PRESERVATION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE MIMUS AFTER THE FALL OF
THE EMPIRE.--THE MINSTREL AND JOGELOUR.--HISTORY OF POPULAR
STORIES.--THE FABLIAUX.--ACCOUNT OF THEM.--THE CONTES DEVOTS.
I have already remarked that, upon the fall of the Roman empire, the
popular institutions of the Romans were more generally preserved to
the middle ages than those of a higher and more refined character.
This is understood without difficulty, when we consider that the lower
class of the population--in the towns, what we might perhaps call the
lower and middle classes--continued to exist much the same as before,
while the barbarian conquerors came in and took the place of the ruling
classes. The drama, which had never much hold upon the love of the
Roman populace, was lost, and the theatres and the amphitheatres, which
had been supported only by the wealth of the imperial court and of
the ruling class, were abandoned and fell into ruin; but the _mimus_,
who furnished mirth to the people, continued to exist, and probably
underwent no immediate change in his character. It will be well to
state again the chief characteristics of the ancient _mimus_, before we
proceed to describe his mediæval representative.
The grand aim of the _mimus_ was to make people laugh, and he employed
generally every means he knew of for effecting this purpose, by
language, by gestures or motions of the body, or by dress. Thus he
carried, strapped over his loins, a wooden sword, which was called
_gladius histricus_ and _clunaculum_, and wore sometimes a garment
made of a great number of small pieces of cloth of different colours,
which was hence called _centunculus_, or the hundred-patched dress.[35]
These two characteristics have been preserved in the modern harlequin.
Other peculiarities of costume may conveniently be left undescribed;
the female mimæ sometimes exhibited themselves unrestricted by dress.
They danced and sung; repeated jokes and told merry stories; recited
or acted farces and scandalous anecdotes; performed what we now call
mimicry, a word derived from the name of mimus; and they put themselves
in strange postures, and made frightful faces. They sometimes acted
the part of a fool or zany (_morio_), or of a madman. They added to
these performances that of the conjurer or juggler (_præstigiator_),
and played tricks of sleight of hand. The mimi performed in the streets
and public places, or in the theatres, and especially at festivals, and
they were often employed at private parties, to entertain the guests at
a supper.
[35] "Uti me consuesse tragœdi syrmate, histrionis crotalone ad
trieterica orgia, aut mimi centunculo."--Apuleius, Apolog.
We trace the existence of this class of performers during the earlier
period of the middle ages by the expressions of hostility towards
them used from time to time by the ecclesiastical writers, and the
denunciations of synods and councils, which have been quoted in a
former chapter.[36] Nevertheless, it is evident from many allusions
to them, that they found their way into the monastic houses, and were
in great favour not only among the monks, but among the nuns also;
that they were introduced into the religious festivals; and that they
were tolerated even in the churches. It is probable that they long
continued to be known in Italy and the countries near the centre
of Roman influence, and where the Latin language was continued, by
their old name of _mimus_. The writers of the mediæval vocabularies
appear all to have been much better acquainted with the meaning of
this word than of most of the Latin words of the same class, and they
evidently had a class of performers existing in their own times to whom
they considered that the name applied. The Anglo-Saxon vocabularies
interpret the Latin _mimus_ by _glig-mon_, a gleeman. In Anglo-Saxon,
_glig_ or _gliu_ meant mirth and game of every description, and as the
Anglo-Saxon teachers who compiled the vocabularies give, as synonyms
of _mimus_, the words _scurra_, _jocista_, and _pantomimus_, it is
evident that all these were included in the character of the gleeman,
and that the latter was quite identical with his Roman type. It was
the Roman _mimus_ introduced into Saxon England. We have no traces of
the existence of such a class of performers among the Teutonic race
before they became acquainted with the civilisation of imperial Rome.
We know from drawings in contemporary illuminated manuscripts that the
performances of the gleeman did include music, singing, and dancing,
and also the tricks of mountebanks and jugglers, such as throwing up
and catching knives and balls, and performing with tamed bears, &c.[37]
[36] See before, p. 41 of the present volume.
[37] See examples of these illuminations in my "History of Domestic
Manners and Sentiments," pp. 34, 35, 37, 65.
