some relief from punishment, or every Christian country would have
been overwhelmed with the blackness of despair. Men could not
live, if they felt they could not expiate their sins. Who could
smile or joke or eat or sleep or have any pleasure, if he thought
seriously there would be no cessation or release from endless
pains? Who could discharge his ordinary duties or perform his
daily occupations, if his father or his mother or his sister or his
brother or his wife or his son or his daughter might not be finally
forgiven for the frailties of an imperfect nature which he had
inherited? The Catholic Church, in its benignity,--at what time I
do not know,--opened the future of hope amid the speculations of
despair. She saved the Middle Ages from universal gloom. If
speculation or logic or tradition or scripture pointed to a hell of
reprobation, there must be also a purgatory as the field of
expiation, for expiation there must be for sin, somewhere, somehow,
according to immutable laws, unless a mantle of universal
forgiveness were spread over sinners who in this life had given no
sufficient proofs of repentance and faith. Expiation was the great
element of Mediaeval theology. It may have been borrowed from
India, but it was engrafted on the Christian system. Sometimes it
was made to take place in this life; when the sinner, having
pleased God, entered at once upon heavenly beatitudes. Hence
fastings, scourgings, self-laceration, ascetic rigors in dress and
food, pilgrimages,--all to purchase forgiveness; which idea of
forgiveness was scattered to the winds by Luther, and replaced by
grace,--faith in Christ attested by a righteous life. I allude to
this notion of purgatory, which early entered into the creeds of
theologians, and which was adopted by the Catholic Church, to show
how powerful it was when human consciousness sought a relief from
the pains of endless physical torments.
After Dante had written his Purgatorio, he retired to the
picturesque mountains which separate Tuscany from Modena and
Bologna; and in the hospitium of an ancient monastery, "on the
woody summit of a rock from which he might gaze on his ungrateful
country, he renewed his studies in philosophy and theology."
There, too, in that calm retreat, he commenced his Paradiso, the
subject of profound meditations on what was held in highest value
in the Middle Ages. The themes are theological and metaphysical.
They are such as interested Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura, Anselm
and Bernard. They are such as do not interest this age,--even the
most gifted minds,--for our times are comparatively indifferent to
metaphysical subtleties and speculations. Beatrice and Peter and
Benedict alike discourse on the recondite subjects of the Bible in
the style of Mediaeval doctors. The themes are great,--the
incarnation, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the
body, salvation by faith, the triumph of Christ, the glory of
Paradise, the mysteries of the divine and human natures; and with
these disquisitions are reproofs of bad popes, and even of some of
the bad customs of the Church, like indulgences, and the
corruptions of the monastic system. The Paradiso is a thesaurus of
Mediaeval theology,--obscure, but lofty, mixed up with all the
learning of the age, even of the lives of saints and heroes and
kings and prophets. Saint Peter examines Dante upon faith, James
upon hope, and John upon charity. Virgil here has ceased to be his
guide; but Beatrice, robed in celestial loveliness, conducts him
from circle to circle, and explains the sublimest doctrines and
resolves his mortal doubts,--the object still of his adoration, and
inferior only to the mother of our Lord, regina angelorum, mater
carissima, whom the Church even then devoutly worshipped, and to
whom the greatest sages prayed.
"Thou virgin mother, daughter of thy Son,
Humble and high beyond all other creatures,
The limit fixed of the eternal counsel,--
Thou art the one who such nobility
To human nature gave, that its Creator
Did not disdain to make himself its creature.
Not only thy benignity gives succor
To him who asketh it, but oftentimes
Forerunneth of its own accord the asking.
In thee compassion is; in thee is pity
In thee magnificence; in thee unites
Whate'er of goodness is in any creature."
In the glorious meditation of those grand subjects which had such a
charm for Benedict and Bernard, and which almost offset the
barbarism and misery of the Middle Ages,--to many still regarded as
"ages of faith,"--Dante seemingly forgets his wrongs; and in the
company of her whom he adores he seems to revel in the solemn
ecstasy of a soul transported to the realms of eternal light. He
lives now with the angels and the mysteries,--
"Like to the fire
That in a cloud imprisoned doth break out expansive.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Thus, in that heavenly banqueting his soul
Outgrew himself, and, in the transport lost,
Holds no remembrance now of what she was."
