“I was a young man when I dwelt at Pisa. One day I went out begging

with a certain lay brother, a good-for-nothing. He was a Pisan, and

the same who afterwards went and lived with the brothers at Fixulus,

where they had to drag him out of a well which he had jumped into from

some foolishness or desperation. Then he disappeared, and could not be

found. The brothers thought the devil had carried him off. However

that may have been, this day at Pisa he and I went with our baskets to

beg bread, and chanced to enter a courtyard. Above, all about, hung a

thick, leafy vine, its freshness lovely to see and its shade sweet for

resting in. There were leopards there and other beasts from over the

sea, at which we gazed long, transfixed with delight, as one will at

the sight of the novel and beautiful. Girls were there also and boys

at their sweetest age, handsome and lovely, and ten times as alluring

for their beautiful clothes. The boys and girls held violas and

cytharas and other musical instruments in their hands, on which they

made sweet melodies, accompanied with gestures. There was no hub-bub,

nor did any one talk; but all listened in silence. And the song which

they chanted was so new and lovely in words and melody as to gladden

the heart exceedingly. None spoke to us, nor did we say a word to any

one. They did not stop singing and playing so long as we were

there--and long indeed we lingered and could scarcely take ourselves

away. God knows, I do not, who set this joyful entertainment; for we

had never seen anything like it before nor could we ever find its like

again.”

From the witchery of this cloud-dropped entertainment Salimbene was rudely

roused as he went out upon the public way.

“A man met me, whom I did not know, and said he was from Parma. He

seized upon me, and began to chide and revile: ‘Away scamp, away,’ he

cried. ‘A crowd of servants in your father’s house have bread enough

and meat; and you go from door to door begging bread from those

without it, when you have enough to give to any number of beggars! You

ought to be riding on a war-horse through Parma, and delighting people

with your skill with the lance, so that there might be a sight for the

ladies, and comfort for the players. Now your father is worn with

grief and your mother from love of you, so she despairs of God.’”

Salimbene fended off this attack of carnal wisdom with many texts of

Scripture. Yet the other’s words set him to thinking that perhaps it would

be hard to lead a beggar’s life year after year until old age. And he lay

awake that night, until God comforted him as before with a reassuring

dream.

Pretty dreamer as he was, Salimbene can often tell a ribald tale. There

was rivalry, as may be imagined, between the Dominicans (_solemnes

praedicatores_) and the Minorites. The former seem occasionally to have

concerted together so as to have knowledge of what their friends in other

places were about. Then, when preaching, they would exhibit marvels of

second sight, which on investigation proved true! A certain Brother John

of Vicenza was a Dominican famed for preaching and miracles perhaps, and

with such overtopping sense of himself that he went at least a little mad.

Bologna was his tarrying-place. There a certain Florentine grammarian,

Boncompagnus, tired of the foolery, made gibing rhymes about him and his

admirers, and said he would do a miracle himself, and at a certain hour

would fly with wings from the pinnacle of Sta. Maria in Monte. All came

together at that hour to see. There he stood aloft, with his wings, ready,

and the folk expectant, for a long time--and then he bade them disperse

with God’s blessing, for it was enough for them to have seen him. They

then knew that they had been fooled!

None the less the _dementia_ of Brother John increased, so that one day at

the Dominican convent in Bologna he fell in a rage because when his beard

was cut the brothers did not preserve the hairs as relics. There came

along a Minorite, Brother God-save-you, a Florentine like Boncompagnus,

and like him a great buffoon and joker. To this convent he came, but

refused all invitation to stay and eat unless a piece of the cloak of

Brother John were given him, which was kept to hold relics. So they gave

him a piece of the cloak, and after dinner he went off and befouled it,

folded it up, and called for all to come and see the precious relics of

the sainted John, which he had lost in the latrina. So they flocked to

see, and were somewhat more than satisfied.[637]

No need to say that this Salimbene had a quick eye for beauty in both men

and women; he is always speaking of so-and-so as a handsome man, and such

and such a lady as “pulcherrima domina,” of pleasing ways and moderate

stature, neither too tall nor too short. But one may win a more amusing

side-light on the “eternal womanly” in his Chronicle, from the following:

“Like other popes, Nicholas III. made cardinals of many of his relatives.

He made a cardinal of one, Lord Latinus, of the Order of Preachers (which

we note with a smile, and expect something funny). He appointed him legate

to Lombardy and Tuscany and Romagnola.” Note the enactments of this

cardinal-legate:

“He disturbed all the women with a ‘Constitution’ which he

promulgated, to wit, that the women should wear short dresses

reaching to the ground, and only so much more as a palm’s breadth.

Formerly they wore trains, sweeping the earth for several feet (_per

brachium et dimidium_). A rhymer dubs them:

‘Et drappi longhi, ke la polver menna.’

(‘The long cloaks that gather up the dust.’)

“And he had this to be proclaimed in the churches, and imposed it on

the women by command; and ordered that no priest should absolve them

unless they complied. The which was bitterer to the women than any

kind of death! For as a woman said to me familiarly, that train was

dearer to her than all the other clothes she wore. And further,

Cardinal Latinus decreed that all women, girls and young ladies,

matrons and widows, should wear veils. Which was again a horror for

them. But they found a remedy for that tribulation, as they could not

for their trains. For they made veils of linen and silk inwoven with

gold, with which they looked ten times as well, and drew the eyes of

men to lust all the more.”

Thus did the cardinal-legate, the Pope’s relative. And plenty of gossip

has Salimbene to tell of such creatures of nepotism. “Flesh and blood

_had_ revealed” to the Pope that he should make cardinals of them; says he

with a sort of giant sneer; “for he built up Zion _in sanguinibus_,” that

is, through his blood-relatives! “There are a thousand brothers Minorites,

more fit, on the score of knowledge and holiness, to be cardinals than

they.” Had not another pope, Urban IV., made chief among the cardinals a

relation whose only use as a student had been to fetch the other students’

meat from market?

It was a few years after this that Salimbene returned to his native town

of Parma, near the time when that city passed from the side of the Emperor

to that of the Pope. This was a fatal defection for Frederick, which he

set about to repair, by laying siege to the turn-coat city. And the war

went on with great devastation, and the wolves and other wild beasts

increased and grew bold. Salimbene throws Eccelino da Romano on the scene,

that regent of the emperor, and monster of cruelty, “who was feared more

than the devil,” and had once burned to death “eleven thousand Paduans in

Verona. The building holding them was set on fire; and while they burned,

Eccelino and his knights held a tournament about them (_circa eos_).... I

verily believe that as the Son of God desired to have one special friend,

whom He made like to himself, to wit the blessed Francis, so the devil

fashioned Eccelino in his likeness.”[638]

Salimbene tells of the siege of Parma at much length, and of the final

defeat of the emperor, with the destruction of the stronghold which he had

built to menace the city, and of all his curious treasures, with the

imperial crown itself taken by the men of Parma and their allies. But

before this, while the turmoil of the siege was at its height, in 1247, he

received orders to leave Parma and set out for Lyons, where Innocent IV.

at that time held his papal court, having fled from Italy, from the

emperor, three years before. Setting out, he reached Lyons on All Saints

Day.

“At once the Pope sent for me, and talked with me familiarly in his

chamber. For since my leaving Parma he had received neither messenger

nor letters. And he thanked me warmly and listened to my prayers, for

he was a courtly and liberal man; ... and he absolved me from my sins

and appointed me preacher!”

Our autobiographic chronicler was at this time twenty-six years old; his

personality bespoke a kind reception everywhere. He soon left Lyons, and

went on through the towns of Champagne to Troyes, where he found plenty of

merchants from Lombardy and Tuscany, for there were markets there, lasting

two months. So was it also in Provins, the next halting-place; from which

Salimbene went on to Paris. There he stayed eight days and saw much which

pleased him; and then, going back upon his tracks, he took up his journey

to Sens, where he dwelt in the Franciscan convent, “and the French

brethren entertained me gladly, because I was a friendly, cheerful youth,

and spoke them fair.” From Sens he went south to Auxerre, the place which

had been named as his destination when he left Parma. It was in the year

1248, and as he writes (how many years after?) there comes back to him the

memory of the grand wines of Auxerre:

“I remember when at Cremona (in 1245) Brother Gabriel of that place, a

Minorite, a great teacher and a man of holy life, told me that Auxerre

had more vines and wine than Cremona and Parma and Reggio and Modena

together. I wouldn’t believe him. But when I came to live at Auxerre,

I saw that he spoke the truth. It is a large district, or bishopric,

and the mountains, hills, and plains are covered with vines. There

they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; but they send their

wine by river to Paris, where they sell it nobly; and live and clothe

themselves from the proceeds. Three times I went all about the

district with one or another of the brothers: once with one who was

preaching and affixing crosses for the Crusade of the French king (St.

Louis); then with another who preached to the Cistercians in a most

beautiful monastery; and the third time we spent Easter with a

countess, who set before the whole company twelve courses of food, all

different. And had the count been at home, there would have been a

still greater abundance and variety. Now in four parts of France they

drink beer, and in four, wine. And the three lands where the wine is

most abundant are La Rochelle, Beaune, and Auxerre. In Auxerre the red

wine is least regarded and is not as good as the Italian. But Auxerre

has its white or golden wines, which are fragrant and comforting and

good, and make every one drinking them feel happy. Some of the Auxerre

wine is so strong that when put in a jug, drops appear on the outside

(_lacrymantur exterius_). The French laugh and say that three b’s and

seven f’s go with the best wine:

‘Le vin bon et bel et blanc,

Fort et fer et fin et franc,

Freit et fres et fourmijant.’

“The French delight in good wine--no wonder! since it ‘gladdens God

and men.’ Both French and English are very diligent with their

drinking-cups. Indeed the French have blear eyes from drinking

overmuch; and in the morning after a bout, they go to the priest who

has celebrated mass and ask him to drop a little of the water in which

he has washed his hands into their eyes. But Brother Bartholomew at

Provins has a way of saying it would be better for them if they would

put their water in their wine instead of in their eyes. As for the

English, they take a measure of wine, drink it out, and say: ‘I have

drunk; now you’--meaning that you should drink as much. And this is

their idea of politeness; and any one will take it very ill if the

other does not follow his precept and example.”[639]

While Salimbene was living at Auxerre, in the year 1248, a provincial

Chapter of the Franciscan Order was held at Sens, with the

Minister-General, John of Parma, presiding. Thither went Salimbene.

“The King of France, St. Louis, was expected. And the brothers all

went out from the house to receive him. And Brother Rigaud,[640] of

the Order, Archbishop of Rouen, having put on his pontifical

trappings, left the house and hurried toward the king, asking all the

time, ‘Where is the king? where is the king?’ And I followed him; for

he went alone and frantically, his mitre on his head and pastoral

staff in hand. He had been tardy in dressing himself, so that the

other brothers had gone ahead, and now lined the street, with faces

turned from the town, straining to see the king coming. And I

wondered, saying to myself, that I had read that these Senonian Gauls

once, under Brennus, captured Rome; now their women seemed a lot of

servant girls. If the King of France had made a progress through Pisa

or Bologna, the whole _élite_ of the ladies of the city would have met

him. Then I remembered the Gallic way, for the mere townsfolk to dwell

in the towns, while the knights and noble ladies live in their castles

and possessions.

“The king was slender and graceful, rather lean, of fair height, with

an angelic look and gracious face. And he came to the church of the

brothers Minorites not in regal pomp, but on foot in the habit of a

pilgrim, with wallet and staff, which well adorned his royal shoulder.

His own brothers, who were counts, followed in like humility and garb.

Nor did the king care as much for the society of nobles as for the

prayers and suffrages of the poor. Indeed he was one to be held a

monarch, both on the score of devotion and for his knightly deeds of

arms.

“Thus he entered the church of the brethren, with most devout

genuflections, and prayed before the altar. And when he left the

church and paused at the threshold, I was next to him. And there, on

behalf of the church at Sens, the warden presented him with a huge

live pike swimming in water in a tub made of firwood, such as they

bathe babies in. The pike is dear and highly prized in France. The

king returned thanks to the sender as well as to the presenter of the

gift. Then he requested audibly that no one, unless he were a knight,

should enter the Chapter House, except the brethren, with whom he

wished to speak. When we were met in Chapter, the king began to speak

of his actions and, devoutly kneeling, begged the prayers and

suffrages of the brethren for himself, his brothers, his lady mother

the queen, and all his companions. And certain French brothers, next

to me, from devotion and piety wept as if unconsolable. After the

king, Lord Oddo, a Roman cardinal, who once was chancellor at Paris,

and now was to cross the sea with the king, arose and said a few

words. Then on behalf of the Order, John of Parma, the

Minister-General, spoke fittingly, promising the prayers of the

brethren, and ordaining masses for the king; which, thereupon, at the

king’s request he confirmed by a letter under his seal.

“Afterwards, on that day, the king distributed alms and dined with the

brethren in the refectory. There were at table his three brothers, a

cardinal of the Roman curia, the minister-general, and Brother Rigaud,

Archbishop of Rouen, and many brethren. The minister-general, knowing

what a noble company was with the king, had no mind to thrust himself

forward, although he was asked to sit next the king. So to set an

example of courtliness and humility, he sat among the lowest. On that

day first we had cherries and then the very whitest bread; there was

wine in abundance and of the best, as befitted the regal magnificence.

And after the Gallic custom many reluctant ones were invited and

forced to drink. After that we had fresh beans cooked in milk, fish

and crabs, eel-pies, rice with milk of almonds and powdered cinnamon,

broiled eels with excellent sauce; and plenty of cakes and herbs, and

fruit. Everything was well served, and the service at table excellent.

“The following day the king resumed his journey, and I followed him,

as the Chapter was over; for I had permission to go and stay in

Provincia. It was easy for me to find him, as he frequently turned

aside to go to the hermitages of the brothers Minorites or some other

religious Order, to gain their prayers. And he kept this up

continually until he reached the sea and took ship for the Holy Land.