But even among the peoples who preserved the Latin language, the word
_mimus_ was gradually exchanged for others employed to signify the
same thing. The word _jocus_ had been used in the signification of a
jest, playfulness, _jocari_ signified to jest, and _joculator_ was a
word for a jester; but, in the debasement of the language, _jocus_
was taken in the signification of everything which created mirth. It
became, in the course of time the French word _jeu_, and the Italian
_gioco_, or _giuoco_. People introduced a form of the verb, _jocare_,
which became the French _juer_, to play or perform. _Joculator_ was
then used in the sense of _mimus_. In French the word became _jogléor_,
or _jougléor_, and in its later form _jougleur_. I may remark that, in
mediæval manuscripts, it is almost impossible to distinguish between
the _u_ and the _n_, and that modern writers have misread this last
word as _jongleur_, and thus introduced into the language a word which
never existed, and which ought to be abandoned. In old English, as we
see in Chaucer, the usual form was _jogelere_. The mediæval joculator,
or jougleur, embraced all the attributes of the Roman _mimus_,[38] and
perhaps more. In the first place he was very often a poet himself, and
composed the pieces which it was one of his duties to sing or recite.
These were chiefly songs, or stories, the latter usually told in verse,
and so many of them are preserved in manuscripts that they form a very
numerous and important class of mediæval literature. The songs were
commonly satirical and abusive, and they were made use of for purposes
of general or personal vituperation. Out of them, indeed, grew the
political songs of a later period. There were female jougleurs, and
both sexes danced, and, to create mirth among those who encouraged
them, they practised a variety of performances, such as mimicking
people, making wry and ugly faces, distorting their bodies into strange
postures, often exposing their persons in a very unbecoming manner, and
performing many vulgar and indecent acts, which it is not necessary to
describe more particularly. They carried about with them for exhibition
tame bears, monkeys, and other animals, taught to perform the actions
of men. As early as the thirteenth century, we find them including
among their other accomplishments that of dancing upon the tight-rope.
Finally, the jougleurs performed tricks of sleight of hand, and were
often conjurers and magicians. As, in modern times, the jougleurs of
the middle ages gradually passed away, sleight of hand appears to have
become their principal accomplishment, and the name only was left in
the modern word _juggler_. The jougleurs of the middle ages, like
the mimi of antiquity, wandered about from place to place, and often
from country to country, sometimes singly and at others in companies,
exhibited their performances in the roads and streets, repaired to all
great festivals, and were employed especially in the baronial hall,
where, by their songs, stories, and other performances, they created
mirth after dinner.
[38] People in the middle ages were so fully conscious of the identity
of the mediæval jougleur with the Roman mimus, that the Latin writers
often use mimus to signify a jougleur, and the one is interpreted by
the others in the vocabularies. Thus, in Latin-English vocabularies of
the fifteenth century, we have--
_Hic joculator_, }
} _Anglice_ jogulour.
_Hic mimus_, }
This class of society had become known by another name, the origin of
which is not so easily explained. The primary meaning of the Latin word
_minister_ was a servant, one who ministers to another, either in his
wants or in his pleasures and amusements. It was applied particularly
to the cup-bearer. In low Latinity, a diminutive of this word was
formed, _minestellus_, or _ministrellus_, a petty servant, or minister.
When we first meet with this word, which is not at a very early date,
it is used as perfectly synonymous with _joculator_, and, as the
word is certainly of Latin derivation, it is clear that it was from
it the middle ages derived the French word _menestrel_ (the modern
_ménétrier_), and the English _minstrel_. The mimi or jougleurs were
perhaps considered as the petty ministers to the amusements of their
lord, or of him who for the time employed them. Until the close of the
middle ages, the minstrel and the jougleur were absolutely identical.
Possibly the former may have been considered the more courtly of the
two names. But in England, as the middle ages disappeared, and lost
their influence on society sooner than in France, the word minstrel
remained attached only to the musical part of the functions of the old
mimus, while, as just observed, the juggler took the sleight of hand
and the mountebank tricks. In modern French, except where employed
technically by the antiquary, the word _ménétrier_ means a fiddler.
The jougleurs, or minstrels, formed a very numerous and important,
though a low and despised, class of mediæval society. The dulness of
every-day life in a feudal castle or mansion required something more
than ordinary excitement in the way of amusement, and the old family
bard, who continually repeated to the Teutonic chief the praises of
himself and his ancestors, was soon felt to be a wearisome companion.
