He could be introduced only +through Charlemagne, who had almost as little right there as he. The +twelfth century had made persistent efforts to get Charlemagne into +the Church, and the Church had made very little effort to keep him +out; yet by the year 1200, Charlemagne had not been sainted except +by the anti-Pope Pascal III in 1165, although there was a popular +belief, supported in Spain by the necessary documents, that Pope +Calixtus II in 1122 had declared the so-called Chronicle of +Archbishop Turpin to be authentic. The Bishop of Chartres in 1200 +was very much too enlightened a prelate to accept the Chronicle or +Turpin or Charlemagne himself, still less Roland and Thierry, as +authentic in sanctity; but if the young and beautiful Dauphine of +France, and her cousins of Chartres, and their artists, warmly +believed that the Virgin would be pleased by the story of +Charlemagne and Roland, the Bishop might have let them have their +way in spite of the irregularity. That the window was an +irregularity, is plain; that it has always been immensely admired, +is certain; and that Bishop Renaud must have given his assent to it, +is not to be denied. + +The most elaborate account of this window can be found in Male's +"Art Religieux" (pp. 444-50). Its feeling or motive is quite another +matter, as it is with the statuary on the north porch. The Furriers +or Fur Merchants paid for the Charlemagne window, and their +signature stands at the bottom, where a merchant shows a fur-lined +cloak to his customer. That Mary was personally interested in furs, +no authority seems to affirm, but that Blanche and Isabel and every +lady of the Court, as well as every king and every count, in that +day, took keen interest in the subject, is proved by the prices they +paid, and the quantities they wore. Not even the Merchant Tailors +had a better standing at Court than the Furriers, which may account +for their standing so near the Virgin. Whatever the cause, the +Furriers were allowed to put their signature here, side by side with +the Tailors, and next to the Princess Blanche. Their gift warranted +it. Above the signature, in the first panel, the Emperor Constantine +is seen, asleep, in Constantinople, on an elaborate bed, while an +angel is giving him the order to seek aid from Charlemagne against +the Saracens. Charlemagne appears, in full armour of the year 1200, +on horseback. Then Charlemagne, sainted, wearing his halo, converses +with two bishops on the subject of a crusade for the rescue of +Constantine. In the next scene, he arrives at the gates of +Constantinople where Constantine receives him. The fifth picture is +most interesting; Charlemagne has advanced with his knights and +attacks the Saracens; the Franks wear coats-of-mail, and carry long, +pointed shields; the infidels carry round shields; Charlemagne, +wearing a crown, strikes off with one blow of his sword the head of +a Saracen emir; but the battle is desperate; the chargers are at +full gallop, and a Saracen is striking at Charlemagne with his +battle-axe. After the victory has been won, the Emperor Constantine +rewards Charlemagne by the priceless gift of three chasses or +reliquaries, containing a piece of the true Cross; the Suaire or +grave-cloth of the Saviour; and a tunic of the Virgin. Charlemagne +then returns to France, and in the next medallion presents the three +chasses and the crown of the Saracen king to the church at Aix, +which to a French audience meant the Abbey of Saint-Denis. This +scene closes the first volume of the story. + +The second part opens on Charlemagne, seated between two persons, +looking up to heaven at the Milky Way, called then the Way of Saint +James, which directs him to the grave of Saint James in Spain. Saint +James himself appears to Charlemagne in a dream, and orders him to +redeem the tomb from the infidels. Then Charlemagne sets out, with +Archbishop Turpin of Rheims and knights. In presence of his army he +dismounts and implores the aid of God. Then he arrives before +Pampeluna and transfixes with his lance the Saracen chief as he +flies into the city. Mounted, he directs workmen to construct a +church in honour of Saint James; a little cloud figures the hand of +God. Next is shown the miracle of the lances; stuck in the ground at +night, they are found in the morning to have burst into foliage, +prefiguring martyrdom. Two thousand people perish in battle. Then +begins the story of Roland which the artists and donors are so eager +to tell, knowing, as they do, that what has so deeply interested men +and women on earth, must interest Mary who loves them. You see +Archbishop Turpin celebrating mass when an angel appears, to warn +him of Roland's fate. Then Roland himself, also wearing a halo, is +introduced, in the act of killing the giant Ferragus. The combat of +Roland and Ferragus is at the top, out of sequence, as often happens +in the legendary windows. Charlemagne and his army are seen marching +homeward through the Pyrenees, while Roland winds his horn and +splits the rock without being able to break Durendal. Thierry, +likewise sainted, brings water to Roland in a helmet. At last +Thierry announces Roland's death. At the top, on either side of +Roland and Ferragus, is an angel with incense. + +The execution of this window is said to be superb. Of the colour, +and its relations with that of the Saint James, one needs time and +long acquaintance to learn the value. In the feeling, compared with +that of the twelfth century, one needs no time in order to see a +change. These two windows are as French and as modern as a picture +of Lancret; they are pure art, as simply decorative as the +decorations of the Grand Opera. The thirteenth century knew more +about religion and decoration than the twentieth century will ever +learn. The windows were neither symbolic nor mystical, nor more +religious than they pretended to be. That they are more intelligent +or more costly or more effective is nothing to the purpose, so long +as one grants that the combat of Roland and Ferragus, or Roland +winding his olifant, or Charlemagne cutting off heads and +transfixing Moors, were subjects never intended to teach religion or +instruct the ignorant, but to please the Queen of Heaven as they +pleased the queens of earth with a roman, not in verse but in +colour, as near as possible to decorative perfection. Instinctively +one looks to the corresponding bay, opposite, to see what the +artists could have done to balance these two great efforts of their +art; but the bay opposite is now occupied by the entrance to Saint +Piat's chapel and one does not know what changes may have been made +in the fourteenth century to rearrange the glass; yet, even as it +now stands, the Sylvester window which corresponds to the +Charlemagne is, as glass, the strongest in the whole cathedral. In +the next chapel, on our left, come the martyrs, with Saint Stephen, +the first martyr, in the middle window. Naturally the subject is +more serious, but the colour is not differently treated. A step +further, and you see the artists returning to their lighter +subjects. The stories of Saint Julian and Saint Thomas are more +amusing than the plots of half the thirteenth-century romances, and +not very much more religious. The subject of Saint Thomas is a +pendant to that of Saint James, for Saint Thomas was a great +traveller and an architect, who carried Mary's worship to India as +Saint James carried it to Spain. Here is the amusement of many days +in studying the stories, the colour and the execution of these +windows, with the help of the "Monographs" of Chartres and Bourges +or the "Golden Legend" and occasional visits to Le Mans, Tours, +Clermont Ferrand, and other cathedrals; but, in passing, one has to +note that the window of Saint Thomas was given by France, and bears +the royal arms, perhaps for Philip Augustus the King; while the +window of Saint Julian was given by the Carpenters and Coopers. One +feels no need to explain how it happens that the taste of the royal +family, and of their tailors, furriers, carpenters, and coopers, +should fit so marvellously, one with another, and with that of the +Virgin; but one can compare with theirs the taste of the Stone- +workers opposite, in the window of Saint Sylvester and Saint +Melchiades, whose blues almost kill the Charlemagne itself, and of +the Tanners in that of Saint Thomas of Canterbury; or, in the last +chapel on the south side, with that of the Shoemakers in the window +to Saint Martin, attributed for some reason to a certain Clemens +vitrearius Carnutensis, whose name is on a window in the cathedral +of Rouen. The name tells nothing, even if the identity could be +proved. Clement the glassmaker may have worked on his own account, +or for others; the glass differs only in refinements of taste or +perhaps of cost. Nicolas Lescine, the canon, or Geoffroi Chardonnel, +may have been less rich than the Bakers, and even the Furriers may +have not had the revenues of the King; but some controlling hand has +given more or less identical taste to all. + +What one can least explain is the reason why some windows, that +should be here, are elsewhere. In most churches, one finds in the +choir a window of doctrine, such as the so-called New Alliance, but +here the New Alliance is banished to the nave. Besides the costly +Charlemagne and Saint James windows in the apse, the Furriers and +Drapers gave several others, and one of these seems particularly +suited to serve as companion to Saint Thomas, Saint James, and Saint +Julian, so that it is best taken with these while comparing them. It +is in the nave, the third window from the new tower, in the north +aisle,--the window of Saint Eustace. The story and treatment and +beauty of the work would have warranted making it a pendant to +Almogenes, in the bay now serving as the door to Saint Piat's +chapel, which should have been the most effective of all the +positions in the church for a legendary story. Saint Eustace, whose +name was Placidas, commanded the guards of the Emperor Trajan. One +day he went out hunting with huntsmen and hounds, as the legend in +the lower panel of the window begins; a pretty picture of a stag +hunt about the year 1200; followed by one still prettier, where the +stag, after leaping upon a rock, has turned, and shows a crucifix +between his horns, the stag on one side balancing the horse on the +other, while Placidas on his knees yields to the miracle of Christ. +Then Placidas is baptized as Eustace; and in the centre, you see him +with his wife and two children--another charming composition-- +leaving the city. Four small panels in the corners are said to +contain the signatures of the Drapers and Furriers. Above, the story +of adventure goes on, showing Eustace bargaining with a shipmaster +for his passage; his embarcation with wife and children, and their +arrival at some shore, where the two children have landed, and the +master drives Eustace after them while he detains the wife. Four +small panels here have not been identified, but the legend was no +doubt familiar to the Middle Ages, and they knew how Eustace and the +children came to a river, where you can see a pink lion carrying off +one child, while a wolf, which has seized the other, is attacked by +shepherds and dogs. The children are rescued, and the wife +reappears, on her knees before her lord, telling of her escape from +the shipmaster, while the children stand behind; and then the +reunited family, restored to the Emperor's favour, is seen feasting +and happy. At last Eustace refuses to offer a sacrifice to a +graceful antique idol, and is then shut up, with all his family, in +a brazen bull; a fire is kindled beneath it; and, from above, a hand +confers the crown of martyrdom. + +Another subject, which should have been placed in the apse, stands +in a singular isolation which has struck many of the students in +this branch of church learning. At Sens, Saint Eustace is in the +choir, and by his side is the Prodigal Son. At Bourges also the +Prodigal Son is in the choir. At Chartres, he is banished to the +north transept, where you will find him in the window next the nave, +almost as though he were in disgrace; yet the glass is said to be +very fine, among the best in the church, while the story is told +with rather more vivacity than usual; and as far as colour and +execution go, the window has an air of age and quality higher than +the average. At the bottom you see the signature of the corporation +of Butchers. The window at Bourges was given by the Tanners. The +story begins with the picture showing the younger son asking the +father for his share of the inheritance, which he receives in the +next panel, and proceeds, on horseback, to spend, as one cannot help +suspecting, at Paris, in the Latin Quarter, where he is seen +arriving, welcomed by two ladies. No one has offered to explain why +Chartres should consider two ladies theologically more correct than +one; or why Sens should fix on three, or why Bourges should require +six. Perhaps this was left to the artist's fancy; but, before +quitting the twelfth century, we shall see that the usual young man +who took his share of patrimony and went up to study in the Latin +Quarter, found two schools of scholastic teaching, one called +Realism, the other Nominalism, each of which in turn the Church had +been obliged to condemn. Meanwhile the Prodigal Son is seen feasting +with them, and is crowned with flowers, like a new Abelard, singing +his songs to Heloise, until his religious capital is exhausted, and +he is dragged out of bed, to be driven naked from the house with +sticks, in this also I resembling Abelard. At Bourges he is gently +turned out; at Sens he is dragged away by three devils. Then he +seeks service, and is seen knocking acorns from boughs, to feed his +employer's swine; but, among the thousands of young men who must +have come here directly from the schools, nine in every ten said +that he was teaching letters to his employer's children or lecturing +to the students of the Latin Quarter. At last he decides to return +to his father,--possibly the Archbishop of Paris or the Abbot of +Saint-Denis,--who receives him with open arms, and gives him a new +robe, which to the ribald student would mean a church living--an +abbey, perhaps Saint Gildas-de-Rhuys in Brittany, or elsewhere. The +fatted calf is killed, the feast is begun, and the elder son, whom +the malicious student would name Bernard, appears in order to make +protest. Above, God, on His throne, blesses the globe of the world. + +The original symbol of the Prodigal Son was a rather different form +of prodigality. According to the Church interpretation, the Father +had two sons; the older was the people of the Jews; the younger, the +Gentiles. The Father divided his substance between them, giving to +the older the divine law, to the younger, the law of nature. The +younger went off and dissipated his substance, as one must believe, +on Aristotle; but repented and returned when the Father sacrificed +the victim--Christ--as the symbol of reunion. That the Synagogue +also accepts the sacrifice is not so clear; but the Church clung to +the idea of converting the Synagogue as a necessary proof of +Christ's divine character. Not until about the time when this window +may have been made, did the new Church, under the influence of Saint +Dominic, abandon the Jews and turn in despair to the Gentiles alone. + +The old symbolism belonged to the fourth and fifth centuries, and, +as told by the Jesuit fathers Martin and Cahier in their "Monograph" +of Bourges, it should have pleased the Virgin who was particularly +loved by the young, and habitually showed her attachment to them. At +Bourges the window stands next the central chapel of the apse, where +at Chartres is the entrance to Saint Piat's chapel; but Bourges did +not belong to Notre Dame, nor did Sens. The story of the prodigal +sons of these years from 1200 to 1230 lends the window a little +personal interest that the Prodigal Son of Saint Luke's Gospel could +hardly have had even to thirteenth-century penitents. Neither the +Church nor the Crown loved prodigal sons. So far from killing fatted +calves for them, the bishops in 1209 burned no less than ten in +Paris for too great intimacy with Arab and Jew disciples of +Aristotle. The position of the Bishop of Chartres between the +schools had been always awkward. As for Blanche of Castile, her +first son, afterwards Saint Louis, was born in 1215; and after that +time no Prodigal Son was likely to be welcomed in any society which +she frequented. For her, above all other women on earth or in +heaven, prodigal sons felt most antipathy, until, in 1229, the +quarrel became so violent that she turned her police on them and +beat a number to death in the streets. They retaliated without +regard for loyalty or decency, being far from model youth and prone +to relapses from virtue, even when forgiven and beneficed. + +The Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, showed no prejudice against +prodigal sons, or even prodigal daughters. She would hardly, of her +own accord, have ordered such persons out of her apse, when Saint +Stephen at Bourges and Sens showed no such puritanism; yet the +Chartres window is put away in the north transept. Even there it +still stands opposite the Virgin of the Pillar, on the women's and +Queen Blanche's side of the church, and in an excellent position, +better seen from the choir than some of the windows in the choir +itself, because the late summer sun shines full upon it, and carries +its colours far into the apse. This may have been one of the many +instances of tastes in the Virgin which were almost too imperial for +her official court. Omniscient as Mary was, she knew no difference +between the Blanches of Castile and the students of the Latin +Quarter. She was rather fond of prodigals, and gentle toward the +ladies who consumed the prodigal's substance. She admitted Mary +Magdalen and Mary the Gipsy to her society. She fretted little about +Aristotle so long as the prodigal adored her, and naturally the +prodigal adored her almost to the exclusion of the Trinity. She +always cared less for her dignity than was to be wished. Especially +in the nave and on the porch, among the peasants, she liked to +appear as one of themselves; she insisted on lying in bed, in a +stable, with the cows and asses about her, and her baby in a cradle +by the bedside, as though she had suffered like other women, though +the Church insisted she had not. Her husband, Saint Joseph, was +notoriously uncomfortable in her Court, and always preferred to get +as near to the door as he could. The choir at Chartres, on the +contrary, was aristocratic; every window there had a court quality, +even down to the contemporary Thomas a'Becket, the fashionable +martyr of good society. Theology was put into the transepts or still +further away in the nave where the window of the New Alliance elbows +the Prodigal Son. Even to Blanche of Castile, Mary was neither a +philanthropist nor theologist nor merely a mother,--she was an +absolute Empress, and whatever she said was obeyed, but sometimes +she seems to have willed an order that worried some of her most +powerful servants. + +Mary chose to put her Prodigal into the transept, and one would like +to know the reason. Was it a concession to the Bishop or the Queen? +Or was it to please the common people that these familiar picture- +books, with their popular interest, like the Good Samaritan and the +Prodigal Son, were put on the walls of the great public hall? This +can hardly be, since the people would surely have preferred the +Charlemagne and Saint James to any other. We shall never know; but +sitting here in the subdued afternoon light of the apse, one goes on +for hours reading the open volumes of colour, and listening to the +steady discussion by the architects, artists, priests, princes, and +princesses of the thirteenth century about the arrangements of this +apse. However strong-willed they might be, each in turn whether +priest, or noble, or glassworker, would have certainly appealed to +the Virgin and one can imagine the architect still beside us, in the +growing dusk of evening, mentally praying, as he looked at the work +of a finished day: "Lady Virgin, show me what you like best! The +central chapel is correct, I know. The Lady Blanche's grisaille +veils the rather strong blue tone nicely, and I am confident it will +suit you. The Charlemagne window seems to me very successful, but +the Bishop feels not at all easy about it, and I should never have +dared put it here if the Lady Blanche had not insisted on a Spanish +bay. To balance at once both the subjects and the colour, we have +tried the Stephen window in the next chapel, with more red; but if +Saint Stephen is not good enough to satisfy you, we have tried again +with Saint Julian, whose story is really worth telling you as we +tell it; and with him we have put Saint Thomas because you loved him +and gave him your girdle. I do not myself care so very much for +Saint Thomas of Canterbury opposite, though the Count is wild about +it, and the Bishop wants it; but the Sylvester is stupendous in the +morning sun. What troubles me most is the first right-hand bay. The +princesses would not have let me put the Prodigal Son there, even if +it were made for the place. I've nothing else good enough to balance +the Charlemagne unless it be the Eustace. Gracious Lady, what ought +I to do? Forgive me my blunders, my stupidity, my wretched want of +taste and feeling! I love and adore you! All that I am, I am for +you! If I cannot please you, I care not for Heaven! but without your +help, I am lost!" + +Upon my word, you may sit here forever imagining such appeals, and +the endless discussions and criticisms that were heard every day, +under these vaults, seven hundred years ago. That the Virgin +answered the questions is my firm belief, just as it is my +conviction that she did not answer them elsewhere. One sees her +personal presence on every side. Any one can feel it who will only +consent to feel like a child. Sitting here any Sunday afternoon, +while the voices of the children of the maitrise are chanting in the +choir,--your mind held in the grasp of the strong lines and shadows +of the architecture; your eyes flooded with the autumn tones of the +glass; your ears drowned with the purity of the voices; one sense +reacting upon another until sensation reaches the limit of its +range,--you, or any other lost soul, could, if you cared to look and +listen, feel a sense beyond the human ready to reveal a sense divine +that would make that world once more intelligible, and would bring +the Virgin to life again, in all the depths of feeling which she +shows here,--in lines, vaults, chapels, colours, legends, chants,-- +more eloquent than the prayer-book, and more beautiful than the +autumn sunlight; and any one willing to try could feel it like the +child, reading new thought without end into the art he has studied a +hundred times; but what is still more convincing, he could, at will, +in an instant, shatter the whole art by calling into it a single +motive of his own. + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN + +All artists love the sanctuary of the Christian Church, and all +tourists love the rest. The reason becomes clear as one leaves the +choir, and goes back to the broad, open hall of the nave. The choir +was made not for the pilgrim but for the deity, and is as old as +Adam, or perhaps older; at all events old enough to have existed in +complete artistic and theological form, with the whole mystery of +the Trinity, the Mother and Child, and even the Cross, thousands of +years before Christ was born; but the Christian Church not only took +the sanctuary in hand, and gave it a new form, more beautiful and +much more refined than the Romans or Greeks or Egyptians had ever +imagined, but it also added the idea of the nave and transepts, and +developed it into imperial splendour. The pilgrim-tourist feels at +home in the nave because it was built for him; the artist loves the +sanctuary because he built it for God. + +Chartres was intended to hold ten thousand people easily, or fifteen +thousand when crowded, and the decoration of this great space, +though not a wholly new problem, had to be treated in a new way. +Sancta Sofia was built by the Emperor Justinian, with all the +resources of the Empire, in a single violent effort, in six years, +and was decorated throughout with mosaics on a general scheme, with +the unity that Empire and Church could give, when they acted +together. The Norman Kings of Sicily, the richest princes of the +twelfth century, were able to carry out a complete work of the most +costly kind, in a single sustained effort from beginning to end, +according to a given plan. Chartres was a local shrine, in an +agricultural province, not even a part of the royal domain, and its +cathedral was the work of society, without much more tie than the +Virgin gave it. Socially Chartres, as far as its stone-work goes, +seems to have been mostly rural; its decoration, in the porches and +transepts, is royal and feudal; in the nave and choir it is chiefly +bourgeois. The want of unity is much less surprising than the unity, +but it is still evident, especially in the glass. The mosaics of +Monreale begin and end; they are a series; their connection is +artistic and theological at once; they have unity. The windows of +Chartres have no sequence, and their charm is in variety, in +individuality, and sometimes even in downright hostility to each +other, reflecting the picturesque society that gave them. They have, +too, the charm that the world has made no attempt to popularize them +for its modern uses, so that, except for the useful little guide- +book of the Abbe Clerval, one can see no clue to the legendary +chaos; one has it to one's self, without much fear of being trampled +upon by critics or Jew dealers in works of art; any Chartres beggar- +woman can still pass a summer's day here, and never once be +mortified by ignorance of things that every dealer in bric-a-brac is +supposed to know. + +Yet the artists seem to have begun even here with some idea of +sequence, for the first window in the north aisle, next the new +tower, tells the story of Noah; but the next plunges into the local +history of Chartres, and is devoted to Saint Lubin, a bishop of this +diocese who died in or about the year 556, and was, for some reason, +selected by the Wine-Merchants to represent them, as their +interesting medallions show. Then follow three amusing subjects, +charmingly treated: Saint Eustace, whose story has been told; Joseph +and his brethren; and Saint Nicholas, the most popular saint of the +thirteenth century, both in the Greek and in the Roman Churches. The +sixth and last window on the north aisle of the nave is the New +Alliance. + +Opposite these, in the south aisle, the series begins next the tower +with John the Evangelist, followed by Saint Mary Magdalen, given by +the Water-Carriers. The third, the Good Samaritan, given by the +Shoemakers, has a rival at Sens which critics think even better. The +fourth is the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin. Then +comes the fifteenth-century Chapel of Vendome, to compare the early +and later glass. The sixth is, or was, devoted to the Virgin's +Miracles at Chartres; but only one complete subject remains. + +These windows light the two aisles of the nave and decorate the +lower walls of the church with a mass of colour and variety of line +still practically intact in spite of much injury; but the windows of +the transepts on the same level have almost disappeared, except the +Prodigal Son and a border to what was once a Saint Lawrence, on the +north; and, on the south, part of a window to Saint Apollinaris of +Ravenna, with an interesting hierarchy of angels above:--seraphim +and cherubim with six wings, red and blue; Dominations; Powers; +Principalities; all, except Thrones. + +All this seems to be simple enough, at least to the people for whom +the nave was built, and to whom the windows were meant to speak. +There is nothing esoteric here; nothing but what might have suited +the great hall of a great palace. There is no difference in taste +between the Virgin in the choir, and the Water-Carriers by the +doorway. Blanche, the young Queen, liked the same colours, legends, +and lines that her Grocers and Bakers liked. All equally loved the +Virgin. There was not even a social difference. In the choir, +Thibaut, the Count of Chartres, immediate lord of the province, let +himself be put in a dark corner next the Belle Verriere, and left +the Bakers to display their wealth in the most serious spot in the +church, the central window of the central chapel, while in the nave +and transepts all the lower windows that bear signatures were given +by trades, as though that part of the church were abandoned to the +commons. One might suppose that the feudal aristocracy would have +fortified itself in the clerestory and upper windows, but even there +the bourgeoisie invaded them, and you can see, with a glass, the +Pastrycooks and Turners looking across at the Weavers and Curriers +and Money-Changers, and the "Men of Tours." Beneath the throne of +the Mother of God, there was no distinction of gifts; and above it +the distinction favoured the commonalty. + +Of the seven immense windows above and around the high altar, which +are designed as one composition, none was given by a prince or a +noble. The Drapers, the Butchers, the Bakers, the Bankers are +charged with the highest duties attached to the Virgin's service. +Apparently neither Saint Louis, nor his father Louis VIII, nor his +mother Blanche, nor his uncle Philippe Hurepel, nor his cousin Saint +Ferdinand of Castile, nor his other cousin Pierre de Dreux, nor the +Duchess Alix of Brittany, cared whether their portraits or armorial +shields were thrust out of sight into corners by Pastrycooks and +Teamsters, or took a whole wall of the church to themselves. The +only relation that connects them is their common relation to the +Virgin, but that is emphatic, and dominates the whole. + +It dominates us, too, if we reflect on it, even after seven hundred +years that its meaning has faded. When one looks up to this display +of splendour in the clerestory, and asks what was in the minds of +the people who joined to produce, with such immense effort and at +such self-sacrifice, this astonishing effect, the question seems to +answer itself like an echo. With only half of an atrophied +imagination, in a happy mood we could still see the nave and +transepts filled with ten thousand people on their knees, and the +Virgin, crowned and robed, seating herself on the embroidered +cushion that covered her imperial throne; sparkling with gems; +bearing in her right hand the sceptre, and in her lap the infant +King; but, in the act of seating herself, we should see her pause a +moment to look down with love and sympathy on us,--her people,--who +pack the enormous hall, and throng far out beyond the open portals; +while, an instant later, she glances up to see that her great lords, +spiritual and temporal, the advisers of her judgment, the supports +of her authority, the agents of her will, shall be in place; robed, +mitred, armed; bearing the symbols of her authority and their +office; on horseback, lance in hand; all of them ready at a sign to +carry out a sentence of judgment or an errand of mercy; to touch +with the sceptre or to strike with the sword; and never err. + +There they still stand! unchanged, unfaded, as alive and complete as +when they represented the real world, and the people below were the +unreal and ephemeral pageant! Then the reality was the Queen of +Heaven on her throne in the sanctuary, and her court in the glass; +not the queens or princes who were prostrating themselves, with the +crowd, at her feet. These people knew the Virgin as well as they +knew their own mothers; every jewel in her crown, every stitch of +gold-embroidery in her many robes; every colour; every fold; every +expression on the perfectly familiar features of her grave, imperial +face; every care that lurked in the silent sadness of her power; +repeated over and over again, in stone, glass, ivory, enamel, wood; +in every room, at the head of every bed, hanging on every neck, +standing at every street-corner, the Virgin was as familiar to every +one of them as the sun or the seasons; far more familiar than their +own earthly queen or countess, although these were no strangers in +their daily life; familiar from the earliest childhood to the last +agony; in every joy and every sorrow and every danger; in every act +and almost in every thought of life, the Virgin was present with a +reality that never belonged to her Son or to the Trinity, and hardly +to any earthly being, prelate, king, or kaiser; her daily life was +as real to them as their own loyalty which brought to her the best +they had to offer as the return for her boundless sympathy; but +while they knew the Virgin as though she were one of themselves, and +because she had been one of themselves, they were not so familiar +with all the officers of her court at Chartres; and pilgrims from +abroad, like us, must always have looked with curious interest at +the pageant. + +Far down the nave, next the western towers, the rank began with +saints, prophets, and martyrs, of all ages and countries; local, +like Saint Lubin; national, like Saint Martin of Tours and Saint +Hilary of Poitiers; popular like Saint Nicholas; militant like Saint +George; without order; symbols like Abraham and Isaac; the Virgin +herself, holding on her lap the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost; +Christ with the Alpha and Omega; Moses and Saint Augustine; Saint +Peter; Saint Mary the Egyptian; Saint Jerome; a whole throne-room of +heavenly powers, repeating, within, the pageant carved on the +porches and on the portals without. From the croisee in the centre, +where the crowd is most dense, one sees the whole almost better than +Mary sees it from her high altar, for there all the great rose +windows flash in turn, and the three twelfth-century lancets glow on +the western sun. When the eyes of the throng are directed to the +north, the Rose of France strikes them almost with a physical shock +of colour, and, from the south, the Rose of Dreux challenges the +Rose of France. + +Every one knows that there is war between the two! The thirteenth +century has few secrets. There are no outsiders. We are one family +as we are one Church. Every man and woman here, from Mary on her +throne to the beggar on the porch, knows that Pierre de Dreux +detests Blanche of Castile, and that their two windows carry on war +across the very heart of the cathedral. Both unite only in asking +help from Mary; but Blanche is a woman, alone in the world with +young children to protect, and most women incline strongly to +suspect that Mary will never desert her. Pierre, with all his +masculine strength, is no courtier. He wants to rule by force. He +carries the assertion of his sex into the very presence of the Queen +of Heaven. + +The year happens to be 1230, when the roses may be supposed just +finished and showing their whole splendour for the first time. Queen +Blanche is forty-three years old, and her son Louis is fifteen. +Blanche is a widow these four years, and Pierre a widower since +1221. Both are regents and guardians for their heirs. They have +necessarily carried their disputes before Mary. Queen Blanche claims +for her son, who is to be Saint Louis, the place of honour at Mary's +right hand; she has taken possession of the north porch outside, and +of the north transept within, and has filled the windows with glass, +as she is filling the porch with statuary. Above is the huge rose; +below are five long windows; and all proclaim the homage that France +renders to the Queen of Heaven. + +The Rose of France shows in its centre the Virgin in her majesty, +seated, crowned, holding the sceptre with her right hand, while her +left supports the infant Christ-King on her knees; which shows that +she, too, is acting as regent for her Son. Round her, in a circle, +are twelve medallions; four containing doves; four six-winged angels +or Thrones; four angels of a lower order, but all symbolizing the +gifts and endowments of the Queen of Heaven. Outside these are +twelve more medallions with the Kings of Judah, and a third circle +contains the twelve lesser prophets. So Mary sits, hedged in by all +the divinity that graces earthly or heavenly kings; while between +the two outer circles are twelve quatrefoils bearing on a blue +ground the golden lilies of France; and in each angle below the rose +are four openings, showing alternately the lilies of Louis and the +castles of Blanche. We who are below, the common people, understand +that France claims to protect and defend the Virgin of Chartres, as +her chief vassal, and that this ostentatious profusion of lilies and +castles is intended not in honour of France, but as a demonstration +of loyalty to Notre Dame, and an assertion of her rights as Queen +Regent of Heaven against all comers, but particularly against +Pierre, the rebel, who has the audacity to assert rival rights in +the opposite transept. + +Beneath the rose are five long windows, very unlike the twelfth- +century pendants to the western rose. These five windows blaze with +red, and their splendour throws the Virgin above quite into the +background. The artists, who felt that the twelfth-century glass was +too fine and too delicate for the new scale of the church, have not +only enlarged their scale and coarsened their design, but have +coarsened their colour-scheme also, discarding blue in order to +crush us under the earthly majesty of red. These windows, too, bear +the stamp and seal of Blanche's Spanish temper as energetically as +though they bore her portrait. The great central figure, the tallest +and most commanding in the whole church, is not the Virgin, but her +mother Saint Anne, standing erect as on the trumeau of the door +beneath, and holding the infant Mary on her left arm. She wears no +royal crown, but bears a flowered sceptre. The only other difference +between Mary and her mother, that seems intended to strike +attention, is that Mary sits, while her mother stands; but as though +to proclaim still more distinctly that France supports the royal and +divine pretensions of Saint Anne, Queen Blanche has put beneath the +figure a great shield blazoned with the golden lilies on an azure +ground. + +With singular insistence on this motive, Saint Anne has at either +hand a royal court of her own, marked as her own by containing only +figures from the Old Testament. Standing next on her right is +Solomon, her Prime Minister, bringing wisdom in worldly counsel, and +trampling on human folly. Beyond Wisdom stands Law, figured by Aaron +with the Book, trampling on the lawless Pharaoh. Opposite them, on +Saint Anne's left, is David, the energy of State, trampling on a +Saul suggesting suspicions of a Saul de Dreux; while last, +Melchisedec who is Faith, tramples on a disobedient Nebuchadnezzar +Mauclerc. + +How can we, the common people, help seeing all this, and much more, +when we know that Pierre de Dreux has been for years in constant +strife with the Crown and the Church? He is very valiant and lion- +hearted;--so say the chroniclers, priests though they are;--very +skilful and experienced in war whether by land or sea; very adroit, +with more sense than any other great lord in France; but restless, +factious, and regardless of his word. Brave and bold as the day; +full of courtesy and "largesse"; but very hard on the clergy; a good +Christian but a bad churchman! Certainly the first man of his time, +says Michelet! "I have never found any that sought to do me more ill +than he," says Blanche, and Joinville gives her very words; indeed, +this year, 1230, she has summoned our own Bishop of Chartres among +others to Paris in a court of peers, where Pierre has been found +guilty of treason and deposed. War still continues, but Pierre must +make submission. Blanche has beaten him in politics and in the +field! Let us look round and see how he fares in theology and art! + +There is his rose--so beautiful that Blanche may well think it seeks +to do hers ill! As colour, judge for yourselves whether it holds its +own against the flaming self-assertion of the opposite wall! As +subject, it asserts flat defiance of the monarchy of Queen Blanche. +In the central circle, Christ as King is seated on a royal throne, +both arms raised, one holding the golden cup of eternal priesthood, +the other, blessing the world. Two great flambeaux burn beside Him. +The four Apocalyptic figures surround and worship Him; and in the +concentric circles round the central medallion are the angels and +the kings in a blaze of colour, symbolizing the New Jerusalem. + +All the force of the Apocalypse is there, and so is some of the +weakness of theology, for, in the five great windows below, Pierre +shows his training in the schools. Four of these windows represent +what is called, for want of a better name, the New Alliance; the +dependence of the New Testament on the Old; but Pierre's choice in +symbols was as masculine as that of Blanche was feminine. In each of +the four windows, a gigantic Evangelist strides the shoulders of a +colossal Prophet. Saint John rides on Ezekiel; Saint Mark bestrides +Daniel; Saint Matthew is on the shoulders of Isaiah; Saint Luke is +carried by Jeremiah. The effect verges on the grotesque. The balance +of Christ's Church seems uncertain. The Evangelists clutch the +Prophets by the hair, and while the synagogue stands firm, the +Church looks small, feeble, and vacillating. The new dispensation +has not the air of mastery either physical or intellectual; the old +gives it all the support it has, and, in the absence of Saint Paul, +both old and new seem little concerned with the sympathies of +Frenchmen. The synagogue is stronger than the Church, but even the +Church is Jew. + +That Pierre could ever have meant this is not to be dreamed; but +when the true scholar gets thoroughly to work, his logic is +remorseless, his art is implacable, and his sense of humour is +blighted. In the rose above, Pierre had asserted the exclusive +authority of Christ in the New Jerusalem, and his scheme required +him to show how the Church rested on the Evangelists below, who in +their turn had no visible support except what the Prophets gave +them. Yet the artist may have had a reason for weakening the +Evangelists, because there remained the Virgin! One dares no more +than hint at a motive so disrespectful to the Evangelists; but it is +certainly true that, in the central window, immediately beneath the +Christ, and His chief support, with the four staggering Evangelists +and Prophets on either hand, the Virgin stands, and betrays no sign +of weakness. + +The compliment is singularly masculine; a kind of twelfth-century +flattery that might have softened the anger of Blanche herself, if +the Virgin had been her own; but the Virgin of Dreux is not the +Virgin of France. No doubt she still wears her royal crown, and her +head is circled with the halo; her right hand still holds the +flowered sceptre, and her left the infant Christ, but she stands, +and Christ is King. Note, too, that she stands directly opposite to +her mother Saint Anne in the Rose of France, so as to place her one +stage lower than the Virgin of France in the hierarchy. She is the +Saint Anne of France, and shows it. "She is no longer," says the +official Monograph, "that majestic queen who was seated on a throne, +with her feet on the stool of honour; the personages have become +less imposing and the heads show the decadence." She is the Virgin +of Theology; she has her rights, and no more; but she is not the +Virgin of Chartres. + +She, too, stands on an altar or pedestal, on which hangs a shield +bearing the ermines, an exact counterpart of the royal shield +beneath Saint Anne. In this excessive display of armorial bearings-- +for the two roses above are crowded with them--one likes to think +that these great princes had in their minds not so much the thought +of their own importance--which is a modern sort of religion--as the +thought of their devotion to Mary. The assertion of power and +attachment by one is met by the assertion of equal devotion by the +other, and while both loudly proclaim their homage to the Virgin, +each glares defiance across the church. Pierre meant the Queen of +Heaven to know that, in case of need, her left hand was as good as +her right, and truer; that the ermines were as well able to defend +her as the lilies, and that Brittany would fight her battles as +bravely as France. Whether his meaning carried with it more devotion +to the Virgin or more defiance to France depends a little on the +date of the windows, but, as a mere point of history, every one must +allow that Pierre's promise of allegiance was kept more faithfully +by Brittany than that of Blanche and Saint Louis has been kept by +France. + +The date seems to be fixed by the windows themselves. Beneath the +Prophets kneel Pierre and his wife Alix, while their two children, +Yolande and Jean, stand. Alix died in 1221. Jean was born in 1217. +Yolande was affianced in marriage in 1227, while a child, and given +to Queen Blanche to be brought up as the future wife of her younger +son John, then in his eighth year. When John died, Yolande was +contracted to Thibaut of Champagne in 1231, and Blanche is said to +have written to Thibaut in consequence: "Sire Thibauld of Champagne, +I have heard that you have covenanted and promised to take to wife +the daughter of Count Perron of Brittany. Wherefore I charge you, if +you do not wish to lose whatever you possess in the kingdom of +France, not to do it. If you hold dear or love aught in the said +kingdom, do it not." Whether Blanche wrote in these words or not, +she certainly prevented the marriage, and Yolande remained single +until 1238 when she married the Comte de la Marche, who was, by the +way, almost as bitter an enemy of Blanche as Pierre had been; but by +that time both Blanche and Pierre had ceased to be regents. +Yolande's figure in the window is that of a girl, perhaps twelve or +fourteen years old; Jean is younger, certainly not more than eight +or ten years of age; and the appearance of the two children shows +that the window itself should date between 1225 and 1230, the year +when Pierre de Dreux was condemned because he had renounced his +homage to King Louis, declared war on him, and invited the King of +England into France. As already told, Philippe Hurepel de Boulogne, +the Comte de la Marche, Enguerrand de Couci,--nearly all the great +nobles,--had been leagued with Pierre de Dreux since Blanche's +regency began in 1226. + +That these transept windows harmonize at all, is due to the Virgin, +not to the donors. At the time they were designed, supposing it to +be during Blanche's regency (1226-36), the passions of these donors +brought France to momentary ruin, and the Virgin in Blanche's Rose +de France, as she looked across the church, could not see a single +friend of Blanche. What is more curious, she saw enemies in plenty, +and in full readiness for battle. We have seen in the centre of the +small rose in the north transept, Philippe Hurepel still waiting her +orders; across the nave, in another small rose of the south +transept, sits Pierre de Dreux on his horse. The upper windows on +the side walls of the choir are very interesting but impossible to +see, even with the best glasses, from the floor of the church. Their +sequence and dates have already been discussed; but their feeling is +shown by the character of the Virgin, who in French territory, next +the north transept, is still the Virgin of France, but in Pierre's +territory, next the Rose de Dreux, becomes again the Virgin of +Dreux, who is absorbed in the Child,--not the Child absorbed in +her,--and accordingly the window shows the chequers and ermines. + +The figures, like the stone figures outside, are the earliest of +French art, before any school of painting fairly existed. Among +them, one can see no friend of Blanche. Indeed, outside of her own +immediate family and the Church, Blanche had no friend of much +importance except the famous Thibaut of Champagne, the single member +of the royal family who took her side and suffered for her sake, and +who, as far as books tell, has no window or memorial here. One might +suppose that Thibaut, who loved both Blanche and the Virgin, would +have claimed a place, and perhaps he did; but one seeks him in vain. +If Blanche had friends here, they are gone. Pierre de Dreux, lance +in hand, openly defies her, and it was not on her brother-in-law +Philippe Hurepel that she could depend for defence. + +This is the court pageant of the Virgin that shows itself to the +people who are kneeling at high mass. We, the public, whoever we +are,--Chartrain, Breton, Norman, Angevin, Frenchman, Percherain, or +what not,--know our local politics as intimately as our lords do, or +even better, for our imaginations are active, and we do not love +Blanche of Castile. We know how to read the passions that fill the +church. From the north transept Blanche flames out on us in splendid +reds and flings her Spanish castles in our face. From the south +transept Pierre retorts with a brutal energy which shows itself in +the Prophets who serve as battle-chargers and in the Evangelists who +serve as knights,--mounted warriors of faith,--whose great eyes +follow us across the church and defy Saint Anne and her French +shield opposite. Pierre was not effeminate; Blanche was fairly +masculine. Between them, as a matter of sex, we can see little to +choose; and, in any case, it is a family quarrel; they are all +cousins; they are all equals on earth, and none means to submit to +any superior except the Virgin and her Son in heaven. The Virgin is +not afraid. She has seen many troubles worse than this; she knows +how to manage perverse children, and if necessary she will shut them +up in a darker room than ever their mothers kept open for them in +this world. One has only to look at the Virgin to see! + +There she is, of course, looking down on us from the great window +above the high altar, where we never forget her presence! Is there a +thought of disturbance there? Around the curve of the choir are +seven great windows, without roses, filling the whole semicircle and +the whole vault, forty-seven feet high, and meant to dominate the +nave as far as the western portal, so that we may never forget how +Mary fills her church without being disturbed by quarrels, and may +understand why Saint Ferdinand and Saint Louis creep out of our +sight, close by the Virgin's side, far up above brawls; and why +France and Brittany hide their ugly or their splendid passions at +the ends of the transepts, out of sight of the high altar where Mary +is to sit in state as Queen with the young King on her lap. In an +instant she will come, but we have a moment still to look about at +the last great decoration of her palace, and see how the artists +have arranged it. + +Since the building of Sancta Sofia, no artist has had such a chance. +No doubt, Rheims and Amiens and Bourges and Beauvais, which are now +building, may be even finer, but none of them is yet finished, and +all must take their ideas from here. One would like, before looking +at it, to think over the problem, as though it were new, and so +choose the scheme that would suit us best if the decoration were to +be done for the first time. The architecture is fixed; we have to do +only with the colour of this mass of seven huge windows, forty-seven +feet high, in the clerestory, round the curve of the choir, which +close the vista of the church as viewed from the entrance. This +vista is about three hundred and thirty feet long. The windows rise +above a hundred feet. How ought this vast space to be filled? Should +the perpendicular upward leap of the architecture be followed and +accented by a perpendicular leap of colour? The decorators of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries seem to have thought so, and made +perpendicular architectural drawings in yellow that simulated gold, +and lines that ran with the general lines of the building. Many +fifteenth-century windows seem to be made up of florid Gothic +details rising in stages to the vault. No doubt critics complained, +and still complain, that the monotony of this scheme, and its +cheapness of intelligence, were objections; but at least the effect +was light, decorative, and safe. The artist could not go far wrong +and was still at liberty to do beautiful work, as can be seen in any +number of churches scattered broadcast over Europe and swarming in +Paris and France. On the other hand, might not the artist disregard +the architecture and fill the space with a climax of colour? Could +he not unite the Roses of France and Dreux above the high altar in +an overpowering outburst of purples and reds? The seventeenth +century might have preferred to mass clouds and colours, and Michael +Angelo, in the sixteenth, might have known how to do it. What we +want is not the feeling of the artist so much as the feeling of +Chartres. What shall it be--the jewelled brilliancy of the western +windows, or the fierce self-assertion of Pierre Mauclerc, or the +royal splendour of Queen Blanche, or the feminine grace and +decorative refinement of the Charlemagne and Santiago windows in the +apse? + +Never again in art was so splendid a problem offered, either before +or since, for the artist of Chartres solved it, as he did the whole +matter of fenestration, and later artists could only offer +variations on his work. You will see them at Bourges and Tours and +in scores of thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth +century churches and windows, and perhaps in some of the twentieth +century,--all of them interesting and some of them beautiful,--and +far be it from us, mean and ignorant pilgrims of art, to condemn any +intelligent effort to vary or improve the effect; but we have set +out to seek the feeling, and while we think of art in relation to +ourselves, the sermon of Chartres, from beginning to end, teaches +and preaches and insists and reiterates and hammers into our torpid +minds the moral that the art of the Virgin was not that of her +artists but her own. We inevitably think of our tastes; they thought +instinctively of hers. + +In the transepts, Queen Blanche and Duke Perron, in legal possession +of their territory, showed that they were thinking of each other as +well as of the Virgin, and claimed loudly that they ought each to be +first in the Virgin's favour; and they stand there in place, as the +thirteenth century felt them. Subject to their fealty to Mary, the +transepts belonged to them, and if Blanche did not, like Pierre, +assert Herself and her son on the Virgin's window, perhaps she +thought the Virgin would resent Pierre's boldness the more by +contrast with her own good taste. So far as is known, nowhere does +Blanche appear in person at Chartres; she felt herself too near the +Virgin to obtrude a useless image, or she was too deeply religious +to ask anything for herself. A queen who was to have two children +sainted, to intercede for her at Mary's throne, stood in a solitude +almost as unique as that of Mary, and might ignore the raw +brutalities of a man-at-arms; but neither she nor Pierre has carried +the quarrel into Mary's presence, nor has the Virgin condescended +even to seem conscious of their temper. This is the theme of the +artist--the purity, the beauty, the grace, and the infinite +loftiness of Mary's nature, among the things of earth, and above the +clamour of kings. + +Therefore, when we, and the crushed crowd of kneeling worshippers +around us, lift our eyes at last after the miracle of the mass, we +see, far above the high altar, high over all the agitation of +prayer, the passion of politics, the anguish of suffering, the +terrors of sin, only the figure of the Virgin in majesty, looking +down on her people, crowned, throned, glorified, with the infant +Christ on her knees. She does not assert herself; probably she +intends to be felt rather than feared. Compared with the Greek +Virgin, as you see her, for example, at Torcello, the Chartres +Virgin is retiring and hardly important enough for the place. She is +not exaggerated either in scale, drawing, or colour. She shows not a +sign of self-consciousness, not an effort for brilliancy, not a +trace of stage effect--hardly even a thought of herself, except that +she is at home, among her own people, where she is loved and known +as well as she knows them. The seven great windows are one +composition; and it is plain that the artist, had he been ordered to +make an exhibition of power, could have overwhelmed us with a storm +of purple, red, yellows, or given us a Virgin of Passion who would +have torn the vault asunder; his ability is never in doubt, and if +he has kept true to the spirit of the western portal and the +twelfth-century, it is because the Virgin of Chartres was the Virgin +of Grace, and ordered him to paint her so. One shudders to think how +a single false note--a suggestion of meanness, in this climax of +line and colour--would bring the whole fabric down in ruins on the +eighteenth-century meanness of the choir below; and one notes, +almost bashfully, the expedients of the artists to quiet their +effects. So the lines of the seven windows are built up, to avoid +the horizontal, and yet not exaggerate the vertical. + +The architect counts here for more than the colourist; but the +colour, when you study it, suggests the same restraint. Three great +windows on the Virgin's right, balanced by three more on her left, +show the prophets and precursors of her Son; all architecturally +support and exalt the Virgin, in her celestial atmosphere of blue, +shot with red, calm in the certainty of heaven. Any one who is +prematurely curious to see the difference in treatment between +different centuries should go down to the church of Saint Pierre in +the lower town, and study there the methods of the Renaissance. Then +we can come back to study again the ways of the thirteenth century. +The Virgin will wait; she will not be angry; she knows her power; we +all come back to her in the end. + +Or the Renaissance, if one prefers, can wait equally well, while one +kneels with the thirteenth century, and feels the little one still +can feel of what it felt. Technically these apsidal windows have not +received much notice; the books rarely speak of them; travellers +seldom look at them; and their height is such that even with the +best glass, the quality of the work is beyond our power to judge. We +see, and the artists meant that we should see, only the great lines, +the colour, and the Virgin. The mass of suppliants before the choir +look up to the light, clear blues and reds of this great space, and +feel there the celestial peace and beauty of Mary's nature and +abode. There is heaven! and Mary looks down from it, into her +church, where she sees us on our knees, and knows each one of us by +name. There she actually is--not in symbol or in fancy, but in +person, descending on her errands of mercy and listening to each one +of us, as her miracles prove, or satisfying our prayers merely by +her presence which calms our excitement as that of a mother calms +her child. She is there as Queen, not merely as intercessor, and her +power is such that to her the difference between us earthly beings +is nothing. Her quiet, masculine strength enchants us most. Pierre +Mauclerc and Philippe Hurepel and their men-at-arms are afraid of +her, and the Bishop himself is never quite at his ease in her +presence; but to peasants, and beggars, and people in trouble, this +sense of her power and calm is better than active sympathy. People +who suffer beyond the formulas of expression--who are crushed into +silence, and beyond pain--want no display of emotion--no bleeding +heart--no weeping at the foot of the Cross--no hysterics--no +phrases! They want to see God, and to know that He is watching over +His own. How many women are there, in this mass of thirteenth +century suppliants, who have lost children? Probably nearly all, for +the death rate is very high in the conditions of medieval life. +There are thousands of such women here, for it is precisely this +class who come most; and probably every one of them has looked up to +Mary in her great window, and has felt actual certainty, as though +she saw with her own eyes--there, in heaven, while she looked--her +own lost baby playing with the Christ-Child at the Virgin's knee, as +much at home as the saints, and much more at home than the kings. +Before rising from her knees, every one of these women will have +bent down and kissed the stone pavement in gratitude for Mary's +mercy. The earth, she says, is a sorry place, and the best of it is +bad enough, no doubt, even for Queen Blanche and the Duchess Alix +who has had to leave her children here alone; but there above is +Mary in heaven who sees and hears me as I see her, and who keeps my +little boy till I come; so I can wait with patience, more or less! +Saints and prophets and martyrs are all very well, and Christ is +very sublime and just, but Mary knows! + +It was very childlike, very foolish, very beautiful, and very true,- +-as art, at least:--so true that everything else shades off into +vulgarity, as you see the Persephone of a Syracusan coin shade off +into the vulgarity of a Roman emperor; as though the heaven that +lies about us in our infancy too quickly takes colours that are not +so much sober as sordid, and would be welcome if no worse than that. +Vulgarity, too, has feeling, and its expression in art has truth and +even pathos, but we shall have time enough in our lives for that, +and all the more because, when we rise from our knees now, we have +finished our pilgrimage. We have done with Chartres. For seven +hundred years Chartres has seen pilgrims, coming and going more or +less like us, and will perhaps see them for another seven hundred +years; but we shall see it no more, and can safely leave the Virgin +in her majesty, with her three great prophets on either hand, as +calm and confident in their own strength and in God's providence as +they were when Saint Louis was born, but looking down from a +deserted heaven, into an empty church, on a dead faith. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE THREE QUEENS + +After worshipping at the shrines of Saint Michael on his Mount and +of the Virgin at Chartres, one may wander far and wide over France, +and seldom feel lost; all later Gothic art comes naturally, and no +new thought disturbs the perfected form. Yet tourists of English +blood and American training are seldom or never quite at home there. +Commonly they feel it only as a stage-decoration. The twelfth and +thirteenth centuries, studied in the pure light of political +economy, are insane. The scientific mind is atrophied, and suffers +under inherited cerebral weakness, when it comes in contact with the +eternal woman--Astarte, Isis, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the last and +greatest deity of all, the Virgin. Very rarely one lingers, with a +mild sympathy, such as suits the patient student of human error, +willing to be interested in what he cannot understand. Still more +rarely, owing to some revival of archaic instincts, he rediscovers +the woman. This is perhaps the mark of the artist alone, and his +solitary privilege. The rest of us cannot feel; we can only study. +The proper study of mankind is woman and, by common agreement since +the time of Adam, it is the most complex and arduous. The study of +Our Lady, as shown by the art of Chartres, leads directly back to +Eve, and lays bare the whole subject of sex. + +If it were worth while to argue a paradox, one might maintain that +Nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the +superfluity of her world. Perhaps the best starting-point for study +of the Virgin would be a practical acquaintance with bees, and +especially with queen bees. Precisely where the French man may come +in, on the genealogical tree of parthenogenesis, one hesitates to +say; but certain it is that the French woman, from very early times, +has shown qualities peculiar to herself, and that the French woman +of the Middle Ages was a masculine character. Almost any book which +deals with the social side of the twelfth century has something to +say on this subject, like the following page from M. Garreau's +volume published in 1899, on the "Social State of France during the +Crusades":-- + +A trait peculiar to this epoch is the close resemblance between the +manners of men and women. The rule that such and such feelings or +acts are permitted to one sex and forbidden to the other was not +fairly settled. Men had the right to dissolve in tears, and women +that of talking without prudery .... If we look at their +intellectual level, the women appear distinctly superior. They are +more serious; more subtle. With them we do not seem dealing with the +rude state of civilization that their husbands belong to .... As a +rule, the women seem to have the habit of weighing their acts; of +not yielding to momentary impressions. While the sense of +Christianity is more developed in them than in their husbands, on +the other hand they show more perfidy and art in crime .... One +might doubtless prove by a series of examples that the maternal +influence when it predominated in the education of a son gave him a +marked superiority over his contemporaries. Richard Coeur-de-Lion +the crowned poet, artist, the king whose noble manners and refined +mind in spite of his cruelty exercised so strong an impression on +his age, was formed by that brilliant Eleanor of Guienne who, in her +struggle with her husband, retained her sons as much as possible +within her sphere of influence in order to make party chiefs of +them. Our great Saint Louis, as all know, was brought up exclusively +by Blanche of Castile; and Joinville, the charming writer so worthy +of Saint Louis's friendship, and apparently so superior to his +surroundings, was also the pupil of a widowed and regent mother. + +The superiority of the woman was not a fancy, but a fact. Man's +business was to fight or hunt or feast or make love. The man was +also the travelling partner in commerce, commonly absent from home +for months together, while the woman carried on the business. The +woman ruled the household and the workshop; cared for the economy; +supplied the intelligence, and dictated the taste. Her ascendancy +was secured by her alliance with the Church, into which she sent her +most intelligent children; and a priest or clerk, for the most part, +counted socially as a woman. Both physically and mentally the woman +was robust, as the men often complained, and she did not greatly +resent being treated as a man. Sometimes the husband beat her, +dragged her about by the hair, locked her up in the house; but he +was quite conscious that she always got even with him in the end. As +a matter of fact, probably she got more than even. On this point, +history, legend, poetry, romance, and especially the popular +fabliaux--invented to amuse the gross tastes of the coarser class-- +are all agreed, and one could give scores of volumes illustrating +it. The greatest men illustrate it best, as one might show almost at +hazard. The greatest men of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth +centuries were William the Norman; his great grandson Henry II +Plantagenet; Saint Louis of France; and, if a fourth be needed, +Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Notoriously all these men had as much +difficulty as Louis XIV himself with the women of their family. +Tradition exaggerates everything it touches, but shows, at the same +time, what is passing in the minds of the society which tradites. In +Normandy, the people of Caen have kept a tradition, told elsewhere +in other forms, that one day, Duke William,--the Conqueror,-- +exasperated by having his bastardy constantly thrown in his face by +the Duchess Matilda, dragged her by the hair, tied to his horse's +tail, as far as the suburb of Vaucelles; and this legend accounts +for the splendour of the Abbaye-aux-Dames, because William, the +common people believed, afterwards regretted the impropriety, and +atoned for it by giving her money to build the abbey. The story +betrays the man's weakness. The Abbaye-aux-Dames stands in the same +relation to the Abbaye-aux-Hommes that Matilda took towards William. +Inferiority there was none; on the contrary, the woman was socially +the superior, and William was probably more afraid of her than she +of him, if Mr. Freeman is right in insisting that he married her in +spite of her having a husband living, and certainly two children. If +William was the strongest man in the eleventh century, his great- +grandson, Henry II of England, was the strongest man of the twelfth; +but the history of the time resounds with the noise of his battles +with Queen Eleanor whom he, at last, held in prison for fourteen +years. Prisoner as she was, she broke him down in the end. One is +tempted to suspect that, had her husband and children been guided by +her, and by her policy as peacemaker for the good of Guienne, most +of the disasters of England and France might have been postponed for +the time; but we can never know the truth, for monks and historians +abhor emancipated women,--with good reason, since such women are apt +to abhor them,--and the quarrel can never be pacified. Historians +have commonly shown fear of women without admitting it, but the man +of the Middle Ages knew at least why he feared the woman, and told +it openly, not to say brutally. Long after Eleanor and Blanche were +dead, Chaucer brought the Wife of Bath on his Shakespearean stage, +to explain the woman, and as usual he touched masculine frailty with +caustic, while seeming to laugh at woman and man alike:-- + +"My liege lady! generally," quoth he, + "Women desiren to have soverainetee." + + +The point was that the Wife of Bath, like Queen Blanche and Queen +Eleanor, not only wanted sovereignty, but won and held it. + +That Saint Louis, even when a grown man and king, stood in awe of +his mother, Blanche of Castile, was not only notorious but seemed to +be thought natural. Joinville recorded it not so much to mark the +King's weakness, as the woman's strength; for his Queen, Margaret of +Provence, showed the courage which the King had not. Blanche and +Margaret were exceedingly jealous of each other. "One day," said +Joinville, "Queen Blanche went to the Queen's [Margaret] chamber +where her son [Louis IX] had gone before to comfort her, for she was +in great danger of death from a bad delivery; and he hid himself +behind the Queen [Margaret] to avoid being seen; but his mother +perceived him, and taking him by the hand said: 'Come along! you +will do no good here!' and put him out of the chamber. Queen +Margaret, observing this, and that she was to be separated from her +husband, cried aloud: 'Alas! will you not allow me to see my lord +either living or dying?'" According to Joinville, King Louis always +hid himself when, in his wife's chamber, he heard his mother coming. + +The great period of Gothic architecture begins with the coming of +Eleanor (1137) and ends with the passing of Blanche (1252). +Eleanor's long life was full of energy and passion of which next to +nothing is known; the woman was always too slippery for monks or +soldiers to grasp. + +Eleanor came to Paris, a Queen of fifteen years old, in 1137, +bringing Poitiers and Guienne as the greatest dowry ever offered to +the French Crown. She brought also the tastes and manners of the +South, little in harmony with the tastes and manners of Saint +Bernard whose authority at court rivalled her own. The Abbe Suger +supported her, but the King leaned toward the Abbe Bernard. What +this puritan reaction meant is a matter to be studied by itself, if +one can find a cloister to study in; but it bore the mark of most +puritan reactions in its hostility to women. As long as the woman +remained docile, she ruled, through the Church; but the man feared +her and was jealous of her, and she of him. Bernard specially adored +the Virgin because she was an example of docile obedience to the +Trinity who atoned for the indocility of Eve, but Eve herself +remained the instrument of Satan, and French society as a whole +showed a taste for Eves. + +[Genealogical chart showing the relationships among the three +queens.] + +Eleanor could hardly be called docile. Whatever else she loved, she +certainly loved rule. She shared this passion to the full with her +only great successor and rival on the English throne, Queen +Elizabeth, and she happened to become Queen of France at the moment +when society was turning from worship of its military ideal, Saint +Michael, to worship of its social ideal, the Virgin. According to +the monk Orderic, men had begun to throw aside their old military +dress and manners even before the first crusade, in the days of +William Rufus (1087-1100), and to affect feminine fashions. In all +ages, priests and monks have denounced the growing vices of society, +with more or less reason; but there seems to have been a real +outbreak of display at about the time of the first crusade, which +set a deep mark on every sort of social expression, even down to the +shoes of the statues on the western portal of Chartres:-- + +A debauched fellow named Robert [said Orderic] was the first, about +the time of William Rufus, who introduced the practice of filling +the long points of the shoes with tow, and of turning them up like a +ram's horn. Hence he got the surname of Cornard; and this absurd +fashion was speedily adopted by great numbers of the nobility as a +proud distinction and sign of merit. At this time effeminacy was the +prevailing vice throughout the world ... They parted their hair from +the crown of the head on each side of the forehead, and their locks +grew long like women, and wore long shirts and tunics, closely tied +with points ... In our days, ancient customs are almost all changed +for new fashions. Our wanton youths are sunk in effeminacy ... They +insert their toes in things like serpents' tails which present to +view the shape of scorpions. Sweeping the dusty ground with the +prodigious trains of their robes and mantles, they cover their hands +with gloves ... + +If you are curious to follow these monkish criticisms on your +ancestors' habits, you can read Orderic at your leisure; but you +want only to carry in mind the fact that the generation of warriors +who fought at Hastings and captured Jerusalem were regarded by +themselves as effeminate, and plunged in luxury. "Their locks are +curled with hot irons, and instead of wearing caps, they bind their +heads with fillets. A knight seldom appears in public with his head +uncovered and properly shaved according to the apostolic precept." +The effeminacy of the first crusade took artistic shape in the west +portal of Chartres and the glass of Saint-Denis, and led instantly +to the puritan reaction of Saint Bernard, followed by the gentle +asceticism of Queen Blanche and Saint Louis. Whether the pilgrimages +to Jerusalem and contact with the East were the cause or only a +consequence of this revolution, or whether it was all one,--a result +of converting the Northern pagans to peaceful habits and the +consequent enrichment of northern Europe,--is indifferent; the fact +and the date are enough. The art is French, but the ideas may have +come from anywhere, like the game of chess which the pilgrims or +crusaders brought home from Syria. In the Oriental game, the King +was followed step by step by a Minister whose functions were +personal. The crusaders freed the piece from control; gave it +liberty to move up or down or diagonally, forwards and backwards; +made it the most arbitrary and formidable champion on the board, +while the King and the Knight were the most restricted in movement; +and this piece they named Queen, and called the Virgin:-- + + Li Baudrains traist sa fierge por son paon sauver, + E cele son aufin qui cuida conquester + La firge ou le paon, ou faire reculer. + + +The aufin or dauphin became the Fou of the French game, and the +bishop of the English. Baldwin played his Virgin to save his pawn; +his opponent played the bishop to threaten either the Virgin or the +pawn. + +For a hundred and fifty years, the Virgin and Queens ruled French +taste and thought so successfully that the French man has never yet +quite decided whether to be more proud or ashamed of it. Life has +ever since seemed a little flat to him, and art a little cheap. He +saw that the woman, in elevating herself, had made him appear +ridiculous, and he tried to retaliate with a wit not always +sparkling, and too often at his own expense. Sometimes in museums or +collections of bric-a-brac, you will see, in an illuminated +manuscript, or carved on stone, or cast in bronze, the figure of a +man on his hands and knees, bestridden by another figure holding a +bridle and a whip; it is Aristotle, symbol of masculine wisdom, +bridled and driven by woman. Six hundred years afterwards, Tennyson +revived the same motive in Merlin, enslaved not for a time but +forever. In both cases the satire justly punished the man. Another +version of the same story--perhaps the original--was the Mystery of +Adam, one of the earliest Church plays. Gaston Paris says "it was +written in England in the twelfth century, and its author had real +poetic talent; the scene of the seduction of Eve by the serpent is +one of the best pieces of Christian dramaturgy ... This remarkable +work seems to have been played no longer inside the church, but +under the porch":-- + +Diabolus. Jo vi Adam mais trop est fols. + + +Eva. Un poi est durs. + + +Diabolus. Il serra mols. + Il est plus durs qui n'est enfers. + + +Eva. Il est mult francs. + + +Diabolus. Ainz est mult sers. + Cure ne volt prendre de sei + Car la prenge sevals de tei. + Tu es fieblette et tendre chose + E es plus fresche que n'est rose. + Tu es plus blanche que crystal + Que neif que chiet sor glace en val. + Mal cuple en fist li Criatur. + Tu es trop tendre e il trop dur. + Mais neporquant tu es plus sage + En grant sens as mis tun corrage + For co fait bon traire a tei. + Parler te voil. + + +Eva. Ore ja fai. + + +Devil. Adam I've seen, but he's too rough. + + +Eve. A little hard! + + +Devil. He'll soon be soft enough! + Harder than hell he is till now. + + +Eve. He's very frank! + + +Devil. Say very low! + To help himself he does not care; + The helping you shall be my share; + For you are tender, gentle, true, + The rose is not so fresh as you; + Whiter than crystal, or than snow + That falls from heaven on ice below. + A sorry mixture God has brewed, + You too tender, he too rude. + But you have much the greater sense, + Your will is all intelligence. + Therefore it is I turn to you. + I want to tell you-- + + +Eve. Do it now! + + +The woman's greater intelligence was to blame for Adam's fall. Eve +was justly punished because she should have known better, while +Adam, as the Devil truly said, was a dull animal, hardly worth the +trouble of deceiving. Adam was disloyal, too, untrue to his wife +after being untrue to his Creator:-- + +La femme que tu me donas + Ele fist prime icest trespass + Donat le mei e jo mangai. + Or mest vis tornez est a gwai + Mal acontai icest manger. + Jo ai mesfait par ma moiller. + + +The woman that you made me take + First led me into this mistake. + She gave the apple that I ate + And brought me to this evil state. + Badly for me it turned, I own, + But all the fault is hers alone. + + +The audience accepted this as natural and proper. They recognized +the man as, of course, stupid, cowardly, and traitorous. The men of +the baser sort revenged themselves by boorishness that passed with +them for wit in the taverns of Arras, but the poets of the higher +class commonly took sides with the women. Even Chaucer, who lived +after the glamour had faded, and who satirized women to satiety, +told their tale in his "Legend of Good Women," with evident +sympathy. To him, also, the ordinary man was inferior,--stupid, +brutal, and untrue. "Full brittle is the truest," he said:-- + +For well I wote that Christ himself telleth + That in Israel, as wide as is the lond, + That so great faith in all the loud he ne fond + As in a woman, and this is no lie; + And as for men, look ye, such tyrannie + They doen all day, assay hem who so list, + The truest is full brotell for to trist. + + +Neither brutality nor wit helped the man much. Even Bluebeard in the +end fell a victim to the superior qualities of his last wife, and +Scheherazade's wit alone has preserved the memory of her royal +husband. The tradition of thirteenth-century society still rules the +French stage. The struggle between two strong-willed women to control +one weak-willed man is the usual motive of the French drama in the +nineteenth century, as it was the whole motive of Partenopeus of +Blois, one of the best twelfth-century romans; and Joinville +described it, in the middle of the thirteenth, as the leading motive +in the court of Saint Louis, with Queen Blanche and Queen Margaret +for players, and Saint Louis himself for pawn. + +One has only to look at the common, so-called Elzevirian, volume of +thirteenth-century nouvelles to see the Frenchman as he saw himself. +The story of "La Comtesse de Ponthieu" is the more Shakespearean, +but "La Belle Jehanne" is the more natural and lifelike. The plot is +the common masculine intrigue against the woman, which was used over +and over again before Shakespeare appropriated it in "Much Ado"; but +its French development is rather in the line of "All's Well." The +fair Jeanne, married to a penniless knight, not at all by her +choice, but only because he was a favourite of her father's, was a +woman of the true twelfth-century type. She broke the head of the +traitor, and when he, with his masculine falseness, caused her +husband to desert her, she disguised herself as a squire and +followed Sir Robert to Marseilles in search of service in war, for +the poor knight could get no other means of livelihood. Robert was +the husband, and the wife, in entering his service as squire without +pay, called herself John:-- + +Molt fu mesire Robiers dolans cant il vint a Marselle de cou k'il +n'oi parler de nulle chose ki fust ou pais; si dist a Jehan: + +--Ke ferons nous? Vous m'aves preste de vos deniers la vostre +mierchi, si les vos renderai car je venderai mon palefroi et +m'acuiterai a vous. + +--Sire, dist Jehans, crees moi se il vous plaist je vous dirai ke +nous ferons; jou ai bien enchore c sous de tournois, s'll vous +plaist je venderai nos ii chevaus et en ferai deniers; et je suis li +miousdres boulengiers ke vous sacies, si ferai pain francois et je +ne douc mie ke je ne gaagne bien et largement mon depens. + +--Jehans, dist mesire Robiers, je m'otroi del tout a faire votre +volente + +Et lendemam vendi Jehans ses .ii. chevaux X livres de tornois, et +achata son ble et le fist muire, et achata des corbelles et +coumencha a faire pain francois si bon et si bien fait k'il en +vendoit plus ke li doi melleur boulengier de la ville, et fist tant +dedens les ii ans k'il ot bien c livres de katel. Lors dist Jehans a +son segnour: + +--Je lo bien que nous louons une tres grant mason et jou akaterai +del vin et hierbegerai la bonne gent + +--Jehan, dist mesire Robiers, faites a vo volente kar je l'otroi et +si me loc molt de vous. + +Jehans loua une mason grant et bielle, et si hierbrega la bonne gent +et gaegnoit ases a plente, et viestoit son segnour biellement et +richement, et avoit mesire Robiers son palefroi et aloit boire et +mengier aveukes les plus vallans de la ville, et Jehans li envoioit +vins et viandes ke tout cil ki o lui conpagnoient s'en +esmervelloient. Si gaegna tant ke dedens .iiii ans il gaegna plus de +ccc livres de meuble sains son harnois qui valoit bien .L. livres. + +Much was Sir Robert grieved when he came to Marseilles and found +that there was no talk of anything doing in the country, and he said +to John: "What shall we do? You have lent me your money, I thank +you, and will repay you, for I will sell my palfrey and discharge +the debt to you." + +"Sir," said John, "trust to me, if you please, I will tell you what +we will do, I have still a hundred sous, if you please I will sell +our two horses and turn them into money, and I am the best baker you +ever knew, I will make French bread, and I've no doubt I shall pay +my expenses well and make money" + +"John," said Sir Robert, "I agree wholly to do whatever you like" + +And the next day John sold their two horse for ten pounds, and +bought his wheat and had it ground, and bought baskets, and began to +make French bread so good and so well made that he sold more of it +than the two best bakers in the city, and made so much within two +years that he had a good hundred pound property Then he said to his +lord "I advise our hiring a very large house, and I will buy wine +and will keep lodgings for good society + +"John," said Sir Robert, "do what you please, for I grant it, and am +greatly pleased with you." + +John hired a large and fine house and lodged the best people and +gained a great plenty, and dressed his master handsomely and richly, +and Sir Robert kept his palfrey and went out to eat and drink with +the best people of the city, and John sent them such wines and food +that all his companions marvelled at it. He made so much that within +four years he gained more than three hundred pounds in money besides +clothes, etc, well worth fifty. + +The docile obedience of the man to the woman seemed as reasonable to +the thirteenth century as the devotion of the woman to the man, not +because she loved him, for there was no question of love, but +because he was HER man, and she owned him as though he were child. +The tale went on to develop her character always in the same sense. +When she was ready, Jeanne broke up the establishment at Marseilles, +brought her husband back to Hainault, and made him, without knowing +her object, kill the traitor and redress her wrongs. Then after +seven years' patient waiting, she revealed herself and resumed her +place. + +If you care to see the same type developed to its highest capacity, +go to the theatre the first time some ambitious actress attempts the +part of Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare realized the thirteenth-century +woman more vividly than the thirteenth-century poets ever did; but +that is no new thing to say of Shakespeare. The author of "La +Comtesse de Ponthieu" made no bad sketch of the character. These are +fictions, but the Chronicles contain the names of women by scores +who were the originals of the sketch. The society which Orderic +described in Normandy--the generation of the first crusade--produced +a great variety of Lady Macbeths. In the country of Evreux, about +1100, Orderic says that "a worse than civil war was waged between +two powerful brothers, and the mischief was fomented by the spiteful +jealousy of their haughty wives. The Countess Havise of Evreux took +offence at some taunts uttered by Isabel de Conches,--wife of Ralph, +the Seigneur of Conches, some ten miles from Evreux,--and used all +her influence with her husband, Count William, and his barons, to +make trouble ... Both the ladies who stirred up these fierce +enmities were great talkers and spirited as well as handsome; they +ruled their husbands, oppressed their vassals, and inspired terror +in various ways. But still their characters were very different. +Havise had wit and eloquence, but she was cruel and avaricious. +Isabel was generous, enterprising, and gay, so that she was beloved +and esteemed by those about her. She rode in knight's armour when +her vassals were called to war, and showed as much daring among men- +at-arms and mounted knights as Camilla ..." More than three hundred +years afterwards, far off in the Vosges, from a village never heard +of, appeared a common peasant of seventeen years old, a girl without +birth, education, wealth, or claim of any sort to consideration, who +made her way to Chinon and claimed from Charles VII a commission to +lead his army against the English. Neither the king nor the court +had faith in her, and yet the commission was given, and the rank- +and-file showed again that the true Frenchman had more confidence in +the woman than in the man, no matter what the gossips might say. No +one was surprised when Jeanne did what she promised, or when the men +burned her for doing it. There were Jeannes in every village. +Ridicule was powerless against them. Even Voltaire became what the +French call frankly "bete," in trying it. + +Eleanor of Guienne was the greatest of all Frenchwomen. Her decision +was law, whether in Bordeaux or Poitiers, in Paris or in Palestine, +in London or in Normandy; in the court of Louis VII, or in that of +Henry II, or in her own Court of Love. For fifteen years she was +Queen of France; for fifty she was Queen in England; for eighty or +thereabouts she was equivalent to Queen over Guienne. No other +Frenchwoman ever had such rule. Unfortunately, as Queen of France, +she struck against an authority greater than her own, that of Saint +Bernard, and after combating it, with Suger's help, from 1137 until +1152, the monk at last gained such mastery that Eleanor quitted the +country and Suger died. She was not a person to accept defeat. She +royally divorced her husband and went back to her own kingdom of +Guienne. Neither Louis nor Bernard dared to stop her, or to hold her +territories from her, but they put the best face they could on their +defeat by proclaiming her as a person of irregular conduct. The +irregularity would not have stood in their way, if they had dared to +stand in hers, but Louis was much the weaker, and made himself +weaker still by allowing her to leave him for the sake of Henry of +Anjou, a story of a sort that rarely raised the respect in which +French kings were held by French society. Probably politics had more +to do with the matter than personal attachments, for Eleanor was a +great ruler, the equal of any ordinary king, and more powerful than +most kings living in 1152. If she deserted France in order to join +the enemies of France, she had serious reasons besides love for +young Henry of Anjou; but in any case she did, as usual, what +pleased her, and forced Louis to pronounce the divorce at a council +held at Beaugency, March 18, 1152, on the usual pretext of +relationship. The humours of the twelfth century were Shakespearean. +Eleanor, having obtained her divorce at Beaugency, to the deep +regret of all Frenchmen, started at once for Poitiers, knowing how +unsafe she was in any territory but her own. Beaugency is on the +Loire, between Orleans and Blois, and Eleanor's first night was at +Blois, or should have been; but she was told, on arriving, that +Count Thibaut of Blois, undeterred by King Louis's experience, was +making plans to detain her, with perfectly honourable views of +marriage; and, as she seems at least not to have been in love with +Thibaut, she was obliged to depart at once, in the night, to Tours. +A night journey on horseback from Blois to Tours in the middle of +March can have been no pleasure-trip, even in 1152; but, on arriving +at Tours in the morning, Eleanor found that her lovers were still so +dangerously near that she set forward at once on the road to +Poitiers. As she approached her own territory she learned that +Geoffrey of Anjou, the younger brother of her intended husband, was +waiting for her at the border, with views of marriage as strictly +honourable as those of all the others. She was driven to take +another road, and at last got safe to Poitiers. + +About no figure in the Middle Ages, man or woman, did so many +legends grow, and with such freedom, as about Eleanor, whose +strength appealed to French sympathies and whose adventures appealed +to their imagination. They never forgave Louis for letting her go. +They delighted to be told that in Palestine she had carried on +relations of the most improper character, now with a Saracen slave +of great beauty; now with Raymond of Poitiers, her uncle, the +handsomest man of his time; now with Saladin himself; and, as all +this occurred at Antioch in 1147 or 1148, they could not explain why +her husband should have waited until 1152 in order to express his +unwilling disapproval; but they quoted with evident sympathy a +remark attributed to her that she thought she had married a king, +and found she had married a monk. To the Frenchman, Eleanor remained +always sympathetic, which is the more significant because, in +English tradition, her character suffered a violent and incredible +change. Although English history has lavished on Eleanor somewhat +more than her due share of conventional moral reproof, considering +that, from the moment she married Henry of Anjou, May 18, 1152, she +was never charged with a breath of scandal, it atoned for her want +of wickedness by French standards, in the usual manner of +historians, by inventing traits which reflected the moral standards +of England. Tradition converted her into the fairy-book type of +feminine jealousy and invented for her the legend of the Fair +Rosamund and the poison of toads. + +For us, both legends are true. They reflected, not perhaps the +character of Eleanor, but what the society liked to see acted on its +theatre of life. Eleanor's real nature in no way concerns us. The +single fact worth remembering was that she had two daughters by +Louis VII, as shown in the table; who, in due time, married--Mary, +in 1164, married Henry, the great Count of Champagne; Alix, at the +same time, became Countess of Chartres by marriage with Thibaut, who +had driven her mother from Blois in 1152 by his marital intentions. +Henry and Thibaut were brothers whose sister Alix had married Louis +VII in 1160, eight years after the divorce. The relations thus +created were fantastic, especially for Queen Eleanor, who, besides +her two French daughters, had eight children as Queen of England. +Her second son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, born in 1157, was affianced +in 1174 to a daughter of Louis VII and Alix, a child only six years +old, who was sent to England to be brought up as future queen. This +was certainly Eleanor's doing, and equally certain was it that the +child came to no good in the English court. The historians, by +exception, have not charged this crime to Queen Eleanor; they +charged it to Eleanor's husband, who passed most of his life in +crossing his wife's political plans; but with politics we want as +little as possible to do. We are concerned with the artistic and +social side of life, and have only to notice the coincidence that +while the Virgin was miraculously using the power of spiritual love +to elevate and purify the people, Eleanor and her daughters were +using the power of earthly love to discipline and refine the courts. +Side by side with the crude realities about them, they insisted on +teaching and enforcing an ideal that contradicted the realities, and +had no value for them or for us except in the contradiction. + +The ideals of Eleanor and her daughter Mary of Champagne were a form +of religion, and if you care to see its evangels, you had best go +directly to Dante and Petrarch, or, if you like it better, to Don +Quixote de la Mancha. The religion is dead as Demeter, and its art +alone survives as, on the whole, the highest expression of man's +thought or emotion; but in its day it was almost as practical as it +now is fanciful. Eleanor and her daughter Mary and her granddaughter +Blanche knew as well as Saint Bernard did, or Saint Francis, what a +brute the emancipated man could be; and as though they foresaw the +society of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, they used every +terror they could invent, as well as every tenderness they could +invoke, to tame the beasts around them. Their charge was of manners, +and, to teach manners, they made a school which they called their +Court of Love, with a code of law to which they gave the name of +"courteous love." The decisions of this court were recorded, like +the decisions of a modern bench, under the names of the great ladies +who made them, and were enforced by the ladies of good society for +whose guidance they were made. They are worth reading, and any one +who likes may read them to this day, with considerable scepticism +about their genuineness. The doubt is only ignorance. We do not, and +never can, know the twelfth-century woman, or, for that matter, any +other woman, but we do know the literature she created; we know the +art she lived in, and the religion she professed. We can collect +from them some idea why the Virgin Mary ruled, and what she was +taken to be, by the world which worshipped her. + +Mary of Champagne created the literature of courteous love. She must +have been about twenty years old when she married Count Henry and +went to live at Troyes, not actually a queen in title, but certainly +a queen in social influence. In 1164, Champagne was a powerful +country, and Troyes a centre of taste. In Normandy, at the same +date, William of Saint Pair and Wace were writing the poetry we +know. In Champagne the court poet was Christian of Troyes, whose +poems were new when the churches of Noyon and Senlis and Saint Leu +d'Esserent, and the fleche of Chartres, and the Leaning Tower of +Pisa, were building, at the same time with the Abbey of Vezelay, and +before the church at Mantes. Christian died not long after 1175, +leaving a great mass of verse, much of which has survived, and which +you can read more easily than you can read Dante or Petrarch, +although both are almost modern compared with Christian. The quality +of this verse is something like the quality of the glass windows-- +conventional decoration; colours in conventional harmonies; +refinement, restraint, and feminine delicacy of taste. Christian has +not the grand manner of the eleventh century, and never recalls the +masculine strength of the "Chanson de Roland" or "Raoul de Cambrai." +Even his most charming story, "Erec et Enide," carries chiefly a +moral of courtesy. His is poet-laureate's work, says M. Gaston +Paris; the flower of a twelfth-century court and of twelfth-century +French; the best example of an admirable language; but not lyric; +neither strong, nor deep, nor deeply felt. What we call tragedy is +unknown to it. Christian's world is sky-blue and rose, with only +enough red to give it warmth, and so flooded with light that even +its mysteries count only by the clearness with which they are shown. + +Among other great works, before Mary of France came to Troyes +Christian had, toward 1160, written a "Tristan," which is lost. Mary +herself, he says, gave him the subject of "Lancelot," with the +request or order to make it a lesson of "courteous love," which he +obeyed. Courtesy has lost its meaning as well as its charm, and you +might find the "Chevalier de la Charette" even more unintelligible +than tiresome; but its influence was great in its day, and the +lesson of courteous love, under the authority of Mary of Champagne, +lasted for centuries as the standard of taste. "Lancelot" was never +finished, but later, not long after 1174, Christian wrote a +"Perceval," or "Conte du Graal," which must also have been intended +to please Mary, and which is interesting because, while the +"Lancelot" gave the twelfth-century idea of courteous love, the +"Perceval" gave the twelfth-century idea of religious mystery. Mary +was certainly concerned with both. "It is for this same Mary," says +Gaston Paris, "that Walter of Arras undertook his poem of 'Eracle'; +she was the object of the songs of the troubadours as well as of +their French imitators; for her use also she caused the translations +of books of piety like Genesis, or the paraphrase at great length, +in verse, of the psalm 'Eructavit.'" + +With her theories of courteous love, every one is more or less +familiar if only from the ridicule of Cervantes and the follies of +Quixote, who, though four hundred years younger, was Lancelot's +child; but we never can know how far she took herself and her laws +of love seriously, and to speculate on so deep a subject as her +seriousness is worse than useless, since she would herself have been +as uncertain as her lovers were. Visionary as the courtesy was, the +Holy Grail was as practical as any bric-a-brac that has survived of +the time. The mystery of Perceval is like that of the Gothic +cathedral, illuminated by floods of light, and enlivened by rivers +of colour. Unfortunately Christian never told what he meant by the +fragment, itself a mystery, in which he narrated the story of the +knight who saw the Holy Grail, because the knight, who was warned, +as usual, to ask no questions, for once, unlike most knights, obeyed +the warning when he should have disregarded it. As knights-errant +necessarily did the wrong thing in order to make their adventures +possible, Perceval's error cannot be in itself mysterious, nor was +the castle in any way mysterious where the miracle occurred, It +appeared to him to be the usual castle, and he saw nothing unusual +in the manner of his reception by the usual old lord, or in the fact +that both seated themselves quite simply before the hall-fire with +the usual household. Then, as though it were an everyday habit, the +Holy Grail was brought in (Bartsch, "Chrestomathie," 183-85, ed. +1895):-- + +Et leans avail luminaire + Si grant con l'an le porrait faire + De chandoiles a un ostel. + Que qu'il parloient d'un et d'el, + Uns vallez d'une chambre vint + Qui une blanche lance tint + Ampoigniee par le mi lieu. + Si passa par endroit le feu + Et cil qui al feu se seoient, + Et tuit cil de leans veoient + La lance blanche et le fer blanc. + S'issoit une gote de sang + Del fer de la lance au sommet, + Et jusqu'a la main au vaslet + Coroit cele gote vermoille.... + A tant dui autre vaslet vindrent + Qui chandeliers an lors mains tindrent + De fin or ovrez a neel. + Li vaslet estoient moult bel + Qui les chandeliers aportoient. + An chacun chandelier ardoient + Dous chandoiles a tot le mains. + Un graal antre ses dous mains + Une demoiselle tenoit, + Qui avec les vaslets venoit, + Bele et gente et bien acesmee. + Quant cle fu leans antree + Atot le graal qu'ele tint + Une si granz clartez i vint + Qu'ausi perdirent les chandoiles + Lor clarte come les estoiles + Qant li solauz luist et la lune. + Apres celi an revint une + Qui tint un tailleor d'argent. + + +Le graal qui aloit devant + De fin or esmere estoit, + Pierres precieuses avoit + El graal de maintes menieres + Des plus riches et des plus chieres + Qui en mer ne en terre soient. + Totes autres pierres passoient + Celes del graal sanz dotance. + + +Tot ainsi con passa la lance + Par devant le lit trespasserent + Et d'une chambre a l'autre alerent. + Et li vaslet les vit passer, + Ni n'osa mire demander + Del graal cui l'an an servoit. + + +And, within, the hall was bright + As any hall could be with light + Of candles in a house at night. + So, while of this and that they talked, + A squire from a chamber walked, + Bearing a white lance in his hand, + Grasped by the middle, like a wand; + And, as he passed the chimney wide, + Those seated by the fireside, + And all the others, caught a glance + Of the white steel and the white lance. + As they looked, a drop of blood + Down the lance's handle flowed; + Down to where the youth's hand stood. + From the lance-head at the top + They saw run that crimson drop.... + Presently came two more squires, + In their hands two chandeliers, + Of fine gold in enamel wrought. + Each squire that the candle brought + Was a handsome chevalier. + There burned in every chandelier + Two lighted candles at the least. + A damsel, graceful and well dressed, + Behind the squires followed fast + Who carried in her hands a graal; + And as she came within the hall + With the graal there came a light So brilliant that the candles all + Lost clearness, as the stars at night + When moon shines, or in day the sun. + After her there followed one + Who a dish of silver bore. + + +The graal, which had gone before, + Of gold the finest had been made, + With precious stones had been inlaid, + Richest and rarest of each kind + That man in sea or earth could find. + All other jewels far surpassed + Those which the holy graal enchased. + + +Just as before had passed the lance + They all before the bed advance, + Passing straightway through the hall, + And the knight who saw them pass + Never ventured once to ask + For the meaning of the graal. + + +The simplicity of this narration gives a certain dramatic effect to +the mystery, like seeing a ghost in full daylight, but Christian +carried simplicity further still. He seemed either to feel, or to +want others to feel, the reality of the adventure and the miracle, +and he followed up the appearance of the graal by a solid meal in +the style of the twelfth century, such as one expects to find in +"Ivanhoe" or the "Talisman." The knight sat down with his host to +the best dinner that the county of Champagne afforded, and they ate +their haunch of venison with the graal in full view. They drank +their Champagne wine of various sorts, out of gold cups:-- + + Vins clers ne raspez ne lor faut + A copes dorees a boivre; + + +they sat before the fire and talked till bedtime, when the squires +made up the beds in the hall, and brought in supper--dates, figs, +nutmegs, spices, pomegranates, and at last lectuaries, suspiciously +like what we call jams; and "alexandrine gingerbread"; after which +they drank various drinks, with or without spice or honey or pepper; +and old moret, which is thought to be mulberry wine, but which +generally went with clairet, a colourless grape-juice, or piment. At +least, here are the lines, and one may translate them to suit one's +self:-- + +Et li vaslet aparellierent + Les lis et le fruit au colchier + Que il en i ot de moult chier, + Dates, figues, et nois mugates, + Girofles et pomes de grenates, + Et leituaires an la fin, + Et gingenbret alixandrin. + Apres ce burent de maint boivre, + Piment ou n'ot ne miel ne poivre + Et viez more et cler sirop. + + +The twelfth century had the child's love of sweets and spices and +preserved fruits, and drinks sweetened or spiced, whether they were +taken for supper or for poetry; the true knight's palate was fresh +and his appetite excellent either for sweets or verses or love; the +world was young then; Robin Hoods lived in every forest, and Richard +Coeur-de-Lion was not yet twenty years old. The pleasant adventures +of Robin Hood were real, as you can read in the stories of a dozen +outlaws, and men troubled themselves about pain and death much as +healthy bears did, in the mountains. Life had miseries enough, but +few shadows deeper than those of the imaginative lover, or the +terrors of ghosts at night. Men's imaginations ran riot, but did not +keep them awake; at least, neither the preserved fruits nor the +mulberry wine nor the clear syrup nor the gingerbread nor the Holy +Graal kept Perceval awake, but he slept the sound and healthy sleep +of youth, and when he woke the next morning, he felt only a mild +surprise to find that his host and household had disappeared, +leaving him to ride away without farewell, breakfast, or Graal. + +Christian wrote about Perceval in 1174 in the same spirit in which +the workmen in glass, thirty years later, told the story of +Charlemagne. One artist worked for Mary of Champagne; the others for +Mary of Chartres, commonly known as the Virgin; but all did their +work in good faith, with the first, fresh, easy instinct of colour, +light, and line. Neither of the two Maries was mystical, in a modern +sense; none of the artists was oppressed by the burden of doubt; +their scepticism was as childlike as faith. If one has to make an +exception, perhaps the passion of love was more serious than that of +religion, and gave to religion the deepest emotion, and the most +complicated one, which society knew. Love was certainly a passion; +and even more certainly it was, as seen in poets like Dante and +Petrarch,--in romans like "Lancelot" and "Aucassin,"--in ideals like +the Virgin,--complicated beyond modern conception. For this reason +the loss of Christian's "Tristan" makes a terrible gap in art, for +Christian's poem would have given the first and best idea of what +led to courteous love. The "Tristan" was written before 1160, and +belonged to the cycle of Queen Eleanor of England rather than to +that of her daughter Mary of Troyes; but the subject was one neither +of courtesy nor of France; it belonged to an age far behind the +eleventh century, or even the tenth, or indeed any century within +the range of French history; and it was as little fitted for +Christian's way of treatment as for any avowed burlesque. The +original Tristan--critics say--was not French, and neither Tristan +nor Isolde had ever a drop of French blood in their veins. In their +form as Christian received it, they were Celts or Scots; they came +from Brittany, Wales, Ireland, the northern ocean, or farther still. +Behind the Welsh Tristan, which passed probably through England to +Normandy and thence to France and Champagne, critics detect a far +more ancient figure living in a form of society that France could +not remember ever to have known. King Marc was a tribal chief of the +Stone Age whose subjects loved the forest and lived on the sea or in +caves; King Marc's royal hall was a common shelter on the banks of a +stream, where every one was at home, and king, queen, knights, +attendants, and dwarf slept on the floor, on beds laid down where +they pleased; Tristan's weapons were the bow and stone knife; he +never saw a horse or a spear; his ideas of loyalty and Isolde's +ideas of marriage were as vague as Marc's royal authority; and all +were alike unconscious of law, chivalry, or church. The note they +sang was more unlike the note of Christian, if possible, than that +of Richard Wagner; it was the simplest expression of rude and +primitive love, as one could perhaps find it among North American +Indians, though hardly so defiant even there, and certainly in the +Icelandic Sagas hardly so lawless; but it was a note of real +passion, and touched the deepest chords of sympathy in the +artificial society of the twelfth century, as it did in that of the +nineteenth. The task of the French poet was to tone it down and give +it the fashionable dress, the pointed shoes and long sleeves, of the +time. "The Frenchman," says Gaston Paris, "is specially interested +in making his story entertaining for the society it is meant for; he +is 'social'; that is, of the world; he smiles at the adventures he +tells, and delicately lets you see that he is not their dupe; he +exerts himself to give to his style a constant elegance, a uniform +polish, in which a few neatly turned, clever phrases sparkle here +and there; above all, he wants to please, and thinks of his audience +more than of his subject." + +In the twelfth century he wanted chiefly to please women, as Orderic +complained; Isolde came out of Brittany to meet Eleanor coming up +from Guienne, and the Virgin from the east; and all united in giving +law to society. In each case it was the woman, not the man, who gave +the law;--it was Mary, not the Trinity; Eleanor, not Louis VII; +Isolde, not Tristan. No doubt, the original Tristan had given the +law like Roland or Achilles, but the twelfth-century Tristan was a +comparatively poor creature. He was in his way a secondary figure in +the romance, as Louis VII was to Eleanor and Abelard to Heloise. +Every one knows how, about twenty years before Eleanor came to +Paris, the poet-professor Abelard, the hero of the Latin Quarter, +had sung to Heloise those songs which--he tells us--resounded +through Europe as widely as his scholastic fame, and probably to +more effect for his renown. In popular notions Heloise was Isolde, +and would in a moment have done what Isolde did (Bartsch, 107-08):-- + +Quaint reis Marcs nus out conjeies + E de sa curt nus out chascez, + As mains ensemble nus preismes + E hors de la sale en eissimes, + A la forest puis en alasmes + + +E un mult bel liu i trouvames + E une roche, fu cavee, + Devant ert estraite la entree, + Dedans fu voesse ben faite, + Tante bel cum se fust portraite. + + +When King Marc had banned us both, + And from his court had chased us forth, + Hand in hand each clasping fast + Straight from out the hall we passed; + To the forest turned our face; + + +Found in it a perfect place, + Where the rock that made a cave + Hardly more than passage gave; + Spacious within and fit for use, + As though it had been planned for us. + + +At any time of her life, Heloise would have defied society or +church, and would--at least in the public's fancy--have taken +Abelard by the hand and gone off to the forest much more readily +than she went to the cloister; but Abelard would have made a poor +figure as Tristan. Abelard and Christian of Troyes were as remote as +we are from the legendary Tristan; but Isolde and Heloise, Eleanor +and Mary were the immortal and eternal woman. The legend of Isolde, +both in the earlier and the later version, seems to have served as a +sacred book to the women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, +and Christian's Isolde surely helped Mary in giving law to the Court +of Troyes and decisions in the Court of Love. + +Countess Mary's authority lasted from 1164 to 1198, thirty-four +years, during which, at uncertain intervals, glimpses of her +influence flash out in poetry rather than in prose. Christian began +his "Roman de la Charette" by invoking her:-- + +Puisque ma dame de Chanpaigne + Vialt que romans a faire anpraigne + + +Si deist et jel tesmoignasse + Que ce est la dame qui passe + Totes celes qui sont vivanz + Si con li funs passe les vanz + Qui vante en Mai ou en Avril + + +Dirai je: tant com une jame + Vaut de pailes et de sardines + Vaut la contesse de reines? + + +Christian chose curious similes. His dame surpassed all living +rivals as smoke passes the winds that blow in May; or as much as a +gem would buy of straws and sardines is the Countess worth in +queens. Louis XIV would have thought that Christian might be +laughing at him, but court styles changed with their masters. Louis +XIV would scarcely have written a prison-song to his sister such as +Richard Coeur-de-Lion wrote to Mary of Champagne:-- + +Ja nus bons pris ne dirat sa raison + Adroitement s'ansi com dolans non; + Mais par confort puet il faire chanson. + Moult ai d'amins, mais povre sont li don; + Honte en avront se por ma reancon + Suix ces deus yvers pris. + +Ceu sevent bien mi home et mi baron, + Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon, + Ke je n'avoie si povre compaingnon + Cui je laissasse por avoir au prixon. + Je nel di pas por nulle retraison, + Mais ancor suix je pris. + + +Or sai ge bien de voir certainement + Ke mors ne pris n'ait amin ne parent, + Cant on me lait por or ne por argent. + Moult m'est de moi, mais plus m'est de ma gent + C'apres ma mort avront reprochier grant + Se longement suix pris. + + +N'est pas mervelle se j'ai lo cuer dolent + Cant li miens sires tient ma terre en torment. + S'or li menbroit de nostre sairement + Ke nos feismes andui communament, + Bien sai de voir ke ceans longement + Ne seroie pas pris. + + +Ce sevent bien Angevin et Torain, + Cil bacheler ki or sont fort et sain, + C'ancombreis suix long d'aus en autrui main. + Forment m'amoient, mais or ne m'aimment grain. + De belles armes sont ores veut cil plain, + Por tant ke je suix pris. + + +Mes compaingnons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim, + Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain, + Me di, chanson, kil ne sont pas certain, + + +C'onques vers aus n'en oi cuer faus ne vain. + S'il me guerroient, il font moult que villain + Tant com je serai pris. + + +Comtesse suer, vostre pris soverain + Vos saut et gart cil a cui je me claim + Et par cui je suix pris. + Je n'ou di pas de celi de Chartain + La meire Loweis. + + +No prisoner can tell his honest thought + Unless he speaks as one who suffers wrong; + But for his comfort he may make a song. + My friends are many, but their gifts are naught. + Shame will be theirs, if, for my ransom, here + I lie another year. + + +They know this well, my barons and my men, + Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou, + That I had never follower so low + Whom I would leave in prison to my gain. + I say it not for a reproach to them, + But prisoner I am! + + +The ancient proverb now I know for sure: + Death and a prison know nor kin nor tie, + Since for mere lack of gold they let me lie. + Much for myself I grieve; for them still more. + After my death they will have grievous wrong + If I am prisoner long. + + +What marvel that my heart is sad and sore + When my own lord torments my helpless lands! + Well do I know that, if he held his hands, + Remembering the common oath we swore, + I should not here imprisoned with my song, + Remain a prisoner long. + + +They know this well who now are rich and strong + Young gentlemen of Anjou and Touraine, + That far from them, on hostile bonds I strain. + They loved me much, but have not loved me long. + Their plains will see no more fair lists arrayed, + While I lie here betrayed. + + +Companions, whom I loved, and still do love, + Geoffroi du Perche and Ansel de Caleux, + Tell them, my song, that they are friends untrue. + + +Never to them did I false-hearted prove; + But they do villainy if they war on me, + While I lie here, unfree. + + +Countess sister! your sovereign fame + May he preserve whose help I claim, + Victim for whom am I! + I say not this of Chartres' dame, + Mother of Louis! + + +Richard's prison-song, one of the chief monuments of English +literature, sounds to every ear, accustomed to twelfth-century +verse, as charming as when it was household rhyme to + + mi ome et mi baron + Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon. + + +Not only was Richard a far greater king than any Louis ever was, but +he also composed better poetry than any other king who is known to +tourists, and, when he spoke to his sister in this cry of the heart +altogether singular among monarchs, he made law and style, above +discussion. Whether he meant to reproach his other