"He swore by the wound in Jesu's side."--_Coleridge, 'Christabel.'_
We may now turn our backs upon the luxuriant and fanciful swearing of
the ancient world and pursue our researches into one other division of
the subject that gives rise to more serious reflections. The diversions
of the Roman and the Greek in the way of imprecation seem to have been
mostly intended in good part, and to have been productive of little
theological odium. But there is a body of swearing that has diffused
itself through Christian countries which is the very reverse of
sportive, and has undeniably provoked the strongest feelings of
aversion. The abuse to which we allude consisted mainly in the
indiscriminate use of popular oaths that selected the limbs and members
of Christ as the paraphernalia of swearing. There does not appear at the
present day any great irreverence in the exclamation, "S'light," or
"S'lid," or "Bodikins," as, happily, the wave of impiety that brought
them has long since broken and passed away. Indeed, as they now occur
in the pages of sixteenth century writings, they only strike the modern
reader in the light of so many interruptions from the text. But we shall
find as we pursue the inquiry further, that there was a great deal of
meaning wrapped up in these expletives, and that they played a by no
means unimportant part in the workings of the mediaeval understanding.
Whatever may have been the malignities laid to the charge of the later
middle ages, it is certain that the Englishman was on the whole of a
reverential type. The pious moralist who laboured in those times was so
far assisted by an utter absence of captious criticism to honeycomb his
teaching, and by the solid sense of appreciation that was wont to fill
the minds of his listeners. He was practised, moreover, in the exercise
of two potent influences that he was ever ready to exert. The one may be
said to have had its root in his hearers' fund of ready sympathy, the
other in their ghostly apprehension of horror and dread. It is not at
all surprising that in later times we should find an opaqueness to have
obscured the clear crystal of these subtle perceptions, for fear and
pity have no longer the same ascendancy in a busy world. But at a period
more piously illiterate, things of this shadowy nature were linked very
closely to objects of a material kind. A long process of reasoning
could then be saved by reference to some obscure picture of monkish
fancy. And so, in the glooms and twilights of mediaeval life, the
moralist might insure speedy victory by overwhelming men's intellects by
an appeal to the formidable images of terror and compassion.
The pre-Reformation Englishman, stricken and toil-worn, having no hope
save in forbearance from the skies, and no consolation but in the repose
of the ale-house, could yet be awed and subdued by the apprehension of
some priest-directed shape of ghostly terrorism. Above all, he had been
made to grasp a sentiment, which, slightly as it can be treated in a
secular work, may be said to have left no adequate imprint upon the
Protestant world. By dint of the monastic teaching, he had been brought
to entertain a keen personal realisation of the actual sufferings of
Christ. The fact is self-evident from every fragment of contemporaneous
literature intended to react upon the fears and sympathies of
uncultivated men. It was the constant presentment of the notion of the
divine agony, the daily calling to remembrance of the thorns, the nails,
and the hyssop, that was relied upon to keep alive in those poor agued
souls some struggling flame of spiritual vitality. And so surely was the
spark wont to kindle, and so reverently was the similitude of these
priestly images treasured up, that they formed the mainstay of the
ploughman's faith, the sum total of the poor man's theology.
From this cause it arose, as there is now every reason to suspect, that
the country was at one time inundated with a torrent of the most acrid
and rasping blasphemy. It would not be difficult to trace the relative
connection between the luxuriance of oath-taking and the various forms
of religion under which oath-taking has successively flourished. It
could be shown that the swearing of most Catholic states is of greater
fertility, and displays a readier fund of invention than that of
countries brought under the reformed faith. The more religion appeals to
the senses, the more fecund has been the vocabulary of oaths. The more
it has been made the subject of illustration and imagery, the more
finished and ornate have been the comminations in use. A priest-ridden
nation, such as the Spanish or Italian, has always been eminent for its
proficiency in blasphemy; and as part of the argument it may not be out
of place to mention the instance of the hedge-parson in the 'Fortunes of
Nigel,' who, by reason of his superior knowledge of divinity, could
swear with greater volubility than any of his associates.