The mediæval knights and their ladies wanted to laugh, and to make
them laugh sufficiently it required that the jokes, or tales, or comic
performances, should be broad, coarse, and racy, with a good spicing of
violence and of the wonderful. Hence the jougleur was always welcome
to the feudal mansion, and he seldom went away dissatisfied. But the
subject of the present chapter is rather the literature of the jougleur
than his personal history, and, having traced his origin to the Roman
mimus, we will now proceed to one class of his performances.
It has been stated that the mimus and the jougleurs told stories.
Of those of the former, unfortunately, none are preserved, except,
perhaps, in a few anecdotes scattered in the pages of such writers as
Apuleius and Lucian, and we are obliged to guess at their character,
but of the stories of the jougleurs a considerable number has been
preserved. It becomes an interesting question how far these stories
have been derived from the mimi, handed down traditionally from mimus
to jougleur, how far they are native in our race, or how far they were
derived at a later date from other sources. And in considering this
question, we must not forget that the mediæval jougleurs were not the
only representatives of the mimi, for among the Arabs of the East also
there had originated from them, modified under different circumstances,
a very important class of minstrels and story-tellers, and with these
the jougleurs of the west were brought into communication at the
commencement of the crusades. There can be no doubt that a very large
number of the stories of the jougleurs were borrowed from the East, for
the evidence is furnished by the stories themselves; and there can be
little doubt also that the jougleurs improved themselves, and underwent
some modification, by their intercourse with Eastern performers of the
same class.
On the other hand, we have traces of the existence of these popular
stories before the jougleurs can have had communication with the East.
Thus, as already mentioned, we find, composed in Germany, apparently
in the tenth century, in rhythmical Latin, the well-known story of the
wife of a merchant who bore a child during the long absence of her
husband, and who excused herself by stating that her pregnancy had been
the result of swallowing a flake of snow in a snow-storm. This, and
another of the same kind, were evidently intended to be sung. Another
poem in popular Latin verse, which Grimm and Schmeller, who edited
it,[39] believe may be of the eleventh century, relates a very amusing
story of an adventurer named Unibos, who, continually caught in his own
snares, finishes by getting the better of all his enemies, and becoming
rich, by mere ingenious cunning and good fortune. This story is not
met with among those of the jougleurs, as far as they are yet known,
but, curiously enough, Lover found it existing orally among the Irish
peasantry, and inserted the Irish story among his "Legends of Ireland."
It is a curious illustration of the pertinacity with which the popular
stories descend along with peoples through generations from the
remotest ages of antiquity. The same story is found in an oriental form
among the tales of the Tartars published in French by Guenlette.
[39] In a volume entitled "Lateinische Gedichte des x. und xi. Jh."
8vo. Göttingen, 1838.
The people of the middle ages, who took their word _fable_ from the
Latin _fabula_, which they appear to have understood as a mere term for
any short narration, included under it the stories told by the mimi and
jougleurs; but, in the fondness of the middle ages for diminutives, by
which they intended to express familiarity and attachment, applied to
them more particularly the Latin _fabella_, which in the old French
became _fablel_, or, more usually, _fabliau_. The fabliaux of the
jougleurs form a most important class of the comic literature of the
middle ages. They must have been wonderfully numerous, for a very large
quantity of them still remain, and these are only the small portion of
what once existed, which have escaped perishing like the others by the
accident of being written in manuscripts which have had the fortune to
survive; while manuscripts containing others have no doubt perished,
and it is probable that many were only preserved orally, and never
written down at all.[40] The recital of these fabliaux appears to have
been the favourite employment of the jougleurs, and they became so
popular that the mediæval preachers turned them into short stories in
Latin prose, and made use of them as illustrations in their sermons.
Many collections of these short Latin stories are found in manuscripts
which had served as note-books to the preachers,[41] and out of them
was originally compiled that celebrated mediæval book called the "Gesta
Romanorum."
[40] Many of the Fabliaux have been printed, but the two principal
collections, and to which I shall chiefly refer in the text, are
those of Barbazan, re-edited and much enlarged by Méon, 4 vols.
8vo., 1808, and of Méon, 2 vols. 8vo., 1823.
[41] A collection of these short Latin stories was edited by the author
of the present work, in a volume printed for the Percy Society in
1842.