sister, Alix of +Chartres, historians may tell, if they know. If he did, the reproach +answered its purpose, for the song was written in 1193; Richard was +ransomed and released in 1194; and in 1198 the young Count "Loweis" +of Chartres and Blois leagued with the Counts of Flanders, Le +Perche, Guines, and Toulouse, against Philip Augustus, in favor of +Coeur-de-Lion to whom they rendered homage. In any case, neither +Mary nor Alice in 1193 was reigning Countess. Mary was a widow since +1181, and her son Henry was Count in Champagne, apparently a great +favourite with his uncle Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The life of this +Henry of Champagne was another twelfth-century romance, but can +serve no purpose here except to recall the story that his mother, +the great Countess Mary, died in 1198 of sorrow for the death of +this son, who was then King of Jerusalem, and was killed, in 1197, +by a fall from the window of his palace at Acre. Coeur-de-Lion died +in 1199. In 1201, Mary's other son, who succeeded Henry,--Count +Thibaut III,--died, leaving a posthumous heir, famous in the +thirteenth century as Thibaut-le-Grand--the Thibaut of Queen +Blanche. + +They were all astonishing--men and women--and filled the world, for +two hundred years, with their extraordinary energy and genius; but +the greatest of all was old Queen Eleanor, who survived her son +Coeur-de-Lion, as well as her two husbands,--Louis-le-Jeune and +Henry II Plantagenet,--and was left in 1200 still struggling to +repair the evils and fend off the dangers they caused. "Queen by the +wrath of God," she called herself, and she knew what just claim she +had to the rank. Of her two husbands and ten children, little +remained except her son John, who, by the unanimous voice of his +family, his friends, his enemies, and even his admirers, achieved a +reputation for excelling in every form of twelfth-century crime. He +was a liar and a traitor, as was not uncommon, but he was thought to +be also a coward, which, in that family, was singular. Some +redeeming quality he must have had, but none is recorded. His mother +saw him running, in his masculine, twelfth-century recklessness, to +destruction, and she made a last and a characteristic effort to save +him and Guienne by a treaty of amity with the French king, to be +secured by the marriage of the heir of France, Louis, to Eleanor's +granddaughter, John's niece, Blanche of Castile, then twelve or +thirteen years old. Eleanor herself was eighty, and yet she made the +journey to Spain, brought back the child to Bordeaux, affianced her +to Louis VIII as she had herself been affianced in 1137 to Louis +VII, and in May, 1200, saw her married. The French had then given up +their conventional trick of attributing Eleanor's acts to her want +of morals; and France gave her--as to most women after sixty years +old--the benefit of the convention which made women respectable +after they had lost the opportunity to be vicious. In French eyes, +Eleanor played out the drama according to the rules. She could not +save John, but she died in 1202, before his ruin, and you can still +see her lying with her husband and her son Richard at Fontevrault in +her twelfth-century tomb. + +In 1223, Blanche became Queen of France. She was thirty-six years +old. Her husband, Louis VIII, was ambitious to rival his father, +Philip Augustus, who had seized Normandy in 1203. Louis undertook to +seize Toulouse and Avignon. In 1225, he set out with a large army in +which, among the chief vassals, his cousin Thibaut of Champagne led +a contingent. Thibaut was five-and-twenty years old, and, like +Pierre de Dreux, then Duke of Brittany, was one of the most +brilliant and versatile men of his time, and one of the greatest +rulers. As royal vassal Thibaut owed forty days' service in the +field; but his interests were at variance with the King's, and at +the end of the term he marched home with his men, leaving the King +to fall ill and die in Auvergne, November 8, 1226, and a child of +ten years old to carry on the government as Louis IX. + +Chartres Cathedral has already told the story twice, in stone and +glass; but Thibaut does not appear there, although he saved the +Queen. Some member of the royal family must be regent. Queen Blanche +took the place, and of course the princes of the blood, who thought +it was their right, united against her. At first, Blanche turned +violently on Thibaut and forbade him to appear at the coronation at +Rheims in his own territory, on November 29, as though she held him +guilty of treason; but when the league of great vassals united to +deprive her of the regency, she had no choice but to detach at any +cost any member of the league, and Thibaut alone offered help. What +price she paid him was best known to her; but what price she would +be believed to have paid him was as well known to her as what had +been said of her grandmother Eleanor when she changed her allegiance +in 1152. If the scandal had concerned Thibaut alone, she might have +been well content, but Blanche was obliged also to pay desperate +court to the papal legate. Every member of her husband's family +united against her and libelled her character with the freedom which +enlivened and envenomed royal tongues. + + Maintes paroles en dit en + Comme d'Iseult et de Tristan. + + +Had this been all, she would have cared no more than Eleanor or any +other queen had cared, for in French drama, real or imaginary, such +charges were not very serious and hardly uncomplimentary; but Iseult +had never been accused, over and above her arbitrary views on the +marriage-contract, of acting as an accomplice with Tristan in +poisoning King Marc. French convention required that Thibaut should +have poisoned Louis VIII for love of the Queen, and that this secret +reciprocal love should control their lives. Fortunately for Blanche +she was a devout ally of the Church, and the Church believed evil +only of enemies. The legate and the prelates rallied to her support +and after eight years of desperate struggle they crushed Pierre +Mauclerc and saved Thibaut and Blanche. + +For us the poetry is history, and the facts are false. French art +starts not from facts, but from certain assumptions as conventional +as a legendary window, and the commonest convention is the Woman. +The fact, then as now, was Power, or its equivalent in exchange, but +Frenchmen, while struggling for the Power, expressed it in terms of +Art. They looked on life as a drama,--and on drama as a phase of +life--in which the bystanders were bound to assume and accept the +regular stage-plot. That the plot might be altogether untrue to real +life affected in no way its interest. To them Thibaut and Blanche +were bound to act Tristan and Isolde. Whatever they were when off +the stage, they were lovers on it. Their loves were as real and as +reasonable as the worship of the Virgin. Courteous love was avowedly +a form of drama, but not the less a force of society. Illusion for +illusion, courteous love, in Thibaut's hands, or in the hands of +Dante and Petrarch, was as substantial as any other convention;--the +balance of trade, the rights of man, or the Athanasian Creed. In +that sense the illusions alone were real; if the Middle Ages had +reflected only what was practical, nothing would have survived for +us. + +Thibaut was Tristan, and is said to have painted his verses on the +walls of his chateau. If he did, he painted there, in the opinion of +M. Gaston Paris, better poetry than any that was written on paper or +parchment, for Thibaut was a great prince and great poet who did in +both characters whatever he pleased. In modern equivalents, one +would give much to see the chateau again with the poetry on its +walls. Provins has lost the verses, but Troyes still keeps some +churches and glass of Thibaut's time which hold their own with the +best. Even of Thibaut himself, something survives, and though it +were only the memories of his seneschal, the famous Sire de +Joinville, history and France would be poor without him. With +Joinville in hand, you may still pass an hour in the company of +these astonishing thirteenth-century men and women:--crusaders who +fight, hunt, make love, build churches, put up glass windows to the +Virgin, buy missals, talk scholastic philosophy, compose poetry: +Blanche, Thibaut, Perron, Joinville, Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, +Saint Dominic, Saint Francis--you may know them as intimately as you +can ever know a world that is lost; and in the case of Thibaut you +may know more, for he is still alive in his poems; he even vibrates +with life. One might try a few verses, to see what he meant by +courtesy. Perhaps he wrote them for Queen Blanche, but, to whomever +he sent them, the French were right in thinking that she ought to +have returned his love (edition of 1742):-- + +Nus hom ne puet ami reconforter + Se cele non ou il a son cuer mis. + Pour ce m'estuet sovent plaindre et plourer + Que mis confors ne me vient, ce m'est vis, + De la ou j'ai tote ma remembrance. + Pour bien amer ai sovent esmaiance + A dire voir. + Dame, merci! donez moi esperance + De joie avoir. + + +Jene puis pas sovent a li parler + Ne remirer les biaus iex de son vis. + Ce pois moi que je n'i puis aler + Car ades est mes cuers ententis. + + +Ho! bele riens, douce sans conoissance, + Car me mettez en millor attendance + De bon espoir! + Dame, merci! donez moi esperance + De joie avoir. + + +Aucuns si sont qui me vuelent blamer + Quant je ne di a qui je suis amis; + Mais ja, dame, ne saura mon penser + Nus qui soit nes fors vous cui je le dis + Couardement a pavours a doutance + Dont puestes vous lors bien a ma semblance + Mon cuer savoir. + Dame, merci! donez moi esperance + De joie avoir. + + +There is no comfort to be found for pain + Save only where the heart has made its home. + Therefore I can but murmur and complain + Because no comfort to my pain has come + From where I garnered all my happiness. + From true love have I only earned distress + The truth to say. + Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess + A hope, one day. + + +Seldom the music of her voice I hear + Or wonder at the beauty of her eyes. + It grieves me that I may not follow there + Where at her feet my heart attentive lies. + + +Oh, gentle Beauty without consciousness, + Let me once feel a moment's hopefulness, + If but one ray! + Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess + A hope, one day. + + +Certain there are who blame upon me throw + Because I will not tell whose love I seek; + But truly, lady, none my thought shall know, + None that is born, save you to whom I speak + In cowardice and awe and doubtfulness, + That you may happily with fearlessness + My heart essay. + Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess + A hope, one day. + + +Does Thibaut's verse sound simple? It is the simplicity of the +thirteenth-century glass--so refined and complicated that sensible +people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any +blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these +three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned +there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as +perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These +stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how +Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing the Queen +of Heaven! + +De grant travail et de petit esploit + Voi ce siegle cargie et encombre + Que tant somes plain de maleurte + Ke nus ne pens a faire ce qu'il doit, + Ains avons si le Deauble trouve + Qu'a lui servir chascuns paine et essaie + Et Diex ki ot pour nos ja cruel plaie + Metons arrier et sa grant dignite; + Molt est hardis qui pour mort ne s'esmaie. + + +Diex que tout set et tout puet et tout voit + Nous auroit tost en entre-deus giete + Se la Dame plaine de grant bonte + Pardelez lui pour nos ne li prioit + + + Si tres douc mot plaisant et savoure + Le grant courous dou grant Signour apaie; + Molt par est fox ki autre amor essai + K'en cestui n'a barat ne fausete + Ne es autres n'a ne merti ne manaie. + + +La souris quiert pour son cors garandir + Contre l'yver la noif et le forment + Et nous chaitif nous n'alons rien querant + Quant nous morrons ou nous puissions garir. + Nous ne cherchons fors k'infer le puant; + Or esgardes come beste sauvage + Pourvoit de loin encontre son domage + Et nous n'avons ne sens ne hardement; + Il est avis que plain somes de rage. + + +Li Deable a getey por nos ravir + Quatre amecons aescbies de torment; + Covoitise lance premierement + Et puis Orguel por sa grant rois emplir + Et Luxure va le batel trainant + Felonie les governe et les nage. + Ensi peschant s'en viegnent au rivage + Dont Diex nous gart par son commandement + En qui sains fons nous feismes homage. + + +A la Dame qui tous les bien avance + T'en va, chancon s'el te vielt escouter + Onques ne fu nus di millor chaunce. + + +With travail great, and little cargo fraught, + See how our world is labouring in pain; + So filled we are with love of evil gain + That no one thinks of doing what he ought, + But we all hustle in the Devil's train, + And only in his service toil and pray; + And God, who suffered for us agony, + We set behind, and treat him with disdain; + Hardy is he whom death does not dismay. + + +God who rules all, from whom we can hide nought, + Had quickly flung us back to nought again + But that our gentle, gracious, Lady Queen + Begged him to spare us, and our pardon wrought; + + + Striving with words of sweetness to restrain + Our angry Lord, and his great wrath allay. + Felon is he who shall her love betray + Which is pure truth, and falsehood cannot feign, + While all the rest is lie and cheating play. + + +The feeble mouse, against the winter's cold, + Garners the nuts and grain within his cell, + While man goes groping, without sense to tell + Where to seek refuge against growing old. + We seek it in the smoking mouth of Hell. + With the poor beast our impotence compare! + See him protect his life with utmost care, + While us nor wit nor courage can compel + To save our souls, so foolish mad we are. + The Devil doth in snares our life enfold; + Four hooks has he with torments baited well; + And first with Greed he casts a mighty spell, + And then, to fill his nets, has Pride enrolled, + And Luxury steers the boat, and fills the sail, + And Perfidy controls and sets the snare; + Thus the poor fish are brought to land, and there + May God preserve us and the foe repel! + Homage to him who saves us from despair! + + +To Mary Queen, who passes all compare, + Go, little song! to her your sorrows tell! + Nor Heaven nor Earth holds happiness so rare. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +NICOLETTE AND MARION + +C'est d'Aucassins et de Nicolete. + + +Qui vauroit bons vers oir + Del deport du viel caitiff + De deus biax enfans petis + Nicolete et Aucassins; + Des grans paines qu'il soufri + Et des proueces qu'il fist + For s'amie o le cler vis. + Dox est li cans biax est li dis + Et cortois et bien asis. + Nus hom n'est si esbahis + Tant dolans ni entrepris + De grant mal amaladis + Se il l'oit ne soit garis + Et de joie resbaudis + Tant par est dou-ce. + + +This is of Aucassins and Nicolette. + + +Whom would a good ballad please + By the captive from o'er-seas, + A sweet song in children's praise, + Nicolette and Aucassins; + What he bore for her caress, + What he proved of his prowess + For his friend with the bright face? + The song has charm, the tale has grace, + And courtesy and good address. + No man is in such distress, + Such suffering or weariness, + Sick with ever such sickness, + But he shall, if he hear this, + Recover all his happiness, + So sweet it is! + + +This little thirteenth-century gem is called a "chante-fable," a +story partly in prose, partly in verse, to be sung according to +musical notation accompanying the words in the single manuscript +known, and published in facsimile by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon at Oxford +in 1896. Indeed, few poems, old or new, have in the last few years +been more reprinted, translated, and discussed, than "Aucassins," +yet the discussion lacks interest to the idle tourist, and tells him +little. Nothing is known of the author or his date. The second line +alone offers a hint, but nothing more. "Caitif" means in the first +place a captive, and secondly any unfortunate or wretched man. +Critics have liked to think that the word means here a captive to +the Saracens, and that the poet, like Cervantes three or four +hundred years later, may have been a prisoner to the infidels. What +the critics can do, we can do. If liberties can be taken with +impunity by scholars, we can take the liberty of supposing that the +poet was a prisoner in the crusade of Coeur-de-Lion and Philippe- +Auguste; that he had recovered his liberty, with his master, in +1194; and that he passed the rest of his life singing to the old +Queen Eleanor or to Richard, at Chinon, and to the lords of all the +chateaux in Guienne, Poitiers, Anjou, and Normandy, not to mention +England. The living was a pleasant one, as the sunny atmosphere of +the Southern poetry proves. + + Dox est li cans; biax est li dis, + Et cortois et bien asis. + + +The poet-troubadour who composed and recited "Aucassins" could not +have been unhappy, but this is the affair of his private life, and +not of ours. What rather interests us is his poetic motive, +"courteous love," which gives the tale a place in the direct line +between Christian of Troyes, Thibaut-le-Grand, and William of +Lorris. Christian of Troyes died in 1175; at least he wrote nothing +of a later date, so far as is certainly known. Richard Coeur-de-Lion +died in 1199, very soon after the death of his half-sister Mary of +Champagne. Thibaut-le-Grand was born in 1201. William of Lorris, who +concluded the line of great "courteous" poets, died in 1260 or +thereabouts. For our purposes, "Aucassins" comes between Christian +of Troyes and William of Lorris; the trouvere or jogleor, who sang, +was a "viel caitif" when the Chartres glass was set up, and the +Charlemagne window designed, about 1210, or perhaps a little later. +When one is not a professor, one has not the right to make inept +guesses, and, when one is not a critic, one should not risk +confusing a difficult question by baseless assumptions; but even a +summer tourist may without offence visit his churches in the order +that suits him best; and, for our tour, "Aucassins" follows +Christian and goes hand in hand with Blondel and the chatelain de +Coucy, as the most exquisite expression of "courteous love." As one +of "Aucassins'" German editors says in his introduction: "Love is +the medium through which alone the hero surveys the world around +him, and for which he contemns everything that the age prized: +knightly honour; deeds of arms; father and mother; hell, and even +heaven; but the mere promise by his father of a kiss from Nicolette +inspires him to superhuman heroism; while the old poet sings and +smiles aside to his audience as though he wished them to understand +that Aucassins, a foolish boy, must not be judged quite seriously, +but that, old as he was himself, he was just as foolish about +Nicolette." + +Aucassins was the son of the Count of Beaucaire. Nicolette was a +young girl whom the Viscount of Beaucaire had redeemed as a captive +of the Saracens, and had brought up as a god-daughter in his family. +Aucassins fell in love with Nicolette, and wanted to marry her. The +action turned on marriage, for, to the Counts of Beaucaire, as to +other counts, not to speak of kings, high alliance was not a matter +of choice but of necessity, without which they could not defend +their lives, let alone their counties; and, to make Aucassins' +conduct absolutely treasonable, Beaucaire was at that time +surrounded and besieged, and the Count, Aucassins' father, stood in +dire need of his son's help. Aucassins refused to stir unless he +could have Nicolette. What were honours to him if Nicolette were not +to share them. "S'ele estait empereris de Colstentinoble u +d'Alemaigne u roine de France u d'Engletere, si aroit il asses peu +en li, tant est france et cortoise et de bon aire et entecie de +toutes bones teces." To be empress of "Colstentinoble" would be none +too good for her, so stamped is she with nobility and courtesy and +high-breeding and all good qualities. + +So the Count, after a long struggle, sent for his Viscount and +threatened to have Nicolette burned alive, and the Viscount himself +treated no better, if he did not put a stop to the affair; and the +Viscount shut up Nicolette, and remonstrated with Aucassins: "Marry +a king's daughter, or a count's! leave Nicolette alone, or you will +never see Paradise!" This at once gave Aucassins the excuse for a +charming tirade against Paradise, for which, a century or two later, +he would properly have been burned together with Nicolette:-- + +En paradis qu'ai je a faire? Je n'i quier entrer mais que j'aie +Nicolete, ma tres douce amie, que j'aim tant. C'en paradis ne vont +fors tex gens con je vous dirai. Il i vont ci viel prestre et cil +vieil clop et cil manke, qui tote jour et tote nuit cropent devant +ces autex et en ces vies cruutes, et ci a ces vies capes ereses et a +ces vies tatereles vestues, qui sont nu et decauc et estrumele, qui +moeurent de faim et d'esci et de froid et de mesaises. Icil vont en +paradis; aveuc ciax n'ai jou que faire; mais en infer voil jou aler. +Car en infer vont li bel clerc et li bel cevalier qui sont mort as +tornois et as rices gueres, et li bien sergant et li franc home. +Aveuc ciax voil jou aler. Et si vont les beles dames cortoises que +eles ont ii amis ou iii avec leurs barons. Et si va li ors et li +agens et li vairs et li gris; et si i vont herpeor et jogleor et li +roi del siecle. Avec ciax voil jou aler mais que j'aie Nicolete, ma +tres douce amie, aveuc moi. + +In Paradise what have I to do? I do not care to go there unless I +may have Nicolette, my very sweet friend, whom I love so much. For +to Paradise goes no one but such people as I will tell you of. There +go old priests and old cripples and the maimed, who all day and all +night crouch before altars and in old crypts, and are clothed with +old worn-out capes and old tattered rags; who are naked and footbare +and sore; who die of hunger and want and misery. These go to +Paradise; with them I have nothing to do; but to Hell I am willing +to go. For, to Hell go the fine scholars and the fair knights who +die in tournies and in glorious wars; and the good men-at-arms and +the well-born. With them I will gladly go. And there go the fair +courteous ladies whether they have two or three friends besides +their lords. And the gold and silver go there, and the ermines and +sables; and there go the harpers and jongleurs, and the kings of the +world. With these will I go, if only I may have Nicolette, my very +sweet friend, with me. + +Three times, in these short extracts, the word "courteous" has +already appeared. The story itself is promised as "courteous"; +Nicolette is "courteous"; and the ladies who are not to go to heaven +are "courteous." Aucassins is in the full tide of courtesy, and +evidently a professional, or he never would have claimed a place for +harpers and jongleurs with kings and chevaliers in the next world. +The poets of "courteous love" showed as little interest in religion +as the poets of the eleventh century had shown for it in their poems +of war. Aucassins resembled Christian of Troyes in this, and both of +them resembled Thibaut, while William of Lorris went beyond them +all. The literature of the "siecle" was always unreligious, from the +"Chanson de Roland" to the "Tragedy of Hamlet"; to be "papelard" was +unworthy of a chevalier; the true knight of courtesy made nothing of +defying the torments of hell, as he defied the lance of a rival, the +frowns of society, the threats of parents or the terrors of magic; +the perfect, gentle, courteous lover thought of nothing but his +love. Whether the object of his love were Nicolette of Beaucaire or +Blanche of Castile, Mary of Champagne or Mary of Chartres, was a +detail which did not affect the devotion of his worship. + +So Nicolette, shut up in a vaulted chamber, leaned out at the marble +window and sang, while Aucassins, when his father promised that he +should have a kiss from Nicolette, went out to make fabulous +slaughter of the enemy; and when his father broke the promise, shut +himself up in his chamber, and also sang; and the action went on by +scenes and interludes, until, one night, Nicolette let herself down +from the window, by the help of sheets and towels, into the garden, +and, with a natural dislike of wetting her skirts which has +delighted every hearer or reader from that day to this, "prist se +vesture a l'une main devant et a l'autre deriere si s'escorca por le +rousee qu'ele vit grande sor l'erbe si s'en ala aval le gardin"; she +raised her skirts with one hand in front and the other behind, for +the dew which she saw heavy on the grass, and went off down the +garden, to the tower where Aucassins was locked up, and sang to him +through a crack in the masonry, and gave him a lock of her hair, and +they talked till the friendly night-watch came by and warned her by +a sweetly-sung chant, that she had better escape. So she bade +farewell to Aucassins, and went on to a breach in the city wall, and +she looked through it down into the fosse which was very deep and +very steep. So she sang to herself-- + +Peres rois de maeste + Or ne sai quel part aler. + Se je vois u gaut rame + Ja me mengeront li le + Li lions et li sengler + Dont il i a a plente. + + +Father, King of Majesty! + Now I know not where to flee. + If I seek the forest free, + Then the lions will eat me, + Wolves and wild boars terribly, + Of which plenty there there be. + + +The lions were a touch of poetic licence, even for Beaucaire, but +the wolves and wild boars were real enough; yet Nicolette feared +even them less than she feared the Count, so she slid down what her +audience well knew to be a most dangerous and difficult descent, and +reached the bottom with many wounds in her hands and feet, "et san +en sali bien en xii lius"; so that blood was drawn in a dozen +places, and then she climbed up the other side, and went off bravely +into the depths of the forest; an uncanny thing to do by night, as +you can still see. + +Then followed a pastoral, which might be taken from the works of +another poet of the same period, whose acquaintance no one can +neglect to make--Adam de la Halle, a Picard, of Arras. Adam lived, +it is true, fifty years later than the date imagined for Aucassins, +but his shepherds and shepherdesses are not so much like, as +identical with, those of the Southern poet, and all have so singular +an air of life that the conventional courteous knight fades out +beside them. The poet, whether bourgeois, professional, noble, or +clerical, never much loved the peasant, and the peasant never much +loved him, or any one else. The peasant was a class by himself, and +his trait, as a class, was suspicion of everybody and all things, +whether material, social, or divine. Naturally he detested his lord, +whether temporal or spiritual, because the seigneur and the priest +took his earnings, but he was never servile, though a serf; he was +far from civil; he was commonly gross. He was cruel, but not more so +than his betters; and his morals were no worse. The object of +oppression on all sides,--the invariable victim, whoever else might +escape,--the French peasant, as a class, held his own--and more. In +fact, he succeeded in plundering Church, Crown, nobility, and +bourgeoisie, and was the only class in French history that rose +steadily in power and well-being, from the time of the crusades to +the present day, whatever his occasional suffering may have been; +and, in the thirteenth century, he was suffering. When Nicolette, on +the morning after her escape, came upon a group of peasants in the +forest, tending the Count's cattle, she had reason to be afraid of +them, but instead they were afraid of her. They thought at first +that she was a fairy. When they guessed the riddle, they kept the +secret, though they risked punishment and lost the chance of reward +by protecting her. Worse than this, they agreed, for a small +present, to give a message to Aucassins if he should ride that way. + +Aucassins was not very bright, but when he got out of prison after +Nicolette's escape, he did ride out, at his friends' suggestion, and +tried to learn what had become of her. Passing through the woods he +came upon the same group of shepherds and shepherdesses:-- + + Esmeres et Martinet, Fruelins et Johannes, Robecons et +Aubries,-- + +who might have been living in the Forest of Arden, so like were they +to the clowns of Shakespeare. They were singing of Nicolette and her +present, and the cakes and knives and flute they would buy with it. +Aucassins jumped to the bait they offered him; and they instantly +began to play him as though he were a trout:-- + +"Bel enfant, dix vos i ait!" + +"Dix vos benie!" fait cil qui fu plus enparles des autres. + +"Bel enfant," fait il, "redites le cancon que vos disiez ore!" + +"Nous n'i dirons," fait cil qui plus fu enparles des autres. "Dehait +ore qui por vos i cantera, biax sire!" + +"Bel enfant!" fait Aucassins, "enne me connissies vos?" + +"Oil! nos savions bien que vos estes Aucassins, nos damoisiax, mais +nos ne somes mie a vos, ains somes au conte." + +"Bel enfant, si feres, je vos en pri!" + +"Os, por le cuer be!" fait cil. "Por quoi canteroie je por vos, s'il +ne me seoit! Quant il n'a si rice home en cest pais sans le cors le +conte Garin s'il trovait mes bues ne mes vaces ne mes brebis en ses +pres n'en sen forment qu'il fust mie tant hardis por les es a crever +qu'il les en ossast cacier. Et por quoi canteroie je por vos s'il ne +me seoit?" + +"Se dix vos ait, bel enfant, si feres! et tenes x sous que j'ai ci +en une borse!" + +"God bless you, fair child!" said Aucassins. + +"God be with you!" replied the one who talked best. + +"Fair child!" said he, "repeat the song you were just singing." + +"We won't!" replied he who talked best among them. "Bad luck to him +who shall sing for you, good sir!" + +"Fair child," said Aucassins, "do you know me?" + +"Yes! we know very well that you are Aucassins, our young lord; but +we are none of yours; we belong to the Count." + +"Fair child, indeed you'll do it, I pray you!" + +"Listen, for love of God!" said he. "Why should I sing for you if it +does not suit me? when there is no man so powerful in this country, +except Count Garin, if he found my oxen or my cows or my sheep in +his pasture or his close, would not rather risk losing his eyes than +dare to turn them out! and why should I sing for you, if it does not +suit me!" + +"So God help you, good child, indeed you will do it! and take these +ten sous that I have here in my purse." + +"Sire les deniers prenderons nos, mais je ne vos canterai mie, car +j'en ai jure. Mais je le vos conterai se vos voles." + +"De par diu!" faits Aucassins. "Encore aim je mix center que nient." + +"Sire, the money we will take, but I'll not sing to you, for I've +sworn it. But I will tell it you, if you like." + +"For God's sake!" said Aucassins; "better telling than nothing!" + +Ten sous was no small gift! twenty sous was the value of a strong +ox. The poet put a high money-value on the force of love, but he set +a higher value on it in courtesy. These boors were openly insolent +to their young lord, trying to extort money from him, and +threatening him with telling his father; but they were in their +right, and Nicolette was in their power. At heart they meant +Aucassins well, but they were rude and grasping, and the poet used +them in order to show how love made the true lover courteous even to +clowns. Aucassins' gentle courtesy is brought out by the boors' +greed, as the colours in the window were brought out and given their +value by a bit of blue or green. The poet, having got his little +touch of colour rightly placed, let the peasants go. "Cil qui fu +plus enparles des autres," having been given his way and his money, +told Aucassins what he knew of Nicolette and her message; so +Aucassins put spurs to his horse and cantered into the forest, +singing:-- + +Se diu plaist le pere fort + Je vos reverai encore + Suer, douce a-mie! + + +So please God, great and strong, + I will find you now ere long, + Sister, sweet friend! + + +But the peasant had singular attraction for the poet. Whether the +character gave him a chance for some clever mimicry, which was one +of his strong points as a story-teller: or whether he wanted to +treat his subjects, like the legendary windows, in pairs; or whether +he felt that the forest-scene specially amused his audience, he +immediately introduced a peasant of another class, much more +strongly coloured, or deeply shadowed. Every one in the audience +was--and, for that matter, still would be--familiar with the great +forests, the home of half the fairy and nursery tales of Europe, +still wild enough and extensive enough to hide in, although they +have now comparatively few lions, and not many wolves or wild boars +or serpents such as Nicolette feared. Every one saw, without an +effort, the young damoiseau riding out with his hound or hawk, +looking for game; the lanes under the trees, through the wood, or +the thick underbrush before lanes were made; the herdsmen watching +their herds, and keeping a sharp look-out for wolves; the peasant +seeking lost cattle; the black kiln-men burning charcoal; and in the +depths of the rocks or swamps or thickets--the outlaw. Even now, +forests like Rambouillet, or Fontainebleau or Compiegne are enormous +and wild; one can see Aucassins breaking his way through thorns and +branches in search of Nicolette, tearing his clothes and wounding +himself "en xl lius u en xxx," until evening approached, and he +began to weep for disappointment:-- + +Il esgarda devant lui enmi la voie si vit un vallet tei que je vos +dirai. Grans estoit et mervellex et lais et hidex. Il avoit une +grande hure plus noire qu'une carbouclee, et avoit plus de planne +paume entre ii ex, et avoit unes grandes joes et un grandisme nez +plat, et une grans narines lees et unes grosses levres plus rouges +d'unes carbounees, et uns grans dens gaunes et lais et estoit +caucies d'uns housiax et d'uns sollers de buef fretes de tille +dusque deseure le genol et estoit afules d'une cape a ii envers si +estoit apoiies sor une grande macue. Aucassins s'enbati sor lui +s'eut grand paor quant il le sorvit... + +"Baix frere, dix ti ait!" + +"Dix vos benie!" fait cil. "Se dix t'ait, que fais tu ilec?" + +"A vos que monte?" fait cil. + +"Nient!" fait Aucassins; "je nel vos demant se por bien non." + +"Mais pour quoi ploures vos?" fait cil, "et faites si fait doel? +Certes se j'estoie ausi rices hom que vos estes, tos li mons ne me +feroit mie plorer." + +"Ba! me conissies vos!" fait Aucassins. + +"Oie! je sai bien que vos estes Aucassins li fix le conte, et se vos +me dites por quoi vos plores je vos dirai que je fac ici." + +As he looked before him along the way he saw a man such as I will +tell you. Tall he was, and menacing, and ugly, and hideous. He had +a great mane blacker than charcoal and had more than a full palm- +width between his two eyes, and had big cheeks, and a huge flat nose +and great broad nostrils, and thick lips redder than raw beef, and +large ugly yellow teeth, and was shod with hose and leggings of raw +hide laced with bark cord to above the knee, and was muffled in a +cloak without lining, and was leaning on a great club. Aucassins +came upon him suddenly and had great fear when he saw him. + +"Fair brother, good day!" said he. + +"God bless you!" said the other. + +"As God help you, what do you here?" + +"What is that to you?" said the other. + +"Nothing!" said Aucassins; "I ask only from good-will." + +"But why are you crying!" said the other, "and mounring so loud? +Sure, if I were as great a man as you are, nothing on earth would +make me cry." + +"Bah! you know me?" said Aucassins. + +"Yes, I know very well that you are Aucassins, the count's son; and +if you will tell me what you are crying for, I will tell you what I +am doing here." + +Aucassins seemed to think this an equal bargain. All damoiseaux were +not as courteous as Aucassins, nor all "varlets" as rude as his +peasants; we shall see how the young gentlemen of Picardy treated +the peasantry for no offence at all; but Aucassins carried a softer, +Southern temper in a happier climate, and, with his invariable +gentle courtesy, took no offence at the familiarity with which the +ploughman treated him. Yet he dared not tell the truth, so he +invented, on the spur of the moment, an excuse;--he has lost, he +said, a beautiful white hound. The peasant hooted-- + +"Os!" fait cil; "por le cuer que cil sires eut en sen ventre! que +vos plorastes por un cien puant! Mal dehait ait qui ja mais vos +prisera quant il n'a si rice home en ceste tere se vos peres len +mandoit x u xv u xx qu'il ne les envoyast trop volontiers et s'en +esteroit trop lies. Mais je dois plorer et dol faire?" + +"Et tu de quoi frere?" + +"Sire je lo vos dirai. J'estoie liues a un rice vilain si cacoie se +carue. iiii bues i avoit. Or a iii jors qu il m'avint une grande +malaventure que je perdi le mellor de mes bues Roget le mellor de me +carue. Si le vois querant. Si ne mengai ne ne bue iii jors a passes. +Si n'os aler a le vile c'on me metroit en prison que je ne l'ai de +quoi saure. De tot l'avoir du monde n'ai je plus vaillant que vos +vees sor le cors de mi. Une lasse mere avoie, si n'avoit plus +vaillant que une keutisele, si h a on sacie de desous le dos si gist +a pur l'estrain, si m'en poise asses plus que denu. Car avoirs va et +viaent; se j'ai or perdu je gaaignerai une autre fois si sorrai mon +buef quant je porrai, ne ja por cien n'en plorerai. Et vos plorastes +por un cien de longaigne! Mal dehait ait qui mais vos prisera!" + +"Certes tu es de bon confort, biax frere! que benois sois tu! Et que +valoit tes bues!" + +"Sire xx sous m'en demande on, je n'en puis mie abatre une seule +maille." + +"Or, tien" fait Aucassins, "xx que j'ai ci en me borse, si sol ten +buef!" + +"Listen!" said he, "By the heart God had in his body, that you +should cry for a stinking dog! Bad luck to him who ever prizes you! +When there is no man in this land so great, if your father sent to +him for ten or fifteen or twenty but would fetch them very gladly, +and be only too pleased. But I ought to cry and mourn." + +"And--why you, brother?" + +"Sir, I will tell you. I was hired out to a rich farmer to drive his +plough. There were four oxen. Now three days ago I had a great +misfortune, for I lost the best of my oxen, Roget, the best of my +team. I am looking to find him. I've not eaten or drunk these three +days past. I dare n't go to the town, for they would put me in +prison as I've nothing to pay with. In all the world I've not the +worth of anything but what you see on my body I've a poor old mother +who owned nothing but a feather mattress, and they've dragged it +from under her back so she lies on the bare straw, and she troubles +me more than myself. For riches come and go if I lose to day, I gain +to-morrow; I will pay for my ox when I can, and will not cry for +that. And you cry for a filthy dog! Bad luck to him who ever thinks +well of you!" + +"Truly, you counsel well, good brother! God bless you! And what was +your ox worth?" + +"Sir, they ask me twenty sous for it. I cannot beat them down a +single centime." + +"Here are twenty," said Aucassins, "that I have in my purse! Pay for +your ox!" + +"Sire!" fait il, "grans mercies! et dix vos laist trover ce que vox +queres!" + +"Sir!" said he; "many thanks! and Go! grant you find what you seek!" + +The little episode was thrown in without rhyme or reason to the +rapid emotion of the love-story, as though the jongleur were showing +his own cleverness and humour, at the expense of his hero, as +jongleurs had a way of doing; but he took no such liberties with his +heroine. While Aucassins tore through the thickets on horseback, +crying aloud, Nicolette had built herself a little hut in the depths +of the forest:-- + +Ele prist des flors de lis + Et de l'erbe du garris + Et de le foille autresi; + Une belle loge en fist, + Ainques tant gente ne vi. + Jure diu qui ne menti + Se par la vient Aucassins + Et il por l'amor de li + Ne si repose un petit + Ja ne sera ses amis + N'ele s'a-mie. + + +So she twined the lilies' flower, + Roofed with leafy branches o'er, + Made of it a lovely bower, + With the freshest grass for floor + Such as never mortal saw. + By God's Verity, she swore, + Should Aucassins pass her door, + And not stop for love of her, + To repose a moment there, + He should be her love no more, + Nor she his dear! + + +So night came on, and Nicolette went to sleep, a little distance +away from her hut. Aucassins at last came by, and dismounted, +spraining his shoulder in doing it. Then he crept into the little +hut, and lying on his back, looked up through the leaves to the +moon, and sang:-- + +Estoilete, je te voi, + Que la lune trait a soi. + Nicolete est aveuc toi, + M'amiete o le blond poil. + Je quid que dix le veut avoir + Por la lumiere de soir + Que par li plus clere soit. + Vien, amie, je te proie! + Ou monter vauroie droit, + Que que fust du recaoir. + Que fuisse lassus o toi + Ja te baiseroi estroit. + Se j'estoie fix a roi + S'afferies vos bien a moi + Suer douce amie! + + +I can see you, little star, + That the moon draws through the air. + Nicolette is where you are, + My own love with the blonde hair. + I think God must want her near + To shine down upon us here + That the evening be more clear. + Come down, dearest, to my prayer, + Or I climb up where you are! + Though I fell, I would not care. + If I once were with you there + I would kiss you closely, dear! + If a monarch's son I were + You should all my kingdom share, + Sweet friend, sister! + + +How Nicolette heard him sing, and came to him and rubbed his +shoulder and dressed his wounds as though he were a child; and how +in the morning they rode away together, like Tennyson's "Sleeping +Beauty,"-- + + O'er the hills and far away + Beyond their utmost purple rim, + Beyond the night, beyond the day, + + +singing as they rode, the story goes on to tell or to sing in verse-- + +Aucassins, li biax, li blons, + Li gentix, It amorous, + Est issous del gaut parfont, + Entre ses bras ses amors + Devant lui sor son arcon. + Les ex li baise et le front, + Et le bouce et le menton. + Elle l'a mis a raison. + "Aucassins, biax amis dox, + "En quel tere en irons nous?" + "Douce amie, que sai jou? + "Moi ne caut u nous aillons, + "En forest u en destor + "Mais que je soie aveuc vous." + Passent les vaus et les mons, + Et les viles et les bors + A la mer vinrent au jor, + Si descendent u sablon + Les le rivage. + + +Aucassins, the brave, the fair, + Courteous knight and gentle lover, + From the forest dense came forth; + In his arms his love he bore + On his saddle-bow before; + Her eyes he kisses and her mouth, + And her forehead and her chin. + She brings him back to earth again: + "Aucassins, my love, my own, + "To what country shall we turn?" + "Dearest angel, what say you? + "I care nothing where we go, + "In the forest or outside, + "While you on my saddle ride." + So they pass by hill and dale, + And the city, and the town, + Till they reach the morning pale, + And on sea-sands set them down, + Hard by the shore. + + +There we will leave them, for their further adventures have not much +to do with our matter. Like all the romans, or nearly all, +"Aucassins" is singularly pure and refined. Apparently the ladies of +courteous love frowned on coarseness and allowed no licence. Their +power must have been great, for the best romans are as free from +grossness as the "Chanson de Roland" itself, or the church glass, or +the illuminations in the manuscripts; and as long as the power of +the Church ruled good society, this decency continued. As far as +women were concerned, they seem always to have been more clean than +the men, except when men painted them in colours which men liked +best. + +Perhaps society was actually cleaner in the thirteenth century than +in the sixteenth, as Saint Louis was more decent than Francis I, and +as the bath was habitual in the twelfth century and exceptional at +the Renaissance. The rule held good for the bourgeoisie as well as +among the dames cortoises. Christian and Thibaut, "Aucassins" and +the "Roman de la Rose," may have expressed only the tastes of high- +born ladies, but other poems were avowedly bourgeois, and among the +bourgeois poets none was better than Adam de la Halle. Adam wrote +also for the court, or at least for Robert of Artois, Saint Louis's +nephew, whom he followed to Naples in 1284, but his poetry was as +little aristocratic as poetry could well be, and most of it was +cynically--almost defiantly--middle-class, as though the weavers of +Arras were his only audience, and recognized him and the objects of +his satire in every verse. The bitter personalities do not concern +us, but, at Naples, to amuse Robert of Artois and his court, Adam +composed the first of French comic operas, which had an immense +success, and, as a pastoral poem, has it still. The Idyll of Arras +was a singular contrast to the Idyll of Beaucaire, but the social +value was the same in both; Robin and Marion were a pendant to +Aucassins and Nicolette; Robin was almost a burlesque on Aucassins, +while Marion was a Northern, energetic, intelligent, pastoral +Nicolette. + +"Li Gieus de Robin et de Marion" had little or no plot. Adam strung +together, on a thread of dialogue and by a group of suitable +figures, a number of the favourite songs of his time, followed by +the favourite games, and ending with a favourite dance, the +"tresca." The songs, the games, and the dances do not concern us, +but the dialogue runs along prettily, with an air of Flemish +realism, like a picture of Teniers, as unlike that of "courtoisie" +as Teniers was to Guido Reni. Underneath it all a tone of satire +made itself felt, good-natured enough, but directed wholly against +the men. + +The scene opens on Marion tending her sheep, and singing the pretty +air: "Robin m'aime, Robin ma'a," after which enters a chevalier or +esquire, on horseback, and sings: "Je me repairoie du tournoiement." +Then follows a dialogue between the chevalier and Marion, with no +other object than to show off the charm of Marion against the +masculine defects of the knight. Being, like most squires, somewhat +slow of ideas in conversation with young women, the gentleman began +by asking for sport for his falcon. Has she seen any duck down by +the river? + + Mais veis tu par chi devant + Vers ceste riviere nul ane? + + +"Ane," it seems, was the usual word for wild duck, the falcon's +prey, and Marion knew it as well as he, but she chose to +misunderstand him:-- + +C'est une bete qui recane; + J'en vis ier iii sur che quemin, + Tous quarchies aler au moulin. + Est che chou que vous demandes? + + +"It is a beast that brays; I saw three yesterday on the road, all +with loads going to the mill. Is that what you ask?" That is not +what the squire has asked, and he is conscious that Marion knows it, +but he tries again. If she has not seen a duck, perhaps she has seen +a heron:-- + + Hairons, sire? par me foi, non! + Je n'en vi nesun puis quareme + Que j'en vi mengier chies dame Eme + Me taiien qui sorit ches brebis. + + +"Heron, sir! by my faith, no! I've not seen one since Lent when I +saw some eaten at my grandmother's--Dame Emma who owns these sheep." +"Hairons," it seems, meant also herring, and this wilful +misunderstanding struck the chevalier as carrying jest too far:-- + + Par foi! or suis j'ou esbaubis! + N'ainc mais je ne fui si gabes! + + +"On my word, I am silenced! never in my life was I so chaffed!" +Marion herself seems to think her joke a little too evident, for she +takes up the conversation in her turn, only to conclude that she +likes Robin better than she does the knight; he is gayer, and when +he plays his musette he starts the whole village dancing. At this, +the squire makes a declaration of love with such energy as to spur +his horse almost over her:-- + + Aimi, sirel ostez vo cheval! + A poi que il ne m'a blechie. + Li Robin ne regiete mie + Quand je voie apres se karue. + + +"Aimi!" is an exclamation of alarm, real or affected: "Dear me, sir! +take your horse away! he almost hurt me! Robin's horse never rears +when I go behind his plough!" Still the knight persists, and though +Marion still tells him to go away, she asks his name, which he says +is Aubert, and so gives her the catchword for another song:--"Vos +perdes vo paine, sire Aubert!"--which ends the scene with a duo. The +second scene begins with a duo of Marion and Robin, followed by her +giving a softened account of the chevalier's behaviour, and then +they lunch on bread and cheese and apples, and more songs follow, +till she sends him to get Baldwin and Walter and Peronette and the +pipers, for a dance. In his absence the chevalier returns and +becomes very pressing in his attentions, which gives her occasion to +sing:- + + J'oi Robin flagoler + Au flagol d'argent. + + +When Robin enters, the knight picks a quarrel with him for not +handling properly the falcon which he has caught in the hedge; and +Robin gets a severe beating. The scene ends by the horseman carrying +off Marion by force; but he soon gets tired of carrying her against +her will, and drops her, and disappears once for all. + + Certes voirement sui je beste + Quant a ceste beste m'areste. + Adieu, bergiere! + + +Bete the knight certainly was, and was meant to be, in order to give +the necessary colour to Marion's charms. Chevaliers were seldom +intellectually brilliant in the mediaeval romans, and even the +"Chansons de Geste" liked better to talk of their prowess than of +their wit; but Adam de la Halle, who felt no great love for +chevaliers, was not satisfied with ridiculing them in order to exalt +Marion; his second act was devoted to exalting Marion at the expense +of her own boors. + +The first act was given up to song; the second, to games and dances. +The games prove not to be wholly a success; Marion is bored by them, +and wants to dance. The dialogue shows Marion trying constantly to +control her clowns and make them decent, as Blanche of Castile had +been all her life trying to control her princes, and Mary of +Chartres her kings. Robin is a rustic counterpart to Thibaut. He is +tamed by his love of Marion, but he has just enough intelligence to +think well of himself, and to get himself into trouble without +knowing how to get out of it. Marion loves him much as she would her +child; she makes only a little fun of him; defends him from the +others; laughs at his jealousy; scolds him on occasion; flatters his +dancing; sends him on errands, to bring the pipers or drive away the +wolf; and what is most to our purpose, uses him to make the other +peasants decent. Walter and Baldwin and Hugh are coarse, and their +idea of wit is to shock the women or make Robin jealous. Love makes +gentlemen even of boors, whether noble or villain, is the constant +moral of mediaeval story, and love turns Robin into a champion of +decency. When, at last, Walter, playing the jongleur, begins to +repeat a particularly coarse fabliau, or story in verse, Robin stops +him short-- + +Ho, Gautier, je n'en voeil plus! fi! + Dites, seres vous tous jours teus! + Vous estes un ors menestreus! + + +"Ho, Walter! I want no more of that: Shame! Say! are you going to be +always like that? You're a dirty beggar!" A fight seems inevitable, +but Marion turns it into a dance, and the whole party, led by the +pipers, with Robin and Marion at the head of the band, leave the +stage in the dance which is said to be still known in Italy as the +"tresca." Marion is in her way as charming as Nicolette, but we are +less interested in her charm than in her power. Always the woman +appears as the practical guide; the one who keeps her head, even in +love:-- + + Elle l'a mis a raison: + "Aucassins, biax amis dox, + En quele tere en irons nous?" + "Douce amie, que sai jou? + Moi ne caut ou nous aillons." + + +The man never cared; he was always getting himself into crusades, or +feuds, or love, or debt, and depended on the woman to get him out. +The story was always of Charles VII and Jeanne d'Arc, or Agnes +Sorel. The woman might be the good or the evil spirit, but she was +always the stronger force. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were +a period when men were at their strongest; never before or since +have they shown equal energy in such varied directions, or such +intelligence in the direction of their energy; yet these marvels of +history,--these Plantagenets; these scholastic philosophers; these +architects of Rheims and Amiens; these Innocents, and Robin Hoods +and Marco Polos; these crusaders, who planted their enormous +fortresses all over the Levant; these monks who made the wastes and +barrens yield harvests;--all, without apparent exception, bowed down +before the woman. + +Explain it who will! We are not particularly interested in the +explanation; it is the art we have chased through this French +forest, like Aucassins hunting for Nicolette; and the art leads +always to the woman. Poetry, like the architecture and the +decoration, harks back to the same standard of taste. The specimens +of Christian of Troyes, Thibaut, Tristan, Aucassins, and Adam de la +Halle were mild admissions of feminine superiority compared with +some that were more in vogue, If Thibaut painted his love-verses on +the walls of his castle, he put there only what a more famous poet, +who may have been his friend, set on the walls of his Chateau of +Courteous Love, which, not being made with hands or with stone, but +merely with verse, has not wholly perished. The "Roman de la Rose" +is the end of true mediaeval poetry and goes with the Sainte- +Chapelle in architecture, and three hundred years of more or less +graceful imitation or variation on the same themes which followed. +Our age calls it false taste, and no doubt our age is right;--every +age is right by its own standards as long as its standards amuse +it;--but after all, the "Roman de la Rose" charmed Chaucer,--it may +well charm you. The charm may not be that of Mont-Saint-Michel or of +Roland; it has not the grand manner of the eleventh century, or the +jewelled brilliancy of the Chartres lancets, or the splendid self- +assertion of the roses: but even to this day it gives out a faint +odour of Champagne and Touraine, of Provence and Cyprus. One hears +Thibaut and sees Queen Blanche. + +Of course, this odour of true sanctity belongs only to the "Roman" +of William of Lorris, which dates from the death of Queen Blanche +and of all good things, about 1250; a short allegory of courteous +love in forty-six hundred and seventy lines. To modern taste, an +allegory of forty-six hundred and seventy lines seems to be not so +short as it might be; but the fourteenth century found five thousand +verses totally inadequate to the subject, and, about 1300, Jean de +Meung added eighteen thousand lines, the favourite reading of +society for one or two hundred years, but beyond our horizon. The +"Roman" of William of Lorris was complete in itself; it had shape; +beginning, middle, and end; even a certain realism, action,--almost +life! + +The Rose is any feminine ideal of beauty, intelligence, purity, or +grace,--always culminating in the Virgin,--but the scene is the +Court of Love, and the action is avowedly in a dream, without time +or place. The poet's tone is very pure; a little subdued; at times +sad; and the poem ends sadly; but all the figures that were +positively hideous were shut out of the court, and painted on the +outside walls:--Hatred; Felony; Covetousness; Envy; Poverty; +Melancholy, and Old Age. Death did not appear. The passion for +representing death in its horrors did not belong to the sunny +atmosphere of the thirteenth century, and indeed jarred on French +taste always, though the Church came to insist on it; but Old Age +gave the poet a motive more artistic, foreshadowing Death, and quite +sad enough to supply the necessary contrast. The poet who approached +the walls of the chateau and saw, outside, all the unpleasant facts +of life conspicuously posted up, as though to shut them out of +doors, hastened to ask for entrance, and, when once admitted, found +a court of ideals. Their names matter little. In the mind of William +of Lorris, every one would people his ideal world with whatever +ideal figures pleased him, and the only personal value of William's +figures is that they represent what he thought the thirteenth- +century ideals of a perfect society. Here is Courtesy, with a +translation long thought to be by Chaucer:- + +Apres se tenoit Cortoisie + Qui moult estoit de tous prisie. + Si n'ere orgueilleuse ne fole. + C'est cele qui a la karole, + La soe merci, m'apela, + Ains que nule, quand je vins la. + Et ne fut ne nice n'umbrage, + Mais sages auques, sans outrage, + De biaus respons et de biaus dis, + Onc nus ne fu par li laidis, + Ne ne porta nului rancune, + Et fu clere comme la lune + Est avers les autres estoiles + Qui ne resemblent que chandoiles. + Faitisse estoit et avenant; + Je ne sai fame plus plaisant. + Ele ert en toutes cors bien digne + D'estre empereris ou roine. + + +And next that daunced Courtesye, + That preised was of lowe and hye, + For neither proude ne foole was she; + She for to daunce called me, + I pray God yeve hir right good grace, + When I come first into the place. + She was not nyce ne outrageous, + But wys and ware and vertuous; + Of faire speche and of faire answere; + Was never wight mysseid of her, + Ne she bar rancour to no wight. + Clere browne she was, and thereto bright + + +Of face, of body avenaunt. + I wot no lady so pleasaunt. + She were worthy forto bene + An empresse or crowned quene. + + +You can read for yourselves the characters, and can follow the +simple action which owes its slight interest only to the constant +effort of the dreamer to attain his ideal,--the Rose,--and owes its +charm chiefly to the constant disappointment and final defeat. An +undertone of sadness runs through it, felt already in the picture of +Time which foreshadows the end of Love--the Rose--and her court, and +with it the end of hope:-- + +Li tens qui s'en va nuit et jor, + Sans repos prendre et sans sejor, + Et qui de nous se part et emble + Si celeement qu'il nous semble + Qu'il s'arreste ades en un point, + Et il ne s'i arreste point, + Ains ne fine de trespasser, + Que nus ne puet neis penser + Quex tens ce est qui est presens; + S'el demandes as clers lisans, + Aincois que l'en l'eust pense + Seroit il ja trois tens passe; + Li tens qui ne puet sejourner, + Ains vait tous jors sans retorner, + Com l'iaue qui s'avale toute, + N'il n'en retourne arriere goute; + Li tens vers qui noient ne dure, + Ne fer ne chose tant soit dure, + Car il gaste tout et menjue; + Li tens qui tote chose mue, + Qui tout fait croistre et tout norist, + Et qui tout use et tout porrist. + + +The tyme that passeth nyght and daye. + And restelesse travayleth aye, + And steleth from us so prively, + That to us semeth so sykerly + That it in one poynt dwelleth never, + But gothe so fast, and passeth aye + + +That there nys man that thynke may + What tyme that now present is; + Asketh at these clerkes this, + For or men thynke it readily + Thre tymes ben ypassed by. + The tyme that may not sojourne + But goth, and may never returne, + As water that down renneth ay, + But never drope retourne may. + There may no thing as time endure, + Metall nor earthly creature: + For alle thing it frette and shall. + The tyme eke that chaungith all, + And all doth waxe and fostered be, + And alle thing distroieth he. + + +The note of sadness has begun, which the poets were to find so much +more to their taste than the note of gladness. From the "Roman de la +Rose" to the "Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis" was a short step for +the Middle-Age giant Time,--a poor two hundred years. Then Villon +woke up to ask what had become of the Roses:--Ou est la tres sage +Helois + Pour qui fut chastie puis moyne, + Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis? + Pour son amour ot cest essoyne. + + +Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine + Qu' Englois brulerent a Rouan; + Ou sont elles, Vierge Souvraine? + Mais ou sont les neiges dantan? + + +Where is the virtuous Heloise, + For whom suffered, then turned monk, + Pierre Abelard at Saint-Denis? + For his love he bore that pain. + + +And Jeanne d'Arc, the good Lorraine, + Whom the English burned at Rouen! + Where are they, Virgin Queen? + But where are the snows of spring? + + +Between the death of William of Lorris and the advent of John of +Meung, a short half-century (1250-1300), the Woman and the Rose +became bankrupt. Satire took the place of worship. Man, with his +usual monkey-like malice, took pleasure in pulling down what he had +built up. The Frenchman had made what he called "fausse route." +William of Lorris was first to see it, and say it, with more sadness +and less bitterness than Villon showed; he won immortality by +telling how he, and the thirteenth century in him, had lost himself +in pursuing his Rose, and how he had lost the Rose, too, waking up +at last to the dull memory of pain and sorrow and death, that "tout +porrist." The world had still a long march to make from the Rose of +Queen Blanche to the guillotine of Madame du Barry; but the "Roman +de la Rose" made epoch. For the first time since Constantine +proclaimed the reign of Christ, a thousand years, or so, before +Philip the Fair dethroned Him, the deepest expression of social +feeling ended with the word: Despair. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME + +Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio, + Umile ed alta piu che creatura, + Termine fisso d'eterno consiglio, + Tu sei colei che l'umana natura + Nobilitasti si, che il suo fattore + Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura.... + La tua benignita non pur soccorre + A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate + Liberamente al dimandar precorre. + In te misericordia, in te pietate, + In te magnificenza, in te s'aduna + Quantunque in creatura e di bontate. + + +Vergine bella, che di sol vestita, + Coronata di stelle, al sommo sole + Piacesti si che'n te sua luce ascose; + Amor mi spinge a dir di te parole; + Ma non so 'ncominciar senza tu aita, + E di colui ch'amando in te si pose. + Invoco lei che ben sempre rispose + Chi la chiamo con fede. + Vergine, s'a mercede + Miseria estrema dell' umane cose + Giammai ti volse, al mio prego t'inchina! + Soccorri alia mia guerra, + Bench'i sia terra, e tu del del regina! + + +Dante composed one of these prayers; Petrarch the other. Chaucer +translated Dante's prayer in the "Second Nonnes Tale." He who will +may undertake to translate either;--not I! The Virgin, in whom is +united whatever goodness is in created being, might possibly, in her +infinite grace, forgive the sacrilege; but her power has limits, if +not her grace; and the whole Trinity, with the Virgin to aid, had +not the power to pardon him who should translate Dante and Petrarch. +The prayers come in here, not merely for their beauty,--although the +Virgin knows how beautiful they are, whether man knows it or not; +but chiefly to show the good faith, the depth of feeling, the +intensity of conviction, with which society adored its ideal of +human perfection. + +The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the +time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to +her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of +the illusion which men thought they thought their existence. The +twelfth and thirteenth centuries believed in the supernatural, and +might almost be said to have contracted a miracle-habit, as morbid +as any other form of artificial stimulant; they stood, like +children, in an attitude of gaping wonder before the miracle of +miracles which they felt in their own consciousness; but one can see +in this emotion, which is, after all, not exclusively infantile, no +special reason why they should have so passionately flung themselves +at the feet of the Woman rather than of the Man. Dante wrote in +1300, after the height of this emotion had passed; and Petrarch +wrote half a century later still; but so slowly did the vision fade, +and so often did it revive, that, to this day, it remains the +strongest symbol with which the Church can conjure. + +Men were, after all, not wholly inconsequent; their attachment to +Mary rested on an instinct of self-preservation. They knew their own +peril. If there was to be a future life, Mary was their only hope. +She alone represented Love. The Trinity were, or was, One, and +could, by the nature of its essence, administer justice alone. Only +childlike illusion could expect a personal favour from Christ. Turn +the dogma as one would, to this it must logically come. Call the +three Godheads by what names one liked, still they must remain One; +must administer one justice; must admit only one law. In that law, +no human weakness or error could exist; by its essence it was +infinite, eternal, immutable. There was no crack and no cranny in +the system, through which human frailty could hope for escape. One +was forced from corner to corner by a remorseless logic until one +fell helpless at Mary's feet. + +Without Mary, man had no hope except in atheism, and for atheism the +world was not ready. Hemmed back on that side, men rushed like sheep +to escape the butcher, and were driven to Mary; only too happy in +finding protection and hope in a being who could understand the +language they talked, and the excuses they had to offer. How +passionately they worshipped Mary, the Cathedral of Chartres shows; +and how this worship elevated the whole sex, all the literature and +history of the time proclaim. If you need more proof, you can read +more Petrarch; but still one cannot realize how actual Mary was, to +the men and women of the Middle Ages, and how she was present, as a +matter of course, whether by way of miracle or as a habit of life, +throughout their daily existence. The surest measure of her reality +is the enormous money value they put on her assistance, and the art +that was lavished on her gratification, but an almost equally +certain sign is the casual allusion, the chance reference to her, +which assumes her presence. + +The earliest prose writer in the French language, who gave a picture +of actual French life, was Joinville; and although he wrote after +the death of Saint Louis and of William of Lorris and Adam de la +Halle, in the full decadence of Philip the Fair, toward 1300, he had +been a vassal of Thibaut and an intimate friend of Louis, and his +memories went back to the France of Blanche's regency. Born in 1224, +he must have seen in his youth the struggles of Thibaut against the +enemies of Blanche, and in fact his memoirs contain Blanche's +emphatic letter forbidding Thibaut to marry Yolande of Brittany. He +knew Pierre de Dreux well, and when they were captured by the +Saracens at Damietta, and thrown into the hold of a galley, "I had +my feet right on the face of the Count Pierre de Bretagne, whose +feet, in turn, were by my face." Joinville is almost twelfth-century +in feeling. He was neither feminine nor sceptical, but simple. He +showed no concern for poetry, but he put up a glass window to the +Virgin. His religion belonged to the "Chanson de Roland." When Saint +Louis, who had a pleasant sense of humour put to him his favourite +religious conundrums, Joinville affected not the least hypocrisy. +"Would you rather be a leper or commit a mortal sin?" asked the +King. "I would rather commit thirty mortal sins than be a leper," +answered Joinville. "Do you wash the feet of the poor on Holy +Thursday?" asked the King. "God forbid!" replied Joinville; "never +will I wash the feet of such creatures!" Saint Louis mildly +corrected his, or rather Thibaut's, seneschal, for these impieties, +but he was no doubt used to them, for the soldier was never a +churchman. If one asks Joinville what he thinks of the Virgin, he +answers with the same frankness:-- + +Ung jour moi estant devant le roi lui demanday congie d'aller en +pelerinage a nostre Dame de Tourtouze [Tortosa in Syria] qui estoit +ung veage tres fort requis. Et y avoit grant quantite de pelerins +par chacun jour pour ce que c'est le premier autel qui onques fust +fait en l'onneur de la Mere de Dieu ainsi qu'on disoit lors. Et y +faisoit nostre Dame de grans miracles a merveilles. Entre lesquelz +elle en fist ung d'un pouvre homme qui estoit hors de son sens et +demoniacle. Car il avoit le maling esperit dedans le corps. Et +advint par ung jour qu'il fut amene a icelui autel de nostre Dame de +Tourtouze. Et ainsi que ses amys qui l'avoient la amene prioient a +nostre Dame qu'elle lui voulsist recouvrer sante et guerison le +diable que la pouvre creature avoit ou corps respondit: "Nostre Dame +n'est pas ici; elle est en Egipte pour aider au Roi de France et aux +Chrestiens qui aujourdhui arrivent en la Terre sainte centre toute +paiennie qui sont a cheval." Et fut mis en escript le jour que le +deable profera ces motz et fut apporte au legat qui estoit avecques +le roi de France; lequel me dist depuis que a celui jour nous estion +arrivez en la terre d'Egipte. Et suis bien certain que la bonne Dame +Marie nous y eut bien besoin. + +This happened in Syria, after the total failure of the crusade in +Egypt. The ordinary man, even if he were a priest or a soldier, +needed a miraculous faith to persuade him that Our Lady or any other +divine power, had helped the crusades of Saint Louis. Few of the +usual fictions on which society rested had ever required such +defiance of facts; but, at least for a time, society held firm. The +thirteenth century could not afford to admit a doubt. Society had +staked its existence, in this world and the next, on the reality and +power of the Virgin; it had invested in her care nearly its whole +capital, spiritual, artistic, intellectual, and economical, even to +the bulk of its real and personal estate; and her overthrow would +have been the most appalling disaster the Western world had ever +known. Without her, the Trinity itself could not stand; the Church +must fall; the future world must dissolve. Not even the collapse of +the Roman Empire compared with a calamity so serious; for that had +created, not destroyed, a faith. + +If sceptics there were, they kept silence. Men disputed and doubted +about the Trinity, but about the Virgin the satirists Rutebeuf and +Adam de la Halle wrote in the same spirit as Saint Bernard and +Abelard, Adam de Saint-Victor and the pious monk Gaultier de Coincy. +In the midst of violent disputes on other points of doctrine, the +disputants united in devotion to Mary; and it was the single +redeeming quality about them. The monarchs believed almost more +implicitly than their subjects, and maintained the belief to the +last. Doubtless the death of Queen Blanche marked the flood-tide at +its height; but an authority so established as that of the Virgin, +founded on instincts so deep, logic so rigorous, and, above all, on +wealth so vast, declined slowly. Saint Louis died in 1270. Two +hundred long and dismal years followed, in the midst of wars, +decline of faith, dissolution of the old ties and interests, until, +toward 1470, Louis XI succeeded in restoring some semblance of +solidity to the State; and Louis XI divided his time and his money +impartially between the Virgin of Chartres and the Virgin of Paris. +In that respect, one can see no difference between him and Saint +Louis, nor much between Philippe de Commines and Joinville. After +Louis XI, another fantastic century passed, filled with the foulest +horrors of history--religious wars; assassinations; Saint +Bartholomews; sieges of Chartres; Huguenot leagues and sweeping +destruction of religious monuments; Catholic leagues and fanatical +reprisals on friends and foes,--the actual dissolution of society in +a mass of horrors compared with which even the Albigensian crusade +was a local accident, all ending in the reign of the last Valois, +Henry III, the weirdest, most fascinating, most repulsive, most +pathetic and most pitiable of the whole picturesque series of French +kings. If you look into the Journal of Pierre de l'Estoile, under +date of January 26,1582, you can read the entry:-- + +The King and the Queen [Louise de Lorraine], separately, and each +accompanied by a good troop [of companions] went on foot from Paris +to Chartres on a pilgrimage [voyage] to Notre-Dame-de-dessous-Terre +[Our Lady of the Crypt], where a neuvaine was celebrated at the last +mass at which the King and Queen assisted, and offered a silver-gilt +statue of Notre Dame which weighed a hundred marks [eight hundred +ounces], with the object of having lineage which might succeed to +the throne. + +In the dead of winter, in robes of penitents, over the roughest +roads, on foot, the King and Queen, then seven years married, walked +fifty miles to Chartres to supplicate the Virgin for children, and +back again; and this they did year after year until Jacques Clement +put an end to it with his dagger, in 1589, although the Virgin never +chose to perform that miracle; but, instead, allowed the House of +Valois to die out and sat on her throne in patience while the House +of Bourbon was anointed in their place. The only French King ever +crowned in the presence of Our Lady of Chartres was Henry IV--a +heretic. + +The year 1589, which was so decisive for Henry IV in France, marked +in England the rise of Shakespeare as a sort of stage-monarch. While +in France the Virgin still held such power that kings and queens +asked her for favours, almost as instinctively as they had done five +hundred years before, in England Shakespeare set all human nature +and all human history on the stage, with hardly an allusion to the +Virgin's name, unless as an oath. The exceptions are worth noting as +a matter of curious Shakespearean criticism, for they are but two, +and both are lines in the "First Part of Henry VI," spoken by the +Maid of Orleans:-- + +Christ's mother helps me, else I were too weak! + +Whether the "First Part of Henry VI" was written by Shakespeare at +all has been a doubt much discussed, and too deep for tourists; but +that this line was written by a Roman Catholic is the more likely +because no such religious thought recurs in all the rest of +Shakespeare's works, dramatic or lyric, unless it is implied in +Gaunt's allusion to "the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son." Thus, +while three hundred years caused in England the disappearance of the +great divinity on whom the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had +lavished all their hopes, and during these three centuries every +earthly throne had been repeatedly shaken or shattered, the Church +had been broken in halves, faith had been lost, and philosophies +overthrown, the Virgin still remained and remains the most intensely +and the most widely and the most personally felt, of all characters, +divine or human or imaginary, that ever existed among men. Nothing +has even remotely taken her place. The only possible exception is +the Buddha, Sakya Muni; but to the Western mind, a figure like the +Buddha stood much farther away than the Virgin. That of the Christ +even to Saint Bernard stood not so near as that of his mother. +Abelard expressed the fact in its logical necessity even more +strongly than Saint Bernard did:-- + +Te requirunt vota fidelium, + Ad te corda suspirant omnium, + Tu spes nostra post Deum unica, + Advocata nobis es posita. + Ad judicis matrem confugiunt, + Qui judicis iram effugiunt, + Quae praecari pro eis cogitur, + Quae pro reis mater efficitur. + + +"After the Trinity, you are our ONLY hope"; spes nostra unica; "you +are placed there as our advocate; all of us who fear the wrath of +the Judge, fly to the Judge's mother, who is logically compelled to +sue for us, and stands in the place of a mother to the guilty." +Abelard's logic was always ruthless, and the "cogitur" is a stronger +word than one would like to use now, with a priest in hearing. We +need not insist on it; but what one must insist on, is the good +faith of the whole people,--kings, queens, princes of all sorts, +philosophers, poets, soldiers, artists, as well as of the commoners +like ourselves, and the poor,--for the good faith of the priests is +not important to the understanding, since any class which is +sufficiently interested in believing will always believe. In order +to feel Gothic architecture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, +one must feel first and last, around and above and beneath it, the +good faith of the public, excepting only Jews and atheists, +permeating every portion of it with the conviction of an immediate +alternative between heaven and hell, with Mary as the ONLY court in +equity capable of overruling strict law. + +The Virgin was a real person, whose tastes, wishes, instincts, +passions, were intimately known. Enough of the Virgin's literature +survives to show her character, and the course of her daily life. We +know more about her habits and thoughts than about those of earthly +queens. The "Miracles de la Vierge" make a large part, and not the +poorest part, of the enormous literature of these two centuries, +although the works of Albertus Magnus fill twenty-one folio volumes +and those of Thomas Aquinas fill more, while the "Chansons de Geste" +and the "Romans," published or unpublished, are a special branch of +literature with libraries to themselves. The collection of the +Virgin's miracles put in verse by Gaultier de Coincy, monk, prior, +and poet, between 1214 and 1233--the precise moment of the Chartres +sculpture and glass--contains thirty thousand lines. Another great +collection, narrating especially the miracles of the Virgin of +Chartres, was made by a priest of Chartres Cathedral about 1240. +Separate series, or single tales, have appeared and are appearing +constantly, but no general collection has ever been made, although +the whole poetic literature of the Virgin could be printed in the +space of two or three volumes of scholastic philosophy, and if the +Church had cared half as truly for the Virgin as it has for Thomas +Aquinas, every miracle might have been collected and published a +score of times. The miracles themselves, indeed, are not very +numerous. In Gaultier de Coincy's collection they number only about +fifty. The Chartres collection relates chiefly to the horrible +outbreak of what was called leprosy--the "mal ardent,"--which +ravaged the north of France during the crusades, and added intensity +to the feelings which brought all society to the Virgin's feet. +Recent scholars are cataloguing and classifying the miracles, as far +as they survive, and have reduced the number within very moderate +limits. As poetry, Gaultier de Coincy's are the best. + +Of Gaultier de Coincy and his poetry, Gaston Paris has something to +say which is worth quoting:-- + +It is the most curious, and often the most singular monument of the +infantile piety of the Middle Ages. Devotion to Mary is presented in +it as a kind of infallible guarantee not only against every sort of +evil, but also against the most legitimate consequences of sin and +even of crime. In these stories which have revolted the most +rational piety, as well as the philosophy of modern times, one must +still admit a gentle and penetrating charm; a naivete; a tenderness +and a simplicity of heart, which touch, while they raise a smile. +There, for instance, one sees a sick monk cured by the milk that Our +Lady herself comes to invite him to draw from her "douce mamelle"; a +robber who is in the habit of recommending himself to the Virgin +whenever he is going to "embler," is held up by her white hands for +three days on the gibbet where he is hung, until the miracle becomes +evident, and procures his pardon; an ignorant monk who knows only +his Ave Maria, and is despised on that account, when dead reveals +his sanctity by five roses which come out of his mouth in honour of +the five letters of the name Maria; a nun, who has quitted her +convent to lead a life of sin, returns after long years, and finds +that the Holy Virgin, to whom, in spite of all, she has never ceased +to offer every day her prayer, has, during all this time, filled her +place as sacristine, so that no one has perceived her absence. + +Gaston Paris inclined to apologize to his "bons bourgeois de Paris" +for reintroducing to them a character so doubtful as the Virgin +Mary, but, for our studies, the professor's elementary morality is +eloquent. Clearly, M. Paris, the highest academic authority in the +world, thought that the Virgin could hardly, in his time, say the +year 1900, be received into good society in the Latin Quarter. Our +own English ancestors, known as Puritans, held the same opinion, and +excluded her from their society some four hundred years earlier, for +the same reasons which affected M. Gaston Paris. These reasons were +just, and showed the respectability of the citizens who held them. +In no well-regulated community, under a proper system of police, +could the Virgin feel at home, and the same thing may be said of +most other saints as well as sinners. Her conduct was at times +undignified, as M. Paris complained, She condescended to do domestic +service, in order to help her friends, and she would use her needle, +if she were in the mood, for the same object. The "Golden Legend" +relates that:-- + +A certain priest, who celebrated every day a mass in honour of the +Holy Virgin, was brought up before Saint Thomas of Canterbury who +suspended him from his charge, judging him to be short-witted and +irresponsible. Now Saint Thomas had occasion to mend his hair-cloth +shirt, and while waiting for an opportunity to do so, had hidden it +under his bed; so the Virgin appeared to the priest and said to him: +"Go find the archbishop and tell him that she, for love of whom you +celebrated masses, has herself mended his shirt for him which is +under his bed; and tell him that she sends you to him that he may +take off the interdict he has imposed on you." And Saint Thomas +found that his shirt had in fact been mended. He relieved the +priest, begging him to keep the secret of his wearing a hair-shirt. + +Mary did some exceedingly unconventional things, and among them the +darning Thomas A'Becket's hair-shirt, and the supporting a robber on +the gibbet, were not the most singular, yet they seem not to have +shocked Queen Blanche or Saint Francis or Saint Thomas Aquinas so +much as they shocked M. Gaston Paris and M. Prudhomme. You have +still to visit the cathedral at Le Mans for the sake of its twelfth- +century glass, and there, in the lower panel of the beautiful, and +very early, window of Saint Protais, you will see the full-length +figure of a man, lying in bed, under a handsome blanket, watching, +with staring eyes, the Virgin, in a green tunic, wearing her royal +crown, who is striking him on the head with a heavy hammer and with +both hands. The miracle belongs to local history, and is amusing +only to show how little the Virgin cared for criticism of her +manners or acts. She was above criticism. She made manners. Her acts +were laws. No one thought of criticizing, in the style of a normal +school, the will of such a queen; but one might treat her with a +degree of familiarity, under great provocation, which would startle +easier critics than the French, Here is an instance:-- + +A widow had an only child whom she tenderly loved. On hearing that +this son had been taken by the enemy, chained, and put in prison, +she burst into tears, and addressing herself to the Virgin, to whom +she was especially devoted, she asked her with obstinacy for the +release of her son; but when she saw at last that her prayers +remained unanswered, she went to the church where there was a +sculptured image of Mary, and there, before the image, she said: +"Holy Virgin, I have begged you to deliver my son, and you have not +been willing to help an unhappy mother! I've implored your patronage +for my son, and you have refused it! Very good! just as my son has +been taken away from me, so I am going to take away yours, and keep +him as a hostage!" Saying this, she approached, took the statue +child on the Virgin's breast, carried it home, wrapped it in +spotless linen, and locked it up in a box, happy to have such a +hostage for her son's return. Now, the following night, the Virgin +appeared to the young man, opened his prison doors, and said: "Tell +your mother, my child, to return me my Son now that I have returned +hers!" The young man came home to his mother and told her of his +miraculous deliverance; and she, overjoyed, hastened to go with the +little Jesus to the Virgin, saying to her: "I thank you, heavenly +lady, for restoring me my child, and in return I restore yours!" + +For the exactness of this story in all its details, Bishop James of +Voragio could not have vouched, nor did it greatly matter. What he +could vouch for was the relation of intimacy and confidence between +his people and the Queen of Heaven. The fact, conspicuous above all +other historical certainties about religion, that the Virgin was by +essence illogical, unreasonable and feminine, is the only fact of +any ultimate value worth studying, and starts a number of questions +that history has shown itself clearly afraid to touch. Protestant +and Catholic differ little in that respect. No one has ventured to +explain why the Virgin wielded exclusive power over poor and rich, +sinners and saints, alike. Why were all the Protestant churches cold +failures without her help? Why could not the Holy Ghost--the spirit +of Love and Grace--equally answer their prayers? Why was the Son +powerless? Why was Chartres Cathedral in the thirteenth century-- +like Lourdes to-day--the expression of what is in substance a +separate religion? Why did the gentle and gracious Virgin Mother so +exasperate the Pilgrim Father? Why was the Woman struck out of the +Church and ignored in the State? These questions are not antiquarian +or trifling in historical value; they tug at the very heart-strings +of all that makes whatever order is in the cosmos. If a Unity +exists, in which and toward which all energies centre, it must +explain and include Duality, Diversity, Infinity--Sex! + +Although certain to be contradicted by every pious churchman, a +heretic must insist on thinking that the Mater Dolorosa was the +logical Virgin of the Church, and that the Trinity would never have +raised her from the foot of the Cross, had not the Virgin of Majesty +been imposed, by necessity and public unanimity, on a creed which +was meant to be complete without her. The true feeling of the Church +was best expressed by the Virgin herself in one of her attested +miracles: "A clerk, trusting more in the Mother than in the Son, +never stopped repeating the angelic salutation for his only prayer. +Once as he said again the 'Ave Maria,' the Lord appeared to him, and +said to him: 'My Mother thanks you much for all the Salutations that +you make her; but still you should not forget to salute me also: +tamen et me salutare memento.'" The Trinity feared absorption in +her, but was compelled to accept, and even to invite her aid, +because the Trinity was a court of strict law, and, as in the old +customary law, no process of equity could be introduced except by +direct appeal to a higher power. She was imposed unanimously by all +classes, because what man wanted most in the Middle Ages was not +merely law or equity, but also and particularly favour. Strict +justice, either on earth or in heaven, was the last thing that +society cared to face. All men were sinners, and had, at least, the +merit of feeling that, if they got their deserts, not one would +escape worse than whipping. The instinct of individuality went down +through all classes, from the count at the top, to the jugleors and +menestreus at the bottom. The individual rebelled against restraint; +society wanted to do what it pleased; all disliked the laws which +Church and State were trying to fasten on them. They longed for a +power above law,--or above the contorted mass of ignorance and +absurdity bearing the name of law; but the power which they longed +for was not human, for humanity they knew to be corrupt and +incompetent from the day of Adam's creation to the day of the Last +Judgment. They were all criminals; if not, they would have had no +use for the Church and very little for the State; but they had at +least the merit of their faults; they knew what they were, and, like +children, they yearned for protection, pardon, and love. This was +what the Trinity, though omnipotent, could not give. Whatever the +heretic or mystic might try to persuade himself, God could not be +Love. God was Justice, Order, Unity, Perfection; He could not be +human and imperfect, nor could the Son or the Holy Ghost be other +than the Father. The Mother alone was human, imperfect, and could +love; she alone was Favour, Duality, Diversity. Under any +conceivable form of religion, this duality must find embodiment +somewhere, and the Middle Ages logically insisted that, as it could +not be in the Trinity, either separately or together, it must be in +the Mother. If the Trinity was in its essence Unity, the Mother +alone could represent whatever was not Unity; whatever was +irregular, exceptional, outlawed; and this was the whole human race. +The saints alone were safe, after they were sainted. Every one else +was criminal, and men differed so little in degree of sin that, in +Mary's eyes, all were subjects for her pity and help. + +This general rule of favour, apart from law, or the reverse of law, +was the mark of Mary's activity in human affairs. Take, for an +example, an entire class of her miracles, applying to the discipline +of the Church! A bishop ejected an ignorant and corrupt priest from +his living, as all bishops constantly had to do. The priest had +taken the precaution to make himself Mary's MAN; he had devoted +himself to her service and her worship. Mary instantly interfered,-- +just as Queen Eleanor or Queen Blanche would have done,--most +unreasonably, and never was a poor bishop more roughly scolded by an +orthodox queen! "Moult airieement," very airily or angrily, she said +to him (Bartsch, 1887, p. 363):-- + +Ce saches tu certainement + Se tu li matinet bien main + Ne rapeles mon chapelain + A son servise et a s'enor, + L'ame de toi a desenor + Ains trente jors departira + Et es dolors d'infer ira. + + +Now know you this for sure and true, + Unless to-morrow this you do, +--And do it very early too,-- + Restore my chaplain to his due, + A much worse fate remains for you! + Within a month your soul shall go + To suffer in the flames below. + + +The story-teller--himself a priest and prior--caught the lofty trick +of manner which belonged to the great ladies of the court, and was +inherited by them, even in England, down to the time of Queen +Elizabeth, who treated her bishops also like domestic servants;-- +"matinet bien main!" To the public, as to us, the justice of the +rebuke was nothing to the point; but that a friend should exist on +earth or in heaven, who dared to browbeat a bishop, caused the +keenest personal delight. The legends are clearer on this point than +on any other. The people loved Mary because she trampled on +conventions; not merely because she could do it, but because she +liked to do what shocked every well-regulated authority. Her pity +had no limit. + +One of the Chartres miracles expresses the same motive in language +almost plainer still. A good-for-nothing clerk, vicious, proud, +vain, rude, and altogether worthless, but devoted to the Virgin, +died, and with general approval his body was thrown into a ditch +(Bartsch, 1887, p. 369):-- + +Mais cele ou sort tote pities + Tote douceurs tote amisties + Et qui les siens onques n'oublie + SON PECHEOR n'oblia mie. + + +"HER sinner!" Mary would not have been a true queen unless she had +protected her own. The whole morality of the Middle Ages stood in +the obligation of every master to protect his dependent. The +herdsmen of Count Garin of Beaucaire were the superiors of their +damoiseau Aucassins, while they felt sure of the Count. Mary was the +highest of all the feudal ladies, and was the example for all in +loyalty to her own, when she had to humiliate her own Bishop of +Chartres for the sake of a worthless brute. "Do you suppose it +doesn't annoy me," she said, "to see my friend buried in a common +ditch? Take him out at once! I command! tell the clergy it is my +order, and that I will never forgive them unless to-morrow morning +without delay, they bury my friend in the best place in the +cemetery!":-- + +Cuidies vos donc qu'il ne m'enuit + Quant vos l'aves si adosse + Que mis l'aves en un fosse? + Metes Ten fors je le comant! + Di le clergie que je li mant! + Ne me puet mi repaier + Se le matin sans delayer + A grant heneur n'est mis amis + Ou plus beau leu de l'aitre mis. + + +Naturally, her order was instantly obeyed. In the feudal regime, +disobedience to an order was treason--or even hesitation to obey-- +when the order was serious; very much as in a modern army, +disobedience is not regarded as conceivable. Mary's wish was +absolute law, on earth as in heaven. For her, other laws were not +made. Intensely human, but always Queen, she upset, at her pleasure, +the decisions of every court and the orders of every authority, +human or divine; interfered directly in the ordeal; altered the +processes of nature; abolished space; annihilated time. Like other +queens, she had many of the failings and prejudices of her humanity. +In spite of her own origin, she disliked Jews, and rarely neglected +a chance to maltreat them. She was not in the least a prude. To her, +sin was simply humanity, and she seemed often on the point of +defending her arbitrary acts of mercy, by frankly telling the +Trinity that if the Creator meant to punish man, He should not have +made him. The people, who always in their hearts protested against +bearing the responsibility for the Creator's arbitrary creations, +delighted to see her upset the law, and reverse the rulings of the +Trinity. They idolized her for being strong, physically and in will, +so that she feared nothing, and was as helpful to the knight in the +melee of battle as to the young mother in child-bed. The only +character in which they seemed slow to recognize Mary was that of +bourgeoise. The bourgeoisie courted her favour at great expense, but +she seemed to be at home on the farm, rather than in the shop. She +had very rudimentary knowledge, indeed, of the principles of +political economy as we understand them, and her views on the +subject of money-lending or banking were so feminine as to rouse in +that powerful class a vindictive enmity which helped to overthrow +her throne. On the other hand, she showed a marked weakness for +chivalry, and one of her prettiest and most twelfth-century miracles +is that of the knight who heard mass while Mary took his place in +the lists. It is much too charming to lose (Bartsch, 1895, p. 311):-- + +Un chevalier courtois et sages, + Hardis et de grant vasselages, + Nus mieudres en chevalerie, + Moult amoit la vierge Marie. + Pour son barnage demener + Et son franc cors d'armes pener, + Aloit a son tournoiement + Garnis de son contentement. + Au dieu plaisir ainsi avint + Que quant le jour du tournoi vint + Il se hastoit de chevauchier, + Bien vousist estre en champ premier. + D'une eglise qui pres estoit + Oi les sains que l'on sonnoit + Pour la sainte messe chanter. + Le chevalier sans arrester + S'en est ale droit a l'eglise + Pour escouter le dieu servise. + L'en chantoit tantost hautement + Une messe devotement + De la sainte Vierge Marie; + Puis a on autre comencie. + Le chevalier vien l'escouta, + De bon cuer la dame pria, + Et quant la messe fut finee + La tierce fu recomenciee + Tantost en ce meisme lieu. + "Sire, pour la sainte char dieu!" + Ce li a dit son escuier, + "L'heure passe de tournoier, + Et vous que demourez ici? + Venez vous en, je vous en pri! + Volez vous devenir hermite + Ou papelart ou ypocrite? + Alons en a nostre mestier!" + + +A knight both courteous and wise + And brave and bold in enterprise. + No better knight was ever seen, + Greatly loved the Virgin Queen. + Once, to contest the tourney's prize + And keep his strength in exercise, + He rode out to the listed field + Armed at all points with lance and shield; + But it pleased God that when the day + Of tourney came, and on his way + He pressed his charger's speed apace + To reach, before his friends, the place, + He saw a church hard by the road + And heard the church-bells sounding loud + To celebrate the holy mass. + Without a thought the church to pass + The knight drew rein, and entered there + To seek the aid of God in prayer. + + +High and dear they chanted then + A solemn mass to Mary Queen; + Then afresh began again. + Lost in his prayers the good knight stayed; + With all his heart to Mary prayed; + And, when the second one was done, + Straightway the third mass was begun, + Right there upon the self-same place. + "Sire, for mercy of God's grace!" + Whispered his squire in his ear; + "The hour of tournament is near; + Why do you want to linger here? + Is it a hermit to become, + Or hypocrite, or priest of Rome? + Come on, at once! despatch your prayer! + Let us be off to our affair!" + + +The accent of truth still lingers in this remonstrance of the +squire, who must, from all time, have lost his temper on finding his +chevalier addicted to "papelardie" when he should have been +fighting; but the priest had the advantage of telling the story and +pointing the moral. This advantage the priest neglected rarely, but +in this case he used it with such refinement and so much literary +skill that even the squire might have been patient. With the +invariable gentle courtesy of the true knight, the chevalier replied +only by soft words:-- + + "Amis!" ce dist li chevalier, + "Cil tournoie moult noblement + Qui le servise dieu entent." + + +In one of Milton's sonnets is a famous line which is commonly +classed among the noblest verses of the English language:-- + + "They also serve, who only stand and wait." + + +Fine as it is, with the simplicity of the grand style, like the +"Chanson de Roland" the verse of Milton does not quite destroy the +charm of thirteenth-century diction:-- + + "Friend!" said to him the chevalier, + "He tourneys very nobly too, + Who only hears God's service through!" + + +No doubt the verses lack the singular power of the eleventh century; +it is not worth while to pretend that any verse written in the +thirteenth century wholly holds its own against "Roland":-- + + "Sire cumpain! faites le vus de gred? + Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vos soelt amer!" + + +The courtesy of Roland has the serious solidity of the Romanesque +arch, and that of Lancelot and Aucassins has the grace of a +legendary window; but one may love it, all the same; and one may +even love the knight,--papelard though he were,--as he turned back +to the altar and remained in prayer until the last mass was ended. + +Then they mounted and rode on toward the field, and of course you +foresee what had happened. In itself the story is bald enough, but +it is told with such skill that one never tires of it. As the +chevalier and the squire approached the lists, they met the other +knights returning, for the jousts were over; but, to the +astonishment of the chevalier, he was greeted by all who passed him +with shouts of applause for his marvellous triumph in the lists, +where he had taken all the prizes and all the prisoners:-- + +Les chevaliers ont encontrez, + Qui du tournois sont retournes, + Qui du tout en tout est feru. + S'en avoit tout le pris eu + Le chevalier qui reperoit + Des messes qu' oies avoit. + Les autres qui s'en reperoient + Le saluent et le conjoient + Et distrent bien que onques mes + Nul chevalier ne prist tel fes + D'armes com il ot fet ce jour; + A tousjours en avroit l'onnour. + Moult en i ot qui se rendoient + A lui prisonier, et disoient + "Nous somes vostre prisonier, + Ne nous ne pourrions nier, + Ne nous aiez par armes pris." + Lors ne fu plus cil esbahis, + Car il a entendu tantost + Que cele fu pour lui en l'ost + Pour qui il fu en la chapelle. + + +His friends, returning from the fight, + On the way there met the knight, + For the jousts were wholly run, + And all the prizes had been won + By the knight who had not stirred + From the masses he had heard. + All the knights, as they came by, + Saluted him and gave him joy, + And frankly said that never yet + Had any knight performed such feat, + Nor ever honour won so great + As he had done in arms that day; + While many of them stopped to say + That they all his prisoners were: + "In truth, your prisoners we are: + We cannot but admit it true: + Taken we were in arms by you!" + Then the truth dawned on him there, + And all at once he saw the light, + That She, by whom he stood in prayer, +--The Virgin,--stood by him in fight! + + +The moral of the tale belongs to the best feudal times. The knight +at once recognized that he had become the liege-man of the Queen, +and henceforth must render his service entirely to her. So he called +his "barons," or tenants, together, and after telling them what had +happened, took leave of them and the "siecle":-- + +"Moult est ciest tournoiement beaux + Ou ele a pour moi tournoie; + Mes trop l'avroit mal emploie + Se pour lui je ne tournoioie! + Fox seroie se retournoie + A la mondaine vanite. + A dieu promet en verite + Que james ne tournoierai + Fors devant le juge verai + Qui conoit le bon chevalier + Et selonc le fet set jutgier." + Lors prent congie piteusement, + Et maint en plorent tenrement. + D'euls se part, en une abaie + Servi puis la vierge Marie. + + +"Glorious has the tourney been + Where for me has fought the Queen; + But a disgrace for me it were + If I tourneyed not for her. + Traitor to her should I be, + Returned to worldly vanity. + I promise truly, by God's grace, + Never again the lists to see, + Except before that Judge's face, + Who knows the true knight from the base, + And gives to each his final place." + Then piteously he takes his leave + While in tears his barons grieve. + So he parts, and in an abbey + Serves henceforth the Virgin Mary. + + +Observe that in this case Mary exacted no service! Usually the +legends are told, as in this instance, by priests, though they were +told in the same spirit by laymen, as you can see in the poems of +Rutebeuf, and they would not have been told very differently by +soldiers, if one may judge from Joinville; but commonly the Virgin +herself prescribed the kind of service she wished. Especially to the +young knight who had, of his own accord, chosen her for his liege, +she showed herself as exacting as other great ladies showed +themselves toward their Lancelots and Tristans. When she chose, she +could even indulge in more or less coquetry, else she could never +have appealed to the sympathies of the thirteenth-century knight- +errant. One of her miracles told how she disciplined the young men +who were too much in the habit of assuming her service in order to +obtain selfish objects. A youthful chevalier, much given to +tournaments and the other worldly diversions of the siecle, fell in +love, after the rigorous obligation of his class, as you know from +your Dulcinea del Toboso, with a lady who, as was also prescribed by +the rules of courteous love, declined to listen to him. An abbot of +his acquaintance, sympathizing with his distress, suggested to him +the happy idea of appealing for help to the Queen of Heaven. He +followed the advice, and for an entire year shut himself up, and +prayed to Mary, in her chapel, that she would soften the heart of +his beloved, and bring her to listen to his prayer. At the end of +the twelvemonth, fixed as a natural and sufficient proof of his +earnestness in devotion, he felt himself entitled to indulge again +in innocent worldly pleasures, and on the first morning after his +release, he started out on horseback for a day's hunting. Probably +thousands of young knights and squires were always doing more or +less the same thing, and it was quite usual that, as they rode +through the fields or forests, they should happen on a solitary +chapel or shrine, as this knight did. He stopped long enough to +kneel in it and renew his prayer to the Queen:-- + +La mere dieu qui maint chetif + A retrait de chetivete + Par sa grant debonnairte + Par sa courtoise courtoisie + Au las qui tant l'apele et prie + Ignelement s'est demonstree, + D'une coronne corronnee + Plaine de pierres precieuses + Si flamboianz si precieuses + Pour pou li euil ne li esluisent. + Si netement ainsi reluisent + Et resplendissent com la raie + Qui en este au matin raie. + Tant par a bel et cler le vis + Que buer fu mez, ce li est vis, + Qui s'i puest assez mirer. + "Cele qui te fait soupirer + Et en si grant erreur t'a mis," + Fait nostre dame, "biau douz amis, + Est ele plus bele que moi?" + Li chevaliers a tel effroi + De la clarte, ne sai que face; + Ses mains giete devant sa face; + Tel hide a et tel freeur + Chaoir se laisse de freeur; + Mais cele en qui pitie est toute + Li dist: "Amis, or n'aies doute! + Je suis cele, n'en doute mie, + Qui te doi faire avoir t'amie. + Or prens garde que tu feras. + Cele que tu miex ameras + De nous ii auras a amie." + + +God's Mother who to many a wretch + Has brought relief from wretchedness. + By her infinite goodness, + By her courteous courteousness, + To her suppliant in distress + Came from heaven quickly down; + On her head she bore the crown, + Full of precious stones and gems + Darting splendour, flashing flames, + Till the eye near lost its sight + In the keenness of the light, + As the summer morning's sun + Blinds the eyes it shines upon. + So beautiful and bright her face, + Only to look on her is grace. + + +"She who has caused you thus to sigh, + And has brought you to this end,"-- + Said Our Lady,--"Tell me, friend, + Is she handsomer than I?" + Scared by her brilliancy, the knight + Knows not what to do for fright; + He clasps his hands before his face, + And in his shame and his disgrace + Falls prostrate on the ground with fear; + But she with pity ever near + Tells him:--"Friend, be not afraid! + Doubt not that I am she whose aid + Shall surely bring your love to you; + But take good care what you shall do! + She you shall love most faithfully + Of us two, shall your mistress be." + + +One is at a loss to imagine what a young gentleman could do, in such +a situation, except to obey, with the fewest words possible, the +suggestion so gracefully intended. Queen's favours might be fatal +gifts, but they were much more fatal to reject than to accept. +Whatever might be the preferences of the knight, he had invited his +own fate, and in consequence was fortunate to be allowed the option +of dying and going to heaven, or dying without going to heaven. Mary +was not always so gentle with young men who deserted or neglected +her for an earthly rival;--the offence which irritated her most, and +occasionally caused her to use language which hardly bears +translation into modern English. Without meaning to assert that the +Queen of Heaven was jealous as Queen Blanche herself, one must still +admit that she was very severe on lovers who showed willingness to +leave her service, and take service with any other lady. One of her +admirers, educated for the priesthood but not yet in full orders, +was obliged by reasons of family interest to quit his career in +order to marry. An insult like this was more than Mary could endure, +and she gave the young man a lesson he never forgot:-- + +Ireement li prent a dire + La mere au roi de paradis: + "Di moi, di moi, tu que jadis + M'amoies tant de tout ton coeur. + Pourquoi m'as tu jete puer? + Di moi, di moi, ou est donc cele + Qui plus de moi bone est et bele?... + Pourquoi, pourquoi, las durfeus, + Las engignez, las deceuz, + Me lais pour une lasse fame, + Qui suis du del Royne et Dame? + Enne fais tu trop mauvais change + Qui tu por une fame estrange + Me laisses qui par amors t'amoie + Et ja ou ciel t'apareilloie + En mes chambres un riche lit + Por couchier t'ame a grand delit? + Trop par as faites grant merveilles + S'autrement tost ne te conseilles + Ou ciel serra tes lits deffais + Et en la flamme d'enfer faiz!" + + +With anger flashing in her eyes + Answers the Queen of Paradise: + "Tell me, tell me! you of old + Loved me once with love untold; + Why now throw me aside? + Tell me, tell me! where a bride + Kinder or fairer have you won?... + Wherefore, wherefore, wretched one, + Deceived, betrayed, misled, undone, + Leave me for a creature mean, + Me, who am of Heaven the Queen? + Can you make a worse exchange, + You that for a woman strange, + Leave me who, with perfect love, + Waiting you in heaven above, + Had in my chamber richly dressed + A bed of bliss your soul to rest? + Terrible is your mistake! + Unless you better council take, + In heaven your bed shall be unmade, + And in the flames of hell be spread." + + +A mistress who loved in this manner was not to be gainsaid. No +earthly love had a chance of holding its own against this unfair +combination of heaven and hell, and Mary was as unscrupulous as any +other great lady in abusing all her advantages in order to save HER +souls. Frenchmen never found fault with abuses of power for what +they thought a serious object. The more tyrannical Mary was, the +more her adorers adored, and they wholly approved, both in love and +in law, the rule that any man who changed his allegiance without +permission, did so at his own peril. His life and property were +forfeit. Mary showed him too much grace in giving him an option. + +Even in anger Mary always remained a great lady, and in the ordinary +relations of society her manners were exquisite, as they were, +according to Joinville, in the court of Saint Louis, when tempers +were not overwrought. The very brutality of the brutal compelled the +courteous to exaggerate courtesy, and some of the royal family were +as coarse as the king was delicate in manners. In heaven the manners +were perfect, and almost as stately as those of Roland and Oliver. +On one occasion Saint Peter found himself embarrassed by an affair +which the public opinion of the Court of Heaven, although not by any +means puritanic, thought more objectionable--in fact, more frankly +discreditable--than an honest corrupt job ought to be; and even his +influence, though certainly considerable, wholly failed to carry it +through the law-court. The case, as reported by Gaultier de Coincy, +was this: A very worthless creature of Saint Peter's--a monk of +Cologne--who had led a scandalous life, and "ne cremoit dieu, ordre +ne roule," died, and in due course of law was tried, convicted, and +dragged off by the devils to undergo his term of punishment. Saint +Peter could not desert his sinner, though much ashamed of him, and +accordingly made formal application to the Trinity for a pardon. The +Trinity, somewhat severely, refused. Finding his own interest +insufficient, Saint Peter tried to strengthen it by asking the +archangels to help him; but the case was too much for them also, and +they declined. The brother apostles were appealed to, with the same +result; and finally even the saints, though they had so obvious +interest in keeping friendly relations with Peter, found public +opinion too strong to defy. The case was desperate. The Trinity +were--or was--emphatic, and--what was rare in the Middle Ages--every +member of the feudal hierarchy sustained its decision. Nothing more +could be done in the regular way. Saint Peter was obliged to divest +himself of authority, and place himself and his dignity in the hands +of the Virgin. Accordingly he asked for an audience, and stated the +case to Our Lady. With the utmost grace, she instantly responded:-- + +"Pierre, Pierre," dit Nostre Dame, + "En moult grand poine et por ceste ame + De mon douz filz me fierai + Tant que pour toi l'en prierai." + La Mere Dieu lors s'est levee, + Devant son filz s'en est alee + Et ses virges toutes apres. + De lui si tint Pierre pres, + Quar sanz doutance bien savoit + Que sa besoigne faite avoit + Puisque cele l'avoit en prise + Ou forme humaine avoit prise. + + +Quant sa Mere vit li douz Sire + Qui de son doit daigna escrire + Qu'en honourant et pere et mere + En contre lui a chere clere + Se leva moult festivement + Et si li dist moult doucement; + "Bien veigniez vous, ma douce mere," + Comme douz filz, comme douz pere. + Doucement l'a par la main prise + Et doucement lez lui assise; + Lors li a dit:--"A douce chiere, + Que veus ma douce mere chiere, + Mes amies et mes sereurs?" + + +"Pierre, Pierre," our Lady said, + "With all my heart I'll give you aid, + And to my gentle Son I'll sue + Until I beg that soul for you." + God's Mother then arose straightway, + And sought her Son without delay; + All her virgins followed her, + And Saint Peter kept him near, + For he knew his task was done + And his prize already won, + Since it was hers, in whom began + The life of God in form of Man. + + +When our dear Lord, who deigned to write + With his own hand that in his sight + Those in his kingdom held most dear + Father and mother honoured here,-- + When He saw His Mother's face + He rose and said with gentle grace: + "Well are you come, my heart's desire!" + Like loving son, like gracious sire; + Took her hand gently in His own; + Gently placed her on His throne, + Wishing her graciously good cheer:-- + "What brings my gentle Mother here, + My sister, and my dearest friend?" + + +One can see Queen Blanche going to beg--or command--a favour of her +son, King Louis, and the stately dignity of their address, while +Saint Peter and the virgins remain in the antechamber; but, as for +Saint Peter's lost soul, the request was a mere form, and the doors +of paradise were instantly opened to it, after such brief +formalities as should tend to preserve the technical record of the +law-court. We tread here on very delicate ground. Gaultier de +Coincy, being a priest and a prior, could take liberties which we +cannot or ought not to take. The doctrines of the Church are too +serious and too ancient to be wilfully misstated, and the doctrines +of what is called Mariolatry were never even doctrines of the +Church. Yet it is true that, in the hearts of Mary's servants, the +Church and its doctrines were at the mercy of Mary's will. Gaultier +de Coincy claimed that Mary exasperated the devils by exercising a +wholly arbitrary and illegitimate power. Gaultier not merely +admitted, but frankly asserted, that this was the fact:-- + +Font li deables:--"de cest plait, + Mal por mal, assez miex nous plest + Que nous aillons au jugement + Li haut jugeur qui ne ment. + C'au plait n'au jugement sa mere + De droit jugier est trop avere; + Mais dieu nous juge si adroit, + Plainement nous lest notre droit. + Sa mere juge en tel maniere + Qu'elle nous met touz jors arriere + Quant nous cuidons estre devant. + . . . . . . . + En ciel et en terre est plus Dame + Par un petit que Diex ne soit. + Il l'aimme tant et tant la croit, + N'est riens qu'elle face ne die + Qu'il desveile ne contredie. + Quant qu'elle veut li fait acroire, + S'elle disoit la pie est noire + Et l'eue trouble est toute clere: + Si diroit il voir dit ma mere!" + + +"In this law-suit," say the devils, + "Since it is a choice of evils, + We had best appeal on high + To the Judge Who does not lie. + What is law to any other, + 'T is no use pleading with His Mother; + But God judges us so true + That He leaves us all our due. + His Mother judges us so short + That she throws us out of court + When we ought to win our cause. + . . . . . . . . + In heaven and earth she makes more laws + By far, than God Himself can do, + He loves her so, and trusts her so, + There's nothing she can do or say + That He'll refuse, or say her nay. + Whatever she may want is right, + Though she say that black is white, + And dirty water clear as snow:-- + My Mother says it, and it's so!" + + +If the Virgin took the feelings of the Trinity into consideration, +or recognized its existence except as her Son, the case has not been +reported, or, at all events, has been somewhat carefully kept out of +sight by the Virgin's poets. The devils were emphatic in denouncing +Mary for absorbing the whole Trinity. In one sharply disputed case +in regard to a villain, or labourer, whose soul the Virgin claimed +because he had learned the "Ave Maria," the devils became very +angry, indeed, and protested vehemently:-- + + +Li lait maufe, li rechinie + Adonc ont ris et eschinie. + C'en font il:--"Merveillans merveille! + Por ce vilain plate oreille + Aprent vo Dame a saluer, + Se nous vorro trestous tuer + Se regarder osons vers s'ame. + De tout le monde vieut estre Dame! + Ains nule dame ne fu tiez. + II est avis qu'ele soit Diex + Ou qu'ele ait Diex en main bornie. + Nul besoigne n'est fournie, + Ne terrienne ne celestre, + Que toute Dame ne veille estre. + Il est avis que tout soit suen; + Dieu ne deable n'i ont rien." + + +The ugly demons laugh outright + And grind their teeth with envious spite; + Crying:--"Marvel marvellous! + Because that flat-eared ploughman there + Learned to make your Dame a prayer, + She would like to kill us all + Just for looking toward his soul. + All the world she wants to rule! + No such Dame was ever seen! + She thinks that she is God, I ween, + Or holds Him in her hollow hand. + Not a judgment or command + Or an order can be given + Here on earth or there in heaven, + That she does not want control. + She thinks that she ordains the whole, + And keeps it all for her own profit. + God nor Devil share not of it." + + +As regards Mary of Chartres, these charges seem to have been +literally true, except so far as concerned the "laid maufe" Pierre +de Dreux. Gaultier de Coincy saw no impropriety in accepting, as +sufficiently exact, the allegations of the devils against the +Virgin's abuse of power. Down to the death of Queen Blanche, which +is all that concerns us, the public saw no more impropriety in it +than Gaultier did. The ugly, envious devils, notorious as students +of the Latin Quarter, were