Thus it was that, labouring under the ban of priestly exaction, and
confronted on all sides by the ghostly emblems of wrath and
condemnation, there descended upon England in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, a torrent of the hardest and direst of verbal
abuse. Not mere words of intemperate anger came bubbling to the surface,
but sullen and defiant blasphemies, execrations that proclaimed open
warfare with authority and a lasting separation from everything that was
tender in men's faith. Imprecations were contrived from every incident
in the narrative of the Crucifixion. The limbs and members of the slain
Christ were made the vehicle of revolting profanation. The didactic
writers of the time, no less than epic poets and sprightly versifiers,
give full testimony to the prevalency of the offence. The laureate,
Stephen Hawes, Lydgate, Chaucer and the "moral Gower," all are alike
loud in their expression of horror and renunciation. Among the later
writers replete with instances of the scandal is the epigrammatist,
Robert Crowley, who enumerates a lengthy catalogue of expletives current
in his day. Although by the time Crowley appeared upon the scene the
language of blasphemy had become a little softened by the admixture of
rather more innocent particles, as "by cock and pye," or "by the cross
of the mousefoot," the author still finds it necessary to record a set
of hard, grating oaths pronounced by the "hands," the "feet," and the
"flesh" of Christ.
To refer, for instance, to the use of the one word "zounds!" This
strikes us now-a-days as anything but a very solemn or a very momentous
form of adjuration. But in unreformed England--the England that still
adored the _Genetrix incorrupta_, and had earned among the devout the
title of Our Lady's Dower, it was absolutely impossible to surpass in
blasphemy the hideous import that had been imparted to the user of the
word. It was in fact nothing else than a rebellious and mutinous
rendering of the once sacred oath taken by the wounds of the Redeemer.
There are few who can probably now realise the conspicuous place then
occupied in the Catholic worship by the legends relating to the five
several incisions in the body of Christ. The monkish representations of
the wounds were depicted in countless rosaries and Books of Hours.
Confraternities were formed in the Church for their greater veneration.
There were occasions when papal absolution was specially extended to
those worshippers who paid their devotions to the wound in the side of
Christ. The so-called measurement of them was even preserved in
families, and was reputed to be a charm.[22] In the great northern
insurrection of 1536, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Five Wounds
was the badge under which York and Lincoln farmers marched to avenge the
spoliation of the monasteries. Such was the oath in the days of the last
King Henry. Its more modern application scarcely requires illustration,
but if any such were needed, we might find it in the villainous lines
which Lord Byron wrote in connection with a certain trip on board the
_Lisbon_ packet.
To the present hour, in Italy, the popular oaths are in close alliance
with the Romanist faith. The ordinary exclamation "_Per l'ostia_" is the
equivalent of "God's bread!" that so long did duty in England of the
pre-Reformation era. A modern traveller has noticed how distinct an
impress has been set upon Italian swearing by the particular notions of
heavenly beings that are inculcated by the national creed. A workman in
an art-studio was heard vociferating in such terms as "_Per Christo_,"
"_Per sangue di Christo_," "_Per maladetto sangue di Christo_,"
whereupon the following conversation occurred:--
"Do you forget who Christ is, that you thus blaspheme Him?"
"Bah!" replied the man, "I am not afraid of Him."
"Who, then, do you fear?"
"I'm afraid of the Madonna, and not of Him."
The fact was that the Mother of God was the sole being the mind was
brought to esteem with feelings of veneration. Christ was only the
_bambino_, or infant in arms, and nothing more.[23]
The state of feeling that still prevails in Italy should go far to
explain the presence in pre-Reformation England of this widely-spread
body of irreverent swearing. With the Reformation, however, the
contagion was shortly to abate. The severer authors at the close of the
sixteenth century do not have to complain so bitterly of these jarring
elements of vituperation. In the literature of the stage there is a
marked improvement: in none but the earlier of the Elizabethan comedies
do the characters accentuate their meaning by reference to the grossest
description of blasphemy. When expletives occur they are generally in
the spirit of derision and lampoon. As the writings of the stage grew
more robust, the custom altogether wore away. It may, indeed, be held
that the subversion of the Catholic religion was mainly, if not
entirely, accountable for the change. There is certainly a marked
distinction between the oaths of the outgoing and incoming creeds. But
if we have been finally spared from the ravages of the infection, we may
attribute our deliverance to that reserve of reverence of which we have
spoken as possessed by English laymen, and to the pious devices that
were practised upon it by the inferior orders of preachers.