“I remember that one day I went to a noble castle in Burgundy, where

the body of the Magdalene was then believed to be. The next day was

Sunday; and early in the morning came the king to ask the suffrages of

the brethren. He dismissed his retinue in the castle, from which the

house of the brothers was but a little way. The king took his own

three brothers, as was his wont, and some servants to take care of the

horses. And when genuflections and reverences were duly made, the

brothers sought benches to sit on. But the king sat on the earth in

the dust, as I saw with my eyes. For that church had no pavement. And

he called us, saying: ‘Come to me, my sweetest brothers, and hear my

words.’ And we made a circle about him, sitting with him on the earth;

and his own brothers likewise. And he asked our prayers, as I have

been saying. And when promise had been given him, he rose and went his

way.”[641]

Is not this a picture of St. Louis, pilgrimaging from convent to convent,

to make sure of the divine aid, and trusting, so far as concerned the

business of the Holy Land, quite as much in the prayers of monks as in

the deeds of knights? We have hardly such a vivid sight of him in

Joinville or Geoffrey of Beaulieu.[642]

After this scene, the king proceeded on his way, to make ready for his

voyage, and Salimbene went to Lyons, then down the Rhone to Arles, then

around by sea to Marseilles, and thence to Areae, the present Hyères,

which lies near the coast. Here to his joy he met with Brother Hugo of

Montpellier whom he was seeking, the great “Joachite,” the great clerk,

the mighty preacher and resistless disputer, whom he had not forgotten

since the days, long before, when he had been in Hugo’s company and

listened to his preaching at Siena. Even then, Minorites, Dominicans, and

all men, had flocked to hear this small dark man, who seemed another Paul,

as he descanted on the marvels of Paradise and the contempt one should

feel for this world; but especially those Franciscans delighted in his

preaching who were of the “spiritual” party, which sought to follow

strictly the injunctions of the blessed Francis, and also cherished the

prophesies of the enigmatical Joachim of Flora. To this Joachim was

ascribed that long since vanished but much-bespoken _Evangelium eternum_,

which appears to have been written years after his death under the

auspices of John of Parma, Minister-General of the Franciscan Order.[643]

There was heresy in this book, with its doctrine of a still unrevealed,

but everlasting Gospel of the Holy Ghost. Until its appearance the genuine

utterances of Joachim were not prescribed, consisting as they did of

prophecies, for example, as to the life of that monster Frederick II., and

of denunciations of the pride and worldliness of ecclesiastics. Thus they

fell in with the enthusiasms of the “spiritual” Franciscans, who still

lived in an ecstasy of love and anticipation;--in the coming time some of

them were to be dubbed Fratricelli, and under that name be held as

heretics.

John of Parma was, of course, a “Joachite”; and “I was intimate with him,”

says Salimbene, “from love and because I seemed to believe the writings of

Abbot Joachim of the Order of the Flower.” John was likewise a friend (so

strong a bond was the belief in the holy but over-prophetic Joachim) of

Hugo of Montpellier, of whose manner and arguments we shall now let

Salimbene speak.

“Once Hugo came from Pisa to Lucca, where the brothers had invited him

to come and preach. He arrived at the hour for setting out for the

cathedral service. And there the whole convent was assembled to

accompany him and do him honour, and from desire to hear him too. And

he wondered, seeing the brothers assembled outside of the convent

door, and said: ‘Ah God! what are they going to do?’ The reply was,

that they were there to do him honour, and to hear him. But he said:

‘I do not need such honour, for I am not pope. If they wish to hear,

let them come after we have got there. I will go ahead with one

companion, and I will not go with that band.’”

Hugo was worshipped by his admirers, and hated by those whom he disagreed

with or denounced. Aside from his disputations in defence of Joachim, a

sample of which will be given shortly, one can see what hate must have

sprung from such invective as Salimbene reports him once to have addressed

to a consistory of cardinals at Lyons, where the Pope then held court.

Here is the story, quite too harsh for the respectable editors of the

Parma edition of the _Chronaca_:

“The cardinals inquired of Brother Hugo for news (_rumores_). So he

reviled them, as asses, saying: ‘I have no news, but a plenitude of

peace in my conscience and before my God, who surpasses sense and

keeps my heart and mind in Christ Jesus my Lord. I know that ye seek

after news, and wait idle the live-long day. For ye are Athenians and

not disciples of Christ. Of whom Luke says in the Acts: For all the

Athenians and the strangers which were there had time for nothing else

but to tell or hear some new thing. The disciples of Christ were

fishers and weak men according to the world, but they converted the

whole earth because the hand of the Lord was with them. They set forth

and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them. But ye are those

who build up Zion in blood (_i.e._ consanguinity) and Jerusalem in

iniquity. For you choose your little nephews and relations for the

benefices and dignities of the Church, and you exalt and make rich

your clan, and shut out men good and fit who would be useful to the

Church, and you prebendate children in their cradles. As a certain

mountebank well has said: If with an accusative you would go to the

Curia, you’ll take nothing if you don’t start with the dative! And

another says, the Roman Curia cares not for a sheep without wool.’”

And with such like, Hugo continues a considerable space.

“Hearing these things the cardinals were cut to the heart and gnashed

their teeth at him. But they had not the hardihood to reply; for the

fear of the Lord came over them and the hand of the Lord was with him.

Yet they wondered that he spoke to them so boldly; and finally it

seemed best to them to slip out and leave him, nor did they question

him, saying, as the Athenians to Paul: ‘We will hear thee again of

this matter.’”[644]

Hugo’s invective is outdone by Salimbene’s closing scorn.

And now (to return to Salimbene’s journey) here at Hyères in the year 1248

many notaries and judges, and physicians and other men of learning, were

assembled to hear Brother Hugo speak of the Abbot Joachim’s doctrines, and

expound Holy Scripture, and predict the future. “And I was there to hear

him; for long before I had been instructed in these teachings.” But there

came two Preaching friars, and abode at the Franciscan house, since the

Dominicans had no convent at Hyères. One was Brother Peter of Apulia, a

learned man and a great speaker. After dinner a brother asked him what he

thought of Abbot Joachim. He answered: “I care as much for Joachim as for

the fifth wheel of a coach.”

Thereupon this brother hurried to Hugo’s chamber, and exclaimed in the

presence of all the notables there: “Here is a brother Preacher who does

not believe that doctrine at all.”

To whom Brother Hugo: “And what is it to me if he does not believe? Be it

laid at his door; he will see it when trouble shall enlighten him. Yet

call him to debate; let us hear of what he doubts.”

So, called, he came, very unwillingly, because he held Joachim so cheaply,

and besides thought there was no one in that house fit to dispute with

him. When Brother Hugo saw him he said: “Art thou he who doubts the

doctrine of Joachim?”

Brother Peter replied: “Indeed I am.”

Then said Brother Hugo: “Hast thou ever read Joachim?”

Replied Brother Peter: “I have read and well read.”

To whom Hugo: “I believe thou hast read as a woman reads the Psalter, who

does not remember at the end what she read at the beginning. Thus many

read and do not understand, either because they despise what they read, or

because their foolish heart is darkened. Now, therefore, tell me what thou

wouldst hear as to Joachim, so that we may better know thy doubts.”

Thereupon there is question back and forth regarding the Scripture proofs

of Joachim’s prophecies, for instance, those relating to Frederick’s

reign. Brother Hugo dilates on Joachim’s holiness; explains the dark

Scripture references, and brings in the prophecies of Merlin, _anglicus

vates_, and talks of the allegorical, anagogical, tropological, moral and

mystical, senses of Scripture. The discussion waxes hot. Peter begins to

beat about the bush (_discurrere per ambages_), and declares it to be

heretical to quote an infidel like Merlin. At which Hugo answers: “Thou

liest, as I will prove _multipliciter_; for the writings of Balaam,

Caiaphas, Merlin, and the Sybil are not spurned by the Church: ‘The rose

gives forth no thorn, although the thorn’s daughter.’”[645]

Peter then turns to the sayings of the saints and the philosophers. But as

Hugo was _doctissimus_ in these, he at once twists him up and finishes him

(_statim involvit eum et conclusit ei_). Hereupon Peter’s brother

Preacher, an old priest and a good, sought to come to his aid. But Peter

said, “Peace, be still.” For Peter knew himself vanquished, and began to

praise Brother Hugo for his manifold wisdom.

“At this moment came a messenger from the ship’s captain, bidding the

brothers Preachers hurry, and go aboard. When they had left, Brother

Hugo said to the learned men remaining, who had heard the debate:

‘Take it not for evil, if we have said some things which ought not to

have been said; for disputants often roam the fields of licence. Those

good men glory in their knowledge, and speak what is found in their

Order’s fount of wisdom, which is the Word of God. They also say that

they travel among simple folk when they pass through the places of the

brothers Minorites, where they are ministered to with loving charity.

But by the grace of God these two shall no longer be able to say they

have walked among the simple.’

“His auditors dispersed, edified and comforted, saying, We have heard

wonderful things to-day. Later, that same day, the brothers Preachers

returned, to our delight, for the weather proved unfit for sailing.

After dinner, Brother Hugo conversed with them familiarly, and Brother

Peter sat himself on the earth at Brother Hugo’s feet; nor was any one

able to make him rise and sit on the bench on the same level with him,

not even when Brother Hugo himself besought him. So Brother Peter, no

longer disputing or contradicting, but meekly listening, heard honied

words spoken by Brother Hugo, and worthy to be set down, but omitted

here for brevity’s sake, as I hasten to record other things.”[646]

So Salimbene passes on, both in his Chronicle and in his journey, but

though his steps lead deviously through the cities of Provence, they bring

him back once more to Hyères and Hugo, at whose feet he sits and listens

for a season in rapt admiration.

After this happy season, Salimbene returned to Genoa, and from that time

on spent his life among the Franciscan brotherhoods of Italy. Henceforth

his Chronicle is chiefly occupied with those wretched unceasing wars of

northern Italy, Imperialists against Papists, and city against city--and

with the affairs of the Franciscan Order. The story is now less varied,

yet not lacking in picturesque qualities; and through it all we still see

the man himself, although the man, as life goes on, seems to become more

of a Franciscan monk, and less of an observer of human life. But he

continues naïve. Thus he tells that one time, with some companions, he

came to Bobbio, that famous book-lovers’ foundation of St. Columban, in

the mountains north of Genoa: “and there we saw one of those water-pots of

the Lord, in which the Lord made wine from water at the marriage at Cana,

for it is said to be one of those: whether it is, God knows, to whom all

things are known and open and naked.”

And again, some one brings him news of the state of France in the year

1251, when King Louis was a captive in Africa;[647] and thus he tells it:

“In this year a countless crowd of shepherds came together in France,

saying that they would cross the sea to kill the Saracens and free the

King of France. Many followed from divers cities of France, and no one

dared stop them. For their leader said it was revealed to him of God

that he must lead that multitude across the sea to avenge the King of

France. The common folk believed him, and were enraged against the

religious, especially the Preachers, because they had preached the

Crusade and had ‘crossed’ men who were sailing with the king. And the

people were angry at Christ, so that they dared blaspheme His blessed

name. And when the Minorites and Preachers came seeking alms in His

name, they gnashed their teeth at them and in their sight turned and

gave the sou to some other beggar, saying, ‘Take this in Mahomet’s

name, who is stronger than Christ.’”[648]

Of those Italian wars--rather feuds, vengeances, and monstrosities of

hate--Salimbene can tell enough. He gives a ghastly picture of the fate of

Alberic da Romano, brother of Eccelino, and tyrant indeed of Treviso.

“There he lorded it for many years; and cruel and hard was his rule,

as those know who experienced it. He was a limb of the devil and a son

of iniquity, but he perished by an evil death with his wife and sons

and daughters. For those who slew them tore off the legs and arms from

their living bodies, in their parents’ sight, and with them struck the

parents’ faces. Then they bound the wife and daughters to stakes, and

burned them; they were noble, beautiful virgins, nor in any way in

fault. But their innocence and beauty did not save them, because of

the hatred for the father and mother. Terribly had these afflicted the

people of Treviso. So they came upon Alberic with tongs and ----”--

the sentence is too horrid for translation. But the chronicler goes on to

tell that they destroyed his body amid gibes and insults and torments.

“For he had killed a blood-relative of this one, and that one’s

father, son or daughter. And he had laid such taxes and exactions on

them, that they had to destroy their houses. The very walls and beams

and chests and cupboards and wine-vats they put in boats and sent to

Ferrara to sell them and redeem themselves. I saw those with my eyes.

Alberic pretended to be at war with his brother Eccelino, so as to do

his evil deeds more safely; and he did not hold his hand from the

slaughter of citizens and subjects. One day he hanged twenty-five

prominent men of Treviso, who had done him no ill; because he feared

they would! And thirty noble women, mothers, wives and daughters of

these, were brought there to see them hanging; and he had these women

stripped half naked, that those who were hanging might see them so.

The men were hanged quite close to the ground; and he forced these

women to go so close that their faces were struck by the legs and feet

of those who were dying in anguish.”[649]

Such was the kind of devil-madness that might walk abroad in Italy in the

Middle Ages. Let us relieve our minds by a story our friend tells of a

certain boy placed in a Franciscan convent in Bologna, to become a monk.

“When asleep he snored so mightily, that no one could have peace in

the same house with him, so horribly did he disturb those who slept as

well as those who were at their vigils. And they made him sleep in the

shed where wood and staves were stored, but even then the brothers

could not escape, so did that voice of malediction resound through the

whole place. And all the priests and wiseacres among the brothers met

in the director’s chamber, to eject him from the Order because of his

insupportable offence: I was there. It was decided to return him to

his mother, who had deceived the Order, since she had known his defect

before letting him go. But he was not returned to his mother, for the

Lord performed a miracle through Brother Nicolas [a holy brother

through whom God had worked other miracles as well]. This brother

seeing that the boy was to be expelled for no fault, but for a natural

defect, called him at daybreak to assist at mass. When the mass was

finished, the boy as commanded knelt before him, back of the altar,

hoping to receive some grace. Brother Nicolas touched his face and

nose with his hands, in the wish to confer health upon him, if the

Lord would grant it, and commanded him to keep this secret. What more?