perpetually making the same charges +against Queen Blanche and her son, without disturbing her authority. +No one could conceive that the Virgin held less influence in heaven +than the queen mother on earth. Nevertheless there were points in +the royal policy and conduct of Mary which thoughtful men even then +hesitated to approve. The Church itself never liked to be dragged +too far under feminine influence, although the moment it discarded +feminine influence it lost nearly everything of any value to it or +to the world, except its philosophy. Mary's tastes were too popular; +some of the uglier devils said they were too low; many ladies and +gentlemen of the "siecle" thought them disreputable, though they +dared not say so, or dared say so only by proxy, as in "Aucassins." +As usual, one must go to the devils for the exact truth, and in +spite of their outcry, the devils admitted that they had no reason +to complain of Mary's administration:-- + +"Les beles dames de grant pris + Qui traynant vont ver et gris, + Roys, roynes, dus et contesses, En enfer vienent a granz presses; + Mais ou ciel vont pres tout a fait + Tort et bocu et contrefait. + Ou ciel va toute la ringaille; + Le grain avons et diex la paille." + + +"All the great dames and ladies fair + Who costly robes and ermine wear, + Kings, queens, and countesses and lords + Come down to hell in endless hordes; + While up to heaven go the lamed, + The dwarfs, the humpbacks, and the maimed; + To heaven goes the whole riff-raff; + We get the grain and God the chaff." + + +True it was, although one should not say it jestingly, that the +Virgin embarrassed the Trinity; and perhaps this was the reason, +behind all the other excellent reasons, why men loved and adored her +with a passion such as no other deity has ever inspired: and why we, +although utter strangers to her, are not far from getting down on +our knees and praying to her still. Mary concentrated in herself the +whole rebellion of man against fate; the whole protest against +divine law; the whole contempt for human law as its outcome; the +whole unutterable fury of human nature beating itself against the +walls of its prison-house, and suddenly seized by a hope that in the +Virgin man had found a door of escape. She was above law; she took +feminine pleasure in turning hell into an ornament; she delighted in +trampling on every social distinction in this world and the next. +She knew that the universe was as unintelligible to her, on any +theory of morals, as it was to her worshippers, and she felt, like +them, no sure conviction that it was any more intelligible to the +Creator of it. To her, every suppliant was a universe in itself, to +be judged apart, on his own merits, by his love for her,--by no +means on his orthodoxy, or his conventional standing in the Church, +or according to his correctness in defining the nature of the +Trinity. The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over +human imagination--as you can see at Lourdes--was due much less to +her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people +who suffered under law,--divine or human,--justly or unjustly, by +accident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil. She cared +not a straw for conventional morality, and she had no notion of +letting her friends be punished, to the tenth or any other +generation, for the sins of their ancestors or the peccadilloes of +Eve. + +So Mary filled heaven with a sort of persons little to the taste of +any respectable middle-class society, which has trouble enough in +making this world decent and pay its bills, without having to +continue the effort in another. Mary stood in a Church of her own, +so independent that the Trinity might have perished without much +affecting her position; but, on the other hand, the Trinity could +look on and see her dethroned with almost a breath of relief. +Aucassins and the devils of Gaultier de Coincy foresaw her danger. +Mary's treatment of respectable and law-abiding people who had no +favours to ask, and were reasonably confident of getting to heaven +by the regular judgment, without expense, rankled so deeply that +three hundred years later the Puritan reformers were not satisfied +with abolishing her, but sought to abolish the woman altogether as +the cause of all evil in heaven and on earth. The Puritans abandoned +the New Testament and the Virgin in order to go back to the +beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve. This is the Church's +affair, not ours, and the women are competent to settle it with +Church or State, without help from outside; but honest tourists are +seriously interested in putting the feeling back into the dead +architecture where it belongs. + +Mary was rarely harsh to any suppliant or servant, and she took no +special interest in humiliating the rich or the learned or the wise. +For them, law was made; by them, law was administered; and with +their doings Mary never arbitrarily interfered; but occasionally she +could not resist the temptation to intimate her opinion of the +manner in which the Trinity allowed their--the regular--Church to be +administered. She was a queen, and never for an instant forgot it, +but she took little thought about her divine rights, if she had +any,--and in fact Saint Bernard preferred her without them,--while +she was scandalized at the greed of officials in her Son's Court. +One day a rich usurer and a very poor old woman happened to be dying +in the same town. Gaultier de Coincy did not say, as an accurate +historian should, that he was present, nor did he mention names or +dates, although it was one of his longest and best stories. Mary +never loved bankers, and had no reason for taking interest in this +one, or for doing him injury; but it happened that the parish priest +was summoned to both death-beds at the same time, and neglected the +old pauper in the hope of securing a bequest for his church from the +banker. This was the sort of fault that most annoyed Mary in the +Church of the Trinity, which, in her opinion, was not cared for as +it should be, and she felt it her duty to intimate as much. + +Although the priest refused to come at the old woman's summons, his +young clerk, who seems to have acted as vicar though not in orders, +took pity on her, and went alone with the sacrament to her hut, +which was the poorest of poor hovels even for that age:-- + +Close de piex et de serciaus + Comme une viez souz a porciaus. + + +Roof of hoops, and wall of logs, + Like a wretched stye for hogs. + + +There the beggar lay, already insensible or at the last gasp, on +coarse thatch, on the ground, covered by an old hempen sack. The +picture represented the extremest poverty of the thirteenth century; +a hovel without even a feather bed or bedstead, as Aucassins' +ploughman described his mother's want; and the old woman alone, +dying, as the clerk appeared at the opening:-- + +Li clers qui fu moult bien apris + Le cors Nostre Seigneur a pris + A l'ostel a la povre fame + S'en vient touz seus mes n'i treuve ame. + Si grant clarte y a veue + Que grant peeur en a eue. + Ou povre lit a la vieillete + Qui couvers iert d'une nateite + + +Assises voit XII puceles + Si avenans et si tres beles + N'est nus tant penser i seust + Qui raconter le vout peust. + A coutee voist Nostre Dame + Sus le chevez la povre fame + Qui por la mort sue et travaille. + La Mere Dieu d'une tovaille + Qui blanche est plus que fleur de lis + La grant sueur d'entor le vis + A ses blanches mains li essuie. + + +The clerk, well in these duties taught, + The body of our Saviour brought + Where she lay upon her bed + Without a soul to give her aid. + But such brightness there he saw + As filled his mind with fear and awe. + Covered with a mat of straw + The woman lay; but round and near + + +A dozen maidens sat, so fair + No mortal man could dream such light, + No mortal tongue describe the sight. + Then he saw that next the bed, + By the poor old woman's head, + As she gasped and strained for breath + In the agony of death, + Sat Our Lady,--bending low,-- + While, with napkin white as snow, + She dried the death-sweat on the brow. + + +The clerk, in terror, hesitated whether to turn and run away, but +Our Lady beckoned him to the bed, while all rose and kneeled +devoutly to the sacrament. Then she said to the trembling clerk:-- + +"Friend, be not afraid! + But seat yourself, to give us aid, + Beside these maidens, on the bed." + + +And when the clerk had obeyed, she continued-- + + +"Or tost, amis!" fait Nostre Dame, + "Confessies ceste bone fame + Et puis apres tout sans freeur + Recevra tost son sauveeur + Qui char et sanc vout en moi prendre." + + +"Come quickly, friend!" Our Lady says, + "This good old woman now confess + And afterwards without distress + She will at once receive her God + Who deigned in me take flesh and blood." + + +After the sacrament came a touch of realism that recalls the simple +death-scenes that Walter Scott described in his grand twelfth- +century manner. The old woman lingered pitiably in her agony:-- + +Lors dit une des demoiselles + A madame sainte Marie: + "Encore, dame, n'istra mie + Si com moi semble du cors l'ame." + "Bele fille," fait Nostre Dame, + "Traveiller lais un peu le cors, + Aincois que l'ame en isse hors, + Si que puree soil et nete + Aincois qu'en Paradis la mete. + N'est or mestier qui soions plus, + Ralon nous en ou ciel lassus, + Quant tens en iert bien reviendrons + En paradis l'ame emmerrons." + + +A maiden said to Saint Marie, + "My lady, still it seems to me + The soul will not the body fly." + "Fair child!" Our Lady made reply, + "Still let awhile the body fight + Before the soul shall leave it quite. + So that it pure may be, and cleansed + When it to Paradise ascends. + No longer need we here remain; + We can go back to heaven again; + We will return before she dies, + And take the soul to paradise." + + +The rest of the story concerned the usurer, whose death-bed was of a +different character, but Mary's interest in death-beds of that kind +was small. The fate of the usurer mattered the less because she knew +too well how easily the banker, in good credit, could arrange with +the officials of the Trinity to open the doors of paradise for him. +The administration of heaven was very like the administration of +France; the Queen Mother saw many things of which she could not +wholly approve; but her nature was pity, not justice, and she shut +her eyes to much that she could not change. Her miracles, therefore, +were for the most part mere evidence of her pity for those who +needed it most, and these were rarely the well-to-do people of the +siecle, but more commonly the helpless. Every saint performed +miracles, and these are standard, not peculiar to any one +intermediator; and every saint protected his own friends; but beyond +these exhibitions of power, which are more or less common to the +whole hierarchy below the Trinity, Mary was the mother of pity and +the only hope of despair. One might go on for a volume, studying the +character of Mary and the changes that time made in it, from the +earliest Byzantine legends down to the daily recorded miracles at +Lourdes; no character in history has had so long or varied a +development, and none so sympathetic; but the greatest poets long +ago plundered that mine of rich motives, and have stolen what was +most dramatic for popular use. The Virgin's most famous early +miracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which was +what one might call her salvation of Faust. Another Byzantine +miracle was an original version of Shylock. Shakespeare and his +fellow dramatists plundered the Church legends as freely as their +masters plundered the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramatic +material untouched. Let us pray the Virgin that it may remain +untouched, for, although a good miracle was in its day worth much +money--so much that the rival shrines stole each other's miracles +without decency--one does not care to see one's Virgin put to money- +making for Jew theatre-managers. One's two-hundred and fifty million +arithmetical ancestors shrink. + +For mere amusement, too, the miracle is worth reading of the little +Jew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and was +thrown into a furnace by his father in consequence; but when the +furnace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of the +flames, with the little child unharmed in her lap. Better is that +called the "Tombeor de Notre Dame," only recently printed; told by +some unknown poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as any +of Gaultier de Coincy's. Indeed the "Tombeor de Notre Dame" has had +more success in our time than it ever had in its own, as far as one +knows, for it appeals to a quiet sense of humour that pleases modern +French taste as much as it pleased the Virgin. One fears only to +spoil it by translation, but if a translation be merely used as a +glossary or footnote, it need not do fatal harm. + +The story is that of a tumbler--tombeor, street-acrobat--who was +disgusted with the world, as his class has had a reputation for +becoming, and who was fortunate enough to obtain admission into the +famous monastery of Clairvaux, where Saint Bernard may have formerly +been blessed by the Virgin's presence. Ignorant at best, and +especially ignorant of letters, music, and the offices of a +religious society, he found himself unable to join in the services:-- + +Car n'ot vescu fors de tumer + Et d'espringier et de baler. + Treper, saillir, ice savoit; + Ne d'autre rien il ne savoit; + Car ne savoit autre lecon + Ne "pater noster" ne chancon + Ne le "credo" ne le salu + Ne rien qui fust a son salu. + + +For he had learned no other thing + Than to tumble, dance and spring: + Leaping and vaulting, that he knew, + But nothing better could he do. + He could not say his prayers by rote; + Not "Pater noster", not a note, + Not "Ave Mary," nor the creed; + Nothing to help his soul in need. + + +Tormented by the sense of his uselessness to the society whose bread +he ate without giving a return in service, and afraid of being +expelled as a useless member, one day while the bells were calling +to mass he hid in the crypt, and in despair began to soliloquize +before the Virgin's altar, at the same spot, one hopes, where the +Virgin had shown herself, or might have shown herself, in her +infinite bounty, to Saint Bernard, a hundred years before:-- + +"Hai," fait il, "con suis trais! + Or dira ja cascuns sa laisse + Et jo suis ci i hues en laisse + Qui ne fas ci fors que broster + Et viandes por nient gaster. + Si ne dirai ne ne ferai? + Par la mere deu, si ferai! + Ja n'en serai ore repris; + Jo ferai ce que j'ai apris; + Si servirai de men mestier + La mere deu en son mostier; + Li autre servent de canter + Et jo servirai de tumer." + Sa cape oste, si se despoille, + Deles l'autel met sa despoille, + Mais por sa char que ne soit nue + Une cotele a retenue + Qui moult estait tenre et alise, + Petit vaut miex d'une chemise, + Si est en pur le cors remes. + Il s'est bien chains et acesmes, + Sa cote caint et bien s'atorne, + Devers l'ymage se retorne + Mout humblement et si l'esgarde: + "Dame," fait il, "en vostre garde + Comant jo et mon cors et m'ame. + Douce reine, douce dame, + Ne despisies ce que jo sai + Car jo me voil metre a l'asai + De vos servir en bone foi + Se dex m'ait sans nul desroi. + Jo ne sai canter ne lire + Mais certes jo vos voil eslire + Tos mes biax gieus a eslicon. + Or soie al fuer de taurecon + Qui trepe et saut devant sa mere. + Dame, qui n'estes mie amere + A cels qui vos servent a droit, + Quelsque jo soie, por vos soit!" + + +Lors li commence a faire saus + Bas et petits et grans et haus + + +Primes deseur et puis desos, + Puis se remet sor ses genols, + Devers l'ymage, et si l'encline: + "He!" fait il, "tres douce reine + Par vo pitie, par vo francise, + Ne despisies pas mon servise!" + + +"Ha!" said he, "how I am ashamed! + To sing his part goes now each priest, + And I stand here, a tethered beast, + Who nothing do but browse and feed + And waste the food that others need. + Shall I say nothing, and stand still? + No! by God's mother, but I will! + She shall not think me here for naught; + At least I'll do what I've been taught! + At least I'll serve in my own way + God's mother in her church to-day. + The others serve to pray and sing; + I will serve to leap and spring." + Then he strips him of his gown, + Lays it on the altar down; + But for himself he takes good care + Not to show his body bare, + But keeps a jacket, soft and thin, + Almost a shirt, to tumble in. + Clothed in this supple woof of maille + His strength and health and form showed well. + And when his belt is buckled fast, + Toward the Virgin turns at last: + Very humbly makes his prayer; + "Lady!" says he, "to your care + I commit my soul and frame. + Gentle Virgin, gentle dame, + Do not despise what I shall do, + For I ask only to please you, + To serve you like an honest man, + So help me God, the best I can. + I cannot chant, nor can I read, + But I can show you here instead, + All my best tricks to make you laugh, + And so shall be as though a calf + Should leap and jump before its dam. + Lady, who never yet could blame + Those who serve you well and true, + All that I am, I am for you." + + +Then he begins to jump about, + High and low, and in and out, + + +Straining hard with might and main; + Then, falling on his knees again, + Before the image bows his face: + "By your pity! by your grace!" + Says he, "Ha! my gentle queen, + Do not despise my offering!" + + +In his earnestness he exerted himself until, at the end of his +strength, he lay exhausted and unconscious on the altar steps. +Pleased with his own exhibition, and satisfied that the Virgin was +equally pleased, he continued these devotions every day, until at +last his constant and singular absence from the regular services +attracted the curiosity of a monk, who kept watch on him and +reported his eccentric exercise to the Abbot. + +The mediaeval monasteries seem to have been gently administered. +Indeed, this has been made the chief reproach on them, and the +excuse for robbing them for the benefit of a more energetic crown +and nobility who tolerated no beggars or idleness but their own; at +least, it is safe to say that few well-regulated and economically +administered modern charities would have the patience of the Abbot +of Clairvaux, who, instead of calling up the weak-minded tombeor and +sending him back to the world to earn a living by his profession, +went with his informant to the crypt, to see for himself what the +strange report meant. We have seen at Chartres what a crypt may be, +and how easily one might hide in its shadows while mass is said at +the altars. The Abbot and his informant hid themselves behind a +column in the shadow, and watched the whole performance to its end +when the exhausted tumbler dropped unconscious and drenched with +perspiration on the steps of the altar, with the words:-- + +"Dame!" fait il, "ne puis plus ore; + Mais voire je reviendrai encore." + + +"Lady!" says he, "no more I can, + But truly I'll come back again!" + + +You can imagine the dim crypt; the tumbler lying unconscious beneath +the image of the Virgin; the Abbot peering out from the shadow of +the column, and wondering what sort of discipline he could inflict +for this unforeseen infraction of rule; when suddenly, before he +could decide what next to do, the vault above the altar, of its own +accord, opened:-- + +L'abes esgarde sans atendre + Et vit de la volte descendre + Une dame si gloriouse + Ains nus ne vit si preciouse + Ni si ricement conreee, + N'onques tant bele ne fu nee. + Ses vesteures sont bien chieres + D'or et de precieuses pieres. + + +Avec li estoient li angle + Del ciel amont, et li arcangle, + Qui entor le menestrel vienent, + Si le solacent et sostienent. + Quant entor lui sont arengie + S'ot tot son cuer asoagie. + Dont s'aprestent de lui servir + Por ce qu'ils volrent deservir + La servise que fait la dame + Qui tant est precieuse geme. + Et la douce reine france + Tenoit une touaille blance, + S'en avente son menestrel + Mout doucement devant l'autel. + La franc dame debonnaire + Le col, le cors, et le viaire + Li avente por refroidier; + Bien s'entremet de lui aidier; + La dame bien s'i abandone; + Li bons hom garde ne s'en done, + Car il ne voit, si ne set mie + Qu'il ait si bele compaignie. + + +The Abbot strains his eyes to see, + And, from the vaulting, suddenly, + A lady steps,--so glorious,-- + Beyond all thought so precious,-- + Her robes so rich, so nobly worn,-- + So rare the gems the robes adorn,-- + As never yet so fair was born. + + +Along with her the angels were, + Archangels stood beside her there; + Round about the tumbler group + To give him solace, bring him hope; + And when round him in ranks they stood, + His whole heart felt its strength renewed. + So they haste to give him aid + Because their wills are only made + To serve the service of their Queen, + Most precious gem the earth has seen. + And the lady, gentle, true, + Holds in her hand a towel new; + Fans him with her hand divine + Where he lies before the shrine. + The kind lady, full of grace, + Fans his neck, his breast, his face! + Fans him herself to give him air! + Labours, herself, to help him there! + The lady gives herself to it; + The poor man takes no heed of it; + For he knows not and cannot see + That he has such fair company. + + +Beyond this we need not care to go. If you cannot feel the colour +and quality--the union of naivete and art, the refinement, the +infinite delicacy and tenderness--of this little poem, then nothing +will matter much to you; and if you can feel it, you can feel, +without more assistance, the majesty of Chartres. + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +ABELARD + +Super cuncta, subter cuncta, + Extra cuncta, intra cuncta, + Intra cuncta nec inclusus, + Extra cuncta nec exclusus, + Super cuncta nec elatus, + Subter cuncta nec substratus, + Super totus, praesidendo, + Subter totus, sustinendo, + Extra totus, complectendo, + Intra totus est, implendo. + + +According to Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans and Archbishop of Tours, +these verses describe God. Hildebert was the first poet of his time; +no small merit, since he was contemporary with the "Chanson de +Roland" and the first crusade; he was also a strong man, since he +was able, as Bishop of Le Mans, to gain great credit by maintaining +himself against William the Norman and Fulk of Anjou; and finally he +was a prelate of high authority. He lived between 1055 and 1133. +Supposing his verses to have been written in middle life, toward the +year 1100, they may be taken to represent the accepted doctrine of +the Church at the time of the first crusade. They were little more +than a versified form of the Latin of Saint Gregory the Great who +wrote five-hundred years before: "Ipse manet intra omnia, ipse extra +omnia, ipse supra omnia, ipse infra omnia; et superior est per +potentiam et inferior per sustentationem; exterior per magnitudinem +et interior per subtilitatem; sursum regens, deorsum continens, +extra circumdans, interius penetrans; nec alia parte superior, alia +inferior, aut alia ex parte exterior atque ex alia manet interior, +sed unus idemque totus ubique." According to Saint Gregory, in the +sixth century, God was "one and the same and wholly everywhere"; +"immanent within everything, without everything, above everything, +below everything, sursum regens, dear sum continens"; while +according to Archbishop Hildebert in the eleventh century: "God is +overall things, under all things; outside all, inside all; within +but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up; +below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, +sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling." +Finally, according to Benedict Spinoza, another five hundred years +later still: "God is a being, absolutely infinite; that is to say, a +substance made up of an infinity of attributes, each one of which +expresses an eternal and infinite essence." + +Spinoza was the great pantheist, whose name is still a terror to the +orthodox, and whose philosophy is--very properly--a horror to the +Church--and yet Spinoza never wrote a line that, to the unguided +student, sounds more Spinozist than the words of Saint Gregory and +Archbishop Hildebert. If God is everywhere; wholly; presiding, +sustaining, embracing and filling, "sursum regens, deorsum +continens," He is the only possible energy, and leaves no place for +human will to act. A force which is "one and the same and wholly +everywhere" is more Spinozist than Spinoza, and is likely to be +mistaken for frank pantheism by the large majority of religious +minds who must try to understand it without a theological course in +a Jesuit college. In the year 1100 Jesuit colleges did not exist, +and even the great Dominican and Franciscan schools were far from +sight in the future; but the School of Notre Dame at Paris existed, +and taught the existence of God much as Archbishop Hildebert +described it. The most successful lecturer was William of Champeaux, +and to any one who ever heard of William at all, the name instantly +calls up the figure of Abelard, in flesh and blood, as he sang to +Heloise the songs which he says resounded through Europe. The +twelfth century, with all its sparkle, would be dull without Abelard +and Heloise. With infinite regret, Heloise must be left out of the +story, because she was not a philosopher or a poet or an artist, but +only a Frenchwoman to the last millimetre of her shadow. Even though +one may suspect that her famous letters to Abelard are, for the most +part, by no means above scepticism, she was, by French standards, +worth at least a dozen Abelards, if only because she called Saint +Bernard a false apostle. + +Unfortunately, French standards, by which she must be judged in our +ignorance, take for granted that she philosophized only for the sake +of Abelard, while Abelard taught philosophy to her not so much +because he believed in philosophy or in her as because he believed +in himself. To this day, Abelard remains a problem as perplexing as +he must have been to Heloise, and almost as fascinating. As the west +portal of Chartres is the door through which one must of necessity +enter the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century, so Abelard +is the portal of approach to the Gothic thought and philosophy +within. Neither art nor thought has a modern equivalent; only +Heloise, like Isolde, unites the ages. + +The first crusade seems, in perspective, to have rilled the whole +field of vision in France at the time; but, in fact, France seethed +with other emotions, and while the crusaders set out to scale heaven +by force at Jerusalem, the monks, who remained at home, undertook to +scale heaven by prayer and by absorption of body and soul in God; +the Cistercian Order was founded in 1098, and was joined in 1112 by +young Bernard, born in 1090 at Fontaines-les-Dijon, drawing with him +or after him so many thousands of young men into the self-immolation +of the monastery as carried dismay into the hearts of half the women +of France. At the same time--that is, about 1098 or 1100--Abelard +came up to Paris from Brittany, with as much faith in logic as +Bernard had in prayer or Godfrey of Bouillon in arms, and led an +equal or even a greater number of combatants to the conquest of +heaven by force of pure reason. None showed doubt. Hundreds of +thousands of young men wandered from their provinces, mostly to +Palestine, largely to cloisters, but also in great numbers to Paris +and the schools, while few ever returned. + +Abelard had the advantage of being well-born; not so highly +descended as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas who were to complete +his work in the thirteenth century, but, like Bernard, a gentleman +born and bred. He was the eldest son of Berenger, Sieur du Pallet, a +chateau in Brittany, south of the Loire, on the edge of Poitou. His +name was Pierre du Pallet, although, for some unknown reason, he +called himself Pierre Abailard, or Abeillard, or Esbaillart, or +Beylard; for the spelling was never fixed. He was born in 1079, and +when, in 1096, the young men of his rank were rushing off to the +first crusade, Pierre, a boy of seventeen, threw himself with equal +zeal into the study of science, and, giving up his inheritance or +birthright, at last came to Paris to seize a position in the +schools. The year is supposed to have been 1100. + +The Paris of Abelard's time was astonishingly old; so old that +hardly a stone of it can be now pointed out. Even the oldest of the +buildings still standing in that quarter--Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, +Saint-Severin, and the tower of the Lycee Henri IV--are more modern; +only the old Roman Thermae, now part of the Musee de Cluny, within +the walls, and the Abbey Tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, outside, +in the fields, were standing in the year 1100. Politically, Paris +was a small provincial town before the reign of Louis-le-Gros (1108- +37), who cleared its gates of its nearest enemies; but as a school, +Paris was even then easily first. Students crowded into it by +thousands, till the town is said to have contained more students +than citizens, Modern Paris seems to have begun as a university town +before it had a university. Students flocked to it from great +distances, encouraged and supported by charity, and stimulated by +privileges, until they took entire possession of what is still +called the Latin Quarter from the barbarous Latin they chattered; +and a town more riotous, drunken, and vicious than it became, in the +course of time, hardly existed even in the Middle Ages. In 1100, +when enthusiasm was fresh and faith in science was strong, the great +mass of students came there to study, and, having no regular +university organization or buildings, they thronged the cloister of +Notre Dame--not our Notre Dame, which dates only from 1163, but the +old Romanesque cathedral which stood on the same spot--and there +they listened, and retained what they could remember, for they were +not encouraged to take notes even if they were rich enough to buy +notebooks, while manuscripts were far beyond their means. One +valuable right the students seem to have had--that of asking +questions and even of disputing with the lecturer provided they +followed the correct form of dialectics. The lecturer himself was +licensed by the Bishop. + +Five thousand students are supposed to have swarmed about the +cloister of Notre Dame, across the Petit Pont, and up the hill of +Sainte-Genevieve; three thousand are said to have paid fees to +Abelard in the days of his great vogue and they seem to have +attached themselves to their favourite master as a champion to be +upheld against the world. Jealousies ran high, and neither scholars +nor masters shunned dispute. Indeed, the only science they taught or +knew was the art of dispute--dialectics. Rhetoric, grammar, and +dialectics were the regular branches of science, and bold students, +who were not afraid of dabbling in forbidden fields, extended their +studies to mathematics--"exercitium nefarium," according to Abelard, +which he professed to know nothing about but which he studied +nevertheless. Abelard, whether pupil or master, never held his +tongue if he could help it, for his fortune depended on using it +well; but he never used it so well in dialectics or theology as he +did, toward the end of his life, in writing a bit of autobiography, +so admirably told, so vivid, so vibrating with the curious intensity +of his generation, that it needed only to have been written in +"Romieu" to be the chief monument of early French prose, as the +western portal of Chartres is the chief monument of early French +sculpture, and of about the same date. Unfortunately Abelard was a +noble scholar, who necessarily wrote and talked Latin, even with +Heloise, and, although the Latin was mediaeval, it is not much the +better on that account, because, in spite of its quaintness, the +naivetes of a young language--the egotism, jealousies, suspicions, +boastings, and lamentations of a childlike time--take a false air of +outworn Rome and Byzantium, although, underneath, the spirit lives:-- + +I arrived at last in Paris where for a long time dialectics had +specially flourished under William of Champeaux, rightly reckoned +the first of my masters in that branch of study. I stayed some time +in his school, but, though well received at first, I soon got to be +an annoyance to him because I persisted in refuting certain ideas of +his, and because, not being afraid to enter into argument against +him, I sometimes got the better. This boldness, too, roused the +wrath of those fellow students who were classed higher, because I was +the youngest and the last comer. This was the beginning of my series +of misfortunes which still last; my renown every day increasing, +envy was kindled against me in every direction. + +This picture of the boy of twenty, harassing the professor, day +after day, in his own lecture-room before hundreds of older +students, paints Abelard to the life; but one may safely add a few +touches that heighten the effect; as that William of Champeaux +himself was barely thirty, and that Abelard throughout his career, +made use of every social and personal advantage to gain a point, +with little scruple either in manner or in sophistry. One may easily +imagine the scene. Teachers are always much the same. Pupils and +students differ only in degrees of docility. In 1100, both classes +began by accepting the foundations of society, as they have to do +still; only they then accepted laws of the Church and Aristotle, +while now they accept laws of the legislature and of energy. In +1100, the students took for granted that, with the help of Aristotle +and syllogisms, they could build out the Church intellectually, as +the architects, with the help of the pointed arch, were soon to +enlarge it architecturally. They never doubted the certainty of +their method. To them words had fixed values, like numbers, and +syllogisms were hewn stones that needed only to be set in place, in +order to reach any height or support any weight. Every sentence was +made to take the form of a syllogism. One must have been educated in +a Jesuit or Dominican school in order to frame these syllogisms +correctly, but merely by way of illustration one may timidly suggest +how the phrases sounded in their simplest form. For example, Plato +or other equally good authority deemed substance as that which +stands underneath phenomena; the most universal of universals, the +ultimate, the highest in order of generalization. The ultimate +essence or substance is indivisible; God is substance; God is +indivisible. The divine substance is incapable of alteration or +accident; all other substance is liable to alteration or accident; +therefore, the divine substance differs from all other substance. A +substance is a universal; as for example, Humanity, or the Human, is +a universal and indivisible; the Man Socrates, for instance, is not +a universal, but an individual; therefore, the substance Humanity, +being indivisible, must exist entire and undivided in Socrates. + +The form of logic most fascinating to youthful minds, as well as to +some minds that are only too acute, is the reductio ad absurdum; the +forcing an opponent into an absurd alternative or admission; and the +syllogism lent itself happily to this use. Socrates abused the +weapon and Abelard was the first French master of the art; but +neither State nor Church likes to be reduced to an absurdity, and, +on the whole, both Socrates and Abelard fared ill in the result. +Even now, one had best be civil toward the idols of the forum. +Abelard would find most of his old problems sensitive to his touch +to-day. Time has settled few or none of the essential points of +dispute. Science hesitates, more visibly than the Church ever did, +to decide once for all whether unity or diversity is ultimate law; +whether order or chaos is the governing rule of the universe, if +universe there is; whether anything, except phenomena, exists. Even +in matters more vital to society, one dares not speak too loud. Why, +and for what, and to whom, is man a responsible agent? Every jury +and judge, every lawyer and doctor, every legislator and clergyman +has his own views, and the law constantly varies. Every nation may +have a different system. One court may hang and another may acquit +for the same crime, on the same day; and science only repeats what +the Church said to Abelard, that where we know so little, we had +better hold our tongues. + +According to the latest authorities, the doctrine of universals +which convulsed the schools of the twelfth century has never +received an adequate answer. What is a species? what is a genus or a +family or an order? More or less convenient terms of classification, +about which the twelfth century cared very little, while it cared +deeply about the essence of classes! Science has become too complex +to affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives for +nothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits, +almost as earnestly as in the twelfth century, when the whole field +of human and superhuman activity was shut between these barriers of +substance, universals, and particulars. Little has changed except +the vocabulary and the method. The schools knew that their society +hung for life on the demonstration that God, the ultimate universal, +was a reality, out of which all other universal truths or realities +sprang. Truth was a real thing, outside of human experience. The +schools of Paris talked and thought of nothing else. John of +Salisbury, who attended Abelard's lectures about 1136, and became +Bishop of Chartres in 1176, seems to have been more surprised than +we need be at the intensity of the emotion. "One never gets away +from this question," he said. "From whatever point a discussion +starts, it is always led back and attached to that. It is the +madness of Rufus about Naevia; 'He thinks of nothing else; talks of +nothing else, and if Naevia did not exist, Rufus would be dumb.'" + +Abelard began it. After his first visit to Paris in 1100, he seems +to have passed several years elsewhere, while Guillaume de Champeaux +in 1108, retired from the school in the cloister of Notre Dame, and, +taking orders, established a class in a chapel near by, afterwards +famous as the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The Jardin des Plantes and the +Gare d'Orleans now cover the ground where the Abbey stood, on the +banks of the Seine outside the Latin Quarter, and not a trace is +left of its site; but there William continued his course in +dialectics, until suddenly Abelard reappeared among his scholars, +and resumed his old attacks. This time Abelard could hardly call +himself a student. He was thirty years old, and long since had been +himself a teacher; he had attended William's course on dialectics +nearly ten years before, and was past master in the art; he had +nothing to learn from William in theology, for neither William nor +he was yet a theologist by profession. If Abelard went back to +school, it was certainly not to learn; but indeed, he himself made +little or no pretence of it, and told with childlike candour not +only why he went, but also how brilliantly he succeeded in his +object:-- + +I returned to study rhetoric in his school. Among other +controversial battles, I succeeded, by the most irrefutable +argument, in making him change, or rather ruin his doctrine of +universals. His doctrine consisted in affirming the perfect identity +of the essence in every individual of the same species, so that +according to him there was no difference in the essence but only in +the infinite variety of accidents. He then came to amend his +doctrine so as to affirm, not the identity any longer, but the +absence of distinction--the want of difference--in the essence. And +as this question of universals had always been one of the most +important questions of dialectics--so important that Porphyry, +touching on it in his Preliminaries, did not dare to take the +responsibility of cutting the knot, but said, "It is a very grave +point,"--Champeaux, who was obliged to modify his idea and then +renounce it, saw his course fall into such discredit that they +hardly let him make his dialectical lectures, as though dialectics +consisted entirely in the question of universals. + +Why was this point so "very grave"? Not because it was mere +dialectics! The only part of the story that seems grave today is the +part that Abelard left out; the part which Saint Bernard, thirty +years later put in, on behalf of William. We should be more +credulous than twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard's +word in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most +accomplished dialectician of the age by an objection so familiar +that no other dialectician was ever silenced by it--whatever may +have been the case with theologians--and so obvious that it could +not have troubled a scholar of fifteen. William stated a settled +doctrine as old as Plato; Abelard interposed an objection as old as +Aristotle. Probably Plato and Aristotle had received the question +and answer from philosophers ten-thousand years older than +themselves. Certainly the whole of philosophy has always been +involved in the dispute. + +The subject is as amusing as a comedy; so amusing that ten minutes +may be well given to playing the scene between William and Abelard, +not as it happened, but in a form nearer our ignorance, with liberty +to invent arguments for William, and analogies--which are figures +intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent +toys if they fail--such as he never imagined; while Abelard can +respond with his true rejoinder, fatal in a different sense. For the +chief analogy, the notes of music would serve, or the colours of the +solar spectrum, or an energy, such as gravity--but the best is +geometrical, because Euclid was as scholastic as William of +Champeaux himself, and his axioms are even more familiar to the +schoolboy of the twentieth, than to the schoolman of the twelfth +century. + +In these scholastic tournaments the two champions started from +opposite points--one, from the ultimate substance, God--the +universal, the ideal, the type--the other from the individual, +Socrates, the concrete, the observed fact of experience, the object +of sensual perception. The first champion--William in this instance-- +assumed that the universal was a real thing; and for that reason he +was called a realist. His opponent--Abelard--held that the universal +was only nominally real; and on that account he was called a +nominalist. Truth, virtue, humanity, exist as units and realities, +said William. Truth, replied Abelard, is only the sum of all +possible facts that are true, as humanity is the sum of all actual +human beings. The ideal bed is a form, made by God, said Plato. The +ideal bed is a name, imagined by ourselves, said Aristotle. "I start +from the universe," said William. "I start from the atom," said +Abelard; and, once having started, they necessarily came into +collision at some point between the two. + +William of Champeaux, lecturing on dialectics or logic, comes to the +question of universals, which he says, are substances. Starting from +the highest substance, God, all being descends through created +substances by stages, until it reaches the substance animality, from +which it descends to the substance humanity: and humanity being, +like other essences or substances, indivisible, passes wholly into +each individual, becoming Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, much as +the divine substance exists wholly and undivided in each member of +the Trinity. + +Here Abelard interrupts. The divine substance, he says, operates by +laws of its own, and cannot be used for comparison. In treating of +human substance, one is bound by human limitations. If the whole of +humanity is in Socrates, it is wholly absorbed by Socrates, and +cannot be at the same time in Plato, or elsewhere. Following his +favourite reductio ad absurdum, Abelard turns the idea round, and +infers from it that, since Socrates carries all humanity in him, he +carries Plato, too; and both must be in the same place, though +Socrates is at Athens and Plato in Rome. + +The objection is familiar to William, who replies by another +commonplace:-- + +"Mr. Abelard, might I, without offence, ask you a simple matter? Can +you give me Euclid's definition of a point?" + +"If I remember right it is, 'illud cujus nulla pars est'; that which +has no parts." + +"Has it existence?" + +"Only in our minds." + +"Not, then, in God?" + +"All necessary truths exist first in God. If the point is a +necessary truth, it exists first there." + +"Then might I ask you for Euclid's definition of the line?" + +"The line is that which has only extension; 'Linea vocatur illa quae +solam longitudinem habet.'" "Can you conceive an infinite straight +line?" + +"Only as a line which has no end, like the point extended." + +"Supposing we imagine a straight line, like opposite rays of the +sun, proceeding in opposite directions to infinity--is it real?" + +"It has no reality except in the mind that conceives it." + +"Supposing we divide that line which has no reality into two parts +at its origin in the sun or star, shall we get two infinities?--or +shall we say, two halves of the infinite?" + +"We conceive of each as partaking the quality of infinity." + +"Now, let us cut out the diameter of the sun; or rather--since this +is what our successors in the school will do,--let us take a line of +our earth's longitude which is equally unreal, and measure a degree +of this thing which does not exist, and then divide it into equal +parts which we will use as a measure or metre. This metre, which is +still nothing, as I understand you, is infinitely divisible into +points? and the point itself is infinitely small? Therefore we have +the finite partaking the nature of the infinite?" + +"Undoubtedly!" + +"One step more, Mr. Abelard, if I do not weary you! Let me take +three of these metres which do not exist, and place them so that the +ends of one shall touch the ends of the others. May I ask what is +that figure?" + +"I presume you mean it to be a triangle." + +"Precisely! and what sort of a triangle?" + +"An equilateral triangle, the sides of which measure one metre +each." + +"Now let me take three more of these metres which do not exist, and +construct another triangle which does not exist;--are these two +triangles or one triangle?" + +"They are most certainly one--a single concept of the only possible +equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each face." + +"You told us a moment ago that a universal could not exist wholly +and exclusively in two individuals at once. Does not the universal +by definition--THE equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each +face--does it not exist wholly, in its integrity of essence, in each +of the two triangles we have conceived?" + +"It does--as a conception." + +"I thank you! Now, although I fear wearying you, perhaps you will +consent to let me add matter to mind. I have here on my desk an +object not uncommon in nature, which I will ask you to describe." + +"It appears to be a crystal." + +"May I ask its shape?" + +"I should call it a regular octahedron." + +"That is, two pyramids, set base to base? making eight plane +surfaces, each a perfect equilateral triangle?" + +"Concedo triangula (I grant the triangles)." + +"Do you know, perchance, what is this material which seems to give +substantial existence to these eight triangles?" + +"I do not." + +"Nor I! nor does it matter, unless you conceive it to be the work of +man?" + +"I do not claim it as man's work." + +"Whose, then?" + +"We believe all actual creation of matter, united with form, to be +the work of God." + +"Surely not the substance of God himself? Perhaps you mean that this +form--this octahedron--is a divine concept." + +"I understand such to be the doctrine of the Church." + +"Then it seems that God uses this concept habitually to create this +very common crystal. One question more, and only one, if you will +permit me to come to the point. Does the matter--the material--of +which this crystal is made affect in any way the form--the nature, +the soul--of the universal equilateral triangle as you see it +bounding these eight plane surfaces?" + +"That I do not know, and do not think essential to decide. As far as +these triangles are individual, they are made so by the will of God, +and not by the substance you call triangle. The universal--the +abstract right angle, or any other abstract form--is only an idea, a +concept, to which reality, individuality, or what we might call +energy is wanting. The only true energy, except man's free will, is +God." + +"Very good, Mr. Abelard! we can now reach our issue. You affirm +that, just as the line does not exist in space, although the eye +sees little else in space, so the triangle does not exist in this +crystal, although the crystal shows eight of them, each perfect. You +are aware that on this line which does not exist, and its +combination in this triangle which does not exist, rests the whole +fabric of mathematics with all its necessary truths. In other words, +you know that in this line, though it does not exist, is bound up +the truth of the only branch of human knowledge which claims +absolute certainty for human processes. You admit that this line and +triangle, which are mere figments of our human imagination, not only +exist independent of us in the crystal, but are, as we suppose, +habitually and invariably used by God Himself to give form to the +matter contained within the planes of the crystal. Yet to this line +and triangle you deny reality. To mathematical truth, you deny +compulsive force. You hold that an equilateral triangle may, to you +and all other human individuals, be a right-angled triangle if you +choose to imagine it so. Allow me to say, without assuming any claim +to superior knowledge, that to me your logic results in a different +conclusion. If you are compelled, at one point or another of the +chain of being, to deny existence to a substance, surely it should +be to the last and feeblest. I see nothing to hinder you from +denying your own existence, which is, in fact, impossible to +demonstrate. Certainly you are free, in logic, to argue that +Socrates and Plato are mere names--that men and matter are phantoms +and dreams. No one ever has proved or ever can prove the contrary, +Infallibly, a great philosophical school will some day be founded on +that assumption. I venture even to recommend it to your acute and +sceptical mind; but I cannot conceive how, by any process of +reasoning, sensual or supersensual, you can reach the conclusion +that the single form of truth which instantly and inexorably compels +our submission to its laws--is nothing." + +Thus far, all was familiar ground; certainly at least as familiar as +the Pons Asinorum; and neither of the two champions had need to feel +ruffled in temper by the discussion. The real struggle began only at +this point; for until this point was reached, both positions were +about equally tenable. Abelard had hitherto rested quietly on the +defensive, but William's last thrust obliged him to strike in his +turn, and he drew himself up for what, five hundred years later, was +called the "Coup de Jarnac":-- + +"I do not deny," he begins; "on the contrary, I affirm that the +universal, whether we call it humanity, or equilateral triangle, has +a sort of reality as a concept; that it is something; even a +substance, if you insist upon it. Undoubtedly the sum of all +individual men results in the concept of humanity. What I deny is +that the concept results in the individual. You have correctly +stated the essence of the point and the line as sources of our +concept of the infinite; what I deny is that they are divisions of +the infinite. Universals cannot be divided; what is capable of +division cannot be a universal. I admit the force of your analogy in +the case of the crystal; but I am obliged to point out to you that, +if you insist on this analogy, you will bring yourself and me into +flagrant contradiction with the fixed foundations of the Church. If +the energy of the triangle gives form to the crystal, and the energy +of the line gives reality to the triangle, and the energy of the +infinite gives substance to the line, all energy at last becomes +identical with the ultimate substance, God Himself. Socrates becomes +God in small; Judas is identical with both; humanity is of the +divine essence, and exists, wholly and undivided, in each of us. The +equilateral triangle we call humanity exists, therefore, entire, +identical, in you and me, as a subdivision of the infinite line, +space, energy, or substance, which is God. I need not remind you +that this is pantheism, and that if God is the only energy, human +free will merges in God's free will; the Church ceases to have a +reason for existence; man cannot be held responsible for his own +acts, either to the Church or to the State; and finally, though very +unwillingly, I must, in regard for my own safety, bring the subject +to the attention of the Archbishop, which, as you know better than +I, will lead to your seclusion, or worse." + +Whether Abelard used these precise words is nothing to the point. +The words he left on record were equivalent to these. As translated +by M. de Remusat from a manuscript entitled: "Glossulae magistri +Petri Baelardi super Porphyrium," the phrase runs: "A grave heresy +is at the end of this doctrine; for, according to it, the divine +substance which is recognized as admitting of no form, is +necessarily identical with every substance in particular and with +all substance in general." Even had he not stated the heresy so +bluntly, his objection necessarily pushed William in face of it. +Realism, when pressed, always led to pantheism. William of Champeaux +and Bishop or Archbishop Hildebert were personal friends, and +Hildebert's divine substance left no more room for human free will +than Abelard saw in the geometric analogy imagined for William. +Throughout the history of the Church for fifteen hundred years, +whenever this theological point has been pressed against churchmen +it has reduced them to evasion or to apology. Admittedly, the weak +point of realism was its fatally pantheistic term. + +Of course, William consulted his friends in the Church, probably +Archbishop Hildebert among the rest, before deciding whether to +maintain or to abandon his ground, and the result showed that he was +guided by their advice. Realism was the Roman arch--the only +possible foundation for any Church; because it assumed unity, and +any other scheme was compelled to prove it, for a starting-point. +Let us see, for a moment, what became of the dialogue, when pushed +into theology, in order to reach some of the reasons which reduced +William to tacit abandonment of a doctrine he could never have +surrendered unless under compulsion. That he was angry is sure, for +Abelard, by thus thrusting theology into dialectics, had struck him +a full blow; and William knew Abelard well:-- + +"Ah!" he would have rejoined; "you are quick, M. du Pallet, to turn +what I offered as an analogy, into an argument of heresy against my +person. You are at liberty to take that course if you choose, though +I give you fair warning that it will lead you far. But now I must +ask you still another question. This concept that you talk about-- +this image in the mind of man, of God, of matter; for I know not +where to seek it--whether is it a reality or not?" + +"I hold it as, in a manner, real." + +"I want a categorical answer--Yes or No!" + +"Distinguo! (I must qualify.)" + +"I will have no qualifications. A substance either is, or not. +Choose!" + +To this challenge Abelard had the choice of answering Yes, or of +answering no, or of refusing to answer at all. He seems to have done +the last; but we suppose him to have accepted the wager of battle, +and to answer:-- + +"Yes, then!" + +"Good!" William rejoins; "now let us see how your pantheism differs +from mine. My triangle exists as a reality, or what science will +call an energy, outside my mind, in God, and is impressed on my mind +as it is on a mirror, like the triangle on the crystal, its energy +giving form. Your triangle you say is also an energy, but an essence +of my mind itself; you thrust it into the mind as an integral part +of the mirror; identically the same concept, energy, or necessary +truth which is inherent in God. Whatever subterfuge you may resort +to, sooner or later you have got to agree that your mind is +identical with God's nature as far as that concept is concerned. +Your pantheism goes further than mine. As a doctrine of the Real +Presence peculiar to yourself, I can commend it to the Archbishop +together with your delation of me." + +Supposing that Abelard took the opposite course, and answered:-- + +"No! my concept is a mere sign." + +"A sign of what, in God's name!" + +"A sound! a word! a symbol! an echo only of my ignorance." + +"Nothing, then! So truth and virtue and charity do not exist at all. +You suppose yourself to exist, but you have no means of knowing God; +therefore, to you God does not exist except as an echo of your +ignorance; and, what concerns you most, the Church does not exist +except as your concept of certain individuals, whom you cannot +regard as a unity, and who suppose themselves to believe in a +Trinity which exists only as a sound, or a symbol. I will not repeat +your words, M. du Pallet, outside this cloister, because the +consequences to you would certainly be fatal; but it is only too +clear that you are a materialist, and as such your fate must be +decided by a Church Council, unless you prefer the stake by judgment +of a secular court." + +In truth, pure nominalism--if, indeed, any one ever maintained it-- +afforded no cover whatever. Nor did Abelard's concept help the +matter, although for want of a better refuge, the Church was often +driven into it. Conceptualism was a device, like the false wooden +roof, to cover and conceal an inherent weakness of construction. +Unity either is, or is not. If soldiers, no matter in what number, +can never make an army, and worshippers, though in millions, do not +make a Church, and all humanity united would not necessarily +constitute a State, equally little can their concepts, individual or +united, constitute the one or the other. Army, Church, and State, +each is an organic whole, complex beyond all possible addition of +units, and not a concept at all, but rather an animal that thinks, +creates, devours, and destroys. The attempt to bridge the chasm +between multiplicity and unity is the oldest problem of philosophy, +religion, and science, but the flimsiest bridge of all is the human +concept, unless somewhere, within or beyond it, an energy not +individual is hidden; and in that case the old question instantly +reappears: What is that energy? + +Abelard would have done well to leave William alone, but Abelard was +an adventurer, and