The position they chose to assume in combating this "fine old
gentlemanly vice" is a singular feature in its history. Their method was
to associate the practice of swearing with the notion of actual bodily
pain being occasioned to the Saviour. They made it appear that Christ in
person was put to extreme physical agony on every occasion of its
committal. Not alone did they assert the wantonness and hardihood of so
directly incurring the Divine displeasure, but they raised the most
piteous appeal to the compassion of these benighted swearers. It was
daily proclaimed from their pulpits that the profanity in this one
respect of professedly Christian men had worked a sharper and more
agonising martyrdom than that formerly designed by the Jews themselves.
In countless broadsheets, no less than by pictorial illustration, the
wounds of Christ were portrayed as hourly re-opened, and the sufferings
of Golgotha renewed from day to day. The doctrine gained additional
credit when transferred from the hands of monkish authors and embraced
by popular and captivating pens. Stephen Hawes, own poet to
carpet-knights and buckram soldiery, brought home conviction to a class
of offenders that a whole consistory would not have succeeded in
convincing. In a rhyming pamphlet, prefaced by a figure of the bleeding
Christ, Hawes depicts with awful realism those sufferings which, as he
believed, were being actually and bodily inflicted.[24] The author of
'Bel Amour' describes the feet and hands of Christ as literally pierced
anew, and every member torn and lacerated by reason of the imprecations
of unheeding Christians.
At this time of day it might be difficult to ascertain with any
certainty the origin of this forced view of the iniquity of swearing. So
far as concerns printed literature, we discover it for the first time
in the doggerel of the poet Hawes, but it is none the less traceable to
that encyclopaedic work of the thirteenth century, the 'Miroir du Monde.'
This takes us to the year 1279, and instances could be furnished showing
its regular passage through the next three centuries, until the monkish
notion is at last surrendered and delivered over to the cleansing fires
of the Reformation. The last of the English authors who seems to have
seriously advanced the theory is to be found in the rigid disciple of
asceticism, Thomas Becon.
Becon was a man who, throughout a devout and severe life, had set
himself sternly to the task of rebuking the immoderate lawlessness of
the orders among which he lived. The rustic usage of collecting round
the village tavern to celebrate the Sabbath in sport and holiday was one
particularly repellant to the mind of Becon, and held by him to be the
mainspring of all the evils that ravaged the country-side. The fore part
of the day having been devoted to the services of the Church, it was
usual for a time of high festival to succeed the morning's austerities.
Noon discovered all the grown men of the village assembled round the
vintner's door and partaking of the ale-house hospitalities. Here feats
of rude strength were performed, wrestlers practised their throws, and
sturdy fellows played bouts at quarter-staff. Foot-races were run upon
the greensward for wholesome wagers of barley-cake, and games of hazard
were conducted under the shelter of the ivy-bush at the publican's
threshold. Bets were staked, dice were rattled, and yokels learned to
place the dues of the harvest-field upon the fortunes of the winning or
losing colour. When, therefore, after earnest and fruitless entreaty,
the good Becon rushed into print and produced his learned 'Invective,'
he did not omit to visit with uncompromising censure the chartered
licence of this Sunday festival.
The riot and pastime that on every seventh day had been wont to disturb
the quietude of rustic life appeared to our reformer as a direct
encouragement to the practice of swearing, and in fact as constituting
so many training-schools for the cultivation of this unwelcome
accomplishment. In the hope of rendering the habit positively forbidding
to the more impressionable among his readers, he reminds them how the
body of the Saviour is actually torn and mangled by reason of the
imprecations hurled at him in these country sports. Oaths, he deplores,
were then used in every matter of chopping and changing, of bargaining
and selling, and he groans to think how the "dicer" will swear rather
than passively submit to the loss of a single cast, the "carder will
tear God in pieces rather than lose the profit of an ace."
It is a feature that must be very palpable to the student of incipient
literature, that when once an original and daring notion was fairly
launched upon the world, it was not allowed to founder for want of
repetition. The peculiar mode of thought which we have ventured to
ascribe to the 'Miroir du Monde' in the thirteenth century, could boast
a long line of exponents in the interval that closed with Thomas Becon.
The writer to whose industry, rather than invention, English laymen were
indebted for their acquaintance with this painful doctrine was a certain
Dan Michael, described as a brother of the Cloister of Saint Austin.
