VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS THE TROUBADOUR.
Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus was a man not satisfied with
four names. In jest or earnest he assumed another, Theodosius. In point
of time he had an interesting position; in regard to residence his story
becomes really valuable; and when we add that he gave to the Church
several of her best-known hymns, he appears before us as a person
unfamiliar, but highly attractive.
If, as we have reason to think, he came into France in 566 or 567, at
the age of thirty-five or thirty-six, we must suppose him to have been
born about 531. He was an Italian of Treviso, which is not far northwest
of Venice and northeast of Padua. Of his parentage and early education
(except the fact that he was trained at Ravenna) we are ignorant; but he
is said to have been acquainted with Boethius, a thing hard to believe,
for the philosopher perished in 524. We are left in some doubt whether
he had set forth from Italy because the Lombards were about to invade
his part of it, or whether religious motives were at the bottom of this
“exile,” as he is very ready to call it.
Judging his unknown past by his better-known later history, he was a man
of affable and genial character, who could pay for all favors in the
small coin of panegyric, and whose pen filled his pocket and procured
him the hospitality of the rich and the great of the earth. We know he
could sing, for he says so himself; and he could also turn verses so
sweet and mellow that even the poorest of them were learned by his
admirers and recited again with much delight. Now it happened that his
eyes were affected, and his friend Gregory of Tours sent him some of the
blessed St. Martin’s holy lamp-oil. When this was rubbed upon them—and
it was doubtless good oil, and therefore not an objectionable
ointment—he was greatly helped. He consequently showed his gratitude in
two ways: by making a pilgrimage to the blessed St. Martin’s own town,
and by writing the blessed St. Martin’s biography. This last he
accomplished to the extent of four books of verse, employing, without
any apparent scruple, the much more classic and elaborate treatise of
Sulpicius Severus as the groundwork of his own. It was this journey
which raises the question whether he was avoiding the Lombards or
performing a pious vow when he entered France. Perhaps in this, as in
other events of his life, the religious garment covered the secular
desire.
From his native country, then, he made his way into another and less
cultivated region. There was a Gallo-Roman society at the time, very
much as there now are groups of educated persons in Siberia, or in the
seaboard cities of China. A certain freemasonry of intelligence passed a
literary man along from castle to cloister and from cloister to court.
It was a period when classic learning was at its lowest ebb, and when
the Romance tongues, like the second growth of a forest, were thickly
clustering in upon the few survivors of the ancient groves of
literature. The sixth century was removed from the past, but had not
attained to much on its own account.
Yet we must not think that this century was barren of beginnings. The
Merving kings—Clovis, and Childebert, and Clotaire the First, and
Charibert—had now given place to Chilperic on the throne of France.
Indeed, some writers are inclined to make this sixth century the true
commencement of the Middle Ages, and it is very certain that we can see
a great deal in the story of Fortunatus which is mediaeval. Moreover,
Mohammed was born in 570, at Mecca, while our future bishop was
traversing Gaul. And nearly contemporary with our author’s birth—that
is, in 533—comes the announcement of the supremacy of the Roman bishop,
which culminated in 590 in the strong administration of Gregory the
Great. Fortunatus lived, therefore, in days when Latin Christianity was
taking shape, and when the most aggressive of false religions was
springing up. We have indeed said, in effect, that the Western Empire
was at an end, and that the Monarchy of France had begun in 476.
Thus, as he looked backward, the Italian refugee could recall the
successive blows of barbarian swords—the swords of Alaric, and Genseric,
and Attila, and Odoacer—under which Rome had fallen. When Alboin started
his raid from Pannonia in 568, with Lombards (Longobardi) and Gepidae
and twenty thousand Saxons, it was surely enough to make a troubadour
take refuge at Tours.
Our materials for the biography of Fortunatus from this point in the
story become more available. He kept an itinerary, which was lost; but
he wrote often to Gregory of Tours, and this seems to be the only
correspondence which he conducted in a natural and ordinary manner. From
it we learn that he crossed the mountains in a “snowy July,” and had
written either “on horseback or half asleep.” He passed some time at
Metz and Rheims. His days and nights were spent in travelling and
feasting and in preparing songs and odes, to the consternation of his
modern biographer, Luchi, who does not find much evidence of piety in
these proceedings.