The Paradise of Dante is not gloomy, although it be obscure and
indefinite. It is the unexplored world of thought and knowledge,
the explanation of dogmas which his age accepted. It is a
revelation of glories such as only a lofty soul could conceive, but
could not paint,--a supernal happiness given only to favored
mortals, to saints and martyrs who have triumphed over the
seductions of sense and the temptations of life,--a beatified state
of blended ecstasy and love.
"Had I a tongue in eloquence as rich as is the coloring in fancy's loom,
'Twere all too poor to utter the least part of that enchantment."
Such is this great poem; in all its parts and exposition of the
ideas of the age,--sometimes fierce and sometimes tender, profound
and infantine, lofty and degraded, like the Church itself, which
conserved these sentiments. It is an intensely religious poem, and
yet more theological than Christian, and full of classical
allusions to pagan heroes and sages,--a most remarkable production
considering the age, and, when we remember that it is without a
prototype in any language, a glorious monument of reviving
literature, both original and powerful.
Its appearance was of course an epoch, calling out the admiration
of Italians, and of all who could understand it,--of all who
appreciated its moral wisdom in every other country of Europe. And
its fame has been steadily increasing, although I fear much of the
popular enthusiasm is exaggerated and unfelt. One who can read
Italian well may see its "fiery emphasis and depth," its condensed
thought and language, its supernal scorn and supernal love, its
bitterness and its forgiveness; but few modern readers accept its
theology or its philosophy, or care at all for the men whose crimes
he punishes, and whose virtues he rewards.
But there is great interest in the man, as well as in the poem
which he made the mirror of his life, and the register of his
sorrows and of those speculations in which he sought to banish the
remembrance of his misfortunes. His life, like his poem, is an
epic. We sympathize with his resentments, "which exile and poverty
made perpetually fresh." "The sincerity of his early passion for
Beatrice," says Hallam, "pierces through the veil of allegory which
surrounds her, while the memory of his injuries pursues him into
the immensity of eternal light; and even in the company of saints
and angels his unforgiving spirit darkens at the name of Florence. . . .
He combines the profoundest feelings of religion with those
patriotic recollections which were suggested by the reappearance of
the illustrious dead."
Next to Michael Angelo he was the best of all famous Italians,
stained by no marked defects but bitterness, pride, and scorn;
while his piety, his patriotism, and elevation of soul stand out in
marked contrast with the selfishness and venality and hypocrisy and
cruelty of the leading men in the history of his times. "He wrote
with his heart's blood;" he wrote in poverty, exile, grief, and
neglect; he wrote like an inspired prophet of old. He seems to
have been specially raised up to exalt virtue, and vindicate the
ways of God to man, and prepare the way for a new civilization. He
breathes angry defiance to all tyrants; he consigns even popes to
the torments he created. He ridicules fools; he exposes knaves.
He detests oppression; he is a prophet of liberty. He sees into
all shams and all hypocrisies, and denounces lies. He is temperate
in eating and drinking; he has no vices. He believes in
friendship, in love, in truth. He labors for the good of his
countrymen. He is affectionate to those who comprehend him. He
accepts hospitalities, but will not stoop to meanness or injustice.
He will not return to his native city, which he loves so well, even
when permitted, if obliged to submit to humiliating ceremonies. He
even refuses a laurel crown from any city but from the one in which
he was born. No honors could tempt him to be untrue unto himself;
no tasks are too humble to perform, if he can make himself useful.
At Ravenna he gives lectures to the people in their own language,
regarding the restoration of the Latin impossible, and wishing to
bring into estimation the richness of the vernacular tongue. And
when his work is done he dies, before he becomes old (1321), having
fulfilled his vow. His last retreat was at Ravenna, and his last
days were soothed with gentle attentions from Guido da Polenta,
that kind duke who revived his fainting hopes. It was in his
service, as ambassador to Venice, that Dante sickened and died. A
funeral sermon was pronounced upon him by his friend the duke, and
beautiful monuments were erected to his memory. Too late the
Florentines begged for his remains, and did justice to the man and
the poet; as well they might, since his is the proudest name
connected with their annals. He is indeed one of the great
benefactors of the world itself, for the richness of his immortal
legacy.