It is to be regretted that the subjects and language of a large portion
of these fabliaux are such as to make it impossible to present them
before modern readers, for they furnish singularly interesting and
minute pictures of mediæval life in all classes of society. Domestic
scenes are among those most frequent, and they represent the interior
of the mediæval household in no favourable point of view. The majority
of these tell loose stories of husbands deceived by their fair spouses,
or of tricks played upon unsuspecting damsels. In some instances the
treatment of the husband is perhaps what may be called of a less
objectionable character, as in the fabliau of La Vilain Mire (the
clown doctor), printed in Barbazan (iii. 1), which was the origin of
Molière's well-known comedy of "Le Médecin malgré lui." A rich peasant
married the daughter of a poor knight; it was of course a marriage of
ambition on his part, and of interest on hers--one of those ill-sorted
matches which, according to feudal sentiments, could never be happy,
and in which the wife was considered as privileged to treat her husband
with all possible contempt. In this instance the lady hit upon an
ingenious mode of punishing her husband for his want of submission to
her ill-treatment. Messengers from the king passed that way, seeking
a skilful doctor to cure the king's daughter of a dangerous malady.
The lady secretly informed these messengers that her husband was a
physician of extraordinary talent, but of an eccentric temper, for he
would never acknowledge or exercise his art until first subjected to
a severe beating. The husband is seized, bound, and carried by force
to the king's court, where, of course, he denies all knowledge of the
healing art, but a severe beating obliges him to compliance, and he is
successful by a combination of impudence and chance. This is only the
beginning of the poor man's miseries. Instead of being allowed to go
home, his fame has become so great that he is retained at court for
the public good, and, with a rapid succession of patients, fearful
of the results of his conscious ignorance, he refuses them all, and
is subjected in every case to the same ill-treatment to force his
compliance. The examples in which the husband, on the other hand,
outwits the wife are few. A fabliau by a poet who gives himself the
name of Cortebarbe, printed also by Barbazan (iii. 398), relates how
three blind beggars were deceived by a clerc, or scholar, of Paris, who
met them on the road near Compiègne. The clerk pretended to give the
three beggars a bezant, which was then a good sum of money, and they
hastened joyfully to the next tavern, where they ordered a plentiful
supper, and feasted to their hearts' content. But, in fact, the clerk
had not given them a bezant at all, although, as he said he did so,
and they could only judge by their hearing, they imagined that they
had the coin, and each thought that it was in the keeping of one of
his companions. Thus, when the time of paying came, and the money
was not forthcoming, in the common belief that one of the three had
received the bezant and intended to keep it and cheat the others, they
quarrelled violently, and from abuse soon came to blows. The landlord,
drawn to the spot by the uproar, and informed of the state of the case,
accused the three blind men of a conspiracy to cheat him, and demanded
payment with great threats. The clerk of Paris, who had followed them
to the inn, and taken his lodging there in order to witness the result,
delivered the blind men by an equally ingenious trick which he plays
upon the landlord and the priest of the parish.
Some of these stories have for their subject tricks played among
thieves. In one printed by Méon (i. 124), we have the story of a rich
but simple villan, or countryman, named Brifaut, who is robbed at
market by a cunning sharper, and severely corrected by his wife for
his carelessness. Robbery, both by force and by sleight of hand and
craft, prevailed to an extraordinary degree during the middle ages. The
plot of the fabliau of Barat and Haimet, by Jean de Boves (Barbazan,
iv. 233), turns upon a trial of skill among three robbers to determine
who shall commit the cleverest act of thievery, and the result is, at
least, an extremely amusing story. It may be mentioned as an example
of the numerous stories which the jougleurs certainly obtained from
the East, that the well-known story of the Hunchback in the "Arabian
Nights" appears among them in two or three different forms.
The social vices of the middle ages, their general licentiousness,
the prevalence of injustice and extortion, are very fully exposed to
view in these compositions, in which no class of society is spared.
The villan, or peasant, is always treated very contemptuously; he
formed the class from which the jougleur received least benefit. But
the aristocracy, the great barons, the lords of the soil, come in for
their full share of satire, and they no doubt enjoyed the ridiculous
pictures of their own order. I will not venture to introduce the reader
to female life in the baronial castle, as it appears in many of these
stories, and as it is no doubt truly painted, although, of course,
in many instances, much exaggerated. We have already seen how in the
story of Reynard, the character of mediæval society was represented
by the long struggle between brute force represented by the wolf, the
emblem of the aristocratic class, and the low astuteness of the fox,
or the unaristocratic class. The success of the craft of the human fox
over the force of his lordly antagonist is often told in the fabliaux
in ludicrous colours. In that of Trubert, printed by Méon (i. 192),
the "duke" of a country, with his wife and family, become repeatedly
the dupes of the gross deceptions of a poor but impudent peasant.