Fortunatus is his own exponent, and his language, literally translated,
gives us a vivid picture of the way in which he made friends with
everybody. “Travelling among the barbarians” (he writes to Gregory), “on
a long journey, either weary of the way or drunk beneath the icy chill,
at the exhortation of the muse (I know not whether more cold or sober),
a new Orpheus I gave voices to the wood, and the wood replied.” The
sentence illustrates not merely his experience but also his style of
composition, which is turgid and frequently obscure. His panegyrics, for
example, abound in the most fulsome flattery, arrayed bombastically in a
string of nouns, verbs, and adjectives half a page long. The real idea
walks within much of his Latin, like a pigmy in a great court train,
ridiculously small and ridiculously pretentious.
Sometimes these same expressions of our poet betoken a convivial
familiarity with his friend Gregory of Tours, which is not precisely
canonical. Many post-classical words appear, and phrases which no
grammarian would easily justify. The man is full of sly hints of good
eating and drinking, and has a high-flown style of compliment, as when
he writes to Lupus, “As often as I put together the parts of your
discourse, I thought that I reclined upon ambrosial roses.” To Sigismund
and Aregesles, two brothers, he declares that, “This sweet letter
reveals to me the names of friends. Here is the brilliant Sigismund, and
here is the modest Aregesles. After Italy, O Rhine, thou givest me
parents, and by the coming of these brothers I shall be no longer a
stranger.” In fact, he picked up “brothers” and “parents” with charming
facility, and had a dexterity in drawing a corner of the mantle of royal
favor over him which any courtier might covet.
Thus he went—we cannot well detect in what order or by what method, but
pretty conclusively as a troubadour might have done—all through France.
Like Chamisso, he proposed to
“Take his harp in his hand
And wander the wide world over,
Singing from land to land.”
With Sigebert, King of Austrasia, he contracted quite a friendship, and
being at Poitiers when Gelesuintha was put to death, he lamented her in
verses which pleased Sigebert, her brother-in-law and avenger, greatly.
He also became well acquainted with Euphronius of Tours, nephew of St.
Gregory, the bishop, and thus laid a good foundation for ecclesiastical
preferment. But it was to Poitiers that he gradually drifted, and there
circumstances fixed him for the most of his life.
We may safely conclude that Tours, which is not a great distance off,
first attracted his wandering feet. He had a duty to the blessed St.
Martin’s holy lamp and to the blessed St. Martin’s holy memory, and
these devout proceedings were more than sufficient to commend him to a
hospitable bishop. Contemporary accounts of him are lacking, if we
except the brief notice of Paul the Deacon, which cannot properly be
called contemporary, as it is in his history of the Lombards, which was
prepared in the first half of the eighth century. But Fortunatus again
comes to our rescue with quite a goodly supply of verses and with some
epistles which show that the life of that period was a curious resultant
between the Roman and barbarian ideas. It ought in honesty to be added
that Brunehilda was no saint, and that the court of the Merovingians was
so barbaric that it stood by and saw her torn to death, at eighty, at
the heels of a wild horse; and this was later even than Fortunatus’s
day.
By this time Treviso (Trevisium) had been regularly attacked by the
Lombards, and the pilgrimage, which had changed to a pleasure-trip,
changed again to a residence. He speaks of himself later as having been
“for nine years an exile from Italy,” and his only reference to his
family that is discoverable is when he tells the Abbess Agnes that she
is as dear to him as his own sister Titiana. He is a poet driven like a
leaf before the storm, and he is whirled first into Tours and then into
the safe eddy of Poitiers, which he celebrates reverently in song as the
home of the great Hilary.
His royal friendships are made apparent by _epithalamia_—especially that
on the marriage of Sigebert and Brunehilda—and by various odes. But now
comes the real romance of our poet’s life. Clotaire the First had
married a fair woman named Radegunda, whose piety gave him not a little
trouble. She was determined to keep all her vigils and fasts and to
exert herself in works of charity, even to the scrubbing of the base of
the altar with her own hands. It was one of her greatest pleasures to
take leprous women in her arms and kiss them, and when one of the lepers
said to her, “Who will kiss you after you embrace us?” she “answered
benevolently, that if others will not kiss me, it is truly no affair of
mine.”
