When learning was solely ecclesiastical and scholastical, there were no
preceptors for mankind. The monastery and the university were far
removed from the sympathies of daily life; all knowledge was out of the
reach of the layman. It was then that the energies of men formed a
course of practical pursuits, a system of education of their own. The
singular institution of chivalry rose out of a combination of
circumstances where, rudeness and luxury mingling together, the utmost
refinement was found compatible with barbaric grandeur, and holy justice
with generous power. In lawless times they invented a single law which
included a whole code--the law of knightly honour. _L'Ordenne de
Chevalerie_ is the morality of knighthood, and invests the aspirant with
every moral and political virtue as every military qualification.[1]
Destitute of a national education, the higher orders thus found a
substitute in a conventional system of manners. Circumstances, perhaps
originally accidental, became customs sealed with the sign of honour. In
this moral chaos order marshalled confusion, as refinement adorned
barbarism. A mighty spirit lay as it were in disguise, and it broke out
in the forms of imagination, passion, and magnificence, seeking their
objects or their semblance, and if sometimes mistaken, yet still laying
the foundations of social order and national glory in Europe.
A regular course of practical pursuits was assigned to the future noble
"childe" from the day that he left the parental roof for the baronial
hall of his patron. In these "nurseries of nobility," as Jonson has well
described such an institution, in his first charge as varlet or page,
the boy of seven years was an attendant at the baron's table, and it
was no humiliating office when the youth grew to be the carver and the
cupbearer. He played on the viol or danced in the brawls till he was
more gravely trained in "the mysteries of woods and rivers," the arts of
the chase, and the sciences of the swanery, and the heronry, and the
fishery; the springal cheerily sounded a blast of venery, or the
falconer with his voice caressed his attentive hawk, which had not
obeyed him had he neglected that daily flattery.
At fourteen the varlet became an esquire, vaulting on his fiery steed,
and perfecting himself in all noble exercises, nicely adroit in the
science of "courtesie," or the etiquette of the court; and already this
"servant of love" was taught to elect _La dame de ses pensees_, and wore
her favour and her livery for "the love of honour, or the honour of
love," as Sir Philip Sydney in the style of chivalry expressed it.
At the maturity of twenty and one years the late varlet, and now the
esquire, stood forth a candidate to blazon his shield by knighthood--the
accomplished gentleman of these Gothic days, and right learned too, if
he can con his Bible and read his romance. Enchanting mirror of all
chivalry! if he invent songs and set them to his own melodies. Yet will
the gentle "batchelor" he dreaming on some gallant feat of arms, or some
martial achievement, whereby "to win his spurs." On his solemn entrance
into the church, laying his sword upon the altar, he resumed it by the
oath which for ever bound him to defend the church and the churchmen.
Thus all human affairs then were rounded by the ecclesiastical orbit,
out of which no foot dared to stray. All began and all ended as the
romances which formed his whole course of instruction--with the devotion
which seemed to have been addressed to man as much as to Heaven.
After the termination of the Crusades, the grand incident in the life of
the BARON was a pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem; what the
penitent of the Cross had failed to conquer, it seemed a consolation to
kneel at and to weep over: a custom not obsolete so late as the reigns
of our last Henries; and still, though less publicly avowed, the
melancholy Jerusalem witnesses the Hebrew and the Christian performing
some secret vow, to grieve with a contrition which it seems they do not
feel at home.
In these peregrinations a lordly Briton might chance to find some French
or Italian knight as rash and as haughty; it was a law in chivalry that
a knight should not give way to any man who demanded it as a right, nor
decline the single combat with any knight under the sun; a challenge
could not therefore be avoided. But a _pas d'armes_ was not always a
friendly invitation, for often under the guise of chivalry was concealed
the national hostility of the parties.
But when no crusade nor pilgrimage in the East, nor predatory excursion
in the West, nor even the blazonry of a tournament, which fed his eyes
with a picture of battle, summoned to put on his mail-coat, how was the
vacant Lord to wear out his monotonous days in his castle of indolence?