The boy at once was cured, and after that slept as quietly as a

dormouse without annoying any brother.”[650]

Thus we have this Chronicle, rambling, incoherent, picturesque, with its

glimpses of all this pretty world, for which our Salimbene, despite his

cowl, has an uncloistered eye--its keenness for incident and circumstance

undeflected by the inner sight with which it could also look on the

invisible world. When Brother Salimbene was young and an enthusiastic

Joachite, a strong motive of his wish to live on in the flesh was to see

whether those prophecies regarding Frederick came true. Alas! for this

purpose he lived too long: Frederick died before the prophecies were

fulfilled, and with his death honest Salimbene had to put from him his

darling trust in the words of Abbot Joachim of the Order of the Flower.

BOOK IV

THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: SOCIETY

CHAPTER XXII

FEUDALISM AND KNIGHTHOOD

FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF KNIGHTLY VIRTUE; THE ORDER OF THE

TEMPLE; GODFREY OF BOUILLON; ST. LOUIS; FROISSART’S _CHRONICLES_

The world is evil! the clergy corrupt, the laity depraved! none denounces

them! Awake! arise! be mindful! Such ceaseless cry rises more shrilly in

times of reform and progress. It was the cry of the preacher in the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when preaching was reviving with the

general advance of life.[651]

Satire and pious invective struck at all classes: kings, counts and

knights, merchants, tradesmen, artisans, even villain-serfs, came under

its lash.[652] And properly, since every class is touched with universal

human vices, besides those which are more peculiar to its special way of

life. All men fall below the standards of the time; and each class fails

with respect to its own ideals. The special shortcomings are most apparent

with those classes whose ideals are most definitely formulated.

Among the laity the gap between the ideal and the actual may best be

observed in the warrior class whose ideals accorded with the feudal

situation and tended to express themselves in chivalry. Not that knights

and ladies were better or worse than other mediaeval men and women. But

literature contains clearer statements of their ideals. The knightly

virtues range before us as distinctly as the monastic; and harsh is the

contrast between the character they outline and the feudal actuality of

cruelty and greed and lust. Feudalism itself presents everywhere a state

of contrast between its principles of mutual fidelity and protection, and

its actuality of oppression, revolt, and private war.

The feudal system was a sprawling conglomerate fact. The actual usages of

chivalry (the term is loose and must be allowed gradually to define

itself) were one expression of it, and varied with the period and country.

But chivalry had its home also in the imagination, and its most

interesting media are legend and romantic fiction. Still, much that was

romantic in it sprang from the aggregate of law, custom, and sentiment,

which held feudal society together. Chivalry was the fine flower of honour

growing from this soil, embosomed in an abundant leafage of imagination.

The feudal system was founded on relations and sentiments arising from a

state of turbulence where every man needed the protection of a lord: it

could not fail to foster sentiments of fealty. The fief itself, the feudal

unit of land held on condition of homage and service, symbolized the

principle of mutual troth between lord and vassal. The land was part of

mother earth; the troth, the elemental personal tie, existed from of yore.

In this instance it came from the German forests. But the feudal system of

land tenure also stretched its roots back into the rural institutions of

the disintegrating Roman Empire. In the fifth century, for example, when

what was left of the imperial rule could no longer enforce order, and

provincial governments were decaying with the decay of the central power

from which they drew their life, men had to look about them for

protection. It became customary for men to hand over land and liberty to

some near lord, and enter into a relationship akin to serfage in return

for protection. Thus the Gallo-Roman population were becoming accustomed

to personal dependence even while the Merovingians were establishing their

kingdom.

On their side the Franks and other Teutons had inherited the institution

of the _comitatus_, which bound the young warrior to his chief. They were

familiar with exacting modes of personal retainership, which merged the

follower’s freedom in his lord’s will. If during the reigns of Pepin and

his prodigious son the development of local dominion and dependence was

held in some abeyance, on the death of Charlemagne it would proceed apace.

All the factors which tend to make institutions out of abuses and the

infractions of earlier custom, sprang at once into activity in the renewed

confusion. Everything served to increase the lesser man’s need of defence,

weld his dependence on his lord, and augment the latter’s power. Moreover,

long before Charlemagne’s time, not only for protection in this life, but

for the sake of their souls, men had been granting their lands to

monasteries and receiving back the use thereof--such usufruct being known

as a _beneficium_. This custom lent the force of its example and manifest

utility to the relations between lay lords and tenants. And finally one

notes the frequent grant to monasteries and individuals of immunity from

governmental visitation, a grant preventing the king’s officers from

entering lands in order to exercise the king’s justice, or exact fines and

requisitions.[653]

From out of such conditions the feudal system gradually took form. Its

central feature was the tenure of a fief by a vassal from his lord on

condition of rendering faithful military and other not ignoble service. As

the tenth century passed, fiefs tended to become hereditary. So long as

the vassal fulfilled his duty to his lord, the rights of the lord over the

land were nominal; more substantial was the mutual obligation--on the part

of the lord to protect his vassal against the violence of others, and on

the vassal’s part to make good the homage pledged by him when he knelt and

placed his hands within his lord’s hands and vowed himself his lord’s man

for the fief he held. His duty was to aid his lord against enemies, yield

him counsel and assistance in the judgment of causes, and pay money to

ransom him from captivity, knight his eldest son, or portion his daughter.

The ramifications of these feudal tenures and obligations extended, with

all manner of complications, from king and duke down to such as held the

meagre fief that barely kept man and war-horse from degrading labour. All

these made up the feudal class whose members might expect to become

knights on reaching manhood.

Neither this system of land tenure, nor the sentiments and relations

sustaining it, drew their origin from Christianity. But the Church was

mighty in its influence over the secular relationships of those who came

under its spiritual guidance. Feudal troth was to become Christianized.

The old regard for war-chief and war-comrade was to be broadened through

the Faith’s solicitude for all believers; then it was raised above the

human sphere to fealty toward God and His Church; and thereupon it was

gentled through Christian meekness and mercy.

This Christianized spirit of fealty, broadening to courtesy and pity, was

to take visible form in a universal Order into which members of the feudal

class were admitted when their valour had been proved, and into which

brave deeds might bring even a low-born man. Gradually, as the Order’s

_regula_, a code of knighthood’s honour was developed, valid in its

fundamentals throughout western Christendom; but varying details and

changing fancies from time to time intruded, just as subsequent phases of

monastic development were grafted on the common Benedictine rule.

Investing a young warrior with the arms of manhood has always in fighting

communities been the normal ceremony of the youth’s coming of age and his

recognition as a member of the clan. The binding on of the young Teuton’s

sword in the assembly of his people was an historical antecedent of the

making of a knight. In all the lands of western Europe--France, Germany,

Anglo-Saxon England, Lombard Italy, and Visigothic Spain--this ceremony

appears to have remained a simple one through the ninth and tenth

centuries. As for the eleventh, one may note the following passages:

William of Malmesbury (d. 1142 cir.) speaks of William of Normandy

receiving the insignia of knighthood (_militiae insignia_) from the King

of France as soon as his years permitted.[654] Henry of Huntington (d.

1155) says that this same William the Conqueror, in the nineteenth year of

his reign, invested his younger son Henry with the arms of manhood

(_virilibus induit armis_); while another chronicler says that Prince

Henry: “sumpsit arma in Pentecostem”--a festival at which it was customary

to make knights. And again, Ordericus Vitalis says of the armour-bearer of

Duke William that after five years’ service he was by that same duke

regularly invested with his arms and made a knight (_decenter est armis

adornatus et miles effectus_).

These short references[655] do not indicate the nature of the ceremony.

But one notes the use of the Latin words _miles_ and _militia_ as meaning

knight and knighthood. Like so many other classical words, _miles_ took

various meanings in the Middle Ages. But it came commonly to signify

knight, chevalier, or ritter.[656] And whatever other meanings _militia_

and _militare_ retained or acquired, they signified knighthood and the

performance of its duties. Frequently they suggested the relationship of

vassal to a lord: and in this sense _miles_ meant one who held a fief

under the obligation to do knightly service in return.

But how did this word _miles_ (which in classical Latin meant a soldier

and sometimes specifically a foot-soldier as contrasted with an _eques_)

come to mean a knight? It was first applied to the warriors of the various

Teutonic peoples, who for the most part fought on foot. But the wars with

the Saracens in the eighth century appear to have made clear the need of a

large and efficient corps of horse. From the time of Charles Martel the

warrior class began to fight regularly on horseback;[657] and thus,

apparently, the term _miles_ began to signify primarily one of these tried

and well-armed riders.[658] Such were the very ones who would regularly be

invested with their arms on reaching manhood. Many of them had inherited

the sentiments of fealty to a chief, and probably were vassals of some

lord from whom they had received lands to be held on military tenure. They

were not all noble (an utterly loose term with reference to these early

confused centuries) nor were they necessarily free (another inappropriate

term with respect to these incipiently mediaeval social conditions).[659]

But their mainly military duties would naturally develop into a retainer’s

relationship of fealty.

The ninth century passes into the tenth, the tenth into the eleventh, the

eleventh into the twelfth. Classes and orders of society become more

distinct. The old warrior groups have become lords and vassals, and

compose the feudal class whose members upon maturity are formally girt

with the arms of manhood, and thereupon become knights. The ceremony of

their investiture has been gradually made more impressive; it has also

been imbued with religious sentiment and elaborated with religious rite.

It now constitutes the initiation to a universally recognized fighting

Order which has its knightly code of honour, if not its knightly duties.

In a word, along with the clearer determination of its membership, and the

elaboration of the ceremonies of entry or “adoubement,” knighthood has

become a distinct conception and has attained existence as an Order. And

an Order it remains, into which one is admitted, but into which no one is

born, though he be hereditary king or duke or count. Moreover, although

the candidates normally would be of the feudal class, the Order is not

closed against knightly merit in whomsoever found.[660] Of course there

was no written _regula_ or charter, except of certain special Orders. Yet

there was no uncertainty as to who was or was not a knight.

A knight could be “made” or “dubbed” at any time, for example, on the

field of battle or before the fight. But certain festivals of the Church,

Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, came to be regarded as peculiarly

appropriate for the ceremony. Any knight, but no unknighted person however

high his rank, could “dub” another knight.[661] This appears to have been

the universal rule, and yet it suffered infringements. For example, at a

late period a king might claim the right to _confirm_ the bestowal of

knighthood, which in fact commonly was bestowed by a great lord or

sovereign prince. On its negative side, the general rule may be said to

have been infringed when Church dignitaries, no longer content with

blessing the arms of the young warrior, usurped the secular privilege of

investing him with them and dubbing him a knight.[662]

The ceremony itself probably originated in the girding on of the sword. As

these warriors in time changed to mounted riders with elaborate arms and

armour, it became more of an affair to invest them fully with their

equipment. There would be the putting on of helm and coat of mail, and

there would be the binding on of spurs; and at some time it became

customary for the youth to prepare himself by a bath. But girding on the

sword was still the important point, although perhaps the somewhat

enigmatical blow, given by him who conferred the dignity, and not to be

returned (_non repercutiendus_), became the finish to the ceremony. That

blow existed (we find it in the _Chansons de geste_) in the twelfth

century as a thwack with the fist on the young man’s bare neck; then in

course of years it refined itself into a gentle sword-tap on the mailed

shoulder.[663]

At an early period the Church sought to sanctify the ceremony through

religious rites; for it could not remain unconcerned with the consecration

of the warriors of Christendom, whose services were needed and whose souls

were to be saved. What time so apt for inculcating obedience and other

Christian virtues as this solemn hour when the young warrior’s nature was

stirred with the pride and hopes of knighthood? And the young knight

needed the Church’s blessing. Heathen peoples sought in every enterprise

the protection of their gods, usually obtained through priestly magic. And

when converted to the faith of Christ, should they not call on Him who was

mightier than Odin? Should not His power be invoked to shield the

Christian knight? Will not the sword which the priest has blessed and has

laid upon Christ’s miracle-working altar, more surely guard the wearer’s

life? Better still if there be blessed relics in its hilt. The dying

Roland speaks to his great sword:

“O Durendel cum ies bele et seintisme!”

“O Durendel how art thou fair and holy! In thy hilt what store of relics:

tooth of St. Peter, blood of St. Basil, hairs of my lord St. Denis, cloth

worn by the Holy Mary.”[664] These relics made the “holiness” of that

sword, not in the way of sentiment, but through their magic power. And we

shall not be thinking in mediaeval categories if we lose sight of the

magic-religious effect of the priest’s blessing on the novice’s sword: it

is a protection for the future knight.

Doubtless the religious features of the “adoubement” revert to various

epochs. The ancient watch-nights preceding Easter and Pentecost, followed

at daybreak by the baptism of white-robed catechumens, may have been the

original of the novice’s night vigil over his arms laid by the altar. His

bath had become a symbol of purification from sin. He heard Mass in the

early morning, and then came the blessing of the sword, the _benedictio

ensis_, of which the oldest extant formula is found in a Roman manuscript

of the early eleventh century: “Exaudi, quaeso, Domine, preces nostras, et

hunc ensem quo hic famulus N. se circumcingi desiderat, majestatis tuae

dextera benedicere dignare.”[665]

Through the Middle Ages the fashions of feudalism did not remain

unchanged; likewise its quintessential spirit, chivalry, was modified, and

one may say, between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries, passed from

barbarism to preciosity. Nevertheless the main ideals of chivalry endured,

springing as they did from the fundamental and but slowly-changing

conditions of feudal society. Since that society was constantly at

war,[666] the first virtue of the knight was valour. Next, since life and

property hung on mutual aid and troth, and a larger safety was ensured if

one lord could rely upon his neighbour’s word, the virtues of

truth-speaking and troth-keeping took their places in the chivalric ideal.

Another useful quality, and means of winning men, was generosity

(_largesse_). When coin is scarce, and stipulations for fixed pay unusual,

he who serves looks for liberality, which, in accordance with feudal

conditions, made the third of the chief knightly virtues.

Valour, troth, largesse, had no necessary connection with Christianity.

It was otherwise with certain of the remaining qualities of a knight.

According to Christian teaching, pride was the deadliest of sins. So

haughtiness, boasting, and vain-glory were to be held vices by the

Christian knight. He should show a humble demeanour, save toward the

mortal enemies of God; and far from boasting, he should rather depreciate

himself and his exploits, though never lowering the standard of his

purpose to achieve. Humility entered knighthood’s ideal from Christianity;

and so perhaps did courtesy, its kin, a virtue which was not among the

earliest to enter knighthood’s ideal, and yet reached universal

recognition.