It would be beneath the dignity of this narrative, if it were not a
portion of her own life in the Latin, for us to record the incident
which helped to cause her separation from her husband. She had arisen at
night and came back thoroughly chilled, and with her feet properly cold.
Clotaire growled out that he would sooner have a nun for a wife
(_jugalem monacham_) than such a queen. So she took him at his word,
founded a convent at Poitiers, and distinguished herself to later
generations by many noble works.
Over this convent she placed her maid Agnes, and served her former
servant with profound humility and obedience, albeit she must always
have been herself the ruling spirit of the place. With Fortunatus she
formed a close friendship. And as this is the beginning of the
conventual and ecclesiastical side of his career, we may as well bring
the story up to its parallel point in current history.
Gregory, Archbishop of Tours and historian of France, always addresses
his friend Fortunatus as _presbyter Italicus_. That Fortunatus embraced
the monastic life at Aquileia (about 558-59) has been maintained, and
the opinion is also fairly defended that he was enrolled as a “cleric”
at Poitiers, although he was _novus_, or a “new-comer,” there. He had
evidently some _quasi_ ecclesiastical connection, and those were days
when the celibacy of the clergy was much mooted, but when the wandering
monks had not yet been held to the stringencies of the monastic orders.
If we ask Fortunatus why he remained in Gaul, he replies that Radegunda
retained him there “by her prayers and vows.” It is conjectural that he
was first chaplain to the convent, and it is certain that then he was
elevated to the rank of Bishop of Poitiers.
To this daughter of Berthar, King of the Thuringi, our troubadour now
paid his devoirs. Often at “the convivial banquets of the barbarians” he
had “poured forth his verses.” He was now to become the devoted cavalier
of a queen and an abbess, and to furnish literature with some very
unique specimens of religio-amatory verse.
The life of Radegunda, written by Fortunatus and amplified by the nun
Bandonivia, furnishes many interesting facts about this holy woman. She
took her final resolution to separate from her husband after he had
unjustly put her brother to death. On this she went to St. Medard and
declared her intention of celibacy, and thence to the church of St.
Martin, at Tours, where she made her formal vows. From this she retired
to her villa called Suedas, near Poitiers, which she turned into a
convent. Thither in 569 the Emperor Justinus (Justin II.) sent rich
presents, one being a portion of the true cross. This inspired
Fortunatus with a new song, and he broke out in the _Vexilla Regis_,
which is surely one of the most stirring strains in our hymnology.
The following version expresses literally and without modification the
ideas set forth in the Latin:
“VEXILLA REGIS PRODEUNT.”
The royal banners forward fly;
The cross upon them cheers the sky;
That cross whereon our Maker hung,
In human form, by anguish wrung.
For he was wounded bitterly
By that dread spear-thrust on the tree,
And there, to set us free from guilt,
His very life in blood he spilt.
Accomplished now is what was told
By David in his psalm of old,
Who saith,[5] “The heathen world shall see
God as their King upon the tree.”
O tree, renowned and shining high,
Thy crimson is a royal dye!
Elect from such a worthy root
To bear those holy limbs, thy fruit.
Blessèd upon whose branches then
Hung the great gift of God to men;
Whose price, of human life and breath,
Redeemed us from the thrall of death.
Thy bark exhales a perfume sweet
With which no nectar may compete;
And, joyful in thine ample fruit,
A noble triumph crowns thy root.
Hail, altar! and thou, Victim, hail!
Thy glorious passion shall not fail;
Whereby our life no death might lack,
And life from death be rendered back.
O Cross, our only hope, all hail!
In this the time when woes assail,
To all the pious grant thy grace,
And all the sinners’ sins efface!
At this time Fortunatus also composed a long poem of thanks to Justin
and Sophia for gifts sent to himself, by which it would appear that he
was tolerably well identified with the interests of Radegunda and her
convent.