William was a churchman. To win a victory over a +churchman is not very difficult for an adventurer, and is always a +tempting amusement, because the ambition of churchmen to shine in +worldly contests is disciplined and checked by the broader interests +of the Church: but the victory is usually sterile, and rarely harms +the churchman. The Church cares for its own. Probably the bishops +advised William not to insist on his doctrine, although every bishop +may have held the same view. William allowed himself to be silenced +without a judgment, and in that respect stands almost if not quite +alone among schoolmen. The students divined that he had sold himself +to the Church, and consequently deserted him. Very soon he received +his reward in the shape of the highest dignity open to private +ambition--a bishopric. As Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne he made for +himself a great reputation, which does not concern us, although it +deeply concerned the unfortunate Abelard, for it happened, either by +chance or design, that within a year or two after William +established himself at Chalons, young Bernard of Citeaux chose a +neighbouring diocese in which to establish a branch of the +Cistercian Order, and Bishop William took so keen an interest in the +success of Bernard as almost to claim equal credit for it. Clairvaux +was, in a manner, William's creation, although not in his diocese, +and yet, if there was a priest in all France who fervently despised +the schools, it was young Bernard. William of Champeaux, the chief +of schoolmen, could never have gained Bernard's affections. Bishop +William of Chalons must have drifted far from dialectics into +mysticism in order to win the support of Clairvaux, and train up a +new army of allies who were to mark Abelard for an easy prey. + +Meanwhile Abelard pursued his course of triumph in the schools, and +in due time turned from dialectics to theology, as every ambitious +teacher could hardly fail to do. His affair with Heloise and their +marriage seem to have occupied his time in 1117 or 1118, for they +both retired into religious orders in 1119, and he resumed his +lectures in 1120. With his passion for rule, he was fatally certain +to attempt ruling the Church as he ruled the schools; and, as it was +always enough for him that any point should be tender in order that +he should press upon it, he instantly and instinctively seized on +the most sensitive nerve of the Church system to wrench it into his +service. He became a sort of apostle of the Holy Ghost. + +That the Trinity is a mystery was a law of theology so absolute as +in a degree to hide the law of philosophy that the Trinity was meant +as a solution of a greater mystery still. In truth, as a matter of +philosophy, the Trinity was intended to explain the eternal and +primary problem of the process by which unity could produce +diversity. Starting from unity alone, philosophers found themselves +unable to stir hand or foot until they could account for duality. To +the common, ignorant peasant, no such trouble occurred, for he knew +the Trinity in its simpler form as the first condition of life, like +time and space and force. No human being was so stupid as not to +understand that the father, mother, and child made a trinity, +returning into each other, and although every father, every mother, +and every child, from the dawn of man's intelligence, had asked why, +and had never received an answer more intelligible to them than to +philosophers, they never showed difficulty in accepting that trinity +as a fact. They might even, in their beneficent blindness, ask the +Church why that trinity, which had satisfied the Egyptians for five +or ten-thousand years, was not good enough for churchmen. They +themselves were doing their utmost, though unconsciously, to +identify the Holy Ghost with the Mother, while philosophy insisted +on excluding the human symbol precisely because it was human and led +back to an infinite series. Philosophy required three units to start +from; it posed the equilateral triangle, not the straight line, as +the foundation of its deometry. The first straight line, infinite in +extension, must be assumed, and its reflection engendered the +second, but whence came the third? Under protest, philosophy was +compelled to accept the symbol of Father and Son as a matter of +faith, but, if the relation of Father and Son were accepted for the +two units which reflected each other, what relation expressed the +Holy Ghost? In philosophy, the product of two units was not a third +unit, but diversity, multiplicity, infinity. The subject was, for +that reason, better handled by the Arabs, whose reasoning worked +back on the Christian theologists and made the point more delicate +still. Common people, like women and children and ourselves, could +never understand the Trinity; naturally, intelligent people +understood it still less, but for them it did not matter; they did +not need to understand it provided their neighbours would leave it +alone. + +The mass of mankind wanted something nearer to them than either the +Father or the Son; they wanted the Mother, and the Church tried, in +what seems to women and children and ourselves rather a feeble way, +to give the Holy Ghost, as far as possible, the Mother's attributes +--Love, Charity, Grace; but in spite of conscientious effort and +unswerving faith, the Holy Ghost remained to the mass of Frenchmen +somewhat apart, feared rather than loved. The sin against the Holy +Ghost was a haunting spectre, for no one knew what else it was. + +Naturally the Church, and especially its official theologists, took +an instinctive attitude of defence whenever a question on this +subject was asked, and were thrown into a flutter of irritation +whenever an answer was suggested. No man likes to have his +intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts +about it himself. The distinguishing essence of the Holy Ghost, as a +theological substance, was its mystery. That this mystery should be +touched at all was annoying to every one who knew the dangers that +lurked behind the veil, but that it should be freely handled before +audiences of laymen by persons of doubtful character was impossible. +Such license must end in discrediting the whole Trinity under +pretence of making it intelligible. + +Precisely this license was what Abelard took, and on it he chose to +insist. He said nothing heretical; he treated the Holy Ghost with +almost exaggerated respect, as though other churchmen did not quite +appreciate its merits; but he would not let it alone, and the Church +dreaded every moment lest, with his enormous influence in the +schools, he should raise a new storm by his notorious indiscretion. +Yet so long as he merely lectured, he was not molested; only when he +began to publish his theology did the Church interfere. Then a +council held at Soissons in 1121 abruptly condemned his book in +block, without reading it, without specifying its errors, and +without hearing his defence; obliged him to throw the manuscript +into the fire with his own hands, and finally shut him up in a +monastery. + +He had invited the jurisdiction by taking orders, but even the +Church was shocked by the summary nature of the judgment, which +seems to have been quite irregular. In fact, the Church has never +known what it was that the council condemned. The latest great work +on the Trinity, by the Jesuit Father de Regnon, suggests that +Abelard's fault was in applying to the Trinity his theory of +concepts. + +"Yes!" he says; "the mystery is explained; the key of conceptualism +has opened the tabernacle, and Saint Bernard was right in saying +that, thanks to Abelard, every one can penetrate it and contemplate +it at his ease; 'even the graceless, even the uncircumcised.' Yes! +the Trinity is explained, but after the manner of the Sabellians. +For to identify the Persons in the terms of human concepts is, in +the same stroke, to destroy their 'subsistances propres.'" + +Although the Saviour seems to have felt no compunctions about +identifying the persons of the Trinity in the terms of human +concepts, it is clear that tourists and heretics had best leave the +Church to deal with its "subsistances propres," and with its own +members, in its own way. In sum, the Church preferred to stand firm +on the Roman arch, and the architects seem now inclined to think it +was right; that scholastic science and the pointed arch proved to be +failures. In the twelfth century the world may have been rough, but +it was not stupid. The Council of Soissons was held while the +architects and sculptors were building the west porch of Chartres +and the Aquilon at Mont-Saint-Michel. Averroes was born at Cordova +in 1126; Omar Khayyam died at Naishapur in 1123. Poetry and +metaphysics owned the world, and their quarrel with theology was a +private, family dispute. Very soon the tide turned decisively in +Abelard's favour. Suger, a political prelate, became minister of the +King, and in March, 1122, Abbot of Saint-Denis. In both capacities +he took the part of Abelard, released him from restraint, and even +restored to him liberty of instruction, at least beyond the +jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Abelard then took a line of +conduct singularly parallel with that of Bernard. Quitting civilized +life he turned wholly to religion. "When the agreement," he said, +"had been executed by both parties to it, in presence of the King +and his ministers, I next retired within the territory of Troyes, +upon a desert spot which I knew, and on a piece of ground given me +by certain persons, I built, with the consent of the bishop of the +diocese, a sort of oratory of reeds and thatch, which I placed under +the invocation of the Holy Trinity ... Founded at first in the name +of the Holy Trinity, then placed under its invocation, it was called +'Paraclete' in memory of my having come there as a fugitive and in +my despair having found some repose in the consolations of divine +grace. This denomination was received by many with great +astonishment, and some attacked it with violence under pretext that +it was not permitted to consecrate a church specially to the Holy +Ghost any more than to God the Father, but that, according to +ancient usage, it must be dedicated either to the Son alone or to +the Trinity." + +The spot is still called Paraclete, near Nogent-sur-Seine, in the +parish of Quincey about halfway between Fontainebleau and Troyes. +The name Paraclete as applied to the Holy Ghost meant the Consoler, +the Comforter, the Spirit of Love and Grace; as applied to the +oratory by Abelard it meant a renewal of his challenge to +theologists, a separation of the Persons in the Trinity, a +vulgarization of the mystery; and, as his story frankly says, it was +so received by many. The spot was not so remote but that his +scholars could follow him, and he invited them to do so. They came +in great numbers, and he lectured to them. "In body I was hidden in +this spot; but my renown overran the whole world and filled it with +my word." Undoubtedly Abelard taught theology, and, in defiance of +the council that had condemned him, attempted to define the persons +of the Trinity. For this purpose he had fallen on a spot only fifty +or sixty miles from Clairvaux where Bernard was inspiring a contrary +spirit of religion; he placed himself on the direct line between +Clairvaux and its source at Citeaux near Dijon; indeed, if he had +sought for a spot as central as possible to the active movement of +the Church and the time, he could have hit on none more convenient +and conspicuous unless it were the city of Troyes itself, the +capital of Champagne, some thirty miles away. The proof that he +meant to be aggressive is furnished by his own account of the +consequences. Two rivals, he says, one of whom seems to have been +Bernard of Clairvaux, took the field against him, "and succeeded in +exciting the hostility of certain ecclesiastical and secular +authorities, by charging monstrous things, not only against my +faith, but also against my manner of life, to such a point as to +detach from me some of my principal friends; even those who +preserved some affection for me dared no longer display it, for +fear. God is my witness that I never heard of the union of an +ecclesiastical assembly without thinking that its object was my +condemnation." The Church had good reason, for Abelard's conduct +defied discipline; but far from showing harshness, the Church this +time showed a true spirit of conciliation most creditable to +Bernard. Deeply as the Cistercians disliked and distrusted Abelard, +they did not violently suppress him, but tacitly consented to let +the authorities buy his silence with Church patronage. + +The transaction passed through Suger's hands, and offered an +ordinary example of political customs as old as history. An abbey in +Brittany became vacant; at a hint from the Duke Conan, which may +well be supposed to have been suggested from Paris, the monks chose +Abelard as their new abbot, and sent some of their number to Suger +to request permission for Abelard, who was a monk of Saint-Denis, to +become Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, near Vannes, in Brittany. +Suger probably intimated to Abelard, with a certain degree of +authority, that he had better accept. Abelard, "struck with terror, +and as it were under the menace of a thunderbolt," accepted. Of +course the dignity was in effect banishment and worse, and was so +understood on all sides. The Abbaye-de-Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, though +less isolated than Mont-Saint-Michel, was not an agreeable winter +residence. Though situated in Abelard's native province of Brittany, +only sixty or eighty miles from his birthplace, it was for him a +prison with the ocean around it and a singularly wild people to deal +with; but he could have endured his lot with contentment, had not +discipline or fear or pledge compelled him to hold his tongue. From +1125, when he was sent to Brittany until 1135 when he reappeared in +Paris, he never opened his mouth to lecture. "Never, as God is my +witness,--never would I have acquiesced in such an offer, had it not +been to escape, no matter how, from the vexations with which I was +incessantly overwhelmed." + +A great career in the Church was thus opened for him against his +will, and if he did not die an archbishop it was not wholly the +fault of the Church. Already he was a great prelate, the equal in +rank of the Abbe Suger, himself, of Saint-Denis; of Peter the +Venerable of Cluny; of Bernard of Clairvaux. He was in a manner a +peer of the realm. Almost immediately he felt the advantages of the +change. Barely two years passed when, in 1127, the Abbe Suger, in +reforming his subordinate Abbey of Argenteuil, was obliged to +disturb Heloise, then a sister in that congregation. Abelard was +warned of the necessity that his wife should be protected, and with +the assistance of everyone concerned, he was allowed to establish +his wife at the Paraclete as head of a religious sisterhood. "I +returned there; I invited Heloise to come there with the nuns of her +community; and when they arrived, I made them the entire donation of +the oratory and its dependencies ... The bishops cherished her as +their daughter; the abbots as their sister; the laymen as their +mother." This was merely the beginning of her favour and of his. For +ten years they were both of them petted children of the Church. + +The formal establishment of Heloise at the Paraclete took place in +1129. In February, 1130, on the death of the Pope at Rome, a schism +broke out, and the cardinals elected two popes, one of whom took the +name of Innocent II, and appealed for support to France. Suger saw a +great political opportunity and used it. The heads of the French +Church agreed in supporting Innocent, and the King summoned a Church +council at Etampes to declare its adhesion. The council met in the +late summer; Bernard of Clairvaux took the lead; Peter the +Venerable, Suger of Saint-Denis, and the Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de- +Rhuys supported him; Innocent himself took refuge at Cluny in +October, and on January 20, 1131, he stopped at the Benedictine +Abbey of Morigny. The Chronicle of the monastery, recording the +abbots present on this occasion,--the Abbot of Morigny itself, of +Feversham; of Saint-Lucien of Beauvais, and so forth,--added +especially: "Bernard of Clairvaux, who was then the most famous +pulpit orator in France; and Peter Abelard, Abbot of Saint-Gildas, +also a monk and the most eminent master of the schools to which the +scholars of almost all the Latin races flowed." + +Innocent needed popular support; Bernard and Abelard were the two +leaders of popular opinion in France. To attach them, Innocent could +refuse nothing. Probably Abelard remained with Innocent, but in any +case Innocent gave him, at Auxerre, in the following November, a +diploma, granting to Heloise, prioress of the Oratory of the Holy +Trinity, all rights of property over whatever she might possess, +against all assailants; which proves Abelard's favour. At this time +he seems to have taken great interest in the new sisterhood. "I made +them more frequent visits," he said, "in order to work for their +benefit." He worked so earnestly for their benefit that he +scandalized the neighbourhood and had to argue at unnecessary length +his innocence of evil. He went so far as to express a wish to take +refuge among them and to abandon his abbey in Brittany. He professed +to stand in terror of his monks; he excommunicated them; they paid +no attention to him; he appealed to the Pope, his friend, and +Innocent sent a special legate to enforce their submission "in +presence of the Count and the Bishops." + +Even since that, they would not keep quiet. And quite recently, +since the expulsion of those of whom I have spoken, when I returned +to the abbey, abandoning myself to the rest of the brothers who +inspired me with less distrust, I found them even worse than the +others. It was no longer a question of poison; it was the dagger +that they now sharpened against my breast. I had great difficulty in +escaping from them under the guidance of one of the neighbouring +lords. Similar perils menace me still and every day I see the sword +raised over my head. Even at table I can hardly breathe ... This is +the torture that I endure every moment of the day; I, a poor monk, +raised to the prelacy, becoming more miserable in becoming more +great, that by my example the ambitious may learn to curb their +greed. + +With this, the "Story of Calamity" ends. The allusions to Innocent +II seem to prove that it was written not earlier than 1132; the +confession of constant and abject personal fear suggests that it was +written under the shock caused by the atrocious murder of the Prior +of Saint-Victor by the nephews of the Archdeacon of Paris, who had +also been subjected to reforms. This murder was committed a few +miles outside of the walls of Paris, on August 20, 1133. The "Story +of Calamity" is evidently a long plea for release from the +restraints imposed on its author by his position in the prelacy and +the tacit, or possibly the express, contract he had made, or to +which he had submitted, in 1125. This plea was obviously written in +order to serve one of two purposes:--either to be placed before the +authorities whose consent alone could relieve Abelard from his +restraints; or to justify him in throwing off the load of the +Church, and resuming the profession of schoolman. Supposing the +second explanation, the date of the paper would be more or less +closely fixed by John of Salisbury, who coming to Paris as a +student, in 1136, found Abelard lecturing on the Mont-Sainte- +Genevieve; that is to say, not under the license of the Bishop of +Paris or his Chancellor, but independently, in a private school of +his own, outside the walls. "I attached myself to the Palatine +Peripatician who then presided on the hill of Sainte-Genevieve, the +doctor illustrious, admired by all. There, at his feet, I received +the first elements of the dialectic art, and according to the +measure of my poor understanding I received with all the avidity of +my soul everything that came from his mouth." + +This explanation is hardly reasonable, for no prelate who was not +also a temporal lord would have dared throw off his official duties +without permission from his superiors. In Abelard's case the only +superior to whom he could apply, as Abbot of Saint-Gildas in +Brittany, was probably the Pope himself. In the year 1135 the moment +was exceedingly favourable for asking privileges. Innocent, driven +from Rome a second time, had summoned a council at Pisa for May 30 +to help him. Louis-le-Gros and his minister Suger gave at first no +support to this council, and were overruled by Bernard of Clairvaux +who in a manner drove them into giving the French clergy permission +to attend. The principal archbishops, a number of bishops, and +sixteen abbots went to Pisa in May, 1135, and some one of them +certainly asked Innocent for favours on behalf of Abelard, which the +Pope granted. + +The proof is a papal bull, dated in 1136, in favour of Heloise, +giving her the rank and title of Abbess, accompanied by another +giving to the Oratory of the Holy Trinity the rank and name of +Monastery of the Paraclete, a novelty in Church tradition so +extraordinary or so shocking that it still astounds churchmen. With +this excessive mark of favour Innocent could have felt little +difficulty in giving Abelard the permission to absent himself from +his abbey, and with this permission in his hands Abelard might have +lectured on dialectics to John of Salisbury in the summer or autumn +of 1136. He did not, as far as known, resume lectures on theology. + +Such success might have turned heads much better balanced than that +of Abelard. With the support of the Pope and at least one of the +most prominent cardinals, and with relations at court with the +ministers of Louis-le-Gros, Abelard seemed to himself as strong as +Bernard of Clairvaux, and a more popular champion of reform. The +year 1137, which has marked a date for so many great points in our +travels, marked also the moment of Abelard's greatest vogue. The +victory of Aristotle and the pointed arch seemed assured when Suger +effected the marriage of the young Prince Louis to the heiress +Eleanor of Guienne. The exact moment was stamped on the facade of +his exquisite creation, the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, finished in +1140 and still in part erect. From Saint-Denis to Saint-Sulpice was +but a step. Louis-le-Grand seems to stand close in succession to +Louis-le-Gros. + +Fortunately for tourists, the world, restless though it might be, +could not hurry, and Abelard was to know of the pointed arch very +little except its restlessness. Just at the apex of his triumph, +August 1, 1137, Louis-le-Gros died. Six months afterwards the anti- +pope also died, the schism ended, and Innocent II needed Abelard's +help no more. Bernard of Clairvaux became Pope and King at once. +Both Innocent and Louis-le-Jeune were in a manner his personal +creations. The King's brother Henry, next in succession, actually +became a monk at Clairvaux not long afterwards. Even the +architecture told the same story, for at Saint-Denis, though the +arch might simulate a point, the old Romanesque lines still assert +as firmly as ever their spiritual control. The fleche that gave the +facade a new spirit was not added until 1215, which marks Abelard's +error in terms of time. + +Once arrived at power, Bernard made short work of all that tried to +resist him. During 1139 he seems to have been too busy or too ill to +take up the affair of Abelard, but in March, 1140, the attack was +opened in a formal letter from William of Saint-Thierry, who was +Bernard's closest friend, bringing charges against Abelard before +Bernard and the Bishop of Chartres. The charges were simple enough:-- + +Pierre Abelard seized the moment, when all the masters of +ecclesiastical doctrine have disappeared from the scene of the +world, to conquer a place apart, for himself, in the schools, and to +create there an exclusive domination. He treats Holy Scripture as +though it were dialectics. It is a matter with him of personal +invention and annual novelties. He is the censor and not the +disciple of the faith; the corrector and not the imitator of the +authorized masters. + +In substance, this is all. The need of action was even simpler. +Abelard's novelties were becoming a danger; they affected not only +the schools, but also even the Curia at Rome. Bernard must act +because there was no one else to act: "This man fears you; he dreads +you! if you shut your eyes, whom will he fear? ... The evil has +become too public to allow a correction limited to amicable +discipline and secret warning." In fact, Abelard's works were flying +about Europe in every direction, and every year produced a novelty. +One can still read them in M. Cousin's collected edition; among +others, a volume on ethics: "Ethica, seu Scito teipsum"; on theology +in general, an epitome; a "Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum et +Christianum"; and, what was perhaps the most alarming of all, an +abstract of quotations from standard authorities, on the principle +of the parallel column, showing the fatal contradictions of the +authorized masters, and entitled "Sic et Non"! Not one of these +works but dealt with sacred matters in a spirit implying that the +Essence of God was better understood by Pierre du Pallet than by the +whole array of bishops and prelates in Europe! Had Bernard been +fortunate enough to light upon the "Story of Calamity," which must +also have been in existence, he would have found there Abelard's own +childlike avowal that he taught theology because his scholars "said +that they did not want mere words; that one can believe only what +one understands; and that it is ridiculous to preach to others what +one understands no better than they do." Bernard himself never +charged Abelard with any presumption equal to this. Bernard said +only that "he sees nothing as an enigma, nothing as in a mirror, but +looks on everything face to face." If this had been all, even +Bernard could scarcely have complained. For several thousand years +mankind has stared Infinity in the face without pretending to be the +wiser; the pretension of Abelard was that, by his dialectic method, +he could explain the Infinite, while all other theologists talked +mere words; and by way of proving that he had got to the bottom of +the matter, he laid down the ultimate law of the universe as his +starting-point: "All that God does," he said, "He wills necessarily +and does it necessarily; for His goodness is such that it pushes Him +necessarily to do all the good He can, and the best He can, and the +quickest He can ... Therefore it is of necessity that God willed and +made the world." Pure logic admitted no contingency; it was bound to +be necessitarian or ceased to be logical; but the result, as Bernard +understood it, was that Abelard's world, being the best and only +possible, need trouble itself no more about God, or Church, or man. + +Strange as the paradox seems, Saint Bernard and Lord Bacon, though +looking at the world from opposite standpoints, agreed in this: that +the scholastic method was false and mischievous, and that the longer +it was followed, the greater was its mischief. Bernard thought that +because dialectics led wrong, therefore faith led right. He saw no +alternative, and perhaps in fact there was none. If he had lived a +century later, he would have said to Thomas Aquinas what he said to +a schoolman of his own day: "If you had once tasted true food,"--if +you knew what true religion is,--"how quick you would leave those +Jew makers of books (literatoribus judaeis) to gnaw their crusts by +themselves!" Locke or Hume might perhaps still have resented a +little the "literator judaeus," but Faraday or Clerk-Maxwell would +have expressed the same opinion with only the change of a word: "If +the twelfth century had once tasted true science, how quick they +would have dropped Avicenna and Averroes!" Science admits that +Bernard's disbelief in scholasticism was well founded, whatever it +may think of his reasons. The only point that remains is personal: +Which is the more sympathetic, Bernard or Abelard? + +The Church feels no doubt, but is a bad witness. Bernard is not a +character to be taken or rejected in a lump. He was many-sided, and +even toward Abelard he showed more than one surface. He wanted no +unnecessary scandals in the Church; he had too many that were not of +his seeking. He seems to have gone through the forms of friendly +negotiation with Abelard although he could have required nothing +less than Abelard's submission and return to Brittany, and silence; +terms which Abelard thought worse than death. On Abelard's refusal, +Bernard began his attack. We know, from the "Story of Calamity," +what Bernard's party could not have certainly known then,--the +abject terror into which the very thought of a council had for +twenty years thrown Abelard whenever he was threatened with it; and +in 1140 he saw it to be inevitable. He preferred to face it with +dignity, and requested to be heard at a council to meet at Sens in +June. One cannot admit that he felt the shadow of a hope to escape. +At the utmost he could have dreamed of nothing more than a hearing. +Bernard's friends, who had a lively fear of his dialectics, took +care to shut the door on even this hope. The council was carefully +packed and overawed. The King was present; archbishops, bishops, +abbots, and other prelates by the score; Bernard acted in person as +the prosecuting attorney; the public outside were stimulated to +threaten violence. Abelard had less chance of a judicial hearing +than he had had at Soissons twenty years before. He acted with a +proper sense of their dignity and his own by simply appearing and +entering an appeal to Rome. The council paid no attention to the +appeal, but passed to an immediate condemnation. His friends said +that it was done after dinner; that when the volume of Abelard's +"Theology" was produced and the clerk began to read it aloud, after +the first few sentences the bishops ceased attention, talked, joked, +laughed, stamped their feet, got angry, and at last went to sleep. +They were waked only to growl "Damnamus--namus," and so made an end. +The story may be true, for all prelates, even in the twelfth +century, were not Bernards of Clairvaux or Peters of Cluny; all +drank wine, and all were probably sleepy after dinner; while +Abelard's writings are, for the most part, exceedingly hard reading. +The clergy knew quite well what they were doing; the judgment was +certain long in advance, and the council was called only to register +it. Political trials were usually mere forms. + +The appeal to Rome seems to have been taken seriously by Bernard, +which is surprising unless the character of Innocent II inspired his +friends with doubts unknown to us. Innocent owed everything to +Bernard, while Abelard owed everything to Innocent. The Pope was not +in a position to alienate the French Church or the French King. To +any one who knows only what is now to be known, Bernard seems to +have been sure of the Curia, yet he wrote in a tone of excitement as +though he feared Abelard's influence there even more than at home. +He became abusive; Abelard was a crawling viper (coluber tortuosus) +who had come out of his hole (egressus est de caverna sua), and +after the manner of a hydra (in similitudinem hydrae), after having +one head cut off at Soissons, had thrown out seven more. He was a +monk without rule; a prelate without responsibility; an abbot +without discipline; "disputing with boys; conversing with women." +The charges in themselves seem to be literally true, and would not +in some later centuries have been thought very serious; neither +faith nor morals were impugned. On the other hand, Abelard never +affected or aspired to be a saint, while Bernard always affected to +judge the acts and motives of his fellow-creatures from a standpoint +of more than worldly charity. Bernard had no right to Abelard's +vices; he claimed to be judged by a higher standard; but his temper +was none of the best, and his pride was something of the worst; +which gave to Peter the Venerable occasion for turning on him +sharply with a rebuke that cut to the bone. "You perform all the +difficult religious duties," wrote Peter to the saint who wrought +miracles; "you fast; you watch; you suffer; but you will not endure +the easy ones--you do not love (non vis levia ferre, ut diligas)." + +This was the end of Abelard. Of course the Pope confirmed the +judgment, and even hurried to do so in order that he might not be +obliged to give Abelard a hearing. The judgment was not severe, as +judgments went; indeed, it amounted to little more than an order to +keep silence, and, as it happened, was never carried into effect. +Abelard, at best a nervous invalid, started for Rome, but stopped at +Cluny, perhaps the most agreeable stopping-place in Europe. +Personally he seems to have been a favourite of Abbot Peter the +Venerable, whose love for Bernard was not much stronger than +Abelard's or Suger's. Bernard was an excessively sharp critic, and +spared worldliness, or what he thought lack of spirituality, in no +prelate whatever; Clairvaux existed for nothing else, politically, +than as a rebuke to them all, and Bernard's enmity was their bond of +union. Under the protection of Peter the Venerable, the most amiable +figure of the twelfth century, and in the most agreeable residence +in Europe, Abelard remained unmolested at Cluny, occupied, as is +believed, in writing or revising his treatises, in defiance of the +council. He died there two years later, April 21, 1142, in full +communion, still nominal Abbot of Saint-Gildas, and so distinguished +a prelate that Peter the Venerable thought himself obliged to write +a charming letter to Heloise at the Paraclete not far away, +condoling with her on the loss of a husband who was the Socrates, +the Aristotle, the Plato, of France and the West; who, if among +logicians he had rivals, had no master; who was the prince of study, +learned, eloquent, subtle, penetrating; who overcame everything by +the force of reason, and was never so great as when he passed to +true philosophy, that of Christ. + +All this was in Latin verses, and seems sufficiently strong, +considering that Abelard's philosophy had been so recently and so +emphatically condemned by the entire Church, including Peter the +Venerable himself. The twelfth century had this singular charm of +liberty in practice, just as its architecture knew no mathematical +formula of precision; but Peter's letter to Heloise went further +still, and rang with absolute passion:-- + +Thus, dear and venerable sister in God, he to whom you are united, +after your tie in the flesh, by the better and stronger bond of the +divine love; he, with whom, and under whom, you have served the +Lord, the Lord now takes, in your place, like another you, and warms +in His bosom; and, for the day of His coming, when shall sound the +voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God descending from +heaven, He keeps him to restore him to you by His grace. + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE MYSTICS + +The schoolmen of the twelfth century thought they could reach God by +reason; the Council of Sens, guided by Saint Bernard, replied that +the effort was futile and likely to be mischievous. The council made +little pretence of knowing or caring what method Abelard followed; +they condemned any effort at all on that line; and no sooner had +Bernard silenced the Abbot of Saint-Gildas for innovation than he +turned about and silenced the Bishop of Poitiers for conservatism. +Neither in the twelfth nor in any other century could three men have +understood alike the meaning of Gilbert de la Poree, who seems to +one high authority unworthy of notice and to another, worthy of an +elaborate but quite unintelligible commentary. When M. Rousselet and +M. Haureau judge so differently of a voluminous writer, the Council +at Rheims which censured Bishop Gilbert in 1148 can hardly have been +clear in mind. One dare hazard no more than a guess at Gilbert's +offence, but the guess is tolerably safe that he, like Abelard, +insisted on discussing and analyzing the Trinity. Gilbert seems to +have been a rigid realist, and he reduced to a correct syllogism the +idea of the ultimate substance--God. To make theology a system +capable of scholastic definition he had to suppose, behind the +active deity, a passive abstraction, or absolute substance without +attributes; and then the attributes--justice, mercy, and the rest-- +fell into rank as secondary substances. "Formam dei divinitatem +appellant." Bernard answered him by insisting with his usual fiery +conviction that the Church should lay down the law, once for all, +and inscribe it with iron and diamond, that Divinity--Divine Wisdom +--is God. In philosophy and science the question seems to be still +open. Whether anything ultimate exists--whether substance is more +than a complex of elements--whether the "thing in itself" is a +reality or a name--is a question that Faraday and Clerk-Maxwell seem +to answer as Bernard did, while Haeckel answers it as Gilbert did; +but in theology even a heretic wonders how a doubt was possible. The +absolute substance behind the attributes seems to be pure Spinoza. + +This supposes that the heretic understands what Gilbert or Haeckel +meant, which is certainly a mistake; but it is possible that he may +see in part what Bernard meant and this is enough if it is all. +Abelard's necessitarianism and Gilbert's Spinozism, if Bernard +understood them right, were equally impossible theology, and the +Church could by no evasion escape the necessity of condemning both. +Unfortunately, Bernard could not put his foot down so roughly on the +schools without putting it on Aristotle as well; and, for at least +sixty years after the Council of Rheims, Aristotle was either +tacitly or expressly prohibited. + +One cannot stop to explain why Aristotle himself would have been +first to forbid the teaching of what was called by his name in the +Middle Ages; but you are bound to remember that this period between +1140 and 1200 was that of Transition architecture and art. One must +go to Noyon, Soissons, and Laon to study the Church that trampled on +the schools; one must recall how the peasants of Normandy and the +Chartrain were crusading for the Virgin in 1145, and building her +fleches at Chartres and Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives while Bernard was +condemning Gilbert at Rheims in 1148; we must go to the poets to see +what they all meant by it; but the sum is an emotion--clear and +strong as love and much clearer than logic--whose charm lies in its +unstable balance. The Transition is the equilibrium between the love +of God--which is faith--and the logic of God--which is reason; +between the round arch and the pointed. One may not be sure which +pleases most, but one need not be harsh toward people who think that +the moment of balance is exquisite. The last and highest moment is +seen at Chartres, where, in 1200, the charm depends on the constant +doubt whether emotion or science is uppermost. At Amiens, doubt +ceases; emotion is trained in school; Thomas Aquinas reigns. + +Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of Aquino were both artists,--very +great artists, if the Church pleases,--and one need not decide which +was the greater; but between them is a region of pure emotion--of +poetry and art--which is more interesting than either. In every age +man has been apt to dream uneasily, rolling from side to side, +beating against imaginary bars, unless, tired out, he has sunk into +indifference or scepticism. Religious minds prefer scepticism. The +true saint is a profound sceptic; a total disbeliever in human +reason, who has more than once joined hands on this ground with some +who were at best sinners. Bernard was a total disbeliever in +scholasticism; so was Voltaire. Bernard brought the society of his +time to share his scepticism, but could give the society no other +intellectual amusement to relieve its restlessness. His crusade +failed; his ascetic enthusiasm faded; God came no nearer. If there +was in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typical Englishman +of the future Church of England type than John of Salisbury, he has +left no trace; and John wrote a description of his time which makes +a picturesque contrast with the picture painted by Abelard, his old +master, of the century at its beginning. John weighed Abelard and +the schools against Bernard and the cloister, and coolly concluded +that the way to truth led rather through Citeaux, which brought him +to Chartres as Bishop in 1176, and to a mild scepticism in faith. "I +prefer to doubt," he said, "rather than rashly define what is +hidden." The battle with the schools had then resulted only in +creating three kinds of sceptics:--the disbelievers in human reason; +the passive agnostics; and the sceptics proper, who would have been +atheists had they dared. The first class was represented by the +School of Saint-Victor; the second by John of Salisbury himself; the +third, by a class of schoolmen whom he called Cornificii, as though +they made a practice of inventing horns of dilemma on which to fix +their opponents; as, for example, they asked whether a pig which was +led to market was led by the man or the cord. One asks instantly: +What cord?--whether Grace, for instance, or Free Will? + +Bishop John used the science he had learned in the school only to +reach the conclusion that, if philosophy were a science at all, its +best practical use was to teach charity--love. Even the early, +superficial debates of the schools, in 1100-50, had so exhausted the +subject that the most intelligent men saw how little was to be +gained by pursuing further those lines of thought. The twelfth +century had already reached the point where the seventeenth century +stood when Descartes renewed the attempt to give a solid, +philosophical basis for deism by his celebrated "Cogito, ergo sum." +Although that ultimate fact seemed new to Europe when Descartes +revived it as the starting-point of his demonstration, it was as old +and familiar as Saint Augustine to the twelfth century, and as +little conclusive as any other assumption of the Ego or the Non-Ego. +The schools argued, according to their tastes, from unity to +multiplicity, or from multiplicity to unity; but what they wanted +was to connect the two. They tried realism and found that it led to +pantheism. They tried nominalism and found that it ended in +materialism. They attempted a compromise in conceptualism which +begged the whole question. Then they lay down, exhausted. In the +seventeenth century the same violent struggle broke out again, and +wrung from Pascal the famous outcry of despair in which the French +language rose, perhaps for the last time, to the grand style of the +twelfth century. To the twelfth century it belongs; to the century +of faith and simplicity; not to the mathematical certainties of +Descartes and Leibnitz and Newton, or to the mathematical +abstractions of Spinoza. Descartes had proclaimed his famous +conceptual proof of God: "I am conscious of myself, and must exist; +I am conscious of God and He must exist." Pascal wearily replied +that it was not God he doubted, but logic. He was tortured by the +impossibility of rejecting man's reason by reason; unconsciously +sceptical, he forced himself to disbelieve in himself rather than +admit a doubt of God. Man had tried to prove God, and had failed: +"The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote (eloignees) from the +reasoning of men, and so contradictory (impliquees, far-fetched) +that they make little impression; and even if they served to +convince some people, it would only be during the instant that they +see the demonstration; an hour afterwards they fear to have deceived +themselves." Moreover, this kind of proof could lead only to a +speculative knowledge, and to know God only in that way was not to +know Him at all. The only way to reach God was to deny the value of +reason, and to deny reason was scepticism:-- + +En voyant l'aveuglement et la misere de l'homme et ces contrarietes +etonnantes qui se decouvrent dans sa nature, et regardant tout +l'univers muet, et l'homme sans lumiere, abandonne a lui-meme et +comme egare dans ce recoin de l'umvers, sans savoir qui l'y a mis, +ce qu'il y est venu faire, ce qu'il deviendra en mourant, j'entre en +effroi comme un homme qu'on aurait porte endormi dans une ile +deserte et effroyable, et qui s'eveillerait sans connaitre ou il est +et sans avoir aucun moyen d'en sortir. Et sur cela j'admire comment +on n'entre pas en desespoir d'un si miserable etat. Je vois d'autres +personnes aupres de moi de semblable nature, et je leur demande +s'ils sont mieux instruits que moi, et ils me disent que non Et sur +cela, ces miserables egares, ayant regarde autour d'eux, et ayant vu +quelques objets plaisants, s'y sont donnes et s'y sont attaches Pour +moi je n'ai pu m'y arreter ni me reposer dans la societe de ces +personnes, en tout semblables a moi, miserables comme moi, +impuissants comme moi. Je vois qu'ils ne m'aideraient pas a mourir, +je mourrai seul, il faut donc faire comme si j'etais seul or, si +j'etais seul, je ne batirais pas des maisons, je ne m'embarrasserais +point dans des occupations tumultuaires, je ne chercherais l'estime +de personne, mais je tacherais settlement a decouvrir la verite. + +Ainsi, considerant combien il y a d'apparence qu'il y a autre chose +que ce que je vois, j'ai recherche si ce Dieu dont tout le monde +parle n'aurait pas laisse quelques marques de lui. Je regarde de +toutes parts et ne vois partout qu' obscuritd. La nature ne m'offre +rien que ne soit matiere de doute et d'inquietude. Si je n'y voyais +rien qui marquat une divinite, je me determinerais a n'en rien +croire. Si je voyais partout les marques d'un Createur, je me +reposerais en paix dans la foi. Mais voyant trop pour nier, et trop +peu pour m'assurer, je suis dans un etat a plaindre, et ou j'ai +souhaite cent fois que si un Dieu soutient la nature, elle le +marquat sans Equivoque; et que, si les marques qu'elle en donne sont +trompeuses, elle les supprimat tout a fait; qu'elle dit tout ou +rien, afin que je visse quel parti je dois suivre. + +When I see the blindness and misery of man and the astonishing +contradictions revealed in his nature, and observe the whole +universe mute, and man without light, abandoned to himself, as +though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put +him here, or what he has come here to do, or what will become of him +in dying, I feel fear like a man who has been carried when asleep +into a desert and fearful island, and has waked without knowing +where he is and without having means of rescue. And thereupon I +wonder how man escapes despair at so miserable an estate. I see +others about me, like myself, and I ask them if they are better +informed than I, and they tell me no. And then these wretched +wanderers, after looking about them and seeing some pleasant object, +have given themselves up and attached themselves to it. As for me I +cannot stop there, or rest in the company of these persons, wholly +like myself, miserable like me, impotent like me. I see that they +would not help me to die, I shall die alone, I must then act as +though alone, but if I were alone I should not build houses, I +should not fret myself with bustling occupations, I should seek the +esteem of no one, but I should try only to discover the truth. + +So, considering how much appearance there is that something exists +other than what I see I have sought whether this God of Whom every +one talks may not have left some marks of Himself. I search +everywhere, and see only obscurity everywhere. Nature offers me +nothing but matter of possible doubt and disquiet. If I saw there +nothing to mark a divinity, I should make up my mind to believe +nothing of it. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I should +rest in peace in faith. But seeing too much to deny, and too little +to affirm, I am in a pitiable state, where I have an hundred times +wishes that, if a God supports nature, she would show it without +equivocation; and that, if the marks she gives are deceptive, she +would suppress them wholly; that she say all of nothing, that I may +see my path. + +This is the true Prometheus lyric, but when put back in its place it +refuses to rest at Port-Royal which has a right to nothing but +precision; it has but one real home--the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The +mind that recoils from itself can only commit a sort of ecstatic +suicide; it must absorb itself in God; and in the bankruptcy of +twelfth-century science the Western Christian seemed actually on the +point of attainment; he, like Pascal, touched God behind the veil of +scepticism. + +The schools had already proved one or two points which need never +have been discussed again. In essence, religion was love; in no case +was it logic. Reason can reach nothing except through the senses; +God, by essence, cannot be reached through the senses; if He is to +be known at all, He must be known by contact of spirit with spirit, +essence with essence; directly; by emotion; by ecstasy; by +absorption of our existence in His; by substitution of his spirit +for ours. The world had no need to wait five hundred years longer in +order to hear this same result reaffirmed by Pascal. Saint Francis +of Assisi had affirmed it loudly enough, even if the voice of Saint +Bernard had been less powerful than it was. The Virgin had asserted +it in tones more gentle, but any one may still see how convincing, +who stops a moment to feel the emotion that lifted her wonderful +Chartres spire up to God. + +The Virgin, indeed, made all easy, for it was little enough she +cared for reason or logic. She cared for her baby, a simple matter, +which any woman could do and understand. That, and the grace of God, +had made her Queen of Heaven. The Trinity had its source in her,-- +totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium,--and she was maternity. She was +also poetry and art. In the bankruptcy of reason, she alone was +real. + +So Guillaume de Champeaux, half a century dead, came to life again +in another of his creations. His own Abbey of Saint-Victor, where +Abelard had carried on imaginary disputes with him, became the +dominant school. As far as concerns its logic, we had best pass it +by. The Victorians needed logic only to drive away logicians, which +was hardly necessary after Bernard had shut up the schools. As for +its mysticism, all training is much alike in idea, whether one +follows the six degrees of contemplation taught by Richard of Saint- +Victor, or the eightfold noble way taught by Gautama Buddha. The +theology of the school was still less important, for the Victorians +contented themselves with orthodoxy only in the sense of caring as +little for dogma as for dialectics; their thoughts were fixed on +higher emotions. Not Richard the teacher, but Adam the poet, +represents the school to us, and when Adam dealt with dogma he +frankly admitted his ignorance and hinted his indifference; he was, +as always, conscientious; but he was not always, or often, as cold. +His statement of the Trinity is a marvel; but two verses of it are +enough:-- + +Digne loqui de personis + Vim transcendit rationis, + Excedit ingenia. + Quid sit gigni, quid processus, + Me nescire sum professus, + Sed fide non dubia. + + +Qui sic credit, non festinet, + Et a via non declinet + Insolenter regia. + Servet fidem, formet mores, + Nec attendat ad errors + Quos damnat Ecclesia. + + +Of the Trinity to reason + Leads to license or to treason + Punishment deserving. + What is birth and what procession + Is not mine to make profession, + Save with faith unswerving. + + +Thus professing, thus believing, + Never insolently leaving + The highway of our faith, + Duty weighing, law obeying, + Never shall we wander straying + Where heresy is death. + + +Such a school took natural refuge in the Holy Ghost and the Virgin, +--Grace and Love,--but the Holy Ghost, as usual, profited by it much +less than the Virgin. Comparatively little of Adam's poetry is +expressly given to the Saint Esprit, and too large a part of this +has a certain flavour of dogma:-- + +Qui procedis ab utroque + Genitore Genitoque + Pariter, Paraclite! + . . . . . . . . . Amor Patris, Filiique + Par amborum et utrique + Compar et consimilis! + + +The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the + Son; neither made nor created nor begotten, + but proceeding. + + +The whole three Persons are coeternal + together; and coequal. + + +This sounds like a mere versification of the Creed, yet when Adam +ceased to be dogmatic and broke into true prayer, his verse added a +lofty beauty even to the Holy Ghost; a beauty too serious for modern +rhyme:-- + +Oh, juvamen oppressorum, + Oh, solamen miserorum, + Pauperum refugium, + Da contemptum terrenorum! + Ad amorem supernorum + Trahe desiderium! + + +Consolator et fundator, + Habitator et amator, + Cordium humilium, + Pelle mala, terge sordes, + Et discordes fac Concordes, + Et affer praesidium! + + +Oh, helper of the heavy-laden, + Oh, solace of the miserable, + Of the poor, the refuge, + Give contempt of earthly pleasures! + To the love of heavenly treasures + Lift our hearts' desire! + + +Consolation and foundation, + Dearest friend and habitation + Of the lowly-hearted, + Dispel our evil, cleanse our foulness, + And our discords turn to concord, + And bring us succour! + + +Adam's scholasticism was the most sympathetic form of mediaeval +philosophy. Even in prose, the greatest writers have not often +succeeded in stating simply and clearly the fact that infinity can +make itself finite, or that space can make itself bounds, or that +eternity can generate time. In verse, Adam did it as easily as +though he were writing any other miracle,--as Gaultier de Coincy +told the Virgin's,--and any one who thinks that the task was as easy +as it seems, has only to try it and see whether he can render into a +modern tongue any single word which shall retain the whole value of +the word which Adam has chosen:-- + +Ne periret homo reus + Redemptorem misit Deus, + Pater unigenitum; + Visitavit quos amavit + Nosque vitae revocavit + Gratia non meritum. + + +Infinitus et Immensus, + Quem non capit ullus sensus + Nec locorum spatia, + Ex eterno temporalis, + Ex immenso fit localis, + Ut restauret omnia. + + +To death condemned by awful sentence, + God recalled us to repentance, + Sending His only Son; + Whom He loved He came to cherish; + Whom His justice doomed to perish, + By grace to life he won. + + +Infinity, Immensity, + Whom no human eye can see + Or human thought contain, + Made of infinity a space, + Made of Immensity a place, + To win us Life again. + + +The English verses, compared with the Latin, are poor enough, with +the canting jingle of a cheap religion and a thin philosophy, but by +contrast and comparison they give higher value to the Latin. One +feels the dignity and religious quality of Adam's chants the better +for trying to give them an equivalent. One would not care to hazard +such experiments on poetry of the highest class like that of Dante +and Petrarch, but Adam was conventional both in verse and thought, +and aimed at obtaining his effects from the skilful use of the Latin +sonorities for the purposes of the chant. With dogma and metaphysics +he dealt boldly and even baldly as he was required to do, and +successfully as far as concerned the ear or the voice; but poetry +was hardly made for dogma; even the Trinity was better expressed +mathematically than by rhythm. With the stronger emotions, such as +terror, Adam was still conventional, and showed that he thought of +the chant more than of the feeling and exaggerated the sound beyond +the value of the sense. He could never have written the "Dies Irae." +He described the shipwreck of the soul in magnificent sounds without +rousing an emotion of fear; the raging waves and winds that swept +his bark past the abysses and up to the sky were as conventional as +the sirens, the dragons, the dogs, and the pirates that lay in wait. +The mast nodded as usual; the sails were rent; the sailors ceased +work; all the machinery was classical; only the prayer to the Virgin +saved the poetry from sinking like the ship; and yet, when chanted, +the effect was much too fine to bear translation:-- + +Ave, Virgo singularis, + Mater nostri Salutaris, + Quae vocaris Stella Maris, + Stella non erratica; + Nos in hujus vitae mari + Non permitte naufragari, + Sed pro nobis Salutari + Tuo semper supplica! + + +Saevit mare, fremunt venti, + Fluctus surgunt turbulenti; + Navis currit, sed currenti + Tot occurrunt obvia! + Hic sirenes voluptatis, + Draco, canes cum piratis, + Mortem pene desperatis + Haec intentant omnia. + + +Post abyssos, nunc ad coelum + Furens unda fert phaselum; + Nutat malus, fluit velum, + Nautae cessat opera; + Contabescit in his malis + Homo noster animalis; + Tu nos, Mater spiritalis, + Pereuntes liberal! + + +Finer still is the famous stanza sung at Easter, in which Christ +rises, the Lion of Judah, in the crash of the burst gates of death, +at the roar of the Father Lion:-- + +Sic de Juda, leo fortis, + Fractis portis dirae mortis, + Die surgens tertia, + Rugiente voce patris + Ad supernae sinum matris + Tot revexit spolia. + + +For terror or ferocity or images of pain, the art of the twelfth +century had no use except to give a higher value to their images of +love. The figures on the west portal of Chartres are alive with the +spirit of Adam's poetry, but it is the spirit of the Virgin. Like +Saint Bernard, Adam lavished his affections on Mary, and even more +than Saint Bernard he could claim to be her poet-laureate. Bernard +was not himself author of the hymn "Stella Maris" which brought him +the honour of the Virgin's personal recognition, but Adam was author +of a dozen hymns in which her perfections were told with equal +fervour, and which were sung at her festivals. Among these was the +famous + +Salve, Mater Pietatis, + Et totius Trinitatis + Nobile Triclinium! + + +a compliment so refined and yet so excessive that the Venerable +Thomas Cantimpratensis who died a century later, about 1280, related +in his "Apiarium" that when "venerabilis Adam" wrote down these +lines, Mary herself appeared to him and bent her head in +recognition. Although the manuscripts do not expressly mention this +miracle, they do contain, at that stanza, a curious note expressing +an opinion, apparently authorized by the prior, that, if the Virgin +had seen fit to recognize the salutation of the Venerable Adam in +this manner, she would have done only what he merited: "ab ea +resalutari et regratiari meruit." + +Adam's poems are still on the shelves of most Parisian bookshops, as +common as "Aucassins" and better known than much poetry of our own +time; for