The domestic fool stood beside him, archly sad, or gravely mirthful, as
his master willed, with a proverb or a quip; and, with his licensed
bauble, was the most bitterly wisest man in the castle. Patron of the
costly manuscript which he could not himself read, the romancer of his
household awaited his call; the great then had fabulators or
tale-tellers, as royalty has now, by title of their office--its readers.
But this Lord was too vigorous for repose, and the tranquillity of chess
was too trying for his brain; the chess-board was often broken about the
head of some mute dependent, or perchance on one who returned the dagger
for the board. There was little peace for his restlessness, when, weary
in his seat, his priceless Norway hawk perched above his head,[2] and
his idle hounds spread over the floor, ceaselessly reminded him of those
wide and frowning forests which were continually encroaching on the
tillage of the contemned agriculturist, offering a mimetic war, not only
against the bird and the beast, but man himself; for the lairs of the
forest concealed the deer he chased, and often the bandit who chased the
Lord--the terrible Lord of this realm of wood and water, where, whoever
would fowl a bird or strike a buck, might have his eyes torn from their
sockets, or on the spot of his offence mount the instant gallows.[3]
There was a disorderly grandeur about the castellated mansion which
should have required the ukase of this Sovereign of many leagues,
surrounded by many hundreds of his retainers; but rarely the cry of the
oppressed was allowed to disturb the Lord, while all within were exact
in their appointments, as clock-work movements which were wound up in
the government of these immense domestic establishments. Great families
had their "household books," and in some the illegible hand of the
lordly master himself, when the day arrived that even barons were
incited to scriptural attempts, may yet be seen.[4] These nobles, it
appears, were more select in their falconer and their _chef de cuisine_
than in their domestic tutor, for such there was among the retainers of
the household. This humiliated sage, indeed, in his own person was a
model for the young varlets, on whom it was his office to inculcate that
patient suppleness and profound reverence for their Lord and their
superiors, which seemed to form the single principle of their education.
At this period we find a domestic proverb which evidently came from the
buttery. As then eight or ten tables were to be daily covered, it is
probable the chivalric epicures sometimes found their tastes
disappointed by the culinary artists; it would seem that this put them
into sudden outbreakings of ill-humour, for the proverb records that
"the minstrels are often beaten for the faults of the cooks."
Too much leisure, too many loungers, and the tedium of prolonged
banquets, a want of the pleasures of the luxurious sedentary would be as
urgent as in ages more intellectual and refined; those pleasures in
which we participate though we are passive, receiving the impressions
without any exertion of our own--pleasures which make us delighted
auditors or spectators. The theatre was not yet raised, but the
listlessness of vacuity gave birth to all the variegated artists of
revelry. If they had not comedy itself, they abounded with the comic,
and without tragedy the tragic often moved their emotions. Nor were they
even then without their scenical illusions, marvels which came and
vanished, as the Tregetour clapped his hands--enchantments! which though
Chaucer opined to be only "natural magic," all the world tremblingly
enjoyed as the work of devils; a sensation which we have totally lost in
the necromancy of our pantomimes. And thus it was that in the illumed
hall of the feudal Lord we discover a whole dramatic company; which,
however dissimilar in their professional arts, were all enlisted under
the indefinite class of MINSTRELS; for in the domestic state of society
we are now recalling, the poetic minstrel must be separated from those
other minstrels of very different acquirements, with whom, however, he
was associated.
There were minstrels who held honourable offices in the great
households, sometimes chosen for their skill and elocution to perform
the dignified service of heralds, and were in the secret confidence of
their Lord; these were those favourites of the castle, whose guerdon was
sometimes as romantic as any incident in their own romance.
No festival, public or private, but there the minstrel poet was its
crowning ornament. They awakened national themes in the presence of
assembled thousands at the installation of an abbot, or the reception of
a bishop.[5] Often, in the Gothic hall, they resounded some lofty
"Geste," or some old "Breton" lay, or with some gayer Fabliau, indulging
the vein of an improvvisatore, altering the old story when wanting a new
one. Delightful rhapsodists, or amusing tale-tellers, combining the
poetic with the musical character, they displayed the influence of the
imagination over a rude and unlettered race--
----They tellen Tales
Both of WEEPYING and of GAME.