Could the proscribed and exiled poet, as he wandered, isolated and
alone, over the vine-clad hills of Italy, and as he stopped here
and there at some friendly monastery, wearied and hungry, have cast
his prophetic eye down the vistas of the ages; could he have seen
what honors would be bestowed upon his name, and how his poem,
written in sorrow, would be scattered in joy among all nations,
giving a new direction to human thought, shining as a fixed star in
the realms of genius, and kindling into shining brightness what is
only a reflection of its rays; yea, how it would be committed to
memory in the rising universities, and be commented on by the most
learned expositors in all the schools of Europe, lauded to the
skies by his countrymen, received by the whole world as a unique,
original, unapproachable production, suggesting grand thoughts to
Milton, reappearing even in the creations of Michael Angelo,
coloring art itself whenever art seeks the sublime and beautiful,
inspiring all subsequent literature, dignifying the life of
letters, and gilding philosophy as well as poetry with new
glories,--could he have seen all this, how his exultant soul would
have rejoiced, even as did Abraham, when, amid the ashes of the
funeral pyre he had prepared for Isaac, he saw the future glories
of his descendants; or as Bacon, when, amid calumnies, he foresaw
that his name and memory would be held in honor by posterity, and
that his method would be received by all future philosophers as one
of the priceless boons of genius to mankind!
AUTHORITIES.
Vita Nuova; Divina Commedia,--Translations by Carey and Longfellow;
Boccaccio's Life of Dante; Wright's St. Patrick's Purgatory; Dante
et la Philosophie Catholique du Treizieme Siecle, par Ozinan;
Labitte, La Divine Comedie avant Dante; Balbo's Life and Times of
Dante; Hallam's Middle Ages; Napier's Florentine History; Villani;
Leigh Hunt's Stories from the Italian Poets; Botta's Life of Dante;
J. R. Lowell's article on Dante in American Cyclopaedia; Milman's
Latin Christianity; Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-worship; Macaulay's
Essays; The Divina Commedia from the German of Schelling;
Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique; La Divine Comedie, by
Lamennais; Dante, by Labitte.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
A.D. 1340-1400.
ENGLISH LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
The age which produced Chaucer was a transition period from the
Middle Ages to modern times, midway between Dante and Michael
Angelo. Chaucer was the contemporary of Wyclif, with whom the
Middle Ages may appropriately be said to close, or modern history
to begin.
The fourteenth century is interesting for the awakening, especially
in Italy, of literature and art; for the wars between the French
and English, and the English and the Scots; for the rivalry between
the Italian republics; for the efforts of Rienzi to establish
popular freedom at Rome; for the insurrection of the Flemish
weavers, under the Van Arteveldes, against their feudal oppressors;
for the terrible "Jacquerie" in Paris; for the insurrection of Wat
Tyler in England; for the Swiss confederation; for a schism in the
Church when the popes retired to Avignon; for the aggrandizement of
the Visconti at Milan and the Medici at Florence; for incipient
religious reforms under Wyclif in England and John Huss in Bohemia;
for the foundation of new colleges at Oxford and Cambridge; for the
establishment of guilds in London; for the exploration of distant
countries; for the dreadful pestilence which swept over Europe,
known in England as the Black Death; for the development of modern
languages by the poets; and for the rise of the English House of
Commons as a great constitutional power.
In most of these movements we see especially a simultaneous rising
among the people, in the more civilized countries of Europe, to
obtain charters of freedom and municipal and political privileges,
extorted from monarchs in their necessities. The fourteenth
century was marked by protests and warfare equally against feudal
institutions and royal tyranny. The way was prepared by the wars
of kings, which crippled their resources, as the Crusades had done
a century before. The supreme miseries of the people led them to
political revolts and insurrections,--blind but fierce movements,
not inspired by ideas of liberty, but by a sense of oppression and
degradation. Accompanying these popular insurrections were
religions protests against the corrupted institutions of the
Church.