the mediaeval Latin rhymes have a delightful sonority and +simplicity that keep them popular because they were not made to be +read but to be sung. One does not forget their swing:-- + +Infinitus et Immensus; + + +or-- + +Oh, juvamen oppressorum; + + +or-- + +Consolatrix miserorum + Suscitatrix mortuorum. + + +The organ rolls through them as solemnly as ever it did in the Abbey +Church; but in mediaeval art so much more depends on the mass than +on the measure--on the dignity than on the detail--that equivalents +are impossible. Even Walter Scott was content to translate only +three verses of the "Dies Irae." At best, Viollet-le-Duc could +reproduce only a sort of modern Gothic; a more or less effaced or +affected echo of a lost emotion which the world never felt but once +and never could feel again. Adam composed a number of hymns to the +Virgin, and, in them all, the feeling counts for more, by far, than +the sense. Supposing we choose the simplest and try to give it a +modern version, aiming to show, by comparison, the difference of +sound; one can perhaps manage to recover a little of the simplicity, +but give it the grand style one cannot; or, at least, if any one has +ever done both, it is Walter Scott, and merely by placing side by +side the "Dies Irae" and his translation of it, one can see at a +glance where he was obliged to sacrifice simplicity only to obtain +sound:-- + +Dies irae, dies illa, + Solvet seclum in favilla, + Teste David cum Sibylla. + + +Quantus tremor est futurus, + Quando judex est venturus, + Cuncta stride discussurus! + + +Tuba mirum spargens sonum + Per sepulchra regionum, + Coget omnes ante thronum. + + +That day of wrath, that dreadful day, + When heaven and earth shall pass away, + What power shall be the sinner's stay? + How shall he meet that dreadful day? + + +When shrivelling like a parched scroll + The flaming heavens together roll; + When louder yet and yet more dread + Swells the high trump that wakes the dead. + + +As translation the last line is artificial. + +The "Dies Irae" does not belong, in spirit, to the twelfth century; +it is sombre and gloomy like the Last Judgments on the thirteenth- +century portals; it does not love. Adam loved. His verses express +the Virgin; they are graceful, tender, fervent, and they hold the +same dignity which cannot be translated:-- + +In hac valle lacrimarum + Nihil dulce, nihil carum, + Suspecta sunt omnia; + Quid hic nobis erit tutum, + Cum nec ipsa vel virtutum + Tuta sit victoria! + + +Caro nobis adversatur, + Mundus cami suffragatur + In nostram perniciem; + Hostis instat, nos infestans, + Nunc se palam manifestans, + Nunc occultans rabiem. + + +Et peccamus et punimur, + Et diversis irretimur + Laqueis venantium. + O Maria, mater Dei, + Tu, post Deum, summa spei, + Tu dulce refugium; + + +Tot et tantis irretiti, + Non valemus his reniti + Ne vi nec industria; + Consolatrix miserorum, + Suscitatrix mortuorum, + Mortis rompe retia! + + +In this valley full of tears, + Nothing softens, nothing cheers, + All is suspected lure; + What safety can we hope for, here, + When even virtue faints for fear + Her victory be not sure! + +Within, the flesh a traitor is, + Without, the world encompasses, + A deadly wound to bring. + The foe is greedy for our spoils, + Now clasping us within his coils, + Or hiding now his sting. + + +We sin, and penalty must pay, + And we are caught, like beasts of prey, + Within the hunter's snares. + Nearest to God! oh Mary Mother! + Hope can reach us from none other, + Sweet refuge from our cares; + + +We have no strength to struggle longer, + For our bonds are more and stronger + Than our hearts can bear! + You who rest the heavy-laden, + You who lead lost souls to Heaven, + Burst the hunter's snare! + + +The art of this poetry of love and hope, which marked the mystics, +lay of course in the background of shadows which marked the +cloister. "Inter vania nihil vanius est homine." Man is an +imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God. If ever +modern science achieves a definition of energy, possibly it may +borrow the figure: Energy is the inherent effort of every +multiplicity to become unity. Adam's poetry was an expression of the +effort to reach absorption through love, not through fear; but to do +this thoroughly he had to make real to himself his own nothingness; +most of all, to annihilate pride; for the loftiest soul can +comprehend that an atom,--say, of hydrogen,--which is proud of its +personality, will never merge in a molecule of water. The familiar +verse: "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" echoes Adam's +epitaph to this day:-- + +Haeres peccati, natura filius irae, + Exiliique reus nascitur omnis homo. + Unde superbit homo, cujus conceptio culpa, + Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori? + + +Heir of sin, by nature son of wrath, + Condemned to exile, every man is born. + Whence is man's pride, whose conception fault, + Birth pain, life labour, and whose death is sure? + + +Four concluding lines, not by him, express him even better:-- + +Hic ego qui jaceo, miser et miserabilis Adam, + Unam pro summo munere posco precem. + Peccavi, fateor; veniam peto; parce fatenti; + Parce, pater: fratres, parcite; parce, Deus! + + +One does not conceive that Adam insisted so passionately on his sins +because he thought them--or himself--important before the Infinite. +Chemistry does not consider an atom of oxygen as in itself +important, yet if it wishes to get a volume of pure gas, it must +separate the elements. The human soul was an atom that could unite +with God only as a simple element. The French mystics showed in +their mysticism the same French reasonableness; the sense of +measure, of logic, of science; the allegiance to form; the +transparency of thought, which the French mind has always shown on +its surface like a shell of nacre. The mystics were in substance +rather more logical than the schoolmen and much more artistic in +their correctness of line and scale. At bottom, French saints were +not extravagant. One can imagine a Byzantine asserting that no +French saint was ever quite saintly. Their aims and ideals were very +high, but not beyond reaching and not unreasonable. Drag the French +mind as far from line and logic as space permits, the instant it is +freed it springs back to the classic and tries to look consequent. + +This paradox, that the French mystics were never mystical, runs +through all our travels, so obstinately recurring in architecture, +sculpture, legend, philosophy, religion, and poetry, that it becomes +tiresome; and yet it is an idea that, in spite of Matthew Arnold and +many other great critics, never has got lodgment in the English or +German mind, and probably never will. Every one who loves travel +will hope that it never may. If you are driven to notice it as the +most distinctive mark of French art, it is not at all for the +purpose of arguing a doubtful law, but only in order to widen the +amusement of travel. We set out to travel from Mont-Saint-Michel to +Chartres, and no farther; there we stop; but we may still look +across the boundary to Assisi for a specimen of Italian Gothic +architecture, a scheme of colour decoration, or still better for a +mystic to compare with the Bernadines and Victorians. Every one who +knows anything of religion knows that the ideal mystic saint of +western Europe was Francis of Assisi, and that Francis, though he +loved France, was as far as possible from being French; though not +in the least French, he was still the finest flower from the French +mediaeval garden; and though the French mystics could never have +understood him, he was what the French mystics would have liked to +be or would have thought they liked to be as long as they knew him +to be not one of themselves. As an Italian or as a Spaniard, Francis +was in harmony with his world; as a Frenchman, he would have been +out of place even at Clairvaux, and still more among his own +Cordeliers at the doors of the Sorbonne. + +Francis was born in 1186, at the instant when French art was +culminating, or about to culminate, in the new cathedrals of Laon +and Chartres, on the ruins of scholastic religion and in the full +summer of the Courts of Love. He died in 1226, just as Queen Blanche +became Regent of France and when the Cathedral of Beauvais was +planned. His life precisely covered the most perfect moment of art +and feeling in the thousand years of pure and confident +Christianity. To an emotional nature like his, life was still a +phantasm or "concept" of crusade against real or imaginary enemies +of God, with the "Chanson de Roland" for a sort of evangel, and a +feminine ideal for a passion. He chose for his mistress "domina +nostra paupertas," and the rules of his order of knighthood were as +visionary as those of Saint Bernard were practical. "Isti sunt +fratres mei milites tabulae rotundae, qui latitant in desertis"; his +Knights of the Round Table hid themselves for their training in +deserts of poverty, simplicity, humility, innocence of self, +absorption in nature, in the silence of God, and, above all, in love +and joy incarnate, whose only influence was example. Poverty of body +in itself mattered nothing; what Francis wanted was poverty of +pride, and the external robe or the bare feet were outward and +necessary forms of protection against its outward display. Against +riches or against all external and visible vanity, rules and laws +could be easily enforced if it were worth while, although the purest +humility would be reached only by those who were indifferent and +unconscious of their external dress; but against spiritual pride the +soul is defenceless, and of all its forms the subtlest and the +meanest is pride of intellect. If "nostra domina paupertas" had a +mortal enemy, it was not the pride beneath a scarlet robe, but that +in a schoolmaster's ferule, and of all schoolmasters the vainest and +most pretentious was the scholastic philosopher. Satan was logic. +Lord Bacon held much the same opinion. "I reject the syllogism," was +the starting-point of his teaching as it was the essence of Saint +Francis's, and the reasons of both men were the same though their +action was opposite. "Let men please themselves as they will in +admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain:--that, +as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its +own figure and section, so the mind ... cannot be trusted ..." +Bacon's first object was the same as that of Francis, to humiliate +and if possible destroy the pride of human reason; both of them knew +that this was their most difficult task, and Francis, who was +charity incarnate, lost his self-control whenever he spoke of the +schools, and became almost bitter, as though in constant terror of a +poison or a cancer. "Praeodorabat etiam tempora non longe ventura in +quibus jam praesciebat scientiam inflativam debere esse occasionem +ruinae." He foresaw the time not far off when puffed-up science +would be the ruin of his "domina paupertas." His struggle with this +form of human pride was desperate and tragical in its instant +failure. He could not make even his novices understand what he +meant. The most impossible task of the mind is to reject in practice +the reflex action of itself, as Bacon pointed out, and only the +highest training has sometimes partially succeeded in doing it. The +schools--ancient, mediaeval, or modern--have almost equally failed, +but even the simple rustics who tried to follow Francis could not +see why the rule of poverty should extend to the use of a psalter. +Over and over again he explained vehemently and dramatically as only +an Italian or a Spaniard could, and still they failed to catch a +notion of what he meant. + + Quum ergo venisset beatus Franciscus ad locum ubi erat ille +novitius, dixit ille novitius: "Pater, mihi esset magna consolatio +habere psalterium, sed licet generalis illud mihi concesserit, tamen +vellem ipsum habere, pater, de conscientia tua." Cui beatus +Franciscus respondit: "Carolus imperator, Rolandus et Oliverus et +omnes palatini et robusti viri qui potentes fuerunt in proelio, +prosequendo infideles cum multa sudore et labore usque ad mortem, +habuerunt de illis victoriara memorialiter, et ad ultimum ipsi +sancti martyres sunt mortui pro fide Christi in certamine. Nunc +autem multi sunt qui sola narratione eorum quae illi fecerunt volunt +recipere honorem et humanam laudem. Ita et inter nos sunt multi qui +solum recitando et praedicando opera quae sancti fecerunt volunt +recipere honorem et laudem; ... postquam habueris psalterium, +concupisces et volueris habere breviarium; et postquam habueris +breviarium, sedebis in cathedra tanquam magnus prelatus et dices +fratri tuo:--Apporta mihi breviarium!" + +Haec autem dicens beatus Franciscus cum magno fervore spiritus +accepit de cinere et posuit super caput suum, et ducendo manum super +caput suum in circuitu sicut ille qui lavat caput, dicebat: "Ego +breviarium! ego breviarium!" et sic reiteravit multoties ducendo +manum per caput. Et stupefactus et verecundatus est frater ille ... +Elapsis autem pluribus mensibus quum esset beatus Franciscus apud +locum sanctae Mariae de Portiuncula, juxta cellam post domum in via, +praedictus frater iterum locutus est ei de psalterio. Cui beatus +Franciscus dixit: "Vade et facias de hoc sicut dicet tibi minister +tuus!" Quo audito, frater ille coepit redire per viam unde venerat. +Beatus autem Franciscus remanens in via coepit considerare illud +quod dixerat illi fratri, et statim clamavit post cum, dicens: +"Expecta me, frater! expecta!" Et ivit usque ad eum et ait illi: +"Revertere mecum, frater, et ostende mihi locum ubi dixi tibi quod +faceres de psalterio sicut diceret minister tuus." Quum ergo +pervenissent ad locum, beatus Franciscus genuflexit coram fratre +illo, et dixit: "Mea culpa, frater! mea culpa! quia quicunque vult +esse frater Minor non debet habere nisi tunicam, sicut regula sibi +concedit, et cordam et femoralia et qui manifesta necessitate +coguntur calciamenta." + +So when Saint Francis happened to come to the place where the novice +was, the novice said: "Father, it would be a great comfort to me to +have a psalter, but though my general should grant it, still I would +rather have it, father, with your knowledge too." Saint Francis +answered: "The Emperor Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver, and all the +palatines and strong men who were potent in battle, pursuing the +infidels with much toil and sweat even to death, triumphed over them +memorably [without writing it?], and at last these holy martyrs died +in the contest for the faith of Christ. But now there are many who, +merely by telling of what those men did, want to receive honour and +human praise. So, too, among us are many who, merely by reciting and +preaching the works which the saints have done, want to receive +honour and praise; ... After you have got the psalter, you will +covet and want a breviary; and after getting the breviary, you will +sit on your throne like a bishop, and will say to your brother: +'Bring me the breviary!'" + +While saying this, Saint Francis with great vehemence took up a +handful of ashes and spread it over his bead; and moving his hand +about his head in a circle as though washing it, said: "I, breviary! +I, breviary!" and so kept on, repeatedly moving his hand about his +head; and stupefied and ashamed was that novice. ... But several +months afterwards when Saint Francis happened to be near Sta Maria +de Portiuncula, by the cell behind the house on the road, the same +brother again spoke to him about the psalter. Saint Francis replied: +"Go and do about it as your director says." On this the brother +turned back, but Saint Francis, standing in the road, began to +reflect on what he had said, and suddenly called after him: "Wait +for me, brother! wait!" and going after him, said: "Return with me, +brother, and show me the place where I told you to do as your +director should say, about the psalter." When they had come back to +it, Saint Francis bent before the brother, and said: "Mea culpa, +brother, mea culpa! because whoever wishes to be a Minorite must +have nothing but a tunic, as the rule permits, and the cord, and the +loincloth, and what covering is manifestly necessary for the limbs." + +So vivid a picture of an actual mediaeval saint stands out upon this +simple background as is hardly to be found elsewhere in all the +records of centuries, but if the brother himself did not understand +it and was so shamed and stupefied by Francis's vehemence, the world +could understand it no better; the Order itself was ashamed of Saint +Francis because they understood him too well. They hastened to +suppress this teaching against science, although it was the life of +Francis's doctrine. He taught that the science of the schools led to +perdition because it was puffed up with emptiness and pride. +Humility, simplicity, poverty were alone true science. They alone +led to heaven. Before the tribunal of Christ, the schoolmen would be +condemned, "and, with their dark logic (opinionibus tenebrosis) +shall be plunged into outer darkness with the spirits of the +darkness." They were devilish, and would perish with the devils. + +One sees instantly that neither Francis of Assisi nor Bacon of +Verulam could have hoped for peace with the schools; twelfth-century +ecstasy felt the futility of mere rhetoric quite as keenly as +seventeenth-century scepticism was to feel it; and yet when Francis +died in 1226 at Assisi, Thomas was just being born at Aquino some +two hundred kilometres to the southward. True scholasticism had not +begun. Four hundred years seem long for the human mind to stand +still--or go backward; the more because the human mind was never +better satisfied with itself than when thus absorbed in its mirror; +but with that chapter we have nothing to do. The pleasantest way to +treat it was that of Saint Francis; half-serious, half-jesting; as +though, after all, in the thought of infinity, four hundred years +were at most only a serio-comic interlude. At Assisi, once, when a +theologian attacked Fra Egidio by the usual formal arraignment in +syllogisms, the brother waited until the conclusions were laid down, +and then, taking out a flute from the folds of his robe, he played +his answer in rustic melodies. The soul of Saint Francis was a +rustic melody and the simplest that ever reached so high an +expression. Compared with it, Theocritus and Virgil are as modern as +Tennyson and ourselves. + +All this shows only what Saint Francis was not; to understand what +he was and how he goes with Saint Bernard and Saint Victor through +the religious idyll of Transition architecture, one must wander +about Assisi with the "Floretum" or "Fioretti" in one's hand;--the +legends which are the gospel of Francis as the evangels are the +gospel of Christ, who was reincarnated in Assisi. We have given a +deal of time to showing our own sceptical natures how simple the +architects and decorators of Chartres were in their notions of the +Virgin and her wants; but French simple-mindedness was already +complex compared with Italian. The Virgin was human; Francis was +elementary nature itself, like sun and air; he was Greek in his joy +of life:-- + + ... Recessit inde et venit inter Cannarium + et Mevanium. Et respexit quasdam arbores + juxta viam in quibus residebat tanta multitudo + avium diversarum quod nunquam in + partibus illis visa similis multitudo. In campo + insuper juxta praedictas arbores etiam multitudo + maxima residebat. Quam multitudinem + sanctus Franciscus respiciens et admirans, + facto super eum Spiritu Dei, dixit sociis: "Vobis + hic me in via exspectantibus, ibo et praedicabo + sororibus nostris aviculis." Et intravit + in campum ad aves quae residebant in terra. + Et statim quum praedicare incepit omnes aves + in arboribus residentes descenderunt ad eum + et simul cum aliis de campo immobiles perman + serunt, quum tamen ipse inter eas iret plurimas + tunica contingendo. Et nulla earum penitus + movebatur, sicut recitavit frater Jacobus de + Massa, sanctus homo, qui omnia supradicta + habuit ab ore fratris Massei, qui fuit unus de + iis qui tune erant socii sancti patris. + + +Quibus avibus sanctus Franciscus ait: + "Multum tenemini Deo, sorores meas aves, + et debetis eum semper et ubique laudare propter + liberum quem ubique habetis volatum, + propter vestitum duplicatum et triplicatum, + propter habitum pictum et ornatum, propter + victum sine vestro labore paratum, propter + cantum a Creatore vobis intimatum, propter + numerum ex Dei benedictione multiplicatum, + propter semen vestrum a Deo in area reservatum, + propter elementum aeris vobis deputatum. + Vos non seminatis neque metitis, et Deus + vos pascit; et dedit vobis flumina et fontes ad + potandum, montes et colles, saxa et ibices ad + refugium, et arbores altes ad nidificandum; + et quum nec filare nec texere sciatis, praebet + tam vobis quam vestris filiis necessarium indumentum. + Unde multum diligit vos Creator + qui tot beneficia contulit. Quapropter cavete, + sorores mes aviculae, ni sitis ingratae sed + semper laudare Deum studete." + + +... He departed thence and came between + Cannara and Bevagna; and near the road he + saw some trees on which perched so great a + number of birds as never in those parts had + been seen the like. Also in the field beyond, + near these same trees, a very great multitude + rested on the ground. This multitude, Saint + Francis seeing with wonder, the spirit of God + descending on him he said to his companions: + "Wait for me on the road, while I go and + preach to our sisters the little birds." And he + went into the field where the birds were on + the ground. And as soon as he began to preach, + all the birds in the trees came down to him and + with those in the field stood quite still, even + when he went among them touching many + with his robe. Not one of them moved, + as Brother James of Massa related, a saintly + man who had the whole story from the mouth + of Brother Masseo who was one of those then + with the sainted father. + + +To these birds, Saint Francis said: "Much + are you bound to God, birds, my sisters, and + everywhere and always must you praise him for + the free flight you everywhere have; for the + double and triple covering; for the painted and + decorated robe; for the food prepared without + your labour; for the song taught you by the + Creator; for your number multiplied by God's + blessing; for your seed preserved by God in + the ark; for the element of air allotted to you. + You neither sow nor reap, and God feeds + you; and has given you rivers and springs + to drink at, mountains and hills, rocks and + wild goats for refuge, and high trees for nesting; + and though you know neither how to spin nor + to weave, He gives both you and your children + all the garments you need. Whence much must + the Creator love you, Who confers so many + blessings. Therefore take care, my small bird + sisters, never to be ungrateful, but always strive + to praise God." + + +Fra Ugolino, or whoever wrote from the dictation of Brother James of +Massa, after the tradition of Brother Masseo of Marignano reported +Saint Francis's sermon in absolute good faith as Saint Francis +probably made it and as the birds possibly received it. All were +God's creatures, brothers and sisters, and God alone knew or knows +whether or how far they understand each other; but Saint Francis, in +any case, understood them and believed that they were in sympathy +with him. As far as the birds or wolves were concerned, it was no +great matter, but Francis did not stop with vertebrates or even with +organic forms. "Nor was it surprising," said the "Speculum," "if +fire and other creatures sometimes revered and obeyed him; for, as +we who were with him very frequently saw, he held them in such +affection and so much delighted in them, and his soul was moved by +such pity and compassion for them, that he would not see them +roughly handled, and talked with them with such evident delight as +if they were rational beings":-- + +Nam quadam vice, quum sederet juxta ignem, ipso nesciente, ignis +invasit pannos ejus de lino, sive brachas, juxta genu, quumque +sentiret calorem ejus nolebat ipsum extinguere. Socius autem ejus +videns comburi pannos ejus cucurrit ad eum volens extinguere ignem; +ipse vero prohibuit ei, dicens: "Noli, frater, carissime, noli male +facere igni!" Et sic nullo modo voluit quod extingueret ipsum. Ille +vero festinanter ivit ad fratrem qui erat guardianus ipsius, et +duxit eum ad beatum Franciscum, et statim contra voluntatem beati +Francisci, extinxit ignem. Unde quacunque necessitate urgente +nunquam voluit extinguere ignem vel lampadem vel candelam, tantum +pietate movebatur ad ipsum. Nolebat etiam quod frater projiceret +ignem vel lignum fumigantem de loco ad locum sicut solet fieri, sed +volebat ut plane poneret ipsum in terra ob reverentiam illius cujus +est creatura. + +For once when he was sitting by the fire, a spark, without his +knowing it, caught his linen drawers and set them burning near the +knee, and when he felt the heat he would not extinguish it; but his +companion, seeing his clothes on fire, ran to put it out, and he +forbade it, saying: "Don't, my dearest brother, don't hurt the +fire!" So he utterly refused to let him put it out, and the brother +hurried off to get his guardian, and brought him to Saint Francis, +and together they put out the fire at once against Saint Francis's +will. So, no matter what the necessity, he would never put out fire +Or a lamp or candle, so strong was his feeling for it; he would not +even let a brother throw fire or a smoking log from place to place, +as is usual, but wanted it placed gently (piano) on the ground, out +of respect for Him Whose creature it is. + +The modern tourist, having with difficulty satisfied himself that +Saint Francis acted thus in good faith, immediately exclaims that he +was a heretic and should have been burned; but, in truth, the +immense popular charm of Saint Francis, as of the Virgin, was +precisely his heresies. Both were illogical and heretical by +essence;--in strict discipline, in the days of the Holy Office, a +hundred years later, both would have been burned by the Church, as +Jeanne d'Arc was, with infinitely less reason, in 1431. The charm of +the twelfth-century Church was that it knew how to be illogical--no +great moral authority ever knew it better--when God Himself became +illogical. It cared no more than Saint Francis, or Lord Bacon, for +the syllogism. Nothing in twelfth-century art is so fine as the air +and gesture of sympathetic majesty with which the Church drew aside +to let the Virgin and Saint Francis pass and take the lead--for a +time. Both were human ideals too intensely realized to be resisted +merely because they were illogical. The Church bowed and was silent. + +This does not concern us. What the Church thought or thinks is its +own affair, and what it chooses to call orthodox is orthodox. We +have been trying only to understand what the Virgin and Saint +Francis thought, which is matter of fact, not of faith. Saint +Francis was even more outspoken than the Virgin. She calmly set +herself above dogma, and, with feminine indifference to authority, +overruled it. He, having asserted in the strongest terms the +principle of obedience, paid no further attention to dogma, but, +without the least reticence, insisted on practices and ideas that no +Church could possibly permit or avow. Toward the end of his life, +his physician cauterized his face for some neuralgic pain:-- + +Et posito ferro in igne pro coctura fienda, beatus Franciscus volens +confortare spiritum suum ne pavesceret, sic locutus est ad ignem: +"Frater mi, ignis, nobilis et utilis inter alias creaturas, esto +mihi curialis in hac hora quia olim te dilexi et diligam amore +illius qui creavit te. Deprecor etiam creatorem nostrum qui nos +creavit ut ita tuum calorem temperct ut ipsum sustinere valeam." Et +oratione finita signavit ignem signo crucis. + +When the iron was put on the fire for making the cotterie, Saint +Francis, wishing to encourage himself against fear, spoke thus to +the fire: "My brother, fire, noblest and usefullest of creatures, be +gentle to me now, because I have loved and will love you with the +love of Him who created you. Our Creator, too, Who created us both, +I implore so to temper your heat that I may have strength to bear +it." And having spoken, he signed the fire with the cross. + +With him, this was not merely a symbol. Children and saints can +believe two contrary things at the same time, but Saint Francis had +also a complete faith of his own which satisfied him wholly. All +nature was God's creature. The sun and fire, air and water, were +neither more nor less brothers and sisters than sparrows, wolves, +and bandits. Even "daemones sunt castalli Domini nostri"; the devils +are wardens of our Lord. If Saint Francis made any exception from +his univeral law of brotherhood it was that of the schoolmen, but it +was never expressed. Even in his passionate outbreak, in the +presence of Saint Dominic, at the great Chapter of his Order at +Sancta Maria de Portiuncula in 1218, he did not go quite to the +length of denying the brotherhood of schoolmen, although he placed +them far below the devils, and yet every word of this address seems +to sob with the anguish of his despair at the power of the school +anti-Christ:-- + +Quum beatus Franciscus esset in capitulo generali apud Sanctam +Mariam de Portiuncula ... et fuerunt ibi quinque millia fratres, +quamplures fratres sapientes et scientiati iverunt ad dominum +Ostiensem qui erat ibidem, et dixerunt ei: "Domine, volumus ut +suadetis fratri Francisco quod sequatur consilium fratrum sapientium +et permittat se interdum duci ab eis." Et allegabant regulam sancti +Benedicti, Augustini et Bernardi qui docent sic et sic vivere +ordinate. Quae omnia quum retulisset cardinalis beato Francisco per +modum admoni admonitionis, beatus Franciscus, nihil sibi respondens, +cepit ipsum per manum et duxit eum ad fratres congregatos in +capitulo, et sic locutus est fratribus in fervore et virtute Spirit +us sancti:-- + +"Fratres mei, fratres mei, Dominus vocavit me per viam simplicitatis +et humilitatis, et bane viam ostendit mini in veritate pro me et pro +illis qui volunt mini credere et imitari. Et ideo volo quod non +nominetis mihi aliquam regulam neque sancti Benedicti neque sancti +Augustini neque sancti Bernardi, neque aliquam viam et formam +vivendi praeter illam quae mihi a Domino est ostensa misericorditer +et donata. Et dixit mihi Dominus quod volebat me esse unum pauperem +et stultum idiotam [magnum fatuum] in hoc mundo et noluit nos ducere +per viam aliam quam per istam scientiam. Sed per vestram scientiam +et sapientiam Deus vos confundet et ego confido in castallis Domini +[idest dasmonibus] quod per ipsos puniet vos Deus et adhuc redibitis +ad vestrum statum cum vituperio vestro velitis nolitis." + +When Saint Francis was at the General Chapter held at Sancta maris +de Portiuncula ... and five thousand brothers were present, A number +of them who were schoolmen went to Cardinal Hugolino who was there, +and said to him: "My lord, we want you to persuade Brother Francis +to follow the council of the learned brothers, and sometimes let +himself be guided by them." And they suggested the rule of Saint +Benedict or Augustine or Bernard who require their congregations to +live so and so, by regulation. When the cardinal had repeated all +this to Saint Francis by way of counsel, Saint Francis, making no +answer, took him by the hand and led him to the brothers assembled +in Chapter, and in the fervour and virtue of the Holy Ghost, spoke +thus to the brothers: + +"My brothers, my brothers, God has called me by way of simplicity +and humility, and has shown me in verity this path for me and +those who want to believe and follow me; so I want you to talk of no +Rule to me, neither Saint Benedict nor Saint Augustine nor Saint +Bernard, nor any way or form of Life whatever except that which God +has mercifully pointed out and granted to me. And God said that he +wanted me to be a pauper [poverello] and an idiot--a great fool--in +this world, and would not lead us by any other path of science than +this. But by your science and syllogisms God will confound you, and +I trust in God's warders, the devils, that through them God shall +punish you, and you will yet come back to your proper station with +shame, whether you will or no." + +The narration continues: "Tunc cardinalis obstupuit valde et nihil +respondit. Et omnes fratres plurimum timuerunt." + +One feels that the reporter has not exaggerated a word; on the +contrary, he softened the scandal, because in his time the Cardinal +had gained his point, and Francis was dead. One can hear Francis +beginning with some restraint, and gradually carried away by passion +till he lost control of himself and his language: "'God told me, +with his own words, that he meant me to be a beggar and a great +fool, and would not have us on any other terms; and as for your +science, I trust in God's devils who will beat you out of it, as you +deserve.' And the Cardinal was utterly dumbfounded and answered +nothing; and all the brothers were scared to death." The Cardinal +Hugolino was a great schoolman, and Dominic was then founding the +famous order in which the greatest of all doctors, Albertus Magnus, +was about to begin his studies. One can imagine that the Cardinal +"obstupuit valde," and that Dominic felt shaken in his scheme of +school instruction. For a single instant, in the flash of Francis's +passion, the whole mass of five thousand monks in a state of semi- +ecstasy recoiled before the impassable gulf that opened between them +and the Church. + +No one was to blame--no one ever is to blame--because God wanted +contradictory things, and man tried to carry out, as he saw them, +God's trusts. The schoolmen saw their duty in one direction; Francis +saw his in another; and, apparently, when both lines had been +carried, after such fashion as might be, to their utmost results, +and five hundred years had been devoted to the effort, society +declared both to be failures. Perhaps both may some day be revived, +for the two paths seem to be the only roads that can exist, if man +starts by taking for granted that there is an object to be reached +at the end of his journey. The Church, embracing all mankind, had no +choice but to march with caution, seeking God by every possible +means of intellect and study. Francis, acting only for himself, +could throw caution aside and trust implicitly in God, like the +children who went on crusade. The two poles of social and political +philosophy seem necessarily to be organization or anarchy; man's +intellect or the forces of nature. Francis saw God in nature, if he +did not see nature in God; as the builders of Chartres saw the +Virgin in their apse. Francis held the simplest and most childlike +form of pantheism. He carried to its last point the mystical union +with God, and its necessary consequence of contempt and hatred for +human intellectual processes. Even Saint Bernard would have thought +his ideas wanting in that "mesure" which the French mind so much +prizes. At the same time we had best try, as innocently as may be, +to realize that no final judgment has yet been pronounced, either by +the Church or by society or by science, on either or any of these +points; and until mankind finally settles to a certainty where it +means to go, or whether it means to go anywhere,--what its object +is, or whether it has an object,--Saint Francis may still prove to +have been its ultimate expression. In that case, his famous chant-- +the "Cantico del Sole"--will be the last word of religion, as it was +probably its first. Here it is--too sincere for translation:-- + +CANTICO DEL SOLE + +... Laudato sie, misignore, con tucte le tue creature + spetialmente messor lo frate sole + lo quale iorno et allumini noi per loi + et ellu e bellu e radiante cum grande splendore + de te, altissimo, porta significatione. + + +Laudato si, misignore, per sora luna e le stelle + in celu lai formate clarite et pretiose et belle. + + +Laudato si, misignore, per frate vento + et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo + per lo quale a le tue creature dai sustentamento. + + + Laudato si, misignore, per sor aqua + la quale e multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta. + Laudato si, misignore, per frate focu + per lo quale enallumini la nocte + ed ello e bello et jocondo et robustoso et forte. + + + Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra matre terra + la quale ne sustenta et governa + et produce diversi fructi con coloriti flori et herba. + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra morte corporale + de la quale nullu homo vivente po skappare + guai acquelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali.... + + +The verses, if verses they are, have little or nothing in common +with the art of Saint Bernard or Adam of Saint-Victor. Whatever art +they have, granting that they have any, seems to go back to the +cave-dwellers and the age of stone. Compared with the naivete of the +"Cantico del Sole," the "Chanson de Roland" or the "Iliad" is a +triumph of perfect technique. The value is not in the verse. The +"Chant of the Sun" is another "Pons Seclorum"--or perhaps rather a +"Pons Sanctorum"--over which only children and saints can pass. It +is almost a paraphrase of the sermon to the birds. "Thank you, mi +signore, for messor brother sun, in especial, who is your symbol; +and for sister moon and the stars; and for brother wind and air and +sky; and for sister water; and for brother fire; and for mother +earth! We are all yours, mi signore! We are your children; your +household; your feudal family! but we never heard of a Church. We +are all varying forms of the same ultimate energy; shifting symbols +of the same absolute unity; but our only unity, beneath you, is +nature, not law! We thank you for no human institutions, even for +those established in your name; but, with all our hearts we thank +you for sister our mother Earth and its fruits and coloured +flowers!" + +Francis loved them all--the brothers and sisters--as intensely as a +child loves the taste and smell of a peach, and as simply; but +behind them remained one sister whom no one loved, and for whom, in +his first verses, Francis had rendered no thanks. Only on his death- +bed he added the lines of gratitude for "our sister death," the +long-sought, never-found sister of the schoolmen, who solved all +philosophy and merged multiplicity in unity. The solution was at +least simple; one must decide for one's self, according to one's +personal standards, whether or not it is more sympathetic than that +with which we have got lastly to grapple in the works of Saint +Thomas Aquinas. + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS + +Long before Saint Francis's death, in 1226, the French mystics had +exhausted their energies and the siecle had taken new heart. Society +could not remain forever balancing between thought and act. A few +gifted natures could absorb themselves in the absolute, but the rest +lived for the day, and needed shelter and safety. So the Church bent +again to its task, and bade the Spaniard Dominic arm new levies with +the best weapons of science, and flaunt the name of Aristotle on the +Church banners along with that of Saint Augustine. The year 1215, +which happened to be the date of Magna Charta and other easily fixed +events, like the birth of Saint Louis, may serve to mark the triumph +of the schools. The pointed arch revelled at Rheims and the Gothic +architects reached perfection at Amiens just as Francis died at +Assisi and Thomas was born at Aquino. The Franciscan Order itself +was swept with the stream that Francis tried to dam, and the great +Franciscan schoolman, Alexander Hales, in 1222, four years before +the death of Francis, joined the order and began lecturing as though +Francis himself had lived only to teach scholastic philosophy. + +The rival Dominican champion, Albertus Magnus, began his career a +little later, in 1228. Born of the noble Swabian family of +Bollstadt, in 1193, he drifted, like other schoolmen, to Paris, and +the Rue Maitre Albert, opposite Notre Dame, still records his fame +as a teacher there. Thence he passed to a school established by the +order at Cologne, where he was lecturing with great authority in +1243 when the general superior of the order brought up from Italy a +young man of the highest promise to be trained as his assistant. + +Thomas, the new pupil, was born under the shadow of Monte Cassino in +1226 or 1227. His father, the Count of Aquino, claimed descent from +the imperial line of Swabia; his mother, from the Norman princes of +Sicily; so that in him the two most energetic strains in Europe met. +His social rank was royal, and the order set the highest value on +it. He took the vows in 1243, and went north at once to help +Albertus at Cologne. In 1245, the order sent Albertus back to Paris, +and Thomas with him. There he remained till 1248 when he was ordered +to Cologne as assistant lecturer, and only four years afterwards, at +twenty-five years old, he was made full professor at Paris. His +industry and activity never rested till his death in 1274, not yet +fifty years old, when he bequeathed to the Church a mass of +manuscript that tourists will never know enough to estimate except +by weight. His complete works, repeatedly printed, fill between +twenty and thirty quarto volumes. For so famous a doctor, this is +almost meagre. Unfortunately his greatest work, the "Summa +Theologiae," is unfinished--like Beauvais Cathedral. + +Perhaps Thomas's success was partly due to his memory which is said +to have been phenomenal; for, in an age when cyclopaedias were +unknown, a cyclopaedic memory must have counted for half the battle +in these scholastic disputes where authority could be met only by +authority; but in this case, memory was supported by mind. Outwardly +Thomas was heavy and slow in manner, if it is true that his +companions called him "the big dumb ox of Sicily"; and in +fashionable or court circles he did not enjoy reputation for acute +sense of humour. Saint Louis's household offers a picture not wholly +clerical, least of all among the King's brothers and sons; and +perhaps the dinner-table was not much more used then than now to +abrupt interjections of theology into the talk about hunting and +hounds; but however it happened, Thomas one day surprised the +company by solemnly announcing--"I have a decisive argument against +the Manicheans!" No wit or humour could be more to the point-- +between two saints that were to be--than a decisive argument against +enemies of Christ, and one greatly regrets that the rest of the +conversation was not reported, unless, indeed, it is somewhere in +the twenty-eight quarto volumes; but it probably lacked humour for +courtiers. + +The twenty-eight quarto volumes must be closed books for us. None +but Dominicans have a right to interpret them. No Franciscan--or +even Jesuit--understands Saint Thomas exactly or explains him with +authority. For summer tourists to handle these intricate problems in +a theological spirit would be altogether absurd; but, for us, these +great theologians were also architects who undertook to build a +Church Intellectual, corresponding bit by bit to the Church +Administrative, both expressing--and expressed by--the Church +Architectural. Alexander Hales, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, +Duns Scotus, and the rest, were artists; and if Saint Thomas happens +to stand at their head as type, it is not because we choose him or +understand him better than his rivals, but because his order chose +him rather than his master Albert, to impose as authority on the +Church; and because Pope John XXII canonized him on the ground that +his decisions were miracles; and because the Council of Trent placed +his "Summa" among the sacred books on their table; and because +Innocent VI said that his doctrine alone was sure; and finally, +because Leo XIII very lately made a point of declaring that, on the +wings of Saint Thomas's genius, human reason has reached the most +sublime height it can probably ever attain. + +Although the Franciscans, and, later, the Jesuits, have not always +shown as much admiration as the Dominicans for the genius of Saint +Thomas, and the mystics have never shown any admiration whatever for +the philosophy of the schools, the authority of Leo XIII is final, +at least on one point and the only one that concerns us. Saint +Thomas is still alive and overshadows as many schools as he ever +did; at all events, as many as the Church maintains. He has outlived +Descartes and Leibnitz and a dozen other schools of philosophy more +or less serious in their day. He has mostly outlived Hume, Voltaire, +and the militant sceptics. His method is typical and classic; his +sentences, when interpreted by the Church, seem, even to an +untrained mind, intelligible and consistent; his Church Intellectual +remains practically unchanged, and, like the Cathedral of Beauvais, +erect, although the storms of six or seven centuries have +prostrated, over and over again, every other social or political or +juristic shelter. Compared with it, all modern systems are complex +and chaotic, crowded with self-contradictions, anomalies, +impracticable functions and outworn inheritances; but beyond all +their practical shortcomings is their fragmentary character. An +economic civilization troubles itself about the universe much as a +hive of honey-bees troubles about the ocean, only as a region to be +avoided. The hive of Saint Thomas sheltered God and man, mind and +matter, the universe and the atom, the one and the multiple, within +the walls of an harmonious home. + +Theologians, like architects, were supposed to receive their Church +complete in all its lines; they were modern judges who interpreted +the laws but never invented it. Saint Thomas merely selected between +disputed opinions, but he allowed himself to wander very far afield, +indeed, in search of opinions to dispute. The field embraced all +that existed, or might have existed, or could never exist. The +immense structure rested on Aristotle and Saint Augustine at the +last, but as a work of art it stood alone, like Rheims or Amiens +Cathedral, as though it had no antecedents. Then, although, like +Rheims, its style was never meant to suit modern housekeeping and is +ill-seen by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, it reveals itself in its great +mass and intelligence as a work of extraordinary genius; a system as +admirably proportioned as any cathedral and as complete; a success +not universal either in art or science. + +Saint Thomas's architecture, like any other work of art, is best +studied by itself as though he created it outright; otherwise a +tourist would never get beyond its threshold. Beginning with the +foundation which is God and God's active presence in His Church, +Thomas next built God into the walls and towers of His Church, in +the Trinity and its creation of mind and matter in time and space; +then finally he filled the Church by uniting mind and matter in man, +or man's soul, giving to humanity a free will that rose, like the +fleche, to heaven. The foundation--the structure--the congregation-- +are enough for students of art; his ideas of law, ethics, and +politics; his vocabulary, his syllogisms, his arrangement are, like +the drawings of Villard de Honnecourt's sketch-book, curious but not +vital. After the eleventh-century Romanesque Church of Saint Michael +came the twelfth-century Transition Church of the Virgin, and all +merged and ended at last in the thirteenth-century Gothic Cathedral +of the Trinity. One wants to see the end. + +The foundation of the Christian Church should be--as the simple +deist might suppose--always the same, but Saint Thomas knew better. +His foundation was Norman, not French; it spoke the practical +architect who knew the mathematics of his art, and who saw that the +foundation laid by Saint Bernard, Saint Victor, Saint Francis, the +whole mystical, semi-mystical, Cartesian, Spinozan foundation, past +or future, could not bear the weight of the structure to be put on +it. Thomas began by sweeping the ground clear of them. God must be a +concrete thing, not a human thought. God must be proved by the +senses like any other concrete thing; "nihil est in intellectu quin +prius fuerit in sensu"; even if Aristotle had not affirmed the law, +Thomas would have discovered it. He admitted at once that God could +not be taken for granted. + +The admission, as every boy-student of the Latin Quarter knew, was +exceedingly bold and dangerous. The greatest logicians commonly +shrank from proving unity by multiplicity. Thomas was one of the +greatest logicians that ever lived; the question had always been at +the bottom of theology; he deliberately challenged what every one +knew to be an extreme peril. If his foundation failed, his Church +fell. Many critics have thought that he saw dangers four hundred +years ahead. The time came, about 1650-1700, when Descartes, +deserting Saint Thomas, started afresh with the idea of God as a +concept, and at once found himself charged with a deity that +contained the universe; nor did the Cartesians--until Spinoza made +it clear--seem able or willing to see that the Church could not +accept this deity because the Church required a God who caused the +universe. The two deities destroyed each other. One was passive; the +other active. Thomas warned Descartes of a logical quicksand which +must necessarily swallow up any Church, and which Spinoza explored +to the bottom. Thomas said truly that every true cause must be +proved as a cause, not merely as a sequence; otherwise they must end +in a universal energy or substance without causality--a source. + +Whatever God might be to others, to His Church he could not be a +sequence or a source. That point had been admitted by William of +Champeaux, and made the division between Christians and infidels. On +the other hand, if God must be proved as a true cause in order to +warrant the Church or the State in requiring men to worship Him as +Creator, the student became the more curious--if a churchman, the +more anxious--to be assured that Thomas succeeded in his proof, +especially since he did not satisfy Descartes and still less Pascal. +That the mystics should be dissatisfied was natural enough, since +they were committed to the contrary view, but that Descartes should +desert was a serious blow which threw the French Church into +consternation from which it never quite recovered. + +"I see motion," said Thomas: "I infer a motor!" This reasoning, +which may be fifty thousand years old, is as strong as ever it was; +stronger than some more modern inferences of science; but the +average mechanic stated it differently. "I see motion," he admitted: +"I infer energy. I see motion everywhere; I infer energy +everywhere." Saint Thomas barred this door to materialism by adding: +"I see motion; I cannot infer an infinite series of motors: I can +only infer, somewhere at the end of the series, an intelligent, +fixed motor." The average modern mechanic might not dissent but +would certainly hesitate. "No doubt!" he might say; "we can conduct +our works as well on that as on any other theory, or as we could on +no theory at all; but, if you offer it as proof, we can only say +that we have not yet reduced all motion to one source or all +energies to one law, much less to one act of creation, although we +have tried our best." The result of some centuries of experiment +tended to raise rather than silence doubt, although, even in his own +day, Thomas would have been scandalized beyond the resources of his +Latin had Saint Bonaventure met him at Saint Louis's dinner-table +and complimented him, in the King's hearing, on having proved, +beyond all Franciscan cavils, that the Church Intellectual had +necessarily but one first cause and creator--himself. + +The Church Intellectual, like the Church Architectural, implied not +one architect, but myriads, and not one fixed, intelligent architect +at the end of the series, but a vanishing vista without a beginning +at any definite moment; and if Thomas pressed his argument, the +twentieth-century mechanic who should attend his conferences at the +Sorbonne would be apt to say so. "What is the use of trying to argue +me into it? Your inference may be sound logic, but is not proof. +Actually we know less about it than you did. All we know is the +thing we handle, and we cannot handle your fixed, intelligent prime +motor. To your old ideas of form we have added what we call force, +and we are rather further than ever from reducing the complex to +unity. In fact, if you are aiming to convince me, I will tell you +flatly that I know only the multiple, and have no use for unity at +all." + +In the thirteenth century men did not depend so much as now on +actual experiment, but the nominalist said in effect the same thing. +Unity to him was a pure concept, and any one who thought it real +would believe that a triangle was alive and could walk on its legs. +Without proving unity, philosophers saw no way to prove God. They +could only fall back on an attempt to prove that the concept of +unity proved itself, and this phantasm drove the Cartesians to drop +Thomas's argument and assert that "the mere fact of having within us +the idea of a thing more perfect than ourselves, proves the real +existence of that thing." Four hundred years earlier Saint Thomas +had replied in advance that Descartes wanted to prove altogether too +much, and Spinoza showed mathematically that Saint Thomas had been +in the right. The finest religious mind of the time--Pascal-- +admitted it and gave up the struggle, like the mystics of Saint- +Victor. + +Thus some of the greatest priests and professors of the Church, +including Duns Scotus himself, seemed not wholly satisfied that +Thomas's proof was complete, but most of them admitted that it was +the safest among possible foundations, and that it showed, as +architecture, the Norman temper of courage and caution. The Norman +was ready to run great risks, but he would rather grasp too little +than too much; he narrowed the spacing of his piers rather than +spread them too wide for safe vaulting. Between Norman blood and +Breton blood was a singular gap, as Renan and every other Breton has +delighted to point out. Both Abelard and Descartes were Breton. The +Breton seized more than he could hold; the Norman took less than he +would have liked. + +God, then, is proved. What the schools called form, what science +calls energy, and what the intermediate period called the evidence +of design, made the foundation of Saint Thomas's cathedral. God is +an intelligent, fixed prime motor--not a concept, or proved by +concepts;--a concrete fact, proved by the senses of sight and touch. +On that foundation Thomas built. The walls and vaults of his Church +were more complex than the foundation; especially the towers were +troublesome. Dogma, the vital purpose of the Church, required +support. The most weighty dogma, the central tower of the Norman +cathedral, was the Trinity, and between the Breton solution which +was too heavy, and the French solution which was too light, the +Norman Thomas found a way. Remembering how vehemently the French +Church, under Saint Bernard, had protected the Trinity from all +interference whatever, one turns anxiously to see what Thomas said +about it; and unless one misunderstands him,--as is very likely, +indeed, to be the case, since no one may even profess to understand +the Trinity,--Thomas treated it as simply as he could. "God, being +conscious of Himself, thinks Himself; his thought is Himself, his +own reflection in the Verb--the so-called Son." "Est in Deo +intelligente seipsum Verbum Dei quasi Deus intellectus." The idea +was not new, and as ideas went it was hardly a mystery; but the next +step was naif:--God, as a double consciousness, loves Himself, and +realizes Himself in the Holy Ghost. The third side of the triangle +is love or grace. + +Many theologians have found fault with this treatment of the +subject, which seemed open to every objection that had been made to +Abelard, Gilbert de la Poree, or a thousand other logicians. They +commonly asked why Thomas stopped the Deity's self-realizations at +love, or inside the triangle, since these realizations were real, +not symbolic, and the square was at least as real as any other +combination of line. Thomas replied that knowledge and will--the +Verb and the Holy Ghost--were alone essential. The reply did not +suit every one, even among doctors, but since Saint Thomas rested on +this simple assertion, it is no concern of ours to argue the +theology. Only as art, one can afford to say that the form is more +architectural than religious; it would surely have been suspicious +to Saint Bernard. Mystery there was none, and logic little. The +concept of the Holy Ghost was childlike; for a pupil of Aristotle it +was inadmissible, since it led to nothing and helped no step toward +the universe. + +Admitting, if necessary, the criticism, Thomas need not admit the +blame, if blame there were. Every theologian was obliged to stop the +pursuit of logic by force, before it dragged him into paganism and +pantheism. Theology begins with the universal,--God,--who must be a +reality, not a symbol; but it is forced to limit the process of +God's realizations somewhere, or the priest soon becomes a +worshipper of God in sticks and stones. Theologists had commonly +chosen, from time immemorial, to stop at the Trinity; within the +triangle they were wholly realist; but they could not admit that God +went on to realize Himself in the square and circle, or that the +third member of the Trinity contained multiplicity, because the +Trinity was a restless weight on the Church piers, which, like the +central tower, constantly tended to fall, and needed to be +lightened. Thomas gave it the lightest form possible, and there +fixed it. + +Then came his great tour-de-force, the vaulting of his broad nave; +and, if ignorance is allowed an opinion, even a lost soul may admire +the grand simplicity of Thomas's scheme. He swept away the +horizontal lines altogether, leaving them barely as a part of +decoration. The whole weight of his arches fell, as in the latest +Gothic, where the eye sees nothing to break the sheer spring of the +nervures, from the rosette on the keystone a hundred feet above down +to the church floor. In Thomas's creation nothing intervened between +God and his world; secondary causes become ornaments; only two +forces, God and man, stood in the Church. + +The chapter of Creation is so serious, and Thomas's creation, like +every other, is open to so much debate, that no student can allow +another to explain it; and certainly no man whatever, either saint +or sceptic, can ever yet have understood Creation aright unless +divinely inspired; but whatever Thomas's theory was as he meant it, +he seems to be understood as holding that every created individual-- +animal, vegetable, or mineral--was a special, divine act. Whatever +has form is created, and whatever is created takes form directly +from the will of God, which is also his act. The intermediate +universals--the secondary causes--vanish as causes; they are, at +most, sequences or relations; all merge in one universal act of +will; instantaneous, infinite, eternal. + +Saint Thomas saw God, much as Milton saw him, resplendent in + + That glorious form, that light unsufferable, + And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty, + Wherewith he wont, at Heaven's high council-table, + To sit the midst of Trinal Unity; + + +except that, in Thomas's thought, the council-table was a work- +table, because God did not take counsel; He was an act. The Trinity +was an infinite possibility of will; nothing within but + + The baby image of the giant mass + Of things to come at large. + + +Neither time nor space, neither matter nor mind, not even force +existed, nor could any intelligence conceive how, even though they +should exist, they could be united in the lowest association. A +crystal was as miraculous as Socrates. Only abstract force, or what +the schoolmen called form, existed undeveloped from eternity, like +the abstract line in mathematics. + +Fifty or a hundred years before Saint Thomas settled the Church +dogma, a monk of Citeaux or some other abbey, a certain Alain of +Lille, had written a Latin poem, as abstruse an allegory as the +best, which had the merit of painting the scene of man's creation as +far as concerned the mechanical process much as Thomas seems to have +seen it. M. Haureau has printed an extract (vol. I, p. 352). Alain +conceded to the weakness of human thought, that God was working in +time and space, or rather on His throne in heaven, when nature, +proposing to create a new and improved man, sent Reason and Prudence +up to ask Him for a soul to fit the new body. Having passed through +various adventures and much scholastic instruction, the messenger +Prudence arrived, after having dropped her dangerous friend Reason +by the way. The request was respectfully presented to God, and +favourably received. God promised the soul, and at once sent His +servant Noys--Thought--to the storehouse of ideas, to choose it:-- + +Ipse Deus rem prosequitur, producit in actum + Quod pepigit. Vocat ergo Noym quae praepaert illi + Numinis exemplar, humanae mentis Idaeam, + Ad cujus formam formetur spiritus omni + Munere virtutum dives, qui, nube caducae + Carnis odumbratus veletur corporis umbra. + Tunc Noys ad regis praeceptum singula rerum + + +Vestigans exempla, novam perquirit Idaeam. + Inter tot species, speciem vix invenit illam + Quam petit; offertur tandem quaesita petenti +. Hanc formam Noys ipsa Deo praesentat ut ejus + Formet ad exemplar animam. Tunc ille sigillum + Sumit, ad ipsius formae vestigia formam + Dans animae, vultum qualem deposcit Idaea + Imprimit exemplo; totas usurpat imago + Exemplaris opes, loquiturque figura sigillum. + + +God Himself pursues the task, and sets in act + What He promised. So He calls Noys to seek + A copy of His will, Idea of the human mind, + To whose form the spirit should be shaped, + Rich in every virtue, which, veiled in garb + Of frail flesh, is to be hidden in a shade of body, + Then Noys, at the King's order, turning one by one + + +Each sample, seeks the new Idea. + Among so many images she hardly finds that + Which she seeks; at last the sought one appears. + This form Noys herself brings to God for Him + To form a soul to its pattern. He takes the seal, + And gives form to the soul after the model + Of the form itself, stamping on the sample + The figure such as the Idea requires. The seal + Covers the whole field, and the impression expresses the stamp. + + +The translation is probably full of mistakes; indeed, one is +permitted to doubt whether Alain himself accurately understood the +process; but in substance he meant that God contained a storehouse +of ideas, and stamped each creation with one of these forms. The +poets used a variety of figures to help out their logic, but that of +the potter and his pot was one of the most common. Omar Khayyam was +using it at the same time with Alain of Lille, but with a +difference: for his pot seems to have been matter alone, and his +soul was the wine it received from God; while Alain's soul seems to +have been the form and not the contents of the pot. + +The figure matters little. In any case God's act was the union of +mind with matter by the same act or will which created both. No +intermediate cause or condition intervened; no secondary influence +had anything whatever to do with the result. Time had nothing to do +with it. Every individual that has existed or shall exist was +created by the same instantaneous act, for all time. "When the +question regards the universal agent who produces beings and time, +we cannot consider him as acting now and before, according to the +succession of time." God emanated time, force, matter, mind, as He +might emanate gravitation, not as a part of His substance but as an +energy of His will, and maintains them in their activity by the same +act, not by a new one. Every individual is a part of the direct act; +not a secondary outcome. The soul has no father or mother. Of all +errors one of the most serious is to suppose that the soul descends +by generation. "Having life and action of its own, it subsists +without the body; ... it must therefore be produced directly, and +since it is not a material substance, it cannot be produced by way +of generation; it must necessarily be created by God. Consequently +to suppose that the intelligence [or intelligent soul] is the effect +of generation is to suppose that it is not a pure and simple +substance, but corruptible like the body. It is therefore heresy to +say that this soul is transmitted by generation." What is true of +the soul should be true of all other form, since no form is a +material substance. The utmost possible relation between any two +individuals is that God may have used the same stamp or mould for a +series of creations, and especially for the less spiritual: "God is +the first model for all things. One may also say that, among His +creatures some serve as types or models for others because there are +some which are made in the image of others"; but generation means +sequence, not cause. The only true cause is God. Creation is His +sole act, in which no second cause can share." Creation is more +perfect and loftier than generation, because it aims at producing +the whole substance of the being, though it starts from absolute +nothing." + +Thomas Aquinas, when he pleased, was singularly lucid, and on this +point he was particularly positive. The architect insisted on the +controlling idea of his structure. The Church was God, and its lines +excluded interference. God and the Church embraced all the +converging lines of the universe, and the universe showed none but +lines that converged. Between God and man, nothing whatever +intervened. The individual was a compound of form, or soul, and +matter; but both were always created together, by the same act, out +of nothing. "Simpliciter fatendum est animas simul cum corporibus +creari et infundi." It must be distinctly understood that souls were +not created before bodies, but that they were created at the same +time as the bodies they animate. Nothing whatever preceded this +union of two substances which did not exist: "Creatio est productio +alicujus rei secundum suam totam substantiam, nullo praesupposito, +quod sit vel increatum vel ab aliquo creatum." Language can go no +further in exclusion of every possible preceding, secondary, or +subsequent cause, "Productio universalis entis a Deo non est motus +nec mutatio, sed est quaedam simplex emanatio." The whole universe +is, so to speak, a simple emanation from God. + +The famous junction, then, is made!