Christianity also meant active charity, beneficence, and love of

neighbour. These are virtues hard to import into a state of war. Fighting

means harm-doing to an enemy; and only indirectly makes for some one’s

good. Let there be some vindication of good in the fighting of a Christian

knight: he shall be quick to right the wrong, succour distress, and

quickest to bear help where no reward can come. Since knighthood’s ideals

took form in crusading times, the slaughter of the Paynim became the

supreme act of knightly warfare.

If such elements of the knightly ideal were of Christian origin, others

still were even more closely part of mediaeval Christianity. First of

these was faith, orthodox faith, heresy-uprooting, infidel-destroying,

_fides_ in the full Church sense. Without faith’s sacramental

credentials--baptism, participation in the mass--no one could be a knight:

and heresy degrades the recreant even before the scullion’s cleaver hacks

off his spurs.

From faith knighthood advances to obedience to the Church, a vow expressly

made by every knight on taking the Cross, and also incorporated in the

Constitutions of the crusading Orders of Templars and Hospitallers. But

does the knight pass on from obedience to chastity? This virtue might or

might not enter knighthood’s ideal. It scarcely could exist with courtly

or chivalric love;[667] and, in fact, knights commonly were either lovers

or married men--or both. Yet even in the Arthurian literature there is the

monkish Galahad, and many a sinful knight becomes a hermit in the end; and

among real and living knights, the Templars and Hospitallers were vowed to

celibacy. In these crusading orders the orbits of knighthood and

monasticism cross; and it will not be altogether a digression to review

the foundation and constitution of one of them.

The Order of the Temple was founded in the year 1118 by Hugh of Payns

(Champagne) and other French knights; who placed their hands within those

of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and vowed to devote themselves to the

protection of pilgrims in the Holy Land. Probably they also bestowed their

lands for the support of the nascent Order. Ten years afterwards Hugh

passed through France and England, winning new recruits and appearing at

the Council of Troyes. With the authority of that Council and of Pope

Honorius II. the _Regula pauperum commilitonum Christi Templique

Salomonici_ was promulgated. St. Bernard, to whom it is ascribed, was in

large part its inspiration and its author. It still exists in some

seventy-two chapters; but one cannot distinguish between those belonging

to the original document of 1128 and those added somewhat later.[668]

This _regula_ with its amendments and additions was translated from Latin

into Old French (_par excellence_ the tongue of the Crusades), and became

apparently the earliest form of the _Regle dou Temple_, upon which was

grafted a mass of ordinances (_retrais et establissemens_). Apparently the

whole of the extant Latin regula was prior to everything contained in the

French _regle_; and accordingly we shall simply regard the Latin as

containing the earliest regulations of the Temple, and the French as

exhibiting the modifications of tone and interest which came in the course

of years.

The hand of St. Bernard ensured the dominance of the monastic temper in

the original _regula_; and Hugo, the first Master of the Temple, could

not have been the Saint’s close friend without sharing his enthusiasms. So

the prologue opens with a true monastic note:

“Our word is directed primarily to all who despise their own wills,

and with purity of mind desire to serve under the supreme and

veritable King; and with minds intent choose the noble warfare of

obedience, and persevere therein. We therefore exhort you who until

now have embraced secular knighthood (_miliciam secularem_) where

Christ was not the cause, and whom God in His mercy has chosen out of

the mass of perdition for the defence of the holy Church, to hasten to

associate yourselves perpetually.”

This phraseology would suit the constitution of a sheer monastic order.

And the first chapter exhorts these _venerabiles fratres_ who renounce

their own wills and serve the King (Christ) with horses and arms,

zealously to observe all the religious services regularly prescribed for

monks. The _regula_ contains the usual monastic commands. For example,

obedience to the Master of the Order is enjoined _sine mora_ as if God

were commanding, which recalls the language of St. Benedict.[669] Clothes

are regulated, and diet; habitual silence is recommended; the brethren are

not to go alone, nor at their own will, but as directed by the Master, so

as to imitate Him who said, I came not to do mine own will, but His who

sent me.[670] Again, chests with locks are forbidden the brothers, except

under special permission; nor may any brother, without like permission,

receive letters from parents or friends; and then they should be read in

the Master’s presence.[671] Let the brethren shun idle speech, and above

all let no brother talk with another of military exploits, “follies

rather,” achieved by him while “in the world,” or of his doings with

miserable women.[672] Let no brother hunt with hawks; such mundane

delectations do not befit the religious, who should be rather hearing

God’s precepts, and at prayer, or confessing their sins with tears. Yet

the lion may always be hunted; for he goes seeking whom he may

devour.[673]

The _religio_ professed by the Templars is called, in the Latin rule,

_religio militaris_, which the French translates “religion de

chevalerie,” not incorrectly, but with somewhat different flavour.[674]

“This new _genus religionis_, as we believe, by divine providence

began with you in the Holy Land, a _religio_ in which you mingle

chivalry (_milicia_). Thus this armed religion may advance through

chivalry, and smite the enemy without incurring sin. Rightfully then

we decree that you shall be called knights of the Temple (_milites

Templi_) and may hold houses, lands and men, and possess serfs and

justly rule them.”[675]

The pomp of the last sentence seems to remove from the tone of the earlier

chapters, and suggests a later date. Another, possibly late, chapter (66)

permits the knights to receive tithes, since they have abandoned their

riches for _spontaneae paupertati_. Still another accords to married men a

qualified admission to the brotherhood, but they may not wear the white

robe and mantle (55). The next forbids the admission of _sorores_; and the

last chapter of all (72) warns against the sight of women, and forbids the

brethren to kiss one, be she widow, virgin, mother, sister or friend.

Thus the Latin _regula_ formulates an order of monasticism with only the

modifications imperatively demanded by the exigencies of holy warfare. The

French _regle_ elaborates the military organization and enhances the

chivalric element. This begins to appear in the portions which are a

translation (usually quite close) of the Latin rule. But even that

translation makes changes, for example, omitting the period of probation

required in the Latin text, before admitting a brother to the Order.[676]

A striking change was made by the later French ordinances in the

interrogations and proceedings for admission. The Latin formula begins in

Cistercian phrase:

“Vis abrenunciare seculo?

“Volo.

“Vis profiteri obedientiam secundum canonicam institutionem et

secundum preceptum domini papae?

“Volo.

“Vis assumere tibi conversationem (the monastic mode and change of

life) fratrum nostrorum?

“Volo.”[677]

And so forth.

The substance of these and other questions was retained in the far longer

French formula, which exacted specific promises of compliance with all the

Order’s ordinances. But far removed from the original are such questions

as the following: “Biau dous amis” (the ordinary phrase of the chivalric

romance) have you, or has any one for you, made any promise to any one in

return for his aid in procuring your admission, which would be simony?

“Estes vos chevalier et fis de chevalier?”

Is the candidate a knight, and son of knight and lady, and are his “peres

... de lignage de chevaliers”? This means chivalry and gentle blood; and

if the candidate answers in the negative, he cannot be admitted as a

knight of the Temple, although he may be as “sergent,” or in some other

character. Most noble and courtly is the phrasing of these statutes. Their

frequent “Beaus seignors freres” is the address proper for knights rather

than monks.[678]

Usually wherever the translation of the Latin _regula_ ends, the _Regle

dou Temple_ passes on to provisions meeting the requirements of a

military, rather than a monastic order. We enter upon such in the chapters

governing the powers and privileges of the (Grand) Master, of the

Seneschal, of the Marshal, of the “Comandeor de la terre de Jerusalem.”

Many sections have to do with military discipline, with the ordering of

the knights and their followers on the march and in the battle; they

forbid the knights to joust or leave the squadron without orders.[679]

Horses, armour, and accoutrements are regulated, and, in short, full

provision is made for everything conducing to make the army efficient in

war. There is also a long list of faults and crimes for which a knight may

be disciplined or expelled; the latter shall be his punishment if he flee

before the Saracens and forsake his standard in battle.[680]

The history of the Templars, significantly epitomized in the amendments to

their _regula_, shows the necessary as well as inevitable secularization

of a military monastic order; an order which for the purposes of this

chapter may be placed among the chief historical examples of chivalry. For

in this chapter we are not straying through the pleasant mazes of romantic

literature, but are keeping close to history, with the intention of

drawing from it illustrations of chivalry’s ideals. We shall not, however,

enter further upon the story of the Order of the Temple, with its valorous

and rapacious achievements and most tragic end; but will rather look to

the careers of historic individuals for the illumination of our theme.

Reaching form and consciousness in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,

chivalry became part of the crusading ardour of those times. All true

knights were or might be Crusaders; and of a truth there was no purer

incarnation of the crusading spirit than Godfrey of Bouillon, that figure

of veritable if somewhat slender historicity, upon whom in time chronicler

and trouvère alike were to fasten as the true hero of the enterprise that

won Jerusalem. And so he was. Not that Godfrey was commander of the host.

He was not even its most energetic or most capable leader. Boemund of

Tarentum and Raymond of Toulouse were his superiors in power and military

energy. But neither Boemund, nor Tancred, nor Raymond, nor any other of

those princes of Christendom, was what Godfrey appears to us, the type and

symbol of the perfect, single-hearted, crusading knight, fighting solely

for the Faith, with Christian devotion and humility, and, like them all,

with more than Christian wrath. The First Crusade (1096-1099) was stamped

with hatred and slaughter: on the dreadful march, at the more dreadful

siege and final sack of Antioch, and finally when the holy sepulchre’s

defilement was washed out in Saracen blood. And there was no slaughterer

more eager than Godfrey.

The cruelty and religious fervour of the Crusade are rendered in the

words of Raymond of Agiles, one of the clergy in the train of Count

Raymond of Toulouse, and an eye-witness of the capture of Jerusalem. After

days of despairing struggle to effect a breach, success came as by the

mercy of God:

“Among the first to enter was Tancred and the Duke of Lothringia

(Godfrey), who on that day shed quantities of blood almost beyond

belief. After them, the host mounted the walls, and now the Saracens

suffered. Yet although the city was all but in the hands of the

Franks, the Saracens resisted the party of Count Raymond as if they

were never going to be taken. But when our men had mastered the walls

of the city and the towers, then wonderful things were to be seen.

Numbers of the Saracens were beheaded--which was the easiest for them;

others were shot with arrows, or forced to jump from the towers;

others were slowly tortured and were burned in flames. In the streets

and open places of the town were seen piles of heads and hands and

feet. One rode about everywhere amid the corpses of men and horses.

But these were small matters! Let us go to Solomon’s temple, where

they were wont to chant their rites and solemnities. What had been

done there? If we speak the truth we exceed belief: let this suffice.

In the temple and porch of Solomon one rode in blood up to the knees

and even to the horses’ bridles by the just and marvellous Judgment of

God, in order that the same place which so long had endured their

blasphemies against Him should receive their blood.”

So the Crusaders wrought; and what joy did they feel! Raymond continues:

“When the city was taken it was worth the whole long labour to witness

the devotion of the pilgrims to the sepulchre of the Lord, how they

clapped their hands, exulted, and sang a new song unto the Lord. For

their hearts presented to God, victor and triumphant, vows of praise

which they were unable to explain. A new day, new joy and exultation,

new and perpetual gladness, the consummation of toil and devotion drew

forth from all new words, new songs. This day, I say, glorious in

every age to come, turned all our griefs and toils into joy and

exultation.”[681]

So new songs of gladness burst from the hearts of the soldiers of the

Cross. In a few days the princes made an election, and offered the kingdom

to Count Raymond: he declined. Then Godfrey was made king; though he

would not be crowned, nor would he ever wear a crown where his Lord had

worn a crown of thorns. As a servant of Christ and of His Church he fought

and ruled some short months till his death. His fame has grown because his

heart was pure, and because, among the knights, he represented most

perfectly the religious impulse of this crusade which fought its way

through blood, until it poured out its new song of joy over the

blood-drenched city. He errs who thinks to find the source and power of

the First Crusade elsewhere than in the flaming zeal of feudal

Christianity. There was doubtless much divergence of motive, secular and

religious; but over-mastering and unifying all was the passion to wrest

the sepulchre of Christ from paynim defilement, and thus win salvation for

the Crusader. Greed went with the host, but it did not inspire the

enterprise.

Doubtless the stories of returning knights awakened a spirit of romantic

adventure, which stirred in later crusading generations. It was not so in

the eleventh century when the First Crusade was gathering. The romantic

imagination was then scarcely quickened; adventure was still inarticulate,

and the literature of adventure for the venture’s sake was yet to be

created. So the First Crusade, with its motive of religious zeal, is in

some degree distinguishable from those which followed when knighthood was

in different flower. If not the Crusades themselves, at least the

_Chansons_ of the trouvères who sang of them, follow a change

corresponding with the changing taste of chivalry: they begin with serious

matters, and are occupied with the great enterprise; then they become

adventurous in theme, romantic, till at last even romantic love is

infelicitously grafted upon the religious rage that won Jerusalem.

This process of change may be traced in the growth of the legends of the

First Crusade and Godfrey of Bouillon. Something was added to his career

even by the Latin Chronicles of fifty years later. But his most

venturesome development is to be found in those French _Chansons de geste_

which have been made into the “Cycle” of the First Crusade. Two of these,

the _Chansons_ of _Antioche_ and _Jerusalem_, were originally composed by

a contemporary, if not a participant in the expedition. They were

refashioned perhaps seventy-five or a hundred years later, in the reign of

Philip Augustus, by another trouvère, who still kept their old tone and

substance. They remained poetic narratives of the holy war. In them the

knights are fierce and bloody, cruel and sometimes greedy; but their whole

emprise makes onward to the end in view, the winning of the holy city.

These poems are epic and not romantic: they may even be called historical.

The character of Godfrey is developed with legendary or epic propriety,

through a heightening of his historic qualities. He equals or excels the

other barons in fierce valour, and yet a touch of courtesy tempers his

wrath. In Christian meekness and in modesty he surpasses all, and he

refuses the throne of Jerusalem until he has been commanded from on high.

At that he accepts the kingdom as a sacred charge in defence of which he

is to die.

It is otherwise with a number of other _chansons_ composed in the latter

part of the twelfth and through the thirteenth century. Some of them (the

_Chanson des chétifs_, for example) had probably to do with the First

Crusade. Others, like the various poems which tell of the Chevalier au

Cygne, were inaptly forced into connection with the family of Godfrey.