Chaucer has portrayed the rapture of a minstrel excited by his harp, a
portrait evidently after the life.
Somewhat he _lisped_ for his wantonness
_To make the English swete upon his tonge_;
And in his Harping when that he had songe,
_His Eyen twinkled in his Hed aright,
As don the Sterres in a frosty night_.
The minstrel more particularly delighted "the Lewed," or the people,
when, sitting in their fellowship, the harper stilled their attention by
some fragment of a chronicle of their fathers and their father-land. The
family harper touched more personal sympathies; the ancestral honours of
the baron made even the vassal proud--domestic traditions and local
incidents deepened their emotions--the moralising ditty softened their
mind with thought, and every county had its legend at which the heart of
the native beat. Of this minstrelsy little was written down, but
tradition lives through a hundred echoes, and the "reliques of ancient
English poetry," and the minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and some
other remains, for the greater part have been formed by so many metrical
narratives and fugitive effusions.
There were periods in which the minstrels were so highly favoured that
they were more amply rewarded than the clergy--a circumstance which
induced Warton to observe with more truth than acuteness, that "in this
age, as in more enlightened times, the people loved better to be pleased
than to be instructed."[6] Such was their fascination and their passion
for "Largesse!" that they were reproached with draining the treasury of
a prince. It is certain that this thoughtless race have suffered from
the evil eye of the monkish chroniclers, who looked on the minstrels as
their rivals in sharing the prodigality of the great; yet even their
monkish censors relented whenever these revellers appeared. It was a
festive day among so many joyless ones when the minstrel band
approached the lone monastery. Then the sweet-toned Vielle, or the merry
Rebeck, echoed in the hermit-hearts of the slumbering inmates; vaulters
came tumbling about, jugglers bewitched their eyes, and the grotesque
Mime, who would not be outdone by his tutored ape. Then came the stately
minstrel, with his harp borne before him by his smiling page, usually
called "The Minstrel's Boy." One of the brotherhood has described the
strolling troop, who
Walken fer and wyde,
Her, and ther, in every syde,
In many a diverse londe.
The easy life of these ambulatory musicians, their ample gratuities, and
certain privileges which the minstrels enjoyed both here and among our
neighbours, corrupted their manners, and induced the dissipated and the
reckless to claim those privileges by assuming their title. A disorderly
rabble of minstrels crowded every public assembly, and haunted the
private abode. At different periods the minstrels were banished the
kingdom, in England and in France; but their return was rarely delayed.
The people could not be made to abandon these versatile dispensers of
solace, amid their own monotonous cares.
At different periods minstrels appear to have been persons of great
wealth--a circumstance which we discover by their votive religious acts
in the spirit and custom of those days. The Priory of St. Bartholomew in
Smithfield, in 1102, was founded by "Rahere," the king's minstrel, who
is described as "a pleasant-witted gentleman," such as we may imagine a
wealthy minstrel, and moreover "the king's," ever to have been.[7] In
St. Mary's Church at Beverley, in Yorkshire, stands a noble column
covered with figures of minstrels, inscribed, "This Pillar made the
Minstrels;" and at Paris, a chapel dedicated to St. Julian of the
Minstrels, was erected by them, covered with figures of minstrels
bearing all the instruments of music used in the middle ages, where the
violin or fiddle is minutely sculptured.[8]
If in these ages of romance and romancers the fair sex were rarely
approached without the devotion of idolatry, whenever "the course of
true love" altered--when the frail spirit loved too late and should not
have loved, the punishment became more criminal than the crime; for
there was more of selfish revenge and terrific malignity than of
justice, when autocratical man became the executioner of his own decree.