--that celebrated fusion of the +universal with the individual, of unity with multiplicity, of God +and nature, which had broken the neck of every philosophy ever +invented; which had ruined William of Champeaux and was to ruin +Descartes; this evolution of the finite from the infinite was +accomplished. The supreme triumph was as easily effected by Thomas +Aquinas as it was to be again effected, four hundred years later, by +Spinoza. He had merely to assert the fact: "It is so! it cannot be +otherwise!" "For the thousandth and hundred-thousandth time;--what +is the use of discussing this prime motor, this Spinozan substance, +any longer? We know it is there!" that--as Professor Haeckel very +justly repeats for the millionth time--is enough. + +One point, however, remained undetermined. The Prime Motor and His +action stood fixed, and no one wished to disturb Him; but this was +not the point that had disturbed William of Champeaux. Abelard's +question still remained to be answered. How did Socrates differ from +Plato--Judas from John--Thomas Aquinas from Professor Haeckel? Were +they, in fact, two, or one? What made an individual? What was God's +centimetre measure? The abstract form or soul which existed as a +possibility in God, from all time,--was it one or many? To the +Church, this issue overshadowed all else, for, if humanity was one +and not multiple, the Church, which dealt only with individuals, was +lost. To the schools, also, the issue was vital, for, if the soul or +form was already multiple from the first, unity was lost; the +ultimate substance and prime motor itself became multiple; the whole +issue was reopened. + +To the consternation of the Church, and even of his own order, +Thomas, following closely his masters, Albert and Aristotle, +asserted that the soul was measured by matter. "Division occurs in +substances in ratio of quantity, as Aristotle says in his 'Physics.' +And so dimensional quantity is a principle of individuation." The +soul is a fluid absorbed by matter in proportion to the absorptive +power of the matter. The soul is an energy existing in matter +proportionately to the dimensional quantity of the matter. The soul +is a wine, greater or less in quantity according to the size of the +cup. In our report of the great debate of 1110, between Champeaux +and Abelard, we have seen William persistently tempting Abelard to +fall into this admission that matter made the man;--that the +universal equilateral triangle became an individual if it were +shaped in metal, the matter giving it reality which mere form could +not give; and Abelard evading the issue as though his life depended +on it. In fact, had Abelard dared to follow Aristotle into what +looked like an admission that Socrates and Plato were identical as +form and differed only in weight, his life might have been the +forfeit. How Saint Thomas escaped is a question closely connected +with the same inquiry about Saint Francis of Assisi. A Church which +embraced, with equal sympathy, and within a hundred years, the +Virgin, Saint Bernard, William of Champeaux and the School of Saint- +Victor, Peter the Venerable, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, +Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure, was more liberal than +any modern State can afford to be. Radical contradictions the State +may perhaps tolerate, though hardly, but never embrace or profess. +Such elasticity long ago vanished from human thought. + +Yet only Dominicans believe that the Church adopted this law of +individualization, or even assented to it. If M. Jourdain is right, +Thomas was quickly obliged to give it another form:--that, though +all souls belonged to the same species, they differed in their +aptitudes for uniting with particular bodies. "This soul is +commensurate with this body, and not with that other one." The idea +is double; for either the souls individualized themselves, and +Thomas abandoned his doctrine of their instantaneous creation, with +the bodies, out of nothing; or God individualized them in the act of +creation, and matter had nothing to do with it. The difficulty is no +concern of ours, but the great scholars who took upon themselves to +explain it made it worse, until at last one gathers only that Saint +Thomas held one of three views: either the soul of humanity was +individualized by God, or it individualized itself, or it was +divided by ratio of quantity, that is, by matter. This amounts to +saying that one knows nothing about it, which we knew before and may +admit with calmness; but Thomas Aquinas was not so happily placed, +between the Church and the schools. Humanity had a form common to +itself, which made it what it was. By some means this form was +associated with matter; in fact, matter was only known as associated +with form. If, then, God, by an instantaneous act, created matter +and gave it form according to the dimensions of the matter, innocent +ignorance might infer that there was, in the act of God, one world- +soul and one world-matter, which He united in different proportions +to make men and things. Such a doctrine was fatal to the Church. No +greater heresy could be charged against the worst Arab or Jew, and +Thomas was so well aware of his danger that he recoiled from it with +a vehemence not at all in keeping with his supposed phlegm. With +feverish eagerness to get clear of such companions, he denied and +denounced, in all companies, in season and out of season, the idea +that intellect was one and the same for all men, differing only with +the quantity of matter it accompanied. He challenged the adherent of +such a doctrine to battle; "let him take the pen if he dares!" No +one dared, seeing that even Jews enjoyed a share of common sense and +had seen some of their friends burn at the stake not very long +before for such opinions, not even openly maintained; while +uneducated people, who are perhaps incapable of receiving intellect +at all, but for whose instruction and salvation the great work of +Saint Thomas and his scholars must chiefly exist, cannot do battle +because they cannot understand Thomas's doctrine of matter and form +which to them seems frank pantheism. + +So it appeared to Duns Scotus also, if one may assert in the Doctor +Subtilis any opinion without qualification. Duns began his career +only about 1300, after Thomas's death, and stands, therefore, beyond +our horizon; but he is still the pride of the Franciscan Order and +stands second in authority to the great Dominican alone. In denying +Thomas's doctrine that matter individualizes mind, Duns laid himself +open to the worse charge of investing matter with a certain +embryonic, independent, shadowy soul of its own. Scot's system, +compared with that of Thomas, tended toward liberty. Scot held that +the excess of power in Thomas's prime motor neutralized the power of +his secondary causes, so that these appeared altogether superfluous. +This is a point that ought to be left to the Church to decide, but +there can be no harm in quoting, on the other hand, the authority of +some of Scot's critics within the Church, who have thought that his +doctrine tended to deify matter and to keep open the road to +Spinoza. Narrow and dangerous was the border-line always between +pantheism and materialism, and the chief interest of the schools was +in finding fault with each other's paths. + +The opinions in themselves need not disturb us, although the +question is as open to dispute as ever it was and perhaps as much +disputed; but the turn of Thomas's mind is worth study. A century or +two later, his passion to be reasonable, scientific, architectural +would have brought him within range of the Inquisition. Francis of +Assisi was not more archaic and cave-dweller than Thomas of Aquino +was modern and scientific. In his effort to be logical he forced his +Deity to be as logical as himself, which hardly suited Omnipotence. +He hewed the Church dogmas into shape as though they were rough +stones. About no dogma could mankind feel interest more acute than +about that of immortality, which seemed to be the single point +vitally necessary for any Church to prove and define as clearly as +light itself. Thomas trimmed down the soul to half its legitimate +claims as an immortal being by insisting that God created it from +nothing in the same act or will by which He created the body and +united the two in time and space. The soul existed as form for the +body, and had no previous existence. Logic seemed to require that +when the body died and dissolved, after the union which had lasted, +at most, only an instant or two of eternity, the soul, which fitted +that body and no other, should dissolve with it. In that case the +Church dissolved, too, since it had no reason for existence except +the soul. Thomas met the difficulty by suggesting that the body's +form might take permanence from the matter to which it gave form. +That matter should individualize mind was itself a violent wrench of +logic, but that it should also give permanence--the one quality it +did not possess--to this individual mind seemed to many learned +doctors a scandal. Perhaps Thomas meant to leave the responsibility +on the Church, where it belonged as a matter not of logic but of +revealed truth. At all events, this treatment of mind and matter +brought him into trouble which few modern logicians would suspect. + +The human soul having become a person by contact with matter, and +having gained eternal personality by the momentary union, was +finished, and remains to this day for practical purposes unchanged; +but the angels and devils, a world of realities then more real than +man, were never united with matter, and therefore could not be +persons. Thomas admitted and insisted that the angels, being +immaterial,--neither clothed in matter, nor stamped on it, nor mixed +with it,--were universals; that is, each was a species in himself, a +class, or perhaps what would be now called an energy, with no other +individuality than he gave himself. + +The idea seems to modern science reasonable enough. Science has to +deal, for example, with scores of chemical energies which it knows +little about except that they always seem to be constant to the same +conditions; but every one knows that in the particular relation of +mind to matter the battle is as furious as ever. The soul has always +refused to live in peace with the body. The angels, too, were always +in rebellion. They insisted on personality, and the devils even more +obstinately than the angels. The dispute was--and is--far from +trifling. Mind would rather ignore matter altogether. In the +thirteenth century mind did, indeed, admit that matter was +something,--which it quite refuses to admit in the twentieth,--but +treated it as a nuisance to be abated. To the pure in spirit one +argued in vain that spirit must compromise; that nature compromised; +that God compromised; that man himself was nothing but a somewhat +clumsy compromise. No argument served. Mind insisted on absolute +despotism. Schoolmen as well as mystics would not believe that +matter was what it seemed,--if, indeed, it existed;--unsubstantial, +shifty, shadowy; changing with incredible swiftness into dust, gas, +flame; vanishing in mysterious lines of force into space beyond hope +of recovery; whirled about in eternity and infinity by that mind, +form, energy, or thought which guides and rules and tyrannizes and +is the universe. The Church wanted to be pure spirit; she regarded +matter with antipathy as something foul, to be held at arms' length +lest it should stain and corrupt the soul; the most she would +willingly admit was that mind and matter might travel side by side, +like a doubleheaded comet, on parallel lines that never met, with a +preestablished harmony that existed only in the prime motor. + +Thomas and his master Albert were almost alone in imposing on the +Church the compromise so necessary for its equilibrium. The balance +of matter against mind was the same necessity in the Church +Intellectual as the balance of thrusts in the arch of the Gothic +cathedral. Nowhere did Thomas show his architectural obstinacy quite +so plainly as in thus taking matter under his protection. Nothing +would induce him to compromise with the angels. He insisted on +keeping man wholly apart, as a complex of energies in which matter +shared equally with mind. The Church must rest firmly on both. The +angels differed from other beings below them' precisely because they +were immaterial and impersonal. Such rigid logic outraged the +spiritual Church. + +Perhaps Thomas's sudden death in 1274 alone saved him from the fate +of Abelard, but it did not save his doctrine. Two years afterwards, +in 1276, the French and English churches combined to condemn it. +Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, presided over the French Synod; +Robert Kilwardeby, of the Dominican Order, Archbishop of Canterbury, +presided over the Council at Oxford. The synods were composed of +schoolmen as well as churchmen, and seem to have been the result of +a serious struggle for power between the Dominican and Franciscan +Orders. Apparently the Church compromised between them by condemning +the errors of both. Some of these errors, springing from Alexander +Hales and his Franciscan schools, were in effect the foundation of +another Church. Some were expressly charged against Brother Thomas. +"Contra fratrem Thomam" the councils forbade teaching that--"quia +intelligentiae non habent materiam, Deus non potest plures ejusdem +speciei facere; et quod materia non est in angelis"; further, the +councils struck at the vital centre of Thomas's system--"quod Deus +non potest individua multiplicare sub una specie sine materia"; and +again in its broadest form,--"quod formae non accipiunt divisionem +nisi secundam materiam." These condemnations made a great stir. Old +Albertus Magnus, who was the real victim of attack, fought for +himself and for Thomas. After a long and earnest effort, the +Thomists rooted out opposition in the order, and carried their +campaign to Rome. After fifty years of struggle, by use of every +method known in Church politics, the Dominican Order, in 1323, +caused John XXII to canonize Thomas and in effect affirm his +doctrine. + +The story shows how modern, how heterodox, how material, how +altogether new and revolutionary the system of Saint Thomas seemed +at first even in the schools; but that was the affair of the Church +and a matter of pure theology. We study only his art. Step by step, +stone by stone, we see him build his church-building like a +stonemason, "with the care that the twelfth-century architects put +into" their work, as Viollet-le-Duc saw some similar architect at +Rouen, building the tower of Saint-Romain: "He has thrown over his +work the grace and finesse, the study of detail, the sobriety in +projections, the perfect harmony," which belongs to his school, and +yet he was rigidly structural and Norman. The foundation showed it; +the elevation, which is God, developed it; the vaulting, with its +balance of thrusts in mind and matter, proved it; but he had still +the hardest task in art, to model man. + +The cathedral, then, is built, and God is built into it, but, thus +far, God is there alone, filling it all, and maintains the +equilibrium by balancing created matter separately against created +mind. The proportions of the building are superb; nothing so lofty, +so large in treatment, so true in scale, so eloquent of multiplicity +in unity, has ever been conceived elsewhere; but it was the virtue +or the fault of superb structures like Bourges and Amiens and the +Church universal that they seemed to need man more than man needed +them; they were made for crowds, for thousands and tens of thousands +of human beings; for the whole human race, on its knees, hungry for +pardon and love. Chartres needed no crowd, for it was meant as a +palace of the Virgin, and the Virgin filled it wholly; but the +Trinity made their church for no other purpose than to accommodate +man, and made man for no other purpose than to fill their church; if +man failed to fill it, the church and the Trinity seemed equally +failures. Empty, Bourges and Beauvais are cold; hardly as religious +as a wayside cross; and yet, even empty, they are perhaps more +religious than when filled with cattle and machines. Saint Thomas +needed to fill his Church with real men, and although he had created +his own God for that special purpose, the task was, as every boy +knew by heart, the most difficult that Omnipotence had dealt with. + +God, as Descartes justly said, we know! but what is man? The schools +answered: Man is a rational animal! So was apparently a dog, or a +bee, or a beaver, none of which seemed to need churches. Modern +science, with infinite effort, has discovered and announced that man +is a bewildering complex of energies, which helps little to explain +his relations with the ultimate substance or energy or prime motor +whose existence both science and schoolmen admit; which science +studies in laboratories and religion worships in churches. The man +whom God created to fill his Church, must be an energy independent +of God; otherwise God filled his own Church with his own energy. +Thus far, the God of Saint Thomas was alone in His Church. The +beings He had created out of nothing--Omar's pipkins of clay and +shape--stood against the walls, waiting to receive the wine of life, +a life of their own. + +Of that life, energy, will, or wine,--whatever the poets or +professors called it,--God was the only cause, as He was also the +immediate cause, and support. Thomas was emphatic on that point. God +is the cause of energy as the sun is the cause of colour: "prout sol +dicitur causa manifestationis coloris." He not only gives forms to +his pipkins, or energies to his agents, but He also maintains those +forms in being: "dat formas creaturis agentibus et eas tenet in +esse." He acts directly, not through secondary causes, on everything +and every one: "Deus in omnibus intime operatur." If, for an +instant, God's action, which is also His will, were to stop, the +universe would not merely fall to pieces, but would vanish, and must +then be created anew from nothing: "Quia non habet radicem in aere, +statim cessat lumen, cessante actione solis. Sic autem se habet +omnis creatura ad Deum sicut aer ad solem illuminantem." God +radiates energy as the sun radiates light, and "the whole fabric of +nature would return to nothing" if that radiation ceased even for an +instant. Everything is created by one instantaneous, eternal, +universal act of will, and by the same act is maintained in being. + +Where, then,--in what mysterious cave outside of creation,--could +man, and his free will, and his private world of responsibilities +and duties, lie hidden? Unless man was a free agent in a world of +his own beyond constraint, the Church was a fraud, and it helped +little to add that the State was another. If God was the sole and +immediate cause and support of everything in His creation, God was +also the cause of its defects, and could not--being Justice and +Goodness in essence--hold man responsible for His own omissions. +Still less could the State or Church do it in His name. + +Whatever truth lies in the charge that the schools discussed futile +questions by faulty methods, one cannot decently deny that in this +case the question was practical and the method vital. Theist or +atheist, monist or anarchist must all admit that society and science +are equally interested with theology in deciding whether the +universe is one or many, a harmony or a discord. The Church and +State asserted that it was a harmony, and that they were its +representatives. They say so still. Their claim led to singular but +unavoidable conclusions, with which society has struggled for seven +hundred years, and is still struggling. + +Freedom could not exist in nature, or even in God, after the single, +unalterable act or will which created. The only possible free will +was that of God before the act. Abelard with his rigid logic averred +that God had no freedom; being Himself whatever is most perfect, He +produced necessarily the most perfect possible world. Nothing seemed +more logical, but if God acted necessarily, His world must also be +of necessity the only possible product of His act, and the Church +became an impertinence, since man proved only fatuity by attempting +to interfere. Thomas dared not disturb the foundations of the +Church, and therefore began by laying down the law that God-- +previous to His act--could choose, and had chosen, whatever scheme +of creation He pleased, and that the harmony of the actual scheme +proved His perfections. Thus he saved God's free will. + +This philosophical apse would have closed the lines and finished the +plan of his church-choir had the universe not shown some +divergencies or discords needing to be explained. The student of the +Latin Quarter was then harder to convince than now that God was +Infinite Love and His world a perfect harmony, when perfect love and +harmony showed them, even in the Latin Quarter, and still more in +revealed truth, a picture of suffering, sorrow, and death; plague, +pestilence, and famine; inundations, droughts, and frosts; +catastrophes world-wide and accidents in corners; cruelty, +perversity, stupidity, uncertainty, insanity; virtue begetting vice; +vice working for good; happiness without sense, selfishness without +gain, misery without cause, and horrors undefined. The students in +public dared not ask, as Voltaire did, "avec son hideux sourire," +whether the Lisbon earthquake was the final proof of God's infinite +goodness, but in private they used the argumentum ad personam +divinam freely enough, and when the Church told them that evil did +not exist, the ribalds laughed. + +Saint Augustine certainly tempted Satan when he fastened the Church +to this doctrine that evil is only the privation of good, an amissio +boni; and that good alone exists. The point was infinitely +troublesome. Good was order, law, unity. Evil was disorder, anarchy, +multiplicity. Which was truth? The Church had committed itself to +the dogma that order and unity were the ultimate truth, and that the +anarchist should be burned. She could do nothing else, and society +supported her--still supports her; yet the Church, who was wiser +than the State, had always seen that Saint Augustine dealt with only +half the question. She knew that evil might be an excess of good as +well as absence of it; that good leads to evil, evil to good; and +that, as Pascal says, "three degrees of polar elevation upset all +jurisprudence; a meridian decides truth; fundamental laws change; +rights have epochs. Pleasing Justice! bounded by a river or a +mountain! truths on this side the Pyrenees! errors beyond!" Thomas +conceded that God Himself, with the best intentions, might be the +source of evil, and pleaded only that his action might in the end +work benefits. He could offer no proof of it, but he could assume as +probable a plan of good which became the more perfect for the very +reason that it allowed great liberty in detail. + +One hardly feels Saint Thomas here in all his force. He offers +suggestion rather than proof;--apology--the weaker because of +obvious effort to apologize--rather than defence, for Infinite +Goodness, Justice, and Power; scoffers might add that he invented a +new proof ab defectu, or argument for proving the perfection of a +machine by the number of its imperfections; but at all events, +society has never done better by way of proving its right to enforce +morals or unity of opinion. Unless it asserts law, it can only +assert force. Rigid theology went much further. In God's providence, +man was as nothing. With a proper sense of duty, every solar system +should be content to suffer, if thereby the efficiency of the Milky +Way were improved. Such theology shocked Saint Thomas, who never +wholly abandoned man in order to exalt God. He persistently brought +God and man together, and if he erred, the Church rightly pardons +him because he erred on the human side. Whenever the path lay +through the valley of despair he called God to his aid, as though he +felt the moral obligation of the Creator to help His creation. + +At best the vision of God, sitting forever at His work-table, +willing the existence of mankind exactly as it is, while conscious +that, among these myriad arbitrary creations of His will, hardly one +in a million could escape temporary misery or eternal damnation, was +not the best possible background for a Church, as the Virgin and the +Saviour frankly admitted by taking the foreground; but the Church +was not responsible for it. Mankind could not admit an anarchical--a +dual or a multiple--universe. The world was there, staring them in +the face, with all its chaotic conditions, and society insisted on +its unity in self-defence. Society still insists on treating it as +unity, though no longer affecting logic. Society insists on its free +will, although free will has never been explained to the +satisfaction of any but those who much wish to be satisfied, and +although the words in any common sense implied not unity but duality +in creation. The Church had nothing to do with inventing this +riddle--the oldest that fretted mankind. + +Apart from all theological interferences,--fall of Adam or fault of +Eve, Atonement, Justification, or Redemption,--either the universe +was one, or it was two, or it was many; either energy was one, seen +only in powers of itself, or it was several; either God was harmony, +or He was discord. With practical unanimity, mankind rejected the +dual or multiple scheme; it insisted on unity. Thomas took the +question as it was given him. The unity was full of defects; he did +not deny them; but he claimed that they might be incidents, and that +the admitted unity might even prove their beneficence. Granting this +enormous concession, he still needed a means of bringing into the +system one element which vehemently refused to be brought:--that is, +man himself, who insisted that the universe was a unit, but that he +was a universe; that energy was one, but that he was another energy; +that God was omnipotent, but that man was free. The contradiction +had always existed, exists still, and always must exist, unless man +either admits that he is a machine, or agrees that anarchy and chaos +are the habit of nature, and law and order its accident. The +agreement may become possible, but it was not possible in the +thirteenth century nor is it now. Saint Thomas's settlement could +not be a simple one or final, except for practical use, but it +served, and it holds good still. + +No one ever seriously affirmed the literal freedom of will. Absolute +liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; +therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible only to +himself. This principle is the philosophical foundation of +anarchism, and, for anything that science has yet proved, may be the +philosophical foundation of the universe; but it is fatal to all +society and is especially hostile to the State. Perhaps the Church +of the thirteenth century might have found a way to use even this +principle for a good purpose; certainly, the influence of Saint +Bernard was sufficiently unsocial and that of Saint Francis was +sufficiently unselfish to conciliate even anarchists of the militant +class; but Saint Thomas was working for the Church and the + +State, not for the salvation of souls, and his chief object was to +repress anarchy. The theory of absolute free will never entered his +mind, more than the theory of material free will would enter the +mind of an architect. The Church gave him no warrant for discussing +the subject in such a sense. In fact, the Church never admitted free +will, or used the word when it could be avoided. In Latin, the term +used was "liberum arbitrium,"--free choice,--and in French to this +day it remains in strictness "libre arbitre" still. From Saint +Augustine downwards the Church was never so unscientific as to admit +of liberty beyond the faculty of choosing between paths, some +leading through the Church and some not, but all leading to the next +world; as a criminal might be allowed the liberty of choosing +between the guillotine and the gallows, without infringing on the +supremacy of the judge. + +Thomas started from that point, already far from theoretic freedom. +"We are masters of our acts," he began, "in the sense that we can +choose such and such a thing; now, we have not to choose our end, +but the means that relate to it, as Aristotle says." Unfortunately, +even this trenchant amputation of man's free energies would not +accord with fact or with logic. Experience proved that man's power +of choice in action was very far from absolute, and logic seemed to +require that every choice should have some predetermining cause +which decided the will to act. Science affirmed that choice was not +free,--could not be free,--without abandoning the unity of force and +the foundation of law. Society insisted that its choice must be left +free, whatever became of science or unity. Saint Thomas was required +to illustrate the theory of "liberum arbitrium" by choosing a path +through these difficulties, where path there was obviously none. + +Thomas's method of treating this problem was sure to be as +scientific as the vaulting of a Gothic arch. Indeed, one follows it +most easily by translating his school-vocabulary into modern +technical terms. With very slight straining of equivalents, Thomas +might now be written thus:-- + +By the term God, is meant a prime motor which supplies all energy to +the universe, and acts directly on man as well as on all other +creatures, moving him as a mechanical motor might do; but man, being +specially provided with an organism more complex than the organisms +of other creatures, enjoys an exceptional capacity for reflex +action,--a power of reflection,--which enables him within certain +limits to choose between paths; and this singular capacity is called +free choice or free will. Of course, the reflection is not choice, +and though a man's mind reflected as perfectly as the facets of a +lighthouse lantern, it would never reach a choice without an energy +which impels it to act. + +Now let us read Saint Thomas:-- + +Some kind of an agent is required to determine one's choice; that +agent is reflection. Man reflects, then, in order to learn what +choice to make between the two acts which offer themselves. But +reflection is, in its turn, a faculty of doing opposite things, for +we can reflect or not reflect; and we are no further forward than +before. One cannot carry back this process infinitely, for in that +case one would never decide. The fixed point is not in man, since we +meet in him, as a being apart by himself, only the alternative +faculties; we must, therefore, recur to the intervention of an +exterior agent who shall impress on our will a movement capable of +putting an end to its hesitations:--That exterior agent is nothing +else than God! + +The scheme seems to differ little, and unwillingly, from a system of +dynamics as modern as the dynamo. Even in the prime motor, from the +moment of action, freedom of will vanished. Creation was not +successive; it was one instantaneous thought and act, identical with +the will, and was complete and unchangeable from end to end, +including time as one of its functions. Thomas was as clear as +possible on that point:--"Supposing God wills anything in effect; He +cannot will not to will it, because His will cannot change." He +wills that some things shall be contingent and others necessary, but +He wills in the same act that the contingency shall be necessary. +"They are contingent because God has willed them to be so, and with +this object has subjected them to causes which are so." In the same +way He wills that His creation shall develop itself in time and +space and sequence, but He creates these conditions as well as the +events. He creates the whole, in one act, complete, unchangeable, +and it is then unfolded like a rolling panorama, with its +predetermined contingencies. + +Man's free choice--liberum arbitrium--falls easily into place as a +predetermined contingency. God is the first cause, and acts in all +secondary causes directly; but while He acts mechanically on the +rest of creation,--as far as is known,--He acts freely at one point, +and this free action remains free as far as it extends on that line. +Man's freedom derives from this source, but it is simply apparent, +as far as he is a cause; it is a reflex action determined by a new +agency of the first cause. + +However abstruse these ideas may once have sounded, they are far +from seeming difficult in comparison with modern theories of energy. +Indeed, measured by that standard, the only striking feature of +Saint Thomas's motor is its simplicity. Thomas's prime motor was +very powerful, and its lines of energy were infinite. Among these +infinite lines, a certain group ran to the human race, and, as long +as the conduction was perfect, each man acted mechanically. In cases +where the current, for any reason, was for a moment checked,--that +is to say, produced the effect of hesitation or reflection in the +mind,--the current accumulated until it acquired power to leap the +obstacle. As Saint Thomas expressed it, the Prime Motor, Who was +nothing else than God, intervened to decide the channel of the +current. The only difference between man and a vegetable was the +reflex action of the complicated mirror which was called mind, and +the mark of mind was reflective absorption or choice. The apparent +freedom was an illusion arising from the extreme delicacy of the +machine, but the motive power was in fact the same--that of God. + +This exclusion of what men commonly called freedom was carried still +further in the process of explaining dogma. Supposing the +conduction to be insufficient for a given purpose; a purpose which +shall require perfect conduction? Under ordinary circumstances, in +ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the conductor will be burned +out, so to speak; condemned, and thrown away. This is the case with +most human beings. Yet there are cases where the conductor is +capable of receiving an increase of energy from the prime motor, +which enables it to attain the object aimed at. In dogma, this store +of reserved energy is technically called Grace. In the strict, +theological sense of the word, as it is used by Saint Thomas, the +exact, literal meaning of Grace is "a motion which the Prime Motor, +as a supernatural cause, produces in the soul, perfecting free +will." It is a reserved energy, which comes to aid and reinforce the +normal energy of the battery. + +To religious minds this scientific inversion of solemn truths seems, +and is, sacrilege; but Thomas's numerous critics in the Church have +always brought precisely this charge against his doctrine, and are +doing so still. They insist that he has reduced God to a mechanism +and man to a passive conductor of force. He has left, they say, +nothing but God in the universe. The terrible word which annihilates +all other philosophical systems against which it is hurled, has been +hurled freely against his for six hundred years and more, without +visibly affecting the Church; and yet its propriety seems, to the +vulgar, beyond reasonable cavil. To Father de Regnon, of the +extremely learned and intelligent Society of Jesus, the difference +between pantheism and Thomism reduces itself to this: "Pantheism, +starting from the notion of an infinite substance which is the +plenitude of being, concludes that there can exist no other beings +than THE being; no other realities than the absolute reality. +Thomism, starting from the efficacy of the first cause, tends to +reduce more and more the efficacy of second causes, and to replace +it by a passivity which receives without producing, which is +determined without determining." To students of architecture, who +know equally little about pantheism and about Thomism,--or, indeed, +for that matter, about architecture, too,--the quality that rouses +most surprise in Thomism is its astonishingly scientific method. The +Franciscans and the Jesuits call it pantheism, but science, too, is +pantheism, or has till very recently been wholly pantheistic. +Avowedly science has aimed at nothing but the reduction of +multiplicity to unity, and has excommunicated, as though it were +itself a Church, any one who doubted or disputed its object, its +method, or its results. The effort is as evident and quite as +laborious in modern science, starting as it does from multiplicity, +as in Thomas Aquinas, who started from unity; and it is necessarily +less successful, for its true aims, as far as it is science and not +disguised religion, were equally attained by reaching infinite +complexity; but the assertion or assumption of ultimate unity has +characterized the Law of Energy as emphatically as it has +characterized the definition of God in theology. If it is a reproach +to Saint Thomas, it is equally a reproach to Clerk-Maxwell. In +truth, it is what men most admire in both--the power of broad and +lofty generalization. + +Under any conceivable system the process of getting God and man +under the same roof--of bringing two independent energies under the +same control--required a painful effort, as science has much cause +to know. No doubt, many good Christians and some heretics have been +shocked at the tour de force by which they felt themselves suddenly +seized, bound hand and foot, attached to each other, and dragged +into the Church, without consent or consultation. To religious +mystics, whose scepticism concerned chiefly themselves and their own +existence, Saint Thomas's man seemed hardly worth herding, at so +much expense and trouble, into a Church where he was not eager to +go. True religion felt the nearness of God without caring to see the +mechanism. Mystics like Saint Bernard, Saint Francis, Saint +Bonaventure, or Pascal had a right to make this objection, since +they got into the Church, so to speak, by breaking through the +windows; but society at large accepted and retains Saint Thomas's +man much as Saint Thomas delivered him to the Government; a two- +sided being, free or unfree, responsible or irresponsible, an energy +or a victim of energy, moved by choice or moved by compulsion, as +the interests of society seemed for the moment to need. Certainly +Saint Thomas lavished no excess of liberty on the man he created, +but still he was more generous than the State has ever been. Saint +Thomas asked little from man, and gave much; even as much freedom of +will as the State gave or now gives; he added immortality hereafter +and eternal happiness under reasonable restraints; his God watched +over man's temporal welfare far more anxiously than the State has +ever done, and assigned him space in the Church which he never can +have in the galleries of Parliament or Congress; more than all this, +Saint Thomas and his God placed man in the centre of the universe, +and made the sun and the stars for his uses. No statute law ever did +as much for man, and no social reform ever will try to do it; yet +man bitterly complained that he had not his rights, and even in the +Church is still complaining, because Saint Thomas set a limit, more +or less vague, to what the man was obstinate in calling his freedom +of will. + +Thus Saint Thomas completed his work, keeping his converging lines +clear and pure throughout, and bringing them together, unbroken, in +the curves that gave unity to his plan. His sense of scale and +proportion was that of the great architects of his age. One might go +on studying it for a lifetime. He showed no more hesitation in +keeping his Deity in scale than in adjusting man to it. Strange as +it sounds, although man thought himself hardly treated in respect to +freedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, man was in action much +the superior of God, Whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, +under restraints that man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas +did not allow God even an undetermined will; He was pure Act, and as +such He could not change. Man alone was allowed, in act, to change +direction. What was more curious still, man might absolutely prove +his freedom by refusing to move at all; if he did not like his life +he could stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its being +done for him; while God could not commit suicide or even cease for a +single instant His continuous action. If man had the singular fancy +of making himself absurd,--a taste confined to himself but attested +by evidence exceedingly strong,--he could be as absurd as he liked; +but God could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity +the right to contradict Himself, which is one of man's chief +pleasures. While man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, an +unlimited freedom to be wicked,--a privilege which, as both Church +and State bitterly complained and still complain, he has +outrageously abused,--God was Goodness, and could be nothing else. +While man moved about his relatively spacious prison with a certain +degree of ease, God, being everywhere, could not move. In one +respect, at least, man's freedom seemed to be not relative but +absolute, for his thought was an energy paying no regard to space or +time or order or object or sense; but God's thought was His act and +will at once; speaking correctly, God could not think; He is. Saint +Thomas would not, or could not, admit that God was Necessity, as +Abelard seems to have held, but he refused to tolerate the idea of a +divine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself. The atmosphere +of Saint Louis surrounds the God of Saint Thomas, and its pure ether +shuts out the corruption and pollution to come,--the Valois and +Bourbons, the Occams and Hobbes's, the Tudors and the Medicis, of an +enlightened Europe. + +The theology turns always into art at the last, and ends in +aspiration. The spire justifies the church. In Saint Thomas's +Church, man's free will was the aspiration to God, and he treated it +as the architects of Chartres and Laon had treated their famous +fleches. The square foundation-tower, the expression of God's power +in act,--His Creation,--rose to the level of the Church facade as a +part of the normal unity of God's energy; and then, suddenly, +without show of effort, without break, without logical violence, +became a many-sided, voluntary, vanishing human soul, and neither +Villard de Honnecourt nor Duns Scotus could distinguish where God's +power ends and man's free will begins. All they saw was the soul +vanishing into the skies. How it was done, one does not care to ask; +in a result so exquisite, one has not the heart to find fault with +"adresse." + +About Saint Thomas's theology we need not greatly disturb ourselves; +it can matter now not much, whether he put more pantheism than the +law allowed or more materialism than Duns Scotus approved--or less +of either--into his universe, since the Church is still on the spot, +responsible for its own doctrines; but his architecture is another +matter. So scientific and structural a method was never an accident +or the property of a single mind even with Aristotle to prompt it. +Neither his Church nor the architect's church was a sketch, but a +completely studied structure. Every relation of parts, every +disturbance of equilibrium, every detail of construction was treated +with infinite labour, as the result of two hundred years of +experiment and discussion among thousands of men whose minds and +whose instincts were acute, and who discussed little else. Science +and art were one. Thomas Aquinas would probably have built a better +cathedral at Beauvais than the actual architect who planned it; but +it is quite likely that the architect might have saved Thomas some +of his errors, as pointed out by the Councils of 1276. Both were +great artists; perhaps in their professions, the greatest that ever +lived; and both must have been great students beyond their practice. +Both were subject to constant criticism from men and bodies of men +whose minds were as acute and whose learning was as great as their +own. If the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Paris +condemned Thomas, the Bernardines had, for near two hundred years, +condemned Beauvais in advance. Both the "Summa Theologiae" and +Beauvais Cathedral were excessively modern, scientific, and +technical, marking the extreme points reached by Europe on the lines +of scholastic science. This is all we need to know. If we like, we +can go on to study, inch by inch, the slow decline of the art. The +essence of it--the despotic central idea--was that of organic unity +both in the thought and the building. From that time, the universe +has steadily become more complex and less reducible to a central +control. With as much obstinacy as though it were human, it has +insisted on expanding its parts; with as much elusiveness as though +it were feminine, it has evaded the attempt to impose on it a single +will. Modern science, like modern art, tends, in practice, to drop +the dogma of organic unity. Some of the mediaeval habit of mind +survives, but even that is said to be yielding before the daily +evidence of increasing and extending complexity. The fault, then, +was not in man, if he no longer looked at science or art as an +organic whole or as the expression of unity. Unity turned itself +into complexity, multiplicity, variety, and even contradiction. All +experience, human and divine, assured man in the thirteenth century +that the lines of the universe converged. How was he to know that +these lines ran in every conceivable and inconceivable direction, +and that at least half of them seemed to diverge from any imaginable +centre of unity! Dimly conscious that his Trinity required in logic +a fourth dimension, how was the schoolman to supply it, when even +the mathematician of to-day can only infer its necessity? Naturally +man tended to lose his sense of scale and relation. A straight line, +or a combination of straight lines, may have still a sort of +artistic unity, but what can be done in art with a series of +negative symbols? Even if the negative were continuous, the artist +might express at least a negation; but supposing that Omar's kinetic +analogy of the ball and the players turned out to be a scientific +formula!--supposing that the highest scientific authority, in order +to obtain any unity at all, had to resort to the Middle Ages for an +imaginary demon to sort his atoms!--how could art deal with such +problems, and what wonder that art lost unity with philosophy and +science! Art had to be confused in order to express confusion; but +perhaps it was truest, so. + +Some future summer, when you are older, and when I have left, like +Omar, only the empty glass of my scholasticism for you to turn down, +you can amuse yourselves by going on with the story after the death +of Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, and William of Lorris, and after the +failure of Beauvais. The pathetic interest of the drama deepens with +every new expression, but at least you can learn from it that your +parents in the nineteenth century were not to blame for losing the +sense of unity in art. As early as the fourteenth century, signs of +unsteadiness appeared, and, before the eighteenth century, unity +became only a reminiscence. The old habit of centralizing a strain +at one point, and then dividing and subdividing it, and distributing +it on visible lines of support to a visible foundation, disappeared +in architecture soon after 1500, but lingered in theology two +centuries longer, and even, in very old-fashioned communities, far +down to our own time; but its values were forgotten, and it survived +chiefly as a stock jest against the clergy. The passage between the +two epochs is as beautiful as the Slave of Michael Angelo; but, to +feel its beauty, you should see it from above, as it came from its +radiant source. Truth, indeed, may not exist; science avers it to be +only a relation; but what men took for truth stares one everywhere +in the eye and begs for sympathy. The architects of the twelfth and +thirteenth centuries took the Church and the universe for truths, +and tried to express them in a structure which should be final. +Knowing by an enormous experience precisely where the strains were +to come, they enlarged their scale to the utmost point of material +endurance, lightening the load and distributing the burden until the +gutters and gargoyles that seem mere ornament, and the grotesques +that seem rude absurdities, all do work either for the arch or for +the eye; and every inch of material, up and down, from crypt to +vault, from man to God, from the universe to the atom, had its task, +giving support where support was needed, or weight where +concentration was felt, but always with the condition of showing +conspicuously to the eye the great lines which led to unity and the +curves which controlled divergence; so that, from the cross on the +fleche and the keystone of the vault, down through the ribbed +nervures, the columns, the windows, to the foundation of the flying +buttresses far beyond the walls, one idea controlled every line; and +this is true of Saint Thomas's Church as it is of Amiens Cathedral. +The method was the same for both, and the result was an art marked +by singular unity, which endured and served its purpose until man +changed his attitude toward the universe. The trouble was not in the +art or the method or the structure, but in the universe itself which +presented different aspects as man moved. Granted a Church, Saint +Thomas's Church was the most expressive that man has made, and the +great Gothic cathedrals were its most complete expression. + +Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of all +the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the Gothic +cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender +nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards +of the flying buttress,--the visible effort to throw off a visible +strain,--never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, +if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. The equilibrium is visibly delicate +beyond the line of safety; danger lurks in every stone. The peril of +the heavy tower, of the restless vault, of the vagrant buttress; the +uncertainty of logic, the inequalities of the syllogism, the +irregularities of the mental mirror,--all these haunting nightmares +of the Church are expressed as strongly by the Gothic cathedral as +though it had been the cry of human suffering, and as no emotion had +ever been expressed before or is likely to find expression again. +The delight of its aspirations is flung up to the sky. The pathos of +its self-distrust and anguish of doubt is buried in the earth as its +last secret. You can read out of it whatever else pleases your youth +and confidence; to me, this is all. + +THE END + + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres +by Henry Adams +******This file should be named mntsm10.txt or mntsm10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, mntsm11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, mntsm10a.txt + +Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +*** + +More information about this book is at the top of this file. + + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. 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