They have become adventurous, and are studded with irrelevant marvels,

rather than assisted to their denouements by serious supernatural

intervention. Monsters appear, and incongruous romantic episodes;

Godfrey’s ancestor has become the Swan-knight, and he himself duplicates

the exploits previously ascribed to that half-fairy person. Knightly

manners, from brutal have become courteous. Women throng these poems, and

the romantic love of women enters, although not in the finished guise in

which it plays so dominant a role in the Arthurian Cycle. Such themes,

unknown to the earlier crusading _chansons_, would have fitted ill with a

martial theme driving on through war and carnage (not through

“adventures”) to the holy end in view.[682]

The Crusades open with the form of Godfrey of Bouillon. A century and a

half elapses and they deaden to a close beneath the futile radiance of a

saintlike and perfect knightly personality. St. Louis of France is as

clear a figure as any in the Middle Ages. From all sides his life is

known. We see him as a painstaking sovereign meting out even justice, and

maintaining his royal rights against feudal turbulence and also against

ecclesiastical encroachment. During his reign the monarchy of France

continues to advance in power and repute. And yet there was no jot of

worldly wisdom, and scant consideration of a realm sorely needing its

ruler, in the Quixotic religious devotion which drew him twice across the

sea on crusades unparalleled in their foolishness. For the world was

growing wiser politically; and what was glorious feudal enthusiasm in the

year 1099, was deliberate disregard of experience in the years 1248 and

1270.

Yet who would have had St. Louis wiser in his generation? The loss to

France was mankind’s gain, from the example of saintly king and perfect

knight, kept bright in the narratives of men equal to the task. Louis was

happy in his biographers. Two among them knew him intimately and in ways

affording special opportunities to observe the sides of his character

congenial to their respective tempers. One was his confessor for twenty

years, the Dominican Geoffrey of Beaulieu; the other was the Sire de

Joinville. Geoffrey’s _Vita_ records Louis’ devotions; Joinville’s

_Histoire_ notes the king’s piety; but the qualities which it illuminates

are those of a French gentleman and knight and grand seigneur, like

Joinville himself.

The book of the Dominican[683] is not picturesque. It opens with an

edifying comparison between King Josiah and King Louis. Then it praises

the king’s mother, Queen Blanche of pious memory. As for Louis, the

confessor has been unable to discover that he ever committed a mortal sin:

he sought faithful and wise counsellors; he was careful and gracious in

speech, never using an oath or any scurrilous expression. In earlier

years, when under the necessity of taking oath, he would say, “In nomine

mei”; but afterwards, hearing that some religious man had objected to

this, he restricted his asseverations to the “est, est” and “non, non” of

the Gospel.

From the time he first crossed the sea, he wore no scarlet raiment, but

clothed himself in sober garments. And as such were of less value to give

to the poor than those which he had formerly worn, he added sixty pounds a

year to his almsgiving; for he did not wish the poor to suffer because of

his humble dress. Geoffrey gives the long tale of his charities to the

poor and to the mendicant Orders. On the Sabbaths it was the king’s secret

custom to wash the feet of three beggars, dry them, and kiss them humbly.

He commanded in his will that no stately monument should be erected over

his grave. He treated his confessors with great respect, and, while

confessing, if perchance a window was to be closed or opened, he quickly

rose and shut or opened it, and would not hear of his confessor doing it.

In Advent season and Lent he abstained from marital intercourse. Some

years before his death, if he had had his will, he would have resigned his

kingdom to his son, and entered the Order of the Franciscans or

Dominicans. He brought up his children most religiously, and wished some

of them to take the vows.[684]

He confessed every Friday and also between times, if something occurred to

him; and if he thought of anything in the night, he would send for his

confessor and confess before matins.[685] After confession he always took

his discipline from his confessor, whom he furnished with a scourge of

five little braided iron chains, attached to an ivory handle. This he

would afterwards put back into a little case, which he carried hanging to

his belt, but out of sight. Such little cases he sometimes presented to

his children or friends in secret, that they might have a convenient

instrument of discipline. He wore haircloth next his flesh in the holy

seasons, a habit distressing to his tender skin, until his confessor

persuaded him to abandon this form of penance as ill comporting with his

station. He replaced it by increasing his charities. His fasts were

regular and frequent, till he lessened them upon prudent advice; for he

was not strong. He would have liked to hear all the canonical hours

chanted; and twice a day he heard Mass, and daily the Office for the Dead.

Sometimes, soon after midnight, he would rise to hear matins, and then

would take a quiet time for prayer by his bed. Likewise he loved to hear

sermons. On returning over the sea, when the ships suffered a long delay,

he had preaching three times a week, with the sermon specially adapted to

the sailors, a class of men who rarely hear the Word of God. He prevailed

on many of them to confess, and declared himself ready at any time to put

his hand to a rope, if necessary, so that a sailor while confessing might

not be called away by any exigency of the sea.

While beyond the sea, this good king, hearing that a Saracen Sultan had

collected the books of their philosophy at his own expense for his

subjects’ use, determined not to be outdone whenever he should return to

Paris, a purpose which he amply carried out, diligently and generously

supplying money for copying and renewing the writings of the Doctors. At

enormous expense he obtained the Saviour’s crown of thorns and a good part

of the true cross, from the emperor at Constantinople, with many other

precious relics; all of which the king barefooted helped to carry in holy

procession when they were received by the clergy of Paris.

The king was very careful in the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage,

always seeing to it that the candidate was not already enjoying another

benefice. His heart exulted when it came to him to bestow a benefice upon

some especially holy man. He was most zealous in the suppression of

swearing and blasphemy, and with the advice of the papal legate then in

France issued an edict, providing that the lips of those guilty of this

sin should be seared with hot irons; and when certain ones murmured, he

declared that he would willingly suffer his own lips to be branded if that

would purge his realm of this vice.

Such were the acts and qualities of Louis which impressed his Dominican

confessor. They were the qualities of a saint, and would have brought

their possessor to a monastery, had not his royal station held him in the

world. The Dominican could not know the knightly nature of his royal

penitent, and still less reflect it in his Latin of the confessional. For

this there was needed the pen of a great gentleman, whose nature enabled

him to picture his lord in a book of such high breeding that it were hard

to find its fellow. This book is stately with the Sire de Joinville’s

consciousness of his position and blood, and stately through the respect

he bore his lord--a book with which no one would take a liberty. Yet it is

simple in thought and phrase, as written by one who lived through what he

tells, and closely knew and dearly loved the king. From it one learns that

he who was a saint in his confessor’s eyes was also a monarch from his

soul out to his royal manners and occasional royal insistence upon acts

which others thought unwise. We also learn to know him as a knightly,

hapless soldier of the Cross, who would not waver from his word plighted

even to an infidel.

That St. Louis was a veritable knight is the first thing one learns from

Joinville. The first part of my book, says that gentleman, tells how the

king conducted his life after the way of God and the Church, and to the

profit of his realm; the second tells of his “granz chevaleries et de ses

granz faiz d’armes.” “The first deed (_faiz_) whereby ‘il mist son cors en

avanture de mort’ was at our arrival before Damietta, where his council

was of the opinion, as I have understood, that he ought to remain in his

ship until he saw what his knights (_sa chevalerie_) should do, who made a

landing. The reason why they so counselled him was that if he disembarked,

and his people should be killed and he with them, the whole affair was

lost; while if he remained in his ship he could in his own person renew

the attempt to conquer Egypt. And he would credit no one, but leaped into

the sea, all armed, his shield hanging from his neck, his lance in hand,

and was one of the first upon the beach.”

This is from Joinville’s Introduction. He recommences formally:

“In the name of God the all powerful, I, John, Sire of Joinville,

Seneschal of Champagne, cause to be written the life of our sainted

king Louis, as I saw and heard of it for the space of six years while

I was in his company on the pilgrimage beyond the sea, and since we

returned. And before I tell you his great deeds and prowess

(_chevalerie_), I will recount what I saw and heard of his holy words

and good precepts, so that they may be found one after the other for

the improvement of those who hear.

“This holy man loved God with all his heart, and imitated His works:

which was evident in this, that as God died for the love which He bore

His people, so he (Louis) put his body in peril several times for the

love which he bore his people. The great love which he had for his

people appeared in what he said to his eldest son, Louis, when very

sick at Fontainebleau: ‘Fair son,’ said he, ‘I beg thee to make

thyself loved by the people of thy kingdom; for indeed I should prefer

that a Scot from Scotland came and ruled the people of the kingdom

well and faithfully, rather than that thou shouldst rule them ill in

the sight of all.’”

Joinville continues relating the virtues of the king, and recording his

conversations with himself:

“He called me once and said, ‘Seneschal, what is God?’ And I said to

him, ‘Sire, it is a being so good that there can be no better.’

“‘Now I ask you,’ said he, ‘which would you choose, to be a leper, or

to have committed a mortal sin?’ And I who never lied to him replied

that I had rather have committed thirty than be a leper. Afterwards he

called me apart and made me sit at his feet and said: ‘Why did you say

that to me yesterday?’ And I told him that I would say it again. And

he: ‘You speak like a thoughtless trifler; for you should know there

is no leprosy so ugly as to be in mortal sin, because the soul in

mortal sin is like the devil. This is why there can be no leprosy so

ugly. And then, of a truth, when a man dies, he is cured of the

leprosy of the body; but when the man who has committed a mortal sin

dies, he does not know, nor is it certain, that he has so repented

while living, that God has pardoned him; this is why he should have

great fear that this leprosy will last as long as God shall be in

paradise. So I pray you earnestly that you will train your heart, for

the love of God and of me, to wish rather for leprosy or any other

bodily evil, rather than that mortal sin should come into your soul.’

He asked me whether I washed the feet of the poor on Holy Tuesday.

‘Sire,’ said I, ‘_quel malheur_! I will not wash those villains’

feet.’ ‘Truly that was ill said,’ said he; ‘for you should not hold

in contempt what God did for our instruction. So I pray you, for the

love of God first, and for the love of me, to accustom yourself to

wash them.’”

Joinville was some years younger than his king, who loved him well and

wished to help him. The king also esteemed Master Robert de Sorbon[686]

for the high respect as a _preudom_ in which he was held, and had him eat

at his table. One day Master Robert was seated next to Joinville.

“‘Seneschal,’ said the king, smiling, ‘tell me the reasons why a man

of wisdom and valour (_preudom_, _prud’homme_) is accounted better

than a fool.’ Then began the argument between me and Master Robert;

and when we had disputed for a time, the king rendered his decision,

saying: ‘Master Robert, I should like to have the name of _preudom_,

so be it that I was one, and all the rest I would leave to you; for

_preudom_ is such a grand and good thing that it fills the mouth just

to pronounce it.’”

Master Robert plays a not altogether happy part in another scene,

varicoloured and delightful:

“The holy king was at Corbeil one Pentecost, and twenty-four knights

with him. The king went down after dinner into the courtyard back of

the chapel, and was talking at the entrance with the Count of

Brittany, the father of the present duke, whom God preserve. Master

Robert de Sorbon came to seek me there, and took me by the cloak, and

led me to the king, and all the other gentlemen came after us. Then I

asked Master Robert: ‘Master Robert, what would you?’ And he said to

me: ‘If the king should sit down here, and you should seat yourself

above him, I ask you whether you would not be to blame?’ And I said,

Yes.

“And he said to me: ‘Yet you lay yourself open to blame, since you are

more nobly clad than the king: for you wear squirrel’s fur and cloth

of green, which the king does not.’

“And I said to him: ‘Master Robert, saving your grace, I do nothing

worthy of blame when I wear squirrel’s fur and cloth of green; for it

is the clothing which my father and mother left me. But you do what is

to blame; for you are the son of a _vilain_ and _vilaine_, and have

abandoned the clothes of your father and your mother, and are clad in

richer cloth than the king.’ And then I took the lappet of his surcoat

and that of the king’s, and said to him: ‘See whether I do not speak

truly.’ And the king set himself to defend Master Robert with all his

might.”

“Afterwards Messire the king called to him Monseigneur Philippe his

son, the father of the present king, and the king Thibaut (of

Navarre), and laid his hand on the earth and said: ‘Sit close to me,

so that they may not hear.’

“‘Ah Sire,’ say they, ‘we dare not sit so close to you.’

“And he said to me, ‘Seneschal, sit down here.’ And so I did, so close

that our clothes touched. And he made them sit down by me, and said to

them: ‘You have done ill, you who are my sons, who have not obeyed at

once all that I bade you: and see to it that this does not happen with

you again.’ And they promised. And then he said to me, that he had

called us in order to confess to me that he was in the wrong in

defending Master Robert against me. ‘But,’ said he, ‘I saw him so

dumbfounded that there was good need I should defend him. And do none

of you attach any importance to all I said defending Master Robert;

for, as the seneschal said to him, you ought to dress well and

becomingly, so that your wives may love you better, and your people

hold you in higher esteem. For the sage says that one should appear in

such clothes and arms that the wise of this world may not say you have

done too much, nor the young people say you have done too little.’”

The hopelessly worthy _parvenu_ was quite outside this charmed circle of

blood and manners.

Another story of Joinville opens our eyes to Louis’ views on Jews and

infidels. The king was telling him of a grand argument between Jews and

Christian clergy which was to have been held at Cluny. And a certain

poverty-stricken knight was there, who obtained leave to speak the first

word; and he asked the head Jew whether he believed that Mary was the

mother of God and still a virgin. And the Jew answered that he did not

believe it at all. The knight replied that in that case the Jew had acted

like a fool to enter her monastery, and should pay for it; and with that

he knocked him down with his staff, and all the other Jews ran off. When

the abbot reproached him for his folly, he replied that the abbot’s folly

was greater in having the argument at all. “So I tell you,” said the king

on finishing his story, “that only a skilled clerk should dispute with

misbelievers; but a layman, when he hears any one speak ill of the

Christian law, should defend that law with nothing but his sword, which he

should plunge into the defamer’s belly, to the hilt if possible.”