In the midst of these popular agitations, aggressive and needless
wars, public miseries and calamities, baronial aggrandizement,
religious inquiries, parliamentary encroachment, and reviving taste
for literature and art, Chaucer arose.
His remarkable career extended over the last half of the fourteenth
century, when public events were of considerable historical
importance. It was then that parliamentary history became
interesting. Until then the barons, clergy, knights of the shire,
and burgesses of the town, summoned to assist the royal councils,
deliberated in separate chambers or halls; but in the reign of
Edward III. the representatives of the knights of the shires and
the burgesses united their interests and formed a body strong
enough to check royal encroachments, and became known henceforth as
the House of Commons. In thirty years this body had wrested from
the Crown the power of arbitrary taxation, had forced upon it new
ministers, and had established the principle that the redress of
grievances preceded grants of supply. Edward III. was compelled to
grant twenty parliamentary confirmations of Magna Charta. At the
close of his reign, it was conceded that taxes could be raised only
by consent of the Commons; and they had sufficient power, also, to
prevent the collection of the tax which the Pope had levied on the
country since the time of John, called Peter's Pence. The latter
part of the fourteenth century must not be regarded as an era of
the triumph of popular rights, but as the period when these rights
began to be asserted. Long and dreary was the march of the people
to complete political enfranchisement from the rebellion under Wat
Tyler to the passage of the Reform Bill in our times. But the
Commons made a memorable stand against Edward III. when he was the
most powerful sovereign of western Europe, one which would have
been impossible had not this able and ambitious sovereign been
embroiled in desperate war both with the Scotch and French.
With the assertion of political rights we notice the beginning of
commercial enterprise and manufacturing industry. A colony of
Flemish weavers was established in England by the enlightened king,
although wool continued to be exported. It was not until the time
of Elizabeth that the raw material was consumed at home.
Still, the condition of the common people was dreary enough at this
time, when compared with what it is in our age. They perhaps were
better fed on the necessities of life than they are now. All meats
were comparatively cheaper; but they had no luxuries, not even
wheaten bread. Their houses were small and dingy, and a single
chamber sufficed for a whole family, both male and female. Neither
glass windows nor chimneys were then in use, nor knives nor forks,
nor tea nor coffee; not even potatoes, still less tropical fruits.
The people had neither bed-clothes, nor carpets, nor glass nor
crockery ware, nor cotton dresses, nor books, nor schools. They
were robbed by feudal masters, and cheated and imposed upon by
friars and pedlers; but a grim cheerfulness shone above their
discomforts and miseries, and crime was uncommon and severely
punished. They amused themselves with rough sports, and cherished
religious sentiments. They were brave and patriotic.
It was to describe the habits and customs of these people, as well
as those of the classes above them, to give dignity to consecrated
sentiments and to shape the English language, that Chaucer was
raised up.
He was born, it is generally supposed, in the year 1340; but
nothing is definitely known of him till 1357, when Edward III. had
been reigning about thirty years. It is surmised that his father
was a respectable citizen of London; that he was educated at
Cambridge and Oxford; that he went to Paris to complete his
education in the most famous university in the world; that he then
extensively travelled in France, Holland, and Flanders, after which
he became a student of law in the Inner Temple. Even then he was
known as a poet, and his learning and accomplishments attracted the
attention of Edward III., who was a patron of genius, and who gave
him a house in Woodstock, near the royal palace. At this time
Chaucer was a handsome, witty, modest, dignified man of letters, in
easy circumstances, moving in the higher ranks of society, and
already known for his "Troilus and Cresseide," which was then
doubtless the best poem in the language.
It was then that the intimacy began between him and John of Gaunt,
a youth of eighteen, then Earl of Richmond, fourth son of Edward
III., afterwards known as the great Duke of Lancaster,--the most
powerful nobleman that ever lived in England, also the richest,
possessing large estates in eighteen counties, as well as six
earldoms. This friendship between the poet and the first prince of
the blood, after the Prince of Wales, seems to have arisen from the
admiration of John of Gaunt for the genius and accomplishments of
Chaucer, who was about ten years the elder. It was not until the
prince became the Duke of Lancaster that he was the friend and
protector of Wyclif,--and from different reasons, seeing that the
Oxford scholar and theologian could be of use to him in his warfare
against the clergy, who were hostile to his ambitious designs.