These satires upon the aristocracy were no doubt greatly enjoyed by
the good _bourgeoisie_, who, in their turn, furnished abundance of
stories, of the drollest description, to provoke the mirth of the lords
of the soil, between whom and themselves there was a kind of natural
antipathy. Nor are the clergy spared. The priest is usually described
as living with a concubine--his order forbade marrying--and both are
considered as fair game to the community; while the monk figures more
frequently as the hero of gallant adventures. Both priest and monk are
usually distinguished by their selfishness and love of indulgence. In
the fabliau Du Bouchier d'Abbeville, in Barbazan (iv. 1), a butcher, on
his way home from the fair, seeks a night's lodging at the house of an
inhospitable priest, who refuses it. But when the former returns, and
offers, in exchange for his hospitality, one of his fat sheep which he
has purchased at the fair, and not only to kill it for their supper,
but to give all the meat they do not eat to his host, he is willingly
received into the house, and they make an excellent supper. By the
promise of the skin of the sheep, the guest succeeds in seducing both
the concubine and the maid-servant, and it is only after his departure
the following morning, in the middle of a domestic uproar caused by
the conflicting claims of the priest, the concubine, and the maid, to
the possession of the skin, that it is discovered that the butcher had
stolen the sheep from the priest's own flock.
The fabliaux, as remarked before, form the most important class of the
extensive mass of the popular literature of the middle ages, and the
writers, confident in their strong hold upon public favour, sometimes
turn round and burlesque the literature of other classes, especially
the long heavy monotony of style of the great romances of chivalry and
the extravagant adventures they contained, as though conscious that
they were gradually undermining the popularity of the romance writers.
One of these poems, entitled "De Audigier," and printed in Barbazan
(iv. 217), is a parody on the romance writers and on their style, not
at all wanting in spirit or wit, but the satire is coarse and vulgar.
Another printed in Barbazan (iv. 287), under the title "De Berengier,"
is a satire upon a sort of knight-errantry which had found its way
into mediæval chivalry. Berengier was a knight of Lombardy, much given
to boasting, who had a beautiful lady for his wife. He used to leave
her alone in his castle, under pretext of sallying forth in search
of chivalrous adventures, and, after a while, having well hacked his
sword and shield, he returned to vaunt the desperate exploits he had
performed. But the lady was shrewd as well as handsome, and, having
some suspicions of his truthfulness as well as of his courage, she
determined to make trial of both. One morning, when her husband rode
forth as usual, she hastily disguised herself in a suit of armour,
mounted a good steed, and hurrying round by a different way, met the
boastful knight in the middle of a wood, where he no sooner saw that he
had to encounter a real assailant, than he displayed the most abject
cowardice, and his opponent exacted from him an ignominious condition
as the price of his escape. On his return home at night, boasting as
usual of his success, he found his lady taking her revenge upon him in
a still less respectful manner, but he was silenced by her ridicule.
The _trouvères_, or poets, who wrote the fabliaux--I need hardly
remark that _trouvère_ is the same word as _trobador_, but in the
northern dialect of the French language--appear to have flourished
chiefly from the close of the twelfth century to the earlier part of
the fourteenth. They all composed in French, which was a language then
common to England and France, but some of their compositions bear
internal evidence of having been composed in England, and others are
found in contemporary manuscripts written in this island. The scene of
a fabliau, printed by Méon (i. 113), is laid at Colchester; and that
of La Male Honte, printed in Barbazan (iii. 204), is laid in Kent. The
latter, however, was written by a trouvère named Hugues de Cambrai.
No objection appears to have been entertained to the recital of these
licentious stories before the ladies of the castle or of the domestic
circle, and their general popularity was so great, that the more pious
clergy seem to have thought necessary to find something to take their
place in the post-prandial society of the monastery, and especially
of the nunnery; and religious stories were written in the same form
and metre as the fabliaux. Some of these have been published under the
title of "Contes Devots," and, from their general dulness, it may be
doubted if they answered their purpose of furnishing amusement so well
as the others.