Well known is the hapless outcome of St. Louis’ Crusades: the first one

leading to defeat and captivity in Egypt, the second ending in the king’s

death by disease at Tunis. Yet in what he sought to do in his Lord’s

cause, St. Louis was a true knight and soldier of the Cross. The spirit

was willing; but the flesh accomplished little. Let us take from

Joinville’s story of that first crusade a wonderfully illustrative

chapter, giving the confused scenes occurring after the capture of

Damietta, when the French king and his feudal host had advanced southerly

through the Delta, along the eastern branch of the Nile. Joinville was

making a reconnaissance with his own knights, when they came suddenly upon

a large body of Saracens. The Christians were hard pressed; here and there

a knight falls in the melée, among them

“Monseigneur Hugues de Trichatel, the lord of Conflans, who carried my

banner. I and my knights spurred to deliver Monseigneur Raoul de

Wanou, who was thrown to the ground. As I was making my way back, the

Turks struck at me with their lances; my horse fell on his knees under

the blows, and I went over his head. I recovered myself as I might,

shield on neck and sword in hand; and Monseigneur Erard de Siverey

(whom God absolve!), who was of my people, came to my aid, and said

that we had better retreat to a ruined house, and there wait for the

king who was approaching.”

One notes the high-born courtesy with which the Sire de Joinville speaks

of the gentlemen who had the honour of serving him. The fight goes on.

“Monseigneur Erard de Siverey was struck by a sword-blow in his face,

so that his nose hung down over his lips. And then I was minded of

Monseigneur Saint Jacques, whom I thus invoked: ‘Beau Sire Saint

Jacques help and succour me in this need.’

“When I had made my prayer, Monseigneur Erard de Siverey said to me:

‘Sire, if you think that neither I nor my heirs would suffer reproof,

I would go for aid to the Count of Anjou, whom I see over there in the

fields.’ And I said to him: ‘Messire Erard, I think you would do

yourself great honour, if you now went for aid to save our lives; for

your own is in jeopardy.’ And indeed I spoke truly, for he died of

that wound. He asked the advice of all our knights who were there, and

all approved as I had approved. And when he heard that, he requested

me to let him have his horse, which I was holding by the bridle with

the rest. And so I did.”

The knightliness of this scene is perfect, with its liege fealty and its

carefulness as to the point of honour, its carefulness also that the

vassal knight shall fail in no duty to his lord whereby the descent of his

fief may be jeopardized. Monseigneur Erard (whom God absolve, we say with

Joinville!) is very careful to have his lord’s assent and the approval of

his fellows, before he will leave his lord in peril, and undergo still

greater risk to bring him succour.

Well, the Count of Anjou brought such aid as created a diversion, and the

Saracens turned to the new foe. But now the king arrives on the scene:

“There where I was on foot with my knights, wounded as already said,

comes the king with his whole array, and a great sound of trumpets and

drums. And he halted on the road on the dyke. Never saw I one so

bravely armed: for he showed above all his people from his shoulders

up, a gilded casque upon his head and a German sword in his hand.”

Then the king’s good knights charge into the battle, and fine feats of

arms are done. The fighting is fierce and general. At length the king is

counselled to bear back along the river, keeping close to it on his right

hand, so as to reunite with the Duke of Burgundy who had been left to

guard the camp. The knights are recalled from the melée, and with a great

noise of trumpets and drums, and Saracen horns, the army is set in motion.

“And now up comes the constable, Messire Imbert de Beaujeu, and tells

the king that the Count of Artois, his brother, was defending himself

in a house in Mansourah, and needed aid. And the king said to him:

‘Constable go before and I will follow you.’ And I said to the

constable that I would be his knight, at which he thanked me greatly.”

Again one feels the feudal chivalry. Now the affair becomes rather

distraught. They set out to succour the Count of Artois, but are checked,

and it is rumoured that the king is taken; and in fact six Saracens had

rushed upon him and seized his horse by the bridle; but he had freed

himself with such great strokes that all his people took courage. Yet the

host is driven back upon the river, and is in desperate straits. Joinville

and his knights defend a bridge over a tributary, which helps to check the

Saracen advance, and affords an uncertain means of safety to the French.

But there is no cessation of the Saracen attack with bows and spears. The

knights seemed full of arrows. Joinville saved his life with an

arrow-proof Saracen vest, “so that I was wounded by their arrows only in

five places”! One of Joinville’s own stout burgesses, bearing his lord’s

banner on a lance, helped in the charges upon the enemy. In the melée up

speaks the good Count of Soissons, whose cousin Joinville had married. “He

joked with me and said: ‘Seneschal, let us whoop after this canaille; for

by God’s coif (his favourite oath) we shall be talking, you and I, about

this day in the chambers of the ladies.’”

At last, the arbalests were brought out from the camp, and the Saracens

drew off--fled, says the Sire de Joinville. And the king was there, and

“I took off his casque, and gave him my iron cap, so that he might get

some air. And then comes brother Henry de Ronnay, Prevost of the

Hospital, to the king when he had passed the river, and kisses his

mailed hand. And the king asked him whether he had news of the Count

of Artois, his brother; and he said that he had indeed news of him,

for he was sure that his brother the Count of Artois was in Paradise.

‘Ha! sire,’ said the Prevost, ‘be of good cheer; for no such honour

ever came to a king of France as is come to you. For to fight your

enemies you have crossed a river by swimming, have discomfited your

enemies and driven them from the field, and taken their engines and

tents, where you will sleep this night.’ And the king replied that God

be adored for all that He gave; and then the great tears fell from his

eyes.”

One need not follow on to the ill ending of the campaign, when king and

knights all had to yield themselves prisoners, in most uncertain

captivity. The Saracen Emirs conspired and slew their Sultan; the

prisoners’ lives hung on a thread; and when the terms were arranging for

the delivery and ransom of the king, his own scruples nearly proved fatal.

For the Emirs, after they had made their oath, wished the king to swear,

and put his seal to a parchment,

“that if he the king did not hold to his agreements, might he be as

shamed as the Christian who denied God and His Mother, and was cut off

from the company of the twelve Companions (apostles) and of all the

saints, male and female. To this the king consented. The last point of

the oath was this: That if the king did not keep his agreements, might

he be as shamed as the Christian who denied God and His law, and in

contempt of God spat on the Cross and trod on it. When the king heard

that, he said, please God, he would not make that oath.”

Then the trouble began, and the Emirs tortured the venerable patriarch of

Jerusalem till he besought the king to swear. How the oath was arranged I

do not know, says Joinville, but finally the Emirs professed themselves

satisfied. And after that, when the ransom was paid, the Saracens by a

mistake accepted a sum ten thousand livres short, and Louis, in spite of

the protest of his counsellors, refused to permit advantage to be taken

and insisted on full payment.

Many years afterwards, when Louis was dead and canonized, a dream came to

his faithful Joinville who was then an old man.

“It seemed to me in my dream that I saw the king in front of my chapel

at Joinville; and he was, so he seemed to me, wonderfully happy and

glad at heart; and I also was glad at heart, because I saw him in my

chateau. And I said to him: ‘Sire, when you go hence, I will prepare

lodging for you at my house in my village of Chevillon.’ And he

replied, smiling, and said to me: ‘Sire de Joinville, by the troth I

owe you, I do not wish so soon to go from here.’ When I awoke I

bethought me; and it seemed to me that it would please God and the

king that I should provide a lodging for him in my chapel. So I have

placed an altar in honour of God and of him there, where there shall

be always chanting in his honour. And I have established a fund in

perpetuity to do this.”

Godfrey of Bouillon and St. Louis of France show knighthood as inspired by

serious and religious motives. We pass on a hundred years after St. Louis,

to a famous Chronicle concerning men whose knightly lives exhibit no such

religious, and possibly no such serious, purpose, so far at least as they

are set forth by this delightful chronicler. His name of course is Sir

John Froissart, and his chief work goes under the name of _The Chronicles

of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining Countries_. It covers the

period from the reign of Edward II. to the coronation of Henry IV. of

England. Have we not all known his book as one to delight youth and age?

Let us, however, open it seriously, and first of all notice the Preface,

with its initial sentence giving the note of the entire work: “That the

_grans merveilles_ and the _biau fait d’armes_ achieved in the great wars

between England and France, and the neighbouring realms may be worthily

recorded, and known in the present and in the time to come, I purpose to

order and put the same in prose, according to the true information which I

have obtained from valiant knights, squires, and marshals at arms, who are

and rightly should be the investigators and reporters of such

matters.”[687]

“Marvels” and “deeds of arms”--soon he will use the equivalent phrase

_belles aventures_. With delicious garrulity, but never wavering from his

point of view, the good Sir John repeats and enlarges as he enters on his

work in which “to encourage all valorous hearts, and to show them

honourable examples” he proposes to “point out and speak of each adventure

from the nativity of the noble King Edward (III.) of England, who so

potently reigned, and who was engaged in so many battles and perilous

adventures and other feats of arms and great prowess, from the year of

grace 1326, when he was crowned in England.”

Of course Froissart says that the occasion of these wars was King Edward’s

enterprise to recover his inheritance of France, which the twelve peers

and barons of that realm had awarded to Lord Philip of Valois, from whom

it had passed on to his son, King Charles. This enterprise was the woof

whereon should hang an hundred years of knightly and romantic feats of

arms, which incidentally wrought desolation to the fair realm of France.

Yet the full opening of these matters was not yet; and Froissart begins

with the story of the troubles brought on Queen Isabella and the nobles

of England through the overbearing insolence of Sir Hugh Spencer, the

favourite of her husband Edward II.

The Queen left England secretly, to seek aid at Paris from her brother

King Charles, that she might regain her rights against the upstart and her

own weak estranged husband. King Charles received her graciously, as a

great lord should receive a great dame; and richly provided for her and

her young son Edward. Then he took counsel of the “great lords and barons

of his kingdom”; and their advice was that he should permit her to enlist

assistance in his realm, and yet himself appear ignorant of the matter. Of

this, Sir Hugh hears, and his gold is busy with these counsellors; so that

the Court becomes a cold place for the self-exiled queen. On she fares in

her distress, and, as advised, seeks the aid of the great Earl of

Hainault, then at Valenciennes. But before the queen can reach that city,

the earl’s young brother, Sir John, Lord of Beaumont, rides to meet her,

ardent to succour a great lady in distress, “being at that time very

young, and panting for glory like a knight-errant.” In the evening he

reached the house of Sir Eustace d’Ambreticourt, where the queen was

lodged. She made her lamentable complaint, at which Sir John was affected

even to tears, and said, “Lady, see here your knight, who will not fail to

die for you, though every one else should desert you; therefore will I do

everything in my power to conduct you and your son, and to restore you to

your rank in England, by the grace of God, and the assistance of your

friends in those parts; and I, and all those whom I can influence, will

risk our lives on the adventure for your sake.”

Is not this a chivalric beginning? And so the Chronicle goes on. King

Edward III. is crowned, marries the Lady Philippa, daughter of the Earl of

Hainault, and afterwards sends his defiance to Philip, King of France, for

not yielding up to him his rightful inheritance, and this after the same

King Edward had, as Duke of Aquitaine, done homage to King Philip for that

great duchy.

So the challenge of King Edward, and of sundry other lords, was delivered

to the King of France; and thereupon the first bold raid is made by the

knightliest figure of the first generation of the war, Sir Walter Manny,

a young Hainaulter who had remained in the train of Queen Philippa. The

war is carried on by incursions and deeds of derring-do, the larger armies

of the kings of England and France circumspectly refraining from battle,

which might have checked the martial jollity of the affair. It is all

beautifully pointless and adventurous, and carried out in the spirit of a

knighthood that loves fighting and seeks honour and adventure, while

steadying itself with a hope of plunder and reward. There are likewise

ladies to be succoured and defended.

One of these was the lion-hearted Countess of Montfort, who with her

husband had become possessed of the disputed dukedom of Brittany. The Earl

of Montfort did homage to the King of England; the rival claimant, Charles

of Blois, sought the aid of France. He came with an army, and Montfort was

taken and died in prison; the duchess was left to carry on the war. She

was at last shut up and besieged in Hennebon on the coast; the burghers

were falling away, the knights discouraged; emissaries from Lord Charles

were working among them. His ally, Lord Lewis of Spain, and Sir Hervé de

Leon were the leaders of the besiegers. Sir Hervé had an uncle, a bishop,

Sir Guy de Leon, who was on the side of the Countess of Montfort. The

nephew won the uncle over in a conference without the walls; and the

latter assumed the task of persuading the Lords of Brittany who were with

the countess to abandon the apparently hopeless struggle. Re-entering the

town, the bishop was eloquent against the countess’s cause, and promised

free pardon to the lords if they would give up the town. Now listen to

Froissart, how he tells the story:

“The countess had strong suspicions of what was going forward, and

begged of the lords of Brittany, for the love of God, that they would

not doubt but she should receive succours before three days were over.

But the bishop spoke so eloquently, and made use of such good

arguments, that these lords were in much suspense all that night. On

the morrow he continued the subject, and succeeded so far as to gain

them over, or very nearly so, to his opinion; insomuch that Sir Hervé

de Leon had advanced close to the town to take possession of it, with

their free consent, when the countess looking out from a window of the

castle toward the sea, cried out most joyfully, ‘I see the succours I

have so long expected and wished for coming.’ She repeated this twice;

and the town’s people ran to the ramparts and to the windows of the

castle, and saw a numerous fleet of great and small vessels, well

trimmed, making all the sail they could toward Hennebon. They rightly

imagined it must be the fleet from England, so long detained at sea by

tempests and contrary winds.

“When the governor of Guingamp, Sir Yves de Tresiquidi, Sir Galeran de

Landreman, and the other knights, perceived this succour coming to

them, they told the bishop that he might break up his conference, for

they were not now inclined to follow his advice. The bishop, Sir Guy

de Leon, replied, ‘My lords, then our company shall separate; for I

will go to him who seems to me to have the clearest right.’ Upon which

he sent his defiance to the lady, and to all her party, and left the

town to inform Sir Hervé de Leon how matters stood. Sir Hervé was much

vexed at it, and immediately ordered the largest machine that was with

the army to be placed as near the castle as possible, strictly

commanding that it should never cease working day nor night. He then

presented his uncle to the Lord Lewis of Spain, and to the Lord

Charles of Blois, who both received him most courteously. The

countess, in the meantime, prepared and hung with tapestry halls and

chambers to lodge handsomely the lords and barons of England, whom she

saw coming, and sent out a noble company to meet them. When they were

landed, she went herself to give them welcome, respectfully thanking

each knight and squire, and led them into the town and castle that

they might have convenient lodging: on the morrow, she gave them a

magnificent entertainment. All that night, and the following day, the

large machine never ceased from casting stones into the town.