This person has produced a didactic treatise based upon the model of the
famous 'Miroir,' an original from which no writer at that time felt
himself justified in departing. With the subject of swearing he deals in
a way that is highly painstaking. Not to mention the intricate
distinctions which he treats under these several heads, we find that he
has grouped the offences of the tongue into no less than eight cardinal
divisions. It may be curious to record the titles as our author
enumerates them, notwithstanding that it is scarcely to our purpose to
follow him through the niceties he has created. The branches of the
subject, according to his classification, would therefore seem to be:
"ydelnesse," "yelpinge," "bloudynge," "todiazinge," "stryfinge,"
"grochynge," "wy■stondinge," and lastly "blasfemye." So far as we have
mastered the system of Dan Michael we are driven to the conclusion that
the practice of swearing, as understood in the Cloister of Saint Austin,
was, save for the outward distinction of dress, much the same as
prevails in the later world. "For there are some," says he of the
cloister, "so evil taught that they are able to say nothing without
swearing. Some swear as if smitten with sudden pain. Others swear by the
sun, the moon, by the head, or by their father's soul."
Minute as is Dan Michael in his treatment of the subject of abuse, his
elaborations are possibly surpassed by the next competitor for
moralistic fame. Robert of Brunne, who produced a similar work in the
year 1303, availed himself largely of the other's labours, while he
enriched his collections with recitals of wrong-doing from his own
exclusive stores. From the "Handlyng Sinne," as the production is
called, one may gather considerable insight into the state of prejudice
existing at the time. The neighbours tell one another good stories in
church time, and inquire during the sermon where they can get the best
ale. The monks have become so luxurious that they refuse to shave their
heads and have commenced to array themselves in fine clothes. The king's
courts are crowded with supplicating suitors, craving for redress from
the extortions of trustees and executors, and yielding themselves
victims to the falsity of the men of law. Swearing, at that time, would
seem to be no longer the prerogative of laymen, but even to have become
the privilege of learned clerks.
To depict what, from this author's point of view, were the fruits and
consequences of blasphemy, Brunne enters into a narrative describing the
Mother of God presenting the bleeding Jesus to the gaze of the rich man
Dives. The latter inquires the reason for the Child being gashed with
wounds. In reply the Virgin points out in terms of keen resentment the
injuries inflicted upon the Infant by the swearing of Dives and his
associates. The doctrine of the 'Miroir' is then introduced in full to
demonstrate the infamy and inhumanity of the practice, the whole
concluding with a promise of repentance on the part of the sinful man.
This fable is only one among many others that were narrated with a view
to curbing the propensities of blaspheming swearers. The work that
contains it met with general circulation at the commencement of the
fourteenth century, but that the spread of the iniquity was not sensibly
abated we may infer from other sources of information we have
mentioned.[25] In 1544, the evil was set forth in the light of a
national grievance, and was paraded in a broadsheet published in that
year entitled a "Supplycacion to Kynge Henry the Eyght."
Such, then, was the ponderous metal that passed current as the swearing
of pre-Reformation England. These verbal projectiles were sometimes
moulded, however, of a lighter calibre, and when employed in the talk
of priests or women, were so nicely rounded off as to incur little of
theological displeasure. Chaucer's people, in particular, are very
punctilious in the propriety of their oaths; good Sir Thopas swearing
mildly "by ale and bread," and Madame Eglantine naming holy Saint
Eligius as the patron of her vows--
"There was also a nonne, a prioresse,
That of hire smyling was ful symple and coy,
Hire grettest oath was but by St. Eloy."
In much the same way did princes and dignitaries of the land single out
some swearing cognizance that might befriend them in the everlasting
conflict between lies and honesty. Edward I. sanctified his oaths by the
mention of a brace of milk-white swans, and whoever will consult St.
Palaye will find that the peacock and the pheasant entered largely into
the codes of chivalry as bearing witness to the truth of a statement.
Edward III. followed the lead of his grandsire in the selection of his
gage of testimony. At the festival held in 1349 to celebrate the
creation of the Order of the Garter, his cognizance was the swan,
adorned, moreover, with the swearing motto: "Haye! Haye! the Whyte Swan!
by Godde's soule I am thy man."
The tradition that St. Paul was the saint that Richard III. was wont to
conjure with, has found expression in the tragedy of Shakespeare.
Faithful to the popular notions of the usurper's characteristic, this
form of oath has been placed upon Gloucester's lips at each impassioned
outburst. Henry V., in his wooing of Katherine, gallantly invokes St.