Chaucer he loved as a bright and witty companion; Wyclif he honored
as the most learned churchman of the age.
The next authentic event in Chaucer's life occurred in 1359, when
he accompanied the king to France in that fruitless expedition
which was soon followed by the peace of Bretigny. In this
unfortunate campaign Chaucer was taken prisoner, but was ransomed
by his sovereign for 16 pounds,--about equal to 300 pounds in these
times. He had probably before this been installed at court as a
gentleman of the bedchamber, on a stipend which would now be equal
to 250 pounds a year. He seems to have been a favorite with the
court, after he had written his first great poem. It is singular
that in a rude and ignorant age poets should have received much
greater honor than in our enlightened times. Gower was patronized
by the Duke of Gloucester, as Chaucer was by the Duke of Lancaster,
and Petrarch and Boccaccio were in Italy by princes and nobles.
Even learning was held in more reverence in the fourteenth century
than it is in the nineteenth. The scholastic doctor was one of the
great dignitaries of the age, as well as of the schools, and ranked
with bishops and abbots. Wyclif at one time was the most
influential man in the English Church, sitting in Parliament, and
sent by the king on important diplomatic missions. So Chaucer,
with less claim, received valuable offices and land-grants, which
made him a wealthy man; and he was also sent on important missions
in the company of nobles. He lived at the court. His son Thomas
married one of the richest heiresses in the kingdom, and became
speaker of the House of Commons; while his daughter Alice married
the Duke of Suffolk, whose grandson was declared by Richard III. to
be his heir, and came near becoming King of England. Chaucer's
wife's sister married the Duke of Lancaster himself; so he was
allied with the royal family, if not by blood, at least by
ambitious marriage connections.
I know of no poet in the history of England who occupied so high a
social position as did Chaucer, or who received so many honors.
The poet of the people was the companion of kings and princes. At
one time he had a reverse of fortune, when his friend and patron,
the Duke of Lancaster, was in disgrace and in voluntary banishment
during the minority of Richard II., against whom he had intrigued,
and who afterwards was dethroned by Henry IV., a son of the Duke of
Lancaster. While the Duke of Gloucester was in power, Chaucer was
deprived of his offices and revenues for two or three years, and
was even imprisoned in the Tower; but when Lancaster returned from
the Continent, his offices and revenues were restored. His latter
days were luxurious and honored. At fifty-one he gave up his
public duties as a collector of customs, chiefly on wool, and
retired to Woodstock and spent the remainder of his fortunate life
in dignified leisure and literary labors. In addition to his
revenues, the Duke of Lancaster, who was virtually the ruler of the
land during the reign of Richard II., gave him the castle of
Donnington, with its park and gardens; so that he became a man of
territorial influence. At the age of fifty-eight he removed to
London, and took a house in the precincts of Westminster Abbey,
where the chapel of Henry VII. now stands. He died the following
year, and was buried in the Abbey church,--that sepulchre of
princes and bishops and abbots. His body was deposited in the
place now known as the Poets' Corner, and a fitting monument to his
genius was erected over his remains, as the first great poet that
had appeared in England, probably only surpassed in genius by
Shakspeare, until the language assumed its present form. He was
regarded as a moral phenomenon, whom kings and princes delighted to
honor. As Leonardo da Vinci died in the arms of Francis I., so
Chaucer rested in his grave near the bodies of those sovereigns and
princes with whom he lived in intimacy and friendship. It was the
rarity of his gifts, his great attainments, elegant manners, and
refined tastes which made him the companion of the great, since at
that time only princes and nobles and ecclesiastical dignitaries
could appreciate his genius or enjoy his writings.
Although Chaucer had written several poems which were admired in
his day, and made translations from the French, among which was the
"Roman de la Rose," the most popular poem of the Middle Ages,--a
poem which represented the difficulties attendant on the passion of
love, under the emblem of a rose which had to be plucked amid
thorns,--yet his best works were written in the leisure of
declining years.