“After the entertainment, Sir Walter Manny, who was captain of the

English, inquired of the countess the state of the town and the

enemy’s army. Upon looking out of the window, he said, he had a great

inclination to destroy that large machine which was placed so near,

and much annoyed them, if any would help him. Sir Yves de Tresiquidi

replied, that he would not fail him in this his first expedition; as

did also the lord of Landreman. They went to arm themselves, and then

sallied quietly out of one of the gates, taking with them three

hundred archers, who shot so well, that those who guarded the machine

fled, and the men at arms, who followed the archers, falling upon

them, slew the greater part, and broke down and cut in pieces this

large machine. They then dashed in among the tents and huts, set fire

to them, and killed and wounded many of their enemies before the army

was in motion. After this they made a handsome retreat. When the enemy

were mounted and armed they galloped after them like madmen.

“Sir Walter Manny, seeing this, exclaimed, ‘May I never be embraced by

my mistress and dear friend, if I enter castle or fortress before I

have unhorsed one of these gallopers.’ He then turned round, and

pointed his spear toward the enemy, as did the two brothers of

Lande-Halle, le Haze de Brabant, Sir Yves de Tresiquidi, Sir Galeran

de Landreman, and many others, and spitted the first coursers. Many

legs were made to kick the air. Some of their own party were also

unhorsed. The conflict became very serious, for reinforcements were

perpetually coming from the camp; and the English were obliged to

retreat towards the castle, which they did in good order until they

came to the castle ditch; there the knights made a stand, until all

their men were safely returned. Many brilliant actions, captures, and

rescues might have been seen. Those of the town who had not been of

the party to destroy the large machine now issued forth, and, ranging

themselves upon the banks of the ditch, made such good use of their

bows, that they forced the enemy to withdraw, killing many men and

horses. The chiefs of the army, perceiving they had the worst of it,

and that they were losing men to no purpose, sounded a retreat, and

made their men retire to the camp. As soon as they were gone, the

townsmen re-entered, and went each to his quarters. The Countess of

Montfort came down from the castle to meet them, and with a most

cheerful countenance, kissed Sir Walter Manny, and all his companions,

one after the other like a noble and valiant dame.”

In this manner the genial chronicler goes on through his long delightful

ramble. After a while the chief combatants close. Cressy is fought and

Poictiers. The Black Prince, that extremest bit of knightly royalty, fills

the page. The place of Sir Walter Manny is taken by the larger figure of

Sir John Chandos, and, on the other side, the usually unfortunate but

unconquerable Bertrand du Guesclin. Froissart is at his best when he tells

of the great expedition of the Black Prince to restore the cruel Don Pedro

of Castille to the throne from which he had been expelled by that

picturesque bastard brother Henry, who had a poorer title but a better

right, by virtue of being fit to rule.

This whole expedition was--as we see it in Froissart--neither politics nor

war, but chivalry. What interest had England, or Edward III., or the

Prince of Wales in Don Pedro? None. He was a cruel tyrant, rightfully

expelled. The Prince of Wales would set him back upon his throne in the

interest of royal legitimacy, and because there offered a brilliant

opportunity for fame and plunder: the Black Prince thought less of the

latter than the Free Companies enlisted under his banner, and less than

his own rapacious knights.

So in three divisions, headed by the most famous knights and in a way

generalled by Sir John Chandos, the host passes through the kingdom of

Navarre, and crosses the Pyrenees. Then begin a series of exploits. Sir

Thomas Felton and a company set out just to dare and beard the Castillian

army, and after entrancing feats of knight-errantry, are all captured or

slain. Much is the prince annoyed at this; but bears on, gladdened with

the thought, often expressed, that the bastard Henry is a bold and hardy

knight, and is advancing to give battle.

And true it was. One of Henry’s counsellors explains to him how easy it is

to hem in the Black Prince in the defiles, and starve him into a

disastrous retreat. Perish the thought! “By the soul of my father,”

answers King Henry, “I have such a desire to see this prince, and to try

my strength with him, that we will never part without a battle.”

So the unnecessary and resultless battle of Navaretta took place. Don

Pedro, the cruel rightful king, was knighted, with others, by the Prince

of Wales before the fight. The tried unflinching chivalry of England and

Aquitaine conquered, although one division of King Henry’s host had du

Guesclin at its head. That knight was captured; somehow his star had a way

of sinking before the steadier fortune of Sir John Chandos, who was here

du Guesclin’s captor for a second time. King Henry, after valiant

fighting, escaped. Don Pedro was re-set upon his throne; and played false

with the Black Prince and his army, in the matter of pay. The whole

expedition turned back across the Pyrenees. And not so long after, Henry

bestirred himself, and the tardily freed du Guesclin hurried again to aid

him. This time there was no Black Prince and Sir John Chandos; and Don

Pedro was conquered and slain, and Henry was at last firm upon his throne.

Could anything have been more chivalric, more objectless, and more

absolutely lacking in result? It is a beautiful story; every one should

refresh his childhood’s memory of it by reading Froissart’s delightful

pages. And then let him also read at least the subsequent story of the

death of Sir John Chandos in a knightly brush at arms; he, the really wise

and great leader, perishes through his personal rash knighthood! It is a

fine tale of the ending of an old and mighty knight, the very flower of

chivalry, as he was called.

So matters fare on through these Chronicles. All is charming and

interesting and picturesque; charming also for the knights: great fame is

won and fat ransoms paid to recoup knightly fortunes. Now and then--all

too frequently, alas! and the only pity of it all!--some brave knight has

the mishap to lose his life! That is to say, the only pity of it from the

point of view of good Sir John. But we can see further horrors in this

picture of chivalry’s actualities: we see King Edward pillage, devastate,

destroy France;[688] we see the awful outcome of the general ruin in the

rising of the vile, unhappy peasants, the Jacquerie; then in the

indiscriminate slaughter and pillaging by the Free Companies, no longer

well employed by royalties; and then we see the cruel treachery of many an

incident wrought out by such a flower of chivalry even as du

Guesclin.[689] Indeed all the horrors of ceaseless interminable war are

everywhere, and no more dreadful horror through the whole story than the

bloody sack of Limoges commanded by that perfect knight, the Black Prince,

himself stricken with disease, and carried in a litter through the breach

of the walls into the town, and there reposing, assuaging his cruel soul,

while his men run hither and thither “slaying men, women and children

according to their orders.”[690]

But when King Edward was old, and the Prince of Wales dying with disease,

the French and their partisans gathered heart, and pressed back the

English party with successful captures and reprisals. Du Guesclin was made

Constable of France; and there remained no English leader who was his

match. From this second period onwards, the wars and slaughters and

pillagings become more embittered, more horrid and less relieved. The tone

of everything is brutalized, and the good chronicler himself frequently

animadverts on the wanton destruction wrought, and the frightful ruin.

All is not as in the opening of the story, which was so fascinating, so

knightly and almost as purely adventurous as the Arthurian romances--only

that there was less love of ladies and a disturbing dearth of forests

perilous, and enchanted castles. It was then that the reader had ever and

anon to remind himself that Froissart is not romance or legend, but a

contemporary chronicle; and that in spite of heightened colours and

expanded (if not invented) dialogues, his narrative does not belong to the

imaginative or fictitious side of chivalry, but to its actualities.[691]

Froissart’s pictures of the depravity and devastation caused by the wars

of England and France, disclose the unhappy actuality in which chivalry

might move and have its being. And the knights were part of the cruelty,

treachery, and lust. One may remark besides in Froissart a certain

shallowness, a certain emptying, of the spirit of chivalry. One phase of

this lay in the expansion of form and ceremony, while life was

departing;--as, for example, in the hypertrophe of heraldry, and in the

pageantry of the later tournaments, where such care was taken to prevent

injury to the combatants. A subtler phase of chivalry’s emptying lay in

its preciosity and in the excessive growth of fantasy and utter

romance--of which enough will be said in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XXIII

ROMANTIC CHIVALRY AND COURTLY LOVE

FROM ROLAND TO TRISTAN AND LANCELOT

The instance of Godfrey of Bouillon showed how easy was the passage from

knighthood in history to knighthood in legend and romance: legend

springing from fact, out of which it makes a story framed in a picture of

the time; romance unhistorical in origin, borrowing, devising, imagining

according to the taste of an audience and the faculty of the trouvère. A

boundless mediaeval literature of poetic legend and romantic fiction sets

forth the ways of chivalry. Our attention may be confined to the Old

French, the source from which German, English, and Italian literatures

never ceased to draw. Three branches may be selected: the _chansons de

geste_; the _romans d’aventure_; and the Arthurian romances. The subjects

of the three are distinct, and likewise the tone and manner of treatment.

Yet they were not unaffected by each other; for instance, the hard feudal

spirit of the _chansons de geste_ became touched with the tastes which

moulded the two other groups, and there was even a borrowing of topic.

This was natural, as the periods of their composition over-lapped, and

doubtless their audiences were in part the same.

The _chansons de geste_ (_gesta_ == deeds) were epic narratives with

historical facts for subjects, and commonly were composed in ten-syllable

assonanced or (later) rhyming couplets, _laisses_ so called, the same

final assonance or rhyme extending through a dozen or so lines. They told

the deeds of Charlemagne and his barons, or the feuds of the barons among

themselves, especially those of the time following the emperor’s death. So

the subject might be national, for instance the war against the Saracens

in Spain; or it might be more provincially feudal in every sense of the

latter word.[692] It is not to our purpose to discuss how these poems grew

through successive generations, nor how much of Teutonic spirit they put

in Romance forms of verse. They were composed by trouvères or _jongleurs_.

The _Roland_ is the earliest of them, and in its extant form belongs to

the last part of the eleventh century. One or two others are nearly as

early; but the vast majority, as we have them, are the creations, or

rather the _remaniements_, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

These _chansons_ present the feudal system in epic action. They blazon

forth its virtues and its horrors. The heroes are called barons (_ber_)

and also chevaliers;[693] _vassalage_ and prowess (_proecce_) are closely

joined; the _Roland_ speaks of the _vassalage_ of Charles _le ber_

(Charlemagne). The usages of chivalry are found:[694] a baron begins as

_enfant_, and does his youthful feats (_enfances_); then he is girt with

manhood’s sword and given the thwack which dubs him _chevalier_.

Naturally, the chivalry of the _chansons_ is feudal rather than romantic.

It is chivalry, sometimes crusading against “felun paien,” sometimes

making war against emperors or rivals; always truculent, yet fighting for

an object and not for pure adventure’s sake or the love of ladies. The

motives of action are quite tangible, and the tales reflect actual

situations and conditions. They tell what knights (the chevaliers and

barons) really did, though, of course, the particular incidents related

may not be historical. Naturally they speak from the time of their

composition. The _Roland_, for example, throbs with the crusading wrath

of the eleventh century--a new fervour, and no passionate memory of the

old obscure disaster of Roncesvalles. It does not speak from the time of

the great emperor. For when Charlemagne lived there was neither a “dulce

France” nor the sentiment which enshrined it; nor was there a sharply

deliminated feudal Christianity set over against a world of “felun

paien”--those false paynim, who should be trusted by no Christian baron.

The whole poem revolves around a treason plotted by a renegade among vile

infidels.

In this rude poem which carries the noblest spirit of the _chansons de

geste_, the soul of feudal chivalry climbs to its height of loyal

expiation for overweening bravery. The battle-note is given in Roland’s

words, as Oliver descries the masses of paynim closing in around that

valiant rear-guard.

Said Oliver: “Sir comrade, I think we shall have battle with these

Saracens.”

Replied Roland: “God grant it! Here must we hold for our king. A man

should suffer for his lord, endure heat and cold, though he lose hair and

hide. Let each one strike his best, that no evil song be sung of us. The

paynim are in the wrong, Christians in the right!”[695]

Then follows Oliver’s prudent solicitation, and Roland’s fatal refusal to

sound his horn and recall Charles and his host: “Please God and His holy

angels, France shall not be so shamed through me; better death than such

dishonour. The harder we strike the more the emperor will love us.” Oliver

can be stubborn too; for when the fight is close to its fell end, he

swears that Roland shall never wed his sister Aude, if, beaten, he sound

that horn.[696]

The paynim host is shattered and riven; but nearly all the Franks have

fallen. Roland looks upon the mountains and the plain. Of those of France

he sees so many lying dead, and he laments them like a high-born knight

(_chevaliers gentilz_). “_Seigneurs barons_, may God have pity on you and

grant Paradise to your souls, and give them to repose on holy flowers!

Better vassals shall I never see; long are the years that you have served

me, and conquered wide countries for Charles--the emperor has nurtured you

for an ill end! Land of France, sweet land, to-day bereft of barons of

high prize! Barons of France! for me I see you dying. I cannot save or

defend you! God be your aid, who never lies! Oliver, brother, you I must

not fail. I shall die of grief, if no one slay me! Sir comrade, let us

strike again.”[697]

Roland and Oliver are almost alone, and Oliver receives a death-stroke.

With his last strength he slays his slayer, shouts his defiance, and calls

Roland to his aid. He strikes on blindly as Roland comes and looks into

his face;--and then might you have seen Roland swoon on his horse, and

Oliver wounded to death. “He had bled so much, that his eyes were

troubled, and he could not see to recognize any mortal man. As he met his

comrade, he struck him on his helmet a blow that cut it shear in twain,

though the sword did not touch the head. At this Roland looked at him, and

asked him soft and low: ‘Sir comrade, did you mean that? It is Roland, who

loves you well. You have not defied me.’

“Says Oliver, ‘Now I hear you speak; I did not see you; may the Lord God

see you! I have struck you; for which pardon me.’”

Roland replied: “I was not hurt. I pardon you here and before God.”

“At this word they bent over each other, and in such love they parted.”