The domestic chronicles of these times exhibit such harrowing incidents
as those of _La Chatelaine de Vergy_, where suddenly a scene of
immolation struck through the devoted household; or that of "La Dame du
Fayel,"[9] who was made to eat her lover's heart. And those who had not
to punish, but to put to trial, the affections of women who were in
their power, had their terrible caprices, a ferocity in their barbarous
loves. Year after year the Gothic lord failed to subdue the immortalised
patience of Griselda, and such was our "Childe Waters," who put to such
trials of passion, physical and mental, the maiden almost a mother. In
the fourteenth century, one century later than the histories of the
"_Chatelaine_" and the "_Dame_," either the female character was
sometimes utterly dissolute, or the tyranny of husbands utterly
reckless, when we find that it was no uncommon circumstance that women
were strangled by masked assassins, or walking by the riverside were
plunged into it. This drowning of women gave rise to a popular
proverb--"It is nothing! only a woman being drowned." La Fontaine,
probably without being aware of this allusion to a practice of the
fourteenth century, has preserved the proverbial phrase in his "La Femme
noyee," beginning,
Je ne suis pas de ceux qui disent ce n'est rien,
C'est une Femme qui se noye![10]
The personages and the manners here imperfectly sketched, constituted
the domestic life of our chivalric society from the twelfth century to
the first civil wars of England. In this long interval few could read;
even bishops could not always write; and the Gothic baron pleaded the
privilege of a layman for not doing the one nor the other.
The intellectual character of the nation can only be traced in the
wandering minstrel and the haughty ecclesiastic. The minstrel mingling
with all the classes of society reflected all their sympathies, and in
reality was one of the people themselves; but the ecclesiastic stood
apart, too sacred to be touched, while his very language was not that
either of the noble or of the people.
A dense superstition overshadowed the land from the time of the first
crusade to the last. It may be doubtful whether there was a single
Christian in all Christendom, for a new sort of idolatry was introduced
in shrines, and relics, and masses; holy wells, awful exorcisms, saintly
vigils, month's minds, pilgrimages afar and penances at home;
lamp-lighting before shrines decked with golden images, and hung with
votive arms and legs of cripples who recovered from their rheumatic
ails. The enthusiasm for the figure of the cross conferred a less pure
sanctity on that memorial of pious tribulation. Everywhere it was placed
before them. The crusader wore that sign on his right shoulder, and when
his image lay extended on his tomb, the crossed legs were reverently
contemplated. They made the sign of the cross by the motion of their
hand, in peril or in pleasure, in sorrow and in sin, and expected no
happy issue in an adventure without frequently signing themselves with
the cross. The cross was placed at the beginning and at the end of their
writings and inscriptions, and it opened and closed the alphabet. The
mystical virtues of the cross were the incessant theme of the Monachal
Orders, and it was kissed in rapture on the venal indulgence expedited
by the papal Hierophant. As even in sacred things novelty and fashion
will perversely put in their claim, we find the writers and sculptors
varying the appearance of the cross; its simple form [Symbol] became
inclosed in a circle [Symbol], and again varied by dots [Symbol].[11]
The guardian cross protected a locality; and in England, at the origin
of parishes, the cross stood as the hallowed witness which marked the
boundaries, and which it had been sacrilege to disturb. It was no
unusual practice to place the sign at the head of private letters,
however trivial the contents, as we find it in charters and other public
documents. In one of the Paston letters, the piety of the writer at a
much later period could not detail the ordinary occurrences of the week
without inserting the sacred letters I.H.S.; and similar invocations are
found in others.[12]
The material symbol of Christianity had thus been indiscriminately
adopted without conveying with it the virtues of the Gospel. The cross
was a myth--the cross was the _Fetish_[13] of an idolatrous
Christianity--they bowed before it, they knelt to it, they kissed it,
they kissed a palpable and visible deity; never was the Divinity
rendered more familiar to the gross understandings of the vulgar; and in
these ages of unchristian Christianity, the cross was degraded even to a
vulgar mark, which conveniently served for the signature of some
unlettered baron.