Denis to aid him in his attempts at love-making. But the chronicler who
seems positively to have had an affection for the oaths the memory of
which he is recalling, is the historian Brantome. Upon this
unimpeachable testimony we learn that the oath of Louis XI. was _par la
Paque Dieu_, an affirmation that Scott avails himself of in his
portraiture of that monarch in 'Quentin Durward.' This was succeeded by
the _jour de Dieu_ of Charles VIII.; by the _diable m'emporte_ of Louis
XII., and the _foi de gentilhomme_ of Francis I. Among the Gascon oaths
of Henry IV. the most usual was _ventre Saint Gris_. As for Charles IX.,
adds Brantome, he swore in all fashions, and always like a sergeant who
was leading a man to be hanged.[26]
The question has frequently been asked who was intended by the cognomen
Saint Gris? The answer accorded by Le Duchat, a savant learned in such
matters, is that Saint Francis d'Assise was the person indicated. It is
true that Saint Francis was _ceint_ by a hempen girdle, and, moreover,
was clad in a habit of _gris_. But there nevertheless seems no reason to
suppose that any individual personage was suggested, or, indeed, as has
been stated, that the oath was of a Huguenot character. Says M. Charles
Rozan,[27] who has had occasion to refer to this subject, Saint Gris is
purely a creature of fancy, and was constituted a patron of drinkers, as
St. Lache was a patron of idlers and St. Nitouche of hypocrites.
The oath of William Rufus, _per vultum de Lucca,_ has raised conjectures
as to its probable signification. The literal meaning, "by Saint Luke's
face," being rejected as not very intelligible, there remain two
distinct explanations: one that it referred to the face of Christ as
painted by St. Luke, the other that the portrait of Christ as preserved
in the cathedral church at Lucca is the object intended. To support the
first derivation, credence must be given to the legend which places the
apostle among the artist craftsmen of Judaea, and has enshrined him as
the patron saint of all workers in the arts. On the other hand, there
has reposed for some centuries at Lucca a miraculous crucifix, famous
alike for the marvels it has seen and accomplished. The Tuscan people
set great store by the possession of this relic, and have engraved a
representation of it upon their coins. The inscription upon the Tuscan
florin, "Sanctus vultus de Lucca," would seem, therefore, to be
identical with the expletive of William Rufus.
We have seen how the occupants of the throne have usually comported
themselves in the matter of oaths, but there is one recorded instance of
Plantagenet royalty having created a singular precedent. If any man can
be said to have ever had cause for swearing, Henry VI. might be
described as being that individual. It is stated, however, by
contemporaries who had opportunities for conversing with this king, and
by whom it is given as a somewhat remarkable fact, that he was never
known to swear under the greatest provocation.
The adage that enjoins us to repeat "no scandal about Queen Elizabeth"
should dispose us to deal lightly with any verbal excesses committed by
the virgin queen. It would appear, however, that the moral atmosphere of
her court, despite the intellect and talent that adorned it, was not so
refined or particular but that the sovereign and the ladies over their
breakfasts of steaks and beer could ring out exclamations that to a
later generation might appear of rather an astounding character.[28] To
turn for comparison to the era of the next female majesty, it is
questionable whether even Sarah Jennings, with all her power of abuse,
would not have taken exception to the flavour of some of the Elizabethan
adjectives.
A story is told of Edward VI., that at the time of arriving at the
kingly dignity he gave way to a torrent of the most sonorous oaths. The
pastors and masters charged with the well-being of the royal youth could
not but stare in blank astonishment at the conduct of one so well
nurtured as the child of Anne Boleyn. It transpired, however, that the
young king had been given to believe by one of his associates that
language of the kind was dignified and becoming in the person of a
sovereign. Edward was asked to name the preceptor who had so ably
supplemented the course of the royal education. This he instantly and
innocently did, and was not a little surprised at the severe whipping
that was administered to the delinquent.[29]
The predicament in which the royal child was placed is similar to that
which once befel a clerical gentleman while travelling on mule-back
across Syria. The Syrian muleteers are, it seems, accustomed to urge
onward their beasts with the shout of "Yullah!" or "Bismillah!" and it
was under the escort of these shouting and belabouring drivers that the
traveller made his way into the town of Beyrout. His friends naturally
inquired of him what progress he had made in Arabic, and in reply he
told them he had only acquired two words, _bakhshish_ for a present, and
_Yullah!_ for go-ahead. He was asked if he had used the latter word much
on his way. Certainly, he said, he had used it all the way. "Then, your
reverence," replied his friend, "you have been swearing all the way
through the Holy Land."