Oliver feels his death-anguish at hand; sight and hearing fail him: he

sinks from his horse and lies on the earth; he confesses his sins, with

his two hands joined toward heaven. He prays God to grant him Paradise,

and blesses Charles and sweet France, and his comrade Roland above all

men. Stretched on the ground the count lies dead.[698]

A little after, when Roland and Turpin the stout archbishop have made

their last charge, and the paynim have withdrawn, and the archbishop too

lies on the ground, just breathing; then it is that Roland gathers the

bodies of the peers and carries them one by one to lay them before the

archbishop for his absolution. He finds Oliver’s body, and tightly

straining it to his heart, lays it with the rest before the archbishop,

whose dying breath is blessing and absolving his companions. And with

tears Roland’s voice breaks “Sweet comrade, Oliver, son of the good count

Renier, who held the March of Geneva; to break spear and pierce shield,

and counsel loyally the good, and discomfit and vanquish villains, in no

land was there better knight.”[699] Knowing his own death near, Roland

tries to shatter his great sword, and then lies down upon it with his face

toward Spain; he holds up his glove toward God in token of fealty; Gabriel

accepts his glove and the angels receive his soul.

This was the best of knighthood in the best of the _chansons_: and we see

how close it was to what was best in life. As the fight moves on to

Oliver’s blow and Roland’s pardon, to Roland’s last deeds of Christian

comradeship, and to his death, the eyes are critical indeed that do not

swell with tears. The heroic pathos of this rough poem is great because

the qualities which perished at Roncesvalles were so noble and so

knightly.

The poem passes on to the vengeance taken by the emperor upon the

Saracens, then to his return to Aix, and the short great scene between him

and Aude, Roland’s betrothed:

“Where is Roland, the chief, who vowed to take me for his wife?”

Charles weeps, and tears his white beard as he answers: “Sister, dear

friend, you are asking about a dead man. But I will make it good to

thee--there is Louis my son, who holds the Marches....”

Aude replies: “Strange words! God forbid, and His saints and angels, that

I should live after Roland.” And she falls dead at the emperor’s feet.

As was fitting, the poem closes with the trial of the traitor Ganelon, by

combat. His defence is feudal: he had defied Roland and all his

companions; his treachery was proper vengeance and not treason. But his

champion is defeated, and Ganelon himself is torn in pieces by horses,

while his relatives, pledged as hostages, are hanged. All of which is

feudalism, and can be matched for savagery in many a scene from the

Arthurian romances of chivalry--not always reproduced in modern versions.

So the _chansons de geste_ are a mirror of the ways and customs of feudal

society in the twelfth century. The feudal virtues are there, troth to

one’s liege, orthodox crusading ardour, limitless valour, truth-speaking.

There is also enormous brutality; and the recognized feudal vices,

cruelty, impiousness, and treason. In the _Raoul de Cambrai_, for example,

the nominal hero is a paroxysm of ferocity and impiety. All crimes rejoice

him as he rages along his ruthless way to establish his seignorial rights

over a fief unjustly awarded him by Louis, the weak son of Charlemagne.

His foil is Bernier, the natural son of one of the rightful heirs against

whom Raoul carries on raging feudal war. But Bernier is also Raoul’s

squire and vassal, who had received knighthood from him, and so is bound

to the monster by the strongest feudal tie. He is a pattern of knighthood

and of every feudal virtue. On the day of his knighting he implored his

lord not to enter on that fell war against his (Bernier’s) family. In

vain. The war is begun with fire and sword. Bernier must support his lord;

says he: “Raoul, my lord, is worse (_plu fel_) than Judas; he is my lord;

he has given me horse and clothes, my arms and cloth of gold. I would not

fail him for the riches of Damascus”: and all cried, “Bernier, thou art

right.”[700]

But there is a limit. Raoul is ferociously wasting the land, and

committing every impiety. He would desecrate the abbey of Origni, and set

his tent in the middle of the church, stabling his horse in its porch and

making his bed before the altar. Bernier’s mother is there as a nun; Raoul

pauses at her entreaties and those of his uncle. Then his rage breaks out

afresh at the death of two of his men; he burns the town and abbey, and

Bernier’s mother perishes with the other nuns in the flames.

Now the monster is feasting on the scene of desolation--and it is Lent

besides! After dining, he plays chess: enter Bernier. Raoul asks for wine.

Bernier takes the cup and, kneeling, hands it to him. Raoul is surprised

to see him, but at once renews his oath to disinherit all of Bernier’s

family--his father and uncles. Bernier speaks and reproaches Raoul with

his mother’s death: “I cannot bring her back to life, but I can aid my

father whom you unjustly follow up with war. I am your man no longer. Your

cruelty has released me from my duties; and you will find me on the side

of my father and uncles when you attack them.” For reply, Raoul breaks his

head open with the butt of his spear; but then at once asks pardon and

humiliates himself strangely. Bernier answers that there shall be no peace

between them till the blood which flowed from his head returns back whence

it came. Yet in the final battle he still seeks to turn Raoul back before

attacking him who had been his liege lord. Again in vain; and Raoul falls

beneath Bernier’s sword. Here are the two sides of the picture, the

monster of a lord, the vassal vainly seeking to be true: a situation

utterly tragic from the standpoint of feudal chivalry.

It is not to be supposed that a huge body of poetic narrative could remain

utterly truculent. Other motives had to enter;--the love of women, of

which the _Roland_ has its one great flash. The ladies of the _chansons_

are not coy, and often make the first advances. Such natural lusty love is

not romantic; it is not _l’amour courtois_; and marriage is its obvious

end. The _chansons_ also tend to become adventurous and to fill with

romantic episode. An interesting example of this is the _Renaud de

Montaubon_ where Renaud and his three brothers are aided by the enchanter,

Maugis, against the pursuing hate of Charlemagne and where the marvellous

horse, Bayard, is a fascinating personality. This diversified and romantic

tale long held its own in many tongues. In the somewhat later _Huon de

Bordeaux_ we are at last in fairyland--verily at the Court of Oberon--his

first known entry into literature.[701] Thus the _chansons_ tend toward

the tone and temper of the _romans d’aventure_.

The latter have the courtly love and the purely adventurous motives of the

Arthurian romances, with which the men who fashioned them probably were

acquainted, as were the _jongleurs_ who recast certain of the _chansons de

geste_ to suit a more courtly taste. Of the _romans d’aventure_,

so-called, the _Blancandrin_ or the _Amadas_ or the _Flamenca_ may be

taken as the type; or, if one will, _Flore et Blanchefleur_ and _Aucassin

et Nicolette_, those two enduring lovers’ tales.[702] Courtly love and

knightly ventures are the themes of these _romans_ so illustrative of

noble French society in the thirteenth century. They differ from the

Arthurian romances in having other than a Breton origin; and their heroes

and heroines are sometimes of more easily imagined historicity than the

knights and ladies of the Round Table. But they never approached the

universal vogue of the Arthurian Cycle.

It goes without saying that tastes in reading (or rather listening)

diverged in the twelfth century, just as in the twentieth. One cannot read

the old _chansons de geste_ in which fighting, and not love, is the

absorbing topic, without feeling that the audience before whom they were

chanted was predominantly male. One cannot but feel the contrary to have

been the fact with the romances in verse and prose which constitute that

immense mass of literature vaguely termed Arthurian. These two huge

groups, the _chansons de geste_ and the Arthurian romances, overlap

chronologically and geographically. Although the development of the

_chansons_ was somewhat earlier, the Arthurian stories were flourishing

before the _chansons_ were past their prime; and both were in vogue

through central and northern France. But the Arthurian stories won

adoptive homes in England, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. Indeed their

earlier stages scarcely seem attached to real localities: nor were their

manners and interests rooted in the special traditions of any definite

place.

The tone and topics of these romances suggest an audience chiefly of

women, and possibly feminine authorship. Doubtless, with a few exceptions,

men composed and recited them. But the male authors were influenced by the

taste, the favour and patronage, and the sympathetic suggestive interest

of the ladies. Prominent among the first known composers of these

“Breton” lays was a woman, Marie de France as she is called, who lived in

England in the reign of Henry II. (1154-1189). Her younger contemporary

was the facile trouvère Chrétien de Troies, of whose life little is

actually known. But we know that the subject of his famous Lancelot

romance, called the _Conte de la charrette_, was suggested to him (about

1170) by the Countess Marie de Champagne, daughter of Louis VII. Surely

then he wrote to please the taste of that royal dame, whose queenly

mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was also a patroness of this courtly poetry.

These are instances proving the feminine influence upon the composition of

these romances. And the growth of this great Arthurian Cycle represents,

_par excellence_, the entry of womanhood into the literature of chivalry.

Men love, as well as women; but the topic engrosses them less, and they

talk less about it. Likewise men appreciate courtesy; but in fact it is

woman’s influence that softens manners. And while the masculine fancy may

be drawn by what is fanciful and romantic, women abandon themselves to its

charm.

Of course the origin or _provenance_ of these romances was different from

that of the _chansons de geste_. It was Breton--it was Welsh, it was

_walhisch_ (the Old-German word for the same) which means that it was

_foreign_. In fact, the beginnings of these stories floated beautifully in

from a _weiss-nicht-wo_ which in the twelfth century was already hidden in

the clouds. When the names of known localities are mentioned, they have

misty import. Arthurian geography is more elusive than Homeric.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries these stories took form in the

verse and prose compositions in which they still exist. Sometimes the

poet’s name is known, Chrétien de Troies, for instance; but the source

from which he drew is doubtful. It probably was Breton, and Artus once in

Great Britain fought the Saxons like as not. But the growth, the

development, the further composition, of the _matière de Bretagne_ is

predominantly French. In France it grows; from France it passes on across

the Rhine, across the Alps, then back to what may have been its old home

across the British Channel. With equal ease on the wings of universal

human interest it surmounts the Pyrenees. It would have crossed the ocean,

had the New World been discovered.

Far be it from our purpose to enter the bottomless swamp of critical

discussion of the source and history of the Arthurian romances. Two or

three statements--general and probably rather incorrect--may be made.

Marie de France, soon after the middle of the twelfth century, wrote a

number of shortish narrative poems of chivalric manners and romantic love,

which, as it were, touch the hem of Arthur’s cloak. Chrétien de Troies

between 1160 and 1175 composed his _Tristan_ (a story originally having

nothing to do with Arthur), and then his _Erec_ (Geraint), then _Cligés_;

then his (unfinished) _Lancelot_ or the _Conte de la charrette_; then

_Ivain_ or the _Chevalier au lion_, and at last _Perceval_ or the _Conte

du Graal_. How much of the matter of these poems came from Brittany--or

indirectly from Great Britain? This is a large unsolved question! Another

is the relation of Chrétien’s poems to the subsequent Arthurian romances

in verse and prose. And perhaps most disputed of all is the authorship

(Beroul? Robert de Boron? Walter Mapes?) of this mass of Arthurian Old

French literature which was not the work of Chrétien. Without lengthy

_prolegomena_ it would be fruitless to attempt to order and name these

compositions. The Arthurian matters were taken up by German poets of

excellence--Heinrich von Veldeke, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von

Strassburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach,--and sometimes the best existing

versions are the work of the latter; for instance, Wolfram’s _Parzival_

and Gottfried’s _Tristan_. And again the relation of these German versions

to their French originals becomes still another problem.

For the chivalry of these romances, one may look to the poems of Chrétien

and to passages in the Old French prose (presumably of the early

thirteenth century), to which the name of Robert de Boron or Walter Mapes

is attached. Chrétien enumerates knightly excellences in his _Cligés_,

and, speaking from the natural point of view of the _jongleur_, he puts

_largesce_ (generosity) at their head. This, says he, makes one a

_prodome_ more than _hautesce_ (high station) or _corteisie_ or _savoirs_

or _jantillesce_ (noble birth) or _chevalerie_, or _hardemanz_ (hardihood)

or _seignorie_, or _biautez_ (beauty).[703]

Such are the knightly virtues, which, however, reach their full worth only

through the aid of that which makes perfect the Arthurian knight, the high

love of ladies, shortly to be spoken of. In the meanwhile let us turn from

Chrétien to the broader tableau of the Old French prose, and note the

beginning of _Artus_, as he is there called. The lineage of the royal boy

remains romantically undiscovered, till the time when he is declared to be

the king. It is then that he receives all kinds of riches from the lords

of his realm. He keeps nothing for himself; but makes inquiry as to the

character and circumstances of his future knights, and distributes all

among them according to their worth. This is the virtue of _largesce_.

Now comes the ceremony of making him a knight, and then of investing him

with, as it were, the supreme knighthood of kingship. The archbishop, it

is told, “fist (made) Artu chevalier, et celle nuit veilla Artus a la

mestre Eglise (the cathedral) jusques au jour.” Then follows the ceremony

of swearing allegiance to him; but Arthur has not yet finally taken his

great sword. When he is arrayed for the mass, the archbishop says to him:

“Allez querre (seek) l’espee et la jostise dont vos devez defendre Saincte

Eglise et la crestiante sauver.”

“Lors alla la procession au perron, et la demanda li arcevesques a

Artu, se il est tiels que il osast jurer et creanter Dieu et madame

Sainte Marie et a tous Sains et toutes Saintes, Sainte Eglise a sauver

et a maintenir, et a tous povres homes et toutes povres femmes pais et

loiaute tenir, et conseiller tous desconseillies, et avoier (guide)

tous desvoies (erring), et maintenir toutes droitures et droite

justice a tenir, si alast avant et preist l’espee dont nostre sire

avoit fait de lui election. Et Artus plora et dist: ‘Ensi voirement

com Dieus est sire de toutes les choses, me donit-il force et povoir

de ce maintenir que vous avez dit.’

“Il fu a genols et prit l’espee a jointes mains et la leva de

l’enclume (anvil) ausi voirement come se ele ne tenist a riens; et

lors, l’espee toute droite, l’enmenerent a l’autel et la mist sus; et

lors il le pristrent et sacrerent et l’enoindrent, et li firent

toutes iceles choses que l’en doit faire a roi.”[704]

All this is good chivalry as well as proper feudalism. And there are other

instances of genuine feudalism in these Romances. Such is the scene

between the good knight Pharien and the bad king Claudas, where the former

renounces his allegiance to the latter (_je declare renoncer a vostre

fief_) and then declares himself to be Claudas’s enemy, and claims the

right to fight or slay him; since Claudas has not kept troth with

him.[705]