From this date onward his friendship with Agnes and Radegunda exposed
both him and them to very considerable comment. He even refers to it in
one of his poems, addressed to the abbess, in which he protests the
purity of his conduct. But it is not hard to see how his expressions
might be misunderstood. They are frequently fervid beyond the courtesies
of compliment, and they remind us all the while of those singers of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries who begin with William, Count of this
very city of Poitiers (1071-1127), and who have made the name of
“troubadour” synonymous with the praise of love and beauty. Fortunatus
calls on Christ, and Peter, and Paul, and Mary to witness the entire
propriety of his love for Agnes and Radegunda, but he follows it with
lines which Bertrand de Born or Alain Chartier might have composed.
Really there is a great deal of this exuberant poetry in the worthy
chaplain. He wrote every sort of odd acrostic on the holy cross,
reminding us in more ways than one of Damasus, or of the later cavalier
poets of England. He tells Radegunda, who seems his principal star, that
everything is alike when he does not see her; that although the sky is
cloudless, yet, if she is absent, “the day stands without a sun.” He
excuses himself in other verses for sending her violets instead of
lilies and roses. Any incident in which Radegunda plays a part is enough
to turn the poetic stream upon the mill-wheel of his verse. If there are
flowers on the altar; if there are flowers sent by her to himself; if
she has retired from the world to perform her vows; if she has returned
again to the public gaze, and especially if he has been at a little
dinner or has received some agreeable little dishes—then the bard
strings his harp!
It is quite amusing to read some of these effusions. He advises
Radegunda, as Paul did Timothy, to drink wine on occasion. And when the
queen and the abbess conspire to make his life pleasant he has plenty of
metrical gratitude to offer. They send him butter (_butyr_) in a lordly
dish; they furnish chestnuts in baskets woven by their own hands; they
provide milk, and prunelles, and olives, and eggs. For all these he
renders thanks in kind. Never were eggs and butter sung in a loftier
strain! But sometimes the poet descends a trifle from his elevated
phrases. He says pathetically in one of these effusions that they sent
him “various delicacies for his full stomach” (_tumido ventre_), and
that he got asleep after it and failed to furnish the appropriate
verses. He laments this in proper metre, declaring that he had opened
his mouth and shut his eyes (the old gormandizer!) and had eaten on,
regardless of his duty. And for this he craves forgiveness from his
_beata domnia_ [it ought to be _domina_] _filia_—his blessed
queen-daughter. But be good enough to observe that his own gifts in
return are very small, and that he is always apologizing and hoping that
they may not be rejected. Truly this was such a man as Sir Walter Scott
has sung, for
“The best of good cheer and the seat by the fire
Was the undenied right of the barefooted friar.”
Only it may be safely questioned whether our Fortunatus was any more of
an ascetic than Damasus himself. One almost wishes for an historical
picture—and it should be a good theme, by the way—in which Fortunatus
and his two friends appear. It should be that celebrated feast which he
describes [J. P. Migne: _Patrologia_; _Opera Fortunati_, Lib. xi., cap.
ii.], where Agnes had adorned the tables and the apartment with “every
species of blossoming plant;” where the rich wines, and the generous
fare, and the crystal, and the gold, and the flowers should brighten the
fine hall of the chateau; and where, perhaps, the ecclesiastic should
take his small harp and strike its strings with a delicate hand, while
the fair face of Agnes and the darker beauty of Radegunda should inspire
his song.
One traces to this mellow undercurrent of human life the swing of his
best lyrics—the _Pange lingua gloriosi praelium certaminis_ and those
hymns to the Virgin of which he was the earliest promoter. No ene can
doubt the influence of these women upon the _Ave maris stella_ or the
_Quem terra pontus aethera_. Say what we please about his piety, he has
written what will live with the best. And to compare him to the
melancholy Cowper, as Mrs. Charles has done, can only be characterized
as a most amusing misconception.
We know nothing of him as bishop further than the fact that the office
became vacant in 599, and he was an available as well as distinguished
candidate. Surviving Radegunda, who passed away in 587, he died about
609, full of years and honors—the last of the classics and the first of
the troubadours; the connecting link between Prudentius and the Middle
Ages; the biographer of some of the saints and the interested collector
of many legends of their miracles; and, finally, the first of Christian
poets to begin that worship of the Virgin Mary which rose to a passion
and sank to an idolatry. Venantius Fortunatus was neither a bad man nor,
in the highest sense, a holy man. But he was a poet in spite of his
barbaric Latin, and a writer of hymns which live to-day, long after the
particulars of his career are forgotten.